Speaker 1: Say hello to the all electric Kia EV five suv.
Based on one of Ireland's most popular models, the Kia Sportage,
but completely reimagined for the Electric Age with best in
class boot space, advanced technology, and unrivaled in comfort. It's
a consistent evolution that adds a new perspective to every drive.
Unlock a world of adventure book You're EV five Test
drive at Kia dot Com.
Speaker 2: Kia movement that inspires. Darren knows these roads. He knows
every turn, every tree, every person's house. He knows when
he wants to put his foot down. But here's something
he doesn't know. He doesn't know that Jim is searching
for his phone and has taken his eye off the road.
Just around the corner ahead. Darren doesn't know this, but
they're both about to find out very quickly. Even if
you know the road, you don't know what's coming. Say
no to speeding. A message from the Road Safety Authority
visit RSA dot ie.
Speaker 3: Meaning a live man like this man you letting butterfly
flapping his wing, dig down in the forest.
Speaker 2: Man, it gonna cause a tree fall, letting five thousand
miles away man.
Speaker 3: Nobody seen, Nobody you see, you don't need no Man's like.
Speaker 4: You followed a little story.
Speaker 3: And you got directed like that.
Speaker 4: That's the way.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 3: Don't like a dang on the panel. Man, you don't matter.
Speaker 5: Man, all right, Librarian of Colino, welcome back to the
Jay Burton Show.
Speaker 3: How you doing man here again? Yeah?
Speaker 5: Our last episode was sort of a sleeper hit. You know,
it did about as well as everyone else, but I
got a very long trail of emails and comments, people
coming back to it saying it was a great conversation,
and you know, I had to agree, and so yeah, man,
I figured i'd have you back on particularly to talk
about your most recent essay. So I assume people remember
you check out a substack.
Speaker 3: It's quite good.
Speaker 5: But if you could, could you describe sort of what
motivated you to write this essay and then your general
thesis if you could.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 3: I was motivated to write about it because, well, I guess,
sort of a sense of duty, you know, because everybody
else was talking about it and a lot of the
commentary around it. I sort of felt missed not the point.
There's a lot of points being made in there, but
I thought it missed a point, a point I think
the author himself didn't quite fully wrap himself around. And
I'm not the only one to I'll get a little
more into it, but I'm not the only one that
sort of think the author sort of missed, missed a point,
or pulled a punch or something like that. But there
was a lot of sort of anger and doomerism around
the response to this article. People throwing their hands up
in the air.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: See this proves that it's always been like this. They
hate white people. You can't get ahead, you can't get
a job, the systems, you know, we need to turn
our rage against the system and stuff. And I think
there certainly is. And this is a point I made
in my article. I thought it'd be more controversial than
it was. That people really just seem to respond to
it well. But the anger, right that, the energy behind that,
I think directing it at the system is not as
important as it is to take that energy and turn
it towards our own creative endeavors, making something new out
of the ruins of what's clearly collapsing around us. Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think it's a difficult needle to thread because and look,
even before this compact piece, this is a drum that
I've been beating on for quite a while that there
are cards stacked against white men, in particularly young white men.
But the problem is, right, your analysis can often not
your personally uh mister Klino. But you know, one analysis
can can veer into a sort of a sense of hopelessness.
And there's sort of a cynically but partially correct take
that comes from the kind of woke right crowd, the
people who say that a lot, we're like, oh no,
this is horrible. You know, by by pointing out that
there is, you know, racial discrimination against white people, you're
you know, adopting the same quote unquote victim morality of
you know, the left. You're you're doing the woke thing
all over again. And Okay, that's disingenuous. That's there for
a reason. But I think there is a genuine danger
in creating sort of you know, Jesse Jackson for white people, right,
this this like permanent grievance status, because look like it's
it's it is true, there are very real structural barriers.
But the problem is the best advice you can give
to an individual, like a person who has no ability
to change kind of a system is actually boomer advice
it is to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. That
can just be difficult to hear from a source who
shall always say does not have your best interest at heart.
Do you recognize that sort of tension unidentifying?
Speaker 3: Absolutely? And it is a problem because any time so
it's correct, like you're right, the system is stacked against
white men in a number of significant ways. The author
does a great job of pointing this out. He mostly focuses,
I think, on creative industries and the media, stuff like that, academia, professions,
things like that, where there's these defined pads that are
very easy to gatekeep, and I think if you butt
your head against those, you're going to experience this more
than as just an entrepreneur or an independent creator or
something like that. But the cards, it's true, are stacked
against us. And when you've already had the rug pulled
out from you before because you believe somebody's promises, you
know that. The story you get in response to this
all the time is, oh, they told us to.
Speaker 4: Go to college and we get a job, and we
played by the rules, and we did everything they said
and went to college, got the degree, and now I'm
being replaced by you know, a guy from India and
I can't get a job in the film industry.
Speaker 3: Because of DEI. And it's true. So you're not gonna
then listen to those same people when they come to
you with good advice, when they say to you, listen,
the only way, the only way forward is to just
make your own path, and you know, not appeal to
people who other people who people really don't have your
best interest at heart.
Speaker 4: I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't necessarily think that the people the boomers were
giving disingenuous advice or evil advice when they told people.
I think they genuinely thought that was the right thing
to do. And when it didn't work out, nobody's going
to listen to the other thing as they say, which
maybe are better advice, because the first thing didn't work.
If I'm making sense there, it's hard. It's hard for
it's hard for somebody. We look at a boomer, you know,
the typical way you see people respond to them on
the right. Oh, this guy, you know, he had it easy.
