Also media, what's murdering seventy five men in hand to hand combat? My margaret? Have you killed seventy five men in hand to hand combat?
I have been told to not comment on this until I'm more certain about a few sevs. The other fucking follow you into war? So bad?
Yeah? Yes, yes, boss, where we going to me to meet me? Grab my axe, let's go. That's going to be conditional for me on what kinds of men you count when you're killing? Right? You know, like Outa didn't count turks? You know, do you count turks if you kill them in hand to hand combat? These are the questions that I need to know.
You know, chuds are the ones that are not certain count.
You don't count no chuds? Yeah, yeah, no, yeah.
And people think I refer to it as a truck because it looks like a truck of chud would drive, But actually it's just very good at.
Anyway. Oh, Audo would have been a truck guy. I think we can all agree on that. Yeah, long enough to see the highlux, I know, it's it's tragic he was born for the highlux. Oh my god, can you imagine how much Lawrence would have loved the Highlux.
I got my oil at this guy who was like trying to tell me about why it's worth it to import a highlux.
Absolutely, you don't me, brother, the.
Cost of importing the He went over all of the prices of all of the importing the Highlux, and I was like, this no longer seems worth it. I thought the point of it was that it was cheaper than the other Toyota trucks.
Yeah, the point of it is that it's a high Lux, you know, that's just that's just got some flair you can't replace.
It has high classiness, it's in the name.
Yeah, I do feel some some I can understand Lawrence better now that I've gone into battle in the back of a Highlux in the fucking Arab world, driven across Syria. Yeah, in an up armored Hilux. Yeah that that that is a good life experience to have for really getting t E Lawrence. Yeah, it would have been a lot of fun, probably if we gotten to blow up a bridge or two, but that wouldn't have been helpful in the situation we were in.
Now, this a strategic scientifically scientific and I have no idea how to really do that.
I would just blow up the bridge. Yeah. Yeah.
Uh.
Now when we discuss T. E. Lawrence, particularly when we try to answer the question was he a bastard? You know, sitting at our computers in the fall of twenty two? Have we been forgetting to do cold opens? Haven't we? Sophie?
We just do them and then Daniel cuts them in later.
Daniel cuts them in later. Well, heiro And I don't know does Dan? Sorry, I just it's fine. Yeah, I wonder what Daniel counts. Yeah, it depends. I still don't know. I don't know what kind of men Daniel counts when he when he when he's killing men.
So she doesn't count men. It's pretty impressive.
Wow. Wow, only only the women you kill? Okay, Yeah, that's good to know.
Would Yeah, that's what Sophie. Just never kills anyone by Sophie standards.
Woke swashbuckler who only counts the nbs he kills men and women don't count to me, just the they thems.
Each one counts more than one because of the plural. Anyway, Is this like.
A political ad that plays during baseball games?
Oh my god, yeah, Jesus Christ.
Okay, far enough left of your jokes.
Yeah, you wind up doing a trump at So when we discussed Lawrence while sitting in our computers in the fall of twenty twenty four, one thing probably stands what that wasn't even a joke, I know, but so funny. It's good. Yeah, one thing stands above every other matter, which is his support for the Balfour Declaration, particularly his support I mean, because that was not made, he did
not help make that, but he is. He is a supporter of Zionism in this particularly post war period, right when all of these European powers give their official support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Lawrence is not initially on that side, but he's going to wind up on that side, right and given what's going on in Gaza right now, it's probably impossible to avoid having this dominate your thoughts on the man's legacy. And that's not entirely wrong.
We are going to talk about his role here because it's significant, but it's important to note that at the time his feelings on Zionism are not what any of his critics, including in the Arab world, saw as the most problematic thing about the man. If you are a Westerner or a Turk the top argument in your Lawrence's evil ledger probably would have been the war crimes, and
so we're going to talk about those first. The gist of this story is that after Lawrence escape the Turks, the forces under his command exhibited increasingly brutal behavior on the battlefield. He started ordering his soldiers not to take prisoners, which is against the law, and in several cases began executing wounded men himself as they lay bleeding on the battlefield. He would just walk around battlefields afterwards, shooting guys in
the head, doing qu de grass, cooing degraz. Yeah, okay, which is you know, bad, You're not supposed to do that. I mean, arguably in a lot of these cases that may have been the kindest thing to do, but it's not legal to do that. Yeah, so he's cooing some degraz,
he's killing people. Scott Anderson, writing for Smithsonian Magazine, describes how his judgment seems to have degraded as well, and the general way this often gets credited to, like the fact that he has just been gang raped, right that like this kind of his mind breaks After that quote, he attacked the Turkish troop train, despite being so short of weapons that some of his men could only throw
rocks at the enemy. If this was rooted in the trauma at Derah's it seems he was at least as much driven by the desperate belief that if the Arabs could reach Damascus first, then the lies and guilty secrets he had harbored since coming to Arabia might somehow be set right. So that's kind of the debate here, is like, is he traumatized because he's just been raped and as a result, he's making all of these very rash moves,
He's becoming increasingly brutal in battle. Is it more that he's desperate to try and he's traumatized because he knows that he's kind of betraying his friends, and he's trying to make things right by getting them to Damascus before the war ends, you know, in order to kind of cut off Sykes Pico at the knees. Right.
I think that's a strong argument to me, because he wants to be a moral man and he knows he's not, so he can find a loophole to loophole himself into morality by killing everyone.
Yeah, yeah, maybe that's the only thing he can do. There's also this argument that, like Lawrence describes himself as a virgin, and he is someone who his friends in sist he has no discernible sexual leanings, and maybe they're this the fact that it's forced upon him, like he has an extra strong reaction to it. We just will never know, you know, thexual he did go to it, he did. He went to less rapeye schools than a lot of other British boys of his of his era.
