All right, folks, this is Steve with Macro N Cheese. Today's guest

is a returning guest, my buddy, David Fields. And David Fields is

more than a buddy. He's an academic and he's an author and

he's a really decent dude. And I'm going to go ahead and

read this bio here. His research is grounded in critical, realistic and

genetic structuralist ontology and epistemology, focusing on the complex interactions of foreign

exchange and capital flows with economic growth, fiscal and monetary policy and

distribution, with particular emphasis on the concept of endogenous money. Additionally, he

investigates political economy of regional development, along with the examining patterns which

with respect to housing, social stratification and community planning. He is currently

an economist at the Utah Department of Commerce and the author of

a Medium post for the Utah Vanguard, which is his publication he

does on Medium. And we're going to be discussing the cultural syndromes

of capitalism, given what a glorious Donald Trump moment we're having these

days where anybody that is left of center, in some cases left

of left, yours truly included, probably is not a favorite of Donald

Trump's. And his whole apparatus seems to have, you know, developed a

slight micro chubby over looking at lefties. And today we're going to

talk a little bit about capitalism and the cultural syndromes of capitalism.

This obviously drew me in big time because a lot of what

we're dealing with these days is the outcomes of capitalism. We're dealing

with the fraudulent democracy, the fraudulent planned obsolescence, the fraudulent rentier economy,

the fraudulent investor grade retrograde scumbag capitalist economy that impacts so many

of our lives. And for me, this article really, really started a

bunch of thoughts in my head. So I quickly asked David to

join me and he was kind enough to agree to do so.

So, well, let me bring on my guest, David Fields. Welcome to

the show, sir.

Hey, how's it going? Thanks for having me. A pleasure to be here.

Absolutely. Again, I respect the hell out of anyone that's willing to

speak out on these issues and write about these issues, especially those

that aren't timid and lecturing people on tone and rudeness, things like

that, because right now we're in a weird timeline, right? We are

in a timeline where the most decent people are being beaten up

by ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], the most decent people are being

in trouble for speaking truth. And all the while we're watching what

looks like at the most corrupt, most radical, most fascist elements driving

us into a direction that is just absolutely terrifying. Raising kids in

this environment is scary business. The outcomes, the outflows, if you will,

of capitalism, the ancillary elements that come as a result of capitalism,

are being felt by a lot of us right now, and there

have never been more on display than they are right now. So

with that, tell us about your article, sir.

I was going to follow up with what you just said. It reminds me

of this infamous passage by Anne Frank when she was hiding in the attic. She

wrote in her memoirs that that outside folks are being disappeared off the streets

for no apparent reason, et cetera, et cetera. But the crux of the story

is that what she was describing is essentially happening right outside our window here,

which no one could think is fathomable, but is. And that's incredibly frightening.

Yeah. Yeah, it is. It absolutely is. I mean, the idea of the basic

things you would have learned in college or even high school are being turned

into... I don't even know what you call it. Like, up is down, down

is up, left is right, right is left kind of insanity. I envisioned the

guy in 1984, the party official that worked with Winston. [Yeah] "Winston, how many

fingers am I holding up?" And he's like, "four."

Four.

"You're holding up four?" And he goes, "no, Winston."

Yeah.

"How many fingers am I holding?" "Four. I don't know what you want me to tell you. I see four. Four.

It must be four." And he's like, "no, Winston, the number of fingers depends on what the Party tells you."

Yep.

If I say there are three, there are three. If I say there are

10, there are 10 kind of thing. And it's like, I see people that

are willing to go along with that, and I say to myself, you are

the most terrifying person on the planet. The most terrifying person on the planet.

Yeah. And what I've been trying to argue with my writings

lately is that what we're facing is not an aberration. It's

not an outlier, so to speak. It's deeply ingrained in this

system that we are heavily embedded in, which is capitalism, which

suffers from psychosocial pathologies which I've come to the conclusion are

the Gain Primacy Syndrome, more a cultural syndrome, Zero-Sum Rivalry Syndrome,

and the Ownership Syndrome. And what I mean by these concepts

is in the first instance, this constant need for perpetual self

optimization to gain as much wealth as you can at whatever

social costs, constitutes a culture of narcissism, you know, the entrepreneurial

self, if you will. And this syndrome facilitates a deep sense

of estrangement, which then leads to alienation for the working class

specifically because they can't rely on the utmost means of security,

unlike the leisure class, reaches a pinnacle of loss. And that

loss is a space of which fascist tendencies to save capitalism

from itself can easily latch on and exploit to use said

class to support far-right forces which are inherently against their interests.

Blame the migrant, blame the person of color, blame the foreigners,

et cetera, et cetera, for problems which are inherently structural because

they haven't been able to attain that image of or that

presentation of the utmost success of which capitalism celebrates and represents.

