Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.
Speaker 2: You're weekly reminder that I have a podcast that comes
Speaker 2: out twice a week, so it's actually twice a week
Speaker 2: reminder that I have a podcast. It's also a show
Speaker 2: where we talk about stuff, and we talk about that stuff,
Speaker 2: usually to a guest. And this week my guest is Katabugazala,
Speaker 2: and she's cool and she's my guest, and she's also
Speaker 2: running for I keep thinking Congress means senate.
Speaker 1: I'm running for the US House. Yeah, the ninth District
Speaker 1: of Illinois. And Hi, I'm Kat.
Speaker 2: Nice to have you. We also have a producer named
Speaker 2: Sophie Hi. Sophie Hi, Sophie Hi, and our audio engineer
Speaker 2: is Eva Hi Eva Hi Hi.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to our voices are The musical.
Speaker 2: Was written force by un Woman. And this is part
Speaker 2: two on another episode about the things they're trying to
Speaker 2: take away from us, in this case Habeas corpus Uka.
Speaker 2: They're not allowed to throw you in jail unless they
Speaker 2: think you did something, which is such a fundamental right
Speaker 2: that they literally didn't even think they had to explain
Speaker 2: it in the fucking Constitution. They only had to explain
Speaker 2: how to suspend it in the time of crisis. In
Speaker 2: part one, we talked about hard boiled egg, who wants
Speaker 2: to take it away from everyone? And I'm just actually
Speaker 2: not above making fun of certain people. I like, I
Speaker 2: guess I never really thought it was above making fun
Speaker 2: of certain people. I think when people are trying to
Speaker 2: eradicate you, that's like a nice thing you can do
Speaker 2: is only make fun of them. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: As someone that grew up conservative, like someone comes in
Speaker 1: good faith, like if you're ignorant, Like yeah, like ignorance itself,
Speaker 1: Like you don't know what you don't know. I mean
Speaker 1: I didn't know about like the Dakota people being executed.
Speaker 1: I had no idea about that. Yeah. But like if
Speaker 1: someone's trying to tell you to justify your existence, you
Speaker 1: don't have to do that. Yeah, we should just understand
Speaker 1: that we don't need to take in good faith and
Speaker 1: as people are idiots.
Speaker 2: I think that's such a good point. Is like specifically
Speaker 2: around good faith, is like there are people who like
Speaker 2: don't know things, and I don't know things. I learned
Speaker 2: that every week. I read a ton of books and
Speaker 2: essays and articles every week, and I learned so many
Speaker 2: new things. And yeah, if you can engage with someone
Speaker 2: in good faith, engage with them in good faith. I
Speaker 2: do believe in talking to people and figuring out our
Speaker 2: differences and shit, and some people are trying to kill
Speaker 2: us all and I'm being real nice if all I
Speaker 2: do is call them hard boiled eggs, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: some part one we talked about Stephen Miller and Trump
Speaker 2: administration talking about getting rid of the most basic right
Speaker 2: in the concept of a legal system. And so we're
Speaker 2: talking about where that concept of a legal system came
Speaker 2: from English common law, which means we have to talk
Speaker 2: about England, which historically is not my favorite thing, but
Speaker 2: sometimes it's kind of interesting. And it's interesting when you
Speaker 2: don't look at so and so begat so and so
Speaker 2: and then they built an army to fight so and so,
Speaker 2: but instead look about like what peasants were doing, and
Speaker 2: the fact that everyone started off not as colonial people,
Speaker 2: even the English, because they were called the British at
Speaker 2: the time. Okay, British history a long ass time ago,
Speaker 2: like BCE or whatever. Celtic people lived on the island.
Speaker 2: They weren't the first people to live there or whatever.
Speaker 2: But we're going to start with them. The southern trunk
Speaker 2: of the island what's now England was a Celtic group
Speaker 2: of people known as the Britons. They spoke the Celtic
Speaker 2: language Brittonic. In forty three AD, Rome was like you're
Speaker 2: in the Empire now, and they called it Britannia and
Speaker 2: they held it until the early four hundreds. Usually when
Speaker 2: people talk about Rome leaving because people call the time
Speaker 2: afterwards the Dark Ages, which is a lie, and every
Speaker 2: historian will roll their eyes if you say the Dark Ages.
Speaker 2: But I really like it because it's really metal sounding,
Speaker 2: but it's presented as this abandonment, right the Romans were
Speaker 2: busy elsewhere, they couldn't keep up the colony. Britannia fell
Speaker 2: into ruin in darkness, but at least one historian I've
Speaker 2: read a man named Tony Dyer who's pamphlet Anglo Saxon Democracy.
Speaker 2: We're actually going to talk about him and what he's
Speaker 2: up to these days at the very end of this episode.
Speaker 2: It's actually really interesting. He wrote a pamphlet called Anglo
Speaker 2: Saxon Democracy about fifteen years ago. It's one of my
Speaker 2: main sources for this part of the story, and it
Speaker 2: presents a very different example of how even the Roman
Speaker 2: abandonment could have gone down in three eighty three. This
Speaker 2: is what I was saying earlier about I live in
Speaker 2: the past instead of the present. I'm like, I spent
Speaker 2: all day reading about three eighty three AD or whatever.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I don't know what's happening in the twenty
Speaker 2: first century. In three eighty three, Rome started pulling back
Speaker 2: its troops because they were needed elsewhere. And then in
Speaker 2: the year four oh six, the quote unquote barbarians crossed
Speaker 2: the Rhine and started heading towards Rome. So by fourteen
Speaker 2: ten there's barely any troops left in Britannia. Basically, by
Speaker 2: fourteen ten, the Romano British, because they're no longer just
Speaker 2: the British. They've integrated with each other in various ways
Speaker 2: over hundreds of years. They're like, get the fuck out
Speaker 2: of here, we can do this for ourselves, right, And
Speaker 2: there's this whole movement I hope to come back to
Speaker 2: on this show, mostly in Gaul what's now France, especially Brittany,
Speaker 2: the chunk of northwest France. That shit confused me for
Speaker 2: a million years. The fact that the Normans do get
Speaker 2: their name from Norway, but they're from France, and then
Speaker 2: Britannia is part of France. It's just like it's fucking
Speaker 2: speaking of not having enough names, a bunch of people
Speaker 2: teamed up into massive peasant armies the bakude from a
Speaker 2: Gaulish word for fighters, and these were people who are
Speaker 2: tired of high taxes and low benefits basically like Rome
Speaker 2: coming and taking their money and not actually providing social services,
Speaker 2: because governments should provide social services. That's the exchange for taxes.
Speaker 1: Hello, yeah, say it again. Brought up people in the back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then there's a lot of upright scenes if
Speaker 2: you don't give people social services and just take their money.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: It's one of those things too where people are like
Speaker 2: like the libertarian right is just like, oh, taxes are
Speaker 2: the problem, and you're like, well, tax is the fun.
