National Intelligence Council Says The Future Of Gov't Is Bleak
Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the recently released report from the National Intelligence Council which predicts over the next 20 years what might happen to governments around the globe. They also bring in the same report from 1992 to add historical context to trace the path we're on and whether the Great American Experiment is a failure.
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This is Jared Yates Saxton here as always with Nick Halsman.
Nick, how was your weekend?
It was great.
We went out to a party.
We actually were in the presence of people in real life, outdoors.
It was amazing.
Yeah, and it was actually in the middle of, like, Malibu Canyon, you know, like this oasis in the middle of these mountains.
It was, like, amazing.
Although it was also strange because I wasn't sure how I was supposed to react or to act amongst people.
It had been so long.
But I think I did okay.
It's going to be odd trying to figure that stuff out, for sure, like how to reenter society.
But that sounds nice.
I'm glad for you.
Thank you.
I take it that you did not have any similar experience.
No, I did not.
I have continued my lockdown.
I'm waiting on my next dose of vaccine, waiting to reenter society like a lot of the rest of us are.
But we're here today.
We thought this would be an interesting opportunity to sort of get people up to speed on a couple of ideas.
There was an intelligence report released very, very recently that we want to talk about a little bit and give some historical background.
When we talk about this current moment, and again, this is something we like to do on the McRake podcast.
We like to talk about current events, but we like to give it a deeper sort of a dive, a historical perspective, give people an idea of why things have happened and a little bit more than the headlines.
So today we need to talk about why America is, and this is a technical term, Nick, why America is so fucked up right now.
And why we're having so many problems and what the issue is.
So before we get into the current situation, there was this intelligence report and one of the things that happens is every few years the intelligence community in America
Drops a a report that basically talks about where the world is and where it is going It is a planning document It is a document that is supposed to lead to strategies and also prepare politicians and military leaders and thinkers for the future This particular report was titled global trends 2040 a more contested world and
Nick, can you tell the people at home what to expect in the next 20 years?
Oh, geez.
Probably another pandemic.
Sure.
I think that could be something that they're talking about.
But also just, you know, I think the failure of, you know, governments to be able to do what they say they intend to do in terms of helping people, which I think we're going to come to ahead, because I think that's what the other issue is.
What is the purpose of government in the first place?
And what do people on both sides of the aisle believe that it should be as a role?
Because that then affects what you describe as either a failure or success.
Yeah, exactly.
So we're talking about the actual politics of the moment right now.
What people of power and persuasion believe is happening and how it's happening versus the spectacle that we're all being spoon-fed every day.
This television show that we're supposed to believe is actual politics when in fact what we're talking about is we're talking about how power is used and how persuasion is used and how wealth moves.
And in this report, which again is, you know, this isn't shown up in your mailbox alongside, you know, your new catalogs.
Like, this whole thing, and I'm just going to read from this section earlier on, it's called disequilibrium, which I don't know about you, Nick, but I never enjoy disequilibrium.
That doesn't sound great.
Not good, Bob.
The scale of transnational challenges, which by the way the report says involves global climate change, which it turns out is real.
It turns out like that's an actual problem.
It also has to do with rising nationalism, political discord, vast inequality.
So the transnational challenges and the emerging implications of fragmentation, which we have to talk about in a second, Are exceeding the capacity of existing systems and structures.
Highlighting the third theme, disequilibrium.
There is an increasing mismatch at all levels between challenges and needs with the system and organizations to deal with them.
The international system, including the organizations, alliances, rules and norms, which for those listening at home is everything.
That's all systems of power.
is poorly set up to address the compounding global challenges facing populations.
They go on to say that the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed this, but these problems have been there all along.
Here it is, the people who were paid to study these things, telling you that the system is not working, that America in particular is not in a position to actually deal with emerging challenges, and if we don't start within the next 20 years, we are in very, very serious trouble.
You know, I'm kind of curious what would have happened had Trump won again if this report would have even been released.
Because there's some stuff in here that they're acknowledging that certainly doesn't point to making America great again.
And even the climate change stuff would have definitely been redacted or forced to change right after we've seen what they did with something as basic as the CDC forcing them to change their reports.
So that is really...
was amazing to me that it almost feels good in some respects that they're going to be willing to release this and then not have any interference by the administration.
Yeah, I mean, this would have been one of those things that would have been probably delivered to Donald Trump and then, you know, set underneath a pile of old mildewy TV guides.
Right.
And then basically somebody within his administration would have called up and threatened the intelligence community to never, ever release this to the public.
And what would have happened then?
The issues that we're talking about right now would have been compounded, right?
They would have gotten worse with every passing day that somebody didn't take this seriously.
Absolutely.
And I think the trajectory of just the basic trust in government and governmental competency, that will continue to erode.
And that seems to me that one of the big worry things here, because that leads to the elections and leads to, you know, what we saw, you know, not so well, it could lead to civil war at that point, if it continues to grow.
And I don't know how we recapture and put that back in the bottle.
This is nothing like what we saw, you know, even in Watergate and how Everyone got so upset and like, oh, my God, my government really is so corrupt.
I can't believe it.
Even what they did compared to what we see now, what we'll find out in the next year.
I'm sure we're going to continue to find out more.
It's wholly different, right?
It's wholly different.
It's wholly different.
And everything that you just said, I think it's important that we point out before we start diving deeper into the historical perspective on this.
