Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein dissect Independence Day 2.0, contrasting pandemic-era civil disobedience with fears of national secession due to economic collapse and vaccine mandates favoring pharmaceutical profits. They critique the double standard in prosecuting Donald Trump for election challenges while shielding past presidents from war crimes charges, arguing this selective justice punishes dissent rather than ensuring safety. Ultimately, the discussion suggests that targeting political figures undermines democratic legitimacy more than addressing actual legal violations, potentially solidifying beliefs in election fraud instead of resolving tensions. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Freedom Fest Independence Day00:01:35
Fill her up.
You're 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, Dave Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I'm Dave Smith.
He's Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
It is the 4th of July, Independence Day.
And there's no one I'd rather be sharing it with than Robbie the Fire Bernstein for an hour over the computer before I go back to hang out with my lovely family.
What a day.
Yeah.
I'm having a lot of fun.
Like being on the road.
Good shows.
You seem to be in a colorful hotel room there.
Yeah, it's the new AG.
Yeah.
Whatever.
Day of.
It was close to the venue.
It works.
That is pretty big in my book, close to the venue.
Nothing makes me like, I love when I have a, if I'll do an event that's at a hotel and I'm staying in the hotel.
There's just nothing.
You really just find out how lazy you are where you're just like, man, if all of my speaking engagements could just be in my living room, I could literally just walk downstairs from my fucking bedroom into and go, okay, yeah, so here's the thing, Liberty.
Fireworks and Authoritarianism00:09:33
And then just go right back.
It's really be wonderful.
I do a little bit better than that in my speeches, but you know.
I just love it because that means I can eat because my bathroom is right upstairs.
Oh, yeah.
You ever need an emergency, pit stop, you're all good.
It's right there.
It's very nice.
Okay, by the way, speaking of speaking engagements, I will be at Freedom Fest coming up in like a week and a half now or something like that.
And then I will be at the Young Americans for Liberty Revolution 2022 in Orlando.
Freedom Fest is in Vegas.
The Young Americans for Liberty event is in Orlando in August.
So come check me out at those places.
Rob is on the road and making plenty more stops with the Summer Porch Tour.
How's that looking?
Oh, it's looking good.
Next weekend, July 8th, I'm at the Whiskey Rebellion for Liberty, which is in New Stanton, Pennsylvania.
And then after that, I got Nashville and Atlanta.
Awesome.
Awesome.
Sounds good.
All right.
So seeing as how it is, the 4th of July, I wanted to maybe start with a little 4th of July talk.
And I was just thinking all day yesterday about this story, which I'm quite certain I told on the podcast from two years ago on the 4th of July.
I just figured I'd retell it because it was the coolest thing ever on 4th of July that I've ever seen.
And it was just that a great, I thought a great little American moment.
So this is to set the stage.
This is July 4th, 2020.
If you can try to put yourself back there, as uncomfortable as that might be, which is kind of wild.
That was two years ago already.
So we had already gone through, you know, what, almost four months of COVID insanity.
And so right the live.
And that was before the rollout of the shots.
It was a real pandemic.
Yes, that's right.
Before it was just a pandemic of the unvaccinated.
Although, of course, sometimes it's a pandemic of the double vaccinated, double boosted Dr. Truth Science, who then on Pulax, blah, whatever, and then getting a rebound infection.
I mean, the funny, the funny thing about it, man, is that it's like, obviously, there's a lot of like, you know, just like jokes to be made about the whole situation, but there's something so obviously underlying COVID, Fauci having COVID.
I'm sorry, sometimes I call Fauci COVID.
Remember, they're two different people, even though he made it.
But so the thing about the, you know, jokes aside, you're like, isn't this such a like, it's so profound, like the imagery of it.
It's like Fauci, the guy himself who literally looked the American people in the eyes and told them: if you get this vaccine, you won't get COVID and you won't spread COVID.
That's the end of it.
It's just a pandemic of the unvaccinated, has now been double vaccinated and double boosted.
He's taken four shots of this thing, gets COVID, goes on the antivirals, gets the rebound infection.
Like, this is the thing to really look at and go, oh, dude, there, you know, there has to be some type of reckoning with this.
You have to at least admit you got this so wrong.
But of course, he doesn't.
It would have been worse.
It would have been so much worse.
I would have been dead twice.
It's unbelievable that moment.
Anyway, so we're in July 4th, 2020.
So, you know, you think the lockdown starts March, March, April, May, June.
We're in July now.
At this point, the riots have been going on for a while, the Black Lives Matter riots.
And Americans have just been, you know, like there was never a period of time in my lifetime.
There's nothing that even comes close to that little period of time, that few months leading into the 4th of July, where just normal life for Americans in such large numbers has been completely turned upside down.
Everything's been taken away from them.
I mean, it's almost hard to, you know, like now we live in this time where COVID is like kind of, especially for people like us who like, you know, we've been able to set up our lives in a way where we've avoided, you know, we didn't have to take the jab.
We didn't, you know, there were some inconveniences.
You know, we couldn't eat at a restaurant in New York City for a little bit, but more or less, our lives went on as they were.
There's, they were making you wear a mask on a plane for a while.
Like there, but that's kind of what it is.