Speaker 2: Certain shit is like I don't mind that we all
Speaker 2: collectively keep the roads maintained and make sure people have
Speaker 2: houses and don't die. That sounds great.
Speaker 1: I think that's good. Yeah yeah, but like what if
Speaker 1: we all like paid our fair share, like all of us,
Speaker 1: like every one of us to live in a society.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it wasn't a way to extract money from
Speaker 2: people and put it towards it, like, oh, I don't
Speaker 2: know fucking Elon Musk's various schemes to take money from
Speaker 2: the government for carbon credits or whatever.
Speaker 1: As someone that was laid off because of Elon Musk
Speaker 1: and just finish my taxes as a freelancer.
Speaker 2: Ooh, you got to pay double.
Speaker 1: I got to pay double and I am on a
Speaker 1: payment plan with IRS. Oh fuck yep, first year I've
Speaker 1: had to do that. Yeah, check out my financial disclosures
Speaker 1: if you're curious. Seeing an independent contractor and having to
Speaker 1: pay taxes in this country is defly a villain origin story.
Speaker 1: That's like yeah, yeah, it's wild. And then like having
Speaker 1: to fill out of public financial disclosure form like the
Speaker 1: House Ethics Committee like you have interest and it's like
Speaker 1: one to two hundred dollars and like the House Ethics
Speaker 1: Committee literally is like you're a broke bitch. Cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So independent contractors paid double taxes and do whatever everything.
Speaker 1: Podcasters in Old England were also doing.
Speaker 2: That, yeah, exactly. Yeah, And we know about these peasant
Speaker 2: uprisings in France and we also know that they kind
Speaker 2: of went to Spain, like a lot of places at
Speaker 2: the fringes of the Roman Empire. The argument is that
Speaker 2: they were probably there in England. There's not a lot
Speaker 2: of written sources during the quote unquote dark ages, and
Speaker 2: that is the one part that is true. Is the
Speaker 2: first couple hundred years after the Romans leap, there's like
Speaker 2: not a lot of people writing shit down. But people
Speaker 2: are like, we don't like fucking giving roam our money
Speaker 2: and not getting anything back. And some of those people
Speaker 2: were enslaved who joined these peasant armies, and so they
Speaker 2: had an extra reason to hate the economic arrangement of
Speaker 2: the time that said, getting rid of Rome does not
Speaker 2: get rid of slavery. Slavery stays threat the entire story
Speaker 2: we're telling, it starts transitioning to more like surf, dumb
Speaker 2: and stuff in the eleventh century. Anyway, people argue about
Speaker 2: the intentions of the Bakudai, who I don't know how
Speaker 2: to pronounce because it looks like a Latin thing, but
Speaker 2: it's actually from a Gaulish word, and I don't fucking
Speaker 2: understand Gaulish. But people try to argue and like slot
Speaker 2: them into various things. They're nationalists, they're the people who
Speaker 2: love France, and they're therefore probably fascist, but in a
Speaker 2: good way. According to that story, they're Marxists, they're Christians.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of people, i'm sure, who are arguing
Speaker 2: that they're like anti civilization pagans, but in a good way. Whatever.
Speaker 2: They're peasant uprisings. I like them. I don't know what
Speaker 2: the fuck they're doing. They seem to have wanted to
Speaker 2: return to pre Roman traditional methods of cooperative land ownership,
Speaker 2: and it's quite likely that the British equivalent was part
Speaker 2: of driving the Roman government off the island. And I'm
Speaker 2: going to say the Roman government because it doesn't seem
Speaker 2: to have been about driving the Roman ethnicity off the island,
Speaker 2: because modern conceptions about ethnic purity don't apply well to
Speaker 2: pre modern people. And I know probably a lot of
Speaker 2: right wing dick bags aren't listening to this show. But
Speaker 2: if you are and you romanticize, like ye old the
Speaker 2: Dark aged sword shit, you're just wrong if you then
Speaker 2: turn it to Nazi shit. Is my argument. The Roman
Speaker 2: government's gone now the Romano British people remain, and that's
Speaker 2: when they start doing really cool shit. First they have
Speaker 2: to get by some accounts invaded by modern historical understandings
Speaker 2: they just get all ethnically and culturally mixed up. Is
Speaker 2: a combination of rating and migration from the Angles and
Speaker 2: the Saxons. The origin of the Anglo Saxons or these
Speaker 2: two Germanic groups. Another term that historians generally hate is
Speaker 2: Anglo Saxons.
Speaker 1: Really, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of interesting to me. Okay. They absolutely
Speaker 2: agree that there were Angles and Saxons, and they are
Speaker 2: Germanic people, and they started living in France and England basically,
Speaker 2: and they started settling a bunch of places, but they
Speaker 2: didn't replace the population. They're only a tiny percentage of
Speaker 2: the population. And so there is a cultural thing of
Speaker 2: like the Germanic influence, but it's not as much as
Speaker 2: people think. And so everyone who's like a proud Anglo
Speaker 2: Saxon from England probably isn't. They're probably just wrong. And
Speaker 2: I think that's funny because then the Wasps aren't actually wasps,
Speaker 2: and the Angles and the Saxons they start invading and
Speaker 2: settling a bunch of places. The Saxons actually started arriving
Speaker 2: before Rome even left, but it wasn't quite colonization. They
Speaker 2: would settle somewhere and the culture would shift but not
Speaker 2: in a like you're part of the Roman Empire now
Speaker 2: it wasn't like haha, the Germanic Empire has expanded the
Speaker 2: same Germanic groups are similar ones like the Franks started
Speaker 2: showing up in gaul what's now frank Sorry France, but
Speaker 2: the France comes from the word Frank, right, the Franks
Speaker 2: gave their name to France, and therefore the name of
Speaker 2: the French language. But interesting at least to me, and
Speaker 2: possibly that's that. What else? But I find this shit
Speaker 2: fucking fascinating. French itself, the language doesn't come from the
Speaker 2: Frankish Germanic language. French the language because it's a Romance language, right,
Speaker 2: whereas English is a Germanic language. French mixes Vulgar Latin
Speaker 2: with Gaulish in its roots.
Speaker 1: Interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the funny pronunciation of France it's very
Speaker 2: different than all the other Romance languages. Yeah, I think
Speaker 2: that's the Gaulish influence. But I read a bunch of
Speaker 2: articles about it, and they're all written for linguists. I'm
Speaker 2: not a linguist.
Speaker 1: Someone that's a linguist listening to this tag me and
Speaker 1: backpi this last note.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and if you're telling us that we're wrong. It's okay.
Speaker 1: I didn't say anything. It would be you that's wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because once again on.
Speaker 2: Perfect Actually you sent the script to me before we started.
Speaker 2: How can we am I not supposed to tell anyone
Speaker 2: that that you wrote this, that.
