So, I'm like, "Oh, no." So I call Trump, and I'm like, "Hey, sir, what's going on?" He's like, "J.D., you missed a very important phone call, and now I'm going to have to pick somebody else." And I, you know, I, like, tense up and almost have a heart attack. And the crazy thing about it is, my son, who's seven, is in the hotel room with me. And he's really into Pokemon cards right now. He's going through a Pokemon phase. Are you guys into Pokemon cards? - I am back in the day. - Yeah, yeah. - That's a big phase right now, I think, in general. - Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, he's really into it. So, he's trying to talk to me about Pikachu. And I'm on the phone with Donald Trump, and I'm like, "Son, shut the hell up for 30 seconds about Pikachu. This is the most important phone call in my life. Please, just let me take this phone call." As you might have guessed, because you had to start this episode of the "Muckering Podcast" with a moment of J.D. Vance. I'm Jared J. Sexton, and Nick Halsman is still out and about. We wish him all of the best, and he will be back on the Friday Weekender edition. I believe with a special guest. And I am about to take my exit for a few days. I am going to get out of dodge, so to speak, and I will be returning back to the world of politics and the muck rake and all that good stuff, somewhere around the 15th of August. I'm going to take my next 10 days or so, and recalibrate and get ready for what's coming. I don't know how else to put it. Yeah, so you will have your daily dose of Nick Halsman, and I will return. I hope that you miss me and send your well wishes. If you want to listen to that Weekender edition, and get reacquainted with Nick, and maybe he'll talk about Hawaii, and maybe he'll talk about the mustache that he had for maybe a couple of hours, I don't know. I don't know what my man's been up to. He's been resting. All you need to do is go over to patreon.com/monkrickpodcast, become a patron to the show. Hopefully you enjoyed last week for the Weekender. I left you with two separate interviews. If you haven't listened to them yet, I highly recommend them. One was with Jake Rockatansky from the QAA podcast, formerly the QAnon Anonymous podcast. The conversation with Jake was fantastic. I loved it. I've been waiting to have that conversation for a very long time. We talked about conspiracy theories, where they come from, what they do for people. His own personal experience. Almost going down the rabbit hole, if not just QAnon, but a whole host of other conspiracy theories. He was really smart and also really vulnerable. And we always want to applaud that and reward that. The second was with Sarah Kinzier. And as always, I love talking with Sarah, one of my favorite people in the world. We talked about the current state of politics, the contrast between the hope that a lot of people are feeling and the threats of continued rising authoritarianism. If you didn't have a chance to listen to that on Patreon, I did release that this morning over at my sub-stack dispatches from a collapsing state. I felt it was an important interview, and I just wanted to make sure that everybody heard it. But yeah, if you haven't had a chance, go back, check those things out. So today, it's just me. I don't have a guest. I wanted to-- I don't know. I guess I kind of wanted to discuss the current state of play before I took my leave and was gone for 10 days. There's no shortage of things to talk about. Before we get to the main thrust, one of the things that I'm keeping track of and, quite frankly, was expecting for a while now was a disruption in the capitalist markets. We're watching a huge sell-off and a lot of tension over there with the markets, which is to be expected. It is always turbulent, especially when you have unchecked capitalism. You don't have the mechanisms in place that we have learned are necessary. Should you avoid booms and bust? I don't know exactly what this is going to amount to, but one of the things that I talk about always when Nick and I are discussing the economy, this idea that the economy is good, heavy, heavy quotations around the word good. When you talk about that, what you're actually obscuring is that the markets are simply measuring how effectively the wealthy are able to accumulate capital and to exploit. And as that happens, this foundational situation is always deteriorating, especially in a time of unchecked capitalism, because the whole thing is rigged. And as you see historic inequalities, such as what we have now, grow and grow and grow, that instability is always around the corner. It doesn't hurt, of course, that there are a whole range of factors out there that are always affecting the economy. We sort of think of the economy as this isolated thing, like it's a phenomenon, all of its own, as opposed to one of the drivers of world events and a reactor to world events. And that is most certainly what it is. And right now, there is so much uncertainty. We have a system that has been driven to the point of exhaustion and collapse. And that's bad enough. But you also have another situation. And it's one of the things that I like to cover on the show, because I think it is both under-covered and one of the most important stories, which is that we are living in a time that because of rising authoritarianism and also in conjunction with that rising authoritarianism. What we're seeing is a moment of great uncertainty. We don't like-- we right now, as individual citizens, we