WEBVTT 00:00:14.730 --> 00:00:17.030 Welcome to the Reality Taboo, where no topic 00:00:17.030 --> 00:00:20.730 is off limits. It's February 21st, 2026. It's 00:00:20.730 --> 00:00:23.250 useful to define terms, and a la Mike Huckabee 00:00:23.250 --> 00:00:25.739 talking about the importance of... defining terms 00:00:25.739 --> 00:00:30.719 ahead of answering or obfuscating an answer to 00:00:30.719 --> 00:00:32.979 Tucker Carlson's question about what the definition 00:00:32.979 --> 00:00:36.259 of Christian Zionism is, I'm going to address 00:00:36.259 --> 00:00:40.359 a question Jeff asked in absentia about what 00:00:40.359 --> 00:00:45.179 we mean by the term managerial state. Uncle Ted 00:00:45.179 --> 00:00:48.719 Kaczynski called it the system. One of the tragedies 00:00:48.719 --> 00:00:52.590 of Ted Kaczynski is that, of course, he is a 00:00:52.590 --> 00:00:55.789 murderer, but a sympathetic one in some ways, 00:00:55.829 --> 00:01:01.170 in that he used those mail bombs as a way of 00:01:01.170 --> 00:01:03.670 drawing attention to something he felt he could 00:01:03.670 --> 00:01:08.269 in no other way draw attention to. And in that 00:01:08.269 --> 00:01:11.909 regard, he was just a few years too early because 00:01:11.909 --> 00:01:17.010 his actions came on the eve. Of the internet 00:01:17.010 --> 00:01:21.030 revolution that would have facilitated Ted getting 00:01:21.030 --> 00:01:26.989 the ideas that he had out to the country, out 00:01:26.989 --> 00:01:30.530 to the entire world, that technology came on 00:01:30.530 --> 00:01:34.450 the scene during the latter part of Kaczynski's 00:01:34.450 --> 00:01:38.989 terrorist campaign in the late 80s and early 00:01:38.989 --> 00:01:43.760 90s. But had he come a decade later, then he 00:01:43.760 --> 00:01:47.959 would have been able to participate in the Gen 00:01:47.959 --> 00:01:52.120 X dream of the internet as being something where 00:01:52.120 --> 00:01:57.489 ideas could be exchanged freely and openly. The 00:01:57.489 --> 00:02:00.170 dream that was still motivating Jack Dorsey when 00:02:00.170 --> 00:02:03.750 he famously called Twitter the free speech wing 00:02:03.750 --> 00:02:06.489 of the free speech movement. In any case, what 00:02:06.489 --> 00:02:10.050 Kaczynski called the system maps well onto the 00:02:10.050 --> 00:02:14.189 idea of the managerial state or what... Thomas 00:02:14.189 --> 00:02:17.669 Saas called the therapeutic state. Tom Woods 00:02:17.669 --> 00:02:21.669 calls the blob. Curtis Yarvin called the cathedral. 00:02:22.030 --> 00:02:25.150 And parenthetically, yes, Yarvin is Jewish. He 00:02:25.150 --> 00:02:27.889 could have called it the synagogue, but chose 00:02:27.889 --> 00:02:30.949 instead to call it the cathedral. Though in fairness 00:02:30.949 --> 00:02:34.449 to him, the idea of a cathedral as having an 00:02:34.449 --> 00:02:37.930 elaborate, inspiring, and somewhat intimidating 00:02:37.930 --> 00:02:42.389 edifice is part of what allows the... cathedral 00:02:42.389 --> 00:02:44.889 to do what it does that allows the managerial 00:02:44.889 --> 00:02:48.129 state to do what it does is that it is draped 00:02:48.129 --> 00:02:52.550 in ornate Fixings, whether they be physical or 00:02:52.550 --> 00:02:55.669 rhetorical in the sense that they self -justify 00:02:55.669 --> 00:03:00.789 themselves as democratic or whether it be by 00:03:00.789 --> 00:03:06.189 way of credentialism. These are studies and pronouncements 00:03:06.189 --> 00:03:10.110 made by the expert class who has gone through 00:03:10.110 --> 00:03:13.590 the academic institutions. Paul Gottfried and 00:03:13.590 --> 00:03:16.990 Sam Francis called it the managerial state. That's 00:03:16.990 --> 00:03:20.270 probably the phrase used most frequently here, 00:03:20.370 --> 00:03:23.490 although it's not my personal favorite. James 00:03:23.490 --> 00:03:26.330 Wilson called it the bureaucratic state. Jack 00:03:26.330 --> 00:03:29.569 Donovan, riffing from the never -ending story 00:03:29.569 --> 00:03:33.349 book and movie from the 80s, called it the nothing, 00:03:33.590 --> 00:03:36.409 the great nothing. The King James Bible called 00:03:36.409 --> 00:03:39.509 it the powers that be. And my personal favorite 00:03:39.509 --> 00:03:41.969 comes from Hartiste, who called it globo homo. 00:03:41.969 --> 00:03:45.150 It's my favorite because it's that trademark 00:03:45.150 --> 00:03:48.569 trenchant innuendo and double meaning that Hartiste 00:03:48.569 --> 00:03:51.150 became so famous for because, of course, globo 00:03:51.150 --> 00:03:55.750 homo evokes the all -purpose slur of homo that 00:03:55.750 --> 00:03:58.370 was common in childhood parlance a generation 00:03:58.370 --> 00:04:02.009 ago. But more significantly, it comes from the 00:04:02.009 --> 00:04:06.099 Greek... prefix homos which means same and it 00:04:06.099 --> 00:04:09.419 is similar to the great nothing the process of 00:04:09.419 --> 00:04:15.620 vacuuming up all of the variety of expressions 00:04:15.620 --> 00:04:19.839 of human action through culture and politics 00:04:19.839 --> 00:04:24.269 and religion and turning them into a globally 00:04:24.269 --> 00:04:29.050 homogenized enlightened hedonism devoid of anything 00:04:29.050 --> 00:04:33.470 more than the immediate avoidance of discomfort 00:04:33.470 --> 00:04:38.399 and the continual stream of pleasure. That is 00:04:38.399 --> 00:04:42.240 fed to the masses. This is Aldous Huxley's idea 00:04:42.240 --> 00:04:45.500 of Soma in Brave New World. It's fed to the masses 00:04:45.500 --> 00:04:48.819 so that the elite institutions, the members, 00:04:48.899 --> 00:04:54.079 the ruling class that controls through a sort 00:04:54.079 --> 00:04:58.129 of committee. what the system or the managerial 00:04:58.129 --> 00:05:01.670 states, bureaucratic states, globo -homo does, 00:05:01.790 --> 00:05:04.529 the decisions that it makes. As to those decisions, 00:05:04.689 --> 00:05:07.230 whatever term is used, what it is getting at 00:05:07.230 --> 00:05:09.990 is the confluence of institutional forces that 00:05:09.990 --> 00:05:13.069 seem culturally and politically totally impervious 00:05:13.069 --> 00:05:16.250 to challenge, whether it be financial or political 00:05:16.250 --> 00:05:19.050 or cultural. No matter how much these institutions 00:05:19.050 --> 00:05:22.850 seem to fail objectively, think of the Iraq War 00:05:22.850 --> 00:05:28.019 or the response to covid the financial crash 00:05:28.019 --> 00:05:32.500 of 2008 or the migrant invasion of europe no 00:05:32.500 --> 00:05:37.300 matter how often and continuously the managerial 00:05:37.300 --> 00:05:41.899 state fails by any sort of objective metric well 00:05:41.899 --> 