Beyond the Vapor with Robert Stark
Robert Stark talks to Keith Preston about The 2024 Election
This is The Stark Truth, hosted by Robert Stark. Brought to you by StarkTruthRadio.com. Robert Stark is an American journalist and political commentator. You can listen to his podcasts at www.starktruthradio.com. This is Robert Stark, I'm joined here with Keith Preston and we're going to be discussing the 2024 election. Keith, great having you back on. Good to be back, it's been a while. I think before we get to the election, I want to go over who the power elites are. People throughout these buzzwords like conspiracy, theorists will say the Illuminati, conservatives will say the cultural Marxist and the Marxist, the progressives will say it's a capitalist, the woke people will say it's the white supremacy or white patriarchy, every group, political group, kind of has their buzzword of who runs things. But before we get to the election, if you want to give an introduction, who are the core groups of the power elite that are impacting political decisions? Well I think the best way to look at that is to recognize that there are two major factions to the American ruling class that were identified way back in the 1970s by a book called The Yankee Cowboy War. It was written by Carl Oglesby, he was a former defense department employee who later became a leader in the anti-vietnam war movement and he held a sort of a mixture of left and right ideas. But in 1975, Oglesby published a book called The Yankee Cowboy War that argued that since the end of World War II, the major division in American politics domestically had been between the traditional Northeastern establishment which involves those elite interests that are located in the Northeastern region of the United States, the New England and New York and places like that. Many of whom are elite families that go all the way back to the period of the Industrial Revolution like the Rockefeller's, some go even further than that, some of them go back to the colonial period. It's this traditional Northeastern establishment where the American ruling class has traditionally been located, that's the one faction and then the other is the Sun Belt. And this is the nascent capitalist class that emerged in the post-war period as the American military industrial complex began to grow and expand and as you started to see more and more heavy industry, armaments industries, energy companies, agribusiness and that kind of stuff developing in the west, the southwest, the west coast, those kinds of areas, that section of the ruling class really started to rise in the post-war period. Where does Silicon Valley and Wall Street fit into this? Like a lot of the coastal elite new money that emerged in the post-war period? Well that comes later, Silicon Valley comes with the digital revolution that began in the 80s and 90s. And what happened with the Silicon Valley, Ogil's book was written in 1975, so the thesis needs to be updated a bit to recognize various interests that have emerged since then. But Silicon Valley emerged in the 80s, 90s and in the 21st century has become a major power block. To a large degree, the Silicon Valley elites are aligned with the traditional Northeastern establishment. However, they're not really the same thing as the Northeastern establishment, they are more like an upper middle class. Like the Northeastern establishment, broadly defined, are, we can think of them as people who are so rich that their personal assets cannot be measured as their sum total of their wealth. I mean, these are people whose wealth extends way beyond personal assets. We're talking about, you know, the Rockefeller's are a good example, Morgan's, DuPont's, all of these elite interests. But you still think those old money families are significant or do you think there's been some decline in the American old money? Well, they're certainly still significant because they're also interlocking with the elites of Europe. They tend to be euro files. One reason why they're so gung ho, that faction of the ruling class is so gung ho on the war in Ukraine against Russia is because they see themselves as the American equivalent of European royalty. Yeah. One thing that is kind of ironic, like, so like the obviously the alt-right, which is totally marginal, is euro centric, but I do think mainstream conservatives are actually kind of europhobic and they're super pro-Israel, but they actually hit Ukraine, which I find kind of ironic. Well, the issue there is that the Sun Belt, which is the faction of the ruling class. Does that include the military industrial conflicts and big oil? Yeah. Right. Yeah. Well, when it comes to oil, the oil bankers are really at the top of the pyramid. The Sun Belt is more medium-level oil companies in comparison. But it is true that the military industrial complex is a big part of the Sun Belt, or at least the right wing of the military industrial complex. But the way the party alignments work today is that the northeastern establishment backs the Democrats and the Sun Belt backs the Republicans. And conservatives, as you're pointing out, are somewhat europhobic. They view the Europeans as liberal socialists, secular, gay-friendly, unreliable allies. They increasingly view the NATO countries as parasites. And even before that, though, the Sun Belt wing of the ruling class always had a very unilateralist orientation, they were very opposed to working through international institutions like the United Nations and that kind of stuff, whereas the northeastern establishment tend to be more multilateralist. They're big on cooperative partnerships with the elites and other nations, whether it's through the UN or whether it's through the Council on Foreign Relations and the trilateral commission and things like that. Those are all real organizations and real entities that are set up for this purpose. What do you think the conspiracy theorists get wrong? Well one thing they get wrong is they frequently assign everything to singular causes or singular groups. As you were saying at the beginning, you know, some of them think it's the Jews fall, some of them think it's the, some of them think it's the Catholic Church, some of them think it's the conspiracy for white male supremacy or, you know, there's a, there's a wide range of conspiracy theories. So it's more like it's not one singular group, it's coalition building. Right. Yeah, the, the ruling class both at the international level and domestically in the United States itself and in other countries is a collection of groups and individuals that often have conflicting interests. Now they may have common interests, you know, the common interest is keeping the peasants down so to speak or, and you see that in the United States. For example, when the, whenever something that the, where there's a consensus among elites is part of their own interests, they come together to defend their own interests. What is the ideology of America's ruling class? Well I'd say it comes down to three basic things, imperialism, capitalism and Zionism. Capitalism is simply about maintaining Atlanticists, North American, Western European domination over the rest of the world. That's all imperialism means on the, you know, the lowest common denominator level. Capitalism meaning the class interest at those at the top of the socio-economic pyramid in the West. And then Zionism in the sense of defense of Israel and there's a range of reasons that not, it's not that there's some arcade Jewish conspiracy. And simply the attachment that the United States has to Israel is rooted in a range of not only ethnic and religious and cultural and ideological interests, but also geopolitical and economic and military interests. For instance, the military industrial complex has Israel as a guaranteed export market for its products. I mean the way it works is that every year the United States gives Israel billions of dollars with the agreement being that Israel is going to use that money to buy weapons from Lockheed and Boeing and all of these kinds of weapons, right beyond these weapons manufacturing firms. So that's as much a part of the reason for the attachment between the United States and Israel as anything to do with organized Jewish interests, although that's a part of it too. As is Christian Zionism, you know, as