 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. All right everybody, welcome to the Iran Brookshow on this Tuesday, August 6th. I'm confused. Yeah, hopefully everybody's having a great week and that, you know, we go, you have a fantastic rest of your week. Today we're going to cover the news, we're going to cover a song, a song. I'm going to give you a song review for free. We're going to do a song review as part of the news because the song is the news right now. Rich men north of Richmond, not powerful men north of Richmond, rich men north of Richmond. We're also going to talk about, we'll talk about Trump indictment number four. I'm going to spend a lot of time on that. God, I'm so sick of this. And we will talk about the climate trial in Montana, big news out of Montana in terms of what this means. You have a new constitutional right based on climate change. This is huge. We'll talk about that. And we'll see, we'll see how much time we have, we can talk about other stuff. There's, I was going to give you an update on Ukraine, we can talk a little bit about China. There's a bunch of stuff going on. But let's start with the song. You know, the song actually deserves doing a whole show on this. I will, I think probably we'll see, maybe this weekend I'll do a whole show on this. And it's really the song, it's the whole phenomena that the song represents, which I think is worth talking about and reflecting on. And it requires, it requires a lot more than just, just what we, the time we have for the newsy stuff. But I wanted to at least cover it in terms of news. And I think part of what I'll do when I talk about the song as a whole show is talk about the reactions to song. I mean, this is now, this is now being defined by Matt Walsh as the protest song of our generation. This is, you know, Oliver Anthony is now the Bob Dylan and the Joan Baez of 2010. This is, this is the defining song of our generation. Matt Walsh will know because he has so much in common with Oliver Anthony. I mean, their lives are just parallel so much. I mean, they're just so similar. I mean, I'm sure Matt Walsh's complaints about the world are just exactly the same as, as Oliver Anthony. He is the, is the songwriter and singer of, of the song which man, which man North of Richmond. Yeah, so we're gonna, we're gonna talk about, we'll talk a little bit about the responses, but we should devote a lot more time to that. Anyway, this song came out, I think it was six days ago was loaded up online. It has been watched on YouTube over 12 million times, which is a lot. It is the number one country music song in the country. It is become a big hit among right wing commentator, conservative commentators. This, as you heard Matt Walsh considers this the modern, the anthem, the protest song of this generation. Yeah, this is, this is every way. I listened to the song. You guys should. It's not particularly good as a song. And it's certainly not getting all this attention because of its qualities as a song. Bob Dylan does not have anything to worry about in terms of either the poetry of the lyrics or the ability of, or the melody, or the ability of the singer. I will give credit to Oliver Anthony, you know, it's a song fill of emotion. So there's anger, there's real anger in the song. And I think that resonates with people. So it's, there's a certain sense in which it's authentic. But it's not good from musical perspective, even for country, right? I can, I can enjoy a country song. And country songs often have, you know, very catchy and fun and, you know, pretty melodic lines. This one just doesn't. It's just, it's not a particularly good song. It's not particularly good music. There's no accident that Oliver Anthony has not been known, not been known in the past for his music. Let's get to the lyrics though, because I think it's a lyrics that resonate with people and the lyrics associated with anger. You know, this is a song about the alienation of American working class. This is a song about the alienation of the people who are dying deaths of despair. This is a song about the working class not making enough money. This is a song about exploitation, about the working class being exploited. I mean, if you had shown these lyrics to somebody 10 years ago, if you'd shown these lyrics to somebody 20 years ago, they would have said, yeah, this is, this is a, this is a leftist socialist song that, you know, Woody Guthrie could have gotten behind. There's nothing, nothing that would have suggested to anybody 20 years ago that this song was right wing. And this song is, I think, more than anything, a reflection of where the right is today. And the tragedy of the fact that there is nobody, nobody out there that actually represents individualism, freedom, free markets, capitalism, all those boring terms that nobody finds interesting anymore. That the right is, the right today has flipped. You've got, you know, again, this could be sung by Woody Guthrie. It could be sung in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s. It doesn't really matter. It could be sung by somebody in the 1850s. It could have been sung by Dickens or Karl Marx in the 1850s. There's