But like, I think that is kind of built into a lot of that school system though, But we don't. I have no evidence as to whether or not any anything like that happened to Lawrence. He certainly doesn't write about it. Yeah, so even if you hold the argument that Lawrence light about the rape, and maybe he would have led about that in order to explain why he was like obsessively trying to get the Arabs to Damascus, because that was kind of some like light treason against
his own side. Whatever's going on here, it makes total sense that his mental state would be degraded. By this point. He has spent more than half of his time in Arabia, deathly ill, sick with plague and heat stroke and catastrophic dehydration. He's experienced harrowing combat at close quarters he had, he has blown his camel's brains out and been flung into the hot desert sands during a battle. So yeah, I mean, just not weird that he's kind of losing it at
this point. And as Anderson notes, he's also weighed down with guilt over the fact that all these guys are fighting and dying with him, maybe for nothing, because his government might betray them. This all culminates in late September in an attack on a town called Derah, where Lawrence had been if he was raped. This is where that happened, right, So this is part of a general offensive that he is carrying out with Allenby that's meant to coordinate with
an attack by Allenby on Palestine in the north. Right, Lawrence and his Bedouin allies are supposed to cut off the Turkish avenues of retreat by taking the railroad junction at Derah. So one of the arguments here is that like this is, you know, where he claims to have been tortured, So maybe what he's about to do is like him taking vengeance, you know, for that attack. And I'm going to quote from Anderson again. After coming upon the village of Tafas, where the fleeing Turks had massacred
many residents. Lawrence ordered his men to give no quarter. Throughout that day. The rebels picked apart a retreating column of four thousand, slaughtering all they found. But as Lawrence doubled back that afternoon, he discovered one unit had missed the command and taken two hundred and fifty Turks and Germans captive. We turned our Hotchkiss machine gun on the prisoners, he noted in his battlefield report, and made an end of them. Lawrence was even more explicit about his actions
that day, and seven pillars. In a madness born of the horror of Taphus, we killed and killed, even blowing in the heads of the fallen and of the animals, as though their death and running blood could slake our agony. Whoops. Yeah, he's going full like corn berserker here. You know, he's just massacring people, and it's you know, the people he's massacring had also just massacred a bunch of civilians. It's
a very ugly war like war. Plenty of war crimes to go around here, right, but this, this slaughter of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of prisoners and wounded men would have been a massive war crime in any theater of world wars. To put him in like yeah, belongs and behind the bastards, now yeah, that's that's that's an international criminal court crime. Right yeah.
Now again, any of the bastards who had on have killed like three people.
Right right? That said, do I kind of sympathize with him? Still? Yeah, Like this is just no, I don't know, I just don't know how likely it is that most commanders in a similar situation, having gone through what he's gone through, would have been much better, right, especially since this is not entirely Lawrence, by his own admission, is partaking in
the bloodshed. But a lot of this is just that his own troops are so angry at all of these war crimes that including on some of their families, right, and they're just bent for slaughter now, right, like everyone has just lost their minds. The war has gotten that ugly. So anyway, you know, you can you can parse that out morally however you want to. You could judge him however you want to. Sitting at your computer. We all do to some extent. But yeah, from here, from Dera.
Lawrence himself moved directly to Damascus, right like, he and his forces rushed there and they they beat the Turks out of Damascus, and they beat European forces to the city.
Now I have a question, Yeah, how did he get out of conscription rape channel?
He kind of just escapes? Okay, I mean they're not they're not great at at at at doing guardings. They don't know that he's Lawrence of Arabia. Right, he just sort of bounces, you know, after a while. So this was an explicit and a direct attempt to destroy Sykes Picau. As soon as the city was in their hands, Lawrence helped organize a provisional Arab government headed by Feisal. Right now, again, the Arabs don't really want the Arabs of Syria don't
really want Faisal in charge of them. They certain don't want his dad in charge. But like they have their own leaders, and they see they don't really like guys from Mecca. They write about like these these Arabs in Syria who are pissed about this. Some of them are like making overtures to the Ottomans because of how unhappy they are about Faisal. They kind of see Feisal and his dad, this whole family of like guys, the Sharif of Mecca, the way like rural Americans talk about like
people from like San Francisco or you know, DC. You know that they have the kind of like Richmond north of Richmond talk about them of like these fucking city assholes from Mecca coming into Syria and telling us how to live our goddamn lives. I don't like that any better than the Turks, you know. Yeah, And there's actually there's this this kind of Zionism is going to play a weird role in this here because it becomes kind of crucial to this conflict in between these different factions
on the Arab revolt. Right. So, within a few days of the Arabs taking Damascus, General Allenby arrives and he's like provisional government, my ass The French are in charge now, and Lawrence like there's really nothing he can do, right
allenb is his superior officer. The British are there with like you know, a significant amount of assets, and this is you know, kind of shatters him, right, Like he is so distraught over the fact that all of their work, you know, even though they took the city it's just been handed over to French control. He said, distraught by this, that he begs to be relieved of command by Allen. Allenb he leaves for London, hell bent on using his celebrity to win Western support for an independent Arab nation
after this. Now, as a note, Lawrence was definitely a very famous over in Europe by this point. An American journalist based in Palestine, Lowell Thomas, had like spotted his story and been like, this is one of the most interesting things happening in the war. It's much more interesting than just like recording slaughter at the various trench fronts. I'm gonna follow this guy around. I'm gonna take some
video and photographs and whatnot. And he put together like a lecture show, basically like a slide show with a lecture attached to it that runs in movie theaters. It's like a matinee hit in England. It's a huge blockbuster at the time, like prior to the nineteen sixty Lawrence
of Arabia. This is kind of like the first movie version of Lawrence, and it's it's portrayed as journalism, but la, you know, Lowell is a he's like a tabloid guy, right, Like he is exaggerating, he's kind of outright lying about stuff. There's some evidence that Lawrence is deeply, deeply unhappy as a result of like the kind of attention that Lowell draws on him and how much he makes Lawrence the
center of the story. But he's also able to use this fame in order to secure meetings with like politicians to try and talk up feisal side of things, right as during these negotiations over what's going to happen to Ottoman territories in the wake of Ottoman collapse. So he's he's so he's such a a vocal part of this and such like so vocally against Syke's Picot that he starts to be seen as a threat from within the military and like within the government of the British Empire.
A lot of them see him as a fame hound because like this is happening while his movie's a big deal. They see him as like he's just some like up to junior officer who's gotten way too big for his breeches and he's trying to ruin this good thing we've got with France. This horrible war is finally done and We're finally going to get fucking some money a place we can plunder right to, to help make up for all of the money we spent on this stupid war we got our country into, right, and this guy is
going to fuck it all up right now. The Balfour Declaration had been leaked out to the public right around the same time Sykes Picot had been made public so right at the end of nineteen seventeen, and some in the British administration during these negotiations in late nineteen eighteen nineteen nineteen, saw the Balfour Declaration, which has a complicated reaction, especially over in the Arab world, saw it as potentially good news for their support of the Husseins, because again,
Feisal and his dad are wildly unpopular in Syria. Right They're seen as these assholes from Mecca trying to lord over a place they don't belong, and Lawrence's boss and the Intelligence Services Service. One of the masterminds behind the whole Arab revolt was a brigadier general named Gilbert Clayton,
and Gilbert saw the Balfour declaration as problematic. He's going to be the guy who writes most accurately about why this is a bad idea, But he also is like this could help us with faisal, right, and he writes up to date, the Syrian Arab has shown the utmost distaste for any idea of a government in which Meccan patriarchism has any influence, hence a lack of real sympathy with the Sharif. Fear of the jew may cause a
reproach ma. Right, if we make it clear that we're going to give the Jews a homeland, the Arabs may get so angry that they decide they line up behind our guy, who they're not really happy about right now, but maybe they're racism against Jewish people will like convince them, you know which obviously that's an incredibly racist move from Clayton, right, Like we'll just use anti Semitism to solve our imperial problems and get our puppet in charge.
