1 00:00:01,040 --> 00:00:03,720 Hey, what's going on? Welcome to the Crime Pays a botany a dozen 2 00:00:03,759 --> 00:00:08,839 podcasts today, I got a conversation with Jay Lesley. If you've ever heard 3 00:00:08,880 --> 00:00:16,079 of them, there behind the fucking Canceled podcast with Clementine Morrigan. They've also 4 00:00:16,120 --> 00:00:19,480 got a website with a bunch of really great writing on it. I first 5 00:00:19,480 --> 00:00:25,320 became aware of them, I think, from the Cursed Cancelations Instagram page, 6 00:00:25,359 --> 00:00:29,359 which you should follow if you've known. It's a it's a really wonderfully eloquent 7 00:00:29,399 --> 00:00:34,719 and articulate critique of what's happened with modern leftism. I should say, of 8 00:00:34,759 --> 00:00:38,240 course, this isn't a political podcast. I don't intend to make it one, 9 00:00:38,920 --> 00:00:43,679 aside from my own weird social commentary and ramblings that I get into sometimes. 10 00:00:44,280 --> 00:00:47,520 I don't really care what someone's politics are. I just my goal is 11 00:00:47,560 --> 00:00:52,039 getting people aware of plant ecology, plant evolution, and most importantly, having 12 00:00:52,079 --> 00:00:58,159 respect for native plant landscapes and trying to create habitat in yards, trying to 13 00:00:58,520 --> 00:01:02,560 kill thelong get rid of this weird you know, car slum slash retailed death 14 00:01:02,600 --> 00:01:07,640 cult that's been created in so many places in North America. It's a dead 15 00:01:07,719 --> 00:01:11,280 end road that's killing us, you know, spiritually, mentally, and especially 16 00:01:11,319 --> 00:01:17,159 physically in terms of obesity and diabetes, etc. So I want to show 17 00:01:17,159 --> 00:01:21,040 people there's another way, and I want to get people looking at plants in 18 00:01:21,079 --> 00:01:23,680 a way that can help them and you know, basically become a form of 19 00:01:23,760 --> 00:01:29,400 therapy for them, because that's what it did to me. So I don't 20 00:01:29,439 --> 00:01:32,719 care what someone's politics are. I would I would prefer, you know, 21 00:01:33,120 --> 00:01:38,120 people that I don't agree with get into native plan landscapes, get into a 22 00:01:38,200 --> 00:01:42,640 calgy, you start understanding evolution, become fascinated with the quote natural world, 23 00:01:42,640 --> 00:01:47,200 which again isn't really the natural world, It's just the real world. I 24 00:01:47,200 --> 00:01:52,560 don't even really like that word natural world. It kind of inherently puts a 25 00:01:52,760 --> 00:01:57,079 separation between human beings and the rest of the biosphere, you know. So, 26 00:01:57,680 --> 00:02:01,599 uh, that said, I am obviously left leanting anyone who's listening to 27 00:02:01,599 --> 00:02:07,120 the podcast for any extented period of time. I'm a leftist, but I'm 28 00:02:07,159 --> 00:02:10,319 not religious. I'm not dogmatic about it. I'm not rather, I'm not 29 00:02:10,360 --> 00:02:15,280 religiously dogmatic about it. I don't give a shit, you know, at 30 00:02:15,319 --> 00:02:17,240 the end of the day, as long as someone isn't trying to preach to 31 00:02:17,319 --> 00:02:23,120 me or change my mind or whatever. So but that said, I think 32 00:02:23,120 --> 00:02:27,960 most people listen to this podcast are leftist anyway, left leaning, progressive, 33 00:02:28,039 --> 00:02:31,360 whatever you want to call it. And there's been a real, to me, 34 00:02:31,479 --> 00:02:35,280 at least the way I've seen it, there's been a really alarming and 35 00:02:35,479 --> 00:02:43,360 bizarre divisiveness and dogmatic view of the world lately among leftism in the United States, 36 00:02:43,439 --> 00:02:46,479 or as Jay calls it, the anglosphere basically like the first world fucking 37 00:02:46,639 --> 00:02:52,479 honkey left not necessarily honky, but you know what I mean. You know, 38 00:02:52,680 --> 00:02:55,439 United States, UK, Canada or whatever doesn't seem that bad. In 39 00:02:55,479 --> 00:03:00,599 Australia, it's kind of shit. It just seems mellow like it's it's you 40 00:03:00,639 --> 00:03:05,879 know, leftism there doesn't seem as as turned up and divisive and rabid. 41 00:03:07,479 --> 00:03:10,319 But you know, obviously here in the United States, UH we take things 42 00:03:10,319 --> 00:03:15,400 to such a weird, fucking extreme no matter what it is. So that's 43 00:03:15,439 --> 00:03:19,639 what today's UH podcast is about. And we you know, we basically pick 44 00:03:19,680 --> 00:03:22,800 apart identitarianism. We look at all these different we look at the role of 45 00:03:22,919 --> 00:03:28,520 social media and hyping this shit and basically spreading ideas. You know, something 46 00:03:28,520 --> 00:03:30,159 I always hear people say, too, is well you know, what about 47 00:03:30,240 --> 00:03:32,280 the right? It's well, what about the right? I don't. I'm 48 00:03:32,319 --> 00:03:38,159 not right wing. I don't associate with right wing people, so I don't 49 00:03:38,159 --> 00:03:40,439 really care what they're doing. My concern is not with that. That's not 50 00:03:40,520 --> 00:03:45,159 my world, that's not my social circle. Um, you know, I'm 51 00:03:45,159 --> 00:03:51,680 concerned with what's going on around me. I'm concerned with the somewhat anti intellectual, 52 00:03:53,879 --> 00:04:00,080 rabid, and really just weird, conformist aspects of and especially formative aspects 53 00:04:00,080 --> 00:04:04,319 in the way of in regards to social media that I've been seeing happen in 54 00:04:04,360 --> 00:04:10,039 my own circles and around people I associate with and different fucking social media accounts 55 00:04:10,120 --> 00:04:13,759 I follow. So that's what we talk about. I will say, though, 56 00:04:13,800 --> 00:04:15,279 too, that you know, working on a rail for fifteen years taught 57 00:04:15,319 --> 00:04:18,720 me to be able to get along with people who are different from me. 58 00:04:19,079 --> 00:04:25,240 That I don't need strict adherence to my own ideology from people that I converse 59 00:04:25,319 --> 00:04:28,839 with or choose to interact with whatever I like, I said, I don't 60 00:04:28,879 --> 00:04:31,000 care, you know, unless they're trying to preach to me, in which 61 00:04:31,000 --> 00:04:35,279 case I say, just hey, you know, don't fucking please just take 62 00:04:35,319 --> 00:04:38,560 it easy, I don't want to hear it. Whatever, let's not talk 63 00:04:38,600 --> 00:04:42,360 about that whatever. You know, you spend twelve hours in a locomotive cab 64 00:04:42,399 --> 00:04:46,600 with someone going, you know, twenty miles per hour through winding mountain canyons, 65 00:04:46,800 --> 00:04:49,800 you learn to tell them, hey, you don't talk about politics or 66 00:04:49,839 --> 00:04:53,240 religion on the railroad, and just I don't want to hear it. Just 67 00:04:53,360 --> 00:04:59,480 you know, you learn to fucking agree to disagree. So that said, 68 00:04:59,639 --> 00:05:05,079 that's today's episode is about. It was a really thought provoking conversation. I 69 00:05:05,120 --> 00:05:10,439 had just woken up and it was not to lit up on coffee yet. 70 00:05:10,439 --> 00:05:14,639 So I'm a little in articulate all over the place, which I heard, 71 00:05:14,680 --> 00:05:16,160 which I realized listening to it later, I was like, God, damn 72 00:05:16,160 --> 00:05:18,680 it, I just got to read more something or what I need more mental 73 00:05:18,759 --> 00:05:26,439 exercise. I'm having trouble getting my thoughts out. But Jay luckily picked up 74 00:05:26,480 --> 00:05:30,639 the slack. You know, they're they're so eloquent, so articulate. I've 75 00:05:30,680 --> 00:05:35,120 read so much they're writing online on their website, and I've listened to the 76 00:05:35,120 --> 00:05:41,439 fucking canceled podcast A Bunch, which is which has been super helpful in terms 77 00:05:41,480 --> 00:05:47,040 of just you know, trying to understand why certain aspects of what's going on 78 00:05:47,319 --> 00:05:51,079 with the left today didn't didn't feel that good to me. So anyway, 79 00:05:51,560 --> 00:05:55,480 um, yeah, so that's what the podcast is about today. That said, 80 00:05:55,879 --> 00:05:59,319 Uh, you know, I've been trying to funk around with different types 81 00:05:59,319 --> 00:06:04,199 of cameras and recording devices. The production company for Killier Long got me this 82 00:06:04,399 --> 00:06:08,439 nice mic which they're going to try and make me return. I'm gonna see 83 00:06:08,439 --> 00:06:11,480 if I can get out of it for recording voiceovers. That's what I'm using 84 00:06:11,480 --> 00:06:14,480 to record now, so I'm hoping to get a little bit better audio quality, 85 00:06:14,879 --> 00:06:16,879 not make it sound too polished. I also have been fucking around with 86 00:06:16,920 --> 00:06:23,680 different cameras for recording video. We were at Star Cactus habitat two days ago. 87 00:06:23,759 --> 00:06:28,759 Astrophyte Asterias one of the rarest plants in the United States and probably one 88 00:06:28,759 --> 00:06:31,279 of the coolest. You know, this little sand dollar looking cactus that sinks 89 00:06:31,279 --> 00:06:36,639 into the ground and grows in a really peculiar geology. Basically, these silty 90 00:06:38,560 --> 00:06:45,160 silty sandy loam, often a lot of gypsum in the soil and pretty saline 91 00:06:45,160 --> 00:06:48,079 as well. Often grows with plants like Varilla Texana, which is a succulent 92 00:06:48,120 --> 00:06:53,319 member of the sunflower family. Astray said, it's got little fingerlike leaves and 93 00:06:53,720 --> 00:06:58,639 discoid flowers, So no leguals, no daisy rays. And you know, 94 00:06:58,680 --> 00:07:00,959 the soil is like I said, this sandy loam. It's kind of saline. 95 00:07:01,240 --> 00:07:04,680 But then there's these just massive gravel beds everywhere, like you know, 96 00:07:04,959 --> 00:07:11,319 up to sometimes ten pound. You know, rocks, most are small on 97 00:07:11,399 --> 00:07:15,959 that most like the size of a baseball if that a lot of shirt in 98 00:07:15,040 --> 00:07:19,360 there. All of them are rounded and polished, indicating they've been transported in 99 00:07:19,519 --> 00:07:25,439 some sort of high energy river or maybe even along a coastline thirty million years 100 00:07:25,439 --> 00:07:28,319 ago. I don't know. But there's a really good book that just came 101 00:07:28,319 --> 00:07:34,720 out on the geology of South Texas by who is it, Doctor Gonzalez again 102 00:07:34,800 --> 00:07:40,639 named doctor Juan Gonzalez, who taught it you UTRGV for a while, and 103 00:07:40,759 --> 00:07:44,240 it gets into all the different geologic settings down here. There's I mean, 104 00:07:44,279 --> 00:07:48,920 it's so fucking cool. This is such a cool and bizarre and mysterious landscape. 105 00:07:49,399 --> 00:07:54,399 You know, this this border region right between the United States and Mexico 106 00:07:55,360 --> 00:08:00,399 along the last few remaining dozens of miles of the Rio and you know, 107 00:08:00,439 --> 00:08:05,879 before it hits Brownsville and and Boca Chica and empties out into the Gulf. 108 00:08:05,959 --> 00:08:07,959 So in the region it's just so cool too. It's where the Gulf Coast 109 00:08:09,199 --> 00:08:15,120 transitions into desert. So anyway, we were there. We were there a 110 00:08:15,160 --> 00:08:18,279 couple days ago. This cactus is about the bloom. You know if in 111 00:08:18,319 --> 00:08:22,519 cultivation they'll bloom whenever they get moisture. But uh, but in habitat, 112 00:08:24,000 --> 00:08:28,079 you know, being as partially as as they tend to bloom in march um 113 00:08:28,600 --> 00:08:30,959 and it has it rained in a while. But remember their cacti, so 114 00:08:31,000 --> 00:08:35,039 they've got all that water stored up. They've got reserves. They don't need 115 00:08:35,080 --> 00:08:39,960 a rain to flower. So anyway, I was out there fucking with an 116 00:08:39,960 --> 00:08:43,279 iPhone fourteen, which is opinion the it's a horrible phone for recording. I'll 117 00:08:43,279 --> 00:08:46,240 never use it again. Um. My friend Matt Berger, a sheriff of 118 00:08:46,240 --> 00:08:50,120 what he's been having the same problem with photos because he just uses a phone 119 00:08:50,159 --> 00:08:54,960 for all his his botany and I naturalist, uh shit, And so he 120 00:08:56,080 --> 00:08:58,320 said, it's you know, the macro level, it's just horrible. It's 121 00:08:58,360 --> 00:09:03,919 just for grainy. It's basically a phone that's the camera's been reduced to taking 122 00:09:03,960 --> 00:09:07,440 selfies and landscape shots, you know, lowest common denominator shit, as you 123 00:09:07,440 --> 00:09:11,879 would expect with the you know, company that's trying to mass market something for 124 00:09:13,360 --> 00:09:16,080 primarily for social media ship, which is what most people use it for now, 125 00:09:16,240 --> 00:09:20,799 you know, taking selfies and landscapes. So the iPhone sucked. Then 126 00:09:20,840 --> 00:09:24,480 I was using a Sony camp Quarter, which was a real fucking pan. 127 00:09:24,519 --> 00:09:28,960 The asked it became great, great video, great image quality, but the 128 00:09:28,039 --> 00:09:31,759 mic sucked on it. So I've got to get some external mic, and 129 00:09:31,759 --> 00:09:33,039 then it's just, you know, I don't like doing that shit because then 130 00:09:33,039 --> 00:09:35,840 at what point is it just you're suddenly you're going down and you're opening a 131 00:09:35,840 --> 00:09:39,080 can of worms. You know, now you have to get this thing and 132 00:09:39,120 --> 00:09:41,279 this thing, and he goes fucking money invested in and then the ship gets 133 00:09:41,320 --> 00:09:46,559 jacked when you're you know, botanizing in Lowland wallhacka anyway, So you know, 134 00:09:48,000 --> 00:09:52,679 before that, I just recorded with a Samsung I think was S twenty 135 00:09:52,679 --> 00:09:56,600 one, S twenty two. All this ship, which is the video on 136 00:09:56,639 --> 00:10:00,120 them is pretty good, not perfect, but it's good enough. So I 137 00:10:00,200 --> 00:10:03,519 might just end up going back to those. We'll see, um but yeah, 138 00:10:03,600 --> 00:10:07,960 man, I don't know. It's you know, all these cacti are 139 00:10:07,000 --> 00:10:09,879 flowering. I was, I wish I could get to uh Na, Sierra 140 00:10:11,000 --> 00:10:16,720 Madre. I just don't have time get down to uh you know, northeastern 141 00:10:16,799 --> 00:10:22,399 Mexico and uh photograph some of the cacti flowering down there now, because this 142 00:10:22,440 --> 00:10:24,440 is when they're going off a lot of them. It seems they flower in 143 00:10:24,440 --> 00:10:28,639 the spring, despite winters in that region generally being dry, especially compared to 144 00:10:28,720 --> 00:10:35,279 summers. But I just I won't have time. And then I got this 145 00:10:35,440 --> 00:10:39,200 New Zealand mycology trip planned with Alan, who still needs to buy his fucking 146 00:10:39,200 --> 00:10:41,639 ticket, and if he doesn't, I'm gonna really get start getting on his 147 00:10:41,679 --> 00:10:46,360 ass here soon. He's really punching around, you know, he's dilly daddling. 148 00:10:46,679 --> 00:10:52,080 I think he's an ecuador Now they're doing mycology stuff and in Ecuador, 149 00:10:52,000 --> 00:10:56,919 which sounds fucking amazing. So I guess there was just a new species. 150 00:10:56,919 --> 00:11:01,000 It's allows to be named after Paul Stammits. Then they too slows to be 151 00:11:01,080 --> 00:11:03,000 Stamens the i, which is like, yeah, I like Paul Stammits. 152 00:11:03,039 --> 00:11:09,879 I'm not you know, fan, a fanboy or anything. I think a 153 00:11:09,919 --> 00:11:15,960 little heavy. He's a little heavy on the marketing sometimes, you know, 154 00:11:16,000 --> 00:11:18,240 and I don't really get down with the whole mushrooms they're gonna save the world 155 00:11:20,279 --> 00:11:22,960 ideology, but uh, it seems like a cool guy, so it's nice 156 00:11:24,000 --> 00:11:26,759 to h they named the mushroom after him, even though you know, I'm 157 00:11:26,799 --> 00:11:33,000 kind of against naming any biological entity after a person. So anyway, without 158 00:11:33,000 --> 00:11:35,480 continuing on too much further, I guess I could save all this shit for 159 00:11:35,480 --> 00:11:39,960 another separate podcast, you know, just my normal solo ranting style. Without 160 00:11:39,960 --> 00:11:43,759 continuing any further, we'll get right into it, and uh, you know, 161 00:11:43,799 --> 00:11:48,399 I hope you get something out of it, because it seems like a 162 00:11:48,440 --> 00:11:52,679 lot of people, a lot of people feel this way. These are not 163 00:11:52,080 --> 00:11:56,600 you know, unusual sentiments, the things that we talk about in this podcast, 164 00:11:56,399 --> 00:11:58,639 and a lot of people are just kind of afraid to come out, 165 00:12:00,000 --> 00:12:05,679 you know, put it out there. So you know, yeah, maybe 166 00:12:05,720 --> 00:12:09,399 you'll maybe to live enlighten you, or you know you'll be like me, 167 00:12:09,480 --> 00:12:11,440 like you hear someone articulate this shit and you're like, WHOA, Okay, 168 00:12:11,480 --> 00:12:16,559 I get it now. That said, if you ordered stickers from me and 169 00:12:16,679 --> 00:12:22,759 haven't gotten them, email me with a screenshot of the venmo I've still got. 170 00:12:22,799 --> 00:12:26,840 I think I like thirty or forty to send out. Still books are 171 00:12:26,879 --> 00:12:31,440 all done, all the books that have been ordered so far with drawings in 172 00:12:31,519 --> 00:12:35,120 them. And it's good too because I am like, I'm so burnt out 173 00:12:35,120 --> 00:12:37,600 on drawing now and I'm about to be on the road for a week too, 174 00:12:37,679 --> 00:12:45,440 so you know, so much I can do at this point. And 175 00:12:45,480 --> 00:12:48,240 then yeah, email me if you want. Crime pays a body doesn't at 176 00:12:48,240 --> 00:12:54,399 gmail dot com. And I think upcoming podcasts I should there should be a 177 00:12:54,399 --> 00:12:58,360 podcast conversation about Texas native plants coming up hopefully in the next week or two. 178 00:12:58,360 --> 00:13:01,840 If the person that I'm trying to get ahold of we're trying to schedule 179 00:13:01,840 --> 00:13:05,600 this with, we'll get back to me. And then hopefully I'll be stopping 180 00:13:05,639 --> 00:13:11,679 by Native American Seed based out a Junction, Texas in New Braunfels, Texas 181 00:13:11,240 --> 00:13:18,559 about their operations there. They're really cool Native Native Seed Dispensary and Native I 182 00:13:18,559 --> 00:13:22,279 think they grow a few native plants. But they got a nice catalog. 