Timcast IRL - Tim Pool - Timcast IRL #470 - Author Of "The Next Civil War" Stephen Marche Joins, Says We Are On VERGE Of Civil War
Aired: 2022-02-18
Duration: 02:50:58


=== Growing Tribal Conversations (07:00) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey, you guys know me.
[00:00:01]  Every other word out of my mouth must be civil war or something like that.
[00:00:04]  And people are in the chat saying, Tim, civil war pool.
[00:00:08]  Well, I certainly think we're in a cold civil war.
[00:00:12]  Maybe it's even hot.
[00:00:13]  It's just too early for us to realize it on a grand scale.
[00:00:17]  But things are absolutely getting crazy.
[00:00:18]  We have a couple big stories.
[00:00:19]  I mean, one of which is this Black Lives Matter activist who was arrested.
[00:00:23]  You need to turn that volume down.
[00:00:24]  What are you doing here?
[00:00:25]  I got you, homie.
[00:00:26]  I get one.
[00:00:27]  You get one.
[00:00:28]  This Black Lives Matter activist was bailed out by BLM, by Black Lives Matter in Louisville, after he was arrested over the attempted assassination of a Jewish Democrat.
[00:00:38]  Now, they're saying he's mentally unwell.
[00:00:41]  Other people have pointed out, it's been reported, that he was actually advocating for a black nationalist organization called, what was the name of it?
[00:00:48]  I'm forgetting the name.
[00:00:49]  It's the armed forces of some extremist organization or whatever.
[00:00:53]  Pan-African Socialists or something?
[00:00:54]  No, it was a similar group to the black Hebrew Israelites.
[00:00:58]  And so when this stuff happens and you're getting the, you know, attempted assassination of politicians, it's coming right after Adam Kinzinger said, you know, he believes that it's possible a civil war could start.
[00:01:08]  And if it does, you will see targeted assassination.
[00:01:10]  So I want to get into this.
[00:01:12]  And we do have a lot of stories coming out now.
[00:01:13]  We got the National Guard deployed in New Mexico to be teachers and things like that.
[00:01:17]  We've got the trucker convoy, obviously.
[00:01:18]  That's up in Canada, but there's talk of an American convoy.
[00:01:21]  We've got cancel culture.
[00:01:23]  We've got, you know, similar issues around this.
[00:01:25]  We've got, in Florida, they've just passed a bill to ban abortion after 15 weeks, which of course is generating a lot of controversy.
[00:01:33]  Joining us to discuss this in depth is the author of The Next Civil War, Stephen Marsh.
[00:01:38]  Hey, pleasure to be here.
[00:01:39]  Do you want to quickly introduce yourself?
[00:01:41]  I'm a writer.
[00:01:42]  I'm a Canadian.
[00:01:42]  I wrote this wonderful book.
[00:01:45]  Yeah, and I sort of think a next civil war is very much a real possibility for the United States in the near future.
[00:01:52]  I think you wrote... What did you write for The Guardian?
[00:01:54]  The next civil war is here.
[00:01:55]  Well, that was an excerpt from the book.
[00:01:56]  I mean, the book got excerpted in The Guardian and The Washington Post and Foreign Policy.
[00:02:01]  Sort of the more technical aspects got excerpted in Foreign Policy.
[00:02:05]  And so, yeah, it's been around.
[00:02:08]  And it was based on an article I wrote in 2018 in Canada about the possibility of a civil war, which I was talking about then in 2018.
[00:02:18]  And so, yeah, I'm a stray cat journalist.
[00:02:20]  I go around and write for whoever leaves out a little plate of milk for me.
[00:02:23]  So, I think we've actually, on this show, discussed your article.
[00:02:26]  I know I talked about it on one of my other channels.
[00:02:29]  Oh yeah.
[00:02:29]  And I think there's like a core that we completely agree on, but then there's like a divergent worldview we have based on, you know, different political parties, which I think will be a really interesting conversation.
[00:02:39]  What's the core we agree on?
[00:02:41]  Well, I think it's, you know, people are forming.
[00:02:45]  At the time we read the article, it was easy for me to pull out the excerpt and be like, you mentioned something about people are sort of tribalizing.
[00:02:53]  They're focusing more on, you know, their own in groups and things like that.
[00:02:56]  And that's causing this like outward spread.
[00:02:58]  You've talked about things like cancel culture.
[00:03:00]  Yeah.
[00:03:00]  Specific scenarios and stuff so I'm like I'm reading your articles and I'm like I think we we agree on those things
[00:03:06]  But then there's certain specific points in politics. I think what disagreements are sure yeah, but but that doesn't
[00:03:11]  You know whether or not we agree on something like a trucker convoy
[00:03:14]  It doesn't change the fact that the core of what's happening civil war conflict the escalation we agree
[00:03:19]  yeah, I mean I definitely think an a nonpartisan observer can look at the United States and
[00:03:25]  I mean, it's a textbook case of a country headed for civil war.
[00:03:27]  It's not really a question of your political affiliation.
[00:03:30]  It's really a question of deep structures that, you know, anyone can see.
[00:03:35]  So those are not, I don't really think of that as a partisan issue.
[00:03:38]  Right.
[00:03:38]  I agree.
[00:03:39]  And what I keep saying is, you know, to a lot of people who maybe are on one side or the other, it doesn't matter if you think you're right.
[00:03:45]  What matters is both sides think they're right.
[00:03:47]  Well, I mean, there's that old expression, would you rather be married or right?
[00:03:51]  Right.
[00:03:51]  And like in America, a lot of people would rather be right than married.
[00:03:54]  You know, that's that's where you're at now.
[00:03:56]  I mean, I should say, like, I don't really think of myself as a partisan in the United States because I'm a Canadian.
[00:04:01]  So my like when I talk about Canada.
[00:04:03]  We can definitely talk about Canada, but what we're seeing in Canada is essentially a proxy conflict for the hyper-partisanship in the United States.
[00:04:11]  And I think of myself like, I think when you think of Canada, you think left.
[00:04:16]  But honestly, as I've crossed the United States writing this book and as I've interviewed the experts, I'm not part of these tribes, right?
[00:04:23]  Like, I'm outside of all of these tribes.
[00:04:25]  So it's not really that we have a difference in tribalism, so much as I have a different perspective because I'm a different citizen of a different country.
[00:04:33]  Well, so we'll get into everything.
[00:04:34]  Yeah.
[00:04:35]  We'll get into all this stuff.
[00:04:35]  Plus, we have a bunch of other stories, too, when we get into the specifics on, but also hanging out is Daniel Turner.
[00:04:40]  Yes, great to be back.
[00:04:41]  Daniel Turner, your favorite energy expert, powerofthefuture.com.
[00:04:44]  And because of the coming civil war, I live on a very large farm, far, far away from civilization.
[00:04:51]  So I'm fascinated by this conversation.
[00:04:52]  So good to be here.
[00:04:53]  We have incredible chicken conversations.
[00:04:55]  Behind the scenes.
[00:04:56]  This seems like a pretty functioning farm to me.
[00:04:58]  I mean, you got fresh eggs, I see the incubator downstairs.
[00:05:01]  I mean, like, you're one step away from Jeremy Clarkson running a, like, I own a farm show.
[00:05:05]  I mean, we grew some vegetables in our garden, but... How'd they go?
[00:05:10]  We grew all tomatoes at once because we were newbies and didn't know what we were doing.
[00:05:13]  And then we had, like, 50 tomatoes to eat at one time.
[00:05:16]  Oh, that's when you need to can them.
[00:05:18]  You need to get the sauces going.
[00:05:19]  We went berry picking because there's, what are they called, wine berries everywhere.
[00:05:23]  This is a beautiful part of the United States of America, I gotta say.
[00:05:26]  This little corner of West Virginia and Maryland.
[00:05:28]  In the summertime, there's wineberries.
[00:05:30]  They're a Chinese raspberry, and they're everywhere.
[00:05:32]  And people pull over their cars on the side of the road and pluck some and just eat them.
[00:05:35]  But we'll get into all that as well.
[00:05:37]  Am I here to talk about agriculture?
[00:05:39]  Yes.
[00:05:39]  How do you rate wineberries on a scale from 1 to 10?
[00:05:43]  Good to see you, man.
[00:05:44]  Pleasure to be here.
[00:05:45]  I'm looking forward to hearing about this documentation you've come across.
[00:05:49]  I'm not going to waste any time, Ian Crossland.
[00:05:50]  Catch you guys soon.
[00:05:52]  I am stoked for this conversation with our northern neighbor.
[00:05:54]  Canadians are always incredibly nice guests and very nice people in general, and it's been a really interesting conversation before the show.
[00:05:59]  It's going to be a great one, so glad you're here.
[00:06:01]  Before we get started, head over to TimCast.com and become a member to help support all of our work, support our journalists, support this show.
[00:06:09]  As a member, you'll get access to exclusive members-only segments from the TimCast IRL podcast.
[00:06:14]  Now, truth be told, because of how we're going to be handling today's episode, it'll be a little different.
[00:06:18]  Normally, we focus on, like, topical news.
[00:06:19]  I don't think we're going to have a members segment, because I think we're going to try and hit every possible point we can in one big conversation.
[00:06:26]  Whereas normally, we try and, like, create, like, a special segment for members.
[00:06:29]  So I think we just might go a little bit longer than usual, but let it be open and free to the public for everybody to just watch.
[00:06:35]  But that being said, we do have a massive library of members-only videos.
[00:06:39]  You definitely want to check those out because you're helping make sure this business can continue to operate.
[00:06:44]  If, in the face of cancel culture and all that stuff, this is how it all operates and you keep our journalists employed, don't forget to smash that like button, subscribe to this channel, share the show with your friends.
[00:06:54]  Let's just jump in to the first article we have here from January 4th by a man named Stephen Marsh.

=== Big Scenarios Feeding In (02:22) ===

[00:07:00]  The next U.S.
[00:07:00]  Civil War is already here.
[00:07:03]  We just refuse to see it.
[00:07:05]  I saw this.
[00:07:06]  It's tagged by The Guardian, The Far Right.
[00:07:10]  And as I was reading it, you know, there are some things in it that I was like, okay, I don't know if I agree with that.
[00:07:15]  I think you talk about voter suppression and things like that.
[00:07:18]  I think it's one of the issues.
[00:07:19]  But as I was getting into it and talking about how we've got these, you know, look, a potential political assassination attempt.
[00:07:26]  Yes.
[00:07:26]  That's not necessarily like a left-right thing with this Black Lives Matter activist.
[00:07:31]  It just shows that there's extremism emerging in this country.
[00:07:35]  But of course, you also have serious things over the past several years, like Charlottesville,
[00:07:38]  where there's these clashes in the street.
[00:07:40]  Yes.
[00:07:41]  So let's just start from the beginning, though.
[00:07:42]  You wrote a book, The Next Civil War.
[00:07:44]  This article is titled The Next U.S. Civil War is Already Here.
[00:07:47]  I don't write the headlines.
[00:07:49]  You didn't write that?
[00:07:49]  Yeah.
[00:07:50]  So do you think that it is likely?
[00:07:52]  Is it your opinion or is it a journalist's assessment?
[00:07:56]  Well, the book is really based on the best available models.
[00:08:00]  That's how I did it.
[00:08:02]  I tried to keep myself out of it as much as possible.
[00:08:06]  So, you know, the leading experts that... Foreign Policy did a survey, like, their number was a 67% chance of a civil war.
[00:08:13]  That also coincides with polls about average Americans, how likely they think a civil war is.
[00:08:21]  So, you know, I feel with this stuff you don't need to exaggerate.
[00:08:24]  It's so scary anyway that, like, what I wanted to do in the book is be as precise as possible, right?
[00:08:30]  And use the best available evidence that I could.
[00:08:33]  So, you know, yeah, there's a process underway.
[00:08:37]  The United States is a textbook case of a country headed for civil war on a number of fronts.
[00:08:41]  And it's not one thing.
[00:08:42]  It's actually what they call a complex cascading system.
[00:08:46]  So, it's things feeding into each other.
[00:08:49]  So, on one hand, it's political illegitimacy.
[00:08:51]  On the other hand, it's effects of climate change.
[00:08:53]  On the other hand, it's the levels of inequality, which are at unprecedented levels.
[00:08:58]  You know, literally levels that haven't been seen since 1776.
[00:09:02]  And all of these things contribute to each other and factor into each other.
[00:09:07]  And that's why the United States is kind of in a unique position because, you know, all these things are happening in the rest of the world as well, but it's the way that they feed into each other that creates such a dangerous situation for the United States.
[00:09:17]  Are there specific things that you found factored across multiple potentials that you just kept showing up?

=== Complex Cascading System (08:25) ===

[00:09:22]  Like, this is one of these things that it seems to be in all these scenarios.
[00:09:26]  Well, the big... I mean, there are a few ones that are big.
[00:09:29]  Like, I don't really separate them out because I do think they feed into each other.
[00:09:33]  But, like, the decline of faith of institutions, so the fact that only 20% of Americans believe their electoral system is fair, you know, that's right.
[00:09:42]  That's a condition that's just right for civil war.
[00:09:44]  The fact that 33% of Americans think that it's okay to use violence if your side loses, and that's...
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[00:11:14]  That is a huge factor.
[00:11:18]  So that's a big one.
[00:11:21]  I'm curious how much of that is honest.
[00:11:23]  And what I mean by that is...
[00:11:24]  Well, you know, these models are all of different strengths.
[00:11:27]  So like, all I can do is tell you what they say.
[00:11:30]  No, no, for sure, for sure.
[00:11:31]  So I think, you know, just leaping off from there, we have the story about the Black Lives Matter activists
[00:11:37]  accused, allegedly shooting this Democrat.
[00:11:40]  Certainly there have been instances where far-right and right-wing groups have engaged in violence.
[00:11:44]  But if you look at institutional support, When it comes to, say, Black Lives Matter in 2020, you get Kamala Harris soliciting donations to bail out rioters.
[00:11:56]  You have a Black Lives Matter activist who's arrested for the attempted assassination of a politician, and Black Lives Matter fronts $100,000 to bail him out.
[00:12:03]  You don't have that same kind of thing on the right.
[00:12:06]  Well, let me answer that question in two ways.
[00:12:09]  Okay, so the first thing is that the process that civil war experts talk about, and this happens all over the world, happens in Chile, it happened in other places that had civil war, is called complementary radicalization.
[00:12:22]  So what you have is left-wing groups or right-wing groups taking extremist positions, and this causes people on the other side to get more radical.
[00:12:31]  So that's an area that transcends, you know, Partisanship like that's that's another that's a process that's underway.
[00:12:40]  Yeah, where as things get more extreme on the left They get more extreme on the right that causes the left to get more extreme that then causes the right to get more extreme Right, and so that's that's a very toxic Process that is extremely hard to escape from now.
[00:12:55]  The other thing I would say is that when I talk to You know, this is just let me just give you this perspective.
[00:13:01]  You can take it or leave it.
[00:13:02]  You know, you might be useful to you.
[00:13:03]  It might not be but when I talk to like members of Secret Services of other countries and they're thinking about what a collapsing America looks like they're not really afraid of the left because the left is inherently self-defeating.
[00:13:18]  It is much less organized than the right like and it's also it's much less effective as it as a group.
[00:13:25]  So like when you look at a group like the Oath Keepers They have it together.
[00:13:31]  They have it together in a way.
[00:13:34]  Whereas when you look at left-wing institutions, like the Women's March after the Trump inauguration, it had somewhere between half a million and a million people at its opening rally.
[00:13:45]  It imploded in internecine politics almost instantly.
[00:13:52]  And the term woke institution basically doesn't exist because they eat themselves, right?
[00:13:58]  So all I would say is both these processes are underway, but I would say that when I talked to experts on civil war from other countries and people who are worried about the stability of the United States, it was definitely far-right extremists that were their primary worry.
[00:14:14]  What about the institutionalization?
[00:14:15]  Well, hold on.
[00:14:16]  I wanted to address this real quick.
[00:14:18]  Yeah, go ahead.
[00:14:18]  I don't think you're wrong, but the way I see it is the right I would describe as sharp, the left I would describe as blunt.
[00:14:26]  Black Lives Matter was able to raise, you know, what, tens of millions of dollars for relatively nebulous causes, but that attracted thousands of people to riot in the streets over 2020.
[00:14:39]  The damage caused was severe and it did result in a lot of death, but it was very, very widespread.
[00:14:44]  So typically what we see a lot of, especially at the start of Donald Trump's run for the
[00:14:49]  presidency, I was actually on the ground at a lot of these Trump rallies, you see
[00:14:53]  a blunt level terrorism. It never exceeded the, it was political violence.
[00:14:58]  Terrorism to me is a technical term that would not apply to that.
[00:15:02]  In terms of this book, like, Terrorism is very specific.
[00:15:08]  It has very specific consequences.
[00:15:11]  I'm not to say that we're not dealing with political violence.
[00:15:15]  Political violence to me is a better term.
[00:15:17]  So the political violence you'd see on the left would be rampant, but low scale.
[00:15:22]  So there'd be a lot of instances of someone getting punched in the face, or someone getting pushed in the street, or people running around and knocking over garbage cans.
[00:15:29]  It was incessant.
[00:15:31]  It was never rising to the point where, you know, for a lot of it, people were losing their lives until, I think, the riots.
[00:15:38]  But we've seen riots in the past.
[00:15:39]  But see, to me, as an outsider, who's right and who's wrong, and the nature of the violence is less important to me than the stability of the system.
[00:15:48]  Right.
[00:15:48]  Like as a Canadian up north, like wanting America to hold on so that we can trade with you.
[00:15:54]  Like what I'm concerned with is the stability of the system.
[00:15:56]  So, you know, like when defund the police happened, right?
[00:16:01]  Maybe the worst political idea of Well, I mean, it's a high bar.
[00:16:06]  No, I'm on board with it.
[00:16:08]  Keep it going.
[00:16:09]  We love it.
[00:16:10]  For electoral purposes, keep supporting them.
[00:16:12]  But, you know, also completely non-doable and insupportable.
[00:16:17]  Well, they did in one place.
[00:16:19]  They couldn't get it achieved anywhere else.
[00:16:21]  They got it in Minnesota and then where else?
[00:16:23]  I think 260 departments had their budgets slashed.
[00:16:25]  And then they came back, right?
[00:16:26]  Not all of them.
[00:16:27]  But a lot of them did come back.
[00:16:29]  Yeah, or CHAZ, right?
[00:16:30]  Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, which is probably the number one example of left-wing resistance to federal authority.
[00:16:39]  I mean, that is a subject in the book, but it has very little impact when compared to the militias.
[00:16:49]  So I can name a ton of things like Chazz, the Chazz Chop, that was in Seattle.
[00:16:55]  Then you also had the Portland attempts.
[00:16:56]  You had the occupation in Minneapolis.
[00:16:59]  Well, the Oath Keeper List, I mean, they have, well, obviously January 6th, I mean, would be at the top of the list, but, you know, as a very highly destabilizing action.
[00:17:09]  But, you know, like the other thing about the right is that they understand the importance of institutions in a way that the left does not.
[00:17:17]  You understand, I'm not judging.
[00:17:19]  I'm just saying.
[00:17:20]  I agree.
[00:17:22]  When you look at the Oath Keeper list, when it came out with that 40,000 names, they'd infiltrated very deeply into police departments, into school boards.
[00:17:33]  When I talked to Michael German, who was an undercover agent with the FBI in far-right movements, he was like, once they discovered I had no tattoos, they were like, you're never going to talk to anyone rough ever again.
[00:17:45]  We're going to run you on a school board.

