975 - Like a Virgin feat. Séamus Malekafzali

All I'm gonna make is hell jumble.

All I wanna make is hell jumping.

We're gonna tell pistols.

All I'm gonna make is hell

Hello, everybody.

It's Monday, October 6th, and this is your Chapo for today.

Joining Felix and I on today's program is our old pal, Seamus Malikovzeli.

Seamus, welcome back.

Good to be back.

As Hakeem Jeffries once said, Gen Z is in the house.

Seamus, how's it going?

It's going all right.

I'm happy to be 26 years old and still alive.

That's right.

I'd like to begin today's episode with

just discussing what is the latest round of ceasefire negotiations and ceasefire proposals in Gaza and Israel.

Seamus,

if you follow this over the weekend, like

Trump did the thing where he came out and he said,

we've got peace.

It's going to be great.

It will be a lasting peace in the Middle East.

And he requested in a post Israel to stop bombing the Gaza strip immediately.

They have certainly not done that.

But

what can be said about

this round of ceasefire negotiations?

Like, what is the proposition on the table?

What has Hamas agreed to?

What has America said like they're going to do?

And what is Israel doing in all of this?

What can be said about this latest round of ceasefire negotiations?

Well, the proposal on the table right now is different from the one that was offered up in January of this year.

Back in January, I mean, the IDF withdrew to a very thin buffer zone.

People in the south were allowed to move back north.

Hamas retained its governmental functions.

Aid was restricted, but a lot more of it was let in.

Growth disorders began to be filled up.

Famine conditions eased.

What is on the table right now is obviously a much more severe conditions that are being placed upon Gaza.

There's supposed to be three phases of withdrawal.

The first one is a freeze to...

the operation to take Gaza City, which they wanted to complete before October 7th.

And obviously that didn't happen.

Then they were going to move toward a slightly wider line outside of Gaza City in which they would remain up until an international peacekeeping force would be established.

And then at some point in the future,

after a transitional government is established, a board of peace led by Tony Blair and Donald Trump himself, it would be handed over to the Palestinian Authority after significant reforms are introduced.

As it might sound, this is

weighing on a lot of different factors, and it doesn't look like Israel wants to abide by any of them.

Mainly because one of the reforms that it is suggesting for the Palestinian Authority before it would hand over sovereignty to it was that the Palestinian Authority stop inciting against Israel.

in any form, to throw out any textbooks that have anti-Israeli messaging, to stop supporting terrorism in any sort of way.

And of course, the definition of terrorism is extraordinarily expansive in the Israeli mindset.

So, that's not happening.

What seems to be advocated for at the moment is an eternal foreign stewardship of Gaza.

Once Hamas supposedly leaves, disarms, it would be placed under the jurisdiction of the Board of Peace for God knows how long.

Palestinians would eventually be dispossessed of all their land into some sort of AI hellscape.

It would be bad.

It would be bad.

As for Israel even abiding for,

I mean, what Trump is asking for with stopping all of the bombing, Israel would say, well, it's only engaging in defensive bombing at the moment to protect its forces inside Gaza.

So they're bombing whatever they see as

a threat to their forces, which has included a school for the blind

and other Palestinians who have just been moving around the area.

They're fulfilling no obligations, and I don't think there is an expectation that they will follow through with any of the final conclusions to that proposal.

And

what has Hamas agreed to in this latest round of talks?

I mean, they've agreed to a partial approval of the deal.

The way that they...

Their understanding of how Trump sees negotiations is that if he is brown-nosed significantly, then he will agree to, I mean, basically anything that anyone says to him.

So Hamas worded the response to the proposal in a way that made it sound like they were agreeing to it and that they only needed to work out certain details.

And then Trump was, of course, you know, completely celebratory about it.

J.D.

Vance and him posted the full text of it.

They agreed to a technocratic independent government, which is something that they've always advocated for in the peace deals throughout this war.

But they did not signal that they agreed to Tony Blair taking over the government or Donald Trump taking over the government or Israel remaining in a significant portion of the territory indefinitely.

And Israel has been talking about, even under any sort of withdrawal plan, that they would stay on the border, they would stay on strategic hills, they would stay in a buffer zone.

So that they haven't agreed to, no.

And is the issue of disarmament still

being negotiated?

Because

are they holding out on disarming?

They're holding out on disarming.

I mean, what they've said is that they are willing to give their weapons to a future independent Palestinian in the same way that Hezbollah has said it will disarm if Lebanon has a comprehensive plan to defend Israel so that there's no point to it.

Since that is not on the horizon, then Hamas has no reason to disarm.

And that's what they've continued to say.

And

as far as the Israeli side goes,

how has Netanyahu reacted to this?

And how has the sort of settler cabinet parties and ministers reacted to this plan?

Is it still not good enough for them?

I mean, Netanyahu has been touting this as a victory because he can at least say that, of course, he's not going to abide by any of these requests that Hamas is making.

There'll be a new government.

There'll be a Palestinian authority that never takes over.

Smotlich has been going along with it as well because he sees the obvious benefits that could come with a deal that they, you know, pull the rug out from under.

But Ben Gavir has obviously taken this as a defeat he's starting to lead the government again

um he's going to be satisfied with nothing less than the full dispossession of the palestinians their expulsion their extermination um

he he exists as that as that wait on the cabinet to continue to demand more and more of the palestinians until they can you know there's no reasonable way for them to abide by any deal and uh like you mentioned you mentioned previously this idea of sort of a semi-permanent, permanent foreign stewardship of Gaza, like led by Tony Blair, of all people.

Is that like,

how can that possibly be serious?

I mean, forget the foreign stewardship, but like, how has Tony Blair been the guy who's tapped for this?

And like,

is there any idea of what that will look like?

And like, how, I don't know, how they will administer law and order in Gaza under the watchful eye of the former British prime minister?

I mean, Tony Blair has been sort of enmeshing himself in the Saudi space, the AI space,

all these different evil tech industries and golf industries since he left office in the 2000s.

And now that's all coming to a head in which now, you know, I think his NGO was called the Tony Blair Peace Institute or something along those lines.

So he can tout himself as someone who is obviously a trailblazer in government and now he could be a trailblazer for other governments seeking to

achieve peace in some manner.

When this was initially suggested back in, I want to say May, the model that they were looking at was Paul Bremer

and the Iraqi occupation that America did.

Paul Bremer, at the time, for

some may not remember, when Iraq was initially invaded, Iraqi sovereignty was completely usurped.

and the entire government was placed under the former ambassador to the Netherlands, Paul Bremer.

He ruled by decree.

He had full judicial, executive, legislative authority for

more than a year.

And it allowed him to shape Iraq into what America wanted, which was a free market democracy that didn't function.

What is being suggested here is a much more severe example of that, mainly in that

Tony Blair isn't even going to be, if this comes to pass, God forbid, he won't even be in Gaza.

What they're suggesting is that...

I mean, that's going to be my next question.

Like, is he going to be like managing this from a Zoom call in London, probably?

Well, what they're saying is that they are going to maybe base this in El Arish, which is an Egyptian village,

Egyptian town very near to Gaza, which is where Palestinian Airlines was based out of when Israel destroyed Gaza airport.

So he would be nearby, and then eventually the activities of the government would move into Gaza as it becomes more reconstructed.

But there doesn't seem to be any

mechanisms for governing it that have been outlined in any way.

The main focus of it seems to be about de-radicalizing the Palestinian population.

That is the main focus.

Okay, and that's the thing that I've been fascinated and repelled by.

Like you mentioned about like

the Palestinian Authority has to commit to like, I don't know, purging textbooks of anything that they regard as anti-Israel.

But I've heard a lot of stuff about like, oh, like part of this transition into whatever whatever authority is going to be running Gaza for the foreseeable future under this plan is this idea that Gaza's population needs to be de-radicalized.

And that basically, like, until they can prove that they don't hate Israel, Israel, Israel or Israelis anymore, like they need to be under some sort of viceroy.

And it's just like, once again, I have to wonder, like, what does that look like?

And, like,

how can you, like, how can you expect people who have been killed en masse non-stop for two years to like,

I don't know, like develop friendly or passive feelings towards the people who have been killing them non-stop for two years?

I mean, forget no, two years,

killing them non-stop more or less as long as anyone in Gaza has been alive.

I mean, what's interesting about this is that in the original 21-point proposal, there were suggestions for a joint Israeli-Gaza, like quasi-deradicalization program in both societies, and that they would learn to like coexist in some fashion.

And then, once Nanyahu got his hands on that, that part was completely stricken out.

So, it was exclusively on the Palestinian side in order to de-radicalize.

What I want to know is like, how would they demonstrate that they have become de-radicalized?

Well,

how would you gauge that?

It seems to be like you sever the

specific to Palestinians, they have this problem.

They get mad when you kidnap their children.