don't know what's going to happen in November. And that's one uncertainty. But we also don't know what's going to happen in the world. And right now, there are so many aspects that are up in the air. One of the things that we're going to talk about today is if we're going to talk about rising tensions between Israel and Iran and, of course, America's role in that. And when we get to that part of the show, I want you to remember the economic instability that we are currently looking at, because they're all intertwined, because these factors are always playing into one another. So even as I'm recording this, and I have a whole host of topics that I need to get into here, even as I'm talking about this, they're moving and fluctuating and pulsing. And we are living in an accelerated moment. And in part, that's because, of course, our media covers everything. And social media has sort of flattened the world and has also sped up events. But it's also because all of these events are connected. You cannot look at them isolated from one another. You can't look at them in a vacuum. And the only reason that you would ever be encouraged to do that is because you're not supposed to understand the relationship between all of these different factors. And deep, deep down, when you actually deal with actual, deep politics, what you're often talking about are the results of material conditions and economic conditions. They drive so much of this. So I'm watching it, even as I am talking about current events, even as I am giving you my analysis of current events. What's also happening in the background is it's almost like you're having a conversation with somebody, but you also have access to a blood pressure monitor. It's not just you're hearing what they're saying. You're not just looking at their facial expressions. You're not just acting upon the shared knowledge and history that you have together. But you also have insight, which is, what is their hurt doing? What's underneath the surface? What is invisible to the naked eye? And what we are watching right now, it could very well become something larger, particularly if conditions around the world continue to deteriorate or lead to uncertainty. If there is an escalation in the Middle East, you better believe that there's going to be market fluctuations that reflect that. So that's the first thing that I'm keeping an eye on. And I'm just sort of putting that out there, because in this show, one of the things that I try and do-- and it's not, again, and I always feel like it has to be expressed this way, because you have so many charlatans out there. I mean, Alex Jones talks every single day about how his presentation and his show is driven by revelatory knowledge delivered to him by God on high. That's not what this is. What this is is an actual reasoned analysis that seems unreal or extreme, because what you have been given your entire life, what you have been force fed is shallow, shallow analysis. That doesn't want to take all these different things into consideration. And occasionally, when they boil over, somebody will say something about it, right? 2008 Financial Crisis happens, and all of a sudden, we need to talk about subprime mortgages. But it is something to keep an eye on. The first story, this will be released on Tuesday, August 6. It is conventional wisdom at this point that Kamala Harris will name her vice presidential running mate tomorrow, or the day that you're listening to this podcast. It might happen now. It might even be leaking as I'm recording this. Again, events are speeding up so quickly. And the way that it often works is that the conventional wisdom, and there is conventional wisdom right now around who will be that vice presidential pick, that you'll start to see a lot of the media outlets tripping over each other in order to announce those picks. My guess is that there are meetings on the books right now where Kamala Harris will be meeting with potential nominees, potential running mates. The way that these meetings usually occur is you're getting face time with the presumptive nominee. You're seeing how things feel. Chances are that she or her staff or the entire apparatus has already made up their mind. They're making a final meeting in order to make sure that they feel that way, that maybe something else doesn't change the opinion or the decision. The frontrunners, at the moment, Mark Kelly has fallen behind. You'll notice that discourse barely touches on Mark Kelly right now. And that is because his potential candidacy has sort of been moved away. There are a variety of different reasons for this. The conversations that I have had have revolved around a sense that Arizona might be unreachable at this point. And as a result, what does he do outside of potentially give you some votes in Arizona and maybe part of the West? There is a growing sense within the Democratic Party that Harris's path to 270 electoral votes might also involve a new map. A lot of the people I've talked to are still convinced that this is going to be what you would call a squeaker of an election. But there are some, as of this moment, who feel like it might actually be a more comfortable type of scenario for Harris than I think a lot of us are even comfortable talking about. That would involve Arizona. But the polls that I have seen, the internal polls from the Democratic Party, do not reflect that Arizona is in play. That has left the two frontrunners as Tim Walz of Minnesota