Ed: Here's my mug.
Sam: Oh, is that the new one I sent you?
Ed: Yep.
Sam: Oh, no, it's the original. I think.
Ed: Nope, nope, this is one. It says, I think. I thought my original one was dead.
Sam: Does it say, what do you call it, specimen?
Ed: Yeah, it says, I hate curmudgeon.
Sam: Oh, excellent, excellent. That's the right one then. That's the one.
Ed: I thought it was, because my original one got broken somehow. I don't remember how.
Sam: I thought you said your wife stole it. Either way, you have a new one now.
Ed: Either way.
Sam: Okay. Well, let's see. There we go. Going to hit the button on that.
Sam: And, yeah, let me check this real quick. Okay.
Sam: Have you thought about things you might want to talk about?
Ed: I did indeed.
Sam: Okay.
Ed: I wrote down a couple things.
Sam: Excellent. then we can just get started you can tell me while we're recording oh okay.
Ed: Sounds like a winner.
Sam: I mean we are recording already but it's like before i hit the music okay but
Sam: let's uh let's do the thing here we go all righty oh i messed that up there it comes there it comes,
Sam: Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, June 14th, 2025.
Sam: It's just after two UTC as we're starting to record. I am Sam Minter.
Sam: Yvonne Bo is not here. This week, our schedules just didn't align.
Sam: I was only able to do it Friday, and he was only able to do it Thursday or Saturday.
Sam: So I sent out my little request for co-host, and guess who answered this time?
Sam: It's Ed. Hello, Ed.
Ed: Hello there. It's the old man again.
Sam: Welcome back, old man. Is that the right way I should address you from now on?
Ed: Absolutely. Once again, this week came in second in my age group.
Ed: There were only two of us over 80 doing it.
Sam: Very nice. Very nice. What was it this time? Like a double marathon?
Ed: That was a 5K run. No, it was a 5K run. And I'm not even really running anymore.
Ed: I'm back to walking since, uh, in, in, uh, October, October last year,
Ed: I had a tibial plateau, basically a stress fracture.
Sam: And that is, well.
Ed: It wasn't that painful, but it pretty much ended my running days.
Ed: Walking was still fine. I continued doing a fair amount of walking and,
Ed: uh, I'm, I'm still walking, just not as much.
Sam: Yeah. Understood. You're probably still walking more than I am,
Sam: to be honest. You know, so can't say much.
Sam: Anyway, as usual, when we have a guest, the guest determines most of the agenda.
Sam: We still like to start out less newsy and get more newsy as the show progresses.
Sam: And, you know, I, I might have a couple movies still, like I have determined,
Sam: I, I, I did, I did a calculation right before the show started that,
Sam: well, this only covered like November to January.
Sam: I haven't like looked at the more recent stuff yet, but I am finishing,
Sam: I'm either a movie or a TV show or a book about every five days.
Sam: So so like doing one 5.1785 days to be a little bit more or 857 to be a little bit more precise,
Sam: but yeah that means if I do one movie a week on this show I'm never going to
Sam: catch up so I need to like start doing two or something and yeah so anyway I
Sam: should do a movie or two but.
Ed: You could always go to three days a week on the podcast.
Sam: We could do that we we we could
Sam: do a podcast every day you know it's just
Sam: no it's it's too much damn work you know
Sam: if if we were ever to do it more frequently it
Sam: would really have to be more a spontaneous we do the live stream we hit stop
Sam: and it's done just however it comes out of the box it's done i don't do any
Sam: prep i don't do any anything whatsoever i've i've cut back so much on how much
Sam: work I do, like editing these damn things.
Sam: I, I'm very close to just taking it straight out and just exporting it and go.
Sam: I, the, the, and the things I do at this point are mostly automated as,
Sam: as opposed to me doing stuff, but still it's, yeah, no, no, I,
Sam: I can't imagine doing this daily.
Sam: I thought about for a while, once we started the tick talk, Like right now,
Sam: I just post like three clips of the show every week.
Sam: And, you know, but when we first set up the TikTok, I was like,
Sam: you know what I'll do is and I gave Yvonne the login to I sort of said,
Sam: whatever I think of something I want to say that's news related,
Sam: I'll just pop up my phone.
Sam: I'll record two minutes and I'll publish it.
Sam: And boom, we'll fill the curmudgeons corner TikTok channel with more stuff,
Sam: not just the clips of the show.
Sam: It'll be more engaging. It'll be more often, whatever. Because you need to succeed
Sam: in that platform, you have to be posting all the time.
Sam: And I thought about that. And the first few weeks, I was like,
Sam: okay, if I think of anything, I'll do that. If I think of anything, I'll do that.
Sam: And I just never got inspired to do that. So I did. And so it's only clips of
Sam: the show because, and I know lots of people do it.
Sam: I follow people on TikTok who like post five or six times a day and the things
Sam: they post are just like a couple minutes long and they're clearly just pop open
Sam: their phone and talk into the phone for a couple minutes.
Sam: You know, there are people on TikTok who do much more elaborate productions
Sam: than that and do all kinds of editing and fancy stuff.
Sam: But there are definitely people out there succeeding
Sam: on tiktok who are literally a thought
Sam: pops into their head they open their phone they record for a couple minutes
Sam: and they post it and done and they're doing fine you know but i just i just
Sam: never maybe i'll start thinking about it again maybe i'll get inspired at some
Sam: point but so far my head just doesn't work that way it's like it.
Ed: Sounds sort of sounds sort of like a verbal uh facebook.
Sam: Where you write down.
Ed: When you think of something yeah.
Sam: It is essentially like that it's and and
Sam: even even in the other social media i'm actually really bad
Sam: at that like i'm i'm my like if you
Sam: do look at you know i'm not on twitter anymore but i'm
Sam: on blue sky i'm on mastodon and i am
Sam: posting regularly on those but my posts are mainly reposting
Sam: stuff other people put out you know it's only
Sam: a few times a week do i do something that's actually me
Sam: typing my own thoughts and even then
Sam: it's usually in reaction to something i read like
Sam: and i'll make a comment about it and and i i just i don't know like this podcast
Sam: is my main outlet for just like hey i'm gonna talk about whatever and i've just
Sam: never made the mental shift to like do that in other forums.
Sam: Even when I, I mean, I still have applesmay.com is officially my blog,
Sam: but I haven't posted anything there in years.
Sam: I, and the thought was also there, Hey, whenever I have something to say,
Sam: I'll post something never really did.
Sam: You know, the only things I posted are some things, things where I created some
Sam: sort of system and said, hey, every time this happens, I will post something about it.
Sam: And it was very structured. I never did a free form off the top of my head, whatever. I don't know.
Sam: Maybe I should try again. Maybe I shouldn't. I don't know.
Sam: So where do you want to start today? You said you had thought about things you
Sam: wanted to talk about today.
Sam: What is the lightest, least newsy thing on your list? We can start there.
Ed: The least newsy thing? I was just going to say that my siblings,
Ed: my brother, my sister, and I are going to be coast-to-coast participants in
Ed: the No Kings demonstrations.
Sam: Okay, yeah.
Ed: My sister lives in Berkeley, and she's going to be in Oakland tomorrow for it.
Ed: My brother's in Iowa City, and I'm going to be going—actually,
Ed: I'm going to go to No Kings in the morning near here in Labbertville, I think it is.
Ed: And then in the afternoon, we're going to—Doylestown is having its own anti-Trump
Ed: thing, so I'm going to go there, too.
Sam: Now, I don't get how you figured out that the anti-Trump protests aren't newsy,
Sam: but let's go with it anyway. am i.
Ed: Going to them.
Sam: But uh yeah no and for for anybody who doesn't know i mean hell this this podcast
Sam: will probably go out after all of these are over almost not even probably almost certainly,
Sam: we'll go out and just just watch i say that and
Sam: then like i get inspired and put it out but
Sam: like no i was gonna say it's nokings.org and
Sam: they are probably gonna have more events after this weekend so you
Sam: can still go and check them out but it's they they
Sam: have organized these protests all over the country i in fact i think there are
Sam: some in other countries as well um but but mostly u.s protests and yeah i'm
Sam: just looking yeah there are a few in europe it looks like a few elsewhere.
Sam: So there are a handful in other places, but by far, by far, it is a U.S.-centric
Sam: event because it is, you know, the subject line, oh, did I give the URL?
Sam: No, no kings.org, no kings.org. You can go there and find out more,
Sam: find out if there's one near you, whether it's the weekend that we're talking
Sam: about or some later events.
Sam: But they were making a big push for events on June 14th, which is now, essentially.
Sam: Yeah, I said it's June 14th to UTC. U.S. time, it's tomorrow,
Sam: Saturday, June 14th, and all over the country.
Sam: And I've been thinking I want to go, too.
Sam: Like, I've got some things going on earlier on Saturday. But I think probably
Sam: I'll be done with those things in time to do one of these.
Sam: There are several near me as well. Like, I'm just south of Everett, Washington.
Sam: Let me see. I will...
Sam: Look at what's closest to me. There's one in Everett, Washington.
Sam: There's one in Marysville. There's one in Monroe.
Sam: There's one in Edmonds. They're all over the place. And of course,
Sam: there's one in Seattle, and there are a bunch more all across the area and all over the country.
Sam: And they're basically there's a
Sam: whole bunch of non-profits and advocacy
Sam: groups who have come together to
Sam: organize these so like each individual one is
Sam: organized by somebody somebody different
Sam: so for instance the one in everett here is by snohomish county indivisible one
Sam: in in uh marysville is by veterans say no kings as i look at these various ones
Sam: the one in Monroe is by something called No Kings Monroe.
Sam: So there are all kinds of different things by all kinds of different people
Sam: under this umbrella. And it's a whole bunch of protests.
Sam: And I think that they have probably, they've been organizing these for a while,
Sam: but I'm gathering there's probably more momentum for because of one,
Sam: what's happening in Los Angeles over the last week, And two,
Sam: Donald Trump's little military march in D.C. as well.
Sam: You know, I think these things both inspire sort of counter-protests.
Ed: It's little military march?
Sam: Yes, little, little military march.
Sam: And we'll see how they go. I mean, these are all very much oriented towards,
Sam: these are normie demonstrations. These are intended to be nonviolent, peaceful.
Sam: They are emphasizing that over and over and over again, whereas,
Sam: you know, they're always troublemakers in any group, any large group.
Sam: But these are the kinds of things that, you know, people will be bringing their kids to, their pets,
Sam: you know, this is people of all ages and, you know, are very,
Sam: you know, will be, I can almost guarantee these are going to be very self-policing
Sam: in that if people start trying to make trouble,
Sam: you know, the people at the demonstration itself will take care of those people.
Sam: And keep it from getting out of control, but, you know, frankly,
Sam: even the ones in LA and stuff that they've been, for the most part,
Sam: they didn't start getting out of control until,
Sam: the police started trying to harass the demonstrators, but even then,
Sam: I mean, they're, they're.
Sam: And there are some, like I said, there are troublemakers in every crowd.
Sam: I mean, yes, somebody did burn a Waymo.
Sam: You know, there is graffiti all over the place. People have been doing that kind of stuff.