That's a problem with their culture that they would have to get rid of.

Obviously, like, you know, we live in a very advanced Western civilized, you know, a Western civilized country ruled by, you know, enlightened values.

So, like, you know, we don't have that problem in this country.

Right.

You know, when someone kills your children, you just sort of say, that's okay with me.

And I don't know if you're.

I don't know.

You're open to diversity and you're open to all these different things.

So why would you have an issue with that?

This is an interesting thing is that like they talk about, okay, we want religious coexistence on Palestinian schools.

We want them not to hate.

And what that seems to look like is right now in southern Gaza, in the entirely Israeli-occupied areas of southern Gaza, there is this gang trying to form this anti-Hamas

administration, Yasser Abu Shabab.

And Barry Weiss has outlawed the free press and this pro-Israeli NGO have been running positive news about this group.

And they did a video of a school that's there.

And supposedly, it's the image of the future of Palestinian education.

And in that school, they were teaching them basically just like, oh, you see a Jew, they're your friend.

If you see a Christian, they're your friend.

They're just like you.

And that was it.

It's an entirely facile understanding of how Palestinian education works,

of what the roots of it are.

It's purely for a show to

I mean, depict like, oh, if we can get this at a basic level, that they were taught from birth that they hate the jews then maybe this can change but of course they're doing this in a bombed out classroom something that was in a neighborhood that's been demolished by the israeli military

under this under this future education regime when they get to the part of the curriculum that um i don't know uh has to address uh what happened to your relatives what happened to some of your limbs like why why is the school that we're teaching in just a bombed out crater what like what is the curriculum that's going to address that?

They're just sort of like, hey, a bad thing happened and it was our fault.

Yeah, fucked if I know.

I mean,

what works for the curriculum inside Israel is that, of course, they remove any mentions of Palestinian history, of Palestinian residents before the Jews got there,

before Jewish settlers, I should say, got there.

That can work on a population that has not had its entire civilization uprooted within living memory,

I can't imagine the purpose is to actually convince anyone.

I imagine it's purely for PR, and then they can continue the objective of expelling the Palestinian population so that it's not even

a matter.

They don't want these people to actually be educated in any sort of way.

I don't think even they expect brainwashing to work.

I think they just expect that, okay, they'll remain illiterate.

They'll remain, their education system has already been eviscerated.

It can remain eviscerated.

People who want to become collaborators, they don't have to believe this, but they could still work with us.

It's pure, like, something that interested in me when I read about the proposal for this new government, is that transitional government is that there's Palestinian technocrats suggested, but none of them are named.

And they're supposed to be apolitical,

apolitical technocrats in a conflict that is unabashedly political and this is the same thing that they're suggesting um in refugee camps in in the west bank in jenin that the only people who can return are people who promise never to engage in political activity ever again

they they want an entirely servile population that doesn't think that doesn't speak that is going to be content to let themselves die out as a as a society well I mean, yeah,

if they want to produce a society where people are unable of speaking, thinking, and are content to let themselves die out, I think AI is a good solution.

I think we need to open some data centers, and I think we need to get AI very much involved in this new education program because it's done wonders in this country cultivating exactly that mentality.

Of course, AI is a huge part of this, I should also say.

Of course it is.

Of course it is.

Tony Blair, I mean, there was an initial thing in the Wall Street Journal where where they had AI-generated images of what Gaza could look like in the future under this transitional government.

And of course it looks like Dubai, because I assume that's what the prompts look like.

But they're also suggesting, okay,

the keys, you know, this is left unsaid, but the keys that Palestinians hold to their homes that they had before the Nakba in 1948, that's a powerful symbol.

But it's also a threat to Israel.

This is something that the Israeli government has said very, very recently, that when the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas wears a key, that that's a threat against Israel.

So they need to remove the key somehow.

How do they do that?

So all these people in Gaza who had their homes destroyed, now they can have a digital token for which they can hold their residency papers, and then they can get that home back when it's reconstructed.

How that works?

Who knows?

But

it's new, it's novel, it incorporates revolutionary technologies, and it's going to be a revolutionary society in terms of,

you know, whatever.

I don't think it's meant to go anywhere, but it's something to, yeah, chew on.

That's sort of the bizarre thing that I've noticed about everything.

Everything really since Tony Blair has become formally involved,

since his

presence in any future plans or negotiations has become an officially acknowledged fact that

their designs, their stated designs are to create,

to basically do Singapore where Gaza used to be.

Obviously, not even,

I don't even think like Trump himself believes that is what's going to happen.

And I think a lot of that, like a lot of the stuff about like making beachfront hotels and shit there, that is just his brain vulgarly interpreting that and spitting it back out.

But it's

very emblematic of the types of policies that are suggested now, which is these things that, like, no one,

not the least of which the people proposing the policies, believe that this is going to happen or that this is a possibility.

But

they still go through the entire

song and dance of putting it out.

And even this incredibly like

fictitious bullshit thing that can't happen even

even in the most managed presentation it still sounds like something out of a fucking david d's illustration

it's still fucking horrifying no no no they they can't they

they don't envision a society in which anyone actually lives.

I mean, the point is that, I mean, what did Trump say?

That it would be the Gaza Riviera would be a place for the world's people.

He does, even in these sort of fantastical visions, Palestinians are not included in this.

It is purely supposed to be an experiment for the Americans and the Israelis to produce a supposedly good society out of nothing or the nothing that they created.

Seamus, I wanted to get your thoughts on like, at least starting to like the Americans' perspective and what I'm seeing in this country as of late.

And like

we hear a lot and we see a lot of polling that shows that at least as far as a lot of the country and particularly Democratic voters, are concerned, there has been this kind of seismic shift away from sympathy for Israel towards sympathy for Palestinians.

And I don't know, I'm wondering about a de-radicalization program for this country because

as it gets, as people get closer and closer to saying the G word, which is, you know, more and more and more undeniable.

I'm wondering if you saw the comments by, I forget who it was, but I think it was a congressman who said over the weekend that the genocide that Israel is doing to the Palestinians is the fault fault of Hamas, which I thought was like a brilliant innovation in how to sort of like acknowledge the genocide and also like find a solution that lets Israel off the hook for doing it.

Because it's just like, oh, to be clear, they are doing a genocide to Palestinians, but it's Hamas's fault for making them do it and not surrendering or giving the hostages or just provoking them into this action.

Because I felt for a long, long time now that within the next six months to a year or something, the defenders of Israel and Zionism in general will just, in the West or in America, will just eventually end up saying, of course it's a genocide, but it's good.

Because I think that's really all they're left with.

But like, what do you make of this sort of rhetorical shift in American politics right now?

I mean, I do notice

the change that you're talking about.

With Hank Johnson in particular, he's interesting because, I mean, he caused a lot of controversy for calling West Bank settlers termites years ago.

And he also said that Guam would tip over if they put too many people on it.

He is just kind of odd like that.

Like he doesn't know what he's saying.

That's a very polite way to put it.

I mean, I think he's literally ill with something, but that's a different story.

There's an interesting thing going on

within the Palestinian political discourse that is similar to what you're talking about, wherein, of course, there is no open support for Israel within either, you know, Fatah or Hamas, obviously, or any of these other groups.

They'll collaborate and such, but no one is actually going to come out and shake hands with

Nanyahu and talk about how much fun it is to be in Tel Aviv.

What they will say is that, of course, there are these horrible things that have happened to us, unspeakable evil, but Hamas caused all of this.

Hamas did this to me.

Hamas killed my son.

Hamas killed my father.

Hamas killed this and that.

I think that is going to be the main mode of discourse coming out of Israel and the United States within the next two years.

I don't think they will ever get to a point in which they can say,

at least in an English-speaking context, obviously in Hebrew, they'll say whatever.

But in an English-speaking context, they'll say that we needed to kill one million people, two million people, God forbid,

because they were going to kill us all.

What they'll say is that, of course, all of this was terrible.

All of this is so, so awful and horrible.

You know, a society was lost, but they did it to themselves.

They brought it upon themselves.

How can you expect Israel to have responded in any other way than the way it did?

Hamas caused these bottlenecks.

It stole the aid.

It did this.

It did that.

They can't deny what's in front of them anymore.

We're past that.

That's the thing that only really happens in, you know, Republican circles or in the German discourse.

But

they will go to, this is so horrible, but it couldn't have happened any other way.

You saw how the Palestinians acted.

They did this to themselves.

I mean, I think a good example of that, I don't know if you saw recently the interview that Pete Buttigieg did with, what's it, Andrew Callahan?

And like, when he asked him about Gaza, Pete Buttigej had this like, this very slick, very slick and like seemingly reasonable response that I think was like

very well crafted from his perspective.

And basically what he said is like, look, like, here's a couple of things that I know are true.

