Michael Malice joins James Smith to dissect government overreach, prison overcrowding, and the corporate press's profit from conflict. They critique sanctions harming civilians while advocating for a Biden-Putin summit guaranteeing no NATO expansion in exchange for Russian withdrawal. Analyzing declining public support for new wars compared to post-9/11 unity, Malice challenges cynicism by recounting his grandfather's escape from Nazis and details his book on Stalin's purges. Ultimately, the discussion rejects binary thinking in favor of incremental power-building amidst nuclear tensions. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Innocent People Fleeing War00:14:40
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
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 Gash Digital Network.
Here's your host, James Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am thrilled to be joined by one of my favorite, if not my favorite guests that we have on this show.
He is, of course, a fantastic author, podcaster, a dear friend, and the man who I will be honored to serve under as the first Jewish anarchist press secretary in the history of the United States of America, Mr. Michael Malice.
How are you, my brother?
Well, I mean, didn't Murray Rothbard do work for Buchanan?
I don't know.
Did he do work for him?
Well, yeah.
They kind of worked together.
Yeah, kind of.
Yeah, I guess kind of.
Although, do we know that Rothbard was Jewish?
He doesn't look Jewish.
He doesn't.
It's true.
He doesn't look Jewish at all.
And he definitely didn't act Jewish.
Or sound Jewish.
He didn't laugh Jewish.
But he was one of the good ones, Michael.
That's what's important.
Truly one of the good ones.
Well, it's a, it's, so this, we're recording this a couple days before this episode is going to come out, and which is a dangerous thing to do these days, especially if you talk about current events at all.
So forgive us if the world has completely changed.
And if we've all been nuked to death, then I guess it won't matter.
But I do really want to ask you, you know, about a bunch of stuff that's going on, but particularly, of course, you are a Soviet spy who is sent here at around one years old to take down the regime and spread your anarchist propaganda.
So what are your thoughts?
Your family is from the Ukraine, right?
Or you was there.
I'm from Ukraine.
Right.
But you were very young.
Yeah, sure.
But we're all from there.
All of us.
Do you have family still there?
Well, I did.
My dad was doing business there until yesterday.
He got out.
I didn't realize he was still there.
So he just got out there yesterday.
Do you have like a strong feeling about what's been going on there?
I mean, besides, it's horrible.
Like, what are your thoughts on the invasion?
I have a strong feeling that when it comes to people fleeing war, it's imperative to make sure that they're taken care of and that they're innocent victims.
And I've been having a very disturbing time on Twitter where I'm because my, as, as, you know, my, my, I was just talking to my sister and she said, you know, dad got out and he's on these trains, you know, with all these people fleeing and they had to leave their, you know, husbands or brothers behind.
It's just like grab a backpack, get the F out of there.
And my dad's sitting next to this little kid crying that they're going to kill my dad, not my dad, his dad.
And like, he's not crying irrationally.
And, you know, as soon as they got over the border, you know, they're being taken care of and so on and so forth.
So that kind of lit a flag under a little fire under my ass to kind of, okay, I'm going to raise some money to feed these people.
And people were coming at me and like, oh, you're just spreading anti-Putin propaganda.
I'm like, what propaganda?
Like someone I know saw this and I want to make sure the families who are fleeing are taken care of.
And you know what?
If some of that money is left over and goes toward hungry people in other countries, I'm okay with that too.
My only goal is to make sure that people who need food are given food.
And, you know, you and I often talk about how tribalist people are.
And I think that you and I agree that this is not going away and it's inherently part of human nature.
But I, the leap of logic it takes to be like, I want to make sure these people are fed to, oh, so you're saying we need to go to war against Putin.
It's, it's, it's insane to me.
I mean, literally insane.
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's the exact equal opposite to if I'll say something, like, I'll be like, you know, there's been some serious like provocations of Vladimir Putin, like sending weapons into Ukraine and kind of like tempting him and having the whole corporate press say for years that Vladimir Putin, you know, overthrew our election and committed an act of war and installed Trump.
And, you know, all these things are like, ooh, this is like, you're really provoking this guy.
And then, you know, this is, and they'll be like, oh, so you support Putin invading Ukraine?
It's like they're doing the exact same thing, but on the other side, that if you were somehow be supporting the, like, how can anyone not logically see that it's like, yes, there are innocent people in Ukraine who exactly.
That's what I was exactly.
There's innocent people who have this war launched against them.
Innocent people are dying already.
I don't know exactly what the numbers are.
It's hard to trust the early reports in the fog of war.
You know, who knows?
But innocent people are dying.
And then there's also innocent people in Russia.
And then there's these two criminal governments.
Isn't that what, at least in our world, everyone should get?
Do you know what else?
It's like, let's suppose that all those deaths are a lie and they're not targeting or not accidentally hurting civilians.
Fine.
There are people fleeing.
They're not crazy to flee.
And I want to make sure they're taken care of.
End of story.
Because you know what?
I had to flee.
My whole family fled under much better circumstances.
It wasn't, although back in World War II, my family also had to flee East under very, very bad circumstances, worse than what they're facing now.
The point is, I just want to make sure that these kids and moms are taken care of.
And when people have to kind of insinuate their political tribalism or to think that that implies that, oh, so you're agreeing Putin's Hitler or, oh, you're saying Putin's a good guy.
This has no commentary on Putin or Biden or Trump or Lenski or any of these people.
Yeah, it's like, I feel like, particularly when there are these hysterical moments when like things are really ratcheted up all the way to the top, the, you know, 10 out of 10 on the emotional scale, it's like everyone's got to be either this is pure evil and this side is pure good or the or vice versa.
And of course, the reality is obviously that it's like, look, there's you got these two governments.
You got, they're both incredibly corrupt.
You have like all governments are, but these are two particularly corrupt governments.
You have nations where the lines are probably not drawn exactly perfect history of being loyal to different areas, different tribal groups.
Like, you know, and I see it even on the people who are more or less on my quote unquote side of the issue, who would be like, well, Ukraine's all a bunch of Nazis.
And you're like, well, no, there is a Nazi faction, you know, within Ukraine.
And then the other people who are like, well, the Russians are all, you know, I see these blue check marks.
Well, I also love the idea that the Russians are like virulently Antifa.
Like, what are you talking about?
Yeah.
Like, what?
You think the Nazis are, excuse me, the Russians are like people who read like the New York Times and sip lattes?
Yeah.
That doesn't matter.
The point is, I still want kids to be fed, even if they're really prejudiced.
And on both sides of that.
Yes.
Like on all sides in all of these different countries.
Yeah, it's a very, it's not a good, it's not a great time for nuance.
Although I guess it's a good time to kind of differentiate yourself if you have a little bit of nuance.
I don't think there's any nuance to be had if you're saying I'm concerned about civilians.
No, I just mean the nuance.
The nuance being that whatever your position on the war might be, there are these innocent people here who are not like a part of either one of these camps, who are just trying to like live their lives and are now scared for their immediate safety.
