Part Two: Christmas non-Bastard: The Tupamaros of Uruguay

Robert is joined again by Margaret Killjoy to continue to discuss José Alberto "Pepe" Mujica Cordano.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Who Blue Blue Yep, that's how we start the episode.
That's night had named the podcast just we can't start
with because Santa Claus was murdered at the beginning of
the first episode. He was He was murdered by Paul Schaefer,
who just zoomed in to shoot him in a river

(00:22):
with a bunch of kids watching Paul Schaefer. Um, the
audience can't see what. I'm shaking my head disapprovingly at you,
At Paul Shaffer. I don't know, but not the Paul
Schaefer who had a Nazi colt in Chile. The Paul
Schaefer who worked on who was Letterman's band leader for years.
That's that's the one. Um. He shot Santa Claus two

(00:45):
in a lake. Uh So, Margaret kill Joy, how are you?
I'm good, You're good. How are you? How are you
likeing the tupamarrows? Uh? You know, I'm like, I keep
I'm really excited to see how it plays out. Yeah. Yeah,
they're because they're endearing. Yeah yeah. But and then even
like the fact that one of them ends up president.
That's like both interesting interesting in so many complicated ways

(01:09):
that I'm like, I want to see the steps that
took them there. Yes, because this does not happen often.
Sometimes guerilla and surgeons win their insurgency and then become
the president or whatever. Sometimes guys who are like labor
organizers or like leftist politicians get imprisoned by a dictatorship
and then later become the president. Rarely is a guy

(01:30):
robbing banks with a handgun and then gets democratically elected
president of the country, like after spending years in a
in a dictatorship's prison cells. That is not a common story.
You don't run into that all the time. How much
did he change? I don't know, you know, because that's
all they're getting into. It's exciting, Yeah, I'm excited. So
by nineteen seventy five, the military had successfully rolled over

(01:52):
and destroyed the Tupamorrow nineteen seventy two. When the dictatorship
comes into place is when they start like going hardcore,
cracking down, and by any five, everybody's dead or in prison,
mostly in prison. And one of the people who was
thrown in prison was our friend in future president Jose Musica.
He was actually captured several times, he was arrested. He
was like imprisoned like four separate times. He broke out

(02:14):
of prison at least once. Um. But like the type
the thing he finally gets caught for is he's like
drinking in a bar after you know, robbing a bank
or something, and a cop who's there in plain clothes
recognizes him and gets a bunch of other cops and
they have a huge shootout in a bar and he
gets shot six times and survives. So again, when we're

(02:34):
saying when I when I say, this guy was like hardcore,
Like you can't you can't be much more committed than
getting shot six times in a gunfight with the police,
um as a revolutionary cred to bring him down, you know,
like I certainly can't. Yeah, um, yeah, yeah, yeah, same.

(02:54):
But this is a little bit more hardcore than that. Um.
And he is one of the last two Pomorrows who
gets captured and locked up, and by the time he
gets locked up, he's fairly high like in the organization,
right is in Again he's kind of because in part
because he's one of the last ones to get to
get captured. Um. And so he's put in prison for

(03:15):
well over a decade. And I'm gonna quote from a
write up in the Guardian to describe like what his
time in the dictatorship's prison is like. The poet novelist
in playwright Mauricio Rosenkoff spent eleven years in a tiny
cell next to Musica. For many years, Rosenkoff told me,
the hostages could only communicate by tapping Morse code on
their cell walls. Allowed to use the toilet just once

(03:36):
a day, they urinated into their water bottles, allowing the
sediment to settle and drinking the rest because water was
also scarce. It was even worse for Musica, whose bullet
wounds had seriously damaged his guts. Solitary confinement drove them
half mad. Pepe became in That's Jose's nickname, became convinced
that a bugging device was hidden in in the ceiling.
It's imaginary static deafened him. He would put stones in

(03:58):
his mouth to stop himself from screaming. Rosen Cough now
eighty one told me Musica thought to obtain the one
item he needed most, a potty. Hostages were allowed occasional
family visits, so Donna Lucy bought it, brought him one,
but the guards refused to give it to him. One
day when his jailers held a party, Musica began to
scream for it. The commandant, embarrassed in front of his guests, relented.

(04:20):
Musica clung to his sole possession, a symbol of victory
over his jailers. Each time they were moved to a
new army camp, he refused to scrub it clean. Rosen
Cooff recalled, we all have ticks left from that time.
When Pepe came out, he came out with all that baggage.
So he is, and some people, some sources, kind of
frame him getting the toilet as like this victory, him

(04:42):
being able to get the one thing he could, the
one like way to exert his autonomy was to force
them to give him his own toilet. Some people should
frame it as him like losing his mind a little
bit and just becoming obsessed with the idea of having
a toilet. Both are probably true. Um, they don't need
to those don't need to be in conflict with each other.
There's no way I think you would have to go
a little crazy in specific ways to survive fourteen years,

(05:05):
which is what he spends in a prison like this,
where you're tortured and beaten and starved regularly. Um, you don't.
You don't survive that by not changing at all, you know,
like that is um. Yeah, he does what he has
to do do. He survives. He's imprisoned for fourteen years. If
you're wondering how he stayed sane during that time in

(05:25):
his own words, we have an interview conducted by someone
from the site Upside Down World with Musica that sheds
some light on how he claims he kept himself, saying, quote,
I would come up with ideas for tools. I mentally
invented farm implements that would be for this or that.
I calculated them, manufactured them mentally, and so kept myself entertained.

(05:45):
I walked several miles a day, more than I do today,
for sure. And then the journalists asked in the hole,
because he's in like this basically a dank hole, and
he said, oh yes, three steps one way, three steps
the other, three steps one way, three steps to the other,
until my legs hurt. Like that's how he avoids losing
his mind in in this prison. It was the early
nineteen eighties when cracks finally started to form around the dictatorship.

