STEVE GRUMBINE:
All right, folks, this is Steve with Macro N Cheese. And you know, I
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have talked a lot, you think about the last several episodes. We've really dialed
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our focus on kind of how does common sense come to be and the
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rugged individualism that has been turned into the cultural norm by the ruling elite.
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And we've looked at the concept of libertarianism and liberalism and the self-made man
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and the whole apparatus that makes us selfish, zero-sum thinking and hating our neighbors
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and all the other machinations that have been used and leveraged against collective power,
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against collective strength, atomizing us to like little teeny consumption units that are jerked
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around by the latest headline and jerked around by the latest oligarch whims. A
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lot of people just can't seem to wrap their head around that because it's
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scary. Once you go there, you have to answer a whole bunch of other
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questions. The dominoes don't just stop there, the dominoes keep falling. And as you
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continue to follow the path, it gets scarier and scarier because realizing you're not
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voting your way out of it might be the most terrifying "aha moment" of
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them all. Because then you're left standing there looking in the mirror saying, "now
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what?" And "now what?" is terrifying, right? It's absolutely terrifying because your whole life
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you grew up believing that it was simply, you're going to go. You're going
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to head to the polling booth. You're going to put an "I voted sticker"
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on your forehead. And good things were going to happen. And what we're watching
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now is something quite terrifying. It's even more terrifying if you understand hegemony and
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you understand how vital oligarchy is in terms of addressing and shaping cultures and
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the way that we view ourselves and view each other. So to discuss this
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phenomenon with me today, I brought on the author of the American Exception, Aaron
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Good, who is just a brilliant guy who's done lots and lots of great
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historical work on JFK, but he's also done a lot of work in this
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space as well. And that's why we're bringing Aaron on, to add to the
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conversation, but to give a new perspective and a new flavor and some of
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his recent work and updated work plays right into this. So without further ado,
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let me bring on my guest, Aaron Good. Welcome to the show, sir.
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AARON GOOD:
Hey, thanks for having me.
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
Yeah, so you heard the intro there. Why don't we get started with, I guess, I
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don't know, a rebuttal, response or whatever, but then we can get into the meat and
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potatoes of the current situation. There's so many of them. I just will say situation to
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kind of be a catch-all for this kind of weird timeline we're living in. But if
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you wouldn't mind, go ahead and address the intro and we'll get started.
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AARON GOOD:
Well, we are certainly at an inflection point and something that I think should
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be called a civilizational crisis, an existential crisis for the prevailing order, as it
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stands, because centuries of Western imperial dominance over the rest of the world are
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coming to a close, this does not seem to be irreversible. And in typically
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dialectic fashion, as is often the case, probably invariably the case with dying empires,
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the actions of the empire in terminal decline are only exacerbating and accelerating its
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demise. And, you know, the Ukraine war, the Gaza genocide, the potential attack on
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Venezuela, these are all symptoms of this. And seeing the continuity of policies now
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should make it very clear that the electoral process is a managed spectacle. If
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you consider that people want to blame Trump as this unique aberration, you know,
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and if only the Democrats were in there. Well, it was Obama who signed
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this ridiculous order. I mean, of course, the US tried to overthrow Chavez in
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Venezuela in 2002, and they eventually succeeded in assassinating him., apparently... that's what [Nicolas]
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Maduro had said. And honestly, when you look at the West and the way
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it has all these sophisticated ways of killing people, I think he was likely
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given some sort of cancer bioweapon. That's what Maduro thought. And I mean, it
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just seems pretty likely to me. But under Obama, he declared a state of
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emergency regarding Venezuela to justify whatever covert actions or policies or sanctions against Venezuela.
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And it's clear that there's no threat represented by Venezuela. Venezuela is not the
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vanguard of a revolution that's going to take over the United States. This is
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all about the hegemony of Western capitalism over the resources of Latin America and
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the Global South, of course, in general, but especially Latin America. And it's so
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obvious whether it's Obama, whether Trump. The only difference is in, you know, the
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tone, the style, and then maybe how far they're willing to go to pursue
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imperialist ends there. And if you look at Biden vs Trump in Ukraine and
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Gaza. I mean, there aren't big fundamental differences in the policy, despite what they
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say. I mean, what Trump said about "heat" in the war today, it was
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obviously not true. And you know, the Gaza genocide was aided and the US
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was a co-conspirator under two regimes to genocidal crimes in Palestine. And if you
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go back, of course the genocide didn't really begin following October 7th. It's of
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course been ongoing since the '40s. So it's just the West cannot really withstand
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any honest scrutiny and it's causing a crisis among the elite. It's a frightening
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spectacle. And it's also hopeful in a sense because the US empire, Western imperialism,
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the rule of white supremacy, as a political project, we could think of it
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as this has to end for humanity to advance and it's hard to imagine
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a way that it would end without any turmoil. So we're going through something
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that is necessary one way or the other, and we have to hope it
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doesn't kill us all.
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
That's brilliantly stated. I'm curious though. You know, we're sitting here talking and I don't
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consider myself to be exceptional. I like to think I'm a decent dude and I
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try really hard. But there's nothing exceptional about me necessarily. And I won't speak for
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you, but my point is we're sitting here talking and we're talking about how this
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timeline is playing out in the worst possible fashion. But you rightfully point out how
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this was not a partisan thing. This is an oligarch thing. This has been going
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on for probably since the dawn of this nation as a colonial project. But looking
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at the current setup, you've got media manufacturing consent for each move, you've got a
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whole host of players within, you know, the theater that this is playing their role.
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And it's all to get us to either do something or believe something or say
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something. And I consider the election season part of that. I consider the campaigning part
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of that. But I look at Fox News, which is the easy whipping boy because
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it is just so atrocious. You listen to the way people that listen to that
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come out. They come out with a very interesting worldview, a very much a makers
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and takers hating the poor. They just assume everyone is a moocher, a taker, a
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thief. "You're stealing my hard-earned tax dollars" and on and on and on. And then
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on top of it, each of these manufactured wars, I mean, you've got the same
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people coming out going, "We gotta get rid of the fentanyl crisis. That's why Trump
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is gonna blow Venezuela to pieces." And, you know, on and on and on while
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simultaneously accepting that the US is broke, while watching Trump give $20 billion to Argentina.
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Every one of these dialectical, like the contradictions are so unbelievably loud. Yet when we
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watch the folks that listen to these various programs, and I don't want to spare
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MSNBC, CNN and all the other not so alternate media, they're the mainstream vocal messaging
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arm of these oligarchies. The Larry Ellisons of the world owning TikTok and on and
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on and on. And it's just across the board, the oligarchs control the messaging. What
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is it about us as a people that makes it so that we refuse, or
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maybe not refuse, we don't even realize we're being lied to? Or if we do
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realize we're being lied to, then we end up suckling into the convenient lie. I
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mean, is that just human nature or is this the plan? Is this what they
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already know at the top? This is why they do it. So they do it.
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That's why invest so much into it.
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AARON GOOD:
There is not a monolithic face to this regime. The political and cultural schisms are
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engineered and massaged in different ways and changed over time. So you can't speak of
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the US prevailing order as something that just indoctrinates people with the perspective, you know,
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the point of view, the capital T, truth. They seem to have given up on
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that at some point in the Cold War, and especially I'd say following Watergate and the
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end of Bretton Woods, although it has its roots even earlier than that. But a
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more of a cult of individualism prevailed in different ways that manifests itself in different
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ways in different sectors of society. So you do have this kind of libertarian-minded American
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right wing that really believes in property above all and is suspicious of the government.
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And in recent years, I think that they have become manipulated in kind of a
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certain way and algorithmically managed to have an even bigger footprint in society. Because I
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think there's some recognition that the narratives of the prevailing order are not plausible. And
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so you need some people to address these narratives and have some way of speaking
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to them, to things like the JFK assassination. I mean, it's the wildest thing to
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see libertarians and others talk about the JFK assassination when it was a crime of
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a propertied regime of capitalist oligarchs. And so we're hearing people talk about oligarchs who
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are like libertarians. It's ridiculous. Because every oligarchy is a function of the political economy
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that sustains that civilization, that prevails in that civilization. So if you're saying they're oligarchs,
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if you're saying, "Oh, we gotta unite against oligarchy" it's like, well, how are you
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going to do that when you basically have no problem with the system that invariably
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generates oligarchy and has never not generated oligarchy? And this is, I think, sort of
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by design. It's a kind of cultural social engineering boosting on Internet algorithms. The conspiracism
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of the right is now sort of useful because it's pro-capitalist. So whatever you believe,
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if ultimately you think that property is sacrosanct and that the whatever property one acquires
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under the system is unquestionable and totally legitimate, then you really have no way of
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combating this oligarchy. Because they're the oligarchy because they have all of the money and
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they own everything. And so they get to control the algorithms. They get to control
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the universities. They get to control the media. They get to control the political system
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because it's all animated by money. And so if you are someone who you say
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you don't like the system, or you have a problem with these bastards that are
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running it, but you have an almost religious devotion to the system that cannot but
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be dominated by moneyed oligarchs, then this is politically, essentially an inert kind of formation.
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And that's one thing that we've been going through lately. We have a Left which
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sort of denies a lot of the state criminality, especially the clandestine kind, or, you
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know, is misdirected in different ways. And then a sort of populist Right that is
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also misled about the nature of the system as a whole, and they're sort of
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socially manipulated through essentially psychological operations that we just call mass media, even alternative media
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now, the alternative media that gets boosted by YouTube, et cetera, and every other, you
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know, internet platform. This is a very weird time with an enormous amount of social
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engineering and technocratic manipulation management. I mean, it's like MK Ultra, you know, of course,
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that it's very unlikely that they would just suspend all sorts of research and things
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in this direction. But it's as if it got more and more applied on sort
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of a mass society level in order to politically neutralize the West. And as a
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result, I think that the political sense of the West is so fragmented and atomized
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and stupefied that the moment that we're living through in the collapse of this global
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system or the Western dominance of it is something that we are just spectators at,
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if we're either learned, wise, judicious spectators of it, or we're misled in one way
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or another. And of course, you know, who gets to determine who's correct on these
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issues. But as much as it sucks, I believe, because there's no money in institutional
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support or marketplace of ideas where these things can actually be discussed and adjudicated without
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the people with money putting their weight on the scales. We are totally unable to
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respond and are just spectators to this.
