Speaker 1: All right, welcome to another episode of the Crime Pas.
But BONDI doesn't podcast. Today, we're doing a podcast that
doesn't have anything at all to do about plants, but
it's with a mind that I greatly respect and admire. Uh,
And I'm always interested to listen to the opinions of
my friend j le Solei, who is half the voice
playing the fucking canceled podcast. He's a writer, he's got
a degree in political anthropology. And yeah, I guess, uh,
I guess film me yeah, fill me in on on
your background.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, thanks for having me. Second, we
we could totally talk about the plants if you want.
I'm always done, Yeah, of course, of course. Yeah. I
did my master's degree in anthropology and I ended up
Originally I'd wanted to do some work on the rise
of this kind of like online like hardline anti feminism
that was popping up a couple of years back, you know,
And I got in touch with this guy who was
running like a like a pickup artist group in Montreal,
and I wanted to I wanted to just interview him
for some like preliminary research stuff, you know, because I
was interested in why this was popping up so hard
at the time. What was kind of motivating people who
were behind it and so on. Anyways, I got in
touch with this guy and he's like, oh, that group
doesn't exist anymore, the pickup artist group, and oh yeah,
like okay, like what happened to it? And he's like, basically,
we're not these now. And he had converted his pickup
artist group into an alt right organization that was operating
in Montreal. And he was weirdly like open to talking
to me, which is unusual for people in the far right.
They tend to be very skeptical of academics, you know.
So I pushed my supervisor and I was like, I
don't know, this guy seems like he he might talk
to me. And I'm thinking of just and like doing
a kind of political ethnography of his Nazi group. And
my supervisor said, listen, if you can do it and
you feel safe, like go for it, because it's really
rare to be able to get in depth interviews with
this kind of person, let alone like a kind of
ethnographic thing where you're like hanging out with them.
Speaker 1: So I wait, really quick, really quick. The road from
pickup artist to straight up Nazi, like that's it. I
can see that. I guess I can see how that works.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I mean, you know, I wrote a whole
thesis about it, if you want to read about how
that works. But yeah, yeah, so I did you know,
I got a haircut, I got a bunch of clothes
that covered my tattoos, and I hung out with them
for like a year, and so it pretended to be
like much more sympathetic to their cause than I actually was.
And then yeah, I wrote my thesis about that. It
was a fucking trip.
Speaker 1: God, I bet I bet man the Uh yeah, I
actually I would love to read that, but I I
the reason I wrote out the reason I wrote to
you and wanted to do this podcast was because we
had done a podcast before about you know how I
guess basically the American left has kind of lost its
mind in some ways, like not all of it, of course,
it's a huge group, but there's elements of it that
went this really weird direction of identitarianism and cancel culture
and was tied to you know, having a profile bio
basically tied to being perpetually online, like social media has
poisoned the minds of social media has poisoned the minds
of both left and right. It's radicalized a lot of
you know, a lot of people's grandparents, obviously, But then
there's this whole other element that came out of it
that I started to see popping up maybe ten or
twelve years ago. That turned into just this really I
think what you've called it before, the mean girl attitude
of leftism. And that's so fucking appropriate because it sounds
like rich kid mean girls. It's like this shaming shit talking, condescending,
just fucking mean. I mean, like, if you're trying to
recruit people for your ideology or your movement, whatever, it's like,
I can't think of a shittier way to do it
than to behave like this, and that I you know
what struck me is that because I'm like, I still
I don't care what the fuck someone believes. If they
want to talk about plants there into conservation, Like that's
what I hold up the most, Like, how do you
feel about the living world around you? Do you respect it?
Do you think humans are at the center of it?
Do you think we need to own and control it?
That's what I care about. But at the end of
the day, I mean, I still if you want to
place me somewhere, obviously, I'm I'm left, like I'm working
class left, I'm more socialist left whatever. But all this
identitarian shit really lost me, and especially the attitudes. But
where I live now. You know, three years ago, I
moved to Texas for family reasons, and I knew going
into it was gonna be fucking weird, and it certainly is. Man,
it's one of the most repressed states that I've ever
been to. And you know, there's just like an element
here like just keep your head down, don't get too
loud and whatever, and there's good to that, and there's
you know, bad people are really polite, but then it's
you know, there's really some really weird value systems here. Anyway.
The point is, you know, I'm always paying attention to
plants and rocks anyway, so what the fuck do I
care about the people? But I made friends with people
here who are, like, who are voting Trump. I mean,
I love them, They're good people, and they're voting Trump.
They're just working class people. They're fucking school teachers, whatever.
And I just couldn't get because you know, ever since
I was like ten, I was I mean, I saw
this on the fucking Simpsons, Like the right is inherently
the party of the wealthy and the business class and
the fucking side that's fucking the planet into a coma
and you know, ruining, ruining the middle class and exploiting
poor people and et cetera. And it's always just been oh, yeah,
this is the way it is. I grew up thinking that,
and to just see working class people voting right, I
just fucking couldn't wrap my head around that. I'm like,
what the fuck is I feel like I'm living in
the matrix, like is everybody to hear duped? And then
I but then when I look at what they think
of the modern American left, I'm like, oh, I kind
of understand that. Like, if not that I agree with them,
but if that's what you think of it, if that's
the image that's portrayed to you, I kind of understand it.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah totally.
Speaker 1: And it's it's and that second and not saying I
agree with it, but it provides some insights. So I
just wanted to know how the fuck did we get
how do we get here? Man? Like? How did how
is this the situation where I feel like the left
is kind of abandoned the working class. Let the movement
get taken over by college kids from wealthy backgrounds, uh
who just like to shit talk online, and then you know,
kind of handed this. I mean, that's the best thing
you could do for for a populist movement, right, You
just you're just giving them, You're alienating this huge sector
of society and handing it over to this, this right
wing populist movement, which is again that's not even just
an America, that's all over the world. Right. But I
just I don't know, I don't know. I'm curious what
you have to say about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got a lot to say there, for sure,
I think. Okay, So at first you have to contestualize
it historically, right, and I think that in the US
in particular, but this is also true like throughout North
America and to a similar but lesser extent in Europe.
You have to think about the decades of anti communist
propaganda that was those leveraged against the population during the
Cold War, and they did a really, really, really good
job of re painting any sort of socialist policy as
not just evil, but insane and completely anathema. To the
the values of hardworking Americans or whatever. Right, So, so
right off the bat, you have this situation where like
a very large proportion of the population thinks that're like
any policy that's set up to like benefit working class
people in a direct way, particularly through you know, economic
reorganization is is just evil and crazy. So it's it's
not even something that people want to consider. And like
any any of the vocabulary that you can use to
talk about these things has been poisoned by by these
decades events out of communism, right, And you know that
doesn't just apply to communism communism like Marcus Leninism or something,
but sort of like anything sort of like exaguarly left
the center just thought of that way by by by
quite a large proportion of the population. And then you
have what I think is one of the most elegant
explanations of all this, which is a phrase formulated by
Mark Fisher, the ate Great in his book Capitalist Realism.
