 This is a question that's incredibly awkward and uncomfortable, but I think it's really important that we address this because we're all thinking it, but not a lot of people are saying it, or they're saying it, but they're kind of like pointing the finger. And this is the question that I want to ask the panel. Is the left too dysfunctional to succeed without leadership? Because we all know that after Bernie 2020, the left has been a mess. As Harvey said, there's been nonstop infighting. Grifters, pseudo-leftists have risen up as de facto leaders of certain leftist factions. There's disagreement on strategy, disagreement on policy priorities. There's even disagreement on voting. If you vote for Joe Biden or if you vote third party, are you an ally? Are you a comrade? All of these questions have become so divisive, and this is why I ask the question, are we able to accomplish anything and unite at all without a leader? Does there have to be like some sort of a leader that rises up? Be it Nina Turner, AOC, or do you think that as grown adults, one day we'll be able to come together and recognize that the apocalypse is near? And we might want to get our our shit together. Spencer, I want to go to you first because you focus a lot on media critique. And I don't necessarily know that there's a lot that the media itself has done as in terms of like leading to leftist disunity. But one thing that I was kind of thinking about is, do you think there's any, and I'm kind of asking you to psychoanalyze leftists, but we're all doing this here, do you think that like this idea that leftists feel excluded from the mainstream? Like, you know, there's the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, both right and center right, but leftists are kind of left out on their own. So do you think that this sense that like we're outcasts has anything to do with it? And this sense that like, okay, well, if my identity is outcast, then I'm more outcast than you. I'm more left than you. I'm more this than you. Give me your take on this, because my thoughts are scattered, and I feel frustrated. And even when I try to recommend leftists do something good, like touch grass, and I include myself in that, that's even taken as like an attack. So what are your thoughts on this? Because I feel like it's really discouraging to see what's what's taking place right now. Yeah, I mean, I think for one thing, your view of politics and what the left is, is probably very different if you aren't ever on Twitter. So that's one thing. So true. There does seem to be this game on the left where, you know, the core project is like proving your intransigence. And whoever can be the most intransigent, you know, is the most left. You know, if as a leftist, you can talk about how it's hypocritical for Bernie Sanders to have, you know, a nice house, then you've won the game. And that's that's the real project. That's politics. But yeah, I mean, I think there's definitely a sense that leftists are left out of mainstream media. I mean, I remember when Rising came on the scene and Crystal Ball was being compared to Rachel Maddow. She was, you know, the left Rachel Maddow. You know, can can these movements ever really get off the ground without serious media? I mean, I don't know. And then that kind of comes back to the question of journalism and local journalism just being gutted. I mean, newsrooms are like half capacity in the last 20 years. A lot of counties and districts don't even have local papers. And then sort of going back to the previous question, I want to flip the prompt a little bit from should we focus more on electoral politics, or mutual aid and direct action. I what do people think about phrasing it more as focusing on federal or local? Because I think local politics, state and local politics and city politics, the direct action and electoralism are are much more intertwined. You know, I don't know how DSA works in other states, but for New York, New York DSA has gotten a lot of wins. And that's all been on the state and local level. I mean, in Albany, there are six socialists and they call themselves socialists for city council and, you know, New York City Council, a city council district in New York has 100,000 people in it. So that's no joke. There are at least two, at least two socialists I mean, people who call themselves socialists who are going to go to city hall in January. And they're very New York DSA, they're very judicious on who they about who they endorse and the races they get into. I mean, they were involved in Bernie, obviously, but I think that's a one off whoever runs in 2024. I mean, unless it's Rashida Tlaib, they're not going to be interested in. They focus on on races that they, you know, can feasibly win and they've done a lot of work. And then those races and and the issues that those people are involved in, you know, are necessarily local. So I would say, and I'm sorry, I guess this is really answering the last question, but I would say, if you have the wherewithal, if you're watching this, I would say feel free to ignore federal politics other than, you know, voting for not Trump, I guess. Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's a good point about the federal versus local. I think that that is a really important distinction. And it's important to kind of like draw those lines for people who, you know, don't necessarily know any better or they tune in and then tune back out. Yeah. Yeah, there's my thoughts on the issue in terms of leftist infighting. It also does go back to electoralism where there's this sense that, you know, if somebody is focused on electoralism, that's negative, or if they're only focused on on direct action, that's that's negative. And I feel like we have to be really open about doing this in a number of ways, right? Like I kind of am for this kitchen sink approach, where we throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. Let's just try everything so we can try to be successful. Direct action, electoralism, everything we possibly can do. But it's kind of getting to the point where leftist factionalization has almost become a hindrance. And I'm wondering like, to what point do we really turn into our own worst enemies? Like one thing that I've really been concerned