 the radical fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Brookshow. All right everybody, welcome to Iran Brookshow on this Tuesday night. It's 8 p.m. here in Puerto Rico. Everybody had a great day and looking forward to the rest of the week. All right, today we're going to talk about my least favorite topic in the world, Donald Trump. But we got to talk about him because the reality is that in all likelihood, or there's a better than 50% chance I think right now, that Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States. Zach in the chat says, after January 6th, I thought Trump was done for good. Yeah, you would have thought. It seemed that way and yet here he is. So, Trump is a phenomena, a political phenomena that is impossible to ignore. And clearly, you can say all you want and I have about his failures as a human being. He is the ultimate, the ultimate politician. So, he is back. He is back and he is back in some sense stronger than ever. So, I noticed two articles recently that both by people who are not necessarily supporters of Trump, who are not necessarily fans of Trump, but who are trying to understand the phenomena. And I think they made a lot of good points. I think they, you know, they're really trying to make the best argument they can for why Trump is so popular, why he's so successful. I think they still both oppose Trump ultimately, but they wrote these articles, one in the Wall Street Journal, one in the New York Times, one was John Cochran, and the other one was Brett Stevens, both nominally Republicans or, you know, have been in the past Republicans or voted Republican. I don't know John Cochran votes, but I assume he votes Republican. So, the real, so the question I asked is, what is it? What is it that makes Trump so popular? It's, you know, there's some objective criteria regarding people's perception of well-being during the Trump period and during Biden period, but a lot of that has to do with really selective memory and remembering certain things. But you have to ask the question, why did he win in 2016? I mean, I did a lot of shows on this back then, but it's good to remind ourselves of it. And then, why is he doing so well today? Why is he likely or at least has good odds, if nothing else, to win again in 2024, which no president has done. Since Cleveland, Cleveland is the last president in the, I think, towards the end of the 19th century to have won the presidency, lost and then won again. And Trump might be the first one in well over 100 years to be doing that again. So, I want to try to break down this, and this has to do also, I think, with the, Scott asked, when is the show on the appeal of Biden? We all know the appeal of Biden. The only appeal Biden has really to anybody, I think, out there is he's not Trump. So, that's easy. We're done with the show. He's not Trump. That's his only appeal. Nobody likes Biden. Nobody voted for Biden because they were excited about Biden. Indeed, Biden lost every primary that he ever ran against decent candidates. The only reason, in the past, he would have never been elected a president. The only reason he won in 2020, because he was not Trump, and the only reason he would win in 2024 is because he's not Trump. That's it. Nobody's talking about you, Scott. First of all, it's not true. Scott says I'm largely voting for Trump because he's not Biden. It's just not true. You've been defending Trump nonstop on this show. This is the thing about so many Trump supporters. Oh, no, no, we hate Trump. We don't like Trump, but he's not Biden. It's a binary choice. We have to support Trump. But then you criticize Trump. Oh, no, Trump's good on this, and good on this, and good on this, and he has no flaws. He's actually the perfect candidate. So again, they are dishonest, but okay, that's just the way it is. Anyway, let's no more, no more, Scott. In order to understand what's going on, I think we actually, we have to do some history, and so we're going to do some history here, not ancient history, modern history, but I don't think you can understand. I don't think you can understand the Trump phenomena without understanding Americans' frustration about the world in which they live, about the state of America, about what has happened over the last, let's say, 24 years. I think the real frustration starts with 9-11 because, you know, pre-9-11, people were upset, people weren't happy. There was a lot of frustration. The Bush-Gore election was very close, but generally things were going positive in the country. People generally felt positively. There was a certain momentum coming out of the 1980s, and the reassertion of American self-esteem called it, coming out of Reagan, at least pseudo self-esteem, at least a sense of self-esteem, and the 90s were a period of relatively robust economic growth, and innovation, and progress, and people really, I think, felt good about much of the world through this, and 9-11 really shattered that. It really showed America that it is vulnerable to the world out there, and the initial response to 9-11 was, all right, we're going to come together, we're going to unite, and we're going to defeat this, we're going to win, we're going to crush the enemy. It was this big boost of patriotism. Flags went up, and there was, I think, a certain sense of excitement about the country coming together to deal with an issue, and to deal with a problem, and a problem that was eminently, imminently, eminently dealable. That is a problem that Americans had a sense of, we can, we can indeed win and defeat this enemy, and by doing so bring the country together. And we all know where that led to. It led down a rabbit hole in Afghanistan. It read down an even deeper and more crazy rabbit hole in Iraq. It led to the perception really from early on of American defeat, American impotence, American inability to deal with the enemy, a growing starting certainly in, I guess, post the 2004 election, starting in 2005, 2006, a real sense of impotence and defeats and a complete and utter distrust of our foreign policy establishment. Foreign policy establishment had got us into these wars, and you could argue, I would argue, but I don't think Americans hold it quite this way, but it prevented us from winning the wars, and prevented us from fighting the right wars. But whatever you interpreted, the foreign policy establishment failed, failed dramatically. By the time Obama was elected in 2008, Iraq was a complete mess. Maybe the insurgency was over, but ISIS was about to rise up, conquer land, make fools of the Americans. Afghanistan was just this endless stream of Americans being killed, no progress, Taliban gaining ground, but nothing really, Obama, under Obama bin Laden was killed, but nobody got a sense of relief. It was so far from 9-11, it was like it wasn't even that dramatic. It was a, what do you call it, anti-something. It just wasn't an impressive anymore, because America had failed. And so going into the 2016 election, there was a complete distrust of everything to do with American foreign policy, and one of the reasons I think Hillary lost is because she was associated with that foreign policy. She was a foreign secretary under Obama. She was kind of conventional when it came to foreign policy. She had, if I remember right, supported the war in Iraq, and people were fed up with that. And there was the sense of we need anti-climactic. Thank you, Kudy Baya. It was anti-climactic. And there was the sense there was the whole thing in Libya, in Tripoli, which was a disaster and where she failed dramatically. But again, why was they even an ambassador there? Why were people being exposed to such dangers? Why was there no realization of the dangers they were in? Why were they just slaughtered? And who was responsible? Well, all of that was a consequence of the traditional mainstream, mainline, Republican and Democratic foreign policy establishment. And basically, America was fed up with the foreign policy establishment as they should have been. They were completely and utterly right about it. All of that was frustrating. And another important point here that I think goes to the fact that Trump voters, Trump voters are mainly from what we call middle America. They're generally uneducated. They're generally older. They're generally working class. And who died in Afghanistan in Iraq? It was working class kids. It was the children of these older Americans. They were the ones who died. Very few of America's, quote, elites, very few of America's intellectual class joined