December 18, 2024 • 21 mins
2024 American Election! Trump v. Harris. We dig into our predictions and perceptions of our current political state as a nation. We break down the fantastic debate hosted by the Free Press between Sam Harris & Ben Shapiro - showcasing how we believe we need more Socratic-style debating. Are we seeing a new political realignment in America? Why have white men become disenfranchised by the democratic party? Will it be a close election? Who is Trump & Harris - really?!?!? What's the culture war? Media consumption via the different parties? Straw-Mans v. Steel-Mans.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
TGI, the Global Island
(00:03):
Yeah, it was election night. We had to talk politics.
My prediction was completely wrong.
You'll find out about that.
But it was interesting to see how we thought about the election the night before versus the day of.
So yeah, enjoy the conversation and be sure to like, subscribe and send it to your friends.
(00:31):
Today's a crazy day. Been checking my betting odds all day long.
I feel like it's like sports betting on crack.
It's the overall American comedy, if you'd call it.
Political theater.
Yeah, too bad it's reality.
(00:52):
It's like the real Housewives, but unfortunately, this is actual consequences.
Yeah, this is real and there's actual consequences.
And I feel like people don't really understand that.
That's actually hella funny. It's like the real Housewives, but the shit's actually gonna go down.
I mean, imagine if the real Housewives were in charge of IR relations.
What's IR relations?
(01:14):
International relations.
Oh, I'm sorry.
No, that's okay. That's okay.
Again, talking that like Paul Sy sort of terms, basic Paul Sy 101.
Sam Harris, please take a 101 Paul Sy course. I would love if you did that.
This man rose Sam Harris. No, but I mean, I'm being honest.
I think the Ben and Sam conversation, I was very happy with.
(01:35):
Besides like where they land, also like the moderator, that girl.
Was it Barry Weiss?
I think it's at like the Free Press, the conversation.
Yes, yes it is.
I thought that she practiced the Socratic method throughout the whole conversation very well.
It is Barry Weiss.
Okay, awesome. Yeah, incredible. Really, really, really, really great.
Because she would take on Sam's perspective and she would like steal man the best point that Sam made
(01:59):
and have Ben respond and she would do that for Ben as well.
And I thought that they touched briefly the issue of Israel and Gaza and Palestinians.
But I thought that it was a more sound debate.
Yeah, I mean, definitely. I went and re-listened to it because the first time around, honestly, like I found I'm like...
You're just angry.
No, no, no, I wasn't angry. I was trying to listen to it from like a realist perspective.
(02:24):
It's very interesting because on the political chart, that sort of like X and Y axis, I'm like bottom, bottom left.
I'm like anarchist, liberal.
But when I actually look at the current stage of the world and like the nation-state system and IR relations
and like how governance actually works, I tend to lean way more realist, way more.
(02:48):
This is the reality of life. This is what happens.
And Ben Shapiro nailed it.
And I think this is why when I was discussing with you, Shapiro has that such strong political science background, being a lawyer.
And I felt like I just wish Shapiro could get over his ideological capturing to really discuss political science.
(03:11):
Because I think...
Where do you think he is ideologically captured?
I think he's, you know what it is. I don't want to say he's ideologically captured, but his...
He just is. He is the conservative, orthodox Jew, and he definitely stands by this.
I think he thinks he's more libertarian than he may actually be.
(03:33):
He definitely has such a stronger political science background, whereas Sam Harris really doesn't.
I mean, Sam Harris is brilliant.
And I've been listening to more and more of his stuff.
And when you sent it, like his focus on Buddhism and whatnot, I've really been going into that.
And I love it. You know, I absolutely love it.
And, you know, I'm kind of on a Sam Harris kick right now.
But at the same time, I feel like he falls to exactly what Firebanz says, where it's like when you're an expert in one field,
(03:58):
you might want to shut up in others because now you just sound like an opinionated regular person.
Your expertise does not translate in the same way.
Sure.
You know, like when Ben was discussing IR relations and the fact that it's an anarchic system, you know,
he spoke for how Trump won, you know, the first sort of Trump presidency,
(04:19):
how he was the best IR president we've had in God knows how long,
which is insane because if you said that, there's so many people that would be like, there's no way you're a liberal.
You just said Trump did something good.
Yeah, sure.
Which he did. I don't care that everyone's like, oh, Trump's an idiot.
Everything he says is stupid.
The interesting question is why was that the case?
(04:40):
Like from your political science knowledge and from your, you know, subjective point of view about Trump,
Trump's persona, he's a very like unpredictable type of a guy.
They just released an amazing movie.