is urophilia because a lot of these, a lot of the elites view Judaism as part of the wider, you know, European culture like the Catholic Church and Protestants and all of that. So it's a convergence of interest, that's why, but those three things I think really are the triumph of the ruling class is ideology, imperialism, capitalism, Zionism. You also talk about something called totalitarian humanism, where does that fit into that? Well, yeah, that's, all right, the, all of these other ideologies, whether it's liberalism, conservatism, evangelical Christianity, wokeism, libertarianism, feminism, environmentalism. Most of that stuff are represent conflicts within the middle class to upper, upper middle class. That is the, the people who are not part of the ruling class, but are still affluent. All right, that's where a lot of that conflict originates. Do you feel like the culture war stuff is more, a more middle class issue? Right, the left and right wings of the culture war, the middle class, or the middle class. So tell it, but what will happen is that the different ruling class factions will attempt to cultivate constituencies for themselves through pandering or trying to appeal to different social groups. The sunbelt wing of the capitalist class uses the American exceptionalism paradigm. They try to appeal to traditional American patriotism, certain types of Christianity, low churchy, evangelicalism, to the lesser degree, conservative Catholicism. Also populism on some levels, nativism, and then the gun culture, you know, we, we, we know who the whole anti CRT issue, where it's sort of become like you obviously don't like local CRT, but it's become sort of another GOP wedge issue. Right, exactly. And then, and then the, the Northeastern establishment has always been one of the more liberal wings of the ruling class, or at least they have for a long, long time, going back to the 19th century, late 19th century, basically, they tend to try to appeal more to more liberal social groups. You know, they tend to appeal to educated, upper middle class, professional people who are fairly liberal in their, in their viewpoint about many things, environmentalism, minority groups, or at least the more upwardly local sectors of, of minority groups. The Northeastern establishment tends to look at it like it's okay to make concessions to labor unions and to have a social safety net and things like that, you know, not because they want to be nice to the prominent people, because they think it generates stability. They're concerned about, you know, general strikes and, you know, worker insurrections and social rebellion and that kind of thing. They think that you need those kinds of things to pacify the, the people. So, and, and totalitarian humanism. Did you say in some ways, do you think the, the like old school elites are more, in some ways more sane than this new emerging like Silicon Valley technocracy? Well Silicon Valley is, is outside of both of these traditional ruling class factions. They tend to align themselves with the Northeastern establishment to a large. But they're more, would you say they're more, much more technocratic? Yeah, they're, they're more technocratic and they are, in some ways they're somewhat more bizarre in a lot of their thinking. I mean, they are, a lot, a lot of them are, are really into things like transhumanism and, you know, cryonics and cryogenics and all that kind of stuff. You get this like from populist conservatives, do they want some like Chinese style social credit system or do you think that's like conservative conspiracy theorists nonsense or partially true? Well, some individuals may, but I, I tend to think that the Silicon Valley elites are more in line with what David Brooks called the bourgeois of opinions. And these are people who are basically part of the, not the ruling class proper, but sort of the new capital, new money, newly rich. Yeah, and then there's also a bit about the libertarian, right libertarian side of that where you have like Peter Thiel or even Elon Musk where it's more libertarian. Yeah, you have more libertarian leaning Silicon Valley types as well. Some of them leave Republican, the, and then you, as far as Wall Street, Wall Street is the same way. You know, you have different levels of Wall Street, Wall Street is at monolithic, you know, I guess you could say upper Wall Street. A lot of that is part of the traditional Northeastern establishment, but then there, you've also got this class of newly rich like these hedge fund managers and people like that. And a lot of those are also bourgeois opinions. I mean, they're very urbane, cosmopolitan people in terms of lifestyle. You know, they're not traditional, you know, certainly not socially conservative people or whatever. But at the same time, they're very wealthy and affluent and so they, from the point of view of class interest, they tend to identify with the elite in that sense. And they, that's another ruling class faction that tends to be aligned with the Northeastern establishment, but also has some conflicts as well. So on the election, do you think that the ruling classes divided and including the democratic establishment on whether Biden should drop out? Because so far, it looks like, most likely it will be Trump versus Biden, but there are, I think a lot of the establishment, they probably would ideally want to replace him, but most likely it will be Trump versus Biden. Yeah, I think the ruling class is certainly divided there. The bulk of the ruling class favors the Democratic Party at this point, and the reason why is that they think that the Republicans under Trump have become a destabilizing force. The main thing that the super elite want is they tend, they want stability. They don't want unpredictability and things like that. So that's another thing. I think conspiracy theorists tend to think the elites are accelerationists who want chaos. Do you think that's another thing they get wrong? Well the bulk of economic elites, that is the fortune 500 corporations and the billionaires and plutocrats and all of that, most of those people want stability. They're very conservative in that sense, they don't like upheaval. Now, it's also true that within other sectors of the state, like in the deep state, you have people that will go out and try to light a fire for the purpose of trying to create a moral panic, and then they have to put it out. I mean, that's something that's been going on for quite some time. That is the deep state elements will, if they see something going on that is a threat to their own perceived interests, they'll try to create a counter current to that, and sometimes they'll try to agitate conflict. For example, I can't prove this, so I don't know for sure that this is happening. At some of the unrest that has happened in more recent times pertaining to the situation in Palestine, I've ventured against that there are elements in the deep state that are trying to encourage some of the more aggressive protests, possibly for the purpose of generating a crackdown in response, and then repressing free speech and things like that with more restrictions on protest as well as this anti-Semitism bill that came up recently. That's more of the kind of shenanigans that the CIA and institutions like that engage in, through the protests that want stability, that's their main thing. What is the significance of the criminal conviction against Trump politically? Well, in some ways, I don't know that it's actually hurting him electorally. In fact, among some demographics, it seems to be helping him. That's what it's meaning is, I do think that it gives the wider ruling class greater leverage over Trump. The main objection that the general ruling class has to Trump is not so much about policy. Trump governed like a norming Republican 90 plus percent of the time. What they don't like about Trump is primarily stylistic and aesthetic. Imagine, for example, in a corporation, if you had a CEO that shows up a shareholder meetings and born of directors meetings, and he's drunk, and he picks his nose and dress up. Even though even though like 90 percent of the time he was a conservative, he was sort of a shock to the system, the idea that just the idea that someone who was not selected could get elected was a shock to the system, even though it