“The Midnight Kingdom” – Jared Yates Sexton

Pinchbeck talks with Jared Yates Sexton, the political writer whose books include American Rule and The Midnight Kingdom, which traces lines of power and religious and nationalist mythology through Western civilization to the present. Sexton describes growing up in a poor rural Indiana town inside an extremist Christian culture laced with white nationalism and conspiracy theory, and how covering Trump rallies in 2016 as a fiction writer turned him into a full-time chronicler of right-wing authoritarianism and Christian nationalism. Much of what is visible here concerns the Democrats rather than the right: Sexton argues the party abandoned labor after the 1970s and became Reaganism with a human face. Later he argues consumer capitalism runs on a shame structure inherited from Christian ideas of sin.

Guest: Jared Yates Sexton

In brief

• Sexton says covering the 2016 campaign at Trump rallies forced him to rebuild his understanding of American history and politics, and that he had already been writing fiction about angry men who did not understand their own anger.
• He argues the neoliberal consensus of the past forty years, not progressivism, produced the present crisis, through deregulation, privatization and the dismantling of the social safety net.
• Sexton contends the Democratic Party abandoned labor unions and its traditional constituencies rather than compete with Reaganism, becoming "Reaganism with a human face."
• He characterizes the current duopoly as a fascistic Republican party pursuing authoritarianism through neoliberalism, paired with a Democratic party reduced to defending existing institutions.
• Sexton argues consumer capitalism depends on a shame structure carried over from Christian notions of sin, in which products promise to make an inadequate self whole.
• He says a shame-based society projects its shame outward, which is why right-wing figures are repeatedly exposed as being what they denounce.

Full text

hey everybody today I am here with Jared sexon uh the author of uh the midnight Kingdom which I've been reading and thinking about along with many other things and um yeah it doesn't exactly tell a happy story uh but before we get into the story that it does tell jar you want to just tell us a little bit about yourself and your background and kind of how you got got into writing this particular book yeah uh I've had weird eight years um so back in 2016 I I was was just sort of a a creative writer a fiction writer who had a had an interest for politics I'd worked in politics covered politics in the past and I had this failed novel so I decided I was going to cover the 2016 campaign and I ended up going to Trump rallies and started screaming team by who would listen to me that something really really wrong was growing within uh the the MAA movement and uh I was sort of thrown into the deep end of the pool very very quickly and so I had to change my understanding of history and politics uh as as conditions were changing and so as a result over the past eight years I've been covering the rise of right-wing authoritarianism Christian nationalism conspiracy theory culture all of that simply as I've tried to keep uh a pace with what's going on so as a result I've ended up writing multiple books one was covering the 2016 campaign how uh Trump came to power another was uh focusing and criticizing the idea of traditional masculinity and how it's played into Neo fascistic culture uh I reconsidered American history and my book American Rule and realize the authoritarian elements that have always been there and the midnight Kingdom uh was a broader subject to sort of trace the lines of power um in so-called Western Civilization to understand how we've reached this point and how these conspiracy theories and narratives and nationalistic and religious mythologies have contributed to all of this so basically I'm a work in progress that is uh trying to to to keep a a pace with this so yeah it sounds like a really strong through line since 2016 me I noticed in in in um I keep wanting to say Midnight's Children the midnight Midnight Kingdom you talk about your grandmother and your family background and so on what is could you just remind me and maybe tell viewers a little bit of your did you come from a sort of Christian American kind of background in a way or yeah uh unfortunately I grew up uh in a very very rural poor conservative uh Indiana town uh area uh in a uh Christian how do I put this a Christian culture that was very cult uh and and and very very extremist with elements of white nationalism and conspiracy theory culture um some really really extremist ideology that unfortunately when things started really falling apart in the last few years it was very recognizable it was very familiar because even going back into the 1980s and into the 90s uh my family and my community and my church all of it were absolutely steeped in all of these things so uh I was able to escape that and uh uh find my way out of it and find a way to understand it but I I unfortunately was raised up within a lot of these principles and ideas okay and um yeah so had you been covering these topics in your fiction also was this just like a big sort of well no in my fiction a lot of what I was always covering was and I didn't understand it for a while obviously when you're a young artist you're spending a lot of time looking at yourself but not particularly understanding yourself I was thinking about the men around me uh the culture I was raised in a lot of men who were angry but didn't understand why they were angry which has now become you know an epidemic in this country one of the reasons why our democracy is at stake is because you have a lot of people who do not understand themselves and don't understand uh their situation so I was basically writing about this stuff before I started to realize the the socioeconomic uh sort of consequences of it uh and I I got the sense from your book that I mean I'm I'm sure you're not voting for Trump obviously you'll vote for Biden but but necessarily feel that you were that supportive of kind of the um liberal Progressive establishment you were sort of critiquing am I correct about that you're sort of critiquing um how they kind of have helped let it get to this state in a way so one of my biggest critiques of what's actually happening right now is that for the past uh I let's go ahead and be conservative with this the last 40 years if not going back into the late 70s uh we've been dealing with uh a neoliberal consensus in this country basically uh following World War II we had had a the New Deal consensus which was the idea that we needed a a robust government that regulated they kept businesses in check but also made sure that the lives of the citizens uh were maintained or even improved whether it was making sure their drinking water was safe or whether they could retire or weren't going to fall into like uh you know penless uh uh ruin and what happened going into the 70s and the 80s was that uh neoliberalism which is an ideology we can get into there's a long long history of how we got here and what it is and why it's doing what it is basically in the 70s into the 80s the Democratic party realized very very quickly that they were not going to compete with uh things like reaganism or trickle down economics it simply wasn't going to happen and as a result uh the Democratic party changed themselves almost in totality uh they left behind their traditional power bases of labor unions uh vulnerable communities uh you know basically anyone that used to support them and uh started to become reaganism with a human face and so what we have dealt with for the past 40 years was a consensus within the United States government of deregulation privatization the destruction of the social safety net and now we've reached a point where that project has produced really ruinous circumstances and so now we have uh unfortunately within the duopolistic system that we have we have a far right-wing fascistic party with the Republican party which is trying to usher in an era of authoritarian ISM through neoliberalism and then you have the Democratic party which has largely been reduced to a conservative party which is maintaining the institutions as they are trying to protect what has been gotten as opposed to moving forward so it isn't necessarily progressivism that I have a problem with it's the uh it's the project of neoliberal Li liberalism which I think has become the consensus for decades now and unfortunately uh has led us to the spot that we're in yeah right I I sometimes think that like you know if Biden all the Democrats are like we have to fight to protect democracy so we have to you know we can't vote for Trump we have to support Biden I was like well I mean isn't that kind of like blackmail in a way because it's like you know you're giving me one alternative so how is that Democratic it's like either I vote you know for fascism or I vote for a sort of you know srum of democratic choice where there isn't really any choice because they they've stifled all the choice in a way exactly and and I think and I want to be very very clear about it i' I've said this to anybody who's asked me like I do plan on voting for Joe Biden in November that is my own personal political choice I am viewing it as voting for pressing the break a little bit on the spread of authoritarianism because to vote for Donald Trump or to have another Trump presidency is to and and by the way I I want to make this clear before we go any forward uh any further Donald Trump is a symptom of a larger disease right he he is not the brain man on this he he is not the one with the strategies what we're actually deal dealing with is a very complicated organized well- financed well-resourced uh Push by uh oligarchical right-wing billionaires and donors in this country and corporatists uh Donald Trump just so happens to be a really useful frontman for that because he creates a faux populistic movement which I'm sure that we'll talk about at some point what I what I keep saying though is that I do not think that voting for Joe Biden or elections at this point are what's going to save us they can they can pause things you you you can sort of like it it's almost like if you're thinking about someone who is um I I I always try and explain I've never actually descended down a mountain you know like repelled down a mountain but you can like sort of you have a break and you can go faster and right now the best choice is to hit the break and try and change something outside of it I think there has to be a new populist Democratic movement that pressures the Democratic party or creates an alternative to the Democratic party I do not think that elections are going to save us I think it's going to take Democratic energy and I think that that's what history has shown us is that you're not going to Simply win this thing by voting and going to the booth that is the absolute bare um that that is the least amount of democratic