Sam: It's not helpful. And I'm hopeful that these no kings marches will avoid all that nonsense.
Ed: Well, they're making it pretty clear in their instruction pages.
Ed: It says, this is not a rally. You want to go to a rally, go somewhere else.
Ed: This is a, I don't know what they're calling an event. Right.
Ed: No protest signs. None of that. Just the placard they're going to give us to put up over our head.
Sam: Yeah. The one in Everett here is labeled that it has a rally, then sign waving.
Sam: So they're going to have both. Yeah. And I think different ones are like,
Sam: I'm just clicking around.
Sam: Some of them have more information about exactly what they have planned.
Sam: Some of them don't. And some of them, some of them have locations that are public
Sam: that others, you only get the address if you RSVP, you know,
Sam: so all kinds of stuff like that.
Sam: So what, what are you, I mean, you know, it'd be nice if like this event had
Sam: already happened and we could talk about how it went, but what,
Sam: what, what are your intentions on going and what do you expect?
Sam: And what, why is it important for you to go?
Ed: Well, I think it sounds like it's going to be just sort of a,
Ed: we're here and we don't believe in kings and, as we say, an event,
Ed: not really a rally or a protest as such.
Ed: My concern, part of the reason why I'm doing this and why I'm going to go to
Ed: the actual rally tomorrow evening is that I see our nation in severe distress
Ed: at this point with a guy who very clearly talks like a dictator and is carrying out dictator actions.
Ed: We'll talk about it later, I'm sure, too. I think we're under a real threat.
Ed: I think we're as close to loss of our republic, at least a democracy republic,
Ed: as we've been since the Civil War.
Sam: Yes. I mean, one of the things, you know, as we dive directly into real issues,
Sam: you know, people talk about, like, what, you know, how will you know?
Sam: When are we really in a crisis?
Sam: You know, do we have a constitutional crisis right now? do we not?
Sam: Are we still a democracy? Are we not? And the thing is,
Sam: I mean, occasionally these things happen with a really abrupt revolution and
Sam: there's a clear day that it happened.
Sam: But much more often, there's a gradual erosion and there is no clear single
Sam: day where everything is different than the day before.
Sam: And instead, it's just slowly over time, things are different than they were before.
Sam: And even in your out-and-out, direct, unabashed dictatorships,
Sam: life goes on for most people.
Sam: People get up in the morning, they go to work, they go home.
Sam: There are certain people that are harassed by whoever's in charge,
Sam: certain people that are taken away to prison and killed and everything else when it gets really bad.
Sam: But for the most part, you know, 99% of the population continues to go about their regular day.
Sam: And, you know, they sort of slowly realize things change.
Sam: I mean, people talk about the myth of the frog in the boiling pot and all,
Sam: which isn't really true.
Sam: The frog does generally jump out before they are cooked. But yeah, it's a gradual thing.
Sam: And I'd say, look, right now, if you look at the stuff that's already happening every day right now,
Sam: in terms of people argue, has Donald Trump directly violated a court order that
Sam: has already been validated by the Supreme Court?
Sam: But already there well first you can argue that yes he actually has the Supreme
Sam: Court gave an order to get that guy back from El Salvador and he is back now
Sam: but it took them like a month and a half to do it.
Sam: But even before then I mean you're already softening the standards like before
Sam: it would be like you're violating a court order from any court you don't have to,
Sam: appeal it all the way to the Supreme Court. I mean, you can appeal it to the
Sam: Supreme Court, but in the meantime, you still need to obey it. Well, they didn't.
Sam: And so is that already a crisis? We've got the president giving a speech in
Sam: front of military folks who were pre-screened for whether they were his supporters
Sam: and instructed to cheer at his political statements.
Sam: That's a dramatic change from how presidents have done events in front of the military before.
Ed: That's a huge change from what the military has ever done.
Ed: I was in there for 27 years, and it was made very clear to us,
Ed: we did not, as soldiers in uniform, ever express a political opinion.
Ed: Afterwards, and you're sitting in your shorts around the bar at night,
Ed: you can talk all the politics you want, But you don't say, I'm Colonel Haynes,
Ed: and here's what you should believe.
Ed: That was not done, and it shouldn't be done.
Sam: Yeah, and at this latest, I forget exactly what event it was,
Sam: but Trump was in front of a military audience, and they made sure the audience
Sam: was screened so that anybody who had any qualms about Donald Trump would not be in the audience.
Sam: They also screened it for, he said he didn't want any fat people.
Sam: Like, so, so they screened at least.
Ed: At least someone decided there shouldn't be any fat people.
Sam: Yes. Well, yeah. I mean, this is the kind of thing that we know Donald Trump
Sam: is in the past, like complained because at a veterans parade,
Sam: they included people who had lost limbs while they were in the military.
Sam: And he said, I don't want, nobody wants to see that. I don't want to ever have
Sam: those people, you know, in my presence again, basically.
Sam: You know, so I have no doubt that it came from the top.
Sam: Even if it was somebody anticipating what he would want, it clearly is what he would want.
Sam: And, you know, and basically making sure that when he, like,
Sam: for instance, said bad things about Governor Newsom in California,
Sam: that everybody cheered or booed when they mentioned his name or cheered when
Sam: he said that he'd go against him or whatever.
Sam: And then, you know, the calling out of the military for the situation in California and, you know,
Sam: arresting the congresswoman in New Jersey for that incident a few weeks back
Sam: and now indicting her or, you know, the harassment of the senator in California this week.
Sam: All of these are things that are direct, you know, contraventions of what would
Sam: have been normal in any other presidency before this.
Sam: It's even stuff that Donald Trump didn't do in his first term.
Ed: His staff prevented it.
Sam: His staff prevented it.
Ed: But he's got a different staff this time.
Sam: Well, he's specifically chosen people who won't say no to these kinds of things.
Ed: Yeah.
Sam: And hell, for that matter, all the Dodge stuff, you know, so when you talk about, you know,
Sam: are we no longer a democracy or whatever?
Sam: There is not that one mark, but they're all of these,
Sam: you know, basically American democracy was built on the norms around respecting
Sam: the institutions that were defining the country,
Sam: both the ones that were explicit in the constitution and ones that had developed
Sam: over time and enforcing the norms of certain behavior, like,
Sam: you know, Hey, if you lose an election, you gracefully say, oh,
Sam: well, I lost. I'll try again next time.
Sam: Norms around what kind of debate is appropriate and what kind is not,
Sam: and norms around lying is bad.
Sam: You can argue, but if you outright say something false, you will have repercussions for it.
Sam: All of those norms are out the window and have been for a while.
Ed: Well, the concept of what's called liberal democracy, which is what we have
Ed: had is a democracy with all people entitled,
Ed: depends upon people cooperating and working together and not going out and encouraging
Ed: a riot because they lost an election.
Ed: It's so much of it depends upon the guy who lost the election coming forward
Ed: and shaking hands and standing up with a new guy and saying,
Ed: this is our president and I salute him.
Ed: Once that norm starts breaking down, you get anarchy and out of anarchy very
Ed: quickly comes oligarchy, which is what Trump really wants.
Sam: And it becomes a very difficult spiral, too, because absolutely.
Sam: Because if the other side...
Sam: Continues to try to play by the old rules, they will lose very often.
Sam: Not always, not guaranteed, but yeah.
Ed: On the other hand, as I've said multiple times over the years,
Ed: if we adopt the policies and actions of our enemy, how are we going to explain
Ed: to our kids who the enemy is?
Sam: Exactly. Well, that's why I said it easily leads to a spiral because the other
Sam: side decides that they need to adopt the same tactics and then they just make it worse.
Sam: And it spirals and spirals until something does break.
Sam: And, you know, I know, you know, there's some people who are itching for,
Sam: you know, revolution at any time, but an actual revolution tends to be really bad for a long time.
Sam: So it's just, it's just a very hard situation to pull out of.
Sam: I mean, there are some countries that have pulled out of these things without
Sam: bloodshed, but it usually takes a while.
Sam: It's much harder to build these institutions and build these norms in the first
Sam: place than it is to destroy them.
Sam: So once you've destroyed them,
Sam: it's just really hard to get them back because the whole mindset of the country
Sam: changes in terms of what people expect is the normal way to operate,
Sam: what people expect is the only way to get things done.
Sam: If nobody believes that they can get what they want through the process and
Sam: no one follows or respects it anymore,
Sam: then like you said, you have a situation of anarchy, which tends to get worse
Sam: before it gets better on all kinds of metrics.
Sam: So I don't know you know I think we're we've,
Sam: we've gone a long way down that direction. Do I feel it's not recoverable at this point? No, no.
Sam: I have faith and I have confidence that this country will eventually pull out
Sam: of the disaster it chose in 2016 and chose again in 2024 on an even worse scenario.
Sam: But, you know, So I, hell, even after 2016, I was saying right away,
Sam: even if Trump only lasts one term, it'll take decades to recover from the damage he's done.
Sam: Giving him a second run, it's, it's going to be a long time.
Sam: It's going to be a long time.
Sam: Even if Donald Trump is out of office in three and a half years and we get a
Sam: string of quote-unquote good presidents,
Sam: good congresses after that, it's still going to take a long,
Sam: long, long, long time to undo the damage of these eight years.
Ed: And in the meantime, things like the climate change are going to continue coming
Ed: forward to make it even more difficult.
Sam: Yeah.
Ed: I think our economy is going to be screwed badly by the time Trump's done with it.
Sam: Well, this is where, like, does the rest of the world step up if we're not, you know?
Sam: And that leads to further American decline for us not taking the lead in all
Sam: kinds of things like this. But, you know, one hopes that, you know,
Sam: the rest of the world can pick up the slack.
Sam: But, you know, it's just as likely that, you know,
Sam: Trump and Putin and these folks get what they want in terms of a multipolar
Sam: world with spheres of influence that are competing against each other and each
Sam: doing their own thing that is not particularly helpful to the world as a whole.
Ed: Um you mean like h.g wells positive all.
Sam: Kinds of people did you know in 1984 also had that structure.
Ed: That's what i mean you know oh.
Sam: That's uh george orwell not.
Ed: Oh geez you're right i'm i'm thinking the wrong guy but uh excuse my age yeah
Ed: orwell yeah um but yeah triumph three countries.
Sam: Yeah, well, and honestly, this was how the world was generally perceived prior
Sam: to the 20th century anyway.
Sam: I mean, you know, the Portuguese and Spanish literally divided the world in
Sam: half and said, you've got this side of the line, you've got that side of the line.
Sam: And then the English took a huge chunk of it as well.
Sam: And it was all just sort of like the great powers competing in what parts of
Sam: the world do they quote unquote own.
Sam: And Trump's made it clear that like that's the kind
Sam: of world he would like to see again you know
Sam: people asked make America great again when are you talking about and there was
Sam: a lot of you know hey he's talking about the 1950s he himself has now made it
Sam: very clear that the time he thinks wistfully of and thinks America should go
Sam: back to is the 1890s specifically yes so yep.
Ed: Absolutely the the error that led up to the great depression.
Sam: Yeah robber barons and uh well.
Ed: A huge huge concentration of wealth and a very small number of people.
