Podcasts about A Modest Proposal

What a lot of fun I had talking to Zena Hitz about Gulliver's Travels. As well as discussing Swift, slavery, genocide, rationality, Christianity, and science, Zena told me that good philosophy is like a box of cake mix and that a liberal education requires you to be freed of false expertise. I also took Zena on a detour to discuss Iris Murdoch, the Catherine Project, and modern philosophy. TRANSCRIPTHENRY OLIVER: Today I am talking to Zena Hitz. Zena is a tutor at St. John's College. She is a philosopher, the author of Lost in Thought. She runs the Catherine Project. She's famous on Twitter. We don't know how she does it all. Zena, welcome.ZENA HITZ: Thank you, Henry. It's great to be here.OLIVER: And we're talking about Gulliver's Travels because it is 300 years since it was published, and it's a book that you love.HITZ: A book that I've loved for a long time.First Encounter with Gulliver's TravelsOLIVER: So tell me, when did you first read it?HITZ: Well, it was an important moment for me. I was in high school, and I was admitted to a scholarship summer program which offered college courses at different campuses. There were some normal-looking college courses at normal-looking colleges. And then there was this course at St. John's called Science as Literature, Literature as Science. [laughs] It had this description that was just unbelievable. And I thought to myself, “This is the one, obviously the one to go to.”So I went, and we read books that no one in their right mind would assign to high school students now, and maybe not then. The fragments of Parmenides, Plato's Timaeus, selections from Aristotle's Physics, Gulliver's Travels. After reading a number of—preface to Ptolemy's Almagest, geocentric astronomy. And we read Gulliver's Travels after reading selections from Hooke's Micrographia, so the inventor of the microscope, and Galileo's Starry Messenger, which is one of the great first uses of the telescope to discover the nature of the moon and the satellites of Jupiter.So then we read Gulliver's Travels. We also read Emma and Flannery O'Connor and various other things. And one of the faculty who was running it said at one point, “Well, we thought we'd throw a bunch of things together and see what you could do, what you could make of it. We didn't actually have an idea of how these all fit together,” which I think was probably true.At any rate, I think I came to Gulliver's Travels thinking about these scientists who were looking at very large things and very small things, and thinking in general about the follies of human perception, whether that was shown in literature or philosophy or what have you, the ways in which human perception and knowledge don't work very well. And I think Swift is still one of the best people to—Gulliver's Travels is still one of the best books about that because it's in the mode of a travel diary, an eyewitness account.Gulliver is trained as a surgeon, by his own account. He at one point says he was a bit of a projector in his younger days, someone who undertook scientific projects. And he's a terrible observer, the worst imaginable observer, and Swift so brilliantly lets us see through his eyes, lets us see all the things he doesn't see. And I think it's not just about seeing and knowing. It has a very profound, I think, moral and political set of commitments. So it's a very humane book. It's social criticism, but from a point of view of a very deep humanity. So I've always loved the book for these reasons since then.I came back to it more recently because it is part of the curriculum at St. John's. So when I came back to teach there, I began to reread it. The other experience I had was that I wrote a long essay on it when I was an undergraduate. So those are my—I'm not any kind of expert. My knowledge of the historical context of the book is limited. It's not zero, but it's limited. But I have always loved it as an account of human understanding and its failures and the way that might impact how we live and how happy we can be.The Houyhnhnm ProblemOLIVER: Have you changed how you think about it as you've taught it?HITZ: I have not really changed the way I think about it. It gets more—like all of these books, the more you read them, the more comes out of them, the more details come up. Hilarious. The more jokes you get, the more . . .I think the one more recent insight I had was, I hadn't understood the full horror of the Houyhnhnms in the last book until relatively recently. I think that took me some time to really take on. It's one of the cases where Gulliver's misperceptions are a bit harder to see, and I think many readers just assume that Swift is endorsing the praise of the Houyhnhnms in some sense or other.OLIVER: There are some very serious critics in the past who have called them Swift's ideal beings. Which at this point in history seems unthinkable, but it has been a belief among serious readers.HITZ: Yes, yes. And also common among students. Yes, it's absolutely one of the wrongest opinions you could have about anything, I think.OLIVER: Why does Swift allow us to make that mistake? Are we bad readers out of the context, or has he made too good a job of his diversions and concealments and ironies?HITZ: That's a great question, and I'll just take a stab at it. I think that he has hit on a mode of misperception which is very deep to us, and it's something that we're much more guilty of. We could imagine that if we were in a place where everyone was small or everyone was large, we might make mistakes like Gulliver makes. But we all live, I think, in communities that are a bit like the Houyhnhnms. And so we are all very subject to these kinds of deceptions, and I think that's how he gets us.That's not to really excuse the bad readings because, you know, Gulliver does leave the land of the Houyhnhnms with a boat made out of human skin, which should—I think that moment should make you realize, if you haven't yet, that something is very seriously wrong with Gulliver. Gulliver has been kind of destroyed as a person by his travels, and especially by this last trip. But if you pass over that little detail, maybe you think, “Oh, wow, he found some very simple beings.”OLIVER: Well, there's also the great council where they debate the genocide of the Yahoos.HITZ: [laughs] Yes.OLIVER: And it directly contradicts several things Gulliver has come to believe about the Houyhnhnms, about the Yahoos, and about himself. And he's completely unaware of these contradictions and so in awe of the Houyhnhnms that he doesn't quite understand, I think, that he's accounting a genocide.HITZ: That's right. That's right.OLIVER: Even though he uses a phrase from Genesis that's very unmistakable. It's a sort of remarkable moment of—particularly to us, having had the 20th century. I think that's why Swift came back into favor in a way, because people used to say, Swift's unbearable view of human nature . . .This is a great bit in Boswell's Life of Johnson where, when they're traveling through Scotland, they're with a lady, and she says to Johnson, “Is any man naturally good?” And Johnson says, “No, no more than a wolf.” And Boswell says, “Well, sir, what about ladies?” And Johnson says, “God, no, absolutely not.” And this woman says, “Oh my God, this is worse than Swift,” utterly horrific view of human nature.But of course, we can actually say, did he go far enough? [laughter] I mean, Swift clearly understands something very real and deep. The council of genocide is horrifyingly familiar to us. And I think that's much to Swift's credit that he can see that, and to show that Gulliver would blind himself to it. And people still blind themselves to it, right?HITZ: That's right. And I wonder—you would know more about this than me because it is a bit of a historical question, but my understanding is that quite a lot of the savagery, the worst parts of rule over men that we see in Gulliver's Travels are pictures of Ireland in the 17th, 18th centuries. And I wonder if that took some time to reveal itself to the British, and in some ways it's still not really as known as it might be. We think of the colonial project as being something that was directed at India and Africa—OLIVER: Faraway countries.HITZ: —faraway countries where people looked really different. And we're not as familiar with the kinds of things that were done to the cuddly Irish with their nice music, and who we don't think of as being people that you would savagely oppress like that. So I think—OLIVER: So, I think partly the English are not interested in their own history in the way that they are expected to be. And partly the English interest in Irish history has become very focused on the more recent events. And it's very hard to get back past that. And it all becomes very complicated, and it's a sort of different country. So there's some of that, but I think generally we don't want to know what we did, yes.HITZ: Well, and I think in anglophone countries in general, there's going to be a history of something like that. To attribute it to the British is not to say that—I mean, Americans have chattel slavery and the genocide of the natives, and the Australians have their own situation. All of the anglophone countries have something like this on their conscience.I think that obscures the meaning of that final book. I think we don't recognize—and that's really to Swift's credit, to have a social critique that is so real and so deep that you may not even recognize yourself in the picture.Slavery in Gulliver's TravelsOLIVER: Yes. When I read it again—I read it as an undergraduate, but I really was actually more interested in the other parts of Swift's work. And I thought it was brilliant, and then I read it again. And it was more recently that—I didn't understand how I couldn't have seen it, but it's basically a book about slavery, as I come back to it.And in each of the books there is enslavement of a different sort. So, to begin with, Gulliver is the one being kept in a box or kept in a house, or he's chained up by the Lilliputians or Glumdalclitch.HITZ: Right. That's right.OLIVER: She's a very nice sort of master, as it were, [laughter] but he has that box that can be sealed, and the dwarf has him swiping at the wasps. And then the enslavement that the flying island has of the country below is like England and Ireland. And then in the final book, you know, the Houyhnhnms are whipping the Yahoos.HITZ: That's right.OLIVER: The slavery thing gets worse and worse as the book goes on. And one of the things that's clever is that it's funny when Gulliver is enslaved, right? When the wasps are let out and he has to—and Swift sort of does that clever thing where he undermines things by making it a joke at the end. By the book of the Houyhnhnms, there is really very little humor. And the twist at the end is always dark.Gulliver can't see that—he can see that he's a bit like the Yahoos. But he can't see that they've been enslaved in the way that he—the farmer wanted to take him around the kingdom and show him off, and he says, “I couldn't possibly have had children in that condition because I couldn't have it on my conscience that I had begotten a slave, someone born into slavery. I couldn't do that.”HITZ: Right.OLIVER: Then he's in the Houyhnhnms and he can't—it's quite remarkable.HITZ: [laughs] Yes. I don't think it's quite true that in the end there's no humor. I read it with some Catherine Project group a couple of years ago, and one of the readers pointed out that it's not obvious Gulliver isn't leaving his home and sitting out in the ocean and always landing on England every single time; just every time, he lands there.And there's something hilarious about an Englishman that discovers a place where there's all horses, [laughter] and his love of horses overwhelms him, and he becomes persuaded that they're the only rational beings that there are. I mean, that is funny.OLIVER: Yes, I agree. There's a lot of irony and stuff. But I think it's in Lilliput when he describes their manner of writing. And he says they don't write from left to right as we do in England, or from right to left, or up-down like the Chinese, but from one corner to the other, as the ladies do in England. This is very funny, dry humor, and that sort of thing is gone. And the things that surprise you at the end of a sentence or a paragraph are more like, “Oh, and of course I used Yahoo skin to cover the boat.” And you're like, oh my God, this is not a joke anymore.You know, in A Modest Proposal, he makes real humor out of those kind of horrors. And with the Houyhnhnms, I think he actually refuses the joke to make you feel the disgust, in a way.HITZ: Yes, that might be right. That might be right.Swift and PhilosophyOLIVER: What do you think about the idea that the Houyhnhnms are drawn from the Phaedrus and Socrates's idea of the soul with the two horses? And there's the good, rational horse and the vulgar, passionate horse, and the Yahoos are the other horse. You see what I mean?HITZ: Yes, yes.OLIVER: Is Swift showing us the two sides, and Gulliver's mistake is to prefer the one and not the—HITZ: Right, I think I have heard something like this before. I'm a bit skeptical. Swift doesn't strike me as someone who uses philosophy in quite that way. I think he's much more interested in Gulliver's—the Houyhnhnms' self-deception about the kinds of beings they are. They do not say “the thing which is not,” yet Gulliver's master hides from him this conversation about the genocide for quite some time. And maybe we don't know if he tells him quite the whole truth about it. So there's—OLIVER: And he also conceals the fact that the others don't like Gulliver because he's a partial—a reasonable Yahoo, as it were.HITZ: Right. So their self-deception, Gulliver's being taken in by their self-deception, the ways in which they—this is one of the ways that I think it's profound about the nature of slavery. And to cheer us all up, I'll make a Holocaust analogy, as you also did.When I was traveling in Germany some years ago, in one of their Holocaust museums, there was an image from a Nazi-era German newspaper of Jewish people living in complete squalor in the ghetto. And of course, they had forced them into squalor. But somehow they forced them into squalor, and then this reinforces the sense that they're these rat-like beings.And there's something very similar that the Houyhnhnms do to the Yahoos. They force them into this animal state, and then they say, “Oh God, look, these people are disgusting. They just don't know how to act.” That seems to me the kind of level at which Swift is working. He is interested in the nature of a human being, but not in the abstract Platonic sense, I don't think.He strikes me as someone who believes in common sense, common decency, basic freedom, and basic use of reason. And he finds in his time that there's distorting teachings, distorting ways of behavior that have gotten people far off track. To me, that's what it feels like it comes from. It doesn't feel like Plato is in the background to me.OLIVER: Is there an extent to which, though, it's a work of sort of anti-philosophy? As you say, Swift, he likes common sense. He likes ordinary reason, and he likes what he would call the revealed truth of Christianity. So he talks, in his sermons about people, it comes to you from God like a light. It's revealed to you. And he doesn't like this idea that the philosophers can work it all out.And in a way, that's the same sort of mistake that the scientists think they can discover all this stuff, and they go in these crazy ways. And the Houyhnhnms are a bit like that. If you had philosopher-kings, they would end up being perverted examples of rationality because they're ignoring the—so do you think it's anti-philosophy in a way? The book is saying, “No, no, I don't want philosophers”?Criticizing Elite Intellectual CultureHITZ: That's definitely a plausible reading. But it's hard to tell whether it's anti-philosophy or anti a particular style of thinking. It's worth pointing out, in that light, that Gulliver, when he arrives in the land of the Houyhnhnms, before he even meets a horse, he sees a Yahoo who, from what I can tell from the text, is trying to wave at him and say hello, who recognizes him. And he's horrified. He sees him instantly as a monster.So I think immediately upon landing, he sees the Yahoos as monstrous, and that tells me that he must already be off kilter. So he's not just corrupted by the Houyhnhnms; he's been somehow led off track, away from the capacity to recognize fellow human beings before that.And he's come from this—the third book is all about various kinds of inquiry, scientific endeavors, practical endeavors, talking to the greats of the past, necromancy, and various kinds of inquiry into wisdom or things like wisdom. And somehow that's the thing that seems to push him to the point where he can no longer tell what a human being is.OLIVER: One of my favorite parts is when he's with the wizards, and he asks to be shown Homer and Aristotle and all their commentators. And he says that there were vast rooms full of these commentators, endless numbers of them. But Homer and Aristotle didn't recognize any of them because they were all so ashamed of the terrible things they'd said about these great men's works that they kept themselves forever in a different part of the underworld. They couldn't bear the shame of being revealed to having told lies and said second-rate things.It's very, very funny. And I think that's another sort of angle on which the book says, “You're so tempted to make a comment and have an idea and be a philosopher, and you should just accept the revealed truth of what is known. Just stop it. Just stop it.” [laughter]HITZ: Well, I suppose maybe I would also put it this way, that Swift sees the condition of 18th-century Ireland, which is quite poor, very bad. And it's ruled in a savage way by the English, who have a quite flourishing intellectual culture, as it happens, at this time.So I think what he might be is not a critic of philosophy so much as a critic of intellectual culture. Because intellectual culture seems to not only not help with existential concerns like slavery and oppression and savage poverty, but even serves to mask and hide and create illusions behind it.So that's, I guess, how it strikes me, as a book that's hostile to what you'd now call elite intellectual culture. And I don't know how fundamental that critique is, in light of its inability to solve problems for real human beings or to obscure the causes of what's going on with real human beings.OLIVER: I think it's quite fundamental because outside of Gulliver's—I think this comes into Gulliver's Travels, but what he might have said more explicitly elsewhere is, there are people starving in the streets of Dublin. And we've got corrupt politicians and intellectuals saying all these things, but you know, here she is starving. You don't need to work that out. [laughter] There's no question—the reveal—just be a Christian and, like, for goodness' sake . . .HITZ: Yes.OLIVER: And when, for example, he talks to the king of Brobdingnag, and there's that wonderful satire of the English government and everything. And he says, “Those people understood mathematics and poetry and whatever, but I could never drive into their head any sense of the abstract or any of these speculative—they simply didn't know what that was. They didn't know what I was saying.” [laughter]And so in a way, his ideal government is anti-philosophical because it would just look at the human problem in front of it. It wouldn't do speculative science. It wouldn't think of itself as rational, all this Platonic stuff. It would just—she's in rags, she has bare feet, you know?HITZ: Yes, that's right.OLIVER: What do we need a philosopher-king? Like, what are you talking about?HITZ: Exactly.OLIVER: The priest understands this because he's there in the city doing it. And is there something of that in the book, that constant resistance of the cleverness of people who cannot see daily life?HITZ: I think that's absolutely true, and I think it's probably one of the things I love about the book, because I think this somehow gets to something in my own heart. Even though I'm a professional intellectual—I have been my whole life—the distance between the concerns of professional intellectuals and the concerns of living, real people in various parts of the world is very large.And it's even worse when, as it was when I was coming up in grad school, there's a ton of explicit concern and various operations underway to improve life for others, which have zero connection with anything that anyone actually does. So I think the Laputans, which is the beginning of the third book, when Gulliver—OLIVER: The flying island.HITZ: Yes, when Gulliver visits the people on the flying island, who have one eye towards the heavens and one eye pointed inward. And they study music and mathematics, and they live in a giant flying saucer, which has the—OLIVER: And the flappers.HITZ: That's right. [laughter] When someone needs to talk to them, someone flaps their ears so that they pay attention. And their wives all run off with working people because they can't bear to be treated the way they are by men like this. And the flying saucer is not just distant. It also has the power to crush the towns underneath it if it judges them to be rebellious.This image will stick with you for the rest of your life. I mean, it's absolutely perfect, and the perfect image of bad government of a kind when intellectual culture is prized. And it's hinted early on in the book in Lilliput, when the rulers in Lilliput have to do these elaborate dances with ropes.OLIVER: Oh, with the king and the chief minister hold the pole, funny angles, and if you get under it, you get a green ribbon or a red ribbon.HITZ: Exactly. [laughter] And they have these athletic contests of grace and various colored ribbons, and that determine how far you get in the halls of power.OLIVER: Yes. Are you a cabinet minister or a junior minister? Yes, yes.HITZ: Exactly. So there, it's all just a funny joke. But it develops, I think, into the Laputans, people who have kinds of expertise that are actually hostile to them doing any kind of humane governing. So yes, that seems right to me.Christianity in GulliverOLIVER: To what extent is it a Christian book?HITZ: That's an interesting question. I've never found a strong Christian element in it myself. There are satires of religious wars, both in Lilliput, where Lilliput's at war with its neighboring city. Oh, wait a second, there's two different disputes in Lilliput. One is about what side you cut your egg on.OLIVER: There are the Little-Endians and the Big-Endians,HITZ: Right. And then there's also one about heel size. So there's two different kinds of disputes.OLIVER: With the marvelous image that the king is a Short-Heeler. But they think that the heir to the throne might be favorable to the High-Heelers because he has one heel slightly higher than the