the army, joined the military, fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, and got killed there. The vast majority, as always, in any army, but certainly in an all-volunteer army like the United States, comes from a working class background. And this is incredibly frustrating, right? For people who lost their kids, for what? What did they die for? Not for victory, not for defeating terrorism, not for winning a war, not for making America safer. I don't think America felt safer in 2016. I don't think, for a variety of reasons, I don't think America feels safe today. And certainly after the attack on Russia, I don't think they did. They do. Today, given ISIS going to Russia, ISIS could go to Des Moines, Iowa. I mean, there's no reason to assume ISIS cannot attack the United States just as it attacked Russia. So there was a real sense of insecurity, and a real sense of insecurity that I think was justified, given the complete and utter failure of Bush's policies and Obama's policies. Foreign policy was a mess. And think about today, foreign policy is a bigger mess. Biden has been a complete and utter failure when it comes to foreign policy. His getting out of Afghanistan was a disaster. Nobody remembers, nobody cares that Trump signed a peace deal with the Taliban. I mean, that requires thinking and researching and remembering and actually caring. Biden was the one that ordered the troops home and did it in a rushed way and did it in a way that 13 Marines died on the ground, did it in a way that resulted in a complete disaster in Afghanistan and ultimately resulted in the fact that ISIS in Afghanistan is today incredibly powerful and strong and organized terrorist attacks in Moscow. So Afghanistan looks like a complete and utter mess. Then now Biden is responsible for, again, foreign policy establishment. Nothing radical, nothing new. Biden is just Bush, Obama, Biden. We'll talk about Trump in a minute. Russia under Obama, Russia invaded Ukraine, and nobody paid attention much to that. Most Americans didn't even know it happened. But now there's a major war in Europe, tanks, people dying, cities being bombed. It's bizarre. It's unusual. What the hell is happening? And what does America do? Send money. But nobody explains it to Americans. Nobody's gone out of his way to actually explain to America why this is important, why any American self-interest is involved. And why should we believe anybody who tells us this? These are the same foreign policy establishment types that got us into Afghanistan. They got us into Iraq. They got our kids killed. They got our kids died in their battles. Why now? So why should we believe anything, anything that the current foreign policy establishment tells us? We don't trust them. And then, of course, October 7th happened, and the Middle East is in flames, and it looks like the United States has no clue what it's doing. It first supports Israel. Then yesterday, before yesterday, it vetoed, it doesn't veto condemnation of Israel, implicit condemnation. And Biden hates Netanyahu and Israel. It's clear, should we support it, should we not support them? After all, it's Jews, and they control everything, and can't do so, and it's a mess. And yeah, people like John Bolton and other foreign policy types call it like it is, but why should we believe them? They're foreign policy types, and they've lied to us from the beginning. They've always lied to us. Everything they say is wrong. Why should we believe them this time? And again, it looks like Biden is completely incompetent, has no clue what he's doing. How can we support that? Look at what's happening with the Houthis. Americans get killed in an attack on an American base in Syria. Why are we still in Syria? Didn't Trump promise to... Anyway, why are we still in Syria? Where's Syria? Americans died. What did Biden do about it? Nothing. Again, American establishment. Oh, he bombed some bases, but nothing of substance. Again, it's all failure. It's all meaningless. There's no strategy. There are no principles, and there's nobody to trust. If you look at the foreign policy establishment, people who write about foreign policy, people who talk about foreign policy, people who comment about foreign policy on the news, on the television, on the radio, on podcasts, they've been wrong for 25 years. Why should we trust them now? And every time they get into power with a president who is conventional and therefore brings them in from the think tanks and so on, it's, again, just a disaster. So the American people have lost trust completely in conventional views of foreign policy, and they should. Again, they should. They're right. The foreign policy intellectual establishment is a complete and utter disaster. It is an embarrassment. They have no principles. They have no ideas. They are pragmatists. They shoot from the hip. Or they are, or they believe in things like America should be the policeman of the world, and nobody was sane once that. So I think 9-11 has done a lot. The response to 9-11, the fact that 9-11 happened, to completely demoralize Americans with regard to foreign policy. And it doesn't surprise me that Americans want to hunker down, bring the troops home, hunker down, let the world slaughter each other. We can't get involved, because every time we do get involved, our kids die and nothing good happens. And nobody out there is articulating a proper foreign policy message. And I think Nikki Haley tried, but she never recognized, she didn't address the real and legitimate concerns Americans have. She didn't address the real fears, the legitimate fears, about the failure of foreign policy to date. You need to talk about that. This is what Trump does so well. You need to talk about that. You need to address that. And if you have an alternative, if you have an option, then you need to be able to articulate first what the problem is. Look, I know you've been betrayed. All these people have told you that they know what they're doing in foreign policy. All these wars that have been fought, they were horrible. They were a waste. They were no principles. Here's what should have been done. Here's what could have been done. And here's what I will do. But you didn't get that from Nikki. She did a decent job defending the war, our support for Ukraine. She did a decent job defending Israel. But she didn't address the frustration, the real frustration. She didn't address the fear, the real fear that people have of what is going on overseas and American involvement in what's going on overseas. All right. So, farm policy, conventional stuff is out. And in 2016, people were frustrated. People were afraid. If you remember, this is a period of terrorist attacks in Europe. There were some attacks in the United States, but there was a real sense that this could get a lot worse. And there were no answers. Nobody had answers. The conventional didn't have answers. And there were clear unequivocal farm policy failures for 15 years. No wonder Americans went for a candidate that said, to hell with how things have been done so far, I'm going to do things differently. Now, whether he did anything differently or not is a separate question. But they were fed up with the status quo. And they should have been. The great tragedy of America is that instead of a rational voice rising up to offer a real alternative, a principled alternative with real solutions, we got Donald Trump, who is very, very good. And he is very, very good at playing on the fears, playing on the frustrations and offering no, literally no solutions to them. Second, second key event of the last 25 years is the financial crisis. Again, the financial crisis was an example of the so-called elites, the people in power, the people with influence having no clue. If one thing was evident from the financial crisis, it was that the people in charge of the financial system don't know what they are doing. They don't know. They're scared. They're panicking. And a sense that America has become a crony country. It's become a country that would rather bail out banks, would rather bail out CEOs, auto companies, anybody big than actually solve any problems. Again, nobody was honest with American people. Nobody offered any principled solution. Nobody explained what really happened other than to blame greed, bankers, who were then bailed out. You blame the bankers and then you bail them out. Now the bailout wasn't really a bailout. And we can get into the nuances of all these things, but the fact is 90% of people don't know, don't care, don't