=== Versus Bank America's Funding Power (15:37) ===

[00:17:47]  That's what we're going to do.
[00:17:49]  What I mean to say, just because I want to make sure I can let Daniel come in, is I think one of the reasons there's a lot of people who don't think that the far right elements, many people on the right don't think that there's a big threat from them because they don't see it a lot.
[00:18:04]  The way to describe it is it's sharp versus the left's blunt.
[00:18:09]  I think you're right when you say that they know the importance of institutions.
[00:18:12]  The right talks about losing institutional control at the time.
[00:18:15]  What the left doesn't understand, what they have is numbers.
[00:18:18]  People will go out in the street and march and smash things, but a day later, where are those activists?
[00:18:23]  Yes, and they have no policy.
[00:18:27]  Their policy ideas are unfeasible.
[00:18:29]  Well, that's generally true.
[00:18:31]  I mean, I think that's true of the left and the right.
[00:18:34]  Well, what's happening in America is it's entering a post-policy phase.
[00:18:37]  The government can... I mean, this is the other thing we talked about.
[00:18:39]  You asked, like, what are the major causes?
[00:18:41]  Like, one is this decline in institutions, but it's also that the government is... America is essentially becoming ungovernable, right?
[00:18:48]  Like, Biden has spent 11 months getting diplomats In place, right?
[00:18:55]  The US government is constantly threatening to renege on its debt.
[00:18:58]  I mean, that's playing Russian roulette with all of this.
[00:19:02]  All of this prosperity.
[00:19:02]  The Federal Reserve is ungoverned.
[00:19:04]  They've never audited it.
[00:19:06]  There is a huge number of ungovernable... To me, as a Canadian, when you look at the big Build Back Better bill or whatever it's called, that's a budget.
[00:19:16]  That's a Wednesday in a mature democracy.
[00:19:19]  Like, you just pass a budget and that's it.
[00:19:22]  In the United States, those basic functions of government are increasingly impossible or extremely difficult, and that leads naturally to a politics of rage, right?
[00:19:33]  Where it's like, because you can't ever enact policy, Whether you're left or right, everything becomes aesthetic.
[00:19:44]  Everything becomes an aesthetic, artistic gesture of your own anger and your own beliefs
[00:19:49]  in a concept that transcends essentially real actions, real government actions.
[00:19:57]  And that's a huge, to me, that's maybe the number one factor.
[00:20:00]  Yeah, people think they're supposed to be creating policy, they should be stripping
[00:20:03]  away bad policy right now.
[00:20:05]  When I hear American politicians think tanks and so on, say like, we have to do this with
[00:20:10]  the tax rate, we have to, yeah.
[00:20:11]  Yeah.
[00:20:12]  No, no, I'm saying, I'm saying, pop your mind.
[00:20:14]  Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry.
[00:20:18]  Like, when I hear them talking about parental leave or something, it's like, you guys can't pass, you can barely pass a budget.
[00:20:23]  Why are you even having these conversations about parental leave or whatever?
[00:20:29]  You're in a system that is increasingly non-functional.
[00:20:32]  And the thing is, one of the most important models in the book is that that is only going to increase.
[00:20:38]  Dude, I was watching Canadian Parliament go nuts and people were heckling, basically.
[00:20:41]  I was like, in an American court, you'd be thrown out if you heckled.
[00:20:45]  Well, have you ever seen the British one?
[00:20:47]  It's like a holdover from British.
[00:20:50]  Even the speaker was like, you guys, cut it out.
[00:20:53]  They're trying to like, it's 21st century where adults don't scream over each other.
[00:20:57]  They're definitely not adults.
[00:20:58]  But it comes from British Parliament where they're trying to interrupt the guy speaking.
[00:21:02]  They're trying to disrupt him.
[00:21:03]  British Parliament is one of the great entertainments of all time.
[00:21:09]  The question period.
[00:21:14]  The point of a parliamentary system as opposed to the American system is that there's a concept of the loyal opposition.
[00:21:21]  So your job is to attack the government.
[00:21:25]  Whether you think they're right or not.
[00:21:27]  And that's just when they're like, yeah.
[00:21:31]  And that, and that creates, that creates an environment where I, where, you know, every leader has to be humiliated.
[00:21:37]  Like, like every leader, every politician, no, everyone's just a servant.
[00:21:41]  Right.
[00:21:42]  And that's, that's, that's just a completely different condition in the United States.
[00:21:46]  I don't know if we lost the point you were trying to make before, Daniel.
[00:21:48]  No, I think it's, it's, it's worth bringing back, not just because it's my point, but I think it touches on what you were saying of institutions.
[00:21:57]  So you mentioned the Oath Keepers and we were also talking about Black Lives Matter in the sense of institutional dysfunction and how I love that you said the right sees institutions as inherently necessary or valuable.
[00:22:11]  Well, as opportunities for advancement of their own program.
[00:22:16]  Both sides now are destroying institutions.
[00:22:20]  Well, absolutely.
[00:22:21]  But one of the things that I'm curious about is when you take a group that is, I think, incredibly polemic, and that does cause a lot of division, which is something like Black Lives Matter, institutionally, they're golden. You have Bank of America who writes them
[00:22:35]  checks. You have the NBA. You have major institutions that support what I think is a purely
[00:22:41]  political entity, but it is held up to this level. And I think that causes a lot of rage because
[00:22:47]  the Oath Keepers, regardless of what you think of them, would Bank of America ever write them a
[00:22:51]  check? They probably couldn't even get a loan at Bank of America. So I think there's institutions
[00:22:56]  that...
[00:22:56]  have chosen sides and I think that's leading to a greater level of the division.
[00:23:02]  Well, the money in American politics is really confusing.
[00:23:05]  Because, like, for example, like you saw the New York Times article about dark money that
[00:23:10]  came out like a week ago.
[00:23:11]  Like, I mean, that to me is the most appalling story in American politics that I know of,
[00:23:17]  where the money that $2.4 billion that decided the 2020 election, no one knows where it came
[00:23:25]  Some of it came from foreign sources for sure, but nobody knows where it came from.
[00:23:28]  Now, $1.5 billion went to the Democrats and $900,000 went to the Republicans.
[00:23:35]  900 million?
[00:23:36]  Sorry, 900 million, yeah.
[00:23:38]  Did I say billion?
[00:23:39]  You said 900,000 went to the Congress.
[00:23:40]  Oh, right.
[00:23:42]  My Canadian small-time politics stuff.
[00:23:46]  And then there's the other fact that while Republicans are pro-business and so on, 70% of American GDP comes from Biden-voting counties.
[00:23:56]  That seems to me like one of the key facts that's going to determine the future of this country In civil war or out of it or at the end of it and so like I think there's that I will acknowledge I find it confusing like where where money goes to where is coming from like where what it is supporting and what it wants.
[00:24:17]  I find it confusing that certain political causes are objectively accepted to receive money, or to be on the board, or write a check to, and others are not, because those causes are aligning more and more towards people's beliefs.
[00:24:33]  Well, the Koch brothers wrote a lot of checks.
[00:24:34]  I mean, the Carr brothers wrote a true love show.
[00:24:36]  know they do know they do absolutely but I mean but you're never going to go to a
[00:24:43]  a Knicks game and at the halftime show have them give a $500,000 check to this
[00:24:49]  political cause but you will see it for something like Black Lives Matter you
[00:24:53]  will see it for something like Planned Parenthood you will see
[00:24:56]  So the philanthropy of politics, I think, has become very, very divisive, because certain philanthropic groups are tolerable, and others are not.
[00:25:06]  And real quick, it's only one Koch brother.
[00:25:09]  Right, sure, right.
[00:25:13]  I think they also stopped giving money to political causes, too, a few years ago.
[00:25:18]  I think they give it to, like, reform things.
[00:25:20]  They just decided they're not doing partisan politics anymore.
[00:25:23]  There are a lot of wealthy individuals that are willing to fund either side.
[00:25:27]  You know, Peter Thiel's got a lot of money and infrastructure.
[00:25:29]  I mean, the point is really not who is giving money to who.
[00:25:33]  The point is, like, all this money is destroying the system and making it inherently unstable.
[00:25:38]  There's also the politicization of everything, which is where you have homophobic chicken
[00:25:43]  and you have LGBTQ positive cookies.
[00:25:48]  Or you know, like, you know, like there were like literally every aspect of life is
[00:25:54]  politicized. That also is classic prelude to civil war.
[00:25:58]  But this is an interesting point because potentially what was the start of the culture
[00:26:03]  war, depending on how you asked Gamergate, you're familiar.
[00:26:06]  This is this was a lot of people who identified themselves as left libertarian on the
[00:26:10]  political spectrum, being angered that everything was becoming political because you had
[00:26:15]  these, quote unquote, news organizations, video game news and video game companies
[00:26:20]  increasingly putting very specific ideologies in their games.
[00:26:23]  And people were upset with that.
[00:26:25]  Right.
[00:26:25]  So they would agree with you, like, why are we politicizing everything?
[00:26:28]  Please don't bring me into Gamergate, man.
[00:26:30]  I mean, my life is in danger.
[00:26:33]  I was playing Heroes of the Storm last night on Blizzard, and I was like, if I type F the CCP, am I gonna get banned off of Blizzard?
[00:26:39]  I didn't test it, but I was wondering.
[00:26:40]  Well, there are certain things that YouTube banned, but to the point about politicizing everything, video games did used to have a lot of politics in them, but it was more of background, acceptable American views.
[00:26:56]  When they started becoming very different, at core, having some kind of Marxist tinge to a lot of them, What do you mean by Marxist?
[00:27:06]  I will say, in America, that word has a meaning that you don't understand.
[00:27:11]  In the true sense of Marxist ideology of oppressed versus oppressor.
[00:27:15]  Well, okay, I mean, to me Marxism is, there's lots of oppressor versus oppressor ideologies, but Marxism to me is strictly a class-based struggle.
[00:27:26]  All other structures are invalidated.
[00:27:29]  No, but that was a key point.
[00:27:31]  I mean, I think around Occupy Wall Street we had the very much class-based narrative of the 1% versus the 99.
[00:27:36]  Well, exactly.
[00:27:37]  Occupy Wall Street to me is, that's a Marxist struggle.
[00:27:41]  Video games almost can't be.
[00:27:42]  I mean, he rejects any aesthetic category.
[00:27:46]  Well, so, are you familiar with the origins of critical race theory?
[00:27:48]  Yeah, but that's not... I mean, to me that's...
[00:27:52]  That's not Marxism.
[00:27:53]  I mean, you know, I think it has come to mean something in this country that I just don't recognize in my own readings of Marxism, in my own readings of... To me, that's an identity politics formulation which is a completely separate thing from Marxism.
[00:28:11]  Well, when it comes to Roblox, you want to talk about video games enslaving people in a class-based system?
[00:28:16]  That's what it is.
[00:28:16]  Totally off-subject.
[00:28:17]  So, critical race theory, specifically, Kimberly Crenshaw wrote that Marx didn't understand American racial politics, and that the idea of oppressed versus oppressor can't just be class-based when race is inherently tied to class.
[00:28:29]  Right.
[00:28:30]  Yeah, but I mean, that's inherently a rejection of Marxism, right?
[00:28:34]  Like, I mean, right, like that, like Marxism, like in the Jewish question he says, you know, there are, there are no, there are in effect no ethnicities, all there is is class.
[00:28:44]  So to me, this whole reading of Marxism... It's a semantic issue, though, is what I was saying.
[00:28:49]  I guess so, but it does seem to me pretty important that... Because Marxism conjured so much evil in the world, because it conjured so many totalitarian regimes, to call something Marxist to me is...
[00:29:04]  I mean, that's kind of the ultimate insult because it was ultimately so evil, right?
[00:29:09]  And that's not what applies to these other forms.
[00:29:14]  Let me bring you there.
[00:29:15]  So I went down to Occupy Wall Street on like day three.
[00:29:18]  Right.
[00:29:20]  So, you know, I end up streaming and stuff, but it started out with conservatives, libertarians, liberals, and leftists all in one place saying, we very much oppose the bailouts, the corruption in the system, the revolving door policies.
[00:29:32]  In the first week, there was so much talk about these big banks got bailed out.
[00:29:37]  The guy who works for the pharmaceutical companies gets a job with the FDA.
[00:29:41]  The guy from the war machine, Halliburton, becomes the vice president.
[00:29:44]  It's a revolving door.
[00:29:45]  Yes, sure.
[00:29:46]  But within about two weeks, Critical race theory took over, and all of a sudden you couldn't speak at their assemblies if you were a white man, and if you wanted to speak, or I should say you're at the bottom of the list on their progressive stack.
[00:29:59]  So it started out as essentially Marxist, the class-based oppression.
[00:30:05]  Quickly turned into a bunch of intersectionalists, critical race theorists coming in and saying, no, no, you guys don't understand.
[00:30:12]  Race is actually the core component.
[00:30:14]  And then all of a sudden the narrative there shifted, the libertarians and conservatives left.
[00:30:18]  And this was one of the starting points, at least in the culture war that I've experienced, where all of these things took over.
[00:30:24]  When I'm talking about self-defeating left-wing politics, this is what I'm talking about.
[00:30:30]  Like, what is required from the left now, more than ever, in a complete sense, is solidarity.
[00:30:39]  And it is completely incapable of providing that, even on the most basic levels.
[00:30:44]  Right?
[00:30:44]  And that's why, to me, like, because my book, what my book is about, is about collapsing systems.
[00:30:51]  Right?
[00:30:51]  And how systems collapse.
[00:30:53]  And like, what is causing the collapse of systems.
[00:30:56]  The left is actually too weak to cause a collapse of the system, because it eats itself in five minutes.
[00:31:01]  That's why Occupy Wall Street went nowhere.
[00:31:03]  But that's technically not true.
[00:31:04]  Well, Occupy Wall Street resulted in a massive shift of wealth from for-profit to credit unions.
[00:31:09]  And it resulted in, I think, the Democratic Party pulled their money out of Bank of America and moved it to Amalgamated, which is a union-operated bank.
[00:31:16]  Oh, yeah?
[00:31:17]  How much was that?
[00:31:18]  The DNC's funds?
[00:31:19]  I don't know.
[00:31:20]  I can't remember.
[00:31:21]  Tens of millions, maybe.
[00:31:24]  Hey guys, Josh Hammer here, the host of America on Trial with Josh Hammer, a podcast for the First Podcast Network.
[00:31:30]  Look, there are a lot of shows out there that are explaining the political news cycle, what's happening on the Hill, the this, the that.
[00:31:37]  There are no other shows that are cutting straight to the point when it comes to the unprecedented lawfare debilitating and affecting the 2024 presidential election.
[00:31:46]  We do all that every single day right here on America on Trial with Josh Hammer.
[00:31:50]  Subscribe and download your episodes wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:31:53]  It's America on Trial with Josh Hammer.
[00:31:55]  Well, tens of millions, I mean, like, we're talking about the United States of America.
[00:31:59]  But it's a big, you know, you plant the seed of a cultural shift and that matters.
[00:32:04]  So when I look at Occupy Wall Street and I see the rise of what was effectively a form of, I think it was overtly critical race theory, It then makes its way into something bigger, into media, it expands.
[00:32:16]  That was the first experience I had with it.
[00:32:18]  It was kind of a crazy experience to see how racist they were.
[00:32:21]  I mean, overtly separating people into different racial categories to make them vote on policy was insane.
[00:32:27]  Do you think you would qualify as someone who was comp- like the process of complementary radicalization would apply to you?
[00:32:34]  Oh yeah, absolutely.
[00:32:35]  That's interesting.
[00:32:37]  How do you negotiate that?
[00:32:41]  I'm curious.
[00:32:42]  The way that the experts that I talk to think about it is like an inverse pendulum.
[00:32:50]  As a pendulum swings, it tends to the center.
[00:32:54]  But in American politics, the energy sends it to more extreme forms.
[00:33:01]  We're not seeing the same level of extremism on the right as we are on the left.
[00:33:05]  Oh, I disagree.
[00:33:06]  I mean, I would have to disagree with you there.
[00:33:08]  Like, I mean, you see, there's all kinds of right-wing extremism.
[00:33:13]  And the other thing about extremism on the right is also way better armed.
[00:33:18]  Well, let's talk about some examples.
[00:33:20]  January 6th?
[00:33:21]  We got, that's a big one, for sure.
[00:33:24]  There you go!
[00:33:24]  But what else?

=== The Far Right's Armed Extremism (14:27) ===

[00:33:25]  The Oath Keepers list, 40,000 people.
[00:33:28]  What did they do?
[00:33:28]  What have they done?
[00:33:30]  Well, January 6th, I mean... But look, January 6th you had 800 people?
[00:33:36]  Well, I mean, certainly, like, they're... Relatively disorganized.
[00:33:39]  Okay, well, the extreme right in the United States is, of course, really hard to figure out.
[00:33:44]  You know, the way I think of it is as a, like, a smorgasbord of ideologies, some that are completely incompatible, and some that are... So there's... It's true for the left, too.
[00:33:54]  Oh, the left is totally chaotic.
[00:33:57]  I mean, for my own sake, I think we can just dismiss the left as a force in America, because it is so disorganized and it eats itself.
[00:34:09]  So what you see on the right is there are sovereign citizens, there are three percenters, You know Oath Keepers there. There are sagebrush rebels.
[00:34:18]  There are as you know Second Amendment absolutists there are tax evasion people.
[00:34:24]  There are Tax avoidance people so there's a whole what have they done?
[00:34:28]  well of the political murders of every year which are amount to like about 70 on average since
[00:34:35]  2015 I think the number don't quote me because it's in the it's in the book and I don't have it on my fingertips
[00:34:42]  but I think it's like 72% are far far right and like 7% are far left and the middle is like
[00:34:51]  So, like, I would say, like, when I talk to the experts, the fear of political violence is much clearer from the right.
[00:34:59]  And that's why I said I feel like the far right is more sharp, right?
[00:35:02]  When they do take action, it's extreme.
[00:35:05]  Well, you know, we're also dealing, I think we should acknowledge this because we are all trying to stay human beings here, is that we're dealing with a lot of people who are on the line between mental illness and political affiliation.
[00:35:17]  We're dealing with a lot of people who are criminal.
[00:35:20]  You were just simply criminals and use politics as a cover for their violence and like that has to be acknowledged too, right?
[00:35:27]  And that this and that this political radicalization gives them cover for mental illness and for and for their violence, right?
[00:35:34]  So those things all like to also those numbers like to be clear are not from the FBI.
[00:35:41]  They're from journalist reporting organizations who are going through newspapers to figure out what are violent crimes.
[00:35:47]  And they're defining who's far-right and who's far-right.
[00:35:49]  Well, they're trying to pick up the pieces, but honestly, this work has not been done at a government level, and it's been done at an academic level, so it's not ideal.
[00:35:57]  I want to get back to that point, because I don't think we've got a chance to flesh it out.
[00:36:00]  So, my point was that there's substantially more far-left polarization and extremism compared to the right, and to make my point, Let me ask you a question.
[00:36:14]  Would you fear violence against you at a right-wing rally?
[00:36:20]  I've always gotten along really well with far-right people.
[00:36:24]  I quite like them.
[00:36:28]  Just real quick for the sake of argument.
[00:36:30]  You wouldn't, really?
[00:36:32]  I definitely would.
[00:36:33]  When you go to a far-right rally, there are many, many people walking around with large weapons.
[00:36:39]  I don't know what a far-right rally is.
[00:36:41]  Also, I look like this.
[00:36:41]  I'm like a white dude from Alberta.
[00:36:43]  know I've been on the ground for I went on the ground for maybe also I look like
[00:36:48]  this I mean I'm like I'm like a white dude from Alberta so you'd be more
[00:36:52]  likely to get attacked by the far left well I don't I've never felt threatened
[00:36:57]  by the far left now you know I'll give you a Let me give you an example.
[00:37:05]  I attended the 2016 inauguration.
[00:37:07]  I covered it for a Canadian magazine.
[00:37:10]  What I fear, genuinely, is not really either side.
[00:37:14]  It's when the two sides are together.
[00:37:17]  That's what's scary.
[00:37:18]  Donald Trump's inauguration.
[00:37:19]  Yeah.
[00:37:20]  There were about 400 black-clad leftists smashing windows, starting fires, and attacking people in the streets.
[00:37:26]  Yeah, there were plenty of far-right groups there, too.
[00:37:29]  But they weren't doing anything.
[00:37:30]  Well, they were sort of triumphantly there, too.
[00:37:35]  Well, there was some violence, but I would say that the atmosphere of menace?
[00:37:40]  Like, you're just asking me my feelings, right?
[00:37:42]  So it's just, you know, it's my personal experience, but there's also a really great example.
[00:37:47]  But you look like you looked him.
[00:37:49]  I mean, like, if you were a black woman and you were at a far-right rally, I think that would be a completely different thing.
[00:37:54]  And, like, that's one of the things that I've always found... Far-right people get along with me very, very well.
[00:38:01]  I like talking to them.
[00:38:04]  They're nice guys.
[00:38:05]  Like, honestly.
[00:38:07]  They're perfectly polite.
[00:38:09]  You want to know what I saw in Portland?
[00:38:11]  I saw the far-left screaming the N-word over and over again at right-wingers.
[00:38:16]  I saw the Proud Boys with a bunch of different people of different races, and there was a black Proud Boy who was walking down the street, and Antifa was screaming incessantly the N-word at him.
[00:38:25]  I've been on the ground on all these things.
[00:38:27]  Daryl Davis.
[00:38:28]  We have very different experiences with these things.
[00:38:29]  For sure.
[00:38:30]  Are you familiar with Daryl Davis?
[00:38:31]  No, I don't know who that is.
[00:38:32]  He's the black jazz musician who, he decided, you know, he thought to himself one day, how could someone hate me if they don't know me?
[00:38:39]  So he started going to Klan meetings.
[00:38:41]  Oh yes, that guy.
[00:38:42]  Yeah, he's fantastic.
[00:38:43]  And we booked him to speak at an event called Ending, what was it called?
[00:38:47]  Ending Violence, Racism, and Authoritarianism.
[00:38:50]  He was our keynote, our headline speaker to talk about de-radicalization.
[00:38:54]  Antifa threatened to burn the theater down, so they canceled on us.
[00:38:58]  The after-show venue refused to back down, so Antifa came and protested.
[00:39:03]  And he said, look guys, don't worry, I'm gonna go talk to him.
[00:39:06]  And when he went out there, they started screaming at him, chanting at him, and wouldn't let him speak.
[00:39:10]  He wrote a Facebook post, which went viral, where he said, I've never experienced anything like this.
[00:39:15]  That I was able to go and talk to Klan members as a black man, but he couldn't even talk to these leftist activists outside without them screaming at him.
[00:39:21]  Well look, all I can tell you is the experts I talk to, the people that study this stuff, are much more afraid of the right than the left.
[00:39:30]  Could it be that they are on the left?
[00:39:32]  Well, they're from foreign countries.
[00:39:35]  So the answer is yes, they are on the left.
[00:39:38]  If they're from Belgium, yes, they're on the left.
[00:39:42]  I'm going to go back to one thing you said.
[00:39:44]  I haven't been to a far-right rally, I've been to Trump rallies.
[00:39:50]  My experience has been that if you are a black woman, people will go so much further out of their way to be accommodating because they want to demonstrate that much more that they are not racist.
[00:40:03]  Because they have been pinned by the left as, you are a Trump person, you must be a racist.
[00:40:09]  And I think I find that amazing that that's what has to be done, but that is what happens.
[00:40:14]  Don't you think the time has come to stop asking yourselves who is more to blame and start figuring out either how do we reconcile this or how do we come to some kind of conclusion that is not violent?
[00:40:27]  I mean, you're talking about like...
[00:40:30]  All of this stuff, you're getting yourselves really angry about this stuff.
[00:40:35]  Not in the slightest bit angry.
[00:40:37]  No, no, no, look.
[00:40:38]  No, no, no, that's not fair.
[00:40:40]  Just because it's a heated conversation.
[00:40:42]  Listen, I'm not blaming anyone.
[00:40:44]  I'm just saying, the point of this book is really that the moment has come where you have to ask yourself, How do we get ourselves out of this cycle of those people are awful, or our people are awful, but that's in response.
[00:41:01]  The crisis that is facing you is no longer one of who is right, but how do you work out these structures into a way that is civilized?
[00:41:13]  You're killing me.
[00:41:14]  I know the answer.
[00:41:15]  You've got to give them something to live for, and you've got to unify people with an idea.
[00:41:18]  Civil war is the worst thing that can happen.
[00:41:21]  Sure.
[00:41:21]  Death is the worst.
[00:41:22]  Being conquered by a foreign country is nothing compared to civil war.
[00:41:27]  It's the worst thing that can happen to a country.
[00:41:29]  It's a disaster.
[00:41:30]  China will come in if this escalates.
[00:41:34]  In part of the book, I'm imagining what it would be like to have a negotiated settlement with the United States, which would have to be internationally monitored.
[00:41:41]  And we love that in this country.
[00:41:42]  What would America love more than Chinese peacekeepers on the ground?
[00:41:48]  Again, I have my bias and I'm very well aware that I have my bias. So no bones about it. So
[00:41:53]  go after me, but let me make my point. So you said when you look at political assassinations
[00:41:57]  or political murders, and you said those numbers were based on journalists who dig into and look at...
[00:42:02]  Well, assassination is a separate question.
[00:42:04]  Not assassination, murders.
[00:42:05]  Political violence.
[00:42:05]  Political violence, and they were done based on journalists who dug into the story and read it.
[00:42:10]  In five years from now, if a journalist reads an op-ed in the Las Vegas Post, which talked about the Black Lives Matter attempted murder in Louisville, They called him a right-wing Trump supporter, basically.
[00:42:25]  They said that this is the cause of right-wing violence.
[00:42:28]  And they said, although he is not, and if you read the op-ed, and I sent it to Lydia, because I was so apoplectic.
[00:42:34]  As of now, he has not been identified to any right-wing groups, but this is Trump violence.
[00:42:40]  This is an editorial in the Las Vegas Sun after it came out that he was a Black Lives Matter activist.
[00:42:45]  So you want to say to that editorial board, What are you doing?
[00:42:50]  Why are you writing a story saying this is a right-wing extremist who shot a Jewish, tried to kill a Jewish man running for mayor, when all of the evidence there says he is a left-wing radical?
[00:43:02]  But I'll answer that, and then I want to answer a point you made.
[00:43:06]  I don't want to hear your answer to my question, because I think you're a very interesting case of somebody who has lived through complementary radicalization.
[00:43:14]  And I would like to know how you see escaping from it.
[00:43:17]  There isn't an escape.
[00:43:19]  But to your point, it's a conflict.
[00:43:24]  They're going to say what they need to say to support their side by any means necessary.
[00:43:29]  And so you actually have groups called, like, by any means necessary.
[00:43:33]  The reason why there is no escape, so you asked me if I am, I forgot how to phrase it, but like if I am subject to complimentary Well, I'm curious.
[00:43:43]  I don't know you, but you seem to me like you would fit into that category that I've seen sociologists describe.
[00:43:51]  I mean, maybe that's not fair.
[00:43:52]  And if it's not, please tell me.
[00:43:53]  No, no, it is without a doubt.
[00:43:56]  But I think the issue at hand is, What's the best example to give?
[00:44:05]  The truckers in Canada are a really great example.
[00:44:08]  I supported Occupy Wall Street, their right to protest.
[00:44:12]  I interviewed people on the ground.
[00:44:14]  I defended Extinction Rebellion when they blocked the streets in DC and put up a boat and said, we demand to be heard.
[00:44:22]  When Ron DeSantis was working in Florida on the anti-riot law, I said, it is wrong to make it a felony to block a road.
[00:44:30]  Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.
[00:44:34]  See, I'm the opposite.
[00:44:35]  I want them all banned.
[00:44:38]  But here's what happens.
[00:44:39]  The same people that I met ten years ago who defended the right to occupy streets are now opposed to it in Ottawa.
[00:44:46]  Well, Ottawa's a very different situation because it's been going on for three weeks.
[00:44:50]  And Occupy Wall Street went on for two months.
[00:44:52]  Well, I was opposed to Occupy Wall Street.
[00:44:53]  And you also had the Chazz and the Chop.
[00:44:55]  You also had Minneapolis.
[00:44:56]  But it's not about your views.
[00:44:58]  It's about the fact that we have, in this country, Two parent factions within those parent factions. We
[00:45:05]  describe them as left and right. It's fairly nebulous You have several smaller groups. Many of them don't like
[00:45:10]  each other. Mm-hmm Antifa people don't like Democrats But I don't hate them, but their politics do align
[00:45:16]  sometimes well barely, but
[00:45:19]  But institutionally, right?
[00:45:20]  So the Democrats support Black Lives Matter to try and earn votes, which then gives funding to, say, the federal government gave funding for COVID relief that the Illinois government then gave directly to Black Lives Matter.
[00:45:31]  I believe it was $300,000.
[00:45:32]  That would never happen with the Oath Keepers.
[00:45:35]  That would never happen with the Proud Boys.
[00:45:36]  In fact, the Proud Boys get called terrorists and evil and demonized.
[00:45:40]  So here's my point.
[00:45:41]  When you look at civics data, civics, if you're not familiar, they're a polling organization that have a massive map, a time spread going back like five years of all these different issues.
[00:45:51]  You can see that independent voters, people who are unaffiliated, right now overwhelmingly agree with the right.
[00:45:58]  When it comes to issues of the economy, when it comes to issues of job, presidential performance, when it comes to black lives matter.
[00:46:03]  But you know why that is, right?
[00:46:04]  Why is that?
[00:46:05]  Because there are no independent voters in America anymore.
[00:46:07]  It's only about 7%.
[00:46:09]  I think the last one is a 4%.
[00:46:10]  Lots of people on the right call themselves independent, but if you talk about voting behavior, people who actually shift, vote Democrat sometimes and vote Republican sometimes, that percentage in America is negligible.
[00:46:25]  It's always been negligible.
[00:46:27]  Yes, that's true.
[00:46:28]  Independent voters have always somewhat leaned Democrat.
[00:46:31]  Republicans would win if they could convince just enough to move on the other side.
[00:46:34]  Republicans call themselves independent on a much higher level.
[00:46:37]  That's why that number is that way.
[00:46:38]  But what we're seeing now with Pew data is that there's a specific graph showing hyperpolarization, and you have a larger portion of Democrats becoming Republican, Independents becoming Republican, than the inverse.
[00:46:49]  So here's what I see.
[00:46:51]  I see my views mostly unchanged on principle, save the Second Amendment.
[00:46:56]  In the past several years, I went from moderate to, hey, we should respect people's rights, but maybe have some gun control.
[00:47:03]  Now I'm just outright, you gotta change the Constitution before you can do any of this stuff.
[00:47:07]  Second Amendment is Second Amendment.
[00:47:08]  That's chapter five.
[00:47:10]  So, but, you know, to have, in this country, people who are uninformed on policy or a specific industry try to regulate it and then fail repeatedly, that's exactly why, one of the reasons my position's on this changed.
[00:47:25]  Right.
[00:47:25]  So when I say something like... Yes, I see what you mean.
[00:47:28]  Let me explain the complementary radicalization.
[00:47:31]  It's not that my positions have become far-right.
[00:47:35]  It's not that my positions have become increasingly conservative.
[00:47:38]  Nope, I've always been pro-choice.
[00:47:40]  In fact, I used to be further left when I was 18.
[00:47:43]  Then I became fairly liberal and I've remained there save gun rights.
[00:47:46]  I became a little bit more libertarian.
[00:47:48]  The issue is that the other side is increasingly becoming authoritarian.

