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Hey everybody, KMO here with episode number 15 of The KMO Show.

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Today is Wednesday, June 14th, 2023.

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And my guest is Chris Cutrone.

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He teaches a variety of subjects, or a cluster of subjects you might say, at the School of

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the Art Institute of Chicago.

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He's got a new book out from Sublation Media, which we will be talking about, and as many

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a leftist author guest of mine over the years, he comes to this program via the vector of

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Douglas Lain, formerly of Zero Books, now of Sublation Media.

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So here's my conversation with Chris Catrone.

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You're listening to The KMO Show.

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Let's go.

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You're listening to The KMO Show.

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I'm KMO and I'm speaking with Chris Catrone.

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Chris, it's good to talk to you.

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Hi.

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Nice to be here.

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You know, I graduated high school in 1986.

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Makes me a Gen Xer.

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And when I was in high school, I wanted to be a cartoonist.

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And one of the schools that I applied to was the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

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Oh, right.

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Yeah.

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And I came away from my profile review grumpy because they didn't give me the automatic

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pass.

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They told me, go ahead and apply, you know, and send in your portfolio.

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But they weren't terribly encouraging.

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Yeah.

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Well, it didn't matter.

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My father was definitely not encouraging about art school.

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But I mentioned that school because I believe you teach there.

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I do.

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Yeah, that's right.

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And I've been teaching there for almost 20 years.

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Wow.

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You teach art history?

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I do.

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Yeah.

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And really critical theory and philosophy, I suppose.

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I do teach philosophy there because it's the Department of Art History, Theory and Criticism.

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So I'm definitely in the theory of those three categories.

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I'm in the theory category, although I also teach art history as well, like proper art

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history.

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All right.

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Well, maybe we can we can broach that topic a bit later.

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But for now, I imagine that you have.

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Well, now I suppose your students are mostly Zoomers.

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But yeah, but you've been teaching in that position for quite some time.

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So you've seen a lot of millennials.

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I don't have much contact with millennials.

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My audience tends to be Gen X and Boomer.

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I hear from some younger people, but not that many.

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Although this past winter, just for need of income, I went to the Lake Tahoe area and

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I worked as a snowmaker at a ski resort.

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And a lot of the people that I was working with were half my age.

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So it was it was a unique opportunity for me anyway to talk to young men.

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It's mostly men working that job.

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It's a pretty, pretty physical, demanding job.

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Yeah.

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And most of them I would describe as right wing, even though we were in California.

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And the ones who were lefty were really superficial in their leftiness.

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They were they hated Elon Musk.

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They hated the people they were supposed to hate, but they didn't really have.

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And they would they would threaten termination if you misgendered somebody, even if they

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weren't there.

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But other than that, they didn't really have much to say about politics, whereas the guys

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on the right were really invested.

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They were really following their online people, student crowd and then people like that.

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So that was that was an interesting view.

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So I mentioned all this because your book is it's a new book from Sublation Media.

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I believe the title is The Death of the Millennial Left.

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That's right.

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All right.

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Is there a longer title?

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Interventions 2006 to 2022.

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All right.

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So what is a doctor, you know, like applying like emergency techniques to a person on the

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brink of death for the last 16 years?

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That's a long intervention.

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Yeah.

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Well, it's multiple interventions.

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OK.

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Yeah.

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On a variety of topics.

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And so, yeah, so I've seen the millennial generation more through their leftism and

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also through their, you know, sincere and genuine attempt to really be leftists and

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to be serious about it.

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And so, you know, I've been personally acquainted with all the major thinkers on the millennial

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left and movers and shakers like people like Baskar Sankara.

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I know that it's not familiar to me.

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He is the founder editor of Jacobin magazine, which is the really the journal of the Democratic

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Socialists of America, the DSA.

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And so they've gone through, you know, as I kind of put it in the book, many agonies

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over the years from the antiwar movement to Occupy Wall Street to, you know, through the

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Great Recession.

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And then finally, you know, Me Too and Black Lives Matter.

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And then finally, the Sanders candidacy and the Trump presidency.

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So kind of end the election of the squad in 2018 as the sort of climax moment for them.

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And now we're kind of in the in the anti climax, we might say the post period the last five

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years.

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And, you know, already five years doesn't feel like it's been that long, but it has

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been a covid.

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Somebody mentioned just in passing the other day that Jeffrey Epstein hung himself supposedly

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four years ago.

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And that shocked me.

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Yeah, it's been that long.

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Yeah.

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Shocking.

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It's because the covid era is like a big hole in our lives.

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Yeah.

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It's really terrible.

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So I feel like I've seen them through it all because, you know, I helped establish an organization

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that was sort of dedicated to engaging all the various different tendencies on the left,

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all the various different ideological aspects of the left, the platypus affiliated society.

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And those are my students who were millennials.

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They started that and I kind of mentored them through it.

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And so, yeah, I've been in this position to really have, you know, a ringside seat or

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a bird's eye view on the last generation of leftism.

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And also, you know, in the Trump era, I have also become more acquainted with the millennial

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right wing.

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But I'm just not as familiar with it.

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Well, because I think that trying to take Trump seriously has meant also dealing with

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the discourse around Trump and people on the right who have tried to make sense of Trump.

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And there have been some personal connections.

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There's a historian of the Socialist Party of America, Jack Ross, who has a personal

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acquaintance with the editor of American Affairs Journal, which is like a kind of a Trumpian,

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like more intellectual, more serious kind of Trumpian journal, Trumpian Hegelians.

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Right.

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Yeah.

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These things exist.

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And one member of Platypus, a young person, more of a Zoomer age person, has also gone

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on a kind of sojourn through the right, like through the Claremont Institute.

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You know, he did an internship there.

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And, you know, he ended up quitting Platypus, but then he ended up because he got really

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sick of the left, but then he ended up getting sick of the right too.

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That's easy to do.

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Yes, right.

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And so I have more of, you know, kind of an awareness of the left, also from my own personal

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history going back, you know, decades now to high school and activism back in the 90s.

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And but yeah, I just haven't familiarized myself with the right as much.

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I've become somewhat acquainted with it.

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I've also published in Compact Magazine, which is this meeting place of left and right intellectuals.

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So I've had to familiarize myself to some extent with the millennial right as well as

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the millennial left.

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And I kind of feel like 2023, everybody, the millennial right and the millennial left are

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a little bit, they're all in the same kind of depressed state or something, or same kind

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of impasse kind of state, you know, same kind of holding pattern in the Biden era.

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So the Biden era, it's strange to look back on the Trump years with nostalgia.

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Yeah, I know.

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I know.

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Yeah.

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Let me, I'm wearing a shirt that I almost never wear because it's starting to get a

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hole in it and I never want to, I don't want it to wear out, but I'll show you where I

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was in 2020.

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Ah, Yang Gang.

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Yeah.

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Yang Gang.

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And in 2016, I was Bernie.

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But of course, I didn't have the opportunity to vote for either of those two in the general

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elections, so in 2016, I voted for Gary Johnson and in 2020, I voted for Howie Hawkins.

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So libertarian and then green.

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Basically just every election cycle.

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I mean, I might vote strategically in the primaries, but when it comes to the general,

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it's just, hey, outside the Overton window, I am not interested in the duopoly.

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Or as you describe it, I wrote down a phrase from one of your essays, I really like this,

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and I'm just, I'm starting in mid-sentence.

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Those who are part of an elaborate political machine for maintaining the status quo, who

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are evidently resentful that he doesn't need to play by the rules, he being Donald Trump.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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But, and I think you were describing Elizabeth Warren there.

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There were three essays that were sort of the assigned reading for this conversation

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and I did read them and I did enjoy them.

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And they were written, I think, like two years apart or?

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Yeah, 2016 to 2018.

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Yep.

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Yeah.

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So what are those three essays?

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Oh, actually, maybe up to 2020.

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So it's Why Not Trump from 2016, from a few months before the election.

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It's Why I Wish Hillary Had Won, and that was before the midterm elections in 2018.

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And finally, Why Not Trump Again, which was late 2019, early 2020.

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So it was before COVID.

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It was just as the election cycle was really heating up before the primaries in 2020.

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And yeah, I mean, I had to do this thing in 2016 where I had to sort of take Trump seriously.

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I'm originally from New York.

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And so it was a little bit of a stretch for me to be able to take Trump seriously because

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I kind of felt like I knew who Trump was as a figure, as a public figure growing up in

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New York.

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And then I didn't really have an awareness of him as the reality TV star.

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I didn't really have an interest in watching The Apprentice.

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But I had this sense that he was like a kind of conservative Democrat, kind of loudmouthed,

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demagogue type guy, like an Ed Koch type figure.

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And I had an intuitive sense of where he was coming from.

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But I was shocked to see that he had any kind of political viability.

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But I kind of did see it as it manifested.

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Bernie too, I have to say.

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Bernie was a funny figure for me from my youth, also from the 80s, as mayor and then senator,

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but mayor of Burlington, Vermont.

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And when I was a leftist, I was kind of a hardcore leftist in Western Massachusetts

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at Hampshire College.

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And so he was like the socialist up the road in Vermont that we would joke about.

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We could be like, oh, yeah, we could be a socialist like Bernie Sanders.

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Right?

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Because we were like hardcore Trotskyists.

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I was a member of the Spartacus Youth Club and we're very serious, like revolutionary

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Marxists.

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And so Bernie was the opposite of that.

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It was a kind of a sentimental kind of harmless figure.

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And so having both Bernie and Trump emerge as viable candidates in some respect, I don't

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think that Bernie could have ever gotten the nomination in the Democratic Party.

