 You may have 40 here, so you may have heard the news, Donald Trump is posing a threat that democracy is failing, so many of the smartest people I know believe that Donald Trump is a threat to our democracy. So, you don't hear them engage with, well, what is democracy? Democracy is the will of the people. So, most people want a stop to illegal immigration. I would suspect that most Americans would want immigration restriction. So, there are all sorts of areas where Donald Trump is far more democratic than the elites who are condemning him as a threat to democracy. So, who decides what constitutes democracy as having a discussion with an academic? So, you've got a progressive theorist who will say the people and those of us on the right will say the people. So, is Donald Trump and the populist right? I think that's what's going on. Donald Trump and the populist right are a threat to their idea of democracy. It's not that Donald Trump wants to give the people what they want and Donald Trump was legally elected to give the people what they want. And you hear people say, our democracy, really? So, this is a democracy they think they own, not the democracy of the people. This is the democracy of the ruling elites. So, when smart people talk about our democracy, what they really mean is our democratic institutions as opposed to what people vote for or equality. So, these democratic ideals are literally anti-democratic. And I've been reading a lot of academic Stephen Turner of this. He's a philosopher of the social sciences. But here's a typical New York Times op-ed. Well, it's not a typical op-ed, but the theme is typical. Trump poses a protest democracy is a feeling by Thomas Edsel. And I love this columnist. And he asks, how is it that Donald Trump stands a reasonable chance of winning a second term in 2024? Because after Donald Trump has abused power, he's broken the rules, he's rejected the outcome of elections that he's lost. And you're saying, Forty, tell me what the political scientists at Yale University say. And there was one Milan Svolik, who published a paper in 2019, Polarization versus Democracy. Some answers here. Hey, Forty, do you still take condoms to synagogue? No, that only happened once. It was a mistake. And it wasn't an Orthodox synagogue. It was a conservative synagogue. It was an event at Sinai Temple. And I went to pay for this event. It was a singles event. It wasn't on the Shabbat, okay? And I went to pay for the event and I reached in my pocket and I put out a $10 bill. And as I was putting down the $10 bill, but some strange incomprehensible reason, there was a condom with it. And the woman who was there taking admission, she said, oh, no, I'm sorry. We can't accept this as payment. But that's totally old Forty, man. I would never, God forbid, engage in that sort of behavior. So it is preserving democratic institutions a top priority for voters. No, I don't think it is. I think what people mainly care about is the protection of their way of life and the protection of people like themselves and protection of their interests. I think people are much more interested in their interests than they are in abstract issues of democratic theory. So in sharply polarized electorates, which is what we have in much of the West today, many voters who value democracy are willing to sacrifice fair democratic competition for the sake of electing politicians who champion their interests. Well, that makes common sense, right? What's more important to you, your interests or abstract ideals? So when punishing a leader's authoritarian tendencies requires a voting for a platform party or person that his supporters detest, many will find this too high a price to pay. So an exacerbated partisan competition presents aspiring authoritarians with a structural opportunity they can undermine democracy and get away with it. Well, what about the Black Lives Matter riots and protests that disrupted life as we knew it? And that segment of the democratic left that has argued for decades, no justice, no peace. We don't care about the rule of law. We don't care about the results of elections. We will make life miserable through criminal behavior unless you give us what we want. That seems to me to be anti-democratic things like the LA riots. So we're coming up on the 30th anniversary of the LA riots, right? They seem to me fairly anti-democratic. We're going to burn down this town because we don't like the decision of a jury. What about bringing in massive numbers of people through immigration? Say just legal immigration. So most Americans didn't favor massively expanding immigration intake, starting in 1965 to larger and larger amounts of non-Europeans, right? This was brought in in all likelihood against the will of the people and sustained against the will of the people with the tacit cooperation of the two major political parties in England, in Australia, in the United States, in Europe. Generally speaking, the major political parties in the West have agreed to take questions of immigration off the table. So you can't really vote on it until recently, really, until the age of Donald Trump. So the experts said, hey, we need to have a tacit agreement on high immigration intake. This should not be a matter for political discussion. Our modern politics, our modern forms of democracy developed as a reaction to the religious wars in Europe in the 17th century, a reaction to, in particular, the Germans of a war, right? So we have, ever since the 18th century, the increasing neutralization of politics, for example, immigration has been largely neutralized as a political issue until, say, the last seven years. So COVID, right? Did people get to vote on COVID restrictions? No, this was the rule of experts. Now, was there great wailing and gnashing of teeth that our very democracy is at stake, that our democracy is being perverted, because we're allowing experts to decide questions and take away the rule of the people? No, you didn't hear that. So I have no doubt the Republicans and Donald Trump, to varying degrees, represent a threat to democracy. Just as the left represents a threat to democracy, and I think Trump and the populist right are any more a threat to democracy. What elites mean when they accuse the populist right of being a threat to democracy is a threat to our democracy. It's a threat to our institutions. So here is favorite academic of mine, philosopher Stephen Turner. This is similar to these problems of liberalism. Okay, so if we look at democracy in relation to liberalism, it seems as though, and even Dahl acknowledges this, you need a bunch of auxiliary machinery. And it's got to include more or less the standard liberal ideas. And these are all ideas involving the forms of a state. But this machinery is not necessarily popular. So these are sort of rules of the game that have to be accepted by the people, but the people may or may not choose to accept them. They don't have a democratic justification directly. They depend on things like people's belief in the Constitution or their rights or in various other things, but they're not based in a direct sense on the people or the will of the people. People like Dewey were very hostile to things like constitutionalism and these things like natural right doctrines. Okay, back to this New York Times op-ed by Thomas Edsall. So he quotes these academic researchers saying that we can no longer rely on voters to serve as a roadblock against authoritarianism. So if Donald Trump was an authoritarian, he was a really lousy authoritarian, very weak and wimpy authoritarian. So there's only a small fraction of Americans who prioritize democratic principles in their electoral choices. Yes, people vote their interests. They don't vote for abstract principles. And the more polarized situation, the fewer people who are willing to prioritize democratic principles. This is just as true for the right as for the left. So Americans have a solid understanding what democracy is and is not, but only a small fraction of Americans prioritize democratic principles in their electoral choices when to do so goes against their partisan identification or favorite policies. So only about three and a half percent of voters realistically punish violations of democratic principles. What are the democratic principles here to to have some concerns about the growing power of the administrative state and the growing power of experts to make decisions without any democratic check against them. So another major factor driving this scare about democracy among our elites and I'm not anti elite. I'm not anti populist either. So my self perception is that I'm 50 50. Some of the time I side with the populace. Some of the times I side with the elite. I don't think any any particular faction is blessed by the will of heaven. So there is a perception among many whites in America and whites in Europe. Their status at the top of the political hierarchy is eroding. So when proponents of expanded more diverse democracy gain power those who have a stake in preserving their way of life will be willing to defy democratic norms to stay in power. Right. People want to preserve their interests with their white or black or Jewish or gay or straight. So in the 1960s you had a coalition of northern Democrats and Republicans who are able to overcome these anti democratic forces to pass civil rights legislation. Well, it was civil rights legislation in 1965. Was that really small D Democratic? Was that the overwhelming will of the people? I'm not so sure about that. So a majority of House Republicans voted not to accept the results of the last election. Well, did a majority of House Democrats accept the results of the 2016 election? A large number did not. So when Democrats were up at arms that the 2016 election was stolen. That's just because they were hyper concerned about the strength of our democracy. So what about a future scenario which Democrats achieve a decisive and sustainable national majority? Well, the Republican Party will then be led by the most illiberal radicals. Right. And so the Republican Party will be led into even more radical insurrectionism according to these elites. So there's no feasible solution to the current crisis within the two party system. Given the escalating polarization, the extremist trajectory of the Republican Party. Well, you can make a pretty good argument that the Republicans have generally shifted to the right over the past 30 years. But Democrats have shifted to the left over the past 30 years. So all this talk about the radicalized Republicans seems to ignore the radicalization of the left. So these academics argue that we've got a degradation of Democratic norms. Right. We've got a hostile subversion of Democratic institutions and values that they seek to serve. Notice they don't want to say really that it's a threat on democracy. It's a subversion of our Democratic institutions, which frequently tend to be anti-democratic. See, they don't want to argue that they are often against the will of the people because that's the very epitome of democracy. And I'm not one who believes that the will of the people is always right or usually right. So we've got an erosion of democracy now self-evidently a global phenomenon. Right. So for all those who think that Democratic liberalism is just the inevitable wave of the future, not so clear-cut. Right. The world has steadily become less Democratic and less liberal over the past 14 years. So he saw that these auxiliary mechanisms that in some sense were supports of democracy could also serve as enemies of democracy, at least in this sort of abstract sense of there being a will of the people or something Democratic opposed to just voting. To serve as... So in any case, these kinds of auxiliary measures tend to generate these anomalies like the no freedom for the enemies of freedom. We sort of begin to look at this as a system more sociologically rather than just as a political theory. So that can sound ridiculous. No enemies for the enemies of freedom. No freedom for the enemies of freedom. But if you want to preserve something in a group, in a community, in a nation, you do usually have to put some limits on your enemies. Right. So that's inevitable. Right. You will have some restrictions on those who want to destroy your way of life. Right. The Constitution, for example, is not a death warrant. If preserving your people, preserving your nation requires violating the Constitution, I think most people would be willing to go along with that. Liberalism and liberal democracy is actually pretty intricate and fragile system. It really depends on people honoring the spirit of the arrangements, has to tolerate a lot of political disagreement. Where there is discretion, the bureaucrats and office holders need to be more or less politically neutral. So I'm looking at a terrific essay here by Stephen Turner from 2021. It's called The Ideology of Antipopulism and the Administrative State. So he notes the people, the state and expertise form an unstable triad. So expertise is when you have experts who know far more than ordinary people can possibly know. And power is delegated to them under the theory that they will be neutral, such as our public health experts who designed our reaction to COVID-19. Now, I think by and large, our public health experts did an above average job that our elites did a solid job in responding to COVID-19. There are certainly flaws. There are certainly contradictions. There are certainly mistakes. But overall, I think that our experts did a solid job responding to COVID-19. But there is no way of stabilizing this triad of the people, the state and expertise. But you can't ignore the problem also. So you're constantly going to be juggling between the power of elites of elite expertise, the power of the people and the power of the administrative state. And for all those other populists right who decried the deep state and the administrative state, you have to come up with what are the alternatives, right? Where have we seen alternatives to the administrative state for First World Nations? So populism is really a belief in the virtue of common people, right? So populism is not a regime. It's not an order. It says that the common people are pretty good, right? That's kind of the essence of populism. Now, the problem for ostensibly