=== The Other Side's Authoritarian Shift (02:27) ===

[00:47:53]  The left is increasingly embracing insane tactics that are destabilizing the system.
[00:47:58]  And then, of course, I do watch the right respond in turn.
[00:48:02]  Now, this is a storm.
[00:48:03]  There is no way out of it.
[00:48:05]  But I'll be damned if I'm going to give up my principles to try and negotiate with psychopaths.
[00:48:09]  So when I say something... But you just acknowledge.
[00:48:11]  Like, see, this to me seems to be a key point.
[00:48:13]  You're like, well, the right responds the same way.
[00:48:15]  So surely you've got to get to a point in your country, or just for your own soul, where you're like, the psychopaths are everywhere.
[00:48:24]  We need to find a way out from the psychopaths.
[00:48:27]  It's not just, the problem is not just the other side psychopaths.
[00:48:31]  It's all of the psychopaths.
[00:48:32]  Well, so let me put it this way.
[00:48:34]  If a guy comes into my- If I'm in the middle of a field, and I watch two guys, and one guy's, like, hanging out with his kid, and they're playing catch, and then some dude in a black mask walks up and punches him in the back of the head, he turns around and starts fighting, I'm not gonna be like, oh no, a fight!
[00:48:50]  Can we please compromise?
[00:48:51]  I'm gonna be like, that dude punched that guy!
[00:48:53]  Arrest him!
[00:48:54]  Arrest him!
[00:48:54]  That guy's defending himself!
[00:48:56]  But you know somewhere, there's some guy who's in a left-leaning podcast who thinks exactly the same thing, except from the other side.
[00:49:03]  And he's wrong.
[00:49:03]  He thinks, but he's not, I mean, like, does it matter?
[00:49:07]  It does.
[00:49:07]  So look.
[00:49:08]  I don't think it matters.
[00:49:09]  Well, listen, Joe Biden, right?
[00:49:13]  Joe Biden is not the source of this.
[00:49:14]  No, no, no, but I'll give you an example.
[00:49:16]  Joe Biden, based on all available journalism and research we've done, engaged in a very serious criminal act with Ukraine.
[00:49:24]  As opposed to the fully legal activities of Donald Trump?
[00:49:26]  report we have his own statements we've got Matt Taibbi's reporting we have
[00:49:30]  sworn affidavits out of Ukraine from Victor Shokin as opposed to the fully
[00:49:33]  legal activities of Donald Trump well give me a specific example of like I'm
[00:49:37]  Donald Trump's illegal I mean he's about to be charged don't make the mistake of
[00:49:39]  creating false binaries by nothing to do with each other specifically citing Joe
[00:49:44]  Biden taking a very specific action with with respect to Ukraine that any
[00:49:48]  reasonable person can look at the journalism coming out of this and be
[00:49:51]  like wow what he did there Now, look, by all means, call out Donald Trump for any criminal activity he may have done, but everyone seems to do it.
[00:49:59]  He seems to be in the hot seat 24-7.
[00:50:01]  He was under investigation for a hoax.
[00:50:03]  The Russiagate hoax was just not true, but that doesn't happen to the establishment Democrat side or the leftists.
[00:50:09]  Black Lives Matter engages in wanton destruction in some of the smallest towns in this country, over $2 billion in damage.
[00:50:16]  And your perspective is the right is more dangerous.

=== Reasons Behind Radical Defederalization (15:22) ===

[00:50:20]  It's not really my perspective.
[00:50:22]  I would say that would be the general perspective of experts on civil war and the conditions of the United States.
[00:50:28]  I mean, those are the models that I'm working from.
[00:50:30]  Right?
[00:50:31]  Like, but I would say, like, surely you can see that these, these sides, that each side has a case.
[00:50:40]  And that they, and that the problem here is not, the problem here is not that, you know, what has happened, but the fact that there is no way for anyone, you know, democracies only work when, if you lose your side, the other side is still valid.
[00:50:58]  Those are the conditions of democracy.
[00:50:59]  What you're saying to me, and what I hear, is that that's no longer possible.
[00:51:01]  And so that, like what you're saying to me is, and what I hear is that that's no longer possible.
[00:51:10]  And that's really what the book is about.
[00:51:13]  And that is, like, I'm kind of, like I'm imploring you as a neighbor.
[00:51:19]  This is a book written out of love.
[00:51:20]  This is not a book written out of contempt for the United States.
[00:51:23]  This is a book written out of profound love for the United States.
[00:51:27]  I've lived in the United States.
[00:51:28]  I've worked there.
[00:51:29]  I have a lot of American friends.
[00:51:30]  I have my Trump-voting cousin in Seattle.
[00:51:33]  I think Canada has a kinship relationship with America.
[00:51:39]  Where we're, you know, Northrop Frye, the great Canadian literary critic, said that a Canadian is an American who rejects the revolution.
[00:51:46]  And I think that's largely true, right?
[00:51:49]  Quebec was asked.
[00:51:50]  They said no.
[00:51:51]  They said no very close though.
[00:51:53]  I mean, you know, like, the other thing is, I come from... We almost took Montreal in 1812.
[00:51:57]  No, you had the worst general in the world.
[00:51:59]  You had the terrible, terrible general in 1812.
[00:52:00]  The real danger was 1860.
[00:52:01]  But, um...
[00:52:06]  Where was I?
[00:52:06]  I now completely lost my train of thought.
[00:52:09]  My point, though, is that as someone who is concerned for your country and as someone who wants you to have a stable country, you are going to have to get to a point where you either come to some kind of divorce, which seems to me like when a marriage reaches the point that the United States is at, you'd sit the kids down and say, like, it's over.
[00:52:31]  But that will lead to violence.
[00:52:33]  Well, I don't think there's a way to avoid violence at this point.
[00:52:36]  The question is, how do we get out of it?
[00:52:39]  Let me ask you a question.
[00:52:40]  Stop focusing on the psychopaths and start focusing on what's causing psychopathy.
[00:52:44]  Because if you try and wipe out the psychopaths, they're just going to keep appearing.
[00:52:46]  Exactly.
[00:52:47]  It's like trying to drown a vampire in blood.
[00:52:49]  Let me ask you then, you want to end the conflict.
[00:52:53]  What I want is for America to survive as a democracy.
[00:52:56]  That is what I want, very specifically.
[00:52:58]  How do you feel about your healthcare system in Canada?
[00:53:00]  I love it.
[00:53:00]  Okay, get rid of that and go fully private and we've got a deal.
[00:53:04]  Yeah, no.
[00:53:05]  No, no, no, no, no.
[00:53:06]  You have to compromise with me.
[00:53:08]  Right.
[00:53:08]  Will you give up your state health care system?
[00:53:11]  You know, that's a fair point.
[00:53:14]  That's fair.
[00:53:15]  I'm sitting here... I see what you mean.
[00:53:16]  I'm sitting here with people telling me that... So, I'm going to go right into the stereotype for everybody who's listening.
[00:53:23]  I come from a second-generation mixed-race family.
[00:53:26]  They fought, my grandparents were forced to flee numerous states because it was illegal to cohabitate and to have kids.
[00:53:32]  This is some of my family experience.
[00:53:34]  I grow up, once again, with my mom, who's mixed race, marrying a white guy and having a second generation mixed race family.
[00:53:40]  And I genuinely believed when I was a kid, growing up in Chicago, like we had come to this position where we recognized race was less important.
[00:53:47]  Martin Luther King Jr.' 's dream.
[00:53:49]  It didn't matter what I was, or my Latino friend, or my Asian friend.
[00:53:53]  We were all just friends in the neighborhood.
[00:53:54]  And then I got to experience critical race theory.
[00:53:57]  And these people looked me in the eyes and said, I don't know what you are, so you're not allowed to be in any of these groups.
[00:54:03]  But all the white people go there, the black people go there, the Asians go there, and the Mexicans go there.
[00:54:07]  That's what they did at Occupy Wall Street.
[00:54:08]  They were called spokes, the spokes council.
[00:54:12]  And they said there were working groups and there were caucuses.
[00:54:15]  And the caucuses were race-based and gender-based.
[00:54:20]  And so they quite literally said, if you want to vote on how we spend money, all the black people have to go in the group of black people and decide how black people want money spent.
[00:54:27]  And I said, that's insane.
[00:54:29]  And I will fight against that tooth and nail because my family experienced this.
[00:54:34]  In this past election in California, they tried to repeal their civil rights amendment from their constitution.
[00:54:40]  I ask you, you say that we've got to come to this position where we come together.
[00:54:44]  Would you be willing to allow a bunch of white people in a majority white state to discriminate against black people in the name of peace?
[00:54:52]  You know, I don't think I'm going to be faced with that question.
[00:54:55]  And certainly the world is perplexing to me enough without what ifs, but I'd actually like to ask you a question because I don't, I don't know the answer to this.
[00:55:05]  Even after I spent five years writing this thing, like, how do you think this is going to end?
[00:55:12]  I mean, I've heard you say there's going to be a civil war.
[00:55:15]  I think we're in a civil war.
[00:55:16]  I mean, I think you're, well, you're literally in civil strife.
[00:55:20]  In a technical sense, like, you are already technically in civil strife.
[00:55:24]  And that was 27 deaths per year or something?
[00:55:26]  No, it's 25.
[00:55:27]  But, like, America's a funny country.
[00:55:30]  Like, America's so big and so diverse and so geographically huge that those numbers are probably not as meaningful as they are in the rest of the world.
[00:55:36]  But on the other hand, I think we're in agreement, right?
[00:55:39]  Is it an older metric?
[00:55:41]  No, it's the standard metric, but it's still not, like, You know, America's America's different, right?
[00:55:47]  Like America is a very different place.
[00:55:48]  Like I don't think America is an exception.
[00:55:50]  I don't think the laws of political gravity don't apply to the United States, but like when you're applying these standards, it's just a little it's just a little more complicated than it would be for Canada, right?
[00:56:01]  But on the other hand, do you think political violence is going to become normalized?
[00:56:08]  That there's just going to be a lot more assassination?
[00:56:10]  Do you think there's going to be street fights?
[00:56:13]  All of those things are happening.
[00:56:15]  I can't foresee a scenario.
[00:56:18]  One of the problems here is that by 2040, 50% of the country will control 85% of the Senate.
[00:56:25]  Right.
[00:56:25]  So this is like this becomes like this is classic anocracy.
[00:56:28]  So, you know, civil wars tend to happen in like civil wars don't happen in full democracies like Denmark and they don't happen in autocracies like Russia.
[00:56:38]  They happen when there's a in the gray area.
[00:56:41]  Right.
[00:56:41]  In this in this area where it's unclear whether it's democracy or autocracy.
[00:56:46]  So do you think like I can't foresee a scenario where there will be an uncontested election ever in the United States?
[00:56:51]  Oh, you're completely correct.
[00:56:53]  I mean, going back to since Gore and Bush, it's just been, and even then you still had some degree of strife and insanity with previous elections, but it was really bad starting then.
[00:57:07]  There's a bunch of different ways I see this.
[00:57:12]  I don't think the right wants to control the left, but the left does want to control the right.
[00:57:17]  Well, the right wants to control the country.
[00:57:20]  I disagree.
[00:57:21]  So you think the right would be happy with just the states controlling their own?
[00:57:26]  Because, I mean, one answer to this is radical defederalization.
[00:57:30]  I mean, that's something that's been talked about for long enough.
[00:57:33]  We are supposed to be radically defederalized.
[00:57:36]  We're not.
[00:57:37]  Well, you already are.
[00:57:38]  But we're not de facto.
[00:57:41]  We're supposed to be radically defederalized.
[00:57:43]  Compared to other countries, like compared to any country in Europe, compared to anywhere in Asia, you are radically defederalized.
[00:57:49]  As you were traveling the country writing this, geographically did you find intensity in certain areas?
[00:57:57]  I'm just curious, because it was a big country.
[00:57:59]  What do you mean by intensity?
[00:58:00]  As you were traveling the country writing this book, when you were in State X, were you like, wow, I really feel a burgeoning civil war here.
[00:58:10]  New York City, I'm from New York City.
[00:58:12]  No.
[00:58:13]  Texas, not to knock Texas.
[00:58:15]  Did you go to any region that you were like, these people are ready to be separated from their friends?
[00:58:19]  I found it everywhere.
[00:58:20]  Really?
[00:58:21]  Yeah, I mean, it was extraordinary to me where I would find it.
[00:58:26]  Like my friends who are in media in the Hudson Valley, they feel very much under threat.
[00:58:31]  Like they feel, they feel like if you run for dog catcher as a Democrat in Hudson Valley, someone will send you a picture of a gun saying we're coming for you.
[00:58:39]  Right?
[00:58:40]  Like, never mind.
[00:58:42]  But, I mean, the thing about America right now is that everyone feels under siege.
[00:58:47]  Right?
[00:58:47]  Like, everyone feels under siege from one kind or another.
[00:58:50]  Whether it's cultural siege.
[00:58:52]  Whether it's political siege.
[00:58:53]  Whether it's siege from political machinery.
[00:58:56]  Right?
[00:58:57]  That's the extraordinary thing.
[00:58:58]  Like, I'm going to talk to you guys.
[00:59:00]  You all feel under siege.
[00:59:03]  I feel under siege to varying degrees with the censorship algorithm on YouTube.
[00:59:07]  They're trying to tell me to live in a segregated world.
[00:59:08]  Exactly.
[00:59:09]  They're hitting me in the back of the head in an open field and well, no, no, they're trying to tell me
[00:59:14]  To you understand in a segregated world exactly and I will go and I will go and talk to black lives matter organizers
[00:59:21]  Which I have also done and they will they will say exactly the same thing
[00:59:25]  They will say they will say literally exactly the same thing
[00:59:29]  And they're lying to you.
[00:59:31]  And that's what they say about you.
[00:59:33]  Yes, exactly.
[00:59:34]  And when Russiagate was a hoax, when the Covington Kids was a hoax, when Jussie Smollett was a hoax, at a certain point don't you say to yourself, maybe they're lying to me?
[00:59:42]  Well, then there's the, you know, then there's January 6th, and then there's, then there's Trump calling up the tanks in Washington on the 4th of July.
[00:59:50]  Well, what is that?
[00:59:52]  What is that?
[00:59:53]  Well, on the 4th of July, when the- During a parade?
[00:59:55]  Yeah.
[00:59:57]  But hold on, hold on.
[00:59:57]  Oh, sorry, am I not close enough to the mic?
[00:59:58]  Yeah, just stick with it.
[00:59:59]  That's not a lie!
[01:00:01]  Listen, if you're going to mix... I don't do the rage.
[01:00:05]  So if you want to have someone on to explain to you the crimes of the right, you can definitely find a lot of people.
[01:00:12]  If I'm going to cite overt, widespread lies, and then you cite January 6th, which is unrelated to what I was talking about, I'm going to ask you... Oh, I think you're asking... Well, I mean, if I were to count Trump's lies...
[01:00:25]  I mean, how many hours do we have here?
[01:00:27]  If we're going to talk about the lies of the right, any Trump speech has 30 of them.
[01:00:33]  I don't like comparing Trump and Biden.
[01:00:35]  They're both authoritarian.
[01:00:36]  I'm not talking about one guy.
[01:00:37]  Trump is a symptom of this.
[01:00:39]  I actually say that in the book.
[01:00:42]  He's a symptom rather than a cause, for sure.
[01:00:46]  But if you're asking me, are there any right-wing people who lie, That's not what I'm saying.
[01:00:50]  I'm saying you'd say that Black Lives Matter would accuse me of lying.
[01:00:54]  And my response is, Jussie Smollett, that thing was an obvious lie, but it was picked up by actors and celebrities and every mainstream news organization.
[01:01:01]  Russiagate was three, four years of outright lying.
[01:01:05]  Ukrainegate, all of it turned out to be lies.
[01:01:07]  Hands Up, Don't Shoot, another lie.
[01:01:09]  The Covington Kids, another lie.
[01:01:11]  Eleven Trump associates have been indicted.
[01:01:16]  But indictments don't mean anything other than people are at war with each other.
[01:01:19]  John Durham is investigating them the same as they're investigating him.
[01:01:23]  What I'm talking about is... Are you really going to argue with me?
[01:01:25]  Are you actually going to say that the Trump administration was an honest administration?
[01:01:30]  You don't believe that.
[01:01:31]  I didn't say that.
[01:01:32]  Okay, so you would admit that they're lying.
[01:01:35]  Oh, absolutely!
[01:01:36]  Well, there we go.
[01:01:37]  But my point is, Trump is... How many viewers does the right command in terms of institutional media?
[01:01:46]  Well, Fox News is the biggest news organization in the country, by far.
[01:01:51]  Well, yeah, I mean, we're in media breakdown.
[01:01:55]  This is actually a large part of the structure, too, like the information breakdown.
[01:01:59]  That's also a big part of the book.
[01:02:01]  But like it's, that's actually, that's a, you know, when I talked about a complex cascading system, that's, that feeds into both sides in different ways, in asymmetrical ways.
[01:02:10]  But, but, you know, like one, one way of thinking about this struggle is that it is a mimetic struggle in the Jeff Jazea, you know, definition of it.
[01:02:21]  Here's the point I'm trying to get to.
[01:02:23]  If you look at the politically homeless faction, the intellectual dark web faction, the post-liberal faction, conservatives, and even hardcore MAGA Trump supporters, they all agree, for the most part, on a typical worldview, except for certain Q elements, which don't make up that many people.
[01:02:40]  I don't think I can really agree with that.
[01:02:42]  I mean, I really tried.
[01:02:43]  I mean, maybe it is my own failing, but I mean, part of my job was trying to figure out, like, what are the intellectual coherences that you find in this?
[01:02:52]  And I found that, I mean, one of the things I find really interesting about the American right in general is their love of esoteric information, right?
[01:03:01]  Like, an esoteric knowledge, where, like, something becomes more valuable because it's less believed.
[01:03:06]  What's an example of that, if you have one?
[01:03:08]  Well, QAnon would be like the ultimate example.
[01:03:12]  QAnon is pretty powerful.
[01:03:14]  There's 50 people going to run in 2022 who are QAnon supporters.
[01:03:18]  What does that mean?
[01:03:19]  Well, 50 members of the Republican Party support QAnon.
[01:03:23]  They're going to run in 2022.
[01:03:24]  Here's the issue I think you might have.
[01:03:26]  We've had Marjorie Taylor Greene on the show, and she's rejected all of that stuff.
[01:03:31]  So when you don't actually... The space lasers and so on.
[01:03:34]  That's not true, actually.
[01:03:35]  That's fake.
[01:03:36]  That's a lie.
[01:03:37]  Right?
[01:03:37]  So if you base your perception off a faction that is lying to you nonstop, of course you're going to believe, well, that both sides must be bad.
[01:03:44]  Marjorie Taylor... Do you not understand that I've had this exact conversation with people on the left?
[01:03:49]  And I've actually stated exactly this in 100 plus shows of this, that the reason civil war, in my opinion, is inevitable is because you have two sides both saying, I'm right.
[01:04:00]  I'll give you an example, a riddle.
[01:04:01]  You may have heard this one.
[01:04:03]  This will be fun for all the kids at home.
[01:04:04]  Don't tell me.
[01:04:05]  I want to guess.
[01:04:07]  You come across, you're walking down a road and you come to a fork in the road and you see there's two paths and you know that one road will lead you to imminent death and one road will lead you to safety.
[01:04:20]  There are two men standing on each side.
[01:04:23]  Oh, yes.
[01:04:23]  The old one.
[01:04:24]  How do you know?
[01:04:24]  One always tells the truth.
[01:04:26]  One always tells a lie.
[01:04:26]  Right.
[01:04:27]  I know this one.
[01:04:27]  How do you know?
[01:04:28]  I heard it differently.
[01:04:29]  Which road is the right path?
[01:04:30]  What is it?
[01:04:31]  Oh, God.
[01:04:32]  I know it.
[01:04:32]  You asked.
[01:04:35]  I've heard it as heaven and hell.
[01:04:37]  Yeah.
[01:04:37]  Where the angel always tells the truth and the devil always tells a lie.
[01:04:41]  And you ask the devil.
[01:04:43]  No, no.
[01:04:44]  You ask the angel, is the other one a devil?
[01:04:46]  You don't know which one is which.
[01:04:49]  That's fine.
[01:04:50]  You want me to give you the answer?
[01:04:51]  Yeah, I can't remember it.
[01:04:52]  I've heard it before.
[01:04:53]  You ask either one of them what the other would say.
[01:04:55]  Right.
[01:04:56]  And then take the opposite path.
[01:04:57]  And take the opposite path, yeah.
[01:04:58]  So the issue here is there is obviously a more complex system of variables here.
[01:05:05]  Well, that's my point.
[01:05:06]  But... That's actually a really good way of putting it.
[01:05:11]  So if that's the condition where one's the angel and one's the devil and you don't know which one is right, Like, surely we have to come up with something more clever than the other side's wrong.
[01:05:24]  I suppose the issue is, the reason I use the Biden example is because if you were to ask the average journalist in this country, did Joe Biden engage in a quid pro quo in Ukraine, they will tell you no.
[01:05:37]  But the actual answer is yes, he did.
[01:05:40]  I think journalists actually are pretty complicated.