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Or lived to take the oath.

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Right.

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I mean, they were starting to get nasty about him already.

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And then certainly they did their skullduggery.

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And I even lived through some weird, I would say, election tampering in my own precinct

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in Chicago during the Democratic primaries because I tried to vote for Bernie in the

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Democratic primaries and they mysteriously did not have our ballots.

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And they said, well, you can still vote.

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But it's they said we can't guarantee that your vote will be counted.

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And it's definitely a precinct.

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That's what you voted for.

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Yeah, right.

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Right.

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And it's definitely a precinct that would have voted for Bernie.

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Right against Hillary.

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Not that he would have defeated Hillary, but they, of course, wanted him to lose by as

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much as possible to Hillary in the primary.

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Right.

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Yeah.

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So, you know, and of course, Chicago is notorious for this kind of stuff.

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I always like to joke that in 2000, you know, with the hanging chads in Florida.

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Oh, yeah.

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We had the same butterfly ballots in Chicago.

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And just the city of Chicago threw out three times as many ballots as the entire state

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of Florida did.

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Wow.

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Yeah.

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You got to win elections by a wide margin because there is.

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Thank you.

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Yeah.

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There is.

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Totally.

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So let me direct us back to your trio of essays because I'm sure we can get off onto some

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other fun topics.

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But I want to make sure that this is covered.

246
00:14:23,520 --> 00:14:29,300
What I was saying was I had to sort of screw myself into this role, especially as a teacher

247
00:14:29,300 --> 00:14:36,280
and as someone who is mentoring some millennial and then zoomer leftists, that I had to sort

248
00:14:36,280 --> 00:14:42,120
of get them to see Trump for what he really was and not for what the Democrats were going

249
00:14:42,120 --> 00:14:44,720
to say and what the left would generally say about him.

250
00:14:44,720 --> 00:14:47,160
He's a fascist and this and that.

251
00:14:47,160 --> 00:14:53,040
And so it was very important for me to sort of like discipline myself to the task and

252
00:14:53,040 --> 00:14:58,360
then try to make a public intervention through these kinds of short pieces where I had to

253
00:14:58,360 --> 00:15:05,440
sort of it's a difficult thing like how to not say what's needed to be said.

254
00:15:05,440 --> 00:15:06,440
Don't say too much.

255
00:15:06,440 --> 00:15:09,920
You know, be careful about what you say, what you don't say, not just in terms of like PC,

256
00:15:09,920 --> 00:15:10,920
but just intellectually.

257
00:15:10,920 --> 00:15:14,540
Like, what could I claim and what could I not claim?

258
00:15:14,540 --> 00:15:17,320
You know, what could I call attention to?

259
00:15:17,320 --> 00:15:19,400
What did I have to treat with a light touch?

260
00:15:19,400 --> 00:15:26,440
And also rhetorically, strategically thinking about like how to defuse like the hot button

261
00:15:26,440 --> 00:15:31,200
stuff that people were very anxious and even hysterical about.

262
00:15:31,200 --> 00:15:37,320
You know, how to sort of address things without conceding to the talking points, if you will.

263
00:15:37,320 --> 00:15:38,500
You know?

264
00:15:38,500 --> 00:15:46,200
How to defuse the sort of reflexive catastrophism of the left and mainstream Democrats.

265
00:15:46,200 --> 00:15:47,200
Absolutely.

266
00:15:47,200 --> 00:15:48,280
Yeah.

267
00:15:48,280 --> 00:15:52,080
So I think you originally wrote that first essay at the request of your students.

268
00:15:52,080 --> 00:15:53,080
Is that right?

269
00:15:53,080 --> 00:15:54,080
That's right.

270
00:15:54,080 --> 00:15:55,080
They did.

271
00:15:55,080 --> 00:15:56,080
Yeah.

272
00:15:56,080 --> 00:16:01,240
I had written during Occupy Wall Street, I had written some short pieces in the midst

273
00:16:01,240 --> 00:16:07,080
of that that they had used as flyers.

274
00:16:07,080 --> 00:16:08,960
And so it had to be short like that.

275
00:16:08,960 --> 00:16:15,140
It had to fit on like a page, like one sheet, maybe double-sided, but still one sheet.

276
00:16:15,140 --> 00:16:18,240
It needed to be reproducible in that way.

277
00:16:18,240 --> 00:16:21,680
And they wanted to do that at the beginning of the academic, you know, school year in

278
00:16:21,680 --> 00:16:28,680
September of 2016 because they, you know, platypus had already existed for 10 years

279
00:16:28,680 --> 00:16:30,400
at that point.

280
00:16:30,400 --> 00:16:37,200
And we had campus chapters around the country and around the world that, you know, where

281
00:16:37,200 --> 00:16:40,560
the student organizations, you know, are active.

282
00:16:40,560 --> 00:16:46,200
And so they knew that people are going to be like, well, what about Trump?

283
00:16:46,200 --> 00:16:51,480
And therefore they wanted me to produce something, you know, succinct and to the point.

284
00:16:51,480 --> 00:16:52,480
And I did.

285
00:16:52,480 --> 00:16:55,560
And that's what generated that piece.

286
00:16:55,560 --> 00:17:00,280
I had written about like Obama, the Obama election in 2008.

287
00:17:00,280 --> 00:17:03,880
I had written about the anti-war movement, you know, the sort of Great Recession and

288
00:17:03,880 --> 00:17:08,720
anti-war movement moment, like circa 2008.

289
00:17:08,720 --> 00:17:15,480
And so I had had some experience writing in a kind of current events kind of way.

290
00:17:15,480 --> 00:17:18,080
But Trump's different, of course.

291
00:17:18,080 --> 00:17:24,200
You know, like dealing with like what's really going on in mainstream politics, but from

292
00:17:24,200 --> 00:17:31,400
a leftist perspective and, you know, sort of not just doing a ritual denunciation, but

293
00:17:31,400 --> 00:17:35,640
trying to like, you know, really think about it, try to open the space for thinking about

294
00:17:35,640 --> 00:17:36,640
it.

295
00:17:36,640 --> 00:17:39,360
It's hard.

296
00:17:39,360 --> 00:17:43,280
And I did spend some months thinking about how I was going to go about that short piece

297
00:17:43,280 --> 00:17:44,280
on Trump.

298
00:17:44,280 --> 00:17:45,280
Yeah.

299
00:17:45,280 --> 00:17:48,000
So what about the second one?

300
00:17:48,000 --> 00:17:51,240
You wrote about how you wish that Hillary had won.

301
00:17:51,240 --> 00:17:52,240
Why?

302
00:17:52,240 --> 00:17:53,240
Right.

303
00:17:53,240 --> 00:17:59,240
Well, two years in, right, or a year into the Trump administration, really, like, let's

304
00:17:59,240 --> 00:18:02,120
say a year and a few months into the Trump administration.

305
00:18:02,120 --> 00:18:05,720
So I had been vilified on the left by why not Trump piece?

306
00:18:05,720 --> 00:18:06,720
No.

307
00:18:06,720 --> 00:18:08,360
Yeah, exactly.

308
00:18:08,360 --> 00:18:09,360
Right.

309
00:18:09,360 --> 00:18:16,600
And I was invited to speak at the Left Forum in New York City by one of the organizations

310
00:18:16,600 --> 00:18:19,600
that had really taken me to task for what I had written.

311
00:18:19,600 --> 00:18:21,960
And that's the Marxist Humanist Initiative.

312
00:18:21,960 --> 00:18:27,840
So they had organized a panel, basically a debate on Trump and Trumpism.

313
00:18:27,840 --> 00:18:31,260
And I was their sort of whipping boy for that.

314
00:18:31,260 --> 00:18:37,980
And so I wrote one why I wish Hillary had won in response to being invited to speak

315
00:18:37,980 --> 00:18:46,440
on their panel and wrote it as my opening remarks to engage them in dialogue and to

316
00:18:46,440 --> 00:18:54,280
sort of kind of call their bluff because they claim to not be for Hillary, right, but to

317
00:18:54,280 --> 00:18:56,420
still be anti-Trump.

318
00:18:56,420 --> 00:19:00,540
And so I had to sort of call their bluff and be like, well, you know, OK, I'm actually

319
00:19:00,540 --> 00:19:05,000
willing to say I wish Hillary had won in a way that they were not willing to be so straightforward

320
00:19:05,000 --> 00:19:06,000
about it.

321
00:19:06,000 --> 00:19:07,000
Yeah.

322
00:19:07,000 --> 00:19:09,280
So it was sort of a double edged sword there.

323
00:19:09,280 --> 00:19:10,280
Absolutely.

324
00:19:10,280 --> 00:19:11,280
That's right.

325
00:19:11,280 --> 00:19:12,280
Exactly.

326
00:19:12,280 --> 00:19:20,120
And so it's because I just had to kind of concede or admit without conceding some points

327
00:19:20,120 --> 00:19:24,720
and really midway through the Trump administration.

328
00:19:24,720 --> 00:19:28,680
OK, has the world ended yet?

329
00:19:28,680 --> 00:19:32,840
You know, we're still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

330
00:19:32,840 --> 00:19:34,400
We're still waiting for the world to end.

331
00:19:34,400 --> 00:19:39,640
And I guess now it's going to end in 2024, right?

332
00:19:39,640 --> 00:19:43,400
Whereas it was supposed to end in 2017 or 2018.

333
00:19:43,400 --> 00:19:48,700
And then it did end in 2020 with the covid catastrophe and and etc.

334
00:19:48,700 --> 00:19:50,380
But it's yeah.