activity that you can engage in that is the bare minimum and there has to be more beyond that I have many many thoughts you know based on my own like thinking and research and other that you just like talked about and I'm sure you know like you know Jane mayor's book dark money uh that was was a great book that showed how as you say the the the far-right oligarchs or plutocrats decided like way back in the 60s that they wanted to they didn't like the direction of U you know modern society towards liberalization and more social services so they you they realized it was a long Hall struggle so they put together a group of uh you know funders and then they went after it you know in a very deliberate way um I mean she really does a great job in that book so they were like okay we need you know the the the left has or the you know has like Grassroots movements for all these people are very inspired we'll have to create astroturfed versions of those movements you know the left has captured a lot of the you know academic departments so we're going to have to create you know we're going to have to buy like they I think they bought the University of Chicago economics department and installed mil treatment you know the the left has all these like intellectuals people rally around so we need our own intellectuals they created like Charles Murray and funded him through like the Heritage Foundation so then like these these ideas that you know uh minorities don't deserve Social Services because they're inherently less intelligent and have less capacity for advancement uh you know sort of simmer through Society you know whether they're expressed uh explicitly or or not uh and I imagine since a lot of those people were also like coch brothers like fossil fuel people I'm sure they also had deep ties to the military-industrial complex which probably helped lead to scops you know various attempts to create scops whether that qinon over the last you know years or even maybe some aspects of this whole you know UAP UFO thing and the way that's being used as you know perhaps a distraction mechanism well that's like a much longer discussion and something I've written about you know a little bit um okay so one thing that fascinated me about your book was that you go all the way back it's like a huge history lesson I hadn't anticipated that U so why don't you take us back through your thinking process and why you felt it was important to go back to like you know Rome and you know up to Napoleon and then you know Illuminati and and the whole thing you well I I because I'm really excited to get into all of these and want I want to touch on something because anybody who's listening to this what we're actually talking about is like it's an interconnecting uh groups of of of self-serving interests right which is one of the reasons why capitalism is what capitalism is is it directs a lot of different people to do things that work in concert with each other what we're not having a discussion about is smoke filed rooms we're not talking about groups that are like meeting you know at Bohemian Grove and coming although you know some of them do meet at aium Grove and some of them do have some really nefarious plans so what we're actually talking about is not necessarily a unified theory of things it's more about the evolution of what you were just getting into which is the powerful who are using narratives and are using uh attacks on reality in order to pursue their own interest which is power and profit which in all of what we're talking about is is logical right that's how this system has been set up that's how the system works that's how the system has done all of it so what I want to say first of all is I went back to Rome because as a person who is raised up in evangelicalism I never understood how Christianity took over the Roman Empire I had no idea because it didn't make sense to me right you had this group that was of course being uh oppressed and and and and being um you know basically killed and harded at all times it never made sense to me how that happened and whenever I kind of do that and and I'm sure you're like this too whenever I start asking questions and this maybe has more to do with the neurod divergency of myself I always end up asking the question before the question that I asked and if I let myself go I keep going and going and going and I was like well I want to go back to the start of so-called western civilization and what I found from the very beginning going back to Rome and this was incredible we're talking about Christians in catacombs right we're talking about Christians being absolutely uh oppressed in this Society Daniel that's where the qinon narratives came from because what were the Christians doing in the catacombs they were sacrificing children for secret powers right they were abusing children those were the rumors about them and then that's what allowed you know the powerful to go after them and oppress them and immediately what I realized was it wasn't that qanon had its Origins there it's that there are stories that continue in a cyclical nature that Humanity keeps telling in itself and these stories eventually are sort of um acted upon by the powerful when they realize it's incredibly useful for maintaining the power that they have and uh gaining more power right because one of the things that happens when you're powerful you're responsible for what's happened right like you you are the one who is making decisions you're the one who's guiding Society take for instance uh a Donald Trump as president who promised all of his supporters he was going to drain the swamp he was to build the wall correct well why is the swamp not drained why is the wall not built you know why are these lies not coming true and opposed to them being bad faith lies there's a simple alternative the Deep State kept him from doing it right and what I figured out was there's always a nugget of Truth in these stories because to be frank there is a deep State you had brought up the military-industrial complex we're talking about oligarchs and plutocrats who are working behind the scenes Beyond uh you know the consequences of representative government there is something that like makes sure that things keep going the same way regardless of whether George W bush is in office or Barack Obama or Donald Trump or Joe Biden there's stuff that's behind the scenes which is the administrative state which has been built but these stories take the onus off of these things so for instance in Rome why is stuff going to hell in Rome why is the empire in Decline it couldn't possibly be the emperor the emperor is a Godlike figure it has to be cons conspiracies it has to be the Christians who are doing this it has to be this group that is doing this eventually though what ends up happening and this is one of the reasons why Christianity has been woven through the history of capitalism and power and particularly white supremacy there is a a double sort of uh it's it's almost like um a weapon against cognitive dissonance there's a martyrdom but there's also a righteousness right God is on my side I get to do what I want at the same time I'm always going to be discriminated against and as a result I should do anything in my power to protect myself and that ideology has been woven through so-called Western Civilization white supremacy and also capitalism the entire time which is why we keep seeing these Cycles play themselves out Through the Ages regardless of what century we're in what country we're in what culture we're in these things are constants and that's what we're watching again at this moment okay um so yeah so what did you discover so you discover the origin of Christianity had to do with um kind of um so they had the scapegoat of Christians that at a certain point how did the scapegoats become the uh the core element of the new structure well so what I noticed and this is it took me a while to sit with this I started to realize that at the core of any moment there is sort of a uh a gravity of of of I'm putting air quotes around this for anyone listening to it a a gravity of of a chosen reality right like so for instance in the United States of America the the the sort of binding reality that is kept everything sort of in order is the American dream which is the idea that we are a society where people can work their way up to the top they can have better lives right they can have uh more and more safety that and on top of that they were born into a special country right that was chosen by God or the universe or fate or history to do things as long as the gravity of that reality is strong like there's usually like not a lot of Discord there's some fighting there are some disagreements there's some political infighting but eventually at some point when the gravity of that reality starts to lose its power you start to see more and more disruptions right you start to see a lot of fights you start to see uh Wars genocides you start to see uh democracy and and liberal democracy at stake eventually you either have to reinforce that old reality or you have to replace it with a new one in Rome the reality was that uh the Emperors were Gods right they were the main Gods on Earth and as a result they couldn't be wrong uh their Direction was perfect the Roman Empire was Everlasting it was never going to be challenged when there started to be civil war there start to be infighting between uh you know potential Emperors or you know even Warlords between themselves that reality starts to fall apart and it needs to be replaced by something and instead of replacing it with an imperial cult it merged with Christianity and all of a sudden now you have an Almighty monotheistic God that has all of these elements that you can use in order to rule in order to have legitimacy and in order to basically do whatever you want so it was the uh replacement of one reality with another which is where we're at now the American dream uh the idea of American exceptionalism these things are starting to fall apart they need to be replaced by something else and the Battle Is Over what's going to replace it what comes next and what we see in the Cycles is is sort of the um it's the conflict over what reality is going to replace the old reality um that makes I was thinking a little bit about um Renee Gerard you know his stuff at all had this whole whole thing about the scape guard scapegoat mechanism and mtic violence somehow he's now been very much you know I I think he was quite right-wing and also Christian but in a way the scapegoat or the Martyr is like the necessary figure for for societ somehow to sort of reconstitute itself or something kind of a scary thought I guess well and I want to I want to point something out on that note because uh something you're bringing up is is really important which is I think the right fundamentally understands this more than the left which is actually really really interesting when you take a look at history which is left I just left is a complicated term when you say left