 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. All right, everybody. Welcome to the Iran Brookshow on this Monday. Monday night. Miss me? I'm back, at least for a little while. Not for very long, actually. Here I am, Puerto Rico, home. It's kind of cool to be back. It's nice to be home. And thank you all for joining tonight. I'm not going to be back for very long after Europe next week, but here for now. So we'll try to cram as many shows as we can this week, try to do as much as we can before I leave again, because who knows how many shows I'll be able to do from the road again. Just got back, for those of you who've been kind of following or not following, I just got back from, what was it, like nine days in Asia and eight days in, or nine days in South America. So we did Tokyo, Seoul, San Paolo, Curitiba, or Brazil, well, those last two, but also Brazil and then Buenos Aires, so all five. So next, we're going to be in the UK. We've got a lot of events going on in the UK. So that'll be like the 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, something like that of October. We'll be in the UK doing a bunch of different events. Then I'll be in Edinburgh in Scotland, in Edinburgh. And let me just pull up a calendar and I'll tell you exact dates. And if somebody's already asking about Lisbon, yes, we will be in Lisbon. So there's an event in Lisbon. I'll be speaking in Lisbon. So let's see, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, I'll be in the UK. I mean England, England part of the UK. Then the 17th, I will be in Scotland. On the 18th, I will be in Berlin, Berlin. I know Edinburgh is the UK. For now, actually the talk I'm giving in Edinburgh is European Balkanization, why Scotland shouldn't be an independent country. Why it should stay part of the UK. So that should be controversial and upset a few people. Geoffrey, thank you for the support. Thanks for coming on board. That's great. That's Scotland. OK, so then Tuesday the 18th is Berlin. Wednesday the 19th is Lugano in Switzerland, Lugano. So that's southern Switzerland, northern Italy, on the border with Italy, Lugano. 20th, maybe Batislava, we'll see. 21st, just so you don't claim I'm just sitting around doing nothing. 21st, Oslo, in Norway. 23rd, I'm taking the 22nd off. How ridiculous, right? 23rd, we will be in Paris, Paris. So if you know anybody in Paris, not that many people in Paris. If you know anybody in Paris, Paris on the 23rd, we're going to be going to Lisbon on the 24th, Monday the 24th, Lisbon. So it's going to be at the Gremio Literario. Gremio Literario. It's a beautiful building in downtown Lisbon. So hopefully a bunch of you can join us in Lisbon. And then finally, on the 25th of October, I will be in Madrid at the Universitat Francisco Maracuin in the Madrid campus, which is a university from Guatemala. This is the Madrid campus. Yes, I will be speaking to Libertarians, I afraid. So yes, come on over in Lisbon. And yeah, so all of these, different topics, different events, the whole gamut, northern Europe, western Europe, no eastern Europe this time, or the Batislava, if we do the Batislava, it's pretty east. But other than that, everything else. I mean, the main thing we need to hope for is no nukes. Putin, no nukes, right? So that would be good, while I'm in Europe. No nukes, that's a good starting point. All right, what else do we have? Yeah, so that's kind of the trip. Information about events could be found in the uranbookshow.com, an event section. Hopefully all the events will be there. And also on the Einren Institute website on the events, you should be able to find all the events, including the ones in England, mainly London. Although I must go on to Durham, Durham University, Northern England. I'll be at the Battle of Ideas in London. I'll be at high school. So just plan on a bunch of different things. On a bunch of different events. Yeah, hopefully you'll join me. If you're in the UK or in one of the countries that I mentioned, that will be October. And then November is a lot of travel in the United States. Although I am going to Mexico and Costa Rica. I'm giving talks in Mexico and Costa Rica as well. So if you live there, hopefully you can join us there. So lots going on. Demand is high and it keeps me busy. And for example, they want me back in Korea and November. I can't go. So I'm going to tape a talk. Probably this week, I'll tape a talk on video and send it to them and they're going to use it. So the Korean Freedom Forum, they're going to use me. All right. Lots to talk about. Lots has been in the news since my last show, which is over a week ago. Lots of stuff going on. So we'll see what we cover today. We'll also do a show tomorrow. We'll also do a show Wednesday and Thursday. We'll try to do as many shows as possible during this week. So we'll be able to cover all the news. And if there's anything I miss, please let me know. If there's anything you're curious about, please let me know. So we'll keep plugging along until we cover up all the missing news items. And we'll get to some broader issues. We'll do another Iran's Wolves for Life. Hope you enjoyed the one on travel. You should definitely listen to one on travel if you haven't yet. It was fun. It was fun and I think really valuable. All right. So where should we start? Well, we should start with the Ukraine war update. Putin's speech about annexing four Ukrainian provinces. We'll start with that. And then we'll talk about Brazil and maybe Italian elections. Since we talk about a Brazilian elections, we'll talk about Italian elections as well. And we'll talk about the complete craziness around the UK budget. And if we have time, we'll talk about California trans insanity, but that might have to get pushed for next time. We might have to talk about it another time. So we'll see. Oh, this is all backed up. All right. We'll see what we get to. And of course, God, try to remind me towards the end of the show. I owe two reviews of Star Trek. And I watched them on the way to Asia. And I've probably forgotten what they're all about. But I was going to do them in Asia. And if I got around to it, so please remind me about them so that I can do it them today. And we can get those as well. All right. So let's start with a quick update on the war itself and how the war is progressing. Yeah, it's been a good couple of weeks when it comes to the war in Ukraine, if you're on the side of civilization, which is the Ukrainian side. As you all know, and we talked about this on one of the shows, the Ukrainians took the Kharkiv province, kicked the Russians, but kicked them out of that province completely, recaptured Ukrainian territory all the way to the recognized border with Russia, but really thrashed them and took over a lot of equipment, a lot of what do you call it, a lot of the supplies, and really did it fast. Quickly, the Russians would disarray. They lost a lot of troops, a lot of weapon systems, and a lot of their pride in the meantime. This last week and over the weekend, the Ukrainians continued by surrounding a strategic city by the name of Leman, and I'm probably mispronouncing it, but it spelled Leman, L-Y-M-A-N, in Eastern Ukraine, which was a supply, a major supply depot for the Russians. 5,000 Russians got trapped there. Many of them have been killed. Some large numbers of them have been captured as prisoners of war, and some got away and got away, but are now being chased by the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians took Leman, which was a huge strategic event. They are also now starting to finalize the rest of the land in Khakib province and going into Lohan province, which is, of course, one of the provinces that Putin annexed. I mean, indeed, the capture of Leman happened on the day, literally on the day that Putin gave his annexation speech, which we'll get to in a minute, where he declared that Leman and the rest of the territory around there in Lohan province was now Russian territory. It was part of the Russian motherland, and an attack on it basically would trigger the full defensive capabilities of Russia, which he implied meant nuclear weapons. He said Lohansk was Russian and would stay Russian forever. The same with Donetsk, another province which I can't pronounce, and Gershan, the two southern provinces. While he was speaking, it seemed like his military was capitulating and was being defeated, I mean, crushed, not defeated, crushed thoroughly by the Ukrainian military, literally while he was speaking. And the Ukrainians have pushed him back and are now entering Lohansk province and slowly chipping away at the Russian's occupation of that territory. We'll see what the days and weeks to come bring us. We'll talk a little bit about Russian mobilization and response to all of this. In addition, yesterday and today, news out of Ukraine suggests that the Ukrainians are making significant progress in the south in Gershan province, where they have broken through the Russian lines, pushed the Russian back, and are slowly starting to get closer, at least from the northeast. They're getting closer to Gershan, the city itself. The Russians, again, are retreating on this chaos. The Russians are suffering immense casualties. Now, a lot of the Russian pro-Russian voices out there have been in past defeats. They've been saying, no, it was a Russian tactical maneuver. They weren't really defeated. They were just moving. They retreated tactically to get into better positions. The Russians, as Jordan Peterson told us, Russia can't lose. Ukraine can't win this. Russia is just Putin is playing three-dimensional chess. That sounds familiar from somewhere. Three-dimensional chess, five-dimensional chess. It sounds familiar from somewhere. I can't remember where. Anyway, Putin's playing chess. Ukraine is