335
00:19:50,380 --> 00:19:55,640
So why I wish Hillary had won just as a kind of like, look, I'm in the same bubble as you

336
00:19:55,640 --> 00:19:59,200
all the Democrats, the libtards, the whatever.

337
00:19:59,200 --> 00:20:00,800
Like I'm definitely in that world.

338
00:20:00,800 --> 00:20:01,800
I'm in Chicago.

339
00:20:01,800 --> 00:20:05,560
I'm in, you know, higher education.

340
00:20:05,560 --> 00:20:08,120
I'm in a lefty school.

341
00:20:08,120 --> 00:20:15,800
And you know, just like I know, I know, I know, you know, like I understand, right?

342
00:20:15,800 --> 00:20:19,120
Where are you coming from, comrades?

343
00:20:19,120 --> 00:20:26,080
But really, you really wanted Hillary and not Trump, huh?

344
00:20:26,080 --> 00:20:27,760
So yeah, it is.

345
00:20:27,760 --> 00:20:33,440
I was meant to be, yeah, it was meant to be a little bit of a barbed, of course, thing.

346
00:20:33,440 --> 00:20:34,440
I don't know.

347
00:20:34,440 --> 00:20:35,840
Maybe these things are too rhetorically complex.

348
00:20:35,840 --> 00:20:37,920
I guess when people are really like on edge.

349
00:20:37,920 --> 00:20:42,160
If you don't mind my simplifying your last answer, I think for the benefit of the audience,

350
00:20:42,160 --> 00:20:47,240
I took you to be saying in that second essay, I wish Hillary had won because then it would

351
00:20:47,240 --> 00:20:52,680
be much more stark and obvious to the neoliberal agenda and how the Democrats don't give a

352
00:20:52,680 --> 00:20:55,960
shit about the material conditions of the working class.

353
00:20:55,960 --> 00:20:56,960
That's right.

354
00:20:56,960 --> 00:20:57,960
No, that's right.

355
00:20:57,960 --> 00:20:58,960
That's exactly right.

356
00:20:58,960 --> 00:20:59,960
Exactly.

357
00:20:59,960 --> 00:21:00,960
No, I know.

358
00:21:00,960 --> 00:21:01,960
I know.

359
00:21:01,960 --> 00:21:11,120
It's, no, it's a problem because I feel like what's haunted them, the Democrats, for the

360
00:21:11,120 --> 00:21:18,320
last, you know, seven or eight years now is they used to call it the Obama coalition of

361
00:21:18,320 --> 00:21:20,920
voters, right?

362
00:21:20,920 --> 00:21:26,920
And I also feel like from my personal experience, I knew firsthand, you know, my family, my

363
00:21:26,920 --> 00:21:32,800
family, rather conservative people from Long Island, just working class people, but conservative

364
00:21:32,800 --> 00:21:34,960
in a kind of a normal way.

365
00:21:34,960 --> 00:21:40,640
You know, they voted for Obama twice and then they voted for Trump.

366
00:21:40,640 --> 00:21:45,160
And you know, and I think they were more neutral in 2020 about it.

367
00:21:45,160 --> 00:21:47,480
I think they did vote for Trump again.

368
00:21:47,480 --> 00:21:50,800
But I also think that they were like, you know, Biden wouldn't be the worst thing in

369
00:21:50,800 --> 00:21:52,160
the world.

370
00:21:52,160 --> 00:21:53,400
Right.

371
00:21:53,400 --> 00:21:55,560
And so they are the Reagan Democrats.

372
00:21:55,560 --> 00:21:58,320
They are the bellwether, you know, swing vote.

373
00:21:58,320 --> 00:21:59,620
They are the working class.

374
00:21:59,620 --> 00:22:02,980
They are this thing that the Democrats worry about.

375
00:22:02,980 --> 00:22:05,200
Can they win the white working class?

376
00:22:05,200 --> 00:22:07,320
Can they win the working class?

377
00:22:07,320 --> 00:22:10,280
And you know, they're very ambivalent about that, whether they even want to.

378
00:22:10,280 --> 00:22:11,280
Right.

379
00:22:11,280 --> 00:22:13,520
I think they'd rather the working class not vote.

380
00:22:13,520 --> 00:22:21,700
Yeah, I'd rather, I think that they think they'd rather just compete among the middle

381
00:22:21,700 --> 00:22:22,700
class.

382
00:22:22,700 --> 00:22:28,680
Well, let me share the second of two of your quotes that I wrote down.

383
00:22:28,680 --> 00:22:33,560
The recent Brexit vote shows that when people are given the opportunity to reject the status

384
00:22:33,560 --> 00:22:38,600
quo, the status quo response has been that they should not have been given the opportunity.

385
00:22:38,600 --> 00:22:39,720
That's right.

386
00:22:39,720 --> 00:22:40,720
Yeah.

387
00:22:40,720 --> 00:22:42,000
Don't let them vote.

388
00:22:42,000 --> 00:22:44,360
Don't give them a hoax.

389
00:22:44,360 --> 00:22:46,000
Don't present them with the option.

390
00:22:46,000 --> 00:22:47,000
Right.

391
00:22:47,000 --> 00:22:52,360
Because I mean, with Brexit, especially so Brexit, you know, kind of foreshadowed Trump.

392
00:22:52,360 --> 00:22:54,600
In 2016.

393
00:22:54,600 --> 00:23:00,840
And it was really a move by David Cameron, the way I understand it, to kind of really

394
00:23:00,840 --> 00:23:09,400
disarm the Brexit faction in the Conservative Party and the Tories and sort of give them

395
00:23:09,400 --> 00:23:13,760
what they were asking for the referendum, but assume that the referendum would be voted

396
00:23:13,760 --> 00:23:16,920
down, that Brexit would not pass.

397
00:23:16,920 --> 00:23:19,840
And then there was a shock when it did pass.

398
00:23:19,840 --> 00:23:21,880
Right.

399
00:23:21,880 --> 00:23:27,680
And you know, so Boris Johnson, you know, represented the sort of Brexit impulse that

400
00:23:27,680 --> 00:23:30,640
David Cameron did not agree with.

401
00:23:30,640 --> 00:23:34,120
And I feel like David Cameron was like, OK, let's put it to a vote.

402
00:23:34,120 --> 00:23:36,800
And he thought he'd defeat it that way.

403
00:23:36,800 --> 00:23:39,200
And then it backfired.

404
00:23:39,200 --> 00:23:41,000
Right.

405
00:23:41,000 --> 00:23:47,440
And you know, I mean, you know, Hillary did something similar with Trump, which is that

406
00:23:47,440 --> 00:23:50,760
the Hillary campaign really preferred Trump as an opponent.

407
00:23:50,760 --> 00:23:55,200
I believe they paid to run some of his ads in certain districts.

408
00:23:55,200 --> 00:23:56,200
They did.

409
00:23:56,200 --> 00:23:57,200
Yeah, they did.

410
00:23:57,200 --> 00:23:58,520
I mean, they played both sides.

411
00:23:58,520 --> 00:24:03,400
You know, they also did things like they paid for people to start fights at Trump rallies.

412
00:24:03,400 --> 00:24:04,400
They did do that.

413
00:24:04,400 --> 00:24:06,240
Bobby Moog did do that.

414
00:24:06,240 --> 00:24:12,560
That came out in the emails in the in the Julian Assange leaked emails.

415
00:24:12,560 --> 00:24:18,600
And you know, but I think that they thought this is how we soundly defeat the Republicans

416
00:24:18,600 --> 00:24:20,920
by making Trump the candidate.

417
00:24:20,920 --> 00:24:24,000
And they're kind of doing that now again, too.

418
00:24:24,000 --> 00:24:26,600
With the the indictment about the documents?

419
00:24:26,600 --> 00:24:27,600
I think so.

420
00:24:27,600 --> 00:24:32,200
I think I thought that was a tempest in a teapot and just a pretense for for skullduggery

421
00:24:32,200 --> 00:24:34,560
until I saw the photographs of the documents.

422
00:24:34,560 --> 00:24:36,200
I mean, it wasn't a few.

423
00:24:36,200 --> 00:24:40,360
It was boxes and boxes and boxes stashed in all these different rooms and in very insecure

424
00:24:40,360 --> 00:24:41,360
conditions.

425
00:24:41,360 --> 00:24:47,000
And apparently, you know, Trump was rather cavalier about just sharing them with people

426
00:24:47,000 --> 00:24:48,000
very casually.

427
00:24:48,000 --> 00:24:49,000
Oh, yeah.

428
00:24:49,000 --> 00:24:51,960
I mean, he was himself.

429
00:24:51,960 --> 00:24:52,960
He was himself.

430
00:24:52,960 --> 00:24:53,960
Yeah, expected.

431
00:24:53,960 --> 00:24:58,040
And and, you know, and the Democrats do lawfare.

432
00:24:58,040 --> 00:24:59,040
They do.

433
00:24:59,040 --> 00:25:00,640
Meaning, why would you mean?

434
00:25:00,640 --> 00:25:01,640
Go ahead.

435
00:25:01,640 --> 00:25:03,840
They're, you know, no doubt.

436
00:25:03,840 --> 00:25:04,840
Right.

437
00:25:04,840 --> 00:25:10,120
If you scrutinize someone closely enough, you can find that they committed an illegal

438
00:25:10,120 --> 00:25:11,120
act.

439
00:25:11,120 --> 00:25:12,120
Right.

440
00:25:12,120 --> 00:25:13,120
Right.

