WEBVTT - It Could Happen Here Weekly 108 0:00:01.760 --> 0:00:05.600 All media. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted 0:00:05.600 --> 0:00:08.639 to let you know this is a compilation episode. So 0:00:08.680 --> 0:00:12.120 every episode of the week that just happened is here 0:00:12.200 --> 0:00:16.119 in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for 0:00:16.200 --> 0:00:18.320 you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. 0:00:18.800 --> 0:00:20.840 If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, 0:00:20.920 --> 0:00:22.639 there's going to be nothing new here for you, but 0:00:23.000 --> 0:00:31.000 you can make your own decisions. There is America hit 0:00:31.120 --> 0:00:33.879 by God in one of its softest spots. Its greatest 0:00:33.920 --> 0:00:37.640 buildings were destroyed. Thank God for that. There is America 0:00:37.640 --> 0:00:39.839 full of fear from its north to its south, from 0:00:39.880 --> 0:00:43.080 its west to its east. Thank God for that. What 0:00:43.200 --> 0:00:46.120 America is tasting now with something insignificant to what we 0:00:46.200 --> 0:00:49.279 have tasted for scores of years. Our nation has been 0:00:49.280 --> 0:00:52.800 tasting this humiliation and this degradation for more than eighty years. 0:00:53.120 --> 0:00:56.400 Its sons are killed, its blood is shed, its sanctuaries 0:00:56.440 --> 0:00:59.480 are attacked, and no one hears and no one heeds. 0:01:00.960 --> 0:01:04.400 Those words, written by Osama bin Laden in October seventh, 0:01:04.440 --> 0:01:07.440 two thousand and one, were part of his first statement 0:01:07.520 --> 0:01:11.520 issued after the nine to eleven attacks. You might notice 0:01:11.520 --> 0:01:13.880 a few things about that. One is, of course, the 0:01:14.160 --> 0:01:17.039 glorying over the deaths of several thousand people, and another 0:01:17.240 --> 0:01:20.880 is that when it comes to his analysis of the 0:01:20.920 --> 0:01:23.600 cultural and psychological impact of nine to eleven on the 0:01:23.680 --> 0:01:26.959 United States, he was more or less right. This is 0:01:27.000 --> 0:01:30.400 it could happen here, a podcast about things falling apart 0:01:30.480 --> 0:01:35.720 and nothing better embodies the slow, sometimes rapid collapse of 0:01:35.760 --> 0:01:39.600 the United States as our reaction to nine to eleven 0:01:40.080 --> 0:01:43.960 and our continuing responses to it. And so today I've 0:01:43.959 --> 0:01:47.240 got in the studio. We don't actually have a studio. 0:01:47.920 --> 0:01:50.640 I've got Mia, I've got James, and I've got Garrison, 0:01:50.680 --> 0:01:53.080 and we're going to talk about something you've probably encountered, 0:01:53.120 --> 0:01:56.480 which is that a letter to America written by osamaban Lan, 0:01:56.520 --> 0:01:58.639 which is a different piece from the one I started 0:01:58.640 --> 0:02:02.440 this reading, but written along broadly similar lines, has started 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:04.800 to go viral on TikTok, and if you've seen the 0:02:04.840 --> 0:02:07.640 reactions to it, it's a mix of a bunch of 0:02:07.840 --> 0:02:10.840 you know, younger people on TikTok reading this letter for 0:02:10.880 --> 0:02:14.639 the first time, where bin Laden explains why he did 0:02:14.880 --> 0:02:17.720 he believed nine to eleven to be justified, and going wow, 0:02:17.760 --> 0:02:19.919 he has a point some of them saying stuff that's 0:02:19.919 --> 0:02:22.560 more unhinged than that even and then you've got this 0:02:22.800 --> 0:02:25.720 chorus of responses from both kind of centrist you know, 0:02:26.360 --> 0:02:30.960 media figures, cultural commentators, pundits, and of course right wing 0:02:31.120 --> 0:02:33.480 shitheads who are all making this out to be the 0:02:33.560 --> 0:02:36.920 left looves Osama bin Laden. We're going to get into 0:02:37.040 --> 0:02:38.960 kind of where the truth lies in this and also 0:02:39.000 --> 0:02:41.440 what is in the letter to America. But yeah, welcome, 0:02:41.560 --> 0:02:47.399 Welcome to the pod everyone, Thanks Robert, horrible to be here. 0:02:47.919 --> 0:02:50.160 How did you how did you all hear about this, 0:02:50.160 --> 0:02:52.120 this new fun trend on the internet. 0:02:53.960 --> 0:02:58.600 I returned from spending my evening volunteering the border in 0:02:58.639 --> 0:03:04.040 Cucumber to find and a death of messages about an 0:03:04.040 --> 0:03:06.560 Issama bin Laden letter or the speech that you just 0:03:06.600 --> 0:03:08.480 read that I've a signed for probably a decade to 0:03:08.560 --> 0:03:14.080 undergraduates without anyone losing their mind. And yeah, extremely confusing 0:03:14.200 --> 0:03:15.080 vibes for me. 0:03:15.240 --> 0:03:16.240 Yeah. Yeah. 0:03:16.520 --> 0:03:18.640 The first time I heard about it was the first 0:03:18.639 --> 0:03:21.040 post that I saw was it was only about a 0:03:21.080 --> 0:03:24.880 million views. It wasn't even that viral, which I guess 0:03:25.000 --> 0:03:26.960 might be true because TikTok is. 0:03:27.480 --> 0:03:31.160 Nuts, But yeah, I think it. 0:03:31.520 --> 0:03:33.240 I don't know, like I first ran into it on Twitter, 0:03:33.240 --> 0:03:35.040 and I think by the time it hit Twitter, everyone 0:03:35.240 --> 0:03:39.120 was just sort of in about eighteen directions completely losing 0:03:39.160 --> 0:03:41.360 their minds, which is just yeahs it is now. 0:03:41.520 --> 0:03:44.720 Yeah, and I mean probably a couple of videos of 0:03:44.760 --> 0:03:45.440 people dying. 0:03:45.720 --> 0:03:48.000 Just that seems to pop up every time something discussed 0:03:48.000 --> 0:03:48.360 on Twitter. 0:03:48.440 --> 0:03:48.600 Now. 0:03:49.120 --> 0:03:51.040 I think that's an accurate description of kind of the 0:03:51.040 --> 0:03:53.440 fallout to and as we're writing the or as we're 0:03:53.680 --> 0:03:58.160 recording this. Most of these original TikTok videos people seem 0:03:58.200 --> 0:04:01.160 to be reading off of the Guardians copy of a 0:04:01.360 --> 0:04:04.560 Letter to America, which was I guess the most easy 0:04:04.600 --> 0:04:07.080 to google prior to I think it was just the 0:04:07.120 --> 0:04:11.080 easiest to google. When this all started rolling, the Guardian 0:04:11.160 --> 0:04:13.560 took that down because they didn't want people reading it 0:04:13.560 --> 0:04:15.720 outside of the context of the article it's in. This 0:04:15.880 --> 0:04:18.440 was a horrible mistake. I have found a number of 0:04:18.520 --> 0:04:21.599 comments being like, this is them. They're trying to stop 0:04:21.640 --> 0:04:23.520 you from reading Ben Lawden's words. We're all going to 0:04:23.560 --> 0:04:25.839 be on a watch list. They can't arrest all of us. 0:04:26.360 --> 0:04:30.040 You can still access the Letter to America. 0:04:30.720 --> 0:04:33.120 It's on the sentiment that you can't arrest one of 0:04:33.200 --> 0:04:34.880 us suggested that many of these people were not alive, 0:04:34.920 --> 0:04:36.760 and the Maybia off to moth of. 0:04:39.200 --> 0:04:44.760 Fucking try. They did try. Just to be very clear, 0:04:44.920 --> 0:04:46.960 you can still read this whole letter to yourself, and 0:04:47.000 --> 0:04:49.359 so can everyone else. It's on wiki source. If you 0:04:49.400 --> 0:04:51.719 just google Binladen Letter to America, it will bring up 0:04:51.760 --> 0:04:56.800 the Wikipedia page that talks about this letter and its context, 0:04:56.839 --> 0:04:58.679 and that will also give you a link at somewhere 0:04:58.680 --> 0:05:01.080 at the bottom to the wiki source. That's just the 0:05:01.200 --> 0:05:04.680 unedited translation of the letter to the American people. So 0:05:05.160 --> 0:05:07.960 it is not like the Guardian's move was bad because 0:05:07.960 --> 0:05:10.440 of they called the streisand principle right that if you 0:05:10.520 --> 0:05:12.839 like try to hide something from people on the internet, 0:05:12.960 --> 0:05:15.400 it just it just makes the problem worse. You never 0:05:15.520 --> 0:05:18.520 do what the Guardian did. It's very dumb, it was 0:05:18.600 --> 0:05:19.600 explain the Guardian. 0:05:23.640 --> 0:05:28.720 Yeah, yeah, sur I was gonna say, yeah, they could 0:05:28.760 --> 0:05:29.600 have blamed trans people. 0:05:29.600 --> 0:05:31.240 I'm surprised he didn't get one of those in there. 0:05:32.000 --> 0:05:34.440 They've been everyone's been trying to pivot very quickly to this. 0:05:34.560 --> 0:05:39.000 So obviously you know, my like James, my opinions on 0:05:39.000 --> 0:05:41.560 this are kind of complex. On one hand, I am 0:05:41.560 --> 0:05:44.600 not an Osama bin Laden fan. He was a bad person. 0:05:45.000 --> 0:05:48.120 He was a terrible person, and he did a lot 0:05:48.120 --> 0:05:51.800 of damage, not just to the United States. That said, 0:05:51.800 --> 0:05:54.680 I've also long been an advocate for like, he's probably 0:05:54.720 --> 0:05:57.640 going to go down as one of the most effective 0:05:57.839 --> 0:06:02.440 and intelligent military rategic minds of the twenty first century. 0:06:03.240 --> 0:06:07.480 The September eleventh attacks worked in large part, right because 0:06:07.480 --> 0:06:10.359 of how We're rereacted, because of the amount of money 0:06:10.360 --> 0:06:12.239 that we spent, the amount of people that we killed, 0:06:12.480 --> 0:06:15.320 the amount of anger that we engendered against the West, 0:06:16.120 --> 0:06:18.080 and the amount of damage that we did to our 0:06:18.120 --> 0:06:20.920 own society. A lot of the fallout that we're seeing 0:06:21.000 --> 0:06:23.559 and all these you know, right wing street gangs and shit, 0:06:23.720 --> 0:06:27.000 a lot of it traces back to fallout from the 0:06:27.040 --> 0:06:30.400 wars that were started by the Bush administration after September eleventh. So, 0:06:30.920 --> 0:06:33.040 and that was that was part of the stated goal, right, 0:06:33.080 --> 0:06:34.839 that was one of the things he was looking to 0:06:34.960 --> 0:06:39.600 provoke a reaction. So I'm both like glad hopefully some 0:06:39.640 --> 0:06:41.760 people are going to come away from this with a 0:06:41.800 --> 0:06:44.560 more nuanced understanding of the guy. And when I say nuanced, 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:47.039 I don't mean in a moral sense, because it's bad 0:06:47.120 --> 0:06:50.120 to kill thousands of random people, but in the sense 0:06:50.160 --> 0:06:52.960 of like, oh, this was not I think I need 0:06:53.000 --> 0:06:54.960 to play something for you guys, because like as a 0:06:55.040 --> 0:06:57.920 nine to eleven, like I was like nine or ten 0:06:58.080 --> 0:07:00.360 when it happened, so I remember it all very well, 0:07:00.360 --> 0:07:02.200 and I remember the reaction to it, and I remember 0:07:02.200 --> 0:07:06.359 the propaganda we encountered. And there's this thing that you 0:07:06.400 --> 0:07:10.240 will find written about fascists pretty regularly, which is that 0:07:10.800 --> 0:07:14.320 they both need an all powerful enemy, but they also 0:07:14.360 --> 0:07:18.480 need an enemy that's like fundamentally free of virtue, and 0:07:18.600 --> 0:07:22.440 intelligence and skill are virtues. So both in the wake 0:07:22.480 --> 0:07:24.760 of nine to eleven, you got this sort of al 0:07:24.840 --> 0:07:28.440 Qaeda and you know, larger sort of Islamist movements were 0:07:28.520 --> 0:07:31.240 considered this nefarious force as they are now in the 0:07:31.280 --> 0:07:33.680 wake of the attacks by Hamas, right, this nefarious force 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:36.679 that is capable of infiltrating the US border and seeking 0:07:36.800 --> 0:07:40.040 terrorist sales into the United States to hit anybody. And 0:07:40.120 --> 0:07:43.440 at the same time they're like primitive idiots who are 0:07:43.440 --> 0:07:45.840 bigots against who are you know, they hate women and 0:07:45.880 --> 0:07:48.280 all this stuff, right, Like you can't you can't see 0:07:48.280 --> 0:07:51.680 them as capable or intelligent, because then that would that 0:07:51.720 --> 0:07:54.080 would be to give them a virtue that you reserve 0:07:54.160 --> 0:07:57.280 for yourself anyway. I think a good example of that 0:07:57.480 --> 0:07:59.960 is this parody song by John Valby that I am 0:08:00.080 --> 0:08:02.400 countered in a Napster download when I was a child, 0:08:02.480 --> 0:08:06.720 and this did not it's bin Laden. 0:08:07.760 --> 0:08:08.600 Oh it's the other one. 0:08:08.640 --> 0:08:11.080 Okay, Okay, yeah, this one's bad. Folks. You're gonna hear 0:08:11.080 --> 0:08:14.440 something offensive. I'm playing it now because number one, I 0:08:14.440 --> 0:08:16.720 think it's something people should remember or no, but also 0:08:16.760 --> 0:08:19.800 because we're about to place these TikTok responses to this 0:08:19.880 --> 0:08:22.160 bin Laden video and read some comments of people who 0:08:22.240 --> 0:08:25.360 are very taken by it. And I want to set 0:08:25.440 --> 0:08:29.640 up what the pre existing image of ben Laden was 0:08:29.720 --> 0:08:33.200 and our culture kind of prior to this reappraisal of him, 0:08:33.240 --> 0:08:36.559 because I think that is important. But this is unhinged 0:08:36.600 --> 0:08:39.080 so and and it's pretty offensive. So just be aware people, 0:08:39.120 --> 0:08:41.959 I'm about to play it now. Can't wait? Oh yeah, no, 0:08:42.040 --> 0:08:44.679 you're gonna have all right? Can you see the giant Confederate? 0:08:46.000 --> 0:08:48.880 So this is from a John Valby album. I think 0:08:48.920 --> 0:08:51.520 it was called Real Woman Do Play in Mud Puddles? 0:08:51.520 --> 0:08:53.240 I don't know, maybe not. That may just be a 0:08:53.320 --> 0:08:57.400 random image I did not check. There's like describe there's 0:08:57.200 --> 0:09:00.480 the general lee as a mudding truck with a giant 0:09:00.520 --> 0:09:04.520 Confederate flag behind it, and then with the Confederate flag 0:09:04.720 --> 0:09:08.120 like colors the text real women do play in mud 0:09:08.160 --> 0:09:11.800 puddles and it's as Southern girls serven girl on the 0:09:11.960 --> 0:09:15.440 on the windshield of the truck. So I'm gonna start 0:09:15.440 --> 0:09:17.400 playing this song. I'm not gonna play all of it, 0:09:17.440 --> 0:09:20.160 but this should set up for you kind of what 0:09:20.280 --> 0:09:23.719 the acceptable discourse on bin Laden was right after nine 0:09:23.720 --> 0:09:24.120 to eleven. 0:09:29.559 --> 0:09:34.319 Well, we come from Malabama, but we're in Afghanistan, Navy 0:09:34.440 --> 0:09:37.200 seamer rays hunting for a man. 0:09:37.640 --> 0:09:40.480 They say he has a beard and a diaper on 0:09:40.640 --> 0:09:43.880 his head. I heard we won't be coming home until 0:09:43.960 --> 0:09:46.880 that fucker's dead. 0:09:47.400 --> 0:09:47.960 No, don't do. 0:09:49.320 --> 0:09:52.040 I've come to fuck your fanny with some frax. 0:09:53.400 --> 0:09:57.000 So had you guys heard that before? 0:09:58.000 --> 0:09:58.080 No? 0:09:58.320 --> 0:09:59.160 Unfortunately? 0:10:00.120 --> 0:10:00.320 Yes? 0:10:01.320 --> 0:10:03.559 Wow. Yeah, see see. 0:10:03.640 --> 0:10:06.120 The part of America that I midged growing up a 0:10:06.200 --> 0:10:08.439 broad and yeah, never fully understand. 0:10:08.840 --> 0:10:11.840 Now we freezed about thirty seconds into that minute and 0:10:11.840 --> 0:10:14.640 thirty second song, but it was like playing random clips 0:10:14.679 --> 0:10:16.600 of art to go along with the music, and the 0:10:16.679 --> 0:10:19.640 one we paused on was Homer Simpson with an American 0:10:19.679 --> 0:10:24.720 flag behind him, outlined and read with a pistol in 0:10:24.800 --> 0:10:27.480 his hands aimed at a bug eyed Osama Bin Laden 0:10:27.559 --> 0:10:31.400 So great nuanced discourse here, so. 0:10:31.840 --> 0:10:34.480 Many memories like I don't know what it was. People 0:10:34.800 --> 0:10:37.600 loved that, like bug ey'd Bin Luden thing. 0:10:37.679 --> 0:10:40.880 This is like like, yeah, I know what, No, I 0:10:40.920 --> 0:10:42.960 think I know. I'm pretty sure I know why. Which 0:10:43.000 --> 0:10:45.120 is that? So One of the most popular pieces of 0:10:45.200 --> 0:10:48.120 like media popular media in response in the nine to 0:10:48.160 --> 0:10:50.320 eleven attacks was an episode of South Park that came 0:10:50.360 --> 0:10:53.360 out literally like a week or two after the attacks, 0:10:53.400 --> 0:10:59.240 which basically, up until fairly recently, TV was always made 0:10:59.240 --> 0:11:01.880 on a significant delay, so there were no shows on 0:11:02.000 --> 0:11:05.520 air that could pivot to comment on something really quickly. 0:11:05.880 --> 0:11:08.600 The West Wing managed to kind of, but it was 0:11:08.640 --> 0:11:11.160 like a dog shit episode. But the South Park guys 0:11:11.160 --> 0:11:13.079 really pivoted and they put out this episode. It was 0:11:13.120 --> 0:11:17.160 basically like a Bugs Bunny cartoon with Cartman as Bugs 0:11:17.160 --> 0:11:20.360 Bunny and Osama Bin Ladden as Elmer Fudd right, and 0:11:20.400 --> 0:11:21.880 there were a bunch of like scenes of him like 0:11:21.920 --> 0:11:24.520 bug eyes bugging out when like shit would happen, and 0:11:24.559 --> 0:11:27.040 it was It was weird because like the I think 0:11:27.080 --> 0:11:30.160 the most people who watched it, including myself, took it 0:11:30.160 --> 0:11:33.160 in the same manner of that song as like, yeah, 0:11:33.240 --> 0:11:36.400 fuck these guys, these like you know, in ways that 0:11:36.440 --> 0:11:39.680 were pretty bigoted. There was also like the episode opened 0:11:39.720 --> 0:11:43.000 with an extended bit of kids in Afghanistan with everything 0:11:43.040 --> 0:11:45.160 around them and all the adults getting murdered by US 0:11:45.200 --> 0:11:50.000 airplanes for no seeming reason, which was like part of 0:11:50.040 --> 0:11:53.960 the anyway whatever. I think one of the was like 0:11:54.000 --> 0:11:56.800 what we're seeing in some of like why young people 0:11:56.960 --> 0:12:00.559 are reacting to this letter by bin Laden so strongly 0:12:00.720 --> 0:12:04.800 is they've never really gotten to appraise the guy objectively. 0:12:05.679 --> 0:12:08.520 And I'm not saying that that's happening across the board now, 0:12:08.559 --> 0:12:11.560 but I don't think the reactions are nearly as unreasonable 0:12:11.600 --> 0:12:12.520 as they're being painted. 0:12:13.040 --> 0:12:16.079 Yeah, he kind of existed an avatar of evil and 0:12:16.160 --> 0:12:20.000 like with zero nuance or complexity, just like, yeah, a 0:12:20.080 --> 0:12:23.160 satanic sort of totem in American culture. 0:12:23.559 --> 0:12:24.600 Yeah, which is why I've. 0:12:24.440 --> 0:12:27.240 Always assigned it just like I think it behooves us 0:12:27.280 --> 0:12:28.040 to understand. 0:12:28.600 --> 0:12:32.840 Yeah, I agree entirely. So I went through and I 0:12:32.880 --> 0:12:35.520 looked at some of the tiktoks being made about this, 0:12:35.840 --> 0:12:38.880 And first off, TikTok does seem to have taken some 0:12:39.000 --> 0:12:40.800 action to try to stop this. I don't think it's 0:12:40.840 --> 0:12:42.640 going to work either. But like when I typed in 0:12:42.760 --> 0:12:46.240 letter to America recently, the text I got on TikTok 0:12:46.360 --> 0:12:48.920 was this phrase may be associated with behavior or content 0:12:48.960 --> 0:12:52.320 that violates our guidelines promoting a safe, positive experience as 0:12:52.360 --> 0:12:55.319 TikTok's top priority. Yeah yeah, yah yah yah. You can 0:12:55.360 --> 0:12:57.600 still find shit by like typing in bin Laden, but 0:12:57.640 --> 0:13:01.520 it's not as much shit as findable right now, so 0:13:02.000 --> 0:13:04.800 worth noting. One of the first things I came across 0:13:04.840 --> 0:13:07.400 that was interesting is like, so there's this trend on TikTok. 0:13:07.440 --> 0:13:11.360 If you're not a TikToker, I'm going to play what 0:13:11.880 --> 0:13:14.840 are the people on TikTok. There's a lot of AI 0:13:15.600 --> 0:13:18.040 videos where either the text will be read by AI 0:13:18.160 --> 0:13:21.440 with like images and video clips on screen, or you'll 0:13:21.640 --> 0:13:24.880 some there's some creepy instances of people just generating AI 0:13:25.040 --> 0:13:28.480 faces sometimes of like actual murderers and criminals to talk 0:13:28.480 --> 0:13:31.160 about the shit they did. It's really weird. But one 0:13:31.200 --> 0:13:34.160 of the top videos I found on this from about 0:13:34.200 --> 0:13:37.960 a little less than a day ago, is just the 0:13:38.120 --> 0:13:40.640 entire text of bin Laden's letter to America being read 0:13:41.360 --> 0:13:44.440 by an AI and it it sounds weird. I'm going 0:13:44.480 --> 0:13:45.920 to just let everyone get a listen to this. 0:13:46.640 --> 0:13:50.160 In the name of Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful, 0:13:50.360 --> 0:13:54.640 permission to fight against disbelievers is given to those believers 0:13:54.640 --> 0:13:57.280 who are thought against because they have been wronged, and 0:13:57.400 --> 0:14:01.079 surely a law is able to give them. Believe Victoria. 