True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 524: Black February
Aired: 2026-02-23
Duration: 01:53:48


=== Without Epstein (10:48) ===

[00:00:00]  Before the end of the Second World War, the West had been expanding.
[00:00:04]  Its missionaries, its pilgrims, its soldiers, its explorers pouring out from its shores to cross oceans, settle new continents, build vast empires extending out across the globe.
[00:00:16]  But in 1945, for the first time since the age of Columbus, it was contracting.
[00:00:24]  Europe was in ruins.
[00:00:26]  Half of it lived behind an iron curtain, and the rest looked like it would soon follow.
[00:00:32]  The great Western empires had entered into terminal decline, accelerated by godless communist revolutions and by anti-colonial uprisings that would transform the world and drape the red hammer and sickle across vast swaths of the map in the years to come.
[00:00:50]  Against that backdrop, then as now, many came to believe that the West's age of dominance had come to an end and that our future was destined to be a faint and feeble echo of our past.
[00:01:04]  But together, our predecessors recognized that decline was a choice, and it was a choice they refused to make.
[00:01:16]  This is what we did together once before.
[00:01:18]  And this is what President Trump and the United States want to do again now.
[00:01:23]  Together with you.
[00:01:47]  Ladies and gentlemen, at long last, we're back.
[00:01:52]  We're back.
[00:01:53]  We're back and there is no, there's literally an empty chair.
[00:01:57]  We're back in the studio, first of all.
[00:02:00]  And there is an empty chair across from me and a hole in my heart so large that Peter Thiel himself would not be able to fit one of those fists within it.
[00:02:12]  Jesus.
[00:02:13]  Well, he likes to do that sort of thing.
[00:02:14]  As we've mentioned on this show many times, hello.
[00:02:18]  Welcome back to Truan On.
[00:02:20]  I am your male host, Bryce Belden.
[00:02:27]  I'm the male producer, Young Chomsky.
[00:02:29]  And yet there is not a, we are with serious yin-yang deficit.
[00:02:33]  Welcome to Truanon.
[00:02:35]  I can't believe this.
[00:02:36]  In order to make you guys feel more at home, a little less crazy about how things are, I'm going to hit the gong real quick.
[00:02:42]  Gong it in.
[00:02:48]  And we breathe in and we breathe out.
[00:02:51]  That does help.
[00:02:52]  It does help.
[00:02:52]  I know.
[00:02:53]  I think maybe if this podcast was starting now, we'd do every segment would begin with a gong.
[00:03:00]  That would be, yeah.
[00:03:01]  There's just no music or sound effects.
[00:03:03]  It would just be the long sustain of the massive gong.
[00:03:07]  Actually, I think that I want to make some changes here while Liz is gone.
[00:03:11]  Okay.
[00:03:11]  First of all, I want to change the name of the show.
[00:03:13]  What to?
[00:03:14]  To the No Liz power app.
[00:03:17]  Or just, you know, or just Brace.
[00:03:20]  Check.
[00:03:21]  You know?
[00:03:21]  Brace.
[00:03:22]  Yes.
[00:03:22]  Done.
[00:03:24]  And second of all, I think that I kind of want to get some girls in here.
[00:03:29]  To do what?
[00:03:30]  Just be around.
[00:03:32]  You know, like in movies when they go to like a Coke dealer's house or like Jabba's Palace, for instance.
[00:03:36]  Right.
[00:03:37]  There's just kind of like some jigs there.
[00:03:40]  Yeah.
[00:03:40]  You know?
[00:03:41]  I kind of think that that would elevate the show a little bit.
[00:03:47]  And of course, I want to start.
[00:03:51]  I got nothing else.
[00:03:52]  I just want to start the episode.
[00:03:54]  This is, I got to cover some stuff first before we get into the main event.
[00:04:00]  There have been a series of shake-ups in Epstein World.
[00:04:06]  And number one is you saw those pictures of Prince Andrew being escorted to and from the Bobby's house, right?
[00:04:14]  Yeah.
[00:04:15]  That was difficult to see.
[00:04:16]  Well, that's a classic genre of British freaks through the car window.
[00:04:23]  Yeah, the royalty does not do well in vehicles.
[00:04:28]  And to the point where one would think that there would be some kind of tinting regime that they would embrace.
[00:04:36]  Maybe that hasn't made it over there.
[00:04:38]  Yeah, they might not have that there yet.
[00:04:40]  I mean, it is, they don't have air conditioning, you know.
[00:04:42]  Yeah, that's true.
[00:04:43]  And I got to tell you, if you are a member of the royal family listening to this, any royal family, you got to get, I understand that you need some vehicles that have clear windows that you can see through, but we got to invest in some tints.
[00:04:58]  You got to maybe need another car with some, or even kind of how they used to have these.
[00:05:03]  And I think in limousines, at least I've seen this in old movies, little curtains that you can close.
[00:05:08]  That's kind of that adds a little bit of dignity.
[00:05:10]  You know, that's the royal tint.
[00:05:13]  He has been arrested, or he was briefly arrested, now freed, for suspicion that he had traded confidential information while serving as a trade envoy of the UK.
[00:05:26]  Now, this pertains to me because while he was trade envoy of the UK, I downloaded his app and I can't remember.
[00:05:35]  It's no longer on my phone.
[00:05:36]  Something, it's called like Royal Palace or something like that.
[00:05:40]  And I could not for the life of me figure out how to use it.
[00:05:42]  What was it?
[00:05:43]  What did it purport to do?
[00:05:45]  That was also rather obscure.
[00:05:48]  It was actually kind of difficult.
[00:05:50]  It was called like something at Palace.
[00:05:52]  It was kind of difficult to see what it was made for and what you could use it for.
[00:05:56]  So it was sort of something that I downloaded on my phone.
[00:05:59]  In retrospect, it might have downloaded child pornography to my phone without me knowing it.
[00:06:03]  But it doesn't exist anymore.
[00:06:05]  No, It does not exist anymore.
[00:06:07]  This is like four or five years ago when the show first started.
[00:06:10]  I downloaded it.
[00:06:10]  So there's a vacuum in the marketplace.
[00:06:12]  I know.
[00:06:13]  I should make one.
[00:06:14]  We should make Prince Andrew a mad.
[00:06:16]  But he's been arrested by the Bobbies.
[00:06:18]  He is now freed.
[00:06:19]  And I got to tell you, it looks like Mandelson might be next.
[00:06:22]  And so there could be a shake-up at the top of the Brits.
[00:06:26]  And I got it.
[00:06:27]  This is tough for me to say too, literally because I, you know, it's a difficult name.
[00:06:32]  Sultan, as Epstein called him, but Sultan Ahmed bin Suleim has stepped down as the CEO of DP World.
[00:06:40]  Sultan is all over the Epstein files, including a message.
[00:06:45]  This actually, he's not involved in this, but Epstein texting his urologist-is it Harry or Henry Fish?
[00:06:54]  I can't remember.
[00:06:54]  I think it's Harry Fish.
[00:06:56]  Famously.
[00:06:56]  Yeah, Harry Fish.
[00:06:57]  That the Sultan was seeking a bionic penis in Switzerland.
[00:07:03]  And actually, this led me, and you know, you guys aren't so curious on how the show is made.
[00:07:08]  You just want to see the end product.
[00:07:09]  But let me let you in on the sausage casing for a moment.
[00:07:12]  Oftentimes, when researching topics to speak on this show, we run into now I run into dead ends.
[00:07:20]  And one of the dead ends I ran into is I was looking to what bionic penises might be available in Switzerland.
[00:07:28]  And you remember the last time we did an episode about the Schaefer width and girth procedure.
[00:07:34]  Of course, the swag procedure.
[00:07:35]  Yeah.
[00:07:35]  Which involved injecting the penis with various filler that might otherwise be used in the face to add girth to it.
[00:07:44]  There have been many new advancements in technology.
[00:07:47]  Obviously, it does not line up with the text messages that Jeffrey Epstein was sending to his urologist about this subject.
[00:07:54]  But they also, the very rich, have access to these things prior to the Hoi Paloy getting it.
[00:08:01]  And so I looked at this stuff for a really long time.
[00:08:06]  And then I was like, actually, this, unless I go do it, I don't think I have enough to say about it.
[00:08:12]  But he has stepped down as the head of DP World.
[00:08:15]  And all this and more will be covered in our next episode.
[00:08:19]  However, for this episode, listen, I know everybody wants to hear about Jeffrey Einstein, but I think we're going to maybe attack Iran.
[00:08:28]  People don't know what they want anyway.
[00:08:29]  That's true.
[00:08:30]  People don't know what they want.
[00:08:31]  But I think we're maybe going to attack Iran.
[00:08:32]  And a lot of stuff has happened on the international stage.
[00:08:35]  And so, you know, I've been trying, I've called every single woman in the New York City phone book, and not a single one has agreed to sit in for Liz.
[00:08:46]  And so I had to call in two men for the task.
[00:08:49]  We are talking about international things, relations, treaties, law, countries, and whatever else you can imagine, with our two guests.
[00:09:02]  And we will begin that right now.
[00:09:20]  Is this the first episode without Liz or no?
[00:09:22]  Yeah.
[00:09:24]  Are you nervous?
[00:09:25]  Should I be nervous?
[00:09:26]  I don't think so.
[00:09:27]  Do you think I'm going to fail without Liz?
[00:09:29]  I think I might fail without Liz.
[00:09:31]  I don't think you'll fail, but it'll be different.
[00:09:33]  Ladies and gentlemen, like many individuals, I have my head in the sand at all times, not paid attention to what's going on on TikTok in the outside world, buried deep like some kind of sensual ostrich.
[00:09:48]  But occasionally, I do poke my head up out of that.
[00:09:53]  I don't know if I said sand or dirt before, but I guess it makes more sense maybe if it's just dirt.
[00:09:58]  And I take stock of the world around me and I am horrified.
[00:10:02]  And unlike Hans Joost, I'm sure many of the listeners out there's personal idol, I do not reach for my revolver because, of course, I've expended all the cartridges exhorting my slaves to work faster and, of course, taking care of the rest of the rats for our deposed mayor, Eric Adams.
[00:10:21]  Instead, I reach for my Jew lawyers.
[00:10:25]  And what do we have here?
[00:10:27]  But in hot seat number one, Jake Rom, who asked to be identified is the very generic way of writer and attorney.
[00:10:37]  And Dylan Saba, who is also a writer and attorney, but at least he has this going for him.
[00:10:45]  He is the co-host of Turbulence Podcast.

