Dave Smith and Luis J. Gomez dissect cancel culture, defending Shane Gillis against NBC's political correctness while criticizing Mark Norman's unchecked harassment and the hypocrisy of "woke capitalism." They analyze recent Democratic debates, exposing Warren's funding gaps and Ramos's identity politics, before linking the Saudi oil field attack to Houthi retaliation driven by US-backed Yemen genocide. Ultimately, the episode argues that empire, petrodollar interests, and drone warfare create a global cycle of violence that disproportionately harms domestic populations and undermines true liberty. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|
Time
Text
Support Anarcho Coffee Today00:01:41
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
Hey guys, today's show is brought to you by one of our newest sponsors, Anarcho Coffee, which I am just thrilled to have on board as a sponsor.
Anarcho Coffee is the fiercely independent owned and operated grassroots coffee company for people who love liberty.
I've been drinking this stuff every morning.
I love it.
I am a coffee snob.
I would not recommend coffee to you that was not excellent.
Anarcho Coffee is some of the best coffee I've ever had.
And obviously, by the name, they're one of us.
So make sure you check this out.
If you love coffee, go order some Anarcho Coffee.
Support good people.
Like I said, this stuff is delicious.
I went with the Rothbard roast for obvious reasons, but they've got a lot of different roasts.
They have a six-bean espresso, a hazelnut, extra caffeine.
They have a Mises mix.
I mean, come on.
How can we not support these guys?
So go check out AnarchoCoffee.com.
Their coffee is 100% ethically sourced, organically farmed, and roast to order.
Meaning, this is the freshest coffee you'll ever taste.
The day you order Anarcho Coffee is the day it gets roasted, packed, and shipped.
A portion of their profits will be donated to non-profit liberty causes like the Mises Institute.
They accept seven different cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, ship internationally, free shipping on all orders over $99.
Guys, this is a no-brainer.
You got to go support these people.
And like I said, it's really excellent, delicious coffee.
And as a special offer for part of the problem listeners, they're going to give you 10% off your first order.
So use the promo code problem 10 to get 10% off.
Once more, that's Anarcho Coffee.
The promo code is problem10 for 10% off your first order.
Ron Paul Debate Fallout00:15:32
All right, let's start the show.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
Here's your host, Dave Smith.
What's up?
Hello.
How are you?
You snuck up on me there.
It's good to see you.
Good to be with you.
I can't actually see you, and I'm not actually with you.
But I think you got what I was saying.
I always thought that was to me specifically.
Not to the fans.
It's never been good to see you.
Oh, that doesn't make me feel good at all.
I thought every episode at the beginning, you're like, it's great to see you, Rob, and be with you.
It is.
It's always great to see you and be with you.
Good.
I like to be with you.
Spiritually, emotionally, sexually.
All those things.
Of course, you know, this is part of the problem.
I am Dave Smith.
He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein, the king of the caulks.
Spent some time with the caulks.
That was over this last week.
Yeah.
Had a fun time.
It's official.
They knighted me.
They gave me a crown.
I didn't wear it when I went up.
I meant to pull it out.
No, I understand.
You're making jokes.
You got to come off like one of the people.
Exactly.
People don't always want to laugh at the king.
Right.
You know, or with the king.
Yeah.
So you kind of got to go up there just like in every, you know, in every man.
Hey, meatballs, whatever else you were talking about.
By the way, Rob, Robbie the Fire was hilarious.
Thanks, man.
Opening up for the younger.
You fucking killed it too.
Oh, well, thank you.
I did kill it.
And by it, we mean Nicholas Sarwell.
Which I got, you know, there's a bunch of stuff I want to talk about today.
And I want to talk a little bit about the debate and the last episode.
Obviously, we missed an episode last week.
Do apologize for that.
I was recording State of the Union with Ari Shafir.
How long did it go in the end?
I don't know how long we did.
We went for a while.
I think like three hours or maybe a little longer.
I'm not sure.
But he was late, and then we ran later than I thought we would.
We did record an episode that we're going to put out either this week or next week at the post show of the, after the Soho Forum debate, the Mises Caucus fundraiser.
We had a panel.
It was me, Michael Heiss, Pete Raymond, Larry Sharp, Maj Ture, Matt Welsh.
So it was a great panel.
It was a lot of fun.
So we got that episode coming out for you guys.
The debate, I believe, will be out by the end of the week.
I'm not sure about that, but I believe they should put it out by the end of the week.
So there's a lot of content that you guys will be getting, plus the state of the union, whenever Ari Shafir decides to put that out.
I wanted to give some thoughts on that.
I also want to give some thoughts on the whole Shane Gillis situation.
We could talk about the Democratic debate that came up.
I know we didn't do a full recap episode.
We'll get into it a little bit.
This episode wasn't even worth a full episode to recap that shit show.
But I want to start by just addressing the Nick Sarwalk debate and podcast.
And I'm going to say this.
This is it for me.
I'm out of the Nick Sarwalk business.
He's been tweeting some things since then.
I'm not tweeting anything back at him.
I'm not going back and forth.
I think everything that needed to be said was said between the debate and the podcast.
Look, you know, one time, and I only know this because Murray Rothbard quoted it, but he that it was originally a quote from, it was Milton Friedman's mentor said it about one of the leading Keynesians of the day when he was writing a piece.
You know, they were writing like dueling articles.
And he said, I don't come here to praise you.
I come here to bury you.
And then Murray Rothbard said that when he was giving a speech on Milton Friedman.
It was like much the same.
I don't come to praise Milton Friedman.
I come to bury him.
And that was the attitude I had with Nick Sarwak in both the debate and the podcast.
And I've never had that attitude before in one of these type of things with somebody where I was really like, I am here to bury you.
That's my attempt.
I'm trying to ruin you.
I'm absolutely like, I don't know what to say.
I understand I come off kind of like a dick when I say that, but I was like, I am here to expose you and to ruin you.
I want to get things on the record where you will no longer be able to be what you are right now after this.
And I did, you know, I got some comments both about the debate and about the podcast afterward.
Now, the vast majority were like, I can't believe how terrible Nick Sarwak is.
Like vast majority, 80, 90% or something like that.
And the truth is that what I did in the debate was, I mean, I won an Oxford debate against him where the room was very much on my side to begin with, which is a difficult thing to do in an Oxford-style debate.
You're going in at a decided advantage if the room is against you because the debate winner is judged off who swings more people their direction.
So if you have, if you go into an Oxford-style debate where just to use an extreme to paint a picture, if you go in and 100% of the room agrees with the other guy to start, the other guy cannot win.
All you have to do is pull one person over and you win.
So you have an extremely low bar to win.
The other person literally cannot win the debate.
And, you know, it's a little bit, you know, the closer you get, that goes down a little bit.
But you can see it's a disadvantage to have the room on your side.
So I went in with a lot more people on my side than he did and still beat him in the debate.
So I thought I handled him there.
And then on the podcast, I thought, I mean, I just couldn't believe half the shit he was saying.
But I just want to say to the other people, because I got maybe usually I don't go through and read like all the YouTube comments and all the stuff, but I did on this last episode with Nick Sarwak.
And I read every single one of them.
You read them all the time.
I'm just hoping someone will say something nice about my hair.
That's all I hope for.
You know what?
After you shaved it, I did see a couple nice comments about that.
I didn't read that one.
I got to go back.
Wow, you got to really.
So you just read the shitty comments, but none of the good ones.
No, no.
Well, I guess I must have missed that one somehow.
People liked it.
They were happy that you finally shaved it.
Yeah, I'll be like, you know, they give me good tips.
I'll be like, what else should I be doing?
Yeah, there you go.
You're already letting it grow in a little bit.
You should be shaving it again.
It's that simple.
Well, I'll say this.
Look, there's the other comments that I was addressing where some people were like, wow, Dave, you were really hostile with this guy and you were interrupting him a lot and doing these things.
And it's funny because I've been criticized many times in the past for being too kind to people who I disagree with on certain issues and letting it kind of slide.
I just want to say that with the Nick Sarwak situation, this is a guy who, first and foremost, forget any of the areas that we may have different views on.
You know, somebody might think, hey, Gary Johnson is the best thing for the Liberty movement.
Like, okay, that's fine.
You can have those views and you could have different views than me.
You know, whatever.
Maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe you're right about this.
I don't know.
I have my opinions, but I certainly could be wrong about some, if not all of them.
But Nick Sarwak is a guy who tried to not only, it's not that he criticized friends of mine and people who I love.
He very much tried to defame them.
I mean, he used what are career-ending attacks against people, insinuating that people are fascists and Nazis and racists and things against people who I love.
Not just like who I've read and really enjoy their work, like people who I know who are friends of mine.
Obviously, Tom Woods, Jeff Deist, Ron Paul.
These are people who I like, you know, I mean, on different levels, I'm more friends with Tom Woods and Jeff Dice.
I've only met Ron Paul a couple of times, but people who I know personally who have been very good to me and who are heroes of mine.
And he tried to defame all of them.
And to me, in the most cowardly way, in the most, you know, as I said in the debate, using cowardly social justice warrior, I think I said despicable social justice warrior tactics.
And that really bothers me.
That was like a real problem.
And the other issue is that I think he is truly bad for the liberty movement, which I care very much about.
So I was not, you know, it's like my attitude was like, I'm here to destroy you.
That's kind of my goal of this whole thing.
And I think it had to be done.
And I got to say, I think I did it.
Like, I, from the way I look at the world, the way I look at things, and I think from most people who are libertarians, if you look at this, just the things that I got him on record to say, I think were like, man, that's got to be pretty damning.
I mean, I think I just handed ammo to anybody who wants to do battle with Nick Sarwak for years to come.
As long as he's even claiming to put libertarian in front of his name, you got some fucking, you got some splaining to do if you're going to, if you're going to try to move forward after making some of the statements that he made, both in that debate and on the podcast.
You know, little things like, we should support Hitler if he is the LP nominee.
We should support Cheney if he's the LP nominee.
I also got to say there was something about the experience that was very frustrating.
I mean, he was just so squirmy and dishonest and constantly moving the goalposts and constantly contradicting himself.
I mean, he, you know, it was really something.
I mean, he straight up lied a couple of times.
And look, there were times where I probably could have nailed him harder than I did, particularly in the podcast.
