Part Of The Problem - Dave Smith - The Malice Of The State w/ Michael Malice
Aired: 2021-04-20
Duration: 01:04:10


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=== The Reactionary Police State (16:08) ===

[00:02:06]  All right, let's start the show.
[00:02:10]  We need to roll back the state.
[00:02:12]  We spy on all of our own citizens.
[00:02:14]  Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
[00:02:18]  If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
[00:02:24]  Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
[00:02:28]  You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
[00:02:32]  Here's your host, James Smith.
[00:02:35]  What is up, everybody?
[00:02:36]  What is up?
[00:02:37]  Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
[00:02:40]  This is another installment of what has become many people's favorite things that I do, which is the great crossover episodes with the one and only the great Michael Malice.
[00:02:53]  How are you, sir?
[00:02:54]  I think they call that damning with fake praise.
[00:02:58]  That might be one way to put it.
[00:03:00]  This is what I dislike the least.
[00:03:04]  It's like one of my poll questions.
[00:03:06]  Would you rather watch Dave Smith do stand up?
[00:03:10]  Legion of skanks?
[00:03:11]  Or is part of the problem?
[00:03:12]  It's like, I don't know, give me some good choices.
[00:03:15]  Watching the odds die.
[00:03:17]  And I even have to put one of the Michael Malice disclaimers in there.
[00:03:20]  Go, if you're incapable of understanding would you rather, then please do not answer this poll.
[00:03:27]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:03:29]  All right.
[00:03:29]  I wanted, so I, I, uh, there's something I wanted to talk to you about that I had in mind that I was really interested to get your take on.
[00:03:37]  Um, because there's one of the kind of recurring topics that's come up between me and you over the last year, as we've been doing a lot of these episodes together, has been right-wingers being red-pilled on the cops.
[00:03:52]  And this is one of the things that me and you have really encouraged by this dynamic over the last year, and it's one of the um, it's really like one of, I think, from our perspective, the strongest white pills, like hey, that this is something that's really positive.
[00:04:10]  That's coming out of all this insanity is that a lot of right-wingers have really had their eyes opened about the nature of the cops and how much the cops will enforce um.
[00:04:21]  Are we perhaps getting a little ahead of ourselves uh, when we're celebrating this trend, because I I have seen um and i'm sure you have too a real regression on this front over the last couple of weeks, with the uh particularly.
[00:04:40]  I was thinking of the um, the shooting death in Minnesota.
[00:04:44]  Um, this cop, uh.
[00:04:45]  For people who don't know the story, it's a female cop uh in a traffic stop attempted to um, which I believe genuinely was trying to use her taser.
[00:04:56]  If you, if you watch the um, the body cam video, I mean she's shouting taser taser, taser.
[00:05:01]  And then, as soon as she shoots the kid, she's like, oh my god, I shot him.
[00:05:05]  Like it seems like she genuinely was did, make a mistake oopsie, whoopsie.
[00:05:10]  Yes, she made oopsie whoopsie.
[00:05:12]  But what do you want to do not draw on someone?
[00:05:15]  That's right, everybody's done before.
[00:05:18]  Yeah, I gave my daughter a bottle in the middle of the night the other night because she had a bad.
[00:05:23]  It was vodka.
[00:05:24]  It was yes, it was vodka, I it.
[00:05:26]  You know, things happen.
[00:05:27]  It was, turns out I gave her a loaded handgun.
[00:05:30]  It happens, you know what I mean.
[00:05:32]  And you were just yelling baba, baba.
[00:05:34]  Yeah, there you go.
[00:05:35]  Now, to be fair, my wife keeps the milk and the handguns right next to each other in the refrigerator, so it's not entirely my fault.
[00:05:42]  See, my point is, we've all been here before because guns are cool.
[00:05:46]  Yeah, it is now I.
[00:05:47]  I will say to this, this woman who I?
[00:05:50]  And I will say I mean no one knows for sure, but I believe I believe this woman.
[00:05:53]  After watching the the body cam, I believe that this was a mistake.
[00:05:58]  That being said, it's a pretty damn unforgivable mistake.
[00:06:02]  So just just to be clear, I do believe the woman now, I could be wrong about this, but after watching the the body cam, I believe she made this mistake, but it's a pretty damn unforgivable mistake um, that anybody who is uh, put in that position just cannot make.
[00:06:19]  Um, but the point that I wanted to address with you and I bet you've seen some of this is that after the fact and and, by the way, just to be completely clear, no one's even like this is her position.
[00:06:30]  The police uh, their position is that it was a mistake that she went for her taser.
[00:06:35]  No one's even arguing that.
[00:06:37]  My actually my understanding someone corrected me on twitter and I would encourage people to double check what i'm saying is that in this context, they don't regard this is a legal issue, not not just verbally um, that their the term isn't like mistaken discharge, it's negligent.
[00:06:54]  Negligent discharge that when something this bad happens, they don't even they don't write it off as a mistake, that it's regarded as negligence, meaning the onus is on you if you're going to apply deadly force to really Be sure that you are doing it correctly and according to procedures.
[00:07:14]  Okay.
[00:07:14]  And that's to protect everybody.
[00:07:16]  Sure, sure.
[00:07:16]  No, I'm not even making the, you know, just from what I'm saying, I'm not making like a legal argument.
[00:07:21]  I'm just saying that they're claiming, even the chief of police said that she meant to discharge her taser, but instead discharged her gun.
[00:07:28]  Oh, I know.
[00:07:29]  I'm just saying I was surprised to learn that the cops don't have this like oops, oops, you know, oops, like caveat, and then they could just invoke it and get away scot-free.
[00:07:39]  Yeah.
[00:07:40]  We take this seriously.
[00:07:41]  Sure, sure.
[00:07:42]  However, what happened was that this kid, a bunch of pictures of him on Facebook posing with money and guns started coming out.
[00:07:53]  And I saw all over the place right-wingers being like, oh, well, look.
[00:07:58]  I mean, look, here's the guy posing with guns.
[00:08:00]  So how bad do we actually have to feel for this kid?
[00:08:03]  And I got to say, I was pretty disappointed given all of the, you know, the trending toward being red-pilled on the cops that right-wingers would still be arguing, oh, but he had a gun.
[00:08:17]  So, I mean, you know, well, there goes all of that awakening.
[00:08:21]  Well, this is the conservative version of the basket of deplorables: that there's certain people that in conservative circles, and they're not entirely wrong, which are regarded as basically these are not exactly contributing members of our society.
[00:08:34]  So if something happens to them, you know, oopsie, whoopsie.
[00:08:38]  I think a lot of the idea, and I don't think this is completely false.
[00:08:42]  The idea is that, well, if it just happens to them, whoever them happens to be at that moment, it's never going to happen to us because I'm not going to be in that situation.
[00:08:50]  So what are you going to do?
[00:08:51]  It's like an unavoidable, like, you know, maybe like a natural disaster.
[00:08:55]  I think a lot of conservatism until Trump has been based on playing defense and has been based on reacting to whatever the progressive issue of the moment is.
[00:09:08]  And it's this kind of like either vice signaling or defiance signaling, depending on how you want to look at it.
[00:09:14]  A good example is, and there's some, they're not entirely wrong because it's how the cathedral rolls out issues.
[00:09:21]  You know, back in the day, I'm a little older than you.
[00:09:24]  It used to be in fashion, the 70s are back.
[00:09:27]  So now this year we're all dressing like the 70s.
[00:09:30]  Then the next year was the 40s came back.
[00:09:32]  Now people pick and choose from different eras, but it was a thing or music too.
[00:09:36]  Like 60s music was having a renaissance at one point.
[00:09:39]  And basically, somehow the memo gets distributed.
[00:09:42]  And we're all listening to 60s and 60s inspired music right now.
[00:09:46]  So what they tend to do is, okay, the cathedral said, not only are we only specifically caring about trans people today, we're specifically caring about trans people and their access to bathrooms according to the gender they identify with.
[00:10:01]  And if you care about any other issue today, or if you care about trans rights, but another trans issue other than bathrooms today, you're basically Hitler.
[00:10:10]  And a lot of conservatives are like, this is a con.
[00:10:13]  They're not incorrect.
[00:10:15]  But their reaction is, you want me to care?
[00:10:18]  Well, I'm going to show you how much I don't care.