Sam: Yes and and the spheres
Sam: of influence we were just talking about across the world you know not quite
Sam: the close to the height of colonialism not quite i think i think it peaked into
Sam: early 1900s but yeah i mean anyway yes so so you're going anyway that's what that's.
Ed: Why i'm going to be there tomorrow.
Sam: That's why you're going to be there tomorrow and i hope we get some coverage
Sam: of these things one of the things i've noticed and people have pointed this
Sam: out before is of course the peaceful protests.
Sam: Don't get a lot of attention. You know, it's the ones that do turn violent,
Sam: that people get all kinds of news coverage and get on TV.
Sam: Like, this is not the first day of protest that's been called since Trump has been back in office.
Sam: And several of them have actually had quite large attendance in cities all over
Sam: the country, just like this one is expected to, where not only do you have big
Sam: crowds in the big cities,
Sam: but you have decent-sized crowds in smaller cities all across the country.
Sam: And this has happened on a number of occasions. And there have been other places
Sam: that have been having protests of one sort or another on a near-weekly basis
Sam: all the way straight through.
Sam: But they tend not to get attention unless they are disruptive,
Sam: unless they are violent.
Sam: You don't really see it. I mean, just on a smaller scale,
Sam: you know, I mentioned last week, you know, how I'm annoyed by my commute back
Sam: and forth, but almost every single day on that commute back and forth where
Sam: I'm going on I-5 from Seattle to Everett, Washington,
Sam: there are people on the bridges over the highway holding up signs of one sort
Sam: or another and, you know, waving at the cars below and trying to get attention.
Sam: Is that ever on the news? No.
Sam: I mean, hell, driving under them, I barely notice them these days.
Sam: I'm like, oh, there's some signs again.
Sam: But because they become part of the landscape and they're not going to make
Sam: the news because they're not disrupting anything.
Ed: I think they still accomplish something because people see them.
Ed: They do get some news commentary.
Ed: Periodically, people get interviewed from it. Yeah. And and the more people
Ed: that participate, the more people see it, whether or not the news reports it. It's almost.
Sam: And that's what's good about like things like No Kings, which are nationwide.
Sam: Like, you know, it used to be the model for these was we are going to have a
Sam: big event in Washington, D.C. And we want like hundreds of thousands,
Sam: millions of people to show up and march on the mall.
Sam: Or we're going to have a big event in CityX, you know, if it's something else.
Sam: And the problem is it's harder to get people there.
Sam: And, you know, most people across the country aren't going to see that directly.
Sam: Maybe it will make a big splash.
Sam: But this model that has been developing over the last few years,
Sam: I mean, And people could always do it, but I think technology is enabling it
Sam: more and more, I think is useful because people all over see it.
Sam: And like you said, it serves multiple purposes, even if it doesn't get wall-to-wall
Sam: coverage in the media all day long or whatever.
Sam: One is if you actually go to one of these things, you realize,
Sam: oh, I'm not alone. I am part of this bigger community that believes the same way I believe.
Sam: And I'm going to meet people. I'm going to network with people.
Sam: I'm hell. I'm even.
Sam: This part's annoying to me, but like if I RSVP, I sign up with some mailing
Sam: list, they're going to send me crap.
Sam: And, you know, and maybe some of these people will be inspired to do other things
Sam: and get involved more deeply.
Sam: You know, my wife, who's now a state rep, didn't start with events like this,
Sam: but she started being heavily involved in online communities after the 2016 election.
Sam: And gradually became more and more involved, became involved in in-person things
Sam: as well, helped or started helping to organize things, et cetera.
Sam: She organized a couple of like rally events, parade, things like this,
Sam: and was involved in person in a variety of others.
Sam: And, you know, she ended up a state rep, you know, just because she got more and more involved.
Sam: And, you know, out of every one of these that occurs, you may not get,
Sam: you know, hundreds of thousands of people who get more involved like that, but you'll get a few.
Sam: And it helps get the next generation of activists and politicians energized.
Sam: And even if that's not, you know, any particular person, like I said,
Sam: it helps build that awareness.
Sam: And I think especially in redder areas, having the blue-leaning people sort
Sam: of get together and know they're not alone is helpful.
Sam: But it's helpful everywhere. And like, you know, I mentioned the people waving
Sam: the signs over the highway.
Sam: Yeah. Even if I don't honk back, even if I'm just driving back and forth,
Sam: you know, there, there are thousands and thousands of people who just drove
Sam: under those signs and saw them.
Sam: And maybe you don't convince anybody.
Sam: Maybe you convince one or two people. I don't know. Maybe you get them thinking
Sam: in a way they weren't thinking before, but you show a bunch of people that, oh, yeah,
Sam: there actually are a bunch of people out there who care a lot about this,
Sam: and it's not a lost cause.
Sam: There's stuff we can do. So even if a lot of the stuff is performative right
Sam: now, I mean, let's be clear. Donald Trump won.
Sam: The Republicans took the Senate. The Republicans took the House.
Sam: The Republicans have been leading the Supreme Court for a number of years now.
Sam: There is not a lot that can be directly done in policy terms at the national level.
Sam: If you're in a blue state or a purple state, maybe.
Sam: But so a lot of this is, you know, solidarity and organizing and building up
Sam: for the next battle. Now that, you know.
Sam: And it does make a difference. We've talked about the taco thing with Trump,
Sam: you know, Trump always chickens out.
Sam: And even with this immigration stuff, there were reports in the last 48 hours
Sam: that he's reconsidering how aggressive ICE is being because people in the agricultural
Sam: industry have been calling him,
Sam: talking about how badly it's affecting them and how it's going to affect,
Sam: you know, this summer's crops.
Sam: And such, and that it will hit food prices and things like this.
Ed: Landscapers, roofers, all of these industries are, and that's,
Ed: you know, that's part of the foundation.
Ed: You know, it's hard to run a factory without a roof.
Sam: Yeah. And so Donald Trump is saying, ah, change is coming.
Sam: We might change some of this stuff because he's
Sam: discovering that going full on out Stephen Miller
Sam: may be losing him some losing him
Sam: support and what we found you know
Sam: immigration and tariffs both seem to be one
Sam: of the areas that he actually does have some deeply held opinions as opposed
Sam: to just doing whatever it takes to give him more power and more money but even
Sam: there he's proving to be somewhat practical where, you know,
Sam: if it's, if it looks like it's backfiring, he backs off.
Sam: And so I don't know there, there've been a number of cases where the, you know,
Sam: You know, really loud opposition has led to dropping polls, which in turn has
Sam: led to Trump backing off.
Sam: And so there you go. And not every time. And, you know, I fully expect in some
Sam: cases it'll make him dig in further.
Ed: But the trouble is is that even
Ed: if he if he backs down he's got guys like
Ed: head seth and steven miller and uh what's his name banner bannon bannon bannon
Ed: steven bannon these people are they don't back down because they were you know
Ed: miller doesn't give a damn i miller wants to see people with brown skin killed well just like.
Sam: We just saw with elon though like in the end And Trump is president.
Sam: If any of these, if Trump starts believing that any one of these people are
Sam: actually hurting him rather than helping him.
Ed: He may get rid of them.
Sam: He may get rid of them. He has no hesitancy to throw people overboard when they
Sam: are no longer useful to him.
Sam: Or when he senses any level of disloyalty.
Ed: Yep. Nope. We'll see. We've got three and a half years, probably.
Sam: Okay. uh anything else on uh on no kings i.
Ed: Think we've covered most of the topics i had.
Sam: Let's hear about we're done thank you very much everybody i gotta hear about.
Ed: A movie first.
Sam: Okay well let's take a break and then uh maybe the next segment can be movies
Sam: you can you can do some movies too um and or tv shows or books or whatever you
Sam: want the next segment will be media.
Sam: So time for time for a break. And as usual, I have to find the right break to run.
Sam: This time, it will be this one.
Break: Okie dokie. Here it comes.
Break: It was just my internet being stupid.
Break: My internet being stupid is a new song we will make.
Break: Do you believe Come on, come on, come on.
Break: I'm tired. What's wrong? I'm really tired.
Break: You, you, you, it's, it's amazing to get the show on the road.
Break: There's a road? There's a road? Oh my God, there's a road.
Sam: And we are back.
Ed: Timed it perfectly.
Sam: As always, you're quite the consummate professional there. Okay, so let's do this.
Sam: I'm going to do two movies. And in between, maybe you have some media you've
Sam: seen recently that you would like to talk about as well.
Sam: So I will do the first one, then I'll ask you for one. Then I'll do one.
Sam: Then I'll ask you for one. And then we'll take another break and see where we are.
Sam: I see Ed like thinking deeply about what he might want to talk about.
Ed: I'm thinking the last movie I saw was Wicked.
Sam: Was which?
Ed: Wicked.
Sam: Almost a year ago. That's okay. You can talk about that. Or you probably watched
Sam: some TV or read some books. Those are fine too.
Ed: Actually, I guess that's about as recently as you've been hitting them too, isn't it?
Sam: Yeah. Well, the one I'm about to do, I watched on August 19th of last year.
Sam: So we're not quite a year in the past. And this, again, this is why I have to
Sam: start doing like two a week instead of one.
Sam: But I'll try to make them slightly faster, I guess. Is faster the right word?
Sam: Okay. This first one is, I mentioned this last week,
Sam: it's Judas and the Black Messiah, which is
Sam: a a biographical historical drama
Sam: from 2021 okay and
Sam: and i told yvonne last week it was more a film festival film than it was like
Sam: a mass popular film that everybody would know about you know it's its budget
Sam: was only 26 million dollars and it made 7.5 million so it lost money at the box office.
Sam: But the basic thing is it's a... It is...
Sam: Okay, the Wikipedia one-liner is, the film is about the betrayal against Fred Hampton,
Sam: chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party in late 1960s Chicago,
Sam: by William O'Neill, an FBI informant.
Sam: And so it's a biopic so
Sam: it's you know based on a true story but fictionalized and
Sam: you know so they're you know it's not an actual documentary
Sam: there are actors playing the parts they've made up dialogue for situations that
Sam: you know we don't have actual transcripts of etc and and in as is usual for
Sam: these kinds of things i don't know specifically about this one but for this kind of drama.
Sam: They often sort of make composite characters so that you have less people to
Sam: keep track of than real life. They simplify certain situations.
Sam: They heighten others for the drama.
Sam: In any case, it was a, you know.
Sam: Basically a situation where this guy,
Sam: William O'Neill, was arrested in Chicago for trying to steal a car by pretending to be an FBI agent.
Sam: That was his scheme for like stealing the car instead of like,
Sam: you know, pulling a gun on somebody or whatever, he pretended to be an agent and take the car,
Sam: you know, and he was caught and they basically made a deal with him that if
Sam: he was acting as an informant for the government and worked to try to infiltrate the Black Panthers,
Sam: that they wouldn't charge him for the crime that he had clearly done.
Sam: And so over the next few years, you know, he got into the Black Panthers and
Sam: rose up in the ranks of the Black Panthers while always secretly being an informant for the feds.
Sam: And then eventually this whole situation, well, I'm mixing a couple things up.
Sam: So the guy I talked about got close to this other guy, Hampton,
Sam: who was forming alliance with various gangs while working with the Black Panthers as well.