=== Vance's War Cry (15:33) ===

[00:10:48]  Fellas, welcome to the show.
[00:10:50]  Thanks for having us.
[00:10:51]  Always a pleasure, Brace.
[00:10:53]  This is now, this is a lot of testosterone this year.
[00:10:55]  Yeah, boys are.
[00:10:56]  Are you feeling this?
[00:10:57]  Yeah.
[00:10:57]  This is the first inaugural meeting of the world's first Third World Appreciation Society sponsored by Chrome Hearts.
[00:11:06]  And I am, because we have sponsors now that Liz is off the show.
[00:11:11]  A lot has happened.
[00:11:12]  I don't even know where to begin.
[00:11:14]  I actually have been, because due to audience capture, I've been having to do a lot of Epstein stuff.
[00:11:20]  But unfortunately, things have kept moving in the world.
[00:11:23]  And I wanted to have you guys on.
[00:11:25]  We've been talking about this, I guess, since last week.
[00:11:28]  And then more stuff is happening now.
[00:11:30]  We have to talk about more of it.
[00:11:31]  I don't know where we should start.
[00:11:32]  Munich, Board of Peace.
[00:11:33]  I think maybe let's start at Munich.
[00:11:35]  The Munich Security Conference took place over Valentine's Day weekend, which I thought was rude of them.
[00:11:42]  Yeah.
[00:11:42]  Yeah.
[00:11:43]  But also, like, none of these people love in their hearts.
[00:11:46]  I did feel that.
[00:11:47]  Yeah.
[00:11:47]  I did feel that.
[00:11:48]  Also, they're Germans.
[00:11:50]  You guys, we've been talking about so this is a question more I'm asking so that the audience can hear the answer to, but I feel like the two big pillars of the conference this year were the speeches by Marco Rubio, standing in for last year's very angry JD Vance, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the congresswoman for the Bronx, who was standing in for, I don't know, Hillary Clinton.
[00:12:15]  What did you guys make of this fucking clown show in Munich?
[00:12:20]  I thought it was a pretty fascinating performance by both of these potential 2028 contenders.
[00:12:26]  It really is our leading lights.
[00:12:29]  Yeah, although AOC made sure to come out afterwards and say, hey, hey, hey, this was for the love of the game.
[00:12:35]  This is not me running for president.
[00:12:37]  This is because I care about the scourge of authoritarianism and the rising fascism around the world, although I don't think she said that word.
[00:12:45]  She didn't say that word.
[00:12:46]  She cares about kindness, though.
[00:12:48]  Kindness.
[00:12:48]  Yeah.
[00:12:48]  She cares about kindness a lot.
[00:12:50]  I think we should maybe start with Rubio because he was the real heavy hitter.
[00:12:54]  He gave the keynote address.
[00:12:57]  And it was a pretty fascinating performance.
[00:13:01]  He really got up there and I would say leaned into the whole Western decline thing.
[00:13:06]  Yeah.
[00:13:07]  A kind of like Spangler-esque screed about how the post-World War II era was one of runaway, woke, godless communism and national liberation movements and post-colonialism, and how the U.S. and the West have simply watched their great civilization crumble.
[00:13:31]  You know, their great civilization that produced, you know, everything from Da Vinci to the Rolling Stones and the Beatles.
[00:13:38]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:13:41]  But at the same time, he's also kind of leaning into the changing world.
[00:13:45]  He's like, this has been a period of decline, but also the rules of geopolitics are changing now.
[00:13:52]  And I think it was so fascinating to me that he kind of like he intentionally undermines the United Nations and the Security Council by talking about how it failed to solve the Gaza conflict, which is just like fucking insane, given the fact that the United States vetoed it fail.
[00:14:11]  Yes.
[00:14:11]  It also failed to solve things that are not in its purpose.
[00:14:14]  Sorry, could you explain that for some of our listeners who maybe have had their heads even further in the sand than I am?
[00:14:20]  The U.S. vetoed what?
[00:14:22]  The U.S. vetoed six different resolutions, I believe, at the Security Council calling for a ceasefire.
[00:14:27]  The U.S. totally ignored the ruling of the International Court of Justice, which is the world court, the arm of the United Nations that determines international law that said Israel is plausibly committing a genocide, ordered Israel to allow aid into the strip.
[00:14:44]  The U.S. just totally ignored that, totally hampered the Security Council, which is the body of the United Nations that is meant to resolve these kinds of conflicts from actually being able to do so.
[00:14:56]  And then fucking Rubio comes out and is like, well, I didn't do it.
[00:15:00]  So now we have to make the board of peace.
[00:15:03]  I thought that was really interesting too, because there was this last year, obviously, JD Vance came out and gave this sort of fire and brimstone speech, which I think was kind of just a worse version, but better delivered of Rubio's speech.
[00:15:17]  And unlike Rubio, I've always gotten the sense that like Vance was kind of part of this, like, yeah, like a Spenglerian kind of clash of civilizations guy, just because people that he were more powerful than him that he hung around with probably thought that was cool.
[00:15:36]  Whereas Rubio, I think, is actually a more effective communicator of it because Vance just came in.
[00:15:41]  I mean, it's hard to take him seriously because he, you know, you're like, he looks 30.
[00:15:45]  He just looks like a bad 30 forever.
[00:15:48]  You know what I mean?
[00:15:50]  And like an alcoholic 30-year-old or maybe he's in recovery for a couple of years.
[00:15:53]  Whereas Rubio, even though he stumbled quite a bit, delivered it both more effectively and it was a little bit more carrot as opposed to just stick there.
[00:16:02]  But not much more.
[00:16:04]  A little more.
[00:16:04]  Like he was kind of saying it wasn't like, like his whole thing, the reason he got the standing ovation is he's like, the old world is dead.
[00:16:11]  We need to revive like Western civilization.
[00:16:14]  Europe is our progenitor and so great.
[00:16:17]  Now you get to be our like most favorite vassals.
[00:16:20]  Yes.
[00:16:20]  Now you get to rock with the new world.
[00:16:21]  We can restore Western civilization, but we're doing it.
[00:16:25]  And you're coming along for the ride.
[00:16:27]  And we can, you know, we can let you have like colonialism again.
[00:16:31]  We can let you have all of this great stuff that you got swindled out of by the brown and dark races of the world, right?
[00:16:39]  Which is like post-45.
[00:16:41]  But yeah, like the carrot is kind of like, kind of like you can be Victor Orban, right?
[00:16:47]  If you become Victor Orban, you can have a pretty nice life as a junior partner slash vassal in our race war against everyone else.
[00:16:56]  I think that was the subtext that he effectively communicated.
[00:16:59]  But also I do think that a lot of those like European IR chuds were standing up and clapping like seals because he literally said we when he was talking about NATO.
[00:17:07]  Yes.
[00:17:08]  So that's, I guess that would be the big difference between Vance's speech is that like, yeah, there was this invitation to come along.
[00:17:14]  Whereas what the impression I get from when Vance addresses Europeans is it's like, we're leaving you behind.
[00:17:20]  Yeah.
[00:17:21]  You know, and it's like, you can come along as a junior partner.
[00:17:23]  And so obviously it was still very within the Trump government's, let's say, rhetorical style guide of like, you have to castigate them.
[00:17:35]  But it was more, I would say, more inviting.
[00:17:37]  I did think it was interesting, especially, listen, I don't want to make anything of this.
[00:17:43]  You know, he's Latinx, Marco Ruby.
[00:17:46]  You know, let's address the elephant in the room or the elephante, as his people might say.
[00:17:51]  But he's very much, let's say, I mean, listen, you know, obviously the Spaniards are in Europe.
[00:18:01]  I don't know if that's what everyone thinks of when they think of Europe, but the anti-anti-colonial subtext to a lot of the speech was really noticeable.
[00:18:14]  And, you know, we're talking a lot about post-45 in this speech.
[00:18:17]  For those who don't know, post-45 to now, this era has been one of international frameworks of especially in the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, a time of decolonization movements throughout the world, third world movements, but also movements by the non-aligned countries, which didn't really work out so well, but there was a big movement around it.
[00:18:45]  And as Rubio points out, increased welfare state spending in Europe, which I thought it was noticeable how he got that in there.
[00:18:54]  And Rubio is explicitly naming all of this stuff as essentially a mistake.
[00:19:00]  And he wraps globalization in there too.
[00:19:04]  But everything before that is also a mistake.
[00:19:07]  He says, you know, people, and I'm paraphrasing here, obviously, you know, we thought it was going to be this kumbaya thing, you know, everybody, there was no nations everyone got together, but like, that's just not in human nature, which, you know, reflects probably some of his ideological training there.
[00:19:22]  And explicitly says that, like, essentially, well, semi-explicitly says that decolonization was basically a mistake.
[00:19:29]  Yeah.
[00:19:31]  Semi-explicit.
[00:19:32]  Because it is like, it's not really subtext.
[00:19:34]  It's not, it's like on the surface.
[00:19:35]  You can stick your finger like down in the sand of time.
[00:19:37]  It's between implicit and explicit.
[00:19:39]  But nevertheless, I think you pointing to his Latinx identity is instructive here because just as a Latin American fascist, he has a bit more panache than a JD Vance or a Stephen Miller, the kind of like WASPY or American Jew version of that.
[00:19:55]  It's just like less compelling, especially when it's draped in the MAGA culture war stuff.
[00:20:00]  Whereas he can speak, Rubio can speak to, you know, European empire, the high colonial period in a more persuasive way.
[00:20:10]  Then, yeah, JD Vance just comes off as this like petulant child.
[00:20:15]  And because he's from the American, he's like grown out of the American culture war, is kind of on some level always going to be calling Europe gay for like having welfare states.
[00:20:24]  Yeah.
[00:20:25]  And so it was like a kind of more compelling narrative from Rubio.
[00:20:31]  And I don't know.
[00:20:32]  I left, I wasn't at Munich, but I left watching Munich.
[00:20:36]  Do you mean you closed your laptop?
[00:20:38]  I closed my laptop being like, oh, it's going to be, it's going to be Rubio.
[00:20:42]  That I think that he just has it more than Vance does.
[00:20:46]  I think his centrality to the Venezuela stuff, the kind of fusion of the Rubio Cold War ideology with the border fascism of Miller, with the Zionism of Miriam Adelson or whatever, is a more compelling fusion to inherit Trumpian MAGAism or whatever than JD Vance, who's just kind of like chasing the culture war stuff.
[00:21:11]  Yeah, you know, I thought about that, the choice to send Rubio as opposed to Vance.
[00:21:17]  Maybe they just don't want to repeat.
[00:21:19]  And obviously there's been some subtext in this administration of like, these are kind of the two contenders for, you know, the throne.
[00:21:27]  Did you see the thing about Trump like getting them both pairs of shoes or something?
[00:21:31]  Like his little children Rubio that like lifts that he wears.
[00:21:35]  Because he is quite small.
[00:21:37]  Yeah, he's the Mario.
[00:21:41]  But I did think it was a little interesting.
[00:21:44]  And Rubio has just a ball.
[00:21:47]  And, you know, obviously I'm not ideological here.
[00:21:50]  I just call him as I see him.
[00:21:52]  Ms. Balls is gone, but Mr. Strikes remains.
[00:21:55]  I would say that Rubio has done, if you're a Trump guy or you're like Miriam Adelson, has done a pretty good job of getting the work done.
[00:22:06]  I mean, it's been pretty fucking crazy over this past year.
[00:22:10]  And Vance has, you know, Vance has been much more present than someone like, you know, Kamala, but obviously maybe he is from his family history, not as much of a drinker or pill user as our former vice president.
[00:22:23]  But Rubio is coming up more in Trump's speeches where he actually said at the Board of Peace meeting the other day is that, you know, Rubio did such a good job at Munich.
[00:22:33]  I was like, I'm going to have to fire this guy.
[00:22:36]  Which is not a totally empty threat.
[00:22:37]  I know.
[00:22:38]  I actually, yeah.
[00:22:39]  He's going to sideline him for a bit now.
[00:22:41]  But Rubio has something.
[00:22:43]  There seems to be the spirit of the warrior has been awoken within him since kind of being elevated to Trumpland.
[00:22:51]  It has really been something to watch.
[00:22:54]  I do think that there was a real sigh of relief at the recommitment to NATO there.
[00:22:59]  Mark Rut, the Secretary General, I think was very, very happy at some of the things that were sort of said and at least some of the things that were not said, if that makes sense.
[00:23:13]  Like they weren't like, fuck you guys.
[00:23:16]  It's pretty short-sighted, though.
[00:23:17]  I have to say, if you're in NATO's seat here, like, yeah, the subtext of that is you need to buy a bunch of American weapons.
[00:23:26]  Like, you need to give us a bunch of money and change your countries.
[00:23:29]  You can't do welfare spending anymore.
[00:23:30]  Yes.
[00:23:30]  Right.
[00:23:31]  Our commitment to NATO is you need to now increase to like 5% or whatever.
[00:23:35]  Yeah.
[00:23:35]  And be on this permanent war footing to finance our kind of misadventures around the world and our declining economy.
[00:23:42]  And so like all of these like, you know, fucking cucked European guys clapping like SEALs, right, are either, you know, either explicitly right-wing and they want this, this war footing because they want to get rid of their welfare state for brown people, but not for whites.
[00:23:56]  Although it's going to go away for both of them.
[00:23:59]  Or they're just dumb.
[00:24:01]  Or they're just like, oh, he said the magic words and now we get to like keep doing our civilizational war against the Russians.
[00:24:08]  But I know, but if you, yeah, it's not going to last.
[00:24:11]  Like if you see the writing on the wall, like I don't think the Greenland stuff is actually going away.
[00:24:15]  And they're obviously the Europeans are very concerned with the Greenland stuff, but there's also other things beyond that, right?
[00:24:21]  If the U.S. and Israel, God forbid, do effectively kneecap the Iranians or take them out of the picture, it's not like Israel is going to stop its permanent war footing.
[00:24:34]  And they're already talking in Israel about, you know, the fucking Sunni Axis and Turkey being the next big threat after, you know, after Iran.
[00:24:45]  And like, yeah, on some level, they'd like it to be Pakistan, but Pakistan has nukes.
[00:24:49]  So they're like, it's just the contradictions for NATO are not going to go away.
[00:24:54]  Turkey is a NATO state, right?
[00:24:57]  So it doesn't like, and also the whole, you know, board of peace thing.
[00:25:01]  It's not like the European NATO countries are excited about a UN replacement.
[00:25:05]  They're not excited about, you know, this arrangement of power.
[00:25:10]  And so it maybe is slightly more comforting in the like short term about Greenland and about what the Trump administration is going to do.
[00:25:18]  But the Europeans, I think more broadly, need to and are having other kinds of conversations about how to survive the post, like the aftermath of the liberal international order.
[00:25:32]  Because I think that they cannot rely on the United States.
[00:25:36]  They cannot rely on NATO sustaining in its current form.
[00:25:41]  I think they have to look at also the non-proliferation stuff, like the U.S. treaty with Russia on nukes falling apart.
[00:25:51]  And I think they're seriously asking themselves what it would mean to not be in the U.S.'s security umbrella in any kind of like permanent way.
[00:25:59]  I might be wrong on this, but isn't there just not really any treaty with Russia anymore?
[00:26:03]  No, it expired.
[00:26:04]  It's all expired.
[00:26:05]  Not all, maybe, but no, maybe all expired.
[00:26:08]  But yeah.
[00:26:08]  Yeah, the big like Obama treaty, what is it, smart?
[00:26:11]  I think it's smart or smart to something.
[00:26:14]  Yeah, salt.
[00:26:15]  Or it's salt.
[00:26:16]  That's all the old one right now.
[00:26:17]  Okay, yeah.
[00:26:17]  Smart then.
[00:26:18]  I think that sounds like Obama.
[00:26:20]  But I think so.

=== European Defense Dilemmas (02:20) ===

[00:26:22]  I mean, there has been various, this is maybe getting a little too off topic, but there have been various attempts or theories of making attempts over the past in the post-war era over a sort of European-centric defense formation.
[00:26:37]  Obviously, Macron's big little pet project is his fake European army that he wants to create.
[00:26:44]  You know, I think that there is, and again, not that I want this.
[00:26:49]  I'm just, you know, I'm calling strikes here.
[00:26:51]  I think that there is, or maybe now was an opportunity for Europe to do something around this as part of the sort of really electric reaction they had to the start of the Russia-Ukraine war.
[00:27:05]  I don't know.
[00:27:05]  I think that moment has passed.
[00:27:06]  But I also think, and not to sound like some sort of 19th century, you know, middle European theorist or whatever here, I think Europe does lack a center.
[00:27:17]  Yeah.
[00:27:18]  You know, it would be Germany, but they got a lot of problems.
[00:27:23]  It would be France, but they also like to do it by themselves.
[00:27:27]  And there isn't really a cohesiveness to the EU or to just, you know, even non-EU states, but taken within Europe that I think kind of prevents it.
[00:27:37]  Like there's no real, I mean, obviously, like Germany and dominates a lot of countries in the EU, or at least, you know, Germany and France are the biggest ones.
[00:27:46]  But there just isn't really, it seems like the one thing that I think that the Trump people really correctly diagnose with Europe is there is this lethargy.
[00:27:55]  And I just don't really see that.
[00:27:59]  I think that many of those states will accept a more explicit junior partner.
[00:28:04]  I mean, they've always been the junior partner to the Americans, or at least, again, since the Second World War.
[00:28:09]  But I think that they will accept whatever new arrangement is being created here.
[00:28:13]  The only problem is, like you say, yeah, we also have this arrangement with Israel and some of those countries do as well.
[00:28:19]  Ours is very close.
[00:28:22]  And any new war that kicks off or new global conflagration will draw the U.S. in and possibly draw Europe in.
[00:28:31]  And then there's all these sort of cascading effects from that.
[00:28:34]  Obviously, as you guys know, we've been doing the Great Replacement for a while, but the refugee crisis kind of caused by the Syrian Civil War.