absolutely well and I'm glad you said that anarchist basically you know who you know so I consider myself pretty farle you but I don't so you and I I would make this argument I think that you and I are sufficiently leftist but I I think people need to understand that like we throw around the left so much we we say the leftist New York Times and it's a corporate lens for reality which is wild MSNBC is a corporate company that goes through a corporate lens and people say leftist MSNBC or the left wants this or the on left wants that to be specific the left was decimated absolutely destroyed over the past Century they were hunted down by multiple uh state-run agencies they were undermined economically and culturally the left basically doesn't even exist anymore and that's part of the issue it's starting to grow a little bit but it doesn't have any fundamental power like in America there is no leftist party there are barely any leftist politicians or anybody who could even be qualified as Center of left but I do think that's part of the issue is that the left in a lot of ways has been relegated to Theory and relegated to sort of um I think sort of logically trying to eat around at the margins or thinking that maybe you're going to talk sense to people in a lot of senses when in fact the right has understood the the power of narrative right uh one of the most influential right-wing philosophers right now is uh Harry jafa who uh is you know is is behind all of these like right-wing think tanks and institutes and and MAA you know americ America First groups and jafa U basically was one of these people who was just like you need the noble lie which is a a PL idea right which is you just need a story and you need a story that people can believe and then they can gather around and they can they can have faith in that's one of the issues we have now is that the right is gaining power because they're telling a story it's it's absolutely incoherent it makes no sense it's it's a complete and utter fraud but it's a story that people can get behind as opposed to means testing or uh tax credits or you know uh qualified federal debt relief nobody cares about that nobody actually believes in any of that they need a story that they need to insert themselves in and the right understands that fundamentally uh for a lot of different reasons and it goes back to to what you were talking about like there's one right-wing or right-wing adjacent philosopher after another who is talking about the story doesn't need to be real there just needs to be a powerful story that organizes society and the right understands that in the way the left has had a real problem with right I guess also even among the right there's kind of you know I mean there was George Bush kind of rock ribbed Republicans or whatever who you know were okay with a certain level of you know Democratic uh choice and and now there's this new group which is kind of recognized that simply like demographically you know as the society becomes more pluralistic they have to you know intervene essentially illegally uh to you know maintain you know white power and privilege yeah and and I want to go back very quickly to uh the first Bush uh HW Bush HW Bush was a technocrat and part of the military-industrial complex that we've already talked about um he was the beginning of the neoliberal consensus but he still had a little bit of the the the nud deal consensus in him right like he still you know basically he he didn't get up and talk about like ethn nationalism or you know he didn't call into question the the uh the institutions you get to W bush same thing which is one of the reasons why you still see these really really disgusting moments with like Bill Clinton uh Barack Obama and W bush hanging out even though you know he's a war criminal like what has happened now and and our idea in America of conventional politics and history is so shallow and so thin that people don't understand how fundamentally our politics have changed so what has happened and and everybody likes to pretend the the GOP is some sort of um you know very very disciplined group right that they're just all on the same page they all want the same things there has been a civil war within the GOP and what has happened is that uh establishment Republicans such as a Mitch Mc Connell right uh that that these establishment Republicans have more or less been pushed to the margins by a new authoritarian GOP and here's what the new GOP offers it offers a CR of neoliberalism while also going ahead and pushing neoliberalism it's it's an ingenious thing right it started with the T party which was astroturfed going back to our discussion earlier about the oligarchs and pl uh plutocrats they they provided a critique of the system that they were aiding and that they have now created a faux populistic movement which is actually on behalf of the same oligarchs and plutocrats who have caused the problems in the first place and they've now created a pseudo fo populistic movement that has replaced the old GOP so it's not Politics as Usual um even going back to the the the second Bush things have so fundamentally changed since then that this old sort of uh analysis and understanding of all of it is not just lazy but it's actually destructive I don't think most people understand what has actually happened in American politics up to this point when you say um they've reconstituted or they're continuing neoliberalism can you be a little more specific what do you mean by that sure so one of the things that's happened and and and to go ahead and do this I want to broaden it out a little bit the beginning of globalism uh was this moment where the American Empire created a global structure of of trade and politics and and again like people we we have to use some old outdated terms first world second world third world right we created this structure where America was up on top of a pyramid right and and we were going to get the benefit of all of it we were going to get the resources the cheap Goods we were also going to head go ahead and Export the labor so that the wealthy wouldn't have to pay minimum wages or benefits or anything they would pay pennies on the dollars for uh second and third world countries to go ahead and manufacture these things meanwhile this all happen oh yeah no this yeah this this absolutely happened and then the second and third world countries were used for their labor used for their resources and everything went up to the top of the pyramid unfortunately to keep countries in that second and third world category it relied on authoritarianism you had to fix their elections you had to take away their rights you had to break labor unions you had to make sure that human rights weren't important sometimes you had to support a dictator or warlord you had to go ahead and give them money and weapons and support the problem in all of this and by the way we'll go ahead and and and and bring this around to to Fuko because you have to there's the boomerang idea which is the idea that when you export these things that those second and third world countries when you take away people's rights when you you know mistreat them or you Warlords or dictators eventually the action comes around to the country that started it in the first place and we've seen this throughout history in Cycles neoliberalism has always been authoritarianism with a mask free markets well we're not doing this the Market's doing this it's it's not about us eventually it gets to the point where it comes back around to the host country which is we saw this with Great Britain with the rise of Corporations including the slave trade and colonialism right eventually the corporations took over Great Britain and sort of plundered it for parts and and ruined the rights of the people that's where we're at now and we've reached a point where this this progress quotes around progress this Pro this progress of neoliberalism requires that America loses its Democratic features it requires the Total Takeover of representative government and it's and and quite frankly we're wages we're not going to pay them benefits we're not going to make sure that regulation's going to be in place so you have to embrace for lack of a better word the whip you have to create a situation in which there is a strong authoritarian bent that is no longer hidden and what's happening with MAA the America first whatever you want to call it the new right what they're doing is in bad faith they're providing a critique of neoliberalism while going ahead and very very quietly and sometimes aggressively putting into position a new authoritarian version of neoliberalism so what they're doing is on behalf of the wealthy who have already benefited from this they're taking the onus away from the people that have caused it the oligarchs the plutocrats and they're putting it on their political enemies right it's going to be labor unions it's going to be people of color it's going to be women it's going to be lgbtq Americans basically and this is how things have always worked they're going to go ahead and say that these people betrayed the nation and as a result there needs to be a Crackdown and a and a and a new sort of strong hand to put that in place and that is how this is always worked whether it was in those Second World countries those third world countries the process is now playing itself out again in the United States so actually they theyve created like I said a faux populistic movement that takes the onus off the people who have actually done this and gives them more power and takes away the Democratic representation that has been promised up to this point yeah I totally agree with you um yeah iess I guess um things that I've been reading and thinking about recently I'm doing a I'm doing these online courses and the next one we're doing I guess in some ways it's it's a you know kind of like a nent effort you know to address some of the things you're talking about it's called embracing our emergency uh so we're trying to figure out like um I'm working with Josh Fox who directed gas lands and we have like Bill mckibbin and Marian Williamson and I think Jane fondas speak um we're trying to figure out how to kind of like re reset like reposition what's happening so that people don't feel so despondent and um you know but but but you know so I've been reading a few books what you know this guy uh John Michael Greer no I don't I'm not familiar was like the former Arch Druid of America uh he wrote a book called uh but he's a very I think he's actually very interesting and and worth checking out he wrot he wrote a book called Dark Ages America uh also this guy Chris Martinson uh who who wrote a book called crash course uh who who's you know so the B basically their their not their their arguments there's a bunch of other authors in this era there was like the peak oil movements you know 10 or 15 years ago Richard heinberg and James Howard Cutler uh and then basically what happened they were all predicting that around like 2012 