Ep. 84 dissects Trump’s 2016 rise through Clinton’s email scandal—2,079 classified documents, Lynch’s evasive testimony—and conservative backers like Coulter and Hannity ignoring his authoritarian red flags. Rudyard Kipling’s The Gods of the Copybook Headings critiques fleeting utopian promises (e.g., disarmament, redistribution) versus timeless truths, warning of cyclical societal collapse. The episode ties Trump’s appeal to populist rage against GOP elites, framing politics as a test of sanity amid moral decay. [Automatically generated summary]
The State Department has released nearly 4,000 new emails that Hillary Clinton sent or received on her private email account at the address billsweetmuffin at AOL.com.
The State Department voluntarily released these final emails in response to a court order, followed by a SWAT team raid that led to a standoff and then a shootout, after which the emails were voluntarily released by the cold, dead fingers of the State Department workers.
Mrs. Clinton, the Democrats' presumptive candidate for time off for good behavior, has long maintained that the emails contained no classified documents except for the 2,079 documents that were classified, but had not been classified at the time she received them, and in fact were never classified at all until long after the intelligence officers named in them had already been tortured and killed.
The rest of the documents, Mrs. Clinton maintains, were of a strictly personal nature, including, for example, one that read, quote, darling, could you please stop on your way home and pick up a quart of milk at the Stop and Save, which is only 6,910 kilometers east by northeast from our secret missile facility outside of Krakow.
If you don't forget, I'll have an extra special surprise for you.
I know you'll like my little Vladiwati.
Kisses HRC, unquote.
FBI Director James Comey has now assigned 15,000 special agents to investigate whether Mrs. Clinton committed any wrongdoing when she left top-secret State Department communications open for hours on her Amiga desktop.
And Comey says he will soon release his report on the case with his recommendations for action.
The report, to be entitled, Treachery, Mendacity, and Obstruction, and also more treachery, will be delivered to the Justice Department by an official mob of Tyrolean villagers bearing torches and screaming, bring us the monster.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch said she looked forward to reading the report on her return from Switzerland in 2029.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Clinton was expecting big gains today on Super Tuesday, where polls have her leading with 70% of the Democratic turnout or 52 votes.
Trigger warning.
I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin trip.
I read that one personally, by the way.
That one hasn't quite come to light yet.
All right, so it's Super Tuesday.
Hey, yeah.
I know I feel super.
I feel super de-duper.
It's like.
So today, obviously, the frontrunners are expecting big gains.
Hillary is expecting big gains and Trump.
You know, I actually want to take a different look at Trump.
I know one day I'm going to come and go, I love Trump.
I don't know what I was thinking before, but I actually want to take a look.
We've taken a look at why people are following this guy.
You know, the unprotected, Peggy Noonan called them, and the people who are angry, and they're this and they're that.
But I want to take a look at some of these conservatives, people like Ann Coulter, Newt Gingrich, and Sean Hannity, who have just gotten on this wagon of a guy who's just not a conservative.
I mean, he has nothing in his record to make us think he's going to be conservative.
So what are they thinking about?
And there's been a lot of really good stuff that just happened to be written today and yesterday that's really worth looking at.
But before that, I just, I have to talk about Hillary Clinton for a minute, these emails that are coming out.
And I don't know if you saw this, Brett Baer, who Brett Baer is like, is Fox News.
Without Brett Baer, Fox News, he's like the best newsman on television.
And he had the Attorney General on yesterday.
And he sits her down and he asks her very, you know, specific questions about this Apple thing, whether Apple should allow the feds to get into a, you know, a cell phone that was owned by terrorists and all this stuff.
It's a really interesting case in a way because it highlights the fact that there actually is common ground between liberals, leftists, and conservatives of goodwill in the sense that conservatives tend to look at the threat to individuals from the government, and leftists tend to look at the threat to individuals from big corporations.
And I think we can all agree that either one of those could be the threat to the individual.
So this actually is a case with a lot of interesting stuff.
But the point is, Loretta Lynch is talking about this case.
She's giving them details, telling them what they're investigating, who's on it, what's they're doing.
Suddenly, Bayer switches over to emails.
And I find Loretta Lynch one of the most chilling people in the government.
I mean, people are always saying, oh, she's so poised.