=== International Order Tensions (14:05) ===

[00:28:42]  A lot of European countries are very focused on preventing maybe such an event from occurring again.
[00:28:50]  And so there are these kind of tensions there.
[00:28:52]  I do want to, I want to talk, because we've got to talk about Board of Peace too, but I want to also just bring in here Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez because she, you know, I've been saying for a long time that, and this has been a feather in my hat, we need not only more women at the Munich Security Conference, more Latinxes, which I was thrilled to see their lineup this year, but more progressives.
[00:29:17]  And we had Gretchen Whitmer and we had the handsome Gretchen Whitmer and we had Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
[00:29:24]  And she came and gave a speech that was, I think in some ways, kind of unfairly, like people, people made fun of her like missteps in like misspeaking a couple times.
[00:29:35]  But actually, the content of what she said sucked way worse than I think many people are giving me.
[00:29:40]  What she said, nothing.
[00:29:41]  She said absolutely fucking nothing, except like a recapitulation of like democracies are good and authoritarianism is bad.
[00:29:50]  Like, who knows what that means, right?
[00:29:53]  Like, we have to get rid of authoritarians around the world.
[00:29:57]  We need to combat them with like the Latina concept of kindness and friendship.
[00:30:02]  She did tell me.
[00:30:03]  What a word.
[00:30:04]  What words?
[00:30:04]  She said it was like, I kind of remember.
[00:30:06]  I texted you guys.
[00:30:07]  It was like a Latin, it was like a Latin concept of kindness.
[00:30:11]  Right.
[00:30:11]  Yeah.
[00:30:12]  And I was like, what are you talking about?
[00:30:14]  Which is something that Petro might say, but in like actually a fireway.
[00:30:17]  Yeah.
[00:30:17]  Yeah.
[00:30:18]  Of course.
[00:30:18]  You have an ecstasy when he's saying it.
[00:30:20]  You know, he's like, telling.
[00:30:21]  Yeah.
[00:30:22]  This is like an ancient indigenous concept that we invented.
[00:30:26]  Like how he talks about dialectics.
[00:30:27]  Exactly.
[00:30:28]  I don't think you should be able to speak like that unless you're a practitioner of tantric sex magic, which I'm sure Petro is.
[00:30:34]  Probably.
[00:30:35]  But yeah.
[00:30:36]  Is that what that white robe symbolizes?
[00:30:38]  That's so cool that he's doing that.
[00:30:41]  No, but like, like what, like, what was, I listened to it a few times because I was like, okay, what does she say?
[00:30:49]  Like, my ears would glaze over.
[00:30:52]  It's not really a phrase.
[00:30:53]  Whenever I would hear her speak, because it was completely like contentless.
[00:30:56]  And part of it is that she's running.
[00:30:57]  She doesn't want to get pinned down to anything.
[00:31:00]  And part of it is just like, I don't think she really knows what she's talking about or has no vision other than like, we need to keep doing the same things we're doing, but good.
[00:31:10]  Right?
[00:31:11]  Like, well, that is the democratic vision, right?
[00:31:13]  Yeah.
[00:31:13]  I mean, my read is that she was saying something, but it's what she wasn't saying that was the most revealing.
[00:31:21]  Like, I think that she was essentially saying that we just have to reconstitute the liberal international order.
[00:31:28]  That we have to just do transatlanticism correctly and stop the world order from crumbling and stop all the bad things from happening, essentially.
[00:31:37]  Like stop history in its tracks, which is like, all right, well, if Obama couldn't do that, what is your grand strategy here?
[00:31:45]  Obama didn't have Latina girl magic.
[00:31:47]  That is true.
[00:31:48]  But he did have black girl magic.
[00:31:50]  That's true.
[00:31:50]  He did have black girl magic.
[00:31:52]  You know, I thought it was interesting that both she and Rubio brought up the rules-based international order.
[00:31:59]  I don't know if he said it so explicitly, but I think he did.
[00:32:01]  No, he did.
[00:32:02]  He said it's an overused term and like is fake.
[00:32:04]  Yeah.
[00:32:05]  And like we have to get rid of it.
[00:32:06]  Yeah, which, you know, I guess, you know.
[00:32:09]  Well, it isn't.
[00:32:10]  It isn't.
[00:32:11]  Yeah, I know.
[00:32:11]  I know that.
[00:32:12]  And also, I know that we, even though you guys are actually lawyers and, you know, you actually work in international law, I have a much more brutish version of international law than either of you guys do that is possibly more closely aligned to, unfortunately, the Trump version of it.
[00:32:26]  But, you know, classic.
[00:32:27]  I'm a realist theorist.
[00:32:30]  This is why Europe needs a center.
[00:32:31]  It needs to be.
[00:32:34]  But I thought it was interesting because he was like, it's fake.
[00:32:36]  And she also said, it's fake, but it wasn't always completely fake.
[00:32:41]  And we need to make it real.
[00:32:42]  And so what AOC said was that, like, okay, there was a rules-based international order, but those rules applied.
[00:32:48]  And she sort of phrased it clumsily, but I know what she said.
[00:32:51]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:32:51]  She said it the opposite of how she said.
[00:32:52]  She said the opposite of how she meant it, even though it was also technically, yeah.
[00:32:56]  But she was like, the rules applied to the, to the, like, to the U.S. and to European countries, but then there was an exception made for the global south.
[00:33:05]  Obviously, what she's saying is actually the opposite, where there was no rules for the white man and lots of rules for the man of the south.
[00:33:14]  And Rubio is like, it's fake.
[00:33:17]  She's like, we need to kind of recapitulate that and make it real.
[00:33:20]  And I just thought, interesting, like, you know, bringing that in with her other sort of attempt at saying there needs to be like an international working class politics, which really I think she didn't think that went out very far at all.
[00:33:36]  I was like, well, this doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?
[00:33:38]  Because it really doesn't sound all that different than something like Hillary Clinton might say on the debate stage in 2016, right?
[00:33:45]  I mean, what is, first of all, can you guys explain to me, what is the international rules-based order?
[00:33:51]  It's like basically what we think of when we think of international law, the UN, like the WTO, all of these international institutions that since 1945 have been structuring to a greater or lesser degree international affairs and like conduct between states, right?
[00:34:09]  So it is the UN and all of the bodies appended to the UN, like the ICJ or WHO, things like that.
[00:34:16]  It's also the World Trade Organization, the System of International Trade.
[00:34:20]  Also the IMF and the Bank of the Bank.
[00:34:22]  Right.
[00:34:22]  Yeah.
[00:34:22]  And it's also like the idea, like, you know, international humanitarian law or law of war.
[00:34:28]  Like, that's a part of the rules-based international order.
[00:34:30]  Basically, just that there are now a set of supranational bodies and laws and regulations that are supposed to govern conduct between states, but also increasingly as time went on, conduct within states.
[00:34:44]  There's all these treaties like the ICCPR, ICECHR.
[00:34:48]  I always forget.
[00:34:48]  Is that the Convention on Civil and Political Rights?
[00:34:51]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:34:51]  Economic and Social Rights.
[00:34:52]  Yeah, that one.
[00:34:53]  SR, not HR, right?
[00:34:54]  Yeah.
[00:34:55]  That are trying to be like, okay, there's minimum standards that all countries need to meet now.
[00:35:01]  And, you know, the U.S. and a lot of Western countries are kind of happy to rock with, obviously, the IMF and the World Bank.
[00:35:09]  Right.
[00:35:09]  And used to be happy with the WHO, kind of, and like some of these more, you know, conduct between states things, but have like always been really hostile to any of the penetration into domestic affairs.
[00:35:24]  Like the CEDAW, the Convention on Women's Rights and Violence Against Women stuff, like U.S. hated that one.
[00:35:31]  I think not even a signatory to the economic and social rights.
[00:35:34]  Nope, not a signatory to economic and social rights, not a signatory to the Conventions on the Rights of the Child.
[00:35:39]  Right.
[00:35:39]  Yeah.
[00:35:39]  One of like three states that isn't.
[00:35:41]  Which is just like crazy.
[00:35:43]  Anything that's like you basically need to provide a minimum standard of living for the people in your country.
[00:35:47]  The U.S. is like, we don't want to do that.
[00:35:49]  Yeah.
[00:35:50]  We don't hate that.
[00:35:51]  We don't fuck with that.
[00:35:52]  And like part of that, part of that is they also don't want other countries signing on to it because there is like the AOC is like not entirely wrong when she says that like international law was kind of real or that it contains a promise in it that needs to be vindicated.
[00:36:07]  Yeah.
[00:36:08]  Right.
[00:36:08]  There is like, there's this under discussed article in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is like one of the first things the international legal order did.
[00:36:15]  Right.
[00:36:16]  And it's, I think, 27 or 28.
[00:36:18]  And it's basically like a right to an international order that makes all the other rights possible, which if you take that just by itself, that's a pretty radical thing.
[00:36:26]  That means like the progressive realization of, you know, like equality and parity between countries and like a halt to exploitation of like the global north on the global south, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:36:38]  And there's like things like that is kind of the promise of the international order, right?
[00:36:43]  Is that weak states and strong states are now on equal footing because as like quad like legal subjects, right?
[00:36:51]  And that disputes will be governed not by force, which strong states will always win, but by the law and by diplomacy.
[00:36:59]  And that is like a radical vision.
[00:37:01]  Yeah.
[00:37:01]  But the thing is, and where she's wrong, and what she, she and many, I think, don't understand, is you can't possibly have that vision while also being like the United States needs to lead it.
[00:37:10]  Right.
[00:37:11]  You can't, you can't, this is, I mean, this is our position.
[00:37:12]  Like, you cannot realize an international legal order that's good with the U.S. at its top.
[00:37:16]  And the flip side of that is the U.S. is willing to go along with this so long as it remains in the position of primacy.
[00:37:22]  Right.
[00:37:22]  And this is like when we talk about the rules-based order, the reason why we say it's both real and not real is because U.S. hegemony is comprised by both coercion and consent.
[00:37:32]  So it actually gets the world, the states of the world to buy into this by making these promises and saying we're going to apply the rules or the rules will apply evenly to people.
[00:37:42]  Like, yes, this kind of legal equality between small states and big states.
[00:37:46]  And the U.S. is willing to go along with that so long as it doesn't threaten their posture.
[00:37:53]  And that makes sense, right?
[00:37:55]  If they hold down the status quo, everyone, the rule applying equally to everyone maintains power relations.
[00:38:02]  And so the U.S. kind of, through this system, maintains its own exemptionalism where it says we're actually going to be the ones that hold down this order and police it.
[00:38:11]  So we have to be able to go outside the rules and regulations, especially when it comes to military force, to make sure that everyone's playing fair and there's no threats to the system from the outside.
[00:38:21]  But in order to sustain that, they need everyone to buy in to a certain extent.
[00:38:26]  So they can't do too much to undermine the consent structures.
[00:38:29]  And for most of the post-45 period, that has worked out for the United States.
[00:38:34]  They had the overarching logic of the Cold War, where they're like, we are defending democracy, we are defending free trade, we are defending all of these things, which is why we need to mobilize against the threat of communism.
[00:38:45]  Then they also carried that logic in the post-Cold War period, where they're like, now the threat to international security and stability is terrorism.
[00:38:53]  And that worked basically up until 2008, because they were not able to prevent the big Great Recession.
[00:39:01]  And also that's the very moment that China's rise really becomes the global story.
[00:39:07]  And so all of a sudden, even within the rules-based order, the U.S.'s primacy is under threat.
[00:39:14]  So it's no longer really functioning to protect that status quo.
[00:39:18]  And they're increasingly having to go beyond it in order to combat China.
[00:39:24]  And Obama like really tries to do this.
[00:39:26]  He tries to use the liberal international order against China with the TPP, with like using multilateral institutions to kind of box China out.
[00:39:35]  And that fails.
[00:39:35]  It fails because people reject the TPP at home.
[00:39:39]  He gets blamed for deindustrialization.
[00:39:41]  And so the next democratic attempt to deal with this problem is Joe Biden, who is increasingly willing to lean on coercion at the expense of consent in order to make this happen.
[00:39:53]  So he starts abandoning certain aspects of the liberal international order.
[00:39:57]  And he does it by keeping the Trump tariffs, right?
[00:40:01]  Because free trade is a big part of this system.
[00:40:04]  He keeps the Trump tariffs on China.
[00:40:06]  The U.S. war planners start getting serious.
[00:40:09]  They start kind of like the mood in Washington shifts and the dovishness, the quote-unquote dovishness of Obama is kind of viewed as like this like softness.
[00:40:18]  And so they start getting serious.
[00:40:20]  Biden himself is like goes, kind of lets it slip in like a senior moment where he's like, actually, we'd go to war over time.
[00:40:26]  He like abandons strategic ambiguity.
[00:40:29]  And then of course with Gaza, right?
[00:40:31]  He's willing to just totally abandon any pretense of the rules-based order of the international legal system by just very explicitly backing this genocide and ignoring the court, what have you.
[00:40:42]  So all of this is the conundrum that the Democratic Party finds itself in.
[00:40:46]  And this is why I say it's so telling what AOC didn't say, right?
[00:40:50]  Because she's saying, well, we just have to do the liberal international order, but fair.
[00:40:56]  And it just doesn't work if you're trying to hold on to U.S. primacy because there's one big global South country that's the elephant in the room, and that's fucking China, right?
[00:41:05]  Like they're the ones.
[00:41:06]  They're the ones that then now have all of this economic power.
[00:41:09]  And she didn't have a story to tell about whether we are going to do a managed hegemonic transition of some kind, right?
[00:41:17]  Whether we are just going to stop trying to stop China from being the biggest economic power in the world or what.
[00:41:24]  And it just comes out so clearly, right?
[00:41:26]  like she's talking about trump being authoritarian how trump wants to carve up the world for authoritarians to play in their sandboxes with trump in latin america russia in europe and he kind of like pauses and you're like waiting for the third authoritarian which like obviously would be china yeah and then she just doesn't say it and like and that's why that's how i also how i read the stumble over taiwan it's not that like she took a while to articulate strategic ambiguity.
[00:41:54]  It's that clearly there's no, she's not willing to say we're going to confront China.
[00:42:00]  And she's not willing to say we're not going to confront China.
[00:42:03]  We're not, we're going to like, we're going to actually engage in some kind of managed withdrawal of the United States.
[00:42:08]  And that is the like, that is the fissure between the left and liberal visions of the world that is, she's not able to hold down both of.
[00:42:16]  For those of you who don't know, just to clarify, strategic ambiguity is the U.S.'s position on whether we will use military force to defend Taiwan in case China gets to, and again, this is balls and strikes here, retake a rogue province, according to them.
[00:42:33]  You know, I haven't looked into the matter, but you know, this seems, you know, one could make a case either way.
[00:42:39]  It's not really my business.
[00:42:40]  I'm not even really sure where it is.
[00:42:42]  But and so she, she does, she sort of stumbled over her answer in regards to that.