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
You know, I've been saying for probably five years, and mind you, I admit
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man, I'm a late bloomer to a lot of this stuff. And I think
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a lot of people are either late bloomers or just now beginning to open
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their eyes a little bit maybe. I've been talking for a long time that
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we need to kind of look at some of the other resistance movements like
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the Young Lords or Fred Hampton and the Black Panthers and others who understood
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that you had to educate the people, but you had to build dual power.
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You had to have parallel systems in place to support people so that they
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could resist. Because otherwise you're leaving people as prey to a system meant to
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devour them, meant to manufacture a certain kind of consent and condemn and destroy
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those who don't fall into that neat little bucket, if you will, that mold.
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And let's just stay in America, the US in particular, for this moment. How
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would you assess the US's ability to see beyond the electoral system, to function
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outside of, to create even a mental vanguard that. Let me step back, I
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think about, like the Underground Railroad as an example of the kind of times
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we're in right now. If we were being honest, we'd be looking at the
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Underground Railroad as dual power, as actual direct action, as taking kind of action
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towards the system as it is. I feel like in America, people are so
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adept at falling into hero worship. The latest thing with Mamdani and New York
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City as a mayoral candidate, et cetera. I mean, there's so many reasons to
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say, "Yes. Oh, I'm so excited." But having a sober perspective of oligarchy and
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a sober perspective of power within a capitalist system, and power based on history
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and understanding that they're not giving anything away. I mean, if you could vote
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it away, they would have already made it illegal. What are your thoughts on
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the American citizens ability to resist, the ability to fight back, and the willingness
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to see beyond the electoral system?
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AARON GOOD:
Well, you know, I think if you start talking about the Young Lords and
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the Black Panthers, these are communities that were so marginalized and exploited and oppressed
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that there was an element within them that could be brought to basically a
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revolutionary state. That's really a minority of the population in the United States. You
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know, if you look at political science, there's a lot of useless quantitatively-based garbage
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that presupposes the rule of law and transparency and democracy prevailing when we all
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know that's not the case. And so it ends up being very silly and
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irrelevant. Apolitical pseudoscience is really the way you could describe a lot of political
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science. But there are some useful works in political science that are kind of
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commonsensical in a way. And the relevant one here is Theda Skocpol's book on
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revolutions, on social revolutions. Right? She points out that in modern civilizations or in
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AARON GOOD:
modern times, the only real social revolutions were in China, Russia and France, the
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French Revolution. So the American Revolution is not a revolution. And anti-colonial revolutions are
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something different. They aren't a society overthrowing its own, you know, oligarchy or own
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regime and then replacing it with one totally opposite. Right? The only times that
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these have happened were in France, Russia, and China. And these were cases where
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the state essentially lost its capacity to maintain its rule, that the people were
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subjected to so many hardships and difficulties, and that this coincided with a collapse
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AARON GOOD:
of state power that was brought on by foreign wars, essentially, you know, world
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war. In the Chinese case, it was the decades of the Japanese, you know,
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incursions into Manchuria, et cetera, coming after things like the Opium wars, the Boxer
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AARON GOOD:
Rebellion, the Sino Japanese War. I mean, that they had been put through hell
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AARON GOOD:
for decades and decades, going back to the 1800s, especially in China, by Western
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imperialism and then by the Japanese copycats of Western imperialism. And so this was
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a state of misery that they had to achieve, at which point being a
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revolutionary becomes kind of existential. So for Americans, there are very few people for
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whom, I mean, there's almost zero people for whom a revolutionary action is existential
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for them. And so this is a sobering realization that you're just not going
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to get people in a revolutionary state of mind when it's not existential for
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them. This is, I think, the lesson of history that this is the case.
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AARON GOOD:
However, it's also the lesson of history that empires do fall, and that's what
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we're experiencing now. And this regime is something that's been more or less increasingly
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dominated by a kind of imperialist global dominance mindset. And everything has been geared
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towards this in decades. And because of schisms, I believe, among this oligarchy of
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corporate capitalist wealth we have seen in the 21st century one particular group, which
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is a neoconservative, super Zionist-dominated, I believe, coalition take control of US foreign policy
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AARON GOOD:
and send the US on one imperial disaster after another. I mean, most of
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these can be explained or best understood as really things for the benefit of
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AARON GOOD:
a Greater Israel project, pretty much laid out in the Clean Break Report in 1996,
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AARON GOOD:
which marked a shift from other imperialists who are not good guys in any
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way, shape or form, but like George H.W. Bush is the most notable one
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AARON GOOD:
here. And this was abandoned in favor of a more neocon super Zionist direction.
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AARON GOOD:
And it has resulted in disastrous wars for the US as this Project for
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a New American Century as it was called. That was the American version of
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AARON GOOD:
the Clean Break Report, except it really didn't frame things around Israel, it framed
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it around global dominance. But this pursuit of global dominance in the wake of
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the fall of the Soviet communism, this has been a disaster. And yet the
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population of the US doesn't have a coherent critique of these things. And no
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political party is, or nobody with a major platform and money behind them and
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institutional support is really able to reach the public on a large enough scale
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to create a new, more reality-based common sense of what this country's situation actually
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AARON GOOD:
is and how it got to be this way. So it's a difficult if
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not impossible time for anybody who is going to be very fixated on the
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idea of how do we fix this system. Because history suggests that this is
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AARON GOOD:
not a revolutionary population, because there's no solidarity. There's plenty of dissatisfaction about the
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AARON GOOD:
terrible regime and the undeniable reality that we have just been facing decline for
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AARON GOOD:
living standards and human indicators in the US for decades, which really shouldn't be
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AARON GOOD:
the case. Technology should be improving and improving people's lives, but it's not. So
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people know that there's like a top-down kind of power that's fixed against them
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AARON GOOD:
and that everything seems more and more like a racket and that you're getting
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AARON GOOD:
screwed by more and more people and that this collectively makes everything more expensive
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AARON GOOD:
and makes life more difficult, makes their children's futures more precarious and uncertain. And
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AARON GOOD:
yet we have no institutions that are going to give people the sense-making ability
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AARON GOOD:
that they would need to understand their plight. And I think that this is
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AARON GOOD:
pretty obviously by design. This isn't something that just happens organically. This is oligarchy
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AARON GOOD:
is doing what they invariably do which is dominating the sense-making and cultural apparatus
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AARON GOOD:
that keeps them in power.
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
Yeah, I love the way you said that. I don't love what you said, by the way, but I absolutely love. How do I say that? I love what you said. But I.
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AARON GOOD:
It's a downer and there's no getting around it. It's not, you can't, there's
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AARON GOOD:
no super happy and positive thing in a sense about dealing with this. Because
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AARON GOOD:
what do you do when there's nothing that you can really do is a
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AARON GOOD:
question. And the first step is perhaps understanding why there's nothing that you can
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AARON GOOD:
do and then somehow managing or it's almost like a Taoist kind of a
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AARON GOOD:
thing. There are powers and historical currents that you just cannot resist. Somehow you
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AARON GOOD:
have to exist even in states of chaos.
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
That's a brutal truth you're laying down there, Aaron. I mean, and it's a brutal
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
truth that I guess I agree with. I think the greater concern from my vantage
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
point, because you just nailed almost 90% of where I'm at, is there's nothing we
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can do about it now. We aren't living amongst revolutionary people. We're living amongst people
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
who are just fat enough to not want to lose something, yet not fat enough
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
to survive in a good way. And knowing full well that it takes the material
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
conditions of society to reach such contradictory points where the rupture happens. And we're not
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
there because this managed democracy, what it does is it keeps us all just above.
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
Like our nose is just above the water line but our mouth is under. And
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
if we don't stay with the cause, we'll take on water. So it leaves us
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
in this position where it's FUBAR [fucked up beyond all recognition]. And yet the standard
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
ways that we've been told we can handle it, vote harder, vote stronger, donate more,
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show up to rallies and celebrate and so forth. I mean that's the hopium. That's
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
the LARPing. That's the cosplaying of a democracy that we see especially largely happening even
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
within a lot of my friends' worlds. I mean democratic socialists are busy selling that
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
world right now as if it's a real possible thing that we can just sort
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
of vote our way out of this. And maybe that's because we need the comforting
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
lies to do exactly what you said and that's survive what we cannot change. What's
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
that old saying, you know, "Lord, help me accept the things I cannot change, the
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." I
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
think that there's some truth in that kind of phrasing, given that it feels, I
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
don't want to say impossible, but like we're nowhere near where we would need to
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
be to take any kind of action. And yet you're watching drones and AI literally
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
begin to run cover for oligarchs to lay the working class off. We're seeing 15,000
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
layoffs come through Amazon. We're seeing tons of layoffs at all these other companies. We're
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
seeing an AI tech bubble. We're seeing where people have placed all their hope and
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
dreams, wrongly, but regardless in these things, in their stock portfolio to try and survive
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
the coming and going of the economic downturns that we experience more and more and
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
more frequently these days. What do you think the average person, how should they process
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
their reality right now? I mean, I know that's intentionally vague to give you room
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
to speak on it, but how do you think the average person should communicate this
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
reality? What do you think is a helpful, healthy way of seeing the world for
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
what it is making do, and at the same time resist in whatever fashion you
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
can?