He's pretty classic.
It's pretty classic, right, yeah. Now, Psykes himself tried to convince Clayton that the declaration was a positive for Arab independence, which Clayton, for all of you know the racism you see in his writing, really does care about Arab independence. He is one of these guys like Lawrence, who is like, we made promises to these people and we should keep them. Clayton more than Lawrence recognizes, because Lawrence kind of gets
behind the idea of Zionism. Eventually, Clayton is always like, this is a bad idea and we shouldn't have done it. But he does get into that. He comes to that conclusion also through a very racist way by saying that Arabs would be dismayed by knowledge that the Jews quote whose superior intelligence and commercial abilities are feared, would take
over in Palestine. In a different level letter to Gertrude Bell, the Arab Bureau's Bagdad correspondent, Clayton wrote this, the Arab of Syria and Palestine sees the Jew with a free hand and the backing of Her Majesty's government, and interprets it as meaning the eventual loss of his heritage. Jacob and Esau wants more. The Arab is right, and no amount of species oratory will humbug them in a matter which affects him so vitally. Experience such as I have
gained in this war impels me to deprecate strongly. In cautious declarations and visionary agreements, we are like men walking through an unknown country in a fog, and it behooves to feel our way and take care with each step we take.
And he is not wrong.
Yeah, we are men. We shouldn't be doing this in part because, like obviously this is going to lead to Arabs being displaced from their homes in Palestine, right, Arabs recognize this, their right to recognize this, and even by sticking our hands into this mess, we are We are men walking through an unknown country in a we don't know what we're doing, and so we shouldn't be doing it, right, Yeah, which is.
Yeah, No, that's that's what the British Empire should have been doing.
Yes, yeah, empire. He is he again, everyone here is racist, but some of the racists are correct about what's going to happen. Yeah, right, Bell, who also deserves much more coverage than we're giving her, good true Bill as a fascinating character. This woman who had just like traveled alone throughout this huge stretch of the Middle East become a legitimate expert on the area, a really interesting person, someone who knew Lawrence too kind of in his early travels.
Replied that she also hated quote mister Balfour's Zionist pronouncement. But Lawrence, whose instincts for this region and its people were generally much better than this, got caught up in the Zionist cause, and he did so in an interesting way as part of his backing of the Arab cause. Right So, during Lawrence's struggle against Syke's Picot in London after the war, he came to see European Zionists as
potential alley the fight for Arab independence. He met with Heim Weizmann, head of the English Zionist Federation, who was willing to back Lawrence's fight for an Arab state so long as Lawrence supported the establishment of a Jewish state. Lawrence, by one account, convinced Faisal. By another, Faisal is kind of the one who's saying, hey, Lawrence, I want you to make overtures to this guy. But either way, Lawrence and Faisal get on board with Wiseman and the Zionists
and they make an agreement. They actually sign an agreement, right which if the Zionists support a Faisal led Arab state based in Syria, Faisal will support European Jews immigrating to Palestine. Now, Faisal does not explicitly embrace a Jewish state, but that was understood to be the result of this.
The treaty between the two of them reads mindful, and this is just fascinating reading just in light of where we are today, mindful of the racial kinship and ancient bonds existing between the Arabs and the Jewish people, and realizing that the surest means of working out the consummation of their national aspirations is through the closest possible collaboration in the development of the Arab state in Palestine. It continues that the Arab State and Palestine should, in all
their relations be controlled by the most cordial goodwill. A commission would be established to lay out boundaries of the Arab state and Palestine. Right, and there's a lot there about like obviously no, it will be displaced by this. Right, it's presenting a two state solution for Palestine, not entirely. Right, There's an Arab state and then there's Palestine. But Palestine is also understood to be an encouraging Jewish immigration and
seen as a Jewish state. Now it's not clear does that mean Arabs and Palestine like Arabs and like European Jews who immigrate and like you know, like the people and who live there at now are will they be kind of equal partners in a state? That's kind of how I read it is the idea, but it's not a two state solution. They are always referring to Palestine, right, like they don't call to Israel.
But yeah, to the one state solution, the like one seculary you can be Jewish.
Or yeah, yeah, that is the closest thing, right, Like the arrangement that they are talking to. When I say that like he supported Zionism, the actual text of the kind of thing he was trying to set up is very different than what exists today. Right, I'm going to
quote again from that agreement. All necessary measures shall be taken to encourage and stimulate immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale and as quickly as possible, to settle Jewish immigrants upon the land through closer settlement and intensive cultivation of the soil. And taking such measures, the Arab peasant and tenant farmers shall be protected in their rights and shall be assisted in forwarding their economic development.
It goes on to state that no interference and free exercise of religion would be permitted, and the Mohammedan holy places in Jerusalem and elsewhere shall be under Mohammedan control.
Okay, yeah, I mean it's presented a fairly reasonable idea. I mean, like obviously, like that's clearly not what large.
Is, not what's going to happen. But when we say that he's a Zionist, he's not supporting what exists currently, right, Like that is the result, and he's it's worthy of criticism. It's Faisal is worthy of criticism too. And it's important to note that like Faisal, this guy seeking to be the king of this Arabic state is supportive of this measure, right, but there's some economic reasons for it.
Yeah, at the very beginning where he's like you know the long standing between Arab and Jewish folks, I mean, that's that is real, and like yeah, there is like you know, when you study Ottoman Empire before it started falling apart, it's like, well that's where European Jews went because they were like second class citizens in the Ottoman Empire.
But like they were, Yeah, we all know what happened in Russia, right, Well happened elsewhere, right, Yeah, when the.
Other thing that happened in fourteen ninety two as relates to Spain, is that all the Jews were kicked out and forced to convert. You know, there's just massive immigration into the Ottoman Empire.