really going to lose any day now. And there was this constant beat of this kind of stuff. Oh, no. Ukraine claims to have captured the city, but the Russians were never there. So they were defeated, because they never actually occupied it. They never meant to take Kievs. They never were treated for Kiev on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on. But what's interesting over the last few days is what is happening on Russia's own pro-Putin, pro-war media. They are flipping out. You can see videos of commentators on Russian TV, pro-Putin, pro-war Russian TV saying we don't understand what's going on. We don't understand how we could be losing. We don't understand how Lehman was captured. This is a case of massive incompetence. Actually, one former general was saying that this is the consequence of lies from the bottom to the top, and the top to the bottom, implying Putin's lies. And he was cut off the air as soon as he said that. But more and more and more, you're seeing Russians speaking out not against the war, but against Putin, against incompetence, against the military, the pro-Russia, the nationalists are flipping out in more and more calls for use of nuclear weapons. Because they can't win this with conventional weapons. They're realizing now they cannot win it with conventional weapons. On these TV shows, you're seeing the commentators being defeatist for the first time since the war began. They're expressing defeatist. They're acknowledging the Ukraine's success in the East. They acknowledge Ukraine's success in the South. I mean, it's within Russia now to the right, if you will, of Putin, to the nationalist right of Putin. Now they are flipping out over what is going on and how this could happen and how anybody could make it happen. And it's, you know, this is real. So now, I don't know what the apologists for Russia on the Iran Book Show are going to say. I'm sure there's some of them over there. But the Russians are acknowledging that they're losing. The Russians themselves are acknowledging that they're losing. So you might not want to acknowledge that they're losing. The Russians, the pro-military, the pro-Russians clearly have adopted this idea of a loss, right? So Russia's losing. It's losing, you know, to some extent the way I predicted it would lose. Given Russia casualties, given disbursement, given capture of soldiers, it's not clear anymore that the Russian military is larger even in sheer numbers than the Ukrainian military. Ukraine has much, much, much better weapons. It has Western weapons systems that the Russians cannot compete with. They don't have any chance of getting weapons, anything as sophisticated. Notice that the Russians are not firing missiles into Ukraine quite as much as they did at the beginning of the war. That's because they're running out. Missiles cost a lot of money. As I told you, much of the military technology in Russia depends on parts from the West. Depends on parts from the West. Actually, Russian commentators and Russian TV have been complaining about this. They've been complaining about this. Russian military is unmotivated, undisciplined. It is strategically a disaster in terms of who leads the military. Is it Putin directly? Are the generals in charge? The generals know what they're doing. Are the generals too afraid to do what they know how to do because they're afraid of Putin micromanaging them? Who knows what exactly is going on there, but clearly, clearly the Russian military is incompetent, pathetically so. It's even worse than I would have expected. Unmotivated, disorganized, badly led, and horrifically equipped. And over the next weeks, you're going to see Ukrainians push the Russians further and further back towards the actual border. Those who support Russia are freaking out, are freaking out. And you're seeing this, I just saw a segment of an interview that Jordan Peterson did with Pierce Morgan on Sky News, I guess, or whatever it's called, whatever the new TV show is called or new TV station is called. Anyway, he was angry before, but now he's super angry, and he's like, Russia cannot lose, which means they're going to use nukes. We should all be terrified. We should all be afraid. We should all be negotiating with Russia right now. We should all be compromising with the devil, whatever it takes, because Russia cannot lose. Putin cannot lose. And not only does he believe he cannot lose, he believes he shouldn't lose, because as we saw when we analyzed the Jordan Peterson video on Russia, he believes that Putin represents the West, and that Ukraine represents woke leftism. And in that battle between the West and woke leftism, the West needs to win, and that means Russia. So while Jordan Peterson says a war is bad, he's against a war Putin should have never invaded Ukraine, that's just a tactical disagreement. On the fundamentals, Jordan Peterson sees to think, let's just get our head around this. Putin, no free speech, Putin. Assassinate your political opponents, Putin. Shut down independent media, Putin. Force people to become cannon fodder, Putin. This is the Putin, right? This is the Putin that Jordan Peterson, and maybe Elon Musk, we'll read a little bit from Elon Musk in a minute, believe is the West, the West. Philippe 999 says, Jordan Peterson is a mystic. He cannot be a reference for anything. No, he can be a reference for mystics. He can be a reference for many within the American right who agree with him. He can be a reference for the national conservatives. He can be a reference for the theocrats of various sides. He just joined the Daily Caller, right? He just joined Ben Shapiro's outfit. Maybe he can be a reference point for the Ben Shapiro. Right, I don't know. He's a reference point for millions and millions and millions of people who listen to every word he says. Every word he says. So, of course, he's a reference point. He must be fought. He must be challenged. He must be, you know, we must destroy him intellectually. And now, Elon Musk, Elon Musk has stepped in to the free. You know, he's got a peace proposal. I mean, Elon Musk is going to tell the Ukrainians what's acceptable for them in terms of peace. It's unbelievable. Ukraine, Russia, peace, he writes. We do elections of annexed regions under UN supervision. Russia leaves it if that is the will of the people. Really? So we reward, we reward aggression. We reward aggression. And by the way, how do you do these elections? Given that a lot of the population is fled, do you allow the population to come back? Do you allow them to vote from where they are? What are the security guarantees if they come back? As long as Russia occupies these territories, how dare you have a referendum? God, that makes me so angry. I mean, Russia started a war, took over land, and now they want a referendum. And of course, they ran a referendum under their supervision. This is nuts. He continues, Crimea, formerly part of Russia, as it has been since 1783 until Khrushchev mistake. All right, so again, Russia uses force to take land. It thinks it's theirs. We should just fold. What a supply to Crimea is assured. This is part of the peace deal. And Ukraine remains neutral. Why? Why should Ukraine remain neutral? I don't get this. So Ukraine has no say in its own fate. But we have to do everything that Russia says. Why can't Ukraine decide if it wants to be neutral? I mean, given Russian aggression, given Putin's revealing himself for what he really is, why would anyone want to stay neutral? Elon Musk gets to decide the Ukrainian fate but not the Ukrainians. They don't get to have a referendum on whether they should be neutral or not. Elon continues, he says, this is highly likely to be the outcome in the end. Just a question of how many die before them, maybe. But what does this teach aggressors that if you threaten to kill a lot of people, you get what you want? I mean, maybe we should have had referendum in Poland when the Nazis occupied it. And France, we should have had a referendum in France. Maybe the French actually wanted to be ruled by Hitler. How do you know they didn't? And by the way, maybe the United Kingdom should have stayed neutral. Elon continues, also worth noting that a possible element unlikely outcome of this conflict is nuclear war. Well, if it's unlikely, what are you worried about? Let the Ukrainians beat the shit out of the Russians. It's truly unbelievable to me. I'm trying to see, now 62% of the tweets voted against this. So he had a little poll. Well, that's good, at least. Elon Musk's Twitter followers are now buying into this bullshit. By the way, it sounds to me like, sounds to me like, Elon's been talking to Jordan Peterson. Sounds to me like they're been talking because this sounds a lot like Jordan Peterson talking points. And then finally, Elon Musk writes, pinned, he pinned this tweet. He says, Russia is doing partial mobilization. They go to full war mobilization if Crimea is at risk. Death on both sides will be devastating. Russia has three times population of Ukraine. So victory for Ukraine is unlikely in total war. If you care about the people of Ukraine, seek peace. This is straight out of Russian propaganda. This is straight out of Jordan Peterson. This complete bullshit. First of all, number of population that has determined victory in war. Now, nukes do, but number of population that has not determined victory in war. We know this, I know this. Because I grew up in Israel and fought in a war in Israel. So population is not the factor. Motivation is a factor. Quality of equipment is a factor. Russia is doing partial mobilization. Yes, it's not gonna be able to mobilize the thousands of young men who escaped from Russia. Who crossed over the border to Kazakhstan and Georgia. Rents in Tbilisi must be going through the roof, through