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AARON GOOD:
I think on some level, if you can't change the reality and the prevailing order,
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AARON GOOD:
you can at least be honest about it. And so for these Social Democrat types,
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AARON GOOD:
I think that I'm not going to say that I have no sympathy for them
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AARON GOOD:
at all. And I think on balance, Mamdani's candidacy is a sign of positive things
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AARON GOOD:
among the American people, that the major city, biggest city in the US would elect
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AARON GOOD:
someone who essentially is for negation of Zionism. I mean, he doesn't quite come out
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AARON GOOD:
and say it, and I haven't followed him that closely because that's just for reasons
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AARON GOOD:
that are pretty obvious. I don't think we're at a revolutionary moment and that revolution
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AARON GOOD:
will come through voting. But I heard him asked, "Do you think Israel has a
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AARON GOOD:
right to exist?" Which is always a stupid question because there's no state has a
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AARON GOOD:
right to exist. States are human contrivances. They are organizations. The humans have rights, not
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AARON GOOD:
states. So it's ridiculous. But leaving that aside, Mamdani said that, "Yeah, he believes that
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AARON GOOD:
there could be an Israel where everyone has equal rights." So that's really not Israel
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AARON GOOD:
at all. Israel's a fascist, essentially Nazified, project. And that's a positive sign that in
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AARON GOOD:
New York, which doesn't have a shortage of powerful Zionists, you would have somebody elected
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AARON GOOD:
the mayor there. That seems to point to something, to some flicker of human cognition
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AARON GOOD:
and decency that's still there even in a political system as corrupt as this. But
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AARON GOOD:
I do find the democratic socialists, the liberals, the faux leftists, the Trotskyites and so
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AARON GOOD:
on, I find them to have an ultimately pretty useless frame of reference because reality
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AARON GOOD:
is that we don't live in a democracy. We live in a lawless, top-down oligarchy
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AARON GOOD:
bent on global dominance. And in maintaining their totally unjust privileges and power over society
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AARON GOOD:
infinite into and you know, as long as they can. It's a system that you
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AARON GOOD:
cannot really justify if you talk about it in an honest way. And I think
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AARON GOOD:
that it's because of institutional manipulation that there are just many dominant influential thinkers or
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AARON GOOD:
institutions, people with institutional backing. To the extent that there is such a thing on
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AARON GOOD:
the Left, it promotes people who are basically safe. They're the loyal opposition because they
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AARON GOOD:
don't point out that whatever the... I mean I have not gone wrong in the
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AARON GOOD:
last 30 years over any major international event as it's gone down in terms of
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AARON GOOD:
determining the Western hand behind it and ultimately imperialist criminality behind it and the responsibility
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AARON GOOD:
behind it in the West. Because if the West explicitly has a grand strategy of
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AARON GOOD:
global dominance forever and it has deployed all manner of covert operations and the manipulation
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AARON GOOD:
of civil society and of democratic processes to maintain this imperialist project. And so whatever
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AARON GOOD:
is going on in this other country where the US wants to intervene, it's essentially
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AARON GOOD:
invariably some nefarious plot, plan, strategy to extend the domination of Western money and oligarchy
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AARON GOOD:
over the world's political economy and its resource-rich areas. I do not understand how there's
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AARON GOOD:
a Left that is fixated on America's enemies. It's the most ridiculous thing. It's pathetic.
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AARON GOOD:
It's embarrassing. [Yes.] And you know the people at Jacobin, people at Democracy Now are paid
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AARON GOOD:
frauds by and large. And it comes down to like, "Well, do you have institutional
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AARON GOOD:
support? Do you have a salary?" Then probably you are co-opted in one way or
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AARON GOOD:
another. There's a handful of like actually radical academics in our universities and some of
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AARON GOOD:
them got in because the times were different when they got in or because they
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AARON GOOD:
managed to maneuver one way or another. But they're eliminating tenured jobs. They're destroying the
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AARON GOOD:
modern university. So even that's not there. And we're just left with these fake annoying
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AARON GOOD:
revolutions that can't appeal to people on a mass level like Breadtube and figures like
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AARON GOOD:
oh man Contrapoints the people that write of Jacobin, Democracy Now, et cetera, et cetera,
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AARON GOOD:
that just when you live under a despotic lawless regime bent on global dominance, that's
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AARON GOOD:
the political situation, that's really the only political issue. Because if you don't even have
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AARON GOOD:
a democracy in any meaningful sense and the regime is lawless, murderous, and bent on
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AARON GOOD:
dominating US and global society forever, if they can do it, then that's your political
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AARON GOOD:
issue. It's not that in Russia they passed a law against gay propaganda. Oh, no.
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AARON GOOD:
Well, you know, as an American, what does that have to do with anything? Like,
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AARON GOOD:
America didn't even strike sodomy laws from the books until the 21st century. So we're
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AARON GOOD:
going to really act like them being a couple decades behind us or more on
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AARON GOOD:
these issues is somehow important. But you hear people make all of these stupid arguments
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AARON GOOD:
about the regimes that the countries that the US wants to destroy. It's embarrassing. And
347
00:29:53,001 --> 00:29:58,000
AARON GOOD:
I would just urge people to recognize that. Keep their eyes on. Keep their eye
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AARON GOOD:
on the ball. Keep their eye on the real enemy, which is the regime that
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AARON GOOD:
dominates them and seeks to dominate the whole world and has explicitly asserted this strategy
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AARON GOOD:
in different documents and policy pronouncements and also in the historical record. It's pretty much
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AARON GOOD:
undeniable. So I would say that people need to stop being the dupes of their
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AARON GOOD:
enemies.
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
You know, I've got friends here, and I'm sure you have them too, that they don't
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
quite rise up to the level of Breadtube. We'll call them Shitlib-tube. I don't know what
355
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
you want to call them, but there's like a very acceptable level of progressive, you know,
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
the gatekeepers that, you know, of course, they're the "of course type people" that live and
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
die for every Bernie rally. And I was once a member of this. So I'm calling
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
myself out, past-Steve, years and years and years ago Steve, but still call myself out in
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
that. And they can't fathom that. I wanted to jokingly interrupt you and just say, "but
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
they're for Medicare for all, Aaron. But they're for free student debt relief or whatever. But
361
00:31:04,001 --> 00:31:09,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
they're for a bucket of policies, Aaron." And this constitutes to them, you know, "Oh, well,
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
then they're the good guys, right?" Look, what's wrong with that? Why would you think of
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
them as your enemy? And enemy is like a weird word. It really is more a
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
matter of what they're saying. And what they're doing is literally leading you back to believing
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
that this is something you have power to vote your way out of. They're leading you
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
back to helplessness. They're leading you back down a train path, you know, that is then
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
treaded on a million times in the past to lead to nowhere or right back to
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
where you are today, anyway. And ultimately, it's not so much that they're your enemy, it's
369
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
that they are sucking the oxygen out of the room with their huge platforms and they're,
370
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
"Of course I'm pragmatic. Of course. What do you want, Trump? Of course I'm just pragmatic."
371
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
And this faux pragmatism, I think hides more than anything. It's kind of like, you know,
372
00:32:00,001 --> 00:32:05,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
"Hey, I can't really live with this world, so give me some good cocaine and let
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
me go out on a high." And I feel like they would rather be lied to.
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
And this is a meme somewhere. I'm sure they would rather a comfortable lie than just
375
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
acknowledging the truth, just looking this in the eye and saying, wow, I can't just vote
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
for Hillary and make Donald Trump not come back. I can't just. It's not going to
377
00:32:25,001 --> 00:32:30,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
change because going back to the Greater Israel Project, which I'd like to talk about here for
378
00:32:30,001 --> 00:32:35,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
a minute, they just treat these as like afterthoughts or, like, "That's just your issue, dude.
379
00:32:35,001 --> 00:32:40,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
That's just this thing that you're focused on." But they don't realize that is the issue.
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00:32:40,001 --> 00:32:45,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
It is the driving force between all things that are happening. Can you talk a little
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
bit about that and then jump to the Greater Israel Project?
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AARON GOOD:
Yeah. Maybe rephrase the last part again, because I got lost in thought as you were talking about that, but
383
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AARON GOOD:
I had things I wanted to say, and then I started thinking about them, and then I lost my train
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AARON GOOD:
of thought. So the first part there and now before Greater Israel, you're saying, how do we get these people
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AARON GOOD:
to recognize that they're being led down the garden path to, you know, irrelevance and such, basically?
386
00:33:12,001 --> 00:33:13,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
That they're being neutered.
387
00:33:13,001 --> 00:33:14,000
AARON GOOD:
Yeah, yeah.
388
00:33:14,001 --> 00:33:20,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
They're going out there by these left tubers that aren't really left at all. They're kind of like centrist shitlibs.
389
00:33:20,001 --> 00:33:21,000
AARON GOOD:
Yeah.
390
00:33:21,001 --> 00:33:26,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
And they listen to them and they're like,
391
00:33:26,001 --> 00:33:31,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
"No, but Kyle's a good guy. You don't
392
00:33:31,001 --> 00:33:36,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
understand. Or, no, Cenk is really... No, you
393
00:33:36,001 --> 00:33:41,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
just. He's really fighting hard for us." Or.
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00:33:41,001 --> 00:33:46,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
And, you know. Or, you know, and I
395
00:33:46,001 --> 00:33:51,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
could list a lot more, but those are
396
00:33:51,001 --> 00:33:56,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
the easy ones.
397
00:33:56,001 --> 00:34:01,000
AARON GOOD:
And then the alternative people, like there's Alex Jones, you know, there's James Corbett.
398
00:34:01,001 --> 00:34:06,000
AARON GOOD:
Yes, there's a lot of like right-wing conspiracism, which is also a newer thing.