But this back then, if you remember, it was, it was like, you know, to the vast majority of American people, just everything.
You can't go to your friend's house.
You can't go to your dad's funeral.
You can't go to work for tens of millions of people.
You can't go, you know, your sports are gone.
The bar is gone.
Everything's gone.
Any little thing, little human thing that you had in your life is robbed from you.
And after all of this, and then there was this done.
And then, if you remember, the craziest shit ever was when the media turned on a dime and said it was okay to protest.
I mean, they had this was times when playgrounds had yellow police tape around them.
They wouldn't let little kids go outside to playgrounds.
They were flipping out about young people on the beach.
You know what I mean?
But all of a sudden, when the protest aided the progressive agenda, that was okay.
You were allowed to do that.
So 4th of July, about, I think it was a week or two weeks before it, they announced no fireworks this year.
We're banning fireworks.
And already by this point at July, it was very obvious to anyone paying attention that this was all bullshit.
You know, you could see through already how insane all of this stuff was.
And you could, you know, people, it wasn't like April, you know, when people really didn't know what the fuck was going on.
It was a little bit more obvious.
And so right away, people were like, wait a minute, but fireworks have got to be like the safest for COVID thing to do.
Like you're outside.
It's very easy to socially distance, right?
Like it's not like you're in some crap, but they just took it.
Was this feeling of like, I remember talking about it on the podcast and being like, This is insane that it's like they just want to punish the American people, they just want to rot.
They can't just give you this one little thing.
It's already absurd enough to be celebrating your independence from a tyrannical government while you're literally being told you're not allowed to go to work, you know.
Like, but people like to do fireworks and watch fireworks on the 4th of July.
And so they canceled all of them.
And they did it in New Jersey.
They did it in New York.
They did it all around.
So all the big fireworks shows that you normally see were all canceled.
And I remember, so I'm here at my place where I live.
And they did fireworks last night.
So I was thinking about this as we were watching them.
Because now they're doing the real shows, right?
So it's like right on the water, and you can see like Staten Island and Manhattan and Brooklyn and like all that.
It's like a real great view.
And I remember on July, on the 4th of July, 2020, literally, okay, there was no one main fireworks show, but everyone it felt like was lighting off fireworks.
And you'd look out, and instead of there being kind of like this one centralized show where there's fireworks, you just see little ones like all over the place.
And I remember I literally was getting choked up watching it.
And I was like, this is just like the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
It's like there's something about it.
Like, yeah, this is just this feeling like this is still fucking America.
Like, I just, it made me love the country.
It was like the most peaceful act of civil disobedience, but just this kind of like, you're not taking this from us.
We're all celebrating.
We've all, you know, done this.
I mean, then I got a little annoyed because it was real loud and woke up my daughter.
But the more important story, by the way, fireworks are really wonderful unless you got dogs or babies.
And then it's really just like, you're like, oh, please, please, I just need this time to relax.
But regardless, that's unnecessary to the story.
It was just a beautiful little moment.
As I'll never forget that, that feeling of seeing that.
Just all of these people.
It was like, it was like you were seeing like a hundred thousand little middle fingers to Fauci.
You know what I mean?
Just all going off.
It is just a fucking amazing thing.
And there's kind of like it, it made you feel like this kind of thing where you're like, oh, okay, we got, we got more numbers than we might think.
You know what I mean?
Like, I know everything on the TV is telling you, you know, COVID, COVID, COVID, oh my God, lockdown, socially distance, all this stuff.
But it's like, I'm looking around and seeing a whole lot of people who are like, fuck this, we're living our lives.
So anyway, beautiful display of fuck you in the sky.
Yeah, it really was.
It was great.
It is pretty interesting, right?
Like when people, you know, it's just the fact that the American holiday is a celebration of the Declaration of Independence is really just kind of fascinating, especially living under like the, you know, how authoritarian our current government is and how much secession is still like considered a dirty word.
Unalienable Rights Debate00:04:45
You know what I mean?
But like, you're like, oh, but that's the whole founding of this country is celebrating.
So, okay, call it independence, whatever.
So if a state called it independence, there's a go, are you seceding?
And they went, no, we're just, we're going to be independent, a different country.
Like, would that be better?
It's fair, you know.
And also, I, you know, I would argue that the logical conclusion of the Declaration of Independence is anarchy.
I mean, I don't know if everyone would exactly see it that way, but to me, you go, well, if you're going to say that, like, You know, it's self-evident that men are created with certain unalienable rights.
Um, and that if one want to be a part of one government, they have a right to secede.
Like, okay, well, if you're saying that applies to a group of people, wouldn't it apply to a group within that group that just seceded, right?
And then wouldn't it apply to a smaller group within that group and a smaller group?
Like, wouldn't you be able to take this down to the individual and say, like, if these rights, if you're saying man has these rights, and so a group of men will get together to protect these rights and form our own union, like, okay, but isn't the logical conclusion of that just whittling this down to smaller and smaller numbers until you say, yeah, the individual has a right to secede from his block or whatever, you know, I mean, um, so I do, I have to declare your independence, right?
You know, and so anyway, so that's I do see that as uh um as logical as long as we're you know we're talking about white male landowners, and so just kidding, everybody.
