WEBVTT - How We Win 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:05.680 All Zone media. 0:00:05.800 --> 0:00:10.240 First, no matter what happens, remember to breathe. It's always 0:00:10.360 --> 0:00:13.480 good advice to breathe. But taking good advice is easier 0:00:13.560 --> 0:00:16.880 said than done. Sometimes the world is so overwhelming that 0:00:16.960 --> 0:00:20.040 any added weight, even the weight of oxygen in your lungs, 0:00:20.480 --> 0:00:22.840 feels like it might be enough to drag you down. 0:00:23.520 --> 0:00:26.160 This is one of those times. The last week has 0:00:26.239 --> 0:00:28.880 brought about ten years worth of news, and we are 0:00:28.920 --> 0:00:33.000 all processing the seemingly inevitable coronation of a dictator and 0:00:33.040 --> 0:00:36.720 the sudden hope and possibility inspired by Joe Biden stepping 0:00:36.760 --> 0:00:40.680 down from the nomination. Welcome to it could happen here. 0:00:41.000 --> 0:00:44.000 I'm Robert Evans, and this is a podcast about things 0:00:44.000 --> 0:00:47.240 falling apart and sometimes about how to put them back together. 0:00:47.920 --> 0:00:50.320 The last time I sat down to talk with all 0:00:50.360 --> 0:00:53.080 of you like this was in the immediate aftermath of 0:00:53.159 --> 0:00:57.080 the Trump assassination attempt, just before the Republican National Convention. 0:00:57.720 --> 0:01:00.640 I told you not to panic. That's still good advice. 0:01:01.200 --> 0:01:03.560 I also told you that no matter how bad or 0:01:03.640 --> 0:01:08.240 good things may look, literally anything can happen in US politics, 0:01:08.280 --> 0:01:11.720 and by god, it has. I felt it was necessary 0:01:11.760 --> 0:01:14.160 to deliver that message because I saw an awful lot 0:01:14.200 --> 0:01:18.319 of people declaring We're doomed. Fascism is inevitable, and quite frankly, 0:01:18.680 --> 0:01:22.319 I think shit like that only helps the fascists. Well, 0:01:22.360 --> 0:01:24.720 it turned out I was right. A lot has happened 0:01:24.760 --> 0:01:27.640 over the last two weeks, and the situation now is 0:01:27.880 --> 0:01:30.480 very different than it was the day the former president 0:01:30.520 --> 0:01:34.080 took that grazing blow from a sniper's bullet. As is 0:01:34.240 --> 0:01:36.800 usually the case and instances like this, I've had a 0:01:36.800 --> 0:01:39.080 lot of people reach out to me since that episode 0:01:39.160 --> 0:01:41.840 saying versions of how did you know? And as good 0:01:41.840 --> 0:01:43.640 as it might be for my career to lean into 0:01:43.640 --> 0:01:45.800 that side of my reputation, the truth is that I 0:01:45.840 --> 0:01:48.320 am white knuckling it through every twist and turn like 0:01:48.360 --> 0:01:51.320 everyone else. I spent the RNC wondering if I'd been 0:01:51.360 --> 0:01:55.000 foolish telling people not to panic, And yes, I feel 0:01:55.000 --> 0:01:57.720 a hell of a lot better right now. Of course, 0:01:57.960 --> 0:02:00.320 I don't know what comes next. I just know that 0:02:00.320 --> 0:02:02.320 we're done with the portion of this mess where we 0:02:02.360 --> 0:02:06.480 spiral in a hopeless mier that was last week. This week, 0:02:06.640 --> 0:02:09.840 the outlook is a lot better, and not because Kamala 0:02:09.840 --> 0:02:12.800 Harris is our savior or because Nancy Pelosi is a 0:02:12.840 --> 0:02:17.239 three D chess master. But because men age and die. 0:02:17.320 --> 0:02:19.800 This is a fact I tried to remind myself of 0:02:19.880 --> 0:02:22.640 as I'd grown through that disastrous debate with the rest 0:02:22.680 --> 0:02:25.240 of the country. On one hand, I felt like we 0:02:25.240 --> 0:02:28.000 were all about to watch one ailing, power hungry man 0:02:28.080 --> 0:02:30.240 hand the keys to the kingdom over to a cadre 0:02:30.360 --> 0:02:34.320 of bloodthirsty fascists. But on the other hand, there's always 0:02:34.360 --> 0:02:39.000 something inherently optimistic in this simple reality. The people who 0:02:39.040 --> 0:02:42.480 would be our rulers will all die someday, and so 0:02:42.560 --> 0:02:46.079 long as men