Doublethink, Oil Shocks, and the Chocolate Ration w/ Stacy

Chris and his sister Stacy finally sit down to talk Orwell's 1984, using the novel as a jumping-off point for a wide-ranging conversation about authoritarianism, demagoguery, and how closely the book's mechanics (the two minutes hate, doublethink, Big Brother as an idea rather than a person) map onto the current moment. From there the conversation ranges into Fed leadership and monetary policy, the Israel-Gaza war and the politics propping up Netanyahu's coalition, the unfolding Iran standoff and its ripple effects on oil and global food supply, gender and sexual politics both historically and in the modern religious right, and Chris's own attempt to define his political identity somewhere between libertarianism and pro-union social democracy. Next time: Fahrenheit 451.

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Academia Obscura. I'm your host, Chris Little, and today I've got my sister Stacy, and we are gonna talk 1984. Hey Stacy, how's it going?

SPEAKER_02 0:11

Oh, pretty good, mostly good.

SPEAKER_04 0:13

Cool. So I remember this was one of the books that you asked me to read when you were first moving in with me a while ago. And we had a couple of hiccups with versions. Apparently I listened to an Amazon podcast instead of the wanted to find out happened. I sent you the link first to make sure it was the right thing.

SPEAKER_02 0:32

Yeah. Affridged versions of important books tend to lose a lot in the messaging.

SPEAKER_04 0:37

Well, I think it was more of a dramatization than an abridged version. Yeah. That's still loses. Yeah. Yeah. It lost a lot. To be to be kind. But yeah. So I feel like it's good we're finally chatting about that book.

SPEAKER_02 0:50

Yeah. I mean, you know, there's all the the way authoritarianism works, it's always going to look the same way. And 1984, it for a lot of people it's groundbreaking, but as far as the historical record goes, it is just a re-examining of classic demagogue techniques as exercised by an industrial modern state.

SPEAKER_04 1:12

Can you break down each of those words for some of our audience that may not be as real?

SPEAKER_02 1:19

Industrial, meaning a society that has learned how to harness other forms of fuel and energy and technology and scientific techniques in order to get more labor done with drastically fewer people than in than all of recorded history. Modern day and age has just been since about the past 1900s and stuff, once we figured out Yeah. And demagogue is just people that yell really loud and keep popping up throughout history to secure power for themselves and and uh betray the principles that they supposedly ran, like talked about.

SPEAKER_04 1:57

So in 1984, the demagogue would essentially be the party.

SPEAKER_02 2:02

Yeah, well, and that that's one of the reasons why like 1984 you you you saw this with the rise of Trump, especially uh regarding 4chan and Gamergate and everything, of there was this incredibly strong urge and willingness to latch on to any figure from uh within the Republican Party that was speaking to them. And so when Trump started actually like directly speaking to the far right, like online, the places that people were allowed to be anonymous, they just they jumped onto the bandwagon because they were already they they're already primed to want to do this. And the thing is that like Big Brother, it could be anyone, and it's important narratively that it's not a person, you know, it's an idea instead of just someone that could die.

SPEAKER_04 2:48

And when you say they wanted to do this, so what was it that the far right wanted to do?

SPEAKER_02 2:54

Institute a wide-scale rollback of uh all the progress that was made during the twentieth during the twentieth century regarding civil liberties, regarding banking regulations, regarding uh air and water regulations. It's a whole host of things that uh boil down to let rich people do whatever they want and stop trying to stop us.

SPEAKER_04 3:17

Yeah, the laissez-faire economic model. Just let it be.

SPEAKER_02 3:20

Yeah. And uh Yeah, it's just that there's uh like Chris, you haven't even read any of Curtis Jarvin's stuff. And he is terrifying because he's can't say that I intellectually respect him, but he has he has the comprehensive worldview that the rest of these people are using as largely a roadmap of important like objectives in order to try and like turn, you know, the political tides, as it were.

SPEAKER_04 3:46

And on that front, that has been one of the things that they have been most successful about with the Trump presidencies, is just the sheer amount of churn they can do through the administrative state under executive action.

SPEAKER_02 3:59

You know, the way I describe it is that this is the first administration to rip the copper out of the walls. You know, my my friends don't none of my friends know what the Fed does. None of them can explain what it does or that it's important. Meanwhile, that's the thing that makes it so money has value and we don't turn into Zimbabwe. Yeah. Like we're we're now we're now getting rid of the people who, while I disagree with the Fed board of governors immensely and whole lots of problems, they were serious people who recognized that what they were doing was serious and that they had to treat it with respect and caution. Whereas, you know, we just selected a new guy who's doesn't want that. And when you have too loose of a monetary policy, what ends up happening is inequality gets death.