So yeah.
Anyway, I guess we can hope.
To me, I think the hope is that at a certain point, Vladimir Putin is kind of like, I've made my fucking point.
And he doesn't really want to make some attempt to reunify the former Soviet states.
And it's just kind of like, so back the fuck off.
And maybe he takes Don Bass, you know, and won't return that, but leaves the rest of Ukraine to laugh.
I had Cernovich on my show this week, and I don't, there's no one I have more respect for than him when it comes to like reading between the tea leaves that the media puts out.
And he had this great point because he's like, my, he's like, this is Cernovich talking.
He's like, my instincts before, you know, being on the side of Ukraine, he goes, but then I see, you know, the New York Times, the Cassa Saran at Live, and every blue check on Twitter, the worst people on earth, they're all for Ukraine.
He's like, well, wait a minute, maybe I did something wrong, right?
And that you and I have that same, the thing that I think people are freaking out about and reacting at correctly on Twitter is if you have any sympathy for Ukraine, that in some way implies you want boots on the ground tomorrow or American troops involved, that's not the implication at all whatsoever.
And you and I are certainly, no one knows better than like, hold on a second.
Once the war, the war propaganda starts, let's take a deep breath because 99 times out of 100, if not 100 times out of 100, it's complete BS and it's being done for duplicitist purposes.
But he's like, you know, this doesn't make sense because when you invade a country and even you take a part of it, it's not like the rest of the people in the world are like, well, you did good here.
So, you know, goodbye and good luck.
They're not going to let him get away with that.
And he knows this.
Putin is anyone who has their analysis that Putin is dumb, like right away, you just don't, in my opinion, you don't have to listen to anything they have to say because you don't become head of the KGB.
You're not, you know, standing up to the US and, you know, having a stranglehold on Russia without being at least somewhat of a good strategist.
I'm not saying he's a good person.
He's a very evil person.
He kills his opponents.
He's incredibly corrupt, but he's figured out some end game.
And it's not going to end with everyone being like, fine, you get to keep this province.
Dude, one of the most like, as you just put it out, one of the most infuriating things that people will couple together is the idea of intelligence and morality being like correlated in any sense.
Right.
Like or the idea that you're kind of like, well, he's dumb because he's bad and he's evil.
So the evil guy is dumb.
Have you ever read a comic book?
Yeah, right.
Like, in fact, the evil, dumb people, really, you need not concern yourself with them.
They're never a threat.
The only threat is the really, really smart evil people.
It's like, right.
Like, yeah, I completely agree with you.
Speaking of Cernovich, I'll be interested to listen to that episode.
He tweeted something today that I really loved that he was talking about sanctions.
And he said basically, like the tweet was something along the lines of he goes, this is unpopular amongst my friends, but I'm against sanctions.
And it's all it does is make poor people poorer and deny basic needs to the innocent civilians who have nothing to do with what their governments decided to do.
And I just thought that was such a great thing to point out.
It's like so much in these situations, you see sanctions, you know, put out there as the, well, okay, you don't want war, so then you must want sanctions.
Right.
You know, but you don't, you don't want to kill people, so you must want to starve them.
But it's, but also, like, you want to kill the soldiers.
It would be one thing if you were starving the soldiers.
Like, I could wrap my head around, if you don't want to shoot the army, let's starve the army.
Okay, that's the way to win war.
I could wrap my head around supply chains are a thing in any military conflict.
Fine.
But these are different targets.
And it serves such a propaganda purpose because then Putin can say with a straight face, there's no food on the shelves because the Americans and the Europeans.
That's right.
And so now, when he's redirecting all of these resources to an already not rich country of Russia, he's redirecting all these resources.
And so they're going to have to tighten their belt and it's going to be hard.
He can say, well, yeah, but that's because the whole world is against us, which would be coming to invade if it wasn't for me creating this buffer zone.
Yeah, you hand him a perfect narrative.
But yeah, exactly.
It's like you're not targeting anyone who you actually care about here.
Someone tweeted to me today about this when I said, yeah, I'm against the sanctions too.
I quote tweeted Cernovich and said that.
And they go, well, if you're against war and you're against sanctions, then what would you have us do?
As if like, you know, which I, and he was not, I think, not asking in a shitty way.
He went, look, honest question.
But if you're against both of these things, what would you have us do?
Like, those are in people's minds the only two options.
And I was like, look, my answer isn't like anarchy, which that is the ultimate thing I'd love.
But I go, well, how about a mass effort at negotiating a peace right now?
Like, what is it going to take?
Let's have everybody sit down.
Let's actually have a summit with Biden and Putin.
Biden come on air and challenge Putin to have a summit to settle these differences right now.
We will offer you a promise, a treaty that we will never bring Ukraine into NATO and we will abandon all sanctions.
We will lift all sanctions on you on the contingency of your immediate withdrawal and the promise that you never cross over the Ukraine border again.
Now, I'm not saying that would work, but why not give it a shot?
Why are we like, if we're willing to throw everything we have at starving children and bombing children, why not throw everything we have at negotiating a peace against that?
Like, it's just so insane.
Both of these guys have nuclear weapons.
I have an answer for you.
So, this was kind of the issue in the Falklands because this, when the Falklands were, this is really showing my gray hair now.
The Falklands were this small group of islands off the coast of Argentina that was part of the British Commonwealth.
The Argentines invaded and conquered it.
Biden's Nuclear Summit Offer00:13:34
There was like 50 people there.
It's just like completely nothing.
And the big question was at the time: is Great Britain going to do something about this?
Because it's a little bunch of islands halfway across the world.
And the Americans, Reagan was president, is on the phone with number 10 with Thatcher.
He's like, we got to sit down and negotiate.
And her point was, you can't negotiate after they've started aggression.
Before aggression, we could talk all day long.
But if you negotiate after aggression, that's going to encourage aggressive nations to be taken more seriously.
And that gives them an incentive.
So she goes, I'm not, we could talk all day long, but now that there's military involved, we're settling this militarily.
And this was a big, her government was on the line.
It was a very jingoistic rejoice here that you're British, blah, blah, blah.
But that is a legitimate answer to your question.
I don't, the thing is, what's really amazing when they're like, what would you have us do?
I don't think you or I or any of us are privy to almost anything that was going on behind the scenes between Russia and Ukraine for the last 10 years.
It's nonsensical to think that we have a very good insight as what's going on there.
Yes, there's certainly more than we know about, but also a big thing that really does change everything here is that you're talking about two nuclear powers that are like no, doesn't the Ukraine not have nukes?
Didn't they give them up?
Oh, yeah, I guess you're right.
That's the thing.
The less they did give them excuse, excuse me, to be clear.
I'm talking about with America negotiating with Russia.
You're talking about a thing where it's not, you can't just simply say, Well, Russia's gone in militarily, so we have to have a military answer.
It's like there really can be no military confrontation between Russia and the United States of America.