democratic regimes, right? And for our ruling elites and the media elites and academic elites who say Donald Trump and right-wing populism is a threat to democracy. Well, hey, Rodney Martin, what's going on, man? Hey, Luke. I saw your invite. I was watching you and I thought I'd just jump in for a little bit. Great. Sounds good, man. What's going on? What's been capturing your attention? Well, you know this whole poo-poo about democracy. I hear that's the leftist clarion call. They're going to ruin our democracy. You know, they call the January 6th capital riots, it was a riot, insurrection. But they also called the burning, the looting, the murdering, the raping that took place all of the summer of 2020. They call that something else. In fact, they endorsed it. They took the knee. I don't think the left has any more credibility on the term democracy. In Russia, Vladimir Putin exercises what's called a controlled democracy. Because he just admits what the Democrats will only say. Remember, Hillary Clinton said it's good to have one position privately and another position publicly? Yeah. That's what the Democrats believe. They want the Russian model, actually, for all of their vitriol against the Russian system. That's what they've been working to impose in the United States, where you have a controlled democracy. That means where they will determine what is good for you. They will determine who should be running for office. I thought it's interesting. They have gone to great lengths to go around the country in Arizona and North Carolina to try to forbid candidates from even running. And for fearing in the Republican primary, actually, trying to say that Republicans can't even pick their own nominees by citing a post-Civil War statue, which was literally rendered moot when President Andrew Johnson granted a widespread clemency before he left office. So that is interesting. The precedent that they're using is invalid because it was rendered moot. The former vice president of the Confederacy served as the governor of Georgia and as a senator from Georgia after the Civil War. And a great many other Confederate officers and higher-ups served in Congress and in the Senate and even as governors of the respective states that were still under union occupation. Because it was all rendered moot, President Johnson granted a blank clemency pardon to all of them. And so now the Democrats kind of dig this up to say, oh, they engage in an insurrection. Well, you know, no court has bought it yet. Either Republican judges or even Democratic judges. The most recent case was dismissed by a Barack Obama appointee. And interestingly, if you can't beat them, you can't engage in democracy, then they will, you know, use the control method to determine who gets on the ballot. Joseph Stalin once famously said, I don't care, you know, who votes, I only care that I get to count the votes. And this is just their way to control, have a controlled democracy. Interestingly, this probably was, this was working back in my latter days of university. They were, you've seen this, and there were still probably a 25% group in the center. You know, it was probably 30, 30, you know, 40, 40 with a 20%. But now the battle lines have drawn that it's, you know, probably a, you know, a 48, 48 loop with only 2% in the center. And, you know, those usually split evenly or don't show up to vote. So these tactics, I think are hurting the Democrats in the long run, even with the 2020 election lost by Trump. I think actually in the long term, it's going to serve to make the Democrats a coastal party. They will be a party of the left coast and a party of the east coast. So we saw the great turnaround in Virginia, which was very interesting that the Republicans swept every single statewide office and also took back the legislature and what the Democrats had put the man up the victory flag. So I don't think they have any credibility on the term democracy. It's their type of democracy. And to be honest, the Republicans have been we've seen that with the Kevin McCarthy tapes, where he was going right along with him to he wanted some of his own members of his own caucus to be censored at the Twitter account shut down, etc. He was right in there with Liz Cheney until it wasn't convenient anymore. And the problem with the Republic of the Democrats that problem is going to solve itself in the midterm they're going to get probably a 50 seat bath. They're going to lose spectacular form 30 of them have already said they're not running for reelection and the remaining. They've never Trump or Republicans, they're out they've all quit throwing in the towel. So the biggest issue is, what will the GOP do when they are given these large majorities in the house and probably a very solid working majority and the in the Senate. Just remember Bill Clinton said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result less than the story of the GOP they've been able to win and win spectacularly. They've lost when they've been punished by the voters. I think this election coming up is going to be a punishment election where the electorate is going to punish the Democrats, and it's probably going to sit for a while. Majority of these house seats that gave the majority of only about three or four or marginal seats to begin with, and was a one off probably, but they don't have any credibility on democracy. Any more than conservatives or the GOP has any, any real credibility in terms of smaller government it was George W Bush that grew the government larger at any time since Lyndon B Johnson that was under George W Bush. And, you know, Trump was hardly a fiscal conservative when it comes to, you know, running up, you know, debt and of course Biden just decided to out do out to Trump and my final question is, how is Ukraine going to pay back the United States for all these billions that has been sent to them or is that just going to be written off. It's going to be written off. It's, it's thought to be in US interest to weaken Russia. That's the biggest mistake. You know, we're in the same I saw excellent analogy. You know, during the eighties Reagan's plan was to make the Soviet Union spend and spend and spend which they didn't have, you know, the deep pockets the US did. And now I kind of see Russia making the United States spend, spend, spend, spend. And now we see it's affected the GDP. We have record high inflation. And interestingly, and in California, they're going to raise the gas taxes when they're already paying $6 and $7 a gallon. You know, I remember Biden and the Democrats saying in the Republicans, of course, the neocons never ever, ever turn away from an effort to line the pockets of their military industrial complex donors, but they were going to ruin the Russian economy. Well, Russia's found markets for its for its oil. They're not they're replicating the same thing other countries have done. I've not seen that this is any way help our economy. In fact, I see, you know, if anything, it's going to be a with the old fashioned pirate victory. You can claim you can claim a victory. But was it was the cost so much that it wasn't worth it to begin with. Do you have a favorite running for president in 2024 or least least disliked possibilities. I don't know who you know I'm having a hard time believing that the Democrats are going to let Biden run, especially you know his his it's obvious that he is mentally diminished. He's not up to the job. And this would be me tell you Jimmy Carter had a better chance of winning in 1980 against Reagan. Then Biden has and being elected in 2024 so it wouldn't be out of the realm to think that a group of his old friends from the Senate but go to him and ask him to stand down. And he might well do it. The big question is who do they replace him with Kamala. She's more detested than than he is. So I mean who, you know, who, who do they have likewise on the on the Republican side of Trump decides not to run he's kind of teasing that but I think ultimately he will but if he doesn't. I think they're only logical choice is is DeSantis in in Florida. So it's going to be rather interesting. I think going into 2024 regardless of who the GOP nominee is they have a clear advantage because people first of all people don't care about Ukraine. They're having to spend $150 to gas up their SUVs and, you know, a little less than 100 to gas up their smaller cars so it's going to be interesting they vote on that. Also, you know, women are going to vote because they go to they're going to vote on the economics they're having to go to the grocery stores and they're seeing the costs of goods when they go buy clothes for the kids so they see the price of beef go up. This is going to be, you know, remember the old saying it's the economy stupid. And for all of Biden's effort to blame Putin, it's not Putin's fault that Joe Biden wrecked the economy he started from day one. In terms of the gas prices when he influenced and cut us domestic supply, canceling pipelines and rescinding leases. So, you know, the Republicans have a shot. I'm not 100% convinced yet the Trump is actually going to. It's going to run. I will say this. If it's Biden if these group of Democrats they don't do something about Biden I think that will make Trump run. But if he has to face a fresh face. I'm probably going to do some calculations, and, and, and probably opt out and handed over to Santas the strongest ticket on the GOP side is is Trump and DeSantis. DeSantis is a young guy, he can run with Trump so Trump can, you know, win the rematch and then he can run in 2028 and have two terms himself. If I was DeSantis that's what I would do and it's not out of the realm that he even though they had a stiff a while back a few weeks back or month back. I think probably they've had that they've had that discussion. The GOP has an issue in that they can't just throw away. Donald Trump supporters the way or taken for granted, the way Jimmy Carter took Ronald Reagan support I mean Ted Kennedy supporters majority of Ted Kennedy supporters that supported Kennedy the primary against Carter. In fact, they either stayed home or they held their nose and voted for Reagan, and now the GOP has the same dynamic. They have someone that just dominates the political the political sphere, and until Trump can't run again, meaning by constitutional He's it's his nomination if he wants it then the Republicans are going to have to deal with it. I'll go a step further Trump should make issue a press statement and call for the replacement of McCarthy. He cannot have these judices working or this, you know, fifth column working in the background, as they did in his first term. Well, I think McCarthy is much more amenable to Trump and Maga than Paul Ryan. I mean, Paul Ryan was diametrically opposed. Well Paul Ryan was running for President Luke. I mean let's be clear. When Trump was faltering when the access Hollywood tape came out. Ryan immediately stepped up a shadow presidential campaign with the expectation that Trump would be asked to stand down or he would stand down, and they would insert him he used to have these weekly or daily almost daily or weekly YouTube videos from the speaker of the house. No speaker never done that before it was a de facto presidential campaign and when Trump whether the storm. Ryan was odd man out, regardless he probably couldn't get reelected to his home district now. Anything surprising you in the Russia versus Ukraine war. Yeah, it's surprising Putin took this long to turn Poland the Bulgarian gas off. Now if he really wants to make a splash he'll turn Germany's gas off. However, Austria, there's Austria is now leading the way and indicating they're going to pay the whole issue is he's making the Western Europe pay for gas and rubles which kind of is a way blowback on the sanctions negating them. So, you know, Poland and Bulgaria said no he cut their gas off Poland is blustering as the polls always do and say they have lots of reserves. Let's see how long those reserves last Bulgaria is probably going to have to bend the knee. I would say that Germany, which gets about 80% of their natural gas supply from Russia is going to have to make a hard choice. I suspect if Russia Germany goes through one of their recent statement that send heavy, you know, offensive equipment military equipment to Ukraine, they'll get their gas shut off to. You must be surprised by the poor performance of the Russian armed forces no one realized that they were this bad. Well, I wouldn't say that. We all did a rock or a rock type of war situation, or a Berlin 1945 situation where the Russians would start off with heavy artillery barrage that fly in Petusha rockets, it would carpet bomb the hell out of Ukraine, Ukraine's infrastructure command and control. The Russian, the initial Russian battle plan was, is what the problem was is that they decided he's citing March in like he did in Crimea, and take the country without any damage, i.e. and having to rebuild it. So, he had some bad intelligence happy United States to United States got bad intelligence on Iraq, and Afghanistan I is an American I'm not going to sit there and go ha ha ha, the Russians are performing badly, when in 20 years, the modern United States military is going to testify, but the 60 IQ goat herders in Afghanistan, just not willing to do it. I think now Putin's got his generals kind of like the Civil War, where Lincoln got his general got a plan he pulled out of the, the key of region which you can say could be a way in which to deplete Ukrainian resources wars about resources. He's now attacking in the eastern part of the country where it's all flat, you know, relatively flat. And there's a lot more sympathy there and he can actually roll his tanks through there, and he is making significant gains in eastern part of the country remember when this first started loop. I think that Putin probably did not have any designs on anything west of the Nipro River that appears to be the case. I think the attempt to capture in Kia was attempt to knock solensky off but I think the Russian troops go to the Nipro River stop and exit or set up another, you know, satellite country, then Russia has its buffer zone that it's been worried about, you know, from the beginning. It's not like we didn't know about this position Russia they talked about it back in the 