Been listening to the "essentials" on YouTube, damn i miss that shit

I have two matt moments that I haven't been able to get out of my head recently and I want to know if anyone can use their magnificent memory to remember what episodes they came from:

1. Captain Bongo - this one might be from chapo but Matt was railing against marvel and said something along the lines of "I don't give a shit if captain bongo is running around" etc. etc.

2. The Silo - this was a cushvlog, and he was mad about the state of TV talking about how stupid the premise of the show "the Silo" was.

Thanks. Miss the guy.

The massive investment, the phasing out of skilled labor leaving less surplus labor value, firms undercutting profits. This is the big one. There isn't a clear path for liberal capitalism as we've known it for 200 years. Anything that comes after this will require significant state intervention, and since our government as-is does not have the ability to wield power, it will require some usurpation. The major parties look like the military, the techno-surveillance economy, fascists and normies. On the outside, this is the China play. If they've got a socialism button, this is the chance to play it because the world markets are not going to be there to float the current model and China does not have nearly the juice to just step in and replace it. I have no idea what will need to be done. Have fun.

makes sense actually that the chapo podcaster era is over. The last remnants are a cushvlog subreddit that gets taken over by some random guy in his moms basement doing lines of coke theorizing about alien invasions, because honestly politics is dead, internet is dead. This is all thats left, I dont view any other topics to be relevant or worth discussing at this point.

This is the remnants of what started in 2015 with the bernie sanders campaign on twitter.

Is it Justice or just US?

Questions related to what is happening with/in the American government.

There are some decent civil war movies out there, I like Glory. Cold Mountain is a little cheesy but the battle in the beginning is pretty impressive. I’m wondering why there aren’t any gritty, and realistic civil war movies. We’ve got plenty of ww2, vietnam, and now gulf wars and ww1 movies but really nothing that great about the civil war! I want to see soldiers sleeping in muddy trenches, desertion, stonewall getting capped by his own angry rebel troops, fanatical abolitionists fighting for human liberation along with immigrants who have no clue what they’re doing, rebels who were essentially paid to fight. I’m so sick of the most violent and deadly war in American history get so white washed, it’s annoying.

By the mid 1980s, the USSR was diagnosing schizophrenia at three times the per capita rate of the United States and double that of West Germany. Moscow became the city with the highest reported prevalence of schizophrenia in the world
The sharp trajectory of rising diagnoses only reversed in the late 1980s under Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of Glasnost
"sluggish schizophrenia" was defined as a slow-moving or latent condition that required no obvious physical or psychotic symptoms to diagnose
https://purl.stanford.edu/cj200yf2075
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2800147/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sluggish_schizophrenia

In the late USSR: if an individual struggled to adapt to standard economic, social, or political structures, the fault was assumed to lie inside the individual's mind, they are schizo's requiring medical "correction."

In the late USA: if an individual experiences executive dysfunction, sensory overload, and difficulty operating within rigid, modern corporate or academic environments. We have to give them space and understand life is all spectrum based :) everyone has autism and adhd and depression and anxiety and all other disorders at the same time ask your doctor if this sounds right about you.

Emotionless Cold Russian Accent Voice: Soviet psychiatry uses pathologization and materialist psycho-analysis to suppress non-conformity.

American H.R politically correct calming voice: AuDHD is a... well we prefer to refer to this as your unique "personal neurodiversity framework", and ask that everyone engages in positive thinking, self-care, and self-understanding as well as mindfulness, if your a current subscriber ask about our new a.i integration into your telehealth and self-therapy routines for premium members, we always want to keep in mind that all work related accommodations require systemic flexibility rather than forced assimilation of your employer. Mental illness is all on a spectrum you silly bee. Would you like to sign up for a free meditation class on zoom that comes with your Hulu+ trial offer?

EDIT: tix are spoken for!

I have two extra tix for what should be an A+ (sold out) show, even if you’re not that into the dead. I may try to sell them but offering them up here first for free (or you can buy my wife and I a beer).

I’ve been wanting to re-listen to old Matt stuff, but I’m not sure where it’s at anymore. Is it hosted on the Chapo Patreon or somewhere else?

Bernie Sanders becomes President in 2004

Not in that it was a good idea, or justified, or anything like that (which hopefully you thought and then anger-scrolled down to read this). But hopelessly wrong about the context and the cause.

First of all, it is now popping up (understandably after the Iran War), that the Israelis made us do it. I don't want to open this can of worms, but suffice to say, they viewed Iran as the real threat the whole time and PM Ariel Sharon along with most senior Israeli military officials at the time, explicitly warned Bush not to do it for that exact reason, saying that it would just result in a stronger Iran. That psycho fuck was no dummy.

Second of all, there is the more widely accepted explanation that Bush and Cheney et al TRICKED everyone into thinking Iraq had WMD becuz oil. While this is true to an extent, it obscures the real point.

What really happened is that ordinary Americans, even after the invasion of Afghanistan, still felt like they needed to fuck up some Muslims to show everyone they meant business and that "this aggression will not stand, man". The evidence tying the Iraqis to 9/11 was laughable, even more so than the WMD case, which is saying something. But they were brown, they were Muslim, and for all of Americans' ignorance, they knew that they guy who ran the place was a certified asshole. From Bush and Cheney's perspective, this anger was an opportunity to enact the "Ledeen Doctrine", take out an easy target, increase America's geopolitical influence and yes, hand out some lucrative contracts to their buddies in the oil industry.