I actually want to watch it. It's called The Apprentice, I think, to kind of go off of like Celebrity Apprentice.
And it's all about the guy that kind of mentored Trump.
(05:03):
OK.
And they're like these like core beliefs that he drilled inside Trump's young 20 year old mind.
And it was always win, never forfeit, never say that you lost.
Right. I forgot what the third one is.
But I think Trump really exudes this personality type of like regardless of what it takes or how do I how I get there.
(05:25):
Like a similar kind of like an Machiavellian type of character.
Well, he comes off as like, you know, I was listening to Sam Harris and Eric Weinstein in one of their earlier discussions on Trump.
And I agree with Weinstein that Trump comes off as anarchic.
But there's there is something to the madness. You know what I mean?
(05:46):
There is something behind the madness. It's not just.
I mean, 50 percent of Americans believe so.
So, well, I mean, listen, I'm not taking a stance on Trump.
I did not vote for Trump this time around.
This is where the conversation this is where like I think the global island is great because I feel like people don't understand why someone would vote for Trump or why someone vote for Harris.
(06:08):
But yet 50 percent are.
Yes.
And so there must be good reasons.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, one thing actually, the New York Times I saw covered today was this there there was a large sum of the Islamic population in the United States that's voting for Trump because he's the antiwar candidate because, you know, to kind of go back to your earlier question on why like an IR relations, why Trump may be better than Harris.
(06:30):
And I think it's because Trump is pro-America as in America first.
Not that Harris isn't, but I think Harris is American Empire, which is almost an extension of the neocons.
I mean, this is where you have the famous Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney.
Reagan.
Now supporting Kamala, right?
Yes.
And so I think that what's happening is I believe that the Republican Party is kind of dead.
(06:53):
I think it's the Trump MAGA party and Republicans have moved from being world police foreign policy to now being isolationists.
You actually saw Vivek Ramaswamy, who's a champion of isolationism, debate the head of the CIA, John Bolton, at the time when Trump was president.
And Bolton is a huge neocon, you know, trying to push for the imperial kind of...
(07:19):
The American imperial.
Exactly.
The American Empire, some people call it.
But this is a really interesting time because now we're seeing a huge political realignment of values from the parties.
Well, so I think David Graeber kind of describes this kind of truly.
I mean, or he did describe it, I should say, rest in peace.
Trump is a corporatist and corporatism is popular to people, especially the middle class.
(07:43):
This is really what it speaks to.
He focuses on not on finance.
He focuses on solid jobs.
He focuses on things that the middle class...
Kind of in regulation so that bosses can give bonuses to their employer, this sort of trickle down economics philosophy.
Sort of in theory.
In theory, yeah.
It's almost, you know, when people say Trump's a fascist, well, he's a corporatist.
He goes for the corporate class, which on the opposite side, you have Harris, who is backed by finance and American Empire.
(08:09):
Now, the problem with the American Empire thing is she hasn't done anything with her campaign at all to speak out to young men or young liberal men at that.
She should have won on Joe Rogan, bro.
I swear to God, if she loses this election, that will be like strong talking point for why she didn't get those votes.
It probably will be.
And you're right, because she like ignored it.
(08:30):
Basically, they went on women's rights.
And you know what?
I understand that.
But you can't isolate the rest of the world, especially when, you know, while women's rights are under attack, men are failing in this economy.
And Trump, even if he lies about it, is at least acknowledging that.
Sure.
There's at least a vision.
Exactly.
Like when I feel like from that part of the population, when you see Harris sort of even like go at it, Harris just seems like another liberal, elitist, institutional figure that's not going to address it.
(09:03):
Like, you know, she to me, the reason why I dislike her, she's the extreme moderate.
She's which in a case creates Trump to an extent, it creates the extreme right.
And like, as you said, like, I agree with you, the conservatives are now the MAGA party, but that's because the right wing movements are more open to these because they're a bit more Machiavellian in which they'll do whatever it takes to win.
OK, I want to talk about culture war.
(09:25):
This is something that I heard Ben Shapiro talking about, like, probably like six years ago.
OK.
Of like the Delhi wire.
Their main goal is to fight the culture war.
And I always thought this was like a weird, like conservative talking point to try to just go against liberal social movements like LGBTQ civil rights.
Right. But now I'm like really thinking about this stuff like, wait, holy crap.
(09:48):
Like there is a huge culture war problem in America that has to do with media consumption.
Right. So during this presidential election, I had a lot of free time.
So I was able to consume a shit ton of media.
Now I was able to bias my YouTube algorithm.
I would like particularly watch MSNBC.
I'd watch Breaking Points.
