September 9, 2026 • 36 mins
Hour 4 of A&G features...
- US Open, Amazon plane crash & something better than happiness
- AI causing extinction in the next decade
- Marco Rubio speaks on Marxism & communism
- Final Thoughts!
Stupid Should Hurt: https://www.armstrongandgetty.com/
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio at the
George Washington Broadcast Center. Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty. Armstrong
and Getty. And now, here's Armstrong and Getty. No, he'll
(00:27):
never get to that. Okay, we can't get to that one. Well,
he'll never get to that one. Well, that one's impossible. Yep. Yep.
Last night's tennis match, one of the biggest upsets in
(00:48):
a long, long time in tennis, and you got an American...
Moving on in the U.S. Open, and we now have
a face of American tennis, which we haven't had in many, many,
many years, as other countries have dominated. This Ben Shelton guy,
who was the eighth seed, knocked off the defending champion,
and this guy who'd won 18 straight Grand Slam matches
and all this different sorts of stuff. A Spaniard. We
don't want a Spaniard out there dominating tennis in our country.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I think Shelton's going to be the first American in
the final in 29 years or something like that.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Yeah, I mean, we haven't had men doing well in tennis, U.S. men,
in a very, very long time. I used to watch
tennis a lot. um and liked it and i wish
i had watched last night it went until 3 30
in the morning there in new york east coast time
3 30 a.m it was four and a half hours
long the fact that it started at 11 30 is
(01:36):
just nuts um i i missed the fact that this
was happening i happened to call a friend of mine
on a completely unrelated matter. Like I call friends about tennis,
but I called a friend of mine and he said, yeah,
I'm watching the tennis match. So tennis match, what tennis match?
So somehow he had been aware that this was going
to happen. Uh, and incredibly exciting. Like that point just there,
(02:01):
it was back and forth with like spinning around and
diving and running as fast as you can and hitting
over your head and all kinds of crazy stuff like that. Anyway,
you either like Tennessee or don't. So the story on
this Ben Shelton guy is kind of interesting. And this
is where I'm setting up the political angle because everything
has to have a political angle, right?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Of Joe Scarborough from Morning Joe today. So this Ben
Shelton guy, it's a pretty cool story because they come
here from Sierra Leone. His dad comes here as an immigrant.
Can't find work, gets work at a local tennis club
like it's a maintenance guy or whatever. And because he's
(02:42):
working there, his kid gets to play tennis there for free.
And it turns out to be a really good tennis player.
And it's the only way they could afford. And then
he gets swept up in the world of professional tennis.
Nice story. But, of course, Trump hates that sort of thing,
as described here by Joe Scarborough.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
And here we are. He's now going into the semifinals.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Of the U.S. Open.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Willie, that is the American dream. A lot of people
in the White House don't understand it. I'm not getting
political here. They don't like these stories. They don't understand
these stories. They think these people from other countries should
be kept out.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
No, no. This is America. This is what makes.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Our hearts swell with pride to see that.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
In America, anything is possible. You're right. That straw man
beat him. Kill him. You're right. Straw man. Trump supporters
all across America. So angry that this kid won this
tennis match last night because his dad was an immigrant.
Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Is that
(03:48):
where we are on our conversations about this sort of thing? Yeah.
Everything's clickbait. Everything's rage bait. Oh, my God. Setting up
straw man and kicking the hell out of them. That's
what you think of. They're showing the tennis highlight on
a show there in New York. It's an exciting match.
And you turn it into, of course, Trump saw that
and hated that because he hates the idea of any
(04:10):
immigrant family doing well. What are you talking about? Another
successful immigrant. Damn it. What are you talking about? I
thought we'd moved past the idea that if you hate
illegal immigration like almost everybody in America does, that that
means you hate the whole immigrant story and all immigrants.
(04:31):
I thought we'd moved past that idiotic conversation.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Boy, I despise it when people come to this country
because they perceive it to be the land of opportunity,
and then they succeed in their dreams and love the
country more than about anybody.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
I hate those stories. You're right, Joe Scarborough.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
You found us out. That's how pinheaded their viewers are.
What do they got, 30 viewers at this point?
Speaker 1 (04:55):
How's he make some damn much money? Wow. My jaw
was open as he was saying, really? That's what you're
going to go with? Yeah. Just childlike. Yeah. Terrible.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
A couple of stories apropos of nothing, but we talked
about them yesterday. Um, the Amazon plane that crashed in
Miami and squashed those poor people in a van.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Um, the, uh, the black box. Sucky way to go.
Oh my God. It just, it's just, it's one in
a zillion. Right. It's like getting hit by lightning. Well,
the NTSB is, uh, really confused. I assume they're confused.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Um, and anxious to interview the pilots, which they're going
to do, I believe, today, because the black box showed
that the Boeing 767 speed brakes, which are panels that
create aerodynamic drag when you land, they were not deployed,
and neither were the thrust reversers. which redirect air to
(05:53):
slow the plane while it is landing. The aircraft's wheel
brakes were applied 23 seconds before the end of the
black box's recording, but then those brakes were released a
few seconds later, and the throttles increased to levels consistent
with go-around thrust, meaning aborting the landing and saying, we've
got to take off again.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
He was so far past where he was supposed to land,
you could have seen that he believed that he would
have done that. We got to touch and go. We
got to touch and go. Right. So the question is,
was he on his phone or something and didn't know
what he was supposed to do? Or did he hit
all those buttons and the plane didn't react to the buttons?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah. Yeah. It's a real head scratcher at this point.
The flight's captain, 55 years old, certified to fly the
jet in May of this year. He had about 7,100
flying hours. The first officer, 37 years old, certified last year,
had 2,600 flying.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Hours as of last month. They're going to interview them today.
So who knows? Who knows? Something went terribly wrong. I
bet they'll be able to figure it out, though, don't
you think? Of course, and it's just, I mean, if
he says, yeah, I pressed the buttons, is there a
way to figure out whether they pressed the buttons or
not or pulled the levers or whatever there?
Speaker 2 (07:06):
You are well beyond my expertise on this topic. I
found this very interesting, totally different topic. A great piece
by Scott Morrison in the Journal.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
A couple of.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Years ago, China decided to play the hard ass. On
the rare earth minerals, specifically or most notably some of
the rare earth stuff that's used in magnets and high-tech pursuits, right?
During the Trump administration, I'm sorry, I meant to explain.
Scott Morrison was the former prime minister of Australia when
(07:40):
Trump was in office the first time.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Did not know that.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
But so he and Trump and some of our other
allies had a bunch of meetings about how vulnerable we
were to China's monopoly on all of this stuff. And
they started to work toward a world where we had
different supply chains and capacity to develop our own or
working with our allies to do that. And then a
(08:04):
couple of years ago, as I started to say, when
China decided to play the H.A., and enact all those
import controls, it alerted everyone to, uh-oh, we need to
supercharge our efforts. And he's saying it's yielded some really
(08:26):
good fruit so far, and that China made a huge miscalculation.
Because like Iran closing the strait there for a while,
and it's mostly closed now, made the rest of the
world realize, all right, we can't be vulnerable to this
sort of thing. Now all of the Western world has
realized we can't be vulnerable to China, and now we
are supercharging our efforts to do those things, to get
(08:49):
those minerals elsewhere. And in essence, he's saying China played
their hand way too early. They alerted the world that
we need to get smart, and the world is getting smart.
So that's one good thing the Trump administration has done, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
If he'd let immigrant tennis players in. Oh, for God's sake.