Everything that you're talking about, this idea of real Americans, fake Americans, deep state, QAnon, fake news, all of this shit is a side effect of the problems we're looking at.
It's the sideshow, right?
It's how you talk about this without ever talking about it whatsoever.
So before we dive into the history of how we've arrived at this moment and what is actually being communicated, I just want to point out, this is from the intelligence community.
This is not, you know, bleeding heart liberals or leftists who have prepared this report.
These are people who believe in law and order and roughly a status quo, right?
They are the protectors of sort of making sure that everything just keeps continuing going down the line.
And while they're talking about global climate change, which again, turns out it's real, turns out that it wasn't just conspiracies, right?
Even these people who do it.
There is a deep dive in this report on the different facets of things, and I want to point out This is an actual mature look at what's going on in this situation.
It has these categories and global trends overview, but of course it's through an American perspective.
And the things that they're showing here is that the electorate or the populations are rapidly aging because there's a, you know, there was obviously a baby boom that was going on here.
We also have populations that are increasingly pessimistic and distrustful as they struggle to deal with disruptive economic, technological, and demographic trends.
And by the way, again, this is the intelligence agency.
The intelligence agency has been a tool to go ahead and make sure that corporations and the wealthy are not troubled.
It says here that one of the bigger problems Is that global economic trends, including rising national debt, which is not real, a more complex and fragmented trading environment, which if you read between the lines means that there are poor nations and rich nations and that's actually becoming a problem.
The global spread of trade and services, new employment disruptions and continued rise of powerful firms.
What do you think powerful firms means, Nick?
What do you think that means?
Can you impact that for the good people at home?
Well, I suppose these are the firms that like to give a lot of money to politicians to get their way in government.
Is that what we're talking about?
We're talking about corporations that are overriding governments and the interest of people.
That's the intelligence community telling you that.
And for anybody who wants to know what the Central Intelligence Agency and the FBI and the DNI have been about, it's helping those people.
So when they start sounding the alarm, they're like, there might be something wrong here.
It's like that old joke, right?
It's the bomb squad.
If you see us run, run.
Right?
I mean, that's an issue.
But we need to go ahead and unpack the history of exactly how we've arrived at this moment.
And I wanted to go ahead and jump back to 1992, right?
I want to go back... Nick, what's the... is that... is that 30 years?
No, that's... that's 40?
I was in college, so don't make me... don't make me sad.
Is that 30 years?
How do you do math on years?
It's 0-2-12, 28 years.
29 years.
30, 30, eww!
Oh, I don't like that.
Yeah, I was at the Capitol in Madison watching Bill Clinton, you know, speak to us when he was running.
Okay, we gotta move beyond this because I'm starting to feel old.
This, what I'm getting ready to read from, is an article from March 8th, 1992 by Patrick Tyler of the New York Times.
And this is an archived issue from page one, headline of New York Times.
And the article is called, U.S.
Strategy Plan Calls for Ensuring No Rivals Develop.
Nick who?
Who's in charge as president of the United States in March of 1992?
Thank God you didn't make me to say the other guy's name I thought you're gonna say but the guy in charge in the White House at that point was HW Bush HW Bush and a reminder that at this point we have just come off a victory in Iraq with the first Persian Gulf War and This is post fall of the Soviet Union.
And by the way, this is around the time for anybody who's interested in looking up this stuff and doing their own research and sort of furthering their things.
This is where Francis Fukuyama, who is what we would call a neoconservative, he starts saying that after Russia falls, we have reached the end of history.
And by the end of history, it means that America has won and American style governments and economies Are going to spread around the world.
That's where we're going and that's how the world's going to work.
How do you feel about that?
How do you feel about that?
How's that worked out for the past 30 years?
You know, listen, we've had plenty of, you know, governments that resemble, you know, democracy and treat their people, you know, in this open society.
We've had plenty of governments that are the exact opposite of that.
I don't necessarily see a proliferation across the globe and everybody, you know, waving the same flag here.
Yeah, Fukuyama eventually would come out and be like, yeah, sorry, the defining work of my life was wrong.
So good luck, everybody.
But let me ask you this, because when I was an adult then, it didn't feel at that time, even when Russia fell, like it was a watershed.
I mean, it was a watershed moment and it hit backwards.
But looking forward then, I don't know how it felt, you know, from a general perspective, as far as, oh, my God, this is the birth of something new.
I feel like we were still sort of stuck, you know, we had Bush Well, so we need to point out who the neoconservatives were, right?
Neoconservatives, and I talked a little bit about this in the last Weekender episode, which if you're not, you know, subscribed and listening to the Weekender episodes, I don't know what you're doing.
Get on board.
Yeah, well tell them how to do it.
Come on, you gotta go over to Patreon.com slash Montcreek Podcast.
It's a fantastic episode every week.
We have a good time.
But we talked about this old buttoned up WASP-y type of politics that the Republican Party particularly used to be.
And H.W.
Bush was like the guy, you know, like he was there for all of the events, including November in 1963 in Dallas, but that's neither here or there and neither here nor there He's like the one person who can't remember where he was that day by the way, right?
Well, we know well, okay.
Well, we can do another episode of that but yeah, he certainly he made a very strategic phone call to try and improve where he was at that moment, which Supposedly far away, but we don't believe it.
So, okay.