0:14:01.480 --> 0:14:03.640 I think it misses some of the some of the 0:14:03.679 --> 0:14:09.280 stirring contexts the delivery. No, but you get the responses 0:14:09.280 --> 0:14:10.880 of this, and like one of my favorite ones that 0:14:10.880 --> 0:14:14.360 I've gotten the screen is is cheeky chicis Fressa saying 0:14:14.679 --> 0:14:16.480 y'all are gonna hate me? But he kind of ate 0:14:16.760 --> 0:14:20.080 And then the first response is no crumbs, which Garrison 0:14:20.360 --> 0:14:24.520 has our gen Z insult. That means, like, I agree, basically, 0:14:25.600 --> 0:14:30.360 you know, it's oh you're twenty one, now you're out 0:14:30.360 --> 0:14:30.720 of touch. 0:14:30.880 --> 0:14:34.600 Yeah yeah, the first feeling old moment live. 0:14:35.440 --> 0:14:41.600 I yeah, I think that means he like ate everything 0:14:42.160 --> 0:14:43.760 and there's like no crumbs left. 0:14:43.920 --> 0:14:44.120 Yeah. 0:14:44.200 --> 0:14:46.560 No, oh, okay, that's that's good. Very literal. 0:14:46.640 --> 0:14:50.640 Yeah, I think I think that's what it means. But again, 0:14:50.760 --> 0:14:52.440 this is this is very. 0:14:52.680 --> 0:14:56.840 Very very particular culture here it's the bleeding edge. 0:14:56.880 --> 0:15:02.720 Yeah. The last comment following that is bizarre. Trump isn't 0:15:02.720 --> 0:15:05.360 a good person either. The gay people have nothing to 0:15:05.400 --> 0:15:07.560 do with me. This does not say book for Trump. 0:15:07.800 --> 0:15:09.120 I think you can't read. 0:15:09.200 --> 0:15:14.120 See you know it's it's and that's the. 0:15:14.200 --> 0:15:17.200 Op responding to no crumbs. So I don't know what's 0:15:17.240 --> 0:15:17.880 missing here. 0:15:17.880 --> 0:15:19.520 It's really it's really hard to tell. 0:15:20.520 --> 0:15:24.520 Yeah, I think these people may be in a parallel reality. 0:15:24.720 --> 0:15:28.040 I don't think really anyone who's participating in this trend 0:15:28.160 --> 0:15:33.320 is very intelligent or has or has very good media literacy, 0:15:33.760 --> 0:15:38.680 or has really looked into like American imperialism very much. 0:15:39.280 --> 0:15:41.000 No, but we will, we will. 0:15:41.040 --> 0:15:42.720 We will get to that in a Yeah. 0:15:42.840 --> 0:15:45.240 So the next comment is so much truth coming out 0:15:45.240 --> 0:15:48.840 this season. And then I appreciated this from Walker. He 0:15:48.920 --> 0:15:50.720 lost me at the end, he being bin laden with 0:15:50.720 --> 0:15:54.000 the religiously charged homophobia, but that left out he was 0:15:54.080 --> 0:15:57.720 right about everything else, justified and well said, see the 0:15:57.840 --> 0:15:59.640 Voice of reason, the voice. Yeah. 0:15:59.760 --> 0:16:01.800 Well, but also. 0:16:01.960 --> 0:16:04.160 Also now we'll get through it. There's a few more 0:16:04.240 --> 0:16:05.640 problems with the letter than that. 0:16:05.920 --> 0:16:09.680 Yeah. Yeah, I'm doing like you're doing nine to eleven, 0:16:09.720 --> 0:16:12.920 but with a pride flag is yeah, perfect, and I 0:16:12.960 --> 0:16:13.760 have no notes. 0:16:13.920 --> 0:16:14.800 Yeah, you can't. 0:16:14.840 --> 0:16:18.040 You can't remove those things from the rest of the 0:16:18.120 --> 0:16:20.440 letter and the action. Now, they actually do create a 0:16:20.480 --> 0:16:23.520 complete hole. You can't actually pick and choose little parts 0:16:23.520 --> 0:16:26.080 that you want. It's it's like trying to pick and 0:16:26.120 --> 0:16:28.520 choose parts of qan On. You're like, yeah, well, actually 0:16:28.520 --> 0:16:31.240 there are rich people who are pedophiles. You're like, well, yes, 0:16:31.320 --> 0:16:35.360 but you can't, like, you can't. Yeah, that's not giving 0:16:35.440 --> 0:16:36.760 qan On the benefit here. 0:16:36.880 --> 0:16:39.160 This is these are totally different things. 0:16:39.560 --> 0:16:42.440 And the thing that I think people should be doing, 0:16:42.520 --> 0:16:45.320 just so we're clear on like my stands here is 0:16:45.600 --> 0:16:50.120 seeing bin Laden as an incisive and intelligent actor who 0:16:50.160 --> 0:16:52.960 had a significant degree of understanding of this country and 0:16:53.000 --> 0:16:57.280 its culture, and the terrible things that he did were 0:16:57.320 --> 0:17:00.520 as effective as they were because he understood things about 0:17:00.600 --> 0:17:04.359 us that we should understand about us. Right, otherwise you 0:17:04.400 --> 0:17:07.080 are not going to be able to successfully act within 0:17:07.160 --> 0:17:11.600 this culture to improve things and reduce harms. You need 0:17:11.640 --> 0:17:15.160 to understand why what he did worked as well as 0:17:15.160 --> 0:17:16.760 it did, and you need to understand what he knew 0:17:16.760 --> 0:17:19.919 about us, because it's pretty useful stuff to understand. That 0:17:20.040 --> 0:17:22.840 is different from saying that what he is, Like, you 0:17:22.840 --> 0:17:25.439 don't have to view it as the truth, right because 0:17:25.440 --> 0:17:28.800 it's it's it's not like the truth in any moral sense, 0:17:28.840 --> 0:17:31.159 but it's the truth in that Like if you if 0:17:31.200 --> 0:17:34.760 you read some of Hitler's writings on democracy, Hitler accurately 0:17:34.880 --> 0:17:38.040 understood the vulnerabilities of a democratic system and how to 0:17:38.080 --> 0:17:41.280 exploit them. You should understand that you're not saying, wow, 0:17:41.320 --> 0:17:44.560 he was spitting truth. You're just saying, yeah, well some 0:17:44.600 --> 0:17:47.639 people are, Robert. That is a problem. Yeah, some people, 0:17:47.680 --> 0:17:48.400 in fact are. 0:17:48.920 --> 0:17:50.320 Do you know who else is spitting truth? 0:17:50.400 --> 0:17:54.880 Robert our advertisers, Yes, that is right. We are. Are 0:17:54.880 --> 0:17:59.040 we sponsored by the new predition of minkompf at this point? No, 0:17:59.119 --> 0:18:03.160 we are sponsored by Albugdati. He's still alive, folks. Yeh 0:18:03.640 --> 0:18:06.040 mm hmm, I don't know. 0:18:06.160 --> 0:18:06.600 I don't know. 0:18:06.720 --> 0:18:10.040 Here here's the ads. Okay, so we're back. I'm gonna 0:18:10.040 --> 0:18:12.280 play another one of these, one of these zoomer Bin 0:18:12.400 --> 0:18:16.520 Laden loving videos for you. Well, no you're not, No, 0:18:16.600 --> 0:18:16.919 I'm not. 0:18:20.720 --> 0:18:23.720 Lots of these videos have also been taken down recently. 0:18:24.240 --> 0:18:29.199 I go, yeah, they which, yeah. I thought this one 0:18:29.280 --> 0:18:31.440 was interesting because it was someone who was like really 0:18:31.480 --> 0:18:33.840 pro bin Laden being like, yeah, you know, he was 0:18:33.880 --> 0:18:38.520 completely right about everything. What a genius. So I love him. 0:18:38.560 --> 0:18:41.080 But all of the comments were people being like, that's 0:18:41.119 --> 0:18:44.880 fucking kind of crazy to say. Bro, Like, yeah, let's 0:18:44.880 --> 0:18:45.600 take a step back. 0:18:46.040 --> 0:18:46.280 Yeah. 0:18:46.320 --> 0:18:48.240 So the thing this reminds me of this, This is 0:18:48.240 --> 0:18:52.560 a phenomenon I've run into with American maoists. We're like, Okay, 0:18:52.680 --> 0:18:56.119 don't read Mao. They'll read MAO saying something that is, 0:18:56.440 --> 0:19:00.600 you know, perfectly reasonable, like you should not talk about 0:19:00.600 --> 0:19:02.720 something unless you've researched it first. 0:19:03.760 --> 0:19:04.040 Yeah. 0:19:04.119 --> 0:19:07.720 Now, any normal person has heard this when they were 0:19:07.760 --> 0:19:10.960 like two, But these people apparently have never heard this, 0:19:11.040 --> 0:19:12.919 and they run into it through MAO and they're like, 0:19:13.000 --> 0:19:15.600 holy shit, Mao is like the greatest living theorist. 0:19:15.640 --> 0:19:17.560 What's a brilliant thinker? Yeah? 0:19:17.560 --> 0:19:19.800 Man, you guys need bid Launa to tell you the 0:19:19.920 --> 0:19:22.600 US sucks, Like really. 0:19:23.240 --> 0:19:27.479 Yes, people do because they get shit history education because 0:19:27.640 --> 0:19:30.520 their education of nine to eleven was the video I 0:19:30.560 --> 0:19:31.600 started this episode. 0:19:31.840 --> 0:19:37.560 Yeah, like we failed as a country, like just completely. 0:19:37.840 --> 0:19:41.440 No, seriously, Like I like a fucking like horse that 0:19:41.520 --> 0:19:43.160 I will whip till it's dead. 0:19:43.280 --> 0:19:43.800 Is that? Like? 0:19:43.960 --> 0:19:47.080 In twenty sixteen, there was this huge thing about we 0:19:47.119 --> 0:19:50.160 need to teach history properly and media literacy. Right after 0:19:50.200 --> 0:19:52.160 Donald Trump got elected, because a lot of people didn't 0:19:52.200 --> 0:19:54.359 know what the fuck was going on, we just and 0:19:54.359 --> 0:19:56.240 then we just stopped, and everyone was like, nah, fuck it, 0:19:56.240 --> 0:19:58.480 why not, We'll just keep doing STEM STEM STEM and then, 0:19:58.640 --> 0:20:03.520 like like teaching undergraduates often like intro courses for years, 0:20:03.680 --> 0:20:06.760 it's become very clear that we are completely failing in 0:20:06.760 --> 0:20:09.880 the United States to educate people or equipment with any 0:20:09.920 --> 0:20:13.400 understanding of American history, and so they just get propaganda. 0:20:13.520 --> 0:20:15.399 This is a big part of why I focus on 0:20:15.440 --> 0:20:18.680 cryptos so much, because James, that is exactly where crypto 0:20:18.760 --> 0:20:21.919 comes from, is we learned a lot of stemshit, but 0:20:22.000 --> 0:20:25.840 we never learned any humanities or anything. So you get 0:20:25.880 --> 0:20:29.359 people saying stuff like, well, the underlying technology buying crypto 0:20:29.440 --> 0:20:31.400 is so impressive, and it's like, no, it's you can't 0:20:31.400 --> 0:20:34.000 point to a single useful piece of work it's ever done. 0:20:34.080 --> 0:20:35.960 You just find it impressive because there's a lot of 0:20:36.000 --> 0:20:40.120 complex math problems and that's what you that's what you value, Like, yes, 0:20:40.119 --> 0:20:42.560 it's the results of that, Yeah. 0:20:42.240 --> 0:20:45.440 The yard stick of academic achievement or intelligence. 0:20:45.520 --> 0:20:49.200 Yeah, it anyway, speaking of people who are less intelligent 0:20:49.240 --> 0:20:51.639 than a yardstick. It's not exactly what you said, James, 0:20:51.760 --> 0:20:53.600 but I also wanted to play here's a right wing 0:20:53.680 --> 0:20:56.640 influencer who's collected a bunch of these videos. I hadn't 0:20:56.680 --> 0:20:58.639 run into this guy before. But oh no, did they 0:20:58.720 --> 0:21:00.720 drop him too? Are they just purching everything? 0:21:01.280 --> 0:21:03.800 So TikTok has been removing all of this, almost all 0:21:03.800 --> 0:21:06.560 of the videos associated with this trend. You can you 0:21:06.600 --> 0:21:10.280 can find the compilations on Twitter are really some of 0:21:10.280 --> 0:21:12.000 the only ways that these videos are still alive. 0:21:12.080 --> 0:21:14.359 Yeah, this is a right wing guy. This was the 0:21:14.440 --> 0:21:16.280 right wing guy making fun of it. But man, that's 0:21:16.280 --> 0:21:18.720 interesting because this was, like I found this five minutes ago. 0:21:18.840 --> 0:21:20.959 So I mean, I think this is the thing that like, 0:21:21.119 --> 0:21:23.640 it's really hard to talk about this without it being 0:21:23.760 --> 0:21:27.600 in like an insane right wing thing. But TikTok is 0:21:27.640 --> 0:21:31.000 really Americans only encounter with the way that Chinese style 0:21:31.040 --> 0:21:34.639 censorship works, which is they take a giant hammer and 0:21:34.680 --> 0:21:38.000 they just like hit things with it. Yeah, as supposed like, 0:21:38.320 --> 0:21:41.600 it's not it's not like targeted. It's like like we 0:21:41.720 --> 0:21:44.200 found everyone who said the word been lauded and band 0:21:44.280 --> 0:21:47.399 it right. Everything associated with the trend like yeah, you know, 0:21:47.520 --> 0:21:49.000 like and this is this is the way that like 0:21:49.200 --> 0:21:52.280 censorship stuff tends to work in China because it's kind 0:21:52.359 --> 0:21:56.159 of easy to do and it covers your ass, and 0:21:56.200 --> 0:21:58.920 so now Americans are like experiencing this. 0:21:59.520 --> 0:22:01.800 I'm sorry, I'm just enjoying seeing what Roberts have suggested 0:22:01.920 --> 0:22:04.359 for other TikTok he might like, oh, thank goodness for 0:22:04.400 --> 0:22:06.080 the shower's top shelf products. 0:22:06.560 --> 0:22:11.320 Yeah, hashtag has talk. Yeah, I'm a big fan. I 0:22:11.320 --> 0:22:15.320 think it's because of this person, ear earth Mother, Earth 0:22:16.440 --> 0:22:20.159 earth Mother basically who actually I brought her up specifically 0:22:20.160 --> 0:22:24.080 because she was an example of like the way this 0:22:24.119 --> 0:22:28.080 is getting portrayed in kind of like particularly like Twitter 0:22:28.200 --> 0:22:30.919 and more mainstream sort of descriptions of it is like 0:22:31.400 --> 0:22:34.400 all of these gen zers are full throat for Osama. 0:22:34.480 --> 0:22:37.320 They've all gone crazy, and you can certainly find no 0:22:37.400 --> 0:22:39.600 shortage of those videos. I found a bunch of other 0:22:39.680 --> 0:22:41.760 videos that are more critical. It is difficult for me 0:22:41.840 --> 0:22:45.280 to tell what the preponderance of is because there's not 0:22:45.400 --> 0:22:47.880 no one's basing what they're saying on a sentiment analysis. 0:22:47.920 --> 0:22:52.919 They're basing it on what their timelines forwarded them based 0:22:52.960 --> 0:22:55.720 on their passion when they typed letter to America or 0:22:55.720 --> 0:22:59.159 whatever into Twitter or into a TikTok. But like I 0:22:59.240 --> 0:23:02.480 ran into this lady video and like so not plenty 0:23:02.480 --> 0:23:04.720 of these are and I found others like this. Plenty 0:23:04.720 --> 0:23:06.960 of these are like a little more critical but not 0:23:07.400 --> 0:23:09.159 but still, yeah, I'll just play it. 0:23:09.440 --> 0:23:12.320 Hey, guys, just coming on here to remind y'all that 0:23:12.320 --> 0:23:16.480 Osama bin Laden was still bad personally. Crazy that I'm 0:23:16.520 --> 0:23:19.840 even having to get on here and say this, wee hello, obviously, 0:23:20.359 --> 0:23:22.199 but I've been seeing a lot of people, you know, 0:23:22.280 --> 0:23:25.159 say that they read Osamogan Laden's Letter to America. And 0:23:26.000 --> 0:23:30.680 I've read the letter, and I understand that a lot 0:23:30.680 --> 0:23:34.240 of people are getting educated and kind of like deconstructing 0:23:34.240 --> 0:23:37.240 the propaganda that they've grown up in living in America. 0:23:37.400 --> 0:23:40.840 But that does not mean that we should mystify these 0:23:41.080 --> 0:23:44.719 terrible people. But are also criticized the West and questions 0:23:44.760 --> 0:23:47.160 in the West, and like how we operated over here, 0:23:47.720 --> 0:23:50.320 Osam b and LANs doing the same thing. It doesn't 0:23:50.359 --> 0:23:52.879 mean that they are necessarily wrong on what they're saying, 0:23:52.920 --> 0:23:56.920 but it doesn't take away the fact that they're sexist, fascist, 0:23:57.640 --> 0:23:59.400 racist dictators. 0:23:59.760 --> 0:24:02.200 Yeah, I like this lady. That's a video. 0:24:02.680 --> 0:24:04.920 Yeah, I think she kind of hits on one point 0:24:04.920 --> 0:24:08.679 that I've seen in some of the other like for 0:24:08.760 --> 0:24:15.280 lack of a better term, promo Sama bin Laden, people. 0:24:15.000 --> 0:24:16.280 Have been saying how like. 0:24:18.080 --> 0:24:20.000 Well like people have been talking about how like they're 0:24:20.040 --> 0:24:25.000 like finally like seeing past US propaganda and they're deconstructing 0:24:25.040 --> 0:24:27.920 the lies that media has told them. And this kind 0:24:27.920 --> 0:24:29.480 of gets at something that we see a lot and 0:24:29.600 --> 0:24:33.800 kind of in like cult spaces, is that you rarely 0:24:33.880 --> 0:24:39.000 ever just completely disengage from some form of propaganda. 0:24:39.359 --> 0:24:42.280 You jump to a different form of propaganda, absolutely right. 0:24:42.280 --> 0:24:46.200 It's like reading this letter, you're not getting like disillusioned 0:24:46.200 --> 0:24:49.880 from US propaganda. You're now buying into someone else's propaganda. 0:24:49.960 --> 0:24:53.119 Like the letter to America is a completely other version 0:24:53.240 --> 0:24:57.399 of conspiracy riddled propaganda that was put out for a 0:24:57.440 --> 0:24:59.960 political purpose, and to try to engage with it in 0:25:00.080 --> 0:25:03.159 good faith is not the way to approach that text. 0:25:04.520 --> 0:25:06.480 And I think this is a big part of this 0:25:06.560 --> 0:25:10.640 problem is how people's education has worked the past few years, 0:25:10.640 --> 0:25:14.680 because they should have learned all of the various motivations 0:25:14.720 --> 0:25:17.800 and geopolitical factors that led to the nine to eleven attacks, 0:25:18.160 --> 0:25:22.080 and instead having Islam bin Lan be characterized as this, 0:25:22.359 --> 0:25:26.760 as this like cartoonish evil that hates America for freedom 0:25:26.800 --> 0:25:29.320 and like hates America as a nation for its freedom. 0:25:29.720 --> 0:25:34.199 Like that, Yes, that is propaganda. And if that's all 0:25:34.240 --> 0:25:36.480 you've had your whole life and you're you're now seeing 0:25:36.520 --> 0:25:38.639 this other side, this is probably like this is definitely 0:25:38.720 --> 0:25:42.160 like mind blowing, but like you can look into why 0:25:42.200 --> 0:25:46.600 these things happen without just falling for someone else's extremist propaganda, 0:25:46.680 --> 0:25:48.159 like like yeah, you can. You can get into the 0:25:48.200 --> 0:25:51.679 actual reasons for why this happened, how how US imperialism 0:25:51.720 --> 0:25:55.120 has caused the geopolitical situation coming out of the nineties, 0:25:55.440 --> 0:25:57.879 Like it's it's lots of people have already done this 0:25:57.960 --> 0:26:00.439 reading there's there's just plenty of people on line who have 0:26:00.480 --> 0:26:02.920 not looked into this because they have life, they're doing whatever, 0:26:02.960 --> 0:26:05.760 like right, they've not everyone like us and spends all 0:26:05.800 --> 0:26:09.400 of our time reading like political extremist literature. 0:26:09.480 --> 0:26:12.320 Yeah, not all of us have strong opinions on the 0:26:12.359 --> 0:26:14.280 different eras of bin Laden writing. 0:26:14.800 --> 0:26:15.040 Yeah. 0:26:15.560 --> 0:26:18.119 Yeah, it's like Tya Swift in that sense. 0:26:18.280 --> 0:26:21.440 Yeah, yeah, I think there's a there's another there's a 0:26:21.480 --> 0:26:23.560 thing That's also important here too, which is I think 0:26:23.800 --> 0:26:25.800 you see this a lot in Americans, which is that 0:26:26.560 --> 0:26:32.720 Americans will have this moment where they realize that they've 0:26:32.720 --> 0:26:35.920 been being lied to by the American media. And then 0:26:36.040 --> 0:26:39.840 the thing this convinces them of is that everyone else 0:26:39.920 --> 0:26:44.600 is telling the truth. Yes, and it's like, no, every 0:26:44.680 --> 0:26:48.720 country is doing propaganda. All of their media is doing propaganda. 0:26:49.240 --> 0:26:51.800 Like you can't just sort of ping pong from one 0:26:52.720 --> 0:26:57.160 like countries sort of prop media propaganda to another countries 0:26:57.160 --> 0:27:01.680 because they're all doing it and the stuff that they're 0:27:01.760 --> 0:27:06.000 saying also isn't true. You have to actually, like you 0:27:06.080 --> 0:27:09.040 have to actually try to work out the sort of 0:27:09.080 --> 0:27:12.840 the reality of history. You can't just rely on reading 0:27:12.960 --> 0:27:16.920 like some other like some other propaganda's version of events. 0:27:17.240 --> 0:27:19.520 But this comes down to like a lack of basic 0:27:19.600 --> 0:27:21.600 understanding of how we do history, which I think is 0:27:21.640 --> 0:27:23.920 not anyone's fault. It's because we don't teach you very 0:27:23.920 --> 0:27:26.520 well at all in schools. But like the lack of 0:27:26.600 --> 0:27:29.240 understanding of the difference between primary and secondary sources, right, 0:27:29.280 --> 0:27:31.600 and like people want to get straight to the source, 0:27:31.800 --> 0:27:35.040 so they'll go and read one historical primary source without 0:27:35.359 --> 0:27:38.399 the adequate secondary context and suddenly be like oh shit, 0:27:39.080 --> 0:27:41.040 and yeah, as you say, turned into a maoist or 0:27:41.359 --> 0:27:42.800 apparently Memora of al Kaieda. 