Was Mao Zedong Great?

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He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein. I am home. He is still on the road. We just had a fantastic weekend in Nashville together. That sounds more romantic than I meant it to say, than I meant it to be. But anyway, we had some great shows out there. How are you doing, Rob? I'm doing well. Still on the road between gigs, staying at this nice placemaker, which I'm enjoying. And then I got Chickamauga on Wednesday, Atlanta on Thursday. Friday in Sandpoint. It's a private show in Spokane. And then Saturday outside of Seattle. And then I fly home so I can do red-eye flights. I can do Monday's episode. And then home for three days. And then you and I are already out in Florida. That's right. We'll be out in Florida on July 30th and 31st. We're out at the Improv out there. It's the Dania Beach Improv, I believe. It's out there. Yeah, ComicDaveSmith.com for those tickets. Oh, and then what's the other one? I have the. I'm speaking at. I'm speaking at the Young Americans for Liberty YaleCon in Cincinnati next week. It's a weekday. I'm speaking on July 28th, I think. They're having the. The convention runs a few days, but that was, I think, the only day I could do because we got to be out at these gigs in Florida. But so the 28th, I will be there. I'm giving a talk. I believe it's the. I'm giving the last talk of the night on the 28th. And I am. I haven't figured out my topic yet, but I'm thinking about it. Sometimes they give me a topic. This year, they didn't give me one, and no one's told me what to talk about. So I'm thinking maybe Thomas Massey, maybe Tucker Carlson. Who knows? Maybe Democratic Socialism. I don't know. I'm going to think about it for a little bit. Anyway, yes, PorchTour.com, ComicDaveSmith.com. Okay, so we were just before. Literally before the show started, I was just saying something, and then you said to me, just start the show with that. And we were just. We were just talking about how it's been. I don't know, just like, it's been a challenge covering this war. And a big part of it is because it is. It's so ridiculous. It's so circular. I don't mean like. I mean, it's circular in terms of the pattern. Like, we keep going in the same thing, the same round around. And Trump is so. So cartoonishly unserious that it's almost hard to even. to even cover the latest thing he said this morning, no matter how crazy it is. But then you're also kind of, on the other hand, left in this position where, how do we not start every show by at least talking about this when, hey, we're in a position like we are now, Rob, where, like, there's been major escalations over the last few days. Desalination plans, power plans, and bridges have started being taken out. Now, not at, like, levels that are taking down all of civilization, but we're in this very weird moment of seeing, like, very dangerous, precarious moment of seeing, like, how bad this can get. And yet, what can you say when you've already, essentially, from our perspective, I'm not being a dick, when you've won the argument 100,000 times over already? What are we even talking about? Everything we were arguing about, and I mean this literally, over the last year, Rob, everything that we've been arguing about has already been abandoned by the hawks. Like, they're not even arguing on any of those things anymore. We're already on to some whole new thing. And so, anyway, it does just, I gotta say, at least in my time of running a show where we talk about these things, this has been a particularly challenging one. Well, the issue is it's too consequential to ignore. I mean, this is literally the biggest risk on our plate and the biggest abandonment of a political campaign or the base that you were supposed to represent that you and I have ever seen. And he changes what he's saying and looking to do every single day because he's being an asshole. And he makes us look like an asshole because it's very hard to predict what he's doing and to untangle his lies because he abandons them within 24 hours. And then things become kind of circular and repetitive, but it's kind of hard to just go, all right, we're going to wait this out. We're going to wait and see if he nukes Iran, and then we'll comment because there's just too much going on and it's too consequential. Yeah, and of course, it's as important at every phase to have as many people against this thing as possible because that's the same reason. The reason he's lying to everyone is to get as many people on board as possible. So, hey, as long as we got a platform and some microphones, we might as well be trying to do the opposite. But yeah, it's like also he's telling you all along that everything's going great, that they're about to bend, that we're destroying them, that we're tremendous, that they've been totally devastated. And then it's like everything on the ground, Rob. Again, everything. And it's hard to even imagine if you try to just think about the public debates I was having about this five months ago before we launched the war, when they were flirting with doing it and just what a disaster it's been at every stage. But so Donald Trump's saying the same thing. We won. We're awesome. This is great. They're about to capitulate. What are the actual things that we know on the ground, Rob? This totally destroyed military just killed at least four of our guys this weekend, three boys and a young girl, a 19-year-old girl are dead over this destroyed military. The Houthis have joined in now in terms of like threatening blockades. We know that the blockading and the bombing has been way up from even the periods in the second phase of the war. What about this looks good? Meanwhile, Donald Trump is throwing out this empty, we're going to control it, we're going to take it. It makes absolutely no sense that he has the ability to do that now and has just not done that for four and a half months. And so he's throwing out that it's all going to go well. And every factor that we can actually look at tells us, this is actually pretty clear here. We're in a no-win situation. And every second we stay in it, we're risking more and more catastrophe. And the question is essentially at this point, are we going to accept that there's no win or are we going to take it all the way to catastrophe? It seems to me to be that much of a binary at this point. And for no defensible reason at all, the official policy right now is let's keep flirting. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is The Wellness Company. And they've just launched their new product, Smile. Say bye-bye to receding gums. Gum recession is not just cosmetic. Millions of people deal with bleeding gums, tooth sensitivity, even tooth loss. 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The only upside is at the moment it seems like Iran is not targeting really American warships or Israel 'cause they're trying to respond without directly escalating. But you've got Red Sea is supposedly being closed, which means that there's gonna be even more of a squeeze on oil. And it seems like it's bomb and hope. That's the American strategy is just bomb more things and hope that some sort of a solution just presents itself. But that hasn't worked for four months and it just seems like you're going up what Robert Pape's been talking about with the escalation trap is now you've got American troops killed and you go, all right, well now we gotta hit them even harder. And that's just a game where you just keep going up and up and having more and more war. - Yeah, and like, I do gotta say, you know, I still at this point, still even in my analysis, the way I just laid it out there, I go, I don't think that like the escalation trap is right. You know what I mean? Like, I don't, I just, I still don't. think we actually end up with boots on the ground or using nuclear weapons or going to world war three it's still by the way don't get me wrong we're flirting with that and god you cannot overstate