1990s, the former, the last US. And he also carried over Mr first ambassador Russia indicated this was a bad mistake that the Russians had been talking about, if you put literally a NATO saver at the gut of the Russian Federation that was going to cause problems. You know, you know, all I could say is Ukraine doesn't have a Navy anymore. They don't have an air force anymore. They don't have tanks, and I'm judging that based on what solensky is just screaming the loudest for. The Russians can hit them at will, either from the air cruise missiles yes they the the Ukrainians used a US supplied rocket to knock out a near 40 year old Soviet era ship. Good on them that was silly that captain got too close. Beyond that, there's just Ukraine doesn't win this. A war of attrition, the Russians love that and I'm going to go a step further come the May Day celebrations that you know the patriotic war celebrations in Moscow that's going to happen here in a couple of weeks. First week of May Luke Putin is probably going to give one of those Stalinist type great patriotic war we're going to denotify Ukraine and drive out the, and that'll probably galvanize, you know, Russian support higher than it already is. What the Americans are understanding is this war is not unpopular in in Russia proper, and it's not because getting fed a bunch of bunch of propaganda. By any means, there's been this issue up until a month before the Russian invasion. The Western media was talking about, you know, neo Nazis and high positions in Ukraine the as off brigade, and such and then Fox News is now running clips, provided by the as off brigade. There was a rally for the as off battalion I'm sorry in New York, and that only helps Putin's case to his own populace. So, you know, long term, you know, I think the wrong battle plan was was deployed. There's assumption that he could take all of Ukraine or at least the eastern part of Ukraine the way he took Crimea. And when that didn't work, you know, he's got the general that literally laid ISIS low in Syria, as well as most of the townships in Eastern Syria to take over and if I was Zelensky I would I would seriously negotiate because what's happening is he's losing his country's countries getting laid low. And, you know, I don't think that for going NATO membership and being a neutral state is such a bad, a bad deal. And I'm not the only one that's of that opinion Israeli Prime Minister Bennett is of that position as well. And how does this end for me to be in a for me to be in a hundred percent agreement with Israel. How do you think this Russia Ukraine conflict ends. It ends with I think Putin had I think he ends at the Nipro River, when the Russians control the eastern part of the country somewhere somewhere east or on the Nipro River, and they have pacified that part of the country and they've got a complete land bridge from Russia proper to Crimea and maybe even over to Transnistria, which is a breakaway province of Moldova who has long wanted to be part of Russia and the annex them I think that it's over. But there's a way that Ukraine gets back anything east of the Nipro River, whether it's what the Russians are holding now or what they will hold in the future. It's not going to happen. Unlike, you know this, you know, you can compare this to Afghanistan keep in mind. It took 10 years for the Soviets to leave Afghanistan, and even then it was only because the type of leader Mikhail Gorbachev was the Russians were still standing and fighting in Afghanistan. I know a lot of reasons for the lot of us use talks a lot of the Russian veterans who didn't like the way they left you here from American veterans who don't like how we left in Afghanistan are during our 10 years so it ends at the Nipro River. It ends with one. It even in the North Korea type situation where there's a perpetual ceasefire but never a formal end to his hostilities. Actually, that's where I think it's going to end up is they'll just agree to stop fighting at the Nipro River and Ukraine will complain that they want Crimea and their eastern part of the country back. Russia will have it and they won't make any sort of formal end of hostilities. What are the implications for the US versus China competition? Well, China is not spending billions and printing billions and billions to send to a foreign country at the expense of its citizens. They're too busy locking people up and boarding up windows in Shanghai. China is actually the ultimate winner because what's happening is China is seeing two of its major foes literally be eroded economically, militarily, Russia militarily, the United States economically. How much longer can we send 33 billion here, 18 billion there, wipe out student loan debt? How much longer can we just keep doing this? I used to say about 60% of the US economy is artificial. I think it's probably up to 80 now. But China is the ultimate winner in all this because they're watching two of their main foes literally get drained militarily and economically. Well, I mean, if the price of oil keeps going up, China is going to be in great trouble because China has to import almost all of its energy while the US is almost self-sufficient. Well, is the US self-sufficient? Why was Titan begging, trying to cut a deal with Iran to buy oil from them? Went down this tail between his legs to Venezuela, who we've crapped on since literally the George Bush administration, the first George Bush administration. I'm just curious if we were energy independent, why is he begging going around crying poor mouth to all these countries that literally don't like us? China, they got oil, they're going to buy Russian oil, and so they're going to be fine. I don't think they're going to go and gobble up Taiwan like everybody else thought they would do. They're not that brazen. They'll wait. They'll wait for the United States to be fully degraded before they go and do that. However, if they went and did it tomorrow, Biden wouldn't do anything. And what's going on with Iran these days? Is there going to be a rapprochement between Iran and the United States? Probably not. Biden tried, and it's funny, as close as Iran has gotten with India in China and Russia, if Biden would have said, hey, if you sell us oil, I'll take all US sanctions off, he would have gotten that deal. And he would have gotten the oil that he wanted. We wouldn't have $6 a gallon gas in L.A. We'd probably only have for $50 a gallon gas in L.A. Because the Iranian infrastructure, oil infrastructure is just not that good. It's still 1979-1980 infrastructure, but I don't think so. Iran is much like China in that they're seeing their major foe, the great Satan, as they like to call it, literally drowned itself in debt and inflation and high energy costs. And sooner or later, Iran figures they're going to want that Iranian oil in the global open market. So they've waited this long. They're kind of like the Cubans, Luke. They've waited this long and toiled through it for this long. A few more years isn't going to hurt anything. And how do you account for the seeming strength of NATO and the seeming unity of the West vis-a-vis Russia? What strength? Do you think that you mean that they're starting to Germany as part of a spine and it's going to arm itself? That's interesting. Wait and see after Poland and Bulgaria, who else gets their gas shut off. Wait and see if Putin starts fueling, just for bluster, starts fueling ballistic missiles in Kaliningrad, which is sitting right there where the East pressure used to be. I'm not sure that NATO hasn't done anything overly remarkable there. They're still buying Russian oil. They're still buying Russian energy. While condemning them, I can tell you Putin is only going to put up with this running arms into Ukraine for so long. He long remembers how the US supplied the Mujahideen in Afghanistan against the Soviets. And we're going to find out. The economies of Europe has taken a hit as well. The French election was all about the economy and inflation and standard of living and things of that nature. They're not in the best shape of all the European countries. Germany has the deepest pockets. It's just how much are they going to spend to keep things normal. And would you describe yourself as a populist? I would describe myself more as a nationalist before I described myself as a populist, but there are some populist things that I agree with. I don't agree with, you know, I agree with unilateral trade. That's probably a populist position. So it just depends. What does populism mean? Keep in mind populism back at the, you know, last century, that was pretty liberal actually. That was a liberal tendency. It's kind of morphed. I'm probably more of a nationalist. I really, you know, I detest foreign entanglements. I think probably the greatest, one of the greatest statements that we have left from our founding fathers is Washington saying, don't engage in foreign entanglements. Why are we, first of all, why are we spending billions and billions of dollars that we do not have that we're borrowing from China, by the way, which is interesting. And then to Ukraine, they're not a NATO member. They're, you know, what is just a strategic interest in antagonizing a nuclear power that actually has more nuclear warheads in the United States. I don't, I don't get it. I don't get NATO NATO was designed to oppose the Soviet Union. But attack on one is attack on all. Well, Turkey is a member of NATO and they've been pretty crappy to other NATO nations. So I don't even support NATO. I don't believe in getting into a treaty that says if, you know, the other guy across the street gets into a fight with his neighbor, I have to come in, you know, him to his side, even if he started it. You know, I just don't like it to me that's just part of my language back shit crazy to be in those types of alliances, especially when the United States is broke and war weary. I don't see the population is supporting any other, you know, military engagements, which is why both Republicans and Democrats why they're doing their neocon crap over UK Ukraine always issue that disclaimer. We're not going to send us troops there. And why do you think there's a little little opposition then to Biden's plan to send about 38 more billion dollars to Ukraine. Well, it's common interest. Neocons in the United States are beholden to military. Just think about how much money Raytheon alone lines the pockets of all those political prostitutes in the House and Senate. They don't care if they have a D or an R behind their name. They just go in there and you know those congressmen put on their skirts and fishnet tops and put on the lipstick and they horror themselves out politically to the defense industry. So, you know, we're sending weapons. Who's paying first of all United States is going to send weapons. Okay, we're going to pay for those weapons from Raytheon and other other defense contractors send them over there. There's a there's big money in this. Not to mention, you know, Joe Biden's family they don't want to lose their cash cow or the big guy got 10% of the take of anything that was done over in Ukraine. So I wonder if he's getting 10% of this, you know, 33 billion. Okay, Alia Blatt. What's what's going on, man? Oh, bro, you'll never guess what I just did. What? Just coming out of a flotation sensory depression, sensory deprivation tank. You ever done it? No. How do you feel, man? Oh, million bucks, bro. A million bucks. Oh, here we go. I got about to hit by a car. Yeah, I don't know. I've been in hell with this last couple of weeks, you know, with all of my eyes have been burning and it's been a bad spell. So I decided to treat myself, you know, treat myself. So now I'm cool as a cucumber, my dude. So, Rodney Martin, how are you feeling these days? Have you been any sensory deprivation tanks? No, but speaking of healing, I'm assuming that's a part of healing. I've been doing a couple. I got one next week. I'm going to be there back in LA. I was there last week, be back again. But, you know, I was given a book. Maybe you have it. Maybe you know that it's called Jewish Healing Wisdom by Stephen Roseman. Are you familiar with it? No. Is it any good? Well, let me tell you, it is very, very informative. It's just all about, you know, making yourself healthy and healing. And it talks about, you know, both physical and your emotional health and being a part of community talks about good, you know, the right perspective on eating and all of that. And, you know, I kind of got into this last spell I've had at going to the hospital that, you know, I decided I was going to just go back to my roots, my younger years and go back to eating one meal a day and fasting and doing all that stuff. And I actually, I've dropped 30 pounds and I feel the best that I have in years. And I'll tell you, it was after, you know, the, I got this book at Cedars and I'll send you the information. It's an excellent read. It's worth reading. Okay, great. Elliot, so how are you taking care of yourself, Elliot? Oh, well, it's been hard, you know. You know, these allergies have kicked in. I haven't felt like exercising. I've been eating like poorly, not sleeping well. So, you know, it's not a good role there for a while, but it's kind of falling off the horse. So I'm trying to get back on. So I'm throwing all these kinds of adjustment measures at it. So Rodney, I think that the the main source of energy is from connections with with other people. So, well, funny, funny, you should say that, Luke, because there's a section in this book, it's chapter two. It's called self examination and I'm a believer. I think I've expressed that on your show. We should all, I used to say self reflection, self examination, and there's a checklist here. Let me, can I share a couple of them with you? Yes, yes. It says, I spend time regularly, it's a check box. It's like a little workbook and no one's written in this book. It was given to me. It's used, but it's, it's like new. I spend time, I spend time with friends regularly and you check that. I call friends and get calls from friends. I correspond with friends and get correspondence from friends. I do thoughtful things for friends. Now, I can honestly say no bloating. I can check all of those boxes and it says, I spend time regularly with a mentor, teacher, study partner, activity