=== People Latched Onto Crack Pipes (15:59) ===

[01:05:42]  I mean, I know a lot of them.
[01:05:44]  You know, as I said, I'm a freelance writer, so one of the advantages I have is that I go into a lot of shops.
[01:05:49]  I'm like a stray cat.
[01:05:50]  Like, I go into the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times and the New Yorker, the Atlantic and so on.
[01:05:55]  And I would say that the general opinion that the American media are all the same, That's not necessarily true.
[01:06:03]  What is true is that people who went to Ivy League schools tend to have a very similar outlook on life.
[01:06:12]  These organizations, most of them are in New York, or they tend to be in big cities where they're surrounded by like-minded people.
[01:06:18]  I will say, as far as I know, they're only in New York, Washington, and LA.
[01:06:22]  But let me ask you, because I think the best example is the Biden thing, were you aware that Joe Biden engaged in a criminal quid pro quo?
[01:06:30]  I'm not sure I would define it that way, but also I'm not sure I have that whole story.
[01:06:35]  Why don't you?
[01:06:35]  this is... Like, and you know when I don't like there's a lot of things... Why don't you?
[01:06:40]  You know I was with the president... Well there was a bunch I was at a I was at a
[01:06:43]  cottage with these friends I have who are in their 80s And one guy told me, they were all giving me life advice.
[01:06:51]  And this old dude said, you know, one of the most important things in life is to know you don't have to have an opinion on everything.
[01:06:57]  You don't have to think, I know the answer to X, when you don't.
[01:07:02]  And so I actually go through life not knowing the answer to almost everything.
[01:07:08]  And so when I write books, what I try and do is figure out exactly what I do know.
[01:07:15]  And also be clear about where I got my knowledge.
[01:07:20]  What happened with Biden in the Ukraine?
[01:07:22]  I don't know.
[01:07:23]  Shouldn't you, though?
[01:07:24]  I mean, if you're writing about a civil war and there have been accusations made against Donald Trump in terms of a quid pro quo... Donald Trump does not figure in this book.
[01:07:33]  Neither does Biden.
[01:07:34]  To me, honestly, horse race politics?
[01:07:36]  Irrelevant.
[01:07:39]  What Marjorie Taylor Greene said, what Ted Cruz said today?
[01:07:41]  Irrelevant.
[01:07:42]  The structural problems that the United States faces are so profound that all of the politics, to me, that consumes everything is all irrelevant.
[01:07:54]  It really, really does not matter.
[01:07:56]  The reason I bring it up is just to try and set a baseline.
[01:08:00]  I started covering Occupy Wall Street.
[01:08:03]  I had been an activist in my younger years.
[01:08:05]  I worked for non-profits.
[01:08:06]  I go to Occupy Wall Street.
[01:08:07]  I start documenting things, and I say, I just want to show people what's happening.
[01:08:10]  I ended up getting a job at Vice and being the founding member of Vice News, doing on-the-ground reporting in Ukraine and Brazil and Venezuela.
[01:08:17]  And then from there I went and joined ABC Univision's joint venture, once again trying to do news, but that's where they got hyper-polarized.
[01:08:24]  Within six months of me being there, they said, we're far left.
[01:08:27]  That's our pitch.
[01:08:28]  We are targeting progressive young people.
[01:08:30]  Oh, as a freelancer, you think I don't see that?
[01:08:32]  Institutions all the time that I'm part of suddenly become hyper-polarized.
[01:08:37]  But it's always to the left.
[01:08:38]  Well, institutions... Yes, no, you're fair.
[01:08:41]  That's fair.
[01:08:42]  They almost always go hyper-polarized left.
[01:08:44]  That's true.
[01:08:44]  And then they immediately die.
[01:08:46]  Like, that's the other thing.
[01:08:47]  Vice's evaluation.
[01:08:48]  Right.
[01:08:49]  Like, they go... That's one of my points about the left, is like, once an institution becomes woke, it almost immediately starts dying.
[01:08:56]  That's my fear about the Federal Reserve management happening slow.
[01:08:59]  I want to make this point.
[01:09:00]  Sorry.
[01:09:00]  Yeah, I'm sorry.
[01:09:01]  I don't mean to interrupt.
[01:09:02]  No, I know.
[01:09:02]  I'm talking a lot this one, but I do want to make this point, is that, as a baseline, I've been reading the news and doing the research and the fact-checking on all of these stories, and it's come to a point where the right tends to be correct on these things, and the left goes off into Wally world every time.
[01:09:18]  UkraineGate being a really great example of the corporate press, the establishment Democrats, and the left all lying about what Joe Biden did with respect to Ukraine, when more and more reporting keeps coming up proving he actually did this, even based on the mainstream media's own previous reporting, say from Politico.
[01:09:36]  Politico publishes a story, as does the New York Times, that Ukrainians meddled in the 2016 election in an effort to help Democrats.
[01:09:44]  Not that the Ukrainian government did, but that elements of higher-ranking officials in Ukraine did.
[01:09:49]  A court even ruled this in Ukraine.
[01:09:52]  Joe Biden engages in a quid pro quo where he brags about it on camera.
[01:09:55]  But if you come out and say that, you're called right-wing.
[01:09:58]  They say it's fake news, you're lying, and it's not true.
[01:10:00]  I live in a world based on, do you have sources for that?
[01:10:03]  Just the other night, we got reporting that the person who tried to assassinate the Democrat was a BLM activist, and I said, no, no, no, no, no.
[01:10:09]  We are not.
[01:10:10]  That is a rumor.
[01:10:10]  It is not confirmed until we can get official confirmation on the story.
[01:10:14]  Even though there had been, I just hadn't seen it.
[01:10:15]  Because if I don't have the official reporting from a trusted source, it didn't happen.
[01:10:19]  But every single time I go to the news, a good majority of what's considered mainstream corporate press is outright wrong and they defend it.
[01:10:27]  For example, the crack pipe story.
[01:10:30]  Jen Psaki goes on TV and says, we were never going to give out crack pipes.
[01:10:34]  That's a lie easily proved by looking at the organizations they were contracting who give crack pipes.
[01:10:40]  I pulled up two different sources, international and national, that say safe smoking kits include meth and crack pipes.
[01:10:46]  Yet when the right comes out and says this, Snope says, false.
[01:10:50]  All of the corporate establishment press are saying it's not true, there were never any crack pipes.
[01:10:54]  Then Jen Psaki goes on TV and says, no crack pipes.
[01:10:57]  Why was there an objection to them giving out crack pipes?
[01:11:00]  Crack pipes are not good.
[01:11:01]  Crack is bad.
[01:11:01]  by exacerbate crack pipe smoking.
[01:11:04]  See in Canada I remember in the 90s there was a, I remember going to parties
[01:11:10]  and there was a government program to give out straws for snorting cocaine.
[01:11:16]  Because it was being, AIDS was being.
[01:11:19]  He communicated nasally.
[01:11:21]  And so I remember and I was like, yeah, that's that's the government I like they give out This is what happens but listen Do you do you honest are you honestly telling me that you feel like when you see something on Fox News?
[01:11:35]  You feel like it's probably correct and that it's not and that it's and that it's and that you've never seen a story on Fox News That was not was a lie No, I call out Fox News, it's just I call them out less frequently.
[01:11:47]  And Fox News is one station compared to... The problem here is the informational networks.
[01:11:52]  It's not the sides.
[01:11:53]  That's what I'm trying to tell you.
[01:11:54]  But what ends up happening is, after a decade of this...
[01:11:58]  It has become so divergent that you cannot convince an 18-year-old who's voting for these policies that the majority of their life was based on lies.
[01:12:08]  So I'll give you another example of what's caused all this, and I don't know if you looked into this, but have you looked at the LexisNexis data on critical race theory and woke terminology?
[01:12:19]  No, I have not checked that.
[01:12:21]  At the end of the 2000s, LexisNexis tracks massive spikes in the New York Times saying things like white privilege, racism, class privilege, etc.
[01:12:29]  You don't need LexisNexis to tell you that.
[01:12:31]  Right.
[01:12:31]  Well, so, several things happened.
[01:12:33]  One, millennials who are in colleges, who are learning these things, started to age into the workforce.
[01:12:39]  But the biggest thing that happened was Facebook created the algorithms that prop up content based on how many keywords are in them.
[01:12:47]  So someone who's eight years old, it goes on Facebook, and they start getting inundated with videos of police brutality for ten years.
[01:12:54]  Why?
[01:12:55]  Because it clicks really well.
[01:12:56]  Anger and justice themes do really, really well on Facebook.
[01:12:59]  But so does the opposite, dude.
[01:13:01]  I mean, definitely.
[01:13:02]  Absolutely.
[01:13:02]  I mean, like... Anger and justice can go either way.
[01:13:05]  Well, like, the... I mean...
[01:13:08]  I feel like I'm repeating myself, but surely we can all see that I've definitely not been a friend to wokeness.
[01:13:16]  You can read my writing on it.
[01:13:18]  I've been punished enough for it.
[01:13:20]  But just to be clear, my point here is really this, that the crisis that your country is facing is so severe that these debates are increasingly meaningless because they take place in a context of Essentially, semantic collapse.
[01:13:41]  Dude, you can see people in the metaverse wearing with black avatars and with white avatars.
[01:13:45]  It doesn't matter if they're black or white in real life, but you'll see them segmented into their little avatars in the game, and they're going to act like real life, as if it's real.
[01:13:53]  People are wired to be like that.
[01:13:54]  I'll make this point real quick.
[01:13:55]  And we can change that.
[01:13:56]  But semantic collapse.
[01:13:57]  I want to hear what you think about it.
[01:14:00]  I want your opinion on that.
[01:14:01]  I'm curious about that.
[01:14:03]  You already mentioned that these media organizations tend to drift left.
[01:14:07]  Well, there's both.
[01:14:09]  Fox definitely has gone way right.
[01:14:11]  And he's going way right.
[01:14:13]  Tucker Carlson has become increasingly more populist and supportive of previous left-wing positions.
[01:14:18]  Now, Hannity, I'm not a big fan of, but hold on.
[01:14:20]  Hold on there a minute.
[01:14:21]  Mike.com is a really great example.
[01:14:24]  And I'll tell you why I think this is happening, and probably why it is happening.
[01:14:28]  Mike.com, when they first started, they were libertarian.
[01:14:31]  They were pro-Ron Paul.
[01:14:33]  But within a few years, they became completely woke.
[01:14:35]  Why?
[01:14:36]  At Facebook and Twitter and YouTube, what is deemed safe?
[01:14:41]  Wokeness.
[01:14:42]  So I had this conversation with Jack Dorsey, for instance.
[01:14:44]  There are certain things you can't say on social media.
[01:14:47]  It almost always favors the left.
[01:14:49]  But you're massively successful doing the opposite of that.
[01:14:52]  And I'm a centrist!
[01:14:52]  And I'm a centrist!
[01:14:53]  I mean, come on.
[01:14:55]  Like, there are certainly right-wing people.
[01:14:56]  Like, Joe Rogan?
[01:14:58]  Joe Rogan's not right-wing.
[01:14:59]  Well, no, I wouldn't say he's either.
[01:15:00]  He's pro-UBI.
[01:15:01]  I wouldn't say he's either, but... Well, then maybe, like... The right has been decimated on social media.
[01:15:06]  And so these companies see the algorithms favoring... Certainly the left would say the other thing.
[01:15:11]  But when Mike.com starts off libertarian and then becomes woke, when Vice.com starts off as an edgy bro frat boy kind of punk website and becomes feminist, when ABC News funds hundreds of millions of dollars and then six months later says, we're going woke everybody, it is not going the other direction, it's flowing one way.
[01:15:32]  No, no, no.
[01:15:34]  I mean, it is just flowing always.
[01:15:38]  The process that's underway is complementary radicalization.
[01:15:41]  I mean, that is what it is.
[01:15:42]  It's like the right becomes more right because the left becomes more left.
[01:15:46]  Have you seen the Pew data on this?
[01:15:48]  Well, yeah, but the Pew data unequivocally supports radicalization online as being a right-wing phenomenon.
[01:15:55]  Stochastic terrorism would be that.
[01:15:56]  Except Pew shows that the Republican Party has moved on a scale of 0 through 10, with 0 being left and 10 being right.
[01:16:01]  They've moved 1.5 degrees to the right since 1994, and the left has jumped three points.
[01:16:06]  Yeah, but it depends also if you check the racial resentment numbers, which spike hugely for Republicans, right?
[01:16:14]  So like, there are a whole bunch of ways of reading those numbers.
[01:16:17]  What are those numbers?
[01:16:18]  The racial?
[01:16:19]  Racial resentment.
[01:16:20]  So racial resentment is like, well, it's a pretty complicated sociological thing, it's a bunch of different factors, but it's like, it's not necessarily racism per se, it's whether you feel threatened.
[01:16:33]  And so that and so that that number like rather than being an ideology like rather than being a Ideology as in I am a racist it is like how you feel about certain aspects of life But so that and those numbers were identical for Democrats and Republicans in I think 1990 and then they again Don't quote me on that, but I won't address the semantic yes, because I would really like You know we're here.
[01:16:59]  We're doing this show people are listening to it right now What are we doing to prevent semantic breakdown?
[01:17:07]  Well, I don't know.
[01:17:08]  I mean having a conversation that clarifies definitions like Marxism, for instance, is probably helpful.
[01:17:12]  Right.
[01:17:13]  Racism has come to mean completely different things.
[01:17:17]  I've been doing this for so long that I try to stay extremely precise in all the terms.
[01:17:25]  As you said, I don't like to use terrorism unless it is actually the technical definition of terrorism.
[01:17:33]  Part of the book, because this stuff is so fraught, I want to have the terminology exact.
[01:17:38]  What is civil war?
[01:17:40]  What is civil strife?
[01:17:42]  Well, I think you can be, but it requires a certain amount of loss.
[01:17:48]  It requires a certain amount of loss of force in your argument.
[01:17:52]  For sure it does.
[01:17:53]  Humility, man.
[01:17:54]  The left and the right, the right has a traditional view of language, like we use words that mean things they meant 20 years ago, and the left has redefined things.
[01:18:03]  Well, the left is involved in a language etiquette that is totally destructive and just as self-consuming, as I said.
[01:18:12]  As Mark said in the German ideology, there was a man who thought, if I define river differently, no one will drown.
[01:18:20]  And that's what the left has become, where they think that definitions will change reality.
[01:18:26]  I have a good example of what I think is contributing to the breakdown and why I think there's no solution.
[01:18:32]  I feel like many on the right are looking for an anchor.
[01:18:34]  Like, just tell me where we stand and where we are, and I'll try and figure out what's going on.
[01:18:39]  Whereas the left just says, I will do as the tide flows.
[01:18:43]  So the example on this is... But the left eats itself.
[01:18:46]  Well, certainly they're a swarm.
[01:18:47]  But that doesn't mean they go away.
[01:18:48]  Let me finish this point.
[01:18:49]  Sorry.
[01:18:50]  Well, nobody goes away.
[01:18:51]  I mean, if people went away, it would be easier.
[01:18:53]  The point I was going to make is, I saw a meme recently where someone was talking about vaccines.
[01:18:59]  And then someone responded, they said, someone made the meme about seatbelts.
[01:19:03]  They were like, oh, we should ban seatbelt mandates.
[01:19:06]  And someone said, you know, hate to break it to you, but seatbelts aren't intended to prevent an accident.
[01:19:10]  They're meant to reduce your risk of injury in the event one happens.
[01:19:13]  And then all of the people on the left started laughing, saying, how stupid do you have to be?
[01:19:16]  That's literally what vaccines do.
[01:19:18]  The problem is, for people on the right, Joe Biden came out publicly and addressed the nation saying vaccines prevent transmission.
[01:19:25]  And Dr. Fauci and they all said something very similar.
[01:19:28]  Now I understand science changes, but it's very difficult to latch onto something if it goes back and forth.
[01:19:33]  Well, I mean, we're dealing, like, the situation with, like, this is a chaotic moment of real chaos.
[01:19:40]  That has nothing to do with semantic chaos.
[01:19:42]  That has to do with the fact of trying to figure things out.
[01:19:44]  Also, suddenly there's Omicron.
[01:19:46]  I mean, people are doing this on the, well, that's just, you know, stuff happens.
[01:19:53]  Like, you're just trying to figure out what the hell happened.
[01:19:56]  I am not saying, you know, fault on either side of this, what I'm saying, one of the things that is causing a divide is people have different tolerances for a change in information, or they have expectations.
[01:20:05]  That's possible, although it seems to me like the radicalization is happening, you know, at the same level, and happening, and don't you feel everyone's out there looking for an anchor?
[01:20:19]  I mean, God knows the people I talk to on the left are desperate for some kind of stability.
[01:20:23]  I mean, that's the one hope I have is that, you know, the chaos has become so intolerable to people that they need some kind of, they really start to crave structure.
[01:20:35]  They're scared to step through the fire.
[01:20:37]  So again, to throw it back to Jussie Smollett, for instance, Covington kids, big cultural moments that were absolutely wrong.
[01:20:45]  For a lot of people that, you know, we've even had on the show, they've said, this was the moment I said, I just can't live this way anymore and I need something solid.
[01:20:53]  And so I said, I can't trust these people who keep lying to me and I look for something else.
[01:20:57]  I mean, those are very specific moments.
[01:20:59]  Like what's the, what's the technical term for the fallacy where you take one example and exclude it to everything else?
[01:21:04]  I mean, you know, everyone has their example.
[01:21:06]  God knows there's enough tolerance.
[01:21:07]  God, there's enough chaos out there.
[01:21:09]  There's enough nonsense.
[01:21:11]  But why take more?
[01:21:14]  Because they never apologized, they never admitted it.
[01:21:16]  See, I think, not to be too much of a salesman, you actually have a lot of information about this that I don't have, but I think what I try to do in my book is go 30,000 feet in the air.
[01:21:29]  I think your book buys a lot of information I don't have.
[01:21:31]  Yes, I think it does.
[01:21:32]  But I think we need some perspective on this stuff.
[01:21:38]  Like, Jesse Smollett is not a major incident in American history.