didn't really challenge power significantly on policy. While he's not viewed as a team player, he's viewed as a maverick within his own class, that's part of it, the super elite view him as something of an upstart. Remember that Trump is the grandson of German immigrants, so to the traditional elite, that's new money, to the traditional able sex and elite, that's new money, and they view him as something of an upstart as well as a maverick, who's not a team player. Also they don't like his rabble rising, they don't like his populism, elites do not like populism, they don't like political candidates that are out there rousing the rabble, and that's because they do that as a threat to their own interest in possibly leading to revolts and revolutions and that kind of thing. So even though he's enacting pretty standard conservative policies, just that he has this massive base that are loyal to him, that's enough to be seen as a threat. Yeah, and of course, that was obviously intensified after January 6. I mean, if you listen to mainstream media coverage of January 6 on most of the networks, maybe not the Republican-leaning ones, but the majority of the television networks, certainly within the Democratic Party, you would think Jay 6 was the worst day in history, you know, it's like Pearl Harbor and 9/11 and the JFK assassination all rolled into one. Now obviously, normal everyday Americans don't feel that way about it. If you ask a normal person off the street about Jay 6, they're like, "Oh, yeah, that's that thing a few years ago, right, that guy with the antlers at the Capitol and all that." You know, it's not significant to normies, to ordinary people, but to elites, that was a frightening moment, you know, for, you know, it was like a peasant revolt, you know, where the actual seat of government was attacked and things like that, you know, even though it was really just a minor riot by, you know, by world historical standards. But that's the objection they have to Trump, is his perceived rabble rising. They have the same feeling about Bernie Sanders. The elites are generally more opposed to Bernie Sanders than they are to Trump because Trump is at least an economic conservative. They don't like his populism and rabble rousing, they don't like him stylistically, they don't like him aesthetically, they don't like, you know, that he's not a team player. But they find him less objectionable than Bernie Sanders. Can you make predictions for what Trump will, so there's a good chance Trump will be reelected, but you expect him to be more of a generic Republican to expect the same as his first term overall, what do you expect of Trump politically and where will he be the same and where do you expect him to be different? Well, I think he'll be very similar to what he did in his first term if he gets reelected. He'll govern as a normal Republican most of the time. A difference this time is that with all of his criminal charges and criminal convictions, the elite have more leverage they can use over him. I would, I would expect him to make some kind of deal. I would expect him to make some kind of deal with the Justice Department, the Democratic Party, the donor classes, the, you know, the fortune 500. I think there is some video where he was speaking to donors and it did seem like there is a faction of like the elite that is making has made peace with Trump. Yeah, I think there is. And he kind of hinted that after the debate where he was talking about how the the moderators of the debate, Jack Tapper, Dana Bash, how they did a great job and all of that. Yeah, I think that he'll probably cut some kind of deal with the elite where they'll drop all the criminal cases against him in return for him pretty much doing their bidding. Now, he may have to do things occasionally to throw a bone to his popular base, you know, to the Republican Party base, you know, maybe some anti-immigration policies here and there or something. As far as I expect him to govern as a fairly normal Republican, maybe even bearing left word on some things and maybe even be being a little bit more liberal on some things. And you've got left word you've been in an establishmentarian direction or like radical centrism in a positive way a little bit above. Well it could be either one. I mean, there could be some, you know, actual reforms, you know, economic reforms that are beneficial to say the working to middle class that he implements, but also, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if you're left word on some social issues. Like, you know, for example, I expect him to try to downplay the abortion issue for one thing. You know, if he's elected president, now the Dobbs, I mean, now that Roe v. Wade has been repealed, the pro-life Republicans are going to be big on trying to get a national abortion ban or something. I see him trying to distance himself from something like that. I don't know that that would be the case, but I don't really see that. I don't see him pursuing policies that the wider elite are going to be particularly offended by or find threatening to their own interests. Does the Israel lobby prefer Trump over Biden or about equally? Well, Jewish Americans prefer Biden by about a three quarters margin. You know, it's about 75, 25 as among Jewish Americans generally. Now, the Israel lobby itself prefers Trump and if you see the polls coming out of Israel, a majority or a greater number of Israelis prefer Trump because they think that he's going to give Israel everything they want and not without being constrained by the, you know, the left wing of the Democratic party, which includes some people who are pro-Palestinian. Trump was the most pro-Israel for president we ever had. Well, arguably Trump and Biden, those two together have been there two most of them. Did it Bush, at least as far as their quorum, he made concessions like the idea of a two-state solution? Yeah, it's certainly true that the US foreign policy has become more consistently pro-Israel over time. If you look at Trump and Biden and compare them with even Nixon and Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, some of those people, Bill Clinton, the power of Israel over American foreign policy in the Middle East has gradually increased at an exponential level. I don't expect Trump to depart from that. I see no reason why he would not pretty much be as pro-Israel as the Israelis wanted to be. An exception though could be if he actually has some personality clashes with Benjamin Netanyahu. Those guys don't really like each other. Trump is angry with Netanyahu because Netanyahu would back his claims that the 2020 election was stolen, Netanyahu was angry with Trump because Trump blamed 10/7 on Netanyahu's failure as far as leadership. And you put two guys with egos like those two guys have together. There's likely to be a clash. But the Republican Party is as pro-Israel as it could be. Trump was, you know, the exception possibly Biden was the most pro-Israel president we ever had. I don't see much in regards to all of that. Do you think that October 7th, terror attack in Israel caused some divide within the establishment but also a split among the world crowd? It did. That gets back to your question earlier about what I call totalitarian humanism, which is basically efforts by the ruling class to weaponize progressivism, progressive cultural and social values or whatever as a self-legitimating ideological -- Yeah, I think with the -- like, wokeness is not monolithic. There's two groups, those who are anti-white and anti-American, but also anti-imperialist. And then those were -- it's kind of this fusion of like -- you could almost say it's like a totalitarian humanism fused with American chauvinism, or you could divide what's described as wokeness into those two groups. Right. You have some people who are -- you'll have the standard woke values and who want to use American foreign policy to do things like spread feminism and gay rights and environmentalism and -- you know, you're Samantha Power type. She's somebody who personifies this. Do you have -- It is to have more like leftists who are more like third-worldists. Yeah. Yeah. It's a spectrum. Think of woke as being kind of like a religion, and just like, you know, in religion, you have different denominations within a religion, and they often