Um, but uh, just kidding, men of all races, uh, male landowners of all races.
Let's say that.
Uh, so, um, also kidding, but anyway, it's just interesting to celebrate that in these times.
And you know, the Libertarian Party, I just did an interview with uh Zach blanking on how to pronounce his last name, uh, but Zach, who's over at uh, at Reason, um, and we were talking about this about the concept of the national divorce because the Libertarian Party has tweeted a few things about the national divorce, and it's just interesting what people who object to that.
I find it very interesting.
He had some like very reasonable objections to it, but I just find it interesting as people object to that.
Like, it's such a fascinating concept to play with.
You know, like the idea of like, well, why is it that we all have to be one country that must stick together, you know, as a nation through all circumstances as we celebrate us breaking away from the British Empire?
Why is this?
Why is it better?
What is what do we gain by all being one nation?
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To me, at least, what I like, what's appealing to me about the national divorce rhetoric, which I think maybe we should work harder to make this clear, especially the Libertarian Party, if they're going to be talking about it, we're going to be talking about it, is that like the whole purpose of it is for peace.
Now, I understand, you know, look, the Declaration of Independence led to a war between the British Empire and the colonies.
Secession Without War00:08:51
Now, that's not necessarily the case.
There's lots of times where, you know, countries have seceded and it didn't lead to war.
However, the idea is like, if there's so much damage and violence and aggression happening from keeping you know, forcing two groups of people to be together who don't really want to be together isn't the peaceful answer to like, hey, let's go our separate ways.
And that'll be a little bit of a theme throughout this show.
But that the idea.
Now, the problem is that obviously there is a real danger and a real risk for conflict in that situation.
The issue is that there's also a real danger and issue and risk to conflict with staying together.
So you have to start to think which one of those is going to outweigh the other.
And it certainly would have to be done in the right way if there were to be secession within the United States of America, which probably won't happen tomorrow, but is not the craziest idea that this could happen in the next 10, 20 years, which is not that long, you know?
Go ahead.
No, I was going to say the model of the Democrats that they seem to want to rule over Republicans strikes me as because I think the Republicans are more than fine to be like, we don't care what you do in New York City.
We don't care what you do in California.
If you want to have schools that are teaching gay stuff, go teach your gay stuff, but like, just don't force it on me.
And for some reason, the Democrats have this different attitude of like, no, you can't go do different things in Texas.
Like your abortion law needs to be the same as my abortion law.
And I just, I don't even understand that attitude of like that they, you know what I mean?
You might as well go conquer Mexico and go force things upon them.
Like, why do you.
And look, it's very interesting that you say that.
And then making the Mexico point kind of really plays into the point right here with the national divorce is that they're not interested.
Like, you know, I don't know if you saw there were a bunch of memes of people.
I guess someone famous, I think someone in, I think it was Jessica, Jessica Beale.
Is that the one who's with Justin Timberlake?
I think it was them too.
And she tweeted something.
They were in Paris and she tweeted, you know, something like, oh, I'm in Paris.
They have the best croissants and they have women's rights, something like that.
And then she was just getting like wrecked on Twitter because it turns out that they've got croissants in America too.
What the fuck are you talking about?
You think our croissants suck out here?
We actually have plenty of croissants and women's rights.
But anyway, it turns out France has a very restrictive abortion law.
But you're not seeing any of these people fucking freak out about France.
Now, okay, I get it.
It's a little bit further away, but we're a pretty big country.
You got states that are pretty far from each other.
You know what I mean?
Like fucking New York and Texas are far.
Okay.
Not that far, but not as far as France, but far.
It's like, so why are, why are people freaking out about that?
It's like, oh, because we're supposed to all be in this one country.
Like, just because in your mind, this is America, then you go like, oh, okay, we have to all have this uniform set of views.
And, and so, so the idea would be that like, if you did have a national divorce, that it just wouldn't be as, you know, potentially at least people wouldn't care as much what's going on in the other area.
At least that's the hope.
Now, to what you said, there's also something there that's really, I think, important for libertarians to grapple with, which is like, Look, we do we have a value that is uh in theory a universal value or universal um philosophy that we think all people ought to be free, you know.
And I'd like to see freedom everywhere.
I want to see freedom all across the globe, you know.
I root for that.
I'd rather Hong Kong be free, and I'd rather North Korea be free, and I'd rather, you know, I think that would be better, certainly.
Um, however, how do we really envision freedom ever working in the real world?
So, not I'm not saying philosophically, I'm saying like logistically, is it going to be that you take over control of a huge mass of people and enforce the non-aggression principle from top down on them?
Seems unlikely, and something kind of ironic or like you know, contradictory about all of that anyway, right?
The idea of like enforcing freedom on a huge group of people.
And I think that we have to realize that even though the principle is universal, in practice, it's always going to have to be local.
The, you know, um, enforcement will always have to be localized, and that were, you know, I don't.
So, in other words, to your point, I wouldn't want, you know, I wouldn't want California to turn into a commie hellhole if they seceded.
You know what I mean?
I mean, look, there's still innocent people in California who don't want that.
If it's not a strictly voluntary thing, then there's somebody whose rights are being violated by this.