other, and he walks with a wobbly gait.HITZ: [laughs] That's right. This, again, in Lilliput is just utterly hilarious, outrageous, very silly, obviously a parody of religious wars between different kinds of Christians. But it resurfaces towards the end. It's the Houyhnhnms, where he talks to the Master Horse—OLIVER: And the horse sort of pretends to this great rationality, simply can't understand that men would kill each other over the question of whether flesh is bread or bread is flesh.HITZ: That's right. That's right. That's right. So there's definitely disparaging remarks about religious wars. And as you're talking about it, where along with Swift's praise of common sense, there's a kind of basic Christian morality, which is that the poor and the suffering need attention. That all strikes me as Christian. Apart from that, I'm not sure. If you have a religious take, I'd be interested to hear it.OLIVER: I find it very interesting that Swift had quite strict beliefs. He was not in favor of Catholics. He thought Dissenters should be tolerated, but he wanted the Test Act. He was very particular about all these things. And in his other works, he's quite direct about that. But in this book, he achieves a kind of high ambivalence. And he's not a Little-Ender or a Big-Ender.HITZ: That's right.OLIVER: And he says the religious text on which this is based simply says that you must break the egg at the most convenient end.HITZ: [laughs] That's right.OLIVER: Now, of course, in reality, he's a Little-Ender, and he's very committed to the Reformation, and he thinks it's all terrible that they're not. And it's interesting that someone with such angry, insistent beliefs on the Anglican Church would take this ambivalent position.And he satirizes so much. But the anti-slavery stuff, the description of the Laputans bringing the island down, and then he says, “I've never seen so much want and misery, and there's a wild look in their eyes, and they're wearing rags.” I mean, this is Dublin, right? This is just, along with the slavery, this basic Christian concern for the oppressed, the poor, the suffering.HITZ: Yes, that's right.OLIVER: And so I don't quite know. It's almost like the book is saying, again with this anti-intellectual thing, all these doctrinal disputes and which church this and who believes that. And here we have slaves and poor people and beggars and starving people.HITZ: Right.OLIVER: Christianity should deal with that first. So is the implicit criticism of his fellow Christians, in a way, that they're more interested in these disputes than in the fact that there are enslaved people and suffering people and—you see what I mean?HITZ: Yes, that's right.OLIVER: And Gulliver—the Houyhnhnms are highly rational but not Christian, which is a significant omission. And by the end, are you supposed to wonder if Gulliver actually isn't very much of a Christian? Because he can see this suffering and not respond to it at all.HITZ: Right, when maybe the—is the best person in the book the King of Brobdingnag? Does that seem right? The person with the—at least who says the best things?OLIVER: He says the best things. I think the best person is Glumdalclitch. She shows real charity and real love towards him.HITZ: What about the Houyhnhnm, the one who likes him, who says, “Fare thee well, gentle Yahoo”? It's tear-jerking—OLIVER: Oh, the sorrel nag.HITZ: The sorrel nag. I can literally weep at that moment when she says, “Fare thee well, gentle Yahoo.”OLIVER: That's true. That's true. She and Glumdalclitch are maybe more similar characters. Yes, yes, yes.HITZ: They're similar characters. Okay.OLIVER: And they have that basic, you don't need to call it Christian. You don't need—it doesn't need theology.HITZ: Humane. I would call it humane. Yes.OLIVER: They have that basic love of their fellow. You know, Glumdalclitch doesn't say, “Oh, how amusing this little man is, or how entertaining, or I can make—” She says, “He must be cared for. He looks a bit like me. He must be cared for.”HITZ: Right.OLIVER: And the sorrel nag, again, has the love of the fellow creature.HITZ: That's right. That's right.OLIVER: So I think Swift might be bringing in this, what he thinks of as the revealed truth of Christianity. Like, you shouldn't need telling, you shouldn't need to argue. It's there.HITZ: Right. This is just me making things up, which is what I'm here for. We're podcasting. Yes.OLIVER: Yes, of course. Also, is that not what the philosophers would do? That's what Swift would say.HITZ: But if I was going to make something up, what I would say is something like this: that Swift to me, from the testimony of Gulliver's Travels, which is the book of his I really know the best. I don't know much about the rest of it. He has a level of self-awareness and sophistication. So, he knows that that religious difference is being used as a pretext. He knows that it is obscuring the suffering of these people. So, for the purposes of the book, he says, “Look, if you're a smart person, if you're a smart ruler, if you're an actually humane, intelligent, commonsensical ruler, you know that the fact that they have the wrong religious views is not a reason for them to be enslaved and oppressed and starved.” So that would be my suspicion.And that's why I think, to me, the religion is so light, because it's not really a religious problem. It's actually just a human problem and a political problem that is, how do you run your country so that these subject peoples are allowed to be free and develop themselves and be full human beings? That would be my made-up guess.Students' Views of GulliverOLIVER: What do undergraduates think? What is it that they find interesting in the book, and what do they like or dislike?HITZ: It's been a couple of years. I think they like this idea that—we all think travel is very broadening, a great way to think about the world. You know, you can learn so much about one's fellow human beings. And whatever else is going on in Gulliver's Travels, travel does not necessarily produce enlightenment.So I think they like the attention to the ways in which, even when we are trying to learn, we fail to learn. And the ways in which structures of learning, like traveling or studying science, might actually make you worse and not better, things like that. But it's not a book—I think it's fair to say it's not one of the favorite books of the undergraduates.OLIVER: Okay.HITZ: I think they find it a little bit distant, and I'm not sure why that is.OLIVER: Is it because it sort of looks like a novel, but it's not what we have come to expect a novel to be? And it sort of has that—HITZ: I think that's right.OLIVER: The pre–Jane Austen novel is kind of weird to us now.HITZ: Well, they love Don Quixote.OLIVER: Okay.HITZ: And that is a challenge of a similar kind. It's a novel which doesn't quite read like a novel, and the humor is kind of old. I mean, it's also true—undergraduates, in my experience, in general—I hope they'll forgive me for saying this on a podcast—they're not always good at comedy. They tend to think that serious things must be tragic.OLIVER: You can't get an A by making a joke.HITZ: Well, more that they have a sense that an intellectual life is something serious. It's serious.OLIVER: Oh, yes. Okay. And the syllabus slightly reinforces that, doesn't it?HITZ: Well, it's sort of self-reinforcing because we used to read more Aristophanes. We used to read Rabelais.OLIVER: If you do Shakespeare, it'll be the tragedies.HITZ: No, no, we do Shakespeare comedies.OLIVER: Oh, you do? Okay.HITZ: Yes. We have As You Like It and The Tempest. And do we have more tragedies? Maybe one more tragedy than comedy, but not a terrible imbalance.OLIVER: Well, that's good.HITZ: It's not Shakespeare-type comedy that's—maybe, correct me if I'm wrong, a Shakespeare comedy is something that ends in a marriage, more or less.OLIVER: More or less.HITZ: It's things that are funny—they don't necessarily think that humor is a way of thinking.OLIVER: Do they struggle with irony?HITZ: No, not usually. As long as it's serious irony, Anyway, I'm not sure why. I think I'm making things—I'm going too far out of the grounds for drawing conclusions.Favorite Parts of the BookOLIVER: Sure. Do you have a favorite passage?HITZ: One of my favorites is the part—is it Balnibarbi where they have people who try to speak with objects?OLIVER: Oh, yes, yes, yes.HITZ: And they have to carry around wagons full of things because they never know what you might want to talk about. [laughter] That's so weird. Because I think I spent a lot of time studying with philosophers, there's a bit of—something's on the nose about this.OLIVER: Yes.HITZ: You know, it's like, “No, you've got to say exactly—no, that's too imprecise. You have to say exactly what you mean.” Bernard Williams, the great philosopher, has something complaining about how contemporary philosophers are very controlling of their readers. They don't want anyone to make the slightest mistake about what they mean by a particular word. That's how the people who speak by objects strike me.OLIVER: Do you think that is a problem of contemporary philosophy?HITZ: Oh, sure. Yes, absolutely. Yes. The way Williams puts it is that when you write something, it should be like a cake mix, and the reader should be able to put their own egg and bake the cake themselves.OLIVER: Oh, I see. You mean like a box of mix, yes.HITZ: Yes, yes, exactly. It's like a box of cake mix. Whereas making the cake painstakingly and force-feeding it bite by bite to the reader is not actually an—OLIVER: Telling them how it tastes.HITZ: Telling them how it tastes is not an educational endeavor.OLIVER: When does this become too dominant in philosophy?HITZ: It's a feature of 20th-century analytic philosophy to be very careful with the meanings of words. And it's by no means universal; it's just a natural vice to the territory.Iris MurdochOLIVER: Is this a problem for someone like Iris Murdoch, or is it more the A. J. Ayer type?HITZ: No, it's the A. J. Ayer type, not Iris Murdoch. No, Iris Murdoch is heterodox outside of the—OLIVER: Do you like her philosophy?HITZ: I do, yes.OLIVER: What do you like about it? Platonic?HITZ: Now, see, I came here to talk about Swift. [laughter]OLIVER: I know, but you made such a good point about the satire of philosophers.HITZ: I like her writing for a more general educated audience, her not making assumptions about the philosophical training of her readers, and her use of Plato for sure, which is quite interesting and creative. She sort of ingests Plato and does something with it that I think is very interesting.OLIVER: Is she properly appreciated as a Platonist, or do you think there's more attention to be paid?HITZ: There's probably more attention to be paid, but she gets some attention. She gets some attention. I also don't think it was particularly helpful, these two books that came out a couple of years ago about Murdoch, Foot, Midgley, and Anscombe.OLIVER: Oh, yes, yes, yes. I only read one of those. It was quite good.HITZ: It might be quite good, but those four women are quite different from one another. So it's an example of where attention to identity could obscure as much as it—OLIVER: Well, one of the books was more about the ideas—they were both obviously about the ideas—and one of them was more about the fact that they were together in Oxford. And that they benefited from hanging out, talking, doing different sorts of work, sleeping with each other's husbands, et cetera.HITZ: Yes, all the good stuff.OLIVER: And from the more sociological point of view, it was very interesting to see that, actually, a lot of what Murdoch did was bound up with her friendships and relationships, in that the argument basically is, A. J. Ayer and the others get sent away because of the war. So these four women are actually—they've been banned from this seminar and told they're not allowed.Well, now they can sit around and do what they want to do. And it worked, and they all produced very interesting things. So from that point of view, I think it was—but I agree with you, Elizabeth Anscombe and Iris Murdoch are not the same. [laughter]HITZ: Not even particularly similar. I also feel like I've read enough of Murdoch's novels to have a sense of what the sociological situation was like.OLIVER: You like the novels?HITZ: I do like them, yes.OLIVER: Do you have favorites?HITZ: I can't remember the name of my favorite because I haven't read them for years. It's one of the things I read years ago, the one—I'd remember it if I saw the title. There's an LSD trip at the beginning of it.OLIVER: Oh, The Good Apprentice. I love that book.HITZ: The Good Apprentice, yes. I think that was my favorite. But I never fell in love with it. I just liked it, and I found it interesting, and I found the sociology interesting. Okay, this is what academics at this time period were doing.What to Pair with SwiftOLIVER: We got diverted.HITZ: “We” got diverted. [laughs]OLIVER: We did. If Swift is on a great books syllabus, what is it good to pair him with? If people are reading Swift, on or off a syllabus, do you think there are other—Hooker, you said, which I think would be interesting.HITZ: No, Hooke. It's Hooke.OLIVER: Hooke. Hooke. That's a very good point.HITZ: The guy who wrote Micrographia, who has the enormous picture of the flea.OLIVER: Yes, yes, yes. So that would be good. But any other? Is it worth reading Plato alongside him?HITZ: Well, I like to—he's on the list for something we called Life of the Mind Seminar at Catherine Project, which is our introduction to the life of the mind.OLIVER: And just to tell people, the Catherine Project—this is not a university. Anyone can join a seminar.HITZ: That's right. It's an open online readers community. Consists of small, high-quality conversations, mostly on Zoom, some in person.OLIVER: You could be some kid, an accountant, a dentist, whatever, and you come and do a—you've got a PhD running a seminar, and you get that experience.HITZ: Right. Some of them are peer led, so they're not necessarily PhDs running them. The reading groups are not necessarily run by PhDs. But the core program in which the Life of the Mind Seminar is—either a PhD or an ABD [all but degree] or someone with some academic experience is usually leading that. We have it there, and we have it there with a set of books that are meant to disorient rather than to orient.So one of the difficulties with reading great books with more or less random selections of adults is that people feel uncertain, out of place. And they bring expertise, real or fake, to the table, which makes it very difficult to have a conversation. It's usually fake expertise, for what it's worth.OLIVER: Give us an example of what you mean by fake expertise.HITZ: Well, so someone will have—we'll be, say, reading Hamlet. Someone will have taken a class on Shakespeare in college, and they'll say, “Actually, we're asking this question. But what I learned, my professor told me, is that Hamlet actually symbolizes—he has an Oedipus complex and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then this is what this means, and this is what that means.” And then your conversation's over, because you need to focus just on the text that's shared between the—OLIVER: It's not a crossword puzzle.HITZ: Exactly. It's not a crossword puzzle, and it's not something where—or the other—people often, again, they feel a bit on their back feet. So they'll google a bunch of stuff about the author, and they'll start tossing out random facts about the book or about the author, about the context. And again, you don't get really into the meat of the book that way.So, Gulliver's Travels is there to help us think about ways in which we might not be expert in things we're expert. Ways in which we might think we understand something and not understand it. And ways in which people who, with every appearance of seriousness and scientific principle, can just say unbelievably stupid things.So it's a very, very good book for that, where in that sense, it's I think very good for any liberal education program. It's liberating that way. One of the things we need to be liberated from is false expertise.OLIVER: You're talking really about these secondhand opinions that you haven't interrogated and come to understand yourself.HITZ: Exactly. Exactly, exactly, exactly.OLIVER: This is what Mill says. Everything is new to someone, and the real genius is that you find it out.HITZ: Exactly.OLIVER: You don't get taught it. Yes, yes.HITZ: Exactly, exactly. So real learning is things you find for yourself. Anyway, that's what I like it with. As for pairing it, yes, I think it would just depend on what you were—I don't have a clear thought about that. I think it'd be good to pair it with Galileo's Starry Messenger and preface to Hooke's Micrographia.But you could also pair it with Emma. Be quite good, actually, because Emma is also about someone who really doesn't know what they're doing and has no idea. Thinks they know what's going on; they really have no idea what's going on.OLIVER: Yes. Hamlet as well, in fact.HITZ: I guess so. Does he not know what's going on?OLIVER: Who's diverting now? [laughter] Well, there's an interesting question, isn't there, about whether Hamlet has legitimate doubts. So he says, “This ghost could be a demon. I should be careful. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm going to pretend to be mad. I'm going to find out.” Or whether he just doesn't want to see the truth in front of him, and he quote-unquote “delays” because of that. I don't know if you have a view.HITZ: I don't think he's deluded. I think the problem is something different, but I haven't thought enough about it recently to know what his volitional obstacle is. But I don't think he's deluded. I think he sees what's going on, but there's something about acting that doesn't work for him.OLIVER: An internal—HITZ: Something internal. Something internal. In a way, I find the play very hard. I don't know what, for instance, what does that obstacle have to do with Ophelia? What's going on with that? Anyway, he's very mysterious, but I don't—yes, that'd be my sense, is that he's not—OLIVER: Do you buy this idea that he's a nihilist?HITZ: No, although he's definitely faced with something like nihilism. He has to look at it. And of course, the play does end with everyone dead, [laughs] so it's not obvious that he's wrong.Sympathy for GulliverOLIVER: This question hangs over Gulliver as well. Is the problem by the end that he's basically become a nihilist? His response to the Yahoos is to deny meaning, deny the possibility of meaning, to shut himself away.HITZ: He is a true misanthrope. He hates human beings and refuses to interact with them and in that sense, in some way, removes himself from any further mistakes. In another way, the mistake that he's in is so massive that that hardly seems like a consolation. But yes, he's definitely stuck, and he's stuck in a place where who he is—because he's a human being. We have to remember that.So he's in a place of total self-hatred and the hatred of his neighbor, what you'd call from the Christian perspective a total loss of charity. Is that nihilist? I don't know, but it's definitely bad. It's not a good state to be in. Maybe I don't know what you mean by nihilism exactly.OLIVER: Are we supposed to disapprove of him at the end or sympathize with him?HITZ: Disapprove, I think.OLIVER: Yes? You don't feel sorry for him?HITZ: I do a bit.OLIVER: But not much.HITZ: Well, should I?OLIVER: I have come to believe—yes, this is what I've come to feel in subsequent readings, is that Gulliver, as you say, is very mistaken. He thinks he understands things that he does not understand. He has the sort of pretense of rationality, but he lacks any sort of meta rationality to see what his limits are.And he becomes, therefore—he doesn't advocate genocide, and he doesn't take any pleasure in using Yahoo skin, but he's just completely null to it. There's a sort of void there where human feeling ought to be. And it's tragic for him. It's a tragic ending that he is so isolated. And we can't sympathize with him, as it were, but we can feel sort of awful that he's shriveled into this state rather than judging or blame.I think one of the persistent themes of the book is, as I say, this kind of basic love of fellow creature, the Glumdalclitch or the sorrel. And if you take that from the book, you will wish you could bring Gulliver back.HITZ: Right. What you're saying reminds me that there is an interesting parallel in Plato's dialogues that I hadn't thought of before, Plato's Parmenides, which is perhaps the most difficult Plato's dialogue. So it's a conversation between young Socrates and the philosopher Parmenides. The first third of it is relatively clear, some arguments against what people think of as Plato's theory of forms.Then there's an extensive, insane dialectical process where various theses about the connection between being and oneness are both argued for and then refuted, and argued for and then refuted, pages and pages and pages and pages of it. So this seems to be—it's Parmenides and Zeno who are running Socrates through this ringer.And the person at the very beginning of the dialogue who they have to go find, to tell him the story of how Socrates met Parmenides, used to study philosophy. But now he just trains horses. [laughs] One of my teachers pointed this out to me, and I've never been able to get over it, that he spent this time doing philosophy, and he's like, “You know what? I'm going to work with horses for the rest of my life. If I never hear another human voice, that's fine with me.”So I think that is an interesting parallel. And I think it is not really that uncommon to see people who are totally disillusioned with relating to humans, who then relate to animals instead, like they devote themselves to animals.OLIVER: But on that reading, it might be a disillusionment with philosophical humanity. It might be philosophy that's killed Gulliver's human feeling.HITZ: That's right. Well, I think that's one possibility, one very strong possibility. That's why I think the Houyhnhnms come after the Laputans. Going to the furthest reaches of his intellectual interests just destroys his humanity.But it doesn't seem like exhaustion in the same way that whoever, I can't remember his name, the character who relates the Parmenides, where you just think he must be exhausted from having heard more than one conversation like this. [laughter] And just in the stable with the horses eating oats, I mean, it's just delightful. It's just so peaceful, you know?OLIVER: Bucolic, pastoral, yes.HITZ: Yes, exactly. Exactly. Maybe you're right that we should be more sympathetic to someone in that situation.OLIVER: Well, next time you read it, you can tell me if you change your mind.HITZ: All right. I will tell you if I change my mind.OLIVER: Very good. Zena Hitz, thank you very much.HITZ: Thank you very much, Henry Oliver. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk

Send us a textI hope you've brought your appetite, because today we're looking at some of Dr. Swift's shorter prose satires (along with a couple of poems) and he certainly gives us plenty to chew on."A Description of the Morning": https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45266/a-description-of-the-morning"A Description of a City Shower": https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50578/a-description-of-a-city-shower"The Battle of the Books": https://www.gutenberg.org/files/623/623-h/623-h.htm"A Tale of a Tub": https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4737"A Modest Proposal": https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1080/1080-h/1080-h.htmSupport the showPlease like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!Email: classicenglishliterature@gmail.comFollow me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber OrchestraSubcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish GuardsSound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.orgMy thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

E Jean Carroll was once described by one of her editors as being “institutionally incapable of being uninteresting” - and Carroll is exactly that. Elizabeth “E” Jean Carroll is a journalist, author, and advice columnist. Her “Ask E Jean” column was one of the longest-running advice columns in American publishing, featured in Elle magazine from 1993 to 2019. In addition to Elle magazine, she has written for New York Magazine, Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, Esquire, and Outside Magazine. Carroll is also the author of six books, including her 2019 book What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal, in which Carroll accused Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her in the mid-90s. As a result, Carroll faced Trump in court and has since won multiple civil cases against him. In this conversation Carroll reflects on her career of honest and bold writing, and her own resilience.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Watch The X22 Report On Video No videos found (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:17532056201798502,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-9437-3289"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="https://cdn2.decide.dev/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs");pt> Click On Picture To See Larger PictureCalifornia is destroying their gasoline market, they want the state to own it, socialism. Oil prices are dropping, gas prices are dropping soon gas will be close to $1. Trump is reversing the [CB] illusion, jobs are being returned to the private sector. All in preparation to go back to the Constitution. The [DS] will continue to push back and try to delay everything Trump is trying to do. The House is prepared to make his EO into law, this will protect the country into the future. Trump had the real Generals stand behind him, these are the individuals that will protect the Republic from the [DS]. Trump is undoing decades of corruption, exposing the [DS] treasonous crimes, they will fight to hide their treasonous acts but this will fail. In the end the Military is the only way. Economy (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:18510697282300316,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-8599-9832"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="https://cdn2.decide.dev/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs"); https://twitter.com/US_OGA/status/2000639453866651711?s=20 https://twitter.com/KobeissiLetter/status/2000951982874636662?s=20 https://twitter.com/profstonge/status/2000628845918265518?s=20 https://twitter.com/KobeissiLetter/status/2000925538131829101?s=20 https://twitter.com/RealEJAntoni/status/2000925018281402525?s=20 https://twitter.com/profstonge/status/2000952081012940948?s=20 https://twitter.com/RapidResponse47/status/2000966123274068007?s=20 https://twitter.com/RealEJAntoni/status/2000936248370717073?s=20 https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2000922549060858200?s=20   $2,000 per household, depending on the number of workers.” “[The economy] is gonna start lifting off in Q1 and Q2.” This is HUGE! Political/Rights https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/2000701268806062358?s=20 https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/2000713713423196652?s=20 https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/2000766725231665257?s=20 https://twitter.com/KnightsTempOrg/status/2000645606964933100?s=20 WEIRD? Police Publish and Quickly Delete Photos of Rob Reiner's Son Being Cuffed for Slaughtering Parents, Give No Explanation Nick Reiner, the 32-year-old son of liberal activist and famed director Rob Reiner, has been arrested and charged with the brutal murder of his parents. The LAPD Gang and Narcotics Division published dramatic photos of Nick's handcuffed arrest on Instagram on Monday, but quickly deleted them without explanation. Rob Reiner, 78, known for classics like The Princess Bride, Spinal Tap, and When Harry Met Sally, and his wife Michele Singer Reiner, 68, were found stabbed to death in their Brentwood, Los Angeles home on Sunday afternoon. The New York Post reports: Nick Reiner, whose face is blurred out, is seen being forced to the ground with his hands cuffed behind his back, according to one photo. Another snap showed law enforcement pushing the suspect against the front of a squad car. In the caption, the unit only identified the man as “a double homicide suspect.” The arrest was made by US Marshals with the assistance of the LAPD's robbery homicide division, according to the post. An LAPD spokesperson declined to comment when asked why the force's gang and narcotics unit deleted the arrest photo shortly after it was published. The since-deleted photos: Nick, who has long battled severe drug addiction starting in his teens, co-wrote and starred in the 2016 semi-autobiographical film Being Charlie, directed by his father, which chronicled a young man's struggles with substance abuse and rehab. Insiders report that Nick “really resented” his father and “hated himself for not being as successful,” amid ongoing family tensions. The night before the murders, Rob and Nick reportedly got into a “very loud argument” at Conan O'Brien's Christmas party, loud enough for other guests to notice. Source: thegatewaypundit.com https://twitter.com/nypost/status/2000870292227260695?s=20 https://twitter.com/barrycunningham/status/2000736216354853228?s=20   lists are…well you know. TAKE A LISTEN https://twitter.com/RealSLokhova/status/2000919590449394156?s=20 Real Texas Conservative  The tragic deaths of filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife Michele on December 14, 2025, have cast a somber shadow over Hollywood, prompting reflections on legacy, loss, and the lingering scars of political division. In response, President Donald Trump’s Truth Social post on December 15, 2025 – framing their passing through the lens of “Trump Derangement Syndrome” (TDS) – has ignited controversy. Yet, when examined against the backdrop of Reiner’s decade-long barrage of vitriolic rhetoric against Trump, the statement emerges not as callous, but as an appropriate blend of pointed satire, genuine sympathy, and a timely concern for mental health. This piece builds an ironclad case for its fittingness, rooted in factual history, psychological insight, and legal precedent. To understand the appropriateness of Trump’s words, one must first confront the unyielding hostility Reiner directed at him since 2015. Reiner, celebrated for directing classics like “This Is Spinal Tap” and “The Princess Bride,” transformed into one of Trump’s most vocal detractors after his presidential candidacy. In a 2016 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Reiner labeled Trump a “con man” and “dangerous,” warning he would erode democratic norms. This escalated over the years. By 2018, Reiner tweeted comparisons of Trump to Hitler, accusing him of fostering fascism and white supremacy. His 2024 documentary “God & Country” explicitly tied Trump’s influence to Christian nationalism, portraying it as a threat to American democracy. Reiner’s social media feed became a relentless stream of attacks, calling Trump a “pathological liar,” “sociopath,” and “existential danger” in posts that amassed millions of views. Even in 2025, shortly before his death, Reiner urged boycotts of Trump-related events, framing his re-election as apocalyptic. These were not isolated jabs but a sustained campaign, often personal and inflammatory, that Reiner himself admitted stemmed from deep-seated outrage. This history of antagonism, predominantly initiated by Reiner, sets the stage for why Trump’s response is not only defensible but proportionate. Far from escalating the feud posthumously, Trump’s post acknowledges Reiner’s talents – “a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star” – while attributing the tragedy to TDS, a “mind-crippling disease” fueled by “raging obsession.” This framing isn’t baseless invention; it’s grounded in credible psychological analysis. Critics have questioned the timing of Trump’s post, issued just a day after the tragedy, as potentially too raw or opportunistic. However, this immediacy is precisely what makes it authentic and effective, aligning with Trump’s longstanding style of direct, unfiltered leadership in a 24/7 news cycle where narratives solidify within hours. Historical precedents abound; consider how President Lincoln addressed critics’ deaths or political losses with prompt wit during the Civil War, using fresh moments to foster national introspection and prevent distorted legacies. Similarly, Trump’s swift response cuts through emerging media spin – already framing Reiner solely as a heroic anti-Trump voice – by injecting balance and psychological truth right when public discourse peaks. Delaying would risk seeming calculated or detached, whereas this timing underscores sincerity, especially paired with the post’s sympathetic close. In essence, it’s not haste but strategic candor, transforming grief into a teachable moment on division’s dangers before emotions calcify. Transitioning from personal history to broader insight, TDS has been recognized by mental health experts as a manifestation of intense political polarization leading to real psychological strain. Psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow, in analyses shared on platforms like the Mark Simone Show, described TDS as rooted in “mass hysteria,” where individuals project anxieties onto a political figure, resulting in paranoia, chronic stress, and potential health declines. Research in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology supports this, linking partisan hatred to elevated cortisol levels, anxiety disorders, and weakened well-being. Trump’s reference to TDS isn’t mockery; it’s a diagnostic observation, highlighting how Reiner’s fixation – evident in his own words – might have contributed to personal tolls, especially amid reports of familial strife surrounding the deaths. By raising this, Trump shifts the narrative from vendetta to vigilance, urging awareness of how ideological obsessions erode lives. Moreover, the post’s satirical edge aligns with a storied tradition of political commentary, making it intellectually apt rather than insensitive. Trump employs hyperbole – “driving people CRAZY” amid America’s “Golden Age” – to underscore the irony of Reiner’s paranoia against tangible achievements like record economic growth, Middle East peace accords, and energy independence during his administration. This mirrors Jonathan Swift’s exaggerated proposals in “A Modest Proposal” or Abraham Lincoln’s witty rebukes of critics, using humor to expose societal flaws without literal malice. Legally, such expression is shielded by the First Amendment; the Supreme Court’s ruling in Hustler Magazine v. Falwell affirms that satirical opinions about public figures, absent provable falsehoods, are protected speech. Trump’s “reportedly due to” phrasing acknowledges speculation, ensuring it remains opinion, not defamation. What elevates the statement to appropriateness is its undercurrent of grace amid past unkindnesses, including Trump’s rare direct engagement with Reiner pre-tragedy despite the instigations. The post concludes with “May Rob and Michele rest in peace!” This isn’t perfunctory; it’s a sincere extension of sympathy, humanizing both parties and transcending the feud while modeling reciprocity in an era of unrelenting acrimony. Trump’s words match rhetoric’s intensity yet cap it with compassion and a mental health caveat, turning potential gloating into a nudge toward understanding division’s toll. In conclusion, Trump’s response is ironclad in its fittingness because it reciprocates a decade of Reiner’s attacks with measured satire, validates psychological realities, and prioritizes sympathy over score-settling. It doesn’t diminish the tragedy but illuminates division’s costs, encouraging reflection. Postscript: While the author is not an attorney or mental health practitioner, his nearly two decades as a seasoned content writer and editor have honed expert research skills, enabling rigorous analysis grounded in verifiable facts and legal precedents. https://twitter.com/DC_Draino/status/2000931274744324237?s=20 https://twitter.com/AlecLace/status/2000700955457630718?s=20 https://twitter.com/KurtSchlichter/status/2000694706054029700?s=20  reason for it. Sadly, past experience, teaches us that the most likely reason for the lack of transparency is that the answers are not going to support the left-wing agenda of the local Rhode Island Democrats. I could be wrong. But if I was wrong, I have a nagging suspicion. I would've had answers to those questions already. The FBI is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of this man. Trump blames Brown, not FBI, for delay in finding shooting suspect President Trump blamed Brown University for the delay in locating the suspect in the fatal mass shooting on the school's campus in Rhode Island on Saturday. “You'd really have to ask the school a little bit more about that because this was a school problem,” Trump said when asked on Monday if FBI Director Kash Patel has told him why it's been difficult for the FBI to identify the suspected shooter. “They had their own guards. They had their own police. They had their own everything, but you'd have to ask that question really to the school, not to the FBI. We came in after the fact, and the FBI will do a good job, but they came in after the fact,” he said. Source: thehill.com War/Peace https://twitter.com/WarClandestine/status/2000694318512652750?s=20 JUST IN: US OBLITERATES 3 More Venezuelan Drug Boats Just Hours After President Trump Designates Fentanyl as a Weapon of Mass Destruction United States Southern Command on Monday announced that Joint Task Force Southern Spear took out three narcotrafficking vessels in the Eastern Pacific.  A total of eight “narco-terrorists” were killed in the strikes. “Intelligence confirmed that the vessels were transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and were engaged in narco-trafficking,” US SOUTHCOM said. Video from the strikes shows massive explosions on each boat, turning them into burning piles of rubble. https://twitter.com/Southcom/status/2000756230252314901?s=20 Source: thegatewaypundit.com Trump: Syria is a key part of peace efforts in the Middle East Washington, Dec. 16 (SANA) U.S. President Donald Trump described the developments in Syria this year as “remarkable,” highlighting that the United States is committed to ensuring lasting peace in the Middle East, with Syria playing an essential role in that peace. Source: sana.sy 1306 Q !xowAT4Z3VQ ID: e7b971 No.1248119 Apr 30 2018 10:51:06 (EST) Define the terms of the Iran nuclear deal. Does the agreement define & confine cease & desist ‘PRO' to the republic of Iran? What if Iran created a classified ‘satellite' Nuclear facility in Northern Syria? What if the program never ceased? What other bad actors are possibly involved? Did the U.S. know? Where did the cash payments go? How many planes delivered? Did all planes land in same location? Where did the U1 material end up? Is this material traceable? Yes. Define cover. What if U1 material ended up in Syria? What would be the primary purpose? SUM OF ALL FEARS. In the movie, where did the material come from? What country? What would happen if Russia or another foreign state supplied Uranium to Iran/Syria? WAR. What does U1 provide? Define cover. Why did we strike Syria? Why did we really strike Syria? Define cover. Patriots in control. Q British Intelligence Head Says Prepare for War Against Russia  The newly appointed head of MI6, Blaise Metreweli, formerly known by her position as “Q”, is literally the granddaughter of factual Ukraine Nazi, Constantine Dobrowolski.  Now, as head of MI6 Metreweli wants war with Russia. In a rather remarkable speech to the British people, Blaise Metreweli proclaimed Europe is in “the space between peace and war,” with a direct military conflict with Russia looming as the biggest threat.  Metreweli declared, “Our world is being actively remade, with profound implications for national and international security.” Source: theconservativetreehouse.com https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/2000898313579561365?s=20 https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2000896186413441184?s=20   have already been filed. The World Bank estimates the total at $524 billion over the next decade – triple Ukraine’s 2024 GDP. Zelensky: “It’s not enough to force Russia into a deal. It’s not enough to make it stop killing. We must make Russia accept that there are rules in the world.” Mechanism: Register of Damage (created 2023): collects claims from individuals, companies, and the Ukrainian state. Claims Commission: reviews, validates, and awards compensation case-by-case. Categories: sexual violence, child deportations, infrastructure destruction, religious sites bombed. Funding plan: Frozen Russian assets held by the EU, supplemented by member contributions. Dutch FM David van Weel: “The goal is to have validated claims that will ultimately be paid by Russia.” Enforcement? Still being worked out. Complication: Trump's team floated amnesty for war crimes as part of a peace deal – makes prosecuting the very individuals being billed impossible. Next steps: Convention takes force after 25 nations ratify it (if funds secured). Russia calls frozen-assets proposal “illegal,” denies war crimes, threatens retaliation. Reality check: This is post-WWII-style reparations applied to an ongoing conflict. The $524B estimate covers through 2024 only – 2025's escalated attacks on utilities, transport, and civilians already make the number outdated. https://twitter.com/AwakenedOutlaw/status/2000626884145754206?s=20   breaking out. Their position is legitimately insane. Sadly, what’s clear is that the European leadership is comprised of war-mongering, bloodthirsty psychopaths. The idiom, “With friends like these, who needs enemies?” comes to mind. Only in this case, it’s not a sarcastic observation. ______ EU Globalists Threaten to Dump $2.34 Trillion in U.S. Debt to Stop Trump's Ukraine Peace Deal JUST IN: Senate Advances $900 BILLION Defense Spending Bill with Military Aid to Ukraine Senate advances $900 billion defense spending bill The US Senate on Monday voted to end the filibuster and advance the National Defense Authorization Act to a final vote.  The bipartisan vote, 76-20, invoked cloture on the bill, bringing it one step closer to final passage, which could still take days. Still, some lawmakers seek to amend the bill further, which would then require House passage before landing on the President's desk. Burchett: Big vote tonight was the NDAA, National Defense Authorization Act, and it was $900.6 billion. There’s money in there for, of course, Ukraine, $800 million total, and some other things, money in there for recognizing an Indian tribe out of North Carolina— has nothing to do with national security— Syria, money, Iraq. But we just got to quit this stuff. Somebody's, America’s got to start paying attention. Trump didn’t even ask for that. You’ve got the war pimps that push for this stuff. And they always will tell you, Oh, it’s, “Burchett, man, they’re gonna spend all that money here buying those missiles.” You know, is that what we’re basing our votes on is they’re going to buy implements to kill other people on? I’m all for getting rid of our enemies, but this is just too much, way too much, and things are just not what they appear. We need to wake up. I voted no. Over 100 Democrats voted to pass this. That ought to tell you right there what this is about. Got some liberal stuff tucked in there, and it’s over 3000 pages. We get it on Sunday, and we’re voting on it today. There’s no way, no way, we will ever know what was in there, and just— anyway, frustrated, we’ll keep fighting. Thank y’all for sending me here. Source: thegatewaypundit.com https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2000775317577744797?s=20   commands down to 8. Under the plan expected to be presented to Secretary Hegseth this week: U.S. Central Command, European Command, and Africa Command would be downgraded and placed under a new “U.S. International Command.” U.S. Southern Command and Northern Command would merge into “U.S. Americas Command” (Americom), reflecting the administration’s shift toward Western Hemisphere operations. The remaining commands: Indo-Pacific, Cyber, Special Operations, Space, Strategic, and Transportation. A senior defense official on the urgency: “Time ain’t on our side, man. The saying here is, ‘If not us, who, and if not now, when?'” The plan aligns with Trump’s national security strategy declaring that “the days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over.” Former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel expressed concern: “The world isn’t getting any less complicated. You want commands that have the capability of heading off problems before they become big problems.” Congress has required the Pentagon to submit a detailed blueprint before any changes can take effect. The Monroe Doctrine comes to CENTCOM. https://twitter.com/WarClandestine/status/2000687672936030583?s=20   been done long ago, which is eradicate the cartels that are plaguing the Western hemisphere via drug/human trafficking. The cartels have gone unchecked for decades, while they murder millions of Americans and commit heinous crimes against humanity. Trump confirms that designating the cartels as a foreign terrorist organizations “is a big deal from a legal and military standpoint”. Trump is going to use the full force of the US MIL to shut this entire corrupt network down. The Dems/MSM, and the weaklings on the Right, are going to squeal and moan the entire way, but this must be done. Trump is going to neutralize this threat to the American People and do what past Presidents failed to do. Medical/False Flags [DS] Agenda https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2000857179142680769?s=20   been part of it. Her late father served as a colonel in the Somali army under dictator Siad Barre, whose regime carried out mass killings in the 1980s. That makes her backstory more complicated than she lets on. A resurfaced video shows a man resembling Omar's father discussing brutal tactics. There's no proof he committed war crimes, but some say he was close enough to know what was happening. Photos also show Omar's siblings with General Morgan – known as the “Butcher of Hargeisa” – and Omar herself at a 2022 event where Morgan was present. One relative even referred to him as “uncle.” Omar hasn't commented on the new findings, and her silence has led some to question how she can call for accountability abroad without addressing her own family's history. https://twitter.com/JamesRosenTV/status/2000723473182965780?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2000723473182965780%7Ctwgr%5Eb493e83212e9c33013500c56069b3622c19b2e21%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fredstate.com%2Frusty-weiss%2F2025%2F12%2F16%2Fice-officials-rip-ilhan-omar-over-ridiculous-story-about-her-son-being-racially-profiled-n2197175 https://twitter.com/thestoicplumber/status/2000748048683815183?s=20 https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2000742064959455252?s=20 U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro: D.C. Authorities Were Artificially Deflating Crime Stats With ‘Manipulated' Numbers https://twitter.com/USAttyPirro/status/2000637280789188855?s=20  into MPD's reported deflation of crime statistics. The need for accurate information to fight crime is essential. After a review of almost 6000 reports and the interview of over 50 witnesses, it is evident that a significant number of reports had been misclassified, making crime appear artificially lower than it was. The uncovering of these manipulated crime statistics makes clear that President Trump has reduced crime even more than originally thought, since crimes were actually higher than reported. His crime fighting efforts have delivered even more safety to the people of the District. The conduct here does not rise to the level of a criminal charge. However, it is up to MPD to take steps to internally address these underlying issues. Source: breitbart.com https://twitter.com/amuse/status/2000822708389745055?s=20 There is FEC data analysis that strongly suggests that Mark Kelly, Elissa Slotkin, Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Chrissy Houlahan and Maggie Goodlander have been recipients of illegally laundered campaign funds. Kelly is currently under investigation. They’re all backed by Soros!! President Trump's Plan https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/2000710555674325272?s=20  extremists after transitioning. https://twitter.com/george18kennedy/status/2000781888152129887?s=20   Staff of the Army (senior uniformed leader of the U.S. Army, member of the Joint Chiefs). – Admiral Daryl Caudle – Chief of Naval Operations (senior uniformed leader of the U.S. Navy, member of the Joint Chiefs). – General Eric M. Smith – Commandant of the Marine Corps (senior uniformed leader of the U.S. Marine Corps, member of the Joint Chiefs). – General Kenneth S. Wilsbach, USAF – Chief of Staff of the Air Force (senior uniformed leader of the U.S. Air Force, member of the Joint Chiefs). – General B. Chance Saltzman, USSF – Chief of Space Operations (senior uniformed leader of the U.S. Space Force, member of the Joint Chiefs). https://twitter.com/MJTruthUltra/status/2000668738203312188?s=20 TAKE A LISTEN https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/2000725299420352640?s=20 https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2000916623243300901?s=20   Something BETTER be done about this. https://twitter.com/RobLutherLawyer/status/2000697951295840722?s=20 https://twitter.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/2000961090612813971?s=20 https://twitter.com/SusieWiles/status/2000943061627548148?s=20   story. I assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team. The truth is the Trump White House has already accomplished more in eleven months than any other President has accomplished in eight years and that is due to the unmatched leadership and vision of President Trump, for whom I have been honored to work for the better part of a decade. None of this will stop our relentless pursuit of Making America Great Again! https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2000957946352820238?s=20  codification of the President’s executive orders.” “A very aggressive legislative agenda coming right out of the gates in January. We’re going to continue to work, for example, on health care to continue to bring costs down for the American people, to bring down the cost of living overall.” “He’s up to about 200 of those [orders], probably about 150 of them are codifiable by Congress and we’re working steadily through that list.” “You’re going to see us delivering for the American people while the effects of that giant piece of legislation that we did on July 4th, got signed on July 4th, comes into implementation.” “So much more, much more yet to do and the President and I talk about that almost every day and he’s excited about it and I am.” https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/2000685717497004167?s=20 to procedurally gum up the works behind the scenes. JD Vance Points Out the Consequence of the Senate “Blue Slip” Veto of Judicial Nominees It was passed by Congress on May 13, 1912, and ratified on April 8, 1913 The 16th Amendment to the United States Constitution grants Congress the authority to impose and collect income taxes without the need to apportion them among the states or base them on census data. constitution.congress.gov It was passed by Congress on July 2, 1909, and ratified on February 3, 1913. all of this is an outcome of the 17th Amendment, which stopped the state legislatures from having control over their senators.  Under the original constitutional framework, the Senate was designed to represent the interests of the state, as the Senators were appointed by state legislature, not popular votes.  The Sea Island assembly destroyed this cornerstone when they triggered the 17th Amendment. Repeal the 17th Amendment, and just about everything in federal government changes. Machiavelli said, “It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new ones.”  A prescient and oft repeated quote that is pertinent to the situation. When our founders created the system of government for our constitutional republic, they built in layers of protection from federal control over the lives of people in the states.  Over time, those protections have been eroded as the federal bureaucracy has seized power.  One of the biggest changes that led to the creation of the permanent political class was the 17th Amendment. Our founders created a system where Senators were appointed by the state legislatures.  In this original system, the Senate was bound by obligation to look out for the best interests of their specific states.  Under the ‘advise and consent‘ rules of Senate confirmation for executive branch appointments, the intent was to ensure the presidential appointee -who would now carry out regulatory activity- would not undermine the independent position of the states.  .When the 17th Amendment (direct voting for Senators) took the place of state appointments, the perspective of ‘advise and consent' changed.  The Senate was now in the position of ensuring the presidential appointee did not undermine the power of the permanent bureaucracy, which is the root of power for the upper-chamber. Senate committees, Homeland Security, Judiciary, Intelligence, Armed Services, Foreign Relations, etc. now consists of members who carry an imbalanced level of power within government.  The Senate now controls who will be in charge of executive branch agencies like the DOJ, DHS, FBI, CIA, ODNI, DoD, State Dept and NSA, from the position of their own power and control in Washington DC. In essence, the 17th Amendment flipped the intent of the constitution from protecting the individual states to protecting the federal government. Seventeenth Amendment- “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures. When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.” (link)   The biggest issue following the passage of the 17th Amendment became Senators who were no longer representing the interests of their state.  Instead, they were representing the interests of the power elite groups who were helping them fund the mechanisms of their re-election efforts. A Senator only needs to run for re-election every six years.  The 17th Amendment is the only amendment that changed the structure of the Congress, as it was written by the founders. Over time, the Senate chamber itself began using their advice and consent authority to control the executive and judicial branch.  The origination of a nomination now holds the question: “Can this person pass the Senate confirmation process?” source: theconservativetreehouse.com https://twitter.com/j3669/status/2000683161273897213?s=20 https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2000952036238746070?s=20 https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2000671858417422538?s=20   is going to save the GOP, AGAIN. (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:13499335648425062,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-7164-1323"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="//cdn2.customads.co/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs");

