Unpacking the 2024 Election: Harris's Strategies, Right-Wing Sympathies, and Geopolitical Ramifications

What does the 2024 U.S. presidential election mean for the future of American politics? Join us as Elijah Emery unpack the unpopularity of both major candidates and the labyrinthine electoral system that confounds even seasoned pundits. We probe Kamala Harris's evolving political strategies on critical issues such as student loan forgiveness and public healthcare, scrutinizing her alignment with Biden's policies and how her tax proposals might impact small business owners and new homeowners. From immigration to international conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, Harris's potential administration is put under the microscope.

We then shift gears to explore the rising presence of fascist sympathies among public figures and the strategic reticence of the Harris campaign to spotlight these extremist ties. Delving into the weakened state of the left, we reflect on the diminished influence of leftist movements compared to 2020 and the strategic decisions progressive voters face. Historical political strategies, the shift in conservative movements, and the economic implications of lowered interest rates are all on the table, providing a thorough examination of the current political landscape.

Rounding out our discussion, we tackle the undemocratic elements within both major parties and their reliance on the judiciary and administrative state, given a dysfunctional legislature. We also touch on the geopolitical complexities involving Iran, Russia, Ukraine, and Israel, discussing the potential ramifications of these conflicts on the upcoming American election. Wrapped in a reflection on the emotional aspect of voting and the personal significance of political choices, this episode offers a comprehensive overview of the pressing issues shaping the 2024 election and beyond.

Chapters

• 1:38 2024 Election and Political Analysis
• 13:28 Analysis of Harris and Left Response
• 32:23 Analysis of Current Political Trends
• 41:54 Analysis of Biden's Political Ideology
• 50:07 Political Analysis and Future Trends
• 1:03:19 Analysis of Leftist Political Strategy
• 1:18:16 Discussing Democratic Leadership and Political Strategy
• 1:27:09 Political Ideologies and the Undecided Voter
• 1:39:42 Geopolitical Analysis and Concerns
• 1:51:52 Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and Political Analysis
• 1:57:44 Analysis of Working Class Politics
• 2:11:45 Voting Dilemma and Personal Choice

Transcript

C. Derick Varn: 1:38

That introduction means it's Varnvog and I'm about as interested in the topic today as I seem, which is the election in 2024. And we are going to talk about the world's stupidest democracy, and I don't mean that the people are stupid, the country is stupid. You can make those decisions for yourself, but that our method of doing it is the most arcane, ass-backwards way that you could possibly do it. And we're voting for the president in an election that, until a month ago, was the first most unpopular president battling the second most unpopular president since we've kept decent stats on the subject matter. Um, in an election literally no one wanted, and yet no one could figure out how to change. And then we changed it because donors realized that biden was going to lose. You had a crazy stat about that, elijah. You want to share it with the audience?

Elijah Emery: 2:49

uh the one on unpopularity yeah, biden is more unpopular than the overturning of roe v wade.

Elijah Emery: 2:57

Another great stat is that Biden. Just to show how old he was, which is the main reason, in my opinion, for his unpopularity, he was born closer to Abraham Lincoln's presidency than his own, which is just like that's wild. That was the 1860s. That should not be the case, and you know, as you can tell, I'm more excited about this topic than Varne is, as an aspiring sicko and bourgeois politics Afrikando, and so I'll try my best to enliven the topic that all of you hate with a little bit of joy, the politics of joy, as it were.

C. Derick Varn: 3:42

All right.

Elijah Emery: 3:44

Elijah, okay, I'll stop.

C. Derick Varn: 3:50

That's going to land you in a gulag one day. Anyway, to talk about this election, harris on messaging has been interesting. To talk about this election Harris on messaging has been interesting the first two weeks we saw her soaring. Then she played defense. She was doing really well in polls. She seems to have overextended her defense and by that I mean people started noticing she wasn't giving interviews or making fundamental policy statements.

C. Derick Varn: 4:23

Um partisans and uh and democrat world, and not just blue maga people and for those of you who don't know my usage, blue maga does not refer to any old, annoying democrat. It refers to the most annoying of Democrats, the people who try to convince me there's nothing wrong with the Biden campaign. Now, I don't know what kind of Democrat Harris really is, even though I've followed her career since before she was even a candidate. I keep up with California politics somewhat and I remember the controversies around her extending sentences to use inmates to fight fires in 2011. But by and large, I have felt like Harris was a more likable version of Lori Lightfoot, which was the weird conclusion for a little while that the Democrats took from the Obama election, which is find a nothing burger person who meets all your demographic projection needs. Have them say nothing. Make sure they come from some kind of vague law enforcement-y background so that you can't hit them on being weak on crime. Have them say progressive things sometimes and then have them rule, usually pretty poorly, because they don't stand for anything and have no clear policy agenda. I'm not sure that actually is Harris. Harris's political instincts are hard for me to gauge.

C. Derick Varn: 6:00

I'll give you an example of that, watching her decisions around, say, student loans.

C. Derick Varn: 6:06

Now I, controversially, am.

C. Derick Varn: 6:08

Well I would benefit from student loan forgiveness personally and my story is actually kind of one of the horror stories you read about in the news about people bidding, put an IBR and moved around and people buying stuff and it always extending everything.

C. Derick Varn: 6:22

So I paid on this loan for 17 years and have paid on average three to $400 a month on it, and it was less than 70 K. I want to make that clear. In fact it was much less than that. It was something like 30, 40 K and actually ended up owing at one point double what I started with and have now paid it down a significant amount. And because of the various lawsuits around Biden's ad hoc attempts to fix the problem, I am now again in limbo as to when my payments are and when they will start and when I can finally finish my public service loan forgiveness. Now I follow that issue pretty well, but I was actually critical of one-time loan forgiveness as a non-answer to an actual systemic problem, a systemic problem of which the Democratic Party has no real incentive to fix, given that some of their major donor bases are out of the university wealth funds which you just probably go ahead.

Elijah Emery: 7:28

And also in an even more real, real politic fashion, based on the fact that downwardly mobile, educated professionals are one of the main voter bases of the Democratic Party. You can increase your share by sending people to college, even if they have no way to pay for it and have been entrapped in it by student loan companies.

C. Derick Varn: 7:52

Yeah, but that runs straight into the trends amongst their other key demographicsin and black uh families. Uh, you in the black community, more often women than men, uh, that partly having to do with southern felon laws and that partly recently having to do a black man kind of getting fed up with the democratic party for whatever reason, although that seems to be slightly stemmed in the most recent polls that I've seen by the replacement of Biden for Harris, but not as much as one might think. This is not like an Obama era where everyone is projecting their identitarian hopes on Harris in the same way. So I bring that up because for me I see Harris doing two things. Before she was in the White House she was a critic of any forgiveness of any kind of student loans. After she was in the White House, she actually pivoted to the left of Joe Biden in private meetings that we have seen leaked to the press in the last year, and I think that's interesting because it just means that I really can't guess what she is and what she actually stands for. Another thing is her endorsement of a people. Say she was on Bernie Sanders. Medicare for all. Her actual policy was more anemic than Bernie Sanders, but she was willing to sign up to the general public health care plan. Now she wants a fix of the ACA, but it's still vague on what fix she actually wants. It might be in a policy paper somewhere, but I haven't seen him reported on nor read it. So I'm not calling her a waffler.

C. Derick Varn: 9:42

And, interestingly enough, uh, trump does not have the message discipline to do so consistently either, and in fact, I was actually struck uh, we're recording this on 9-11, the day after the debate by how bad he was at messaging attacks that would have any resonance outside of the diehardest of his base, and he seemed low energy even there. And this is before we get to anything the left really cares about right now. The left really cares about Jaza and the genocide, and I have been on team quit lying to yourselves about what you can do about this. Uh, you need to push for a ceasefire and you might be able to pull something off with the harris campaign. Uh are with putting pressure on biden, with things like uncommitted.

C. Derick Varn: 10:37

But I also thought that was that rhetorical wad was blown by the online left pretty much immediately too, by claiming that gaza was somehow how they forced the donors to consider their vote. It was actually absurd. Some of the stuff I said, including by the npc of the uh, the national leadership for those of you who don't know what I mean of the DSA, which I think was only endorsed by the DSA's more Democratic, party-adjacent caucus, or what the other side of the DSA calls the DSA-right releasing a statement praising Harris and claiming that as part of their victory on the day that Cori Bush was unseated in her district by a coalition of labor abstention and AIPAC. Now, another thing that's come up, and I'll let you talk and respond to this, elijah, I'm doing my whole front-loading thing. No, no, no, this is great.

C. Derick Varn: 11:42

Another thing that's come up to me as I look at all this right now is that the left has no, the far left that is still willing to play with the Democratic Party has no real agenda other than now to say, well, supporting Harris', supporting genocide, of which case sort of true in some ways, to which I answer, and what is your vote for Jill Stein going to do about it? And as a punishment, exactly not really anything. So the left seems to be in a weird space where half of them, like yourself, want to liquidate into the Democratic Party and the other half of them want to repeat the 1990s, but with even lazier steps. To do it like pulling up the same candidate who's run like four times and never gotten more than 2% of the vote. We're not even talking about a Ross Perot or a Nader figure. I mean, this is a completely different configuration. Meanwhile, we've seen the consolidation of mega communism, which I don't really think matters in any statistical sense, but apparently it matters enough to.

C. Derick Varn: 13:05

Cnn is doing a docu-series of report on them. So um, uh, so you know. And the more paranoid wings of the on the online left have actually decided that cnn maybe helped be bankrupted by the people who are bank running the ACP, so they can do a docuseries on them. We're getting into that levels of paranoia. I bring all this up for context because it on one hand, I have no idea what the left is going to do, but there's so many of them right now and so many of them are old playbooks and they're all kind of frankly, dumb. I don't know what to tell you to do. So how do you feel about it? And then we can get to the substance of the debate last night. In so much as the debate had any substance at all, I would characterize the debate as status quo versus status no. But somehow status quo has managed to convince a fair amount of her own electorate that she's a change candidate, and I have not figured out how. But go ahead.

Elijah Emery: 14:20

Yeah. So there's a couple of elements there. One is Harris in terms of policy, the other is the left's response to that. I think that the most indicative thing about Harris in terms of policy is you know, you can see now the platform that was copy pasted from Joe Biden's reelection platform, which was published at the DNC. Politically, what Harris seems to be promising is largely a continuation of Biden's policies, and to a certain extent, that makes a lot of sense, considering that many of the most pressing issues within the administration relate to the rollout of the big bills that were passed during the first two years of Biden's presidency.

Elijah Emery: 15:12

You need a lot more people in the administrative state working on stuff like Inflation Reduction Act implementation, the bipartisan infrastructure bill, whatever else, and this is going to take up a lot of time. This is not me saying this as a defense of the choice not to present a comprehensive policy platform, which I think is both an electoral mistake and also a disservice to the voting population, who deserves to know about what somebody wants to change. But I think it is indicative of what Harris's intentions are were she to be elected. In terms of her own policies, the biggest change is her, you know, opportunity economy thing, which is basically a massive tax cut for small business owners, as far as I can tell, a $50,000 tax credit and some demand side interventions in the housing market, including a $25,000 tax credit for new homeowners. Neither of these things are particularly inspiring, whether or not you think they're a good idea.

C. Derick Varn: 16:32

And.