And I mean the phrase itself is capitalist realism, and
Fisher wrote this, it's this slim little book you can
read it in an afternoon, called Capitalist Realism. And and
then he basically discusses how the fall of the Soviet
Union was like a downloambal through the Western left. And
no matter what you want to say about the various
kind of like communists and socialist parties that existed in
the West prior to the fall of the Soot Union,
and you can say a lot about them, you can
criticize them a lot. At least before the fall of
the Sod Union, people understood in a kind of embodied
way that there was an alternative to capitalism. It existed,
and it was out there. You know, there was a
different way that you could organize an economic system. Then
you could criticize the way they were doing it, but
it definitely existed, right And after the fall of the
Seed Union, what you get is this kind of situation
where as Mark Fisher puts it, the end of the
world becomes easier to imagine than the end of capitalism
because there is no alternative. There's nowhere in the world
that has, you know, that is really like working outside
of the capitalist system, except for these like bizarre little
holdouts like North Korea, which nobody wants to fucking live in. Understandable, right, yeah,
of course, because I mean it's a totally degenerated, like
fascist like theocracy at this point. But yeah, and so
you get the situation where like alternatives to capitalism are
like not even not even thinkable for so many people.
And what I did on the left in the West
is that a lot of these parties either collapsed immediately
or they pivoted away from anything that resembled socialism towards
a kind of like vague social democracy, which in and
of itself is not a terrible thing, but with like
a huge, huge focus on identity rather than on economic issues,
and in particular class.
Speaker 1: I think really quick too with that, I mean the
fall of Soviet Union. But then in the eighties you
got Reagan and Thatcher that are just pumping this sign
randy and bullshit that if you give the rich more money,
it's going to be for everybody you know, and that
business is the best thing you can do with your life.
Go to school for business. Why the fuck do you
want to learn science? Why do you want to study astronomy?
Why do you study Why do you want to study biology?
Why do you want to study the sex lives of quail?
That's garbage, that's nothing. Why not study business and learn
how to fucking run a plastic manufacturing company or fucking
day trade or whatever. You know, just this fucking just
this holding up business is the ultimate aim. And not
only that, like not only is it capitalism, but like
any form of regulation on the rich or on corporations
is you know, it's crazy, it's sacrilege. You can't like
why you can't do that? All hands off the market,
free markets, free minds, all that bullshit. I mean, it
really set the stage. And so that's when, you know,
defunding libraries, defunding health institutions, defunding the fucking post office,
at least in this country, in the United States. It's
just that's how we ended up where we are today.
In Texas where I live now, such a great example
of it. Everything's privatized, the fucking state electric grids privatiz
There's middlemen involved in everything. Our health insurance is fucked.
You know, you're in Canada, you got somewhat decent health insurance.
Here we've got these sleeves back middlemen who are basically
finding out a way to try and gain it. They're
like the fucking mafia. You pay us, We're going to
make sure we don't have to actually pay out.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, absolutely, And I mean, even in Canada,
like there's privatization of healthcare is proceeding. You know, it's
it's really devastating to watch this, this thing that like
my ancestors like thought for. You know, it's it's like
the birthright of the fucking working class is that we
have health care that we don't have to pay for
at the point of service, and they're doing their best
to slowly privatize it. And it's like it's absolutely horrifying
to watch. But you're you're totally right that neoliberalism is
the other part of this puzzle, right, because in the
eighties and nineties, neoliberalism just swept the entire Western world
and it became even more unthinkable to have policies that
would benefit working across people in any material way. And
this effect is like obviously not only parties on the right,
but also parties on the on the quote unquote left,
like the Democrats right. And you know, in the United States,
you're in this particularly sucked position because you only have
two parties and so right now, like both of the
parties are like firmly neoliberal and their economic outlook right,
like there's there's no discussion of wanting to move away
from your liberalism.
Speaker 1: Right, you're gonna get it. You're gonna get someone who
supports the oligarchy either way, you're going to get a
war criminal and a friend of a friend of Wall
Street no matter what.
Speaker 2: You know, well, absolutely right, And like you know, these
these Democrats, like every once in a while they're they're
they're like, we're going to have like this historic rays
in like the corporate tax rate or something, and they're
raising it to like much less than what it was
like a couple of decades ago. Right, So it's like
it's it's still within the realm of this like total deregulation,
cutting taxes much possible for the rich and so on,
and so for like regular working class people, like when
they look at these two parties, like there's very clearly
not a party that is actually looking up for them,
like you know, it doesn't it doesn't exist. They don't
have anyone to vote for, and so like in terms
of their class interests really, and it's you know, like
one party is sort of like comically evil and the
other party is like evil and somewhat competent. And you
know it's like you know, which evil parties you want
to vote for both of them are going to fuck
over your economic interest So so what you do, and
especially because you have no expectation that any party is
going to look out for your economic interests, you you
look for the party that is sort of saying things
that sounds vaguely like maybe what you think about stuff
you know, and or even just the kind of like
sound like the sound of in general, it's just like
fucking vibes. And I mean, like you can look at
like Kamala Harris just did this big interview I think
it was yesterday, and you know, she really adaptly managed
to just not talk about any policies, right because like
they don't have any it's like nothing that's going to
like particularly help people. Yeah, and so I think that
that more or less sums up when I think about that.
I mean, I guess the last thing I would say
about why they're left in the US lost their working
classes because they saw fucking trying, Like they don't particularly
care about it at all, and they don't like to
think about things in terms of class anyway, Like Americans
in particular are very against thinking about things in terms
of class. And yeah, like the two political parties that
govern your country are not interested in really talking about it.
But what is quite interesting is that the Republicans have
been doing I think a better job of paying lip
service to the working class yea, than the Democrats have.
You know, they've they've noticed that. It's it's it's a
kind of like a useful way to sort of grange
job voters who are relatively politically unsophisticated. And yeah, and
I mean in Canada where I live, we're in this
like insane situation where the Conservative Party is about to
crush the next election, like absolutely crush it. And I
think one of the reasons is that the current leader
of the Conservative Party PR has been saying the words
of working class over and over again, and no one
else is, you know, including our like our party that
pretends to be social Democrats. So yeah, it's it's just
a bizarre situation.
Speaker 1: And I think I think too. I mean, well, I
first off, I wrote to you when Biden was still
in the race, and I just I can't even look
at this ship. It's like, oh god, you know, the
whole thing. But when Biden was still in the race especially,
and it felt especially disheartening, and you're watching Trump just
surge and you're like, how the fuck do people think
this guy is actually on their side? It's fucking insane,
and you don't want to just be a dick. You can't.
I mean, it's it's it's so easy to be like, oh,
everyone's a fucking moron who's been duped and played and
you know he's living in the matrix whatever, Like that's
not one. It's not nice too. It's fucking whatever truth
there may be to it, or elements of truth, it's not.