(06:09):
Some of the credit for this goes to the men
and women on the legal left, the same people who
formed the Frente Amplio. They continue to organize an agitate
in In In nineteen eighty four, people took to the streets
in mass um It protesting the dictatorship, and it was
such a significant number of people that the dictatorship like
backs down, basically realizes like, we were either are going

(06:30):
to start killing people in mass in the street or
we're not going to have a dictatorship anymore. And if
we kill people in mass in the street, I'm not
sure we'll win. And so I'm not going to gamble.
I think is kind of what happens right um and
the Liberal the kind of the dictatorship's end is negotiated
in large part by the leader of kind of the
Liberal party, Julio Sanguinetti Um, who helps to negotiate an

(06:53):
into the dictatorship, and he gets elected president next in
a peaceful election, and one of his first decisions is
to push for an amnesty that freeze imprisoned leftist radicals
like Musica, will also providing amnesty to the military leaders
who run the dictatorship. So san Quinetti is like, we're
going to release all the two p Tomorrow's we're also
not going to imprison the military, because I think the

(07:14):
attitude is number one, you have to leave them. We're
trying to get them to back down without mass bloodshed
in the streets, so you have to leave them an
exit plan. And I also think it's his the attitude
is like, well, if we just imprison another group of people,
then maybe we'll have a cycle where a new regime
comes in it imprisons the old regime, and like that

(07:34):
doesn't like, I don't know how much of it is
like trying to give the military and out, and how
much of it is trying to stop a cycle of reprisals.
But that's what they decide to do. UM better than
most you know, actually getting the political prisoners free, better
than most movements, better than most like movements. And it
it's it's I mean, obviously it's controversial not prosecuting the military.

(07:54):
And actually they do start to prosecute and currently are
to some extent some people who like the some of
the worst people. But initially it's just like, yeah, let's
amnesty kind of for everybody involved in that whole thing.
Let's try to put it behind us. UM. Now, Sanguinetti,
who's kind of the first post dictatorship president is also
one of the people who blames the Tupamorrows for the
coming of the dictatorship, one of the Uruguayans who does

(08:17):
his claim for this. Like one of the things he
says in an interview I found is that like the
bullets that Musica and the other two Tomorrow's fired were
shots against democracy because they led to the dictatorship. UM
and he as Jose gets out of prison and gets
into politics, he does not like Uh Musica. UM. I
found some quotes from him in a Guardian article, and
I think at least some of his issue with the

(08:39):
Tupamorrows is that he's not a leftist. For one thing,
he's kind of like more maybe center left, you could say,
but he's not like, I don't think he's a far
leftist UM. And I think some of his frustration comes
from the fact that when the dictatorship ends UM and
politics starts up again, the Frente Amplio comes back, UM
and it starts siphoning votes away from the Liberal Colorado

(09:01):
Party San Juanetti's party. UM. I'm not gonna spend a
lot of time like digging into Uruguay and electoral politics
because I don't understand them. Well, um again, I I
cite two scholarly papers you can read that go into
a lot of detail about Uruguay and electoral politics. I
would recommend reading that if you want to know it better. Um.
But it is interesting to me that um to kind

(09:22):
of look into which groups of people had issues with
the fact that Jose Musica, when he gets into politics,
was a former tup Tomorrow and which people didn't because
like Sanguinetti, this guy who to his credit helps into
the dictatorship, dislikes Musica and the Tupamorrows and blames them
for the coming of the dictatorship. You know who doesn't
blame them, and who in fact votes for Musica when

(09:42):
uh he wont when the presidency? Is it the products
and services that support this show. No, it's not time
for that. You remember how I read that story last
episode about like that guy who as a kid with
his like wheelchair bound sister, Jose like robbed the family
to threaten to murder his dad. Yeah, he votes for
him for president. Later he's like, yeah, we'll talk about
that a little more. But he's like, yeah, I think

(10:03):
he's he's probably a good candidate. I'm not angry at him,
which is gave me my typewriter back that says something
about how polite a robber you are if like later
someone votes for you to be president, and imagine that
being your backstory, like in the United States, being like, yeah,
you know, when I was six, Joe Biden robbed my
house at gunpoint and threatened to kill my stepdad. And

(10:25):
Biden does all these other crimes that are far grosser,
way grosser. Yeah, I mean, Musique was at least front
and center whatever he was doing, you know. Um. So
we talked earlier about how the tup Tomorrows are characterized
by how flexible they are, how good they are at
pivoting from different things and not really staying locked into
things that one tendency or another would require of them

(10:46):
kind of ideologically. Um, and they do this again, they don't.
They get out of prison or at least you know,
because some of them are just like underground hiding, but
like they're able to be public again and they form
a political party and join the front Amplio again. Um
and so yeah, the old Tupermorrow start getting into electoral politics,
and the Tupamarrow who was like at the forefront of

(11:09):
pushing for the party to get into electoral politics is
Jose Musica. Um and I'm gonna quote from the New
Republic here. As the group readjusted to freedom, most of
its members wanted to avoid returning to guerilla warfare, though
what course to pursue instead was unclear. Right wingers still
maintained control over much of the government. Musica argued for
an entry into traditional party politics and staged public forums

(11:31):
known as Mattea's Confabs, held in village squares over calabash
gourds full of strong mate ti. He'd retained his childhood
egalitarian passions, but prison had made him more philosophical and
deepened his rough hewn physical allure. He rapidly developed a
following among poorer workers and in the mid nineties entered parliament.
Then in two thousand five he received an appointment as

(11:52):
Agriculture Minister. It was in that post that Musica won
national acclaim, speaking in almost biblical terms about how govern
policies affected the common man. For post dictatorship Uruguay, his
language was healing, a triumphant return to the country's traditional
values of humility and shared responsibility. Bugica's biggest fight as
agriculture minister was to ensure poor Uruguayans access to a sado,

(12:15):
the traditional dish of beef rib grilled over an open fire,
and able to afford the meat. The lower classes often
ate less expensive cuts off the neck. Neck is unacceptable,
Mujica told a reporter. When some butchers began selling more
affordable asado, people lovelingly nicknamed it a sado del pepe A.
Two thousand seven polls showed that he'd become far and
away the country's most liked government official, and he decided

(12:37):
to run for president. Like that is such a heartwark
just being like, wait, poor Pia, Like this is our
traditional dish that we I grew up eating, and you're
telling me people are like eating using ship meat for it. Now,
that is unfucking acceptable. Like poor people deserve to eat
well too, And I'm gonna fight for that ship. Um.
Obviously people loved him, Yeah, where's the catch? Well, we'll

(13:00):
talk about that. It's not perfect, Like, it's not perfect, um,
and we are going to I think, like primarily today
we'll be talking about the catch and the degree to
which he would have sold out or whatever, you want
to talk about it, like we're yeah, well I'm excited.
I'm excited to have a conversation about that with you. Yeah.
So he ran for president in two thousand nine, and