183 00:13:22,399 --> 00:13:24,120 You know you want, you want a nice catalog with the nice pictures and 184 00:13:24,200 --> 00:13:28,879 stuff to look at. The catalog In some cases is basically like a field 185 00:13:28,879 --> 00:13:33,279 guide. I've got some really interesting stuff and they sell Sylfium albiflorum seed, 186 00:13:33,320 --> 00:13:39,639 which is fucking got such a cool, such a cool h Texas endemic to 187 00:13:39,720 --> 00:13:43,840 those thin soils on top of the limestone prairie, you know, you get 188 00:13:43,879 --> 00:13:48,039 around Austin for word, etc. Just a really rough plant to a really 189 00:13:48,080 --> 00:13:54,879 super tough plant basically looks like a white flowered, tougher, hardier Selfium lessiniatum, 190 00:13:56,759 --> 00:13:58,679 the big white you know, with that big white flower. It's the 191 00:13:58,720 --> 00:14:03,399 fuck and banger of a plant. There's so much good shit on on those 192 00:14:03,480 --> 00:14:07,879 limestone prairies and on the limestone soils. As you know, the more music 193 00:14:09,120 --> 00:14:13,159 lands of the East are slowly transitioning to the more arid lands of the west. 194 00:14:13,240 --> 00:14:16,639 So anyway, that's all I got for you today, uh in terms 195 00:14:16,679 --> 00:14:18,399 of intro, and I hope you get some out of this. Enjoy the 196 00:14:18,440 --> 00:14:20,720 next I think it's like an hour and twenty minutes of this podcast. Go 197 00:14:20,799 --> 00:14:24,360 fuck stup me. Well, I'm gonna showing you what it's like where. 198 00:14:24,399 --> 00:14:30,039 I'm not gonna show you the bart In section, you know, I mean, 199 00:14:30,039 --> 00:14:33,840 I think they're sharp, like they got a nice shop liberal berries. 200 00:14:35,000 --> 00:14:37,320 So they started tagging each outer and quash come out. You know, I've 201 00:14:37,360 --> 00:14:41,279 seen a couple of night things in their room before, get a bunch of 202 00:14:41,360 --> 00:14:46,480 hippies to have on each others, to come with starting to get down for 203 00:14:46,639 --> 00:14:50,159 the night for eight of you. They're about to go bad, but they're 204 00:14:50,159 --> 00:14:54,080 not baggy. Okay, Jay, how do you prompt your last name so 205 00:14:54,080 --> 00:15:00,240 I don't fuck this up. Let's let's so late. Okay, thanks being 206 00:15:00,279 --> 00:15:03,000 willing to do this. I'm very excited to talk to you. I guess 207 00:15:05,919 --> 00:15:09,600 yeah, I guess I found you. I found you in Clementine Morrigan. 208 00:15:11,039 --> 00:15:15,279 Um, I think through the curse cancelations. Uh, I g account, 209 00:15:15,279 --> 00:15:18,240 which is fucking great. But um, I started listening to You Guys podcast 210 00:15:18,440 --> 00:15:24,159 and uh, you know, I don't really care what someone's political affiliation is 211 00:15:24,200 --> 00:15:28,080 if they're into plants. My my main interest is just getting people stoked on 212 00:15:28,159 --> 00:15:33,240 native plants and ecology and looking at the world in a different way because the 213 00:15:33,279 --> 00:15:37,480 human world that we've created in so many parts of the world is so fucking 214 00:15:37,559 --> 00:15:43,240 bleak. Um. But you know, I guess if when it comes down 215 00:15:43,279 --> 00:15:46,960 to it, identify as a as a leftist and I want you know, 216 00:15:48,240 --> 00:15:50,879 I want many of the same things a lot of people on the left want, 217 00:15:50,879 --> 00:15:54,039 which is, you know, affordable healthcare. Uh uh, you know, 218 00:15:54,240 --> 00:16:00,440 education, I want money being directed to education. I want more income 219 00:16:00,559 --> 00:16:03,559 equality, I want a quality opportunity, all that kind of shit. And 220 00:16:03,639 --> 00:16:07,799 so, you know, I've always I've always felt that way since I was 221 00:16:07,840 --> 00:16:11,639 a kid, and just watching what's kind of happened to the left with the 222 00:16:11,679 --> 00:16:17,480 advent of social media and I guess, for lack of a better word, 223 00:16:17,519 --> 00:16:22,440 identitarianism, the last ten or twelve years, it's really, uh, it's 224 00:16:22,440 --> 00:16:25,759 been kind of shocking. And when I found you guys in your podcast, 225 00:16:26,679 --> 00:16:30,080 uh, you know, I'm I'm eloquent and articulate about plants, but when 226 00:16:30,120 --> 00:16:33,080 it comes to like ideologies and shit, I'm just a fucking, you know, 227 00:16:33,879 --> 00:16:37,440 regular working class moove. I can't really, I can't really articulate that 228 00:16:37,480 --> 00:16:41,759 well. And when I found you know, you guys basically putting, you 229 00:16:41,799 --> 00:16:47,600 know, basically putting to words things I've been feeling for so long, I 230 00:16:47,720 --> 00:16:49,840 was blown away. So I guess let's just start right off. I mean, 231 00:16:52,120 --> 00:16:53,320 I guess give me a little bit of your background and then you know, 232 00:16:53,600 --> 00:16:57,919 give me your your take on what's what's happened to the left and in 233 00:16:57,960 --> 00:17:03,360 the United States, in Canada and you know, probably the UK a couple 234 00:17:03,399 --> 00:17:07,319 other places over the last I don't know, ten or fifteen years, all 235 00:17:07,400 --> 00:17:11,359 right, Yeah, well, uh yeah, so I mean, I um, 236 00:17:11,400 --> 00:17:15,920 I'm I'm I'm Canadian, I'm qua um and uh I live in Montreal. 237 00:17:17,359 --> 00:17:19,799 I've lived here since I was about seventeen when I moved out, and 238 00:17:22,240 --> 00:17:23,559 uh yeah, I mean I was. I was a punk kid, you 239 00:17:23,599 --> 00:17:27,359 know, like I I was a teenager into punk m I was also like 240 00:17:27,759 --> 00:17:32,519 I was into politics, like largely because of punk, you know. So 241 00:17:32,640 --> 00:17:34,720 when I was a teenager, I was I was interested in all this shit, 242 00:17:34,799 --> 00:17:37,799 and I was reading you know, Noam Chomsky and and and Marx and 243 00:17:37,799 --> 00:17:41,640 all this kind of stuff, um and trying to sort of figure out how 244 00:17:41,680 --> 00:17:47,839 the world worked, you know. And I I remember like feeling when I 245 00:17:47,920 --> 00:17:51,079 was like a young I was I was. I was an anarchist. I 246 00:17:51,119 --> 00:17:53,240 was really really really into anarchist. And I remember as as a young guy 247 00:17:53,359 --> 00:17:59,759 like kind of being like, um, excited about the possibility of changing the 248 00:18:00,119 --> 00:18:02,079 way that the world worth, you know, and I was like, I 249 00:18:02,119 --> 00:18:07,319 gotta learn as much as I can about how humans operate, how systems work, 250 00:18:07,400 --> 00:18:08,640 you know, and then maybe I can help people to try to like 251 00:18:08,720 --> 00:18:12,519 understand why the world we live in got so fucked up and how we can 252 00:18:12,640 --> 00:18:15,920 how we can change it. Right. So you you came in at a 253 00:18:15,759 --> 00:18:18,079 young age, you could tell someone was fucked up, Like you could tell 254 00:18:18,160 --> 00:18:22,200 something was wrong. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean it's honestly 255 00:18:22,240 --> 00:18:25,480 like if you if you take five seconds to think about it, it's pretty 256 00:18:25,480 --> 00:18:30,599 clear, you know. And uh and yeah, I just I as I 257 00:18:30,640 --> 00:18:37,759 sort of integrated into this like leftist mill year in um in Montreal, it 258 00:18:37,039 --> 00:18:42,200 it became clear that it was kind of like uncool. Eventually it became kind 259 00:18:42,200 --> 00:18:47,599 of uncool to actually have any sort of um, hope for the future and 260 00:18:47,640 --> 00:18:52,599 any sort of like uh path to move forward on, you know. And 261 00:18:52,680 --> 00:18:57,240 it became all about just sort of like critique of everything and everyone and a 262 00:18:57,279 --> 00:19:06,279 lot of like you know, um purity spirals and virtue signaling, and it 263 00:19:06,359 --> 00:19:08,240 just got really really depressing. And it got to the point where I was 264 00:19:08,279 --> 00:19:11,640 honestly like I felt like I was kind of in a cult um and I 265 00:19:11,640 --> 00:19:15,559 I was like thinking all these things, and I was like actively training myself 266 00:19:15,599 --> 00:19:19,240 to not to not think them and to definitely not express them. You know. 267 00:19:19,720 --> 00:19:26,599 Even so I was always, um, I was always critical to a 268 00:19:26,640 --> 00:19:27,920 degree of this stuff, and it kept getting me to trouble over and over 269 00:19:27,960 --> 00:19:30,680 again. You know. Um, I was always like I was always like 270 00:19:30,720 --> 00:19:33,599 okay, like yeah, like I get it, you know, sure, 271 00:19:33,640 --> 00:19:38,359 Like you know, we shouldn't be oppressing anyone, like understood, and that's 272 00:19:38,359 --> 00:19:41,960 important, you know, but also like how are we going to change the 273 00:19:41,000 --> 00:19:45,400 material conditions that we live under? Like if we're if we don't have a 274 00:19:45,440 --> 00:19:47,680 plan for that, then we don't have anything. Like there's no point in 275 00:19:47,680 --> 00:19:51,400 any of this. We're just talking, you know. Um. And yeah, 276 00:19:51,480 --> 00:19:53,440 So I was always sort of like trying to push people towards a bit 277 00:19:53,440 --> 00:19:56,559 of a material analysis, and I was like, it doesn't have to be 278 00:19:56,839 --> 00:20:00,359 exactly what I think. You know, there's there's many different ways about of 279 00:20:00,160 --> 00:20:03,440 of thinking about this stuff, but we do need some kind of a plan 280 00:20:03,519 --> 00:20:07,240 for like changing particularly like the economic base of society because that is kind of 281 00:20:07,240 --> 00:20:11,359 where all power flows from. Like ultimately, you know, um, I 282 00:20:11,480 --> 00:20:15,559 might be off on a bit of a tangent now, but long story short, 283 00:20:15,640 --> 00:20:19,039 I think that something that happened to the left in North America and broadly, 284 00:20:19,079 --> 00:20:22,720 as you were mentioning in like what I call the anglosphere, which is 285 00:20:22,759 --> 00:20:26,279 like the kind of like the English speaking countries you know, Um, is 286 00:20:26,359 --> 00:20:30,599 that we like the left got like fucking just stomped in like the fifties, 287 00:20:30,640 --> 00:20:34,960 you know, and and basically never recovered. You know, like the communist 288 00:20:36,039 --> 00:20:41,079 parties in the UK and the US UM used to have you know, like 289 00:20:41,160 --> 00:20:45,839 hundreds of thousands of members and like organized like huge events and had like daycares 290 00:20:45,839 --> 00:20:48,839 for their members and like, you know, all kinds of shit. Um. 291 00:20:48,839 --> 00:20:51,000 And you can think whatever you want about the Communist Party, there's lots 292 00:20:51,039 --> 00:20:52,440 of lust of critique, you know, but like there was a left there, 293 00:20:52,559 --> 00:20:55,920 There was like a real left that existed, and they were they were 294 00:20:55,920 --> 00:20:57,119 they had their eyes on power, and they were moving towards it. And 295 00:20:57,160 --> 00:21:02,200 it doesn't exist anymore. McCarthyism fucking killed it, um. And then it 296 00:21:02,240 --> 00:21:06,599 was sort of like weak but still existed, still existed. And then when 297 00:21:06,640 --> 00:21:11,759 the Solid Union collapsed, Um, the left, like the socialist left is 298 00:21:11,839 --> 00:21:15,160 kind of like imploded completely because there was no there was no path forward anymore. 299 00:21:15,160 --> 00:21:18,240 They didn't know what they wanted. They didn't know what to due and 300 00:21:19,400 --> 00:21:29,839 it. I think that basically there's a lot of people in North America who 301 00:21:29,880 --> 00:21:33,279 are and in the anglosphere broadly, who are um, they're immersed in leftist 302 00:21:33,279 --> 00:21:37,400 ideas because, like I said earlier, to look around is to notice that 303 00:21:37,440 --> 00:21:41,720 there's something wrong, and there's a there's a large body of leftist ideas that 304 00:21:41,720 --> 00:21:45,079 they can that they can access, but there there's kind of floating unmoored in 305 00:21:45,160 --> 00:21:49,880 this sea of ideas with no structure, like nothing to put into practice, 306 00:21:51,000 --> 00:21:53,200 you know. And I think that that is the recipe for the mess that 307 00:21:53,240 --> 00:21:56,400 we found ourselves in today, where you know, everyone's got like lots of 308 00:21:56,440 --> 00:21:59,839 ideas, but there is no left to speak of, like, because the 309 00:22:00,079 --> 00:22:04,160 left ultimately is some kind of a movement that can, through mass power, 310 00:22:06,400 --> 00:22:10,440 influence policy. It can influence the policy of the state, you know. 311 00:22:10,480 --> 00:22:11,599 And if we can't influence the policy of the state, we don't have shit, 312 00:22:12,160 --> 00:22:15,279 right Yeah, yeah, I think you know, looking around, anyone 313 00:22:15,359 --> 00:22:21,400 can see the planet's dying. They can see, you know, the poor 314 00:22:21,440 --> 00:22:26,480 are getting trampled. People are left out with no fucking safety net, people 315 00:22:26,480 --> 00:22:30,079 are left out in the cold basically to get fucked especially in the US. 316 00:22:30,160 --> 00:22:32,880 I mean, you guys have free healthcare there. We don't have shit here. 317 00:22:33,960 --> 00:22:36,759 It's just kind of this, you know. And then then then we 318 00:22:36,799 --> 00:22:38,839 live in this world that for me, the big bummer is this, you 319 00:22:38,839 --> 00:22:42,920 know, this kind of sprawl, retail consumerism. I see just spreading out 320 00:22:42,960 --> 00:22:48,359 like a campcer, like destroying habitat and then cultivating this way of life that's 321 00:22:48,359 --> 00:22:51,799 fucking terrible, that's killing us. I mean, it's this car dependent, 322 00:22:51,960 --> 00:22:56,279 fucking I call it like car slash retail slum. It doesn't feel good to 323 00:22:56,319 --> 00:23:00,240 be in. And and for me, what's there is a fundamental disconnect action 324 00:23:00,400 --> 00:23:03,599 from the quote unquote natural world, which I don't even like that word. 325 00:23:03,599 --> 00:23:06,480 It's not the natural world, it's the real world. Everything we made is 326 00:23:06,559 --> 00:23:10,640 kind of just this fake bullshit that we you know, is taken over the 327 00:23:10,640 --> 00:23:15,839 world. But I guess I think what just the last ten twelve years, 328 00:23:15,920 --> 00:23:18,920 you know, And I don't even I used to call it woke. I 329 00:23:18,960 --> 00:23:22,119 don't even like using that word anymore because the right wing has totally co opted 330 00:23:22,160 --> 00:23:26,640 it. You know, if to them, woke means racial diversity, it 331 00:23:26,680 --> 00:23:30,000 means like having to see queer people on TV. It means just crazy shit, 332 00:23:30,119 --> 00:23:36,079 and they of course exist in this totally deranged, often heavily religious cult 333 00:23:36,160 --> 00:23:41,039 like state themselves. You know. It's it's more like this performative aspect. 334 00:23:41,039 --> 00:23:45,000 And then there was with the advent of social media, it put this really 335 00:23:45,559 --> 00:23:48,880 deranged twist where now it what you didn't even have to really think this stuff 336 00:23:48,960 --> 00:23:52,640 or self evaluate or think too critically about anything. You could just put, 337 00:23:53,559 --> 00:23:57,519 you know, just perform, just perform online, you know, basically sculpts 338 00:23:57,559 --> 00:24:00,680 your own self image, how you want people to see you. You know, 339 00:24:00,720 --> 00:24:04,200 whether that's like you know, posting a black square when George Floyd was 340 00:24:04,279 --> 00:24:07,440 murdered to show that you're an ally, which was such a like meaningless and 341 00:24:07,559 --> 00:24:12,519 trite. It just seems so fake to me, you know or whatever. 