It's certainly not shit you're gonna say to people, because
that's not gonna win them over. But it's just I
felt so fucking twisted. I'm like Jesus Christ, am I
the only one seeing this? Like it was one of
those like Emperor Wears No Clothes moments, Like you're voting
for this dude in a fucking fifty thousand dollars suit
who's been fucking over poor people his whole life, and
you you think he's gonna be your friend. Like you
work as a contractor, you're eating shit for a railroad
company or for a fucking oil drilling company, whatever, and
you think this dude is gonna support you, Like how
the fuck, like, you know, I don't even know where
to start. And then you know, Harris enters the race
and he loses. He like drops down a little bit,
and he did that whole getting shot thing with the
corny fucking holding his fist up, you know, photo ops,
super fucking corny, and uh like someone emblazon that someone
made a meme. They emblazon that over like this typical
American shopping slum scene of like chick fil a drive
through and all the like, you know, all the like
you know, like this is what you're defending or this
is what you're you know, this is America. But so
he dropped a little bit and then it's kind of like, Okay,
I feel like that's the job of the like the
Democratic Party is like just to and don't get me wrong,
like I hope Harris fucking wins. I don't want religious theocracy.
I want the poison. I know, you know, I don't
want the fucking I don't know what the fuck Trump's
gonna like they got plans they got they want, you know,
they want to replace fifty thousand you know, civil servants
with people they already know, like with just pure people
who are already in their cult. I mean, it's scary
shit like Trump is. Yeah, there's definitely a difference between
the two, at least in some ways. Like it's it's
not you know, I don't know, it's fucking freaky. But
I feel like that's the job of the Democratic parties
to play cap people and be like, Okay, just sit
here while they're the oligarchs, continue to fuck you and
uh and we'll just you know, we'll put a rainbow
on it, we'll smile and we'll you know, And that's
that's what they do, whereas like the right wing is
like they're salesman, they got this whole pitch. They're completely
full of shit, but they've really got a plan to
like drive home the fucking nails deeper, you know, and
really take it somewhere dark. I just I think that's
the That's just the infuriating thing for me, though, is
seeing working class people voting for this dude, and they're
good people. I'm not going to just write them off
and be like, oh, you're a fucking idiot, you know,
or nothing like that. It's just it's more dystopic than
that's like I like you, but like, yeah, I don't know,
you're just confused, man. And yeah, it's like this really
distoper feeling.
Speaker 2: I think, like, you know, machine gun into my head.
Probably out vote for Harris, but I wouldn't want you,
you know, if I could vote in the US, which
you can. Yeah, But I think that one of the
mistakes that the left makes, or like liberals anyway, is
like they really believe that the Democrats are so self
evidently better for working class people than Republicans. But I
don't know if that's the fucking case anymore. Like I
really don't know the companies right now. I mean yeah,
like yes, And so if if you come take a
step back and you accept that both of these parties
are like absolutely fucking trash run by total psychos, then
half the people are going to vote for one. Half
people are going to vote for the other, you know
what I mean? Yeah, Yeah, I just I feel like
they're just both based on vibes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I guess that's what it was like Ragan.
You'd working class people voting for Reagan. But I don't know, man,
I look at the modern left and then I travel
to other countries and look at the left there, and
I'm like, man, they don't the ship we do here,
the ship the left does in the US they don't
do another other countries is as much like this whole
And that brings me to identitarianism, this focus on like
this two dimensional characteristic, Like what, how would you define identitarianism?
Like for anyone that's confused about what the fuck it is,
it still doesn't know, Like how would you how would
you sum it up?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I mean I like to say identitarianism
instead of identity politics. And the difference is basically that
identitarianism is like a total privileging of identity at the
expense of pretty much any other relevant factor, like a
real obsession with identity as the cause and effect and
you know, the only thing that's important about any given topic,
whereas identity politics, I mean, identity politics is just sort
of like any politics or policy that has identity involved
in it, which there's not a bad thing in and
of itself in any way, right, Like, identity definitely impacts
people's lives and it makes sense to have policy. Is
that addressed that in various ways? But is this like
obsession with identity at the expense of every other, every
other characteristic And it really has taken over in like
a huge way, and it's taken over across the board,
which is interesting too. It's not just on the left,
Like I think that the rise of the Old Right
and the rise of like male identity politics are examples
of this. On the right, right, so you have like
this white nationalism and the MRAs and the pickup artists
and the in cells and all this kind of stuff.
Is it's also identitarianism, right. It's people who are like,
the defining factor of my life is that I'm a
man and I can't get late or whatever, and they're
trying to articulate politics out of that identity characteristic that
they have. And on the left, you know, we're more
familiar with that, I think because more people bitch about
identity politics on the left and identitarianism on the left.
But yeah, so I mean on the on the left
you have this, like particularly in the United States, is
a very very strong obsession with race at the expense
class and are constant the word I'm looking for, the lighting,
I think is the word I'm looking for. But basically
just where you you take one thing and you make
a stand for the other. So in the US, like
constantly when when they are getting close to talking about
something in a way that would make sense, they switch
from talking about class and talking about race, you know,
and it's always about race and never built class, whereas
I mean, actually, in many, many, many cases, those far
more relevant factors become a class with the person involved.
But Americans seem to be like incapable of understanding that
end and articulating things that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's it's super fucking divisive. It's super divisive.
It's stupid, and it's going to turn off people that
don't understand what you're talking about, you know, Like it's
I think it's I always tell you. I think it's
started from, you know, a critical lens on history, which
is absolutely that's necessary for living in this world. You
have to understand why things are the way they are,
histories of oppression, histories of repression, histories of resistance, et cetera.
But so it started up with that, and then it
just turned into this like two dimensional stand in, you know,
and this fixation on like race, which doesn't exist, I mean,
just from a purely biological standpoint, these alleles that code
for melanin production are the result of a population having
spent you know, the past few thousands of years at
a certain latitude and receiving solar insulation and the vitamin
B deficiency you get if your pale skin the lower latitudes,
and the vitamin D deficiency you get if you're melanin
toned higher melanin tone at higher latitudes, and using that
is a stand in for culture, like tying in quote
unquote race melanin content, that's all it is, and tying
that in with culture and not just understanding oh, like
you know, the dominant class of these anglos for the
last five hundred years at least, has been historically oppressing people,
you know, based on their melanin content, which is fucking
asinine and ridiculous. Like these motherfuckers actually thought they were
better than these people, you know, but not just understanding that,
but but turning that into like something else, like this inherited,
like you know, just fixating on this. It's fucking nuts.
And I think that goes so well with social media too.
And I know we've talked about this before, Like you
need something to put in that profile bio. You grow
up in a depressing consumer society, maybe living in a
cul de sac or you know, you're you're you have Noah,
You're deprived of so much that could build a genuine identity.
You cling to these two dimensional characteristics. Well that's not
who you are. Who would you be if you were stranded,
you know, alone for a week somewhere, you know, or
if you if the world ended like that Twilight Zone episode.
I'm always mentioning like where you know, Like the dude
likes to read and the fucking world ends and he's
stuck in a library, and that's like he knows what
he's going to do. Is got endless food, He's got
like what would you do? What art would you make?