the roof. But the thousands of young men that escaped Russia, good for them, will now be mobilized. Many, many others have been, although they are protests against the mobilization and some of the Caucasus, some of the provinces. They were, of course, demonstrations in St. Petersburg and in Moscow against the partial mobilization. The people being mobilized as is being discussed on Russian TV, pro-war, pro-Putin Russian TV, are gonna have to be trained. They're unmotivated. Many of them are motivated to drink rather than to fight. Again, I get this from Russian TV. The quality of these soldiers as compared to the motivated Ukrainian soldiers and the soldiers of Ukraine that are trained by many of the West militaries, they don't have a chance. They just can't afford it. Russia has a bigger population, but it has a population unmotivated to die for nothing, for nothing. It has a larger population, but has a, given the support Ukraine's getting from the West, it has an insignificant economy, which is not able to supply its military with what the military needs in order to win a war. If Russia goes to full war mobilization, the voices within Russia against the war will only increase. The opposition to Putin will only increase, both from the far right, his nationalist right, and from the anti-war segment of the Russian population. So no, I mean, Elon Musk is completely detached from reality, but he is detached from reality in a Jordan Peterson way. And this suggests to me, yeah, that this is Jordan Peterson talking, not Elon. This suggests to me that Jordan and Elon sat down, maybe, who knows, maybe with Joe Rogan or something, and decided on a PR strategy, a PR strategy. Yeah, truly shocking. I would have expected much better from Elon Musk. Remember, this is the Elon who provided them with the satellite internet connections at the beginning of the war. And now he's basically calling on the Ukrainians, in a sense, to surrender. Crazy, crazy stuff. All right, connected to all this. Talked a little bit about the mobilization. I wanna talk about Putin's speech, and then I wanna talk about the pipeline being blown up. So I don't know that we're gonna get all the topics we have today on the list. We might have to postpone some of them for tomorrow because we've got a little bit more here. All right, so Putin's speech. I don't know if you heard the speech. I've read it. I read the speech, about 35 minute speech. Really weird. I mean, the guy's going a little nuts. I mean, he's always been nuts, but he started off the speech by bemoaning the loss of the USSR, the great tragedy in 1991 of, without asking the people dissolving the USSR and what a catastrophe that became and what a national tragedy that is. And then he says, okay, well, we don't need it. That's fine. We don't need it anymore. We're not striving to reassert the USSR, but we are striving on the battlefield. This is what he says. The battlefield to which fate and history have called us. Fate and history is the battlefield for our people, for great historical Russia, for future generations, for our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. So he's launching on his mission for this greater Russia, for the mystical, this mystical great Russia. He says, I want Kiev authorities and the real masters in the West to hear me so that they remember this. People living in Luhansk, Donetsk, Girsian, and Zaporizia are becoming our citizens forever. So he's just annexed these territories that are now Russian citizens, although it's not clear where it counts because he never had full control of Donetsk. He never had full control. He's losing control more and more in Girsian. He's never had full control of Zaporizia province and he's losing control of Luhansk slowly chipping away. So where does the border, where do the Russian citizens begin and where do the liberated Ukrainian citizens end? Where's the border between those two? Yet to be determined, I guess. Again, questions interestingly enough, being asked right now on Russia TV by nationalists, by former generals, by Putin supporters, they don't know. They think, I mean, they were pretty upset that there was this big concerted Red Square, big party that was being held in Red Square as basically Russian troops were being slaughtered in Lehman. You know, if you're a former military, if you're associated with a military in any way, that is, from their perspective, so unjust, so horrific. He then goes on in his speech to talk about the West and he talks about Western imperialism. Here he sounds like the ultimate leftist, right? The West began its colonial policy back in the Middle Ages and then followed the slave trade, the genocide of Indian indigenous tribes in America, the plunder of India, of Africa, the wars of England and France against China. What they did was hooking entire nations and drugs, deliberately exterminating entire ethnic groups for the sake of land and resources. They hunted people like animals. This is contrary to the very nature of man, truth, freedom and justice. That's compared to what the USSR did, starving 20 to 30 million Ukrainians and on and on and on. But going after Western imperialism like a good lefty, right? And then he goes like, but he's on the right, right? Supposedly, again, these left and right distinctions are meaningless these days. He goes, the dictation of Western elites is directed against all societies, including the people of Western countries themselves. This is a challenge to all. This is a complete denial of humanity. The overthrow of faith and traditional values, indeed the suppression of freedom itself has taken the feature of a religion outright Satanism. So we are dominated in the West by Satanism. This is, he's going all out Christian right wing. Do we really want here in our country in Russia, instead of mom and dad to have parent number one, parent number two, number three, he's really going after the woke. Have they gone completely insane? Do we really want it drilled into our children and our schools that there are supposedly genders besides men and women and children to be offered the chance to undergo sex change operations? We have a different future, our own future. So the West is corrupt because it's colonial. The West is corrupt because it's crazy trans, crazy woke. He's got it all lined up. And then to hide his, you know, his nuclear threat, he says, the United States is the only country in the world that has twice used nuclear weapons, destroying the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and setting a precedent. Even today, they actually occupy Germany, Japan and the Republic of Korea and other countries. And at the same time, cynically call them allies of equal standing. So if he uses nuclear weapons, he's gonna say, yep, the Americans did it first. So Putin's rallying around his crazy, mystical, you know, Russian imperialistic vision. He is rallying the troops around that. He is trying to rally the Russian people to war. He declared, as I said, the annexation of these four provinces as he's losing land in these four provinces. Ukrainians on a daily basis, achieving significant gains on the ground, not to say that it's over, not to say that, you know, the Russian military is completely defeated, but it is in bad shape, you know? And as I predicted and I predicted this all along, it just is not a match for the kind of equipment that the Ukrainians have received from the West. It's not a match for the Ukrainians motivated in the West. And then, of course, last week, the pipeline that provides natural gas from Russia to Western Europe, which has been basically dormant, was shut down in August, was sabotaged. It was a massive explosion. Couldn't have been caused by natural reasons, couldn't be caused by any kind of glitch in the pipeline. This is clearly some kind of sabotage. There are very few countries that can pull off a case like this. Obviously, countries that have submarines, the US, France, UK maybe, and the Russians, are the countries that could do something like this. But this is a massive blow to the prospects of Western Europe getting natural gas from Russia. It's, you know, probably wouldn't have gotten natural gas anyway. Russia was committed to not providing it, seemed committed at least, pretended it was committed to it. But now, there's just no way, this pipeline is that segment of it is destroyed. Fixing the pipeline is going to be very, very difficult. It's at depths of 50 to 100 meters, depths that require a lot of effort. 