(13:20):
he immediately made a massive impact on Uruguay's urban poor Um,
just because of the way he presented himself, not even
in terms of policy yet, because the policy pact part
is more debatable. But he has this big impact in
fact part because he dresses. He's not in a suit,
he's not dressing like a politician, he's not dressing like him.
He refuses to wear a tie. Um. He has often
seen at public events and sandals and like he would

(13:43):
wear dirty jumpers, like at first his like he had
they had to like kind of fight with him to
get him to wear at least like okay, you can
wear like just a shirt, but a clean one, right,
Like and he's like dragging his around. Yeah, he's got
his body with him. Um. He met poor people where
they lived, and he was particularly famous for ask asking
meaningful questions about their lives, like do you support this policy,

(14:04):
but like asking like very pointed material questions about what
they had access to and how they were doing. Um.
He also ranted in his public speeches against consumerist capitalism,
which he said wasted human strength on quote frivolities that
have little to do with human happiness. Jose was elected
president in two thousand nine, and on paper his term

(14:26):
is a left liberal wet dream. Under his presidency, Uruguay
legalized gay marriage, marijuana, and abortion, which is pretty good
for four years, right, yeah, yeah, And it's not like
a like a great I guess you could say, it's
not like the ideal abortion policies, legalizing I think up
to twelve weeks. But like from a point of this

(14:46):
as a Catholic country and you can't do it, that's
like a huge that's a big that's a that's a
thing like that's worth celebrating. Um. And also just like
being down with gay rights when he would talk about
that the sixties revolutionary, we will talk about that. Not guaranteed,
not a guarantee. Now these are the cliff notes of
Jose's presidency, and so you can see what, like the

(15:07):
Guardian says, it's the most radical president in the world. Now,
when you get into the weeds a little bit, it
is less radical, well in some ways less radical, seeing
it's certainly in some ways, like it's more complicated, but
I also think it's a lot more interesting if you
look at like his motivations for things. Let's take gay marriage, right, Um,
his support of gay rights, because a decent critical piece

(15:27):
on Musik and I've read a number will note rightly
that he should not be credited with bringing gay marriage
to Uruguay because activists have been working for decades to
get to that point, you know, which is always the
case when gay marriage gets legalized. Right, that's the case
with Obama too, Like I don't give him credit for it,
other than the fact that he was the guy who
decided not to fight it anymore. You know. Um, I
think gets a little more credit than I would give

(15:49):
Obama for this, maybe, um telling the press quote they
fit about his like gay rights, marriage rights. They those
rights fit our sense of freedom and human rights, but
they don't solve the basic problem, which is the difference
of class. And that's what will see is like, I'm
happy to legalize gay rights. I don't think this solves
the problem, which is primarily a class problem. He'll say
a lot like look the issue, like it's important for

(16:10):
people to have rights. I believe in people having freedom.
But also if you look at it, rich people were
always free to be gay. This is something he says
like interviews, the number rich people have always been able
to be gay and pretty much live life the way
they wanted. It's if you're if you're a gay woman,
a poor woman, um, you know, an indigenous gay person,
like if you're not part of the upper class, that's
when it becomes a problem. And so he sees gay

(16:32):
rights as primarily part of the class struggle is the
thing that he always emphasizes in his interviews. So it's
interesting because he's not doing fulk class reductionism. No, he's
actually tiny issues in he's actually doing better than a
huge he really is. It's radical left at the moment.
And it's interesting because when it comes to Jose's personal views.
One Uruguayan sex health activist called him a bit chro

(16:54):
magnan um, and he refers to when he refers to
gay people, he calls them sexually ambivalent um, which you know,
he was born in nineteen thirty five, right, Like you
can call me sexually ambivalent, Like it's not offensive, it's
just kind of weird. And it's clear he's just like

(17:15):
I don't really get this, but like my default is
that people should have more freedom. So yeah, let's let's
do it, you know, Like I think that's kind of
his attitudes, Like I don't understand this at all, but
like it's a question of rights and people should always
have more rights. Um, which is fine, And it is
worth noting that the so before Musica gets elected, the
Broadfront Alexa another president. The first president the broad Front

(17:37):
Alex is a guy named Vasquez who is a very
left wing dude in a lot of ways, and we'll
talk about him a bit more, but he's also very
Catholic and again like liberation theology and stuff. So he
had despite being the lefty president right before Musica, he
vetoed a lot of legalized gay marriage during his term.
And so again an abortion to probably I don't I
don't know as much about that, but I don't know

(17:58):
if like the fight to legalist abortion was and enough
of a point during his presidency where he could I'm
not really sure, um, but I think you should say,
don't give this guy all the credit. There's a lot
of activists, but also the last guy who was on
the left vetoed this, so it's not no credit that
Musika gets. Especially I always give credit to like an
old dude who clearly doesn't understand anything about it other

(18:20):
than that people are being restricted from a thing. And
it's like, well that's bad, Like there's an agree to
which I just inherently respect a man who's willing to
say I'm old. I don't understand things anymore, but my
default has always give people more freedom. So that's where
I land on this. That's a really good way to
approach aging and not understanding issues, is just trying to

(18:40):
be like, all right, well what about like where where?
What is? Yeah? I think that's admirable. Um, you know
what else is admirable, Margaret, No, I have no idea
the products and services that support this podcast. Um, very
admirable admiration will be available from everybody. Yeah, we're back.

(19:13):
So Um. When it comes to how Musica talks about
legalizing gay marriage, who he talks about, like how he
deals with like when people like especially like foreign journalists
credit him with this is really interesting and I want
to read a quote from him on that subject, um
and some other things from that Guardian article quote. All
we are doing is recognizing something as old as humanity.