how um criminally insane it is to even be flirting with that but it's i do think professor papen i don't mean to like um i don't mean to mischaracterize his work i think i'm accurate in saying that he almost builds it in as an inevitability in this model that we get up to those phases and i still go nah there's just too much destruction for no benefit and it hurts everybody involved and i think at some point trump walks away before that and as you know rob trump's capable of doing that uh there's still an easy solution on the table which is walk away and let boats pay a two million dollar fee and take the l that still is like just sitting there uh you can do uh one of those old uh dying cats video for three cents a day on your gasoline we can avoid world war three and the straits can be open um but uh trump seems unwilling to walk away and i don't see them sitting down to forge another deal after what just happened with the mou i mean look i agree with that look i was i was saying all that about professor pape as the the disclaimer as the setup to then just say but like my god his model looks so good you know like it's and i will say the thing about um you know professor paper did i mention this on one of the previous shows way before other people do. And I knew about him from the work he was doing 20 years ago. And his book, Dying to Win, is phenomenal. It was one of the books that Ron Paul was promoting back when he was running for president. But he did this essentially like a gigantic, like the biggest scientific study. I think they created the biggest database that's ever been created on suicide terrorists and like overwhelmingly concluded that it is just simply not the case that Islam or even like culture or any type of religious fundamentalism is the major driving factor. And there are places that are more, you know, Islamist that are not able to convince people to become suicide bombers even when they want to. And then there are totally secular suicide bombers. And then there are atheist suicide. And then like, and it's a huge database, this huge, like he just totally proves the case that absolutely. Actually, it's this tactic that people use to repel, to repel in oppressive, you know, occupation and stuff like that. So anyway, he's just, the guy does incredible work. He's really worth looking at. I want to think that we're not actually going to move into that direction. But I do agree with you, Rob, that this is perhaps kind of the darkest hour of the whole thing where you're, you're just at a point where the fact that Donald Trump has walked away from all of the war aims. The fact that we're not. You know, Rob, when you just think that we already moved from regime change and unconditional total surrender, that was the initial demand. And then we ended up with a memorandum of understanding, basically going like, hey, you got to play nice for 60 days and then you're a much more powerful country ever that controls the trade. And we're going, but they didn't play as nice as they were supposed to in those 60 days. That's the war we're fighting now. That's what you're telling me. It's not anymore. It's not about regime change. It's not about that. It's not about any, it's not about nuclear dust. It's not about, you know, and I'll tell you that there's something, you know, when Donald Trump, I know you, we've talked about this. I think we've talked about this, Rob, but I know you've heard Donald Trump tells the lie now that like, if he hadn't launched the war and it sounds like he's talking about the 12 day war, it's not exactly clear, but that it's Iran was like going to have a nuke in, in two weeks or two months. And they would have already nuked Israel. You've heard him. You've heard him say that, right? Yes. That this is the new lie. And I think there's something about that lie that is kind of interesting to me because well, number one, everyone knows it's a lie. Everyone like there's no one, nobody thinks that's true. There's not a single defender of the war who believes that's true. There's not a single, I mean, okay. Maybe, maybe like maybe you could say you could find really uninformed, dumb people who like believe the bullshit, but generally speaking, none of the people selling the war, none of that, the pundits who go along with it, none of them actually believe Iran was about to have a deliverable nuclear weapon and use it like it. That's just too crazy. But it's interesting that he has to tell that lie because in a way, Rob, that's the only thing that would kind of justify how crazy all this is. You know what I'm saying? Like you almost have to present it in a way where it's like we were about to get nuked. And so we had to do this because the only way it could ever possibly be justified to even like embark on this action. Yeah. Would be something along the lines of like nukes are headed toward us. And since we all know it's a lie, doesn't that kind of prove the whole thing in itself? Does that make sense? Yes. I mean, that's, I think he was even saying going to nuke Europe or he was going to nuke the United States. And so we're lucky that we stopped them when we did. And now his lie is we're just, we're still just playing for bonus points here because the mission was that Iran does not go nuclear and we've already prevented them from doing so. If they try and hit anything or they try and rebuild anything, we'll bomb. And so we're only over there for bonus points. It's already, we already won. Yeah, that's right. That's right. That's kind of a new thing. We already won bonus points, you know, and I will say, by the way, there is. So I think, in fact, I think one of the clips we have here is him getting at that, that new point that you're, you're making the bonus point argument, which is a really hilarious one. It's already won and over. Don't worry about it. I'm just like, I'm just running up the scoreboard right now. So don't, don't worry. Um, but there's something, you know, like, do you remember Rob in the, uh, when, when the trans debate was raging on in this country way back three years ago or whatever, yeah, whatever it was, like, it seems like another lifetime now of crises that we were in back then as compared to now. But so when, uh, when, when the, the trans debate was raging on there, one of the points that the people, uh, who were critical of the movement would. So a lot of like right wingers and people would say is that it's like, Hey, insisting that we lie just for the sake of like, like that is wrong in it of itself. Like, like just saying like, in a sense that I remember people used to say, I thought this was a very powerful point. Jordan Peterson used to make this point a lot, but he would say that like, there's something about when you go like trans women are women. Like, even if you smuggle that in under the guise of like, I'm just being nice to this one person who's a little bit. Different. And so like, don't make them feel bad about that. You're asking someone to like publicly affirm a lie in a sense. And there's something whenever people are doing that, particularly when they start mixing that with very authoritarian status policies that they're pushing where you should kind of question that, you know, like don't like lot, you know, like if I just, if there's a chair with four legs there and I have to get you to say there's three legs on that, like there's something powerful about just getting just me publicly lying, getting you to repeat the lie. And then like, we're all living in a lie. This just isn't good for anyone. It's not good for any of us to find answers because you can only really find solutions if you're dealing in the truth. And what really is the difference between that and Donald Trump saying Iran was about to nuke the world if we didn't do this when everyone listening knows just everyone knows that's a fucking lie. And to even think about the fact that like, doesn't it just make you in some way lose respect for everyone else? In his government, like everyone in his government, everyone, but JD Vance to Pete Hegseth to Tulsi Gabbard, who I guess she may be out now, but you know, all the people who have been there this whole time, all of the people who are like adults who wear suits and ties and have professional titles and collect six figure salaries and just overall like look in the mirror every morning, have children and spouses and families and like you serve a man who just blatantly lies. It's as much. It's as much a lie as a boy is a girl or up is down or anything else. If every one of you know that on the matter of selling a war of choice, that's going disastrous that the commander in chief who you serve is lying through his fucking teeth. No question. You know it for a 100% certainty. And you do nothing. It's none of you have an inch of integrity then. All right, guys, let's take a moment. 