Part Of The Problem - Dave Smith - Is Recession Coming?
Aired: 2019-08-17
Duration: 01:33:09


=== Welcome to Gash Digital Network (01:29) ===

[00:00:00]  Fill her up.
[00:00:02]  You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
[00:00:06]  We need to roll back the state.
[00:00:08]  We spy on all of our own citizens.
[00:00:10]  Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
[00:00:14]  If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
[00:00:20]  Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
[00:00:32]  What is up, everybody?
[00:00:34]  Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
[00:00:37]  I am, of course, Dave Smith, and I am today, finally, whole again because back by popular demand, everybody's been missing you is the one and only the king of the cocks, Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
[00:00:53]  What's up, brother?
[00:00:54]  Welcome back.
[00:00:54]  Well, thank you.
[00:00:55]  You know, if you just count me those contracts a little quicker, I could be here on time and stuff.
[00:00:59]  But sometimes you got to hold out sometimes.
[00:01:00]  Yeah, you were a hold at it.
[00:01:01]  It was like a Nate Diaz type situation.
[00:01:04]  You've been fight for a long time, but you know what?
[00:01:06]  You're back now.
[00:01:06]  It's going down.
[00:01:08]  I am very excited.
[00:01:09]  And I feel refreshed.
[00:01:10]  I'm ready to work.
[00:01:11]  Well, not for you, for Nate Diaz.
[00:01:13]  I was transitioning.
[00:01:13]  I'm over that you being back there.
[00:01:15]  Okay.
[00:01:15]  Nate Diaz.
[00:01:16]  I'm pretty pumped for that too.
[00:01:17]  Tomorrow night.
[00:01:19]  What a fucking stacked UFC card.
[00:01:21]  I'm excited to enjoy those fights tomorrow night.
[00:01:23]  And then flying out to LA on Sunday morning.
[00:01:28]  Big shows.
[00:01:29]  Big shows out in LA.

=== Economic Bubble Concerns (13:16) ===

[00:01:30]  A lot of big things happening there.
[00:01:31]  I'm looking forward to that.
[00:01:33]  And then in September, back here.
[00:01:35]  And of course, September 10th is going to be my debate against the chairman of the LP.
[00:01:41]  We're going to fuck that guy up.
[00:01:42]  Yeah.
[00:01:43]  No, we're going to jump him before the show.
[00:01:44]  He'll never make it to the debate.
[00:01:46]  Win by forfeit.
[00:01:47]  That's my plan.
[00:01:48]  But yeah, go to thesohoforum.org for more information.
[00:01:53]  And I'm opening it up.
[00:01:54]  That's right.
[00:01:54]  Hello.
[00:01:55]  Is that official?
[00:01:56]  I hope so.
[00:01:56]  I just announced it.
[00:01:57]  So now it's official.
[00:01:58]  Now it's official.
[00:01:58]  Okay, very.
[00:01:59]  The king of the cocks is sanctioning the event.
[00:02:01]  Rob Bernstein will be doing warm-up, doing some stand-up before the show, as I usually do at these things.
[00:02:08]  So he'll be doing the stand-up.
[00:02:09]  I'll be debating.
[00:02:10]  Everyone's getting bumped up a level here.
[00:02:12]  It's going to be a part of the prom party.
[00:02:14]  By next year at this time, I'll be doing Gene's job.
[00:02:16]  You'll be debating.
[00:02:17]  Yeah.
[00:02:18]  And Gene will be warming up.
[00:02:19]  We still got to find something for him.
[00:02:23]  He needs this.
[00:02:24]  Anyway, so a lot of cool stuff coming up.
[00:02:27]  But it's good to be back in the studio podcasting with you.
[00:02:30]  It's been quite a while because of my vacation, then you were under the weather.
[00:02:37]  You were on vacation.
[00:02:39]  We didn't time all of that out very well.
[00:02:40]  Although I guess you can't really time out getting sick.
[00:02:43]  No.
[00:02:44]  But we're back now.
[00:02:44]  You're back.
[00:02:45]  You're feeling slightly better.
[00:02:47]  And we're all done with vacations for a little bit.
[00:02:51]  So where to start today?
[00:02:55]  We're going to take some questions or comments from the Part of the Prom inner circle because I didn't have that much on my mind that I wanted to rant about.
[00:03:03]  But there are a few things out there.
[00:03:05]  So I guess where should we start?
[00:03:07]  Let's start with this question.
[00:03:11]  Is the United States of America headed toward a recession before the 2020 election?
[00:03:20]  This seems to be a question that a lot of people are starting to talk about, starting to take more seriously.
[00:03:25]  And it's not just as simple as, well, you know, this is like a political talking point because the presidential election is coming up.
[00:03:37]  You know, we saw the Fed lower interest rates just a few weeks ago.
[00:03:45]  There's a whole lot of people who seem to be, you know, that's a fair indication that they're actually a little bit concerned that we could slip back.
[00:03:52]  Guild Kurds are yield curves are inverting.
[00:03:55]  Gold prices are up.
[00:03:56]  I think Bitcoin might be up as well.
[00:03:57]  Bitcoin's doing quite well.
[00:03:58]  Stock markets all over the place, ECB negative interest rates.
[00:04:02]  Yeah, these are some serious signs that something is not right.
[00:04:07]  And of course, me and you have been saying basically since we've been podcasting together that of course something's not right.
[00:04:15]  And it seems to me that if you look at the Austrian perspective on the Austrian economics perspective on the U.S. economy, that seems to me to be the only economic outlook that I've come across that makes sense.
[00:04:33]  That when you see it through that, from that angle, that you go like, oh, okay, I get what's happening here.
[00:04:39]  I get why the stock market can take these crazy, you know, like have a day, they can be up 700 points and then down 700 points one day to the next, you know, based off what a rumor that the Fed might do or a rumor about a sanction or something like that, like, or not a sanction, but a tariff, I meant to say.
[00:04:59]  It seems like what we've been saying for a long time is that, look, this whole thing is kind of a house of cards and this is a scary position to be in.
[00:05:08]  And we've said basically since we were talking, you know, I don't even want to, I don't know.
[00:05:16]  I guess if you, you know, when did I start this podcast?
[00:05:19]  Like 2012 or something like that?
[00:05:21]  And probably if you had ever asked me since 2012, so the last, you know, seven years, if you had said, do you think there's a chance there could be a big recession this year?
[00:05:33]  I would have said yes.
[00:05:35]  And, you know, I haven't been right.
[00:05:36]  I mean, there hasn't been one yet, and I'm surprised it's lasted this long.
[00:05:40]  But still, if you were to ask me, is there a chance?
[00:05:42]  I'd say yes.
[00:05:43]  And I actually think that every year there's not a recession and we continue with this crazy fiscal policy, this crazy monetary policy, we make the recession that's inevitable worse.
[00:05:53]  Like it's going to be worse.
[00:05:54]  It's kind of like, you know, like the analogy Peter Schiff always uses, like getting drunk and having a hangover.
[00:06:00]  It's like you're hammered and you're like, so am I going to be hungover?
[00:06:04]  And you're like, absolutely.
[00:06:05]  You are blackout drunk.
[00:06:06]  You're like, well, what if I keep drinking for another hour?
[00:06:08]  You're like, now the hangover is probably going to be worse.
[00:06:10]  But then you do some Coke for breakfast and you're like, all right, we're back up.
[00:06:13]  Yeah, that's quantitative easing for you.
[00:06:16]  It's Coke for breakfast.
[00:06:17]  But still, at some point in that day, you're going to need a pretty extended nap.
[00:06:23]  And that's the recession.
[00:06:26]  There, economics.
[00:06:27]  Now you get it.
[00:06:29]  But it is, you know, there was like a piece in the Washington Post that was out the other day that was basically saying, you know, Donald Trump is actually very concerned.
[00:06:37]  They're very concerned in the White House.
[00:06:41]  By the way, take that with a grain of salt because I always say this is what Trump's feeling or whatever, but that makes sense.
[00:06:45]  I'm sorry, go ahead.
[00:06:45]  Yeah, we were saying before Trump came in that his biggest blunder was taking credit for the stock market and that also the most likely scenario is that they'll crash on him before the next election because that's how you make sure that you can turn over who's in charge.
[00:07:00]  Now, what Trump did, which was really smart, is he kind of got ahead of it and he attacked the Fed.
[00:07:05]  He politicized the Fed and said, hey, I know what you guys are trying to do here.
[00:07:08]  And so he's kind of set himself up, put that out where, if they do crash the economy on him, he can call them out on it and go, hey guys, i'm your only safeguard.
[00:07:16]  Look at what government's really trying to do to you.
[00:07:18]  Or look at what the the swamp yeah, look at what the swamp's doing so that he kind of protected himself a little bit.
[00:07:24]  Yeah well politically, it makes sense why he would start blaming the FED and trying to get them to lower interest rates.
[00:07:30]  However, if you're actually trying to help the country yeah um, I think that's the worst thing he could do, and and you touched on it right there that you know the best thing Donald Trump could have done and I don't mean to get reelected or for his own legacy or anything like that I mean like, if you actually were looking at this like you know, if you were looking at it like a doctor, not like a lawyer yeah, like if you weren't looking at it like how can I win?
[00:07:54]  Like a lawyer, but you were looking at like how can I solve the problem like a doctor um, what you would have wanted to do when you first got in there is to say first of all, hey, this whole thing's a bubble.
[00:08:06]  Obama didn't bail us out of the great recession and, by the way, that's why I won the presidency, because ordinary people basically, you know like they're still feeling a lot of the recession.
[00:08:15]  Um, but this whole thing's a bubble.
[00:08:18]  It's all built on on artificially low interest rates and and high government spending.
[00:08:23]  This is, this is doomed and we got to deal with it now and then be like you know, and then and then.
[00:08:29]  If he did that and and really advocated like, sound fiscal and monetary policy I understand he doesn't have complete control of the monetary policy, but you know he does appoint the FED chairman.
[00:08:39]  Uh, there were people you know he could have picked someone great.
[00:08:42]  He could have put uh, you know, Jim Grant as the head of the FED, or something like that, and if you had had some type of like reasonable historic level interest rates, I think you would have started to deal with a real bad economy.
[00:08:53]  But if he had just said hey yeah, this whole thing I inherited was a bubble, and then the economy did very bad, he could still say yeah, that's right, that was their disaster.
[00:09:01]  Same way as if he, if Donald Trump, came in and ended all the wars right away and then something terrible happened in Afghanistan or something terrible happened in Syria, he'd be like, yeah, that's why Bush and Obama shouldn't have ruined those countries.
[00:09:10]  I don't know what to tell you man like that.
[00:09:12]  This is their failure, not mine.
[00:09:14]  I'm just getting our, our kids out of this.
[00:09:16]  You know what I mean?
[00:09:17]  Like, and that's that would have, to me, been the best path forward to actually solve the problem.
[00:09:22]  The problem is, much like all the other politicians, Trump doesn't have the stones to actually do that, and I get it.
[00:09:28]  That's not going to be pleasant.
[00:09:29]  That's not going to be a pleasant experience.
[00:09:30]  That's going to be very tough.
[00:09:31]  What Trump did instead was basically immediately start bragging about what an unbelievable success the economy was because of his own greatness, and the funny thing was Trump was doing this like a couple months in.
[00:09:45]  He was doing this before he had implemented anything, just by Donald Trump being there.
[00:09:50]  His presence made this whole thing so great.
[00:09:52]  The markets had in Donald Trump.
[00:09:54]  Yes, the only part of that that was somewhat true was that um Wall Street reacted positively to his initial tax cuts.
[00:10:01]  Well, look once, once he got the tax cuts through and he got some deregulation done, particularly in the energy sector.
[00:10:08]  Um, but he, there was some deregulation.
[00:10:10]  I have no no doubt about it that those were good things.
[00:10:12]  Those helped the economy.
[00:10:14]  But when he would be bragging about these numbers and the stock market and the unemployment rate And the jobs created?
[00:10:23]  And a lot of people, what was the standard Democratic talking point in response to that?
[00:10:28]  This was Obama's recovery.
[00:10:29]  This was Obama's recovery.
[00:10:31]  And you inherited Obama's.
[00:10:32]  And actually, look, if you look at the numbers, if you're going to look at the world that way, they kind of have a point.
[00:10:39]  They do have a point.
[00:10:40]  The stock market was going up.
[00:10:41]  Jobs were being created.
[00:10:43]  Unemployment was going down.
[00:10:44]  Like, if we're using these same metrics, like the same way.
[00:10:47]  Now, because I think that's what I'm saying.
[00:10:47]  Just like the housing bubble burst was actually Clinton's recession.
[00:10:50]  That was the same thing the Democrats were saying then.
[00:10:53]  What?
[00:10:53]  That it was Bush's.
[00:10:54]  Yeah, during Bush's era, that this was Clinton's recession.
[00:10:56]  Well, no, of course, right.
[00:10:57]  None of them would have to play.
[00:10:59]  It's all about when you're there.
[00:11:00]  Yeah.
[00:11:00]  But, you know, look, I mean, I guess just for political purposes, when the housing bubble crashes in 2008, it's a little bit harder to blame 1999 than if you come in in 2009 and you're blaming 2008.
[00:11:15]  You know, so look, it's, you are correct that a lot of the bubble was blown up under Clinton.
[00:11:20]  Really, it was the tech bubble that then kind of went into the real estate bubble.
[00:11:25]  But a lot of that bubble was blown up under W.
[00:11:28]  That was his own bubble that collapsed in a lot of ways.
[00:11:30]  And I was reading the other day, which blew my mind.
[00:11:32]  Housing debt now is actually above where it was before the last collapse.
[00:11:36]  Yeah.
[00:11:37]  And then you look at student loan debt, and then you look at the fact that we're at peak employment, and then you look at natural cycles in the market with recessions.
[00:11:44]  And you go, oh, actually spending.
[00:11:46]  So this is the situation that we're at now, is that we're actually, if you just look at natural cycles and natural cycles in modern nation state economies, we're actually about due for a recession.
[00:12:00]  And the problem that people are starting to realize, right, is that if Donald Trump, if Donald Trump is bragging about how great the economy is, so before the recession comes, we're starting with interest rates that are, okay, they're not at zero anymore, but now, I mean, what are they at?
[00:12:14]  They're still crazy low at under 2%.
[00:12:17]  Okay.
[00:12:18]  And we're running trillion dollar deficits annually.
[00:12:22]  So what the hell do you do when a recession comes then?
[00:12:26]  If their answer is always during a recession, you put your foot on the gas pedal, right?
[00:12:30]  This was Obama's justification for all the government spending and the 0% interest rates.
[00:12:34]  So this is where you're, and as you point out, all these people are carrying all this debt that they can barely barely hold off right now.
[00:12:43]  How are all these people with debt going to spend more money?
[00:12:45]  That's your solution.
[00:12:46]  And we're going to consumer economy and you're like, we need people to spend more.
[00:12:50]  They're like, yeah, but we already spend more than what we had.
[00:12:52]  What more are we going to spend?
[00:12:53]  And if you realize that we have a consumer economy where everybody's in debt, you start to realize that it's like, oh, we don't really have a consumer economy.
[00:13:01]  We have a debtor's economy.
[00:13:02]  We have an economy that's completely run off people's ability to borrow more money and spend more than they have.
[00:13:10]  And if people have to at all start dealing with that, this whole thing can come down very, very quickly.
[00:13:17]  So here's the other side of it that's just kind of nuts.
[00:13:20]  So part of what I think forced the Fed's hands into, and Janet Yellen said this.
[00:13:25]  She said, it's a global economy.
[00:13:26]  This idea that we're our own country and that we should be making decisions that best suit us no longer exists.
[00:13:32]  And the reason being that every single country is debasing its currency.
[00:13:35]  And if we don't kind of all debase our currencies at certain levels, all of a sudden one currency is worth a lot more.
[00:13:41]  And people start realizing, oh, this government printing money thing doesn't really work.
[00:13:46]  All of a sudden, my currency is worth significantly less relative to this currency.
[00:13:50]  So when you have the ECB going into negatives, it kind of forces the U.S. hand where if we ramp up our interest rates and all of a sudden dollar demand goes way up and the dollar starts being worth a hell of a lot more than the euro, people realize, oh, this money printing thing, that doesn't work.
[00:14:05]  We're losing value in our currency.
[00:14:07]  So in other words, every government's in this racket where they're trying to pretend, hey, we can print a lot of currency and it doesn't have a negative effect on our, you know, on savers.
[00:14:16]  It doesn't have a negative effect on our population.
[00:14:20]  And so if they're not all in on that racket at similar levels, it blows the illusion.
[00:14:24]  And when they tell you, hey, we're a world currency, that's what they're, not a world currency, but it's a world economy.
[00:14:29]  That's what they're really talking about, is that the people in power, the people at the Fed, the people who want to have money for to pay, you know, for all the fucking military gear and also to give handouts, it all relies on governments being able to print money and they got to debase it like a similar ratio.
[00:14:45]  It's insanity.