I'd watch a little bit of Kamala Harris on Call Her Daddy podcast.
(10:10):
I obviously watched Donald Trump on Joe Rogan.
And what I was noticing was that independently watching these two separate spheres of media landscape, they were talking past each other the whole time.
It wasn't like they were having the exact same conversations.
They were having two radically different conversations.
Right.
And then their straw manning of the other side was so evident.
(10:34):
They were not steel manning the best conservative arguments and then trying to show why our way is better.
It was all straw man all the way down.
Right.
And that was more scary to me than Donald Trump or Kamala Harris or the super PACs.
To me, that media landscape is fucking terrifying that we have half of the country that is literally not thinking and having a conversation on the same wavelength.
(10:59):
Than the other part of the country.
You kind of nailed it.
I mean, when you watch the Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, their debate, this is a different country.
This is an absolutely different country.
I mean, those people had respect for each other.
They, you know, although like I, you know, I have my criticisms of both.
Like it was a landscape where I could actually put some faith within the media.
(11:24):
You know, I was young and I think I was too young to actually vote in that election.
But it was something I could trust.
Now I feel I have nowhere to trust.
I have literally nowhere in the media to trust.
How do you feel about any independent journalists on YouTube?
I turn to independent journalists more.
(11:46):
I try to look at how they, you know, how they display the information that they bring forth.
Where do they get their funding from?
Yeah, where they get their funding from.
Also, you know, again, I think everyone would benefit from some Pol Sci 101 and 102 courses just to get a really basic understanding to see.
Well, would you also agree maybe like basic civil understanding?
(12:08):
Oh, well, you mean like civic engagement?
Civic engagement, yeah.
I mean, yeah, America.
The civic exams, yeah.
America needs better civic engagement across the board.
The Vekarama Swami, not to keep bringing him up, but he, when he was running, he, one of his points was that in high school,
in order to graduate, you would have to pass a civics exam.
I mean, it's probably a good idea.
That would be beneficial to us because, you know, where do you vote?
(12:32):
How do you vote?
Who's your representative?
Who's your judge?
You know, what's the highest court in your state and what's the highest court in your federal government?
Like, I feel like everyone, you know, we make immigrants pass exams.
We should make our high school students pass the same exam that immigrants have to pass.
Because if you don't have a basic understanding of what our founding fathers are talking about,
(12:54):
what our government's supposed to stand for and, you know, what your local...
And even if you want to change it, at least understand what's even there first.
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
You know, don't, don't proclaim to me that like, oh, you know, our founding fathers were all about finance and, you know,
and taking land when literally Thomas Jefferson, he wanted to take Virginia and rip off land contracts
(13:18):
because 40 families owned the entire state and have like 99-year land contracts.
Meanwhile, then on the other side, you had John Adams, who specifically was like,
we can't give everyone the right to vote because 1 million people own property, 9 million don't.
And if the 9 million people get the vote, well, then they're going to reappropriate the property.
And, you know, it's just, this is lost.
(13:41):
Like, most people don't even know their local representatives.
So how the hell would they know what the different debates were in America between, you know, Adams and Jefferson?
Yeah.
It's, I agree with that.
I mean, we do need better education on it, absolutely.
Looking at like the arc of history, it seems that we go as civilizations through these like ebbs and flows of power being centralized
(14:04):
and then power being decentralized.
Like, to me, I think of like the Dark Ages, where like the Catholic Church held all the power,
and then you have the Renaissance and like the Scientific Revolution that now decentralizes access to knowledge and power.
And then I think of England becoming overpowered and taking over all the colonies and kind of sucking the lifeblood out.
And then all the colonies coming together and saying enough is enough, no taxation without representation.
(14:29):
And then now we have, you know, American democracy.
To me, I think that this is just a natural arc of human history.
I think power over time becomes centralized and then you need a revolution to then decentralized and not just power, but in all domains of society.
And I think I think private equity firms are this new form of a monarchy and there probably are other groups of people too.
(14:54):
And they are kind of sucking the lifeblood out of everything, making it impossible to own a home, driving up inflation, other things.
So it seems like we're on the precipice of a new revolution of decentralization.
Well, so I guess what you're more focusing on is the globalization and the control that global corporate powers have over the global economy,
(15:21):
our local economies, and now over our political selections.
And I think that's really all in modern sense comes in post-marshal plan following World War II.
But I mean, but even historically, like a lot of the conquering wasn't necessarily for power.
I mean, there's the argument that Cortez, the conqueror of Mexico, he kept conquering because he was indebted and he had to keep paying his debts.