And then there's this competitive strife, the zero sum rivalry I

talked about, where this constant comparison of another can lead to

self deprecation, psychic regress, mental destabilization, so contrary to what a

psychologist would say of this personal disgruntlement and unable to take

care of his or her emotions, is in fact a manifestation

of a system where cooperation is not the key essence of

the society in which we live in. It's dog-eat-dog, Hobbesian brutishness.

And that Hobbesian brutishness translates into a constant social comparison of

rank. And if somebody can't reach that rank, they're demonized, they're

ostracized, they're considered less than dirt, and that translates into a

downward spiral. Another space of which fascist tendencies can exploit to

entrench its hegemony, saying that your deep sense of loss is

again that migrant, that foreigner, you know, that next door neighbor

who... you get the idea. And then there's this ownership syndrome

where celebration of humans is not centered on their authenticity for

who they are, how they treat others, etc. But conspicuous consumption

to fill a void of meaningless that the society celebrates and

reproduces in that conspicuous consumption, where we treat humans as things,

facilitates a fictitiousness inauthenticity where nothing seems real, nothing seems genuine,

nothing seems filled with emotion. And this is another space which

is not mutually exclusive from the two other spaces I talked

about, where again, fascist tendencies can latch on, exploit and use

to entrench itself and facilitate a hegemony, which provides an inauthentic

sense that well, here's the essence and here we're going to

save society or bring back society which has been lost in

the past and bring back something that's genuine, which we know

is not true, but that sense of loss is a means

to manufacture that and allows fascism to come to the surface

and essentially perpetuate capitalism, even though the person who is being

exploited to support that tendency doesn't realize that this is a

means, a far-right means to save capitalism from its own destruction.

In the article you talk extensive and I think this is really important for

folks. We will have the link to this in the show notes, but I

think it's really very interesting to see the grid that you put together, the

table that you put together, kind of breaking it down into capitalism's core principle,

the ideology behind it, the syndrome that it associates with, and then the social

manifestation. I think that is really interesting. I mean, you go into the profit

motive and you say utility maximization, profit maximization, wealth as a goal in and

of itself. The syndrome, gain primacy syndrome, and the social manifestation, perpetual self optimization.

I mean, you just went through this, but the way that you laid it

out here, all anybody needs is a ruler or index card to block out

the other line and they can read left to right how this starts and

how it ends and how it shows itself. Definitely worth taking a look at.

You brought something else up there that I think is really important. And for

folks that listen to this podcast, you'll have heard me bring this up several

different times, but I feel like there's never been a better time than right

now to learn about [Italian anti-fascist] Antonio] Gramsci and cultural hegemony and understanding how hegemony works

and a crisis of hegemony that brings about these harsher, more fascistic tendencies during

that period. I mean, these are not permanent states. I don't believe you could

live perpetually in a fascist state without the contradictions rupturing to the point where

there would be mass violent. I don't think you could keep it for long.

It would have to be a tactic as opposed to a long term strategy.

But can you weigh in a little bit how cultural hegemony speaks to these

syndromes of capital?

Oh, for sure. And I'll connect it with Karl Polanyi, who developed the

concept of the double movement. First, I'll center my attention on culture. A

lot of folks like to poo poo culture, like, ah, culture, it's touchy

feely stuff and doesn't really explicate the concrete economic realities. And for a

long time I said, "yeah, maybe that's right, culture's too, you know, softy,

touchy." But then I started thinking more deeply and culture is actually very

important because it's a plane where the conflicts of capitalism are played out.

So it's not just on the shop floor, it's not just in the

streets. It's also fought on what constitutes meaning and essence. And to me,

that's what culture manifests is the meaning/essence. You know, what does everything mean

to this person? And how does it structure relationships with other folks? And

in that realm, what Gramsci was talking about with respect to culture hegemony

is, more culture and parallelism, if you will, which he discussed and developed,

is meaning in the sense that the system which the meaning supports facilitates

misrecognition, you know, a sense of distortion where the overall dominance of what

makes everything seem real to the person is not real, but it's made

to seem real. To think that this is just natural, like your relation

to other person as things, or the gain primacy, where it's perpetual optimization

through utility maximization, profit maximization, where everything is all about market competition. You

know, a pejorative term, social Darwinism, but makes sense. And private property is

some natural essence, natural force. The only way that these pillars can survive

is a meaning that supports it, is a meaning that emphasize that this

is just natural. It's always been like this.

It's... there's nothing you can do about it. And therefore if there's nothing

you can do about it, well, you treat it as eternal. So that's

the cultural imperialism or the cultural hegemony I'm talking about the meaning that

emphasizes entrenches these pillars. And if that meaning starts to be contested, like

I said before, the fascist tendency is there to save it from itself.