Or, that's that's a real bad situation for everybody.
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Um, yeah, I mean, look, I really do hope that uh uh cooler heads can prevail.
I guess we'll see what uh what will happen.
So, this is something I wanted to mention.
Let me just say one more thing.
Of course, go ahead.
I saw an article, and again, half of these articles you have to assume are propaganda, but this one had a ring of truth to it to take it with a grain of salt.
But they were reporting that all these Russian soldiers were basically drapped and they don't want this fight.
And the thing is, as you and I know, and anyone who listens to this show knows, if you're going to get a population ready for war, there has to be some emotional 9-11.
You know, it has to be something like that.
You really, we need to, we really are fighting these people for a reason.
They're bad people.
I don't see that being the case from the Russians toward the Ukrainians.
That they're like, All right, enough's enough.
We're going to put a stop to these efforts that did not seem to be, I know they were shelling those two regions for a long time, sure.
But from the perspective of the average Russian, I don't think that there was this kind of bloodthirst going on recently.
So, that is another, I think, big question mark here as to what Putin thought he was doing.
Yeah.
And the other, to me, big question is that, as people know, Putin is really propped up by these oligarchs in Russia.
No different really than many governments, and certainly our government here.
I said that earlier today on Twitter, someone accused me of being pro-Putin.
And I said, Look, if I wanted an oligarch, propped up authoritarian who was comfortable invading foreign countries, I would just support my government.
I have no interest in Vladimir Putin.
But so, but how much pressure will these oligarchs now put on Putin?
Because there's no question this is really hurting their economy and hurting those oligarchs specifically.
So, there's, I think you're right about that.
One of the things that I wanted, I just had to mention this to you because I thought this was so just reminded me of you.
Because one of your main, I think, messages, and it's particularly interesting as an anarchist thinker and writer, that you've always talked about how the corporate press is like the number one enemy, even more so in some ways than the state.
I think number two.
I think the universities are number one.
Okay, fair enough.
But the universities, the corporate press, and then the actual political class, which is interesting for an anarchist thinker who would usually put the state as number one.
And I remember even as I heard you kind of make this case, being like, I don't know.
I mean, but the state are the ones who actually initiate violence and break the non-aggression principle or whatever.
But, you know, there's really something to it the more you think about it.
So anyway, Brian Stelter tweeted out.
This was about five days ago.
He tweeted out over the first day of the war in Ukraine.
And he said, now this is how he puts it, but you only have to look at it from a slightly different angle to see another way to look at this.
But he says, the past 24 hours, and this is when the invasion started, are a reminder that consumers in an era of YouTube and TikTok still gravitate to trusted, established news outlets during emergencies.
They, quote, know where to go, end quote, so to speak.
And television coverage is essential.
So he is bragging about how the ratings for CNN are up during wartime and how that's proof that people really know where to go to the really trusted news when it really matters.
Of course, another way to look at this would be that war is great for CNN.
And you're just like, wow, you guys really are very blatantly in the business of profiting off the slaughter of innocent people.
And even though you won't say it that way, you're quite happy to go gleefully brag about this on Twitter.
Well, you know what?
These last day has really shown you how much I told you.
We're trusted.
And look at our numbers.
We can finally have a show that cracks a million views because Putin's bombing Ukraine.
I think he's lying twice.
First of all, it's not true that everyone's going towards these mainstream outlets because a lot of people on social media, thanks to the ubiquity of cell phones, are getting answers from people on the ground.
So those are the things that are spreading.
It's not one individual, but it's like that woman in Ukraine, someone in Kiev, whatever, which is a city in Ukraine, obviously.
That's where people are getting the information because there's so much like everyone is, or most intelligent people are aware, there's so much propaganda flying around.
It's much more useful to have that source who's directly there.
Second, when he says they're going to support news outlets, it's not CNN.
It's going to be the news outlets in Eastern Europe that you're trusting because they have boots on the ground.
They have the reporters on the ground.
They know that region.
They're coming.
They live there.
They have that experience.
I'm not looking toward Brian Stelter or Tucker Carlson to be like, all right, you know, what's the latest going on there?
I'm looking toward outlets that are close to the location.
And I'm looking toward individual journalists or just regular citizens.
So he's making this claim and conflating two things that are simplyn't true.
Yeah.
Well, I would say it's probably as true that they're right from the bottom of the people.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, because probably even your average person who doesn't even like think about all this still might go, I'll flip on the news.
Yes.
There's a thing going on.
But even that to me is like, yeah, it doesn't, you're right.
It doesn't represent some like regain of trust in the media or something like that.
But it also does like there's something really sick about the perverse incentives that you go, oh, look, more people are flicking us on the TV when something really awful is happening.
He goes, wow.
So it seems like you're really, you're happy in some weird way.
But it's also, I think, what he's not getting is that people might understand that when they talk about American politics, it's all lies, but they're of the delusion that when it comes to Eastern Europolitics, this is when they're putting out the facts.
So you and I, it'll take us a few years before people realize, wait a minute, it's just as much as they lie about the stuff here, they're lying about the stuff over there.
Well, I do think that that's a point that many people in our camp have been making for a while.
But it is still pretty unbelievable how many people fall for that.
You know, every now and then, like me and you have been talking over the last couple of years, and I guess it's always kind of like one, like two steps forward, one step back.
But you talk about how much, you know, people have been red-pilled.
But then when there is an emergency crisis, it does seem like you kind of figure out how much of that, how many of those people were really red-pilled and how many of them are like, ah, shit, they fall right back in line when there's an emergency.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
And it's, I just, it's just funny because I remember when this stuff was going down with North Korea and President Trump and Kim Jong-un, and Fox had Sheriff Clark on.
Like he's this like black conservative sheriff with his big hat, just opining.
And I'm just like, this man has absolutely no business talking about this issue.
This is a clown show.
And that just speaks to in their defense, I'll use that very broadly.
This is a breaking story.
They need to give people, you know, perspectives on it.
The number of people, you know, who are informed about Ukraine at CNN or Fox or MSNBC is going to be very small.
They can only use them so much.
And then what are they going to do with the rest of the time?
Yeah.
But if you are in any way a professional news outlet, you'd think like someone who's going to come on to like talk about this situation should know a bit about like so you know it's but I've seen that before too on Fox News.
I mean, there's like, you know, conflicts in the Middle East and stuff like that.
And me and you, you know, we both, we've done like panels on Fox News shows and stuff before.
And there will be people who are on these panels who, you know, you talk to afterward in the green room and stuff, who it's, it's shocking how little they know about these situations.
Like they'll, you know, it's, it really is something.
It's, it's something awful maybe about our generation or our culture, but where people like kind of will really pretend like they know about all this stuff.
And maybe I'm guilty of this too in some way, but I'm talking about people who like really couldn't tell you which country is majority Sunni or Shiite and are giving you their take on what we should do in terms of like the next military policy there.
And it's like, oof, geez, you really shouldn't.