barely disagree with each other on particular practices or dogmas or whatever. And the woke milieu is like that, you know, you've got -- I guess you could say it's the right wing of woke that's generally pro-Western values, pro-liberalism, pro-Israel. I mean, they'll say things like, like Barry Weiss, somebody like Barry Weiss is a good example like that. She'll say things like, America is good, or Israel is good, because we have gay rights, you know, or -- and things like that, you know. So, you know, for her Western values is basically Zionism and lesbianism and that kind of thing. And then you have, you know, a full spectrum of opinion. You have other people who sound -- who are blue who say, well, no, Israel is a settler at colonial state, you know, you know, they view Jews as white, for example. And that has been a split there in response to 10-7, because you have some pro-Israel liberals, pro-Western liberals. Yeah, I think it's weakened, in some sense, it's weakened wokeness, and it's almost like you're seeing this trend. It's weakened wokeness, but you're seeing this trend where wokeness is being replaced by a more like overt establishmentarianism. Yeah, it is. It's very different vibes, then, went down in 2020. Yeah, the difference is the elites who were trying to weaponize wokeness as part of their own ideological superstructure got caught off guard when 10-7 happened, because the pro-Palestine protests started, because, you know, you had a lot of people who were taking woken its word, they're like, we're supposed to be against racism, right? We're supposed to be against genocide, right, and the, you know, the establishmentarians who were trying to weaponize wokeness of their own purposes said, well, no, we didn't really mean it that way, but what's happened is that the establishment has lost control of the woken narrative, and, you know, a lot of woken people have gone over to the pro-Palestine movement. Yeah, and I think it's the Israel-Palestine issue, but I think also, like, wokeness is the issue of economic leftism, so, like, you do have, so you do have, like, woke capital, woke capital, but overall, like, most people who are woke are more to the left than economics. Yeah, I think there's been a big class divide. In fact, Joel Cocken, who's a great social scientist, had a recent article, it's on his website, JoelCocken.com, he talks about the big split that's happening in the Democratic party between the neoliberal, you know, tech oligarch types, on one hand, and then your more woke progressive activist types, on the other hand, I always predicted, I was predicting 20 years ago that there would be a split, eventually, between the neo-liberals, you know, the more centrist neo-liberals for whom political correctness is just a ruse and a tool, and then those who were further left who were true believers and all that, you know, we can make an analogy to a country like Saudi Arabia, where in Saudi Arabia, you've got the House of Saud, the ruling class proper, who are really just gangsters, and they could care less about Islam itself, but in order to legitimize themselves to their subjects, many of whom were devout Muslims, they make an alliance with these Wahhabi clerics and make that the state religion of Saudi Arabia and things like that, and that's kind of the relationship that developed between the woke progressives and the centrist neo-liberal oligarch types, you know, the latter wanted to use the former as a self-legitimate mating superstructure and cultivate constituencies for themselves, whereas the latter are true believers, you know, and that those two have started to split, and Palestine has been a core issue, and also economic issues as well, you know, I mean-- Palestine's an core issue, economics are core issue, I think Trump created this alliance in opposition to Trump, there was this alliance between the kind of establishment neo-liberal oligarchs and leftists, but once Biden got into office, that alliance kind of weakened, but I think actually, do you think of Trump, if Trump is reelected, could he re-energize that alliance, so in some ways, like if Biden's reelected, it's better as far as causing division between those two? Yeah, I think if Trump is reelected, it's going to push the centrist liberals and the left further together, just like what we saw in France this week, if you look at the election in France this week, the centrists, neo-liberals, the Macron's party, or macaroni as I call him, but Macron's coalition, and then the new popular front, the left coalition, more or less, formed a de facto alliance to ensure that whatever else happens, the National Rally Marine Le Pen's party does not achieve state power, that that was their primary concern, and that, I think, is the reaction that the centrist neo-liberals and the world progressives would have to another Trump's president. So in some ways, I think it would be, from an anti-establishment perspective, in some ways, it would actually be better for either Biden to be reelected or for someone like Kamala Harris to get in. I think in many ways it would be, if your goal is to simply make the establishment look bad and create divisions within the ruling class, I think that that's entirely plausible. You know, I've been thinking for quite some time, and I thought this was going to happen as far back as 20 years ago, that really we have the equivalent of three political parties nowadays. We have the Trump movement, which is sort of a populist nationalist movement, and then we've got the centrist neo-liberals, and the neo-cons are sort of the right wing of that, whereas the Biden policy showmer and their immediate circle, that's more the centrist or liberal wing of that. And then you've got the progressives, the woke progressives, are almost like a separate party. You know, in many countries they would be a separate party, it's just that we have our very sealed-in two-party system. So we've really got like a progressive party, a centrist neo-liberal party, and then a populist nationalist party, and you know, not unlike what you see in France, where you have the left coalition, the centrist bloc, and then the nationalists on the right. We have the equivalent of all that in the United States is just structured differently. And yeah, I think that a Trump presidency is definitely going to push neo-liberals and progressives back further together, whatever divisions they have. Yeah, and I also think if he's a disappointment, like on one hand you do see these quasi, like, right? Ideas getting normalized and wrong mainstream conservatives, but on the other hand, like I could actually see the sort of like nationalist populist, right, becoming ending up being really weakened and demoralized even after a Trump term. Well what seems to be happening is that, and this is a pattern that's developed over a good while as well, is that, while, even as the demographic groups who make up the conservative side of the spectrum broadly defined, you know, like white Christians, even while those groups are shrinking in size and losing cultural power, they seem to be in some ways becoming more radical. You know, you have this more radical, I mean, relatively speaking, national populism that's developed in the Trump era. You know, I saw that coming as far back as the 1990s and the 1990s, I used to see stuff on the far populous fringe of the United States, and I thought then it would probably find its way closer into the mainstream, and it did. You know, that actually happened, you know, first with the rise of people like Alex Jones and all of that, and then the alt-right and then the Trump movement. So yeah, at the same time, I tend to think that that kind of thing has a limited dish market, you know, it's just like in business, you might have a product that there's a niche market for, and you're always going to have an audience for it, or market for it, a consumer market for it, but your market's never going to grow past a certain point. And a lot of the populist right strikes me as having that kind of character, you know, there's certainly a quote unquote market for it, you know, there's an audience for it, a constituency for it, but it's a growth potential to the point where it could become something like a permanent majority, I think is probably fairly limited. I don't really see that happening. Well, if