Now I bring in the concept of the double movement into this, famously

captured by Karl Polanyi's book, The Great Transformation. And the way I interpret the

double movement, there's economic plane where folks are trying to make sense of

their economic insecurities. They can go a path towards more social democracy or

socialism, or the other end, where you have charismatic cult of personalities like

what we have now, use that economic disgruntlement to push for more fascist

means to save the system from collapsing. But on a cultural plane, there's

a double movement as well. And that's a cultural contradiction or a cultural

contestation, if you will, where there's a way for culture to shift towards

a direction that contests, that radically tries to transform the dominant sense of

meaning, that treats everything as eternal. But then on the other side, there's

a counteracting force to prevent such cultural contestation with reinforced sense of meaning.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. All that is just radical

dogmatic nonsense. We need to save our nation. We need to save our

society. And this is where the culture of otherness starts to play a

role which is meant to save the cultural hegemony, to ensure that the

system doesn't collapse or doesn't push towards those more progressive forces I talked

about before. So when we talk about cultural hegemony, we have to consider

the double movement that Karl Polanyi talks about again, not just on an

economic plane or the political plane, but on a cultural plane where forces

are going in different directions to try to make sense of the situation

that we're in. And history shows that prior to World War II or

even before World War I, but during that time period, economic crises were

reigning supreme. There was a lot of contestation of whether or not this

system called capitalism could sustain itself, and there were a lot of progressive

socialist movements, et cetera. But the only way fascism was able to gain

a foothold was, no, no, no, no, no. We're going to save our

society. We're going to make sure that we can go through this with

super nationalism, otherness, xenophobia, et cetera, et cetera, which is parading today. But

that's the point, because fascism is the underlying force, not just economic and

social and political, but cultural, to ensure that the system doesn't go towards

the direction that folks like you and I would see, which is more

social justice routes and more transformative routes that radically transform the system. So

those syndromes, like I talked about, are not prevailing and not treated as

eternal.

I want to read from your article here real quickly. It's

two quick paragraphs, but I think they're powerful and they play

right into what we were just talking about. You say, "On

the one hand, capitalism acts as a powerful driver for socialization,

propelling advancements that demonstrably improve collective power and interconnectedness for innovation

enables the pooling of resources, knowledge and effort on scales previously

unimaginable. Yet the collective advancement is fundamentally compromised by an economic

framework wherein the proceeds of labor are expropriated. This engenders a

pervasive sense of powerlessness and isolation. Laborers experience detachment from the

products of their efforts, exercising minimal control over the production process

or the ultimate disposition of their creations. This alienation extends beyond

the confines of the workplace, permeating social relations as workers are

increasingly perceived as cogs rather than integral members of a community.

By subjecting the substance of society to the laws of motion

of capitalist violence, the structural bifurcation provides for fertile ground for

the emergence of political and social cataclysms. Anime systematically transmutes human

creative power into a personal and social antagonistic force, a social

condition for fascism." And I'll continue with one last paragraph. "Fascism,

hence, rather than representing a radical departure or direct opposition to

the capitalist system, operates as a profound and often brutal mechanism

for capitalism's continued existence and perpetuation. This is achieved through the

deliberate cultivation of a false consciousness." We're now talking about hegemony

right here. This is the cultural hegemony right there. "Effectively blinding

the proletariat to the true roots and architects of their economic

and social subjugation. By diverting their attention and misdirecting their grievances,

right wing fanaticism ensures that the fundamental structures of capitalism remain

unchallenged and intact, often leveraging nationalistic fervor, scapegoating and the suppression

of dissent to maintain social order and economic stability for the

ruling class." Hello. If that isn't exactly what is going on

right now, I don't know what, I don't know what else

it is.

Exactly. No, that's it. That's it. There's no other way to describe it. And

that's exactly what's happening. So like I said, Trump is not an aberration. Trump

is a part and parcel product of the sick system that we have.

The people act like, you know, it's radical or extreme to identify this stuff and to speak on it.

Yeah.

Which I find tragic, quite honestly, because you don't

even have to be a well researched scholar or

a some sort of radical extremist or whatever.

Yeah.

And at this point in time, let's just be crystal clear. [Yeah] we are

living in an extremist timeline. We are living in the most, excuse my French,

fucked-up timeline that I have ever experienced and I'm almost 60 years old.

Yeah, you're not wrong. We are living in the system where

what I wrote here exactly constitutes what's happening, which is these

right wing tendencies are getting a foothold, is encapsulating the minds

of everybody, pitting people against other people, facilitating interpersonal violence along

with structural violence. And yes, that's happening. But what gave rise

to this? And I emphasize, well, liberalism facilitates these forces. And

why? Because apologetic reformism can only go so far. Okay? Because

apologetic reformism, which is the essence of liberalism, is not meant

to facilitate social transformations where everybody and anybody, regardless of circumstance,

can reach their full human potential. Liberalism is a means to

say, "okay, okay, we'll provide some welfare state provisions and give

the appearance that the system works for everybody, but it doesn't."

And then you have Democrats saying, "how is this possible?" Easy.

