The euphemism bit of Carlin’s routine that this is a part of falls apart when it’s taken out of context like this. It's a damning statement and a good quote, if you read it a certain way in relation to a specific cause or operation. At the same time, when read more broadly or in relation to a cause which has the opposite intent, then it fails miserably. As a standalone line, it's pretty edgelord shit, but in context it's calling out how specific groups' actions were obscured by calling them "freedom fighters". The specific bit this comes from is formed around this and this is the actual quote: “Israeli murderers are called commandos. Arab commandos are called terrorists. Contra killers are called Freedom Fighters. Well if crime fighters fight crime and firefighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part of it to us, do they?” The scene the bit was set to was criticizing the entirety of America’s invasion of the Middle East in the early 2000’s.
This and, importantly, Christian Nationalists and Priests and Pastors who preached Antisemitism and agreement with the Nazis, were hugely important to making the Nazis seem "reasonable".
Italy did in fact fight the Red Army in WW2; it went *exactly* as well as you'd expect. The Italian Army in Russia had 235,000 men. They lost 114,520 of them.
Don't diss the Italian Army in Russia, I mean they charged tanks on horseback armed with satchel charges... won the engagement! OK it was a desperate gamble with what they had at hand but still.
My mental image of Robert was always that photo of him in a jacket holding a handgun. It’s just now dawning on me that that photo is probably 10 years old
It's really hard to talk about extremism without sounding like you're being hyperbolic! I often think about the Trunchbull telling Matilda and her classmates no parent will believe that she throws kids over the fence, because who's going to believe that really happens?!
I listened to this on Spotify, and the actual ads I'm getting are for the state of Ohio, so mattresses are a step down in weirdness. I've never lived in Ohio, wanted to live in Ohio, or been to Ohio, btw
I live in Ohio and even voluntarily moved back to Ohio (if you count moving back home because broke) and it eventually grew on me enough to want to stay... ...and I still can't fucking imagine anyone listening to an ad and deciding to move to Ohio. But it's a whole thing that has funded several massive boondoggles in Cleveland. Check out the "medical mart" project, and realize that the premise was that building it would somehow draw one in four medical conferences to Cleveland over the currently popular destinations of [checks list] Vegas, Florida and Hawaii. How did they come up with that number? Working backwards from the conclusion that funding the project would be worthwhile. And then there's the hyper loop project. "What if people could commute to Chicago from Cleveland" was a project people spent serious money on for years. I'd argue it was better thought out than dozens of attempts to replicate things that worked in Chicago... as if Chicago already existing is irrelevant to trying to turn Cleveland into Chicago. Anyway, what I'm saying is that there's a good chance that ads pitching Ohio are probably unrelated to selling anyone outside of Ohio on moving here, and are probably better explained as some real estate guys trying to get taxpayers to keep lining their pockets. If I wasn't morally opposed to being a landlord I would probably consider investing in property here though. It's probably going to stay a reasonable place for lots of climate refugees to end up in coming decades.
I like how Robert implies that Italy fighting the Red Army was just a hypothetical, when they actually did fight on the Russian Front. It went about as poorly for the Italians as Robert said, though.
There's a Polish war comedy, made in 1960s, called "Giuseppe w Warszawie" [Giuseppe in Warsaw]. Giuseppe is Italian soldier sent to R&R from Eastern Front. The train he's in gets derailed by resistance group and he hitches a ride on civilian train, full of local Polish people. And that's just the beginning of his adventures...