00:05:44.079 other than the objective metric of sustaining 00:05:44.079 --> 00:05:47.819 their own ability to continue to control and 00:05:47.819 --> 00:05:50.379 direct events other than that metric they seem 00:05:50.379 --> 00:05:54.370 to continuously fail on all fronts and yet undeterred, 00:05:54.370 --> 00:05:57.050 roll on like a juggernaut. And one of the things 00:05:57.050 --> 00:05:59.209 that unites all of these critics, Kaczynski, 00:05:59.290 --> 00:06:03.310 Saas, Wood, Jarvin, Gottfried, Francis, Wilson, 00:06:03.569 --> 00:06:07.089 Donovan, the Bible, Hartiste, and so many others 00:06:07.089 --> 00:06:09.970 offering critiques, whether they be of the neo 00:06:09.970 --> 00:06:13.550 -reactionary variety as these are, or from other 00:06:13.550 --> 00:06:15.610 angles, no matter what the critiques are, they 00:06:15.610 --> 00:06:18.750 all are quite uniformly impotent when it comes 00:06:18.750 --> 00:06:23.639 to... having any impact, any effect on how that 00:06:23.639 --> 00:06:27.379 system operates. This is going to be a bit of 00:06:27.379 --> 00:06:30.740 a potpourri recording. That is a good enough 00:06:30.740 --> 00:06:35.600 segue into one thing that might potentially disrupt 00:06:35.600 --> 00:06:39.300 Globo Homo's vice grip on everything, and that 00:06:39.300 --> 00:06:43.959 is artificial intelligence. This week, C -Dance 00:06:43.959 --> 00:06:47.899 2 .0 has been made available to the public and... 00:06:48.509 --> 00:06:50.930 If you haven't seen what CDance is capable of, 00:06:51.110 --> 00:06:54.949 I encourage doing so. There's a link in the show 00:06:54.949 --> 00:06:57.449 notes that provides a menagerie of different 00:06:57.449 --> 00:07:00.170 things that CDance has been able to do just in 00:07:00.170 --> 00:07:03.269 the first week of being open to the internet 00:07:03.269 --> 00:07:06.730 using public. And it has blasted through the 00:07:06.730 --> 00:07:12.199 uncanny valley that has characterized AI. video 00:07:12.199 --> 00:07:14.240 productions over the last couple of years where 00:07:14.240 --> 00:07:18.699 it is really the untrained eye can detect almost 00:07:18.699 --> 00:07:22.779 immediately that what is being presented is not 00:07:22.779 --> 00:07:26.819 live action. It's comparable to CGI and in a 00:07:26.819 --> 00:07:29.240 lot of cases, quite bad CGI, especially on particular 00:07:29.240 --> 00:07:32.399 aspects like human movements, mouth movements, 00:07:32.540 --> 00:07:35.139 and the coordination between sound and the movement 00:07:35.139 --> 00:07:39.519 of lips, hands, walking, a lot of the subtle 00:07:39.519 --> 00:07:42.779 things that have to do with human movement in 00:07:42.779 --> 00:07:46.600 particular, that up until Seedance were clearly 00:07:46.600 --> 00:07:50.680 not real humans operating in real space, but 00:07:50.680 --> 00:07:55.339 that is gone with Seedance 2. It looks and sounds 00:07:55.339 --> 00:07:59.240 just like actors and actresses you'd be familiar 00:07:59.240 --> 00:08:02.819 with. There are a series of AI -generated scenes 00:08:02.819 --> 00:08:06.579 riffing off of... Breaking Bad that look like 00:08:06.579 --> 00:08:09.000 they could have come directly from a cut from 00:08:09.000 --> 00:08:11.139 the show. I've not seen it, but I've seen clips 00:08:11.139 --> 00:08:15.199 here and there. And so the redone versions of 00:08:15.199 --> 00:08:18.019 scenes take place from a little bit of a different 00:08:18.019 --> 00:08:20.660 angle and a bit of a different spin on the event. 00:08:20.759 --> 00:08:23.000 So this isn't just directly copying something 00:08:23.000 --> 00:08:25.660 else that was already produced. This is creating 00:08:25.660 --> 00:08:28.899 something that could have been included in the 00:08:28.899 --> 00:08:33.100 show series production to represent various scenes, 00:08:33.200 --> 00:08:36.250 but wasn't. And of course it wasn't because it 00:08:36.250 --> 00:08:38.870 wasn't actually recorded this way when the show 00:08:38.870 --> 00:08:42.210 was made over a decade ago. But now, from the 00:08:42.210 --> 00:08:45.750 footage that exists from the previous show and 00:08:45.750 --> 00:08:50.470 the capacity of the C -Dance 2 .0... underlying 00:08:50.470 --> 00:08:54.549 its operations that creates new video and audio 00:08:54.549 --> 00:08:57.190 effects that look like they could have come from 00:08:57.190 --> 00:09:01.470 the exact time that the actual thing that is 00:09:01.470 --> 00:09:06.350 being impersonated or that is having a new reimagined 00:09:06.350 --> 00:09:10.529 spin on it presented, that you would be totally 00:09:10.529 --> 00:09:13.789 unaware of that if not for having previous knowledge 00:09:13.789 --> 00:09:17.629 of the show that is being riffed off of. And 00:09:17.629 --> 00:09:21.690 one of the criticisms of AI is that it's putatively 00:09:21.690 --> 00:09:25.250 can't come up with anything new. It's just remixing 00:09:25.250 --> 00:09:28.330 things that already exist. But while that might 00:09:28.330 --> 00:09:30.929 be in some sense tautologically accurate, it 00:09:30.929 --> 00:09:34.190 doesn't really what critics insinuate that it 00:09:34.190 --> 00:09:36.789 means. Because, of course, the same criticism 00:09:36.789 --> 00:09:40.129 could be made of any author who is writing some 00:09:40.129 --> 00:09:44.340 new novel or some... new piece of non -fiction 00:09:44.340 --> 00:09:47.620 unless he is coming up with neologisms that are 00:09:47.620 --> 00:09:49.980 literally words that have never been used before 00:09:49.980 --> 00:09:53.460 he's just recombining words that already exist 00:09:53.460 --> 00:09:55.740 out there but the output i don't think people 00:09:55.740 --> 00:09:57.620 would say well there's nothing new in here because 00:09:57.620 --> 00:10:01.519 we have definitions for all of these words and 00:10:01.519 --> 00:10:04.299 phrases and terms being used ergo this isn't 00:10:04.299 --> 00:10:07.629 anything new But by taking the collective output 00:10:07.629 --> 00:10:11.470 of humanity that is recorded in some digital 00:10:11.470 --> 00:10:16.110 form and remixing it in effectively infinite 00:10:16.110 --> 00:10:21.250 different ways that can be guided by simple prompts, 00:10:21.529 --> 00:10:25.149 input prompts from users, that is every bit as 00:10:25.149 --> 00:10:30.750 novel as a new show or movie or book or... Soon, 00:10:30.870 --> 00:10:34.529 computer game being created. What CDance 2 .0 00:10:34.529 --> 00:10:39.309 shows is that big budget action slop, romantic 00:10:39.309 --> 00:10:43.830 comedies, anime, horror, all of the different 00:10:43.830 --> 00:10:47.269 genres of film are going to be trivially easy 00:10:47.269 --> 00:10:52.870 