Liberal vs Libertarian: WTF Happened to America?

Self-proclaimed "Libertarian Lite" Mookie Spitz and his liberal friend HP return to the political podcast battlefield for a volatile, funny, surprisingly philosophical follow-up to their earlier “End of American Exceptionalism” debate — this time with the second Trump administration fully underway and the consequences no longer theoretical.

HP argues that America is facing a moral crisis disguised as a political one. He lays out the case that Trump’s rise exposed something deeper and uglier inside the electorate itself: the collapse of trust in institutions, science, journalism, and even basic democratic norms. From ICE raids and tariffs to billionaire loyalty pledges and the unraveling of “liberal democracy,” HP warns that America is drifting toward a culture driven more by grievance, spectacle, and strongman politics than by principles.

Mookie pushes back. While openly acknowledging Trump’s vulgarity, narcissism, and destabilizing behavior, he argues that many liberals fundamentally misunderstand Trump by dismissing him as merely crazy or incompetent. Instead, Mookie frames Trump as a deliberate strategist channeling a much older version of America — one rooted in McKinley-era nationalism, hard power, economic coercion, border control, and raw geopolitical leverage. 

The debate turns into a fascinating collision between morality and pragmatism: Is Trump simply wrecking the system, or exposing what the system always was underneath the surface?

Along the way, they clash over:

• whether Trump’s supporters are victims of manipulation or rational actors pursuing their own value system
• whether “American exceptionalism” was ever real to begin with
• the morality and strategic logic behind Trump’s foreign policy
• Venezuela, Iran, oil politics, tariffs, and the limits of American power
• whether the backlash against DOGE, ICE, and executive overreach proves democracy is still functioning
• the danger of social media turning politics into wrestling-style entertainment
• why both the left and right increasingly view each other as existential threats
• whether America is heading toward renewal… or simply another pendulum swing into a different kind of extremism

The conversation spirals outward into AI, consciousness, religion, evolution, Star Trek, quantum reality, and whether humanity itself is mature enough to survive the technologies it’s creating. What begins as a debate about Trump evolves into something bigger: a discussion about power, tribalism, morality, civilization, and whether modern society has outgrown the instincts that built it.

It’s combative, humorous, occasionally unhinged, and loaded with the kind of ideological crossfire that only happens when two smart people fundamentally disagree — but still genuinely enjoy the argument. 

The Guest

HP is a self-proclaimed "moderate liberal" and chooses to remain anonymous so he doesn't ruin his professional career -- unlike Mookie, who just throws it out there everyday on these podcasts, go figure. 

Their Revisited Blog Post

https://medium.com/@mookiemultiverse/the-end-of-american-exceptionalism-415ae8e1b333

Their Prior Podcast

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2455331/episodes/16684646

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome back to Bald and Bloviating. I'm still Bald and I'm still bloviating and I'm still Mookie Spitz, your host for BSing and Carousing and Sharing Ideas. And I can't wait to share more ideas with my partner in political crime, Mr. HP. Welcome back to the podcast, HP.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

Thank you, Spitz. It's good to be here. And yeah, sorry that I I kind of feel a need to keep uh keep uh uh a gnome deplume or whatever because uh I work in I work in healthcare and it's a sensitive area, and so what we're about to talk about might cross into some cross some boundaries, but it'll be fun to dig into it.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

I totally empathize, although I work in healthcare too, and uh I've blown my reputation, I think, quite some time ago. So I'm just I'm just going for it. People just say, hey, that's just mooky, and I'm like, okay, thank you. I'll take my carte blanche and bloviate away. Our focus on said bloviation is taking a look at American exceptionalism. We we did that a couple of years ago, and I'll pass the baton to you to provide more context, but we're in a magic moment for this conversation. We are a good, what is it now, 18 months into the second Trump administration. There have been monumental milestones, oscillations, fluctuations, and having this conversation with you to give it a little bit of perspective is just what the doctor orders this Friday afternoon. So set it up for us, HP.

SPEAKER_02 1:57

Cool, yeah. So uh so when Trump won back in November of 2024, you and I wrote a piece in uh medium, I believe it was, called End of American Exceptionalism, which was basically a debate between the two of us. We both opposed Trump, but we disagreed about why and basically and who to point fingers at, right? And my argument was that some things just have to be deal breakers, that Trump wasn't a mystery. He said all the quiet parts out loud. He told us exactly who he was: a bigot, a racist, a sexual abuser, a criminal, and a wannabe uh dictator. He even said out loud that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. And I said that that really should be a deal breaker. That should be a functioning moral compass that should have been disqualifying for anyone who had one, right? And I, you know, we went back and forth, but uh I'll call up one thing that I want to come back to today, which was I used that that analogy from the C.S. Lewis series, the Narnia series, right? Uh, where many of the citizens had been tricked by this orange orangutan, which is of even now just like you can't make that up, right? And they were tricked by this orangutan who dressed up like Aslan, the magical line in the series, so that later in the story, after all kinds of other stuff has happened and the orangutan has started to kind of blow it in his impersonation, and there people are starting to get the notion that it's fake. When the real Aslan shows up, many of the citizens are no longer able or willing to recognize him anymore. And I said that that's where a big chunk of Americans are right now. They're unable to distinguish real heroes from fake heroes or legitimate news from fake news, facts from fiction, good science from bogus science, and most importantly, I think still is uh detecting like or uh feeling the difference between right and wrong. And you came back to me on that that, hey, you know, you're kind of blaming the electorate. You're blaming you're blaming the the voters, right? And um and and really it was a Democrats' fault. It was a messaging problem. They they completely blew it, they they failed Americans working class. Voters were fed up with them and with the Democrats. And and and you kind of said, I think, a phrase like, we got to just let the Trump out at that point. Uh, and trust the electorate to course correct down the road. So, in the end of that article, we agreed that American exceptionalism, uh, the idea that this country stands for values that are worth defending, was in trouble. But, you know, let's see. Well, so here we are, uh a year and a half into Trump's second term. And I thought we could uh dive back into that discussion. And I'd like to make the case that the that the what we're seeing right now, what we're witnessing, is not just a political crisis, but it's a moral crisis. And that the only path forward for us is to return to some fundamental principles of liberal democracy that this country was built on. Um I yeah, I think that principles matter, especially when we're in such a flux of understanding what's true or not. So I can bang through some of the you know reasons why I think that's still important, but before I do any of that, I'd be curious what uh what your take is so far. I mean, do you should we dig into this?

SPEAKER_00 5:40

Yes, we shall. Kudos to you for such an exquisite summary. I think you nailed all the key points, including some of my counterpoint. And I would also add there's a veneer of pragmatism, if you will, almost utilitarianism, to my point of view, which is Trump might come across, does categorically come across as morally reprehensible to the point of demanding a reset to your great points. But at the same time, I was stressing then, and I will reiterate it now, that we do need to take a more pragmatic view of his policies, of his messaging. And we should not assume that he is just a racist or just crazy, that there's more to Trump than many on the left feel there is, and we could talk a little bit about that too, which is what is the true depth of Donald J. Trump's depravity, and to what extent is his flailing with tariffs and foreign policy and kidnapping world leaders and triggering a war? To what extent is that a consequence of his mania and ADHD? And to what extent is it focused, calibrated strategy, albeit arguably not as effective as he might envision?