What are your experiences? What's your perspective on the world
when you mentally ingest material? What is your reflection back
on it? That kind of thing, and it just went
this really weird direction. Yeah, man, And I had some
guy I posted I made that giving tree, that tree
giving the finger to the little kid post, you know,
drawing a play on shel Silverstein's Giving Tree. And I
had this kid comment and uh, you know, we probably
would have gotten along in any other context, but he's like,
can you can It's only white people that act like this,
And I was like, are you fucking kidding me. You
ever heard of Genghis Khan? Have you ever heard of
like any of the other like five hundred fucking genocidal
maniacs and dictators in the last fifteen thousand years of
human history, Like history is littered with mass graves, Like
you're not thinking about this broadly enough, Like it's you know,
like what about the white people that existed in Europe,
you know before before this weird the precursors to European colonials,
And what about white pelist there before the that culture
wiped them out, like the indigenous white people of wherever
the fuck? You know, it's weird, man, for sure.
Speaker 2: Like the flip side of over white supremacy is is
kind of still white supremacy because it just imagines that
there's something very very special about white people, that they're
just bad instead of good, you know. But like there's
nothing special about any group of people. They're all just
like human beings doing their thing, you know. But yeah,
I mean in the United States too, there's this particularly
like weird way of thinking about race that where like
in particularly like like Black Americans are spoken about as
though they are a race. But I mean, realistically, this
group is an ethnic group. It's an American ethnic group, right,
and but it gets confused with race all the time too,
which is really interesting. And actually there was something like
super funny that happened a while back where like Donald
Trump excused Kamala Harris as like not really being black,
you know, and everybody super mad about this. But it's
really funny because like Trump, even though he was like
only right by accident, is kind of right because Kaalala
Harris does not come from the ethnic group of Black
Americans like her her father, I believe is is I
guess like quote unquote racially black, but he's an immigrant, right,
And the same thing is true of Obama. And so
like the two sort of like major black political figures
in the US are not Black Americans. They're they're the
descendants of immigrants, and they're sort of like I mean,
I hate using this war, but like they're like racially
black or whatever, like their their ancestors descended from people
from Africa, but they're not members of the ethnic group
that is Black Americans who have their own you know.
Even though it's a very large ethnic group with lots
of like internal differences and so on. It has its
own sort of you know, cultural characteristics and like dialects
and so on. Right, but yeah, Americans are continuously very
confused about.
Speaker 1: This, like in indigenous cultures is a monolithic entity, not
realizing there were like thousands of tribes and you know,
I see that all the time, same thing like different cultures,
et cetera.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. To get back to identitagonism quick,
I think like one of the things that has happened,
and this ties into capitalist realism too, is that a
lot of people on the lest essentially abandoned any possibility
of getting socialist policies passed in any way. And if
you abandon that, what is the sort of point, like,
what what are you going to do next? Then if
you can't have any policies past they are going to
benefit working across people, what can you focus on? You know?
And so what they did begin to focus on was
identity because that was something that they felt that they
could actually make some sort of impact on. You know. Now,
whether or not they've made any sort of like positive
impact is I guess the mays to be seen. Perhaps
some right, but like for the most part, it's just
turned into this circus where you get to sort of
like look at any issue and then apply identitarianism to it,
and you can get so many juicy arguments out of that,
you know, and you can find people to blame, and
you can find people who are the virtuous victims and
so on and so forth. And so people are just
pouring their energy into this and like one of the
one of the quote unquote good things about this for
people who are like involved in that world is that
they feel like they can make an impact for real
because they can, you know, go on the internet, find
somebody who said something bad, and then they can dedicate
you know, weeks to like hounding that person down or whatever,
you know, which is like, you know, they can expend
like energy on it and sort of see a result,
even if the result is insane doesn't actually really help
anything in the long run, it's still a result. Whereas
if you look at, you know, the distribution of income
in the United States, like what are you going to
do about that? Like, right, like, how are you going
to fix that? You can't fix it yourself, you know,
And because of the United States, it's just like and
I mean it's not just the US, but I think
it's like most advanced in the US because there's no
possibility of of sort of yeah, like socialist policies actually
taking any any form because there's no socialist party, there's
no organized socialist movement, at least none were worthy of
the name. That's what people just end up focusing on
the identity stuff, right.
Speaker 1: That's got it so weird. I mean, Roger Pete really
was right when he said it's you know what, I
was like, what causes this, like this the left eating itself?
He's like powerlessness and a telephone or a telephone, pocket telephone,
And I was like, yeah, basically, but you know, it's
it really struck me because I was I had this
really dumb perspective on things. I was like, Oh, if
anyone is as long as they agree with me politically,
we're probably going to get along. And then I watched
my neighborhood, you know, which had been a working class neighborhood,
get taken over by everyone who seemed like they were
you know, they grieved me. On paper, they had the
signs in the windows, all the fucking you know, the BLM,
whatever the fuck, all this shit they put in the windows.
But they were some of the most obnoxious and fucking
just shitty people, you know, just like really mean. They
were always on that app next door complaining about shit
or or like you know, happy to lecture someone on
that next door app. You know, even if it was
like a working class, you know, black person from a
neighborhood lecture them about something they did, you know, that
was like morally condescend to people like this just is
morally condescending. Running everything through this filter you know of
like this social justice shit that's social justice and name
only it was. It was so weird. It was such
a headspin. I was like, what the fuck, man, Like
this is really you know, and it didn't. None of
them were working class, Like I'm over there working in
the fucking railroad, you know, working midnights, breathing and break
dust whatever. And then seeing the people who are like
causing the who are moving into these I wouldn't say
causing it, the investors caused it, but moving into these
expensive new apartments in my neighborhood, and they look all great,
they're driving subarus, you know, they're fucking you know, they
get they get like I said, they got the signs
in the windows, which that and that alone got an
obnoxious like you know, majority Anglo people trying to like
virtue signal and perform and prove what an ally there,
Like there's few things that are more nauseating than that,
like the self flagellating. Like oh my god, it was
twenty twenty, so George Floyd uh had just happened, and
this was like this was on blast, like they were
this was people were going hard with this and it
was so just like oh god, fuck.
Speaker 2: God dude, yeah, I remember, you know, And it's like
when when twenty was going down, like I was just
like he all you people like just learned about racism
or what just what.
Speaker 1: I feel like, I'm like, fuck, I've read fucking people's
history of the United States when I was like fourteen,
Like you just learned that, like world is like the
systems fucked? Like what is why do you why you
have such a need to perform? You know, settle down?
Speaker 2: It's okay, yeah yeah, and and I mean again, it
like comes down to like what the fuck are you
going to do about it? You know, and like the
Democrats are not going to do anything about it. They're
fucking not like what like you know, they were in
power for the last four years, What the fuck did
they do? But I think they just like shoveled more
billions of dollars to the cops and like beefed up
border security and like I did like the fucking right
wing party that they are.