Sam: Hampton became the one who became further up in the leadership and you know he was,
Sam: eventually betrayed, like it said.
Sam: Yes, yes. Hampton was betrayed by O'Neill. Anyway, that's the drama of the thing. Spoilers, sorry.
Sam: And I'm vacillating on the spoilers.
Sam: The whole situation explodes at the end. There's significant consequences and
Sam: we see how all that plays out.
Sam: The only actor I recognized in this thing was Martin Sheen, who,
Sam: who played, who did he play exactly?
Sam: Someone high up in the, did he actually play Hoover?
Sam: I forget who he played. He played someone high up in the FBI and,
Sam: but I'll give it a thumbs up. It was good.
Sam: It, it, it, It was not, you know, as a, as this kind of sort of biographical,
Sam: historical drama, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: It's definitely not your like, it's not like watching the superhero movie or
Sam: going to an action film or whatever.
Sam: It's more serious than that. It's more, it's not quite documentary style,
Sam: but it's getting there. But it was compelling, and it was a little slice of history I didn't know.
Sam: Also, like most things like this, it's coming to you from a particular point of view.
Sam: So it's hard when you watch this knowing, okay, how much of this was real?
Sam: How much of it is spinning it to make this guy look good?
Sam: How much of it is spinning it to make this guy look bad, you know,
Sam: and as opposed to a, what, what really happened, you know, like,
Sam: and I, and by the way, Martin Sheen was indeed playing Jagger Hoover.
Sam: So look, look that up while, while I was talking, but yeah, so it's,
Sam: it's hard to tell. Like, I mean, I guess that's true even of documentaries.
Sam: They're coming from a point of view, too.
Sam: And sometimes it's more neutral. Sometimes it's not.
Sam: But regardless, it was compelling. There's a slice of history I didn't know
Sam: about sort of 1960s Black Panthers versus FBI stuff going on in Chicago,
Sam: which I'm sure was mirrored in other places around the country as well.
Sam: And I don't want to say it was fun. It was not fun, but it was good.
Sam: So that that's my review of that one and yeah your turn well.
Ed: I as i said i the last movie i saw was almost a year ago somehow we just don't
Ed: seem to get to them very much anymore for whatever reason too busy i guess uh.
Sam: And you know pandemic kind of broke that habit
Sam: in a lot of people too even the ones that were going regularly but
Sam: it's starting to pick up i've gone to a couple movies in person
Sam: i went to a movie in person yesterday i will not talk about it today i'll talk
Sam: about it like next year sometime probably if i go at this pace but and and i
Sam: also saw wicked in the theater but i have not gotten to it in order yet so i'm
Sam: not going to talk about it but i'll let you talk about it other than well.
Ed: Rather than that.
Sam: I'll preview my thoughts what.
Ed: We did do.
Sam: Is uh yes on.
Ed: And on Oscar night, our son and his wife and our daughter and her husband,
Ed: we all went to an Oscars party at the local theater here.
Sam: Okay.
Ed: It was great fun. They have an open bar and food catered by a bunch of the restaurants in town.
Ed: And then when the Oscars start, we all go in and fill up the whole theater.
Ed: I have never watched an Oscars show clear through.
Ed: I watch a few minutes of it and get bored out of my skull and go off and do something else.
Sam: I think years ago, like I'm,
Sam: I went through like maybe two or three years where I actually like forced myself
Sam: to watch all of the major award shows from beginning to end. But then.
Ed: That's your OCD coming in again.
Sam: That's my OCD coming in. I was like, I'll watch all of them.
Sam: So I know what's going on.
Sam: And, you know, I'll watch the Oscars. So I'll have an idea.
Sam: Oh, these were the important films of the year. Blah, blah, blah.
Sam: I'll watch the Grammys. So I'll know what's going on with that kind of stuff.
Sam: I'll watch the Emmys. I don't think I did the Tonys.
Ed: But if, if, if somebody does an Oscars party like that, you know,
Ed: in a theater, I highly recommend it because somehow being in the audience,
Ed: being in a live audience there, it really was kind of fun.
Sam: And we all stayed for the whole show.
Ed: Yeah.
Sam: Because after watching a few of them on TV, I decided, okay,
Sam: I never need to do that again.
Sam: So since then I've only watched highlights if, if there weren't.
Ed: You know, even a funny joke that someone tells and you're sitting alone, you don't laugh at it.
Ed: When you're in a crowd like that, laughter and enjoyment is contagious.
Ed: Right. And pretty soon things aren't even necessary that become kind of entertaining
Ed: and fun. So, yeah, it was a good time.
Ed: If there's one going on, I would say go to it because if it includes dinners
Ed: and drink and everything else, I don't know, it's $45, $50, $60 a person.
Ed: It's worth it. It's five, six hours of entertainment, and it's clearly worth it.
Sam: Now, watching the Oscars in person at a party didn't inspire you to immediately
Sam: go out and seek out where you could watch all those movies?
Ed: No.
Sam: Not for any of them?
Ed: A couple of them. Well, we had seen a couple, three of them last because we
Ed: did go to, we had seen Wicked and we saw Oppenheimer and a few of the other
Ed: shows that were nominated.
Ed: But no, I just, we just somehow don't seem to get to the theater that much.
Ed: We're even a contributing member.
Sam: Now, Ed, you don't have to watch
Sam: movies at the theater. Like 99% of the movies I watch, I watch at home.
Ed: Well, I'm doing that. My wife sort of dictates what we watch.
Ed: She watches a lot of them and she likes to get the old series or any series
Ed: and binge watch it over three or four days. You will watch 10 years of episodes.
Ed: So right now we're watching one that's, it's an FBI versus the CIA thing to
Ed: do with a lady who's been tattooed. I don't remember the name of it.
Sam: That's helpful.
Ed: And the tattoo, she was kidnapped and brainwashed, and the tattoos are clues
Ed: to crimes that are coming up.
Ed: So they solve what a tattoo means, and then they go out and stop the crime.
Ed: That's not a good idea. It's kind of fun.
Ed: Tonight's episode, geez, I'm going into another one. This will be my second.
Ed: Tonight's episode showed that
Ed: the leader of the FBI group had participated in a crime arrest program.
Sam: Okay, is it called Blindspot?
Ed: That's it, Blindspot.
Sam: Okay, I've been frantically Googling over here the things you've said to try to find it.
Ed: That is it, yeah.
Sam: Blindspot, and let's see, it was on TV from 2015 to 2020, five seasons.
Ed: Five seasons, woo! We're going to see a lot of it then. But the leader of the
Ed: group participated in a basically illegal wiretapping and got a whole bunch
Ed: of people arrested over the years.
Ed: And then tonight that became an issue in the episode.
Ed: And they all disagreed. This is law. It's illegal in this country. Not supposed to do that.
Ed: But if we turn you in, all these really bad guys that you got arrested are going to be released.
Ed: And they addressed, I thought, with, you know, some depth.
Ed: And the characters did it. But it has the CIA guy is, you know,
Ed: someone who ought to be stabbed in the back in a dark alley.
Ed: And they portray him that way.
Ed: But, hey, it's a fun show. But, you know, it's worth watching.
Sam: Thumbs up?
Ed: Thumbs up, yeah. I'll give it a thumbs up.
Sam: Okay.
Ed: The Oscar party is definitely both thumbs up.
Sam: Okay, I will do my next movie, and then I'll ask you for one more thing.
Sam: Okay, my next movie, speaking of something that the other movie was not,
Sam: this is a superhero movie.
Sam: This was X-Men from the year 2000.
Sam: So this was the original X-Men movie. There's obviously been a series of them following up from that.
Sam: And it yeah let's see it's
Sam: like it's it's not is
Sam: it the origin not quite the origin it starts at the beginning it
Sam: starts with magneto in 1944 nazi
Sam: or occupied poland and then
Sam: it then it zoop zoops zoops is
Sam: that a word zooms forward zoops okay
Sam: zoop zoop anyway then
Sam: it it brings a bunch of the x-men together and you know they and you know it's
Sam: a superhero movie i could i could read you the plot of it but you know i i i
Sam: don't know if it's sort of like rom-coms.
Ed: It's always the same plot.
Sam: Yeah well you know this is i'll
Sam: read you the the the again the
Sam: the shortest part of the description from wikipedia
Sam: the film depicts a world where an
Sam: unknown proportion of people are mutants possessing superhuman
Sam: powers that make them distrusted by normal humans
Sam: it focuses on mutants wolverine and rogue as they are brought into a conflict
Sam: between two groups with radically different approaches to bringing about the
Sam: acceptance of mutant kind charles xavier's x-men and the Brotherhood of Mutants led by Magneto.
Sam: And so, there you go.
Sam: I'm gonna give it a thumbs up.
Sam: You know, wavering towards the thumbs sideways, I remember, you know,
Sam: and again, this has been almost a year since I saw the stupid movie,
Sam: but it's been ten months. But I...
Sam: You know, I kind of grayed within a curve within the genre.
Sam: It wasn't particularly memorable, but I remember having fun while I watched it.
Sam: And for this kind of movie, that's what you want.
Sam: You know, you just want a couple hours of escapism where, you know.
Sam: Whatever happens and you watch it play out.
Sam: And they use their superpowers and they have some battles.
Sam: And there's a little bit of human drama around it.
Sam: Typically for me, like the superhero movies that I will give a flat out like
Sam: thumbs down to are the ones that really lean heavily into the action components
Sam: and away from characters.
Sam: Like I, I find myself like almost tuning out, like when they're actually in
Sam: the big climactic battle, it's sort of like, okay, tell me when the battle's
Sam: over. I know some people watch these things just for that.
Sam: I kind of watch the even superhero movies.
Sam: I watch for, are there interesting plot points?
Sam: Is there, are there interesting interactions between the characters?
Sam: Are they, you know, is there good dialogue that I enjoy that's like clever in some way?
Sam: Those are the things that like get me and
Sam: and make me interested and i
Sam: again i don't see anything i i i'm not
Sam: remembering anything that like this was outstanding on any of those fronts but
Sam: it was it was fine it was good it was you know it was entertaining as it needed
Sam: to be i didn't feel like it was too too so heavy on the action that i just got
Sam: bored and annoyed because that was all there was.
Sam: And, you know, and I don't know, maybe I shouldn't grade on a curve.
Sam: Maybe that should be a thumb sideways when it was just like,
Sam: oh, it was okay. I don't know.
Sam: Uh, I, I tend to leave the thumb sideways more like thumbs down is just straight up. Like, oh, I hated it.
Sam: Unambiguously. I hated it.
Ed: The Blair Witch Project.
Sam: No, no, you gave a thumbs down to Blair Witch. I actually thought it was okay.
Sam: We've talked about this before.
Ed: Yeah, I know.
Sam: But yeah. Maybe I should save the thumbs up for the ones that I thought were really outstanding.
Sam: But they're very few. Those are few and far between.
Sam: Most movies are, eh, it was an okay couple hours.
Sam: And I leave, Thumbs Sideways is a little bit below that, and Thumbs Down is I absolutely hated it.