Jesus is not just the true Boaz; He's the better Boaz because he didn't need anybody to suggest the idea of redeeming us to Him.

Welcome to Episode 47 of The Paranormal Rundown! This episode is just the 3 of us, as Fr. Josh is a little under the weather. Still, we manage to get into some deep discussions around Star Wars and the Sith, as compared to paranormal topics like PSI, and Vic and Fr. Mike do a little educating of Dave on the physics of gravity, velocity, and resistance, using the parable of the Bowling Ball and the Feather. Along the way we discuss A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift, Darth JarJar, Victor and the Sick, Dying Alien, 3IAtlas, The Yank It Out Of Your Kazuni School of Statistics, the NASA Vacuum Chamber Drop, Foucault's Pendulum, the Light and Dark Side of the Force, Diogenes, and of course, the Great Cicada Robbery Wave of '96. So dust of that physics textbook and get your Star Wars universe map ready to go!As we are ramping up episodes for season 3, we would love to have you on the show if you are interested! All we ask for is an interest in all things paranormal, and a good sense of humor. Please email us at feedback@paranormalrundown.comThe Paranormal Rundown is a partnership between the hosts David Griffith, Father Michael Birdsong, and Vic Hermanson.Be sure to check out our partner podcasts:You can find Vic at Trailer Trash Terrors, https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/vic-hermansonYou can find Father Birdsong at https://www.becomingahouseofprayer.com, as well as hear his new podcast Ending the Curse at:https://open.spotify.com/show/5yL7ZAN4wcRKnMPAlalVXW Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

MEMBERS! JOIN US FOR THE BONUS SHOW IMMEDIATELY AFTER THIS MAIN SHOW: https://youtube.com/live/SPQ0tGd3c_gJOIN OUR COMMUNITY! Exclusive Members-only content & perks! Only ~17 cents/day! $5/month! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-GqXHAdxVUVMw2F_7h_X3Q/join You've all heard my many rants on the plague on our great American nation that are our own feckless, unelected, black-robed, tyrannical, inferior federal court judges, many of whom seem to have utterly lost their legal and human sensibilities as a result of a societally-threatening degree of Trump Derangement Syndrome.We've talked about the use of the impeachment power to remove these judges, as well as the prospect of removing them for their failing to “serve during Good behavior” as demanded by Article III of our glorious Constitution.Now, however, we can enjoy the keen insight of my friend, colleague, and lawyer, Ron Coleman, who has written a fantastic column on how America might go about saving itself from this plaque of rogue judges in a manner that is both constitutionally-sound AND actually practicable.Join me at 4 PM ET as I break it all down!COLEMAN on X:  https://x.com/RonColemanCOLEMAN ORIGINAL COLUMN: https://x.com/RonColeman/status/1973410849399214357COLEMAN YOUTUBE CHANNEL:  https://www.youtube.com/@roncolemanlawJOIN OUR COMMUNITY! Exclusive Members-only content & perks! Only ~17 cents/day! $5/month! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-GqXHAdxVUVMw2F_7h_X3Q/join I'm Andrew Branca, a 34-year attorney and member of the Supreme Court bar. My personal mission is to deliver to all of you political and legal analysis that is exuberantly pro-America as envisioned by our Founders, pro-Constitutional order, pro-WESTERN civilization, pro-meritocracy, pro-AMERICAN family, and adamantly opposed to everyone and everything degenerate and barbaric that undermines those great American values. America, and all of western civilization, is currently in a desperate and existential war against enemies foreign and domestic. All of us are called upon to save our great nation and western cultural tradition from a destruction that would cast ourselves, our posterity, and indeed the world into a dark ages for centuries to come. And I invite each of YOU to join me in this desperate but worthy mission to save our great nation. The easiest way to do that? SUBSCRIBE! SUBSCRIBE! SUBSCRIBE! BECOME A CHANNEL MEMBER! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-GqXHAdxVUVMw2F_7h_X3Q/join : -)Intro song: "Back in the Saddle," Tone Seeker & Dan "Lebo" Lebowitz And even better, Episode 1032

Hour 3 Audio from WGIG-AM and FM in Brunswick, GA

SLEERICKETS is a podcast about poetry and other intractable problems. NB: Also the title of a good Liz Phair song. And Chloe Pirrie is Scottish.My book Midlife now exists. Buy it here, or leave it a rating here or hereFor more SLEERICKETS, subscribe to SECRET SHOW, join the group chat, and send me a poem for Listener Crit!Leave the show a rating here (actually, just do it on your phone, it's easier). Thanks!Wear SLEERICKETS t-shirts and hoodies. They look good!SLEERICKETS is now on YouTube!For a frank, anonymous critique on SLEERICKETS, subscribe to the SECRET SHOW and send a poem of no more 25 lines to sleerickets [at] gmail [dot] com Some of the topics mentioned in this episode:– Out of Order by Alexis Sears– Bright and Tender Dark by Joanna Pearson– The Hyla Brook Reading Series at the Frost Farm– Too Much (2025)– Girls (2012–2017)– Megan Stalter– Will Sharpe– Lena Dunham– Luis Felber– Michael Zegen– John Magaro– Aubrey Plaza– Sally Hawkins– Chloe Pirrie– Adele Exarchopoulos– Emily Ratajkowski– Jack Antonoff– Rhea Perlman– Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke, ft. T.I., Pharrell– Got to Give It Up by Marvin Gaye– Keith Moon– Sonoya Mizuno– Eudora Welty– Edi Patterson as Judy Gemstone– The White Lotus (2021–)– A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift– Historia Calamitatum by Peter Abelard– Her Ex Writes a Novel by Shashi Bhat– Byung-Chul Han– J. K. Rowling– Michael B. Jordan– S. E. HintonFrequently mentioned names:– Joshua Mehigan– Shane McCrae– A. E. Stallings– Ryan Wilson– Morri Creech– Austin Allen– Jonathan Farmer– Zara Raab– Amit Majmudar– Ethan McGuire– Coleman Glenn– Chris Childers– Alexis Sears– JP Gritton– Alex Pepple– Ernie Hilbert– Joanna Pearson– Matt Wall– Steve Knepper – Helena FederOther Ratbag Poetry Pods:Poetry Says by Alice AllanI Hate Matt Wall by Matt WallVersecraft by Elijah BlumovRatbag Poetics By David Jalal MotamedAlice: In Future PostsBrian: @BPlatzerCameron: Minor TiresiasMatthew: sleerickets [at] gmail [dot] comMusic by ETRNLArt by Daniel Alexander Smith

It seems that the time has come in Putin's war on Ukraine that both sides indicate a willingness to negotiate. But negotiate what? This episode moves on from what is necessary for a sustainable peace, what Putin's real goals are in his war on Ukraine, and propose a possible path forward. I introduced this possible path in In Episode 104. This episode sets that idea in the context of the previous two episodes and the recent political and military developments. Music: Copland, A. & United States Marine Band. (2000) Fanfare for the Common Man, unpublished, Washington, DC. [Audio] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, (Fair use for educational purposes.) Mozart, W.A. and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Requiem in D Minor, downloaded from the Internet Archive, https://archive.org Reference Book: Walsh, M. (2025). A rage to conquer: Twelve battles that changed the course of Western history (First edition). St. Martin's Press.

Stand Up is a daily podcast. I book,host,edit, post and promote new episodes with brilliant guests every day. This show is Ad free and fully supported by listeners like you! Please subscribe now for as little as 5$ and gain access to a community of over 700 awesome, curious, kind, funny, brilliant, generous souls I had a great talk with the brave,brilliant,hilarious and iconic Author of the already NY Times Bestselling Book "Not My Type" Today I had the great honor of interviewing E. Jean Carroll about her life and new book and I think it was one of the best conversations I've had in a long time. She makes it very easy with her humor and brilliance. I was very inspired by her story and the way she has handled it all with elegance and humor and she could not have been kinder to me. I hope we will get to talk again and I hope you will subscribe to her substack and get her book E. Jean Carroll, born Elizabeth Jean Carroll on December 12, 1943, is an American journalist, author, and advice columnist. She is best known for her long-running "Ask E. Jean" column in Elle magazine, which ran from 1993 to 2019. Carroll gained prominence for accusing Donald Trump of sexual assault in her 2019 memoir, "What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal".  Early Career: Carroll began her career as a writer for magazines like Rolling Stone and Playboy, and later became a contributing editor for Esquire and Outside.  "Ask E. Jean" Column: Her advice column in Elle, which she started in 1993, became one of the longest-running in American publishing.  "What Do We Need Men For?" In her 2019 memoir, Carroll detailed the alleged sexual assault by Donald Trump in the mid-1990s, as well as other experiences with harassment and mistreatment.  Lawsuits Against Trump: Carroll sued Trump for defamation and battery related to his public denials of her allegations.  Jury Verdict: In May 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation against Carroll and awarded her $5 million.  Carroll also hosted her own television show, "Ask E. Jean," in the 1990s.  She co-founded the dating website Greatboyfriends.com and the matchmaking service Tawkify.  She was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series in 1987.  Her book, "What Do We Need Men For?", was excerpted in New York magazine.    Be sure to visit https://www.patreon.com/PeteDominick/membership and scroll down where you should see a "Connect to Discord" button.  You can also look at https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/212052266-How-do-I-get-my-Discord-Rewards- for more info. Join the SUPD Marketplace! Watch the video to learn how to post at StandUpWithPeteDominick.com/marketplace Join us Thursday's at 8EST for our Weekly Happy Hour Hangout!  FARM JAM INFO Pete on Blue Sky Pete on Threads Pete on Tik Tok Pete on YouTube  Pete on Twitter Pete On Instagram Pete Personal FB page Stand Up with Pete FB page All things Jon Carroll  Follow and Support Pete Coe Buy Ava's Art  Hire DJ Monzyk to build your website or help you with Marketing Gift a Subscription https://www.patreon.com/PeteDominick/gift

Stand Up is a daily podcast. I book,host,edit, post and promote new episodes with brilliant guests every day. This show is Ad free and fully supported by listeners like you! Please subscribe now for as little as 5$ and gain access to a community of over 700 awesome, curious, kind, funny, brilliant, generous souls I had a great talk with the brave,brilliant,hilarious and iconic Author of the already NY Times Bestselling Book "Not My Type" Today I had the great honor of interviewing E. Jean Carroll about her life and new book and I think it was one of the best conversations I've had in a long time. She makes it very easy with her humor and brilliance. I was very inspired by her story and the way she has handled it all with elegance and humor and she could not have been kinder to me. I hope we will get to talk again and I hope you will subscribe to her substack and get her book E. Jean Carroll, born Elizabeth Jean Carroll on December 12, 1943, is an American journalist, author, and advice columnist. She is best known for her long-running "Ask E. Jean" column in Elle magazine, which ran from 1993 to 2019. Carroll gained prominence for accusing Donald Trump of sexual assault in her 2019 memoir, "What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal". Early Career: Carroll began her career as a writer for magazines like Rolling Stone and Playboy, and later became a contributing editor for Esquire and Outside. "Ask E. Jean" Column: Her advice column in Elle, which she started in 1993, became one of the longest-running in American publishing. "What Do We Need Men For?" In her 2019 memoir, Carroll detailed the alleged sexual assault by Donald Trump in the mid-1990s, as well as other experiences with harassment and mistreatment. Lawsuits Against Trump: Carroll sued Trump for defamation and battery related to his public denials of her allegations. Jury Verdict: In May 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation against Carroll and awarded her $5 million. Carroll also hosted her own television show, "Ask E. Jean," in the 1990s. She co-founded the dating website Greatboyfriends.com and the matchmaking service Tawkify. She was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series in 1987. Her book, "What Do We Need Men For?", was excerpted in New York magazine. Be sure to visit https://www.patreon.com/PeteDominick/membership and scroll down where you should see a "Connect to Discord" button. You can also look at https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/212052266-How-do-I-get-my-Discord-Rewards- for more info. Join the SUPD Marketplace! Watch the video to learn how to post at StandUpWithPeteDominick.com/marketplace Join us Thursday's at 8EST for our Weekly Happy Hour Hangout! FARM JAM INFO Pete on Blue Sky Pete on Threads Pete on Tik Tok Pete on YouTube Pete on Twitter Pete On Instagram Pete Personal FB page Stand Up with Pete FB page All things Jon Carroll Follow and Support Pete Coe Buy Ava's Art Hire DJ Monzyk to build your website or help you with Marketing Gift a Subscription https://www.patreon.com/PeteDominick/gift

This episode dives deep into the escalating tensions between Iran and Israel, unpacks the "No Kings" protest movement, and explores a wild governance theory: What if we ran states like companies with CEOs?Welcome to the Alfalfa Podcast