Like, every day, what we see happening in Gaza are more, or like, unrestrained war crimes and atrocities.

But on October 7th, we also saw unrestrained war crimes and atrocities.

And, like, these two things I know are true.

And it's just sort of like, well,

good thing we're, yeah, good thing we're funding both sides of this atrocity.

You know what I mean?

Like, maybe we should just stop giving money to all these atrocities.

It's just like

the fact that they're weighed in the same and it's like it's not ever remarked upon that like one of the sides doing these war crimes are being funded entirely and armed by the united states like would seem to like one would outweigh the other in terms of both the scope of it and our moral and physical culpability funded entirely i mean the casualty count is so

much more severe by this point i mean they dropped i mean when october 7th first happened what did we see from biden and yeah who this was at you know four 9-11s 10 911s 20 911s in in contrast to israel's population i mean once it became clear that it had to have been countless more for Gaza, considering its population, they dropped that line.

But they still have to maintain that what happened October 7th was equal to what has befallen

Palestinian society itself.

I mean, just today,

they're doing that Paramount Plus show about October 7th that was Israeli government approved.

I mean, they're posting about how beautiful this show is and how important this show is, coming on the same day that Barry Weiss has been appointed as

editor-in-chief of CBS News by Larry Ellison.

No, they're going to fight as much as they can to avoid actually

adjusting their viewpoints in any sort of substantiative way.

They have to, because...

To actually change their view, I mean, it would require an entire rethinking of

the liberal order of of how we got to this point about the u.s-isra relationship and that's that's that's not possible that's not going to happen not as long as larry ellison controls everything the the thing that i found like very notable about pete buddega

uh his repulsive answer on that show was um

Do you notice how his preamble was, it was something to the effect of,

well, you know, no matter what you say on this, one side's going to yell at you because they feel like you just do their thing.

Pete, Pete, you're saying this because when you were on Pod Save America or Pod Save the World or whatever fucking podcast that was, you got yelled at because you were an idiot.

I do think that is

how

liberals in America and probably for most of the EU,

that's what they figure is their way out of this.

That they're in fact taking a cue from the right.

If you recall in the first like six months of this,

the right's line on this was just, it was fucking incoherent.

I saw the dumbest shit I have ever seen.

Like

you would see pictures,

you would see things that were like,

you know, it was like a meme where it's supposed to be like rockets being fired by Hamas or PIJ and then missiles being fired by Israel.

And it's like,

America has to fund both of these.

And this generalized, like, idiotic line of like,

who cares?

Leave us out of this.

As if we aren't like the main reason this is in its current form.

Like, as if we are not the thing that is propping up Israel.

and has shaped this it shaped everything leading up to this fucking point but that is going to be the liberal line going forward like uh i mean you know i'd love to come up with a great technocratic solution, but people will yell at me no matter what.

Yell at you no matter what.

I mean, how can we be invested in such a granular

Middle Eastern issue that has no effects back home or on any other foreign policy venture that America is engaging with?

I mean, what frustrates me also is like, I see certain democratic politicians,

they realize that this issue is toxic, that even if they don't personally care about it, that other people care about it, and it pisses them off to no end.

So they have to find different ways of triangulating talking about it.

Like

Ruben Gallego, Galejo, the Arizona senator, I think, when he was questioned by a constituent about Biden's and the Democratic Party's support for Israel in this war, he started talking about how Trump was responsible for the entire thing.

He had to find a different way of speaking about it.

And when he was called out about it,

he refused to back down on that point.

It's

They know that they have to change in some fashion or another, either in ways of talking about it or whatever, on this one issue, but they don't want to budge on anything else or else that whole pack of cards starts to tumble down.

They have to care about other things that America is doing abroad.

Well, it's so weird.

I mean,

it's equally weird whether it is from like, you know, the fucking right-wing guys who just vote for any fucking mainstream Republican, at the end of the day, support anything any mainstream Republican do and are in fact like the the the mere image of the people who had a left liberal patina on them for the entirety of the first Trump administration and just reverted to mean the second that it became clear that they were going to have to vote for Biden again but these like these people trying out like specifically people who held cabinet positions in the Biden administrations and fucking senators trying out this line of like, it's this ancient conflict that we don't have anything to do with it.

And it's like, there's a photo of you from like a year ago, like

helping the ghost of Sheldon Adelson circumcise like a child.

No, I'm not telling you.

There's like a photo.

There's like a photo of you like living in a giant menorah.

Like,

like, what the fu?

How are you?

Like, how are you trying to

put this line out there?

Like,

what the fuck?

I hate the fucking term gaslighting, but, like, isn't that, like, fucking gaslighting?

Like, every year, all these people go to the APAC conference, and then suddenly, when there's just, like, an ounce of pushback, oh, it's this crazy religious thing that we don't know anything about.

What do we have to do with it?

No, Trump's saying it's like a 3,000-year-old conflict conflict that he's about to put to rest, finally.

If you sound like that, if you sound like this, this syphilitic moron, then like,

maybe reevaluate a little bit.

That's just me.

That's just me.

In terms of novel and exciting new rhetorical strategies for liberals to deal with this issue or address it,

I got to mention something that happened over the weekend that I saw that was like so dumb.

I had to look this up to make sure it was real.

And indeed it was.

And I'm talking about Van Jones' comments on real time with Bill Maher from this Friday that were like jaw-dropping.

And now, this is in the context of a debate, attempting to explain why young people have so, you know, overwhelmingly abandoned Israel or turned on Israel.

Now, Bill Maher, his take on this is that it all has to do with DEI and critical race theory.

But luckily, liberal commentator Van Jones was there to, you know, he was there to correct that, you know, sort of foolish and somewhat racist point of view.

He said.

Palestinians are like when a 17-year-old goes to community college and everyone yells at you because you said, well, she's in college.

Yeah, liberal commentator Van Jones was there to correct him.

And he said, the reason why is he said, basically, it's because Qatar and Iran are using the algorithm to like inundate people's social media feeds with, and I quote, if you open your phone and all you see is dead Gaza Baby, Dead Gaza Baby, Dead Gaza Baby, Diddy, said Jones on real time, earning laughter and applause, Dead Gaza Baby, Dead Gaza Baby, that's basically your whole feed.

And it's just like,

what I love about this idea is that like, okay,

let's credit like what he's saying as true, that like, oh, it's Cotter and it's Cotter and their nefarious foreign influence over social media algorithms that keep showing Americans dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby.

So, and that in fact has led them to turn on the people killing all those babies, which most normal people are opposed to.

Like, it's never the thing itself, it's the representation of that thing or the documentation of that thing that's the problem.

And it's just like they can't ever face the reality that, like, no, people have turned on Israel to the extent that they have because of the things it's doing, which is killing hundreds of thousands of people.

It reminds me of the like Russia gate shit when they would go like

Russia is why people hate Hillary Clinton.

All this stuff that Hillary Clinton has publicly said and said in private correspondences and talks with

the like big four

bulge bracket investment banks.

It looks bad, but like that's just because like Russia is putting it out, is framing it in this way to make you hate her.

And it was always like, Russia's economy is like smaller than Texas's.

Like if Russia, if Russia can make,

if Russia is the reason that Hillary Clinton, this incredibly like well-funded, this, this project decades in the making, why it falls apart, then

yeah, it was never going to last when the rubber hit the fucking road.

And like, and also implicit in Van Jones' comments is in no way did he try to deny the reality of all those dead babies.

He wasn't even saying that they're fake or AI generated.

He's just saying we're seeing too much of it.

And it's just like, yeah, if Cutter can overwhelmingly turn American public opinion on Israel by how?

How are they doing this?

How are they approaching this strategy?

By showing people the reality of what this genocide looks like every single day?

They never even say that Cutter is like lying or presenting things.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, only the most deluded people do that it's always just like the the fact like they just say that anyone anyone with any voice who's opposed to any of this is funded by cut by cutter and that just automatically invalidates all of it which like

okay then what what does that say about like 85 to 95 percent of like u.s media that this this in that case this this way that van jones is saying this in particular is really to me.

Like using Gaza in that way is like an adjective, like

a dead Gaza baby as if it's this like inanimate object.

Right.

Yeah, yeah.

That it's not just a dead baby, it's a dead Gaza baby.

And then throwing in, like, you know, just like the little bit of humor he injected in there, dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby.

Diddy.

And then I said to the laughs and applause from the audience, like, man,

he has since apologized for this.

Oh, I'm sure.

And he's like, guys,

that was my bad, guys.

Like, I shouldn't have made light of all these dead infants.

But he didn't apologize for

the essential point, the cretiness point he was making that like Qatar and Iran are responsible for this because they're interfering in our democracy through nefarious social media algorithms.

Once again, it's not the fact that Israel is killing so many people, many of them children.

It's that people in this country know about it and they know about it too much.