He you know, was handed the greatest economy in history
and he made all this money and now he's pulled
up the ladder behind him and stuff and to some
extent that's true, certainly in the industries that the Savage
pointed out. Uh, but the general idea of you know,
boomers had it universally easy and telling people to make
their own way as bad, I think is completely counterproductive.
Speaker 5: I think that there's also a there's an interesting I
think cast to this argument as well, which is, in general,
I actually think is entirely reasonable in the political landscape too,
you know, to talk about and to address the dispossession
of young white men. I think that that is a
relatively speaking, winning strategy when compared to kind of color
blind Reaganite capitalism. Can we say that, you know, for
a bunch of random buzzwords to throw out there. And
so it's difficult again because oftentimes the people who are
trying to head this off at the path are doing
so so that they can substitute a sort of return
to you know, nineteen nineties conservatism. And the problem is
is it's like, well, okay, like some of their specific
critiques are in fact correct, but not for the right reason,
and they're not making them in they're not doing that
genuinely because they are primarily interested in the successive young
white men. They are primarily interested in, at least in
a stated sense, avoiding quote unquote identity politics. And you mentioned,
of course the kind of dipping their toe in the
rubicon that you see often from the sort of I E. W. Types,
And I think we can sort of extend that to
sort of like the good conservative, you know, the the
the kind of on the on the reservation types. And
I think that that's another point as well, that sort
of moneies this discussion is at a certain point, it
doesn't the discussion is not even really being had in particular,
it becomes a sort of friend enemy you know, are
you a group I like or not? If you see
what I'm getting at there, man.
Speaker 3: Yes, So I think that there's a positive and a
negative in framing the political issue as we need we
need to address the needs of young white men. Right.
That's there's there's two sides to that. Two parts of that.
On the one hand, white men are being screwed over
in different economic spheres because they're white men at the
same time, and and economics there's there's it's very difficult
to a imagine and economics that just sort of universally
benefits white men categorically, if you're a blue collar, young
white man. Then the world that's going to benefit stockbrokers
and media personalities and things like that is not necessarily
going to benefit you. You know, if I'm trying to
make money in the finance industry, tariffs aren't going to
help me where they are going to help the guy
who wants to be an electrical engineering. There's a class
dimension to it as well that I think it's very
easy to paper over with this just sort of appeal
to whiteness as such or white maleness as such. There's
no economy that's going to universally benefit all white men
equally in economics. That's just what. Everything in economics benefits
some people and not so much other people, or not
at all other people. In terms of the critique, you know,
savage is the critique you mentioned about the rubicon. Everything
that goes back to Jeremy Carl Wilso wrote a great
article about this story. Savage is critique is a liberal critique.
He's making a liberal point. He's saying liberalism is not
working like it should and it should be working, and
we should be upset about that. The implication of what
he's saying is is that we need to just sort
of introduce this sort of colorblind meritocracy, and the general
rightist critique of that is, well, all these other people
are acting in their racial interests, such as it is,
we should do that too. But again it comes back
to the point I was making before. What is the
white economic interest? Does it benefit white people? Would be
a financialized economy like neoliberalism wants. Does it benefit white
people to have a high tariff reindustrializing economy? What's the
what's going to benefit white people? And so I think
thinking about it that way is counterproductive. I think that
what we should be focusing on is how do we
use conditions as they exist to thrive and then longer
term or at the same time, how do we change
the system so that I, as a white man with
my neighbors and everything that can prosper. Yeah.
Speaker 5: And you see sort of a mirror image of this
in the conversation about dating and family formation, which might
be my least favorite conversation ever on the Internet. And
somehow I keep getting stuck back into it because you
have largely correct systemic critique saying, you know, this is
much more difficult. You know you can run through, you
know the problem simply meeting women, let alone, you know,
divorce court, any one of these kind of classic you know,
pua sort of, I guess it would be MRAs would
be probably more accurate complaints which are you know, there's fair,
there's some merit there. But the problem is in both
the case of the economy and in the case of
you know you finding them and eventually having children, you
have a definite amount of time on this earth, like
there is only a certain amount of time you have
on the game board, so to speak. And so if
you take ten years out to wait for conditions to approve,
well they may well improve, but you have spent a
non renewable resource a decade of your life at a minimum.
And I think as well, it's sort of difficult when
we talk about the economy and race because you have
something like, as you mentioned, tariffs, which are non racialized.
It is done on national level, but there are other elements,
you know, as regards hiring and firing, and you know,
I've experienced this and I know many others as well. Right,
literally hundreds of job interviews, your job applications with no
interviews where it seems as if that is explicitly racial
in a turn right, you were preferring some to others,
and so well, I guess I accept your critique kind
of more broadly, the idea that you know, you should
not approach economics in racial terms at a certain point,
much as you've said, kind of accepting the state of
play it is. It seems to me to be an
understandable response to a situation where you are moving from
sort of an individual economic actor to a racialized actor
some very like New Left. But do you get what
I'm trying to express there?
Speaker 3: Yes, the system sort of by virtue of the fact
that it's excluding you because you belong to this category,
is trying to force you into this category. And if
you start thinking of yourself in that category. I'm not
saying it's necessarily wrong to think of yourself as I'm
a white man. I have interest as a white man.
But if you start thinking of yourself that way, it
creates these other issues. You know, Okay, so what's the
economy that's going to benefit white men? How do you
construct that? And you know, you say, okay, well, you know, like,
for example, if I want to get a job in
the tech industry, right, the the the legal environment, the
financial environment, the all the the laws around that, everything
like that. That's going to if I, if I optimize
things to benefit the tech industry, well, that's going to
hurt other industries where other white men work, you know.