We don't know we don't even we don't even listen Yeah, he wouldn't even admit he was in the CIA when we pretty much know he was in the CIA.
He probably started What are you talking about?
When George H.W.
Bush was named the director of the CIA, he was an outsider.
Are you telling me that he actually worked for the CIA and then was put in charge of the CIA?
Because that doesn't sound right.
Very important for them to hire an outsider who didn't have any connection to the agency beforehand.
It really was.
I tell you, sometimes you have to laugh about this stuff.
Because if you don't, like, you're just gonna pull your hair out.
But this WASP-y sort of establishment, these neoconservatives, um, these are people who were raised up in what's called, uh, Straussian politics.
Which is this idea that, like, it doesn't matter if you tell people the truth, you have to give them symbols and crusades, right?
And if you do that, and if you claim that you are, like, you know, godly, or chosen, or good, people will come with you, and they'll feel fulfilled.
So the Bush administration, of course, created the first Persian Gulf War and attacked one of their allies and fought a war where he fought back using weapons that we had given him.
Right.
But it brought along Russia.
It was part of this, you know, sort of, quote unquote, New World Order.
So in 92, they're sort of feeling their oats.
And so these neoconservatives and we're talking here about Dick Cheney, who we'll see in a second, we're talking about Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld.
This is what they say in 92.
In a broad new policy statement that is in its final drafting stage, the Defense Department asserts that America's political and military mission in the post-Cold War era will be to ensure that no rival superpower is allowed to emerge in Western Europe, Asia, or the territory of the former Soviet Union.
A 46-page document that has been circulating at the highest levels of the Pentagon for weeks and which Defense Secretary Dick Cheney How do you feel about that, Nick?
How do you feel about just that idea?
that part of the American mission will be, quote unquote, convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interest.
How do you feel about that, Nick?
How do you feel about just that idea? - You know, it's problematic.
And it just makes it seem like, you know, there might be a lot of other countries and other people in the world that might have something to say about it. - You would think.
Well, how do you... What does that mean to convince them?
Like, you sit down and you're like, hey everybody.
Like, we're the good guys.
Don't worry about it.
Is that what this is?
Uh, no.
I mean, I think their intention was to crush anybody that wasn't going to believe that they were happy with them, right?
We're your friends, we're your friends.
You don't believe us?
We're going to show you and we're going to make you bow to our friendship, I suppose.
It's sort of how they felt about it, right?
And they also had this weird idea that, like, listen, democracy is, in the theory, a really great way to run a country, right?
A structure in place of a country.
But it doesn't necessarily have to be the only way to do it.
And, you know, there's human rights.
If countries give enough deference to human rights, it's like there's a lot of different ways you can run a country.
But I feel like it was very myopic on their end where they felt like this is the only way to do it.
And I've seen this across Israel.
Israelis would have these books about it as well.
Yeah, and by the way, one of the things that we're talking about, and we've mentioned it before, and actually I had somebody reach out the other day and they were like, hey, I keep hearing this word, what is it?
So ergo, whatever, that's the answer.
It clearly means that's what it is.
And that's I think that was the real flaw.
Yeah.
And by the way, one of the things that we're talking about and we've mentioned it before.
And actually, I had I had somebody reach out the other day and they were like, hey, I keep hearing this word.
What is it?
Hegemony.
H-E-G-E-M-O-N-Y.
And hegemony is when an individual or a country or a group influences and uses power, right?
They're able to control either a region or the world.
And like we have been, you know, at the forefront of that, particularly at this moment.
92 post-Persian Gulf War It looked like America could do whatever it wanted.
It had its own conglomeration of countries.
I mean, basically everybody jumped in on that war, right?
But one of the things that we find in this report Is that the Bush administration and the hawks around them, those neoconservatives like Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, they start talking about, okay, we have a hegemony right now.
How do we maintain that?
And one of the ways that you do that is you secure resources, right?
If you are going to control the world, you're going to need a lot of substances.
Yeah.
You can say it.
It's only three letters.
It's oil, my friend.
And they say it in so many words.
And then on top of it, they're like, you know what?
We will work with coalitions.
But guess what?
If there is no coalition to be found, we'll go alone.
We then start saying, and reminder, what I'm reading to you right now is from 1992.
Listen to this quote.
Quote.
The U.S.
may be faced with the question of whether to take military steps to prevent the development or use of weapons of mass destruction.
How's that feel, Nick?
You know, I thought we had kind of ruled those out after World War II, right?
Like, as a use to actually be proactive using them.
So, that's a problem.
Yeah, and let me check this 1992 report again to see who they think might get weapons of mass destruction and need preemptive war.
From 1992, Iraq and North Korea.
Interesting.
Almost like an axis of evil.
Well, let me set the stage for one quick second, because in March 92, you have to remember, you know, Bill Clinton wasn't even on the national stage yet.
And I looked it up, because I was like, who else ran?
Because they kind of dissipated pretty quickly.
but he had Jerry Brown, who was governor of California.
You had Paul Sangas and Tom Harkin and Bob Carey.
Like those guys, you know, kind of a, they didn't, nobody wanted to run because George H.W. Bush was coming off of this great victory in Iraq.
He was, he basically, he basically timed it a little too early or, or Saddam Hussein screwed up the timing.
If he had gone in later in the year and then they go in and they, they seven to one, you know, 90 nations coalition to defeat them.