really nothing here that's right wing, except, you know, some complaining about welfare, but, you know, not in any kind of really serious way. There's some complaints about welfare. There's some complaint about taxes. But no complaint about taxes as they've applied to rich people, just taxes on the working class. It's a complaint, you know, there's a little bit of a complaint maybe about inflation. A dollar ain't shit, you know, maybe that's the complaint about inflation. But really, you know, there's a hint at pedophilia, which is like the kind of the right wing thing these days. But, I mean, thing to complain about. But really, this is just a song that is of the left. I'm going to read it to you. I'm not going to sing it to you. I'm going to read it. I've been selling my soul working all day, overtime hours for bullshit pay. All right. Yeah, working all day overtime hours for bullshit pay. A pay in manufacturing, which is what this is relating to, steadily up pretty much forever, you know, I looked at some graphs for United States manufacturing jobs, 26 bucks and 47 cents on average as of July 2023, that is significantly above 2016, which was a 20 bucks, or 2002 when it was at 15 bucks, or 1960 when it was, I don't know, three, four bucks, something like that, an hour for manufacturing jobs. They've increased. They've never paid phenomenally well. The reality is the value added of manufacturing job in the United States is very limited. And the consequence of that is that, oh God, why is this not doing that, you know, these jobs are done cheaper and as well in other countries. In many cases, these jobs are done better by robots, machines, a big chunk of the more productive parts of these jobs are done today by computers. And yeah, in spite of that wages are steadily rising. The number of people working at these jobs has declined from its peak. The peak was in 1979, 19,500,000, 19 and a half million people were working in manufacturing jobs in 1979. Today, it's about 13 million. So they've declined from 19 and a half to 13 million, but still 13 million Americans work in these kind of jobs. Were they poorer today than they were in 1979? Probably not. Purchasing power, quality of life, standard of living. Might have increased dramatically. Might have increased dramatically because again, but it was increased. You know, 1979 wages, I'm just looking at this graph, probably about seven and a half bucks an hour. Today it's 26 and a half. That seems to have outpaced inflation from 1979 to today. I'd have to run the numbers. Wait a second. I wonder if this is already inflation adjusted. Anyway, it's, no, these are not inflation adjusted. So if you look at inflation adjusted, they're making more money. So yeah, you know, manufacturing jobs have always been tough. They're hard. They're grueling. You don't make a fortune. You certainly are not going to become rich working as a manufacturing laborer. You're going to be middle class. You're going to be maybe lower middle class depending on that's an average wage. People in managerial jobs make a lot more than that within manufacturing and people just starting up make quite a bit less than that. But so they average is 26 with with a little bit of tenure and stuff. Maybe you're making 3035. And so people have been complaining about these jobs forever. So I sit out here and waste my life away, drag back home and draw my troubles away. Now, so he's bitching and complaining about his life. And a lot of people are complaining about their lives. Whose responsibility is it? His life. Why is he wasting his life away? Why is he sitting out here? Why is any pursuing something better? I mean, this is where the left and right completely fail, right? They completely fail. Why doesn't anybody care about personal responsibility? Why doesn't anybody challenge these people to do better? And I think that's the cause of death to despair is they're not challenged. They're not taking responsibility for their own lives. They're just okay. This is it. This is manufacturing job, 26 bucks an hour. This is what I'm going to do. I work. I waste my life. I know I'm wasting my life. I do nothing about it. I don't have the balls. I don't have the guts. I don't have the ability. I don't know. I think it's the guts and the balls. I drag back home, draw my troubles away. Yeah. Alcohol, drugs, whatever. It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to. For people like me and people like you, wish I could just wake up and it's not be true, but it is. Oh, it is. Was the world for people like him any different 30 years ago? 40 years ago? 50 years ago? In rural Virginia, wherever he's from? Was it really that different? I think it was in the sense that there was a lot less envy in American society. There was a lot less looking at what other people have, those people north of Richmond. And by the way, north of Richmond, so that's all of northern Virginia, it's wealthy people. So there's a lot less envy, a lot more satisfaction in what people had, a lot more taking responsibility for your own life and trying to do something with whatever you had. There's a lot more about building families and building