441
00:25:13,120 --> 00:25:14,680
It's the you know, the Republicans always say this.

442
00:25:14,680 --> 00:25:16,560
That's the Stalinist playbook.

443
00:25:16,560 --> 00:25:17,560
You know, show me the man.

444
00:25:17,560 --> 00:25:19,160
I'll show you the crime.

445
00:25:19,160 --> 00:25:20,440
Right.

446
00:25:20,440 --> 00:25:23,560
And and he is kind of, you know, foolish enough.

447
00:25:23,560 --> 00:25:29,920
But you know, as far as the the casual nature of the storage, evidently, you know, evidently,

448
00:25:29,920 --> 00:25:31,760
it's a little shocking.

449
00:25:31,760 --> 00:25:38,080
But evidently, like presidents, when they leave office, this stuff that they have right,

450
00:25:38,080 --> 00:25:43,580
their kind of documented legacy is literally in their personal possession, meaning they

451
00:25:43,580 --> 00:25:51,200
literally have to handle it personally, like they have to finance it personally, like storage.

452
00:25:51,200 --> 00:25:52,200
Right.

453
00:25:52,200 --> 00:25:58,760
And so, you know, evidently, Obama put it in a used car dealership his stuff in the

454
00:25:58,760 --> 00:26:00,360
suburbs of Chicago.

455
00:26:00,360 --> 00:26:02,800
It's all very it's in.

456
00:26:02,800 --> 00:26:07,640
So the shocking part is that it's literally their personal responsibility.

457
00:26:07,640 --> 00:26:12,040
And so, of course, Trump's just going to stuff it in the unused rooms in Mar-a-Lago.

458
00:26:12,040 --> 00:26:13,040
Right.

459
00:26:13,040 --> 00:26:20,280
Another aspect of this is just the, you know, the habit of stamping top secret on everything.

460
00:26:20,280 --> 00:26:22,840
Oh, very, very secretive.

461
00:26:22,840 --> 00:26:25,360
Yeah, over classification.

462
00:26:25,360 --> 00:26:28,760
So that, you know, I don't know if you've paid close enough attention because the rhetoric,

463
00:26:28,760 --> 00:26:31,520
the public discourse around this, but I've been trying to follow it.

464
00:26:31,520 --> 00:26:35,240
So there are a couple of interesting things about this indictment.

465
00:26:35,240 --> 00:26:42,400
One is that they're actually not accusing him of like they're sidestepping the classification

466
00:26:42,400 --> 00:26:46,240
issue and they're turning it into a national security issue instead.

467
00:26:46,240 --> 00:26:53,040
In other words, they're not saying that he's guilty of mishandling classified documents.

468
00:26:53,040 --> 00:26:57,640
They're saying he mishandled documents that pertain to national security.

469
00:26:57,640 --> 00:27:02,320
And that means that even if he said that he even if if it were to be shown that he had

470
00:27:02,320 --> 00:27:06,360
declassified anything, it wouldn't change anything.

471
00:27:06,360 --> 00:27:07,720
That's the first move.

472
00:27:07,720 --> 00:27:11,920
The second interesting part about it is that evidently among the documents that he's being

473
00:27:11,920 --> 00:27:18,600
indicted for mishandling are documents that prove that the Russia collusion hoax was indeed

474
00:27:18,600 --> 00:27:20,400
a hoax.

475
00:27:20,400 --> 00:27:26,280
So he took things he wasn't supposed to take because he he wanted the evidence that he

476
00:27:26,280 --> 00:27:30,400
was innocent of what he had been accused of with Russia.

477
00:27:30,400 --> 00:27:35,800
And those are the very same documents that they are saying is also a national security

478
00:27:35,800 --> 00:27:37,400
risk for him to possess.

479
00:27:37,400 --> 00:27:43,080
So they're kind of getting him made up a story about him, then he has documents that prove

480
00:27:43,080 --> 00:27:44,320
that it was a made up story.

481
00:27:44,320 --> 00:27:48,560
And him having those documents is indeed part of what they're charging him with.

482
00:27:48,560 --> 00:27:52,960
It's a threat to national security because it might be it might allow him to establish

483
00:27:52,960 --> 00:27:54,720
his innocence at some point in the future.

484
00:27:54,720 --> 00:27:55,720
Exactly.

485
00:27:55,720 --> 00:28:00,040
Well, because it is it is a threat to national security to show that the US government lies

486
00:28:00,040 --> 00:28:02,040
the way it does because it does.

487
00:28:02,040 --> 00:28:03,040
Right.

488
00:28:03,040 --> 00:28:04,680
And that is a threat.

489
00:28:04,680 --> 00:28:05,960
Right.

490
00:28:05,960 --> 00:28:12,200
At the same time, I think most of the public is so cynical about that, that I like I remember

491
00:28:12,200 --> 00:28:18,360
when Snowden released his documents via Glenn Greenwald, and it seemed really damning about

492
00:28:18,360 --> 00:28:21,960
all of this unauthorized surveillance of American citizens going on.

493
00:28:21,960 --> 00:28:25,840
And I think the universal response was, yeah, whatever.

494
00:28:25,840 --> 00:28:26,840
We know that already.

495
00:28:26,840 --> 00:28:27,840
Yeah.

496
00:28:27,840 --> 00:28:32,840
No, I mean, it is a funny I mean, obviously, it's fun a certain way, meaning that you can

497
00:28:32,840 --> 00:28:38,800
be sure that the Democrat aligned media is going to handle it a certain way.

498
00:28:38,800 --> 00:28:42,000
And but also the Republicans are not going to make too much of an issue of it.

499
00:28:42,000 --> 00:28:46,200
In other words, I think that in the Obama era, you know, because you see people like

500
00:28:46,200 --> 00:28:52,480
Tucker Carlson, who will say I was wrong about what I went along with in the era of the war

501
00:28:52,480 --> 00:28:53,760
on terror.

502
00:28:53,760 --> 00:28:58,960
So in the George W. Bush era and in the Obama era, the Republicans basically gave a pass

503
00:28:58,960 --> 00:29:02,280
to the national security state.

504
00:29:02,280 --> 00:29:08,200
And they only wised up to it in the Trump era and only marginally only marginally.

505
00:29:08,200 --> 00:29:09,200
Right.

506
00:29:09,200 --> 00:29:13,680
So only a little bit and only at the margins that the mainstream established Republican

507
00:29:13,680 --> 00:29:22,320
Party still does not want to really expose the state.

508
00:29:22,320 --> 00:29:23,320
They don't.

509
00:29:23,320 --> 00:29:24,320
Right.

510
00:29:24,320 --> 00:29:29,160
They want to say, oh, well, the state is not being even handed or something.

511
00:29:29,160 --> 00:29:34,360
You know, in other words, like they're basically saying, well, if the state violates people's

512
00:29:34,360 --> 00:29:37,000
rights evenly, then it's fine.

513
00:29:37,000 --> 00:29:40,740
That's basically their their approach.

514
00:29:40,740 --> 00:29:46,760
The problem is that it's an uneven application of the denial of people's rights.

515
00:29:46,760 --> 00:29:47,760
It's amazing.

516
00:29:47,760 --> 00:29:52,400
I mean, the way that I've talked about it with my students and with my friends, that

517
00:29:52,400 --> 00:30:02,160
the Trump era and again, turning it into like a teachable moment, it shows how things work.

518
00:30:02,160 --> 00:30:03,620
It does.

519
00:30:03,620 --> 00:30:07,600
And so it casts a lurid light on the way things work.

520
00:30:07,600 --> 00:30:11,520
It's a distorting, like Chioscuro kind of lighting.

521
00:30:11,520 --> 00:30:14,240
But it is an illumination of something.

522
00:30:14,240 --> 00:30:16,040
It does show something.

523
00:30:16,040 --> 00:30:24,000
And of course, it's not like we weren't able to see it before, but now it's sort of something

524
00:30:24,000 --> 00:30:26,000
that you can't ignore.

525
00:30:26,000 --> 00:30:31,780
Because again, in the war on terror era, there was some exposure of it.

526
00:30:31,780 --> 00:30:38,280
But it's been you know, that could still be turned into, oh, well, that's foreign people.

527
00:30:38,280 --> 00:30:39,520
That's other countries.

528
00:30:39,520 --> 00:30:40,520
That's this and that.

529
00:30:40,520 --> 00:30:42,720
You know, it's Guantanamo Bay.

530
00:30:42,720 --> 00:30:50,840
Whereas, you know, again, the idea that this would be turned against the American population.

531
00:30:50,840 --> 00:30:56,980
Do you know about this Jason Siegel article in Tablet about the Russia collusion hoax?

532
00:30:56,980 --> 00:31:00,600
It's an interesting article that he published recently.

533
00:31:00,600 --> 00:31:05,940
So evidently, so he's a millennial journalist, a liberal, you know, a Democrat, essentially.

534
00:31:05,940 --> 00:31:12,640
But he was an Army intelligence officer in Afghanistan.

535
00:31:12,640 --> 00:31:17,680
And so evidently, the scales fell from his eyes when he realized that the US was using

536
00:31:17,680 --> 00:31:24,160
the same techniques on the American population that they used in the war on terror in Afghanistan

537
00:31:24,160 --> 00:31:26,320
and Iraq.

538
00:31:26,320 --> 00:31:30,720
The same kind of information warfare and psychological warfare.

539
00:31:30,720 --> 00:31:34,440
He's like, oh, they're doing the same thing here that they did there.

540
00:31:34,440 --> 00:31:36,240
And that shocked him.

541
00:31:36,240 --> 00:31:39,160
And of course, that really shouldn't shock anybody.

