(upbeat music) Welcome to Packets and Bolts Podcast about technology, life, philosophy, and everything in between. It is Wednesday, July 24th, 2024. This is your host, Muscrat. And today I talked to Lee Camp about the left or lack thereof in America. Mangus and Dubstenge cannot make it today, but this Friday is Sis Admin Day. So look forward to that coming up in just a couple days. I'm gonna email the show at packetsandbolts@gmail.com Packets and Bolts@gmail.com. All right. Well, Lee Camp is a comedian, activist, and commentator. He created, wrote, and hosted the hit weekly comedy show redacted tonight for eight years. He now hosts the Daily Show Dangerous Ideas on YouTube and Rumble. He's the author of multiple books, including Bullet Points and Punch Lines and Dangerous Ideas. He also has multiple comedy albums and hosts the podcasts, The Lee Camp Show, Moments of Clarity, and Government Secrets. Visit his website at leecamp.com. All right, welcome Lee Camp to the Packets and Bolts. Big fan, I followed you on redacted tonight until I magically didn't see it anymore. How are you doing? - Thanks, thanks for having me. - Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about some recent conversations we've had on the show with regards to politics in America and the influence of the left and the radical left. And some opinion that the radical left has taken over the Democratic Party, my personal belief that we don't have a real left. And I was wondering to pose this first question to you, Mr. Camp, the media talks about the radical left all the time, what is the radical left in America? - I mean, honestly, well, first of all, I don't think the media does. I think Fox News and OAN do some of these far-right media, but I would love to see any evidence whatsoever that an actual left wing, not just has taken over the Democratic Party, but has any sway whatsoever over the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party. And we'll get back to the radical left idea in a second. But the Democratic Party is not left. People who think it's left wing don't understand anything about American politics or maybe world politics. But the Democratic Party, in most countries, if it were in that country would be considered a right wing but maybe towards center right, if you're being generous. The Democratic Party is not left wing. And people, again, who call it left wing or call certain media left wing like CNN or whatever, I don't even know how to answer them, other than just to say that they're completely ignorant of what left wing means. None of the things I'm mentioning, the mainstream Democrats, almost the entirety of Democrats in Congress, almost the entirety of our media personalities that are at the top of the media. Echelon are in any way anti-war, anti-capitalism. They don't actually stand for doing anything to protect the environment. They just maybe stand for saying something about it here and there, but they're not actually, there's no action to back that up. So in the biggest areas, in the core beliefs of this country, there is no left or left wing ideals. In order to be truly left wing, in my view, you need to be anti-capitalist, you need to be anti-war, at least largely. And again, you see zero of that in our Congress, in our presidency, there's just zero. So the idea that somehow the radical left has taken over now, I guess what Fox News or maybe your colleague or someone would point to if they were really pressed as to show that the left wing has taken over the Democratic Party or some portion of politics in America, all they would, I assume, have to point to is they'd either point to something that's false. So they'd say, oh, look at the open borders. In fact, Reuters and many other outlets have just reported that Biden is deporting more people than Trump ever did. So the open borders thing is just a made up idea. So then if they're not pointing to something that's false, they'll point to kind of these woke so-called ideas of like, well, look, there's a black woman as the press correspondent or there's a black woman actually running for president now with Kamala Harris. Well, those are just things on the front. Those are just facade things. Those don't actually equal leftist ideals. They're just, if you can find a, you can find plenty of black women across this country who stand for pro-war, who stand for Israel's genocide being perpetrated against Palestinians, who stand for all of these far-right, egregious, you know, Wall Street running wild enriching the billionaires to some crazy level while the average people across America get poorer and poorer. So just 'cause you have a black woman or a gay person, you know, Pete Buttigieg or something in these positions, it means nothing in terms of actually being left-wing in terms of actually pulling any of the actual policies of this country to the left. So, you know, wokeism, quote, unquote, is often used to actually cover the war crimes and cover the crimes of our ruling elite. So that doesn't equal leftist ideas. You know, you can tell that these people who claim that left ideas have taken over the government have nothing because they have to point to tiny little things. They have to point to, oh, a trans story time took place in Chicago. Like, if you have to point to that, then you have lost the thread. You have nothing else to point to. - Yeah, so you mentioned wokeism, and I guess we can go a little bit if you want into the history of woke, where originally it just meant realizing that you were being oppressed by, you know, the people that actually run society, and now it's turned into