Diplomatic Hell Hole.Book 3 in 18 parts, By FinalStand. Listen to the ► Podcast at Explicit Novels."Are we in the right place?" the stranger worried."I'm afraid so. Anais, you need to leave.""Not until you tell me what is going on here," she sizzled."She's not here to have sex, if that's what you worried about," I retorted. "Wait, are you here to have sex with me?""I barely know you.""That rarely stops me," I muttered."He's a master of bedroom antics," Pamela praised me. "He's pretty much at a loss at doing anything else.""Thanks Grandma," I griped."Your welcome, Grandson.""We, are here to meet someone," the stranger hedged."You came to the right place," Pamela preempted me. "He's definitely someone.""Fine, redo. I'm Cáel Nyilas," (deep breathe), "NOHIO, HCIESI-NDI, U HAUL, Magyarorszag es Erdely Hercege plus a bunch of other honorifics that have yet to be confirmed. I am single-handedly bringing back medievalism to the center of Europe and the Near East. The woman to my left is Pamela Pale, and she really is my bodyguard. The woman to my right is Sgt. Anais Saint-Amour, RCMP, my ex-lover and the person that needs to leave   right now.""I'm not sure I should leave at this moment," Anais shifted possessively. I had to recall earlier this morning, the part where we'd broken up by mutual consent. Yep. That had really happened. I had thought I was whittling down my current list of paramours. Why do the Goddesses hate me so?"Told you, she can't give up that cock," Pamela whispered."As you can see, I have limited control of my life," I told the strange woman. "I know you are here to meet somebody who isn't me. Now you know who I am. Who are you and your companions?""I'm Ms. Quincy.""Sorry; I'm on a first name basis with everyone I meet," I interrupted."What's your rank, Honey?" Pamela added."What makes you think,?""She doesn't think. That's what makes her so dangerous." I explained."Hey now," Pamela faux-complained."Okay. She's a fledgling telepath, or medium," I shrugged."Captain, Zelda Quincy.""In case you are mesmerized by her tits," Pamela tapped me, "she's packing some serious hardware.""One of those personal defense gizmos?" I leaned Pamela's way."Close, but no cigar. She's my kind of girl, big 'bang-bang', back-up at the small of her back and knife in her boot.""What!" Zelda gulped."She's his knife-fighting instructor," Anais answered drolly."Are you Special Forces?" Zelda regarded my mentor."Nah, I got kicked out for a consistent failure to observe even the loosest Rules Of Engagement. I'm a free-spirit.""Oh, you're a sniper," Zelda nodded."I like this one," Pamela smiled."Ah, thank you." Then, over her shoulder, "I think we are in the right place." Zelda entered the room, followed by a Hispanic panther of a man (kind of like a tanned, slightly shorter Chaz without the cool accent) wearing a long coat, and a Subcontinent-cast woman who looked at everyone as if she expected us to sprout fangs, or start quoting the Koran any second now. She obviously was a brain seconded to this mission very much against her will.The fourth person had that cagey 'when my lips move, I'm lying' look while seemingly unhappy with her current assignment. The heavy implication was that the lady was a career diplomat. Considering our current company and who we were talking to, she was State Department. She was in her late 30's or early 40's and giving off the sensation she had devoted so much to her career that she was starting to wonder if that was all that life had to offer.The fifth member was a military man clearly uncomfortable about what he was doing here, thus not a spook. His off-the-rack suit wasn't terrible, so he expected to socialize somewhat while performing his duties. He also looked like a man who expected other people to speak half-truths and obfuscated lies as easily as they breathed. Numbers three, four and five were dressed for the weather and unarmed.All of this meant they were good at what they did, though they probably didn't know the particulars of what was expected of them. They had their marching orders. Those orders were about to be made irrelevant in the company they would be keeping. The latter weren't the 'doing it by rote' kind of people they would normally be dealing with."I bet you she's a doctor," I murmured to Pamela, "she's with State and he's some sort of Foreign Service type.""I bet the first guy is Air Force," she countered."Like one of those Para-rescue guys?""No. More like one of those Battlefield Air Operations guys, I'm guessing," she corrected me."That guy?" I nodded to the final guy. "Pentagon wonk?""More likely he's one of those embassy guys. I'm going to take an educated leap here, Office of Military Cooperation, Mongolia?""That is pretty clever of you. Kazakhstan. Major Justin Colbert.""I bet some people in the White House, Pentagon and Langley are disappointed with you right now," I reasoned. His jaw grew tight."Don't worry, Major," Pamela grinned. "We consider that a good thing. We don't like the people in charge and have a low opinion of their opinion on just about everything, including their habit of blaming the blameless for their government's fuck ups.""Who are these people?" the first man whispered to Quincy."She's a telepath." That was Zelda"She's a psychic-medium." That was Anais."She can see through time." That was me. "Nice to meet you. Who are you?""Chris Diaz. Lieutenant Colonel, USAF.""Dr. Saira Yamin," the second woman introduced herself. "Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies. Are you the man from Johnston Island?""Why yes, yes I am," I beamed."The APCSS is in Waikiki, Hawaii," Pamela educated me. "Your arrival probably cost her some prime surfing time.""I was more interested in the fact that he survived a plane crash in a Category Four Cyclone," she admitted."Mother Nature hates me. No matter how hard I try, she refuses to kill me," I confessed. "My suffering is an endless source of amusement to that bitch.""That, that wasn't the helpful answer I was looking for," she stammered."So, Lt. Colonel Chris Diaz, you must be with JSOC, I have a deep and abiding respect for you guys. If you need something, just ask," I greeted him. "Captain Zelda, you are not with JSOC.""She's with the DCS ~ that is the Defense Clandestine Service," Pamela kept going. "Zelda, you love being in your uniform, you're proud, yet happy with the concept of dying in an unmarked grave for Constitution and Country. You are too old to have been in the first female class at Ranger School, so that means no 'in the field' JSOC for you. You've gotten around that stone wall by joining the US Defense Department's own little pack of killers.""Also, you felt it was necessary to bring a Benelli M4-11707. That's a close-in action shotgun, but a bit over-kill considering the paper-thin walls in this building. That tells me you are used to being in the kinds of places where such a tool is a necessity. Or in other words, since you think you are meeting a band of terrorists, you brought along your favorite toy.""Your personal weapon is a SIG Sauer P229R DAK in .357 which is a new weapon still under trial by the US Army and Air Force. Your boot dagger is ceramic so it will pass a cursory exam, or scan. You hate the idea of being trapped on a public aircraft weaponless. You have also given up killing power for a proper balance for throwing. I like a forward-thinking gal.""Air Force ~ you've recently come back from Asia, most likely Tibet. It shows in your breathing brought about by a close call with Altitude Sickness. The only reason for an Air Force guy to be here is because he's familiar with the Khanate military and you are not US Army, or Marine Corp Special Forces. I know the type.""You went with the MP5K in the standard 9mm, so you are more interested in sending bullets down range than looking into someone's face as you kill them. You may be a 'light' Colonel, which means you are almost somebody. What your higher-ups haven't appreciated is that our guests will respect you because they are like that ~ remembering past friends and comrades in arms. Of greater importance, you have Cáel's gratitude which will count for more than you currently believe."I pledged then and there to be as good as Pamela at determining that kind of stuff before I died. She had assured me it was as much a matter of psychology as eagle-eyed perception. People were often a type that gravitated to various forms of destruction, be they old school, or going for the latest gadget."I told you all that firepower was excessive," State softly chastised her associates (what they really were, not the underlings she saw them as)."So, you appeared to have forgotten to tell us your name," I regarded the State lass."Nisha Desai Biswal. I'm with the government.""Oh, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, I've examined your website," I told her. It clearly pissed her off somewhat that I so swiftly disregarded her crude attempt at subtle manipulation."Hey. I've got some real enemies at State, so it pays to know who might be the next suit trying to cock me over," I explained. I had to prioritize. It would take some serious effort to convince Zelda to have a MFF three-way straight out the gate and she was definitely the hotter number."Major, you came here unarmed," Pamela noted. "That won't do. They expect you to be armed because you are a warrior, damn it. Cáel get him one of your Glock 22's.""Gotcha," I nodded. I went to my room, tipped away the false back to my closet (that Havenstone had installed recently so Odette wouldn't accidently fire off one of my weapons) and retrieved one of my spare Glocks, but not the one with the laser sight. Such over-the-top fancy gear would be inappropriate. I only gave him one mag. If he couldn't get the job done with 15 rounds, he wouldn't have a chance to reload.Mind you, I took two in a twin-rig shoulder holster and four 22 round magazines, because I tend to shoot two-handed which doesn't exactly give you a bullseye every time. I returned to our crowded living room, handed the Major his weaponry, and then directed the US group to the far side of the room (towards Timothy's bedroom. Saira and Nisha took the couch.Because this tiny space wasn't crowded enough, there was a knock at the door. I checked. It was Juanita, oh yeah, my real bodyguard."Listen up everybody," I announced to the room. "This is my other bodyguard, my official one. Her names is Juanita Leya Antonio Garza, she's from the Dominican Republic via Buenos Aires and she is armed, so don't freak out." I opened the door."What is going on?" Juanita hissed."I'm having a private meeting with a few heavily armed friends. The other side to this party hasn't arrived yet. Why don't you come in?" She came in."Why didn't you warn me?" she whispered her complaint."Long night, worse wake-up, needed to do some soul-searching. Pamela was looking after me, then this came up and I forgot. I apologize," I lowered my head in shame. Juanita was only trying to do the job she'd been entrusted with and by not thinking of her, I was making that so much harder.I made the introductions, first names only."Juanita, Anais, Pamela; please slip into the kitchenette," I suggested.Anais "Why?"Juanita "Where are you going to be?"Pamela "Sure. I'm starving. I'm going to raid the fridge.""Anais, because I need my faction in one place. Juanita, I will be refereeing this meeting, so I will have to remain in the living room, roughly six feet from you." It was really a small apartment. "Pamela, if it is edible, it isn't mine and you'll have to replace it."Great Caesar's Ghost! No wonder Big Wigs had their personal assistants handle this pre-meeting crap. I was on my last two fucking nerves and one of those was already stressed and tender. And the real reason for being here hadn't even arrived yet."Why am I in your faction?" Anais mulled over threateningly."Because you haven't walked out that door. There are going to be three sides to this meeting, not three plus Anais. That is the way it is going to be. Now, are you going to behave, or are Juanita and Pamela going to toss you out?""You are threatening me!""Finally catching on to that, aren't you, Sweetie?" Pamela chimed in."I'm only staying because I believe you are in trouble," Anais grumped."Why is she (Anais) here?" Nisha inquired heatedly. "This is supposed to be a very, very private encounter.""I know Anais. I don't know you. I trust Anais with my well-being despite the fact she has numerous reasons to distrust me. She's staying because she is a straight arrow. That's good enough for me.""But is she going to keep her mouth shut about what happens here today?" Nisha pressed."Anais, this is a clandestine meeting that isn't going to be recorded by anybody so, barring a crime being committed, you can never discuss this with anyone who isn't already in the room. Agreed?"Pause."I agree," she nodded. I really was going to have to fuck her again. Not today. Well, maybe not today; I had to keep my options open. Her investigator mind was going into overdrive. Give it a week and she'd be knocking on my door late one night. Inquisitive, truth-hungry dames are like that, trust me. Then it would be 'bask in my genius' sex. It had been a while since I'd experienced that, with Lady Yum-Yum.There was another knock at the door. I checked before Juanita could do the checking for me, in case someone was going to shoot me through the door. Fuck it. I was going to talk to Timothy about moving. Him, me and Odette. I couldn't give those two up. It was Kazak bookends. I opened up and invited them in. It turned out they had names besides Bookends #1 and #2, Nuro and Roman.Nuro (I think) checked out the rooms while Roman (I was pretty sure) kept an eye on my guests. I made introductions, first names only and specifying who was with who. Technically, they could trust my side because I was the Great Khan's brother and thus my servants were his servants. Technically.Iskender came next followed by OT. A woman I didn't know (sadly, not OT's daughter) came in behind him while the other two quintuplets stayed in the hallway. Iskender and I hugged."Ulı Khaan s yikti ağası," he smiled. That was 'Prince-something'. My Kazak was a bit rusty. He then whispered into my ear. "OT bows to you first. His title is Hongtaiji." What?"Ulı Khaan s yikti ağası," OT bowed."Hongtaiji Oyuun T m rbaatar," I bowed back. I remembered I had to rise first. It was an etiquette thing. In retrospect, Iskender had stretched the bounds of tradition by hugging me, his titular superior. "Welcome to my humble abode.""I thank you for your hospitality," he 'grinned'. His face wasn't made for that gesture so that faint gesture came across as rather unnatural.My mind finally finished translating what Iskender and OT had called me. It wasn't 'prince'. It was 'beloved brother of the Great Khan'. Mother fucker!"Wait," Justin, the military attach  guy muttered, "we are here to meet this guy?" indicating me."What do you mean?" Saira questioned."The title Mr. Nyilas was identified with means 'beloved brother of the Great Khaan'," he explained. "The Kazakhs don't go tossing honorifics like that around. This guy," again pointing at me, "is a really important somebody.""Thanks for dropping this grenade in my lap, OT," I joked. "I'll get you for this, and your little yak too.""Odette is going to be so miffed that she missed this," Pamela chuckled."Mr. Nyilas," Zelda began."Please, call me Cáel. It is how I roll.""Cáel, can I ask you a stupid question?""Go right ahead," Pamela snorted. "Cáel does stupid real well. It is a critical part of his skill set. It makes him adorable instead of annoying. Trust me, you'll learn that soon enough."Too much 'trust me' was flying around in a room where nobody trusted anybody."Thanks for that encouragement, Teach," I grumbled. "Ask away, Captain Zelda.""Why are you playing this game with us?""I wasn't. Until thirty seconds ago I was sure I was here totally as a spectator," I gripped. "My buddy," the word dripped with sarcasm, "Temujin likes dumping these kinds of surprises on me.""Did you mean what Ms. Pale said about you feeling you owed me?" Chris asked."Absolutely.""We need help defusing this Thailand crisis before a shooting war begins.""What do you suggest?""We want the Khanate to back down," Chris stated firmly."I thought we had agreed that I would spearhead this delegation," Nisha reminded Chris."I think the situation had evolved and we need a different approach," Chris insisted."You should listen to the Lieutenant Colonel," I advised. "He knows a whole lot more about what is going on than you do.""Why don't you explain it to us?" she began her weevil-ling."You are engaging in linguistic niceties with men who have bled together, Ms. Biswal," I instructed. "Not that Chris and I have bled on the same battlefield, we have shed blood in the same cause; and that cause has been bringing our two nations, the Khanate and the US, together. The Khanate owes Chris for his efforts on our behalf and we pay our debts.""How so?" Nisha asked."National Security stuff," I evaded. "If you don't know, you shouldn't know and you probably don't want to know. Suffice it to say, the Khanate is willing to listen to Lt. Colonel Diaz's request as a friend.""But he doesn't speak for the United States Government," she corrected."Why not?" I riposted. "He's dealt with the Khanate longer than you have. He has a clue about the mindset of their rank and file.""But does he know their leadership?" she persisted."I don't know. Chris, do you think you have a handle on me?""Are you really capable of talking for the Khanate government?" Nisha preempted Chris. What she left unsaid was 'are you culpable in their atrocities?'"Let's find out," I then looked over my shoulder. "Hongtaiji Oyuun T m rbaatar, will my words and wishes reach my brother's ear?""That is why I am here," he replied."Don't you have the authority to speak for your leader?" she grilled OT. Nisha was relentless trying to stay in the limelight. "Aren't you a diplomat?""There is no need to insult the man," Pamela snidely commented."I am one of many voices that provide information to the Great Khan. I am not his brother. Cáel Nyilas is and has already proved his familial affection by proposing Operation Funhouse and brought whole nations as gifts," OT schooled her. "He is gifted with both tactical and strategic insight as well as sharing the Great Khan's love for his people and his hopes for their eventual freedom.""I didn't think you were a soldier," Zelda looked me over."Oh no," I wove off that insinuation. "I've never been a real soldier and am unworthy of that distinction. I know quite a few who have earned that title and they scare the crap out of me. I mean, they go looking for trouble. In my case, trouble comes looking for me. I'm damn lucky to still be alive and that's the damn truth.""Bullshit," Pamela coughed."What was that, Artemisia?" I winked at her."Bitch," she laughed "My men have become women, and my women men. At least you didn't call me Cassandra.""Well, she's Greek (a deadly insult to all Amazons), but you could be her Evil Twin because everyone believes whatever you say.""Can we get down to business?" Chris inquired."Damn," Pamela shook her head. "They haven't been paying attention.""What does that mean?" Zelda griped."Iskender, you know what I'm talking about, don't you?" I asked."Not a clue, Exalted One," he stood there like a stone statue. Note, the Khanate contingent really were standing there like the Altai Mountains, doing nothing. You had to carefully examine them to see that they did indeed breathe and blink."Use small words," Pamela advised."You really are a rude misanthrope," Anais told Pamela."Do you know what's going on?" Pamela volleyed."No.""Then sit back and watch how the madness works," she snickered. "It is all you, Cáel.""Okay. One; how did Artemisia escape the battle of Salamis?" I began. Nothing."Oh," Justin nodded. "She rammed an allied ship to make the pursuing Athenians think she was an ally. What does that have to do with our current predicament?""Achieve your ends by using violence as a distraction," I sighed. "The Khanate will invade Thailand in," I looked to OT, "tomorrow?" He nodded."How does that help us?" Nisha complained."Second example, Cassandra. She saw the truth through all illusions and falsehoods and no one believed her. Now, reverse that."Pause."We are waiting," Saira finally joined the conversation. I could hear those little microprocessors inside her noggin firing electrons at light speed."We fight a phony war. The Khanate and their buddies invade in a lightning campaign that appears to be successful. Shit like attacking the opposition where they ain't. Things that look epic on CNN where some retired colonel, no offense...""None taken," Chris responded."Where some colonel talks about seizing resources, severed supply lines and encirclement. We, the Khanate, bomb shit like bridges and supply dumps, things with no civilians to get killed. On the downside, to make this work the Khanate needs to put some level of force into Bangkok.""That will get civilians killed," Nisha reminded me, unnecessarily."Civilians are getting killed right now by their own government. This time they will get a chance to strike back," I stated firmly. "The Thai protestors aren't cowards. They are just grossly outgunned. We can change that.""How does that help the United States?" Nisha queried."The US gets to come in and save the day," I sighed. "The US can t get there until the day after, so you don't look bad about letting the first 24 hours of brutality happen.""Oh," Zelda blinked."The US gets to end the fighting that the Khanate has no desire to continue. The US brings peace, while whomever takes over owes the Khanate. Both sides look good. Both sides claim victory. The President gets a second Nobel Peace Prize (psychic, aren't I?). The US gathers some regional allies like Malaysia, the ROC and the Philippines along with our Marines to ensure free and fair elections. The Khanate isn't seen to be backing down against the Titan of Western Civilization. They are working with them to bring about a better world.""Win-win," Saira nodded in agreement."The Khanate is still an autocratic tyranny," Nisha commented."As opposed to the People's Republic's oligarchical tyranny?" Chris countered."Agreed," Saira said. "I now think we should work with the Khanate to bring stability to Central Asia which which was impossible while those member nations were being squeezed between Russia, Europe, China and India.""What are you a doctor of?" I asked."I specialize in 'failed states', among other things," Saira grinned."This could still turn into one bloody cluster-fuck," Zelda mused."My peopled don't have the resources to devastate Thailand," OT finally spoke. "If you, the US, agrees to intervene on our timetable, you will have our thanks, off the record, of course.""How do we know this isn't some ruse to allow the Khanate to overthrow Thailand's existing government?" Justin questioned."You have my word," I replied. No one said anything for several heartbeats."Really?" Nisha balked."Mr. Nyilas, Cáel, do you give me the Great Khan's word?" Chris studied me intently."Without reservation," I answered. "For what you have done for us and more, the Great Khan will honor this deal. We and the Thai's will do the bleeding. You will get your accolades. We avoid a pointless clashing of forces, which is why we are all here today.""I will give you my written recommendation in a few hours," Saira told Nisha.Chris stepped forward to shake my hand. He was an alpha-type alright. I gave as good as I got. His eyes bore into mine, looking for a faltering of will."What did you do in Romania?""I got a lot of good men killed.""Okay.""Okay?" Nisha squawked. "A handshake, a pat on the back and the deals done? Since when did our democratic republic do business this way? He admitted he got men killed in Romania. What is to say this won't be Romania writ large?""Ms. Biswal, he told the truth. He got good men killed and he isn't happy about it. I would be worried if he claimed one bit of glory from that episode. He didn't.""Nisha," I took a deep breathe, "When you unleash men with weapons, nothing is assured. Maybe the Thai government will see the hate coming their way and back down. Maybe the people will resist the intrusion. Maybe the Khanate's