(15:46):
So imagine this man looking for the cities of gold, taking over entire, you know, taking over Mexico.
He was doing alliancing with the Tulas calans to take on the Aztecs and then conquering Mexico.
And one of the driving forces is because he was in debt.
This is not new. This is just evolved.
(16:07):
And now rather than being indebted to Kings, Queens or, you know, some other global company, I mean, because there was global companies back then.
There was the East India Trading Company, which was in modern times known as one of the first, you know, global.
Yeah, exactly. But now I think it becomes a bit more vague, you know, like people don't have civic engagement.
(16:28):
How are they going to understand that five companies are finance industries that don't actually do anything besides owning different companies and trading them?
The way that they find out about that is through this independent media landscape.
And I feel like this is the start.
This is the match that will be in the history books of when social media platforms allowed high quality independent journalists who say we're not going to take any money from private corporations.
(16:53):
We're going to be subscription based.
Like, for example, Breaking Point News, they don't take any money from anyone.
It's just if you want early access to the content, you could pay a subscription.
Otherwise, it's completely free on YouTube and it's the most base news you could possibly digest because they literally have everyone of all political leanings.
(17:14):
They even put on like very like far left people, very far right people, independents.
But the point that I'm trying to make is that now knowledge is becoming decentralized where we had the four, you know, media corporations that would control the whole kind of overton window.
And now we're seeing this explosion of access to knowledge, which I think is a decentralization of knowledge, like the printing press was.
(17:38):
To me, the YouTube, the YouTube, to me, YouTube is the, this is actually a point that Jordan Peterson made, is like the video printing press.
I mean, to an extent I agree, but also we are the kinds of people that are the outliers.
Like, you know, we forget we work with more normal people where...
You're basically saying everyone else has much less access to it.
(18:01):
People like you and I, it's not that they have less access, it's that they're manipulated into it.
I mean, this is kind of what Robert Epstein did.
Like we kind of with Robert Epstein studies, you and I purposefully manipulate our algorithms to try and seek out information, to try and seek out.
Where most people it's the opposite.
Yeah, where most other people it's this, I agree with it.
You know what I mean? Like, I think I told you earlier on.
(18:23):
Google was literally censoring Joe Rogan and Trump and that's literally Joe Rogan's second biggest video.
Yeah.
And if it wasn't for X and X can have very, you know, conservative content, but if it wasn't for X, there would be no social media platform where Joe could have posted, hey, this is literally being...
This is literally being censored.
It wasn't even on the freaking trending and it was literally getting, I think, like 1.5 million an hour views.
(18:48):
I mean, isn't that crazy? A president meets with one of the biggest podcasts. I think he is the biggest podcast in the world, which now overtakes radio and it's not even trending because that's the way the algorithms go.
I mean, it's...
Well, in this election, Google can move up to 16 million votes.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
I mean, Epstein said that, Robert Epstein said what? They moved the last election by four and a half points, which was about what Biden won by.
(19:12):
So, like, you know, I mean, and even right now, the fact that the betting odds are in favor of Trump and those people have money in it, like, I think the Democrats failed.
I think the Democrats failed. I mean, I'm calling this and this is...
Predictions. We're going to end on predictions.
Yeah, we're going to end on predictions.
Go, go.
I think Trump's going to take the election overall. I don't care about the popular vote.
(19:37):
Yeah.
Kamala's definitely getting the popular vote. Yeah, because of cosmopolitanism.
But the Electoral College, by how many points of the Electoral College do you think Trump's going to win by?
I don't know, to be honest.
Imagine it's one point. That would be wild.
Can you imagine the Democrats go out and say it was rigged if it was by one point?
You know, listen, I actually...
Okay, you ready? You're going to say Trump wins. I'm going to say Kamala Harris wins.
(20:01):
You think Harris wins.
The Electoral College, I'm just going to say this prediction.
Okay.
I'm going to immediately say the election was rigged. There's going to be litigations for the next two months.
And we're going to see far-right conservative groups plan marching on the Capitol.
Honestly? I mean...
That's a nightmare I'm trying to avoid, but I'm just putting that prediction out there.
(20:22):
But that nightmare of the far-right movement, if Trump wins, I feel like it'll fuel it.
If Trump loses, it will also fuel it. And I hate to put this on the Democrats.
They need to address this. The extreme moderates of the Democrats need to address this or else they will lose.
I mean, because they have a progressive...
(20:43):
Address what?
To address the fact that they are focused on the extreme moderate rather than understanding...
The wide range of democratic...
Yes. They're isolating their progressives that are more towards their side but not.
Sure.
And they're completely isolated the far-right. So while the Democrats are so center...