die, liberty will never perish. So long 0:02:46.120 --> 0:02:49.600 as men die, we have hope. I stole that line 0:02:49.600 --> 0:02:52.000 from Charlie Chaplin. He put it in the mouth of 0:02:52.000 --> 0:02:55.080 his character from The Great Dictator, a movie he produced 0:02:55.080 --> 0:02:58.440 at great personal cost in nineteen forty Riot. As Hitler 0:02:58.440 --> 0:03:01.440 and the Nazis reached the apex of their power, a 0:03:01.560 --> 0:03:04.520 rational analyst staring out at the playing field after the 0:03:04.520 --> 0:03:06.760 fall of France could be forgiven for having seen the 0:03:06.800 --> 0:03:11.359 outcome as certain Great Britain stood alone, Hitler's armies victorious 0:03:11.480 --> 0:03:14.280 on every theater, and the future of democracy and human 0:03:14.320 --> 0:03:19.400 liberty gasping for breath. One such rational analyst was Joseph Kennedy, 0:03:19.639 --> 0:03:23.160 US Ambassador to Great Britain and patriarch of the Kennedy family. 0:03:23.760 --> 0:03:26.400 Joseph was a man of wealth and power, whose sober 0:03:26.480 --> 0:03:29.040 judgment and cunning had seen him short the entire US 0:03:29.120 --> 0:03:31.520 stock market and the kind of fortune that let him 0:03:31.520 --> 0:03:34.480 buy his way into the ranks of global royalty. He 0:03:34.560 --> 0:03:37.600 was a man who had predicted the future once one big, 0:03:37.760 --> 0:03:39.840 and he let that convince him that he had the 0:03:39.920 --> 0:03:43.680 second sight. And so in November nineteen forty, less than 0:03:43.720 --> 0:03:46.640 a month after the release of The Great Dictator, Kennedy 0:03:46.680 --> 0:03:49.720 found himself in an interview with the Boston Globe, looking 0:03:49.720 --> 0:03:51.880 out at the ruin of Europe and the bombs falling 0:03:51.880 --> 0:03:55.920 on London. He told a reporter democracy is finished in England. 0:03:56.240 --> 0:03:59.360 It may be here here, of course, being the United 0:03:59.400 --> 0:04:03.160 States now. The resulting blowback to all of this saw 0:04:03.280 --> 0:04:07.240 Kennedy forced to resign his ambassadorship. The very next year, 0:04:07.320 --> 0:04:10.800 Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, and for several brutal months 0:04:10.840 --> 0:04:13.640 it looked like Joe had been right. Not only might 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:17.599 democracy be finished, but every system besides fascism might be 0:04:17.680 --> 0:04:22.599 hurtling towards annihilation and bondage under the Swastika, depending on 0:04:22.640 --> 0:04:25.400 how you count it. The Third Reich and fascism as 0:04:25.400 --> 0:04:28.719 a whole, reached its greatest extent of territorial power in 0:04:28.760 --> 0:04:33.080 either mid August or September nineteen forty one. By November 0:04:33.160 --> 0:04:36.200 of nineteen forty one, a year after Joe Kennedy's remarks 0:04:36.240 --> 0:04:39.280 to the Globe, Operation Barbarossa had been wrenched to a 0:04:39.320 --> 0:04:42.120 bloody halt, and the long battle to push the fascists 0:04:42.160 --> 0:04:44.120 back and drown them in the waters of their birth 0:04:44.160 --> 0:04:48.240 had begun. And so in the end it was Charlie Chaplin, 0:04:48.360 --> 0:04:51.120 not Joe Kennedy, who had the proper measure of things. 0:04:51.560 --> 0:04:55.240 Liberty survived because men died, many millions of them, from 0:04:55.320 --> 0:04:59.520 Kiev to Canterbury. We live in very different times now. 0:04:59.680 --> 0:05:02.919 The arm armies of fascism are not primarily conquering land 0:05:03.040 --> 0:05:07.000 under arms. The primary terrain of our present conflict exists 0:05:07.040 --> 0:05:09.600 within the hearts and souls of men and women. And 0:05:09.640 --> 0:05:12.599 while populism is still a favorite mechanism of action among 0:05:12.680 --> 0:05:15.960 the fascists, they have in this country at least given 0:05:16.080 --> 0:05:19.560 up on victory by sheer weight of numbers. It's true 0:05:19.600 --> 0:05:23.440 what they say war never changes. Weapons do, but the 0:05:23.480 --> 0:05:26.600 core of all human conflict revolves around the