basically any of their bogeymen. Do you think the shift in identity politics, which I feel personally that the Democratic Party seems to focus on? Do you think that was done not just on purpose to drive the discussion that way, but to distract from any other potential left-wing attack? So I think even Bernie Sanders once said that focusing on identity politics was bad, and they almost immediately jumped on them for, so you don't support equal rights for women and things like that. Do you think that's part of the strategy? - Well, I think part of the strategy is to confuse everyone by just using terms like identity politics. Identity politics, you know, as you're mentioning, can be, you know, a false road to go down if every time you try and discuss anything, someone goes, this needs to be said by a black woman or this, you know, unless you have a trans person in your group, you're not allowed to speak, it can be used to sideline any change or any discussion. So in that way, identity politics can be very bad. But to just group everything under that umbrella of identity politics means, oh, okay, so we can't talk about racism in this country anymore, you can't talk about the fact that this is the largest prison state in the world and that it is by the numbers, very, very racist. So to just use this umbrella term identity politics to sideline every conversation, it's, to me, it's borderline meaningless to just say identity politics. - Sure, all right. Well, you've pointed out some flaws in the left-wing agenda idea of America, but what about the critics would say? California, Seattle, San Francisco, these are the home of the radical left that have taken over the cities. Crime is at an all-time high. Homelessness runs rampant, probably because they wanna get rid of capitalism or something. What do you say to that? - Well, I guess you'd have to pick apart what the things are you're most upset about. Well, so let's look at homelessness. Well, we know that homelessness is not caused by left-wing ideals or anything homelessness is caused by this gut-wrenching capitalist system that churns people up and spits them out and you have 61% I think it is of Americans who are living paycheck to paycheck, meaning they're on the cusp of homelessness at any given time. You have something like 66%. You know, both of them are in the sixties of Americans can't afford a house no matter where they live. So that is the system that is creating this homelessness. Now, some of them may choose to go and live in certain cities in California 'cause the weather's a little nicer and for a variety of other reasons, but that is not what created the homeless. And many people, you know, the studies show that many homeless, perhaps 50% are mentally ill, which also points to a society that does not actually care for mentally ill in appropriate ways. We don't send people the help they need. And believe it or not, there are answers to homelessness that would solve it, essentially solve it, all but solve it. And guess what? We've even tried them across America. What? In fact, in Utah, I can't remember what year it started, maybe 2015 or something. They tried something and it was crazy. You know what they did? They gave every chronically homeless person an apartment and a caseworker. And guess what? The city saved the state saved money because it costs less to give them a small apartment and a caseworker than it did to deal with homelessness and all the emergencies and the emergency personnel needed, et cetera. But on top of that, it eliminated 95% of homelessness. 95% of chronically homelessness disappeared. Now they have since done away with that policy. Why did they do away with it? Because it was working. And we can't have that in America. We can't have the homeless having homes. So instead, we do this insanity, which is, oh, well, we're gonna pass laws saying homeless people need to go away, that we could arrest you for sleeping in public. Well, if they can't sleep in public and they don't own any private, where exactly are they supposed to sleep? It's just, it's heartless and gut wrenching and disgusting the way we treat homeless people, especially in a country that has 17 million vacant homes, millions upon millions of vacant homes litter our landscapes and homeless people are not allowed to use any of them. We have roughly a million, maybe less, of homeless people. You could give every homeless person 17 homes and not run out. And here, I gotta compromise, rather than give every homeless person 17 homes, how about we just agree on one? How about we agree and we give one? Yeah. So this idea that it's somehow left-wing policy that created homelessness is just, again, it comes from mass ignorance and it comes from epic levels of propaganda pushed out by Fox News and others, you know, and you go back to the open borders thing. Like I said, Joe Biden's to port him and, you know, ruining the lives of more refugees than Trump was able to in his four years. Now, of course, Trump would love to, so it's not that Trump doesn't seek to do that. So this is not left-wing policies. There is no open border. And if you wanna really talk about immigration, why are these people, many of them Latin American, coming to the United States? Is it 'cause we're so just wonderful? Or is it because the United States has like systematically, go through the history systematically, destroyed so many countries in Latin America. Every time they have a democratic elected leader that actually wants to help their people, the US, the CIA, through various means, goes in there and does gut wrenching, you know, efforts to