=== Nfl's Contradictions (14:54) ===

[01:21:42]  It's a grain of sand in a heap.
[01:21:44]  That's a really good way of putting it.
[01:21:46]  But it was a joke!
[01:21:49]  But it wasn't a joke in the sense of the way institutions latched onto it, the way elected officials latched onto it, the media latched onto it.
[01:21:56]  And I think one of the ways where, I don't want to say I disagree with you, but where we see the world differently, I do not see the right trying to cancel the left the way the left tries to cancel the right.
[01:22:07]  Small example of that you have this lovely singer British chick Adele who won an award and Because of the current time period a week ago.
[01:22:17]  It was a gender-neutral artist of the year and in her acceptance of speech She said I wish it weren't I won't fake a British accent.
[01:22:23]  I wish it weren't Although she's cockney.
[01:22:26]  I wish it weren't artists of the year.
[01:22:27]  I wish it were Woman of the Year, because I love being a woman.
[01:22:31]  That turned into Adele's trying to cancel the trance movement.
[01:22:35]  Adele should be banned on Spotify.
[01:22:37]  Stop buying Adele.
[01:22:38]  I don't ever see that on the right.
[01:22:39]  And proof of that is, two years ago, the NFL, they kneel at the anthem.
[01:22:45]  Stop watching the NFL.
[01:22:46]  No one stopped watching the NFL.
[01:22:50]  Look at the Super Bowl numbers.
[01:22:52]  Look at the playoff numbers.
[01:22:53]  The right can't go to a cancel culture the way the left can.
[01:22:57]  What would have to happen for people to stop watching the NFL?
[01:23:00]  It's unimaginable.
[01:23:02]  Exactly.
[01:23:03]  The Civil War could happen or not, but the NFL is going to continue.
[01:23:06]  But look at the movement to get Taylor Swift to pull her record off of Spotify because of Joe Rogan.
[01:23:11]  I don't think you see that on the right.
[01:23:12]  There are calls for it.
[01:23:13]  Certainly there are calls for it.
[01:23:15]  The NFL being the best example.
[01:23:17]  We should stop watching the NFL.
[01:23:18]  But they don't.
[01:23:19]  Yeah, the right couldn't boycott Netflix after Cuties came out.
[01:23:25]  You guys are worried about Jussie Smollett, and you're worried about the NFL, and you're worried about the Halftime Show.
[01:23:33]  No, no, no.
[01:23:34]  Hold on.
[01:23:34]  Those are grains of sand in the heat.
[01:23:36]  Yes.
[01:23:36]  No, no, no.
[01:23:36]  Fair enough.
[01:23:37]  I'm worried about commentary.
[01:23:38]  What the left's worried about is that by 2040, 50% of the Senate is going to be controlled by 50% of the country.
[01:23:41]  40-40, 50% of the country is going to be in, 50% of the Senate is going to be, sorry, 85%
[01:23:46]  of the Senate is going to be controlled by 50% of the country.
[01:23:48]  That's a good thing.
[01:23:49]  But that's, well, I mean, that really to me devolves into like pseudo-democracy.
[01:23:54]  We're a constitutional republic, not a democracy.
[01:23:56]  Ah, well, see, this is where we get into, it's time to separate.
[01:24:00]  Because, like, I think there are two visions of America.
[01:24:03]  One is a constitutional republic, a settler republic, and the other is a multicultural democracy.
[01:24:10]  And I think they are fundamentally irreconcilable.
[01:24:12]  I agree.
[01:24:14]  And they're actually, you need two countries.
[01:24:17]  Because, like, the time has come for, like, these are both visions that have their merits, and they have their demerits, right?
[01:24:25]  But, you know, certainly I am on the side of multicultural democracy all day, forever.
[01:24:31]  That's where I come from.
[01:24:33]  You mean like 51% decides the law?
[01:24:35]  Yeah, with minority protections.
[01:24:37]  What's a minority protection?
[01:24:38]  Well, those are by law.
[01:24:40]  So those are not... Well, I mean, if you actually want to know what I believe, it's the Charter of Rights and Freedoms of the Canadian Constitution, which is incredibly specific and was written in 1982 and contains all this beautifully articulated in a simple way.
[01:24:53]  But my point really here is like, Whichever side you're on of this, these two countries can't coexist.
[01:25:00]  It has to be one or the other, and it really can't be both.
[01:25:04]  I'd like to see people democratically choosing where their tax dollars go, but also having some sort of republicanism.
[01:25:09]  That's a good point.
[01:25:11]  That would be an idea of an amalgam.
[01:25:14]  America has been an amalgam.
[01:25:15]  America is a massive contradiction.
[01:25:17]  The beauty of America, its great gift, has been its capacity to hold contradictory ideas at the same time.
[01:25:25]  Um, like that is, that is the glory of America.
[01:25:28]  And because it's a constitutional republic, it's able to.
[01:25:30]  Well, I think actually it's, when you go back to the original constitution, it contains a whole coast of political ideas that are in conflict.
[01:25:38]  And also, you know, it, it believes in, it believes in, in struggle as it believes in disagreement.
[01:25:44]  I mean, that's the, that's the amazing gift of the American constitution is that it believes that You don't need unity.
[01:25:52]  You need disagreement to get to the best answer, right?
[01:25:55]  But that only works if you have a concept of yourself as a unified whole.
[01:26:01]  And when that evaporates, when that dissolves, you're left with irreconcilability.
[01:26:09]  Have you read Washington's Farewell Address recently?
[01:26:11]  No.
[01:26:12]  I mean, it's really worth reading because it's a great work of genius.
[01:26:16]  It's a really fascinating Book because he worked because he predicts exactly where you are right now like exactly where you are right now And he did it you know on his retirement.
[01:26:28]  I imagine you did a lot of research on the first American Civil War Yeah, I mean There's so much work on it like I would never call myself an expert on that like I definitely read a lot of books about it But just you know I'm not I would never There are some things in here that I do consider myself an expert on but that there are so many Civil War experts Just because you asked me earlier what I thought was going to happen.
[01:26:47]  We didn't quite get into it.
[01:26:48]  I will say we spent a lot of time, you know, you from 30,000 feet, me from someone on the ground trying to explain my positions.
[01:26:56]  I don't think I need to explain them to you for the most part.
[01:26:58]  I think, you know, you wrote a book.
[01:27:00]  I obviously want to explain it to the audience.
[01:27:02]  But as for what I think is going to happen, we hear a lot of peaceful divorce.
[01:27:05]  You mentioned these two countries can't exist.
[01:27:08]  But there is, in my opinion, no scenario in which there's a peaceful divorce.
[01:27:11]  It's almost impossible.
[01:27:12]  And the reason for it is, it was actually someone on the show brought this up, I can't remember who, but they made a great point.
[01:27:17]  There's two countries, you can say multicultural democracy and constitutional republic, both have their merits.
[01:27:22]  The first civil war, what happened?
[01:27:24]  It was like, I think four states legally seceded.
[01:27:27]  Yeah.
[01:27:27]  Everybody was like, all right.
[01:27:28]  Then I think seven more states joined in and they all went, well, okay then.
[01:27:33]  And then the North said, but these military bases are ours and we're going to remain in them.
[01:27:38]  And that's when Fort Sumter, South Carolina, they said, no, no, no, no, no, no.
[01:27:40]  Hold on.
[01:27:41]  You got to leave.
[01:27:43]  Nobody believed the muskets were loaded.
[01:27:44]  Nobody believed the cannons were armed.
[01:27:46]  They all thought that it was just bluster and there would be no fighting because it could never happen here.
[01:27:50]  That's right.
[01:27:50]  And then the bombardment started.
[01:27:52]  No one foresaw the first civil war.
[01:27:53]  Yes.
[01:27:55]  Even though in hindsight it all seems perfectly clear and the structures are all there and it's like there's no way that it couldn't be a civil war after the nullification crisis and the bloody Kansas.
[01:28:07]  After whatever happened here.
[01:28:09]  Harper's Ferry.
[01:28:10]  Harper's Ferry.
[01:28:10]  We're like 15 kilometers away from where this happened.
[01:28:13]  But even Fort Sumter, I mean Jefferson Davis said it's probably nothing.
[01:28:20]  I bet the leaders of the North knew there was something coming.
[01:28:22]  As soon as they left, they're like, yo, we're getting that back.
[01:28:24]  They had to go to Europe to buy guns, the North.
[01:28:28]  The industrial superpower of the world in 1850 had to go to Europe.
[01:28:33]  I wonder how much of our treasury they sold out for those weapons.
[01:28:36]  They bought a lot of guns.
[01:28:37]  And so here's what happens now.
[01:28:41]  So it'll bankrupt the country too.
[01:28:41]  There was a great statement.
[01:28:43]  I think Texas had written this, that they had joined the South simply by nature of geography.
[01:28:47]  Yes.
[01:28:48]  Not ideology.
[01:28:49]  Same thing would happen today because... Well, Texas was a slave state.
[01:28:53]  California was a free state.
[01:28:54]  And that's where they lined up.
[01:28:56]  But they were so nascent.
[01:28:57]  I mean, you're not talking about large groups of people.
[01:29:01]  Right, right, right.
[01:29:02]  In the First Civil War.
[01:29:03]  And then you also had slave states who joined the North by nature of geography.
[01:29:07]  Yeah, because of geography, yeah.
[01:29:08]  So what I think would happen- But there was only one, right?
[01:29:11]  Maryland, I think?
[01:29:13]  I think West Virginia, too.
[01:29:14]  West Virginia was not a slave state.
[01:29:16]  West Virginia seceded from Virginia.
[01:29:18]  So what would happen today is you would likely have New York, Illinois, California, maybe Washington, maybe Oregon.
[01:29:25]  You write all that stuff, I imagine.
[01:29:26]  I'm going to show you the map that I got.
[01:29:28]  I want to know whether you think it's reasonable.
[01:29:32]  But go on, please.
[01:29:34]  So I think it could start with rapid defederalization.
[01:29:37]  But then ultimately what will end up happening is one side's going to say, yeah, I'll slide that
[01:29:37]  218.
[01:29:43]  over. One side's, what's the page number? 218. One side's going to say, let me grab this book.
[01:29:50]  Hey, those nukes, those weapons, those resources are ours and we want them.
[01:29:56]  The other side's gonna say, sorry, no dice.
[01:29:59]  Fighting starts.
[01:29:59]  Well, the problem is, like, to negotiate a settlement, you need goodwill.
[01:30:03]  Right?
[01:30:03]  There are countries that negotiate separation, like Czechoslovakia, where they do negotiate in goodwill, and that's what happened with Norway and Sweden.
[01:30:11]  Yeah, tell me what you think of that.
[01:30:12]  I mean, that is not a... I wonder what the best way to show this is, actually, because I don't... I wonder if I... So...
[01:30:18]  I can't do it. Well, it's basically the north, northeast and then the south and Midwest and then
[01:30:23]  California to Oregon and in Texas. Have you seen the poll?
[01:30:26]  I think it was you go data showing the different five different regions of the US. You've
[01:30:30]  got the Midwest, the South, and they were all basically saying, yeah, let's break off.
[01:30:34]  You know what you will really like in that book is the psychometric data, which is like different
[01:30:38]  personality types by region, which is actually fascinating and like goes to really deep
[01:30:44]  seated structural differences between between these groups.
[01:30:47]  But that was the one that I had only had three.
[01:30:50]  I like how Texas is just goes back to Texas.
[01:30:52]  Well, Texas, they have a very active nationalist movement that's quite together.
[01:30:59]  And also, Texas would 100% work as a country.
[01:31:02]  What do you think?
[01:31:04]  Do you think it's close?
[01:31:05]  I think you're close.
[01:31:05]  The only issue is I think it ends up with a bunch of war.
[01:31:09]  Well, the problem is, first of all, to negotiate a settlement, you need goodwill.
[01:31:13]  And then the UN, to negotiate with the UN, which I know sounds ridiculous, but, you know, you can't, no one will land in an airport until you have a UN agreement that you're a separate country, is really, really hard, especially with a country that has security, general, what's it called, security council placement.
[01:31:30]  So, like, it would be incredibly difficult.
[01:31:34]  Let me ask you a question.
[01:31:34]  To negotiate a secession.
[01:31:36]  Have you researched abortion?
[01:31:38]  Well, no, that's polarization.
[01:31:41]  That's part of polarization.
[01:31:42]  Of course, I did just write something about it in Lit Hub, about the politics of abortion as a factor in polarization.
[01:31:53]  I mean, you know, the most bizarre thing about it is that, you know, this is again looking at it from a foreign country, is like, Abortion in the United States should be one of the policies that everyone agrees on.
[01:32:07]  It is a success story.
[01:32:09]  Women get more control over their reproductive health every year.
[01:32:13]  Abortion rates have declined 19% between 2011 and 2017.
[01:32:17]  If you want to end abortion in America, keep doing exactly what you're doing.
[01:32:21]  It's a policy success.
[01:32:25]  No one can see it.
[01:32:26]  Everyone is screaming at each other.
[01:32:28]  No, like someone said is screaming life.
[01:32:31]  The other one is screaming choice.
[01:32:33]  If you were to ask yourself what the correct policy is, you would see that the policy is both like women get control over their reproductive health.
[01:32:43]  That's what leads to declines in abortion rates.
[01:32:46]  And so it's a win-win for everyone.
[01:32:49]  But because it's so divided, they can't see those basic facts.
[01:32:54]  That's not really a contributing factor to what I'm talking about in the book.
[01:32:57]  The reason I bring it up is I think it could be a strong moral issue in this civil war.
[01:33:03]  Oh, it's huge.
[01:33:04]  It's a huge thing.
[01:33:04]  But there are a whole bunch of them.
[01:33:06]  Church attendance, corporal punishment in schools.
[01:33:09]  The sociological factors that go into it are actually really significant.
[01:33:14]  So, are you familiar that the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Roe v. Wade?
[01:33:18]  Yeah.
[01:33:18]  Well, not on Roe v. Wade, on Mississippi.
[01:33:19]  On Mississippi, yeah.
[01:33:20]  Florida just, they just passed a ban after 15 weeks.
[01:33:24]  Right.
[01:33:25]  And so, man, we've had a bunch of people in here, we've had legal experts, and everyone seems to agree that Roe v. Wade will be overturned.
[01:33:32]  It's gonna cause so much anger.
[01:33:34]  There's already 12 states that have trigger laws.
[01:33:37]  As soon as Roe v. Wade is overturned, instantly banned.
[01:33:40]  So my question is, you mentioned the far right.
[01:33:42]  Here's what I've said.
[01:33:44]  Do you think that when that happens, do you think Republicans will try to ban abortion nationally?
[01:33:50]  Oh, I have no idea.
[01:33:51]  Like, that's not... I don't have expertise in that.
[01:33:53]  Like, I'm sorry, but like, I just can't really give an honest or accurate answer to that question.
[01:33:58]  I mean, I would say that once that happens, that... Like, one thing that I notice in this book is, like, the right has said concept of civil war for a long time, right?
[01:34:11]  Like, for at least since the 90s.
[01:34:13]  And it was a fringe position, but it sort of became more mainstream in 2008.
[01:34:17]  But I think the left is actually starting to catch up.
[01:34:20]  The left is actually starting to catch up to the idea that this country isn't working, its institutions are failing, there's going to have to be a response to this, and I think abortion could be a major trigger of it.
[01:34:30]  I think there are a lot of people who don't... You know you asked me that question, what if healthcare was taken away from me?
[01:34:37]  It will be like that for them.
[01:34:39]  So there's a lot to this.
[01:34:42]  For one, many conservatives have told me, no, Republicans will never try to ban it federally.
[01:34:46]  Not only that, they can't.
[01:34:48]  It can't be federally legislated.
[01:34:51]  It has to be at the state level.
[01:34:53]  But my question is, do you think there's any number of right-wing people, any small number, who would be willing to go to an abortion clinic the moment Roe v. Wade is overturned and say, with force, end what you're doing right now?
[01:35:08]  Well, you know, the criminalization of abortion is one of the worst policy ideas it's possible to have, because you have to ask yourself all kinds of questions.
[01:35:17]  Like, are you going to start a DEA for abortion?
[01:35:22]  Sure, sure.
[01:35:23]  That's not an argument.
[01:35:24]  But my point is, they're not really thinking about policy.
[01:35:26]  No, no, for sure.
[01:35:27]  But do you think people would be like, do you think there would be a John Brown of abortion, who's going to walk up to an abortion doctor and just blow his brains out?
[01:35:34]  But it's already happened.
[01:35:36]  It's happened many, many times.
[01:35:38]  There's been a huge amount of violence around that.
[01:35:40]  It's kind of the question I'm getting to.
[01:35:43]  When we're talking about the numbers of what constitutes political violence, that doesn't qualify as political violence in the stats that we looked at.
[01:35:51]  Going up and killing an abortion doctor.
[01:35:52]  But I, of course, would qualify it as that.
[01:35:55]  Right.
[01:35:55]  So like, yeah, like, absolutely, I think.
[01:35:59]  So the point is not really the violent extremists.
[01:36:02]  The point is, do they start a police force?
[01:36:05]  Like, how are they going to actually manage?
[01:36:07]  Like, you know, the Texas law was not policy.
[01:36:10]  It was just like, we're going to start this crazy bounty system that I mean, no one knows what the hell that would look like.
[01:36:16]  They don't want to actually answer the question of what Yeah, and they've gone a long way already.
[01:36:22]  this would look like especially given the fact that you know america can even
[01:36:25]  control the flow of hair i think it's i think it's simple i think these red
[01:36:28]  states are gonna they're gonna shut down all of their planned parenthoods and
[01:36:31]  yeah and they've gone a long way already and when you look at proximity to abortion access in america

=== Water Rights Dispute (09:31) ===

[01:36:36]  like red and blue states she i mean just the world of difference
[01:36:40]  so what you either get to a point where you know uh... california immigrant sanctuary state they're
[01:36:46]  already defying federal law
[01:36:48]  Then you've got... Yes, they certainly did in 2016.
[01:36:50]  I mean, Jeff Sessions, that's a big chapter in the book.
[01:36:52]  But I'll tell you what else.
[01:36:53]  I mean, New York voting for non-citizens to have the right to vote.
[01:36:56]  Massachusetts voting for non-citizens to get driver's licenses.
[01:36:58]  This is my point.
[01:36:59]  Like, I think the left is starting to figure out, like, that would have been, those kind of defiant actions would have been typical of Red states for its whole history, but I think now oh, sorry.
[01:37:10]  I've got it mixed up You know, you know everywhere else in the world red means left You know why that's right.
[01:37:16]  Yeah, it was it was 2000 election, right?
[01:37:18]  Someone explained it to me Yeah, but it used to be the other way around it used to be the other way around.
[01:37:22]  Yeah But so now people on the left are figuring out We're gonna be in defiance of federal authority So we've had sanctuary cities on the left for a long time.
[01:37:34]  We've had now California sanctuary state.
[01:37:36]  Do you know how our elections work in this country?
[01:37:39]  The electoral college?
[01:37:40]  Well, yeah.
[01:37:41]  I mean, I almost put a chapter in the book about it, but I could not find unbiased opinion.
[01:37:49]  That was the thing that was so amazing.
[01:37:51]  It's like, I can't find anyone who could explain it to me in a coherent way.
[01:37:55]  The electoral college.
[01:37:55]  Well, the electoral college.
[01:37:56]  Yeah, I understand that.
[01:37:58]  In the United States, non-citizens do have voting power in every single election.
[01:38:04]  So when California says, we are going to allow non-citizens into this country and provide them benefits, they are seizing federal authority.
[01:38:11]  The way it works is... I'm sorry, seizing?
[01:38:13]  Oh, okay, I see what you mean.
[01:38:15]  Seizing federal power.
[01:38:16]  Yeah, okay, gotcha.
[01:38:17]  They're stealing disproportionate amounts of power within our federal... Well, I would say they're in defiance of...
[01:38:21]  No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
[01:38:21]  They're actually stealing.
[01:38:22]  Okay, all right.
[01:38:23]  So here's how it works.
[01:38:24]  The Electoral College is based on congressional seats.
[01:38:26]  You get an electoral, uh, elector vote, and your seats in Congress are based upon your population size, not citizen size.
[01:38:33]  Right.
[01:38:34]  So when California allows in non-citizens, the census is done, non-citizens are counted, and they get extra congressional representation, which then results in, it results in disproportionate voting power, and it results in disproportionate power to elect the president.
[01:38:48]  I think, according to the Heritage Foundation, California last election only got one additional electoral vote.
[01:38:53]  But when we're talking about, you know, what is it, 538?
[01:38:55]  I mean, that's substantive.
[01:38:58]  That's a decent amount of gained power.
[01:39:00]  And it's not just California, it's other sanctuary cities and states.
[01:39:03]  So, the left likes to come out and say it's unfair that the Senate is comprised of, you know, X amount of senators who come from only a certain amount of states when they're engaging in defiance of federal authority to give themselves disproportionate votes in Congress and the Electoral College.
[01:39:19]  But, I mean, it's really kind of much of a muchness because the problem here is, like, I think you're going to have an election relatively soon.
[01:39:27]  Like, not, I don't know if it's 2024, I don't think, I don't know if it's 2028, might even be 2032 if you're lucky.
[01:39:33]  Well, you're going to have a president lose the popular mandate by 10 million votes and still win the election.
[01:39:38]  And that's the way it's supposed to be.
[01:39:40]  Well, that's, I mean, whether that's the way it's supposed to be or not, you're going to have a huge number of people in your country who don't regard themselves as living in a legitimate democracy.
[01:39:52]  But we're not a democracy.
[01:39:54]  Right.
[01:39:54]  Never have been.
[01:39:55]  Okay.
[01:39:56]  Well, I mean, you did call yourself the world's greatest democracy for a long time.
[01:40:00]  Yeah.
[01:40:01]  And in 2000, you said, we're going to export democracy to the world.
[01:40:04]  These are media establishment politicians who have no idea what they're talking about.
[01:40:08]  Well, you know, you did call yourself a democracy for 240 years.
[01:40:11]  I mean, like... Who did?
[01:40:13]  Well, like, Ronald Reagan.
[01:40:16]  Like, I mean, like, every American president I ever heard called himself a democrat.
[01:40:20]  So if you're saying you're not a democracy... And this is part of the problem.
[01:40:24]  So there's a reason we have an electoral college.
[01:40:27]  There's a famous quote from Benjamin Franklin.
[01:40:29]  Democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what's for lunch.
[01:40:32]  A republic is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
[01:40:36]  I'll give you a- That's not- that's- that's minoritarian, but that's not the same thing as- that's minority protection.
[01:40:41]  That's not the same thing as minoritarian rule.
[01:40:43]  I mean, that is- that is very big distinction.
[01:40:45]  I mean, in Canada, we understand this really implicitly.
[01:40:48]  Right?
[01:40:48]  Like, we have a minority population, French Canadians, who are, you know, who have to be protected from the majority rule by, like, just to keep the country together.
[01:40:57]  Good call.
[01:40:58]  Right?
[01:40:58]  So that's like a very distinct, that's a distinct thing.
[01:41:06]  The fact that people choose to live in populous states, you actually need a functional control for that so people don't all just crowd into one tight space and they actually spread out.
[01:41:16]  And that is the system.
[01:41:17]  But that's the opposite of where we're going in this world.
[01:41:19]  I mean, other than you, who moved from... No, no, no, actually, we're actually seeing people leave cities because of the problems.
[01:41:25]  Yeah, well, it's probably also COVID.
[01:41:27]  From Wikipedia, it looks like we are officially a federal presidential constitutional republic.
[01:41:32]  Yes.
[01:41:32]  So let me give you an example.
[01:41:35]  So you mentioned minority protections is a good thing.
[01:41:37]  The example that I experienced... But minority protection is different from minoritarian rule.
[01:41:41]  I love that.
[01:41:42]  That's important.
[01:41:43]  So in California, when I was covering the drought, we went to East Porterville, a small, mostly migrant city with no water.
[01:41:51]  Why?
[01:41:52]  The farmers were not allowed access to surface water because of the drought.
[01:41:56]  The surface water had to be rerouted to cities.
[01:41:59]  Why?
[01:41:59]  Because the cities had voting power and voted away the water from the people who actually had it.
[01:42:04]  So what happens is the farmers, being a large portion of the United States' economy, said, we're going to have to drill deeper and deeper into groundwater.
[01:42:11]  And they went down thousands, even tens of thousands of feet.
[01:42:14]  The small family migrant workers could only drill about 30 feet and their water went dry.
[01:42:20]  That's chapter three.
[01:42:21]  big cities inequality etc well it's not that so much as the water problem
[01:42:25]  that the united states faces yeah i mean actually that was the
[01:42:29]  that was the chapter that kept me up at night it's funny not any of the none of
[01:42:32]  none of the politics stuff like it's funny the one that kept me up was
[01:42:35]  talking to like an expert at the usda on corn did you did you uh look into the
[01:42:40]  the lawsuit attempts to seize great lakes water Yeah, well, well, of course, in Canada, we're really obsessed with this because like we have all the water, right?
[01:42:48]  Like we have one fifth of the world's natural water supply.
[01:42:51]  And so what happens when you guys run out of your water is of great concern to us.
[01:42:56]  So there was an attempt by, I could be getting this wrong, it's been a while, Arizona, I think, was filing a federal suit.
[01:43:02]  Right.
[01:43:02]  Claiming they had access to the Great Lakes, but the problem for them was the Great Lakes Coalition includes Canada.
[01:43:08]  Yes.
[01:43:09]  So I think specifically Ontario.
[01:43:11]  Yeah, well, and Manitoba as well.
[01:43:12]  And Manitoba.
[01:43:13]  And so basically they were like, we have an international treaty on this water, you can't That's right.
[01:43:18]  And that's really important to us.
[01:43:20]  Important to you?
[01:43:20]  I'm from Chicago.
[01:43:21]  Right.
[01:43:22]  I mean, yeah.
[01:43:22]  The thing about Lake Michigan, for instance, is that we were depleting it because so much water was being consumed.
[01:43:28]  We had to put in environmental protections to make sure the water replenished before so we could only take so much from it.
[01:43:33]  Well, I mean, the worst thing to me is the Ogallala Aquifer.
[01:43:36]  Which they're accessing to grow.
[01:43:38]  Like we live in an era of completely cheap food, like artificially cheap food, largely driven by Midwest, the genius of Midwestern farmers who have innovated corn to a point of, you know, extreme productivity.
[01:43:52]  And that's driven by this aquifer that is not renewable.
[01:43:57]  That's just water they're taking out of the ground, that when it's gone, it's gone.
[01:44:02]  And where they go from there, they don't really know.
[01:44:06]  I want you to imagine a world where we don't have cheap food anymore.
[01:44:10]  That's added to all this stuff we're talking about, right?
[01:44:14]  Added to all this conflict.
[01:44:17]  That's when things start to get real in a hurry.
[01:44:21]  I tweeted this a while ago.
[01:44:23]  In 50 years, we are going to look back and laugh about literally flushing fresh water down the toilet.
[01:44:29]  Well, I mean, you already have it in certain places.
[01:44:32]  When California goes through its droughts, people brush their teeth very carefully.
[01:44:37]  Some people do.
[01:44:40]  Some people do.
[01:44:41]  Some people don't.
[01:44:42]  I think most people don't.
[01:44:43]  I was encouraging people to pee in the sink for a while.
[01:44:47]  Do it.
[01:44:47]  Don't waste that water for it.
[01:44:49]  Ian, you pee in the top of the toilet.
[01:44:52]  I roll a 20.
[01:44:53]  Roll initiative.
[01:44:54]  No, you pee in the top of the toilet so you can flush with urine.
[01:44:57]  Oh, that's the way.
[01:44:59]  News you can use.
[01:45:01]  That's useful stuff.
[01:45:03]  Did you ever, in any of these, when you were thinking of all the potential possibilities, did you ever find out No, I mean, that was not something I looked at.
[01:45:11]  hey we're gonna supply your weapons and help you win when you give us states
[01:45:14]  when you win we'll take Florida on no I mean that was not something I looked at
[01:45:19]  I mean what I looked at was inequality levels which are of course like
[01:45:22]  catastrophically high and you know they there are no examples of history of
[01:45:29]  countries with inequality rates like the United States that don't end in war
[01:45:33]  revolution or mass death like it's like it's a like it's a I have a lot of like, on the one hand this, on the one hand this, in the book, right?
[01:45:44]  Some examples go this way, some examples go the other way.
[01:45:46]  But when you look at inequality levels like the ones you have in the United States, they only go one way.
[01:45:50]  This is financial inequality?
[01:45:52]  Well, income inequality is the main one, but it's also the wealth inequality, the wealth gap, which is catastrophic.
[01:46:03]  And this past couple of years, it's just exploded.