It's like, or it's like, it's not that they know about it.

It's that they know about it too much because they see it too often.

And like, that's the problem.

What's weird about it is that Van Jones, I mean, he used to be a Maoist.

He was a rapper.

He rapped specifically about the Palestinians.

He is aware of these issues and he is aware of these issues.

how they were before, I mean, Generation Z, the generation that everybody keeps complaining about with their support of the Palestinians, he was aware of these things.

So he's made this change.

So now he is adopting these same viewpoints.

I mean, Herta Müller, the German author whose father was in the fucking Waffen-SS,

she makes this almost exact same point about how Hamas is distorting the images that we see out of Gaza and that we're seeing too many

images of dead people that aren't a full representation of the situation.

Oh yeah, because there are many people that are still alive there.

Yeah, no, no, no.

Oh, my God.

I mean, it used to be that when, like, when there were accusations of famine, is to post images of, like, oh, there's a grocery store that's still active here.

There's a bakery that's still active here.

There's food that you can see here.

We're not going to tell you when these images were taken, but clearly, this isn't true.

People are still alive.

Food is still being eaten by certain people.

None of what you're seeing is accurate.

No, it's

what's what's

like like when when what like when Mitt Romney when Nitt Romney like talks about like last year when he was still in office They were discussing TikTok and the algorithm and specifically he was talking about the reason that it needed to be shut down was because it was antagonizing young people against Israel.

The algorithm was responsible for it.

It wasn't an accurate representation of events.

And now you're seeing that come to pass.

I mean again Larry Ellison,

you know, putting his fingers into the pie, making the algorithm U.S.

owned and almost certainly going to be used to direct pro-Israel content into people's feeds.

As if if people saw a post from the Israeli foreign ministry in their feeds or from Netanyahu's office, that they would change their,

that their minds are such goop that they would forget everything that they see and not see that something has obviously been tampered with in some fashion.

I think it's a reflection or sort of like a projection of like like how they see other people or how they see other how they see people, which is just like somewhat like just goo that you can propagandize more or less at will just by pressing a button and giving them the good messages.

And they're like, oh, that's what Qatar and Iran are doing.

And they're just brainwashing people.

And they think it's that easy.

And like this, the slender hand here is like the rhetorical shift is like, not that the images that you're seeing are inaccurate.

It's that they are accurate, but you're seeing too much of it and it's causing antagonism.

People aren't dying in as many numbers as you think they are.

You know, you're probably seeing the same infant over and over again.

It's you can't possibly be look.

Oh my God.

Like perfect example of this is when I saw this one comment on Reddit last year where somebody was saying that

you like saying that

cities in Gaza were leveled was like saying that BLM leveled cities.

Like

that's the pure democratic mindset, rarely articulated in such a clear fashion.

Like something, you know, Russia is interfering with things.

You're not seeing what's actually there, social media distorts everything.

But then you hear testimonies from doctors saying like, it's so much worse than you're already seeing.

There's so many things that aren't filmed.

And we are already...

I mean, I'm tapped into this pretty closely.

I assume many people listening to this are, as well as you guys.

It is an endless stream of not just the same videos, they're all distinct.

They're different.

They're people dying, casualty counts that are oftentimes 70 people dying in a day, 80 people dying per day, and

they get blown over because the next day is even deadlier.

It's not a distortion.

There's so many data points about this, but Van Jones and people like that,

they get this filter.

They get all this stuff filtered.

And they think, oh, okay,

this must not actually be how it is.

Really, it can't be.

Going back to the sort of like the problems that the Democrats are having with their voters and how APAC in particular has become a liability for them.

The New York Times

covered this this weekend in an article by Annie Carney, and the headline is, Democrats pull away from APAC, reflecting a broader shift.

And I just wanted to

read a couple paragraphs from this because it deals with our good friend Hakeem Jeffries.

But in all those years of relationship building, Mr.

Jeffries never sought the group's endorsement.

Are they speaking of J Street?

He was more closely associated with APAC, the hardline pro-Israel lobbying organization that has long supported him financially and has in the past discouraged lawmakers at BACs from aligning themselves formally with a group that holds a different stance on Israel.

That changed last month when Mr.

Jeffries was, when Mr.

Jeffries, for the first time, was open to and accepted J Street's official support.

It was a coup for J Street, which is highly critical of the current Israeli government and seeking to establish itself as a mainstream voice about Israel on Capitol Hill.

I mean, I'll pause here for a second and say that if J Street becomes the mainstream voice for Israel on Capitol Hill, that's a lateral move as far as I'm concerned.

Good lord.

But just like, here's the thing.

What fucking year is it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I want to get to the money graph here, though.

It says here, Mr.

Jeffries is so closely aligned with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that the radio host Charlemagne the God recently mocked him as, quote, APAC Shakur.

So the fact that he would take such a step is a symbol of a broader sea change occurring in Congress when it comes to Israel and the clout of what it has for decades been the most powerful pro-Israel group in American politics.

Then in parentheses, in parentheses, I just got to read this part.

Mr.

Jeffries, in a statement, said that Charlatan the fraud has no idea what he's talking about, as music industry luminaries like Birdman, Beanie Siegel, Fredro Starr, and NBA Youngboy have repeatedly made clear.

Yeah, that's what I wanted to bring up.

The first guy he named is Birdman.

Yeah, the first guy he fucking named, like the Jimmy Seville of rap.

Yeah.

Like that's the first guy.

Yeah.

You're like, okay, who's a cool guy I can associate myself with?

Who, okay,

who has go who has groomed the most people ever in the history of rap?

I'm like him.

Yeah.

He's like, hey, to Charlotte and the Fraud, I got to say, like my good friend Birdman once said, put some respect on my name.

Charlotte the Fraud is like

Charlotte?

Sounds something like Bill Cosby would say?

Like Paul Pepper?

Like, who is running his comms team?

Yeah.

Well,

we'll see

little Wayne's comments on this.

I'd like to know what he feels about

all this.

Is Birdman pro-Israel?

What is...

I mean, well,

he does a lot of pro-Israel things in terms of...

He does a lot of things that you have to do before you take a lifelong vacation to Israel.

Yeah.

To shift gears for a second here,

I really want to talk about

another story here in the United States that I read this weekend.

And this is like certainly of a a piece with the interview I did over the weekend with Memo Torres of LA Taco.

And I would really recommend you check out that interview about basically the ongoing just, I don't know, siege or even just outright war that's being waged on American cities by the Department of Homeland Security and ICE.

I don't know if you saw like these videos that the Department of Homeland Security has been posting on Twitter.

But like there was one that was just one of those like sort of grainy VHS style clips of like cool things from the 1980s and Donald Trump.

And they were like, this is what America was like before the illegal alien invasion.

And it was littered with like neo-Nazi memes from like 10 or 15 years ago, like Mac Tonight.

And, you know, they've been posting cop, they've been posting copy on their poster that says like, secure our future, you know, like not, not very subtle here.

But like,

I read this article.

This is from the Chicago Sun-Times here about this, like

a military style ice raid on an apartment complex in Chicago.

And I just like, like,

I really, I just want to read here, like, just like the first couple paragraphs, because it was so chilling to me.

And this is from the Chicago Sun-Times.

It writes here, Dan Jones was jolted awake around 1 a.m.

Tuesday to the sound of federal agents trying to break through his apartment door.

They couldn't get past his double lock, so he went back to bed.

But when he woke up hours later for work, he walked out and found broken doors littering the hallway and his neighbors missing.

Jones, 27, is among the residents left at 7500 South South Shore Drive who are trying to piece together what remains after an early morning high-powered federal immigration raid

led to the arrests of dozens of their neighbors at the South Shore apartment building.

Armed federal agents in military fatigues busted down their doors overnight, pulling men, women, and children from their apartments, some of them naked,

residents and witnesses said.

Agents approached or entered nearly every apartment in the five-story apartment building, and U.S.

citizens were among those detained for for hours.

When he got home from work, Jones said, he entered his unit to find all of his electronics and furniture missing, and all of his clothes and shoes thrown on the floor.

Jones said he had no idea who took his belongings and hadn't received answers from Chicago police.

I'm pissed off, Jones said.

I feel defeated because the authorities aren't doing anything.

On Wednesday, toys, shoes, and food were still in piles in the building's hallways.

Property managers were seen throwing mattresses and broken doors into dumpsters.

Like, you know,

I don't know where to go with this, but like, this to me was like,

you know, like, I know it seems quaint and a bit naive to reference our wonderful Constitution or our Bill of Rights, but like, this seems like just such a flagrant, just desecration of not only the Fourth Amendment, but the oft-forgotten about Third Amendment.