and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania. And I'll get to Shapiro in just a second. But Tim Walz has, I think, shown over the past couple of weeks a pretty remarkable talent. And I don't know that we would be having these meetings or that Harris would be having these meetings unless she wanted to get more of a sense of Walz. He has shown himself to be a pugnacious attack dog and critic of Donald Trump, JD Vance, and the Republican Party. He has shown himself to be a really good surrogate for Harris and the Democratic Party. Of Walz and Shapiro, I prefer Walz. I made it clear earlier on that my top two preferences would either be Andy Beshear of Kentucky or Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. There are a variety of reasons why that didn't culminate in a serious push for either one. But as this has shaken out, I have been impressed with Walz. I think that his bona fides are airtight. I think you would make an incredible running mate for Kamala Harris. Electorally, it's a little bit, it's a little bit passé and it's a little bit old fashioned to believe that a candidate will deliver a state to you. He would help in Minnesota, obviously. I think he would help in Michigan. I think he would help in Wisconsin. I think you would see a general movement within the upper Midwest with Walz included on the ticket. Shapiro has emerged as the front runner. And if I had to put money down on someone being named right now, it'd be Josh Shapiro. I think that he is the odds on favorite to be the vice presidential pick of Kamala Harris. I don't know that he can deliver Pennsylvania solely. I understand that there's an argument. I've been in meetings where that argument has been articulated over and over and over again. There's also some hesitance around picking Shapiro. And I think by simply saying, well, I don't know if America's ready for a Jewish vice president. I think that's overblown. I don't think that that is the issue here. My concern is that we have been writing a wave of enthusiasm and hope within the Democratic Party. And the magic of that was not just predicated on relief that Joe Biden had stepped aside. It's also been, as I talked to Sarah Kinzier about, it's also been grounded in the idea that perhaps the Democratic Party could change, that maybe now that we were moving beyond Joe Biden and possibly even Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and the other mainstays of the power base of the party, that we could see them moving towards progressivism and possibly even starting to acknowledge what the left has been telling them for a while. Shapiro is a more conservative liberal or progressive, however you want to call it. He has a lot of abilities. And I want to go ahead and name them. This is one of the reasons why I've been advocating and saying in these meetings that I thought Joe Shapiro would make a really, really effective head of the DNC. He is an incredibly talented technocrat. He has built a political machine in Pennsylvania that is second to none. And when we talk about machines, you need to understand, it's not just about fundraising, which is what we have been beaten with. This idea that the only thing that matters is how people are able to raise money for themselves or the party. And he does raise money. But he's been an effective builder of machines. Top to bottom in Pennsylvania, what Shapiro has brought is a new technocratic system with new ideas. I've had several meetings with several people within Pennsylvania. I don't want to give away any names. I don't want to talk about any of the projects. I've been working on or have worked on. But almost to a person, what the people associated with Shapiro have told me is that it is what used to be referred to as enlightened administration, which is a technique in which you're thinking about different things. You're taking in new information. You're taking new angles at old problems. The meetings that I have had and the projects I have worked on and the conversations that I have had with people around Josh Shapiro have been refreshing. Almost every one of the intractable problems facing the country, I have talked to people in Shapiro's orbit and within Shapiro's machine, in which they are taking new angles on old problems and coming up with new solutions. And they have been incredibly effective in being able to communicate that, to carry it out and to also make it palatable to Republicans. That's not an easy thing. It's actually a very, very praiseable thing. And I personally believe that in order to move forward, you have to exercise or lop off the diseased limb of the Republican party that is authoritarian and anti-democratic, while also bringing back the more moderate Republicans who have been sort of orphaned by this thing, but also making it clear that those old tactics that gave way to Trump and MAGA and the far right and authoritarianism have to be politically and culturally exercised. All of that is to say, that Shapiro is effective. Shapiro is capable. These are things that we should want from a politician. Again, this show, "The Muckrake" is based on being objective. It's not based on a cult of personality. I do not want to carry water for the Democratic party. I think that's counterproductive. So here are the list of reasons why a Josh Shapiro, as VP under Kamala Harris, would be kind of problematic in a few ways. I'll start with the larger one, or rather the more pressing one, which is that this feeling of hope and optimism that has come up since Joe Biden has stepped