Then H.W. is, sweeps right back into the White House, but he couldn't sustain that momentum so early in January of that year, and then all of a sudden the No New Taxes thing comes up again.
So that's the thing.
These guys wrote this completely and utterly convinced that they were going to have at least four more years to run the table here and then institute a lot of these concepts.
So if not more, yeah, I mean, they thought after Reagan that they may never lose an election again.
I mean, that's how dominant Reagan was.
And you're exactly right.
What happened here was the there was enough time between the end of the Persian Gulf War and the election that there was just a quick economic hiccup, right?
It was just bad enough for a second that it hurt Bush.
On top of that, like, the difference between Clinton, Bill Clinton, who, by the way, just everybody imagine Bill Clinton and everything we know about him, and this buttoned-up wasp, George H.W.
Bush, right?
That was a thing.
The other thing that the Republican Party didn't count on Was that the Democratic Party would accept Reaganism and with the Democratic Leadership Council, which of course Bill Clinton was like one of the leaders of, they decided that you had to embrace Reaganism.
You had to embrace the economic consensus that it's good to give corporations tax breaks and make the wealthy wealthier and that would help the economy.
They didn't plan on that.
They thought that they would be going up against like old classic liberals and leftists in this type of thing, even though it was starting to change.
So you're exactly right.
They thought they would have at least four more years to carry out this plan.
So Bill Clinton manages to shock the world and beat George H.W.
Bush.
Clinton comes in and actually carries out a lot of the plans that George H.W.
Bush had already made.
Like, NAFTA was the project of Reagan and H.W.
Bush, and Clinton carried it to fruition, and actually, economically, pushes the exact same shit that the Republican Party would have pushed, right?
Which leads to the economy that we have.
Well, the people that we were just talking about, those neoconservatives, we have Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, a whole, just, murderous row.
They go on to form this group.
And by the way, like, here's the thing.
When you form a group, Nick, you don't want a lot of, you know, pomposity.
You don't want to really set your sights too high.
So these guys come together to form a group called the Project for a New American Century.
I mean, like, like, like, just put that on a t-shirt, you know what I mean?
And, and by the way, isn't it weird that that is also in relationship with what we just talked about with that 1992 report, which is we have to create for the 21st century a ground for Pax Americana, control of the world by America.
So these people come together and, and here are the first three paragraphs from their statement of principles.
And this is, of course, we've got Wolfowitz, we've got Cheney, Francis Fukuyama, who I was talking about, Jeb Bush is on there.
Great, great group of guys.
This is from June 3rd, 1992.
American foreign and defense policy is adrift.
Conservatives have criticized the incoherent policies of the Clinton administration.
They've also resisted isolationist impulses from within their own ranks, but conservatives have not confidently advanced a strategic vision of America's role in the world.
We aim to change this.
We aim to make the case and rally support for American global leadership.
As the 20th century draws to a close, the United States stands as the world's preeminent power.
Having led the West to victory in the Cold War, America faces an opportunity and a challenge.
Does the United States have the vision to build upon the achievements of past decades?
Does the United States have the resolve to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interest?
How do you feel about that?
How does that strike you?
You know, it sounds like, you know, your typical, you know, nostalgic pop, you know, anthem, anthemic stuff.
But you know what would have made me feel a lot better?
If they had spent a little bit of that, all that energy, they're writing all that word salad into helping Russia secure their nukes after the fall of the Soviet Union.
That would have been nice.
We're actually a democracy in Russia.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, let's go back further.
Wouldn't it have been nice if they would have just helped the Mujahideen in Afghanistan after we supported them against Russia in 1979?
Like, maybe we wouldn't have had to deal with them later?
You know, like all these things.
It's the same foreign policy problems we have every time.
So they're so focused on, like, Here's the thing, and we heard this with William Barr, the winner writes the history.
They think that they can just write the history without doing any of the work that actually would lead to success.
That's what it is.
They're stupid.
They're not thinkers in that respect.
They don't have the capacity to And also, they're nostalgic as hell.
of those concepts.
And as a result, here we are.
They keep getting in control just enough, right, to sink us into these issues.
It's like we can't ever get three steps forward without taking four back.
And also, they're nostalgic as hell.
One of the things that we talk about on this podcast all the time is how the Cold War led to America playing the world like a chess game.
Oh, we'll overthrow that person and put this guy in.
We'll go to war over here.
We'll fund these people.
We'll sell them weapons and then go over here.
But George H. W. Bush didn't know anything about that.
So that, you know, he had no idea what was going on with Iran-Contra.
I mean, how could he?
It's not like he had this long history and intelligence and using chess game tactics.
But that's neither here nor there, Nick.
So they long for that.
And one of the things that these neoconservatives want is a crusade, right?
They want something to channel that way they can hide the machinations, they can launder it.
And here we're talking about everything from intelligence to outright military maneuvers, right?
Well, that's in short supply, although they have already mentioned in 92 Iraq and North Korea, right?
Well, here we go.
And this is in January of 1998.
And this is from our old friend Bill Kristol.
And it is signed by that whole just murderers row, literally.
I mean, we've got Fukuyama on here, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney.
So here is a letter to Bill Clinton.
It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam Hussein does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world's supply of oil will all be put at hazard.
As you have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security of the world in the first part of the 21st century will be determined largely by how we handle this threat.
Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate.
