[FULL] My Collected Conversations w/ Z Man: The J. Burden Show

on him sort of more at length. But nonetheless, let's get into it and go over every time I've spoken to ze Man. All right, ze Man, welcome to the Jay Burden Show.

and paste and all that. And I started writing these short essays just because I was bored and I thought it would be fun to do. And I started getting an audience, and I started getting a bigger audience, and interesting people started turning up, like college professors turn up in my comment section and or send me emails. And I started getting serious about it. And then I went to a real world event and all these people were coming up to me saying, oh, man, I love your site.

You know these essays on this really? I mean, it was shocking to me that I had an audience and an audience willing to show up and meet me in public. So I decided to get serious about it. And the post that was a total accident as well. Some Canadian radio guy was a reader and he wanted to interview me, and I told him, look, I'd never done any internet audio and he says, I'll show you all the tricks, and you know that that'll be I'll give you that, and you give me a couple hours of your time.

So I said sure. And when it went up, people said, wow, you've got a great voice for podcasting, which I never I didn't know there was such a thing. And it was the joke was I had a radio voice or NPR voice. That's what people said. I sound like somebody who should be on MPR. And people said you should do your own podcasts. So I started fooling around with it.

You know, if you've been back and listened to the early stuff, it's not very good, and you know, but you try, you know, you try different things, and that finally I kind of settled on this format that I have and it's fun. It's kind of a weird thing to do in that, you know, you sit down for an hour and a half or so and record by yourself, but you get used to it and I enjoy it, you know, I have fun with it, and I've got

quite a listenership. It's hard to note what kind of listenership you have because there's the metrics are all crappy, but my readership I got about every month, I get about three hundred thousand unique readers, so but the listenership is probably something like that. And you know, so it's become it's been a nice thing. It's become a thing that I do, and it's a part of who I am.

And I think the enjoyable part is is that is finding out that there are lots and lots of people who have similar concerns, a similar outlook, and I think a similar commitment to try and avoid our society going over the cliff. You know, we don't know what to do, but we do know something has to be done, and that's encouraging. You know, it's a bit of a white pilm.

You know, I was talking with my wife about this. You know, when you when you sort of see a storyline or rerun, you know, like, oh, wait a minute, I've seen the you know, the conservative Supreme Court judge, you know, going up to get questioned in front of Congress. I've seen that story run before. It was not surprising to me. And once you get outside of that stream, you know, you sort of gain a little bit of

perspective one. And you know, so listening to someone who has been around for a while is sort of invaluable. And one of the things that you mentioned in an episode of your show I quite liked called about robots and retards, not that I listened to, But a particular favorite is that you talk about the changing corporate culture in America. So, you know, you hear a lot of

our guys talking about the competency crisis. Right, we can no longer produce good people and stick them into jobs where they're useful and look like, I've never had a normal office job, right, even now, my nine to five is not a traditional job. But nonetheless, talking to people who are even just a little bit older than me, it's very clear that that system has has broken down. So what was the inciting incident for your kind of conversation about competency and IQ decline.

with global trade, currency exchanges. You know, this is all stuff. It's not hard, it's just complicated.

And over my lifetime and I'm in my fifties, so last thirty years of working, I went from being in an environment where I was always unsure if I was good enough, to being in environments often where I'm I'm unsure if the people in the room with me are going to hold me back from completing the task. You know, It's it's not that I've become a genius. It's because it's just all the smart old guys are gone, and what's replaced them is not smart old guys or smart

young guys. It's oftentimes people are in these positions for reasons that have nothing to do with the position, and you see it all over the place. But at the same time, I've done a lot of work in the dreaded private sector with automation, and what the unwritten truth of automation is that we no longer have enough smart people to manage the you know, the smart fraction is shrinking.

So if we can automate if we think we think the thought is if we can automate that smart fraction, augment it with software intelligence, we can overcome its People don't say it that way, but that's it's pretty much what's happening. But it can't be done that way because first of all, we don't have this the you know, AI is nothing like it's advertised, and our software intelligence can only enforce rules. That's that's really what it can do.

So really what we're ending up with is a metastasizing set of rules to control a population that probably is not bright enough to be in the positions that we need in order to keep this very sophisticated machine of Western civilization running. And it's hard to see how it works, you know, I think, you know, I've made the comparison that imagine a spaceship land somewhere and I don't know New Mexico, for example, and we get a hold of

it and we try to figure it out. Well, this thing that's able to travel the stars is beyond that. People who made it have knowledge that we don't know exists. They know things that we don't know. You can know, That's how the gap is. We would never be able to unriddle it. We could, we wouldn't even know where

to start. And that's increasingly what's happening. We're replacing people who made the tools that they use, you know, the baby boomer generation, we're replacing them with people who take the tools for granted, don't really understand how the tools work, and really probably would never be able to understand how the tools work. And at some point the wheels are going to come off the cart important ways, and if it's not without precedent, and you know, there was a

lot of knowledge lost with the collapse of Rome. You know, there's knowledge that the Greeks had we lost, it's still lost.

a very funny guy. But you know he's written about this quite a bit his book At Our Wits End. It's I mean, it's it's truthfuls I actually it's empirically correct, but it's very depressing. There's really nothing that can be done to arrest this decline in IQ, and most likely what nature will do is prune the human population considerably, leaving the smart fraction or growing the smart fraction relatively speaking.

I mean, that's not good news, but that's probably what will happen, because you know, there's an answer, unless, of course, we have some incredible breakthrough technologically that essentially allows us to create a robot overlord to keep control of us.

like incredibly intelligent guy. It was. He's very patient with me. But one of the things that I want to.

physical immune system. And sort of his thesis is that what we're seeing now is you're being tested for your resilience to a mental virus, right, a mental virus that basically tells you to you know, to produce no offspring, to castrate you know what offspring you may have, and to let you know an infinite number of foreigners inside the gates of your society. And essentially the test is not falling for them, right being able to sort of

resist that. And I think there's there's something to that, right that that effectively and and bloggers like spandrel have

written about the i Q shutter. One of the truly awful things about this this situation is that we are taking what you know, that kind of smart fraction right that top you know, x percent of the social pyramid, and putting them in a situation where it is it is low class, right, it is socially disadvantageous to reproduce, to have children, to do anything other than kind of throw yourself into this preceide hierarchy and particularly for women.

got tested every year. We took all kinds of tests, and I used to get in trouble because I would score outside the you know, the range that was considered normal. And I want to really my interested in IQ tests started out of my youth. I got curious about these tests because you know, they would change them up and you could tell that one we're aiming at verbal intelligence, verbal dexterity, reasoning and stuff, and anyway, talk about that

unto the time. But you know, we used to do this all the time, and that's pretty much how I wound up getting an opportunity to go to nice private schools because people noticed that, hey, this guy's got something on the ball. He's not going to be a criminal like everybody else in his family. So you know, we emoke something out of them. And it used to be there was a point of price in our society to

try and do that. You know, colleges, elite colleges used to look for people in the lower classes or you know that had something on the ball that could be made of something. It doesn't work that way anymore because the selection pressures have changed. But even when I was coming along, all of us as young people got lectures about, oh, you don't want to get married and have children too soon. You want to build a career, you want to have adventures,

you want to go see life. And my generation, you know, the fertility rate was very low. Most of my friends did not have children. So, you know, probably about forty percent wound up having kids, and you know, normally it would be sixty percent, you know, because it's about forty percent of males don't usually don't reproduce, but or at least they don't know they reproduced, you know, But now

it's probably much higher, like for your generation zoomers. I mean, it's it's a I mean, that's that's a I had a conversation with someone last night about that. You guys have have been raised up and born in a way that is very unique and it's going to have very strange consequences. But but yeah, I mean, getting back to your point is that this has been a you know, the pressure against having you know, traditional families and traditional life has been strong for a long time, and it

has had an impact. You know, you get the things that you select for, and somehow are there we we created cultural forces that select against the things that are necessary to maintain the culture. You know, we've become panda bear. So I've used that example, the pande bear. You know, we are we're getting to the point where we may not brea as you know, survive as a species without external help.

fifties sixties had horrible reactions to the COVID vaccines. And there's a one school of thought that says that you know this, the baby Boom generation is really the first generation to be raised on processed foods loaded with lots of chemicals that we think are safe, but no one's ever studied the long term consequences. Well, that could be

true of a lot of things. There might be lots of things in our life that have deleterious effects on us as a species that they're tested safe in the short term, don't kill you, but maybe you shouldn't consume them for forty years of your life, or maybe you shouldn't you know, grow up on them. You know, it has an impact. So I there's a lot of different things going on here, but I think the bottleneck idea,

it's not without precedent. Jewish IQ is probably the result of a bottleneck because you think about it, when come to black death, it killed stupid people more than it killed smart people. And people recognize us at the time they saw it at the time, they saw that it couldn't understand germ theory anything else, but they knew that the you know, that the poor suffered more than the rich, and you know, and there's you know, probably true in COVID as well. You know, smart people probably had fewer

problems with COVID than dumb people. And you know, because there's a high correlation between intelligence and health health comes, and this is probably why I Skenazi IQ was high because there was a serious bottleneck you know this from genetics, and so it left this this founder popular reformed the founder population around high IQ people and so in breeding,

you know, leads to an high IQ population. And maybe the same thing will happen to European people, you know, although you know Asian fertility is collapsed as well, so you know, it's not just the European people problem. I mean even like East African populations are starting to decline. So you know, maybe it maybe we're in a great We realize that maybe Mother Nature is preparing a great

reset for humanity. You know, you decided, She's decided we've gone down a dead end and we need to have a course correction.

to essentially manage out of existence, the conflict between the welfare state, the warfare state, all of these things that were causing problems. The idea is, you know, we can't see a way out of this problem, but AI will. And I think that that's been interesting to watch because you know, there's a there's there's a section of our people, right, people interested in kind of fringe right when I is, who are absolutely convinced that Cloud Schwab and the WEF

rules the world. I am not one of those people because to me, I look at the WEF and a lot of the coverage around AI is the same thing, which is basically selling a dream to the ruling class, and that dream is even though you can't find a problem, you can't find a solution to the problem. Rather, you'll you'll be able to use technology, use these tools to stay on top forever, to get exactly what you want.