342 00:24:12,559 --> 00:24:15,920 I mean, it's just and of course the right wink does you know virtue 343 00:24:15,960 --> 00:24:18,079 signaling too, of course, but I'm just saying it just this whole it 344 00:24:18,119 --> 00:24:22,319 became more about appearances to me, and it just became so yeah, so 345 00:24:22,400 --> 00:24:26,079 transparent, and then watching people be scared like it felt weird. It's felt 346 00:24:26,119 --> 00:24:30,160 weird and left the circles for a while, like it's felt uncomfortable and not 347 00:24:30,319 --> 00:24:33,920 very good. It doesn't feel good, and then watching people kind of squirm 348 00:24:33,960 --> 00:24:38,319 but just go along with it anyway, mainly because of fear was what really 349 00:24:38,359 --> 00:24:42,519 struck me and I because I've never I've never been into conformity. I've never 350 00:24:42,559 --> 00:24:45,279 been able to that kind of herd mentality, you know, to go along 351 00:24:45,319 --> 00:24:48,839 with it, because it's just at the end of the day, it's it's 352 00:24:48,880 --> 00:24:53,240 fear that's keeping you there. It's not genuine dialogue. So but uh, 353 00:24:53,480 --> 00:24:56,960 I don't know what effect do you think social media has had on the left 354 00:24:56,960 --> 00:25:02,400 and how it's I guess helped nudge it along into this fucked up state that 355 00:25:02,400 --> 00:25:06,279 it's in today where you've got all this in fighting. Yeah, it's it's 356 00:25:06,279 --> 00:25:08,759 insane, man. And what you were saying about not knowing what to call 357 00:25:08,799 --> 00:25:12,359 this ship is a huge issue actually, you know, and I'm just gonna 358 00:25:12,359 --> 00:25:17,480 talk about that for a second. Like on the podcast Fucking Cancel, we 359 00:25:17,599 --> 00:25:22,279 coined this term the nexus just because we basically needed like a placeholder word to 360 00:25:22,359 --> 00:25:26,920 talk about this phenomenon because the interesting thing about this phenomenon is that it doesn't 361 00:25:26,920 --> 00:25:30,799 have a name for itself, you know, like every other like ideology has 362 00:25:30,839 --> 00:25:33,039 a name for itself. Because it wants to be known, you know. 363 00:25:33,200 --> 00:25:37,599 But the thing about what we call the nexus is is that it sort of 364 00:25:37,599 --> 00:25:45,400 pretends like it it is just the right way, it is the good thing, 365 00:25:45,720 --> 00:25:47,920 you know what I mean. It doesn't have like a name for itself. 366 00:25:47,960 --> 00:25:49,640 And so yeah, like conservatives call it woke, I call it woke 367 00:25:49,720 --> 00:25:55,480 sometimes, you know, but it's like it's like toxic. Social justice culture 368 00:25:55,559 --> 00:25:57,799 is another thing that some people call it. But anyways, what we ended 369 00:25:57,839 --> 00:26:00,079 up calling it was just the next because we needed to call it something. 370 00:26:00,119 --> 00:26:03,880 But the nexus, like what a nexus is is an intersection of different things, 371 00:26:03,960 --> 00:26:07,920 right, And I think that what is happening on the left is that 372 00:26:07,960 --> 00:26:15,039 there's an intersection between cancel culture, identitarianism, and social media. And social 373 00:26:15,079 --> 00:26:18,480 media is the thing that is really like driving all of this along in a 374 00:26:18,559 --> 00:26:22,680 huge way in the sense that like, first of all, yes, it 375 00:26:23,400 --> 00:26:27,240 has this extremely performative element to it, right, Like everything on social media 376 00:26:27,359 --> 00:26:33,359 is performative, and the algorithms and the structure, like the architecture of these 377 00:26:33,359 --> 00:26:37,599 social media platforms like really ensures that the stuff that gets seen, you know, 378 00:26:37,680 --> 00:26:40,599 the stuff that gets big, that gets reshared, whatever, it's like 379 00:26:40,680 --> 00:26:44,799 very performative it's very visual. You know. Also, something about social media 380 00:26:44,839 --> 00:26:48,319 is that it strongly encourages like short, like little sound bite type ideas, 381 00:26:48,440 --> 00:26:52,680 not complicated and nuanced ideas. So like the people who perform really well on 382 00:26:52,759 --> 00:26:57,480 social media are people who are able to take complicated ideas and sort of like 383 00:27:00,240 --> 00:27:03,400 essential character hot day, yeah yeah, and distill them. And you know, 384 00:27:03,480 --> 00:27:07,279 that's actually like a useful skill. And actually I think that Clementine is 385 00:27:07,279 --> 00:27:08,559 really really good at that. That's kind of a one of her skills, 386 00:27:08,599 --> 00:27:12,240 you know. Um, But it also means that like there's like so much 387 00:27:12,279 --> 00:27:17,279 fucking like gibberish out there. It's just like it's just fluff, Like there's 388 00:27:17,359 --> 00:27:19,400 there's no depth through it whatsoever, because there literally can't be like you can't 389 00:27:19,519 --> 00:27:22,559 put an essay on Instagram. You know, it doesn't it doesn't fit, 390 00:27:22,599 --> 00:27:26,519 it doesn't right, And then then you know, just what's important is that 391 00:27:26,519 --> 00:27:30,240 it's getting likes, it's getting backpats, and then yeah, yeah, for 392 00:27:30,240 --> 00:27:32,400 sure, it's more of it. And then you know, and then there's 393 00:27:32,440 --> 00:27:36,200 the element of cancel culture and like again, like that's that's a word that's 394 00:27:36,200 --> 00:27:37,519 been completely co opted by the right. You can call it whatever the fuck 395 00:27:37,519 --> 00:27:41,319 you want, but you know what I'm talking about, um where you know, 396 00:27:41,400 --> 00:27:45,680 people are just sort of like marked for destruction by like online mobs and 397 00:27:45,680 --> 00:27:48,759 then have their lives destroyed and um often for like really insane reasons, you 398 00:27:48,799 --> 00:27:52,400 know. And the thing about the social media and relationship to that is they're 399 00:27:52,400 --> 00:27:56,200 like, Okay, so back in the day, among like you know, 400 00:27:56,480 --> 00:28:06,920 lefty groups or among like even like you know, anarchist squat scenes or whatever. 401 00:28:07,240 --> 00:28:10,839 You know, people would get into fights and and sometimes people would get 402 00:28:10,880 --> 00:28:15,119 kind of like scapegoated or pushed out of the scene or blacklisted or whatever. 403 00:28:15,279 --> 00:28:18,960 But it didn't follow them around for the rest of their lives. And it 404 00:28:19,039 --> 00:28:22,920 wasn't crowdsourced to like one hundred thousand people, right because it was just local, 405 00:28:23,400 --> 00:28:26,079 you know. And the thing about social media is that like some random 406 00:28:26,119 --> 00:28:30,720 fucking person, like really like a random person who like no one would ever 407 00:28:30,839 --> 00:28:34,119 care about it. It's like some like some like Vegan Baker in like Chicago 408 00:28:34,319 --> 00:28:38,880 or whatever, for some fucking reason has their life blown up by a number 409 00:28:38,880 --> 00:28:42,440 of people that is like exponentially larger than it ever would have been before. 410 00:28:42,519 --> 00:28:48,240 Because people in California and people in England and like whatever are like piling on 411 00:28:48,359 --> 00:28:51,480 and being like, yeah, like the fact that you said that veganism is 412 00:28:51,519 --> 00:28:53,839 good actually shows that you're like a colonialist or whatever it is, you know 413 00:28:53,880 --> 00:28:57,079 what I mean. And it's just like people who have no connection to what 414 00:28:57,079 --> 00:29:03,759 the fuck is going on are are just like finding themselves well participating in these 415 00:29:03,799 --> 00:29:07,559 like insane canceling Absolutely. I think ninety nine percent of the people piling on 416 00:29:07,640 --> 00:29:11,119 and a lot of cancelations have never met the person they're piling on. They're 417 00:29:11,160 --> 00:29:12,720 just not going online and tell them they're a piece of shit. And it's 418 00:29:12,720 --> 00:29:19,319 some of the guys that this weird almost evangelical esque moralizing, you know, 419 00:29:19,400 --> 00:29:23,079 it's so fucking weird, man, And then they get pass on the back 420 00:29:23,119 --> 00:29:26,400 for doing it, and it just feels good. There's a rush of dopamine 421 00:29:26,400 --> 00:29:30,559 and fucking serotonin and you know, we're one with the group and we're attacking 422 00:29:30,559 --> 00:29:34,359 this villain. It is. It's shit that human beings have seemingly been doing 423 00:29:34,440 --> 00:29:38,640 for fucking millennia, and it is so creepy to see it come out among 424 00:29:40,119 --> 00:29:42,119 you know, a group that you'd normally think would be more enlightened, more 425 00:29:42,160 --> 00:29:45,799 aware, you know, or you would like to think so. But yeah, 426 00:29:45,799 --> 00:29:48,160 like, as you mentioned, man, this is like a it's like 427 00:29:48,200 --> 00:29:52,920 a long standing part of human behavior. You know, like all major religions 428 00:29:52,920 --> 00:29:56,440 like warn against it while also often doing it. You know, It's it's 429 00:29:56,480 --> 00:29:59,759 something that like we it's it's kind of like baked into a certain degree. 430 00:29:59,839 --> 00:30:02,839 But that doesn't mean that it's completely inevitable, man, Like there's you know, 431 00:30:02,839 --> 00:30:04,920 obviously the choices that we can make. Absolutely, but I do think 432 00:30:04,960 --> 00:30:08,359 that like social media has just made it possible for this to happen on like 433 00:30:08,559 --> 00:30:11,680 unprecedented skills. Totally. No, And I'm not saying, oh, it's 434 00:30:11,720 --> 00:30:15,200 going to happen anyway, it's just a fat I'm just saying it's like this 435 00:30:15,279 --> 00:30:17,920 is part of our genome, which is good to be aware of it. 436 00:30:17,920 --> 00:30:19,640 It's good to be aware that this ship comes up so you can nip it 437 00:30:19,640 --> 00:30:22,200 in the bud and not be like that. You know, there's a tendency 438 00:30:22,759 --> 00:30:26,279 for this bad behavior to come up. You know, I feel the same 439 00:30:26,319 --> 00:30:30,200 way about human greed. And once you acknowledge there's that tendency, then you 440 00:30:30,240 --> 00:30:32,759 can change it with culture, nip it in the bud and be like, 441 00:30:33,200 --> 00:30:34,880 listen, this is what we tend to do, and this is not a 442 00:30:34,960 --> 00:30:38,720 healthy way to go about This is intremental to the collective. So yeah, 443 00:30:38,759 --> 00:30:44,160 it's funny that the cancelation thing, I was a friend of mine. Actually 444 00:30:44,160 --> 00:30:48,240 this happened probably seven years ago. A friend of mine canceled another friend. 445 00:30:48,400 --> 00:30:51,480 They were in a relationship for like a year and a half. You know, 446 00:30:51,480 --> 00:30:56,359 they they broke up. You know, it was a fucking nasty breakup, 447 00:30:56,440 --> 00:31:00,119 like people that were breaking each other shit. Whatever. This is the 448 00:31:00,160 --> 00:31:04,240 punk scene in Oakland, like seven years ago, and basically she ended up 449 00:31:04,240 --> 00:31:08,640 after a while, she ended up kind of alleging kind of like assaultish tones 450 00:31:08,680 --> 00:31:12,799 without really saying it. And I don't know what the fuck happened whatever, 451 00:31:12,920 --> 00:31:15,599 But I mean, I would hope that's not what happened. If that was, 452 00:31:15,680 --> 00:31:18,519 I would hope there was a way to, you know, actually get 453 00:31:18,599 --> 00:31:23,119 the other person to listen and have it be like a constructive thing. But 454 00:31:23,240 --> 00:31:26,240 at the end of the day, I don't know, it doesn't sound like 455 00:31:26,759 --> 00:31:30,359 you just sound like it was a fucking unhealthy, deranged relationship as all that 456 00:31:30,440 --> 00:31:33,839 happens. And anyway, he ended up dropping out a punk scene, moving 457 00:31:33,880 --> 00:31:37,599 to La becoming a comedian, you know, she like destroyed a bunch of 458 00:31:37,640 --> 00:31:40,680 his ship on the way out. Whatever, and then it was whatever, 459 00:31:40,680 --> 00:31:42,559 and I was just something I did was like I don't want to touch that 460 00:31:42,640 --> 00:31:45,920 with you. I'd like, both of you, I don't want to And 461 00:31:45,960 --> 00:31:49,839 then she ended up getting canceled a year later because she was helping her fucking 462 00:31:52,359 --> 00:31:56,279 Chinese landlord who didn't speak English. She had moved out of her house. 463 00:31:56,319 --> 00:32:00,640 It's like subleased it the place she was renting this someone else, and they 464 00:32:00,680 --> 00:32:02,720 ended up trashing the place like a bunch of like fucking punk theralics, you 465 00:32:02,759 --> 00:32:06,000 know. And I say that, like we were all punk theralics. Yea. 466 00:32:06,279 --> 00:32:07,759 So she ended up being like, Okay, you guys have to leave. 467 00:32:08,079 --> 00:32:14,079 The landlord wants to fucking you know, and the least and they were 468 00:32:14,119 --> 00:32:16,039 like, you can't kick us out. This person's a person of color. 469 00:32:16,160 --> 00:32:19,839 You're a fucking racist, Like one of them was a person, and it 470 00:32:19,960 --> 00:32:22,759 just went down. I was like, oh my fucking god, you know. 471 00:32:22,160 --> 00:32:27,039 And of course the person's like fucking twenty four, you know, not 472 00:32:27,200 --> 00:32:30,319 knocking it, not being ages here, but like life experience of a fart 473 00:32:30,400 --> 00:32:34,079 maybe compared to whatever, you know. And at the time I was working 474 00:32:34,079 --> 00:32:37,799 for the railroad. I'm working with like all fucking people from different backgrounds, 475 00:32:37,839 --> 00:32:40,359 any of this shit. If they could listen to the conversations that these people 476 00:32:40,400 --> 00:32:44,839 were having and the allegations, they'd be like, what the fuck is this? 477 00:32:44,920 --> 00:32:47,000 Like this is you know, this is the most goofy shit, And 478 00:32:47,079 --> 00:32:50,440 I think, how that's this? That's how a lot of this ship comes 479 00:32:50,480 --> 00:32:52,279 off to people who aren't in it right, They're like what the fuck? 480 00:32:52,799 --> 00:32:55,519 And so anyway, it ended up they ended up ruining her life, telling 481 00:32:55,519 --> 00:33:00,519 her she should kill herself all this shit, and you know she's like half 482 00:33:00,519 --> 00:33:02,839 Arab if that even matters. It's it's just it's just identitarianism, you know. 483 00:33:02,839 --> 00:33:06,680 That's the other wack thing I want to talk about later. But it 484 00:33:06,720 --> 00:33:07,839 was just kind of funny. It came full circle. It's like this is 485 00:33:07,880 --> 00:33:10,759 a whole culture. It's like you were doing this and not like it justifies 486 00:33:10,799 --> 00:33:15,359 this happening to you. But do you see that this is kind of a 487 00:33:15,359 --> 00:33:20,720 circular thing here in this weird culture. Maybe it's time to leave it, 488 00:33:20,759 --> 00:33:22,839 you know, walk away from it for sure. Man. I mean that's 489 00:33:22,839 --> 00:33:25,480 that's the thing. Man. If you if you like nurture this culture, 490 00:33:25,759 --> 00:33:31,920 where punishment is like crowdsourced and you know, and the other thing about cancelations, 491 00:33:31,920 --> 00:33:36,359 well, the other thing one thing about translations is that no one's in 492 00:33:36,400 --> 00:33:38,240 charge of them. Man, Like maybe somebody starts it, you know, 493 00:33:38,319 --> 00:33:40,880 but like nobody's in charge of it. There's no structure to it, so 494 00:33:42,000 --> 00:33:45,960 you can't stop it. Like once you feel like you've gotten what you wanted 495 00:33:45,039 --> 00:33:47,720 or whatever, you can like tell everyone to stop. Like no one's in 496 00:33:47,799 --> 00:33:51,599 charge, man, you know. And so it's like there's this culture where 497 00:33:51,640 --> 00:33:54,119 it's just like yeah, these crowdsource punishments with no one in charge that can 498 00:33:54,160 --> 00:33:59,720 go on indefinitely and can morph into fucking anything. You know, Like if 499 00:33:59,759 --> 00:34:02,720 you if you nurture our culture, it'll happen to you. Like there's like 500 00:34:02,880 --> 00:34:07,440 there's like that's going to happen to you. You know. That's what always 501 00:34:07,480 --> 00:34:09,800 blows my mind, is like it's, you know, these people who associate 502 00:34:09,840 --> 00:34:13,039 with this ship and partake. It's like, at what point are they going 503 00:34:13,119 --> 00:34:15,599 to turn on you? Because it's a really fucking thin line to piss some 504 00:34:15,639 --> 00:34:19,440 of them off, and to you know, especially with all this heavy dog 505 00:34:19,519 --> 00:34:21,760 mine that was the other thing that never felt good. It's like all the 506 00:34:21,840 --> 00:34:24,760 dogma got so weird. It wasn't just about you know, and it never 507 00:34:24,840 --> 00:34:29,239 felt, towards the end like it was done from a place of love and 508 00:34:29,440 --> 00:34:32,400 genuine betterment, you know, like you would see in like a twelve step 509 00:34:32,400 --> 00:34:35,360 program, which I want to talk about too, because I know you're, 510 00:34:35,480 --> 00:34:37,239 you know, coming up on ten years so right now. But it felt 511 00:34:37,280 --> 00:34:43,440 like this just this really juvenile, divisive, angry, nasty form of shaming 512 00:34:43,440 --> 00:34:45,960 and shit, which you know, I think like one out of one out 513 00:34:45,960 --> 00:34:51,119 of every ten thousand cases. Maybe that's valid, you know, but um, 514 00:34:51,960 --> 00:34:53,559 you know, it's just it was just fucking weird. It was weird 515 00:34:53,599 --> 00:34:57,599 and disgusting. And that's when I started to get this is I started, 516 00:34:58,039 --> 00:35:00,599 you know, breaking away from this ship probably about ten years ago, slowly 517 00:35:00,639 --> 00:35:04,119 and then getting more into botany and plants and being like, yet it's just 518 00:35:04,159 --> 00:35:06,679 kind of whack. I don't want to do with this, you know, 519 00:35:07,320 --> 00:35:12,800 But anyway, moving on, I know you're When I learned that you and 520 00:35:12,840 --> 00:35:16,559 Clementine are sober, it kind of clicked. I was like, oh, 521 00:35:16,599 --> 00:35:21,440 because being I'm I got seven years and I still fund wasschedelic and shit, 522 00:35:21,519 --> 00:35:23,960 but that's not you know, but booze was my main thing. That was 523 00:35:24,000 --> 00:35:28,599 what I was like using to numb myself from how shitty the world could be. 524 00:35:29,039 --> 00:35:30,559 Booze. If I never would have quit drinking, I never could have 525 00:35:30,599 --> 00:35:36,159 done anything that I'm doing now. I never could have grown, you know. 526 00:35:37,559 --> 00:35:39,599 And so when I learned that you guys were sober, I was like, 527 00:35:39,639 --> 00:35:43,639 oh, okay, this makes sense because having been to a lot of 528 00:35:43,679 --> 00:35:46,159 meetings and seeing the ship that comes out, you got people from all different 529 00:35:46,159 --> 00:35:51,639 backgrounds. Non judgment, humility, self honesty, you know, bullshitting yourself. 