Let's see. What time is it?
Speaker 2 (09:10):
All right.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
One more.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
One more. I found this super interesting. Because I think
about this sort of thing a lot. There's something better
than happiness, writes Mark Edmondson, who's a professor and author.
And he's talking about retirement kind of, mostly, I guess.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
But he talks about retirement. Labor Day is here.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
You already missed the lapping waves and waves and subtle breezes.
Maybe you're missing the forest where you can think your
gentle thoughts in a green shade. You found what therapists
and yoga teachers call your happy place and how that's
all lovely.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
I don't like forests because I can't get a good signal.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Keep track of my doom scroll. How many people clicked
on my tweet.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Right. Yeah, that's.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Very frustrating.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
But he says, most of us think the goal of
life is to work hard, succeed, and live softly for
the rest of our days. Get on a sailboat to nowhere.
Go to the south of France and sample every wine-paired dish.
Float from one music festival to the next.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Then he cites some.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Philosophers who agree with him and some great authors of history.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
I'm not one of those people, by the way. Yeah,
I really enjoy that sort of stuff, watching the birds. Oh,
I could do it for hours.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
But then he points out there are others who think
that happiness of this sort, if not to be avoided altogether,
then it needs to be taken in guarded doses.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
He says, I'm with him.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
The German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, warned us that human beings
have two main enemies.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
The evildoers and your neighbors.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Bears. Pain and bears. No, pain and boredom. We use
our intellects to guard ourselves from pain. And this is
so good because I've seen this. Once we've escaped pain,
the mind keeps worrying on, demanding new objectives, new distractions.
So off we go into folly. We gamble and often lose.
(11:06):
We have affairs and fracture our marriages.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
We provoke quarrels.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
By their nature, our minds cannot rest. The problem with
that happy life we're pining for is that it will
inevitably breed boredom, and boredom begets trouble. And Schopenhauer wrote
that against boredom, a man has, quote, a great many
fancied remedies, balls, theaters, parties, cards, gambling, horses, women, drinking, traveling.
(11:30):
These are temporary. Soon we're bored again. And so his solution,
and I find this very compelling, find something to occupy
your intellect. Whether you're collecting coins or stamps, learning about
insects and birds, acquire languages, read good books, summarize them
in journals, do not let the mind succumb to idleness.
Most scenes that people associate with happiness, the golden beach,
(11:51):
the splashing waterfall, are boredom traps.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
I don't, because I've lived this, I got to live
this when I was younger. Not everybody does, because you
have kids and have a normal life. I have no
interest in sitting on a beach or any of those
things that you just described. At some point when I
have the time. Because it's a dead end, man. It's
a dead end. It wears off really fast. Right.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Right. And a guy like me probably loves it because,
you know, believe it or not, we work really hard
at this job.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
And so it's great to have a break and clear
the mind.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
And then he gets into the female.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
I have no breaks currently, but I was thinking about
back in the day when I didn't have kids and
I had money and I got an easy job. I
get to do whatever I want. And that's a dry
hole for happiness, I can tell you. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
And then he gets into the female version of it.
That's pretty interesting, too. It's a little old-timey because, you know,
he was kicking it in, what, the last century?
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Pretty new problem in the history of Homo sapiens, though.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
To ever be in a situation where you could get bored,
where you're not scrambling every day to come up with
some food, or you died about the time you quit working. Mm-hmm.
Just super, super briefly, then we need to take a break.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Simone de Beauvoir also argues for activity over passive forms
of happiness. And she's talking about how some women, their
most dangerous temptation is what she called being in itself.
People who cultivate like the standard of perfection. They strive
to show others that they are complete and whole and
fit and beautiful and blah, blah, blah. There's nothing wrong
(13:30):
with being fit. But this is a condition, she argues,
especially tempted for women and girls. Everyone encourages them to
be pretty, self-contained, perfect. The girl must make herself object.
She must therefore renounce her autonomy. She's treated like a
living doll, and freedom is denied her. Anyway, food for thought.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
The term living doll reminded me of sex dolls, which
reminded me of, we were going to talk about that today,
and I think I'm going to put it in the
One More Thing podcast. An interesting, serious article about where
sex dolls are headed. along with AI, for the One
More Thing podcast. Did you know that if you subscribed
to Armstrong and Getty On Demand, One More Thing auto-downloads? Effortless.
(14:10):
Speaking of AI, it's in the news today. We got
a couple of texts about that topic with the guy
who quit Anthropic because he's scared. If you haven't heard that,
stay tuned, among other things, on the way. Armstrong and Getty.
The CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amadei, has said he believes
we should have policies in place to pace the development
(14:31):
of AI.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
If you think of the extent to which AI can
make individualized propaganda, can break into any computer system in
the world, can, you know, surveil everyone in a population,
it's really scary and we have.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
To stop it. So cynics say that's a ploy. What
are we talking about here? Guy who worked for Anthropic,
which is the leading AI company in the world right now,
quit because he said, yeah, in the hallways, they're having
conversations about the fact that this could kill everybody on
Earth by the end of the decade. And I feel
(15:08):
like this, we should stop. He also worked for OpenAI.
He had quit OpenAI because he thought they didn't care
enough about the damage that AI was going to do.
So we went big on this in hour one. If
you want to hear the whole discussion and go through
all the tweets from this guy who quit Anthropic, you
can catch it in hour one on the podcast, Armstrong
and Getty on Demand. His name is Jacob Coxon, 27-year-old
(15:32):
researcher working at two of the biggest companies in the world.
And he argues that both labs are racing towards self-improving
superintelligence that they don't know how to control and that
insiders privately treat extinction as a live possibility by the
end of the decade. Now, a couple of things from...
(15:54):
Joe's question is a bad one. It's a good question.
This decade or the next decade? I mean, they're both bad.
Or like a new decade starting right now. Or does
he mean the 2020s? Because that's only three years. Are
we talking three, three and a half years or three
and a quarter years or 13 and a quarter years?
Because I got a budget accordingly. Yeah, for planning purposes.
So there's that question. There's also a number of people
(16:17):
have texted, kill us how? Human beings will be extinct
in 10 years. How?
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Rampaging robot dogs with guns. Shooting lasers out of their eyes.
Biological agents, electrocutions, boilings.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
I don't know. Anyway, to the... Other part of it,
people who think Darius Amodi, who is seen by most
people who know him as the guy with a conscience
in the world of AI, that, of course, he and
his people keep saying that they want the rules to
get in place while they're ahead as the number one
company in the world. So they want the guidelines to
(16:57):
be put in place while they're number one. Everybody who
knows him says he's this kind of guy that he
actually does care about this. I don't know. There's a
lot of money overwhelmed.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
So Marco Rubio and I share one characteristic. We're both
handsome Cubans.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
No, wait, no. We both hate Marxists. Stay with us.
Armstrong and Getty. My head is bleeding, which is not
a good look. Hey, Jack. It's fine. How do you do?
Can't help but notice the open wound. I was.
I was at my parents' house, and they have a minivan,
and I was getting something out of the back, and
(17:33):
I bent over too soon as the van lid opened
up and hit my head on that sharp latch thing. Oh, no!
I don't know how many times I've done that. They
need to make the latch on vehicles less sharp, because
it's the most likely thing to hit your head on.
Is there a way to make it less sharp? Anyway.