SPEAKER_02 7:20

Interesting. Yeah, the kind of the madman strategy that keeps everyone on their on their heels. And yeah, so we'll we'll I'll definitely be curious to hear what you have to say about that. I'll bang through a couple things, uh, thinking back on that article, which I I think is still actually, I read it the other day and I thought it's still kind of an interesting uh take. But okay, so one of the things I argued uh argued in that piece was about you know moral compass, right? And I think that part has been kind of vindicated. I mean, we've the moral compass argument has has been playing out in horrible living color. ICE agents have literally shot people, innocent people in the streets, but 90% of Republicans still support Trump. The idea that I had presented that that some things should just be deal breakers, uh not not true yet. I mean, yes, he's lost a lot of independence and and some Republicans, but the loyalists are hanging on like uh crazy, and he still has control of the party, he still has control of all the branches of government. So the moral compass thing that I thought should, you know, that should be a deal breaker, not a deal breaker yet. Okay, so that's a thing. Second, that whole ASLAN analogy, I'd say it wasn't a fantasy, it's it was a prophecy. I mean, Americans have now allowed themselves to be taken in by a complete charlatan, an orange, uh, an orange uh, you know, kind of monster, a criminal, an autocrat. And and when you look around, many Americans no longer believe in science. I work in healthcare. We've got huge doubts about vaccines, about um, yeah, just scientific institutions, schools of higher learning. Um, there's distrust in uh there's there's no sense of what is legitimate news versus fake news or social media. And I'd say basic moral values are kind of in question too. So we're kind of awash in a morally uh moral quagmire right now. And and I I personally believe that until we align again on the principles of liberal democracy and come together as a people, around that, we're we're just gonna, it's just gonna be a lot of trouble. Um the other thing I I would just note is that while I I brought the I you know I I made that analogy of the whole Aslan thing and the trickery of the orangutan, Trump didn't really actually have to trick anyone very much. He just kind of played into the myths that were already baked into our culture. Alpha male, might makes right, boys will be boys, immigrants are freeloaders, and all the other, all the rest of the rising tide of grievances against the libs, the pronouns, the all of that. So he was kind of able to just barge through the door that was already open. He didn't really have to trick anyone. People willingly voted for the guy. Um, I guess there was uh whatever percent millions of Americans didn't vote at all, so that's there's another problem, you know, with just um moral kind of like apathy or institutional apathy, or feeling like none of this stuff even matters to me. So that's also I think kind of uh one of the key points. And then the the other one, and I'll kick it back to you to to hear your take, is the thing that just is stunning to me, uh worse than I even imagined it could be is the moral ambiguity of the of the uh of the business community, Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Cook, the top law firms, these people who have every resource, platform, and agency to push back against obvious injustice, who who instead completely prostrated themselves to give Trump money in his Bitcoin account, gold-plated toys. Didn't Cook give him a gold-plated iPhone in exchange for tax cuts in government contracts? I mean, my God, that is just a total betrayal of civic responsibility. These guys, uh, I think these guys are basically criminals to do that. And then last but not least, the Republican Party that has completely sold their souls to Trump. Uh, they don't know how to get it back. I mean, you see a tiny bit of like, you know, Rand Paul's not crazy about the war. Some couple of the libertarians are not too crazy. Gorsuch, uh, yeah, and you're kind of a libertarian, right, right, Spitz. Um, Gorsik made a very strong and compelling case against the tariff thing and and blew, you know, that won't. But but those are just kind of few and far between. The uh the big picture is the people that should have held the line, the business people, the legal people that have the power, that have the money, haven't done a damn thing to stop Trump and to stop uh uh stop him from turning our Justice Department into his personal police um force, somewhat ineffectively or largely ineffectively so far, but we'll see how um the next round goes. Uh but I'll I'll curious what your take is on all that part.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

Aside from the business focus that you had with all of those billionaires and soon-to-be trillionaires showing up at the inauguration, paying homage to the king, kissing, kissing the ring of the mafioso. Aside from that focus, how are any of the other criteria that you bring up or or experiences of the Donald any different really than the precedent that was set going into this election? So the reason I ask is for us to do this before and after. We published our piece right when Trump won, Trump 2.0, he would say it's 3.0 and his minions. But what's really different, let's say, about the Republican Party, they've been sycophantic from the second they smelled the tide turning toward Trump in terms of his popularity. They flipped for a microsecond after January 6th, because even for them that was over the top. But when they realized that the core GOP constituency was still raging MAGA, they just flipped right back because they misread the tea leaves. So the Republican Party, I don't think they've changed really very much at all.

SPEAKER_02 14:33

Well, they've given up their they've given up their conservative principles that supposedly they had, like small government. Um small government not interfering in people's personal lives. ICE agents crashing into your into uh innocent people's homes, taking people away in the in the middle of the night, shooting people. I mean, they're breaking core Republican foundational principles, and the Republican Party is like, okay, go for it, keep it going, no problem. Um, obviously there are critics there and there are some grumbling, but the party itself is not holding the line on how about the never war thing. I thought the Republican, though I thought we were in an America First uh wave that um Marjorie Taylor Green and many others were espousing, and Rand Paul and others were espousing, and now not a peep.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

You are you are conflating MAGA with with the rhino, the Republican name only old GOP. So my point is that Trump won over the GOP his first term, and he won went over the GOP to the extent that an actual riot at the Capitol, resulting in death, destruction, the vandalism of our cherished landmark, didn't turn the Republican Party. Two impeachments didn't turn the Republican Party, and all of the gripes and grievances vociferously shared by the left throughout the first Trump administration didn't do anything. In fact, it further fanned the flames of the Magaminions and further reinforced the sycophancy of the Republicans, even the old school Republicans to play ball.

SPEAKER_02 16:36

Well, that's because they like they like to win.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

Only those Republicans who were going to retire, and that is true to this day, except for Mr. Rand Paul, who is raising the libertarian flag. Woo-hoo. Yeah. Yeah. He, by the way, is also a physician, right? I don't see much difference in the Republicans at all. It it's a matter of degree in terms of the violative nature of Trump's behavior, but the core is still the same, which is sycophants, which is is adhering to the desire of the base, that Trump is a demagog, nothing that Trump can do is wrong, and that he's a genius, and we should just trust him. My response to you is I get it, it's not like I'm disagreeing with your points. I'm merely illustrating not much has really changed, I don't think. It's a matter of degree, not attitude or policy or practice. In business, it's follow the money for the Republicans, it's follow the voters. We exist because we won. We won, therefore, we not only exist, but we need to do Trump's bidding. So I don't I don't see the the Republican landscape changing all that much at all. And thanks to their victory of both the House and the Senate, and the Supreme Court. And I was just gonna say, SCOTUS, they rule the roost. And why wouldn't they use their power? Yeah, it's just what are they gonna use it for? Well, they use it for maximizing more power. Come on, HP, HP, your naivete is uh is astounding here. Now I'm being facetious, and I understand that you're looking at it through the lens of of old school liberalism, which is uh when we define truth justice in the American way, not necessarily in how the Superman people did in the 50s, we are talking about liberté, equalité, fraternite. We're talking about the values that go back ostensibly to how this nation was founded, yeah, which can also be debated to a certain extent. But I I hear you. I'm I'm not pushing back at all when you're making these allegations of these extreme, air quote, un-American behaviors. But what I am saying, though, that there's a core of pragmatism to the right and the GOP, and then I affix to that a more pragmatic strategy, which I believe has intent. The GOP hasn't changed, Trump hasn't changed, and that core voter, for the most part, hasn't changed. Where what you're saying is having a demonstrable impact is on many of the minority voters who flipped to make Trump's election possible. They're smelling the coffee when it comes to their own pocketbook, gas prices, food prices, inflation, as bad, if not worse, than under Zombie Joe. So they are like, hey, wait a second. We we loved you in the McDonald's drive-thru in the garbage truck, and I saw you on TV with The Apprentice, and uh, you're the business guy, right? And and if I remember, before we had this Joe Biden guy, I was doing better. And now you're telling me I'm gonna do great. So I'm gonna vote for you. Well, how has that worked out? Not particularly well. Is that a moral evaluation? Is that a judgment about American liberalism? No, it's a pragmatic assessment based on everyday living.