399
00:34:06,001 --> 00:34:11,000
AARON GOOD:
It's so easy to make arguments about how bad the liberals are and how
400
00:34:11,001 --> 00:34:16,000
AARON GOOD:
hopeless that is. It's interesting that, I mean, at present we have basically an
401
00:34:16,001 --> 00:34:21,000
AARON GOOD:
outlaw murderer, you know, who's been just like killing people in the Caribbean for,
402
00:34:21,001 --> 00:34:26,000
AARON GOOD:
I won't say, for no reason. The whole reason that he's murdering people in
403
00:34:26,001 --> 00:34:31,000
AARON GOOD:
the Caribbean is so that he can accuse them of being drug dealers, so
404
00:34:31,001 --> 00:34:36,000
AARON GOOD:
that he can murder more people in Venezuela in order to steal the oil.
405
00:34:36,001 --> 00:34:41,000
AARON GOOD:
That's literally what the state is doing right now. And the Democrats, to my
406
00:34:41,001 --> 00:34:46,000
AARON GOOD:
knowledge, aren't speaking to this. They might say, "I don't agree with the policy,"
407
00:34:46,001 --> 00:34:51,000
AARON GOOD:
but they're not going to speak about the whole reality of it. To my
408
00:34:51,001 --> 00:34:56,000
AARON GOOD:
knowledge, I must admit I don't follow the pronouncements of senators and so on
409
00:34:56,001 --> 00:35:01,000
AARON GOOD:
that much anymore because it seems such a waste of time. I think that
410
00:35:01,001 --> 00:35:06,000
AARON GOOD:
the reason that these platforms exist, the reason that they do end up following
411
00:35:06,001 --> 00:35:11,000
AARON GOOD:
left coded or branded, you know, productions and personalities, is because those are the
412
00:35:11,001 --> 00:35:16,000
AARON GOOD:
ones that do have some institutional support. And they're the group that's saying something
413
00:35:16,001 --> 00:35:21,000
AARON GOOD:
that appeals to some vaguely liberal, lefty-ish people's ideology. And they're sensed to want
414
00:35:21,001 --> 00:35:26,000
AARON GOOD:
to do something because people don't want to accept that there is like zero
415
00:35:26,001 --> 00:35:31,000
AARON GOOD:
that they can do. So they take all of this energy and the energy
416
00:35:31,001 --> 00:35:36,000
AARON GOOD:
that exists in the population instead of being channeled in a meaningful way with
417
00:35:36,001 --> 00:35:41,000
AARON GOOD:
a critique that actually resonates and could produce some solidarity among people. They end
418
00:35:41,001 --> 00:35:46,000
AARON GOOD:
up just wasting their time on trifling, silly politics that are doomed when they
419
00:35:46,001 --> 00:35:51,000
AARON GOOD:
could recognize that in reality, we'll endow one with a kind of revolutionary mindset.
420
00:35:51,001 --> 00:35:56,000
AARON GOOD:
Even if they're going to have to face the truth that they live in
421
00:35:56,001 --> 00:36:01,000
AARON GOOD:
a pre-revolutionary or non-revolutionary society or anti-revolutionary society really. And so it's just a
422
00:36:01,001 --> 00:36:06,000
AARON GOOD:
difficult thing to get people to grasp the sense-making apparatus. The cultural apparatus in
423
00:36:06,001 --> 00:36:11,000
AARON GOOD:
the US has been manipulated in so many ways and it's done the same
424
00:36:11,001 --> 00:36:16,000
AARON GOOD:
way now, except in ways that we don't even know. The fakery that exists
425
00:36:16,001 --> 00:36:21,000
AARON GOOD:
online and on these big platforms like Reddit and Wikipedia and Facebook and Twitter.
426
00:36:21,001 --> 00:36:26,000
AARON GOOD:
These are essentially, they may as well be run by the intelligence agencies in
427
00:36:26,001 --> 00:36:32,000
AARON GOOD:
terms of the algorithms and how TikTok was there they couldn't accept that it's
428
00:36:32,001 --> 00:36:37,000
AARON GOOD:
the discourse and the numbers that seem to prevail there. You have no idea.
429
00:36:37,001 --> 00:36:42,000
AARON GOOD:
These people are all anonymous. You know, you have no idea what is meaningfully
430
00:36:42,001 --> 00:36:47,000
AARON GOOD:
behind things on Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia and so on. It's all top down.
431
00:36:47,001 --> 00:36:52,000
AARON GOOD:
Everything is top down. And there's so much misdirection. I have no ballpark estimation
432
00:36:52,001 --> 00:36:57,000
AARON GOOD:
of the number of people who are online, you know, managing personas and multiple
433
00:36:57,001 --> 00:37:02,000
AARON GOOD:
accounts across multiple websites, who just spend hours creating a false sense of what
434
00:37:02,001 --> 00:37:07,000
AARON GOOD:
like public opinion is in ways great and small every day. I would guess
435
00:37:07,001 --> 00:37:12,000
AARON GOOD:
that it's staggering. And I would guess that one of the main things that
436
00:37:12,001 --> 00:37:17,000
AARON GOOD:
they are really excited about AI for is that they will be able to
437
00:37:17,001 --> 00:37:22,000
AARON GOOD:
create infinite numbers of anonymous spammers who are engaged in all sorts of propaganda
438
00:37:22,001 --> 00:37:27,000
AARON GOOD:
operations of every flavor. Whether they're bespoken for different political groups, whether they're conservatives
439
00:37:27,001 --> 00:37:32,000
AARON GOOD:
or liberals or leftists, or whether they are rural or urban, coastal, interior, et
440
00:37:32,001 --> 00:37:37,000
AARON GOOD:
cetera, et cetera. They think that AI is going to give them the key
441
00:37:37,001 --> 00:37:42,000
AARON GOOD:
to basically take away the power of organized workers and to dominate the cultural
442
00:37:42,001 --> 00:37:47,000
AARON GOOD:
space as essentially a warfare that they're waging on all of us. It should
443
00:37:47,001 --> 00:37:52,000
AARON GOOD:
be easy to recognize this, and it should endow people with a real disdain,
444
00:37:52,001 --> 00:37:57,000
AARON GOOD:
contempt, antipathy, hatred even for the oligarchy that does this to us, while pretending
445
00:37:57,001 --> 00:38:02,000
AARON GOOD:
to be a democracy, which is a country ruled by the demos, when it
446
00:38:02,001 --> 00:38:07,000
AARON GOOD:
most certainly is not and never really has been. And with the benefit of
447
00:38:07,001 --> 00:38:12,000
AARON GOOD:
hindsight, we can see that the moments when it appeared more democratic, this was
448
00:38:12,001 --> 00:38:17,000
AARON GOOD:
more or less an illusion designed to confer legitimacy on the oligarchy when it
449
00:38:17,001 --> 00:38:22,000
AARON GOOD:
needed it for things like surviving the Great Depression without becoming socialist, or rallying
450
00:38:22,001 --> 00:38:27,000
AARON GOOD:
the country to fight to win the peace after World War II so that
451
00:38:27,001 --> 00:38:32,000
AARON GOOD:
the US oligarchs could establish a Wall Street dominated American century, a dollarized empire
452
00:38:32,001 --> 00:38:37,000
AARON GOOD:
over the whole world that they would like to make last forever, but which
453
00:38:37,001 --> 00:38:42,000
AARON GOOD:
cannot. And that's the moment that we're in now. And I think that they
454
00:38:42,001 --> 00:38:47,000
AARON GOOD:
think these technocratic clandestine meta operations of just manipulating the internet and dominating corporate
455
00:38:47,001 --> 00:38:52,000
AARON GOOD:
media and creating alternative media that's so specialized and niche that it's just going
456
00:38:52,001 --> 00:38:57,000
AARON GOOD:
to atomize and befuddle people. By and large, they think that this is going
457
00:38:57,001 --> 00:39:02,000
AARON GOOD:
to save them. I think ultimately they're going to be transcended by countries and
458
00:39:02,001 --> 00:39:08,000
AARON GOOD:
emerging great powers whose regimes are animated by something different than capitalist greed.
459
00:39:08,001 --> 00:39:12,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
Wow, powerful. Can we touch on the Greater Israel here real quickly because,
460
00:39:12,001 --> 00:39:17,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
you know, before they clamped down on TikTok and before many of the,
461
00:39:17,001 --> 00:39:22,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
if not most of the people of the press that were in Gaza
462
00:39:22,001 --> 00:39:27,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
being killed now, it used to be my wall was filled with information
463
00:39:27,001 --> 00:39:32,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
and now I have to actually go search for it to find it.
464
00:39:32,001 --> 00:39:37,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
The algorithms which are controlled by these oligarchic elements have basically silenced anything
465
00:39:37,001 --> 00:39:42,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
that competes with that space. But the elements that we're talking, I mean,
466
00:39:42,001 --> 00:39:47,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
it's so ridiculous to see the narratives surrounding Israel. And you know, I
467
00:39:47,001 --> 00:39:52,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
find it humorous in a sick way that some New York yuppie can
468
00:39:52,001 --> 00:39:57,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
lay claim to property held by a Palestinian over in Gaza. And this
469
00:39:57,001 --> 00:40:02,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
whole concept of Zionism is such a letch, just a wretched, twisted, grotesque
470
00:40:02,001 --> 00:40:07,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
form of colonialism and fascism, quite frankly.