SPEAKER_04 4:50

Yeah. I disagree with your perspective on Kevin Warsh. Obviously, like Trump wants interest rates cut, and so that's all the hullabaloo around his nomination. But if you look at everything he's ever written economically, he is sort of the anti-Bin Bernanke. He fundamentally believes, almost Hoover-esque, that like quantum, you know, hold on, I'm gonna say it. That uh quantitative easing was a failure and that the Fed needs to shit shed assets, and the economy should feel some pain during that process as we move more toward a purely like economic, like free market-based approach. That's not a cut interest rates model. That's a let the economy, that's a let the Fed balance sheet runoff model.

SPEAKER_02 5:35

Chris, yeah. We are five and a half years into uh the Trump presidency, and I am just gonna go out on a limb and it's going to be much worse than you think, Chris.

SPEAKER_03 5:46

Well, it's only like 15 months. It's Chris. It feels like five years, but yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:51

Yeah, like, but also with all of the damage that accumulates, it's every individual piece attacking it as you can, you know.

SPEAKER_04 5:59

Like so far, we're right on track for a Great Depression like shock event hitting mid-August. So that'll be fun.

SPEAKER_02 6:06

Because remember, like 1984, the the first line is him cutting himself with a shitty razor. Because instead of building is instead of consumer goods, you know, instead of high-quality consumer goods, all of the excess resources from the society go towards war and destruction and battleships. The floating fortresses, I think they're called in the book, you know? Could be carriers. It count as a lot. Yeah, but you know, what's what instead of instead of a school or a hospital, we have a giant metal boat with guns or planes. And you're starting to see that because like there was so much of the population that has been primed for at least 50 years to accept a fascist figurehead that relies on religiosity primarily to instill loyalty and corruption to take advantage of the system.

unknown 7:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 7:00

I mean, I the evangelical political project.

SPEAKER_02 7:03

Yeah. I mean, I mean, Chris, the most like Alex Jones terrifying thing you can listen to is content content continuation of government plans that were created during the 80s by the Reagan administration, that they are literally like it's the full, the government has plans for like what to do during riots, to suspend civil liberties, to do all of that. That was by the Republicans. Alex Jones now says that he likes the ICE agents going after people and blackbagging them.

SPEAKER_04 7:33

I'm sure he does. Trump and the Republicans are certainly paying a polling price for that at the moment. He's that's why he's had to pull back and moderate it some. Now that's why they're in order to hit their uh quote unquote quotas for immigrants, is why they're restricting legal immigration by trying to make pe uh spouses of American citizens that apply for green cards to leave the country before they can apply and apply at their home embassy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:57

I mean, Chris, like our hometown, there's a uh detention camp about five minutes away from Danny's grave. Hamilton? Butler County detention Hamilton, yes, sir. Butler County. Butler County Doug Dimmidome. Sorry, his name's not actually Doug Dimodome, but he reminds me of a cartoon character named Doug Dimodome. Butler County Sheriff Doug Dimmodome has been a long time fan of Trump. Just fucking disgusting. Really? Because yeah. And I mean, Chris, like one of the things that you didn't you didn't live through this with like mom and dad, and I don't know if you paid any attention how much attention you paid to like what uh Rick and Gwen were listening to, like on the radio and everything.

SPEAKER_04 8:36

Yeah, totally. Fox News. Rick loved Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson. Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh. Who was the guy before Rush Limbaugh that just was like said good day all the time? There's no there was a guy before Rush Limbaugh. I wish I'd say good day. And that was how he sort of signed off like the before the ad breaks for his show.

SPEAKER_03 8:56

Um he was worse, much worse. But yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:03

I remember I remember one time I was in the car and the guy was just going on one of his regular gay bashing episodes, talking about how some guy got AIDS from getting fucked in prison and about how the guy deserved it and should go to hell. Yeah. And that's what God wanted for him. And I was like, okay, this is traumatic. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:20

And I mean, that's the two-minute hate, is it's meant to get you like angry. It's meant to make you think about all the bad things and reassign the blame. Because that is the one thing that I will say that like Democrats are absolute idiots about right now, is that Trump is at least willing to say, things are bad, and I'm going to do something. He's not going to do any of the things that needed to fix the problem, but he at least acknowledges it's bad. Whereas, like, you know, Kamala Harris, there's nothing I will change from the Biden administration. Meanwhile, you don't talk about the things you were doing good.

SPEAKER_04 9:52

That was the moment she lost the campaign when she went on the view and could not name a single thing. That was the easiest softball question they could have possibly handed to her and she flubbed it. And that's not even in like the DNC's autopsy report that they just released, which was a complete joke.