SPEAKER_02 20:27

Yeah, I mean, I I agree with you though, and I think it but I think it ties into my POV about it, which is we're gonna keep getting whipsawed between one kind of uh nightmarish experience after another if we don't get back to any of these basic principles. And if we, you know, the the electorate decided to vote for a pro wrestler, uh, a guy whose entire career was rescued for uh from bankruptcy by being able to say, you're fired, in a fake part of his uh Trump Tower that had been redesigned by the producer of that show. And when they walked into the original or the prior version, it was this ratty old carpeted Trump tower, and Trump was on his way to bankruptcy. His career got rescued by a fantasy of a guy who could sit behind a desk and say, you're fired. And people loved that. Uh the, you know, uh fake news and uh, you know, uh made-up TV show kind of things, and and yeah, core principles. Otherwise, I just feel like this country is going to, I mean, we're we're headed for a five car pile up at right now. And I don't know what's gonna write the ship, but but Trump is driving us off a cliff. We'll see how he can maneuver the whole uh Iran nightmare, which by the way, is proving that Biden's pact with Iran that Trump unwound was was perfectly fine and should have been left alone, because we're now going to wind up with a worse deal, if at all, than the one we had, including probably a global recession and a bunch of other negative things that will come out of that. And for what? Because he wanted to do something and because uh Hegseth said we can get it, you know, a BB whispered to him and said, if you don't go in, if you don't go in, I'm going in, and I want you to go in so that you can be the hero. And Trump bought that. Uh so he went in and it's turned into a disaster, and he wishes he had never in his secret midnight self or two in the morning self when he's not posting on uh Truth Social, he's probably sitting there going, God damn it, why the fuck did I get into Iran? Because this is a mess. But he can never admit that.

SPEAKER_00 23:05

I disagree, and I'll elaborate on why. I think Trump went in with intention. I don't think that BB Netanyahu and the Israelis coaxed Trump into joining them. I think Trump used the opportunity of the circumstance to do what he's always wanted to do, which is control and or influence Middle Eastern oil the same way that he currently controls and influences Western Hemisphere's oil with the kidnapping of Maduro. You're making various assumptions about Trump's internal state and strategy, many of which I do not agree with. We are now leaving the realm of ethics and morality, and we're entering that of pragmatic policy, foreign wars, energy. I just want to delineate that because it gets conflated on the left all the time. You look at this orange pasty orangutan who's been uh at least convicted in civil court of sexual abuse. You look at his history as a TV buffoon, and all sorts of conclusions are made about his competence as a president. And I think again that these things are getting conflated, and I think that it's a highly emotional perspective that is sometimes a little bit self-delusional because this idea of Trump derangement syndrome, whereas I get hit with it on TikTok probably 10 times a day when I ever even hint at anything that smacks anti-MAGA, I throw it back and I allege that they have Trump devotional syndrome because it's a cult.

SPEAKER_01 25:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:05

So I think emotions are getting at the core of the swirl. So I do want to delineate this a little bit. For example, when you when you say that he's the apprentice stooge and we took a T a hack TV show host and made him president, just a reminder, Vladimir Zal Zelensky had very much a similar role on Ukrainian TV. He actually played the Prime Minister of Ukraine in a Ukrainian comedy show. Sure. Yeah, no, I knew he was I knew he was a former actor. Just for the sake of this debate, if we could not conflate some of these to get to the heart of two things I think we're trying to grapple with here. One, are Trump's obviously morally reprehensible behaviors and actions undercutting the fabric of American society and our place in the world, yes or no. And the other one is which you segue to, are Trump's actual policies and decisions domestically and in terms of foreign policy better for America or worse? Does that does that make sense? And then I think you're trying to bring these together, which is if you're morally reprehensible and you're you're destroying the American exceptional idea of humanism and globalism and all this kind of stuff, then you're de facto gonna mess it up when you start useless wars and kidnap foreign leaders.

SPEAKER_02 26:42

So I think there are there is a connection between between one's moral and principle fabric and how things end up, uh, what the results over time are. And I would argue that when you look at Trump's whole history, it's not great. I mean, he was born, he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, the son of a billionaire. He went bankrupt six times, his whole business was on life support. Um and he, you know, he managed to like, I guess maybe the analogy is like, you know, uh, like I used to do at my great-grandmother's place, uh, you know, out on the water, jump from one rock to another to avoid falling into the water. You keep skipping, you keep jumping, and if you keep, if you can keep going, you avoid like slipping into the water. So he's skipped along and he is he is nimble and he somehow manages to keep avoiding the complete disaster that is waiting for him. But I really fear that he is leading us into a worse and worse situation. And he hasn't really in either term, I guess you could argue that he's definitely he definitely secured the border the second time, didn't build a wall the first time, I think he built five five miles of one or something. But he definitely secured the border this time, and then look at what he did on top of that, and gone uh gone and killed a bunch of people ill, you know, through the whole ice debacle that has uh that has so that's an example. Like he set out to do something, he kind of did accomplish it, and it's turned into kind of a a nightmare. I mean, for mo even even for everyone except for the most ardent MAGA fans, they don't look at those ice raids with a good uh feeling anymore. So uh so there's a disaster. The Epstein files, his moral, his moral depravity that's underneath all of that, and he's in the middle of it all, as we know, is an explanation for why that has gone into become a complete and you know, total fucking mess for him and for everyone else, including some of his biggest fans who are no longer fans, like Marjorie Taylor Green and many others. So there's a thing. I mean, if you just go through the list, the the the tariff business and the international uh, you know, there was like a moment there. He he pulled off an amazing um murder of Maduro, and I guess got high on that experience and thought he could just keep doing it. Well, that's not working out. And I don't think the Iran thing is going well for him at all. So I guess I guess what I would tie it back to my original premise of all this. If you're not grounded in any kind of basic principles of what is right and wrong, what are we, what are we actually doing, what is what is the constitution of the United States and what's my role in it? If you're just like this crazy uh you know pro-wrestling, uh you know, uh the apprentice star who doesn't understand a thing about government and you're turned loose in the White House, it's not gonna go well. And it's not going well. And I predict, uh I what's that uh I forget that show. What's the quote? Um prediction. Who was it who said that?

SPEAKER_00 30:21

Or the X-Files fear the future.

SPEAKER_02 30:24

And the guy from the A-Team said that, right? Prediction.