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So once again, if you're 21 years old and you, enjoy cannabis, well go check out your online dispensary for all your needs at indocloud.co, promo code problem for 30% off. I think at the core of it, that was the problem with the MOU and why it wasn't going to last was Donald Trump needs to go, this was a mistake. And if he really wants to cleanse the country, he needs to go, these are the influences that I had that led me to this mistake. And here's what we need to clean up so that people don't make these errors in the future. But he was trying to LARP and pretend it was a win. Then you had a lot of people who were willing to go along with that just because, hey, let's walk away from the war or the loyalists who just want to pretend that everything that Donald Trump is doing amazing. You had some people who were so into this war that they were furious at Donald Trump for doing an MOU. But at the end of the day, the MOU was built on a falsehood of Donald Trump trying to pretend like there was a victory here. And I think for as long as we're trying to LARP and pretend like everything's going amazing and Donald Trump is the greatest, smartest, most common, sense individual ever, you know, we're stuck in the exact mess that you're talking about, which is we're not living with truth. Yep, that's right. Well, I mean, and another major truth that I got to say, because because, look, we're wondering how this is actually going to play out. And we both of us are essentially saying that, like, look, man, we're flirting with real disaster here. But hey, look, there is an option to just get out of this. And hopefully he takes that. And yes, it would be best. I agree. If it could be acknowledged that this was a mistake here, but no matter what, we want to stop this thing. But OK, so in this this world, the best case scenario is we stop this. We reach some type of agreement. It's not going to be any better than the MOU. We're not doing any better than that. We're in no position to demand further, you know, concessions. And so you find yourself in a situation where the goal that Iran wants to achieve, looks like it will be achieved, which is that essentially, shit, no one's ever going to want to try that again. Right. This is this is the goal of what they're trying to do. And this is why the hardliners in Iran never wanted to sign on to the MOU, why it was controversial over there and why a lot of them have now gained even more political influence, because, yeah, America's making them look pretty good right now. And so. The point essentially is this. Look, just the facts we know on the ground, Rob. The the biggest justification, the only justification for this war, the thing that Trump goes back to over and over and over and over and over again, Rob, is Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. And he says that one over and over again. And it's for very specific reasons. There's a reason why they said WMD is with Saddam Hussein. They know this is the thing that sells. Americans are scared of nuclear weapons. They're scared of nuclear weapons. They'll do a lot if you threaten them with the idea that someone could touch them with a nuclear weapon. But this fundamental lie that the entire war is based on, it's a weapon that they don't have, that they were not intending to produce. Again, like we said, Rob, you killed the old Ayatollah who put the religious fatwa on building nuclear weapons. There are and have always been factions within Iran that want a nuclear weapon precisely for this reason. And the biggest deterrent for Iran getting a nuclear weapon outside of, well, okay, you put whatever value you want to put on how genuinely religious the leaders in Iran are and whether the old Ayatollah genuinely believed that it was against the wishes of Allah to have nuclear weapons. Now, I'm not saying, I'm not taking a position on that one way or the other. I really don't know. Like, I wonder sometimes, Rob, like religious kooks in power, how religious are they really? Are they just using that to control their people? Do they really believe it themselves? I don't know that, you know, any of us know the answer to that. And you'd have to like read biographies about the individuals from people who knew them to even get a gauge. So I'm not sure. I would say that like there are a lot of people who just don't believe in nuclear weapons for moral reasons. It's not the craziest thing ever that someone would be against it. Then again, he wasn't the nicest Ayatollah ever. I don't know if I buy that. So anyway, just saying the big real world deterrent that we know of, of why Iran wouldn't develop a nuclear weapon. Because look, short of the moral issue or whatever, every nation kind of wants a nuclear deterrent. No one fucks with you if you have nukes. You have more power if you have nukes, right? Everyone wants them. It's why our country has them. So Iran certainly would have liked them. And they wanted them for a very specific reason. The reason would be to avoid this. But also, Rob, and this is the weird thing, right? This is the kind of strange dynamic. But this is both very, very much true. The number of people who wanted nuclear weapons was so that this wouldn't happen. But also, the number one reason why Iran didn't break out to get nuclear weapons was because this would happen. So, and this is, by the way, this is beyond, nobody is contesting this. Not a single intelligence agency across the entire world, not a single hawk or any anti-war person who knows what they're talking about. Iran has been able to develop nuclear weapons for, I think, at least 20 years. Something like that. They've proven that they can do it. They just haven't. But like, they can enrich uranium mass with a fuel cycle, do all the steps that you need to do. They can spin it all the way up to 60%. So obviously, they could go to weapons grade. So, okay, why have they not done that? Well, because this might happen. But Rob, that deterrence off the table. And the Ayatollah who declared the religious fatwa is dead. And the country is more radicalized than ever before. And if this war ends, then they've also, now, essentially, you know, remember when they said the, the ballistic missiles are a nuclear shield? Well, they actually have a crazy nuclear shield now. Like if this war ends, why would they not, maybe they are already, but why would they not break out toward a nuclear weapon? At this point, it seems to me that deterrence has been completely destroyed. Yeah. I mean, I think clearly the threat of don't pick a fight with America was a better threat before we engaged in and showed that we can't, we don't really have the resources or means to step in and actually bully you around. Excellent point. Excellent point. Excellent point, too, because it's not just the threat. It's also right. We revealed to be somewhat of a paper tiger. But even look, I mean, even it's we're a paper tiger in some sense, but like not to downplay like the air campaign. Trump isn't completely wrong when he says every day it'll take him 25 years to rebuild and we've destroyed there. It's like we've destroyed much of Iranian civilization. And