Speaker 1: I wrote this? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I wrote this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is what I've been studying my congressional campaign on. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely none of that is true for the people
Speaker 2: who take everything too literally. In England, it was the
Speaker 2: Germanic language that won out English. The language wiped out
Speaker 2: the Celtic language of Brittonic, although Welsh survived as an
Speaker 2: offshoot of this.
Speaker 1: Oh but Brittonic is such a cool name. I know
Speaker 1: that's also an envy name for sure, one hundred percent right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, And it was someone who was named Brittany
Speaker 2: and they changed their name to Brittonic and I support you.
Speaker 1: Amazing.
Speaker 2: So because English one, people tend to assume, oh, they
Speaker 2: got rid of the Britons, right, they're wiped out, and
Speaker 2: that's just not true at all. Modern DNA analysis confirms this.
Speaker 2: To quote that historian Tony Dyer quote, rather than a
Speaker 2: mass genocide and almost total population replacement to create England,
Speaker 2: The reality is that even in England, the Anglo Saxons
Speaker 2: remained a minority, outnumbered by Romano British quote unquote natives.
Speaker 2: In fact, many geneticists now agree that somewhere in the
Speaker 2: region of seventy percent of the genetic makeup of the
Speaker 2: population of England can be traced back to the Paleolithic
Speaker 2: period hunter gatherer population, basically meaning that these invasions added
Speaker 2: slightly to the genetic diversity but didn't wipe anyone out.
Speaker 1: Interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, totally right. I don't like playing games about
Speaker 2: genetics and bloodlines is like a general rule. But it's
Speaker 2: important that a popular understanding of this era tends to
Speaker 2: be wrong, and that basically people who are like, ah,
Speaker 2: this is the way it is and has always been,
Speaker 2: the strong replaced the weak, you know, like the fucking
Speaker 2: conquered not stolen people. Have you ever seen these? I
Speaker 2: don't know how much of your time you spend countering
Speaker 2: Nazi graffiti, but there's like stickers that Nazis put up
Speaker 2: that say conquered, not stolen with a picture of America,
Speaker 2: you know, and they're like, this is just the way
Speaker 2: it is, this is our human animal nature. No, you're
Speaker 2: just fucking Nazis right, Like, there are examples of this
Speaker 2: happening throughout time, but there's so many examples of even
Speaker 2: like fucking Viking ass raiders who kill and slave and
Speaker 2: do all kinds of horrible shit, still not genociding people
Speaker 2: to replace them, but instead eventually cohabitating the area. No
Speaker 2: modern comparisons need to be drawn about any current geopolitical.
Speaker 1: Everything has only happened one time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, So these dreaded dark ages come and popular
Speaker 2: imagination has a time of chaos and anarchy and bloodshed
Speaker 2: and everyone getting wiped out and rule of the week
Speaker 2: by the strong, until one day all power will be
Speaker 2: centralized and everyone becomes Christian and monarchy sets everyone straight.
Speaker 2: But that's not what said everyone's straight. What set everyone
Speaker 2: straight was the sweet, sweet deals that we are offering
Speaker 2: you are listeners, where actually there's almost never any deals
Speaker 2: in any of our ads.
Speaker 1: They've gone through millennia to come here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. That's why this episode is brought to
Speaker 2: you by the well I forget the name of it,
Speaker 2: and so the sponsor is going to be mad, But
Speaker 2: I belie leave the Celts. I think it was the Celts,
Speaker 2: but maybe it was the picks. I don't know. They
Speaker 2: had a throwing axe and it was really neat and
Speaker 2: the people at the front of the battle would throw
Speaker 2: the throwing axe and it would bounce, and everyone's gonna
Speaker 2: be mad at me for not knowing the name of this.
Speaker 1: I want to bounce you throwing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you throw the axe as you're like running
Speaker 2: into battle, usually naked, maybe be covered in blue or whatever,
Speaker 2: and then it would bounce and then it would kind
Speaker 2: of like cause chaos as it bounced through the ranks
Speaker 2: of the enemy.
Speaker 1: I just have like a very large axe that Robert
Speaker 1: gave me. That sounds faut, right, Yeah, that's pretty good.
Speaker 1: It's engraved on one side it says fuck you and
Speaker 1: on the other side it says pay me. It's really
Speaker 1: kind of amazing. But I don't think it would bounce
Speaker 1: because it weighs more than Anderson.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I will say, if you ever have to home defend,
Speaker 2: don't use that because it'll look really bad for your
Speaker 2: self defense case.
Speaker 1: Here's ads.
Speaker 2: Yeah they are and we're back, and I want to apologize,
Speaker 2: dear listener, I have led you astray. I implied that
Speaker 2: the Francesca the throwing acts that I was just discussing.
Speaker 2: I implied that it was Celtic. It was not. It
Speaker 2: was traumatic. It gets its name from the Franks, so
Speaker 2: really just the opposite side of the conflicts. I was
Speaker 2: just discussing. And one, I know, they're really pretty. They
Speaker 2: have a kind of a curved head a little bit.
Speaker 2: They're like, they're cool. Yeah. Anyway, I just want to
Speaker 2: apologize to Francesca. Anyone named Francesca. You have a pretty
Speaker 2: cool name. You can be thrown into battle and cause
Speaker 2: chaos among the enemies, which is a neat thing to
Speaker 2: be able to do. Or you can wield a Francesca
Speaker 2: as Francesca. You have so many options. Anyway, instead of
Speaker 2: actually being a period of there is warfare and shit,
Speaker 2: like it's not like peaceful happy times, but like you
Speaker 2: actually have a period that has the origins of a
Speaker 2: lot of the better parts of Western political structure, because
Speaker 2: when peasants and shit kick roam the fuck out, they
Speaker 2: return to what can be understood as a plan or
Speaker 2: tribal structure by and large, Specifically, to quote Tony Dyer again,
Speaker 2: quote it is probable, and a lot of the probables
Speaker 2: around the seat. He provides tons of evidence and shit
Speaker 2: that I'm just not going to get into about like
Speaker 2: where there's mounds and forests and what has been abandoned
Speaker 2: and what hasn't or whatever. But there again, not a
Speaker 2: lot of writing during this period. It is probable that
Speaker 2: following the end of the Roman occupation of Britain, the
Speaker 2: local population regained control of their own territories, returning to
Speaker 2: a form of governance based on kindred groups working with
Speaker 2: other kindred groups, and a relationship in which local people
Speaker 2: made local decisions whilst also contributing to a wider political territory.
Speaker 2: And so the reason I'm calling it bottom up instead
Speaker 2: of just like purely decentralized is most decisions are happening
Speaker 2: at all local level, and some decisions are happening at
Speaker 2: a larger level. Just like No, yeah, I mean I
Speaker 2: would argue that we're kind of top down.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I've been like a lot of like really
Speaker 1: impactful stuff that you don't even hear about topics with
Speaker 1: the local and state life.