And am I better off being excluded from the economy
because I'm white? Or am I better off being excluded
because some other white people decided to engineer things in
their direction? I think if you my my economic thinking
generally revolves around the idea of a fair system. Whatever
it is, is a system that allows a man to
earn a living and support a family in moderate comfort
in the town he grew up in, living in the
manner of his ancestors. Anything that creates those conditions is just.
And I think it's possible to have an economy where
that's broadly true without even necessarily introducing any kind of
racial element to it. If you say, the population we
have right now, if you freeze it and don't let
in any more immigrants, and keep the racial balance like
it is and everything like that, you could still create
broad based prosperity by having that as your focus. Now,
how do we get there? That's a different question that
involves a whole bunch of policy choices. For my part,
I like the tendency of the current administration is going
with that in terms of tariffs and reindustrialization. I think
that bodes well.
Speaker 5: One other thing that you bring up in this article,
and it's funny because this is a point that I
have made as well, which is the importance of sort
of the status economy. I wrote an article on this
year's and a half ago called social emotional patronage. I
think I published it. I remember doing it. I might
not have talking about how you know this exists for
a certain portion of the left, whereas kind of you know,
in a broader sense, you know, a perching power has decreased,
and you know, cost of living has decreased. The patronage
to certain groups has sort of moved from economic to
social status. Right, that is the primary GiB, you know,
it is that you get to act and feel better
than your family, not necessarily that you're richer than them.
You see this with sort of the rage towards Coulock's,
you know, the sort of wealthy tradesmen and small business owners.
But similarly, on the right there is sort of this
I guess you could say, two faced relationship or on
one hand, there is this broad frustration with the system
and desire to sort of make yourself deliberately repugnant to
that system, basically saying like, I don't derive my status
from you. I don't care about your moral U you know,
your moral invective against me because you your opinion of
me doesn't matter. Whereas at the same time, there is
a I am aggrieved because I have not been given
access to, you know, a high status job. I think
that that's an interesting tension there. Now, I will say,
and this is a common refrain I hear from people,
which is a generalized economic anxiety. Right, I am downwardly mobile,
I am poorer than my parents and my grandparents, and
I feel as if I have not been given a
fair shake in that understandable, understandable enough, but also at
a certain point, you know, if we've accepted that these
people are your enemies. At a certain point, if they
are your enemies, they are not going to give you
nice things. They're not going to treat you well because
they don't view you as part of their group, part
of their coalition. And so I think that it's tough
because on one hand, you know, it would be nice
to be you know, wealthy and comfortable and you know,
high status. But at a certain point, I don't know
how compatible that is with political dissonance. Do you see
what I'm sort of poking around there?
Speaker 3: Liberian? Absolutely? In fact, I called this in my essay
the schizophrenia on the right, where on the one hand,
one week a guy will write an essay about how
crooked the system is, how completely unsuitable it is for
any kind of authentic existence as a rightist. You know,
you can't live traditionally, you can't live transcendently, you can't
live the way a Rits is supposed to live in
the system. Systems are enemy, the systems against us. And
then the next week you'll get an essay, why won
would they give me a job? Why can't I Why
can't I thrive in this system? This is unfair?
Speaker 4: This is it.
Speaker 3: I can't believe they hate me. It's like, you know,
which is it?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 3: Quit going to these people and deriving any sense whatsoever
of self worth from them. Status is not something that
can be given. It can't. You cannot hand somebody's status,
you know. I mean, in a traditional society you can
inherit status. But in a society like ours, in a
liberal society, you can't just pull somebody out and say,
this guy is somebody you should listen to. Why. I mean,
if you think about this, think about the jobs and
the roles in society where people are supposed to have status. Okay,
I'm a CEO, I'm an army general, I'm a congressman,
I'm a university professor. Nobody respects those people who's you know,
who's the politician right now, whereverybody's like that guy's got status,
you know, I want to I defer to him. He
walks in a room, people pop their hats off for
that guy who's the college professor. Where people looking at
that guy and saying, whoa this guy like is a
major influence on the intellectual trends. And there are I mean,
there are some people I would argue that are like that.
But it's in general, you can't just take these mediocrities,
give them a job, give them, you know, the judicial
robes or the fancy hat or the fancy title or
whatever like that, and just now they have status. It
doesn't work that way. You know, you could take somebody
like Katanji Brown Jackson from judicial obscurity you can make
her a Supreme Court justice. Everybody understands as soon as
she opens her mouth she's completely in qualified for that job.
When you watch I made this point in the essay.
You watch the latest Disney slop that came down the pike.
They put the Star Wars label on it, They got
lightsabers running around. Everybody realizes it's crap. And just because
you've managed to attach somebody's name to that, they don't
derive any status from that. You know, the people I
deal with on the right, just on substack and acts
online and my personal life and stuff, these are people
who are interesting and creative and smart and hard working.
And there's no reason whatsoever they should be going to
these people looking for any kind of validation. It's not
going to come, first of all, and second of all,
you're better than them. You know, you work harder than them.
You have to work harder than them because the system
doesn't like you. And to the degree you're able to
thrive within that system, that just shows the inner qualities
that you have.