And I don't want that person's rights.
I want that person's rights to be protected.
But the question becomes: how do you realistically do that?
And it's got to be bottom-up.
It's not going to be top-down.
So it's got to be that like the people there are able to, you know what I mean, actually like demand enough freedom, enough powerful people are persuaded or for whatever, for their own self-interest, believe in it.
You know what I mean?
Like it's going to have to be something like that.
And the truth is, if you're having any type of bottom-up influence on your government, you're much better off with a much more local government.
Like you could have a real influence on a government that controlled your neighborhood.
Less so your city, less so your state, and almost zero so with your national federal government.
So it, in other words, as we try to get closer and closer to, you know, kind of simulating what a free society might look like, well, many steps better than what we currently have would be a situation where people kind of can vote with their feet to some degree, where areas where the overwhelming consensus is more progressive have more progressive policies.
Areas where the overwhelming consensus is less progressive has less progressive policies.
And people can kind of move, you know what I'm saying?
Like if there's one area that has like a 5% tax and another area that has a 70% tax, my guess is a whole bunch of people are going to move to the 5% tax area.
And that would probably put some pressure on the other area to keep tax rates lower if they want to keep people there.
The problem is that currently the major tax that people have is the federal income tax.
And moving out of the country is a much bigger barrier than just moving across state lines or city lines or town lines.
And so I think the libertarian argument, again, this isn't from like a philosophical standpoint.
It's much more of like a strategic practical standpoint is to try to support anything that decentralizes power as much as possible.
that's just practically speaking probably our best bet and then i i think uh it starts forcing governments to actually provide value to you it almost forces them to kind of operate closer to corporations because you know if they're just totally corrupt and they're just kind of seizing money from people and you get you know all your handouts and not growing economies then people can just move to where it's free and then all of a sudden you realize oh this freedom thing works really well that's right that's right And so, right.
Because to your point, there's a little bit of competition in there.
As long as there's a little bit of competition that brings them closer into the realm of what's more similar to market forces.
And it can showcase how things work.
So, for example, if Texas had no, you know, forced free health care law and actually got rid of licensing laws and then people were traveling to Texas for better and cheaper health care, you know, your state of Connecticut or Massachusetts that had your free government health care would all of a sudden have to explain, well, what's going on here that I can't get the care I need and I can just go down to Texas and it's, you know, cheap.
I can just go buy it.
I mean, they already kind of have to explain this with like Mexico.
Like, why is why is it that my drugs are so much cheaper there than here?
Vaccines and Market Forces00:09:36
But I, yeah.
Right.
And it just works better the more, you know, better if it were when it's different states than when it's different countries, just for practical purposes.
It's just a much higher barrier to move to Mexico if you want the cheaper drugs or go to Mexico if you want them than to go, you know, for a few hour drive.
So the other thing, and I talked about this a bit in this recent interview, which I think will be out.
I'm not sure, but it should be up soon.
That, you know, when you talk about these ideas, I think it does sound a little crazy and far-fetched still, less so than it used to, but still a little bit.
Although I would just say, like, you know, over the last couple years, a lot of things that sounded pretty crazy have ended up happening, you know?
And also there has been much more of an emphasis on the states than ever before, particularly with COVID.
I mean, there weren't too many safe havens from COVID, but really, I mean, the ones that were, or at least became safe havens to some degree, you know, this was a big thing that people noticed that you look, your life, not saying DeSantis was perfect, but your life in Florida was drastically different than your life in New York was.
Like your life was really drastically and not just affected like, you know, like, oh, I have like 6% more of my income that I pay in taxes if I'm in New York, which is, you know, annoying, but it's not the same thing as like my kid's school was shut down and I was put out of work.
This is very different.
It was weird if you traveled because you could see how delusional people were.
It's like literally if you walked into an insane asylum and everyone thought they had to like block out the sun or they were going to die.
And then you went into another building with nice windows and everyone's fine.
You're like, oh, the block out the sun people are just crazy.
Yeah.
That's what it felt like when you went to areas that were just open.
And like, you almost wish you could take your relatives from New York and be like, can you just come?
I'm going to places all the time.
No one's sick.
I mean, I got COVID.
I didn't die.
But I have it, but people were getting COVID in the other place too.
You know what I mean?
It's like, no, I have a chunk about this in my new hour.
It's like stand-up.
It's like, it really, it's hilarious in a lot of ways, but it's also just really interesting.
Like if you were traveling around during COVID, during the real craziness, you'd travel around.
It's like you'd get on a plane and go to Florida or get on a plane and go to Texas.
And it's like you got on a plane and went to 2019.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like, that's how it feels when you're like in New York or something like that.
You're like, whoa, I just literally time traveled back to everyone just being normal.
And you're like, oh my God, it's so nice.
It's so nice that everyone's just being normal.
People aren't wearing masks and businesses are open.
There's no capacity limits.
We're all just having fun.
And then you get on a plane and go back to, you know, to do a show in New York.
And you're like, oh my God, you know, I think I've made the comparison before, but it's like it was Will Smith and I Am Legend, where it's like, you're almost like looking at all these zombies in their masks and you're like, I can save you.
Like, you can go back.