0:27:43.240 --> 0:27:45.880 This is why, like you know, journalists do a lot 0:27:45.920 --> 0:27:48.639 of gathering, you know, what they can in the moment 0:27:48.680 --> 0:27:51.760 from a scene, from interviews and stuff. But academics there's 0:27:51.760 --> 0:27:54.199 always going to be if it's like a good academic, 0:27:54.520 --> 0:27:57.679 Like I'm reading a great book right now on trust 0:27:57.880 --> 0:28:01.399 in unstable societies. Society is like racked by war. So 0:28:01.400 --> 0:28:04.720 it's like the concept of it's written by a Gosen 0:28:04.760 --> 0:28:07.919 and it's about like how concepts of public trust fluctuate 0:28:08.119 --> 0:28:12.080 during conflicts. And he's looking at Lebanon, he's looking at Syria, 0:28:12.119 --> 0:28:15.280 he's looking at a rack, he's looking at Palestine. It's 0:28:15.400 --> 0:28:19.000 very interesting. But like he's not just interviewing people. There's 0:28:19.080 --> 0:28:21.959 like a set of basically an algorithm that he runs 0:28:22.160 --> 0:28:25.560 his different interviews and like the overall sentiments expressed in 0:28:25.640 --> 0:28:28.320 them through in order to try and determine like here 0:28:28.440 --> 0:28:31.199 is the aggregate of like what I found as a 0:28:31.240 --> 0:28:33.760 reaction to this question from like the people that I survey. 0:28:33.840 --> 0:28:35.240 It's the same kind of stuff that you do in 0:28:35.280 --> 0:28:37.159 a survey to attempt to add a little bit more 0:28:37.240 --> 0:28:39.600 rigor than just saying, well, I talked to ten people 0:28:39.680 --> 0:28:41.960 and most of them said this, So clearly this is 0:28:41.960 --> 0:28:44.960 a trend, right, which journalists are often guilty of, and 0:28:45.040 --> 0:28:48.600 also just goes ab in part because of that. Twitter 0:28:48.720 --> 0:28:52.480 goes wild with this kind of shit, just like well, 0:28:52.520 --> 0:28:54.600 I looked through and I listened to twenty videos, and 0:28:54.680 --> 0:28:56.760 most of them the kids loved Bin Laden. So the 0:28:56.840 --> 0:28:59.880 kids must love Bin Lodding now, which I don't think 0:28:59.920 --> 0:29:03.040 is entirely fair, but I wanted to. I think it's 0:29:03.080 --> 0:29:05.320 probably a good time for us to go through the 0:29:05.400 --> 0:29:09.520 Letter to America and talk about what is actually in 0:29:09.560 --> 0:29:12.960 this thing, right, because you might as well know what's 0:29:12.960 --> 0:29:14.320 in it. It's a good thing to read. Again, you 0:29:14.320 --> 0:29:15.560 can find it on wiki source. 0:29:16.400 --> 0:29:16.680 Yeah. 0:29:16.720 --> 0:29:20.719 So it starts with him kind of providing just some 0:29:20.800 --> 0:29:24.880 kind of churonic justifications for the concept of fighting against 0:29:24.880 --> 0:29:27.640 an aggressor fighting against like, you know, someone who is 0:29:28.120 --> 0:29:31.840 actively attacking you, which is more essentially how he positions 0:29:32.080 --> 0:29:34.720 like the relationship between the US and the Muslim world. 0:29:35.440 --> 0:29:36.840 And he is a big you know, a big thing 0:29:36.880 --> 0:29:38.720 that comes up over and over in this piece is 0:29:38.800 --> 0:29:42.160 him talking about how the Caliphate is being sort of 0:29:42.200 --> 0:29:45.600 like squashed and stopped from you know, existing in the 0:29:45.640 --> 0:29:49.600 form that it should exist by this kind of constant 0:29:50.120 --> 0:29:53.760 both attacks on not just Arab democracy but on like 0:29:53.880 --> 0:29:58.640 sovereign Arab states as well as like support by the US. 0:29:58.680 --> 0:30:01.880 For he complains about corrupt rulers in the Muslim world, 0:30:01.880 --> 0:30:04.040 and he is talking about not just guys like Saddam, 0:30:04.120 --> 0:30:06.240 but like largely the Saudi royal family is a big 0:30:06.280 --> 0:30:10.480 part of it. He talks a lot about Iran and 0:30:11.040 --> 0:30:15.320 basically the uh So that's kind of like a bit 0:30:15.400 --> 0:30:18.280 where a lot of his like grievances start. He does 0:30:18.400 --> 0:30:20.800 bring up and one of the videos, James that you 0:30:20.840 --> 0:30:24.160 posted earlier was like in Israeli man responding to this 0:30:24.320 --> 0:30:29.680 and basically characterizing in a very inaccurate form saying like, uh, 0:30:29.720 --> 0:30:32.360 there's no facts in this letter. Like he doesn't like 0:30:32.440 --> 0:30:38.719 say anything true. Yeah, he's just angry at Israel in Palestine, right, 0:30:38.760 --> 0:30:41.880 He's just angry at like at that. And he does 0:30:42.040 --> 0:30:44.920 bring up Palestine multiple times. There's lines like the blood 0:30:44.920 --> 0:30:47.520 pouring out of Palestine must be equally revenged. That's a 0:30:47.520 --> 0:30:50.320 significant part of his case. But he also lists a 0:30:50.320 --> 0:30:52.800 lot of other areas right, he is not. It is 0:30:52.840 --> 0:30:55.560 not just what's happening. It's not just what Israel is 0:30:55.600 --> 0:30:57.800 doing in Palestine that he's talking about. There's lines like, 0:30:58.080 --> 0:31:01.120 you attacked us in Somalia, you supported Therussian atrocities against 0:31:01.200 --> 0:31:04.120 us in Chechnia, the Indian oppression against US in Kashmir, 0:31:04.160 --> 0:31:06.680 and the Jewish aggression against US in Lebanon, and he 0:31:06.720 --> 0:31:09.280 brings all of those up several times. He also he 0:31:09.320 --> 0:31:11.880 does drop some facts in here. One of the more 0:31:12.560 --> 0:31:15.480 salient lines is you have starved the Muslims of Iraq, 0:31:15.520 --> 0:31:17.600 where children die every year. It is a wonder that 0:31:17.640 --> 0:31:20.000 more than one point five million Iraqi children have died 0:31:20.040 --> 0:31:22.040 as a result of your sanctions, and you did not 0:31:22.120 --> 0:31:24.880 show concern yet when three thousand of your people died, 0:31:24.960 --> 0:31:27.360 the entire world rises and has not yet set down. 0:31:28.360 --> 0:31:31.720 And that's not an inaccurate thing to be That's not 0:31:31.720 --> 0:31:35.640 an inaccurate statement or a thing to not be angry about. Now, 0:31:36.080 --> 0:31:40.400 that's not the full context of it, right, because there 0:31:40.520 --> 0:31:42.720 is a bunch of stuff that is in here that 0:31:42.960 --> 0:31:47.360 is like bidden laden culture, warshit that absolutely is not 0:31:47.760 --> 0:31:51.600 reasonable or a reason to bomb people. Like there's a 0:31:51.640 --> 0:31:53.600 point in the letter where he's like, what do we 0:31:53.680 --> 0:31:56.360 want from you? The Americans like, what do we you know? 0:31:56.400 --> 0:31:58.800 Al Kaida, the people who have attacked you. He's speaking 0:31:58.840 --> 0:32:01.240 kind of broadly for the Uma here, what are we 0:32:01.280 --> 0:32:03.440 asking from you? And the first thing we are is 0:32:03.440 --> 0:32:06.080 that we are calling you to Islam, which I don't 0:32:06.080 --> 0:32:08.840 think is likely to happen. The second thing is we 0:32:08.880 --> 0:32:11.360 are calling on you to stop your repression, lies in 0:32:11.400 --> 0:32:14.240 immorality and debauchery that has spread among you. We call 0:32:14.320 --> 0:32:16.920 him for you to be a people of manners, principles, honor, 0:32:16.920 --> 0:32:22.400 and purity, to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling, 0:32:22.480 --> 0:32:25.840 and trading with interest. We call all of you this 0:32:25.920 --> 0:32:27.600 that you might be freed from what you have already 0:32:27.680 --> 0:32:29.200 been caught up in. That you might be freed from 0:32:29.200 --> 0:32:33.160 the deceptive lies that you are a great nation. And 0:32:33.320 --> 0:32:36.840 you may recognize that as a pretty insane reason to 0:32:36.920 --> 0:32:40.640 kill three thousand people. I mean there's gambling, Yeah, yeah. 0:32:40.720 --> 0:32:42.800 I think a big part of the framing of this 0:32:42.960 --> 0:32:47.000 entire thing is like people are taking this as being like, oh, 0:32:47.000 --> 0:32:50.280 look at all these justified reasons. Because the US was 0:32:51.040 --> 0:32:54.880 complicent and active in mass violence in the Middle East. 0:32:54.880 --> 0:32:59.120 But like he's not actually critiquing violence or political violence 0:32:59.160 --> 0:33:02.400 because he is pro political violence. He is like that, 0:33:02.640 --> 0:33:06.160 he look, what he is critiquing is Western degeneracy. Like 0:33:06.160 --> 0:33:08.600 that is that is his actual thing. The first to 0:33:08.720 --> 0:33:12.120 ask is to is to convert over to a fascistic 0:33:12.360 --> 0:33:17.640 version of his religion. Yeah, like that's the primary thing 0:33:18.160 --> 0:33:23.160 that this isn't about, like US imperialism in terms of 0:33:23.240 --> 0:33:25.280 what his end project is. 0:33:25.680 --> 0:33:28.040 And he's also when he's angry about violence, it is 0:33:28.120 --> 0:33:32.320 specifically violence against Muslims, right, because again bin Laden is 0:33:32.480 --> 0:33:36.280 fine with doing violence to and having the state potentially 0:33:36.320 --> 0:33:39.160 do violence to non Muslims in his ideal state. He 0:33:39.240 --> 0:33:42.760 also we read he is very right when he says 0:33:42.800 --> 0:33:44.840 that the United States is complicit in the depths of 0:33:44.840 --> 0:33:47.440 over a million Iraqis because of our sanctions. This is 0:33:47.480 --> 0:33:50.280 in the pre invasion period. One of the worst crimes 0:33:50.280 --> 0:33:53.440 this country has been complicit in within our lifetimes. Absolutely 0:33:53.440 --> 0:33:56.840 a fucking nightmare. He devotes as much time to the 0:33:57.320 --> 0:33:59.600 to that as he does to this next paragraph I'm 0:33:59.600 --> 0:34:02.400 going to which is another one of his grievances. Who 0:34:02.400 --> 0:34:05.160 can forget your President Clinton's imral acts committed in the 0:34:05.160 --> 0:34:08.000 official oval office. After that, you did not even bring 0:34:08.080 --> 0:34:10.520 him to account other than that he made a mistake, 0:34:10.840 --> 0:34:13.799 after which everything passed with no punishment. Is there a 0:34:13.800 --> 0:34:15.799 worse kind of event for which your name will go 0:34:15.880 --> 0:34:19.480 down in history and be remembered by nations? He was, like, 0:34:19.600 --> 0:34:22.160 it's fucked up that you killed a million people. The 0:34:22.200 --> 0:34:25.080 worst thing you did was let your president get a blowjob, 0:34:25.680 --> 0:34:28.319 Like that is part of this letter, And that's a 0:34:28.440 --> 0:34:34.080 crazy person thing to think. Yeah, Like that's just him 0:34:34.120 --> 0:34:39.200 being an asshole, because not really a problem, right, there's 0:34:39.239 --> 0:34:42.840 personal problems, right, but on the scale of like American crimes, 0:34:42.880 --> 0:34:45.400 the fact that we didn't forcepend or forced Clinton out 0:34:45.400 --> 0:34:48.480 of office not really on the list. Yeah, does not 0:34:48.560 --> 0:34:51.520 really make the cut. Yeah, there is a long list, 0:34:51.560 --> 0:34:54.919 and that does not make it. Yeah, then of course 0:34:54.960 --> 0:34:58.120 he's got He also spends actually more time on the 0:34:58.200 --> 0:35:00.839 sex trade than he does on what the US did 0:35:00.880 --> 0:35:03.319 to Iraq. You are a nation that practices the trade 0:35:03.320 --> 0:35:05.880 of sex and all its forms, directly and indirectly. Giant 0:35:05.920 --> 0:35:08.960 corporations and establishments are established on this under the name 0:35:09.000 --> 0:35:12.319 of art, entertainment, tourism, and freedom, and other deceptive names 0:35:12.320 --> 0:35:14.360 you attribute to it. And because of all this, you 0:35:14.400 --> 0:35:16.440 have been described in history as a nation that spreads 0:35:16.480 --> 0:35:18.960 diseases that were unknown to man in the past. Go 0:35:19.000 --> 0:35:21.239 ahead and boast to the nations of man that you 0:35:21.280 --> 0:35:23.720 brought aids as a satanic American invention. 0:35:24.840 --> 0:35:28.239 It's a very basic reactionary screen. It's like, yes, you 0:35:28.320 --> 0:35:32.120 can do the same thing with like sections of Hitler 0:35:32.160 --> 0:35:35.680 speeches talking about like working conditions and factories. Right, you 0:35:35.680 --> 0:35:38.360 could take little sections, put them on TikTok, make it, 0:35:38.480 --> 0:35:39.960 make it be read by an ai voice and be like, 0:35:40.000 --> 0:35:42.879 oh wow, this is a really good critique of capitalism. 0:35:43.520 --> 0:35:46.919 Like you're missing the entire point of what Hitler's actual 0:35:46.960 --> 0:35:50.319 political project is. This is the exact same thing. It 0:35:50.360 --> 0:35:54.440 is exactly this is the this is the thing reactionaries do. 0:35:54.520 --> 0:35:57.839 This is like they will take a few of these 0:35:57.880 --> 0:36:01.560 points talking about imperialism, talking about capitalism, and then wrap 0:36:01.600 --> 0:36:04.480 it in a fascistic package like that. That is their 0:36:04.640 --> 0:36:07.920 entire political goal. It's it's it's the entire way they recruit, 0:36:07.960 --> 0:36:09.880 it's how they spread their propaganda. It's how they get 0:36:09.880 --> 0:36:11.320 people to believe conspiracy theories. 0:36:11.680 --> 0:36:12.160 Yeah. 0:36:12.280 --> 0:36:16.240 Yeah, and we American people especially will be incredibly vulnerable 0:36:16.280 --> 0:36:19.759 to it because they'll look at the critiques, which are 0:36:19.760 --> 0:36:22.439 in some cases reasonable, right, or if somebody's not wrong 0:36:22.480 --> 0:36:26.319 about every critique he has, but the fact that he 0:36:26.440 --> 0:36:30.160 is valuing the murder through starvation of a million or 0:36:30.200 --> 0:36:35.080 more people, which Bill Clinton getting the blow shop some 0:36:35.280 --> 0:36:38.160 it's not something you should miss in your interpretation of 0:36:38.200 --> 0:36:40.440 the validity of his points. Yeah, this is not a 0:36:40.840 --> 0:36:42.400 This is not a guy you need to agree with. 0:36:42.760 --> 0:36:47.960 No, under no circumstances, have to. 0:36:49.120 --> 0:36:50.320 Once again drill. 0:36:51.760 --> 0:36:56.880 Yeah, it's uh, it's certainly a weird one. The reaction 0:36:56.960 --> 0:36:59.440 to it has been equally weird and equally misleading. 0:36:59.640 --> 0:37:04.720 And yeah, the reaction to the reaction like, yeah. 0:37:04.800 --> 0:37:06.799 It shouldn't be that fucking hard for us to be, 0:37:06.880 --> 0:37:09.840 Like America shouldn't have three sanctions, killed millions of children 0:37:09.880 --> 0:37:11.600 and done then two war crimes out of the world 0:37:11.880 --> 0:37:14.680 Asama bin Lad and bad dude. We can take that 0:37:14.760 --> 0:37:15.319 middle path. 0:37:17.080 --> 0:37:18.600 I do want to get into a little more before 0:37:18.640 --> 0:37:21.240 we finish our talking about this, some of the lines 0:37:21.280 --> 0:37:24.440 that I think are really igniting some of these people 0:37:24.480 --> 0:37:29.520 who are now pro bin laden TikTokers, because it makes 0:37:29.560 --> 0:37:31.319 sense to me that there are bits of this that 0:37:31.360 --> 0:37:33.160 really grab people and I'm going to read a couple 0:37:33.239 --> 0:37:35.520 of them. One of them is this line here. The 0:37:35.520 --> 0:37:38.359 freedom of democracy that you call to is for yourselves 0:37:38.400 --> 0:37:40.759 and for white race only. As for the West of 0:37:40.760 --> 0:37:43.680 the world, you impose on them your monstrous, destructive policies 0:37:43.680 --> 0:37:46.960 and governments, which you call the American friends. You prevent 0:37:46.960 --> 0:37:50.200 them from establishing democracies. When the Islamic Party in Algeria 0:37:50.239 --> 0:37:52.719 wanted to practice democracy and they won the election, you 0:37:52.800 --> 0:37:55.440 unleashed your agents in the Algerian Army onto them and 0:37:55.520 --> 0:37:57.799 to attack them with tanks and guns, to imprison them 0:37:57.840 --> 0:38:00.439 and torture them. A new lesson from the America Book 0:38:00.440 --> 0:38:03.960 of Democracy. And like, yeah, there's some valid stuff in 0:38:04.000 --> 0:38:07.720 that paragraph, right, there's some there's some points he's making 0:38:07.760 --> 0:38:10.600 there that people who have started to get people who 0:38:10.600 --> 0:38:14.000 have just gotten out of like their parents' bubble and 0:38:14.000 --> 0:38:16.759 who are starting to become aware of the world and 0:38:16.880 --> 0:38:19.760 history in the US's place in it. I see why, 0:38:19.960 --> 0:38:22.480 especially if they encounter stuff like that out of context, 0:38:23.000 --> 0:38:26.880 they will find that intriguing, because that's a fairly lucid 0:38:26.880 --> 0:38:29.960 and reasonable sentiment of a horrible thing that this country 0:38:30.000 --> 0:38:30.960 has been involved in. 0:38:33.200 --> 0:38:35.600 It's also nothing that hasn't been said better by it. 0:38:35.760 --> 0:38:36.400 You can find it. 0:38:37.440 --> 0:38:39.600 You can find it being said well ahead of bin 0:38:39.719 --> 0:38:42.320 Laden saying it by people who did not kill thousands. 0:38:43.160 --> 0:38:45.239 I want to sort of, you know, maybe this is 0:38:45.239 --> 0:38:47.719 too late in this episode for anyone to still be 0:38:47.760 --> 0:38:50.040 listening to this, but I want to sort of make 0:38:50.080 --> 0:38:52.680 an appeal to people who are discovering anti colonialism for 0:38:52.760 --> 0:38:55.160 the first time. Yeah, sort of in the wake of 0:38:55.200 --> 0:38:57.760 this and in the wake of Israel community and genocide 0:38:57.960 --> 0:39:01.480 and the thing that's the something very important to understand 0:39:01.520 --> 0:39:04.440 about anti colonialism, which is that anti colonialism is not 0:39:04.560 --> 0:39:08.440 a single coherent set of politics. There are many, many 0:39:08.440 --> 0:39:12.280 different types of anti colonial politics, and those different versions 0:39:12.320 --> 0:39:15.960 of anti colonialism wind up with completely different politics. And 0:39:16.080 --> 0:39:19.480 this is something you know internationally, there was a very 0:39:19.480 --> 0:39:22.920 important distinction between made between left and right wing anti colonialisms. 0:39:23.360 --> 0:39:23.839 In the US. 0:39:23.880 --> 0:39:25.840 I mean, we don't have this right like. This is 0:39:26.000 --> 0:39:28.279 sort of the problem with Americans encountering this for the 0:39:28.320 --> 0:39:31.200 first time, is we don't have left and right wing 0:39:31.280 --> 0:39:34.400 anti colonialism because the US is the world's tremere colonial power. 0:39:34.800 --> 0:39:36.839 But in a lot of parts of the world there 0:39:36.880 --> 0:39:40.959 is right wing anti colonialism, and you know, The core 0:39:41.080 --> 0:39:45.480 difference here is there are people who hate colonialism because 0:39:45.560 --> 0:39:47.920 of their sort of deep and abiding, principled opposition to 0:39:47.960 --> 0:39:51.080 oppression and exploitation, and there are people who hate colonialism 0:39:51.080 --> 0:39:53.160 because their empire lost a war and they want to 0:39:53.200 --> 0:39:53.880 go back to being. 0:39:53.719 --> 0:39:54.479 An empire again. 0:39:56.000 --> 0:40:00.400 And what kinds like which version of this politics people 0:40:00.600 --> 0:40:02.759 take up often has a lot to do with their 0:40:02.760 --> 0:40:05.160 class position, and they're you know, they're they're sort of 0:40:05.239 --> 0:40:11.840 like ethnic, racial, or position in the pre existing society's hierarchy. 0:40:11.920 --> 0:40:14.279 And that's something very important about bin Lauden that you 0:40:14.360 --> 0:40:17.000 can't get from either the American nationalists they hate us 0:40:17.000 --> 0:40:19.080 for our freedom shit, and you also can't get from 0:40:19.120 --> 0:40:23.200 bin Laden's own description of his motivation. And the thing 0:40:23.200 --> 0:40:26.840 that's important here right is that you know, assamo'm bin 0:40:26.920 --> 0:40:29.279 Laden is not some Palestinian k who picked up an 0:40:29.280 --> 0:40:32.280 ak after the Israelis murdered his family. Assamo'm bin Laden 0:40:32.480 --> 0:40:34.720 is one of the heirs to Saudi bin Laden group. 