about is like, are we making ourselves look bad to the normies? Because part of my project is I really want to convert normies. But if I see like, and don't use the word normies, I promise I won't use it outside of this context. But it's like, like you people. Yeah, I mean, it's like when I see some of the discourse that takes place on Twitter and don't discourse on Twitter, as demon mama says, don't ever do discourse on Twitter. But when I see it happen, I think Matt, if one of my normie, like liberal friends saw this, they think that leftists are absolutely fucking insane. So I just, I kind of feel like we all need to give ourselves a pep talk and Hector, you've like, you've stayed busy and above the fray as the leftist kind of like, shit the bed everywhere. Like what's your take on this? Because again, my thoughts are really scattered. And I'm just trying to like find some way to like, unite leftists that are still on the left that are well intentioned. And I don't necessarily know that there's any one magic bullet. But in your opinion, like what would help? Do you think that we need a leader or is it or is it like climate change? Like is it a policy? Like what are your thoughts on this? Sorry, that's that's super broad, but it's just, there's so much like with this topic. No, and I see a lot of the same discourse that you see and I'm frustrated by it as well. And like ostensibly the answer to your question in my opinion is that yes, like it and it would be nice because the strongest I've ever seen us react as a movement is when there was a strong leader there in 2016, 2020 when Bernie was doing it, even 2018 when AOC was running for the first time. That's when I really saw the left act in a way that your normie friends would be like, wow, these people look like a legitimate political movement that's on the rise. And the thing about the left, and we touched on this before is that we're just going to have a higher standard for who those leaders are, we're not going to fall in line to the extent that the right does and say, well, we can sell this person off enough to the normies. So let's stick with this person, our leader, whoever it is. Well, and I think that it'll have to be something just because of the way the left is, it'll have to be people transitioning and we won't stick with one leader for too long, because I think that we have a lot of factionalization. People will want to say, you know, we don't want to put the brand on one person for too long. It's almost like if you had like a leftist like infinity gauntlet and like you wanted to give it off to one person, like they can't keep it forever and eventually you'd probably want them to give it to somebody else. And that's just sort of the way I see it working. But honestly, I do think that the best we've ever been is when we had somebody who was like, you know, at least like, vibing enough with the people that you could cause a movement behind them. Leftist infinity gauntlet implies a leftist avengers. So that's kind of my opinion is not necessarily a leader, but leaders. Like like the civil rights movement MLK is like who we think of, but there was many, there were so many people just for that movement, which obviously led into a broader leftist movement. And I think maybe that would be a good way to go where you have people like, you know, a Bernie Sanders in there that sometimes it's like, you know, clearly like the top person that we're excited about. But would it be the worst thing to ask for these any major leftist organizations to like get together in the same space and do a thing and like actually make a broader movement? Because I feel like, you know, we're all very disparate and we interact with each other in ways. And I mean, even on in the smaller versions of this, like Twitch communities or YouTube communities, like this kind of thing happens. But most of the time we end up yelling at each other. So like, what about like a summit? Couldn't we do something to that effect? Like, I mean, I'm small potatoes as far as like actual political, like people things happen. But we know enough people around to like help that out in like part of the appeal that I think our politics have is that we do speak to people that are online and have found out these politics through this way. And we could support these politicians through the kind of virility of social media and Twitch and things like that. Like that could be the way we work. But I think in real life, it needs to be like actual major people getting together. Does that make sense? Like we don't have we don't have and also like we don't the resources are really disparate. So we have money. So like if that happens, that's a way to like pool its collectivization is like the core of it. So why don't we actually do that with politics? Why don't we practice what the whole thing is about? Yeah, I'm wondering, right? Something maybe I don't know how it would work. I'm just saying like, is this a viable thing? Could left con be a thing? I don't know. Somebody put a comment about left con. I'm trying to find it now. Shout out to that person. But yeah, I mean, like something right? Sorry, Dan, I kind of cut you off. Go ahead and jump in here. No, no, I really want to give folks space. But I mean, I just have so much to say about this, especially because I think what we're reflecting at is a time on the left where there we just there's a vacuum, essentially, of a thing or movement. I kind of felt like this post occupy occupy was kind of my kind of radicalizing moment. But after that, you sort of had, you know, you had your media figures here and there from it who would eventually become your like Tim pools, etc. But then you kind of had like no sort of direction as to where this coalition of you finally had this motivation of saying, oh, yeah, leftist were organized and put together. But without any sort of avenue to put that energy, you get, yeah, like in in real politics, when you get a power vacuum somewhere, you get a lot of bad actors who take advantage of that power vacuum and use their advantage. In real politics, it's like military groups with oftentimes like religious undertones, and on YouTube, which Jimmy door, but it's the other the main thing I want to get at is like, just as Democrats, for