you look at the history of partisan politics in the United States, going back to the late 19th century, what you see is that partisan cycles tend to run about 40 years. One party will be the dominant party for 40 years, and then the other party will be the dominant party for 40 years. From the late 1880s to the late 1920s, the Republican party was dominant. There were seven presidential Republican presidential terms and only three Democratic terms. Then from the late 20s through the late 60s, it was the opposite. The Democrats were the dominant party. There were seven Democratic presidential terms, only three Republican presidential terms. They're from the late 60s to the late 2000s. The Republicans became the dominant party. There were seven presidential terms of the Republicans, only three for the Democrats. Now, there's no law of history that I know of that says this pattern has to continue, but if that pattern means anything, that means right now we're probably about 16 years into another 40-year cycle, which means that between 2008 and 2048, the Democrats are going to have a total of seven presidential terms. The Republicans will have three. That means the Republicans are going to have two more presidential terms between now and the middle of the 21st century if this pattern continues. What are your predictions for the future realignments of both parties? Right now we're undergoing a political realignment, but it's not been completed. There's been a number of major realignments in American history, but what do you see as the future political realignments for both parties? There are several things going on. One involves social class and income level. Increasingly, more and more upper-income people are moving towards the Democratic Party. More and more lower-income people are moving towards the Republican Party. Bill Bishop who's a sociologist that traces these things, he's more of a journalist than a sociologist, but he did some breakdown of the data and showed that in the 2020 elections, upper-class and upper-middle-class people were more likely to vote Democratic, whereas middle-middle-class people tended to be split right down the middle and lower-middle and lower-class people were more likely to vote Republican. That was nationwide. Obviously, there's large minorities in all those categories and plenty of outliers. I think there's even been some, I think the Republican-like strategists, they exaggerate greatly, but there's been some degree of a working class non-white shift towards the GOP. I think you're probably also exaggerated. Well, yeah, you see that reversal as well, which is interesting, like a while back, Charles Schumer said that for every working-class union member in the Rust Belt that the Democrats lose, they pick up a suburban upper-middle-class professional person, and then Matt Gates responded to that by saying, "Well, for every upper-middle-class white woman, Karen type, who's a swing voter, but pro-choice, so moves toward more towards the Democrats." For every person like that, the Republicans lose, they pick up somebody with the last-name Sanchez or with the first-name Jamal or the last-name Nguyen or something like that. That seems to be true. I guess you could say it's a trickle of minorities moving more and more towards the Republican party. I think a number of things are driving that, one is economics, one is immigration, some is social conservatism, religion, and opposition to abortion, things like that. I mean, obviously minority people are all over the place in terms of their opinions, like everybody else. I think as the issue of things like basic civil rights is deeply entrenched and well-established, I think that the tendency of minorities to vote for the Democrats, because they're the civil rights party, is going to become more diluted, become less intense, and you're going to see more minority people focusing more on other issues, and that will lead some to the Republican party. Where do you see the realignment playing out in terms of policies, and could you see the GOP actually moving a bit to the left in economics as it becomes more cruel? Well, the problem with the idea of the GOP moving leftward on economics is, as I said at the beginning, the major division in U.S. politics is between the Northeastern establishment and Sunbelt Capital, and the way that that is structured on a socially economic basis is that the Northeastern establishment tend to be the upper levels of the capitalist class, the super-rich, the super-super-rich, whereas the Sunbelt wing of the capitalist class tends to be more the lesser-rich. And they're way to the right in economics. Right, right. They tend to be more regional capitalists, small capital, medium-sized capital. One of the biggest constituencies for the Republican party is small business owners, and that sector, the lower levels of capital are probably as conservative on economic policy as virtually anybody anywhere, particularly in the United States, and in Europe and some other places, there are some differences. But a lot of your more small capital, medium capital, heavy blue-twas and marches call it, those people certainly in the United States tend to be very right of cleaning on economics. These are the people who think social security is communism. I mean, not all of them are that extreme, obviously. But if it's one thing that unites this Sunbelt capitalist class, it's their opposition to what they think of as socialism, progressivism, the welfare state. Now it is true that you have a growing working-class populist constituency for the Republican Party, and that's a worldwide phenomenon. You see that in Europe as well. I see, like, the American GOP, populist wing, or they're way to the right of, like, a European nationalist, like, look at this party on economics. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. I have seen some efforts by some Republican politicians to sort of pretend to be populist by throwing out some token gesture concerning economics, and you do have some people associated with this national conservatism or things that are adjacent to that that talk about they want to have some more victor or bond type approaches to social policy. That is basically social democracy, only with a socially conservative framework. Like, who's the guy, the Iranian guy that used to write for the New York- Surabah. I think it's Surabah. I'm wrong. I forget to- That's not right. Surabah Mari. Surabah Mari. Yeah. He's developed this viewpoint. It's a socially conservative Catholic who believes in social democracy as a- Like, social democracy by cultural conservatism. Right. Exactly. You know, it's like pro-life, pro-rally. How are you like the European, like, Christian Democrats? Yeah. The problem with that is this. The capitalist interests that control the Republican Party have zero interest in that. In fact, they're steadfastly opposed to it. It's one of their core issues. And even the more socially conservative people who have lefty or leaning economic views, I've generally noticed that they ultimately side with their social conservatism first over their economic views. Like, as an example, let's say you had a candidate who was socially liberal on cultural things, but a social democrat on economic policy. And then you had someone who was a neo-liberal, Ronald Reagan admirer as another candidate, but a social conservative in pro-life. I'm pretty sure most of these people would still take the socially conservative guy over the- And that's true of the left, too, by the way. I think the other angle to it is that elites matter and elites determine policy. I don't think, like, a purely working class or pro-based movement can succeed. That's just how politics works. Right. Exactly. You know, the real divisions on economic policy, when it comes to things like the working class, is you have the Northeastern establishment who has long had the idea that you need to have a social safety net, you need a welfare state, you need a regulatory regime, you need a technocratic management and that kind of stuff to make things work better. And so you don't get labor revolts and armed insurrection and terrorism and all the kind of stuff that different societies had back in the days of the Industrial Revolution when all of that was at its peak. So whereas the conservative side of the