Speaker 5: Well, and and that's you know, another another kind of
interesting point here is that I think that the really
the biggest positive development that I've seen on the right
in the last two years has been an increase focused
on building and actually doing something, whether you know you
have my friends and colleagues at the OGC right doing
something you know, more kind of fraternal, or also the
kind of explosion in physical writing and publishing. I think
about this where you know, I have been on kind
of a run of you know, Andrew Edwards books, and
between him and a few others writing fiction, it's very
clear like, oh, even you know, even if the d
hiring had been relaxed, if that was no longer a problem,
this book couldn't have been written even by the literary
establishment of two thousand and five or nineteen ninety five.
And it's better for it, right, It's great, It's genuinely good.
But it is its values are and kind of the
thrust of it, even twenty thirty years ago, wholly and
entirely antithetical to the sort of American civic religion. It
is incompatible, and so you know, there's genuine value to it. It
is artistic, it's good. I've actually been given another book,
fed book by Stancliffe that I'm starting today, which is
you know, similarly quite good. And there's an element to it,
which it is. I actually think we would be worse
off culturally and politically if our enemies had been able
to control themselves, if they had been able to keep
up the sort of worm tongue esque relationship where you know,
many people were sort of paid off to ignore certain things.
You know, it was sort of a you could still
derive a certain amount of you know, status and a
certain amount of wealth from the system. But now that
those options are closed or closing, it is sort of
a bizarre advantage because it almost forces you to work
outside of a system which hates you. It forces a
certain amount of independence. It is almost like a Darwinian
or a selection style event. And so there is a
bizarre way in which they could have had the three
thousand year lib tard Reich if they could only have
sort of kept their their baser instincts in check. But
because they couldn't, because they wanted everything and they wanted
to rub your nose in it. They have, as you've said,
taken a group of people who are very talented and
very hard working and pushed them out of the system,
which has created this sort of push pull or on
one hand, you have a brain drain, you know whereas before.
And look, I don't want to be overly romantic about
the Supreme Court, but to put it this way, you
can't imagine Kataji Brown, however, supposed to say her Star
Wars name, serving on the court one hundred years ago. Well,
that means consequently that there is someone who should be
on that court who is not. And that doesn't mean
he's you know, great guy in particular, but you sort
of have this push pull where they are following their
ideas to their logical conclusion, making their sort of engine
run worse and leaving you know, high end mentioned material
out and cold. And so I think that in a
weird way, they sort of have created now this monster
from their perspective. And you know, as someone who does
have a great deal of we say criticisms of you know,
that system in a weird way, I'm glad they've locked
us out because otherwise I think most people wouldn't have
even bothered.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you know, liberalism is this world, Patrick Patrick.
And he makes this point. Phillips makes this point where
you're it's about taking down boundaries, it's about getting rid
of any restrict Freedom is understood as the absence of restraint.
So any restraints you can remove, whether they're traditional restraints,
cultural restraints, religious restraints, the restraints of nature, you know, transgenderism,
any restraints you can remove. And then it sort of
follows from that that reality itself can sort of be
willed into being. And so there's this idea that if
we just see.
Speaker 5: This with with Viveka Amfest, right, the idea that you know,
there there is nothing there is no legitimate physical determinant
for who is an American. It is entirely affirmative. Right,
if you just look in the mirror and say three times,
I'm an American, you are. It's exactly the same logic
as you know transgenderism. But sorry, point it is just
an interaction.
Speaker 3: No, that that's great, great exams sample and you know,
so there's this idea that, you know, reality can be
just sort of remade. If we decide these people are
college professors, if we decide these people are Hollywood writers,
if we decide these people, you know, whatever we decide
they are, we can make them that just through sort
of force of will and control over media, and we
can just convince everybody this is this is real, and
reality is that thing that doesn't go away when you
ignore it. You know it's still there. And so I
made this point in the essay too. I was like,
imagine a counterfactual where Savage does get this job writing
in Hollywood like he wanted, you know, does he get
what he wants? No, Everything he's going to try to
put out that's original and interesting from his perspective is
just going to get ground into powder by a studio
that wants to homogenize everything and create this sort of
liberal slop woke message. You know, what if what if
they what if they came to you today and said, hey,
would you like to write for the Acolyte? Remember that show?
How would I use that as my example? You know,
what do you what are you going to do?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 3: What what would getting this job have benefited you? I
think we were given so like for example, with communism, right,
you look at the places in Europe that were under
Communist rule during the Cold War, you know, for like
fifty years and then when it all falls apart, those
are the places that are the bastions of cultural conservatism
as compared to Western Europe, which is just this degeneracy.
You know, the people that vote for the AfD in
Germany are all the Eastern German people that used to
be under communist rule, you know, Poland and Hungary, and
these are more far more traditionalist places for having gone
through this persecution. And I'm not saying it's good that
people are suffering. It's good that they're being persecuted. In
an ideal world, people would just be free to make
a living and have peaceful lives. But we shouldn't overlook
since we have to live in it anyway, we shouldn't
overlook the sort of purifying benefits of having to work
so much harder and think about who we are, you know,
we're being well And then yeah, well, and this is
actually a point. It's funny you bring stuff. This is
a point that I made at the it was the
first Cascade Frontier Conference, uh, in a speech I gave that,
look like there is a a purification through suffering. And
you know, well certainly, you know you wouldn't wish for that,
you know, you wouldn't you know, voluntarily kind of cast
yourself into you know, a YMRS situation. But you see
this all throughout scripture, right, the idea of you know,
God allowing his people to be carried away into captivity,
you know, moving from the twelve tribes to the you know,
the two of Israel. Uh.
Speaker 5: Similarly, Frank Herbert's done where you have you know this,
these these people of Iracus who've been living in you know,
horrible conditions in the desert, and because of that, they've
been sort of formed into this blade that it was
used to you know, set the galaxy of blight. And
again that is to say I'm glad for this persecution.