companion. I seek out support groups. There you are, Luke, evens. Your support groups are a healthy thing. Right. And it goes on. I spend time regularly with family. Well, it's hard for me not to, given the number of kids and grandkids that I have. It's a real sense of strength for me. I'm in touch regularly with family who live far away. Yeah, I agree with that. I enjoy holidays with family. I'm blessed with supportive family. Yes. When I'm confronted with challenges, absolutely. I'm supportive of family members who need me. Yes. And then it goes on. It goes into great detail. And I think, you know, you've talked about this on your show, but the way this is written, you know, it, it's very well done. And it gets even into, part of the self-examination talks about exercise. You don't have to go to a gym and pump iron. You can just go walking and do some stuff in your home. I like stair steps, by the way. I like going and going upstairs like I used to when I was younger at the local football field. And anyway, I'll send you, matter of fact, Luke, when I'm done with this book, I'm going to give it to you. Oh, yeah. Well, at least send me a link. Send me the title. All right, Elliot, how are you doing with the whole human connection thing? You'll have to unmute if you're there. Oh, but Luke, I'm a total gutter ball. Total gutter ball. Couldn't be worse. Well, this is your bowling group, right? You're not bowling a line. You're not bowling a line, bro. I was listening to that checklist and I'm like, oh, God, no, no, Jesus, no. It was murder, bro. I got work to do, I did. Rodney, it's kind of funny because you're such a pugnacious, you know, confrontational guy. Yeah, you've maintained a lot of human relationships. So how do you square those two things? Well, it depends on who I'm, you know, being pugnacious too. I mean, obviously I would not debate my adult children the way I would debate to people on your stream. And of course, you know, maybe your stream is a way of blowing off steam. So, you know, in a healthy way where I don't blow off steam at home. You know, you have to think about, I'm not saying that's the case, but I think we're all different. You know, obviously I would not talk to my employees the way that I probably have addressed and debated people on your stream and others. But all things given, given the right outlet, I think you can channel, you know, whatever and whatever you're feeling at any given time, but keep in mind, I told you this, I think when we had coffee, that I'm a reaction person. I react to what's in front of me. And so if it's a subtle, you know, very gentlemanly like discussion, I'm game for that. If someone comes up and tries to punch me in the face, well, I'm going to be like Mike Tyson, the guy on the airplane. And, you know, that's just the way it is. It's just my personality. And I'm not natural. I'm not naturally the way you describe me. And I think you kind of know that from the times we've kind of spent met in person. Yeah. And, Elliot, you're left on mute, but do you want to blow off steam about anything, Mr. Blatt? Well, at the very moment, I don't have much steam to blow off, but it's just a matter of time, my dude. But I'm here in the, I'm here in like the Marina District, which is kind of like, it's like one of the posh neighborhoods in the city. And like just the women here, unbelievable. It's like yoga pants all over town, cycling, you know, spa treatments. It's really, it's really a different world, bro. And you think you have joining a gym, Elliot? No. I think those days are over, my dude. I think it's just water sports. Wow. Disavow. Disavow. Rodney, what sort of exercise routine have you been able to maintain? Do you belong to a gym? I have a gym on my property. It still is fully, it's a boxing gym and I had, I had not been in it, well, my kids had been in it, but not me. But probably the last couple of months I've gone back in there and throwing a few limp wrists at the heavy bag, nowhere near what I did when I was 20. And then I am walking far more. I walk about five o'clock in the morning and then again about eight at night. And then I cut, you know, I've radically changed, you know, in terms of, I ended up having a diabetic problem. To be honest, I got hauled into the hospital at the 700 blood sugar level and I don't know what caused it because I, yeah, they didn't know how I walked in there. They were surprised. My son took me. And anyway, they, I was in for, so I've been taking care of that, but I've radically changed. I eat basically a meal and a half a day. I have eliminated all sugars. I actually, Luke, I've actually nearly 99% eliminated all booze as well. Wow. Wow. And I feel better. I feel better. I feel stronger. You know, I'm actually able to go and do things with my grandkids that I kind of was blowing off because I just, you feel like crap when your health's screwy. And Elliott, what are you, what are you going to do to turn things around, bro? Aside from sensory deprivation tanks? What is that? What exactly, how does that work? Oh, you want, you want the blow by blow? Yes. Well, how about a description? I really don't want a blow by blow, but a description would be great. Just trying to honor your boxing tradition, Rodney. So anyway, you get in there. So it's like a, it's always a, I rarely do this type of thing, but you go in there and it's all sort of poofied out, you know, it's got like soothing music and incense and plants and bookshelves about positive stuff and, you know, you go in there and then you go into the, they call it a pod. And a pod, it's like a big tub with a cover on it, you know, and then in the, in the tub is, is Epsom salt and water. So you're completely buoyant, right? You can stay completely floating without any effort. You're just, and the water is like exactly your body temperature. So you just sort of relax into this state. You can hear your heartbeat, like, you know, like it's a marching band, you know, and then you just, the salt kind of relaxes you and, you know, you just kind of let go of your tears and woes for a while there, Luke. And are there other dudes in the tank with you? No, bro. It's solo. It's totally solo. Can, are there, can you, are there, are there women in there that make sure that the ending is happy in those tanks? Well, they are at the desk. I'm totally down for that and sign me up and, you know, I'm there. You know, at the end of the thing, like, I got roped into this thing, right? Like, you sign up and they say special and it's 65 bucks. And I'm thinking, whatever, 65 bucks. But then you sign up, you give them a card and there's tax and then you forget to put in the code and then it's not 65 bucks. At the end, it's 100 bucks. And then, like, you check out, then there's that little opportunity, that little screen thing. Would you like to tip? Oh, yeah. So like, oh my God. So I clicked the $10 tip thing. And so it's 110 bucks. Well, actually 112 bucks, soup to nuts with all the tax and stuff. And like, now see my mind immediately just leaps on this sort of little negative twist. I'm not going to make a scene in this spot about 35 bucks and the special and the coupon. I just can't do that. So what are those things where it's just like, they always get you, Luke, they always get you. So what happened to putting the code in so you get the special discount, right? Well, I did that, but the discount didn't appear on my bill. And like, I didn't want to be a Karen and say, well, I put in the discount code, you know, I just love these things. I just, I just take it on the chin, Luke. It's like Christ like I just take it like it's, you know, my cross to bear bro. I'm stoic that way. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. You didn't want to draw attention to yourself, huh? That's right. That's right, bro. I don't want to know yet. So how do you see the world differently after being in the deprivation tank? I mean, it sounds like you've really gotten spiritually centered. Well, this, I mean, I, not three minutes after I got out of the tank, I'm on the phone with you. I haven't really, I haven't even like processed it, but I looked down and I saw the invite and I said, well, maybe, maybe I must, it's time for me to call in. The timing couldn't have been more perfect. And is this something you plan to do regularly? Um, well, probably not, but I wouldn't, I'll definitely do it again, but I don't think I would do it regularly. I would do it sort of like an emergency situation where, you know, like, these past few weeks have been difficult. So I've been, you know, I'm feeling stressed more than I usually feel it. And so I decided, you know, rather than take a big bong hit or a bunch of CDD, I decided to go the natural route. I did. I think you need some Jewish healing wisdom, bro. That could be in the cards, my dude. Yeah, share the book with him. Yeah. Steven M. Rossman, bro. I read all that. I know, I'm on a good course, bro. I'm not complaining. I just took a little, sometimes you need a little remedial attention, you know, you got to put it on 11. You're going to take your relaxation off 10 and go, go one louder or one quieter and make it 11. No, I, there's very, you know, Luke, there's a very prophetic statement in this book. Do not live to eat. To live. Makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? Yeah. Elliot, you were saying something? Well, my phone may cut out spontaneously because my battery went out, but I should be in the car within four minutes and it could recharge. So. Okay. Do you need the latest iPhone, bro? It sounds like it. I just, I got a 12. I got a 12. I just got the 13, bro. Oh, you're so much better than me, Luke. You're so much better than me. You just have to rub it in, bro. Couldn't hold it in. Couldn't hold it in. Could you lose? No, no, no. Rodney, what type of phone do you use? Samsung. And how old is it? Just got it. It's just, in fact, it's not even done being programmed yet. And I still have a, I got the new LG last year, right when they decided to get out of cell phone business and I actually love that phone. And Elliot, have you been reading any good books lately? Of course not, Luke. I'm functionally illiterate, Luke. I'm intentionally illiterate. A mind's a terrible thing to waste, Elliot. Luke, there's nothing, there's nothing intrinsically better than reading off the page of this to be listening to somebody speak. It's more, you get more nuance if you listen to people talk because there's things that are said by the silence and the pauses, Luke. And so I'm able to get more done and learn more just by not wasting my time and exerting my eyes unnecessarily on this printed word, Luke. The printed word is fetishized in this culture, Luke. Yeah, yeah, we definitely read too many books in this culture. That's the problem. Rodney, have you been reading any good books aside from this one on Jewish Healing Wisdom? That one, that one is my, I just finished Eugene Weber's big book on Western civilization and won this like 1300 pages. That was an incredible read. And then I picked this one, this book was given to me that went on Healing Wisdom. And I said, okay, I'm gay. And I just, I'm just enjoying the hell out of it. Okay, the Western tradition by Eugene Weber. Yeah, he also did. He did a series through UCLA. In fact, I had a couple of classes with him. And then to, he wrote a book on basically Western civilization. And it's a monster. It's just a monster. Elliot, you're about to say something about Western civilization. No, I'm having a panic attack because my car is not where I thought it was. Oh man. You'll never walk alone, bro. Oh, this could be a long night, Luke. Walk on, bro. Oh God. That happens to me in parking garages. My heart's racing, Luke. When you walk through a storm, hold your head up high and don't be afraid of the dark. Oh God, Luke, I'm sweating. At the end of a storm, there's a golden sky and the sweet silver song of a lock. Oh, how could I be so stupid? Walk on through the wind, walk on through the rain, though your dreams be tossed and blown. Oh, hold on. You'll never walk alone. I go through this, I go through this wrong quite often. So. Oh God. That happened to me in parking garages. It's the worst feeling. Now I just go around clicking the clicker till I get in range and then I know where I parked. Oh, did I really suck this up? I remember looking and scrutinizing it, making sure it was a safe space. Oh, this would be ironic. There are no safe spaces in LA. He's in San Francisco. No, yeah, that's worse. So what's it like coming back into LA, Rodney? What's that? I'm sorry. I'm coming back into LA. So you live outside of LA now. Well, I, you know, I've been coming back now, you know, for the last, probably the last month for his medical stuff and I come back next week for a surgery. But, you know, I have to get credit for credit. You can't be grossly unfair. They are making an effort to clean the mess up. Yeah. My understanding is Echo Park was cleaned up and then the sheriff went down and started cleaning up Venice. But I've noticed even around Beverly Hills. There is an area that has been cleared up. It's been a long time since. On the. West of Third Street. That has all been cleaned up. Homeless tents are off. They are making an effort. To clean it up. So, you know, and I noticed also, you know, I stayed right across at the hotel right across the street from Cedars. And I noticed that there's just none of the savory characters after 10 o'clock at night. There anymore. it when they have a district attorney that won't prosecute crime but whatever they're doing they're making an effort. And Elliot you'll have to unmute is San Francisco cleaning up it's homeless and dysfunction problems it's astronomical crime and feces on the street and all that. No not in slightest it's it's I'm actually in the marina which is usually pretty aseptic and I actually just passed a tent which you normally never see you know you don't normally don't see that in this neighborhood and that means that you know they've broken through they've broken truly into the swivel neighborhoods it's terrible. And what about human defecation on the streets? Uh not today but uh I'm sure it's as bad as it's ever been. Well I was just go ahead Rodney. You talk about bad um Seattle and Olympia, Washington I started a project up there and of course I don't stay