capture and 0:05:26.640 --> 0:05:30.880 denial of territory. If you can't occupy ground yourself, you 0:05:30.960 --> 0:05:34.400 must at least deny it to the enemy. In infantry combat, 0:05:34.440 --> 0:05:36.920 this is the primary use of a machine gun, not 0:05:36.960 --> 0:05:39.640 to kill people, but to blanket an area in bullets 0:05:39.680 --> 0:05:42.680 and stop the enemy from moving through it. In our 0:05:42.800 --> 0:05:45.720 modern war of thoughts and feelings, the machine gun has 0:05:45.800 --> 0:05:49.600 yielded to the fire hose of propaganda and disinformation. These 0:05:49.640 --> 0:05:52.360 have always been parts of the fascist arsenal, but the 0:05:52.400 --> 0:05:54.920 Internet has allowed an increase in the scale and speed 0:05:54.920 --> 0:05:57.240 of their deployment that is very much comparable to the 0:05:57.279 --> 0:06:01.279 replacement of bolt action rifles with automatic ones. The forces 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:04.799 of basic human decency have a natural advantage in terms 0:06:04.800 --> 0:06:08.080 of human terrain that should be impossible for the fascists 0:06:08.120 --> 0:06:11.520 to counter. No matter what the bastards say. Most people 0:06:11.560 --> 0:06:13.960 want to be left alone with the people they love 0:06:14.120 --> 0:06:17.000 to live their lives. The forces of hate, the people 0:06:17.000 --> 0:06:19.120 who want to throw trans kids in their parents in 0:06:19.160 --> 0:06:22.400 gas chambers and drown migrants in the Rio Grande, tap 0:06:22.440 --> 0:06:25.520 out at a little over a third of the population max. 0:06:26.160 --> 0:06:28.560 If you want to return to World War II metaphors, 0:06:28.560 --> 0:06:31.680 and why wouldn't you? The monsters are stuck in tiny, 0:06:31.800 --> 0:06:35.320 landlocked Germany without any gas or steel. The only way 0:06:35.400 --> 0:06:38.359 for them to access the resources in territory they need 0:06:38.400 --> 0:06:41.240 to maneuver themselves into a victory is by cutting us 0:06:41.279 --> 0:06:43.919 off from each other and keeping us too confused and 0:06:44.000 --> 0:06:48.240 divided to surround the bastards and smother them all for good. 0:06:48.720 --> 0:06:51.520 They do this by convincing you that you are isolated, 0:06:51.680 --> 0:06:56.800 alone and surrounded by them. Our hopelessness is their force multiplier. 0:06:57.320 --> 0:06:59.920 When leftists in the US look out at Ukrainians strike 0:07:00.320 --> 0:07:03.040 for survival and write them off as Nazis, as deluded 0:07:03.080 --> 0:07:06.320 tools of imperialism, When liberals and blue cities to cry 0:07:06.360 --> 0:07:09.840 college students protesting on behalf of dying Palestinian children as 0:07:09.920 --> 0:07:13.480 agents of hamas the lines of solidarity between a snap 0:07:13.720 --> 0:07:16.160 rather than wrapping like a garret around the throats of 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:19.800 our opponents. This is why you've seen so much allegiance 0:07:19.840 --> 0:07:22.720 and sympathy between the cruelest and most eluded segments of 0:07:22.760 --> 0:07:25.680 the Western left. The people who laughed at Syrian civilians 0:07:25.720 --> 0:07:28.400 sheltering from Brishah al Assad's bombs and called them the 0:07:28.440 --> 0:07:31.720 CIA and the agents of Putin's Russia and Peter Teal's 0:07:31.720 --> 0:07:35.960 neo monarchist right. The Teals, Bannons, Putins, Airdoins, Trumps and 0:07:36.000 --> 0:07:38.880 Modis of the world know how lonely they are. The 0:07:38.920 --> 0:07:41.280 only way they can win is to convince you that 0:07:41.360 --> 0:07:44.880 you're alone. Then they have you at a disadvantage. Then 0:07:45.120 --> 0:07:48.360 they can kill us one by one. You know, there's 0:07:48.400 --> 0:07:51.240 no smooth way to transition to an ad and a 0:07:51.280 --> 0:08:05.600 piece like this, but here it is. We're back now. 0:08:05.840 --> 0:08:08.320 I'm not a young man, but I do sometimes tend 0:08:08.360 --> 0:08:11.840 to think of humanity as a single, vast, gestalt organism 0:08:12.160 --> 0:08:14.960 groping for survival and comfort