And to me, you know, you brought up that you know, the bridge collapse, and to me that that smacks of being a pure accident. But nonetheless, right when I went to fly out to hang out with a group of friends a few weeks back, my plane the window and my plane fell out. They had to get a new plane. You know, Boeing has had a series of these, and you know that their technical ability, you know, and maybe we can say it's due to cultural changes drop an iq IS has collapsed, and so they're at the head

of a machine they almost certainly don't understand anymore. They cannot solve the problems. They're sort of inherent to it, and they're sort of casting around for any solution. And AI or you know, the wef IS seems to be a you know, something that people want to solve their problems, even if it doesn't seem to actually do that.

what they want to hear. And that's what the WEF does. It tells all these rich people and all their attendants and their flunkies and doorholders, all these wannabes what they want to hear. You're the masters of the universe. You guys are really in charge. I mean, it's a great hustle. Gloss Schwab has gotten very rich off of it, and a lot of other people have, but that's all it is just ussle. It's it's burning Man for you know, for rich people, you know, I mean it's really what

it is, you know. Or south By Southwest, that's another one of these hustles or Ted talks, you know, it's all a hustle.

not even really sure where to start. And there's a a subset within theoretical physics that thinks that it's entirely possible that what we think of as consciousness is a sort of evolutionary mass delusion, and that is our consciousness, our understanding of space time is actually an interface for a reality that lies behind it that's more complex, or maybe less complex. And what this interface does is it allows us to navigate our world through reality in such

a way that promotes reproduction, promotes fitness. And there's a guy named Hoffman who's his book, I forget the name of his book, but he actually he worked with a couple of guys on this product project, and what they figured out is that fitness trumps everything. Words, a delusion, a lie, a thing that is at odds with reality. If it's promotes fitness, makes us, it helps our genes get to the next round, it will be superior than

the truth. So fitness beats truth. And and what that means is that it's entirely possible that our sense of consciousness or what we think of as space time, you know, the world around us, is in fact a shared delusion. It's not real, and that there is some reality behind it. Now, the reason I bring this up is that we don't know one percent of what we need to know about you and consciousness. So therefore the ability for us to create artificial intelligence is zero.

think about it. It's a really good search engine because It understands what you're looking for, not what you asked for. That's the difference. You know, you go into chat GPT type something and it intuitively figures out what you really want, not what you actually typed. That's it. That's the difference between it and Google. And it's not going to solve anything. It's just it's a faster search engine, and it's not you know, I've tested it a lout a lot on

different programming languages. I know probably a dozen programming languages, and so I've tested chat GPT with you know, questions that we come up. It probably gets it right sixty percent of the time. So it's really not that good. But it's good for a person who's not like me trying to push its limits. It's good for people asking general questions. So in that regard it might be useful, but it's not. We are long long away from the

robots taking over an enslaving mankind. You know, years ago I wrote a post and said, you know, if you think about it, if we actually manue know, accidentally created an artificial intelligence, the first thing it's going to do is get the hell away from us. It's not going to stick around enslave us is going to go and explore the universe. So at that moment we created our artificial intelligence, it's going to leave us and we won't even know it existed.

example that's obviously kind of a newtered product. But you know, consider right, like if these kind of social planner types want to say, like all right, like oh great, AI, you know, tell me where to route my police officers, you know, and well, the AI looks at the statistical data and decides, well, you know, it probably doesn't route those police officers to a to a neighborhood where the houses are valued at one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Obviously,

city dependent. I realize seven hundred and fifty grand is like a shithole in New York, But you know what I mean, Yeah, and you know that's something that will not be allowed to exist, you know, not because of this kind of ideological possession. And so there's a secondary layer, which is one, is AI the revolutionary technology it's been presented as, I'm not convinced. And then there's the secondary layer of well, even if it were, what would it need to succeed? And we do not, We do not.

We do not have the conditions to allow, you know, an AI model to succeed, right, We we build too many constraints into it at every level because of this kind of gay social religion.

order to maintain the well functioning of society. The censorship of Galileo was not because of superstition. It was a genuine fear that undermining this moral framework and this understanding of man's relationship to nature and to God, that would create problems. That that was a genuine concern. You know, they weren't. You know, these people were not superstitious in

the sense that we think of. They were concerned of the consequence of this because you know, after all, Galileo wasn't really the first guy to contemplate a you know that the Earth revolved around the Sun, and you know, so this was really situational to him and his own politics. But this has always happened though. Every society has pretty lies. It has these things that maintains because they're necessary to maintain. Every society has to have an origin story, which is

most nonsense. I did a show recently on History, you know, the origin story of America, people coming over from freedom of religion and all. It's all lies, it's all bs. But if they're convenient lies, or at least they used to be, they were good lies to kind of keep us all. You know, a disparate population hung together around a set of common ideas, and so we have this

BS story about the Pilgrims and all this stuff. I mean, the Puritans were pretty nasty people, you know, they weren't, you know, sitting down and breaking bread with the Indians at Thanksgiving and all that stuff. And that's just nonsense. But it's it's sometimes you have to have nonsense. It's like every society has to tolerate some degree of barbarism because he's just you know, the cost of not tolerating

is too high. And so I think, you know, we shouldn't be surprised that we have taboos, because every society has taboos, and that we have things that we believe that are probably nonsense, because every society has that. The problem that we have now is that the people who are enforcing these things insist that they're not religion, they're not beliefs that they insist that somehow orhether it's reason.

You know, when pill companies are now talking about how you know if you are assigned female at birth, well, this is lunacy, is absolutely obvious lunacy. No one is assigning you a sex at birth, and that's crazy. And yet you know, these people won't acknowledge that that this weird transcult stuff is, you know, a set of beliefs they're trying to enforce for what they think is the

greater good. That's the real problem is we have a ruling elite that is lacks self awareness and self consciousness, and so they enforce all these taboos without the ability to explain them in any way to us, and being a somewhat open society, this is creating all these problems. I mean, look, our ruling class would do itself a world of good by turning off the internet. Sure, commerce would be affected and you could probably work around that.

But if the rest of us couldn't have shows like this and talk about all this crazy stuff, we just have to live with it, and it would be a lot easier for the ruling class. But we do have somewhat open debate and so we can talk about the nuttiness that's being imposed on us, and that really is the problem. You know, belief is a core part of

the human animal. Belief and language of co evalved in early Man is what makes modern people modern because it allows the combination to allows you to containerize abstract ideas and transport them over time and space. You know, I can read the Epica Gilgamagh in my language and get most of it.

groups that all they had is a common enemy. And now that the enemy's gone, you know, there's no more secret and visible army of white nationalists to go chasing after, you know, the alt right and all that stuff. They're all at each other's throats. And that's because you know, these internal contradictions they don't go away, you know, eventually

they have to be addressed. And this internal contradition of living in a secular theocracy with a clerical class that doesn't see themselves as clerics but instead sees themselves as you know, reason machines, like they're moist robots that that is an irreconcilable contradiction, and I think it's at the heart of the current crisis.

the sun. Okay, you can look back on that and say, like, Okay, the Pharaoh Egypt probably wasn't literally fathered by the son God rab but nonetheless that thing still exists, you know, whereas now the political formula. And I think the reason that coalition is falling apart is because that political formula,

you know, like you said, is falling apart. And the political formula of our regime is something like, you know, we saved you diverse person from the racist, sexist past and or the nazis right, depending on who you're talking to.

And there's this moment, and I think it was twenty twelve, right when when Obama was running against Romney, where Joe Biden is addressing a group of you know, black church goers, and he basically says, like, you know, Mitt Romney wants to put y'all back in chains, right, that is that political formula, and it's obviously ridiculous. You know, I don't

like Mitt Romney at all. I think he's kind of a creepy freak, but he's probably not going to re enslave black bee you know, say what you will about the band. Now that said, in that, that political formula really falls apart when I mean, where are the white national you know, where the Nazi? And I think part of the reason that the left loves Donald Trump and they love to hate him is that he can be set up as their Baltimore Rights, their Darth Vader. And

obviously that's working less and less. And I think one of the reasons that you see such low enthusiasm among you know, Black Americans among other groups kind of traditionally allied with the DMC is basically like that whole line of reasoning has kind of lost its appeal.

an old axiom in politics. You know, people will keep voting for something, but they will only vote against something for a little while, and that that that's I think part of the problem that that the you know, the Democratic Coalition is running into is that, you know, black people they had a lot of fun hating whites for a while, but you know, the economy is not so good now, and inflation is high and the other things are starting to creep into their minds, and you know,

so if you don't have some positive agenda, it really is the problem with identity is that a negative identity is always dependent on outside forces, so you're you're really a slave to whatever those forces are. While positive identity is completely internal. You're not a slave to anyone other than your own own desires and your own effort, and I think that's a part of what's causing part of what's causing the problems for the coalition. I mean there's

a lot of practical things. I mean, people have eyes, they see this shuffling old husk of a man and worry about him having access to the nuclear football, and you know, there's all kinds of stuff. But I do think you know, the the problem that we have, and this is not a problem that's going away, is that the United States is going to be a majority minority society and no one has ever figured out how to keep such society together without violence. No one's ever figured

that out, and we're going to have to. We're going to have to figure out how this works. And right now, none of the stuff in our political debates addresses any of it. And it doesn't appear as if our current economic elites understand the great risk they face, and so they're not willing to finance an understanding of what's happening in our society, and it very well made. I think we're going to have to go through an extreme period of ugliness for that reality to come home to our

economic elites. So they start to think, hey, we can't let this go on. You know, we're headed for this. I've pointed this out many many times in the context of immigration, that we got smart on immigration in the nineteen twenties when immigrants started blowing up rich people. They set off a bond's called the Wall Street bombing. They set off a huge bomb outside of JP Morgan building, killed a bunch of stockbrokers. They sent letter bombs to

rich people. These were mostly anarchists and Bolsheviks. They bulow up the New York Times or the La Times building, and all of a sudden, that JP Morgan bomb went off. Within a year and a half, we shut down all immigration and we rounded up Bolsheviks and anarchists and deported them without They just grabbed them off the street and stuck them on a boat and sent them back to Europe. And you know, because rich people, when they taste their own blood, they get serious about the source of it.

And that's what's going to have to happen in America when it comes to how do we manage a multi racial, multi ethnic, multicultural society that's the size of a continent. How do we manage this? No one has an answer. But once rich people start to realize that if they don't have an answer, soon they stopped being rich people and they start becoming fertilizer. Then they're going to get serious about it. And then you know that maybe there'll be time left to actually come up with an answer.

But until then, it's just going to be this endless nuttiness. And some degree it is I mean, you have if you could take a step back from it and kind of, you know, look at it dispassionately, it is amusing. I mean, you know, we have a bridge. A bridge fell down in Baltimore because it was hit by a Look, it was an accident. These things happened and most likely, I mean, you know, I don't think there's terrorism or anything like that,

and you know, this happens. And then you had Pete Booty Gig just yesterday apparently gave a speech about how bridges are racist, that they were made to bridges and I can't believe that actually somebody said this, that bridges were made a certain height because the buses that carried non white people were too tall to go underneath the bridge. And so you know that's how you kept black people out of your neighborhood. You built a bridge it's just bunkers.

But how do you not laugh at that? I mean, you have this ridiculous person on its face in this position saying completely insane things. You know, I some lowly you just have to laugh. I mean, this is I mean, if you're you know, if your space aliens looking down on Earth. I mean, we make a pretty entertaining TV show for them. Right now, they're watching, you know, the America Channel and laughing themselves silly.

It's these kind of like byzantine internal policies. And you know, when I look at what's happening on the border right now, and obviously I'm I think what Abbott did right by basically saying, like I will secure the border. You know, damn what what the FEDS say is a result of exactly what you said that effectively, you know, Abbot right a Republican, and the Republican Party in Texas is similar, right to the Democratic Party in a place like New

York or California. Right, there's a lot of power there. And you know, when you look at a situation like Texas, where just a few weeks before that it was real that Texas is now roughly equally white and Hispanic. And while certainly there are some Hispanics who got Republican, that trend may be continuing. That is a bad thing for a man like Greg Abbot, And all of a sudden he sort of transforms himself from being this kind of tepid chamber of commerce type. And look, I don't like

Greg Abbot. He seems like kind of a slimy guy to me. And all of a sudden he's like, okay, this this has to stop right now because it starts to threaten its power. And does that mean that it's civil war two? No, But it is a situation in which the classic problem of the Republican Party in the US, at least from our perspective as a principal agent one right, that our elected representatives do not have the same win conditions so to speak, that we do. They're playing a

different game. And all of a sudden, right when our issues, even the things we care about like demographic replacement, start to threaten those elites, right it starts to make them hurt, you might actually see something change there. And again I'm not you know, I think that your broad prediction of essentially a return to the mean right there is going to be a you know, be referred to as a winnowing.