example, is like a good instance of, hey, let's use some lefty media prowess. I mean, it was started with jenki Uger and Kyle Kalinsky in mind, and I'm going to dot dot dot that there and let people Google the rest of that history. But like, it was the idea of let's bring on the progressive community on YouTube and on the internet. This is like 2016 2017 ish to ultimately bring on candidates like AOC and Corey Bush and Jamal Bowman, etc. Rashida to leave like that. So we call the squad now came out of justice Democrats. It was this idea. And again, without, while letting people do the research on how that has ended up, you've gotten some great pros and great cons. Like on the one hand, that's built tangible power. You've gotten people into office. On the other hand, there's like justice Democrats on its own has sort of gone to exist as its own entity. And I don't think it's that connected to the online space and being able to mobilize that. And honestly, for better or worse, I'd like justice Democrats to be as far away from the left online as possible right now, because it's not great. And I don't want that. I don't think it's a good thing politically to show off. But I think we've done that. And justice Democrats is also the other part is going to make is kind of like the exception to the rule, because not to call out any particular entities any more than I already have, let's say. But there are different movements. And I'm going to stop right there. But there are different groups out there that put together political parties and groups and try to coalition build, but they usually miss out on that they usually overweigh one thing, they weigh on, oh, we're a bunch of YouTubers and podcasters. Therefore, we have the influence in the cache to bring about a bunch of crowds all across the country and get them to mobilize on something. It's, it's usually you're missing both sides of it. And I will give credit like Cenk Uger, Kyle Kalinsky, the other folks where he'd say he like within justice Democrats, did a really good job of melding the online strategy with the political strategy. But you've really got to do both smartly. And you have to, again, check your ego and not thinking one is too more important than the other in order to turn this space into real political power, I think. Yeah, I wanted to kind of Oh, sorry, go ahead. I was gonna actually I was going to bring you in Hilda, because you you kind of have your feet in both camps, right? So you're you're online. But I don't think like you're not terminally online, like you don't come across as terminally online to me. So it's like, is it are we are we overemphasizing like the online left's impact in your opinion? Or is it really an issue that does kind of have real world consequences? I'll let you go ahead in there. It does have real consequences. After the 26 election, when Bernie lost, it was like a punch in the gut for all of us that were leftists in Canada, because whatever goes on in the United States will domino into Canada. So we were hoping with the discussion of Medicare for all, we were hoping that that finally would happen for the Americans. Because as Canadians, we like to think that we are just a little bit better than the Americans, we like to pat ourselves on the back. We're not a bunch of shit weasels here also, as long as we are just a little bit better than you that we can basically turn our nose up and touch book or birds in the air. But then when Bernie lost in 2020, that was not only just a punch in the gut, but that was like a mixed martial arts kick to the gut. It was horrific. It was horrific. And so we do need people that are charismatic, who are this beacon as a leader. The only reason why Canada got the Medicare for all or what we call the universal healthcare is because of Tommy Douglas. He was the leader of the NDP party. He successfully got it passed through the House of Commons. He was not even the Prime Minister. Lester B. Pearson was the Prime Minister. And fun fact, Keeper Sutherland, that Tommy Douglas, that was his grandson there. So I mean, it was just that there was this beacon of hope where this got passed. And it did have a lot of strife with respect to the doctors. The doctors were all arguing, Oh, no, we're going to be bringing in all these people from out of the country. No, it didn't happen. And then when that didn't happen for us with the 2020 election, when Bernie lost, we're thinking, Oh, well, maybe with a pandemic, that might kick it in the high gear for you guys. And sadly, it hasn't happened for you. So sadly, that's not going to happen for us. And for people that aren't aware of the Canadian healthcare system, it fucking sucks. It's horrific. It's awful. I mean, we, we can go to the doctor, sure, we can pick any doctor we want to sure, but our dental is not covered. So if you happen to need filling, well, I guess, you know, that's just not an option for you. If you happen to need glasses, apparently vision is optional in our world over here. If you happen to need prescription drugs, that's not covered either. Mental health isn't covered physical therapy, massage therapy, infertility. I don't know about you, but I think people need to be able to populate in order to make the world go around. Home care is not covered. Long term care is not covered. Again, I could list the number of things that aren't covered. But as Canadians, we like to get on our real high horse here and take a victory lap because we think that we are just a little bit better than you guys. But another thing that was striking was in 2020, there was a poll where 75% of Canadians were very proud of their health care. And here is where it gets sideways and wonky-donky, because we feel that it is not as bad as what the Americans have. We have- I mean, if that's your bar. Exactly. We have a hole in the ground, lowered the bar, covered it up, you know, and gently walked across it with our, you know, horse that we're riding on. But we do definitely need to have some sort of a beacon, a person. Tommy Douglas was that for us in the 60s. And see, I'm oldest fuck. I was born before anyone landed on the moon. I can remember how awful it was. And so this beacon of hope with Bernie, it's not there anymore. We don't have a Nina Turner in Canada. We don't