communities and building a life. Today there's a lot of bitching, complaining, moaning and comparing ourselves to people north of Richmond and not matching up. Living in the new world with an old soul. Is it a new world really? Is in that sense it a new world? These rich men north of Richmond, Lord knows they all just want to have total control. Want to know what you think? Want to know what you do? And they don't think you know, but I know that you do. Because you're dulling shit and it's taxed to no end. Because rich men north of Richmond. So yeah, taxes are too high, way too high. Including on these working people who are, you know, he would pay probably about 20 to 25% of his income in taxes. Way too much. He probably doesn't have a lot of the deductions, a lot of the stuff to deduct. But remember that out of that 24, 25, a big chunk of that, right? A big chunk of that. What is it? Probably over 10%. So almost half is Social Security Medicare. Is anybody out there in the heartland or any of the manufacturing workers want to give up their Medicare and Social Security? Probably not. And they're going to use much more Medicare than they put in. They'll get their Social Security back if the system doesn't go bust. They'll get it, but their Medicare, they're going to use a lot more than they put in. And they want Medicare because that's what they'll pay for their healthcare after they reach 65. Are they really willing to give that up? Is that what the song is about? I want to privatize healthcare. I want to privatize Medicare. I want to privatize Social Security. No, we know that that's not what it's about. Yeah, they're complaining about the people up north wanting total control. Good reason to do that. They do want total control. I would say the powerful men north of Richmond want total control. They want to know what you think. They want to control you. Left or right, they want into your life. They want into your mind. They want into education. They want control over who you are. So it's a protest song about people who are too powerful and want to control us too much. You might tell us politicians will look out for the miners and not just miners on an island somewhere. That's reference to Epstein, right? Actually, miners, if you look at wages for coal miners, this is not far from coal mining territory. Significantly higher than manufacturing. They get a premium because of the risk they take. So it's about 20% higher than it is for miners. Now it is true that those jobs are going away because of the whole climate change, green energy stuff. So yeah, in that sense, politicians are not looking out for the miners. Lord, we got folks in the street, ain't got nothing to eat. And the obese, milking welfare. I mean, unfortunately, yeah, some obese are probably milking welfare, but obesity is a massive problem in the United States. You know, we can talk about why it's a problem. Maybe I go back to the issue of personal responsibility. Where is that? So he's complaining about obesity in America as everybody should. It's terrible. He says, well, God, if you're five foot three and you're 300 pounds, taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds. The empirical evidence about how much food stamps are being used to make obesity worse, not really there. But yeah, I mean, I'm against welfare. I'm against food stamps. But who's the problem? We've got a lot of people with obesity and it goes to the same thing. It goes to the same problem. Is the problem the wages? Is that why they were obese? Is the problem welfare? Is that why they were obese? In a sense, yes. Because welfare sends everybody a signal, don't take care of yourself. Don't think for yourself. Don't worry about yourself. Obesity might also be part of the epidemic of deaths of despair. Obesity might be part of the alienation and the depression and the suicide and the alcoholism. Just the fact that so many people out there feel so depressed about the world as this song reflects. But again, what's the cause? Is it really rich men north of Richmond that are causing all this? Young men are putting themselves six feet in the ground because all this damn country does is keep on kicking them around. Are young men being kicked around? I mean, Lord, it's a damn shame what the world's gotten to for people like me and people like you. Wish I could just wake up and it'd not be true. And then, you know, the last line is, I've been selling my soul, working all day, overtime hours for bullshit pay. Same way it opened. I mean, this is a song of frustration. This is a song of angst. This is a song of anger. Embraced by people who met Welsh who I don't know if he's ever worked in a factory in his life. I don't know if he knows what a factory looks like. I don't know. Maybe he has. Maybe I'm not being fair. Picked up by intellectuals who have a strong incentive, strong incentive to promote this kind of angst, to fuel it, to fire it up, to use it for their own political means. I suspect Matt Walsh belongs more to the rich men north of Richmond than he does to the rule of Virginia that, you know, works in a manufacturing job that this song represents. Just like this angst was picked