She's so articulate.
Listen to Bayer, try and get anything out of her, one little thing out of her on this case.
Is it legal or illegal for federal employees, especially cabinet members, to set up a private server to handle all government email correspondence?
You know, I'm not going to give you a legal opinion on that since it is a matter under that may be under review.
Certainly the State Department Inspector General is looking at the procedures and practices and policies of that department.
So I'm not going to comment on that except to say that our investigation is going to continue as any other case.
Will it be wrapped up soon?
We don't give you timing estimates either.
Again, we don't have to.
There is a timetable that is hanging over this, you know.
But shouldn't American voters know Hillary Clinton's legal status as they get prepared to head to the polls?
Well, what they should know, and what I hope that they do know, is that any case that the Department of Justice looks at is going to be handled efficiently, fairly thoroughly, without any kind of artificial deadline on it.
Because what's most important is to follow the facts, follow the law, and come to an independent conclusion as to what may or may not have happened.
Would you ever have a private server?
With regard to emails.
Well, we use our DOJ servers here for emails.
So you wouldn't have a private server at home.
I don't comment on that.
You know, I frequently talk about the fact that I find it hard to appreciate modern popular music.
And I find it hard to appreciate modern popular music because I listen to the lyrics.
And old lyrics used to be sophisticated, intelligent, condensed, really well written.
And new lyrics tend to be kind of sloppy and stupid the way the performers are.
You know, they just don't say anything to me.
If you listen to the music of her voice, let us call it the music of her voice, it sounds like she's actually saying something.
You know, she's leaning forward, her eyebrows are coming down, she's saying, you know, we don't really say what we can't.
The words that are coming out of her mouth are as empty of meaning as if they were a truck backing up and emitting that loud, you know, piercing alarm to tell you that it might back over you.
You know, it's just she is saying, she is saying, trust your government, we do this in the best way.
We do this in the best way because we're the government.
Yes, but we're the government and we do it, therefore, in the best way.
Let me ask you a question.
The one question, Bear asked her everything, but the one question I don't think he asked her, why isn't there a special prosecutor on this case?
You know, when Bush had that stupid Valerie claim thing, he appointed a special prosecutor just to make things look right.
And it was a disaster.
It was a terrible thing to do.
The guy went out completely over the top in what he was investigating.
But I can't believe that, you know, Loretta Lynch is an appointment.
She is a creature of Obama.
She is an appointment of Obama.
Why isn't there a special prosecutor?
All that verbiage that just came out of her mouth, why hasn't she just recused herself and said, look, I'm a political appointee.
This is a political case.
I'm out of here.
You know, get somebody who doesn't care who's going to be fair.
Well, why?
Because they're protecting the Democratic Party.
That's basically why.
But, you know, the real question about Hillary Clinton's emails at this point, as far as I'm concerned, is what difference at this point does it make?
I mean, I can't remember who am I quoting there.
Was that Shakespeare?
I can't remember.
But, you know, we know, I mean, we know who this woman is.
You know, we know this is the woman.
She lied.
She provably lied about the death of the Americans of Benghazi.
It's provable.
She has testified before the Senate, before Congress, and said that she sent emails telling people that she knew it was a terrorist attack.
And she told us, you and me, she then told us it was about this video.
Poor video guy goes to jail.
We know she lied about this, okay?
So we know who she is.
Her foundation took donations while she was senator, while she was secretary of state, and the people who gave her those donations, whether companies or whether they were countries, they got special favors from her.
And we know that she slandered, harassed, and bullied women who made plausible accusations against her husband, accusations of not just molestation and unwanted attentions, but rape.
We know she did all this stuff.
We know it.
So if you're going out and voting for her, that's who you're voting for.
The New York Times, a former newspaper, did a two-piece, huge two-piece article on how Libya went down the drain.
How after they got rid of Qaddafi, Libya just spiraled into this ISIS mess that it's in today.
I mean, this was happening even while Hillary was on stage at debates going, isn't it wonderful my success in Libya?
And they just describe, you know, the thing that makes me crazy about the New York Times is they have the capacity to report so well that it actually increases the evil of the fact that they don't report on the IRS scandal, that they don't report on the things that Obama is doing.
It makes their silences so much darker and deeper that they have, in fact, the capacity to report.