The only acceptable strategy.
Are you ready, Nick?
Yeah.
The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates, and by the way, this is again 1998, Right, I know how this story ends.
the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction.
In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing.
In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power.
Right.
I know how this story ends.
Yeah, I've seen this movie.
So yeah, it's funny because we knew this and we, I'm not even sure anyone has ever referenced exactly the letter you're talking about, but we knew that they had a hard on for Saddam Hussein And I think it's because, well obviously it's the oil, but I think they recognized that they just needed to win.
They know that it's like, this looks good.
Hey, and like how we swept across Kuwait to stop them in 92, how that was so easy.
It will again be you know, this is again.
They don't really think about these things It'll be so easy again to sweep him out of there by the way in their defense That part was right Um, but, uh, they don't, they can't get beyond any notion of just like the next sentence.
And that's what's always been so frustrating.
Um, and I don't care where they went to school and how many letters they have out their name, because it's, it's not, it's not intelligent, uh, assessments that we, that we rely on.
And it's caused untold amount of damage, uh, across the board.
It cost unbelievable.
And by the way, again, that letter was sent in 1998.
We are not sitting here, and this is important because a lot of people get lost in the weeds on this.
We're not sitting here telling you that they planned 9-11.
We're not sitting here telling you that, like, you know, that whole thing was fake.
What we're telling you is, in the aftermath of 9-11, which, by the way, the Bush administration, who all these people were a part of, all of them, George W. Bush was the completion of the George H.W.
Bush foreign policy project.
They got back in.
They saw Bush Jr.
They said this would be a perfect figurehead to continue the work that we started, right?
So they come in, they hit the ground running, they pay no attention whatsoever to actual intelligence that tells them That, you know, Bin Laden is determined to strike within the U.S.
They completely screw the pooch on that, drop the football, whatever you want to say.
It happens.
And immediately we see reportage that Rumsfeld is in meetings the day after September 11th and the intelligence community is like, we think Al Qaeda did this.
We are 99% sure.
He's like, what about Iraq?
And they're like, no, no, that doesn't.
He's like, well, I mean, they're, you know, they're both Arabs.
So, I mean.
Yeah, obviously.
They're together.
They immediately pushed it, and this was their aim.
And what did they want?
They wanted to turn a tragedy into a victory.
And they wanted to go ahead and find a foothold in the Middle East for American democracy, and to make the 21st century the American century.
And meanwhile, it cost Trillions of dollars, which we could have used for schools, education, health care, social services, any number of things, and it killed God knows how many people, and injured God knows how many people, and destabilized this entire situation, and the only thing that we can say after looking at this report for the next 20 years, which by the way takes us to the mid-21st century, the mid-21st century,
The kindest thing that we can say about what has happened is that they failed.
They got everything that they wanted and they failed.
And I would say Osama Bin Laden, great, see that?
I almost did it there.
Osama Bin Laden won.
He won.
This is exactly, 20 years on, look where we are.
And you can draw a straight line from 9-11 to where we are now.
I mean, the radicalization of what you can consider, you know, Republicans, moderate Republicans, to hardline, crazy rights, starts with 9-11 and turns them against I'm sorry, I wasn't paying attention.
against agriculture and thinking that and then it's it begins a path of racism and all those things kind of can be can be traced a lot to that and to that attack and to our response to that i'm sorry i wasn't paying attention the truck in my neighborhood that has a decal on the back that says infidel was driving by so right because they're always well marked now Nonetheless, yeah, it's, oh no, and then people who are cheering, yeah.
Nonetheless, yeah, so out of all of that, and by the way, Fox News in 2001, you know, they had just started in 98, I believe, or 96, so it was still like a fledgling and taking root.
So all of those things start to mix together and it really is, you know, if we're gonna look back 20 years from now or 40 years from now, look at where we are, And if it doesn't change, that is what's the ground zero for that.
And also the 2000 election with how they got W into office.
It's amazing.
In fact, it's kind of like an amazing time to have lived through, historically, in terms of things happening.
It certainly hasn't been a success if you believe that, you know, government should help people.
I mean, I think that's sort of the baseline we got to kind of figure out, because I think there's a very distinct dichotomy between what, let's say, you know, hardline Republicans feel the government should be, and then in the world as well, and then what, like, Democrats feel, right?
I think that's pretty clear.
They're wildly different goals.
Well, and the question there, so a couple of things.
All of that money, that was spent.
And I don't even tell my human lives and tragedies, because I don't know how to make people care about people being killed unnecessarily.
You know what I mean?
I don't know how to how to make people care about that.
That's that's a really hard conversation to have.
You know, I was watching the run up to the Iraq war and just watching the men around me talking constantly about murdering Arab men and families and, you know, letting God sort them out.
That's That's not even a conversation that I know how to have.
So let's go ahead and go with the practical thing.
Let's talk about money and resources and power and energy.
We went into this because they thought that it would create a situation where America would be the sole superpower and hegemonic influence in the 21st century.
They have failed at that, at the very, very least.
And I'll tell you what, if you're going to take all that money and sacrifice all those lives, I mean, the least you could do is quote unquote secure the 21st century.
They didn't do it.
Right?
We are now in a situation where America has been profoundly screwed up because we went and did that and spent all that time and all that money and all that manpower and all that blood and all that treasure.
It's messed us up psychologically.