SPEAKER_03 10:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 10:10

But uh go, can you talk more about the two-minute hate uh for those that aren't as familiar with the book and how that ties in? Yep. And now we just do that for uh yeah. Well, Fox News does it for a hell of a lot longer than two minutes. But yeah, all the gay bashing, which is more trans bashing now. Gay rights has honestly come a long way. There's still problems, but it's much better. All the racism, all of it. Yeah. And the irony is that anti-Semiticism has been conflated with any criticism of the state of Israel, which is a complete departure from its historical definition. Hearing hold on, this hold on. I want to st st stay on that frame for a minute. So you just compared Zionists to Nazis and Confederates, correct? So let's take apart that claim. So Zionists believe that they, as the Jewish people, have a divine right to the land granted to them in the Hebrew Torah by their God Yahweh, and that they are moving in mass to the Holy Land and reclaiming it with military force in order to receive the divine inheritance that is owed to them by Abraham's covenant with God, right? Okay. And for Nazis, they believed that it felt like it was a version from my understanding of like a divine right, but I'll I'll let you explain it.

SPEAKER_03 11:32

Exactly. Right. Well, let's come back to the Confederates.

SPEAKER_04 11:35

If we could come back to the Confederates, I want to stay on the Nazi frame. But it sounds like the frame that you just admitted was in contradiction, because Zionism is from a religiously centered divine right. Nazism, as you just explained it, was more a political and economic driver to mimic America's manifest destiny. Yeah, yeah. A new era, riviera, according to Trump. Of course, civilize the savages. Civilize the savages was a rallying cry for quite a few hundred years. And even to the that blacks were had the were the descendants of Cain, and the black skin was the mark of Cain, and that's why they were inferior and deserved to be punished. Those were taught in the Sunday school. Yeah, they're committing a I would say would they have crossed the line from genocide to Holocaust and what they're doing to the Palestinian people. Alright, so you we were back at uh China.

SPEAKER_02 12:27

Uh I was making the point that, like, about what separates the Holocaust from a lot of other genocides was the meticulous planning that went into it and the organization of it all.

SPEAKER_04 12:41

Okay, go on.

SPEAKER_02 12:42

Um like historically, a lot of genocides around the uh world, like they happen, they're fucking horrible. They're not nearly as organized. They more often take the approach of in Russia pogroms where essentially you know, poor Jewish people or poor uh any of the Russian minorities, there's a list I don't I'm not aware of, but like essentially the law did not protect them. So when nobles wanted to vent some anger, or when people with money wanted to vent some anger, they could just go terrorize like a village of poor serfs. And unless that and and you were unlikely to get any like you no one was likely to even care, you know. Um but yeah, whereas like the Holocaust it it was so fucking organized and step by step, and the the amount of logistical planning that went into it is utterly unprecedented. Um you know, just yeah. Um whereas like yeah, they're not doing the the Israel is doing genocide. They're not doing it's not upgrading from a genocide to a Holocaust. It's the Holocaust is a genocide, you don't get worse than genocide.

SPEAKER_04 14:17

Yeah, that's okay. So you're saying the Holocaust was just one specific genocide. Yeah. Because I mean there are like prominent like Jewish uh people that have called out what they're doing. For example, Masha Gesson, uh longtime New Yorker writer, she's Jewish with family killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust, directly compared Gaza as a ghetto to the fortifications and the living conditions that the Jewish state was making the Palestinians live under. Oh, yeah. And then this whole war was about just demolishing that ghetto and trying to see how far south they can go in hopes that they could force them into Egypt through the Sinai corridor, and then that failed.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 15:00

So it was like mass expulsion from the people that they couldn't bomb and like into oblivion with the irony of, oh, we announced a strike target on Twitter after they destroyed the electricity and cut off cell service.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 15:16

Uh it it just mind-blowing beyond belief.

SPEAKER_02 15:20

Yeah. Uh and so that's and the thing is that depending on your ideology, genocide is acceptable, is an acceptable political tactic to achieve your goals. And for people on the far right, genocide is explicitly an acceptable tactic. For liberals, it is never acceptable.

SPEAKER_04 15:45

Yeah, exactly. And what I don't think people understand that the way Israeli politics is constructed, the far right religious parties that prop up uh Ben Ham and Netanyahu's government um are explicitly the far-right uh hardcore Zionist uh radicals. They believe that there is a mandatory draft in Israel for everyone after after they hit 18, except the men in the religious society uh and the and the that are studying to be rabbis or for religious life. And the Israeli Supreme Court has struck that down as unconstitutional because they're like, hey, you can't have a mandatory draft and then exclude a whole segment of the population. And that single issue has been what has roiled Netanyahu's coalition for the past five years. It's because they keep trying to overturn the Supreme Court, and they even tried a major Supreme Court reform right before uh the October Hamas attacks happened, that fizzled out completely because they're trying to institutionally just do whatever they can to protect the religious right, which has that much political power in the country. If they fall, then Netanyahu falls out of power and immediately gets swept up in uh criminal investigations. So Netanyahu making them happy is what keeps him out of jail, which is why he can't let the war in Gaza or in Lebanon end, because that fractures his coalition and that throws him in jail. So this goes on as long as it can. Yep. And that's why it's like he even dragged Trump into this by just like basic basically just like telling whatever he wanted to hear and how it would be a legacy-defining thing, because this is all Benjamin Yetinahu staying out of prison and selling his soul to the devil to do it.