He, you know, the debate, I'll let you guys, I'll wait till that's out and you guys can go see that.
I mean, you, you saw the debate, but there were things where he, I don't know, I was going at him very hard.
I was not pulling punches.
And when he attempted to come back at me, it was with these, you know, at one point, he, you know, I told him to stop being a lawyer.
Well, actually, I think it was Michael Heist screamed from the crowd, stop being a lawyer.
And then I said, yeah, really, stop being a lawyer.
This is like, this is ridiculous.
And then he goes, well, who should the LP nominate next time?
I go, well, it depends on who's running for it.
He goes, stop being a lawyer, Dave.
It's like, right.
Yes.
I'm, I'm, not only am I not a lawyer by profession, but of all the criticisms you could have of my style in podcasting and all that, I don't think being a lawyer would be one of them.
It was sad.
And then at one point, I took a shot at him for trying to work a $75 an hour deal out of the LP.
He did some real shady shit.
He can fucking answer for that.
And he goes, well, you know, like being the LP chairman isn't as lucrative as the podcast business or something like that to me.
And it's like, yeah, no, it's not.
That's right.
I don't know what to tell you.
Like, this is, are you like demonizing people for making money in the market?
Nick Sarwak, libertarian, thought we were free market capitalists.
It's like, yes, I put out a product.
I'm an entertainer.
If people want to buy my comedy special or they want to subscribe to my podcast, they can do so.
I've built up a big audience.
So if people want to advertise, they pay for that advertising because it's worth it to them for their product.
Sorry, that's what this is.
It's not like anybody doesn't know what that is.
However, you know, working for the LP, when people like me are dues paying members and they pay their money into the LP, I think what they're thinking they're doing is trying to advance the liberty movement.
That's why we're paying our dues.
It's not so that you can work more of a salary out of them.
So they're kind of different things.
Nick said at one point, what is, look, maybe he just misremembered.
So maybe I'm being a little hard by saying it's a flat out lie, but it was flat out wrong when I said that they wanted to get Tom Woods to sign this open letter denouncing fascism.
And he said, no, no, no, not fascism, racism.
Well, actually, he's wrong.
And now I thought this at the time, but he said it with such certainty that I was like, oh, maybe I'm misremembering it.
But I wasn't.
Not only was it not fascism, it was national socialism.
That's what the letter was denouncing.
And the idea that Tom didn't want to degrade himself by signing some pledge, some letter that says, we are not Nazis, makes complete sense.
Why would it even be necessary to sign something saying you're not a Nazi?
The fuck is a Nazi in 2019?
Besides 20 idiots, like who, why do we, and like, no one's asking Bernie Sanders to sign a pledge saying he's not a Nazi or Barack Obama or fucking Trump or any of this, but Tom Woods, Jeff Dice, by the way, said he didn't even know about this.
He's like, I don't even know what the fuck you're talking about.
Like, here's the thing.
Nick Sarwak would go out and he would do it in the most cowardly way where I would have more respect for him as a man if he would go, I think Tom Woods is a racist.
I think the Mises Institute are racist, or I think they're fascists, or I think, you know, say whatever you want to say.
And then we can debate that.
But he would go, I'm not saying the Mises Institute are fascists, but they are the preferred Institute of fascists.
So you're kind of like, wait, what?
And then his proof of that was that, well, look at the YouTube comments.
Look at Twitter responses that I've gotten.
And I tried to explain this to him, but that's just what having a following is.
There's some shitty comments that are made in different places.
Sorry.
That's like he doesn't have any following.
He's the chairman of the LP.
He's got like 10,000 Twitter followers.
He's got, you know, like less than a fourth of the followers I have.
But it's not even an organic real following.
I mean, how many of these followers are just people who are LP members who are like throwing the chairman a follow?
That's not a real following.
If he loses that title, he's got no one.
No one cares.
You know, it's an interesting thing where you'd see not just his followers, but the engagement.
Because now that I'm not responding to his tweets, his tweets will get two likes.
No, nobody's listening to what this guy has to say.
It's literally just, he's speaking into a vacuum.
It's speaking just in an empty cavern.
Anyway, the truth is, let's take a step back and look at this.
If you want to make the accusation that Tom Woods and the Mises Institute and Ron Paul are racists, let's be adults about this.
The Nazi Cake Controversy00:08:32
What evidence is there of that?
What do you have?
What have they ever said that you go, well, here's what he said.
Here's what he wrote.
This is what's racist.
You got nothing.
The fact that they have to go back to a Ron Paul newsletter in 1992 where someone under Ron Paul's newsletter, who's not Ron Paul, who Ron Paul disavowed, made some joke about the LA riots and the fact that there were a bunch of people on welfare and the riots.
The fact that that's the evidence you have is proof in itself that you have nothing.
You have absolutely nothing.
You have nothing that Tom you have to go back to some meeting that Tom had when he was 20 with an organization that turned out to become racist later.
This is all this is just pathetic.
Men don't act this way.
So I just, that, that stuff, I just couldn't stand.
I just look, I don't know what to say.
He tried to make the argument.
I mean, he basically, whether he tried to or not, he made the argument that you should have no principles if you want to support the LP.
I mean, if I'm supposed to vote for Dick Cheney or Adolf Hitler, basically you're saying I have no principles.
And okay, fine.
Notice I'm not going to go around.
I just go, okay, well, that's not what I believe is right.
If that's the case, then just be a Republican.
Why would you even go in that direction?
The other, notice that I'm not going to go around and be like, he said he would support Adolf Hitler.
You're a Nazi, or at least you're Nazi sympathetic.
By the way, the candidate for the LP, Gary Johnson, who I was debating, I was arguing that we should never elect another candidate like that.
I never brought up the whole debate.
I didn't bring up his fucking Jewish baker Nazi comment.
I'm not going to go, he said that a Jew should have to bake a Nazi cake.
He must be a Nazi.
Because that's just like bitch shit.
You know, it's like, that's not what Gary Johnson meant.
Gary Johnson's not a Nazi.
That's not my concern with him.
He's an idiot, but he's not a Nazi.
So you don't have to go after that line of attack.
And, you know, anyway, the whole thing was just ridiculous.
To me, I was like, that's, I don't know how anyone could look at this guy after those two nights and not go, man.
He got smoked twice.
And I'm done.
I'm done with Nick Sarwak.
I'm out of the Nick Starwalk business.
This is it.
I agreed to go on Pete's podcast on Free Man Beyond the Wall podcast on Wednesday.
He wanted to talk to me about the debate.
So I'll go do that one.
We'll talk about the debate a little bit, but that's it for me.
That'll be the last time.
If you guys want to go listen to that, then I'll talk about the debate and we'll get into it.
But I'm done after that.
I think I said my piece.
I think I got out of Nick what I wanted to get out of him.
And I think I'm fine with that.
I'm fine to move on from there.
That's just, to me, it's like, you know, it's whatever.
The arguments that he was making were so goddamn absurd, so absurd.
And the idea of just being, you know, if you want to be a social justice warrior libertarian, just understand that you can never win.
If we want to play on the left's field by the left's rules, you're never going to win.
If you say, this was, by the way, my big problem with Gary Johnson, that here was the real problem with the Jews have to bake a Nazi cake thing.
And it wasn't that he was saying Jewish people have to bake a Nazi cake because he didn't even really mean that.
What Gary Johnson said is you can't have freedom of association.
You can't have the right to discriminate because if you do, then people would be racist and you could see areas where Muslims weren't allowed into stores and where other people wouldn't allow minorities.
So you can't have that.
The government has to make sure that you can't discriminate.
Then Austin Peterson jumped on him and said, well, would you be saying that a Jewish baker can't refuse to bake a swastika cake?
Because that is the logical consistency of not being allowed to discriminate.
And he said, yes, because he wanted to be consistent in his dumbass ideology.
So he was just trying to be consistent after applying stupid principles.
The problem there isn't the dumb Nazi comment.
The problem is that if you're going to say that in a free market, it'd be a really horrible, racist society.
You've basically given the left all they need to hang you with.
Okay.
Well, then they'll go, well, then they'll say, well, obviously then we can't live in a free market because it might be a racist, terrible world.
When the truth is that in a free market, maybe some places would decide they're not going to serve Muslims.
That would be directly against their interests.
They would lose all their Muslim business and other places who would serve Muslims would take all that business away from them.
So the incentives would at least be for them to not discriminate in that regard.
And okay, you'll always at least have an area where you are welcome.
And that's good.
You'd want to shop with the people who aren't bigots anyway.
The truth is, and Gene Epstein made this point when he debated Bhaskar Sankara, that the real thing that you have to fear, if you're so against prejudice and discrimination, is democratic socialism.
I mean, if you're telling me that the workers get to democratically decide how the production is made, and Gene brought this up, he goes, how many people are going to be making Qurans?
I mean, you have to get a democratic majority to decide to produce something.
Muslims don't have a majority in this country.
What are they?
They're like 1%, 3% of the population, something like that.
So there's your concern.
At least in a free market, you could be something that's only 3% of the population.
But hey, that's big business.
You could sell a lot to 3% of the population and make a lot of money.
Anyway, so I'm done.
I'm out of that game.
I think the interactions we had speak for themselves.
And if people can still take this guy seriously after advocating that you should vote for Dick Cheney, if he were the LP nominee, then maybe we're just not in the same movement.
I will say the final thing I'll say, and this is it, is that a lot of people had the response of saying that this has turned me off from joining the LP.
That's it.
It's like a guy like this is the chairman, then I don't want to join the party.
And, you know, you have a right to say that, obviously.
It's your choice what you want to do.
But I would just say this.
That is handing him a victory in a way.
If none of us enter the party, and this is ultimately why I decided to do it, if none of us enter the party and we all just decide, okay, a guy like this is there, then fuck it.
We're out.
That is kind of giving him exactly what he wants.
Now, I'm not saying Nick Sarwalk exists to destroy the liberty movement, but the old Tom Woods line, if I'm not saying Nick Sarwalk is a CIA plant who's there to bring down the Liberty movement, but if he was, he couldn't be doing a better job.
If he was, how would you distinguish it from the way he's acting right now?
Okay.
So I'm just saying this.
This is just my pitch, right?
The Libertarian Party, the third biggest party in the United States of America that has the word libertarian in front of it and has ballot access on 50 in 50 states has 15,000, under 15,000 dues paying members, under 15,000 of them.