to produce. What CGI did to Claymation is going 00:10:52.870 --> 00:10:56.789 to be what AI is going to do to CGI. Not just 00:10:56.789 --> 00:11:01.269 CGI, but the entire... The entire edifice that 00:11:01.269 --> 00:11:05.049 surrounds video production and audio production 00:11:05.049 --> 00:11:10.210 now. The studios and the sets, the actors, the 00:11:10.210 --> 00:11:14.830 agents, the stunt people, the years it takes 00:11:14.830 --> 00:11:19.230 on sites to cobble together these big budget 00:11:19.230 --> 00:11:22.330 Hollywood productions that have production costs 00:11:22.330 --> 00:11:25.909 running into the... hundreds of millions of dollars, 00:11:25.990 --> 00:11:29.529 it is very little, if any, exaggeration to say 00:11:29.529 --> 00:11:31.950 that that is, we're on the cusp of that being 00:11:31.950 --> 00:11:34.990 able to be done by a single person sitting on 00:11:34.990 --> 00:11:37.190 a personal computer in his basement. That person 00:11:37.190 --> 00:11:38.870 sitting in his basement coming up with things 00:11:38.870 --> 00:11:43.590 via prompt for CDance 2 .0 to create isn't as, 00:11:43.769 --> 00:11:46.490 of course, easily able to take advantage of the 00:11:46.490 --> 00:11:50.580 network effect that Universal Studios can. But 00:11:50.580 --> 00:11:52.559 that was the same type of argument that was made 00:11:52.559 --> 00:11:57.299 when YouTube was in its seminal stages. Sure, 00:11:57.360 --> 00:11:59.860 people could broadcast themselves on a screen 00:11:59.860 --> 00:12:03.419 just like ABC or CBS, NBC, Fox, whatever did, 00:12:03.600 --> 00:12:06.940 but they don't have any network effect. Nobody's 00:12:06.940 --> 00:12:08.700 going to go seek them out, and if they do, they're 00:12:08.700 --> 00:12:10.100 not going to be able to share their experience 00:12:10.100 --> 00:12:13.120 with anyone else because there isn't that shared 00:12:13.120 --> 00:12:15.860 social and cultural experience that people have 00:12:15.860 --> 00:12:18.850 by watching the NBC nightly news. Well, here 00:12:18.850 --> 00:12:21.889 we are today where the largest YouTube creators 00:12:21.889 --> 00:12:26.610 get orders of magnitude, literally hundreds times, 00:12:27.009 --> 00:12:30.210 not hundreds more, hundreds of times more views 00:12:30.210 --> 00:12:33.789 than any of the old network stations do. And 00:12:33.789 --> 00:12:38.889 unlike the YouTube versus TV network battle. 00:12:40.610 --> 00:12:45.970 yesterday. Seedance versus the old studio production 00:12:45.970 --> 00:12:50.929 battle is one in which the old studios have an 00:12:50.929 --> 00:12:53.570 additional major weakness that the networks didn't 00:12:53.570 --> 00:12:55.840 have and that the network Model was a free one, 00:12:55.940 --> 00:12:58.240 subjected to some advertisements, but it didn't 00:12:58.240 --> 00:13:01.620 cost anything to partake in what the networks 00:13:01.620 --> 00:13:04.139 were putting out. But of course, to watch studio 00:13:04.139 --> 00:13:06.320 productions, especially when they first come 00:13:06.320 --> 00:13:09.399 out, requires an expenditure of resources. And 00:13:09.399 --> 00:13:14.559 so not only are the network big budget productions 00:13:14.559 --> 00:13:18.440 going to be almost indistinguishable in terms 00:13:18.440 --> 00:13:22.539 of the... on -screen product they're also going 00:13:22.539 --> 00:13:25.360 to take years instead of hours to produce and 00:13:25.360 --> 00:13:28.799 they're going to ask you to fork over a bunch 00:13:28.799 --> 00:13:32.279 of money to have access to them while cdance 00:13:32.279 --> 00:13:35.440 will be free or will operate on a sort of freemium 00:13:35.440 --> 00:13:37.539 model where people if they want to be patrons 00:13:37.539 --> 00:13:41.500 can but the general public will be able to watch 00:13:41.500 --> 00:13:44.700 these see dance productions for free. There is 00:13:44.700 --> 00:13:49.340 also the sense among critics of AI that humans 00:13:49.340 --> 00:13:52.740 aren't going to go for this artificially generated 00:13:52.740 --> 00:13:57.460 cultural content, even if it is indistinguishable 00:13:57.460 --> 00:14:00.799 to the naked eye and naked ear from the cultural 00:14:00.799 --> 00:14:04.139 production of individual humans or committees 00:14:04.139 --> 00:14:07.039 of humans in the past. But the practical problem 00:14:07.039 --> 00:14:09.659 aside of being able to distinguish what's what. 00:14:10.200 --> 00:14:12.539 Because undoubtedly, and it's probably already 00:14:12.539 --> 00:14:15.759 happened, undoubtedly, once it becomes impossible, 00:14:16.240 --> 00:14:18.059 effectively impossible with the naked eye or 00:14:18.059 --> 00:14:20.220 ear to detect what's AI and what's not, what 00:14:20.220 --> 00:14:23.299 people are going to create, and I use that term 00:14:23.299 --> 00:14:27.399 loosely to refer to simply putting in prompts 00:14:27.399 --> 00:14:31.139 into these AI systems to, quote, create, unquote. 00:14:31.769 --> 00:14:34.070 movies and songs and books, and that are going 00:14:34.070 --> 00:14:35.909 to, to the extent that they're able to, going 00:14:35.909 --> 00:14:39.429 to market those productions as not being AI, 00:14:39.590 --> 00:14:41.950 as being things that they produce the old -fashioned 00:14:41.950 --> 00:14:45.029 way, at least until the threshold for tolerance 00:14:45.029 --> 00:14:48.990 of AI gets on an equal footing with the old -fashioned 00:14:48.990 --> 00:14:51.929 way of making movies or writing books. And not 00:14:51.929 --> 00:14:54.549 surprisingly, there is a generational component 00:14:54.549 --> 00:14:59.490 to this. The Economist YouGov In a poll conducted 00:14:59.490 --> 00:15:02.129 this week, asked respondents how much they trust 00:15:02.129 --> 00:15:05.750 artificial intelligence, those under the age 00:15:05.750 --> 00:15:10.809 of 30, 12 % said a great deal. Among those aged 00:15:10.809 --> 00:15:15.090 30 to 44, 11%. And then between the ages of 45 00:15:15.090 --> 00:15:18.970 and 64 is 3%. And among those 65 and older, 2%. 