Speaker 1: The same lobbyists are going to both parties, man, the
same fucking companies are the interact. You're you're working for
the companies, they're working for the people. You're working for
the fucking companies. You know, it's it's an oligarchy. It's
straight up and it's you know, so, so what do
people do? They talk shit online and they just perpetually
condescend to people talk to them like they're a fucking
idiot or like they're morally Like, oh my god, you're
like a literal garbage person. That was the fucking thing
I used to see all the time, Like reading the
comments section on some of these posts is fucking noth
And then you know, again running everything through this constant filter,
Like I saw a post where someone was attacking free
to Callo and saying that she like ripped off Indigenous
people and wasn't real fucking I was like, Jesus Christ,
it gives a fuck, Like it's it's one hundred years
after the fact. Let it go, Like there's don't you
have real shit to focus on?
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, yeah, no totally. And I mean it
doesn't it doesn't accomplish anything material, like it never does.
I mean, Okay, so this is like an interesting thing.
Like I guess there's like a little bit of a pivot.
But I'm thinking again about like how the Republicans in
the US have managed to win over so many people.
And I mean I think that there is this like widespread,
sort of nauseated hatred of the elite, right, Like this
is like a lot of people hate the elite, whatever
they think the elite is. And one of the things
that the Republicans have done really really well is that
even though they are very very obviously the elite, they
just talk about the elite all the time. And the Conservatives,
the Conservatives in Canada are doing the same thing, and
they're just sort of like these fucking crazy bad guys
are trying to fuck you over, and they're they're terrible,
and we're gonna we're gonna tear them down. You know,
We're gonna go in and we're gonna just destroy like
all of their their giant edifice of corruption, and people
are like, yes, sounds fucking good, sign me up, you know,
and like, particularly if you're not sort of sophisticated enough
to realize that these cycles are as you eat. I mean,
but it sounds fucking good, popular, right.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's what they fucking do. And they play into
the anger, you know, and I think of like, oh,
that fucking Hillary Clinton quote that she had in twenty sixteen,
I almost want to I like, I simultaneously shap my
pants and threw up in my mouth at the same time.
It was when they go low, we go hi? What
No fucking go low? Kick them in the nuts. These
these are devious, fucking villains, Like what you go go high?
Shut up? Like, how's that gonna work out for you?
It was so I mean again, I can't believe like
they ran her too, Like she was so universally hated.
You know, I've been hanging out with occasionally, and I
would rednecks that had been hating her for the last
twenty years. You know. When I got sent to a
fucking military school in Wisconsin, you know, in lieu of jail,
Like there were kids there who's like, who were wearing
like anti Clinton shit, like they fucking you know, there's
like mid nineties, like their dads were had already indoctrinated,
and then with like anti Hillary Clinton shit, not just
Bill but Hillary too, like they've hated her for so long,
like it was you know. Yeah, the Republicans are amazing
at their businessmen, They're amazing at pr and bullshit, you know, yeah.
Speaker 2: For sure, and they realize that everybody hates the fucking people.
I mean, it's the established political class that has just
been destroying the country for forever. And yeah, they're obnoxious
and they're condescending and nobody who likes them, so it's
a really easy way to sort of like to get
people on your team.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean I don't know. I think that
like what's really really needed desperately is another party somehow,
some way for you guys for sure in the US.
And like I don't have any expertise on like how
this could be done, you know, but I'm like, nothing
at all can happen until this exists. There needs to
be a third party that has a reliable chance of
influencing power, right And basically I'm like all the different
tiny lefty groups and like the Green Party and like
the Parties for Socialist Liberation or whatever it's called, and like,
you know, all these lookers they need to like abandon
whatever the fuck they've been doing and join together and
start building up a platform that is palatable to regular people.
And they also have to be doing the populist thing.
I think that it's like politically advantageous, but they would
have the benefit of not being the establishment psychos the
way that the Republicans are the establishment psychos, you know,
And like you need somebody who's willing to get up
there and be like, all of these fucking people are criminals, traders,
they hate you, they fear you, and we're going to
tear down there. We're going to tear down their their
real edifice of corruption and it includes the Republicans here,
you know. So you need a kind of like lestling
populism that is capable and willing of standing up and
being like these people are fucking disgusting. They're disgusting. I'm
not even going to debate them. They're so disgusting, you
know what I mean, Like just like really like nail
it home, like over and over and over again that
these people are cycles and corrects.
Speaker 1: And statistics and shit, you know, and yeah, who's taking
money from what company? Et cetera.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, absolutely right. And I think that you need,
like I don't know, I think you need green policies
that I wrote an article about this, but you need
green policies that are like really good for poor people
and just absolutely infuriate rich people, because I think that
a lot of people's problem with green policies on the
right is that they note correctly that these won't impact
rich people. Right, They're like, oh, so you want me
to like have my fucking paper straw, but like Justin
Trudeau is going to fly around the world in this
protect year, like spending millions of dollars and blah blah blah. Right,
and they're like, just fucking bullshit, And they're right, you know,
they're completely corrected as bullshit. But what you need is,
like I don't know, I think it'd be hilarious to
just have a party that's been like that. It's just
like we're gonna ban privateize just like you know what
I mean, I can't.
Speaker 1: Even imagine what like, I can't imagine what a third
party here would look like, Like I don't think any
American can like, how would you you know it's and
then how would how would that be gamed by the
companies to just take away votes from whatever, you know,
person they were worried about would win. I mean, no
one's going to regulate the companies to any significant amount,
you know, either party. I think I will say, on
an unrelated note to this, we can get back to
this if you want that. This is something I've always
liked about what you and Clementine are pushing. And I
don't know if this just comes from you know, working
in recovery or whatever, but is being willing to work
with people, not just write someone off because they vote
Trump or because they vote for you know, whatever the fuck,
and and kind of talk to him and work with them.
I mean, that was something I got a friend, Uh,
he just retired from the railroad as an engineer. He
was a you know, a labor organizer. He worked on
the South side of Chicago for a few decades. Lives
in the Vada now, and he used to always tell me,
He's like, yeah, man, I'd go in we'd go into
like these these white working class neighborhoods where they were
extremely racist and he would, and he would just work.
You'd work with him. He'd ignore the shit they said
and talk about you know, working working for this company
that hates you and we gotta we got to protect
our rights against the carrier, et cetera. And then slowly,
you know, he wouldn't write, you wouldn't like morally reprimand
them or anything. He would kind of maybe say something
here and there and just ignore or whatever, and then
slowly start putting in bits of anti racist shit like
working on them, you know. And and he he had success,
you know, that's what. But like these I feel like
people today are just so fucking intolerant of you know,
like you're not gonna get you're not gonna get tainted
by talking to someone who disagrees with you politically, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And and like it's very difficult to make someone
stopping a racist, right, Like it's it's a it's a
fucking complicated process. And even if you succeed in in
changing their views, they're probably going to still hold some
bigative views like somewhere in their mind. Right. But I
know for fucking sure that like lecturing people and then
like sort of like cutting them out completely, Like to
fucking do anything at all, right, And yeah, I mean
it's for sure the twelve step stuff that's like insluenced
me in this also the fact that I worked in
homeless shelters for like five years. And I mean you
would be shocked or maybe not at all at like
how offensive people can be when they're like crazy and
trying to deal with a lot of a lot of
shit and they have like no you know, no political
shiscation whatsoever, because you know, they might not know how
to read or whatever it is. And like you know,
people would say like insanely offensive ship like all the time.