I'm advocating for it, but I think that there is
a benefit. And to your point about you know, imagining
Savage gets this job, imagine the counterfectual of like the
most stereotypical boomer, right growing up in the you know
the world of the nineteen fifties, you know, being able
to you know, have this extremely high standard of living. Right,
exactly what the meme would lead you to think, right,
the kind of prototypical baby boomer. It's like, okay, like
you would you take his role? Would you say? Like yes?
Like I will you know, be part of this great
kind of cash out of civilizational capital and watch my
country and my culture crumble around me. It's like, well, sure,
you might individually be more comfortable in that situation. But
I thought the whole point was that, you know, we
don't care primarily about hedonism, We aren't primarily interested in
living you know, comfortable lives in the pod. It's what's
true that matters. And I say that not to say,
you know, the boomers did nothing wrong, or you know,
housing prices aren't insane. I've covered this extensively, but to say, like,
be very interested in what you're actually asking for here,
because it reminds me, and this is you're you're of
the age to get this reference right, But it reminds
me of you know, the guy in the matrix right,
who wants to go back in the pot, who wants
to eat the digital steak, who wants to you know, effectively,
whose main opposition to the system is not that it's
evil and wrong and headed up by you know, godless pedophiles,
but it is simply that I am not in a
position of relative advantage there. And I certainly understand feeling
aggrieved because when you and I do the same thing,
when you read you know Kataji Brown, right, you know,
a descent or something, You're like, what what in the world,
like you can be a Supreme Court justice and be
like this, I understand that it rankles me, you know,
it raises my hanckles as much as anyone else does.
But again we have to understand, like, what is our
relationship to the system. Are we simply like super conservatives
who you know, have a slightly more radical view of
this system, but we still ultimately want it to exist.
We want these institutions to last or is it something
that is, you know, moribundant. Many things need to go away.
And again, like I'm just saying this for my audience,
but like I don't want people to take this the
wrong way. I've been The last episode I put out
with you know, Mark Mitchell was entirely about the dire
financial straits of young men and the coming political instability
from that. But at the same time, I think it's
very important to sort of be very explicit about what
you want and about what needs to come next, because,
as you've said, you know, simply going back and getting
the screenwriting job in this you know, already deeply corrupt system.
Sure it might benefit you in the short term, but
it doesn't solve this issue anyway. I'll kick it back
to you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I totally agree, and I think I mentioned this
as well, where there's, for lack of a better word,
I just have to call it envy. Almost there's this
contempt for the boomers, the boomer screwed us over the boomers,
this and this, this, things that are fairly accurate, I'd say,
But at the same time, there's this they want to
be them. You know, deep down there's a lot of
people on the right whose main objection to the boomers
is that they weren't there. They want to live that
same basic lifestyle of consumption and indifference to tradition and
in difference to the things that actually hold society together.
And to me it's just just as problematic, like what
world do you want to rebuild? Do you want to
roll the rock, you know, twenty years back up the
hill where you can live like they did. You know,
I see this stuff all the time, where you'll have people,
you know, you can't afford to have kids these days,
you can't afford. And then you look at how he lives,
and he lives in some expensive blue city, you know,
people writing articles about we need a right wing nightlife.
And still how old are you? You know, if you
can afford to live there, and you can afford to
go out drinking it, you know, have kids, you know,
build a community, you know, stop being a boomer spiritually,
stop being a boomer. And it just bugs me when
I see that, because we're capable of so much more
than longing for that world. That was a very, very
contingent thing. You know, Boomerdom came into existence because of
the interplay of historical circumstances and had nothing to do
with the character of the people in it. They weren't
better or worse than us. They just happened to live
in times that were flush with cash, and they took
the opportunities they had and you know, like you said,
cashed out. You know, during the eighties and nineties, they
sold an industrial base it took one hundred years to
build that their ancestors built, not them, and sold it
to China and lived on the proceeds. And that that's
that's there, that's Reaganism. That's their contribution to that. And
I think, like I said, we can do better than that.
We need to get beyond that boomer fixation on I
want I want my money, I want this job, I
want this material circumstances. It's it's not to me it's
not us. I think that there is.
Speaker 5: And you see this often in grievance politics. And this
is going to sound like a point made by uh
a sort of like very firm liberal is not how
I intended. Which you look at the the feminist and
you know, the feminist hates men, and yet everything in
their life is done in relation to men.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 5: In the kind of extremely uh shall we say uh
JQ pilled part of the right, you see a similar
thing where it's almost like Jews become this sort of
like you know, magic gnome, you know, where every problem
and these people are you know, superman. But similarly, I
think that there is a problem with you know, exclusive
focus on the boomer where it's almost like you become
their mirror image because of your opposition. And you know,
as Bowden said, right, the correct answer is to step over.
And so I think there's another element to this which
is not financial, which is the boomers are really the
only true believers in the post war consensus left that
they you know, grew up in the kind of heyday
of this secular state religion, and for them it is
alive and sacred in a way that it is not
for younger people, and so there are these sort of
ideological and conceptual limits placed on us because of that religion.
But the problem is is it could not replicate itself.
It was not you know, it was not a living cult,
so to speak, and so which with each subsequent generation
it's sort of degraded. And I think that there is
a danger in anti boomerism, which bears many of the
same the same kind of the same features just in reverse.