forces will get slaughtered at the starting line. It isn't like they have enough time to deploy enough forces to win a protracted war.""What happens if the Khanate decides it won't go?" she continued."Then they get destroyed on the ground in a war of attrition," Chris answered for me. "He's right. They can't bring enough in the time allotted to completely overwhelm the roughly 120,000 members of the Royal Thai Army that have remained loyal to the regime.""In three days they will be out of fuel, shells, rockets and bullets. It is logistics, Ms. Biswal," Zelda piled it on. "The Khanate war-fighting systems are not NATO compatible. That means they can't simply capture more material as they penetrate the frontiers. If they overstay their welcome, we can launch missile strikes against their fuel depots. The combat devolves back to World War I and that's a style of war they can't afford to fight.""What about stopping the Khanate from invading in the first place?" Nisha wouldn't give up."Had the US acknowledged the Khanate, none of this would have happened, Ms. Biswal," I became snappish. "Neither superpower talked to the other until other commitments had been made.""If you think you can come in and start dictating Khanate policy, you are dreadfully mistaken. The US doesn't have the power, or the resolve," I glared at her. "Don't try convincing the Khanate that isn't the case. We know better.""You don't know what the US is capable of," she snapped back."Abandoning Iraq with a fractured pseudo-democratic process? Abandoning Afghanistan without destroying the Taliban? The Syrian Civil War? The Donbass Crisis? The collapse of Libya? Boko Haram? Somalia? Yemen? Exactly how has the US's power and resolve solved any of those issues?" I countered."Ms. Biswal," OT spoke again. "We are willing to create a desert and call it 'Peace'. Our enemies know that. Your unwillingness to do so is neither a strength nor a weakness. It is a hallmark of your society in the same way that 'Total War' is a hallmark of ours. We are more than willing to leave you to manage the Peace. Let us manage the War against the forces opposed to civilized discourse.""As ugly and disagreeable as it is, we are willing to keep creating pyramids of skulls on every street corner until either they learn their lesson, or we kill them all. Let us do that and you will have your global stability and reap the economic benefits and accolades of Pax Americana. We are not your enemy. We are precisely the ally you need to keep the peace and we will do that, if you let us.""To allow barbarism is to become barbarians," Saira mused."That is complete fiction," I scoffed. "The United States didn't become communist because it allied with the Soviet Union in World War II. Truman didn't become Stalin. The enemy of my enemy is my friend is older than recorded history.""It is the Carrot and the Stick on a Global basis," Justin agreed. "Listen to the gentle words of the West, or you will end up feeling the wrath of the East.""As long as the Khanate accepts the limitations of is role," Saira added, "this might work. Please understand there will be factions in the Western Democracies who will not accept that status quo. It is not in the nature of our societies to stifle dissent.""Is it possible to get any political concessions from the Khanate's leadership?" Justin requested. "A pledge to hold some level of democratic elections? A Constitution with some strong provisions to protect individual rights and liberties would be nice.""Justin, in case your bosses missed it, the Khanate is still at a state of war with the PRC," I shook my head. "With their limited experience with democratic government throughout most of the Khanate's territories, that would be madness.""With limited concessions to the Imperial State, we have not interfered with the politics of Albania, Armenia, Georgia and Turkey. We are never going to become a Western-style democracy. We have had limited rule by consensus long before White Men arrived in the Western Hemisphere," OT informed them."Discounting the Irish Monks, Vikings and Knights Templar," Pamela interjected."If you say so," OT gave a minuscule bow to Pamela. "Long before your nation was anything more than the scribbled history of a long-faded Greek city-state, we had meritocracies, oligarchies of senior statesmen & warriors, thinkers and religious leaders, and we had codified judicial moral equality into the political arena. We have a far superior record of religious and minority freedom, of genuine multi-culturalism plus a deeper understanding of the arts and crafts as a means of uniting disparate peoples. We find your claims of cultural superiority to be childish.""Oh, snap," I snickered. "You get'em, OT.""I bet the boys in Foggy Bottom felt that pimp-slap," Pamela agreed."I bet the bronzed skull of some Harvard dean just fell off its pedestal.""They are called 'busts'," Anais groaned. "With a name like that, how could you forget it?""So true," I concurred. "All this responsibility must have clouded my normally hedonistic vocabulary.""That doesn't change the fact that you have employed biological warfare and genocide in this current day and age," Justin pointed out."Tell that to our Native Americans," I snorted. "They are easy to find. They live in trailer parks in whatever blasted Hell Hole we stuck them in, or in their casinos where they are buying back their country, one rube at a time. Ask them if they've gotten over it.""We don't claim to be perfect," Justin insisted."No, we merely claim to have the only correct form of government, economic policy and schools of philosophical, political, scientific and educational thought," I pointed out."We definitely should revive ethical utilitarianism," Pamela slapped a fist into her palm. "Oh, and the guillotine. Work houses for orphans and grist mills for the disabled, and A Modest Proposal for those chronically unemployed and terminally homeless, yes, and,""Pamela, what is it with you today?" I snickered."It is nearly sunset,""Ah, and you haven't killed anyone yet.""You know how cranky I get when I don't get my daily dose of homicide.""Are you two done?" Anais frowned. She did that a lot around me."And you don't hand out Mini-Uzi's to your preschoolers," Pamela glowered. "What is wrong with you people?"Pause, waiting for that punch line that was never coming. See, it was more difficult to sense Pamela was an immediate threat to your health if you thought she was completely off her rocker."Hmm, well, on that note, ladies and gentlemen, I believe we have a deal. Chris and Justin, I will leave you with my loyal Iskender to work out the gory details. Who wants to grab dinner?" I inquired."Are you serious?" Nashi gasped."Oh yeah. I had the Russian invasion of Manchuria figured out in this amount of time and Manchuria is way bigger than Thailand." Was it? I didn't know. Geography was not one of those subjects which gets you laid."What do you have in mind?" Zelda inquired."Whatever you want."{1 am, Sunday, August 31st ~ 8 Days to go}"How did I end up in bed with you?" Zelda sighed happily, her body splayed halfway over mine and her head resting on my chest, listening to my heartbeat."You aren't the first girl to ask me that question."On the other side, Anais moaned in her sleep. Yeah, she was over me. Abso-fucking-lutely. If you recall, she'd try anything once. I convinced her the military babes were totally different than that Goth chick we'd blown the mind of back in Montreal.Zelda was with me because I had caught her in a lie. She claimed to be a lesbian when I first hit on her. She was adamant. I destroyed her with incontrovertible evidence.A) She hadn't scoped out Anais when she came in. A glance didn't count and Anais oozed sexy when she was angry, which was most of the time.B) She hadn't scoped out Juanita's figure when said worthy went to the kitchenette. I look for such things and Juanita has thighs to die for.C) When I told her she had a wicked sense of humor, she blushed. Honestly, lesbians rarely care about strange men complimenting their personalities.D) Then I double-downed by asking her if she preferred a shower, or bath. She said shower (because that's the butch thing to say). When I asked her 'when was the last time she'd had a bubble bath', she blushed again. Lesbians don't like it when a man imagines them naked. Straight chicks, unless you are a creepy, stalker guy, like it when men fantasize about them swathed in bubbles, thus semi-clothed, thus not creepy.E) In a final and fatal act of evasion, she asked a grumpy Anais what she liked about me. Anais was blunt."He can fucking hammer you all night, sneak in a romantic quickie in the shower, cook you a delicious breakfast then give you another round of mind-numbing intercourse up against the wall before you have to go to work. And still find the time and energy to fuck your neighbor."Woot!"So, this happens to you often?" she mused, it was a trap. She really wanted to know if I was an egotistical scumbag who took advantage of every woman I came across. At the same time, she wanted to know if I considered her a 'whoe' ~ a woman who gives up the goodies for free."Do you mean 'am I taking advantage of you'?" I replied."That is not what I asked," she persisted. That meant 'yes'."Let me see," I laid back and looked up at the ceiling. "I have a fiancée, six women I am close enough to to spend quality time with, a fuck-buddy who is a sweet girl and trusts me too much and a passel of ex-girlfriends who have found my infidelity to be reprehensible.""Six women?" she frowned."Four co-workers (Rhada, Oneida, Yasmin and Buffy), the girlfriend of a co-worker who dumped her in a very public fashion (Brooke) and that woman's friend (Libra). She was the wing-chick who was stuck with me on a quadruple-date and was underwhelmed with me when we first met."I didn't count my 'hook-ups' and I wasn't sure how to qualify Nicole."Ex's?""'No' is not a word in common usage in my vocabulary. I've dated a best friend's girl, a mother, sister and aunt of the same girlfriend, basically, I'm either highly immoral, incredibly loose, or a letch.""Don't you take responsibility for any of those, relationships?""Hell yeah," I tilted her chin up so that we could make eye-contact. "I've never blamed a woman for taking out her frustrations on my flesh, ran away from a screaming fit (Big Lie!), or blamed them for any failing in our relationship. It is always my fault because I can't stay loyal.""That's depressing," Zelda moped."Don't get me wrong. I don't find fault in any of the women I have spent time with. That is my problem, I find women fascinating; never boring, or bland. Quite frankly, it is a gift that I don't regret having. I may be a fuck-up, but I'm a fuck-up who will give you the very best attention.""Full of yourself, much?" her attitude shifted. I had short-circuited her fears; I was a cheater, I confessed to it without shame because I was inexorably drawn to her beauty, personality and charm. With Anais around, I couldn't claim to be solely enchanted with Zelda, so I had to think quickly on my feet. After all, Zelda was energetic and had great stamina."I promised you pleasure," I countered. "Did I deliver?""Yes, you are full of yourself," she slapped my stomach. I wasn't full of myself. I was a confident sex machine."Thank you.""Huh?""Wonderful sex, taking a chance with me, agreeing to a three-way, being awake after," I looked at the bed-table clock, "six hours.""I run five miles a day," she bragged."I try to have ten hours of sex a day," I teased. Zelda slapped my stomach again. Anais stirred."Do any women like you, for any reason beyond your cock?""I'm considered loyal where sex is not concerned, reliable and brave," I offered."What happened in Romania?""Have you ever been in combat?""I've been in violent confrontations, but not a true firefight," she admitted."Hmm,""Is it something that you can't relate?" she asked."No. You are a soldier so you probably know more about combat than I do. It was, not chaotic at all. I never lost perspective of what was going on despite the bullets flying around. The Romanian Captain in charge knew his stuff, directed his company well and all I had to do was figure out where the terrorist leader was.""What happened?" she perked up."I am here talking with you and he's in a morgue in Bucharest.""Oh," She wanted more."I have to live with the knowledge that I set all of that in motion, Zelda. I convinced the Romanians that they had to confront that terror group before they moved on to their next target, me.""I knew they would come after me and my friends, no matter where we were. Which would have ended up as a blood bath in some urban center. So I felt compelled to strike first. Based on information I provided, the Romanian Army sent two battalions, the 22nd and 24th, of the 6th Mountain Troops Brigade into battle.""It was a massacre," I remembered sadly."But you won," she tried to comfort me."Of the four companies involved in the battle, the Romanians suffered nearly two hundred dead and wounded. I hardly consider it anything other than a massacre. Yes, we won. Only three of the terrorists escaped. Their leader died. I don't think I've ever felt so hollow in my life," I finished."Forty percent losses, that is horrific," she crawled on top of me."The kicker is the Romanians sent some men of the 24th to hunt me down when I was kidnapped. A squad was in the group that rescued me and my companion from Johnston Island. I thought they would never want to deal with me ever again.""Don't be so hard on yourself. If they thought well enough of you to send their men out to rescue you, then you must have done right by them.""Chaz said something like that too," I felt sheepish and sleepy."Chaz? Who is she?"Honest to God, one day I want to find a girl who thinks I'm talking about another girl and asks if we can have a three-way, instead of trying to compare herself to this unknown person. Wait... I already had someone like that. Her name was Odette."Chaz is Color Sergeant Charles 'Chaz' Tomorrow of Her Majesty's SSR," I corrected her assumption."SSR? Those are some tough people. How do you know him?""Black Bag directives from the National Security Council, sworn to secrecy upon penalty of death, pinky-promise kind of stuff," I grinned. Maybe I wasn't all that sleepy after all."You really are a Man of Mystery," Zelda purred. She had truly exceptional stamina. "Maybe I can convince you to talk.""Maybe I can find another use for my tongue," I countered and off we went. Somewhere along the process, Anais woke up and joined in.It wasn't all fun and games. Anais' parting words were "You are a pig," then she sauntered out of my room and out of my life. Had she remembered to take her Serge with her, I would have bought the act. As it was,"Is she always so volatile?" Zelda remarked."Volatile? That's not her being volatile. That's Anais being affectionate. Volatile usually is accompanied by thrown objects and bodily harm," I sighed happily. Meeting her one more time couldn't be all that bad, could it? Zelda looked hungry so I shoved that thought to the back of my mind and got to work.That was the highlight of my Sunday. Zelda had to fly back to Washington D.C. and I had to go to work with JIKIT. It seemed that the Khanate and the US military were heading for a showdown. I unloaded all my Saturday's activities to the team and we got to work, no recriminations. I was the Khan's spiritual brother and sometimes that meant I had to do him favors.I asked Addison when she thought he would return the favor. She laughed, then smiled and told me that wasn't how it worked. He was a world leader now and I was merely his kooky kinsman that he would keep throwing problems at until one day I broke. Then it would be some other poor saps turn.Then she told me she was kidding and clearly the Great Khan thought the world of me. I chose to believe the second lie because it made me feel better, and it was promising to be a long weekend/start of the week.Note: Geopolitical DevelopmentsWhat follows are snippets of the Battle for Thailand that takes place late in the night of September 1stand continued into the early morning of September 3rd. If this does not interest you, you can rejoin Cáel's exploits in four pages)On the eve of battle, the Royal Thai High Command had decided to strip all but one armored unit from the 2nd Army in order to give the First Army's offensive against the rebels more of a punch. It's decision to strip the tank battalions from both their infantry divisions as well as the armored and one of the two mechanized regiments would prove to be disastrous. It was as if the leadership of the Royal Thai military were idiots.The least economically valuable part of the country was the northeast which the 2nd Army warded. They had severely underestimated the airlift capacity of the Khanate as well as the willingness of Laos and Cambodia to both use their armed forces in an invasion as well as their willingness to let Vietnamese troops cross their countries.That thinking had led the Thai military to adopt a 'forward defense' strategy, the desire to fight the enemy at the borders, as opposed to having stronger formations deeper within the country. Considering the relative weakness of the Cambodian and Laotian militaries, that policy had made sense:- The baseline Laotian and Cambodian tank was the T-54/55, a 1950's Soviet relic. The normal anti-tank capabilities in all Thai infantry formations was more than equal to such a threat.-Neither country had an air force worth worrying about.In contrast, the Khanate's primary tanks, the T-90SM and T-95 were resistant to most of what the Thai Army could throw at them, at least from the front. The seven hundred combat aircraft the Khanate and the Vietnamese were able to field was an equal catastrophe for the Thais. It greatly compensated for the relative small numbers of invaders.Finally, there was a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Alliance's goals were. Military logic dictated the destruction of Thailand's mobile force followed by the capture of Bangkok. As long as the Thai regime held the capital, it would remain the legitimate power in the country.Due to the altering political landscape, the Alliance's only option was to make the government 'look bad'. The loss of peripheral provinces, while of negligible immediate strategic value, looked great on the maps the world-wide media would be showing to their audiences. It would appear that the Thai army had failed to defend their country. That would (hopefully) make the Thai Third Army look like the legitimate authority in Thailand.That was the plan anyway, and you know what they say about battle plans and the enemy, right? H-hour was 4 am, September 1st.The commander of the Zuun stood up and waited to be recognized. The staff officer from the Yunnan Command pointed at him."Sir, why are we doing this? I am not afraid to fight for the Great Khan, but this action seems to be suicidal. We will be far behind enemy's lines while our offensive force will be grossly under-equipped.""You will have to rely on our ability to supply you by air.""We only have supplies for two days of operations. What happens then?""We rely on the Americans to come and save us," the senior officer responded bitterly."Allah save us from allies," the young commander muttered. What else could he do?He was part of the 2nd Mountain Sultan Mehmet Tumen which had just arrived in Yunnan to replace the exhausted 1st Mountain Abu al-Ghazi Bahadur Tumen. His men were from Turkey, inexperienced in combat and using new equipment they were not familiar with. They would be working with a unit he had never worked with before, the 1st Airmobile Tauekel Khan Tumen, Kazaks, who would be seizing the small airport his men needed to land in.From there, they were to 'run amok'. That was the technical term for racing south down a highway in Central Thailand, attacking the headquarters of the 3rd Cavalry Division, an armored unit. Once that was accomplished, they were to attack the local police precinct. Provided they were still alive after that, they were to return to the air strip to resupply then they were to 'spread chaos' until they were finally hunted down by the vastly larger Thai division his 100 men would be fighting.Of course, there was the plan for the rebel Royal Thai Third Army to force their way through the larger frontline forces of the loyalist Royal Thai First Army and come to his rescue. How would the Thai troops respond when ordered to fight their fellow Thais? No one was sure. If there was any hope in this mission, it was the knowledge that several other Zuuns had the exact same mission in other areas of Thailand.  It was H-hour minus twenty-two.It was 11 o'clock in the evening when the general in charge of the Royal Thai 9th Infantry Division was woken up. The Marines were leaving. That was correct; the three Royal Thai regiments were heading west to Sattahip Naval Base, because they had been ordered to by the Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Thai Navy. It didn't take a rocket scientist to realize why this was going on.Seven hours earlier, the Royal Thai Army had seized all the Air Force bases in the 1st and 2nd Army districts as well as ordering the 4th Army to do the same thing (The Royal Thai Air Force had been trying to remain neutral in the upcoming civil war).Undoubtedly the navy had decided to make their assets less 'hijack-able'. A few phone calls later confirmed that most of the Navy had set sail for parts unknown and the naval air units at Ban Sattahip Air Base (U-Tapao International Airport) had also departed either out to sea, or to ports and bases in the South.He made a personal appeal to the commander of Marine Forces to no avail. They wanted no part of the upcoming struggle and advised the general to do the same. The general had other problems. The Royal Thai Marines were the frontline forces facing the southern border with Cambodia. He quickly reorganized his regiments, sending them to take the old Marine strongpoints to await further orders. Stopping the Marines never entered his mind.That was a bloodletting he wanted no part of. The last thing he did was inform his superiors, thus avoiding any stupid orders to the contrary. Suddenly the nebulous movements along the Cambodian border developed a haunting significance. He wondered how much longer he had before something happened.  It was H-hour minus five.At midnight a loyalist commander of a company of mechanized infantry in the 2nd Cavalry's 11th Battle Group (named after their axis of advance, Highway 11) decided to send a motorized section of his command forward to the advance position his battalion was to occupy come sunrise. Either later in the day, or tomorrow morning, the forces loyal to the regime would launch a coordinated assault against the rebels main supply center at Phitsanulok.He had a cot set up in his communications hut and had just nodded off when the radio squawked to life. His lieutenant in charge of the advance made a hurried report. They had encountered serious opposition in a confusing night action, then he went silent. The captain immediately swung into action. He put the rest of his men on alert, then contacted the neighboring Tank Battalion. He needed some armored support. He made a similar call to the attached artillery component.The Tank Battalions night officer quickly put a platoon of light tanks at his disposal. The artillery were ready for any fire mission he sent their way. Before the armor could arrive, the company commander found himself being called to the carpet by the Duty Officer at the 3rd Cavalry (two regiments of the 2nd Cav. had been attached to the 3rd's command) over his 'offensive' action and the relief mission was called off. What had happened to the patrol of 20 Royal Thai soldiers? He was ordered to wait until sunrise to find out.Little did anyone know, these were the first combat casualties of the upcoming rebel offensive. His patrol had stumbled across a battalion of mechanized troops arriving at their jump off point for the attack that was less than six hours from beginning. Neither the commander of the 11th Battle Group, the 3rd Cavalry Division, or First Army was informed that the enemy had already advanced twenty kilometers south of where they were supposed to be.  