aside, it's steeped in the idea that we can get beyond things like Gaza, and not only is Gaza an unethical blight on the United States of America, this genocide, this ethnic cleansing, these brutalities, that made people like me talk about voting for Joe Biden as if I would need a shower afterwards. This was an opportunity to break from that and also begin to rebuild the coalitions. You don't have to be extremely online or on social media to know that Gaza created an incredible schism within the Democratic base. It laid bare the differences between liberals, centrist, progressives, and leftist. And there was an all-out war over it, which is one of the reasons why Joe Biden's electoral chances diminished quickly. It wasn't just the age. It wasn't that he didn't seem to be able to do another term. It's also the cumulative effect of all of these things, including Gaza. The perception that Shapiro would cause a problem in that regard is real. I do think that if he has chosen this week as Harris' running mate, that you're going to see some cultural and political battles that either reflect what it was like at the beginning of the protest movement against Gaza or even grow them. I think you would lose some voters with Shapiro for that very reason. Along with that, Shapiro as governor of Pennsylvania has at times shown a desire to be more centrist. Inacting or attempting to enact conservative or right-wing ideas. First and foremost, as the idea of school vouchers, and I know a lot of Pennsylvanians, keystoneers who have felt betrayed in that regard with a push towards school vouchers. Now, of course, in politics, particularly in a state like Pennsylvania, a so-called purple state, one of the things that you're trying to do for some problems, including the problem of education, which was created by right-wing billionaires who destroyed it, is that you are attempting to give solutions that can be seen as centrist or bipartisan. Shapiro pushed pretty hard for vouchers. And that made a lot of people feel like they didn't necessarily know who he was or where his principles were. You could just say, oh, he was just trying to make nice with Republicans or to be more of a centrist, but there's another problem with all of this, which is he's consistently pushed for massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. So the question we have to ask now, and this is the important one. Have we seen a glimpse of who Josh Shapiro is as a politician or have we seen a glimpse of who Josh Shapiro is as a person? And we don't know that. And I hope to hell that if he is selected as the VP, it's happening because we have seen in these meetings that there is a part to him that while being an effective communicator, while being an attractive politician, that what he actually wants is to change the party and move towards whatever agenda it is that Kamala Harris and the new Democrats are interested in moving in. And I personally hope that that reflects a desire to change and to start addressing the obvious problems of the neoliberal consensus. I hope that that's true. The concern I have is that with Harris ending up in this position and with the sense that the Democratic Party is going through a generational shift, the concern I have is that the old guard, the neoliberal consensus who helped deliver us into our current present and crisis, my concern is that they are attempting to control the party beyond them, which is both a rational and irrational desire. It's one of the reasons why people are so weird with their kids. They have a desire to affect the world even beyond their own mortality. I worry about that. And I don't have the answers for you right now. If I did, I would be forthcoming about them, but I hear so many contradictory explanations and communications about this. And I think what that communicates is that there is a fundamental uncertainty within the Democratic Party. They don't know who they are. They don't know what they're becoming. It takes a while to figure out who you are beyond your parents going back to that metaphor. Who are the Democrats when Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi aren't in charge? Who are the Democrats when Joe Biden is president? I don't think they know yet. And I think there are a bunch of different parts of the party that are battling and shocking to figure that out. The easiest route in the Democratic Party is to continue business as usual. That's how you get the money. That's how you get the institutional support. That's why parties and entrenched institutions breed complacency. They are, they are greasing the wheels for what they have done to continue. The easiest thing in the world is to say, "Yeah, I'll do that. That's fine. Give me the lanyard. Give me the promotion. Put me in power. I'll do what you want me to do and we'll continue going down your path." But there are those within the party who are tired of this, who want something different and who want to work for something different. The question now is will they prevail? And I don't know. As long as we're talking about uncertainty, while we're uncertain about who the nominee will be, while we're uncertain what the nominee will represent, we need to understand that uncertainty, reflect on it and be curious about it. Okay. And she was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn't know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black and now she wants to be known as black. So I don't know. Is she Indian or is she black? She is always