But I mean I'm not gonna like kick them out
of the right, you know.
Speaker 1: Actually I need to take you aside and lecture you actually,
you know. And by the way, my venmo, you can
venmo me for the emotional labor that I've spent. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean you need to keep it like
safe for everybody, So you have to talk with people
and just be like, you know, this kind of like
language isn't isn't a lot in the shelter whatever was
to just cool it. But you know, I'm not gonna
be like this guy, yeah, like a homophobe and therefore
he can't come in.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like a lot of people are fucking homophobic and
it sucks, and I think it's fucking stupid. But like
the best way for sure to get people to abandon
their most like intense bigoted views is to get them
in in spaces and organizations where they're hanging out with
people about who may have those bigoted views. Right. Like,
one of the best things for anti racism, I believe
is getting people in unions, getting people in unions with
people of other races, and you know, they have like
a clear common material goal absolutely that they're working towards together.
And it really sort of like hammers home the fact
that like people, people can have the same sort of
interest even if they're of different quote unquote races, right,
And that and that their interests are opposed to other
people of their same race who are in a different class.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely. I mean, and you look at where I mean,
where's racism come from. It comes from lack of experience,
probably lack of travel, lack of interaction with other people,
a relatively small world, a small worldview, and and lack
of education. Absolutely lack of education, you know, and so Yeah,
it's it's it's fucking awful. But if you really want
to fight it, you don't do you don't just do
it by by refusing to work with people. Get in there.
You fucking view it as infiltrating. You know, you really
want to change shit, Get in there and infiltrate, you know,
hold your nose for some of the dumb shit, then
start slipping in bits. I mean, that's how you that's
how you change people's mind. That's how you wake people
up out of whatever weird worldview they have.
Speaker 2: For sure, And and and in particular because like most
people who hold racist views aren't like what you might
call politically racists. Like they're not they're not like invested
in this stuff in like a really intense way, the
way that like a neonatsy is right, They just kind
of believe some stupid shit and they haven't thought about
it that much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a lazy minded view. It's a lazy minded worldview.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah exactly. And and you know, whereas neo Nazis
are searching out these people and attempting to convert them,
we're you know, we just like shut them out. Percent
they don't exist percentage they're neo Nazis, which they're not
at whatever, and it just leave them ripe to be
harvested by like the real the real psychos.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, where do you I mean in terms
of populism, because you see this stuff popping up all
over this kind of reactionary, angry, blunt headed, not very intelligent,
just just mad shit popping up everywhere. I mean you
see it popping up and obviously in Brazil, places in Europe.
Where does man, where does this come? Like the stuff
in the UK, Like it was like, you know, some
immigrant from Africa or the child he was actually born
in the UK and quite clearly just had mental issues,
you know, and and wasn't even Muslim. They started attacking Muslims,
like the working these working class whites in the UK
started attacking Muslims and burn like what the fuck? Like,
where where does that come from? Why are they so mad?
Like why are they so willing to just well, we
know why they're mad. Why are they so willing to
just escapegoat it and blame it? It seems like the oldest
trick in the book that you know, the powers that
be have played, you know, to keep them away from
you you make them fight among each other.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, absolutely. Where it comes from is kind
of a complicated question, but I mean my go to
you answer is just that people are in enraged at
their in miseration, like they've been made steadily poorer and
poorer in comparison to the wealthiest people in the society.
And they also recognize that the entire game is rigged
against them because it is and you know, the the
the explanations of this that they're that they're fed don't
making sense to them. Like, you know, if you're some
I don't know, racist like white teenager somewhere in like
northern England, and everything sucks, and it's very clear that
like nothing is set up for you in any material
way because you're sucking poor, and people are going around
being like, oh, well, you know, all of the problems
in society are the results of like white privilege. Right,
You're like, what the fuck are you talking about? Like
I don't have any yeah, and nobody I know has anything,
so like, clearly this narrative is fucking wrong, right, And
it's like, which which narrative are you? It sounds more
palatable to you? Is it that you and your like
group of like broke fucking guys you hang out with,
or the closet of anything wrong in the world, or
that you are the heir of a race of mighty
conquerors who you know took over the entire planet in
a hundred years. And you know what I mean, It's
like which sounds better until like a seventeen year old
like fucking broke kid much better.
Speaker 1: It's just it's so like anti intellect and anti you know,
critically thinking about anything around you. It's but yeah, no,
I mean it's it works. It's just again, it's just
one of those things where it's like the lowest comment denominator,
bottom of the brain stem, no offense to anybody, but
you know, the easiest way out, the sloppiest, laziest minded
way to think about any of this stuff. And you
see the left doing it too, with versions of their
identitarianism shit like this guy that was like it's only
white people that do this. It's like what really, Like,
do you think the fucking alleles that code for melanin
production or lack thereof also code somehow for brutality or something?
You don't think like like what do you where are
you going with this? You know, it's the same the
same shit, and it just ends up playing people. It's
just sports teams. You know. It's like it's fucking it's
so depressed.
Speaker 2: And like the the main reason and why this is
happening both on the left and the right in particular
that it's huge exis on race as the explanatory sactors
for sucking everything is that crisis disappears from the fucking equation.
And so like right wing popularism, like let's think about it, right,
what is right wing populism. It's a bunch of like
rich people in elite who are not saying that there
shouldn't be an elite. They're saying that they're wrong people
in elite. They're saying that there's a faction of the
elite that is, you know, it's the enemy within. Right,
there's a cabal so with like QAnon stuffs, like obviously
they're like satanic pedophiles, with like classic anti semitism. It's
that there's a cabal with Jews whatever. And like there's
also you know, there's like the World Economic Forum and
they're like the multi culturalist like you know, communist bankers
are trying to make it so that you own nothing
and be happy or whatever. Right, But it's all the
version of the same thing where they're like, it's not
that there shouldn't be any elite, is that it's the
wrong people. Right. So that's what right wing populism is.
It's one faction of the elite targeting another faction of
the elite and using populist rhetoric in order to do that. Right,
Because the elite has factions, they're not a united modelist.
I mean, they're united by class interests, but they have
other other interests as well, like political interests, right. And
so Donald Trump is like, really adapt at this, and
it's also you know, it's been popping off all around
the world. But there is a version of populism that
you can imagine that is, you know, less this and
what that would look like is saying that there should
be no elite. You know, there's no purpose for a
class of parasite to own the entire economy and make
all of the political decisions. We don't need that, right,
we don't need any of these people. And that is
something that I think would be palatable to a lot
of people if it was ever fucking set. But it
isn't right, because the left, largely the ones that you
hear anyway, the lot of voices on the sort of
like so called progressive left are much more content to
say that like their version of like the elite that
has to be a RAS or whatever is just like
white people or like men or whatever, rather than the
easily identifiable group of people who have clear interests, material
interests in maintaining their own power and a method of
doing so, which is that they're they old the means
of production right, and so like. Socialism has a bill
in response to all of this shit, but it's just
been more or less completely abandoned and or replaced with
race as the exponentory aside the.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you know well, America first off, is
still living in this Reaganesque dream that it's morning in
America and everybody can have their own private fucking golf
course behind their house. And isn't it the dream to
be rich? I mean, the value system here is fucked.