have the patience for the nuance. What they saw was a bailout. What they saw was some people getting rich after the crisis. And they saw themselves losing their jobs. Many of them got them back, but since the great financial crisis, we have lived in an economy that's done, okay, unemployment has been very low. But other than that, it's just been, okay, okay, we've lived through stagnation. Gone is a robust economy. Gone is the optimism. Gone is the feeling of growth. It seems like every few years, people get more pessimistic about the future. The Obama years were years of recovering or trying to recover from the financial crisis. They generated, of course, the Tea Party out of frustration of the financial crisis, frustration for the economy. But the reality is, the reality is that the economy stagnated. Now it stagnated during Trump's period as well. I mean, I can show you graft after graft after graft that Trump's economy was not that better than the second term of Obama and not that better, if better at all, than Biden's economy. But it doesn't matter. Trump was very, very good at marketing. He's very good at marketing, including marketing. How good things are. Greatest economy ever. You say that enough times, just like the left, when they say a lie over and over and over and over again, people buy it. When Trump lied over and over and over again, people buy it. But the reality is that people lost trust in the financial system. They lost trust in the economy. The economy progressed, but it's sped it along. And this has led people to be super pessimistic. I mean, at the end of the day, in spite of Trump's great economy, he lost in 2020. And he lost in 2020 because people maybe weren't quite as convinced. And of course, his performance during COVID, we're not going to talk about that. So people had, and of course, the mixed economy during this period is exactly why you get the sputtering, the stagnation. And presidents have very little to do with economic success. Any particular policy. I mean, Trump did some good things and did some bad things. Obama did some good things and some bad things. How exactly that manifests itself in the economy is not directly attributable to any particular president. But the reality is that people, again, were very pessimistic during the Obama years. It manifested itself in the Tea Party. They were very pessimistic about, again, the intellectual elite knowledge of economics. The mixed economy is endlessly frustrating because it constantly pits one group against the other and everybody's fighting and everybody's trying to grab their perceived share of things. So again, people were filled with angst, fear, frustration, and they voted for the new guy. They voted for the disruptor, thinking this will make it different. This will be different. It wasn't really no significant economic policy shifts under Trump, but they wanted something different, just like they wanted in foreign policy because nothing was going right. And the same is true today, in spite of the fact that unemployment, it is historic lows. Black unemployment is the historic lows. Labor participation rate is increasing. American disposable income is at the highest level it's ever been, higher than what it was under Trump. I mean, adjusted for inflation, right? I'm not cheating. Job creation is robust. Stock market is way up. Historical highs. Economic growth is about at the same rate as the best Trump years. In spite of that, gas prices are high. Inflation is high. Homes are unaffordable. Interest rates are high. So even though on an inflation-adjusted level, we're wealthier in terms of disposable income, we can buy more stuff, it doesn't feel that way. Certainly, wealthier if you're in the stock market. Consumer sentiment is horrible. People are pessimistic, and they should be. Debt is out of control. Debt is out of control. And, you know, things are, things are, feel really, really bad. And whether the debt is out of control because of Trump or because of Biden or because of both of them, Biden's president right now, he gets to blame. It doesn't really matter. So when it comes to foreign policy, people have lost trust completely in the people running foreign policy, in the people talking about foreign policy, in the intellectuals advocating for foreign policy. When it comes to the economy, the Neocainsians, the statists, the mixed economists of various forms, all lost credibility. If it's not this crisis, the SAC crisis, you know, this bank is going on to another banking crisis, another problem over here, inflation, it's down, but no, it's actually rising again. Interest rates are going to come down, and we'll know we're going to keep them flat. Nobody knows what they're doing. And nobody has known what they're doing forever. That's the nature of statism. But it's become real for people. It's become real. They get it now. And they're frustrated, and they've had enough of it. And again, the reality is that, yes, Nikki Haley is willing once in a while to mention the world capitalism, although she didn't really in the debates. DeSantis didn't talk about the economy at all. He ignored the topic. Nikki Haley talked about it a little bit. She actually dared to mention cutting spending. But again, there was no recognition of the existence of a problem, and no radical departure from what Bush and Bush and Clinton, all the other conventional candidates have always said. So it's, who cares? So over and over and over again, we get this notion that the conventional, the conventional, the mainstream, both Republican and Democrat, are bankrupt. They have nothing to offer. They have everything they have done in the past ultimately has failed and has creed this deep angst among Americans. And then finally, well, not finally, but there's the Cultural Wars. There is definitely a sense that every time America goes too far to the left on the Cultural Wars, there is a backlash. Not on every issue. I don't think that's true of abortion, for example. But suddenly, as political correctness, if you remember before 2016, it was micro-aggressions and it was all this other stuff. There was a backlash against that. But notice that 2020 was probably the year in which the Cultural Wars were the strongest ever that the left went completely insane to the point of burning down American cities and Trump still lost. So you know, there's certainly a Cultural War element here and there's certainly a big group of Americans, a big group of Americans who resent the dominance of the far left, not the regular left, but the far left, the dominance of the far left in our institutions. They resent the racism, they resent the wokeness, they resent the political correctness of old, they resent the micro-aggressions, they resent it, all of that stuff, the BLM, insanity, so-called anti-racism, all of this, they resent, there's a huge number of Americans who resent this. But look, if that was the main issue, if that was the main issue driving Republicans, then they would have voted for DeSantis. DeSantis was more articulate than on that issue than Trump ever is. DeSantis actually did something about it, you could argue whether he did anything good, I don't think so, but he did something about it in Florida, whereas Trump never did anything about anything, right? And DeSantis didn't beat Trump. So even on the woke stuff, you know, yeah, Americans resent the left, but why did they embrace Trump? I mean, again, the choice is not binary. Trump won out of a field of what, seven, eight? He beat DeSantis on the woke stuff. And DeSantis wasn't conventional on the woke stuff, he was using gum in creative ways to attack woke. So do Americans really care that much about that? It looks like maybe not. What did Trump and his entire presidency do to address issues of wokeness? Almost nothing, defunded a few things, nothing significant. I'm not talking about who you vote for, you guys can vote for whatever you want. We're trying to explain the phenomenon, not explain your particular motivation for voting this way or that. I mean, you guys in the chat are narrow-minded, you know, too many of you are narrow-minded and unthinking. Now, those are some of the reasons, some of the reasons, foreign policy, the economy with a great financial crisis as an important point with regard to the economy, and the fact that we've never recovered from the great financial crisis. We have never recovered from it. And we've never recovered from the, what do you call it, quantitative easing, we've never recovered from the massive