00:15:18.970 --> 00:15:23.850 So Zoomers and millennials. about five times, 00:15:24.029 --> 00:15:27.710 five to six times, is likely to express a great 00:15:27.710 --> 00:15:30.250 deal of trust in artificial intelligence compared 00:15:30.250 --> 00:15:34.149 to Xers and Boomers. From the digitally artificial 00:15:34.149 --> 00:15:39.009 to the analog artificial, YouGov also ran a recent 00:15:39.009 --> 00:15:41.870 survey questioning respondents on their views 00:15:41.870 --> 00:15:44.450 of foreign leaders, and this is among Americans, 00:15:44.629 --> 00:15:46.610 people in the United States, U .S. citizens, 00:15:46.789 --> 00:15:49.039 presumably. and actually looking at the technical 00:15:49.039 --> 00:15:51.820 notes explicitly, U .S. citizens, they were asked 00:15:51.820 --> 00:15:55.059 about 25 world leaders and asked to rank them 00:15:55.059 --> 00:15:57.299 as those that they have the most favorable view 00:15:57.299 --> 00:15:59.240 of and those they have the least favorable view 00:15:59.240 --> 00:16:01.679 of. And in terms of net favorability, the one 00:16:01.679 --> 00:16:05.720 who came out on top among those 25 world leaders 00:16:05.720 --> 00:16:08.580 that were asked about is the president of our 00:16:08.580 --> 00:16:11.799 greatest ally. And I don't mean our oldest ally, 00:16:11.940 --> 00:16:14.179 although Macron does do pretty well coming in 00:16:14.179 --> 00:16:17.990 seventh place among the 25. world leaders and 00:16:17.990 --> 00:16:20.389 i'm not even talking about our greatest ally 00:16:20.389 --> 00:16:22.990 in the 20th century in the early part of the 00:16:22.990 --> 00:16:26.190 21st century benjamin netanyahu in fact he does 00:16:26.190 --> 00:16:30.950 quite poorly coming in at 17th out of 25 coming 00:16:30.950 --> 00:16:34.970 in below donald trump but no number one is the 00:16:34.970 --> 00:16:37.830 man who before becoming president was famous 00:16:37.830 --> 00:16:40.889 for playing a piano with his penis and that is 00:16:40.889 --> 00:16:44.289 zielinski of ukraine And it's not even particularly 00:16:44.289 --> 00:16:47.409 close. He beats the second place, who is Mark 00:16:47.409 --> 00:16:50.590 Carney of Canada, by eight points. Donald Trump 00:16:50.590 --> 00:16:54.950 comes in at 16th out of 25. Rounding out the 00:16:54.950 --> 00:16:58.250 very bottom of the list is Kim Jong -un of North 00:16:58.250 --> 00:17:02.299 Korea at 25th, but just behind him. Only beating 00:17:02.299 --> 00:17:05.660 him by a single point is Vladimir Putin of Russia. 00:17:05.859 --> 00:17:09.660 And so the most favorably viewed world leader 00:17:09.660 --> 00:17:14.160 among Americans is Zelensky, and the second most 00:17:14.160 --> 00:17:18.359 poorly viewed leader among Americans is Putin. 00:17:18.599 --> 00:17:21.700 And so here, with everything that was promised 00:17:21.700 --> 00:17:25.519 about Ukraine falling through and being... unequivocally 00:17:25.519 --> 00:17:28.400 now at this point shown that Ukraine cannot win 00:17:28.400 --> 00:17:31.240 this war with Russia, that it never had a chance, 00:17:31.240 --> 00:17:33.839 that the only reason it's been able to limp along 00:17:33.839 --> 00:17:39.319 is because of perpetual infusions of support, 00:17:39.519 --> 00:17:42.059 military and financial support from the West. 00:17:42.279 --> 00:17:45.880 While Russia, which unlike Ukraine, is a real 00:17:45.880 --> 00:17:49.359 country with a real leader who is popular among... 00:17:49.769 --> 00:17:52.009 the Russian citizenry who has put the country 00:17:52.009 --> 00:17:56.930 back together and who has managed in the face 00:17:56.930 --> 00:18:01.809 of a war on the border that has cost Russia a 00:18:01.809 --> 00:18:05.390 lot in terms of blood and treasure, has strengthened 00:18:05.390 --> 00:18:08.529 the Russian economy and has done so in tandem 00:18:08.529 --> 00:18:13.049 with a reclamation back to... traditional Russian 00:18:13.049 --> 00:18:17.150 culture, both secular and spiritual, in terms 00:18:17.150 --> 00:18:20.309 of the embrace of the Orthodox Russian Church. 00:18:20.549 --> 00:18:24.950 So here is yet another example of where the managerial 00:18:24.950 --> 00:18:27.890 state or the system, the blob, the nothing, globo, 00:18:27.890 --> 00:18:30.910 homo, whatever term you want to use to describe 00:18:30.910 --> 00:18:34.059 it. Here is another example where since 2022, 00:18:34.359 --> 00:18:36.539 it has just fallen flat on its face and failed 00:18:36.539 --> 00:18:39.660 entirely. All of the objectives that were put 00:18:39.660 --> 00:18:41.680 out have not been reached. All of the promises 00:18:41.680 --> 00:18:44.619 made have not been kept. Hundreds of billions, 00:18:44.660 --> 00:18:46.740 if not trillions of dollars at this point have 00:18:46.740 --> 00:18:49.980 been siphoned off from the West into this corrupt 00:18:49.980 --> 00:18:53.519 money laundering pit of lies and death and destruction. 00:18:53.980 --> 00:18:56.799 And yet through all of that, the unstoppable 00:18:56.799 --> 00:19:01.539 juggernaut maintains its control and has even 00:19:01.539 --> 00:19:04.220 managed to convince if this polling is to be 00:19:04.220 --> 00:19:07.279 believed. And as we've discussed previously, 00:19:07.559 --> 00:19:09.619 there is plenty of reason to put a lot of stake 00:19:09.619 --> 00:19:13.440 in these polls. Economist YouGov is a very reliable 00:19:13.440 --> 00:19:17.460 polling operation that has shown impressive predictive 00:19:17.460 --> 00:19:20.680 power in the past. And so if we take this seriously, 00:19:20.779 --> 00:19:24.079 as we should, we see that, again, the global 00:19:24.079 --> 00:19:26.980 homo, the system, the managerial state, it gets 00:19:26.980 --> 00:19:30.539 what it wants. And even though it loses objectively 00:19:30.539 --> 00:19:33.940 in terms of all the things that it promised on 00:19:33.940 --> 00:19:37.660 the eve of this latest debacle that it forced 00:19:37.660 --> 00:19:41.559 the world kicking and screaming into, that even 00:19:41.559 --> 00:19:45.900 after failing, it continues to chug along, not 00:19:45.900 --> 00:19:49.140 much worse for the wear. And it even gets the 00:19:49.140 --> 00:19:52.319 assent of the people who have suffered because 00:19:52.319 --> 00:19:56.539 of what the Western world has done over the last... 00:19:56.960 --> 00:20:01.039 four years in funding and impoverishing its own 00:20:01.039 --> 00:20:06.480 citizenry to money launder and prop up this proxy 00:20:06.480 --> 00:20:12.500 military regime to engage in a hopeless struggle 00:20:12.500 --> 00:20:15.599 against russia just to enfeeble russia i guess 00:20:15.599 --> 00:20:17.440 at least ostensibly that's the reason i think 00:20:17.440 --> 00:20:20.779 that real reason is more A mix of glee and seeing 00:20:20.779 --> 00:20:23.079 the bloodlust of a bunch of Slavs killing each 00:20:23.079 --> 00:20:25.240 other and also the money laundering opportunities 00:20:25.240 --> 00:20:29.079 that Ukraine has afforded members of the managerial 00:20:29.079 --> 00:20:31.559 elite. But whatever those confluence of reasons, 00:20:31.700 --> 00:20:36.500 the result is, while the Ukrainian population 00:20:36.500 --> 00:20:41.420 lost, the Western system, of which Zelensky is 00:20:41.420 --> 00:20:45.849 part of, won. And speaking of winning... Contra 00:20:45.849 --> 00:20:51.549 Candace Owens, who asserted that the TPUSA put 00:20:51.549 --> 00:20:56.049 on, quote, all -American halftime show, unquote, 00:20:56.190 --> 00:21:00.589 that was to compete with the Bad Bunny Super 00:21:00.589 --> 00:21:02.990 Bowl halftime performance that featured someone 00:21:02.990 --> 00:21:07.089 who didn't speak or doesn't speak English, putting 00:21:07.089 --> 00:21:10.089 together a halftime show that featured a bunch 00:21:10.089 --> 00:21:14.170 of Central and South American countries' flags. 