destroy these countries, put in dictators, put in right-wing lunatics, like right now in Argentina. And then these people flee because, or certain percentage of them, flee because their country is economically destroyed. We also have economic war against many of these countries that have not been CIA-cued or assassinated. So it's like, and then when these people try and find a better life for themselves, we go, all these horrible immigrants are coming to the United States, was wrong with them. - Well, the other thing about that is, is it curious that no one ever enforces the hiring of the illegal immigrants, and whenever people bring it up, it's shot down pretty quickly. - Yeah, because the corporations, many of them need that workforce. They need the immigrants, many of them undocumented, many of them not undocumented, but they need immigrants to allow any manufacturing and other work to farming, to continue in the United States. So the US government, which is part and parcel to the corporate, the corporate America, is not gonna do anything to go after the hiring of these people because that would harm corporate America. Instead, they just want to attack the people as they come into the country. Let's also remember that we are a nation of immigrants from our founding. The estimates are that every year throughout the entire history of the United States, we've had between 10 and 15% of our population has been recent immigrants. So, and that has not changed. It's just not like we have a million percent now and we had 10% 40 years ago. It's always been roughly 10 to 50%. The difference is, through many of those years, a lot of those immigrants were white. Now, that didn't stop us back in those days from hating those immigrants, the hatred towards Irish, the hatred towards Italians, but now that hatred has shifted towards Latin Americans and those who are not white-skinned, and just look at the numbers of Ukrainians that are allowed to immigrate here versus the numbers of many other countries or African countries. So, it is a racist policy, much of these policies are racist at their heart. And again, it's very nice to see that Kamala Harris was in charge of some of these policies. It's nice to see a black woman in charge of destroying the lives of people of color. - Well, you gotta have equal opportunity, correct? - Yep. - All right, so when Utah was implementing that policy you spoke of of the House, would that have been considered communist or radical left? - I mean, first of all, I know radical is supposed to be a negative term in our propaganda now, but I view radical as pretty awesome. Most radical left people I speak to are anti-war, like actually anti-war, they're anti-genocide and Gaza right now, they actually wanna help people, they wanna help those who are struggling, which this country is about enriching a tiny handful of people at the expense of millions and millions of people. So, now radical left people sound when you actually talk to them, so I'm pretty nice to me. But anyway, back to Utah. Well, I guess this gets into the definition of socialist, which, you know, I'm no expert, but a lot of people misuse it or the way we use it has transferred over time, so you can have all those linguistic debates that people can feel free to have those, but, you know, the real, like, original term for socialism had to do with workers owning the means of production and et cetera, but nowadays we use socialist often to mean anything that's kind of paid for by the state, which would mean social security, it would mean firefighters, it would mean police, it would mean roads, guess what? The largest socialist organization in the world just about, or, well, it's definitely in the United States, is our military, and if you're talking about amount of money going towards it, it's the largest in the world. The largest socialist organization in the world, going by sheer amount of money and basis around the world is the U.S. military. So if you, if you, these people, the radical left's taken over, well, get rid of the military and then we'll talk, all right? If you really want to get rid of all these socialist ideas, if we're using socialist to mean paid for by the government. So, you know, it's a common, the reason people misunderstand this stuff and it's a combination of propaganda and ignorance, and, you know, if you give someone, if you give someone an apartment who's struggling, who's chronically homeless, and guess what? According to most studies, most people are homeless originally due to life events, not because they're just love being homeless or they're just lazy. It's because their life is different than many other people in that they didn't have a support network, perhaps they're mentally ill, perhaps they're PTSD, a whole assortment of things. If you or I, you know, in many people around this country, if we lose our job, we're not immediately out on the street. Many of us have family. Many of us have family that may loan us money. Many of us have family that may say, you know what, sleep on your couch for a year. We're sleeping in the guest room. How about that? Because they're in the guest room for a year until you get back on your feet. Yeah, well, some people don't have that. And the fact that they don't have that doesn't make them lazier or crazier. It's just, we're lucky. Like, instead of coming from a place of privilege where you lose your job, you're not on the street, or you get some, you know, catastrophic, you know, let's say some illness where you have to go in the hospital and then you lose your life savings paying for that, et cetera. And