Sam: Okay that was mine so then the next one i want to know because you mentioned
Sam: it a couple times what did you think of wicked part one.
Ed: I liked it a lot yeah it was we saw
Ed: the uh the stage presentation when we were
Ed: in san in uh jacksonville and it was superb we took one of the grandkids to
Ed: it as i recall but the movie i thought was just spectacular the singing is good
Ed: The costumes are exotic Just overall, highly entertaining,
Ed: You don't go to it to see the plot The plot's sort of thin But I really thought
Ed: it was excellent Well done.
Sam: And well worth seeing I'll give a preview Although I'll talk about Wicked in
Sam: order When I eventually get to it some year,
Sam: But first of all, I also saw the play my
Sam: wife my daughter and i saw it
Sam: on broadway with the original cast so we
Sam: we it was still adina mizel and and what's her name who played glinda i'm i
Sam: remember i i i am upset that i am not remembering it off the top of my head
Sam: christian chanelworth oh okay yeah so i i saw it would be Glinda.
Sam: Yes. So I saw it with, with, with the original cast on Broadway.
Sam: It was great on Broadway, liked it at that point.
Sam: And actually like, so it was one of the few movies where I actually brought
Sam: up like to, to my daughter and to Alex, Brandy was out of town at the time.
Sam: Do you guys want to see this? Like not, not only while it's still in the theaters,
Sam: but fairly soon after it opened, we saw it like, we didn't see it on opening
Sam: day, but we saw it like a week later or something like that.
Sam: And my, my preview is I also, I agree with you. Thumbs up. It was, it was good.
Sam: Front to back, kept my attention. We took my mom to it.
Sam: Her review was, it was too loud.
Sam: She had to keep her thumbs in her ears the whole time because the volume was
Sam: too loud in the theater we went to.
Ed: I have to agree, the theaters play stuff too damn loud.
Ed: I'm deaf at this point. I have hearing aids. I turn my hearing aids off in the
Ed: movies because it's just, I don't know why you make it so loud it's it's a lot
Ed: parts of it are so loud that there's damaging to those of you who still have good ears.
Sam: Yeah i i mean it's one
Sam: of the reasons they want to make it really and truly immersive they want to
Sam: make it different than what you can get at home so they want to crank it up
Sam: in in all kinds of different ways they want to make it absolutely impossible
Sam: for you to get distracted by other things you are you are going to be paying
Sam: attention to that movie you know,
Sam: but yeah maybe I'll talk more about it when it comes up in order but I agree
Sam: thumbs up for Wicked it was a good movie let's take another break real quick and then when we return,
Sam: we will come up with one more topic and this time we will make it a newsy topic I think,
Sam: who knows maybe we'll come up with something else that isn't But,
Sam: you know, probably newsy.
Sam: So anyway, back after this. And this is a Wiki of the Day one. So here we go.
Break: Do, do, do. Hello. This is Standard Raveena.
Break: I'm here to let you know about Sam the Curmudgeon's other podcasts.
Break: The Wiki of the Day podcasts. Wiki of the Day comes in three varieties.
Break: Popular, random, and featured.
Break: Each highlights a new Wikipedia article each day. They just pick the articles differently.
Break: This week on Featured Wiki of the Day, you would have heard this summary for Sudasticus.
Break: Pseudasticus, meaning false astachos, in comparison to the extant crayfish genus,
Break: is an extinct genus of decoupod crustaceans that lived during the Jurassic period
Break: in Europe, and possibly the Cretaceous period in Lebanon.
Break: Many species have been assigned to it, though the placement of some species
Break: remains uncertain and others have been reassigned to different genera.
Break: Fossils attributable to this genus were first described by Georg Zuhmunster
Break: in 1839 under the name Bolina Pustulosa, but the generic name was changed in
Break: 1861 after Albert Oppel noted that it was preoccupied.
Break: The genus has been placed into different families by numerous authors,
Break: historically being assigned to Nephropidae or Protostagidae.
Break: Currently, it is believed to
Break: be a member of Stenakiridae reaching up to 6 cm, 2.4 in, in total length.
Break: Sudastachis was a small animal. Members of this genus have a crayfish-like build,
Break: possessing long antennae, a triangular rostrum and a frontmost pair of appendages
Break: enlarged into long and narrow pincers.
Break: Deep grooves are present on the carapace, which is around the same length as the abdomen.
Break: The surface of the carapace is usually uneven, with either small tubercles or pits.
Break: Sexual dimorphism is known in P. pustulosis, with the pincers of females being
Break: more elongated than those of the males.
Break: There is evidence of possible gregarious behavior in P.
Break: Lemurvices in the form of multiple individuals preserved alongside each other,
Break: possibly killed in a mass mortality event.
Break: With the oldest known record dating to the Cinemarion age of the early Jurassic,
Break: and possible species surviving into the Cinemanian stage of the late Cretaceous,
Break: Pseudasticus has a long temporal range and was a widespread taxon.
Break: Fossils of this animal were first found in the Solenhofen limestone of Germany,
Break: but have also been recorded from France, England, and Lebanon.
Break: All species in this genus lived in marine environments.
Break: That's all there is to it.
Break: See? Fun, entertaining, educational, and short.
Break: Okay, now look for and subscribe to the Wiki of the Day family of podcasts on
Break: your podcast playing software of choice, or just go to wikioftheday.com to check out our archives.
Break: Now back to curmudgeon's corner. Do, do, do.
Sam: Well, there we go. I hope you learned a lot, Ed.
Ed: You know, as she was reading that, it occurred to me,
Ed: What must be the life of a scientist when his grandchild sits on his knee and
Ed: says, what did you do, grandpa? And he says, oh, I classified worms from 10 million years ago.
Sam: Yes, well, you know, this one was a crustacean.
Sam: But yes, there are scientists out there whose entire career is classifying worms
Sam: from 10 million years ago or whatever.
Ed: There you go.
Sam: You know, so, you know, and, and, and there are certainly some times where I
Sam: am jealous of that career and that, that would be, you know, that would be fun.
Ed: When my phone rang, when my phone rang at one o'clock in the morning for someone
Ed: who had broken an ankle, I was sort of thinking maybe classifying worms would be nice.
Sam: Yes. And not the intestinal parasite kind.
Ed: Right.
Sam: Anyway. Anyway, so Ed, do you have a preference for a last topic of the show?
Ed: Well, I guess the most current thing, I mean, we've already talked pretty much
Ed: about what's going on in L.A. and in our presidency.
Sam: We touched on it.
Ed: And I'm tired of talking about him anyway.
Sam: Okay.
Ed: Yeah. But how about just a real brief rundown of what's going on in Israel, which is, to me,
Ed: the Israel attack on Iran is what I would call an offensive operation.
Ed: And since it was preemptive, which means that Iran had not committed any military
Ed: action against it, might be planning one, I don't know.
Ed: But that was, by most international standards, was a crime, an offensive assault
Ed: on a neighboring nation's
Ed: that is breaking all the rules.
Ed: But more of a problem probably coming is that the whole Middle East,
Ed: this is going to throw the whole Middle East.
Ed: I really think that place is likely to explode big and bad.
Ed: There's a bunch of people from Egypt who are marching towards Israel that I hear today.
Ed: Not an army, a group of people.
Sam: I have not heard that at this point.
Ed: I didn't hear the description of it. I just heard a brief thing on it.
Ed: I don't know anything about it.
Sam: One key thing here is that as we are recording this on Friday night U.S.
Sam: Time, this is still ongoing.
Sam: Israel is still attacking Iran, and Iran is still retaliating against Israel.
Sam: These things are still happening as we are speaking.
Sam: So let's talk a few of the details of this.
Sam: As you said, it was preemptive. that the basic theory and, you know,
Sam: Netanyahu has been wanting to do this for at least a decade.
Sam: Oh, yeah. And they've done a few smaller attacks on Iran.
Sam: But fundamentally, the notion is, hey, look, Iran has a nuclear capacity.
Sam: They've been developing over the years.
Sam: Iran has insisted up and down from the very beginning that they have no intention
Sam: of doing nuclear weapons, that this is a civilian program for nuclear energy, et cetera.
Sam: Their religious leader has on a few occasions actually issued statements saying
Sam: that the use of nuclear weapons is a horrible sin and should never be contemplated,
Sam: et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Sam: But nevertheless, Western intelligence agencies, including both Israel and the U.S.
Sam: And others, don't believe them.
Ed: The International Atomic Energy Association also says, They're lying.
Sam: Well, no. Well, the last time they were in there for sure, it wasn't that clear
Sam: cut in terms of their, like wit.
Sam: We'll get back to it. Let's finish up the scenario. I'll get back to that.
Sam: But fundamentally, all of the Western intelligence agencies believe that that's just a cover.
Sam: What they're trying to do is even if they don't build a bomb today,
Sam: they want to make sure their capabilities are such that if they decided to build
Sam: a bomb, they could do so in days.
Sam: They want to have everything in place so that, you know, at a moment's notice, they could decide,
Sam: you know, actually we do need a nuclear bomb and have it almost instantaneously
Sam: before anybody could stop them.
Sam: And the West's position on that is that's equivalent.
Sam: Even if all you are actually doing with your nuclear program is civilian uses,
Sam: if what you build out is such that you could switch it to a military use overnight,
Sam: then we don't want you having that, Let alone if you actually build the nuclear devices.
Sam: And so, you know, there have been, you know, like I said, occasional Israeli
Sam: attacks to take out one thing or another in Iran, or take out an individual scientist or two,
Sam: attack a facility or two, going back decades.
Sam: This attack is
Sam: different it is much larger in scale they
Sam: have taken out a significant portion of
Sam: iraq's military leadership they have taken
Sam: out and as individuals not just we're taking out a a facility no they were specifically
Sam: targeting individuals in leadership they were specifically targeting most of
Sam: the lead scientists that were involved in this effort, and they're taking out facilities.
Sam: They're taking out nuclear facilities. They're also taking out other aspects
Sam: of Iran's offensive capabilities.
Sam: They're taking out air bases. They're destroying planes, all of this kind of
Sam: stuff on a fairly massive scale.
Sam: And, you know, the stated intention being we want to completely remove the risk
Sam: of them building out this nuclear program.
Sam: Now, having said that, I've heard a number of military analysts and experts
Sam: in what Iran actually has been doing here say that, well,
Sam: one of their two big nuclear enrichment sites is buried deep,
Sam: deep, deep within a mountain.
Sam: And even if you destroyed all of the surface entrances and buried it and cut
Sam: it off from external power, et cetera, that's just a delay until they dig it back out again.
Sam: Because Israel is not doing anything,
Sam: does not have, and I'm going to caveat this in a second, they do not have the
Sam: type of massive bunker buster bombs that could potentially get to this underground facility.
Sam: Now, when I heard someone say that, I said, well, except we all know,
Sam: actually, Israel has nukes too.
Sam: Now, there's no reports that they're using them, but at least in theory,
Sam: they probably could break open that mountain if they wanted to.
Sam: But anyway, the massive attack from all reports so far, it's been very effective.
Sam: The Iranians have, of course, responded. From all reports, their response has
Sam: not been very effective.