00:21:15.180 --> 00:21:19.079 and celebrated that culture not just in Latin 00:21:19.079 --> 00:21:22.500 America, but inside of the United States as well, 00:21:22.500 --> 00:21:27.420 most iconically with a bodega storefront, La 00:21:27.420 --> 00:21:31.440 Marquita, with a neon sign in the window that 00:21:31.440 --> 00:21:35.900 says, We Accept EBT. As an alternative to that, 00:21:35.980 --> 00:21:40.880 TPUSA put on what was styled an all -American 00:21:40.880 --> 00:21:46.059 halftime show featuring Artist without the mainstream 00:21:46.059 --> 00:21:50.660 popularity today of Bad Bunny, who is allegedly 00:21:50.660 --> 00:21:55.160 the most downloaded musician in the history of 00:21:55.160 --> 00:21:58.920 the world. The headliner of that TPUSA show being 00:21:58.920 --> 00:22:01.859 Kid Rock, and that is the only name I'm familiar 00:22:01.859 --> 00:22:04.819 with at all from the lineup. Kid Rock was a pretty 00:22:04.819 --> 00:22:07.880 big name from about 20 years ago in the aughts. 00:22:08.359 --> 00:22:12.400 But even in his heyday, the toppy wasn't equivalent 00:22:12.400 --> 00:22:17.019 to a Taylor Swift today. And yet the All -American 00:22:17.019 --> 00:22:20.720 halftime show was, by any objective measure, 00:22:21.039 --> 00:22:25.559 quite a success. In the first day after it was 00:22:25.559 --> 00:22:28.519 played, TPUSA claimed that it had something like 00:22:28.519 --> 00:22:31.460 20 million total views across all platforms, 00:22:31.720 --> 00:22:34.640 and Candace Owens came out scoffing at that, 00:22:34.720 --> 00:22:37.579 saying that that had to have been based on the 00:22:37.579 --> 00:22:40.220 comment ratio on the YouTube page, that that 00:22:40.220 --> 00:22:43.240 had to have been artificial. And there are ways 00:22:43.240 --> 00:22:46.099 to goose those numbers through bot farms and 00:22:46.099 --> 00:22:49.259 the like, but to such an enormous scale, it would 00:22:49.259 --> 00:22:52.539 have required YouTube being an accomplice who... 00:22:53.069 --> 00:22:56.230 through the platform itself, artificially boosted 00:22:56.230 --> 00:23:00.349 the numbers without users, whether they be real 00:23:00.349 --> 00:23:03.609 people or bots, clicking on the link, or it would 00:23:03.609 --> 00:23:08.589 have required a bot farm push, the likes of which 00:23:08.589 --> 00:23:12.170 have never happened up to this point with such 00:23:12.170 --> 00:23:15.049 rapidity. And while that, I suppose, wouldn't 00:23:15.049 --> 00:23:19.430 be impossible, given the enormous amount of money... 00:23:19.740 --> 00:23:21.900 the hundreds of millions of dollars that TPUSA 00:23:21.900 --> 00:23:24.940 has made in the wake of Charlie Kirk's death, 00:23:25.140 --> 00:23:28.140 that wouldn't be impossible. But the simpler 00:23:28.140 --> 00:23:31.460 explanation and the one that is backed up by 00:23:31.460 --> 00:23:34.920 this Economist YouGov poll that was conducted 00:23:34.920 --> 00:23:37.500 this week that asked respondents if they had 00:23:37.500 --> 00:23:40.220 watched the Super Bowl, the Super Bowl, the Super 00:23:40.220 --> 00:23:42.440 Bowl halftime show, or the All -American halftime 00:23:42.440 --> 00:23:46.079 show, well, this pool of respondents, some 24 00:23:46.079 --> 00:23:51.190 % say that yes, they did. quote, watch the All 00:23:51.190 --> 00:23:53.710 -American halftime show featuring Kid Rock and 00:23:53.710 --> 00:23:56.950 Brantley Gilbert, unquote. And that broadly checks 00:23:56.950 --> 00:24:00.130 out. The poll also asked respondents what percentages, 00:24:00.309 --> 00:24:03.170 these are adults over the age of 18 in the United 00:24:03.170 --> 00:24:05.910 States, watched the Super Bowl this year. The 00:24:05.910 --> 00:24:09.650 figure that Economist YouGov found was 53%, and 00:24:09.650 --> 00:24:13.299 the official... TV rating for the Super Bowl 00:24:13.299 --> 00:24:16.400 was 128 million viewers in the United States, 00:24:16.559 --> 00:24:20.319 and that comes to right about exactly at 53 % 00:24:20.319 --> 00:24:23.619 of adults in the United States, about half of 00:24:23.619 --> 00:24:26.160 them. If there's 128 million who watch the Super 00:24:26.160 --> 00:24:30.299 Bowl, well, that's among about 250 million adults 00:24:30.299 --> 00:24:33.380 in the United States. And so that 24 % of all 00:24:33.380 --> 00:24:35.119 adults watching the All -American Halftime Show 00:24:35.119 --> 00:24:37.640 comes to about 60 million people. Now, not all 00:24:37.640 --> 00:24:40.609 those people watched it live. which is where, 00:24:40.690 --> 00:24:42.589 and I need to make a quick addendum looking here, 00:24:42.630 --> 00:24:45.210 I said that that was 20 million viewers. That's 00:24:45.210 --> 00:24:50.009 what TPUSA claimed among all platforms. I misspoke. 00:24:50.029 --> 00:24:54.529 That is just on TPUSA's YouTube channel. And 00:24:54.529 --> 00:24:58.630 so across all platforms and all iterations, the 00:24:58.630 --> 00:25:02.029 Economist YouGov survey suggests that about 60 00:25:02.029 --> 00:25:05.210 million people have seen it in one form or another. 00:25:05.869 --> 00:25:08.730 And so while it might be gay, the numbers there 00:25:08.730 --> 00:25:12.730 do not appear to be fake. And apropos of not 00:25:12.730 --> 00:25:15.829 a lot of anything, the Economist YouGov poll 00:25:15.829 --> 00:25:18.890 posed the question of support or opposition to 00:25:18.890 --> 00:25:23.190 the death penalty. Just 29 % of respondents said 00:25:23.190 --> 00:25:26.269 that they are opposed to the death penalty. 47 00:25:26.269 --> 00:25:30.630 % were in favor and 24 % not sure. That is a 00:25:30.630 --> 00:25:33.829 figure that hasn't moved much at all in the last 00:25:33.829 --> 00:25:36.470 generation. It's not one I track particularly 00:25:36.470 --> 00:25:39.849 closely, but there is a general sense that the 00:25:39.849 --> 00:25:43.130 cultural ratchet always shifts to the left and 00:25:43.130 --> 00:25:47.190 support for capital punishment tends to be associated 00:25:47.190 --> 00:25:49.990 with right -wing political beliefs. And in fact, 00:25:49.990 --> 00:25:53.130 that's the case with this poll, with 73 % of 00:25:53.130 --> 00:25:55.410 Trump supporters favoring the death penalty compared 00:25:55.410 --> 00:25:59.190 to just 24 % of Harris voters in the 2024 election. 