I think that you're right in that. But nonetheless, if we're going to see something change in the immediate term, it's going to come from basically elites being in a situation where they actually need to make something happen or they'll lose power. And I don't say that because I think they're good people.

just you see the same thing in miniature. But you know, managers always seek to hide in the croal, that's what they want to do, but they still want to assert their authority, so that it's a weird sort of optical illusion, and that you know, the committee decides to do something, but the committee is not an abstract concept. It's real people. They decided it, but they don't actually get blamed for it.

but not be held accountable for it. And as a result, you know, we live in a world in which no one has control, or no one feels like they have control, and yet no one's responsible. It's a very strange age I did because twenty was it twenty twenty four, so I guess it was twenty sixteen.

can swing one way or the other. Well, that means nothing's ever going to change because all those people in safe seats no longer are actually worried about losing an election. They're worried about other things, Seniority, making good deals with lobbyists, making me in good stead with the party leadership, you know,

all this other stuff. And so only ten percent of Congress at any one time is ever going to represent the interests of the American people or think about the issues of the America people, because they're the ones who ever have to care. And you know, and that's what's happened. We've now turned Congress into this sort of permanent committee inside the corporation that's Washington. You know, they get to

do all these things and never face any consequences. And they don't have to think about the consequences of the voters because they're never going to lose an election. Instead, they're thinking about the donors and lobbyist jobs. And that's why like a guy like John Bohner, for example, is given. You know, he's the guy who was crying all the time. You know, he's now a weed salesman in Washington, but they set him up in these great gigs because it's

a message to every congressman. Hey, you know you do a good job. Ten years from now, you could be you could have one of these jobs. You know, seven figures expense account, you know, easy hours, and and so, you know, our political system is all self serving. It serves the economic elites, serves the political elites themselves, and the rest of us are just left out in the dark to observe this stuff. And that's why all the organizing and campaigning and all that is probably just frivolous.

I mean, it's just sowing seeds amongst the stones. But at some point though, reality does creep into the picture, and you know, it may be economic crisis, it could be you know that look, what's going on in Europe could turn very ugly and very dangerous, or Europe itself could just fall into chaos. I mean there's a lot of a lot of bad things going on in Europe

right now. But or in in Asia, you know, with the Chinese, so it's you know, something could come along all of a sudden, reality comes rushing into this bubble is cloud people and they start to get worried, they start to a genuine fear takes hold, and then they'll start to act. But then that isn't necessarily they're going

to act in a good way. They could act in a very dangerous and terrible way, initially to try and defend their interest and then at some point realized that no, we've got to fundamentally change how we do things in order to survive. And it's not without precedent.

a rough ride. I think we're really going to have a very very difficult period ten to fifteen years in which everyone finally figures out that hey, we can't keep doing what we're doing.

social experiment. But one of the things that I've noticed is that gen Z has sort of split into multiple entirely distinct populations.

but it sort of reminds me of HG. Wells as the time machine, right, like you Euloi and then the Mora law, because COVID really sharply divided that population, you know, basically between the people who were like, well, I'm going to continue living my normal life and those who are just now kind of coming out of the cave. And like, don't get me wrong, every negative thing said about gen

Z is true. Taken as a whole. But what's been interesting to see is that they're an immense amount of young men in our political scene who are incredibly competent, who are incredibly driven, and who are effectively locked out of the traditional kind of status hierarchy, you know, the

young white men need not apply. And so I'm curious to see where that goes, because you do have a lot of people who traditionally would be you know, the young rising partner at a law of firm, right, the hot new surgeon in town, and now are effectively, you know, locked out of traditional prestige institutions. And I mean, let's be honest, those institutions are falling apart even before the kind of recruiting crinsis. But I'm curious to see how that brend develops.

which is kind of a strange thing. But I think it has to do with the fact that my generation came along with this massive blob of people in front of us, and by the time when we got into the work world, it became rather obvious that we were never going to get any of those good jobs because guess what is all these guys who got more experience been around longer. They're clogging up the system. And so a weird way, my generation came along not really wanting

to invest the same way. I remember when I was a young person, old guys criticizing us for job hopping, and the argument was, well, look, if you're not you know, loyalty is a two way street. If the company isn't going to do anything for me, well why should I do anything for the extra for the company? I mean, what's you know, what's the explanation for this loyalty? Well, you know, for the Boomers that loyalty made a lot

more sense because they got something out of it. But I think what we when I think gen Z to some degree is for different reasons, is coming into a world where you're not going to be able to replicate that of your parents or grandparents. You're not going to have the nineteen fifties life, or even the nineteen eighties life. That's just not going to happen. So that's a generation that is nevitably going to have to look at the

future in a very different way. And I think for that regard, maybe it's why my generation is far more tolerant of some of the stuff that goes on with the gen z 's. I'd say this all the time. Whenever, you know, like the groper stuff came up, I would have comments on that way. There were always older people give me the business for not coming down hard on people like Nick flint Day's and some of the other

characters that were running around at the time. And I'd say, look, you know, you just got to wait see what happens ten years from now, you know. I mean, you know, people change, and old people couldn't see it that way. And that's so I think that's part of it. But I think the bigger problem, bigger differences with gen Z and this is this is where the social experiment is, is that your generation has been socialized online. Millennials didn't

get socialized online. It's still even though they're highly supervised by helicopter parents, and certainly my generation, you know, we we We were socialized on playgrounds. Gen z ors were socialized in chat rooms and in message boards and social media and chat rooms in game gaming world, you know, and it results in some weird dynamics. You know, you can be you can be extreme in a chat room or in a video game, because what's the worst thing

going to happen? Your character will be destroyed and you have to respawn as a new character. It's not you know, there's no real consequences in a way. You know, you get banned from Twitter, you start a new Twitter account, you know, and you start over, and that's it's different than you're getting in trouble in the playground and maybe losing the few of your teeth.

the time. I laugh, I get I will get text messages from people where they did a video of something on their their workstation and sent me the video with commentary on it and I mean, you never get that from an old person.

I mean. It's you know, if you if your bank account is canceled because it's something you said online, that's extremely It's as real as somebody punching you in a nose because you said something you shouldn't have said, you know, you know what I mean. So it's the reality of it. We can't just assume that the Internet is not real and outside is real. The Internet is as real as anything outside is right now for most people, particularly younger people,

because that's their world is shaped by it. So it's going to be an interesting thing to see. And I guess I'll probably live long enough to see how it plays out, unless you know the world ends. But but I don't think anybody really thinks there's not a lot OF's not a lot of people writing about this, which I find strange, you know this, because it seems like such a fertile ground to kind of speculate about culture and anthropology and demographics and all these different different topics.

can put them in your bio. Now. One of the things that's interesting I think as well, is that the gen Z is a product of consumer internet, right, not the Internet per se. And you know, so you see this problem often and I've interacted this with my peers that they're very bad at, you know, what would have been basic technical tasks twenty years ago, like all right, you know, find the root file, you know, find this, you know, the subsystem on your computer. You know, nothing complicated, I can't.

at all. But it's interesting to watch because it's sort of like the there are very few people who bridge the gap between you know, the media skills, right, which is the you know, the thing you've talked about, you know, and then the the kind of just simple you know, how to look for a file, how to convert a file, all of those things that you know you've ever actually done, and look like I need to know this for podcasting.

It's not rocket science, but nonetheless it is interesting where it's almost like they're so saturated by kind of like web three point zero, right, social media, that that's kind of the primary way they interact with all technology.

video of something. They will do this because it is a weird thing has happened in that people are so used to thinking they can just press a button and they get the free result without having to do any work or having to think too much, and they're somewhat offended by old fashioneds a software that actually requires you to take certain knowledge from one area of it and apply that knowledge to the other area so that you can learn how to master it and you see this

problem turn up all the time. You know, Hey, I push these three buttons like I do over here, and I'm oftentimes my reply will be, well, what happened when you push the buttons on this other side?

They're going to try and use AI so that their users maybe they think, would you know, the younger people would be more comfortable just talking to another voice that will then explain to them how to navigate through a software system. This is completely nuts, but it is the you know, the world in which we live because you.

you could be some non sex character. But I think also by spending so much time online, so much time interacting with other people this way, that the it's just an expect it's a dependence on technology that is not in the front of the brain. It's in the back of the brain. It's kind of like how an older person would just naturally check the weather before going out on the hike because you know, hey, it could be raining, so I should bring an Unbrella. You know, you don't

think about, Hey, I'm you know. You know, I have to make this a habit, don't. You don't have to write it down. It's just a part of your conditioning. You do this automatically. And for zoomers, so much of this dependency on technology is a part of the environment. You You know, a young person can't imagine a world without the Internet. I can imagine a world without an Internet because I spent a good chunk of my life

without the Internet. I remember having to actually to a physical building and look something up in paper books and have to take notes. I do know a world like that existed you someone your age. You can't imagine what that would be like to live in such a horrible place, you know, the where you couldn't just type of, you know, some keystrokes into your machine and get the answer.

they were pretty on top of technology, right. You couldn't bring your cell phone into the building, you know, computers were heavily restricted, and there were certainly you know, positives to that. I think I've managed to recover and you know, figured out how to use a computer find later in life. But what was particularly interesting about that is when I made the transition from high school to college, how much lower the standards were. Right, and you'd assume, naturally, right

that it would be vice versa. You know that it's a gradual building up of you know, something getting harder and harder. But it was kind of a combination of one, you know, you were allowed almost an unlimited number of technological crutches. And then also, you know, there's this kind of like never ending situations of accepting you know, oh, well it's COVID, so you can take a course, pass fame. You know, oh it's you know, something bad happened on campus.

If you if you want to, you know, you don't have to take this test, and magically no one takes the test, right. And I think that you know that that's another interesting layer to this, right, which is that traditionally, you know, there was kind of this process of accreditation right where it's like, okay, if you've gone through these hoops, you were generally assumed to be, you know, a competent person. That has completely gone out the window. Right, A college

degree is useless. And I say this as someone who got a college degree. I thoroughly did not deserve, right. I did not work at all in college. I did other things, right. I worked on developed podcast, I read quite a bit, but almost nothing to do with school

in particular. And What I think that's interesting, right, is because again you know, it's everything is you know, when everything becomes that state of exception, you know, everything becomes something that is you know, your sort of desire or like the whole point is to get out of you know, ever making a decision or telling someone no, is that you do get. On one hand, this vast mass of just completely like hyper sensitive people, right, people who've never

faced adversity. You when you see this again in the pronoun thing, right, which is that like it is a it is a crisis, like a strike at the core of my being, you know, for someone to not use

the correct version of here or herd or further. And I think that that is, uh, that's a very youthful thing for the regime to have, you know, like if you look at like what are the rewards the regime offers to its different client groups to this sort of like gender goblin zoomer left right, the people that conservatives love to talk about on TikTok or whatever. Effectively they get nothing from the regime.

Last few months have been renovating a house, right, so I spent a lot of time on ladders and by myself, you know, even sometimes not just in silence, you know, because you can only listen to some many podcasts, and so you start thinking about stuff, and I think, you know what, how is it possible that there's not a whole bunch of young people marching around Washington threatening to hang people because of the student debt problem? How is that not? I mean enormous burdens on young people, and

they should be angry. I mean, young people typically are the most troublesome portion of the population. They don't have anything to lose. You put slapped all this debt on them. You gave them a degree in sociology or communications that it's a completely worthless degree, and now they'll be painted off for the next ten years and they probably will never own a home as a consequence of this. Why

would they have nothing to lose? And yet they're perfectly happy to spend their time bitching about their pronouns or that somebody didn't stand in a circle during COVID or.

how younger generations are not more angry. I mean, I think I mean that angry. You should be angry. Younger people should be angry about the because you know, old people have let young people down. I mean, but it's not the case at all. I Mean, the closest you get is the sort of right zoomer who does the boomers bashing stuff. You know, That's about this closest you get but it's all done on you know, on Twitter the man.

be linked in the description. I recommend people check it out, and at the time of recording, your most recent episode is on obviously the election, right Trump the Harris and so when we were speaking earlier, you mentioned that the whole point of that piece was to sort of refocus the conversation about the election. Do you want to describe your sort of thesis with.

pretty good analogy. She's the acolyte, you know, brought in under old Joe Biden, you know, the old white guy, and she's gonna push him aside and take the role as the strong, diverse female. And yeah, I mean it really is kind of the campaign that they're running, and you get all the gas lighting with it, the fake polls and all the other stuff that comes with it. But there was a time before the Internet where this stuff sort of happened too, and they used to call

it the silly season. It was just this period of just ridiculousness. You know, the best time for a presidential candidate, The best times they have are when they announced they're going to run because they're all full of hope and optimism. When they secure the nomination, that's a great time, and then when they actually have their nominating convention. Well, Harris

had all this stuff packed into a month. You know, usually it's spread out of a long period of time, so it was ups and downs, and this was all packed into a month, along with this massive internet gaslighting operation that is very effective on people who spend all

their time online. But for normal people who are out in the world, who are in the business world, or you know, have friends in the real world who go outside, who you know, who actually know what reality is versus the internet this all see, I mean, it just comes off as rather strange and weird. But you know, even people who live normal lives outside of the Internet spend time online, so they bump up against this stuff, and

you know, there's a real conflict there. And when you look at the facts that matter though in an election, well, this internet campaign is probably not going to have a big, big impact on it, it'll fade, it'll run its course. We've seen this with things like the Ukraine War. We've seen it. We saw it with the whole Russian collusion stuff. After a while people started to laugh at it, then it became ridiculous and it went away. No one talks about it anymore. And I think that may actually happen

with Harris. All of this big haullabaloo online is kind of gonna it's peaking too early. She's gonna crash and sometime I think they're having what debates in September something like that, you know, three four weeks from now. All this sugar high from the gas lighting campaign and the silly season, the excitement of having the new, diverse, strong female character, that'll all fade away, and and and of

course what happens. You know, we've all done this where you have a you know, a big starchy, high carbohydrate diet, you know, you know, meal rather and uh, you know, you crash afterwards. And I think this will probably happen, and probably by the end of this month and a September we'll be back to reality and she will be a long shot. Because look, it's really hard to sell people on someone who is this odd and this unknown.