530 00:35:52,000 --> 00:35:54,960 People won't let each other bullshit themselves too, you know. I mean 531 00:35:55,000 --> 00:35:59,760 that's a great thing working with people. It all made sense. And I 532 00:35:59,800 --> 00:36:00,960 look at that. I mean, yeah, I've been in I've been in 533 00:36:01,000 --> 00:36:05,280 fucking AA meetings where so I was in a meeting in East Oakland where that's 534 00:36:05,320 --> 00:36:07,559 too, was like, and then I shot the motherfucker, you know, 535 00:36:07,760 --> 00:36:10,639 And he was talking about it from a place of like self. He would 536 00:36:10,719 --> 00:36:14,679 like he wasn't proud of himself, you know, Yeah, he had known 537 00:36:14,719 --> 00:36:16,039 he'd honestly fucked up. Like look at where I was, like, this 538 00:36:16,119 --> 00:36:19,960 is what happened to me, you know, when someone else in the room 539 00:36:20,039 --> 00:36:22,280 was like damn. Like when he said that, they were like holy shit. 540 00:36:22,559 --> 00:36:25,199 But it was like people come out and and people then embraced them, 541 00:36:25,199 --> 00:36:28,639 and we're like, man, you've come so far, like you got fucking 542 00:36:28,679 --> 00:36:32,079 However, many years now, it's genuine love and it feels good in those 543 00:36:32,159 --> 00:36:37,159 rooms, and it has to because those people can't afford to bullshit themselves anymore, 544 00:36:37,239 --> 00:36:40,440 you know, and they have to like live what they it's it's I 545 00:36:40,480 --> 00:36:44,599 mean, I think A's got good instructions for people that don't even have drinking 546 00:36:44,639 --> 00:36:45,280 problems. But when I learned that, I was like, holy shit. 547 00:36:45,440 --> 00:36:50,239 And then I could, of course compare that with this weird whatever you want 548 00:36:50,239 --> 00:36:54,199 to call a cancel culture, this deranged like divisive leftism, their their worlds 549 00:36:54,239 --> 00:36:57,159 apart. Yeah, I don't know. I'd love to hear what you have 550 00:36:57,199 --> 00:37:00,679 to say about that. Yeah, man, I got so much to say 551 00:37:00,679 --> 00:37:05,280 about that. Honestly, I mean, where do I even start? Yeah, 552 00:37:05,320 --> 00:37:07,719 I mean, okay, I've been in the program for ten years. 553 00:37:07,960 --> 00:37:10,280 Um, I also work at a homeless shelter, and I'm just like, 554 00:37:10,360 --> 00:37:15,039 yeah, like people people are okay new slash like people are fucking complicated, 555 00:37:15,199 --> 00:37:21,280 you know, like really complicated, and we often do like really whack shit, 556 00:37:21,599 --> 00:37:22,760 you know, So what are we gonna do about that? Or like 557 00:37:22,800 --> 00:37:28,119 do we just like do we just like take everything away from people when they 558 00:37:28,159 --> 00:37:30,440 when they do something wrong and then expect like things to get better, Like 559 00:37:30,480 --> 00:37:34,199 what the fuck is the endgame here? You know? And and as you 560 00:37:34,199 --> 00:37:37,480 were pointing out, like in in tost that programs, like people come in 561 00:37:37,519 --> 00:37:39,440 and they've done like insane shit. They were like bikers, they fucking killed 562 00:37:39,519 --> 00:37:44,960 people, they're you know whatever, like insane stuff they've been up to because 563 00:37:45,039 --> 00:37:47,440 like you know, shocker, like when you're when you're fucking drinking and doing 564 00:37:47,480 --> 00:37:52,800 drugs for ten years and you know, like you become a professional at it, 565 00:37:52,840 --> 00:37:55,239 like you get up to some like really crazy shit. Man. You 566 00:37:55,239 --> 00:37:59,920 know, it's like fucking happens, you know. Um, and so yeah, 567 00:38:00,000 --> 00:38:01,199 and you know, we understand on the program, like if you fucking 568 00:38:01,320 --> 00:38:05,880 if you fucking like killed somebody you know, or did some other shit that 569 00:38:05,880 --> 00:38:09,440 that no one can be proud of, you know. Um. You it's 570 00:38:09,519 --> 00:38:14,440 we understand that you know, the family and friends of that person that you 571 00:38:14,559 --> 00:38:16,960 killed, you know, they don't want to see you probably, you know, 572 00:38:17,000 --> 00:38:20,599 and they shouldn't have to and they shouldn't even have to forgive you. 573 00:38:20,599 --> 00:38:22,239 You know, it's fine, you know, like they they're allowed to be 574 00:38:22,280 --> 00:38:25,400 fucking mad at you, Like we understand that. But that doesn't mean that 575 00:38:25,480 --> 00:38:30,119 everyone else in the fucking world has to isolate you. You know. It 576 00:38:30,119 --> 00:38:31,480 doesn't mean that you can never have a job again. It doesn't mean that 577 00:38:31,519 --> 00:38:34,880 you can never have a girlfriend again. It doesn't mean that you can never 578 00:38:34,920 --> 00:38:37,760 have a life, you know, because you deserve a life. Even if 579 00:38:37,800 --> 00:38:39,159 you did something really fucked up, you deserve a life. You know, 580 00:38:39,840 --> 00:38:44,000 Like if you're if you're fucking working on your ship and trying to like not 581 00:38:44,079 --> 00:38:45,679 be such a psycho, like, you know, you should have friends that 582 00:38:45,719 --> 00:38:49,199 are that are helping you with that. You should have people offering you a 583 00:38:49,320 --> 00:38:52,000 job at they're fucking mechanic place they work out or whatever it is. You 584 00:38:52,039 --> 00:38:55,920 know, like that's that is a good thing. We want to reintegrate people 585 00:38:57,719 --> 00:39:00,679 into the world of the living, you know. And it's the same shit 586 00:39:00,760 --> 00:39:02,159 with like, you know, I work with homeless people all day, man, 587 00:39:02,280 --> 00:39:06,239 and you know, these are people who like ninety nine percent of them 588 00:39:06,239 --> 00:39:10,440 have had like an extremely traumatic upbringing, you know, and at think it's 589 00:39:10,440 --> 00:39:13,880 like chronically homeless people. You know, it's different if you lose your job 590 00:39:13,880 --> 00:39:16,159 and just get fucked, But people who are chronically homeless, man, it's 591 00:39:16,159 --> 00:39:21,039 like, you know, severe mental health problems almost always stemming from childhood trauma. 592 00:39:21,119 --> 00:39:23,840 And then like the experience of being homeless is itself extremely traumatizing as well. 593 00:39:24,039 --> 00:39:27,920 And then you know, adding to that lots of like racial trauma, 594 00:39:28,000 --> 00:39:31,079 like especially with Indigenous people in Canada, very fucked up recipe for disaster, 595 00:39:31,280 --> 00:39:36,000 you know. But like, you know, a lot of people in situations 596 00:39:36,039 --> 00:39:39,599 like that, like repeatedly act in ways that are like extremely antisocial, often 597 00:39:39,719 --> 00:39:43,840 violent, you know, like they get themselves into a lot of trouble, 598 00:39:43,920 --> 00:39:46,199 right, and like if you just are like, okay, well you did 599 00:39:46,280 --> 00:39:52,199 a bad thing, like you you cat called the girl, You fucking you 600 00:39:52,320 --> 00:39:54,119 pissed on the side of my building, you fucking took a swing at me, 601 00:39:54,159 --> 00:39:59,920 like whatever it is, then like and therefore you never get to have 602 00:40:00,079 --> 00:40:05,639 anything ever again. Like how how the fuck are you going to um like 603 00:40:05,800 --> 00:40:09,119 tackle the issue of homelessness, you know, how how are you going to 604 00:40:09,280 --> 00:40:14,039 help people in any material tangible way? And this is something that like drives 605 00:40:14,079 --> 00:40:17,159 me fucking crazy about The nexus about like toxic social justice culture is that they're 606 00:40:17,159 --> 00:40:22,920 always talking about marginalized people, you know, but they're they're and they're never 607 00:40:22,440 --> 00:40:28,719 acknowledging the fact that, like the experience of marginalization is often very traumatizing and 608 00:40:28,760 --> 00:40:30,800 can end up with people, you know, acting in ways that they're not 609 00:40:30,840 --> 00:40:34,599 proud of, you know, Like, how how are you going to like 610 00:40:34,639 --> 00:40:38,280 help marginalize people if you don't accept people who have done things that are wrong, 611 00:40:38,440 --> 00:40:43,159 you know, like being that's the ultimate form of rejection, you know, 612 00:40:43,199 --> 00:40:45,679 of being stepped on, being ignored, of being fucking told you're not 613 00:40:45,719 --> 00:40:50,880 going to be anything, You're never going to be anything. It's how do 614 00:40:50,920 --> 00:40:52,360 you create something good from that? I mean, it's just and it's just 615 00:40:52,440 --> 00:40:57,440 common sense too. Like if I'm if if I'm like talking to my kid 616 00:40:57,440 --> 00:41:00,199 and she does something that pisses me off and I'm like, don't do that, 617 00:41:00,239 --> 00:41:02,760 How could you do that? Blah blah, and I'm mad at her, 618 00:41:02,840 --> 00:41:07,480 She's gonna be like fuck you, and that creates an antagonistic relationship. 619 00:41:07,559 --> 00:41:10,119 Whereas if I'm like, hey, listen, you did this thing. Here's 620 00:41:10,119 --> 00:41:13,639 why I don't want you to do it. It's you know, it's upsetting 621 00:41:13,679 --> 00:41:16,119 to me, it hurts me, blah blah. We can't you know, 622 00:41:16,400 --> 00:41:19,800 and explain it to her and then she's like, oh okay, And I'm 623 00:41:20,159 --> 00:41:22,639 like, I'm like like holding her and caressing her and being like, I 624 00:41:22,679 --> 00:41:24,760 love you. It's okay, But just just try to do that. That's 625 00:41:24,760 --> 00:41:29,159 going to change her behavior if I just you know, I just like you 626 00:41:29,320 --> 00:41:31,199 to rate her, What does that do? You know? And it just 627 00:41:31,559 --> 00:41:36,480 and it just making people out to be villains. Some people are fucked up. 628 00:41:36,559 --> 00:41:39,800 Some people have really bad motives. Some people have but I think, 629 00:41:40,280 --> 00:41:44,039 you know, it's a lot to go from that to saying that there's no 630 00:41:44,119 --> 00:41:46,239 redemption, that there's no possibility for change, and it kind of goes off, 631 00:41:46,480 --> 00:41:51,559 It goes against everything leftism is. It's it's more like conservative approach, 632 00:41:51,679 --> 00:41:57,400 right, there's more punitive, disciplinarian approach. Yes, it's fucking weird, 633 00:41:57,400 --> 00:42:00,199 man, It's some you know. I had an interview with Roger Pete, 634 00:42:00,239 --> 00:42:02,639 who you know, a friend of mine, friend of ours, and he 635 00:42:04,320 --> 00:42:07,039 said, you know, because I was we kind of touched on this too 636 00:42:07,119 --> 00:42:09,320 for ten minutes, this topic like what the fuck happened to left? And 637 00:42:09,599 --> 00:42:13,079 he was like, well, you know, I remember I saw it kind 638 00:42:13,119 --> 00:42:16,239 of starting when someone was someone I knew was working. They were trying to 639 00:42:16,360 --> 00:42:21,840 organize workers, you know, like this is the working class people. I 640 00:42:21,840 --> 00:42:22,840 think it was in the South Side of Chicago, I figure where it was, 641 00:42:22,880 --> 00:42:27,079 but uh, you know, working class whites. And they were and 642 00:42:27,199 --> 00:42:30,880 they were like, I can't work with them because they're they're a little racist, 643 00:42:30,960 --> 00:42:32,719 and you know, and he was like what the fuck, Like that's 644 00:42:32,880 --> 00:42:38,320 not that's not you know, that's not the way that's bad, Like that's 645 00:42:38,760 --> 00:42:43,639 and that I think that idea is shocking through a lot of people on left. 646 00:42:43,639 --> 00:42:46,599 It's like, no, you you work with people who are ideologically different 647 00:42:46,639 --> 00:42:51,360 than you. And the possibility there is that, you know, if you're 648 00:42:52,480 --> 00:42:55,000 not tolerating nasty shit. They're saying, of course, but you know, 649 00:42:55,039 --> 00:43:00,440 instead of just you know, you have a shared goal, right, you 650 00:43:00,440 --> 00:43:02,639 want to better conditions, you want to organize a label or whatever. You 651 00:43:02,719 --> 00:43:07,679 know, you just deal with this kind of whatever and then slowly that also 652 00:43:07,119 --> 00:43:09,840 gives them the opportunity to change. It is by being around you, because 653 00:43:09,840 --> 00:43:14,480 you're not tolerating, You're not just you know, keeping your mouth shut up. 654 00:43:14,480 --> 00:43:16,039 They say, some racist shit, But you're not going to automatically be 655 00:43:16,079 --> 00:43:19,840 like, no, I refuse to work with you. You're a fucking right 656 00:43:20,159 --> 00:43:22,719 you know. Maybe it will come to that eventually, but I'm just saying 657 00:43:22,760 --> 00:43:24,679 that's, you know, no, no for sure, man, I wrote. 658 00:43:24,920 --> 00:43:30,400 I wrote a whole article about organizing conservative workers because it was it popped 659 00:43:30,480 --> 00:43:34,159 up in the discourse for a while last year where where like a lot of 660 00:43:34,239 --> 00:43:38,000 leftists were basically just like I refuse to ever like organize with conservative workers. 661 00:43:38,000 --> 00:43:42,920 I'm like, yo, like, depending on how you like define conservatism, 662 00:43:43,039 --> 00:43:45,880 you know, like, like most if you define it as like holding some 663 00:43:45,960 --> 00:43:51,679 degree of like conservative and or like reactionary or like regressive views about like some 664 00:43:52,039 --> 00:43:54,760 identity topic. You know, like fucking like almost everyone you fucking meet in 665 00:43:54,800 --> 00:43:58,840 the world is like a conservative man, you know, and like one of 666 00:43:58,840 --> 00:44:00,800 the things that I sort of touching on this earlier, but like people have 667 00:44:00,880 --> 00:44:06,519 this idea that like only sort of like like white guys and like checked shirts 668 00:44:06,559 --> 00:44:09,000 are conservatives or whatever. And I'm like, yo, if you won't organize 669 00:44:09,000 --> 00:44:14,840 with conservative workers, you won't organize with like Muslims, you know, like 670 00:44:14,880 --> 00:44:19,239 you won't organize with like you know, uh, you know, you know, 671 00:44:19,239 --> 00:44:22,079 like Hispanic like immigrants who like come from traditional families, Like you know, 672 00:44:22,159 --> 00:44:25,639 what the fuck you won't organize with anyone who isn't like a basically like 673 00:44:25,679 --> 00:44:30,760 a white or off white like fucking urban professional, like you know what I 674 00:44:30,800 --> 00:44:34,239 mean, because like those those are like the only people who are on board 675 00:44:34,280 --> 00:44:38,760 with like every single one of your like identitarian um like pet projects, you 676 00:44:38,800 --> 00:44:43,719 know, like most people aren't, you know, and like it doesn't that 677 00:44:43,800 --> 00:44:49,039 doesn't mean that you're that like the goals of of I hate even saying this, 678 00:44:49,039 --> 00:44:52,199 but like the goals of identity politics, which like you know, or 679 00:44:52,320 --> 00:44:55,320 like the goals of progressive um politics, you know, is like you know, 680 00:44:55,400 --> 00:45:00,760 to have to have identity based oppression and no longer or be a major 681 00:45:00,800 --> 00:45:04,159 factor in anyone's life. Like that's a good goal, you know, like 682 00:45:04,559 --> 00:45:06,960 we should all support that, right, But like when you look at the 683 00:45:06,960 --> 00:45:10,519 real material world, like many people hold regressive ideas about identity, like it's 684 00:45:12,119 --> 00:45:14,800 and if you refuse to fucking talk to them, you have nothing. You're 685 00:45:14,920 --> 00:45:16,880 you're just like in a in a tiny little room by yourself. You know. 686 00:45:17,400 --> 00:45:21,440 Yeah, yeah there was forget what it was, but there was a 687 00:45:22,159 --> 00:45:24,480 figure where I saw, but someone had shared a meme that said it was 688 00:45:24,519 --> 00:45:29,440 like a screenshot of a conversation. It was like the person on the left 689 00:45:29,840 --> 00:45:31,360 was talking and then the person on the right, you know, typical like 690 00:45:31,400 --> 00:45:34,840 text message screenshot. And the person the left was like, well, I 691 00:45:35,239 --> 00:45:38,000 just can't imagine ever, you know, working with uh, you know, 692 00:45:38,199 --> 00:45:43,400 I don't think trans people should ever organize with with homophobes. And the person 693 00:45:43,440 --> 00:45:47,400 on the right was like, trans people should absolutely organize with homophobe Like you 694 00:45:47,400 --> 00:45:50,880 know, if if it's a labor movement, it's called the picket line, 695 00:45:50,920 --> 00:45:52,719 look it up. You know. It was like holy fuck, Like that 696 00:45:52,800 --> 00:45:58,039 just flew so far over person on the left head, like the person that 697 00:45:58,239 --> 00:46:00,119 was on the left side of the conversation, you know, the text message. 