Speaker 2: No, totally, And like a very good and active thing
Speaker 2: that needs to be done is to continue to try
Speaker 2: and remind democracy that it fundamentally should be a bottom
Speaker 2: up thing, or it is a less democratic The more
Speaker 2: top down it is, the less democratic it is. And
Speaker 2: this is a pattern I've seen again and again, no
Speaker 2: matter what time or place I look. When you get
Speaker 2: rid of empire, what replaces it is rarely warlordism, although
Speaker 2: I think it is sometimes warloadism, and I just won't read
Speaker 2: those books as much. But you get time and time
Speaker 2: again bottom up democratic assemblies, and no one ever talks
Speaker 2: about community assemblies, and then how they start federating with
Speaker 2: one another to make larger decisions. But this happens over
Speaker 2: and over again, and that's what they were doing in
Speaker 2: Dark Age is Britain to greater or lesser degrees. And
Speaker 2: you can trace a direct path, and I'm going to
Speaker 2: over the next however long we're continue to record, you
Speaker 2: can trace a direct path from these local assemblies to
Speaker 2: the modern parliamentary system of Western democracy, and you would
Speaker 2: form kinship groups, and those groups would form larger groups.
Speaker 2: And specifically, these groups have a lot of what we
Speaker 2: talk about a lot on the show, the commons, the
Speaker 2: thing that gets stolen from us by the enclosure, which
Speaker 2: is in this ye oldly dark Age. I'm gonna keep
Speaker 2: calling it the dark Ages. So every historian's already mad
Speaker 2: at me, But it's just like the nice period of
Speaker 2: Gothic spookytom and the sun never came out. Well yeah,
Speaker 2: I know, Well it was England. I've only been there
Speaker 2: a couple of times. And when I like Land, you
Speaker 2: just like move through a sea of clouds and then
Speaker 2: just like are like in the soup of England when
Speaker 2: you get there. Nearly all privately owned land and resources
Speaker 2: were owned by an entire clan. There was like private
Speaker 2: ownership of land, but it was communal private ownership of
Speaker 2: land or potentially a whole village. But everything that wasn't
Speaker 2: privately owned was the commons. Places you could graze your sheep, woods,
Speaker 2: you could go hunt and gather wooden rivers to fishing.
Speaker 2: And importantly, this structure looks a lot like what both
Speaker 2: Celtic and Germanic groups would be familiar with going back
Speaker 2: to at least the second millennium BC. So the Britons,
Speaker 2: the Angles, and the Saxons could all be like, ah,
Speaker 2: this just makes sense. We don't have a fucking empire
Speaker 2: over us anymore, so we go back to doing this thing.
Speaker 2: And this part matters to me because again, like anytime
Speaker 2: I read about like the idyllic folk past or whatever
Speaker 2: they literally get called folk, moot the organizations they have.
Speaker 2: I worry about the kind of shit that Nazis like romanticizing.
Speaker 2: So I want to point out again to my imaginary
Speaker 2: Nazi listeners made it this far.
Speaker 1: Nazis love those podcasts, obviously.
Speaker 2: I know, right, I will say, compared to like writing,
Speaker 2: very few people hate listen to podcasts, and I think
Speaker 2: that's saved me a lot of trouble.
Speaker 1: Like listening to a whole last podcast. Yeah, to hate listen,
Speaker 1: that's just exhawesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you did media the right wing shit
Speaker 2: for a very long time. You did that hard one,
Speaker 2: so I would know exactly. So anyone hate listening, you
Speaker 2: might be thinking. Yees see, when they kicked out the
Speaker 2: Roman foreigner, they had a good idyllic utopia. Again, First
Speaker 2: of all, they didn't kick out ethnically Roman people. A
Speaker 2: lot of them were ethnically Roman. They moved to a
Speaker 2: traditional style of governance for their own area. But both
Speaker 2: Germanic and Celtic traditions have a bunch of laws saying
Speaker 2: that strangers are welcome to become members and like citizens
Speaker 2: and even nobility in any of these groups. So fuck
Speaker 2: you Nazus.
Speaker 1: How do you become nobility? Oh?
Speaker 2: I want to find more about it. I was like
Speaker 2: that part. I tried to look a little bit more.
Speaker 2: I think that there's this idea that be really hot. Yeah, honestly,
Speaker 2: probably a lot of the like becoming nobility in a
Speaker 2: smaller area is around the sort of person in charge
Speaker 2: giving you like special privileges or whatever and being like
Speaker 2: you're my favorite basically, and it does fight against the
Speaker 2: egalitarianism of this area. And there's this give and take
Speaker 2: between egalitarianism and a noble system that's like constantly happening.
Speaker 2: But probably the answers that be really hot. Yeah, actually, okay,
Speaker 2: I know anthropology is really dangerous when you like compare
Speaker 2: one group to another, right, But in our episodes about
Speaker 2: the weird pirate utopias on Madagascar, it did talk about
Speaker 2: a lot of people becoming nobility not by showing up
Speaker 2: and being like haha, I'm in charge, but literally by
Speaker 2: showing up and being like I am now part of
Speaker 2: your organizational system and people being like, great, you're like
Speaker 2: a weird foreigner. You're a noble now because you're interesting,
Speaker 2: you have different stories and shit. Yeah, and there's a
Speaker 2: lot of like chiefs marrying their daughters to foreigners and
Speaker 2: stuff like that, and so it might be through a
Speaker 2: similar way. But whenever you compare anthropologies, you're playing dangerous games.
Speaker 2: So a regional level above this hyper local level, which
Speaker 2: was the kingdom, which was not like England. Yet there's
Speaker 2: all these little kingdoms and there's general a king. I'm
Speaker 2: not a big fan of kings. Historically, Tolkien would fucking
Speaker 2: love this shit and probably did. This is probably how
Speaker 2: he because he's like a weird anarcho monarchist, which is
Speaker 2: absolutely a contradiction in terms, but he's interesting in the
Speaker 2: strange guy. When you imagine a king of England, you're
Speaker 2: imagining wrong. When you imagine these folks at the beginning,
Speaker 2: by the end of this era, you're thinking, right. There
Speaker 2: was a council of wise men, the Watan especially what
Speaker 2: you're running for, and they would meet at the witten
Speaker 2: Moot to advise the king and serve basically as the
Speaker 2: highest court in the kingdom, and most likely they met
Speaker 2: to elect the king. There's arguing among historians about whether
Speaker 2: or not kings during this era were elected directly by
Speaker 2: the Wittan, or the Wittan would get together to sign
Speaker 2: off on like yeah, yeah, the king's eldest son is
Speaker 2: the heir as like a formality. But a tenth century
Speaker 2: abbot named Alfrick, which is a good name. It's got
Speaker 2: that ae at the beginning. Bring that back, don't. It's
Speaker 2: probably bad. It's everyone he probably wants to do. That
Speaker 2: is bad, but it's not boring. Alfrek wrote, quote, no
Speaker 2: man can make himself king, but the people has the
Speaker 2: choice to choose as king whom they please. But after
Speaker 2: he is consecrated as king, he then has dominion over
Speaker 2: the people and they cannot shake his yoke off their necks.