2013 like oil production was going to plummet but obviously what happened is that we discovered you know you know more unconven conventional forms of extraction Hydro fracking and tarand which has allowed actually the US to become the world's I think number one exporter of fossil fuels at this point again but those are also you know running out and they're incredibly environmentally destructive and require a lot more uh energy inputs you know so um in any event fossil fuels are a uh non-renewable finite resource a as are a lot of the other resources on the planet uh you know rare metal you know rare Metals all the stuff that we need to build the cars and the computer all that stuff is getting harder and harder to access and in fact China has kind of beaten us to the punch by like you know holding on you know creating the pipelines for for those minerals in the future um yeah so I mean um so Greer believes that we're heading into a you know inevitable you know sort of downs slope of decline uh where um there's just not as much cheap energy and then also going along with that is what's happening with you know global warming climate change and how that's affecting you know agriculture in particular but also the availability of fresh water so you have these I mean you know droughts that are making parts of the country unlivable you have the Colorado River which is like the huge you know agriculture supplier for you know California basically Out of Water uh you have these aquifers uh being pumped dry um and you know there really doesn't seem to be long range planning around this stuff um so yeah so it's like um I see Trump in that in that you didn't really get into this aspect of you mentioned them change a little bit but but in way Trump who's lived on massive debt his whole life is just you know he's like the Avatar of we're just going to keep this thing going despite any you know drag or any reality we're somehow you know going to uh so yeah I'm curious um you know if that resonates with you or what kind of your perspec oh absolutely and I'm so glad listen I've been looking forward to this conversation for a while because there's some stuff that like most people don't want to get into that is at the the heart of this right and and I want to go ahead and start with something which is that neoliberalism instead of providing solutions for these things provides Market opportunities so like as the country is running out of water or while there are going to be parts of the country that are uninhabitable that actually creates sort of segmented marketed opportunities so I always use this opportunity and by the way the week that we're talking about this it it it it now has an even more disturbing aspect to it right I always say that neoliberalism can be boiled down like this it's like what's happened on an airplane where you you now have these sort of segmented parts of the plane that like if you pay extra you don't have to go through the misery of boarding the way that they expect right or I don't know maybe you can actually bring a bag on the plane if you can afford to do that right so if you pay more what you're actually paying for is to be isolated from the misery of what it is to travel on a plane now right well now all of a sudden we're looking at like one of the major plane producers that their planes are falling out of the sky right their their parts are falling off constantly and instead of the system saying hey we're not going to allow Boeing to fly anymore and we're going to do a massive investigation like neoliberalism says hey this is an opportunity you can go ahead and offer those flights the dangerous flights for less money you'll make profit from that and you can go ahead and charge more for the flights that aren't falling apart like neoliberalism works that way and that's the way it approaches global climate change the reason why we're not able to conceive of climate change the reason why we're not even able to come to a consensus on it we're not able to create something the only way to address global climate change is a critique of the institutional systems that's it you literally have to go ahead and uproot things and imagine something different and that's going to lead to a redistribution of of wealth and power there's no other way around it neoliberalism will not allow it this is where Trump comes in and this is why Trump is so important I think that this is the fundamental thing that is happening right now Trump is an abusive person period there's no other way to put it Trump uh makes fun of his enemies uh you know whether or not they they they have uh disabilities or whether he thinks they're weak he he's a misogynist you know he's racist he's xenophobic we could list all these things all day long what Trump actually does is something that's really really wild Daniel that we haven't seen before which is instead of John F Kennedy's like ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country which is asking more of the citizenry he's asking less he's actually telling the citizens you don't have to change anything in fact you're not racist you're not sexist you're not selfish you're not any of those things those people over there are lying and they're doing it to get one over on you that's different that is a change in American political rhetoric it's always sort of been there with the Republicans but the fact that it's so overt at this point is is wild what we actually need to do unfortunately is we need a cultural introspection we need to recognize that like we we we are we have been greedy and we've been destructive and we've been racist we've been sexist we we've been xenophobic like all of these things have contributed to a not just cultural Poli itical and economic problems but now we're talking about an existential problem the American Empire is one of the biggest drivers of global climate change the capitalism that America has spread around the world one of the biggest drivers of climate change in order to address climate change we would have to address ourselves we would have to change ourselves people like Trump first of all tell us we don't have to change ourselves and second of all abuse us to the point where we don't have an imagination for something better which is what abusers do what abusers do to make sure that they keep people in their place is they they demean them they humiliate them and they tell them you're unrealistic you're absurd this is ridiculous nothing could be better and the problem is that we have arrived where we no longer have an imagination for something different the I you know I think it was Daniel Fischer that says we we could sooner imagine the apocalypse than we could the end of capitalism our imaginations have been destroyed they've been eradicated which is one of the reasons why American innovation is just absolutely falling apart we were told that Tech was going to save us and what's happened to tech tech is just like regressing like we we all thought you know it was going to lead us into the future and now we're looking around and it's like the innovation has just sort of stopped we've seen it in medicine the exact same way we have lost our ability to think outside of a paradigm we've lost our ability to sort of innovate any way outside of the world that we have and what we now have is we have a leader who is one of the most powerful people in the world who tells us we don't have to imagine anything new we need to go into the past Retreat into the past and actually that's what you find with fascism authoritarianism right-wing authoritarianism we've seen that over and over it is always a rejection of the ability to think of anything uh that could change yeah I don't I mean obviously there's you know this whole artificial intelligence thing is is a kind of innovation um I interviewed recently an artist friend of mine Warren nidek who wrote a book about what he calls cognitive capitalism which which I also found very interesting and yeah we nobody can cover everything but I'm be interested too but I mean one of his thing ideas that he introduced to me to I guess i' already kind of had the idea but it made more palpable is U you know capitalism can only perpetuate itself because it has uh you know interest it sort has to grow exponentially so it constantly has to create new markets and now there really aren't anymore you know I mean we've covered every land and and you know island with capitalism as much as we can there's one big one that we haven't which is what China okay that that's but that's but that's also part of what's going on right now too I agree with you that's right yeah any so the idea is that actually what's happening now is um cognitive capitalism is going into deeper into the brain mind cognitive capacity so for instance if you give a kid a smartphone at 10 so they have a GPS you know during their whole childhood you know like like part of childhood is you know playing with your friends you go to the forest you get lost you have to find your way back you know it's a little dangerous but you know you you you learn how to spatially navigate you know now this whole generation of young people is not learning how to spatially navigate so at a certain point you know Google and apple can just turn on a switch be like okay now I have to pay us 10 bucks a month U you know to navigate because you apparently the hyper campus which is where the sort of spatial navigation stuff happens if that isn't developed when you're a teenager it can never develop you know and the hippocampus is also linked to memory spatial recognition is linked to like there these memory palaces where they would teach people how to remember all these Languages by like creating a palace in your head or whatever and similarly now with AI they're taking our innate capacity to reason and to think and turning it into something that you just automate so like instead of writing a piece about Shakespeare and Walter Benjamin you say it's the AI look write me an essay about Shakespeare and Walter Benjamin they'll come up with something you know so so it's sort of it's sort of going deeper to our core cognitive capacities and actually changing our brain functionality because once you lost certain skills it's not that easy to get them back and sometimes you can't even you know so that that's an interesting um Rift upon of this oh I I I I could I could we we could talk about that simple part of it I think for hours but I want to point out a couple of things that that goes along with that one artificial intelligence it's it's it's actually really speaking of stories like the the religious and faith-based idea that comes around it we we we basically have these corporations and and Tech glates that are programming artificial intelligence right they're the ones who are making sure what it does how it thinks how it processes things and we're pretending like somehow or another it's some sort of like deity that's going to talk to us and solve our problems when in fact what's actually happening is it's being programmed to