anywhere near the downtown areas but the hospital that I had to go to I was up there it started all this medical stuff the it's adjacent to a park the Catholics own this whole mountaintop uh Olympia and uh going up the road adjacent to this park is just lined with tents uh and uh you know dilapidated RVs and such and there's areas that are landscaped areas that are public you know literally landscape medians that are fairly large and like they call them a transportation jarger the gore zone between where the highway will interchange will link up with the you know into the municipality and I can tell you Luke driving around up there uh Olympia and Seattle is worst in LA was at its worst. Wow. And they're not doing anything it used to be isolated to Seattle and then some friends of mine I know up there that live you know in Olympia and such they've actually moved from Olympia uh down you know to some of the outlying areas and they've not done anything yet uh and it is just bad I mean it is horrible bad and my daughter was driving with me up there uh and uh she said this is worse than LA was and I have to agree with her and uh you remember uh do you remember do you remember the former he passed away the ceramic artist Charles Kraft Luke? Not sure. He's the one that got canceled uh because he had gone to one of Greg Johnson's conferences and the conference list got leaked and he had his exhibits in Paris and New York and he was big time he was a ceramic craftsman. Oh yes. Yes. Yeah yeah well anyway he passed away a brain cancer but he once told me we were hanging out in Seattle one time that he did his best work when in studio and he would have podcasts on like yours or or you know some of the other you know shall we say uh uh controversial podcasts yeah he got a kick out of it you know they were calling that guy a Nazi and he was the farthest thing from a Nazi he was a Buddhist he would he would go to the you know the Ganchi River in India to do that whatever they do he was you know he just wasn't he just was was an absolutist in terms of free speech and such but he sure they sure destroyed his life and made it hard for him to you know live his remaining years you know in any sort of peace and stability. And what about you Rodney of people trying to cancel you? All the time if it's not my kids it's my hot joking uh yeah there was a period of time probably oh I'd say 2008 2009 2010 where people showed up at my house the difference is as you say like I told you I'm I react to what's presented me and it didn't work out well for those folks and so they gave up and of course most people know that 99% of the time I'm armed so they're not going to try to hit me with a bike lock I know unlike a lot of people I know how to use a weapon and I don't believe in going out and brandishing it I don't believe in going out and wearing it on the hip but people knew that I'm not the one that you want to go and hit with a bike lock or do anything like do anything as such but it was about months back at the end of 2008 to 2010 that it was it was interesting and I mean they even what's even funnier is they tried to bully my wife at a grocery store and that worked out even worse for them and have they confronted me because she's a real zealot and Elliot Blatt back to you bro all right well I figured out the car situation I was on the wrong street so the palpitations have subsided so but my sort of ambient stress level is back to the pre pre immersion time so basically my my immersion has been cancelled is this when you you pick up a transvestite being a good Samaritan and to give him a ride no but I did that I picked up a veteran like a couple years ago like and he needed a ride so I said all right I'll give you a ride big mistake Luke big mistake but he gave you a happy ending no no but he started telling me by so he was in my car for a total of two minutes right in that in in the total uh span of that two minutes uh you know I got this tail of woe and he had like hepatitis C and HIV and I'm like wow why do I do this shit bro why do I do this I fall for these fucking stories all the time bro but luckily it was only a two minute ride and I sent him on his way how much uh how much lice all did you use in your car after he got out well I took it to one of those uh I took it to one of those uh car car washing places where they have like 20 illegal aliens it's kind of just send on it and then they just sanitize every and you could brew beer in your car afterwards I mean they sanitize every molecule out of the car so you know go ahead Rodney that is something I have never done I have never picked up a hitchhiker ever you should try it bro no thank you have you ever picked up a hitchhiker uh yeah I picked up women hitchhiking okay was it a rewarding experience it wasn't it wasn't negative I can I can only think of one occasion in my whole life it was in Oregon and Oregon seems you know pretty safe so I gave a young woman a ride in Oregon yeah Oregon safe as long as you're not in Portland yeah yeah on uh Easter or you know Eastern Passover I went on a road trip with uh two of my daughters we started uh in Seattle not in Seattle proper I don't go into Seattle proper but we drove down the coast route all the way down to LA in time for my appointment at Cedars and it was it was just a wonderful drive beautiful scenery and what's funny is we only saw that you calculate the miles that's about 900 miles of course we stopped along the way but I only saw two cops and two hitchhikers along that entire drive on Interstate 5 from Washington down to Oregon down to California down to LA yeah I think you have a lot more in Australia my brother was hitchhiking from a fairly early age so Australia doesn't that's a different culture yeah very different culture yeah I mean you can literally I mean does your uh does your family over there still walk there do they lock their doors at night uh maybe some of them do but uh it's not really necessary yeah it used to be that way in the States yeah until the 1960s really in the San Fernando Valley Steve Saylor says you didn't have to lock your car door or your home till the 1960s yeah my uh my grandmother lived uh in westwood in the 1950s where they moved to San Diego and said that they never locked their doors but things happened started in about 1962 and that's when they moved to San Diego wow and Elliott did you pay any attention to Mr. Medica versus Nick Puentes I did I listened very passively I think I'm kind of done with that whole story arc it was a little uh you know I just got a nicky feeling after a while I mean Nick didn't really come off too well but uh you know neither did Medica I I don't know bro it's like the whole thing seems pretty negative so I'm just trying to back away from it very high schoolish I I listened to it Luke because you mentioned it on your show I caught your show uh the other day so I I tuned in to see if it was gonna be bad and boy it was worse you know first of all it's more like uh junior high to freshman year high school type of banter and uh Nick I've said this before your show he doesn't debate and he lies you know Medica called him on a carpet several times for statements that he clearly had made people know and he just denies him and tries to laugh it off and you know the most I think the most interesting thing that came out of that is you know Nick admitted again that uh he's a Mexican where a lot of his fanboys always say oh no he's Spanish and yet it's been you know known for quite some time and he acts like one in his uh debate he's I would say that he's not uh does not have an excessively high IQ at all and the fact that he can take it I mean he can dish it out but then he goes around and tries to get people censored and their stuff removed because he's kind of but hurt well at the same time you know he talks and complains about people coming in and sabotage and or confronting him in his events but it was okay for him to do the Charlie Kirk which MediCorps had brought up uh as well I've always considered uh Nick just to be the uh a very uh two things one a very self-loathing closeted homosexual and two uh a very juvenile and all he does is gin up the uh you know fellow juveniles you know socially retarded uh and sexually stunted uh followers that he has what's few there's left yeah it's kind of depressing the low quality of the these right wing live streamers I mean I how much has devolved and just the petty juvenile nature of their discussion that that somehow it's some kind of moral failing or personal failing if you get seriously ill and the mocking of medica for having cancer and and Nick Fuentes stands behind Christ is king well most most satanist wouldn't wouldn't speak the way that Nick Fuentes is speaking I I don't know how do you how do you use the platform Christ is king and then speak the way that Nick was doing by the way there's a comment in the chat Nick is 87 percent european that's false even he's admitted that but two uh the uh I have found Luke in both my professional career and personal life he come across people those that screamed the loudest about being you know christian or jewish or even islam you know I've all walks of life I've encountered they tend to be doing that to almost like using church to go to the rotary club uh as as opposed to actually having any sort of spirituality at all I would venture to say that uh uh Nick uh has no deep spiritual connection to catholicism at all I doubt that he is goes to mass regularly I even doubt that he went to mass on Easter uh but uh with that said you know it's easy uh you know to pick up the mantra I mean it's like it's like the evangelicals that supported Trump when everybody knew Trump was not an evangelical uh remember when Trump said two Corinthians I mean yes to me there's not much difference between that it's exploiting religion for political purposes or wrapping yourself in religion or the flag you know for political purposes to tickle the ear of a very limited number of donors because you've made yourself unemployable which is something that I've always told these young people for god's sakes don't make yourself unemployable or otherwise unable to get an education and yet Nick has washed out at university he's unemployable he talks about being a millionaire he lives at home with mommy um all of his moral uh bloviating seems to just be superficial you know for him to rake in a few uh livestream donations and uh Elliot Blatt are you souring on internet drama it sounds like uh sounds like you're getting a little tired of it if you want to unmute Elliot yeah I am I'm getting a bit tired of it it's not to say I'm not gonna indulge in it but uh I gotta put limits on it it is it is I I do think this is all gonna culminate with some sort of real-world violence between these parties uh it's gonna be these characters are spiraling out of control in a really dangerous way and uh I I just don't see how it doesn't uh it doesn't sort of end in you know either prison or or suicide or some sort of active violence it just seems like it's on a very branch trajectory yeah Rodney go ahead Elliot no no I had nothing else go uh Rodney there there seems to be a lot of peril to becoming an internet personality it seems to have a deleterious effect on people's real lives well I don't think Luke that uh it's affected your life in a negative way because you're reasonable uh but when you have people that are trying to be Howard Stern shock shock drop shock jocks pardon hard time spitting that out you know what I mean yeah and but yet they are they are spewing some of the most vile and repulsive things not to mention just absolute illiterate in terms of how how the world works and how you should because you block themselves into a very narrow echo chamber with a bunch of unix uh it's dangerous like I said I go back to you know a young person should not be making themselves unemployable they should not be making themselves unable to uh if it's a male to get a wife and have children and be able to provide for a family for all of Nick's blood I stay on him because he's easiest most hypocritical one for all of his bloviating um you know he washed out of university he blamed Antifa or whatever there's lots of schools he could have gone and finished his degree I don't know of any real job that he's had so he's now he's kind of painted himself into a corner where he has to you know rattle the tin cup and say these stupid things because there is a market there a very narrow market but what's going to happen when that market dries up what does he have left um you know I don't know uh you know we've seen as anybody heard from Andrew Anglin lately he's a prime example he rally you know he just relished his role as the quote unquote shit poster and troll general the troll army who he's more like general custer and now he's running from multiple judgments all around the globe and uh you know he was last reportedly to be in Russia and I wonder if Russia's gonna keep him since they have a free disposition of being pissed off against Americans right now it's just it seems to me that this younger group of of uh of alt-right people and that includes Richard Spencer by the way have a propensity itself destruction and upon destructing destroying themselves they proclaimed victory which I find to be rather sorted and schizophrenic and something that's going on here I notice is audience capture people go online that they do a show they get some applause and they start growing towards the applause like a plant towards the sun and that as they they chase the applause that leads them down a dark path yeah exactly and sadly the path they go down sometimes a person can recover and come back uh you know provided they weren't too stupid but I don't see that you know most of them don't look I mean uh Elliott talked about prison well a lot of them are in prison most of Richard Spencer shock troops they took to charlotteville have some sort of criminal conviction most of them felonies which is going to preclude them from meaningful work you know for years to come uh it's crazy look at the people it doesn't it's not just limited to these what I call the you know the socially retarded and the undersexed uh alt right look at some of the people that went to the january 6 rally people that flew in on private jets I don't see nick twint has ever run a private