They report on this story in incredible detail about what's going on behind the scenes.
Made me even wonder if they were targeting Hillary.
Because Hillary comes across in this story as just kind of a naive incompetent.
You know, she kind of come to her and they say, oh, you know, if we get rid of Qaddafi, we're going to have a Democratic government.
And she's like, okay, that's a good idea.
well, I'll go tell Obama, you know, oh, Mr. Obama, you know, we're going to have a democratic government when we get, and Obama, who is such an ideologue, his idea is basically whatever, but I just don't want to get involved in a war, you know.
He just doesn't want to be involved in a war.
So essentially, they kill off Gaddafi, they get rid of Gaddafi, and then Obama won't do anything to secure the peace, and the place spirals into disaster.
I mean, if you wrote a play about it, it would be called The Ideologue and the Incompetent, The Ideologue and the Incompetent.
And that's Hillary Clinton's record.
I mean, everything she touches turns to garbage.
And that's kind of what she's running on.
She should say, you know, examine my record.
Everything I touch turns to garbage.
And so you can depend on me.
You know what you're getting with Hillary Clinton.
But, you know, she's going to win.
She's going to win big today because of the black folk, basically.
She's going into the South.
A lot of blacks, a lot of Democrats aren't showing up because they don't care.
She doesn't inspire them.
So the blacks will be busted en masse to the polls and they will reliably do what they have been doing for the past several elections, many elections, which is voting in a block.
And when we talked yesterday about David Duke and his racism, about his, you know, I mean, he's this virulent, you know, anti-Jew, anti-you know, he's a terrible guy.
But I was just saying that he is the same to me as Black Lives Matter.
Comparing Trump to Rubio?00:15:15
It is all the same logic, this identity politics, where, you know, I have a different, go off on a little tangent here.
I have a different theology than most people.
Most people believe that there's the natural world and there's the supernatural world, and they're kind of different, you know, that like angels float overhead and there's suddenly a bolt of lightning and all this stuff.
I believe that there is a natural world and there is a supernatural world and they're exactly the same thing.
So like you go to church and they'll say, well, Jesus expelled a devil from this man, but nowadays we know it was mental illness.
And I think, yeah, maybe there's no difference.
You know, those two things are going on at exactly the same time.
I mean, you notice that nobody who hears voices ever hears a voice going like, you're a great guy.
I like you.
Why don't you go do something nice for someone?
You know, people who hear voices, the voices are always saying, kill, you know, you're miserable.
I hate you.
So I think like, you know, the devil actually does operate, but he operates in the world we know, you know, and God does operate and he operates in the world we know.
And one of the things you see about evil is that it turns everything into itself.
So if a black guy is mistreated, he goes to the white guy and he says, you know, you're mistreating me, but I'm exactly the same as you are.
I have the same rights as you do, right?
And that's great until the abuse goes on long enough.
And finally the black guy starts saying, well, you know, I'm black, so I'm special.
I get to do whatever, you know, I get to do whatever.
And you stink because you're white.
He just becomes the guy.
The devil doesn't care who the bigot is.
The devil doesn't care what color your face is if you're a bigot.
As long as there's bigotry, he's a happy dude.
He's sitting there drinking.
You know, as long as somebody's hating on somebody, he is in the catbird seat.
So that brings us to the Republican side, speaking of evil turning everything into itself, where everything has turned into Donald Trump.
Now, like, everybody has become, you know, like they're trying to strike back against Donald Trump.
We have that Rubio cut.
Play the Rubio cut of Rubio talking about Donald Trump.
he likes to go on Twitter.
So he now says, well, first of all, he says that I'm sweating all the time.
It's hot in here.
Am I sweating now?
No, all right.
He doesn't sweat.
He doesn't sweat because his pores are clogged from the spray tan that he uses.
Donald is not going to make America great.
He's going to make America orange.
The next thing.
Now, the other thing he says, he's always calling me Little Marco.
And I'll admit, the guy, he's taller than me, he's like 6'2, which is why I don't understand why his hands are the size of someone who's 5'2 ⁇ .
Have you seen his hands?
They're like this.
And you know what they say about men with small hands?
You can't trust them.
You can't trust them.
So that's what Rubio is going to do about the national debt, right?
That explains.