It's messed us up in terms of priority.
It's messed us up physically, traumatically, you name it.
It has kept us from being able to build new roads.
It's kept us from being able to make sure our schools are working.
It's kept us from health care.
All of those things.
And for what?
For nothing.
These people thought, and this is one of the main American problems of the last, Jesus Christ, Nick.
I was getting ready to say since 1940, post-World War II, but you got to talk about the Great You gotta talk about American colonialism.
Like, this is as old as apple pie.
They thought if they put their thumb in all of the places that they needed to, they could just control everything.
The problem is you can't control everything.
You can't control the world.
It's impossible.
And you destroy yourself trying to do it.
Okay, I love everything you said, but you're looking at this from a very distinct prism.
Whereas if you ask, you know, all for what, to the people that voted for Trump, they'd be like, we got four years of Trump!
That was a terrific win.
We got the taxes we wanted.
We got the judges we wanted.
We got the libs crying their tears.
You know what I mean?
That is a win.
And it's, again, directly related to what we've been doing since the 90s.
And Trump comes out of that mindset.
I mean, it's like with Cuomo.
It's so funny.
It's nothing really related to, but it came up this this weekend.
But even like the fact that we're dealing with the Me Too movement that comes up and it starts to roil, you know, the way we deal with each other in offices and in the government as well.
You know, a guy like Cuomo is simply acting the way he acted in the 80s and the 90s.
Like, what's the big deal?
And so anyway, the point being that these these these neol conservatives from then are looking at this going, this is great.
We're going to be doing this.
We've now got the country completely distracted and we can do whatever we want to do.
And that might still be the case.
I mean, if not for Biden winning, they would really be able to have just looted the bank as much as they possibly wanted to.
But they already got the four years.
And by the way, who knows?
This could be very short lived, what we are in right now.
And they get right back to it.
So I think from their point of view, you know, again, because they're so myopic, this is a win.
They're happy.
Yeah, so I think there's a lot to unpack there for sure.
So on one hand, you're exactly right in terms of Trump, because what they fed us, these Straussians, these neoconservatives, right?
Their entire thing is symbols.
They're not real symbols.
The whole point is that the way that you control society and you control the flow of history is through almost Jungian archetypes.
You know, the hero and the villain.
And it's this society of spectacle that we're in right now.
And we've talked about this ad nauseum.
Trump didn't actually do what his supporters thought he was going to do.
He gave them symbols.
right?
I'll build the wall.
No, you're not going to build the wall.
You'll build a portion of the wall that you can stand in front of.
And you know, you are there for them.
And believe me, I'm your hero and your champion.
Meanwhile, government is being privatized and being completely plundered for private profit, right?
So that's what they're into.
You're 100% right there.
It has taken America and completely captured it within artificial, symbolic spectacle, right?
Meanwhile, the corporate interest, and let's point out what the history of this is.
We solved this with Bush and with the Iraq War.
You hand it over to companies.
You send in your troops who destroy and just you know die and bleed and then you send in companies to plunder the resources and to privatize everything and become private mercenaries and you know private subsidiaries and all of this stuff and so what you're actually doing is over here you're like oh American and freedom and fireworks and over here it's like hi I'm from Halliburton it's nice to meet you.
You're right.
I'm looking forward to working with you.
Who used to be in charge of Halliburton?
I can't find that name.
It's tough.
It's got to do a lot of research for that one.
I believe that's Dick Cheney, if I'm not incorrect.
Yeah.
And wasn't he, he had a pretty decent position in the government, I think, right?
He had a few of them.
He had a few.
So I think he might have been a vice president.
And you know, I'm sure he had divested all of his shares and didn't own any part of Halliburton.
You know, after they went in after 9-11.
Surely he didn't have any vested interest financially in Halliburton.
There's probably no way that happened, because that would be bad, right?
That would be unethical.
Really unethical.
It'd be terrible.
And again, I just thought this was important to go ahead and catch this shit up, because it's like these intelligence reports come out, and by the way, most of the time they're like, yeah, here are some challenges that we've got.
I've read all of these.
This is the most dire report that I have read.
You know, it's like one of those cartoons where like a cartoon character is looking at like the wall of a dam, you know, and like there's like a little bit of water and they put a finger in it and then all of a sudden another one pops up and suddenly they're using all their toes and whatever.
The American hegemony project, Pax Americana, this project for a new American century, whatever you want to call it.
It is not only failed.
We are living in the realization that it has completely failed and that there are problems.
And the American empire and American hegemony cannot keep going.
This is completely unsustainable.
And every empire that has ever existed, we should have paid attention to the fact that it doesn't work.
You cannot control everything all the time.
It doesn't matter how much money, how much manpower you throw at it.
You just simply can't do it.
And that's the era that we're living in, unfortunately.
Well, the interesting question then is, you know, JFK had laid out a foundation of us being like the cops for democracy across the world, which doesn't mean we needed to necessarily go preemptively in, but when there were horrible humanitarian crises, we would go in and then stop that.
And that seems to be a reasonable, you know, goal to have as a reactionary force, as opposed to go in and do that and be those cops.
But I do feel like that also leads to a whole other issue where we get embroiled in these conflicts.
Vietnam's a good example of that.
And they knocked JFK off to be able to do that, where we end up getting into the same bullshit with our foreign policy anyway.