When I think about that guy coming home to his house that's just been looted, like all his shit gone, his furniture and electronics missing, and the and the cops won't tell him who took it that seems to me a violation of the third amendment of the constitution prohibiting being forced to quarter soldiers in your houses and i guess i don't know like felix are you familiar with this neighborhood in chicago because like i know chicago is like yeah yeah yeah yeah this this was um

i i mean this is like a

not a very fucking well-off area.

And

what happened in this building is something we've seen happen

more times than we can count with ICE, which is a slum lord, like the piece of shit that owns this building, wants to offload his property.

It's hard for him to get everyone out of there

within the timeframe that he wants to do it at his convenience.

So he calls ICE and says, oh, I think there's human traffickers or fucking Trenda Agua or fucking undocumented immigrants in here.

And they will,

you know, regardless of what of anyone's legal status of anything will rob humiliate beat and detain everyone in the fucking building and who do you call after that there's no one that you could call that will give a shit or lift a finger to try to fucking help you uh jd pritzker said record them and send it to who send it to who the fucking the the the state's attorney the chica the chicago police department that is helping them Like,

it's

that this entire thing, like, this has happened before, the thing that happened in this building, a billion fucking times.

It's happening a lot more now, obviously.

This one was particularly,

it particularly struck a nerve because

this is not, this is a few blocks away from that disgusting fucking monstrosity of a presidential library.

Obama's presidential library?

Wow.

Think about what the things that have gotten Obama off his ass to

release his statement over the years.

It's the times where he has been motivated to weigh in.

It was when they thought basketball, there might not be any more basketball that summer.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Like in reading in a labor dispute in the NBA, he told LeBron and the players to go back to work.

I seem to remember him interjecting interjecting recently to tell everyone to calm down and just get behind the abundance agenda.

Yeah.

And telling everyone that he's listening to Shapple Roan.

Yeah.

Look, Felix, Felix, Felix, you're, I like, I don't like Obama, but like this misrepresentation of him, I can't agree with.

I mean, right here, he's mourned Jane Goodall.

He said

he just had his anniversary with his wife.

I mean, you can't expect him to comment on a military military operation being directed at his momentum.

Message from the office of former President Barack Obama.

Recently, I've been playing Raid Shadow Legends.

It's completely free, and there's a new champion you can download.

If you're worried about not leveling up, it's double XP weekend.

Type in code Obama.

That's like that's like the tip, but he's like not a fucking word.

It's insane.

Like, I obviously hate the guy, but like he is a widely admired figure in American politics.

And having having him come out and say like,

hey, what the fuck, would actually be worth something.

But like, God forbid,

that might engender the viewership of American Factory season five.

Well, he can't weigh in too much because, I mean, a lot of these people in ICE right now, he appointed.

I mean, Tom Homan.

Tom Homan, his appointment.

Yeah, executive associate director of enforcement.

Like all of these things, these bricks were laid by Democratic presidents.

And you can't just like come out and say, actually, we need to abolish the DHS or abolish ICE or anything like that, because you were complicit in that process.

Not just complicit, you actively aided.

the situation that we are now in.

So no, he can't comment on Operation Midway.

Midway Blitz.

Midway Blitz.

God.

And by the way, you may say

a military raid.

They used a Blackhawk helicopter

in this apartment complex, right?

And it's just like,

fuck, like,

you know, forget Obama or whatever, like, the people that they arrested, but like the vast majority of people in this apartment complex and the people who were detained for hours, including with like their children.

I separated the vast majority of the people that they just handcuffed who are black American citizens from the handful of Venezuelans that they were ostensibly there to deport or arrest.

A Trendiagua.

Yeah.

Or whatever or whatever the fuck.

So it's like something that really worries me here, and I'm sure other people have spoken about this.

The fact that like militarily we're supposedly going after Trendiagua inside the U.S.

And also we're bombing these boats in the Caribbean,

which are supposedly Trendiagua boats.

And now Trump is talking about how

they've stopped the boats.

So we're going to have to attack them on land.

These Trendiagua guys,

it really feels like it's being set up for like a building in America to just straight up be bombed.

Oh, 100%.

1,000%.

Like a fucking airstrike or some shit.

And then the American citizens who were killed in that airstrike...

Well, unfortunately, they were being used as human shields by the dangerous Venezuelan gang, Trende Agraguerrera or whatever the fuck.

They captured the apartment building.

They did.

They were holding.

They paved the way for this stuff.

And now you can easily, I mean, I think about like

the bombing that happened in Qatar.

Like, originally, the IDF, the Mossad, they would have done a clandestine operation.

They would have kept it, you know, secret.

They would have kept it quiet.

But now in this era where international law doesn't mean a goddamn thing, sovereignty is a myth, any sort of laws at all are disrespected, Sure, bomb the fucking negotiating team in a country that has never been bombed by Israel before.

Like,

all of these things that get broken up.

And also a country that's like a U.S.

ally where there's a gigantic

non-NATO ally.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like,

no, all of this stuff, like, people who relegate Gaza to a minor issue that they can't understand why Americans talk about.

All of these laws that get broken over in Gaza, all of these precedents that are shattered in

the execution of that war, all of this stuff comes back to the United States inevitably, and it's coming back at a record pace.

All of this stuff will eventually be utilized against American citizens who become unpersoned

in the major political discourse.

Yeah, it is from the beginning.

It is to see what you will put up with.

What you

can pass before your eyes and you can just blot it out with whatever white noise.

And they have figured out that is a lot of fucking things.

Speaking of people who were complicit in funding ICE,

all these Democratic senators

have they have come out and said, you know, how awful this is, that this is unconstitutional, et cetera, et cetera.

All of them voted for that stupid fucking bill where they were going to double the size of ice

and remember that bill in was this like the lake and riley act or something

well also the lake and riley act that was earlier okay uh this year but the the one before remember the ice bill under biden during biden's last year in office where it was like oh we're doing we're putting all of trump's immigration things in a law and voting for it and then we're going to show that they're obstructionists when they've when the republicans vote against God.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They're like, we're going to, we're going to give this like the fascist apparatus of ethnically cleansing America.

We're going to give the people behind that exactly what they want in an effort to show how that, what they really, they're actually hypocrites because they want, because they, then they're like, it's like, oh, what a brilliant strategy there.

It really worked well.

As you can see, Donald Trump lost the election.

Yeah.

But it's like, yeah, I mean,

even if, like, all, you know, the next two, like, federal elections, the midterms, and the presidential elections, even if they occur unobstructed and the bottom falls out of the economy, blah, blah, blah, et cetera, et cetera,

I don't even think they would have to worry

about,

you know, wresting power back in a coup of some type, because

if Democrats do get back in power, they will not punish anyone involved in this.

No one will even lose their fucking job.

And that is the bare minimum, the bare minimum of what you can do to make sure that this doesn't happen again for at least 10 fucking years is to put people in prison.

None of them, none of them have the fucking courage to do any of that.

Not Newsom, not fucking any of them.

No, Brazil has much stronger institutions

about this.

I mean, they're, I mean, separate case, but I mean, mean, the whole thing with Yarbo Sonaro and overthrowing, trying to overthrow the government.

I mean, Bolsonaro has been sentenced.

Supreme Court justices are going after people who are involved in this kind of insurrection.

Absolutely, none of that is going to happen.

You're correct, because that would involve breaking norms or assessing that America is...

its system is in trouble beyond what can be repaired by a midterm election victory or a presidential victory, if that will

happen.

No, no, no, no.

They, they still are unable to admit things are truly broken in a meaningful way.

Well, you know, yeah,

at least I'm going to fantasize.

Like, I mean, like, is there, is there any Democratic candidate out there for president who's going to run on a platform of like, you know, all the things that you're seeing happen right in front of you of like people being like pulled off the street, zip-tied and thrown into a van by like these obese peanut-headed borons wearing Marvel t-shirts?

You're going to still see that, but it's going to be done to the people who are currently carrying this out.

Like, you know, we're going to, like, we have I want to see some raids on the homes of whoever these idiots who work for ICE are currently residing.

I'd like to see some arrests of the people in charge of the Department of Homeland Security.

That is the bare minimum to show that you're serious.

Everyone who has, you know, tried to browbeat everyone into voting in the last three presidential elections with how fucking important they are, how, you know, now is not the time.

This is the destiny of America that is at stake here.

Show us that you mean it.

Would Stephen A.

Smith support this?

I will vote for him if he does.

I don't care about anything else he believes in.

All right,

one last thing for today.

I got a reading series for you.

And just follow this under more.

Unspeakable horrors on the horizon.

And Seamus, you know, we mentioned several times during this episode that we're now on the precipice of the Barry Weiss-run CBS news era.

Interesting to see.

Not on the precipice.

It happened.

Just before we're going to, you know, we'll see what their news output will be.

And you're like, I can say confidently, everything I said about how public opinion has turned against Israel in this country, Barry's going to turn it around.

Yep.

They got TikTok, they got 60 Minutes, and they got the free press.