continue capitalism and all of these ideas right which which is it's The Wizard of Oz idea like it's we're very happy to not look behind the curtain because it will actually give liberalism the plausible deniability and I I want to go ahead very very quickly give people an idea what this is going to look like think about right now with like the Democratic party that can't pass Joe Biden's agenda because there's like a a parliamentarian that says that they can't and what do they do after they can't do it they go out in front of the cameras and they say we wish we could but we just can't right the parliamentarians said that we can't uh we have a filibuster we would totally do this if there wasn't a filibuster right we wish that we could do that this actually I think in the future when it comes to artificial intelligence is going to change everything about politics and our economics and people are going to say man I wish it was different I really feel so bad that these jobs are being eliminated that these people are being hurt that state power is being used to oppress but I mean we're not in charge of this thing I think that's one thing to remember um the the next you know I I I I think when you when you take a look at all of this what is actually happening is our society is so fundamentally changing that we we we've seen it before we've had these major inventions whether it was the printing press right which led to the Schism between the Catholic church and protestantism like one of the biggest changes that we've actually seen which has has brought us here uh you know you've had the radio you've had television I mean the radio gave us the Nazis television gave us like basically a detached Society now all of a sudden we have reached the point where capitalism and neoliberalism has so so fundamentally changed our culture that we're almost unrecognizable I am a firm believer in the term homoeconomicus that like this system has changed us to the point where our our the way that we think the way that we live our lives has been so altered that it's almost impossible to totally understand it I want to give a a quick little representation of this I didn't plan on coming on here to talk about Survivor but I'm going to talk about Survivor uh the the reality TV show uh this was happening right around the the the end of the Millennium uh and by the way it's not an accident that it happened then uh you know we we have this reality show where people are put on an island right and they're supposed to create like a fake society and it's a competition between them right and while they're doing that they have a choice they can create a a society an egalitarian society where they work together or they can screw each other over well guess what we have interviews with the contestants the guy who won was the guy who screwed everybody over the absolute worst if we were working with somebody like in our jobs back then and they would have like took us aside and been like I'm screwing everybody over and I'm lying to people I'm manipulating them I'm I'm taking advantage of them we would have called them a sociopath right we would have like repelled from them in horror we now we expect that life is a game this is one of the reasons why Donald Trump a third rate reality TV show host and con man criminal for years who has ripped everybody off has become so powerful because we now in a society we don't believe egalitarianism we don't believe that we can work together right like I I've been talking to you now for going on an hour I think you're you're a good enough person I think I'm a good enough person I think we're acting in good faith you're not going to suddenly jump out and screw me over that's a form of intimacy right so as a result we can have a conversation we can share terms but when you don't have that faith when you think that everybody is out to screw you over which is what neoliberalism does it's like putting two scorpions in a glass jar and making them fight each other right that's what it does to us we have created a society where not only can we not work together to create a different project or move ourselves forward or to repair any of the damage we're now seeing these articles I assume you probably saw it these articles about influencer parents who are using their children to make money on Instagram or You Tube or or Tik Tok or whatever it is and they're understanding that not only are they exploiting their children but there are predators who are like exploiting them but they pay money so you might as well do that that the fundamental bonds of human connection that are necessary for creating a better future for cooperation for working with one another they've been dissolved they've been like literally destroyed by everything that we're talking about and the functions that you're talking about have been destroyed we don't know where we're heading but we have to have some sort of a sea change um we have to have some sort of a return to to some type of value that isn't about uh uh you know extraction ACC ulation exploitation like those things have now become inherent in us and I think that's what keeps us from being able to form political movements that can make change over time and like what we're discussing right now is only going to make that worse I mean I think uh I mean you know we've been a little bit focusing on let's say the the rightwing aspect the problem is that the um kind of the I mean you know there was a sense that like the sort of technologists Were Somehow like a like a like a new for in society that Were Somehow inherently a bit more Progressive but but I guess over time that's been revealed as being fraudulent um I mean um you like you know elad musk has obviously you know gone fully into the you know Maga realm basically um you know Zuckerberg is just entirely about um kind of protecting his uh you know himself and his resources I mean Bill Bill Gates um I think you know you know sort of wants to do good in a way but but also is trapped in this uh you know capitalist imperialist um ideology that he doesn't you know isn't able to perceive the limits of you know well and and and it's it's honestly it's it's a cult-like mentality is what it is and and I was disgusted it was years back and people don't like talking about this but you know when when Facebook first came around when Elon Musk first came around like you had Democratic senators Congress people and presidents just making like heart eyes at them just like putting their heads on their hands just being like how do you do it you know like they they had no interest in regulating them they had no interest in understanding what they were doing because they had a religious faith that those people were their people and that they were going to head and bring learning and logic to society and as a result things were going to get better the problem and this is the problem with liberalism RIT large is that there is a religious faith that they although they believe in liberalism and rights and and the idea of equality deep deep down they believe that you know some pigs are created more equal than others and and the idea that like they they they if they could just educate the masses and the masses probably they they should have a vote but they shouldn't have that much of a seat at the table and we see that now and we actually see that throughout history which is one of the reasons why you see middle classes particularly middle white classes they're all for Liberal democracy and direct representation until you know the the Fire Hits the road and all of a sudden they start siding with fascist and authoritarians they wish that Hitler wouldn't say the things that he did they wish that Bonito musolini was a little just would chill out a little bit but meanwhile they made the trains run on time and they're pretty good corporatist the problem is that the middle class is always in like a state of um psychic panic and like existential Terror right like they they they want things to be better but they also don't want their station to be troubled right like they they would be all for a better society and they really wish that people would be okay which is one of the reasons I think that social media is so Insidious you can post about it you can put it in your bio you can share memes you can do all those things those are there's no downside to that you're not you're not putting yourself in danger you're not doing any of those things but meanwhile the actual political action necessary doesn't have to happen and I think that's one of the problems we've faced is that Tech has given the illusion of progress when in fact what it's done is it's just sort of institutionalized the inherent inequalities and the oppression and the disruption of reality that we were talking about earlier it's just forwarded those things under a new package that I think made it palatable to a lot of those lawmakers that we were talking about yeah uh I hear you on all that yeah I mean you and one reason the the Democratic senators were shooting googly eyes at The Tech Guys is they were um allowing for the religion of progress to you know Innovation like you know that they kept that whole um thing going for a while I just want to add one thing on that front because this was something I had to get into the midnight Kingdom what I realized was that the birth of liberalism uh was birthed in utopic ideology right and the idea stop slow down is that like Thomas Moore and stuff like that or yeah so like we're getting we're getting back to just a little bit before uh the enlightenment right like just as and this was back when the corporate structure was just sort of coming online and sort of taking over a lot of government including Great Britain as you take a look at this what what actually happened is capitalism and exploitation and uh settler colonialism these things which are causing genocide they're causing oppression just Untold problems right you're seeing a lot of what I would call protol liberals who are all saying this is really bad but I promise you we have a Utopia in front of us we're getting somewhere science is going to get us there progress is going to get us there this is ugly right now and we really wish it wasn't so bad but if we can just get past this unpleasantness I promise you up over the hill it's the promise land and if we can just do this we'll be fine which by the way is how they came to love Elon Musk well I mean he's not great and yes cars blow up and kill people but he's going to get us to Mars and yes we have global climate change and maybe we should keep him from extracting all these resources and basically destroying the environment but if he can just put the foot on the gas a little bit faster we'll get to Mars I promise it's a religious secular idea which is the thing like the the right relies on actual religious IDE ideology liberalism relies on secular ideology secular religion and so as like somebody like Bill Gates will always go back to the fact that you know more people are living longer and