(19:34):
Music has said the best thing is that people can
live as they want to live. And that's his like
attitude to like why did you, which is I think
very admirable. He sees those twice punished by poverty and
intolerance is the real victims. Those who are sexually ambivalent
have a real problem if they are poor, if they
are rich, they are tolerated. That sounds crude, but it's
the truth as I see it, he said. And the
women most discriminated against are those in poverty. Machismo hits

(19:58):
hardest at the lowest level. Poor girls are not well
treated by our society. There are women who end up
abandoned with lots of children. For me, that is one
of the most important battles for fairness. Um. Yeah. And
and during his presidential campaign, he was caught complaining about
quote intellectual women who think they are down trotting, but
who talk about their companera or cleaning lady when she

(20:21):
is really the servant. Which I love that he makes
that distinction, whereas like, there's a lot of rich women
complaining about like how they're not treated equally, who also
have a lady who's basically their slave. Um, Like I
don't think that's cool. He's he's it's hard to argue
with the things he says. At least you know, yeah,

(20:42):
goes out to a restaurant. We are Yeah, we're actually
getting to that in a little bit. Um. Yeah. So
the fact that Peppe is a quasi anarchist militant president
who legalized pot might lead you to lead you to
expect that, like he's does a lot of pot, he's
never smoked marijuana. And I will believe that from a
I who legalized it. Like a lot of times it's like, Okay,

(21:02):
well you're probably just and he's like, no, he's fine
with it being legal, he just doesn't want to do it. Um,
he's he's heavily addicted to tobacco and he drinks a lot.
But I don't think he's he's ever smoked pot. He
says he hasn't. Um but and and his he's not
like pro weed culture. He just thinks prohibition has been
a failure. And there's also a big element of like
why he's legalizing pot is to take money away from

(21:23):
drug cartels because there's a major it's essentially like a
cocaine derivative problem in Uruguayan slums that his government was fighting,
and so he is not anti the drug war entirely,
and this is I think one of the areas in
which I would disagree with him, because his attitude is,
I think we should legalize the drugs that are not
harmful in his view, um to deny Cartel's money and

(21:45):
we should fight them selling what is basically crack um,
which like, I'm not pro crack uh, it's pretty nasty stuff,
but I don't think prohibition works there either. Again, it's
not a perfect man um, but this is I think
his attitude towards and I'm all so not an expert
in Uruguay's crack cocaine problem, so I'm not gonna pontificate
there either. Um In his attitude in general towards drug

(22:07):
use seems to be that, at least from a user
perspective people. One of the quotes he gave is, we
want to take users out of hiding and create a
situation where we can say you are overdoing it. You
have to deal with that. So it's a very like
Scandinavian attitude towards how drugs should be treated um, which
of like the ways Western countries deal with drug use

(22:28):
is the most reasonable. That kind of states tend to embrace. UM.
So whatever you can think about that the way you do.
But it's nuanced. It's not just like he's not just
pro drugs, he's he is. He does support some kinds
of drug war. UM. I think the place where Jose
Mujica is most impressive isn't the ways in which he
actually does live. Because it's one thing to say all
this stuff. He really does live in concert with his values.

(22:51):
For example, he speaks all the time about the plight
of poor women. Um. And as president, he made like
two d grand a year as president, and he donated
his salary to single months. Um. And he's not getting
into this as a rich guy, you know, Like he's
not like a millionaire becoming the president. Um. He took
enough to like live in the house that he'd occupied
most of his life, um, and gave all of the

(23:11):
rest to like single moms, um, which is dope. And
he had he has like some land and a bunch
of old people live on it and don't pay rent.
Like he's he's a pretty Like he's everything about his
life is very much in concert with the things that
he's said. I want to not like him, and yeah,
you're making it hard. It's hard not to even the
people who are very critical of him like him personally.
It's very hard not to like him personally. Despite being

(23:35):
tortured in prison. He seems to generally support the amnesty
for the military um, which I find really interesting. His
attitude is that because a lot of people are very
critical of this, and I'm not saying it's the right
or the wrong policy. Obviously, people who like had friends
murdered or tortured by the military have issues with the amnesty.
I think I would um. Jose's attitude, as someone who
was hurt as much as anybody by the military was

(23:58):
that the men who harmed him, we're not doing it themselves.
They were tools of a system, and that system was
his actual enemy. Um. There also seems to be beyond
his ideological justifications. I think a dimension of emotional pragmatism
to this attitude. As he told the Economist in an interview,
I do not hate. Do you know what a luxury

(24:18):
it is to not hate? So I think there's an
element of like, this is the only way I can
continue as I have to not hate them, like I
have to not hate them because otherwise it would destroy me. Um.
And it's it's I'm now that I am out of prison,
I have the luxury of not hating. It's the thing
that I enjoy most about freedom is I don't have
to hate anymore. Is I think kind of what he's saying,

(24:40):
which is pretty profound, actually, I think, um it Also,
I mean it's funny because then it's like, well, it's
the anti Carcero thing is like you you the only
defense for prison is to stop people from doing things right,
and these people are no longer part of a system
that is capable of doing these things, so they're no
longer capable of committing the harm that they did commit.

(25:01):
So in some ways, I don't see what would myself
speaking of the president, Yeah, you know it makes sense
to me. Yeah, it totally makes sense. Um, I could
also understand other people. I don't think I would be
as good a person as him in his situation. If
I'd been locked up and tortured for fourteen years, I
would want to be as good a person as he is. Um.

(25:25):
But some Catholic and thereafter all, And it's interesting because
there's a number of like there's one interview I found
with him, where he talks about how not all the
guards were terrible. A number of them would like smuggle
in food for us, or like gifts for us, or
like things to like make us more comfortably. So as
much as the torture was a part of like that
I blame like most of the crimes on the system,
that I recognized that the people in it were also humans,

(25:47):
and like I wouldn't want to just like paint them
all with one brush. He's very nuanced when he talks
about this stuff in a way that is impressive for
someone who suffered so much under that regime. Um, you
really get a sense of how different he is him
like a normal politician when you read articles by journalists
who actually meet with him. This passage from the Guardian
is emblematic of the whole Mujika emerged from his tiny

(26:11):
house dressed in a fawn fleece and gray trousers with
sandals over socked feet. The fleeces and improvement, which can
be credited to his two thousand nine campaign team, who
weaned him off tattered jumpers age, has made his features
both more pinched around the eyes and fleshier around the edges.
His thick shock of graying hair was neatly brushed, another
habit he acquired while running for President Manuela. A three

(26:32):
legged mutt hopped gamely along the one story house lies
half hidden by greenery. It's corrugated metal roof resting on
pillars around a narrow cement walkway full of dusty crates
and jars. Winter rain highlighted the patchy plaster work. Mind
the mud, the president warned by way of greeting. The narrow,
elongated front room contains a cheap office chair and desk, bookshelves,
a small table with two uncomfortable wood backed chairs, a

(26:55):
roaring log stove, and an ancient, immaculately restored Pugh Joe bicycle.
I've that bicycle for sixty years, he said, proudly, recalling
his days as an amateur racer. My my God, Musica
could live in the Presidential Palace, a hundred year old
mansion in the old money Prado district, but he would
rather be here. We think of it as a way