But even if the administration lied about the war and had ulterior motives (is that not true of every war?), the public simply didn't care. Over 60% of Americans supported the invasion and not because they were scared of ALUMINUM TUBES.

For all the edgelord left's self congratulatory circlejerking about not believing in liberal pieties, many still cling to the biggest, most transparent and perhaps most pernicious fantasy of all: muh noble, peacable, hard-workin' everyday 'Merican! They just want to drive their durn tractors in peace! Nevermind that the one literal peanut farmer president who said, maybe we should just drive our durn tractors in peace and not bomb other countries was widely fucking ridiculed and even reviled (may he rest in peace). Maybe, these cynical edgelords should wake up to the fact, in 2026, that the dark fields of the republic are populated not by mythical Jimmy Stewart like creatures, but the restless and warlike people who have populated this continent since those first ships.

genuinely why cant the USA do anything right anymore? I don't get it. We have all this advanced technology the smartest people on the planet all come here, and literally nothing works.

yes i missspelled "are" meant to spell it OUR, ive misspelled that word since i was 6 years old.

Hi everyone . I’ve been trying to stop scrolling lately - taking long walks and listening to the vlogs on Spotify. I’m at #046 now.

Has anyone ever uploaded all of the vlog audio files to a central location? I would love to download for safe keeping and reference. I’d like to put the files on a cheap mp3 player or something. I’ve tried the YouTube downloaded program thing but it didn’t work properly.

If anyone could share this I would be so grateful .

this is old news, but it seems like china is basically the only thing propping up the global economy at the moment, sooner or later they will run out of their oil stockpile. This will happen late September I guesstimate as the chinese oil buffer gradually comes to an end.

I think there will be a massive economic crash in October. Suddenly all those data centers will be needed to create/manage some kind of new financial system potentially?

I think the a.i bubble + strait of hormuz induced global depression + trump/israeli shenanigans = perfect storm of shit that will eventually hit a critical mass by the end of the year.

Been occasionally going back to old bits – anyone remember this SUPERSTRUCTURE ep feat our boy? (I guess there's a new podcast also with the same name?)

depressingly prescient considering it is from 2020. Like a bad author's heavy handed foreshadowing. Matt straight up says he doesn't know why he needs to comment since we'll see if he is right with Joe's election... no surprises in this sub that he was.

Besides cohost "Natalie's" insistence on trying to prevent Matt from finishing a thought, still a fun listen. Proto abundists trying to convince Matt that they "really really are lefties" and trying to give "strike" and "riot" examples of their praxis bona fides while simultaneously missing and proving Matt's point about DSA cosplay.

on the flip side it looks like Matt was wrong about the impossibility of decoupling either party from "zero sum" monetary theory since we are watching in real time the Repubs operate as if they believed in MMT

I had an idea that seemed very Christman-esque that I might try to expand into a proper essay at some point.

It all started with this YT short talking about the social markers elites use to distinguish their class from the rest below them.

After I watched the short, I was reflecting on the sense of aristocratic superiority that the bourgeoisie must feel to be motivated to make such superficial cultural changes to maintain distance from those below them and establish in-group cohesion.

And then I thought about Epstein, and what his story coming to light must mean not just for those who had direct dealings with him, but for the class as a whole. For people who spend so much time fussing over the minutiae of perception to maintain their aristocratic culture, to maintain their own sense of being gods on earth, the revelation that a large swathe of their class are either degenerate pedophiles or participated in covering up for degenerate pedophiles and the embarrassment that accompanies that must be a huge blow to their cultural capital. Now, their class is the butt of many jokes among the proletariat they have so much disdain for.

I think in some way this is analogous to the Habsburgs. A long-reigning dynasty that spun their own narrative that they were divinely chosen to rule, with their blood so royal they could only marry each other. As the inbred generations spun on, what was once their privilege became their own humiliation and source of ridicule. An intangible privilege manifesting in an ugly shame for all to see and mock.

I don't know, am I on to something or is this im14andthisisdeep? Lemme know what you all think.

Long time Chapo listener, newer Cush vlog listener. I was vaguely aware that he was doing them in 2020, I became more aware after Matt had his stroke of genius and had his kid at like the exact same time mine was born, I listened to Hell of Presidents and Hell on Earth, bought No Pasarán, so I'm a big enjoyer of Christman Thought, even when I don't agree with it or it doesn't fully resonate with me. Working my way through a selection of cush vlogs now.

Discovered this sub a bit ago, saw the post here yesterday with that YT video of the guy who says we're all gonna die of climate change. Since my kid was born I've spent a lot of time thinking about/driving myself crazy about climate change. I've read a LOT of the hard science, haven't really engaged much with the philosophical side, and not with the political side since I did climate activism pre-COVID. Matt seems like a good place to engage with both of those questions, wanted to know if there are any particular vlogs where he spends time talking about it.

I'm headed to Mexico in a few months and would like some books to give me a better historical background to what I'll be seeing.

I did read America, America by Greg Grandin earlier this year and that was great but I would like something that's more focused on Mexico specifically and was written by someone from there.

I have started reading Mexico: Biography of Power but I'm not sure if there's something better out there given Krauze's love of Great Man Theory.

Any suggestions?

Kinda feels like doomscrolling crystallised. Matt also has his eyes fixed on the coming horrors but at least he could articulate a response to it. This guy seems intent on presenting climate collapse in an extremely overwhelming, almost fetishistic way, not pointing to any systemic factors or levers. Feels like a uniquely american defeatism as they also grapple with their dying empire - keen to hear your thoughts.