healthier you know obviously you know I mean heter Richie who is the you know scientist for Oxford's world and data just published a book called not the end of the world that that Bill Gates has been touting where you know she's basically you know saying like yeah we have to keep having economic growth and um you know people eating less meat is good but you don't really have to change your lifestyle that much and you know sort of like you know the technocracy is still like going to figure it out you know somehow you know and and I go ahead at the history there really has been a lot of progress you know and there is let's you know there is some truth to that whereas there are many more people on the planet you know living longer you know maybe they're not having I I mean I I I I trip out on that a lot because I visited indigenous cultures in South America where I saw like these 80-year-old guys who were able to like climb up trees and like March on through the jungle for hours you know and knew every plant in the jungle and so in many ways they seem to be having uh you know much more amazing lives but you know I mean infant mortality obviously is touted as one of the great achievements or vaccines also and all the stuff you know what are you gonna say well it's it's funny by the way that you ended that comment on infant mortality and vaccines because we're way back on that now like you know what I mean like that that that isn't even something the United States can talk about nor is it education or length of life or any of it and you you brought up a lot of really really good stuff that I think it it would it would behoove us to get into very quickly one so-called Western Civilization is based on the fallacy of we've already gone this far do you want to go back you know it's this idea it's the best of all worlds I used to live in this small college town in the South it had like six or seven restaurants and there was like this one restaurant you went to where I mean it was it was a roll of the dice whether you're going to get food poisoning you know like every time you ate there like it was really playing with fate and we kept going back because where else were you going to go you know what I mean like are you going to drive to a different place are you going to try another place that's going to get you sick and eventually what you get told it's limiting of imagination it goes back to what we were talking about and it turns out the technocracy the liberal Elite whatever you want to call them these people are being served by what's happened right like like why would anybody whether it's the media the political class or even like a billionaire like Bill Gates why would any of them critique this system it gave them what they have it gave them the power they have the wealth that they have also going back to the idea of stories it's intertwined their own personal narrative are you going to say that this system isn't fair that has raised you up what's that say about you were you the beneficiary of privilege and chance and and and discrimination no you're not going to believe that so what are you going to tell people let's not throw the baby out with the bath water come on there's some things that need to be worked on but whatever that's what western civilization is based itself on but what you just brought up is really important the basis of capitalism in western civilization was the destruction of indigenous cultures and before I wrote The Midnight Kingdom I I always had that old idea in my head that was why why did Western Civilization steamroll the indigenous cultures and I always had that old Nar well they had better weapons right or they were more advanced and they just came across these people that's not why they were able to do it because they deceived them because they were more wicked and wretched and they they betrayed them Time After Time After Time right you actually look at these indigenous cultures that I was always told that they were primitive and silly and naive they were full of you know quote unquote Savages and barbarians what you actually realize is that that right there is when Eve bit the Apple when we started like moving more towards the western civilization type of mindset which brings us into sociopath iic behaviors these uh inherent inequalities that that that forward Perpetual inequality what you realized is those indigenous cultures had it figured out they actually figured out how to live a galarian good lives and they had to be wiped from the face of the Earth in order to make way for this severely unhealthy abusive environment and that's what we're dealing with and people are still saying well I mean you know it's the best it's ever been well it could be something else and we we've lost that imagination to even imagine what that something could be yep sounds about right uh okay so wait I had another question oh by the way yeah let's see um um well well in that case where do you think we go from here I mean it's looking pretty you know pretty bad um oh okay there's also another I was G to ask you about actually so um but it seems like even the system uh you know of control domination exploitation that's gotten us to this point on the one hand there's the you know the the environmental stuff you know which sort of looks like the the illusion of of prosperity you know is not I mean it's not goingon to be able to maintain for too much longer no matter what uh and then like you know I mean it's actually had mention New York City right now the prices are skyrocketing it's like the most expensive city in the world like you get a coffee and a Quant and you dropped like 15 bucks or something I've never seen anything like it uh but but on the other hand it's much it feels like it's really Deluxe like feels like that you know like a lot of money has come in from somewhere and rebuilt all the facades and everything um but if you look at like the the graph of like um you know the money supply expansion that the Federal Reserve has been doing you know like the population graph uh and like a few other really scary graphs it's like an exponential graph that basically um starting in 2008 you know when essentially the financial system died um you know we started quantitative easing and the federal res just started pumping invented money into the into the into the into the system so you basically if if the system is you know has all these debts that if they don't get repaid then the whole system starts to collapse that's why it has to keep expanding and there's no real there's no real place to expand anymore the the real world of mineral resources and food and good and goods and water has kind of reached its limit you know how does that crash into reality um you know and when does that happen you know well I mean both questions that you asked I think play into the exact same thing um economics um it really watching it it it's like watching the tide you know when it's getting high you know when it's going low like you can you can chart these things it's the same story since capitalism came online everybody always says I always get a kick out of this so like capitalism is easily the best system that we've ever had and then they hey don't say anything bad about it you'll spook it and it will absolutely fall apart like chill out right like this thing this thing's unstable we we've been tied to a bomb and what always happens is is we have these moments where um we we have the powerful and the wealthy that uh create vast record inequality and as that happens like you you you have like the 1% 2% that have all this wealth everybody else is struggling going paycheck to paycheck but guess what here's the Innovation credit and debt right that all of a sudden now you're going to run up credit and debt well eventually you run out of credit and debt and eventually this entire thing falls apart we've seen it happen we watch it uh 16 years ago it happened then it happened before that and and what always occurs in all this is afterwards like we got to do something about this we got to put some breaks in it we got to deal with it and then we immediately take them off and then it happens again so it just continues to boom and bust like that and here is what I think is occurring and history feels this way in terms of its cyclical nature these things are always working together and unfortunately they have some really predictable uh elements to them there's a recipe to it right there's the boom and bust of the markets there's also uh the amount of inequality there's perception of reality that we were talking about earlier also it really helps if there's some sort of an environmental disaster or crisis that plays into it like every time you see one of these big changes there's always some sort of environmental thing or disease right whe whether it's a a climate change takes place Roman Empire you have the end of feudalism that takes place with the black death you know it's back and forth all these things sort of combin I think what's happening right now and it's pretty predictable unfortunately is that we are reaching another existential crisis that combines all of these elements we're probably going to have some sort of an economic major problem or malfunction because it can't continue like this it doesn't work I mean like you you see it left and right like people are people are not just stretch thin they can't buy houses anymore like the the the single family housing market is pretty much gone people can't afford rent anymore uh eventually at some point or another that metabolizes into a labor movement which we're having right now like it's not reported on it's not dealt with but you're seeing a lot of people organizing and gaining power in those regards you start seeing social movements that start rearing their heads we've seen occupy we've seen black lives matter and there's a tons of tons of other ones that come out eventually it's that authoritarianism we were talking about earlier it starts to grow and grow and warm its way into our lives you brought up New York City you can barely get on a subway car right now New York City for like troops going through your things right thousands of troops and cops who are like you know uh carrying out what are arguably unconstitutional search and seizures then on top of it if you do happen to get into a car you might either get attacked or killed or who even knows right like the fabric of society is starting to disintegrate a little bit so as that happens you're going to see a clash between I think what is a resurgent left and a powerful right the question now which is the question at all times all you have to do is go back into the 1960s 1970s in which you had another Moment Like This which is are you going to see enough people who are willing to put their lives and safety on the line and for a while they were doing it because of things like the Vietnam draft which is where in order for the business of Empire and state to continue it's going to take blood to grease the wheels right well guess what a lot of the