Yeah, like you probably shouldn't be commenting on this publicly.
For sure.
Yeah.
All right.
Did you watch Joe Biden's State of the Union at all?
No, I was doing benchwork.
So, no, I, I, I, I knew it was going to be a disaster.
The couple of clips I saw was when Biden was talking about the coal miners breathing whatever smog and Nancy Pelosi started like pumping her fingers.
It was about, it was about the soldiers breathing the fires from burn pets.
And she stood up and like almost started like she was going to clap and then just did like a, it was so bizarre, dude.
It was so weird.
It was so weird.
By the way, his son died from this, almost certainly.
It's not 100%, but like, this is what gave a lot of the soldiers cancer.
And Bo Biden, his non-crackhead son, came back and died from cancer.
It's speculated that that's what from it seems very.
Well, he had two crackhead sons.
Okay.
Did he?
Two?
Yeah.
One of them went through, cracked his head in the windshield in a car accident and died.
Oh, Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
All right.
Well, that is true.
That is factually true.
But Bo was the good one.
Yeah.
He went off to war and died of cancer when he came back.
And this is what a lot of soldiers got the good one who was double-teaming his wife with his brother.
The good one.
Yeah, I guess you don't pick up the widow.
That's true.
That's true.
After the funeral, you were hooking up with her before.
That is a very good point.
I still am not going to blame Bo for that.
I'm going to lay that at Hunter's feet for being a piece of shit.
But yes, that wow, that really is something so funny, dude.
I haven't thought about that in a while.
But yeah, that is true.
He's got one son who went after the other son's chick after he died.
But I don't know that he did that.
I think they were double-teaming her when he was alive.
Okay, so I see what you're saying.
Rising Tensions Between Powers00:07:52
That makes it a much easier transition.
That is true, but not necessarily true.
Not necessarily.
Necessarily that it happened, but it is true if that's right.
Yeah, Jesus, what a weird family.
Man, politicians are some weird people.
Does this, all of this stuff happening, does it affect your take at all on the whole kind of like white pill like argument or the idea of the concept of your next book that we should be optimistic for the future?
I'll be honest, I get a little bit worried when there's tensions rising between nuclear powers.
No, it doesn't change my outlook at all.
I mean, the white pill doesn't mean everything that happens is always going to be good and that nothing bad is ever going to happen.
I think you and I and lots of other people knew that as soon as COVID died down, they were going to pivot to something else.
People were saying it's going to be climate lockdowns.
I did not think that was plausible because it's not something that's an immediate emergency like a pandemic is.
War is a perfect pivot for them.
But the thing is, you and I are old enough to remember the Iraq war and 9-11 and so on and so forth.
And despite what they're trying to do, I don't think the fervor is there.
I don't think that they have the will or the capacity to get the U.S. involved in this to the kind of extent that they would want, which is something that's a very good thing.
Yeah.
Okay.
So I agree with that.
I have been thinking that I do think there's an attempt made to pivot toward the climate change thing, but I think you make a very good point that it's just not immediate enough.
It's not like a virus that's out there that people are getting and that you can, you know, it's too off in the future.
I think that's a good point.
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Um, what concerns me about this is that I think that Vladimir Putin really is.
I mean, I don't think he's like Adolf Hitler, and I don't think he's you know, lost his mind and is pure evil, but I do think he's a very bad guy.
And I think that he has kind of been pushed to the point where now NATO is up to his doorsteps.
There was a coup in Iran.
Excuse me.
I just did the same Biden thing.
There was a coup in Ukraine in 2014 and that the pro-Russian government was overthrown, a pro-Western government installed.
Weapons have flooded in since then.
This is a big thing that, you know, Trump got impeached for holding up the weapons deal.
The big story is that he caved and he gave all the weapons to Ukraine and Putin's kind of had it.
This is like almost like his red line.
And now he's invading Ukraine.
I still think it's very possible that he's going to back off of this.
But if he does just take over Ukraine, I don't think NATO is going to do anything about it.
I don't think I think I think, but does he move further than that?
And then if so, again, the difference is it's not just a war.
It's not just Iraq.
This is a war with, you know, a nuclear-armed superpower.
And that's what's scary about it.
But I don't, that doesn't seem plausible to me because if his concern, which is a very realistic concern, is having NATO on his border, you don't solve that by moving your border closer to NATO.
You give yourself more of a buffer.
Sure.
But if he's only, if Ukraine is becoming part of Russia again, the buffer is gone.
Now you're on, you know, now you have to be defending Lviv and all those other cities.
So but I think the point is, I think the point is that if you go, look, if you recognize, like, look, if you'd rather Ukraine be the buffer, right?
Like you'd rather them be an independent country and then you have this buffer zone.
And then at a certain point, if you realize, well, there's no such thing as independence, you're either with us or you're with them.
Right.
I'll take you over just to keep you as the buffer.
I think is the idea.
But I really think it's unlikely that if he managed to militarily capture Ukraine, that NATO would do nothing because NATO would love an excuse to justify its existence, to send in the troops.
This is a lot of money for a lot of people.
This is a lot of prestige for a lot of people.
This is their fantasies.
You know, it's World War II.
They get to be the good guys.
So all the incentives, in my opinion, are for NATO to actually escalate things.
But then do the nukes fly?
Well, I mean, that to me was when Putin started being like, okay, we're putting the nukes on alert.
That was very disturbing to me.
Now, there's two scenarios.
One is it's a bluff, right?
And he's like reminding everyone of what he can do, which he didn't need to do.
We all are very aware that Russia is strong in terms of nuclear weapons, or it's not a bluff.
And he's just like, you know, just try me.
If we're going down, we're going down swinging hard.
So I mean, we all hope it's the first, but we're all very scared.
It's the second.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So like I, in general, completely agree.
And obviously, if you're concerned about Putin nuking anyone, therefore you're advocating for U.S. troops on the ground Ukraine.
That's just logic.
Right, exactly.
So I overall, like, I really, I'm with you on the whole argument to be white-pilled, but the threat of nuclear war is the one that I'm kind of like, oh, there's just been close calls before.
If you, if you read up on the history of like the Cold War, there's been close calls.
And it's really scary the idea that we would even, that's why I just think if there's anything with nuclear armed powers where they're anything like close to going to war, it should like, I think all sane people should be throwing everything at the wall to negotiate peace.
Like, what do we have to concede?
What do you have to concede?
What will you concede for all the concessions you want?
And it just seems like, man, that's not happening.
Like, anyway, I'm very white-pilled on like human beings versus the state, but I'm not so white-pilled on nuclear-armed state versus another nuclear armed state, making sure they act in a sane, rational way.
I am not at all claiming or predicting that Eastern Europe, this is going to resolve itself nicely.
And, you know, it'll be this nice, happy ending.
Like, I don't, I don't, but I don't even see what the bad ending looks like.
Like, it's, it's, it's very hard to like, I don't like, even I, I get what he wants.