that is still a price to be paid. And we're also a paper tiger relative to how convinced the American people are that you're an existential threat. So if an actual evil dictator, you know, came up tomorrow, let's say he was before nuclear and he started invading other countries and we thought we were coming here. Yes, people would pick up their guns. We could have a force of a million people and go decimate that problem. The thing is, dude, this is really America. I think, Rob, it's not even necessarily that people would pick up their guns. It's that, look, we have a military. OK, now we we have a military that essentially and this sounds kind of harsh, but if we're just being really blunt, we have a military that is what we call a volunteer force. But what volunteer force really kind of meant in effect was it's not everybody's problem. It's the poorest, most disenfranchised, most optionless young men, mostly in our society. We will bribe. Slash propagandize them into doing the military service. And so like that now, don't get me wrong, it's in many ways preferable to a military draft and overall preferable to a military draft. But it also becomes not really like middle class families problems anymore. Middle class and above. You really don't in America. You really don't know too many people who are in the military for the most part. It's really in in more in poorer rural areas where everyone, you know, is. Is it's done some military service. If there was a real threat that boomers home values would go down by 5%, boomers would support nuking a country like it's it's not that they're going to pick up a gun and do it. It's just that we got the arsenal to blow up the entire world and we got enough people. And if it really came down to it, boomers would support them conscripting your Gen Z, you know, nephew also if they needed to. So, like, it's it's just it's just a matter. It's just a matter that if there was anything that actually really upset America, sure, there'd be tremendous support for us to just take the gloves off and go World War Two style on them. But yeah, we don't have anything like that here. And for good reason, you know, so we will. Yeah, I mean, I don't even know. Maybe I guess we don't even need these clips. We can move right on to the the Hassan Piker one because I was going to talk about that. But here's I guess where we are in the world. I'm sorry, I would say the clips are each only about a minute long. And I do think they add some context to where I find the moment. Fair enough. Rob, I'll defer to you on that. Let's hear Natalie, let's throw to the first Donald Trump clip that I sent. That Iran is ready to stop fighting. So what is the plan? Is the plan? How would you know? There are no signs? Why do you know something that I don't know? Well, they continue to attack our allies. You don't know what the dialogue is behind the scenes that they want to meet desperately to try and end it, because they're getting decimated. You don't get that when you listen to your fake station. But You don't know. You don't know anything. You know something that I don't know. You know something I don't know. Well, tell us. I will tell you, they want to desperately meet. And until they're ready to meet in a meaningful way, we have no interest in even. All right. You know, I'll throw it to you. I'll just make one one point that is honestly the first thing that came to my mind watching it this time. So, you know, in all the one of the most valuable things about Donald Trump, one of the greatest things Donald Trump did for America was just make the corporate media look so bad. And he would just call them out for how much the liars that they were, you know. And, yeah, he always focused on the lies about himself a little bit more than the lies just about the country. But he did call them out for the liars they were. And then he'd expose them and they'd say some lie, you know, bullshit question about Russiagate. And he'd be like, you're fake news. You're lying. Like if the. If there was value in that because the corporate news were liars and Donald Trump called them liars and then years later, everyone went, oh, yeah, Donald Trump was right. They were lying about that. If there was any value in that, well, then there's equal opposite, you know, costs to Donald Trump sitting here and just making the corporate media look good. You know, he's sitting there lying. They're asking an obviously correct question. And he goes, that's why you're fake news. That's why you're a liar. You know, that does that does every bit as much. damage as it ever did help in making the corporate media look bad. Because of course, Rob, obviously, well, what do you mean they're not ready to capitulate? Who told you that? I don't know. The families of the four American service members who were killed by the Iranians this weekend. Maybe that. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Ultra Pouches. You guys know about Ultra Pouches. I've told you about them. They're truly the guilt-free pouch. They've got nothing bad in them. There's no nicotine or caffeine or anything like that. 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Nothing that's going to leave you feeling less than optimal the next. So, Ultra Sleep Pouches deliver better, deeper sleep with properly dosed and natural ingredients and new customers can use the promo code PROBLEM to get 15% off at TakeUltra.com. That's TakeUltra.com and for 15% off, use the promo code PROBLEM. Yeah, and then of course he got, you know, he's calling them out. You guys are reporting fake news. What am I supposed to be reporting? You keep telling me something that's happening and then it's not happening. You've said it multiple times. You've said it multiple times that the Iranians have already given up or they've admitted defeat. You're going to see signing tomorrow and that did not happen. At the moment, we seem to be seeing the most, I mean, the biggest amplification of this war and that now there's more civilian infrastructure being taken out and you're telling me that Iran wants out of this fight. Can you give me any more information about that? Yes, they called me. All right, I guess if we're back to the Donald Trump said so standard after that being not true since he's in office and particularly on this war, it's such an incredible thing. I mean, I think it's a great thing. I think it's a great thing. I think it's an incredible way to spin this lie of, well, do you know something I don't? Because I'm the president and I'm telling you that they just called me. All right, well, do you have any evidence of that? Because we can't really just work with you saying it. You've said that a thousand times. Right. I mean, look, I mean, I guess I'm trying to be as generous as I could here. I suppose like once for maybe a period of 72 hours from a president who had built up some goodwill and trust, you know, if they were like, no, look, this thing's almost over, but we're talking about, we got that. But you're like, dude, you think you can just go for like well over a hundred days of just trust me, we're on the phone, the straight close the whole time. They're desperate to open it up. There is no tangible sign of that that he can look to. The only signs we have so far, right, are look like I've said this from the very beginning of the war. And this again, guys, this isn't rocket science. That's why it mean we're not journalists and we're still better at it than most. It's just like because this isn't rocket science. You look at what the governments are doing. You look at what the governments are saying. You look at how those things interplay with each other. Iran has been saying the same thing the entire time. We are not capitulating. We're fighting to the last man. And by the way, we're winning. Okay. The only in terms of what they've done, it's backed that up. They've responded to every attack. They haven't gone down. They've continued just decimating our bases, killing Americans, attacking our allies where