SPEAKER_00 30:28

Remember when Hannibal, the leader, would pop the cigar into his mouth and with tremendous satisfaction with the smoke still simmering behind him. I love it when a plan comes together.

SPEAKER_02 30:43

So I just think that that um uh buckle your seatbelt because this is this is a bumpy ride, and I'm afraid it's gonna just keep getting worse. I mean, the rule of law is broken, the separation of powers is broken. The idea of having an informed citizenry is basically broken. We we don't have legitimate news anymore. People are getting it from social media. Uh, our institutions have been under attack. My beloved client at the NIH and the entire team that I have done work for was frog marched out the door. Um, our our investment in research and science is being cut away. And I just don't see good things coming of that. I mean, my I just really feel like we're gonna be fortunate if we can get to the other side of this administration without major uh major problems. Global recession, war, third world war is very, very possible. We're like this close to a Tinder uh box going off, China getting involved, and the dominoes start to fall, they invade Taiwan. I mean, there's so many things that could could kick off a problem. Um, so tell me, tell me, I'm not right about that.

SPEAKER_00 32:07

I am going to wear my libertarian hat on my bald head because I think that'll make this this conversation even more fun. I'm gonna dial up my opinion just a couple notches.

SPEAKER_01 32:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 32:19

So we could we could laser focus on each of your points and and and go mono on mono that way. First off, I feel like passing you a Xanax through the Riverside app to calm calm your liberal ass down a little bit. Uh, you use all of these hyperbolic phrases. The system is broken, we're on the brink of World War III, and I sense your your cognitive hyperventilation with all things Trump. To bring it back a little bit, and if we look at each of the points you made through the lens not of emotion, but whether they're effective or not, and put it within the perspective of government not necessarily being our friend, then it might paint a slightly different picture. Now, I'm in no way a mega maniac, I get abused every day on TikTok and all the social medias. I can base that on evidence. So I'm not making friends in Trump's world. But again, for the sake of this conversation, I will dial up some of my Trumpista support. And it's not even so much support, but it's looking at his behaviors through the lens of actually being beneficial for this country. Maybe not short term, but medium and longer term. Let's start with the border. You were you you you mentioned the border in about two seconds, almost with the wave of your hand that, oh, you know, the border's secure. No small feat, but look at ice. Okay. So securing the border is extremely significant. Some would say foundational. You can't really have a country if you don't have a border that's secure. And the benefits engendered from having this secure border are also incredibly significant. Beyond no small feat, I think Trump's ability to secure that border, both psychologically and pragmatically, benefits us in many ways that are often downplayed and dismissed by the left because you don't want to give your enemy any kind of juice. The ice raids created an incredible backlash. The people have spoken, HP. And the people have spoken not only about the abuses of ICE, the violation of civil liberty, men in masks on our streets, the rolling in of the National Guard, Possi Comatanis. What happened? What is happening to this country? The system, I will allege, is not broken. The system is unbelievably robust and healthy. Taco. He chickened out, didn't he? He pulled back. He got rid of Bovino. He got rid of the Stooges running that situation, and he had to recalibrate. He took heat. Democracy worked. I think to a large extent. Doge. Remember Doge, Musk with the chainsaw.

SPEAKER_02 35:42

Well, the Doge caused an unbelievable damage before they finally pulled the plug on that.

SPEAKER_00 35:49

My point, though, is for every action, there's a reaction. And I think you can claim that the foundational pillars of our society and democracy and the way this country was founded are crumbling. They're broken. But I look at them as incredibly healthy and pushing back and having an impact. The flooding the zone of the beginning of Trump's administration has been tempered. To your point, um, Gorsuch punched the tariffs in the face and Trump along with it. And I was the one ranting on TikTok, predicting that that's exactly what would happen. That even the conservative Trump-appointed court would throw back and throw down on that nonsense.

SPEAKER_02 36:34

Yeah, no, that was that was predictable. That was predictable.

SPEAKER_00 36:38

Not everything that this orange Asalon orangutan does is terrible. When he does go beyond even his own excesses, we are in a society that still has checks and balances, not only legally, but in our society. Yeah. We push back.

SPEAKER_02 36:59

I agree with you that that I don't my main point is not just purely about results. It's not just, I'm not trying to argue that every single thing Trump has done is a failure. Although I do think that ultimately he will be a failure, because my argument is that if you don't have a strong value-based approach to things, uh a basis in our history and understanding what the foundation of this country is supposed to be about, you can't, you're not operating, you know, you're not really using the operating system of the country the right way. You're you're distorting it for something else, and that's inevitably not going to work right. He doesn't get it. Uh, and his whole administration doesn't get it.

SPEAKER_00 37:48

You're saying he doesn't get it. I hear this all the time, especially from the left. Trump is, and here's the usual slurry and slough of adjective. He's crazy, he's racist, he's a fascist, he just wants to be king, he's chaotic, he doesn't make any sense. He keeps changing his mind, and basically he's um he's an at-or-all popping cheeseburger devouring maniac who's a ticking time bomb leading to Armageddon. Uh-huh. I don't see it that way. I see Trump as uh a master at marketing. You and I work in this business of behavioral modification through messaging. Right. And I believe Trump has created a brand and a political brand for him. When you meet him in person, he's the most gracious guy, which is how he wins over so many of the folks, including the billionaires whom you feel are traitors. He's gracious. He won over Bill Mayer to the point he set up a little stool and for 12 minutes told all of his audience what a great guy Trump is. Trump, Trump is like night and day when it comes to his persona and when it comes to what you see on the social medias. So you can say he's a master manipulator, but that's just another word for a really good marketer.

SPEAKER_02 39:16

I agree. I agree with you, Spets. You know, I think maybe I I need to make something clear on my end, which is my whole point of view that's underneath all of this is not even so much to keep talking about Trump this, Trump that. It was about the original premise of our of our article, end of American exceptionalism, was my point was something's wrong with the American people to vote for this guy. And that's still a big concern. Regardless of how the Trump administration ends up doing, maybe Trump will pull off a miracle. He is unbelievably gifted at uh getting out of uh situations that other people would founder and just fall on their head, and somehow he escapes conviction here, and he's escaped how many, how many different government uh cases against him and and all of these things. So he may come out all right. The question for me is are the American people gonna come out all right? And where is the foundational principles of the American people to go? One of two things could happen. At the by the end of Trump's term, it could be, you know what? Never again. Never again are we going to vote or get behind a political animal like this, uh, who is obviously just manipulating us. We're gonna work based on the principles of democracy and try to build our country back to what it was supposed to be, or keep whipsawing back and forth between the next con person who comes along. Maybe there'll be a democratic version of that, who lies to everyone and tells them that they're gonna help and then ends up not House of Cards.

SPEAKER_00 41:02

The Kevin Spacey character was a Democrat. I like, I like that. That was that was a really nice touch. A Southern Democrat.

SPEAKER_02 41:09

And that was that was the uh the Aslan analogy from the original piece was the idea that people can be so captured by false prophets that they can't ever they can no longer recognize the truth, even if it's standing right in front of them. Um now that's that's real, and now I think we're looking at that. My hope is it's not permanent. People do wake up, times change. Maybe there's a reckoning happening, maybe there's a groundswell that may be happening, and that gives me some hope that maybe there are some people with courage and that could be contagious, and then maybe we'll get sick of this kind of um uh this kind of uh what's the right word for just this this immediate gratification and and this like non-principle behavior that that we're WF Trump circus. Yeah, the the the pro wrestling, the sport that's not even a sport, which millions of people love for some reason, even though it's not a sport, it's a show. Uh and uh, you know, uh that's kind of who we've got running things right now. But I think that my hope is just that, like you said, there are minorities who pulled the lever for Trump and they're regretting it. There's podcasts now all over the country of former Republicans who are now anti-Trumpers and want to talk about it. The bulwark is a good example. I don't know if you ever listened to that one.