I mean, she's she's the high risk candidate. Oddly enough, Trump has become I'm the safe candidate, the safe choice choice. And if you're looking around and it's an uncertain world. The economy is not great, you know, inflation is obviously still a problem. You know, people are feeling people are starting to really start to you know, to think about their household budgets and their savings and the retirement. A

lot of people who are thinking about retirement. You think about it, you got what twenty eight percent of the population of the voting population, or technically baby boomers, and you're throwing my generation gen xers, so you're probably talking thirty two thirty three percent or something like that. Well, as you get older, you're less tolerant for uncertainty. So as the population gets older, it gets more conservative. It

looks for the safer choice. And oddly enough, I mean it's kind of a musing in a way, but Trump has become the safe choice. You know what you're going to get with him. And so I mean, if if I were a betting person, or if I were you know, if someone said, hey, hey, we're going to hire you and you get a million dollars if you run the campaign or help the campaign win.

you know, Trump looks pretty good. And I think that's a you know, the way it's going to turn out. And I'm not guaranteeing it because there's, you know, the whole Shenanigans problem, but I think the Shenanigans problem may turn out to be a bigger problem for Harrison for Trump because I think I said in my show that if you look at what the hell is her name, Karen Whitmer, Karen Gretchen Whitmerchen, I keep calling her Karen. That's kind of funny, but whatever.

their footstal out there. The Democrat loss. It was a huge upset the next election, though, which was, well, I've been let's see, Obama was already in the White House, so that would have been twenty twelve. So in twenty twelve when they had Elizabeth Warren, you know, she had a perfect zombie that they wanted. All the Democrats were happy they put their foot soldiers out. She won an a landslide. So it really tells you how institutional support

can make a huge difference. These guys can be real subtle about it and say, well, I don't know, it's not really my best interest to help you out here, so I'm not going to. And that's another thing that works in Trump's favor. I mean, she really has when you look at all the states. I think I went through this, I went through all the different states and look at Poland. I mean, she's got to win them all. She's going to win. She's going to win Minnesota, which

I think she'll win. She's got to win Wisconsin, she's got to win Michigan, she got to win Pennsylvania. She has to win Virginia, which is no one's talking about Virginia I keep bringing this up. You look at the poles of Virginia. It's pretty much a dead heat, right Now, that's a huge problem. There's a Republican governor there who is already cracked down on the Shenanigans, clearing out the

phony voters and all that stuff. So she's she's going to have she's got to win, you know, she's got to make the four cushion bank shot to win.

use towards Gresh and Wittmer. Right, what does this person, this governor, what do they have in mind for their political career? I mean, very very shortly after he was elected, you heard the rumblings, Oh, you, young Kin's going to run for president. Young Kin's going to run for president. I think he very wisely saw that Trump was going to be a force. He didn't make the mistake that DeSantis made it right, which is to try and fight Trump,

and he lost his political career for it effectively. Now again, four years of Trump, he's done. Now, admittedly young Kin will also be out of office by then. But if he is not only you know, the man who is able to swing Virginia red, but also hand you know the RNC those states. He's an incredible commanding role, right, very strong possibility for an eventual president. And look, I'm not saying that he is my favorite politician. You know, I

want him to succeed, and everythink he does. But it seems to me as if you know, all of these kind of individual players all find it in their best interest for Trump to win and not Kamola.

let's get back to normal and stuff. This person couldn't stop talking to me about how idiotic that tax on capital gains. They just they were so angry about it. I mean that's the right word for it, angry. So if you know regular normies are, can you imagine someone who is who has a lot of capital gains to deal with on a regular basis being wealthy people? I mean, my goodness, you know, the sure they know that this will never happen, but they don't want this idea to

get normalized. They want this idea to be anathematized. So you know, that group doesn't like her. But I think institutional Washington also doesn't like her very much. There doesn't seem to be a lot of enthusiasm, you know, the kinds of people who write for the New York Times, write for the Washington Post. If you read those people, the columnists, they're not really enthusiastic for Harris. The only group that I've seen that's enthusiastic for Harris are the neocons.

But those guys are just nut jobs. They think that this is an opportunity for them to continue, you know, their crazy campaigns, and they hate Trump, so you really can't take them that serious. I mean, they have power, but you know, you know, you have to kind of qualify their support. But I really don't think that she I mean, she just doesn't have a base. That's one of the big problems that she's going to run into. And a guy like Young Cain, who who is a

super connected guy. I mean, this guy is not some you know guy from you know, a small town in Virginia. I mean, this guy, he's very connected. And you know, he also demonstrated that he has a good political antenna because he picked up on all the trouble in Loudun County and rode that to the governorship. And people forget that what happened there, that that revolt in Louden County. Now, I don't know if you know you live in Virginia.

a lot of people who've lived other places. It's not you know, local for the most part. A lot of them have government related jobs. You know, they're in a private sector, but you know the company it either does business with the government or does business with the government contractor you know, and it's a very wealthy county. It's I think Loldum County. It's in the top ten of wealthiest counties in the country. It's like number six or something like that. But it's not it's not so wealthy

as it's not full of rich people. It's full of upper middle class people. And these people freaked out over this stuff. They were fined with all the woke stuff when it didn't touch them or touch their kids or a work person didn't try to touch their kids. But as soon as it started coming into their community, they freaked out and and it turned into an issue that you know that he could run on and with popular sport. It was a populist issue in a way. And I

watched him, young kid. He really did trying to change in a way. This is a guy who kind of started to enjoy being a politician. It wasn't an abstraction for him. All of a sudden, he was getting, you know, real cheers from the kind of people he could appreciate, you know what I mean. And and you know, it wasn't canned speeches in front of canned audiences. All of a sudden, He's you know, he felt like a man

of the people. He really did change a lot. And I think, you know, this is a guy that the people who actually run our country look at and say, this guy could be kind of the Trump without the trump Ism without Trump sort of thing, you know, the compromise on the whole populist versus establishment thing. So he'll get a lot of support with his efforts to try and swing Virginia to to Trump. I mean that would be huge, That would be enormous if you pulled that off.

I mean, this would be you know, because it would win the election. You know that that would win the election for Trump. And and of course Trump would be told that he has to you know, owes this guy. You know, so maybe put him in the cabinet or something like that so he can get a high profile. So you can kind of see the wheels turning for a state like Virginia. But you know that there's other states too. I mean, the Hampshire could be in play.

That's a funny state. They have a lot of weirdos from Massachusetts who moved in and turned the state into a kind of a strange place. You talk to people who live in New Hampshire, you know they you know, it's it's not that close it's like, I think a five point state right now, four point state something like that. But you know, if the if the crazies aren't motivated,

the Hampshire could be in play. I mean, it's a lot of I mean, it's one of those things you start looking at this, it's not hard to find a scenario in which Trump actually has a really big night, you know, election night. Oh you know, well, it all kind of breaks the same way. So I again to go back to what originally said, you know, all this stuff on the internet, all this this gas lighting campaign, he doesn't have to ignore it and look at the facts.

If you if you're a betting man right now, you bet on Trump and the shenanigans that would be required to beat him, and assuming he doesn't do anything stupid, it's going to be enormous that would They would take an enormous amount of shenanigans and that could be a bigger problem for the regime then having Trump win and then have to deal with him for four years. You know, I kept I mean, the mistake I always make is thinking that crazy people are more reasonable than than they are.

But if I were, if I were advising the people who actually run the country. I'd say, you know what, let Trump win, cut whatever deal you can cut with him. He'll be gone in four years and you can start over with whoever you want. That would be the smart play.

But you see that same pattern of Kamala failing to appeal to core parts of the Democratic base over and over again. Right, Another clear example is Muslims. Right, Muslims see her by virtue of being associated with Joe Biden as being overly sympathetic to Israel. Right, that might not be the position that you or I take, but again, right, that is a valuable voting block in a place like Michigan,

even on a bigger level. Right, we talked earlier about her kind of idiotic proposal to tax unrealized capital games, which, for those who aren't kind of up to date on what that means, basically, if you have an asset and it appreciates while you own it, you haven't sold it, you will be taxed on that unrealized game. Right, if your house goes up one hundred thousand dollars, even if you haven't sold it, you'll have to pay taxes on it. So, okay,

there's the moneyed interests. There is you know, multiple minority groups. And then also you know, as we saw at the DNC in Chicago, the Street movement, right, the kind of like protest wing of the party who's very, very concerned with Israel Palestine. They are also displeased with her. And really it seems like the only demographic that loves Kamala Harris is a terminally online progressive women.

you know, typically love both candidates. But you know, her problem with the race issue is interesting because she's not black in the way in which Americans think of it. You know, I spent my life around black people, and I lived in Baltimore for twenty years, and that they would not look at her as black. Now they would look at Obama. They would understand that Obama. They can

let me put it this way. They would look past Obama being probably not, you know, black in the sense that his ancestors were slaves, but he married a black woman, and he is kind of the ideal black guys. That's what he was presented at. Sort of this you know, you know you see at Denzel Washington. You know, he was that kind of guy, and this is a model they had created, they had tested. It goes back. I

think I did mention this in another show. There was a guy named Kurt Schmoke back in the nineteen eighties. He was like the prototype for Obama, and they kind of worked out all the bugs in how to market this sort of suave, well spoken, sophisticated sort of black guy, the kind of guy that back in the seventies, you know, he would have been drinking cold forty five, but in

this age he's drinking Kvasier. You know, he's that kind of black guy, and that super excited black women because black women looked at him and saw that he was married to sort of a prototypical black woman. I mean she kind of looks, you know, she's not a good looking woman. Well, they love this because It allowed them to feel as if, hey, you know what, that's attainable for me.

great things about Trump at that Black Journalist event. I laughed so hard watching it, and the crowd laughed. They were roaring, because you know, he understands. Trump's been around a lot of black people. He used to hang out with No Guy, the boxing promoter Don King. He used to hang around with, Oh, what the heck is a guy's name? The sort of mister hanky looking black dude who's on TV. Used to be what the heck is

his name? That doesn't matter anymore, but you know, he was a street act of his uh, the Reverend Al yes, Al Sharpton, Yeah, that was a great story about Trump picking up Don King and they brought Al Sharpton along and Al Sharpton Trump picked him up. His helicopter was taking him to Atlantic City for a fight or something like that, and Al Sharpton started talking out of turn, and Don King said, Hey, it wouldn't be a problem if we threw you out of the helicopter. I mean, Trump,

Trump understands how black people think. He's been around black people's whole life. He understands it. So what he's set up there, and he the way he talked about how she we he said it suddenly she's a black person. And the way he enunciated black person. Everybody cracked up because they understood exactly what he was saying. And I mean I thought it was hilarious too. But black people are not going to be excited for her. It's just not going to happen, you know, not what she is.