(21:06):
Yeah.
They have isolated so many groups that it just to me is unhealthy and I feel like they need to address this.
All right. Well, we're going to see tonight.
We are going to see tonight.
Who knows? We might be singing Oh Canada in the morning.
Oh Canada.
TGI, the Global Island
(00:03):
Yeah, it was election night. We had to talk politics.
My prediction was completely wrong.
You'll find out about that.
But it was interesting to see how we thought about the election the night before versus the day of.
So yeah, enjoy the conversation and be sure to like, subscribe and send it to your friends.
(00:31):
Today's a crazy day. Been checking my betting odds all day long.
I feel like it's like sports betting on crack.
It's the overall American comedy, if you'd call it.
Political theater.
Yeah, too bad it's reality.
(00:52):
It's like the real Housewives, but unfortunately, this is actual consequences.
Yeah, this is real and there's actual consequences.
And I feel like people don't really understand that.
That's actually hella funny. It's like the real Housewives, but the shit's actually gonna go down.
I mean, imagine if the real Housewives were in charge of IR relations.
What's IR relations?
(01:14):
International relations.
Oh, I'm sorry.
No, that's okay. That's okay.
Again, talking that like Paul Sy sort of terms, basic Paul Sy 101.
Sam Harris, please take a 101 Paul Sy course. I would love if you did that.
This man rose Sam Harris. No, but I mean, I'm being honest.
I think the Ben and Sam conversation, I was very happy with.
(01:35):
Besides like where they land, also like the moderator, that girl.
Was it Barry Weiss?
I think it's at like the Free Press, the conversation.
Yes, yes it is.
I thought that she practiced the Socratic method throughout the whole conversation very well.
It is Barry Weiss.
Okay, awesome. Yeah, incredible. Really, really, really, really great.
Because she would take on Sam's perspective and she would like steal man the best point that Sam made
(01:59):
and have Ben respond and she would do that for Ben as well.
And I thought that they touched briefly the issue of Israel and Gaza and Palestinians.
But I thought that it was a more sound debate.
Yeah, I mean, definitely. I went and re-listened to it because the first time around, honestly, like I found I'm like...
You're just angry.
No, no, no, I wasn't angry. I was trying to listen to it from like a realist perspective.
(02:24):
It's very interesting because on the political chart, that sort of like X and Y axis, I'm like bottom, bottom left.
I'm like anarchist, liberal.
But when I actually look at the current stage of the world and like the nation-state system and IR relations
and like how governance actually works, I tend to lean way more realist, way more.
(02:48):
This is the reality of life. This is what happens.
And Ben Shapiro nailed it.
And I think this is why when I was discussing with you, Shapiro has that such strong political science background, being a lawyer.
And I felt like I just wish Shapiro could get over his ideological capturing to really discuss political science.
(03:11):
Because I think...
Where do you think he is ideologically captured?
I think he's, you know what it is. I don't want to say he's ideologically captured, but his...
He just is. He is the conservative, orthodox Jew, and he definitely stands by this.
I think he thinks he's more libertarian than he may actually be.
(03:33):
He definitely has such a stronger political science background, whereas Sam Harris really doesn't.
I mean, Sam Harris is brilliant.
And I've been listening to more and more of his stuff.
And when you sent it, like his focus on Buddhism and whatnot, I've really been going into that.
And I love it. You know, I absolutely love it.
And, you know, I'm kind of on a Sam Harris kick right now.
But at the same time, I feel like he falls to exactly what Firebanz says, where it's like when you're an expert in one field,
(03:58):
you might want to shut up in others because now you just sound like an opinionated regular person.
Your expertise does not translate in the same way.
Sure.
You know, like when Ben was discussing IR relations and the fact that it's an anarchic system, you know,
he spoke for how Trump won, you know, the first sort of Trump presidency,
(04:19):
how he was the best IR president we've had in God knows how long,
which is insane because if you said that, there's so many people that would be like, there's no way you're a liberal.
You just said Trump did something good.
Yeah, sure.
Which he did. I don't care that everyone's like, oh, Trump's an idiot.
Everything he says is stupid.
The interesting question is why was that the case?
(04:40):
Like from your political science knowledge and from your, you know, subjective point of view about Trump,
Trump's persona, he's a very like unpredictable type of a guy.
They just released an amazing movie.
I actually want to watch it. It's called The Apprentice, I think, to kind of go off of like Celebrity Apprentice.
And it's all about the guy that kind of mentored Trump.
(05:03):
OK.
And they're like these like core beliefs that he drilled inside Trump's young 20 year old mind.