100 meters, depths that require drivers to basically stay under the water to fix it for a month. Germans cannot fix this quickly. There is no way to fix it quickly. It requires equipment that doesn't exist. It requires equipment to be built to be able to fix it. You know, maybe in a few months, probably six months, if they devote huge amounts of resources and money to do it. It's not clear who's responsible for it, for actually fixing it. It's not clear, you know, whether you can fix it, given the regime of sanctions imposed. So it's, you know, it's interesting. And of course, nobody's claiming responsibility. Nobody's claiming responsibility for doing it, for actually blowing it up. It's almost for sure the Russians who did this. But it's not clear if it was done at the request of Putin or this is a little internal insurgency. It could be from his right. I mean, we still don't know who killed Dugan's daughter and who tried to kill Dugan. So who knows what's actually going on in Russia and actually what people are trying or wanting to do in Russia. But the likelihood of this being the United States, I think, is zero. The United States doesn't have the balls to do anything like this. I mean, the idea that Biden would do something like this is, you know, it's just, it's just stupid. I mean, because Biden, I mean, Biden doesn't have the balls to do something like this. And it would leak. The United States could never keep it a secret. It would leak tomorrow that the U.S. did it. It would have to be the Navy. It couldn't be the CIA. It would actually have to be the Navy. And these things don't stay secret for very long. Europe didn't do it. Really, the only people who have the capacity and the incentive and the will to do it are the Russians. And it could be a rogue part of the Russian army that did it, you know, offended by the idea that Putin is continuing to sell natural gas to their enemy in the West. But Russia is not going to fix it. Russia has no motivation to fix it. It doesn't have the funds to fix it. This requires more than just putting a submarine in the water. This requires a massive efforts with ships. It requires building these massive clamps, which Russia does not have the capacity to do. Yes, Russian can put submarines in the water, but it can't put the technical and engineering resources to be able to fix this pipeline in place. There's just no way. This requires the Germans. It requires German engineering. It requires American engineering. Another reason why America probably didn't boil up because America probably is the one that's going to fix it and going to spend the money to fix it to help Western Europe get it fixed. So that'll stay a mystery for a long time because nobody's admitting to actually doing it, but you could just lay a new pipe and hook it up. Laying pipe over there is very difficult. It takes years. Think about Nord Stream 2 how long it took. You'd have to lay it in parallel to the common track, then connect it to the existing pipeline. Very difficult. We're talking about pipes that are made of steel, very thick steel and covered with very thick layers of concrete. You would have to connect it, and again, you would have to design clamps that connected to it. Again, because it was blown up, it's not a clean cut. You'd have to cut off the existing, the parts of the pipeline that were blown in order to attach a new pipeline. Massive operation. Unlikely, you're unlikely to find anybody who can do it fast, and you're unlikely that the Russians have the technical capabilities of doing this. There are lots of rockets that could have blown this up. You have to find, hopefully, divers or submarines will go down there and find the explosives, the detonated discs and the shells of it and be able to determine whose shells they are. Another reason why it wouldn't be America. America to piss off its NATO allies by doing it, it just would be stupid and ridiculous and require a certain level of courage that Biden doesn't have. Yeah, Frank, good point. It's always easier to destroy than to build yes, and particularly when it's a complex, difficult project like it exists. Now, the pipeline was already shut off, supposedly for maintenance or for different things, but the whole thing is weird and it makes sense that it was done by kind of rogue Russians. Russians who didn't think Putin was being tough enough with the West. All right, what else do we want to say about Russia? Let's see if we have any questions about Russia. Not that one, not that one. All right, let's see. Hopper Campbell asks, even when oppressed mystic populations like Russia experience a little bit of freedom, they won't give up their Starbucks, which is just to me a worldwide dark ages in terms of pure fascism, communism is possible. I'm not sure how the first point connects to the second one. Look, absolutely a dark ages is possible. A worldwide fascist kind of regime. I don't think communism will ever come back, but fascism will. I think it's possible. People, this mysticism is now infecting the West. This mysticism and fascism is infecting many countries in the West. It is affecting the United States. We're seeing the rise of intellectuals of the right who are fascists and mystics. We're seeing the infatuation with Putin himself or with Russian nationalism. Look at Jordan Peterson, how popular he is. Yeah, I mean this is not a good time. And the idea that human beings can accept authoritarianism is well established. Freedom is rare. Freedom is unusual. Freedom is as occurred very little, very infrequently in human history. And human beings can easily be pivoted towards an unfree society and towards embracing authoritarianism. All right, let's see anything. Okay, nothing there. Okay, so I think we're done with Russia. That was my brief, although it lasted 45 minutes. My brief update. Let's see, let's take one other topic. Well, the Brazil elections are not going away and the Italian elections are not going away. So maybe we'll do that tomorrow. Let's talk about the UK budget. Liz Truss's first budget that was proposed, the first budget proposal. Let's talk a little bit about that. The market's response to it, the backtracking today, and everything else that has gone on in the UK, the response of the Bank of England, and just the general hysteria around Liz Truss's first budget. And then let's leave kind of the election, Brazil and Italy, and the California insanity. Well, you know, California insanity, which one? So many of them. But this one relates to trans issues. I mean, it's just another one of these crazy, insane, woke, nutty things that California is doing. I think the Supreme Court's going to turn it back. But anyway, we'll get to that tomorrow. So let's talk about UK budget. So the UK announced a budget last week that basically involved two main features, two main features. One was massive subsidies for energy. So I don't know the exact number. I think it was something like 200 billion pounds to subsidize the cost of energy over the winter. So subsidize it for poor people, subsidize it pretty much for everybody, which is nuts in many respects. It's exactly the wrong policy you want, the best way to ration or to get people to adjust their use of energy. You want them during the winter, this winter, to use less energy because there's less available. It's to let prices rise, prices suppress demand, and that, of course, helps prices stabilize. And it reduces the stress on the entire system. Instead of that, the UK budget involved, instead of letting prices go up and suppressing demand and maybe helping out the poor with some vouchers or just increasing a one-time increase of what do you call it? I don't know, welfare or something like that. Instead of that, basically everybody is getting a subsidy so that they can use as much energy as they want without any cap, but the government will cap their prices. Well, not let prices go too high. I mean, that's nuts. It's going to cost the UK a fortune. But it's a one-time massive subsidy, which is harmful to the economy, but not devastating. It's not that unusual. It's not that different than what they did during COVID. Second part of the budget, which is what got a lot of attention, was tax cuts across the board, tax cuts, corporate taxes, and marginal taxes across the board, including the elimination completely of the highest marginal tax rate at 45%. So this was something that she had promised when she ran within the Conservative Party for leadership. It's intended to stimulate the British economy. It's intended to put more money in the hands, in the pockets of people, particularly the wealthy, because they eliminated the 45% tax bracket and lower other tax brackets, means that they get to keep more of their money, which means they invest more of it, which means greater long-term economic growth, which is what people don't understand. It also, in the short run, means higher tax revenue. Supply side does actually work. That is, when you lower marginal tax rates, particularly when they're particularly high, like 45%, you actually discourage work and you just encourage people to invest heavily in ways to get around the tax code. When you lower taxes, you increase the propensity of people to actually pay their taxes, and as a consequence, you increase tax revenue. But the market and the public took this as a huge slap in the face. So basically, in this sense, so basically the idea was, no, this is going to dramatically increase the budget. The deficit, it's going to dramatically increase the amount of lending the U.K. government is going to have to do. It's going to make it unlikely that U.K. repay its debt in the future without significant inflation. As a consequence of that, yields on U.K. bonds went through the roof. One day spikes that I don't know that we've ever seen the likes of in a country like the U.K. we saw public polls show that only like, I don't know, 10%, 16% of the people supported the elimination of the top tracks back then, of course. Liz Truss went on TV to try to defend all this. She was pathetic. Pathetic is a compliment. I think she was worse than pathetic. She was awful. And so the whole thing was just a disaster. Instead of coming out and saying, look, this raises revenue ultimately. Second, it increases investment and therefore increases economic growth in the long run, which will cause whatever recession the U.K. is heading into to be less severe. What came across was somebody who was incompetent who didn't know what they were doing, couldn't defend what they were doing, who was just trying to benefit the rich and to help with everybody else. Of course, she couldn't defend it. And as a consequence, Ashton, you're back. It's been a while. Haven't seen you in a long time. You're on vacation in Rome. Cool. Thank you. Thank you for $300. Really, really appreciate that. That gets us very close to her. Gets us closer to a goal of 650 for the night. But it's good to have you back, Ashton. So, you know, no ability to defend herself. And of course, one of the things she didn't do, which would have been, which was necessary, is