up by the left in the 1960s and 70s, this kind of angst and frustration and anger is picked up by the right today. There are no solutions. There are no answers. All these populist right wing or left wing, all they want to do is use this to enhance their power. All they want to do is tap into this. How many people who listen to the song and who support the song and have embraced the song? How many of those people are middle class kids? How many of those people wouldn't know what this kind of angst looks like? How many of those people are much more interested in the politics of this than interested in actually resolving the problem of deaths of despair, of youth suicide, of people really struggling out there? Right. Anyway, that's the song. You know, there's a lot more to talk about this, you know, the whole attitude that exists out there in the country. Nathaniel Brandon wrote a really good essay years ago in the 1960s for Ayn Rand on, I think it's in capitalism, not an ideal, on alienation and I think it so fits our time. It so fits our time in terms of the way people feel. It's not about what existentially is out there. It's not about how much money they make. It's not about the quality of life, the standard of living. It's not about any of that. It's about how they feel about their life. It's about how they relate to their own life. It's our educational system has so corrupted them is that they can't relate to their own life. They feel impotent in the face of the world before them. They feel that they cannot take control of their own life. And the question is, why do they feel that? And I think it has to do with the philosophy and the culture, the education and the culture and everything else. Alright, I am way behind. Let's see. Alright, quickly. You all know this. We talked about this yesterday. I said the indictment would come down yesterday and it did. Donald Trump was indicted together with 18 other people. This is the first indictment that has included significant numbers of other people, including Giuliani, including Meadows, his chief of staff. So it includes a bunch of people, which is going to be interesting because the prosecutors might be playing some of these people off of one another. They might be some deals to be made so that some people testify against other people. It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out. There is, they are, you know, indicted for a conspiracy. So there is, you know, RICO comes into this and RICO, of course, is, you know, there's a sense of justice, I feel, if only because Giuliani is one of the people that has been indicted. And he, of course, pioneered RICO, primarily pioneered using RICO against financiers, against Michael Milken, Ivan Bosky, and others. Now Ivan Bosky was a real crook, but Michael Milken, of course, was not. And many of the people that Giuliani went after were not crooks and actually were ultimately, ultimately their convictions were overturned. But that's after he destroyed their lives and destroyed their businesses. RICO was passed in 1970. It's called the Racketeering Influence and Corruption Organizations Act. It's a horrible law with lots and lots of problems. It raises first amendment issues. It raises issues of due process. It raises lots of constitutional issues. I'm sure Giuliani will raise many of those issues when it's time for him to be in front of a court. Of course, he didn't raise them at the time. And yeah, all this is about the attempts of the Trump, of these people surrounding Trump, Sidney Powell and others, to reverse the election results in Georgia. Again, one of the things unique about these prosecutions, these cases against Trump is, we all know this happened. His phone call asking for 11,000, whatever, for them to find new votes and find this. That's all been documented for years now. None of that is in question. They've got witnesses. They've got witnesses who are Republicans because most of the election officials were Republicans. They've got plenty of witnesses around this. This all happened. Now, whether it rises to a conspiracy and all of that, that's what a court is there for. But is there any doubt that Trump tried to reverse the election in Georgia and did whatever he could to reverse it? This wasn't just theoretical. This was inaction. People were sent to Georgia to try to do whatever they could to figure it out how to reverse the election result. Again, they might have to prove that he knew he lost. So we'll see. I mean, it's all going to be boring to watch. And I wish none of this happened. I wish he'd just gone into the sunset and disappeared. But there we go. There we go. We will see how all this plays out. It's going to make this coming election a complete and out of circus and could plunge this country into a real constitutional crisis, into real challenges. And I don't know how the country overcomes it because there is a certain percentage of the Republican Party, 25 to 35 percent of the Republican Party, who is just 100 percent committed to Trump. I mean, there's 50, 60 percent that are going to vote for him in the primaries, it looks like. But there's 25, 35 percent that will go do anything that he