SPEAKER_02 17:42

Well, I mean, I wouldn't even say selling the soul to the devil. There's plenty of examples in the Old Testament of Israeli people getting you know, having a king who goes ape shit and then God turns his back on them and they suffer.

SPEAKER_04 17:56

Right. Right. Yeah, and it's just a quirk of how the Israeli parliament works. Uh whenever you have a strict parliamentary system, you don't have two dominant parties like we have here in the States. You have a whole like kaleidoscope of smaller parties uh that have to form coalitions in order to get a majority in the parliament. And then that majority elects a prime minister who then forms the executive branch. Um but the way Israeli politics sort of works, that kaleidoscope is just a little bit easier to form on the right, because on the left that includes like 15% that represent Arab parties from the Arab citizens of the state of Israel, which Israel, which Israel itself has a hard time accepting as legitimate because they were founded as explicitly a Jewish state. Um and the main problem they've been trying to solve is how do you have a pluralistic democracy that is founded on a religious and ethnic identity? Um so a lot of the left-wing politicians can't literally form a government because they refuse to work with or legitimize the Arab um MPs that hold seats. And that's sort of a little bit of an extra buffer that keeps Netanyahu in power.

SPEAKER_02 19:15

Yeah. Because that's the way that, you know authoritarianism, nationalism works. Like it is essentially it's power at any means at any cost and never let it go, ever. Um and instead of there being like any principles or virtues to guide it, it's just it it collapses the moment that reality starts to like take its consequences.

SPEAKER_04 19:54

Yeah. Well, speaking of reality taking its consequences, and speaking while we're on Israel, let's pivot to Iran, because that's reality taking its consequences, but also the clearest example of uh not double speak, but what's the phrase where they kept saying, uh, we've always been at war with East Asia, we've never been at war with East Asia. I feel like that's what we're doing with the Iran deal. A deal is so close, oh, we're so far away. A deal is so close, oh, we're so far away. And it's just like we've gone back and forth every week now, and for some reason, people still like the media is still like reporting what they say, even though they clearly can't mean it.

SPEAKER_02 20:38

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 20:38

Um remember, this is all after we supposedly nuked the it's not nuked, we uh bombed their nuclear facilities uh a few months ago and achieved total victory and oblity and obliterated their need for a weapon. All of a sudden, oh my god, we have to go in uh because they're so close to getting it a a nuclear weapon. But don't call our previous attempt to destroy their attempt uh to get a a weapon unsuccessful as a total success.

SPEAKER_02 21:06

Yeah, because essentially it's the the term you need the way you need to think of it is you don't you need to think of it, it's not lying, Chris. It is uh gaslighting. Um while yes, they are lying, they're doing it strategically, and there's a reason to keep making shit up and keep thinking that things are going to happen and keep uh having all this chaos because they can benefit from the chaos. Um Trump has more uh stock trades in his first quarter than any president through their their history. Like it's gotten bad, but he knows that he can manipulate the market for advantage by making sure everyone's confused and doesn't know what the fuck's going on. You see, Steve Bannon t uh laid it out years and years ago, saying that our goal is to flood the field with information so that people so that it's harder for people to uh figure things out. Um and when you do that as a governmental entity, you know, of reducing the chocolate of increasing the chocolate ration from 200 grams to 150 grams.

SPEAKER_04 22:21

Such a generous increase.

SPEAKER_02 22:24

You destroy people's sense of collective reality and it becomes so much more difficult for anything positive to happen if we can't agree on reality.

SPEAKER_04 22:39

Yeah. Well the thing is with this Iran war, Trump may have just found the one place where objective for reality is going to reassert itself on a timeline that he doesn't like. Because especially with uh excluding the gas shortages, which have we've been largely spared from because the world just tapped the strategic reserve massively to stabilize supply, which we're not going to be able to do here come the start of August without dipping into core like military strategic reserves, which most governments aren't going to do. So we're going to have a giant spike. Also we've already hit all of the used up all of the slack in the system because all of the ships that had that were able to clear before Iran instituted their blockade have now docked at port. So we're now truly experiencing the the true price of oil as as it's locked in. Yes. Additionally we're no one has truly factored in the famine that is going to reap the world from 20% of the world's fertilizer supply getting locked out.