If a fraction of the people who listen to our podcast were to join, we own that party.
It's ours.
We can nominate whatever chair we want to.
We can run whatever candidates we want to.
And it just seems to me more and more that's probably the best path forward if you want a real liberty movement in this country, which I do.
If everybody who listened to this podcast became a dues-paying member of the Libertarian Party, we own the Libertarian Party.
It's ours.
Now, I'm not going to tell you what to do.
That wouldn't be very libertarian of me.
But it seems to me that a better path forward than saying, fuck that, I'm not going to be a part of this, would be if we all decided to join up and go, we're going to damn well make sure that this party isn't run by the Nick Sarwalks of the world anymore and that he has no influence over this.
That seems to me it would be a better path forward.
Owning the Libertarian Party00:14:50
That's how I'll close and we'll move on from there.
Fuck that guy.
It's more or less what I'm trying to say.
All right, guys, let's take a quick second to thank our sponsor for today's show, which is wix.com.
There's a better way to build a website for your clients, and that's using Wix.com.
With Wix, you can harness the latest web technology, innovative design tools to deliver professional results every time.
Start with a blank page and design the layout the way you want.
Grow your business with custom online stores, out-of-the-box booking systems, and live chat.
Publish in a click and make edits fast.
Your clients will enjoy enterprise-grade security and automatic web hosting.
Use industry-leading SEO and powerful marketing tools to drive traffic to your site or whoever's site you're trying to build.
Get started on your next client's website today.
Go to wix.com/slash P-O-T-P.
That's wicks.com/slash P-O-T-P.
Wix.
Scale your web business.
All right, let's get back into the show.
Louis J. How are you, brother?
You want to jump on for a sec?
I'll jump on for a moment.
I wanted to, I know we're going to talk about this on Skanks tonight, but I wanted to, I was literally just about to talk about the Shane Dylan thing about the Chings.
Well, indirectly.
But yeah, I wanted to talk about the Chings for a little bit.
Dave has a solution to their eye problem.
Yeah.
I'm not getting headphones here.
So I just saw that.
Literally, I was in the moment of transitioning into the Shane thing, and I saw you come out of the other studio.
So I thought it was, why not have you jump on?
Louis J. Gomez, the proprietor of the network.
Welcome, Louis J. Gomez.
Hi, part of the problems, fans.
Welcome yourself.
I'm clapping for myself right now.
I'm applauding myself.
This is very good.
Sorry, my headphones weren't working, so it was sort of throwing me off.
I'm good.
So, yeah, dude, Shane officially fired.
How fuck, how much does that suck?
How much is it like officially comedy?
I don't want to say comedy's dead, but it was a big blow.
Main, major blow to comedy with SNL not standing by him.
You know, my assumption, they probably got more stuff.
I'm assuming SNL probably got like a folder.
Bunch of stuff.
Me and you were talking on the phone a couple days ago, and I was like, fuck, man.
Like, you know, you think he's going to pull through this because it was kind of, you know, we weren't sure.
And you go, no, he's not going to.
He's going to get fired.
And you go, look, the reality is they haven't even scratched the surface with the offensive shit.
I mean, we've gone hard with Shane LOS.
And what they, dude, by the way, one of the greatest things ever that happens in outrage cancel culture is when they write these articles that are like, he said this.
And obviously, a lot of times, you know, like on Bill Burr's new special, he had this one bit where he was talking about like a girl's being sexy.
And she's like, no, stop it.
No, don't do that.
And then if you just read it in a court and you were like, she said no, stop it.
Don't do that.
You'd be like, man, that sounds bad.
So a lot of times they'll make something sound bad, but sometimes it's just so funny that you can't, when they go, that Shane Gillis referred to Judd Appetow talking about his feelings as, quote, gayer than ISIS.
It's funny that you just read that.
You read gayer than ISIS.
And you're like, how would I know half the people on your social justice warrior staff were literally holding back laughs, reading gayer than ISIS?
There was a bunch of things that were hilarious.
I mean, just come on.
Him calling Andrew Yang a Ju Chenk.
Like when you just read when you, I guess when you read like Juchenk, it seems really bad, but even Andrew Yang had a great response to it.
He was like, yeah, comedians, they speak a different language.
They're trying to be funny.
They're trying to be provocative.
He did.
Although I didn't, I kind of found there to be a little bit something cunty, even in, but he was the best of the group.
So I'll give him a pass on that.
But when he went, you know, I prefer that comedians, you know, expand our thinking and don't take cheap shots, but I'm willing to sit down with you.
It was still like, ah, all right, at least he's not.
It was more the interview.
It was less the tweet and the interview that he did with CNN afterwards, specifically talking about it.
That was the thing that made me go like, all right, well, you know what?
It was, it was really good to have.
I thought that was the moment where I was like, oh, shit, Shane might actually survive it because this very prominent Asian figure is sort of going like, what are we doing?
Well, we need to be in a forgiving society.
Whether you consider what Shane said to be a mistake or not, mistake, yeah.
I mean, if Shane knew he was getting on S, Shane Gillis is funny enough that he can joke about anything.
He doesn't need to say racial slurs is a punchline, right?
Helps.
I think it's funny.
I think racial slurs has a punchline simply just in and of itself, if you have the right timing, you have the right moment, like, yeah, dude, it's shocking and it's, it's funny and it's silly.
Well, the fact that it's been made so taboo also makes it funnier.
Yeah.
Like there's a relationship between those two things.
That's why it's not hate speech.
If the reason it's funny is because he knows it's wrong.
We know when we say the N-word on Legion of Skangs that it's wrong and you're not supposed to.
Not many people are doing it.
And we all try to go like, well, it reminds me of the aristocrats.
I've made this comparison before.
There was a movie.
It's a joke from back in the day.
Like this, the idea, I guess it was like a joke that ran from the vaudeville days where people would sort of improvise the most fucked up scenario possible.
And they would go, this family walks into a talent agency and the baby starts shitting in the dad's mouth and the dad takes the shit and spits it into the mom's mouth.
And the idea is comedians would try to be as filthy as possible with this joke and try to go as far as possible.
And comedians, we have very thick skins.
It's hard to make us laugh.
It's hard to shock us.
So comedians would sort of pass around this joke.
And it was almost like, I don't even know how, I don't know the myth about this joke, if it was even really that popular, but they made a whole documentary about this joke.
And the documentary was called The Aristocrats.
And I just remember when we were sort of setting up Legion of Skangs.
And the punchline of the joke is he goes, what do you call the show?
And he goes, it's the aristocrats.
Yeah.
So the opposite, it's the contrast of the most filthy thing ever is called the aristocrats.
So that Legion of Skanks sort of reminds me of that joke.
That's what we do on that show.
We're competing with each other to try to be more fucked up and still be funny with it.
Exactly.
But at the same time, try to still be funny with it.
And I don't think Shane Gillis would have played that game had he ever thought SNL was even an option.
That was like it was so far from reality for like a guy like Shane to get a show at SNL.
It was far from where when Pete Davidson, it was very surprising.
It was very surprising when Pete Davidson got it.
But for Shane, it was like, we were like, whoa.
And it was also sort of this moment where we're like, wait a minute, maybe comedy might be in a good place.
Maybe the industry is recognizing that comics make jokes and we say fucked up things.
And they did their due diligence.
They vetted Shane.
They knew that he said crazy shit on podcasts.
They went to that.
There's no way not to.
No, there's no way not to.
And it's fucked up on NBC's part.
You should have done a better job vetting him.
You literally set this guy up to be canceled.
He got canceled.
It's a problem.
It's a problem in his career forever now.
It's worse than him not getting SNL.
Well, is it?
Is that true?
It's debatable.
It's debatable.
In some ways, I think if he wasn't going to get SNL, this helps Shane because now at least he's known as that guy who this guy, you know, it looks Shane.
The crazy thing about this, which is really bananas, is that Shane is a guy who, look, me and you, right?
Like, we've been at this podcast game for a long time.
We are like, you know, have in the range of like 45,000 Twitter followers or something like that.
And we have hundreds of thousands on our, on our podcast.
43.4, you have 42.7.
Wow.
Lewis passed me, I think, last week.
I'm not even exaggerating.
He did the whole thing.
And it drives me crazy.
My blood was boiling.
I remember.
Pops up.
I'm like, where the fuck did all these followers come from?
Did you do something?
He did Rogan.
That's when he first got ahead of me.
And it was infuriating.
I started calculating my follower jump daily versus his follower jump daily.
I was like, okay, I know by October 17th, 2019, I will pass him again as long as he doesn't get anything else that's important.
Well, but you, but you did pass me.
I passed you.
You passed me.
I passed you.
We've been through this a lot.
Every time it breaks my heart when Lewis passes me.
I contemplate quitting, giving my baby up for adoption.
But I'm still up in the air about those.
But there's this weird thing when you're at that level, right?
Like, and you're like, oh shit, after all these years of not really having a following, now you have a little bit of a following.
But then there's people with like hundreds of thousands of followers.
And then there's people with millions of followers.
And then there's people with like tens of millions of followers.
And there's all these different levels to like who really, you know, like if Rogan says something that like, okay, that's going to be trending.
Shane has like 13,000 Twitter followers and all of a sudden is trending number one all over the place.
He made this jump from being someone that no one was even looking about to he's the talk of the comedy world.
And it's just, it's, it's hard to not look at that and go like, holy shit, dude, the Yang thing, forget what Yang even said.
What was mind-boggling to me was that you have a guy running for president on CNN with Jake Tapper.
This is supposed to be the big boy news.
You know, I mean, we talk about on the show all the time how ridiculous they are, but this is supposed to be the big boy news.
This guy running for president, we got $20 trillion in debt, the longest wars in American history.
Donald Trump's in the Oval Office.
Like, what's going on with the country?
And they're asking him about Shane, who a week ago was just our boy on Legion of Skanks.
And now all of a sudden he's the number one trending thing.
And it was surreal to see.
And I hope Shane's doing good.
I haven't talked to him through the whole thing.
I talked to him today.
I mean, I think he's fine.
You know, I think it's probably a breath of fresh air.
I think there was probably this daunting thing where he's going like, really, dude, the chink joke, that was it.
Like, we, you know, not even us, like, him and Matt have just hours and hours and hours of them doing that type of humor.