(27:15):
of fighting for our personal freedom, he said. If you
complicate your life too much in the material sense, a
big part of your time goes to tending that. That's
why we still live today. As we did forty years
ago in the same neighborhood, with the same people, in
the same things. You don't stop being a common man
just because you were a president. I think he might
be incorrect about that ability to exert power. He's too nice,

(27:40):
but yeah, but I appreciate the like, yeah, well, and
one of the one of the criticisms we're getting to,
like the critiques of him by the left, but one
is that is he's bad at using power. He's too
much of And that's part like he makes a lot
of compromises with the neoliberals and with like the conservatives,
especially in economic stuff, because he's not very authoritarian, Like
he's not good at that. Like, that's one of the

(28:01):
really trenchant criticisms of his time as president is he's
like actually bad at forcing his way into things. He's
too much of, like a little too much of an
anarchist um. When foreign journalists interview Pepe about his past
is a freedom fighter, he refuses to apologize for the
violence that he took part in Musiki, even expresses scorn
for what he calls beatific pacifism and added, the only

(28:24):
things I regret are those I could have done but
didn't just incredible flex. I wish I'd robbed I wish
I'd robbed another couple of banks. You know, it's not
too late. It's not too late, and no one's going
to stop you at this point. In part one, I
told you the story of two kids Musika held up

(28:46):
at gunpoint when he was threatening to murder their dad.
And again the young kid he held up Many's told
The Guardian that he voted for Musika, saying I might
be expected to feel better about him, but he's the
only one who practices what he preaches. Yea, just like, yeah,
he robbed me at gunpoint and trying to kill my stepdad,
but he's an honest man. I mean, it's it is.

(29:08):
It's adust to just actually exert that power as copared
to like hiding behind this or that institution. Yeah, he
never like had goons do ship for him. He was
out there. Now, given that Jose Mujika has not in
fact destroyed the state or the system he railed against
as a young man, you will not be surprised to
hear that his largest detractors and the most trenchant criticism
against him comes from the left and the leftist to

(29:30):
critique him have a lot of very fair points. I
found a New Republic article by a journalist who traveled
to Uruguay and talked with left wing organizers, political leaders,
journalists and came up with a very critical article. He
was kind of in response to the Guardians saying the
most radical presidency, this New Republic journist is like, well,
let's go see how radical it really is. Um, And
the radicals in Uruguay says, not at all. Um. They

(29:51):
all kind of seemed to agree that he's a very
nice man. Nobody seems to believe that he's like lying
and like hiding his life as a rich person. Um.
But that that didn't make him an effective president. Um.
They point out that most of the things that he
was elected to do did not happen. He pushed for
a massive educational expansion that would include a flood of
new technical universities for poor kids, but actually making that

(30:14):
happen meant ramming laws through the still very splintered and
gridlocked Congress, and Musica, as a political outsider and is
not good at being authoritarian, was unable to do that. Um.
He did succeed in getting laptops for like Uruguayan school
children UM, which is like one of the big things
that his administration would brag about. But tests scores, I
think mostly still continued declining during this period. The issues

(30:36):
that Uruguayan public school system had had had didn't. He
didn't fix the problem UM, even though that was like
the main thing he harped on in his campaign and
I'm gonna quote from the New Republic here. The story
was the same on other policy fronts. Musico wanted Uruguay's
public railway utility to operate under private sector rules to
boost efficiency. Nothing happened. He tried to pass a new

(30:57):
tax on the big landowners to help the poor, but
failed to ensure that the legislation would be constitutional. The
Uruguayan Supreme Court struck it down. If he had taken
the opportunity to consult more specialists in law, he wouldn't
have failed, said gar Say, the political scientist. But Mujika
isn't too worried about the legal aspects of things. One morning,
over coffee, I spoke to a former Rugika's staffer named

(31:17):
Conrado Ramos, a budget wonk who looks like a sad
Hue Grant. He had been in charge of an effort
to reform the Uruguayan public sector. Mujika said he would
make it a priority. Ramos recalled, but that was part
of the problem. Mujica's pan enthusiasm placed everything and consequently nothing,
at the top of his agenda. From time to time,
Pepe would wheel unannounced into Ramos's office and get excited,

(31:38):
unfurling beautiful language about the big changes needed, but he
doesn't know how to plan. Mujika appointed as Ramos's boss,
the disinterested son of a former top Tomorrow and appeared
to forget the issue. After several fruitless years, Ramos quit
in frustration, embarrassing the administration. And again it's like, I
think it's a mix of he's probably a little a
d h D and maybe little too much of an

(32:00):
anarchist to be good at making things work in a system. Well,
it's like it's in its way, it's almost brilliant critique
of state and state power, because finally everyone's like, well,
if you had the right person in charge, and so
you finally have the right It doesn't get writer as
presidents go, it doesn't get writer. And he can't do anything.
I mean, he could do. He does things not being

(32:22):
but by not being the right person anymore would be
the ways that he would. So it's like this kind
of interesting, this is what you all claim we need
to do is get the no and the systems writing guy. Anyway. Yeah,
it's the it's the like everybody loves like. I think
one of the things that endears a lot of people
to Bernie Sanders. You see a picture of him in

(32:43):
his house and he's got like the chair with crap
stacked on it, which you never see a politician have,
and it's like, oh, he's a human being. He's at
least a person, and maybe if a person was president
things would be better, and some things are I think
the I think the left and especially this New Republic
article goes too hard against him. For one thing. It's
interesting I've talked a lot about what the kind of
liberal and centrist sources leave out when they're reporting on

(33:06):
this The New Republic, as they're critiquing him, and we're
going to read more critiques, doesn't note that like unemployment
dropped by half under him, um, and maybe that's maybe
they're being fair that like, well that was there was
it was an economic boom. You know, he doesn't get
credit for like, like everything there's every time there's good
stuff that happens, it's like, well, but he shouldn't get
credit for that or this, But it's like, well, I
think you're going a little far here, but still there.