Speaker 2: So the Witan, though, actually did depose at least two
Speaker 2: kings in the eighth century. They were like, no, you're
Speaker 2: not doing right, bias, you gotta go. The king in
Speaker 2: this period had a mandate from the people, and so
Speaker 2: there is a comparison that can be made to these
Speaker 2: early kings with a mandate from the people to a
Speaker 2: modern politician. That can't be made to a later king
Speaker 2: right only centuries later, as the Church gains more power,
Speaker 2: does the mandate explicitly come from heaven instead the earlier
Speaker 2: kings were selected ostensibly. I'm sure that this was absolutely corrupt,
Speaker 2: and they're shitty kings everywhere. And I'm not defending monarchy,
Speaker 2: but the earlier kings were selected because people were like,
Speaker 2: we want someone to keep us safe and keep this
Speaker 2: whole place peaceful. We think this guy will do it.
Speaker 2: Over the centuries, as Tolkien predicted, power will corrupt people.
Speaker 2: The kings will start amassing more and more power. In
Speaker 2: the earliest days of this, you don't actually owe the
Speaker 2: king anything unless he shows up, Like you just kind
Speaker 2: of most of the year, you're these autonomous villages doing
Speaker 2: your own autonomous thing, and then every now and then
Speaker 2: the king rolls through and he's like, hey, I'm the king,
Speaker 2: and people are like, huh, all right, I guess you're
Speaker 2: in charge today. How long are you stay in You're
Speaker 2: gonna be here long And they're like, you know, they
Speaker 2: give him us taxes and shit, and it's like having
Speaker 2: really annoying in laws. Yeah, totally, the king is you're
Speaker 2: in laws. You can have some of our stuff and
Speaker 2: be in charge for a minute. I guess, because by
Speaker 2: and large, more of the power resided, even though there's
Speaker 2: the higher court. More power resided not with the wits
Speaker 2: and moot, but with the folk moot, the people's gathering,
Speaker 2: the assembly. Basically these were at much smaller levels. I
Speaker 2: am unclear who could vote in these assemblies. The inference
Speaker 2: again not a lot of writing. The inference is that
Speaker 2: it was free men because there's slavery in this period,
Speaker 2: although most slavery in Britain during this period is not
Speaker 2: people in these villages owning people, but instead people in
Speaker 2: these villages getting stolen and sold. So hooray, and women
Speaker 2: were likely allowed to be there but not vote. Is
Speaker 2: the best I can tell by comparing if it's analogous
Speaker 2: to an Icelandic thing that we do have more information
Speaker 2: about anyway, the other Germanic ones, these assemblies, they weren't
Speaker 2: called vocalots. They were called things, and that's where the
Speaker 2: word thing comes from. So if you're like, hey, you
Speaker 2: go into the thing, you're actually more accurate than if
Speaker 2: you're like, hey, can you hand me the thing? Because
Speaker 2: the thing was a gathering.
Speaker 1: Interesting, Yeah, oh my god.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love learning etymology like those.
Speaker 2: I know, and like half of this is just about like,
Speaker 2: isn't language neat The folk moot would meet to sort
Speaker 2: out the taxes and conscription into the army, and hear
Speaker 2: out grievances basically to put people on trial. These were
Speaker 2: trials based on evidence and testimony and involve neutral third parties.
Speaker 2: So this idea of like, ah, back in the day,
Speaker 2: it was Game of thrones, and whoever had the biggest
Speaker 2: sword is innocent or whatever. It's not the thing. That's
Speaker 2: not what happens at the thing. Thank you, thank you,
Speaker 2: I appreciate it to laugh. And these were trials based
Speaker 2: on evidence, and then everyone involved, everyone who had voting
Speaker 2: power at the thing, they would all vote on the verdict,
Speaker 2: and it wasn't like innocent or guilty, but instead, okay,
Speaker 2: what do we do with this situation?
Speaker 1: Gotcha?
Speaker 2: Because it wasn't a punitive legal system, it was a
Speaker 2: I can't really say it was like a restorative Actually
Speaker 2: probably would have identified as more of a restorative justice system.
Speaker 2: I'm not trying to claim it's perfect. I get you,
Speaker 2: but we literally can watch pative trials come in hundreds
Speaker 2: of years later. The punishment was usually a fine of
Speaker 2: some sort, which is best as I can understands. You
Speaker 2: then swear an oath to make the victim hole again
Speaker 2: or their family hole again if you killed someone or whatever. Right,
Speaker 2: and this oath that you've sworn. Both sides of your parents'
Speaker 2: family is also on the hook for it. So you
Speaker 2: do something bad, you get fined a ton of money.
Speaker 2: Not only are you on the hook for it, but
Speaker 2: so are like all your aunts and uncles and your parents,
Speaker 2: and so they're all mad as shit at you. And
Speaker 2: so that's kind of part of how it handles making
Speaker 2: people be better, is you don't want to drag your
Speaker 2: entire family into this. Yeah, such oaths were not taken lightly.
Speaker 2: At the beginning of this Everyone's a Pagan. By the
Speaker 2: end of this, everyone's a Christian. Everyone involved takes oaths
Speaker 2: very seriously. To quote the historian hr Loin quote, a
Speaker 2: freeman in one of our early territorial kingdoms still bore
Speaker 2: the characteristics of a free member of a tribe. He
Speaker 2: was oath worthy and weapon worthy, a person of repute,
Speaker 2: possessed of a free kindred, and capable of playing a
Speaker 2: full part in the army in the courts. Such a
Speaker 2: part involved much more active self help than would have
Speaker 2: been considered proper or seemly in a later age. He
Speaker 2: fulfilled his duties without an elaborate hierarchy or officialdom to
Speaker 2: sustain him and they actually started with the folk moots
Speaker 2: and then developed the Witten moot, the bigger one. Well
Speaker 2: actually I don't know if it's like physically bigger, but
Speaker 2: the bigger region one. And this is the fucking origin
Speaker 2: of the idea of parliament for England, and therefore everywhere
Speaker 2: that England colonized and sent all of its good and
Speaker 2: bad ideas to people. Have it backwards. There wasn't autocracy,
Speaker 2: and then slowly people added layers of democracy. It was
Speaker 2: that they added layers of hierarchy to their democracy in
Speaker 2: an effort to make larger scale decisions, probably for good reasons,
Speaker 2: but power corrupts and sla The kings centralize their authority,
Speaker 2: usually through the need to raise and maintain militaries. However,
Speaker 2: the power that has corrupted us is the power that
Speaker 2: could be available to you through purchasing the goods and
Speaker 2: services that support this show. Because that's how we all
Speaker 2: got where we are today, was doing whatever the next
Speaker 2: ad tells us to do. Hi, Margaret Kiljoy, here boy.