0:40:35.040 --> 0:40:36.640 And this is a second I need this style. We 0:40:36.680 --> 0:40:38.080 need to stop for a little bit and talk about 0:40:38.080 --> 0:40:40.839 the differences between American and Saudi capitalism, because they don't 0:40:40.840 --> 0:40:44.080 they're not structured the same way And one of the 0:40:44.120 --> 0:40:47.000 sort of big differences here is that the Saudi bin 0:40:47.080 --> 0:40:50.480 Laden group isn't like it's not like a company, right, 0:40:50.800 --> 0:40:54.719 it's a conglomerate. And what this means is that you know, 0:40:54.920 --> 0:40:58.920 is that bin Laden's family, like the people who own 0:40:59.000 --> 0:41:01.120 the bin Laden Group, which is outed by his dad, 0:41:01.800 --> 0:41:06.480 they don't own one company, they own five hundred companies. 0:41:07.280 --> 0:41:11.120 The American equivalent to who bin Laden is is like 0:41:11.760 --> 0:41:14.800 it's it's it's imagine if one off Jeff Bezos' kids 0:41:14.840 --> 0:41:17.200 went to like a church, like an Orthodox church of 0:41:17.280 --> 0:41:20.360 Ukraine's seminary school, and then god his dad to like 0:41:20.440 --> 0:41:22.880 go like pay for him to go do war tourism 0:41:22.920 --> 0:41:25.560 in Ukraine and then got a group together to like 0:41:25.600 --> 0:41:26.880 fly a plane into the Kremlin. 0:41:26.920 --> 0:41:30.239 Yeah, and became like a weird like trad cat. 0:41:30.640 --> 0:41:33.560 That would be kind of cool, it would be funny, 0:41:33.640 --> 0:41:36.160 but like, but that's the thing. Like, he's not like 0:41:36.880 --> 0:41:39.600 London is not a sort of moral authority on like 0:41:39.719 --> 0:41:42.839 Islamic reticizance to American imperialism. He's a rich, failed son 0:41:42.840 --> 0:41:45.600 who had this combination of like regurgitated say you'd cut up, 0:41:46.080 --> 0:41:48.040 and a bunch of his dad's money and like money 0:41:48.040 --> 0:41:50.200 from Pakistani intelligence, and that allowed him to sort of 0:41:50.320 --> 0:41:51.879 you know, that allowed him to do everything that he did. 0:41:51.920 --> 0:41:54.040 Right that that that's the thing that allowed him and 0:41:54.080 --> 0:41:57.399 not you know, like that kid in like that that 0:41:57.400 --> 0:41:59.560 that that kid in Gazo picked up an ak Like 0:41:59.640 --> 0:42:01.759 that's the that allowed him to declare war in the US. 0:42:02.640 --> 0:42:07.000 And I want to read his account of what he 0:42:07.160 --> 0:42:11.440 actually thinks happened to the US. This is this is, 0:42:11.480 --> 0:42:13.920 this is from that same uh this this, this is 0:42:13.960 --> 0:42:17.320 from that same letter. You are the nation that permits usury, 0:42:17.400 --> 0:42:20.200 which has been forbidden by all religions, yet you build 0:42:20.200 --> 0:42:23.520 your economy and investments on usury. As a result of 0:42:23.560 --> 0:42:26.640 this in all its different forms, and guys, is the 0:42:26.719 --> 0:42:29.759 Jews have taken over your economy, through which they have 0:42:29.840 --> 0:42:32.399 then taken control of your media and now control all 0:42:32.440 --> 0:42:35.200 aspects of your life, making you their servants and achieving 0:42:35.239 --> 0:42:38.960 their aims at your expense, precisely what Benjamin Franklin warned 0:42:39.000 --> 0:42:42.919 you against. So I want to like, like like think 0:42:43.000 --> 0:42:44.720 for it. Like I wanted people to sort of stop 0:42:44.840 --> 0:42:48.920 and look at what he's actually saying here. His argument 0:42:49.040 --> 0:42:51.600 for why the US is an imperialist power is that 0:42:51.640 --> 0:42:54.480 it is controlled by Jews who control the economy in 0:42:54.520 --> 0:42:56.480 the media and has enslaved the rest of the US 0:42:56.480 --> 0:42:58.640 to do their will. And this is and I cannot 0:42:58.680 --> 0:43:04.000 emphasize this enough word for word, a Nazi yes analysis 0:43:04.040 --> 0:43:05.560 what happened to the US? And this is this is 0:43:05.560 --> 0:43:06.960 what right wing anti colonialism is. 0:43:07.000 --> 0:43:07.160 Right. 0:43:07.200 --> 0:43:09.560 You look at like the sort of horrors of colonialism, 0:43:09.680 --> 0:43:12.279 go oh, this is bad, and then when someone asks you, okay, 0:43:12.280 --> 0:43:15.200 why is this happening, you unload this like utterly half 0:43:15.239 --> 0:43:17.680 assed pile of anti Semitic conspiracy theories instead of like 0:43:17.680 --> 0:43:21.080 an analysis of capitalism, like he thinks the source of 0:43:21.120 --> 0:43:27.839 like American like imperialism and capitalism is interest bearing loans. Yeah, yeah, 0:43:28.160 --> 0:43:29.440 this is nonsense. 0:43:29.480 --> 0:43:32.640 And that's what he means whenever he talks about usury, which, like, 0:43:32.840 --> 0:43:35.440 by the way, is a heads up. Every Muslim country 0:43:35.560 --> 0:43:38.360 that I am aware of has banks that do what 0:43:38.400 --> 0:43:41.880 it fan does it. Yeah, and they do what is 0:43:41.920 --> 0:43:44.560 effectively usury. It's just okay. So if you know anything 0:43:44.600 --> 0:43:48.759 about like orthodox Judaism, right, you are not supposed to 0:43:48.800 --> 0:43:51.600 do anything on the Sabbath, and so some people do 0:43:51.719 --> 0:43:53.600 keep that You're not even supposed to turn on a light, right, 0:43:53.719 --> 0:43:55.520 like One of the old ways this was expressed is 0:43:55.560 --> 0:43:58.400 like you would light candles the night before the Sabbath 0:43:58.440 --> 0:44:00.600 so that you could have some burning on the Sabbath. 0:44:01.000 --> 0:44:03.880 Today there are ways around it that are like you 0:44:04.080 --> 0:44:06.640 get lights that are scheduled to go on and off 0:44:06.640 --> 0:44:09.439 at certain hours, and it's it's always. It's kind of funny. 0:44:09.480 --> 0:44:11.040 There's a lot of jokes about this you get from 0:44:11.080 --> 0:44:13.239 the Jewish comedians being like, do you think God is 0:44:13.280 --> 0:44:16.759 like tricked by your rule slowering and stuff? But there 0:44:16.760 --> 0:44:19.960 are banks in the Muslim world that are the banking 0:44:20.000 --> 0:44:23.640 equivalent of that. Well, what they're doing isn't technically taking interest, 0:44:23.760 --> 0:44:26.759 but like it works out to be the same thing 0:44:26.840 --> 0:44:29.640 for them. They're just they're just getting around anyway. I 0:44:29.640 --> 0:44:30.800 think that's an important piece. 0:44:30.680 --> 0:44:34.440 Of Catholic Church deciding that uh, fish and chicken on 0:44:34.600 --> 0:44:35.879 meat so you could eat right. 0:44:35.960 --> 0:44:38.799 Right right yeah, where it's like really God, Yeah, yeah, 0:44:39.000 --> 0:44:41.120 do you think you think God is like, oh yeah, no, 0:44:41.160 --> 0:44:45.120 I never meant for those things to be meat? Damn 0:44:45.160 --> 0:44:48.560 they got me with that chicken shit. That ain't a 0:44:48.600 --> 0:44:52.080 cow God seeing it? Yeah, I do. Actually, you have 0:44:52.120 --> 0:44:54.560 to credit Chick fil A for being closed on Sunday 0:44:54.600 --> 0:44:56.080 a little, I guess. But I love the idea of 0:44:56.120 --> 0:44:59.319 like God going to like watch a Catholic congregation go 0:44:59.360 --> 0:45:02.919 to breakfast and get their fucking like chicken sandwiches and going, ah, 0:45:03.040 --> 0:45:08.040 you cut you crafty bastards. Got me again, guys. I 0:45:08.080 --> 0:45:10.280 didn't think you need those, guys, They're so gross. 0:45:12.320 --> 0:45:18.080 That is kind of how the Catholic God works far removed. 0:45:18.480 --> 0:45:20.920 Yeah, he's like set up a little sudoku for you. 0:45:21.000 --> 0:45:22.680 He's just thrilled that you're getting. 0:45:22.360 --> 0:45:26.959 That to press a button to get its food. 0:45:28.160 --> 0:45:29.719 Yeah, yeah, I want to. 0:45:29.760 --> 0:45:30.880 I want I want to bring it back to bin 0:45:30.960 --> 0:45:33.399 Laden for a second, because I think part of what's 0:45:33.440 --> 0:45:35.479 going on here is something that. 0:45:37.040 --> 0:45:38.560 Isn't I don't know. 0:45:39.640 --> 0:45:44.200 Bin Laden is a product of his specific context, right, 0:45:44.200 --> 0:45:46.279 And his specific context is that he grew up in 0:45:46.400 --> 0:45:49.480 one of the richest families in Saudi Arabia, and you know, 0:45:49.600 --> 0:45:51.279 and his you know, And I guess this is the 0:45:51.280 --> 0:45:53.799 thing we should actually I should actually mention I'm being 0:45:53.800 --> 0:45:56.160 slightly unfair to the Taliban when I when I talk 0:45:56.200 --> 0:45:59.239 about them having loans because of the Taliban are from 0:45:59.280 --> 0:46:02.560 a different like school of Islamic jurisprudence. Then al Kaida 0:46:02.640 --> 0:46:04.120 is even though they sort of they kind of work 0:46:04.160 --> 0:46:07.000 together sometimes, but like, you know, but the thing, like 0:46:07.400 --> 0:46:11.080 the sort of hobbyist school that like bin Laden is 0:46:11.200 --> 0:46:14.640 from right, like he's the reason he has a right 0:46:14.640 --> 0:46:17.920 wing anticlonial critique is he's absorbed this sort of like 0:46:18.040 --> 0:46:21.400 social mores and he's absorbed you know, the like the 0:46:21.400 --> 0:46:24.120 the like involved in the slave trade, level of anti 0:46:24.160 --> 0:46:28.080 blackness that you get from the Souds, like from you know, 0:46:28.160 --> 0:46:31.000 like the the he's absorbed their anti Semitism. He's absorbed 0:46:31.040 --> 0:46:33.160 all of these things. And this is what he sort 0:46:33.200 --> 0:46:38.400 of like has constructed as the reason you know, and 0:46:38.760 --> 0:46:41.760 filtered through his sort of cobbling together of like different 0:46:42.280 --> 0:46:44.439 sort of like like of like so how you could 0:46:44.480 --> 0:46:46.360 up and of sort of like different sort of Islamic thinkers, 0:46:46.400 --> 0:46:49.759 Like this is what he's assembled together. And it's this 0:46:49.920 --> 0:46:54.360 thing that it's not a stable, coherent critique of the US. 0:46:55.280 --> 0:46:57.799 It's it's it's it's this like it's all of his 0:46:57.880 --> 0:47:01.879 sort of like weird prejudices and hang ups like grafted 0:47:02.040 --> 0:47:05.960 onto anti colonialism and being able to tell the difference 0:47:06.000 --> 0:47:08.480 between someone who is a genuine anti colonialist and someone 0:47:08.960 --> 0:47:13.480 who is doing this stuff or like who wants their 0:47:13.480 --> 0:47:17.840 empire back, or who is like, you know, like pissed 0:47:17.840 --> 0:47:19.959 off that gay people exist like that. That is something 0:47:20.000 --> 0:47:22.359 that is genuinely very important, and it's something that's made 0:47:22.920 --> 0:47:26.279 enormously harder to do by the way that people like, 0:47:26.480 --> 0:47:28.480 you know, by by the American education system, by the 0:47:28.480 --> 0:47:34.040 way people are raised to think about media. Yeah, yeah, 0:47:34.120 --> 0:47:35.360 this is this is, this is, this is, this is 0:47:35.400 --> 0:47:36.640 this has the bin Loden rant. 0:47:37.960 --> 0:47:40.600 I we can always stand to do more ban Laden rants. 0:47:40.600 --> 0:47:42.799 Maybe I'll do another episode on him on Bastards one 0:47:42.800 --> 0:47:46.719 of these days. But yeah, I uh, good stuff. I 0:47:46.719 --> 0:47:49.759 do want to kind of close by reading another bit 0:47:49.960 --> 0:47:53.799 from from obl you know, our our friend of the pod. 0:47:54.080 --> 0:47:56.879 This one's from two thousand and four October twenty ninth, 0:47:57.440 --> 0:48:01.279 and I think it's relevant as we look at the 0:48:01.400 --> 0:48:04.840 different ways the current president of the United States, the 0:48:04.960 --> 0:48:07.440 former and possibly future president of the United States are 0:48:07.440 --> 0:48:12.640 talking about dealing with problems like Islamic extremism. Because I 0:48:12.680 --> 0:48:16.759 think Bin Laden's words here are pretty salient and this 0:48:16.840 --> 0:48:20.120 comes from a common team made. It wound up airing 0:48:20.120 --> 0:48:22.799 on Al Jazeera criticizing George Bush ahead of the two 0:48:22.800 --> 0:48:26.120 thousand and four election. Your security is not in the 0:48:26.160 --> 0:48:29.439 hands of Democratic candidate John Kerry or President George Bush 0:48:29.520 --> 0:48:32.400 or al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands. 0:48:32.560 --> 0:48:34.480 We had no difficulty in dealing with Bush in his 0:48:34.520 --> 0:48:37.640 administration because they resemble the regimes in our countries, half 0:48:37.640 --> 0:48:39.480 of which are ruled by the military and the other 0:48:39.520 --> 0:48:41.600 half by the sons of kings. They have a lot 0:48:41.600 --> 0:48:46.200 of pride, arrogance, greed, and thievery, and again not wrong, 0:48:46.560 --> 0:48:50.319 not wrong about most Muslim majority nations, and not wrong 0:48:50.360 --> 0:48:52.560 about most Western nations. 0:48:52.239 --> 0:48:54.160 And it's a good And also is the Bushes too, 0:48:54.239 --> 0:48:57.040 because yes, the Bushes were friends with the bin Laden family. 0:48:57.160 --> 0:49:00.160 Yes, yes they are you and they are also as 0:49:00.160 --> 0:49:04.320 close as the US has to royalty as is Trump. 0:49:05.080 --> 0:49:09.000 Maybe the kend maybe the Kennedy's. Kennedy's, but another presidential 0:49:09.080 --> 0:49:13.080 candidate man, you know, complete with the insane, inbred guys 0:49:13.160 --> 0:49:21.520 who anyway, anyone else got anything? I'm just baffled. Yeah, 0:49:21.600 --> 0:49:26.239 well I'm happy. I'm having a good time, you know. 0:49:26.320 --> 0:49:30.680 Get on TikTok. Let people know that you love terrorism. 0:49:31.160 --> 0:49:35.239 Yeah it got wrong for you. Yeah, alternatively, get on 0:49:35.480 --> 0:49:39.160 Twitter or wherever YouTube and film an angry video in 0:49:39.200 --> 0:49:42.520 your car about how all of gen z I ironically 0:49:43.840 --> 0:49:47.000 and supports the mass killing of civilians. Do either. Those 0:49:47.040 --> 0:49:49.399 seem to be the two primary things people are doing 0:49:49.480 --> 0:49:51.360 right now. So get out and join the herd. Everybody. 0:49:51.400 --> 0:50:12.440 It's fun. What a great place. Ah, welcome back to 0:50:12.640 --> 0:50:17.000 it could happen here, a podcast that is now happening here. 0:50:18.640 --> 0:50:21.440 I could have done something with ear but we'll do 0:50:21.480 --> 0:50:24.040 that next time. Just forget that I said that, and 0:50:24.200 --> 0:50:27.640 welcome Mia to the program. Mia, how are you doing today? 0:50:28.600 --> 0:50:29.040 Not bad? 0:50:29.120 --> 0:50:30.680 Not bad? I'm excited to be here. 0:50:31.120 --> 0:50:33.760 Yeah. Yeah, We're going to be talking about a subject 0:50:33.760 --> 0:50:36.799 that's near and dear to all of our hearts, by 0:50:36.800 --> 0:50:39.520 which I mean the Roman Empire with a guest who 0:50:39.560 --> 0:50:42.680 is near and dear to our hearts, Mike Duncan. Mike, 0:50:43.320 --> 0:50:43.919 how are you doing? 0:50:45.000 --> 0:50:46.520 Hello? Thank you for having me. 0:50:46.840 --> 0:50:48.480 It is wonderful to have you. 0:50:49.480 --> 0:50:49.719 Mike. 0:50:49.920 --> 0:50:53.400 You're a podcaster. You are kind of like the history 0:50:53.480 --> 0:50:56.280 podcaster as far as a lot of folks are concerned, 0:50:56.320 --> 0:51:03.640 including me and you. Also, you've had some interesting interactions 0:51:03.680 --> 0:51:06.920 online with people as regards the Roman Empire recently. 0:51:08.200 --> 0:51:08.520 Yeah. 0:51:08.560 --> 0:51:12.640 Well, anytime the Roman Empire shows up on the cultural radar. 0:51:13.320 --> 0:51:17.160 I am tagged into it by roughly ten thousand people. Yeah, 0:51:17.160 --> 0:51:18.640 and then I come in and I do my bits, 0:51:18.760 --> 0:51:22.200 or if you know, if something comes through, you know, 0:51:22.239 --> 0:51:24.880 it gets shared at me, you know, not shared with me, 0:51:24.920 --> 0:51:27.319 but shared it at me. And then and then I 0:51:27.360 --> 0:51:29.360 take a look at it, and I get aggravated, and then, 0:51:29.440 --> 0:51:33.959 you know, fire off a few salvos and retreat back 0:51:33.960 --> 0:51:36.279 out of the social media ecosystem, which is kind of 0:51:36.280 --> 0:51:37.440 the strategy these days. 0:51:37.800 --> 0:51:38.560 Yeah. 0:51:38.719 --> 0:51:41.719 Yeah, we all have to like fight like an insurgent 0:51:42.239 --> 0:51:44.320 when it comes to that sort of thing, because the 0:51:44.640 --> 0:51:48.000 alternative is to just get constantly stuck in this escalating 0:51:48.040 --> 0:51:51.600 world of beats with strangers on the internet who are 0:51:51.640 --> 0:51:53.000 making money off of the beef. 0:51:53.800 --> 0:51:54.080 Yeah. 0:51:54.080 --> 0:51:56.920 But yeah, but there are certain things that will get 0:51:57.000 --> 0:51:59.320 me to come out of my little hibernation, which I 0:51:59.360 --> 0:52:00.480 think we're about to talk about. 0:52:00.680 --> 0:52:02.879 Yeah, yeah, me, do you want to do you wanna 0:52:02.880 --> 0:52:03.440 take it away? 0:52:04.440 --> 0:52:04.720 Yeah? 0:52:04.760 --> 0:52:07.319 So one of the things that's been happening recently is 0:52:07.360 --> 0:52:12.000 that so on October twenty fifth, the Republicans finally, after 0:52:12.560 --> 0:52:15.240 an enormous amount of time, finally managed to electic Speaker 0:52:15.280 --> 0:52:19.880 of the House, and they picked this fairly unknown rep 0:52:19.960 --> 0:52:22.560 named Mike Johnson, who's the guy from Louisiana, And they 0:52:22.600 --> 0:52:25.879 picked him effectively because nobody knew who he was. Yeah, 0:52:25.920 --> 0:52:28.600 and so they picked this guy and they're like okay, 0:52:29.000 --> 0:52:32.719 and Mike Johnson gets elected and immediately everyone starts trying 0:52:32.760 --> 0:52:34.319 to figure out who this guy is, and they very 0:52:34.360 --> 0:52:40.000 quickly realize this guy is just a absolute incredible Christian 0:52:40.000 --> 0:52:44.200 fundamentalist weirdo. He he doesn't have a bank account. 0:52:45.160 --> 0:52:49.600 Which is like, why, that's classic fundamentalism too, that's some 0:52:49.640 --> 0:52:52.520 of that old school stuff. Yeah, to see. 0:52:52.280 --> 0:52:54.960 It, it's really sort I mean, he's really sort of 0:52:55.000 --> 0:52:56.359 like he's like he's he's really a. 0:52:56.320 --> 0:52:58.399 Blast in the past with the Christian fundamentalist I. 0:52:58.320 --> 0:53:01.600 Mean he he he was a lawyer that represented like 0:53:01.640 --> 0:53:04.640 a bunch of Young Earth creationist museums. 0:53:04.480 --> 0:53:06.400 He's really going into that old school stuff. 0:53:06.440 --> 0:53:08.920 And one of the other things that some people dug 0:53:09.000 --> 0:53:13.759 up is a podcast interview where he is talking about 0:53:13.800 --> 0:53:17.680 how gay people cause the fall of Rome. So, Mike Duncan, 0:53:17.760 --> 0:53:19.600 I want to ask you the question that I think 0:53:19.640 --> 0:53:23.200 all of our listeners are wondering. Can we as queer 0:53:23.239 --> 0:53:26.560 people take responsibility? Can we take any credit for the 0:53:26.560 --> 0:53:28.680 fall of Rome, or are we stealing visigof Valor? 0:53:28.760 --> 0:53:31.319 If we do that, you're stealing valor here. 0:53:32.080 --> 0:53:37.239 But but I do I do agree that several of 0:53:37.239 --> 0:53:38.880 the gays in my life are like, don't take this 0:53:38.920 --> 0:53:41.560 from us. It's one of our proudest accomplishments. We brought 0:53:41.600 --> 0:53:45.359 down the Roman Empire. And I was like, but unfortunately, 0:53:45.400 --> 0:53:47.960 it's just it's not the case. It's not even close 0:53:48.000 --> 0:53:50.200 to the case. It's you know, you could you could 0:53:50.320 --> 0:53:54.239 draw random words out of a hat and produce a 0:53:54.320 --> 0:53:57.239 sentence that was literally nonsensical, and that would be a 0:53:57.800 --> 0:54:00.160 better read of the end of the Roman Empire and 0:54:00.200 --> 0:54:04.320 saying gay people or homosexuality like, because it's all wrapped 0:54:04.400 --> 0:54:06.880 up in this sort of like it was decadence that 0:54:06.960 --> 0:54:09.200 caused the fall of the Roman Empire. They were too like, 0:54:09.960 --> 0:54:12.000 you know, they were just too life sensious, and they 0:54:12.040 --> 0:54:14.799 just throw up some some vocabulary words. 0:54:14.880 --> 0:54:16.839 And it just it just doesn't land at all. 0:54:17.320 --> 0:54:19.200 It doesn't land on the specifics, it doesn't land on 0:54:19.239 --> 0:54:22.880 the general it doesn't land chronologically, it doesn't land in 0:54:22.920 --> 0:54:26.440 any way, shape or form. It's just something they've decided 0:54:26.560 --> 0:54:29.439 is true and repeat to each other and that's the whole. 