SPEAKER_00 42:36

The bulwark is, but look at what happened in South Korea when their leader declared a coup d'etat for the sake of the country's security, and everyone hit the streets, and then this guy hit the jail cell. They were not having it. They were not having it. Look at Brazil with Bolsonaro. He pulls the same shenanigans that Trump did on January 6th, and they're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Now, the reason both of these countries said no to the pseudo-Trump was because they'd been through all this shit before. South Korea was pretty much a military dictatorship for most of its history, and before that, it was a slave of Japan. And they're over it. We fought hard for the values that you're espousing, HP. And then when some bozo pulls the plug on that, is no way, Jose. We're you're not taking us down, you're not taking us back. And I agree with you, the pendulum swings, it's gonna oscillate in the other direction. Why did Biden get elected? Because people were sick of Trump in 2016 to 2020. You had the most boring zombie alternative to Trump imaginable, and this guy actually pulled it off. So, what's gonna happen maybe after Trump? Well, we're gonna either get a moderate Republican, maybe even JD. Or we're gonna swing all the way the other way and said, enough of this Trump stuff. And then we get all the accesses of the left coming back in droves. So we've got a bipartisan system, it's not a parliamentary democracy. So you got to vote one way or the other. It's a package deal. And because of that, and the mechanism of social media, which which hypes outrage and further polarizes us with wedge issues and bombast and outrage, we're gonna keep zigging and zagging from one extreme to another. So I agree with you completely that that this is not gonna last and it's gonna swing the other way. However, right now we're in the thick of it. Yeah. And I don't think it's as bad as you paint it. And I separate myself from that hyperbole. And I do look at a lot of what Trump is trying to do, not from the lens of someone who doesn't know what he's doing, but from the from the lens of someone who's doing things that you disagree with. So let me be specific. Trump's foreign policy is William McKinley. We're going back a hundred years. Manifest destiny, controlling the Western Hemisphere, and might makes right. Now, that was an administration in America. So when you wave the flag, the American flag at our 250th anniversary, and you are representing the true values of the United States, based on what president, HP, because we've had other presidents and other administrations, you could call them robber barons, and you could say that it's an anachronism even to their own time. But this point of view of the 20th century liberal American view of what America has always been is categorically false. It's demonstrably incorrect. It's an evolution of the academy, it's an evolution of the civil rights movement. It's an evolution of, frankly, this academic wonkery that's been happening for decades. Now, I'm not saying it's wrong, and I'm not saying that it's bad for America. I'm merely stating the historical fact that you're looking at America through the lens of intellectual, upper middle class, very successful urban person in 2026. And that's not the America that I see in the history books or when looking back. And Trump, in ways, is a throwback to an America that was using its dominion as it could and as it felt it should. And Trump is applying that same that same strategy. I'm not saying it's right. I'm just saying that it's not crazy. And some parts of it might be effective. Let me finish and I'll pass the baton back to you. Venezuela, okay? You can't imagine anything more violative and air quote un-American than to send in Delta Force and literally kidnap, kidnap the leader of another country and then throw his ass in a Brooklyn jail where Maduro is still festering. No one even talks about this anymore. I was over in Park Slope living for years, and Maduro is literally like a couple miles from where I used to live. I'd go visit him if I if I still lived in New York. The point I'm making though is Trump did something that Kamala never would have done in a billion years. Barack. None of the left would have ever done this, even thought about doing it. And Trump did it. Why did Trump do it? Because he's McKinley. He's Teddy Roosevelt. He's manifest destiny. He's the white man's burden, and he wants the oil. That is the strategy. And here's the other thing. Thanks to Delta Force and some great intelligence, he pulled that off. Now, what are the consequences of Maduro sitting in a jail? Here's the thing, HP. We actually now do control and influence Venezuela's oil. All right. And the benefits of this are absolutely enormous from the point of view of hegemony throughout the world. Venezuela has 300 billion barrels of rough crude below the surface, the number one reserves that we know of on planet Earth. We have cut off Cuba. And we are trying to induce regime change in Cuba, which very well might work. Is there a strategy? Categorically, there is. Control the oil. Exert American power because might makes right. And we'll all be better off for it because the government in Venezuela is a commie nightmare. The people of Venezuela have been needlessly suffering for decades, and we're on the brink of freeing Cuba Libre. God damn it. I just use that as one example that this Mofo isn't crazy. He's got a point of view that you disagree with, and sometimes it does work.

SPEAKER_02 49:48

I didn't sign up for hegemony.

SPEAKER_00 49:50

It's a free country. Other people did.

SPEAKER_02 49:53

Well, I don't think they did. I mean, I think that that's the problem. The American people are very confused. I think the American people need to start thinking about trying to learn a little bit more than just pulling the lever of a voting booth about whether or not you're happy about last quarter's finances uh in your household. I get it. That matters to everyone. But every every you brought it up a good point, which is that every single president loses the midterm. Why? Because the American people over the last 40-50 years have just kind of gotten discontent with everything. A lot of the principles and things that were that we came out of uh that came out of with FDR, came out of the Second World War, the Marshall Plan, the golden era of the 50s and 60s, where everybody held in the home and good jobs were easy to have, or you know, everybody except for black people, I should say. Um, you know, the seeming the picture, the the veneer of the great America that we wanted it to be was kind of being painted. There were some troubling signs all along the way. But now I feel like we're in this spoiled aftermath where you hear I hear podcasts. This was during the lead up to the Trump uh victory, which is uh this is white guys in the Midwest. I want to be the main, I want to be the primary breadwinner in my family, and I'm not. Uh oh, why is that? Well, I don't know. I mean, uh I didn't want to go to college. I tried it, I don't like it. I want to be a car mechanic. Okay, how's that going? Well, it's okay, but I'm not making as much as my wife, who is a nurse, and she makes more than me. I don't like that. This kind of like you know, this feeling of of of you know, that you have the right to to uh to have all of this kind of wealth and and and uh success, but you don't want to work for it or you you feel entitled to it, and you feel resentful of the libs and resentful of that your wife makes more money than you. And you know, the America that that is exists in a lot of places now in our in our uh current time is just how about if we get back to some basics of of uh fairness, hard work, um, you know, and and honoring the principles that the country was founded on and not uh resenting everybody around you for having more money than you and not deciding your entire vote just based on whether the gas price went up the last few months or eggs, eggs cost more the last few months, but maybe about like where do you really want the country to go and how do you think that's going to make all of us better?