=== Major National Debt Fork (14:20) ===

[00:14:46]  Right.
[00:14:46]  No, it's, it is very, it's synchronized insanity on a global scale.
[00:14:53]  But that's.
[00:14:54]  What's up with the ECB and negatives?
[00:14:55]  What's been going on there that they got to force.
[00:14:57]  If you're negatives, you're basically trying to force people to spend, spend, spend.
[00:15:01]  Right.
[00:15:01]  You don't want it because you're charging them for holding money.
[00:15:04]  Exactly.
[00:15:05]  So in other words, you are going to, the pace of inflation is going to be more than the interest that you could make on saving money.
[00:15:13]  Unless you're gambling it essentially on Wall Street.
[00:15:15]  Right.
[00:15:16]  So that's the other thing is that it's incentivized.
[00:15:17]  It's been the model for, hey, they've been doing it forever and it's been working out, supposedly.
[00:15:21]  Yeah, but I mean, really, if you look at it, it's been the economic growth in Japan has been terrible over that period of time.
[00:15:26]  So the idea that it's been working out, I think, is not accurate.
[00:15:30]  Look, the truth is that just back to the point that we were discussing.
[00:15:36]  They're fucking you.
[00:15:37]  Well, yes, they're definitely fucking you over.
[00:15:39]  No question about that.
[00:15:42]  But once Donald Trump, and even though there were the good things that he did, and I have no doubt in my mind that if he hadn't passed the corporate tax cuts and he hadn't passed, you know, he hadn't deregulated to some degree, I think the economy would be doing worse than it is now.
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[00:17:11]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:17:13]  Once Donald Trump started bragging about the economy and how great the stock market was and how strong the economy was.
[00:17:20]  And, you know, there was like all these, it really exposes a lot of the people who are like full of shit.
[00:17:24]  Because a lot of people, and even guys like, okay, so like Charlie Kirk or someone like that is an example where they're people who even talk a somewhat a good pro-Liberty game, but then they have nothing but, you know, nothing but compliments for Donald Trump.
[00:17:40]  No criticism at all.
[00:17:41]  He's like the greatest president ever.
[00:17:42]  Now, I know I get shit sometimes from the MAGA people who are like, oh, you beat up on Donald Trump too much.
[00:17:47]  And then I get shit from the other side for being a MAGA person or whatever.
[00:17:51]  My favorite is that like the left is just so insane that the right-wing MAGA people who are like, oh, you're too hard on the president, they'll still kind of listen and be like, I like Dave, but I think he's too hard on the president.
[00:18:03]  But the left will just be like, you're a MAGA person and you just won't admit it.
[00:18:06]  I'll be like, well, on my last podcast, I said Donald Trump should be impeached and tried for war crimes and probably spend the rest of his life in jail.
[00:18:12]  And they're like, yeah, but you're still a MAGA person.
[00:18:14]  It's like, well, how can I be a MAGA guy if I think the guy should be thrown in a cage for the rest of his life?
[00:18:19]  You know, like, but anyway, but there's, there's, here's the thing, right?
[00:18:23]  So, someone like Charlie Kirk or someone like these kind of like MAGA, guys who kind of talk a good liberty game, when Obama was bragging about the, you know, the unemployment figures, they were all very quick to point out, well, you know, there's millions of people who have dropped out of the labor force and they don't count them in the unemployment figure.
[00:18:40]  Like they would always point things like this out.
[00:18:42]  Oh, but this is not actually an accurate representation of what's going on.
[00:18:45]  But as soon as Trump's bragging about it, it's like record low African-American unemployment and you guys say he's a racist.
[00:18:50]  Well, blah, blah, blah.
[00:18:51]  You know, it's like, you just, I remember you last year pointing out the flaw in this argument.
[00:18:56]  So come on.
[00:18:57]  This is like the team sports of politics.
[00:18:59]  That's just so.
[00:19:00]  But there's two major problems as far as I see it.
[00:19:03]  Is number one, once you say that the stock market being high and unemployment as the government figure, you know, figures it out is being low, this means we're in a great economy.
[00:19:14]  So it doesn't matter, right?
[00:19:16]  Like, look, 2000, the first quarter of 2007, you could have said, oh my God, we're in an unbelievable economy.
[00:19:24]  Look at the profits and the earnings.
[00:19:26]  Look at the price of real estate.
[00:19:27]  Look at the unemployment level, right?
[00:19:28]  Like all these things, you could have said we're in a great economy.
[00:19:31]  But looking back at it in hindsight, was that a great economy?
[00:19:33]  Or were we about to fall off a cliff?
[00:19:35]  We were just at the, we were at the furthest extent of the bubble before it burst, right?
[00:19:40]  So it looks like a good economy by a lot of the traditional markers when there's a bubble that's built up, but it's actually about to burst.
[00:19:47]  So no, it's not a good economy.
[00:19:48]  It's a very unstable economy and millions of people are about to be wiped out.
[00:19:52]  So it's a very bad economy.
[00:19:54]  But once you accept, as Donald Trump did, that these markers mean good economy, well, then you've bought into the bubble.
[00:20:01]  And then, of course, the Democrats do have a strong argument to be like, oh, well, a lot of these markers were going in this direction before you got in here.
[00:20:07]  So it's not really you.
[00:20:09]  It's Obama or whatever.
[00:20:11]  You know, you inherited it.
[00:20:12]  You can't really claim it.
[00:20:12]  So there's that.
[00:20:13]  And then, of course, the other problem, the real problem with it from a political perspective, is that once you, what Donald Trump did with seemingly no concern about recession was he stamped his name on the economy in big gold, dumb Donald Trump letters and said, this economy is Trump Towers.
[00:20:33]  Like this is my economy.
[00:20:35]  I own it.
[00:20:36]  I just spent two years bragging about how I did this.
[00:20:40]  So if that economy goes bad, like if you're saying the stock market being high is because I'm so fucking great, well, then when the stock market loses 700 points in a day, that also has to be you.
[00:20:54]  Or if it loses 700 points every day for a month, that has to be you.
[00:20:59]  Like if there's a crash in the economy now, Donald Trump, you know, all this stuff we've been talking about, oh, I'm looking at the Democrats and they're saying all this crazy shit.
[00:21:09]  And I don't see how any of these guys can beat Donald Trump running on giving, you know, health care to illegal aliens, you know, which is, it's still true.
[00:21:17]  But if there's a big recession right now, Donald Trump is going to get wiped out.
[00:21:20]  He's going to get wiped out.
[00:21:22]  He needs the strong economy.
[00:21:23]  I mean, with a strong economy, his approval rating still doesn't crack 50%.
[00:21:27]  He's not winning reelection if the economy turns south.
[00:21:32]  Now, to your point, can he sell everybody on like, well, this was the Fed.
[00:21:37]  It's not me.
[00:21:38]  It's the Jews in the swamp.
[00:21:39]  Maybe.
[00:21:40]  It depends on how bad the Democratic candidate turns out.
[00:21:43]  Yeah.
[00:21:44]  But I'll tell you, once they are...
[00:21:46]  He's just so stupid.
[00:21:48]  Yeah, but you know what?
[00:21:48]  Once the economy crashes.
[00:21:52]  If the economy crashes, I think it doesn't matter because it'll be so easy for them to just get back on message.
[00:21:57]  And it'll be so easy for anyone to go, yeah, look, is the country in shambles?
[00:22:03]  Of course it is.
[00:22:04]  We elected this maniac.
[00:22:06]  What did you think was going to happen?
[00:22:08]  Of course, you know, like, it's just so easy.
[00:22:10]  It's like, yeah, this guy's tweeting out insults and meanwhile, he's destroyed the economy.
[00:22:14]  Okay, you ready to get serious again?
[00:22:16]  I think the pitch becomes so easy for them at that point.
[00:22:19]  And that's what I'm thinking.
[00:22:22]  And I got to say, I think there's a chance it happens before the election.
[00:22:25]  Maybe I'm wrong.
[00:22:26]  It's lasted a lot longer than I thought it could already.
[00:22:28]  But if it doesn't happen then, it's happening soon.
[00:22:30]  And there's going to be some major problems.
[00:22:33]  Like there's major problems.
[00:22:35]  And, you know, to me, the ultimate problem of where the where the future of the U.S. economy is going.
[00:22:46]  And you touched on it when you were talking about the student loan debt.
[00:22:49]  Of course, everybody knows about the national debt.
[00:22:51]  What's really scary is if you get into the unfunded liability of public sector pensions and the entitlement programs.
[00:22:58]  I mean, you get into those unfunded liabilities.
[00:23:00]  You just get to numbers where it's pretty obvious pretty quickly.
[00:23:04]  There's no way.
[00:23:06]  Don't worry.
[00:23:06]  Once we buy Greenland and all that ice melts away and we get all that copper and zinc out, we're going to be covered, dude.
[00:23:12]  We're going to need a lot of copper and zinc.
[00:23:14]  We're going to need a lot of copper and zinc.
[00:23:15]  I don't know to the end if those things are pretty going up.
[00:23:20]  The truth is that you start to see into the not so distant future that the U.S. is going to face a major, major fork in the road.
[00:23:33]  And basically, there's going to be two choices.
[00:23:36]  I don't see any way around the two choices.
[00:23:39]  And it's going to be default or inflate.
[00:23:44]  This is what the choices are going to be.
[00:23:47]  And this is why people like Peter Schiff have been predicting really, really bad inflation for a long time.
[00:23:55]  Because you got to think, will the politicians get to a point where they go, well, you know what?
[00:24:05]  Man, we were wrong.
[00:24:07]  We don't have it.
[00:24:08]  I mean, we can't pay.
[00:24:10]  We can't pay.
[00:24:10]  You know, when they talk about, when Paul Ryan would talk about, hey, maybe we should start, you know, means testing Social Security in 40 years.
[00:24:21]  They'd be like, you're throwing grandma off the cliff.
[00:24:24]  And he'd be like, but grandma's only like 45 right now.
[00:24:26]  We're talking about 45 year olds when they retire.
[00:24:28]  Nobody's talking about touching old people right now.
[00:24:30]  He's like, ah, this is heresy.
[00:24:32]  Like they would freak out about the idea of it.
[00:24:34]  Oh, Republicans are taking away the entitlements.
[00:24:36]  So they couldn't handle that.
[00:24:37]  So do you think any politician is going to have the stomach to go, right now, you know, you guys who are dependent on Social Security, who have paid in your entire life, there's nothing there for you.
[00:24:49]  You got nothing.
[00:24:50]  And they're like, how am I going to eat?
[00:24:52]  I don't know.
[00:24:53]  Your guess is as good as mine.
[00:24:54]  I don't know.
[00:24:55]  But what about my medical bills?
[00:24:56]  Oh, you don't get Medicare either.
[00:24:58]  Oh, by the way, poor people on Medicaid, we don't have that for you either.
[00:25:01]  Oh, all you public sector workers who have been working for the government forever, also you get none of the pensions that you were promised.
[00:25:06]  You know how the reason you work for the government is because of the sweet pension deal?
[00:25:10]  Well, you don't get any of it.
[00:25:11]  You don't get any of that.
[00:25:12]  Also, by the way, people are holding T-bills.
[00:25:14]  You're getting any of your fucking money back.
[00:25:16]  All the Chinese holding, you're not getting any of your money.
[00:25:18]  Like, do you really think smart enough to hoard some gold?
[00:25:22]  We're taking it.
[00:25:23]  Yeah, well, that's what they did in the Depression, right?
[00:25:25]  That's what FDR did.
[00:25:26]  And I wouldn't be surprised.
[00:25:27]  This is one of the strongest arguments that the Bitcoin guys have on their side is that you can't confiscate it.
[00:25:32]  You know, that's their pitch at least.
[00:25:35]  But do you think any politicians are going to have the stones to say that?
[00:25:39]  Oh, and by the way, all these people who are left out in the cold, who we made promises to, who have nothing now, it's because we made promises we couldn't keep.
[00:25:48]  Like, we're the bad guys, just so everybody sees here.
[00:25:51]  We're the bad guys.
[00:25:52]  We fucked up.
[00:25:53]  We destroyed the greatest country that's ever existed.
[00:25:55]  You think they're going to say that?
[00:25:56]  No.
[00:25:56]  Or are they going to turn to the Federal Reserve and say, get to printing?
[00:26:01]  Get to printing that fucking money because these people need their fucking money.
[00:26:05]  And that is in many ways a much scarier situation than just defaulting.
[00:26:11]  What you've really done also, at least if you default.
[00:26:14]  Well, let's talk about defaulting in a second.
[00:26:16]  If you inflate, what ends up happening is you're going to give people what you promised them for Social Security, but it's going to be worth half.
[00:26:22]  That's the honest truth.
[00:26:23]  When people go to spending time, look, I mean, if we have to print the way we'd have to print to take care of all of the entitlements, all of the unfunded liabilities and the national debt, we are going to have to print a lot more than cutting your value in half, I'd imagine.
[00:26:36]  But that's what's fun: they get to pretend like, hey, look, we're giving you the money we promised you.
[00:26:40]  What are you talking about?
[00:26:41]  We were promised money.
[00:26:42]  We gave you the money.
[00:26:43]  And people are going to be able to do that.
[00:26:44]  Well, so it's essentially a default anyway, right?
[00:26:47]  It's essentially a default, at least a huge percentage of a default, right?
[00:26:50]  If I pay you what I owed you, but the money has 20% of the value that it used to, I basically defaulted on 80% of what I owed you.
[00:26:57]  I mean, in effect, I did.
[00:26:59]  Unfortunately, that high inflation or even hyperinflation, unlike default, also has the side effect of destroying the economy.
[00:27:09]  That's what gets scary.
[00:27:11]  That's what gets scary about this whole thing coming up.
[00:27:13]  And we'll see.
[00:27:14]  We'll see how it all goes.
[00:27:16]  And it's not like, you know, the crazy thing is that it's not like America has all of these challenges.
[00:27:21]  Like, look, obviously, my preferred method, my preferred solution to this problem is default and secede.
[00:27:32]  That's like what I think is the best.
[00:27:34]  Default on the debt, simply walk away from it, walk away from all of it.
[00:27:38]  It's like, oh, did you get a government job?
[00:27:40]  Did you invest in T-bills?
[00:27:41]  Okay, sorry.
[00:27:42]  You made the bet.
[00:27:43]  Same way as if you fucking invested in a stock and the company went bankrupt, you lose your money.
[00:27:48]  I mean, I don't know what to tell you.
[00:27:49]  Like, that's what happens.
[00:27:50]  You lost your money.
[00:27:51]  It sucks, but that's what happened.
[00:27:53]  You bet on the government.
[00:27:54]  You had every opportunity to look at the books.
[00:27:56]  They weren't that, the money wasn't there.
[00:27:57]  Sorry.
[00:27:58]  Default and secede and break up and break up the country.
[00:28:02]  Smash it up into at least 50 states.
[00:28:03]  How about that?
[00:28:05]  We already have these state borders and everything.
[00:28:06]  So there you go.
[00:28:07]  We're 50 countries instead of one.
[00:28:09]  That would be my preferred solution immediately.
[00:28:13]  But that seems not the most likely thing to happen.
[00:28:17]  And if we're not going to do that, if we're going to work within the framework of the United States of America, the geographic location, at least right now, that's the United States of America.
[00:28:29]  We're going to work within the framework of having a federal government.
[00:28:31]  And we're trying to solve the problem of, you know, a country that has expanded itself way too far militarily, spent itself into more debt than any country in the history of the world has ever spent itself, you know, has ever extended itself into.
[00:28:47]  And we got to deal with these problems.
[00:28:49]  What we would need for that to happen would be a cohesive society that was unified around certain principles.
[00:28:57]  You'd need really serious, smart people running the show to make some very hard decisions and be able to explain those difficult situations to the American people.