00:25:59.339 --> 00:26:02.839 But where the pro -capital punishment side really 00:26:02.839 --> 00:26:06.400 gets the advantage is among political independents 00:26:06.400 --> 00:26:12.079 who 41 % to 29 % favor the death penalty for 00:26:12.079 --> 00:26:15.400 convicted murderers. Also included was a question 00:26:15.400 --> 00:26:17.920 about legal immigration. Most of the attention 00:26:17.920 --> 00:26:23.019 and the ICE deportations and everything surrounding 00:26:23.019 --> 00:26:27.759 that that has been part of the... National conversation, 00:26:27.779 --> 00:26:31.359 as they say, over the last several weeks. That 00:26:31.359 --> 00:26:34.980 all has to do with illegal immigration. The question 00:26:34.980 --> 00:26:39.740 of legal immigration, which by the numbers now 00:26:39.740 --> 00:26:43.799 on a year -over -year basis is the more significant 00:26:43.799 --> 00:26:48.799 form of immigration in terms of the raw numbers 00:26:48.799 --> 00:26:53.019 of people coming to live inside the geographic 00:26:53.019 --> 00:26:56.109 boundaries of the United States. To the question 00:26:56.109 --> 00:26:59.349 of whether legal immigration should either be 00:26:59.349 --> 00:27:03.829 reduced or halted entirely, among Trump supporters, 00:27:04.089 --> 00:27:08.109 49 % want it reduced or stopped compared to just 00:27:08.109 --> 00:27:10.650 8 % of Harris voters. And so that breaks down 00:27:10.650 --> 00:27:14.170 to an overall population support for reducing 00:27:14.170 --> 00:27:17.849 or eliminating legal immigration of 29%, a little 00:27:17.849 --> 00:27:19.789 less than one in three Americans want to see 00:27:19.789 --> 00:27:23.599 a reduction in legal immigration. One interesting 00:27:23.599 --> 00:27:26.900 thing that distinguishes immigration restrictionist 00:27:26.900 --> 00:27:29.900 sentiments by whether the immigration in question 00:27:29.900 --> 00:27:35.279 is legal or illegal is that the... the question 00:27:35.279 --> 00:27:39.279 of illegal immigration is less racially divisive. 00:27:39.299 --> 00:27:44.420 Among whites, 31 % support a reduction or elimination 00:27:44.420 --> 00:27:48.099 of legal immigration. That figure for blacks 00:27:48.099 --> 00:27:52.440 is 25 % and for Hispanics is 28%. The reason 00:27:52.440 --> 00:27:55.940 it is less racially divisive is because unlike 00:27:55.940 --> 00:27:59.660 illegal immigration, which is largely coded as 00:27:59.660 --> 00:28:05.309 Hispanic migration or black migration in the 00:28:05.309 --> 00:28:10.269 case of haiti legal immigration is largely thought 00:28:10.269 --> 00:28:13.269 of as pertaining accurately thought of as pertaining 00:28:13.269 --> 00:28:19.710 to asia in general and subcontinental indian 00:28:19.710 --> 00:28:24.869 immigration in particular and Blacks and Hispanics, 00:28:24.869 --> 00:28:28.109 what we used to call NOMs, non -Asian minorities 00:28:28.109 --> 00:28:32.890 in the United States, are not as concerned about 00:28:32.890 --> 00:28:39.190 the prospects of Asian aspiring migrants to the 00:28:39.190 --> 00:28:43.730 West as they are about Blacks and Hispanic migrants 00:28:43.730 --> 00:28:46.450 to the United States. The YouGov Economist survey 00:28:46.450 --> 00:28:50.740 doesn't break out responses. among Asians, but 00:28:50.740 --> 00:28:54.779 I suspect if it did, that there would be the 00:28:54.779 --> 00:28:57.400 strongest support for legal migration would be 00:28:57.400 --> 00:28:59.859 found among Asians living in the United States. 00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:04.700 The CDC has released preliminary numbers on births 00:29:04.700 --> 00:29:10.539 in 2025, and a talking point on the heritage 00:29:10.539 --> 00:29:14.140 American right has been that non -Hispanic white 00:29:14.140 --> 00:29:19.130 births actually ticked back up to just barely 00:29:19.130 --> 00:29:23.190 constitute a majority of recorded births in the 00:29:23.190 --> 00:29:26.390 United States in 2025. And that is not a function 00:29:26.390 --> 00:29:29.309 of the white birth rate going up. The white birth 00:29:29.309 --> 00:29:32.450 rate in 2025 among non -Hispanic white women 00:29:32.450 --> 00:29:36.450 came in a little under 52, whereas when Biden 00:29:36.450 --> 00:29:39.769 was on his way out, it was over 53. And so it 00:29:39.769 --> 00:29:43.910 continues to drop. or in the last couple of quarters 00:29:43.910 --> 00:29:48.009 of Trump's second term, it has stayed steady. 00:29:48.150 --> 00:29:52.630 But the reason it has now, at least for 2025 00:29:52.630 --> 00:29:56.269 preliminarily, represented an outright majority 00:29:56.269 --> 00:30:03.269 at just a hair above 50%, up from 49 % the year 00:30:03.269 --> 00:30:07.150 before, is because Hispanic and especially Black 00:30:07.150 --> 00:30:11.019 fertility has dropped, and that really is remarkable. 00:30:11.180 --> 00:30:15.220 For the first time possibly in all of U .S. history, 00:30:15.400 --> 00:30:18.480 certainly the first time in the modern age, black 00:30:18.480 --> 00:30:21.220 fertility in the United States is lower than 00:30:21.220 --> 00:30:23.599 white fertility, and that's among non -Hispanics. 00:30:23.640 --> 00:30:27.079 The most recent figures for white fertility is 00:30:27.079 --> 00:30:31.480 52 births per thousand women, whereas for blacks 00:30:31.480 --> 00:30:35.819 it is just under 50 at 49 .6. To reach a total 00:30:35.819 --> 00:30:40.279 fertility rate of which is about what is required 00:30:40.279 --> 00:30:43.660 for replacement, requires a birth rate per 1 00:30:43.660 --> 00:30:47.299 ,000 women in the 70s. And unfortunately, what 00:30:47.299 --> 00:30:51.019 the CDC reports data in primarily is birth rate 00:30:51.019 --> 00:30:53.579 figures, whereas for the sake of clarity, total 00:30:53.579 --> 00:30:55.700 fertility rate is a lot easier to understand. 00:30:55.759 --> 00:30:59.119 It's hard to conceptualize what does 50 live 00:30:59.119 --> 00:31:02.079 births per 1 ,000 women in a year mean compared 00:31:02.079 --> 00:31:06.299 to 70 live births. among 1 ,000 women in a year, 00:31:06.380 --> 00:31:09.119 whereas total fertility rate gives you what the 00:31:09.119 --> 00:31:12.740 expected total number of children a woman will 00:31:12.740 --> 00:31:16.000 have over her lifetime at any given point, and 00:31:16.000 --> 00:31:18.980 that's a lot easier to grok because if it's less 00:31:18.980 --> 00:31:21.359 than two, then it's below replacement, and if 00:31:21.359 --> 00:31:23.700 it's above two, then it's above replacement. 