They were just doing it.
All you have to do is just pretend none of this happened.
That's it.
That's it.
And like, yeah, like you said, like, yeah, some people still get COVID over there, but some people still get COVID here.
Like, it's not, none of this does anything.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Isn't it funny how getting COVID freed so many people up to just realizing like, oh, I lived.
I'm okay.
Yeah.
Well, it's so ridiculous.
I was talking about on Kennedy the other night there.
She was asking about the topic was like the flight cancellations and all the disruptions with that.
I was just talking about how they still have a mandate for pilots to get vaccinated.
So one pilot from South Southwest Airlines said, you know, that he goes, look, they're receiving job applications.
First off, he goes, a whole bunch of people retired when they were eligible to, you know, so if you didn't want to get the vaccine, just retire.
And then they he said they're passing over applications right now of totally qualified pilots who are unvaccinated.
And, you know, they say they claim they're having these shortages.
It's like, well, that might have something to do with it.
And it's just so stupid.
It's like, why it's insane to me that there isn't honest reporting on that.
I mean, what's the number?
Yeah.
Like, how many pilots could be hired tomorrow if they got rid of that?
And would that just solve the problem?
It's crazy to me.
They're not even being asked the question is what's crazy.
No one's even like pushing this as like a question.
That's to me when you start realizing like we live in full socialism where government can create a top-down policy and then just kind of cover their tracks where you don't realize the cost of it, where all of a sudden there's shortages.
I mean, it's essentially like a form of rationing where, you know, they try and pretend like airlines are fine, like a critical industry still just functions because they don't want to own up to or even write a story to go, hey, did government policy destroy a critical American industry?
It's, and, and it's fascinating to watch.
And we've seen this with so many examples, right?
Just in the last 20 years or so, so many examples where there's this, um, there's like a policy that's justified by this like logical claim, you know, and then the logical claim just gets completely destroyed, like just demolished, but the policy continues.
It's almost like the legs are gone, but the thing is just still moving along.
And you watch it, you're like, well, this is just really just something to see, a sight to behold.
But the idea of like just the logic of it completely falls apart, you know?
Like, okay, so you want to, you need your pilot to be vaccinated.
It's like, well, first of all, I mean, how many people don't really interact with the pilot in close quarters for an extended period of time.
And what about those filtration systems?
You told me during the peak of COVID that airplanes were the safest place to be because of their filtration systems.
So you could breathe on top of a guy next to you, but then when you get off the plane, go back to your house because you need to be separated.
Right, right.
And so, you know, you get you have, and the idea is like, okay, so you have this vaccine.
You're like, okay, the pilot's not vaccinated.
So you're like, well, the only way to justify a mandate for the vaccine.
would be to say this vaccine really, really works, right?
That's the, if it doesn't work, what's the fuck is the point of fucking mandating it?
So you'd have to be like, this vaccine works.
And you'd have to prove that there's an emergency.
Well, well, but I'm just saying, like, even just staying with this, right?
So the vaccine works, right?
It would have to work in order to justify a mandate.
And then you go, okay.
So the pilot's not vaccinated.
Has the vaccine been made available to everybody else?
Yes, it has.
Okay.
And it's provided to them for free, taxpayer expense, right?
Okay.
So they can all get it.
So the people who you're saying would be at risk could all get the vaccine if they want to get the vaccine.
Okay.
So already, like all the vaccine mandates, this makes no sense.
But then when you start to go like, you go, look, at this point, the amount of people who have had natural immunities, like, which is it stronger than the vaccine?
So there's all that, you have to account for all of that too.
So even if you were like just pretending to have some justification for this policy, you know, like you'd have to say, well, we'll count you if you've ever had COVID also.
Someone who's had COVID, as I said on Kennedy the other day, I love saying this, particularly when there's like a Democrat progressive on the panel because they never know what to fucking say.
But I just go, this is all so stupid.
And everybody knows it, including the people who pretend not to.
I go, there is no scientific argument that someone who's had COVID this year is not more safe than someone who was double vaccinated in the summer of 2021.
There's zero even like debate on that.
Someone who just, someone like me who just had COVID, whatever, a month or something ago, that I'm like way safer than someone who was vaccinated.
But it's just so funny.
The vaccine, you have more antibodies.
Right, right.
But even if they say that, it's like, right.
But so those people who never had COVID who got the vaccine, whatever, they don't have the natural antibodies, right?
So just saying, oh, for all those people who like gave me shit, because I was very publicly not getting vaccinated for all that time.
It goes, well, look at you now.
I'm safer than all of you.
So how stupid is this whole thing?
And then once you realize that their justification was always complete bullshit, because this thing's still moving along without that justification even existing, it starts to let you know, like, okay, so what would the real justification be then?
Risks of Splitting Up00:06:31
Since yours clearly wasn't the reason why.
There's some possibilities there.
I think the fucking huge pharmaceutical profits certainly have something to do with it.
Okay.
Sorry, do you want to add something?
No, I was going to say, and they were just able to lock in their industry for the next five years.
I think the government just pre-ordered like, I think it was $100 billion, some massive number of orders for the variant specific vaccine, which they've been claiming that they were making for a long time.
They still haven't rolled it out.