When you have folks like Kamala Harris saying, "okay, let's calm

down, let's be reasonable," etc. etc. They have nobody except themselves

to blame for what's happening.

I think to myself, and I want to be crystal clear on this, right? Like,

if we had a visual on the board and we had a Venn diagram.

Yeah.

And we said, here is your liberation right here in this spot on the

Venn. We don't even have a Venn diagram yet. We have a universal set

at this moment. We haven't done any intersections or anything else. Right? Just here

is liberation. And you look and you see that liberals believe that they represent

liberation, but they are not in any way. They're capitalists that facilitate this very

thing. And what they do is they put out like a pittance for welfare

that allows the other side, which is not really an other side, it's just

their alter ego showing up saying, "hey, you lazy, no good pieces of shit,

how dare you milk off of my tax dollar. And you lazy, good for

nothing SOB, you're stealing from my plate." They don't look up, they don't look

at the rich. They don't. They look and they demonize their brothers and sisters.

The other people that are working class schmucks like myself that have to, you

know, go to work for a living, do whatever. And I mean, not saying

anything about the type of work we do or whatever issues that come as

a result of the type of output we have, it's just in general, we

have to work for a paycheck. And if we don't have a paycheck, we

lose everything. And so in a liberal, you know, version of the world, they're

still sitting... I mean, I remember the God blessed DNC [Democratic National Committee], what

was it in Chicago or whatever this year? And watching people protesting Gaza. And

I remember this black guy who's dressed in Prada, basically. Oh yeah, slings his

head back laughing.

Yeah.

Yes, laughing. What a disgrace. That is a shitlib extraordinaire.

Someone so perverse, so grotesque, so unbearably liberal. And you

think to yourself, there's a genocide going on, homeboy bonanza.

Yeah.

You're sitting there chuckling and laughing and throwing your head back

like a privileged SOB that you are. And it's because you

don't represent change. You don't represent resistance. There is no resistance

there. You are every bit as much a capitalist as the

other guys are. There's no difference there. Except in your world,

you'll go ahead and starve people with pittances and then act

like you're doing God's work, trying to save those pittances instead

of actually fight for meaningful, real change that fundamentally helps everyone.

Look at the timeline, like from Obama. "Hope and change. Hope and change." Okay, that,

where'd that get us? And then you had the last DNC and what was the

phrase that they kept saying? "We're not going back, we're not going back." And I'm

sitting here. Okay, well what the fuck does that mean? I'm sorry, part of my

Anglo-Saxon words, but really, what the fuck does that mean? It's like, "oh, don't worry,

don't worry, we're going to get together, we're going to say some positive words and

we're going to make sure that the most violent forces which we're experiencing now don't

happen. And we can go back to just taming the system which has been our

modus operating for years on end. Don't worry about it."

Brunch at 10.

Yeah.

The more I think about it, right? And I bring this up because I feel like as part of that

cultural hegemony, people really have been conditioned to believe that they're going to vote their way out of this.

Yeah.

And I've tried to explain to anyone that'll listen, I mean, listen, I

have been a strong 15 year plus advocate for modern monetary theory even

though I haven't been regarded by some of the individuals whose books we

hump. I have absolutely been a non wavering staunch advocate for modern monetary

theory. And the idea that we are just going to "source the vote"

that we're going to just vote a few more progressives in and change

this, it fundamentally misses why none of that ever happens. It fundamentally skips

the hegemony, the actual elements that make. It's not an issue of facts.

We don't need facts. Every, nobody cares about the facts. They're not listening

to the facts. They're listening to the vibes and feels okay? And every

time I get into a discussion with people, they want to tell me

about tone, they want to tell me about, "Well, that was rather rude,

wasn't it?" And I'm like, "you're not getting this."

Exactly.

This is not a matter of ledgers. You're not waking up the world by explaining

how... Yes! Once they are awakened to the fact that these things could happen, you

can radicalize people. And that's my... Let's just be fair. That's my goal. I want

people to wake up and smell the coffee. Now, I'm not asking for anything beyond.

Because I'm not smart enough to tell people what to do once they've woken up.

I'm just asking people to wake up. And then I'm hoping that smart people come

together and make some different decisions. I don't know what that is. I'm not smart

enough to know what that is. I'm really not. And I don't think that there's

any kind of class struggle theory that really, truly understands the times we're living in,

the disproportionately underemployed or the lack of a central work area. There is none of

the things that happened back in the days of Lenin or Gramsci or any of

the other folks. It's a totally different world today and the rules are different. You've

got Palantir and you've got what's his name, [Larry] Ellison, who just bought TikTok and

owns Oracle and CNN and CBS and all the other things. You've got this guy

who's basically saying, "hey, we will record everything, we will observe everything. We will look

over you and the citizens will absolutely shudder and be well behaved because we are

your overlords and we are looking at you and we are monitoring you when we

were..." And it's like, tell me explain to me how we vote that away. Help

me understand how we vote that away.