And while certainly many of those features are are not laudable,
are you know, things to avoid that The true answer
is not anti boomerism, It is a boomerism, right, completely
unrelated to actually that'll be the title of the episode,
a boomerism. But I think that I think that that
is a particularly on the right who by virtue of
you know, the nature of progressivism sort of occupies the
role of the second mover in any issue, you know,
and can be reactionary. Even that is ultimately a tactical mistake,
and you see a lot, uh, you know, Mike from
Imperium Press has done great work on this talking about liberalism,
where the solution is not to be you know, anti liberal,
but it is simply to not even consider that you
know worldview is as relevant, and I think that that
is perhaps that the enlightened sort of centrist path on
the boomer issue.
Speaker 3: I totally agree. I made the I said my essay.
I don't want to fight the system. Ultimately, I want
to ignore it, you know, I want to I want
to just be indifferent to it. I don't want to sit.
I mean when I say I don't want to fight it,
I don't mean like when I see injustice, I want
to do anything about it within my capacity. But ultimately
I want to live my life as much as I
can without reference to it. I don't want anything from them.
I don't want to owe them anything. I want to be.
I want to be postliberal in the truest sense. I
want to move beyond it. There's with the JQ, with feminism,
it's the same basic idea. Nobody is a recreational jpill taker.
You know, once you're jpilled, you're hopelessly addicted and it
becomes the center of your life. And just like Heroin,
it makes you completely unable to function because everything is
Jews control this, Jews control that, Jews run your life.
You can't accomplish anything because of jew juju ju juju.
I mean, it's it's insane, and it works the same
way with feminism. It's the same basic the patriarchy. I
can't benefit because when you start believing things like that,
you just rob yourself of any kind of agency, and
then you have to start rationalizing why other people are succeeds.
I've had people I know online who are right as
right wing as they come, and they're doing a little
better than somebody else on substack. And then the guy
they're doing better than incomes, he's working for the Jews.
He's compromised, and it just eats away at your ability
to form form unions with other people and benefit each
other and do it.
Speaker 5: It's dumb, well, I will say, and uh, that is
that is true, but only in relation to me. Anyone
better than me, uh, is is an agent of the massade.
Anyone worse than me is just a loser who needs
to kill themselves.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 5: You see this at the gym as well. Anyone bigger
than me is taking roids. Anyone smaller than me is lazy. Yeah,
you know, it's it is as far as I've as
far as I've done the research, ironclad reasoning. But sorry,
just a brief interjection.
Speaker 3: There absolutely, that's there's so much of that that you see,
which is why I just I just ignore those people
because they're just they're they're block them, they're they're they're horrible,
because they'll suck you into that. You know, it's just dumb.
You know. Is the system stacked against us? Yes? Can
we thrive despite that? Also? Yes, there are a million
examples of each. There are a million examples of white
men getting screwed over by the system, and there are
a million examples of white men thriving despite that if
we focus on what we can do, right, I use
the example in my essay Peudie Pie. Right, I'm not
even a fan of video games. I don't follow this
stuff like that. This is a guy that carved out
a career for himself where any anybody on network TV
would give their right lung to have his kind of
audience and his kind of pull, you know. And then
the guy since retired and is living a trad life
in Japan with his wife and kids. You know, it's
like what a right wing fairy tale that all is.
You know, you can do it, you can get ahead,
you can you can make it without having to depend
on these people for status, and once you realize the
boomer myth is a myth, stop believing in it yourself.
Stop trying to live the way they did. Start trying
to find a new way to live, and best of all,
help other people. You know, get out of this mindset
where this guy's like you said, you know, if this
guy's doing better than me, it's because you know he's
he's worth the Jews, he's a fed, he's Get out
of that. Ask him how he did it. You know,
benefit each other, pull your resources, pull people up. You know,
I don't. I don't think I would honestly say what
popularity I have on substack is only partially because of
my writing. A lot of my popularity, I would say,
is just because I'm a prolific restacker and you know commenter,
and I do my best to like somebody post something,
I make sure if I'm going a chance to read it,
yet I restack it before I've read it, because I
know the guy and I know he solid. You know,
help people get their stuff out there. Do that. It's free.
There's so many ways we can help each other, and
so many ways we can encourage each other to have agency.
And not get sucked into this doomerism, the doumerism of boomerism,
as it were.
Speaker 5: Well, and similarly, it's important to to bring up that,
you know, like let's take the maximally conspiratorial worldview, like
as an example, like say it, everything in that is true, right,
you know, it's the it's the David Iicke lizard people
all at once, you know, pick your poison it. It's like, well, okay, functionally,
if you know, you take that all to be true
and you are effectively frozen by that that nothing ever happens.
You know, everything is an op. Everything is a conspiracy,
and so I will simply do nothing or go out
to a compound in the woods. It's like, well, you're
politically neutralized. You might as well be dead functionally, like
they basically could have, you know, shot you and killed you,
and it would have ultimately the same result. And so
like again to your point, like there there are very
very real challenges, and there are very real ways in which,
you know, young white guys are dispossessed.
Speaker 3: But at a.
Speaker 5: Certain point, it's like you're kind of doing what they
want if you just completely opt out of everything. You know,
if you just simply decide to become a need because
you're done then and look like I get it. Like
times are tough, Believe me, I do. Right, As someone
with a mortgage that is way away higher than the
one my parents paid for a much nicer house, I
understand that. But at the same time, it's like you
in a certain sense, by letting letting them demoralize you,
whoever you consider to be them, they've basically won. Like
you're you're a dead man walking effectively, you've been shot,
you just haven't died yet. And again, right, we're primarily
interested in trend lines here, and so you know, even
a relative increase is positive. It is not winning. It
is not getting to you know, whatever based world is right,
pick your poison there, but ultimately right, like our enemies
wedged a very long war, you know, there was you know,
obviously the long March institutions, but in other ways, like
it took them quite a long time to get power.