Now we've got that figured out.
So, you know, I know for the ladies in the audience who have never heard what the small hands reference is, of course, it's the old saw that a man with small fingers also has, you know, small equipment.
So now we've gotten down to the point where we're talking about Donald Trump's dingus.
And, you know, it's like, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, well, I'll tell you about the national debt.
You know, you've got a small package.
You know, it's like everything, everything has become Donald Trump.
It's just all turned into Donald Trump.
So I'm sitting there watching this craziness.
I'm thinking to myself, what is it?
You know, what is it that these people like Ann Coulter and Sean Anning, Newt Gingrich, Jeff Sessions, what are they thinking?
What are they thinking?
So today, Brett Stevens, who is the foreign policy columnist at the Wall Street Journal.
And when Brett Stevens writes about foreign policy, he is second to none.
He is absolutely brilliant, especially on the Middle East.
He's completely, you know, has integrity.
He's just incorruptible.
He says, and he really gets things right.
He has been writing about this, and he has been going slowly crazy watching Trump.
And the thing that has really been off-putting about it is he has been lumping Trump together with crews, which I just think is absurd, you know, that to lump this guy, Trump, with a constitutional scholar, a senator, a guy who stood up for certain things with integrity.
But this time he doesn't.
This time he just goes after Trump.
So he says, the candidacy of Donald Trump is the open sewer of American conservatism.
He's just going for it here, okay?
He says, in recent weeks, Mr. Trump has endorsed the code pink view of the Iraq war.
Bush lied.
People died.
He has cited and embraced an aphorism of Benito Mussolini, which, by the way, is the one thing I think Trump did that I don't blame him for.
He saw the quote, he didn't know it was Mussolini, and the quote was perfectly reasonable.
It was something like, better to live like a lion than die like a lamb.
You know, anybody could have said that.
He has refused to release his tax returns, and he has taken his time disavowing the endorsement of Ku Klux's one time Ku Kux Klan grand wizard, David Duke.
None of this seems to have made the slightest dent in Mr. Trump's popularity.
If anything, it has enhanced it.
He keeps going on.
What too many of Mr. Trump's supporters want is an American strongman, a president who will make the proverbial trains run on time.
This is a refrain I hear over and over again from Trump supporters who want to bring a businessman's efficiency to the federal government.
If that means breaking with a few Democratic niceties, so be it.
Mr. Trump exemplifies a new political wave sweeping the globe, leaders coming to power through Democratic means while avowing illiberal ends.
That's the future Mr. Trump offers, whether his supporters realize it or not.
If Donald Trump becomes the candidate, he will not win the presidency, but he will help vindicate the left's ugly indictment of the right.
He will be, as I said many, many months ago at this point, that Donald Trump is what the left says we are.
I mean, Donald Trump is the image of what we are.
Now, the only thing missing from this by Brett Stevens is any kind of mea culpa, any kind of taking the blame for creating this phenomenon.
You know, I mean, you listen to Brett Stevens.
I've never met him.
We've exchanged a few emails, but I've heard him speak.
And he has this very lofty Ivy League-style view of the world where he, you know, he tells you, oh, you know, you foolish Republicans worrying about illegal immigration.
You know, my wife is a Mexican and she's lovely.
You know, I'm sure she is, but she's not taking somebody's job.
She's not taking the job of a guy who, you know, maybe can't do that much, but maybe he doesn't have the skills to do much more than an unskilled worker who comes over illegally and takes his job away.
And he hasn't been listening, okay?
And that's the thing.
These guys, and the Wall Street Journal is, it is the HQ of the establishment.
I mean, when you read the Wall Street Journal, you are reading the establishment view.
And a lot of times it's good.
A lot of times I agree with it.
I don't care where they're coming from.
I just want to know if they're right or wrong, but they are not listening.
So let's talk about what they're saying.
There's an article by Laura Ingram, who is, you know, obviously a firebrand, very bright woman.
I've met her a couple times and have talked to her at length.
And she's an extremely bright woman who takes no quarter.
I would not want to be between her and something she wanted.
I wouldn't want to get in her way.
And she writes this piece called, it's called The Suicide of the Establishment, the Republican Establishment Commits Suicide.
Here is something to think about, says Laura, as we approach Super Tuesday.