SPEAKER_02 23:46

Plenty of people have Chris they're just not getting listened to right now.

SPEAKER_04 23:50

They are not getting listened to there is going to be a massive famine uh globally which is going to spike the price of food and and it's going to be completely disruptive. Uh Europe is incredibly exposed both on the energy and the supply but so is uh are the Asian countries. China specifically especially since China before this got like 20% of its oil from Iran because Iran was giving them such a discount.

SPEAKER_02 24:17

But China is also uh more and uh a lot safer to the shock because less of their total energy supply comes from fossil fuels and they've been continuously growing their renewables uh at a ridiculous rate they made more energy off renewables last year total than they did off of uh old the off of fossil fuel power plants that's true but they haven't fully switched over yet and right now their solar energy um yeah is over capacity they're churning out too they they're churning out too many solar panels and the world isn't buying them because of uh import restrictions so and the so the company started doing a price war um and there's a series of like domino bankruptcies happening in the industry right now because it was over uh created. Yeah but also all things considered a plethora of cheap solar panels on the market that need to get sold is a better thing problem for a society to have than our than you know I mean we're think about all of the data centers that we're using that you're starting to get deep red people uh uh allying with the blue haired uh folk because hey the water is going brown and the air vibrates now um well the water's been caught set uh sorry the water's been uh getting set on fire in Pennsylvania from the fracking industry I don't know why brown is what people would notice I would think literally being set on fire is what coming out of the faucet is what would get their attention uh but yeah no so you see like in all these things they're just they're they're they're just crises of capitalism that because capitalism is the current system the current financial system that we have um like the people with money don't want to deal with the consequences of their actions so they're just they just got rid of all of the regulators that were trying to stop that and tried to say that you can't make that no states can make AI laws for 10 years.

SPEAKER_04 26:32

Did that pass?

SPEAKER_02 26:32

I thought that was not there was an executive order that even that none none of the states even Texas and Florida are still are ignoring that shit too um yeah uh because yeah I don't think that actually passed Congress. I know Trump was about to issue an executive order but then pulled it at the last minute yeah yeah no one's no one's buying that uh and and it's just yeah it it's authoritarianism.

SPEAKER_04 27:04

Yeah but I don't know the most likely scenario that I see for how the Iran war ends is China has to step up and break the U.S. blockade uh by escorting either Iranian tankers or even PLA tankers like India started to do um and dare the U.S. to fire on a Chinese destroyer that's escorting an Iranian carrier um while at the same time that forces Iran to stand down. Because Iran can't Chris I'm not gonna I I'm not you're not gonna go there that is not what's dude China is not going anywhere near there China has insane foreign policy that they haven't been like angling to sit in the city has a foreign policy of being the grown up in the room okay they have been trying they have been China has been trying to say look this whole rules based order that the US has stood up is a sham they the U.S. breaks it whenever they need it to look at China China is a model country we're the ones actually abiding by international law that is the case China has been is has been trying to make once once this oil crisis and the food crisis start spiking it's also going to hit China's bottom line because of all their trading partners there's a certain point where the cost benefit flips and China just gets tired of being pushed around and having their economy go into a depression because of an American president's stupid foreign excursion.

SPEAKER_02 28:38

At which point China as the one no Chris this is not China will not go into the Strait of Hormuz you're uh this feels like one-sided war gaming without fully like paying attention to their history and their internal their issues like they they benefit from the Strait of Hormuz more than it hurts them because they are still the ones producing things and they are the ones that are actively trying to help out other countries that are being negatively affected by it well we'll have to agree to disagree on that point.

SPEAKER_04 29:22

But like I said it's an opinion uh but the end result is that in my opinion the uh basically China ends up being the guaranteeing Iran security in exchange for getting them to back off and reopen the strait um and which essentially replaces the US as the guarantor of Middle East security and starts chipping away at the petrodollar I that's a lot of conjecture dude I I don't I just nothing about Chinese history or current policies makes me think that they're gonna try and get into a pissing match like in like out like so far away from any Chinese territorial waters it's not what they do.

SPEAKER_02 30:20

It's not what they have done.

SPEAKER_04 30:23

Um yeah and it's just like it's a test of US resolve because the US is already expended so many interceptors the US wouldn't dare risk it this isn't this this is an easy moral high ground test they can do with the international community to gauge American resolve to see how we might react if they invade Taiwan which Xi Jinping says he wants to do next year. He has structured Chinese society for the next three years for the last like three years around doing a Taiwan invasion next year. This is a this is a very easy like moral high ground testing ground of American resolve in the region. I don't think so I don't Chris we're we're disagreeing about this you're just doubling down I'm just explaining more but you're right so we can move back all right so then what other themes of 1984 do you can you think of that are also popping up today?