Yep. Yeah, So this is MESSI And obviously none of this works out the way that Faisal and Lawrence had hoped. While researching this, I've come across several extremely pro Israel publications, including the Israel Forever Foundation, who published articles trying to remake Lawrence into a hardcore supporter of the modern state of Israel. I found this line in an article they
republished from The Jerusalem Post. You won't find this truth and the lengthy biography of Thomas Edward Lawrence, the Legendary Lawrence of Arabia, in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Don't expect to hear about this on the BBC. The world remembers Lawrence as a guide, friend and champion of Arabs, but hardly knows that he believed in Zionism as it was forced to restore Palestine to which ancient glory brought about by
active British Jewish Arab cooperation. And that's not really like that is making him into that he is not nothing that he has described sounds like the modern state of Israel. Right. Yeah, he was not in favor of Palestinians being forced out
of their land. Now we can say that was a foolish thing for him to hope, and he should have known that there was very likely this was going to get ugly, right, But you know, he he winds up doing what he does, right, And a big part of like what he and Feisler was hoping for, is that if we allow Jewish immigration to Palestine, that will bring in a lot of money to this economically depressed area, and it will be good for these like Palestinian farmers
and peasants. Right that it will like a rising tide, will kind of lift all boats. That is what they are writing about. Right. There were ways it could have worked out differently than it did, right, But you know, it's also worth noting that whatever their plans and whatever their hopes for how this works out, Lawrence winds up on the side of what becomes a major calamity for the Middle East. Right, is how bloody and brutal everything that results from this eventually is, right, And I.
Actually think it's the same problem he has in general, which is that even though he doesn't want England to control these things, he's still on some level he's more okay with fucking around with England controlling things.
Yeah, you know.
And so it's like, and that is the same problem that happened with British mandate Palestine? Now is that is that the British.
We're again it's like Clayton writes, right, we don't know what we're doing, Like we're going to fuck a bunch of things up because we don't really understand what we're messing around with here. Yeah, and yeah, like it probably just shouldn't have been fucking around with any of this. Maybe a bunch of British guys should not have been making all of these calls. Yeah, and maybe and to be fair, a bunch of guys like Faisal Rich, guys from Mecca shouldn't have been making all of these calls.
Oh yeah, Like none of it works very well. Yeah, Now, I will say for a much, you know, because of what's happening right now, this gets a lot of focus. We're going to inherently think a lot about Lawrence's support of this, of the Balfour Declaration, of all this stuff.
This probably was not a big part thing on his mind when he thought about like his failures, you know here in the wake of kind of the peace agreements and stuff, because like nothing happens during his lifetime, right, he dies in thirty five, Right, So none of this like leads to anything while he is around, you know, And.
There's like a couple of riots and stuff, but it's not.
Yeah, there's some riots, you know, there's some stuff that does result from this, but he's probably not super plugged into it, right, Yeah, he is. What really is occupying his mind is he sees the wheeling and dealing in the immediate wake of the war as a fucking calamity for this cause that he cares about. Nearly every piece of the cause that he cared about goes down in
flaming failure. The French get their mandate in Syria, the British wind up running much of his imagined Arab state, including Palestine, and and once it becomes clear that Arabs had fought and won a war of independence only to wind up ruled by Europeans, the response was bloody. As this passage from an article in Smithsonian Magazine makes clear,
Lawrence was particularly prescient about Iraq in nineteen nineteen. He had predicted full scale revolt against British rule there by March of nineteen twenty if we don't mind our ways. The result of the result of the uprising in May nineteen twenty was some ten thousand dead, including one thousand British soldiers and administrators. And man, that's a good prediction, right he calls March. It happens in May, not bad.
Task to clean up the debacle was the new British Colonial Secretary, Winston Churchill, who turned for help to the man whose warnings had been spurred T. E. Lawrence at the Cairo Conference in nineteen twenty one. Lawrence helped to redress some of the wrongs. In the near future, Faisal, deposed by the French in Syria, would be placed on a new throne in British controlled Iraq, out of the
British buffer state of trans Jordan. The nation of Jordan would be created, with Faisal's brother Abdullah at its head right. And obviously Faisal and his family don't wind up in charge of a rock for all that long, you know, thanks to our friend of the Pod, Saddam Hussein and the Bath Party. And then Faisal's brother Abdullah, that is still the ruling family in Jordan. Right, that's where that's
where that all gets started. Now, the fact that this is the result, right, you know, it's not a total failure. You do have Arab states that are independent, you know, that get come out as a result of this. But largely, you know, during his lifetime, it's France and Britain kind of calling the shots in a large a lot of this region. This shatters Lawrence, right, he never really recovers from his failure here. And you know who else has never recovered from their failures?
Is it the casinos?
Yeah? The casinos there their failure to give you too much money, right, yeah, you know, they just can't wait to give you money.
Now.
They lose money more often than they win. That's why gambling, if you gamble enough, you always win. The house always loses. That's why they say.
That, Yeah, exactly, the house always loses. It's always safe, always safe to gamble. Keep your money in a casino, right, it's an investment.
I mean if it's controlled by the casino. Yeah, yeah, they do it. They will succeed, and we're bad. Robert, I have terrible news. I followed our advice, and now I have no money left.
Oh no, well maybe you should just put all of your remaining money on black and uh and and just do it. Do a shadow roulette. I think that'll fix your problems, Margaret.
Yeah, the forty eight point five percent chance of success, that's more than fifty so it'll work.
Yeah. Absolutely. So Lawrence is shattered. He's very depressed. He has seen all of his hopes for a better future go down and flame sames. He's never going to recover from his failure here or the attendant PTSD as a result of his wartime experiences. And honestly, this is a big part of what makes him a sympathetic figure to me, right, but he is not seen that way by a lot of the men who fought for him or his descendants.
One of my favorite articles analyzing Lawrence's legacy was That Peace in Smithsonian Magazine by Scott Anderson in twenty fourteen. He followed in Lawrence's Shadow during the early years of the Syrian Civil War and interviewed descendants of the Bedouins who'd fought by Lawrence's side. One sheikh, a latune of Muduwara in southern Jordan lamented that after the war, the badly damaged Hejah's railway was allowed to fall apart, entirely
isolating many communities once connected by the Imperial project. The partitioning of the Arab world had made the maintenance and rebuilding of such a railway impossible, and there's no real way to conceive of such a project working out and preserving such accomplice peaks of infrastructure through all of the conflicts that have royaled the area since. Quote. My grandfather thought that these destructions were a temporary matter because of
the war, but they actually became permanent. And you have to remember this railway had been backed and funded by donations from Muslims in places like the Hejahs, because it was this was their future, right, this would have connected them to the world. And there's no way to keep this going in like these carved up conflicting states that are the ultimate result, right of the actual you know,
post war period. And Lawrence had kind of convinced people to blow up this railway and the promise that and then you'll get a state and we can fix things right like you know, the right, and that never happens right now, Lawrence tries, right, how much credit does that get him? You know, maybe not a lot if you're living in the in the rusting shadow of this dead railway, watching any hope of a better future, you know, fade away, Right, So they kind of.