If Marco Rubio becomes president, we can expect, one, that he will work with Democrats and the GOP leadership in Congress to pass something that looks like the Gang of Eight Amnesty Bill.
Two, that he will urge Congress to pass any trade agreements that Obama has signed.
Three, that he will send significant numbers of U.S. troops to the Middle East.
Four, that his foreign policy will be developed by many of the same people who advise George W. Bush.
Five, that his economic policy will reflect the views of those who were in power when the United States was hit by the economic crisis of 2008.
She goes on, for almost eight years, it has been increasingly clear that many, many Republicans, probably a majority of the party, do not agree with any of the five principles outlined above.
Time and time again, grassroots and movement conservatives have expressed their opposition to all five of the key planks in Rubio's platform.
These voters have tried through every means available to make their opposition felt.
They are the reason that Eric Cantor is no longer in the House.
They are the reason that the Gang of Eight bill didn't pass.
They are the reason that John Boehner is no longer Speaker.
Many people have urged the Rubio donor network think tank fellows and media supporters to back off on their policy demands to do more than simply acknowledge the voters are right to be angry.
Nevertheless, even today, the Rubio supporters refuse to budge.
Furthermore, the Rubio supporters have, for the most part, flatly refused even to debate the policy issues at stake here.
They will not even discuss changing our trade policy.
They make some noises about immigration enforcement, but this is not done in a spirit of compromise, but with the arrogance of those who know that no one really expects them to change their views if they win.
For all the complaints about Trump's policy generalities, establishment GOP types have not even pretended to engage in a serious debate.
Their offer is simple.
You do as we say or we will throw the election to Hillary.
And by the way, that is true.
They are basically saying that.
They're saying that we will throw the election to Hillary.
It is this fanaticism, she says, of the establishment, this complete unwillingness to change their policy or even to debate the possibility of serious change that has put us in the position we are in today.
In the end, they have left the opponents of the status quo no choice.
They must either defeat Rubio and radically change the power structure of the GOP, or they must watch Obama's immigration policy, Obama's trade policy, Bush's foreign policy, and Bush's economic policy be implemented.
Now, that's a little unfair as far as I'm concerned about Bush's economic policy.
It's a little unfair about Bush's foreign policy in the sense that Bush's foreign policy was an ad hoc assembly of ideas in response to 9-11.
Remember, he was not a nation builder until 9-11 happened, and then suddenly he let himself get drawn in to what may have been an over-ambitious response to a traumatic terrorist attack.
I mean, he was trying to defend the American people against what is obviously a monstrosity, a movement of monsters in the Middle East.
So that's a little unfair.
And Bush's economic policy, Bush failed because he had lost.
Bush failed to stop the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac loans to people who couldn't pay them back, which was the core of the financial crisis, because Wall Street then took those loans and double-funded them and triple-funded them and quadruple funded them until everything collapsed.
He failed to stop that because he had lost all his credibility because of the wars.
He had put all his political chips into the wars and he had nothing left to fight with the Barney Franks of the world and the Christopher Dodds.
So he got stuck.
So it wasn't really his economic policy.
But still, the point is fair enough that this is all the same stuff.
And even though I agree with the establishment on a couple of those issues, I understand that people really are angry and you have to address them.
And it's not enough to say you have the right to be angry.
So Pat Buchanan now writes the same thing, right?
Pat Buchanan, staunch conservative, nationalist, and all this.
And he says, a conservative friend told this writer that Trump, unlike, say, Ted Cruz, has never shown an interest in the Supreme Court, which, with Justice Antonin Scalia's seat vacant, hangs in the balance.
What Buchanan's talking about is, will Trump destroy the conservative movement, which is what a lot of people are afraid of.
Buchanan says, surely a President Trump, hearing the clamor of those who elected him to find a Scalia, would be responsive.
With President Clinton, the court is gone for a generation.
So he's comparing Trump to Hillary.
Obviously, that's true.
We hear wails that the nomination of Trump would mean the end of the conservative movement, but how so?
If Trump won and conducted a conservative government, it would validate the movement.
If Trump won and turned left, it would inspire an insurgency like Ronald Reagan's in 1976.
If Trump ran and lost, the conservative movement would have President Clinton to unite and rally the troops against.