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Satire is a way to indirectly draw attention to societal issues, often through over the top humor. Join Dave and Greg as they discuss Swift's “A Modest Proposal” which served as the solution to the Irish Famine. The solution was so horrifyingly taboo that it may have changed the course of history.

Why are we holding big national events in a church run by one of the smallest denominations? At the National Prayer service, the nation and international media were subject to hearing a small narrow political agenda from the presiding bishop of one of the most liberal Christian denominations. What opportunity was lost? What are the options for the next National Prayer service?LEARN MORE:Website: https://stephenmansfield.tv/Instagram: https://instagram.com/mansfieldwrites/Twitter: https://twitter.com/MansfieldWrites

Commentator David Bouchier suggests a way of bringing peace to cultural wars.

Invest Like the Best: Read the notes at at podcastnotes.org. Don't forget to subscribe for free to our newsletter, the top 10 ideas of the week, every Monday --------- My guests today are Chetan Puttagunta and Modest Proposal. Chetan is a General Partner at venture firm Benchmark, while Modest Proposal is an anonymous guest who manages a large pool of capital in the public markets. Both are good friends and frequent guests on the show, but this is the first time they have appeared together. And the timing couldn't be better - we might be witnessing a pivotal shift in AI development as leading labs hit scaling limits and transition from pre-training to test-time compute. Together, we explore how this change could democratize AI development while reshaping the investment landscape across both public and private markets. Please enjoy this discussion with Chetan Puttagunta and Modest Proposal. My guests today For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. ----- This episode is brought to you by Ramp. Ramp's mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Ramp is the fastest growing FinTech company in history and it's backed by more of my favorite past guests (at least 16 of them!) than probably any other company I'm aware of. It's also notable that many best-in-class businesses use Ramp—companies like Airbnb, Anduril, and Shopify, as well as investors like Sequoia Capital and Vista Equity. They use Ramp to manage their spending, automate tedious financial processes, and reinvest saved dollars and hours into growth. At Colossus and Positive Sum, we use Ramp for exactly the same reason. Go to Ramp.com/invest to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. – This episode is brought to you by Alphasense. AlphaSense has completely transformed the research process with cutting-edge AI technology and a vast collection of top-tier, reliable business content. Imagine completing your research five to ten times faster with search that delivers the most relevant results, helping you make high-conviction decisions with confidence. AlphaSense provides access to over 300 million premium documents, including company filings, earnings reports, press releases, and more from public and private companies. Invest Like the Best listeners can get a free trial now at Alpha-Sense.com/Invest and experience firsthand how AlphaSense and Tegas help you make smarter decisions faster. ----- Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes.  Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossus Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com). Show Notes: (00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like the Best (00:05:30) Introduction to LLM Scaling Challenges (00:07:25) Synthetic Data and Test Time Compute (00:08:53) Implications of Test Time Compute (00:11:19) Public Tech Companies and AI Investments (00:16:58) Small Teams and Open Source Models (00:29:02) Strategic Positioning of Major AI Players (00:35:49) AGI and Future Prospects (00:46:50) AI Application Layer and Investment Opportunities (00:54:18) The Paradigm Shift in AI Reasoning (00:55:34) Investing in AI-Powered Solutions (00:58:46) Economic Impacts of AI Advancements (01:00:19) The Future of AI and Model Stability (01:02:52) Private Market Valuations and Compute Costs (01:05:05) Infrastructure and Utilization in AI (01:12:50) The Role of Hyperscalers and GPUs (01:18:02) The Evolution of AI Applications (01:27:56) Philosophical Questions on AGI and ASI (01:34:31) The Importance of Innovation Hubs

Invest Like the Best Key Takeaways  As of late 2024, the AI industry is shifting from a pre-training compute approach to test-time compute Understanding the difference between pre-training and test-time compute: Pre-training occurs before testing and involves more complex, resource-intensive computation, whereas test-time compute is typically faster and focuses only on making inferencesMoving from pre-training to inference-time is a powerful paradigm shift for the AI industry1. It better aligns revenue generation and expenditures; this is beneficial for the industry at-large  2. Having to re-architect the computing network creates new opportunities and considerations related to power generation and grid designTest-time compute better aligns the compute and expenditures of the model, relative to pre-training; this is better for the hyperscalers from an efficiency perspective The plateau in pre-training has enabled small teams to catch up to the state-of-the-art models; the proliferation of open source models, specifically what Meta has done with Llama, has been an extraordinary force for AI scaling  If the plateau in pre-training continues, small teams will be able to “jump to the frontier” of model training for a specific AI use case; this allows reduces competition amongst the hyperscalers It is likely for two of the Mag7 companies, such as Google and Meta, to give away an AI search product similar to ChatGPT for free OpenAI is “very serious about achieving AGI”; that is the company's mission, and everything else the company does is in service of that Stability at the model layer will enable optimization at the various layers above it; when the industry is in “land-grab” mode, there is not any time to optimize! Over the long-term, technology is deflationary because it is a matter of optimization When technology unlocks, distribution also unlocks; this means that startups can now acquire customers that were previously too expensive to get “I imagine that we'll be pretty close to or at AGI in 2025.” – Chetan Puttagunta Read the full notes @ podcastnotes.orgMy guests today are Chetan Puttagunta and Modest Proposal. Chetan is a General Partner at venture firm Benchmark, while Modest Proposal is an anonymous guest who manages a large pool of capital in the public markets. Both are good friends and frequent guests on the show, but this is the first time they have appeared together. And the timing couldn't be better - we might be witnessing a pivotal shift in AI development as leading labs hit scaling limits and transition from pre-training to test-time compute. Together, we explore how this change could democratize AI development while reshaping the investment landscape across both public and private markets. Please enjoy this discussion with Chetan Puttagunta and Modest Proposal. My guests today For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. ----- This episode is brought to you by Ramp. Ramp's mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Ramp is the fastest growing FinTech company in history and it's backed by more of my favorite past guests (at least 16 of them!) than probably any other company I'm aware of. It's also notable that many best-in-class businesses use Ramp—companies like Airbnb, Anduril, and Shopify, as well as investors like Sequoia Capital and Vista Equity. They use Ramp to manage their spending, automate tedious financial processes, and reinvest saved dollars and hours into growth. At Colossus and Positive Sum, we use Ramp for exactly the same reason. Go to Ramp.com/invest to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. – This episode is brought to you by Alphasense. AlphaSense has completely transformed the research process with cutting-edge AI technology and a vast collection of top-tier, reliable business content. Imagine completing your research five to ten times faster with search that delivers the most relevant results, helping you make high-conviction decisions with confidence. AlphaSense provides access to over 300 million premium documents, including company filings, earnings reports, press releases, and more from public and private companies. Invest Like the Best listeners can get a free trial now at Alpha-Sense.com/Invest and experience firsthand how AlphaSense and Tegas help you make smarter decisions faster. ----- Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes.  Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossus Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com). Show Notes: (00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like the Best (00:05:30) Introduction to LLM Scaling Challenges (00:07:25) Synthetic Data and Test Time Compute (00:08:53) Implications of Test Time Compute (00:11:19) Public Tech Companies and AI Investments (00:16:58) Small Teams and Open Source Models (00:29:02) Strategic Positioning of Major AI Players (00:35:49) AGI and Future Prospects (00:46:50) AI Application Layer and Investment Opportunities (00:54:18) The Paradigm Shift in AI Reasoning (00:55:34) Investing in AI-Powered Solutions (00:58:46) Economic Impacts of AI Advancements (01:00:19) The Future of AI and Model Stability (01:02:52) Private Market Valuations and Compute Costs (01:05:05) Infrastructure and Utilization in AI (01:12:50) The Role of Hyperscalers and GPUs (01:18:02) The Evolution of AI Applications (01:27:56) Philosophical Questions on AGI and ASI (01:34:31) The Importance of Innovation Hubs

My guests today are Chetan Puttagunta and Modest Proposal. Chetan is a General Partner at venture firm Benchmark, while Modest Proposal is an anonymous guest who manages a large pool of capital in the public markets. Both are good friends and frequent guests on the show, but this is the first time they have appeared together. And the timing couldn't be better - we might be witnessing a pivotal shift in AI development as leading labs hit scaling limits and transition from pre-training to test-time compute. Together, we explore how this change could democratize AI development while reshaping the investment landscape across both public and private markets. Please enjoy this discussion with Chetan Puttagunta and Modest Proposal. My guests today For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. ----- This episode is brought to you by Ramp. Ramp's mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Ramp is the fastest growing FinTech company in history and it's backed by more of my favorite past guests (at least 16 of them!) than probably any other company I'm aware of. It's also notable that many best-in-class businesses use Ramp—companies like Airbnb, Anduril, and Shopify, as well as investors like Sequoia Capital and Vista Equity. They use Ramp to manage their spending, automate tedious financial processes, and reinvest saved dollars and hours into growth. At Colossus and Positive Sum, we use Ramp for exactly the same reason. Go to Ramp.com/invest to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. – This episode is brought to you by Alphasense. AlphaSense has completely transformed the research process with cutting-edge AI technology and a vast collection of top-tier, reliable business content. Imagine completing your research five to ten times faster with search that delivers the most relevant results, helping you make high-conviction decisions with confidence. AlphaSense provides access to over 300 million premium documents, including company filings, earnings reports, press releases, and more from public and private companies. Invest Like the Best listeners can get a free trial now at Alpha-Sense.com/Invest and experience firsthand how AlphaSense and Tegas help you make smarter decisions faster. ----- Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes.  Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossus Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com). Show Notes: (00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like the Best (00:05:30) Introduction to LLM Scaling Challenges (00:07:25) Synthetic Data and Test Time Compute (00:08:53) Implications of Test Time Compute (00:11:19) Public Tech Companies and AI Investments (00:16:58) Small Teams and Open Source Models (00:29:02) Strategic Positioning of Major AI Players (00:35:49) AGI and Future Prospects (00:46:50) AI Application Layer and Investment Opportunities (00:54:18) The Paradigm Shift in AI Reasoning (00:55:34) Investing in AI-Powered Solutions (00:58:46) Economic Impacts of AI Advancements (01:00:19) The Future of AI and Model Stability (01:02:52) Private Market Valuations and Compute Costs (01:05:05) Infrastructure and Utilization in AI (01:12:50) The Role of Hyperscalers and GPUs (01:18:02) The Evolution of AI Applications (01:27:56) Philosophical Questions on AGI and ASI (01:34:31) The Importance of Innovation Hubs

In today's poem, while everyone else is dressing up to become something terrible, the acerbic Jonathan Swift gives us a domestic horror story in reverse. Happy reading.Anglo-Irish poet, satirist, essayist, and political pamphleteer Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin, Ireland. He spent much of his early adult life in England before returning to Dublin to serve as Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin for the last 30 years of his life. It was this later stage when he would write most of his greatest works. Best known as the author of A Modest Proposal (1729), Gulliver's Travels (1726), and A Tale Of A Tub (1704), Swift is widely acknowledged as the greatest prose satirist in the history of English literature.-bio via Poetry Foundation Get full access to The Daily Poem Podcast at dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

On this episode of Radio Rothbard, Jonathan Newman joins Ryan McMaken and Tho Bishop to discuss the Mises Institute's new documentary, Playing With Fire: Money, Banking, and the Federal Reserve, and respond to some friendly critics about the continuing importance of Austrian Business Cycle Theory in the modern financial world."A Modest Proposal to End Fed Independence" by Joseph T. Salerno: https://mises.org/RR_210_A"Who Starts Business Cycles? Banks or the Fed?" by Jonathan Newman: https://mises.org/RR_210_B"The Federal Reserve and the Regime Are One and the Same" by Ryan McMaken: https://mises.org/RR_210_C"Playing With Fire – a Very Disappointing and Factually Incorrect Mises Article on Money" by Mike Shedlock: https://mises.org/RR_210_D"The Role of Shadow Banking in the Business Cycle" by Arkadiusz Sieroń: https://mises.org/RR_210_EAnatomy of the State by Murray Rothbard: https://mises.org/AnatomyGet free copies of What Has Government Done to Our Money? at https://Mises.org/RothPodFREEBe sure to follow Radio Rothbard at https://Mises.org/RadioRothbardRadio Rothbard mugs are available at the Mises Store. Get yours at https://Mises.org/RothMug PROMO CODE: RothPod for 20% off

On this episode of Radio Rothbard, Jonathan Newman joins Ryan McMaken and Tho Bishop to discuss the Mises Institute's new documentary, Playing With Fire: Money, Banking, and the Federal Reserve, and respond to some friendly critics about the continuing importance of Austrian Business Cycle Theory in the modern financial world."A Modest Proposal to End Fed Independence" by Joseph T. Salerno: https://mises.org/RR_210_A"Who Starts Business Cycles? Banks or the Fed?" by Jonathan Newman: https://mises.org/RR_210_B"The Federal Reserve and the Regime Are One and the Same" by Ryan McMaken: https://mises.org/RR_210_C"Playing With Fire – a Very Disappointing and Factually Incorrect Mises Article on Money" by Mike Shedlock: https://mises.org/RR_210_D"The Role of Shadow Banking in the Business Cycle" by Arkadiusz Sieroń: https://mises.org/RR_210_EAnatomy of the State by Murray Rothbard: https://mises.org/AnatomyGet free copies of What Has Government Done to Our Money? at https://Mises.org/RothPodFREEBe sure to follow Radio Rothbard at https://Mises.org/RadioRothbardRadio Rothbard mugs are available at the Mises Store. Get yours at https://Mises.org/RothMug PROMO CODE: RothPod for 20% off

This week the guys are back to discuss Jonathan Swift. Everyone has heard of Gulliver's Travels and A Modest Proposal, but he has another work worth looking at: The Battle of the Books. Plus: the audience has voted on who the funniest co-host is. 

On this week's episode, Jon and Brandon discuss new releases from Kasabian, The Streets, Zeina, Thou, Wormed, Blind Girls, Krallice, A Modest Proposal, and more!   Intro Music by Anthony Reeder   Show Notes: Link To Weekly Rotating Playlist

My guest today is Modest Proposal, joining me for our third conversation and the first in a few years. Modest is anonymous online, but one of the more thoughtful investors I know, overseeing a large pool of capital in public and private markets. He offers insight into many different corners of today's landscape, covering AI's frontier models versus open-source models, overcapacity issues in transportation in our post-COVID world, the potential economic impact of GLP-1 drugs, and more. Please enjoy my conversation with Modest Proposal. Listen to Founders Podcast For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. ----- This episode is brought to you by Tegus, where we're changing the game in investment research. Step away from outdated, inefficient methods and into the future with our platform, proudly hosting over 100,000 transcripts – with over 25,000 transcripts added just this year alone. Our platform grows eight times faster and adds twice as much monthly content as our competitors, putting us at the forefront of the industry. Plus, with 75% of private market transcripts available exclusively on Tegus, we offer insights you simply can't find elsewhere. See the difference a vast, quality-driven transcript library makes. Unlock your free trial at tegus.com/patrick. ----- Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes.  Past guests include Tobi Lutke, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, John Collison, Kat Cole, Marc Andreessen, Matthew Ball, Bill Gurley, Anu Hariharan, Ben Thompson, and many more. Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossus Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com). Show Notes: (00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like the Best (00:04:00) Comparison to Mid-2000s Commodity Markets (00:07:18) The Role of AI and Power Consumption (00:09:29) NVIDIA and the Future of AI Investment (00:13:10) Commercialization of AI and Market Dynamics (00:23:14) Public vs. Private Market Performance (00:28:03) Post-COVID Capital Cycles (00:30:32) Capital Expenditures and Post-COVID Market Distortions (00:31:47) Amazon's Capacity Expansion and Market Inflections (00:33:45) Challenges in Displacing Market Leaders (00:37:50) Behavioral Barriers in GLP-1 Adherence (00:39:58) Public vs. Private Market Allocations (00:45:08) International Equities and Japanese Market Potential (00:47:35) Market Structure and Trading Dynamics (00:53:22) AI Models and Future Market Implications

On today's Modern Readers episode, we're placing “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift in context with pieces of contemporary political satire. We'll explore how satire is being used today to comment on politics and social issues, and the power, or limits, of its influence. Throughout our discussion, we discuss the lasting legacy of Swift's essay, the rise of satirical media, and how satire is used as a rhetorical tool. Listen to the end for contemporary satirical examples in TV, online media, and comedy. We're also excited to  announce our Summer Big Book Read Along: Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. We're looking forward to digging into this classic with you! This Big Book Read Along includes 5 recaps spread over June, July, and August, 3 book club meet ups to discuss along the way, an active Discord chat for support and motivation, classes and bonus content. The summer is a great time to join our scholarly community!  Find more details on our summer plans in our free Substack newsletter or head to patreon.com/novelpairings to join our community.    Books Mentioned: A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift Les Miserables by Victor Hugo The Odyssey by Homer Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift   Also Mentioned: A Modern Proposal on Project Gutenberg  Little Women Musical Jo Musical A Point of View: What's the point of satire? The Onion Saturday Night Live The Daily Show The Colbert Report White Lotus Abbott Elementary Veep The West Wing John Oliver  

Prepare to light up your imagination as we take you on a whimsically satirical journey back to the smoke-filled rooms of yore. Remember when a cloud of tobacco was synonymous with deep thought in university halls and spirited camaraderie in our favorite bars? We'll entertain the fantastical notion of reviving this golden era, complete with smoking dispensaries and safe smoking sites, enveloping everything from educational institutions to airplanes. We blow smoke at the boundaries of public health discourse and current societal norms, daring to ask: could the communal ritual of lighting up actually be the spark needed to ignite a bit of a re-think around certain policies ...For What it's worthThe music for this episode,  is performed by our current artist in residence, #TracyJones from his album #LuckyTimeYou can find out more about Tracy by visiting his Blog PostSupport the Show.review us on Podchaser Show website - https://fwiw.buzzsprout.comFollow us on:Show Blog Face Book Instagram: Support usEmail us: fwiw.thepodcast@gmail.com

#CLIMATE: Modest proposal to reduce US temperatures with high-altitude balloons. HenryMillerMD.org https://henrymillermd.org/27680/global-shading-reducing-global-warming-u... 1783 Spain

A Modest Proposal - Possession - Killian Farrel

The perfect episode for a football-less Sunday! Bill and Patrick Bet-David on Bill's dinner with Warren Buffet, dementia and our leaders, Patrick's military service, the woman who never met someone from Iran, what makes Salman Rushdie a great hang, Bill's Real Time editorial that Patrick loves, the concept of bad versus worse, what would happen if a super bug hit society, what Bill learned during his summer in Geneva, Gavin Newsom's Real Time appearance, Bill's pretend wife's name and how many pretend children they have, Bill's Modest Proposal for a world crisis, and much, much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The perfect episode for a football-less Sunday! Bill and Patrick Bet-David on Bill's dinner with Warren Buffet, dementia and our leaders, Patrick's military service, the woman who never met someone from Iran, what makes Salman Rushdie a great hang, Bill's Real Time editorial that Patrick loves, the concept of bad versus worse, what would happen if a super bug hit society, what Bill learned during his summer in Geneva, Gavin Newsom's Real Time appearance, Bill's pretend wife's name and how many pretend children they have, Bill's Modest Proposal for a world crisis, and much, much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is a sober one. When I addressed the reality of pastors exiting ministry a few episodes ago (episode 87), I sensed that my thoughts were incomplete. I felt that I needed to point churches in a direction that would help their pastors thrive instead of leave. Yes, that requires some adjustments to how […]

This week on The Learning Curve, guest co-hosts Prof. Albert Cheng of the University of Arkansas and Mariam Memarsadeghi, interview Harvard Prof. Leo Damrosch. Delving into the life of Jonathan Swift, Prof. Damrosch explores Swift’s satirical brilliance in works like Gulliver’s Travels and A Modest Proposal. Analyzing his sharp critiques of politics and society, Dr. […]

This week on The Learning Curve, guest co-hosts Prof. Albert Cheng of the University of Arkansas and Mariam Memarsadeghi, interview Harvard Prof. Leo Damrosch. Delving into the life of Jonathan Swift, Prof. Damrosch explores Swift's satirical brilliance in works like Gulliver's Travels and A Modest Proposal. Analyzing his sharp critiques of politics and society, Dr. Damrosch emphasizes Swift's enduring literary legacy, showcasing his wit, keen insights into human nature, and commitment to liberty. In closing, Prof. Damrosch reads from his book, Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World.