471
00:40:07,001 --> 00:40:11,000
AARON GOOD:
Yeah, it's anti-Semitism. I mean, to be real, it basically takes the Nazi argument that Jewish
472
00:40:11,001 --> 00:40:16,000
AARON GOOD:
people cannot really [be] full citizens in other countries because of their cultural historical uniqueness and
473
00:40:16,001 --> 00:40:21,000
AARON GOOD:
so on and the hatred that it engenders in people that so they have to have
474
00:40:21,001 --> 00:40:26,000
AARON GOOD:
this state or some of the writings of some of the Zionists who said like that
475
00:40:26,001 --> 00:40:31,000
AARON GOOD:
they invoke some of the stereotypes of Jewish people that are like, "Oh, we are weak
476
00:40:31,001 --> 00:40:36,000
AARON GOOD:
and effeminate, but it's because we don't have a state, you know, and if we had
477
00:40:36,001 --> 00:40:41,000
AARON GOOD:
a state we'd be strong and powerful." I mean, it's a form of Nazism really. Nazism
478
00:40:41,001 --> 00:40:46,000
AARON GOOD:
emerged, a modern industrialized "blood and soil" fascism with a project that's exterminationist, you know, for
479
00:40:46,001 --> 00:40:51,000
AARON GOOD:
Lebensraum and so on. This is so analogous to Israel that it's, you know, it's almost
480
00:40:51,001 --> 00:40:56,000
AARON GOOD:
cliche to point it out at this point. And it just flies in the face of
481
00:40:56,001 --> 00:41:01,000
AARON GOOD:
all of our notions of progress and the enlightenment and modernity, the 21st century has revealed
482
00:41:01,001 --> 00:41:06,000
AARON GOOD:
the West to be totally morally bankrupt, dishonest, lawless political project at its apex. That's not
483
00:41:06,001 --> 00:41:11,000
AARON GOOD:
to speak about the people in the West because they are deprived from, you know, impacting
484
00:41:11,001 --> 00:41:16,000
AARON GOOD:
power and influencing the policies in any real way. But this is more and more clear
485
00:41:16,001 --> 00:41:21,000
AARON GOOD:
to people. We're just the villains to most of the world. To the world that's halfway
486
00:41:21,001 --> 00:41:26,000
AARON GOOD:
conscious of all the U.S., is this dangerous problem whose decline they need to manage with
487
00:41:26,001 --> 00:41:31,000
AARON GOOD:
as little carnage as possible.
488
00:41:31,001 --> 00:41:33,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
Well stated.
489
00:41:33,001 --> 00:41:38,000
AARON GOOD:
I just want to clarify, and this is where I think the sort of
490
00:41:38,001 --> 00:41:43,000
AARON GOOD:
emerging right-wing, anti-Israel people are predictably getting it wrong. The issue is not, "Oh,
491
00:41:43,001 --> 00:41:48,000
AARON GOOD:
everything's great. If it weren't for Israel and for Zionism." The problem is we
492
00:41:48,001 --> 00:41:53,000
AARON GOOD:
created a system where money and acquiring great amounts of money through political corruption
493
00:41:53,001 --> 00:41:58,000
AARON GOOD:
and dominating rackets and monopolies and sectors of the economy is the way that
494
00:41:58,001 --> 00:42:03,000
AARON GOOD:
political power is achieved and exercised and extended. And Jewish Americans didn't create this,
495
00:42:03,001 --> 00:42:08,000
AARON GOOD:
you know, and Zionist Jewish Americans didn't create this. It turns out that they
496
00:42:08,001 --> 00:42:13,000
AARON GOOD:
put together a political formation, neoconservatism, that was intertwined with the National Crime Syndicate,
497
00:42:13,001 --> 00:42:18,000
AARON GOOD:
Meyer Lansky and the Teamsters and all of that. And that was given protection
498
00:42:18,001 --> 00:42:23,000
AARON GOOD:
by this regime of the US because it was useful to these actors in
499
00:42:23,001 --> 00:42:28,000
AARON GOOD:
terms of dominating US society and also international politics, you know, in fighting the
500
00:42:28,001 --> 00:42:33,000
AARON GOOD:
Cold War with this sort of underworld army that's intertwined with capitalism and intelligence
501
00:42:33,001 --> 00:42:38,000
AARON GOOD:
agencies. And the role of Zionists in this was foundational because of the Vegas
502
00:42:38,001 --> 00:42:43,000
AARON GOOD:
Teamster mob syndicate that Robert F. Kennedy went after. And really nobody else did,
503
00:42:43,001 --> 00:42:48,000
AARON GOOD:
except for Nixon to some extent, which is why Lansky had to go to
504
00:42:48,001 --> 00:42:53,000
AARON GOOD:
Israel in 1970. But it isn't a case where, "Oh, if it weren't for
505
00:42:53,001 --> 00:42:58,000
AARON GOOD:
the globalists and if it weren't for the Zionists or if it weren't for
506
00:42:58,001 --> 00:43:03,000
AARON GOOD:
the Illuminati or the Freemasons or the Jesuits, that everything will be fine." It's
507
00:43:03,001 --> 00:43:08,000
AARON GOOD:
a system that is designed around the acquisition of wealth through the exploitation of
508
00:43:08,001 --> 00:43:13,000
AARON GOOD:
workers and people and also political domination, which allows one to control entire sectors
509
00:43:13,001 --> 00:43:18,000
AARON GOOD:
of the economy and establish, you know, essentially monopolies over essential human functions like
510
00:43:18,001 --> 00:43:23,000
AARON GOOD:
health care, agribusiness, energy, you know, everything. Every aspect of our economy is essentially
511
00:43:23,001 --> 00:43:28,000
AARON GOOD:
dominated by these corporate oligarchs. That's really the root of the problem. So Zionism
512
00:43:28,001 --> 00:43:33,000
AARON GOOD:
is uniquely historically impactful in the US because of a number of historical accidents
513
00:43:33,001 --> 00:43:38,000
AARON GOOD:
that the world has paid for and has suffered a lot for this. Nobody
514
00:43:38,001 --> 00:43:44,000
AARON GOOD:
more than Palestinians and people in the Middle East in the 21st century.
515
00:43:44,001 --> 00:43:48,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
That's extremely well stated. I was going to take us in a
516
00:43:48,001 --> 00:43:53,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
slightly different, but almost exclusively related to the system kind of direction.
517
00:43:53,001 --> 00:43:57,000
AARON GOOD:
Yes. I just wanted to establish that. I'm not trying to argue that, "Oh, it's just Israel is all our
518
00:43:57,001 --> 00:44:02,000
AARON GOOD:
problems." People don't know my work that well. I would like to clarify that. So thank you for that.
519
00:44:02,001 --> 00:44:07,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
Absolutely. No, and that's exactly what I wanted. It is systemic and it is beyond
520
00:44:07,001 --> 00:44:12,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
systemic, because the system itself isn't failing. It's doing what it is intended to do.
521
00:44:12,001 --> 00:44:17,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
It's been designed this way. And some of the tactics. I spoke with a great
522
00:44:17,001 --> 00:44:22,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
author and a scholar named Clara Mattei about the capital order. And some of the
523
00:44:22,001 --> 00:44:27,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
stuff that she raised was about how austerity is a tool that economists created on
524
00:44:27,001 --> 00:44:32,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
behalf of the ruling elite to discipline labor and to create this otherness, to create
525
00:44:32,001 --> 00:44:37,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
the bad guys, the good guys, the makers and takers, as part of the cultural
526
00:44:37,001 --> 00:44:43,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
tactic, if you will, to manipulate [the] public, to hate the poor, to hate those
527
00:44:43,001 --> 00:44:48,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
that are different, etc. And it's definitely part of the Zionist project, but it's not
528
00:44:48,001 --> 00:44:53,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
the Zionist project that's bigger than that. It's part of this othering that they do
529
00:44:53,001 --> 00:44:58,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
as part of fascism, et cetera, to create the conditions that keep us at each
530
00:44:58,001 --> 00:45:03,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
other's throat instead of looking in the direction where the real problem lies. But what
531
00:45:03,001 --> 00:45:08,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
I wanted to do is just bring your attention to Washington D.C. for a moment.
532
00:45:08,001 --> 00:45:13,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
And Washington D.C. is a non-state that has sort of elected representatives. Not really. It's
533
00:45:13,001 --> 00:45:18,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
kind of like a dog and pony show at best. And there's these sports teams
534
00:45:18,001 --> 00:45:24,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
that are, you know, there that everyone takes great pride in. And I think there's
535
00:45:24,001 --> 00:45:29,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
a lot to be said for just having some sort of distraction to keep you
536
00:45:29,001 --> 00:45:34,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
from slitting your wrist during this period of like, helplessness. But nobody wants to be
537
00:45:34,001 --> 00:45:39,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
the poor. Nobody wants to be the guy on the outside looking in. And so
538
00:45:39,001 --> 00:45:44,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
I wanted to read this to you because this is kind of the way I
539
00:45:44,001 --> 00:45:49,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
believe they keep us as divided as ever as part of that atomized man that
540
00:45:49,001 --> 00:45:54,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
you talked about in the beginning, et cetera. And I said "The cycle create austerity,
541
00:45:54,001 --> 00:46:00,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
cut spending, make it harder for people to survive. Folks break laws when they're trying
542
00:46:00,001 --> 00:46:05,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
to survive. Assholes ignore the cause and effect and want tougher laws, not a return
543
00:46:05,001 --> 00:46:10,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
to the necessary spending. They begin talking about personal responsibility and then blame the poor
544
00:46:10,001 --> 00:46:15,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
for being irresponsible. Cops are called to crack down on the poor. Then they begin
545
00:46:15,001 --> 00:46:20,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
to talk about abuses in the system. They ratchet the austerity. Cut more spending and
546
00:46:20,001 --> 00:46:25,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
more police spending is added. And they act like more police and more tough on
547
00:46:25,001 --> 00:46:30,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
crime is required while not helping the poor. Wash, rinse, and repeat. I said be
548
00:46:30,001 --> 00:46:35,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
careful who you blame." And I think that ultimately people are so bought into this
549
00:46:35,001 --> 00:46:41,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
notion of, "If I have the most toys, that makes me a good person. Whoever
550
00:46:41,001 --> 00:46:46,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
is rich, they must be good because you got to be a good person to
551
00:46:46,001 --> 00:46:51,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
become rich. I'll follow them. I'll worship them. I'll hero worship them." And you don't
552
00:46:51,001 --> 00:46:56,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
have to look farther than Elon Musk and Bill Gates and all these other figureheads
553
00:46:56,001 --> 00:47:01,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
that own all the social media platforms, own the regular media platform platforms, etcetera, but
554
00:47:01,001 --> 00:47:06,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
this whole concept of blaming the poor for our societal problems, punching down on immigrants,
555
00:47:06,001 --> 00:47:11,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
et cetera, why do you think this is so effective and useful to these oligarchies
556
00:47:11,001 --> 00:47:17,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
that do this repeatedly? It's not some new phenomenon.