ruling class, which is based in the Sun Belt primarily, they have the idea that all of that is heresy. They hold to the old liberal idea, the old classical liberal idea that there shouldn't be any government interference in the economy at all, that they have this idea that raising the minimum wage is counterproductive, it creates unemployment. They have the idea that social security is communism. And a lot of it is just motivated by indifference as much as ideology. They just have the idea, well, who cares about people who live in trailer parks and places like that? So yeah, I don't really see the conservative side of American politics moving leftward on its economies, except for maybe some isolated individuals or currents or something here and there. But I do think a lot of the dramatic changes with automation are growing in equality are going to force some kind of realignment. I don't think that capitalist conservatism can survive the dramatic change that will come with automation. Yeah, you do have people like, well, I know Tucker Carlson has talked about this. He's talked about the impact that driverless trucks would have, like he was talking once about how if you had of all the trucks in the United States where became driverless trucks, then 10 million truck drivers would be put out of work and what would be the social and political and cultural impact of that, the 10 million people who were suddenly unemployed. So that's going to be an interesting question as this, but well, it's very similar to what happened in the Industrial Revolution. In the Industrial Revolution, you had all of these very rapid technological advancements that were undermining traditional culture, that were undermining traditional institutions. You had this rapid economic development that was taking place, parallel to that, you had a lot of people losing their livelihoods like small farmers and peasant farmers and craftsmen and all of that kind of stuff. And the digital revolution and automation and the tech revolution is having a very similar effect to the Industrial Revolution 150 years later. And I do think that it's going to create some kind of social economic upheaval that we haven't really seen yet, because it's also producing the same disparity of wealth, the same kind of wealth disparity that we saw in the Industrial Revolution is happening now as a result of the tech revolution. Do you think Trump's policies could be inflationary? I do, because what Trump has proposed so far is, first of all, a combination of tax cuts and that's standard Republican doctrine, you know, you cut taxes. Also, he's proposed raising tariffs, which means increased prices for imports. And there's no evidence that Trump plans to reduce public spending in any serious way. In fact, the real approach of Republicans nowadays to fiscal policy is, as Dick Cheney once said, deficits don't matter. We learned that in the '80s. Republicans still have this image of somehow being fiscal conservatives. And some of them on the fringes are like Rand Paul or Tom Massey or something like that. And in the old days, Republicans tended to be more seriously, fiscally conservative, like Barry Goldwater, you know, Bob Dole. Those guys were fiscal conservatives. But nowadays, your standard Ronald Reagan, Neocon type Republicans are not fiscal conservatives. They could care less. They will spend money like it's going out of style. But when you combine tax cuts with increased tariffs and without corresponding spending cuts, which means printing more money, which has an inflationary value, all of those things combined have an inflationary effect. So I don't really see Trump as being a very good candidate as all when it comes to fighting inflation. I'd be surprised at his position, at his ability to combat inflation. Do you see even more inflationary than Biden's policies? Yeah. Yeah. He may very well be more inflationary. Now, they'll be. And also what matters is with the response to that, like let's say some of these policies are enacted and inflation increases, well, what they would then do is they would try to raise interest rates considerably to get inflation down. They push the federal reserve to raise interest rates, you know, like back in the- I think that makes the debt impossible to pay off and that's going to cause a really severe recession. Yeah, exactly. That would create a severe recession. You know, so yeah, I think with Trump economics, as it's been enunciated so far, we're looking at the danger of increased inflation followed by an increased danger of recession. So I don't really see Trump's economic policies being very good at all. I don't- Maybe it's sort of like, I wouldn't say the economy was great during Trump, but it was like okay compared to now, but obviously I think things like we've avoided, like the U.S. has avoided a technical recession, but I still think like a major financial crisis is inevitable. It's just a question like how long it could be delayed. Yeah. Well, obviously the impact of the pandemic and everything related to that is a factor, but yeah, many economists are predicting we're headed for a crash. You know, there's disagreement on how bad it's going to be, but it does seem like it's on its way. One issue is that we have a lot of the standard debt bubbles now in the economy like we had with the housing bubble in the 2000s that led to the 2008 crash. You know, we've got record high credit card debt, record high student loan debt, record high consumer debt. So you know, and more and more people now are defaulting on those kinds of debts, more and more people are defaulting on say credit card debts and things like that. So we could be facing a vast debt default, just like we have the similar problem with housing debt back in the 2000s and that could create a recession certainly. All this talk, like talk of World War three gets super hyperbolic, but how much of a risk is there of the Ukraine versus Russia and the Israel, Israel conflict, like involving Iran or Hezbollah really escalating and do you see a higher risk of the wars escalating under Trump or Biden? Well, the issue in Ukraine is whether Western NATO troops are actually used in combat at some point where there's direct engagement between NATO and Russian forces, which could potentially lead to nuclear exchange or something like that. That remains to be seen. I don't think that the elite policymakers want to escalate it to that level. I think they want to fight to the last Ukrainian, but they're hoping that Ukraine can, they want Ukraine to be what Afghanistan was in the 1980s when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and then the West was aiding at the Afghan rebels, the Muja Hadid, and for the purpose of weakening the Soviet Union, but Western forces were not typically not used in that combat. I mean, maybe in direct ways, an advisory capacity and all of that, but maybe some special forces units or something, but for the most part, Western forces were not actually fighting in that war. And I think that that seems to be the approach they're taking to Ukraine, they'll fight to the last Ukrainian just like they fought to the last Afghan, but I think the policymakers understand the danger of engaging directly with the Soviet Union, I mean with the Soviet Soviet level dam, with the Russians in Ukraine, there seems to be enough people who don't want to escalate it to that level that I think it probably won't go to that level. You know, it is a danger, I mean, the more it bogged down in that situation, the more the danger of escalation is there. The same thing is true with Israel. Right now, like with Israel and Hezbollah, they're having like these skirmishes, so far there hasn't been a full blown escalation, but I think the risk with Israel is probably greater than with Russia and Ukraine, not saying like 100% overall, but I'm saying like right now at this specific point. I think so, because I think what happened today is Israel, because Israel, well Israel did Iran struck Israel and then Israel retaliated, but then they kind of called the truce and nothing really came of that and but like and there's stuff going involving now with Israel and Hezbollah and Israel just struck aside in Syria with Iranian ships coming in. But again, like a lot of times like people have super hyperbolic and say this is World War III