This is your new cause. Give generously. It just did
(17:53):
to my head.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
So Marco Rubio and I, and Jack for that matter,
share something in common. We despise communists, Marxism. Coming up,
the most dangerous intellectual of the 20th century. Not the
most famous or the most read. You probably never heard
his name. But in terms of damage done, I would argue, well,
not more dangerous than Marx because he used Marx's ideas.
(18:16):
But one of the most damaging people who's ever lived
on Earth.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
We will explain. He's as quoted as Marx, but people
don't know it. Yeah, yeah, indeed.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
His marching orders are absolutely the marching orders of the
degenerate woke left.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
By the way, before we start Marco Rubio yesterday talking
about communism, it looked to me like he was speaking
off the top of his head.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Which is pretty impressive, given what you're about to hear.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Yeah, he's given a speech at a forum. I can't
remember which one. It doesn't really matter. But will Marco
speak for himself?
Speaker 5 (18:52):
I'm going to give a speech I've never given before.
I hate Marxism and I hate communism. And I hate
it because everywhere in the world it's ever been tried,
it's led to tyranny and poverty and exile and oppression.
And there's a mistake that people have made. Maybe some
of us, maybe myself, have been guilty of it. And
that is the belief that somehow Marxism is dead. That
(19:14):
Marxism is now something that crazy people at the faculty
club at some university talk about, but it isn't really
alive anymore. The other mistake we make is that Marxism
is some sort of economic theory. Neither one of those
things is true. Marxism is not dead and it's not
an economic theory.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
What's happened is that Marxists.
Speaker 5 (19:33):
Realize what the track record of Marxism is around the world,
so they don't want to call themselves Marxists anymore. They
have found new titles, things that frankly sound benign and
you almost feel guilty being against, social justice. Who can
be against social justice? But that's the terminology they come
up with, equity. equity, who can be against equity?
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Go on Marco, you got a head of steam.
Speaker 5 (19:58):
But the truth of the matter is that, and this
is not about economics solely, the old Marxism was the
argument that the capitalist system, the whole system, was flawed
and rigged and it divided people. It said the world
and society and capitalist societies are divided between two groups.
You have one group which owns the businesses, they're the oppressors,
and you have the workers, everybody else, that group are
(20:21):
the victims. And that's how communism works. It creates a
victim class, it creates an oppressor class, and then it
says the only way to fix this is we have
to overthrow this system.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
We need a revolution. We need a government to take over.
Speaker 5 (20:35):
And make everything fair, and we need a government that
goes to the former oppressors and makes them apologize for
being an oppressor, be reeducated into responsible people, and pay
a penance for what they've done.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
That's the old Marxism. And it sounds familiar. Take it home, Marco.
Take it home.
Speaker 5 (20:54):
Because today, we are being asked to divide. First of all,
we're being told that America in and of itself... was
founded on racism, prejudice, and evil. Not that we have
a history of racism or prejudice, but that we were
founded on, that that's the foundation of our society, that
we are irredeemably broken in our history.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
The system, that the system is rigged.
Speaker 5 (21:15):
Not about capitalism, the system is set up to benefit
the oppressor versus the victim.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
And who's the oppressor?
Speaker 5 (21:21):
The oppressor, basically, if you listen to some of these people,
is anyone who is a white, male, heterosexual. and everybody
else i guess myself included being a cuban-american is a
victim and the only answer is for government to step
forward and create equity and make things.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Fair that's pretty good off the top your head which
is sure look like he was speaking and i uh...
have uh... visions of a marco rubio rama manual debate
for the presidency that would make our last several rounds
of debates seem extra, extra ridiculous. Ah, yes, I would agree. Yes.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Who's got a better golf game, for instance? Perhaps the
low moment in the history of the republic. So Marxism
made a couple of adjustments in the 20th century. Number one,
the workers of the World Unite didn't work. And so
they decided, all right, Anybody with any gripe of the
world unite, and we will join with them in their
(22:27):
gripe to overthrow the system, no matter how disparate or
oppositional it is. That's how you get queers for Palestine,
which is just an absurdity. But, you know, fundamentalist Muslims
want to overthrow the system, and, like, really angry sexual
minority types want to overthrow the system, so let's work together.
That's the whole of it, okay? And then the second adjustment...
(22:50):
came courtesy of Antonio Gramsci, who, and I love this
Twitter account, it's one of my favorites, Krzysztof of Poland.
His last name has roughly 37 consonants in it, but
he's absolutely a wonderful writer, and I'm going to quote
him now. Gramsci was the most dangerous intellectual of the
20th century, not the most famous, not the most read,
(23:12):
the most dangerous, and the most consequential, because he was
the one who figured out why the revolution kept failing
and what to do instead. This is the man who
invented the long march through the institutions, which if you've
studied communism, Marxism, is a familiar phrase, even if you
don't know quite what it means. But everything that followed,
(23:34):
and this may be familiar to some of you, the
Frankfurt School, the Fabian Society's operational model, the captured university,
the HR department enforcing approved speech, they're all downstream of
what he wrote in a prison cell. Between 1929 and 1935,
he was being held in Mussolini's Italy as a communist.
(23:55):
So his central question was, why hasn't the revolution happened,
the glorious revolution?
Speaker 1 (24:00):
The working class was supposed to rise.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
The contradictions of capitalism were supposed to produce the revolution,
but they hadn't, not in the West. And Gramsci's answer
was precise and devastating. It was because the ruling class
does not maintain power through force alone. It maintains power
through cultural hegemony, control of the ideas, the values, the
(24:22):
frameworks that we use to understand our world. So the
worker who accepts that the existing order is simply how
things are will not revolt, regardless of if he's exploited.
So the revolution requires cultural change first. And the instrument
to do that was the long march through the institutions.
Not storming a barricade. The school.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
The university. The media. The judiciary. The civil service. The
cultural establishment. Every institution.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
That a civilization uses to transmit its values to the
next generation.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Capture these and.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Fill them with people who share the counter-hegemonic project and
the cultural assumptions that maintain the existing order gradually dissolve.
No more barricades, no visible moment of rupture, just the
slow replacement of one cultural hegemony with another. Hence, friends,
(25:22):
The idea that showing up on time is white supremacy
and racism is one of the most serious charges you
can level in America. Working hard, saying America is the
land of opportunity. This is all racism. You know, there
are a thousand examples. You've seen it. Good manners are racism.
Asking somebody to hand in their homework on time, that's racism.
(25:43):
That's why they say this stuff. They're trying to dismantle
the norms of our civilization through long march through the institutions.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Well, some of those examples you gave there are obviously
ridiculous and haven't caught on yet with most people. But
in general, the general United States is a bad country
and we're the cause of all bad things. It has
caught on and it is now the culture. And I
read that thing, too. And what I thought was so interesting, well, one,
it's he's been successful. Him and his crowd have been successful.
(26:12):
They've already done it. It's why you're so up against
it if you talk to somebody that's come through our
current public schools and colleges. They're in that position he
was trying to get rid of where, well, they just
feel like, well, yeah, because everything's this way and always
has been this way. I mean, it's so... intellectually and
(26:34):
culturally a part of their world, that the United States
is a bad country and capitalism is bad and all
white men are racist and all that sort of stuff.
But you can't even, you can't hope to have an
argument with them. Right, right.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
So Christoph points out the educational capture was the masterpiece,
controlling the curriculum. And if you control the curriculum, you
control the categories of thought available to the next generation.
And it's not as simple as just telling them what
to conclude. You shape the questions that they think to ask.