Sam: However, unlike the last time that Israel and Iran had a tit-for-tat last year
Sam: sometime, I forget exactly when it was, but this time, a few did get through to Israel.
Sam: There have been some actual hits on Tel Aviv.
Sam: I believe it was like the Israeli army headquarters was hit.
Sam: So, you know, now most of it has been stopped on the way, but there have been some hits back.
Sam: And so, again, as we are speaking, it is continuing.
Sam: The Israelis actually said explicitly they expect this to last several days.
Sam: And we'll see. You know, of course, what everybody worries about is what you said, Ed.
Sam: Does it spiral out of control to something even bigger that involves more countries in the region?
Sam: One thing that was potentially, you know, Iran had threatened before this happened
Sam: that if Israel did attack like that, Iran would hold the U.S. to blame.
Sam: So the U.S. has been very vocal in saying we had nothing to do with this.
Sam: This was just the Israelis.
Sam: Iran, you better not attack us because then we will get involved.
Sam: The U.S., by all reports, was not involved in the offensive strikes against Iran.
Sam: However, the U.S. has been involved in helping to take out incoming weapons
Sam: heading towards Israel.
Sam: So we have been involved in that sense.
Sam: A couple other interesting points on this, and then I'll throw it open to discussion again.
Sam: There have been conflicting reports on exactly the U.S. stance on this.
Sam: The initial sort of leak out of this was there was, first of all, the U.S.
Sam: Did know in advance.
Sam: The U.S. started moving to take non-essential personnel out of the region several
Sam: days before this attack happened. They were evacuating families from embassies in the region.
Sam: They were moving various military assets further away from Iran, etc. So the U.S.
Sam: Had a heads up that it was happening. The initial reports out of this were that
Sam: on Monday there was a phone call between Netanyahu and Donald Trump that was
Sam: reportedly very contentious because Donald Trump, if you remember,
Sam: is trying to renegotiate a new Iran deal on the nuclear weapons.
Sam: Now, rewind a little bit.
Sam: There was a deal in place that Obama had put in place that basically had,
Sam: in exchange for some sanctions relief.
Sam: The Iranians agreed to limit their refinement of uranium, limit their nuclear
Sam: program in a bunch of ways, let the inspectors back in, all this kind of stuff.
Sam: And to your comment about inspectors before, the inspector reports were that
Sam: Iran was living up to that deal.
Sam: Now, the Netanyahu and a bunch of conservatives in the U.S.,
Sam: including Donald Trump, had a big problem with this deal because they read it
Sam: as this deal allows Iran to build nuclear weapons.
Sam: And the reason, as far as anyone can tell was because the deal had an end date.
Sam: The deal basically said, we have all these restrictions in place for 10 years,
Sam: but there was no agreement past 10 years on what would happen.
Sam: Now, of course, the Obama administration's stance on that was the intention
Sam: was to build a trust during those 10 years and then continue negotiations on
Sam: what things would look like after that.
Sam: And potentially, no one would say this out loud, but if you could improve relationships
Sam: enough during those 10 years, maybe you would even normalize relationships at some point.
Sam: And, you know, I solved the nuclear issue as part of the way.
Sam: There was also a lot of contention about how the nuclear deal that Obama negotiated
Sam: was only about nuclear weapons and nuclear development.
Sam: It did not include Iran.
Sam: There's a difference. It did not
Sam: include Iran's other activities to be militarily involved in the region.
Sam: So it did not involve their development of missiles. It did not involve their
Sam: participation in the war in Yemen.
Sam: It did not involve their participation with various groups in Lebanon and Syria
Sam: and even Hamas, all of these things.
Sam: And so when Donald Trump came in, one of the very first things he did was pull out of this agreement.
Sam: And of course, Iran is like, okay, well, if you've reneged on the agreement, we do too.
Sam: And that's when they resume development.
Sam: And so now Donald Trump got back into the presidency and he is apparently,
Sam: they have now had five direct meetings between Americans and Iranians.
Sam: I will give Donald Trump some credit.
Sam: Like one of the things that he has no compulsions against doing that I think
Sam: is actually the right approach as opposed to, you know, he's just talking directly to the Iranians.
Sam: None of this like will work through intermediaries, whatever.
Sam: No. There's a U.S. envoy talking to an Iranian envoy straight up.
Sam: We're going to negotiate this, whatever.
Sam: He did the same thing with with North Korea when he was president last time.
Sam: This is something that Obama and Biden won't do.
Sam: They'll they'll like work through intermediaries and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: And, you know, in some cases, it's just like, you know, yes,
Sam: just just get them in a room and start talking. We recognize that you may not
Sam: like him, but at some point you need to talk to him and talking through intermediaries
Sam: doesn't really help anything.
Sam: Just talk to them. But anyway, there are five meetings that already happened.
Sam: Apparently, as far as anybody has reported, what Donald Trump was trying to
Sam: get out of them was essentially just going back to the agreement he'd ripped
Sam: up last time he was president.
Sam: With maybe some small minor
Sam: changes sprinkled around the edges so he could say that
Sam: he was right to kill the Obama deal and this
Sam: one's oh so much better but substantively it
Sam: was about the same but the Iranians weren't budging
Sam: on I think the sticking point I heard was
Sam: they still wanted to do some of
Sam: their uranium enrichment because they stick to the line They have a civilian
Sam: program that they are legally allowed to do under the non-proliferation treaty
Sam: that they signed with certain reporting requirements and etc.
Sam: And they want to be able to do what they're supposed to be allowed to do under that treaty.
Sam: And they were not budging on that. And so back to the meeting between Trump and Netanyahu,
Sam: Trump was apparently trying to get Netanyahu not to do this because he wanted
Sam: to continue his negotiations with Iran because, you know,
Sam: This guy wants a Nobel Peace Prize. You know, he'll solve Ukraine in one day.
Sam: He'll solve Gaza in five days. He'll solve the Iranian issue.
Sam: One of these things, he wants to get a Nobel Peace Prize out of.
Sam: But anyway, he was telling Netanyahu, please don't do this right now.
Sam: We are actively negotiating with Iran.
Sam: Give peace a chance. You know, we want to, we're going to try to make this do
Sam: this. We're going to try to make this happen. We're going to get a deal.
Sam: And Netanyahu is like, no, absolutely not. Because Netanyahu never wanted a peace deal out of this.
Sam: He never wanted some scenario where Iran is bound by some agreement that may
Sam: or may not be enforced over the years.
Sam: He hated the agreement Obama put together, even though by all objective reports,
Sam: it was doing what it was supposed to be doing and keeping Iran from developing beyond a certain point.
Sam: He was never happy with that. He does not want a deal now.
Sam: He wants to just go in there and destroy as much as he possibly can.
Sam: And there was reporting in the last 24 hours that the Israelis recognized they
Sam: probably can't actually fully destroy the nuclear program in Iran,
Sam: but they want to weaken it enough to delay it significantly.
Sam: And they're making noises about hoping that this gives the Iranian people an
Sam: opportunity to overthrow their government, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: But, okay, let's get real here.
Sam: The one way, better than any other, to bring people behind a leader who isn't
Sam: necessarily that popular in the first place is an external attack.
Sam: You know, George W. Bush was not super popular in the first few months of his presidency.
Sam: I mean, it was middling, okay, he wasn't like as unpopular as Donald Trump is,
Sam: but he wasn't like a super popular president.
Sam: Or, sorry, I want to, both him and, well, let's talk George W. first. Then we had 9-11.
Sam: His approval rating went up to like 90 fucking percent, you know,
Sam: because the country had been attacked and everyone rallied around him.
Sam: And the afterglow of that lasted for years, you know, and until he started killing
Sam: it himself with the Iraq war.
Sam: George H.W. Bush had a similar big bump during the first Iraq war where,
Sam: you know, and that wasn't us being attacked, but we were at war and people rally around the leader.
Sam: And so, you know, if there was any chance of Iran liberalizing over time,
Sam: the quickest way to kill it is something like this.
Sam: And even more literally, there was an Iranian leader who was one of the chief
Sam: negotiators in the negotiation with Donald Trump's team,
Sam: who had made some statements last week about how the Iranians wanted a deal,
Sam: and they liked this process,
Sam: and they thought we could get somewhere, and they were willing to put on restrictions
Sam: in exchange for various things, and that these conversations were productive.
Sam: And Donald Trump, on his social media, reposted the statement from this Iranian
Sam: who was just killed by Iran yesterday.
Sam: You know, so one of the people who was actively involved in the negotiations
Sam: with Donald Trump, actually apparently several of them were,
Sam: Donald Trump also tweeted or tweeted,
Sam: truthed, whatever social media he used, basically saying, yeah,
Sam: but he basically said, look,
Sam: you know, we were coming towards a deal, But unfortunately, most of the people
Sam: we were talking to are dead now.
Sam: But Iran can still make a deal if they want to. Let's talk.
Sam: Meanwhile, the Iranians have
Sam: officially said they were supposed to meet again on Sunday this weekend.
Sam: The Iranians are like, yeah, no, that's not happening.
Sam: You know, duh. And I got to believe, like, in addition to like actually destroying
Sam: the things they're destroying and killing the people they're killing,
Sam: that one of Israel's actual explicit goals, if you looked at their planning,
Sam: was to kill these negotiations.
Sam: They had no interest in these negotiations going anywhere.
Ed: My guess is that's exactly right.
Sam: Yeah. And finally, one last thing related to the meeting between Netanyahu and Trump.
Sam: I mentioned that a lot of the initial reporting was that this was a very contentious
Sam: meeting and Donald Trump was like, no, don't do it. And Netanyahu was,
Sam: yeah, we're going to do it.
Sam: And that basically Netanyahu explicitly defied Donald Trump's wishes in order to do that.
Sam: There has been subsequent reporting that says, even though that is what the
Sam: Trump administration is saying publicly,
Sam: that privately, at the actual meeting, they did not express any objections whatsoever
Sam: and, in fact, gave a green light to this.
Ed: Could be.
Sam: Could be. Like, can't trust anything any of these people say.
Sam: Netanyahu and Trump are both liars and disingenuous in all kinds of different areas.
Sam: So there's no reason to trust either of them until you have sort of reports
Sam: from independent third parties.
Sam: And I don't think we have that at all right now. We have sort of Israel saying
Sam: one thing, Trump saying another.
Sam: And the whole notion is that they made a private deal, but publicly agreed to
Sam: say something different.
Sam: And I think part of this was coming out because it was actually,
Sam: the first narrative was looking bad for Donald Trump because it was basically
Sam: like he tried to get Netanyahu to act in a certain way. and Netanyahu told him to go fuck himself.
Sam: And that doesn't make Donald Trump look particularly good.
Sam: So maybe this counter spin here now to try to reframe that in a way that says,
Sam: oh, no, actually, this is once again just Donald Trump playing four-dimensional chess.
Sam: So, I don't know. What do you think of all this, Ed? I know you're scared of
Sam: escalation. Anything else?
Ed: I'm not sure how we prevent it from escalating you know, they flew through Jordan
Ed: Air to get there they threw through Iraqi airspace to get there,
Ed: We're helping Israel to shoot down missiles coming at them, which sounds to
Ed: me like we're participating in some form.
Sam: Well, you know, the model is the last exchange.