And so you know what it is where you are
an enemy of the state. You know, you have decided
that you were a dissident. We've got to understand that
is a that is a long project. And even in
the past twenty thirty years, that project has gone very
very well. You know, I love talking to you guys
like the you know, the dearly departed z Man or
you know Thomas or other figures you know who've been around,
you know, kind of radical dissident circles for a long
time because they're very, very white pilt. And it's not
to say that these guys are blind to the very
real issues facing us in ours but it's to say, like,
look like, you know, twenty years ago you were a
really big deal if you had one hundred guys on
your mailing list. Very you're you're pretty active on substack,
but I feel like you can confirm one hundred subscribers
on substack is basically nothing. You can do that with one,
you know, moderately successful essay on a new account. And
so I think it's important to recognize, like, yeah, sure,
like material conditions for the sort of modal American have
gotten worse, your prospects have gotten worse. But in the
face of that, you have agency, and if you have decided,
as I have, as many of my listeners have, that
this system needs to be opposed, well, to be honest,
things are looking up from that perspective.
Speaker 3: I totally agree. I mean, I'll be so bold as
to say, despite the material conditions being what they are
and they're bad, I don't think there's ever been more opportunity,
more possibilities for a young white man in America. I
say that because, yes, it was possible to work at
the GM factory and buy a house back in nineteen
sixty without a high school diploma. That is true. But
it's also true that that was pretty much your only path.
You know, if you're the kind of guy who worked
at the GM plant and got a union job and
had the house and everything like that, that was pretty much
because that was your horizons. It wasn't like you had
the choice, well, maybe I'll be a podcaster, maybe I'll
be a creative writer, maybe I'll maybe I'll be a
live streamer, or maybe I'll work at the GM factory.
You worked at the GM factory because that's whatever Ben
in your town did, and that was it, you know,
And yeah, you had more material prosperity, but just in
terms of your cultural horizons and your opportunity to get
much more constraint versus now where you know your reindustrial
you can have a blue collar job and work on
an oil rig and have a sub stack, and in fact,
there are people who do that. You know, you don't
have to be Airic Coffer. You if I wanted to
be a movie producer, I want to make movies a producer.
I want to be a director. I want to I
want to make movies. In the nineteen sixties, that meant
go into Hollywood, and that meant, you know, dealing with
that system and everything like that, you can make a movie. Now.
I have more computing power or in my phone that
every computer on Earth put together when I was born.
You know, there's so many ways you can succeed now,
more so than people had in the past. And if
I think it's important to focus on that, because it
is really easy to say, I mean, I might me personally.
I could not afford to buy the house I grew
up in where my dad, without a high school diploma,
with a working class job, could buy it. That's true, right,
I don't have that ability. But at the same time,
I had so many more opportunities than my dad. My
dad couldn't dream of going to college and there in
the in the late sixties, when he was graduating high school,
my dad is a brilliant writer, but he never had
the opportunity to get anywhere. He never, you know, could
have started a sub stack and done all these things
like that I've done. So yeah, my material circumstances are
a bit diminished compared to his, but my opportunities to
be who I am are far more.
Speaker 5: Just to kind of play Devil's advocate here, But what
would you react to someone who says, well, sure that's true,
but we can't have a nation of substackers, right, That
is not something everyone can do. And I am not
a writer, I am not interested in writing, and I
can't get you know, the sort of manufacturing job. What
would you say to you to that person?
Speaker 3: So, when when my dad was a kid, there was
no robin Hood online app to invest in stocks. When
my dad was a kid, there was no three D
printing to make stuff in my house to sell online.
There was no eBay, there was no Pinterest, there was
no Etsy, There was no none of these outlets where
I could be my own businessman if I wanted to.
There was no Facebook marketplace to sell things on. There
were no YouTube videos to instruct me on how to
be a car mechanic or anything else where I could
learn these valuable skills. I mean, you don't have to
be a writer, you have to be a creative if
I just in terms of learning marketable skills, it's easier
to do now than it ever was.
Speaker 5: I think that when I look at, you know, the
kind of serious right in America, I think that there
are sort of two concrete advantages we have as a group,
which is one an information advantage. We can predict things
and we know things that simply cannot be said in
other circles. But I think the other one is this
great untapped human resource, you know, that same process we
mentioned earlier. And I to me, this is the exciting
thing I see when I go to conferences and I
see people talking about the things that they are building,
right the businesses that they've started. At the Second Cascade
Frontier out in Portland. I can't remember his name, I should,
but it was it was a really interesting talk because
the guy was someone who basically, to you know, ape
the classic millennial phrase, did the thing like he moved
back to a small town, he started a construction business
and basically went about the process of becoming sort of
a local elite. And it was it was a really
interesting conversation for a couple of reasons. One because he
made very similar points to agency that you did, where
he basically said it's like all right, like let's just
do something and see what we can do. But equally,
it was it was a very realistic conversation because he
was talking about the fact that like it wasn't this
kind of like you know, maoist paradise of you know,
kind of a barrel tested yeoman just waiting for a job.
He was saying that I think he went through like
a one hundred employees in the first year, you know,
just cycling through because it was you know, it was
drug addiction, it was people he couldn't depend on. But
it was a really interesting conversation because the end of it,
he's like, well, no, I was able to build a company.
I was able to you know, sit on whatever the
town council, whatever it was called in a small town.