There's several scenarios of what Putin wants, but I don't see how this is the route for him to get what he wants.
And if I don't see it, he doesn't see it or because he's certainly much more aware and informed about the different capabilities and he knows these different actors better than I do.
Yeah, no, that's that's fair.
Um, so, well, let's, I guess, let's let's switch gears a little bit.
Distrust Across Political Lines00:12:26
Um, how has uh how has your life in Texas and Austin been aside from the threat of nuclear war?
What's been what's been new with you?
It's it's great.
Like, I just don't miss New York for one second.
Um, the weather here is lovely, which is a minor thing, but like I didn't realize how much the New York winter got to me because New Yorkers were kind of used to it.
But like when it gets dark early, when you can't really go anywhere, walking a few blocks is a nightmare, you know, every you kind of stay huddled in your house where it's nice and cozy.
Not having to deal with that is a great treat.
Um, I still haven't learned how to drive.
I'm going to learn how to drive when I finish the book.
Progress is slow because I'm at like a very hard part because right now I'm writing about Stalin's purges and the tortures that they use.
So, when you're trying to write about literal torture in such a way that people can empathize with what that's like, that does a big number on you.
But after this, there's a going to be a chapter on the gulags, but after that, it's going to be kind of smooth sailing.
What was really fun is I did this whole section on Upton Sinclair.
What I love about this book and why it's taking me so long is that I wanted to have as much content as possible.
So, there are all these people back in the day who we are still revere and regard as heroes.
Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle as a result of the jungle.
People still read in high school.
You know, they had the FDA and he's a big socialist.
He was people don't realize this, but he was a Democratic candidate for governor in 1934 for California.
And he was defending genocide explicitly.
He said, Yeah, they starved, you know, at least a million people in Ukraine, but look at it this way, they solved the problem of famine forever.
So, I can't wait for people to read this and be like, because I always play it, matter of fact, to be like, Holy shit, like, like, at least have the something to kind of double talk around it or tap dance instead of being like, Yes, sure, it's a million people starved, but you know, no one's hungry anymore.
I'm like, Yeah, I guess technically, when you're dead, you're not hungry.
So, point to you, Upton.
Yeah, Jesus.
It is something, right?
It kind of, um, I like when you write about these things, like you have a real knack for doing this to really almost like uh, really dispel the idea that I see very prevalent amongst even like what I think a lot of people would call consider like the red-pilled camp in America today, who even within that camp, you see this idea floated a lot that it's like things have gotten really bad.
Oh, yeah, right, yeah, yeah, you know, and now the press can't be trusted, and now the establishment is out of control.
And it's like, you know, they don't, they don't do journalism like they used to, and you're like, That's almost like the most dangerous myth, right?
Even though, like, you're you're that person who says that is usually right about a lot of things, but you're like, No, that's what's crazy.
No, you're, you don't get it, you still believe in the whole past, you know, mythos of like, oh, yeah, it used to be all honest and good.
And you're like, no, people who were genocide supporters were taught like to your children.
It's it's also this kind of a good analogy to explain this point is like when people, when they turn 20 or 25, are of the belief that a lot more people having sex than they were 20 years ago.
It's like, no, 20 years ago, you were five.
So you were completely oblivious to the amounts.
And now that you're an adult, you are not oblivious.
You're seeing it all around you.
So from your perspective, oh my God, it's like increased a trillionfold.
It hasn't.
You are completely looking at the data from a personal perspective.
You're not looking at data.
Anyway, you're looking at anecdotes from a personal perspective that you were completely oblivious to before.
So it's a similar thing.
It's like, yeah, when I was a kid, the news was honest.
No, when you were a kid, you were trusting the guy on the TV because that's what they told you to do in school.
And sometimes it's not even just when you were a kid.
It's when you were blue pilled.
Yeah, yeah, right.
It's like when you were blue pilled, you're like, no, they used to fucking tell you the truth.
Like, remember, it was like all this stuff.
And you're like, no, no, no, you're just, you became red-pilled now and you're still projecting this kind of blue-pilled energy onto what you had before.
Walter Cronkite was a piece of shit.
None of them were ever good.
I like the idea.
I'm like, well, he was trusted by everyone.
Therefore, he's trustworthy.
No, that meant he was good at it, you idiot.
That means he's the most dangerous liar in the country.
Yeah, you know, that's, that's a thing also that you've hit on a lot that I think is, that's a big white pill that I think many Americans have underappreciated that, you know, people would say a lot.
And I, by the way, I really like this, that this is the right wing talking point about Donald Trump is that he didn't start a new war.
Like that's, I love that.
Yeah.
I think that's a real sign.
Now, to be honest, my feeling is like Donald Trump continued a lot of wars and is a war criminal for that.
And someone I would never support because he didn't end enough of the wars.
And that's what he ran on.
But the fact that the talking point from the right wing isn't he got really tough on this war, the talking point is he didn't start another stupid war.
That's like really great.
I think that's like incredible that that is the, you know what I mean?
Like that's what they want to brag about.
It's, it's, it's, and because again, like before Ron Paul, this is clearly Ron Paul's fault or credit, excuse me, not his fault.
It's just credit.
Before Ron Paul, it was the only people who are against war are these lefty hippies and you're weak and you want America to fail and you want us to be overrun by terrorists.
And we have like, we have to send our brave boys and girls overseas because they got to kick ass and USA, USA.
And now it's like, wait a minute, those brave boys and girls who are brave are coming home in coffins or in wheelchairs.
And what do we have to show for it?
And it's like, maybe we don't need to be doing all this all the time.
So the fact that that's so quickly taken hold.
But my fear, and I'm sorry to do this, but my fear is that it's going to be like the anti-war left with Obama.
And then as soon as Obama gets in office, like they just vanished overnight and they didn't care.
So I don't know.
Well, here's the thing that I, and by the way, I'm very happy to give as much credit to Ron Paul as possible.
But what I was getting at that I think was your point that I think deserves probably even more credit than that is that, you know, there is this kind of knee-jerk assumption that the country being united is superior to the country being divided.
And I think that's a huge part of why there was no new war under Donald Trump.
Like, I don't actually, now, I believe that Ron Paul had a huge influence on why that was palatable, like why that was, why, why you were able to say that to a Republican audience and still win votes.
But, you know, I don't believe that actually Donald Trump, while he was in there, couldn't have been persuaded to launch a war in Venezuela or in Iran or a lot of these other places.
I think the truth is that the country was so divided that really you and this is the point you were making about Putin launching this war in Ukraine that the country almost has to be unified around this goal in order to really have a successful war.
And that was true after 9-11.
The country was unified in like, we're going to go get these terrorists who did this to us.
And we just having the country so divided now makes it very difficult for whether it's President Trump or President Biden to rally everyone together to go start a new war and or just a disastrous policy.
The most disastrous policies always have bipartisan support and support of the people.