and then things to escalate, but you'd think as you, but you never know what's going to happen. Well, the issue with Israel is that the American ruling class is more committed to the defense of Israel than they are to the defense of Ukraine. If you look at votes, votes that have been taken and Congress in recent times about whether to provide additional aid to Ukraine, far fewer people in Congress have voted for Ukraine aid than they have for Israel aid or Taiwan aid and the genuine, the ruling class seems to be genuinely divided on Ukraine. The Northeastern establishment who are your files, like I said, they think of themselves as the, you know, American equivalent of European royalty, they are the primary hawks on Ukraine. You know, they see Russia as this, you know, backward, asiatic society that doesn't know its place and that kind of thing. The interestingly though, the Sun Belt Wing of the capitalist class seems to be far less hawkish on Ukraine, which is an interesting about face because it was that sector that tended to be the most hawkish on the Cold War with the Soviet Union. But I think that they moved towards a position that is more urophobic than Russ Russo speaking. Right. With the exception of Thomas Massey, the Republican position is to be very unconditionally support Israel, but they're fine throwing Ukraine under the bus. Right. And I think the reason for that is they do, increasingly the Republicans view NATO as freeloaders, you know, as two liberal culturally, as fair-wethered friends, so to speak, untrustworthy allies. I think they just don't care about that much about Russia, about Europe, you know, but you saw hints of that back in the Bush administration during the Iraq war period. Donald Rumsfeld, I remember made a crack to joke about old Europe because a lot of the European countries wouldn't support the Iraq war. And he's like, what do they know, you know, they're old Europe, you know, we're America, we're better than them, you know, it's, and that kind of sentiment tends to run through a lot of American conservatism, you know, the Europeans are a bunch of socialists and homosexuals. Except for the more, like, nationalist wing who have some affinity for, like, Victor Orban, but that's still relatively, like, marginal. Yeah. Also, the American right is less hostile to Putin than they were to the Soviet Union. You know, a lot of the hostility to the Soviet Union on the American right was driven by religion. You know, the Soviets were these godless atheist homies who put priests in prisons and persecuted Christians and things like that, but, you know, but now they've done it about a lot of them tend to be Russia's comparatively conservative Christian society that, you know, isn't, doesn't have gay marriage in that kind of stuff, you know, so it's been sort of a cultural reversal there. Do you have a prediction of whether Trump or Biden will win? Because right now, a lot of polls show Biden ahead, but there's, there's also good reasons to, to predict that Trump could lose. What it comes down to is what happens in the swing states. There's about 10 states that are up for grabs. You know, there are some states that Trump is going to win or Biden is going to win no matter what. I mean, they could be dead and they'd still win, you know, it's, and most U.S. elections are really decided by, you know, 7, 8, 10 swing states. And last I checked, Trump was ahead in most swing states. I think the only one, but Biden had a slight advantage was Michigan. So right, that's what it, that's what's going to decide the election, you know, which way does this, do the swing states go? And even in the swing states, it's really a matter of what do the genuinely independent voters do, like you have voters who were independent, but lean Democrat or Republican. And most of them are going to vote their normal preference, you know, regardless of who the candidate is. But you're going to have a smaller slice of voters in swing states who were independent and they really can go either way. And it's going to be those people that really decide the election for the whole nation. And right now, Trump is ahead. I mean, you know, in all the areas that count, Biden is not doing anything to race as standing or improve his image any, I mean, if anything, it's getting worse and worse after his performance in the debate with Trump and then his interview after that with George Stephanopoulos. I mean, you know, the guy, you know, I mean, everybody who's ever had people in their family with Alzheimer's or dementia or any of those cognitive decline issues that affect old people, you know, everybody can see that in Biden. So it really comes down to, you know, whether you have that many people who find Trump the most objectionable or Biden the most objectionable, you know, you have people who are concerned about stability who think Trump is too much of a loose cannon, you know, they don't like all the criminal charges he's got against him that that, you know, that's that might be a liability among some swing voters. Also the abortion issue, abortion issue is definitely working in favor of the Democrats. So you know, the Democrats have some of the controversies about Trump and then the abortion issue on their side. The Republicans have, you know, Biden's obviously incompetence, as well as just just satisfaction with the economic conditions on their side. What happens if the economy before the election, that also matters? That matters a great deal. Yeah. What the economy is doing in October is going to matter a great deal as the health people. Does that hurt some thing where Janet Yellen, she did some, she worked something out where she issued a two year treasury, a lots of two year treasury bonds, so that ensures that the economy is propped up, but once the treasury bonds expire in two years, then that heightens the risk of our crash. Yeah. I'm not that familiar with that, but that it sounds entirely plausible that the administration would develop something like that as a strategic policy. Nixon pursued policies like that in the early '70s and then '70s, '71, '72, because he wanted to create an economic boom that would guarantee his re-election, and he did, and that in part was a major factor that contributed to a lot of the economic problem we had in the '70s. So, it's not at all surprising that the Biden administration would be trying to engineer something like that, and it would certainly work to their advantage if we could, you know, have a boost of economic prosperity throughout the summer and fall, and the Democrats win re-election, and then it crashes in the middle of Trump's term, then that's going to be a major liability for the Republicans, you know, certainly in the midterms in 2026 and also for the 2028 election. So yeah, that's... What do you make of RFK Jr. as far as his role, his ideology, and what is core consistency is you saw that article yet you republish that I wrote about him? Yeah, Kennedy is interesting because in some ways he's similar to Trump in the sense of coming from the elite, the northeastern elite, but while Kennedy is closer to the true ruling class than Trump is, he's... The Kennedy family has a longer dynastic history than the Trump's, but the Kennedys were also upstarts as well. They were Irish Catholics against the Anglo-Saxon Protestant traditional elites, and that's largely how the Kennedys got to dominate the liberal wing of the northeastern establishment. And then Bobby Kennedy is something of a maverick within that framework. You know, a lot of his siblings, I think, are refusing to endorse his candidacy. But the direction that Bobby Kennedy has gone in is really more in tune with the kind of bourgeois Bohemians that you see among lower capital, among the Silicon Valley types and some of the New Wall Street types. If you look at Bobby Kennedy's career, what has that been about? Well, he's been about environmentalism, and he's been about questioning vaccines and that kind of stuff. If you look at who his donors and backers are, he's got a lot of Silicon Valley money behind him. In fact, he even picked Sergey Brin's ex-wife as his running mate, so he's very tuned into that circle. You know, he's sort of one of these bourgeois Bohemians that's connected to Silicon Valley. I don't -- it's going to be interesting to see how what he actually