government deficits. Indeed, all of that has just gotten worse, quantitative easing, you know, got much worse over COVID, now is shrinking, but got a lot worse. And budget deficits are unimaginably high today relative to what they were 10, 15 years ago. And that includes, by the way, that includes, by the way, what Trump did in terms of growing the deficit. But that doesn't matter. It's not any particular. It's not any particular action. It's attitude. And Trump comes across as different, unconventional, out of the box. Everything in the box is screwed up. And it's true, it is screwed up. It's just that Trump is not an alternative, not a legitimate one. And then add to that some illegitimate fears, or at least fears that irrational, taken out of context, and again, where Trump does not present a solution, but that Trump understood and understands that Americans feel this way. And again, the reality here is political. It's not an issue of truth. It's an issue of politics. So Trump recognized in 2015 that immigration was a huge issue for Americans. He noticed in his speeches, in his rallies, that when he mentioned immigration, he got a great response, that Americans feared migration, that the great migration that was happening all over the world from north, from sorry, from south to north, from east to west, was something that scared Americans, particularly in 2016 as they looked to Europe, and they saw the mass migration of Muslims into Europe in 2015. Scary, really scary. They didn't want that here, and they were afraid of it, and he played on it. All right, I have to comment on this, just for the hell of it. Ken says, remember, Iran would never say these things to Lenin Pekov. I have said all these things to Lenin Pekov. There's nothing that I've said to you about Trump that I've not said to Lenin Pekov. I'll just leave it at that. I've said all of this stuff to Lenin. And in a sense, Lenin already knew some of what I said, because so many of you tell him, oh, Iran said this, usually out of context, usually completely slandering me, but yeah, I mean, as I told you years ago, I've had a conversation, more than one conversation. I had a recent conversation with Lenin Pekov about Donald Trump, where I did not hold back. I said exactly what I think about Trump. And shockingly, I mean, we remained friends after that. Doesn't mean we agree. But the difference is that I think at least it was the case that Lenin had more respect for me than you do. That's fine. I'll take it. I'll take his respect over yours any day. So people are afraid of immigrants. And Trump played to that fear. Very effectively, by the way, very effectively to that fear. And played in 2015, and that's going to be the issue that wins it for Donald Trump, this election cycle, how Joe Biden allowed this to happen just politically, put aside beliefs, put aside everything else, how he allowed it politically. He has the tools to take this issue off the table. And he has perpetuated this, perpetuated this as an issue for Donald Trump. That is stunning. And that is amazing. People are afraid of immigrants. I mean, in my view, irrationally, in my view, wrongly, and in my view, again, the Donald Trump that they want to elect doesn't have solutions that are good for America. But that's true of the foreign policy. That's true of the economy. That's true of all these issues. Just there, their fears are justified. Here they're not. There, their fears are justified, and they go to Trump for bad solutions. Here, their fears are unjustified, and they go to Trump for bad solutions. But he's the only one presenting an alternative to call it the mainstream, the conventional, the broad spectrum of intellectuals who have determined policy in America for the last 30 years unsuccessfully and brought us to where we are today with foreign policy disasters and everything else. Trump acknowledges the frustration people have. He acknowledges it. He fuels it. He encourages it. He reinforces it. And he doesn't really have to offer a solution by doing that. It's just by giving people visibility in a sense that they think that he has solutions for it. The other irrational fear, of course, is a fear of China. Not a fear of China as a military force, but a fear of China as an economic force. A completely irrational fear, but again, a fear that people have. Trump figured that out, played on it, used it, pretended to do something about it when he was in office, did nothing really. So all these fears justified or not. Trump understands. Trump leverages, reinforces, and presents himself as an alternative, presents himself as the solution. And finally, in an irrational world where real solutions just are not, nobody's offering them, nobody's making them available. And it's not clear that the world is really even capable of comprehending real solutions because they're so stuck in the existing status paradigm. In times of fear, of crisis, of angst, people look for centralized solutions. They look to centralized power. They look to strong men. They look for somebody to tell them how to solve the problem, for somebody to do the work. So Trump, who's not really a strong man, he's not strong enough to be a strong man, comes across as such. And it feeds off of this idea that to solve these kind of problems, you need a strong government. You need big programs. You need bold assertions, which is Trump. I mean, the reality is that that country is indeed broken. It's broken in a real sense. Our schools are broken. Our universities are broken. You know, arguably with the politicization of the FBI, it is broken. The CDC, we saw during COVID, it's broken. The media is broken. From policy establishment is broken. The Fed is broken. Economic intellectual elites are broken. Who do you trust? I mean, COVID didn't help, right? We learned that senior officials and the CDC and the health department and other places were lying to us. Lab leak, reasons for masks changed. They lied. They locked us down. They kept us locked down for much longer than anybody could have imagined. Again, our world today is defined by broken institutions and broken trust in those institutions. And in a state like that, people are open to, people are open to strong men, people are open to demagogues with solutions. People are open to anybody who's willing to talk to them about what they really feel. So, you know, Trump wrote a wave of pessimism to the White House, successfully. And he's going to write, if he gets into the White House again, it's going to be a consequence of writing another wave of pessimism to the White House. Trump offers no solutions. He offers no positive prospects for the future. He offers no ideas of how to get us out of the mess that we're really objectively in. He offers us nothing but an emphasis on the recognition of the awful situation we are actually in. So, yeah, we're in trouble. But we're in trouble no matter who wins. They both have no ideas. They both are going to set us down a course that is going to be a disaster. You could argue about which one brings about disaster faster. Some of you believe Trump buys us time or some of you might even believe he's our savior. Some of you believe that Biden will destroy the country faster. I don't agree with you guys, but essentially they're both disasters. They're both horrible. And Trump in some essential characteristic, in my view, is the bigger disaster because he undermines the very system that makes it possible for us to actually ultimately fix things. But I get it that people don't get it. But his appeal is in people's fear. This goes back to our show on Saturday. His appeal is in his ability to recognize just how broken the system is. Just how broken the system is. And the system thoroughly, again, the economy, the foreign policy, the institutions, the entirety of it is broken. He has no idea how to fix it. Indeed, he will break it and make it worse. But he at least recognizes it's broken and that appeals to people and particularly people who are not particularly well educated, who can't imagine a solution, who can't think about how to get out of this problem, and are likely to place their trust and they vote in a big demographic personality rather than in ideas and in solutions. We're witnessing, I think these four years, we're witnessing a complete reshuffling of the American political landscape. We're seeing people who were Republicans become Democrats. People who, a lot of people were Democrats becoming Republicans. We're seeing a real, each one of these Democrats and Republicans