in a world that mostly 0:08:15.000 --> 0:08:18.680 exists beyond what we can see. Majority of people are 0:08:18.760 --> 0:08:21.680 happy existing as part of that vast whole. We take 0:08:21.720 --> 0:08:24.200 comfort and safety in our communion with the rest of 0:08:24.200 --> 0:08:27.400 the species. But there are a few diseased minds out 0:08:27.440 --> 0:08:30.040 there that don't believe in the rest of us. These 0:08:30.080 --> 0:08:33.800 sollipsists see themselves as the only minds, and the perpetuation 0:08:33.880 --> 0:08:36.640 of their own power and will as the only real good. 0:08:37.520 --> 0:08:41.440 That's why men like Peter Teel seek physical immortality, and 0:08:41.480 --> 0:08:43.959 it's why men like Vladimir Putin or Hitler seek the 0:08:44.040 --> 0:08:46.880 kind of immortality that comes from welding the edifice of 0:08:46.880 --> 0:08:51.000 a nation state to themselves. Hitler is Germany, and Germany 0:08:51.040 --> 0:08:54.520 will last forever. Elon Musk sees his children as an 0:08:54.559 --> 0:08:58.720 extension of himself, and his fantasies of space colonization are 0:08:58.760 --> 0:09:01.520 really just a fantasy that he will remain central to 0:09:01.600 --> 0:09:06.760 humanity's future down through eternity. Musk has repeatedly identified himself 0:09:06.800 --> 0:09:10.280 as a pro natalist, and he believes his responsibility is 0:09:10.280 --> 0:09:12.680 to have as many children as possible to secure a 0:09:12.720 --> 0:09:16.560 pro human future. The term pro human might confuse you, 0:09:16.880 --> 0:09:19.240 given the lack of concern he has for the children 0:09:19.280 --> 0:09:22.079 being bombed in Gaza or who will surely die in 0:09:22.120 --> 0:09:25.160 the mass deportation camps through a publican party is currently 0:09:25.200 --> 0:09:29.000 salivating to open. But the only real human Elon ses 0:09:29.080 --> 0:09:32.080 is himself, which is why he equates the survival of 0:09:32.120 --> 0:09:35.880 the species with his own ability to breed. As I type, 0:09:35.880 --> 0:09:38.600 this video has begun circulating around the Internet from an 0:09:38.600 --> 0:09:41.840 interview Musk conducted with Jordan Peterson for The Daily Wire. 0:09:42.400 --> 0:09:45.240 In it, Musk explains why he has now fully embraced 0:09:45.320 --> 0:09:50.080 politics endorsing Donald Trump and declaring himself at war with wokeism, 0:09:50.440 --> 0:09:53.679 which he describes as an existential threat to the species. 0:09:54.160 --> 0:09:56.520 He claims that what cinched this for him was his 0:09:56.679 --> 0:09:58.199 daughter deciding to transition. 0:09:58.840 --> 0:10:02.480 It happened to one of my my older boys where 0:10:02.600 --> 0:10:08.680 I was, I was essentially tricked into signing documents for 0:10:08.920 --> 0:10:12.000 one of my older boys. There was a lot of confusion, 0:10:12.960 --> 0:10:16.719 and you know, I was told, oh, you know, might 0:10:16.720 --> 0:10:21.840 commit suicide if it's incredibly evil. And I agree with 0:10:21.880 --> 0:10:23.800 you that people that have been promoting this should go 0:10:23.800 --> 0:10:26.520 to prison. So I was, I was stricked into doing this. 0:10:27.520 --> 0:10:29.480 You know, it wasn't explained to me that puberty blockers 0:10:29.520 --> 0:10:36.200 are actually just sterilization drugs. So I lost my son essentially. 0:10:36.880 --> 0:10:38.000 So you know, they. 0:10:39.320 --> 0:10:42.520 They're callot dead naming for a reason, all right. So 0:10:42.760 --> 0:10:45.680 the reason it's called dead naming is because so my 0:10:45.720 --> 0:10:49.360 son is dead, killed by the Wok mind virus. 