00:31:23.940 --> 00:31:26.400 And just intuitively, you can sense that if a 00:31:26.400 --> 00:31:28.619 woman has one child over the course of her entire 00:31:28.619 --> 00:31:31.059 life, that's below fertility, whereas if she 00:31:31.059 --> 00:31:34.079 has three, that's pretty high fertility. But 00:31:34.079 --> 00:31:38.539 that corresponds to a birth rate of 30 and a 00:31:38.539 --> 00:31:42.299 birth rate of 90 per 1 ,000, respectively. That 00:31:42.299 --> 00:31:44.960 is harder to intuitively make sense of. And we'll 00:31:44.960 --> 00:31:46.880 bookend this with a look at the total fertility 00:31:46.880 --> 00:31:49.599 rates by race in the United States. But to get 00:31:49.599 --> 00:31:52.359 back to the birth rate, among whites, it's gone 00:31:52.359 --> 00:31:58.599 from 53 in 2023 to 52 now in 2026, presumably, 00:31:58.839 --> 00:32:01.640 the end of 2025, which is a decline in the birth 00:32:01.640 --> 00:32:05.390 rate of about... 2 % in the last two years. By 00:32:05.390 --> 00:32:09.269 contrast, among blacks in 2023, it was over 56, 00:32:09.430 --> 00:32:12.470 and now it's under 50, which is a decline of 00:32:12.470 --> 00:32:16.130 about 12 % in the black fertility rate in just 00:32:16.130 --> 00:32:19.269 the last two years. The Hispanic birth rate has 00:32:19.269 --> 00:32:22.289 declined at a rate about in between those two, 00:32:22.349 --> 00:32:26.930 going from 66 a couple years ago to 63 now, which 00:32:26.930 --> 00:32:30.529 represents a decline of about 5 % in the Hispanic 00:32:30.529 --> 00:32:33.299 birth rate in the United States. I'm not sure 00:32:33.299 --> 00:32:35.500 exactly how to interpret this. It's significant, 00:32:35.579 --> 00:32:37.859 and not just statistically significant, but also 00:32:37.859 --> 00:32:41.019 culturally. Is it Roe versus Wade being overturned, 00:32:41.019 --> 00:32:43.880 playing into this in some way? The thought was 00:32:43.880 --> 00:32:46.099 that that would boost fertility, especially on 00:32:46.099 --> 00:32:49.160 the lower end of the socioeconomic status ladder, 00:32:49.299 --> 00:32:51.640 since in some states abortions couldn't happen, 00:32:51.740 --> 00:32:54.119 so the thought would be that the people with 00:32:54.119 --> 00:32:57.079 the lowest conscientiousness, the lowest... capacity 00:32:57.079 --> 00:33:00.039 for forward planning would be the ones who would 00:33:00.039 --> 00:33:02.700 end up having more children than would have otherwise 00:33:02.700 --> 00:33:05.579 been the case if Roe versus Wade hadn't been 00:33:05.579 --> 00:33:10.460 overturned and abortion protections were kept 00:33:10.460 --> 00:33:13.839 in place in mostly red states where the populations 00:33:13.839 --> 00:33:16.990 didn't want abortions occurring. but maybe even 00:33:16.990 --> 00:33:18.869 in the case of the lower end of the socioeconomic 00:33:18.869 --> 00:33:22.490 stratum, that without the abortion backstop, 00:33:22.509 --> 00:33:25.369 or at least the sense that there is an abortion 00:33:25.369 --> 00:33:29.289 backstop, of course abortions can still be obtained 00:33:29.289 --> 00:33:33.990 in most places in the country, but with the idea 00:33:33.990 --> 00:33:37.630 that that is more difficult to pull off, there 00:33:37.630 --> 00:33:41.009 is less unprotected sex going on, especially 00:33:41.009 --> 00:33:43.829 among blacks. Taking a look at the total fertility 00:33:43.829 --> 00:33:47.589 rate by race from the CDC, this data is from 00:33:47.589 --> 00:33:50.509 the end of 2024, so the preliminary data from 00:33:50.509 --> 00:33:53.329 2025 is out, but it won't be completely formalized 00:33:53.329 --> 00:33:55.890 and cleaned up for a few months. This is the 00:33:55.890 --> 00:34:00.369 latest annualized data that is available. The 00:34:00.369 --> 00:34:03.069 overall total fertility rate in the United States 00:34:03.069 --> 00:34:07.220 is 1 .63. Again, replacement is a little bit 00:34:07.220 --> 00:34:10.840 over 2%. It's often referred to in the shorthand 00:34:10.840 --> 00:34:15.059 as being 2 .1. That's misleading with... infant 00:34:15.059 --> 00:34:18.420 death being as low as it is, it's probably closer 00:34:18.420 --> 00:34:22.300 in the developed world to something like 2 .02, 00:34:22.360 --> 00:34:27.639 but I think just using two as a mental benchmark 00:34:27.639 --> 00:34:30.880 is a perfectly fine and intuitive way of understanding 00:34:30.880 --> 00:34:35.539 whether fertility is below, at, or above replacement. 00:34:36.360 --> 00:34:39.699 Because on an individual level, the procreative 00:34:39.699 --> 00:34:42.719 question is one in which if you have one or zero 00:34:42.719 --> 00:34:45.300 children, you are losing ground. If you have 00:34:45.300 --> 00:34:47.380 two, you're treading water. And if you have more 00:34:47.380 --> 00:34:51.460 than two, then you are expanding. And so at 1 00:34:51.460 --> 00:34:56.219 .63, the total fertility rate of the United States 00:34:56.219 --> 00:34:59.440 is well below replacement. The lowest fertility 00:34:59.440 --> 00:35:03.320 rate of any measured... Racial or ethnic group 00:35:03.320 --> 00:35:05.760 in the United States is among American Indians 00:35:05.760 --> 00:35:14.860 at 1 .37. Next is Asians at 1 .46, followed then 00:35:14.860 --> 00:35:17.420 by blacks, again, below white replacement at 00:35:17.420 --> 00:35:21.739 1 .52. Whites are at just a hair higher at 1 00:35:21.739 --> 00:35:28.750 .53. Hispanics at 1 .95 are just a hair below 00:35:28.750 --> 00:35:31.929 replacement in the United States. And then Native 00:35:31.929 --> 00:35:35.050 Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders come in at 2 00:35:35.050 --> 00:35:39.670 .22, the only group in the United States that 00:35:39.670 --> 00:35:42.989 is above replacement currently. Another continuing 00:35:42.989 --> 00:35:48.570 trend in the nature of natalism in America, the 00:35:48.570 --> 00:35:52.670 only age range where birth rates are growing. 00:35:53.280 --> 00:35:58.059 is among women aged 40 and over. That has continued 00:35:58.059 --> 00:36:00.679 to increase over the last couple of years. It's 00:36:00.679 --> 00:36:04.480 a trend that has been in place for decades now, 00:36:04.780 --> 00:36:10.380 but that increasing modest uptick is from a very 00:36:10.380 --> 00:36:14.579 low base to start with. The CDC breaks down birth 00:36:14.579 --> 00:36:19.599 rates by five -year age ranges, the highest birth 00:36:19.599 --> 00:36:22.190 rate range currently. and these numbers again 00:36:22.190 --> 00:36:27.730 are from 2024, is among women aged 30 to 34. 