I was able to you know, employ gainfully four or
five you know, skill tradesman. And there was a particularly
interesting example because he was talking about, you know, one
of his guys, and this guy he employed twice the
first time. You know, there were a lot of problems
he ended up going to jail for you know, a
month or two on something minor, and he's like, what
I was able to do is I was able to
basically give this guy another shot. And now not only
is that a guy who you know, seemingly was spent
on ruining his life who's now a productive member of society,
but there's an immense amount of loyalty there because I
was the boss who basically said, like, all right, Bud,
you know, we start when you get back. And I
think that there's two lessons in that. One, you know,
the importance of agency and the importance of realizing that,
like you don't necessarily need to go through a pre
defined path, even if there are sunk costs, because look
like there are many people stuck in this situation, myself included,
who have paid a lot of money in time to
learn how to do something where they are not hirable. Right,
but at a certain point, right, it's like there was
agency there. And also, like you, there is an advantage
in reaching those sort of unreached people. Sure you might
have to cycle through one hundred people in two years
as he did. Sure you might have to, you know,
work harder than simply putting something up on you know,
indeed or whatever job for him. But also, like the
things that we're you can sort of practice your own
patronage and secure for yourself loyalty that you maybe could
not going through the kind of traditionally defined managerial paths
or starting a business. Interesting point. I'll see if I
can remember who it was and maybe you know, link
his Twitter account down the description. But he's he was
an interesting fellow. It was a good it was a
good talk, and I think a good practical example of
what you and I are poking around here.
Speaker 3: Yes, uh, I wrote a while back an article called
Chris Ruffo is right. You know when the whole Panda
Express thing came out or you posted you remember that
when posts the link to a job at pand Express
near his house or something. People, I'm not working at
pand Express. I get that. You know, it's a it's
a job that you know is coded low status. Nobody
wants to work at pand Express. But I think the
general point he was making is very very applicable to
kind of what we're talking about here. So when you
talk about the guys, the guys who are writing about
this problem, like who are on substack and access of
writing about this. These are not the sorts of people
who are going to go work at Panda Express. And
that's why I think they kind of take offense to
that idea. They're not the guys who are going to
start a construction company. They see themselves as intellectuals, and
they are. They're philosophers. They think about stuff, they want
to write all day. They don't want to work with
their hands or trades ur stuff. But if you're talking
if you're going to talk about white men or just
men in general, or people in general or whatever, you
have to accept that the vast majority of people are
not creatives. They're not writers. They're not looking to express themselves.
They want something, a job where they can have agency
at things. And the you know, the online equivalent of
is being pilled, you know, being addicted to that. The reality,
the real life cognitive that is just being pilled, you know,
just being on oxy contin and stuff and ruining your life.
That's the ultimate expression of that doumerism and that that despair.
And I think that if you're not one of these,
if you're trying to construct a society that's going to
benefit white people in general, and most white people are
going to be working people. Then you have to empower
those people who are going to run the local chick
fil A and the local business and things like that
to be able to do what they do because those
patronage networks, as you note, are an extremely powerful force
keeping communities together. You know the guy. The guy my
local chick fil A employs kids from the local high school,
from the local college, senior citizens. His chick fil a
is a third place in that in that sociological sense,
people old people meet there in the mornings and hang out.
People go there after church, people go there after their
football games. It's this hub of community life outside of
the hull. Yeah, it's a cheesy chain restaurant. The food
ain't healthy and all that, but at the same time,
as a community institution, and if we're going to be
serious about a rightist politics that benefits young white men,
we have to address that aspect of it as well.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think there's something there, Brian. Unfortunately, it is
the holidays, so I'm gonna have to wrap up sooner
than later because I have a man. It's great having
a large family and religious community, but man, it is
it is hell on a podcaster and you know as
really someone who you know. I think you know we're
talking about different classes. Really, the heartbeat of America is
the American podcaster. It's really an inappropriate level of social obligation.
So I'm gonna have to tap out, man, But this
is really fascinating. I'll be sure to link your substack
in your Twitter in the description of this. But is
there anywhere else where people can find you?
Speaker 3: Man? That's about it at the moment, unless you want
to follow my rap career. But that's a different worry
about that.
Speaker 5: The aspiring rapper to New York mayor seems to be
a well traveled career path, so I am anticipating your
your mayoral run.
Speaker 3: Aspiring rapper is the best way to get shot. That
aspiring rapper auto fills like recently shot or worse, aspiring
rapper turning his life around. That's just a death sentence.
Aspiring rapper.
Speaker 5: I think that's on the New York Post list of
approved euphemisms. I'll maybe a little bit there.
Speaker 3: The teen scholar rapper.
Speaker 5: Again, as far as my stuff, the Jay Burton Show, Apple,
Spotify YouTube, this I guess will probably be the last
or almost the last episode of the year, a year
where I launched myself as a full time professional podcaster.
I just wanted to extend to thank you. You guys
have been wonderful, supporting enabling me. Really, I guess honestly
like an overbearing mother or like a drug pusher to
keep recording my thoughts on the internet. But in all seriousness, guys,
I really do appreciate that your support means the world
to me. What are you entitled to for your support?
You get the episodes early in ad free. I know
the ads are irritating, but it pays my mortgage, so sorry,
is really the best I've got. But if that's annoying,
throw me five bucks a month and for twenty cents
an episode, which is not bad on substack, Patreon or
gum Road. You get in without those ads again, Librarian,
thanks so much for coming out, man, thanks for having
me to everyone to know them. Keep your head up.
The lie can't last forever. Good night, that's not put
The Bagariagary program