So, you know, it'll be, it'll be, yeah, it'll be months behind whatever the current variant is.
Of course.
And also, if this thing works so well, like, I don't know, why is the government got to be pre-paying for it?
You know, if you got something the market wants, aren't people just going to go purchase it if it's life-saving?
You'd, you would think it would be able to move if it was what they were claiming it is.
So anyway, so back to the point that I wanted to make before, but I kind of lost track of it.
Like when it to the issue we were saying about the national divorce thing and like states splitting up and all of this, I think that what a lot of people go to right away is the risks associated.
And as I was saying before, I do think there's risks associated.
Certainly, if there was ever to be a secession, you'd really want it to be done the right way.
really done the right way.
And you'd really want immediately, you know, from the libertarian perspective, at least, immediately, it's not like you would go just like, oh, okay, you know, kind of like what we were getting at before.
It's not like I'd say, oh, okay, well, as long as you secede and now this is more decentralized, then whatever you want to do, we're fine with.
Like the next step would be then putting pressure on that smaller government to, you know, protect freedom or not infringe upon freedom of the people in that state.
So it's not like you're just like, oh, that's great.
It's not just like, oh, like, well, this state seceded and they want slavery, but that's great.
It's decentralization.
Yay, like it's the end goal is liberty.
But you'd also want to really make sure that they were not, you know, logistically speaking, if there was any type of secession, it's not going to be a situation where 100% of people agree with the secession, right?
You'd want it to be as high as possible.
You don't want it to be a Brexit type situation where it's like 51%.
You'd really want to try to get it like to be 75, 80% of the people here want to be their own country.
And then it'd be really important to not be vindictive and oppress the other 20% because anything like that could end up being like a pretext for a war.
And that's like the real thing you want to avoid.
And so there's problems, there's logistical problems with, you know, because how what among among, you know, along what lines are you going to secede?
And along what, you know, there's all types of like issues that come up with this.
However, I think the point that people who are entertaining this conversation are making is that while there are issues and risks associated with the with the country splitting up, there are also real issues associated with it staying together.
And I got to say, Rob, you know, me and you have been two people who have, we've always been saying since we've been podcasting together, it's been a while now at this point, we've always said, like, look, this economy is a house of cards and it's going to collapse.
And it's going to be very tough when it does.
Like, there's going to be a lot of pain when this thing comes crashing down.
But look, the situation we're at now, and I'm not even talking about this huge crash, which I really think could come very soon.
But I've been wrong in the past and I'm very surprised how much they've been able to reinflate the bubble every time.
So who knows?
This may not happen next year, or this may not happen the year after that it also may, but I could be wrong about this again, so maybe it doesn't.
But if you start to look at more of a frame, like in the next 10 years, the next 20 years, there's no way that this doesn't all come to a head.
And if you even look at it like there um, if you look at like the economic projections not from like the Mises Institute, I'm saying the economic projections from like the Social Security Administration, like the, from like government economists, like any, if you at without another huge recession, without some like outside event,
I mean, we're going to be in within the next 10 to 20 years, interest on the debt is going to become a major federal expense.
This is just happening.
There's the only way to keep it as still, it'll be a major federal expense, but unless you want to blow it up to be something that literally eats up the entire GDP, just paying for the interest on this debt, you're going to have to have low interest, a low interest rate environment.
As long as you have a low interest rate environment, this inflation is not going to be controlled, right?
So you have a choice basically between raising interest rates very high and tanking this whole thing, or keeping interest rates very low and letting inflation get out of control.
My guess is it's going to be the latter.
They're going to try to keep reinflating the bubble as much as they can, which is probably the worst choice, but the more politically expedient choice.
And so if we're talking about something like that, like real economic hardships, like something substantially worse than what 2008 was, with the political climate, with the cultural climate that we're already in, what is that going to look like?
So you can talk about the dangers of decentralization and even secession, but think about the dangers of keeping this whole thing together by force.
This is going to look very bad.
So happy 4th of July.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Let's move on to a couple other things.
You know what?
Let's do uh let's do the Morning Joe clip real first.
I, I, someone uh, Twitter messaged me.
I gotta look up who it was and thank them for it because I can't remember.
Someone Twitter messaged me.
I just happened to catch this.
I don't, I'm not very good at going through my Twitter messages, but I happen to catch this as a great little moment.
Every now and then I see these, and I'm just, I was just like, oh, this is so glorious.
I just have to talk about this on the show.
I haven't played this for you yet, Rob, but I did kind of tell you what it is, more or less.
But it's one of those real, as you guys know who listen to this show, I love, love the mask drop moments from powerful people, people in the corporate press, politicians, things like that.
So this was really one of those by Joe Scarborough at Morning Joe.
They're talking about January 6th, and got to thank old Joe, old Uncle Joe, for his honesty in this moment, even though he doesn't realize the implications of what he's saying.
Let's play a Morning Joe clip from the other day.
Prosecuting a Former President00:14:00
So let's talk also about just the historic impact of a current president's justice department prosecuting a president going out of office.
I remember a lot of discussions when George W. Bush was leaving office at the end of 2008, early 2009.