That's the type of humor that Shane does, where it's like he leans into him being adults.
He leans into him being a dummy.
I do the same thing.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, you know, Shane isn't, Shane's not a stupid guy, you know?
So he's sort of like, I hate the character excuse because it's not a character, but we are exaggerated versions of ourselves on these shows and we are trying to be bigger and more of a, you know, just where we go bigger than we would.
I wouldn't say that's what comedy is.
Shane wouldn't make a chink joke at the bank.
Yeah, but it's also like, like, that's just what comedy is.
Like when Brian Regan does some joke and he's like, could they really figure out the thing?
That's not actually literally Brian Regan.
That's an exaggerated version to make it funny.
When Jim Gaffigan is like, you know, like all that stuff, it's, that's, that's an exaggeration.
Even the cleanest comics.
That's why I use those two as examples.
Even clean comedy is that.
So obviously, like offensive comedy is going to be an exaggerated version.
And you might be making a point.
Like there might be something that you're actually getting at that you do believe, but it's not literal.
And the truth is, and I tweeted this out just recently, but these guys have set a standard now.
And this is what sucks about NBC caving into it.
You've set a standard that Pryor, Carlin, Murphy, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Patrice O'Neal, none of these guys could pass the standard that you've set.
So, okay, you want to play by those rules.
It's really not just Shane's laws.
It's fucking your laws.
It's comedy.
It's comedy.
It's fucking society's loss.
And now you'll never get a great comic like that.
If you can ruin him when Shane's got 13,000 followers, he hasn't made his first album, his first special, his first sketch on SNL yet.
You've taken him out before he can even show you he's great.
You know, like Bill Bird's new special, those first 20 minutes, if you want to take any of that, you could take him out for it, but he's already knighted.
He's already got millions of fans.
So they're going to be like, but that's why I'm saying it's probably worse.
So look, it's, here's the thing.
Matt and Shane Secret Podcast, you guys should all go and subscribe for the Patreon.
I'm sure they're going to open it back up.
Go do that now.
Support comedy.
Okay.
Obviously, subscribe for Cast Digital.
Support us as well.
But go support Shane directly because Shane's literally a good person.
Yeah.
A good person.
There's no other fucking ifs, ands, or buts about it.
He's a good person.
And I believe that, yes, it will be, it's not a fucking death blow, but for the path Shane could have gone down.
It's a deathblow to a path.
This path.
Yeah.
Now, because NBC did this and canceled him, now he would be considered problematic.
Now, networks like Netflix, other networks, other MTV, other opportunities that he would just have, the natural opportunities that come where he's not too problematic for.
Now there's going to be people that won't even have the conversation about him.
His name won't even get brought to the table.
It's not about what he's going to lose.
It's about what he's not going to be offered.
Well, it's the seen versus the unseen.
And what you won't see is what other people would have been looking for Shane who now just won't touch him.
And that's what they're doing.
Yeah, they're going to step back and go like, you know, and he'll be fine because Shane is really likable and really funny.
And everyone in the comedy world thinks this is stupid.
Everyone.
I'm sure people at NBC think it's stupid.
I'm sure Lauren Michaels thinks it's stupid.
Oh, yeah, I guarantee it.
I guarantee you.
But they are in a position where, I mean, there's lawyers, there's teams.
They got there.
I'm just saying the reason NBC fucked up, it's not even for firing Shane.
It's for hiring him in the first place and not vetting him the way that they should have.
If this is the standard.
If they were going to fire him for that.
If this is the standard, right?
And then you better fucking do your due diligence.
Really?
There's bloggers doing better vetting than your entire team at NBC, than your lawyers, than everybody.
So you sort of fucking, you canceled it.
When you cancel somebody, you put this fucking scarlet letter on their chest.
And it takes a special type of person to move away from that.
And it's going to be an uphill battle.
Luckily, we live in this world where we have a hardcore fan base that will support Shane.
I think his podcast will blow up because of this.
I think other opportunities of the world will blow up.
I think Shane will have a coming out party as a great comedian earlier than he would have, even if he got SNL.
Because I think you sort of get stuck as the young buck on SNL for a little while until you get some things.
And there's also the other problem is like Shane could have easily gone the way of one of these.
There's been plenty of white guys who are just straight up players on SNL for a season or two.
They were in the background.
Could have gone the way of, you know, this Pete Davidson's just banging Ariana Grande and being a millionaire and hanging out with Justin Bieber.
I mean, who wants that?
But look, here's the thing, right?
You go, there is now Shane kind of has to come and join us on the other side, which, by the way, and me and you have talked about this before.
I think I've talked about this on the show before, but there is something where when you first start comedy, everybody's got a dream of like, oh, I could make it big.
I could be this big success, these huge things.
And there's a certain point where we had to accept, right?
That we were like, well, look, we decided we were going to lean into being balls out, edgy comics.
Mark Norman Herpes Claims00:06:02
And okay, we know we're not going to get some of these mainstream credits now.
But it's kind of like, look, I could sit here and go, you know, if I had the correct approved politics, I bet a lot of doors would have opened for me that haven't opened for me because I don't.
But, okay, I'm a guy who makes good money, supports my family off doing what I love to do.
I have this great career.
Am I really going to sit here and bitch about like what a victim I am?
Like, everything's fine.
No, it's going to be fine.
You said it right there.
So, so what do you, you know, it's like success is doing what you want to fucking do.
Nate Bargazzi is doing what he wants to do.
He likes writing clean jokes.
He likes getting into a notebook.
He likes figuring out a way to, in a clever way, to figure out a way to tell a story and to get these puns out.
It never excited me to put my nose into a notebook and write that way and to try to figure out that formula of getting a late night set.
Like it was so when I was putting together a late night set, it was so unenjoyable that it was like, this isn't why I got into this.
I got into this to say what I want to say and to not have a boss.
And to, you know, so if I change, and I did change that for a while.
I got on Last Comic Standing.
I've done certain things in my career that are, you know, considered more industry.
And it was, it never made me happy.
Yeah.
It made me feel gross.
I remember when I was on Last Comic Standing, there was the moment where, you know, they're coming to you with the cameras and they're like, oh, talk about what?
Your motivations.
And I'm talking about my son.
Did I tell you?
I told you the story, right?
I was talking about James.
And I was like, I was showing a picture of him.
And it's one of the grossest moments of my career.
I was showing a picture of him on my cell phone, but I put my thumb over the logo for the cell phone because I knew, like, I consciously knew that the logo was in this shot.
They weren't going to be able to use the footage.
It was fucking disgusting.
Oh, disgusting.
I have less respect.
This current never told me that story.
I swear to God.
But it was like, I'm in the marketing.
I'm like, good move, Lewis.
All right.
But I'm wearing like a suit jacket that I would never wear in real life.
And I'm going to be like, oh, my baby boy.
And it's just crying.
It's gross, dude.
It just sucked.
And then I watched Mark Norman, who I have a ton of respect for, is a great comic.
You know, he's sexually harassing female comics on the set.
At one point, he threw like a box and it hit a producer in the head and he's like ducked down and like hidden on a couch.
It's just, he didn't give a fuck.
It didn't matter.
And he got through to the top 10 or whatever it was.
It's just, it's crazy that you're going to be your fucking self.
You have to have an actual rapist like Mark Norman.
Yeah.
Mark Norman rapes women.
But isn't it weird that Mark Norman's never been caught for all these rapes?
It's weird.
Isn't it strange that like, and we've talked about this before in the Me Too moment and all that shit, but the fact that like if Mike Tyson were to come host SNL, it would be fine.
He's like in these movies and shit and people don't care.
Alec Baldwin has been like arrested multiple times.
He's their Trump character.
No one cares about that.
But Shane made these fucking chink jokes.
And by the way, why?
Just saying, you can make whatever jokes you want about white people, but and the justification is always like, but they have this white privilege.
You know how good Asians are doing in this country?
They're doing phenomenally well.
And it's so strange to me.
That's also for the ones.
He has so many Jew and black jokes, and they picked on the Asian ones.
Speak and check are still on the table.
Come on, man.
Speak and cheek are currently on the table, in my opinion, as just at the edge.
Right there.
Okay.
You can call it.
I remember saying this.
Dude, times have changed so much.
And we haven't been doing comedy that long.
Like, it's been over a decade, a little over a decade, like not that long.
And I remember there being a time when I used to talk about this with other comedians.
And it was just like people like laughed and got what I was saying.
Where I was like, okay, okay, fine.
We have to say the N-word, but we're hanging on to faggot.
Like we can say faggot.
I was like, listen, I'll give up nigger, but I will die on the hill of faggot.
Like I will die.
And that would just be a thing.
And now, even as I say it, you go like, no, you can't even kind of say that.
And it's really good.
I still say faggot regularly.
Oh, no, no, no.
Well, we say nigger.
But the point is, the point is, no, we're just doing whatever we want to do.
We really are.
But why, like, I, there is something about that.
And that's kind of the nice thing.
And you touched on it when you said Shane might be kind of relieved.
There was something that's kind of liberating about just accepting that it's like, well, look, I have my fan base.
I want to grow my fan base.
That's what I want to do with my career.
I'm not trying to get some network credit.
I'm not trying to convince some suits to give me something.
I'm just trying to keep doing what I'm doing and growing my fan base.
And I can be me.
And that'll be my appeal.
Whether it's the comedy stuff or the political stuff, what my appeal is to the reason why people watch me is because I'm going to be me.
Like, I'm going to tell you what I really think.
I'm going to say what I really think is funny and never kind of cater.
And there's something fun about that and really like liberating.
Well, yeah, I did an interview with the Hollywood Reporter.
They want to talk about like all the stuff, everything from Shane to Skank Fest to the Milo stuff.
The interview is coming out on Friday.
But I compared it to getting herpes.
It's like, in a weird way, you kind of want to get herpes, you know, because once you got it, you got it, baby boy.
You're out there.
Let's fuck now.
Let's party.
I've never.
I think that's when you can't fuck.
No, you fuck with no condoms anymore.
You give that freedom to other people.
You spread freedom.
That's what I do.
Okay.
And that's what it is.
When you get, you know, herpes, or Shane got herpes.
Shane just caught some herpes, and that's fine.
That's okay.
You got the industry herps.
That's it.