=== Infinite CBD Recommendation (02:36) ===

[00:29:06]  Like, this is what we have to do.
[00:29:08]  This is why we have to do it.
[00:29:09]  It's going to mean all of us tightening our belt.
[00:29:11]  We're going to be willing to all sacrifice together.
[00:29:14]  And what we have to do is...
[00:29:15]  Some of the trannies are going to have to wait before you can get your dick.
[00:29:18]  Yeah, right.
[00:29:18]  Like, we're going to get it for you, but we need an economic recovery.
[00:29:22]  We'll get you that dick.
[00:29:22]  We will get you this dick.
[00:29:23]  It's just going to be a little live.
[00:29:25]  But it's, you know, we need a little time.
[00:29:27]  We got to deal with some big boy stuff first.
[00:29:29]  Of course, as you point out perfectly, that's not where we are.
[00:29:34]  We're not in a situation where we're unified.
[00:29:36]  We have serious people.
[00:29:37]  We have Biden and Donald Trump, you know, competing with each other.
[00:29:41]  We're living in clown world.
[00:29:43]  The country is divided and divided over issues like you just mentioned.
[00:29:46]  That are not the most serious issues.
[00:29:49]  Not like really important issues.
[00:29:50]  You know, like no one even wants to talk about it.
[00:29:52]  I mean, look, you look at the unfunded liabilities, this whole thing going bankrupt.
[00:29:56]  Obama, who was supposed to be the serious guy, it like never even came up.
[00:30:01]  He was never, you know, it was like the big issue of Obama's reelection was like, I came out in favor of gay marriage.
[00:30:06]  Like, well, okay.
[00:30:07]  When you talk about the country falling apart, like, who the fuck really cares?
[00:30:10]  This is kind of irrelevant.
[00:30:13]  You know, I mean, okay, maybe you should get a marriage instead of a civil union, but can we talk about the fact that we're leaving our grandkids nothing?
[00:30:19]  Like, does that matter?
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[00:31:38]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:31:40]  And just, this is what was kind of scaring me over this past week.