So there's something really encouraging about that, that now that everyone's divided, no matter which president it is, whether a Democrat or Republican, you can count on half the country to hate that person's guts and not trust them.
And I think we saw this also with Syria when Obama said, oh, there's a red line.
If you cross this red line, it's going to be hell to pay.
And they're like, okay.
And he's like, oh, see you next time.
And the Republicans made hay of it about, look, this shows how weak Obama is as a person.
But I think it was also a testament to how weak he was politically in the sense that normally he counted the Republicans, especially the neocons, to be like, war in the Middle East, like, let's go.
I've been waiting for this for months, for years, excuse me.
And now there was like, they were kind of marginalized and thankfully increasingly so.
And he couldn't really do anything about it, even though I'm sure he wanted to.
Yeah, I think so.
Absolutely.
And I think it is, you know, there was this guy, some neocon guy was talking shit on me on Twitter the other day.
And he's just getting fucking ratioed, like unbelievably.
And it's like, it is interesting to see how much they've been marginalized due to this whole like, you know, popular social media shit.
But it's, and in their stupid heads, they think I'm getting ratioed because Twitter's a cesspool and everyone here is a troll.
But it's like, fine, let's assume that's true in this case.
Does it explain all the polling where the polling also shows that there is not this big popularity that you'd want?
I think we just saw some polls about should U.S. get involved in.
I think it was Dave Reboy.
Let me find it.
Like, this is actually very germane.
And I want to get these exact numbers for you.
There was a poll and he took it in a different direction that I did.
The poll said, hold on a second.
Man, this MF are sure tweets a lot.
This was within the last, God, this is only it was, bear with me.
We can, yeah, we could take this out and post.
God damn it, Dave.
You hate when you're looking for a tweet and then you realize the guy tweets every hour.
Yeah, it's literally, he's like retweeting like crazy.
I'm still only 12 hours back, 19 hours.
Okay.
Almost there.
Almost there.
Come on.
It was a, it was a chart.
Oh, now he's live tweeting the state of the union.
It's Kathy Young.
Here we go.
Rasmussen poll.
Rasmussen tends to be skewed toward Republicans, a grain of salt.
Support for U.S. joining a potential war in Europe over Ukraine by party.
And Republicans, it was 49%.
Democrats, 53%.
Independents, 44%.
And he's like, Dave said, Dave Reboy, if this is true, that shows that America is pretty much over.
And I'm like, wait a minute, you've had nonstop Putin's Hitler.
This is the end of the world.
And the number's only going to go down, I think, because after 50% is your starting bid.
That's not a high percentage because when it came to like Afghanistan with W, I think it was like 90%.
It was some crazy number.
When it came to HW with Kuwait, I think it was some very high number.
So 50% when this, it's very easy to paint this possibly factually as a completely unprovoked, you know, attack on an innocent people.
To get 50% and 44% of independence, that really, I think, is progress in the right direction.
Yeah.
And one of the things that I thought was really like...
You got to look up support for Afghanistan.
Let's look that up.
Yeah.
See, see what it was, because it must have been like incredibly high.
Yeah.
I know that Bush had incredibly high approval ratings at the time.
So he must have, and, you know, like even people who are really like anti-interventionist were really like, okay, all right, fine.
We got to go in there.
Of course, I think initially with the thought of we're taking out al-Qaeda, not the thought of we're waging a regime change against the Taliban, you know, but still.
Did you get anything on that?
No, I'm getting his approval ratings, which were like 85 to 90%.
Still, still unbelievable approval ratings of that level.
You know, thank you.
Oh, here we go.
Public, this is from the Pew Poll.
Excuse me, this is Gallup.
This is from October 8th, 2001.
So this is less than a month after 9-11.
The headline is public overwhelmingly backs Bush in attacks on Afghanistan.
Legal Delta 8 THC Options00:02:58
And it says 90%.
The poll was conducted on Sunday, hours after the announcement the U.S. and Great Britain had launched missile and bombing attacks on at least three cities in Afghanistan.
According to the poll, 90% of Americans approve, while 5% are opposed and 5% are unsure.
So we had 90% and not even 10% against, only 5% against.
And the article goes on to say, by way of comparison, 79% approved of the decision on January 16th, 1991 to initiate the air attack war against Iraq at the beginning of the Persian Gulf War.
So again, if those numbers are 80 and 90, and now we're looking at, what, 50, that's a quarter of the population.
It's a massive change.
Yeah.
Now, I remember, and this is another thing that's really encouraging about, you know, and look, this is not to like discount any of the things that people say are discouraging about the world we live in today and social media and how, you know, false information can spread and stuff like that.
And of course, the corporate press makes a big deal out of this.
You know, false information can spread now.
But they never spread false information.
Well, and that's exactly it.
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So I remember for whatever reason, I have this.
So I was, I guess, the Persian Gulf War, the George H.W. Bush war in Iraq, I was like, it was in, I was born in 83 and it was in 91.
So I was eight years old.
Saddam Hussein Incubator Story00:15:00
But I remember hearing the story as an eight-year-old of Saddam Hussein's army pulling babies out of incubators.
That made it sway down to the eight-year-olds that we were like, wow, that's fuck.
Oh my God, this is crazy.
They're pulling.
And of course, like, you know, in an eight-year-old's mind, I think like what I heard was Saddam Hussein is pulling babies out of incubators.
Yeah, right, right.
That's how you picture it.
You know what I mean?
Like the guy, he is doing it.
And that, that's, you know, that, that girl who you can still go watch this video, this 15-year-old or something like that girl crying as she tells the story to Congress about witnessing this.
And it's, it's like horrific.
I mean, if you watch that, it's, it's just incredible.
She does a very good job.
And then you find out later that she's like the daughter or something like that of a Kuwaiti ambassador or something.
And then the whole story is bullshit.
It's like complete bullshit.
And then like Tom Woods made this point once, but he's like, once you forget even the morality of it, when you just start to think through like the logistics of it, like you're like, wait a minute.
So an army is invading a country and they stop off at a hospital to like just for the sake of evil, pull babies out of incubators.
Instead of just bombing the whole hospital, we only kill them.
And only the premature babies.
The regular babies we're not going to kill.
Only the premature ones.
Like just in terms of being a military strategist, you'd be like, this is not, this makes no sense.
Like, what do we do?
You know, and then of course you realize it's all bullshit.
But what you've seen so far already this week is, oh, these videos, yeah, they get shared and some of them get shared on the corporate press channels and outlets and written up in newspapers, but then they get debunked online right after, oh, this isn't real.
This didn't happen here.
This is actually a picture from 30 years ago.
This is actually a picture from a different war time.
So while there is false information that spreads, there's also false information that gets debunked so much quicker.
And so what you have is this situation where it's so much harder to create this kind of cohesive, everyone's on board with this narrative.
What you have is everyone finding their own narrative that suits their predispositions, which, okay, there's problems with that too.