698 00:46:00,519 --> 00:46:04,119 It was just like that. You know. It's like, yeah, 699 00:46:04,639 --> 00:46:07,960 that's how you eventually come together to get you And that's not only that, 700 00:46:07,000 --> 00:46:13,280 but that's that person you know, who might have these somewhat regressive ideas is 701 00:46:13,360 --> 00:46:16,960 exposed to more just by not being immediately shut out as exposed to more progressive 702 00:46:17,000 --> 00:46:22,119 ideas, maybe that gives them the opportunity to fucking change at some point. 703 00:46:22,119 --> 00:46:25,400 That's how you change culture. Putting yourself in this bubble where you're only gonna, 704 00:46:25,480 --> 00:46:29,960 you know, align with people who are ideologically the same as you is 705 00:46:30,039 --> 00:46:34,119 such a fucking weird, twisted take Man and I. And that was something 706 00:46:34,159 --> 00:46:36,719 I saw happening. You know, I'm I lived in the Bay Area for 707 00:46:36,760 --> 00:46:38,440 twenty years. Man, that was like such a thing. It was really 708 00:46:38,480 --> 00:46:42,639 weird. It was also weird that the more gentrified my neighborhood got, the 709 00:46:42,679 --> 00:46:46,480 more like Black Lives Matter signs appeared in the windows of white people that live 710 00:46:46,559 --> 00:46:51,360 there. Of course, you know, all the like all the fucking symbols 711 00:46:51,400 --> 00:46:54,599 and the signs and the logos and shit, and you know, I thought, 712 00:46:54,639 --> 00:46:59,159 like for a minute, like it should feel better that these you know, 713 00:47:00,079 --> 00:47:04,039 I see these things and like they represent people who kind of feel the 714 00:47:04,079 --> 00:47:07,079 same way I do. But it doesn't make me feel that way because what 715 00:47:07,119 --> 00:47:08,760 they kind of stand to me now is like the symbol of like the rich 716 00:47:08,880 --> 00:47:13,840 moving in, like my neighborhoods starting to suck. It's weird, you know, 717 00:47:13,920 --> 00:47:15,960 it's like the how the fuck like the wealthier people moving in feel this 718 00:47:16,000 --> 00:47:20,679 way, but they're still kind of clueless about things that you know, there's 719 00:47:20,679 --> 00:47:23,280 still the people like getting into it with me, you know, calling cops 720 00:47:23,280 --> 00:47:30,360 on me for fucking you know, planting trees whatever whatever, Like I was 721 00:47:30,559 --> 00:47:34,159 really bizarre. I always joke about the you know, calling the cops on 722 00:47:34,199 --> 00:47:37,679 somebody for tampering with their like Black Lives Matter side, you know. Yeah, 723 00:47:38,239 --> 00:47:40,559 it's yeah, man, it's so but you know, and this is 724 00:47:40,599 --> 00:47:44,840 something what's been especially maddening to me too, is to talk about this stuff, 725 00:47:44,880 --> 00:47:47,840 this stuff as someone on the left and have so many friends, like 726 00:47:47,880 --> 00:47:51,480 people I genuinely care about be like, well, I don't think it's really 727 00:47:51,519 --> 00:47:54,280 an issue. Like I don't really think cancel culture, you know, which 728 00:47:54,280 --> 00:47:57,119 I don't like. I said, I don't even like using those words. 729 00:47:57,119 --> 00:47:59,679 I don't think cancel culture. I don't think all this shit's just online, 730 00:47:59,719 --> 00:48:01,280 you know, you just ignore, it'll go away. It's like they it's 731 00:48:01,320 --> 00:48:06,599 not going away, man, It's spreading out and becoming more you know. 732 00:48:06,679 --> 00:48:08,480 And then of course the right wing sees it, and I mean Steve Bannon 733 00:48:08,599 --> 00:48:12,079 has said, like keep doing this shit. You know. I love this. 734 00:48:12,199 --> 00:48:14,800 I love that the left is doing this kind of shit because it's the 735 00:48:14,880 --> 00:48:19,039 best recruiting tool for us. Yeah, dude, I did. I did 736 00:48:19,079 --> 00:48:22,360 my master's research on fire right extremism. And when I was doing that, 737 00:48:22,440 --> 00:48:28,440 I was just hanging out with um fucking nazi's for like a year, um 738 00:48:28,880 --> 00:48:32,679 and doing like interviews with them and like going to their meetings and ship It 739 00:48:32,760 --> 00:48:37,599 was like it was a very fucked out time. Um. But yeah, 740 00:48:37,760 --> 00:48:40,320 And one of the things that they fucking repeated all the time was they were 741 00:48:40,360 --> 00:48:44,159 like, yo, the current like left, like the current iteration of the 742 00:48:44,239 --> 00:48:46,400 left is like the perfect enemy for us, Like they could not be more 743 00:48:47,000 --> 00:48:51,000 ideal, Like, you know, we couldn't pick a better enemy because they 744 00:48:51,000 --> 00:48:54,239 look fucking ridiculous and like everybody hates them, you know, it's like so 745 00:48:54,320 --> 00:48:59,519 easy to mock them. It's so used to poke holes in their arguments, 746 00:48:59,519 --> 00:49:01,079 like they're so fragile like whatever, you know what I mean. And I 747 00:49:01,159 --> 00:49:04,639 was just like Jesus christ Man, like, you know, unfortunately, like 748 00:49:04,679 --> 00:49:07,760 they're completely correct, you know, And I just I would really love to 749 00:49:07,800 --> 00:49:12,360 see a left that is, you know, a bit more like muscular, 750 00:49:12,480 --> 00:49:15,480 like you know, like I know, you know, has a thicker skin 751 00:49:15,639 --> 00:49:16,960 and doesn't Yeah, yeah, that's the thing. I was, like, 752 00:49:17,000 --> 00:49:21,840 you call a racist racist, they don't give a fuck like racist, it 753 00:49:21,880 --> 00:49:25,320 doesn't matter to them. It doesn't you know. It's yeah, I don't 754 00:49:25,360 --> 00:49:29,320 know, but that had to be weird to see, you know, especially 755 00:49:29,559 --> 00:49:32,519 as a leftist being in those groups and being like, holy shit, this 756 00:49:32,599 --> 00:49:37,599 is the reflection, this is the mirror back. And of course no one, 757 00:49:37,079 --> 00:49:40,599 not among like the urban left would see that because they don't they don't 758 00:49:40,639 --> 00:49:43,880 ever leave their bubble, you know. Yeah, no, they have no 759 00:49:43,960 --> 00:49:45,400 idea. One of the reasons I did that of research was because I was 760 00:49:45,400 --> 00:49:49,400 like looking around at my scenes and I was like, none, none of 761 00:49:49,440 --> 00:49:53,559 you guys actually understand what fascists think about stuff like you you have no idea, 762 00:49:53,800 --> 00:49:58,199 you know, and you you misunderstand it completely. And uh so I 763 00:49:58,239 --> 00:50:00,599 was like, I don't know, I'm gonna I'm gonna try to like do 764 00:50:00,679 --> 00:50:04,199 a deep dive into this ship and just make it a bit more understandable to 765 00:50:04,239 --> 00:50:07,760 like anti fascists, you know. Um, but yeah, it's yeah, 766 00:50:07,800 --> 00:50:12,400 it's it's the range. But again, I mean I think, you know, 767 00:50:12,440 --> 00:50:16,239 I think to the the weird thing, well, there's identitarianism, which 768 00:50:16,280 --> 00:50:21,280 I want to talk about too, because that's that's a it's such a foreign 769 00:50:21,320 --> 00:50:23,000 idea to a lot of people. I mean, if you would have asked 770 00:50:23,000 --> 00:50:24,760 me, like fifteen years ago, I would have been like, oh, 771 00:50:24,800 --> 00:50:30,400 that's g I mean, it goes beyond having social context or you know, 772 00:50:30,559 --> 00:50:36,800 race and oppression, and it's become this weird almost fetishization, especially among urban 773 00:50:37,440 --> 00:50:42,599 white you know, generally well educated liberals, where it's like any anyone who 774 00:50:42,639 --> 00:50:45,800 can be grouped into these kinds of into these demographics is like an accessory. 775 00:50:45,840 --> 00:50:50,199 It's like a thing to parade. I mean, that's my super cynical take. 776 00:50:50,280 --> 00:50:53,760 It's it's you know, it's and you're assigning qualities and your last the 777 00:50:53,880 --> 00:50:58,760 last fucking canceled podcast hit this on the head. What was the name of 778 00:50:58,760 --> 00:51:01,480 the professor you guys had on Adolph Reid? Yeah, man, holy shit, 779 00:51:01,639 --> 00:51:06,119 that guy was like anyways, you could tell you like a working class 780 00:51:06,199 --> 00:51:09,960 Brooklyn accent too. Just fucking appreciate. But but uh, you know, 781 00:51:10,119 --> 00:51:15,920 assigning attributes to people based on race, like but like in a positive way. 782 00:51:15,239 --> 00:51:19,239 You know, it's like it is this weird kind of reverse take on 783 00:51:20,079 --> 00:51:22,119 and making people too dimensional. You know, like, oh, well, 784 00:51:22,119 --> 00:51:28,079 this person's indigenous, so they're automatically they're a steward of the land. You 785 00:51:28,079 --> 00:51:31,199 know, this person, this person, you know grew up black in Harlem, 786 00:51:31,280 --> 00:51:36,039 so they're they're automatically, you know, a lot more street smart than 787 00:51:36,440 --> 00:51:40,760 It's just it's fucking weird, and it's and it it is. It kind 788 00:51:40,760 --> 00:51:44,880 of yeah, it kind of is. It's kind of it's not not kind 789 00:51:44,880 --> 00:51:45,880 of. It literally is racist, man, like, you know, and 790 00:51:45,920 --> 00:51:47,960 this is what it don't really talks about it all the time. It's like, 791 00:51:49,599 --> 00:51:52,079 racism fundamentally is the belief in race. You know, if you fucking 792 00:51:52,119 --> 00:51:55,519 like act like race is a real thing. You know that there's like attributes 793 00:51:55,559 --> 00:52:00,599 that could be like handed like like that could be handed down genetically about people's 794 00:52:00,639 --> 00:52:04,159 behavior and like the way that they like seeing the world and you know, 795 00:52:04,199 --> 00:52:07,159 their essential relationships the truth or whatever. You know. That is fucking racism. 796 00:52:07,239 --> 00:52:09,719 That's like literally what it is, you know. And like obviously there's 797 00:52:09,719 --> 00:52:13,960 like a form of racism that says that white people are fucking better than everybody 798 00:52:13,960 --> 00:52:16,440 else, you know, but like that that is not that is not fundamentally 799 00:52:16,480 --> 00:52:20,360 what racism is. Racism fundamentally is the belief in race, you know. 800 00:52:20,440 --> 00:52:25,960 And what I've seen is that um, the left has just embraced race completely, 801 00:52:27,039 --> 00:52:30,079 you know, and has started to just act as though race as like 802 00:52:30,079 --> 00:52:35,000 a real thing and assign these essential qualities to people based on the racial group, 803 00:52:35,039 --> 00:52:38,360 and is super fucked up, really racist, really concerning, and there's 804 00:52:38,400 --> 00:52:42,039 like a huge step backwards in terms of like racial progress. You know. 805 00:52:42,280 --> 00:52:45,960 Well also it's I mean, it's fundamentally anti intellectual, which is my take 806 00:52:45,000 --> 00:52:49,880 with that. I look, I look at racist like your traditional racist, 807 00:52:49,920 --> 00:52:52,159 like you know, the fucking right wing sort of Nazis, and I'm like, 808 00:52:52,440 --> 00:52:54,920 who the fuck thinks like that? Like that's just just such an anti 809 00:52:55,000 --> 00:53:00,039 scientific take on things like when you understand like melan production is just tied that, 810 00:53:00,119 --> 00:53:04,519 you know, evolution in a certain latitude and some exposures shit like that. 811 00:53:04,719 --> 00:53:07,320 And then of course there's race, there's culture. The two don't always 812 00:53:07,360 --> 00:53:09,880 go hand in hand. It depends on where someone it's it's just such a 813 00:53:09,920 --> 00:53:13,960 ship for brain to take, you know, to be racist like that, 814 00:53:14,400 --> 00:53:19,280 but then to look at like this weird fetishizing that the left is done over 815 00:53:19,320 --> 00:53:22,000 the last fuck man, I don't know, like especially ten years, it's 816 00:53:22,000 --> 00:53:28,079 really taken off. It's also extremely anti intellectual. Well, I hear a 817 00:53:28,119 --> 00:53:30,599 lot of this ship too. This I've always mentioned this, and no one 818 00:53:30,639 --> 00:53:34,400 really seems to know what I'm talking about. But this fetishizing of Indigenous people 819 00:53:35,280 --> 00:53:37,079 where it's like, well, and I hear that a lot being you know, 820 00:53:37,480 --> 00:53:42,440 associated with working with plants, doing you know, wanting native plant restoration. 821 00:53:43,000 --> 00:53:44,920 You know, like things people say things like what did you have an 822 00:53:44,920 --> 00:53:50,320 indigenous person consulted on this? Like what do you mean indigenous? Like what 823 00:53:50,360 --> 00:53:52,360 if? Like my fucking you know, someone who's never worked with plants in 824 00:53:52,400 --> 00:53:55,719 their life, but as you know, uh arapaho in their blood, Like 825 00:53:55,880 --> 00:54:00,719 what the fuck? Really? Like that's what you know, man, Yeah, 826 00:54:00,800 --> 00:54:05,199 it's really it's really fucking weird. And then of course, you know, 827 00:54:05,239 --> 00:54:07,559 again the social media, you can put it in your bio like I'm 828 00:54:07,679 --> 00:54:12,000 such and such, I put this in my bio, I'm this background, 829 00:54:12,039 --> 00:54:15,039 like that, this, this, and I think a lot of it too. 830 00:54:15,079 --> 00:54:17,559 I guess, you know, wanting, wanting, this identity comes from 831 00:54:17,760 --> 00:54:22,400 this fucked up, deranged form of consumerism we have where we're kind of taught 832 00:54:22,400 --> 00:54:23,840 to hate ourselves. We don't have any identity. Many of us grow up 833 00:54:23,840 --> 00:54:30,599 in these shitty suburbs where you know, there's there's it's just the most bland, 834 00:54:30,440 --> 00:54:36,000 you know, cultureless slum of the mind, you know, and so 835 00:54:36,039 --> 00:54:38,159 you want something that kind of defines you, you're fucking lost. I totally 836 00:54:38,199 --> 00:54:42,360 get it. But yeah, but you know, I don't know, man, 837 00:54:42,400 --> 00:54:44,760 I guess I've read some of the stuff you've written about this, and 838 00:54:44,760 --> 00:54:47,199 it's I've written like on your website, especially like the whole indigenous thing, 839 00:54:47,639 --> 00:54:52,840 this weird fetishizing that white liberals have with indigenous, uh, anything indigenous, 840 00:54:52,880 --> 00:54:55,559 and it's it's fucking man, hit the nail again. It hit the nail 841 00:54:55,559 --> 00:54:59,079 on the head, like I'm a slab when it comes to articulating this ship. 842 00:54:59,159 --> 00:55:00,119 What do you have to say about this? I guess because it's, 843 00:55:00,199 --> 00:55:04,000 man, it's some of the stuf people written. It's great. Yeah, 844 00:55:04,079 --> 00:55:06,880 okay, I have a couple of thoughts about this. I guess. First 845 00:55:06,880 --> 00:55:08,400 off, I can I'll try to remember all three of the things I wanted 846 00:55:08,400 --> 00:55:12,039 to say. But first off, I can just like run through the arguments 847 00:55:12,039 --> 00:55:15,239 of that article a little bit, Like it's called landback will not protect us 848 00:55:15,280 --> 00:55:20,039 from climate change. I believe it's what it's called. And basically because like 849 00:55:20,159 --> 00:55:22,800 last year, there was like this thing that I was noticing where anytime anyone 850 00:55:22,840 --> 00:55:27,320 would talk about climate change and like the fucking disaster that we're hurtling towards. 