And it was always win, never forfeit, never say that you lost.
Right. I forgot what the third one is.
But I think Trump really exudes this personality type of like regardless of what it takes or how do I how I get there.
(05:25):
Like a similar kind of like an Machiavellian type of character.
Well, he comes off as like, you know, I was listening to Sam Harris and Eric Weinstein in one of their earlier discussions on Trump.
And I agree with Weinstein that Trump comes off as anarchic.
But there's there is something to the madness. You know what I mean?
(05:46):
There is something behind the madness. It's not just.
I mean, 50 percent of Americans believe so.
So, well, I mean, listen, I'm not taking a stance on Trump.
I did not vote for Trump this time around.
This is where the conversation this is where like I think the global island is great because I feel like people don't understand why someone would vote for Trump or why someone vote for Harris.
(06:08):
But yet 50 percent are.
Yes.
And so there must be good reasons.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, one thing actually, the New York Times I saw covered today was this there there was a large sum of the Islamic population in the United States that's voting for Trump because he's the antiwar candidate because, you know, to kind of go back to your earlier question on why like an IR relations, why Trump may be better than Harris.
(06:30):
And I think it's because Trump is pro-America as in America first.
Not that Harris isn't, but I think Harris is American Empire, which is almost an extension of the neocons.
I mean, this is where you have the famous Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney.
Reagan.
Now supporting Kamala, right?
Yes.
And so I think that what's happening is I believe that the Republican Party is kind of dead.
(06:53):
I think it's the Trump MAGA party and Republicans have moved from being world police foreign policy to now being isolationists.
You actually saw Vivek Ramaswamy, who's a champion of isolationism, debate the head of the CIA, John Bolton, at the time when Trump was president.
And Bolton is a huge neocon, you know, trying to push for the imperial kind of...
(07:19):
The American imperial.
Exactly.
The American Empire, some people call it.
But this is a really interesting time because now we're seeing a huge political realignment of values from the parties.
Well, so I think David Graeber kind of describes this kind of truly.
I mean, or he did describe it, I should say, rest in peace.
Trump is a corporatist and corporatism is popular to people, especially the middle class.
(07:43):
This is really what it speaks to.
He focuses on not on finance.
He focuses on solid jobs.
He focuses on things that the middle class...
Kind of in regulation so that bosses can give bonuses to their employer, this sort of trickle down economics philosophy.
Sort of in theory.
In theory, yeah.
It's almost, you know, when people say Trump's a fascist, well, he's a corporatist.
He goes for the corporate class, which on the opposite side, you have Harris, who is backed by finance and American Empire.
(08:09):
Now, the problem with the American Empire thing is she hasn't done anything with her campaign at all to speak out to young men or young liberal men at that.
She should have won on Joe Rogan, bro.
I swear to God, if she loses this election, that will be like strong talking point for why she didn't get those votes.
It probably will be.
And you're right, because she like ignored it.
(08:30):
Basically, they went on women's rights.
And you know what?
I understand that.
But you can't isolate the rest of the world, especially when, you know, while women's rights are under attack, men are failing in this economy.
And Trump, even if he lies about it, is at least acknowledging that.
Sure.
There's at least a vision.
Exactly.
Like when I feel like from that part of the population, when you see Harris sort of even like go at it, Harris just seems like another liberal, elitist, institutional figure that's not going to address it.
(09:03):
Like, you know, she to me, the reason why I dislike her, she's the extreme moderate.
She's which in a case creates Trump to an extent, it creates the extreme right.
And like, as you said, like, I agree with you, the conservatives are now the MAGA party, but that's because the right wing movements are more open to these because they're a bit more Machiavellian in which they'll do whatever it takes to win.
OK, I want to talk about culture war.
(09:25):
This is something that I heard Ben Shapiro talking about, like, probably like six years ago.
OK.
Of like the Delhi wire.
Their main goal is to fight the culture war.
And I always thought this was like a weird, like conservative talking point to try to just go against liberal social movements like LGBTQ civil rights.
Right. But now I'm like really thinking about this stuff like, wait, holy crap.
(09:48):
Like there is a huge culture war problem in America that has to do with media consumption.
Right. So during this presidential election, I had a lot of free time.
So I was able to consume a shit ton of media.
Now I was able to bias my YouTube algorithm.
I would like particularly watch MSNBC.
I'd watch Breaking Points.
I'd watch a little bit of Kamala Harris on Call Her Daddy podcast.
(10:10):
I obviously watched Donald Trump on Joe Rogan.
And what I was noticing was that independently watching these two separate spheres of media landscape, they were talking past each other the whole time.