Sam: I mean, this is much bigger than the last exchange. But last time around this
Sam: happened, and it wasn't that many months ago. I forget exactly how many again.
Sam: I said last year before, but I don't even know. But it wasn't that long ago.
Sam: You know, there was an Israeli attack on Iran.
Sam: Iran attacked back. There was
Sam: a tit-for-tat, went back and forth a couple times, and then it stopped.
Sam: Because nobody wanted the further escalation.
Sam: You know, so far, the Iranians haven't attacked U.S.
Sam: Interests as part of this back and forth. and last
Sam: time the americans and the jordanians and the british and a whole bunch of others
Sam: were also involved in sort of shooting down the missiles coming from iran towards
Sam: israel so if they are again it's no different than last time yeah uh the the
Sam: difference is only is the scale And can Iran,
Sam: like,
Sam: stop in a way that allows them to save face and not actually destabilize the regime there?
Sam: You know, I said everybody rallies around the flag when the country's attacked,
Sam: but maybe if they look too weak, that changes.
Sam: I don't know. And it also depends, like, it's not over yet.
Sam: How far does this end up going before the Israelis do stop?
Ed: The Iranian government has not been real popular with their people.
Sam: No, and if you remember just a few years back, there was a major sort of youth uprising,
Sam: and especially among women, but of youth in general, rebelling against sort
Sam: of the morality codes and the morality police and such.
Sam: And that got really big for a couple months and then got quashed.
Sam: Violently squashed you know and so has been quiet for a while because people
Sam: were jailed and people were killed and you know.
Sam: And you know repression works you know and so but we'll see but again it's not
Sam: the kind of scenario where that kind of thing flourishes is when it's internal
Sam: like what happened that last time that led to that
Sam: All those demonstrations in the street was video of a prominent case where a
Sam: woman was jailed and then died in jail after having been in public doing things
Sam: the morality police disagreed with.
Sam: And that was 100% internal.
Sam: And I say that with the caveat that I am also 100% sure there were various foreign
Sam: intelligence services egging it on because that happens no matter what.
Sam: But it was basically a grassroots movement internally to Iran on an internal
Sam: issue that, if it had been a little stronger, might have been able to overturn the government.
Sam: It wasn't strong enough. Instead, it was repressed. But with this kind of thing,
Sam: where you have an external attack on the country, that's the kind of thing where people rally around.
Sam: That's not the kind of thing that tends to weaken movements or weaken the people in power.
Sam: Again, there's a tipping point where eventually sometimes governments fall in
Sam: these kinds of situations.
Sam: It doesn't feel like we're there yet. Of course, hell, for all we know,
Sam: by the end of the weekend, Israel will have decapitated the rest of the Iranian government.
Ed: That may be harder to do.
Sam: They killed quite a few generals, apparently, the head generals in the Revolutionary
Sam: Guard, and they killed a bunch of scientists.
Sam: But they did not, so far, go after the country's president, the country's religious
Sam: leader, leaders in the cabinet, things like that.
Sam: Maybe they will. But they sort of have been focusing on the military side,
Sam: although, as always with these kinds of conflicts, there are reports of civilian deaths as well.
Sam: Just because, you know, you go after the scientist living in his apartment building,
Sam: you hit other people in the apartment too. That kind of thing.
Sam: And if nothing else, Israel has shown in Gaza that they don't care one slight
Sam: tiny bit about the civilian death toll that gets in the way of them killing
Sam: the people they want to kill.
Ed: There have been very few wars in history in which there have been fewer civilian
Ed: deaths than military deaths.
Ed: The vast majority of the time, it's been highly skewed towards the civilians.
Sam: And even, especially when you add add-on effects,
Sam: like not just killed directly by weapons, but killed by, you know,
Sam: lack of food or medical care because infrastructure has been destroyed. and that kind of thing.
Ed: Starvation and disease, injury.
Ed: If you break your leg and the system's working, your leg gets fixed.
Ed: You break your leg and the system's not working, you die.
Sam: Right. And, you know,
Sam: the 20th, well, the second half of the 20th century, let's start after World
Sam: War II, because if you include World War I and World War II,
Sam: the net for the 20th century is just as bad as any other century.
Sam: But the second half of the 20th century was much better along those lines than most of history.
Sam: Unfortunately, it seems like we're
Sam: reverting to the mean here and getting back to how things used to be.
Ed: It was better because a large part of it was not only the Marshall Plan,
Ed: but the idea behind the Marshall Plan.
Ed: Is let's get rid of poverty in those countries that lost the war and the other
Ed: countries. Let's rebuild and let's have people, you know, work together. And it worked.
Sam: Yeah. And I mean, the key to the Pax Americana or whatnot after World War II
Sam: was exactly what people keep talking about as the...
Sam: The liberal world order, or whatever they call it, the rules-based world order,
Sam: was that you had a significant portion of the world, and we did have this sort
Sam: of multipolar thing during the Cold War with the Soviet Union,
Sam: and now more with China as well.
Sam: But you had a fundamental international agreement that we were all better off
Sam: if we weren't at war and if we honored treaties and traded with each other and
Sam: developed interdependencies.
Sam: So, you know, hey, we we are so dependent on each other that any war would be
Sam: disastrous for both of us.
Sam: And and then and so you get like the longest period of peace in Europe that
Sam: Europe has seen ever, basically.
Ed: Actually, majority of the world.
Sam: Or at least since the Roman days.
Ed: Yeah, there were small skirmishes going on over the place, but there was no major war.
Ed: And the economy throughout the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and even into the 80s,
Ed: was really cooking along pretty
Ed: well for the people on the bottom and the middle, much better than it had.
Ed: And then gradually that began eroding.
Ed: And, you know, we've kind of gotten away from that concept.
Ed: But, gee, if we are all eating well, then we're all pretty happy, aren't we?
Sam: Right. Like, if you can get everything you need without going to war with anybody,
Sam: then why would you get a war?
Ed: Yeah. Part of the part even of the economy is if you build a tank,
Ed: it costs, say it costs you $10 million to build that tank.
Ed: That tank does not produce any wealth. It doesn't.
Ed: It doesn't make anything. All it does is tear up your roads if it drives down
Ed: them and kills people and destroys wealth.
Ed: If you build 10 semis, those 10 semis produce wealth and more than pay for their cost.
Ed: So anything we put into munitions and warfare is lost to the economy ultimately.
Ed: There's a little boom at the beginning because people are getting to work and
Ed: we're spending money and doing all that. But then later on, you know,
Ed: the factories are failing and everything's going to hell in a handbasket.
Sam: Well, yeah.
Ed: Wars don't produce wealth.
Sam: Well, and here's the thing. That whole post-war order, rules-based international
Sam: order, is the thing that Donald Trump and his people fundamentally don't believe in.
Sam: They think it was bad. Of course they don't.
Ed: Because they believe in an oligarchy in which, you know, he wants to be a king,
Ed: and that concept doesn't support, it supports liberal democracies.
Sam: It does not support oligarchies. And it supports, like, the whole notion of,
Sam: it's fundamentally built on the idea of cooperation.
Sam: And that's just a completely alien concept to Mr. Trump.
Sam: And so, yeah, he's hell bent on tearing down that order,
Sam: regardless of the fact that that actually led to all kinds of improvements for
Sam: the world in terms of, you know, reducing the, it doesn't solve everything.
Sam: Certain people still got screwed. Certain people still benefited.
Sam: But all in all, it was a net positive for the world over what had existed before.
Ed: And what exists now.
Sam: And it provided all kinds of protections that may not have avoided every negative option.
Sam: Hell no. All kinds of bad things still happened every day.
Sam: But it guarded against the worst options.
Sam: And now he just wants to remove all those protections and, you know,
Sam: to hell with it. Let's go.
Sam: You know, if Russia wants to, like, take over Ukraine, so be it.
Sam: It's in their sphere of interest.
Sam: I'm sure the same thing would apply, like, you know, China wants to take back
Sam: Taiwan, you know, or for that matter, U.S.
Sam: Wants to take Greenland and Panama, you know.
Sam: You know it's it's all the same thing it's like you
Sam: know if we want to why can't we and if we can then
Sam: of course they can on the things they care about so uh
Sam: yeah so we'll see i i think donald trump may actually be a little bit annoyed
Sam: at this iran thing because like i said he wanted to make a deal he wanted to
Sam: get his nobel peace prize but but in the end you know i think his general philosophy
Sam: is going to be to wash his hands of it and be like, well,
Sam: if they want to go at it, that's their business, not ours.
Sam: And, you know, I mean, we are defending Israel right now because there's a significant
Sam: portion of, you know, both parties in the U.S.
Sam: Actually, who would be absolutely apoplectic if the U.S. didn't.
Sam: But yeah, I could easily see him saying, you know, you guys want to have a little war? Have fun.
Ed: You know, that brings up an interesting... How is it that we have changed anti-Semitism,
Ed: which is hatred of Jews, to being hatred of Israel's anti-Semitism?
Ed: If I hate Italy, does that mean I'm anti-voke because he lives in Italy? For God's sake, no.
Ed: You know, the Israeli government has not been a decent government for a long time now.
Ed: That has nothing to do with the Jewish faith.
Sam: I mean, I certainly think that conservative Israelis have been intentionally
Sam: muddying that line. And the Trump administration has been intentionally muddying that line as well.
Sam: And going further than that, saying that being pro-Palestinian is automatically
Sam: anti-Semitic, essentially.
Sam: Even if you're just expressing sympathy for the plight of the Palestinian people.
Sam: If you do that incorrectly, then you're clearly anti-Semitic.
Sam: There was an interview I saw part of just earlier today with Jon Stewart and Trevor Noah.
Sam: I think Jon Stewart was on Trevor Noah's podcast or whatever.
Sam: And they talked about a bunch of things. But the clip I saw was specifically
Sam: about John Stewart and how he feels about, as a non-religious Jew in America,
Sam: how he feels about the notion of Israel and how they are positioning all of
Sam: this and how they are positioning the notion that not only that.
Sam: In order for a people to feel secure, they have to have an ethnically based homeland.
Sam: And how he thought that idea in and of itself was pernicious.
Sam: And you can understand how Israel
Sam: got there, especially in the wake of the Holocaust and World War II.
Sam: But, and a long history of being driven out of places that were their home, right?
Sam: You can understand why a Zionist movement existed along those lines.
Sam: But he talked about how he felt like the notion that this homeland had to exist
Sam: in a certain way, and that's the only way that Jews could be safe,
Sam: was harmful in and of itself because
Sam: it required you to dehumanize other
Sam: people like the palestinians um and
Sam: i i i honestly i what we're
Sam: seeing is a backlash against the
Sam: movement away like nation states
Sam: only developed a couple centuries ago you know before that century you know
Sam: countries were a lot more fluid and a lot more based on like who was king and
Sam: what areas could they control and very often controlled areas that were a patchwork
Sam: of languages and cultures and stuff like that,
Sam: the nation state as we know it today that's really a culturally homogenous and
Sam: racially homogenous group that comes together as a country as well,
Sam: is not that old as a notion of the norm of things being.
Sam: But I think a lot of what we're seeing now is a backlash to that starting to erode.