I think George Orwell was pretty spot on.

Yeah.

I mean, in 1984, and Animal Farm.

You can't.

And sure, voting can give you some benefits. There's no question. I

mean, there's empirical evidence to concretize that. But in a bourgeois democracy,

it can only go so far. Because that voting or that platform,

that manifestation, gives the appearance that one can say, "well, if I

just gather folks up and get the ballots, get the signatures, deliver

my piece to the floor, things will follow suit. So I can

pursue the legislation that I want to see and social justice can

follow suit." Well, this 19th century social theorist, who I think everyone

should read, and I think you know who I'm talking about, said

that every now and then the masses come. Who's going to vote

to exploit them next? And that's pretty concrete. Which was concrete back

then and remains quite relevant and significant today.

Yeah. And, you know, when I say we don't live in a democracy, I mean this. First of

all, we are NOT a democracy. And I know this seems like one of those difference without distinction

kind of moments. They always say, "oh, it's a republic or it's this or that and the other."

Yeah.

But we really, truly do not live in a democracy. And you could see this

every time you go to primary times, right? We're going to have a primary now

for whatever the Democratic Party. And the party bosses, the powerful, the elites say, "Yeah,

you know, we're just not that interested in having a primary this time. So, no,

we're not going to let it happen because we are a private corporation, AKA more

of the capitalist society and more of this private ownership, more of this not public.

We're going to make the rules and we're going to...

That's a structural means of enforcing syndrome, which I talked about.

Yes! And that's the point. Right? Is how in the world do we make

people stop being children? Baby bibs and milk and mother's milk and, like, you

know, warm cookies and cream and onesie pajamas and stuff like that. How do

we get them to stop lying to us and stop lying and stop curtsying

and stop bowing and stop pretending that it's all about rudeness and politeness and

bullshit, when in reality, if you watched ICE beating the taste out of that

woman's mouth whose husband got taken away and, you know, shot and everything. We're

talking about a whole different timeline here. And we're talking about people that are

selling normiedom when people have a gun to your head.

Yep.

I wonder. It's like, you know, yes, we agree on ledgers, but

my God, are your eyes not open? And I mean this lovingly,

because I don't understand why this pretense of we can vote our

way out of this exists, why they're pretending that we live in

a situation. They're already propping up Buttigieg and Kamala again.

Yep.

They're already rebooting that garbage again.

And I'm not shocked, because that's the whole point. The whole point

is theater, a front stage, a celebratory encapsulation to say that, "look,

give us a chance, and we're going to be your saviors." Sorry,

this hope in a hopeless world has run its course.

Kamala said the other day. I'm gonna read this just real quick.

Yeah, go ahead.

It is so hilarious. And I say this as somebody

who genuinely doesn't care. Right? Because I. I don't believe

any of this is real. Okay? But she said on

MSNBC, September, 2025, that "Trump is a communist dictator."

Yeah.

I want you to realize for the kids in the back row that

maybe don't know this stuff. Communism, socialism in general is about worker ownership,

worker empowerment. It is not about free stuff. It's not about, like, welfare

state. It's not about those things. It really is genuinely about workers owning

the means of production as opposed to some rich fat cat, sucking off

their labor and alienating them from the product of their labor. Now, if

you call that radical, you got a bizarre world that you're living in

there. If you think that's radical, this is who they're going to prop

up. She literally called Trump a communist dictator.

I fell off my chair.

Seriously. I mean, is this more cultural hegemony where they don't even question, they just

flap their wings like seals? Circus seals. I mean, what. What's up with that?

Yeah, but one could look at it and say that this is just an

aberration, But I would argue no, this is another part and parcel of the

system which is meant to facilitate a constant flux of uncertainty and trying to

make sense in the senseless, godforsaken world we live in, where you can't make

sense of it because you have these distractions like that. Another example involving Kamala

Harris was she was giving a lecture about this new book that she just

published, which I'm not going to read, I have no care for it, where

there were protesters, wonderful human beings that came and said, you are responsible for

giving [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu the means to facilitate his holocaust against Palestinians right

now. And you know what Kamala said in response? Unlike what she said during

her presidential campaign where she says, "I'm speaking..." as a means to shut those

demonstrators up. Do you know what she said at this moment?

What's that?

She said, "well, I'm not the president." That was her response. Now,

if that's not a clear indication that she is just like the

disgusting rot like the rest of them, I don't know what is.

Yeah, you know, I'm going to take a step back with this real quick

and just say that, you know, as part of this deluge of chaos that

just keeps hitting us, these twisted inversions of words and so very Orwellian. Right?

There's a whole point to it. It's an instrument,

this constant means of facilitating confusion and distraction and

disorientation is a psychological, manipulative, systemic entity to entrench

that misrecognition I talked about. So those pathologies which

I talked about before, the psychosocial pathologies maintain this

destructive system that we live in.