=== Financial Inequality Builds On Itself (12:51) ===

[01:46:08]  It builds on itself, right?
[01:46:09]  I mean, that's the thing about capital.
[01:46:11]  It builds on itself.
[01:46:12]  It might be a problem is that you give money to your kids.
[01:46:14]  I like it.
[01:46:14]  I mean, it's always been normal, but it's making stupid rich people.
[01:46:18]  Kids that aren't qualified for the money are growing up with it and have all this power.
[01:46:22]  Well, as I say, I try not to judge anyone.
[01:46:24]  It's not every time.
[01:46:26]  I'm looking at structures here, but what I do know is that when you get to inequality levels with this kind of structural problem, it just creates huge amounts of turbulence.
[01:46:35]  Obviously, you pointed out problems.
[01:46:36]  Have you thought of any solutions?
[01:46:39]  Well, I mean, like Tim here, I'm not sure I see... So don't judge me!
[01:46:46]  No, I'm kidding.
[01:46:48]  I think my strength in this book is that I'm not on either side of this, so I don't really... I disagree.
[01:46:55]  Well, I want stability.
[01:46:58]  I think you are on the left side.
[01:47:01]  Well, I guess maybe, but, you know, I would say that I kind of tried to consciously work against that.
[01:47:06]  Like, obviously, I'm a Canadian.
[01:47:07]  I believe in socialized medicine and gun control, but the Conservative Party believes in that, right?
[01:47:12]  Like, so it's... I definitely don't feel affiliated with the Democratic tribe, right?
[01:47:17]  Like, and I don't feel like... Like, when you mentioned Biden, like, you know, he means nothing to me.
[01:47:22]  But the truckers.
[01:47:23]  Oh, you want to do the truckers now, eh?
[01:47:25]  Oh, sure.
[01:47:26]  You know, I don't know.
[01:47:27]  You finally got your first A in.
[01:47:28]  Thank you.
[01:47:29]  It's been all evening.
[01:47:30]  Did I say A?
[01:47:31]  Yes, you did.
[01:47:31]  I didn't even know.
[01:47:32]  Finally.
[01:47:32]  I was waiting for it.
[01:47:35]  Well, I actually say it a lot.
[01:47:37]  So, just to start this off, the same people who supported occupational protests with Occupy Wall Street and the CHAZ.
[01:47:46]  See, I would never support any of those, and Canada wouldn't support any of those.
[01:47:49]  But, um, in America, these same people are now in at odds and defiance.
[01:47:54]  Well, if I can be honest with you, like when I hear the debate here about the trucker convoy, it is it's like, have you ever seen like a movie where you know what really happened?
[01:48:05]  And like you see the movie and you're like, it has nothing to do with, like it's just so distorted that it has nothing to do with reality.
[01:48:12]  The largest support for the Trucker Convoy I've seen in my life was driving here in Maryland and someone had a big sign up.
[01:48:21]  Right?
[01:48:21]  I mean, you have to remember, like, here it's become, like, all this stuff about Trudeau and, you know, all this, like, the person who did the original Emergencies Act was Doug Ford, the Premier of Ontario, who's a populist conservative, and I personally have called him a tinpot Northern Trump in the pages of the New York Times.
[01:48:43]  He would, like, this is a very, the political context of this in Canada is just completely separate from the political
[01:48:52]  context here.
[01:48:53]  Like it's just a completely different framework of interpretation of events.
[01:48:58]  And you know, I think...
[01:49:00]  We get our news about it from Canadians.
[01:49:02]  Well, they're coming to talk to you, right?
[01:49:05]  No, no, no.
[01:49:07]  We watch people on the ground who are reporting.
[01:49:08]  They're on the ground talking and interviewing people.
[01:49:10]  Well, yes, but they're sending the sites to American news sources.
[01:49:13]  If you look at the Globe and Mail— No, no, no.
[01:49:15]  If you look at the Globe and Mail— Piva Fry is a Canadian lawyer who's livestreaming it.
[01:49:19]  Right.
[01:49:20]  So I just turn on his stream and we just watch what he's talking about.
[01:49:22]  Right.
[01:49:23]  He's not the only source we use.
[01:49:25]  So for the most part... I would just say the reporting that I've seen in American sources from both sides, like, has really... Like, I was trying to think, like, how could I explain this?
[01:49:35]  And I was like, well, you know, the Quebec premier, who is a conservative, like, he's definitely the right, a month ago proposed a tax on the unvaccinated.
[01:49:46]  Right?
[01:49:46]  Like, just a straight tax.
[01:49:48]  This is a different world than the world you guys are in.
[01:49:51]  You know what I mean?
[01:49:53]  Because of universal health care... But we have that too, though.
[01:49:56]  Like, DC had a vax mandate.
[01:49:59]  You couldn't go inside buildings.
[01:50:00]  Attacks?
[01:50:01]  Did any American politician suggest, you know what, if you don't get a vaccine, you're going to have to pay a levy?
[01:50:05]  No, they gave people free money.
[01:50:06]  I want you to imagine an American conservative politician saying, we're going to tax people for not getting vaccinated.
[01:50:10]  We're gonna like I want you to imagine an American conservative politician
[01:50:15]  Saying we're going to tax people for not getting back what we saw was
[01:50:19]  I gotta put this back up here. Oh, yeah For the what we had were that everyone's actually going to
[01:50:25]  listen to big big organizations, um hospitals and uh corporations
[01:50:29]  Saying if you don't get vaccinated, we're deducting we're slashing your pay, but see
[01:50:34]  Or firing you.
[01:50:35]  Yeah, or firing you.
[01:50:36]  Universal health care just completely changes the dynamic of all of these questions, right?
[01:50:41]  And that's why Canadian anger at the truckers is so profound and so wide.
[01:50:49]  Like, you know, why 70% of Canadians want to call in the military, right?
[01:50:52]  And, like, 70%, like, these are people with kids, right?
[01:50:56]  Like, and, you know, like 90% of Canadians want them gone, right?
[01:51:00]  Like, the reason for that is, like, when you're in a universal healthcare system, They're when they get sick, it costs me money.
[01:51:11]  It's a burden on the taxpayer, right?
[01:51:14]  And like when they get sick, it takes a space like my cousin cam who's got problems with his heart and need surgery like when they're sick.
[01:51:22]  When they're filling up the hospitals, he can't get the treatment that he needs.
[01:51:26]  I have a question.
[01:51:27]  Did they distribute vaccines on the basis of race in Canada?
[01:51:31]  Yeah, well, they went to indigenous populations first because they were more vulnerable to the disease.
[01:51:39]  So they did go, but those are, you know, very, those are remote communities.
[01:51:42]  I had a friend... Like that's an affront to... No, I don't think so.
[01:51:46]  No, for our values?
[01:51:47]  Right.
[01:51:48]  No, but they're more, they're more vulnerable.
[01:51:50]  Like those are, those, they, it went to vulnerable communities first.
[01:51:53]  That's very racist.
[01:51:54]  Experimenting on the most vulnerable.
[01:51:56]  No, no, no, quite literally in the United States to claim that a certain person of a certain race has different susceptibilities or different traits based on race is overtly racist.
[01:52:03]  I think sickle cell anemia was endemic to the African American population.
[01:52:06]  That's racist.
[01:52:08]  In America, it's a small war, I guess.
[01:52:11]  So it's contradictory.
[01:52:13]  I wouldn't say it is contradictory.
[01:52:15]  In the United States, it is.
[01:52:17]  What I'm saying is that the Canadian facts on the ground are just totally separate from the debate that you guys are having.
[01:52:29]  Another thing is, less than 30% of the fundraising for this group came from Canadian sources.
[01:52:34]  I actually read that wasn't true.
[01:52:37]  Well, it really depends on how you read the numbers, but it's definitely the majority of the funding came from American sources.
[01:52:44]  But that's the give, send, go.
[01:52:46]  That's the give, send, go.
[01:52:48]  The only sources I've seen on it are that the majority was actually Canadian sources.
[01:52:51]  No, I have completely different sources.
[01:52:54]  And therein lies one of the big problems.
[01:52:55]  It's a six, it's a nine.
[01:52:56]  Yeah, you guys are both, who knows, it's the same game.
[01:53:02]  Well, you can look it up.
[01:53:03]  Well, you know what the problem is?
[01:53:04]  There's no way to look it up.
[01:53:06]  I know, isn't that the truth.
[01:53:07]  If I type in Canadians funded truckers, I'll find all the sources.
[01:53:11]  Yeah, everything.
[01:53:12]  If I type in Americans did it, I'll find all the sources.
[01:53:14]  Yeah, yeah, I know.
[01:53:15]  So I'm like, I don't even know what to search for.
[01:53:16]  But I would just say, when I see the American debate around it, I've yet to see an American left-wing source say that the number one enemy of the truckers is Rob Ford's brother.
[01:53:30]  The left-wing source?
[01:53:32]  Yeah, like MSNBC, it's become this debate around Justin Trudeau or whatever, but the point is, the conservatives have all said, go home.
[01:53:42]  He is the most conservative.
[01:53:46]  He's also the most powerful conservative in Canada.
[01:53:47]  If I were gambling, I would say he'd be our next conservative prime minister.
[01:53:51]  I think this might make him the next conservative prime minister.
[01:53:58]  He's very active in this, right?
[01:54:01]  So no one seems capable of mentioning that.
[01:54:04]  I'll tell you, you know what?
[01:54:05]  I got a prediction.
[01:54:06]  Here's what's going to happen.
[01:54:07]  When the Civil War breaks out in the United States, we annex Canada.
[01:54:09]  First thing.
[01:54:10]  I want to do a TV show about it.
[01:54:13]  I've asked myself the question, how would an occupied Canada act?
[01:54:21]  Would we resist?
[01:54:22]  Because we're talking here, if I were to tell you I was an American, you would believe me.
[01:54:27]  I would.
[01:54:28]  We would believe you.
[01:54:31]  So it would create, what kind of occupation would it be?
[01:54:34]  Let me tell you.
[01:54:35]  I'll tell you exactly.
[01:54:35]  Do you have ideas how it would go?
[01:54:36]  I know exactly how it would happen.
[01:54:37]  So imagine now, it's one year after the occupation.
[01:54:41]  All the Canadians are dancing in the street in their cars, throwing money in the air.
[01:54:45]  They've all got gold chains.
[01:54:46]  Everyone owns a Lamborghini.
[01:54:47]  They're all rich and successful.
[01:54:49]  They're like, man, this freedom stuff worked out way better than our crappy government.
[01:54:54]  That's pretty funny.
[01:54:57]  I think America and U.S.
[01:54:58]  should get together.
[01:54:59]  Well, here's the thing.
[01:55:00]  What I really wonder about it is, what if they made every province a state?
[01:55:06]  So that would be, let's say, ten provinces a state.
[01:55:08]  That would make America way left-wing.
[01:55:11]  Suddenly, overnight, America would be a left-wing country.
[01:55:17]  Wasn't there a belief back in the 80s and 90s when Quebec was doing its stronger separatist movement that Northwest Territories would try to apply for American statehood, giving us a direct road to Canada?
[01:55:28]  There was Alberta.
[01:55:31]  I mean, there was a lot of chaos.
[01:55:32]  There was a lot of crazy thinking out there.
[01:55:34]  So you just had your Civil War.
[01:55:37]  I mean, so, there's martial law declared in my country now.
[01:55:41]  Like, if the government wants to seize my bank accounts, they don't need a court order.
[01:55:45]  That's crazy.
[01:55:45]  Right.
[01:55:46]  Still?
[01:55:47]  Oh, right now, I thought you meant from the Quebecois separatist movement.
[01:55:53]  In 1970, when they declared martial law, they arrested people.
[01:55:57]  You didn't need a warrant to arrest anyone.
[01:55:59]  My country has nearly died twice in my lifetime, 1982 and 1995.
[01:56:03]  This is not a book of judgment.
[01:56:05]  This is a book of like, what's amazing to me, what's the most shocking thing, maybe one of the most shocking things that's happened in my life, is that somehow Canada has become the stable country and America has become the unstable country.
[01:56:17]  I mean, if you told me that that would happen when I was 20, everyone would have laughed in your face.
[01:56:23]  I think it's, in all seriousness, I do think Canada gets involved in whatever civil war happens in the United States.
[01:56:28]  Oh, we're in trouble.
[01:56:30]  The trucker convoy is already your political proxy.
[01:56:34]  It's a political proxy conflict on our soil of your toxic discourse.
[01:56:40]  It feels right.
[01:56:42]  I don't think it's our toxic discourse.
[01:56:43]  I think the UK's been experiencing this.
[01:56:46]  Canada's been experiencing it.
[01:56:47]  The US.
[01:56:48]  But Canada has resisted it in a lot of ways because of Because of a bunch of really odd policies like we have very strict immigration But we are very pro-immigration and we have we have we didn't 2008 didn't happen to us, right?
[01:57:02]  Like we didn't we didn't have Occupy Wall Street because we are because we're so vulnerable We because we're not America like we had to protect our banks and our banks came through very safe It's the center of the Empire exactly what Montreal says are the most culturally diverse city in Toronto is Toronto.
[01:57:22]  Toronto's more than half foreign-born.
[01:57:24]  It's an open city.
[01:57:25]  Except I'm pretty sure Toronto's majority white.
[01:57:28]  Um, no.
[01:57:29]  I mean, the thing that's funny is like Canada has multicultural policy even though we're about... Well, I'm sure Toronto is majority white.
[01:57:37]  It's just half foreign-born.
[01:57:38]  Yeah.
[01:57:39]  But, you know, Toronto, you know, Canada is about 78% white and... Yeah.
[01:57:46]  Whereas the United States is 58%.
[01:57:48]  So it's, you know, there's quite a gap there too.
[01:57:52]  47.9 is the plurality.
[01:57:55]  The plurality is white.
[01:57:57]  The plurality, so it is not a majority white city.
[01:58:00]  That's interesting.
[01:58:00]  It is not majority white.
[01:58:01]  Interesting.
[01:58:02]  Well, that makes sense.
[01:58:03]  Yeah, which is interesting.
[01:58:04]  That's very different policies over in Canada compared to... Well, we're bringing in 400,000 immigrants next year, right?
[01:58:10]  And that's in a country of 40 million.
[01:58:15]  In Canada, the more patriotic you are, the more in favor of immigration you are.
[01:58:19]  I think that's a huge difference and I think you were talking about abortion and how you think it's a polarizing issue and it is.
[01:58:25]  I think should the civil war come, those who are not here legally should be the ones who are most concerned because there are parts of this country that they will ask for your papers and you will flee to California or Illinois or New York.
[01:58:39]  Well, already in 2016, there was a flood of people across the border.
[01:58:42]  You know how many, in a civil war, people would flood the borders that aren't natural, that would fight for a side to get their citizenship?
[01:58:49]  Like, you'd have millions and millions of foreign people.
[01:58:51]  Oh, like my great-great-grandfather, who was Irish, who fought for the North because he wanted to be an American.
[01:58:56]  Except Ian, in New York now, you can vote as a non-citizen.

=== Civil War Envisioned (02:27) ===

[01:59:00]  So they're gonna just go to the state and be like, we're here anyway.
[01:59:04]  And then that's it.
[01:59:06]  So, you know, that point I made about taxes and geography before, I think one thing you might end up seeing in the map you have in your book might actually be an accurate starting point.
[01:59:15]  Yeah, I mean, it's very much like... States will align based on... Yeah, I mean, it's like a, that's, that's like, you know, a bar room suggestion.
[01:59:21]  Like, obviously, it's not, it's not like how it would actually happen.
[01:59:24]  Actually, I think, interestingly, I would, I'd be willing to bet New Hampshire, at this point, would declare independence in any conflict.
[01:59:32]  Well, that's another possibility.
[01:59:34]  Because you're familiar with the Free Staters, right?
[01:59:35]  Yeah, well, and also Vermont.
[01:59:37]  There's a huge separatist movement in Vermont that's very serious.
[01:59:40]  And, well, I mean, they're not as serious as Texas.
[01:59:43]  But they'll get occupied very quickly.
[01:59:46]  You know, do people want to occupy countries anymore?
[01:59:51]  No.
[01:59:52]  What would be the value in occupying New Hampshire?
[01:59:55]  Access.
[01:59:56]  To what?
[01:59:57]  To maple syrup?
[01:59:57]  To the other states that are part of your union.
[01:59:59]  I guess.
[02:00:00]  I mean, I don't really go there.
[02:00:02]  I would assume that what would happen is that there'd be the attempt to control.
[02:00:10]  It would be the civil war that I envision.
[02:00:14]  Would not be really between sides.
[02:00:16]  It would be between the forces of order and chaos.
[02:00:18]  People would try.
[02:00:19]  Right.
[02:00:19]  It would be between people who want disorder and want breakdown and people who are trying to keep the institutions alive by by force.
[02:00:27]  And like and of course the problem is as America's learned in its counterinsurgency strategy and as you know I talked to an anonymous colonel who was responsible for drawing up what they call full spectrum operations in the homeland like the more you try to control the population militarily that
[02:00:43]  just spreads violence unit you know i think you're right about that
[02:00:45]  point about ordering chaos
[02:00:47]  but my vision of it is the democratic establishment
[02:00:51]  that which used to be the democrat republican like uniparty until donald trump came in
[02:00:55]  then you ended up with these neocons joining the democrats like bill crystal
[02:00:58]  lincoln project people the democrats
[02:01:01]  saw these far-left individuals is progressives as away to bolster their ranks and get votes
[02:01:06]  Essentially, the one ring.
[02:01:08]  They thought they could wield the power, but they can't.
[02:01:11]  Because the woke, the cancel culture stuff, the far-left, they are a chaotic and destructive force.
[02:01:17]  But it's also that the institutions themselves are rotting from the center.
[02:01:21]  It's not just a question of, like, the partisanship.
[02:01:24]  It's a question of, like, is the Senate a functional body?

=== Democratic Woke Chaos (15:29) ===

[02:01:28]  No.
[02:01:28]  No!
[02:01:29]  Right, like it isn't.
[02:01:31]  It's not a functioning body.
[02:01:32]  You should check out... You're in a government which supposedly has control of all three levels of... and they can't pass basic policies.
[02:01:41]  Well, people don't know what agrees on them.
[02:01:44]  Well, exactly, and they can't whip.
[02:01:47]  In British parliamentary system, when you control the system, you make the decisions and then you are responsible for them.
[02:01:53]  It used to work this way.
[02:01:54]  Do you know how Congress works?
[02:01:56]  So we had Marjorie Taylor Greene on, and she said, when she went to Congress, she was confused because she's sitting there and there's like 10 Democrats, or like 5 Democrats and like 5 Republicans, and there's some random guy she doesn't know at the speaker's podium, pulls up a bill and goes, bill, assembly bill, you know, congressional bill 473, in favor, Democrats, and they go, meh, Republicans, meh, Democrats have it, next bill, They must have hated her.
[02:02:22]  no one's even voting on the stuff right so she called a roll call vote which forced all the members
[02:02:27]  of congress back to actually record their votes in a state of her and they
[02:02:30]  could they come after her for it and that's probably why you hear these
[02:02:33]  insane stories about her in the press because she's in defiance of
[02:02:36]  and it's one work so we had time well nasi on
[02:02:40]  with you know what their job is i mean you know Fundraising.
[02:02:42]  Their job is fundraising.
[02:02:43]  Exactly.
[02:02:43]  I mean, when you actually talk to, I've been interviewing a politician lately about the inner workings of electoral politics for a possible sequel to this book, and, you know, it's staggering.
[02:02:55]  Like, I had like a 20 minute conversation with this guy, and I was like, oh, well, no wonder this system is so screwed up.
[02:03:02]  All they can think about all day is the three levels of fundraising.
[02:03:06]  Dark money, social media money, and bundled money.
[02:03:11]  That's what they do all day.
[02:03:13]  That's a big problem.
[02:03:15]  It is non-functional.
[02:03:17]  It is a non-functioning system.
[02:03:19]  I agree.
[02:03:19]  And we need to go to Super Chats.
[02:03:21]  So we did a little bit of longer show today because, you know, typically what we do with the members-only segment is we'll save like a spicier story for TimCast.com's segment.
[02:03:32]  But I figured because we're going to be having kind of an amorphous conversation about Civil War and politics, it wouldn't really work out to do that.
[02:03:38]  So I just, we extended the normal show.
[02:03:39]  Now we'll go to Super Chats.
[02:03:41]  The hate mail's already started.
[02:03:42]  I was going to say, just forewarning, there's a lot of Canadians and they're like, truckers, no!
[02:03:47]  Well, I mean, you know.
[02:03:48]  Let's read it.
[02:03:49]  It's actually a good question.
[02:03:50]  Yeah.
[02:03:51]  Wrestler Town says, If Mr. Marsh started writing his book five years ago, I'd like to know which right-wing activists he had to compare to the left at the conception of his book.
[02:04:00]  His go-to January 6th example happened one year ago.
[02:04:03]  Well, what inspired it was the Trump inauguration and the general atmosphere of violence.
[02:04:10]  I mean, I wouldn't say at the beginning of it I was like... I mean, I went and talked to various prepper groups.
[02:04:15]  I went to talk to various far-right groups.
[02:04:19]  I talked to Richard Spencer.
[02:04:20]  I talked to various members of the far-right and going and meeting them in Ohio and in the field research.
[02:04:29]  So that's different than, I would say, icons or something like that.
[02:04:34]  And I just, you know, I got along very well with them.
[02:04:36]  And they, and also like, you know, Sons of Confederate Veterans and things like this, like, you know, and sovereign citizens and constitutional sheriffs and sagebrush rebels.
[02:04:50]  And so, yeah, I would talk to all these different groups.
[02:04:52]  Now, you know, like the specific violence that they're involved in is sometimes purely
[02:04:59]  in their own minds, right?
[02:05:01]  And sometimes the right wing groups, I mean, you go and meet these guys and sometimes it's
[02:05:06]  like this is a hobby.
[02:05:09]  Thinking about the Civil War, it's like, am I with a far-right group who's plotting the overthrow of the U.S.
[02:05:15]  government, or are these basically like birdwatchers?
[02:05:18]  Then how do you compare them to the $2 billion?
[02:05:21]  And that's the insurance maximum.
[02:05:23]  We think the damage from the George Floyd riots was actually higher than that.
[02:05:26]  Well, there's lots of violence on all sides here.
[02:05:29]  I mean, surely.
[02:05:29]  There's not.
[02:05:31]  Well, I mean, all I can say, like, you can read the book and check my sources, but those are the sources that I have.
[02:05:36]  They come from foreign sources.
[02:05:39]  They're not Democratic or Republican.
[02:05:41]  There's no lack of right-wing violence in this country.
[02:05:44]  But there's certainly substantially more coming from the left.
[02:05:47]  I would not say that.
[02:05:48]  My evidence would say the opposite.
[02:05:50]  So there was $2 billion in damage across the United States.
[02:05:54]  Well, that's property damage.
[02:05:55]  I mean, it depends.
[02:05:55]  I guess, I don't think I... Which is like destroying 30 people dead.
[02:05:59]  Well, I was dealing with murders, right?
[02:06:01]  Like, I don't think I was... I think 26 of those were murders and 32 were just... I never did a comparative analysis of property value damage.
[02:06:11]  I guess I probably should have done that.
[02:06:13]  I just went with the murder rates.
[02:06:16]  but it's not going to be because the murder rates are where you get closer to
[02:06:20]  that's where you get close to the definition of civil war i i guess it by
[02:06:23]  i guess technically by disagree i mean if you've got uh...
[02:06:27]  mass movement funded by corporations
[02:06:29]  that advocates and and the vice president herself is is is providing
[02:06:33]  bail for people who are burning down buildings and smashing
[02:06:36]  windows and killing people
[02:06:38]  like we're there man like we look look how mullah harris
[02:06:42]  Well, Donald Trump saying what, you know, how about the Republican Party saying January 6th is legitimate political discourse?
[02:06:48]  What was the specific context around that?
[02:06:50]  Well, I don't know, but like... Well, then I don't think you have a point.
[02:06:53]  Well, I would just say that there's certainly been legitimization of violence on the right.
[02:06:57]  Like, I don't really think that's debatable.
[02:07:00]  You gotta give me a specific example, because I can name... January 6th.
[02:07:03]  January 6th is one thing that happened one time, and I can give you over the past several years... I mean, the French Revolution is one thing that happened one time.
[02:07:09]  Sure, but hold on, we're talking about 800 people, of which several hundred fought their way to the front tunnel entrance, and the other several hundred walked through the back door that was opened by police.
[02:07:19]  But I can also go back to, like, Everett.
[02:07:21]  I can talk about Ferguson.
[02:07:21]  Well, there's the Oregon state, the Oregon, Mike Nierman, when he let in the rioters who... I mean, the other thing... Nothing happened there!
[02:07:31]  They opened the door and the guy got in trouble.
[02:07:32]  I can talk about... Well, the vandalism of the legislature.
[02:07:36]  A guy went to the ICE facility with an AR and firebombed it.
[02:07:40]  We had the guy Aaron Danielson get shot and killed.
[02:07:43]  We had over 800 instances of low-tier, what I call, blunt force violence.
[02:07:48]  This is something that has been repeated in this conversation.
[02:07:51]  You say, show me an example, then I do, and then you say... He keeps saying January 6th.
[02:07:57]  Well, that's a pretty big one, man.
[02:07:58]  But that's the only one?
[02:07:59]  I mean... Like, it happened one year ago.
[02:08:02]  After a decade of political violence from the left... Well, would you consider sovereign citizenship to be right-wing violence?
[02:08:07]  Because certainly the groups that I do, do.
[02:08:10]  On what scale are these guys?
[02:08:11]  About 50 murders a year.
[02:08:13]  And those are murders based on...
[02:08:15]  People killing cops at traffic stops.
[02:08:18]  So, as I said, there are definitional questions here.
[02:08:21]  Like, I'm not trying to hide anything.
[02:08:24]  But certainly that would...
[02:08:25]  Like, you would probably not consider that a far-right group.
[02:08:28]  You probably... You might just consider those criminals.
[02:08:30]  What makes them right-wing?
[02:08:31]  They believe in no taxes.
[02:08:35]  They come from small government ideology.
[02:08:40]  They believe in the rejection of the 14th Amendment.
[02:08:44]  They're the roots of QAnon mentality.
[02:08:48]  But this is so far separated from, like, how does that relate to a Trump supporter?
[02:08:55]  Well, we're not in the realm... Well, they're roughly on the same spectrum.
[02:08:58]  I mean, when you're dealing with the far right in the United States, you're dealing with a huge collection of ideas that are not coherently connected.
[02:09:06]  But Black Lives Matter is.
[02:09:07]  And they marched together in the 100,000s.
[02:09:08]  Well, and it also strips itself apart very quickly and is also filled with a lot of segmentation.
[02:09:15]  So, like... Like, I mean, there's no... Like, I would say... All I'm saying here is, you know, you would say that your right wing Does not commit any violence.
[02:09:26]  I don't say that.
[02:09:27]  Well, there's some violence.
[02:09:28]  But if you're looking at, like, mass terms of violence, like, you have to look at things like sovereign citizens, or QAnon, or, you know, etc.
[02:09:35]  Like, it would just not be reasonable to say that those are not right-wing political violence.
[02:09:39]  But this is why I explained in the beginning that the right engages what I define as sharp, acute instances, and the left is... Well, let's stay with that.
[02:09:46]  Because, like, that seems to me quite correct.
[02:09:48]  The one substantially worse.
[02:09:51]  I don't believe that.
[02:09:52]  I believe that... Well, it depends what you mean by worse.
[02:09:55]  Let me explain.
[02:09:55]  So the sovereign citizens of the United States are not a destabilizing factor?
[02:09:59]  They absolutely are.
[02:10:00]  I mean, the FBI declared them the number one threat to police.
[02:10:03]  Yeah, but the FBI goes and sends 12 agents to a garage pole rope.
[02:10:10]  Well, you know, this is the thing where I'm a Canadian and I'm an outsider.
[02:10:14]  So to me, when you're against the FBI, that's where... Americans have not had a good relationship with the FBI.
[02:10:22]  Well, no one has a good relationship with the police forces of their country.
[02:10:26]  All police forces need reform.
[02:10:27]  The FBI is called the Administrative State or Deep State.
[02:10:31]  J. Edgar Hoover was like the head of the FBI for 48 years.
[02:10:33]  So, you know, the motto of Canada, the motto of America is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
[02:10:38]  The motto of Canada is peace, order, and good government.
[02:10:41]  The motto of America is, in God we trust.
[02:10:42]  What I find with peace and order is you can have a slave state that's suppressed its population into peace and order, and they're still slaves and unhappy, but there's peace.
[02:10:51]  So I think a good example of the breakdown, and there's no middle ground, right?
[02:10:58]  Well, that's it.
[02:10:58]  The middle ground is gone.
[02:10:59]  Everybody in the chat perceives you as far left.
[02:11:02]  Right.
[02:11:03]  I mean, in my own country, that would just be so ludicrous.
[02:11:06]  Well, no, but far left doesn't mean, like, you refer to certain people as far right, far left, it's meaningless.
[02:11:12]  They're worldview signifiers.
[02:11:15]  Yeah, that's a fair point.
[02:11:16]  I mean, I would say I'm talking about a specific category of ideologies.
[02:11:20]  I'll tell you, you know, like, I'm doing research and I come across a story about a guy, no one say his name, seriously, And, uh, because if you do, YouTube will shut the show down instantly.
[02:11:30]  That is, there's nothing, uh, on the left, so I sit down with Jack Dorsey, and we pull up a tweet of an Antifa account overtly calling for, organizing, and inciting violence and giving instructions on what to do, and they went, meh.
[02:11:44]  Look, dude, there's lots of evidence of right-wing radicalization through social media networks.
[02:11:49]  Like, lots of it.
[02:11:50]  Sure, sure, sure.
[02:11:51]  My point is, I mean the algorithms point to extremism of both kinds.
[02:11:57]  So the data actually shows, because I've covered this for years, a flow towards the left.
[02:12:04]  But we've actually had, there's a researcher who mapped out all of political YouTube and found it flows 2 to 1 to the left.
[02:12:11]  And this is easily exemplified by the fact that right-wing channels get banned all the time and left-wing channels don't.
[02:12:16]  They get propped up and they get mainstream media coverage.
[02:12:20]  i have no evidence of that so like steven crowder for instance is a piece of
[02:12:24]  mainstream conservative he gets strike strike strike strike strike and then he
[02:12:28]  has to go on hiatus taught the strikes roll off his channel gets forced on a
[02:12:31]  rumble meanwhile you have anti-foot channels they don't left-wing political
[02:12:35]  channels they don't experience same thing uh... on on twitter you talk to people on face book role really
[02:12:41]  groups where we would go to the venture peers as well and face
[02:12:44]  book is predominantly older you know boomer and stuff like that
[02:12:47]  well so i mean the people i was a rivals i mean about the other point is that
[02:12:53]  like that do you have to understand
[02:12:55]  i've gone across this country i've talked to people from both sides you all
[02:12:58]  say they're both very different But that means you haven't done the fact check.
[02:13:02]  Because I haven't come to your side?
[02:13:04]  I'm 30,000 feet in the air.
[02:13:06]  I don't think you understand, right?
[02:13:08]  The right calls us liberals.
[02:13:11]  Trump supporters call us liberals.
[02:13:13]  Ian is a weird, hippie, communist, something-or-other, authoritarian.
[02:13:18]  I'm a magician.
[02:13:19]  And I'm in favor of universal basic health care.
[02:13:23]  I support progressive taxes.
[02:13:25]  But in this country, the left will call me right-wing and the right will call me left-wing.
[02:13:30]  Honestly, I'm kind of in the same position.
[02:13:32]  Right?
[02:13:33]  Your group is calling me far left, but when I was an Esquire columnist for years, I was considered like Norman Mailer and constantly called out for all these kinds of questions.
[02:13:43]  Here's my point, though.
[02:13:44]  Sorry.
[02:13:45]  No, go ahead.
[02:13:45]  Finish.
[02:13:46]  We've got to do Super Chats.
[02:13:48]  The main issue was when you cite the FBI, it's a signal to these people you haven't done any research into the FBI.
[02:13:56]  I've interviewed a lot of FBI agents.
[02:13:57]  But you haven't done the fact-checking.
[02:13:59]  So, like, when the New York Times lies and makes up fake crap, and then we have to fact-check it and prove it wrong with evidence... This book is deeply fact-checked.
[02:14:07]  This is why I used the joke... Deeply.
[02:14:09]  I mean, I'm... I don't... I have a lot of failings.
[02:14:13]  I have a lot of stuff to be humble for.
[02:14:16]  But this book is correct.
[02:14:17]  So, but this is why I use the Joe Biden Ukraine gait as a really good example.
[02:14:21]  Because if you go to the New York Times and ask them, did Joe Biden quid pro quo, they'll say no.
[02:14:27]  And that's factually incorrect.
[02:14:29]  All evidence points to the fact that Joe Biden did this.
[02:14:32]  He's even on video saying he did it.
[02:14:33]  And for some reason, So when the FBI doesn't prosecute Hillary Clinton, doesn't prosecute Joe Biden or even investigate these things, when you have the collusion between Twitter and Facebook shutting down the story about Hunter Biden's laptop, when Hunter Biden is publicly known to have illegally acquired a handgun or disposed of one, nothing happens!
[02:14:53]  Oh no, they reported on all that.
[02:14:55]  No, no, no, I'm saying the FBI hasn't done anything.
[02:14:57]  Oh, well, I mean, you know, the number, like, everyone always says that about crime, and the thing about crime is, like, tiny, only tiny little amounts of crime are ever prosecuted.
[02:15:05]  The DHS specifically comes out and says it's effectively the right that is the problem.
[02:15:10]  Without talking about BLM and the billions of dollars in damage, people say they have no credibility.
[02:15:15]  If you cite them, they'll say... Well, one side says that they have no credibility.
[02:15:18]  I mean, the problem we're in is the one we keep going back to, which is, like, the sides are so divided now that, like, literally there is no common ground in fact, there is no common ground in narrative, there is no common ground, like, in institutions, there is no common ground in language.
[02:15:32]  Exactly.
[02:15:33]  Right?
[02:15:33]  And, like, when you're in that condition, you either have to find a way back to that common ground or split up.
[02:15:38]  You're not far left or right.
[02:15:40]  I mean, like, this is it.
[02:15:41]  Like, you either have to work towards, let's find a way to talk together, or you have to say, it's done.
[02:15:47]  You're not far left, and it's unfair to say you are far left.
[02:15:50]  Far left?
[02:15:50]  I mean, look at my suit!
[02:15:51]  No, no, for anyone to say you are, because the reason why you're not far left is because you're here, because the real far left in America, and people may say the real far right.
[02:15:58]  Well, you may underestimate my desire to sell books.
[02:16:02]  They would not sit together and have this conversation, and that is one of the biggest problems.
[02:16:06]  I mean, I do political debate for a living, even though I've been very taciturn this evening, but it is hard to find an open-minded And I'm sure they would say the same about us, but we don't
[02:16:15]  sit together.
[02:16:16]  Crossfire is gone, right?
[02:16:17]  We don't sit together and have these intellectual conversations.
[02:16:22]  We have four panelists who think the way we do on our program and they have four—
[02:16:25]  And who can scream aloud.
[02:16:26]  Exactly.
[02:16:27]  And that's political discourse.
[02:16:28]  So I do think, you know, some of these super chats are making points that we've probably
[02:16:34]  already made and it's probably not relevant to make, but I do want to read them anyway.
[02:16:38]  Madison says, easy experiment.
[02:16:40]  Wear a MAGA hat at a leftist event.
[02:16:42]  Wear a BLM hat at a right event.
[02:16:44]  You'll see who talks and who uses violence very clearly the left.
[02:16:49]  Blair White, for example, wore a MAGA hat around Hollywood and got physically assaulted.
[02:16:52]  I mean, I've been to, I went to, one example is Boston.