social movements that era they came to a stop particularly the anti-war Free Speech movement whenever the draft went away right the Civil Rights movement the feminist movement the gay rights movement they had their moments but eventually it all got codified into uh consumerism all of a sudden everybody starts wearing blue jeans they going to rock and roll concerts and you have hippies they go to yuppies right it gets commercialized and and sort of absorbed the question we have to ask now is are all the projects that are going to amplify state power including AR artificial intelligence surveillance robots you you all the drones right all these things that amplify state power is it going to create an environment in which protesting or being an activist is going to put your life on the line probably so are we going to see enough people who are going to put their shoulder to the wheel or are we going to basically Retreat into personalized uh Boutique realities virtual reality social media working from home never seeing other people the decline of communities are people going to say you know what things out there are ugly I'll stay behind my closed door and I'll just go ahe and have my life as long as I can have it we don't know but it seems like as time moves forward that that's the the chess board that's being set up and I personally have hope I I know that i' I've gotten a reputation for being a little bit of a profit of Doom and I know that these conversations aren't always fun I personally from looking at history I have hope and I am optimistic that uh lower D Democratic forces are going to Prevail but I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that this isn't going to be ugly this is going to be really really ugly in a lot of different ways and I I I don't think it's going to I don't think it's simply going to solve itself I think it's going to take uh a lot of work and a lot of blood unfortunately yeah well then there's the other analysis I think it would be interesting if you to check out this John Michael Greer book I think it was from 2019 Dark Ages America basically you know his perspective uh also another book that I I I did a podcast with him recently also jeem Bendell wrote a book breaking together and you know their argument based on their assessment of what's happening with energy and resources um is it's actually not going to be possible to maintain these gigantic uh you know Federated Empire Imperial systems and ultimately power is just going to start to devolve back to the you know Lo localities and regions as people have to deal you know with you know whatever is happening um well we're already seeing that I mean globalism and and that's another part of the story globalism is unwinding you know like it it reached it Zenith and now it's coming back there's a reason why America is now investing in manufacturing the the reindustrialization of America I think is going to create a labor struggle the likes of which we've never seen because China's now the the Cold War enemy right and we also have a federal government that has been completely depowered the most powerful people in the United States now are Governors like they are the they are the ones who basically control what happens in your daily life I don't think that that's outside the possibility that it could become much more regionalized and localized I think that's even uh sort of what uh the the oligarchs and plut uh uh plutocrats that we were talking about earlier I think that's even what they're counting on I think that's the real possibility I mean obviously the you know I mean I liked in your book you talked about how I mean you mentioned um the the reality is that you know it was the it was America America that kind of destroyed the sort of hopeful possibility of the USSR falling apart by sending in the Milton Freedman NE liberal economists Who convinced all those countries that they had to privatize all state owned you know kind of Institutions as quickly as possible sell them off to the highest bidder which led to kleptocracy which then led to Putin which now led to this you know really really difficult situation where you have a religious fanatic psychopath you know with 3,000 nuclear weapons that he might decide if he's going to die you know he just wants to go out in in in a blaze of global destruction we just don't know I mean you know I mean a psychological issue there I think I think that was I think that right there was the beginning I I I I say all the time I said the Cold War wasn't one there were two mortal wounds that were suffered it just so happens that the USSR bled out first um the United States Unleashed on the world not just neoliberalism but also an autocratic energy that has now metastasized into a right-wing authoritarian movement I mean Putin's not in control of it but he's one of the major nodes of it and it's you know it's mobster style kleptocracy and that's what the United States is is is also becoming and I think that's absolutely right I think that that more or less sort of Unleashed a poison into the system that has now sort of circled back around yeah I mean I also want to be careful because sometimes when you're you know when you get into the more like leftist analysis you end up blaming Europe you know and and and America for everything sure you knowy style you know which which I also think everybody has you know their own homegrown style of evil we just happen to be you know in the Lu position to extract you know the bulk of the world's energy and resources you know for a considerable period you I would make I would make the argument and I think this is one of the things that the left misses out on a lot of the times I don't think it's that the United States is an inherently evil country countries are countries they can either be good or bad at any given moment uh certainly the founding of the United States was evil uh not just you know settler genocide but also the the framing of the Constitution I think the bigger thing here is that we have missed the point that capitalism is a parasite and it jumps from Nation to Nation eating them up and destroying them from the inside out the United States was past the Baton of capitalism from Great Britain after World War II the United States took over and as a result it was co-opted by a parasite and it and and now the parasite's done with us you know you you brought up the the lack of new markets and George W bush like that's why we went to Iraq we opened it up as a new market and it didn't serve the United States because capitalism had taken the reign it had you know the parasite had effectively taken control of the body so yeah I think it's actually reductive to Simply say the United States does this or Russia does that I think it actually misses the larger Mark which is capitalism is itself an entity that has more or less sort of jumped and moved and caused these things to happen I think that's the the larger critique that needs to be focused in on yeah well I I guess the point I was trying to get to was um so we we missed our opportunity maybe with the USSR um and then allowed for you know some people would say it's like a you know a nemesis that we helped create or whatever but um you know the problem really from the tragic situation that we're facing now which you do you do allude to a little bit at the end of the book Al it's not it's not a main focus is um you know it looks like we at a period where climate change is not just going sort of linearly up but is is curving more exponential uh as all the feedback loops in in in the in the climate system and the biosphere engage so 2023 we saw you know unprecedented you know warming of the oceans like they don't SES don't even know what's happening or why um you know cherry blossoms are out now instead of May um you know it looks like we've kicked up we we've shot past 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre industrial levels to about 1.7 and yeah there were a lot of you know there you know the ipcc was quite conservative in their estimates that actually what we didn't really look into or they sign just didn't go into was how all these feedback loops would would come together so so you know now we may be in a period of like 10 or 20 years you know until you know the climate or even less becomes very very unlivable uh for you know a lot of people uh in different parts of the world particularly the global South um and so it's at the time when we actually would need Global coordination and connection we've instead got into this modality of uh you know the new cold war between you know Russia the West us and China and um yeah I mean it seems to me like the best thing that would you know the smart I mean Robert Wright I don't know if you know him he wrote a book nonzero he's quite good actually he um U wrote a piece recently about how yeah you know sanely the US should be trying to make peace with China right now and just figure out how we go forward because um you know this could you know easily become you know a scale of like billions of people dying in the next 20 years you know you know and there's nothing within you know Imperial modernity Imperial you know capitalism that's going to make that uh that's going to stop that you know no there there's nothing about it and there's no possibility for it within that that framework I I think it's actually amazing and first of all I I think Xi Jinping is a a murderous dictator this is not at all a Chinese apology like they have theyve tried to to work with us even even as the saber rattling has grown there have been uh moments in which like they've tried to lower the temperature but the American xenophobic white supremacist capitalistic sort of regime has no ability whatsoever to work with them it just can't happen the only thing they can do is have corporations including the the the tech oligarchs that go in and work with them right sort of like the the tentacles of capitalism that can go in and take what they can and and are more than fine again with the authoritarianism we were talking about this is a death spiral there is no way whatsoever under the current climate that that climate change is going to be dealt with and so what's actually happening right now I think is a precursor to where things are going the extremism of of right-wing authoritarianism I think is actually preparing the ground for what is going to happen and this is one of those things I I I think the rightwing is in denial about uh global climate change because ideologically they have to be right because their project is to cond continue extraction and oppression but I do think that they feel it and they know it I think a lot of of what's Happening happening with uh immigrants and refugees right now is more or less uh an acting out of what will eventually happen if climate change is allowed to hit us and we have not had a cultural sea change um if if you think things are bad right now with people being put in camps families being separated I mean in Georgia there's been forced hysterectomies I mean