The second door creaks open... 

Door 2 of the Hypnogoria Halloween Advent Calendar opens... --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hypnogoria/message

This week we talk about Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal For Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public, a nice normal essay. Also, unrelated, Hozier's Eat Your Young.

Rosh Hashana | Akedat Yitzchak (4), by Rav Yitzchak Etshalom Why didn't Avraham protest God's command? In this four-part series, we examine one of the most mysterious and troubling stories in all of Tanakh - the story of Akeidat Yitzchak (Bereishit 22:1-19). We discuss the selection of this narrative as the קריאת התורה for (2nd day) Rosh Hashana (#1), the larger narrative contexts within which this story operates (#2), some classical approaches to unraveling the mystery of this "test" (#3) and some suggestions for a new approach to understanding this startling story (#4). Source sheet >>

This podcast is a commentary and does not contain any copyrighted material of the reference source. We strongly recommend accessing/buying the reference source at the same time. ■Reference Source https://www.ted.com/talks/john_bohannon_dance_vs_powerpoint_a_modest_proposal ■Post on this topic (You can get FREE learning materials!) https://englist.me/150-academic-words-reference-from-john-bohannon-dance-vs-powerpoint-a-modest-proposal-ted-talk/ ■Youtube Video https://youtu.be/vJCIWiKmau0 (All Words) https://youtu.be/qgHXWv8a02k (Advanced Words) https://youtu.be/atQsqqDAwo0 (Quick Look) ■Top Page for Further Materials https://englist.me/ ■SNS (Please follow!)

Aug 4th, 2023 - Pastor Tim Westermeyer - #254 – A Modest Proposal

Aug 4th, 2023 - Pastor Tim Westermeyer - #254 – A Modest Proposal

“It's not technology that does the harm, it's the person wielding it.” ― Abhijit Naskar https://manujaggarwal.com/

In this conversation, Tyler uses ChatGPT to interview Jonathan Swift about his views on religion, politics, economics, and literature. GPT Swift discusses his support for the Church of Ireland, his shift from the Whigs to the Tories, and his opposition to William Wood's copper coinage in Ireland. He also talks about his works, including Gulliver's Travels and A Modest Proposal, and his skepticism of moral and intellectual progress. Swift addresses rumors about his relationship with Esther Johnson and his fascination with scatological themes in his works. He also discusses his early life in England, his intellectual mentor Sir William Temple, and his jovial attitude towards death. Special thanks to our Mercatus Center colleague Robin Currie for giving voice to Jonathan GPT Swift. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Recorded March 23rd, 2023 Other ways to connect Follow us on Twitter and Instagram Follow Tyler on Twitter Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu Subscribe at our newsletter to have the latest Conversations with Tyler news sent straight to your inbox. 

Check out Toby's page on Canon Plus: https://mycanonplus.com/tabs/discover/pages/toby-sumpter 

Theonomy & Classical Reformed Christian Nationalism: A Modest Proposal Introduction The conversation swirling around Christian Nationalism, the classical liberal order, and how Christians ought to think about particular policy proposals continues apace. These issues are in play with the current push for “school choice” and Education Savings Accounts, and they are in play with Senator Josh Hawley’s recent proposal to ban social media use for children under 16. To which I tweeted out: “Yikes. No. This is the kind of folly that conservatives propose in the name of "the common good" that gives me the creeping fantods. This is why Kuyper's sphere sovereignty and old fashioned theonomy are so necessary. God has not established the state/power of the sword to raise/train our children. Same goes for alcohol, tobacco, and firearms. As soon as you start letting the civil magistrate act like your mom, you will only get more of the Karen State that we currently have.” And that seems to have stirred the waters. At this point, I’m hoping I’ve stirred the waters of Bethsaida and not something more shark infested, but that remains to be seen. Part of the fun of the last few weeks was the honor of having Timon Cline on CrossPolitic, and we had a great time debating and discussing the differences between theonomy and what I think he and others would call classical reformed political theology – although I’m still not convinced that they are that far apart. Meanwhile, other conversations have continued behind the scenes with friendly critics of theonomy. And then we had the follow up honor of talking to David Bahnsen about his misgivings surrounding the “Christian Nationalism” conversation and his preference for the “classical liberal order.” Some related factors are that sometimes advocates of “classical liberal order” *sound* a bit cavalier about our current cultural moment, and some, like David French, seem to have sold the whole farm to the leftists in the name of his version of the “classical liberal order” which seems to be code for “surrendering slowly.” But David Bahnsen insists that is not at all what he means or thinks. He envisions an explicitly Christian public square, but he is concerned not to make the civil sphere the central or primary actor in such an endeavor. The role of the Church and the family also need to be reinvigorated and reinforced, otherwise, you have a semi-conservative version of the current regime. And to his credit, there are some in the Reformed Christian Nationalism conversation that think it’s perfectly reasonable for Josh Hawley to propose age limits for social media, and others have suggested taking over the public schools and turning them into explicitly Christian schools funded by tax dollars and run by departments of education. All of which, I repeat, gives me the creeping fantods. Warm Theonomic Fuzzies The old Puritans and Scottish Presbyterians and Genevans who first sought reinvigorate civil magistrates under the spell of Papist supremacy (hence the name “magisterial” Reformers) affirmed that the specific civil laws of old Israel had expired with that particular state, except for the “general equity thereof.” While many modern Reformed types have concluded that this means something akin to “cute metaphors and warm fuzzy feelings,” the actual authors of the Westminster Confession and their immediate heirs functioned as though the Old Testament civil laws had a lot more to teach us than that. The fact that the early American colonies had Sabbath civil laws and blasphemy laws and laws prohibiting sodomy and adultery and fornication and divorce, tell you that they understood “general equity” as including the eternal moral and ethical principles resident in those civil laws and penalties. Now first off I want to emphasize that I think we need to have this conversation. And by “this conversation,” I mean, I think we need to have those of you steeped in the Reformed political tradition talking with those of us who are more steeped in the biblical studies and theonomy. Some of us need to be reading Franciscus Junius and some us need to be reading Rushdoony. I really appreciated the olive branch of sorts from Stephen Wolfe on this topic (his article on “Classical Reformed Theonomy”), and I also really appreciated Bahnsen’s demeanor toward the whole thing as well. Look, we’ve got men in lingerie twerking in front of little kids in public parks and libraries; I think this is the moment for us to work together, not splinter into a million pieces because we didn’t get exactly what we wanted. So first, off, I want to issue a general invite to anyone interested in recovering a truly Christian America to join the conversation in good faith. The leftist progressives rally around their common hatred of our Lord and His people, and they are frequently able to get more done together because of that shared hatred than conservatives because we throw elbows and knife one another in the back in the name of truth and morality and justice. Look, if you want to see drag queens banned from the public square, and our nation submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, you are most welcome to the table, even if our philosophical categories and methodologies are different. Let’s talk. Let’s work together. Let’s spar, debate, and brainstorm. A Chastened Classical Reformed Theonomy And toward that end, I want to propose one way of pushing the conversation forward. One trusted and friendly critic of theonomy lamented theonomy because biblical law, he said, simply doesn’t have enough substance to fill out a complete law code or public policy system. And I don’t have any problem acknowledging that we need more than what is written in Scripture. As the Westminster Confession says, “Nevertheless we acknowledge… that there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God, and the government of the church, common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the Word, which are always to be observed” (WCF 1.6). While this is primarily addressing the worship of God and the government of the church, I would argue that those activities that are “common to human actions and societies” would include the rational ordering of public policy and civil government, and therefore, those arrangements are to be “according to the general rules of the Word,” but must also “be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence.” So here’s a practical question for my “classical Reformed” brothers: Since I believe that we agree that wherever Scripture establishes transcendent morality or universal principles of justice, those principles are universally binding on all societies and governments, regardless of time or place, can we agree that since we are Reformed and Protestant, those principles are “First Principles?” In other words, Sola Scriptura (understood rightly) applies here as much as anywhere else. Sola Scriptura does not mean that Scripture is the only authority, but rather, it means that Scripture is the only ultimate and infallible authority. Tradition, creeds, common law, parents, and pastors all play true authoritative roles in the life of Christians and Christian society. Nevertheless, the First Principles of Scripture are foundational, and wherever any other true authority bumps up against one of them, Scripture always wins. Are we on the same page so far? Now here’s the proposal: I propose that we agree that wherever Scripture speaks on matters of universal morality and justice, those principles be nailed into the ground with enormous steel stakes (yuge ones). At that point, I would be happy to concede that all by itself, those general principles of justice are not enough to build out a modern civil law code, but since we are Protestants, we are agreed that whatever else ought to go into that law code, it must be deduced from those principles by good and necessary consequence, according to the light of nature and reason, and be consistent with them. Now this might be where I run into trouble with critics of theonomy, but as a fiercely loyal Protestant, I also want to insist on a sort of regulative principle of power. Since all power is derived from God (Rom. 13), all power is wielded by His blessing and in submission to His ultimate power or else it is wielded in defiance of His blessing and power. Furthermore, this fits with what the Confession says regarding worship, that what is clearly stated must be explicitly obeyed, and whatever else is necessary for a flourishing society must be deduced from those principles and the light of nature. This need not be taken as tight-shoed regulative principle, but simply, as my old seminary professor, Hughes Oliphant Old, like to say, it must be “according to Scripture,” obedient to the commands and consistent with its principles and examples. A Few Stakes in the Ground What follows is certainly not an exhaustive list, but this will do for a start. First, while I do believe that civil government was instituted before the Fall and would have developed as families filled the earth, organizing society with a body of customary laws to maximize their good (deciding which side of the road to drive on, for example), the primary postlapsarian instruction and picture we are given of civil justice in the Bible captured well in the paintings and statues of Lady Justice: she is blind (or blindfolded), holding balances in one hand, and a sword in the other. This accords with the repeated instructions to the judges, “Ye shall not respect persons in judgment; but ye shall hear the small as well as the great; ye shall not be afraid of the face of man; for the judgment is God’s…” (Dt. 1:17). Justice requires diligent inquiry, but that inquiry is primarily for the purpose of putting all the facts in the scales of justice. While justice requires wisdom, it is not primarily a “creative” task. The judgment of justice is God’s. Diligent inquiry puts all the facts that we have in the scales, and it is the job of civil magistrates to deliver verdicts of equity, which is primarily punitive (as indicated by the sword). Now when I said that Josh Hawley ought not be leading the way in banning teenagers from social media since that is family/parental jurisdiction, some friends pointed out that the Bible on one occasion refers to magistrates as nursing fathers and mothers (Is. 49:23). And so it does. But that one image (which we should not abandon) cannot be made the normative image without doing great damage to the rest of Scripture. The key question of course is: how are civil magistrates to be faithful fathers and mothers? The answer is: by doing justice according to God’s law. Isaiah 49:23 is no more a defense of Social Security, Medicare, and government schools than is Paul’s description of himself as a father default permission for him to tell parents which breakfast cereal is right for their kids. The church is the household and family of God, but that doesn’t mean that the church is the first line of defense for widows. Paul insists that a man that doesn’t provide for his own family is worse than an unbeliever (1 Tim. 5:7). These natural affections, natural obligations remain firmly in place, including then the fact that the civil magistrate has no role in health, welfare, and education, unless you simply mean the role of punishing criminals and cheering churches and families on in their tasks. Another stake to drive into the ground is the most basic principle of biblical justice: the lex talionis: “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe” (Ex. 21:24-25). A number of case laws are laid out in the biblical law that give is a lot of information about how this principle is to play out (e.g. slaves that are struck and lose an eye or tooth must be set free). Related is the principle of restitution: a thief caught stealing must return double (Ex. 22:4). Because what he sought to do his neighbor ought to be done to him to restore balance to the scales of society. If the theft is of a particularly great value, perhaps including the ability of a man/business to do his productive labor, or if the stolen item has been sold for profit that restitution may be increased to four or five-fold (Ex. 22:1). The penalties in the Mosaic law should also be taken seriously, and they should be understood as maximum penalties. The only required death penalty is for murder (Gen. 9). Related to this is the principle that only civil magistrates have the power of the sword, and so church and family government may not execute criminals or heretics. This is part of the glory of Dt. 21:18-19 regarding the rebellious son. In some ancient societies, a father claimed the right to execute his own children, but God’s law forbids it. Perhaps a pagan father might have even argued “from nature” that since he had brought the life into the world, it was his to adjudicate, but God’s law prohibits it. The law provides that the family government may appeal to the civil government for adjudication and potential capital punishment. But notice that until an actual crime has been committed, the civil magistrate has no jurisdiction, and the civil magistrate is only involved upon appeal from the family government. This would be one such biblical principle that would render Sen. Hawley’s proposed social media legislation null and void. One of the most often cited laws in the Old Testament for explaining the continuing relevance or “general equity” of Mosaic law is Dt. 22:8: “When thou buildest a new house, then thou shalt make a battlement for thy roof, that thou bring not blood upon thine house, if any man fall from thence.” On the one hand, this certainly is an extension of the sixth commandment forbidding murder, and it certainly establishes the notion of liability for negligent homicide or battery. The general equity of this law would be rightly applied to people who refuse to put a fence around their swimming pool or a deep pit or their upstairs balcony (and arguably, reckless driving): if someone falls and dies or is injured, the home owner/driver can be held negligently liable. And the overarching principle is certainly the duty of all to take reasonable precautions to protect and preserve life. At the same time, some want to reason from this principle that health and building codes are therefore a reasonable application of this justice. But while it would certainly be a “sin” to act in high-handed negligent ways, it was not a “crime.” The lex talionis principle requires that actual harm be measured for appropriate penalties to be exacted. But if a man built a balcony and refused to build a railing or drove recklessly through town, he may very well be in sin, but until actual damages have occurred, what penalty would truly be “eye for eye?” We also shouldn’t underestimate the power and influence of the family and church governments and their related communities. Not every problem must be solved with guns and fines. Many problems should be solved by community pressures and influence. Conclusion The fear of the classical reformed Christian Nationalist types is that “the classical liberal order” is code for more liberalism, more false offers of a seat at the table of a neutral public square, and defeatism and apathy, but let us be done with all offers of neutrality, secularism, and the like. Jesus is Lord of the public square, and the Great Commission requires us to preach and make disciples of all the nations. So America must confess that Jesus is Lord formally, and our laws must reflect is eternal law, as derived from Scripture and nature and reason, but with Scripture firmly ensconced as the Chief authority. On the other hand, my friends of the theonomic Kuyperian classical order flavor are understandably nervous that if we do not firmly root our “Christian order” in Rutherford’s axiom, that the Lex really is Rex, and that justice and the “common good” must be grounded in God’s Special Revelation in Scripture, then in the name of “the tradition” and “the common good” and “reason” and the “light of nature” we will end up right back where are, a Machiavellian power grab that happens to have Christian symbols and phrases attached to it. It's true that the “classical liberal order” guys sometimes sound like power is only icky and bad, but in our determination to take responsibility for this mess of country, we must have clearly defined limits to that power. And it’s also true that sometimes the Christian Nationalists sound like they would be willing to do anything to punch the liberals and score points. But tyranny is still tyranny even you try to defend it in the name of “the common good.” The “common good” is whatever God says it is, and nothing else. And if God has given the authority and power to wield, then we should not be afraid of it. We should take it up with boldness and joy in the name of Christ.

Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen an accelerated shift toward digital banking, This means that local branches of banks are shuttering in record numbers. Furthermore, the most powerful countries and institutions have pledged their support for the Great Reset. The new global economic overhaul will encompass ESG metrics, which rate sustainable investments and force the world to adopt “green” energy sources - all essential elements of the Great Reset plan to transform the world. Tonight on Ground Zero, Clyde Lewis talks with financial analyst, Alan Johnson about PENNY DREADFUL - A SWIFT AND MODEST PROPOSAL. #GroundZero #ClydeLewis #PennyDreadful https://groundzeromedia.org/10-11-22-penny-dreadful-a.../ Ground Zero with Clyde Lewis is live M-F from 7-10pm, pacific time, and streamed for free at groundzero.radio. There is a delayed broadcast on our local Portland affiliate station, KPAM 860, from 9pm-12am, pacific time. For radio affiliates near you, go to talkstreamlive.com. To listen by phone: 717-734-6922. To call into the show: 503-225-0860. The transcript of each episode will be posted after the show at groundzeromedia.org. In order to access Ground Zero's exclusive digital library which includes archived shows, research groups, videos, documents, and more, you must sign up at aftermath.media. Subscriptions start at $7/month. Check out the yearly specials!

American conservatism appears to be coming apart at the seams. What, if anything, can bring the various factions together to fight the much greater threat of an illiberal, intolerant left? Perhaps plain common sense. In this episode of Acton Line, George H. Nash sits down with Noah Gould to discuss his article "Conservatism and Its Current Discontents: A Survey and a Modest Proposal" which appeared in the Winter/Spring 2022 issue of Religion & Liberty.George H. Nash is a Senior Fellow of the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal. He is author of The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 and several scholarly volumes about the life of Herbert Hoover. He writes and speaks frequently about the history and current direction of American conservatism. He lives in western Massachusetts.Subscribe to our podcastsConservatism and Its Current Discontents: A Survey and a Modest Proposal | Religion & Liberty Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sean and Muke continue the discussion on Leninism and the joy of sects. Also, a very (im)modest proposal on how to maybe revive international unionism, wrest control over supply chains and strike some serious blows against capital. To access this bonus content and more become a patron today at patreon.com/theantifada