you're not on the street. Don't look at that as now I need to turn around and go after all the homeless people. Look at it as, wow, I'm privileged. Boy, I should help the others who are not as privileged as I am. And to me, it's just amazing that the propaganda has been so successful is to get people to punch down in their ideologies just constantly. Yeah, we'll get to some, I have a question on how you think we got here, but two countries. Okay, we're told Cuba, crazy left-wing, and it's so left-wing that that's why it's a failed state. Meanwhile, China, supposedly communist, but we hear some people say it's succeeding because of capitalism. So what is up with the two dichotomies there? I mean, I think that analysis is a bit too reductive. So I don't know why you're calling Cuba failed states. That's what people say, I'm gonna say. Yeah, I mean, I've been to Cuba. It's an amazing country and, you know, yeah, there are complaints about Cuba by Cubans, which I think is probably just about every country in this world. I don't really know of one where there's nobody who complains about what goes on in their country, but you look at Cuba and there is a lot of happiness there. They're like, Cuba has guaranteed, they have free medical care, they have free education, they have guaranteed employment. So if you don't have a job, you can get one. And they have guaranteed housing. So there's essentially zero homelessness. There's essentially zero people that are, you know, completely destitute. Now, again, this doesn't mean everyone loves Cuba. There are Cubans who don't like their government or their country, but to call it a failed state is just kind of propaganda. Cuba also has been able to achieve this, meaning a largely functioning, largely fine country with a medical system that's better than the United States, with a mortality rate, you know, length of life that is now higher than the United States. People live longer in Cuba than they live in the US. They're able to achieve all this despite the fact that the US has had a massive gut wrenching economic war on them for decades and decades, ever since they threw off their US empire chains and that has always pissed us off. So to be able to achieve all this, despite the economic blockade, which if you look at the UN, the only countries in the world that still believe that Cuba should have an economic embargo on. It should have this economic war against it as the United States and then, you know, Ukraine votes with the United States 'cause they need our money and Israel sometimes does. But so every country in the world, essentially, except for the US says, why not let Cuba have economic trading partners and work with other countries and the US has worked steadfastly for decades to crush Cuba and yet still Cuba's largely doing fine. So when people say, oh look, when people say, oh look how bad Cuba is, even for the things that are bad in Cuba or more difficult in Cuba, it's due to the US economic war. The US is able to tell just about every country in the world except China, Russia, Iran and Venezuela to not get anywhere near Cuba, to not do any trading with them, to not give any resources to them, to not work with them. So I think any difficult to Cuba's having is due to that, is due to the economic war on them. - Yeah, and I'm obviously throwing straw men at you here, but this is serious things that people actually say. I knew someone that went to visit during the Obama period of a little bit better travel. And when he came back, he said, you can tell how communism really doesn't work. And I brought up the sanction thing, but he didn't, he talked about how poor everything, everyone was and stuff. - Yeah, well, I'm wondering what he saw 'cause I didn't see poor people. I mean, I guess if you come from a US-mic mansion and that's what you're used to, is like these giant sparkling clean, sterile, 42 room houses, then I guess you would look at somebody living happily in an apartment and you'd go, "Oh my God, look at the poverty." But that's just, if you've fallen so aggressively for the propaganda, then you're kind of beyond saving. - Yeah, funny thing about McMansions is they're usually built with really horrible quality. So what about China? The Chinese are supposedly communist, but yet they succeed because of capitalism. At least that is an argument that capitalists like to make. What do you make of that? - They are a mixture between capitalism and communism and they're a better economist since I'm not an economist to speak to about this. But I will say that some of their success has been due to market economics, but again, it depends on how you decide success. Many of the people you're probably quoting in your straw men arguments is they're probably viewing success as who has the most money, who built the biggest thing, who has the richest people. I view success for humanity as who has the least people destitute, who has the least people that are hungry every night, who has the least people that are dying from unclean water, the number one cause of death around this world. Like to me, that is success, that is winning. Who is the best communities where people feel they really have a community and they have friends and family that love them and they can work with and who has the best system where people have passion in their jobs and their lives. Like to me, that's success. To others, it's how many diamonds on the chain around your neck. And to those people who say, well, Cuba doesn't have a lot of diamonds on the chains around their neck, some of them don't even have chains around their neck at all that