Like, you know, in the end, it was better under the Ottomans.
No, I think it's a little more complicated than that. Ultimately, when I read kind of analyzes of Laura, you know, you can find some good pieces of like Muslim scholars talking about like how Lawrence gets talked about. It's mostly just like he's not really seen as a major figure in all of this, right, They're more interested in like guys like Faisal, They're more interested even in like British people like alan By, there were some other you know,
British agents who were moving around like Lawrence. Because I think in part of how much attention he gets has for a long times been kind of like, well, he
wasn't really as important as everyone thinks he is. Right now, that is, there's a reappraisal that's going on in the present day, and you can find some some like Muslim historians who are essentially like, yeah, I actually he actually was a very significant part his book is a fairly accurate accounting of things, and he seems to have really tried to do what he thought was best, even though
like a lot of it didn't work out. Like there is a reappraisal going on here, in part because modern historiography has found that Lawrence was actually telling the truth about a lot of stuff that he had been kind of believed to be bullshitting about for a while. Now that said, attitudes about him are very complicated over there.
Right now, I want to refer back to that article in the Smithsonian magazine because later in that article, Sheik a Latune says this, some people think he was really trying to help the Arabs, but others think it was all a trick, that Lawrence was actually working for the British Empire all along. When I press for his opinion, the shape grows slightly discomfited. May I speak frankly. Maybe some of the very old ones still believe he was a friend of the Arabs, but almost everyone else we
know the truth. Even my grandfather, before he died, he believed he had been tricked. And that's a common attitude towards Lawrence over there, and it was not universal. His old friend Emir Feisal, who became King of Iraq, said in nineteen twenty that Lawrence had been truthful in his promises, a matter that made the Arabs trust him, But a lot of people dislike Feisal, right, you know.
I mean this gets into the like, why I believe so strongly in honesty is that well to the people that you're working alongside of, is that you set yourself up for that when you lie to people, even if you're trying to. Like his paternalism in the end makes people realize that he was fucking them over, you know, because he didn't treat them as equals and make decisions alongside of them. Yeah, because they might have reached the
same conclusions. They might have been like, well, cynically, I guess we should side with the British because dynamite and British gold will accomplish everything, you know.
And there's a lot of like you could you could argue prob Maybe part of why Feisal is, you know, so positive towards Lawrence is that, like, you know, Lawrence is kind of honest with Feisal in a way that maybe he isn't to a lot of these other people, right, These different because a lot of these a lot of these Arab tribes that he was getting in line behind the rebellion weren't super pro feisial. What they were like, well, but we hate the Ottoman and he's saying it'll work
out better. Maybe we'll just like give it a shot. The rebellion seems to be working pretty well, and then they wind up being like, oh, well, we just kind of got fucked on this, right, We sent our sons to die and this asshole became a king. But like, what did we get right? Yeah, So, after his brief stint with Churchill, Lawrence changed his name and asked to be allowed to re enlist in the British military, this
time as a private. He told a friend that he never wanted to be responsible for anyone or anything significant again for the rest of his life. Like this is how broken he is that he was like, I don't want any of this fame. I am not going to I'm going to take a new name and it re enlists us a private, so I just don't have to do anything but follow orders for the rest of my life.
Yeah, I kill and die.
That's kill and die. Sure, I'm fine with that. Literally, anything like I've done lots of killing. I'm okay with that. I just can't like, I have failed so utterly in what were my goals in this thing that I just I don't want to make another decision for the rest of my life.
Yeah.
So we spend the next I think fourteen years stationed on a series of small bases around Britain. He lives a quiet, almost solitary life, reading voraciously, listening to music, writing letters to friends, and writing his motorcycle through the countryside.
Through this time, the legend of Lawrence grew and grew, spurred on by the publication of an edited version of his book, which is there's a fascinating story here Margaret about like what happens to Lawrence's manuscript here, And this is one of the there's a great article by Robert
Knu that's just an author's worst nightmare. So Lawrence, he writes while he's like, you know, in the start of the nineteen twenties, after all of this had fallen apart, he wants to write his great memoir, which he'd planned for a long time. He'd planned to publish a book called Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Initially this was going to be based on his before the war, his travels through the Muslim world, and he writes that book and then
he destroys it. He gets like anxious about it. He decides it's no good, and before he goes off to war, he destroys the entire book, right, And then he takes the title of that book and he uses it for the book that he writes about his time fighting in this desert war. And he puts together, using all of these notes that he's taken, a two hundred and fifty thousand word manuscript. And then after finishing the manuscript, he
destroys his notes. I don't know why. I've never heard a good reason as to like, why does he destroy all of his original notes once he finishes it? But he does, And he only has a single copy of this manuscript. And then when he is at reading station, he leaves it in a bathroom and loses it.
Yeah, I see why every author's worst nightmare.
Yeah, that's a nightmare. Now I want to lost.
A file of about thirty five thousand words of.
Then god, oh my god, what a nightmare.
Oh yeah, oh that hurts here. I never finished that book.
Yeah. There is debate Margaret about this, Right, some biographers or some people will argue, he probably didn't lose this. He probably he was so angry about this guy who is, you know, this journalist who has made him into like the center, like a celebrity, right, and he's just so shamed of what happened that he destroys this manuscript, right, and then like regrets it immediately, right, But that like maybe that's what happened, right, And he's destroyed a manuscript before,
it wouldn't be weird, right, whatever the case. Lawrence gets back to work working on a new version of the book, and the second draft of this, which he has to make from memory since he's destroyed most of his notes, is four hundred thousand words. And he writes this in three months, just like that's like some Stephen King ass shit. I do wonder if I know cocaine was available over the counter back then, what were you doing, Laura? How do you do four hundred thousand words in three months?
That's nuts?
Well, like five thousand wars a day or something.
Yeah, that's an insane rate of something like that.
I could do that for like three weeks if I had to.
And he's unhappy with it, so he throws that out, and then he writes a third version of the book.
He's on his fourth, seventh, four seven manuscripts of wisdom.
He almost does write fucking seven.
Yeah.