have a Bernie Sanders. We don't have anybody on the left at all. That is this beacon. All the left in Canada is doing is trying to drag us across the centre line onto the right. There is no reason why we shouldn't be yanking them over to try and have that discussion with us, which goes back to the original points that I was making in the previous section, where we need to put people in strategically placed positions of power. We just, we really do. And I mean, this isn't controversial. People need to be able to live. It's not a radical idea. And so right now, because Canada is in this, what we call the erection of election mode, meaning we're erecting all of our signs and, you know, getting ready and people are measuring themselves against who the other candidate is. But unless we have some leader to unite us, then we will not be able to focus and amalgamate and consolidate all of our efforts for the greater good. We just won't. Yeah, what I'm wondering is, it seems like the consensus so far with everyone who's spoken on this is leadership is really important. I mean, one thing that I always go back to is occupy as Dan brought up and how, you know, without any leader, I mean, sure, it's admirable that it's horizontally organized. But at the end of the day, you do need somebody to kind of be the face of that movement. And so my question to Harvey is, like, do you think that absent of some sort of an actual, like left a superstar? Can unions, can organizations do the trick? Or do we actually need someone to be like the face, the icon for the movement? Like, I don't want to be like putting too much stock into celebrity worship, but it really felt like having Bernie, like this idea of him being president really united a lot of people. And so I just don't know, like, that we're going to get that again, at least in the near future. So is there anything else, like a lower standard that we can try to hit lower to like, you know what I mean? Like, I'm just well, it is fascinating to consider the fact that between Bernie, who turned 80 today, I think it is. Yes, today. Right. Happy birthday, Bernie. Okay. And the squad, who's the oldest member of the squad? Probably, I believe I'm all the she not to be prying into her personal life, but I mean, think about the gap there. Okay, I don't know how old Ro Khanna is, but you think about in the Democratic Party, at least, there's this is amazing sort of age gap between the most prominent left figure in America, and the rising stars. Now, the fact that we're on the verge of dystopia becoming apocalypse, leaving that aside for the moment, the prospects of the left are great. If you think about young people, you think about your generation, I mean, the prospects are great. So the question of leadership is crucial. Okay. For what it's worth, I, you know, I should have said this at the outset. My campaign, my crusade for some years now, maybe not as many as I think has been to try to get younger and older politicians in America to start talking about something like an economic bill of rights that FDR proposed that Bernie tried to resurrect a bit, but didn't do it enough. And it's, I can tell you, and you're not gonna, you haven't heard a lot about it, but here in Wisconsin, it's definitely becoming a possible cause. It may well become that in California in the next couple of years. So, so I mean, there are things underway. Now, in terms of leadership, I mean, I've already made clear that I don't think the left can ever redeem itself without the labor movement redeeming itself. I'm quite serious about that. But I also think that if we're going to think in terms of personalities, and I don't mean personalities in the sense of the best face for the movement, but the energy that would be involved, I think Sarah Nelson of the airline flight attendants literally could be the next major figure on the left, not as an electoral, not for the electoral voice, but as a working person's left figure. And the only question is whether the labor movement will allow her to prevail as opposed to splitting into their respective, you know, trade unionism versus industrial unionism versus service unionism. I mean, but she is incredible, absolutely incredible. And there are other folks around labor movement like that. Now, again, in politics, you can see this younger generation emerging, but there's that real, I mean, who's there in their 50s say, because that's kind of a prime moment to emerge as a major political figure. I don't know. Oh, by the way, can I just go back and make one comment? We were talking before, and I was whoever said it, I remember Hector or Jake or whomever. And I was thinking, yeah, so Bernie was this angry old guy. And AOC was this sort of talk about uplifting kind of figure. Okay, I mean, I'll never forget, I thought, chief, it's a shame that you're too edged, but Bernie served an incredible purpose, again, for all of what I think it was failings. And and AOC has become this thing where even people on the left find it imperative to pick on her. I mean, you know, I use the F word, the F bomb before, I don't know if we're supposed to be doing that. You totally can. Okay, what the fuck is wrong with people? This is the most promising figure imaginable on the left. And I'll give you one example. So when she after she was elected, she arrived in DC and they did a number of interviews with her on all the major networks. And she she she said something really interesting. And I thought this could really make a difference. She talked about Lincoln and Roosevelt as as really progressive radical figures in American politics, we can fault them, we can definitely fault them, we can take anyone apart by the way, that's something else. The left has got to stay start taking apart heroes got to stop taking apart heroes. Okay, that's like ridiculous. But and what happened, my own peers, a couple of left historians criticized her for making too much of of Lincoln and FDR and talk about fucked, I thought, what are the what the fuck is this about and made the New York time. Really? Yeah, you know, so we've got to stop going after heroes. They're, you know, there are no saints. That's all there are no saints got to get over that. Okay, I can't remember the only time I've ever voted and not held my nose is when I voted for Bernie, but I still vote. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I want to ask this question to Riverboat Jack, because I've been trying to be introspective after 2020. And like, I noticed even myself, like, kind of to what Professor Harvey was talking about, I even noticed myself like nitpicking politicians who I like, where it's like, they'll say something, and it's not even necessarily that meaningful. But I'll just in my mind, it'll like trigger me and like my lizard brain will start like going all crazy. And like the the red alerts will be going off. So I mean, like, do you think that the left does have this issue of really tearing each other down, not necessarily like just leaders and like heroes, if you want to use that word, but like just each other as well. Like I think that that's part of the issue. It's like we really tear each other down. And even if we weren't political, if the left was like some other amorphous organization around some other thing, that would still be super toxic. So do you think that overall this is a widespread issue of us just like ripping each other to shreds? I think that it's a couple of different things, right? Like I think it comes from the fact that a lot of a lot of people in the online left are extremely online. And a lot of us are, you know, we're trying to claw for clout, you know, essentially, because it's like, it is our job. They're like, this is our this is our little fiefdom that we're building up, right? And a lot of us don't necessarily have like this unifying overarching goal, right? Like we agree on a few things, right? Like Medicare for all. But if like it doesn't look like we're getting traction on that, well, then the next best thing for for your clout is, well, I have a the controversial take on Abraham Lincoln, the most beloved American president. And that will get me a lot of internet clout, right? Like, but there's nothing that's going to further a leftist mission in attacking Abraham Lincoln, right? Like really that that is an ego building exercise. It is a online clout building exercise. It's not something that's going to win you political support. And if we're talking about actually making a difference, then yeah, we need to actually have this focus on our rhetoric and focus on our subjects and focus on these larger issues that we agree on, right? Like we should we shouldn't be getting bogged down in the weeds. We should be talking about, you know, labor, organize how to how to organize a union, how how to if you wanted to organize a democratic workplace, how to go out and make a difference and further the cause of Medicare for all. We need to talk about these things in a way that actually furthers our goals rather than just our own personal ego, essentially. Yeah, I think that that's something that is lacking. Yeah, I think that, you know, for all these these issues that we're bringing up, it kind of centers on like the terminally online. And even though that is a detriment, like being online has a lot of negative side effects, it also should, in theory, really emboldened the left. I mean, we have someone on from Canada, Hildubes. We have picks from Australia. So why isn't there this opportunity for like an international leftist solidarity movement? And I really feel like Michael Brooks was trying to like force this all in that direction. But something just, you know, people, I don't know what it is. Picks, do you want to weigh in as someone from a different country, like seeing the shit show play out here, and then you also kind of have your own shit show? Like, what is it about the left that's just like incapable currently of coming together and doing anything? I mean, we have the easiest issue, in my opinion, to rally around currently is climate change, because it affects all of us on the planet. So I feel like that's not this one insular thing. Like it's not, oh, well, there's this community that doesn't have housing or there's this country without Medicare for all like this is the one thing that should, in theory, facilitate this building of an international left, but it hasn't happened. So like what's your take on that? I mean, it's hard to psychoanalyze everyone on the left, but Well, I agree. I think there's a few things that come into play. I think what we're really struggling with at the moment, not only online, but globally, is our overall conceptualization of leadership. So basically, our conceptualization of leadership still looks like a cis, white, strong, male figure, right? And so on the left, where, you know, generally, we like to be very inclusive of, you know, lots of different oppressed groups who are fighting for their own, you know, dear cause, right? We are in a place where we need the support of white men, basically, to lift up marginalized voices and to make sure that the left as a wider spectrum of people are also lifting up marginalized voices, indigenous voices, queer voices, all of those things. And so what I think ends up happening, especially online, is that we see, you know, if you look at the online political space, which is where I am, and you see the leaders in the space who are generally white cis males still, right? I think what ends up happening because of the kind of commodification of identity, these leaders, instead of focusing on bringing up the entire movement as a whole, look for points of difference, so that they can specialize their brand of leftist leadership over all of the other kinds of brands of leftist leadership, which ends up in Twitter fights, hate videos, all of the things that you just see and you're like, why? So there's so many things that are happening, but I think what we really need to focus on as a cohesive movement, because we have major opportunities right now, without access to information, the internet, look at us all having a conversation right now, it is easier to disperse the movement over a wide range of things. And I think it's about inclusive language. I never used to engage, I have been talking about politics for a couple of years now, but I never used to engage in the panel space because I was like, I am going to get eaten alive, this is a terrible idea. But then my changing kind of, my thinking kind of changed when I started to