necessary, if you really care about economics and if you really care about your economy, is she didn't propose cutting spending. So no proposed spending cuts. So increasing spending on energy and decreasing taxes. It's kind of the Ronald Reagan formula. Ronald Reagan also deregulated significantly. So it would have made the recession less bad. But it would have also increased deficits, at least because of the spending. And ultimately, you cannot achieve sustained tax cuts and you cannot achieve sustained economic growth without cutting government spending. Now, that's just an economic basis. I'm not even talking about the morality of the government spending as much as it does in the U.K. and the U.S. and everywhere else, everywhere else. So today, because... Now, let me just make one more point. Two years ago, Johnson, the Conservative Party, won a landslide victory. I mean, a landslide, historical landslide victory in the United Kingdom by playing to the left. That is, by playing the populist card. By arguing for so-called worker-friendly regulations, controls, taxes, spending. Being explicitly anti-capitalist and anti-market. By playing to the left on climate change. And I'm playing to the right on social issues. And they won. They won many people over, many people who are leftists. They won the working class in the north of England. And what Liz Truss is doing is she doesn't understand the political dynamic. She is now reverting to Thatcher-type policies. But Thatcher-type policies are not what won Boris Johnson the election. Thatcher-type policies are not popular in the U.K. Thatcher-type policies are not popular in the U.S. or anywhere today in the western world. We are in a world of right-wing populism. What's popular of the right is the social issues. And from economic perspective, what's popular is leftist policies. Government intervention, government subsidization, central planning, and promises. Promises galore to the so-called poor. So Liz miscalculated politically. Now, I give a credit for having the courage to propose something that was going to be super unpopular. But then I give a D minus for being so awful in trying to defend it. She was just pathetic. And so were the rest of her ministers. And then finally, today we hear that of all the different policies that they propose. The one thing that they are eliminating, that they are walking back from, is maybe the best thing in all the stuff they proposed, which is the elimination of the top marginal rate of 45%. So the reinstituting of the 45%. The one thing that could have really helped the U.K. economy long-term is reducing taxes on the highest earners. Those are the people who invest. Those are the people who invest in the future. That they're doing away with. So Liz Truss has already capitulated. She was facing a rebellion within the conservative party. Not surprising, given that it's a conservative party shaped to a large extent by Boris Johnson and by this new populism. And I expect that she will move away from a lot of her tax cuts and then, of course, the big thing is deregulation. She has promised massive deregulation, getting rid of all the regulations that were imposed on them by the European Union that she doesn't think they need. She also promised to frack. We'll see. Fracking is very unpopular in the U.K. Well, she's opening up the U.K. to fracking. We'll see if she will open the U.K. up to more fossil fuels. We will see. So Liz Truss, half a step forward, quarter of a step back. Well, maybe a full half-step back. Not impressed. Not a good beginning. Not a good start. Of course, what the Bank of England had to do was while it's raising interest rates on the one hand, in order to get those yields of the long-term bonds come down, the Bank of England said, we'll buy British bonds as many as we need to to get interest rates down. In other words, we're going to raise interest rates on the one hand, and we're going to lower interest rates with the other hand. So we're going to raise short-term interest rates and we're going to lower long-term interest rates by buying up bonds. It doesn't end well. It doesn't end well. All right. We will see where it goes from here. But again, Liz Truss, not a good start. Not a good start politically. Not a good start economically. Not a good start. Certainly not a good start from the perspective of defending your values, defending your positions, and standing up to the status quo, the pro-tax, pro-regulation, anti-fee market status quo. All right. Let's see. Let's do some super chats. And yeah, and then tomorrow we'll do Brazil and Italian election in California and Sandy. So I'll just cut that from the title on this and move it to tomorrow's title. All right. Just a quick reminder. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this. We're $129 short of our goal of $650 thanks to Ashton, who got us very, very close, and thanks to all the other superchatters as well. So what is it? $6.5, $20 questions, and we made our goal. All right. Ashton. Hi, everyone. It's me, Nawal. Jessica back from the States yesterday from a vacation. I took in Rome. Wow. I saw the School of Athens. Cool at the Vatican Museum. And was in awe of its deep message. I know you hate Plato, but seeing him in the center of the painting, debating with Aristotle, gave me a renewed hope for mankind. Although they're not really debating, right? They're both walking towards us. It looks like they're kind of talking true. Yeah, it's one of the great masterpieces of Western civilization, one of the great paintings of all time. And it's kind of a cool painting. It's just fun, too, because all the different characters and different Greek philosophers and Michelangelo is actually in there. Raphael, who painted the painting, actually put Michelangelo in there as brooding at the bottom of the painting. And a lot of the faces there are faces of Renaissance figures, right? Renaissance. But it's a fabulous painting. Of course, the Vatican Museum is amazing. Hopefully, Ashton, you saw the Sistine Chapel, and you got to see that amazing, amazing Sistine Chapel of Michelangelo's masterpiece. And you saw the Pietà Michelangelo in the Vatican itself, not in the museum. The Pietà is in the Vatican itself and the Pietà, God, one of the greatest pieces of art ever. And there's quite a few Bernini's. I don't know if you made it to Villa Borghese. Villa Borghese is where the Bernini sculptures are, but one of my favorite places on planet Earth, certainly one of the best places in Rome. Statue of David in Rome. So you saw a copy in Rome, or did you go to Venice to Florence to see the David? But glad you enjoyed it. Yeah, my plan is to go to Rome next year, hang out with my wife, do Rome for a week, and then maybe go to the Malfi Coast and Naples for a week. All right, Michael asks, it amazes me how altruism turns nobody's into somebody's. In a rational world, someone like Putin would be in jail. Instead, he's running the place. It's quite an effective little trick. Loses how pulling on winners. Yes, and of course, part of this has a lot to do with mysticism, right? Don't forget mysticism. Oh, Ashton went all over Italy, so he did see the David in Florence. Excellent, excellent, excellent. So much to see in Italy. But yes, it's the combination of mysticism and altruism. A super effective, right? I speak to the spirits, the spirits of Greater Russia, and the spirits command you to sacrifice to me. What a powerful, what a powerful combo that is. And it's a combination that Attila and the witch doctor have been using forever, right? This is the combination that Ein Rand identified in For the New Intellectual. Attila, who wants to rule man's bodies, man, the material world, Attila, in order to rule them, needs the witch doctor. The witch doctor tells them some story about spirits and how they must sacrifice to the spirits. And the spirits, of course, you know, in communication with Attila and with the witch doctor. And the deal is that Attila protects the witch doctor, allows him the power, the fame, the fortune. And together, they will... You know, Russia has its Russian orthodoxy. It's Attila, it's a witch doctor. It has Putin, it's Attila. It has Dugan, witch doctor. Putin and his comrades around him, they're Attila's. But every authoritarian regime has this structure of a theory that grants special status, that special platonic status, special status to know the world that nobody else has, to the people in charge. And the people in charge, of course, want to rule everything and want to command everything. And of course, there's the combination of altruism. The spirits command you sacrifice to me. That is so cool if you can get away with it, right? I mean, it's not cool. It's horrible and it's stupid and it's self-destructive. But what a trick. What a trick they're pulling on and they've been pulling it off for thousands of years now. I think starting with when we were in tribes. All right, Ashton just took us over the 650 mark with the $200 additional contributions. Again, thanks, Ashton. And as I said, it's good to have you back. Let's see. Ashton says, Hitler infamously said, it's not true, truth that matters, but victory. The philosophy of national socialism is predicated on the idea that might makes right. Is it true that history is written by the victors? Do the people who have power today got it because they won the wars of yesterday? Well, yes. I mean, history is definitely written by the victors. It's important to win wars. And it's important not to let the bad guys win wars because the bad guys, when they win wars, institute bad policies that affect us all and the loser gets stuck with those bad policies. Hitler, of course, said it's not truth that matters, but victory. This is partially pragmatism. Pragmatism always holds this. This