851 00:55:27,840 --> 00:55:31,000 Um, someone would just drop like a hashtag landback in the comments and just 852 00:55:31,039 --> 00:55:34,920 be like yeah, like you know, there can be no like action on 853 00:55:34,920 --> 00:55:37,760 climate change about indigenous leadership and like blah blah blah blah blah, and I'm 854 00:55:37,760 --> 00:55:40,599 like, okay, like listen, like I it is. It is personally 855 00:55:40,639 --> 00:55:45,559 and politically important to me that decolonization would be like taken seriously. I was 856 00:55:45,599 --> 00:55:47,960 like a political goal. You know, It's it's important to me because I 857 00:55:47,960 --> 00:55:53,480 have like many Indigenous friends, m and community members, Okay, and also 858 00:55:53,559 --> 00:55:57,719 I have Indigenous ancestry that I'm proud of, you know, and I think 859 00:55:57,760 --> 00:56:00,920 that it's an important thing. But de colonization has to be taken on its 860 00:56:00,000 --> 00:56:06,480 own compelling merits, not because we believe that the magic elf blood of Indigenous 861 00:56:06,480 --> 00:56:09,559 people is going to save us from fucking climate change. The thing about Indigenous 862 00:56:09,679 --> 00:56:15,440 understandings of of ecology, which by the way, there are hundreds, if 863 00:56:15,519 --> 00:56:20,000 not thousands, of different Indigenous understandings of ecology, because indigenaty is like a 864 00:56:20,039 --> 00:56:22,239 weird like racial category that we made up like exactly, you know what I 865 00:56:22,239 --> 00:56:27,119 mean. It's not it's not like an ethnic or cultural identity anyways. Um 866 00:56:28,039 --> 00:56:31,519 the idea that, like, the thing about indigenous understandings of ecology is that 867 00:56:31,639 --> 00:56:36,679 often they're intensely local, right The whole fucking point of them is that they're 868 00:56:36,719 --> 00:56:38,760 intensely local because they're like very land based, you know, So, like, 869 00:56:39,000 --> 00:56:44,239 how the fuck would you know someone who, like like someone who's like 870 00:56:44,320 --> 00:56:46,719 Inuit, you know who who grew up somewhere where there are literally no trees 871 00:56:47,920 --> 00:56:52,719 and no plants most of the time because it's fucking ice, you know, 872 00:56:52,960 --> 00:56:57,920 Like, how is that person going to go to southern California and um, 873 00:56:58,599 --> 00:57:01,559 like educate you on how to grow a native plant in southern California. It 874 00:57:01,559 --> 00:57:07,400 doesn't make any fucking sense, right Like, And apart from that, like 875 00:57:07,639 --> 00:57:15,400 the the challenges that we're facing as a global like meta civilization require solutions that 876 00:57:15,480 --> 00:57:20,880 are huge in scope, right like, and and really really complex, you 877 00:57:20,920 --> 00:57:23,760 know. And that is not to say that an indigenous person could not come 878 00:57:23,840 --> 00:57:28,239 up with solutions that are huge and complex. It is to say that, 879 00:57:28,320 --> 00:57:35,360 like the traditional and like intensely local ways of understanding the natural world that people 880 00:57:35,360 --> 00:57:38,280 are talking about when they talk about like indigenous leadership and shit are not huge 881 00:57:38,280 --> 00:57:45,480 and complex um systems for like undoing global capitalism and finding like new ways of 882 00:57:45,519 --> 00:57:49,920 like deriving energy so that we can use it to power a gigantic civilization that 883 00:57:50,000 --> 00:57:53,280 like did not exist when colonization started to occur, you know, Like it's 884 00:57:53,360 --> 00:57:59,000 it's like it's like saying that, like because people also put indigenous people like 885 00:57:59,159 --> 00:58:04,199 uh in the past. Basically they're like permanently like like placed like five hundred 886 00:58:04,239 --> 00:58:07,920 years ago. You know, Um, the indigenous people in twenty twenty three 887 00:58:07,920 --> 00:58:10,960 like drive pickup trucks and fucking throw plastic bottles on the ground and whatever. 888 00:58:12,000 --> 00:58:15,079 Because there's just people. Republican doesn't make much sense to me. But some 889 00:58:15,079 --> 00:58:17,920 people, yeah, dude, Like many of them are like evangelical Christians, 890 00:58:17,920 --> 00:58:21,400 Like you know, it's it's like a fucking group like anybody else. And 891 00:58:21,400 --> 00:58:25,320 to say that they're not allowed to have internal disagreements, internal political discourses, 892 00:58:25,639 --> 00:58:30,480 you know, vast differences between them on the basis of like every kind of 893 00:58:30,519 --> 00:58:34,440 identity that you can pick up and political understandings, you know, is racist. 894 00:58:34,519 --> 00:58:37,039 They actually do have all of those differences because they're normal, regular human 895 00:58:37,039 --> 00:58:43,840 beings like everybody else. So that was one thought. The other things that 896 00:58:43,840 --> 00:58:45,719 I just wanted to like briefly sort of like go over just because they're in 897 00:58:45,760 --> 00:58:51,159 my head is I have thought a lot about why identitarianism has taken off so 898 00:58:51,280 --> 00:58:53,880 much in the past a little while. I think that there's like there's two 899 00:58:53,920 --> 00:58:59,559 major things that I can point to. One is that we're in like an 900 00:58:59,559 --> 00:59:04,679 epithet make of alienation, Like people are completely completely fucking cut off. Man. 901 00:59:04,840 --> 00:59:07,719 I think that the the what you call the slums of the mind is 902 00:59:07,719 --> 00:59:12,159 something I could of all the fucking time. Man, Every fucking small town 903 00:59:12,199 --> 00:59:16,280 looks exactly the same. They're completely soulless, man, and you know, 904 00:59:16,559 --> 00:59:21,239 just completely interchangeable. There's like nothing to be proud of, there's nothing to 905 00:59:21,280 --> 00:59:23,880 feel connected to. And in general, our entire culture is just moving more 906 00:59:23,920 --> 00:59:30,239 and more towards this complete disconnection, total alienation. And in circumstances like that, 907 00:59:30,000 --> 00:59:36,119 people who require connection in order to fucking not lose their minds try to 908 00:59:36,159 --> 00:59:38,360 find ways to feel like they're part of something. Man. And identity is 909 00:59:38,400 --> 00:59:42,840 like what we have, you know, And of course it's like this like 910 00:59:43,159 --> 00:59:46,519 fetishized commodified identity like you were saying, it's something you put in your bio 911 00:59:47,119 --> 00:59:51,239 is something that you can sort of just like put on and wear like a 912 00:59:51,559 --> 00:59:54,159 it's social capital. It's social capital too, for sure. But I do 913 00:59:54,199 --> 00:59:58,639 think like people sincerely are like I feel so fucking empty, you know, 914 00:59:58,679 --> 01:00:00,960 and I want to something, so I'm going to like latch onto an identity. 915 01:00:01,000 --> 01:00:04,440 I think that's one really important thing. And that's happening both on the 916 01:00:04,559 --> 01:00:07,400 left and the right, by the way, you know, identitarianism, the 917 01:00:07,480 --> 01:00:09,519 rise of like white nationalism on the right. You see that, you see 918 01:00:09,599 --> 01:00:15,199 like you see like the white the white suburban dad putting like Second Amendment patriot 919 01:00:15,239 --> 01:00:19,440 and his fucking his Instagram bio whatever. Man, it's the same shit people 920 01:00:19,440 --> 01:00:22,840 are clutching for, like meaning, you know. And then the other thing 921 01:00:22,880 --> 01:00:25,039 that I think is really contributing to the rise of identitarianism, particularly on the 922 01:00:25,119 --> 01:00:29,840 left, I would say, is the complete collapse of an economic analysis. 923 01:00:30,119 --> 01:00:31,920 And this goes back to what I was saying at the beginning of the podcast, 924 01:00:32,159 --> 01:00:37,199 um, which is just that like the the economically informed left has collapsed 925 01:00:37,239 --> 01:00:42,639 completely. Um. People do not believe that there is like a possibility to 926 01:00:43,360 --> 01:00:47,320 uh even modify capitalism really, Like I don't think that most people really believe 927 01:00:47,360 --> 01:00:52,559 that in the anglosphere, because we're still used to losing, you know that 928 01:00:52,679 --> 01:00:57,480 we've just decided that, like that battlefront is a lot of cause it's it's 929 01:00:57,480 --> 01:01:01,639 a fucking lost cause. So what what's the other it's identity, m you 930 01:01:01,679 --> 01:01:06,079 know, and so so we have a laser focus on identity instead, you 931 01:01:06,119 --> 01:01:08,760 know. Um, but you know, it ends up with this situation where 932 01:01:08,880 --> 01:01:13,360 particularly Americans. Man, I've noticed this so often. It's like when they 933 01:01:13,760 --> 01:01:17,559 when they mean rich people, they say white people. It's really weird, 934 01:01:17,840 --> 01:01:22,320 right, God damn it, you're so fucking you know. That's been another 935 01:01:22,360 --> 01:01:25,840 great thing about listening to you guys, is is your take from the other 936 01:01:25,880 --> 01:01:31,639 side of this fucking arbitrary geopolitical boundary is so fucking you know, I don't 937 01:01:31,639 --> 01:01:34,960 know. I mean, yeah, America is just so fucked up, as 938 01:01:35,000 --> 01:01:37,320 you clearly see. I think, you know, much more so than Canada. 939 01:01:37,320 --> 01:01:39,920 I can't as fucked up too, of course, but what we've got 940 01:01:39,960 --> 01:01:44,039 going on here, I mean, look at our our whole, our culture, 941 01:01:44,559 --> 01:01:47,800 the way things are done, even just our lack of affordable healthcare. 942 01:01:47,880 --> 01:01:52,800 You know, watching you guys, you know, be that mirror back is 943 01:01:52,480 --> 01:01:54,719 uh yeah, I don't know, but I hear that a lot. Yeah, 944 01:01:54,760 --> 01:01:58,480 instead of saying risk and they say white. The thing, you know 945 01:01:58,519 --> 01:02:02,639 what really got me with ident Terianism. That really once I left the fucking 946 01:02:02,679 --> 01:02:07,440 bubble of the Bay Area, which I did after a fucking psychedelic therapy session, 947 01:02:07,440 --> 01:02:10,400 I was like, holy shit. I was finally like I gotta fucking 948 01:02:10,679 --> 01:02:14,719 get the fuck out of here or I'm not gonna grow. This is fucked 949 01:02:15,000 --> 01:02:16,840 And I left, and I came to like the complete opposite, like the 950 01:02:16,880 --> 01:02:22,119 Mexican border in South Texas. There's no white people down here unless they're visiting. 951 01:02:22,159 --> 01:02:23,960 They would call them winter Texans whatever, and they're often very nice. 952 01:02:23,960 --> 01:02:29,960 There's like a lot of nerdy you know birding. Minnesota's like Minnesota Birders, 953 01:02:30,000 --> 01:02:32,639 like old, old white. I mean, it's a fucking Latina where you're 954 01:02:32,639 --> 01:02:37,760 not gonna get like hardcore, you know, right wingers coming to an area 955 01:02:37,760 --> 01:02:39,960 that's mostly brown, but coming down here. I mean, you know, 956 01:02:40,039 --> 01:02:45,199 my daughters a third Apache. My daughter's a third Apache and her fucking grandparents. 957 01:02:45,559 --> 01:02:47,159 I get along with them. They're nice. People are Trumpers. They're 958 01:02:47,159 --> 01:02:50,679 fucking Trumpers. They don't you know. That's the thing. It's like this 959 01:02:50,800 --> 01:02:55,639 identitarianism. Shit, it's so you know, it's just it's just such a 960 01:02:55,719 --> 01:03:00,360 weird, anti intellectual take on the world. I mean, there's so money 961 01:03:00,719 --> 01:03:06,199 well Latinos down here, and again it blows my fucking mind. But there's 962 01:03:06,199 --> 01:03:08,760 probably more that are you know, left leaning, but there's a good amount 963 01:03:08,800 --> 01:03:14,639 that are right leaning conservative. Oh that's just the way we've always done it. 964 01:03:14,719 --> 01:03:20,920 Heavily religious Latinos, and so it kind of throws this whole weird you 965 01:03:20,960 --> 01:03:24,599 know, California version of race that people have out the windows because you know, 966 01:03:24,760 --> 01:03:28,280 like I was when I was living in California's used to like, you 967 01:03:28,320 --> 01:03:32,400 know, Latinos that were you know, brightly colored houses, art Caesar Chavez, 968 01:03:32,519 --> 01:03:37,400 generally left leaning progressive ideas. Not always of course, there's fucking total 969 01:03:37,599 --> 01:03:40,320 of you know, but and then come in here and saying it's like, 970 01:03:40,360 --> 01:03:43,559 oh okay, wow, this is yeah, this kind of throws Ever, 971 01:03:43,639 --> 01:03:46,280 you can't really think this way. These classifications are useless, you know, 972 01:03:46,920 --> 01:03:50,440 q dB I, POC, Like, what the fun does that even mean? 973 01:03:50,480 --> 01:03:52,360 You know, it's just again something to put in the buyo. It's 974 01:03:52,400 --> 01:03:55,400 a hashtag, man, for sure. I mean, like the fucking category 975 01:03:55,920 --> 01:04:01,039 of Latino is itself like such a bizarre idea honestly, but you know, 976 01:04:01,119 --> 01:04:06,000 it's it's what it's like maybe eight hundred million people or something like, how 977 01:04:06,000 --> 01:04:11,239 could there not be like huge division population? You know? And if like 978 01:04:11,519 --> 01:04:15,199 if a Latino is like someone in the Americas who speaks a lot in the 979 01:04:15,280 --> 01:04:17,880 language, I mean, like I'm a Latino, let's be French, you 980 01:04:17,920 --> 01:04:21,440 know, Like, I don't know, it's like anyways, Yeah, it's 981 01:04:21,519 --> 01:04:26,800 it's a it's a weird tike. But um, yeah, man, I 982 01:04:26,840 --> 01:04:30,119 guess, um, I don't know. I mean, I guess moving forward 983 01:04:30,159 --> 01:04:30,920 too. Like this is what I want to ask you, Like, what 984 01:04:31,000 --> 01:04:33,800 do you think? Do you think this shit is dying down? Do you 985 01:04:33,800 --> 01:04:36,480 think? I mean, because so many people on the left have seen how 986 01:04:36,559 --> 01:04:44,599 deranged, uh this culture has gotten, and they'll attack anything they there's you 987 01:04:44,639 --> 01:04:48,119 know, there's just elements of the left that have gotten so fucking nutso and 988 01:04:48,159 --> 01:04:50,800 I don't talk about the right because I don't hang out with the right. 989 01:04:50,800 --> 01:04:53,840 I talk about the right, but it's so easy to be like, yeah, 990 01:04:53,880 --> 01:04:56,519 they're fucking they're fucking crazy, like whatever. Yeah, yeah, I 991 01:04:56,800 --> 01:05:00,360 don't care about whatever they're doing unless it affects me. I I mean, 992 01:05:00,400 --> 01:05:02,679 I don't care about them. It's like, because I'm not in that you 993 01:05:02,679 --> 01:05:08,360 know, cluster of social identity. I care about the left because that is 994 01:05:08,360 --> 01:05:13,000 what I historically aligned with our world. Yeah, and I and you know, 995 01:05:13,039 --> 01:05:15,840 again, I don't care. When I was when I was friends with 996 01:05:15,880 --> 01:05:17,599 the fucking hardcore trumper when I worked on the railroad, he was just the 997 01:05:17,679 --> 01:05:20,440 cool, cool guy. We both shod on the company. I think he 998 01:05:20,480 --> 01:05:24,760 was totally confused, probably because I don't know what his upbringing was. I 999 01:05:24,760 --> 01:05:28,119 don't know what ideas he was exposed to. He was certainly, you know, 1000 01:05:28,119 --> 01:05:30,199 a working class dude that knew he was getting fucked by the company he 1001 01:05:30,280 --> 01:05:32,800 worked for, but we just didn't talk about it. And if he if 1002 01:05:32,800 --> 01:05:34,599 he'd start with that, I'd be like, hey, come on, leave 1003 01:05:34,599 --> 01:05:38,039 that. She don't talk politics of religion on the rail I don't be like 1004 01:05:38,079 --> 01:05:40,639 that, and just brush it aside, and we would just continue shitting on 1005 01:05:40,679 --> 01:05:44,559 the company or joking on the radio or whatever. But I guess I'm just 1006 01:05:45,760 --> 01:05:48,760 yeah, I don't know. I guess at what point, at what point 1007 01:05:48,800 --> 01:05:51,840 do you see things changing? At what point do you see people getting just 1008 01:05:51,920 --> 01:05:57,039 fed up and more aware of this shit? Um, you know, without 1009 01:05:57,079 --> 01:06:00,360 of course going to the right. I mean that's because that's always a certain 1010 01:06:00,400 --> 01:06:03,800 too. This is the issue, man. Yeah, it's really hard to 1011 01:06:03,800 --> 01:06:08,119 say, man, And I honestly think it could go one of several ways, 1012 01:06:08,440 --> 01:06:13,960 you know, Like I don't know, I do, okay, So 1013 01:06:14,000 --> 01:06:16,079 I do. I do think that this stuff is sort of dying down a 1014 01:06:16,159 --> 01:06:21,679 bit in the sense that there's some people who are doubling down on it and 1015 01:06:21,679 --> 01:06:26,840 they're getting just crazier and louder. You know, there's a lot of people 1016 01:06:26,880 --> 01:06:30,239 who are really sick of it. You know. I think that the success 1017 01:06:30,280 --> 01:06:34,079 of our podcast is really demonstrating that. And in general of my life, 1018 01:06:34,119 --> 01:06:36,159 you know, I've had so many fucking conversations with people who are like, 1019 01:06:36,239 --> 01:06:39,079 yeah, I completely agree with you, but I'm afraid to say it, 1020 01:06:39,119 --> 01:06:42,239 you know. And in general, I think like, like, you know, 1021 01:06:42,440 --> 01:06:45,000 most people are not crazy, Like most people can see how fucking stupid 1022 01:06:45,079 --> 01:06:47,119 this is, but they're just you know, they don't want their lives blown 1023 01:06:47,199 --> 01:06:51,360 up by fucking crazy people, so they kind of keep their mouth shut. 1024 01:06:51,800 --> 01:06:56,079 But I think, yeah, like some people are doubling down, others I 1025 01:06:56,119 --> 01:06:58,519 think are drifting away. And so like the question is like, what do 1026 01:06:58,559 --> 01:07:00,679 we do with these people that are drifting away? You know, I think 1027 01:07:00,719 --> 01:07:06,199 that as you know, somewhat public figures or you know, intellectual or whatever, 1028 01:07:06,440 --> 01:07:11,280 Like, our job is to offer them a place to stand, you 1029 01:07:11,320 --> 01:07:15,920 know, because where they can go is they can either become a political completely 1030 01:07:16,320 --> 01:07:20,920 right, which is the easiest path. It probably will hurt a little bit 1031 01:07:20,960 --> 01:07:26,159 because politics were a part of their identity is but whatever, you know, 1032 01:07:26,239 --> 01:07:29,519 like if everything is crazy, fuck it, you know, just you know, 1033 01:07:29,800 --> 01:07:33,559 love your family and do whatever, you know, And we should avoid 1034 01:07:34,519 --> 01:07:41,239 people becoming a political because then the left shrinks right. Another option is they 1035 01:07:41,280 --> 01:07:45,079 become right wing right because they they become so burned by what's been going on 1036 01:07:45,199 --> 01:07:49,760 with their communities and potentially them if they were like really like ruthlessly canceled or 1037 01:07:49,760 --> 01:07:53,760 something like that. And they look around and like the only fucking people talking 1038 01:07:53,760 --> 01:07:56,760 about this is the right wing, you know. And I was always told 1039 01:07:56,800 --> 01:08:00,119 that the right wing is a bunch of like psychotic monsters. And then like 1040 01:08:00,159 --> 01:08:01,840 I, you know, I listened to this like panel of you know, 1041 01:08:02,880 --> 01:08:09,880 the university guys talking about cancel culture or whatever, and and they don't seem 1042 01:08:09,880 --> 01:08:13,039 so bad, you know, so like maybe maybe I'll just kind of like 1043 01:08:13,159 --> 01:08:17,479 become one of these Yeah, these kind of they're always looking for recruits types. 