Undeniably, a Trump presidency would mean an end to the Bush and establishment policies on trade, immigration, and intervention.
The same song that Laura Ingram is singing.
In other words, anything that will blow up the establishment.
We hate these guys so much, the Boehners and the McConnells and the Ryans.
We hate these guys so much, and they will not listen to us.
We think that whether Trump is a good president or a bad president, this is what they're saying.
We've got to blow up this house first.
We're going to blow up a house, and then we're going to rebuild it with a beautiful palace there in its stead.
And all I can say to that is you're living in the house.
There's one thing to refurbish a house, another thing to build on a new wing, another thing even to tear it down and start again.
When you blow up the house, we got nowhere to go.
We are living in this house.
And you do not know.
I mean, I tell this to people all the time, just like the climate, society is too complex a system to predict for very long periods of time.
I'm talking like over three hours.
You know, it's very hard to tell when somebody says to you, oh, you know, if we allow gay marriage, society will fall.
You don't know.
You just don't know.
You have to do what's right in front of you.
You have to say, it's right or wrong to do this.
I'll do what's right.
It's right or wrong to do that.
I will do what's right.
You have to continually do what is right and trust society to work it out.
You know, give people their freedom, give people their liberty, leave people alone and let society work it out.
When you throw a bowling ball down that alley like Donald Trump, what I don't understand is, did I miss the place where Ted Cruz won the love of the establishment?
Did I miss the place where the establishment said, oh, please, please, give us Ted Cruz, anything but Donald Trump.
They're saying the opposite.
So I don't understand why, if you're going to burn down the house, if you're going to want to take down this establishment house, why not get a guy who is actually anti-establishment, who is principled, who has read the Constitution, which I'm sure Donald Trump never has, who knows it down to the, you know, down to the periods and commas.
I don't get that.
I do not get why the Coulters and the Hannity's and the Gingrich's and the Pat Buchanan and Laura Ingram, for all I know, I'm not sure where she stands on this, but she seems to be standing for Trump.
Why, if they want to blow this building up, don't they bring in a guy who's a demolition expert, who actually knows what he's doing?
Why not go for Ted Cruz?
I just, I really don't understand it.
And there is now this story that's going around that there's a secret New York Times tape of Trump saying even on his signature issue he's lying, even on his issue about immigration, that he's going to really be a lot nicer than he sounds.
The Gods of Copybook Headings00:07:01
And he said, you know, he said this in an interview a couple of months ago.
He said, you know, I have a heart.
Whatever I do, it's going to be done with heart.
And the interviewer said, well, why don't you say that?
And he said, because then my poll numbers would go down.
Maybe my poll numbers wouldn't be as high.
I mean, he's an open, he's an honest liar.
He honestly says he's the guy who says to you, I'm going to lie to you.
Now I'm lying to you.
Now I've lied to you.
Thank you very much.
Bye.
And now I'm the president of the United States.
All right.
Well, I just wanted to take a look at that to see if there is anything to this.
I think these people are selling themselves a scenario that is just going to blow up everything they care about.
But again, I can't predict it either because, I mean, as I say, society is just too much in flux.
Let me move on to stuff I like.
I'm trying to take a little bit of extra time with stuff I like because I'm talking about poetry and I know how difficult how people hate poetry and I think they have every reason to hate poetry because I think every poem written after about 1950 is terrible.
Those poems are terrible.
Lovely Lindsay was suggesting to me, which has been suggested to me before, that the great poets are now working in music, writing song lyrics and things like that.
I think there is some truth to that, but there is something about poetry that is worth looking at.
Great poems are worth looking at because they force you to stop.
They force you to stop what you're doing, to turn off your phone and your connections and just start to think about what this guy is saying.
So yesterday, I read a poem called The Second Coming, which William Butler Yeats wrote in 1919.
So it's right as World War I has basically destroyed civilization as the Europeans knew it.
This poem was also written in 1919 by another British poet named Rudyard Kipling.
Yeats was an Irishman.
Kipling was the great British poet.
Everybody hated him because he was an imperialist, and he has, of course, his stock has gone down because he was an open imperialist.
But interestingly, interestingly, around 1897, I think he was writing for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.
He was supposed to turn out this great celebratory poem, and instead he turned out a poem called Recessional, which basically said, don't forget about God.