=== Big Banks Bailout Scheme (15:31) ===

[00:31:43]  So much of our economy, I think one of the only leading indicators of a recession is basically consumer confidence.
[00:31:50]  I think that's one of the gauges, right?
[00:31:52]  So when the newspaper itself starts printing on a daily basis, like, hey, I think we're headed for recession.
[00:31:58]  Hey, I don't think the Fed has the tools we need to even gear us out of a recession.
[00:32:02]  That's when people start pulling their money out of, you know, well, like that, that is what gets people to shift their perspectives.
[00:32:09]  Yeah.
[00:32:09]  Is you and I, forever, we've been saying, hey, this money printing makes no sense.
[00:32:13]  But when it's in the journal, when it's CNBC, when I remember there was a headline in Bloomberg last week that like hedge funds put massive amounts of dollars into gold.
[00:32:21]  They made like a huge gold play.
[00:32:23]  That's the kind of stuff when you start reading in the paper on a daily basis, that'll trigger a recession.
[00:32:28]  Well, I mean, look, and you got to understand it's which is why Yellen's going, hey, it's all fine.
[00:32:34]  Well, look, I remember in 2008, thinking back to this last recession, which I know there's, you know, younger people who listen to this show, and I know like when you're maybe the difference between, say, being like 20 and being 36, as I am now, is that 10 years ago doesn't feel like a different lifetime.
[00:33:02]  You know, when you're 20, 10 years ago, you were 10.
[00:33:05]  That's like a different existence.
[00:33:06]  Being 20 and being 10 are nothing alike.
[00:33:09]  Like you're an adult at 20.
[00:33:11]  At 10, you're like, you don't even know what the fuck's going on in the world.
[00:33:14]  You're playing with action figures.
[00:33:15]  And, you know, it's like just a different time.
[00:33:17]  At 20, you're playing with action figures, but you know, secretly.
[00:33:21]  But when you're 36, 10 years ago, you were 26.
[00:33:24]  It's like, you know, you have your life a little bit more together, but you still kind of remember it as an adult, as, you know, with a fully developed brain.
[00:33:30]  And when this recession first started, I remember the Republican nominee at the time was John McCain.
[00:33:41]  And he was, you know, the great heroic John McCain, role model for all children.
[00:33:46]  Just, you know, only committed a few murders with his own hands.
[00:33:51]  And I always felt that.
[00:33:52]  And only a few hundred thousand with the arms of the state.
[00:33:54]  And I always felt like the real heroes, those aren't the guys that get caught.
[00:33:58]  You know, the real horrors, they win wars.
[00:34:00]  They get out there.
[00:34:00]  They do heroic things.
[00:34:02]  That's got a real ring to it.
[00:34:03]  I've never heard anyone say it.
[00:34:05]  They're going to torture in camps.
[00:34:06]  That's not what happens to the heroes.
[00:34:08]  No, that's basically losers.
[00:34:10]  Whenever I'd walk by one of the PMW accounts, I'd just hold up an L over my far head.
[00:34:15]  Those are the captured ones.
[00:34:16]  Stop faggots.
[00:34:18]  Way to get caught.
[00:34:20]  You guys are so bad at war.
[00:34:22]  Oh, man.
[00:34:22]  You guys suck at this.
[00:34:24]  All right, torture them.
[00:34:24]  Let's see what they know.
[00:34:26]  But I remember he said, John McCain said that the fundamentals of the economy were sound.
[00:34:37]  That's because his economy is, hey, we got to go to war and spend money on the war.
[00:34:40]  He goes there, don't worry.
[00:34:41]  Yeah, I'm a few more countries.
[00:34:43]  Sound.
[00:34:45]  And then when you had the heads of the big banks and the Treasury Secretary, what's his name?
[00:34:53]  Paul Walton.
[00:34:54]  Wasn't Paulson?
[00:34:55]  Paulson.
[00:34:55]  I'm sorry.
[00:34:56]  Paulson.
[00:34:58]  Switched straight out of Goldman Sachs.
[00:35:00]  Yes.
[00:35:00]  Making sure they got paid on the airport.
[00:35:03]  They said after TARP had originally not passed, and then they were able to scare Congress into passing it, they basically said.
[00:35:10]  Was that like Obama and McCain called it quits on the election to go back to Washington?
[00:35:16]  I remember McCain did.
[00:35:17]  No, they both did.
[00:35:18]  They both called it quits.
[00:35:19]  They're like, this is too important.
[00:35:20]  We want to make sure this bailout happens.
[00:35:22]  So they go back and basically what they said was they go, look, if you do not bail out these banks, ATMs are going to dry up.
[00:35:32]  Everybody's going to lose their fucking savings, all the money they have to go.
[00:35:36]  That was true.
[00:35:37]  But I'm just saying they said that this was going to tank the U.S. economy.
[00:35:42]  Like it was over.
[00:35:43]  This was going to, that our nation was crushed if we did not bail out these big banks.
[00:35:49]  Now, I'm with you.
[00:35:50]  I think they were being hyperbolic.
[00:35:52]  I don't believe this would have happened.
[00:35:53]  But Rachel Maddow famously said that she said, if Obama, if they hadn't bailed out the economy, there would be no economy, which, you know, makes is a ridiculous statement to make.
[00:36:04]  Like, what do you mean?
[00:36:04]  There would be no economy?
[00:36:06]  Like, nobody would be trading with each other.
[00:36:08]  Nothing.
[00:36:08]  We'd all just be gone.
[00:36:10]  Some of the big banks that fucked us would have gone under.
[00:36:12]  Everything else wasn't sure.
[00:36:14]  Look, I tend to agree with you, but it's a weird thing to hear someone like John McCain say, oh, the fundamentals of the economy are strong, and then vote for this bailout package.
[00:36:25]  And you're like, wait, wait, wait.
[00:36:26]  So which one is it?
[00:36:27]  Yeah.
[00:36:27]  Now, I'm just saying, which one is it?
[00:36:29]  Are the fundamentals strong?
[00:36:30]  Or are we about to go off a fucking cliff if we don't have this bailout?
[00:36:34]  Now, the whole justification for the bailout is, no, we're about to go off this fucking cliff.
[00:36:39]  If we're not going to go off the cliff and what you say is going to happen and what I tend to think is going to happen too, then there's no justification for the bailout.
[00:36:45]  You're like, well, no, then let the people who made the bad bets suffer, let them lose money.
[00:36:49]  You know what I mean?
[00:36:50]  Like there's no, but that was the justification for this.
[00:36:54]  Now, my point I was making before when I was like, this was only 10 years ago.
[00:36:58]  This was not that long, 11 years ago now.
[00:37:00]  But this is not that long ago.
[00:37:01]  This is an ancient history.
[00:37:03]  We embarked on a new scheme after 2008, which was unlike anything we had done before, where you're talking about flooding the market with liquidity, bringing interest rates down to zero for close to a decade.
[00:37:19]  This is a different ballgame.
[00:37:22]  And at the end of it now, we look at ourselves and we go, Donald Trump is president.
[00:37:29]  It's been an interesting experiment here in America, hasn't it?
[00:37:32]  Like nobody ever really seems to look at it from this perspective.
[00:37:36]  But you're saying what the official story is, is that the country was going to be destroyed.
[00:37:42]  As Steve Bannon put it, who was, of course, one of Trump's top strategic advisors.
[00:37:48]  As Steve Bannon put it, he goes, so you're saying that the bankers, the big banks and the political elite did to America what the British, what the Nazis, what none of these forces could do.
[00:38:05]  Like nobody was, you know what I'm saying?
[00:38:06]  Like they couldn't break this country, but you're telling us that the bankers and the politicians broke this country.
[00:38:13]  If we don't bail them all out now, we're done.
[00:38:17]  They ended us.
[00:38:19]  So that is really the official story of the bailout.
[00:38:23]  So right away right there, you would think that would require a little bit more like, whoa.
[00:38:28]  But instead, it was like George L. Bush was like, just shop.
[00:38:30]  Go back to shopping.
[00:38:31]  That's the best thing you can do to be patriotic.
[00:38:32]  Just go back to shopping, go back to consuming.
[00:38:34]  Don't worry about it.
[00:38:35]  We'll put it on the credit card.
[00:38:36]  Your money's still there.
[00:38:37]  And we're supposed to just brush off that the global elite did to us something that the Nazis couldn't have dreamed of doing, that bin Laden couldn't do, that the British Empire couldn't do, what none of these threats could do.
[00:38:50]  This fucking cabal of bankers and their political cronies, they were able to do this to us.
[00:38:56]  So right away, you're like, wow, that's pretty, we'd never really swallowed that as a country.
[00:39:01]  And then, of course, the answer was to flood the market with liquidity, have these artificially low interest rates and record high government spending.
[00:39:09]  And, you know, what we did for the first time in American history was we destroyed what was the core of the American economy, which was families saving.
[00:39:23]  This has been the core of a civilized economy, not just America, all of Western civilization.
[00:39:29]  This is the core of it.
[00:39:30]  Families that save money.
[00:39:32]  You save money so you'll have something better for your children, for your grandchildren.
[00:39:36]  This is the core of it.
[00:39:37]  Well, if you can't make any interest, you can't save anymore.
[00:39:39]  That's over.
[00:39:40]  You can't save money because the money's losing value every year.
[00:39:44]  You can't save in a savings account because you get no interest off it.
[00:39:47]  You'll pay more fees on the account than you're going to fucking make saving money.
[00:39:50]  So you can either give it to Wall Street to gamble the fucking money and hope you don't have another 2008, or you can do what you're fucking.
[00:39:58]  You can do the patriotic thing and go buy next year's iPhone.
[00:40:02]  Go buy another fucking PlayStation or a big screen TV.
[00:40:05]  And, you know, by the way, those things are left to the market and they're being made cheap in China.
[00:40:08]  So, you know, you can go get those for like fucking, wow, what an amazing big screen TV.
[00:40:12]  Things feel pretty great right now, you know?
[00:40:14]  Except we destroyed what the core of the economy had always been, what the core of civilization, which is time preference and the non-aggression principle.
[00:40:22]  We destroyed a huge part of that.
[00:40:24]  The time preference aspect.
[00:40:26]  The idea that I'll sacrifice now for a better future.
[00:40:29]  It's like, no, no, no, sacrifice the future for a better now.
[00:40:32]  This was where all of the incentives lined up.
[00:40:34]  This is where they put it.
[00:40:35]  And then, of course, it's not a shock when you look around at, you know, whatever.
[00:40:40]  All the six of the top 10 richest counties are right outside Washington, D.C.
[00:40:45]  Oh, there's tons of wealth right outside New York City and New York City.
[00:40:48]  Those people are living better than ever.
[00:40:52]  But the people in fucking, you know, the Rust Belt in the South, they're voting for Donald Trump.
[00:40:58]  So we're here now.
[00:41:00]  And it's just like nobody seems to seriously be processing this last decade and what it means in the history of America.
[00:41:10]  And of course, you would think that the fact that Donald Trump's president would make people go like, oh, we really got to think about what the hell just happened here.
[00:41:18]  But what do you get?
[00:41:18]  And it's like, well, it was Russia and the racists.
[00:41:21]  That's it.
[00:41:23]  On top of everything else, and I think part of this is why I have, you know, I have like my beliefs and all that stuff.
[00:41:30]  And I, you know, everyone who listens to the show knows I have like pretty passionately held beliefs.
[00:41:35]  But even all that stuff aside, I think a big part of the reason why I have so much contempt for the mainstream media is like the story that it's the Russians and that it's the racists, Donald Trump is just, you know, a racist.
[00:41:51]  That story just sucks compared to what the actual story is.
[00:41:55]  It's just boring.
[00:41:57]  Like if nothing else, it's just fucking boring.
[00:42:00]  The real story is so much more interesting and nuanced and like, this is cool.
[00:42:05]  Like someday people will write fucking books about this shit.
[00:42:08]  I mean, there's a few that have been out there already, but like really, when this is all said and done, really write a book about how this fucking country, the most badass, fucking advanced, richest, most powerful country in the history of the world, just fucking fucked itself so quickly, you know?
[00:42:26]  It's really just not that, it just hasn't been that long.
[00:42:29]  And we really just, we, we threw out all of the fucking norms.
[00:42:34]  And of course, the other angle, which you really touched on, you kind of nailed it before, is that the truth of the matter is that it was kind of all bullshit.
[00:42:45]  You know, Rachel Mattis says, if we didn't bail out the economy, there wouldn't be an economy.
[00:42:49]  What does that mean?
[00:42:50]  There wouldn't be an economy?
[00:42:53]  Nothing.
[00:42:54]  Farmers wouldn't farm anymore.
[00:42:56]  People wouldn't buy food.
[00:42:58]  They wouldn't really nothing?
[00:42:59]  Of course there would have still been an economy.
[00:43:01]  It would have sucked.
[00:43:02]  It would have been bad for a few years and then it'd be over.
[00:43:06]  We would have dealt with a hangover.
[00:43:09]  It's almost on the level of some, you know, someone who's like blackout drunk.
[00:43:13]  The problem is that you're kicked this off.
[00:43:15]  You know who would have gone and purged?
[00:43:16]  A lot of people in power.
[00:43:17]  A lot of the politicians would have been like, hey, man, you guys are really fucked up.
[00:43:21]  You're out.
[00:43:21]  The Fed, that probably would have gone and taken a look at.
[00:43:24]  Wall Street, all those people would have lost jobs.
[00:43:27]  Titans of industry would have gone.
[00:43:29]  Goldman Sachs would have been gone.
[00:43:30]  Oh, yeah.
[00:43:31]  Gone off the AIG thing, gone under.
[00:43:33]  AIG would be gone.
[00:43:34]  Like some of these giant fucking people would be gone.
[00:43:37]  Well, the funny thing is that now you see these like, you know, the Democratic Socialists, the Bernie Sanders, who are all like, we need to break up the big banks.
[00:43:44]  It's like, well, actually, the market would have done it all for you.
[00:43:46]  And it would have done it just as the market always does.
[00:43:49]  It would have done it in a more precise and far more just way.
[00:43:52]  They would have just gone around and broken up banks just for the sake of being banks.
[00:43:56]  They would have broken up the banks who made the bad loans and couldn't pay them back.
[00:44:00]  They would have punished the people who deserve to be punished.
[00:44:01]  And by the way, a lot of other people would have felt pain too.
[00:44:04]  I'm not trying to make it like a rosy picture.
[00:44:06]  It would have been a bad economy.
[00:44:07]  Or make it easier to be a bank that can get FDIC insurance.
[00:44:10]  That's really all you got to do to introduce some competition in some local banking industry.
[00:44:14]  Or just abolish the FDIC, abolish the regulations.
[00:44:17]  And I mean, that would be ideal because basically what they were saying was the FDIC is full of shit anyway.
[00:44:22]  And they can't, you know, if every bank, a major bank lost its savings, they can't guarantee it anyway.
[00:44:29]  But the point is that this was all a fucking scheme.
[00:44:34]  None of it was real.
[00:44:36]  There's no, nobody can actually, you know, they always use this kind of like fear, you know, like scare tactics.
[00:44:42]  Like, oh my God, there'll be no economy or there'll be no money at all or all this stuff.
[00:44:46]  It's kind of like most people would just be out of a job.
[00:44:48]  Nobody can actually take you through line by line logically and show you how the country couldn't have recovered from these big financial institutions going under.
[00:44:57]  It would have been bad, but we would have fucking recovered.
[00:45:00]  We've gotten through a lot in this country.
[00:45:01]  We would have gotten through that.
[00:45:03]  It's like, yeah, these guys would have been fucked if they didn't get a bailout.
[00:45:06]  That's right.
[00:45:08]  But the point is, we destroyed the core of our whole society over a scare tactic.
[00:45:17]  We destroyed it all for bullshit.
[00:45:19]  We destroyed the American saver, the family saver, in order to bail out the banks, in order to keep this fucking scheme going.
[00:45:30]  That's what it was all about.
[00:45:32]  Because what had happened, what really had happened, was their game was over.
[00:45:38]  Their whole Wall Street circus was coming to an end.
[00:45:41]  That's what would have happened if we hadn't bailed them out.
[00:45:43]  Because not only was it going to be that all these major players would have gone down and it would have been a very bad economy for a few years.
[00:45:50]  Don't you remember?
[00:45:51]  I think my guess, you know, I don't know for sure, but my guess is that the economy in 2008, 2009, and 2010 would have been worse than it was.
[00:46:02]  I think it would have been worse than it was without fucking depression.
[00:46:06]  But I think it would have been over after that.
[00:46:09]  By 2011, 2012, 2013, we could actually be building on a solid growth and we could, you know what I mean, be over.
[00:46:15]  And there are some historic examples of this.
[00:46:18]  Like Jim Grant, who I mentioned earlier, wrote a great book about the crash of 1921, where there was actually a steeper, it was a steeper depression than the Great Depression, but there was no government intervention and it basically corrected itself within a year.
[00:46:31]  It was a really good book.
[00:46:32]  I recommend it.
[00:46:33]  It's called The Forgotten Depression of 21, I believe.
[00:46:37]  But so it would have been bad.
[00:46:40]  It would have been bad for a year, maybe two, but then it would have been over.
[00:46:43]  And what would have happened is their whole racket would have fallen to pieces because then people would have, you know, it's like in the same way as sometimes you got to like touch the stove and burn yourself to know, don't touch that fucking stove anymore.
[00:46:57]  It's like people would not have been investing their money in banks who are making crazy loans like this.
[00:47:01]  They just wouldn't.
[00:47:02]  They've been like, no, no, no, I need to know that I'm going into a financial institution that's like keeping my money safe.
[00:47:08]  Because that, by the way, is really the point of why people put their money in banks to begin with, to keep their money safe.