0:54:29.520 --> 0:54:30.600 That's the long and short of it. 0:54:31.480 --> 0:54:31.680 Yeah. 0:54:31.760 --> 0:54:34.839 Yeah, I think there's some interesting stuff there too, of 0:54:34.920 --> 0:54:37.640 like the stuff people talk about why when they like 0:54:38.160 --> 0:54:40.319 I remember I was reading someone like writing about this 0:54:40.360 --> 0:54:42.319 and they started talking about Nero, and I was like, 0:54:42.400 --> 0:54:46.440 do you know, like in what century the Roman Empire 0:54:46.760 --> 0:54:50.400 like collapse? Like why are you talking about Nero? I 0:54:50.400 --> 0:54:53.880 don't know, it seems like there's this real I don't know, 0:54:54.040 --> 0:54:57.200 it seems like, you know, the the fall of Rome 0:54:57.239 --> 0:54:59.040 is one of these things that's become central to a 0:54:59.040 --> 0:55:01.160 lot of very weird in politics. And I remember, like 0:55:01.160 --> 0:55:02.960 a few years ago, the big thing was like the 0:55:03.200 --> 0:55:06.880 Rome was called the fall of Rome was caused by immigration, Yeah, which. 0:55:06.800 --> 0:55:08.200 And that's also current as well. 0:55:08.480 --> 0:55:11.000 Yeah yeah, And so I don't know, what is it 0:55:11.080 --> 0:55:14.120 about like Rome with these people? The fall of Rome, 0:55:14.120 --> 0:55:16.439 these people are like so drawn to in a way 0:55:16.480 --> 0:55:19.520 that causes them not to think about what actually happened 0:55:19.560 --> 0:55:19.799 at all. 0:55:20.239 --> 0:55:22.640 I mean, well, I mean, just to go back a second, 0:55:22.719 --> 0:55:28.319 it's like Rome in general, in their heads, is not 0:55:28.760 --> 0:55:33.960 a sort of temporarily dependent series of events that unfolded 0:55:34.000 --> 0:55:35.920 over a thousand years. It's just this kind of like 0:55:36.320 --> 0:55:41.000 one eternal place that's like a pastiche in their minds, 0:55:41.040 --> 0:55:45.600 so like Nero can exist alongside Attila, can exist alongside 0:55:45.680 --> 0:55:49.040 you know, Scipio Africanus, and all of these people and 0:55:49.080 --> 0:55:51.799 events like just sort of are near each other in time, 0:55:51.920 --> 0:55:53.880 the same way that they believe that, like you know, 0:55:54.000 --> 0:55:57.200 dinosaurs and humans cohabitated the earth like it. It's that 0:55:57.320 --> 0:55:59.759 kind of same thing. And so if they think about 0:55:59.840 --> 0:56:05.239 somebody like Caligula or Nero running this like running these 0:56:05.320 --> 0:56:08.200 courts of decadence, like, it doesn't click to them that 0:56:08.239 --> 0:56:11.080 this is like in the first century, and that the 0:56:11.160 --> 0:56:13.839 Roman Empire doesn't fall for four hundred years, five hundred years, 0:56:13.880 --> 0:56:16.440 and then the East keeps going for another thousand years. 0:56:16.560 --> 0:56:19.759 That's a huge part of it. It is interesting to me. 0:56:19.840 --> 0:56:21.920 You you kind of made the statement there about in 0:56:21.960 --> 0:56:26.040 these guys' heads, Rome being this kind of eternal like 0:56:26.160 --> 0:56:30.400 continuing thing, And that's interesting to me because it that 0:56:30.400 --> 0:56:33.600 that conception of Rome goes back so far, I mean 0:56:33.719 --> 0:56:38.759 very famously, Like when Russia became like an organized political entity, 0:56:38.800 --> 0:56:41.799 there was this widespread attitude that it was the third Rome, right, 0:56:42.680 --> 0:56:46.040 that still plays into a lot of Russian imperial politics 0:56:46.040 --> 0:56:47.759 to this day, So it is. It is kind of 0:56:47.760 --> 0:56:52.320 fascinating how far that idea goes back, Like it says 0:56:52.360 --> 0:56:57.480 something about the success of Roman propaganda, that it still 0:56:57.520 --> 0:57:00.440 has this place in so many people's minds. 0:57:01.560 --> 0:57:04.000 Yeah, and I mean it has a place in my mind. 0:57:04.640 --> 0:57:08.480 I don't I don't think of that. Yeah, so do 0:57:08.560 --> 0:57:11.200 I so to many of us. And I don't think 0:57:11.239 --> 0:57:14.800 that the crime here is thinking about the fall of 0:57:14.840 --> 0:57:18.800 the Roman Empire or the trand or as you know, 0:57:19.080 --> 0:57:21.760 we would more properly call it the transition from late 0:57:21.760 --> 0:57:24.520 Antiquity to the eartal Medieval period, which is, you know, 0:57:24.720 --> 0:57:27.920 unfolded and that didn't have a cataclysm, and you shouldn't 0:57:27.960 --> 0:57:31.120 necessarily be thought of as as an inherently negative thing, 0:57:31.600 --> 0:57:36.640 et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But organizing your worldview 0:57:36.760 --> 0:57:43.320 around utterly historically illiterate version of the Roman Empire that 0:57:43.480 --> 0:57:47.440 is really just a vehicle for your own special bigotry. 0:57:48.960 --> 0:57:52.840 That's where they're really running a foul of me and 0:57:52.880 --> 0:57:53.400 my temper. 0:57:54.960 --> 0:57:58.680 Yeah, And there's there's a lot that's really interesting about 0:57:59.040 --> 0:58:02.280 how they sort of choose to interpret like the causes 0:58:02.400 --> 0:58:07.000 of the fall. I think probably the least the least 0:58:07.160 --> 0:58:10.040 sensible argument they have is this idea that it had 0:58:10.080 --> 0:58:14.040 something to do with like degeneracy. But yeah, it's like 0:58:14.440 --> 0:58:18.000 you can find Romans in like the the Middle Republic 0:58:18.080 --> 0:58:21.080 period saying the same thing, that, like, we've become too degenerate, 0:58:21.120 --> 0:58:24.240 too lazy, because of like all of the you know, 0:58:24.640 --> 0:58:28.280 slaves automating, you know, the ruling classes tasks people have. 0:58:29.320 --> 0:58:31.440 You know, Romans are not like the Romans of our 0:58:31.480 --> 0:58:35.240 forefathers and stuff anymore. And like, you know, the empire 0:58:35.320 --> 0:58:38.120 continued or the Republic and then the Empire still had 0:58:38.440 --> 0:58:39.800 centuries in the tank at that. 0:58:39.960 --> 0:58:44.240 Yeah, very very famously, the Romans started complaining about how 0:58:44.520 --> 0:58:47.560 it's not like the good old days round about the 0:58:47.560 --> 0:58:51.720 second century b c. Which is like three hundred years 0:58:51.760 --> 0:58:54.800 before they hit what we all acknowledged to be the 0:58:54.840 --> 0:58:57.920 peak of Roman civilization. And this is like, this is 0:58:57.920 --> 0:59:00.280 when Cato the Elder gets into it. And the thing 0:59:00.280 --> 0:59:01.760 that those guys were griping about at the time, and 0:59:01.920 --> 0:59:04.200 there are there are little, you know, little connections here, 0:59:04.320 --> 0:59:06.919 just doesn't none of it shapes up. Is that what 0:59:07.080 --> 0:59:09.439 Cato the Elder and people like him were complaining about 0:59:09.520 --> 0:59:11.480 way back in the second century was this is when 0:59:11.480 --> 0:59:14.200 the Romans come in contact with the Greeks, and there 0:59:14.360 --> 0:59:17.840 was there was a kind of like a split between 0:59:18.040 --> 0:59:25.040 traditional Latin Romanness and then this like new Eastern Greaceness, 0:59:25.080 --> 0:59:28.000 which like they've got new ideas and like they sounds 0:59:28.000 --> 0:59:30.560 like they have sex with each other all the time. 0:59:30.720 --> 0:59:32.480 You know, they don't care if they're men or women, 0:59:33.560 --> 0:59:36.920 and so that's what they were pushing back against, and 0:59:36.960 --> 0:59:38.960 so that kind of language does that. 0:59:39.120 --> 0:59:41.560 This is where it kind of distills. 0:59:41.400 --> 0:59:43.800 Over the centuries and then over the millennia into this 0:59:43.960 --> 0:59:47.200 idea that the Roman Empire collapsed and was ruined by 0:59:47.800 --> 0:59:51.680 this kind of degeneracy without being able to really define 0:59:51.680 --> 0:59:54.720 what degeneracy means or how it could possibly impact the 0:59:54.760 --> 0:59:57.560 long term health of a of a large empire. 0:59:58.720 --> 0:59:59.040 You know. 1:00:00.560 --> 1:00:03.760 The fact that very bluntly right when you're saying this 1:00:03.840 --> 1:00:07.320 in one eighty six BC, you can't say that contact 1:00:07.320 --> 1:00:11.680 with Greek ideas brought the Roman Empire down. It just can't, 1:00:11.800 --> 1:00:15.600 because it just didn't get crushed by this, It didn't 1:00:15.640 --> 1:00:16.240 fall apart. 1:00:16.880 --> 1:00:17.280 Yeah. 1:00:17.360 --> 1:00:20.000 I mean, my if I have to make an argument 1:00:20.080 --> 1:00:22.160 as to like what thing that I can connect to 1:00:22.200 --> 1:00:25.280 modernity killed the modern Empire, I tend to claim that 1:00:25.320 --> 1:00:28.760 it's the concept of a reboot, right, because no sooner 1:00:29.000 --> 1:00:32.480 than did Augustus have Virgil reboot the story of the 1:00:32.480 --> 1:00:35.480 Trojan War, than the inevitable path to the collapse of 1:00:35.520 --> 1:00:38.720 the Roman Empire began. Right that the real sign that 1:00:38.720 --> 1:00:41.440 we're heading towards collapse is all these movie reboots. 1:00:42.160 --> 1:00:44.560 Okay, great, well, the. 1:00:44.680 --> 1:00:49.680 Rule is, whatever your modern preoccupation is, that's what you 1:00:49.880 --> 1:00:52.320 use to explain the fall of the Roman Empire. So 1:00:52.320 --> 1:00:55.360 of course I have my preoccupations, and that's what I 1:00:55.400 --> 1:00:59.080 say caused the fall of the Roman Empire, which is 1:00:59.080 --> 1:01:00.640 that the Roman Empire and never found. 1:01:00.680 --> 1:01:02.400 We're all living in a hologram. 1:01:04.920 --> 1:01:06.520 And we know and we know this because if a 1:01:06.560 --> 1:01:09.000 woman visits me and brings me and brings me groceries 1:01:09.040 --> 1:01:11.840 and she's wearing a Jesus fish necklace, it can pop 1:01:11.880 --> 1:01:13.440 into my brain and I can know that we're. 1:01:13.640 --> 1:01:16.200 Living in We're still We're still in the Roman Empire. Yeah, 1:01:16.240 --> 1:01:20.000 the empire never ended, folks, Yeah, yeah, every politician is 1:01:20.000 --> 1:01:20.720 still Cato. 1:01:21.560 --> 1:01:23.280 Yeah. 1:01:23.320 --> 1:01:25.960 I mean, look, they you could also tell this because 1:01:26.000 --> 1:01:28.240 you know, it's like, in the same way that everything 1:01:28.240 --> 1:01:31.000 tastes like chicken. They haven't invented a new moral panic 1:01:31.080 --> 1:01:34.440 in two thousand years, So pretty clearly we're just we're 1:01:34.480 --> 1:01:37.120 just we're just recycling through exactly the same content over 1:01:37.160 --> 1:01:37.760 and over again. 1:01:38.760 --> 1:01:42.440 It does all of the the kind of similarities you 1:01:42.480 --> 1:01:45.160 can find, or at least seeming similarities you can find 1:01:45.160 --> 1:01:49.520 between stuff that different Roman politicians were complaining about, you know, 1:01:50.000 --> 1:01:53.800 two thousand years ago, and stuff that's in our media today. 1:01:54.400 --> 1:01:57.880 I think does suggest part of why it's almost impossible 1:01:57.920 --> 1:02:01.360 to not keep bringing Rome up, which is that like 1:02:01.800 --> 1:02:04.360 there are and I think that it's a mix of 1:02:04.440 --> 1:02:07.840 like there are some legitimate similarities between our cultures, and 1:02:07.920 --> 1:02:12.120 also our concept of Rome, which is often a historical 1:02:12.200 --> 1:02:16.160 but is based on generations of misconceptions, makes it seem 1:02:16.360 --> 1:02:17.160 even closer. 1:02:18.640 --> 1:02:22.520 Yeah, and we are a post Roman society and they 1:02:22.600 --> 1:02:25.680 are our forebears, whether we like it or not. Like 1:02:25.760 --> 1:02:31.000 any civilization that exists today that went through the Mediterranean world, 1:02:32.000 --> 1:02:35.040 you know, it had a Roman period, and the Romans 1:02:35.080 --> 1:02:37.439 made a strong imprint on all of us in terms 1:02:37.480 --> 1:02:39.680 of like our laws and how we think about money, 1:02:39.720 --> 1:02:42.560 and how we think about family relationships, like all of 1:02:42.600 --> 1:02:44.919 these things are you know, we're living in a post 1:02:45.000 --> 1:02:49.040 Roman world, and that's why it's important to study the 1:02:49.120 --> 1:02:52.160 Roman Empire as an entity, but do it with some 1:02:52.240 --> 1:02:55.600 degree of rigor rather than just using it as a 1:02:55.640 --> 1:03:00.720 prop in the culture wars. Yeah, that was a great 1:03:00.800 --> 1:03:02.560 That was a great point I just made in so No, 1:03:02.640 --> 1:03:06.240 that was absolutely brought the conversation to a complete stance. 1:03:06.280 --> 1:03:09.640 So as everybody said, just chewed on this nugget wisdom 1:03:09.760 --> 1:03:11.120 that I have fruped at the table. 1:03:13.000 --> 1:03:15.960 I do kind of think it behooves people. Part of 1:03:16.000 --> 1:03:18.640 why it's valuable to do things like listen to the 1:03:18.680 --> 1:03:24.480 Revolutions podcast by Mike Duncan is that you're this Rome 1:03:24.560 --> 1:03:27.000 isn't going to stop being brought up by these people 1:03:27.040 --> 1:03:31.160 and increasingly unhinged and inaccurate ways. And it's it's just like, 1:03:31.200 --> 1:03:33.400 it's helpful to have an actual understanding of who the 1:03:33.440 --> 1:03:35.760 Spartans were and what they did and did not do 1:03:36.080 --> 1:03:38.320 for the sake of these arguments. It's helpful to have 1:03:38.640 --> 1:03:41.600 a meaningful understanding of the Roman Empire. And I'm kind 1:03:41.600 --> 1:03:45.680 of wondering, like when you when you come into misconceptions 1:03:45.880 --> 1:03:48.560 about Rome, what are some of like the top ones 1:03:48.680 --> 1:03:51.600 on your list that uh that that your brain just 1:03:51.760 --> 1:03:52.920 forces you to go in and. 1:03:52.880 --> 1:03:55.960 Correct, well, I mean this is a big one that 1:03:56.040 --> 1:03:59.360 because this one I feel like is deeply homophobic and 1:04:00.400 --> 1:04:05.760 principally used to attack the queer community rather than anything else. 1:04:07.400 --> 1:04:07.520 Is. 1:04:07.800 --> 1:04:10.280 And just to give your listeners, like some specifics here, 1:04:10.280 --> 1:04:13.280 it's like, you know, sexuality in the Roman world was 1:04:13.400 --> 1:04:16.520 very different than it was today, and there weren't even 1:04:16.840 --> 1:04:19.680 you know, the kind of binary conceptions of gender sexual 1:04:19.720 --> 1:04:21.680 relations that we have today. A lot of these things 1:04:21.720 --> 1:04:23.920 are very modern inventions. I'm sure a lot of people 1:04:23.960 --> 1:04:27.920 know this, but we can also point very specifically to like, 1:04:28.840 --> 1:04:32.400 you know, Hadrian, who is broadly considered and cited to 1:04:32.440 --> 1:04:34.400 be one of the greatest of the emperors who lived 1:04:34.400 --> 1:04:35.640 at the height of the Golden. 1:04:35.360 --> 1:04:36.760 Age, was gay. 1:04:37.040 --> 1:04:39.640 Like that's like, that's a full stop thing. And so 1:04:40.320 --> 1:04:45.760 it's just like there's no compatibility between these two ideas 1:04:46.360 --> 1:04:50.480 or really anyway, if you ask them to take this 1:04:50.640 --> 1:04:53.480 argument more than twenty five words deep, they're not going 1:04:53.560 --> 1:04:55.520 to have a way to explain how it is that 1:04:55.560 --> 1:04:58.919 somebody engaged in gay sex in the four hundreds could 1:04:58.960 --> 1:05:02.480 have possibly been the reason why the Goths won a 1:05:02.480 --> 1:05:04.440 certain battle, or why Attila the Hunt was able to 1:05:04.440 --> 1:05:07.880 do what he did. All of it is just complete 1:05:07.920 --> 1:05:11.120 and utter ahistorical nonsense, and so I consider it, I 1:05:11.160 --> 1:05:14.400 consider it my duty as some kind of voice of 1:05:14.440 --> 1:05:17.200 authority on Roman history to not let people get away 1:05:17.200 --> 1:05:20.040 with this. The last, the last time I saw this 1:05:20.080 --> 1:05:23.480 pop up was actually uh Ben Carson, which is a 1:05:23.520 --> 1:05:26.000 little bit of a blast from the past at this point, 1:05:26.080 --> 1:05:29.400 but he he he wrote a book at one point 1:05:29.400 --> 1:05:31.960 where he dropped this stuff in there. And and the way 1:05:32.000 --> 1:05:33.880 they always couch it too is like as we all know, 1:05:34.160 --> 1:05:36.440 you know, it was homosexuality that really led to the 1:05:36.560 --> 1:05:37.200 generacy of. 1:05:37.120 --> 1:05:40.040 The lay like I'm so sick of you people. 1:05:41.200 --> 1:05:43.680 But the other, the other big one that really grinds 1:05:43.760 --> 1:05:47.160 my gears that really emerged. This this was not a 1:05:47.160 --> 1:05:49.600 preconception that I had going into doing the history of Rome, 1:05:49.640 --> 1:05:52.960 but something that I came away from after doing it 1:05:53.000 --> 1:05:55.320 and studying, you know, the year by year history of 1:05:55.320 --> 1:05:58.480 the Empire, is that this notion that like sort of 1:05:58.520 --> 1:06:03.200 the Romans were this uh like like a like a 1:06:03.800 --> 1:06:09.440 like a nationality that then went forth and conquered the Mediterranean, 1:06:09.480 --> 1:06:12.360 that Romans were Romans as like an ethnic stock thing, 1:06:12.880 --> 1:06:16.320 and that it was when these other ethnicities started sort 1:06:16.320 --> 1:06:18.560 of pressing at the empire's borders, or as we said 1:06:18.600 --> 1:06:21.120 a little bit earlier, that it was immigration right that 1:06:21.200 --> 1:06:23.320 destroys the Roman Empire. That there was this kind of 1:06:23.400 --> 1:06:27.400 like pure noble Roman thing. This is essentially functioning as 1:06:28.320 --> 1:06:31.120 the white person in the ancient world, Like this is 1:06:31.160 --> 1:06:32.960 how we're connecting these things. The British did this, the 1:06:32.960 --> 1:06:35.160 French did this, Americans now do this today, that like 1:06:35.400 --> 1:06:37.520 the Romans are our stand in as sort of the 1:06:37.560 --> 1:06:40.800 white people, and the white people are civilized and all 1:06:40.800 --> 1:06:44.600 of these other like mongrel races are are uncivilized, and 1:06:44.640 --> 1:06:46.640 they were either civilized by the Romans that they were 1:06:46.680 --> 1:06:48.360 killed by the Romans or enslaved by the Romans. But 1:06:48.400 --> 1:06:50.800 this is all for the good because the Romans themselves 1:06:50.840 --> 1:06:55.920 were were like this this this superior stock of DNA somehow. 1:06:56.440 --> 1:06:59.880 And really, when you go through the empire, the h 1:07:00.040 --> 1:07:04.120 history of the Roman Empire, you find that there is 1:07:04.200 --> 1:07:07.440 that kind of conservative strain inside of like the patrician 1:07:07.440 --> 1:07:09.640 class and inside of the senatorial class that they're like, 1:07:09.640 --> 1:07:11.600 we want this to be a closely held thing, Like 1:07:11.640 --> 1:07:15.120 the original Republic was a closely held oligarchy of Latin 1:07:15.160 --> 1:07:17.400 families who lived on the Palatine Hill, and that's what 1:07:17.480 --> 1:07:20.280 they wanted for themselves. And so when other people tried 1:07:20.320 --> 1:07:22.960 to push into the Republic, they tried to resist it. 1:07:23.760 --> 1:07:26.240 And so that is a running conflict that happens in 1:07:26.800 --> 1:07:32.440 Roman history. But any time that that tendency is overcome 1:07:32.720 --> 1:07:37.160 and a second prevailing force that says like, actually, Romanness 1:07:37.200 --> 1:07:39.640 is just an idea. Romanness is just a set of 1:07:39.960 --> 1:07:43.200 beliefs and practices and sort of daily habits of life 1:07:43.200 --> 1:07:46.120 and ideology that can really be held by anybody at 1:07:46.120 --> 1:07:49.880 any time. And if we let in say non Roman Italians, 1:07:49.960 --> 1:07:52.680 which is the first people who were considered non Roman 1:07:52.720 --> 1:07:54.840 who then came into the Empire, which then we look 1:07:54.880 --> 1:07:57.200 back and we're like, there was a time that Romans 1:07:57.200 --> 1:07:59.920 didn't think that people from what is today like Florin 1:08:00.160 --> 1:08:03.160 or Milan were not Italian or not Roman. Yeah, yeah, 1:08:03.200 --> 1:08:06.680 they were not considered Roman until you know, the very 1:08:06.760 --> 1:08:08.640 late stages of the Republic. I mean, I wrote a 1:08:08.640 --> 1:08:10.560 book about the later stage of the Republic, and the 1:08:10.600 --> 1:08:14.320 Social War is when this gets wrapped up. After hundreds 1:08:14.320 --> 1:08:17.880 of years being treated as second class citizens, there was 1:08:17.880 --> 1:08:20.559 a civil war that nearly destroyed the Republic before Caesar 1:08:20.600 --> 1:08:24.200 even came along. It was resolved by giving citizenship to 1:08:24.200 --> 1:08:27.280 the Italians, making them full members of the polity, and 1:08:27.320 --> 1:08:29.799 then having that just be a boon to Rome's fortunes. 1:08:30.120 --> 1:08:32.599 This happens in Gaul, this happens in Spain, this happens 1:08:32.640 --> 1:08:36.840 in Illyria, this happens in the Far East. That these 1:08:36.880 --> 1:08:40.240 people who the Romans encounter and yes, do conquer, because 1:08:40.280 --> 1:08:44.200 it's a very violent world of conquest and mutual conquest. 