But I think it's quite, I think it's not only possible to argue, but I think it seems to be the case that that is preferable to one false narrative that everybody can believe, where everyone's trying to poke holes in the other one.
And then you kind of see what arises out of that.
You know what I mean?
100%.
And that's the only reason I got involved was there was so much information.
I didn't know what to trust and so on and so forth.
And my gut tells me, again, like Serie Rich said on my show, if all the worst people on earth are saying, you know, to be for Ukraine, that probably tells me there's something here I'm missing.
Right.
Once I hear from dad that there's kids who are fleeing and they're hungry, it's not a political issue.
And this is a source I trust, though I don't particularly like.
So it's like, okay, that is something I have a dog in that fight for sure.
Sure.
And I think that makes sense.
And I think that's also not picking like, you know, you're not sending money to like an NGO or a government actor in this.
You're just saying like, okay.
Can I say one more thing?
Like that's, you just remind me of something that something else happened on Twitter.
One of the things I fight against a lot by being hopeful based on facts is people, is cynicism, which is so stupid and lazy.
Everything sucks.
Nothing's ever going to be good.
You're wasting your time, blah, blah, blah.
It's like, great.
It's just like, you know, people accuse anarchism of being this high school philosophy.
Like, that is the high, like, um, everything sucks, bro.
And, you know, I went on Twitter, which I think is actually a really good source to find information as opposed to trying to Google around.
I said, What's a good charity to help the people of Ukraine?
And someone's like, You're just going to be wasting your time because you're going to learn that all the money goes to the NGOs, is going to get stolen.
True, but there's other charities, the NGOs.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And I, of all people, I'm like, Well, I'm not giving it to like the UN, but the UN is not the only agency who is trying to do something.
And why this need to be like, Well, this all sucks anyway.
All of it, no one is helping, you know, families who are displaced.
Yeah, I mean, it's like the same, dude.
I hate cynicism, I just hate it.
And I've tried, I've brought this like stories like this up before, but you know, even over the last couple of years where people would be like, you know, with the COVID stuff, where like they'd be like, Well, look, look at this.
Obviously, the whole totalitarianism has risen up.
So, what's the point of even fighting it?
They're always going to find something next.
I'm like, dude, my family fled the Nazis.
Like, my grandfather fled the Nazis after watching his whole family get slaughtered, came to America, enlisted in the army, went back to Europe, fought against the Nazis, won, came back over here, started a family, and one generation removed, you know, two generations later, is me.
And I'm doing everything I love to do.
What a waste of time.
You know what I mean?
Exactly.
The point is, he would have been like, get me in the train car.
The point is, not every story will be this useless.
Some of them.
This I went back to Europe for this.
And I think he's one of these too.
Your grandpa's in heaven right now reading my copy.
You know what?
He had some good points.
He goes, I don't know.
He goes, I could have just given in to the sweet surrender of the dark night.
Now I got this asshole out there preaching this anarchy.
Really?
That's what you think is going to happen?
Oh, God.
It's okay.
But anyway, I'm just saying, like, I look at these people like, you know, and I've had people even in the Mises caucus of the Libertarian Party who would say stuff like this to me.
And I'm like, do you know what Mises went through?
Yeah.
Right.
Like, you know what he went through?
So is this your burden in life?
And this is why I channel the Jordan Peterson in me.
I go, well, if this is your burden, then lift it up, carry this cross on your back, put a goddamn smile on your face and take as many steps forward as you can take.
And that's not to say that it hasn't been unfair what's happened to you, or you haven't suffered, or it's not fucked up what's going on around you.
But come on, man, to act like this is like no, it all hope is lost now as compared to like previous times or something.
It's like you, I think there's a real benefit in learning more about previous times and how bad they were to understand that it's like, no, there's real, there's real beauty all around you.
And actually, you know, like you always tend to say, like, even as I read that Brian Stelter, you know, tweet, I know you love to make this point where you're like, well, if that's our enemy, then I like our chances.
And this is what people need to appreciate, these cynical types.
They're confusing their powerlessness with hopelessness.
They're often thinking correctly, there's nothing I can do.
But then they want to project and be like, that means there's nothing anyone can't do.
No, no, you are powerless.
So the answer is get more powerful, work on yourself and get to the position where you can move the needle.
You're not going to, you don't have to, you don't have to be the president or a senator or, you know, even like a sheriff.
Those are not the only people who move the needle.
Yes.
You can just become powerful enough that you're making, it's very easy to make a difference because so many people are lazy and don't think in those terms.
Yes, I'll channel Jordan Peterson again.
Which, by the way, I'm supposed to do your friend Michaela's show.
Oh, she's great.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
We were supposed to do the show, but then she wasn't feeling well.
So she canceled, but she said, we're going to reschedule all meat diet my ass.
I thought she still wasn't feeling well that day.
I thought it solves everything.
Have some roast beef, Michaela.
Well, no, what happens is she does have food sensitivities.
So when they go to a restaurant and they like put like the wrong kind of oil, like the whole family got screwed up.
That's what happened.
Really?
Yes.
Oh, okay.
So that's what happened when we channeled.
And also, I kind of low-key, she asked me if she should have you on the show.
And I'm like, are you kidding?
This guy validates the Holocaust.
So she's been postponing you.
You bastard.
I knew there was some.
But it's true.
I said what I said and I stand by my statement.
Well, anyway, I hope.
Okay.
So maybe we're not going to reschedule.
But anyway, I do.
Michelle, if you're listening, I support you.
She's not listening.
She's not listening.
You're not.
If you are, I support you.
Please reschedule.
No, but Jordan Peterson has made this point many times that it's like, it's very easy to feel powerless in all of these situations.
Right.
And that's okay.
But the idea is that, you know, like there's like this one inch of more powerful that's right in front of you.
Right.
And like, so you take that one inch and then take one inch more and then one inch more.
And it's, you will be shocked by how much it kind of can open up for you and how much you can.
And by the way, everyone who you look at who's more influential and powerful than you, that's how they got there.
They got there by going one inch further and further and further.
Just convert to Judaism and then you can control the weather.
That's pure power.
And look, I'm not saying that it's easy to convert to Judaism.
You'll be turned away a few times.
I'm saying as soon as you do, you control the weather.
Yeah, exactly.
And that's all it.
And by the way, another have me on.
Come on.
This type of stuff, I could have it on your show.
You know, and I have to give the Nazis another point that they were right because I do have dual loyalties.
I am concerned about Ukraine, where I was born and the people in Ukraine.
And I am concerned about Americans.
So does that make me a bad person in this context?
I don't think it does.
But if they think it does, more power to them.
Well, I've said this for a while that I think one of the awful things about war in general is that you are supposed to lose all humanity for opposing sides country.
And this is to me one of the most evil aspects of war.
You know, I've seen people, several blue check marks who have advocated for preemptive, preemptive nuclear war.
Yes, I'll send you the screenshots of all of this, but also just advocating for in the ballpark of that.
But we should attack Russia.
We should do this.