tells them to do. And that could create real mayhem if he gets convicted and if he's forced to withdraw from the race. Republicans are also very afraid that if Trump withdraws from the race, those Republicans who would have voted for Trump will not vote, will not participate in the election. And as a consequence, the Democrats will win because, you know, that 25 to 35 percent of Republicans will be so disgusted by the process, they'll just stay home. All I can say is they made this bad. They're going to have to lie in it. They're going to have to survive this. All right, here's a story that I'm sure is going to make you a date. So in Montana, young environmentalists, activists, these are young people, sued the state of Montana, sued them because the young people argued that the state agencies were violating the young people's constitutional right to a clean and healthy environment by allowing fossil fuel development. A judge yesterday ruled in their favor. He ruled that the state has an obligation, an obligation to consider or has a constitutional obligation to consider a clean and healthy environment for young people. And as a consequence, right, to reevaluate all fossil fuel permits, all fossil fuel permits. It's the first time a U.S. court has ever ruled against a government for violating a constitutional right based on climate change. And now this is a state court, not a federal court. It's based on the state constitution, not the U.S. Constitution. And, you know, this is going to be appealed and we will see what happens on appeal. And of course, you know, Montana is a major producer of coal, coal-burned electricity, has large oil and gas reserves that are being exploited. And this is, you know, for now, I think primarily just a big PR stunt, but it is a big deal. Right, this is a big deal. These young people are convinced that they are going to be convinced by Greta and her pals and her intellectual supporters that they are going to die. They are, their lives are going to be shortened by the use of fossil fuels and they are demanding that the states, that the state protect them. You know, the Dean of the Lucid Clark Law School in Portland says, the ruling really provides nothing beyond emotional support for the many cases seeking to establish a public trust right, human right or federal constitutional right to a healthy environment. There is no such right, not in the U.S. Constitution, not that this even our Supreme Court will accept. It's just unbelievable that a judge would rule this way undermining the entire nature of our Constitution, that we have some kind of right to these kind of outcomes. Where would these kids be? Would they even exist? How would their lives, what would their lives be like if we didn't have fossil fuels? They have no conception of that. No conception of that. I was encouraged today though to read, oh, I think I just closed that window. To read out of the U.K. like a sub-stack, this is, yeah, here it is, it's a sub-stack. It's the Cliff Fox sub-stack, it's an Academy of Ideas out of the U.K. The title is Extreme Weather, Can We Adapt to a Changing Climate? And his conclusion at the end is, should we spend trillions on reducing our greenhouse gas emissions? Given that economic losses from such events can be enormous, isn't prevention better than cure? Or would that money be better spent on making society more resilient to extreme weather? Does the narrative of climate change catastrophe get in the way of less dramatic measures that can protect people and property? And he's talking about the fires in, among other things, the fires in Hawaii. And the focus of the article is climate deaths are down. We can spend money, not that much money, on preserving human life. And it's actually, and the cost of reducing fossil fuels is just astronomical when we can spend a fraction of that protecting ourselves from, you know, nature, from maybe catastrophic events or bad consequences of climate change. And it's straight out of Alex Epstein, right? I mean, the whole line of reasoning is straight out of Alex Epstein. So here you have an Academy of Ideas, which is kind of a left-of-center organization in London, in the U.K. Hard to identify left-of-center. They're very good on free speech, but Cliff Fox, I mean basically it's a Marxist organization that is good on free speech and anti-woke, but they're Marxist in a sense of class redistribution, state ownership of resources, things like that. So it's really, it's interesting kind of the combination. But here they're taking on climate change. They're taking at least this one right out there is Rob Lawyans, a Alex Epstein approach to climate change. So they are having an impact out there somewhere. All right, we're about halfway to our goal. Lots of questions, but only halfway to our goal. So because we have a lot of questions, we have limited time. Please, only $20 questions from now on. Only $20 questions now on. A friend opposite, sounds like Bjorn Lombog. Yeah, it sounds like Bjorn Lombog. And of course Bjorn Lombog has been influenced by Alex Epstein. So let's not minimize Alex's. All right, Eric. So what we need is $620 questions. And we're there. We're