(33:27):
They have other trenchant critiques that I'm going to continue
to read. So the progressives and leftists interviewed by The
New Republic have two main arguments. Musica accomplished a few
of his actual policy goals, and while he both lived
very consistently to his values and he said wonderful things
about anti consumerism the horrors of capitalism, he didn't stop
them and he didn't try to stop them. In particular,

(33:48):
the article quotes a journalist Mauricio R. Buffetti. I agree
with absolutely everything Musica has to say about materialism. He
told me. I believe inequality and consumerism are damaging to society.
It was exciting and fascinating to me then that this
man became our president. But he has done nothing. He
later added, he's always saying he's a fighter. He's a fighter,

(34:08):
so his failure is something that's very hard to understand
and hard to forgive. And nickul cheek him by pointing out,
like how much, how many more designers stores there are
in monte Video, how much the fact that inequality has grown,
the fact that people are increasingly obsessed with like Western
like consumerist things, electronics and all this stuff, And like
he didn't stop that, And it's like, yeah, he didn't.
How could he? Yeah, Like like that is because it

(34:32):
is like, yes, it is fair to say it's frustrating
that this guy maybe didn't destroy the system when he
talked about how the system clearly didn't need to keep existing.
But also like what was he supposed to do? And
this is I think one of the things if you're
going to be really fair, you have to note he
was elected president at age seventy four, after fourteen years
in prison and getting shot six times. And I kind

(34:54):
of think part of his editor is like, Yeah, there's
a bunch of shut fucked up ship that I'm not
going to be able to fix or do anything about,
and I will talk about it as if it's bad,
and then I will engage with the system because I
am too old to be a gorilla and I'm going
to try to help people. Um, And you can feel
about that the way you want. You know, it's a compromise.
For sure, and and it's a compromise made by a
man who did uncompromising things for a very long time.

(35:17):
And uh yeah, and I'm like, like I said, not
in a good place to play any judgment on decisions.
I think we can analyze it while saying like I
would be willing to bet that virtually no one could
go through what he did and not have his outcome
be the best case scenario like that. That's kind of
where I land on this and for where what it's worth.

(35:39):
Musique addresses the fact that like, yeah, he didn't destroy
how he didn't stop consumers, and he talks about that
a lot. He talks about the the he like very
openly in interviews, will address kind of the inconsistencies with
his beliefs and what he's doing as president. And I'm
gonna quote from that Guardian article again quote the man
who inspired by Guavara once blew up actoris owned by foreigners,

(36:01):
now offers them tax breaks. I need capitalism to work
because I have to levy taxes to attend to the
serious problems we have trying to overcome. At all too
abruptly condemns the people you are fighting to suffering, so
that instead of more bread, you have less bread. And
he's like he he talks about like you know, because
he's like he's been in a bunch of photos with
Hugo Chavas and stuff, and he's like, but also, Venezuela

(36:22):
system doesn't work very well. Um, And I don't think
the U S system works very well either. I'm just
trying to like, I'm not I was not elected to
overthrow the government and destroy the system as it exists
and build a new one. And I'm too old and
tired to do it. So I'm just trying to help
people have more bread because I feel like that's all
I can do. Um. Not all the Tupamorrows have accompanied

(36:43):
Musica on his journey to soft pragmatic socialism. They left
their ideals in their prison cells. The former hostage, George
Zabalza proclaimed recently, some old compagniros won't understand Musica. Said
they don't see our battle against people's everyday problems. That
life is not a utah be a and that's interesting.
So there are former two p Tomorrows who are like,

(37:04):
you're you fucking you, you sold out, you know, like
we were supposed to overthrow the state and you became
part of it, and you are willingly working with the capitalists,
working with the conservatives, and like that was never the plan.
And Euxica's response is, and that's that is a fair criticism.
That is what happened, right, You can morally land wherever
you want on that. That is objectively what happened. Um

(37:27):
and musicas I guess, moral defense is like, yeah, that's true,
and I get why you you're angry, but I can
I think I can help people, and we're not living
in a utopian situation. So I'm going to I'm gonna
applow the ship, you know. I think that's kind of
his attitude. And again, there's a number of ways to
feel about that. I'm not going to tell you how

(37:48):
to feel about that. I don't know how. I entirely
feel like it's a complicated issue. But he's not he's
not denying the inconsistencies. He's not pretending that he's the same. Um.
He is acknowledging like, yeah, I kind of sold out
because I thought I could do these good things, and
I do you have to respect that to some extent,
I think, yeah, yeah, I mean it's it's a I

(38:14):
can see it. It's like it's one of those things
where it's like, I don't, I don't imagine that's like
what I would hope for someone, right, yea, but I
I can see it, and it's a lot more interesting
to me than the people who sell out by just
entirely abandoning their values. Yeah, like the Christian cinema where
you're like ending in black block at the w t

(38:36):
O protests in two thousand eight and then voting for
austerity with Joe Manchin. Yeah, yeah, he doesn't. He doesn't
do that, um perfect. And you know who else doesn't
vote with Joe Manchin? Ah? Oh gosh, some of the
products and services that I was going to say, can't

(38:58):
you really bear some of the products and services supporting
our podcast? Do not vote alongside Joe Mansion. And that's
about as good as you're gonna get. Guys, Look, come on,
the real person. I thought Joe Mansion was like Joe
the plumber, Joe who lives in the mansion. He took

(39:18):
Joe Manchin very It is funny that like one of
the men repeatedly holding back any attempts to address inequality
in the United States is you could you could call
him Joe Mansion. That is kind of funny. I didn't
think about that. Um, all right, Oh, we're back, so

(39:46):
continuing because we have actually a bit more kind of
grinding through the different sides of how to look at
this man to get through because I think he's fascinating
and I think what he represents is fascinating, and I
think it's incredibly important for leftists, especially leftists who like
dream of some sort of revolution, to engage with the
Tupamorrows and musica and the journey that they went on. Um.

(40:08):
I think that's there's tremendous. It's tremendously important to at
least try to understand it and come to your own
conclusions about it because it's not a common situation and
I think very worth studying as a result of that. Um,
I'm gonna quote read another quote from a little bit
later in that same article. Globalizations glaring failure Music has
said is a lack of political oversight. It is bad

(40:31):
because it is only governed by the market. It has
no politics or government. National governments are only worried about
their next next elections. But there are a series of
global problems that no one deals with that does not
mean capitalism has won outright. I don't think it inevitable
that the world should live in capitalism. He told me.
That is the same as not believing in man. And
man is an animal with many defects, but also with

(40:51):
many startling capabilities. Is interesting guy. Um yeah, Uh. That
New Republic article critical Musica saves its most most trenchant
criticism of the man for a passage in which it
lays out the achievements of his predecessor, Vasquez, who also
followed musicas you can't do subs. You can't do one
term after the other. As president Vasquez is the president

(41:13):
before Musica and the president after. I'm going to read
a quote about him. And I think the New Republic,
I don't know, the Catholic leftist, Yeah, the Catholic leftist,
I don't know. Generally, I'm not super up on the
New Republic. I think they're a little bit more state
socialist kind of authority driven, uh than I am. My impression. Yeah,
but I'm not trying to Yeah, you get that in

(41:35):
this quote because there they are critiquing and for the
things that we've laid out. Um, and some you can
read that. It's a good article. You should read it.
I don't agree with everything in it, but it's a
good article. Um And they contrast his failure to overcome
a lot of gridlock with this guy Vasquez quote. In fact,
there is a politician in Uruguay who accomplished some of
the same kinds of goals people hoped Musica could tackle.