It is the dominant value system. It's utterly fucked. It's corrupt,
it's you know, it's based on wanting these shiny shit,
this shiny shit that leaves you feeling fucking empty. You know,
you can be, you can live, you can accumulate all
this wealth, turn eighty years old being your deathbed, and
then realize you've got no self insight. You never got
to know yourself, You never learned art, you never fucking
you know, had a wealth of experiences. All your half
your friends were phony and only wanted to be around
you because you're wealthy. You know this. It's this value
system that holds wealth. This mindless, primary, evolutionarily obsolete, hearting
complex that we have as the monkeys that we are,
that holds that up is the prime' that's the prime thing. Again.
It's just like this whole value systems fucked, and that's
what kind of enables this. It's like, there should not
be an elite. You say that to people here and
they're like, oh, well, you don't want people to live
comfortably and be rich, No, motherfuckers, I don't want people
to own yachts. Like I want you to be comfortable
and and have healthcare and you know, live in a
decent sized house and have everything you need. But I
don't think people need to own yachts or you know,
or fucking five hundred thousand acres of property or have
fucking servants. I think that's deranged. That's mental illness. If
you want that and you want more, you're mentally ill.
That's a mental illness. That's like obsolete primate neurology fucking
with you. But America is just not ready for that,
you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I wonder no one ever fucking says
it to them though. Yeah, yeah, because it's disgusting to
be rich. It's shameful to be rich.
Speaker 1: It is to have that much, Yeah, to have what
are you doing, like if you have if you have
that much money, if a responsibility you know, to to
to build schools, to fucking bring people up, that's your responsibility.
If you have that much money, that's an incredible responsibility.
You need to fucking be you know, investing in schools,
bringing What are you doing for your community? Motherfucker? What
you give a couple of months a couple of you know,
million dollars to philanthropic causes, Like that's nothing, do it yourself,
you know, it's it's no one there shouldn't be a.
Speaker 2: Leg It's also just a sign that like the you know,
the economic system is fucking.
Speaker 1: Broken, right exactly exactly, it's possible.
Speaker 2: It shouldn't be possible to accumulate that much wealth, and
in the meantime, we should absolutely be like advocating for
prosperity for everyone.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: And this is like another like annoying thing about certain
segment of the latch where they kind of spetishize poverty
a little bit and and or they like hate America
a lot, right, like a lot of like malice like
this where they're sort of like when you actually did
down to shit, they're sort of like, we actually hate
working class Americans because we hate.
Speaker 1: America or whatever, very very charming.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, And it's like okay, cool, well, good
luck trying to win anyone over with like the idea
that everyone should be poorer. Like I don't think that
everyone should be poorer, I think everyone should be more prosperous,
but like, yeah, it should be absolutely impossible to accumulate,
you know, ten thousand times more money than the person
who works for you.
Speaker 1: Right, It's crazy. It's crazy. Yeah, I mean, I don't.
That's what it is. It's the America still conflates prosperity
with being rich, like not just comfortable or upper middle class,
but with being rich having way more than you need,
having servants, having yachts, having all this fancy shit. That's
Nut's like again, you can live your entire life like
that and feel fucking empty. It's you know, I feel
prosperous right now because of the people in my life,
the experiences I have, the art I make. I'm still
learning this, you know. I'm fucking forty one. I'm still
learning a shit ton about the world around me. I'm
just generally stoked on life. I'm not loaded. You know.
I'm able to make a living doing what I love,
and that's good enough for me. I don't need any more.
I'm fucking fine, man. I don't want any more. I
don't want the responsibility, you know, to have more and
keep wanting it. That is, it's a fucking mental illness.
But I think again, that's an American thing. That's like
the corrupted value system we have. That's the result of indoctrination.
You know. I put this post up today talking about
how how can one person own five hundred thousand acres?
How can one person own a fucking mountain? And a
couple people and you go to the profile, it's always
the fucking same. Assuming it's not about it's like some
dude posing with this car right you go, and the
people comment thing are like, oh I want I want that,
that's baller status. It's like, God, what a fucking knob.
I don't say this, but I'm just thinking, like what
a dummy, what a fucking empty headed? Really that's what
you want? You want to fucking own? Like that's such
a like bottom of the brainstem fucking value system, Like
I want to travel, man, I want to go have
some crazy experiences. I want to almost die. I want
to almost get rid of I want to have like
crazy shit, not hurt anybody, but learn a ton, make
people happy, inspire people around me, make uard all this
shit Like I could write down a fucking list, you know,
And and all you want is to own some shiny shit,
a new fucking car that makes a roombrom sound when
you step on it, and like and a bunch of
shit that you're not gonna be able to use, you
can't take with you when you die, Like oh man,
it drives me nuts. It's just like, come on, man,
there's more than this, Like aim higher, motherfucker, what are
you doing? You know?
Speaker 2: It's yeah, for sure, it's the the ideological apparatus that
has been set up in the West to broadcast the
interest of the ultra rich at the population and convince
them that those are their interests is off the chain, man.
Like they've done an extraordinarily good job of that, you know,
And so it's part of the work of socialists to
try to counteract that. Not easy, definitely not easy. But
we've been failing, really fucked hard. And you know, the
fallow of unionism is a big part of this too.
You know, they fucking destroyed all the unions in the
eighties and nineties, and now no one's in the union, right.
Unions were one of the best ways to make people
understand that their cross position had something to do with
their fucking status in life, right, and that they had
interests in calling with other people of their class. And like,
you know, the unions are really suffering right now.
Speaker 1: It's crazy.
Speaker 2: Well, there is like some movement in that area, which
is kind of cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's it's not I mean, I worked for
you know, the railroad for fifteen years, and when I
first hired out, the first five years, there were still
a lot of old guys left hired out in the seventies,
which was like the heyday of the American working class.
Like there was like you could you could not have
a college degree and get a decent job then own
a house and things were somewhat affordable. There was some
fucking hiccups along the way, of course, in a decade,
but you know, it was still like there was a
viable working class. I mean you could live comfortably without
being ultra wealthy and also not have to worry about stuff,
and your kids would be okay, et cetera. And these
guys would tell me about it, and they'd tell me
about like the company was different than to the railroad company,
like the it just wasn't the The company was kind
of like intimidated to a degree by the employees, you know,
like they was before all the strike breaking. I mean
it was like and so they would behave, they would
be the company would behave much more respectfully than they
do now. And they knew, like, oh, we already know
you can't strike, you can't do anything. We fucking own
you go. You know, you can go take a hike
and find another job if you don't like it. It's
it's nice to see what's been lost and people have
no idea. I mean some people do, but a lot
of people don't. And you know, again, mice voting for cats.
It's fucking crazy, man.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep, I don't know.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my grandmother was a was a railroad union organizer.
Speaker 1: Oh no, shit, did you tell that before? You had
to have I think maybe not. Wow, that's pretty cool.