at what we need to be. Your last show in religion made me think of where they're living. Where one of their quasi-heroes was Andre, a communist. He was drawn to Andre because he was an atheist. What are your thoughts on Andre and what were Rans? Yeah, I don't think, I don't know what Rans thoughts were. I don't know what you wrote about him, although we do have in the journals and other places that he was, but I don't have that in the top of my head. But she wasn't drawn to Andre because he was an atheist. She was drawn to Andre because he was an idealist. She was drawn to Andre because he believed in something. He was idealistic. And he was wrong about his ideals. And ultimately, he was very wrong. And ultimately when confronted with how wrong and how evil those ideals were, he had no choice but to take his life. But it's that, I mean, Ayn Rand, you know, she took seriously people who took their ideas seriously. None of this wishy-washy, measly mouth. I mean, think of the other characters and we're delivering more communists. They were communists, but they don't really believe in communism. They try to, you know, use the system for their own advantage and sneak a little bit here and sneak a little bit there. They talk communism all day. But there wasn't this, you know, it wasn't like Andre was kind of a working-class person who had been, who has, you know, hated the old system because he was exploited on the old system as he really was and believed that communism was a solution and believed that communism was better and had a whole, you know, idea around communism. But he really bought into it completely and lived it and had, you know, and what Rand really hated were the people who had no sense of any kind of integrity. And Andre is portrayed as wrong and mistaken and mistakes have caused him to do horrific things that he can never recover from. And therefore he has to die, right? He has to. And the system of communism can't allow the real idealists to exist because the system is inherently corrupt and the people who view it as some ideal, perfect ideal cannot exist within it because the corrupt people are not going to allow them to survive and not going to allow them to be there. So those are some of my thoughts on Andre, but it's not primarily his atheism, it's idealism. See, he believes in something and he's willing to fight for that belief. He's willing to go all out for that belief that attracts her to him. And he's strong, he's a powerful, he's a powerful man. There he goes to say, Just finish the romantic manifesto. I'm having trouble understanding Rand's concepts of sense of life as a preconceptual of the evaluation of metaphysics. Would you mind fleshing this out? Yes, it's, you know, as a child, you don't have a, you don't think in terms of A is A. You don't think in terms of, I belong on this earth, I am competent, I am able, I can live in this world. But you have a sense of it. You have a sense of it. You have a, you know, you relate to the world as if A is A. As if existence exists. If you've accepted sentiment versus some children who complain bitterly about metaphysics, about reality. They want, demand even, the primacy of consciousness. They can't articulate it that way, but they've accepted those premises. And they have a certain emotional state, a preconceptual state, an emotional state of, I demand reality, adjust to my feelings. And this is a mentality that you develop when you're young, again, without really articulating it, of I accept reality as it is, and I deal with reality as it is. That's just one example. The same is true of a certain mentality that accepts reason as its way of dealing with reality. Most people can't articulate that and say, reason is my way of dealing with reality. But there are a lot of people out there, people who work for a living, people who deal with reality, people who are challenged by reality, people who use their reason day in, day out to deal with it. They don't have a conceptual view of it, but they have a general sense. They have a certain confidence in their mind and its ability to deal with reality without actually conceptualizing that idea. And sense of life is the sum of all that. It's the sum of your attitude towards reality and towards yourself, towards your place in reality and your ability to cope with reality. It's that sense of the world is a beautiful place and there's amazing things to do in this world and I can do them. That some people have. They're never necessarily put into words, but they have it. And then there are others who, the world is an ugly, dark place and nothing, nothing I do will ever make any difference. And that's a different sense of life. That's a dark, ugly sense of life and that's a sense of life. Sadly, I think that's a sense of life that more and more Americans have whereas they used to have the opposite of kind of this depression and this acceptance of, you know, I get a bullshit wage and I go home and there's nothing I can do about it and I get obese and I put a bullet in my head or I take fentanyl or whatever. It's a certain attitude and that attitude is all negative. That so much exists. It's the opposite sense of