SPEAKER_02 31:31

The brutalization of women and the sexual repression being a necessary element for um the rise and fomenting of young men for for the party's cause how can you I I I'm having a hard time seeing sexual repression when porn when Grok and even ChatGPT is going to start rolling out porn soon yeah so you're saying uh that you're saying the two-tiered society um because on the one hand yeah Chris you we we grew up in this environment where like it was seen as a moral evil you know the idea of a woman needing an abortion you know um like that it was seen as like men get to brag about how many people they sleep with but if a woman does then she gets called a slut. Um and you see a lot of this on the right wing there is this blatant hypocrisy because on the one hand stud price and uh slut shame yeah like you you see this blatant hypocrisy where like the president that is chas that is been chosen by God supposedly has three different baby mamas and has defin and legally and in a court of law one of his wives said that he raped her but according to their version of the Bible that's fine.

SPEAKER_04 33:03

Marital rape doesn't exist to them yeah well and that's beside the Eugene Carroll lawsuit right yeah yeah and she was actually found by a judge and a jury to have uh I don't think it was rape it was something else like the lower charge.

SPEAKER_02 33:23

Yeah because one of the things in the book is and that people forget about it like I forget I don't think Winston I think Winston is married.

SPEAKER_04 33:30

I don't think he ever got divorced he's married at right because the wife just ran away and he just has no clue and she's not there to do the paperwork.

SPEAKER_02 33:38

Yeah and and one of the and the thing the reason that he you know he he's a very flawed character because he's meant to illustrate what this kind of a world would do to someone and one of the things that he loves about Julia is that she's a slut she likes sex she enjoys it she wants to have it with him his wife laid on her back and thought of England and her duty to the party to bear a child yeah um that's not someone that wants you yeah i it the the people the people saying that you know you need to have ten children for the species to survive not a single one of them knows what a female orgasm is I mean it's yeah uh and and you see this it it's this weird thing that I can't fully explain the hypocrisy but you've seen it you know it's it's just no one will call them on it so the modern Christian church is just built on repression.

SPEAKER_04 34:53

Um the Catholics like it used to always say like sex is only permissible for reproductive purposes in the missionary position and that was their stance for a few hundred years until they finally had to start backing off of it.

SPEAKER_02 35:05

Which is really sad because actually for a few hundred years they were teaching that like it's better if the woman comes during sex because then it's better more likely to have a baby. They switched around the 1400s Chris Yeah um like you see you see that the the church got more conservative as the Enlightenment happened whereas before the Enlightenment like you there's a lot of liberal monks that are like doing science and carrying the torch of whatever the church just felt they had to defend themselves against the Enlightenment so they just stood themselves up uh in opposition to it. Yeah and you see that exact same mechanic today.

SPEAKER_04 35:48

Yeah and and it's why we've gone back to the insane abortion laws we have right now where in like if you're in Texas and you've got a medical condition like an uh epcotic pregnancy, sorry, you're just condemned to death because no doctor's allowed to treat you. In the name of Jesus.

SPEAKER_02 36:11

Yep there was a uh bill a few years ago that uh they tried to get passed through in Ohio but even the Republicans realized you can't where they uh specifically wanted a procedure done that that if you abort nectop of pregnancy you have to reinsert it. Mm-hmm and uh I this is official medical advice that's not how that works. That's not how that's not that that'll that's maybe in a few hundred years once our technology advances you know genuinely if we had nanobots it'd be easy. Once you have nanobots everything's easy yeah that's why the board is so awesome. Like nanobots are great until you have great goo.

SPEAKER_04 36:56

Yeah we just like need nanobots to go in there like move the egg down into the right position and then we're all done yeah um but yeah that's uh something that like because Chris you're not really aware of this but like women have only had full rights in America for about 50 years. Oh I'm fully aware I remember Brenda telling me what it was like when uh she was allowed uh the right to vote. Because when she was born she couldn't vote and she got that in her lifetime.

SPEAKER_02 37:29

Yeah. Um and then I'm well aware and and one of the things you know Peter Thiel famously said that like um minorities and women are famously hard people for us to win over democratically so fuck democracy I guess.

SPEAKER_04 37:44

Yeah although Trump's margins with Latinos and blacks did and like all the minorities did rise by like 10 points in the last election which was a surprising anomaly.

SPEAKER_02 37:56

No no no Chris you don't pay attention to the online right and the on the right wins online because liberals have bad game and the leftists don't want to actually and the leftists are too busy getting into a circle and shooting each other. Like the the there the the the amount of lies the amount of hatred the amount of um low information voters that they're able to target the right wing is willing to play bare knuckle boxing and go after every bit of information about people that they can in order to tailor any of their advertisements to that per person.