Elijah Emery: 16:34

I think they're probably not a good idea, and you know that's really the only new thing. Otherwise, she's running on the completion of this immigration bill, which came up for a vote last year and Trump sank, despite the fact that it came from really the right wing of the Republican Party within the Senate, with no discussion of more comprehensive fixes to the broken immigration system besides more Border Patrol officers, more militarization of the border, which you know is a band-aid for illegal immigration at best and certainly does not address the underlying reasons why people flee to this country. Um, or the fact that it's a moral imperative to make sure that there's not, you know, 11 to 13 million undocumented people who can be taken advantage of by employers and whoever else to be used as a cheap labor force, which is a serious problem. In terms of Ukraine and Gaza, again, the promise is more of the same. On both, I think Harris is pretty aligned with the Biden administration.

Elijah Emery: 18:00

On Ukraine, there's some possibility that she'll untether some of the limitations we've placed on Ukrainian self-defense capacity. Basically, as it works right now, we're giving them a bunch of weapons, but we're not letting them use the weapons in Russian territory because we don't want to increase tensions with Russia, harris might stop that policy, which is a big priority for the more hawkish wing of the party, which would allow Ukraine to use our missiles to strike deeper into Russian territory. In terms of the situation in Gaza, harris is committed to a ceasefire, in the same verbiage that Biden is, which is to say no pressure, no additional pressure applied, that we can see no halt to even offensive weapon shipments, not to say anything of funding for the Iron Dome, Though, in terms of the possibility for an improvement to the situation, harris also does not have the type of longstanding 50 year record Biden has on being the most pro-Israel guy ever, or you know, not ever, but you know what I mean. I mean Biden is fanatically pro-Israel. Harris grew up at a different time and if she aligns even with the baseline instincts of the Democratic Party, it's less likely that she'll be so absolutely conciliatory as Biden has been, which, again, at least there'll be a shift in rhetoric, and I think it's quite likely that certain actions which the Biden administration has haltingly done, such as the sanctioning of particular battalions in the IDF convicted of international human rights abuses, or the sanctioning of the settlers up on the hills of the West Bank, which Biden has done to a limited extent and then always pulled back from at the last minute. I think it's likelier that that type of small-scale intervention would be maintained by Harris administration than by a Biden administration, do I? Is that a guarantee it's going to happen? No, does that mean it's even likely? Also, no, is it likelier? Yes.

Elijah Emery: 20:32

In terms of what the left's response is to all of this, I think one one thing, varun, which you touched on and which I think is true, is that the left is coming at this even for those of us who are willing to vote for Democrats and attempting, as you say, to liquidate into the party is that we're coming at this from a position of considerable weakness, far more than in 2020, where Bernie Sanders had posed a challenge to Biden's nomination and where Bernie had a good working relationship with the Biden campaign and worked on creating a platform together. Basically, again, this is not a strong position. This is a position of weakness, but it's more negotiating room than is the case now, where the left posed no serious primary challenge to Biden, even in the form of the uncommitted movement, and where, as a whole, the left appears to be exhausted after the high points of the 21st century left from Occupy to roughly 2020. In terms of what people should do, I'm not going to say vote for Harris if you don't want to. I'm going to say you shouldn't vote for Donald Trump, because I think organizing conditions would be considerably worse under a Trump administration than they would be under a Harris administration.

Elijah Emery: 22:12

I don't like Jill Stein.

Elijah Emery: 22:14

If you want to write in Cornel West, I think he's a cool guy.

Elijah Emery: 22:18

Or if he's on the ballot in your state, I think he's a cool guy.

Elijah Emery: 22:20

Personally, just to show my biases, I'm going to be voting on the Working Families Party line in New York State, which is the most pathetic protest vote ever, because all of those votes go to the Democratic Party but maintain funding for the Working Families Party, for the Working Families Party. This is not a stance where I think that's going to seriously do anything, even if a large number of people were to do something similar in terms of altering the trajectory of the Democratic Party. It's more an indication that very little can be done electorally or even in terms of protest for uh on the issue of Palestine will have an effect on the democratic party or indeed on national electoral politics, and I continue to think that the best path forward for the left is, uh, to focus on organization at the local and state level where independent candidates can win, where the DSA can conceivably take over something like the New York City Council and maybe, in a decade, win a mayoral election. But it's a long, hard slog and it's an unsatisfying one.

C. Derick Varn: 23:36

So just to put that in real terms for people who know their history, what you're saying is, in a decade, an organization of 50,000 can do what an organization of 5,000 did in the mid-1980s. Yes, okay, I just want everyone to understand that. That's where we are. Maybe, if they play their cards right yeah, I don't think they're going to.

Elijah Emery: 24:03

I mean no, but that's a different, that's a different thing.

C. Derick Varn: 24:06

Yeah, that's beyond the, the immediate thing today.

C. Derick Varn: 24:12

But because the DSA itself, being that it started off as a clearing house of sectarian interest, has no real program or ability to handle its actual, real position. So it goes wildly between we can help electives by, I don't know, giving them seven thousand dollars on a grant, um, which I think is basically what they are, which you know does jack and shit for most electeds, or we can punish, we can hold electeds accountable, which, by that I mean, I guess, support a counter-protest to Jamal Bowman in a park where 50 counter-protesters showed up to 200 supporters, despite AOC and Bernie being there, it being kind of a joke. Then you have the fact that the leaders of our movement not mine, because, fuck them, I've never been a part of that movement, but you know, I voted for Bernie once in a primary, that's it. None of the USA either. But the leaders of our movement do not draw a crowd, partly because lately they keep on getting caught with their rhetorical pants down. For example, bernie Sanders sounding well to the right of Jon Stewart on Dick Cheney endorsing Kamala Harris. Now, I think for me and I am not, even though the polls put the difference at 47% to 43 or 49 or whatever no no

C. Derick Varn: 26:06

no, no, I saw one poll that's like. If you look at, if you account for the weighting of the particular states, it gets up like 48 to 47 or something. Okay, if you look at overall popularity, harris is over five points above Trump. Five points is the margin of error if you look going back to the beginning of the Pew polls, but if you go to the modern era and aggregate, actually the margin of error is about 3.5 points. Actually, they're not generally as off, except in some key states. I think Wisconsin is actually one of them. Problem is, the key states that they're off on are actually the key states that throw the whole fucking country's election. So who knows?

C. Derick Varn: 26:49

I've also been playing with the idea because I've been listening to more about these polling things, despite the fact, in 2016, everyone freaked out about the polling, which was, broadly speaking, right, just saying it actually was pretty accurate. It's just people misinterpreted what those margins meant in an electoral college system. But since then, there have been more different kinds of polls with less oversight on what they are, being aggregated together and used as part of the news cycle as if it is the news cycle itself. So, instead of constructing a narrative out of events, as you would see if you go like read about the events of gary hart's election or the events of even uh, uh, the 2008 and hillary clinton. There's key events and reported in the news today. The news reports the numbers as if the numbers are the story.

C. Derick Varn: 27:47

Um, which is very weird about a candidate from which we know a ton about, except he's utterly inconsistent on what he's saying and avoids both responsibility are stating outright what he expects to do, and we'll. We'll get to that, because it's going to get to one of our disagreements on project 2025, where I think we're both a little closer than we used to be, but that I'm not as worried about it as you. However, it is interesting that they're beginning to be some real defectors on the right and Alexia and I know a lot of like hard rightist hates of Rob Amari, but when you hear so Rob Amari sounding like Jonah Goldberg when he used to be a Tucker fan about who's Tucker's platforming and this is actually making like waves and conservative media like dispatch actually making like waves and conservative media like dispatch it becomes very clear that there's real fear that once Trump's demagoguery is gone, the mask is going to be off on what some of these people are trying to do and how far they have gone in appealing to basically the most rabid of their fan base.

Elijah Emery: 29:02

yeah, and what that is referring to, by the way, is tucker's platforming of an actual nazi who peddled holocaust denial and blamed the allies for the beginning of world war ii, um, and who elon musk obviously responded to and saying wow, you should listen to this interview um so just that guy that guy daryl cooper is his name, by the way, and uh, I don't know that he's an actual nazi, but I suspect he is pretty fashion.

C. Derick Varn: 29:31

I know he's just.

Elijah Emery: 29:32

He did a whole series on spingler um on his martyrdom, I guess I remember he tweeted out a picture of the paris olympics, you know being having some gender non-conforming people in a next to a picture of adolf hitler walking through, uh, the champs-elysees, and said basically, you're insane if you think that the picture on the left uh, you know, the picture of of Adolf Hitler or whatever is not infinitely more preferable to the picture on the right, the picture of gender non-conforming people at an Olympics thing. So you know, he certainly likes Hitler more than he likes trans people, which is worrying enough.

C. Derick Varn: 30:21

Yeah, I would say, and I would say he's also. He's at least a negationist, which is a word we use on the left, for people actually tended to be French left communists, but not just them. All kinds of people fell into this who first negated the significance of the Holocaust, beginning with an article that was falsely attributed to Amito Bordiga, but it was actually written by someone else. They didn't sign their names, it was called Auschwitz-Gerais Alibi, but that didn't deny the Holocaust, it just said it was always going to happen and that didn't justify the United Front I mean not the United Front, the Popular Front or the United Front or any front with any other group, which is, you know, kind of a big deal in and of itself. But that got accelerated, particularly in france, to outright holocaust denial and then eventually, with some of the people from the french ultra left uh ending up in like breton nationalist parties and actually becoming fascist, although the main one did not now, the main one being, uh, this guy from uh gulamelet, from socialism or barbarism, the group, and he, he remained an ultra leftist, but he ended up a Holocaust denier. And so I bring that up that long history.

C. Derick Varn: 31:51

Up to say, cooper used to actually try to play with certain leftists. I knew him on Facebook at one point and I used to listen to his Martyr Made podcast because there weren't that many good history podcasts on war that weren't just repeating stuff that I'd heard before. And then he did an interesting and I wouldn't say bad. I actually did learn stuff from a series on Oswald Spengler, and then you can imagine where it's gone from there. Say bad, I actually did learn stuff from a series on oswald spengler, and then you can imagine where it's gone from there. As things have progressed, and particularly on elon musk twitter, he's just gotten more and more outright.

C. Derick Varn: 32:29

I don't know, uh, fascist sympathetic at minimum, and tucker has, has called out, has pulled that out. Now I don't know why people are like oh, that's the line, you guys are perfectly fine with Tucker being all buddy-buddy with Alex fucking Jones and everyone that comes along with that rabble, including other actual, at least fascist-adjacent people, if not outright fascist. And we do seem to have a fascist in sheep clothing problem. And I don't say this. I don't think this is just like the red Brown problem that everyone that liberals fear so much. I mean that, like the alt-right got defeated with the exception of the neo-reactionary movement. The neo-reactionary movement was the only member of the alt-right that actually has enough get money and isn't limited to very marginal white people.

C. Derick Varn: 33:25

Uh, so, uh, it's been mainstreamed and you have that and a lot of the people downstream trump people who used to be standard neoconservative Republicans. So Arun McIntyre, for example, is now all into Smith and Pareto and he's actually into a bunch of parafascists. You know the people that are cited by Burnham in his new Machiavellian books and also Curtis Yarvin explicitly. Now, what I think is actually smart this time and I'm going to actually give the Harris campaign some credit here is they have not done what the Clinton campaign did and try to zoom in on this as an attack point about the movement itself, which I find interesting. What's your take on why they aren't doing that, despite the fact we see all this happening?