Speaker 2: The world sure is a mess right now?
Speaker 1: Huh?
Speaker 2: Seems like every day there are more and more reasons
Speaker 2: to get out into the streets and protest. That's why
Speaker 2: when I get arrested, there's only one strategy. I trust,
Speaker 2: I shut the fuck up. I say, I would like
Speaker 2: to remain silent, I would like to talk to my lawyer,
Speaker 2: and then I shut the fuck up. In the United
Speaker 2: States of America, it's constitutionally protected and recommended by the
Speaker 2: National Lawyers Guild. That's shut thch f u c k up.
Speaker 2: Once again, that sah thche fuc k up. Because you
Speaker 2: can't talk yourself out of custody, but you can talk
Speaker 2: yourself into a conviction.
Speaker 3: Providing identification to law enforcement required in some states and
Speaker 3: situations giving them an address expedient in most circumstances. Never
Speaker 3: discuss the events leading to arrest with anyone except your lawyer, doctor,
Speaker 3: or therapist. Posting pictures of protests and actions on social
Speaker 3: media may lead to complications. If you have already talked
Speaker 3: to cops or experienced confusion about talking to cops, call
Speaker 3: your attorney immediately, as these may be signs of more
Speaker 3: serious legal problems. The concept of not talking to cops
Speaker 3: does not provide legal advice, and the foregoing statements are
Speaker 3: for informational purposes only. If you have specific legal questions,
Speaker 3: consult an attorney.
Speaker 2: And we're back. Slowly, the system of democracy started getting
Speaker 2: corupted by hierarchy and autocracy. After a while, the Folkmot
Speaker 2: became the Hundred, which is a very hard term to google.
Speaker 2: I'll have you know. Usually what I do is I
Speaker 2: read about things in books whenever possible. But then I
Speaker 2: like books have like just to tell you how the
Speaker 2: sausage is made of the historical research I do for
Speaker 2: the show, Dear Listener, the books will have the more
Speaker 2: in depth information and often the like more complicated takes,
Speaker 2: but because they're just literally older, like because I can't
Speaker 2: read a book that was written yesterday, I can. Yeah, no,
Speaker 2: I know it is because you're perfect, which is honestly
Speaker 2: impressive that you're able to do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So then I'm like searching more information about this. So
Speaker 2: I'm like reading about how the Folkmot became the hundred,
Speaker 2: and you know this piece I'm reading Anglo Saxon Democracy
Speaker 2: by Tony Dyer. And then I'm like, all right, I
Speaker 2: need to know more about that transition because I have
Speaker 2: this one perspective and I try and compare with multiple perspectives,
Speaker 2: and I wasn't able to find as much about that
Speaker 2: transition just partly because an organization called the Hundred it's
Speaker 2: fucking hard to google. I'm like, but why isn't there
Speaker 2: more readily available information about this thing that happened in
Speaker 2: one part of England and seven hundreds hyper fixations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so.
Speaker 2: That's what people don't understand about a history podcast is
Speaker 2: that it only if your brain is set up to
Speaker 2: hyper fixate on a new thing every week. So anyway,
Speaker 2: the folk Moot became the Hundred, which is similar to
Speaker 2: the Folk Moot. The peasants were still in charge, but
Speaker 2: there's a royal official there running the whole thing, and
Speaker 2: he's not making the decisions, but he's kind of like
Speaker 2: the facilitator. And that slowly it's actually developed into the
Speaker 2: shire system, which is the county system, which is why
Speaker 2: everything is named sure, you know, like Hampshire whatever. I
Speaker 2: don't know the names of the counties in England. With
Speaker 2: the rise of the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church,
Speaker 2: shit started getting more formalized and more hierarchy was everywhere,
Speaker 2: and I don't know how to pronounce hierarchy. I apparently
Speaker 2: the king went from the person that all the wise
Speaker 2: people agree should probably be in charge of keeping the
Speaker 2: peace to kings are chosen by God to make Pagans
Speaker 2: into Christians. And this is where the mandate of heaven
Speaker 2: comes in. And the job isn't Yeah, different fucking mandates.
Speaker 2: People don't talk about mandates enough. Like the idea of
Speaker 2: like being like we elected politician to do this thing
Speaker 2: on our behalf, you know, it is not we don't
Speaker 2: elect fucking kings. Well they did, but that also wasn't great,
Speaker 2: right we elect saying like, hey, we think you'll help
Speaker 2: to get universal health care. Please go do that, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and try out you can and like do a
Speaker 1: job and talk to people and ask where they're at
Speaker 1: and like the house. You know, as the US gets
Speaker 1: bigger and bigger, it's more difficult to do that totally.
Speaker 1: But like, if you're asking for this job, you have to,
Speaker 1: like you have to act. I've been wondering. I'm like,
Speaker 1: how do people do this for decades and decades? And
Speaker 1: I'm like, the thing that's becoming very clear to me is, oh,
Speaker 1: they just don't do a good job, like even if
Speaker 1: they started for the right reasons. Like, this is tiring
Speaker 1: and we're two months in and it's very fun and
Speaker 1: I've met so many cool people, and it's like one
Speaker 1: of the most fulfilling things I've ever done. But like,
Speaker 1: first off, you know, the country, the constitution are you know,
Speaker 1: legal systems should be dynamic and fluid, just like the world.
Speaker 1: But also like doing this for a really long time,
Speaker 1: like a really long time and doing it right that
Speaker 1: has to be like emotionally exhausting, because like empathy is
Speaker 1: a muscle that you flex and when you're representing like
Speaker 1: five hundred and seven hundred thousand people, yeah, you got
Speaker 1: to flex it a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, it makes sense because it's like you know,
Speaker 2: in a smaller scale thing, it's much easier to have
Speaker 2: a direct mandate a like if I am part of
Speaker 2: a group that sends someone to a spokes council meeting,
Speaker 2: we're like, all right, you are there to represent us,
Speaker 2: and this is our position and that is the position
Speaker 2: you will take there. But you're coming from a position
Speaker 2: where like you don't have a consensus mandate. You don't
Speaker 2: have everyone that you're you know representing, all agreeing on
Speaker 2: the same thing. It's messy and it's worth using every
Speaker 2: tool and toolbox to try and make the world a
Speaker 2: better place. And so so kings mandate to heaven and
Speaker 2: the kings start meeting out more and metting out, I
Speaker 2: don't know, giving more shit to certain people. And they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: you can collect taxes in the following area and own
Speaker 2: the following chunk of everything, like the commons. It's not
Speaker 2: the commons now. You can keep it as the Commons
Speaker 2: if you want, but it's your shit, right folk land.
Speaker 2: The commons started to become bookland, private land. It basically
Speaker 2: made lots of little kings, people who could go and
Speaker 2: take shit from the peasants and tell them what to do.
Speaker 2: This is the rise of the nobility, which was the
Speaker 2: king taking a direct note out of the Catholic Church's book.