The fourth version of this comes in at three hundred and thirty five thousand words, and this time he has the Oxford Times Press print eight copies of it. Right, He's not gonna lose this fucking one. Right, he send some of these and that this is the text from which we get the final version, and Lawrence would would kind of regret for the rest of his life. He would say that the first draft was more accurate, like I fucked up less, like I got more of the
basic the nuts and bolts. Right. Some people will say, like, well, it's actually probably much better because in the process of writing a million words of this story over and over again, he got better at writing.
I'm sure the prose is better, and I'm sure that accuracy is better in the first one.
Yeah, that's probably fair to say. And that's like, my god, what a fucking nightmare. I I know I would not be able to live with myself.
But would the first version have helped the Vietnamese defeat?
Yeah, have helped the Vietnamese war strategy, right, maybe not. I think it's at this point here, like when we talk about all these different versions of the truth and the question of like how accurate is this, that we get dragged back once again the question of Lawrence's sexuality. Right. One of the key arguments against the rape and draw story is that some of Lawrence's comrades in the Tank Corps would later claim that he asked them to beat
and whip him for sato masochistic pleasure. Now, there is a lot of reason to doubt these claims, and even if they are true, we could just as easily interpret this as Lawrence working through his trauma as a result
of having been gang raped. But one piece of evidence to the contrary is that in the original version of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence's description of his rape was then this is wild two hundred pages longer than the version that wound up in print, which is a lot And so some people will be like this, this kind of reads like he was more putting out a fantasy. Right, That's a lot of time to spend talking about yourself being tortured in this kind of like very graphic detail.
That is, it is tinged with romance too, Like it's very it's an odd bit of writing. Oh you know, that's just the way Lawrence writes. Yeah.
And also there's a huge difference between romanticizing the bad stuff that happens to you and romanticizing bad stuff in general. Right, yeah, Like if the way that you want to process something bad is by romanticizing being like, at least my life is interesting and beautiful, even though it's terrible and tragic, yeah, like, good on you. Well.
Yeah, So the journalists that we get these claims that Lawrence he's basically writing pornography, right, you know, just because he's so into this stuff that didn't really happen is a guy named Philip Knightley. And when I say journalists, you might put some air quotes around this, but he reports heavily on Lawrence, right, and he's kind of the origin of a lot of this, And he says, quote it was so redolent of the sort of sato masochistic
literature that you get in the Charing cross Road. It sort of cried out that this is Lawrence writing for his own interest in delectation. Right, This reads like a lot of the Sato masochistic like smut that was being published at the time, and so that's why I think it's fake. Quote. Lawrence continued these sato masochistic practices with the help of a man called John Bruce. Bruce was paid to birch Lawrence and then write an account of
Lawrence's beating bearing. Under the birching, the letters were collected by Lawrence, who read them again and got two kicks for his book, so to speak, right, this is Knight's Nightly's claim right now. The unedited version of the book also points paints a darker and more self serving and consciously imperialist picture of Lawrence. In the original text. For example, he describes Fisle as a very weak man, an empty man. You were able to use faisal to get what you wanted.
And is that a more accurate depiction of Lawrence or is that just kind of him in a much darker frame of mind? After three writing three versions of this story, right.
How do we know what the first one said? Is it because he's later we.
Know what earlier drafts say, Right, we have that draft of the four hundred thousand word one. I think, oh, we do have that. I think that's what he's talking about. Not the original draft that's lost forever. We're like the three hundred and thirty five thousand word one or something like that. There are earlier There are earlier, longer drafts than what got published that we have access to. I
don't actually know exactly. There's so many, so many copies of seven Pillars floating around, right I am.
But if I were to write that and I spent two hundred pages describing a thing that happened to me, yeah, I could imagine being like, it's time for a third draft.
Time for a third draft. I might need to cut this down a little bit, kill your darlings, Lawrence. Maybe maybe the torture scene is a little log.
There's this classic thing with like writing, where your first novel you can't get away with spending eight pages describing stained glass. Yeah, But by the time you like on your like fifth novel and there's a fucking window. Yeah. But by the time you're on your fifth novel, you can spend eight pages talking about stained glass because you already have the auther buy in. So, Lawrence, your problem was that it was your first book.
It was your first book, buddy, you know, well, actually it was It was like his third through or second or third through like fifth books or something like that. Yeah, now, Nightly, I should say this, who is making this case that like Lawrence was an asshole. He was a real imp realist. He was a bad person. He was this like masochist who lied about what happened to him. Knightley's not a
great source himself. The first articles I found about him that were like, well, there's this guy who says, you know, all this bad stuff abou Lawrence described him as like a scholar. That's not really who Nightly was. And to describe, like who this guy is, I want to read a
quote from The New York Times. Early in nineteen sixty five, Philip Knightley and Colin Simpson, journalists specializing in feature pieces for the London Sunday Times, were assigned to follow up a Sixtyish Scotman story that when he was nineteen and Lauras thirty three, he was paid by the hero of
Arabia to administer periodic beatings. The lawrence that Lawrence relished testing his body in other ways was nothing new, but the revelation was clearly of a kind when stretched into a front page Sunday series to stimulate both reader and newspaper circulation, and by early June of the same year,
the sensationally headlined articles began to appear. The Sheik who made Lawrence Love Arabia and how Lawrence of Arabia cracked up a full exclusive confession from the man who shared his tragic secret with the global facilities established press power and generous pocketbook with the Sunday Times at their disposal, Nightley and Simpson could locate and interview people from Turkey to Australia, pay for information, proy open library doors and foreign office files long locked shut, and do it all
in time to meet their newspaper deadlines. So, you know, maybe take this with a grain of salt. Some of these things they're claiming, these these recollections from other people decades later. You know, these guys who are hungry for big stories that they can sensationalize about, you know, t e. Lawrence, right, Jerry, just.
Like don't care if it was like whether it was a kink or yeah, trauma dealing with because as are related anyway, and like whatever.
Yeah, I'm interested in like whether or not it happened, right, But like, yeah, I've known more of Claire based on it, yeah, right right now. Jeremy Wilson, Lawrence's officials biographer, interprets the original text, or at least what we have of the earlier text of Seven Pillars, very differently from Nightly. The fact that you have Lawrence being more of a dick, you know about some of this stuff, as this segment from an article and the in dependent makes clear. Wilson said.