if you think any of that is bad imagine as our as our land starts to shrink and our resources start to shrink it's it's the equivalent of a fascist being in charge of like a a boat that is on fire and the fascist tells you that the smoke isn't there we're not actually on fire and then the moment it becomes uh unavoidable that there's a fire all of a sudden it's time for the person who denied it in the first place to make the Split Second cruel decisions about what you do who survives and who doesn't and so I believe America is preparing itself for that uh if not unconsciously in a way that should frighten everybody I I think what we're seeing right now from Trump with MAA is an unconscious preparation and I think it's only going to get worse unless we have some sort of a sea change yes I mean I'm actually living on a block right now where all these uh Refugee Asylum Seekers are gathering every day uh because there they they turned an abandoned school on Catholic School on the corner into a uh shelter processing center um and then they just sit in the park you know so it's like hundreds of these you know young guys mostly from you know these countries that are already collapsing in the global South you know like Ivory Coast then then you read that it's actually like you know 80% deforestation because of Coco they they grow 50% of the world's chocolate and the uh you know Nestle and Hershey's work with the corrupt government which gets like 5% of the of the revenue and these these guys who working the chocolate Farms which is dangerous work it paid 78 cents a day you know so and and even then they they're starving so they're so they're you know you have 50 million people in Central West Africa on the verge of starvation and some of them are just finding ways to March you know somehow to get over to Brazil then just March North or get over to Columbia or whatever um and so this is just the trickle um of what you know could be coming um yeah I mean apparently you could resettle two billion people in Canada um you know um I'm not sure if Canadians are going to be crazy about that uh but it looks like um maybe at some point that's just people are going to be on the move like in mass quantities and um you know I I think what we've already seen and and to be fair and this is something that never gets brought up in any of this the reason why we're dealing with these people from the global South is because the the global structure has completely uh you know dominated and destroyed the global South it has continually undermined them and undermine their political and economic structures so these are the consequences of our action that's not a popular thing to say out loud but that's how we've arrived at this point there are going to be so many people who are going to move when it comes to to uh the the consequences of of global climate change and eventually it's not going to get to the i i to be honest you saying the idea of resettling 2 billion in Canada is maybe the most optimistic thing that I've heard about this in a long while but if you look at it rationally from what has happened we're talking genocide that's what we're literally talking about we're getting to the point where we are setting up for an industrialized genocide we have the robots you know the AI robot drones which will just be doing this you know a I mean um yeah it's really um it's it's it's terrifying and we have been told and this is one of the unfortunate things and and I think this is important to point out we have created this narrative in reality in which fascism Nazism was just a phenomenon of 20th century Western Europe it we don't know what happened a guy got up and made speeches and they were too good instead of recognizing that these are inherent conditions of humanity that we have to fight and deal with and also the capitalism you know feeds and and Stokes and I think America particularly in the place where it's at and what is happening particularly with Decline and and what we've been discussing this entire time like it is being set up to deal with the consequences of its imperialist actions through more and more Furious violence and unless we we have something that changes that unless we have some sort of a redirection it's almost faded at this point and I don't say that to scare people I say that because we actually need to wrestle with that we need to look in the face of it understand where we've been where we are and where we're going I mean I I'm sorry but I'm I'm looking at what's happening in Haiti right now and I think I think the rightwing is going to just bleed that for all the fearmongering it can well somebody who wrote The Midnight Kingdom and I look at how Haiti played into 18th century America and their fears about you know slave revolts you look at the pre-confederation against the country like all of this is cyclical and it's very very clear where this is going and and we can we can go ahead and chart it if we just pay attention there is an end to the cycle in some respects which is the the decline of cheap energy yes which keeps the whole you know thing in motion you know so if we don't develop something like you know fusion power you know which still seems very much like a pipe stream we're not you know there's nothing there's no way you know the whole idea that renewable energy can maintain this type of system particularly since all the industrial farming you know is fossil fuel dependent um I I saw something it was I don't know if you saw this it was a couple of months ago there was this big uh hubub on on Twitter where someone I believe it was Matt Chrisman suggested that for a sustainable future we might have to give up bananas and and people are like what are you talking about we shouldn't be saying that out loud and it's like I love bananas I I I I'll I'll eat a banan after we're done here I don't care and like but that's such a small thing to have to give up and in American culture what we've actually Bartered for it's it's it's multiple types of Reese's Cups you know it's it's it's Ruby Tuesdays like it's such a a ridiculous thing that we've given up a sustainable better more equal future for and we're going to have to do that like it's liter it's not going to be be necessarily a decline it's going to be what a lot of people are afraid of and if you listen to American apocalyptic narratives they're afraid of becoming a second world nation something that other people already live with some you know other people's realities are based in and like it's going to be giving up some of the conveniences which by the way some of are really not all that important and and I think that's what we're struggling with which is actually consumer um consumer choices I think that's what a lot of people are dealing with yeah well that yeah I mean may go deeper in that down the line but I wanted to um you we talking for bit we start to wind up but I I really enjoyed talking to you and um we should keep up a conversation do more things are um really enjoyable uh I wanted to get into one idea that I really appreciated from the midnight Kingdom uh I think this is after maybe you're talking grandmother towards the end um okay the self-styled Messiah is a big Tech offer digital and future salvation that's only another mythology promising a future in the cosmos or the virtual world is just distracting pressing problems and allowing the conservation of wealth extraction resources to continue unabated blah blah blah these untenable Solutions Pro proliferate what I've come to think is a very general but costly mistake the concept of sin powered Christianity led to systems of spiritual and economic domination rationalized waren slavery and genocide inequality supplied the self-interest core of capitalism and aspired conspiracy theories and a general distrust that makes Collective action impossible but it was never real like the devil which I learned to fear as a supernatural external threat I guess in your childhood as an Evangelical it was a projection of internal guilts uh that I found was really interesting the powerful who manipulated the world and engaged in Endless cruelties for their own benefit laid their own shame upon the rest of us and designed the systems that continued to benefit them accordingly around that lie that frame contorted us perverted us turned it turned us into Twisted versions of them and with that twisting we projected it outward again and again and again yeah I was curious if you wanted to just you know explain that maybe in different terms or you know what you're talking sure uh I I one of the things I've come to understand in my next book project is actually looking at the psychological toll of of capitalism and what it's actually done to us um capitalism runs on the idea that we we need to be told constantly that there's something wrong with us and this is as simple as something like toothpaste if we don't get the right toothpaste we're not going to get the date we're we're we're we're going to end up alone right we're going to get humiliated at work we we possibly could lose product has become in some way or another something that we need to buy order to make ourselves whole right and as a result we have this entire pseudo environment uh going back to who we were talking about earlier a little bit naming uh we have this entire pseudo environment where product is about fixing us it's giving us something that we don't comes Christianity in order to bring ourselves atic idea and what it does is kep us from believing that we deserve better and that's part of the issue at this point we have lost the ability to imagine that we deserve programs that take care of us or we or or even look after us or we deserve a government that you know keeps corporations in check instead we have turned into a shame based society and a shame based society does one thing which is it projects its shame on other people which is why you see Republicans constantly being exposed as Hypocrites for saying that they're against something and it turns out that that's who they are and it turns into the cycle of self- imulation and self-abuse that we are not able to to get away from and that's why sin and Christianity has been such an essential component of the the capitalist structure and of course liberals tried to get away from it they tried to create you know the the the valley between State and religion but it's always been in that because IDE logically and narratively it's always been essential for this entire thing to work from the very beginning all right cool why don't we stop on that note that's a good note to stop uh and we will pick it up again soon I hope yeah this has been fantastic it's been so nice talking with you yeah yeah yeah have a great day um in your secret Hideaway from the uh the white nationalists I hope they don't find you uh and stay safe and uh Stay Free as my former friend Russell bran would have said uh and we'll talk soon that the best goodbye I've ever heard you stay safe as well cha

Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.