jet uh if he's a millionaire uh but that's another issue and yet they ruin their lives families destroyed and of course the most repulsive thing out of that whole event so it was where family was informing on family as if we had morphed into the soviet union that was simply incredible then not the to me uh personally I would rather serve time in jail looked and had my family destroyed like that and it means severed from my you know my kids and grandkids and yet that happened and these weren't just these weren't you know people that worked in wrecking yards these were lawyers uh they were uh real estate agents I mean these were people that had successful by thriving careers that is now in the ashy and they'll probably never recover from it they'll end up living at starlight star bright trailer park yeah okay right now as long as as long as hind box not their neighbor all right all well off now okay man take care okay uh alia blad any any more thoughts any any wisdom to share with us i'm driving with the sun in my eyes luke it's tough to to produce wisdom in this condition uh not today luke i'm sorry okay okay still floating bro okay you're welcome to come back in if you think of something you want to add but oh yeah i did i did have something to talk about yeah uh did you hear that uh mentions mold bug is it is a feature piece in him and vanity fair yes i read it it was quite a good piece did you did you cover the story yet i didn't cover i didn't have anything to add but uh i thought it was a fairly you know fair piece jeff bezos uh praise the piece as well okay interesting i thought you might uh all right i'll have to read it myself before i say anymore okay bro i just heard about it don't hurt your eyes maybe you can have someone read it to you okay good i'll find the audio version all right later okay bro take care all right uh terrific piece here by steven turner the etiology of anti populism and the administrative state it came out in 2021 so what is the populist someone who believes in the virtue of the people so this distinguishes the populist from the reformer so the reformer is satisfied with his own virtue but not with other people's virtue so giving over government to the people is not the same as lecturing the people so progressivism is the path of the reformer so the progressives want the support and the enthusiasm of the people and they envy the populists for this but the progressives want to lead the people themselves so populism progressivism very different approaches they're diametrically opposed and so progressives assert themselves not in the name of the people's interests not in the names of the people's wishes but in the name of expertise so progressivism leftism is the alliance of experts and it aroused people so communism is ruled by experts socialism is really ruled by experts the more left wing you get the more the ideology believes in rule by experts so you have all these social movements based on expertise notably the prohibition movement so the prohibition movement used all the techniques presently associated with climate science under the heading alcohol science and so this is how the experts became the third leg of the modern triad so anti-populism takes the form of a whole series of assertions about expertise and governance that we need to turn over more and more of government to the experts so the anti-populist is not satisfied with the people's virtue the populist is satisfied with the people's virtue so the anti-populist does not agree with the people's preferences and so the anti-populist faces a fundamental problem to deny populism is to deny democracy to deny the idea that the people should govern themselves so the anti-populists the progressives the left pretend to be democratic and they cannot overtly deny the myth of the people but they believe in expertise and rulers and so for the justification of their rule they have to redefine the democratic idea to support the democratic institutions they have to create an appropriate counter myth that enables the people to have a place but not to rule so populism really comes from the pure democratic idea itself rule by the people but whenever we talk about democracy we start adding all these disclaimers and qualifications and specifications all right the expressions of the world of the people must take the form of laws and procedures we need election laws and laws governing representation we need genuine democratic will formation that requires free individuals with freedom of speech and various individual rights or we need substantive equality between people rather mere formal equality for meaningful democratic participation right so these additions act as temporary stabilizers to the relations between the three elements the people the administrative state and the experts but they all have their own difficulties so you can think of government as a way of reconciling relations between the wishes of the ruled and the superior power of the ruler that's the the relationship between the person who makes shoes and the person who wears the shoes and complains that their feet hurt so populism arises when you have a failure in the ruling of experts right the the experts pretend to never exercise power right they they pretend that they're just neutral and and their expertise is above politics so public health officials right and Steve Fauci says that judges should not be making decisions it's public health officials who should be making policy so populism asserts the superior wisdom of the people progressivism meaning leftism socialism communism denies the superior wisdom of the people so populism denies identification of power and expertise so if governments are legitimated by experts then what is the point of democratic accountability what role do the people have other than to obey so in much of our american democracy today the the only role for the people is to obey and occasionally ratify the whole system as a whole right this no longer seems to be democracy it is rather paternalism but explicitly arguing for paternalism explicitly arguing for rule by an elite or rule by experts cannot be squared with the rhetoric of democracy so anti populism is weird leftism is weird so anti populism comes from a particular ideological need how do we reconcile practices derived from absolutism with the claim to be democratic right how do we justify renewed extensions of government power and practice by experts that's rooted in the traditions of royal bureaucracies how do we justify this and call this democratic and so claims about expertise play a large role in reconciling these two things so populism is democratic it's the assertion the reassertion of popular control is a remedy for the perceived failures and the perceived injustices of normal political administrative practice particularly the failures of representation abuses by bureaucrats so the rise of donald trump the anti the brexit brexit movement populism in europe in idly in austria this is a reaction to the failures of the governing elites so in response to failures by the experts and the bureaucrats and the governing elites populists endorse referenda plebiscites constitutional amendments and direct elections over mediated elections right depending on which corrupt system they're trying to circumvent so populist movements happen when political parties traditional leaders elites experts and politics as usual fail to deliver the expected goods they fail to accord with the popular sense of reality where our leaders are widely perceived to be untrustworthy and corrupt so populism surges when you have elite failure when you have an increasingly widespread rejection of the workings of the political system itself so for example in much of the western world in america australia england matters of immigration were simply taken off the table and the two three main political parties in these countries essentially agreed to conduct themselves without debating high immigration right that was just not to become a political issue so populism arises out of conflict right as an alternative to parties populism relies on charismatic leaders like a donald trump populism usually is an attempt to take over an existing party like the trump i took over the republican party populist tendencies are prone to co-option they typically do not outlast the situations that produce them but they do represent a reserve a general sentiment against elites in particular ruling groups so populism can be activated in new situations down the road so populists differ from ideologies in that they are situational rather than analytic populism is not analytic it's situational so populists tend to have concrete targets and grievances they don't tend to have developed analysis of political life that can be extended to new situations and can be refined and elaborated so populism does not tend to be an intellectual movement does not tend to be ideological so populist movements have a preference but leaders who promise to act decisively in contrast to normal politicians and so populism is usually hostile to politics as usual so populism is situation driven rather than analysis driven populism is driven by specific crises and grievances doesn't tend to have a strong ideological viewpoint that may have an analytic component so populism is essentially antinomian it's kind of a rejection of law of the way things are done now how do elites rule as against the people elites rule through particular strategies and they also fail through typical issues so elite solidarity is essential to elite rule so donald trump was able to pick off some elites get them on his side so division among the elites causes elite failure now elites rule through alliances between the elite and a significant non-elite group so the most stable of these alliances have been with the middle classes normally under an ideology of meritocracy or property rights or support of the rights of business and this alliance is played off against the demands of the excluded group the poor but then we get the modern democratic party in the united states which is an upstairs downstairs alliance between the elite and the underclass now the upper hand that the elite has in dealing with the non-elite segments of society right the inner party versus the outer party the inner party versus the country party so the democrats of the inner party the republicans of the country party so the advantage that the elite have is that they can use these shifting alliances right they can choose alternate groups to ally with so pluralism favors the elite pluralism is very different from populism pluralism means it's great to have different groups that then have very much in common and so elites can shift their alliances to remain in power so pluralism the pluralistic society that favors elite rule because it provides more opportunities to change alliances populism must produce enough unity in the population to effectively counter the elite and can therefore transcend differences between segments of the society in the name of the people so left and right populisms tend to be anti pluralist right because that's just a consequence of the dynamics of elite alliance making either kind of left wing or right wing populism can succeed if the elite uses its alliance making power to divide the populist movement so elite rule depends on manipulating and shifting alliances with non-elite groups just like israel's dominance requires manipulating and shifting alliances with the other countries particularly in the middle east same to with english dominance right constant shifting and manipulating of alliances the populism is an attack on pluralism which is a threat to elite rule and to the political system as is so let's contrast Marxism to populism so for a populist the cause of troubles is not the system as such but the intruder who has corrupted it financial manipulators politicians bureaucrats it's not a fatal flaw inscribed into the structure of society as such but let's make america great again right something's not playing its proper role within the structure now for a marxist or for a Freudian the pathological the deviating misbehavior of some elements of society is the symptom of the normal it's an indicator of what is wrong in the very structure that is threatened with pathological outburst so the marxist needs analysis it needs a theory about the system the populist only needs villains such as the one percent the populists will target the elite but communism leftism is all about elite rule so zizak has a kind of left-wing anti-populism and so from his perspective what makes right-wing populism dangerous is that the villains it identifies include not only the elite but groups that are excluded from the populist conception of the people and therefore populism undermines pluralism you know populism you can have pluralism you can't really have both they're at war with each other so the popular strategy must be to break the alliances of the elites with various subgroups and take those subgroups and absorb them into the people so you reduce the power of pluralism and by doing that you reduce the power of the elite and government as usual so populism responds to the failure of the ordinary political process populism is hostile to business as usual political parties come between the people and the state so political parties are an obstacle to electoral control by the people now with the case of donald trump the the people mounted a hostile takeover of the republican party and then of the country so william gladston in 19th century england he was able to go over the heads of the party leaders speak directly to the people the charismatic leaders often represent popular opinion and they tend to be impervious to the existing political order the populism means accountability to the people sometimes electoral accountability anti-populism means restrict accountability and this is where the claim of expertise becomes relevant experts by definition not directly accountable to their people they accountable to their expertise or to the expert community they are members of an expert class they're part of an expert institution so bureaucracies displays responsibility to rules that the bureaucracy interprets for itself they can seal decision-making by distributing its elements to multiple officials not of whom have complete