[00:10:21]  The textbook example of this was Stacey Dash saying, I don't care.
[00:10:25]  They can go to the bathroom in the bushes.
[00:10:26]  She said this on Fox.
[00:10:28]  And it's like, I get how you're basically trying to give the finger to people who are leveraging trans people in terms of putting forth their agenda.
[00:10:36]  Like, if anyone can appreciate giving the finger, it's me.
[00:10:40]  At the same time, this isn't really a coherent response.
[00:10:43]  And I think they don't appreciate to what extent that kind of approach is off-putting to blue-pilled laymen who don't really have a dog in the fight.
[00:10:54]  And they're being like, okay, this group is pretending to care about this population that are, I'm being told, are treated poorly, transgender genocide.
[00:11:03]  You're saying this grown person should go pee in the bushes.
[00:11:08]  You're a clown to me.
[00:11:09]  And I think this is something I don't realize.
[00:11:11]  So I under the same thing happened with George Floyd and some other people, like, and the 13-year-old kid who was just killed by the cops in Chicago.
[00:11:19]  Yeah, they'll trip over themselves to say, you want me to care?
[00:11:23]  Well, I'm not going to care.
[00:11:24]  And here's reasons why I don't care.
[00:11:26]  There's a strategy to it, but I don't think it's a very efficacious one.
[00:11:32]  And I think it also speaks to, you know, in-group, out-group crosses across all fields and boundaries.
[00:11:39]  Yeah, there's a lot that you just said there that's really important.
[00:11:43]  And I think one of the central dynamics is what you said.
[00:11:48]  I mean, look, conservatives by their very nature are reacting.
[00:11:51]  They're always reactionary.
[00:11:53]  That is the nature of trying to conserve something.
[00:11:55]  You are responding against something changing, right?
[00:11:59]  So that's the nature of being a conservative.
[00:12:02]  But it reminds me of something that I heard Curtis Yarvin say when he was talking about how, you know, if you basically, if you, you know, reject the idea that everything that's happened over the last hundred years has been progress.
[00:12:18]  If you reject that in any sense, then you're labeled a Nazi.
[00:12:21]  And so a lot of these reactionary types will go, okay, great.
[00:12:26]  So then I'm a Nazi and then I'll be, I'll be a Nazi.
[00:12:28]  And then you're like, okay, but the flaw in this is number one, just because you're reacting against something that might be bad doesn't make you right.
[00:12:37]  You can react against it in lots of wrong ways.
[00:12:39]  And the other thing that's that's also like deeply misguided about it is that you're still operating within their framework.
[00:12:49]  You're like, yes, you've agreed to let them define you.
[00:12:53]  So if you're saying, well, I don't care, let them go in the bushes.
[00:12:55]  Number one, it's just wrong.
[00:12:57]  Like you might be reacting against something that's wrong, but what you're doing is also just wrong on moral levels, on, you know, in every way.
[00:13:06]  But you're also letting them define you.
[00:13:08]  I mean, you're accepting their constructed narrative that you're either with, you know, caring about transgender bathrooms or you're this evil person who has no humanity for transgender people.
[00:13:19]  And you're walking right into that setup and saying, yes, I'm the evil person who doesn't care about transgenders.
[00:13:25]  When, you know, I think from a lot of sane people's perspective, the response isn't that.
[00:13:30]  The response is just that like, no, this is a constructive narrative, a constructed narrative that's bullshit.
[00:13:36]  And we don't have to all flip out of that this one issue because they just said it.
[00:13:40]  But we also don't want transgender people going in the bushes.
[00:13:44]  Like that's not a humane solution to this problem.
[00:13:47]  In this scenario.
[00:13:49]  I'll get one more thing.
[00:13:50]  One of the big arguments is that people are going to claim to be trans and that way they're going to go into the women's room and rape them.
[00:13:56]  And it's like, okay, I mean, isn't it easier to rape someone if you're jumping out of the bushes?
[00:14:01]  I mean, it's and it's like, okay, you don't want your kids to see trans people.
[00:14:06]  Okay.
[00:14:06]  Do you want to see them lurking in bushes?
[00:14:08]  Like, like even on your terms, this doesn't make sense.
[00:14:13]  The most stereotypical place where people get raped, bushes.
[00:14:18]  Of all the places to send them.
[00:14:19]  Let them go in the alley and the bushes where no one's ever been raped.
[00:14:24]  It's so weird how in a democracy or democratic republic, whatever we have, people seem to think, well, this group, I don't care about them.
[00:14:32]  So I don't have to think about it.
[00:14:33]  It's like, just because you don't care about a population doesn't mean they stop existing and that it could be localized there.
[00:14:40]  It's like, oh, I don't care about any inner city crime.
[00:14:42]  Like people, like African Americans complain about the cops, but they're too busy shooting each other.
[00:14:46]  Sure, you know, they're going to say, let them shoot each other for all I care.
[00:14:49]  It's like, do you realize that if you're going to say let them shoot each other, at a certain point, some of them are going to say, well, I don't want to shoot each other.
[00:14:56]  I want to shoot you.
[00:14:57]  So by saying I don't care when something exists, you don't have to care in terms of sympathy or empathy, but you do have to care in terms of these people exist.
[00:15:07]  People who exist have the ability to do awful things or wonderful things.
[00:15:11]  And just not thinking about it is not going to resolve the situation.
[00:15:17]  Yeah, just in practical terms, even if you're not concerned with the morality of it.
[00:15:21]  Right.
[00:15:22]  But I do think that there is this.
[00:15:25]  This reactionary impulse in right-wing America and that at times it's helpful and good, because often what they're reacting against is the cathedral, and they're Thank God there are some people who are reactionary reactionary and opposed to the you know kind of ruling elite.
[00:15:46]  But what happens now is that the narrative it's not as if the narrative from the corporate press is that we can't criticize cops.
[00:15:53]  That is certainly not the narrative.
[00:15:54]  They're not.
[00:15:55]  It's actually.
[00:15:56]  It's a it's a trickier narrative than that, because it's not as if their narrative is, we support the state and the enforcement arm of the state.
[00:16:05]  The narrative from the corporate press, which is more sophisticated than that, that's what you would get out of a North Korean regime or something like that with state media.
[00:16:13]  What you get out of our corporate press is a far more sophisticated narrative, which is that you can criticize cops all day long however, only on racial grounds.
[00:16:26]  That is, the only appropriate criticism of cops is just that they're racist.
[00:16:32]  And what's brilliant about this narrative is that it keeps the population fighting each other and not uniting against the cops.
[00:16:39]  It's actually a great protector of of the police state in many ways, because it's like, oh no, now we let the plebs argue about racism rather than say oh, we're also going to show videos of the cops killing these white people and make those big stories and then be like, oh look, they do it to black people, they do it to white people.
[00:16:58]  Hey, what's the common denominator here?
[00:17:00]  Kind of seems like it's a cops versus citizens issue, and there's a lot more citizens than there are cops.
[00:17:05]  So they very carefully control that.
[00:17:07]  And what happens is that the right-wingers, who are reactionary, they see this and they go, well no, it's bullshit, this kid was a thug.
[00:17:14]  So now i'm reacting against the corporate press, but you're, you're doing it in the way that they want, just like Curtis Yarvin was saying, they almost, they want you to be a Nazi, like that's the perfect, that's.
[00:17:24]  Look, was the corporate press upset that Charlottesville happened?
[00:17:27]  No, they were thrilled, they ran Joe Biden was running on that.
[00:17:31]  As of last year, it was like, perfect, that's the perfect way to paint the other side.
[00:17:35]  See, they're just what we told you.
[00:17:36]  And so you're falling into their hands, I think, a lot more than meaningfully uh, resisting them.
[00:17:42]  Oh, I agree completely with with everything you just said and I I wonder uh, thinking out loud if, from their worldview uh, for criticism to be valid politically, it has to be racist meaning, if it's not racist, if something is just bad, they're not going to care at all.
[00:17:59]  And like these, two things have largely become uh, synonymous synonymous like one of the big reasons, while they were saying that opposition to Obamacare is that it was disproportionately Helping black communities.
[00:18:10]  So, therefore, the only reason you're against it is because you're racist and therefore it's illegitimate.

