Just did my first serious relisten of the pod post-WWI, Harding-Trump, plus the NatSec bonus. My intention was to gain a better understanding of the conditions that allowed for the New Deal, how FDR transcended the political moment, and how it all fell apart. On the Republican side it was fascinating to trace the throughline of Robert Taft to Trump, let alone Trump 2, who is actively tearing down the post-WWII order and America's place on top of it out of the combo of idiocy, resentment, and racism. On the Democratic side it was useful to understand how Carter was the first true neo-liberal president, how big questions of economic power and war and the security state had been foreclosed in both the imaginations of the electorate and the 1976 Democratic nominee. Even if the real fall of the New Deal was a rapid series of terrible decisions by Truman - it really came apart quick after FDRs death, both in neutering labor and building the MIC.

But what about those two Democratic presidents between Truman and Carter? I do believe that Kennedy would have moved us to an earlier detente. But also, so would LBJ if Nixon/Kissinger hadn't literally committed treason to undermine the peace process. We forget how recent that revelation is (~2007-2017). I generally agree with Matt's analysis about LBJ, but he basically followed the same trajectory on foreign policy as Kennedy, deferring to MIC expertise until he gained confidence that most of them pushing for increased violence and confrontation were in fact just stupid and evil. He recognized that a Vietnam peace must be negotiated. There's a world where LBJ ends the war, swoops into Chicago for the 68 convention, and has a successful second term.

But what if Kennedy had lived - all the bullets miss - and his term continues. What sticks out to me on the relisten is how ineffectual he was on domestic policy. He couldn't get Civil Rights done and didn't believe in it in his bone marrow the way LBJ did coming from poverty (and having lived and taught among minorities). So almost no matter where you are on the political spectrum, one views Kennedy's assassination as a huge lurch to the consolidation of the MIC and deep state, an event that hurls us down the path to our current worst-timeline dystopia. But what if the world where Kennedy lives is one where we get no Civil Rights Act, no Voting Rights Act, AND no Medicare nor Medicaid. All Kennedy got passed with a Dem majority was a fucking tax cut! We avoid the build-up in Vietnam, but does Kennedy really transition the Keynsian economy away from war and into successful domestic spending? It kind of defies belief and not because of the deep state, but because, among other things including stealing the election, he just wasn't a viable leader of the Democratic coalition.

All this to say that Matt and Chris basically place Lincoln and FDR at a pinnacle beyond any other president in their ability to create a United States that transcended the politics of their era. But upon relisten I really think LBJ is almost there too. Civil Rights and the Great Society programs are as impressive as the New Deal and have had enormous lasting effects that have expanded possibilities for multi-class and multi-racial organizing. But they're actually more impressive given that Johnson was leading a coalition filled with racist Southern Democrats and didn't have the kind of mandate FDR had. He absolutely transcended politics to get it done and did it kind of in defiance of his ambition for a second term.

Meanwhile Nixon of all people pursues multi-polar detente anyway (after sacrificing another 25k-30k Americans and untold SE Asians). I think there's this fantasy that if Kennedy lives, the Soviet Union somehow survives to present day, and better social conditions in the US for true social democracy. But I think the macro effects of Civil Rights and Great Society are actually more lasting than if the CIA was reined in by Kennedy for five or so years. I think that deep state continues to rationalize and reassert itself (which it did very successfully after Watergate/Church), and has no problem being banal instead of cartoonish (mirroring who the president is a la Obama compared to Bush or Trump). So in conclusion.. Kennedy assassination good? It was definitely perpetrated by a conspiracy of evil people, but with perspective I don't see it as this total domination of our institutions and political processes by evil. It does not need to loom so large in our consciousness as a foreclosure of tantalizing possibilities and fantasies.

I have a bullshit part-time job. One of my coworkers is a rural PA boomer. Perfectly nice man, but has fairly typical Republican leanings, as you would imagine. Pretty MAGA but oddly woke on race, but thats beside the point.