=== Why We Left Crossfire (09:36) ===

[02:16:57]  I mean, those kind of experiments to me have so little value.
[02:17:03]  They don't mean anything.
[02:17:05]  I went to a rally in Boston.
[02:17:06]  The right came with shields, the left came with clubs and bats.
[02:17:10]  There's lots of clubs and bats on the others.
[02:17:12]  Everyone has clubs and bats.
[02:17:14]  I think the 30,000 feet perspective is super important if we're going to survive.
[02:17:19]  Yes, exactly.
[02:17:20]  I want you to survive.
[02:17:21]  Please survive.
[02:17:22]  As your neighbor, as your friend and neighbor, please survive.
[02:17:27]  And the only way you're going to survive is by either finding some way to get into common language or to break up.
[02:17:34]  I think science is part of it.
[02:17:35]  Let me, let me, I've just got to read more of these.
[02:17:36]  Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
[02:17:37]  Mike says a major pipeline project in Canada was attacked by 20 masked individuals with axes and flare guns deep in the woods this morning.
[02:17:44]  Millions in property damage, destroyed heavy equipment and work camp.
[02:17:47]  Media silent.
[02:17:48]  Well, the left would take that because like all of the indigenous protests about pipelines got broken up very quickly and quite aggressively.
[02:17:57]  And like for you know, like the Ottawa police were sued for $60 million successfully for their for their brutality over the G7 with the leftist protests.
[02:18:10]  So actually I think I mean this is that's a Canadian example.
[02:18:12]  So it's actually not very relevant but You know, one of the things is, like, there are many people on the left asking, like, well, if these were left-wing protesters in Ottawa, would they be treated anywhere near as decently as they have been so far?
[02:18:27]  Like, there's a lot of... And I, frankly, I sympathize with that.
[02:18:33]  We have this super chat from, uh, Legamothegain.
[02:18:37]  I'm probably pouncing that wrong all the time.
[02:18:38]  He says, right-wing esoteric knowledge like QAnon is crazy, but is less insane and far less dangerous, mainstream and institutionally entrenched compared to standard progressive dogma.
[02:18:49]  It's ridiculous to make an equation between the two.
[02:18:52]  I mean, I do find that interesting.
[02:18:54]  That's not in my book, and I find it one of the more fascinating things that I didn't answer.
[02:18:58]  There are a few, like, mysteries that were kind of around the edges of the book that I... because I tried to be really specific and, like, really only say what I know.
[02:19:09]  But, like, the fascination with esoteric knowledge on the right, I just find it fascinating.
[02:19:15]  There was a... Are you familiar with the... You're probably not.
[02:19:17]  You're Canadian.
[02:19:18]  The indefinite detention provision of the National Defense Authorization Act.
[02:19:21]  No, I don't know that.
[02:19:22]  Although I should.
[02:19:23]  What is that?
[02:19:23]  So, in... I think it was 2012, Barack Obama signed into law in... Our National Defense Authorization Act reauthorizes, you know, spending on national defense and stuff.
[02:19:33]  Yeah.
[02:19:33]  And Obama signed into it.
[02:19:35]  He was like, oh, no, I can't believe they're doing this.
[02:19:37]  But it was everybody, you know, the United Party puts it in.
[02:19:40]  It allows the U.S.
[02:19:41]  to detain anyone anywhere in the world for any reason at any time and hold them wherever they want.
[02:19:45]  Right.
[02:19:46]  And so Dave Smith was telling a story on Joe Rogan's podcast where he said Brian Stelter was complaining that conspiracy theory videos about how, you know, certain tragic events didn't really happen were dangerous.
[02:19:59]  And, you know, Dave's point was like, if some weirdo guy makes a YouTube video, it's like, sure, it's annoying, and Brian Seltzer's like, no, it's dangerous!
[02:20:07]  And he goes, you know what's dangerous?
[02:20:08]  That Barack Obama signed into law the indefinite detention provision of the National Defense Authorization Act, and the media didn't cover it.
[02:20:16]  Yeah, I mean, I think there's so much that's dangerous right now.
[02:20:20]  Like, you know when I called it a complex cascading system?
[02:20:23]  Yeah.
[02:20:24]  These things all feed into each other.
[02:20:26]  You know, like one of the things that I think is happening that's, you know, probably I shouldn't have brought up right at the end of this conversation, is like people's sense of what is real is fraying.
[02:20:38]  They don't know what is real.
[02:20:39]  That's part of the esoteric information.
[02:20:41]  They lose faith in institutions, but what is actually happening is very hard to tell.
[02:20:46]  And I think that's part of the contribution to this chaos.
[02:20:53]  What was the term you used?
[02:20:55]  Semantic?
[02:20:57]  You had a really good way of phrasing it.
[02:21:00]  I'll look at the tape later.
[02:21:01]  Semantic argument?
[02:21:02]  No, semantic carnage or something.
[02:21:04]  I forget what it was.
[02:21:04]  I don't think that was me.
[02:21:05]  I think you said that.
[02:21:06]  No, no, no.
[02:21:06]  It was you.
[02:21:07]  I said it.
[02:21:08]  Oh, you did.
[02:21:08]  What was it?
[02:21:09]  No, I'm just taking credit.
[02:21:10]  Someone made a good point.
[02:21:11]  I was going to take credit.
[02:21:12]  Say it in the chat, you guys.
[02:21:14]  Semantic corruption?
[02:21:15]  I forget what it was.
[02:21:16]  When you're talking about that love of esoteric knowledge, that's kind of what God is.
[02:21:19]  And it seems like that resonates with people on the right.
[02:21:22]  I don't think of people on the right or left much like that.
[02:21:24]  Ian, it seems like religion was always part of that.
[02:21:26]  One of the core components of religion is to proselytize and spread your religion,
[02:21:30]  not to hold it within.
[02:21:32]  The decline of religion in American life is actually a huge part of this, in my opinion.
[02:21:36]  And if people are reaching for some sort of knowledge that they can latch onto,
[02:21:39]  that's Q, or whatever it is.
[02:21:41]  I think exactly.
[02:21:42]  And I think you get the sense of meaning that you got from church.
[02:21:46]  You get in politics now and it's... Wow, that's super dangerous.
[02:21:50]  Yeah, and that's very dangerous.
[02:21:51]  I want to address a lot of these super chats.
[02:21:53]  Yeah.
[02:21:53]  Because I think, you know, one of the things I was making early, the point I made early on is that we agree on a lot of the core issues that's happening.
[02:21:59]  Yeah.
[02:21:59]  But we probably, we disagree on like... Well, I think you have a perspective and my perspective is 30,000 feet in the air.
[02:22:06]  That's what I would like to say.
[02:22:07]  A lot of people are commenting like, oh, he's wrong about this, he's wrong about that, you know, and he's wrong about civil... No, I think Stephen is very much correct about civil war.
[02:22:14]  I think there's probably core political issues that we have different views on.
[02:22:18]  But, like, that's why I thought it would be fascinating.
[02:22:19]  But I don't know, I mean, I think when you actually... Like, you're in favor of universal health care, you're in favor of progressive taxation.
[02:22:24]  I mean, the problem that we're dealing with here is that when you talk about politics... We've had this whole... We've talked for like two and a half hours now about politics.
[02:22:33]  Policy has been...
[02:22:35]  Five minutes?
[02:22:36]  Ten minutes?
[02:22:36]  Like actual policies.
[02:22:38]  But let me explain.
[02:22:39]  I can back up everything I claim with a source that is effectively academic and mainstream certified.
[02:22:47]  And I'm a civil libertarian.
[02:22:50]  My views are on freedom of the individual.
[02:22:54]  Decentralization is typically how I put it.
[02:22:57]  I don't like the idea that you get one despot who thinks he knows everything.
[02:23:00]  We've seen how that goes.
[02:23:02]  But the problem is I've been on the ground at all of these protests.
[02:23:05]  I spent the start of my career going to different protests and talking to people and what did I find?
[02:23:10]  When I would go to like a right-wing event, they would be very specific to the point of like, this is my thing, this is my thing.
[02:23:16]  And so like a Trump rally, they'd say, my factory closed down, Trump wants to bring factories back and end free trade.
[02:23:22]  I'd go to left-wing rallies and they'd say, I don't know.
[02:23:25]  See, I had this experience when I was in 2015 where I covered the Canadian election and then I went down and covered a Trump rally and a Sanders rally, like right after each other.
[02:23:36]  They were both in Iowa within three days of each other.
[02:23:38]  And so this is what a Canadian debate is like.
[02:23:42]  Sir, we need to spend $428 million on education.
[02:23:45]  You're completely wrong.
[02:23:46]  We need to spend $485 million on education.
[02:23:49]  It's all numbers and it's all boring technical policy things.
[02:23:54]  I mean, it's unwatchably boring.
[02:23:56]  Then you go to America and it's God and socialism.
[02:24:00]  These grand ideas that have no practical applications, that are incredibly vague, and just simply are essentially aesthetic categories.
[02:24:12]  What we're talking about here is language.
[02:24:18]  But if you were to actually sit... Like, I think the abortion question comes up here again, where it's like, if you were to actually sit down, like, what are our policy objectives?
[02:24:26]  We want women to be in control of their bodies, and we want abortion rates to decline.
[02:24:32]  Guess what?
[02:24:33]  Guess what?
[02:24:33]  There's a really good way to do that.
[02:24:35]  But you're wrong.
[02:24:36]  That's right.
[02:24:36]  I'm wrong, because that's not what they want.
[02:24:38]  No, they want no abortion at all.
[02:24:39]  Right.
[02:24:40]  Well, if you want to get—well, that's not ever going to happen.
[02:24:43]  It will, by force or by decree.
[02:24:45]  The United States cannot control the flow of heroin onto its streets.
[02:24:48]  The idea that it's going to control a major surgical procedure that you can get chemically— You don't got to look at it so absolutely.
[02:24:54]  The idea among the pro-life right is— Well, that's my point.
[02:24:56]  You don't have to look at absolutely.
[02:24:58]  Shut down the abortion clinics and end the government sanction of murder.
[02:25:01]  Right.
[02:25:02]  That's their view.
[02:25:03]  That's their view, and that is essentially a religious view.
[02:25:05]  Whereas if their views were policy-based, if they were like... How is that not policy-based?
[02:25:11]  Because the policy asks, what is the end we're looking for collectively?
[02:25:15]  Ending the government support of murder.
[02:25:17]  But see, that's not a policy, that's a vision.
[02:25:21]  What do you mean?
[02:25:22]  A policy is like, we want a result.
[02:25:24]  The result we want is fewer abortions.
[02:25:27]  want the if you want result we want is the government to stop supporting
[02:25:29]  abortions that's it that's it again you're in this that you're in a
[02:25:32]  static political category you're like you're asking large questions about what
[02:25:36]  your government is who you are what you are as a people put aside those
[02:25:41]  Ask, what do you want?
[02:25:43]  They want the government to stop actively supporting... Well, see, that's right.
[02:25:46]  And see, I would never... Like, I would say that, you know, in sensible countries, what you ask is, what do you want to do here?
[02:25:55]  Like, what do you actually want to achieve?
[02:25:57]  If you want to achieve lower abortion rates, there are many, many ways to do that.
[02:26:01]  Criminalization would not be among them.
[02:26:02]  But I think this is your bias, right?
[02:26:05]  Well, I think my bias is pro-policy.
[02:26:07]  Like, what I believe is that government is an agent of policy.
[02:26:10]  There certainly is, like, hey, we live in a country and the country takes X position.
[02:26:18]  We would like the government to stop taking that position.
[02:26:20]  It's that simple.
[02:26:21]  Yeah, and see, that to me is the least interesting question in politics.
[02:26:25]  The question of what is the government... The pro-life crowd understands abortion will still exist.
[02:26:31]  They just say, like, here's the line we want to set.