SPEAKER_04 38:46

I mean deep user personalization but I but I but I also agree with you I see that on the right they will put power over purity any day at the end of the day they would rather their party hold power and they will tolerate ideological differences and figure it out. Whereas on the left we put purity over power more often which just devolves into infighting and us constantly like having bigger primary fights than the Republicans do. Yeah this this last round of the primary cycle was a bit unique because Trump was trying to purge so many people that crossed him and we'll see how that does in the general especially in Texas because Paxton Paxton's win in the primary over corn definitely puts the Texas Senate seed in play and there's a decent chance that the Senate flips because of Texas uh which would be hilarious.

SPEAKER_02 39:41

Yeah. But and but even with if all that happens so assuming let's assume a blue wave you know what let's be real crazy Chris just for a moment let's say we get two thirds in the Senate and three fourths in the in uh Congress I don't care how.

SPEAKER_04 39:57

No just say we get a majority we're not getting two thirds.

SPEAKER_02 40:00

No Chris hear me out. I'm saying even if we get that holy trifecta okay the history of economic warfare will be very apparent to people afterwards because there's a reason that all of the tax that all of the uh cuts from the big beautiful bill trigger in 2027 and venture capitalists and the tech and tech pro fascists are actively willing to burn down the system if they don't get everything they want well then the system's just gonna burn down other Trump's watch which is what he signed up for.

SPEAKER_04 40:40

Trump is like uh did you watch uh The Onion like the Glass Onion like the detective show like the movie that was out I saw the first one okay yeah there was a sequel that was released on Netflix um which and the villain quote unquote was a tech bro that always wanted his name mentioned in the same breath as the Mona Lisa and what he did was he paid France to borrow the Mona Lisa from the Louvre uh his insurance he said his insurance company made him install like a really expensive fire suppression system in case it was in case anything happened but he just couldn't help himself and uh installed an override that way he could actually touch the Mona Lisa and through the end of the story like that override gets triggered during a fire and the Mona Lisa is destroyed. And so he he becomes the billionaire that burned the Mona Lisa down and that's how he achieved his legacy. It was like the divine cosmic irony of the thing he wanted so much was his own undoing and he was going to be remembered for the undoing.

SPEAKER_01 41:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 41:53

And that is the exact trap Trump is in right now because you've got that timer you've got Iran you've got the famine plus there we still even haven't talked about this migrant crisis we're about to have in Florida from whatever the fuck we're doing in Cuba um forcing like an entire country to systemically collapse that's 90 miles off the coast of Florida right before midterm terrible policy. I mean I get it there's a lot of Cuban expats from the Castro days that want blood and want everything that they lost back and that's where root that's where uh Rubio is from that community and that's why they're cracking down as hard as they can but the regime's not going to give in especially not for the hundred million dollars that Trump just offered them which would do literally nothing to solve any of their major problems is purely like a number for the press uh to say hey we offered something um without any uh connection to the reality of what that number would buy in that country uh and they're just as what with cutting off their Venezuela oil they are in full scale societal lockdown and the boats are gonna start coming here very shortly.

SPEAKER_02 43:11

Yeah. Because that's like Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 43:20

In the middle of a hurricane season with a hollowed out FEMA.

SPEAKER_01 43:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 43:24

Because FEM oh no one is talking about how bad FEMA is hollowed out right now right as we go into the Chris there are people talking about it.

SPEAKER_02 43:34

They're not being listened to I know like I so every day green literally had a video today about that exact topic.

SPEAKER_04 43:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 43:47

Um about like talking about FEMA and stuff but it it doesn't matter. I mean it we I saw it during the I I still remember uh when Katrina happened like dad talking about how they should just shoot all the looters and I'm like Like, how do you know who's looting and who's trying to survive? And he's like, it's just shoot him anyway.

SPEAKER_04 44:05

Yeah. Like the amount of currents that are converging on the August eclipse cycle is immense. Because that eclipse and that eclipse cycle is going to set the tone for the next six months.

SPEAKER_02 44:24

Yep, sure.

SPEAKER_04 44:25

Yeah. I know you don't uh buy into my paganism as much, but you're the rationalist. Yeah. Which is ironic because I feel like we switched.

SPEAKER_01 44:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 44:39

Like growing up, I was the rationalist and you were the spiritualist, and now that we're in our 30s, like we've traded places. Almost like the Democrats and the Republicans traded places.

SPEAKER_02 44:48

Don't say it like that. Uh Chris, are you a fascist?

SPEAKER_04 44:54

Um God, I hope not. Yeah. I I think, if anything, the name that I've been toying around with how to identify myself would be Civic Libertarian. I believe in maximizing individual liberty, but balancing it with civic responsibility and proper government oversight to make sure a competitive market and prevent rent seeking and monopoly.