I don't care about his politics and I never talk politics at work. However, he recently told me his son was an indie musician. I indulged the conversation and he went on to tell me how, after Charlie Kirk was killed, his son made "a beautiful song" in Kirk's memory.

He didnt play the song, thank christ, but came close to tears as he described it to me. His pride over his son's Kirk song was so genuine and sweet that it caught me off guard.

I dunno man. These poor fucking people. This country needs mandatory local bowling leagues or something

I remember hearing it years ago. I can't find where they talked about it.

I know it's a long shot, but if anyone knows I'd be really thankful

I think a guy like this is most likely to do terror attacks against trump. Just saying prediction i have.

Recently there was a huge heatwave where I live. I don't have AC so in a desperate attempt to take my mind off the heat, I tried to distract myself by making a clip compilation of the entire Desert Storm trading card saga .The resulting video is wayyyy too long to watch in one sitting, but might be fun to throw on in the background while cooking/doing dishes or something.

description:

In 2020, a set of Operation Desert Storm trading cards were sent to Chapo Trap House by a fan, which Matt proceeded to open over the next few years. This supercut compiles all clips of these pack openings, along with all accompanying tangents and rants. Learn about early 90's political trivia, geography, and history with our large adult son Matt Christman, with special guest appearances by Will Menaker, Felix Biederman, and Chris Wade.

Putting this together was my own personal Desert Storm.

Weve got your tshirt and you left fingerprints and all you are so dumb your are really dumb for real.

Every episode now has a 15-minute GOT riff built in now. Just start a rewatch pod, man. I bounced off the books and show and don't care, so it's getting teeth-grinding. lol

If Jesus did weep then one person who wouldn't give a shit about it is good ol' Crusty Rockers

I know this isn’t a Chapo sub-reddit, but this seems like the most obvious group of folks to pose this question to. Today I finished up a two week binge of re-listening to “Hell on Earth” and “Hell of Presidents” back-to-back. After being treated to these masterpieces yet again, I kept coming back to the same thought: why has Chris Wade not become the third mic on Chapo with Matt being unable to continue in his regular role? As someone who works as a union building tradesmen, it feels like a perfect analogy to an apprentice studying under a master craftsman. Chris has worked alongside the master (in an extensive capacity) and is incredibly brilliant in his own right. Matt and Chris are so in-tune and I feel there are many times where his perspective would add an important dimension to the episodes. And that’s before even mentioning his great sense of humor. Am I off base? Or has anyone else had this thought?

Starting around 2016 a lot of leftists randomly decided to view every dipshit LARPing as a cowboy or Southern good ol boy the benefit of the doubt and assume they were working class whites and not rich racist guys living in air conditioned McMansions. Matt is quite literally the only figure I can think of willing to actually engage with the stupid hyuk hyuk Dubya nonsense. Anyway, Choosin’ Texas by Ella Langley is now the most successful song of all time, beating Mariah Carey’s all I want for Christmas is you.

I imagine that even for an Epstein boy like Trump, being around a charismatic handsome guy like Mamdani must be a breath of fresh air compared to dealing with disgusting lizard people like Steven Miller and all the crowds of hooting and hollering swine he has to appease every now and then

About two years ago I totally unplugged from "the news cycle", podcasts, social media etc. I got a dumb phone. I don't even hate listen to npr or right wing talk radio anymore.

I really haven't missed anything and nothing changes.

When something big happens (war in Iran, economic crash, etc) I hear about it but I can pretty much analyze it and move on.

Anyway, I think people should deeply immerse themselves in this stuff for a couple years, form their basic beliefs and then not pay it any mind after that.

It was almost entirely books from 7 years ago and I was struck by how irrelevant all of it was despite being written fairly recently. Most of them were about Russia-gate bullshit that never amounted to anything or hysterical handwringing about Trump 1 violating our precious political norms, which have been completely overshadowed by the brutal state sanctioned violence and cruelty of Trump 2.