Industry herps.
It's no big deal.
Once you get it, you go.
We all have it.
Yeah, dude, we all got industry herps.
We all give it.
And also, if you sit down with the Legion of Skanks, you might catch industry herps.
Wasn't it kind of, it was like a joke?
Because Shane had some heat.
He had good representation.
And it was kind of a rash.
That was a rash from industry herps.
That is.
But it was kind of a running joke that we were like, oh, you're, it's like, hey, you should stop saying this shit because this is going to fuck you over when you go start blowing up.
And then it happened in the most spectacular way that we could.
Shane's Spectacular Rise00:04:05
It wouldn't have matter, though, if he didn't get SNL.
Shane could have gotten a Netflix special.
He could have gotten a movie.
He could have gotten.
You think he can't get the Netflix special now?
He can, but it's going to be, it's going to be a little bit of a negotiation.
Here's the thing.
The reason Shane Gillis got SNL, the reason Shane Gillis ingratiated himself with our crew and every other crew, the reason that everybody.
He's got that thing.
He's likable.
Yeah.
He's a liable.
He's a really likable fucking dude.
And that right there, that factor, you can't fucking figure it out.
But he'll sit out in a room with people and they're going to go, no, I want this guy to succeed.
And that's why he's done well so far.
So I think that's not going to go away.
I don't think that I think this will ultimately be a blemish on the industry and a blemish on, or just sort of a moment.
It's very interesting because Shane is at a moment right now where it is actually way more, it's pivotable, pivotable, it's pivotal and it's way bigger of a moment than I even think we're giving it credit for.
No, no, I mean, it was trending number one.
But not even him getting fired is like this big thing in my mind where I'm like, oh shit, it was.
Maybe this is the last straw or something.
The thing that's frustrating to me, and I was making this comparison, me and Rob were talking next door before the podcast.
And I go, you know what?
It reminds me of they would say this thing, this talking point that was really big years ago, where they'd go, you know, women make 77 cents to the dollar.
And then there were like videos.
I mean, if you just search this on YouTube, you could probably find, I don't think I'm exaggerating, a thousand videos of people just dismantling this argument.
Like any serious economist who looks at it, anybody who's criticizing it, they're like, well, well, okay, if you just look at the average woman's salary versus the average man's salary, it's 77 cents to the dollar.
But if you just do a few basic controls, like how many hours a week they work, and then do a control for what their major in college was or how many years they took out of the workforce, these very basic things, it shrinks down to being like 97 cents to the dollar.
It's almost like gone.
And then you go, and then after a while, you'll kind of just go like, okay, this argument has been as thoroughly defeated as it could possibly be.
Anyone who's looked into it can see that this is a bullshit talking.
You're not.
And then you'll just hear, right?
You'll just hear someone go, then Barack Obama just goes, did you know women make 77 cents to the dollar for the same work?
And you're like, wait, not only did you repeat it, but you added on a lie that's not even, no one would even like say that's just factually incorrect.
You know that women pay men 77 cents an hour?
Holy shit.
So it feels like you, so we have this conversation to the point that people are going, guys, it's so boring when you talk about the PC police because we've had this conversation for years now.
And obviously you're right.
You're just beating up on a weak argument because it's so stupid.
It is so stupid to go look at comedy to try to get offended by it.
Like it's really, I don't know what any other word.
It's a low option.
I read one of the headlines.
It said comedian under fire for making joke.
Yes.
I mean, like, and I was like, what?
How do you not read that sentence and go, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard?
What are we doing here, guys?
I mean, this is something that you like, genuinely, you should be able to explain to a third grader why this doesn't make any sense to do things this way.
And it's no matter how many times you win the argument, then you see Shane.
And like, I was like, one of these reporters for one of these fucking publications has like a thousand followers.
And she tweeted out a thing about how we're looking through all the material to, you know, see what else Shane said is offensive.
And I tweeted back at her and was like, you're looking through comedy material to get offended.
Like, take a step back.
What are you doing with your life right now?
And, you know, you just see like, it feels like everyone's agreeing with us and not with them.
Like the ratio of even the guys.
But they still win.
They still win.
He posted on his page.
The guy, Sam Smith or whatever the fuck his name is.
No, that's a singer.
Whatever the guy's name.
Fuck that singer.
He's got a thousand comments being like, you're a fucking loser.
Suck a dick.
Kill yourself.
Nobody's supporting him.
There's like three people being like, good job, buddy.
But they still win.
Comedy Material vs Bigotry00:03:28
There's something so frustrating about that.
It's like you're getting beat on the battlefield.
And somehow you're still.
Well, again, what's gangfast in the venue?
Then a thousand comments being like, you guys fucking suck.
I'll never go to your venue again.
Nobody being like, good for you guys for releasing this statement against Lil.
It's like, why would you do this?
It makes no sense.
There's no rhyme or reading.
So who do we blame?
The Jews?
Like, why is this happening?
The Chinks?
The JuChinx?
Do the Juchinks run everything?
They really do.
You broke it down.
Well, it's actually starting to like question my faith in the marketplace, though, because I just try to look at this and I go, okay, but look, we bring in all of this, all of these people, all of this money.
Everybody's supporting it.
What the fuck's going on?
The free market is speaking.
Well, it's woke capitalism.
It's freaking me the fuck out.
It's like all of these corporations are competing.
When you see Walmart coming out against guns and you're like, Walmart, your whole base is all America.
You've been selling them forever.
And there's something so cheap, by the way, that Walmart example where they didn't even, Walmart goes, you know, we're not going to sell these bullets for AR-15s anymore because there's just too many people dying and we just don't want them out on the street.
And then they turned around and sold them to other companies for them to go sell.
So it's not like the bullets aren't going out there on the street.
Like you're not even, it's not like you're throwing them in a fucking ditch somewhere or something like that.
You're just getting the pandering points.
And you know you're full of shit.
Any company, I have a hard time supporting any company to a certain degree.
If it's convenient, I'm not getting a cup of coffee across the street because I have this like, I don't give a fuck.
That's the reality, right?
No, me too.
But a company that throws a fucking rainbow flag to the window, I'm going like, it's not about that I'm against throwing a rainbow flag in your window or I'm against, I want, I think you should support gay rights.
I believe that.
Set that flag on fire.
No, I really do believe that.
I believe you should support gay rights.
I believe that in the clearest, most purest sense, like if a gay guy walks in and another guy walks in, I believe you should look at both of their resumes for a job.
You look at both their resumes and you give the better guy the job regardless of his sexuality.
It's just true equality.
I really do believe in that.
And I believe that, yeah, there are people that would treat that gay guy like shit because he's gay.
And they're bigoted people that would do that.
And I don't think that's fair.
And I think that we should eliminate that if possible.
However, I don't like being treated like a fucking sheep.
I don't like being treated like it's such an obvious thing.
And it's so, it's such a, it's a scuzzy business move.
Yeah, I agree.
When these companies, they, they, they, during diversity month or whatever it is, they send this message.
There was the, the Gillette campaign where that fucking failed.
They lost millions of dollars and now they've completely just shifted it.
But that's almost what has to happen is some type of market answer.
I think what I think is that the problem that we deal with, and I'm not quite sure what the answer to it is, but here's the problem the way I see it.
And it goes here.
The perfect example of it is when we had Milo on Legion of Skanks.
Now, if we have, let's say we had even, I don't know who the example is, but some left-wing guy who's the left-wing equivalent of Milo.
If we have him on, nobody on the right is going, we're going to show up and throw milkshakes and boycott this business and get it shut down.
But if you have Milo, lots of people will do that.
And what happens, and this is the truth with SNL too, is that even though it's a small percentage of the audience who's going to be offended, those people will never stop trying to ruin you.
Inclusive Venues and Backlash00:11:45
They will make it, they don't have families, they don't have marriages, they don't have serious, like anything else to do with their lives.
So they will spend all of their time trying to ruin you.
And you go, okay, so that's more of a pain in the neck, but what's the answer?
Is the answer that people on the other side have to be as big cunts?
Yes, but that's what's happening.
That's what happens.
Because that sucks.
That sucks as my answer.
I agree.
And the reality is this, okay?
These are people that have never created a thing in their life.
They've never created a comedy special.
They've never created a podcast.
They've never tried to make a piece of art.
They've never tried to make a piece of content.
And you have a whole sect of people in the world for the first time in their life.
They write something and they get 100 likes on it.
And they go, what?
Yeah.
This is incredible.
They virtue signal and they get 100 retweets and they go, I've never said anything that's gotten any attention ever.
I've never written words on a paper that people have shared and been like, you're the fucking best.
And there's definitely something like biological in that.
Oh, no, it's scientific.
The endorphins that are released and The feeling of importance that you get, like, I'm like, that's addictive.
And that's what, that's why these people live in that world.
And they, they, they, that guy who wrote that article, uh, the first guy that wrote about Shane, his whole life is that.
His whole life is writing these things, tweeting this stuff, and then sitting there and going like, oh, bathe me in this attention.
And it's like, it just sucks.
I don't know what else to say.
Like that, it just sucks on the highest, highest level.
Um, Jamie Kilstein was very honest about that feeling that he would get me there.
And the other thing, it's honestly one of the reasons why I started hanging out with Jamie again was because he was so honest about it.
Yeah.
He went down this path.
He was like, shit, I'm getting money.
I have fans for the first time in my life.
Like I'm this hero.
Yeah, and then it gets addictive.
And then there's another element where you go, and I'm also doing something really good.
I'm creating social justice.
I'm helping people that are less privileged than myself.
And then you start to have this real justification.
You start to get really on a high horse there.
So it's this dangerous path to go down.
I'm not on the side of any of that shit, dude.
I'm literally on the side of funny.
What was funny was I was talking to Hollywood reporter.
He was like, it seems like it's like two sex in comedy now.
It's like one side is like inclusive and diverse.
And then the other, I was like, yeah, us.
You're right.
One side is inclusive and diverse.
And he was trying to, and I said, it's very funny you say that because that other side is not inclusive.
They're not diverse.
You have to have one way of thinking.
One main town.
Come on, dude.
Or they will try to take you the fuck down.
I remember this.
And I mean, it's one of these things that makes your jaw drop almost that someone could be this like have this lack of self-awareness where they were saying they wanted to boycott the creek because we were having Milo because the creek is an inclusive venue.