542
00:31:39,160 --> 00:31:40,560
But I guess it is shocking.

543
00:31:40,560 --> 00:31:41,560
Right.

544
00:31:41,560 --> 00:31:43,600
And again, that's like the Tucker Carlson thing.

545
00:31:43,600 --> 00:31:47,840
Well, I was fine with the war on terror until I realized that they brought it home.

546
00:31:47,840 --> 00:31:49,040
Right.

547
00:31:49,040 --> 00:31:51,120
Which is impossible not to do.

548
00:31:51,120 --> 00:31:52,120
Yeah.

549
00:31:52,120 --> 00:31:54,280
I mean, didn't they bring it home from the very beginning?

550
00:31:54,280 --> 00:31:55,280
Right.

551
00:31:55,280 --> 00:32:04,320
I mean, you know, so but again, like I'm an old style Marxist, meaning that I am skeptical

552
00:32:04,320 --> 00:32:08,320
and critical of the state per se.

553
00:32:08,320 --> 00:32:12,040
That's the capitalist state per se, but the state per se.

554
00:32:12,040 --> 00:32:17,200
I mean, that's like a very, very old fashioned kind of Marxist perspective.

555
00:32:17,200 --> 00:32:19,240
Sounds anarchist.

556
00:32:19,240 --> 00:32:20,240
It does.

557
00:32:20,240 --> 00:32:21,240
It does.

558
00:32:21,240 --> 00:32:26,000
Because of course, you know, Marxism and anarchism come from the same 19th century

559
00:32:26,000 --> 00:32:28,320
socialist movement.

560
00:32:28,320 --> 00:32:31,160
And they did agree on most things.

561
00:32:31,160 --> 00:32:34,720
In fact, in the 20th century, you get a sense that they didn't agree, and that's because

562
00:32:34,720 --> 00:32:39,160
of what happened in the Soviet Union and Stalinism and etc.

563
00:32:39,160 --> 00:32:43,120
But you know, up to that point, yeah, they, you know, and I think that that got lost.

564
00:32:43,120 --> 00:32:44,120
Pardon me just a moment.

565
00:32:44,120 --> 00:32:45,960
I think we're about to be interrupted.

566
00:32:45,960 --> 00:32:52,160
So we're talking about anarchism and general skepticism of the state.

567
00:32:52,160 --> 00:32:54,360
And I don't remember exactly what you were saying when I interrupted.

568
00:32:54,360 --> 00:32:55,360
Oh, right.

569
00:32:55,360 --> 00:33:00,800
So in the 20th century, I think that what happened on the left, unfortunately, is that

570
00:33:00,800 --> 00:33:05,440
it became statist and it became identified with the state.

571
00:33:05,440 --> 00:33:10,840
And of course, in American politics, it really has to do with like, I don't know, the FDR

572
00:33:10,840 --> 00:33:17,520
New Deal moment and the turn, you know, the realignment of the political parties that

573
00:33:17,520 --> 00:33:22,000
the Democrats were like the more conservative party until FDR.

574
00:33:22,000 --> 00:33:27,000
And then they became the more progressive party, starting with FDR.

575
00:33:27,000 --> 00:33:33,040
And I think that then, you know, the 1930s is also the era of like Stalinism and the

576
00:33:33,040 --> 00:33:35,900
alliance of the Soviet Union with the United States.

577
00:33:35,900 --> 00:33:43,400
And so a lot of our language in popular political discourse, not just on the left, comes from

578
00:33:43,400 --> 00:33:44,400
that era.

579
00:33:44,400 --> 00:33:51,040
And a lot of 20th century conservatism is also born in that era in the 1930s in response

580
00:33:51,040 --> 00:33:53,000
to this phenomenon.

581
00:33:53,000 --> 00:33:59,400
And so you get this notion that, you know, the Republicans as conservative and really

582
00:33:59,400 --> 00:34:05,200
as conservative liberals, like kind of their upholding of like the Constitution.

583
00:34:05,200 --> 00:34:09,480
And they say it's not a democracy, it's a constitutional republic.

584
00:34:09,480 --> 00:34:12,400
And it's not the rule of people, it's the rule of law.

585
00:34:12,400 --> 00:34:19,800
Is this sort of attempt to sort of uphold a kind of, you know, civil libertarian perspective

586
00:34:19,800 --> 00:34:25,400
against the state, the statism of like the New Deal and progressive policies.

587
00:34:25,400 --> 00:34:31,240
And, you know, it goes, it runs through the 1960s, you know, in the Black Lives Matter

588
00:34:31,240 --> 00:34:38,240
era, but also in the period around, you know, 2015, you know, the 50th anniversary of, you

589
00:34:38,240 --> 00:34:44,840
know, 2014, 2015 and the Obama years towards the end, the 50th anniversary of the Civil

590
00:34:44,840 --> 00:34:47,520
Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

591
00:34:47,520 --> 00:34:50,400
You know, the Selma movie, this kind of thing.

592
00:34:50,400 --> 00:34:54,880
What recirculated was an old Cambridge debate between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley

593
00:34:54,880 --> 00:34:55,880
Jr.

594
00:34:55,880 --> 00:35:00,160
You know, William F. Buckley, who's the conservative neocon.

595
00:35:00,160 --> 00:35:04,560
And basically, William F. Buckley is like, you know, you can't legislate against racist

596
00:35:04,560 --> 00:35:06,920
attitudes.

597
00:35:06,920 --> 00:35:10,000
And James Baldwin is saying, yeah, but you got to try.

598
00:35:10,000 --> 00:35:14,160
And William F. Buckley was like, that's just going to produce a worse situation even for

599
00:35:14,160 --> 00:35:15,160
Black people.

600
00:35:15,160 --> 00:35:20,880
That's going to make them, you know, dependent on the state and etc.

601
00:35:20,880 --> 00:35:26,040
And of course, he was right, you know, like Buckley was right in that debate.

602
00:35:26,040 --> 00:35:30,520
It was assumed at the time that, of course, he was not right, you know, but, you know,

603
00:35:30,520 --> 00:35:31,520
he was thinking.

604
00:35:31,520 --> 00:35:32,520
He's so annoying.

605
00:35:32,520 --> 00:35:34,920
If you're on the left at all.

606
00:35:34,920 --> 00:35:35,920
Totally.

607
00:35:35,920 --> 00:35:37,080
He's so annoying.

608
00:35:37,080 --> 00:35:41,480
And he's so not in the mold of what you would think a conservative would be.

609
00:35:41,480 --> 00:35:43,200
I mean, he's very highly educated.

610
00:35:43,200 --> 00:35:46,400
He sounds like he's putting on this sort of fake British accent.

611
00:35:46,400 --> 00:35:47,400
Yeah, right.

612
00:35:47,400 --> 00:35:48,400
Very effective.

613
00:35:48,400 --> 00:35:49,400
Efeat.

614
00:35:49,400 --> 00:35:55,720
Efeat would be, you know, the phrase that like the alt-right throws at the left now.

615
00:35:55,720 --> 00:35:58,840
But Buckley was definitely effete.

616
00:35:58,840 --> 00:36:04,960
And I remember a panel debate just before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

617
00:36:04,960 --> 00:36:07,000
There was a debate, I think it was on PBS.

618
00:36:07,000 --> 00:36:08,000
And on one side...

619
00:36:08,000 --> 00:36:10,440
In our generation, Buckley is like a crazy figure, isn't he?

620
00:36:10,440 --> 00:36:11,440
But go ahead.

621
00:36:11,440 --> 00:36:12,440
Yeah, yeah.

622
00:36:12,440 --> 00:36:17,280
And the topic being debated was, is the Cold War starting to come to an end?

623
00:36:17,280 --> 00:36:19,480
And Buckley was firmly on the no side.

624
00:36:19,480 --> 00:36:21,880
And within a couple of years, the Berlin Wall was down.

625
00:36:21,880 --> 00:36:25,240
So that was quite the watershed moment.

626
00:36:25,240 --> 00:36:27,520
So he was, you know, spectacularly wrong about that.

627
00:36:27,520 --> 00:36:31,760
But you know, smart people are spectacularly wrong about all kinds of stuff.

628
00:36:31,760 --> 00:36:32,760
Absolutely.

629
00:36:32,760 --> 00:36:37,120
But yeah, that's just me reminiscing about William F. Buckley.

630
00:36:37,120 --> 00:36:42,240
I can go back now because, you know, when I was young, I was pretty lefty.

631
00:36:42,240 --> 00:36:43,240
And I'm just not anymore.

632
00:36:43,240 --> 00:36:47,120
And I can go back and listen to Buckley now and not be irritated.

633
00:36:47,120 --> 00:36:48,920
And just kind of shake my head.

634
00:36:48,920 --> 00:36:51,800
It's like, wow, that's quite a voice on the right.

635
00:36:51,800 --> 00:36:52,800
I don't...

636
00:36:52,800 --> 00:36:56,280
Like, I wasn't even in a position to appreciate what he was playing.

637
00:36:56,280 --> 00:36:57,280
Right.

638
00:36:57,280 --> 00:36:58,280
Even what he was saying.

639
00:36:58,280 --> 00:36:59,280
Right, exactly.

640
00:36:59,280 --> 00:37:05,240
No, I was in the same kind of, you know, predisposition, which is to say, you know, just to see a

641
00:37:05,240 --> 00:37:08,120
nefarious motive behind it.

642
00:37:08,120 --> 00:37:14,340
And there's actually a movie that's like it revisits the Gore Vidal William F. Buckley

643
00:37:14,340 --> 00:37:17,280
debates around 1968.