does when the vote told her. Do you think -- do you expect him to win a lot of Obama to Trump voters? Do I expect him to do what? To do well among the Obama to Trump voters. I think so. Yeah. I think Kennedy has a certain appeal to voters who are swing voters who tend to like populist type candidates. You know, they're not rigidly attached to a party. They're not ideologically rigid, but they tend to be anti-somewhat anti-establishment. They're like more populist maverick candidates, but at the same time, they think Trump is just too over the top. I see -- I see that as being the kind of person from whom someone like Kennedy would probably have the most appeal. I don't think Kennedy is going to get that many votes from outright conservatives. He's too much of a liberal and so -- and his family. He's this iconic liberal family. I'm probably good of a vote for him. Yeah. Well, you know, someone with your political outlook, I think, you know, is obviously somebody that Kennedy would appeal to, but I think when it comes to more conventional conservatives, I don't see Kennedy having a huge appeal there. And then among the -- on the left, I don't see him drawing a whole lot from the left, in part because of this Palestine position. He's very pro-Israel. That's one thing that I think makes a case that -- Do you think like with the hard left, who are independent or more likely to back, Cornel West or Jill Stein? Probably Stein, simply for practical reasons, she's going to be on the ballot in more states. So you say, like, you could say that Kennedy's represents more a kind of like radical centrist fusionism. Yeah. Yeah. He's -- I could see an opening for his type of politics in the future somewhere. I mean, it does kind of represent a coalition of like populism and working-class people with some faction of like elites who are -- with disaffected elites as well. Yeah. And that seems to be where he's getting his support from. You know, it's -- you know, he's not getting his support from dissident conservatives who don't like Trump. He seems to -- and then, of course, you know, most of your hardcore democratic centrists, you know, they have the vote blue on that. And, like, I live -- I live in an area that's fairly affluent, and I'm noticing, like, where I'm in California, but also on my recent trip to Sedona, I've noticed a decent number of R.K. Jr. signs. I'd say more so than Trump or Biden, even. Yeah. Well, I think an area like that is exactly where you would find a lot of support from Kennedy. I think that's what he appeals to. You know, the more bourgeois bohemian class to a large degree, as well as some more, you know, populist-type people who are, you know, go back and forth from Democrats to Republicans, including working-class union types, you know, who are -- who think of the Democrats as supposedly being the labor party and that kind of thing. I mean, he's probably -- obviously not going to win, but I do think his policies are something to we'll keep an eye out. That kind of coalition in the future. Well, if he does well in terms of both totals -- I mean, he's not going to be the president, but if he does well in terms of -- Maybe the best case -- obviously not going to win. Maybe the best case -- he might get, like, eight percent and cause a shift in some swing states. Yeah. I think if he got eight percent, you would have more political figures trying to imitate him. But that would create an opening for more people with an approach similar to his to come along in the future. We're at the end of the show before I wrap things up, Keith, do you have anything else you'd like to add about the election or any of these topics? Yeah, I think that a lot of the hysteria around the election is just that. It's a hysteria. On the Democratic side, they're trying to claim that Trump is going to be a fascist dictator and he's got all these conspiracy theories about Project 2025 and that kind of stuff. Most of which, by the way, most of the stuff in Project 2025 is standard conservative Republican doctrine that's gone -- goes back to the -- as long as the conservative movement has existed. That doesn't mean they're going to get everything they want, and Trump is not really committed to that kind of outlook. And I think that what the Democrats are hoping for is basically they're hoping they can get Joe Biden's corpse over the finish line. Given the kind of condition the guy is in, I wouldn't expect him to survive another four-year term, much less in functional condition. Well, I do think it's going to be Trump versus Biden, but if Biden gets reelected, you probably could expect them to replace him with Kamala. Yeah, and I think that that's what Democratic Party elites want. That's why they're so adamant about not replacing him as a candidate. Their plan is they want to drag him over the finish line and just get him there. And then if he resigns or dies or gets 25th amendment or whatever, Kamala Harris will become the president without having to be bothered with an election because she's a hard sell as a presidential candidate. But the kind of elites who control the Republican, the Democratic Party today, she is their ideal candidate. A lot of your super elites from the Northeastern establishment, a lot of your West Coast elites are really behind Kamala Harris. That's who they want for their president. She's basically another Hillary Clinton, perhaps even more extreme than Hillary Clinton. I mean, Biden is pretty bad in a lot of ways, but he also has a streak of him where he's also kind of an old school Democrat, where he has the kind of the more kind of union issue. Like he did put in Lena Khan, he's doing anti-trust, and he also withdraw from Afghanistan. So he does have a streak of him where he has a side of him where he can be more of an old school Democrat too. Well, yeah, I mean, he's been in the government since I think I don't think I consider Biden by far to be like the lesser of evils than someone like Hillary Clinton or even Kamala. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. He's more of an old school Rockefeller Democrat in many ways. But yeah, Hillary and Kamala Harris, they are, on one hand, they're aligned with the Northeastern establishment, but they're also aligned with the neocons and some of the kind of stuff that Bill Clinton brought into the fold, these neo-liberals. So yeah, but the interest behind the Democratic Party, they want Kamala Harris as their president. That's if they were backing back in the 2020 primaries, but she panned out in the primaries. But then she was selected as his VP for that reason. That's who they want. Do you expect to see greater political repression or crackdowns in civil liberties? Because it has happened, but maybe it hasn't gotten as extreme as a lot of dissidents were anticipating. It kind of goes in these cycles and then eases a bit, same with like waves of deplatforming. Yeah, well, I see a lot of people on the right claiming that we're going to have some kind of Stalin estate where the Democrats are throwing people from the right in Gulags or something like that. That's total hyperbolicism. Yeah, well, I think it's based on a misunderstanding of how our system actually works. The kind of elites that we have don't want to have a Stalinist like regime or a Hitlerian type regime because that's not conducive to having the kind of commercially driven society they want. I mean, their primary value is capitalism. America has like a mercantile elite, which is very different than what created it, who was bought then like Hitler or Stalin. Right, exactly. You do see like political crackdowns and civil liberties, but it's nothing like that. Well, we could see things like what we've had in the past, you know, we could see depending on circumstances, we could see something like the Patriot Act, we could see something like the Cohen's help program from the 60s or something like McCarthyism, maybe not necessarily directed towards alleged communists, but something else, alleged fascist or racist or something. So that kind of thing flares up occasionally in American political history and it probably will again at some point. I'm not sure where it's going to come from, but it's there. It comes and goes. We're at the end of the show. Keith Preston, I'd like to thank you for being on and check out AttackTheSystem.com.