You shape what they consider obvious, like Jack just pointed out.
(27:10):
You shape what they consider unthinkable. The generation educated after
the Long March does not need to be told what
to think.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
It thinks what it was formed to think. You know
people like this. And experiences that thinking as their own.
I know people like this. Yeah, they have been so
into it for so long, surrounded by people who also
are so into it. It's just like it's like a
fish doesn't always wet. I mean, it's just it's their
whole world. Yeah. And and and it's disturbing because, like
(27:42):
I said, you can't sit down with one of these
people and change their mind. It's going to take a
long march through the institution, the other direction to turn
this around. And Gramsci, you have to salute his brilliance
because he also theorized in his writings from prison. What
he called the organic intellectual, the person who translates the
(28:06):
theoretical framework into stories and assumptions that circulate throughout the
culture but don't even appear ideological. The film that makes
the existing order seem absurd. The journalist who frames every
story within the approved assumptions. Gramsci understood that culture is
politics by other means and that the side that controls
the culture wins regardless of who wins the elections. And,
(28:29):
you know, Christoph addresses whether it's a conspiracy theory. I mean,
it is in a way, but it's, as I often say,
these people wrote books.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Their names are on the spines. They said precisely what
they wanted to do and how they were going to
do it. Now they're doing it. But it's a published, documented,
widely taught strategy that the left implemented consciously across the
entire Western world. The 1968 generation put it into practice
in the universities. They became the professors, the journalists, the
civil servants, the judges, the HR directors of the decades
(29:01):
that followed. And the march took 50 years, but it works.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
Yeah. It worked. You know, as soon as I read this,
I thought, you know, a smaller version of this for
conservatives was the way, and I think they were using
this phrase, used the Federalist Society with the long march
through the judges and the judicial to get Roe versus
Wade overturned. They had this goal decades ago to start
(29:26):
with judges at the very bottom and work so you
get to the point that it's just so much of
the judicial branch that you could get to where Roe
versus Wade over. They did the same thing. It really worked.
but you have to be incredibly patient. You have to
play a long game.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Boy, and we're up against it now because I have
it on very, very good authority that the law schools
of America are practically exclusively left.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
I mean, left, left. We're going to be talking to
Tim Sandefur later this week about a different topic. But yeah,
we can ask him about that because he's been explaining
that to us for years now. And that's horrifying. It'll
take a long march the other direction to turn that around.
And all those lawyers that graduate and they're going out
into the world doing their thing with a completely different
(30:16):
worldview than you've got. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
Kristoff's last couple of sentences are, the countermarch has begun.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
It just doesn't have a name yet. And he's right.
Awareness is up.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
I read this morning that the number of kids homeschooled
in New York has increased.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
By 200% in the last 10, 12 years. People are
becoming aware, but boy, it's going to be a long fight.
That's fine. I got nothing better to do. That was
very clever on that dude's part. Brilliant man. Absolutely brilliant.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
He understood humans and societies and cultures.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
I mean, brilliant. Evil. Completely evil, but brilliant. Yeah. Any
thoughts on that? You can text or email. We will
finish strong next. Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
An American Airlines passenger was duct taped after hurling racist
and homophobic slurs during a midair meltdown.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
And for anyone wondering, I did make my connection. So
here's something that will make you unhappy. Seems to be
our goal. I was talking to an insurance agent the
other day. Car insurance, I'm talking here. My car insurance
is just insane. This is a California thing. And what
(31:35):
I'm about to tell you might be exclusive to California, too,
because every state has its own laws around insurance. But
my insurance is the same part of it. It's just
I got too many vehicles on my policy. So he's
explaining to me, this insurance agent, about how we socialize
car insurance and why. The idea being, if somebody got
(31:56):
a drunk driving... Oh, somebody on my policy had a
wreck and how much it was going to increase the
cost of the insurance, even though it was a minor
fender bender with like no fault. If somebody got a
drunk driving, their current insurance would be like $ 50, 000 a year.
(32:19):
for the insurance company to be able to do it,
to want to insure them. And the state of California decided, well,
the problem with that is what they'll do is nobody
can afford that. So they'll just drive without car insurance,
and that would be worse. So what we'll do is
we'll spread that $ 50, 000 out among all the other people
who don't have any problems on their records. So that
(32:40):
that person can afford their insurance who got a drunk driving.
And that's why everybody's insurance is so high with this
theory that, well, we don't want to like really punish
the person that. you know, whatever, you weren't paying attention,
you were staring at your phone, you ran somebody over,
or you got a drunk driving or whatever, we'll socialize
those costs so that we can guarantee that they can
(33:02):
afford their insurance. How do you like that, bull-ass?
Speaker 2 (33:07):
We'll add in practically uninsured drivers, including.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Many, many, many hundreds of thousands of illegals.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Because there's a state program in Calunicornia, the California Low-Cost
Auto Insurance Program, Where normally you've got to carry at
least $ 15, 000 in property damage liability, $ 15, 000. But under this
state-created program, qualifying drivers can just carry $ 3, 000 per accident.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
See? Not $ 3, 000 per car or whatever. $ 3, 000 total. Well,
I'll save my conclusion to this for my final thought. Oh,
something to look forward to. Oh, boy. Creepy. I don't
want this one. Now we have far stabbier introductions than
(33:59):
this one. Here's your host for Final Thoughts, Joe Getty.
Let's get a final thought from the whole crew to
wrap up the day. Michelangelo, what's your final thought?
Speaker 2 (34:06):
I got to start saving my pennies to get that
new foldable iPhone.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
So $ 2, 000. I think I can draw, you know, I
got to figure out something. I'll give up electricity. I'm
looking forward to the unveiling of it if it seems impressive.
Katie Green, our esteemed newswoman, has a final thought. Katie?
I'm thinking the same thing, Michael. I think I might
start selling foot pics. Because you want the new foldable iPhone. Yeah,
just step in butter once a week, sell some feet pics.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Butter?
Speaker 4 (34:35):
What?
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Is that a thing? I do like butter. Jack, a
final thought for us? Here's what I think you should do.
If somebody does something that makes their car insurance too
expensive for them, then I guess they don't get to drive.
I guess, oh no, here come the consequences of my actions.
I hate when that happens. And I, who haven't done
anything wrong, don't pay for your mistake. Yeah, yeah. I
(34:57):
hate to close on.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
A serious note, but the era where the U.S. was
impregnable and didn't really have to worry about much at all,
it's over.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Clearly. Yeah, we've got to be on our toes for
a bunch of different stuff. On your toes, you just
dipped in butter for your foot pics.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
I know, and if anybody would like pictures of my toes,
drop me a note. We'll see if we can work
something out.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Got to admit, Katie, I don't know what your husband
thinks of this, but if you could make enough money
off of feet pics to buy the new foldable iPhone,
that would be an interesting story. He hates the idea,
but I'm still pushing for it. I think I would
give the thumbs up. Armstrong and Getty wrapping up another
grueling four-hour workday.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
My wife has lovely feet, too. So many people, thanks
so little time. Go to armstrongandgetty.com. Pick up some Armstrong
and Getty swag. What do you have for your favorite
A & G fan?
Speaker 1 (35:41):
Maybe it's even you. T-shirt, hat, hoodie. I wouldn't tell
my kid when they got older. We will see you tomorrow.
God bless America. Armstrong and Getty. Jacob Coxon is getting
a lot of attention for his doomerism about AI today.