is why Dugan, the Russian Dugan, says that the only legitimate philosophy in the West today is pragmatism. The only thinkers in America that he respects, that he has any respect for are the pragmatists because Dugan too believes that it's not truth that matters, but victory. Indeed, somebody like Trump believes exactly the same thing. I won't forget when he was asking in an interview, but what you said, can you acknowledge that it wasn't true? Did you lie? And he literally said, it doesn't matter. It worked. What doesn't matter if it was truth or not? It worked. That is the mentality of an authoritarian. That is the mentality of pure pragmatism. That is the mentality of short-term victory at the expense of everything, including truth. The expression history is written by the victors is tricky because it's not just meant to say that the victors shape the future. It's meant to say that the victors also rewrite history. That the history we know is not factual. It's not true because it was written by the victors and shaped by them. And to some extent, that's true. I mean, they get to shape the written word. But the beauty of the modern world and beauty of good historians is that that's not good enough for good historian. A good historian looks at an archaeological record. A good historian looks at multiple resources and multiple sources. A good historian looks at every aspect of this and takes into account that if you were biased of the victors, Frank says Howard Zinn is an example of history by the losers. Not true. Not true. Howard Zinn is an example of history by the winners. It's not true that the communists, that Marxism lost. It hasn't lost the ideological battle. Communism has lost a territorial battle. But the battle for the hearts and minds of men, communism is still doing pretty well. Pretty well. All right. Thank you, Ashton. Thank you again. All right. Liam asked, is deregulation a tricky thing? When the culture is ready for freedom and begins voting for it, is there a risk large-scale deregulation will be scrapped? Is there a risk large-scale deregulation will be screwed up like in Russia in the 90s and people would turn against markets? I mean, it's possible. But in a culture that is already turning against the government and is pro-regulation, a pro-deregulation, there are plenty of smart people that can get this right. The problem with Russia is they had no foundation. There's no conception of property rights in Russia. There never has been in its entire history. There's never been a property rights in Russia. So suddenly to impose or to bring about property rights without building the institutions, the legal context, the legal framework for property rights was insane. You know, it was Geoffrey Sacks from Harvard University who helped the Russians put this in place without thinking. I mean, the guy's supposedly a genius, but he's an idiot. The Russian catastrophe in the 90s of deregulation turning basically everything onto the mafia was easy to avoid and could easily be avoided in the United States. It has a history, a tradition, institutions of private property into which you deregulate, right? You don't deregulate no rule of law. You deregulate and elevate the existing rules vis-a-vis property rights, and that's a huge difference. To deregulate in the United States is a million times easier than what you would do in Russia. What was done, sorry, what was done in Russia? James Taylor says people don't really want to live under the consequence of their own ideas, which indicates most people are cowards who don't have a problem with lying to themselves. Absolutely true. Objectivism can't grow with that juvenile mindset. That's right. I absolutely agree with you, James. People lie to themselves that dishonest themselves. They don't want to face reality. They don't want to face facts. And they buy into philosophical and unethical systems that they don't really want to live, and they can't consistently live by. And objectivism cannot, as long as that is the dominant epistemology and way people think and way people behave, objectivism cannot grow, and this is why the focus of growing objectivism has to be on young people before they become evading cowards. That's the challenge. This is why the most important industry in the world is the education industry, and that's the one that needs to be liberated. Michael asks, if you're mentally deficient, can you really achieve happiness let's say you can hold the jar bagging groceries and living at home, can you build self-esteem and live a happy life at such a low level of functionality? To some extent, to whatever extent it's possible. Not full on, I don't think, because there's a sense in which you know that you probably can't survive in the world in a slightly different world. You couldn't survive by yourself. You're very dependent on others. Happiness is not 0-1, it's a continuum. They can achieve a certain level of satisfaction, peace of mind, contentment, whether they can achieve full-blown, full-potential happiness, probably not, if you're really mentally deficient. Michael, thank you. Mike Dowell, thank you. Appreciate it, it's good to be back. As I said for a short period of time. Let's see, do you think warmer cultures tend to have worse customer service? For instance, Israel, it's easier to make friends there, but they don't make the best waiters, whereas the US and Asia are very efficient but less impersonal. Yeah, I mean, it's really an issue of culture and I don't think that has to do with the weather. For example, some of the best service you will get in the world in terms of service, like in hotels and restaurants, is they're not particularly efficient, but unbelievable service, although in hotels and restaurants they're pretty efficient too, is, for example, in Thailand. Thailand is super hot. Or Hong Kong, think Hong Kong and Singapore. Super efficient, super hot. So you're talking about warmer culture, not in terms of weather, but in terms of people's personality. Again, I don't know. I don't know. I'm trying to think Thailand's a very warm culture, efficient in some things, not in others. I don't know. It's a good question. America's a pretty warm culture and yet quite efficient. The US is much warmer than the UK, for example. The US is much warmer than Europe, for example, in a sense of people's attitudes and yet more efficient. So not completely clear. Oh, Shazmat is here. Good, because Shazmat making a comment in the chat reminded me that I owe Shazmat two Star Trek episodes. Two Star Trek episodes that he asked for. So let's do the Star Trek review now and then I'll finish up with Super Chat Questions. Of course, you can continue asking Super Chat Questions, but making them $20 or more. No $5, $10 questions, because there's just too many right now and I still have to do the Star Trek. So Jennifer, remember now, you should have remembered earlier. Or maybe you did remember and I didn't see you comment on it. So $20 questions if you want to ask questions, but otherwise I'm going to do the two Star Trek reviews and then all the Super Chats and then we'll call it a night and I'll see you again tomorrow. Okay, so unfortunately, I watched these like underway two ages. So what was that? Three weeks ago, exactly three weeks ago. But I think I remember them. All right, so let me start with this is Star Trek The Next Generation Season 3 Episode 15 called Yesterday's Enterprise, which was a clever use of time travel to create a situation where people give up their lives, but it's not clear they're giving up their lives because it's in a time dimension. So it's a hate. Generally, I don't like time travel because all you can think about when you're watching time travel is all the contradictions and all the bizarre outcomes and all the impossibilities and all the just that it's impossible. And in this case, the time travel in order to set everything straight. So what happens to Star Trek, what happens to the Enterprise is it gets zapped into a different kind of timeline and everybody in the ship is now a little different. Everything is a little different. Different personnel, they're still fighting over the Klingon so there's no Klingon in the ship. I think that's what they call them. Anyway, so the whole thing is in a different time zone but they don't know they're in a different time zone because they don't have memory of another time zone. They just have memory of their timeline and a lot of the nonsense is nonsensical. But if you remember Star Trek, the next generation has this woman outplayed by Whoopi Goldberg who is kind of a mystic. She, I don't know, she has the ability to commune with something. She knows stuff that nobody else knows and she senses, she feels that they've shifted to a different timeline and she basically has no proof, no evidence except a feeling and the fact that people generally trust her but except a feeling. She has to convince the captain and everybody to act in crazy ways although it turns out that they're going to die anyway so the fact that they do this other thing and some of them die is less of a big issue because they're going to die anyway. So it turns on a mystical element which I don't like and then what happens is that in order to preserve the original timeline, another enterprise from another timeline drifts into this timeline. They have to go back. They go back to certain death and they volunteer to go back to certain death in order to preserve the timeline. Is it altruism? No, because they're going to die here anyway. Anyway, so you know, I like Star Trek because it always creates these dramatic circumstances. They're often philosophically bizarre. This one is metaphysically bizarre because time travel is metaphysically bizarre always. And so it was definitely enjoyable called yesterday's