This is really reminding me of some arguments in the LGBT+ community in the mid 2000s where some activists felt that marriage was essentially an impossible goal, and so they wanted to argue only for equal access to healthcare, housing, adoption, and employment. They felt like these were fundamentally less threatening and more achievable goals (and I guess the "reasonableness' of the rhetoric felt safer or like it'd draw less negative attention). Granted, the Love is Love campaign finally made a cultural dent and then the Supreme Court ruled on marriage equality as a form of gender equality and right to privacy in 2015. And I guess the people who were feeling cautious were both right and wrong in a way. The rise in public openness about LGB life, families, and visibly loving commitment has made it much harder for people to attack gay people for being married. But now all that fury is falling on the broader queer community, especially on trans folks who already had it hard enough. Of course, the Heritage Foundation already got Roe vs Wade thrown out, and that was the foundation for all our legal wins so far. So we're not nearly as secure as we could be either.
While I appreciate the pivot to video, the changes to the thumbnails make new episodes harder to spot in my feed. I'd also prioritize a better naming convention for the episodes over creating unique thumbnails for each episode.
When you have one person saying it's raining and another person the opposite, a good journalist doesn't simply report both sides - they open the window and look
There are a concerning number of people, especially people in power, who believe in the necessity of absolving themselves of all moral stances, all moral agency, in all situations, to maintain legitimacy. As if a situation where their moral abstinence lets them permit atrocity to happen is not an inevitability of that stance.
Michael, Kyle didn't get kicked out of Tenacious D. They're just laying low for a while and Jack even said so in a statement a week or two ago. The D will rise again!
Glad to hear we're on the same page regarding Chakotay, but you have to admit that O'Brien did have some personal growth in his feelings about Cardassians while on Empok Nor.
To be fair, the actual pivot to video was fine and made a bunch of shows people loved, it was the subsequent liquidation of the video department that worked out poorly.
As an Italian American, yeah Robert is right... He would have been at least mildly alright with the ladies provided he was SOMEWHAT smooth. He had that classic look 🤷🏼♀️
The Fire and Fury guy said about Trump that meeting Trump and Bannon was kind of similar to what you're saying about Mussolini. Basically, he said that if you ever got invited to dinner with them you should go, because it will be great! And the incredible love-bombing that Trump does. When you're around him, he loves you, and thinks you're great, and wants to do great things with you. And the second you're on the bad side, he always knew you were awful, and he never trusted you. But he talked about kind of believing it as long as he was around. I think Trump's is really convenient, because he's so openly gross. People love that they have access to Trump and Bannon, and they are pretty transparent about their lust for power. Trump is transparent about the switch between people he can use and people he can't. And everyone in his circle seems to fall for it. They see him as somehow a conduit for their personal elevation, and the achievement of their desires, and constantly he betrays that, and nobody seems to ever learn anything. Somehow he has an aura that makes You see similar stories with Boris Johnson. One of the best ones is Rory Stewart talking about being promised a job in the cabinet in the exact same time as being not promised it. Nadine Dorries believing that he grew up in poverty like she did. Lots of Tory politicians explaining how this guy that absolutely couldn't be trusted could somehow be trusted and was somehow their ticket to victory. £350 million on the side of a bus. But the same things happen with most politicians. They're just less obviously lying. Either because they're playing the game more, or because they're just less convincing and less apparently able to do anything about it. For politicians, it's the game. Your fave does it too. And outside of politics, people do it. Your boss will deny you a raise and have you believing that if you just buckle down and work hard, the money is coming, knowing fully well that they would never give you the money. This is a natural process, and people are always vain enough to believe that they're not going to fall for it, which means that they almost inevitably fall for it. That vanity causes a lot of people to be unable to process the fact that they fell for it. Even when they turn against the things they believed, their embarrassment causes them to deny that they ever thought anything different, in the hopes that nobody is going to notice. And media reporting on things means that they're necessarily having to flirt with the ideas that are being sold. If they write a hit piece about that politician, that might be the end of their access, so they have incentives not to do that. If they have access to the politician, the politician is using it to influence them. If they are reporting on that politician, then they are looking for the most interesting story they can write. If that politician throws something insane into the mix, then the story is inevitably going to be about the insane thing they said, whether or not that's a useful story to be telling. Ultimately, grifters get away with it because they know how to play the game, and the media just isn't set up to deal with grifting, and they rapidly work out how to control access so that anyone who might try is kept away from them.