And even the sanctions say even that.
It's just like, you know, it's like you're forcing me into this binary of like, well, I care so much about the people of Ukraine that fuck the people of Russia.
Or I care so much about America not getting involved that fuck the people of Ukraine.
And like, all of this is crazy.
This is insanity.
It is literally like it's sociopathic insanity.
The idea that I am supposed to lose all humanity for any entire nation of people, not like, I mean, forget a group of people or even a family of people, which would be crazy, or even a city block of people, but a nation of people.
I'm supposed to, and this is one of the things that they always try to do during war is like make one group pure this binary thinking.
This group is pure evil, and none of their people matter, and this other group is pure good, and only their people matter.
And this is why, even in things like World War II, I've always found myself kind of saying, Man, like fuck.
So, we just targeted civilians in Germany and in Italy and in Japan and all these countries.
You're like, God damn, I bet there were a lot of people there who didn't support what their government was doing, who just got like burned alive.
Well, that sucks.
Like, all these, you know, like, I just, I think that for us to actually kind of like advance past all of this war propaganda, you're going to have to realize that there's people all throughout these different areas who have nothing to do with what their governments are doing that are like innocent people whose lives are being destroyed.
And that's horrible.
And here's something else: if there's someone in their house who's like, you know what, I'm glad Putin is invading Ukraine and that's the extent of their thoughts.
I don't think that's they should be killed.
Yeah, really, really, like, exactly.
They just had a political view that was wrong.
And even if it's pure evil, I still don't think having evil thoughts is like, you know what, let's kill the person.
Yeah.
And there's a lot to that too, right?
Like, even having evil thoughts.
I remember.
So I did this.
I did a debate with Nick Fuentes.
And it was on the kill stream.
Okay.
Was the thing?
It's like a debate channel that they have.
I think it's like an alt-right thing.
I went in there and like debated Nick Fuentes, who's like, you know, a very right-wing, you know, Groyper kind of identitarian guy.
And I made a comment at the beginning because like the chat, if you can imagine what the live chat is like, and those things I like looked right at and I was like, whoa, that is one racist live chat you guys have going on here and just like joked around about it.
And people were like a few libertarians, like the more woke libertarians, gave me shit for that.
And they were like, oh, so you think that's funny?
You think that's funny that they have a racist, a racist live chat?
And you're like, what do you think?
Do you think every well, it did have a laugh track?
So yeah, that's how I knew it was funny.
And by the way, they were saying funny shit.
Like I wasn't, I wouldn't say it if it wasn't funny.
But like, I'm giving you a professional assessment.
Where do you think I get my material from?
It's this chat.
I was just there with a notepad.
You see my comedy special.
Oh, yeah.
You say, oh, okay.
All right.
I see what you did there.
Okay.
And there's the, and there's the punchline.
Okay.
Yeah.
No, but you almost go like, so do you have again?
It's just this binary thinking worldview where you're like, so you think everyone who's involved in this chat is what?
Adolf Hitler?
Okay.
You don't think one of them's maybe a 16-year-old who's lost and the other one's a fat, sad 42-year-old in a basement who's trolling and another one.
And then maybe one of them is like a real deal, fucking neo-Nazi fucking needs it.
Professional Comedy Assessment00:02:04
But it's not so clear.
Like all these things aren't so clear.
Like the person, the Russian who supports what Vladimir Putin is doing, one of them, like just the person.
I'm saying no one involved in government.
One of them might just be like kind of looking for something to identify with.
And so he supports that.
Like, yeah, that's kind of the position of peace.
Is like, I'm not sure that guy deserves to die.
I don't think anyone deserves to die over just having the wrong thought or certainly being born in the wrong national boundaries.
And I, I, yeah, I think you and I are as almost always on the same exact page.
And my concern is for peace as quickly as possible.
I also want all of the Ukrainian and Russian soldiers to be healthy and happy and go back to their families as quickly as possible.
And I mean, I think he has, there's a lot of responsibility on these governments' heads.
And at the very least, Putin has done a very poor job of explaining why he did what he did.
Because they had that one hour speech.
It did not seem particularly coaching or coherent.
He did not seem to offer an explanation as to why this had to happen now, this sense of urgency that it had to escalate to crossing a border.
So that is something that is just very disturbing to me.
No, I agree with you on that.
And just, by the way, on that same kind of like thought, I always, I always like that Mentus Mulba, Curtis Yarvin said like kind of the idea.
Oh, shit.
He just emailed me and I forgot to reply.
Hold on.
You're right.
Maybe handle that after the show.
Yeah.
But he, I like that he said the thing about how like, you know, if we want to overthrow like this kind of regime, the move is to pay them off.
Now, I don't know that I agree completely with paying them off, but I do think there is something to the point of being like, yeah, listen, head of Goldman Sachs, I'm not trying to have you like beheaded in the public square.
Disturbing Thoughts and Emails00:02:23
I'd much rather say, well, pay your pension.
Now go away.
You know what I mean?
Like there's what we should be concerned with is peace and what will lead toward a peaceful outcome.
That should be the primary concern of like all decent people is like not like what is going to lead to like a more brutal conflict where let's now, okay, we take power and now let's go destroy all of our enemies.
What we should be concerned with is like, how do we diffuse this entire situation?
And that should always be, I think, what good people are searching for.
100%.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, this has been, this has been great, as always.
It's great talking with you.
Speak for you.
Well, yeah, I will speak for you.
It is always great talking with you.
And you are, you know, should be honored and welcome.
I'm part of the solution.
You are welcomed.
So what's next for you?
What do you got coming up in Austin there?
Oh, I just got the, it's two tons, 2,500 copies of the hardcover of the anarchist handbook.
So I have to sign a number of them.
Hard copies of it.
That's yeah, they're limited edition signed and they're all fancy.
I can't even tell you.
I'll tell you off air just because it drives people crazy.
I got all these tricks and gimmicks for the covers.
I'm going to have an LA.
What's that?
Can I have one?
Sure.
A hard copy?
Yeah.
All right.
Thank you.
I'm going to have to sign them all and have to fly to LA to do that.
So that's going to be a situation.
And I guess I'm going to see Curtis Yarvin this weekend.
Thanks to the reminder.
Oh, there you go.
Where are you seeing him?
Well, he's in Austin right now.
I think he was just on Alex's show, Alex Jones' show.
So yeah, everyone's coming through here.
And I'm tricking out my living room.
The vibe is 80s Wall Street douchebag.
And I want to make it to be kind of like, I never entertained in New York.
And I'm going to make it a place where people come through.
Everyone can get together and hang out.
All right.
Well, I fucking, I can't wait to fucking hang out with you.
I will next time I'm in Austin.
I was like only there for like such a short period of time.
We got to hang out next time I'm there.
All right.
I love you, brother.
It's good to see you.
Let's talk to you again.
All right.
There you go.
All right.
We'll talk soon.
We'll do another podcast, either on mine or yours, as we always do.