1:08:44.360 --> 1:08:49.080 That Romans in Gaul were as much Romans as Romans 1:08:49.120 --> 1:08:55.240 in Rome. And anytime I find Roman leaders resisting that idea, 1:08:55.880 --> 1:09:00.439 I find the empire starting to falter and commit miss steps. 1:09:00.680 --> 1:09:03.000 And anytime they're like, nah, let's just throw it open. 1:09:03.160 --> 1:09:06.040 You know, if you're good, if you're dedicated, if you're loyal, 1:09:06.240 --> 1:09:08.120 you can be a part of this project that we have. 1:09:08.479 --> 1:09:11.639 Then I find the Romans doing very very well. And 1:09:11.920 --> 1:09:14.040 I'm about to start not to just monologue here, but 1:09:14.080 --> 1:09:17.120 I'm about to start working on another book that is 1:09:17.160 --> 1:09:20.519 about the crisis of the third century. And by this time, 1:09:20.600 --> 1:09:23.120 we have emperors who are coming from North Africa. We 1:09:23.200 --> 1:09:27.519 have emperors who are tagged as being Arabian. We have 1:09:27.880 --> 1:09:31.559 the set of emperors who really help Rome emerge from 1:09:31.680 --> 1:09:33.400 this thing that is called the Crisis of the third 1:09:33.400 --> 1:09:36.120 century when the empire very nearly collapsed in the mid 1:09:36.120 --> 1:09:38.960 two hundreds. Is a bunch of guys from Alyria, which 1:09:39.000 --> 1:09:41.080 is today the Balkans. I mean, we're talking about guys 1:09:41.080 --> 1:09:44.600 who are coming from like Serbia and Croatia, or the 1:09:44.680 --> 1:09:48.600 emperors who are continuing the Roman legacy and keeping the 1:09:48.640 --> 1:09:52.840 empire intact. So this notion that like the Rome wasn't 1:09:52.840 --> 1:09:55.960 a multicultural empire, or that the arrival of new peoples 1:09:56.040 --> 1:10:00.320 was somehow bad for them is just disproven over and 1:10:00.400 --> 1:10:02.479 over and over again by the realities of Roman history. 1:10:02.520 --> 1:10:04.760 So that's the other one is this immigration caused the 1:10:04.800 --> 1:10:07.439 fall of the Roman Empire is just flat out incorrect. 1:10:08.080 --> 1:10:10.000 Well, yeah, one of the arguments that I've heard sort 1:10:10.000 --> 1:10:13.200 of against that, and I want to ask how true 1:10:13.200 --> 1:10:15.040 this is. But one of the things that I hear 1:10:15.040 --> 1:10:17.360 people sort of responding to this with is this argument 1:10:17.479 --> 1:10:20.559 that like part of what causes like the sack of 1:10:20.640 --> 1:10:23.720 Rome is that the Romans get into one of these 1:10:23.800 --> 1:10:26.240 nphobic streaks and they don't want to sort of try 1:10:26.240 --> 1:10:30.600 to observe the visigoths. Okay, so that that is, that's 1:10:30.680 --> 1:10:32.439 a that's essentially my position. 1:10:32.720 --> 1:10:33.560 Yeah. 1:10:33.680 --> 1:10:36.320 I was just going to bring up a guy who 1:10:36.520 --> 1:10:39.920 a historian, who has to come up anytime you talk 1:10:39.960 --> 1:10:42.639 about the way the right likes to use the image 1:10:42.640 --> 1:10:48.480 of Rome, particularly the collapse of Rome. Victor Davis Hansen. Yeah, yeah, 1:10:48.520 --> 1:10:50.040 he is. He is a guy you're going I mean, 1:10:50.080 --> 1:10:52.960 he was. He's my dad's favorite historian. I come from 1:10:53.000 --> 1:10:56.519 a very conservative family. And he wrote a book not 1:10:56.640 --> 1:10:59.840 all that long ago. No, actually it was twenty ten. Sorry, 1:10:59.840 --> 1:11:01.920 that still like five years ago to me. But it's 1:11:02.040 --> 1:11:05.840 not five years ago. It's much further away called Why 1:11:05.880 --> 1:11:08.080 did Rome Fall? And Why does It Matter Now? And 1:11:08.479 --> 1:11:11.559 there's a quote I found from a little article he 1:11:11.600 --> 1:11:14.639 wrote plugging it that I want to bring up here 1:11:14.720 --> 1:11:18.000 so we can chew over in short, what ruined Rome 1:11:18.080 --> 1:11:20.759 in the West. Lots of things, but clearly the pernicious 1:11:20.760 --> 1:11:24.799 effects of affluence and laxity warped Roman sensibility and created 1:11:24.800 --> 1:11:27.839 a culture of entitlement that was not justified by revenues 1:11:27.920 --> 1:11:32.400 or the creation of actual commensurate wealth, and the resulting debits, inflation, 1:11:32.560 --> 1:11:36.360 debased currency, and gradual state impoverishment gave the far more 1:11:36.479 --> 1:11:39.920 vulnerable Western Empire far less margin when the barbarians arrived. 1:11:39.920 --> 1:11:45.880 It's all bullshit, I know, it's. 1:11:42.560 --> 1:11:47.080 It's so it's so frustrating because this culture of dependence 1:11:47.120 --> 1:11:49.200 that can I swear on this podcast. 1:11:49.040 --> 1:11:50.519 Oh, absucking lutely for sure. 1:11:50.520 --> 1:11:57.160 This fucking these motherfuckers, this entitle this entitlement thing that 1:11:57.200 --> 1:11:59.719 they have because they don't like welfare because they're pricks, 1:11:59.760 --> 1:12:03.040 you know. And you know Victor Davis Hansen, you know, 1:12:03.080 --> 1:12:05.040 this is a guy who wrote a book called Like Mexifornia, 1:12:05.080 --> 1:12:08.280 which is like, oh my god, yeah, absolutely, this is 1:12:08.280 --> 1:12:10.120 where it comes from the nineties where he's like he's 1:12:10.160 --> 1:12:12.120 like California is going to be destroyed by all these 1:12:12.160 --> 1:12:16.439 Hispanic people. Like it's just loathsome shit that he writes. Anyway, 1:12:17.400 --> 1:12:20.280 this culture of entitlement, right, like oh, it was just 1:12:20.400 --> 1:12:22.800 bread and circuses and like the empire had to give 1:12:22.840 --> 1:12:26.040 all this money to like how many Like okay, great, 1:12:26.080 --> 1:12:29.720 the Roman Rome the city was like a million people, yeah, right, 1:12:29.760 --> 1:12:33.000 And there were a couple of large urban hubs that 1:12:33.160 --> 1:12:35.960 did have like grain doles because you needed to be 1:12:35.960 --> 1:12:37.680 able to feed the people in these cities. And this 1:12:37.720 --> 1:12:40.160 is you know, smart policy by the emperors. It's actually 1:12:40.160 --> 1:12:43.040 not bad on a humanitarian level. And then they also 1:12:43.080 --> 1:12:46.360 through games because this is what people do. Rich people 1:12:46.520 --> 1:12:48.920 throw parties to make themselves love like this is a 1:12:49.040 --> 1:12:51.519 very This happens today, This happens all the time, This 1:12:51.560 --> 1:12:55.080 happened during the medieval period, happens all the time. The 1:12:55.200 --> 1:12:58.439 number of people who are like benefiting from this like 1:12:58.520 --> 1:13:02.720 imperial largess, who have this like entitlement mentality is such 1:13:02.720 --> 1:13:06.479 a fraction, such a fraction of the total number of 1:13:06.520 --> 1:13:09.439 people who live in this empire, where we're talking about 1:13:09.720 --> 1:13:12.599 sixty sixty five million people maybe maybe give or take 1:13:12.640 --> 1:13:16.080 a little bit. Not that many people were on the 1:13:16.200 --> 1:13:20.360 dole in Rome. It was usually just the male head 1:13:20.360 --> 1:13:23.640 of the household got some grain. It was like it 1:13:23.800 --> 1:13:27.519 was it was a little bit of supplemental It's basically 1:13:27.560 --> 1:13:30.519 the equivalent of like supplemental income. It was absolutely not 1:13:30.600 --> 1:13:35.280 just they're rolling out banquets for these people every single day. 1:13:35.640 --> 1:13:39.200 Nor is it the case that that entitlement of Romans 1:13:39.240 --> 1:13:42.160 living in Rome in the two hundred's AD or something 1:13:42.640 --> 1:13:47.320 is like the reason why they couldn't sustain their border defenses. Right, 1:13:47.400 --> 1:13:49.680 This is the same arguments we get when it's like, 1:13:50.439 --> 1:13:54.200 you know, we can't afford social security because the you know, 1:13:54.320 --> 1:13:59.080 the National Endowment for the Sciences paid somebody two hundred 1:13:59.080 --> 1:14:01.840 and fifty thousand dollars to uh to look into the 1:14:02.360 --> 1:14:05.000 you know, be keeping habits. 1:14:05.360 --> 1:14:05.599 Uh. 1:14:05.920 --> 1:14:09.840 Like it's like people just don't have a way to 1:14:09.960 --> 1:14:13.800 compare a million dollars to a billion dollars to a 1:14:13.840 --> 1:14:15.880 trillion dollars because it's just a lot of money in 1:14:15.920 --> 1:14:16.439 our heads. 1:14:16.920 --> 1:14:20.679 So like this none of none of that is true. 1:14:20.760 --> 1:14:21.639 None of that that's true. 1:14:21.640 --> 1:14:27.120 It's it's it's fascinating to me, especially when you hear like, uh, 1:14:27.640 --> 1:14:30.240 this is like really popular amongst the Joe Rogan set, 1:14:30.520 --> 1:14:32.839 this idea that like, oh, you know, when an empire 1:14:32.920 --> 1:14:34.479 is at the end, that's when you get all the 1:14:34.479 --> 1:14:38.400 Britain circuses to distract people. And man, when the empire, 1:14:38.600 --> 1:14:41.519 like the Roman Empire, the entire period during which it 1:14:41.600 --> 1:14:45.639 was expanding like wildfire, was doing nothing but throwing giant 1:14:45.640 --> 1:14:47.960 fucking parties in the caps. All they did, Like that's 1:14:48.000 --> 1:14:51.280 all they did. You couldn't be in politics without going broke. 1:14:51.320 --> 1:14:53.760 Throwing parties like that was the That's why a lot 1:14:53.800 --> 1:14:55.920 of the conquest happened is because you have to throw 1:14:55.960 --> 1:14:58.040 these parties when you were earlier up on the on 1:14:58.080 --> 1:15:00.160 the curses and rum and then you would have to 1:15:00.240 --> 1:15:03.280 like go conquer someplace to pay for it, yep. 1:15:03.400 --> 1:15:06.400 And that was why Actually, when you get right down 1:15:06.439 --> 1:15:09.360 to it, you know, one of my you know, side 1:15:09.400 --> 1:15:11.960 opinions is that if you were a provincial inside of 1:15:12.000 --> 1:15:16.519 these conquests, you know, conquered lands, life was much better 1:15:16.600 --> 1:15:19.519 under the Empire than it was under the Republic because 1:15:19.560 --> 1:15:25.160 there actually was some tightening and normalization of the bureaucratic 1:15:25.200 --> 1:15:28.759 regime under the Empire, like after Augustus comes along, rather 1:15:28.840 --> 1:15:30.760 than what was going on in the Republic, which is 1:15:30.800 --> 1:15:34.000 every single year a province was getting a new governor 1:15:34.360 --> 1:15:36.759 who was there to extract as much money for himself 1:15:36.800 --> 1:15:39.320 as possible because he had taken out tons and tons 1:15:39.320 --> 1:15:42.559 of loans to throw the biggest games that he possibly could, 1:15:42.600 --> 1:15:45.080 to build the biggest act, to build the biggest thing. Now, 1:15:45.120 --> 1:15:47.320 when you get into the later Empire, like are their 1:15:47.400 --> 1:15:50.519 financial difficulties of course, right, you don't get the kind 1:15:50.560 --> 1:15:53.439 of monument building and even aqueduct building and infrastructure projects 1:15:53.439 --> 1:15:56.040 you get in the later Empire, But like there are 1:15:56.280 --> 1:16:01.919 larger economic and structural reasons why they were suffering financial 1:16:01.920 --> 1:16:04.639 difficulties at the end of the empire that have nothing 1:16:04.720 --> 1:16:08.080 to do with these couple of grain doles that were 1:16:08.080 --> 1:16:10.240 going to a few major urban areas. Most of the 1:16:10.280 --> 1:16:13.680 population is rural subsistence peasants, like those people were not 1:16:13.720 --> 1:16:14.680 feeling entitled to. 1:16:14.720 --> 1:16:17.720 Shit, which I think is really funny because if you 1:16:17.760 --> 1:16:21.519 look at like, I am very confident if you actually 1:16:21.520 --> 1:16:24.760 did the math, US spends more money agricultural subsidies every 1:16:24.840 --> 1:16:28.040 year than like than the Romans did, like on the 1:16:28.240 --> 1:16:29.080 entire grain dole. 1:16:29.439 --> 1:16:32.479 I mean, there's a way the math is true. Like yeah, 1:16:32.680 --> 1:16:34.760 like we I mean, but in part not just like 1:16:34.800 --> 1:16:36.439 because who knows what the Romans would have done with 1:16:36.479 --> 1:16:39.120 a higher level of technology. Just wasn't possible to do 1:16:39.200 --> 1:16:41.960 that kind of thing outside of the major urban hubs, 1:16:42.000 --> 1:16:42.559 Like you can't. 1:16:42.600 --> 1:16:45.519 Also, you can't you couldn't do it, That's the thing. 1:16:45.640 --> 1:16:47.639 Yeah, this is the same thing where you get into 1:16:47.680 --> 1:16:50.040 like when people like to slip in the whole, like oh, 1:16:50.080 --> 1:16:52.160 there was lead in the in the in the pipes, 1:16:53.320 --> 1:16:55.040 and like there was lead in the pipes, and you know, 1:16:55.080 --> 1:16:57.200 maybe some of the leadership was a bit over led 1:16:57.240 --> 1:17:00.360 exposed like who knows, like maybe maybe, maybe, but like 1:17:01.080 --> 1:17:04.400 the vast majority of the population is not living in 1:17:04.560 --> 1:17:07.800 downtown Rome where this might be a problem, or in 1:17:07.920 --> 1:17:10.480 you know, one of the other you know, regional capitals 1:17:11.120 --> 1:17:13.360 that's just not where any of this is taking place. 1:17:14.000 --> 1:17:16.840 Well, people love to talk about stuff like that. It 1:17:16.960 --> 1:17:19.080 is like, you know, the fact that they're one of 1:17:19.080 --> 1:17:22.160 their major sweeteners included a lot of letters is always 1:17:22.280 --> 1:17:25.840 like interesting to bring up. But the thing that I mean, 1:17:25.880 --> 1:17:28.280 and this was this is also pure speculation, but that 1:17:28.320 --> 1:17:30.760 I always wonder more about, not just with Rome, but 1:17:30.800 --> 1:17:35.240 with like most postmodern societies and even like early modern societies, 1:17:35.320 --> 1:17:38.040 is like, what about like mild head injuries, because we 1:17:38.120 --> 1:17:40.640 know so much more now about how a bunch of 1:17:40.680 --> 1:17:44.519 little head injuries can permanently alter your behavior, and like, 1:17:44.520 --> 1:17:46.439 like that's a big thing when I think about when 1:17:46.439 --> 1:17:48.479 I think about like the World War one generation, is 1:17:48.479 --> 1:17:51.400 you've got millions of men who wind up becoming very 1:17:51.400 --> 1:17:55.160 influential in politics who are under artillery barrages and who 1:17:55.200 --> 1:17:57.600 are there's almost no way they're not walking away with 1:17:57.640 --> 1:17:59.680 some kind of cte based on what we know now 1:17:59.680 --> 1:18:02.920 about what being near artillery does to your brain. You 1:18:02.960 --> 1:18:05.559 know what does that do to Yeah, the ancient world 1:18:05.640 --> 1:18:09.120 was full of trauma and that's and that's a real thing. 1:18:09.160 --> 1:18:13.519 All of these guys were deeply, deeply traumatized. But like 1:18:13.560 --> 1:18:15.880 one of the other points about the whole like bread 1:18:15.880 --> 1:18:18.719 doll thing is this gets back to this is sneaky 1:18:18.760 --> 1:18:22.519 backdoor racism because the argument, the argument is that Rome 1:18:22.640 --> 1:18:25.040 was great when it was the Romans doing it like 1:18:25.120 --> 1:18:28.800 these actual like Latins who were coming from the environs 1:18:28.840 --> 1:18:31.360 of Rome in particular, and that it all started to 1:18:31.400 --> 1:18:34.160 go bad ones non Romans were in charge of things 1:18:34.200 --> 1:18:38.120 because the Romans themselves had had decayed into this like, 1:18:38.160 --> 1:18:39.960 oh well, we just want our bread and circuses and 1:18:40.000 --> 1:18:41.840 we're not going to join the legions. We'll just have 1:18:41.960 --> 1:18:44.160 Germans do our fighting for us, or Goths do our 1:18:44.200 --> 1:18:48.759 fighting for us. Which that is That is simply sneaky 1:18:48.800 --> 1:18:51.640 backdoor racism, because it's a way of saying that it 1:18:51.760 --> 1:18:54.000 was the reason why the Roman Empire was successful was 1:18:54.000 --> 1:18:57.320 because of this small population group and once they go away, 1:18:57.720 --> 1:19:02.040 other groups, these mongrel digs, will never be able to 1:19:03.160 --> 1:19:05.960 live up to or sustain civilization in the way that 1:19:06.080 --> 1:19:09.719 Romans did. The pure Romans did and so that's also 1:19:09.760 --> 1:19:11.559 a big reason why we need to push back on 1:19:11.600 --> 1:19:14.160 these things is because the Roman Empire was not just 1:19:14.200 --> 1:19:18.959 sustained but thrived and expanded by people who were not Romans. 1:19:19.080 --> 1:19:22.800 And the idea that you know, their civilization required this 1:19:22.880 --> 1:19:26.200 like little tiny speck of a DNA spark to keep 1:19:26.240 --> 1:19:28.960 it going is just you know, this is the kind 1:19:28.960 --> 1:19:31.440 of person who finishes writing that book and then immediately 1:19:31.479 --> 1:19:34.120 turns their attention to modern California politics and says, the 1:19:34.120 --> 1:19:35.520 big problem here is Hispanics. 1:19:35.840 --> 1:19:39.000 Yeah, which is also not true, by the way, I 1:19:39.080 --> 1:19:39.800 need to cut that up. 1:19:40.040 --> 1:19:45.880 Yeah, the big problem with California politics is California politicians. 1:19:46.000 --> 1:19:47.520 Right, It's not Latinos. 1:19:47.840 --> 1:19:50.760 You know, it's certainly not Latinos. You know. 1:19:50.800 --> 1:19:53.640 I wanted to kind of circle back around to the 1:19:53.680 --> 1:19:56.719 sort of degeneracy stuff because I think there's an interesting 1:19:57.439 --> 1:19:59.720 through line there too, with with not just sort of 1:19:59.720 --> 1:20:03.439 modern politics, but the politics of the period of the 1:20:03.479 --> 1:20:05.599 original rise of fascism, because you know, you look at 1:20:05.600 --> 1:20:07.840 these arguments and they're like, well, okay, it was like 1:20:08.479 --> 1:20:11.200 cultural decadence, and then they start talking about degeneracy and 1:20:11.200 --> 1:20:14.040 how homosexuality was this like degenerate thing. That brought down 1:20:14.040 --> 1:20:16.320 the empire, and like you go back and you like 1:20:16.479 --> 1:20:21.439 read the Nazis and they are also absolutely obsessed with, 1:20:21.600 --> 1:20:24.000 like you know, with this notion of like degenerate art 1:20:24.000 --> 1:20:26.799 and like cultural degeneracy is this force that's this internal 1:20:26.840 --> 1:20:30.720 force of subverting the empire. And you know, and like 1:20:30.800 --> 1:20:34.680 this is also I think another like reason to be 1:20:36.160 --> 1:20:38.559 reason to be interested in a better way about Rome 1:20:38.680 --> 1:20:41.920 was also the way that like the original Italian fascists art. 1:20:42.320 --> 1:20:46.120 I mean, like the word fascism is like derived you know, 1:20:46.200 --> 1:20:49.200 like from from Roman symbol symbols, right, and like you know, 1:20:49.920 --> 1:20:52.400 this is like Mussolini's entire thing is about turning the 1:20:52.439 --> 1:20:55.680 Vediterranean into the Roman lake. Blah blah blah blah. 1:20:55.880 --> 1:20:59.120 So the fascist is great. Not to get you know, 1:21:00.040 --> 1:21:01.200 to derail your point, keep. 1:21:01.040 --> 1:21:04.040 Talking, Just gonna cut that line out of the podcast. 1:21:04.640 --> 1:21:09.719 Mike Duncan says, fascist, it's great. The fascist is great. 1:21:10.400 --> 1:21:13.080 It's a great symbol. Go go, Like a lot of 1:21:13.120 --> 1:21:15.320 people don't actually even notice this. Maybe they do at 1:21:15.320 --> 1:21:16.920 this point this is no longer a fun fact. 1:21:17.240 --> 1:21:18.400 But you go. You go to the link. 1:21:18.439 --> 1:21:19.800 No, well, I mean not just Congress, but go to 1:21:19.880 --> 1:21:21.840 Lincoln Memorial look at the Lincoln Memorial. What are his 1:21:21.840 --> 1:21:23.840 hands resting on to a couple of fascists. It just 1:21:23.960 --> 1:21:25.800 is because you know what, a bundle of sticks is 1:21:25.840 --> 1:21:29.280 stronger together and that is a symbol of solidarity, and 1:21:29.360 --> 1:21:32.240 it is a symbol of group action being superior to 1:21:32.360 --> 1:21:34.640 individual attempts to do anything, and that the one, the 1:21:34.680 --> 1:21:36.559 one boo is going to break, but all of them 1:21:36.560 --> 1:21:38.960 together is good. Like none of this is like inherently bad. 1:21:39.000 --> 1:21:43.479 It's just a bunch of fascists claimed it for their own. 1:21:43.520 --> 1:21:43.720 Yeah. 1:21:43.760 --> 1:21:46.960 Well, and my memory of this is that I'm pretty 1:21:46.960 --> 1:21:48.960 sure there was a group of people who were like 1:21:49.400 --> 1:21:53.599 calling themselves fascis, like in in early like late eighteen hundreds, 1:21:53.600 --> 1:21:56.600 early nineteen hundred Italy, who weren't fascists, who were like, 1:21:56.360 --> 1:22:00.400 it's like basically left wingers. And then and then like, well, sorry, Notazis. 