=== Semi-Bifurcation Of Democratic Parties (03:06) ===

[00:42:47]  I do think it was, it really was, and I mean this in a not exactly kind way, very much the progressive vision that I see from the future.
[00:42:58]  It is crazy.
[00:42:59]  I don't know.
[00:43:00]  Bernie had this same fucking problem.
[00:43:02]  I mean, he has, I guess, still, but I don't know if anyone's really listening to him anymore on this.
[00:43:06]  But Bernie had the same fucking problem where like they are social democrats, democratic socialists, whatever.
[00:43:14]  And so their vision of internationalism kind of coheres in some ways to that post-45 vision, which had so many contradictions in it and which was itself really informed by like, you know, social democracy was kind of the, that was what was going on in 45.
[00:43:32]  That was very big.
[00:43:33]  It was very hip in 1945.
[00:43:35]  And it clearly.
[00:43:36]  When Bernie was allowed exactly.
[00:43:37]  When Bernie was, yeah, when Bernie was like 15, 16, you know, you know, you had a sort of Ho Chi Minh moment when he was, of course, at the founder of the UN, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:43:47]  But it is, those contradictions, I mean, I don't even know.
[00:43:53]  They remain today.
[00:43:54]  We don't still have the same kind of bifurcation of the world between the communist bloc and the free bloc that we had in the immediate aftermath of World War II.
[00:44:07]  But we do have this sort of semi-bifurcation of trifurcation, but also these weird overlaps too that we have.
[00:44:14]  And I think one thing that even I have difficulty getting my head around is that like, yeah, you could make analogies, right, to even like, you know, what AOC is saying and like the Zimmerwald problems that the Second International had, where at the onset of World War I, a lot of social democratic parties, which is, remember, there wasn't communist parties yet, for those listening.
[00:44:40]  So it's like 1915, a lot of social democratic parties decided to actually support their governments for various reasons and, you know, vote for war credits or joined war cabinets or what have you.
[00:44:52]  And then a fraction of members of the Second International was the so-called Zimmerwald left took on a position of revolutionary defeatism and sort of turning the world war into an international civil war, or as it turned out, mostly localized civil wars.
[00:45:12]  And it's funny because I sort of see that same seed planted here, but we're in such a weird situation now where the overlap between the U.S.'s economy and China's economy, I don't think that there has ever been, you know, I'm not a history guy, but like in history, a two ostensibly not warring, but rival powers, the only two big rival powers in the world have such an interdependent system.
[00:45:42]  And I think a lot of people say that, okay, well, China is actually kind of getting away from that.
[00:45:47]  But the reality is, it's like the U.S. has a lot of sway over much of the world's markets.

=== U.S.-China Climate Hegemony (15:45) ===

[00:45:54]  You know what I mean?
[00:45:54]  Like, obviously, we have our own sort of like, you know, buying power here in the U.S., but also like, you know, Mark Carney is kind of slipping the leash a little bit with allowing the Chinese electric vehicle plants to be built in thing in Canada like crazy.
[00:46:08]  But we still do have a lot of say over it.
[00:46:12]  And we probably will for the first, for at least the near future.
[00:46:15]  I just don't really know what to make of like what AOC is saying in light of these the situation.
[00:46:23]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:46:23]  Well, I mean, she, the one thing she said we would continue to do with China is competition, right?
[00:46:29]  Like that was her way when she was on the panel with Whitmer, who was kept being just like, I just want to talk about cars.
[00:46:34]  And she did use several car analogies too.
[00:46:36]  She's like, I'm just a simple Michigan gale.
[00:46:38]  And so I could, let me, allow me the analogy of a car here.
[00:46:43]  Which like, which is a funny one because also like China is making EVs that are good and cheaper and like better.
[00:46:50]  And the U.S. is like stopping people from buying them around the world and also in this country.
[00:46:55]  And so like the way, yeah, like the only thing like AOC wasn't willing to say like, we're going to go to war with China.
[00:47:01]  And she wasn't willing to say we're going to become China's junior partner.
[00:47:06]  She was just like, we're going to compete with them.
[00:47:07]  And that's, you're going to lose.
[00:47:08]  Like they're, that's baked in.
[00:47:10]  Like it's lost.
[00:47:11]  No, man, we're bringing reindustrial.
[00:47:13]  It's going to happen for sure.
[00:47:16]  There's no kind of putting that toothpaste back in the tube.
[00:47:19]  So the idea that we're just going to continue to compete with them, what does that mean?
[00:47:23]  That means the only way you can really do it, the only way you can try to put the toothpaste back in the tube is by making sure other countries cannot get the objectively better deal that China is offering them.
[00:47:36]  And the only way you can do that, and this is the Rubio vision, is you kill them.
[00:47:42]  The difference between now and World War I, World War II, right?
[00:47:44]  Like this is not an inter-imperial conflict.
[00:47:47]  And you have all of these new states now that didn't exist then.
[00:47:51]  And not just states that didn't exist, but states now that have actual economic weight and heft to them and diplomatic heft.
[00:47:58]  And this is a product of the world order actually working too well for the United States' liking.
[00:48:04]  The United States is able to kind of manage it in the way it was doing because it was rebuilding the world after World War II.
[00:48:12]  And everyone wanted to get a peace and they were doing this.
[00:48:14]  They could open up new markets, blah, blah, blah.
[00:48:16]  But then you do that really well and capital has to go to all of these new places.
[00:48:20]  And eventually those places just have an economy in their own right, independent of you supporting them.
[00:48:27]  And so it looks more like a conflict now where you have independent, not even just blocks, but like independent countries that want to be self-determined and want to just do what is best for them economically and developmentally.
[00:48:42]  And you have China on the one hand offering their own vision of trade, which is just significantly better than the US one and also is like better in the face of climate change, like significantly in a way that I think is like kind of, we can get in this maybe.
[00:49:01]  And this is like a little pet, a little pet project of mine now that's like structuring, structuring all of this.
[00:49:08]  But how does the US respond to that?
[00:49:10]  You have the AOC vision, which is put your head in the sand, right?
[00:49:14]  And the Rubio one, which is like, you know, a rational idea in pursuit of irrational goals.
[00:49:21]  And the rational idea is like, okay, well, we kind of have to use brute force because the international system as we set it up worked so well for all of these other states that now they are able to make it real, right?
[00:49:33]  Now they can actually make it real.
[00:49:35]  And we have to make sure that doesn't happen.
[00:49:36]  And the way to do that is we blow it up and start over and do the Board of Peace, which is U.S. President Donald Trump is the head of it for life.
[00:49:44]  And it's just like a collection of the most like degraded vassals that we can assemble.
[00:49:50]  And if we can keep adding people to that and we can kind of kill everyone who doesn't want to rock with us, then maybe we can arrest this structural decline that we're in.
[00:49:58]  Although I think that's also just like a fool's errand.
[00:50:00]  Yeah.
[00:50:00]  And I think the risk is that the one vision kind of ends up overlapping with the other, right?
[00:50:05]  And this was like, this is a major critique of AOC coming out of Munich is like, okay, well, you have kind of failed to articulate how this is different than Biden's foreign policy.
[00:50:14]  Yes.
[00:50:14]  And, you know, she had her articulation, which is, well, I think what Israel did was a genocide and we should reconsider our unconditional aid to them.
[00:50:23]  But that's not enough, right?
[00:50:25]  If your entire worldview is structured by this idea of, yes, engaging in conflict with China, and as you've correctly identified, that that's increasingly less likely to happen in a successful manner on the economic terrain, which means it is increasingly likely to actually happen on a military terrain, you end up in these scenarios.
[00:50:44]  It's not like...
[00:50:45]  It's not like the Biden administration came into power in 2020 and is like, we want to spend our foreign policy chips participating in a land war in Europe and a genocide in Gaza.
[00:50:58]  Like that was not their plan.
[00:51:00]  But when shit happened, when Putin invaded, when October 7th happened, that was their reflexive response.
[00:51:07]  And I think that Biden gets described as this ideological Zionist, which I think is true to a certain extent, but he is an ideological American imperialist.
[00:51:21]  Like that is what he is ideologically committed to is American supremacy in the post-45 period.
[00:51:28]  And he just has a very orthodox view of what that means and looks like.
[00:51:31]  And what we haven't seen from AOC is really anything all that different.
[00:51:36]  Because, okay, maybe there is more likelihood to pull back from Israel to put constraints on that relationship.
[00:51:44]  It's not like Israel is going to be the only genocide in the 21st century.
[00:51:48]  Yeah, it's not the only genocide happening right now.
[00:51:50]  Exactly.
[00:51:50]  Exactly.
[00:51:50]  Well, the other one is also being, well, one of the other ones is also being done by one of our allies.
[00:51:55]  Right, exactly.
[00:51:57]  So, yeah, I think that the demand on AOC, it's not to like articulate everything perfectly.
[00:52:04]  It's to actually offer an alternative left foreign policy vision that confronts these major contradictions and looks for another way out.
[00:52:12]  And just invariably, that means some form of the U.S.'s retreat from the global stage.
[00:52:17]  And that is a tough pill to swallow because we are living in the tail end of decades and decades of liberal internationalist rhetoric that is built around American exceptionalism, the brilliance of the Constitution, the light on the hill, all of this shit that Obama articulated so forcefully and so powerfully.
[00:52:37]  And we have to disabuse ourselves of that and to say we have to get ready to be a normal state again.
[00:52:43]  Otherwise, the entire world system is going to be fucked.
[00:52:46]  Because as you're saying, right, there is this massive challenge, which is climate change.
[00:52:51]  And if we don't kind of accept a sort of national humility, a willingness to work together with China to confront it, then we are going to get not only climate collapse, but also World War III, in addition to whatever fucking other hells emerge from this century.
[00:53:06]  Yeah, you know what?
[00:53:07]  I'm going to let you off a leash, Jake.
[00:53:11]  I get to feast.
[00:53:12]  We can talk about the climate here because, yeah, I think, you know, I want to actually talk about a couple of things.
[00:53:17]  One is, because we can talk about how stupid these fucking people are, how venal and pathetic these people are all day.
[00:53:24]  But like, one thing that I've learned from, you know, my time going around the block a couple of times is that just criticizing somebody is, you know, it's really easy to do, but, you know, how do we prove that we are smarter than AOC is by maybe putting forth like some suggestions on what to do.
[00:53:38]  And I think one of the one of the things that you're particularly focused on right now is the climate and the climate of the earth, I'm assuming.
[00:53:48]  And more just like the political climate, we need to take it down a notch.
[00:53:52]  We need to take it down a notch.
[00:53:54]  Everything's getting too hot.
[00:53:55]  Since the Charlie Kirk thing, I think.
[00:53:57]  Oh, my God.
[00:53:57]  Oh my God.
[00:53:58]  That was just a lot after we finished World War II.
[00:54:01]  But yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:54:04]  But one of the things that China is at least structurally much more capable of doing is large-scale deployments of, let's say, climate.
[00:54:14]  I don't know the exact terminology here, but bettering technology, right?
[00:54:18]  I mean, famously, they cleaned up some of the smog in some of their cities fairly spectacularly.
[00:54:24]  Other equally sized countries like India have struggled.
[00:54:29]  In fact, have gotten much worse in terms of air quality in some of their major cities.
[00:54:34]  You know, they have the electric vehicles and also the, I mean, the solar shit.
[00:54:39]  I feel like the world has kind of enough solar panels at this point.
[00:54:42]  It's just about distribution.
[00:54:43]  But like they are, they have they have really kind of taken green tech to a new heights, whereas the U.S. has really tried to, we've had various starts and stops in terms of trying to transition to a green new world.
[00:54:59]  AOC, I mean, famously sort of was behind the Green New Deal.
[00:55:03]  It doesn't look like that's really, I mean, again, not really her fault on that.
[00:55:10]  But, you know, I would say one of the flashpoints of international cooperation would be in terms of dealing with the climate.
[00:55:21]  And listen, even if you don't believe in climate change or whatever, just pretend to believe in it so that we can get along around World War III.
[00:55:28]  But this is sort of what you think, right?
[00:55:31]  Yeah, this is like, okay, so climate change is a global problem, like by definition, right?
[00:55:36]  And it requires global cooperation to solve because it's not like you can't do like, I don't know, like green tech in one country isn't going to work.
[00:55:48]  And it's going to require also a relaxing of intellectual property rights.
[00:55:53]  You have to just let countries around the world build these things or give them away for free so that you can solve this problem.
[00:55:59]  And the United States does not want to do that at all.
[00:56:02]  And not only does the United States not want to engage in the international cooperation that is required to solve climate change, it one doesn't officially now believe in climate change at all and is actively making steps to make it worse.
[00:56:15]  Which like I think if we like look at the kind of right like nodes of global conflict that the United States is putting its ham fist in, we have Venezuela, largest oil reserves, right?
[00:56:31]  Nigeria, humongous oil producer that the United States is increasingly getting militarily involved in for reasons that are officially very unclear.
[00:56:38]  It's like to protect Christians.
[00:56:39]  Yeah.
[00:56:40]  No, wrong.
[00:56:42]  Jesus does that.
[00:56:42]  Right, exactly.
[00:56:43]  We don't need the U.S.
[00:56:44]  I thought this was Nikki Minaj's pet project, right?
[00:56:46]  Yeah, it was.
[00:56:47]  Yeah.
[00:56:47]  But like, like, like that is great.
[00:56:49]  Like, why are they bringing him out?
[00:56:50]  I would imagine has something to do with Nigeria being a huge oil producer.
[00:56:55]  Where else?
[00:56:56]  Iran, the rest of the Middle East, right?
[00:56:58]  A lot of oil there.
[00:57:00]  We famously did some stuff there a few decades ago.
[00:57:04]  And Russia, like, we're not trying to control Russian oil production, but we are trying to cut Europe off from it so that they now have to buy U.S. liquid natural gas, which I think I just saw something today that's like 60% of their imports now are like from the U.S.
[00:57:17]  Oh, maybe.
[00:57:18]  I was going to say what I saw today was Cy Hirsch vindicated on the Nord Stream thing.
[00:57:22]  The Nord Stream thing.
[00:57:23]  The biggest fucking thing happened.
[00:57:25]  I'm a Nord Streamer.
[00:57:27]  I think that they just fucking built that shit wrong.
[00:57:30]  Yeah, so gas famously explodes.
[00:57:33]  Exactly.
[00:57:34]  They're not smoking a cigarette around it.
[00:57:36]  And they love to smoke cigarettes over there.
[00:57:38]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:57:38]  They're thin little Capri.
[00:57:42]  Right.
[00:57:42]  So you have the U.S. getting involved in all of these centers of oil production around the world.
[00:57:47]  And part of that is like, what is one thing that China does not have?
[00:57:50]  It doesn't have oil.
[00:57:51]  It needs to import its oil.
[00:57:52]  Yes.
[00:57:52]  And so structurally, part of why the Chinese are investing so heavily in green tech is because they don't have oil and they need to transition away from a world in which they are dependent upon these imports that the United States is increasingly putting its thumb on.
[00:58:04]  And of course they aren't like, you know, they still use a bunch of coal and whatever.
[00:58:07]  It's not like a time that they're making a green transition.
[00:58:09]  I think we should be clear on that.
[00:58:11]  It's like, this isn't necessarily done out of like the Xi Jinping's green thumb.
[00:58:17]  Right, exactly.
[00:58:18]  And but like it is like great.
[00:58:21]  Like if structural stuff makes you do it, keep doing it and do it more.
[00:58:25]  And also they are like, I think part of the play of like exporting like solar panels and these EVs is they have control over rare earth minerals, which you need to make these things.
[00:58:36]  And so it makes if they can like help transition the world away from fossil fuels, it makes their exports much more attractive.
[00:58:42]  Exactly.
[00:58:43]  Relative, especially relative to the United States, which is also itself a major oil-producing country and gas-producing country.
[00:58:49]  Thanks, Obama.
[00:58:50]  Yeah, that's right.
[00:58:51]  Drill, baby, drill.
[00:58:52]  Suddenly, America's like the biggest oil producer and the biggest gas.
[00:58:56]  That was me.
[00:58:57]  And so, you know, like, I think part of like part of what's unspoken and like what is blowing up the international order, you know, we talk about like return of imperialism, return of colonialism, but all that is taking place against the backdrop of like terminal climate catastrophe that is going to kill so many people and also disperse them around the world and like do the global north.
[00:59:20]  Oh, I don't like that part.
[00:59:23]  And so, like, the U.S. was able to establish some kind of hegemony in post-45 because it was offering a really good deal to at least like the West, right?
[00:59:37]  It was offering the deal of we will literally rebuild your country.
[00:59:40]  We will put a bunch of money into it.
[00:59:42]  You just got to rock with us against communism, which also most of you guys don't really like anyway.
[00:59:46]  And a part of hegemony that I think is pretty crucial here is that people have to rock with you a little bit.
[00:59:51]  People have to rock with you.
[00:59:52]  Hegemony in ostensibly in people's interests, and they have to go along with those interests a little bit.
[00:59:56]  Yeah.
[00:59:57]  Hegemony doesn't just mean that you're in charge.
[00:59:59]  Right.
[01:00:00]  It means that you have an extra layer of consent.
[01:00:02]  Yes.
[01:00:03]  If you only rely on coercion and not on consent, what happens?
[01:00:06]  You run out of missile interceptors, which is a major strategic problem.
[01:00:11]  And you get scheming visors trying to.
[01:00:13]  Or me too.
[01:00:14]  Yeah.
[01:00:15]  Me too.
[01:00:15]  Right.
[01:00:17]  And so, right, like they were able to secure hegemony because of all these factors during the Cold War.
[01:00:23]  That, I think, is just like gone now.
[01:00:25]  Like, I don't think as long as the United States is committed to fossil fuels and committed to like fossil capital, you cannot get hegemony back, even if you decide that you are going to be friendlier to other countries around the world.
[01:00:38]  Because there is this thing that is an existential crisis for so many of them.
[01:00:41]  And unless you are willing to work with them in a humble way and like a way that like, and by humble, I mean like you are not putting U.S. like economic interests above everything, uber alis, maybe we should say, then you can never try to say to people, hey, we're giving you a better deal than these other guys who actually are kind of doing something for that.
[01:01:02]  Because what we're doing is hastening your demise.
[01:01:06]  And so like part of, I think, the move away from the international legal order that Trump, Rubio are articulating is like, not only do we like not care about hegemony anymore, which I think is kind of clear,
[01:01:20]  or they want hegemony in this sense of like trying to build a fascist international, but also like hegemony that is plausible to the majority of the world as it currently exists is no longer even really possible for us if we want to sustain our economic fossil fuel advantage over the rest of the world.