Elijah Emery: 34:27

I think one thing is that they correctly recognize that most people are not tracking us, and then also another thing is that Trump, the way he works is he takes the most popular outlandish claims and then says them publicly repeatedly. And it's a lot easier to say Trump is insane than have to explain the history of why the internet has created a fake story that haitian immigrants in springfield, ohio, are eating dogs and cats right, and which is obviously essentially blood libel against immigrants, um, right, and.

C. Derick Varn: 35:12

and why jd vance is, uh, promoting it while denouncing it, while still promoting it. Yeah, yeah, bizarre. You know the still promoting it? Yeah, bizarre.

Elijah Emery: 35:19

You know, the ordinary person is not tracking all this stuff. What they're going to see is Trump is claiming that immigrants are eating dogs and cats, which is crazy, and you don't have to say anything else. You don't have to say, oh, he's being manipulated by a sinister movement, because, even though that accurately portrays how stupid he is, it's a lot less helpful to your, your efforts as a campaign, than saying he's an insane person and you know they're also not doing although it could risk becoming that is trying to do the smug.

C. Derick Varn: 36:00

Oh, these people are just stupid thing that they did against Bush in 2004. And I know that's like before your time, it's not before you were alive, but it's, you know, way before before I was really conscious about electoral politics.

C. Derick Varn: 36:14

Yeah, you might. It might be before you're really conscious about much of anything. Um, uh, whereas I yeah, this might be before you're really conscious about much of anything, whereas I was 24 years old, so it's different. So you know, that was my first frustration with Democrats way back in the day, and I was still conservative-ish at that time. But I hated the Bush administration with the power unbeknownst to man, and I still do. I hated the Bush administration with the power of announced man, and I still do.

C. Derick Varn: 36:38

I do not like this whole like oh Bush, oh, now Dick Cheney. I mean, dick Cheney is in my hall of the. In my villains list, cheney does actually rise above Trump. So you know, I just want to make that clear, but I am sort of at a loss as to what to do. One of the things that used to be claimed by certain dissident leftists who were more, uh, willing to tell the Trump administration, as that Trump was a relative peace candidate. Um, that's hard to argue now, given his stances on both Iran and Israel, where we know that he's willing to gear up beyond what the Democratic Party is wanting to get. It's even actually dividing some of his base in his most outlandish, far-right supporters.

Elijah Emery: 37:37

The best example of this is nick fuentes unendorsed trump because he is claiming that trump is controlled by israel.

C. Derick Varn: 37:44

Yeah, um so you know, trump's losing uh, some of the nazi vote um over his israel support and I think the other thing is like people like candace owens, who've always been weird conspiracy theorists, but how publicly they've gone. People like Candace Owens, who've always been weird conspiracy theorists, but how publicly they've gone from, oh, I mean even leftists who watch it. Like, oh, she has sympathetic voices to Palestinians. That's interesting for a conservative too. Oh, my God, she's claiming like Pol Pot, not really, but Stalin really, beria really really are Jews and that you know, and there, and she's linking, like Leo Frank to this guy who was basic, effectively lynched name Frank, like you know, to the Leo Frank and that you know, that guy to the Frank is movement, as if that's a like. She's the first person I found to ever do that. It just happens to be like a name that's similar.

Elijah Emery: 38:44

Yeah.

C. Derick Varn: 38:45

I mean it's a, it's a.

Elijah Emery: 38:47

It's a strong indication that the enemy of your enemy is not your friend necessarily. Sometimes, they can be. Usually they're not no no.

C. Derick Varn: 38:59

So usually they're not. Um, no, no, um. So my, my fear right now, though, uh, is two things, and everyone's been talking about realignment. I think people miss that. We've been talking about realignment since nixon. That's a trend that comes up every election. Also, this is the most important election of our lifetime. Realignment has come up on every year there's been an actual contest and not a clear incumbent winner that I can think of for going back. Clinton was a realignment. Obama was a realignment. Bush was a realignment. Obama was a realignment. Bush was a realignment. So that narrative, while I think is true, is actually a sign of the shifting and ideological sorting of the parties, and the real realignment has been what donor base goes where, and right now, what we have seen is Silicon Valley has some key figures that have definitely flipped sides because, frankly, they now have monopoly hole over a lot of their fields, so they don't need the Democrats anymore and would probably like lower taxes, given that they're pulling bullshit and they're.

Elijah Emery: 40:25

They think trump will not regulate cryptocurrency and ai on some of the more you know smaller tech firms essentially right so basically, they think trump will allow for massive levels of grifting.

C. Derick Varn: 40:38

Not that we haven't already seen massive levels of grifting we have. We are discovering how much of the second half of the Biden miracle GDP was mostly a bubble over investment in AI and LLMs and ai and llms and even now to people falsely claiming to be ai so that they can boost their stocks, which is something we saw in 20 uh, in 2000 um, which was a precursor to the dot-com collapses in 98, 2000 trend um, which is a good indication that it's a bubble. Also, the left is talking about it. The left is always late to everything. So, um, I sound man. No one's gonna know after this discussion what side I like, if any um, but anyway, the left is always late to everything. So now they're talking about the, the ai bubble, and I was like brother in democracy. Haven't you realized that the, that Goldman Sachs had already called that? And if Goldman Sachs called it, it's like analysts have probably known it for four months, like.

Elijah Emery: 41:54

I yeah, no, I mean, I think that's definitely true, though, you know, maybe these lowered interest rates which are supposed to hit pretty soon will, you know, reignite the bubble to a certain extent, though I think that the broader point is that there's a small number of tech people who are funding the Trump campaign. By and large, the industry still funds the Democrats, and then other elements of the donor class which are funding the Trump campaign are guns, oil and natural gas, big agra, a number of commodities fields, but by and large, the overwhelming support of the business community is to the Democratic Party at this point, and we see it in spending.

Elijah Emery: 42:55

They almost lost it when Biden was really beginning to slip, but as soon as they got rid of Biden you saw the money re-secure and one thing I would like to emphasize in this is that, to a lot of people who may be more conspiratorially minded or indeed correctly mistrustful of the business class, this is going to make it seem like Trump is the candidate arrayed against business in some way, and I don't think that's the case.

Elijah Emery: 43:31

I think a good example from across the pond is the abandonment of Liz Truss in the United Kingdom when she slashed taxes and regulations and caused a credit crunch. Basically, the assumption from the business class is not that Kamala Harris is favorable to their interests and Donald Trump is unfavorable politically. Their assumption is that the Democrats are more trustworthy to prevent something like a government shutdown or a failure to raise the debt ceiling or any number of these massive macroeconomic shocks which are destructive to the entirety of the economy, which are destructive to the entirety of the economy, and that most of these people are more willing to do business with people, a group of people who can be trusted to stably manage the state, than a group of people who cannot be trusted to do that, which is a very easy calculation to make for people other than groups like crypto or AI, who are really, really dependent on the maintenance of the current regulatory environment and don't have the extra cash running around to adapt if there's further regulation or any regulation of the crypto industry or something like that.

C. Derick Varn: 44:57

Right. Well, I think we're going to also see. This brings me to something that actually is an issue with Harris that I'm worried about. I have a theory that I've floated past a few people and we'll come back to Gaza for those of you who care. I want people to put a pin in it, but that how do I say this that we have misidentified Biden as an Atari Democrat, that shift that started with Gary Howe's Senate campaign and through his failed 88 campaign and then was passed on explicitly and knowingly through the DNC to Clinton and the Clinton types and thus maintained, not in rhetoric but in actual policy and in advisors I mean by Obama that that era was actually ended by Joe Biden. Joe biden, the arch neoliberal, the one of the guys who made declaring bankruptcy senator from uh, from dupont or or whatever or no, what's the name of the, the bank in delaware.

Elijah Emery: 46:08

Whatever the, the most of them. Most of them, yeah, the capital one, I don't know um joe b Banker's friend bankruptcy should be impossible for poor people.

C. Derick Varn: 46:20

That Joe Biden student loan bankruptcy impossible. That guy, total Zionist friend of Israel, forever liked to tell as late as 2017, when my ex-wife drove me out to see him speak when I first came back to America, which I was not happy about, I was talking about how sometimes you have to get along with Strom Thurmond as late as I would talk about misidentifying the moment by the way I was like that's crazy, you do not have to hand it to Strom Thurmond.

Elijah Emery: 47:11

He is dead.

C. Derick Varn: 47:13

It's just just like. It's like Strom Thurmond adopted a person of color and I was like he was also a segregationist. I don't know what else. To tell you, anyway, that Joe Biden is, however, not a Atari Democrat or a DNC creature. He's actually a Mondale Democrat. That's a factor of his age and that makes dealing with him kind of difficult. That's a factor of his age and that makes dealing with him kind of difficult. That's why a lot of the Jacobinites, our friends over at Jacobin Magazine friends in loose terms that's why a lot of them actually started claiming that, and incorrectly, because they kept pretending that LBJ didn't exist but that Biden was the most progressive Democrat since FDR, and they would say, oh, I don't mean that as a compliment and I'm like well, that's a, not true, but B, you're misrecognizing what's going on.

C. Derick Varn: 48:12

The Mondale Democrats model to make sure that 60, that another 1968 never happened was give them scraps, but let them actually use the scraps. And we got scraps in Bernie Sanders, which he did not use. But we also got scraps in antitrust law being enforced in a real way. That hasn't been the case since the Carter administration, with one exception, and that's the Microsoft lawsuit from the late nineties. Early aughts are the Sherman antitrust suit brought against Microsoft in the late nineties, early aughts, which was more or less allowed to fizzle during the, the, the Bush administration.

C. Derick Varn: 48:55

But we now have had real gains on that See recent courts rul gains on that See recent courts rulings on Google which might be severe we don't know how severe because that hadn't fallen out yet. We've been so and he's done decent stuff with with the NCLA and the NCLB, but has misrecognized both where the labor movement was and a lot of the jacob and i's really over relied on that. I think, uh, eric blanc over there really was putting too much faith and and work at the ncl, uh b, uh, b? Um what I will say?

C. Derick Varn: 49:43

oh nlrb n. Yeah, yeah, totally botching this. Today, guys, I have aphasia. The National Labor Relations Board, god damn it, I'll just say it. At the same time we have seen large union democracy movements go in different ways. I talk about the tale of two shawns and those and people are surprised by it and they pretend like sean o'brien is red, brown if you look at where the interest of the teamsters are versus the interest of the uaw, who are basically surviving because of tariffs and patronage so you are very pro.

Elijah Emery: 50:24

Uh, you know electric car fund like for example um well they were mixed.

C. Derick Varn: 50:31

They were mixed on that, but they've come over to that they've come around to it yeah, right, um, because it's a.

C. Derick Varn: 50:39

It's a way that they might buy some time to to be slightly more competitive against Chinese cars, cause I doubt those tariffs will hold forever. Um, the? My point, though, is basically in a real way, the auto industry in America is a subset, is subsidized by the state for like legacy reasons, if we're completely Frank, and um, so, and they know that Trump won't really care and he's already threatened them, whereas the they're a major constituency for the Democrats, and I'll and I'll give why the Democrats are going to care about labor going forward into the future, whether we like it or not. I don't necessarily think this is all good people, and they're not going going to give you the PRO Act or all the stuff they promised. I almost promised that, but why they're going to take labor more seriously is because, frankly, their whole demographic prediction that race would trump class and economic issues with all groups is being shown not to be true.