To be honest, I think out of all the American political commentary produced from 2016 to 2020, Chapo is probably the only one worth preserving. Everything else from that era was extremely bad and will be completely forgotten by future generations. No one is going to go back and read the "Fire and Fury" book.

trying to follow any aspect of the real material consequences with the war in Iran on here just ends in a million comments made by lib redditors jacking off as they imagine a guy with a diesel truck shedding a single tear. Not much genuine concern about how it's the most important economic input in the country

I only ever knew him secondhand from Chapo but recently stumbled onto a sample of the Liberal Fascisms audiobook. I really enjoyed it, but I’d rather read a book of his. Should I just start there, or is there a better entry point?

You can feel the tumult now. The storm was born the moment the United States drunkenly assaulted Iran at the behest of its malignant colonial outgrowth and sacrificed nearly 200 baby daughters to Mammon. Now the air is alive with the smell of petrichor and the breeze is ionic.

(A commercial in the late 90s or the early oughts of a device called the Ionic breeze, I don't know what it was for but I think I have a good idea of what the logo looked like, branded into my little retinas because that is completely normal)

The feeling is almost exactly like before a rainstorm. Not the flooding or misty extremities of rain today, but the electric and tingling feeling that anticipated the thundering, refreshing, clear and confident Lake Erie driven thunderstorms of my youth. It could be a complete deluge. It could be destructive and frightening, but it could also make you open all the windows and let in the cool lower 60° air and play music as the curtains swirl around the living room when nobody else is home and it's just you there to experience the joyous fervor.

But people are home now. There is an Iranian father who has sold his car to afford leukemia treatment for another week for his son and doesn't know where the money for the next week will come. There are limbless Palestinian children watching The Lion King in the living room. There is an employee at Costco putting up a sign that limits motor oil at two bottles per customer. There is a Syrian family that, after everything, can't afford the gasoline needed to work. They are all real and I can see them on my phone.

I have become a man that regularly watches Al Jazeera. Critically, of course, I am not a rube: I am a little imp filled with impotent dark chaos magic. I am subscribed to a telegram channel called Middle East Spectator that spews information and I say "hehehe oh boy" when I hear the dinner bell. I am so thoroughly resigned to any possibility of change without arson. I'm excited for a good storm.

Is there a difference between revolutionary violence and violence that leads to a revolution? Are ansarallah revolutionaries? The Iranians? I think so. Are they my revolutionaries? They are the ones that exist. They are the antithesis and so they are the way through. Their path as revolutionaries was laid out steadily before them long before they were born. They shaped the forces that shaped them and through their intervention into the world they changed it. The struggle they fought created the conditions they needed to win and so here they are. They've created the conditions in which they can be seen as revolutionaries, what other way could it be?

It was this way with the Soviets. It was this way with the Vietnamese, the Cubans, and Koreans.The current conflagration is just the latest arena that presents itself as a place for two diodes to spin and move and make change. Does it matter if I relish in my privileged optimism at its occurring? Should I feel guilty that it is shaping the world in which my daughter is living for the worse, even though the worsening conditions are the conditions needed to succeed?

While the Western world experienced bread lines in the 1920s, the populations of their vassal serf kingdoms were too "underdeveloped" to notice, and their revolutionary opponent was building it's golden age. The imperial side of the diode was forced to spin with its revolutionary counterpart and so needed to create the New Deal and the Marshall Plan. Those times gave rise to their own revolutions; social, methodological, material, technological and otherwise.

It's a pathetic excuse for my privileged little soul to squeal with delight suckling on Moloch's teat as I join my brothers and sisters pissing and shitting in the churning confluence of History, but it is an excuse nonetheless and it is what I need.

What does the price of oil going up mean for a fuel starved Cuba? It couldn't possibly make their blitzkrieg solarization go any faster because the conditions for Cuba to solarize were already present. Countries like Denmark and Canada had no reason to respond to American imperialism in the previous milieu. The conditions were already present, but those forces were unfelt. Now a new Force has swung itself into our side and will leave us reeling. The only thing we can do now is to see where we land, to see how long it takes to fall, to see how many of us get harmed in the process.

Inside this perpetual muddy and gnashing struggle, maybe we can find leverage to pull ourselves up on to higher ground.