557
00:47:17,001 --> 00:47:22,000
AARON GOOD:
They control our sense-making institutions and they direct the political regimes that have existed in the
558
00:47:22,001 --> 00:47:27,000
AARON GOOD:
US and so there's always been various others that have been deployed as props and, or
559
00:47:27,001 --> 00:47:32,000
AARON GOOD:
as real adversaries throughout the history of the US. So it wasn't a matter of pitting
560
00:47:32,001 --> 00:47:37,000
AARON GOOD:
us against ourselves or I mean, white people pitting themselves against other white people in the
561
00:47:37,001 --> 00:47:42,000
AARON GOOD:
early American experience because there's the frontier. Of course there are conflicts in US politics, but
562
00:47:42,001 --> 00:47:48,000
AARON GOOD:
this fact that you had the frontier as a way to externalize this conflict and that
563
00:47:48,001 --> 00:47:53,000
AARON GOOD:
you had an externalized other that was very useful for them. You know, initially it's the
564
00:47:53,001 --> 00:47:58,000
AARON GOOD:
Indians who are not Christian, not white, and didn't have a system of property rights that
565
00:47:58,001 --> 00:48:03,000
AARON GOOD:
would give them title to the land in the way that they did back in Europe.
566
00:48:03,001 --> 00:48:08,000
AARON GOOD:
And then of course, there are realistic problems about running into wars with Indians and how
567
00:48:08,001 --> 00:48:14,000
AARON GOOD:
using European labor would exacerbate these problems. Indentured servants would exacerbate the problems because it would
568
00:48:14,001 --> 00:48:19,000
AARON GOOD:
necessitate more westward expansion so that more people would have land if they survived their indenture.
569
00:48:19,001 --> 00:48:24,000
AARON GOOD:
And the result of that crisis faced by the colonial class there, the owning class, and
570
00:48:24,001 --> 00:48:29,000
AARON GOOD:
especially in the American South, was slavery initially for their tobacco plantations, because that's what made
571
00:48:29,001 --> 00:48:34,000
AARON GOOD:
America viable as a colony for England in the first place was tobacco. And eventually they
572
00:48:34,001 --> 00:48:39,000
AARON GOOD:
used slaves for this. It was kind of on the decline because tobacco was not as
573
00:48:39,001 --> 00:48:45,000
AARON GOOD:
lucrative. But then of course, cotton revived slavery in the U.S. and you know, it's the
574
00:48:45,001 --> 00:48:50,000
AARON GOOD:
most important part of the economy for many decades in the US and in the South,
575
00:48:50,001 --> 00:48:55,000
AARON GOOD:
you had this system which really did have whiteness. It had what we think of as
576
00:48:55,001 --> 00:49:00,000
AARON GOOD:
whiteness in America really takes shape in this time. And it's very useful because it did
577
00:49:00,001 --> 00:49:05,000
AARON GOOD:
create a kind of solidarity. In this case, it wasn't dividing Americans as they were thought
578
00:49:05,001 --> 00:49:11,000
AARON GOOD:
of at the time, just the white people against each other. It was a way of
579
00:49:11,001 --> 00:49:16,000
AARON GOOD:
creating fake solidarity among, you know, white people, because, "At least you're white. You're on Team
580
00:49:16,001 --> 00:49:21,000
AARON GOOD:
Whitey and you're part of the good guys. That's how the Confederacy actually could field an
581
00:49:21,001 --> 00:49:26,000
AARON GOOD:
army, which when you think about how many people actually owned slaves and such in the
582
00:49:26,001 --> 00:49:31,000
AARON GOOD:
South. You wonder how in the world could they have ever fielded an army when most
583
00:49:31,001 --> 00:49:36,000
AARON GOOD:
of these people did not own slaves and the best land was owned by these slaveholders.
584
00:49:36,001 --> 00:49:42,000
AARON GOOD:
So they were actually fighting for their enemies and dying for them en masse. That was
585
00:49:42,001 --> 00:49:47,000
AARON GOOD:
the power of the social cohesion created by whiteness, which is this fake idea. The idea
586
00:49:47,001 --> 00:49:52,000
AARON GOOD:
that was created for social cohesion and for support of a prevailing political order. And you
587
00:49:52,001 --> 00:49:57,000
AARON GOOD:
know, that persists to this day among some people, like white nationalists and so on, are
588
00:49:57,001 --> 00:50:02,000
AARON GOOD:
the dupes of political opportunists in the US you know, once we go sea-to-shining- sea and
589
00:50:02,001 --> 00:50:08,000
AARON GOOD:
of course there's Mexico. We fight a war with Mexico to steal Texas and California and
590
00:50:08,001 --> 00:50:13,000
AARON GOOD:
everything from them. But then immediately, once that happens, the US keeps going further West because
591
00:50:13,001 --> 00:50:18,000
AARON GOOD:
they needed this other. They needed an other to fight against and a project of expansion.
592
00:50:18,001 --> 00:50:23,000
AARON GOOD:
So they went West and they just kept going West. They went all the way into
593
00:50:23,001 --> 00:50:28,000
AARON GOOD:
Edo [Tokyo] Bay. Even before the US Civil War, Commodore Admiral or whatever you want to
594
00:50:28,001 --> 00:50:33,000
AARON GOOD:
call him, Matthew Perry sails into Edo Bay and he forces the Japanese to sign a
595
00:50:33,001 --> 00:50:39,000
AARON GOOD:
humiliating treaty with the US to trade with them and has other provisions as well, because
596
00:50:39,001 --> 00:50:44,000
AARON GOOD:
they needed that expansion. And that has survived in one way or another through almost all
597
00:50:44,001 --> 00:50:49,000
AARON GOOD:
of US history. I think there's a tiny window of like under Roosevelt where you had
598
00:50:49,001 --> 00:50:54,000
AARON GOOD:
the good neighbor policy in Latin America and the US was generally sort of contracting inward
599
00:50:54,001 --> 00:50:59,000
AARON GOOD:
from the imperialism of the early part of the 20th century. But by and large there's
600
00:50:59,001 --> 00:51:05,000
AARON GOOD:
always been boogeymen externally. And increasingly they've turned since the end of World War II, the
601
00:51:05,001 --> 00:51:10,000
AARON GOOD:
decades, you know, as the Cold War progressed, it was more and more sort of internal
602
00:51:10,001 --> 00:51:15,000
AARON GOOD:
division and culture wars ginned up in different ways. Instead of rallying the population to this
603
00:51:15,001 --> 00:51:20,000
AARON GOOD:
American cause in some sort of like Nazi-style global imperialist project, it's more of that the
604
00:51:20,001 --> 00:51:25,000
AARON GOOD:
population is atomized and instead of rallying all the youth to be prepared to fight in
605
00:51:25,001 --> 00:51:30,000
AARON GOOD:
a big military mobilizations, big wars, they create economic conditions that force some people to regard
606
00:51:30,001 --> 00:51:36,000
AARON GOOD:
military service as the best choice they have. And so it's changed in its form, but
607
00:51:36,001 --> 00:51:41,000
AARON GOOD:
there's always been an imperialist aspect to it. And it's more a sign of the decline
608
00:51:41,001 --> 00:51:46,000
AARON GOOD:
that our rulers have focused more on increasing social division. And they've kind of given up
609
00:51:46,001 --> 00:51:51,000
AARON GOOD:
even on any national project for the US at this point. They have the project that
610
00:51:51,001 --> 00:51:56,000
AARON GOOD:
they manage, but it really is not something that the public is largely on board with
611
00:51:56,001 --> 00:52:02,000
AARON GOOD:
or even understands.
612
00:52:02,001 --> 00:52:06,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
I think most people are probably not even aware of Bacon's Rebellion. But Bacon's
613
00:52:06,001 --> 00:52:11,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
Rebellion, to me, showed the lengths that they will go and how easy
614
00:52:11,001 --> 00:52:16,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
it is to destroy solidarity in these very spaces. The poor black slaves,
615
00:52:16,001 --> 00:52:21,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
the serfs, white indentured servants, you name it, all kind of got together
616
00:52:21,001 --> 00:52:26,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
to fight back. And all the ruling elite had to do was give
617
00:52:26,001 --> 00:52:31,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
the white guys a little extra benefits, and they abandoned all the rest
618
00:52:31,001 --> 00:52:36,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
of them. And it quelled Bacon's Rebellion simply by that economic inequality, by
619
00:52:36,001 --> 00:52:41,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
just dividing right there, by saying, "Here, we'll give you an extra $0.05
620
00:52:41,001 --> 00:52:46,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
to not stand with these guys."
621
00:52:46,001 --> 00:52:50,000
AARON GOOD:
Well, they also ceased the use of indentured servants from Europe, meaning that there was going
622
00:52:50,001 --> 00:52:55,000
AARON GOOD:
to be less people that were owed land after they survived. So it was this. I
623
00:52:55,001 --> 00:53:00,000
AARON GOOD:
don't even know how much they really gave. The people like Bacon weren't necessarily given much.