You know, we're the most powerful.
I mean, the empire, the sun never set on the British Empire.
And he wrote this thing saying, you know, don't forget, if you forget your principles, you know, we're going to be in big trouble.
And of course, a few years later, the war came.
And this is a poem he wrote in the same year, 1919, that Yeats wrote his poem, The Second Coming.
And it's called The Gods.
And Kipling lost his son in World War I.
So he really understood.
He really understood what had happened and what had been destroyed.
And he wrote a poem called The Gods of the Copybook Headings.
And it's a very simple poem, very straightforward.
I don't think I have to explain much of it.
The gods of the copybook heading, copybooks were books that they would give students, kids, and you would write out your handwriting.
You would practice your handwriting.
And then it's saying you'd copy phrases out.
And the phrases, the copybook headings, would be just little pieces of wisdom, you know, like health is more important than wealth, or a stitch in time saves nine, or, you know, just the little things that build, that are common wisdom that everybody knows, the wages of sin or death, you know, just the simplest wisdom.
And so he's talking about the gods of the copybook headings, the gods who run the universe, who live according to the copybook headings.
And he compares them to what he calls the gods of the marketplace.
And a lot of people take that to mean materialist, you know, marketplace ideas.
But what I think he's talking about are the gods who win because they're popular, whose ideas are popular, the popular ideas.
They sell, okay?
And the narrator of this poem is basically the human spirit.
So here's the poem.
He says, it's not long.
As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race, I make my proper prostrations to the gods of the marketplace.
Peering through reverent fingers, I watch them flourish and fall.
And the gods of the copybook headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us.
They showed us each in turn that water would certainly wet us, as fire would certainly burn.
But we found them lacking in uplift, vision, and breadth of mind.
So we left them to teach the guerrillas while we followed the march of mankind.
We moved as the spirit listed.
They, the gods of the market, of the copybook headings, they never altered their pace, being neither cloud nor windborn like the gods of the marketplace.
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come that a tribe had been wiped off its ice field, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the hopes that our world is built on, they were utterly out of touch.
The gods of the copybook headings don't care what your hopes are.
They don't care what your dreams are.
They deny that the moon was Stilton.
They denied that the moon was made of green cheese.
They denied she was even Dutch.
They denied that wishes were horses.
They denied that a pig had wings.
So we worshiped the gods of the market who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, they promised perpetual peace.
They swore if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
So give up your guns and there'll be no more violence.
Hear that anywhere else?
Okay, that's what the gods of the marketplace told us.
They swore if we gave them our weapons, the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed, they sold us and delivered us bound to our foe.
And the gods of the copybook heading said, stick to the devil you know.
On the first Feminian sandstones, we were promised the fuller life, which started by loving our neighbor and ended by loving his wife, till our women had no more children, and the men lost reason and faith.
And the gods of the copybook heading said, the wages of sin is death.
In the Carboniferous Epic, we were promised abundance for all by robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul.
You've heard this one before, too, right?
All right, but though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy.
And the gods of the copybook heading said, if you don't work, you die.
Then the gods of the market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew, and the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true.
That all is not gold that glitters, and two and two make four.
And the gods of the copybook headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of man.
And there are only four things certain since social progress began.
That the dog returns to his vomit, and the sow returns to her mire, and the burnt fool's bandaged finger goes wobbling back to the fire.
We keep making the same mistakes over and over and over again.
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins, when all men are paid for existing, and no man must pay for his sins, as surely as fire will wet us, as surely as fire will burn, the gods of the copybook headings, with terror and slaughter, return.
Kipling was writing after he had seen the gods of the copybook headings come back with terror and slaughter.
Stoic Wisdom Revisited00:00:41
Let us hope they don't do it to us.
You know, I get these newsletters every day from various sources, and one of them, my favorite one, is actually from Ricochet, a wonderful kind of conversational site, and they send something called the Daily Shot.
And at the top of each one, there's always a quotation.
Today was from Marcus Aurelius, who was the emperor of Rome, but he was also a great stoic philosopher.
Stoic, as the British say.
He was a stoic philosopher.
And he writes, The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
If you're voting today on Super Tuesday, try to stay out of the ranks of the insane, even if you're not in the majority.