(36:01):
And it just replied, sleep with one eye open. Put
your feet far enough apart that you can stick your
head down between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye.
Armstrong and Getty.
Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio at the
George Washington Broadcast Center. Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty. Armstrong
and Getty. And now, here's Armstrong and Getty. No, he'll
(00:27):
never get to that. Okay, we can't get to that one. Well,
he'll never get to that one. Well, that one's impossible. Yep. Yep.
Last night's tennis match, one of the biggest upsets in
(00:48):
a long, long time in tennis, and you got an American...
Moving on in the U.S. Open, and we now have
a face of American tennis, which we haven't had in many, many,
many years, as other countries have dominated. This Ben Shelton guy,
who was the eighth seed, knocked off the defending champion,
and this guy who'd won 18 straight Grand Slam matches
and all this different sorts of stuff. A Spaniard. We
don't want a Spaniard out there dominating tennis in our country.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I think Shelton's going to be the first American in
the final in 29 years or something like that.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Yeah, I mean, we haven't had men doing well in tennis, U.S. men,
in a very, very long time. I used to watch
tennis a lot. um and liked it and i wish
i had watched last night it went until 3 30
in the morning there in new york east coast time
3 30 a.m it was four and a half hours
long the fact that it started at 11 30 is
(01:36):
just nuts um i i missed the fact that this
was happening i happened to call a friend of mine
on a completely unrelated matter. Like I call friends about tennis,
but I called a friend of mine and he said, yeah,
I'm watching the tennis match. So tennis match, what tennis match?
So somehow he had been aware that this was going
to happen. Uh, and incredibly exciting. Like that point just there,
(02:01):
it was back and forth with like spinning around and
diving and running as fast as you can and hitting
over your head and all kinds of crazy stuff like that. Anyway,
you either like Tennessee or don't. So the story on
this Ben Shelton guy is kind of interesting. And this
is where I'm setting up the political angle because everything
has to have a political angle, right?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Of Joe Scarborough from Morning Joe today. So this Ben
Shelton guy, it's a pretty cool story because they come
here from Sierra Leone. His dad comes here as an immigrant.
Can't find work, gets work at a local tennis club
like it's a maintenance guy or whatever. And because he's
(02:42):
working there, his kid gets to play tennis there for free.
And it turns out to be a really good tennis player.
And it's the only way they could afford. And then
he gets swept up in the world of professional tennis.
Nice story. But, of course, Trump hates that sort of thing,
as described here by Joe Scarborough.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
And here we are. He's now going into the semifinals.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Of the U.S. Open.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Willie, that is the American dream. A lot of people
in the White House don't understand it. I'm not getting
political here. They don't like these stories. They don't understand
these stories. They think these people from other countries should
be kept out.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
No, no. This is America. This is what makes.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Our hearts swell with pride to see that.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
In America, anything is possible. You're right. That straw man
beat him. Kill him. You're right. Straw man. Trump supporters
all across America. So angry that this kid won this
tennis match last night because his dad was an immigrant.
Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Is that
(03:48):
where we are on our conversations about this sort of thing? Yeah.
Everything's clickbait. Everything's rage bait. Oh, my God. Setting up
straw man and kicking the hell out of them. That's
what you think of. They're showing the tennis highlight on
a show there in New York. It's an exciting match.
And you turn it into, of course, Trump saw that
and hated that because he hates the idea of any
(04:10):
immigrant family doing well. What are you talking about? Another
successful immigrant. Damn it. What are you talking about? I
thought we'd moved past the idea that if you hate
illegal immigration like almost everybody in America does, that that
means you hate the whole immigrant story and all immigrants.
(04:31):
I thought we'd moved past that idiotic conversation.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Boy, I despise it when people come to this country
because they perceive it to be the land of opportunity,
and then they succeed in their dreams and love the
country more than about anybody.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
I hate those stories. You're right, Joe Scarborough.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
You found us out. That's how pinheaded their viewers are.
What do they got, 30 viewers at this point?
Speaker 1 (04:55):
How's he make some damn much money? Wow. My jaw
was open as he was saying, really? That's what you're
going to go with? Yeah. Just childlike. Yeah. Terrible.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
A couple of stories apropos of nothing, but we talked
about them yesterday. Um, the Amazon plane that crashed in
Miami and squashed those poor people in a van.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Um, the, uh, the black box. Sucky way to go.
Oh my God. It just, it's just, it's one in
a zillion. Right. It's like getting hit by lightning. Well,
the NTSB is, uh, really confused. I assume they're confused.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Um, and anxious to interview the pilots, which they're going
to do, I believe, today, because the black box showed
that the Boeing 767 speed brakes, which are panels that
create aerodynamic drag when you land, they were not deployed,
and neither were the thrust reversers. which redirect air to
(05:53):
slow the plane while it is landing. The aircraft's wheel
brakes were applied 23 seconds before the end of the
black box's recording, but then those brakes were released a
few seconds later, and the throttles increased to levels consistent
with go-around thrust, meaning aborting the landing and saying, we've
got to take off again.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
He was so far past where he was supposed to land,
you could have seen that he believed that he would
have done that. We got to touch and go. We
got to touch and go. Right. So the question is,
was he on his phone or something and didn't know
what he was supposed to do? Or did he hit
all those buttons and the plane didn't react to the buttons?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah. Yeah. It's a real head scratcher at this point.
The flight's captain, 55 years old, certified to fly the
jet in May of this year. He had about 7,100
flying hours. The first officer, 37 years old, certified last year,
had 2,600 flying.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Hours as of last month. They're going to interview them today.
So who knows? Who knows? Something went terribly wrong. I
bet they'll be able to figure it out, though, don't
you think? Of course, and it's just, I mean, if
he says, yeah, I pressed the buttons, is there a
way to figure out whether they pressed the buttons or
not or pulled the levers or whatever there?
Speaker 2 (07:06):
You are well beyond my expertise on this topic. I
found this very interesting, totally different topic. A great piece
by Scott Morrison in the Journal.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
A couple of.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Years ago, China decided to play the hard ass. On
the rare earth minerals, specifically or most notably some of
the rare earth stuff that's used in magnets and high-tech pursuits, right?
During the Trump administration, I'm sorry, I meant to explain.
Scott Morrison was the former prime minister of Australia when
(07:40):
Trump was in office the first time.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Did not know that.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
But so he and Trump and some of our other
allies had a bunch of meetings about how vulnerable we
were to China's monopoly on all of this stuff. And
they started to work toward a world where we had
different supply chains and capacity to develop our own or
working with our allies to do that. And then a
(08:04):
couple of years ago, as I started to say, when
China decided to play the H.A., and enact all those
import controls, it alerted everyone to, uh-oh, we need to
supercharge our efforts. And he's saying it's yielded some really
(08:26):
good fruit so far, and that China made a huge miscalculation.
Because like Iran closing the strait there for a while,
and it's mostly closed now, made the rest of the
world realize, all right, we can't be vulnerable to this
sort of thing. Now all of the Western world has
realized we can't be vulnerable to China, and now we
are supercharging our efforts to do those things, to get
(08:49):
those minerals elsewhere. And in essence, he's saying China played
their hand way too early. They alerted the world that
we need to get smart, and the world is getting smart.
So that's one good thing the Trump administration has done, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
If he'd let immigrant tennis players in. Oh, for God's sake.
Let's see. What time is it?