And you're like, guys, can you not just take a step back and not see the hypocrisy in saying that we have to keep a guest out in the name of being inclusive?
Like if you want to be exclusive, fine.
But you don't get to say we're inclusive, therefore we need to exclude.
Also, exclusive is good.
I want to go to exclusive club.
I want to be riding in this exclusive fucking car with exclusive people.
Fuck inclusive.
Inclusive are homeless shelters.
Suck a dick.
That sucks.
And he has included people out.
Even they'll be like, look, sorry, we're at max capacity.
You got to go sleep in the park, bro.
This isn't one of those shitty homeless shelters.
Yeah, we'll see.
I mean, the whole...
Well, we'll have fun with it tonight on Skank.
We will.
We will.
I was trying to get Shane on today.
I think he's doing a Matt and Shane Secret podcast.
I like a bunch of people tweeting at us.
They're like, you guys should get Shane on tonight.
You're like, yeah, we probably thought of that already.
Well, I initially, today, I texted him at like one and being like, do you want to skank tonight, JK, before he got fired?
But then you were like, you text him back and go, seems like a real possibility now.
You seem like you probably need something now.
We're kind of doing you the favor.
So if you want to get your name out there a little bit more, because by the way, this internet following thing is your only path now.
So why don't you try to get your followers up.
But by the way, this is the first time as well that I started like genuinely having a little bit of a fear of this whole net neutrality sort of thing.
I don't know anywhere near enough about net neutrality and sort of that world, but all you need to know is that I'm right about everything.
For a while, I was just kind of going like, I don't know, man.
I don't know that I just feel like the internet is this like, this powerful tool that nobody has.
Nobody realizes how much power is in it.
It's like, do we really, does everyone have the responsibility?
Should everyone have the responsibility to share ideas that quickly and be this reactive?
I feel like it's one of the reasons why society is crumbling.
It's because nobody thinks about their own lives.
Nobody actually puts thought into their views in the world anymore.
It's just, cool, I read that.
Let me fire off my opinion.
Whereas before you'd read that, you'd sit on the toilet, you'd work out, you'd clean your house, you'd really reflect on it, and then you'd be like, all right, I got to go to work tomorrow and talk to somebody about this.
That's how long it took me to get your opinion on an issue.
And there's also something about, and I don't, net neutrality one way or the other.
I don't want to lose a thought.
But now I'm going like, fuck that.
It really truly is the last place where we can share ideas.
Oh, yeah.
Where you can do things freely.
No, there's no question.
There's that good.
There's tremendous good and tremendous bad with the internet.
But one of the things that's really crazy is that if you, like when you call, and this is something that regulates male behavior.
And it's part of the reason why women in general speaking generally, but women do this like caddy.
gossipy kind of thing.
And any chick who's out there who's worked at a job with all women before knows exactly what I'm talking about, where they gossip about each other, they're very caddy.
Male intersocial behavior is regulated by the constant underlying threat of physical violence.
That we always could get into a fist fight.
You can cross a line where that guy's probably going to have to either punch you in the face or threaten to punch you in the face.
And what's happening to men when you can insult someone over social media and there's no like real human dynamic where if I just don't know you and I want to come up to you and be like, dude, I think you're a fucking Nazi.
I might be like, oh, this dude might throw a fist at my face.
Like knuckles might come flying at my nose right now.
And we always know every time you walk down the street and you see another dude, there is this thing that regulates all of us.
And that's lost online.
And then there's just these people who talk shit.
And bro, you would never just go approach another guy like this.
You would never.
Well, and that's a weird gauge that I have because that's something that's sort of that thing you're talking about where it's like you would never approach another guy like this.
I have this like philosophy in life where I go, I'm not going to approach somebody online like this because I wouldn't approach a guy in life like this.
That's my personal story.
I love you.
This is my problem.
Like I would like, well, would I say this to a guy?
Well, then let me shut the fuck up because I'm really kind of being a phony right now.
I'm not really being true to myself.
I'm being Mr. Fucking, you know, internet boss keyboard warrior.
And yeah, dude, that, you know.
Look, what you said before about how there's, and this seems so obvious to me, you go, one side is inclusive and this.
And it's like, yeah, it's us.
Like, even if when people went like, oh, so now Louie's just trying to perform to these alt-right people or whatever.
Forget the fact that Legion of Skanks is not alt-right, that Skank Fest isn't right-wing in any meaningful term.
Where you go like, oh, you're saying we're such terrible people and now Louie's going to perform to us.
It's like, no, we'll have him.
It's not that he chose.
He's more at home with Hillary Clinton supporters, but they won't fucking talk to him anymore.
And we will.
We're the inclusive ones.
It was real interesting with the Shane thing to take a step back and go, okay, one side of this is like, hey, our really funny friend who's a great guy got something great.
We're happy for him.
And the other side is actively trying to ruin somebody who never did anything to hurt anybody.
Literally never did anything to you.
I'm sorry if your feelings got hurt after looking up a podcast that you never would have listened to before.
That wasn't for you anyway.
Like that's what I said in that interview.
They were like, you know, sort of the Milo thing.
And I was like, they're like, well, isn't having Milo on anyway sort of making a statement that you're kind of standing on a certain side?
And I said, no.
The statement that I made was, I'm not going to bend the knee to people that are already calling me a Nazi, that already say that I'm on an alt-right podcast, that I'm already problematic.
These are people that will not ever buy a ticket to my show, will never listen to my show.
So why am I catering to them?
As an artist, I said, I think I can do something funny with this guy on my show.
And we did.
That was the only thing that I wanted to cater to.
We have a fan base that, you know, that honestly, they respect the fact that we're taking chances that other people aren't taking.
Well, I would, listen, if there, if they were reasonable people on the PC social justice, you know, cancel culture left side, I would think about trying.
And by the way, I think a lot of people are some people.
There's very few that are still into the cancel culture, social justice warrior thing.
I'm not saying left-wing people.
They're into the cancel culture.
There's lots of reasonable left-wing people or lots of people who are left-wing who are like, you can talk to.
I'm not saying that.
I'm saying in the social justice warrior world, I think a lot of our instincts at first are to go something like even what you said before.
Now, you go like, well, hey, by the way, like, I don't hate gay people and people who do hate gay people, I think, are terrible.
I think racism is really bad.
All these things.
I like, like, after a while, if there's a fucking guy in the woods throwing rocks at black people and calling them niggers.
I want to hang with that guy.
I think he should be a guest on the podcast.
Maybe even give him his own show on the network.
What am I supposed to do?
The guy's supposed to be.
Tell me that won't be an entertainer show.
The guy for fun hangs out in the woods and throws rocks at black people.
You're telling me you don't want to get inside that head a little bit?
You didn't know what his childhood was like, maybe where he's coming from.
You don't think he's got some good comments to make on policy?
No, but I'd literally be the first person to step up and fucking say something.
I don't think people...
He just threw a rock at you.
That ain't cool.
You got to say something.
But, you know, it's like we've said this before.
It's like, if there's a woman being attacked in the street.
We have actually, me and you together, have probably saved a woman's life.
We thwarted rape.
Pretty good sure.
Pretty sure we thwarted it.
You ruined my evening.
Yeah.
Rob, no.
Sprayed water at Rob.
Down, Rob.
Rob down.
I mean, all seriously, me and Lewis actually thwarted a guy who was trying to come up and almost, I guess you could call kidnap a stumbling in the midst of a blackout drunk chick.
This was way back in like New York days.
This is in 2005 when you didn't have to do this shit.
You could just let her get raped.
We could have just cheered him on.
Yeah, that was completely fine.
There was no Twitter back then.
It was my space.
MySpace days, no such thing as rape culture.
And we thwarted him.
We're good dudes.
Yeah, we're like, hey, buddy, what are you doing?
She's fucking black drunk.
You're following this chick home.
Like, she was like, like that, dude, like falling over.
And he like had his hand around her.
And I knew the girl because she came to the comedy clubs a lot.
Like, I knew who the chick was.
And I was like, this guy's not with her.
He literally is noticing a blackout drunk chick.
And came up.
It was real creepy.
Like, she was at shit.
But you see, like, what, like, the story that you hear about, like, that would have been fucking.
So she literally this chick.
It was at Standup New York.
The chick was passed out with her face down on the bar.
And then just out of nowhere.
And, you know, like, people are kind of talking and joking, like, oh, man, this chick is hammered.
Like, she's passed out drunk.
Maybe on pills or something.
I don't know.
And then she at one point just gets up and stumbles out.
And you're talking about, I'm talking stumbling.
Like, you think every step she might face plant into the ground.
Like, can't walk in the middle of a blackout.
No chance she'll remember this tomorrow.
And me and Lewis, we're just like, where is this chick?
This chick's going to die right now.
And we went outside and we were smoking a cigarette and she crosses the street and starts walking up.
And we just watched some guy walks up the block, puts his arm around her and starts kind of leading her up the block.
And me and Lewis were both just like, whoa, whoa, whoa, dude, no way.
Ruining Trump Supporters' Days00:03:31
And I forget who did what, but we like flanked him.
Like one of us went right over to him and the other one crossed the street.
And she was like, no, he's fine.
Like literally, she was so drunk that she was like, no, he's like, this guy might, best case scenario, he's going to rape you.
That's the best case.
He's going to have sex with you.
You're halfway.
Dead is the worst case scenario.
Like tortured and dying is the worst case.
Something bad's happening.
By the way, still don't know what ended up happening to that chick, but we turned the guy around.
I made him fucking.
I killed her a year later.
She came back.
She didn't.
Literally wants to shame on you.
Yeah, but the point is, it's like, that's all lost.
In such a tangible and practical way.
Well, let me just say, because what I was getting at at first is that there are like, it seems to me now where there's, when you get to these hardcore social justice warriors, it's like, look, man, if there's a reasonable left-wing person, I'm willing to talk to them and be like, hey, dude, like, we're not fucking racist.
I'm not even saying that to the hardcore people because it wins you no favor.
It's like, there's no point in even pandering to them at all.
They're going to hate you just as much.
So the stuff with Milo coming on the podcast, these are people who would have called us Nazis if we had never had Milo on the podcast.
They were already calling us Nazis.
So fuck you guys then.
Yeah, there's no reason.
I can't.
It's just not my audience.