identified as a black. I respect either one. I respect either one, but she obviously doesn't. Because she was Indian all the way and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she went, she became a black person. Just to be clear, sir, do you believe that she? I think somebody should look into that too. Man, that was about as gross as it gets. That was Donald Trump talking to a convention of black journalists. Shouldn't have been there in the first place, but it's pretty clear why he was. I've sat with this for the past few days. The initial shock factor of it, of course, was overwhelming, but I thought it was important to discuss very, very briefly what happened here and why it happened. Trump and the Republicans have seen over the past few years, in 2020 and in some of the midterms, they have seen some gains made within communities such as the black community, the Hispanic community. And what is happening here is that Trump is recognizing or thinking that he recognizes an ability to capitalize off of a biracial opponent, which is as gross as it gets, truly, truly as gross as it gets. And what I wanted to discuss was a reiteration of something that has been a part of our conversation over the years. God knows that there has been no shortage of places to get into this, but I wanna talk about white supremacy and the malleability of whiteness. The basis of white supremacy, and I wrote an article that touched on this a little bit in Splinter if you have an ad chance to read it and you're looking for something to read. The entire idea is to create an non-impirical, again, revelatory idea that white people are more deserving than people of color. There's some science to back this up, there's no empirical evidence to back this up. It's simply an ideology that allows certain people, white people, or more particularly white wealthy men, to have more power than everybody else. And capitalism has used this as one of its main foundations. It includes white supremacy, patriarchy. It includes xenophobia, gay and transphobia, you name it. Whatever it is that you can take another group of people and you can start to cut them off from one another to keep them from forming a coalition against white people that you must take that opportunity in order to solidify your own status and wealth and privilege and protect your wealth and status and privilege. The problem, I mean besides everything, but the operational problem is that white supremacy is both destructive and limited. Because what you're essentially doing is you are attempting to destroy other coalitions so that your coalition can continue to have power. In this case, Donald Trump understands that he didn't really have the votes to become president. Doesn't care about it all that much 'cause they hate democracy anyway and they are absolutely going to try and steal this election the way they stole the 2020 election. But the Republicans, as they have dove head first and submerged themselves in white patriarchal supremacy, it tends to alienate people and it tends to turn people off and it tends to keep people from wanting to vote for you and give you power. When that happens, there's a secret mechanism that takes place. And that secret mechanism is the malleability of whiteness. So when I say that you have to maintain these different coalitions while destroying other ones, white supremacy has discovered an incredible ability to invite selected groups into whiteness. It's always changing the notions of what it is. And if you've ever had an argument with someone who is toxic or abusive, sometimes you might feel like you're going crazy because the terms and the ideas are always changing. The target is always moving and it would drive you insane to try and hit all of the different targets that are in flux. White supremacy and whiteness have an incredible ability to do this. In the 20th century, there was a crisis in white supremacy. Eventually, this would lead to, I don't know, fascism and Nazism, which were helped to be birthed. I guess they were ushered into the world in large part because of what happened with the crisis of white supremacy in the United States of America in the early 20th century. As there started to be more immigration to America, there was a fear, and tell me if this sounds familiar, that immigrants were gonna poison the blood, they were gonna commit crimes, they were gonna change things, they were going to infect people with their wild ideas, including socialism, communism and arkism, you name it. And there was a war on those immigrants and on those new people. There were tons of books that came out, the right-wing reactionary culture and parts of the centrist part of America also were won over by these ideas that unless white people did something, you ready for this? They were gonna be replaced. I know that sounds familiar. So they needed to restrict immigration, they needed to deport immigrants, and because their ideas were infecting all kinds of people and getting people interested in things like labor unions, they were going to have to wage actual war against those things. And that doesn't mean just surveillance, which it was. It doesn't mean sabotage, although it was. It also meant literal blood in the streets war, including battles between labor unions, federal troops, the National Guard, corporate private police. Over time, it became obvious that these factors were not going to destroy these new coalitions. Why? Because you can't kill an idea. So what'd they do? They adapted. All