responsibility therefore officials are protected from personal liability for their actions so expertise and bureaucracy have an elective affinity because it enables the rulers to avoid accountability to the people so bureaucrats are an organization experts are an epistemology but they unite to the same end epistemology how do we know what we know so concern and talk about the american administrative state we would be taught in the news media and academics now this is some kind of form of right-wing paranoia but the american administrative state was deliberately set out and created in late 19th century america by american elites who looked to europe and admired the way its bureaucracies functioned and european bureaucracies descended from royal bureaucracies and so it was easy to integrate them when you had the rise of parliamentary democracies so to the extent we have an administrative state today that largely comes from royal bureaucracies so the continental administrative state didn't have to be explained didn't have to be justified you didn't have to make his case in relation to democracy because it existed prior to the many gradual steps toward democracy now the american form of the democratic the administrative state had to be created through borrowing from continental models so there's explicit analysis of the administrative state in this relationship to the democracy and the american administrative state was particularly created as against the populist movement that arose in the 1880s in america in response to worldwide wheat crisis which coincided with the rapid expansion of cities the war economy that demanded the capital created a crisis for credit that affected the capitalist world so the claim that people had superior wisdom was an essential part of populism from the very beginning now there was an expert consensus on what was going on in the 1880s among us economists and elites that we needed strong currencies that we needed to hold by the gold standard and we needed to stand firm against the radical expansion of the money supply so the platform of the people's party of 1892 said you should not crucify mankind on a cross of gold right it was an anti-elist social analysis so silver had been accepted as coin since the dawn of history but now it was being demonetized to add to the purchasing power of gold by decreasing the value of all forms of property as well as human labor so the supply of currency is a bridge to fatten bankers bankrupt enterprise and enslave industry this is the populist perspective so vast conspiracy against mankind has been organized on two continents rapidly taking possession of the world if not met and overthrown it forbids terrible social convulsions the destruction of civilization and the establishment of an absolute despotism so the aim of the populist movement in 1880s 1890s america is to restore popular rule to restore the government of the republic so the populist movement aligned itself with the largest labor unions and populists were opposed to unrestricted immigration and for the same reasons right because it would reduce working class salaries so national people's party platform 1892 we condemn the fallacy of protecting american labor under the present system which opens our ports to the pauper and the criminal classes of the world crowds out our wage earners and we denounce the present ineffective laws against contract labor and demand the further restriction for the undesirable emigration so populism means gathering the people as a whole into one powerful force to overcome the current system and the unity that comes from that tends to be quite skeptical of outgroups such as jews and immigrants so porcelain has released his documentary on mersh mersh from revenge of the sin tacious gold watch and the snazzy dress suit a real hit amongst his beat-up roster of two-dollar poll grinding course but after just two years of full-time employment he would be unceremoniously fired by the owner of gold club tamper mike tomkovich with his newly acquired financial lifeline now severed a panic-stricken mersh would go on the legal offensive alleging that his firing was in fact a race-related whistleblower case due to his opposition of tomkovich's discrimination against black employees mersh would claim that he was instructed to thin the herd of non-white dancers adding that tomkovich directed him to charge black entertainers up front to perform while similarly situated Caucasian employees were not charged until after their performance mersh would even suggest that after hearing he had hired a black female to work the door the club owner remarked fantastic now i have an n-word door girl all in all the frivolity of this lawsuit represented some incredibly tribal behavior indeed just from a realistic perspective i don't buy any of this so you're going to tell me the guy who's desperate to make it famous right um who is living in this mercury uh is barely scraping by always begging for paypal money uh you know has to deal drugs to for supplemental income finally finds a stable position working at a place where he's a fucking manager and he's gonna be like no i'm not gonna do that basically i worked for a chain of clubs uh strip clubs and i was the manager i was fired for political reasons i was fired because uh i basically there were i was being asked to do things that are illegal and uh anyone who knows me knows i'm a fucking soldier dude i don't have problems do any illegal shit for money in this case i was asked at a certain point to treat uh basically to thin the herd so to speak of my black and hispanic employees uh the impression that came from my owner at the time was that i had too many working for me and he didn't want to be that kind of club so i was asked to you know basically partake in certain measures that were discriminatory that would cause these people uh to not want to be there and to quit uh basically forced them out the door and because of my refusal to take part in that uh those policies i was fired having now self identified as an opportunistic snitch merge would stake everything on the outcome of the shealy versus se show club's lawsuit and with the defendant's motion to dismiss denied by judge james s moody junior things were initially looking up for the embittered informant and with a potential severance package of six hundred and thirty seven thousand dollars on the table the prospect of genuine life changing money would no doubt have sent much into a full-blown ocular tailspin however after three years of bitter legal wranglings the case was ultimately thrown out leaving an exasperated mike shealy not only completely penniless but with a well-deserved reputation as a litigious tattletale and that's for the fundamental question of whether the suddenly altruistic mush truly cared for the working conditions of black sex workers or had simply saw a self-serving opportunity to leverage the alleged discrimination towards ethnic minorities into a hefty personal settlement all for himself is something we'll never truly know for sure this is fucking with my mind again he's ahead of the curve so he's basically trying to cancel culture for racism maybe five or six years a little too early anybody that knows me knows i don't do illegal things set the dude that would post on facebook about selling coke to gay guys you all know me mr dry my car into the wall a drug dealer when he made me do those mean things against those innocent black girls that's where i drew the line uh found out today that uh my lawsuit was in fact thrown out by a federal judge uh we were not giving a trial we were not giving any of the things that were promised by the system that we believe in um so yeah it was uh no trial no jury no nothing uh just a federal judge who or whatever for one reason or another didn't like me so needless to say four years a lot of fighting and uh on a whim it's all gone so today's probably been one of the worst days i've had in years finding out this news today but i am needless to say in a bit of a jam right now you know you do a whistle lowercase like this and you hope that after four years of fighting that you will at least get a chance to say your piece i was not afforded that opportunity but as a result i now have to suffer from the the repercussions of being known as somebody who's a whistleblower or a snitch or you know or a litigous litigious person after three long years of watching his hairline gradually disappear behind the vista of his ever-growing scalp the theoretical nest egg teaming with delusions of expected wealth had finally shattered and with barely a hint of a reliable income stream on the horizon it was back to the old drawing board for murch as he negotiated his next move with the formidable weight of paying his own rent and utilities outsourced to his satanic sugar daddy roice murch was given the luxury to once again try his hand at performative comedy and following the inception of what appeared to be his very own production company he would commence work on stitching together a potential homemade tv pilot jobber would see murch get to live out his ultimate teenage fantasy playing dress upon camera as his favorite wrestlers a six-minute promotional trailer poorly shot in roice's living room would advertise itself as a comedic mockumentary based around the misadventures of amateur wrestling aside from the substandard production quality across the board the pilot was seemingly lacking any sort of tangible scripts leaving these so-called actors uncomfortably stumbling over one another in a scene not too dissimilar from your local amdram society ultimately as the centerpiece of his freshly established enterprise killjoy productions this was an embarrassing mess for all involved and despite murch creating yet another failed go fund me for this would be abomination okay that's uh from the new porcelain uh documentary on murch from revenge of the sess it uh dropped this afternoon back to steven turner now pipelines have a paradoxical attitude towards the state on the one hand they want an increase in government power but they don't want the creation of an unaccountable administrative state they don't want a massive bureaucracy so they want government control of the railroads but they don't want a massive institutional state running the railway so this is contradictory you want more government action without more power for the administration and the bureaucrats who want less money in the hands of the state but the populace their suspicions of state power are foremost so populace hold the money of the country should be kept as much as possible in the hands of the people so populace want more direct electoral control they wanted the popular election of senators they wanted the imposition of one term limits the president the vice president they wanted the secret ballot so they wanted democracy requiring the maximization of electoral control of the state and they wanted a state that was responsive to the demands of the people as expressed in voting but there's little mediation as possible by professional politicians so underneath this at an epistemic level you find rejection of the guiding expert opinions of the elite so woodrow wilson writing in the 19th and early 20th century as a professor perhaps provided the quintessential intellectual articulation of this anti-populist thinking so woodrow wilson made the argument that people cannot be trusted to perform certain tasks such as voting for administrators but the people can be led by expert opinion leaders which will give the people the illusion of choice to allow them to accept what they are given and the administrators can be given the actual discretionary power and a great deal of it under the fiction that what they do is not politics it's just pure administration and that political choices determine the ends which administrators seek now how do you justify this arrangement well the people are stupid and administrators possess knowledge expertise that the amateurs who get elected to the excessive multitude of democratic democratically accountable officers they just don't have the expertise so the electoral process needs to be radically curtailed it's corrupt people are stupid so the vast number of political officers needs to be reduced needs to be centralized we need to eliminate local independent control we need to replace that with administrators who can be entrusted and can be accountable because their responsibilities will be defined despite lack of an electoral method or any method but trust of holding the administrative state accountable so pluralism means that there's no people left so people who want the administrative state want an increasingly pluralistic society so we have become increasingly pluralistic since the 1960s so there is less and less a people to challenge the ruling powers there's increasingly less and less of a people to hold politicians of bureaucrats accountable and the whole idea of democratic accountability well that just leads to corruption and incompetence from Woodrow Wilson's perspective so all these hallowed political ideals such as the separation of powers of the rule of law well they need to be discarded but it's inefficient to have the courts and lawyers in a position to correct and supervise administrators administrators government bureaucrats need a wide zone of discretionary power right and and they're going to save democracy from itself so it's not the argument we have the relevant expertise we are prevented from using it by an ignorant public therefore we need positions of authority which are free from electoral supervision and we can be trusted to use our powers correctly but the argument is the public is ignorant officials need to protect be protected from the public and administrators can be trusted if they're given a free hand and they can develop the expertise to act so it's an argument against the people right and this is not an argument that you can make openly this argument needs to be disguised as something else and the same to today with our elite discourse about democracy so the disguise will come in the form of a variety of claims about inadequacies of the electoral process so you need to limit electoral accountability and this obviously clashes directly with populism the novelty with populism was that the case for the people no longer rested