C. Derick Varn: 51:49

And, um, while, yes, the black vote is still great majority over towards the democrats, they've lost a good bit of it. Um, uh, they've gone from like 90 to 70, and it's still a ton compared to any other group, but that's. They've not done that in a long time. I mean, like the last time they were looking at numbers that low were, like when the Dixie crats were still around, so they realized they had, and their, their primary demographic is college educated and they see the writing on the wall for the university undergraduate programs and we all see it Like men aren't going by and large, for some reasons that are smart and some reasons that are probably not smart, but nonetheless, that's who you are. Less, that's here you are, uh, and women are in a more precarious place in the workforce if they had kids, due to the cost of child care, which the democrats have not been able to really do much about.

C. Derick Varn: 52:53

Um, so we are in a weird place and my, my, my thing about right now is I think whoever wins this will be unpopular in four years because we have an economic bomb that's about to explode. It's probably going to explode after the election, though One hopes, um, I don't know who it helps if it explodes, but I mean I clearly it would probably help Trump, but like, I'm not totally sure it totally would either, uh, and this is why I'm like somewhat, um, uh, concerned, because the other thing I think that we can say is that harris. Uh, harris is a more substantive candidate than trump. She's not that substantive, though, also true. Watching the debate last night, I was just amazed at how much Trump was just not taking responsibility. It wasn't even like he was saying what he did was good. He's like no, I just didn't do that. But what about the immigrants who are eating cats or whatever?

Elijah Emery: 54:03

Or they execute babies after they're born in half the country. I have the endorsement of Viktor Orban, which is that was hilarious.

C. Derick Varn: 54:16

Anyway, the point is no substance there, no substance very defensive and he's gone with no substance. And this is where we can pivot a little bit about Project 2025, because Project 2025 has substance and that's why Trump doesn't like it. And now that doesn't mean he doesn't like parts of it and it doesn't mean he wouldn't implement good bits of it, although I told you one of the reasons I wasn't scared of 2025, because it was a whist list of conservatives that, if implemented, would literally cause a governmental coup. I mean, I just can't see the military allowing them to do some of the stuff in there it is clearly a whist list for wackadoos, because there is no cold war to unite those factions anymore.

C. Derick Varn: 55:01

And while the liberal media oh my, I sound like a conservative, but we all know that CNN and MSNBC are liberal the liberal media have been unable to really make a whole lot of hay out of Project 2025, as much as they found it's interesting. A friend of mine said well, the Democrats finally learned to play on fear and that works for the Republicans, and I'm like. But the Democrats' base are different people and the fear exhausts them. It doesn't animate them in the same way.

Elijah Emery: 55:33

Yeah, I mean, I do think their polling does suggest that people associate Project 2025 with Trump and don't like it. I don't think that that doesn't necessarily mean that it's like the main motivating factor for that many people. Right At least a couple of people in the country. But it is something where, like you know, making hay with something in a world where every election is a swing of about 5 percent from the election before is going to pick up way fewer people than it would 10 or 15 years ago.

C. Derick Varn: 56:11

So one thing I've been wondering, though, about this is the intractability of our polarization. There are obvious, there's the obvious normal answers that we get the decline of local politics algorithms. There's also non-obvious things that I think are true the decline of pork barrel spending that allowed people to make non-ideological compromises that no one really saw. You know, I knew a bunch of people in the government reform People like, oh, we need to get rid of pork barrel spending, and when we did, uh, you all of a sudden saw the end of moderate, uh, conservatives altogether, because there was now no longer any way for anyone to take a non-ideological vote to protect themselves in their own constituency.

C. Derick Varn: 56:59

Um, nor has it made the government less wasteful, which is also kind of funny. So it's it is. It is an interesting proposition to look at about that as one of the factors, I also think, the decline of real meat space and I don't just mean that because COVID, I also mean because it's mostly been privatized. You need to, like, have money to even go out at all it has led to a whole lot of things being over relied on through through very facile engagements, uh, online, and that also leads people to think I don't know that you can build a real movement off of twitter or something you can't I'm finding that out for the first time.

Elijah Emery: 57:44

Um no, I'm joking, uh but it is.

C. Derick Varn: 57:49

I mean, it's also interesting, like I I find the the fact that elon must twitter and even though it's declining and in ways that are like, transparently obvious, uh, and it is losing um members, but people have never like paid attention to the fact that Twitter was not even in the top 10 most common social media.

Elijah Emery: 58:11

It's just popular with the media class. That's what it is.

C. Derick Varn: 58:14

It's a substitute for doing reporting is what it is, and as a person and it's popular in academics, for whatever reason as a person who has to book guests, I got back on Twitter to book guests and it does help my show.

C. Derick Varn: 58:27

But I'm also like it's a weird bizarro world where things that are huge on it do not have any reflection on what my outside experience in my day job. The people I know do not know, and some of them are actually fairly politically knowledgeable do not know what's going on on Twitter to the extent that, like most terminally online people do. But yeah, we also can't discount the fact that there have been real media. I mean political media people launch from Twitter, political media people want from Twitter. I mean, I think the squad is a product of Twitter in a lot of ways. Not just that, but the fact that we all know about them is. I think that Trump was, in some ways, a product of being able to use tweets to get free advertising, which has not worked for him this time and he hasn't really been doing it um, he lost his juice.

Elijah Emery: 59:34

He's not a good poster anymore.

C. Derick Varn: 59:36

Um, yeah, yeah, and you know, whenever harris are, uh are by to make a statement, they're gonna get eaten alive on twitter, so they just don't care. Um, I say all this to say, like, okay, so, uh, on project 2025, though, this is what I think is interesting. I don't. I didn't take it as seriously as you. I knew that it was. I guess I'm less enamored with the administrative state than you are. Uh, for obvious reasons, I think. Um, uh, maybe not to our listeners, um, but that I did see.

C. Derick Varn: 1:00:19

I agreed with you about what it was aiming to do, which was to create a cast of political appointees to go deeper than political appointees often do Now, and that the only thing that's ever stopped that with either side is norms. It is not law. We've also had a bunch of legal decisions that reversed administrative state growth to some degree. I found it funny that people like this is democracy versus, uh, the unelected judiciary. I'm like it's the unelected administrative state versus the unelected judiciary. Um, now, the judiciary is clearly dangerously taking more and more power into itself and I really would kind of like somebody to use some of their actual constitutional checks and do something. All right, maybe fuck, if I might respect kamala harris if she pulls an andrew jackson on this one thing yeah, and you can do.

C. Derick Varn: 1:01:17

I have an army and stuff like that right like, uh, like I, I would be interested in that. I don't see them doing that, though, because, by and large, we are still with a Democratic party that wants to maintain a status quo that it sees as beneficial to itself. I think you and I both know that, even if Harris wins, that's not great, and I want to point out where I probably differ from you. I actually do think there has been a broadly speaking anti-democratic tendency from the people who are constantly talking about saving democracy in the Democratic Party. That actually reflects an anti-democratic tendency in Europe, which I think has a feedback loop on reactionaryism. I think they feed each other, yeah, um, and I am worried about this, actually, because the right without trump is in total disarray uh, why else would they run the second most unpopular president in history?

Elijah Emery: 1:02:28

would no. Trump has a 90 approval rating within the Republican party. He is the only thing keeping the Republican party together at this point. Um, which is the reason why, the main reason why I'm going to, why I hope Harris went, the main reason why I'm going to, why I hope Harris wins, you know, because I would like to see the Republican Party completely eviscerated, because I think it's evil. Essentially, every election since 2016 should have some effect in forcing it to reckon with some of the uglier aspects of itself, though I have no idea if that's going to happen.

Elijah Emery: 1:03:20

But I do actually agree that there's major undemocratic elements within the Democratic Party as well. I don't think that the administrative state is a particularly democratic way of running things. I do think that both the Democratic and Republican Party are reliant on the judiciary. With Democrats, it's at lower levels than the Supreme Court because they no longer control the Supreme Court, and I think that that's corrosive and it would be infinitely preferable if more things happened through the legislature, because you can actually discipline the legislature to a far greater extent than you can anybody else. People still lose primaries you know?

C. Derick Varn: 1:04:16

Yeah, the problem that we have is the legislature is now almost designed to be dysfunctional.

C. Derick Varn: 1:04:20

That's also true, and so there's no wonder why we're more reliant on the administrative state and the judiciary, which are also dysfunctional, but less dysfunctional well, this, actually this is where I'm going to go, to something you said all the way back in the beginning about what the left should be doing, where I agree with you but a lot of people don't go. But isn't that just localism that they tried after the boomers and then in the 90s and didn't go anywhere? And my response to that is, uh, that localism was mostly lifestyle localism, um, and it was like building your community parapolitically and some of that still has to be done. But if you don't have massive amounts of money and the scale of money in this economy makes the kind of money you need for this almost unfathomable- I mean mean the Democrats have raised a billion dollars since Joe Biden dropped out.

C. Derick Varn: 1:05:10

Right.

Elijah Emery: 1:05:11

I mean yeah, that's not even that much, no matter how much money the American Communist Party's secret donors have, I guarantee you they're not able to drop a billion dollars on electing a communist president of the United States.

C. Derick Varn: 1:05:26

No, I mean, like there are organizations that have millions who throw that out in the far left. I don't know how they have it, but they do. I have no. The aforementioned New American Communist Party is not one of them that I know about, although they might, who knows. None of these organizations are particularly transparent outside of the DSA. It's one of the reasons why sometimes I feel bad about shitting on the DSA for its numbers, because I'm like well, at least I know yours. Everybody else kind of hides everything, but nonetheless, we can very much see that, like they don't have the money to do this and none of these groups, like there's also no way that the American communist party, despite what it's Twitter following may say, has more than a few thousand people. I, I, I, my, my guess for these organizations is like the historical norm of 5,000. I don't know why that's the historical norm for most of these groups at their high point, but it is Um, but I wouldn't even say that for the American. They're too new. I mean, regardless of what you think about their ideology, they're just too new. Um, the PSL probably has that though. Uh, but all these, what's all these?

C. Derick Varn: 1:06:47

What we, what we've seen in light of the Biden administration has been interesting and it's very interesting, and this might be why some of these people maybe tend to to to trace. Trump is just like in opposition to Reagan, although not in opposition to either of the Bushes, interestingly enough, and I don't know why that I mean cold pink, I guess, and those kind of groups still exist from those days, uh, as kind of like dinosaur groups, just like, uh, the 70s groups still existed in the 90s and early aughts. There's dinosaur groups but uh, you did not see, uh, like legacy parties and stuff emerged that much during the 90s and on to the post of Bush. But you did see them as opposed to Reagan and you've seen them as opposed to Trump. And one of the things that I think will make people really uncomfortable to think about um, and maybe that's why we've seen an increase of what I like to call dipshit anti-liberalism and also like very thin marxist leninism that seems to float it's.

C. Derick Varn: 1:07:53

It's. It's a free, floating marxist leninism where people like stalin but don't even really know what he believed like. Well, they'll get mad at me when I talk about the popular front as a stalin endorsed policy and I'm like, do you not know your own history at all like um, uh. So what I'm what I what I'm saying here is is that I think that what happened is the dsa was rather cynically played, not by the squad, who themselves are rather cynically played and lost Although I will also remind people that AOC was a Kennedy staffer, but also just on that note very quickly the squad members who lost are the ones who had the, which connects to our point about localism.