It wasn't like they were having the exact same conversations.
They were having two radically different conversations.
Right.
And then their straw manning of the other side was so evident.
(10:34):
They were not steel manning the best conservative arguments and then trying to show why our way is better.
It was all straw man all the way down.
Right.
And that was more scary to me than Donald Trump or Kamala Harris or the super PACs.
To me, that media landscape is fucking terrifying that we have half of the country that is literally not thinking and having a conversation on the same wavelength.
(10:59):
Than the other part of the country.
You kind of nailed it.
I mean, when you watch the Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, their debate, this is a different country.
This is an absolutely different country.
I mean, those people had respect for each other.
They, you know, although like I, you know, I have my criticisms of both.
Like it was a landscape where I could actually put some faith within the media.
(11:24):
You know, I was young and I think I was too young to actually vote in that election.
But it was something I could trust.
Now I feel I have nowhere to trust.
I have literally nowhere in the media to trust.
How do you feel about any independent journalists on YouTube?
I turn to independent journalists more.
(11:46):
I try to look at how they, you know, how they display the information that they bring forth.
Where do they get their funding from?
Yeah, where they get their funding from.
Also, you know, again, I think everyone would benefit from some Pol Sci 101 and 102 courses just to get a really basic understanding to see.
Well, would you also agree maybe like basic civil understanding?
(12:08):
Oh, well, you mean like civic engagement?
Civic engagement, yeah.
I mean, yeah, America.
The civic exams, yeah.
America needs better civic engagement across the board.
The Vekarama Swami, not to keep bringing him up, but he, when he was running, he, one of his points was that in high school,
in order to graduate, you would have to pass a civics exam.
I mean, it's probably a good idea.
That would be beneficial to us because, you know, where do you vote?
(12:32):
How do you vote?
Who's your representative?
Who's your judge?
You know, what's the highest court in your state and what's the highest court in your federal government?
Like, I feel like everyone, you know, we make immigrants pass exams.
We should make our high school students pass the same exam that immigrants have to pass.
Because if you don't have a basic understanding of what our founding fathers are talking about,
(12:54):
what our government's supposed to stand for and, you know, what your local...
And even if you want to change it, at least understand what's even there first.
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
You know, don't, don't proclaim to me that like, oh, you know, our founding fathers were all about finance and, you know,
and taking land when literally Thomas Jefferson, he wanted to take Virginia and rip off land contracts
(13:18):
because 40 families owned the entire state and have like 99-year land contracts.
Meanwhile, then on the other side, you had John Adams, who specifically was like,
we can't give everyone the right to vote because 1 million people own property, 9 million don't.
And if the 9 million people get the vote, well, then they're going to reappropriate the property.
And, you know, it's just, this is lost.
(13:41):
Like, most people don't even know their local representatives.
So how the hell would they know what the different debates were in America between, you know, Adams and Jefferson?
Yeah.
It's, I agree with that.
I mean, we do need better education on it, absolutely.
Looking at like the arc of history, it seems that we go as civilizations through these like ebbs and flows of power being centralized
(14:04):
and then power being decentralized.
Like, to me, I think of like the Dark Ages, where like the Catholic Church held all the power,
and then you have the Renaissance and like the Scientific Revolution that now decentralizes access to knowledge and power.
And then I think of England becoming overpowered and taking over all the colonies and kind of sucking the lifeblood out.
And then all the colonies coming together and saying enough is enough, no taxation without representation.
(14:29):
And then now we have, you know, American democracy.
To me, I think that this is just a natural arc of human history.
I think power over time becomes centralized and then you need a revolution to then decentralized and not just power, but in all domains of society.
And I think I think private equity firms are this new form of a monarchy and there probably are other groups of people too.
(14:54):
And they are kind of sucking the lifeblood out of everything, making it impossible to own a home, driving up inflation, other things.
So it seems like we're on the precipice of a new revolution of decentralization.
Well, so I guess what you're more focusing on is the globalization and the control that global corporate powers have over the global economy,
(15:21):
our local economies, and now over our political selections.
And I think that's really all in modern sense comes in post-marshal plan following World War II.
But I mean, but even historically, like a lot of the conquering wasn't necessarily for power.
I mean, there's the argument that Cortez, the conqueror of Mexico, he kept conquering because he was indebted and he had to keep paying his debts.
(15:46):
So imagine this man looking for the cities of gold, taking over entire, you know, taking over Mexico.
He was doing alliancing with the Tulas calans to take on the Aztecs and then conquering Mexico.
And one of the driving forces is because he was in debt.
This is not new. This is just evolved.