=== SA Company Face Shields (02:51) ===

[00:18:15]  So, if they get to play it on that turf, it's going to be a very easy, or they're going to have enormous home field advantage, if I can use sports metaphors correctly in this episode.
[00:18:28]  I also think, and I'll defend conservatives to some extent, you've made this point very many times, which I think helps people understand that given the choice, which people will perceive as the choice between burning down cities and a little bit of police brutality, people are going to be like, I'd rather like a few people get their asses kicked, even innocent people, than an entire city burned down and a lot of people get killed.
[00:18:56]  And our cities are ruined and become like raked down.
[00:19:00]  So, I don't think that that's kind of, but the thing is, that's a false in terms of maybe it would work as one of my polls, but in terms of reality, those are not the two options on the table.
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=== Protecting the State (09:31) ===

[00:21:06]  It's amazing how much conservatives often feel the need to show they don't care about the life of another human being.
[00:21:17]  And it's just like, okay, let's suppose this kid was a thug.
[00:21:20]  The 13-year-old, there were just state Kim Klasik, who, you know, for people don't know her, she ran for Congress in Baltimore because she made this video where she was a streetwalker and it went viral.
[00:21:31]  You know, she had this tweet about like, oh, it's a tragedy, but where were the parents?
[00:21:35]  Like, why was that kid out?
[00:21:36]  And it's like, his body's not even cold.
[00:21:39]  And you're like, you're like, can you like, you're basically publicly yelling at mom while burying the kid, like, this is your fault.
[00:21:46]  You're a bad mom.
[00:21:47]  Should have known better.
[00:21:48]  It's like, okay, that's really a pro-life perspective there, Kim.
[00:21:52]  Right.
[00:21:52]  Like, how about where are the people who have the decency to not pile on a grieving mother?
[00:21:58]  Where are those people?
[00:21:59]  You know, I mean, like, it's, it's, you know, to what you said, which is really, and, and of course, like, I've made this point a lot, um, that if people are seeing rioting and destruction of property and people being assaulted, they're going to be like, yeah, I want cops.
[00:22:14]  I don't care if there's a little bit of police brutality.
[00:22:17]  But to your point about how it's a false choice, I mean, the funny thing is, like, we currently have both.
[00:22:24]  You know, it's like, so you might be choosing between, well, would you rather have that, this bad thing or that bad thing?
[00:22:29]  It's like, well, is anyone choosing both?
[00:22:31]  Is anyone saying I'd rather have riots and police brutality?
[00:22:34]  It's like, would you rather have like bone cancer or full-blown AIDS?
[00:22:38]  And it's like, well, I got some good news and bad news.
[00:22:42]  You don't have to, good news is, you don't have to make a choice.
[00:22:46]  Right.
[00:22:47]  Yeah.
[00:22:47]  So that's, that is what we're, what we're dealing with.
[00:22:50]  And it is, you know, it's, it's funny because, of course, as an anarchist, we're used to this hypothetical being thrown at us a lot.
[00:23:01]  It's like, okay, well, you might have really consistent arguments, but if your reality, if you're, what you're advocating leads to disaster, then I don't care, which is, which is fair.
[00:23:13]  That is a fair point.
[00:23:14]  Like, if what you're, what you're suggesting leads to just chaos and violence, then I don't care.
[00:23:21]  I'd rather not have chaos and violence and have my logical inconsistencies.
[00:23:25]  And then it's our job to argue with them that that's not actually what we're advocating.
[00:23:29]  But if it were, they'd have a pretty good point.
[00:23:31]  It's really funny because one of the biggest arguments I get personally is like, you shouldn't be for anarchism.
[00:23:39]  You're four foot eight.
[00:23:40]  You'd be the first one to get their ass kicked.
[00:23:43]  And it's just like, why?
[00:23:45]  And someone replied to one of these tweets.
[00:23:47]  It's like, why is it in this world, the only kind of combat is one-on-one and hand to hand?
[00:23:54]  Like the whole argument from conservatives, which is completely something I agree with, is the best argument against rape culture is an armed female population.
[00:24:04]  The whole point of weaponry for thousands of years, David and Goliath, is that you're a small dude.
[00:24:10]  There's a bigger dude.
[00:24:12]  Now you've got at the very least a fighting chance.
[00:24:15]  But somehow, if it's an anarchist society, everyone is immediately disarmed and is unable to acquire weaponry.
[00:24:22]  And everyone doesn't have an incentive to make sure smaller people, including their own children, aren't violently beaten up for no reason in their communities.
[00:24:33]  It's a very bizarre situation where it goes from like, it's like the underpants gnomes.
[00:24:38]  It's like step one is here.
[00:24:41]  Step two, question mark.
[00:24:43]  Step three, I'm one-on-one in the ring with Hulk Hogan.
[00:24:46]  It's like, that's not the record scratch here.
[00:24:49]  Yeah.
[00:24:49]  Well, I've gotten this same criticism a lot, like in the, you know, just it's a similar criticism in a different way, just like, oh, you would never survive in the world that you're advocating for or something like that.
[00:25:00]  And what that argument presupposes is that the state is currently protecting me.
[00:25:06]  Yeah.
[00:25:07]  Or that the state is currently protecting you.
[00:25:09]  And it's like, okay, if that's your argument, then like, let's go through the points.
[00:25:13]  I mean, like, in what way is the state actually protecting me?
[00:25:17]  I've never once in my life been about to be assaulted or abused and a cop intervened and saved me.
[00:25:25]  That's never happened.
[00:25:26]  I have, however, been threatened, kidnapped, held in cages by police officers for doing nonviolent things.
[00:25:35]  That has happened to me.
[00:25:36]  I have been extorted by the federal government, the state government, to, you know, no insignificant tune a lot.
[00:25:46]  So if you're going to just start with the assumption that somehow I'm being protected by the existence of the state, I'd like some receipts on that.
[00:25:56]  Like, show me exactly how, like, how, you know?
[00:26:00]  I'm going to quote The Simpsons, and Lisa Simpson had this example.
[00:26:04]  She was talking about the use of specious reasoning.
[00:26:07]  And she goes, look, I've got this rock that keeps away, I don't remember if it was bears or tigers, right?
[00:26:13]  And it's like, I have a rock that keeps away bears.
[00:26:16]  No, it's tigers.
[00:26:17]  And Homer's like, I'd like to buy that rock.
[00:26:19]  And Lisa's like, no, no, Dad, it's just a rock, but there's no tigers around us.
[00:26:24]  And he's like, Lisa, here's all my money.
[00:26:26]  And she takes the money.
[00:26:27]  And it's the argument that like saying that but for the police, it's plausible.
[00:26:31]  Definitely there would be a lot more you personally being assaulted is akin to saying, well, if there weren't all these exorcists, we'd all be possessed.
[00:26:39]  You're arguing something that's certainly plausible, but to assume that you're begging the question, you're assuming that what you're trying to prove.
[00:26:48]  And I think another context, they would appreciate that if you have cities with concealed carry where people are presumed to be armed, they're much less likely to be the targets of violent assault than in urban areas where you don't have any gun rights.
[00:27:04]  And basically the criminals are the only ones who get the guns.
[00:27:06]  And not only are the criminals the only ones who get the guns, they're also the only ones who often who get to just test the waters by acting completely antisocially and having no consequences for it.
[00:27:18]  And this is kind of that whole broken window stuff from the Manhattan Institute that Giuliani implemented.
[00:27:23]  The argument being if you go, I think his name is Michael Wilson.
[00:27:26]  I forgot the guy's name.
[00:27:27]  Basically, the argument is if you go in the subways and you see people have graffiti and you see people are blasting their music and just behaving other ways, it's safe to presume that lots of more serious crimes aren't being enforced as well.
[00:27:43]  And this is also cue the criminals.
[00:27:45]  Okay, like you're not even slowing me down here.
[00:27:48]  Why would I assume you're going to stop me once things get serious?
[00:27:51]  So the argument was if you take out the people, the people who are more likely to do anti-social, you know, maybe misdemeanor stuff tend to be the same ones who do the more serious crimes as well.
[00:28:05]  And that's why they were cracking down on people who are jumping the turnstiles, not paying their fare, because they're like, more likely than not, that is a population that correlates very well with those who have warrants.
[00:28:15]  Yeah.
[00:28:16]  And they would also argue that it creates a culture where crime is just not accepted.
[00:28:21]  This was like a big part of the broken windows argument that if you see graffiti all around you and you see people jumping over the turnstile and you're thinking about mugging someone, you might be a little bit more emboldened to mug them.
[00:28:33]  Whereas if it's clean and no one's doing that, you're like, oh, they don't tolerate crime here.
[00:28:37]  And by the way, there might be something to that argument.
[00:28:41]  There probably is.
[00:28:43]  However, there's also other costs associated with that type of policing.
[00:28:47]  And in the same way that, you know, one of the things that's very frustrating for people who see, you know, kind of the nonsense of the whole COVID lockdown regime and how you see over and over again.
[00:29:01]  I mean, like Tom Woods, our mutual friend and your favorite person to insult, is, you know, he put out this fantastic free e-book.
[00:29:12]  I don't know if you've, he's never done anything like this before, but he put out a book.
[00:29:16]  It's online and it's free.
[00:29:18]  Okay.
[00:29:18]  How much does it cost?
[00:29:20]  I have to look it up.
[00:29:21]  And where can I get this book?
[00:29:23]  I'm pretty sure the guy's got a website.
[00:29:26]  I don't know the details.
[00:29:27]  But he, and he's going through just all of the charts of COVID state by state.
[00:29:33]  And it's really unbelievable to see it.
[00:29:35]  And how every single time they're like, well, here's a mask mandate and cases spike.
[00:29:38]  And the lockdown comes in and cases spike.
[00:29:40]  And then the lockdown goes away and cases drop.
[00:29:43]  And all of these charts that would contradict the lockdown settlement.
[00:29:48]  Yes.
[00:29:49]  And every time he'll get opposition from somebody, and sometimes, you know, you can't really prove these things one way or the other, but they'll go, well, here came the mask mandate, and then cases went way up.
[00:30:01]  So obviously it didn't do anything to stop them.
[00:30:02]  It'll be like, well, it would have been worse.
[00:30:04]  Right, exactly.
[00:30:05]  It would have been worse if they hadn't done that.
[00:30:06]  So you can always kind of, in this non-scientific way, just assert, well, if things would have been worse.
[00:30:13]  But for people who see through this with the COVID stuff, right, and you see Texas goes, oh, we're going to completely reopen.
[00:30:18]  And they go, well, cases are going to surge.
[00:30:20]  And now we're like a month later and cases have been steadily going down.
[00:30:24]  You're like, okay, well, clearly their predictive powers using this frame are not very good.
[00:30:30]  And in the same sense, when people argue, oh, you had this broken windows policing, and look, crime went down.