Elijah Emery: 1:08:43

The ones who won are the ones who have really quite effective staffs that manage constituent interests and have something to support and have constituents that support them, which was not the case with Cori Bush or Jamal Bowman and I can not really speak to Cori Bush, but Jamal Bowman represents the district I grew up in and he was really hard to get a hold of and he didn't do a good job at the basic tasks of like answering constituent mail and stuff like that.

C. Derick Varn: 1:09:15

Yeah, I would say with Cori Bush. It seems like her bigger deal was doubling down on and I remember saying this was going to have political consequences way back in the day on things like carbon taxes without subsidies to offset them for poor people, and that alienated her from local labor and they did not show up for her. And when people go, oh, it was AIPAC who defeated them. And I'm like AIPAC took advantage of the fact that those candidates were weak. They would love to get rid of Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, but they know they can't do it, so they don't try. They only go for people where there's already blood in the water, and a lot of these people, I hate to say it, were not ready for prime time, and the ones that were with the exception of Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, who have very particular constituencies who will protect them and this is important to look out the others have have played by the rules of the Democratic Party, because you don't really have that much of a choice if you want to stay in, and this is why I have been trying to convince people not to be anti-electoralist, but that this whole great wave we could go through, bernie, and like do things squad to squad, like you haven't built up the apparatus of the DSA enough at the local level. In fact they don't even have consistent state coordination. They let ideological caucuses substitute for regional coordination. It's bizarre Because the way Harrington built it there's just a national and the local, which also meant the way Harrington built it was also a way to have all the other chapters kind of fun stuff in New York City. But nonetheless there's other things in New York, there's specific electoral reforms in New York that make that more viable, where such left groups can actually be a caucus in this way. So, regardless of what kind of ideology you want to play, unless you're taking a totally abstentionist view, I think you have to just admit that what the Sanders people tried to do was premature, and the DSA and the Jacobin left was all too willing to throw themselves on top of that. Not that they weren't, I would say Jacobin was actually pretty instrumental in some of the resurrections of bernie, and you think about jacobin setting up the jacobin reading groups on colleges and stuff.

C. Derick Varn: 1:12:14

Um, after occupy, I mean they, they had, they had a plan. Most of those people, however, are no longer in the dsa. Most of the people who did that are barely involved. I mean, I'm sure bosh karson cara is still involved with a DSA, but he hasn't been involved with governance and forever it's too busy running the nation and being rich. So it's. You know I'm writing for the guardian or whatever it is what it is. And in response to the Harris campaign, I mean, you know, you, you think the Trump admit I I am torn on the second Trump administration. I think it would be bad for labor. I really do no-transcript, including basic ones. For example, right now, yes, we have the return of child labor, but children can't work in mines and there's stuff in Project 2025 that would make that legal of stuff in project 2025 that would make that legal. Um, so it's just, it would basically make the states almost completely set, like truly completely separate countries, like to the point of almost undoing the civil war which is another reason why business doesn't support trump.

Elijah Emery: 1:13:40

For the record, it's much better for them to have a national economy with stronger labor laws than a patchwork of state economies, some with better labor laws and some with no labor laws.

C. Derick Varn: 1:13:55

Right, I mean basically, but there is a petite bourgeois base in there that would love some of that stuff.

Elijah Emery: 1:14:02

Yeah, no, I'm talking about big business for the record, for listeners.

C. Derick Varn: 1:14:06

Well, this is what we talk about. We talked about the big businesses, along with Trump. The reason why Harris has a small business policy, one that I think would be completely ineffective, but I know why she has it is they realize that that's Trump, the Chamber of Commerce Republicans. While they are reasonable on social issues, they're totally willing to go rabid for anything to keep tax rates really, really, really, really low. And I think a lot of people also know the current tax regime is pretty unsustainable, which is where, like poor, like middle class people, our workers are actually paying real percentages lower than rich people, not just. You know it used to be kind of like nominal percentages, but now it's like no, you're the tax rate on.

C. Derick Varn: 1:14:57

This is like from. This is not even from my Marxist thing, this is just me knowing history. Once you start taxing the, the, the lower people in society, to get more of your money than the higher, that tends to destabilize society to the point where you got two ways to go. One is going to be some kind of insurrection and the other is going to be like manorialism and private pseudo governments which led to feudalism Put that in quotations for the people who don't like the category in the Middle Ages and Europe. I mean it just leads to like unofficial governance in a lot of ways.

Elijah Emery: 1:15:36

It's a bad call.

C. Derick Varn: 1:15:37

It's a terrible call and the Trump tax policy had that bomb in it, which is it was good for everyone for a while. Then it progressively uh revote those tax cuts on poor and middle-class people uh, and for a lot of people got hit by a tax bill this year. And also, trump knew that it was kind and the republican congress knew that. They kind of designed it that if he lost it it would go off on a Democrat, which it did. Now I I don't know where we all go from here, because one thing I guess for me, what I got from the debate last night is you're right, there's not a significant difference between Biden and Harris. So I guess this gets me to a question biden is, uh, biden was more willing to enforce antitrust law see my theory on mondo democrat do you think that?

C. Derick Varn: 1:16:36

harris is going to back off on uh enforcing these antitrust regulations on the tech industry I don't know.

Elijah Emery: 1:16:45

Um, she seems to have committed to keeping Lena Kahn, which is a good sign. She also has much stronger ties to the tech industry than Biden does. So there are again countervailing forces and we kind of won't know until she gets it. I think, writ large, the party is more excited about doing antitrust now than they were a decade ago, and that counts for something because you know it's a whole administration, it's not just the president, and I think you know most of her administration is going to be favorable to, uh, at least retaining current antitrust policy. Um, even if they're opposed to going farther. Um, it's kind of my instinct on this. Um, trump on the other end, would definitely fire Lena Kahn, definitely fire Lena Kahn, absolutely. So, yeah, it's another case of like, well, the other guy sucks. Basically, I wish we knew what the Democrats were going to do. It's unfortunate that they won't tell us.

C. Derick Varn: 1:18:08

Well, here's the thing that I'm worried about. Also, we've had the normalization of many Trump policies. This has been one of my pushbacks on you and people who told me to keep my mouth shut about Joe Biden.

Elijah Emery: 1:18:23

For the record I never told you to keep your mouth shut about Joe Biden. No, you didn't. Um and the record I never told you to keep your mouth shut about Joe Biden. No, you didn't.

C. Derick Varn: 1:18:33

I just presented different views and I want to tell the listeners that so that they don't hate me. No, you are not who I'm referring to.

Elijah Emery: 1:18:36

No, I know, I know.

C. Derick Varn: 1:18:37

I know Um but um. I have really been disgusted with the way the Democrats handled the press during the Biden era. I have been not happy that. I would have loved for everything that came out of the people complaining about free speech and hazing free speech laws and using misinformation to extend government prerogative. That's real. I wish liberals took it more seriously, because it's a problem for them too If they don't think that-.

Elijah Emery: 1:19:14

As we saw in a very clear way when Joe Biden walked out onto the debate stage and it turned out that they were hiding him for a reason he's. He's completely unable to be president for another four years. Uh, you know, and, and they covered it up, it's that simple right I mean, glenn greenwald made a a point that why?

C. Derick Varn: 1:19:41

uh? Well, I don't. I haven't loved gl Greenwald lately, but I will give him credit for this. He has said pretty accurately that what we have to realize is that we're ruled by regimes. Now he seemed to indicate that it was just the Democrats that were doing that. I'm like, no, it's pretty clear that we're ruled by regimes, period, and that Trump isn't going to get rid of regime rule. He's just going to change it all the way down to the core. Uh, I don't know why you would be naive about that, but that there really is, uh, like stuff has been kind of on. It seems like stuff has been on autopilot for about a year and a half, yeah, and it definitely is right. Now we have, uh, I would be very if harris wins this election. I am very hard pressed to see her win in 2022, unless you see I mean 2022.

Elijah Emery: 1:20:40

So, god damn it, I'm getting 2028, 2028 um well, unless they nominate Trump again he'll be 80 fucking 2, doesn't matter if he lives as long as his parents, he'll still be alive in 2032 that's terrifying he's gonna be the Republican nominee until he dies or goes to jail, is my feeling.

C. Derick Varn: 1:21:12

Well, I mean and in that sense I mean the longer they do that, the more discrediting it'll become. Yes, you know like you're going to run. I mean that's like people running William Jennings Bryant over and over again, or social democrats insisting that we run Bernie Sanders for fucking ever. It's embarrassing and people need to stop it. But okay, so, maybe, but it does seem to me that we are likely in a time period, though barring Trump still being a viable candidate in four years, which is statistically not unlikely but still when the presidents are going to be unpopular. And now I don't say this to pat myself on the shoulder, but I said this in 2012 that I could easily see us, after Obama, entering a period since Obama was a and I don't say this from my communist perspective, I'm just putting on my government generation political talent he was a once in a generation political talent who his actual government instincts was mediocre but who was not a bad political talent.

C. Derick Varn: 1:22:33

So his government instincts ring into his political talent meant that we didn't get a whole lot done that needed to be done after the bush administration and um, and that he couldn't do it because his natural instincts were to empower people who were the right wing of the carter and clinton administrations. I mean, he fucking put volker on his advisor committee, holy shit, um. So for those you don't know, that's paul volker of the said volker shock um, which was completely unnecessary by the way.

C. Derick Varn: 1:23:10

Well, it didn't fix inflation. Inflation came down, like seven years later. Yeah. So my point on all that Is just like Obama was a, because Obama blew it Despite his political talent as an orator and you know, as a, as a Almost, as a man, as a myth, as a myth, like born in a vat in Chicago. You know, I know he was born in Hawaii, but I think he became who he is in Chicago, but he did not bring anyone else up with him. Mean that that's one of the things. That's why biden was the. What we were stuck with in 2020.

C. Derick Varn: 1:23:56

Um, he did not. There was no oh, but unlike clintonism, for all that I disliked it, I knew what it was the thing about Obama is. I have no idea what Obamaism was at all, and even with Biden is loses as he is. I know that Biden was a Mondale Democrat, like in my head. That explains what he does and, yes, he was Mr Neoliberal, but in some ways, ways he's also such reptile blamed and so willing to play all sides to keep people in the coalition, to stop us 68 from happening, until he got too old and seen how to realize what was going on. Uh, because, by the way, if he had not stepped down, I do think the dnc would have been a 68, um uh, that that we actually do kind of have a new vision of democratic politics. For him that's just an older vision. It's not a left-wing vision, it's not a progressive vision, but it's not as hostile to progressives as the DNC was.

C. Derick Varn: 1:25:03

It's a liberal vision in the classic american sense of the term right, you know it's, it's, it's, it's, the it's the kennedy vision I'm not giving him.

C. Derick Varn: 1:25:15

I don't think kennedy was as good a politician we've both read enough lash to hate kennedy yeah, and I do, by the way, but it is the kennedy like throw all the people who oppose each other in your coalition in the room and let them hash out and and and, make them spread, make them take political compromises, but get something. Whereas the DNC vision was like we got to, we got to marginalize like half of the old party because we have to answer movement conservatism. We actually don't give a shit about our own constituency, our machine. Actually, one of the interesting things about the Clinton era is a lot of the old Democratic machines died during that period and I think people miss that. So it is a very interesting situation that we're in, because I have no idea if it it's harrison obama or laurie whitefoot, I don't know. I really don't.