=== Becoming a Normal World (14:33) ===

[01:01:39]  And again, there is a way to solve that.
[01:01:42]  And it does look kind of like becoming a regular country and transitioning away from fossil fuels and cooperating very extensively with China to do that.
[01:01:49]  But no one, and not AOC, not any of the Green New Deal architects, right, are seeing the real structural limitation of their vision of we want a clean U.S. economy and a clean global economy.
[01:02:01]  And also we want to be the top dog.
[01:02:03]  And also we need to outcompete China, who also we want to destroy.
[01:02:06]  It's interesting because what you say here, not to also bring history into it again, because I know like three things that have happened in history.
[01:02:13]  So I guess I have to analogize with each of them.
[01:02:18]  But I mentioned revolutionary defeatism before, and that was people sort of working for their own state's demise in World War I so that they could transform those conditions into revolutionary conditions.
[01:02:31]  Not saying that this is my view.
[01:02:33]  In fact, I have no views.
[01:02:36]  But this is in a in a case you put forward here, it could be almost a version of revolutionary defeatism, which is becoming a normal country.
[01:02:44]  And so that's actually a much more palatable version of revolution.
[01:02:47]  It's not even very revolutionary.
[01:02:48]  It's just kind of defeatism.
[01:02:50]  And it's not really so much defeatism as it's normalism.
[01:02:53]  But in order to stave off some kind of climate holocaust here is to do a version of that and accept our place in sort of a reconfigured global order, but one that is also sort of more based on some kind of green, I don't know what, revolution everywhere.
[01:03:16]  I mean, the problem is with that, I would say, is that the issues, and I know that we're doing, obviously, we're not talking about our own politics here.
[01:03:23]  We're very, we're very high-minded about these things.
[01:03:26]  The problem is, is that that doesn't, of course, you know, there's still exploitation of labor.
[01:03:31]  Right.
[01:03:31]  Yeah.
[01:03:32]  It doesn't solve those problems at all.
[01:03:34]  In fact, it might exacerbate them in certain parts of the world.
[01:03:36]  Yeah.
[01:03:37]  And I think the U.S. is also cognizant of that.
[01:03:39]  It's not like the U.S. isn't trying to seize lithium deposits.
[01:03:42]  You know what I mean?
[01:03:42]  Like they are still trying to get their hand in that game too.
[01:03:45]  And they're doing it in a destructive way.
[01:03:48]  And also the global South states that have those deposits are also exploiting them in horrific ways or allowing companies in to exploit them in horrific ways.
[01:03:56]  So it doesn't, it certainly doesn't solve the problem of exploitation, although it could go a long way towards maybe doing it if you do it in a way that, again, like also allows those countries to live.
[01:04:09]  Because if you just like turn Bolivia into a mine, you're not really like, you're also fucking up the climate in a significant way.
[01:04:18]  Or if you like destroy the Amazon to get its stuff underneath it, you're also fucking up the climate.
[01:04:23]  No matter how many solar panels you build.
[01:04:25]  So like there's ways like there's ways that like the green transition can exacerbate this exploitation of global south.
[01:04:30]  But if we actually want to do a actually green transition and not just like build a bunch of fancy panels, like you kind of can't do that.
[01:04:37]  Yeah.
[01:04:38]  Yeah.
[01:04:38]  And I'll add that it's in a way the vision is for the US to become a normal state, but at the same time, that actually involves undermining the intrastate system and the concept of states and sovereignty.
[01:04:52]  Because one of the problems of the moment now is that we have this world in which the U.S. is a hegemonic power in decline, but we don't actually have a rising hegemony.
[01:05:03]  We have a rising power in China, but China's not really interested in playing that role.
[01:05:07]  It's not really interested in being the global police force in the way that the United States was.
[01:05:12]  It's not really interested in getting all of that, all that much in terms of consent on policy from the world, right?
[01:05:21]  It's not a kind of like global ideological entity in the way that the U.S. is.
[01:05:27]  And so, like, if you just have U.S. retreat and you don't have China taking over in a kind of managed hegemonic transition, which I don't think is in the card cards, what you then would have is just a kind of return to international anarchy that is the condition that produces something like a world war, right?
[01:05:47]  So like there is like multipolarism on its own is not a stable outcome, right?
[01:05:54]  This is what we like learned from the interwar period.
[01:05:56]  All that shit I've been reading on Twitter, man.
[01:05:59]  But I've been bringing it to the British news has been telling me it is.
[01:06:03]  It's like nuclear proliferation and parody in the international system.
[01:06:07]  Like that sounds like, you know, maybe appealing in some circles.
[01:06:12]  That leads to war.
[01:06:13]  Right.
[01:06:14]  And that is one of the outcomes that we're trying to avoid.
[01:06:16]  And so we do have this weird system where we need U.S. retreat, but we also need to deconstruct the idea of sovereignty altogether because we're not going to get the U.S. is not going to suddenly just lose its military power.
[01:06:32]  Right.
[01:06:32]  And so if we're going to imagine a world of U.S.-China integration that is not based on competition and doesn't lead to war, then we need a level of cooperation that undermines the state system entirely.
[01:06:49]  And that is a very difficult thing to imagine in part because the state system itself emerged to like smooth over the contradictions of what nations were built on top of, which is all of these different people with all of these different claims.
[01:07:07]  And they're like, okay, we're going to just solve this with a large abstraction that's going to be based on territory.
[01:07:12]  And we're all going to be able to buy into this thing.
[01:07:15]  And the problem with the interwar period is that all of a sudden there wasn't any more room in the globe.
[01:07:21]  Are you trying interwar or post-war?
[01:07:23]  Interwar.
[01:07:23]  Interwar.
[01:07:24]  So like they were, you know, they were trying after World War I.
[01:07:27]  I was just finished reading this book by E.H. Carr about that was on the 1919 to 1939 crisis about attempts to institute a global peace after World War I, which very famously failed.
[01:07:40]  He was writing this like-I think they got a year of global peace.
[01:07:43]  No, no.
[01:07:44]  He was writing this as World War II was starting and being like, damn, we fucked up.
[01:07:49]  Yeah.
[01:07:50]  And one of the things that he was lamenting is that, well, okay, if you want to transcend. the states, the interstate system, the state as a concept, we've got a problem because we're already at the largest territorial unit.
[01:08:02]  And we're not going to get a situation where all of a sudden we have to fight Mars, right?
[01:08:07]  And we can all unify to fight Mars.
[01:08:09]  But we're kind of in a different situation now where it's not Mars that we're fighting, but we do have a global problematic.
[01:08:16]  We do have a global exogenous threat to everyone's safety that does require transcending the state system.
[01:08:25]  And so the vision is like a very kind of utopian and idealistic one.
[01:08:31]  I mean, I think it has to account for all of these realist suppositions and like the reality of the conjuncture and the world as it is.
[01:08:38]  But if we are going to get out of this in a way that does not lead to World War III and does not lead to ecological collapse, it will be a more equal world system that moves beyond the limitations of the state forum.
[01:08:52]  As our mutual friend loves to say, we got to build the world state.
[01:08:55]  Got to build the world state.
[01:08:56]  Okay, so you guys are fucking post-war rules-based order guys because that was quite a popular idea, the world state.
[01:09:05]  And I know E.H. Carr, I think, was, I don't know if he was a proponent of that.
[01:09:08]  Maybe he was a little before that.
[01:09:10]  He was, I mean, I think he was skeptical of it at the time for very good reasons.
[01:09:15]  But the world state or world staters, they had sort of some influence in the formation of the UN, right?
[01:09:21]  And people got to remember, the UN, as I've known it throughout my life, is something that you see on TV sometimes where people either do crazy clapbacks at the opening week or there's some dull thing that's voted down or et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
[01:09:38]  But the UN was actually started very idealistically also in San Francisco as sort of the basis for a kind of global peace, not a world state so much, but a lot of people who believed in a world state.
[01:09:50]  And this was a real political outlook.
[01:09:53]  We're not just being joking around here.
[01:09:58]  We're important to the founding of it.
[01:10:00]  However, I got some questions for you guys because my view is, why the fuck would anybody in any sort of power in the U.S. consent even a little bit to this and not just do World War III?
[01:10:12]  They won't.
[01:10:13]  They're going to do World War III.
[01:10:14]  So by these formulations, we would...
[01:10:17]  Okay, yeah, fair enough.
[01:10:18]  By...
[01:10:18]  By these formulations, if we want something even close to what you're describing, there would have to be some kind of revolutionary or whatever kind of upheaval in the U.S. that essentially replaces essentially the entire apparatus, the business and government of the U.S. with something that would be more amenable to us just becoming a normal state.
[01:10:38]  I'm not talking about us becoming like whatever Soviet Union 2, which I hear is coming any day now, but just becoming like a normal fucking, you know, becoming fucking Sweden.
[01:10:50]  And I just, I'm like, that to me is like, there's so many hurdles here.
[01:10:54]  And I feel like the problem is, is that wars do happen.
[01:11:00]  And the presence of World War II always does make me think, huh, there might just be a World War III.
[01:11:06]  They wouldn't have called it two if it was exactly because that's when they're like, oh, because they would have just been like, they would have come up because it was the Great War and then they renamed it World War One or Retchcon, Retcon, I think is what they call it now.
[01:11:18]  And then they're like, but when they did World War II, instead of just giving it another crazy name, that's like, okay.
[01:11:22]  Yeah, they get like the post-credit sequence of all of like Werner von Braun smiling.
[01:11:28]  Khrushchev's regime.
[01:11:30]  But it is, it's interesting because wars right now, there have been a lot of war now.
[01:11:38]  No?
[01:11:38]  Yeah.
[01:11:39]  A lot of war now.
[01:11:40]  A lot of war now.
[01:11:41]  And in fact, a lot of war now.
[01:11:44]  Yes.
[01:11:44]  There was, there was, there is maybe going to be war this weekend.
[01:11:49]  I don't think so.
[01:11:50]  And to be clear, we are making zero predictions on this because we have a track record of predicting exactly one war on this show, which was the one there, that Russia-Ukraine war, and that did not go so well.
[01:12:04]  And so we bow out of it now.
[01:12:06]  But from all available evidence, the U.S. is preparing for at least an operation, which we have to get, you know, careful with your semantics here, but to do some active warfare upon the country of Iran within the next couple of weeks.
[01:12:23]  We have one aircraft carrying the region.
[01:12:24]  We're moving another one there as we speak.
[01:12:27]  And tensions are high.
[01:12:30]  Actually, tensions weirdly don't seem high.
[01:12:33]  Like they're high if you read the news, but I would doubt that like anybody, like more than a quarter of the people in this building, even maybe I'm really being optimistic on that.
[01:12:43]  Maybe 5% of people in this building know that there's something that's maybe going to happen there.
[01:12:49]  And it's interesting because it seems like what we're doing is we're kind of going after, and this was kind of, we were doing this with Israel during the more acute phases of their war on Gaza and the genocide of the people there is going after the enemy by enemy by enemy.
[01:13:07]  We already took, we did the Iran one once last summer.
[01:13:11]  It looks like we're running it back, but bigger this time.
[01:13:15]  And so many things are kind of happening the same way as they happened last summer.
[01:13:20]  There were the talks in Oman last year that were interrupted by the U.S. strikes and Operation Inherent Resolve.
[01:13:26]  And now there are U.S. talks between, what's Witkoff, Kushner, and Iran's foreign minister, who's, forgive me, can't remember the guy's name, that are happening right now.
[01:13:36]  And I think in Geneva.
[01:13:38]  And people maybe take that as a sign of, oh, they're talking, but talking means nothing with the U.S.
[01:13:44]  The U.S. will talk to you while they're pushing the big red button in a different room.
[01:13:49]  I think a lot of people are pretty freaked out who are paying attention about what's about to happen right now because this seems like a much bigger buildup than there has been in the past.
[01:14:01]  I mean, it's the largest military buildup since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
[01:14:05]  Yeah.
[01:14:06]  I don't think I'm really trying to not make predictions here.
[01:14:11]  I think a lot of people, I think the U.S. has, they don't, they learn lessons.
[01:14:16]  I'll say this.
[01:14:17]  They can learn their lesson.
[01:14:18]  I don't think there's about to be 50,000 U.S. troops deployed.
[01:14:21]  No.
[01:14:23]  And so you can't call it a war if there's not.
[01:14:26]  But I do think that there's about to be some pretty heavy striking and probably some deployment of special forces.
[01:14:33]  And unlike different targets than last time, I think it's like the obviously the massive buildup is very scary in its own right.
[01:14:40]  But it also does seem like they're not just going for the nuclear sites this time.
[01:14:46]  It does look like they want to target the regime itself, which basically, like kind of on the U.S.-Israel model, looks like targeting critical infrastructure for people and like blowing up.
[01:14:57]  They're already having the Hasbur Arabats like talking about how there's Revolutionary Guard guys hanging out in hospitals, right?
[01:15:03]  Oh, yeah.
[01:15:06]  They also said they were going through hospitals, shooting people, et cetera, et cetera.
[01:15:10]  No, but not even that, just like that this hospital is a Revolutionary Guard base.
[01:15:14]  It's an IRGC base.
[01:15:15]  Yes, exactly.
[01:15:15]  Exactly the same way.
[01:15:18]  The New York Times is about to put out a big graphic with the AI generated damage for us.
[01:15:24]  You know, it's the last, to be clear, I mean, if my memory is failing me, we attacked them last time because they were attacking Israel, but also because of the nuclear enrichment.
[01:15:35]  And it was like a little unclear because it came in the midst of a sort of tit-for-tat bombardment exchange with Israel that Iran was having.
[01:15:44]  And then we just like bombed these three nuclear sites.
[01:15:48]  I think it was three nuclear sites.
[01:15:51]  A little ambiguous to how much damage, but there was damage done.
[01:15:55]  According to BRICS News, it was none.
[01:15:56]  According to New York Times, it was, you know, actually, I think New York Times was a little more BRICS News about it.
[01:16:01]  But according to the U.S., it was totally devastating.
[01:16:05]  But this time, yeah, you're right.
[01:16:07]  I think it's going to be more focused, even though the negotiations have been ostensibly about the nuclear program.