SPEAKER_02 45:22

Okay. What you're actually wanting is social democracy andor maybe democratic socialism. However, Civic libertarianism, it You don't have a government capable of regulating large international corporations capable of manipulating trillions of dollars in offshore bank accounts while trying to say we have a super tiny small government.

SPEAKER_04 45:53

Oh, I didn't say that. I didn't say we have a super tiny called full small government. I said we have to have a government big enough to actually rein in the corporations. That's what I said.

SPEAKER_02 46:03

That tends to mean that no liber you will like you you can call yourself a libertarian, but the libertarian party would not agree with you in none of like That's why it's kind of weird. It's weird talking about politics, Chris, but like Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 46:18

That's why I said like the Libertarian Party doesn't have much is more anarchy than liberty, because individual liberty requires safeguarding against all of the threats that could uh encroach upon it. The government is just one threat vector that can encroach upon your personal liberty. Um the corporations or the wealthy class are another vector. They're like religious institutions, right? The point of the secular government is to protect individual liberty and balance that with the need for collective responsibility, right? We we all need a military, right? We want roads and bridges, we want plumbing, right? That requires some sort of large-scale coordination to make all that work.

SPEAKER_02 47:07

Yeah. Okay, so Chris, Chris, uh, here's my thing. Do you believe that in your worldview that the people who work a factory have the right to agree to unionize and set work hours and collective bargain?

SPEAKER_04 47:22

Aaron Powell I believe they 100% have the right to unionize and collectively bargain. Whatever their hours and compensation are, that's like part of the negotiations. I'm not going to say there's one size fits all.

SPEAKER_02 47:35

Because that's like a lot of the people that ever talk about libertarianism, unless you have some way for the people doing things to band together, then you're just getting oligarchy with uh pretty set dressing.

SPEAKER_04 47:56

Exactly. That's and and and and unionization is about enabling micro-scale individual liberty um at its core. That's why the actual libertarian party doesn't live up to its name.

SPEAKER_01 48:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 48:15

Um because you cannot maximize individual liberty if you have undercut all of the pillars and all the power structures from which individual liberty is built. Yeah. That's just by definition. So you need a strong centralized like union infrastructure in order to counterbalance capital.

SPEAKER_01 48:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 48:39

Which is part of why IPS, honestly, the pagan org that uh I'm on the board of, it's why we are like structuring it like a worker union cooperative at its core. This is good. Yep. You'd like our bylaws.

unknown 48:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 48:59

Probably. We worked very hard on them.

SPEAKER_00 49:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 49:04

Yeah. Do you have any other questions to ask me about my political worldview? No.

SPEAKER_02 49:10

Like I know you're not nearly as well read as me and stuff.

SPEAKER_04 49:14

Um, and it's but uh like it it's just yeah, but it's to the point to where at our last board meeting we put in our standing legislation that we are going to use a local uh union print shop for all of our supplies and that it has to be a union shop. So that's how specific we're getting.

SPEAKER_01 49:37

Okay. Sounds fine. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 49:44

What did you think I was gonna say? Um nothing. Nothing.

SPEAKER_01 49:51

Well, like I I didn't have I don't know, I didn't I I I didn't have expectations.

SPEAKER_04 49:57

I don't know. Yeah, I hear that. Alright. Are are there any other c uh themes you think are worth touching on before we close out? Any other uh parallels with modern society?

SPEAKER_02 50:13

I mean I could keep going. There it's it's uh really hard not to. Um but just um say safe people.

SPEAKER_04 50:27

Yeah. And it was really nice to finally do this.

SPEAKER_02 50:32

Yeah. You kept wanting to like talk about way more serious topics without like background first, and I'm like, no.

SPEAKER_04 50:40

Well, we're doing background. This counts. Yeah. Okay. So is there a different book you'd like to talk about next time you're back?

SPEAKER_02 50:49

Uh sure. You want to do the trio, Brave New World Fahrenheit 451?

SPEAKER_04 50:55

I read Fahrenheit 451 in high school, so that's that would be an easy skim. Let's do that one first. Brave New World is thick.

SPEAKER_02 51:04

I mean, not really Okay, sure.

unknown 51:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:08

Fairly enough. What? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 51:10

Fahrenheit 451 I I can commit to on a reasonable time frame. Brave New World's gonna take me a while. I've got some other books I've got to finish in the next two weeks as well.

SPEAKER_02 51:18

Okay. Uh, but yeah, no. Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_04 51:23

Um, next time I have you on, we will talk Fahrenheit 451.

SPEAKER_00 51:32

Alright.

SPEAKER_04 51:33

Sounds good. Alright, thank you, Stacey. And while you're listening, see you next time.