(41:56):
His name is Tabare Vsquez, an oncologist. He proceeded Musika
as president and will succeed him again come March. In
two thousand five, he inaugurated the first left wing government
since the country's dictatorship, and took great strides towards restoring
the Uruguayan social safety net, rebooting Baze's national health care system,
expanding welfare, and making Uruguay the first nation in the
world to fully implement the one Laptop per Child program.

(42:19):
He managed these successes thanks to a political persona as
authoritarian and charmless as Musikas were, gaily, anarchic and alluring.
With a ruff of silver hair, bassett hound eyes and
a smile just on the wrong side of lascivious, Vesquez
exudes the unsettling aura of a Mr. Rogers impersonator who
performs in porn. He rarely consults others on political decisions
and projects arrogance in his certitude. Faced with the same

(42:41):
constraints all modern presidents face with their power, he just
goes around them. When Vasquez decided to ban smoking in
public buildings, something that was really important for him as
an oncologist, Rabuffetti, the journalist, said he didn't involve Congress
at first. Instead, he used Uruguay's version of an executive order.
The unilateral move prompted a flurry of outrage about personal liberties,
and the Uruguay and legislature could have subsequently overturned it,

(43:05):
but ultimately the policy established a new status quo that
its opponents decided they didn't want to waste time in
political capital to fight again. It's um, you know, I
think there's that. That's that's that's again not you can
think about that whatever you want. I think it's probably
factually a broadly accurate statement, and I get why, I

(43:26):
get why that is a criticism, and it's probably it's
worth saying that, like, yes, an authoritarian as president will
get more done than a guy who's kind of more
egalitarian and consensus driven, you know, obviously, and there's good
things about that and bad things about that in part
because like I you know, maybe this guy Esquez the
executive order use and stuff, that's that's a precedent that

(43:48):
could be bad when the Conservatives get back into power,
and they got back into power in so like, you know,
it's never none of this is I I simple, you know. Um.
It's also worth noting that, like this article doesn't note
that Vesquez veto to gay marriage bill um, and that
that was something that happened because Pepe wasn't. Yeah, he

(44:08):
believes that he should be able to do what he wants. Yeah,
and like you know, it's like I don't want my
government to dumb me, you know, Like, but it's all
I think maybe if you want to engage with it
even a little more nuanced. And again this is just
something that maybe this is partially the case that like,
if you're trying to change society, maybe it helps to

(44:29):
have people who are broadly politically aligned and have an
authoritarian and then a guy who's not authoritarian and kind
of like so that you're not trending too hard in
that direction and you can then like Pepe is better
at building social consense. I don't know, maybe that's accurate.
Maybe that's not. Um, it strikes me there's a benefit
from Vasquez going to Pepe afterwards, like certainly within the

(44:51):
matter of gay rights and some other issues. Um, because
it's more different ratcheting system. Yeah, in the US we
have a right word racheting system where they're against push
things that Wright and the Democrats and ship and then
and then I could I could see. Yeah, I don't know.
I don't think anyone does know, but I think like
that's something to maybe consider. It doesn't it doesn't seem

(45:14):
to be worse than the way things have been going
in the United States. Like if I'm comparing it to
my government, this sounds all right, you know, by comparison
this this like method of things is like, well that
that's okay. You know, I wouldn't I would have probably
I would definitely have more critiques where I living in Montevideo. Um,
but that's always the case. Uh yeah. Um. And I

(45:37):
will note that, like, in fairness to the author of
that New Republic piece, in addition to being coming down
very much on the sort of critical of Peppe Vasquez,
is it was a better president. He also does some
work in this article that I don't think a lesser
journalist would have done in his position, um, because he
actually went and spent a lot of time in like
crippling lye poor neighborhoods in Uruguay after talking to these

(45:59):
like leftist and again the guys that we've been quoting
from so far, these journalists and these like I think
they're mostly like middle class kind of and and upper
like leftist sort of thought leaders. And he also spends
time among the very poor. And what they tell this
guy is very different from what kind of the activists
he talked you told him quote. Of course he understands
us better, Almron said, blinking perplexedly, as if my question

(46:23):
itself whether Musika had been good for the poor was
not even worth asking. She'd received me in a dark
but startlingly pretty anti room and the shack she'd built,
its floorboards mere planks, over the slums off liquid earth. Eagerly,
she showed me painting she'd done on the shacks walls,
stylized fairy images reminiscent of tinker Bell, and the new
wardrobe and table in her bedroom, the wardrobe she'd recently

(46:45):
been given through a work for Housing program sponsored by
Musica's government, the table she'd subsequently made on her own.
She gave Musika credit for both interventions. Living in elective
poverty himself, he appreciates the importance of something seemingly as
simple as a clean place to keep one clothes. Once
Smusika had come to visit the neighborhood and seen Almron shack,
he asked. He'd asked her a question that had stuck

(47:07):
with her ever since, affecting how she thought of herself
and her five boys and girls. Does every child of
yours have a mattress of his own? Al Maron had
never considered this. She works at a slaughter house and
has barely enough to get by, But she explained, Musika
thinks every kid has the right to privacy with his
own fantasies. She had started saving for those beds. The

(47:28):
policymakers and opinion setters I'd spoken to had been so
spittingly certain that Mujika's presidency had failed Uruguay's poor, and
four teachers I spoke with who work with them directly
believe the opposite. I spent a couple of days touring
lower income schools and neighborhoods, and the view of Musika,
I encountered was as different as the view of a
city from the street level versus looking down from atop

(47:49):
of skyscraper. Everyone without exception believed Musika had improved their lives.
Seeing a man who looked like them and lived like them,
who even invited them to barbecues at his commune, supying
the land's highest office, had made them feel human again
by noticing them, by speaking to them rather than about them.
Mujika had reincarnated them. We are a poor people, Almran

(48:11):
told me, with a note of defiance, But we are
people at the end of the day. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
So I'm pretty pro this guy. Yeah, no, I mean
it's interesting because, yeah, most of the critiques coming from
the left are, oh, you're not good enough, that use
wielding institutional power, and his whole thing is seems to
be a little bit like that's not the thing he's

