I'm just discovering Matt, and I've had this thought many times this last year about Michael, but the absence of these voices over that time has been noticed.... at least by me. Rest in Power Michael and I hope the absolute best for Matt.
@@sachinaraszkiewicz785 I used to. He's smart and right about many things but gives the impression everything's hopeless. Constant negativity makes audiences lose their motivation to take action and fix things.
Still sinking in for me that Michael has passed. What a massive loss....Grateful that we have all of this video of him to watch....really like the interaction between Michael and Matt. Two of my faves
Panama was actually bad. Noriega had his mansion in a crowded civilian district. A lot were killed taking him out. Plenty of violence. Just n case younger viewers didn’t know about that one.
The Ben Elton novel referred to is 'Stark'. A book that points out that a great place to mount a destructive conspiracy without being bothered is remote Western Australia. I wonder if the Aum Shinrikyo read it.
I used to deliver pizzas around my city, and one thing I’d always check whenever I went into buildings was whether or not the ‘Close Door’ button in the elevator actually did anything. In a few places it did... but there was a clear correlation between the expensiveness of living in the building, and the likelihood that the button was just a prop with no real effect, haha
I'd guess that in more expensive buildings the button would be just a prop with no real effect, since it's mandated by law and in the buildings where it does work, it's because that elevator hasn't been updated since that went into law
Jo Pestorius I hadn’t heard this... it’s mandated to HAVE a button? Or is it mandated that the button doesn’t work? (My pizza-slinging days were around ~2011-2012, if that has any bearing)
Michael and Matt both opened my mind up to spirituality on the left and in myself. I wish I could know more of what was in their minds regarding it. I’m not a past lives healing crystal kinda guy though
This discussion of the death-drive reminds me of Simone Weil's "The Iliad; or the Poem of Force" written when she was in the French Resistance in 1942. Everyone should check her out. Interesting figure as both a Christian mystic and revolutionary Leftist intellectual.
I am not a Marxist, just a mild centrist, but I really miss Michael and his depth of knowledge, philosophical acumen, logical thinking, and empathy. What a loss for all of us was his early departure. Rest in peace my friend.
Good discussion here, guys, thank you. The gentleman on the left had some interesting points re: fascile lies for social mediation and the inherent self destruct of facist regimes; my own rw authoritarian-loving old folks have that fatalism and I don't have the heart to blame them out loud..their great grandchildren will never forgive us/them.
I think you and I both know why Power and capital don't want any more power to the people and ranked choice voting represents some small modicum of power betting diverted to the average working person
the novel matt talks about is called "stark" by ben elton - 1989 (!), and wikipedia's "themes" section is pure gold: The novel is largely a satire of business, government and social attitudes toward environmentalism during the late 1980s. It describes a world in which big business and the ultra-rich are uncaring. It also skewers environmental activists as being unwilling to take decisive action or willing to take actions that are self-destructive and ineffectual. The book often deals with serious themes and then delivers comic relief. These comic diversions usually come to an abrupt end, often due to the hapless sudden death of a gag character. The comedy draws on Elton's typical fodder. The book contains crude and cringe humour, with characters who often experience flatulence and drunkenness, and running afoul of the law. The narrative also pokes fun at religion, place names and foreigners. The capricious and sometimes unjust nature of male-female relationships is a constant theme. Corporate culture and military culture are ridiculed. As in much of Elton's comic work, the central character is an unsuccessful, self-loathing, 'farty' skinny Englishman who has trouble relating to women. The book's prominent themes include: -Air pollution -The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament -Displacement of Indigenous Australians from their land -Far right politics -Finance -Global warming -Nuclear power -Racism -Recreational drug use -Unrequited love -Uranium mining -White supremacy
Mccaffrey was a career infantry officer. He was in Vietnam and commanded a large unit in desert storm and was the commander for the largest ground battle in that war. This battle happened after the cease fire (worth checking out). He did command southern command but that was after the Panama invasion. Check out the
For anyone who was curious, the book Matt was referring to is called 'Stark' by Ben Elton. Good shit. I highly recommend. www.goodreads.com/book/show/242242.Stark
The "drug czar" is the informal name for whoever is sort of in charge of drug policy. In the US, this has meant the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, ever since the ONDCP was founded in 1988. Prior to that, the "drug czar" refers to various other directors of various other offices. Notably, every drug czar of the ONDCP has been massively and provably dishonest about the drug statistics every single year since 1988, as has been shown by Matthew Robinson & Renee Scherlen's book "Lies, Damned Lies, and Drug War Statistics."