0:10:50.040 --> 0:10:53.080 Musk's child is not, in fact dead, but they have 0:10:53.160 --> 0:10:56.960 expressed an identity utterly separate from Elon, an identity he 0:10:57.000 --> 0:11:01.120 cannot understand because Musk can only see his children as 0:11:01.160 --> 0:11:04.559 an extension of himself and his ego. This is in fact, 0:11:04.760 --> 0:11:09.840 worse than death. It is a threat to Musk's own life. This, incidentally, 0:11:09.960 --> 0:11:13.320 is why Musk and his fellow travelers see transgender kids 0:11:13.360 --> 0:11:16.720 as such a threat. Accepting a trans child, even if 0:11:16.760 --> 0:11:19.320 you don't fully understand how and why they feel the 0:11:19.320 --> 0:11:22.040 way they do, is one of the most radical acts 0:11:22.080 --> 0:11:25.439 of love imaginable. To do this means that you've accepted 0:11:25.600 --> 0:11:29.360 on a fundamental level that your children are autonomous beings, 0:11:29.679 --> 0:11:33.600 not an extension of you, but something new, wonderful, and unique. 0:11:34.160 --> 0:11:37.480 The essence of parental love is to give your children 0:11:37.559 --> 0:11:41.000 to the world. This means accepting that you are finite 0:11:41.280 --> 0:11:44.040 that the world goes on without you. If you see 0:11:44.080 --> 0:11:47.560 all humanity as an extension of your own ego, nothing 0:11:47.559 --> 0:11:50.680 could be more frightening. The people who feel this way, 0:11:50.840 --> 0:11:54.520 people like Elon, are mutations, a glitch in the human 0:11:54.559 --> 0:11:56.719 system that starts as a glitch within the heart of 0:11:56.760 --> 0:12:00.280 an individual. It comes as a byproduct of success and 0:12:00.320 --> 0:12:04.800 the very visible, spectacular ways that feed narcissism. When I 0:12:04.840 --> 0:12:07.600 think about stuff like this, I refer often back to 0:12:07.640 --> 0:12:11.319 a great article by the anthropologist Richard Lee, Eating Christmas 0:12:11.360 --> 0:12:15.520 in the Kalahari. Lee spent years living among the Ikung Bushmen, 0:12:15.760 --> 0:12:18.640 a Bantu speaking hunter gatherer group who were seen by 0:12:18.679 --> 0:12:21.240 anthropologists as some of the people still living in a 0:12:21.280 --> 0:12:25.320 manner most similar to our ancient ancestors. One Christmas, as 0:12:25.360 --> 0:12:28.320 a show of gratitude to his hosts, Lee purchased a 0:12:28.360 --> 0:12:31.560 massive ox for the holiday feast. He was excited to 0:12:31.600 --> 0:12:34.040 show this great gift off to his new friends, and 0:12:34.080 --> 0:12:36.720 he was proud of himself for having gotten it, and 0:12:36.960 --> 0:12:40.120 he was utterly shocked when they responded to his pride 0:12:40.200 --> 0:12:44.400 with mockery of him and his ox, insulting it as scrawny, tiny, 0:12:44.679 --> 0:12:48.360 hardly fit to eat now. This shockedly because the ox 0:12:48.400 --> 0:12:50.920 he had purchased was, of course quite large, and it 0:12:50.960 --> 0:12:53.520 was eventually explained to him that his friends were reacting 0:12:53.559 --> 0:12:56.600 with mockery not to his gift, but to the evident 0:12:56.679 --> 0:12:59.480 pride he had shown in it. Bringing in a great 0:12:59.520 --> 0:13:02.040 beast way of meat, either as a hunter or from 0:13:02.080 --> 0:13:04.600 buying it as Burton did, is the kind of thing 0:13:04.600 --> 0:13:07.160 that can go to a young man's head. If you 0:13:07.240 --> 0:13:09.199 are the one with the pocket book or the one 0:13:09.240 --> 0:13:12.199 who fires the arrow, you can forget that the meat 0:13:12.240 --> 0:13:14.800 before you, the meat that you've brought into the community 0:13:15.280 --> 0:13:18.240 is not the product purely of your own genius, but 0:13:18.520 --> 0:13:21.199 is a product of all of the time and resources 0:13:21.280 --> 0:13:25.120 invested in you by the community. The shaming of the meat, 0:13:25.160 --> 0:13:27.319 as this tactic was called, is a time honored way 0:13:27.360 --> 0:13:29.960 of correcting the glitch in young men of the Ukun 0:13:30.120 --> 0:13:33.280 before it can turn terminal. As one elder in the 0:13:33.360 --> 0:13:36.880 tribe eventually explained to Lee, when a young man kills 0:13:36.960 --> 0:13:38.920 much meat, he comes to think of himself as a 0:13:39.000 --> 0:13:41.120 chief or a big man, and he thinks of the 0:13:41.160 --> 0:13:44.120 rest of us as his servants or inferiors. We can't 0:13:44.160 --> 0:13:47.360 accept this. We refuse one who boasts, for some day 0:13:47.440 --> 0:13:50.240 his pride will make him kill somebody. So we always 0:13:50.240 --> 0:13:52.960 speak of his meat as