=== Government As Policy Agent (10:31) ===

[02:26:33]  That's right.
[02:26:34]  It's a moral question of their own identity, of who they are and who their government is.
[02:26:39]  And that is the thing about America.
[02:26:41]  It's like you have this idea of yourselves as a shining city on a hill, as a beacon for the world, whereas I think in other countries that are perhaps more stable, it's like, well, what are we doing here?
[02:26:53]  How can we make life a little bit better?
[02:26:55]  How can we make things, we're in these systems, how can we make these systems better?
[02:27:01]  When you get to the systems questions, when you get to those policy questions, there's actually a lot of common ground.
[02:27:07]  It's actually quite possible to build things together.
[02:27:12]  I agree.
[02:27:12]  We have another super chat here.
[02:27:13]  Yeah, sorry.
[02:27:14]  I'm going on too long about this.
[02:27:15]  No, but I agree on that.
[02:27:16]  We probably agree on a lot of things.
[02:27:18]  Yeah.
[02:27:18]  But we have a good, this is a good super chat.
[02:27:20]  Seth Houser says, there are no two versions of America.
[02:27:23]  It has always been a constitutional republic formed by the founding fathers.
[02:27:26]  It's actually a really good point.
[02:27:29]  When you said that there's a multicultural democracy and a constitutional republic, what you're, this country has always been a constitutional republic, albeit with politicians making improper statements about being a democracy or whatever.
[02:27:42]  Or like for 240 years.
[02:27:44]  Sure.
[02:27:44]  I mean, okay, but the Founding Fathers had arguments about over federalism and what the Republic was.
[02:27:49]  Ulysses S. Grant in the First Civil War wrote about what the Republic was.
[02:27:52]  They didn't call it democracy.
[02:27:53]  Benjamin Franklin has comments about democracy about we're not a democracy and why we're not a democracy.
[02:27:58]  But the point is, that's not what Madison said.
[02:27:59]  But anyway, for sure.
[02:28:01]  But the point is, if this country was formed as a constitutional Republic, And we now have an emergent multicultural democracy.
[02:28:11]  No, no, I don't think that would be accurate to say that it's emergent.
[02:28:14]  I mean, it is in place.
[02:28:16]  It has been in place for at least since 1860.
[02:28:18]  I'll tell you what the real government is right now is Google.
[02:28:22]  Well, that's the other question.
[02:28:23]  And that is another aspect of the book.
[02:28:26]  Did the First Civil War properly end?
[02:28:28]  And I agree.
[02:28:28]  When you go back to the original founding father documents, there's immense contradiction built into them, right?
[02:28:35]  I think the Civil War never ended.
[02:28:37]  Well, also you could say it began at the beginning of the country.
[02:28:39]  It began with the Three-Fifths Compromise.
[02:28:41]  It began with all the compromises that were embedded in the Constitution that ultimately were between slave and free states that were not subject to compromise.
[02:28:52]  Did you read about, I think it was the 1872 election in the United States?
[02:28:55]  1876, you mean? 76.
[02:28:57]  I always mix it up.
[02:28:58]  Where they basically were like, we'll just rubber stamp, you know, and negotiate who's the president.
[02:29:03]  Well, I mean, you know, one of the subjects of this book is what an American occupation would look like.
[02:29:08]  And of course, 1876 was the end of the first American occupation, which was the North's occupation of the South, which was a low level civil conflict, right?
[02:29:17]  With lots of terrorist groups and lots of, and lots of conflict.
[02:29:20]  And basically 1876 was, You know, the thing is, occupation never works, right?
[02:29:25]  Like, it simply never... You can't really occupy people against their will.
[02:29:30]  It just is not feasible.
[02:29:31]  Well, I don't know, 20 years in Afghanistan, I think, proves you wrong.
[02:29:35]  The North American settlers... I mean, when you read... Like, one of the guys I interview for the book is a guy named Daniel Bolger, who's a real expert in counterinsurgency and, you know, saw it in Iraq and saw it everywhere.
[02:29:47]  And he's like, you know, there are basically no examples of this working.
[02:29:50]  But when you read his book, you keep waiting for the... This book is called Why We Lost.
[02:29:55]  You keep waiting for the losses.
[02:29:58]  They don't lose at all.
[02:29:59]  They win everything.
[02:30:00]  It doesn't matter.
[02:30:01]  It makes no difference.
[02:30:02]  I think if we were doing wargaming of your book, which we're not going to do because we'll go back to Super Chats, I think that the most important variable is who is what party, what faction is the president at the time.
[02:30:15]  And that would be, I think the Civil War, the American Civil War, I think would have been very differently.
[02:30:19]  It would have been very different if there was a different president of a different party.
[02:30:23]  And so who controls DC, who controls the military, who controls the powers of the federal government, I think will determine an awful lot.
[02:30:30]  Again, if we were playing wargaming.
[02:30:32]  Yeah, I mean, I worked on the assumption in the book that the military oath would hold, because it does seem to me like it would.
[02:30:39]  I believe so.
[02:30:42]  It was taken extremely, extremely seriously.
[02:30:45]  I mean, one of the problems here is that the military is the last institution with widespread respect in the United States.
[02:30:53]  Which is not healthy.
[02:30:56]  When that's the backdrop, that's not good.
[02:31:00]  But the generals in the Washington Post a few months ago openly discussed would the military fragment in the case of a contested electoral college vote.
[02:31:10]  That's a whole level of terror that I didn't put in the book, but it seems to me entirely plausible.
[02:31:17]  So we have this one from Babak.
[02:31:19]  He says, hi, I am 20 and throughout high school, my teachers told me the party's switched and that Dems are not trying to take your guns.
[02:31:26]  The left lies to children.
[02:31:27]  When I was a child, I will not compromise.
[02:31:29]  I thought that was a good comment.
[02:31:33]  One thing that I think is apparent to a lot of people, if you pay attention, is that the Democratic establishment makes demands.
[02:31:39]  The Republican establishment says, no, wait, don't.
[02:31:42]  And so gun control is a really good example.
[02:31:44]  Well yeah, one's progressive and one's reactionary.
[02:31:47]  That seems to be the pattern.
[02:31:50]  So there's no one actually fighting for... This is why Trump comes around.
[02:31:55]  Even though he was in favor of gun control and banned bump stocks, which was an insane and absurd policy that ruled by decree.
[02:32:01]  But when people on the right say, the Second Amendment says, the right to keep and bear arms should not be infringed.
[02:32:07]  The Democrats ban guns, seize guns, arrest people for guns, and the Republicans say, slow down there, Democrats.
[02:32:13]  This results in the Trump phenomenon.
[02:32:16]  People finally being like, I can't take it.
[02:32:19]  I don't care.
[02:32:20]  Give me the human Molotov cocktail.
[02:32:21]  I'm done with this.
[02:32:22]  Well, that, I mean, and there's going to be that on the left too, right?
[02:32:26]  Like that, that's what we were saying.
[02:32:29]  That's what we were saying before.
[02:32:29]  Like the best way to think of Trump is as a symptom.
[02:32:32]  Yeah.
[02:32:32]  Like, I mean, I think that's the, the, the, the, when I go and talk to like NPR people and so on, I wonder if I'm the only person this year to talk to you and NPR at the same time, but, uh, possible.
[02:32:42]  But like the, the part they find controversial is, um, that I say, if Hillary Clinton had been elected, all of this would be exactly the same.
[02:32:52]  Right, like the Trump, like what we're dealing with here are deep-seated structural problems
[02:32:58]  that are built into the, they transcend completely the outcomes of elections.
[02:33:06]  This is why I can't stand the Trump fraud narrative that I'll give you a funny example. I have never once stated
[02:33:14]  that Donald Trump won the 2020 election.
[02:33:15]  Right.
[02:33:16]  Nor that there was widespread fraud that would have changed, in fact, quite the opposite.
[02:33:19]  My first reaction when I started hearing this was I was like, dude, I'm not playing the same game
[02:33:24]  where Hillary Clinton came out and claimed Russia and all this other garbage, trying to be fake.
[02:33:29]  You are.
[02:33:29]  I mean, I think you are.
[02:33:29]  to do audits. They did audits. They didn't come out with anything substantive and the
[02:33:32]  company shuts down. People are like, Tim, look at all the data. I looked at all the
[02:33:35]  data. There's some interesting stuff there. But ultimately, here we are. It's 2022. And
[02:33:40]  the issue for me is, are we just going to keep playing this back and forth?
[02:33:43]  You are. I mean, I think you are.
[02:33:46]  Absolutely. Country just rips apart.
[02:33:48]  If that's what we keep doing, we have to change course.
[02:33:50]  I'll tell you the funny thing. There are organizations right now that, there's an organization that
[02:33:56]  has raised tens of thousands of dollars off of the lie that I am a proponent of Trump's
[02:34:03]  Right.
[02:34:04]  Even though it's 100% fake.
[02:34:05]  You'll get news outlets lying about my views.
[02:34:08]  Oh man, I'll give you a great example.
[02:34:09]  They take clips of me, they take clips of Joe Rogan.
[02:34:13]  There's a really great post, I can't remember who put it up, I think it was Zed Jelani.
[02:34:16]  We've had him on as a guest several times.
[02:34:18]  He said, in all those instances of Joe Rogan saying the N-word, he was actually arguing against racism.
[02:34:24]  Right.
[02:34:25]  And they were taken out of context to make him seem racist because... Sure.
[02:34:29]  So here's why I think, you know, you mentioned we're in civil strife.
[02:34:31]  I think it's civil war.
[02:34:33]  Well, that's a technical threshold.
[02:34:36]  It's strictly terminology, but we're definitely seeing the normalization of political violence.
[02:34:41]  I think we can agree on that.
[02:34:43]  I'm talking about fourth and fifth generational war.
[02:34:45]  Have you researched any of those things?
[02:34:47]  Well, not really.
[02:34:49]  So this is when... Think about what the purpose of war is, right?
[02:34:54]  To gain control of an asset resource land or a people.
[02:34:58]  When you look at what started the first civil war, it was these military bases and then eventually, like preserving the Union, gaining control and holding one government over the South because they were trying to secede and form their own country or whatever.
[02:35:10]  What if you never had to fire a shot to accomplish that?
[02:35:13]  Well, yeah.
[02:35:14]  So, fourth and fifth generational warfare is when you get into insurgency with fourth generational, and fifth generational is manipulation and propaganda.
[02:35:20]  You mean mimetic warfare?
[02:35:22]  I mean, the thing I find pretty... I actually wrote about that for Foreign Policy.
[02:35:26]  I think it's a really... You know, I actually think what's happening in Russia and the Ukraine, not to go off on a completely different thing, but I think it's one of the earliest instances of truly mimetic warfare.
[02:35:35]  You know, Marshall McLuhan said the Third World War will be an information war fought with no distinction between civilians and military.
[02:35:42]  And we're in it.
[02:35:44]  And I think in that sense, if you were to think of the Civil War as a mimetic war, Or as an informational wars or diathetical war, which is what Lawrence of Arabia called it, that you are absolutely in it.
[02:35:58]  That's why I think when we if we talk in terms of left and right, we've already lost the war because our mind has been changed by the mean to think in that way.
[02:36:05]  Well, I think, you know, I think it's natural to have a left and a right, and I think it's natural to have disagreement.
[02:36:12]  I don't think you need to be in a unified country that that's somehow better.
[02:36:19]  You have to feel you're on the same team, though.
[02:36:21]  It's true that it's natural to have a left and a right, but not to have two political parties in control of a government.
[02:36:26]  That's not natural.
[02:36:27]  That's been formed on purpose.
[02:36:28]  i want to read this one super chat and make a point about many of the ones
[02:36:31]  uh... gold macro says thanks for coming steven you've been an
[02:36:35]  interesting voice on these matters
[02:36:36]  but understand for many you're asking them to sacrifice all they feel is right
[02:36:40]  and honorable for the sake of peace with those who hate them
[02:36:43]  well would you rather be married to write It's like what I said right at the beginning.
[02:36:46]  That's why I asked you about the healthcare thing.
[02:36:48]  And you know, I take that point.
[02:36:50]  Like, I genuinely do.
[02:36:51]  Like, if someone were to ask me that, if that were the choices, I don't know what I would do.
[02:36:56]  There's a lot of comments where they're like, you know, this guy is wrong, and you know, obviously.
[02:37:03]  But to the people who are— I'm not everyone's cup of tea.

=== Project Veritas' Recklessness (05:11) ===

[02:37:05]  No, for sure.
[02:37:06]  And I knew, having seen your Twitter, we had these disagreements, but I thought, you know, we try inviting many other people of opposing views.
[02:37:14]  They don't come on the show.
[02:37:15]  Well, you can have me anytime.
[02:37:17]  Oh, I thought it was a fantastic conversation.
[02:37:19]  And for the people who are saying they don't want to buy your book, I think that is wrong.
[02:37:25]  I think they should buy your book.
[02:37:26]  The book has stuff in it that is not me.
[02:37:28]  I genuinely think it's worth reading.
[02:37:32]  Look, I understand if people are like, I don't want to buy his book because he doesn't deserve my money or it'll make him rich or whatever.
[02:37:39]  No, no.
[02:37:39]  I think they should read it because, as I often say, if you think he's wrong, wouldn't it be valuable if they knew all of your thoughts and ideas and research and where it came from?
[02:37:48]  And then, by all means, you can take the book.
[02:37:49]  We've actually had a couple people comment saying they did read your book and felt you were wrong or whatever, and that's the right answer!
[02:37:55]  You know, at least almost 40% of the sources are Republican.
[02:37:58]  Like, I would just add.
[02:38:00]  I don't think these people like Republicans.
[02:38:02]  I probably didn't help myself then.
[02:38:06]  No, but I mean, I read CNN all the time, and then I'm like, that one's wrong, that one's wrong.
[02:38:11]  And then I read Breitbart too, and I'm like, that one's framed poorly, and that one's wrong.
[02:38:16]  But like, because you have to read everything, and then try and figure out, on a lot of articles it's tough.
[02:38:22]  So like, because when the New York Times says X is true, I'm like, you just said something.
[02:38:28]  Like, how am I supposed to know it's true just because you said it?
[02:38:31]  Well, as someone who's worked for a bunch of publications, I would say if something is in the New York Times, that's the most reliable news source of anything I've worked for, with the possible exception of the Atlantic.
[02:38:41]  When you go to the Atlantic, when something's fact-checked by the Atlantic, it is fact-checked within an inch of its life.
[02:38:49]  The New York Times, I caught in what I view as a major scandal of publishing a news piece, getting boosted in the algorithm, and altering it to an op-ed for sustained growth.
[02:39:01]  They do it all the time.
[02:39:02]  It's called stealth editing.
[02:39:03]  But other than that, I mean, you look at what they did with Project Veritas, where they just lied about them, and then basically never fact-checked it, got sued.
[02:39:12]  It was so egregious that they've actually, surprisingly, Veritas has gotten past the motion to dismiss, which is I thought the New York Times lost a lot of its credibility when they published Anonymous, and they said this was a high-level Trump staffer with intimate details of the Trump administration, and then it turned out it had like the same position I had in the Bush administration, where, you know, you have a job, but like their editorial board, their senior leadership allowed that to go forward, saying this is, they made it look like it was a cabinet position, and they did it for political expediency.
[02:39:44]  What did you guys think of the Palin trial?
[02:39:47]  Oh, the dismissal?
[02:39:48]  Yeah.
[02:39:49]  We talked about that last time and libel is very hard.
[02:39:53]  I think times to be Sullivan needs to be removed.
[02:39:56]  Are you familiar with what that is?
[02:39:57]  Yeah.
[02:39:58]  Get rid of it.
[02:40:00]  You really think so?
[02:40:00]  I mean, it would make you...
[02:40:04]  I thought it was fascinating that someone was the fall guy, right?
[02:40:08]  That one editor said, yeah, this is on me.
[02:40:10]  James Bennett, the ultimate.
[02:40:12]  I mean, James Bennett is a fascinating man because he's been in the middle of these struggles and attacked by both sides.
[02:40:21]  For being absolutely superb at his job.
[02:40:24]  I mean, the best op-ed editor I've ever worked with.
[02:40:27]  I just don't think the New York Times would ever allow such a piece about Kamala Harris.
[02:40:31]  Oh, I don't know about that.
[02:40:32]  I would not agree with that.
[02:40:36]  With Brad Stevens, there's a lot of people.
[02:40:37]  Let's wait and see.
[02:40:38]  For those that aren't familiar, Times v. Sullivan is the standard that basically you have to prove, if defamation is of a public figure, you have to prove they either knew it was false or were acting recklessly.
[02:40:49]  And malice.
[02:40:50]  Actual malice means that they knew.
[02:40:54]  That they knew and that they wanted to hurt this person.
[02:40:56]  No, no, no.
[02:40:57]  Hurting is... In Canada, it's completely different, and it's so much easier to sue somebody for libel.
[02:41:03]  In the U.S., actual malice doesn't refer to intention to cause harm, necessarily.
[02:41:07]  It's that you knew it was wrong and you didn't care.
[02:41:10]  Recklessness is that... Very hard to prove.
[02:41:12]  Impossible, unless you get into discovery.
[02:41:15]  Recklessness is that, for the New York Times, for instance, if they publish something, you'd have to prove that they didn't follow their standard procedure for verification.
[02:41:23]  And if you can't get past a motion to dismiss, and you can't because of its own stance, it's insane.
[02:41:30]  Someone, they outright make up stories about me.
[02:41:34]  I can't get into them because of litigation and stuff like that.
[02:41:37]  But they'll outright lie and make everything up.
[02:41:39]  And then they're just like, we assume it to be true.
[02:41:41]  Like we had a source who said it, therefore it's fact.
[02:41:45]  That you should not be able to get away with that.
[02:41:46]  And the anonymous sources stuff has gotten out of control.
[02:41:49]  It's insane.
[02:41:49]  And then on top of that, you have to prove damages.
[02:41:53]  That's easier to do.
[02:41:54]  No, no, no, no, no.
[02:41:56]  Well, Palin could have done that.
[02:41:57]  So with Project Veritas, the New York Times argued their reputation is so tarnished, you can't possibly cause them damage.
[02:42:07]  That's what happened with Benedict Arnold.
[02:42:10]  He was sued for libel.
[02:42:11]  He won.
[02:42:13]  And he said, but your reputation is worth six cents.

=== Reputation's Worth Sixpence (02:57) ===

[02:42:17]  That's what they gave him?
[02:42:17]  And they gave him one.
[02:42:18]  That was like in whatever, you know, The Traitor, Benedict Arnold.
[02:42:22]  Like in the Revolutionary War.
[02:42:24]  They were like, yeah, you were slandered.
[02:42:26]  Your reputation is worth sixpence.
[02:42:28]  Before he left America?
[02:42:29]  No, after.
[02:42:30]  So I'll read, we'll just read two more because we've gone a bit long tonight and I think it was worth it.
[02:42:34]  Papa Romano says, I disagree with him a lot, but a great guest.
[02:42:37]  Yo, thank you people need like need to understand we would we would have a lot more guests That are more like mainstream journalists and leftists if they were willing to come on.
[02:42:46]  Am I gonna become your pocket leftist?
[02:42:48]  No Maybe the pocket Canadian Crossfire was one of the best shows of all time news wise and we need that's kind of what I want.
[02:43:00]  I will say I We have made a lot of money off people not liking you.
[02:43:04]  They're sending in superchats like, he's wrong, I don't like him.
[02:43:06]  It's so good to have someone from Canada, because your perspective is invaluable for me as an American.
[02:43:11]  I was grown in this system, so I need... Well, I do think we, as I say in the book, we're like Horatio to your Hamlet.
[02:43:17]  We're this small, irrelevant country, right on the edge.
[02:43:21]  I've lived in America, I have American friends, I love America, but I'm not American.
[02:43:26]  Right, like, so I'm not part of this, you know, America's not my mother, right?
[02:43:30]  Like, it's like when you say, like, with, like, healthcare, like, that, my blood goes up.
[02:43:34]  With your stuff, my blood does not go up.
[02:43:36]  You see?
[02:43:36]  Right.
[02:43:36]  So there's different things that are important.
[02:43:38]  Absolutely.
[02:43:38]  Gun control, stuff like that.
[02:43:40]  Oh, yeah.
[02:43:40]  Gun control's different.
[02:43:41]  Canada's, like, again, it's really odd because, like, nearly half of Canadian homes have a gun in it, but it's not the same gun culture at all.
[02:43:47]  Right.
[02:43:47]  So there's like, and it's certainly much, much more regulated.
[02:43:51]  And in Canada, cops kick in people's doors and go into their houses and arrest them.
[02:43:55]  And it's harder to do in the United States, though they do it for sure.
[02:43:58]  Well, I mean, I don't think we have like quite Canadian cops are incredibly nonviolent.
[02:44:04]  I mean, that's part of the problem with with Ottawa.
[02:44:07]  Like, you know, when the truckers came for Paris, they just sent in the tear gas and it was all over in half an hour.
[02:44:13]  That happens every day in France.
[02:44:14]  Yeah, I mean, yeah, and like that's what would happen here incidentally like if a trucker convoy started and they went
[02:44:19]  into Chicago It would not it would be over in a day
[02:44:22]  Yeah, like you would not it would not be like Canadian police being like let's try and not hurt anybody
[02:44:27]  But I mean, I think I might get to the end of the same without well, I should buy Wall Street is actually an
[02:44:32]  interesting example But I think if this thing ends without any violence, God willing, it will be oddly a kind of national achievement.
[02:44:43]  Was there violence from BLM in Canada?
[02:44:45]  There were BLM marches.
[02:44:48]  They were much smaller.
[02:44:51]  Yeah, then here.
[02:44:54]  There were a series of indigenous movements that were about pipelines, but also about, you know, historical genocide, cultural genocide.
[02:45:07]  They were burning down churches because they were essentially... Right-wing indigenous groups?

=== Bristol Farm Controversy (05:43) ===

[02:45:14]  Well, I would say national groups.
[02:45:17]  They would not fall into either category.
[02:45:20]  They're themselves, right?
[02:45:22]  They have support from the left, though.
[02:45:26]  I actually think they have a lot of broad support.
[02:45:28]  Like Stephen Harper, who was the last conservative prime minister, he was the first person to acknowledge crimes in the educational system, and he actually made a very powerful statement about it.
[02:45:42]  I want to I just read one more because we've gone long and we'll wrap it up
[02:45:46]  But um cowboy ish says Tim the guy has demonstrated that he has bias
[02:45:51]  Why is it wrong to give him our money to check for ourselves?
[02:45:55]  So I think I wonder if this question is shouldn't it be wrong, right? Is that what they mean or?
[02:46:00]  Or are they agreeing with me?
[02:46:01]  I wanted to read that because my point is, if you only get news from one source, you'll have no idea what you're arguing against.
[02:46:10]  And then I remember I was working for Greenpeace and I was outside of a bookstore and I saw Glenn Beck's book, Arguing Against Climate Change.
[02:46:17]  And I was like, I should read that.
[02:46:19]  And I went, I was, I think I was like 21.
[02:46:20]  I went to the bookstore and I started skimming through it to see like some of it, read a couple of chapters and I didn't buy the book.
[02:46:25]  I put it back.
[02:46:26]  Buy my book!
[02:46:29]  Don't read it in the store!
[02:46:29]  If someone's going to make an argument, and you're like, I completely disagree with this person, wouldn't you want to arm yourself with the facts and data to properly be able to argue your points?
[02:46:40]  Yes!
[02:46:40]  And not only that, I don't think people should take everything you've said here as everything that's in the book.
[02:46:44]  Oh, no, no, no.
[02:46:46]  We barely touched on, we only touched on two chapters.
[02:46:48]  Right, right.
[02:46:49]  I think people might read through that and be like, oh, okay, this one has less to do with some of the stuff they talked about, because we have our bias on this show.
[02:46:55]  Long story short...
[02:46:57]  I understand them saying they don't want to give you money.
[02:47:00]  That I get.
[02:47:01]  But reading as much as you can.
[02:47:04]  It's not that much money.
[02:47:06]  It's just a bunch.
[02:47:07]  Man's gotta eat also.
[02:47:08]  I only get a royalty.
[02:47:09]  It's not like you're giving me the money.
[02:47:12]  I just think I'm a proponent of learning and reading as much as you can.
[02:47:16]  And that's why I'll watch CNN and read what they're writing and be like, When I come out and say hey this story was wrong
[02:47:23]  It's because I read the story read about the author looked at what they were researching and said here's what they
[02:47:27]  missed not because I
[02:47:29]  Saw the headline and went that's not true. Bye and then to close out the article. I got to read that stuff
[02:47:34]  Otherwise, I'm like I think reading in itself is an act of depolarization
[02:47:38]  You know, like I think actually Trying to understand people and trying to be in their
[02:47:45]  language for a bit Yeah is really is really helpful, you know
[02:47:50]  I wrote this book explicitly trying not to judge.
[02:47:54]  I went and talked to all sorts of people.
[02:47:58]  I really would feel like I'd failed if I didn't feel like the Oath Keepers that I interviewed felt that they were represented fairly.
[02:48:07]  I am not trying to skew anything.
[02:48:12]  Even people who I consider outright criminals.
[02:48:15]  I'm trying to get their point of view and put it on the page.
[02:48:18]  And I think that's key.
[02:48:20]  If you want to understand people, that's what you have to work towards.
[02:48:24]  Yeah.
[02:48:25]  All right.
[02:48:25]  I think we should wind it down here.
[02:48:27]  So go to TimCast.com, become a member.
[02:48:30]  We're not going to do the member segment because we decided just to do this segment extra long to have this deeper conversation.
[02:48:35]  But becoming a member does help support all of our work and there is a massive library.
[02:48:39]  So there's tons of other segments you can watch and it is greatly appreciated.
[02:48:42]  when you sign up because your membership sustains us.
[02:48:45]  You can follow the show at TimCastIRL on Instagram.
[02:48:48]  You can follow me at TimCast as well.
[02:48:50]  Don't forget to like this video, smash the like button, subscribe to this channel, share the show with your friends.
[02:48:56]  Do you want to shout out anything else?
[02:48:57]  No.
[02:48:57]  Your book, your social media?
[02:48:58]  Just the book.
[02:48:59]  Well, I'm at Steven Marshall Twitter if you want to follow me.
[02:49:01]  But, you know, you probably don't.
[02:49:03]  They'll probably disagree with you.
[02:49:06]  No, they should.
[02:49:06]  They should tweet at you.
[02:49:07]  The book's... Oh, please don't tell them to tweet at me.
[02:49:10]  I like to tweet a lot.
[02:49:11]  Don't do that to me.
[02:49:12]  Like, six months from now you come back and you're wearing a MAGA hat, and you're like, I learned, I believe everything they've said!
[02:49:18]  I was depolarized.
[02:49:19]  I was depolarized, or I was repolarized.
[02:49:21]  Or I was just turned into an American, really.
[02:49:24]  Yeah, you're wearing an American flag.
[02:49:26]  Yeah, right on.
[02:49:27]  Daniel!
[02:49:27]  Yes, Daniel Turner, Power of the Future.
[02:49:29]  It's great to be here.
[02:49:30]  And I want to give a shout out to our farm Instagram page.
[02:49:33]  So love your local gay sheep farmers here in Virginia.
[02:49:37]  Bristol Farm, Virginia.
[02:49:39]  And it's called Bristol Farm because that was the first hotel we ever stayed at in Vienna, the Bristol Hotel.
[02:49:43]  So we named our farm after that hotel.
[02:49:45]  And so Bristol Farm, Virginia on Instagram.
[02:49:47]  It's new.
[02:49:48]  We're trying to get people because we love small farms and we're trying to connect with other small farmers.
[02:49:52]  Now everyone can agree with that.
[02:49:55]  If you've checked you agree with that. Thank you local farming like these these leftists. They hate farm animals
[02:50:01]  The way to depolarize is to get the hell out of cities and get away
[02:50:06]  You're not that wrong and breathe make people raise it raise a couple chickens together
[02:50:11]  Yes and have them focus on
[02:50:12]  chickens eyes and people won't be so angry to to tweet and hate and things like that if they have to muck out stalls
[02:50:18]  and Clean and fresh and get fresh
[02:50:22]  Yes, thanks for coming in and doing the top-down view. That's really really
[02:50:26]  Pleasure.
[02:50:26]  Yeah, man.
[02:50:27]  And maybe next time you're here, we can go a little higher and look from like 100,000 feet.
[02:50:32]  Cosmic next time.
[02:50:35]  Cosmic orders.
[02:50:35]  Beautiful.
[02:50:36]  Follow me at iancrossland.net.
[02:50:37]  I'll see you guys next time.
[02:50:39]  Thank you guys all very much for tuning in.
[02:50:41]  I always love to have conversations where we don't fully agree on everything.
[02:50:44]  To me, that's very much the spice of life.
[02:50:45]  So I appreciate you guys for bearing with us and for sending us all your crazy superchats.
[02:50:49]  You guys can follow me on Twitter and Minds.com at Sarah Patch Lids.
[02:50:53]  Thanks for hanging out, everybody.
[02:50:55]  Become a member at TimCast.com and we will see you all tomorrow night.