Elijah Emery: 1:26:12

I, I can say well, she's not as talented as obama, but she's not as off-putting as laurie lightfoot no, and this is the thing she has been in the past.

C. Derick Varn: 1:26:21

I was that one thing I wanted to talk about in just in the optics of last night. As annoyed as I was by it, I was like oh, but like she's normally not always a great public speaker, she actually was really good last night, I don't you know she was kind of cooking like that abortion answer.

Elijah Emery: 1:26:37

Pretty good, you know, yeah, and we're just speaking for people in the audience rhetorically.

C. Derick Varn: 1:26:45

Don't come after us, we don't, you know, necessarily like all of her politics varn, I don't like currently any of them like any of her politics but like, uh, but I'm just, I'm just looking at like what I've seen her make like really unforced errors and stump speeches and stuff, so I was surprised at how good she did last and she did good. I'll give her that. It's also pretty clear that the right does not think Trump won last night.

Elijah Emery: 1:27:14

No, no one does because he came off as I mean he sounds insane, he sounds like a crazy person and you know the American median voter is also insane but doesn't like the crazy people.

C. Derick Varn: 1:27:29

No, no, we are all insane. Here you live in the same country. You're going to end up crazy, but I want to give a little bit of grace to the American median voter for being as weird as they are, because of reasons why.

Elijah Emery: 1:27:47

Yeah, no, absolutely.

C. Derick Varn: 1:27:50

But you're right, we were talking off air about. You know the mythical. You know independent voter and or undecided voter. Which is even more important. Independence can swing. I mean, technically I'm an independent most of the time, um uh, but undecided voters I'm always like who the fuck are you like? Like?

Elijah Emery: 1:28:15

were you like a?

Elijah Emery: 1:28:16

reporter of another candidate that like were you an rfk supporter or something, because that's the only there's this um, there's this 20 year old trans man in a who, like I forget if it's the Washington Post or New York Times keeps interviewing and they keep being undecided and they're like I'm just worried, you know, trump will take away my health care, but on the other hand, isn't he good for business? And it's like this is the least plugged in man alive, like what? Alive? Like what? Um? Or I was telling Varn before we got on, uh, about this New York times interview.

Elijah Emery: 1:28:55

They have, like this group of voters who they interview, uh, after every major political event and after the Trump, um, you know, felony conviction. There's this one guy who gets on and he's like, yeah, you know, I think they're going after Trump and it's politically motivated and it's a bullshit case. But I'm not going to vote for anybody to control the nuclear triad, who can't get away with crime. And then he was like, yeah, you know, and Trump had sex with a porn star, and not a very attractive one at that, and I love porn stars and I'm like this is crazy, like this is somebody who, whose vote will decide the fate of our country. Isn't that great. I love our country, um, and I sound like being sarcastic. I actually think it is pretty cool, uh, even though it's insane.

C. Derick Varn: 1:29:47

Well, I mean it's only to the median undecided voter is not the median voter at all, it's not even and it's definitely not the median person. It's like the median undecided voter lives in like a bunch of weird states and and has to have pretty self conflicting interest actually to not know like unless they're like me where my undecisions, like what protest vote am I going to make.

Elijah Emery: 1:30:21

like it's just if you're choosing between trump and harris, like why the fuck are you undecided? Like it's? It's really unclear because, like you, you clearly you're. Like I love both of them. I wish I could vote for both of them, or you know? I mean, most people are not like that. Most people are like I hate both of them, which makes sense. But at the same time, like which?

C. Derick Varn: 1:30:50

chaos. God, do I want to pray to?

Elijah Emery: 1:30:55

It's like but also because you, you like, listen to the interviews and it's not typically people who are like, yeah, I dislike both of them for any normal reason, like it's people who are like it's, it's like way weirder, like it's like um, yeah, you know, like I, I really disapprove of kamala harris's outfit choices and I think that uh donald trump did a bad job as the uh host of celebrity apprentice, so I think they're both unqualified like I worked, I wasn't gonna.

C. Derick Varn: 1:31:27

I was gonna say, like you didn't find, like the undecided dearborn michigan muslim voter who doesn't know what the fuck they're going to do, like like that like that's a, that's a real person that never gets interviewed.

Elijah Emery: 1:31:40

Yeah, I mean I have heard, like some interviews, and, by the way, Jill Stein is apparently winning in the Muslim community, which is a huge unforced error on the part of the Democrats, because I think that if they had not, for example, banned any Palestinian speaker from taking the stage at the DNC, they'd be winning more of these people.

Elijah Emery: 1:32:00

I think, at the same time. They earned that, and I don't blame anyone who chooses not to vote for the Democrats over this. It's not your job to keep them in power. It's their job to appeal to you. Your job to keep them in power, it's their job to appeal to you.

C. Derick Varn: 1:32:17

No. Rick Perstein, Rick Polarstein, saying explicitly on Twitter uh, vote for the slower genocide, it's the only right thing to do. And he really said and I used to respect girl stream he really fucking said that and I was like what is happening to these people? Like.

Elijah Emery: 1:32:36

I mean, I, I think I do think that, um, on a purely political interest calculus, harris is probably a better vote for most of those people. But voting because it doesn't matter except in the aggregate, is primarily a moral choice, and if you don't want to give your moral blessing to something you see as immoral and destructive, I don't blame you, you know. On the other hand, I think that one thing which should be raised in this is, like last night, one of the weirdest lines of the night when Harris asked Trump to apologize to the 800,000 Polish Americans in Pennsylvania for not supporting Poland. Just in terms of raw numbers, it's those people who are the swing voters who decide things. It's still in these Rust Belt states, white ethnics felt states, white ethnics suburban voters. Um, it makes sense from a raw electoral calculus perspective why this would be the main point of emphasis for the democrats on the other hand, it also doesn't make sense that they so forcefully pushed away um anybody connected with the, the pro-palestine uh wing of party.

C. Derick Varn: 1:33:55

Because you can have both. There's many Muslims in the United States that are Jews. And one thing I will say right now from the standpoint of anti-Semitism you hear a lot of leftists say anti-Semitism isn't a problem. Some of them, I do think, left. Anti-semitism is greatly overstated. But the longer this goes on, the more likely it is to be real, and right-wing anti-Semitism is definitely on the rise in a real way, see Tucker. Interesting to me that it seems like a totally unforced error, um, for the jewish community, uh, to also pressure the democrats to to do this, and I will admit that, like, while amongst younger jews, like you know, a great majority of us are, uh, well, I shouldn't say us. I'm half Jewish and I don't say that, I just don't want to steal valor.

Elijah Emery: 1:35:02

I think you're Jewish All right A Chabad guy might not agree with me, but that's a.

C. Derick Varn: 1:35:06

Chabad guy Definitely would not agree with you, but, but, but anyway, in the world of Judaismdom. My point is, I think a lot of the big voices who are critics of this slaughter are also Jewish and they have been pretty vocal on this, pretty vocal on this. A right-ish friend of mine has been pointing out that in some ways, this is an internal civil war for the Jewish institutions in America, who are so thoroughly Zionist right now and they are, they are, they really are when people are frustrated with the advocates for legal Judaism. I don't go to the Jewish community center right now either, and I normally do, uh, so it's, uh, it's an unforced error. Um, it's a long-term, not a smart error, and I don't think it's good for jews either.

C. Derick Varn: 1:36:09

Like it's definitely bad for fucking palestinians, but I really don't think it's good for for, uh, people who do not all agree with what is fucking going on in in the West Bank and Gaza and I gotta emphasize, it's also going on in the West Bank who think it's, who think it's a genocidal and a slaughter, regardless of how we feel about other political options or or whatever. Um, I think it's it's a disaster that the Democrats actually did not at least let some dissenting voices actually you know, who were normally fairly loyal Democrats actually fucking say something, and I mean, I know why they didn't.

Elijah Emery: 1:36:57

Yeah.

C. Derick Varn: 1:36:57

Still, who were normally fairly loyal Democrats, actually fucking say something.

Elijah Emery: 1:37:00

I know why they didn't, but still A good example of it from the Jewish perspective is that they had Hirsch I forget his last name, but his parents spoke at the DNC and one thing which maybe people know, maybe they've missed is that within Israel, these parents and the families of the hostages have been the leading advocates for a ceasefire and I believe during their speech they called for a ceasefire and called for a deal. And so, you know, I don't think a Palestinian speaker, who they would have let on, would have had a position that different. It's completely unreasonable that, you know, a Jew was allowed to a Jewish family, was allowed to say we want a hostage deal and a ceasefire. Uh, palestinian wasn't invited on stage to to say the same thing.

C. Derick Varn: 1:38:00

Um, right and it's. I have my theories about this that are unpopular. I know everyone says it's the united states call, just like they did, just like reagan did with uh in lebanon, that it would end. I'm not sure about that.

Elijah Emery: 1:38:20

I think the political economy has changed. We don't have as much power over Israel as we used to. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't be doing more. It does mean that it takes more than a phone call.

C. Derick Varn: 1:38:32

I think optimally stopping delivering arms would have been a way to put pressure on things, and that should have happened in January. It should have happened years ago, I mean honestly it should have like, yes, it should have happened, like it should have happened before this ever got to this point in the first fucking place, which is always kind of my point.

C. Derick Varn: 1:38:54

I mean, it's you know, theomas friedman, point of we're managing our what's supposed to be our client state really, really poorly um it, uh, it makes the empire look bad, guys, and not that I'm against the empire looking bad, but this is this is particularly gruesome, although I will also say this makes the entire fucking world community look bad, including ones that are nominally not on our side, because they haven't done shit either. I guess China has done a couple of like we'll get Israel to the table and we'll get we'll hill Hamas and Fatah, and then, you know, the guy who was willing to do that gets shot in Iran. And then, all of a sudden, we're back to square one. What I can tell you?

C. Derick Varn: 1:39:44

I've been talking to an Iranian friend of mine, an Iranian, american friend of mine, but an Iranian friend of mine. We're waiting for the Iranians to say like, hey, we are either going to retaliate or you're going to give us the nuclear deal and also put more pressure on Israel. If you don't want a larger regional war, what are you going to do? And that's what he thinks will happen, because they can't sit back domestically forever with assassinations happening on their soil without getting some major concessions.

Elijah Emery: 1:40:18

I don't know what India will do with that. I wonder if one thing that's going on and I'm just spitballing here.

C. Derick Varn: 1:40:23

Well, we don't know. I want to be very clear on that.

Elijah Emery: 1:40:24

We don't know, and I'm very careful about that. I wonder if kind of the opposite dynamic to Bibi is going on where Iran is thinking about the American election and trying to prevent a regional war until after, in the hopes it'll help the Democratic Party, because the cadres at the top know that Trump would be more aggressive towards them than the Harris administration would be.

C. Derick Varn: 1:40:51

Right. Which also makes all these alliances right now kind of very interesting, because, while everyone you know Iran and Russia are long historical allies, they have tensions over which governing party would they like in the United States. I think it's funny like Putin has like made some comments about supporting Harris. Yeah, he endorsed Harris he's a funny guy.

Elijah Emery: 1:41:18

It's a great break that man.