look at things from a more like intersectional perspective, because if you don't see the space, both online and IRL, as it exists right now, any of the fixes that you're putting in place, any of the leaders that you are putting in place aren't going to be what's needed. Like if you don't see the space as it exists, you can't put the right leader in the right position. And I think because we look it out, there's something really comforting about kind of grouping down into interactions, which is what happens on the left, because you see people who are really comfortable in a queer community, you see people who are really comfortable in a black community, in an indigenous community. And the thing is, we really do have to work on bringing all of those communities together, while at the same time lifting up the voices of the most marginalized. Anyway, TLDR, we need a new conceptualization of leadership, which is inclusive of diverse voices. Yeah, that's really interesting. Part of it too, I think, is a lot of us, since Zoomers possibly might be more affected by this, growing up with social media and the internet, it's kind of easy to be introverted, even if you're not. Like it's just the easiest thing to post videos by yourself and not engage with these panels. I mean, doing these panels was something that I kind of forced myself to do after many years, because it takes time, it takes work. And some people have social anxiety, so you might not necessarily want to put people in this position where they have to speak in front of a group of people and talk about complex things. So there's a lot of things to consider. But in terms of leadership, the conceptualization of leadership is really important, organizational, individual, but also something that Spencer touched on earlier was like a media leader, since the left doesn't have that. And my question to Spencer is, is there hope, I mean, we've kind of touched on the egos on the left, especially of like indie media personalities, right? We're always butting heads and doing attack videos on each other. Like is there a hope of like some sort of unified or larger like cohesive apparatus on the left that could in some ways start to facilitate like leadership or be a leader in and of itself? Like what's your take on this? Because you study a lot of mainstream media. And I think that the issues that plague independent media are different from the issues that plague mainstream media, but there still are issues nonetheless. So what's your like overall prediction on like where the indie media movement is going to be like five, 10 years from now? Like will it continue to factionalize or do you think there might be some sort of unity in the future? Chris Hedges said he's not a Marxist, because although he agrees with Marx's writing, he disagrees with the idea of having hope. I don't necessarily have, I mean, hope for the future. I think, you know, talking about leaders, leaders popping up. I mean, it's the luck of the draw, right? And they very rarely get elected. Maybe sometimes on the local level. I mean, like I said, in New York, you know, we have socialists in Albany. Realistically, you know, Bernie was never going to get in, because the mainstream Democratic Party was never going to let that happen. As far as media, I mean, the thing with corporate media is that it's lubricated by money and advertising. I mean, that is the glue that holds it all together. There is no necessary connection between individual indie media outlets. So everyone can be factionalized and atomized. And, you know, it doesn't necessarily matter to anyone's bottom line. So it's never going to stop. I mean, I don't have hope. I mean, you fight because you have to and you do what you can in movements or mutual aid or direct action. You show up to protest. As much as you can, you talk about the things you want to talk about because, you know, hopefully it's helpful. At the very least, it's cathartic. I mean, a lot of the topics of my videos are just things that I saw on TV and I felt annoyed about enough to do a video on. Some of the things like with mainstream media is there's these certain incentives, right, like the advertising dollars, the ratings, you know, which leads to a sensationalist bias. But on the left, I think that we should be more open about the incentives here and the incentives. It's been really obvious that like clickbait and attacking people is very, very, it makes you successful, right? Like if I do a video where I talk about climate change, you know, nobody's going to click on that. Nobody cares about it. But if I change that video to where Dave Rubin said this dumb thing about climate change, people are going to click on that. So it's tough. And Dan, like knowing that this is the case, knowing that nobody's perfect, knowing that a bunch of people will log on, and they don't care about anything but success, like how do we, how do we deal with that? Like I'm trying to teach my viewers like media literacy in some ways to like know what to look out for, how to differentiate the grifters from the non-grifters. But it's really tough. And you can see how easily people can get duped by like charlatans online. So that's part of the reason why I think that the left is so dysfunctional. Did you want to add anything to that? Because I feel like, you know, it's a lot of the divisiveness. It really is bad faith, in my opinion. Like I think that disagreements with the left who has high standards, I think that's to be expected. But like some of this is unnecessary if people realize that some actors on the left, like Jimmy Dorr and other, other folks are just like, they don't care about anything but views and clicks. Yeah, it's hard because this was one of the hardest things I had to reconcile with as a producer at TYT, which is I guess something that I think we all know as content creators. But that, yeah, as you were alluding to climate change, we can all agree that hands down like face value is like the most, if not one of the most important issues facing us. It's like a dire issue. You make a video about it. It's going to be your worst performing video. And if you have a business to run, or if you are trying to monetize your channel because you need to to survive, then it's weird. But like you