life because implicit philosophy. Well, but it's a particular part of philosophy. It's particularly the metaphysics. Your attitude towards reality, your attitude towards you as man, a man's ability to cope with reality. So he says, I like the formulation of philosophy as the science of turning implicit feelings into explicit convictions. Well, that's not really right, right, because that's not what it is. I mean, yeah, I mean there's a sense in which that's true. You've got to do that. You've got to take your implicit, but your implicit might be inconsistent. They might be non-philosophical. You might have all kinds of implicit convictions. It's not obvious that they are consistent. You bring them to the forefront and then you figure out what's consistent and what is not. Okay, Andrew says, if Trump is anti-ideological, what is the cause of the fervor of his supporters? Anti-ideology. They hate ideology. They don't want ideology. They don't want consistency. The fervor is around, is a form of nihilism and anger and frustration and wanting to break things. It's wanting to tear it down. And in this case, I think the main thing they want to tear down is what they call kind of the rich man north of Richmond. It's the authorities. It's the establishment. It's the people who live, people who command the swamp, if you will. It's people who have money. It's the elites. It's people who know stuff. They're experts. It's elite and expertise and success that it's anger towards all that. It's anger towards the fact that nothing has changed in the last 30, 40 years. It's anger towards the fact that the left seems to be everywhere and they're destroying this country and the only way to deal with them is to smash them. It's the same way they deal with us. Let's see. Michael has, you noticed a few GOP candidates are unabashedly using the word capitalism instead of free enterprise. They seem like they're more ready to defend it. Maybe. The only one I'm familiar with is Nikki Haley, but maybe there's some others using capitalism. Certainly the leading candidates are not. Maybe. I don't know if Vivek uses the word capitalism. I hope he doesn't, but he might be using it. Yeah. I mean, I think there is a certain part of the Republican Party that's willing to still defend capitalism, but certainly not the party of Donald Trump and, you know, the rich men north of Richmond and DeSantis, right? That part of the party is not interested in defending capitalism. Michael says, why didn't I end up here in Philadelphia twice given how corrupt and dishonest he was. He only had her on in an attempt to discredit her and her ideas. Well, yeah, you know, but that he had her on because she was an interesting person because she evoked strong responses because it made good TV ratings. I mean, don't attribute to him motivation that you don't know, but it made good ratings. I think that's why he had her on again. On the other hand, you know, Johnny Carson was very nice to her and had a really nice, pleasant discussion. Why didn't he have her on every year for 10 years? Why did he stop having her on? You know, who knows what why producers of these shows, how they make decisions on what, but it's primarily at the end of the day ratings. She was an incredible, you know, she was an incredible guest. Michael says, do you think one of the reasons it's harder to regulate tech because much of it fail fails under First Amendment protection activity? Protected activity? No. I think it's not harder to regulate tech. They're getting to it and they will do it. I think that they didn't regulate tech for a long time because to some extent I think they realized that in order to have this goose that lays golden eggs one after the other after the other, they better not touch it. And I think politicians know what regulations do. They're not idiots. They know the impact it has and they know that if they regulated tech, they would destroy this incredible innovation machine that they need in order to just like they needed the industrialism that was shrugged in order to suck it dry both financially and use it for their own power lust. And in, you know, California regulates tech a lot less than it regulates other businesses for exactly the same reason. The budget of California depends on tech being successful. Michael says, is the concept of being the bigger man legitimate, like if someone's a joke obnoxious, not to stoop to their level, or is that an altruistic injustice to yourself? No. I mean, I think it's absolutely, you don't want to stoop to the level of somebody who's lying, cheating, thug. Do you want to be a lying, cheating thug? So yeah, absolutely, you want to maintain your integrity. You want to maintain who you are. You want to maintain your own identity and not stoop to somebody who you clearly don't respect and clearly is behavior is not your behavior. Ryan says, may please make a short video with picture of this guy and everyone share. I'm sure, I'm sure that'll be done. Christian is on it would be my assumption. Gail says evasion of reality seems to dominate the culture now seems thanks again for all you do. Yes, I think evasion is dominant and but but it's more