624
00:53:00,001 --> 00:53:05,000
AARON GOOD:
They didn't get much benefit from it. They got crushed. I think Bacon dies of dysentery,
625
00:53:05,001 --> 00:53:09,000
AARON GOOD:
you know, because they did sack Jamestown and burn it down, as I understand it, which
626
00:53:09,001 --> 00:53:14,000
AARON GOOD:
is, would have been something to see, but that was only after they'd gone out and
627
00:53:14,001 --> 00:53:19,000
AARON GOOD:
tried to kill a bunch of Indians. This was a more populist kind of genocidal imperialism.
628
00:53:19,001 --> 00:53:24,000
AARON GOOD:
And it just shows you how in the early US among these, like, white colonists, there's
629
00:53:24,001 --> 00:53:29,000
AARON GOOD:
virtually no good guys in any meaningful sense.
630
00:53:29,001 --> 00:53:34,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
Absolutely. Right on. All right, final thing. I know that you are in the midst of
631
00:53:34,001 --> 00:53:39,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
doing a rewrite for Japan for your book. Can you talk a little bit about that?
632
00:53:39,001 --> 00:53:43,000
AARON GOOD:
Yeah, we have a translation which is basically finished, as I understand it, and I'm working
633
00:53:43,001 --> 00:53:48,000
AARON GOOD:
on the new preface for them. I was excited that they wanted to bring this to
634
00:53:48,001 --> 00:53:53,000
AARON GOOD:
Japan, because I used to teach Japanese history for three years as a high school teacher,
635
00:53:53,001 --> 00:53:58,000
AARON GOOD:
and it was a class for high school seniors. And then I took a bunch of
636
00:53:58,001 --> 00:54:03,000
AARON GOOD:
classes in college. I had almost a minor in East Asian Studies, so I knew Japanese
637
00:54:03,001 --> 00:54:08,000
AARON GOOD:
history well. And I'd been to Japan on a peace study tour with Peter Kuznick to Hiroshima
638
00:54:08,001 --> 00:54:13,000
AARON GOOD:
and Nagasaki on the anniversary of the bomb dropping. And I just find Japanese culture fascinating.
639
00:54:13,001 --> 00:54:18,000
AARON GOOD:
The history is just amazing to me, and I was really touched that they would want
640
00:54:18,001 --> 00:54:23,000
AARON GOOD:
to publish my book there. And so I'm trying to write about Japanese imperialism, the oligarchy
641
00:54:23,001 --> 00:54:28,000
AARON GOOD:
of Japan, and how its history has been shaped overwhelmingly by the United States since Admiral
642
00:54:28,001 --> 00:54:33,000
AARON GOOD:
Perry sailed into Edo Bay. And I enjoy doing this, but I also feel a bit
643
00:54:33,001 --> 00:54:38,000
AARON GOOD:
of pressure, in a sense, because I'm writing about something that I'm not really a specialist
644
00:54:38,001 --> 00:54:43,000
AARON GOOD:
on the way. I'm a specialist on US imperialism. However, I think that because Japan has
645
00:54:43,001 --> 00:54:48,000
AARON GOOD:
been dominated by the US and because so few US specialists actually understand what the US
646
00:54:48,001 --> 00:54:53,000
AARON GOOD:
really is, I feel like my book explains the US regime very well and that it
647
00:54:53,001 --> 00:54:58,000
AARON GOOD:
filled the gap in terms of understanding the American deep state, which is to say the
648
00:54:58,001 --> 00:55:03,000
AARON GOOD:
top-down regime or oligarchy of the United States in the biggest sense. That by understanding the
649
00:55:03,001 --> 00:55:08,000
AARON GOOD:
forces that really dominated what, how history unfolded in Japan and by having being conversant in
650
00:55:08,001 --> 00:55:13,000
AARON GOOD:
Japanese history that I would be able to convey the relevance of American exception to Japanese
651
00:55:13,001 --> 00:55:18,000
AARON GOOD:
readers who would be probably of an anti-imperialist bent or they wouldn't be reading the book.
652
00:55:18,001 --> 00:55:23,000
AARON GOOD:
Right?
653
00:55:23,001 --> 00:55:24,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
Yeah.
654
00:55:24,001 --> 00:55:29,000
AARON GOOD:
So it's a shock when the US sails into Japan and forces them to sign a
655
00:55:29,001 --> 00:55:34,000
AARON GOOD:
treaty. They had seen what had happened to China, of a country that they have very
656
00:55:34,001 --> 00:55:39,000
AARON GOOD:
centuries long cultural and historical ties to and connections to. They knew about the Opium Wars
657
00:55:39,001 --> 00:55:44,000
AARON GOOD:
and the ruin, these things that the west had brought to China, but they couldn't resist
658
00:55:44,001 --> 00:55:49,000
AARON GOOD:
the US gunboats and they are forced to concede to the US. However, in Japanese fashion,
659
00:55:49,001 --> 00:55:55,000
AARON GOOD:
they decide that they will borrow from these barbarians and reap and take their technology and
660
00:55:55,001 --> 00:56:00,000
AARON GOOD:
make it better because they're Japanese. They're better than these barbarians. And so they modernize, they
661
00:56:00,001 --> 00:56:05,000
AARON GOOD:
industrialize Japan and they go from having a feudal oligarchy to essentially an imperialist-minded corporate oligarchy
662
00:56:05,001 --> 00:56:10,000
AARON GOOD:
of corporate wealth, you know, represented most, I think significantly by the Zaibatsu corporations like Mitsubishi,
663
00:56:10,001 --> 00:56:15,000
AARON GOOD:
which is still around today. We think of the Japanese imperialism as like vicious and fascistic,
664
00:56:15,001 --> 00:56:20,000
AARON GOOD:
which once, be honest, it pretty much was, if you understand what they did in China
665
00:56:20,001 --> 00:56:26,000
AARON GOOD:
and elsewhere in Korea, et cetera. But what's notable about this is that especially in the
666
00:56:26,001 --> 00:56:31,000
AARON GOOD:
lead up to or In World War II itself, they were essentially displacing Western colonial regimes
667
00:56:31,001 --> 00:56:36,000
AARON GOOD:
with their own Japanese colonial regimes. And they did it by copying the West and using
668
00:56:36,001 --> 00:56:41,000
AARON GOOD:
Western technology and even changing their own political structure to be something more Western than what
669
00:56:41,001 --> 00:56:46,000
AARON GOOD:
it was before. It was like a big board of directors is how I think of
670
00:56:46,001 --> 00:56:51,000
AARON GOOD:
the Japanese eventually during this era where they tried to establish their own empire and then
671
00:56:51,001 --> 00:56:57,000
AARON GOOD:
the US nukes them at the end of the war, enters the war really because of
672
00:56:57,001 --> 00:57:02,000
AARON GOOD:
the Japanese attacks on supposedly US nominally US territories. But if you look at the US
673
00:57:02,001 --> 00:57:07,000
AARON GOOD:
in the Philippines and in Hawaii, you can't really justify that as you being American dominated
674
00:57:07,001 --> 00:57:12,000
AARON GOOD:
in any real sense. It just was we took it by force and that's as much
675
00:57:12,001 --> 00:57:17,000
AARON GOOD:
legitimacy as it had. But that gets left out of the story. But once Japan is
676
00:57:17,001 --> 00:57:22,000
AARON GOOD:
totally defeated, then the US drop essentially because the Soviets have invaded Manchuria and are poised
677
00:57:22,001 --> 00:57:28,000
AARON GOOD:
to invade Japan. That's when the US just drops the bomb on two cities, two defenseless
678
00:57:28,001 --> 00:57:33,000
AARON GOOD:
cities for a defeated empire that really has no ability to project force outside of its
679
00:57:33,001 --> 00:57:38,000
AARON GOOD:
borders anymore. But the US drops those bombs I think partly as a warning to the
680
00:57:38,001 --> 00:57:43,000
AARON GOOD:
Soviets that they have this bomb and also because it provides this great pretext for the
681
00:57:43,001 --> 00:57:48,000
AARON GOOD:
Japanese to surrender to the Americans. And they knew that the Americans would be much more
682
00:57:48,001 --> 00:57:53,000
AARON GOOD:
friendly or they had hoped, I guess and probably had some assurances in some way. I
683
00:57:53,001 --> 00:57:59,000
AARON GOOD:
wouldn't be surprised if there's things we don't know about this, that their oligarchy would be
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AARON GOOD:
essentially preserved. Because if you wipe out this oligarchic class that ran this empire, you probably
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AARON GOOD:
have a socialist takeover in Japan. And so the oligarchy of Japan got essentially subjugated and
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AARON GOOD:
made subservient to this US imperial project. And the same happens with Germany and NATO. Gradually
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AARON GOOD:
after World War II, none of these regions and countries, Europe and Japan and other East
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00:58:19,001 --> 00:58:24,000
AARON GOOD:
Asian countries like South Korea etcetera, have enjoyed real independence. They've been subservient to the US
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AARON GOOD:
Empire. They have not had any real sovereignty. They've not been independent. They have been subjected
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00:58:30,001 --> 00:58:35,000
AARON GOOD:
to with their own oligarchic political system as kind of the intermediaries, but they've still been
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AARON GOOD:
subjected to the same mind-scrambling that the US has been subjected to. And it's the same
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AARON GOOD:
forces that are doing it. And now that we're at this inflection point, Japan is going
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AARON GOOD:
to have to face the way that it's going to be in the world going forward.