worthless. This way we cool 0:13:53.000 --> 0:13:57.040 his heart and make him gentle. And speaking of cooling 0:13:57.080 --> 0:13:59.600 your heart, why don't you cool your heart with some ads. 0:14:00.080 --> 0:14:02.920 And then we'll come back to conclude this in a 0:14:02.920 --> 0:14:17.240 little bit, we're back. It has been theorized that the 0:14:17.280 --> 0:14:20.480 shaming of the meat is a social construct that may 0:14:20.520 --> 0:14:23.880 help to explain one of the evolutionary values of satire, 0:14:24.080 --> 0:14:28.480 perhaps even why humanity keeps producing comedians. They act as 0:14:28.520 --> 0:14:32.160 a part of our species immune system when this glitch 0:14:32.240 --> 0:14:34.680 in the hearts of young men isn't punctured. When it's 0:14:34.720 --> 0:14:38.560 allowed to take off and dominate them, then it changes 0:14:38.600 --> 0:14:41.160 them on a fundamental level, and the being that it 0:14:41.280 --> 0:14:45.560 leaves in its wake seems to understand instinctively that laughter 0:14:46.160 --> 0:14:49.560 is a danger to it. This ultimately explains why Musk 0:14:49.600 --> 0:14:53.120 purchase Twitter and why Barack Obama's mockery of Donald Trump 0:14:53.240 --> 0:14:56.320 during that White House Correspondence Center set us all down 0:14:56.360 --> 0:14:59.640 the dark path that we currently are walking. So clearly, 0:15:00.080 --> 0:15:02.840 humor alone doesn't always save us from these kinds of 0:15:02.840 --> 0:15:07.000 people either. What will I have several times and my 0:15:07.120 --> 0:15:10.200 various shows identified myself as an anarchist, and I tend 0:15:10.240 --> 0:15:12.400 to do that even though I don't feel fully comfortable 0:15:12.440 --> 0:15:15.600 with the title, because brevity matters. I'm speaking to a 0:15:15.640 --> 0:15:18.640 mass audience, and using that word gets as close enough 0:15:18.680 --> 0:15:21.160 for the sake of a podcast. But I'm not an 0:15:21.160 --> 0:15:22.960 anarchist in the sense that I have some sort of 0:15:23.160 --> 0:15:26.760 clear vision for how to build a utopia. Obviously, I 0:15:26.800 --> 0:15:30.640 do think anarchism has some answers for how human beings 0:15:30.720 --> 0:15:33.120 might build a better world. That's why I went through 0:15:33.120 --> 0:15:35.160 a Java, It's why we cover a lot of the 0:15:35.200 --> 0:15:37.840 things that we cover on these series. But I am 0:15:37.920 --> 0:15:42.800 primarily an anarchist because I understand that hierarchy kills, because 0:15:42.840 --> 0:15:46.160 I understand that hierarchy separates us from each other and 0:15:46.240 --> 0:15:50.000 acts as a petri dish within which this glitch can propagate. 0:15:50.440 --> 0:15:53.000 I'm an anarchist because I love the people around me, 0:15:53.160 --> 0:15:55.680 because I understand that I am human, and because I 0:15:55.720 --> 0:15:58.760 see that my role in the human immune system is 0:15:58.840 --> 0:16:02.120 to remind other people of that fact and to point 0:16:02.160 --> 0:16:05.120 a finger at the people who have forgotten that they're human. 0:16:05.880 --> 0:16:08.040 I promised in the title of this little piece that 0:16:08.080 --> 0:16:10.120 I would tell you how we can win, and I 0:16:10.160 --> 0:16:13.280 can do that in a few words. We have to 0:16:13.320 --> 0:16:18.160 remember that we are humans. Kamala Harris is an authoritarian. 0:16:18.320 --> 0:16:20.360 The fact that she wants to be president at all 0:16:20.440 --> 0:16:22.880 should make you leery of her. But she's not a 0:16:22.880 --> 0:16:26.480 Trump or a Musk. She has not separated herself entirely 0:16:26.520 --> 0:16:30.080 from humanity, if you'll forgive the reference. She understands that 0:16:30.120 --> 0:16:32.840 she exists in the context of all that came before her. 0:16:33.560 --> 0:16:36.160 Joe Biden has been hungry for power all his life. 0:16:36.440 --> 0:16:39.560 The glitch is in him. It has consumed most of him, 0:16:40.000 --> 0:16:42.680 but as we all learned recently, not all of him. 0:16:42.960 --> 0:16:45.800 He too understands that he is a part of humanity, 0:16:46.040 --> 0:16:49.560 