644
00:37:17,280 --> 00:37:20,400
It's called like Best Enemies or something.

645
00:37:20,400 --> 00:37:26,880
And it's like a wonderful thing because again, it's kind of like, you know, Vidal and Buckley.

646
00:37:26,880 --> 00:37:32,360
And it's about like Vietnam and Richard Nixon and also Reagan was a candidate in the primaries

647
00:37:32,360 --> 00:37:34,800
in 1968 already.

648
00:37:34,800 --> 00:37:37,320
You know, he was angling to be president.

649
00:37:37,320 --> 00:37:43,400
And I think that Buckley might have supported Reagan against Nixon at that point.

650
00:37:43,400 --> 00:37:49,120
And it's a fascinating window into a kind of formative moment, you know, during the

651
00:37:49,120 --> 00:37:54,880
new left, but also the birth of the new right that gave us, you know, the Reagan era that

652
00:37:54,880 --> 00:37:57,940
was formative for our generation.

653
00:37:57,940 --> 00:38:02,560
And again, like just thinking, well, in fact, these things that people on the left might

654
00:38:02,560 --> 00:38:09,080
have considered to be settled historically are not.

655
00:38:09,080 --> 00:38:15,800
And that's, you know, it's raised by Trump and in a very peculiar way because there isn't

656
00:38:15,800 --> 00:38:22,800
like quite the same intellectual apparatus around Trump that there was around Reagan,

657
00:38:22,800 --> 00:38:24,520
you know, like William F. Buckley.

658
00:38:24,520 --> 00:38:30,040
You know, there isn't like an ideologically coherent like new right the way there had

659
00:38:30,040 --> 00:38:32,960
been in response to the new left.

660
00:38:32,960 --> 00:38:35,360
And so but it's just it is interesting.

661
00:38:35,360 --> 00:38:40,600
So anyway, getting back to the statism point or like a Reagan, you know, the government

662
00:38:40,600 --> 00:38:47,000
is the main threat to like freedom, you know, most terrifying words in the English language.

663
00:38:47,000 --> 00:38:49,160
I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

664
00:38:49,160 --> 00:38:50,160
Yeah.

665
00:38:50,160 --> 00:38:52,440
I'm an Adorno scholar, right?

666
00:38:52,440 --> 00:38:56,080
So I'm a scholar of Theodore Adorno, who's like a Frankfurt School critical theorist,

667
00:38:56,080 --> 00:38:57,520
a Marxist.

668
00:38:57,520 --> 00:39:03,720
And there's an essay that I teach by him that's talking about like, he says, actually, this

669
00:39:03,720 --> 00:39:09,960
is a line, you know, the social worker might be a greater threat to the abused woman than

670
00:39:09,960 --> 00:39:13,840
her husband does.

671
00:39:13,840 --> 00:39:14,840
Rhetorically powerful.

672
00:39:14,840 --> 00:39:16,840
I'm not sure it's true, but right.

673
00:39:16,840 --> 00:39:23,400
But what we've lived through since that time, so he was writing that in the 60s, is we've

674
00:39:23,400 --> 00:39:28,280
lived through a kind of state of education of life.

675
00:39:28,280 --> 00:39:31,120
Right that that we've naturalized and that we take for granted.

676
00:39:31,120 --> 00:39:37,160
In other words, we think, OK, yes, like domestic violence, you should have a police intervention,

677
00:39:37,160 --> 00:39:38,160
right?

678
00:39:38,160 --> 00:39:42,680
To prevent what used to go on in the private sphere in the past.

679
00:39:42,680 --> 00:39:47,640
But then actually, when you scrutinize it a little bit more closely, you know, it is

680
00:39:47,640 --> 00:39:50,240
part of like a criminalization of the working class.

681
00:39:50,240 --> 00:39:55,280
It is about bringing the working class under state control, state surveillance.

682
00:39:55,280 --> 00:39:58,960
And the fact that the police are because the police are quite cynical about these things.

683
00:39:58,960 --> 00:40:02,960
In other words, when they show up for an incident of domestic violence, they often arrest both

684
00:40:02,960 --> 00:40:08,320
people because often both people have thrown blows.

685
00:40:08,320 --> 00:40:14,520
And then, you know, so a woman who is has an abusive partner and has children, she is,

686
00:40:14,520 --> 00:40:19,920
you know, through victim advocacy, she's subject to a kind of police scrutiny that might end

687
00:40:19,920 --> 00:40:23,520
up with her losing her children.

688
00:40:23,520 --> 00:40:25,240
Right.

689
00:40:25,240 --> 00:40:32,840
And so, you know, and again, just recalling that the old style socialism and Marxism and,

690
00:40:32,840 --> 00:40:38,520
of course, anarchism as well would have would have objected to the working class coming

691
00:40:38,520 --> 00:40:42,840
under the tutelage of the state in the way that we've naturalized now.

692
00:40:42,840 --> 00:40:47,480
So I'm going to speak in a very meta way just about the structure of the interview and such.

693
00:40:47,480 --> 00:40:52,680
You've been talking about the past, and I want to switch into some speculations about

694
00:40:52,680 --> 00:40:53,680
the future.

695
00:40:53,680 --> 00:40:59,280
But before we do that, I want to make sure that your new book and Sublation Media have

696
00:40:59,280 --> 00:41:00,640
been given their due.

697
00:41:00,640 --> 00:41:03,880
Is there anything else you want to say on those topics?

698
00:41:03,880 --> 00:41:07,240
Yeah, I mean, I probably should say something about that.

699
00:41:07,240 --> 00:41:16,160
So just in terms of like this book that I'm just publishing now, that, you know, again,

700
00:41:16,160 --> 00:41:21,680
reviewing the last 16 years or so, but through the issues that have come up for the millennial

701
00:41:21,680 --> 00:41:26,800
left in their formative experience, really, these are the abiding issues on the left.

702
00:41:26,800 --> 00:41:32,880
So things like capitalism as an economic system and as an economic crisis, like the Great

703
00:41:32,880 --> 00:41:35,880
Recession kind of moment.

704
00:41:35,880 --> 00:41:42,800
Also, you know, the question of Black Lives Matter and the enduring, you know, legacy

705
00:41:42,800 --> 00:41:50,680
of a history of racism in the United States, the question of US military interventions,

706
00:41:50,680 --> 00:41:57,840
the question of US imperialism, and then, of course, Trump as a kind of culminating

707
00:41:57,840 --> 00:41:58,840
moment.

708
00:41:58,840 --> 00:42:03,040
But really, you know, that's the closest thing we've had to an anti-war president in my lifetime.

709
00:42:03,040 --> 00:42:04,040
Yes.

710
00:42:04,040 --> 00:42:05,680
And I do write about that.

711
00:42:05,680 --> 00:42:10,000
So I think the third of the essays that you that you read, Why Not Trump Again?

712
00:42:10,000 --> 00:42:14,600
I think that it's there that I say Trump was the peace president that Obama was supposed

713
00:42:14,600 --> 00:42:15,600
to be.

714
00:42:15,600 --> 00:42:16,600
Yeah.

715
00:42:16,600 --> 00:42:23,760
He had one point where I think to appease the Pentagon, they launched some missiles

716
00:42:23,760 --> 00:42:26,840
at an airfield in Syria.

717
00:42:26,840 --> 00:42:29,040
But they got the body.

718
00:42:29,040 --> 00:42:34,480
They did kill a considerable number of Russian military advisors.

719
00:42:34,480 --> 00:42:39,720
Democrats couldn't criticize him for that right now in the current environment.

720
00:42:39,720 --> 00:42:45,920
You know, what he did was he did a kind of yeah, he did a punitive strike in response

721
00:42:45,920 --> 00:42:50,640
to I think a Syrian chemical weapons attack and he attacked the airfield that it had been

722
00:42:50,640 --> 00:42:53,640
mounted from.

723
00:42:53,640 --> 00:42:57,640
And so it was a measured response.

724
00:42:57,640 --> 00:43:02,320
You know, the one that I also recall is like the drone strike of Soleimani.

725
00:43:02,320 --> 00:43:03,320
Yeah, right.

726
00:43:03,320 --> 00:43:09,640
And then Baghdad, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard military advisor for the Shia militias

727
00:43:09,640 --> 00:43:12,080
in Iraq.

728
00:43:12,080 --> 00:43:15,960
And evidently, this is what I read about anyway, who knows?

729
00:43:15,960 --> 00:43:17,800
It's all very apocryphal.

730
00:43:17,800 --> 00:43:23,480
You know, what happens is the president is given a menu of options by the national security

731
00:43:23,480 --> 00:43:24,480
team.

732
00:43:24,480 --> 00:43:26,840
You know, you can do this, that or the other thing.

733
00:43:26,840 --> 00:43:31,880
So it was in response to attacks that have been made on US military bases by the Shia

734
00:43:31,880 --> 00:43:33,360
militias in Iraq.

735
00:43:33,360 --> 00:43:38,760
And evidently, he chose the one that was supposed to be the option that was so crazy that, of

736
00:43:38,760 --> 00:43:40,640
course, you don't choose that one.

737
00:43:40,640 --> 00:43:41,640
And yeah, on purpose.

738
00:43:41,640 --> 00:43:42,640
Yes, I imagine.

739
00:43:42,640 --> 00:43:46,320
As if to say, I recognize the game you're playing.

740
00:43:46,320 --> 00:43:48,480
If you're going to play this game, I'll pick the crazy option.

741
00:43:48,480 --> 00:43:52,040
So go ahead, choose wisely.