That Ben Elton book was called 'Stark.' I'd add; it's not that difficult to grow at least some of your own food; growing your own leafy greens and herbs can cut down on the food bill, make your diet healthier for little cost and connects you to the environment/seasons. You don't need alot of space for it. Do it.
Politics under a fascist government feels like a blood sport to me. I think our first order of business is to get our soldiers out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Our fight is here at home with this system. We have much work to do. We need our children home now.
@unborn I don’t think it’s going to happen. I could be pleasantly surprised if it did but I’m not counting on it happening. The Afghan government hasn’t been included in this peace deal so.....,,
I never subscribed to the 'death drive' theories. They almost completely lack explanatory power. "Why do we kill others?" "Because we have a death drive". "Why people make love?" "We have a love drive" etc. Still, I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation, as always :-)
@@Cyclopsvision14 I do understand the argument, it's even older than Freud. Specifically with the nazis, this line of explanation was pursued by Erich Fromm after WW2, in "The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness". My criticism is that this way of structuring your explanation is not very useful. Consider physics, and a simple example. For centuries, it was argued in Europe that things burn, because they have something called 'flogiston' inside them. What is 'flogiston'? It's the thing that makes other things burn. See the problem here? :-) It's exactly the same with the 'death drive' - it's the thingy that makes people do death, and we have it. It was only later that scientists discovered the actual mechanism of flame, and similarly, we need to do better with explaining mass violence. There are, actually, great models being developed, which take into account many factors, from genetic all through cultural.
Two simple ideas that would have an impact on resource usage and distribution far greater than the Green New Deal: 1) Eating little or no meat. We waste an unbelievable amount of land, water & fuel, not to mention contributing to environmental destruction and disease, by eating meat. Compared to growing a potatoes to beef, it's about 5x as much water and 30x as much land. 2) Fair pricing for farm commodities, especially those eaten directly by humans (wheat, rice, etc.) The USDA calculates "parity" rates for crops that essentially represent living wage prices. Farmers are paid on average anywhere from 20-40% of the price they need. A big part of both Lincoln and FDR's recovery programs included establishing fair crop prices by government mandate. This would put millions back on the land and shrink the size and resource-intensiveness (other than labor) of farms. There are solutions to nearly every problem. We need the right marriage of hyperefficiency (ie high speed trains) and hyper-inefficiency (ie more labor and less resource use on farms). When things like oil and fertilizer can be centralized and privately owned the whole society becomes dependent upon their perpetuation.
You'd have to reduce your definition of fascism to specifically Italy and Germany for William Reich's argument to work. But the fascists in Spain and Portugal stayed in power for decades - and in Spain, their regime was not destroyed.
I haven't read Reich's argument, but it would also seem to me that Italian fascism would be much closer to Franco than Hitler. I'm currently reading Origins of Totalitarianism and Arendt goes to pains to elaborate on the differences between Italy and Germany there too...I don't think Italian fascism was as obviously self-destructive/connected to the death drive as Nazi germany was
Julius, I think Italian Fascism is significantly different from Spanish Fascism. Both distinct from Germany. Italian Fascism was about modernization, centralized power (Against unions, church, mob), resisting England and Austria, the dominant powers, and really against the traditional upper class. Mussolini was uncouth and revolutionary. In Spain Fascism had three legs: military, aristocracy, church. It’s more feudal than modern.
Iran is the civilized nation compared to the USA. To understand fascism, start with Wilhem Reich's Mass Psychology of Fascism. Then study Carl Jung's Archetypal Psychology to understand how the archetype takes possession of the psyche.