indivisible from it. Now you can and should still view 0:16:49.600 --> 0:16:52.080 the man with disgust, even hatred. He ought to be 0:16:52.160 --> 0:16:55.280 in the Hague. But he also stepped down and gave 0:16:55.360 --> 0:16:57.560 up the thing that a week ago I'd have said 0:16:57.680 --> 0:17:00.760 probably mattered most to him in the world. This was 0:17:00.800 --> 0:17:03.600 not a purely selfless gesture. I'm sure he acted in 0:17:03.720 --> 0:17:06.800 large part to try and salvage his own legacy, but 0:17:06.880 --> 0:17:09.879 it is also not a thing Donald Trump could ever do. 0:17:10.480 --> 0:17:12.960 You certainly wouldn't see a man like Vladimir Putin make 0:17:13.000 --> 0:17:15.480 a similar choice. And we've all seen the kind of 0:17:15.520 --> 0:17:18.240 slaughter bb Netan Yahoo is willing to back to hold 0:17:18.280 --> 0:17:21.880 on to power. None of this redeems Biden or makes 0:17:21.920 --> 0:17:24.960 him a good person or any less complicit in genocide 0:17:25.000 --> 0:17:27.480 than he was a week ago. I think it does 0:17:27.520 --> 0:17:29.399 put us in a better position when it comes to 0:17:29.440 --> 0:17:33.359 fighting for a ceasefire in Gaza. Everyone in US politics 0:17:33.440 --> 0:17:36.520 knows that Biden's political end started with the surge of 0:17:36.640 --> 0:17:40.240 uncommitted voters in Michigan. The loss of a second term 0:17:40.400 --> 0:17:44.119 is not a sufficient punishment for Biden's actions, but it 0:17:44.280 --> 0:17:47.040 is a punishment that has the ability to reshape the 0:17:47.119 --> 0:17:50.760 kind of risks US presidents will and won't take for 0:17:50.920 --> 0:17:54.240 Israel from now on. It has also helped me make 0:17:54.320 --> 0:17:57.480 sense of something that happened in twenty twenty. You all 0:17:57.520 --> 0:18:00.800 remember the moment during the one presidential debate that year 0:18:00.920 --> 0:18:04.600 President Trump attacked Biden over the numerous scandals of his son, Hunter, 0:18:04.960 --> 0:18:07.960 a troubled drug addict who tried and largely failed to 0:18:08.080 --> 0:18:11.400 use his father's name to secure wealth and standing for himself. 0:18:11.840 --> 0:18:15.480 Hunter's troubles have been tremendously embarrassing to his father, but 0:18:15.600 --> 0:18:18.120 up in front of the country and world, Biden refused 0:18:18.119 --> 0:18:20.840 to throw his son under the bus. He embraced him 0:18:20.880 --> 0:18:23.960 and expressed the kind of unconditional love that is utterly 0:18:24.040 --> 0:18:27.640 alien to men like Trump and Musk. Biden, for all 0:18:27.640 --> 0:18:30.360 the evil that he has done in the raw selfishness 0:18:30.359 --> 0:18:33.000 that allowed him to reach the presidency in the first place, 0:18:33.560 --> 0:18:36.520 is a man who loves his son. Most importantly, he 0:18:36.560 --> 0:18:40.000 loves Hunter as Hunter and not purely as an extension 0:18:40.119 --> 0:18:43.640 of Joe Biden. There's an excellent series of articles out 0:18:43.640 --> 0:18:46.080 in the Atlantic right now by Tim Alberta, who might 0:18:46.119 --> 0:18:49.639 be the finest political journalist writing today. Tim had the 0:18:49.640 --> 0:18:52.120 good instincts to look behind the scenes at the team 0:18:52.240 --> 0:18:55.760 Trump picked to orchestrate his twenty twenty four campaign, and 0:18:55.800 --> 0:18:58.639 he's delivered deep reporting about why they've made some of 0:18:58.680 --> 0:19:02.679 the baffling decisions they've made. Chief among bafflements was the 0:19:02.680 --> 0:19:06.440 selection of J. D. Vance as Vice President. Vance barely 0:19:06.480 --> 0:19:08.680 won his seat in Congress with the help of tens 0:19:08.720 --> 0:19:11.800 of millions of teal dollars. He is a liar without 0:19:11.840 --> 0:19:14.800 principal who has repeatedly expressed his desire to tear up 0:19:14.800 --> 0:19:17.919 the Constitution and usher in a new red caesar to 0:19:17.960 --> 0:19:21.439 bring this nation to heal under men like him. I 0:19:21.560 --> 0:19:24.880 watched Vance's speech at the RNC live at a Heritage 0:19:24.880 --> 0:19:28.520 Foundation party, surrounded by the rightest of the right. Not 0:19:28.640 --> 0:19:31.600 one of them offered a single word of praise Vance. 