00:36:28.070 --> 00:36:30.530 Having in the last couple of years surpassed 00:36:30.530 --> 00:36:32.289 what used to be the highest, which was among 00:36:32.289 --> 00:36:39.050 those aged 25 to 29, and that continuing increase 00:36:39.050 --> 00:36:42.510 in the median maternal age surely has something 00:36:42.510 --> 00:36:45.369 to do with the rise of attendant health problems 00:36:45.369 --> 00:36:48.389 in kids, including things like an increase in 00:36:48.389 --> 00:36:50.880 early -term births. which is another thing that 00:36:50.880 --> 00:36:53.719 the CDC monitors. Early -term births are on the 00:36:53.719 --> 00:36:57.159 rise. Expected -term, normal -term births and 00:36:57.159 --> 00:37:00.460 late -term births are both on the decline. More 00:37:00.460 --> 00:37:03.519 C -sections, more gestational diabetes and the 00:37:03.519 --> 00:37:07.880 like. The healthiest age, that is the most nubile 00:37:07.880 --> 00:37:11.159 age, which is something men can assent to if 00:37:11.159 --> 00:37:13.679 they have a pair of eyes that work, is in the 00:37:13.679 --> 00:37:16.710 age range of 20 to 24. But the birth rate for 00:37:16.710 --> 00:37:19.969 women in that age range is 54 .2, which is actually 00:37:19.969 --> 00:37:22.949 marginally lower than the birth rate for women 00:37:22.949 --> 00:37:27.349 aged 35 to 39. So women in the United States 00:37:27.349 --> 00:37:29.489 are more likely to have children in their late 00:37:29.489 --> 00:37:33.309 30s than they are in their early 20s. If American 00:37:33.309 --> 00:37:36.369 total fertility is below replacement, and it 00:37:36.369 --> 00:37:40.170 has been since the 90s, then why does the U .S. 00:37:40.230 --> 00:37:43.690 population keep growing? One major reason, of 00:37:43.690 --> 00:37:46.980 course, is... Immigration, net migration to the 00:37:46.980 --> 00:37:48.679 United States is positive. That is, there are 00:37:48.679 --> 00:37:50.699 more people coming into the country than leaving. 00:37:50.900 --> 00:37:54.880 But another reason is because the average age 00:37:54.880 --> 00:37:59.539 has to go from low in a population up to high 00:37:59.539 --> 00:38:03.980 in a population before absolute numbers. And 00:38:03.980 --> 00:38:07.539 a generation that helps make that easy to understand 00:38:07.539 --> 00:38:09.800 are the baby boomers in the United States, where 00:38:09.800 --> 00:38:13.920 there was a... post -war population boom, a bunch 00:38:13.920 --> 00:38:16.719 of babies being born in the late 40s and the 00:38:16.719 --> 00:38:21.559 50s and into the early 60s before the continued 00:38:21.559 --> 00:38:25.139 secular decline in fertility took hold in the 00:38:25.139 --> 00:38:30.139 70s, that bulge of baby boomers meant that in 00:38:30.139 --> 00:38:33.239 the 70s, the median age of an American was 28. 00:38:33.420 --> 00:38:37.099 If you were in the 70s, 28 years old, which is 00:38:37.099 --> 00:38:40.440 about where the boomers would have been in 1975, 00:38:41.469 --> 00:38:45.809 Donald Trump and Joe Biden were 29 and 33 respectively. 00:38:46.210 --> 00:38:50.710 If you were 27 in the 1970s, there were as many 00:38:50.710 --> 00:38:53.230 Americans younger than you as there were Americans 00:38:53.230 --> 00:38:55.550 older than you. But as subsequent generations 00:38:55.550 --> 00:38:59.500 had fertility below replacement. The population 00:38:59.500 --> 00:39:01.380 was still growing because the boomers weren't 00:39:01.380 --> 00:39:03.400 dying off. They were just getting older. And 00:39:03.400 --> 00:39:05.860 so the median age continued to increase and increase. 00:39:06.019 --> 00:39:09.159 And now the median age in the United States has 00:39:09.159 --> 00:39:12.980 gone up more than a decade on average from the 00:39:12.980 --> 00:39:16.429 1970s with the average American now. little over 00:39:16.429 --> 00:39:21.250 39 years old 39 .2 as of 2024 and so if you are 00:39:21.250 --> 00:39:24.949 39 now in America there are as many people younger 00:39:24.949 --> 00:39:28.389 than you as there are older than you and so what 00:39:28.389 --> 00:39:30.409 happens to a population that's on the decline 00:39:30.409 --> 00:39:34.050 is first it's it's young then it becomes old 00:39:34.050 --> 00:39:37.090 then it begins to shrink and so most of the country 00:39:37.090 --> 00:39:40.869 is still in the going from young, getting older 00:39:40.869 --> 00:39:43.829 stage, but there are several states that are 00:39:43.829 --> 00:39:47.369 now in the not just old, but declining because 00:39:47.369 --> 00:39:50.570 more people are dying off than being born. Those 00:39:50.570 --> 00:39:55.789 states as of 2024 are Delaware, Rhode Island, 00:39:56.030 --> 00:40:00.690 Kentucky, Ohio, Arkansas, Alabama, New Mexico, 00:40:01.050 --> 00:40:03.869 Vermont, New Hampshire, Mississippi, Michigan, 00:40:04.250 --> 00:40:08.369 Florida, Oregon, Maine, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. 00:40:09.119 --> 00:40:11.539 The Rust Belt states are definitely overrepresented 00:40:11.539 --> 00:40:14.780 there, as is New England. This doesn't tell the 00:40:14.780 --> 00:40:18.139 whole story, of course. Net migration matters, 00:40:18.219 --> 00:40:21.860 too, in terms of births and deaths. It's not 00:40:21.860 --> 00:40:24.860 as though New York is some bastion of fecundity 00:40:24.860 --> 00:40:27.780 in America. Its fertility is well below replacement, 00:40:28.059 --> 00:40:30.460 and its fertility rate is actually lower than 00:40:30.460 --> 00:40:33.119 Florida, but Florida... is experiencing more 00:40:33.119 --> 00:40:35.800 deaths than births in large part because a lot 00:40:35.800 --> 00:40:38.420 of people live in New York, you get old, and 00:40:38.420 --> 00:40:40.960 then go down to Florida to die. But it is the 00:40:40.960 --> 00:40:44.840 old white, and also to a significant degree black, 00:40:44.980 --> 00:40:49.940 but not... immigrant -heavy states where deaths 00:40:49.940 --> 00:40:53.539 are outstripping births because those states 00:40:53.539 --> 00:40:56.940 have already moved past the aging process to 00:40:56.940 --> 00:40:59.719 one in which people are dying off faster than 00:40:59.719 --> 00:41:01.880 they're being born. But those states are just 00:41:01.880 --> 00:41:06.250 cars farther along on the... same train that 00:41:06.250 --> 00:41:09.010 is heading the same direction because there is 00:41:09.010 --> 00:41:12.489 not, as has been mentioned before here, there 00:41:12.489 --> 00:41:15.969 is not a single state in the United States where 00:41:15.969 --> 00:41:19.710 fertility is at replacement, let alone above 00:41:19.710 --> 00:41:22.550 replacement. And on that sterile note, we'll 00:41:22.550 --> 00:41:24.590 end it for this week. Thanks for listening. Talk 00:41:24.590 --> 00:41:39.210 to you next time. Thank you.