our bases are stationed, all of that. And of course, closing the straight Iran came to the table twice, both times when Donald Trump completely capitulated to them. And then when Donald Trump was like, no, no, no, I'm not completely capitulating. Both times they went great back on. So he can sit here and say, no, no, no, no, no. Someone's calling me on the phone. Okay, Rob, I don't know who's on the phone with him. I don't know what he's talking about. But in terms of what the like, even if that is true, which I don't believe, but even if it's true, well, what the Iranian government is officially saying and doing is not what they're telling you on the phone, sir. And we have long established that at this point. Sir, if they're actively begging for a deal, but it's not good enough for you to take it, do they continue? Are they going to continue to engage in warfare? Because it sounds like you're not in agreement? Yeah, like what? I mean, I don't know. It's it's the guy there. They're still shooting at us. Everyone knows that. So if they're so terrified, they still want to make a deal. Why wouldn't they like we are to again, this is we used the best example, Rob, we used to love this one so much. But it's when they would tell you COVID is the worst illness ever. It's the plague. The vaccine is the greatest cure ever. It's the cure. It's 100%. And you can't possibly get hurt by it. And you can't possibly get the plague with it. And we're really having trouble convincing people to take it. Our biggest problem is vaccine hesitancy. And we would go just think about the story. You're telling right now, just like on the face of it, it makes no sense at all. You just you can't you're convincing me there's the plague and you found the cure. And you can't get people to take the cure. They like this just it can't be all of those things. Either the germ has to be not that dangerous, or your cure has to be not that good, or something else is going on. Then Alex Jones convinced everyone in the middle of the plague not to take the cure for it. Right. And it's like the same thing right here. They're desperate and trying to get out of this and they just want to make a deal. But you're also telling us that they just violated the last deal that they just broke this agreement that we just had. And that's why we're back at the in the war. Well, why would they do that? If they felt the way you're saying? Why would they possibly I'm sorry, like, the guy who's begging you to not fight anymore isn't also swinging haymakers. He can't tell me he's both of those guys. Here, let's I'm sorry, did you want to add something? We can roll the next one. Let's jump to that next Trump clip. I can't have a nuclear weapon right now. We take them years to produce it. And we will absolutely attack we you know, the the new site that they're talking about. I mean, how about these people? They're in this because of nuclear weapons, and they're trying to possibly reconstitute a site will hit that site, any site where they're even thinking about nuclear, we'll be hitting it very, very powerfully. Now, nobody knows, except the Iranians, the damage that we've done to them. We have done damage that will take them 2025 years to recover from. So if we left tomorrow, we had a big we had a big success. But we're not leaving tomorrow. I can't have it. Well, there you go, Rob. There was your the outline of the new Trump doctrine that you were alluding to before bonus point war. We're just in you know, you ever go to the arcade and you get like a couple rounds in the game in and then it's like bonus rounds like you already got what you paid for. You're just trying to get a few more extra tickets now. Maybe maybe get out of here with that big water gun you got your eye on. That's all we're doing. Yeah, and of course, the bonus points are the straight so we're not getting back. Yeah, right. Right. Now I mean, look, it's you know, it's just it's it's cartoonish. It's ridiculous. He's really you know, as we said, through this whole war, you know, you're watching something you're watching something truly self destructive. And you just kind of wonder how much destruction is going to be done by by the end of it. He's he's obviously lying. He's obviously trapped. And he obviously doesn't know what to do. And he's going to continue. He's going to keep lying at least for now. And we'll see. All right, you want to transition and talk about this? This hot song clip? So I guess the transition there with the almost the best way is that look, one of the one of the costs here in a way of this war you know that cost of war project they always come up with great numbers on excess mortality and and money spent on munitions and stuff but they never factor this cost in is that uh people who who oppose the war but have really bad views also end up gaining a lot of traction um so there's a there's a hassan piker uh little clip here that's going super viral uh around social media and i thought we would respond to this now i don't want to this is a short clip and i don't have all the context around this and so i don't want to do a thing here where we're like taking this out of context it's more something that just like there's this thing that's going viral a lot of people are freaking out about it or loving it to be honest and um and i just feel like there's an interesting conversation me and me and you could have about this robin kind of different than what other people are saying but one of the first things i'd say is that look i think it seems pretty clear to me that hassan piker is like ascendant right now he's i think he's the biggest lefty streamer in in america and he's i think he's very influential in this um the kind of democratic socialist wing of of the the you know political movement whatever you want to call that i don't know you know as i've said before i don't know that democratic socialist is exactly the right term to call it like the mamdani wing or whatever and i know some of those guys are affiliated with like the dsa and stuff and some of them aren't but i just kind of broadly mean that that wing i think he's very influential with them he's become a guy who like politicians are are either denouncing or refusing to denounce and anyway he's got you know he's got um some momentum it seems to me right now and i think a huge part of that has got to be because well he has always been several clicks to the left of anything you know kind of establishment inside the democratic party and i think he's i think it's fair to say he's an open communist sympathizer and so because of that he hasn't had to tie himself to the awful positions of the democratic establishment and he's been against the wars and against some of the the corporate democrats kind of policies and as they've you know as the wars have given you nothing but what genocides give you and as the corporate democrats ended up giving you donald trump and jd vance the mamdani wing has a lot more credibility uh than they otherwise would have and so now we gotta deal with uh some of the other ideas that they bring along with them uh anyway here let's let's play the clip and then there's there's a good amount we could talk about here rob i got stopped by a cop who thought i was like making fun of of mao zedong which i never would and never will mao zedong is a is a one of the great leaders of of this world okay a man who changed the entire universe the entire planet okay for real for real yes i mean there was a lot of excesses let's be real but the people's republic of china would not exist without mao zedong i got stopped by a cop all right so this is the clip that of course is going super viral i do not understand the context of this story was he in a communist country or something like that i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know what it is but there was a cop who was angry that he was making fun of mao zedong and he's like i would never would never make fun of the great uh mao zedong um anyway this this clip it seems to me this