Speaker 2 (09:10):
All right.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
One more.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
One more. I found this super interesting. Because I think
about this sort of thing a lot. There's something better
than happiness, writes Mark Edmondson, who's a professor and author.
And he's talking about retirement kind of, mostly, I guess.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
But he talks about retirement. Labor Day is here.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
You already missed the lapping waves and waves and subtle breezes.
Maybe you're missing the forest where you can think your
gentle thoughts in a green shade. You found what therapists
and yoga teachers call your happy place and how that's
all lovely.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
I don't like forests because I can't get a good signal.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Keep track of my doom scroll. How many people clicked
on my tweet.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Right. Yeah, that's.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Very frustrating.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
But he says, most of us think the goal of
life is to work hard, succeed, and live softly for
the rest of our days. Get on a sailboat to nowhere.
Go to the south of France and sample every wine-paired dish.
Float from one music festival to the next.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Then he cites some.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Philosophers who agree with him and some great authors of history.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
I'm not one of those people, by the way. Yeah,
I really enjoy that sort of stuff, watching the birds. Oh,
I could do it for hours.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
But then he points out there are others who think
that happiness of this sort, if not to be avoided altogether,
then it needs to be taken in guarded doses.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
He says, I'm with him.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
The German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, warned us that human beings
have two main enemies.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
The evildoers and your neighbors.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Bears. Pain and bears. No, pain and boredom. We use
our intellects to guard ourselves from pain. And this is
so good because I've seen this. Once we've escaped pain,
the mind keeps worrying on, demanding new objectives, new distractions.
So off we go into folly. We gamble and often lose.
(11:06):
We have affairs and fracture our marriages.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
We provoke quarrels.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
By their nature, our minds cannot rest. The problem with
that happy life we're pining for is that it will
inevitably breed boredom, and boredom begets trouble. And Schopenhauer wrote
that against boredom, a man has, quote, a great many
fancied remedies, balls, theaters, parties, cards, gambling, horses, women, drinking, traveling.
(11:30):
These are temporary. Soon we're bored again. And so his solution,
and I find this very compelling, find something to occupy
your intellect. Whether you're collecting coins or stamps, learning about
insects and birds, acquire languages, read good books, summarize them
in journals, do not let the mind succumb to idleness.
Most scenes that people associate with happiness, the golden beach,
(11:51):
the splashing waterfall, are boredom traps.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
I don't, because I've lived this, I got to live
this when I was younger. Not everybody does, because you
have kids and have a normal life. I have no
interest in sitting on a beach or any of those
things that you just described. At some point when I
have the time. Because it's a dead end, man. It's
a dead end. It wears off really fast. Right.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Right. And a guy like me probably loves it because,
you know, believe it or not, we work really hard
at this job.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
And so it's great to have a break and clear
the mind.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
And then he gets into the female.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
I have no breaks currently, but I was thinking about
back in the day when I didn't have kids and
I had money and I got an easy job. I
get to do whatever I want. And that's a dry
hole for happiness, I can tell you. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
And then he gets into the female version of it.
That's pretty interesting, too. It's a little old-timey because, you know,
he was kicking it in, what, the last century?
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Pretty new problem in the history of Homo sapiens, though.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
To ever be in a situation where you could get bored,
where you're not scrambling every day to come up with
some food, or you died about the time you quit working. Mm-hmm.
Just super, super briefly, then we need to take a break.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Simone de Beauvoir also argues for activity over passive forms
of happiness. And she's talking about how some women, their
most dangerous temptation is what she called being in itself.
People who cultivate like the standard of perfection. They strive
to show others that they are complete and whole and
fit and beautiful and blah, blah, blah. There's nothing wrong
(13:30):
with being fit. But this is a condition, she argues,
especially tempted for women and girls. Everyone encourages them to
be pretty, self-contained, perfect. The girl must make herself object.
She must therefore renounce her autonomy. She's treated like a
living doll, and freedom is denied her. Anyway, food for thought.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
The term living doll reminded me of sex dolls, which
reminded me of, we were going to talk about that today,
and I think I'm going to put it in the
One More Thing podcast. An interesting, serious article about where
sex dolls are headed. along with AI, for the One
More Thing podcast. Did you know that if you subscribed
to Armstrong and Getty On Demand, One More Thing auto-downloads? Effortless.
(14:10):
Speaking of AI, it's in the news today. We got
a couple of texts about that topic with the guy
who quit Anthropic because he's scared. If you haven't heard that,
stay tuned, among other things, on the way. Armstrong and Getty.
The CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amadei, has said he believes
we should have policies in place to pace the development
(14:31):
of AI.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
If you think of the extent to which AI can
make individualized propaganda, can break into any computer system in
the world, can, you know, surveil everyone in a population,
it's really scary and we have.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
To stop it. So cynics say that's a ploy. What
are we talking about here? Guy who worked for Anthropic,
which is the leading AI company in the world right now,
quit because he said, yeah, in the hallways, they're having
conversations about the fact that this could kill everybody on
Earth by the end of the decade. And I feel
(15:08):
like this, we should stop. He also worked for OpenAI.
He had quit OpenAI because he thought they didn't care
enough about the damage that AI was going to do.
So we went big on this in hour one. If
you want to hear the whole discussion and go through
all the tweets from this guy who quit Anthropic, you
can catch it in hour one on the podcast, Armstrong
and Getty on Demand. His name is Jacob Coxon, 27-year-old
(15:32):
researcher working at two of the biggest companies in the world.
And he argues that both labs are racing towards self-improving
superintelligence that they don't know how to control and that
insiders privately treat extinction as a live possibility by the
end of the decade. Now, a couple of things from...
(15:54):
Joe's question is a bad one. It's a good question.
This decade or the next decade? I mean, they're both bad.
Or like a new decade starting right now. Or does
he mean the 2020s? Because that's only three years. Are
we talking three, three and a half years or three
and a quarter years or 13 and a quarter years?
Because I got a budget accordingly. Yeah, for planning purposes.
So there's that question. There's also a number of people
(16:17):
have texted, kill us how? Human beings will be extinct
in 10 years. How?
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Rampaging robot dogs with guns. Shooting lasers out of their eyes.
Biological agents, electrocutions, boilings.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
I don't know. Anyway, to the... Other part of it,
people who think Darius Amodi, who is seen by most
people who know him as the guy with a conscience
in the world of AI, that, of course, he and
his people keep saying that they want the rules to
get in place while they're ahead as the number one
company in the world. So they want the guidelines to
(16:57):
be put in place while they're number one. Everybody who
knows him says he's this kind of guy that he
actually does care about this. I don't know. There's a
lot of money overwhelmed.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
So Marco Rubio and I share one characteristic. We're both
handsome Cubans.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
No, wait, no. We both hate Marxists. Stay with us.
Armstrong and Getty. My head is bleeding, which is not
a good look. Hey, Jack. It's fine. How do you do?
Can't help but notice the open wound. I was.
I was at my parents' house, and they have a minivan,
and I was getting something out of the back, and
(17:33):
I bent over too soon as the van lid opened
up and hit my head on that sharp latch thing. Oh, no!
I don't know how many times I've done that. They
need to make the latch on vehicles less sharp, because
it's the most likely thing to hit your head on.
Is there a way to make it less sharp? Anyway.
This is your new cause. Give generously. It just did
(17:53):
to my head.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
So Marco Rubio and I, and Jack for that matter,
share something in common. We despise communists, Marxism. Coming up,
the most dangerous intellectual of the 20th century. Not the
most famous or the most read. You probably never heard
his name. But in terms of damage done, I would argue, well,
not more dangerous than Marx because he used Marx's ideas.