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AARON GOOD:
They're the biggest holder of US treasury bills in the world. And I don't think that
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00:58:55,001 --> 00:59:01,000
AARON GOOD:
they have a choice in that. I think that for economic reasons, but there's a carrot
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AARON GOOD:
and steak aspect to it, it helps their exports. But also I think if they didn't
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00:59:06,001 --> 00:59:11,000
AARON GOOD:
have those, who knows what the US would do? They have treaties that we know about
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00:59:11,001 --> 00:59:16,000
AARON GOOD:
that the US is allowed to be stationed on Japanese soil at Okinawa, which is enormously
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00:59:16,001 --> 00:59:21,000
AARON GOOD:
unpopular, but there's also bases on the main islands and they are not at all a
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00:59:21,001 --> 00:59:26,000
AARON GOOD:
democracy. The Japanese ruling party, the Liberal Democratic Party [LDP] which is a very deceptive name
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00:59:26,001 --> 00:59:32,000
AARON GOOD:
for it, it's essentially a one-party state for almost all of the post war history and
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00:59:32,001 --> 00:59:37,000
AARON GOOD:
it was founded by two guys. One of whom was a class A war criminal who
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00:59:37,001 --> 00:59:42,000
AARON GOOD:
should have been executed. He was essentially a yakuza [organized crime] man who worked with the
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AARON GOOD:
Navy to loot China and other parts of Asia, but especially China, by dominating the opium
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00:59:47,001 --> 00:59:52,000
AARON GOOD:
trade and sucking as much precious metals and diamonds in platinum and such out of China.
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00:59:52,001 --> 00:59:57,000
AARON GOOD:
And then with the money that he had stolen, I think it's like 175 million, the
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00:59:57,001 --> 01:00:03,000
AARON GOOD:
precursor to the CIA sprang him from jail and used that money to create a slush
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AARON GOOD:
fund for the Liberal Democratic Party that has ruled Japan forever. Not forever, but since the
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AARON GOOD:
end of World War II, by and large. And this guy was essentially a hard right
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01:00:13,001 --> 01:00:18,000
AARON GOOD:
imperialist gangster who was just repurposed to serve the new gangsters of capitalism, which were headquartered
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AARON GOOD:
in Washington D.C. at this point they became a satellite. I mean, Chalmers Johnson was an expert
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AARON GOOD:
on Japan and Japan's economic development after World War II. He was an expert on US
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AARON GOOD:
imperialism later in his career. And he said that in the 80s he wanted to make
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AARON GOOD:
a joke that the Sony Walkman tagline should have been "...from the people who brought you
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AARON GOOD:
Pearl Harbor." Because they. It was the same group was basically the oligarchs were still left
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AARON GOOD:
in charge, might execute some military officials and so on. But just as in Germany, the
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AARON GOOD:
real oligarchs were by and large left in positions of power in society and over the
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01:00:54,001 --> 01:00:59,000
AARON GOOD:
political economy in Japan and Germany both. And so now when we see the descent into
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AARON GOOD:
actual sort of Nazi-style fascism which the US is a party to in Palestine, it should
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01:01:05,001 --> 01:01:10,000
AARON GOOD:
crystallize a lot of things in the minds of people. And I hope that eventually, when
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AARON GOOD:
it's clear that this system, when it's undeniable that the Western hegemonic project cannot continue and
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01:01:15,001 --> 01:01:20,000
AARON GOOD:
it's no longer viable, that, you know, hopefully I would love for my book and for
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AARON GOOD:
books of other thinkers, the works of other thinkers to influence them and make them more
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01:01:25,001 --> 01:01:30,000
AARON GOOD:
aware of this political reality that the US and then US-friendly oligarchs in Japan and really
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01:01:30,001 --> 01:01:36,000
AARON GOOD:
elsewhere around the world, in every country under Western sway; It'll break this spell that they
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01:01:36,001 --> 01:01:41,000
AARON GOOD:
have been put under, which is not merely a spell, but it's got a lot of
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01:01:41,001 --> 01:01:46,000
AARON GOOD:
money behind it. All the money in the world essentially. It's the people that control the
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01:01:46,001 --> 01:01:51,000
AARON GOOD:
machines that make all of the money, as you know. [Yes] It's a staggering thing to
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01:01:51,001 --> 01:01:56,000
AARON GOOD:
comprehend. And then I'm hoping that my preface and that the book is well received over
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01:01:56,001 --> 01:02:01,000
AARON GOOD:
there. That would mean a lot to me. But that's what I've been working on of
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AARON GOOD:
late, in between doing the podcast. And we also have a documentary film. I'll send you
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AARON GOOD:
the trailer for it, which we can't post publicly because we have some issues to hammer
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AARON GOOD:
out with that first, but I can send it to you and you can check that
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01:02:17,001 --> 01:02:22,000
AARON GOOD:
out. And I've just been, you know, pretty busy and kind of burned out at the
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AARON GOOD:
same time, but still trying to juggle all these things. I appreciate the chance to be
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01:02:27,001 --> 01:02:33,000
AARON GOOD:
able to talk about this here on your podcast.
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01:02:33,001 --> 01:02:37,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
Absolutely. Dude, you're right at the fulcrum. Right? This is what the actual problem is,
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
and so many things distracting us from it. And you're like right over Berlin, so
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01:02:42,001 --> 01:02:46,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
to speak. So bravo. I appreciate it and thank you so much for the time
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01:02:46,001 --> 01:02:51,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
you spent with me today. Where can we find more of your work?
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01:02:51,001 --> 01:02:55,000
AARON GOOD:
The American Exception podcast is on Patreon, so I think it's patreon.com/americanexception. And if you want
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01:02:55,001 --> 01:03:00,000
AARON GOOD:
the book, it's just American Exception, Empire and the Deep State. There's an e-book, there's an
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01:03:00,001 --> 01:03:05,000
AARON GOOD:
audiobook, I think there's an e-book, there's an audiobook, and definitely a hardcover. And I tried
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01:03:05,001 --> 01:03:10,000
AARON GOOD:
to make this more comprehensive in terms of addressing social science perspectives and critiques. Because it
745
01:03:10,001 --> 01:03:15,000
AARON GOOD:
was originally a dissertation. I tried to write it to make it a little less academic
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01:03:15,001 --> 01:03:20,000
AARON GOOD:
and turgid with the prose, but I think I succeeded partially. But for the most part,
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01:03:20,001 --> 01:03:25,000
AARON GOOD:
I think it's pretty readable, and most people who are educated, lay people, not social scientists,
748
01:03:25,001 --> 01:03:30,000
AARON GOOD:
have been positive about it. So it's a very good resource if you're interested in the
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01:03:30,001 --> 01:03:35,000
AARON GOOD:
suppressed aspects of our politics and history. I think people could benefit from checking it out...
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01:03:35,001 --> 01:03:40,000
AARON GOOD:
and the film when there's more going on with that. I'll circle back to you when
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01:03:40,001 --> 01:03:45,000
AARON GOOD:
we have our news about distribution and everything, but it's basically finished and I'm really excited
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01:03:45,001 --> 01:03:50,000
AARON GOOD:
for it to get out.
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01:03:50,001 --> 01:03:55,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
That sounds fantastic. Aaron, thank you so much for your time. I'm going
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01:03:55,001 --> 01:04:00,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
to go ahead and take us out here, folks. My name's Steve Grumbine
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01:04:00,001 --> 01:04:05,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
and I am the host of Macro N Cheese and the founder of
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01:04:05,001 --> 01:04:10,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
the nonprofit that sponsors this, Real Progressives. We are a 501[c]3, not for
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01:04:10,001 --> 01:04:15,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
profit. That means your donations are tax deductible. And I say this every
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01:04:15,001 --> 01:04:20,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
time, but I think people ignore it. Folks, if you think it's being
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01:04:20,001 --> 01:04:25,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
funded by some big fat cat, you're wrong. We're getting by the skin
760
01:04:25,001 --> 01:04:30,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
of our teeth, so don't look for somebody else to do it. If
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01:04:30,001 --> 01:04:35,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
you find value in this. We need you bad. And realize that we're
762
01:04:35,001 --> 01:04:40,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
in the fourth quarter. So while it's still tax deductible for you, so
763
01:04:40,001 --> 01:04:45,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
consider either a one-time donation or becoming a monthly subscriber or monthly donor.
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01:04:45,001 --> 01:04:50,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
You can get us on patreon.com/real progressives, you can go to Substack/realprogressives and
765
01:04:50,001 --> 01:04:55,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
become a donor. You can go to our website realprogressives.org and become a
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01:04:55,001 --> 01:05:00,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
donor there as well. I will tell you, every Tuesday night we conduct
767
01:05:00,001 --> 01:05:05,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
a webinar called Macro N Chill. You'll see us feverishly sharing it around
768
01:05:05,001 --> 01:05:10,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
trying to get people there. This is an opportunity for us to get
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01:05:10,001 --> 01:05:15,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
community and build knowledge together, flex that brain muscle together and develop a
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01:05:15,001 --> 01:05:20,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
kind of shared understanding of the world. And then on Thursday nights usually
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01:05:20,001 --> 01:05:25,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
we have a book club. So we are currently going through Lenin's State
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01:05:25,001 --> 01:05:30,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
and Revolution. All of this is free of charge. We live and die
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STEVE GRUMBINE:
on your donations and volunteers could be you. So without further ado, let
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01:05:35,001 --> 01:05:40,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
me say on behalf of my guest, Aaron Good, thank you so much
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01:05:40,001 --> 01:05:45,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
for joining me today. And for you guests out there who are listening,
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01:05:45,001 --> 01:05:50,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
thank you so much for taking the time to listen. On behalf of
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01:05:50,001 --> 01:05:55,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
the podcast Macro N Cheese and the nonprofit Real Progressives, we are out
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01:05:55,001 --> 01:06:01,000
STEVE GRUMBINE:
of here.