have to make that decision of like, either I cover that video and take the monetary hit. And at TYT, at least you have the privilege of being at the scale where we could do that from time to time. And that didn't matter as much. Or you decide to do the video with a spin that you know will help you get more views. Another thing is like putting, if it's a Trump video and if it's Trump talking about climate change, then there it'll do well. But so, and I would often talk with friends and have like really like long drunken discussions at night about like, why are you making all this content? And I would kind of go, why are you consuming all of this content? I would very much love and I would say that jokingly, not of course like blaming the audience, but like, I would love for the platform to incentivize me to make other things. I want to like an ideal world we would all love to make the exact things we want to make, regardless of whether or not the platform prefers it, but whether or not it fulfills us, whether or not it feels like it is providing our audience with valuable and important information that we feel like leads them to whatever action we want them to have. And we compare rent, like we want to be able to do all those things, but that isn't our decision. It's the algorithms and kind of people's behavior and choices. And so I wrestle with this all the time. My next video is a climate change video, but like, like, it's the same issue where I've had to abstract the idea of climate change so far away from what the video is about, that when it finally drops, you're probably not going to realize it's a climate change video until six minutes in. And that's kind of the trick, because I'm using like a, I'm using like a flashier topic to try to appeal to an audience that doesn't usually think about politics, but like, there's, I mean, to give a little bit of the game away, there's different communities on YouTube, there's video game YouTube, there's tech YouTube, there's car YouTube. And so by using one of those silos, I can get people who are usually not thinking about politics and maybe kind of trojan horse them into a political conversation, political dialogue, something that they won't know, or maybe like they won't figure out from the first part of the video that I'm a like leftist political YouTuber. But by the end of it, they'll come out asking the questions that might leave them to left YouTube on other topics or, you know, so I'm trying to almost as a creative exercise for myself, because I think Malcolm also relates to it, making doom content forever can be like tiring for your own goal. So I wanted to do like a different creative exercise, but also, yeah, I have to wrestle with, I want to make sometimes boring topics, but topics I think are vitally important, go as viral as I possibly can. And that's a challenge that you have to weigh with the fickle nature of how people are, but as content creators, like, that's the challenge that we have to figure out. Like that's that one's on us to figure out. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think that if we as content creators get better, myself included, of course, then I feel like the left overall, at least the online left might be a little bit more, I guess stable is the right word. I don't know. It's tough, right? Because we are a relatively new movement. I mean, Harvey talks about, you know, history all the time. But for us, this feels new because we all kind of jumped in 2016, others in 2020, you know, our political awakening coincided with Bernie Sanders becoming president for a lot of young people. So it feels new to them. And they're kind of finding their footing, and there's going to be growing pains. But I feel like it's all part of the process. And the fact that we're having conversations about our flaws as a movement is really healthy, especially like as content creators, right? Because if you're a content creator, like you really benefit from creating this cult of personality where you're like, I was right about this, this and this, and I'm, I'm never wrong. I'm, I'm awesome. But like to actually kind of like expose the human side of ourselves is just like people who talk on the internet. I think that there is value in that. Even if, you know, it's, you know, not necessarily conducive to monetary benefit as, you know, we were kind of talking about. So I mean, we kind of like, it's hard to come away with any like concise message about the left, but I think that it is really clear that some sort of leadership has to emerge if the left is going to be successful. So I'll kind of just open this up to anyone else who has any closing thoughts on this, about the left, whether or not we can ever be successful without leadership, or if he just had anything that you wanted to add in before we go to our closing shout outs. Yeah. I mean, I think that one of the most promising candidates is probably going to be Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I know she's really young, but in 2024, I mean, there aren't really that many other progressive options that could feasibly do it. I think even if we're looking at like Rashida Tlaib, I don't think Rashida Tlaib has the same amount of like social cachet that AOC does. AOC knows how to navigate platforms like Instagram, Twitter, even Twitch. That is something that she can leverage to great effect and has in the past. And I think that if I recall correctly, there was a poll that came out during the 2020 election that showed like three fourths of Democrats would happily vote for AOC. And that's before she was even legally eligible to run for president. So I think that she has the makings, even if it's not in 2024, I hope it is, because I'm not too thrilled by the other prospects. But I think that there is a lot of the ingredients and makings there of a really powerful leader for the left that could go forward. And I hope so. I do think that while we could talk about a leaderless sort of movement that would be great, I think that having a leader for a movement definitely helps in our current kind of duopoly between a Republican and a Democrat. Just the way our system is set up, having a leader is really helpful. I have tons of hope. In fact, in fact, quite literally, I do not allow people