Yeah. One of the other things that I wanted to bring up, and I'll give you a... 

I didn't mean to interrupt. Go ahead.

No, it's. This is a conversation, bro. If I go on too long, you

have every right to cut my ass off. Excuse my French. But I want

to just read something to you, and this is very important to me personally.

Okay? I come from a Christian background. Okay? My recovery from alcoholism came as

a direct result of my faith and working through step programs and dealing with

people of all shapes and sizes, walks of life, from homeless people that are

toothless to the wealthy and powerful, who all are equally afflicted by alcoholism. It's

a disease, right? But there was one guy who I got turned on to

during my walk as a Christian. Now, mind you, I was not raised in

a Christian household. My mom and dad were marginally... You know, they had Bibles

around and pictures of Jesus here and there with Reagan. And, love you, mom

and dad. But let's be fair. I mean, we weren't going to church on

Sundays and so forth. My mom later in life did, but that wasn't the

way we were raised. I came to this as a last ditch effort to

survive from addiction. I was turned on to a guy, a great Lutheran theologian

named Dietrich Bonhoeffer. And Bonhoeffer was part of the resistance against Adolf Hitler back

in World War II. And he was captured once by the Nazis and he

was rescued out of Auschwitz, I believe it was, by the Brits. And he

could have lived out his life safe. And he's like, "nah, I can't be

part of a new Germany if I don't go back." He went back to

Germany within, like two weeks, was captured, and he was hung right before the

Allies took Auschwitz. But all the Nazi guards talked about what a great man

of faith he was, as he would stand there as the bombs would be

falling, and he would be steadfast and not shaken. He was just at peace.

And he would talk to them about peace and about love and about altering

their worldview. And I have no idea how many people he changed or was

able to somehow or another "convert" or whatever, but there was a great many

firsthand testimonies of it. But he wrote a book called The Cost of Discipleship.

And I think this is important given how this is being used as the

measuring stick for whether a person is fit to be an American these days.

Right? They, "oh, you know, normal family values, American values" and so forth. And

I say to myself, "okay, well, if we want to break out the Bible,

I am totally down for the cost because I was studying to be a

minister years ago and I kind of know my stuff a little bit." And

so this quote is really important, and it is really one of the key

quotes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Cost of Discipleship, where he talks about cheap grace. What

he says is: "Cheap grace is preaching forgiveness without requiring repentance, Baptism without church

discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship,

grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ living and incarnate. Costly grace is

the treasure hidden in the field for the sake of a man will go

and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to

buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule

of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes

him to stumble. It is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple

leaves his nets and follows him. Costly grace is the gospel which must be

sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for the door at

which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to

follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It

is costly because it costs a man his life. And it is grace because

it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns

sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because

it costs God the life of his Son. Ye were bought at a price.

And what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it

is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to

pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the

incarnation of God. The gospel makes much of sin because Jesus died to redeem

us from our sins, to pay the penalty for our sins. And the more

we can appreciate sin, the more we can appreciate grace, the more we can

appreciate the gospel and what Jesus died. Because he didn't die a horrific death

on the cross to show us that sin didn't matter. We see the cost

of sin at the cross." And I read that not to preach the word

of God so that everybody's like, oh, I read that because if you are

going to say you're MAGA. If you are going to try to stand on

high and speak this stuff. Show me this grace. Show me this grace. Because

grace is all it is, if that's what you're talking about. And I'll be

honest with you, I see zero grace in Republican Jesus. I see zero grace

in MAGA Jesus. I see zero grace. All I see is white supremacy and

quite frankly, fascism. I don't see anything that would even remotely resemble the kind

of sacrifice and the kind of love that people in sobriety find every day

when they try to get themselves straight. And I say it knowing you're a

Jew and I'm a Christian and here we are talking and hey...

Nobody's perfect. It's okay.

Well, and there in which it is though, right? You can have people of differing beliefs

and different thoughts and so forth without having to demonize and kill somebody over it. And

at the same time though, there IS a lot of pain and suffering that comes from

this kind of fascist inclination that demonizes people and turns them into "other".  Others, them and

makes them the scapegoat and makes them the ire of an entire group of people. And

in lockstep. Because what happens when you go to a church, David? What happens is you

let your guard down, you open up your head, you open up your heart, and the

guy pours whatever he's pouring into you and you think about it and you wrestle with

it and so forth, but you have allowed yourself to be as a child where these

words become part and parcel with who you are. And if they're preaching hate, if they're

preaching the kinds of othering that was never part of the red letters, whether you're a

Christian or not, the red letters are beautiful words. There's no hate involved. None. It's nothing

but love and acceptance. In fact, when they ask Jesus, at least in the Bible, whether

you believe it or not, the Bible says, so to speak, what is the greatest commandment.