it's evasion and victimhood. And one of the things that is unique, one of the things that has changed about the right, I think, I think this is true. And you'd have to study history to find but I think certainly true over the last 40 years. One of the things that changed around the right is it used to be the left was the victimhood and now the right as matches the left in its victimhood. Everybody's a victim. Everybody's whining. Everybody's complaining. Everybody's everybody's everybody's a victim of somebody. Everybody's a victim of something. And it used to be that the right used to yell at the left, take personal responsibility. And now that's gone. Now that idea of personal responsibility is gone because the right can't look in the mirror doesn't want to look in the mirror. How many of the people who love this song are obese and on the right. And I mean the song blames kind of blames welfare and food stamps for obesity. But how many, I mean, if you look around obese people, look around your job, look around, you know, the south, the Midwest. I mean, red America is far more obese than blue America. It's just interesting, right? Catherine says, what gale said? Thank you, Catherine. Oh, by the way, we're about $80 short if somebody wants to step in and do some stickers. Not a lot of time for questions, but if somebody wants to do a sticker, we can do that. Colt says, I'm so glad you covered this song. It's terrible. I haven't liked new country music since I realized how hedonistic it's become. However, that music is much better than whatever this was. Yeah, I mean, this is a, this is a victimhood thing. I mean, it's right in the first paragraph. Okay, bullshit overtime wages, and then I go home and you know what the left says? I read this left economist. He said his answer to the song was join a union. You should join a union. That will raise your wages. Give you better benefits. And that's right. That's the left's argument. And it's probably the right's argument as well. We should have more unions. They take care of those workers. Enough of this capitalism exploitation stuff. Frank says money question. Why are they no more $1,000 bills? Well, because the government doesn't want you to have $1,000. It's too easy to move large sums of money in cash if you have $1,000 bills. They want to make it very difficult for you to move large amounts of money in cash. So if you have to write a check or if you have to do an electronic transfer, then the government can monitor that. And indeed, anything over 10,000, the bank has to report it to the government. So the government is watching you. They are controlling you. That is true. That part of the song is absolutely right. But if you, anything you do over $10,000 in a bank and now with, you know, peer to peer stuff, anything you do over, I think $600 has to be reported to the government. So it's against money laundering, tax evasion. And just so the government can monitor what you do with your money. Okay, Shelley, probably the last question, but we still have time for stickers. We've got 82 people watching, a buck a person, and we make it. All right. You should really go on more, you should really go on more online shows if you get the option, like Stitchin' at Amma. It's always good fun. You know, I go on every show that asks me to pretty much, pretty much every single show that asks me to come on, I go on. So there's no way for me to, you know, there's no way for me to get on shows except for you guys to write to the shows you like or write to the shows you enjoy online and encourage them to invite me. And if they invite me, I will go on. Almost every show. No, I won't go on every show, but almost every show. Jupiter Menace just did a sticker. Thank you, Juniper, and you can too, and help us get to where we need to be with the other stickers that I missed. Yeah, Stephen Hopper, thank you. Who else did I need to thank that didn't ask a question? Shali, thank you. Yeah, I think that's, I think we caught everybody. All right. Thank you, everybody. I appreciate the support. Thanks to the Super Chatters. I've got something to do, so I have to run. And I will see you all tonight. Tonight we'll have a show on the future of the dollar, the present and the future of the dollar. And what else? Yes, tomorrow there are no shows. I'm traveling tomorrow. And I'm not sure about Thursday. Might be a show on Thursday, depending on if I have time in my hotel room, but tomorrow no shows for sure. Tonight, probably after 8 p.m., it'll probably be 8.30 for the show tonight, probably 8.30. Sorry to keep you up so late, but I've got something that starts at 7, and I'm not sure when it's going to end. And maybe even 9, so we will see. We'll play it by ear as we go along tonight, but there will be a show tonight on the dollar, on a continuation of the show we did before on the dollar. This time it'll be about the future of the dollar. We'll also talk about dollarization in Argentina and so on. The other alternative is maybe to do the show at like 5.30. So I might do the show at 5.30 eastern time or at 8.30 eastern time. I'll let you know. Bye, everybody. I'll see you tonight, one way or the other.