It's very, very silly.
And you watch it happen with, I mean, SkankFest, with all of these things.
These people that will never spend a dime.
These people are never going to Brooklyn Bazaar.
Nobody that tweeted at Brooklyn Bazaar was ever going to spend money there.
So why wouldn't you listen to the opinions of the thousand people that did spend money at your venue and go like, oh, wait a minute.
It's purely bad business.
And what's happening, man, and just to tie it back to the political, because this is part of the problem, there is an interesting dynamic where you've got people like me who will say quite openly all the time, gays, right?
Who will say quite openly all the time.
I love Kyle.
I love me.
But say, I think Donald Trump should be impeached and tried for war crimes.
Like, I'm not.
But you are a Trump supporter.
But at this point, I'm not a supporter, but you do.
I saw Nick Mullen.
No, no, no, I'm not saying that.
I'm saying you're known as a Trump supporter.
Well, that's what they'll say.
I'm a Trump supporter.
It doesn't matter that I go, really?
Those are two views that seem inconsistent for a Trump supporter to say, but you do kind of go.
And even I watched Nick Mullen tweet this out.
And once you're getting Mullen to say this, it's like he goes, man, when you look at all these guys, just wait for Donald Trump to be elected, to be re-elected.
And the point he was making, I'm not getting the tweet exactly right, was how the best thing about Donald Trump being re-elected is that all these people who you hate so much are going to be so upset by it.
And it almost, it has the effect on a lot of sane people who wouldn't be on that side going, I'm kind of rooting for whatever ruins your day.
Yeah.
Like whatever just ruins your fucking day as a big fuck you to all of you.
I'll take the rainy day and I'll get wet too.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because I want to watch you struggle with wet socks all day.
Yes.
I want to watch you fucking dude a wet sock.
Oh my God.
There's nothing worse.
There's nothing worse.
Dude, I came in here a few weeks ago.
There's one podcast.
There was one episode of this podcast where I just seemed off my game.
Wet socks.
One socks.
Bolt socks wore sneakers.
Didn't really worry.
One's worse than you walked.
Step in one puddle and you have one wet shoe and wet sock.
Oh, dude.
I'll put the other one in the puddle.
I can't do one.
I would, I swear to God, if I was a spy and they wanted to get secrets out of me, I would give up every government secret I had if they just made me sit in wet socks for an hour.
Oh, is there a bad thing?
Blinkist Life Hacks for Readers00:02:59
Oh, or or lie in a wet bed.
I don't.
That's not something that happens to me a lot.
Have you pissed your bed recently?
Have you ever laid?
I was an inside.
Just get your cat all wet.
Have you ever like laid in like sheets that weren't completely dry yet and you had to put them back in your bed?
No.
Now dry them.
Where are you drawing your sheets?
I did.
You know what I'll say?
Is that I was in, there was a chair in my house.
So Lauren took a shower and like didn't dry her hair and then was rocking the baby in the chair.
And then I sat down in the chair and the back was wet.
And I was like, this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me on the show.
She takes out of the shower and she doesn't dry off completely and she gets in the bed and you're like, dry off.
You fucking wet, bitch.
What am I supposed to do here?
You're fucking sticky and wet.
I hate it.
I got to run, guys.
I apologize.
No, no, no.
I got to get.
I appreciate you popping in.
I will see you over at Skanks tonight.
Love you, brother.
Oh, by the way, Lewis, maybe just real quick, plug your tour or whatever.
You're doing a tour with me.
Friday, Saturday, I'll be with Kurt Metzger, Nashville, Zaney's.
Go to Louis A. GomaspresentsLewisJayGomas.com.
I'll have ticket information available starting tomorrow, I believe, for all of the tour dates.
Going everywhere, Boston, Syracuse, San Diego.
Awesome, man.
And I mean, two of the funniest stand-up comedians you could go see, Lewis Jay Gomez and Kurt Metzger.
That's going to be a fucking great show.
And they might knife fight afterwards.
So you really get all of it.
All right, guys, let's take a second and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Blinkist.
Blinkist is unbelievable.
I love this app.
It's one of the ultimate life hacks.
It's hard to find time to sit down and read and learn more.
I know that's true for a lot of you guys.
You're busy.
You don't have the free time you want to read or work on personal development.
That's where Blinkist comes in.
It's an incredible app that solves that problem.
I highly recommend it.
Blinkist is really unique.
It works on your phone, your tablet, or your web browser.
What it does is it takes the best key takeaways, the need to know information from thousands of nonfiction books and condenses them down into just 15 minutes that you can read or listen to.
So this has been incredible for me.
As you guys know, I have a nine-month-old baby now.
It's hard to find time to read what you want to read.
But now with Blinkist, you really don't need that much time.
You can get the information you're looking for.
Right now, for a limited time, Blinkist has a special offer just for our audience.
Go to blinkist.com slash problem and you can try this service for free for seven days and save 25% off a subscription if you decide to sign up.
So that's Blinkist.
It's B-L-I-N-K-I-S-T.com/slash problem to start your seven-day free trial and get 25% off if you choose to sign up.
But only when you sign up at blinkist.com/slash problem.
Guys, go check this out.
This is an unbelievable life hack.
You can get a book's worth of information in 15 minutes.
Really improve yourself, learn a lot more, improve your self-education, which is what we're all about here at this podcast.
Blinkist.com/slash problem.
All right, let's get back into the show.
Joe Biden Iran Policy00:15:16
All right.
Well, that's cool that Lewis popped in.
The timing worked out.
Excellent.
Excellently.
All right.
Well, now we're at a weird no man's place where I don't know.
We got a few minutes.
Democratic debate.
All right.
Let's talk.
Let's talk about the Democratic debate a little bit.
You know, my plan originally was to do an entire recap episode, and then I got fucked up with the Ari Shafir State of the Union skeptic tank episode.
But honestly, I don't know that there was that much to say about this debate.
You watched, did you watch the whole thing or you watched parts of it?
The majority of it.
Here's the thing.
They got to get rid of everyone except for three main players because I'm mostly just fast-forwarding through everybody else.
They're meaningless.
The only interesting moment to me was when Biden brought up the concept of how are we going to pay for this.
Well, that was somewhat interesting.
Biden, look, man, Biden just tried his best to go be forceful and in command and ended up kind of gassing out and just once again being Joe Biden.
I don't think Joe Biden's capable of going two plus hours being forceful and in command.
He did, damn it.
Yeah, really.
Yeah, he really needs really need some time to reset.
What are those, you know, that you see those commercials for dentures where they're like, this adhesive really changed my life.
Like, you need some of that shit.
So that's bad.
He also, even though people in the media are being like, Castro fucked up when he went at Joe Biden hard, dude, there was something really bad about Joe Biden's body language.
Now, I'm not going to do one of these.
You know, Bill O'Reilly used to have these like body language experts on his show.
But look, there are psychological subtexts to things that are said in presidential debates.
Like when Donald Trump would look at Jeb Bush and call him low energy over and over again, there is a basically he's saying you can't get a boner.
You can't fucking please a chick.
That's more or less what the accusation is on a gut, you know, human level.
He's basically saying you're a bitch.
That's what low energy means.
And Jeb Bush, then you look back at him, you're like, he was kind of low energy.
Now, what Castro was saying when he goes to Joe Biden, he's like, oh, did you forget?
Did you have another moment where you can't remember what you said?
He was saying you're an old man, saying you're an old fucking senile man.
You don't remember what you said a minute ago.
Like, you're not, you're not young and capable.
And Joe Biden looked over to Bernie Sanders to ask him what he was saying.
Do you remember that moment?
I thought that was like, oh, my God.
He was literally like, you're an old bitch.
And he goes, huh?
Speak up, sonny.
Like, that's not a good response.
Now, what Joe Biden was able to do, I thought, was to damage Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren up top.
I thought Elizabeth Warren stumble when she just dodged the question.
I mean, they asked her straight up, will middle class taxes go up?
I mean, come on.
I don't know.
Listen, I don't know what the Democratic voter base is, but how stupid do you have to be?
If somebody goes, hey, here's a prop, I'm proposing $32 trillion of new spending.
And someone goes, okay, well, how will we pay for this $32 trillion?
And they go, that's a Republican talking point.
Like, come on, man.
That's a Republican talking point to just ask where this $32 trillion is going to come from.
And then to go, will you tax it from the people?
Like, I've lowered my bar so much that if you just went, no, we're going to borrow it.
Or no, we're going to print it.
Or so, okay, fine.
But what's the answer?
Where does this 32 trillion?
She just refused.
She goes, well, the answer is the rich will pay more and the middle class will pay less.
And Joe Biden was like, look, this is just not true.
I mean, it's going to be middle class tax increases.
At least Bernie kind of admitted that.
Look, I thought watching the debate, I thought it was incredibly boring.
I thought the only guy, forget your ideology or what your point of view is.
I thought the only guys who you could even argue had decent nights were Corey Booker, kind of seemed in command and had some moments, even though I despise him.
He was fine.
And I thought Andrew Yang was at least interesting and different.
But what Andrew Yang was doing was just straight up bribing people.
Like straight up being like, I'll give you money if you vote for me.
This is, it's shocking to me that it's actually legal.
War with Iran.
That's a great question.
But first, let me remind you, I will be giving every one of you $12,000.
But I don't understand how it can be, like, look, I tweeted out something about this, right?
I tweeted out that Andrew Yang was just trying to bribe people.
And a lot of people would tweet back to me things like they go, well, by that logic, isn't offering, you know, to forgive your student loans bribing people?
And I'm like, yes, that's right.
I'm just saying this is the most blatant form of it I've ever seen.
Absolutely.
When Obama ran against Mitt Romney and he said, we're going to extend unemployment insurance, that's a bribe to people who are unemployed.
I don't know.
Vote for me.
I'll give you more money.
It's a bribe.
If you say anything, a government service for your vote, that is by the definition, it is literally a bribe.
However, just straight up saying, I will pay you money to vote for me seems like the most blatant of all the bribes ever.
And then people would go, they'd say, it's like, wow, Dave, you couldn't do any research into what his proposal actually is.
It's a freedom dividend.
And it's going to replace the fact that all these jobs are going to be lost.
I didn't realize that.
And you're like freedom dividend.
It's like, okay, what?
This is not an argument.
I don't know.