And he says "to love one another." [Yeah] Period. They didn't see it and go into

a bunch of stuff. "Only them Republic, only those Democrats, only those whites, blacks, whatever". He

said "love one another." And so when I think about the hegemony and I think about

capitalism and I think about the end around it does to destroy our brains, destroy our

minds, to destroy our souls. And I think about the very idea that Republican Jesus is

being used as a weapon as opposed to the biblical Jesus that doesn't say any of

those things.

I hate to interject, but...

No, please.

It reminds me when I used to teach, I used to say, "students, I'm not religious and I'm

not here to preach, et cetera, et cetera. But are you familiar with the Sermon on the Mount?"

Oh, wow.

I would get a lot of hands up, and they're like, "yeah, blessed are the poor, et cetera, et cetera, et

cetera." Okay. And then I would say, "do you think that it's good to say that, repeat it, study it, emphasize

it when you go to services on the weekend? They say, "yeah, of course." Okay. And I'm like, "oh, great.  Okay,

that's great. Again, you know, I'm not religious, I'm not preaching, but that's good to know." And then I would ask

like, "well, do you think it's not good to then forget about the rest of the week?"

Yeah.

And it got them thinking, like, "well, what do you mean? Why is this some bullshit

you say on the weekend, but then forget about the rest of the time?" If it's

holy, if it's essential, if it's celebratory, etcetera, and has deep, deep meaning, why is it

obstructed? And then forget about and used it for unsavory intentions, or not even used, but

just completely disregarded on Monday? And they'd be like, "where are you getting at?" And I'm

like, "what I'm getting at is this. Does this have meaning? Is this a distraction? Does

this give a false sense of, like, makes you feel whole? And if it makes you

feel whole, why does it seem alien on Wednesday?"

Amen.

Wow.

Yeah.

And they didn't know how to answer, but that's what I wanted. Because if

you don't know how to answer it, that means you're starting to think and

say, "huh? What does it really mean?" And now in Judaism, you have tikkun

olam, which is similar. And tikkun olam is about the practice, the praxis.

Yes.

Where you treat each and every person with dignity, respect, because we're all part

of the same community. We're humans connected, where we should strive to make sure

everyone is respected and nobody has to suffer from anything. And I'm like, that's

great. That's wonderful. And that's something I held onto when I was in Hebrew

school and I was going through my bar mitzvah studies, et cetera. This is

great. I tried to live by it. I tried to do it, which in

Judaism, we call mikvah. Why are we systematically denying it? Israel and in other

areas. Right? Why do we have this thing called Israel in the first [place].

That's antithetical to what this all means? And I think I told you this

once before I was called anti Semitic. And I'm just sitting there like, what?

So, yeah, I'm a self hating Jew. That's apropos. But I say that story

in connection with the other story because it gets at the point like, what

the fuck does this all mean? This is great. But is this to say

that, "okay, it gives you that nice touchy feeling so you can stay in

the matrix and not see what's outside of it, or is it a tool

to help you get out of the matrix and destroy that software program?"

Yeah, I love that you brought the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes and all that stuff, but one of

the things that really jumped out to me was the one time where you really got to see J.C. angry.

Yeah.

And that was dealing with the money changers in the temple. It's

easier for a camel to climb up a pyramid or something like

that than for a rich person to enter into the kingdom of

heaven. And you think about this, there's a reason for that, right?

Like, I think ultimately when you consider that, in my estimation, Jesus,

however you view him, was the first communist. I mean, the early

church was very much a communal space.

Yeah, absolutely.

We bear with one another, we help one another, we feed one another. We

don't ask them, "hey, did you earn enough yet? You don't deserve to eat

there, boy. What are you looking at? You sonna bitch." None of that.

None of it.

And so for me, debunking, I've made it my own personal mission, aside from

MMT and these other things, to reclaim Jesus from MAGA and to reclaim Jesus

from those guys over there. My old pastor was a messianic Jew, he called himself....

A messianic Jew...! Oh...

He was fully Jewish, but he believed in Jesus and he taught. His name was

Rob Schenck. And I've watched him. He is. I don't practice the way I did

anymore. I find it very challenging to be around right wing thinking at all. But

he did too, and he really fought the Trump narrative and watching so many Christians

fall into this thing. And, you know, I'm not here to act like any of

these things are good because they work together. Both of these groups are not like

working class people. This is part of the oligarchy, the power elite that has shared

interests and there are differences of what each want, but not much. They both stand

for AI, they both stand for domination. They both stand for fattening the wealthy and

literally using austerity on the poor.

It's [German philosopher Freidrich] Nietzsche's concept of slave morality, which is to keep this at bay.

Yeah.

Now, people like to poo poo Nietzsche that he gave the philosophical foundations to

fascism. That may or not be true, regardless. What I'm saying is that he

did come up with this concept how such forces can facilitate a sense of

loss, which therefore translates into subjugation and subservience, which he called the slave morality.