(16:07):
And now rather than being indebted to Kings, Queens or, you know, some other global company, I mean, because there was global companies back then.
There was the East India Trading Company, which was in modern times known as one of the first, you know, global.
Yeah, exactly. But now I think it becomes a bit more vague, you know, like people don't have civic engagement.
(16:28):
How are they going to understand that five companies are finance industries that don't actually do anything besides owning different companies and trading them?
The way that they find out about that is through this independent media landscape.
And I feel like this is the start.
This is the match that will be in the history books of when social media platforms allowed high quality independent journalists who say we're not going to take any money from private corporations.
(16:53):
We're going to be subscription based.
Like, for example, Breaking Point News, they don't take any money from anyone.
It's just if you want early access to the content, you could pay a subscription.
Otherwise, it's completely free on YouTube and it's the most base news you could possibly digest because they literally have everyone of all political leanings.
(17:14):
They even put on like very like far left people, very far right people, independents.
But the point that I'm trying to make is that now knowledge is becoming decentralized where we had the four, you know, media corporations that would control the whole kind of overton window.
And now we're seeing this explosion of access to knowledge, which I think is a decentralization of knowledge, like the printing press was.
(17:38):
To me, the YouTube, the YouTube, to me, YouTube is the, this is actually a point that Jordan Peterson made, is like the video printing press.
I mean, to an extent I agree, but also we are the kinds of people that are the outliers.
Like, you know, we forget we work with more normal people where...
You're basically saying everyone else has much less access to it.
(18:01):
People like you and I, it's not that they have less access, it's that they're manipulated into it.
I mean, this is kind of what Robert Epstein did.
Like we kind of with Robert Epstein studies, you and I purposefully manipulate our algorithms to try and seek out information, to try and seek out.
Where most people it's the opposite.
Yeah, where most other people it's this, I agree with it.
You know what I mean? Like, I think I told you earlier on.
(18:23):
Google was literally censoring Joe Rogan and Trump and that's literally Joe Rogan's second biggest video.
Yeah.
And if it wasn't for X and X can have very, you know, conservative content, but if it wasn't for X, there would be no social media platform where Joe could have posted, hey, this is literally being...
This is literally being censored.
It wasn't even on the freaking trending and it was literally getting, I think, like 1.5 million an hour views.
(18:48):
I mean, isn't that crazy? A president meets with one of the biggest podcasts. I think he is the biggest podcast in the world, which now overtakes radio and it's not even trending because that's the way the algorithms go.
I mean, it's...
Well, in this election, Google can move up to 16 million votes.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
I mean, Epstein said that, Robert Epstein said what? They moved the last election by four and a half points, which was about what Biden won by.
(19:12):
So, like, you know, I mean, and even right now, the fact that the betting odds are in favor of Trump and those people have money in it, like, I think the Democrats failed.
I think the Democrats failed. I mean, I'm calling this and this is...
Predictions. We're going to end on predictions.
Yeah, we're going to end on predictions.
Go, go.
I think Trump's going to take the election overall. I don't care about the popular vote.
(19:37):
Yeah.
Kamala's definitely getting the popular vote. Yeah, because of cosmopolitanism.
But the Electoral College, by how many points of the Electoral College do you think Trump's going to win by?
I don't know, to be honest.
Imagine it's one point. That would be wild.
Can you imagine the Democrats go out and say it was rigged if it was by one point?
You know, listen, I actually...
Okay, you ready? You're going to say Trump wins. I'm going to say Kamala Harris wins.
(20:01):
You think Harris wins.
The Electoral College, I'm just going to say this prediction.
Okay.
I'm going to immediately say the election was rigged. There's going to be litigations for the next two months.
And we're going to see far-right conservative groups plan marching on the Capitol.
Honestly? I mean...
That's a nightmare I'm trying to avoid, but I'm just putting that prediction out there.
(20:22):
But that nightmare of the far-right movement, if Trump wins, I feel like it'll fuel it.
If Trump loses, it will also fuel it. And I hate to put this on the Democrats.
They need to address this. The extreme moderates of the Democrats need to address this or else they will lose.
I mean, because they have a progressive...
(20:43):
Address what?
To address the fact that they are focused on the extreme moderate rather than understanding...
The wide range of democratic...
Yes. They're isolating their progressives that are more towards their side but not.
Sure.
And they're completely isolated the far-right. So while the Democrats are so center...
(21:06):
Yeah.
They have isolated so many groups that it just to me is unhealthy and I feel like they need to address this.
All right. Well, we're going to see tonight.
We are going to see tonight.
Who knows? We might be singing Oh Canada in the morning.
Oh Canada.
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