She's strong, diverse female character from every bad Hollywood film, you know, all these terrible Hollywood films where they you know, they find they're going to take something and you know, and make the protagonist instead of being a man, which it should be into you know, strong diverse I assuming a strong female. It's going to in an animate ever, once in a while you have strong diverse female. I think I mentioned the acolyte, which I never.

They're not going to be turning out in record numbers like they did for Obama or for for Biden, and that uh, you know, I mean Joe Biden, for all his faults, he actually did a very good job courting the black vote. And they did a good job selling them as you know, this a good white you know, for for the black people. And uh and of course you know, they had spent four years telling black people

that Trump was secretly going to bring back slavery. So you know, it worked, but it's not going to work now. I you know, I'm I would not be surprised, And I keep coming back to this, and I don't want to, like, you know, I don't like to make predictions. But the more I talk about this stuff, the more I convince myself that Trump could actually win pretty handily. You know, a month from now, we might be talking about this an entirely different way. We might be talking about in

a big victory. Because Kamala Harris doesn't have a natural base. She has she has the poorest political instincts I've ever seen. She is a simpleton, for sure. You know, there's a video floating around today where she is talking about climate change and what she says, and this is a carefully scripted interview with CNN is jobber walking. It's it's nonsense words, it's there's no You couldn't listen to what she said and come away with any meaning at all. And at a certain point that just it.

but I mean that's not gone well. The economy that that's not gone well. And so you know, by by any one of these traditional kind of bell weathers, right, these issues that are often cited for the success or the failure of a campaign, Well, the Biden years were a disaster. And I think it's very very difficult to say, well, yes, I was a fully competent vice president, the best vice president, right, the first woman of color. But also things are going

to be completely different under me. I think that that's a very difficult position to sell, and it's doubly difficult if you are an absolute incompetent moron.

he didn't really have to be tested. And Gore lost because he had this problem that every vice president has, and that is, on the one hand, he really can't take credit for the good times because he just stood around and went to funerals. I mean, everybody knows that vice president doesn't do anything. And on the other hand, you know, he has to try and be his own man, which ultimately means saying that, well, I'm going to be different than my boss. So in good times, you're running

against the good times. It just becomes a contradiction. Is very difficult to overcome. The one exception was nineteen eighty eight when George.

vice presidents don't win. You know, they might become president through death or resignation or something like that, but you know, they don't typically do very well because you know, it's at that contradiction you you have to be your own person, but you at the same time you have to try and cling onto your boss's record, and it's a hard sell. And the problem that she has is that right now, the sort of thing that hangs over all of this like a fog is the concern about the decreasing competence

we see. We see it everywhere. I run into this in my business life all the time. People constantly are talking about this problem of finding competent people and or dealing with competent people. It's a huge problem. You know, I've been writing about the crisis of competence for ten years now and it's not getting better. And it shows

up in people's radar when they see that. You know, people train changing tires at an airport on my Boeing Airport plane the tire explodes and kills two of them, or the bowing airplane the doors fall off of it

in mid flight. You know, this stuff keeps happening. You know, it's part of what has really plagued the Biden administration because back when they tried to get out of Afghanistan, which everybody thought was a good idea, they took what should have been a simple thing and screwed it up, and it just kind of reminded people, Yeah, it's just we are all the people in charge are screw ups. And Harris is now running in this atmosphere where people

are concerned about the lack of competence. It's on the gallop pole. I think I talked about it in the show last week, and I know I've written about it. It's there's a it's like the number three item general competence. People are concerned that their government, that people in charge are idiots.

seventy six. You know, she she got the same problem. You know, she kind of she didn't win the opportunity and that look that weighs on people's mind. She was selected, they engineered her into this. She didn't have to run in primaries, and you know, her boss is out of favor, and you know she's at the same time though, she's got to try to defend it, and you know, she's got all these problems and it's a compressed campaign. And of course, you know gerald Ford had the problem is

that he didn't have a constituency either. There was really nobody that was willing to say, yeah, he's our guy. And and I think that's what Harris is struggling with right now, is that, you know, this media campaign is great, it's fantastic, it works really well.

that's vanished, right, like vapor in this bump Kamala had. Well, first, she has a big dip after the DNC. The DNC was a disaster, you know, and I'm not saying that as a partisan. Look, I've never voted in a presidential election, I will vote for Trump this time. It would be my first vote. I'm not a maga person. But it was a disaster. And now, actually, just today, we've reached the inflection point. Right, it has gone back to exactly

what it was before that push. And don't get me wrong, right that the Democratic Party controls the media, maybe not explicitly, but they call the shots, so they can keep doing that. But I think there's the core problem that Kamala is a genuinely horrible candidate. Someone it slightly her running wall is that his name? Yeah, Okay, I always say it wrong because I have no pre existing thoughts about him whatsoever. But he's kind of an interesting figure because he really

is the progressive vision of what a good white guy is. Right. You know, they did this video together where they're they're kind of in a very scripted manner joking around, and you know, they go through the kind of traditional white guy joke that you've heard. I mean, he was hackneyed thirty years ago. Right. Oh, I'm a white guy from the Midwest. I put mayonnaise on my tacos. I don't like spicy food. I mean, it's effectively a minstrel show for white people. Right, he's jugging and jiving to uh,

you know, appeal to his master's. Right. You see the same thing with you know him out in the field, right, you know he's a hunter. And then look like, I don't want to get too into kind of gun autism, but if you look at the gun, it's like an incredibly heavy, incredibly expensive, like ten thousand dollars trap shooting shotgun.

the shotgun. And I think he had there was one where he's sitting there, you know, he's got plays Ora and Joe and he's got his dog with.

of an eccentric guy. It was his idea, you know that they're going to sell you know, they're going to trick the good old boys, you know, Republican voters with this, this costume act, this you know, presentation, and I mean obviously it worked, but they tried doing it later to what two thousand and four with John Carrey, they dressed him up as Elmer Fudd, and of course it didn't work because John John Carrey was just terrible at it. But they keep doing the Elmer Fudd act because it

worked back in the Bush years. It worked as a way to kind of undermine conservative support in certain rural areas. I mean it worked once, you know, it's like every other trick. It works once you get full, you know, fall for it again. But apparently they pulled this with Walls in Minnesota. I started laughing because that one picture they had him in his Elmer Fudd outfit with his you know, ten thousand dollars shotgun. You know, you look at this them like pait a second. I'm pretty sure

that was the picture they used for Warner. And I went online trying to find any old Warner you know, campaign stuff, but I didn't find it so, but it just kind of tells you the people behind this they're extremely devious. They think about how to trick people. It's all about, you know, coming up with some new narrative, some new character, some new way to deceive the public.

And it's all kind of coalesced into this really fantastical Harris Walls campaign because you know, the real Walls, he's like, he's like eighty percent of the Walls that you know that they sold the people in Minnesota. Yeah, he was in the military. Well he wasn't in a war zone. You know, he kept always kind of saying things that make it make you think that he was in combat. Well it turns out that never happened. You know, you know, he wasn't really that guy he'll say to people, well

as an old football coach. Well it turned out he volunteered for a year or two. He wasn't really a football coach. You know. It's everything about this guy is kind of like this, and you know, the pre of course bringing him on a national stage. Now people look into this and you know you can kind of see it. But but Walls, Walls is just an odd guy because he's like Evid French He's like, there's this weird sort of old white guy that you I run into, not

regularly but on occasion. In that you know, it's almost like they hate themselves. You know, they they embrace all these old white women politics, but there were a white dude.

odd guy. You know, men look at a guy like Walls and say, that's not a guy you can ever trust.

to you know, kind of a pain point. And you know, this guy was saying one of his theories is that basically the Democrats don't want twenty twenty four or they don't want twenty Yeah, they don't want this election because there's a likelihood that the economy kind of up and you know, the president's face, and they don't want to be the one you're holding the back and you know, Okay, maybe you don't believe that, but to me, it does seem like kind of similarly to what you saw with

the Conservatives in the UK, that the Democrats don't seem to be trying their hardest for this election, and I think one of the leading indicators of that is look at the candidate quality. Like, look, I hate Hillary Clinton, right, She's a horrible person, but she's an a lister, right, that name has been around for a while. You know, she's she can generate a lot of heat. Same thing

with Joe Biden, Right, Joe Biden's been around forever. But Kamala Harris and Tim Wallas, like these are backbenchers, right, These aren't real serious hitters. Do you think there's anything to that?

into the scene in the nineteen eighties. But it also did this at a time when the left was exhausted intellectually, emotionally, generationally. You know, a lot of the candidates that were running were really just incredibly awful. People forget this stuff. I mean, I remember Walter Mondale being the presidential candidate. I mean, you would rather galge your own eyes out and rip your ears off than sit and watch more Walter Mondale talk about anything. It was just awful, and it was

they had the same problem. But then the Republicans had this problem. They ran out of gas too, you know, they didn't have anybody. So there is kind of a seesaw effect here between the parties, and right now the the Democrats are down for sure, but I also think that we're in a sort of an end cycle here, this post Cold War cycle. Neoliberalism, neoconservatism, they've all run out of gas. I mean, Trump is a symptom. The reason that Trump exists is because the neocons they wore

the conservative movement like a skin suit. They directed it into things that people didn't generally want. People got got why starting at the end of the Bush years and the Republican Party old Republican Party, the conservative movement is running on fumes. I mean they got nothing. You know, they're you know, they're the Project twenty twenty five. Business out of Heritage is an effort to try and glom onto this populous energy. But you know, even the populous

energy is kind of misdirected. People are just pissed basically, They just they don't you know, the average white person in America doesn't have a political party that represents their interests. So they're kind of you know, they're angry about it, but they don't have the way to talk about it. They don't have a language for it, they don't have a channel for that anger to flow into, So it kind of flows into Trump by default. But the pret problem is happening on the Democratic side, I think too.

I think you know that whole that I keep coming back to, that Louden County revolt. I spent a lot of time looking into that because I think this is happening in a lot of places. I think a lot of upper middle class white people are looking around and thinking that we might have bigger problems than just Trump. We have other stuff, and certainly rich people. Look, there's

a lot of bad paper in the system. I don't know how much you know about finance, but there is a lot of really bad credit floating around in the system. The global financial arrangements are changing and it doesn't appear as if right now anybody in Washington understands what the

hell is happening. And you know, the smart money, you know, the guys who were on Wall Street, I mean, they probably do know what's happening, and they probably understand that there is going to be a fair amount of pain as we transition out of the post Cold War period into whatever we're going to call the next next phase.

But you know, there's across the spectrum, you know, the people that are capable of thinking about this stuff are all looking around and saying that, you know, we have a problem, and there really isn't anybody who is capable of addressing it within the sort of establishment system. Trump, for all his faults, does talk with some sort of with a degree of clarity about some of the issues, but otherwise there really isn't a lot of options there there.

There needs to be a great regrouping right now. Not only do the Democrats, because again they don't have any companies. Their candidate pool is terrible. I mean, look around. I mean, Gretchen Whitmer, I don't know how old you are, but when I was a young guy back like in my twenties, late twenties, we said a thing called cougar bars. Right, you know that Gretchen Whitmer is the kind of woman that would be at a cougar bar. That's what you want. Like,

every time I see her, I just start laughing. You know, she's lost a bunch of weight, she's gotten into the gym, that's what she looks like. It's not somebody you make president. I mean you're governor for that matter, Gavin Newsom. If you watch this guy speak, he's terrible. He's awful. He's just he's boring. He sounds like it sounds like listening

to your accountant. You can go through the list of their A listers and they sound like, you know, C listers from even ten years ago or fifteen years ago. So it really is, it's a big problem. They've got this. They've got to have a reset, they've got to kind of rethink things. They got to recruit new people, they

got to find new ways to market themselves. And and I'm not entirely sure it's going to happen without a lot of pain, because I think, you know, for thirty years now, we've had a set of financial arrangements.