But I would like to think that there is some notion of good there where we could actually help people when the crises erupt.
And we should do that.
I would even go a step further with that and say that as World War II is coming to an end, The Allies had what was called the Four Policemen Plan, in which the United States, Russia, Britain, and China would rule their spheres of influence and basically work amongst themselves.
And you'll like this, Nick, they would take every gun larger than a rifle And because you wouldn't need them, right?
And that they would work together.
And by the way, like while we're talking about this, we got to point out a couple things.
One, Truman came in and was just absolutely used by the precursors, the neoconservatives.
He was completely rolled.
He had no idea what he was doing.
And he came in and blew up the entire project.
The second thing that we have to say, and this goes along with the JFK policeman role, that would have blown up too.
The four policemen thing would have blown up.
Like, there's no way that four countries, four powers, were going to share the power.
Like, it was going to turn into a situation where it was two-on-two or three-on-one.
It was just always going to fluctuate.
Whenever you look at plans like this, it's ambitious.
Right?
It's really ambitious to say, you know what, I think we have the power to make the world better.
But then you have to ask the question, because we're a couple of white dude Americans talking about this.
Why are we the ones who get to make that decision?
You know what I mean?
Like, why is it our version of the world and the reality that has to be followed?
And that is one of the reasons why this shit just never ever works.
It's the arrogance of it, right?
It's why do you think that you are the person who should make things work a certain way?
By the way, it's the same arrogance that sort of motivates Republicans to ignore what the country wants.
The incredibly popular bills and the incredibly popular laws that we want to have passed.
And they vote to a T against it all the way.
And then they have the temerity to try and like, you know, somehow take credit for it or praise it, even though they didn't vote for it at all.
By the way, I don't know, that's why I want to throw this out there, because if there is a tide that's turning, even though it might be short-lived until, you know, 2024 or even earlier, HR1, we're talking about how we're going to pass that, but with fucking Manchin is really could conceivably blow the whole thing up or we're not going to put it in.
And then 2024 will very well be a lost election.
But in there, I just want to say, like, there is a notion of, OK, if they can get this passed, the presidents will have to disclose tax returns.
Members of Congress will be banned from serving on corporate boards.
This is great.
And we'll have more insight into who exactly is funding the dark money groups.
And then partisan gerrymandering will be banned.
I mean, think about what the effect that that would have on what we're talking about with democracy.
My whole take on it was if they would just ban congressmen and women from owning stock, then we'd be perfect.
Then we'd actually have a government, in theory, if they follow those laws, that would get closer to what we're talking about.
I love, by the way, that you're exactly right on that, which is we would have the beginnings of a government.
Who's going to police it?
Yeah, it would be fantastic if we had representative government.
And by the way, like, let's point out real fast that Intelligence Report admits it.
They admit that governments can't actually do these things and that they're falling apart and they can't meet the demands of the moment because of private firms and developing firms.
They are completely rendered toothless.
The people that we're talking about, those neoconservatives that over here were like, here's a great crusade, over here, here are the corporations we're actually serving, they handed everything over.
They handed the entire store over to the point where, like, I wrote about this the other day, the corporations have grown and grown and grown.
You want to talk about the biggest dangers to American hegemony?
It's corporations that are stateless.
They're using America as a host to feed on.
They're using America for the social safety net, the little that still remains, and, you know, government-inspired insurance and projects so they don't have to pay anybody anything.
They did this.
This movement is a consequence of those actions and those plans.
But meanwhile, they're not below, you know, criticizing the government now for trying, for these draconian Jim Crow 2.0.
And it's to hear Mitch McConnell threaten, threaten these large corporations who he has, he has, I wish, I don't want to be uncouth, but there's some awful word we could use to describe the relationship between him and corporations.
I'll just say real fast, he backed off on that real fast.
He said it, and then it was like the next day, he's like, well, I would never say that a corporation shouldn't give money to political parties.
It's like, OK, all right.
Thanks, Mitch.
Right.
Well, and he knows they'll wait a couple of months and then they'll start giving money again.
Although there are some murmurings of them making a coalition to say we're not going to contribute to politicians anymore, which would just be the death of the company itself if you did do that, I suppose.
That has to be a big part of the business plan is allocating money to politicians on these big corporations.
It absolutely is.
Lobbying is a major thing.
But if they were to ever institute that – and by the way, we talked about this.
My God, we talked about this right after January 6th where corporations said that they weren't going to donate any more to the right.
And, you know, they were like, for six months or whatever, they're already doing it.
Right.
They're already donating to the Republican Party.
Like, those stories are already coming out.
But if we do get to the point where corporations agree that they're not going to give money to politics anymore, that should probably set off some alarm bells, which would mean they don't need to anymore.
You know what I mean?
Like, they have become so big and so powerful that the government will go ahead and serve them, or the candidates are already inextricably linked to them.
Which is something that we're kind of already looking at right now.
But the whole point is, it didn't have to be like this.
Like this moment, and I think people need to understand that it wasn't when Fukuyama talked about history being at an end.
He was he was telling us that history was always heading in one direction, which is what these people love to tell you.
It's just like, you know, history plays itself out.
There was no other way for things to be.
It didn't have to be like this.
America did not have to operate in this way.
We did not have to be in this moment of crisis or misery.
This is this is the fault of some people.
Yeah, I mean I part of me wonders like as Eisenhower called this out as the industrial military industrial complex, which is another one of these touchstones.