becoming much more tribal, much more homogeneous, much less thoughtful. It is a horrible phenomena because it's not just the leaders of the political parties that are changing. It's the very base of the political party is changing, which means it's going to be almost impossible to change. That is, even if Donald Trump gets beaten, nobody else other than somebody like Donald Trump can win in the Republican Party because the Republican Party has self-selected now for these characteristics. It's hard to imagine how we get out of it. That is what is so depressing. It's not anybody particularly winning. It's how do we get out of this cycle of losers? How do we get out of this cycle of statism? Even Ronald Reagan would be refreshing at this point. How do we even get anything like that given neither the Democratic or the Republican Party would be willing to come anywhere near somebody like that? All right, let's take your questions. All right, quickly, thank you. Thanks to all the superchatters. I see there are a lot of questions. I appreciate that. We still got a long way to go if we're going to make our targets, but I appreciate the effort you guys have already made. Please feel free to continue to ask questions about anything. Challenge me on stuff that I said. Richard is still here for some bizarre reason. I thought he'd given up. I thought I'd convince him to leave, but he's still here. He says go read some stuff on immigration and come and ask me some tough questions. Richard is too cheap or too poor to do it himself, so he is asking you to do it. Go ahead, ask me anything about immigration. Any empirical evidence, anything you want, principal thing, anything you want, ask me about that. I'm happy to answer the questions with references to appropriate articles and books as need be. I'm pretty sure I won't get those questions because you don't want to ask us. Adam, January 6th, 2020 was the beer hall push, 1923. January 6th, 1923 was the beer hall push. By 1935, 95% of German voters, nationalists and socialists, united voted to make Hitler the absolute dictator of Germany. Depending on the charisma of Trump's successor, 2032 plus or minus, no, I don't think so. Who knows, right? Who knows? I mean, I'm not very good at political predictions. I haven't been and there's no reason to think I am any good at political predictions. But I think America is not Germany. So anything that happened in Germany that fast would probably take longer in America. And it really depends on the path. There was no necessary path that Germany had to take to get to 2032. It didn't have to happen. Different things could have happened in between. Intellectuals could have made different choices than they did. And the reality is that it'll probably take longer here. But there's no way to predict the dates, right? Leonard in DIMM, which was published a few years ago right now, maybe almost 10 years ago now, predicted, optimistic prediction was 50 years. He thought it would be less than that. So maybe another 30 years. I don't know. It wouldn't shock me if it happened in 10 years, but it's more likely to be 15 to 20. But again, it's meaningless because I don't know. I don't know. It depends who wins this election. It depends how long they last. It depends on who runs the next time. It depends on what their response is by the intellectuals. It depends if anybody learns anything. The fact that it happened in Germany does not deterministically determine that it has to happen here. Leah, are people too wicked or corrupt in some way to such a significant degree that a minimum level of morality required to resonate with objectivism isn't present? Ugly or empty souls can't respond to optimism, positive values. It's not that they can't respond to optimism or positive values because they have during various periods done that. And indeed, I think that ultimately, if America is to fall to a dictator, that dictator will be an optimist. And in a sixth sense, in a wrong sense, but he'll be projecting some positive value, not real positive values, not pro-life positive values. No, I mean, look, you underestimate the impact of 2000 years of morality, 2000 years of altruism, 2000 years of Christianity. You underestimate the impact that that has on a culture. You underestimate how ingrained altruism is in the way people think. So now you're coming to them with a proposal that's diametrically opposite. It requires a complete rejection of their morality, of their view of life, of their view of reality. It is way, way too challenging for them. And it and it takes time. So Leninpekov said, I don't know, when was it six years ago, eight years ago? I can't remember. Probably eight years ago now, time flies. Something about the culture is just, it's too early. And it hasn't evolved enough. It hasn't matured enough. It's too young. These ideas are too challenging for a culture that's been saturated with Christianity for 2000 years. It's really, really important to understand why I hate Christianity so much, why I think Christianity is such a negative influence on the world. It's whether people are secular or religious right now, it doesn't matter. Christianity is what a shape to they are. In that sense, I agree with the book Dominion. And it's just way too difficult. So the Enlightenment did an amazing job. And we're still the good things in our culture are still the remnants of that Enlightenment, but it was flawed. And it didn't completely reject Christianity, didn't completely trounce Christianity. It didn't pound it into the dust that it deserved. And as a consequence, Christianity was resurrected in secular form by Kant. And we're suffering the consequence of that. And that is hard. It is hard. It is challenging. And just to say, you know, to make it as their souls are ugly, okay, maybe they are ugly, but why? That's what's important. What's important about the why is ideas, ideas, ideas, ideas. That's why it's all about philosophical ideas and at the root of it is mysticism versus reason. And next is altruism versus egoism. Those are the ideas that have to be challenged. And only then can you talk about capitalism, freedom, liberty, individuals living by their own mind in pursuit of their own values. That is, whoa, that sounds good to people, but they have no idea what that means, because they have no idea what living by their own mind means, if they have no idea what their own values are or should be, and they have no idea what freedom really means and really requires and how to go about it. And you look at people, people are, people are not, people are not engaged in that. They're not pro-freedom. They're not pro-liberty. They don't want to live with the capital L. They don't want to live with the capital L. They really don't, because all their ideas, all the philosophical structure around them is telling them that they shouldn't want to live and they're torn. Now again, the better people do and the better people struggle and the better people make something of their lives, but most people, look at most people. It's pretty pathetic. All right, Michael with $50, thank you, Leon, for the $50. Really, really appreciate that. We need a few more like that to get close to our target. Michael says the lower the self-esteem in the population, the more their demand for statism, like lockdowns and cradle to grave welfare systems. Do you think Americans have more self-esteem than Europeans and Canadians only used to have more self-esteem? I mean, it's hard to tell. I think they still have more because Canadians and Europeans are pretty low down there. I mean, as bad as you think the government is in terms of statism here, look at Canada, where freedom of speech is completely disappearing, where the government just wants to be in everybody's life in every way possible. So I don't know if Americans have the most self-esteem anywhere, but suddenly the Europeans are in terrible shape and the Canadians are in terrible shape. But yeah, it's absolutely an issue of self-esteem. When you don't have self-esteem, you want to be taken care of. When you don't have self-esteem, you don't trust your mind to follow your values in pursuit of your happiness. You don't even value happiness because you don't deserve it. You think you don't deserve it. So absolutely it's an issue of self-esteem. And Americans have been knocked flat again by their intellectuals over and over and over again to the point where they've lost trust in what America stands for, what America is, the ignorant of it, and they lost trust in it. So I