1044 01:08:17,680 --> 01:08:19,920 Yeah, they're friendly, yeah for sure, well for the most part. 1045 01:08:20,000 --> 01:08:24,479 Yeah. Um, so that's like another option. We got to avoid 1046 01:08:24,520 --> 01:08:29,079 that too, you know, for obvious reasons. Or we offer people a 1047 01:08:29,239 --> 01:08:32,479 kind of leftism that is like what I like to call sort of like pragmatic 1048 01:08:32,520 --> 01:08:36,319 pan socialism, which is like, yes we're socialists, but like we're not 1049 01:08:36,399 --> 01:08:41,159 like completely dogmatic about it. We're like looking for any path forward that can 1050 01:08:41,239 --> 01:08:45,359 like transform our economy so that it is no longer capitalist and is whatever comes 1051 01:08:45,399 --> 01:08:49,159 next, you know, is in some way controlled by working people, so 1052 01:08:49,199 --> 01:08:55,319 that we're not continually getting like absolutely fucked by like five hundred people who only 1053 01:08:55,439 --> 01:08:59,399 entire fucking continent. You know. Um, like can we please you know. 1054 01:08:59,760 --> 01:09:04,039 And And I think that like that that kind of like that kind of 1055 01:09:04,039 --> 01:09:08,199 take that, like, you know, we don't have to completely abandon identity 1056 01:09:08,199 --> 01:09:11,079 politics. And I try to say this pretty often that identitarianism is not the 1057 01:09:11,119 --> 01:09:14,239 same as identity politics. Like identity politics as a place it's important, man, 1058 01:09:14,279 --> 01:09:18,920 you know. But by moving away from identitarianism and moving towards a like 1059 01:09:19,119 --> 01:09:25,359 class based um non insane socialism that like kind of anybody can look at and 1060 01:09:25,399 --> 01:09:28,720 be like that makes sense and applies to me. I think that we can 1061 01:09:28,800 --> 01:09:31,880 offer people like a path forward which is going to be far more threatening to 1062 01:09:32,000 --> 01:09:35,640 status quo than like whatever the fuck identitarian ship is going on in the left, 1063 01:09:35,680 --> 01:09:40,520 man, because thinking the people who actually run this ship, like they 1064 01:09:40,560 --> 01:09:43,479 look at this stuff and they're like, okay, great, fine, you 1065 01:09:43,520 --> 01:09:47,520 know we can have like a we don't have BLM nikes, we can put 1066 01:09:46,640 --> 01:09:50,000 it, we can put we can put the them on your little like vest 1067 01:09:50,159 --> 01:09:55,239 that you wear. They become that person that my neighborhood and put the sign 1068 01:09:55,239 --> 01:09:57,199 in the window. You know. Yeah, it doesn't threaten them at all 1069 01:09:57,239 --> 01:10:00,359 in any fucking way. They don't care. But the difference isn't you know, 1070 01:10:00,560 --> 01:10:04,119 Like in Tennessee they can put fucking like guns and fucking Confederate flags on 1071 01:10:04,159 --> 01:10:08,640 their bank, and then in Seattle they can put rainbow flags and fucking BLM 1072 01:10:08,640 --> 01:10:10,640 signs. Man, it's the same fucking shit. They don't care. It 1073 01:10:10,640 --> 01:10:14,279 makes no fucking difference whatsoever to them, you know, And so like what's 1074 01:10:14,319 --> 01:10:16,399 currently going on in the left does not threaten power in any way. At 1075 01:10:16,439 --> 01:10:21,479 all, and um, we would do really well to offer people an alternative 1076 01:10:21,479 --> 01:10:24,760 man so that when they get fucking sick of it, they don't just drift 1077 01:10:24,760 --> 01:10:28,199 away into the fucking ether right, and there's that, there's that, SAYNK 1078 01:10:28,239 --> 01:10:30,399 too. Of course, you know that the right looks for recruits, the 1079 01:10:30,479 --> 01:10:33,279 left looks for heretics. And that's where we're at right now. And that's 1080 01:10:33,319 --> 01:10:36,560 you can't with a culture like that, you can't fucking go anywhere. You've 1081 01:10:36,560 --> 01:10:40,960 got to take a shit that like, okay, bring people in, reach 1082 01:10:41,000 --> 01:10:43,840 out to them. Humilis Yeah, yeah, yo, Like I saw this. 1083 01:10:44,119 --> 01:10:45,560 I saw this video recently. I can't remember. It was on fucking 1084 01:10:45,600 --> 01:10:49,960 Instagram or something, but it was some something like reporter went to that town 1085 01:10:49,960 --> 01:10:54,720 in Ohio. They got like neoked by that train, you know, East 1086 01:10:54,760 --> 01:10:59,399 Palestine, I think, and they were the reporter was just talking to these 1087 01:10:59,439 --> 01:11:01,800 like these like working class like dudes who live in that town, and they're 1088 01:11:01,800 --> 01:11:04,520 all wearing fucking like Trump hats, you know, and they're like they're like 1089 01:11:04,600 --> 01:11:08,600 right wing guys, you know, but like they're all sitting there being like, 1090 01:11:08,640 --> 01:11:11,199 yo, like we're getting fucked by rich people. The rich people don't 1091 01:11:11,199 --> 01:11:13,760 care about US, these fucking companies they do where the fuck they want, 1092 01:11:13,840 --> 01:11:15,880 you know, and um, you know they're they're clearly like they're like five 1093 01:11:15,880 --> 01:11:21,000 seconds away from fucking like like like burning down the fucking mansions, you know. 1094 01:11:21,439 --> 01:11:25,399 Um. But it's like in the in the discourse, like there's been 1095 01:11:25,439 --> 01:11:29,560 all this discourse about how these fucking yokels in rural Ohio, you know, 1096 01:11:29,680 --> 01:11:31,840 keep voting against their own interests and like voting Republican And I'm like, who 1097 01:11:31,880 --> 01:11:36,560 do you want them going to vote for Democrats? They're voting against their fucking 1098 01:11:36,560 --> 01:11:40,119 interests either way, man, Like you what the fuck? You know what 1099 01:11:40,159 --> 01:11:43,119 I mean? Like, and these people need I mean, honestly, they 1100 01:11:43,119 --> 01:11:45,279 need like a labor party. Like if I'm gonna be like most realistic about 1101 01:11:45,319 --> 01:11:48,800 it, like you know, I think that like a communist revolution is unlikely 1102 01:11:48,800 --> 01:11:51,399 in the next like ten years or something, you know, and so like 1103 01:11:51,439 --> 01:11:57,199 electoralism, you know, as as fraught and problemazed problematic as it is, 1104 01:11:57,239 --> 01:12:00,399 like you know, perhaps offers some kind of the path forward. And there 1105 01:12:00,439 --> 01:12:03,319 are people trying to build a labor party in the US that isn't insane, 1106 01:12:03,359 --> 01:12:05,920 you know, And those fucking people need to be able to vote for a 1107 01:12:06,000 --> 01:12:11,239 labor party because they're they're the fucking close to noticing that the Republicans also are 1108 01:12:11,279 --> 01:12:14,840 a bunch of fucking vampires about them, you know what I mean. Yeah, 1109 01:12:14,920 --> 01:12:15,880 it just seemed like a little bit of push and telling them to vote 1110 01:12:15,920 --> 01:12:21,239 Democrat. It's not gonna do it, man, Why would theote for a 1111 01:12:21,279 --> 01:12:24,279 Democrat? Man, Like, you couldn't pay me enough to vote for a 1112 01:12:24,319 --> 01:12:26,600 Democrat. They don't give a fuck, no they did. You see that. 1113 01:12:27,359 --> 01:12:29,880 There was a take that was so nauseating. It was, and it 1114 01:12:29,920 --> 01:12:32,720 was like something I would have heard in California because when I moved to Texas, 1115 01:12:32,840 --> 01:12:35,560 you know, I had friends, one or two friends. Uh, 1116 01:12:35,720 --> 01:12:39,840 I actually don't like me anymore. We don't really talk giving me shit for 1117 01:12:39,880 --> 01:12:41,920 it. But it was a take it was like, well, that's what 1118 01:12:41,960 --> 01:12:45,079 you get for voting for Trump, for these fucking people whose town just got 1119 01:12:45,079 --> 01:12:48,199 blown up. It's like, that's the most fucked up, Like this spite 1120 01:12:48,239 --> 01:12:53,800 that it's certainly a conversation, right, but that's the most fucking elitist snot 1121 01:12:53,800 --> 01:12:56,119 nose like that makes me want to punch you in the face, Like that's 1122 01:12:56,159 --> 01:12:58,880 the most dude fucked up, you know, And when I was moving out 1123 01:12:58,920 --> 01:13:01,640 to moving out here, like, I don't travel for people or culture. 1124 01:13:01,760 --> 01:13:04,359 I travel for fucking plants in geology, that's sort of what you know. 1125 01:13:04,399 --> 01:13:09,439 And so my you know, my girl was out here or she, you 1126 01:13:09,479 --> 01:13:13,600 know, we moved out here, basically moved for our daughter. I realized 1127 01:13:13,640 --> 01:13:15,680 I had to get out of California, and I was like, Texas has 1128 01:13:15,720 --> 01:13:17,840 all this cool limestone geology, a bunch of cool plants I've never seen before, 1129 01:13:18,079 --> 01:13:23,239 really cool ecologies and plant communities. And one of my friends, she 1130 01:13:23,359 --> 01:13:26,520 lived in Berkeley, of course, and had like a six figure salary as 1131 01:13:26,520 --> 01:13:29,199 a social worker. But she was like, she's like, why are you 1132 01:13:29,239 --> 01:13:30,560 moving to Texas. That's like really fucked up. You can't even get an 1133 01:13:30,600 --> 01:13:33,600 abortion there. And I was like, well, yeah, but there's plenty 1134 01:13:33,640 --> 01:13:38,520 of people in Texas who aren't like that, Like there's like Trump only one 1135 01:13:38,600 --> 01:13:42,279 by five hundred thousand votes. And furthermore, have you looked outside your door? 1136 01:13:42,359 --> 01:13:45,359 Do you see how fucked up it is? You have people like dying 1137 01:13:45,399 --> 01:13:48,199 in the street, like with fucking needles in their arms, just like mass 1138 01:13:48,279 --> 01:13:53,840 homelessness. It's it's it's expensive as fuck. It's like the land is so 1139 01:13:53,920 --> 01:13:59,279 overvalued. Like that kind of attitude is exactly why I don't want to be 1140 01:13:59,359 --> 01:14:01,800 around this kind of shit me more. You know, like, have you 1141 01:14:01,800 --> 01:14:04,439 ever been to Texas? No? They they of course they've never been to 1142 01:14:04,439 --> 01:14:08,279 Texas. Maybe they drove through once. You know, it's and I got 1143 01:14:08,279 --> 01:14:10,560 that shit so much. It's like, well, I would never go to 1144 01:14:10,600 --> 01:14:12,920 Texas. It's like, there's a bunch of cool shit here. What you're 1145 01:14:12,960 --> 01:14:15,159 afraid of the people there? You don't need to be afraid of them, 1146 01:14:15,199 --> 01:14:18,960 I mean afraid of their ideology, sure, but like you know, it 1147 01:14:19,039 --> 01:14:21,439 was just I don't know that kind of gave it to me too. But 1148 01:14:21,479 --> 01:14:25,359 the thing that again, and I I know, you gotta go so we 1149 01:14:25,359 --> 01:14:28,119 can wrap up. So but the thing that's that's always kind of blown my 1150 01:14:28,159 --> 01:14:32,640 mind too, is that criticizing these ideas, um you know, like I 1151 01:14:32,640 --> 01:14:36,520 would see these hashtags and I would see these people putting this shit in their 1152 01:14:36,520 --> 01:14:41,680 bio and I would kind of cringe. And it wasn't because the root ideology 1153 01:14:41,800 --> 01:14:44,920 of this stuff in any way offended me. I was very much for it, 1154 01:14:45,119 --> 01:14:46,800 but it was just the kind of it was. It was the conformist 1155 01:14:47,239 --> 01:14:51,840 aspect, it was the performative aspect. It felt fucking gross and weird, 1156 01:14:53,239 --> 01:14:56,319 and I felt like I couldn't say that to people. They would think like, 1157 01:14:56,359 --> 01:14:58,880 oh my god, you're you're going you know not. They never, 1158 01:14:58,920 --> 01:15:01,000 no one ever excused me, but like they kind of seem to imply that 1159 01:15:01,560 --> 01:15:04,079 that like I wasn't leftist, that I was like, you know, going 1160 01:15:04,159 --> 01:15:06,560 right or something, and I'm like, no fucking way, man, I 1161 01:15:06,600 --> 01:15:10,439 couldn't. And if I wanted to, yeah, yeah for sure. Man. 1162 01:15:10,600 --> 01:15:13,760 It's I call it the Coke versus Pepsi, you know, and like 1163 01:15:13,800 --> 01:15:16,000 it's especially apparent in the US, but it's it's honestly, like all over 1164 01:15:16,000 --> 01:15:19,920 the Anglo sphere. It's like this, and like the political sphere has just 1165 01:15:19,960 --> 01:15:25,520 like split into these two teams, a Team Coke and Team Pepsi. They're 1166 01:15:25,520 --> 01:15:29,880 fucking the same, but they're different colors. Um and like neither of them 1167 01:15:29,920 --> 01:15:33,199 are addressing like the fucking fundamental issues that actually like affect everyone you know, 1168 01:15:33,640 --> 01:15:36,840 um and so and and people just get sucked into it because that is the 1169 01:15:36,840 --> 01:15:40,720 culture war, man, Like that is that is what people understand politics to 1170 01:15:40,760 --> 01:15:43,439 be. And so like if you're on Team Pepsi, which is like, 1171 01:15:43,479 --> 01:15:45,479 you know, the Democrats and whatever. You know, like a lot of 1172 01:15:45,560 --> 01:15:48,800 leftist understand themselves to be on Team Pepsi because they're not on Team Cookes, 1173 01:15:48,800 --> 01:15:50,680 so they must be on Team Pepsi, you know. But then they're then 1174 01:15:50,720 --> 01:15:54,239 they're on the same team as a bunch of fucking Democrats, a bunch of 1175 01:15:54,239 --> 01:15:57,680 fucking liberals in Canada, you know, and um, they're just you know, 1176 01:15:57,760 --> 01:16:00,359 they're they're like just squaring up against conservatives, you know. But I'm 1177 01:16:00,359 --> 01:16:04,199 like noe as socialists, as like the actual left. You know, we 1178 01:16:04,279 --> 01:16:08,439 are not part of Team Pepsi or Team Coke. You know, we are 1179 01:16:08,479 --> 01:16:11,760 outside of Team Pepsi, Team Coke. We're on team fucking socialism. And 1180 01:16:11,960 --> 01:16:15,479 we're trying to get people from Team Pepsi and from Team Coke to understand this 1181 01:16:15,800 --> 01:16:19,760 and join team Socialism. You know. Like we're like, conservatives are not 1182 01:16:19,840 --> 01:16:24,600 our enemy. Conservatives are not our enemy anymore than like, you know, 1183 01:16:24,680 --> 01:16:28,439 like conservatism, okay, but like we are not liberals. Conservatives of the 1184 01:16:28,520 --> 01:16:30,760 enemy of the liberals, and we are not liberals. We're not part of 1185 01:16:30,760 --> 01:16:34,600 that fucking war man, you know. Like we're like most conservatives are working 1186 01:16:34,640 --> 01:16:39,279 people. Working people is our team, right And a lot of people, 1187 01:16:39,319 --> 01:16:43,359 a lot of working people especially, have been ideologically duped, of course, 1188 01:16:43,399 --> 01:16:45,279 man, and a lot of liberals have been ideologically duped, like actually all 1189 01:16:45,319 --> 01:16:49,640 of them, you know, totally. Yeah, And that's the thing I 1190 01:16:49,640 --> 01:16:53,920 mean, you're saying that. I know so many people that would cringe if 1191 01:16:53,920 --> 01:16:57,600 you said conservatives are not the enemy that people They just be like what what, 1192 01:16:57,880 --> 01:17:00,640 like, you know, like, yeah, that's because they're on team 1193 01:17:00,640 --> 01:17:03,439 PEP. But I'm not. I'm sorry, man, right, And that's 1194 01:17:03,439 --> 01:17:06,640 just that's kind of the thing that I mean, And I wholeheartedly agree with 1195 01:17:06,680 --> 01:17:11,479 you. And that's the thing that I see among among a lot of people 1196 01:17:11,479 --> 01:17:13,359 in the left. It's like when you've got to get over this ship, 1197 01:17:13,479 --> 01:17:15,960 this fucking team sports, Like, what do you want? Like for me, 1198 01:17:15,039 --> 01:17:17,560 what do I want? I want a better quality of life for people. 