=== Israel Palestine Hubris (14:54) ===

[00:47:14]  And also, so you don't just spend it on strippers.
[00:47:16]  Because if it's in the house as cash, dude, that shit's going real quick.
[00:47:21]  Now you got a charge card.
[00:47:22]  You go fucking hit up that strip club ATM.
[00:47:25]  Yeah, you're right.
[00:47:25]  Do you accept a $76 fee for this withdrawal?
[00:47:29]  Yes.
[00:47:30]  Yes, I do.
[00:47:31]  Just give me all my fucking cash and hand it to that stripper now.
[00:47:35]  Never been a fan of strip clubs.
[00:47:36]  Yeah, me.
[00:47:37]  Never gave a shit about strip clubs.
[00:47:38]  But that's because I'm too stupid to enjoy them.
[00:47:40]  I literally walk in, first stripper walks up.
[00:47:42]  I'm like, here's all my money.
[00:47:43]  Take it.
[00:47:46]  Here's my money.
[00:47:47]  Are we in love?
[00:47:48]  Hey, why are you grinding on someone else?
[00:47:50]  Yeah.
[00:47:50]  Hey, that's my wife.
[00:47:51]  10 minutes later, you're like, hey, we got to go.
[00:47:53]  Why?
[00:47:53]  Because there's fucking jizz in my pants.
[00:47:55]  What are you still doing here?
[00:47:56]  Did you not give all your money to a stripper already and get jerked off into your own pants?
[00:48:01]  Oh, shit.
[00:48:02]  That's what keeps it from being prostitution as long as it's in your own pants.
[00:48:05]  That's the way those work.
[00:48:07]  Morally and legally.
[00:48:09]  All right, guys, let's take a quick second and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is wix.com.
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[00:48:37]  And as people who listen to this show know, I'm not so good with the computers.
[00:48:43]  And I could figure this out.
[00:48:44]  That's how doable it is.
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[00:48:54]  That's wix.com.
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[00:48:58]  Use that at checkout to save 10% off any premium plan.
[00:49:02]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:49:03]  All right, let's switch gears.
[00:49:05]  There's one other thing I want to talk about, and then we'll do some part of the problem inner circle comments or questions.
[00:49:12]  So the other thing that was on my mind.
[00:49:16]  Crazy bitch watch.
[00:49:18]  Oh, is it?
[00:49:19]  But it's not really their fault.
[00:49:20]  No, this is actually, I think, well, this is crazy bitch, but they didn't really create.
[00:49:25]  Like, this is the one time.
[00:49:27]  It's only officially a crazy bitch watch when we have a video ready.
[00:49:30]  Okay.
[00:49:30]  Come on, learn the segments.
[00:49:31]  My bad.
[00:49:32]  We have no video for this.
[00:49:32]  But really, if I was going to name a crazy bitch, it would be Bibi Netanyahu this time.
[00:49:38]  So it was Ilhan Omar and Rashida Talib.
[00:49:46]  I hope I'm saying those names correctly.
[00:49:50]  So anyway, so they want to go to Israel.
[00:49:56]  They wanted to go to Israel.
[00:49:57]  They want to get some good propaganda footage.
[00:49:58]  They're deep into this divest and don't stop giving Israel money.
[00:50:03]  And so they want to go over there.
[00:50:04]  They want to visit Palestine.
[00:50:05]  They want to show all the oppression.
[00:50:07]  They want to put out good videos.
[00:50:08]  They want to talk about Rashida Talib is Palestinian.
[00:50:12]  I guess her grandmother is it, is like 90 years old.
[00:50:15]  No, but that was secondary story.
[00:50:17]  She did kind of full, she pulled a, she pulled a lady move.
[00:50:20]  At first, they just wanted to, from what I understand, they just wanted to go.
[00:50:23]  Israel said no, and then she pulled like, she played a chick move through.
[00:50:26]  She goes, how horrible of you.
[00:50:27]  I just want to go and visit my grandmother's 90.
[00:50:29]  This is going to be the last time that I get to see her.
[00:50:31]  So I don't think originally that was the intended purpose of her trip.
[00:50:35]  Maybe she was doing that as a side thing, but then she played the how dare you card.
[00:50:39]  This is what Chancellor, she never even wants to see her grandma.
[00:50:42]  Look, I am no fan of these two congresswomen, but I got to say, there's something.
[00:50:51]  First off, I found it unbelievably politically stupid that they would ban them from Israel.
[00:51:00]  And then I guess they did accept.
[00:51:01]  They said Rashida Talib could come, but she was like, no, fuck you guys.
[00:51:05]  Whatever.
[00:51:06]  Here's why it was so stupid.
[00:51:07]  One is Israel is getting really bad press for the amount of money that the U.S. gives.
[00:51:13]  There's not that much attention that really gets called to that.
[00:51:15]  The actual numbers of how much money we give them on an annual basis is now being printed.
[00:51:20]  And the fact that Israel wouldn't allow a U.S. elected official into its country, despite all the money that we give them.
[00:51:26]  Well, I got to say, that just outrages me.
[00:51:28]  That just outrages me.
[00:51:30]  I mean, I'm fucking sorry.
[00:51:31]  And maybe this really hit like a nationalist core in my body.
[00:51:38]  Because there is something, despite how much I hate the state, I am a fucking American.
[00:51:43]  And like, I do love this.
[00:51:44]  But now you got to understand that.
[00:51:45]  But there's something where you just go like, no, no, no, no, excuse me.
[00:51:48]  I'm sorry.
[00:51:49]  I don't care if you like their politics at all or if they had the nerve to criticize Israel.
[00:51:54]  Like, oh my God, because this is the one country we're not allowed to criticize.
[00:51:58]  Get the fuck out of here.
[00:51:58]  Well, that censorship also fucking take, have taken hundreds of billions of dollars in aid from our country.
[00:52:05]  If one of our fucking congressmen or congresswomen want to go there, you fucking roll out the red carpet.
[00:52:11]  You don't get to say no.
[00:52:13]  If they want to come check, if you want to say no to an elected official of America coming into Israel, then give back the fucking money.
[00:52:20]  Sorry.
[00:52:21]  Here's just the other side of that.
[00:52:22]  I don't think Israel, I think Israel actually understood, hey, it's not a good move to say no to congresspeople.
[00:52:27]  I think it's that Trump pulled what he kind of did with the Nancy Pelosi thing where he said, hey, look at how much power I have here.
[00:52:34]  I know you wanted to go to Afghanistan on your little vacation.
[00:52:36]  I'm canceling it.
[00:52:37]  Trump pulled the same move here.
[00:52:39]  Now, Israel kind of lives a very different existence.
[00:52:42]  I'm not saying this isn't good, but Israel kind of lives by the hand of other countries going, hey, it's okay for you to exist.
[00:52:49]  It's almost like when the UN declared officially, hey, you're allowed to exist.
[00:52:53]  Then all of a sudden they have like, I don't know what it is.
[00:52:56]  You're on stolen property or other people.
[00:52:57]  Like, listen, I can't, I don't understand the history that well, but that one document that all of a sudden the UN declared them legitimate, they're legitimate.
[00:53:04]  Also, the same thing.
[00:53:05]  Let's get to ethnically cleansing this bitch.
[00:53:07]  Well, it's also just the same thing.
[00:53:08]  The United States going, hey, we recognize Israel as being legitimate.
[00:53:12]  It allows them to kind of continue to exist and be.
[00:53:14]  So they need Trump.
[00:53:16]  Like, Trump is kind of like their biggest asset.
[00:53:18]  He's the one who will even go, oh, you can put your embassy in Jerusalem.
[00:53:21]  And all of a sudden now Jerusalem is the recognized capital, which it wasn't for a long time.
[00:53:27]  So Trump kind of just does have the power over Israel that if he says something, they're not saying no.
[00:53:34]  In this case, I think it was actually a dumb request of Trump and it's a bad look of Israel.
[00:53:38]  Here's the other thing that makes them look really, really bad.
[00:53:41]  I didn't even understand.
[00:53:42]  I didn't realize that if you were in Palestine, there is zero entry in or out of that country.
[00:53:48]  I thought you could go through Jordan.
[00:53:49]  I didn't realize that even if you were going through Jordan, you got to go through.
[00:53:52]  You're literally not able to access Palestine unless...
[00:53:54]  It's an open-air concentration camp.
[00:53:56]  Well, I don't want to use those terms.
[00:53:58]  But it is fine.
[00:53:59]  It's exactly what it is.
[00:54:00]  You can't come to prison.
[00:54:01]  The prison might be a little lighter, but it's a little bit, listen.
[00:54:05]  Well, there's two.
[00:54:05]  I'm not saying it's a death camp, except once every three years when they decide to start bombing the shit out of you.
[00:54:10]  But yeah, it's a concentration camp.
[00:54:12]  I know that word has like, you know, gets the Jews' panties in a bunch, but I'm sorry if you're so sensitive, so sensitive to it, then stop fucking running them.
[00:54:20]  It's a goddamn concentration camp.
[00:54:21]  Look, man, they don't let supplies in.
[00:54:23]  They don't let aid in.
[00:54:24]  Everything has to be checked and authorized by them.
[00:54:27]  There is the Egyptian border, but they don't fucking let you in either.
[00:54:30]  So maybe they deserve a little bit of fucking heat for it as well.
[00:54:33]  Wait, can you go?
[00:54:34]  No, because I don't think you can go direct from Egypt to like Ramallah.
[00:54:37]  You can go direct from Egypt to maybe the Gaza or like the east.
[00:54:41]  But I think there's even a break between the two strips of land.
[00:54:45]  Yes, you're right.
[00:54:46]  Yes.
[00:54:46]  You can't even get from Egypt to Ramallah without at some point going through Israeli checkpoints, in which case you got to get signed off on.
[00:54:53]  So, I mean, I just think that, listen, I guess the Israel side would go, hey, if we allowed free entry, we know how much military gear they're going to bring in here.
[00:55:02]  But I just, you can't exist where, like, wait, so like people born and like they've literally can't get out of where they, like, that's insanity.
[00:55:10]  It's insanity.
[00:55:11]  Absolutely.
[00:55:12]  Oh, look, absolutely.
[00:55:13]  And this is bad press because they've really called attention to the fact that that's the conditions that these people are living in.
[00:55:18]  Yeah, it's terrible press.
[00:55:20]  It really shows the hubris of Netanyahu that he would do something like this and not think like, dude, you're really, you've got a fairly sweet deal here from the USA.
[00:55:30]  And you don't think you're going to like fuck, you're not even concerned that this might like shine a bad light.
[00:55:36]  All this stuff about how we have to support Israel because you see, they're the one democracy in the Middle East.
[00:55:42]  Like they're the one true.
[00:55:43]  Forget the fact that like, you know, whatever, like these other countries like Egypt like went democracy.
[00:55:49]  They went democratic.
[00:55:50]  And then we didn't like who won the election.
[00:55:52]  So we went right back in and overthrew the fucking Muslim Brotherhood and fucking made them a military dictatorship because we're so in favor of democracy.
[00:55:59]  But, you know, like whatever.
[00:56:00]  While we go to war to instill democracy in Iraq, we fucking real quick, you know, after 40 years of propping up a military dictator in fucking Egypt.
[00:56:09]  Then we go, oh, yeah, they're overthrowing him.
[00:56:11]  Yeah, they're going to have elections.
[00:56:12]  Oh, wrong, wrong guys.
[00:56:14]  Okay, we're overthrowing it.
[00:56:15]  Whatever.
[00:56:16]  Israel is the one democracy.
[00:56:19]  It's this open country in a sea of all these closed countries.
[00:56:22]  You know, like they're this like democracy, which I guess if there's any value in democracy, the idea is what?
[00:56:28]  You can, you have a say in your government.
[00:56:31]  You can have different political opinions.
[00:56:33]  And then you're saying two people can't come into your country because you don't like their politics.
[00:56:40]  Because you don't like their political views and they've been critical of the government of Israel.
[00:56:44]  They can't come because there's no fucking question that if any, if fucking Chuck Schumer or Joe Biden or fucking Mitt Romney or Donald Trump or any of these people wanted to come to Israel, they'd roll out the fucking red carpet for him.
[00:57:00]  But what?
[00:57:00]  Because these chicks have been critical of Israel?
[00:57:02]  Because one of the few issues that they're actually kind of right about, they can't come into your country now.
[00:57:10]  Fuck that, man.
[00:57:12]  It just drives me crazy.
[00:57:13]  It's a little bit like when you got things to hide.
[00:57:15]  You know what I mean?
[00:57:16]  It's like you get Chuck Schumer, what they go to Jerusalem, they take nice pictures.
[00:57:20]  I'm sure you really go into the past.
[00:57:21]  Even when Obama went, even when Obama went, people were like, oh, Obama is, you know, like, whatever.
[00:57:27]  He's like critical of Israel.
[00:57:28]  And he did have like a little kind of like, you know, deep down, you always felt like he didn't really like Israel, but he always kind of played ball.
[00:57:36]  He went over there.
[00:57:36]  Can you imagine the power of a U.S. congressperson going over there?
[00:57:40]  And I guess, I mean, I've never really delved that into what Palestine or some of the living conditions in this area are in those areas.
[00:57:47]  I'm sure it's bad.
[00:57:48]  But here's the flip side of that: is that, like, in a vacuum, imagine if Israel didn't exist.
[00:57:54]  You look at the other regions in the area.
[00:57:56]  Do you think the Palestinians would be like living like we do here?
[00:58:00]  No.
[00:58:00]  No, of course not.
[00:58:01]  The other thing that's kind of crazy is I don't even understand the relationship between these two countries that Israel provides resources to them at all.
[00:58:08]  Yeah, but look.
[00:58:09]  They are kind of an enemy straight.
[00:58:10]  Like they're still pumping water in.
[00:58:11]  They're giving electricity.
[00:58:12]  There's something interesting about that dynamic that I think people have a tough time grappling with both sides of.
[00:58:18]  And what you see a lot of times is on one side, someone will say, Israel's an apartheid state and they're horrible.
[00:58:26]  Their treatment of the Palestinians is horrible.
[00:58:28]  And then someone on the other side will say, well, look, I mean, all these other Muslim countries are kind of shitholes.
[00:58:36]  Israel's this great country.
[00:58:37]  If they weren't there, it'd all be a shithole.
[00:58:39]  And the Muslims who live in Israel, it's probably the best place to live.
[00:58:42]  That's the best place to live.
[00:58:43]  As a Muslim, and they have the highest standard of living.
[00:58:45]  As an Arab Israeli.
[00:58:46]  Right.
[00:58:47]  But here's the.
[00:58:47]  Which is a second-class citizen.
[00:58:49]  Right.
[00:58:49]  But here's the truth.
[00:58:50]  They're all true.
[00:58:52]  Yeah.
[00:58:52]  All of that is true.
[00:58:53]  It's, they're not.
[00:58:55]  Look, here's how I see it, right?
[00:59:00]  I've also heard, just to use other examples, right?
[00:59:02]  If you look at India after they were conquered by the English when they were under the control of the British Empire, there's lots of metrics you could use that showed that things got better.
[00:59:17]  Now, for those who didn't get fucking killed, of course, but for like literacy rates went up.
[00:59:23]  The standard of living went up.
[00:59:24]  Their production went up.
[00:59:25]  All these things.
[00:59:26]  You know, if you became the greatest empire in the world at the time, if you became under their control, you learned some stuff from them.
[00:59:33]  And, you know, it's like, so they, there's lots of people in India who fucking had better lives because they were part of the empire.
[00:59:44]  They were taken over because of imperialism.
[00:59:48]  That being said, is it really that shocking that they fucking hated them?
[00:59:53]  You know, Gandhi himself said at one point, you know, a lot, someone like was saying to him, and he was like, oh, you know, like all these things, there's like X, Y, and Z that got better since the British are here.
[01:00:02]  If you kick the British out, it might be really bad.
[01:00:04]  And he was like, yeah, it might be a failure, but it'll be our failure.
[01:00:07]  Yeah.
[01:00:08]  You know, and it's like, so by the way, another example is black people in South Africa under apartheid.
[01:00:14]  A lot of people would go, well, you know, there's like blacks from another country in Africa who would love to be in South Africa under apartheid.
[01:00:20]  It's like, true, very true.
[01:00:21]  That is a fair point.
[01:00:23]  But can you also understand where this is destined to make them hate you?
[01:00:26]  And now you're dealing with what you're dealing with today.
[01:00:28]  So it's like, yeah, all that stuff about Israel is true.
[01:00:31]  At the same time, if you're some fucking Palestinian who's fucking 12 years old and you're growing up in fucking occupied territory and some Israeli soldier runs around and yells curfew and fucking, you got to get in your fucking house because this Israeli soldier just started yelling curf you and your grandmother's not moving fast enough, so he fucking pushes her.
[01:00:53]  What do you think is going to happen?
[01:00:55]  It's a guaranteed recipe for hatred forever.
[01:00:59]  So I I firstly.
[01:01:01]  I spent a fair amount of time in Israel and I also have a lot of relatives that live there.
[01:01:04]  I have friends that served in in the military but um, like I, I mean both.
[01:01:08]  Both sides of the equation suck.
[01:01:09]  Firstly, like, you know, I'm sure it's not all of them.
[01:01:12]  A lot of the Palestinians, like, absolutely hate and would love to kill.
[01:01:15]  And it happens.
[01:01:16]  I got a friend of a friend who has fucking bullet wounds from, you know, you steer into the village, you're driving late at night, like on some of those roads, you end up with bullets.
[01:01:25]  But the flip side of that, and I know this to be true, I had a friend who served in, I think he was in a guard booth in Janine or something.
[01:01:33]  And he was like, yeah, we were just there to let them know, like, hey, we're a boss.
[01:01:36]  I also, I was in Hevron once for a weekend, and they said that they were going to do a tour of the old Jewish parts in Hevron.
[01:01:43]  And I didn't want to go, but the rabbi's like, hey, man, you got to go.
[01:01:46]  You got to go on this tour, right?
[01:01:47]  So I'm going to store it with the Israeli military.
[01:01:49]  And then the rabbi said to me straight up, he goes, like, we weren't looking at anything.
[01:01:52]  I'm just telling you, we're walking through these places with the whole military battalion.
[01:01:57]  And the rabbi said to me, he goes, yeah, the only reason we really do this is just to show them who's boss.
[01:02:01]  That was the real reason.
[01:02:02]  They wanted to go into like their marketplace, shut everything down to let them know, like, hey, at the end of the day, we've got the military here.