Where in Montreal.
Speaker 2: No, my mom grew up in like a railroad company
town in northern Ontario, and everybody there works for the
mind of the railroad. And yeah, her mom was a
union organizer.
Speaker 1: Damn, man, that's cool. Yeah, it's it's a I mean,
they're working for the railroad now is kind of a joke.
A bunch of people have quit. They're trying to consistently
trying to raise health insurance costs so the company pays less.
They wanted to get rid of it entirely. It just
be like, you guys, go find your own health insurance
plan and we'll help you, will help you, but you
guys are on your own. We're not paying into it anymore.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, because it used to be this thing
they would just deduct it from your paycheck and the
company would pay half no more, like they just it
the balls they have. They just keep trying to take more.
It's insane, man, like, just more and more more little
bites and people or for it, Like you get these
dudes who are just like, well, I don't mind, I
never use it anyway. It's like you're fucking twenty seven.
Maybe you might need use it in fifteen years, Like
this job works on you. I mean, you're gonna get
diabetes from not moving in fifteen years and sitting in
a locomotive cabal day. What the fuck do you ever
think about that? I mean, yeah, I don't know. I
don't know anyway. It's alarming to me. And that's why
I appreciate you making the time to talk to me
about it, because you're always more lucid and more clear
and more articulate than I could ever be about this
kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: So I don't know, I appreciate that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what do you think? What do you think the
future is here? Like do you think I mean, in
terms of any of this, at least in America. I
know you're viewing it as an outsider, but maybe that
gives you a better lens, Like where do you think
stuff's gonna go, Like, what do you have hope or
what do you think?
Speaker 2: I'm certainly not hopeless. I mean sometimes you look at
it and it's pretty pretty doom and gloom. One thing
that I try to remind myself of is that, like
when things seem like really really stuck, it's often because
there's enormous underlying tension. It's kind of like continental plates
like rubbing against each other, you know, and like we're
not moving, but the reason they're not moving is because
there's all this pressure on them. And then without pressure
gives you get an enormous earthquake or whatever. And we
really get it that way, Like, there is the possibility
for some very great changes to happen in the near future,
near to medium term future. What those are, I think
depends on a great degree on whether or not the
American Last is able to get a shit together, because
if it's not, the change is likely to just be
like a pivot to like full fascism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, that's what I worry about. The oligarchs
are not going to give things up easily. They're not
gonna You're never gonna have healthcare without a fight. You're
never gonna you know, it's not. And you've got so
many people that have been duped and brainwashed in the
working class to vote for like the worst of the
too bad options. It's it's I don't know.
Speaker 2: Man, I wouldn't even say. I don't even like, I
don't know. It's it's interesting because like the Trump camp
is clearly the more it's clearly the one that is
more happy to use kind of like Sashist like rhetoric
and imagery. But interestingly, the Democrats and the sort of
like mainstream political establishment in the US. I mean, you know,
the main the mainstream political establishment in the US are
the ones who you know, assassinated Martin Luther King and
you know, like every single civil rights leader, and they're
they're the ones who are really really intent on holding
on to power by all means necessary. And there's a possibility,
I think that if the Trump camp is too heavy
hand ended with its like attempt to radically reorganize what
the state looks like in the US, there's a possibility
that like the faction of the elite that as opposed
to that could act also in a fascist way, right,
where they like consolidate power and attempt to sort of
like clamp down on on challenges to their own power
right and declare like a state of emergency whatever, like
literally like either side is totally capable of it, which
is another thing that I think a lot of progresses
in the US or just like totally like they don't
want to look at you know, but it's not like
the fucking mainstream political establishment in the US is above
you know, climping down on opposition, right, like even if
the opposition is coming from the right, because like again
you have to remember that like having a fucking like
blood soaked like white nationalist revolution or something is like
not in the interest of like the guys who runt PepsiCo, right,
Like they don't like, they don't.
Speaker 1: Want that right right, Right. There's plenty of business interests
that probably don't want Trump too because they realize he's
a crazy motherfucker and he's too volatile and has no
idea what he's doing economically, and he could really fuck
things up for them, you know.
Speaker 2: So yeah, because he basically makes decisions based on like
vibes and like what he sees on Fox News or whatever.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, yeah, I mean either way, man, it's I
don't know, it's yeah, it's I'm not trying to be
a doom sayer, but I just that's why I look
at plants. I try not to spend too much time
focusing on it. Again, I just I read the comments
from what seemed to be working class people saying all
this this right wing propaganda, you know, and I'm just like,
I'm just fucking thrown off. Man, I'm so confused, you know,
I'm like, what the fuck? Yeah, how do we get here?
You know? But anyway, I.
Speaker 2: Mean again, like my advice to Americans is, like, every
single one of you who care about the shit, you
have to join you're nearest like left the organization and
whatever the fuck it is, and no matter how stupid
it is, and then advocate instantly and consistently for it
to join up with other less learned organizations until you
have something that looks like a coalition party, and then
you need to purge like all the most insane rhetoric.
Stop saying it, Try as much as possible to not
sound insane, like stop race dating. Try as much as
possible to focus on class at all times, because it
is something that even though Americans hate talking about it,
they do understand to a certain degree that they're getting
fucked by the elite right, and you got to find
the right way to talk about it, the right way
to reach them. And you got to say, both the
Democrats and the Republicans are fucking evil and they don't
care about you, and like, here are a number of
proposals that we have there are going to make your
life much much better, you know. And this is like
a medium to long term goal. It would take probably
thirty years to build up like a party that was
capable of really contesting elections. But it is not an
impossible thing. The United States has not always been a
two party system, and people forget that. It's like I've
talked about this on the internet and people are just like, oh, well,
you don't understand America. And I'm like, no, I understand
that it's very entrenched. You have a two party system,
but there's nothing like it's not like in a fucking
constitution or something, you know. And like in the past,
there have been like insurgent parties that have popped up
and fucking you know, influenced power. Right, So it's not
an impossible thing. And and I think that like people
really have to break with the Democrats the Democrats are
not going to say there they never work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems it all seems so hard to break
with that and form a third party. But I mean, yeah,
there there's a huge contingent of the modern American left
that's just insane or at least behaving extremely irrationally, you know,
and thinks that, you know, the strategies that they're keeping
keeping up with is actually going to change things. And
it doesn't. Like all you build, all you end up
building is a political culture built on shame and fear
of social ostracization. And you know, it's just it sucks.
It sucks for everybody, and those people aren't even really
they may really have your back. Everyone's just afraid of
getting canceled or shit talked or were not agreeing with
the the towing the line one hundred and everything. It's
nuts again. Just yeah, focus focus on class man, and
the rest will fall into place. I feel like that's
just the number one thing. And yeah, and of course
have a good a good lens on ecology and the
living biosphere around you, which I feel like any anybody,
everybody should have. So anyway, man, well thanks thanks a
lot for doing this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, man, I always amazingly to talk to you,
and I hope the rest of your day it was
really good, okay, all
Speaker 1: Right man, Thanks a lot, take care bye,