C. Derick Varn: 1:41:23

But nonetheless, I think I do worry about Ukraine becoming a broader war. For people who don't know, I subject myself to all kinds of media, so you guys don't have to. I don't just listen to left off. I occasionally even suggest myself to Jonah fucking girl bird which is like pulling goddamn teeth An idea of where all these conservative new Democrats well, they still think of themselves as conservative Republicans, but they refuse to play with Trump and a lot of them have endorsed Harris or they're staying very quiet where their mind actually is. And some of them are quite hawkish on Ukraine and want basically an Iraq style engagement which I think would lead to nuclear war. And this is one of the few times where I think Trump has a point.

Elijah Emery: 1:42:19

Can you hear?

C. Derick Varn: 1:42:20

me. Yeah, all right, we had a lag that has been cut from the audio. I was talking about Ukraine and a broader war that I am actually very much afraid of that. I also and this doesn't make me happy to say, because I know a lot of people I first I got accused of being too pro Ukrainian, now I get accused of being too pro Russian, but I really don't see how Ukraine wins this war. Um, uh, um, uh and uh, I think it's going to be large. I don't think it's not necessarily going to be as great for the russians, a lot of people think either in the long run. But like, um, because I tend to see modern warfare as much more pyrrhic than anyone who, than a lot of my listeners do. Uh, because I just don't see where most of these wars go. Well, in resolution for anybody after vietnam, and not just for the americans people. I was like, oh, that's an american problem, like I don't know.

C. Derick Varn: 1:43:25

I mean, it was such great things for the soviet union yeah, I mean, it's just uh, um, I I don't know, I I don't know how this is all going to play out. And I also, like, as long as Russia is staying on the you know, the more Russian ethnic spheres of Ukraine, you don't have a an insurgency beyond the war. But will they? Will they be able to even stay at that point if it stays hated for another year or two?

Elijah Emery: 1:43:55

I don't know, I mean I can say that my hope is not for a peace deal but for an armistice. So by that I mean, I think that the best thing would be for everybody to lose or win by the same amount in terms of discouraging a broader conflict. Um, whereas if there's.

C. Derick Varn: 1:44:22

I don't know how that happens, man I don't me, neither, me, neither, but I'm.

Elijah Emery: 1:44:28

My instinct is that one dangerous thing is it's gotten to the point where if a peace deal is too pro-Russia, it encourages more forceful moves on the part of other countries in the world, which causes more wars, and if it's too pro-Ukraine, the reason it's done that is because we've given them so many weapons that we've escalated the risk of a broader conflict. Um, and so we need everybody to lose, needs to look like korea um, yeah, that's not a path, though I see, really on the cards.

C. Derick Varn: 1:45:08

That's the thing I mean. It's like. It's like what I, my ideal state for israel is like it's a brokered state and everyone, like you, you integrate the population, blah, blah, blah. And you know, I both know, that's not going to happen because that would require it would require everyone involved and I don't just mean the Palestinians and the Israelis, I mean everyone in the geopolitical spectrum to give something up, and we're just not in a world where that happens very often anymore. We're just not in a world where that happens very often anymore. But that would be a way to have. Without these, we're going to get rid of all the Israelis. Blah, blah, blah. Settler colonialism, which, yes, it is a settler, colonial state and true, and that's important to understand, understand analytically. Um, when people try to like build policy out of it, it's like when I'm like, so you want to depopulate north america for like two percent of the population, and where are those people going to go? Uh, and that's never answered. And, to be fair, most indigenous. That's not what they mean.

C. Derick Varn: 1:46:17

No, I want to be honest, or want, you're right, like they want like some identity over territory. They want the treaties to be respected, they want some of them want the abolition of land ownership altogether. But you know, that's not the same thing as like ethnic cleansing. As like ethnic cleansing, uh. But weirdly, a lot of, a lot of radicals on twitter and even in other spaces seem to think that's what it is. I remember someone, an anarchist, was on a radio show. Just like we all need to go back to our indigenous homelands. I'm like one that's blood and soil bullshit. Two, we can't. There's literally no way for that to happen.

Elijah Emery: 1:46:54

I don't know where I get sent. Maybe half of me would get sent to Northern Europe and the other half, I guess, to Eastern Europe.

C. Derick Varn: 1:47:01

in this analysis, yeah, I was about to say I get split between Bulgaria, like Morocco, and Scotland and Ireland.

Elijah Emery: 1:47:11

Yeah, it's. I think it's a good thing that people live in all different places. I don't think people should. I don't think it's good that when people move to other places or I'm going to change that when people conquer other places, because immigration is not an invasion that they dispossess people. That you know, that seems to be that's a very boring position, but that's, that's my own mistake.

C. Derick Varn: 1:47:40

Yeah, I know. Then burgers got in trouble for saying it. I tend to, I tend to be like. I also tend to think where you go. I mean I hate to sound like a liberal, but they're right about this what time period are you going to pick to be where you're going to freeze these lines forever? Come on, is it 1492? Cause, that's all. That's not a great time period for most people, but like, okay, like is it? You know, where are we talking about Like? You're always, it's always like, and we're talking about cultures that didn't necessarily have a concept of nation, like we do in the first place, but nonetheless, when it comes to Palestine, as far as you know, indigenous has any meaning. It definitely implies there, but and this is absolutely genocidal. I want to be clear that I, that I think that I know there's some people uh, my friends, uh, frenemies, at this point, uh, zero book, disagree with me. Uh, I look at the numbers. I don't know, you know the, the, the death ratio and bomb totals. They could be worse.

Elijah Emery: 1:48:51

I've actually like if, if the Israelis totally wanted to just get it done, they I think the intent of at least major sections of the israeli government is to kill as many people as possible right, I agree, um.

C. Derick Varn: 1:49:08

I, however, I think they know that if they actually did that quick, like even more quickly, like I don't know, by just carpet bombing, it to nothing which they could do.

Elijah Emery: 1:49:19

They could use artillery.

C. Derick Varn: 1:49:21

You know that it would automatically break out into a writer war. And you know, when I hear people tell me, oh well, this will lead to the political defeat of Israel, and blah, blah, blah, like South Africa, I'm always like well, the conditions are different, you haven't given me a way forward for that. And while, uh, um, that would you know. It'd be nice for for political sovereignty to be sort of palestinians, I don't see how this leads to that at all. I mean, there's just like um, it's. It's this weird place where there's leftists who want to be like oh, hamas can win this, and then there's other leftists who are like don't call this a war. And I actually think the latter people have more of a point, because it's not like the Palestinians are by and large, as a population. I mean, they're resisting, but not in a formal army sort of way. They're not able to, they don't have that capacity.

Elijah Emery: 1:50:18

By and large, they're also not supportive of I guess that doesn't matter that much that they're by and large not supportive of Hamas and that the data is doctored because, by and large, the Israelis are not supportive of their own government.

C. Derick Varn: 1:50:36

Yeah, none of that matters. None of it. I wish it did. I wish that did matter. But let's like not pretend that all these systems are particularly democratic, like um but the and I, I don't think from this time period. I mean, a friend of mine told me today that maybe we should start looking at harris as just walking up to be lbj and have an lbj like problem. Like she's got to keep labor, she's going to have to be more progressive than the, than the dnc democrats were, but she can't be too progressive. But, like just now, if you don't do some of that stuff, you're in a huge heap of trouble. They have to deal with the courts. I haven't figured out how to do that and this war is going to be the major legacy of this time period, even though in many ways this both isn't, is not an American war Like and that's. You know, this is going to be a black spot in history, I think.

C. Derick Varn: 1:51:41

But my, you know your point about Trump. It still stands. We know where Trump. Trump might resolve things. Overly pro to Russia from your perspective. Admittedly, I'm not sure how I feel about it In Ukraine, russia, in a way that probably would make nobody happy, which was probably, I mean, except for maybe, russia. But even Russia probably wouldn't get everything it wanted. I think that's probably true. But what he would do with Gaza-Palestine is probably allow him to pretty much break Gaza's back and then completely annex the West Bank, which is really what they want anyway. Allowed him to pretty much break Gaza's back and then completely annex the West Bank, which is really what they want anyway, and I think that would be a geopolitical fucking disaster, not to mention like how many fucking Palestinians are dead now. I can't even keep up. I quit looking because I got too depressed and I don't trust the stats anymore either.

Elijah Emery: 1:52:42

We'll know at some point, and either way, it's a ton of people.

C. Derick Varn: 1:52:47

Who should not be dead. I mean, even if you thought a response to October 7th was justified, and I will say I don't know if any government, even even if the government you know recognize the right of resistance, I don't know any government who wouldn't put a resistance up to that like there's.

Elijah Emery: 1:53:06

Uh, that that a deal would have been possible months ago yeah, it would look like we almost got.

C. Derick Varn: 1:53:14

We've almost gotten it several times and the israelis are the people who scuttled it and the the only reason I can figure is to kill more palestinians yeah, well, also also just within the coalition, because bb just wants to survive and the second the war ends, he's out.

Elijah Emery: 1:53:32

Um, which is not you. If your price of political survival is massacring people, that's pretty damn evil.

C. Derick Varn: 1:53:43

Yeah, bb, bb may be a world villain, I mean, the reason why we're not going to remember him as one of the great 20th century ones is because there's just not as many Palestinians. I mean, as I, as I have pointed out, unfortunately, as, like you, you to put things in perspective. Uh, about these population sizes, like, um, while Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas on earth, it still has less population than Alabama, but that's also a fuck lot of people, that's 2 million people, uh, over half of which are women and children. Um, so I mean, how I think it's what was half of the the Gaza population was under, was under 21, under 18.

C. Derick Varn: 1:54:30

Yeah, like so it's. It's, uh, it's fucking nightmare. Yep. Like so it's, it's, uh, it's fucking nightmare, yep. And it's a weirdly demoralizing nightmare in the sense that this has this has meant that for the first time since vietnam, we've actually seen all of it. Um, this is not like iraq, and also the idf just doesn't fucking care. I've been actually sort of shot, like like they're releasing stuff on their TikTok feeds that.

Elijah Emery: 1:54:59

Just as a military, a lot of what we're seeing is the ramification of truly awful discipline. From a purely military perspective, you should not be allowing people to share photographs of just opening fire on buildings for fun, if you have staff sergeants who are at all competent. You don't do that.

C. Derick Varn: 1:55:31

They won't be able to claim most moral military for a long fucking time, like ever. But nonetheless, I didn't want to get depressed. I've been depressed about Israel-Palestine since 2016. So I mean, this is like a constant state of my sadness Because when Kuba and I we talked about this once before, all this punked out when I first started the show and we were both like it looks like it's going to end in an infinite cleansing eventually and that everyone's going to have seen it coming and no one's going to do anything, even when it happens.

C. Derick Varn: 1:56:11

And we are kind of there and uh, um, you know and I told people about this when the american public I'm like the american public by and large does not approve of this, but they don't a lot of people don't they? They don't care, and I think the reason why they don't care honestly is not, it's not the normal, like, oh, they don't care about people in the middle east, they're far away. It's that. I don't think they think they can do much about it. I don't think they know how much. I don't think the average person really realizes how much money and resources the US government is sending Israel. Uh, people who do are not happy about it. Uh, like Israel has really lost its lost its moral legitimacy, even in a lot of conservatives' eyes, but they don't care, and to me this puts the lie. I mean, we're talking about an election and we haven't really talked about Harris or Trump in a while, but in some ways my concerns are much larger than these two goobers.