Yup.
What would have happened if he obviously had his term limit was up, but if we could have figured out a way to focus on that, because it sounded like based on what he was saying, being from the military itself, which is also kind of crazy.
There might have been a chance there as well.
Like we might have had a chance before JFK was assassinated to actually get closer to what you're describing.
It's not like Dwight D. Eisenhower woke up one day and he's like, what is this military-industrial complex?
which makes sense, right?
It was the moment that scared the original neocons more than anything.
And then now we have to decide whether or not they were involved in, you know, the assassination of JFK.
But certainly they weren't crying after they got him out of there.
Yeah, and a historical note on that point.
It's not like Dwight D. Eisenhower woke up one day and he's like, what is this military-industrial complex?
He helped to establish it.
He was one of the architects of what we now call the military-industrial complex, which is an America that relies on military mobilization and a private enterprise around it to constantly profit and redistribute money and wealth.
He helped to create that, and at one point he looked around and said, holy shit, this is out of control.
It's important to point out that one of the defining moments of that era And by the way, I personally think probably played a role in why JFK was assassinated or why a lot of those events took place, which would be the Bay of Pigs operation, which was another one of those under the cover of darkness, intelligence, military operations that, you know, had plausible deniability except for they got routed in Cuba and they got discovered.
That was hatched during the Eisenhower administration and was passed over to Kennedy.
And the reason is this, and this is an important thing that I want people to take away from this, is that it really doesn't matter who is elected.
And, you know, when people say deep state, this is what we're talking about.
There is an element of truth to the idea of a deep state, which is there are people within the government that it doesn't matter who's elected.
It doesn't matter what party is in control.
The military and the military-industrial complex continues to do what they do.
They don't, you know, the president doesn't have control over it.
Maybe sometimes they get to say where the drone goes or whether or not we engage in a war or send in troops.
But this is, they call it the blob, right?
They call it, like, it's this thing that continues to grow and grow and grow.
Notice the guy who named it the military industrial complex, Eisenhower.
Had an operation that went from his administration straight to Kennedy's administration.
This is a thing that's constantly happening in the background, and it's why the person listening probably is worried about their finances, and probably doesn't know how they're going to pay a medical bill, or where their kid's going to go to school, or whether or not they're going to have financial debt, or school debt, or any of those things.
It's because that blob continues to churn and churn and churn.
A couple of details.
We all know who the vice president was under Eisenhower, don't we?
That would be a man named Milhouse.
Yes, Richard Nixon.
So he was probably the guy more even in charge of Bay of Pigs designing it than anybody.
And let's just throw this out.
One of the ship's names that was ferrying the people to attack on Bay of Pigs, the name was called Barbara.
That's not true!
It is!
And they also happened to launch off of an island nearby that had offshore oil rigs that was owned, it was called Zapata Oil.
And it's fascinating when you look at who owned Zapata Oil and you figure it's the same guy that somehow took over the CIA in the 70s who had nothing to do with the CIA until then.
It's really amazing.
And what was his name again?
What was H.W.' 's wife's name again?
I believe it was Barbara Bush.
What I love about, and by the way, am I wrong here?
Maybe you can look this up while I'm going on this rant.
Wasn't George H.W.
Bush's fighter plane in World War II named Barbara?
Oh, I don't know that, but probably.
Look that up while I go on this little rail.
That might be interesting.
So yeah, it's funny, like George H.W.
Bush likes to tell this story that he got a call one day and it's like, George H.W.
Bush, you have nothing to do with the CIA at all.
Even though, by the way, the CIA worked hand in hand with oil men.
Because they had the ability to affect international commerce and international relations.
And because the CIA and the American military, and this isn't tinfoil hat bullshit, this is established history, has always made sure that America has access to those resources and those markets.
There's a reason why all this stuff almost always revolves around resource control, oil control, and energy control.
Was the airplane named Barbara?
It was.
So there you go.
He likes that name for some reason.
That's spooky.
I will tell you right now that H.W.
was involved in the Bay of Pigs invasion.
They used his company, used his ships to ferry the people over.
That's not a random connection.
That is a CIA connection that they used and he was more than willing to help.
Because by the way, he knew that there was more resources in Cuba that they could get their hands on once they took over.
Oh, no, I mean, Godfather 2 was almost a documentary.
I mean, like the idea of Cuba being like divvied up.
I mean, that has been the apple in the eye of these people all along.
I mean, they want it bad, you know.
And by the way, I'm always a little I'm always a little sensitive about this, and I always want to be careful.
And for the people who are listening who are like, holy shit, Nick and Jared are talking about some out there stuff.
This is not Alex Jones stuff.
Like, just because you didn't read this in your high school textbooks, this is legitimate history.
Nothing that we have talked about.
Like, all of these links are there.
All of these reasons are on there.
We read you the memos today.
Like, the stuff that we're talking about is, like, actual deep history.
Like, there's nothing going on right now that is really conjecture.
Right.
At least what we said.
It's a lot of conjecture on the other side.
All right, everybody, we're going to bring this plane.
We'll call it Barbara just to go ahead and commemorate.
I knew it was.
I knew it was Barbara.
That's fantastic.
We'll bring this plane in for a landing.
A reminder that we do have our bonus Patreon Weekender episode that comes out on Fridays.
You should join up on that.
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