has gone super viral on um on on social media and it seems to me i was looking through you know rob by the way this is a little bit of an aside note but i gotta say it's one thing i don't like as much about new twitter um you know when videos twitter used to have a thing where if you shared a video like whoever the original person you know you put a video clip up now like if say i shared that same video like if i shared your video the view count would be the total number between your video and my video and then if someone else shared my video any one of their videos you would look at so like if it was the most popular viral video ever and some random account with 20 views showed it he'd be sharing a video with 20 million views on it you know now it everyone gets their own anyway the problem with this now is you can't see how viral a video is going i you used to be able to look at this and go whoa this spread to like 40 million people but now it's like you have to go find each one and tally it up which nobody is going to be capable of doing anyway a side note it's just you it was a better system the old way because you could kind of get a gauge on like how broad the you know the viewership of something was anyway there's basically two reactions as i could and this one supervised the the dsa one account that i saw it shared it it had like 10 million views just on that one account i saw another one with like that had like 13 million views like it was a lot of people had seen this and it's almost all the reactions are one of two things it's either yes we love mal or oh my god you monster you know how could you possibly say something like this and in some way i just find both of those reactions to be fundamentally wrong and well like i guess the pro mal one is kind of obvious why it's wrong but we kind of could get into that but even the people who are acting hysterical i find them to be wrong too because that's just not what do you you're almost saying that it's like oh that's the correct thing the the anti-communist should also get our panties in a bunch and what can't cancel him should it's also why i hate this whole new thing there's like this new thing where they say deport you know deport hassan piker deport this guy to put you're like guys like this is just i don't know it's just like some right-wing version of snowflake shit and it's like just decimate them if you're in the political sphere where you're making arguments about why things should be a certain way just like i don't know so like if you want to look i understand rob people have been pointing out forever what hypocrites you know people like hassan piker are because what's really the difference between saying this about mao or saying this about adolf hitler or something you know what i mean and okay fair enough that's a reasonable point to make but at the same time i i don't know i guess in some ways i just find it more effective to like open up that conversation and just be like how much do you want to own this how much do you want to own that you're supporting the biggest mass murderer in human history you're supporting the biggest police state that was erected in in human history and perhaps the most vicious one i i don't know i just the correct answer here rob can't be that we're supposed to screech you know oh my god you're horrible or something like that all right guys 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the poor and like we need more socialism here and yet he's celebrating a mass murderer so to me well and to be clear to be clear man not a mass murderer the biggest mass murderer in human history by orders of magnitude and that really is the case the estimates of how many people now killed are i think it's i've seen estimates from around 40 i think is the lowest you'll get i think it's the lowest you'll get i think it's the lowest to over a hundred like they really have no idea dude there's entire there's like the biggest war in human history worth of margin of error in how many people mao zedong killed needlessly so i think it's worth uh highlighting as uh hey this is not a person that either this person's completely evil and you probably don't want to get your where can i how can i be a nicer person and advocate for more government uh so that i can be a nicer person and advocate for more government i can feel like a like this this is not actually a nice philosophy or this person is so ignorant and stupid that they seem to be praising a mass murderer. So I think it's more highlighting the stupidity so that people realize, oh, this is not actually worth listening to or platforming or taking seriously as a political movement. Absolutely, man. No, I think that's kind of my feeling with it. You know, look, I'll say this, OK? There is obviously, as anybody who's familiar with like social media or a comment section of any sort would know, there are a lot of like there's a lot of like right wing comments online. I'd say I think it's a reflection of people who are feeling this way, who flirt with support of Adolf Hitler and with the Nazis and with kind of like and even to a lesser extent, you see this with like Pinochet and people just there's almost this kind of celebrating of some of the the right wing governments in history who kind of historically have been known for their brutality. But there's this kind of now fuck that we're going with them anyway. I will say, you know, a lot of people made the the comparison to Nick Fuentes, who has also made comments about like Adolf Hitler being a great man or Joseph Stalin being a great man or stuff like that. I guess I would say I guess I could be wrong about this. When I see right wingers do it with Hitler, there always seems to be like a little bit of a smirk. Like they know they're doing something naughty. There's a little element of like trolling involved in it with in my experience with the vast majority of guys like that when you talk to them one on one and you go, what do you actually believe? They come way down from like this kind of persona of like, oh, I actually believe in in death camps or something like that. I get I'm just giving you kind of my experience and maybe I'm wrong about this. When I hear Hassan Piker do this, I don't think there's any element. Of that. Like, it doesn't seem like there is any element of like a Nick Fuentes smirk. And I'm trolling a little bit. I'm being a little sarcastic. I'm saying something to get a reaction. This seems to me like it. And I could be wrong. I'm kind of guessing someone else's motivations here. But this seems to me like this is Hassan Piker's genuine analysis of now. Like, I wouldn't make jokes about him. He's a great man in history. And I will tell you, and I'm somebody who like, you know, I swim in politically radical circles. I've talked to a lot of radical right wingers and a lot of radical left wingers about politics in my day. And I have seen this is a thing that if you get into that world, Rob, where you're talking about people who are like DSA and or Democratic socialists in general, whether they're part of the organization or not, you do get a lot of this. You find some kind of communist. Oh, gee, you know, some kind of like, well, and the they much more so than I've ever really seen right wingers like legitimately defend Hitler or something like that. I have seen a lot of left wingers go, you know, oh, now wasn't really so bad or they talk like this, Rob excesses. The excesses of now 40 to 100 million people. Those were the excesses. And then this this, by the way, I find fascinating because in some way, you know, you're talking about the mass murderers, right? And you're talking about the people who are, you know, the people who are the most important people in the world. And the thing is, you almost like empirically can't even argue with these people because look at the track record. You're talking about the biggest mass murderer ever. You're talking about the person. And Rob also like, it's not just that they were brutally authoritarian. If