But, you know,

right as she inaugurates her new reign, controlling all of American journalism, I think it's important to check in on what the free press has been up to.

And

I got an article here from free press contributor Tyler Cowan.

Oh, God.

Yeah, this is.

This guy guy is,

I mean, I do not think he's a sex offender.

It has not been legally proven.

But he really, like, every picture of him looks like he's getting his picture taken for registry.

And, like, Felix, you bring that up.

Even he would admit that.

Hold on, hold on.

Let me look up a photo of this man.

An important thing to know about Tyler Cowen is that he is an economic.

He is an economic.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He is an

university.

The economics department is your world's largest sex offender register.

That is your

airline I have ever seen.

The George Mason Economics Department is a freak factory of unspeakable proportions.

There's that guy, Robin Hanson, who

works for them as well.

If I had to describe the intellectual and sort of academic output of the George Mason Economics Department, it would be using like economic formulas to try to determine when exactly is the best time to marry a 12-year-old.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The the compet the the uh mutual like free trade advantage of a 59-year-old marrying a 12-year-old.

Yeah.

And he gets right into it.

Uh, this is the headline is, my favorite actress is not human.

And the sub headline is this, Tilly Norwood doesn't need a hairstylist, has no regrettable posts.

And if you wish to see a virgin on screen, this is one of your better chances.

That's because she's AI.

Okay, if you wish to see a virgin on screen, like that, that came out of nowhere.

That one hit me like a fucking uppercut because I was just like, is this a thought that people have when they see actors in movies?

I just like,

I would love to, I would love to enjoy the latest Margot Robbie movie, but unfortunately, I'm aware of the fact that she's engaged in intercourse before.

I haven't even seen like, like, Rod Dreyer hasn't even complained about that.

Like, even he is like that's a little weird to want this went through all astraces

be virgins god damn this went through like i'm trying to imagine like if i were to include this in any article whatsoever like you would see it editors like like what does this mean Why did you include this?

So that multiple people approved that dick.

That's crazy to me.

And it's so bizarre too, because like A, he is like copying the fact that like, I really do wish to see virgins in film.

You know, like, what, what adult, what adult human are you watching on TV that you can't reasonably assume, male or female, has had sex sometime in their life?

And even more baffling about it is like,

Tilly Norwood is not a virgin either.

She's not a human being.

She doesn't exist.

Her sexuality is not an issue because she's not real.

Here's the article, though.

Here's what Tyler writes.

Tilly Norwood is the actress I most want to see on the big screen, or perhaps the little screen, if if she gets her own TV show.

She is beautiful, but not too intimidating.

She has a natural smile and is just the right amount of British, a touch exotic, but still familiar with her posh accent.

Her Instagram has immaculate standards of presentation.

If you do not already know, Tilly is not an actual human being.

She is, she, it, is an AI creation.

I like that he's like, She's the actress I most want to see in movies.

She's my favorite actress.

What quote-unquote acting has Tilly done thus far because all i've seen is just like a shitty ai generated image of a woman like in some sort of just i i don't even know what to describe it in some sort of shitty like slop marvel looking action scenario yeah this is not a thing by the way yeah like all the articles about this are the shitheads that put money into this going oh uh we're actually talking to multiple agencies and there's talks for a movie

there's always talks for a movie or a series that never fucking happens this is the people that foolishly invested in this trying to get anything back at all.

Yeah.

But, but, but, I, like, okay, he says she's beautiful, but not intimidating.

Like, theoretically, like, when he see, when he sees fucking, uh, who's, who's the girl in the Fallout show?

Oh, you know what I'm talking about?

I know exactly.

Her name escapes me at the moment, but yeah.

Ella Purnell.

Yeah, yeah.

With Ella Purnell, like, with, with, when he, when he sees her in a show or a movie, he's like,

yeah, I mean, she's just out of the range where I might have a chance with her.

Like, okay, okay.

If you play your cards, right?

You know?

Nice little eagle.

It's good to be realistic, you know?

No, no, no.

You can tell for, like, just in this first paragraph, like, this man is so hard that he is getting lightheaded, and this woman is not real.

Like, it's, I, I haven't seen, like,

this has happened a couple times before, I feel like, in which there was, I think, like an AI-generated musician that they were trying to push for a while who had, like, a made-up story about being, like, within her narrative, she had been sexually assaulted.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was

a CGI influencer named Michaela, who, I think it was like the like the Weinstein company was invested in that project.

Like, that was,

and like, when that came out, that came out in like 2017.

And that, like, people then were like,

projectile vomiting.

Like, get this the fuck away from me.

We hate this.

And then you didn't see, you didn't really see it.

The only people,

this is an experiment you can do.

Whenever you want to prove that something is not sellable to the general public, if the only comments you see on the page of whatever person, entity, or organization this is, if the only positive comments are from Dutch people

as was the case with Michaela

that was the case I have nothing against the Dutch I the amazing contributions to kickboxing and organized crime they're huge parts in the movie layer cake great

but some of the worst uh

said they have made some of the worst posts ever and if you went to a michaela post it you know it was her her being like uh they asked asked me if I'm real.

And I said, 300,000 polygons

of real.

And then just nothing, nothing.

And then, you know, Jorgsmith von Gugerschmith.

Wow, you are pure sass and you don't even need to be recharged.

You know, like that, that was.

But now everyone is so beaten down that they don't even, they don't even have enough fluid left in their body to projectile vomit.

So you are are just getting all the same things that the average Dutch person would enjoy shoveled down your gullet like foie gras.

Returning to Tyler,

he says here, not everyone is happy about this gorgeous innovation.

Sag Aftra, the union representing performers in the U.S.

entertainment industry's protests.

They state, the union is opposed to the replacement of human

performers by synthetics.

They also claim that Tilly's makers are ripping off human actors because presumably the creation of Tilly involved training on their performances.

Or in Sag After's words, it creates the problem of using stolen performances to put actors out of work, jeopardizing performer livelihoods and devaluing human artistry.

In the same breath, they insist that A, Tilly will put human actors out of work, and also B, audiences do not want the product.

Namely, audiences aren't interested in watching computer-generated content untethered from the human experience.

If that is the state of your logical thinking these days, you have problems well beyond competition from AI.

There's nothing about those two statements that are contradictory, by the way, because like whether audiences like something or not is obvious.

I mean, AI is the perfect representation of whether something is wanted or needed by people is no barrier whatsoever to it thus threatening the jobs of people otherwise doing those things.

No, businesses are fully willing to sabotage themselves, waste exorbitant amounts of money on AI ventures that they want to force by people.

And Mark Zuckerberg was talking about we might.

I may have, I may have blown several hundred billion dollars on AI.

We'll see.

Yeah, and like that money had to have, it could have gone somewhere else.

And with studios, I mean, you only have to look at what Zaslov has been doing to see that, of course, they could run themselves out of business attempting to make this work.

Nobody, like, people will pay for

ChatGPT.

They'll pay for there's that new video app, Sora.

They'll pay for that because they can create things with it.

Even if it's, you know, they're not actually creating it.

They're still creating something.

Why would I pay to see a film that I did not have any hand in making with an actor that's not real, where there was no craft or anything put into it?

I don't understand what is...

What's the market for it other than this very creepy old man who wants to see it?

There doesn't need to be a market for it.

It's like, yeah, that is it completely like that, then there's it takes out everything that's interesting about art.

It's like if you saw a screensaver and you were like, Hollywood's in trouble because this is entertaining me.

Like, I, I, I, that, that argument he makes too about how, like, you know, well, if people don't like it, then it will go away.

Like, that is really that, that is the upper limits of this, like, GMU free market bullshit.

This idea that, like, that the consumer's desires

that

it can stop companies from committing trillions of dollars to horribly shitty ideas.

Like if that was the case, then

there would be like, you know, at least like some functional printers in America that you could buy.

Your refrigerator would not need a fucking software update.

The market is bloated with bullshit that no one enjoys and doesn't fucking work, but it's just for lack of another option and because people are already they've already committed so much to it, you have no other option.

Yeah, exactly.

And your only your only option, again, is to, you know, with your smart TV or smart whatever, is to say that you were taking care of an old person with a pacemaker and they give you a code to turn it off.

That's it.

Yeah, what I was gonna say is like there doesn't need to be a market for Tilly Norwood or any of these other monstrosities because every single corporation in america is currently propping up a multi-trillion dollar ai bubble that is not profitable and no one wants so if you're the consumer you don't really have a choice in any of this and your objections or feelings about whether you like it or not are irrelevant no i i can't wait to uh to see a virgin on screen

good

okay listen to this like listen to this next sentence and please try to tell please explain to me what he's talking about he says there's also something strangely karmic about actors yearning to become influencers only to compete with influencers and then saying the game is rigged

That's not what karma is you fucking cunt.