on the virtues of the german farmer now rests on the falsity of the beliefs of the elite in particular with regard to the gold standard so you would get elite rule on behalf of the people which is very different from self-government right this is the new model for saving democracy is to reduce democracy and so you have to invent a new class of people administrators who will be granted this vast discretionary power so we need to from the progressive leftist perspective we need to limit electoral control of administration we need to leave things to the experts we need to replace those who can be elected and centralized power so democracy requires homogeneity therefore heterogeneity requires administrative power so as our countries become less and less homogeneous we have more and more need for independent bureaucratic power less and less need for explicit democracy right so Woodrow Wilson complained oh we've got so many elective offices that even the most conscientious voters have neither the time nor the opportunity to inform themselves to the regard to every candidate on the ballot so they have to vote for a great many men of whom they know nothing so therefore you get the local machine and the local boss where population crowds interest compete work moves strenuously and at haste life is many sided and without unity voters of every blood and environment and social derivation mix and stare at one another at the same voting places government is confused irresponsible unintelligent wasteful methods of electoral choice which served us admirably well while the nation was homogeneous and rural service oftentimes ill enough now that the nation is heterogeneous so it's in the interest of the ruling class it's in the interest of the ruling elites it's in the administrative interest of the administrative state to have a diverse nation right the more diverse the more pluralistic the less in common people have the less power the people will have to interfere with elite rule so democracy requires homogeneity we're increasingly less homogeneous so therefore we need less democracy so representative government had a long life it had an excellent development but now that we have a more diverse population is not going to work out so well the people on their own are incompetent they're not capable of governing themselves so we need to delegate authority to administrators who possess the expertise that is beyond the can of the people now these administrators they need no supervision merely by given by being given responsibility and discretionary power they will become paragons of neutrality without democratic control without the interference of lawyers and courts government will become efficient we just need to give up democratic control accept the pale substitute of trust and democracy will be saved the courts just need to invent doctrines that enable them to deny relief to those who are injured by the experts and the bureaucrats and politicians need to pass political problems off to the experts need to pass politics after the administrative states and the experts need to claim and take questions out of politics with the tacit or with the explicit consent of politicians we need to live in an age of neutralization so we take more and more issues outside the realm of politics so populism was caught in a practical contradiction it wanted more government but less bureaucratic power the populist did not want to give up electoral control and this is a classic problem the conflict between liberalism and democracy democratic vote can eliminate the freedoms that are a condition of liberalism so the wishes of the people may lead to practical contradictions this is intrinsic to democracy the democracy is a majoritarian system of rule it inevitably favors majorities over minorities whether these are minorities of interests minorities of opinion minorities of ethnicities so much of the mythology of democracy means papering over these hard facts anti-populism like liberalism itself is essentially anti-democratic but liberal anti-populism relies on liberal means on the rule of law and on constitutional restrictions on the state to tie the hands of the people to restrict the will of the people the liberalism is based on fear of the people left anti-populism is anti-democratic the more left you go the more anti-democratic the more you have rule by experts so the left denigrates the people they denigrate notions of false consciousness misrecognition so they are anti-democratic in the guise of anti-populism but the guise is important because it allows anti-democratic ideas to be presented as saving democracy or true democracy or our democracy or protecting our democratic values and institutions right this is the beautiful rhetoric that expands the hides expanding the power of bureaucrats and administrators and experts and their discretionary power at the cost to the power and well-being of the people so populists can break out of the constraints of experts and speak directly to the people the point of anti-populism is to prevent appealing directly to the people to restrict accountability so pluralism and progressivism and leftism are essentially anti-democratic in the name of democracy hey everyone hello from colorado where it is spring it's going to be 75 degrees today and then in three days we're going to get two inches of snow because mountains today i wanted to talk about ukraine from an economic point of view now all the strategic issue that has been in most of my update stands the russians still need to plug those geographic gateways that allow access to their territory so they still need to get all of ukraine and then continue on and the russian population is still dying out and this is their last chance to do so all of that's true all of that stands but there's an economic issue underlying it that is worth exploring because it means that the russians are going to be a little bit more brutal than they would otherwise need to be ukraine in many ways is like the american midwest it has a big river going through its most productive territory so in the united states that's the mississippi allows for all of the grain and soy producing states to export their stuff at low cost out to new orleans in um in ukraine it's the neeper it serves the same purpose everything goes down the river and i was ultimately repackaged at odessa for shipment to the wider world that means that from a an american economic point of view ukraine makes sense for russia though it doesn't work that way i've got this weird thing of hair right here but for russia it doesn't work that way russia only has one river that flows south that is the vulga and it dead ends in the caspian sea which is a landlock lake the north flowing river is the ob for example uh have a different problem uh one they flow to the arctic and no one lives there so any sort of shipment has very roundabout two in winter the rivers flow from the mouth to the source rather than the other way around and when your river is flowing into ice it breaks up the ice it pushes the ice ahead of it until there's too much ice and then the ice gets by its mere weight gets pushed down to the river bed and it forms an ice dam ice dams can last a long time and you get massive floods as the river overflows its banks and it does this in russia every fall moving into winter all winter long and then especially in the spring melt because it then it melts from the source to the mouth instead of the other way around and the water has nowhere to go so most of the floodplains in most of the world are used for agriculture and russia not necessarily because it's a death trap uh there's actually a bit of a competition among the folks in the russian military about who gets to go out and use 500 pound bombs on the ice dams to try to free up the rivers now what this means in the terms of the russian empire and you do need to think of russia as an empire it expands it expands expands until hits those gateways and all the countries that it expands through are occupied peoples that's that's an empire that's not a republic that's not a democracy it means that russia knows that its internal distribution is crap and russia knows it can't sell any excess production to the wider world because it's hard to get it out but ukraine can ukraine is the most productive land in the russian sphere of influence they have huge agricultural surpluses a fair number of metals some coal uh other chemicals and it can all get out easily and once it's to the black sea you can go to turkey or through the turkey strakes to europe and the wider world for russia it's never been that easy so ukraine has always been a territory that the russians have grabbed on to very tightly and now that ukraine is making a reasonable go at being independent and maybe even doing well in the war the russians feel they have to destroy all of that so the civilian infrastructure obliteration strategy that the russians started about six weeks ago is is continuing uh we know that what happened in bucha with the atrocities there have been replicated in at least 70 places in other places that the russians occupy they're in the process of doing that in miracle right now the infrastructure is going to go because if the infrastructure goes then a modern industrialized society can't exist and ultimately that is like a secondary goal for the russians compared to the security stuff but it's very very much front of mind okay that okay question the chart have i done stand up i think perhaps this is about hello the sex industry for 12 years met many interesting creatures during those 12 years and i became the mainstream news medias go to guy for commentary about what was going on in the sex industry so i'd be interviewed on 60 minutes or entertainment tonight and until about three years ago i used greekian formulas so that's why there's no gray in in the hair there and that's jamie lin the pandhouse pet of the year 2006 right at trying to tempt me into sin right above me so i was living a life where i'd i'd go to an orthodox school in the mornings and i'd i'd govern i'd study a page of talmud and then i'd often go to a porn set and interview porn stars and a lot of people thought that was kind of an incongruous life and so a lot of people in the jewish community said to me what do you think you might be a sex addict because they couldn't understand why anybody would want to write about such a industry and other people said you think you might hate women because how else could someone immerse himself in the sex industry unless you really enjoyed the degradation of women and i thought these comments were just you know silly and i just totally dismissed them but i found it was hard to date nice jewish girls while you're writing on the sex industry i remember this one woman said you know i'd have to test you for every std under the sun and wrap you in plastic and deep freeze you for a year you know before i could date you so in 2007 i quit writing on the sex industry and thought oh i'll just go back to writing on orthodox Judaism because they're they're they're similar like they're these distinct subcultures like highly suspicious of outsiders think the outside world is there to get them and like to me made perfect sense to write simultaneously about pornographers and orthodox rabbis who are sexual predators but uh so i was in therapy about five months ago and i was talking to my therapist about what i want out of life and my therapist said that sounds like a roti-sized rage and oh that's uh haley rivers i did date one porn star that was after she left the industry and i remember i was uh talking to a friend i was kind of concerned about one of the scenes that she'd done it upset me and and my friend said to me well at least you know she isn't racist and it was about a couple of years ago i was looking for a little solace one evening on the internet and uh you know i found one of her videos those uh there's a really sick feeling like she's a really sweet girl and so i was in therapy a few months ago and my therapist said you know it sounds like you have a roti-sized rage and i'd never heard of the term a roti-sized rage but as soon as i heard it i immediately knew it was true so my therapist explained that a roti-sized rage is anger that's being sexualized so perversion is the erotic form of hatred a sexual behavior that breaks the rules and social disapproval judgment and shame a key to arousal taking place so i realized in a very short time that basically all my fantasies are just a form of anger and that like i was motivated in this you know vital intimate arena by really dark stuff so you know someone who is motivated by a roti-sized rage now they have a rapist just under the surface which was quite upsetting for someone who i was trying to be a mensch and you know practicing orthodox Judaism this was not the way that i wanted to see myself but as i as i read the the more i realized it was true like for instance whenever i was having sex with a woman i would almost always have to close my eyes and i'd go in my brain to some perverse fantasy about some other woman than who i was with like the intimacy of keeping my eyes open during the act was too much for me and if i actually kept my eyes open the whole time i was unable to uh to do the deed and uh so as i read about this i thought you know i might need to go to 12-step programs for sex addiction this this might be um my problem and so my therapist outlined look look at the pain in my eyes see how empty i am like you know on the one hand this is my 40th birthday and penthouse set like six pets over for my 40th birthday and this is crystal Klein very erudite reads a lot of books doesn't mind getting naked you know a wonderful woman but as you look in my eyes you can see like underneath all the fun and like you know the the sexual disneyland like you can see how empty i was feeling inside okay so now this is being i've got to keep things on a really elevated level so so each of us has an arousal template like there are certain things that turn us on and you know for giggles you might want to like one time just like write them out because all of us have a certain roadmap and this roadmap to to love or to to eros is going to profoundly affect your your dating romantic decisions and and many of your choices in life okay that we'll do it for tonight