Yep.

And if that is not a complete essence of the system we live in, I don't know what is.

Well, think about what you just said. Like, I want to add to this and build on this momentarily as we close things out.

Yeah.

I think it's really important to consider who we think of as the bad guy.

Yeah.

Right? When I look at slavery and I think to myself, if I

was a slave and my wife was a slave and my kids were

slaves and the slave owner, to calm us down because we were getting

uppity, took my wife and sent her off to be sold elsewhere.

Yeah.

And whipped my children in front of me to make sure that I bit

my tongue. And maybe cut the tongue out of one of my children because

they scream too loud or something like that. The idea that they would be

wrong for violence against the slave master is what is being preached today by

the powers that be. How dare you be such a radical to say that's

not okay. ICE and all the other things. How dare you do that? And

to me, we've literally turned what we know to be true on its head

to make it work within this sick culture that we live in.

Yeah. It's the pathology.

Yeah. I want you to take us out. David. That was my tee for

you to put the bow on not only your article, but this conversation.

Yeah. And that hit the nail on the head. It's these psychosocial

pathologies to turn on its head what we know to be true

and essential and of utmost importance for with respect to humanity, turn

it on its head and have folks who become willing servants to

the oppression, to the oppressive system that essentially oppresses them. That's why

you see how working class folks support these fascist tendencies. And to

learn both to say, "oh, they don't know they're dumb, they're stupid,

they have no sense of what it means to do this, et

cetera, et cetera." And I say, "no, no, no, no, no, no,

no. Why are they doing this?" Because they've been caught up in

a system that turns their interests against them. Because there are levers,

there are instruments, I'm sorry, that are symbolically, interpersonally and structurally violent.

To ensure, through violent ways more explicit nowadays, that the system that

is against them sustains itself and reproduces itself.

Yeah. All right, listen, folks. David, for taking the time to

do this. Thank you for indulging my sermonizing from Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

You bet.

Folks, I promise you, this is not intended to be

a, you know, a church session. That's not my intent.

It's okay.

Yeah. You know what? At some level, these are the narratives.

Yep.

That are out there. I'm watching the daughter of one of my friends who works with us.

Yeah.

Who came home with a, you know, I am Charlie Kirk shirt. Not I

am George Floyd shirt. Not a,  I am whatever. But I am Charlie Kirk.

Yeah.

And it's a tragedy when anyone gets killed. It is. Period. I don't know what the plan for them would have been

had they. You know, maybe they would have changed. Maybe. Who knows? Right? You never know. I don't. I'm not here to.

I have never owned a gun in my life, and I'm not a violent person. That is not who I am.

Yeah.

So I want to be very crystal clear on that. But

when you see this stuff, it's like the cultural hegemony of

that movement has turned misogyny into something to be proud of.

It's turned racism into something to be proud of. Homophobia and

just absolute xenophobic bigotry into something to be proud of. And

they're calling it "traditional American values"? And I think to myself,

"wow, I don't want my kids being poisoned with this hate."

Yeah.

And yet this is what's coming, man. This is what's coming. So I appreciate you

allowing me to crack open my biblical knowledge a little bit there. And my...

You're good, man. I like it.

I appreciate it. All right, let me take us out then, folks. My

name is Steve Grumbine. I am the host of this podcast, Macro N

Cheese, and also the founder of the 501[c]3 nonprofit Real Progressives. We are

not a political organization. We do not focus on any elections whatsoever. But

we do talk about the topics and subjects surrounding macroeconomics, and we do

try and educate. We use the intersection of class struggle, working class people.

Like much of the folks that are MAGA. There's blue collar folks that

are striving in their own way, but have been captured by a rhetoric

that is just. I don't know, just not good. Toxic. And we're trying

to intersect an understanding of MMT and class struggle and trying to help

people see the world just a little bit differently so that they see

each other not as enemies, but as friends, as people of the same

struggle. And not to demonize one another, but to come together. Because there

is no way that this divided political system that we live in will

ever produce the kind of working class solidarity that is necessary to change

the world. Well, I guess I want to say, hey, we live and

die on your contributions. So if you would consider becoming a donor, you

can go to our website realprogressives.org you can go to our Substack, substack.com/real

progressives. You can also go to Patreon and you can become a monthly

donor there as well at patreon.com/real progressives, we need your support. And if

you think that the work that we're doing is interesting, thought provoking, worthy

of your support, we welcome your support. And thanks to great guests like

David Fields who's joined me today and others. I mean we have been

going non stop now for seven years and I hope that folks go

back to episode one and listen to all 350 that we've got. We've

never missed a week and we don't plan on missing a week. And

as long as you guys can keep the lights on for us, we'll

keep moving forward. So without further ado, I bid you adieu on behalf

of my guest, David Fields, myself Steve Grumbine, the podcast Macro N Cheese.

We are out of here.