=== Facebook Group Access Process (03:34) ===

[01:02:09]  We can kick you around.
[01:02:10]  So I read that, like, first, it's bad on both sides.
[01:02:13]  Everyone's guilty here.
[01:02:14]  At the end of the day, nations, walls, borders, they divide people.
[01:02:17]  Send me with some sandwiches.
[01:02:19]  I'll fucking fix this problem.
[01:02:20]  But that's not happening.
[01:02:21]  Yeah, probably.
[01:02:22]  With the current conditions, I mean, it's just, it's inexcusable that you have people landlocked, that they have to go through your ports of entry and be basically without being citizens of your country.
[01:02:34]  They have to go through you for visas in and out.
[01:02:37]  That makes no sense to me.
[01:02:38]  Yeah, I don't know how you describe this anything other than basically a prayer.
[01:02:41]  Like, that's what is that?
[01:02:42]  That's not, that's not, you know, it's like you won a war decades and decades and decades ago, and then you've decided, well, since we won that war, we'll just rule over these people forever.
[01:02:51]  It's like, where, where is that okay?
[01:02:54]  Yeah, I don't think that's a good idea.
[01:02:54]  Why do we just think that's okay?
[01:02:56]  That like it's if anything, I understand.
[01:02:58]  I understand like you give them their port of entry or whatever.
[01:03:02]  And then if they stock up on arms and like go to war with you, now you're at war with the country.
[01:03:07]  And then maybe you got to go through the cycle again or whatever, but just permanently leaving them with that doesn't make sense to me.
[01:03:13]  That seems unfair.
[01:03:14]  I agree.
[01:03:15]  I'm with you on that.
[01:03:16]  All right.
[01:03:17]  Let's take some comments from the part of the problem inner circle.
[01:03:22]  Of course, Rob, you know, people are subscribed to the show.
[01:03:25]  If you're not subscribed to the show, go on over to gasdigitalnetwork.com, use the promo code P-O-T-P, get a monthly discount.
[01:03:31]  You get access on demand to every episode of Part of the Problem ever.
[01:03:35]  We've been doing the show for years and years and years.
[01:03:38]  We got some great episodes out there.
[01:03:39]  We're actually coming up toward 500.
[01:03:43]  We're going to throw a big ass party.
[01:03:44]  We're going to do a big thing for the 500th episode.
[01:03:46]  What number are we up to now?
[01:03:48]  What are we up to, Brian?
[01:03:49]  Do you know what episode this is?
[01:03:53]  Let me pull it up here.
[01:03:55]  I should be able to pull it up on my phone.
[01:03:58]  This is episode 476.
[01:04:00]  Wow, we're getting close.
[01:04:01]  We better start planning.
[01:04:02]  Yeah.
[01:04:03]  A half a century's worth of part of the tour episode.
[01:04:06]  I was thinking we start planning around episode 498.
[01:04:09]  Yeah, that sounds like us.
[01:04:10]  No, we should, we'll start planning it now.
[01:04:12]  But anyway, you get all of these shows.
[01:04:13]  Go sign up against you get to listen to the show ad-free.
[01:04:18]  You get the show the day that it's recorded rather than having to wait till the next day.
[01:04:23]  You also get access to all the other great shows on the network.
[01:04:26]  A bunch of great shows, of course, Legion of Skanks, Believe You Me, Real Ass Podcast, Kurt Metzger's new show, Can't Get Right, a bunch of great shows, SDR.
[01:04:36]  And you also get access to our private Facebook group, the part of the problem inner circle.
[01:04:43]  And you can comment and, you know, I'll read your comments every now and then.
[01:04:46]  We also, we mix it up.
[01:04:47]  People, really interesting group.
[01:04:48]  A lot of people with different views.
[01:04:49]  It's not like uniformly libertarian.
[01:04:51]  There's all types of different people in there, all the way from libertarian to Nazis.
[01:04:58]  But, you know, whoever wants to be in there.
[01:04:59]  I'm just kidding.
[01:05:00]  I tease you guys.
[01:05:01]  But anyway, so if they want to join the part of the problem inner circle, Rob, how do they do that?
[01:05:05]  Here's what you do.
[01:05:06]  You got to subscribe, and then we got a forum.
[01:05:09]  You just put your name in.
[01:05:09]  You got to put your name in the forum, the same exact name that you're going to request access to the group with on Facebook.
[01:05:16]  And then we do matchup.
[01:05:17]  It's a lot of fun.
[01:05:18]  We copy and paste your Facebook request into the forum search, and if it pops up, boom, you're in.
[01:05:23]  So, real simple: request enter our group, subscribe, and put your name into the forum the same way it is in Facebook.
[01:05:29]  If we can match those two things up, boom, you're in the group.
[01:05:32]  You can come party.
[01:05:33]  You can make fun of us.
[01:05:34]  We'll make fun of you back.
[01:05:36]  And well, it's not that hostile.
[01:05:38]  Sometimes it's just nice.
[01:05:39]  Sometimes it's nice, friendly, and complimentary.
[01:05:41]  I don't like it when people argue in the group.