they got from the jewelry store. - Well, then you don't understand what life is about. And, you know, again, that's a tougher argument to discuss 'cause you gotta break down who the person is to begin with. But to go back to China, yeah. Some of the GDP success, China, you know, along with BRICS is now, their GDP is above that of the G7. The US is on the decline, the US is a waning empire. Some of China's success has to do with the market economics or, you know, connected to some levels of capitalism. But if you look at the way China plans, which I don't know that you have to call it communist, but I think you could call it socialist or you could call it putting the people over profit, China will plan things for a decade or sometimes two decades out. The US and capitalist truly unfettered capitalist countries have no way of planning that far out. Instead, all planning by the United States is done by corporate America. And it's all, at most, how to get the most, yeah, per quarter usually, like per fiscal quarter, but at most a year or two ahead is about, how to make the most money a year or two ahead. China will make decisions on how to get the most people out of extreme poverty. And this story, and anybody can look this up if they think I'm making a fact, they can look it up, it's been in the New York Times, it's been in all the mainstream media, they don't like to talk about it a lot, but China has taken 850 million people out of extreme poverty over the past 30 years, 850 million people. And that was not due to capitalism, that was due to China deciding we're going to put the money and the effort and the planning into getting 850 million people out of extreme poverty, and they did it. And if you look at the actual growth of humanity around the globe out of people coming out of poverty, like the vast majority of it is just China. So when people say, hey, look, capitalism works, we're in a capitalist world and people are out of poverty or extreme poverty, most of that was actually China. So, yeah, these are things that the US capitalists don't really want to talk about, but that is a crazy achievement, that is more than double the population of the United States being taken out of extreme poverty. It's really unbelievable. And that's again, due to long-term planning and due to planning that is not just about money over people, the US essentially plans everything on money over people because we live in an inverted totalitarian system ruled by the anonymous corporate state as that concept was originated with political philosopher Sheldon Wollan. And that's what we live in. So at the end of the day, it is these anonymous corporate state entities that make the decisions for the United States. It's not the two clowns, the two ass clowns, if you want technical terminology, that actually are running for president right now. It is instead these massive entities that are far more wealthy and powerful than the ass clown. - As George Galloway calls them, two cheeks of the same behind, I believe, and I think you recently spoke with them. So, one quick comment on the current economic war that it looks like we're waging or attempting to wage on China. I always found it ironic that we spent years moving all of our manufacturing over to them, giving them the ability to overtake us, only now to be concerned, possibly, that they're overtaking us. Feel free to comment on that or not. But back to the last topic quick. You mentioned propaganda and how successful it is. And there's probably whole Noam Chomsky manufacturing, consent, et cetera. But was FDR, would he be considered left in your interview? Would he be considered extreme left? Or neither? Would he just be centrist? And was the Red Scare what really set the dominoes in order to get us to where we are today? - Okay, let me, let's see, tackle those by order. So, yeah, the China manufacturing, I'll just say real quick 'cause there's more to talk about. But yeah, that's actually a good example of the US corporations doing exactly whatever made them the most money. For a time making them the most money was to get rid of all American workers that they could, send all of the manufacturing over to China where people were working for the equivalent to see pennies for the dollar. And that's gotten a lot better. Most Chinese do not work for that small amount now. But we send all the manufacturing, these US corporations, while they're doing that, do not care. They may have said they did here and there, but do not care at all about the millions of jobs, US jobs that they were eliminating as they do that, because at the end of the day, and at the end of the day, there is no concern for the worker in capitalism. There is zero. There is nothing in the equation, in the equation for GDP, in the equation for how a capitalist system works. There is nothing in the equation that says, are your workers happy? Do they feel good? Do they think you're treating them right instead? And they may give some little talking points to that, throw out a little lip service to that here and there. But if you actually look over a scale of five to 10 years, they're going to eliminate whatever jobs they can. They're going to get the workers to work for as little as they can. That is always the case. And that was the case with sending so many jobs to China. Now, once China became a more powerful country economically, the US corporate state has gotten a little worried that the US empires in decline, Chinese are in the ascent. And so now there's a bunch of, you know, hollering about, you know, let's stop shipping all our jobs over there. But then the