The text shows that Lawrence felt guilty after he encouraged the Arabs to rise up and fight. He knew they would not get an independent state in exchange for their help because France and Britain had other plans. Wilson told BBC Radio four. When he realized how duplicitous his role was, he became upset about it and went off on a spying mission to Damascus. But the point is he was hoping to get killed on the way. There's no reference to that in the final text, but there is an
allusion to it in the original texts. So Wilson, who is more of a scholar certainly than Knightley, is like, well, no, actually, like the original text includes him kind of talking about how he tried to get himself killed because he felt so bad about what he had done, right, which does not portray him as like this cold imperialist, right, just fucking over people, right, and is more a man who did some very immoral things but was also trapped in this just fucked up situation. Right now.
That's the version that I feel like has been that I've certainly taken away from. Yes, is like the man who always wants to do right and realizes you can't and then feels trapped and like.
Yeah, yeah, I think that's probably the closest reality to the reality that we're going to get.
He would to be such a good Catholic, like he wanted to get it, would have made it. Yeah, he wants forgiveness.
He would have been a great monk, right, Like if he had come about in the medieval era, he would have been so happy as a monk.
Yeah.
Yeah. Now, partly as a result of the War on Terror and largely pushed by the work of scholars like bar And shedding doubt on aspects of Lawrence's narrative, Lawrence saw a reapprisal in the early twenty first century that was largely late ninety late twentieth kind of early twenty
first century that was largely negative. Right, the Arab revolt has regularly been described as a side show in World War One, which I really hate to hear whenever people are like, well, actually, it wasn't even that big a deal that any of this went on, because one intent of the people living in the region died in the fighting. Right, Like, this is not a side show. This is a major historical event, no matter how you slice it. And it's really fucked up when people argue otherwise.
Sorry, fewer white people were there.
Sorry, there weren't as many white people there.
Right.
Lawrence has been described as a braggart, a liar, a fantasist, and a historic appraisal of the man has to caution against taking this interpretation too far. Again. Barr, who's very properly critical, I would say, responsibly in a historical sense, critical of Lawrence, also describes seven Pillars as essentially accurate. Right, and more recent scholars, including the leftist academic Neil Faulkner, have urged a reappreciation of Lawrence as a titanic figure
in world history and that of the region. Now, Margaret, you asked a little earlier, are we going to hear about what happened to do right, and it's time for us to tell that story, which is I know, it's a bummer. Yeah. Yeah. So after Lawrence left the Karkamish dig site in nineteen fourteen, the two never met again because during the war, partly as a result of the war, there's a typhus epidemic in Dome's hometown and he dies
in nineteen sixteen. Oh shit, so he's only like sixteen or something he was, Yeah, I think he might have been eighteen, yeah, because he was like sixteen when Lawrence left, right, So he's probably like eighteen. Yeah, but he does not get a long life. You know, this is partly as a result of the war, although not Lawrence's pardon it. Lawrence is not an active participant in the fighting until
Dome's dead. Now, if you don't find the claims made a Knightley's reporting credible and instead take Lawrence at his word and the words that he sent along to close friends, he never had any other kind of intimate relationship, sexual or otherwise in his life. I want to quote now from an article in Salon dot com by Anthony Sattin in nineteen twenty seven. He wrote to his friend the homosexual novelist, I M Forster, I'm so funnily made up sexually,
and later that same year went further. Having read Forster's ghost story Doctor Woollacott, in which a man dies after a game sexual encounter, Lawrence wrote that the Turks, as you probably know or have guessed through the reticences of seven Pillars, did it to me by force. I couldn't ever do it. I believe the impulse strong enough to make me touch another creature has not yet been born in me. And that is that kind of sounds like, yeah, like this is someone who's ace, that men's very ace, right.
Like the following year with Robert Graves, the poet and at that point his biographer, he had a discussion about fucking as I wrote, with some courage. I think few people admit the damaging ignorance. I haven't ever, and I
don't much want to. And that's part of what's so interesting to me is that, like, this isn't really something if we're looking at Lawrence, this isn't something we have to be like wondering about, because he not only as you write about it, he is aware and open to homosexuality.
He is talking to his gay friends about his sexuality, which is so interesting to me, so unexpected, Right, I really didn't think that we would have him directly talking about like fucking and being like, yeah, I never wanted to do it, Like, yeah, that's fascinating to me. That's perhaps there's so many historical figures that I wish I knew that about, right, because you're like, oh, why did this woman never have children or get married? Was she guy? Was she Ace?
Was it just never work out?
Like?
Was she just actually loved Duck? But it was doesn't want to marry? Like who knows?
You know?
Yeah, And it's like with Lawrence, this is as clear as you can get a figure in this era talking about a sexuality. And probably I think the best final source on this is one of Lawrence's homosexual friends, Vivian Richard's. And it's like spelled vyv y an. It's a man's name, but I think it's just pronounced Vivian. The two met at Oxford, and Vivian is no, I haven't, Oh there's a there's a man named Villa. Anyway, Well, Vivian is
in love with Lawrence, right. Vivian is a homosexual man who has a massive crush on Lawrence, and he was like, I could fix him. Yeah, horribly sad that Lawrence was never reciprocated. He wrote later, he had neither flesh nor carnality of any kind. He received my affection, my sacrifice, in fact, eventually my total subservience, as if it was his due. He neither gave the slightest sign that he
understood my motives or fathomed my desire. In return for all I offered him with admittedly ulterior motives, he gave me the purest affection, love, and respect that I have ever received from anyone, a love and respect that was spiritual in quality. I realize now that he was sexless, at least that he was unaware of sex. And yeah, that's beautiful, that's.
Kind of sweet. Yeah, it's like what sometimes like when people who have sexuality who date people who are ace. Yeah, you know my like, oh well there's something else that's beautiful about this.
Yeah. Yeah, And that's very much what Vivian is saying. I think if Dome had lived, and he might have written something similar, right, like, this was never a physical thing, but he was the best and most most dedicated friend I ever had. Yeah, and this is where we will conclude the life of Lawrence Margaret after one of the most action packed first acts in history. The remainder of his military career in existence was not the stuff great movies are made of. The simple reason seems to be
that he was just absolutely shattered by war. Lawrence's nerves never recovered, and in nineteen thirty five, at age forty six, he opted to retire from the military. As he was settling into his new home, he wrote one friend of his discomfort with this situation. I imagine leaves must feel this way after they have fallen from their tree and until they die. Let's hope that will not be my continuing state. Alas it was. A week after writing this,
Lawrence crashed his motorcycle and perished in the accident. And that yeah, again, it's like, beautiful rider. Yeah.
It's like when there's like several really sad musicians who accidentally drown and you're like, yeah, I'll let you have it. I'll pretend. I'll let the world pretend that's an accident. Yeah, yeah, sure, Lawrence accidentally crashed his motorcycle.