anyone doesn't know much about that, go Google the brutality of the Mao Zedong regime and go go look into it. Right. And so not only are they this brutal, brutal regime that tortures in the sickest ways to like cuts ears off and cut like just tortures political dissidents. And so not only are they this brutal, brutal regime that tortures in the sickest ways to like cuts ears off and cut like this, but also at the same time, it's an economic program, the great leap forward, right? Now the cultural revolution is to cover up for what a disaster that was and propagandize all the kids to go kill all the adults who are talking about what a disaster that was. But this was an economic program. The vast majority of those numbers of deaths, Rob, you understand, came from starvation. So like the result of it is mass murder. Mass starvation, plus no political liberty. And so empirically, that's not enough to get you to go like, you know, we turn away from this or something. I would also think, and not my field of expertise, so people can bash me for having this wrong, but even, and this is disgusting, but let's say you even wanted to say, hey, China's now a better place for all of these individuals. And I understand it took 100 million people to die in order for the current state of China, but now China is this incredible place. Well, for one, I'd love to see an economic study of the standard of living of people who are living in Hong Kong during the same time period, just to kind of showcase the differentiation between these two economic models. And then you'd also be forced to look at the current situation in China and say that I guess that's such an ideal landscape that it justified. I'm saying even if you wanted to say, listen, it took authoritarian efforts and it took a sacrifice of 40 million people, but look at what we ended up with. And I think that this is the most fantastic form of government you could possibly have. Compare that to the economic growth in Hong Kong, and then look at the situation in China and tell me that that's the absolute best model that it justifies that level of, not that anything would justify that level of death, but I'm just saying as a thought experiment, if that's what you're saying. Both of those, because that's a really, really important point here, Robin. I almost like would challenge every leftist, like every leftist who I like, like all the crystal balls, Ryan Grims, and like all you guys, like, and I don't even mean this is like a rhetorical question, like, please answer this. Like, I actually want to, because, you know, look, the neocons, right, who were also, by the way, former communists, just saying, and from our perspective, they didn't shed enough of it. But so like, if you remember, I've mentioned this a bunch on the show, but I guarantee you like crystal ball, and Mehdi Hassan, and Ryan Grim, I bet a bunch of them have covered this and done segments on it. But because this, this got a lot of us people talking about it. But when Brett Stevens wrote for the New York Times, this piece in 2023, that was Iraq 20 years later. And he was asking the question, was it worth it? You know, I was a cheerleader of the war in Iraq, was I wrong? Did I get this huge foreign policy thing wrong or not? And literally, the whole thing you could you could read it, the whole thing is a comparison between Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and Iraq of today. And he makes the argument that Iraq of today is better. Therefore, he was justified in in, in the war. And every single one of those people, crystal ball and Ryan Grim, and Zoran Mamdani. And even I want to believe Hassan Piker, if he was really focused and rubbed all his brain cells together, would be able to tell you why that doesn't work, like methodologically, why you're leaving out a big thing here. Because like, what about the million people you killed? Huh? You're not even going to kind of take that, like, okay, you killed a million people, a million people are dead. 13 million people had to flee from from their homes, you know, like you, okay, you destroy an entire country. And I don't even know if you get into the numbers of like, how many hundreds of thousands of people were like, critic, you know, were wounded and had severe injuries. And all that stuff. And the trillions of dollars that it costs, right? And then you got to think about the scene versus unseen, what could have been done with those trillions of dollars that now isn't done because of that. Like, what about all that calculation? She just gets a yada yada over that. Like, that's a real goddamn human toll. And if the goal of the thing is human flourishing, well, then what about all these humans who not only didn't flourish, but met the worst fate ever, you have to factor that in. And so in this breaking eggs to make an omelet argument, which essentially it is, well, he's a great man, because he made, you know, whatever China ended up being a thing because of him, which to some degree is, is there's some truth to, but like, okay, yeah, you're yada yada in over the biggest bloodbath in human history. And so yes, there's that is one argument right there. Like, are you really prepared to embrace this? Like, gotta break some omelets to make an egg argument. And by the way, people like me and Rob, who forgive us when we're good on the war question, but we're a little bit hesitant on your, we can break as many omelets as we want to make an egg, we may have some questions like, is there a limiting principle to that? Other than you say the word democracy? Like, you know, because because like, hey, Hassan Piker, if you're so into the idea of like, whatever this break some omelets to make an egg, you know, we could save like seven people's lives by murdering Hassan Piker. And harvesting his organs and then giving them out to other people who need, you know, a new liver or new, I don't know how kind Hassan's been to his liver, but I'm sure he's got some good stuff in there that someone could use. Like, where exactly do we go with this theory? And then the other point, though, that you you really got at there, and I think this is a really, really important one that I wanted to make, because this is there is this thing where, and I've seen this where the Stalin and Mao apologists will do this thing. where they go. But he industrialized. Like, hey, man, say what you will about Lenin. But when he found Russia, it was an agrarian society. And when he left it off, they made it into a, you know, they had factories and stuff. Mao Zedong built factories or whatever it is. And it's like, first of all, there's a couple things here, Rob. Number one, isn't it interesting to watch communists celebrate someone for building factories? You just gotta, you gotta really juxtapose the way they treat the industrial revolution in the West, which, by the way, Rob, came without tens of millions of starving dead people. And all they can think, all they can think when they see that is child labor and a capitalist taking advantage of somebody. But yet, if the biggest mass murderers in history build a factory, all this, well, look, they industrialized the country. So let me just get this straight. In Britain, in America, in Germany, in France, we had industrial revolutions. In Belgium, we all had the industrial revolution, okay? Different phases of it, I suppose. But like, okay, it was capitalist societies. Now, Rob, when I say, just to be clear for the discussion, when I say these are capitalist societies, me and you, I'm sure, could, go through the federal book of regulations in any of these countries or whatever and find some things we didn't like. But I just mean for the sake of the argument here, since we're talking about Mao Zedong, then, like, I'm saying they were private business owners who owned factories and built factories. It wasn't, when you talk about the industrial revolution in the United States of America, you're not talking about Washington, D.C. opening a whole bunch of factories and having