of a sudden, the idea of the white race, which is a figment of the imagination, it's not even real. All these things are made up and malleable for a reason. All of a sudden, it expanded. It opened its doors. It started to invite in some of those immigrants. It wasn't just Anglo-Americans or people of descent from England anymore. All of a sudden, you started welcoming in Italians. All of a sudden, you started welcoming in Irish people. All of a sudden, you welcomed in Germans, Jewish people. You started to expand this imaginary notion of whiteness in order to replenish the coalition that was rapidly diminishing and was rapidly being overpowered because it needed to be overpowered. This attack on Kamala Harris is as old as America itself. The founding of America was based on the idea that white, wealthy men were the lone inheritors to be trusted with power. They were the best. Despite being told, we were all created equal. No, we weren't. Like only some people were allowed to vote, hold office and own property. Women were dangerous. They were so emotional, as our founders would tell us. They could not be trusted. And so they didn't need a vote. Black people, I mean, they weren't even people. They were property. They were cornerstones of the capitalistic system, not just existing, but growing, which is one of the reasons why America got its economic start in the first places because we chose to enslave human beings and pretend like they were property. As a result, can you even imagine what that mindset or ideology would have to say about a black woman running for president or a biracial woman running for president? It is a fundamental argument that is repellent to our ears and disgusting to our soul, but it's with a purpose. It's meant to try and divide the coalition that would vote for Kamala Harris or support her candidacy or policies. That's simply what it is. And watching our media fail to understand this is as frustrating as anything. I'm so tired of lazy analysis. I'm so tired of lazy discourse. It sucks and it's such a terrible, terrible time for that. And I kept hoping that they would learn, but they're toadies of a capitalist system. And so as a result, they're not going to investigate it. But what Donald Trump is attempting to do, and I think he knows it instinctually. Like, I think instinctually he is obviously a white supremacist asshole and a misogynist. And that's why he's disrespecting her. But those ideas have always been useful to the wealth class that uses him as a puppet. It's strategic. We're gonna hear a lot of this over the next few months. And truly unfortunate and truly awful. And it's really evil, quite frankly. But it's not just being a racist in front of a panel. There's a reason why the racism is happening. It's a lack of respect. It's not affording dignity, but it's also protecting a seat at the table. These are the deeper material conditions that are taking place that nobody's talking about it. I'm so tired of them not talking about it. So we gotta talk about it. And we have to start addressing what whiteness and white supremacy and patriarchal supremacy really are. And I wanna dedicate for the rest of this election that we are going to keep an eye on this. We're gonna talk about it. We're going to speak loudly about it, and we're going to call it what it is, which is poisonous, destructive bullshit. Finally today, I wanna speak for a couple of minutes about what's going on in the Middle East. In the midst of a presidential election, we get caught up talking about things like Trump's disgusting rhetoric or the selection of a VP and what often gets lost in the shuffle are some of the more pressing issues. I haven't heard yet an articulation of what anybody's planning on doing about rising tensions based on the fundamental opposition between coalitions that I was talking about earlier, the American hegemonic Western model and what has grown between China, Russia, Iran and others. I don't really talk about it all that much. It ends up in the middle of a debate where it's barely even being discussed. Even watching Biden at the NATO summit, there's not really ever a discussion about it because to say it out loud would sort of give the game up. And it would also frighten people and maybe even her political numbers if you were to actually discuss it. And for those who maybe aren't aware, what is currently bubbling up in the Middle East is after a series of assassinations carried out by the Israeli government, Iran is once again on the precipice of retaliating against Israel. I've discussed on this show multiple times that Benjamin Netanyahu and the group of far-right extremists in Israel that he represents, that they have been looking for an escalation of this war to continue dragging in belligerence in order to solidify both support within the United States and also to improve their position within the struggle. We are looking at a potential situation where Iran might retaliate against Israel. This time not telegraphing what they did. The last time that they attacked Israel with rockets and drones, it was done in such a way where it was more or less an understood stand-down. Where you understand that we have to retaliate for what has happened, here is this, now we're done. And by the way, Joe Biden deserves a lot of credit through probably back channels in his State Department of saying, this is where it ends. I know you have to do this, then we're done. That's it, and we're moving on. Israel has continued to carry out these