I hate to go all mall in you on you, but this is not an argument.
Like, you can call it a freedom dividend.
It's a bribe.
You're giving them money.
You can cite some non-existent problem and then say we're bribing you because of this non-existent problem.
Okay, it's a bribe.
I don't say just give you money.
So this was your interesting candidate.
I'll give you money if you vote for me.
And, you know, like the idea that he was like saying, I saw myself, you're like, do you even understand?
You know, he already gave 10 families this money.
And do you know the difference that it's made in their lives?
And it's like, yeah, no, I never was arguing that people don't want money.
My argument wasn't that like, oh, if you give someone $12,000, they can't buy $12,000 worth of shit with that money.
The point is that he's just bribing you with taxpayer money.
Why would you not, oh my God, if you think that giving the taxpayers money is a good idea, why would you not just be for getting rid of the taxes?
I mean, just think about it, right?
If you give people money.
Right like if you have welfare wouldn't wouldn't most reasonable people acknowledge if you pay people Who don't work or you pay people There's a little bit of a problem with the incentives Where you now you're benefiting for doing the wrong thing kind of right like even if you feel like we need to help those people Yeah, you're kind of benefiting from doing the wrong thing.
Okay, so why don't we just repeal the income tax and then we let all of these working people keep so much money and all of the incentives line up perfectly You're incentivized to work and you get to keep all the money and then I could give you a million stories about what those people did with the money.
So anyway, Andrew Yang was, I guess, that one.
I thought, like, I thought Elizabeth Warren had a very bad night.
Bernie Sanders, again, this is just, it's not the most substantive criticism, although I think we've done quite a few of those on the podcast.
But his voice was hoarse from the very beginning.
And I thought he was going to lose his voice by the end of the debate.
He ended up keeping it.
I was actually like kind of amazed, like, holy shit, he's going to not be able to speak.
I've never seen this happen to anyone.
But there is something where still it's not.
If you're an old man and you can't speak, that's a bad night for you, man.
Sorry.
This is just the way it is.
It's kind of like Joe Biden's eye capsule popping or whatever.
That's just a bad, it's a bad speech if that happens.
Hillary Clinton having a coughing fit, like anything like this.
And it's so funny how people will, people who are like, people get so tribal and like, you know, like team sport mentality with politics because you can already hear, you know, like the Democrat or the Bernie supporter being like, this is so unfair to like criticize him for his voice being hoarse.
I mean, who really cares about that?
But then like, if Donald Trump is breathing too deeply in a debate, they'll be like, look at him.
He's a fucking maniac.
It's like, yeah, look, these things matter.
You're presenting yourself to people.
It matters that you come off in command and ready to do a very serious job.
So it was a bad night for him, a bad night for Warren, a subpar night, or I guess around a par night for Joe Biden, which is not good.
I just, I was like looking at that.
And we got to talk about that Latino dude who was up on Castro.
Yeah.
No.
Oh, is that Castro?
No, I'm talking about the guy who was like on the panel asking the questions.
Oh, Jorge Ramos.
That was just so weird.
Yeah.
I mean, just playing into this fictional re, I don't know.
I mean, you said it when we were talking about it before, so I'll say yeah, but how racist, you know, his outlook is.
Oh, it's it's quite unbelievable.
I mean, it's like, you know, one of the strongest arguments that people like who I guess would be considered like alt-right leaning or whatever, one of the strongest arguments that they make is they'll go, hey, white people, you guys may not want to play the racial identity politics game, but guess what?
Everyone else is playing it.
So you either want to play it or you're just going to get wiped out by the game.
And it's kind of hard to not be like, you know, it does seem like there's a lot of truth to that.
That's why even when I was talking to that fucking jerk off last time, when he starts going, oh, this collectivist mentality that the white nationalists have, it's collectivism.
And I was like, okay, are they the only ones who have a collectivist mentality?
Like, what about black people who quite literally refer to each other as brothers and sisters?
Is that collectivism?
Are we calling that out too?
Or are we as libertarians just going to say, you know what?
You're allowed to have whatever believer preferences you have.
Just, you know, as long as you're not initiating violence or advocating that, we're cool with you.
You're a libertarian, which seems more reasonable to me.
But when it was Castro actually said at one point, where he goes, you know, those people who were shut up in El Paso, this guy drove 10 hours to kill people who look like me.
Yeah.
And you're like, wow.
That makes it worse.
Right?
Like, okay, I get even, I can understand feeling that way personally, but to take that to a presidential debate, like, okay, so by your own logic, I should care less because they don't really look like me.
Like, what does that mean?
And by the way, Obama did that same shit.
He goes, if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon Martin.
Like, okay, so what?
So you wouldn't care as much if it was a white kid or you care more because he looks like what your kid?
Like, okay, fine.
I get feeling that way, but to take that into politics, you're kind of like, oh, all right.
Now you're just kind of insisting that we all play this identity politics game.
And it's very, it's not something that I like.
It's really kind of sad.
And I don't know.
I find it gross.
Just the whole thing.
It's really disgusting.
We got 10 minutes left and one more topic.
All right.
Saudi Arabia.
Yeah.
Okay, sure.
Sure.
So Saudi Arabia, there was this oil field or whatever.
They sent drones in.
Yeah.
By the way, this whole thing that it was Iran, that it was Iran is bullshit.
There's like no evidence it's fucking Iran.
Like they, anytime a Shiite anywhere in the region does something, they fucking take it out.
It was the goddamn Houthis who did it.
And I wonder why the Houthis would fucking respond to Saudi Arabia.
Like why they would want to bomb it.
Maybe it's because Saudi Arabia is with America fighting a war of genocide against the fucking people of Yemen.
It's like, yeah, so they're trying to take out their fucking fuel because they're using that fuel to bomb children.
So I got two questions on that.
I always thought the Houthi claim was not that they're not saying, hey, Iran did it.
It's that Iran is backing the Houthis and now the Houthis are being more aggressive and attacking.
Backing is like pretty like, I don't know.
It's like, what exactly do you mean by that?
It's like, yeah, the Shiites tend to support the Shiits.
What they're really saying is that it's like Iran has backed Hezbollah, who's declared allegiance with the Houthi cause.
And it's like really fucking close.
So it's not like they're giving military gear and no, they have like, no, they have basically nothing in that.
Like maybe they can find one.
You know, it's like, oh, this Shiite sect that's kind of allied with Iran has helped them out a little bit.
It's a loose affiliation game.
It's the same thing they do when they just call someone a racist here almost.
It's just that loose because you're tied into this.
And basically they go with the, okay.
And then the whole, I guess, Houthi, Saudi Arabia, Yemen thing.
So I know that like what's going on there is, you know, horrible and you got all these Yemen people who are starving because they can't get, you know, there's like a blockade on it, getting shit in there or whatever.
But what's the origin of the Houthi Saudi Arabia beef?
Well, I mean, there's always been like the origin of the Sunni Shia beef is where it goes.
Well, it goes pretty far back.
But really what happened was, I mean, it's, it's, um, it's, and we did an episode on this with Scott Horton on the podcast.
It was one of the ones you were off, but I'll send you the episode if you want to listen to the full thing.
But it goes back, it was a war that Obama got us into.
It was basically after the, you know, we really started alienating the Saudis after the, after the Iraq war.
Right.
And Obama was working.
And basically, so after the Iraq war, the Saudis always didn't want us to fight.
They were really against that because they were like, no, you're going to overthrow this Baath Sunni party and we're going to let the Shiites take all this fucking power.
This will be a disaster.
But George W. Bush wanted it.
Israel wanted it.
The CIA wanted it.
And they went ahead and they did it.
And then it was a disaster.
It was exactly what the Saudis said.
And then Obama wanted to make this deal with Iran.
So he really wanted to let the Saudis know.
It's like, no, we're still on board with you.
Don't worry.
And he launched a war in Yemen as he called it to, quote, placate the Saudis.
And it's the whole thing.
What did the Saudis want in Yemen?
They wanted to control the United States.
I think they wanted control.
Oh, they actually want to take over Yemen?
I think they want it to be allied partners with them, more or less.
But I guess earlier than that was you had the Houthi Rebellion, which is okay, fine.
Yeah, it's all a Sunni Shiite war.
But just to take a step, like, because I guess what they kind of, the picture they portray now is we have a, I don't even know if they say this, but it's kind of implied.
We have a reliance on foreign oil.
Saudi Arabia is one of our biggest allies in the region.
And so now if these people are actually going after, like, now, now we're playing for keeps because they're going after the thing that we need.
Like, we want it to stay out of this, but we need that thing.
And they're the people that's going to give it to us.
Now they're bombing it.
So we better go in there.
And I don't even, you know, I'll tell you, the more and more I get into it, I don't even know if it's about this dependency on foreign oil.
You know, maybe it is.
It's about the petrodollar and propping up.
Empire Power Games Explained00:01:38
But that dollar.
But if you don't know what it is, it just seems like it seems like it's more just good old empire than anything else.
It's just like we run the fucking world.
This is a power game.
Lots of people make money off different, you know, like fucking, you know, things within the empire, the weapons companies and all that.
And they're just like, you can't fuck with us.
You can't disrespect us like that.
Like, we're the fucking boss.
You know, it's almost like it's gang shit.
It's like gang mentalities.
It's almost like they're the mafia masquerading as a human rights organization.
My only other takeaway is it, I mean, we've spoken about blowback on this show a million times, but you can only imagine as technology gets better, the tools that the disenfranchised have are going to get better.
And like, so we've started, we started the drone warfare, and now they're at the beginning of trying to figure out how to use that technology.
Yep, you can like, and it's a dangerous game to play.
It really is.
Whatever technology we have, you know, others are going to have it in a few years.
And we can't turn around and go, hey, we were just trying to play nice with you guys.
No, when we were in power, we were fucking up there shit.
Well, that was, and maybe I should have hit him harder last time, I promise, officially, but when Nick Sarwick said on the podcast that the warfare state doesn't affect the domestic population, I actually, and I could have said some things better after that, but I just couldn't believe I got the help chairman on that.
I mean, right, just the money, the thousands of soldiers who have died, the 22 soldiers a day who commit suicide.
But how about things like 9-11?
Like, sure.
Yeah, it doesn't really affect, like, you don't think the blowback, the whole terrorist problem doesn't affect the country?