742
00:43:52,040 --> 00:43:58,000
You know, Barack Obama supposedly would be presented with a set of baseball guards with

743
00:43:58,000 --> 00:44:03,320
potential drone strike victims on it, and he would choose the baseball card of his choice.

744
00:44:03,320 --> 00:44:10,840
But he was the drone assassination president, which to me, the idea that you can just because

745
00:44:10,840 --> 00:44:15,240
there's not a human pilot in the aircraft, the people that you kill are still dead.

746
00:44:15,240 --> 00:44:16,240
It's the same.

747
00:44:16,240 --> 00:44:17,240
Yeah, it is.

748
00:44:17,240 --> 00:44:19,080
And it's not an autonomous weapon.

749
00:44:19,080 --> 00:44:22,360
There's a human pilot controlling it in a trailer in Nevada.

750
00:44:22,360 --> 00:44:25,240
It's not it's not a movie that depicts this.

751
00:44:25,240 --> 00:44:26,760
I think it's called Good Kill.

752
00:44:26,760 --> 00:44:29,360
Oh, yeah.

753
00:44:29,360 --> 00:44:30,840
Or something, something kill.

754
00:44:30,840 --> 00:44:33,280
I think I think it's good kill.

755
00:44:33,280 --> 00:44:36,200
That's the pathos of the drone pilot.

756
00:44:36,200 --> 00:44:42,720
There's a very low budget sci fi film called Sleep Dealer, and it is about a drone pilot

757
00:44:42,720 --> 00:44:48,800
who defends the American, you know, the US Mexican border against illegal crossings by

758
00:44:48,800 --> 00:44:50,280
Mexicans.

759
00:44:50,280 --> 00:44:52,520
But he himself is a Mexican American.

760
00:44:52,520 --> 00:44:53,520
Right.

761
00:44:53,520 --> 00:45:00,400
Yes, yes, but but he is the like gold star drone pilot with the most kills of Mexicans

762
00:45:00,400 --> 00:45:05,400
who in the story are basically just trying to get to a body of water because they need

763
00:45:05,400 --> 00:45:06,400
right.

764
00:45:06,400 --> 00:45:07,400
Right.

765
00:45:07,400 --> 00:45:08,400
So they it's right.

766
00:45:08,400 --> 00:45:10,400
So it's like a setup.

767
00:45:10,400 --> 00:45:11,720
No, it's terrible.

768
00:45:11,720 --> 00:45:16,400
I mean, you know, so and you know, so I've had debates with people on the left about

769
00:45:16,400 --> 00:45:21,360
this and they're like, well, you know, the drone strikes increased under Trump than under

770
00:45:21,360 --> 00:45:22,360
Obama.

771
00:45:22,360 --> 00:45:24,640
They do make that claim.

772
00:45:24,640 --> 00:45:26,920
And that's probably true.

773
00:45:26,920 --> 00:45:32,880
However, there was a general attempt to draw down the wars and to draw down the war on

774
00:45:32,880 --> 00:45:36,280
terror more generally.

775
00:45:36,280 --> 00:45:41,360
And you know, certainly there were opportunities to escalate, you know, with like the Civil

776
00:45:41,360 --> 00:45:42,360
War in Yemen.

777
00:45:42,360 --> 00:45:47,120
I mean, there were there are these opportunities to escalate these things.

778
00:45:47,120 --> 00:45:50,120
And he did not.

779
00:45:50,120 --> 00:45:58,840
And you know, again, that's hard for the left to swallow because I think that they see the

780
00:45:58,840 --> 00:46:02,520
national security state as essentially Republican in character.

781
00:46:02,520 --> 00:46:08,960
You know, they have a very out of date notion that like the police and the FBI and the CIA

782
00:46:08,960 --> 00:46:16,560
certainly, but also the Pentagon and maybe even the State Department are Republican.

783
00:46:16,560 --> 00:46:17,560
Right.

784
00:46:17,560 --> 00:46:19,960
But that's that's who they recruit from.

785
00:46:19,960 --> 00:46:26,480
They recruit these sort of, you know, macho white guy conservatives who are Republicans

786
00:46:26,480 --> 00:46:31,760
and that the Democrats are some kind of check on the national security state.

787
00:46:31,760 --> 00:46:33,840
That seems to have been thrown out the window.

788
00:46:33,840 --> 00:46:40,600
But in the Trump era, I think that it was jarring for them to recognize that actually

789
00:46:40,600 --> 00:46:44,560
the deep state might be saffed by Democrats now.

790
00:46:44,560 --> 00:46:49,480
And you know, I think that again, they have this idea, a very old idea.

791
00:46:49,480 --> 00:46:50,480
I don't know.

792
00:46:50,480 --> 00:46:55,240
You know, in the 80s, certainly when there was a renaissance, like far right in the Reagan

793
00:46:55,240 --> 00:47:00,840
era, you know, there was like the new KKK and there were like neo Nazis and whatnot.

794
00:47:00,840 --> 00:47:05,640
And so part of the discourse on the left would have been that the state colludes with them.

795
00:47:05,640 --> 00:47:10,400
In other words, the state cracks down hard on the left, but kind of winks and nods at

796
00:47:10,400 --> 00:47:11,400
the right.

797
00:47:11,400 --> 00:47:16,400
And according to many leftists online, that is still the case.

798
00:47:16,400 --> 00:47:17,640
I don't think so.

799
00:47:17,640 --> 00:47:18,640
I don't think so either.

800
00:47:18,640 --> 00:47:19,640
I don't think so.

801
00:47:19,640 --> 00:47:20,640
Right.

802
00:47:20,640 --> 00:47:25,120
And so it's one of these funny things where I feel like, okay, the left is really stuck

803
00:47:25,120 --> 00:47:26,760
in the past.

804
00:47:26,760 --> 00:47:32,040
And maybe that's why I've been, you know, talking about the past in the way that I have,

805
00:47:32,040 --> 00:47:38,560
because I feel like really the tragedy for me of the millennial left has been that it

806
00:47:38,560 --> 00:47:45,680
was an opportunity in the new millennium to rethink a lot of received wisdom on the left

807
00:47:45,680 --> 00:47:47,540
and they shied away from it.

808
00:47:47,540 --> 00:47:54,160
They made some steps in that direction, but they ultimately shied away from it and adopted

809
00:47:54,160 --> 00:48:03,680
very much our generation's posture of like defending the welfare state against the privatization,

810
00:48:03,680 --> 00:48:09,460
neoliberal libertarian onslaught of like a Reaganite Republican party.

811
00:48:09,460 --> 00:48:15,480
And they really couldn't recognize that Trump ran against that Reaganite party, ran against

812
00:48:15,480 --> 00:48:22,240
the neocons, the neoliberals, and even in a certain way, he sought to disarm the Christian

813
00:48:22,240 --> 00:48:28,280
evangelicals, to sort of throw a sock to them without really conceding to them.

814
00:48:28,280 --> 00:48:29,280
Right.

815
00:48:29,280 --> 00:48:34,280
And instead, it's like, oh no, he's like the ultra neoliberal and the ultra neocon and

816
00:48:34,280 --> 00:48:38,760
the ultra Christian evangelical demagogue.

817
00:48:38,760 --> 00:48:43,120
And you know, and they had to invent these ideas of like Christian nationalism and white

818
00:48:43,120 --> 00:48:44,400
nationalism and white supremacy.

819
00:48:44,400 --> 00:48:49,440
And there might be some of that going on ideologically, but I don't think that that's why people voted

820
00:48:49,440 --> 00:48:50,440
for Trump.

821
00:48:50,440 --> 00:48:51,440
I really don't.

822
00:48:51,440 --> 00:48:56,600
I mean, maybe because my family is Italian American from Long Island, maybe that's not

823
00:48:56,600 --> 00:48:58,040
like a real world to me.

824
00:48:58,040 --> 00:49:00,400
I don't have like a felt sense of that.

825
00:49:00,400 --> 00:49:04,760
I'm sure there is some of that, but I feel like that doesn't really explain it.

826
00:49:04,760 --> 00:49:13,680
It's not some atavistic, you know, like white nation rearing its head, you know, the way

827
00:49:13,680 --> 00:49:16,760
the Democrats would have us believe.

828
00:49:16,760 --> 00:49:18,840
And you know, we'll just see next year.

829
00:49:18,840 --> 00:49:25,240
You know, I imagine that if Trump runs again, if he does in fact, you know, run in the election,

830
00:49:25,240 --> 00:49:32,280
which I think he will, he will get even more Latino and black votes than he did in 2020,

831
00:49:32,280 --> 00:49:39,600
where he evidently got more black votes than any Republican had gotten since 1960.

832
00:49:39,600 --> 00:49:48,320
You know, I went to the Politicon gathering in 2019 in Los Angeles and I had never taken

833
00:49:48,320 --> 00:49:53,780
an Uber before and I took an Uber from the place where I was staying to to a bus terminal

834
00:49:53,780 --> 00:49:56,200
where I from there and go to the airport.

835
00:49:56,200 --> 00:50:03,040
And my very first Uber driver was a young Mexican man who was very enthusiastic about

836
00:50:03,040 --> 00:50:04,040
Trump.

837
00:50:04,040 --> 00:50:05,040
Yeah.

838
00:50:05,040 --> 00:50:08,200
He said, yeah, I don't like to build the wall thing, but everything else right on.

839
00:50:08,200 --> 00:50:11,320
You know, so what is my first.

840
00:50:11,320 --> 00:50:13,100
It's real here in Chicago.