1:22:00.479 --> 1:22:02.400 Well I don't know if you know this, but Nazis 1:22:02.400 --> 1:22:05.840 are actually socialists. They're national socialists. And so a lot 1:22:05.920 --> 1:22:08.320 of people think that their right wing, but actually their 1:22:08.400 --> 1:22:12.080 left wing. And that's what it is. Hitler was. It 1:22:12.280 --> 1:22:13.559 was an Oberlin grad. 1:22:14.000 --> 1:22:16.679 This is where we q my thirty minute digression about 1:22:16.680 --> 1:22:17.519 stress rism. 1:22:18.200 --> 1:22:24.040 Oh god, but I think to you, I think to 1:22:24.080 --> 1:22:25.800 the point that you were trying to make or that 1:22:25.880 --> 1:22:28.960 you were making there though, is that they were you know, 1:22:29.000 --> 1:22:31.519 the Nazis did. And then we hear this repeated today 1:22:31.840 --> 1:22:35.160 that like that degeneracy is like a thing that is 1:22:35.240 --> 1:22:37.759 a force, like a physical force that can maybe even 1:22:37.800 --> 1:22:39.760 be measured, and if you don't have enough of it, 1:22:39.880 --> 1:22:41.280 or if you have too much of it, then your 1:22:41.280 --> 1:22:43.400 society is going to start to break apart or decay. 1:22:43.960 --> 1:22:46.920 Like it's just an idea, that's it. It's just sort 1:22:46.920 --> 1:22:48.720 of a way of thinking about something or a way 1:22:48.760 --> 1:22:52.080 of describing something. It's not actually a really real thing 1:22:52.160 --> 1:22:54.640 that is out there in the world. Like if you 1:22:54.760 --> 1:22:59.120 have a society that suddenly can't grow grain and you 1:22:59.200 --> 1:23:01.679 have a famine, like that's a real thing that will 1:23:01.720 --> 1:23:04.320 actually affect your society and bring it down. You have 1:23:04.360 --> 1:23:07.280 this other thing that is just like moral degeneracy. This 1:23:07.400 --> 1:23:10.040 is just like you listing things you don't like and 1:23:10.160 --> 1:23:12.840 saying that this is the reason why things are falling apart, 1:23:12.880 --> 1:23:17.760 because degeneracy can be anything to anybody. But really, you know, 1:23:17.920 --> 1:23:21.320 like people smoking cigarettes at four o'clock in the morning 1:23:21.360 --> 1:23:23.919 because they've been up all night, you know, doing drugs, 1:23:23.960 --> 1:23:27.519 like that's what kids do, what people have that people 1:23:27.560 --> 1:23:29.920 are always going to do this, This is always on 1:23:30.000 --> 1:23:32.960 the backgrounds and margins of any society. So like and 1:23:33.080 --> 1:23:35.759 rich people like they've always partied, they always will party. 1:23:35.800 --> 1:23:38.840 Like those kinds of things. You can't really then say like, oh, 1:23:38.840 --> 1:23:43.479 well we've accumulated too much degeneracy. Now our society is 1:23:43.479 --> 1:23:45.160 going to start to break apart, and this, you know, 1:23:45.200 --> 1:23:48.040 the things that we see today in terms of our 1:23:48.080 --> 1:23:52.320 own sort of faltering democratic republic. This is not because 1:23:52.360 --> 1:23:54.760 of degeneracy. This isn't because the kids are doing too 1:23:54.800 --> 1:23:57.519 many drugs, or like we legalize gay marriage, Like that's 1:23:57.560 --> 1:24:00.120 not That's not why any of this is happening. It's 1:24:00.120 --> 1:24:02.639 happening for other reasons. It's happening because of greed. It's 1:24:02.640 --> 1:24:07.920 happening because of sociopathic indifference to other people's lives. Those 1:24:07.960 --> 1:24:11.080 are the things that actually matter, not whether you stayed 1:24:11.120 --> 1:24:12.920 up all night drinking and partying. 1:24:13.520 --> 1:24:16.680 No, No, it's yeah, it's it's it's the kind like 1:24:16.720 --> 1:24:18.879 I tend to think, like talking about the Lata fundia 1:24:18.920 --> 1:24:21.920 is a lot more relevant to talking about like what 1:24:22.080 --> 1:24:25.880 happened to the elites under Rome and what's happened in 1:24:25.920 --> 1:24:28.880 our own society than bringing up like the parties and. 1:24:28.880 --> 1:24:30.280 Shit like yeah, it's this exactly. 1:24:30.360 --> 1:24:33.080 The centralization of wealth and power in a tinier and 1:24:33.120 --> 1:24:35.840 tinier number of men was responsible for a number of 1:24:35.840 --> 1:24:37.920 the problems that Rome encountered, as it aged. 1:24:38.280 --> 1:24:40.880 And they don't want to have that conversation out, so 1:24:40.920 --> 1:24:44.479 they want us to have this other conversation which flatters 1:24:44.520 --> 1:24:45.240 their bigotry. 1:24:46.680 --> 1:24:48.439 Well, and this I think comes back to the thing 1:24:48.479 --> 1:24:50.200 you were, you know, the joke you're making about like 1:24:50.240 --> 1:24:52.080 all of these these are all the same people who 1:24:52.160 --> 1:24:54.200 are like, oh, well, the Nazis were socialists. 1:24:54.240 --> 1:24:56.120 It's like yeah, you know. 1:24:56.200 --> 1:24:59.920 Like the point of like these arguments is so they 1:25:00.160 --> 1:25:02.919 you don't go back into the historical record and realize 1:25:03.240 --> 1:25:04.920 how much all the things are saying are wrong and 1:25:04.960 --> 1:25:08.680 how much they're making precisely the same arguments that you know, 1:25:08.720 --> 1:25:10.519 the Nazis were making, or that all of these sort 1:25:10.560 --> 1:25:14.439 of like you know, all all of the sort of 1:25:15.120 --> 1:25:18.519 past people who broadly is acknowledged did a bunch of 1:25:18.600 --> 1:25:20.880 terrible stuff, had the same opinions that they do. 1:25:21.640 --> 1:25:26.320 Mm hmm, yeah, well I don't know. I think that's 1:25:26.560 --> 1:25:32.640 what I've got to talk about today. I mean, this 1:25:32.800 --> 1:25:37.000 is like we could go on to the way in 1:25:37.040 --> 1:25:41.400 which like Sparta gets remembered and stuff and the cultural 1:25:41.840 --> 1:25:44.719 like right wing, but I think that's kind of moving 1:25:45.040 --> 1:25:48.479 sort of far afield. Although there's similarities, right, there's always 1:25:48.479 --> 1:25:51.600 this idea that like at this certain point when everybody 1:25:51.640 --> 1:25:55.080 looked the same, like that's when this historic empire was 1:25:55.080 --> 1:25:58.800 at their best. And when you know, degeneracy got entered 1:25:58.800 --> 1:26:00.840 into it, when immigrants got into into it, that's when 1:26:00.840 --> 1:26:05.760 it sort of fell apart. I guess some of that's 1:26:05.800 --> 1:26:08.479 mixed in with sort of like Frank Miller as opposed 1:26:08.520 --> 1:26:11.599 to any sort of real history. But that's always the case, right, 1:26:11.840 --> 1:26:12.280 I think a lot. 1:26:12.880 --> 1:26:13.040 Yeah. 1:26:13.040 --> 1:26:15.320 I mean in Frank Miller's working in a tradition that 1:26:15.439 --> 1:26:18.240 is very standard. You know, the you know, the kind 1:26:18.240 --> 1:26:24.080 of racist orioleentizing, orientalizing of you know, of anybody from 1:26:24.120 --> 1:26:26.559 the east, like that was all current, like you know, 1:26:26.600 --> 1:26:28.479 the Romans had those ideas. I mean that we get 1:26:28.479 --> 1:26:30.360 the word barb like the word like one of the 1:26:30.360 --> 1:26:32.719 points that I'm going to make probably in my book 1:26:32.840 --> 1:26:36.200 is that like so the word barbarian just means non Greek, 1:26:36.479 --> 1:26:38.360 like that's it, because the Greeks had a you know, 1:26:38.439 --> 1:26:40.480 a very sort of self centered. 1:26:40.280 --> 1:26:43.000 View of the world, as we all do. But that 1:26:43.120 --> 1:26:45.400 meant that the Romans are barbarians, you know, and that 1:26:45.479 --> 1:26:48.680 word is coined, and we're thinking about who the Romans are, 1:26:48.720 --> 1:26:51.439 like they were the civilized ones and then and then 1:26:51.479 --> 1:26:53.200 there are all these barbarians who are bad. 1:26:53.240 --> 1:26:56.000 But like from the Greek perspective, the Romans were as 1:26:56.040 --> 1:27:00.360 barbaric as you know, the Scythians were, and you know, 1:27:00.439 --> 1:27:03.280 probably and certainly less civilized than the Persians were when 1:27:03.280 --> 1:27:05.519 the Romans. When the Romans first appeared on the scene 1:27:05.680 --> 1:27:07.599 in Greece, they were like, who are they? These are 1:27:07.600 --> 1:27:09.280 just a bunch of guys who are obsessed with war 1:27:09.560 --> 1:27:11.479 and they have no culture, they have no ideas of 1:27:11.520 --> 1:27:13.800 their own. They just march around in squares and kill 1:27:13.840 --> 1:27:16.720 people like That's that was their interpretation of what the 1:27:16.800 --> 1:27:20.679 Romans were originally, which is not a you know, terrible 1:27:20.720 --> 1:27:26.439 interpretation of e really Roman history. But yeah, this just 1:27:26.479 --> 1:27:30.160 this sort of dividing between civilized peoples and barbaric peoples 1:27:30.680 --> 1:27:33.560 is something that then has been around for thousands of 1:27:33.640 --> 1:27:35.800 years and we're still doing it today. Like everything that 1:27:35.840 --> 1:27:39.560 we're seeing, you know, and I look at Israel and Palestine, 1:27:39.600 --> 1:27:43.200 there's a lot of this mapping of civilized versus uncivilized 1:27:43.240 --> 1:27:47.720 people onto this conflict that I see is rooted in 1:27:47.760 --> 1:27:51.839 a lot in these sort of Western traditions that informed 1:27:51.920 --> 1:27:55.719 nineteenth century racist ideas about how things you know, about 1:27:55.720 --> 1:27:58.880 how societies organize themselves, all of which needs to be 1:27:59.000 --> 1:28:00.559 deconstructed and thrown away. 1:28:01.120 --> 1:28:04.840 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I always love it when people 1:28:04.880 --> 1:28:08.479 try to bring up like these sort of racial theories 1:28:08.479 --> 1:28:11.800 within the context of the Roman Empire, who had absolutely 1:28:11.840 --> 1:28:14.600 nothing that would be considered like a modern understanding of 1:28:14.680 --> 1:28:17.759 whiteness or race like was was completely absent. 1:28:18.400 --> 1:28:21.920 No, they they all had they all had group identity. 1:28:22.120 --> 1:28:26.559 No, they wets but yeah, different era, Yeah, exactly right. 1:28:26.640 --> 1:28:28.960 It was there's us and then there's everybody else. 1:28:29.080 --> 1:28:33.479 Yeah, and you know, the Romans differentiated a little bit 1:28:33.600 --> 1:28:36.519 between like there were Egyptians, and you know, they they 1:28:36.520 --> 1:28:38.639 were kind of you know, they were they were curious 1:28:38.640 --> 1:28:41.680 about how how the Jews worked, because the Jews were 1:28:41.800 --> 1:28:44.000 very old civilization, and so the Romans kind of took 1:28:44.040 --> 1:28:46.719 special note of that, and they really admired the Greeks, 1:28:47.760 --> 1:28:49.920 and so there are these like sort of like groupings 1:28:49.960 --> 1:28:52.080 that they all understood, but it's all just sort of 1:28:52.080 --> 1:28:55.080 that very self centered. You know, if you go through 1:28:55.080 --> 1:28:58.200 anthropological history of any group of people, their word for 1:28:58.280 --> 1:29:00.280 themselves is just the word for person. 1:29:00.560 --> 1:29:00.760 You know. 1:29:00.800 --> 1:29:02.800 We find this a lot, and the Romans were that 1:29:02.840 --> 1:29:05.080 way too, but not not in this way, not not 1:29:05.240 --> 1:29:09.960 sitting down and making like hierarchies of you know, who can, uh, 1:29:10.040 --> 1:29:11.720 you know, who can do what, and who should be 1:29:11.760 --> 1:29:13.439 on top and who should be on bottom, because you know, 1:29:13.439 --> 1:29:15.800 if you're a traditional ancient Chowvinus, you're like, well, my 1:29:15.800 --> 1:29:17.439 people should be on top, and that, you know, is 1:29:17.479 --> 1:29:20.320 self explanatory, and then we will we will fight for 1:29:20.360 --> 1:29:23.960 that that it's not because of yeah, these these racial hierarchies. 1:29:25.200 --> 1:29:28.960 Yeah. Well, I think that's about all I had to 1:29:29.000 --> 1:29:31.080 get into, Mia. You have anything else you wanted to 1:29:31.120 --> 1:29:32.040 sort of touch on today? 1:29:35.160 --> 1:29:36.840 I I think I think I think we've about we 1:29:36.880 --> 1:29:37.920 think we've about covered it. 1:29:38.920 --> 1:29:39.800 Well, we got it. 1:29:40.000 --> 1:29:42.400 We have we've established that it's wrong to think that 1:29:42.520 --> 1:29:44.439 gays made the Roman Empire fall. 1:29:45.080 --> 1:29:51.760 No, No, although you can, yeah, there's a million more 1:29:51.800 --> 1:29:54.720 things to say about that, but but yeah, I think 1:29:54.760 --> 1:29:59.120 we've we've hit on the basics. Mike. You are a podcaster. 1:29:59.320 --> 1:30:02.280 Your Revolution podcast is one of the best things on 1:30:02.320 --> 1:30:04.960 the internet. You are also an author. Think of a 1:30:05.000 --> 1:30:08.719 whole bunch of books, The Storm Before the Storm, which 1:30:08.760 --> 1:30:10.479 is about a lot of the stuff we've been talking 1:30:10.479 --> 1:30:16.120 about today, Hero of Two Worlds, the History of Rome. Yeah, Mike, 1:30:16.240 --> 1:30:17.479 you have anything else you want to plug? 1:30:18.960 --> 1:30:21.280 Well, I am just about, as I said earlier, about 1:30:21.320 --> 1:30:23.960 to start work on a third book, which will be 1:30:24.120 --> 1:30:27.240 the Crisis of the Third Century. So if anybody out 1:30:27.240 --> 1:30:28.920 there who's listening to this has been like I wonder 1:30:28.920 --> 1:30:30.360 if Mike's ever going to write a book about the 1:30:30.360 --> 1:30:34.080 Crisis of the third Century, I will, and I am excellent. 1:30:34.640 --> 1:30:37.200 Well, thank you for being on the show, Mike, and 1:30:37.520 --> 1:30:41.439 yeah listeners until next time. If somebody brings up the 1:30:41.520 --> 1:30:46.879 Roman Empire in an attempt to attack various special interests 1:30:46.960 --> 1:30:50.599 in our modern political system by a Gladias, you know 1:30:50.880 --> 1:30:53.200 that still works the same way it did in the past, 1:30:53.439 --> 1:30:56.320 Just start swinging a Gladias. Remember it's God but blade 1:30:56.400 --> 1:30:58.599 on both sides, so you got to be careful when 1:30:58.640 --> 1:31:04.400 you swing a Gladias. Satire satire that's not actionable satire. 1:31:20.160 --> 1:31:23.679 Hello, everybody, Welcome to it could happen here. My name 1:31:23.800 --> 1:31:28.000 is Scharene, and today, as usual, I have a very 1:31:28.040 --> 1:31:32.439 serious topic to talk about. Today, I wanted to talk 1:31:32.520 --> 1:31:38.040 about corn. Yes, corn, the food. I think corn gets 1:31:38.080 --> 1:31:42.439 a really bad wrap these days, a starchy carb. Oh no, hi, 1:31:42.520 --> 1:31:45.960 fructose corn syrup, get away from me. But like, actually 1:31:45.960 --> 1:31:47.840 that shit is not good for you, so do eat 1:31:47.880 --> 1:31:51.599 it in moderation, if at all. But corn itself shouldn't 1:31:51.600 --> 1:31:54.200 be made into a death syrup in the first place. 1:31:55.320 --> 1:31:58.200 Corn isn't supposed to be eaten this way. It's meant 1:31:58.240 --> 1:32:01.320 to be eaten just as it is, or rather how 1:32:01.400 --> 1:32:04.360 it has come to be because of human intervention, which 1:32:04.439 --> 1:32:09.799 is delicious. I am obsessed with corn. My entire family 1:32:10.120 --> 1:32:14.680 is obsessed with corn. Corn boiled sweet corn in particular, 1:32:15.040 --> 1:32:17.120 is one of the most popular street foods in the 1:32:17.120 --> 1:32:22.360 Middle East and Syria. Street vendors have handfuls dozens of 1:32:22.400 --> 1:32:26.040 corn cobs boiling in these giant cauldrons at the side 1:32:26.040 --> 1:32:30.519 of the road, and the smell is intoxicating. Every time 1:32:30.640 --> 1:32:33.040 my family and I were in Syria, my uncle would 1:32:33.080 --> 1:32:36.360 stop by a vendor and grab bags full of corn 1:32:36.439 --> 1:32:39.280 for us, like it was right after getting picked up 1:32:39.280 --> 1:32:43.639 from the airport, our first stop always. Then we'd usually 1:32:43.680 --> 1:32:46.280 put the corn in the biggest pot my grandmother had 1:32:46.600 --> 1:32:50.519 and boil them fresh. And again the smell, you guys, 1:32:51.160 --> 1:32:53.799 it would fill up the entire apartment and it smelled 1:32:54.160 --> 1:32:57.599 so good. The corn would be steaming hot, and we'd 1:32:57.680 --> 1:33:00.040 move the couch in the living room in order to 1:33:00.080 --> 1:33:02.080 make room for the table that we can all eat 1:33:02.120 --> 1:33:04.639 on and gather around, and we would devour the corn. 1:33:05.160 --> 1:33:08.639 We would go to town, and in my thoughts about 1:33:08.640 --> 1:33:11.599 corn that I have quite often, I started wondering about 1:33:11.640 --> 1:33:16.360 how exactly did corn become a street food, because it's 1:33:16.360 --> 1:33:19.320 a street food in many cultures. Elote is one that 1:33:19.360 --> 1:33:21.679 comes to mind that is the most popular, I believe, 1:33:22.880 --> 1:33:26.160 But I wanted to know why and how how did 1:33:26.240 --> 1:33:30.519 it become so popular as street food. That's what I 1:33:30.560 --> 1:33:34.519 wanted to find out, and I did kind of. I 1:33:34.640 --> 1:33:37.360 ended up learning a lot about the history of corn 1:33:37.600 --> 1:33:41.280 and how exactly it ended up being in practically everything 1:33:41.360 --> 1:33:44.839 we eat, and that was fascinating to me, so maybe 1:33:44.880 --> 1:33:48.760 you'll find it fascinating too. Today corn is one of 1:33:48.800 --> 1:33:53.440 the world's most important crops. That is not news. Obviously, 1:33:53.479 --> 1:33:55.839 we eat corn, and it can also be turned into 1:33:55.880 --> 1:34:00.800 flour and syrup. It's fed to livestock, it's transformed to ethanol, 1:34:01.080 --> 1:34:03.920 and it can even be used to make plastic. More 1:34:03.960 --> 1:34:07.200 than one billion tons of corn are produced around the 1:34:07.240 --> 1:34:11.080 globe every year, and corn yields more than six percent 1:34:11.400 --> 1:34:15.000 of all food calories for humans, which is a big 1:34:15.040 --> 1:34:19.200 percent even though six is a small number. Let's talk 1:34:19.240 --> 1:34:22.599 about the history of corn. Corn as we know it 1:34:22.640 --> 1:34:25.679 today would not exist if it weren't for the humans 1:34:25.720 --> 1:34:29.559 that cultivated and developed it. It is a human invention, 1:34:29.960 --> 1:34:32.679 a plant that does not exist naturally in the wild. 1:34:33.240 --> 1:34:37.440 It can only survive if planted and protected by humans. 1:34:37.960 --> 1:34:42.959 Relatable scientists believe that people living in central Mexico developed 1:34:43.000 --> 1:34:48.000 corn about ten thousand years ago. Apparently, civilization got off 1:34:48.000 --> 1:34:51.320 to a slow start in Mexico, flagging about five thousand 1:34:51.400 --> 1:34:55.439 years behind civilization in what historians call the quote fertile 1:34:55.479 --> 1:35:00.000 Crescent of the Middle East. Hughitlas, a University of Wisconsin, 1:35:00.000 --> 1:35:03.639 the professor of botany, thinks this delay can be blamed 1:35:03.680 --> 1:35:07.160 on the differences in plants. He said, the New World 1:35:07.160 --> 1:35:11.400 civilization developed slowly because the basic food crop first cultivated 1:35:11.439 --> 1:35:15.280 in Mexico was corn. He said the process of deriving 1:35:15.360 --> 1:35:19.160 corn from wild plants was maybe fifty times more complex 1:35:19.520 --> 1:35:22.040 than the development of wheat and other crops in the 1:35:22.080 --> 1:35:26.120 Middle East. Las said agriculture in the Old World started 1:35:26.160 --> 1:35:29.679 ten thousand years ago with the sowing of wild plant seeds. 1:35:30.360 --> 1:35:34.360 With time, farmers selected grains with seed pods that didn't 1:35:34.400 --> 1:35:37.400 shatter as easily and that could be easily gathered and stored, 1:35:38.360 --> 1:35:42.320 And humans got plenty of lessons from animals too. He said. 1:35:42.320 --> 1:35:46.120 The early Old World farmers probably learned from golden hamsters 1:35:46.160 --> 1:35:49.639 and other little seed gathering mammals that lived in the area, 1:35:50.000 --> 1:35:53.080 and they learned this way to hoard seeds over the winter. 