=== Ballistic Missiles Threat (05:34) ===

[01:16:13]  But also like the ballistic missiles.
[01:16:15]  The ballistic missiles, you can't have a military.
[01:16:18]  We want to turn you into Syria.
[01:16:19]  Like you can't have a military name.
[01:16:20]  Exactly.
[01:16:20]  Well, it's also just like the ballistic missiles, which are, you know, for those of you who are not seasoned missile veterans like all of us here, those are more sort of conventional weapons, not nuclear, that were capable, as we saw, of hitting Israel to greater and lesser effectiveness during this last year.
[01:16:41]  But enough, I mean, but enough to make Israel suit for peace.
[01:16:44]  I think that's like the main takeaway here is, you know, it's clear that the nuclear issue is what is stuck in Trump's head.
[01:16:51]  And like, that's what he's being sold on, is that we have to prevent them from getting a weapon.
[01:16:55]  It obviously kind of causes some rhetorical problems because Trump came out after the strikes and was like, they're totally destroyed or whatever.
[01:17:04]  But the real issue for Israel, and I think that we have to just basically treat this as an Israel-instigated war, even though all the bluster is coming from the United States and all the hardware and firepower is coming from the United States, is the ballistic missiles.
[01:17:21]  Because I think, you know, they played a bunch of cards during the 12-day war last June where they did their intelligence ops and they struck a bunch of IRGC individuals.
[01:17:34]  And Israel, I mean, Iran was able to pretty quickly reconstitute its command and control structure and started firing off ballistic missiles.
[01:17:43]  And yes, Israel was able to bomb some of the missile sites and target some of their launchers, but nevertheless, Iran got some licks in.
[01:17:54]  And also it really drained down, I kind of referenced this earlier, the U.S.'s interceptors because they're running defense for the Israelis.
[01:18:01]  And they were running through their missile interceptors pretty quickly.
[01:18:05]  And so Israel realized that over a longer period, Iran's ballistic missile stockpile was the actual thing that could threaten it.
[01:18:13]  And Iran realized that that's their actual deterrent.
[01:18:17]  And so that's why, A, that's why the June war, Israel was down to end the June war.
[01:18:24]  And B, that's why Israel had to insist that their ballistic missile capacity is neutered in this war.
[01:18:31]  I have a kind of, yeah, I don't know, cynical, but also optimistic in a way, read of what's happening in the negotiations, which is that the nuclear issue is actually the thing that they could reach a deal on if the Trump administration were willing to offer meaningful sanctions relief, right?
[01:18:53]  Because that's what the Iranians need.
[01:18:56]  Their economy is currently crippled.
[01:18:59]  So bad.
[01:19:00]  It's so bad.
[01:19:01]  They need sanctions relief.
[01:19:02]  They need investment to come into the country.
[01:19:05]  That is an existential threat for the regime right now.
[01:19:08]  And so there is a deal to be made.
[01:19:10]  I mean, they have to have a face-saving amount of enrichment going on.
[01:19:14]  But the gulf between any enrichment and the type of enrichment you would need to actually produce a weapon is a huge gulf.
[01:19:22]  And so presumably there is a conceivable deal on the table that is economic relief in exchange for a nominal amount of enrichment, which again was the deal that they had.
[01:19:34]  This was the JCPOA.
[01:19:36]  And why did the JCPOA end?
[01:19:38]  Because Netanyahu came and pulled his strings and got Miriam Adelson to go pull her strings or whatever and got Obama to, I mean, got Trump to rip it up, right?
[01:19:47]  So all of that is now still happening.
[01:19:51]  And my read on it is that the missiles are totally non-negotiable because Israel needs them destroyed and Iran can't destroy them because it's their last deterrent power.
[01:20:02]  Because if they didn't have the missiles, then Israel would just do whatever they wanted and fire at will.
[01:20:07]  And so that, to me, to my mind, that's the war track is the missiles issue.
[01:20:12]  And so I anticipate that there will be strikes, that those strikes will be, you know, they may hit the nuclear sites, but they will be really focused on trying to like mow the lawn and degrade Iran's missile capacity as much as possible and then return to the negotiating table and maybe repick up this nuclear deal.
[01:20:34]  And maybe not.
[01:20:35]  You know, they may just want to punish Iran further and not give them any kind of economic relief.
[01:20:40]  But that's my read on this situation.
[01:20:42]  But it is, and I think that's the Iranians read on some level, right?
[01:20:47]  They know that there's not going to be a real deal on missiles.
[01:20:52]  And it seems like they think, the Iranians think that in order to get a better deal on nuclear and a better deal in general, they need to inflict some amount of pain on the Americans.
[01:21:03]  So they're saying, okay, well, we need to have a short war in which we can do some damage and make the Americans back off, a la what the Houthis did when they told the Americans to fuck off and eventually got the U.S. to withdraw.
[01:21:19]  And the U.S. is thinking, well, if we just knock out their missile capacity, then Israel stops breathing down our neck as much.
[01:21:28]  And we're freed up to then make a deal or whatever and accomplish our goals that way.
[01:21:32]  So you have both sides saying, we just got to win.
[01:21:35]  We just got to have a short conflict that we win, which is a recipe for a long conflict, right?
[01:21:39]  It's a recipe because you enter into the chaos of war in which things are not predictable.