841
00:50:13,100 --> 00:50:14,100
That's also the case.

842
00:50:14,100 --> 00:50:16,080
And you do encounter them.

843
00:50:16,080 --> 00:50:21,120
You know, the Uber drivers are essentially the proverbial taxi cab driver, right?

844
00:50:21,120 --> 00:50:22,320
The cab driver.

845
00:50:22,320 --> 00:50:23,320
And they are there.

846
00:50:23,320 --> 00:50:29,600
There is a kind of certain like conservatism that you encounter with such people for sure.

847
00:50:29,600 --> 00:50:31,220
But it's it's it's there.

848
00:50:31,220 --> 00:50:32,220
It really is there.

849
00:50:32,220 --> 00:50:39,000
I mean, the way that I like to joke about New York City is when people were still reading

850
00:50:39,000 --> 00:50:46,400
paper newspapers, like not that long ago on New York City subways, you know, all the working

851
00:50:46,400 --> 00:50:49,440
class people of color are reading the New York Post.

852
00:50:49,440 --> 00:50:50,440
Yeah.

853
00:50:50,440 --> 00:50:52,680
Supposedly this this right wing rag.

854
00:50:52,680 --> 00:50:53,680
Right.

855
00:50:53,680 --> 00:50:54,680
Yeah.

856
00:50:54,680 --> 00:50:58,080
I lived in New York City from 2012 through 2016.

857
00:50:58,080 --> 00:50:59,320
And yeah, I'm very familiar.

858
00:50:59,320 --> 00:51:02,960
I was there during the Bloomberg years and very familiar with the different, you know,

859
00:51:02,960 --> 00:51:03,960
New York media.

860
00:51:03,960 --> 00:51:04,960
Oh, yeah.

861
00:51:04,960 --> 00:51:05,960
Yeah.

862
00:51:05,960 --> 00:51:06,960
Very.

863
00:51:06,960 --> 00:51:07,960
You know, we're waiting for with that.

864
00:51:07,960 --> 00:51:10,440
He caught dead reading the New York Times.

865
00:51:10,440 --> 00:51:12,440
Yes, exactly.

866
00:51:12,440 --> 00:51:13,440
Yes.

867
00:51:13,440 --> 00:51:17,520
So, you know, this is just a reality.

868
00:51:17,520 --> 00:51:18,800
And you know, what do we make of it?

869
00:51:18,800 --> 00:51:21,760
I mean, you know, one shouldn't like read too much into it.

870
00:51:21,760 --> 00:51:27,740
And it is this kind of like, you know, projection object, you know, the working class and their

871
00:51:27,740 --> 00:51:29,840
political sensibilities.

872
00:51:29,840 --> 00:51:36,800
My sense is that, you know, it isn't it isn't what people might think either in a negative

873
00:51:36,800 --> 00:51:38,960
or in a positive sense.

874
00:51:38,960 --> 00:51:42,720
It will confound expectations.

875
00:51:42,720 --> 00:51:43,880
And so won't fit.

876
00:51:43,880 --> 00:51:49,320
It won't fit a kind of a hysteric paranoid narrative.

877
00:51:49,320 --> 00:51:54,800
And it won't fit a kind of sentimental, you know, narrative on the left either.

878
00:51:54,800 --> 00:51:55,800
Right.

879
00:51:55,800 --> 00:51:56,800
Well.

880
00:51:56,800 --> 00:52:01,480
If one is devoted to a paranoid narrative, facts will not stand in the way.

881
00:52:01,480 --> 00:52:03,280
Well, there's that.

882
00:52:03,280 --> 00:52:04,280
Now I know.

883
00:52:04,280 --> 00:52:08,200
Well, this is the other thing that I've come to recognize, because, you know, I made my

884
00:52:08,200 --> 00:52:14,440
sincere good faith effort to just open some little bit of space for thinking.

885
00:52:14,440 --> 00:52:20,140
And I've just had to come to the sad conclusion that people see what they want to see, hear

886
00:52:20,140 --> 00:52:26,760
what they want to hear, stand what they want to understand, believe what they want to believe.

887
00:52:26,760 --> 00:52:35,000
And it's it's very difficult to get people to challenge their preferred, including their

888
00:52:35,000 --> 00:52:37,400
preferred like negative view of things.

889
00:52:37,400 --> 00:52:38,400
Oh, yeah.

890
00:52:38,400 --> 00:52:39,400
Right.

891
00:52:39,400 --> 00:52:42,120
Oh, I can go on and on about that.

892
00:52:42,120 --> 00:52:47,000
Hey, we have reached what is definitely the end of a one hour podcast segment.

893
00:52:47,000 --> 00:52:50,240
You have another 20 minutes to hang out and talk about other issues.

894
00:52:50,240 --> 00:52:51,240
Sure.

895
00:52:51,240 --> 00:52:58,960
All right.

896
00:52:58,960 --> 00:53:04,620
That was Chris Catrone and the additional 20 minutes that I asked for turned into 45.

897
00:53:04,620 --> 00:53:08,700
And it won't be a great surprise to regular listeners that I wanted to talk about artificial

898
00:53:08,700 --> 00:53:14,440
intelligence and in particular, the reaction of aspiring young artists to the diffusion

899
00:53:14,440 --> 00:53:20,560
models, which generate very detailed images from text descriptions or prompts.

900
00:53:20,560 --> 00:53:24,680
And it probably also won't be surprising to you to learn that when the topic turns to

901
00:53:24,680 --> 00:53:30,400
artificial intelligence, I do most of the talking and Chris doesn't have a whole lot

902
00:53:30,400 --> 00:53:35,240
to say on that topic, but he does return to the topics that he's more familiar and comfortable

903
00:53:35,240 --> 00:53:36,240
with.

904
00:53:36,240 --> 00:53:39,920
So if you enjoyed what you heard in this episode, well, you'll probably enjoy the content of

905
00:53:39,920 --> 00:53:44,320
the next episode of the Sea Realm Vault podcast, which if memory serves, will be episode number

906
00:53:44,320 --> 00:53:45,320
459.

907
00:53:45,320 --> 00:53:52,800
All right, well, normally here at the end of the podcast, I ramble on for a bit.

908
00:53:52,800 --> 00:53:58,520
And the thing that's on my mind right now is the death of Theodore Kaczynski, aka the

909
00:53:58,520 --> 00:54:00,000
Unabomber.

910
00:54:00,000 --> 00:54:07,400
He extorted the New York Times and the Washington Post into running his manifesto in... what

911
00:54:07,400 --> 00:54:08,400
year was that?

912
00:54:08,400 --> 00:54:09,400
Was it 95, 96?

913
00:54:09,400 --> 00:54:12,160
I think it was in 95 and then he got caught in 96.

914
00:54:12,160 --> 00:54:18,840
I was in grad school at the time and I remember reading it and not being terribly impressed

915
00:54:18,840 --> 00:54:22,480
and I'm pretty sure I didn't even get to the end of it.

916
00:54:22,480 --> 00:54:28,960
And it wasn't until Wired magazine ran that famous, infamous, we'll just say well-known

917
00:54:28,960 --> 00:54:34,840
editorial by Bill Joy called Why the Future Doesn't Need Us, in which he quotes the Unabomber

918
00:54:34,840 --> 00:54:38,160
Manifesto extensively.

919
00:54:38,160 --> 00:54:42,880
And at that time I went back and I did read the manifesto from beginning to end carefully

920
00:54:42,880 --> 00:54:45,800
and it made quite the impression on me.

921
00:54:45,800 --> 00:54:49,400
And that's largely what's been on my mind.

922
00:54:49,400 --> 00:54:55,300
One thing that Ted Kaczynski argued, both in the manifesto and then in later writings

923
00:54:55,300 --> 00:54:59,320
like in the book Anti-Tech Revolution, Why and How, which I have on the desk in front

924
00:54:59,320 --> 00:55:04,960
of me, he argues that technological civilization is a self-propagating system and that over

925
00:55:04,960 --> 00:55:07,640
time it will need fewer and fewer people.

926
00:55:07,640 --> 00:55:12,160
And the people that are no longer necessary for the continued functioning of the self-propagating

927
00:55:12,160 --> 00:55:16,280
system will be eliminated.

928
00:55:16,280 --> 00:55:21,840
And that the people who are still useful to the system won't make much of a fuss.

929
00:55:21,840 --> 00:55:25,680
First they came for the communists and I didn't object because I'm not a communist.

930
00:55:25,680 --> 00:55:27,160
You know the litany, right?

931
00:55:27,160 --> 00:55:34,000
Anyway, these are topics that I have been ruminating on in my YouTube videos.

932
00:55:34,000 --> 00:55:38,400
And directing you just by voice to my YouTube channel is difficult because even if you type

933
00:55:38,400 --> 00:55:42,480
in the exact name of my channel, YouTube won't show you my stuff.

934
00:55:42,480 --> 00:55:47,880
But if you go to my Patreon, which is very easy to direct you to, patreon.com slash KMO,

935
00:55:47,880 --> 00:55:52,000
I have links to various YouTube videos there, any one of which will get you to my YouTube

936
00:55:52,000 --> 00:55:53,000
channel.

937
00:55:53,000 --> 00:55:56,780
Alright, well that does bring us to the end of this episode of the KMO Show.

938
00:55:56,780 --> 00:55:58,360
Thank you very much for listening.

939
00:55:58,360 --> 00:56:02,840
I will talk to you again quite soon, particularly if you're a CWROM Vault subscriber.

940
00:56:02,840 --> 00:56:05,600
But until you next hear my voice, please, stay well.