SPEAKER_00 52:47

Again, no disagreement. And I'm with you in terms of my personal value system. So I get crushed and I love it, hashtag bring it on the social medias, when I do my little videos, and and people interpret everything I say literally and as if it's my opinion. So, by my opinion, I mean when I make a statement that that that taking Venezuela's oil was an awesome move, I don't think that we necessarily should have done it. And I think it might come across as net negative in all the ways that you describe. But what I'm trying to get at is it is a point of view, and it's a strategic one, and it was successful within the constraints of what they were trying to do. And the issues that you bring up is the moral fabric of a huge swath of America. They believe that men should be the breadwinner, that America is white, male, heterosexual, and we need to get back to that because there's been this evolution of moral rot, which has precipitated our decline. And wake up, people, Jesus is coming, and until he gets here, we've got to whip America back in the shape. Do I believe that that's true? Do I think that that's the America that I want to live in? No, no, no. But here I'm being a sounding board for the right, and I'm putting on my MAGA hat in the sense of conveying to you that a large swath of the American population believes it, that it's more coherent a perspective than I think you're letting on, and that it's not just a consequence of reverse moral rot. It's not just about racism, it's not just about destroying values, but it contains within itself its own moral system, its own values. And where the left, frankly, gets itself up into a sling is being either unable or unwilling to acknowledge that there's a diametrically opposite point of view and perceived value system among millions of our fellow Americans. And we need to reconcile these two things. So when you're when you're on the podcast here, and again, I'm I'm agreeing with you, HP, but but when you're here and you're you're you're laying it down as if these are Kantian categorical imperatives. American liberalism is the foundation of our country. A lot of wonky pundits will disagree with you, and millions of your fellow Americans will disagree with you too. What is a country except for the totality of the people living in it and what they believe in and how they perceive it? Look at the debates that are raging at the highest echelons of our legal system about what constitutes constitutional law. And there's some really smart people who are going mano a mano debating these core issues, and the solutions are not obvious and easy, especially if you remove the sense of moral bias. See what I'm getting at? So I I am with you in emotion. But where cognitively I need to throw back at you is a sense of implicit liberal bias that I'm hearing. Because I talk to a lot of people on the right, and they will just throw back in ways that I'm throwing back that that the picture you're painting is what you want. And there are millions of Americans who don't want that, they want an entirely different way of life.

SPEAKER_02 56:56

That's fine. That's fine. I know I'm I'm I am a liberal. I'm not that far to the left, honestly. I may come across in this conversation. I have plenty of arguments.

SPEAKER_00 57:06

Yeah, just like I'm not that far to the right.

SPEAKER_02 57:08

I have plenty of arguments with uh with friends and uh friends and family who are farther to the left than I am, and I I consider myself more uh centrist. But anyway, but what my point is just that it's not to me about this country needing to be liberal in the liberal sense. It's liberal democracy, which is a broad category that can that can that it's a broad enough tent that uh right and left can live under it or in it. It's just the principles on which the country was founded and and imperfectly. So we so you can always catch me by saying, Well, we've never lived up to it yet. That's true. Not not perfectly. We've had flashes here and there, but the premise has always been there, and the goal has always been there, and the dream of it has always been there. And if you don't have that beacon or something to aim for, what are we aiming for? Pure strategy of hegemony and like who can we we're the strongest country in the world. We could probably we could probably pull off a quick world war and just like take over everybody, uh, possibly. It might be tough, but we could probably for five minutes. For five minutes, we could probably invade China, uh, maybe knock out Xi Jinping, uh, take over. Yeah, we could probably have the money and the and the power to do, although we've depleted our arms quite significantly.

SPEAKER_00 58:36

The Iranians are kicking our ass strategically, tactically, we that we decimated them, at least we claim we do, and uh they're still controlling the Strait of Hormuz. Absolutely. And they're demonstrating American weakness, not strength. I was the one ranting on TikTok and taking all the heat, uh, saying that Trump's going in with 7-2.

SPEAKER_02 58:59

Yeah, well, that's why to me, like you're a strategist, I'm a strategist. Strategists have to build on objectives, which I would argue in the governmental sense or are the sense of our kind are the principles on which we're founded. We have to agree on that. What is the framework that we're living in? And we have a constitution, it has it, I think it has plenty of room for everybody, but somehow right now I feel like the government is completely not connected to that, but that much could change in in three more years. But the American people are not really connected to it. And if the people are not connected to the principles and the constitution of our country, we are at risk of being whipsawed between this one and that one and whoever the shiniest penny of a politician is who comes along and is charismatic, uh, the next one who can be that person may attract millions of people, and we go in a whole other direction. And I what I'm my main point today is how do we how do we as an American people get back to an agreement generally of what are we about, what are the principles of our country. We can disagree about tactics and strategy and laws, but we have to agree on though that, or we're at risk of losing our way completely.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:29

You're reiterating what you said during our first podcast, and I'll re-reiterate the reiteration of what I reiterated to that by saying that Trump, Trump will be remembered as one of the major political figures, uh, symptom or cause, depending on your political persuasion, yeah, uh, of our of our era. There's there's really no question about that. But I see the benefit of Trump as being America's enema. Okay? He's he's he's I hope so. You know when you go and get a colonoscopy, yeah, and and I'm of the tender age where I've had one. I have to say I got propofil afterwards or during. And uh when the doctor kind of tapped me on the shoulder with everything still taking place, he was like, Are you okay? And I was like, Yes, I kind of understand why it was the demise of both Michael Jackson and Prince, poor guys, right? They they both succumbed to their pharmacist or their uh but anyway, I I digress. Yeah, uh the reason I bring up my prophyl colonoscopy experience with you and our listeners is that after the Trump era subsides, the benefit to reinforce your point is you need to experience the opposite sometimes to understand that your baseline is valid and it's worth fighting for. So when we have a president who's so over the top with this lack of etiquette, who bloviates on social media every five minutes from the toilet, who is so demonstrably sexist and racist and McKinley-esque in his 19th-century view of tariffs, China, oil, coal. See, I'm I'm in agreement with you. I I think Trump has way more gifts than most liberals acknowledge, but Trump is a moron when it comes to the potential of this country, and he is shooting us in the foot with most of the things he's doing. I'm I'm with you, HP. But at the same time, I don't see it as crazy. I see it as intentional. The reason I think that's significant is twofold. He has an intentional, coherent point of view after all the smoke clears and after he popped his last adderall and took his last shit and tweeted. Okay, there is a POV. And I think the POV is 19th century. It's a 19th century POV. We gotta grow up a little bit, and because it's going to fail, just like you mentioned, in many of these expressions through policy, I'm getting back to the morality. I am. The only way people really shift their point of view is to get punched in the face a little bit. And when the consequences of our blistering ignorance and narcissism and entitlement and sexism and everything that's fucked up about this country right now come home to roost on the lapel pins of Trump's ketchup stained shirt, that's when we're gonna get moral progress. It'll it'll return because this sucks. It sucks. We're an embarrassment to the world, we're alienating our allies. And Qi of China is laughing his ass off. And he's closer to making a move against Taiwan than ever before because Mr. McKinley 2.0 has unloaded on Iran, giving them the greatest gift of all, which is control of the Strait of Hormuz, and Ayatollah, who's even worse than the one who came before, and a completely destabilized region. Nice going, Don.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:40

I love it. I love it. You're speaking my language. I love it. Um yeah, so I think it could be to your point that the good the silver lining could be a gigantic wake-up call and lesson for the American people to wake up and pay attention. And it's not just about short-term um tiny little uh pocketbook things, although those are very important to everybody, but there's a lot we could lose. And Trump is playing with those things, and some of those things could get dropped on the floor and broken, and then uh you know, hard to ever repair.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:24