1:35:53.880 --> 1:35:56.439 What's kind of fucked up about that, though, is that 1:35:56.520 --> 1:35:59.200 Itlas said these humans may have even dug out some 1:35:59.280 --> 1:36:02.439 of the hamsters seeds stashes and taken those seeds from 1:36:02.479 --> 1:36:07.400 the hamsters route. But in comparison, the New World farmers 1:36:07.439 --> 1:36:10.320 did not have it so easy. There were no plants 1:36:10.320 --> 1:36:13.600 well suited to agriculture and no seed hoarding mammals to 1:36:13.680 --> 1:36:17.439 learn from. The only potential grain the New World people 1:36:17.479 --> 1:36:21.360 had to work with was an unpromising mutant plant derived 1:36:21.360 --> 1:36:26.240 from the plant called Teosinte. It took five, six, maybe 1:36:26.280 --> 1:36:29.600 seven thousand years for this plant to evolve into an 1:36:29.680 --> 1:36:35.000 integrated food producing plant. Taocinte is a wild grass and 1:36:35.040 --> 1:36:38.559 it looked very different from our corn today. The kernels 1:36:38.600 --> 1:36:41.240 were small and they were not placed together like the 1:36:41.320 --> 1:36:45.120 kernels we see on a modern ear of corn. Honestly, 1:36:45.160 --> 1:36:48.320 I found it kind of unsettling and disturbing if you 1:36:48.360 --> 1:36:51.400 wanted to look that up to each their own. And surprisingly, 1:36:51.439 --> 1:36:54.360 the original tiocente plant can still be found today, but 1:36:54.560 --> 1:36:57.799 only in one three acre area of the Hellisco region 1:36:57.840 --> 1:37:03.560 of Mexico. It said the plant is absolutely useless. Teocente 1:37:03.640 --> 1:37:07.360 seeds have a steel hard outer covering, and these seeds 1:37:07.479 --> 1:37:11.599 were virtually inedible except when they were green. Also, the 1:37:11.600 --> 1:37:15.200 Teocente plant only had six or twelve kernels on each 1:37:15.280 --> 1:37:18.760 tiny ear. It was said that the first step in 1:37:18.800 --> 1:37:21.759 the development of corn as we know it today involved 1:37:21.800 --> 1:37:26.760 a quote catastrophic sexual transmutation his words that converted the 1:37:26.840 --> 1:37:31.360 tip of some male tassels into the uniquely monstrous many 1:37:31.520 --> 1:37:34.519 ranked ears. Also his words that are now the edible 1:37:34.600 --> 1:37:39.040 female ears of corn. I did not know I've been 1:37:39.080 --> 1:37:42.840 eating female corn this whole time. But this is what 1:37:43.040 --> 1:37:48.480 researching a podcast can do. After this complex transformation, farmers 1:37:48.520 --> 1:37:52.040 then had to select mutant tiocente plants that were more 1:37:52.200 --> 1:37:56.160 edible and easier to cultivate. These changes were much more 1:37:56.200 --> 1:37:59.879 complex than the changes that made old world plants useful. 1:38:00.880 --> 1:38:04.479 Modern agriculture continues to tinker with corn and ti ucentae. 1:38:05.360 --> 1:38:08.360 It Liss said that plant breeders today are crossing the 1:38:08.360 --> 1:38:13.160 two plants together to derive perennial or enduring, long lasting 1:38:13.240 --> 1:38:16.000 corn that would not have to be planted each year 1:38:16.280 --> 1:38:20.000 and that would be resistant to viruses. Steve Price is 1:38:20.040 --> 1:38:23.919 a biotechnology researcher for the Standard Oil Company of Ohio, 1:38:24.320 --> 1:38:27.400 and he said that with genetic engineering techniques, it might 1:38:27.439 --> 1:38:31.480 take five years rather than five thousand years for contemporary 1:38:31.560 --> 1:38:36.519 humans to make a better corn plant. This time, from Mexico, 1:38:36.800 --> 1:38:40.439 corn spread north into the southwestern United States and then 1:38:40.560 --> 1:38:45.200 south down the coast to Peru. In Mexico, squash cultivation 1:38:45.360 --> 1:38:48.360 began ten thousand years ago, but corn had to wait 1:38:48.400 --> 1:38:52.040 for natural genetic mutations to be selected for in its 1:38:52.160 --> 1:38:57.240 wild ancestor, teocente. Wild corn like plants derived from theo 1:38:57.320 --> 1:39:00.080 cente appear to have been cultivated at least nine one 1:39:00.120 --> 1:39:04.160 thousand years ago. The first directly dated corn cob dates 1:39:04.200 --> 1:39:07.320 to only around five thousand and five hundred years ago. 1:39:08.200 --> 1:39:12.200 As corn reached North America, it cultivated sunflowers, and this 1:39:12.320 --> 1:39:15.639 is also when potato started growing in the Andes region 1:39:15.920 --> 1:39:19.800 of South America about one thousand years ago. As indigenous 1:39:19.840 --> 1:39:23.040 people migrated north to the eastern woodlands of present day 1:39:23.080 --> 1:39:27.520 North America, they brought corn with them. So when Europeans 1:39:27.680 --> 1:39:31.479 like Columbus, friend of the Show, made contact with people 1:39:31.520 --> 1:39:34.439 living in North and South America, corn was a major 1:39:34.520 --> 1:39:38.040 part of the diet of most native people. When Columbus 1:39:38.200 --> 1:39:41.600 quote unquote discovered or just like bumped into America, he 1:39:41.680 --> 1:39:45.559 also discovered corn for his people, because up to this time, 1:39:45.680 --> 1:39:48.439 people living in Europe did not know anything about corn. 1:39:49.080 --> 1:39:52.360 In fourteen ninety three, Christopher Columbus returned to Europe with 1:39:52.439 --> 1:39:55.920 apparently a pocket full of corn seeds, among other things. 1:39:56.360 --> 1:39:58.679 He learned a lot during his travels to the New World, 1:39:59.360 --> 1:40:03.320 killed and his people and stolar land, et cetera. But 1:40:03.400 --> 1:40:06.120 being exposed to this new grain he was unfamiliar with, 1:40:06.320 --> 1:40:11.400 seemed promising agriculturally for Europe. It was unfamiliar it was delicious. 1:40:11.680 --> 1:40:15.679 It was us Columbus romanticized at the time quote affixed 1:40:15.760 --> 1:40:19.639 by nature in a wondrous manner, and inform in size 1:40:19.960 --> 1:40:24.640 like garden peas. And it could, to corn's credit, if 1:40:24.680 --> 1:40:28.360 Europeans learned to farm it properly help feed a lot 1:40:28.400 --> 1:40:32.479 of people. The only problem was that Columbus had left 1:40:32.479 --> 1:40:36.400 behind a fairly important bit of information about said corn. 1:40:37.360 --> 1:40:40.320 He didn't take back the knowledge of how to process it. 1:40:41.080 --> 1:40:44.719 Betty Fusell is the author of Quote the Story of Corn, 1:40:45.040 --> 1:40:49.439 which chronicles corn's several thousand year history. She says it 1:40:49.520 --> 1:40:53.320 might sound innocuous, but the history of corn probably changed 1:40:53.360 --> 1:40:57.679 the course of humanity. According to her, the old world 1:40:57.880 --> 1:41:00.680 is a wheat culture. You know what else is a 1:41:00.760 --> 1:41:07.439 wheak culture. Ads, and we're back, okay. So, over the 1:41:07.439 --> 1:41:11.160 next few hundred years, most of Europe grew to misunderstand 1:41:11.240 --> 1:41:16.519 corn rather than embrace it. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, corn 1:41:16.680 --> 1:41:20.080 endured a different fate. It thrived and eventually found its 1:41:20.080 --> 1:41:24.400 way into the very center of the American diet. Until 1:41:24.400 --> 1:41:27.679 the eighteen hundreds, corn was eaten mostly by the poor. 1:41:28.320 --> 1:41:32.160 It was a cheap and prolific crop consumed by farmers 1:41:32.160 --> 1:41:35.520 and fed to prisoners, and used also as a commodity. 1:41:36.240 --> 1:41:38.760 As Michael Pollan wrote in his two thousand and six 1:41:38.800 --> 1:41:43.080 book The Omnivores Dilemma, corn was both the currency traders 1:41:43.200 --> 1:41:46.000 used to pay for slaves in Africa and the food 1:41:46.120 --> 1:41:49.839 upon which slaves subsisted on during their passage to America. 1:41:51.200 --> 1:41:54.599 But then came the Industrial Revolution and with it three 1:41:54.800 --> 1:41:58.680 essential technologies that helped corn thrive from being just the 1:41:58.760 --> 1:42:02.200 grain for poor people to being the grain for all people, 1:42:02.600 --> 1:42:07.639 consumed by everyone. The first invention was an iron plow, 1:42:08.120 --> 1:42:11.160 which allowed farmers to sow deep into the soil on 1:42:11.240 --> 1:42:15.080 much larger scales. The Midwest was planted with corn on 1:42:15.120 --> 1:42:18.800 a commercial basis precisely because of the iron plow, which, 1:42:18.840 --> 1:42:23.040 although it seems pretty simple, was a revolutionary tool. Two 1:42:23.040 --> 1:42:26.559 other advancements had an equally large effect, even though they 1:42:26.680 --> 1:42:32.360 touched corn production more tangentially. Fuselle said that one of 1:42:32.400 --> 1:42:35.880 the most important boons for corn might have been that 1:42:35.920 --> 1:42:38.880 the commercial farms in the Midwest grew up at the 1:42:38.920 --> 1:42:43.839 same time as the canneries and railroads. Until then, corn 1:42:43.920 --> 1:42:47.800 was mainly distributed locally, but trains helped move the grain 1:42:47.920 --> 1:42:51.080 far beyond just county limits, and along with the advent 1:42:51.160 --> 1:42:54.400 of canning, it meant that corn could keep for much longer. 1:42:55.439 --> 1:42:59.040 This allowed farmers to grow corn and other crops with 1:42:59.240 --> 1:43:03.599 hundreds of thousands of mauths in mind. In the coming decades, 1:43:03.720 --> 1:43:07.280 the amount of land dedicated to corn grew incredibly quickly, 1:43:08.000 --> 1:43:10.960 but it wouldn't be for another fifty years until corn 1:43:11.040 --> 1:43:13.960 actually made its way to the center of the American diet. 1:43:14.960 --> 1:43:18.439 Corn is what fu Cell calls a genetic monster because 1:43:18.479 --> 1:43:22.439 it's highly adaptable and easily manipulated, and there is perhaps 1:43:22.520 --> 1:43:26.040 no better example of its mutant like qualities than what 1:43:26.120 --> 1:43:29.439 happened shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. In 1:43:29.479 --> 1:43:32.800 the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties, scientists discovered a way 1:43:32.840 --> 1:43:36.760 to boost corn production to a level that was previously unthinkable. 1:43:37.560 --> 1:43:41.040 They bred hybrid strains that had larger ears and could 1:43:41.080 --> 1:43:44.320 be grown closer together, which allowed farmers to produce a 1:43:44.360 --> 1:43:48.599 lot more corn without needing more land. This discovery, along 1:43:48.640 --> 1:43:52.679 with the introduction of new industrial fertilizers and more efficient 1:43:52.720 --> 1:43:56.760 farm tools like tractors, led to a huge increase of 1:43:56.840 --> 1:44:00.920 corn output. Paul Roberts wrote in his two thousand and 1:44:01.000 --> 1:44:04.080 nine book The End of Food that in the following 1:44:04.160 --> 1:44:07.280 decades the number of bushels of corn per acre doubled, 1:44:07.439 --> 1:44:11.000 and then it continued to rise each year. Corn yields 1:44:11.000 --> 1:44:14.760 have risen ever since then, with only brief interruptions due 1:44:14.840 --> 1:44:19.599 to sporadic droughts, but these interruptions are easily countered with 1:44:19.760 --> 1:44:25.840 further engineered corn. Advancements in farming, technology and science paved 1:44:25.840 --> 1:44:29.720 the way for corn's ascent into the American food system. 1:44:30.080 --> 1:44:32.519 But the main reason that corn has made its way 1:44:32.600 --> 1:44:35.320 into just about everything we eat and every food that 1:44:35.360 --> 1:44:39.480 Americans eat today is that, above all, it is inexpensive. 1:44:40.520 --> 1:44:43.960 Corn has and always will be cheap because it grows 1:44:44.040 --> 1:44:47.800 everywhere in the world. The most incredible thing about the 1:44:47.840 --> 1:44:50.600 corn grown in America today is how little of it 1:44:50.760 --> 1:44:54.240 we actually eat. This does not include people like me 1:44:54.479 --> 1:44:56.960 and my family who are obsessed with corn and eat 1:44:56.960 --> 1:44:59.800 it regularly, and also Sophie, who I know shares this 1:45:00.040 --> 1:45:03.639 corn obsession. But less than ten percent of the corn 1:45:03.800 --> 1:45:07.240 used in the United States is directly ingested by humans. 1:45:07.920 --> 1:45:10.800 The bulk is either turned into ethanol for use as 1:45:10.800 --> 1:45:14.080 fuel or fed to the hundreds of millions of animals 1:45:14.320 --> 1:45:18.479 that we subject to the factory system. Corn is fed 1:45:18.479 --> 1:45:23.000 to cows, chickens, pigs, and even fish. I had no idea. 1:45:23.439 --> 1:45:26.519 Apparently fish are given these little pellets that are largely 1:45:26.520 --> 1:45:30.120 made of corn, so it's everywhere. The relative cheapness of 1:45:30.200 --> 1:45:33.719 corn and general usefulness of it as a form of energy, 1:45:34.000 --> 1:45:38.160 both for living animals and living more generally, have proved 1:45:38.200 --> 1:45:41.280 important enough that the government subsidizes its production to the 1:45:41.320 --> 1:45:44.559 tune of some four point five billion dollars each year. 1:45:45.479 --> 1:45:50.520 The result is perpetuation of ambitious growing goals, farmers realizing 1:45:50.600 --> 1:45:53.000 the more efficient they are, the more money they will get, 1:45:53.280 --> 1:45:56.240 grow more and more corn. The more corn there is, 1:45:56.360 --> 1:45:59.280 the lower its price, and the greater the incentive is 1:45:59.320 --> 1:46:02.720 to use it in as many ways as possible. I 1:46:02.760 --> 1:46:05.400 want to talk now about the different varieties of corn, 1:46:05.560 --> 1:46:10.080 But first, do you know what else has variety? All 1:46:10.120 --> 1:46:14.719 the ways you can spend your money like these. Let's 1:46:14.760 --> 1:46:17.960 talk about the different varieties of corn. There are many types, 1:46:18.000 --> 1:46:20.960 but the most commonly eaten forms can be divided into 1:46:21.040 --> 1:46:25.960 three general categories. The first is sweet corn. Sweet corn 1:46:26.080 --> 1:46:28.840 is what Americans usually eat when they eat corn on 1:46:28.880 --> 1:46:31.559 the cob, or when they throw corn on the grill 1:46:31.680 --> 1:46:33.640 at a barbecue that you didn't want to go to. 1:46:34.520 --> 1:46:37.799 And this sweet corn accounts for only about one percent 1:46:38.160 --> 1:46:42.960 of the corn grown in America. Then there is flint corn. 1:46:43.479 --> 1:46:46.719 Flint corn has a soft center and harder outer shell, 1:46:47.040 --> 1:46:51.200 which most people know as popcorn. It became popular in 1:46:51.200 --> 1:46:54.160 the nineteen sixties after a Jiffy pop which cooked the 1:46:54.240 --> 1:46:57.720 kernels in aluminum foil on the stovetop, was introduced, and 1:46:57.760 --> 1:47:01.320 its popularity rose further in the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties, 1:47:01.560 --> 1:47:06.519 shortly after the introduction of the microwave. Today, much like 1:47:06.600 --> 1:47:10.560 sweet corn, flint corn accounts for a steady but comparatively 1:47:10.680 --> 1:47:15.360 insignificant portion of the US corn crop. And then there's 1:47:15.600 --> 1:47:19.800 dent corn aka field corn, the most important kind of 1:47:19.840 --> 1:47:23.519 corn when it comes to production of it, not when 1:47:23.520 --> 1:47:25.880 it comes to me eating it, because I cannot do that. 1:47:26.840 --> 1:47:30.120 But dent corn accounts for the vast majority of corn 1:47:30.200 --> 1:47:32.919 grown in America today, as well as the vast majority 1:47:32.960 --> 1:47:36.680 of the corn Americans eat, just not on purpose. It's 1:47:36.680 --> 1:47:39.519 in most of the beverages we drink Surprise Surprise because 1:47:39.520 --> 1:47:42.320 of high frycto's corn syrup, and this is derived from 1:47:42.320 --> 1:47:45.799 flint corn and is the most commonly used commercial sweetener 1:47:46.479 --> 1:47:51.120 aka death syrup. It's in most animals people eat because 1:47:51.120 --> 1:47:53.679 it's fed to most animals that are raised for slaughter. 1:47:54.400 --> 1:47:57.679 It's even in our cheese because many cows are fed 1:47:57.760 --> 1:48:01.519 corn instead of being able to graze on grain. All 1:48:01.560 --> 1:48:05.559 of this makes corn virtually inseparable from the American diet. 1:48:06.200 --> 1:48:09.920 Reddy Fouseel says that people have this kind of nostalgic 1:48:10.040 --> 1:48:13.280 understanding of corn. They think of corn on the cob 1:48:13.320 --> 1:48:16.920 and popcorn. But the truth is that field corn is 1:48:16.960 --> 1:48:19.240 what we are really talking about when we talk about 1:48:19.280 --> 1:48:22.479 the dominance of corn in the United States. It's in 1:48:22.560 --> 1:48:26.360 almost every product in the supermarket today. That's no exaggeration. 1:48:27.280 --> 1:48:32.160 But obviously corn cannot be contained. American style processed food, 1:48:32.200 --> 1:48:36.400 which almost always relies on corn, has unpopularized in countries 1:48:36.640 --> 1:48:40.320 all around the world. Let's go back to Mexico, the 1:48:40.479 --> 1:48:44.080 birthplace of corn as we know it. How exactly did 1:48:44.200 --> 1:48:48.160 corn become such a popular street food. Mexican food is 1:48:48.240 --> 1:48:51.680 quite often literally built upon the tortilla, which is a 1:48:51.720 --> 1:48:54.800 lot of the times made of corn. The tortilla is 1:48:54.840 --> 1:48:57.760 a vehicle by which the country's most popular foods are 1:48:57.800 --> 1:49:01.920 eaten in chiladas, caesadillas, taos, tomalies. I can list food forever. 1:49:02.600 --> 1:49:05.479 Although wheat flour has grown in popularity here in the 1:49:05.600 --> 1:49:10.200 United States, which is actually the technical home of the burrito, Apparently, 1:49:10.680 --> 1:49:15.040 in Mexico, it's all about the corn. Mexico City is 1:49:15.080 --> 1:49:17.840 frequently praised as one of the most significant cities on 1:49:17.960 --> 1:49:21.679 Earth in terms of street food. Street food is referred 1:49:21.720 --> 1:49:25.800 to as antohitos in Spanish, which means little cravings, which 1:49:25.840 --> 1:49:29.360 I find very cute. Street dishes count corn as a 1:49:29.400 --> 1:49:33.360 near universal ingredient and sometimes, of course, it doesn't have 1:49:33.400 --> 1:49:36.960 to be processed to achieve its highest potential. Elote is 1:49:37.000 --> 1:49:40.160 perhaps the most recognized example, which is, for those not 1:49:40.280 --> 1:49:42.720 in the know, a full ear of corn that is 1:49:42.800 --> 1:49:46.120 grilled and slathered with a variety of toppings like butter, 1:49:46.320 --> 1:49:51.320 chili powder or taheen mayonnaise and cotiha cheese, among many 1:49:51.439 --> 1:49:55.880 other things. The final product, elote is served on a stick, 1:49:56.120 --> 1:50:00.360 providing an easy means for mobile consumption. Another common corn 1:50:00.400 --> 1:50:05.080 street food is asquitas, a Mexican sweet corn salad, although 1:50:05.120 --> 1:50:08.799 its true origin is not known. According to Nawadl stories, 1:50:09.280 --> 1:50:12.760 asquitas are credited by being created by a god, a 1:50:12.840 --> 1:50:17.040 deity with a name I cannot say or pronounce what 1:50:17.160 --> 1:50:20.280 It is long and looks cool, but I won't try 1:50:20.320 --> 1:50:22.680 to say it. But this god is also credited with 1:50:22.760 --> 1:50:28.719 creating Mexican corn, jelly corn. It's from the gods. Literally. 1:50:30.000 --> 1:50:33.920 As for me, there isn't some magical history of corn 1:50:34.240 --> 1:50:38.240 in the Middle East. I looked, I searched, I tried 1:50:38.560 --> 1:50:42.599 to find something, and I couldn't find one. No magical 1:50:42.800 --> 1:50:47.240 mystical history of my beloved corn. Like most things I 1:50:47.280 --> 1:50:50.120 have questions about, I asked my mom, and my mom 1:50:50.200 --> 1:50:53.880 said that when it's in season, street vendors sell corn. 1:50:54.720 --> 1:50:55.160 That's it. 1:50:56.200 --> 1:50:58.519 The same goes for other street foods that are popular 1:50:58.560 --> 1:51:01.000 in the Middle East, which you might find interesting, which 1:51:01.040 --> 1:51:04.960 is cactus fruit or the prickly pair. But no corn 1:51:05.600 --> 1:51:09.240 is magical. But it's only magical to me. And just 1:51:09.280 --> 1:51:13.639 because it's magical to me doesn't mean it is actually magical. 1:51:14.720 --> 1:51:18.120 And through researching for this episode, I have learned that. 1:51:19.000 --> 1:51:22.400 So what I'm saying is this episode has shattered my 1:51:22.680 --> 1:51:27.640 naive childhood dreams about a magical land of corn. But 1:51:28.880 --> 1:51:30.960 the job's a job, and someone has to do it. 1:51:31.080 --> 1:51:35.840 So that's it. Goodbye. 1:51:37.200 --> 1:51:40.360 Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week 1:51:40.439 --> 1:51:42.320 from now until the heat death of the Universe. 1:51:42.920 --> 1:51:45.439 It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media. 1:51:45.520 --> 1:51:48.200 For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website 1:51:48.200 --> 1:51:50.439 cool zonemedia dot com or check us out on the 1:51:50.479 --> 1:51:53.880 iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 1:51:54.320 --> 1:51:56.400 You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated 1:51:56.479 --> 1:52:00.559 monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.