=== U.S. Empire as a Protection Racket (15:33) ===

[01:21:48]  We don't know what surprises both sides have.
[01:21:50]  We don't know, we don't even know what would happen if Iran got a really solid strike in on, for example, a U.S. carrier and you have dozens of casualties.
[01:22:04]  We don't know what would happen because Trump has never really been in that position.
[01:22:08]  And so we just don't know what his reaction would be.
[01:22:10]  We don't know what the country's reaction would be.
[01:22:12]  And so that's what is so terrifying about this moment right now is that you have both sides charging into this place of open contingency and both sides kind of headed towards war in a way that then just opens up all kinds of terrible consequences.
[01:22:28]  Yeah, and to be clear, I know a lot of people like to point to that one war games exercise that the U.S. ran against itself, but you know, to the I think blue and red with one team playing Iran, the other team playing the U.S. and the U.S. came out the worst for it.
[01:22:45]  That was a long time ago and a lot of things have changed.
[01:22:47]  So I just, I would not say, you know, don't be bricks news about this and be like, but I think there is a real chance here of casualties occurring on the U.S. side, which famously, and this is watch this transition, fellas, did not occur with the abduction of Nicolas Maduro from Venezuela.
[01:23:05]  And I have been really, it has been just crazy visit after crazy visit to Venezuela in the past month.
[01:23:14]  We had CIA Director John Ratcliffe go down there.
[01:23:18]  We had our energy secretary.
[01:23:20]  I can't remember the fucking guy's name.
[01:23:21]  I think it's Scott something.
[01:23:22]  He's down there.
[01:23:23]  He kissed.
[01:23:23]  Did you guys see that?
[01:23:24]  He kissed a little vial of oil at the Peta Vesa plant.
[01:23:30]  No, that's crazy.
[01:23:31]  Yeah, Delsi Rodriguez is standing behind him.
[01:23:33]  He goes, he closes his eyes and he kisses the oil.
[01:23:36]  He's a Western law thing.
[01:23:39]  We had, I think it was like the Southcom commander went down there the other day and it was pictured with American soldiers with guns.
[01:23:47]  I mean, people were making a lot of big deal about this, like Venezuelan opposition people.
[01:23:51]  I think they were guarding the embassy.
[01:23:52]  That's fair.
[01:23:54]  But still, you know, it's a change from how it was a month or two ago.
[01:24:00]  And we see a strategy cohering here.
[01:24:03]  And I don't want to be, you know, one of these guys, but Marco Rubio's Cuban, right?
[01:24:12]  Listen, this is a big, this is, people like to quote, I think it was Teddy Roosevelt about this, these hyphenated Americans.
[01:24:18]  You know, this is a big, a big Trump 2 thing.
[01:24:20]  We talked about these hyphenated Americans.
[01:24:22]  I just want to say it does seem like Marco Rubio has maybe a personal problem with the Cuban government.
[01:24:30]  I just, I don't want to, you know, I'm not trying to speak out of turn here, but it seems like perhaps this issue is rather close to his heart.
[01:24:39]  And I will take a mea culpa here because in the aftermath of the abduction of Nicolas Maduro, Marco Rubio was actually rather closed-mouthed about Cuba.
[01:24:52]  And I was like, maybe.
[01:24:56]  And I don't even remember what I said on the show, but that has not been the case.
[01:24:59]  We are squeezing the fucking lights out of Cuba.
[01:25:02]  I know a number of people who have been there over the past few months.
[01:25:07]  It's bad.
[01:25:08]  It's really bad there right now.
[01:25:12]  And it's getting worse.
[01:25:14]  We cut off Venezuela's, obviously, the oil supply that they were giving them.
[01:25:18]  We're threatening sanctions on Mexico and Shinebaum's government there.
[01:25:23]  And I believe they are maybe kind of reconfiguring the oil that they're sending there.
[01:25:28]  It doesn't seem like they're sending the oil.
[01:25:29]  They've been talking about humanitarian aid, but that's not oil.
[01:25:33]  And they're going to send the oil.
[01:25:34]  I know, but aren't they saying that it's going to be oil as humanitarian?
[01:25:37]  That's what they've been saying, but where is it?
[01:25:40]  Yeah, I don't know.
[01:25:41]  I don't know.
[01:25:41]  I mean, I don't know.
[01:25:42]  I mean, Russia, I think, has said that they will, too, but again, like...
[01:25:44]  The U.S. is also, like, intercepting ships now, like, around the world.
[01:25:47]  They did it in the Indian Ocean.
[01:25:49]  Exactly.
[01:25:49]  Exactly.
[01:25:50]  And intercepting and boarding ships.
[01:25:52]  And so like, you can say it's humanitarian aid if you want.
[01:25:55]  I do not think that would stop the United States from fucking boarding your fucking tanker and turning that motherfucker around in, you know, in the Bering Strait or whatever.
[01:26:06]  And what confuses me here is what they think is going to happen.
[01:26:12]  Because with Venezuela, I mean, I think a lot of people were, including myself, were rather surprised.
[01:26:16]  They actually did the, and again, this is from their perspective, the smart thing of leaving the government in place and not trying to really fuck with it that much.
[01:26:26]  Because I think a lot of people were under the impression, understandably, that they would overthrow the Venezuelan government and then the country would be plunged into civil war.
[01:26:34]  And, you know, Brick's news led me to believe that this would happen.
[01:26:37]  But also, you'd think that this would happen.
[01:26:39]  This is the U.S. has done many, many, many times.
[01:26:42]  And, you know, we don't particularly always give the Trump government intelligent as a adjective when we describe them.
[01:26:50]  But it was, from their perspective, very intelligent thing to do.
[01:26:53]  With Cuba, I mean, this is, I don't think that there's as much wiggle room with that.
[01:26:59]  And, you know, there's all these reports in the Miami Herald about Rubio meeting with Raul Castro's grandson and shit like that.
[01:27:07]  Who knows?
[01:27:08]  You know, turns out that maybe the reports in the Miami Herald about meeting with Dulcie Rodriguez might have been true.
[01:27:13]  So I don't know.
[01:27:15]  But there isn't really, I mean, the Cuban opposition is, I mean, the sort of nest of gangsters is rather old at this point.
[01:27:25]  And there hasn't really been like a major political figure besides Marco Rubio to emerge from the newer generations for the Mariella generation.
[01:27:34]  And so I don't really know what they're planning to replace it with, but it seems like, I mean, they're just trying to squeeze it until it just dies.
[01:27:43]  And then I don't know.
[01:27:45]  Yeah, I mean, I don't know.
[01:27:46]  I don't want to make predictions here, but I do think that the Trump administration is riding high off of their quote-unquote success in Venezuela.
[01:27:53]  And you're right that in some of these other, on some of these other terrains, it's not going to be quite so seamless.
[01:27:59]  I mean, I don't think it was a guarantee that that was going to go seamless.
[01:28:02]  I think it's pretty fucking insane, what their raid was.
[01:28:05]  But both in Cuba and also in Iran, you have governments that are far less, that are very integrated.
[01:28:18]  And you just, you know, especially in Iran, you have the Islamic Republic, which really views itself as a military organization as the defender of the revolution.
[01:28:30]  And so even if you were to kidnap. you know, the Supreme Leader, like, or, or assassinate him, that wouldn't, it, it, I mean, it might lead to some form of state collapse if it is paired with a massive campaign of destruction, but that is far more likely to lead to a civil war scenario because for the people defending the regime, it is existential.
[01:28:52]  Yeah.
[01:28:52]  Um, and I don't know as much about the structures of the Cuban government, so I can't make a similar prediction, but I just will say that with this kind of bellicosity and recklessness on the international stage, there will be a miscalculation.
[01:29:11]  There will be a misstep.
[01:29:12]  And I think that the question is what happens at that moment?
[01:29:17]  Because I really don't think that the Trump administration is operating with a very coherent grand strategy.
[01:29:24]  It's more like there are several overlapping operative logics that win the day variously.
[01:29:32]  Well, I was watching this Board of Peace meeting the other day and God, what a waste of time that was.
[01:29:40]  I was watching this fucking board of peace meeting the other day.
[01:29:42]  And once I got through 45 minutes of show tunes, YMCA played twice and also they ended the meeting after Trump gaveled with YMCA once again.
[01:29:57]  Which was, I got to tell you, a surreal thing to watch.
[01:30:01]  But it felt like nothing less than a mafia dawn coming off of like a successful whatever heroin sale or whatever, kind of like lording it over the fucking peons there.
[01:30:15]  And it was interesting because it was a lot of, it was the, it was kind of the bumass states that mostly sent their fucking guys there, you know, like Modi didn't go.
[01:30:22]  And then some guy, but Modi sent a representative and some guys didn't even send a representative, but Trump was like, I know you're watching.
[01:30:28]  So, you know.
[01:30:29]  But it was really crazy because it was just Trump up there doing his usual thing of being like, shout out you, shout out you.
[01:30:35]  And he just goes and he shouts out all the world leaders there.
[01:30:38]  And the way that he describes them, he's like, they're smart.
[01:30:40]  They're tough.
[01:30:41]  You know what I mean?
[01:30:41]  But it really sounded like, you know, like a mafia boss.
[01:30:45]  And that really seems to me what they're kind of like writing on is this like extra supra UN that you have to buy into that is like the actual, like, this is where, you know, this is where the fucking deals get made.
[01:30:59]  You know what I'm saying?
[01:31:00]  And it's almost like Venezuela, Cuba, Iran are kind of their test cases.
[01:31:05]  And like, we're going to take these guys out.
[01:31:07]  We mean business.
[01:31:08]  And like, you kind of join this protection racket that we're fucking starting.
[01:31:13]  And this whole thing is, what I sound like Michael Parenti here or something, but this is a fucking gangster state.
[01:31:19]  I mean, he's acting like a fucking gangster.
[01:31:22]  And one thing, one thing, because now you guys know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I guess I'm still petty bourgeois, but I will be big bourgeois, hopefully by the time this comes out.
[01:31:31]  Congrats.
[01:31:32]  I'm PMC, by the way.
[01:31:33]  Well, you guys are lawyers, dude.
[01:31:35]  Right, yeah.
[01:31:35]  Yeah.
[01:31:35]  No, we're killing you.
[01:31:38]  But, but, um, but it is, it is so fucking low class, the way this fucking place is governed.
[01:31:46]  The putting the fucking Trump thing on the, on the fucking, do you guys see that?
[01:31:49]  They unveiled the Trump thing on the DOJ.
[01:31:51]  Low class, our fucking cadillo in chief.
[01:31:55]  But, uh, but not having, not that saying having a cadillo is necessarily low class, but it has generally been associated with not very wealthy countries.
[01:32:01]  But, uh, but that's what it seemed like to me.
[01:32:03]  And the way that he's behaving with Cuba and the way that they're behaving with Iran, I hate to say it because it seems like such a lazy fucking way to put it, right?
[01:32:12]  Like, it seems like something some fucking, and you know, obviously I fuck with Michael Moore mostly.
[01:32:18]  I actually don't really, I just saw Bowling for Columbine.
[01:32:21]  I've never seen another second that he did.
[01:32:24]  And I actually even went up to shoot up a school after I saw that.
[01:32:28]  I got the wrong message from it.
[01:32:30]  But to sound like a guy when I think my caricature in my head of what Michael Moore sounds like, it is almost a lazy analysis, but it really, they are just operating from the logic of gangsterism.
[01:32:41]  I don't think it's a lazy analysis.
[01:32:42]  Thank you.
[01:32:43]  Because, I mean, it is like the U.S. is running a racket, and there's been like very good writing about the U.S. Empire as a type of racket.
[01:32:51]  By who?
[01:32:51]  By Arigi.
[01:32:52]  That's the thing.
[01:32:53]  I was setting you up for that.
[01:32:54]  You set me up for that?
[01:32:55]  Yeah.
[01:32:55]  Shout out to Rigi.
[01:32:58]  Everyone's reading Arigi in New York right now.
[01:32:59]  It's true.
[01:33:00]  You are the third person to tell me.
[01:33:02]  Yeah.
[01:33:02]  He's good.
[01:33:04]  But, right?
[01:33:05]  Like, he has this great, this great, really long essay called Hegemony Unraveling, where he talks about the racket theory of the state.
[01:33:13]  And the original development of it by this guy Charles Till is like internal, right?
[01:33:18]  That you have basically bandits and gangs eventually establish a monopoly of violence and do extraction and they make money from extracting and they also make money from, or they get buy-in eventually by like opening up new markets for merchants.
[01:33:35]  This is different from the usual Marxist analysis of a people forming into classes and then one class kind of creating this.
[01:33:46]  Yeah, I think it seems related, but it seems related, but yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:33:49]  But right.
[01:33:49]  And then like those guys like pay a protection rent, but they make more than they're paying because they're able to like go to new markets.
[01:33:56]  Gotcha.
[01:33:57]  And then Arigi's like, okay, this is actually how the U.S. Empire is working.
[01:34:00]  And it used to be, when we were talking about having hegemony, it used to be that they were running like a kind of legitimate protection thing.
[01:34:06]  Like we are making the world safe for capital against like the Soviet Union and all these like nascent.
[01:34:12]  And we'll give you some money after World War II.
[01:34:14]  Exactly.
[01:34:14]  So it's like, we are providing you protection at a cost that is no greater and in fact cheaper than any competitors who might do it.
[01:34:22]  And you're making a sweet deal in the meantime too.
[01:34:25]  And then that changes to an actual protection racket, which is not only are we now like kind of charging you more politically and economically, like you have to buy our shit.
[01:34:34]  Like we're going to terror of you.
[01:34:35]  We're going to fuck you up if you don't.
[01:34:37]  But also we're creating the problems, which is like a classic mafioso move.
[01:34:41]  It's like, it would be a shame if something happened to your store unless you like, I'm protecting you from me.
[01:34:46]  This also works in relationships.
[01:34:49]  Say more.
[01:34:50]  No, I'll leave you to figure that out.
[01:34:52]  But don't you do this, right?
[01:34:54]  Yeah.
[01:34:55]  No, no.
[01:34:55]  But no, but you're right.
[01:34:57]  It's like this crude protection racket where also we even know what the street tax is because it's $1 billion because that's what it costs to join into the Board of Peace.
[01:35:06]  That is true.
[01:35:07]  So they're like, no, FIFA got in for 65 mil.
[01:35:09]  75.
[01:35:10]  75.
[01:35:10]  Excuse me.
[01:35:11]  They got it for $75 million.
[01:35:12]  I guess if you are a sports association, there's like a discount code you can put in.
[01:35:16]  Or if you're just like, he's like way more obsequious even than some of the other guys.
[01:35:20]  Maybe it's just that.
[01:35:21]  Trump likes having that guy around.
[01:35:23]  Giovanni Infanti.
[01:35:24]  He shouted out Giovanni Infanti many times during the Board of Peace.
[01:35:29]  Because he gave him the peace prize.
[01:35:29]  He gives him the peace prize.
[01:35:30]  Well, he's working.
[01:35:31]  I don't think they give it to me.
[01:35:32]  Oh, no, they did give it to him.
[01:35:32]  Yeah, yeah, the Trump Peace Prize.
[01:35:33]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:35:34]  But he's still, he's in his running for the second year in a row.
[01:35:37]  But yeah, it's a billion dollars.
[01:35:39]  It's a billion dollars to join the protection racket.
[01:35:41]  And you're absolutely right that the cost of not joining is, well, then you get to be with Venezuela and Cuba and Iran.
[01:35:49]  And yeah, so I mean, I don't know.
[01:35:50]  I don't even have anything more to say that it is just very explicitly a protection racket.
[01:35:55]  And that is like what is so kind of low-minded, low-browded-that's what I'm saying.
[01:36:02]  Yeah.
[01:36:02]  About the right-wing ideology now is like, what if we just stopped pretending that the liberal international order was any of the good things?
[01:36:12]  And what if we just kept insisting that it's the bad things?
[01:36:15]  And it's this like, it is, and that's where it kind of like dovetails in with the broader MAGA kind of revanchism because they have this idea that there was this force, wokeism or whatever you call it, that was actually the cause of decline, where they're like, the fact that we had any consent at all is why we are falling from power and just kind of totally ignoring these secular structural forces that are at play.
[01:36:40]  And what they end up doing, I refer to it as the quicksand theory of imperial decline, where they're like, we just need to abandon all of the consent and lean heavily on coercion.
[01:36:51]  And that's how we'll get back into power.
[01:36:53]  That is just the struggling in the quicksand that ends up undermining the entire system, undermining the entire system of hegemony in the first place.
[01:37:01]  Yeah, right.
[01:37:01]  And also, like, speaking more to like its crudity and just like, like, I don't know, like, gross, like, low-rent stuff, it also has the structure of like patrimonialism.
[01:37:11]  It's not just like the gangster state that the U.S. kind of became in the global war on terror, so-called, right?
[01:37:17]  It's also like, no, Trump is like, he's on the board of peace for life.

=== Why Bikers Symbolize Their Ideology (05:09) ===

[01:37:21]  Yeah.
[01:37:21]  He's, he's the Don, right?
[01:37:23]  Like, they, they have this, like, very, like, naked, like, like, you know, like, father worship thing.
[01:37:29]  And there's also, like, I don't know if you see this, like, Republicans love the mafia.
[01:37:33]  They love pretending the mafia is like righteous and cool.
[01:37:36]  And the mafia is going to kill every child of us.
[01:37:38]  Right.
[01:37:38]  Yeah.
[01:37:38]  They're going to kill all those human traffickers and town molesters.
[01:37:41]  Like, the right-wing vision of like what justice should look like is like some awesome cops, but who are afraid to get their hands dirty?
[01:37:49]  Right.
[01:37:50]  Some fucking gangsters from every like Chinese, Russian, you know, with hearts.
[01:37:56]  I don't want to say that.
[01:37:57]  Italian, Russian, because we're in New York.
[01:38:01]  Mafia all getting together.
[01:38:03]  And then also the bikers.
[01:38:05]  Yeah.
[01:38:06]  Every single time, there is nothing you could show basically anybody who's ever voted Republican in their entire life a video, a clearly AI generated video on your phone of just an endless loop of bikers going down the street and be like, look, they're going to Washington to kill the pedophiles and they will believe you.
[01:38:22]  I don't care if they went to Harvard or what, they will believe you.
[01:38:25]  I showed that to JD Vance and he would be entranced.
[01:38:28]  They would have loved DMX's funeral.
[01:38:30]  You guys in New York for that?
[01:38:31]  No.
[01:38:32]  It was crazy.
[01:38:33]  No, I didn't go, but I just like, I was trying to walk outside and there was just hundreds and hundreds of bikers in the streets.
[01:38:39]  Interesting.
[01:38:40]  There's a guy who went to my school who became a corrections officer and then a cop.
[01:38:44]  And he was like straight up the dumbest guy in my school.
[01:38:47]  Yeah.
[01:38:47]  Who also like loved bikers and he would just post videos of himself going on these like biker gang rides.
[01:38:53]  No gangs.
[01:38:54]  It's just like, it is like the vision that these guys have of what a biker gang is of like righteous anti-woke warriors who, you know, they might, they might party.
[01:39:05]  They might like to party, but that's kind of the extent of it.
[01:39:08]  They might fuck you up.
[01:39:09]  Right.
[01:39:09]  They might fuck you up if you get out of line on their turf.
[01:39:12]  Yeah.
[01:39:12]  And like if you disrespect a woman, yeah, like a biker.
[01:39:15]  The most woo-beat sort of person in the world.
[01:39:19]  And it's, and it's crazy.
[01:39:20]  I think they also like bikers because bikers could often be quite, let's say, diabetic in terms of their, you know, what the diabetes you get.
[01:39:29]  They also get to wear the cool symbols that no one else gets to wear.
[01:39:31]  The swastika?
[01:39:32]  Swastika.
[01:39:33]  Yeah.
[01:39:33]  Listen.
[01:39:35]  Anyone can wear it.
[01:39:36]  Right.
[01:39:37]  If you want to.
[01:39:40]  But it's, it's, yeah, it's just, it's, it's ridiculous to me.
[01:39:44]  And I, I got to tell you, I just am fucking.
[01:39:47]  This is why I want to, I want to, I want to bring this back a little bit to where we started.
[01:39:51]  This is why I want to bring up the AOC thing because in the face, we've often kind of criticized, like, there's like they're running, they're running amok here in the federal government.
[01:40:01]  And our goat Schumer seems to have abandoned his perch.
[01:40:06]  And, you know, the Democrats are just, they have nothing to offer.
[01:40:09]  They, they never really have anything to offer except just not this, which is not a durable offer.
[01:40:16]  Because for a lot of people, this is awesome.
[01:40:19]  I think a lot of people don't understand is that like what is happening right now is popular.
[01:40:24]  But also, like, the Democrats' offer isn't just not this.
[01:40:27]  It's this, but like more competent and kinder.
[01:40:30]  Yeah.
[01:40:30]  But like people love it, not just because of the policy, but because of how nakedly crude it is.
[01:40:36]  And like, not just who's psychoanalytical, but they like their ego ideal is the biker who gets to do whatever he wants.
[01:40:42]  And then they have this like fake moral code that they would abandon in a heartbeat.
[01:40:45]  Yeah.
[01:40:45]  And I will say, this is not a novel feature of America.
[01:40:48]  We have the like figure of the settler, the settler frontiersman.
[01:40:52]  Like as we've been talking about this Easy Rider character, it is just reminding me of the like, you know, Ternarian settler idealist vision of what an American is as this frontiersman.
[01:41:03]  Well, I gotta say that's not the Easy Rider character.
[01:41:05]  Easy Rider character.
[01:41:06]  I don't actually know who Easy Rider is.
[01:41:08]  Bro. Easy Rider character is famously killed by right-wing elements in the film because he's too cool.
[01:41:13]  He's too cool.
[01:41:14]  He's too chill.
[01:41:15]  You don't understand.
[01:41:15]  There have been a lot of people, Cool Hand Luke, who have been killed for being too cool.
[01:41:20]  And I think that is really, we cannot mix that up with those things.
[01:41:24]  Because certain cowboys, obviously the cowboy, very big settler archetype, but there were certain cowboys who were mostly focused on being cool.
[01:41:31]  You know what I mean?
[01:41:33]  And so like, like even Clint Eastwood, the man in black, like he was, he was aura farming.
[01:41:39]  He was aura farming.
[01:41:39]  Yeah.
[01:41:39]  You know what I mean?
[01:41:41]  He wasn't wheat farming and he wasn't slave trading.
[01:41:44]  He was simply aura farming.
[01:41:45]  Got it.
[01:41:46]  But but it is, it is, it just drives me.
[01:41:49]  I hate these fucking thugs, these Ruthugans.
[01:41:56]  But the Democrats, I don't like them either.
[01:41:59]  I hate them too.
[01:42:00]  It just drives me crazy because that's the only two.
[01:42:02]  That's the two guys who are on the ballot besides the whatever the green, like my goat, what's her name, Jill?
[01:42:08]  But it just drives me crazy because there is the alternative that AOC presented at Munich seems to be this, an international version of the alternative that not only the AOCs, but everybody's in the Democrat present here, which is we got to go back to how it was, but more fair.
[01:42:27]  And that just, that fucking, that dog does not hunt anymore.