don't know how you resurrect American self-esteem other than by educate, educate, educate, try, you know, you can't impose it from the top, I don't think. I mean, it would be interesting experiment, but I don't think I think it has to be because people can demand more safety nets, more welfare, more of this stuff. So I think you're going to have to do it from the bottom up. Education, education, education. Dave, with 50 bucks, enjoy your show. Thank you, Dave. Really, really appreciate the support. It's what makes this show run is you guys. So remember, you know, it's a show funded by the listeners. Couldn't do this show without the support, financial support I get from you guys. James Taylor, ideas cannot be fought except by means of better ideas. The battle consists not of opposing but exposing, not of denouncing but disproving. I read, God, how was she so perfect with language? Yeah, she was. I mean, what a great writer. What a great writer. Yeah. But yes, it's about exposing. It's about disproving. And it's about presenting an alternative, which she did in spades, right? She did in spades, showing people what is possible, what is possible for their lives as individuals, what is possible politically, what is possible in terms of a nation, in terms of an economy, in terms of wealth creation, productivity, growth. She showed us. And that's exactly what she did. She exposed, she disproved, and she gave an alternative. Michael says, why do you say a majority of people cannot be helped? Do I say that? I don't know. Why do I say that? I think a majority of people, you know, how are we going to get to a majority of people? At the end of the day, a majority of people can only be helped if the entire intellectual culture changes. Most people don't think for themselves. Most people get their cues on how to think from the intellectuals or from leaders. Most people are told, learn how to approach issues from an intellectual. So the only way to help the majority is by helping a minority, the minority of thinkers, the intellectuals, the teachers, the writers, the people who ultimately influence the majority, point them in the right direction, indicate to them how to think about these issues. Kim, Elon said happiness is reality minus expectations, thoughts on his happiness formula. Yeah, I mean, I don't buy it because that suggests that low expectations leads to happiness and I don't think that's true. I don't think people with low expectations have happiness. If you had to put happiness into formula, it's something like reality multiplied by expectations. The higher your expectations that are met, the higher your happiness, it's something like reality put in parentheses, reality minus expectations multiplied by expectations. I mean, the whole thing is silly, but no, I mean, I don't buy it because it assumes that people who have very low expectations, rational, irrational, are going to be happy. And I think that's not true. What's missing here is whatever level of capability you have in life, whatever you're capable of, given that as the threshold, so you have to have some constant factor, which was your capacity, the closer your expectation to your max capacity, the closer your reality to the max capacity or the closer the reality is to your max capacity, the happier you're going to be. So it's not reality that is you have to do better than the next guy, then your neighbor, than the guy in the booth next to you. It's that you have to do better than your capacity, than what you think you're able to. You have to be the best that you can be. That's what leads to happiness. It's being the best that you can be. And that's unique. And that's not in Elon's formula. And I think Elon's formula is wrong. I mean, he assumes that people who are really, really smart, really, really able, but have low expectations, are still going to be happy. No, not true. Whoops. Hop a Campbell. If Israel captures Sinwa, should he be hanged like Aichman? Would that act as a deter deterrent or just inspire more martyrs? Is radical Islam energized like never before? I don't know like never before. I think 9-11 probably inspired radical Islam more than ever before. I think the decade and a half after 9-11 saw the radical Islam being the most inspired. They're still pretty inspired. They're still pretty strong. But they're also weak and they hate each other and they fight with each other. So that's also been a problem for them, right? What should be done with Sinwa? I really hope they just kill him because given the state of the world, giving him a stage to talk about the injustice towards the Palestinian people in a trial and all of that stuff, I think would be wrong and counterproductive. I really think they should just kill him. So that is, yeah, I'd hate to see Sinwa actually given any kind of platform. All right, what else do we have? Clock. We're getting, we're getting, we're chipping away at the goal. We're chipping away, but a little bit, a little bit still to go. So hopefully, hopefully some of you have some more 20 or $50 questions to get us closer. Also remember, you can do stickers with no question associated with it. Just a sticker. A bunch of you typically do that. RDF has done it. John Glue has done it and a number of you others have done it and I didn't catch. John Grover has done it. Raphael, Raphael has done it. So please consider doing a sticker, even if it's a $1.99, $2.99, $10, $20, whatever you think it's worth, whatever you can afford, whatever, however you want to calibrate it, feel free to jump in with a sticker. It helps us chip away at the goal. All right, let's see. Where are we? We are with Clock. Clock says, have you seen some of the newly released mental freedmen tapes of him debating a panel of snotty British academic leftists? How do you, how do you think he did? I haven't seen that one. I'll have to look for that. But I think when it comes to economics, economic ideas, economic principles, I think Milton Friedman was a master. He was brilliant at it. I thought he, he, he did about as good of a job as anybody has ever done in taking very complex economic principles, simplifying them and articulating to the public. And I think one of the, one of the reasons why I think you cannot convince people that economics, that economics is never going to be enough is that even though he was a great communicator, even though he, he just nailed it with regard to all these issues, that in spite of that, he convinced nobody, including people who supposedly his ally is on the right. So look at how many of his ideas take trade, where he just demolished anybody who argued against trade. And look at the vast dominant majority of Americans today and the attitude to which trade. And trade is like one of the simplest ideas in economics. And yet it doesn't matter. So, but yeah, Friedman was brilliant at taking these concepts and simplifying them and articulating them. And I wish some of the people in the chat would listen to some of his, watch some of his videos. God, I mean, okay, Hoppe Campbell, people do not decide their futures, they decide their habits and their habits decide their futures. No, no, no, no, no, none of that is true. Why you guys, you guys, you know, ganging up on Shazbot, I mean, you guys are so disgusting. Really? It really is. I mean, it's the ad hominems, the pathetic nature, attacking and for supporting the show because he pays for my dinners. When you buy an iPhone, you're paying for people's dinners with their wives. You're paying for Apple to pay salaries for people. What do you think profit is about? Anytime you buy a product, what is, what are you paying for? What do you think the profit goes? You guys are pathetic. I don't really, I mean, attacking me is one thing. But what are you, what are you ganging up on someone and over what? Over what? I mean, it really is. War beef, you really are, you take, you reach new levels of debasement and disgust. And I know I'm not supposed to comment on what happens in the chat. Everybody tells me not to do it. And I know you people are listening on the podcast later on. But it's just, I probably shouldn't have a chat, but I find it usually motivating. But even the horrible stuff, it really is, it exposes the level of ugliness in our world, in our society. Because you assume that the people who listen to this show are some cross-section of society and a better cross-section. But it turns out, no, some of the people who listen to this show are on the ugliest cross-section of society. All right. So people do not