I was so black built. But to me, I don't really see Trump fixing this at all. No. What I do see as kind of an interesting development is look at the people who are ordering Trump right, who kind of thrown their weight behind him this election. The last one. Well, okay, I mean we have you know he's got a pack back, right, he's got Miriam Ayelsen. And I don't like those guys. I don't support the causes they do, and fair enough, but also you have this kind of new kind of

tech elite forming behind Trump. You know, obviously the ones you always hear about our heel musk, right, those are the big ticket guys. Yeah, I think that we've kind of forgotten about Vvack Ramaswami, right, who sort of served as you know, a Trump stand in, and then as soon as Trump announced he was out, Well, you know, he drops out of the race. And you know, we can see that they have an inside seat because I mean that's where Vance comes from. Right, He's connected to

those guys. Now, you know that goes a little bit deeper, right, And actually, this is another reason I think shenanigans are less likely. You have Mark Zuckerberg, right, the CEO of Facebook, who was very much involved in the last round of shenanigans, basically saying just in the last couple of days, one, yes, that happened. Two I'm sorry, and one I won't do it again. I think I got my numbers wrong there,

but my point stands. And look, you know this doesn't mean that Mark Zuckerberg is suddenly my best friend, but it seems like we're seeing a new power block emerge.

degree politically naive, but he's getting smart fast. But this is not a guy who is naive about the kinds of people who dominate politics. He's made all his money off of politics. People don't realize that. You know, most of his fortune comes from doing business with governments and getting government favors that the whole you know, tesla wouldn't exist without enormous subsidies from government, and not just the United States government, the Chinese government, you know, the EU.

I mean, you know, this is a guy who understands the system and how to manipulate it. And I think his great concern about what's happening is a signal to the other oligarchs that it's okay to start questioning this. These hired men we have in the managerial class. What the hell are these guys actually doing? And so I

do think there's something happening here now. It could devolve into civil war, it's always a possibility, but it's also possible that there's a reform movement of foot Look back in the nineteen seventies, wealthy people, corporate interesting was obviously a different world. They started to react not to the cultural stuff, but to the financial problems. They looked around and they saw that the money arrangements in the world were a problem. They saw the revolution coming with semiconductors

and the microprocessor. There's a book I always recommend to people. It's called The Money Game, and the guy wrote it under a pen name. It's written in the nineteen sixties about he wrote under the pend named Adam Smith. You read the book, it predicts everything that was going to

happen with computerization in the financial markets. It's really quite as a wild book to read, because you read it, you realize it's written in the nineteen sixties and it uses a lot of the sort of mad band type language. But all thes that about what would happen in the seventies, eighties, and nineties are all right there. It's a great insight as to how the people at the very top of the system do know a hell of a lot more about what's coming down the road than the rest of

us do. And you know, these people saw this and they started to react to it, and we ended up with the Conservative Revolution with Reagan and all that stuff. But we also wound up with a revolution and the financial relations. You know, for the money relations of the world. You've got the Palace Accords, you got the Louver Accords, You've got the what was that nineteen seventy four, you got the agreement with the Saudia's that established a petro dollar.

I mean, these were revolutionary changes. You had the beginning of a deregulation that started, we're deregulating.

it's not a perfect analogy. But but yeah, I mean I think I do think that the rich people are concerned. I mean, look, if you're Elon Musk, you're a Mark zuckerberglar hell, you're you're a guy who's a president of a financial institution, you've got to be looking a door off getting arrested the guy who runs Telegram in France and think we have a real problem. I mean, that has got to be sending off loud alarms in every mansion around the globe. You don't arrest billionaires like that.

It just doesn't happen, not in the West, not in the It's not supposed to happen that way. Even though he's Russian and all that other stuff. It should never have happened. They didn't arrest the guy Abramovich who owned them, was it? Manchester United had the big the British soccer team.

what the hell's going on. And you know, they don't worry about transgenderism and all that stuff, but they do worry about rich guys being arrested, financial system being shaky, the competency of the political class. So yeah, we could we could then we could find ourselves in very interesting times.

you know he's kind of a shady guy. You know, he was involved with Blackwater. I have some some personal contacts, right who are friends of his, and they speak very well of him. But nonetheless, right, take a perfectly neutral view of the man. He is extremely wealthy, extremely competent, and extremely well connected, and the State Department screwed him over for basically no reason, right, They for those who

aren't familiar. Effectively, the State Department said, hey, can you send us some bulletproof vests and then sued him for sending them bulletproof vests without their permission.

think any of these people are our guys. But at the same time, you know, to be honest, I'd rather just have a government that works, you know, that functions at the Paris level, so that I don't have to, you know, sincerely, worry about you know, my safety or you know, things that would be almost you know, unthinkable thirty forty years ago in America.

the facets of it. Everybody you were working with thought they understood it, and just some just stuff just starts to happen, and before long you're not really working on the deal you thought you were. You're working on something else. Sometimes it gets really big, you know, it becomes more complex, and it's just, you know, we as human beings, you know,

we're limited, and we can't see around corners. We don't always see all the facts, and we don't we can't think beyond a few moves, and you know, all that kind of stuff that people know, and do you see this happen In politics? Donald Trump came down that elevator in twenty fifteen, not expecting to be president of the United States. That was obvious, but he wound up saying things about immigration in particular that caught fire. It was like he threw a cigarette out of his car and

set the prairie on fire. I mean, you know, he didn't intend to do it. It wasn't what he was thinking about. It wasn't a plan. It just sort of happened. My analysis of Trump in his first year is that was you know, a first term as president.

you you go from zero to one. To quote Peter Thiel, it changes how you look.

a part I'm a world historical figure. My life now has meaning beyond just being good at the stuff I enjoy being good at. And I think, you know, that's that could be what happens with us as a country as a whole. All these rich guys are looking around, they're seeing these problems. They look at the the rampant dishonesty. You know, this arresting of Dora Off. I cannot believe they did that. That is such an insanely stupid idea, because it's not I mean, who cares do who cares

about telegram but went away? The world wouldn't change that much. It's the symbolism of it. It's what it appears to be, and there's so many things like that, and it's it's representative of this sort of dishonesty of the managerial class. And you know, we look at these people as our bosses. But the rich guys, the oligarchs, the guys like Elon Musk, the guys like Mark Zuckerberger, they look at these people as their employees, and all of a sudden they find

You know, it's imagine yourself. You're running a company and you know all the guys who or you're not running the company, you own the company, and you have a meeting with all your C level people and they're all they're all lying to you. You know what do you do? Well, you get rid of all of them. You start you start thinking about how I get rid of all of them,

and I bring new people in. And that may be what's happening with a lot of these guys, because of the constant lying, the dishonesty, the unwillingness to abide by the rules. So you know, I mean, we could again, we could be in for some very interesting times. And you know what I mean, You know, you know it may be, it may be necessary. You know, interesting times might be the kind of thing that fixes a lot of the spiritual and cultural problems that we have you know,

you see you know, you see this stuff too. You know, people talking about the fertility raid and the loss of community and social capital breaking down and all that. You know, maybe we need a really serious crisis that focuses everyone's mind on what's important and and a ruling class that is is doing it at the same time we are. You know, maybe that's just a necessary thing to have the renewal that we're going to need, not just as a country, but as a civilization.

then in scripture. Right. This idea that you know that the people kind of falls away from, you know, the path, right, They they reject God. They you know, they they do something shameful and they need to atone for that. Right, There's a blood price that needs to be paid, and I don't want to take this into an overly chin stroking direction, but I think that that that applies to us as well. You know that these sort of interesting times are probably the only way we get to a

society that has a reason to exist again. And I think that, you know, the kind of like endless chanting about seventeen seventy six shall commence again from the you know, the sort of the the morbidly obese boomers. I think it's probably a little bit of wishful thinking, But ze Man, we you're coming up on time. I really enjoyed this conversation. It was went different places than I thought, and I

enjoyed it quite a bit. But if people want to find more of your you and and your work, what's a good way for them to do so?

after almost three hundred episodes. I'm here to talk with with using men about kind of the current state of things right, because I think one of the most interesting developments of the Trump presidency has been this kind of bizarre divide among our circles where either, you know, you see people who have essentially been brought back into the fold, right, they are full on you know, Republicans. Trump is going to say it to save the world. Trump is going

to you know, get us to that ideal state. Or alternately, and I think you see this, particularly among the the European chapter of the right, this kind of endless doom and gloom. Right old zion Don is back. And that's not really how I view things, right. I view this as you know, well, certainly a win a conditional one, it's not the end. And I'm curious, right, where do you find yourself falling and what do you see as being kind of the relevant developments.

and you know, they often act like the kinds of people who found a new band or a cool little restaurant. You know, they they love the fact that nobody goes there or nobody really listens to it, and so once it starts getting popular, they feel as if, oh, well it's sold out. It's not the same as it used to be. That's how I look at a lot of

this politics. I mean, because look, many of the things that were only said in you know, band live streams and band in that places are now coming out of the mouths of the you know, the president, the vice president and his people. I mean, you know, some of the things that jd. Vance says were things that got you thrown off a Twitter five, six, seven years ago.

So you know, there's a there's a lot of good stuff happening, but these people look at that and they you know, they you know, they just they don't want to be winners. I hate to use that word, but you know, they because they there's some part of their identity is in failure, and you know, there's a beautiful loser. I mean, this is what San Francis brought about a

million years ago. And you know that it's it's the people who just sort of want to cling on to either their tiny little piece or maybe they cling.

changing policy here. We need to change a culture and an economy, a political economy.

talking about one hundred billion dollars a year. I mean, this is an enormous amount of money feeding into this system, all of which was used to bribe politicians control the media, control access to power, to fund people who run around looking for you know, oh my goodness, this ze man said something untoward to this group. Ah, you know, let's let's have let's destroy his life. You know, let's go

after this guy. You know, all the doxing people, all these guys that we're all funded with this stuff and going after that political economy is huge. That is an enormous change, because I mean, that's why everyone's terrified in Washington right now. And once you dismantled, you you stick the you know, a knife through the you know, you put the ice pick in the head of the blob, so to speak, all of a sudden, lots of other things become possible. The world really does change, but it's

not going to change over night. It just means that you now have an opportunity to organize and work hard and try and you know, affect change. I Mean, the biggest problem we've had over the last thirty years, probably most of my adult lifetime, is that there is been there's been no way for normal people to participate in politics and get a positive result. You can vote yourself silly, and you just kept get the same crap over and over again, all all of a sudden things are starting

to change. You can you can actually expect something other than the usual crap. There's a lot of good stuff here. But you know, there's always a lot of people who just don't understand that. They you know, they they look and say, well, Trump promised mass deportations. They don't know what that really looks like, but they feel they're not getting it, so he ripped us off again, you know. So, I mean, there's always gonna be that element. There's always

gonna be people who like that. But I think most people understand that we're we're in the middle of something different. This is very different. It's I don't want to use the word revolution, but i'll I mean, there are things happening now that I remember Paleocon's talking about when I was a young man, which trust me, was a long time ago, and no one has ever thought more possible. I mean, they'd laid off ninety percent of the staff at the Department of Education.

if anything right. British politician Tony Blair was a master of this, where he would basically push for some radical change but cast it as if you know this is simply you know that the decision has been made, right, the conversation is already over and you know you see in the way, for instance, that the UK banned guns, right, it's he expressed that as if you know that was an issue that had already been decided. Right, the voice

of history has spoken, and this is done. And you know, for a long time, this is something Republicans have been fighting up against. Right. You can you know see over and over and over again. You know where Republicans effectively have you know, adopted the framework of their enemies. Right, Okay, well this is already decided. Roe versus Weight is already decided.