I'm so sick of this Karma is it determines if you're an asshole in your life like if you're a shitty county official you get to be a locust in your next life because you were such a bad county official it happens in the next life it's not like you were rude you were rude to the ai that you jerk off to and then uh she she like posts pictures of your urethra the next day.

It doesn't happen in the same life cycle, you fucking cunt.

I'm imagining that year is it?

Felix, are you doing this?

You're saying all this in like a Shinto temple in 12

I'm interested in like the psychology of this because it seems like he really, I mean, not just like a woman who doesn't have sex, he really wants a woman woman that he can just fully project himself onto.

Fully has no emotions, has no independent life of any kind.

Well, yeah, listen to this next paragraph.

Now, maybe you think there is something strange about how she does not quite look like a woman you would expect to see on the screen.

That lies in the eyes of the beholder.

Plastic surgery is nearly universal in Hollywood, and to many of us, the current crop of actresses do not quite have the dignity, beauty, and grace of Ingrid Bergman or Grace Kelly.

Currently, I think Hollywood is failing us.

The quality of movies has never been lower in my lifetime.

Most of the top hits are boring and predictable tentpole franchises.

Fight and chase scenes are overdone and laden with CGI at the expense of good dialogue and dramatic content.

If you watch an older movie, such as Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window or Stanley Kubrick's Barry Linden, you may be shocked how much the art of movie making has declined.

Yeah, you may be, but then like, why are you chilling for this slop that's going to make it a billion times?

times worse.

You're saying like, oh, good movies like Rear Window or Barry Linden, but like he's saying like those movies are good because they have like real human artistry and like writing and something real.

But he's like, but you know what, though?

If only Ryan O'Neill could be replaced with Tilly Norwood, I think Barry Linden would really be even better than it already is.

Again, and like all of his criticisms about like how shitty movies are now.

Okay, if those are so bad, why aren't market forces taking them out?

Yeah.

And also, and also like, these celebrities, like, they were fucking, these celebrities that he's talking about,

they were fucking all the time.

They had very, like, illicit sex lives.

I don't.

We need to bring back strong heterosexual men to movies like Carrie Grant.

It says, I'm going on here.

It says,

he writes, the difference is that this time the technology is especially powerful and flexible.

If four years ago you had shown me a tape of Tilly, I would not have believed she is a real woman.

The other key difference is that technology soon enough will be at the disposal of many people, not just AI experts such as Van der Velden.

You'll notice the name there, Felix.

Vandervelden is the creator of Tilly.

Vander Velden is the creator of Tilly Wood.

Of Tilly Norwood is created by a Dutch woman.

Yeah, he, like, Dutch guys.

Every, like, every Instagram influencer, like, all the guys who are saying, like, telling them good morning, like, they're on a WhatsApp chat.

It is, this guy got banned from too many influencers' pages, and he made his own.

Very terrifying.

I skipped this paragraph, but yeah, it is very relevant, especially given your dead-on fucking observations of Felix.

Tilly was concocted by actress, comedian, and technologist Eileen Vandervelden, working through her AI company, Jishoka.

Vandervelden is quite real.

She's a Dutch actress and has a master's degree in physics.

Oh, my my God.

This is...

From what university?

Like, think about what we're doing.

We're letting, like,

we're letting the Dutch, like,

take authorship of world culture.

That's not okay.

No.

It says,

okay.

The other key difference is that the technologies soon enough will be at the disposal of many people, not just AI experts, such as Vandervelden or the well-financed Hollywood Studio.

This week, OpenAI released demos for their new video service, Sora 2, which generates very realistic short videos, synchronized with sound as well.

I don't have early access, but the demos and advanced buzz for the service are impressive.

Soon enough, I expect to be- And I've already told the library they can't kick me out because none of this stuff is actually happening.

Soon enough, I expect to be making the 15-second surrealistic clips I long have dreamed of producing.

I'm a Maya Darin fan.

And then one-minute segments, five-minute segments, and so on.

It's not just open AI.

We're expecting new AI video production offerings from Meta, Google, and others as well.

The competition will intensify the race for quality and affordability.

You can see where this is headed.

Yeah.

Again, why did not, okay, then why isn't there a race for quality and affordability and move-in?

The thing you were just fucking complaining about?

Or is that like the one one thing that, according to you, is independent of market forces?

When I look back on the history of culture, I see that new technologies often precede major creative breakthroughs.

The printing press and cheaper paper were needed for the novel to flourish.

Oil paint made possible many of the breakthroughs of the Venetian and Florentine Renaissances.

And the electric guitar and recording studio were essential to the development of rock and roll.

In each case, there were competitive losers along the way.

Like, who is the loser in the oil paint war?

I think Kevin.

Egg Tempra.

Many observers, many observers hate short-form video, which they consider to be kind of a slop that ruins our minds.

I do not dismiss such claims, but I will proudly report I will not let it wreck me, just as I currently avoid TikTok.

I will hold out for the grand and glorious AI-drenched cinematic creations, at first short, then long later, that are headed our way.

Great talents are going to draw inspiration from these new AI technologies, and so you will get some very interesting and original outputs.

If the package deal is your slop plus my beauty, I say bring it on.

Hollywood and TV and popular music brought us lots of slop too, and that is the devil's bargain we all need to live with.

Learn how to rise above it.

In other words, take responsibility for your own level of taste.

If you feel like you can talk about slop, you also ought to be able to avoid it.

If nothing else, just ask your friendly large language model, which are the best movies to watch on Amazon or the Criterion channel.

It will recommend some with enthusiasm.

Much like Faust.

If you're presented with a devil's bargain, you have to take it.

Tyler, you are beyond, you are so deep below the surface, no sunlight has ever hit you.

I like that he's saying, I like that he's saying that, like, yeah, if you're an adult, you, if like, slop bothers you, just avoid the slop and you should take responsibility for cultivating your own tastes by asking Chat GPT what movies you should watch.

And he says,

God, like this is

the most

I take back everything I've ever said about and prims like this is if you're an an prim you should be just like shouting this article verbatim and you will

you will see your movement swell like it never has before I'll give up my glasses like it's fine we don't have to deal with this anymore oh me to gouge my eyes out oh sure

he says in any case you probably will not have much of a choice

directly contradicts everything he just said.

He says, in any case, you probably will not have much of a choice.

The online attacks on Tilly will not succeed.

At least not if people listen, watch, and listen.

Maybe she is not the girl, but someone else will be.

No, no, someone else will not be.

None of this is real, Tyler.

She's not a virgin.

She's not a girl.

And

the attacks on her will fail.

We have to stop people from jerking on her.

Tilly Hive is coming after me after I said I don't like her new AI-generated video.

Have you noticed how people are engaging in character assassination against Clippy?

Like,

what are you fucking talking about?

Here we go.

Like,

you pointed it out, but it's like his,

like, his

hard on for her.

It's the same thing.

He's like Joseph Fritzel.

His dream is ultimately like just a a captive woman.

And this is like the closest thing that he can buy at this point.

A captive woman that he can protect.

Felix, Seamus,

thank you for that perfect setup to this last paragraph.

Keep in mind what they just said.

Oh, come on.

I suspect, it goes, I suspect that Tilly is easy to manage, has no past political post to regret.

Whoa, okay.

All right.

Sorry, I got to take this one from the top again.

I suspect that Tilly is easy to manage, has no past political posts to regret, and if you wish to see a virgin on screen, this is one of your better chances.

She needs neither a hairstylist nor a sushi lunch, and she is not going to walk off set because someone offended her.

Tilly will stay young forever, at least if her followers want her to.

In the meantime, I am in the market for some live theater and stand-up comedy too.

So if you're a frustrated actor, maybe I will see you there.

Like, I just...

What the fuck?

Yeah, okay, okay.

Like,

a couple things of note.

A couple things of note.

Okay.

He thinks Tilly is superior to any human actress because she is a virgin, easy to manage, will stay young forever, and doesn't have political opinions that could

make you uncomfortable.

She won't talk back.

She won't talk back.

She doesn't know how to use the stove.

She doesn't know how to ask adults for help.

She definitely doesn't know how to call 911.

She doesn't know how to do anything.

Oh, my God.

She doesn't know there's an air tag in her bag.

And it's just like,

God, it's just a cliche to say now, but like

economics professors and every and I've them and everyone else promoting this giant AI bubble that is going to consume our economy and probably destroy it within the next year or two.

The boundless hatred and contempt that they have for human culture, and particularly people who create human culture, who write a song, who act in a performance, who do anything real that produces art that people like or is of value in some way, that creates an emotional feeling or emotional feeling, like they despise them to their core and wish to eradicate them entirely so they can be complacent by, they can be replaced by eternally young and eternally

compliant Tilly Norwoods.

Now,

the comment about this this will be your best chance to see an on-screen virgin.