(18:16):
But one of the most damaging people who's ever lived
on Earth.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
We will explain. He's as quoted as Marx, but people
don't know it. Yeah, yeah, indeed.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
His marching orders are absolutely the marching orders of the
degenerate woke left.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
By the way, before we start Marco Rubio yesterday talking
about communism, it looked to me like he was speaking
off the top of his head.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Which is pretty impressive, given what you're about to hear.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Yeah, he's given a speech at a forum. I can't
remember which one. It doesn't really matter. But will Marco
speak for himself?
Speaker 5 (18:52):
I'm going to give a speech I've never given before.
I hate Marxism and I hate communism. And I hate
it because everywhere in the world it's ever been tried,
it's led to tyranny and poverty and exile and oppression.
And there's a mistake that people have made. Maybe some
of us, maybe myself, have been guilty of it. And
that is the belief that somehow Marxism is dead. That
(19:14):
Marxism is now something that crazy people at the faculty
club at some university talk about, but it isn't really
alive anymore. The other mistake we make is that Marxism
is some sort of economic theory. Neither one of those
things is true. Marxism is not dead and it's not
an economic theory.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
What's happened is that Marxists.
Speaker 5 (19:33):
Realize what the track record of Marxism is around the world,
so they don't want to call themselves Marxists anymore. They
have found new titles, things that frankly sound benign and
you almost feel guilty being against, social justice. Who can
be against social justice? But that's the terminology they come
up with, equity. equity, who can be against equity?
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Go on Marco, you got a head of steam.
Speaker 5 (19:58):
But the truth of the matter is that, and this
is not about economics solely, the old Marxism was the
argument that the capitalist system, the whole system, was flawed
and rigged and it divided people. It said the world
and society and capitalist societies are divided between two groups.
You have one group which owns the businesses, they're the oppressors,
and you have the workers, everybody else, that group are
(20:21):
the victims. And that's how communism works. It creates a
victim class, it creates an oppressor class, and then it
says the only way to fix this is we have
to overthrow this system.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
We need a revolution. We need a government to take over.
Speaker 5 (20:35):
And make everything fair, and we need a government that
goes to the former oppressors and makes them apologize for
being an oppressor, be reeducated into responsible people, and pay
a penance for what they've done.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
That's the old Marxism. And it sounds familiar. Take it home, Marco.
Take it home.
Speaker 5 (20:54):
Because today, we are being asked to divide. First of all,
we're being told that America in and of itself... was
founded on racism, prejudice, and evil. Not that we have
a history of racism or prejudice, but that we were
founded on, that that's the foundation of our society, that
we are irredeemably broken in our history.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
The system, that the system is rigged.
Speaker 5 (21:15):
Not about capitalism, the system is set up to benefit
the oppressor versus the victim.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
And who's the oppressor?
Speaker 5 (21:21):
The oppressor, basically, if you listen to some of these people,
is anyone who is a white, male, heterosexual. and everybody
else i guess myself included being a cuban-american is a
victim and the only answer is for government to step
forward and create equity and make things.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Fair that's pretty good off the top your head which
is sure look like he was speaking and i uh...
have uh... visions of a marco rubio rama manual debate
for the presidency that would make our last several rounds
of debates seem extra, extra ridiculous. Ah, yes, I would agree. Yes.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Who's got a better golf game, for instance? Perhaps the
low moment in the history of the republic. So Marxism
made a couple of adjustments in the 20th century. Number one,
the workers of the World Unite didn't work. And so
they decided, all right, Anybody with any gripe of the
world unite, and we will join with them in their
(22:27):
gripe to overthrow the system, no matter how disparate or
oppositional it is. That's how you get queers for Palestine,
which is just an absurdity. But, you know, fundamentalist Muslims
want to overthrow the system, and, like, really angry sexual
minority types want to overthrow the system, so let's work together.
That's the whole of it, okay? And then the second adjustment...
(22:50):
came courtesy of Antonio Gramsci, who, and I love this
Twitter account, it's one of my favorites, Krzysztof of Poland.
His last name has roughly 37 consonants in it, but
he's absolutely a wonderful writer, and I'm going to quote
him now. Gramsci was the most dangerous intellectual of the
20th century, not the most famous, not the most read,
(23:12):
the most dangerous, and the most consequential, because he was
the one who figured out why the revolution kept failing
and what to do instead. This is the man who
invented the long march through the institutions, which if you've
studied communism, Marxism, is a familiar phrase, even if you
don't know quite what it means. But everything that followed,
(23:34):
and this may be familiar to some of you, the
Frankfurt School, the Fabian Society's operational model, the captured university,
the HR department enforcing approved speech, they're all downstream of
what he wrote in a prison cell. Between 1929 and 1935,
he was being held in Mussolini's Italy as a communist.
(23:55):
So his central question was, why hasn't the revolution happened,
the glorious revolution?
Speaker 1 (24:00):
The working class was supposed to rise.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
The contradictions of capitalism were supposed to produce the revolution,
but they hadn't, not in the West. And Gramsci's answer
was precise and devastating. It was because the ruling class
does not maintain power through force alone. It maintains power
through cultural hegemony, control of the ideas, the values, the
(24:22):
frameworks that we use to understand our world. So the
worker who accepts that the existing order is simply how
things are will not revolt, regardless of if he's exploited.
So the revolution requires cultural change first. And the instrument
to do that was the long march through the institutions.
Not storming a barricade. The school.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
The university. The media. The judiciary. The civil service. The
cultural establishment. Every institution.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
That a civilization uses to transmit its values to the
next generation.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Capture these and.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Fill them with people who share the counter-hegemonic project and
the cultural assumptions that maintain the existing order gradually dissolve.
No more barricades, no visible moment of rupture, just the
slow replacement of one cultural hegemony with another. Hence, friends,
(25:22):
The idea that showing up on time is white supremacy
and racism is one of the most serious charges you
can level in America. Working hard, saying America is the
land of opportunity. This is all racism. You know, there
are a thousand examples. You've seen it. Good manners are racism.
Asking somebody to hand in their homework on time, that's racism.
(25:43):
That's why they say this stuff. They're trying to dismantle
the norms of our civilization through long march through the institutions.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Well, some of those examples you gave there are obviously
ridiculous and haven't caught on yet with most people. But
in general, the general United States is a bad country
and we're the cause of all bad things. It has
caught on and it is now the culture. And I
read that thing, too. And what I thought was so interesting, well, one,
it's he's been successful. Him and his crowd have been successful.
(26:12):
They've already done it. It's why you're so up against
it if you talk to somebody that's come through our
current public schools and colleges. They're in that position he
was trying to get rid of where, well, they just
feel like, well, yeah, because everything's this way and always
has been this way. I mean, it's so... intellectually and
(26:34):
culturally a part of their world, that the United States
is a bad country and capitalism is bad and all
white men are racist and all that sort of stuff.
But you can't even, you can't hope to have an
argument with them. Right, right.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
So Christoph points out the educational capture was the masterpiece,
controlling the curriculum. And if you control the curriculum, you
control the categories of thought available to the next generation.
And it's not as simple as just telling them what
to conclude. You shape the questions that they think to ask.
You shape what they consider obvious, like Jack just pointed out.
(27:10):
You shape what they consider unthinkable. The generation educated after
the Long March does not need to be told what
to think.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
It thinks what it was formed to think. You know
people like this. And experiences that thinking as their own.