1199 01:17:18,319 --> 01:17:23,880 I don't want excess wealth anymore than I want poverty. Um. I 1200 01:17:23,960 --> 01:17:30,680 want fucking native plant habitat protect that. I want uh ecologies revered and and 1201 01:17:30,800 --> 01:17:33,439 respected and understood. I want, you know, people to stop seeing themselves 1202 01:17:33,479 --> 01:17:38,479 as disconnected from like the rest of the fucking biosphere. Um, that's what 1203 01:17:38,520 --> 01:17:41,720 I care about. I don't give a fuck what shit, what shitty sign 1204 01:17:41,760 --> 01:17:45,720 you have in your window. Whether like I agree with the sentiments behind it 1205 01:17:45,800 --> 01:17:46,880 or not, these are the things I want. And this is what, 1206 01:17:47,439 --> 01:17:53,800 you know. I fucking want more conservatives to get into fucking plant ecology and 1207 01:17:53,880 --> 01:17:57,119 totally native plant gardens. I don't give a fuck, you know. And 1208 01:17:57,159 --> 01:17:59,720 people are like, yeah, I won't organize unions who conservatives, And I'm 1209 01:17:59,720 --> 01:18:01,680 like, we please have more conservatives in our unions. Man like, maybe 1210 01:18:01,680 --> 01:18:04,319 they can learn a fucking thing or two, you know, right right, 1211 01:18:04,640 --> 01:18:08,439 Maybe they'll change what they too. Who knows, I don't, yeah, 1212 01:18:08,560 --> 01:18:10,199 dude, you know, like maybe they'll be like, hey, like, 1213 01:18:10,279 --> 01:18:14,039 why are these politicians that I'm voting for, like constantly saying the unions are 1214 01:18:14,079 --> 01:18:16,720 like basically like Satan you know, um, and yeah, I think like 1215 01:18:16,760 --> 01:18:21,640 a big, big part of it is the Democrat Republican thing in the States, 1216 01:18:21,680 --> 01:18:25,600 you know, or left and right you know. Yeah, yeah, 1217 01:18:25,640 --> 01:18:28,680 but like I mean, you know, in particular the Democrat Republican thing, 1218 01:18:28,680 --> 01:18:30,159 because you guys have two parties. You know, like most countries in the 1219 01:18:30,159 --> 01:18:33,840 world there are like many political parties league right right, right, there aren't 1220 01:18:33,880 --> 01:18:38,359 just like two options. You know. In Canada, there's like three basically 1221 01:18:38,520 --> 01:18:41,479 like sort of four if you count the Greens. Um. But I know, 1222 01:18:41,720 --> 01:18:44,680 I know so many people though too that that shit on the Democrats, 1223 01:18:44,720 --> 01:18:46,560 who, you know, and I say that as as a leftists, shit 1224 01:18:46,600 --> 01:18:50,840 on the Democrats who also kind of support all this, you know, quasi 1225 01:18:50,880 --> 01:18:56,640 cancel culture fucking weird deranged shit, and they they're like yeah, fuck banging 1226 01:18:56,680 --> 01:19:00,600 blah blah. And it's like, but you're still like you are that kind 1227 01:19:00,600 --> 01:19:03,600 of you know, like you're still yeah, yeah, absolutely, man, 1228 01:19:03,640 --> 01:19:09,800 Absolutely, I think that it's a huge thing. And I don't actually think 1229 01:19:09,800 --> 01:19:15,039 that the Democrats like are particularly like quote unquote woke, you know, like 1230 01:19:15,399 --> 01:19:17,880 they kind of like pay lip service to it every once in a while and 1231 01:19:17,920 --> 01:19:20,760 like they'll like they'll use it when it's convenient, but like in general, 1232 01:19:20,880 --> 01:19:25,640 they understand that this ship is pretty insane and they keep like some distance from 1233 01:19:25,680 --> 01:19:29,800 it, you know. But I do think that the whole like papsy versus 1234 01:19:29,800 --> 01:19:32,239 coke thing is a function of the Democrat versus Republican thing. And I think 1235 01:19:32,239 --> 01:19:36,439 that it's like just it's very difficult for people in a country where there's only 1236 01:19:36,439 --> 01:19:42,760 two political parties to conceptualize like a third camp basically, you know, and 1237 01:19:42,920 --> 01:19:45,520 I do think, like you know, in Canada, it's really not much 1238 01:19:45,560 --> 01:19:47,239 better, is what I was getting at. Like, the the NDP is 1239 01:19:47,279 --> 01:19:54,159 like the Social Democrat Party and they're basically liberals but like more woke, like 1240 01:19:54,239 --> 01:19:57,560 you know, it's like they've pretty much abandoned their socialist roots unfortunately at this 1241 01:19:57,600 --> 01:20:00,840 point. But in Quebec, where I'm from, there is a we did 1242 01:20:00,840 --> 01:20:02,600 It like an episode about this. I don't know if you've heard it, 1243 01:20:02,640 --> 01:20:06,119 but there's a there's a provincial political party called Quebec Stid to Die that is 1244 01:20:06,399 --> 01:20:13,000 UM a socialist party, right, and they have seats in the legislature UM, 1245 01:20:13,079 --> 01:20:15,680 and they have like a fucking dope program, you know that. Like 1246 01:20:15,840 --> 01:20:19,119 I don't agree with every single fucking part of it. But if I if 1247 01:20:19,199 --> 01:20:21,880 I was asked to sit down and come up with like a platform for a 1248 01:20:21,880 --> 01:20:26,359 socialist party that might win an election, this is the basically the platform I 1249 01:20:26,399 --> 01:20:29,159 would come up with, you know. And so like there's a place for 1250 01:20:29,199 --> 01:20:31,119 me to stand in Quebec. Quebec is weird though. Quebec is different because 1251 01:20:31,159 --> 01:20:35,000 Quebec is a French speaking place, you know, and and it is it 1252 01:20:35,159 --> 01:20:40,640 is very integrated into North American culture, but it's also different, you know, 1253 01:20:40,680 --> 01:20:44,600 and it's very much more attached to like Europe and particularly what's going on 1254 01:20:44,640 --> 01:20:46,880 in France because of the language thing, you know. So like our politics 1255 01:20:46,880 --> 01:20:50,039 are different. Man, Like the conservatives here, Conservatives in Quebec, like 1256 01:20:50,119 --> 01:20:55,199 their main thing that they really want to do is ban all religious symbols. 1257 01:20:55,039 --> 01:20:58,520 It's like from from public life, you know, because that that's kind of 1258 01:20:58,560 --> 01:21:01,199 like you know, their version of being like fuck immigrants. But like you 1259 01:21:01,239 --> 01:21:04,079 know, it's just very very different from what conservatives want to do in like 1260 01:21:04,119 --> 01:21:06,760 the US, for examp. I mean, is it like using cultural issues 1261 01:21:06,800 --> 01:21:11,640 as a wedge issue, like cultural shit that they don't like Basically yeah, 1262 01:21:11,680 --> 01:21:13,760 they're like we don't. They're like we don't want to see h jobs, 1263 01:21:13,760 --> 01:21:16,880 so we're gonna like ban like all religious symbols, you know. But like 1264 01:21:17,279 --> 01:21:20,359 it's it's interesting though, you know, it's like it's like way, way 1265 01:21:20,399 --> 01:21:24,000 way more secular. Like if you tried to come in with like some kind 1266 01:21:24,000 --> 01:21:28,079 of like a religious like lying about anything, like you would get like laughed 1267 01:21:28,079 --> 01:21:30,039 out of the fucking province. You know. It's like the fucking drag queen 1268 01:21:30,119 --> 01:21:33,119 thing here, Like that's there, that's their issue now. Like I remember 1269 01:21:33,119 --> 01:21:38,119 it was they were ranting of their conservatives here were ranting about antifa five years 1270 01:21:38,119 --> 01:21:42,119 ago like that. I worked with at work. I've heard him mentioned antifa. 1271 01:21:42,119 --> 01:21:45,399 I'm like, how the fuck do you know about the word in like 1272 01:21:45,439 --> 01:21:46,600 ten years? Like and then I was like, Oh, they're putting it 1273 01:21:46,640 --> 01:21:49,960 on They're putting it on Fox nos now, and like this is what the 1274 01:21:50,159 --> 01:21:54,600 thing. Everyone's antifa. Everyone who's on the left is antifa. Like Antifa 1275 01:21:54,600 --> 01:21:57,800 Antifa. It's like, man, if you have any idea what antifa would 1276 01:21:57,800 --> 01:22:00,880 like, you wouldn't feel threatened by like it, come on, man, 1277 01:22:00,880 --> 01:22:03,199 it's it's like twenty two year old in a lot of cases like young ass 1278 01:22:03,279 --> 01:22:10,039 kids or whatever. Dude. But um yeah, yeah, yeah, I 1279 01:22:10,079 --> 01:22:12,600 don't know. I was just saying that, Like there, I just want 1280 01:22:12,680 --> 01:22:16,159 people to understand that there actually is the possibility of like a real socialist platform 1281 01:22:16,199 --> 01:22:20,159 that they can fucking get behind that is like non insane and like actually has 1282 01:22:20,199 --> 01:22:24,720 like a cool vision for ecology, you know, a cool vision for the 1283 01:22:24,760 --> 01:22:28,279 economy. Um that that is like realistic, that is like run by people 1284 01:22:28,279 --> 01:22:30,479 who aren't crazy, and you know it existing Cobec, which means it could 1285 01:22:30,479 --> 01:22:33,479 exist in other places. Cobec is look a bit different, should existed here, 1286 01:22:33,560 --> 01:22:36,439 man, not not. You know. What gives me hope though, 1287 01:22:36,439 --> 01:22:40,560 it is like seeing you know, when when Bernie Sanders and of course he 1288 01:22:40,640 --> 01:22:44,479 got fucked I mean people, I mean I think that he galvanized a lot 1289 01:22:44,479 --> 01:22:46,039 of people. Man, that was that was cool to see. Democrats are 1290 01:22:46,079 --> 01:22:48,880 owned, of course by many of the same business interests that also own the 1291 01:22:48,960 --> 01:22:51,880 right, you know, and that's those are the real owners of this country. 1292 01:22:51,960 --> 01:22:57,000 But uh, but you know it's yeah, seeing people on the right 1293 01:22:57,079 --> 01:23:00,800 who like would have voted for Bernie heading it had the chance, you know, 1294 01:23:00,840 --> 01:23:03,720 people adamantly saying this, openly saying this, and then you know, 1295 01:23:03,800 --> 01:23:06,039 going for the right instead, like that kind of gives me hope. It's 1296 01:23:06,039 --> 01:23:10,560 like, well, people aren't totally my brain dead, like people still you 1297 01:23:10,640 --> 01:23:15,520 know, you know, and like fundamentally like people understand people understanding they're getting 1298 01:23:15,560 --> 01:23:18,279 fun they really do, you know, and so like where that energy goes 1299 01:23:18,439 --> 01:23:20,680 is the question, man, you know, and like on the right, 1300 01:23:20,760 --> 01:23:29,720 like they've very successfully uh push it into this like right wing populist direction where 1301 01:23:29,800 --> 01:23:32,239 people are like okay, so I guess. I guess there is an elite 1302 01:23:32,399 --> 01:23:39,079 that like owns everything and runs everything. But they are like Satanist pedophiles, 1303 01:23:39,760 --> 01:23:43,880 you know. Um the culture they're the right wing is so good at the 1304 01:23:43,920 --> 01:23:46,079 culture of wardship. Yeah, yeah, damn it. They don't even believe 1305 01:23:46,079 --> 01:23:48,560 half of it, I know. But yeah, I'm just like, yo, 1306 01:23:48,600 --> 01:23:51,399 you're so close mad, you know. Or like how like the right 1307 01:23:51,439 --> 01:23:55,640 wing like all of a sudden like really cares about like the World Economic Forum. 1308 01:23:55,840 --> 01:23:58,399 You know, these sort of like neoliberal like talk shops you know, 1309 01:23:58,760 --> 01:24:00,840 and uh, and they're sort of like, yeah, well, what do 1310 01:24:00,840 --> 01:24:02,760 you support the World Economic Forum because you're on the left that it's like no, 1311 01:24:02,880 --> 01:24:05,399 like no one on the left supports the World Economic Forum, you know 1312 01:24:05,439 --> 01:24:10,000 what I mean. It's like these are like psycho like business people in like 1313 01:24:10,079 --> 01:24:13,359 Geneva, Like what the fuck are you talking about? Like, but but 1314 01:24:13,399 --> 01:24:15,760 it's interesting because we should be also talking about the World Economic Forum and there's 1315 01:24:15,760 --> 01:24:20,880 like fucking international talking shops where they sort of decide policy undemocratically and like all 1316 01:24:20,880 --> 01:24:24,479 this kind of shit, you know. But anyways, point being like the 1317 01:24:24,920 --> 01:24:28,720 right wing has like really successfully channeled this energy and sort of like random weird 1318 01:24:28,720 --> 01:24:31,920 directions, because that's what riving populism does. It says, yes, there 1319 01:24:32,000 --> 01:24:34,800 is an elite. The fact that there is an elite is not actually a 1320 01:24:34,800 --> 01:24:38,279 bad thing. It's just that it's the wrong elite, you know, right, 1321 01:24:38,720 --> 01:24:43,079 Like we need the right elite who are patriotic and preferably the right color 1322 01:24:43,159 --> 01:24:45,119 and like whatever. You know. Um, And you know, I think 1323 01:24:45,159 --> 01:24:49,760 that we can we can quite easily get a lot of those people to be 1324 01:24:49,840 --> 01:24:51,880 like, well, like, I don't know, maybe do we actually need 1325 01:24:54,279 --> 01:24:57,920 an elite, Like do we need a bunch of like filthy rich vampires like 1326 01:24:58,119 --> 01:25:01,840 running all of our lives like it's like super duper necessary, or possibly do 1327 01:25:01,880 --> 01:25:04,119 it without them, you know? Um? And I think that, like 1328 01:25:04,199 --> 01:25:10,159 many people are not that or from making that fucking um discovery for themselves. 1329 01:25:10,239 --> 01:25:13,359 You know, I'm making that They're never they're never going to make that connection 1330 01:25:13,399 --> 01:25:16,000 if the left is what it is now exactly because it's caught up in all 1331 01:25:16,000 --> 01:25:19,119 this other shit that doesn't really matter and it's such a distraction. And you 1332 01:25:19,159 --> 01:25:23,760 know, again, it gets makes the social media, this kind of divisive 1333 01:25:23,760 --> 01:25:27,600 shit, gets that dopamine and you know, adrenaline flowing, And it's because 1334 01:25:27,640 --> 01:25:30,520 I think it becomes addictive for people. I wonder like what people like Eugene 1335 01:25:30,520 --> 01:25:36,159 Debs, if he were alive today, would have to say about things if 1336 01:25:36,159 --> 01:25:39,680 they could look, you know, just like what the fuck like, what 1337 01:25:39,720 --> 01:25:45,359 would that dudes take be? You know? Yeah, fuck it anyway, 1338 01:25:45,399 --> 01:25:46,399 Well, man, thanks so much for being down to do this. Really 1339 01:25:46,439 --> 01:25:48,840 appreciate you. I love what you're doing. I look forward to hearing more 1340 01:25:48,800 --> 01:25:53,640 of your podcasts and tell us tell us where people can you know, get 1341 01:25:53,640 --> 01:25:57,680 more your get more your stuff. Yeah for sure, man. Um, 1342 01:25:57,880 --> 01:26:01,560 so definitely check out the podcast. It's fucking canceled um with two ls because 1343 01:26:01,600 --> 01:26:06,520 we're Canadian. Um. And I got a website is Josla dot com. 1344 01:26:08,159 --> 01:26:12,000 Um. That's good writing on there by the way to Yeah, thank you, 1345 01:26:12,560 --> 01:26:14,600 Thank you very much. Man. I'm gonna I'm gonna try to write 1346 01:26:14,600 --> 01:26:18,079 more. Um. I've been kind of slacking on her recently, but yeah. 1347 01:26:18,520 --> 01:26:21,960 UM, and yeah, I'm on Instagram, you know. Um it's 1348 01:26:23,279 --> 01:26:28,039 just at jlisla. Um. But yeah, and definitely, you know, 1349 01:26:28,119 --> 01:26:31,039 check out qumentine. Ship to Qumentine. Morgan's got a lot of good writing. 1350 01:26:31,439 --> 01:26:35,760 Clementine more Regan too. For anyone listening that Morgan m R. I 1351 01:26:35,840 --> 01:26:39,680 G A N. Yeah let's say. Yeah. Oh, I also write 1352 01:26:39,800 --> 01:26:44,479 zines UM, which you can't find online. Well, there's some snippets online, 1353 01:26:44,479 --> 01:26:46,800 but my zines are actually the writing that I'm most proud of, honestly, 1354 01:26:47,079 --> 01:26:49,960 um. And I will mail them to your house. So if you 1355 01:26:50,279 --> 01:26:55,439 if you like having physical copies of shit um, you can get those from 1356 01:26:55,439 --> 01:27:00,199 my from my website or from the fucking canceled store which is fucking canceled big 1357 01:27:00,239 --> 01:27:04,800 Cartel dot com. And your background is an anthropology or what exactly? Yeah, 1358 01:27:04,920 --> 01:27:11,279 yeah, I have a have a a bachelors and a master is an 1359 01:27:11,279 --> 01:27:16,840 anthropology specifically like political anthropology, damn so good man, Yeah, super articular. 1360 01:27:16,880 --> 01:27:18,760 Thanks for doing what you do. I really appreciate it. Man. 1361 01:27:19,039 --> 01:27:21,079 Hey, thanks a lot, man, thanks for having me. All right, 1362 01:27:21,119 --> 01:27:24,119 all right, have a going by