=== Grove Collaborative Home Cleaning (03:07) ===

[00:30:38]  Well, you're just doing the same thing.
[00:30:40]  I mean, it's like, okay, yes, crime may have gone down after you implemented these policies, but there's like maybe a billion factors that go into crime going down.
[00:30:49]  And it's not clear at all that just because there was this one correlating policy, that this is causing the crime to go down.
[00:30:56]  So it just conservatives, right-wingers, don't fall into that same type of argument where you're just asserting that, oh, things would have been worse.
[00:31:04]  The crime wouldn't have fallen this way if we hadn't had that policy.
[00:31:07]  Well, you don't know that.
[00:31:08]  There's actually other states and cities where crime fell in the same years that didn't have broken windows policing.
[00:31:16]  So it's just, it's not very clear at all that just because there's correlation there, that there's causation.
[00:31:21]  Well, yeah, in the same way that I'm for raising the minimum wage in order to drive people out of work, I'm absolutely in favor of excessive police brutality against people who play their music on the subway or in other contexts.
[00:31:33]  I know you like that.
[00:31:34]  But see, if I'm going to have police brutality, it might as well go in a socially useful direction.
[00:31:40]  But aren't you violating your own rule that you laid out earlier in the show that if you're comfortable with police brutality for loud music players on the subway, aren't you concerned that then that's going to spill over to probably not just the subway?
[00:31:53]  We'll cross that Brooklyn Bridge when we come through.
[00:31:57]  All right, guys, let's take a quick second.
[00:31:59]  I want to thank our sponsor for today's show, which is a brand new sponsor that we're very happy to have on the show, and that is Grove Collaborative.
[00:32:07]  I know a lot of you guys have experienced running to the store being a little bit more stressful than usual over the last year.
[00:32:14]  And there's nothing worse than forgetting something on your list and needing to make multiple trips.
[00:32:19]  Shopping for home essentials should be easy and convenient.
[00:32:22]  And that's where Grove Collaborative comes in.
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[00:32:43]  Grove Collaborative takes the guesswork out of going green.
[00:32:47]  I can tell you that now, particularly with my wife being pregnant and having a two-year-old daughter, we're a little bit more concerned about home cleaning products and things like that being natural and not having chemicals in them.
[00:32:58]  So Grove is great for us.
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[00:33:39]  That's grove.co slash P-O-T-P.
[00:33:44]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:33:45]  It's funny.