=== Intellectual Majority Points (15:36) ===

[01:05:44]  Every now and then it happens.
[01:05:44]  Things get a little bit contentious, but you know, what are you going to do?
[01:05:47]  It gets spicy.
[01:05:48]  It sure does.
[01:05:49]  All right.
[01:05:49]  Hold on.
[01:05:49]  Let me fucking.
[01:05:53]  Oh, goddammit.
[01:05:54]  And what's your promo code?
[01:05:55]  Did you tell them the promo code?
[01:05:57]  Promo code P-O-T-P at gasdigitalnetwork.com.
[01:06:00]  I did.
[01:06:01]  I mentioned it.
[01:06:02]  Okay.
[01:06:03]  But I'll mention it again because I need to buy a second.
[01:06:05]  Yeah, what's that promo code, Dave?
[01:06:07]  I'm pretty sure the promo code is P-O-T P? P. There you go.
[01:06:15]  All right.
[01:06:16]  Here we go.
[01:06:16]  That was perfect.
[01:06:17]  Perfect amount of time.
[01:06:18]  Bought us exactly what we needed.
[01:06:21]  All right.
[01:06:22]  So I asked the part of the problem inner circle.
[01:06:25]  I said, Robbie the Fire Bernstein is back.
[01:06:28]  Boom.
[01:06:29]  What do you guys want us to talk about today?
[01:06:32]  So Cody posted first.
[01:06:35]  Cody, who I know had a.
[01:06:37]  Oh, he's a real rascal.
[01:06:38]  So, yeah, he is, but he had an injury recently.
[01:06:42]  Sorry, Cody.
[01:06:43]  So I don't want to give out any more details than that because, you know, what happens in the inner circle stays in the inner circle.
[01:06:47]  But I hope you're doing all right, buddy.
[01:06:49]  I hope you're feeling better.
[01:06:50]  Okay, so Cody writes, Do you think the alt-right is popular because it has good intellectual points regarding demographics, or is it simply almost by chance or circumstance?
[01:07:04]  How popular is the alt-right, really?
[01:07:06]  More clearly, well, let me just read the question, then we can go through it.
[01:07:08]  More clearly, what alt-right viewpoints are you sympathetic to, and which ones, not so much?
[01:07:16]  Okay, well, let me start.
[01:07:19]  Let's try to take this apart a little bit.
[01:07:22]  So the first part is, do you think the alt-right is popular because it has good intellectual points regarding demographics?
[01:07:30]  Well, that does beg the question.
[01:07:32]  I know I use that term incorrectly.
[01:07:34]  I know.
[01:07:34]  But it does leave you to wonder: how popular is the alt-right?
[01:07:38]  You know, I don't really know.
[01:07:40]  Alt-right is something that doesn't exactly have a specific definition.
[01:07:46]  And I don't know how popular they are.
[01:07:48]  Honestly, part of it is because they're fucking, there's a situation with the alt-right where you really, if you have a decent job or you're in the public eye at all, there carry significant downsides, stigmas, risks to being openly alt-right.
[01:08:08]  So it makes it one of these things where it's actually hard to gauge how many there are.
[01:08:12]  Then there's the people who are unpersoned and kicked off of social media and things like that.
[01:08:16]  So you don't know if this person would have, you know, 100,000 followers or not.
[01:08:21]  So it is actually hard for me to gauge how popular they are.
[01:08:26]  That's a testament to its lack of popularity because if you had hit a critical mass, at some point there'd be pushback where it's kind of accepted.
[01:08:33]  I don't know if I agree with that necessarily because, look, I guess you're saying, yes, there's not 200 million members of the alt-right.
[01:08:40]  Fine, but Alex Jones got kicked off of all of these sites.
[01:08:43]  This is a guy who had millions and millions of viewers.
[01:08:48]  So that's pretty popular.
[01:08:50]  I mean, I don't know, relatively speaking.
[01:08:52]  It's like, I'm just saying, I don't know exactly how popular they are.
[01:08:57]  Yes, I agree with you, Rob.
[01:08:58]  It's not 50% of the country.
[01:09:00]  It's not so much that you can't possibly pretend it doesn't exist.
[01:09:03]  And so because of these dynamics, it's like, I don't know.
[01:09:07]  I think any fringe political group is going to have some pull to it.
[01:09:10]  If anything, the alt-right is so tempered relative to real racists or real Nazis that it allows you to be, it allows you people to maybe tip their toe into that a little bit more.
[01:09:21]  And that's kind of the extent by which it's popular.
[01:09:24]  Well, people that are disenfranchised, this has some allure to it.
[01:09:28]  I'm sure there's some of that.
[01:09:29]  Look, the question specifically is: do you think the alt-right is popular because it has good intellectual points regarding demographics?
[01:09:37]  Well, I'm going to say, to answer your question, no.
[01:09:41]  I don't think that's why the alt-right got popular.
[01:09:44]  Now, that's not to say there aren't any good intellectual points regarding demographics, but I don't think the reason the alt-right became popular was because of these great points.
[01:09:54]  I mean, even Richard Spencer himself said we memed ourselves into existence, right?
[01:09:59]  They didn't, it's not that they had such great intellectual points that they became popular.
[01:10:05]  What I see, and this is my take on the thing, is like the reason the alt-right became a thing, the reason they blew up was a mix of demographic changes that are coming in the country and white people being endlessly lectured,
[01:10:27]  hated on, and treated like bitches by more and more of the establishment, the mainstream, Hollywood, academia, politics, media, to the point where it, you know, I didn't predict it at the time, but looking back at it, you're almost like, yeah, this was kind of predictable that there would be a group that rose up and was like, well, fuck you.
[01:10:48]  Fuck you.
[01:10:48]  If everyone's telling me I need to apologize for being white, how about this?
[01:10:52]  I'm happy that I'm white.
[01:10:53]  Is that such a fucking bad thing?
[01:10:55]  Fuck you.
[01:10:55]  So there was a lot of that.
[01:10:57]  And there was a lot of, I feel like in our society, there's not a lot of outlets for masculine behaviors, viewpoints.
[01:11:09]  And there was something inherently ballsy and masculine about the alt-right.
[01:11:15]  And to me, I'm not saying there are no intellectual points to go along with demographics.
[01:11:21]  In fact, I think there are some.
[01:11:25]  But I don't think that's the reason.
[01:11:27]  I don't think that's why they became popular.
[01:11:29]  Now, you were to say, is it simply almost by chance or circumstance?
[01:11:33]  I mean, I don't think chance, I mean, okay, there's some chance involved in everything that exists.
[01:11:39]  And circumstance, I think there is a lot to be said for that.
[01:11:44]  But I think that human beings, political groups in general, you know, there's a lot of them that are, you know, just about all of them are reactionary, really.
[01:11:57]  They're all kind of reactionary in some sense.
[01:11:59]  And I think a lot of people refer to alt-right alt-writers as reactionaries.
[01:12:03]  To me, I think it was a reaction to the fact that there's a, that basically in America, in modern America, it is off limits and considered the worst thing you can possibly be to be hostile toward any group except white people.
[01:12:25]  White people is the one group who it's completely socially acceptable to be as hostile toward them as you want to.
[01:12:30]  And this is happening along with coming off of the worst recession since the Great Depression, and along with white people becoming a minority in what has always been a majority white area.
[01:12:45]  And all of these things to me built a recipe for a reactionary group to stand up against that.
[01:12:52]  So that is more or less my feeling on what created the alt-right.
[01:12:57]  Now, that's not, again, that's not saying that there are no intellectuals in it.
[01:13:00]  So then he says more clearly, what alt-right viewpoints are you sympathetic to?
[01:13:05]  Which ones not so much?
[01:13:08]  Okay, so I am sympathetic.
[01:13:12]  And I think I've said this before on the show, but I am, I, this is how I see it.
[01:13:19]  I think the idea that any group is allowed to have pride in their group and care about their group and wish for and concern themselves with the well-being of their group.
[01:13:36]  And that's completely acceptable.
[01:13:37]  That's fine.
[01:13:38]  Any black guy could say, hey, I just really, like, I care about policies that help the black community.
[01:13:43]  I'm proud to be black.
[01:13:44]  And I really want my brothers and sisters, as black people refer to themselves openly, my brothers and sisters, to succeed in life.
[01:13:51]  And in mainstream world, that's thought of as nothing but a positive thing.
[01:13:55]  But if a white person says the exact same thing, says, hey, I'm proud to be white.
[01:14:00]  I really just want white people to do well.
[01:14:01]  I care about policies that help white people.
[01:14:03]  And I care about my white brothers and sisters.
[01:14:05]  And I have white pride.
[01:14:06]  That's considered evil.
[01:14:08]  I think that's bullshit.
[01:14:10]  That just seems unfair to me.
[01:14:12]  And that's not to say that things were always fair throughout the past, but you don't correct unfairness in the past by trying to balance it out in an unfair way in the present.
[01:14:22]  I think there's got to be one standard across the board.
[01:14:25]  So whatever that standard should be, it shouldn't be a double standard against white people.
[01:14:32]  So in that sense, I'm somewhat sympathetic.
[01:14:35]  I also think that, as I've said before on the show, I think if you went to any country and told them, if you went to fucking, you know, Italy and said, oh, you know, there's a whole bunch of immigrants, both legal and illegal, coming in from Japan.
[01:14:50]  And we're looking at these demographic projections.
[01:14:53]  And it looks like in 20 years, this is going to be a majority Japanese country.
[01:14:57]  Italy will be majority Japanese.
[01:14:59]  Isn't that wonderful?
[01:15:00]  We'll be more diverse.
[01:15:02]  I think most Italians would be like, no, that's not wonderful.
[01:15:07]  We want Italy to be Italian.
[01:15:09]  And it doesn't mean they hate Japanese people.
[01:15:12]  It's just like we kind of have our own culture, norms, traditions, and we don't really want to see those go away.
[01:15:18]  So I also don't think, it's not even necessarily that I agree with it.
[01:15:23]  I certainly don't agree with government intervention of any sort.
[01:15:27]  A whole different debate, whether the Japanese are coming in because of government intervention or government intervention to keep them out.
[01:15:32]  I'm just saying, I don't think that makes you evil.
[01:15:35]  Like, I don't think that means like, if you were like, oh, no, we just want this to stay Italy.
[01:15:39]  I'm not like, you're a Nazi.
[01:15:40]  Like, I don't think that makes you a Nazi.
[01:15:43]  I just don't have that same moral compass or whatever.
[01:15:47]  I don't know.
[01:15:48]  So I get that.
[01:15:50]  The other thing, this maybe I'll get in trouble for the most.
[01:15:54]  But if I'm being honest and I'm, you know, I'm taking your questions, I'm going to answer them.
[01:15:58]  What I care about really is liberty.
[01:16:02]  I care about a social order, the most libertarian social order and political order that we can have.
[01:16:09]  And if you're being honest, where what countries have had any type of sense of liberty?
[01:16:20]  I mean, where are the countries that really have any type of order of liberty?
[01:16:25]  Pretty much the only ones have really been European majorities, white majorities, or Asians.
[01:16:34]  I mean, and I'm not saying any of these are perfect.
[01:16:36]  There's none of these examples that you're going to find are perfect.
[01:16:39]  But like, if you look in Asian countries, you could find at least, like, relatively speaking, some amount of liberty.
[01:16:45]  Like, maybe in Hong Kong or Singapore, they rank fairly high on the Economic Freedom Index.
[01:16:50]  They are not a libertarian country at all.
[01:16:53]  I'm not saying that, but, you know, you kind of look at this thing on a spectrum.
[01:16:57]  And then there are some more capitalist and less capitalist countries in Europe.
[01:17:00]  Now, by the way, that doesn't mean you have a white majority country, you're good, or you have an Asian majority country, you're good, because there's also been communist white countries and communist Asian countries and socialist countries and all types of brutal authoritarian regimes.
[01:17:14]  However, I guess maybe it is true that, you know, if there was like a real, like I've said before on the show, if there was a real order, if there was like a culture that really supported liberty and the immigrants who were coming into the country really supported liberty, I probably wouldn't be concerned about it.
[01:17:34]  I wouldn't really put too much stock in the racial thing.
[01:17:36]  But, you know, maybe there is a point that they have there to being like, eh, the countries that tend toward, look, I mean, libertarians are always uncomfortable dealing with this stuff.
[01:17:49]  But the truth is, you go to any libertarian meeting.
[01:17:52]  You know, we went to Porkfest.
[01:17:54]  I go to the Mises University.
[01:17:57]  There's diversity there.
[01:17:58]  There's students of different races and colors, but really, it's like 80% white.
[01:18:03]  It's always like at least 80, 90% white.
[01:18:07]  Kind of like the general population.
[01:18:09]  Well, no, the general population isn't quite that much.
[01:18:11]  What is it?
[01:18:12]  60-something?
[01:18:13]  60-something?
[01:18:14]  Yeah.
[01:18:14]  But, you know, it's like, now, again, it doesn't matter, but there are like these, you know, you look at like white people tend to prefer smaller government to bigger government versus other minorities who tend to prefer a bigger government to smaller government.
[01:18:28]  You know, I don't know.
[01:18:29]  So maybe there is some concern there that I certainly would at least take that information and say, I don't think it helps libertarians at all to like beat up on white people.
[01:18:39]  That's part of the reason why I kind of stand up against that.
[01:18:41]  Like there shouldn't be this double standard.
[01:18:43]  But also part of it is just because I just don't agree with it.
[01:18:45]  Like I think it's wrong.
[01:18:49]  What am I not sympathetic to about the alt-right?
[01:18:53]  Well, I don't know.
[01:18:55]  Anybody who's trying to use state violence against any minority group, to me, I consider that evil.
[01:19:00]  And if you're advocating an ethnostate in a country where there's lots of minorities, I mean, you know, like when I had Richard Spencer on the show, I tried to ask him.
[01:19:09]  I asked him like three different times and he just always kind of dodged the question.
[01:19:12]  But I'd be like, hey, so, okay, you want an ethnostate in an area with a bunch of minorities.
[01:19:16]  What are you prepared to do to them?
[01:19:17]  What are you going to do to get the people out who don't want to go?
[01:19:19]  And he would answer with these things.
[01:19:21]  Like, he would go, well, history has its dark times and its good times.
[01:19:25]  And sometimes during the dark times, you have to swallow the darkness.
[01:19:29]  Give me a fucking tangible answer so I can point to that and say, hey, that's evil.
[01:19:33]  Don't do that.
[01:19:34]  So that I'm completely against.
[01:19:35]  And, you know, all the Jew hatred stuff, it's like, I don't know.
[01:19:39]  I've done episodes on this before.
[01:19:41]  I think I try to deal with it in a somewhat honest like manner.
[01:19:44]  I'm pretty critical of Israel.
[01:19:46]  I'm pretty critical of left-wing Jews, neocon Jews, Jews in Hollywood, Jews in the media, all this stuff.
[01:19:52]  But like, yeah, if you're advocating a legal system where Jewish rights are restricted, yeah, I'm not sympathetic to you.
[01:19:59]  Go fuck yourself.
[01:20:00]  I'm a Jew.
[01:20:01]  My family's Jews.
[01:20:02]  You're literally advocating violence against me and my family.
[01:20:05]  Like I could even get past the me part, but my family, like not even like, go fuck yourself.
[01:20:10]  Like there's a certain amount of those, like, I've been like, some people have like said, like, oh, you should debate different people on the alt, right?
[01:20:19]  Who are like straight up like the neo-Nazi, like the real extreme wing of the alt-right.
[01:20:24]  And it's almost like, how do you even debate somebody who's straight up going, I'm advocating violence against you?
[01:20:31]  Here's the debate.
[01:20:32]  You're advocating violence against me.
[01:20:34]  Come make it happen, motherfucker.
[01:20:36]  Let's see who can get it done.
[01:20:39]  It's like, I don't know.
[01:20:40]  It's like, here, debate me.
[01:20:42]  I think we should have a government that beats the shit out of Rob Burns.
[01:20:45]  It's like, okay, well, let's see if you can fucking take them.
[01:20:47]  Let's see if you can take me.
[01:20:49]  I don't know what to say.
[01:20:50]  Like, okay, before you enact some system that's going to be violent against my daughter, I'll try to fucking kill you, and we'll see who kills who first.
[01:21:01]  There's our debate.
[01:21:03]  I don't know what to say.
[01:21:04]  So, all of anyone who's advocating any violence against any group of people, I'm not sympathetic to that.
[01:21:10]  And if you're advocating violence against me and my family, really not sympathetic to that.
[01:21:14]  Also, if you're white and you think that makes you superior or you're owed something, that's just lame.
[01:21:19]  Go earn shit.