provocations, and once more, we are on the precipice of something really bad. I have a hard time imagining that Iran is going to telegraph it again. If they do retaliate against Israel, and all signals are that they will, it will likely be a real attack. Right now, the U.S. is sending generals to the area in order to prepare for what could possibly happen. We have a lot of our weaponry and apparatus going over there as well. There is a feeling, growing, that this thing might get more hot. Now, there's the obvious political implications, which are if there is a developing war in the Middle East, what will that say about our election? And that's a fair question, but it also goes ahead and sort of obscures what's really happening, which is a much, much larger situation. I'm worried about this, and I think our markets are too. A reminder that the axis of resistance as we've called it, which is a pretty incredible rhetorical choice, China, Russia, Iran, and other nations, that their opposition to the American hegemonic empire is almost destined to go to war at some point. I do not believe it has to happen. I believe we can avoid that. I think we can make changes and we can address the material conditions that have led to this in the first place, and we can avoid a catastrophic war with weaponry, the likes of which it almost boggles the mind. But it is there. That possibility is there, and I would be lying if I said that going away for the next 10 days, I'm worried that this thing will boil over because it very well could, and it would make sense if it did. I mean, it tracks with the instability and unpredictability of the moment. I also think it's important to say within this context that I think one of the things that we're looking at right now, we're staring down the barrel of something, is something different from World War I or World War II. I think Syria, what's happened in Syria and what's happened in Gaza and around Gaza, has given us a little bit of a glimpse of what it could be, which is a malleable, almost inscrutable type of a conflict where one moment, two nation states or two groups are allied, and in another moment at the exact same time in another place, they're opposing each other. Part of the reason I believe this is because of the shifting capabilities of the ideological groundwork here. You have the Republican Party, which is in lockstep with Vladimir Putin, while also wanting to go to war with China. You have the Democratic Party, which also kind of wants to go war with China and is opposed to Russia. You have a place like Israel, that is a little bit all over the map. They rely on the United States for their weaponry and financing, and meanwhile, they're pretty chummy with Russia, and more than happy to use that relationship whenever they need it, or in order to cause a little bit of leverage over here. This is a fluid circumstance. We don't know how it's going to play out. We can be prepared for it. We can understand what has happened. We can understand the miseries and awfulness, and what that represents. But we also need to be prepared for something that's happening beyond us, something that isn't necessarily under our control. We need to be ready for a situation that doesn't divide us immediately, because we're looking deeper and we understand that this is nuanced and tangled and knotted and weird. And we're just not there yet. I think you are, as a listener of the Muckering Podcast, if you've stuck with us so far, I think that you are a person that looks for nuance and deeper explanations and understandings. I've always said it. It's a self-selecting group of people, and we appreciate you so much. But I do think that we need to start wrapping our heads around a future that doesn't look so much like the past. When we consider world conflicts a potential World War III, including maybe even the proxy battles that would represent some totality of a new war, we can't think about World War I or World War II, except for to learn relevant ideas from that. And one of the relevant ideas is that if we would have approached the conditions prior to World War I or World War II differently, before World War I, if we would have, I don't know, a shoeed empire and went towards better lives for all people and representation and democracy, we could have avoided that war the way the leftist before the war told us we could, and we should have. World War I, as I've said in my YouTube series for the Midnight Kingdom, it was a capitalistic apocalypse. It didn't need to happen. World War II was a result of the fluctuations of the market that allowed the right wing to come along and assert authoritarian power. It was a war of empire and resources, what white supremacy could and should do. We can learn from those things without expecting the same things to happen, we can change that and we must. We absolutely must. All right everybody, that's gonna do it for me. I'm gonna sign off of here and I'm gonna go take a few days off, get some things in order, get ready to come back and fight and make a better world. I appreciate you so much, your kindness, your support. It has meant so much to me and I'll be thinking about all of you while I'm gone. You'll be in the capable hands of Nick houseman and possibly some surprise guest host. I can't wait to come back and do the thing again. All right everybody, if you need us before then you can find Nick, you can hear me S-Mage, you can find me at JY Saxton. Whatever you're doing, wherever you are, stay safe out there.