There are a lot of Democrats or a lot of progressives or a lot of Obama supporters that wanted George W. Bush prosecuted for war crimes.
And Barack Obama wisely said, no, no, we don't want to get into that.
And I say wisely because, of course, Barack Obama, eight years later, could have had war crime charges brought against him for his use of drone strikes against American citizens.
And I'm just saying, at the end of every presidency, you could go back, cherry-pick anyway.
So I've always said, you don't bring charges against the last president.
I agree with the Kennedys when it came to Gerald Ford that pardoning Nixon, moving on, even though it cost Ford the presidency, it was a thing to do.
That was just a really long lineup to say.
But in this case, in this case, we have a president for the first time in American history that is trying to destroy American democracy and is very open about it that he wants to undo a presidential campaign if we don't move here.
So I guess what I'm saying, this is a hell of a quandary for Merrick Garland, isn't it?
It is.
And it's a hell of a moment.
I mean, if we can't agree on election results, we're looking at chaos and civil war.
And I've covered this before.
And people resorting to political violence is a very dangerous thing for the country.
So I think it's an option.
A prosecution is necessary if he's going to defy election results.
Yeah.
All right.
So that's there.
We go.
Now, here's what's so amazing about this clip.
It's almost like there is this concession that we are right about everything, like in the way we see the world.
You're like, it's almost like for once they'll finally go, yeah, we'll agree on terms here.
We'll agree on what happened.
We'll agree on the state of reality.
But it's a funhouse mirror version of it where, you know, we have to have all of those values.
Both Obama and Bush are war criminals.
Yes.
Well, he, I mean, he didn't flat out say that, yes, they are war criminals, but he goes, there was a lot of pressure to charge Bush with war crimes.
But then Obama also could have been charged with war crimes, right?
Because Obama's like, I want to commit some war crimes too.
I just became president.
You don't think I'm going to go bomb some people?
So he certainly doesn't dispute it and then gave one example of many of Obama's drone policy, which is the one you're allowed to talk about in the mainstream for whatever reason.
You know, you can't talk about like the actual wars and stuff, but you always say drone policy.
But so it's so interesting to build this case up, but actually be arguing that it was wise.
Obama wisely didn't prosecute George W. Bush for war crimes because, you know, then he could have been prosecuted for war crimes later.
Now, that is quite a way to look at war crimes.
It's so funny.
Like there's that they have this like moral indignation about everybody else who they judge to be the bad people.
But this is how quickly we excuse war crimes.
And by the way, of course, you would think any human being with any shred of semblance of like moral decency would be like, well, no, you'd want him to prosecute George W. Bush for war crimes because they're war crimes.
And then he'd be locked into a situation where he probably couldn't commit further war crimes because now the president has been set that you're not above the law and you could be prosecuted for these war crimes.
We got to keep this democracy going so we can commit more war crimes.
That's why MSNBC exists.
It's the deep state.
So like, we can't have anyone undermining the democracy because if they realize it's not a real democracy, we can't go abroad and do war crimes.
Guys, this whole war crime game is over.
You know, it's almost like they were going like, they were going like, now, listen, I hate to ever do this, but we got to prosecute a former president.
Now, this is dangerous.
This could someday be used against our precious war crimes.
But for now, we're going to have to do it because this is, and as they say, you go, well, look, I mean, if we don't agree on elections, this is why they say they have to prosecute Donald Trump, right?
Because this one time, even though we don't believe, even though we believe that the president is above the law, even when that means he's murdering innocent people, he has to be above the law.
But this one time has got to be different because he challenged the results of an election.
And if we don't all agree with the results of an election, then what do we have?
It's like, Jesus, man, how about if we don't all agree that war crimes should be punished?
Then what do we have?
Huh?
I think that's a lot scarier.
It's a lot scarier to say you live in a system where you believe that when it comes to slaughtering innocent people, the president is above the law than it is to say that like some people don't think Joe Biden was legitimately elected.
I would take on that debate with anyone any day.
How could you lose that?
Which one is those?
Which one of those is more dangerous?
Now, the point that he made about, you know, like the possible, the possibility for violence and civil war and all this stuff, it's like, yeah, it's kind of in line of the point that I was making, you know, about the dangers of us all staying together and being one nation.
That is, that is risky.
But the idea that what, you think somehow that would be alleviated by Merrick Garland prosecuting Donald Trump?
Like, is the argument really that that will like calm down tensions?
Like, however you feel about the last election, even if you're coming from the position of saying like it was completely legitimate and Trump was so reckless or even criminal in, you know, convincing people that or arguing that it was stolen without having evidence of it.
Even if you're starting from that point to go like the cat's out of the bag in a sense.
So what, oh, so do you think that like if the new government, who he claimed was illegitimate now prosecutes him and throw imprisons him for saying they're not legitimate?
Think about this from the perspective of someone who believes it's not legitimate.
That just solidifies their position, right?
That doesn't do anything to no, I mean, if you were actually interested in what, you know what I mean, like convincing people that it was legitimate, what you'd want is a, an impartial, thorough, open investigation.
That's what you'd want to try to prove to people, like, no, no, no, we're really concerned that you don't believe in this, whatever their worldview is, we all got to believe in the value of democracy in order for this whole thing to work.