Speaker 2: This land allocation wasn't under control of local councils. So
Speaker 2: the enclosure of the commons, which later led to capitalism,
Speaker 2: was the death of this period of democracy. And to
Speaker 2: me that's an important point because most tellings of the
Speaker 2: story of democracy in Western Europe talk about it starting
Speaker 2: with the rich people. And I want to say capitalism
Speaker 2: was the death of democracy or the thing later built
Speaker 2: to capitalism. And for anyone who's listening, when I say capitalism,
Speaker 2: I don't mean the idea of buying and selling everything.
Speaker 2: We don't live in a binary world where you either
Speaker 2: of the fucking USSR or the USA. Capitalism whatever, capitalism
Speaker 2: is a specific economic system, and it can be questioned.
Speaker 2: The legal system becomes much more strictly formalized. Common law
Speaker 2: basically means law that's built up by precedent rather than
Speaker 2: the legislation. Legislation starts becoming more common and instead of
Speaker 2: compensating victims, criminal justice moved to become more punitive. Suddenly
Speaker 2: way more shit had the death penalty. I did while like,
Speaker 2: I was like reading this glowing thing about Anglo Saxon democracy,
Speaker 2: and I was like, was this the downside here? And
Speaker 2: so I read a lot more about slavery. And one
Speaker 2: of the things that could happen is if you owe
Speaker 2: someone a lot of money, you basically saw yourself and
Speaker 2: the like ostensibly non punitive system led to sometimes the
Speaker 2: punitive thing of people being owned by people. And yeah,
Speaker 2: all the people who have been given all this fucking
Speaker 2: land and the right to tax people, the nobles in
Speaker 2: the church got wealthy as shit. The next nail in
Speaker 2: the folk coffin was the Viking invasions of the nine hundreds,
Speaker 2: which led to a massive restructuring of England to support
Speaker 2: the military to defend against the raiders. To quote Tony
Speaker 2: Dyer again quote, the peasant's status began to change from
Speaker 2: that of a free farmer to that of a subject
Speaker 2: tenant with significant ongoing obligations of rent and service to
Speaker 2: his lord. And then the final nail didn't come from
Speaker 2: within England, though England was clearly moving in a more
Speaker 2: autocratic direction with its monarchy. The final nail was the
Speaker 2: Norman conquest of ten sixty six. Normandy is part of
Speaker 2: the northwest of France and in the tenth century some
Speaker 2: Vikings settled there and then christianized, and then in ten
Speaker 2: sixty six a fuck ton of them invaded England, the Normans,
Speaker 2: and they were successful and brutal, and they built pasty.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine a race named Norman. We have Frank,
Speaker 1: we have Norman, Like, what's next the Garys.
Speaker 2: I know? And then the Garys are just murdering everyone
Speaker 2: you've ever met. Yeah, not a good point that he's
Speaker 2: like the most standard ass boring names.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're like this is the Steves. Yeah, oh no,
Speaker 1: the Ryans are coming.
Speaker 2: From All of their hair is surprisingly well kempt Brittonic
Speaker 2: they're defeated by the non binary army of the Brittonics.
Speaker 2: And yeah, so suddenly castles go from and again this
Speaker 2: is an oversimplification, but castles go from being there to
Speaker 2: like protect the population from invasion to subjugating the population
Speaker 2: and being like, now where the the autocrats running around
Speaker 2: in our little dystopia we're building, and we know that
Speaker 2: this case they actually did successfully not change all of ethnicity,
Speaker 2: but like conquer the economy. There's a book called the
Speaker 2: Domesday Book, and it's an eleventh century record book of
Speaker 2: like taxes and shit. It's just like who owns what,
Speaker 2: and essentially everyone with money was Norman not English, like
Speaker 2: basically like I think ninety percent of landed people were
Speaker 2: the Norman invaders. They close a lot of the commons,
Speaker 2: they enforced the law brutally, and it's Norman rule that
Speaker 2: becomes the baseline authoritarianism that people, largely rich people, begin
Speaker 2: to rebel against. And so the rich didn't event democracy,
Speaker 2: they claimed it from the peasantry. That's my thesis, and
Speaker 2: that when people one writes it wasn't for the first time,
Speaker 2: it was drawing on something older, something ancient. So when
Speaker 2: we demand habeas corpus. When we demand that we have
Speaker 2: a fair system of justice and democracy, we are drawing
Speaker 2: on something that has existed all over the fucking world
Speaker 2: that literally predates civilization. And I promise I'll tell you
Speaker 2: about this guy, Tony Dyer. Oh yeah, I haven't had
Speaker 2: any named like cool people this whole fucking episode the historian.
Speaker 2: I was like, what's this guy up to now? And
Speaker 2: so I googled them, and there's a fair number of
Speaker 2: people named Tony Dyer. But his pamphlet was put out
Speaker 2: by the Bristol Radical Pamphleteers or something like that, And
Speaker 2: so I was searching Tony Dyer Bristol and I found
Speaker 2: that he is a Green Party politician who is currently
Speaker 2: in charge of the city of Bristol, a city of
Speaker 2: half a million people. He's not the mayor because the
Speaker 2: city got rid of the position of mayor. He is
Speaker 2: the leader of the city council. Now that there is
Speaker 2: no mayor, the entire city council makes decisions instead.
Speaker 1: That's so cool, I know, I know, that's so cool.
Speaker 1: And this is like today, like right now. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. In twenty twenty four, he became the fucking all
Speaker 2: of the articles about this were from last year, Like
Speaker 2: that's awesome, And in an interview he said about this system,
Speaker 2: decisions should be reached by consensus, collaboration, and compromise in
Speaker 2: a public setting.
Speaker 1: That's how I run cool Zone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like and so like I had this moment where
Speaker 2: I was like, I wonder if this is the same guy,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, no, this is obviously the same man,
Speaker 2: because it is what he wrote about as a historian.
Speaker 2: He wrote about local democracy and making it be as
Speaker 2: public as possible and as participatory as possible and like
Speaker 2: a galitarian and shit. Yeah, and I'm sure it is
Speaker 2: not perfect, but I like it didn't find the imperfect yet. Yeah,
Speaker 2: if you're listening in Bristol, you might have completely different information.
Speaker 2: But the Green led city council there has been focusing
Speaker 2: on removing car infrastructure, improving walking and cycling infrastructure. Some
Speaker 2: of the interview questions I found with him people being
Speaker 2: like why do you hate cars? I like my car,
Speaker 2: you know, and his answers are like, well, actually, you know,
Speaker 2: we save lives this way and it's better and whatever,
Speaker 2: and like hey, you're.
Speaker 1: Being on a train. You don't have to do anything.
Speaker 1: You can read.
Speaker 2: You just fun read a book. You can be listening
Speaker 2: to this right here. Well, you guess you can listen
Speaker 2: while driving, but it's less nice.