Elijah Emery: 1:57:12

Well, that's why we originally pitched this as a debate episode and have spent the entire time talking about political coalitions and underlying elements of political class.

C. Derick Varn: 1:57:23

That's way more interesting, it's also way more important because, like I didn't learn shit yesterday from watching debate except that Harris was a better speaker under pressure than I thought, like that was, that was pretty much all I learned was a better speaker under pressure than I thought. That was pretty much all I learned. I think there are interesting hints in this campaign. Walsh is an interesting figure. I haven't talked about him at all, but he's not a millionaire, he's not even a hundred thousandaire. I think he probably has about the same net worth as me. He's a teacher. He's a teacher and he doesn't own his home. He's a millionaire.

Elijah Emery: 1:57:57

He's not even a hundred thousandaire, I think he probably has about the same net worth as me. He's a teacher.

C. Derick Varn: 1:57:59

He's a teacher and he doesn't own his home. He is a governor. He comes from a red state but he is fairly progressive. People say he's a Zionist. I I would be, given his state I'm. I'm actually pretty sure he doesn't think much. He hasn't thought much about it until recently. It's just like what's constant. I will say this when people are like oh, he's probably, I'm like dude.

C. Derick Varn: 1:58:24

I don't know why a small state governor has stances on those things that are not just moral, unless they know they're applying for higher office and I think he's picked partly because he isn't. But it definitely is a signal that they want to, that there is an attempt to bring the working class, which is often coded as white, although it kind of shouldn't be. It's, I mean, yes, it is majority white because the country still is. But you know the, the and by working, when they say working class, what they mean is un-college educated. I need to also be clear that's not the way Marxists define it. But and Walsh would not be working class by that definition. But he definitely comes from an area of the country and a district that you know. His constituency is that. So you are seeing a pivot Like I was afraid that Harris was going to do one of those dumb like what the DNC creatures always did, which was like pick the most conservative vice president you possibly can Like who's still in the party, like Joe Lieberman, orman or harris goes like to have a harris joe mansion ticket or something which is often every time they I mean it does show the democrats learn something, because every time they've ever done that they've lost.

C. Derick Varn: 1:59:46

But um, you know, uh, waltz is not tim kaine. Um, but uh. The reason why we talk about coalitions and geopolitics and all this is because, frankly, in my mind, these are regimes. I don't like either one of these regimes. I, I, I am more ambivalent than you about the long-term cost of a Harris win. I also do not know what a Trump win means, but I know that, even if I was relatively that, I think the fears of Trump as a demagogue are overstated. His coalition is actually kind of getting fucking weird and scary.

Elijah Emery: 2:00:36

I think one other thing is for left-wingers, who suggest that movement building would be better under a Trump administration than under a Harris administration. Why didn't you win in the period from 2016 to 2020?

C. Derick Varn: 2:00:55

Yeah, because that would have been when you had a chance to do it right.

Elijah Emery: 2:00:58

Yeah, I mean, we tried this already. It didn't work. Okay, it's that simple, you know.

C. Derick Varn: 2:01:12

Yeah, I don't see how this, the accelerationist logic, just doesn't seem to hold. I know that people might be surprised, but I've never been an accelerationist in this regard. I'm not a believer in the immiseration thesis either, in that, yes, immiseration forces something, but you don't actually know that it's going to be what you think and, historically speaking, more times than not, it's not.

Elijah Emery: 2:01:41

The weaker you are, the more likely you're not going to be the beneficiary of immiseration.

C. Derick Varn: 2:01:48

No, that it's some unseen, already existing major power, unless all social forces are exhausted, as happened in Russia and in China and the post-imperial period. But even then it ended up not playing out like anyone thought. And if you don't believe me, go read the minutes of the various communist caucuses I mean congresses, not caucuses between 1917 and 1927, because they were often caught off their guard. So it's it is. It is a hard place to be. I know there's people who want the empire to fall apart.

C. Derick Varn: 2:02:35

My things is tells you, just to tell you, if empires don't blow from within, that usually takes a long time. And don't forget that all these powers have nuclear bombs and, yeah, eventually they will denature themselves. But you don't live in that world yet. Uh, you could be like the right wingers who say maybe neutral war isn't as bad as we say it is. Um and uh, I don't know. I kind of trust the War Games predictions that it would probably be like three-fourths of the US population dead and three-fourths of my farm. I mean, I'm in Utah, I'll be cooked. No, you're in New York. New York is gone In all scenarios. New York is gone. Do I want to survive into a post-nuclear apocalypse? That's a good question. I'm not in great health right now.

C. Derick Varn: 2:03:24

I'll interview on that. I've been thinking about that. You know where my mind's been and this is where we can end the show. But I just recently done a couple of solos where I mentioned that I've read like a lot of 1950s, post-nuclear fiction. So I went back and read a canicle for on the beach and, um alas, babylon, which are all post-apocalyptic nuclear stories that are. They're all pretty good too. I would actually suggest people read them.

C. Derick Varn: 2:03:59

That, except for classic science fiction nerds and or British mid-century literature people, some of these books have kind of been forgotten, but I've been trying to get back into the head of that headspace because I'm like are we in a new cold war and what does that mean? And a lot of people on the online left can temporarily get into these righteous ignanations of like retribution and blood and that used to sound to me like uh, paranoid conservative bullshit, but I've literally now seen it go outright that far. It's not, and not metaphorically, and no, I don't think the people know what they're saying. I don't think they understand. Well, you know, but some of them do, and even the ones that don't like this is a great vengeance and this is one thing I want the left to, to get over. Yes, I would love the bourgeoisie to be, uh, forcefully expropriated. I'm you know, it's part of my politics never abandoned it. But, uh, the great revenge.

Elijah Emery: 2:05:11

Fantasy politics does not speak to me, it doesn't seem like a One wants me to go to a reeducation camp. He doesn't want me executed.

C. Derick Varn: 2:05:21

Probably no. I actually, like I by and large, do not encourage the death penalty, except in extraordinary situations or in active acts of war. When someone's trying to kill you, yeah, you kill them back, but that's active when they're actively doing it. I don't think engaging in great revenge fantasies is great, because I've seen what happens when you unleash those social forces and it's not good for anyone, even the left social forces, and it's not good for anyone, even the left um, to have to clean up when you let everyone, uh, basically use whatever as an excuse to get revenge on their ex-girlfriend or whatever, as did happen in the yizhash china and has occasionally happened in the cultural revolution. And the cultural revolution didn't eke out that many formal death penalties. That's actually a myth. It just got that street violent. So it's something to consider. And I just want to say, even in China, for people who really have, where you meet people who have nostalgia for the collective period which came immediately after the Cultural Revolution until 1978, very few people there are some, but very few people outside of weird 60s French academics have really want to live through a Cultural Revolution going on for a prolonged period of time. Talk to Chinese people who remember it and they pretty much stay the same, like they might. Some of them might say it was necessary, but almost nobody like would want it to happen again. Um, I shouldn't say nobody. I'm sure there's some neo-malice to do. But like, uh, when I talk to old chinese people which I have done not a mandarin, so admittedly there's a class bias they speak english or korean at least, so you know already there, um, but uh, I don't get a whole lot of like nostalgia for, like the red guards uh doing you know um struggle sessions or anything like that. Like, uh, our mass to our mass confusion influence suicides or anything like that. Like are mass Confucian-influenced suicides or anything like that. No one seems to really want that back. So I guess take that by due, but whatever.

C. Derick Varn: 2:07:47

So for the left, if you're not going to engage in the revenge fantasy and you're not going to pretend you can start at the executive and you're not going to pretend that can start at the executive, um, and you're not going to pretend that you're, a sect of at most a few thousand people is going to somehow overthrow a country of 320 million with the largest military force that's ever existed on the face of the fucking planet, even though it's not very good at deploying it, it still has it. Um, and even though some of it's getting really weird, I do think we need to reflect on why everything failed the last 16 years, I mean from 2008 to now, the left kept on seeming to win, and yet didn't at all. And if you don't believe me, just look at all the policy stuff that we said we might try to achieve, that are was even that we weren't asking for things that other capitalist countries haven't even done. That's the funny thing. Um, we didn't achieve any of them and we're further away from them now. And now.

C. Derick Varn: 2:08:57

Now we have real problems on the healthcare front, real problems on the educational institution front um, much realer than we did in 2012. Um, real problems with inequity much more than we did in 2012. I mean, like, every problem that the left cared about got worse. Like every problem that the left cared about got worse. Um, so I, you know, and I, you, I, I appreciate that you've not tried to guilt anyone. You haven't done that stupid democrat thing where they blame people who don't want to morally support them, because you and I both agree, the reason why people don't want to support them is democrats own. You, you know, might think there's still reasons to support them. I am much more like we need to be independent and I I uh, I think there is to support the Democrats with your individual vote.

Elijah Emery: 2:09:49

Um, I think, if you're actually a left-winger committed to a politics beyond the democratic party and uh, I'm in a weird place on that one Um, then you don't have to go out and knock on doors. But you know you should, uh, you should knock on doors for something else. Um, you should.

C. Derick Varn: 2:10:12

I'm doing union business, man. That's where I'm at.

C. Derick Varn: 2:10:15

And uh um, uh, um, I don't say how I vote, uh, because it would influence other people and I really don't think that's my job, um, to tell people how to vote. Um, I'm not a member of any party, not, you know. Uh, uh, I changed my voter registration, uh, here in Utah all the time for strategic reasons, because of we have some primaries that are open and some primaries that are closed, and and I'm always doing local stuff. So I've, if you look at my registration, I've probably. Until I lived in Utah, I was not registered as anything ever. Um, uh, I think I was a technically a member of I mean, I've been members of, like, I was, uh, technically a member of the red party, but that wasn't an electoral party, really, and uh, anyway, my point is that, um, you people need to be politically engaged at the local level. They need relative independence to do that, and I'm not. I don't feel comfortable telling people how they should vote even for that in this election.

C. Derick Varn: 2:11:32

Uh, I will say that I think a lot of what trump would do would be quite bad. I also think a lot of what Trump would do would be quite bad. I also think a lot of what the Democrats are going to do are going to be quite bad. And no, I don't think they're equal. Before people come at me for that either, I just don't.

C. Derick Varn: 2:11:45

I I'm at a point now where I don't know how to parse the calculus anymore and I don't I think a lot of people don't honestly. I think a lot of people don't, which is why why I of people don't honestly, I think a lot of people don't, which is why I, why I thought that there was this and I'm not even talking about you, but like there's this tendency like the like the right of the dsa had to be like let's liquidate into the harris campaign as their own people are losing, yeah, like that was something that I was like wow, you guys just are tired and want out and want to claim a victory somewhere. Um, so we'll see. Uh, last thoughts, elijah, for my depressing ones.

Elijah Emery: 2:12:22

Um well, I know that the best reason to vote for the Democrats is that I would make my mom really happy. Um so, if you're looking for an excuse, you can use that one, and if you don't want to do that, you don't have to. It's a free country.

C. Derick Varn: 2:12:41

And your vote probably doesn't matter, unless you're in certain states. Anyway, mine doesn't. No matter the outcome of the election, however I voted. I wouldn't lose sleep over it because I know where my state's going. So it is. It is what it is, all right.