So we're going to do everything we can to prove to you that this was legit.
So that is not what, like, I don't believe they actually believe that.
That's not what they're interested in here.
Now, I think there is just some petty bullshit going on because, you know, Trump was really insulting to Joe and Mika and said the whole thing about Mika's face lifts and her face bleeding and all that shit and talked about how Joe Scarborough might have murdered a woman once.
I think he said a lot of fucked up.
I believe it.
He went at the, it's very possible.
Who the hell knows?
But so I think they're just angry and kind of petty.
But there's also something where it's like, look, all again, much like with the COVID stuff, all these justifications are fucking bullshit.
None of them believe that this is going to like calm down the tensions between the divided America if we just throw Donald Trump in jail.
None of them believe that.
What they believe is that they've seen him rally their enemy, which is his supporters.
And they want him taken out for that reason.
They want him taken out so he can't galvanize.
Yes.
Yeah, they want to rule.
They want to rule over other people.
And in this case, what's so striking to me is that the statement is that presidents are above the law, except for Donald Trump, because it would be too dangerous for him to be above the law.
Well, then who makes the decision?
Who makes the decision that one president, the guy who we've all put in charge, isn't if this guy's not above the law, so then it sounds like there's a higher authority than the president who gets to make those determinations?
Sounds kind of like you're describing some deep state.
No, it literally sounds like you are now describing that there's some other government entity that gets to decide that the person that we've elected to be in charge, some of them are allowed to be in charge, but other of them are not because they're too dangerous if that guy's in charge.
It doesn't sound a whole lot like democracy.
That's for sure.
You know, no, right.
It's okay.
So, but now Merritt Garland can punish Donald Trump for what?
For breaking the law.
But you already said these other presidents have broken the law.
So it's not just about breaking the law, right?
It's about this kind of like, you've decided what law really matters and what law doesn't matter that much.
And think about it.
I mean, it's like, look, man, this is like some like truly like satanic level evil shit that you're going.
And we've decided that what doesn't matter are war crimes.
But what really matters, like, yes, those are technically against the law, but we don't prosecute for those.
But what really matters is prosecuting Donald Trump for really what's his crime.
I mean, above all, obviously the crime is that he won an election he wasn't allowed to win, that Hillary Clinton had been anointed, that she was going to be obviously a president who was with the program.
She was going to be a president that was like completely in support of the military industrial complex of Goldman Sachs of the, you know what I mean?
Like, okay, so he robbed her.
But really, what's the crime here?
And this is what's so goddamn fascinating to specifically to libertarians.
This is why libertarians, particularly like the wokey type, you know, who are basically been driven into irrelevancy.
But where libertarians get goofy on this stuff is not understanding how interesting this is and how powerful a moment this is.
That it's like, what are they saying his crime really was?
Because none of them are being very specific about what, what's the crime.
It's not january 6th because Trump didn't do january 6th.
You know, the crime is what they late?
They just told you right there that he challenged the election results.
What?
What is that really like?
Translate this, Donald Trump, on the biggest bully pulpit, through the biggest megaphone, said, I don't believe, I don't believe in it.
That's the crime.
This whole thing requires that you believe in it.
And he loudly told like fucking as the sitting president of the United States said, I don't believe in it.
I'm leaving.
I'm handing over the keys to this guy, but I don't believe in it.
I don't believe it's legitimate.
And that is the ultimate crime.
And they're telling you right now that's worse than war crimes.
And not just like a little bit worse, like way worse.
They're saying, oh, we love war crimes go all the time.
Who cares about that?
And it goes, and I hate the idea that we have to prosecute someone, but we have to prosecute them for the crime of telling you I don't believe in the perceived legitimacy of the people who rule over you.
It's almost, it's like from the opposite, it's like in the same way that they just almost said the same thing we say, but with the complete opposite conclusion, it's almost like they're acknowledging Rothbard's premise with the complete opposite, you know, conclusion because they're an upside down, satanic, evil, bizarro world.
But like what they're telling you is that like, yes, we acknowledge that the whole, like the system of the government relies on perceived legitimacy.
And if you tell people you don't believe in that perceived legitimacy, then that's undermining everything.
We're going to have a civil war in this country.
This is going to be horrible.
All of it's just such a fascinating admission.
So anyway, I thank whoever, the nameless person who sent me this clip.
I'll find him on Twitter and message him back and thank him for it.
But yeah, that's something.
There's some woman.
I forget the exact story.
So I don't want to like go into it because I'll fucking probably get it wrong and butcher it.
But there was some woman in his life who ended up dying.
And there was always kind of like a question.
Was it before he cheated on his wife or afterwards?
Before.
It was before.
Okay.
Maybe that was the first one.
He made it.
It was before.
It was before he left her.
Right.
So he was still trying to cover his tracks.
And then he was like, this isn't sustainable.
I can't keep killing the women just because I don't love my wife.
That's why he went with Mika.
He went, getting too old for this shit.
Yeah.
I can only bury so many corpses.
He just had a real Danny Glover moment.
All right.
That's our, that's our episode.
Go enjoy your 4th of July, Rob.
I'm going to, I got some family coming over.
I'm going to start grilling and drinking and having fun.