Speaker 1: You can listen and then stare at the thing going
Speaker 1: like the little thing that scrubs, which is of how
Speaker 1: everyone listens to a podcasts. They just stare at the
Speaker 1: screen and they use it continues.
Speaker 2: But even more than enacting like green and progressive legislation
Speaker 2: like removing car infrastructure, improving walking and psychling infrastructure, which rules.
Speaker 2: I am most impressed not by when progressives and leftist
Speaker 2: politicians enact leftist policies, but when they change the structure
Speaker 2: of government to become more egalitarian.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, and sick.
Speaker 2: Yeah, someone who extensively studied the history of the region
Speaker 2: and saw its radical democratic roots is working to put
Speaker 2: them into practice. And so the surprise cool person of
Speaker 2: today is the non mayor of a major city who
Speaker 2: wrote a pamphlet that I read about ten years ago
Speaker 2: that fundamentally changed my understanding of a lot of history. Yeah, sick, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's what I got. That's Margaret's theory of the development
Speaker 2: of English common law. That it's like this is not
Speaker 2: every all over the world. There's people who have democratic
Speaker 2: traditions that they're drawing on right, and some of them
Speaker 2: are similar to this and some of them aren't. But
Speaker 2: unfortunately England then went on to you know, famously draw
Speaker 2: random lines across the map that caused a huge chunk
Speaker 2: of all the conflicts that are happening today.
Speaker 1: I've never heard of.
Speaker 2: This is a good I don't know if it's a meme,
Speaker 2: if it's a video. I'm old there's a good thing.
Speaker 2: That's like the like the English watching all of the
Speaker 2: world be destroyed by lines they draw on the map
Speaker 2: one hundred years ago, and it's a bunch of people
Speaker 2: in pith helmets like skanking in the desert. It's very good, amazing.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I don't know any thoughts. How are you feeling?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I feel good. I think democracy is cool.
Speaker 1: I mean I didn't know about all this. Like when
Speaker 1: you think about you know, English democracy, you think the
Speaker 1: Karta and like this is really interesting. And also the
Speaker 1: step of a like restorative versus punitive justice and like oaths.
Speaker 1: It's just it's really fascinating to see how people handle things,
Speaker 1: and especially in a system where you're not constantly living
Speaker 1: under fear of having your life ruined by one thing
Speaker 1: or another, whether that's Stephen Miller coming to arrest you
Speaker 1: for having darker skin, or you know, crushing debt or
Speaker 1: whatever else it may be. It's just really interesting to
Speaker 1: see how different communities can work together and create these systems.
Speaker 1: And I seriously had no idea about any of those.
Speaker 2: They call it the fucking Dark Ages. They don't talk
Speaker 2: about it, you know, And yeah, and part of it
Speaker 2: is because some of it speculative, right, like this is like, yeah,
Speaker 2: but historians are I'm not a historian. Historians are good
Speaker 2: at their jobs and it is a science, and they
Speaker 2: like try to figure out, like we think this is
Speaker 2: what happened, you know. Yeah, well you got anything you
Speaker 2: want to plug if you've been up to anything, like
Speaker 2: I think you're kind of low key and off the radar.
Speaker 2: I haven't seen anyone attacking wildly on the internet randomly
Speaker 2: at all times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not really doing anything lately, just kidding. I'm running
Speaker 1: for Congress, running for Congress in the ninth District of Illinois.
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about what I'm about,
Speaker 1: you can go to Catfreillinois dot com. That's Kat with
Speaker 1: the K. Can you tell that I have said this
Speaker 1: little spiel quite a few times.
Speaker 2: Yeah, huh, yeah, no, that's fair.
Speaker 1: Today, we just took our as we're recording this or
Speaker 1: I guess in two days, because we need to make
Speaker 1: sure that the illusion of time is there. A few
Speaker 1: days later, Yeah, we made our discords over republic and
Speaker 1: so you can join that in the volunteer section of
Speaker 1: our website because we need help from all people, local, remote,
Speaker 1: We really want to try to do this progressive grassroots
Speaker 1: approach that's not only like not taking corporate money, but
Speaker 1: we're trying to spend our money in ways to improve
Speaker 1: as many lives as we can along the way. So
Speaker 1: if you've got a few bucks to spare, consider chipping
Speaker 1: in at Catfreillinois dot com. And if you have some
Speaker 1: skills or I've thought, why don't politicians do this? Like
Speaker 1: we want to get creative, we want to get weird.
Speaker 1: So come volunteer, hang out on the discord and as always,
Speaker 1: listened to this podcast.
Speaker 2: All right, yeah, what else do I want to plug?
Speaker 2: I don't know, take care of each other, don't let
Speaker 2: them suspend habeas corpus. And also I can be somewhat
Speaker 2: sectarian as every leftist or whatever it can be, but
Speaker 2: it's not. We got to be as careful about as possible.
Speaker 2: We have to de escalate all conflict that isn't with
Speaker 2: the enemy. What I try to do is be like,
Speaker 2: is this person trying to enact systems that kill me
Speaker 2: and or everyone that I care about and or other
Speaker 2: people that I've never met that still shouldn't get murdered.
Speaker 2: And if the answer is no, they're probably not my enemy,
Speaker 2: and I probably want I'm in conflict with them, rather
Speaker 2: than trying to find all the ways that they're wrong,
Speaker 2: try to find common ground.
Speaker 1: Unless their boyfriend is the CEO of The Onion. Oh yeah, no, okay,
Speaker 1: spark that person. Could you imagine someone running a satire
Speaker 1: website is dating someone that's just a moral as far
Speaker 1: as I can you imagine, especially if they've been dating
Speaker 1: for years? Yeah, what the fuck?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely? I will say though, like it's funny because
Speaker 2: in my mind, as soon as someone's like, oh, what's
Speaker 2: the journalistic integrity of the Onion supporting you, I'm like, well,
Speaker 2: it's not journalism. It is a fucking comedy website.
Speaker 1: It's America's finest news source. Let's be clear here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are a lot of Times when the onion
Speaker 2: is more correct than the New York Times, Like, there's
Speaker 2: some stuff that I've like. I remember twenty some years
Speaker 2: ago when Schwarzenegger was elected in California, the onion headline
Speaker 2: was a strong man elected leader of world's fifth largest
Speaker 2: economy or whatever. You're just like, yeah, no, that's that's
Speaker 2: just the news that happened.
Speaker 1: That's just the news that happened.
Speaker 2: So we live in a clown world. So maybe the
Speaker 2: clown news is the real news. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Oh my God, to put the clown creators in Congress.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anyway, we'll see you all next week. Unless we
Speaker 2: have no habeas corpus.
Speaker 1: I won't see you next week, but I like seeing
Speaker 1: you this week, So thank you for having me on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was nice to see you all right, Hi everyone. Bye.
Speaker 2: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 2: cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts on cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 1: Goolezonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.