=== Libertarian Anarchism Debates (14:40) ===

[00:33:46]  I do, this is one of the things that I actually got in some arguments with other libertarians about.
[00:33:52]  And it's, I didn't play, I wanted to talk about something else, but since this comes up, it's just a topic that I enjoy and I'm curious your thoughts on.
[00:33:59]  But there is, and it all kind of stems from the way I talk about immigration and some other issues too.
[00:34:05]  But there is this kind of like autistic brand of ANCAPs who think that aspiro capitalism is what it is.
[00:34:14]  Yes.
[00:34:15]  They're good people.
[00:34:15]  I like them.
[00:34:16]  Those are my people.
[00:34:17]  Good people.
[00:34:19]  They are.
[00:34:19]  They are fanatical people.
[00:34:22]  But that seem to think that it's almost like just because you advocate the abolition of the state and because you believe in like private property and the non-aggression principles, the non-aggression principle, that I therefore, in a statist world, cannot be, cannot pick between two bad options and the state doing anything.
[00:34:45]  And I try to explain to these people where you're like, well, look, so if you're like, I used to live in the Upper West Side, a very nice neighborhood, pricey neighborhood, a lot of families, kind of quiet for New York City.
[00:34:58]  If the streets are covered in homeless people, it's been worse this year than ever, but it's been a problem for a while.
[00:35:06]  People were complaining about it when I lived there pre-COVID, you know, for a while.
[00:35:10]  Homeless people all over the streets.
[00:35:12]  Now, I have absolutely no problem with the police making them leave.
[00:35:18]  Like, I have no problem with that.
[00:35:19]  Now, you could make some libertarian argument and go, but they're non-violent and they're just standing there.
[00:35:24]  And this is a man with a gun coming in and making them leave.
[00:35:27]  And you're like, okay, yes, but look, if they didn't rob all of us to force us to pay for these roads, to pay for these parks, and then build them there, the libertarian position isn't none of these would exist.
[00:35:39]  The libertarian position is that we would voluntarily pay for it on our own.
[00:35:43]  There would still be roads and streets and parks.
[00:35:45]  And in that scenario, what do you think the odds are that we would allow homeless people to just hang out here?
[00:35:52]  So you can say that like we want the state to do nothing, right?
[00:35:57]  But when the state robs you, creates these parks, builds these roads, and then allows homeless people on them, that's still doing something.
[00:36:05]  Like that, that's also doing something, claiming a monopoly on your security force and then not securing anything.
[00:36:11]  And if I have to choose between a homeless person being forced to leave or my daughter seeing people pissing and shooting up heroin on her walk to school, I choose them being told to leave.
[00:36:26]  Like, I'm sorry, there's nothing contradicting being a libertarian anarchist about that.
[00:36:30]  It's just out of two bad situations, I like this one better than that one.
[00:36:34]  Yeah, if the state seizes for itself the duty or the right or the obligation, whatever you call it, to provide security and prevents individuals from privately implementing that, I would rather they actually did it in as peaceable a manner as possible than that they proclaim themselves this right and then not do it.
[00:36:57]  I mean, here's an example.
[00:36:59]  Like, we don't not, we do not want government producing food because we know that's going to lead to famine.
[00:37:05]  But if the government seized all the farms, I would much rather them try to be as productive as possible than say, yeah, we're not going to do anything.
[00:37:15]  So the problem is whenever they try to do anything, it always ends up with distortions.
[00:37:21]  And what those distortions mean when it comes to security is extreme violence, innocent people being killed, murderous people not being convicted, so on and so forth.
[00:37:31]  But yeah, the other thing is people seem to have a very diff, and I see this with Twitter in my polls all the time.
[00:37:38]  People seem to have a very difficult capacity to make ranked choices.
[00:37:43]  And it's just like, these all suck.
[00:37:45]  And it's like, listen, if you're an anarchist and someone said, here are 10 government programs, which do you want to get rid of first?
[00:37:52]  And you're like, all of them, they all suck.
[00:37:56]  I find that to be a position I have very little respect for.
[00:38:01]  Because the choices are between the ATF and food stamps.
[00:38:04]  Yeah, I would prefer food stamps or private.
[00:38:06]  I think it encourages people to have unhealthy eating habits.
[00:38:09]  I remember I was in the supermarket and someone behind me was paying with food stamps and she was buying Oreos.
[00:38:15]  And I'm like, the whole point of, I'm thinking to myself, the whole point of food stamps is that you're not starving.
[00:38:20]  It's not that you're eating like sugary lard.
[00:38:23]  And you know perfectly well, Nabisco has their lobbyists who are saying, look, you know, it's not fair that people who are, you know, food insecure don't have access to dessert.
[00:38:33]  And that Congress was like, yeah, I'm going to make sure Oreos are on this list of things you could buy in food stamps.
[00:38:38]  But at the same time, it's like, yeah, between those two, I'd rather be wasting money on Oreos.
[00:38:44]  Yes.
[00:38:44]  And I think that's the problem.
[00:38:45]  And I think there is a libertarian anarchist argument on both sides of that issue, right?
[00:38:53]  So you could also argue, well, this is creating more government intervention now to be not just giving a handout, but regulating what people can do with said handout.
[00:39:02]  But there's also another argument on the other side, which is like, look, if I have to pay, if I'm forced at gunpoint to pay for their food stamps, and then I'm going to be forced at gunpoint to pay for their health care, like, geez, could we kind of make them have fruits and vegetables instead of this?
[00:39:16]  The point is that you can have that good faith argument on both sides.
[00:39:19]  It doesn't make you any less of an anarchist or less of a libertarian to deal in reality and to say, okay, this is the reality of the situation.
[00:39:28]  What would be better?
[00:39:29]  The example that I like to give that really ties up the ANCAPs on this one is I go, okay, we're all against public schools.
[00:39:36]  As long as there are public schools, do you have a preference if they say communism is great or communism is terrible?
[00:39:43]  Are those equal?
[00:39:44]  Does it not matter what they're brainwashing our kids with?
[00:39:48]  They're just either way.
[00:39:50]  And you can make the argument that it's good that they're teaching communism is good because that will force kids to be pulled from school, blah, blah, blah.
[00:39:56]  You can make that argument too.
[00:39:57]  But the point is these are not identical outcomes.
[00:40:00]  Yes, yes.
[00:40:01]  And now, so to me, my take on it is that I think that anarcho-libertarians should be willing to get into these conversations.
[00:40:10]  If nothing else, just for the thought experiment, expand your mind a little bit and be willing to have them.
[00:40:15]  But I think our role is to always be pushing back toward the North Star.
[00:40:19]  You don't want to get lost in these battles and then become Milton Friedman, just spending your whole career pushing for a negative income tax or school vouchers and forgetting that the end goal is to get the government out of all of this and that that would be a much, so you always want to keep promoting anarchy and libertarianism and all of these things.
[00:40:41]  But there's nothing wrong with saying, okay, but short of getting there, I'd prefer this to that, or this is an important, you know, like decision to make within this, the realm of the world we're actually living in.
[00:40:53]  And you also, if you're unwilling to do that, you turn off a lot of normal people who do live in the real world and don't live in these abstractions and just go like, yeah, I don't care about your abstract justification.
[00:41:08]  I want these homeless people off of these streets so my kids don't have to see them.
[00:41:12]  If you can't relate to that person a little bit, I think you're lost.