(48:34):
trying to accomplish is wielding institutional power. That's It's fucking interesting.
It's very interesting, and I really recommend some of the
studies and articles that i've I've attached to this, Like
he's a fascinating person and like what his journey says
about yeah, everything about like radical politics is I think

(48:57):
really important to understand. And um, I also should note, uh,
he took a bunch of people from Guantanamo Bay, um
and like like welcomed them into Uruguay so that they
wouldn't have to be in Guantanamo anymore because they were
people who like didn't have a state that was willing
to take them. Um. And then he went on a
long rant about US torture and how like these people

(49:18):
have like you destroyed these people for nothing, and like
this is fucked up and wasn't just like talking about
how bad Guantana was. Was like, yeah, of course my
country will take some of these people, bring them here.
I killed Dan the Strangler. Of course I killed Dan
the Strangler. Of course I'm going to take prisoners from Guantanamo.
Do you know me? Again? I and I hope nothing

(49:40):
we've come across in talking about the criticism of him
is dismissive. Of those criticisms, I don't agree with all
of them, and I think the thing that is most
admirable about him is that number when he never pretends
to be perfect or entirely ideologically consistent. And neither were
the two Tomorrows, you know. Um, But he's like he
is pretty ideologically consistent. Like he's not just going to

(50:00):
talk about the plight of single mothers. He's going to
give them all of his money. He's not just going
to talk about how Guantanamo is bad. He's going to
make his country take people from Guantanamo and and and
re home them. Um he's he's, uh, he's pretty good
at that kind of ship. Um. Yeah, he follows his
ethical guidelines of ideological guidelines, and that's kind of interesting

(50:21):
to me. Yeah, And I've read some quotes about the
Tupamrrows now because like especially in twenty like a more
conservative government was elected, there's a lot of like uncertainty
about what's going to happen to the education system. Like
I'm not getting into that as much as like I've
just got up to speed on like the broad strokes
of Uruguay and political history. I don't want to like
pretend to be any kind of an expert, but um,

(50:41):
I've read some quotes about the Tupamrrows where it's like, yes,
they're in politics now, they also still have guns, and
they're like like they're they're flexible, like they're ready to go.
But if they have to they'll go back and like
do the thing that they were doing. Like you know,
they they're not they're they're they're never like we're add
percent for electoralism, like when they were terrorists there now
they weren't a hundred percent for terrorism. Like they're real

(51:04):
good at kind of flowing in making ethical exceptions and stuff,
which I think makes them very interesting to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I had no idea what to expect with any of this,
So this is Yeah, I think it's broadly Again, Uruguay
still has plenty of problems. This is an ongoing story. Um,

(51:27):
but I think the sweep why this is a Christmas
non Bastards episode is the sweep of this history is
um a pretty inspiring may not be exactly the right word,
but like hopeful, yeah, because it's it's actually slow work
to change society, and people think it's slow work, like

(51:49):
sees power and then excuse the fact they've taken power.
Of course it takes forever we have to hold on
the power. But instead the like slow work of like
just trying to be good in all of the situations
that you put yourself into and realizing that what it
means to be good by your own standards might change
depending on Sometimes it means there's you know, sometimes it

(52:13):
means robbing people some yes. Sometimes it may mean assassinating
a CIA torture. Sometimes it may mean giving documents you
stole to a prosecutor who you trust agrees with you
on that single issue at least, um, you know, like
that's what they did. Yeah, and it's it's a it's

(52:33):
complicated again, like you should feel about this however you
feel about this, but maybe think about it because it's
it's there's some stuff in here that's worth thinking about,
Like I think for the left trying to find its
way at this present point in time where things are
very scattered and fragmented in ugly sharp ways, and um,

(52:54):
there's a lot of ideological in fighting at a time
when we're all kind of staring extermination and the face,
these are probably some people to look at and be like, well,
maybe we should learn some stuff from them, right, Not
not that you should ever just say, whole hog, these
guys were perfect and we'll do exactly what they did,
but like, let's let's maybe learn some lessons here, because
I think there are some lessons here, right, Yeah, Well,

(53:16):
one of the lessons is, no one ever knows whether
or not violent revolution is going to make things better
or worse. It seems, including including both mass huge uprisings
and like target assassinations is a total craft, complete fucking
roll of the dice. Um, And anyone who pretends otherwise
is probably dangerously unhinged. Yeah. Yeah, Like anyone who pretends

(53:39):
this will obviously happen if we do this is a
lunatic and you should be scared of them. Um, you know, um,
But yeah, I don't know. Cool dude. I think who
said he as? As an individual person, he's like my
favorite of our people since probably Wallenberg, because he's just

(53:59):
he's very He's very caring to all of the people
around him, and I think that's good. He's a nice man. Yeah. Um,
And my god, do I love the idea of a
president who bicycles to work wearing socks and sandals. And
it's like, and I want to be around authentic people

(54:19):
more than a specifically want to be around people who
agree with everything that I'm because then you can actually
model your decisions based on well, I expect this person
to be morally consistent to their own values, not to
my values, but their values. Yeah, you know, like yeah, no,
that's yeah, yeah, yeah, all right, well that's that's behind

(54:43):
the bastards. Um, having merry Christmas, have a happy New Year. Um,
have a uh dancing tet. I don't I don't know
enough about tet, but have a good one of that too.
If if you're in Vietnam, you know, have have a
good whatever holiday is your next holiday that you're looking
forward to enjoy it? Um? Yep, no, wait, ship, I

(55:07):
forgot to ask you to plug your plugables market you
got any pluggables to plug? Yeah. You can find me
on the internet on Twitter at Magpie kill Joy. I'm
on Instagram at Margaret Killjoy. And I have a new book.
It's actually an old book rereleased called A Country Ghost
that just came out that answers the question of well,
it presents one of the many, many different answers to

(55:30):
the question of what could a society without authority look like?
And how could it function? And um, but more than
that's actually just a story about going to go fight
people and fun plot things in an adventure. Excellent. Yeah,
and it it is great and also a good companion
to this piece. Um, because this is I mean, this

(55:52):
actually happened, but it is kind of one way of
imagining what happens when anarchists get some of their way, uh,
little bits of it, pieces of it. Um, I don't
know door, I'll just rang. Oh okay, well you go
do that and everybody else go home. You're drunk, my

(56:14):
h