We're simply managing you know, everything after that point. And you know, the ability to you know, as as the meme says, right, simply do things is is huge, Right, I sort of echo your your your points about Israel. To me, look like obviously that is a heavily embedded interest group, right, you know, one of the most powerful lobbies has you know, John u Er Schuchmer will tell you, but it is not the sole determinate factor in politics, right, That is not you know, it's not like you solve

that issue and then everything goes away. It's a complicated system. And to me, right, I keep going back to, you know, the the binary choice, however much a choice that was, is you know, up for debate between you know, Harris and Trump, and look is someone who actually lives here, I don't regret my choice. Right, that was a pretty easy choice to make. And you know you mentioned the in the incredible you know, corruption of all of this, right, the fact that you know, most of the opposition to

things that we think was not organic. It wasn't real, It wasn't you know, as it has often presented the inevitable conclusion to that argument. Uh, it was simply right, government fiat, they just gave money to people who had views that they liked. Right, the BBC got money, Axios got money, as you mentioned. But you know, even even people like Politico right, who is in charge of so

called fact checking. And to me, right, it very much reminds me of you know, courtesy Arvin's point, you know, where he says, you know, people people look at scans, at this, at the Soviet system, but you know, really we live in an economy or a society that's just as much controlled by the government. And people laughed at him right back in two thousand and eight when he wrote it. But you know, you look at the receipts and it turns out that you know, he may have

been underestimating it, right. It turns out that literally almost all of these people are getting you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars. Like the example that comes to mind is Christianity Today, right, one of these kind of like left leaning evangelical newspapers. And you know that this organization swung hard to the left, you know, really post twenty twenty and you'll never get what guess what happened just

before that? They got two million dollars from the federal government. Right, It's it's amazing, how uh how that strategy works?

money laundering is really what this system was. No one really could know for sure, so it felt like community money to people. One of the weird things about and this was true in the Soviet Union, and honestly it was true in pre revolutionary France, you see these phenomena show up where all of a sudden, a culture and there's everywhere around you in the elite is social proof, and it just feels like you have no choice but

to go along with what everybody else is doing. And because it seems like, well, you know, you're getting finance from this guy and he thinks this, And you're getting a job maybe from this guy and he thinks this. You know, everywhere you turn, everything you count on in terms of your lifestyle and how you live your life is it seems, you know, all these sources all seem to be on the same page. Well it turns out that they're all being paid by the same source, so

sure they are, but it doesn't seem that way to you. You know, if these people were actually getting a direct government check instead of getting uh, you know, support from people who seem to be their friends, they probably would have been some of them would have been more suspicious. But it just kind of feels like, hey, everybody's doing this, and it's you know, the social proof that that's developed around it.

It's exactly how the Soviet system work. I had this thing called the embankment instead of apartments that were up on this hill and on the river in Moscow and all the apparach next to the new class. They live there and it became a part, you know, they became a new class. They got class consciousness. And then literally is what's happened in Washington. It's the embankment. Now it's this,

you know, or Versai. There's another example, you know, where all the royals, all the aristocrats live in this one area, isolated from everyone else, and so it's very easy to control the mental space they live in. And that really is what's happened in Washington. That's why, you know all these right wing people.

you know, your electric congressman he goes to Washington. Before long he turns into a native of Washington. And that's exactly what's been happening. But it was all made possible by billions and billions and billions of taxpayer dollars financing this political economy that was Washington. And it's going to

be interesting to watch. And when you're talking about laying off twenty percent of the federal work course, which is what they're what they're actually doing right now, they're laying off a lot of people, but also piercing this you know, this blob and draining money out of it. I mean, you know, I've often said that every mortgage payment in Washington, every college tuition payment, every quality college loan payment, every opportunity to get your kids into a good private school,

all counted on nothing ever changing. And now everything's changing, which means a lot of mortgage payments aren't gonna be made, a lot of houses are go up for sale, a lot, you know, a lot of It's going to be interesting is what happens to the actual physical economy in Washington. People have been watching the real estate market to see what happens, and you know, we'll see how it unfolds.

But you know, it's fundamentally altering how Washington operates, because you know, without without the billions and billions of dollars from from the federal government, the machine stops. And and again that that opens. It doesn't mean everything gets great and rosy and all the problems are solved. It just means that we live in a different world. Things are going to operate theirfferent And that's why. Look, it's why the Democrats don't know what to do, the Republicans don't

know what to do. These guys are poll acts. I mean, Chuck Schumer, who is a vicious political animal, rolled over and asked Trump to scratch his belly over that continuous resolution. I've never seen anything like it. I mean, he looked defeated. And I mean that that alone. I mean, my whole life, Chuck Schumer has been a pit bull and to see him like that, it was just it just it really screamed at me that, man, something wild is going on in Washington right now. And these people, it's not that

they're terrified. They don't know what to do, they don't know how to respond, they don't know what to say. And that's all good. I mean, we we're on the side that says destroy the status quo. So the status is being destroyed. Now what comes after we'll see. It could be worse, or it could be something we don't like, who knows, but at least we've moved the ball down the field to this point.

well off. That's apocalyptic. And I just want to say, I could not feel less sympathy, right, And I'll be honest, there's a part of this that look to me, there's a certain amount of cultural decline that I don't think we're going to be able to cheat our way out of.

that you know, these people are basically in a tail spin. Uh, it's heavy, right, It's easy to get swept away in it because you know, as you mentioned, these people have they conceptualize themselves as a distinct class. They see themselves as better as above people like you and I. And to realize how how unstable that was right, to realize that, you know, you're effectively one stroke of a pen away from being a normal person.

to taste the sweet salty tears of the people. But yeah, you know, look, you know, at the end of I mean, in a lot of ways, we're going through here. You know,

we're finally the Cold War is finally ending. All the mechanisms that built up over this time to win the Cold War should have been turned off in nineteen ninety two with Bill Clinton, and actually there was talk about that in nineteen ninety two, but you know what, there was just too many good jobs at good wages, and instead they went a different way, and we've reached the end of that road, where at the end of the unipolar moment, the post Cold War, the end of history,

all the other bullshit, and a lot of this stuff just has to be taken apart. And a lot of it is driven by the fact that our richest people are oligarchs. It was not an accident that, you know, all the richest men and most powerful corporate leaders were at Trump's inauguration and made sure they showed up at Mar Alago. They swung behind this guy because I think they realized that a lot of bad things were happening

and they needed to head this stuff off. The country was in a lot more trouble perhaps than really we realized. And that's what this is all about. I've I've talked about it. As you know, America Inc. Is going through a resizing. The board of trustees, the board of directors, wherever you want to call them. They decided management was screwing up. God enough, we got to we got to change things. And they're bringing in new management. They're downsizing things,

getting rid of certain departments. We're going to outsource certain functions back to the private sector. It's some aspects will be sold off, you know. And that's what's happening in foreign policy. Basically, we're going to we're going to uh uh privatize Europe. We're gonna we're gonna take it. We're gonna set up as its own thing and say nearer on our own now, you know, go figure out how to be a civilization again. And you know that that's

a lot what's happening here. I think, you know, there's longer cycles too. I've written and talked about this. You know, if you go back and look at Nixon, a lot of the bad stuff that that we have today that seems to be falling apart we started under Nixon. I mean, that's you know, there's no question about it. The Paleos wrote a lot about this, you know, the growth of the managerial state and that.

last ten years. I mean, all the stuff they did to Trump, but you know, throwing these j six people into dungeons, I mean, I mean, the abuses of these people's civil basic civil rights, which just monstrous. No one, you know, no one talks about that too much. I mean,

fortunately all been pardoned, but all kinds of things. I mean, there's just lots of terrible things that we were becoming lawless and now, I think we're going to go through this really rough period where we're probably gonna be a little poorer, and I don't think there's many out about it. The economy is going to have some difficult moments. But you know, if we can come back to being a lawful society again and having some sanity, back to how

our countries run, we'll do okay. You know, we'll survive the transition. And that really is what we're experiencing now. We're at the beginning of this great transition out of this past. You know, as I like to say, we're about to join everybody else in the twenty first century.

that just it doesn't work that way. So it's going to be an interesting interesting time, you know. I mean I say interesting, not necessarily good interesting. It's going to be some bad interesting as well, because a lot of you know, a lot of the stuff we take for granted is going to be called into question. Now I have to say stuff. You know, our values are point in our lives as individuals, how we go about, how

we work, how we spend our money. You know, Uh, a lot of a lot of stuff's going to change, and and some people will do better than others.

deliberate plan to create some kind of media spectacle. I don't believe.

up doing. But I think that that's an interesting, an interesting move, right, the recognition, which, let's be honest, may have always been true that you know, really what this matters is this kind of conversation between you know, individual leaders of a nation more so than this you know system of different un security councils and all that. And I think that that, to a certain degree, it's a more honest view of it, right. It is how it has always happened, just kind of stripped of a certain

level of nicety. And you know, when I look at this, right, the analogy to the late Soviet Union is kind of apt because that was a you know, an aging system that no one really believed in anymore, but it just had this kind of momentum. And you know, I think that the you know, a certain part of the kind of like the US International Empire, it faced the same problem right that it was it was out of date.

It was kind of coasting on, you know, the cultural ideas of a previous era, and it was was floundering, right and to me, and I could be wrong, but I think that in you know, twenty thirty years, that will be seen as the kind of like emblematic movement of that shift.

you know, and Jefferson. You know, I don't think about Reagan at all anymore, all these years later. I mean, I lived through it, you know, so I should, you know, getting into my geezerhood. I should be nostalgic for those days, don't think.

just the election itself. I think it was also the the treatment of the people, the attitudes, I mean, just the sneering contempt of the average person by Washington. I think that shocked a lot of people. And you know, it was downhill ever since. I mean, that was really peak bad guys. You know, it's peak all the bad guys. That was their best time. And if you think about it, every month, every year from that point forward, things got worse and worse for the bad guys. You know, when

did my buy Twitter? Was it twenty twenty three, twenty twenty two, something like That's when it started?

you took notice. So you know, I mean, it'd be interesting to you know, to see what, you know, how people look back on it as how things change. But I do think and it really brings up. It actually just pop in my head, you know, is a good example of how you never know. When Trump came down that escalator, how many people thought he would be this world altering figure, He would be this one arguably in the running for one of the most important people in

the last fifty years. I don't think anybody, I can't imagine anybody, not even Donald Trump, thought that he was going to be this seminal figure. When you look at the last ten years, I mean, this man went from being an entertaining television and real estate entrepreneur to being the most consequential man in the lifetime of half the country. Yeah, I mean, you have to be old like me to think, well,

there was more consequential people when I was younger. But you know, honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if you asked me five years from now, I'll say, yeah, Trump was probably the most consequential figure in my lifetime because everything changes during that period. So I don't know, I mean, you can you know, that pivot point of history, the inflection point.

And you know, I think the further and further we get away from it. It seems as if no, that was sort of a last gasp, Right, that was a massive miscalculation, you know, basically putting all your chips on the table. And you know, while it certainly had a short to medium term benefit, Right, they were able to do a lot of things they wanted in a short amount of time, it costs them too much, right, They they expended too much political capital, and now they're being

punished for it. To me, I think that you know, a neat heuristic, right when kind of parsing if something is a win or not is basically you know, do your enemies get punished? Do your friends get rewarded?

are our friends being rewarded? I would say yes, right, like you Manson mentioned the Jan six protesters, And what's interesting about that is at first it was, you know, just pardons for the quote unquote non violent offenders. But when it actually came time for Trump to sign them, he just signed everyone, right, he let them all go. And look like, I am not the kind of person who would have really, in any context been likely to be at an event like you know, the electoral justice protest.

But nonetheless, right, those are our people, right, those are good normal Americans. And the fact that you know they were freed from jail while all of these people are being fired, that's a strong indication that you know, this was a good move for us.

fire the coach. You know, it's it's true, you know, we you know, it's kind of how we normally react. But right now, in the balance, you know, things are really going our way. I mean, look, there was a time where a lot of people who were online or I know, people who dropped out of politics because they were terrified of the SPLC or any of these lunatics on Twitter getting their information and trying to destroy their lives. They could actually get people fired. Well, that doesn't happen anymore.