=== Protest Rights Debate (11:48) ===

[01:21:20]  Yeah, I agree with that.
[01:21:23]  I mean that for real.
[01:21:24]  It's about how hard you're going to work, your skill set, and what you're going to accomplish.
[01:21:28]  It's got nothing to do with the color of your skin.
[01:21:30]  It's more values.
[01:21:31]  Look, I agree with that too.
[01:21:34]  All right, the next.
[01:21:38]  Oh, lost my place.
[01:21:40]  One second.
[01:21:45]  All right, Mike wrote, I said anything you guys want us to talk about in the next comment is Mike.
[01:21:49]  And he wrote, nah.
[01:21:51]  That's pretty funny.
[01:21:52]  And a good switch up from that first comment.
[01:21:54]  All right, Mike.
[01:21:55]  Well, I guess we covered that.
[01:21:58]  Let's have two seconds of silence for Mike.
[01:22:01]  All right, there you go, Mike.
[01:22:03]  We got you.
[01:22:03]  We got you.
[01:22:04]  You're nothing.
[01:22:05]  All right.
[01:22:06]  Grishka, I hope I'm saying that name right.
[01:22:10]  I'd like you to watch some videos of Iran's foreign minister, Javed Zaref, and break down what he's saying versus what the media says he's saying.
[01:22:20]  Should be enough to find some good videos.
[01:22:22]  He's an English speaker, smart guy.
[01:22:25]  Okay.
[01:22:25]  Yeah, I mentioned him before that I saw him when he was Chris Wallace, interviewed him for Fox News Sunday, and I thought he did a great job.
[01:22:33]  I mean, I thought he was fairly impressive.
[01:22:35]  It's not to say that I'm a supporter of the Iranian regime at all.
[01:22:39]  I'm certainly not.
[01:22:41]  But when it comes to discussing the conflict, I mean, they just have such a stronger argument than we do.
[01:22:48]  He was the guy who basically said, he goes, look, Trump pulled out of the Iranian agreement, out of the agreement we had without even reading it.
[01:22:56]  He just pulled out because Obama did it and he didn't like Obama.
[01:22:59]  He goes, and now he's telling us we're not living up to the agreement that he just walked away from.
[01:23:04]  We're not starting wars with people.
[01:23:06]  It's like, how many wars has Iran started over the last 10 years?
[01:23:09]  How many wars has America started?
[01:23:10]  You know, just like shit like that.
[01:23:11]  And it's like pretty hard to argue with.
[01:23:14]  And that's why, as bad a government as they may be, we're so obviously wrong in this conflict.
[01:23:20]  We're the ones, just imagine the idea that we're pretending that Iran poses a serious threat to the United States of America.
[01:23:29]  Now flip that around, and Iran is saying the United States of America poses a significant threat to Iran.
[01:23:35]  And you're like, yeah, no, that makes sense.
[01:23:37]  We're fighting wars on both sides of you.
[01:23:39]  Actually, three sides of you, right?
[01:23:42]  Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria.
[01:23:43]  We're fighting wars all around Iran.
[01:23:46]  So yeah.
[01:23:47]  So yeah, I mean, maybe we'll find some videos of him in the future.
[01:23:52]  Corey writes, why do you need permission to visit Israel?
[01:23:55]  We kind of dealt with that already.
[01:24:00]  Jacob writes, How can we trust the cops post-gun control?
[01:24:04]  And then an article about a police officer charged with illegally making selling guns.
[01:24:10]  Oh, yeah, this is the, I believe, I mean, there's an article there, and I don't have time to click and read it, but I believe this is the story.
[01:24:17]  If you ever saw that clip that I said was one of the ones I was most proud of on cable news, where I got Christine Quinn to say that the Nuremberg defense was a perfectly moral defense.
[01:24:27]  That's what the story was about.
[01:24:29]  It was about these police officers who were selling guns.
[01:24:33]  It's pretty hilarious that they create the black market and then were the fucking participants in it as well.
[01:24:41]  But yeah, I mean, there's a pretty easy answer.
[01:24:43]  You can't.
[01:24:44]  You can't trust the police.
[01:24:46]  Don't trust cops.
[01:24:47]  That would be my message to all of you.
[01:24:50]  Don't.
[01:24:52]  How many times anybody who's had any dealings with the cops, it's always like something like, listen, you just tell me what happened here.
[01:24:58]  Nobody's going to get in trouble.
[01:24:59]  And they're like, okay, we were smoking weed.
[01:25:01]  It's like, turn around, put your hands behind your back.
[01:25:03]  You're like, motherfucker, you just said.
[01:25:06]  That's life.
[01:25:08]  That's why I always lived by Ice Cube's fine words of fuck the police.
[01:25:14]  Little known fact, Rob Bernstein, ghost wrote that entire album.
[01:25:17]  That's right.
[01:25:20]  All right, Zachary writes, maybe touch basis on the Hong Kong issue regarding them wanting a Second Amendment while so many in our country want to throw it out.
[01:25:32]  Yeah, that's interesting.
[01:25:34]  The Hong Kong protesters, I guess, have been invoking a lot of Americana stuff recently, Bill of Rights and Second Amendment and all this.
[01:25:46]  Look, I think, you know, I'm not exactly sure what's going on in this situation.
[01:25:52]  It's gone fucked up.
[01:25:53]  They tried to pass an extra, like an extradite rule.
[01:25:57]  What's the extradite?
[01:25:58]  What's extradition?
[01:25:59]  But it wasn't exactly that.
[01:26:01]  From what I understand.
[01:26:02]  It was an extradition to China.
[01:26:05]  But from what I understand, the law wasn't actually that if you committed a crime in Hong Kong, you'd be extradited to China.
[01:26:12]  It was that if you committed a crime in China, you would be tried in China.
[01:26:16]  Like you wouldn't be extradited back to Hong Kong.
[01:26:19]  No, no, no.
[01:26:19]  It was also, I'm fairly certain.
[01:26:21]  Okay, maybe you're right about that.
[01:26:23]  This is what I had read a little bit about.
[01:26:25]  And what they were saying, maybe I've got this wrong.
[01:26:27]  Maybe I've got this.
[01:26:27]  What they were saying is that it basically was just saying it was just saying that you won't be extradited back here anymore if you commit a crime in China.
[01:26:34]  So you would have to face Chinese prisoners.
[01:26:37]  No, from what I understood was it opened up the door to any crime.
[01:26:41]  Like they were saying it was just going to be for like extreme crimes, but you could commit a crime in Hong Kong as a Hong Kong citizen and get sent to China for trial.
[01:26:50]  And the population went nuts because they're like, well, then, I mean, that's completely not freedom.
[01:26:54]  We all know that we're not going to get due process in China.
[01:26:57]  Sure.
[01:26:58]  And look, it's hard not to be sympathetic to that argument.
[01:27:02]  Certainly, I think Hong Kong, you know, look, originally, right, China went in like the communist direction and Hong Kong went in a much more free market direction.
[01:27:12]  It was a great example of both.
[01:27:15]  You know, Hong Kong goes from mud husbands to factories.
[01:27:20]  Was it the U.S. owned or England for like 100 years or something, and then they had to give it back?
[01:27:24]  But it's recent that it went back.
[01:27:26]  I mean, it's like within 10, 15 years or something.
[01:27:28]  What, that it went back to China?
[01:27:30]  Am I crazy?
[01:27:31]  Well, I think the history, you know, I really don't know enough about the history of Hong Kong to get into it now, but I know that they were as far back as like the 70s and 80s, I think, they were like really building up industry there.
[01:27:43]  Like they were, they always have been more, at least for that period of time, been more free marketing.
[01:27:48]  But that's because I thought for like an 100-year stretch, they weren't under Chinese rule.
[01:27:52]  Well, I think what happened was the people who believed in democracy during the communist takeover of China kind of got the fuck out and they basically let them have Hong Kong.
[01:28:01]  So some people who kind of believed in democracy were hanging around that, you know, in Hong Kong and they went in a more.
[01:28:09]  However, the other thing, there's a few other aspects to this, right?
[01:28:15]  So number one, they started protesting this extradition.
[01:28:19]  And the protest won.
[01:28:21]  And it worked.
[01:28:21]  They pulled it back.
[01:28:23]  Immediately.
[01:28:24]  The law's gone now.
[01:28:25]  But the protest is still going.
[01:28:27]  Well, in part because they realized, oh, this protesting thing kind of works.
[01:28:30]  Let's see if we can get some more freedoms.
[01:28:32]  Now, the thing is that there's these pro-democracy parties that are kind of leading the protest.
[01:28:36]  And these guys never win the elections.
[01:28:39]  They're like one of the minority parties in Hong Kong.
[01:28:41]  So there's something a little bit there where it's like, oh, so you're so, you believe so much in democracy, yet you can't democratically win.
[01:28:48]  So you're just keeping these protests going.
[01:28:49]  The other thing about, well, you know, I don't know.
[01:28:53]  Who the hell is real elections?
[01:28:54]  I don't know.
[01:28:55]  But the other thing is that there's been a decent amount written about U.S. covert support for these.
[01:29:03]  They always say that.
[01:29:04]  They say that with the umbrella protests.
[01:29:05]  Yeah.
[01:29:06]  I mean, it's always probably true.
[01:29:07]  Yeah, well, that's the thing.
[01:29:08]  And so it's just, it's just hard to say.
[01:29:10]  And I wonder when these groups are playing on these American themes, like, oh, Second Amendment and this and that, how much of that is trying to get America involved.
[01:29:18]  And I just, look, I hope like freedom and free markets and capitalism wins everywhere.
[01:29:25]  Hate government oppression.
[01:29:26]  But more and more, when I hear stuff like that with the Second Amendment, I'm like, I guess my first thought is like, oh, good.
[01:29:31]  I hope you guys all get guns.
[01:29:32]  And then my second thought is like, I hope we don't get involved at all.
[01:29:36]  And that's kind of like a conversation.
[01:29:37]  Because the French protesting shit still going on.
[01:29:40]  You know, last I had heard, which was like maybe a month ago or something like that, there were still like incidents of Yellow Vest running in and protesting, kind of these like flash mob protests type things.
[01:29:51]  But it's not a weekend activity.
[01:29:52]  I don't think it's quite what it was.
[01:29:54]  Is Hong Kong also weekend only?
[01:29:56]  Because that's what was going on in France.
[01:29:57]  It was like everyone went to work all week and then it was like weekend.
[01:30:00]  All right, now we can go protest.
[01:30:01]  These fucking Europeans do it in a different way.
[01:30:03]  They protest during their fucking three-hour lunch breaks every day or something.
[01:30:07]  I don't fucking know.
[01:30:07]  I don't know.
[01:30:08]  I'm not sure.
[01:30:11]  Okay, let's do, what are we at?
[01:30:12]  All right, we'll do one more.
[01:30:14]  Let me look and see.
[01:30:15]  Okay, here we go.
[01:30:16]  I want to hear Robbie break down the whole Epstein nonsense.
[01:30:21]  The whole Epstein.
[01:30:22]  So we don't have too much time.
[01:30:24]  You don't have to hear from me.
[01:30:25]  Dave just did a whole episode on it.
[01:30:26]  It was a full hour plus.
[01:30:28]  But any thoughts on that?
[01:30:30]  What on the Epstein thing?
[01:30:31]  I just think it's great because everyone, everyone, everyone is like, dude, I want to know what really happened here and this is bullshit.
[01:30:38]  Yes.
[01:30:38]  And nobody's buying the official story.
[01:30:41]  And so I hope that, you know, I hope that the media doesn't get to just push it to the side.
[01:30:46]  Here's what's interesting is that like some of like the very Democratic news sources like CNN and the Times are like immediately like, oh, suicide.
[01:30:55]  And then some of the other ones are reporting about the fact that his neck cracked and that that's usually rare for when someone commits suicide.
[01:31:01]  So it's interesting that even in this one with the Clinton thing, some of your traditional Democratic news sources are very quick to be like, oh, clear-cut suicide.
[01:31:11]  Even on this one, you know, every news, every news organization is still kind of playing to its team, which is interesting.
[01:31:17]  Yeah, to me, there's like, look, I agree with everything you said.
[01:31:21]  I guess as I've just reflected on a little bit more, the two things that really stick out in my head are like, number one, what you just said, that the idea that so many people are like, this smells like bullshit.
[01:31:34]  I don't buy it.
[01:31:35]  I think is great.
[01:31:36]  Even if it was the exact official story, I think it's better that people are like, yeah, I don't fucking buy this.
[01:31:40]  And number two, it's just like so much of that media stuff, which I've seen, and I've read about it in the Times as well and seen on CNN and stuff.
[01:31:47]  And so many of these people are like, look, it's not a conspiracy.
[01:31:50]  These guys are crazy with the conspiracy.
[01:31:51]  It's like, look, man, we know there was a conspiracy here.
[01:31:56]  This was a guy who was running a pedophile ring on a secret island.
[01:32:01]  There is a conspiracy.
[01:32:03]  And not just that.
[01:32:03]  You should be a little more concerned with that conspiracy.
[01:32:05]  And not just that.
[01:32:06]  We know that the government tried and failed to cover it up.
[01:32:09]  They gave him a sweetheart plea deal.
[01:32:11]  And Cernovich, I believe, is the guy who sued them to say, hey, you're not allowed to keep this behind you.
[01:32:16]  Cernovich, the Miami Herald was involved as well.
[01:32:18]  But then here's what's crazy.
[01:32:19]  Once they won the lawsuit that said that you have to make this information public, the FBI turned around immediately, took him into jail and said, oh, we're investigating the shit out of this.
[01:32:28]  If that court case never got turned, that was not happening.
[01:32:31]  Well, it's like when you see this, like this R. Kelly documentary comes out, and then all of a sudden they move in and like arrest him.
[01:32:37]  Oh, yeah, of course, right away.
[01:32:38]  Is that how this works?
[01:32:39]  Yeah.
[01:32:40]  That's literally also shameless plug.
[01:32:42]  Listen to Run Your Mouth.
[01:32:43]  I spent like 45 minutes on this.
[01:32:44]  So we got balls in the future.
[01:32:46]  Okay, so there you go.
[01:32:47]  On the summer porch store.
[01:32:48]  It was the topic that my guest brought up.
[01:32:50]  I had the guest co-host it.
[01:32:52]  All right.
[01:32:52]  So listen, you want to hear Rob's extended take on this?
[01:32:55]  Go listen to Run Your Mouth.
[01:32:56]  And go follow Rob at RobbieTheFire on Twitter.
[01:32:58]  Come see me in LA.
[01:33:00]  Come see me here in New York at the Soho Forum.
[01:33:02]  Go to thesohoforum.org for all the info.
[01:33:05]  I will see you motherfuckers on Monday.
[01:33:08]  Peace.