[00:41:16]  And this whole libertarian argument that basically they're homesteading, that public property is not really property at all, which is true in one specific sense.
[00:41:27]  So therefore, when they're camping on the sidewalk, they're like the settlers who are now seizing that sidewalk for their own personal use and their own kind of de facto property.
[00:41:37]  And my friend Weston, who's the best, he just made this claim.
[00:41:40]  It's like, yeah, you could just build a concrete barrier inside the subway station on the tracks because of my freedoms.
[00:41:46]  I mean, it does not, I don't think, really work out the way people claim.
[00:41:52]  Yeah, and also.
[00:41:54]  And one more thing.
[00:41:54]  Sorry.
[00:41:55]  It's like, they're not staying in those tents.
[00:41:57]  Like, I would even wrap my head around like, this tent is my own microstate and I'm the king inside of it.
[00:42:04]  I'm the sovereign.
[00:42:05]  Okay, we're not going in your tent.
[00:42:07]  You're coming out of the tent with the kids.
[00:42:10]  And there's filth and needles on the floor.
[00:42:12]  That's the issue.
[00:42:14]  So I don't begrudge you being in your tent as long as you stay in your tent.
[00:42:18]  Yeah.
[00:42:19]  No, I tend to agree with that.
[00:42:22]  But of course, that's the reality is never going to be them just staying in their tent.
[00:42:26]  And, you know, as this is a point that Rothbard made later in his career and Hans Hoppe has made a lot throughout his career.
[00:42:32]  But the truth is that even like if you just look at public property as up for grabs, unowned, you're kind of missing a crucial aspect to it, which is that it's not just unowned property.
[00:42:46]  It's expropriated property.
[00:42:48]  There's a big difference between that.
[00:42:50]  It's like if someone steals your wallet and is running down the street with it, just because it's stolen doesn't mean it's now unowned.
[00:42:58]  It's not like, oh, if he took that and you go, well, should he return that wallet to Michael?
[00:43:02]  Or should he just give it out to everybody?
[00:43:04]  First come, first serve.
[00:43:05]  It's like, well, no, he should return that.
[00:43:07]  That's not unowned just because he took it.
[00:43:09]  That wallet is seal fur.
[00:43:11]  It's very hard.
[00:43:12]  It's a seal fur wallet because the thief is like, how do I even know it's yours?
[00:43:16]  And you're like, dude, come on.
[00:43:18]  How many people have a seal fur wallet?
[00:43:20]  You know, it's like, oh, this could be anyone's seal fur wallet.
[00:43:23]  I don't know.
[00:43:25]  Other people are like, I don't remember.
[00:43:26]  I can't remember if mine was leather or seal fur.
[00:43:29]  I don't know.
[00:43:29]  It's one of the two.
[00:43:31]  But, you know, so the point is now, obviously, this gets very murky when you have a government that's taxed a huge population and has wronged a huge other population and all of this.
[00:43:40]  But it's not as if it's, you know, if there's like a whole bunch of families in the Upper West Side who are like, hey, we don't want our public roads used as homeless toilets.
[00:43:51]  And then there's some homeless guy who's like, well, I want to use it as a toilet.
[00:43:54]  I think I can fairly reasonably say, I don't think the homeless guy put a lot of money into this, the taxes that paid for this road.
[00:44:00]  I mean, maybe.
[00:44:01]  Maybe he was a billionaire last year and is homeless this year.
[00:44:04]  But like odds are, probably not.
[00:44:06]  And I'll probably err on the side of the people who have much more of a rightful claim to these parks and these streets than the homeless do.
[00:44:14]  They are the people who were forced to pay for it.
[00:44:17]  To me, this all just seems, you know, very common sense.
[00:44:21]  There's one argument I've been seeing in the last 48 hours, especially, I mean, on Twitter, but I see it a lot.
[00:44:27]  And sometimes there's an argument that is so absurd that, or like it just doesn't add up that I start to wonder what I'm missing because I can't understand how people posit it as a gotcha with a straight face.
[00:44:40]  So one of the arguments against anarchism, and this is not at all a poor argument, I think it's a very strong argument, is, well, if you have an anarchist area, you know, it's going to be immediately invaded by a stronger government just overnight.
[00:44:55]  And when I point out there are many countries on earth right now, small countries that do not have a military, why aren't they being invaded?
[00:45:05]  Their argument is, yeah, but they're not being invaded because they're under the protection of bigger countries.
[00:45:11]  And I'm like, okay, but it's just because they're like, well, if you have this anarchist area, it's going to be invaded.
[00:45:17]  Why isn't this one being invaded because it's being protected?
[00:45:19]  It's like, why wouldn't this anarchist area be protected as well?
[00:45:24]  Or the idea that it's impossible that it would be protected.
[00:45:27]  And to the point where I genuinely don't understand what they're trying to prove when it's just immediately been demonstrated as false.
[00:45:37]  Yeah.
[00:45:37]  Yeah.
[00:45:38]  Well, there's just a lot of in the same sense as the example before when people go, well, if you really pick at it, what you're taking as a given is that the state is there protecting you.
[00:45:49]  But that's a big jump to just take that as a given.
[00:45:52]  And what you're taking as a given here is that the military is actually there to thwart off invaders.
[00:45:58]  But this isn't really, I mean, I'm not suggesting that never in history has a military been used to do that.
[00:46:04]  But it's not as if this is something that's happening with regular occurrence.
[00:46:08]  That militaries are just, you know, fighting off invading forces.
[00:46:12]  I mean, like, there certainly are a lot of examples of states invading other states.
[00:46:19]  But the truth is that it's not exactly clear that a centralized government does a better job at repelling these invasions.
[00:46:29]  I mean, look, Afghanistan isn't even really a country.
[00:46:33]  We just think of them as a country.
[00:46:34]  But most people in Afghanistan don't think of themselves as a nation.
[00:46:38]  They think of themselves as whatever tribe, you know, whatever little sect they're a part of.
[00:46:43]  They don't think of themselves as all some random warlord in Afghanistan doesn't think of himself as under one nation with the Taliban.
[00:46:52]  And they've, I mean, they've withstood 20 years of us invading them.
[00:46:56]  And we're about to hopefully leave in defeat, whether we admit it or not.
[00:47:02]  It's not clear at all.
[00:47:04]  On the other hand, France in the Second World War was a very strong centralized state.
[00:47:10]  And they just freaking went down like that when the Nazis invaded.
[00:47:14]  So, I mean, it's just, it's one of these things that's asserted, but not really thought through.
[00:47:20]  That, you know, whatever.
[00:47:22]  And also, if you're going to make the argument, well, if someone's providing security for you, that therefore they're de facto your government, it's like, if someone's my chauffeur or my bodyguard, they're not my president.
[00:47:32]  And no one thinks they're my president.
[00:47:33]  So it's just very, I'm trying to understand their perspective on this, and I'm falling short, to be honest.
[00:47:42]  Yeah.
[00:47:42]  Yeah.
[00:47:43]  Well, we'll keep trying.
[00:47:44]  Maybe we'll bring one of them on to debate us on this at some point.
[00:47:48]  But I don't even need a debate.
[00:47:50]  I don't even understand.
[00:47:51]  I just want to know what the argument actually is.
[00:47:53]  You're saying that a small area would immediately be conquered.
[00:47:57]  And I'm giving you examples that are counter examples to what you're claiming.
[00:48:03]  And you're still maintaining your position.
[00:48:04]  I don't know where to go from here.
[00:48:06]  Yeah.
[00:48:06]  Yeah.
[00:48:07]  And if you're going to argue that, okay, anarchism can't work on an America-sized scale, okay, fine.
[00:48:13]  I don't care.
[00:48:13]  So we'll have Vermont.
[00:48:15]  Like, what is that?
[00:48:17]  What relevance is that?
[00:48:19]  Yeah.
[00:48:19]  And of course, it's just even the argument that...
[00:48:22]  I like that.
[00:48:22]  Sorry, just saying, if I'm going to be free, I have to live in a giant country.