US capitalist system won't bring them back to American workers. Instead they'll move those, instead they'll move that labor source to Vietnam or to some other country that is Bangladesh that will work for pennies on the dollar. And just to remind everyone how egregious this garbage is, the average, you know, I haven't looked this up for five years, so maybe it's changed slightly. But the average Bangladeshi sweatshop worker that makes a shirt that you buy on Amazon makes in a year what Jeff Bezos makes in about a minute. It is utterly insane. But anyway, the point is, corporate America is not gonna bring those jobs home. Instead they'll shift them to another country where people can work for pennies. Okay, so FDR was FDR left. I'd say that some of the things he did were left-wing and, you know, mainly people point to the new deal. But I think people need to remember that FDR, yes, he wanted the new deal, but he was able to achieve much of the new deal because of the power of the unions, the power of the workers, and the power of some sort of left-wing in America that actually did have sway back then, and was actually able to force FDR, in order, force FDR to pass those things, slight protections for workers, social security, you know, Medicare, Medicaid, and things like that, but that was done. I would not call him far left because that was done to save capitalism. It was done to save the capitalist structure, which it largely did. It allowed it to continue pretty successfully for many decades by giving workers these slight things. And I call them slight because you're still, you know, giving away your labor and your life force for often 50 years or the prime of your life to a corporate power that enriches themselves to some egregious level, with we now have a thousand billionaires or whatever it is in this country. So I wouldn't call them far left at all. I'd call him some of his policies left-wing. There were also amazing people behind him who pushed those policies into play. But now we see the gravity of capitalism eroding that new deal at every level, even to now having the discussion about how some people want to get rid of social security. They've eroded workers' rights. They're eroding child labor laws, which we now see multiple states are allowing children to get back into the workforce. All of those protections are being gutted. So that's funny. If this government and this nation is run by the radical left, why are all those things getting gutted? Huh, interesting that. If it's run by the radical left, why can't anyone get a $15 federal minimum wage in this country, which is such a, you know, basic level of dignity for workers? And then you add some, oh, the Red Scare. So yeah, I don't know whether the Red Scare is responsible for, fully for where we are now, but the Red Scare was part of the large-scale war between the capitalist states and the communist states. And so they therefore, because communism, I mean, communism is worker-based, but if you look at most of the communist structures, you know, with Stalin and everything, that is, if you have a authoritarian structure, that's not worker-based. That's, you know, they may claim to be for the workers, but it's an authoritarian structure. Anyway, that aside, the Red Scare was part of a larger war between capitalism and communism, which was why we went and utterly destroyed Vietnam, killing millions of people, was because they were becoming communist. It's the Korean War. It's actually largely why we dropped the atomic bombs, even though Japan was on the cusp of surrender, and actually had said they would surrender as long as we let them keep their emperor. And we dropped the atomic bombs, basically to show to the Soviet Union, despite them, quote, unquote, being our allies in World War II, to show the Soviet Union that we had the atomic bombs and that we're not afraid to use them. But anyway, so then that battle of the capitalist Titans versus the workers is also happening within the U.S. And it is used to go after anyone who dare to be a part of many of these worker groups or support them. And so, yeah, it's all part of the same battle, which has now led to, I think we're seeing the environmental destruction of the world and possibly no future for humanity, if it continues. I mean, it's not just climate crisis, it's we're cutting down all the trees, we're filling the oceans with plastic, we're destroying all the insects are disappearing. So if this is capitalism, then it's not, it's not long for this world nor are we. - Well, on that bright note, I think I threw, I don't know, 20, 50 strumming at you. I think they lie in ashes, anything else that you wanted to add as we ended here. - No, thank you for that. I wasn't expecting such a deep economics debate, but thank you for that. If people, I mean, maybe we're going to say this, if people want to follow my stuff and most of my stuff is fairly comedic, although most of this was not, but I do comedy and I also do a lot of political analysis and I live stream daily. My show is called Dangerous Ideas on YouTube and Rumble. And my name is Lee Camp and people can find my stuff at leecamp.com or on my link tree. I have podcasts, I have books, yeah. - All right, well, we'll definitely link to it in the show notes. Thanks again for joining the show. - Yeah, thanks a lot. - Well, those chimes are coming and it was great sitting down with Lee talking with the left, but what do you think? Do you think the radical left is taken over or we have no left? Remember to keep packing the bolts until next time. See ya. (upbeat music) - Real good. (screaming)