to do more in my chat. But I was going to ask a question. Someone brought it up in chat and I thought that's actually kind of interesting, just because of the way American politics works. This is kind of a weird question. Do we want Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to be, her political uses, you can't go back into Congress after that, right? Is that good to be like, this person is really, really young and then try to have her be president and hopefully she can be, but imagine she wins. She's no longer in a career politician as a very strong progressive voice for 50 years. She's there for eight. Is that reasonable or weird? I was just a question I never thought of until now. I think that makes her more valuable to the left. That's kind of my inclination too, but it was an interesting question. A young former president who can go out and stump and campaign. Wait a minute, I think I heard about this guy. His name was Barack Obama. That didn't work. True. No, I think Obama was largely defeated by Obama in that regard. Yeah. Yeah. Picks, did you want to jump in with some Hopium? I have some Hopium and it's not that I disagree with Spencer in regards to having hope for fast systemic change or anything like that, but leftist politics at the moment are based on hope. In order to motivate people, there has to be a sense of hope. Otherwise, it's too hard, right? You have the right peddling fear-based rhetoric and it is very convincing. Generally, what I try and tell people and where I try and help people focus in is not on the fact that things are going to change quickly. Sometimes these things are so slow and there are people out there that are hurting, they are suffering and it is just so frustrating to see nothing changing. It's like, I need this to happen now. Why isn't it happening now? You can see how they become extremely apathetic to hope-based politics when everything that the future holds right now, when you look at all the issues, you're like, well, this is a lot. I think if you can focus on the idea that no matter where we go, no matter the climate crisis, no matter all of the things that happen over the next 20, 50, 100 years, there are always going to be people fighting for good. There are always going to be people out there in their communities trying to do the right thing for other people. I think that is a human strength and I think it is a strength of the left that we should really focus on, that we actually care about one another and we can take that going forward into anything. Yeah, I've been around the block for, well, I've been at a political junkie for about 50 plus years and I see the waves and the cycles that come through and I echo absolutely with what Pixel says. The incredible highs come with incredible lows but then the hope that and the learning that comes from all of that is what pushes us and drives us to be better, to do better and to reach out to others to say, hey, it's going to be okay, we'll catch it next time and sometimes we do catch it next time, sometimes we don't. Right now, we really want to catch some good luck because we could really, really use some and I know that in my chat, it can get quite doomer, which is why I have a Doctor Who wine fridge in behind me. I got to have that because there are days where it's so, so, so doomer-ish but we always have hope, we always do. Yeah. Is that an infinite wine fridge, by the way? It holds three bottles of wine. No, it's Doctor Who, so I want to know. The one thing I'd add on to that is that failure isn't ever complete, right? Like, every failure is a chance for us to learn way more than we ever would have if we had one and so if you run for office, if you get a group of people to help you try and get into office and you fail, guess what? You just learned a whole lot and that makes you valuable. Whether you're an individual actor or whether it's Bernie Sanders and his campaign, a lot of talented people learned a whole lot about politics and are using those skills, carrying them forward to make either local, state, national fights that much more likely to succeed. So even when we fail, let that cause you to crash and burn. Yeah, I think people forget that. It's part of the process. You don't have to use the hammer from the hammer and sickle just to smash stuff. You can build things with it too. I think people, it's very, very easy to be like, that's too hard. It's so easy to do that and it's not as easy to be like, and here's how we fix it. For me in my community, I feel like it's my responsibility to not let that attitude happen because we can, we lead to complacency so quickly just as a society, especially Americans in general. When things are difficult, we like to think we're like, these blue collar hardworking people. No, we're whining a lot of the time. We really want, we have a very, very comfortable living situation, but we're to that point of living situations where it's like, well, here's all the other stuff that we've never been able to address and this is why we're so upset about it is because now you're talking about, okay, we're not just surviving, we are quality of life is the question now and having to discuss quality of life issues like housing and food and healthcare and abortion and any of those sorts of things, those are the really, really divisive things. That's why I think we need to focus on, wherever our lane is, focus on these things, then try really hard to do stuff like this where we have people with diverse background. I've never run for Congress. I don't know anything about this shit. I probably be not very good at it. Hector has done things like this. Harvey has been out here teaching people for years and years about tons of great stuff. Again, we need to collectivize. We sit on our little islands and don't interact a lot and I think that's probably to our detriment even though we make more money when we're alone. I certainly make more money when I'm alone, but I'm in a situation where my bills are probably going to be paid. I'm fine with that. Let's try to spread out and maybe not do things with capital gain in mind. I know a lot of us don't, but I think we know some people, some peers among us that maybe do do that. I really appreciate this kind of stuff. I think it's been great.