=== China Uranium Conspiracy Claims (07:30) ===

[00:48:26]  Like, is that what they're saying?
[00:48:28]  It seems very weird.
[00:48:30]  Well, there is, it's funny, man, because this is something that we deal with all the time as anarchists, but there is a tremendous bias toward the status quo.
[00:48:42]  Sure.
[00:48:43]  It's just one of the things.
[00:48:44]  So people, particularly in America, really do have this feeling that we've got to be a giant big country.
[00:48:49]  I mean, because we're a giant big country.
[00:48:52]  And how could we not be?
[00:48:53]  I mean, what if we were just like a smaller country?
[00:48:56]  Then we're not America anymore.
[00:48:58]  Then it's not this thing, you know?
[00:48:59]  And it's funny because one of the, and this is, I think it's like it's coming undone a little bit because things have been so crazy over the last year that they're making our job a lot easier to be like, hey, no, this is really weird.
[00:49:14]  Like what we're living with is really weird.
[00:49:16]  I know this other hypothetical might also sound weird, but like, isn't this pretty weird?
[00:49:21]  Isn't it pretty weird that we have to do this?
[00:49:23]  I mean, that's like, that's what a lot of the anarchist business has been for a long time.
[00:49:28]  So people will be like, wait a minute.
[00:49:30]  So you're telling me like you have to hire private security or you have to do this or that.
[00:49:36]  seems kind of weird and then we'll be like hey have you ever thought about kids pledging allegiance to the state every morning at their indoctrination camps that's kind of weird i mean i know you just take that as a given because it's the way the world works but that's also kind of weird and they're just making that a lot easier for us now as people are like being ritualistically publicly vaccinated and it's a lot easier to go like hey that's that's pretty weird no like why do we just accept this as the normal thing to do And it's,
[00:50:05]  I didn't realize, I recently read a book from 1850, I think it was.
[00:50:09]  And the argument there, this was about slavery.
[00:50:12]  And this is a defense of slavery.
[00:50:14]  This is a southern book.
[00:50:15]  And their argument was, listen, if you try to abolish slavery, we're going to have a civil war or America is going to split in half.
[00:50:22]  And if America splits in half, England's going to invade us and reconquer us.
[00:50:26]  They were saying this.
[00:50:27]  And they were not saying this ridiculously.
[00:50:29]  It wasn't that long ago before that, that the British burnt down the White House.
[00:50:33]  And we all forget about that now.
[00:50:35]  But the number of people who are convinced that if the federal government vanished tomorrow, we'd be conquered by China the day after.
[00:50:45]  I can't begin to wrap my head around this argument.
[00:50:47]  First of all, the logistics of China trying to conquer us is insane.
[00:50:52]  Second of all, you have three.
[00:50:54]  I mean, how big are we?
[00:50:55]  How many people are there?
[00:50:56]  How many guns?
[00:50:57]  How many people trained with guns?
[00:50:59]  But they just take it for granted that if the military vanished tomorrow, China would be able to get their military.
[00:51:06]  And also the fact that like Canada, England, all these other countries, like, oh, it's fine.
[00:51:10]  We're just going to let China take over all these resources and we're just going to sit in our hands.
[00:51:14]  It's a very, but I mean, this is, you know, part of the war propaganda, you know, that browbeating us about that.
[00:51:20]  You have to support the military because but for the military, tomorrow we'll all be speaking Chinese.
[00:51:25]  And I do not see it.
[00:51:27]  And I do not understand how they can so blithely say, well, you know, they I'm not going to argue at all that this is their wet dream.
[00:51:36]  I mean, I don't take that for granted, but the idea that they'd be able to execute this effortlessly seems deranged to me.
[00:51:43]  Well, it is.
[00:51:44]  So much of the propaganda rests on the idea that this could happen and has for a long time.
[00:51:50]  And easily.
[00:51:50]  Well, look, I mean, the absolute just bullshit propaganda of World War II, which was that, you know, if not for whatever, we'd all be speaking German, which is just like a common thing that people say.
[00:52:04]  And there is really almost no feasible way that Hitler was taking over America.
[00:52:12]  Well, there was one way if he got the nukes first.
[00:52:16]  Well, okay, yes.
[00:52:17]  He got the nukes first.
[00:52:18]  That might be a big problem.
[00:52:20]  You know this story?
[00:52:20]  There's a great story about this.
[00:52:22]  I've heard a lot of them.
[00:52:23]  Well, one of the, this is just for the audience who aren't familiar.
[00:52:26]  So all these Nazi scientists were genuinely convinced that they're the smartest people on earth and we're just dumb, you know, stupid hicks.
[00:52:33]  And so they were just like, we're going to have this weapon and the Americans don't even know that we're going for it because they're so dumb and backward.
[00:52:39]  And they had a captured Nazi scientist and he's there in the American person's office just being all.
[00:52:47]  And he's like trying to like, just condescendingly trying to explain these principles to the Americans.
[00:52:53]  And he picks up the paperweight, right?
[00:52:56]  And he's like, let's suppose this was uranium-238.
[00:52:59]  And he's like, oh, it is uranium-238.
[00:53:02]  It actually was a uranium paperweight.
[00:53:04]  Like, I remember it was like not the radioactive kind, but whatever.
[00:53:08]  And that was his moment of like, oh, maybe these Americans aren't as stupid as I think.
[00:53:12]  Yeah.
[00:53:12]  Well, look, I mean, we did, we got the first was a big concern.
[00:53:15]  And we kind of do run the world.
[00:53:16]  So yeah.
[00:53:17]  If you read histories of the Manhattan Project, all those scientists were freaking the F out because they're like, if Hitler gets to this bomb before us, things are going to get really, really bad really, really fast.
[00:53:28]  Yeah, I believe Einstein was really concerned about that.
[00:53:31]  Oh, yeah.
[00:53:31]  I think this is one of the things he wrote in that letter.
[00:53:35]  He was like, Yeah, look, they're working on it, and we better get it before they do.
[00:53:40]  Yeah, sure.
[00:53:41]  So, listen, even that, even with atomic bombs, I mean, maybe he could have dropped them, but the idea of crossing over the oceans and invading America is just would have been strategically, logistically impossible.
[00:53:55]  Like, that was just never going to happen.
[00:53:57]  Um, and the, I mean, look, Hitler failed at invading Russia from Poland.
[00:54:03]  The idea of crossing the Atlantic, I mean, there would just be so like it'd just be ridiculous or crossing the English or the Pacific or whatever.
[00:54:11]  That was very hard for them, too.
[00:54:12]  Yeah, I mean, yeah, exactly.
[00:54:14]  Was it 10% of our population?
[00:54:15]  Something crazy like that.
[00:54:17]  Yeah, the characters.
[00:54:18]  Charlie, that we, look, in a world of, and the atomic bombs of the Second World War are nothing compared to the weapons we have today.
[00:54:26]  In a world of, you know, H-bombs and all this stuff, like, yeah, look, there's we, there certainly are threats to be concerned about, but obviously that is true whether you have governments or not, right?
[00:54:38]  Like, we still will still be talking shit with, you know, China and Russia when we all have the ability to end the whole world.
[00:54:46]  So that's all of that's pretty creepy.
[00:54:49]  But the idea that anyone is going to invade the United States of America, this country that has friendly nations to our north and our south, has two giant oceans on either side of us, and has hundreds of millions of guns with a big population.
[00:55:10]  You know, it's just, this is not going to happen.
[00:55:13]  It's just a fantasy.
[00:55:14]  But even if it does happen, it's not going to be effortless.
[00:55:17]  I mean, people seem to think like invasion is cheap and easy.
[00:55:22]  And it's just like, there's every single invasion has been costly.
[00:55:26]  Even like the ones that the beaches of Normandy, the costs of that were astronomical.
[00:55:32]  Yeah.
[00:55:32]  Yeah.
[00:55:33]  Oh, it's the, it's the reason why even the Hawks, the neocons with a lot of control never got their war in Iran.
[00:55:41]  It had nothing to do with the strength of the anti-war movement.
[00:55:44]  It really didn't.
[00:55:45]  It was just the fact that it's just too damn costly.
[00:55:48]  We just invaded two countries and we straight up can't afford to invade a third.
[00:55:53]  That's why Bush Cheney didn't get Iran.
[00:55:54]  North Korea is the size of Pennsylvania.