There's inherent plasticity, especially I think to the United States of America. We've we often forget that the governor of Indiana was of the KKK party, it was a political party, and he got elected on the KKK ballot. Okay, we you look that shit up. If you look at so much of American history, it's this tumultuous, swirling cauldron of things that you and I find reprehensible. Trump looks like he's this wrecking ball of democracy. But if you peel away the layers of history and the shenanigans that have happened generation to generation, this A ain't nothing new. And B is really just a manifestation of what's been cruising below the surface this whole time. I brought this up in our last conversation that there's nothing new about the American electorate either. Trump just let it all out. And we had a good exchange then, too, that he's a conduit for everything shitty in our culture.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:29

But I think the electorate over time has changed somewhat. Maybe it's always been there in different ways, but I feel like something's happened in the last 40 years or so, maybe 50 years.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:40

Why why do you think that? Richard Nixon won his second term over George McGovern by the biggest electoral landslide in American history. I think McGovern just won his home state. That was Richard Milhouse Nixon. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:57

But he was a very talented politician. So Trump. Yeah, so well, and they they're popular. You know, you can win that way, right? But I mean, a lot of people probably ended up regretting their votes for for Nixon. And Nixon had his Watergate disaster probably pushed a lot of Republicans to be like, okay, maybe that was overboard. So yeah, maybe things swing, they come and go, but I don't know. I guess, I guess to the principles thing. Uh I'll I'll share one thing with you. I can't remember if I've ever shared this, but I'm not I'm not religious uh in the traditional way. I don't go to church every Sunday, but uh I love this quote by um Cecil B. DeMille, who directed uh the Ten Commandments. He gave a commencement at uh a college, Brigham Young. He said, we cannot break the Ten Commandments, we can only break ourselves against them, or else by keeping them, rise through them to the fullness of freedom under God. Um again, I don't want to get into the religious part of it, but it's the principal part of it that I like, which is that our constitution is built on them and it's not a left-wing document, it's not an ultra-left document, and democracy is not a partisan document. Um, and American exceptionalism, not as a fact right now, but as an aspiration, is still worth us fighting for. And the question I have is are the people of this country going to fight for it or not? Are we and I'm when I mean fight, I don't mean like go out in the streets, and I'm not necessarily, although I've I've been in a few No Kings rallies, I'm not talking about fighting in the sort of um what's the word, in sort of a uh impractical way or just like you know, demonstrative way, but like real way, like actually care about these things and maybe uh yeah, think about who you're gonna vote for rather than just every two years or every four years the midterm goes against the the current president just because people are unhappy uh all the time about whatever. But really think about I yeah, I feel like we have to just start uh thinking about who do we actually want to have running our country and and care about that in a way that is not happening right now.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:26

It's hard to disagree with any of your sentiments, although it invoking the Ten Commandments on our podcast is akin to the Texas legislature mandating that they appear in every classroom right now.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:41

Well, I only quoted them uh based on the idea that they're principles, not for the religious reasons. Well, that's the argument that they made, too. Yeah. Well, I'm uh I'm opposed to forcing anything to be inside a school that has a religious nature.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:56

Right. I I'm of course being facetious, and I appreciate you coming on and and having this this debate. I think it does illustrate how how we're very human, and by we I mean the royal we, that we can't help but conflate emotion with value, with the vision of a society, with the characteristics of the leaders we choose, with policies that get mandated to bring that about. And it's a confusing, convoluted swirl of cultural norms, philosophical and ideological values, and this pragmatic realism of keeping costs down, our streets safe, and our kids fed, educated, and happy. And that I think is the human condition. I I was speaking with a client who is in the Middle East, and I literally I check up on him to make sure he's not being bombed at the moment. And uh, and and he's he's from a very different background from me. He was born in Lebanon, he grew up speaking French, he lives in Saudi Arabia, and he's just like me. And we are we are very much apart in our culture, in our born religion. We couldn't be more distinct. But what we always conclude at the end of these fist pumping sessions when we put the business aside for a few minutes and we talk heart to heart is this acknowledgement of the universality of the human psyche and condition. And we all we look at it and say, Why can't we just get along? If we could get over our social Darwinian programming, probably induced by genetic drift and a host of other factors, to not get along, then the world would be so much a better place. We're dealing with this vestigial tissue of leftover instincts that helped us get here when we were tribes of people running around the African savannah of 40, 50 people. We're now a planet of nearly 9 billion, and we need to grow up. And Donald J. Trump is an anachronism.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:11

It's so true, Spitz. It's so true that we're that we need to grow up. That that you're you're you're hitting a point that I I really believe in. We need to grow up because we now have the the most powerful tool and weapon that has ever come on earth, which is of course AI. And so now we have this all-powerful potential, and we have to decide: are we going to be the shepherds of the world and take care of everything, which we could totally do with this tool? We can probably end world hunger, we can probably solve energy problems, we can probably solve all of our problems with this tool, or we could destroy everything. So what's it gonna be? You know, are we are we going to actually are we actually going to fulfill the promise that human beings, I don't know how many other, you know, living creatures there are in the universe, Earth may be, you know, I'm sure there are some out there, but I don't know how many billions of light years away they are. We're we're fairly special in that regard, at least in the known confines that we can detect with with with uh all the instruments that we have. And we're and we're the dominant race of this earth, and the United States is the dominant country on the planet of Earth of humans, and what are we going to do with that power? We have the ability right now, if we all got our heads on straight, to be like we're gonna take care of this earth and make it good for everybody, which we could totally fucking do. But right now we're mired in a lot of juvenile and uh you know prehistoric behavior patterns. Uh and then we'll have to do another podcast about whether we should do biological biological manipulation of our of our of our organisms to to we have great brains, but we seem to have primeval instincts still ruling us.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:20

You know, all the vestigial tissue of our instincts corrupting us. But but here here's the dilemma, and I here I'm going libertarian again, is who is going to make these decisions?

SPEAKER_02 1:14:33

Well, we all are. We'll do it with a fair vote, but we've got to be like somehow somehow aligned on what the goals are. I mean, if if the group if the group, if there's gonna be a group of people who say, I'm like Trump, I just want to rule the world, I want to be the dominant, uh, I want I want to make billions of dollars and I want to dominate other people, and I want to step on the throats of those I don't like in order to get my way to the top. That's one group of people. And then there's gonna be this other group of people uh that I would want to be part of uh in is what the what I said before. Like we want to make this world a habitable place for everybody and get along and thrive, which we have the power to do. So maybe there will be a fight over that, but I want to be on I want to be on the the side of the of the of those that uh want that rather than like just uh stepping on the throats of everyone around me.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:40

In principle, I agree with you. I think in practice we're gonna zig and zag as we have throughout our history. We've got more powerful tools to your point than ever before. We've got nuclear, we've got genetic control, and now we have AI. And uh people posit these as the great barriers to your point. Where are all the aliens with trillions of galaxies, the observable universe a hundred billion light years across? Where the hell is everybody? At least we can't detect anyone, and maybe every sentient civilization encounters variations of what we're going through right now, which is each of these things that we rattle off are double-edged swords. So, genetically, we could create a gene engine and wipe ourselves out in terms of AI. You got AI Mageddon, everyone's talking about that. That's not not too hard. That's the trope of science fiction for decades, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:16:47

What happens when uh the Iranians get a hold of an AI tool that can knock out all our electric grid across the country or something?