decide their futures, they decide their habits, and their habits decide their futures. No, no, no, they decide their futures and they pick their habits to fit the futures they decide. At least that's how they should do it. Now, maybe, maybe a lot of people choose their habits and don't choose their futures, but that's, that's an error. It's not the way it should be. The whole point of living consciously, of being aware of your own life, of living intentionally, living through reason is to choose your own habits, create your own habits. Hopper Campbell, does objectives and properly integrate, integrate it, allow one to exert mental effort longer? Yeah, I think so, because I think it makes mental effort, first of all, mental effort is a value. So it's a motivational issue. Second, particularly if you integrate the epistemology and concept formation, things are clearer, therefore it makes it possible to extend their mental offer for longer. So yes, I definitely think objectivism should help you think and should help you be clearer and should help you be able to focus for longer on that thinking. So yes, Michael, the greatest sign of maturity is your ability to change. Americans are just very immature and missing that link. Again, I don't know if that's true, right? I mean, what does it mean? Change in what? Change your moral values, change your habits, change the technology you use. So too generalized. I don't think a greatest sign of maturity is your ability to change. Change where? Change what? Change why? So some change is good, some change is bad. If you're really good, why change? If your moral values are the correct moral values, why change them? So you have to define in what realm change is good, that maturity leads to change. That Dutta Bani, a man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with. A man is what he makes of himself. I agree with that. That's absolutely right. That's absolutely right. And yeah, a man as a being of self-made soul is the way Iron Man put it. The man is a being of self-made soul. Clark. Who is the closest person you have met in real life to Howard Walk? Blake Scholes. He's asking about Blake Scholes. I don't know Blake Scholes well enough to know. I mean, I don't know. Maybe he is. I don't know. But who would it be? I mean, yeah, I'm not sure. I'd have to think about it. Howard Walk is a unique character because he's so he knows himself in a way he knows what his values are. He knows what he wants. He knows in such a clear way from such a young age, talk about he doesn't change. I mean, he changes. He grows. He learns more. But the core of his values doesn't change. I don't know. I don't know if I've met anybody who I can say he's close to Howard Walk in terms of his success and his values. Wes, thank you for the $100. That's amazing. It gets us a lot closer to what we need to be and really, really, really appreciated. And I'm sure there's a whole group there on the chat that now thinks very poorly of you. But I love you. Thank you, Wes. Liam, how is altruism a stepping stone to nihilism? Okay, we've done this before, right? Several times. Altruism teaches you that your standard is other people, that you should live for other people. The happiness is what's important. A certain set of people realize that that is absurd and ridiculous. Why should I live for other people? What's the purpose of living for other people? It doesn't make me happy to live for other people. What about me? But there is no way to live for me. Me is obviously bad. Other people, that can't be right. So maybe morality is completely out. And these are the people I need to sacrifice for. You start hating them because you're supposed to sacrifice for them. So you resent them and you hate them. You despise them. You want to see them fall. You want to see them struggle and in pain. You want to burn it down. This is the world I'm supposed to sacrifice for? Why was I even born? Why was I even born into a world where my happiness doesn't matter. All that matters is other people. I don't want to be in this world. I don't love this world. I hate this world. If this world demands that I sacrifice to other people. So I'd rather watch the world boon. I think that's the kind of sequence and you can take this in a bunch of different directions. But that's essentially how altruism leads you towards nihilism. One only fears if they think they can be one only fears if they think they only fear if they think they can save a value. If action is impossible to change the outcome, no emotion is felt. But that's just not true. It's just not true. People can fear what they don't know where they have no nothing they can do about it. People can fear a something that's, yeah, they can fear God. They can't change the outcome because there's nothing you can do, God. They can fear him. They can fear the afterlife. People fear death. And so for now, at least, there's no action possible to avoid death. But yet people fear it all the time. They know they're going to die. They know that question. They're going to die. And yet they fear it. So fear can be quite irrational and can be disassociated with action from action. Whoops. The PREP project. 1911 per year USA equals lifetime risk of death of one in 1300 lower than risk of car death. So why did Peacock say end terrorism state cost benefit? Because it's not about cost benefit. The reality is that you can end terrorist states at a very low cost if you do it the Peacock way. And you don't have a 9-11 anymore. So you can view it as a one in 1300, which doesn't seem right because that seems like a pretty high risk, one in 1300. I don't think car accident risk is higher than one in 1300. But you can end the states that support terrorism. Get rid of the one in 1300 risk. But it's not about the risk. It's about the 3,000 people who don't die. You prevent 3,000 people from dying who don't need to die. We need to travel by car from place to place. We need transportation. We don't need terrorism. And we can end terrorism. So if there's a risk, I mean, if you're out there wondering in a, I don't know, in a, what do you call it, lightning storm, the probability of the lightning hitting you is very, very low. But if there's a lightning storm, I recommend you stay at home. Now, if you have to, if there's a really urgent reason you have to cross the field, then you're going to cross the field and take the risk. There's zero reason why you need terrorism. You don't. So eliminate it. If there's no reason to take a risk, get rid of that risk. Adam Ritz says I was off by January 6, 2021, so 2033. Yeah, I don't think that changes my answer. I don't know is basically my answer. Joseph, what is the nature of America's distrust in the media journalism since 9-11 as compared to previous decades? Well, I think the media didn't lie, whether it lied or not, but it certainly didn't do its research when it came to weapons of mass destruction after 9-11 invasion of Iraq. The media participated in the Bush administration's evasion of the Islamist, Islamic nature of the terrorists. The media distorted what happened during the financial crisis and the reasons for it. And the media has become more and more biased. It's always been biased. I mean, I and Rand talked about how biased the New York Times was way back. It's always been biased, but it's only gotten worse over time to the point where everybody knows it. I think when Fox News came around, then it became clear that, oh, this is biased on the right. This is biased on the left. Media became partisan and even, in a sense, dropped the pretense of objectivity. So I think 9-11, everything that's happened since has just reinforced the idea that already, to some extent, existed, but now has become more even more a bigger deal and then woke up and the media became woke suddenly and that became completely nutty for Americans and they lost all belief. And the coverage of the BLM riots was, I think, also another turning point. Oh, no, this is peaceful as the fires are raging just behind the reporter. I mean, stuff like that made it clear how bad the whole thing is, how bad the media really is. Let me just see. James, has the Sanders been good economically for Florida, just bad on civil liberties to some extent? I think he's been okay for Florida economically. He's done some bad things. Suddenly, he's been very statist with regard to the insurance industry. In Florida, you can look it up and research it. He's done some other things that have deregulated. He's been okay on education in terms of supporting