=== AOC's Unrealistic Vision (09:14) ===

[01:42:31]  Yeah.
[01:42:31]  And it's just, and I cannot believe these people, I think that it will hunt temporarily.
[01:42:36]  I think that, again, if Gavin Newsom is like, I will arrest Trump.
[01:42:41]  You know what I mean?
[01:42:43]  And for being too cool.
[01:42:45]  I will arrest Trump.
[01:42:46]  I think that would work temporarily.
[01:42:48]  But there is clearly some trends that we can point out here that are like people, Trump did get re-elected.
[01:42:55]  People really like Trump.
[01:42:57]  And I will just say, though, that I don't think it's necessarily an electoral failure in terms of strategy.
[01:43:03]  Like I look out over the left electoral scene right now, not just your AOCs, but you're also like your Graham Plattners up in Maine, Mamdani even in New York City, who are taking this approach of leaning into the working class analysis, economic justice, and pairing it with a kind of narrow critique, not necessarily of U.S. empire more broadly, but of U.S. support for Israel.
[01:43:28]  And I do think that that has the chance of being a minimally persuasive message such that they could win.
[01:43:36]  I think the bigger problem, though, is not so much about them losing the elections.
[01:43:40]  It's about what happens when they do win.
[01:43:42]  So, yeah, exactly.
[01:43:43]  When AOC gets in there, because you know we're all voting.
[01:43:47]  Right.
[01:43:47]  When AOC gets in.
[01:43:48]  I vote every day.
[01:43:50]  I voted for AOC many times.
[01:43:53]  But when AOC gets in there, or if AOC gets in there, you know, in 2028 or whatever.
[01:43:59]  And okay, so we cut off a certain amount of aid or maybe even a lot of aid to Israel.
[01:44:04]  Or also maybe no aid to Israel.
[01:44:06]  Well, there's that.
[01:44:07]  That's the same thing.
[01:44:09]  Even in an amazing case scenario, right, where this happens, okay, well, then what happens when someone maybe attacks Israel in a major way?
[01:44:21]  Yeah.
[01:44:21]  Or what happens when there is like a big conflict between states and we have, you know, we have treaties with one of them, right?
[01:44:28]  I mean, we have treaties with one of them and we have all the fucking military bases stationed around all these players.
[01:44:35]  I mean, that's another thing.
[01:44:36]  It's like the U.S. has a lot of outposts in this world, all over this world.
[01:44:44]  And so if there's like wars in like 80% of the world, there's going to be a U.S. base there.
[01:44:51]  And, you know, it just, it kind of like you run up to, you run up to some real contradictions there.
[01:44:56]  And again, like, I think a lot of people really lazily like to like paste history over the present and be like, it's exactly this.
[01:45:03]  And I think that I understand that temptation because I am lazy and I am doing that literally right now.
[01:45:08]  But like we run into a World War I problem, right?
[01:45:11]  It's like, okay, well, then, you know, World War II is a little easier because the Soviet Union was involved.
[01:45:16]  So everyone could just kind of do that, be like, we're going to support the U.S. government.
[01:45:20]  We're going to sign the no-strike pledge, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
[01:45:23]  But in World War I, people were like, well, we have these treaties or, well, they're oppressing these people.
[01:45:29]  What do we do?
[01:45:30]  You know, it's just, I think the problem is, is like, you know what?
[01:45:35]  It's just, it's you, you are, you're, you can be as democratic socialist as you want.
[01:45:41]  You will rule the capitalist, imperialist United States of America.
[01:45:46]  Yeah.
[01:45:47]  And that is going to, it doesn't matter how inspired people are by your presidential campaign, you are going to run up into some real contradictions that if history has shown us anything, and I'm not talking about ancient history, I'm talking about present history or history of the near present.
[01:46:04]  That is going to run you some problems that you might not be, in fact, you will not be prepared to solve and that or to deal with.
[01:46:10]  And that is, that's the thing is like a guy like Trump, not to be.
[01:46:15]  Myself has been glaring about this, but like a guy like Trump is actually has been kind of prepared to deal with the problems he's faced.
[01:46:22]  Like he really has like, there has been, I said this a lot at the beginning, but I felt real jealousy at points during this because I know that if, for instance, like Bernie had won in 2016, you think there'd be a fucking doge or whatever, a version of left-wing doge?
[01:46:36]  You think there would be a renaming of the Department of Defense to the Department of Peace?
[01:46:40]  You know, like, no, that, that was not going to happen.
[01:46:42]  You need somebody with real, and now I become a Nietzsche and you need someone with real will.
[01:46:47]  And like, and Trump has that kind of.
[01:46:50]  You know, he doesn't want that all the way.
[01:46:51]  He doesn't want that the way that all his fans think.
[01:46:53]  But what the right has is a story about the world, right?
[01:46:56]  It may be crazy and it may be like not ultimately that persuasive in comparison to a real story about what's happening, but they do have a story they're telling about decline and they can mobilize people behind that and around that.
[01:47:08]  And what the Democrats have is just wish casting of restoring a world that is just gone and not coming back.
[01:47:15]  Well, it's also like they like the reason you can't have like this but more fair as a competent or like coherent vision is because this shit only works because it's not fair.
[01:47:25]  Yeah.
[01:47:25]  It only works like this we were saying on the international order, right?
[01:47:28]  This only works in the way where it redoubts to the U.S. benefit exclusively because it's not fair.
[01:47:33]  And you can't do that.
[01:47:35]  And so what the Republicans often similar dynamic in Israel, right?
[01:47:37]  Like you have this like liberal wing, such as Israel, Israel, before October 7th, you know, constantly deferring the two-state thing down the road, being like, no, we can maybe like live side by side, whatever.
[01:47:49]  And that's not a realistic vision because the whole like raison d'etre of Israel is to exterminate the Palestinians.
[01:47:55]  And likewise with the like the U.S. as a continuing imperial power, it's you have the Democratic vision of endless deferral of decline or endless deferral of the decision that Trump is now making.
[01:48:08]  Or you have the now, which also used to be the right wing vision to a certain degree, but now you have the Trump Rubio vision, advanced vision, whatever, of, okay, no, we get it.
[01:48:17]  Like this shit does only work because it's not fair and we need this shit to keep working.
[01:48:21]  And that is a vision that is coherent and it has an attraction because of that.
[01:48:26]  I will say like the left, and this may ruffle some of you guys' feathers, maybe yours more, but like a lot of the left-wing vision is also just like, it's some variation of like a woke thing or whatever.
[01:48:39]  You know what I mean?
[01:48:39]  It's like it doesn't, there's not really a positive vision offered a lot.
[01:48:43]  And the reality is, whether you're correct or not, you do need to offer a positive vision.
[01:48:47]  And like, it's funny because the more correct ones that I see are the more negative visions that are out there because that's the reality.
[01:48:54]  But if you want to actually enact a political program, you do need a positive one.
[01:48:58]  And so it's going to be the peoples like the AOCs who at least will, in their ignorance, I should say, can offer something that's like fake but positive vision.
[01:49:10]  But again, it's nothing like the Ruby Ovance sort of Trump one where they have this sort of grand story.
[01:49:17]  And yeah, it's just, I don't know.
[01:49:20]  I hear the left-wing vision, which is this shit only works that's not fair.
[01:49:23]  So we need to get rid of it.
[01:49:24]  Or we need to make it fair, which means it's a new thing now.
[01:49:26]  Yeah.
[01:49:26]  Right.
[01:49:27]  And that is like, that's what we talk about when we talk about the international order.
[01:49:29]  It's like you have to make it true, which actually just makes it a different thing.
[01:49:32]  Yeah.
[01:49:32]  And I think that the problem with what is on offer right now is that leaning into the economic justice angle of it, which also, again, was the kind of like Bernie vision, is you end up sidestepping a lot of the key issues.
[01:49:45]  And the biggest one is migration, right?
[01:49:47]  Because it's just simply not true what AOC is saying, that the number one or exclusive cause of right populism is inequality.
[01:49:59]  Like that just totally misses the entire, like all of the all of the issues around migration that are being caused by climate catastrophe, being caused by wars, being caused by imperialism, right?
[01:50:11]  So if you don't have an alternate explanation for what's happening, then all you end up doing is saying, only think about the economic issues and you default to pretty reactionary positions on immigration, which is what Bernie was, right?
[01:50:24]  Like Bernie has come out and like essentially endorsed some of Trump's policies on immigration.
[01:50:29]  You have, you know, not that she's anywhere on the left, but you have Hillary Clinton also talking about bragging about how many people were deported before Trump came into office under her husband's administration.
[01:50:40]  And then also Obama, you know, who was called the deporter in chief, right?
[01:50:44]  And so if you just default to that kind of nationalism, A, it's not going to work as a persuasive tool because you're not going to out xenophobia, the Republicans.
[01:50:57]  And B, you're not going to actually satisfy your constituency with an explanation because you're only addressing a small part of the problem.
[01:51:03]  So yes, it is a tall order to pitch a new world system.
[01:51:07]  It is a tall order to incorporate aspects of a national story that we have not fully integrated, right?
[01:51:14]  It is a tall order to say as a left electoral figure, you actually have to incorporate anti-imperialism into your narrative of the world, but we're fucked.
[01:51:26]  Like we're in a bad way, right?
[01:51:28]  And so like if, yes, we need a positive project, that starts with being able to articulate where we're at, being able to articulate the conjuncture in a meaningful way if we're ever going to actually get to some of these solutions that we're talking about.
[01:51:40]  Well, ladies and gentlemen, two more of my lawyers here to berate me.

=== Import the War, Export the Border (02:02) ===

[01:51:46]  Thank you, gentlemen, for your time.
[01:51:47]  We are, of course, have been joined by Jake Rahm, a writer and lawyer.
[01:51:53]  Where can people read your things?
[01:51:55]  I guess wherever I write.
[01:51:56]  I don't know.
[01:51:57]  Just Google your name.
[01:51:59]  Just Google my name.
[01:51:59]  Go to my Twitter.
[01:52:00]  I don't know.
[01:52:01]  Google your Twitter.
[01:52:02]  Yeah.
[01:52:03]  I like post my articles there.
[01:52:06]  But I don't know.
[01:52:08]  I write for like a bunch of places.
[01:52:09]  He's not trying to brag.
[01:52:10]  I'm not trying to brag.
[01:52:11]  I don't want to.
[01:52:13]  The Atlantic.
[01:52:15]  Yeah, The Atlantic.
[01:52:16]  National Review.
[01:52:17]  Yeah, the New York Review.
[01:52:19]  Yeah.
[01:52:20]  I'm in the Wall Street Journal culture section often.
[01:52:23]  Obviously.
[01:52:23]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:52:24]  Places like that.
[01:52:26]  Dylan is, of course, also a writer.
[01:52:28]  I'm not going to ask you this question.
[01:52:29]  You're probably going to say the same.
[01:52:30]  Where can people read your writing?
[01:52:31]  I actually have a new piece that's out today.
[01:52:33]  Look at that.
[01:52:34]  That covers a lot of the material that we've talked about today in N plus One.
[01:52:38]  It's called Import the War, Export the Border.
[01:52:40]  I have to actually just check to see what it was titled because it was published while we were.
[01:52:44]  All right.
[01:52:45]  This is the come out Monday.
[01:52:46]  Okay, cool.
[01:52:47]  So it's fully up.
[01:52:49]  But folks should also turn into TurbulencePod, which can be found at turbulencepod.substack.com.
[01:52:55]  And I will say that Jake has come on the program.
[01:52:57]  Oh, great.
[01:52:58]  And we've done a really fantastic two-part episode about the liberal international order and international law more broadly.
[01:53:05]  So if you like this chit-chat, come over and give us a listen.
[01:53:09]  Oh, also, everyone should read Protean Magazine.
[01:53:11]  That's the only thing I do.
[01:53:13]  That's true.
[01:53:13]  Yeah.
[01:53:14]  You know, we knew the guy that started that back in San Francisco.
[01:53:16]  I know you did, which is like a small world.
[01:53:18]  It's a very small world.
[01:53:20]  You know what?
[01:53:20]  Let's just call this right now.
[01:53:21]  My name is Brace.
[01:53:23]  I'm producer Young Chomsky.
[01:53:25]  And it feels, doesn't that feel, doesn't that feel bad?
[01:53:27]  Is there a way?
[01:53:28]  Who you want to fly her in?
[01:53:30]  Fly her in.
[01:53:30]  That's what we say.
[01:53:31]  From New Jersey.
[01:53:32]  In the audio world, yeah.
[01:53:33]  You want her?
[01:53:34]  We're going to have her real voice that appears on this episode that she records in here, but I feel like we can't end the episodes any other way.
[01:53:43]  Okay.
[01:53:43]  Well, we'll do it in post.
[01:53:45]  I'm Liz, and this has been Drunan.
[01:53:47]  We will see you next time.