Sam: The United States actually being the prime example in the world of a country
Sam: that was not founded and based that way.
Sam: It was not, we are a single culture, we are a single religion,
Sam: we are a single ethnicity.
Sam: Instead it was founded on a
Sam: set of principles and ideas instead and and
Sam: for most of its history was wide
Sam: open welcoming of immigrants from all over the world and then we started shutting
Sam: down immigration from china and then we started shutting down immigration from
Sam: other places and then you know and of course there's a whole fraught history
Sam: of the slave trade but you know in theory,
Sam: we were based on ideas and welcomed all kinds of people.
Sam: And there was the whole idea of the melting pot and all of this kind of stuff. And.
Sam: We also had a lot of other places in the country where, not the country,
Sam: in the world, where migration was getting more active.
Sam: And a lot of these things were being broken down.
Sam: I mean, another big example is the UK. after
Sam: you after britain started
Sam: losing first gained their huge empire and then
Sam: started losing it but had a
Sam: policy of for many parts
Sam: of the empire people could come to the homeland and
Sam: come move to the uk and particularly lots of people from india and pakistan
Sam: the the characteristic makeup of Britain is significantly different than it
Sam: was 50 or 100 years ago because of immigration and from other places in the empire.
Sam: And other places in Europe have seen the same thing. And Germany was letting
Sam: in Syrian refugees and, you know, all kinds of stuff.
Sam: And I think we're seeing a backlash to that where all over the world people
Sam: are saying, you know, no, Hungary is for Hungarians.
Sam: France is for French people. Italy is for Italians, you know, et cetera.
Sam: And trying to get back to sort of these more ethnically pure memories of a long time ago.
Sam: And Trumpism and Millerism and the stuff in the U.S.
Sam: Is an extension of that where, you know, like we said, he's longing for the
Sam: 1890s, you know, in terms of how the country was made up.
Sam: And, you know, even though his own family immigrated since the 1890s,
Sam: to be clear, you know, but anyway.
Ed: His ancestry is not all that pure, is it?
Sam: Yeah, well, one of the things that the German chancellor did that was,
Sam: you know, I think we mentioned on the show the whole thing about,
Sam: you know, him pointing out that, no,
Sam: the defeat of Germany was not seen as a sad day in Germany because it was when
Sam: they were liberated from the Nazi dictatorship.
Sam: But also, the German chancellor brought Donald Trump the original of his grandfather's
Sam: birth certificate from Germany and presented it framed and, you know, all nice to him.
Sam: But the subtext of that is, your family are immigrants too, Donald Trump.
Ed: Yeah.
Sam: And not that long ago.
Ed: An immigrant whorehouse owner, as I recall.
Sam: Yes. Yes. And draft dodger. He moved to the U.S. Because of the draft.
Sam: Well, no, the second time. Well, yeah, he moved because of the draft.
Sam: He did not want to be drafted into the German military.
Sam: And I think this was pre-World War I, if I'm remembering my timelines correctly.
Sam: But he didn't want to be drafted into the German military. So he came to the U.S.
Sam: He tried to make his fortune in the California gold rush or some such,
Sam: or the Alaskan gold. I forget.
Sam: You can look him up on it. Anyway, it was Alaska. He was trying to make his money from gold.
Sam: He failed at that. So instead he opened the whorehouse and he got rich doing that.
Sam: And that was the beginning of the Donald Trump fortune.
Ed: Very few of the gold miners got rich. It was guys who ran the grocery stores
Ed: and the whorehouses that got rich.
Sam: Yes. Yes. And the traders who would buy the gold from the miners and then sell
Sam: them to other people. And, you know, yes.
Sam: As usual, the people on the ground aren't usually the ones who make the money in the end.
Ed: Well, we're getting off topic.
Sam: Anyway, anyway. And then he tried to go back to Germany and the Germans wouldn't
Sam: let him back in because he was a draft dodger and sent him back to the U.S.
Sam: Anyway, we were talking about Iran, weren't we? How did we get to that?
Ed: I don't know. I think we're about done.
Sam: Yeah, I agree. Let's wrap it up. Okay. Thanks for joining us at Curmudgeons Corner once again.
Sam: You can go to Curmudgeons-Corner.com to find all the stuff, all the ways to
Sam: talk to us, our archive of shows, transcripts of recent shows, all of that fun stuff.
Sam: You can also go to our Patreon to give us money at various levels.
Sam: You can get a, us mentioning on your, it is getting towards the end of the show.
Sam: You can tell because I start flubbing my lines even more than usual.
Sam: You can get us mentioning you on the show. You can get us ringing the bell. You can get a postcard.
Sam: You can get a mug like, like Ed has in front of him at this very moment.
Sam: Well, not like that one. That's a special one-off just for Ed,
Sam: but you can get our regular curmudgeons corner mugs.
Sam: And, and yeah, what else? Oh, yes.
Sam: At $2 a month or more, or if you just ask us, you can be invited to the Curmudgeon's
Sam: Corner Slack, where Yvonne,
Sam: Ed, myself, and various other people are throughout the week chatting,
Sam: sharing links, all kinds of stuff.
Sam: So, Ed, do you have something from the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack that you would
Sam: like to highlight, or should I pick something?
Ed: I figured you're going to ask that, so I went back and reviewed,
Ed: and we had a fascinating discussion from one of the members who had received
Ed: an advertisement for a prepaid cremation.
Sam: Right.
Ed: And we all discussed the advantages, and I pointed out that I'm anticipating
Ed: being cremated because I think it'll prepare me for the afterlife if there is one.
Ed: And another one of the members proposed that composting
Ed: is the best way to go but composting is expensive and it's not available everywhere
Ed: so my wife and i are going to probably go we're going to end up in the there's
Ed: a veteran cemetery at washington's crossing where washington crossed the delaware and i'm very familiar.
Sam: With the place i used to live.
Ed: We'll end up in there in the in some ashes from us okay i was anyway nice.
Sam: But i'm not sure that.
Ed: It's nice.
Sam: Per se i would rather see you in this form than that but you.
Ed: Know hey what the hell but.
Sam: Under the circumstances when you think of the various things to to do yeah i
Sam: mean i i don't know i i'm one like,
Sam: I've thought for the most part, like, I'm not going to be there.
Sam: So whatever works for my family, you know, that's exactly right.
Ed: Yeah.
Sam: And like, I, yeah, I don't have too strong opinions. I guess I feel like it
Sam: would be nice to have some sort of physical place where family could go to remember you.
Sam: But then I also think, well, realistically, you know, people don't actually
Sam: visit those spots all that often. they can remember me from anywhere.
Sam: My mother's family has a plot in Vermont that's up on a hill.
Sam: It's a cemetery up in a hill outside of a very, very small town that has a great
Sam: view and has generations of people there.
Sam: My mother has indicated that's where she wants her ashes when she goes eventually,
Sam: hopefully not anytime soon.
Sam: She's doing really well, by the way, for anyone who cares.
Sam: She hasn't cleared to drive yet, but everything else seems fine at this point.
Sam: They're waiting for the numbers representing the pressure in her skull or the
Sam: amount of fluid in her skull to get down below a certain level.
Sam: It's way down from where it was, but not at whatever level their goal is.
Sam: So they're just watching it for another month.
Sam: Anyway, she wants to be there. And I've thought a few times,
Sam: you know, I like that place too.
Sam: I've visited it a couple of times. It's very nice, very calm,
Sam: nice view, blah, blah, blah. I wouldn't mind being there too.
Sam: But then I also think my family lives in Seattle.
Sam: You know, why would I put that in Vermont?
Sam: Like they would never ever go, you know?
Sam: But, you know, I don't know. But for the most part, I think the answer is whatever works for my family.
Sam: You know, I won't be there. You know, you guys decide what works for you.
Sam: And, you know, there are people who do all kinds of weird things like,
Sam: you know, have the ashes baked into some sort of object they keep with them, you know, do, you know.
Sam: All kinds of stuff that I've seen people consider or do. That seems a little over the top to me.
Sam: I mean, what was it? Jeremy Bentham, the famous philosopher who just had himself
Sam: stuffed and you can still visit him in a cabinet at the University of Oxford or something.
Ed: Oxford and Cambridge is one of those.
Sam: Was it Bentham? Now I have to check. Jeremy. Of course, I can't spell it.
Sam: Jeremy Bentham Body. Oh, yes it is. There's pictures of him.
Sam: Let's see. It's at,
Sam: Okay, here we go. I have to read this summary.
Sam: Yes, if you just Google Jeremy Bentham's body, you will immediately find pictures of him.
Sam: He is on display at the Student Center at UCL, which is what,
Sam: University of Central London, something like that?
Sam: I have to check that too. University College of League? University College London.
Sam: University College London.
Sam: And he is stuffed and on display in a glass case in the student center at University College London.
Ed: I would never do that to my future generations.
Sam: This was his specific request that this is what would be done with him.
Sam: And they have honored him. And you can go visit him to this day.
Ed: Well, our intent has been to make things as easy as possible for the kids.
Ed: So we've actually prepaid everything with the locals' mortuary here.
Ed: So all they need to do is call them, they come pick up the body,
Ed: burn it, and then they can take it on up to Washington Crossing,
Ed: which is only about 25, 30 miles from here.
Sam: So a quick additional note on Jeremy Bentham. They note that what is in display
Sam: is his stuffed body, but a wax head of him.
Sam: And the reason is, here's a section, I'm on Londonist.com. What about his head?
Sam: While the skeletal remains and wax head of Bentham remain in the student center,
Sam: his actual head remains out of public view elsewhere at UCL.
Sam: The head was once stolen in a prank by students from the rival King's College
Sam: and has ever since been kept under lock and key.
Sam: And they do also have a picture of the head along with the picture of his body on display.
Ed: So, Jesus, we say in his public forum, don't do that to me, please.
Sam: Yes. For all members of Ed's family who are listening, he does not want to be
Sam: on public display in stuffed form.
Sam: Okay. Well, I guess that clearly indicates the end of the show.
Sam: So thank you once again for joining us, Ed. It's always fun to have you.
Ed: And it's always fun to be here. I always enjoy it.
Sam: Okay, so everybody, we expect to have Yvonne back next week.
Sam: Ed and I, I think, are both going to try to go to one of these rallies.
Sam: If I succeed in going, which in part depends on how the rest of my day goes,
Sam: then I will report on it next week on the show. Yvonne should be back, hopefully.
Sam: Or he was only here because our schedules didn't align. So hopefully there won't
Sam: be any problem next week.
Sam: And so we'll have a normal show next week. and so everybody stay safe have fun
Sam: all of that stuff i usually say yeah goodbye all right goodbye,
Sam: Wait, Tang, up until I tell you.
Ed: I've got about 2% more of the battery left.
Sam: Okay, let's get this done then.
Ed: I assume that's your son behind you.
Sam: Yes, yes, that is.
Ed: Hello, Alex.
Sam: He can't hear you, but Ed says hello, Alex, because you're on my headphones.
Sam: But, okay, I'm hitting stop, Ed, wait until it says 100% uploaded before you
Sam: actually hang up or close out or whatever. Okay, here we go. Hitting stop.