a program of, we're industrializing the country. You're talking about people opening factories, okay? So explain this to me, Rob. A capitalist in America in 1879 or whatever, okay? You've got a bunch of money. You could use this for present consumption, right? You could go out and buy all the finest amenities that 1895 or whatever year I said it was, 1879, has to offer, okay? But let's say you choose to defer that and you go, instead, I'm going to open a factory. That will provide 5,000 people with work and it will make me money. I'll get to consume things, but in the future, I'll sacrifice my present consumption for more future consumption that will also provide a whole bunch of jobs for this community. You're evil. But the fucking murderous dictator who says, I put up nothing of my own, but I'll take this poor peasant shit and fucking insist that he go into labor to build a factory, that guy gets credit for building the factory. Just think about this for a second. Yes, it is true that there was some degree of industrialization in Russia and China under Lenin and Stalin and Mao Zedong, but it was also true that we had industrial revolutions all throughout the Western world without the communist bloodbath. That's preferable. I'm sorry, Rob. I know I rant for too long, but this is another one that's kind of interesting. No, because none of them, no one fucking, this is why I say Austrian economics is the only real economics. None of these guys even understand what they're talking about. And it is unfortunate because I do like some of them. Not so much Hassan, but some of the other ones. But like, also, you're not always supposed to industrialize. Like, it's not, everybody knows you can. Nobody said, Rob, if I enslave everyone in the country to build a factory, there might be a factory at the end of it, but it's not clear that that was the right. And in fact, that's kind of the whole point, at least certainly in China, is that they weren't ready to industrialize, right? So like, this is essentially what happened. And this is, you know, I'll just say this on the caveat, because we're getting toward the end of time, that there's historians who could explain this way better than me. But this is very interesting, right? So essentially, England, where the industrial revolution first happened, was very capitalist at the time. America, when the industrial revolution happened here after the civil rights, like, we didn't have a central bank, we didn't have an income tax, we didn't have federal regulations, we didn't have federal spending. Like, it was just, you know, these were free market countries, relatively speaking, that had industrial revolutions. And so what happened there, like, Rob, if you could imagine, right, let's say, like, me, you, and Natalie, and 10 of our closest friends, we all move out to, like, it's 1886, okay, if you've seen that show. We go out on the Oregon Trail or something. The industrial revolution is happening, in the cities, but it's not happening out there. So we're, no industrial revolution, right? So we go out there, and we're going to homestead a piece of land together. And you're going over jobs, like what we should all do, because the winter's coming in a couple months. And I go, I think we should industrialize, Rob. Let's start building a factory. You very likely might go, hey, hold on there, Dave. Like, we don't have any steel. Like, we don't, we are not at all, we will starve to death, if we start putting our time and resources toward, building a factory. We're nowhere near ready to do that. And you know what happened, again, this is a little bit above my pay grade, but go read about this, because it's very interesting. What preceded the industrial revolution in England is what's known as, I believe, the British agricultural revolution, or the second agricultural revolution. I can't, I can't remember, but it's, it's something like that. And it's basically this period of time where they figure out all these things. And Rob, I'm not the expert, and I know figuring out the steam engine was big in the British industrial revolution, because they could move the shit out of it. On the boats. And then I know, it was the internal combustion engine was huge in the American industrial revolution. But like, I don't know all the details of this at all. But I know that this agricultural revolution, it led, they, for the first time, started producing way more food than they needed. And the population in England exploded from like 5 million to 40 million. And for the first time ever, there was so much food that they didn't need as many people working in agriculture to make food. Like, that was a really important precursor, right? Rob, to everyone going and investing all of these resources and building factories and doing factory jobs. And you know what happened in China? They weren't at that point. And so Mao just ordered everybody to stop being farmers and start fucking building factories. And then you know what happened, Rob? They weren't producing nearly enough food, and people starved to death by the tens of millions. Like, look, if you want to say he was a great man, just meaning he was a powerful man in history, or something like that. Well, then fine. Yeah, he was. But you're not saying anything if you're saying that. So I don't think that's just what you're saying. You're saying you won't make jokes about this guy, because there were some factories at the end of the day. Just think about that, Rob. You got to break some eggs to make an omelet. But if you built some factories, then that's worth it. Man, could a capitalist get some of that love? I'm sorry, that's too long of a rant. But go ahead, Rob. Anything you want. No. Ahsan's got to get back on the mountain, too. I think he's lost his touch. He needs the black fingernails. And a fresh mountain dew to clear his head. There you go. Well, you know, dude, I got to, I would still love to debate him. We had talked about doing that. And then he got in all his legal trouble. I'm going to reach back out to try to make that happen. But there you go. Let's debate Maoism. What a wonderful thing it was for China. Oh, and by the way, I guess the last thing to add is just that people give Mao the credit for modern China. It's like, yeah, when he died, and then they decided to allow business, you know, like, why didn't all that happen while he was alive? Why don't they try to make it out like this is, oh, no, they did communism for a long time. And now they're much richer than they were. Yeah, they were at their poorest after doing communism for a long time. And it was around the time that they decided communism meant fascism. You know, it was around the time that they go, communism really means big business and government just work together a lot. And then that worked a bit better than communism, where they had no prices. You know, oh, and by the way, I should say, Rob, all that shit that I was saying about moving out to where you go homestead, when do we industrialize? When do we do this? All that shit? How do you tell prices? That's how you do it. A pricing system is you go, oh, steel's really cheap. That means we should start doing a project that involves steel. You know, why did Mao Zedong decide they were going to produce steel? Because he wanted to. He thought he decided that would be best for China long term would be to produce a lot of steel. So he took all the people. And then, what did he need to do in order to enforce that type of economic policy? Be the most draconian, authoritarian, brutal mass murderer in human history. All right. All right. Communism sucks. And the Republicans who launched stupid wars are actually giving them a lot of ammo. So that, I guess, continues to be the theme. All right. Catch you guys next time. Peace. Support for this podcast comes from Progressive, America's number one boat insurer. We've all made mistakes on the water, but there's one mistake you shouldn't make, being uninsured. 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