SPEAKER_00 1:16:55

Well, you've got anthropic's mythos now, whether it's PR or actual non-hype capability. I think it's a combination of both, but AI now can crack other AI. So just like you've got drone wars in Ukraine, we're gonna have AI wars.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:11

Because AI can work all day and night and keep cycling over the solutions to things, all of this gets sped up into not just days or hours, but like minutes. Like tomorrow, AI could be a hundred times better than it is today.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:29

Yeah, although there could be an architectural ceiling to the large language model, at least on the predictive side, that'll preclude AGI. I tend to believe that. I think I think the LLMs can't do it by by by nature, by architecture. But to your point, it is a black mirror-like scenario where where a thousand years can go by in three seconds because uh everything is accelerated.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:55

I feel bad for the guy, the the go master, you know, the go master who looked back on um uh not. Is it Kasparov? Who was the chess champion? Kasparov who lost to Big Blue. Yeah. And okay, so Kasparov loses to Big Blue. That was probably pretty uh devastating for him, but he could recovered and he's a strategist and had a career since the Go Master, though, was like computers will never be me and go. I mean, Go is way too complicated. The the levels, the permutations, the the the you know, you think you're being surrounded and you're actually surrounding them who's surrounding you, and all of that complexity. And then he just got hammered. And I and I read an article, and I think the guy was poor guy was just devastated. I don't know if he was recovered since. It was uh just you know, unexpected that it could accelerate that fast. And I think we're gonna see every piece of computing power that gets added onto AI is gonna just keep speeding up its ability to improve. Uh, we'll see where that goes.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:05

There, there's a difference between quantitative improvement, as you know, and a qualitative transformation. So we'll see. But uh, you mentioned religion before. I had a guest on the podcast just yesterday, and he's an entrepreneur doing some AI stuff. I was trying to figure out whether he's shambolic or a genius. It was a little bit elusive for me. But uh he brought up the point that hey, maybe um, you know, our consciousness is tied to some kind of pan-dimensional reality that we can't really replicate consciousness because there's something truly mystical or spiritual about sentience and self-awareness. I'm not so sure. I think we've we're going to human exceptionalism now, and I think that's a great way we could cap our conversation, which is we're we're debating American exceptionalism. And in a nutshell, thanks to Donald J., the Donald, King Donald, we're pretty much annihilating that sense of American exceptional. That is one point that you and I both violently agree with, which was the foundation of our conversation, that even if I'm sitting here as the Trump apologist or the Trump translator, I'll be the first to acknowledge that our American exceptionalism is out the damn window. In ways that might even be his goal. And conversely, we've got this idea of human exceptionalism. We're always the center of the universe. The sun goes around the earth, we're the only sentient beings in the universe, and consciousness is unique to us. And I would venture to assume that that myth will eventually succumb to the inevitability that we're just a bunch of primates on this little blue marble, as Carl Sagan mentioned. And the only thing special about our lives is how special we can make it. And a good way to make it special is to not succumb to the lies, deception, and and and manipulation of those who want to take everything for themselves.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:21

We read the Tao De Ching. I've always kind of loved reading about that and had interest in that. And along the way, a few, you know, in my life I I had tr uh had some acupuncture done, but there's always this thing that like this is this is just baloney, right? All of this is bullshit. Now I don't know if you saw the news recently, but there's been a scientific breakthrough.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:46

The inner inner interstitium interstitium. I love that.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:51

Which which is now basically demonstratively proving out that that practice of acupuncture has an actual scientific basis. And it just makes me think that these things are going to keep happening, where some of the things that have been mysterious will be explained and there'll be a there'll be one last thing about this was uh this is also back to my college days. Uh I remembered a lecture that I'll never forget where uh the professor was saying, you know, in ancient times the scientists were the priests. The priests were the ones that studied the stars and mapped out the heavens, and like they were the scientists. And then there a schism occurred where the priests are now religious and the scientists study science. And he said someday there will probably be a unification again, and that will be an exciting thing to see happen if we can marry science to religion or or to the to these mystical concepts, because I think there there well could be a connection that we just haven't figured it out yet.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:07

I I think so too. I mean, I was witness to my father's ghost. I've written a short story about that and I've talked about it, and it was as real an experience as you and I talking to each other. Now, did I have a momentary lapse or did I really connect with something? I've had various air quote psychic occurrences throughout my life where that, like that Twilight Zone episode, I have sensed before someone has died, especially people close to me, repeatedly. My mother had had these psychic abilities where she knew when her daughter was giving birth the night before, where uh she had premonitions. So there could be a lot we don't know about, and people oftentimes talk about quantum entanglement as destroying really our notion of space and time. There's a wonderful book by Hoffman called The Case Against Reality, that the way we perceive space and time and the world around us is nothing at all like it actually is. And this was uh a philosophical conundrum that just plagued even Immanuel Kant. The critique of pure reason was an attempt to uh posit the synthetic a priori, which is how can we really prove that perception is veridical in a way that we can prove an analytical statement like one plus one equals two? And we can't, and the reason we can is we have absolutely no clue what the essence of reality is. We can't.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:47

Now we're now we're I love that you're bringing this up, Spitz. I mean, I studied Kant and I and I I love those concepts, but I know that you know there's there's uh yeah, a big debate about that. But tying it back to to our whole discussion, though, I think there is some connectivity between between this these concepts of mystery, the discovery of things like the interstitium that knit together things that didn't seem to make sense with things that do. And uh we'll see how that all plays out.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:23

That was my point though, HP. Even space and time aren't anything like we perceive them. So, how could our own bodies be fully understood? How could our place in the universe be fully understood when we have really no clue as to what the is actually is?

SPEAKER_02 1:25:42

Well, and to me, that means we should be humble enough to have like awe of all of this and approach it with the right attitudes, uh, the right kind of like desire for wisdom rather than desire for another dollar all the time. Like everybody likes to be wealthy.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:00

You know, I have the other podcast, the science fiction and fantasy factory, and I talk about the evolution of science fiction and the motif of Star Trek, the first one, boldly go, right? Non-interventionalism. It was DEI on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, multiple races, genders. You did have Captain Kirk as the swashbuckling uh sexist pig, but you know, hey, it's uh at least he was called out every once in a while.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:30

Right, and they had principles of not interfering with the life of other of uh in other worlds.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:35

The prime directive was don't be don't be an imperialist asshole.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:41

So then what happens when your captain who takes over the ship when Kirk retires decides to say, fuck it, let's go in and pillage each planet planet we uh that we that we find.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:52

That's it. See, and that's why I love I love that full circle analog, because I agree with you. I'm just saying that this captain's got a clear agenda, and a lot of the crew agree with him, and there's a mutiny, there's a mutiny on the enterprise right now.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:08

All right, well, I'm joining the mutiny. I'm joining the mutiny.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:11

Thank you for listening to Bald and Beloviating. I've had my very good friend and uh and recontour and debater, Mr. HP. And I have a feeling we'll continue again six months or a year. We could we could loop back and uh and see where this train wreck is going. I appreciate you, your perspective. It was a very respectful, engaging conversation, and I found it really satisfying. So thank you so much for making time, HP. Thank you, Spitz. Until next time. To be continued.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:49

Unless we can't.