0:19:31.760 --> 0:19:32.639 Was that bad. 0:19:33.480 --> 0:19:36.400 JD is the sort of pick Trump's handlers were sure 0:19:36.440 --> 0:19:39.280 that they could afford to make. Vance would bring the 0:19:39.320 --> 0:19:42.720 Silicon Valley billionaire set to the table, open up their 0:19:42.720 --> 0:19:45.400 purse strings, convince them they were welcome in the new 0:19:45.480 --> 0:19:48.560 ruling class. Sure he wouldn't bring any votes, but a 0:19:48.560 --> 0:19:51.320 week ago, running against Sleepy Joe, the sick man of 0:19:51.440 --> 0:19:55.359 US politics, Trump's team felt they had votes to spare well. 0:19:56.080 --> 0:19:59.119 Now the worm has turned. The Poles still point to 0:19:59.160 --> 0:20:02.320 an election that is deeply in doubt. But Poles don't 0:20:02.359 --> 0:20:06.240 say everything. The panic of their responses to Biden's stepping down, 0:20:06.280 --> 0:20:09.359 the chaotic spree of hate points to a single truth. 0:20:09.800 --> 0:20:12.320 They don't know what to do now. The monsters are 0:20:12.359 --> 0:20:16.280 off balance, stumbling, unable to find the ground. We can 0:20:16.320 --> 0:20:18.440 see some evidence of this and the fact that Musk 0:20:18.600 --> 0:20:21.359 just came out and canceled has promised forty five million 0:20:21.400 --> 0:20:24.840 dollar monthly donations to the Trump campaign. This is the 0:20:24.880 --> 0:20:28.080 first chain of solidarity between our enemies to crumble, and 0:20:28.119 --> 0:20:31.159 it won't be the last. Every time that happens, we 0:20:31.280 --> 0:20:35.000 get more room to move and maneuver. The fascists may 0:20:35.040 --> 0:20:37.760 well regain their footing and time to crush us. But 0:20:37.840 --> 0:20:41.159 something else has happened in the last few days as well. People, 0:20:41.400 --> 0:20:44.439 we humans, as a vast, blurry mob, have started to 0:20:44.440 --> 0:20:47.080 remember how many of us there are and how much 0:20:47.080 --> 0:20:49.800 potential the weight of our numbers gives us. We have 0:20:49.880 --> 0:20:52.240 started to reconnect with each other, and that has also 0:20:52.359 --> 0:20:56.320 opened up possibilities that did not exist before. Kamala Harris 0:20:56.359 --> 0:20:58.479 and the Democratic Party aren't going to bring an end 0:20:58.480 --> 0:21:00.960 to global capitalism or drive a stake into the heart 0:21:01.000 --> 0:21:04.000 of the oil and gas industry. There remains so much 0:21:04.000 --> 0:21:06.440 else to do, so many other fights ahead of us. 0:21:06.920 --> 0:21:09.200 But if we can crush the Republicans here, it will 0:21:09.240 --> 0:21:11.800 be the fourth election cycle in a row where the 0:21:11.880 --> 0:21:14.720 Right made a war on trans people, on the concept 0:21:14.760 --> 0:21:18.160 of diversity, on any kind of open, secular society the 0:21:18.160 --> 0:21:20.840 core of their electoral efforts, and it will be the 0:21:20.880 --> 0:21:24.120 fourth time that they have done that and lost. If 0:21:24.160 --> 0:21:26.960 we break their lines and send them fleeing into the hills, 0:21:27.000 --> 0:21:29.840 we have an opportunity to shatter their power and use 0:21:29.880 --> 0:21:32.919 the momentum of that victory to start building something better. 0:21:33.359 --> 0:21:35.919 There's no cleaner, easy route to a better future, but 0:21:35.960 --> 0:21:38.000 our chances are a hell of a lot better the 0:21:38.080 --> 0:21:40.760 more of us that stay alive, and the more scattered 0:21:40.800 --> 0:21:43.880 and frightened that we can make our enemies. Our strength 0:21:43.920 --> 0:21:47.239 has always come from solidarity, from the understanding that we 0:21:47.280 --> 0:21:49.520 need each other and that we are part of each other. 0:21:50.000 --> 0:21:52.439 The Putins and Trumps and Musks and Teals of the 0:21:52.440 --> 0:21:54.879 world are, of course a part of humanity as well, 0:21:55.200 --> 0:21:58.480 but they are incapable of seeing or accepting that. And 0:21:58.560 --> 0:22:01.800