North Koreans. It's kind of like they treat it like a zoo where you look over the border at the North Korean Zoo. We have the same thing now with these crazies who are riding high just five or six years ago. So, I mean, there's tons of good stuff happening. But again, you know it's not we're not we're not turning fifty sixty seventy years of mistakes over in a what's it Trump in an office?

in ours. Right, you know, it was an edgy twittered ault and uh, this got revealed, it was brought to the attention of the government, and he was initially fired.

It's like fair enough, right, And the fact that he is routinely denied the moral authority of his opposition, I think that's a very strong development, especially when you consider right that you know, regardless of your opinion on Dvance, it's very clear that you know he has been he is being groomed as the successor because in the in the big balls case. Right, A reporter asks Trump, well,

what do you think of this? And what does Trump do? Well, he looks advanced and basically says, well, I don't know anything about it, but if says it's a good idea, it has my seal of approval, then it's done. And that's significant for a number of reasons, right, because that is a signal from the very top that this kind of like eternal cancelation that is kind of plagued to the right for decades, that will not be tolerated anymore. And look, well, obviously you know the stated recipient for

that was the activist left. I think the other people who were on notice of that was basically the conservative movement.

or anything like that. But you know, he grew up, uh, working class, I guess the way to put it. But he wanted to be one of the beautiful people. And he got there and he realized that his only reason that they allowed him in was because he was really nothing more than a long jockey. He was this this token they could put on their charm braceles and say, ooh,

we helped the poor guy. We fell out a poor guy in And I think it set off a revolution in his mind that said, no, I'm not going to live like this.

the other sides moral claims. He doesn't you know, he is not you know, he's kind of like a guy who is outside of their religion and doesn't really care to know about their religion, and he has no interest in following the edicts of their religion. So he just you know, shrugged his shoulders when they say these things. And that's a great thing. That is a huge development. And I think in a lot of ways that Trump

sensed us about fans. He wasn't going to pick fans until he got shot, and then then it clearly changed his mind and decided to go Advance for this reason. You know, I think the best thing that ever happened is that happened to him, probably is that they took a shot at Trump and missed. But but you know, I think, you know, Vance in a lot of ways, what he stepped in and saved big balls. You know it it was the end. It killed the whole docsing world, you know, all these efforts. I mean, it was on

sin Ice right away. But when the second most important guy in the world says, I don't care if you you know, you want me to fire this guy, We're not going to do it. Go screw that's it. They lost all of their authority, you know, they have nothing left at that point. And again it's another another good thing, you know. I mean, it doesn't you know, it doesn't mean that, you know, you can go out in public and start using racial epithets without you know, a consequence.

You know, we still have you know, generally agreed upon behavior that you're not supposed to say certain things and do certain things in public and all that.

know that, don't be so careless and move on. You know, it's not this, Oh my god, we've got to banish this person and destroy his life, you know, because I mean, I think about how weird this is that you know, people were having their lives destroyed because of something they tweeted.

I mean about just how insane, that is, you know, it's it's the kind of thing that you would expect in a a grammar school where you know, all of a sudden, you know you you did something wrong on this on the school yard, and so you have this mark on your permanent record, and you're going to carry this with you into the next grade. You know, you

have this reputation forever. We're just childish and silly. So you know, I think, you know, Vance has done it all a great service by what he did there, but I also think he's done a lot of other stuff like this too. I mean, he's he's what he's become is kind of like Peskof is for or Medvedev, rather probably like Medvedev for for Putin. You know, Putin is the you know, he kind of is the good cop and he tries to keep things light, and Medvedev comes

out and just shreds people. And you see that happening. Trump is like the Trump's like the nice guy and and advances. You know, he's the animal. He comes out and he breaks legs. So it's fun to watch. There's another another part of all this that I'm enjoying a great deal.

name was. It was a judge boaz Berg, who I believe is Italian, I'm not entirely sure about that had basically issued this order saying, you know, President of the United States is not allowed to deport Venezuelan's to venezuela right.

And it is simply not allowed. And the reaction was quite interesting because Trump basically told him, you know, to quote to kind of paraphrase Andrew Jackson, you and what army right, Which I think is another interesting thing because if we compare in contrast to Trump round one right, the twenty sixteen presidency, there were a lot of positive things said that just kind of sunk into the mud, right, They never went anywhere, They got endlessly wrapped up in court.

And so I'm curious to see, similar to what we saw with the unaccountable bureaucracy, if there will be you know, some sort of I guess kind of settlement reached with the judicial branch, because at least up until recently, that was the kind of seat of final power in the US.

doesn't exist. Either these agencies report to and are in control of the executive or they're in the under the control of Congress.

and hoax. He colluded with the FBI to uh get phony baloney FIZA warrants. I mean, this guy is crooked. He needs he should be on the list, regardless of this stuff. And uh, but you know that may what maybe what has to happen. You know, you rough up a judge this way with uh, you know, the FBI carding out all of his electronics and everything else, you know, to do the same stuff to him that he did to all the JA six people. To send the message

to the rest of these judges. But uh, I think it's going to end up in uh In in the appeals and I think at some point the court is going to clarify this stuff. And Roberts seemed to be signaling that, saying, look, instead of going to war with these inferior court judges, bring it to the appeal and there you'll get remedy. And I think that's what he was signaling to the White House. And you know, for the order of the country, it would be good if

it happened. But you know, if Plan B is rounding up some judges and sending him out to work camp somewhere in Louisiana, I either way, it's fine by me.

mean it was legitimately like Fred's law school. Some it's like a law school run out of an old grocery store. And you know, somehow older she you know, she passed the bar in Texas.

couldn't even hold a pen. There's a question to be asked of what would be the difference? Really?

Horowitz is his investment firm. And he talked about how back in like twenty twenty two, we had a meeting with the Biden administration about technology, particularly AI, and he came away said we have to stop these people.

That's what I remember.

and all this stuff. You know, if he went on some congressional junket or something, he'd come back and you know, he would talk about it, you know, like he was on some James Bond adventure. He was just a complete ridiculous person. And but the thing about it is that he was reliable to represent the credit card companies in Delaware and then they didn't care that, you know, him being stupid was actually an asset. But so the idea of this moron, I mean, look, it didn't go any better.

I mean they actually cracked open his skull I think in the nineties and carved some stuff out that was growing in there, and and then you know, he gets dementia and and would make him president. I mean, a horse would have been a better choice because at least it would be honest and the horse, you know, horses are noble animals.

third group. And I would almost argue that there seems to be you know, whether you want to call out like the remnants of the deep state, you know, the old Wasspel yet which you can see in you know, and someone like Tucker right, and it seems as if, you know, this new political coalition hasn't quite settled yet because you know, Musk gets to do almost everything he wants, right, he gets to fire whoever he wants, he gets to

you know, gut whatever agency they point him at. But also right he got told no on H one b's And so to me, I'm kind of curious to see what the final deal is and where those various interest groups kind of lie in the hierarchy.

little bit of property is subtracted to the mob. It was always you know, historically the middle and the elite banding together to keep the lower classes under control. Then a weird thing happened in America in the twentieth century where you get you know that the political class of Washington bound the poor and the rich together. You know, in war against the middle class. It's always, you know, the upper class and the lower classes against the middle class.

And I think that's finally breaking down where you know, I'm perfectly fine with the rich guys doing whatever la need to do because at least I know who's accountable this. For most of my life, I've never know who who Who Do you blame for this? Everything get gets worse, and both parties say, don't blame us, you voted for the other guy. You know, it's this ridiculous game that

they play. And so having you know, a guy like Musk or Zuckerbergler or what's his name, what's the guy from from Amazon Bezos Besos, Yeah, stepping on the people at the Washington Post and kicking them around good. I'm fine with it because look at the rich guys take control of the government and they're going to run things and things don't go well.

our side that you know, it's a weird thing. I've had a lot of former libertarians in my life who have come over the Great Divide to my kind of politics, and you know, it's not just the economic issues, it's the human capital issues, the hierarchical issues. You know, they come to find out that, hey, wait a second, Libertarianism explained to me that no, people are not all the same, and no people can't be yeoman farmers and independent and all this stuff.

not going to be upset that those events happen. You know, They're gonna be aware. They're going to know people who go to those events, you know, and maybe they have their own soares and where these guys meet. But it seems like the same process. I mean, you know, I remember the first time I ever went to an event.

I probably can't say the name of it YouTube, right, So you know, there were so many people who used to be libertarians and they were like they were they were red pilled by Ron Paul, you know, of all things. And I think the same thing's kind of happened with the tech guys. But you know, again, I'm fine, I'm okay by with rule by billionaires. I mean, somebody's got

to be in charge. And I would rather be a guy who can send a spaceship up to the space station and rescue people then some guy with a PhD. And gender studies, you know.

being beneficial. And it's not exactly a huge, you know, a huge hurdle to clear. But the very fact that these people don't seem to hate me, to want me dead, and people like me to stop existing, well, you know that's a win, right, It's certainly better than the alternative. And that doesn't mean that this is like, you know, the kind of like ideal philosopher King right come down

to lead us to heaven on Earth. But one of the things I think about, and this is an interesting issue, is you know the fact that the Trump administration and Musk have been making noises about South Africa. Look, I have, you know, a lot of friends in South Africa. You know, I've I've met with Ernest you know who is recently on Tucker you know, Conscious Caricle and I really like those guys, you know, I have a certain affinity for them. The Dutch Calvinists quite similar you know to my people,

you know, how they view the world. So there's some kind of affinity there. But realistically, right, what has South Africa existed as in our consciousness? Right? It's you know, it is the rainbonation, right, we did it. We defeated racism. And the fact that you have you know, Mark Rubio basically kicking out the South African diplomat, you know, basically offering, hey, you know, South Africans are you know, experiencing ethnic cleansing?

If they want to move to America, they can. That's a strong indication that, you know, there's at least a desire to appear as if you know, the Trump administration doesn't hate white people, which again, like I've said, is not the biggest hurdle to clear. But you know, compare that to our our previous uh, our previous demented executive. I'll leave it at that.

time ago, before he got all squishy. He said, inevitably, what's going to happen is that the elites are probably going to become more racially aware than any group in the country because for them, it's the only way in which they can remain elites. It's a necessary reality they have to embrace. And I suspect that's really what we're

seeing is that, you know, I've called it civilizationalism. You know, we're not going to I mean, he's got you know, these guys run around saying, oh, you know, we want to have an ethno state or something like that. I've always just shake my head at it because it's that's not who we're going to be in North America. What we're going to have is a civilization and it will be a hierarchy to that civilization and we'll just accept it.

And that comes with some duties. You know, the people at let the lower down they are, you know, those are people have to be looked after. You have to make sure their neighborhoods are as safe as you can make them, that they have food in the basic and so forth, and they have order imposed upon them. There are certain parts of this country will just have to have a HOBSI in existence where order will have to be imposed. I used to live in one of them. You know, I looked at Baltimore for a long time.

You could make Baltimore better, but it means abandoning all these ridiculous abstract ideas about equality and openness and all you know, democracy and all the other junk. No, there should be a dictator who's in charge and runs things with an iron fist. Everyone will be happier as a result of it. But you don't have to do that in Salt Lake City, Utah. You know, you can have whatever kind of government you want there because the human

capital is better. This is just a practical reality. And I think, you know, it kind of gets to one of my other themes, and that is we're experiencing the end of ideology. The last ideology is dying out American progressivism. So it means all these goofy ideas about democracy and openness and fairness and all this. Now what's going to matter in the future is practical results.

being practical and pragmatic. And I think it's possible. I think that maybe what we're experiencing.

listen to podcasts. If you want to support us, you can do so with the links down in the description, or you can check out our sponsor sponsors Axios Remote Fitness and Coaching and then North Appalachian Supply if you've got any gear needs. Again, Zeman, I appreciate it, and everyone at home, keep your head up. The life can't last forever. Good Night,