Luckily, Spencer has

sent this along to me.

Tyler Cowan has been writing about how to find virgins for years now.

This was from his blog, Marginal Revolution, from September 24th, 2009.

This is the headline.

Where to find virgins?

Go to urban churches.

He writes here, the man who would be Thursday opines, and this is quoting from one of his commenters, look for someone at a church in an urban area.

For example, evangelicals in downtown Toronto are there because they really believe, while those in rural Alberta, perhaps less so.

He also adds and explains why.

Find yourself a cute but not spectacular 22-year-old with a bachelor's degree.

Then Tyler writes, P.S., the biggest indicator that a girl is a virgin is...

her insistence that she wants a guy who is a virgin himself.

Hat tip goes to Robin Hansen, who discusses Thursday more generally.

Is he also a virgin?

Yeah.

Oh my god.

Aren't you guys like supposed, isn't your thing supposed to be like

prices and the monetary supply and the business cycle?

I've had some fucking

crank economics professors.

Even some GMU guys.

Tyler.

But they were just really into like the gold supply.

they didn't talk about this shit there is like it's not just that he talks about this shit but he's like i actually have a friend who's uh also should be killed as much as i should be who has his own thoughts about those if you are an adult man who is concerned with the virginity of a potential uh sexual partner i think you should be um

just sent away sent away somewhere like there is the you want to throw like oh there is uh no better indication that a woman is a virgin than if she wants a virgin uh she wants you to be a virgin as well if you have these thoughts as an adult i don't just

reader listener fill in the gaps in your own mind it's just like

well like what like

i sorry tyler tyler i hate to break this to you grace kelly was not a virgin when she filmed rear window

Nor are any of those other bygone starlets of the golden age of Hollywood.

Nor most adults past the age of 18 or 19.

So if you want to see versions on screen, what you're really asking for is to see minors on screen or AI generated facsimiles of them.

There you go, folks.

The George Mason, the leading lights of the George Mason economics department.

You know,

Branson from E1 had this great idea a few years ago.

He called it Ho'wa Island.

And

the idea was was basically that there are these people who are like, they're fascinating.

They give us great and horrifying insights into marginal personality types, which are often

rarely or never repeated.

People like Brian Pumper, Mikey Miles, Dan Quinn.

Yeah.

But they're like, but they're just too much of a danger to like have in society.

Like they're going to, they're going to cause societal and personal harm left in society.

What we can do is we can put them on

an island of some type with actors and professionals so we can still study them, but they don't harm society.

And we are able to

take in even more data.

I think Tyler is the newest entrant and his friend.

They are both ready for Ho Island.

General population,

they must live under the rule of the probable ruler of Ho Island, Brian Pumper.

Brian Pumper, yeah, obviously.

He is the strongest.

He will rise to the top.

Yeah.

Ho Island, he is kind of like the

Isaac Hayes character in escape from the New York Times.

Escape from New York,

the Duke of Ho Island.

Yeah,

yeah.

Like Brian Pumper, awful guy.

We don't want him in society, but it's Ho Island.

We can't have the guys too much in Ho Island.

He's in charge.

If you were cracking eggs on Tyler Cowan's head, I would support it.

Yeah.

I mean, that is why Ho Island exists.

It's better that he does it to

Tyler and the other fucking freak that talks about this shit with Tyler than, you know,

a real person.

One last thing of note to bring this back to Bovine Barry and the free press.

Just last week in his comments about Barry in the New York Times, Ezra Klein said, Barry is an insane talent spawner.

And her recent hire of

Tyler Cowen to the free press is a great example of this.

This is his first article?

Yeah.

I don't know if this is his first article or not.

No, no, it's not his first article for free press, I don't think, but

Tyler Cohen is like

for decades, he's been like, you know, the conservative that like Ezra

and that love this guy.

They love it.

They love it.

Like, they're like, that's a smart conservative.

And it's like, again,

I

fucking raw snude hat and uh even even even um

even the biggest freaks we could think of they have not written anything this alarming like rod has not freaked me out this much yeah not even close yeah not even close like give like if i'm in a situation where it's like

okay

um you know there's a five-year-old in your family and you need to hire a babysitter your choices are tyler Cohn and Rod Drehart.

Rod, 100 times out of 100.

I'm not even thinking for a second.

Rod has never openly speculated on where to find divergence or that that would be like a desirable thing as an adult man.

Like

hurting someone and having bad sex.

Ross is like, like, Rod, like, the worst thing that would happen after you, like...

Let him look after a younger family member is, you know, they're like, what's the Nicene Creed?

Rod made me take it

but nothing like nothing like permanent i just like i have to go back to like why does he need to see them why is why is this a consideration when he's watching a movie i want to see a version on screen not not just him not just him but like he he wants other people he wants the whole reality to like fold around the notion of this woman, this fake woman, being on screen and everybody has to see it.

Like that feels like so much of the world right now.

Not just that everybody can create their own realities,

like functionally through AI, they can do that, but everybody else needs to be, have that reality foisted on them into the real world.

It's not enough for me to have it.

You have to like it.

You have to see it and you have to like it.

I, I, like, that thing about her being a virgin, I almost was like, okay,

maybe that's just a weird weird thing that's in the sub.

Like sometimes editors add things in the subheading.

That's what I'm doing.

That's what I thought too.

That's what I thought too.

But no, it's like, it's, it's like, it's his some, it's, in his summation paragraph, he mentions it again.

Yeah.

Like for a second, it was like, maybe, like, his editor is Edward Tuttle from True Detective Season 1.

Like, you know.

Maybe, but no, no, he's, there was, think about, like, if this got edited at all, there was way more stuff about how, like, you know, even if she failed the Hyman test, they could just make her a new one.

Oh, boy.

All right.

All right, guys.

Yeah, that's enough of that.

Time to wrap up today's show.

Time to do a little promo, though, starting with you, Seamus.

Seamus, what's this here about you starting a new podcast?

Yes, I fell for the siren call

that every male writer eventually falls into.

If any of the listeners here listen to Truanan, they will likely be familiar with Dylan Saba and the great work that he does.

Him and I are joining up and creating Turbulence, which is a podcast where we analyze the disintegration of the liberal order since October 7th.

You can find a turbulence underscore pod on Twitter and on Instagram, and it will be dropping our first couple episodes at the end of this month.

It is the only podcast dedicated.

It is 5%

about what you just said.

The other 95% is about the Steve Aoke and Lil John 2011 club hit Turbulence.

The only podcast about

the Warren Z Von song Turbulence.

No, we interview all of these illustrious artists, all these people you're describing.

Do you know that what Warren Zoe Warren Zevon's last words is he heard the Steve Aoke song Turbulence?

It's a cover of his song, and he said, It's his now.

I always thought that was cool.

Well, Seamus, I'm definitely looking forward to this project.

Dylan is great.

Dylan and Seamus together.

Can't wait to hear it.

I will be collecting my cut, though.

As long as I can web myself.

I will give my tribute to the Don as is instructed.

Yeah, this is like

this is

one of the podcasts coming into the world that actually

should exist.

Yeah, absolutely.

I appreciate that.

The reason why people should have a podcast, because

they have genuinely fascinating insights, and I'm very excited to listen to this.

Bless you both.

Now to do a little business on our end, I got two things to promote here today.

The first is we've got a new merch drop that is live now on choppotraphouse.store.

The pre-orders are up now.

You can pre-order for two weeks.

We got some cool new merch for you.

Once again, at chapotraphouse.store, including

a Chapo Trap House dad hat, the classic Reaper t-shirt, the classic Reaper hat, and a trucker hat thing.

We got reissues of the Zapata oil t-shirt and hat in black.

And my personal favorite, we got a new Carousel Club t-shirt that I think is, I'm definitely going to get a couple of those.

The Carousel Club.

If you'll remember, fans of Jack Ruby will remember that August establishment.

So yeah, once again, chapotraphouse.store.

You can pre-order our new merchandise, which is

available to pre-order now.

Next up,

circle the date October 28th.

On October 28th, for your Halloween enjoyment, Hesse and I will be doing a ticketed live stream event.

Where we will be watching the classic film on its 40th anniversary, Stuart Gordon and Brian Junze's Reanimator.

There will be a Patreon discount code, give you 20% off tickets with the code CHAPO20.

We'll have a link to pre-order those tickets or place those tickets.

Place your ticket orders now.

We'll have a link up in the show description.

But once again, October 28th, Hessa and I join us for a Halloween screening on the 40th anniversary of the classic horror film Reanimator.

Join Hessa and I as we watch one of our favorite Halloween movies together, MST3K style.

October 28th.

Check it out.

All right, everybody.

Until next time, bye-bye.

Turmoil back in Moscow brought this turbulence down on me.

Turmoil back in Moscow brought this turbulence down on me.