=== Alex Jones Hong Kong Riots (06:46) ===

[00:55:57]  I mean, they're defying everyone and they boast about this.
[00:55:59]  They call themselves a shrimp among whales.
[00:56:02]  So again, the idea that like any small area, even Hong Kong, it's not easy for them right now, what they're doing with Hong Kong.
[00:56:09]  And that is basically their property to begin with.
[00:56:11]  So the claim that any smaller area, like Pac-Man, can effortlessly be conquered and subsumed.
[00:56:20]  And not only that, the costs of enforcement.
[00:56:22]  Once you have control, let's suppose China somehow magically takes over America.
[00:56:27]  The idea they wouldn't be a huge underground resistance and that, you know, there wouldn't be all sorts of, I mean, how to enforce that over that population, it's going to be very expensive.
[00:56:37]  Yeah, no, agreed.
[00:56:38]  All right.
[00:56:39]  I want to switch gears because there was just one other thing I want to ask you about.
[00:56:42]  And we're getting toward the end of our time.
[00:56:44]  But I wanted to get your thoughts on, I don't know how much you've been following this Derek Chauvin trial, who's the cop who put his knee on George Floyd and he's on trial right now.
[00:56:58]  What do you, you know, as somebody who's, you know, me and you are both kind of in the same camp on these issues where we're people who have been, you know, critical of the police for years and years.
[00:57:11]  And you really, I think, take a back seat to no one in terms of your criticism of the cops.
[00:57:17]  Of course, one of the best moments of all time was you and Alex Jones and you arguing to the anti-cop position of Alex Jones.
[00:57:27]  And Alex getting all blue pilled like boomer con.
[00:57:30]  It was so weird.
[00:57:32]  It's really something.
[00:57:34]  You're acting like there's a conspiracy by the police to take our rights away.
[00:57:37]  It's like, wait, what?
[00:57:38]  Yeah, there's something to taking a step red-pilled of Alex Jones and making him the kind of like, wow, come on, come back to reality.
[00:57:46]  Yes, there are interdimensional beings, but there's not going to, you know, not all cops are bad.
[00:57:51]  But anyway, so that was great.
[00:57:54]  But you've also been someone who's been very, you know, you're not hesitant to give your feelings about rioters and looters and people who are destructive of property and people.
[00:58:08]  If this guy gets off, I'm like 1,000% certain we're going to see mass riots.
[00:58:14]  There weren't riots after Trayvon and George Zimmerman got off.
[00:58:18]  There were.
[00:58:18]  They weren't big.
[00:58:20]  Yeah, I mean, it was nothing compared to last year.
[00:58:22]  No, nothing compared to last year.
[00:58:24]  Nothing like everyone was expecting.
[00:58:26]  So do you think I'm wrong to be that certain?
[00:58:28]  You think there won't be riots if this guy gets off?
[00:58:30]  See, you're at 1,000%.
[00:58:32]  I'm at 100%.
[00:58:35]  No, there's a couple of factors.
[00:58:38]  I think people have two ideas in their heads and there's a little bit of dissonance there.
[00:58:43]  They understand on some level how much these riots are artificial and how much these riots are ginned up by corporate media attention, by corporations, by politicians adding fuel to the fire.
[00:58:57]  You get to be on TV, everyone else is acting out.
[00:58:59]  And also the fact that in many ways President Trump's hands were tied because if he had gone in with the tanks, you're Hitler, you're Hitler, this valid is Hitler.
[00:59:07]  And he had tweeted out, I think it was to the mayor of Seattle, where he said, you could just call me.
[00:59:13]  We could resolve this in 24 hours.
[00:59:14]  And they're like, screw you, we can handle this.
[00:59:17]  I think we are primed for rioting, given those other two deaths you just mentioned, with the lady cop and that 14-year-old kid.
[00:59:25]  If he gets off, I think what the issues from last year were not particularly addressed or resolved, no matter how fallacious those issues might be.
[00:59:36]  I don't think it's, we can even take Derek Chauvin out of here.
[00:59:41]  We could still, I mean, in a way, it's almost secondary because we could very easily have a conversation about now that the weather is getting warmer, do you expect more rioting against police brutality?
[00:59:53]  And the factors for it and against it, I think, are pretty well known.
[00:59:57]  And it's more likely than not, but I don't think it's a given.
[01:00:01]  And I think there's an enormous space in the media for Biden to come in with a strong, heavy hand of the lobby, Giuliani.
[01:00:09]  I mean, this is Crime Bill Biden.
[01:00:11]  And they would say, we finally have an adult in the White House.
[01:00:14]  Officer Harris can take point.
[01:00:16]  I'm a member of these communities, but a certain point, blah, blah, blah.
[01:00:20]  And they'd all be applauding for them.
[01:00:21]  So we could see it play out in several ways.
[01:00:23]  No, that is true.
[01:00:25]  The last thing I wanted to ask you about is, I don't know, did you see the Max, what's her name?
[01:00:31]  Maxine Waters.
[01:00:32]  Maxine Waters out in the streets and what she was saying with them.
[01:00:38]  I got to say, I've been very skeptical to ever accuse politicians of inciting violence.
[01:00:45]  I hate the slippery slope of that crime to begin with.
[01:00:51]  And all the people who cite was Oliver Wendell, what's his name with the shouting fire in a crowded theater?
[01:00:59]  Also the claim that if you're criticizing a journalist, you're basically saying that they should be beaten with their family.
[01:01:04]  Yes.
[01:01:04]  Not at all.
[01:01:06]  Well, listen, from the very beginning, the shouting fire in a crowded theater excuse was used to come down on anti-World War I activists.
[01:01:15]  This was like this, this has been going on for a very long time.
[01:01:17]  Right.
[01:01:18]  Of course, you see examples of this all over the place.
[01:01:21]  Glenn Greenwald is harassing journalists or whatever because he's calling out the corporate press.
[01:01:26]  Like just all of this.
[01:01:27]  Right.
[01:01:28]  Yeah.
[01:01:29]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:01:30]  Now, I was one of the people who, you know, I thought Donald Trump handled his loss like a bitch and I thought it was like ridiculous.
[01:01:38]  And I also thought it was, look, you can make an argument, not great for the country.
[01:01:41]  You can make an argument, maybe good for the country that a lot of people don't believe in the system.
[01:01:46]  But I hated when people would say he incited violence because there's an actual criminal meaning to that.
[01:01:52]  And no, I'm sorry.
[01:01:53]  He has every First Amendment right to say, I think this election was stolen from me and I want my people to peacefully protest it.
[01:02:00]  You have every right, just as an American citizen.
[01:02:02]  Or mostly peaceful.
[01:02:04]  Yeah, right.
[01:02:06]  Whatever.
[01:02:06]  But still, he did not break the law.
[01:02:10]  I got to say, seeing Maxine Waters in the street going, if there's a guilty verdict, we need to get more aggressive and more confrontational in the context of what we all know is very likely coming, in the context of rioting happening in Minnesota over this latest shooting.
[01:02:28]  I was like, yeah, that might really push me on the level of being like, yeah, you are, this is so reckless and so encouraging of violence where innocent people will end up getting hurt.
[01:02:41]  I was like, yeah, that's really wrong.

=== Confrontational Political Rhetoric (01:26) ===

[01:02:43]  Yeah, and this isn't the first time with her.
[01:02:47]  I've repurposed one of her quotes, but she basically, this footage has been gone very wide where she had said, if you see someone from the Trump administration in the gasoline station, in the movie theater restaurant, you basically come up with them and get in their face and tell them you're not welcome anywhere.
[01:03:02]  And it's just like, okay.
[01:03:04]  So I say that take the same thing, but apply it to corporate journalists.
[01:03:07]  If you see someone get in their face and tell them they're not welcome.
[01:03:10]  But yeah, if you are encouraging people to be confrontational to that extent, yeah, that is going to lead to someone being shoving you back or, you know, getting in someone's face is not going to be the kind of thing where the other person is like, oh, golly, gee, I've learned my lesson today.
[01:03:26]  So I think it is dangerous as someone who's a fan of peaceful communication and cooperation.
[01:03:32]  But I'm not that surprised because it feeds into her power because then once things get out of control, then either you have the out of control continues or and then you need the state to be kind of the safety net or you have a crackdown, then you need the state to be the authoritarians.
[01:03:49]  So for them, it's win-win.
[01:03:50]  Although I don't think she has this Machiavellian strategy.
[01:03:53]  I think she's just an ass in this.
[01:03:54]  Yeah.
[01:03:55]  Yeah.
[01:03:55]  No, I think she's just trying to be like, I'm with these guys, so you can't challenge my support amongst this group.
[01:04:01]  So yeah, I think you're right.
[01:04:02]  All right.
[01:04:03]  That's our time for today.
[01:04:04]  Always a pleasure speaking with you, Mr. Michael Malice.
[01:04:08]  Thanks, everybody, for listening.
[01:04:09]  See you next time.