Enterprise. Definitely enjoyable, definitely interesting, definitely causes you to think all the good things that a Star Trek episode does. It's not my favorite episode just because it's got time travel and it relies on this element of faith in her feelings which cannot be defined, her character is kind of weird, her prophecy or whatever. So I enjoyed it, but it's not my favorite Star Trek because of those two features. But everything else, given the suspend, you suspend belief about the nonsense, entertaining, dramatic and dramatic. The second one, and Shazibot of course says this is his favorite, I bet I like it, right, is a taste of Armageddon. Now this one's really interesting. Again, this is some of the best Star Trek because it really takes an interesting premise, creates an interesting premise, shows you what happens with an interesting premise like this. The Enterprise shows up, this is the original Star Trek, this is a taste of Armageddon, doesn't say here which episode it is, but an episode from the original series. The Enterprise shows up on a planet system with two planets at war and have been at war, I don't know, 500 years or something, right? But there's no signs of war, there's no destruction on the planets and a previous spaceship that when they disappeared, it's gone. And so they beam down and, you know, the planet says go away, we don't want you here, you're in the way, go away, right? Because we've got this war on, the other side will misinterpret you being here. And while they're there's an attack. Now what is an attack constituted? An attack constituted a cyber attack. In a sense, the attack constituted a computer message which just says you've been attacked and these are the variables. And based on the variables the computer simulates, it determines how many people died, who died, where they died. And then what happens is that the people go and they're killed by their own people. And that's how the war is engaged. Each party sends one of these computer blasts to the other side and the other side executes by killing its people based on, and this has been going on for 500 years. And as part of, of course, this one, the other planet that we never see determines that the enterprise has to be destroyed, that all the people in the enterprise has to be killed, and of course Coke is in a quagmire. And the rationale that the planet is using, so they say, what are you doing? What is this? They say, look, this is a much more efficient way of managing a war because if we just unleashed on one another all the weapons we have, we'd basically destroy both our worlds. Not only would we kill everybody, we'd destroy the infrastructure, civilization would end. This is a way of managing the carnage so that only some people die all the time but civilization continues and our worlds continue. So it's a way to reduce the pain and the messiness of war, which is very clever. You have to admit it's very clever. And of course what the enterprise tries to convince them, what Coke tries to convince them is, and does in the end by destroying the computers, is that, well, partially it's the messiness of war that helps stop wars. And of course the real messiness here is a disrespect for the individual, a disrespect for individualism, right? Because if you value the individual every life that has to be sacrificed for the sake of this game is unacceptable and you would negotiate to stop this war and you would figure out why the war if I started and how you could solve this issue. But anyway, so what he convinces them of is no, you want the messiness because the messiness will force you to negotiate and you'll soon discover maybe there's no reason for this war. So Star Trek is so much better than Star Wars. I mean, not the movies but the show because it's so thoughtful and philosophical. Star Wars in the end is just an action movie. It has no meaningful themes and it's filled with mysticism and altruism. But Star Trek is always thoughtful, always causes you to think, it's always interesting, it's always challenging. And this episode in particular was really cool. So it's a little dorky because it's got old special effects and the acting. It's not, you know, the old Star Trek is not great because primarily special effects look so stupid today. But for the time, of course, it was very advanced. But the cleverness is in the plot and in the story. And yeah, I love the original Star Trek and Schausbad is kind of incentivizing me to revisit these episodes and they're very, very, very good. Yeah, you know, Schausbad adds the leader of the alien planet claims that the warlike mentality is instinctive and inevitable. You know, because it's all they've known. And for hundreds of years, they can't think outside of it and they've created this routine of sacrifice, of human sacrifice, like mystics of old that can't be questioned. So the routine is just dogma, it's just there and it takes the cook and the crew of the Enterprise to shake them into realization that no, they have choices. They can think for themselves. They have free will. They can break the routine. They can challenge the existing order. They can sue for peace. It's quite clever. And then there's a great character of a diplomat in there, a typical diplomat who thinks he knows everything who always thinks, you know, all these military men, what do they know? You know, everything can be negotiated. Everything can be negotiated. And of course it's proven wrong to its credit. Recognizes that he's wrong and admits it during the show. So it's very good. It's very good. Yeah, one of the female says, that's the way we've always done it. Yeah, that's a theme in history. A theme. All right, so as far as I know, I have two reviews left that I owe you guys. A review of the song Compliance by Muse and a review of Glorious Dawn, which I can't believe is sung by Carl Sagan. So those two, I still owe you. So Star Trek is really about ideas. And that's not always good ideas, but ideas, but always something that I'll get you thinking. And this episode was about good ideas because it's about free will. It's about the ability to change the world. And it's about never giving in to some collectivistic ideal, never accepting human sacrifice, which is what all these people that want Ukraine just to fold want. They want, because they're afraid of a nuclear bomb. They're willing to sacrifice the people of Ukraine. Just willing to make the sacrifice. Stunning. Okay, that was Star Trek. Colt, something I've been doing as of late, this is because of your influence. I've been reaching out to people more in the center of the political spectrum and warning them about the dangers of the far right and the far left. That's great. Thank you, Colt. I mean, that's the kind of work that needs to be done. What we need to do is save people from the far left and far right. What we need is to offer a real alternative to the far left and the far right. Let's see. Hopper Campbell, would you say life has come easy to you for the most part? You haven't had a lot of overwhelming trials and tribulations. I don't know. I don't know what that means exactly. I don't know what that means exactly. Compared to whom? Compared to what? I think that life has come easy to me because I've made it easy. People suffer through military service and it can be hard. I made the most of it. I was poor for many years, particularly my early years in the United States. Made the most of that. You know, a variety of other trials and tribulations that I'm not going to get into. But I don't let the issues and the problems get to me. So it feels like it's easy. But I can't say that it came easy. I think I can say I made it easy. Apollo, thank you for the support. Really appreciate it. Let's see. Michael asks, is honesty and hard work still the best strategy for successful and happy life in late stage mixed economy? Yes. I just don't see any alternative to it. You'll achieve the most that in our world can be achieved. But if you're not honest and I don't like the term hard work, smart work, combined with ambition and dedication, rather than hard work. I know a lot of people work hard, but don't create or produce anything. James says, is the First Amendment going to save us in the end? It's the only thing the law protecting the transition, transmission of Iron Man's ideas. Yes. I mean, thank God for the First Amendment. Who knows? Although who knows what would happen without it? This country would not last very long without it. I mean, the left and the right would compete on getting rid of speech they didn't like. And who knows who would land up still standing? Gale says, yay for calling out Jordan Peterson. That doodle dandy says, if the left has no regard for individual rights, why do they support abortion rights for purely nihilistic reasons? They just want to see more dead humans regarding of the mechanism. No, partially because fetuses are not humans. No. I mean, look, the left supports gay rights. It supports gay marriage. It supports, or at least it used to support being anti-racist. Not all the left is nihilistic and not all the left has no regard for individual rights. The far left, the crazy left has no regard for individual rights. And to a large extent, they support abortion because the rights against abortion. Because they want to be able for women to do whatever the hell she wants because they support individual autonomy, which is basically women worship and emotionalism. So they support abortion for the wrong reasons, but they support it. But most of the left is not far left. Most of the left capitulates the far left, but most of the left is not far left. Most of the left is not nihilistic. And they support it because they have a certain understanding of some level of individual rights. Not a very deep one, not a very