I know people like this. Yeah, they have been so
into it for so long, surrounded by people who also
are so into it. It's just like it's like a
fish doesn't always wet. I mean, it's just it's their
whole world. Yeah. And and and it's disturbing because, like
(27:42):
I said, you can't sit down with one of these
people and change their mind. It's going to take a
long march through the institution, the other direction to turn
this around. And Gramsci, you have to salute his brilliance
because he also theorized in his writings from prison. What
he called the organic intellectual, the person who translates the
(28:06):
theoretical framework into stories and assumptions that circulate throughout the
culture but don't even appear ideological. The film that makes
the existing order seem absurd. The journalist who frames every
story within the approved assumptions. Gramsci understood that culture is
politics by other means and that the side that controls
the culture wins regardless of who wins the elections. And,
(28:29):
you know, Christoph addresses whether it's a conspiracy theory. I mean,
it is in a way, but it's, as I often say,
these people wrote books.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Their names are on the spines. They said precisely what
they wanted to do and how they were going to
do it. Now they're doing it. But it's a published, documented,
widely taught strategy that the left implemented consciously across the
entire Western world. The 1968 generation put it into practice
in the universities. They became the professors, the journalists, the
civil servants, the judges, the HR directors of the decades
(29:01):
that followed. And the march took 50 years, but it works.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
Yeah. It worked. You know, as soon as I read this,
I thought, you know, a smaller version of this for
conservatives was the way, and I think they were using
this phrase, used the Federalist Society with the long march
through the judges and the judicial to get Roe versus
Wade overturned. They had this goal decades ago to start
(29:26):
with judges at the very bottom and work so you
get to the point that it's just so much of
the judicial branch that you could get to where Roe
versus Wade over. They did the same thing. It really worked.
but you have to be incredibly patient. You have to
play a long game.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Boy, and we're up against it now because I have
it on very, very good authority that the law schools
of America are practically exclusively left.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
I mean, left, left. We're going to be talking to
Tim Sandefur later this week about a different topic. But yeah,
we can ask him about that because he's been explaining
that to us for years now. And that's horrifying. It'll
take a long march the other direction to turn that around.
And all those lawyers that graduate and they're going out
into the world doing their thing with a completely different
(30:16):
worldview than you've got. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
Kristoff's last couple of sentences are, the countermarch has begun.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
It just doesn't have a name yet. And he's right.
Awareness is up.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
I read this morning that the number of kids homeschooled
in New York has increased.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
By 200% in the last 10, 12 years. People are
becoming aware, but boy, it's going to be a long fight.
That's fine. I got nothing better to do. That was
very clever on that dude's part. Brilliant man. Absolutely brilliant.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
He understood humans and societies and cultures.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
I mean, brilliant. Evil. Completely evil, but brilliant. Yeah. Any
thoughts on that? You can text or email. We will
finish strong next. Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
An American Airlines passenger was duct taped after hurling racist
and homophobic slurs during a midair meltdown.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
And for anyone wondering, I did make my connection. So
here's something that will make you unhappy. Seems to be
our goal. I was talking to an insurance agent the
other day. Car insurance, I'm talking here. My car insurance
is just insane. This is a California thing. And what
(31:35):
I'm about to tell you might be exclusive to California, too,
because every state has its own laws around insurance. But
my insurance is the same part of it. It's just
I got too many vehicles on my policy. So he's
explaining to me, this insurance agent, about how we socialize
car insurance and why. The idea being, if somebody got
(31:56):
a drunk driving... Oh, somebody on my policy had a
wreck and how much it was going to increase the
cost of the insurance, even though it was a minor
fender bender with like no fault. If somebody got a
drunk driving, their current insurance would be like $ 50, 000 a year.
(32:19):
for the insurance company to be able to do it,
to want to insure them. And the state of California decided, well,
the problem with that is what they'll do is nobody
can afford that. So they'll just drive without car insurance,
and that would be worse. So what we'll do is
we'll spread that $ 50, 000 out among all the other people
who don't have any problems on their records. So that
(32:40):
that person can afford their insurance who got a drunk driving.
And that's why everybody's insurance is so high with this
theory that, well, we don't want to like really punish
the person that. you know, whatever, you weren't paying attention,
you were staring at your phone, you ran somebody over,
or you got a drunk driving or whatever, we'll socialize
those costs so that we can guarantee that they can
(33:02):
afford their insurance. How do you like that, bull-ass?
Speaker 2 (33:07):
We'll add in practically uninsured drivers, including.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Many, many, many hundreds of thousands of illegals.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Because there's a state program in Calunicornia, the California Low-Cost
Auto Insurance Program, Where normally you've got to carry at
least $ 15, 000 in property damage liability, $ 15, 000. But under this
state-created program, qualifying drivers can just carry $ 3, 000 per accident.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
See? Not $ 3, 000 per car or whatever. $ 3, 000 total. Well,
I'll save my conclusion to this for my final thought. Oh,
something to look forward to. Oh, boy. Creepy. I don't
want this one. Now we have far stabbier introductions than
(33:59):
this one. Here's your host for Final Thoughts, Joe Getty.
Let's get a final thought from the whole crew to
wrap up the day. Michelangelo, what's your final thought?
Speaker 2 (34:06):
I got to start saving my pennies to get that
new foldable iPhone.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
So $ 2, 000. I think I can draw, you know, I
got to figure out something. I'll give up electricity. I'm
looking forward to the unveiling of it if it seems impressive.
Katie Green, our esteemed newswoman, has a final thought. Katie?
I'm thinking the same thing, Michael. I think I might
start selling foot pics. Because you want the new foldable iPhone. Yeah,
just step in butter once a week, sell some feet pics.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Butter?
Speaker 4 (34:35):
What?
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Is that a thing? I do like butter. Jack, a
final thought for us? Here's what I think you should do.
If somebody does something that makes their car insurance too
expensive for them, then I guess they don't get to drive.
I guess, oh no, here come the consequences of my actions.
I hate when that happens. And I, who haven't done
anything wrong, don't pay for your mistake. Yeah, yeah. I
(34:57):
hate to close on.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
A serious note, but the era where the U.S. was
impregnable and didn't really have to worry about much at all,
it's over.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Clearly. Yeah, we've got to be on our toes for
a bunch of different stuff. On your toes, you just
dipped in butter for your foot pics.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
I know, and if anybody would like pictures of my toes,
drop me a note. We'll see if we can work
something out.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Got to admit, Katie, I don't know what your husband
thinks of this, but if you could make enough money
off of feet pics to buy the new foldable iPhone,
that would be an interesting story. He hates the idea,
but I'm still pushing for it. I think I would
give the thumbs up. Armstrong and Getty wrapping up another
grueling four-hour workday.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
My wife has lovely feet, too. So many people, thanks
so little time. Go to armstrongandgetty.com. Pick up some Armstrong
and Getty swag. What do you have for your favorite
A & G fan?
Speaker 1 (35:41):
Maybe it's even you. T-shirt, hat, hoodie. I wouldn't tell
my kid when they got older. We will see you tomorrow.
God bless America. Armstrong and Getty. Jacob Coxon is getting
a lot of attention for his doomerism about AI today.
(36:01):
And it just replied, sleep with one eye open. Put
your feet far enough apart that you can stick your
head down between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye.
Armstrong and Getty.
Hosts And Creators
Joe Getty
Jack Armstrong
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