certain things. In terms of supporting certain things, like educational choice, but in the case your choice wasn't particularly good that he did. But yeah, I don't think DeSantis has been that much better than previous governors of Florida. He's been consistent. Florida is relatively low regulation, relatively low taxes overall, all in, better than Texas in both regulation and taxes, I think. But I don't think DeSantis has changed it dramatically from an economic perspective. It was good before DeSantis showed up. He didn't make it worse. He didn't make it dramatically better. Ben, this evening, I finally finished the Godfather Trilogy. I've heard from so many people that the first two are regarded as one of two of the best ever made. Do you agree? Honestly, don't see how. I think they're good movies. I think they're very well made. I think that they have very effective dramatic arcs. I think the way they create the resolution, all three movies, they have this moment where everything gets resolved, all the knots get tied, all the key people get killed is very clever and original and very, very well done. I think they do a good job of characterization, that you really get to know these people. You really get a sense of who these people are and what drives them and what motivates them. You get a sense of the price they pay for being gangsters. It's not just hypothetical. It concretizes it well. I think they're very, very well made movies. The way the camera works, the final shot in Godfather Number One, where Michael's at the end and he sends his wife away and they close the door and he's doing the Godfather thing. It's just moments like that, just cinematically, are very, very, very effective. They convey, whether you agree with the movie or not, whether you like the theme of the movie or not, they just convey the ideas, the ideas that they want to convey very, very, very well in a very, very effective emotional way. I actually like Godfather Number Three as well. I know people hate that movie, but I actually like it. I think it's very well made as well. It's very well done. It doesn't have the subtlety of the first two, but I think it's good in their own ways. I like all three of them. So yes, I do think they're very good. Again, they're not philosophically good, philosophically terrible, and they dwell on evil, constantly dwell on evil, and at some extent they normalize evil. But they are very good cinema. They're very good, aesthetically, I think, from what I know about it, movies. Chosen Squirrel says, I wouldn't be so pessimistic you're on. The white is learning from Millet and with space accoloration close enough, we could see revival of the frontier spirit and not the revival of freedom. I don't think anybody is learning from Millet. I mean, I'd love to see evidence that the right is learning from Millet. I mean, that would be fantastic, but I don't see any evidence the right is learning from Millet. Who is this right is learning from Millet? Maybe I think the most optimistic thing you can say about it is that young people are learning from Millet, and maybe that's good, but I don't see anybody in America at least, maybe in South America, but in America learning from Millet, quite the opposite. I see the American right moving in the exact opposite direction from Millet, and in a sense rejecting Millet completely, completely, rejecting his foreign policy, rejecting his economics. So maybe young people, I hope young people, but not anybody on the right that I think is notable. In terms of space exploration, I hope you're right. I hope you're right. That's super optimistic. I hope the super optimistic vision works is the one that dominates. I hope it comes to reality, but yeah. Spiderman 3000, have you been keeping up with what's been happening with porn websites? Apparently, porn addiction survivors will be able to sue sites like Pornhub for damages. I mean, that's the problem of making everything an addiction and not defining what addiction really is. And therefore, you know, making anything, you know, addiction something, addiction anything. And therefore, if you're addicted to something, you can see the people who made you addicted to it, even though really only you can make yourself addicted to something by using it. But there's no such thing as porn addiction. There's not having a life. There's being bored with living. There's being sexually frustrated. There are a lot of things that lead you to porn, not addiction. So I think the whole thing, no, I haven't been following it. But the whole thing is absurd. I know a lot of people who are addicted to the Iran book show. I hope they don't sue me over that addiction. I, you know, it would be, it would be sad. Yeah, gone is the concept of post responsibility. I think that's right. But gone is the concept of a real addiction, which is, you know, try stopping to take heroin after you've taken for a while. You really suffer. I mean, really physically suffer in observable, measurable ways. That's addiction. I'm not, I'm, I, I, you know, I'm not addicted to chocolate even though I crave chocolate and I want chocolate every day. But I'm not addicted to it because when I go off chocolate, it's no big deal. Same with coffee. I'm not addicted to coffee. Even though when I go off coffee, it feels a little uncomfortable. Sometimes I'll get a headache a little bit, but it's so manageable. It's so easy. That's not addiction. Addiction has to be a challenge to get over it. Catherine, good show you're on. Thanks for the work you do. I appreciate it, Catherine. Thank you for the support. Daniel, I'm genuinely concerned about a constitutional crisis. If Trump wins, I don't think he'll become a dictator, but I think he will be an important bridge to one. What do you say? Yeah, I agree with you. I've been saying that for years. I think he is a bridge to authoritarianism and I think he, he basically takes a blow torch to the better institutions that we have. He takes a blow torch to whatever prospects we have of getting out of the mess that we have. He destroys any alternative that we have, any out that we have, any options that we have. Trump destroys them. And as such, yeah, he's a complete another disaster. Propa, does material wealth protect us from authoritarianism? If AI and biotech start really making us rich really fast, will strong men still be able to invent and imagine catastrophe to take over anyway? Sure. I mean, I don't see why wealth has anything to do with it. I mean, we won't stay how wealthy if there's a strong man, but we can become wealthy and then become go for a strong man. I don't see what prevents that. Particularly if we don't associate the wealth with the freedom, then we would be willing to give up the freedom, to give up the freedom without realizing, well, I'll say you lose the wealth. So no, I don't think making us rich prevents it. I do think the more technological advance, the, the, the, the, there's some element to technological advance and wealth, particularly if that wealth is, if you will, distributed widely, if it's, if it's benefits of it are perceived widely understood widely, then that delays the authoritarian, but it doesn't prevent it because ideas ultimately to core not how much money we have. Frank, is Easter tale, in Easter tale, is Judas a more rational character? I don't know why, why is he a more rational character? I mean, he gives up Jesus to the Romans. I don't, maybe I don't know this story well enough to understand why he would be a rational character. It's a story, and I think the point of Judas is that he betrays Jesus and that Jesus forgives him and that Judas is a Jew. But I'm not sure what makes him a more or less rational character within the context of the story. You'd have to give me more background or more about what your intent is. All right. I think, I think we're done. Thank you. Thank you everybody for participating. Thanks to all the superchatters. You were great. I did land up blocking one person on the chat because it just became ad hominem and despicable, and you guys don't have to suffer through that, so I blocked him. But other than that, it was good. Thanks everybody. I will see you all again tomorrow for another News Roundup, and then on Thursday we'll have a usual schedule, and again, I will be off to South America next week. Don't forget to register for Ocon. Don't forget to apply for scholarship for Ocon. You can do both of those on INVAN.org slash start here. All right. See you all tomorrow. Have a great night. Bye, everybody.