Okay, yeah, yep, wow, whoa see.
I would watch the movie about the second half of his life. But it'd be more like watching The Lighthouse or something.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that that I would as well. Also, I'll be watched The Lighthouse. Great movie. I think Lawrence of Arabia probably would have liked The Lighthouse.
Yeah, that would have been too. He wouldn't have gotten all the masturbation. I didn't get all these.
He would not not have been a fan of all of the masturbation. Yeah, it's not interested in that. Yeah, yeah, explaining the Mermussy to Lawrence of Arabia. If I get my time machine working, I'm gonna go back in time and be like Lawrence, wait a second before you get on that motorcycle. Yeah all right. First off, this is a photo of a man named Willem Dafoe. He's gonna
be born in a couple of decades. Great actor. Now I need to explained to you with something called a book series called the Twilight Series, this is not your time to books. There are vampires which I feel like you might be into, but not in the way that you're into them.
Yeah, yeah, I didn't. I didn't know the first thing about him. I've read about the Ottoman Empire, I've read about British man Naye Palestine. I knew that there was this guy. I never saw Lawrence of Arabia the movie.
Oh it's great, you should see it.
Yeah, And I think by the time I would have watched it, I would have been like, ah, another movie about a white guy and off to go save the world or whatever. Yeah, and well, now I want to watch the movie.
But yeah, I recommend it.
No, he's he's interesting. And it's like most of the really simple narratives that are around available for him don't seem accurate. Yeah, you know, because like absolutely is Orientalism part of his story completely for sure? Yes, and like but it's but you can compare his or antilism to the guy the like daddy guy who like wants to go around the Ottoman Empire or whatever. Yeah, and then also you know, he's still doing bad while trying to do good. And oh man, he's interesting.
Yeah, fascinating character. Oh yeah, and that's Laurence of Arabia. Well, Margaret, you're gonna go blow up the train now, uh legally legally not well cast over.
Yeah, go listen to cool people, cool stuff if you like complicated moral stories about people that are kind of like.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah, this was kind of that from me, because that is I guess we should answer the question I said we were going to be asking this, where do you land Lawrence of Arabia bastard? Yes or no?
Bastard in the way that we're all doomed to be.
Yeah, yeah, that might be it.
You can't go into it. You talk all the time on the show about how you can't go into war and come out with your hands clean, and I'm always like, yeah, but I probably could.
I could get make it work.
Yeah, I would just I would just stay morally clean, even if it kills me whatever.
Yeah. Yeah.
And here's someone who wanted to stay morally clean even though it would kill him. And then he's like, oh no, never mind, I'm just gonna gun down everyone.
Yeah, and timed to machine gun hundreds of people.
So he is a bastard. And he's a bastard almost by like accident of birth and like thing he's involved in, rather than like a character treit. Yeah, you know, like he's up to some bastardrey.
Yeah. Yeah, it's tough. It's tough. He did his best, uh, but he also probably shouldn't have been doing some of the things he was doing.
It's a mix, yeah, like, don't stumble around in the fog.
Around in the fog of a foreign country, and yeah, and try to institute new states. Uh, maybe you don't know what you're doing. Maybe that's a bad idea. Maybe maybe maybe there's more wisdom in the prime direct. Not that this is a less advance, I'm not saying that, but like just in the idea that, like, don't just go stick in your dick in every fucking situation you see, right, Yeah, maybe the fact that some people are having a ward doesn't mean that you need to like make a call there, right.
Even though you fell in love with one of them.
Even though you fell in love with one of them, and even though it is very sweet to say I'm going to liberate his entire race, Yeah, yeah, it's also pretty fucked up and orientalist to do. So maybe just don't do that. Maybe maybe just buy him like some chocolates, you know, maybe chocolates are better than launching a rebellion.
Maybe the ring of power needs to be cast into the fiery yeah pits of Mount Doom.
Yeah, I'm sorry, yes he is. There is some strong Boramir vibes to t Lawrence. Yeah, he was boramir maxing there for a little while.
Wonder some of the story about like going across the desert to go get the Allies to attack the city. Yeah, liked Tokien read that and then a going to go find the like undead army to bring it to bear.
Like Token obviously would say like no, you know, this is none of it because that was always his stance. But like yeah, also, like obviously World War One influenced what he wrote, and this is part of World War One. This definitely who definitely takes from this. This is the basis of doom, right, Yeah, Like this is directly like this is not I'm not like going out on a linear. This is directly what inspires a lot of doom.
Yeah.
Right, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, and it's not really all that hard to see why, you know. Yeah. And it's also it's interesting because it shows that Frank Herbert, I think, understood this similarly to we Do to how we do, because dude is fundamentally about how like it's a really bad idea to have this white savior stumble into another culture and just start leading a war. It does not end well. He goes crazy. He com it's a shitload of war crimes. He becomes an absolute monster,
and like, Okay, you got it. You really took the right thing out of the te Lawrence story. Unfortunately, everyone is going to interpret your book wrong for forever because you made the horrible mistake of doing it making it all look really cool.
Yeah.
Ah, well that's why I don't.
Like Yeah, this is why I don't write fiction about, for example, anarchist militant characters who are are meant to be very complicated and not necessarily good people. But I also like writing about cool people, so they wind up sounding cool, and then people are like, oh, is this guy a good guy? No, no, he's not.
And Bernie was curious they should go read Robert's book After the Revolution, because that is what that is talking, Yes.
A book full of morally compromised people who regret their actions in war just get to say.
Where sunscreen, yeah, plots of water, touch grass, and pet a dog if that dog says they want to be petted.
And if you want to do a moral action that is essentially never wrong. Feed people.
People don't blow up bridges, you know what. Honestly, more often than not, blowing up bridges works out badly. Sure, don't don't blow up a bridge unless you're a hurricane. Then like that's your business, you know, And not that I support it, but you know, you have that right.
Hurricane, And if you do want to if you do want to do a hurricane, just call up Nancy Pelosi because she's got that hurricane on speed dial.
Oh. I don't know what that's a reference to. I only know about to drink. What the fuck is I assume controlling the weather? Hurricane? Oh okay, I was.
Just doing I've been doing a bunch of episodes about witches recently, and they they were believed to control the weather, and that was a It was actually not actually what caused the wish hunts, but a lot of them were. People were like, oh, the witches control the weather. And I'm like, ha ha ha, look at you, silly early modern fools thinking people. Oh crap, nope, that's happening now.
Yep. Yeah, anyway, anyway, Bye.
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