comprehensive one, not a very consistent one, but at some level they have it. Liam says, it's the reason we haven't seen a great depression since 1929 because we are so much wealthier. Paul Krugman says this is due to the welfare state preventing mass poverty. I mean, there's a sense in which Paul Krugman is right. What the government has learned to do very effectively through the welfare state since 1929 is to spread the pain, the misery, the cost out over generations instead of taking a hit immediately. So we don't have a great depression, but you could argue that shaving off 3 percentage points of GDP a year for 40 years is worse than the Great Depression in a sense of unfulfilled economic growth. The government has also become very good at using the fiat money system whereas it was very bad at using it in 1929. It's gotten better at using it to avoid great depressions, although it still managed to use it in a way as it created the Great Recession, and use it in a way that creates this situation where you don't get a depression today, but you get slower economic growth for 40 years. And they keep doing that and they do it every crisis. They do it every time the Fed takes interest rates to zero, anytime they bail out banks, anytime they do a mass checks to all the people, anytime they do a stimulus package and write trillions and trillions of dollars. They are giving up future growth to avoid significant economic recession today. Now there's a different way of getting rid of depressions and that is freedom, but that's inconceivable to them. Yeah, one of Fremont says the upside is 1.03 to the power of 40 over 40 years is 320%. That means you're richer by four times, right? That's what you're giving up. It's worse than the Great Depression. Might as well have a Great Depression and then have this massive economic growth. But here you're never going to have that growth because they've mortgaged your future. And it's clever because you don't know what you don't know. You don't know what you can't see. You don't feel the pain because the pain is, it's like the boiling frog. He doesn't know he's boiled and he's dead already. We don't know. We're in this slow economic growth. All economists tell us, yeah, we're in a mature economy. Mature economies don't grow very fast. Bullshit. But everybody's bought it. Good question, Liam. Huppercambo, what makes people hate life? I don't know. Infruity complex. Lack of self-esteem. Mainly lack of self-esteem. Valdrin says influential leftist called you and a third-rate novelist. How do you respond to someone belittling someone you respect, even someone smart? Say Harris. You don't. You say you don't know what you're talking about. You're wrong. And you want. I mean, what are you going to argue about literature with Sam Harris or with a leftist? I mean, what's the point? Obviously, if he's read Ain Rand, then he has very different literary standards than you do and probably very bad ones. Somebody who probably thinks James Joyce was a great writer is not going to appreciate Ain Rand. And you just have to accept that and tell him you disagree, have to express your opinion. There's some point in getting an argument with him. Kurtz says it's always a good day when pro-Russian goons have to eat a bag of manure. Also disappointed, what Musk said. Also nice to see you doing a show today. Thank you. And yeah, very disappointed, what Musk said. It just shows what a mixed bag and how his move from the left to the right has involved him getting captured by the right. Captured by the right. Now he's spouting talking points from Jordan Peterson, which is pretty sad. You'd think he was a better thinker than Jordan. Francis, do you think Russia with its nukes poses an objective threat to the United States at this point? If so, to what magnitude and how should we handle it? Yes, I definitely think it poses a threat. You know, if I were president, which I am not, of course, I would make it very clear to Putin that the use of nuclear weapons would result in his annihilation. It's complete and utter destruction. And that that would be something the United States would take on. And it would be an act of suicide for him and for pretty much everybody in the city of Moscow. The other thing I would do is I would muster all of my anti-missile technology, all of my anti-missile resources. If they, you know, make sure that they're stationed in the right places, make sure that we have enough capacity. I suspect that many of the Russian nukes wouldn't work anyway, but it doesn't take many to destroy the world. So you want to be able to knock as many of them out of the sky as possible. So you want to make sure that the U.S. military has the defensive capabilities of protecting us from nuclear Armageddon, or at least making sure that the Russians fear that they cannot destroy us. I don't know how realistic that is, but if Israel has a missile defense system, both for ballistic missiles and for a variety of different incoming missiles and for the kind of short-range missiles that they have in the Gaza Strip, the Iron Dome, you would think the United States has a system at least that's capable of not better. And if they don't, they better start building one. Better start building one. So this should be, by the way, a wake-up call for the United States to start heavily investing in missile defense systems. And deploying them in key places, I would deploy them all over Western Europe. And I would let the Russians know, we're deploying anti-missile systems all over Western Europe. And, you know, make it clear that there's no way, there's no stalemate, this is not going to result in anything but the annihilation of the Russian regime. Because I don't think Putin wants to die. So the challenge is convincing him today. Now look, you know, I have a different foreign policy than almost anybody out there and libertarians hate me and the left hates me and the right hates me, everybody hates me on foreign policy. But I would basically do whatever I could right now to assassinate Putin. And I would deploy whatever resources were possible to assassinate him. He has threatened the United States with nuclear weapons. That's an equivalent of a declaration of war. And while, and he's crazy enough, and he's back as to the wall because he's losing so much, I don't want to put him in a position where he has to make those kind of decisions. So just kill him. Just kill him. Take him out. Do what is necessary. So, you know, that's my view. That's what I would do with Russia. But generally, both because of North Korea and because of Russia and because of Iran might have a nuclear weapons at some point, I would definitely, what do you call it, I would definitely invest heavily and deploy the best technology possible to missile defense systems. All right. Let's see. Michael asks, Trump wants to make America great, Putin wants to make Russia great, M2 is in the air. I mean, Trump is not M2. This is the thing about Trump. The Trump is not M2. Trump is a non-ideological. Trump is a nothing. M2 is an integrated ideology. The national conservatives are M2. The theocrats, the conservative Catholic theocrats are M2. In the United States, the Catholics, the Patrick DeNines, the Vermool, the Sahaba Mares, they're M2. Trump is a nothing. Trump is what makes M2 possible. Trump is the guy who paves the road to M2. He is not any more of a self-M2. He's just a nothing. He's a noise machine. Good wonder. Wonder Freeman, absolutely. He's a noise machine. He's a nobody. He is an idealist in many respects and he will create enough havoc on the right. We really have havoc on the left. We have nihilism on the left. Trump will create nihilism on the right which allows the M2 to fill the gap and to take over. And that's where I see us heading. Again, the national conservatives are making headway. I don't know. I'll do a show on this maybe this week. But the national conservatives had their conference earlier in September. And one of the interesting things at the conference was that the head of Hebertage Foundation, the conservative foundation that's been around forever. I was actually on a panel in Seoul, South Korea with the guy who founded the Hebertage Foundation. I didn't ask him because this was just before I read this. But the head of the Hebertage Foundation declared at the National Conservative Conference that the Hebertage Foundation is with them. The Hebertage Foundation, last I look, had a budget of over $100 million. $100 million. The heritage, heritage, heritage, not heretics, heritage foundation. And I don't think Ed Folner who was on the panel with me would agree that the heritage is national conservative. I don't know. He's religious. He's very religious but I don't think he's quite that wacky. But that's where we are. We're at a point where the mainstream conservative think tank, the leading mainstream conservative think tank is now completely on board with the National Conservative Project. That's what's scary. Colleen, thank you for the support. Really, really appreciated. $50. Thank you. We easily made our goal today. Thanks to everybody. I will be back tomorrow at the same time, same place. Tomorrow we'll talk about Italian and Brazilian elections. We'll talk about California Insanity. And I'm sure something will happen between today and tomorrow's show that we worthy of discussion. Thanks to all the superchatters. Thanks to all the people who support me on a monthly basis, whether it's on Patreon, on Subscribestar, on PayPal through my channel, you're on bookshow.com.support, or even through locals. Thank you to all the supporters. Thank you to all the listeners. I will see you all tomorrow. Have a great night. It's good to be back. We'll do a lot of shows this week because next week I'm off to Europe. Bye, everybody.