I love the idea that social pressure and innate human awkwardness was weaponized by fascists to control the news media. So simple but also so fuckin real lmao
10:20 I love being able to witness Sophie contemplate interrupting Robert's shenanigans with a "Robert!", weigh the effort, and dismiss it as not the right time/not far enough over the line yet.
4:33 Little did she know, NASA would say they’re not coming home for a while merely a day after posting. Seen plenty of memes since saying “Starliner can’t” using the graphic Boeing made to say it could be reused 10 times lmao
32:00 "The Hitler Vote is a symptom; not necessarily of anti-Jewish hatred, but of momentary resentment caused by economic misery..." You guys laugh abd immediately say it was absolutely caused by Jew-Hatred, but you have entire episodes about how people voted for Hitler without actually being antisemitic themselves specifically because it made sense economically.
The So-Cal low-cal calzone zone? Is it local? People get very sick in low-no gravity situations. Your immune system shuts down. Ahh, the illusion of movement...
I really disagree with the reaction of the cast to the Einstein quote. He was saying that people voting for Nazism weren't just crazed with race-hatred. They were people who felt threatened by the upheaval to the status quo. An idea you have entire podcast episodes dedicated to exploring.
@@johnmckiernan2176 I don't think it's apologia to point out that hatred alone doesn't get you a Nazi Germany. Hatred in general and anti-semitism in particular was (and indeed is) widespread within *and* without.
32:41 Why was Einstein wrong? Many of the issues of pre-war Germany may have been due to economic anxieties, of which the Hitler vote would have been a symptom. Einstein probably did not paint the picture accurately, as there was certainly anti-Jewish sentiment in the Nazi party and in Germany. But I got the impression that Einstein's nuanced take of German politics was not misinformed or naive, but misinterpreted as authoritative by the U.S. media (i.e. the entire picture).
"Economic anxieties" were cited for January 6th, wherein small business owners like, um,...realtors and people with precarious employment like...off duty police officers on fat public pensions flew at great expense across a massive country like the US to participate in a would-be coup against the electoral process. Because "economic precarity and anxiety". Or something. Hang on, that nararative is total nonsense. And so is the narrative that Nazi supporters weren't whole-hearted anti-Semites, anti-Ziganists, homophobes and fans of political assassination. I guess, for Einstein, we have to reverse the "even a stopped clock" aphorism. Even Einstein got things wrong sometimes.
PS the curse of the intelligent and the reasonable, ie the Einsteins of this world, is to project their own intelligence and reason on the large minority of humans who unfortunately lack these attributes. I'm always perturbed at the "evil genius" portrayal of the Nazis and of Hitler in particular. Hitler failed to get into art college, ffs. I did that, and I graduated to become an art teacher and art historian, and I'm a complete schlub. They ran IQ tests on the Nuremberg trial detainees. Only one, Hjalmar Schacht, had an IQ score that was in any way rare, (147, 99.9th percentile) and he was a late joiner to the party, an economist and academic who joined the Nazis after Hitler's rise to power. The rest were the definitive "dumb people's idea of a smart person". Even Goering, the next highest on this particular (somewhat arbitrary) scale, scored a 138. Think a mildly gifted engineer or software programmer. Not an ubermensch. Not by a long shot. I'm good at these puzzle solving tests and I am, in many ways, a moron. The prospect that high ranking Nazis were mostly dumber than me is not a comforting one. Their voters must have been utter dribblers. You would have to be to believe Nazi BS.
I was going to get mad about the Miles O’Brien slander, but then you compared him to Einstein, and now I’m not sure what to think. Either way, fuck the Cardassian Empire, and never forget Sito Jaxa!
Love hearing about people being brutally hacked apart in the Rwandan genocide on LLbD just to hear Robert defend hacking people apart on his podcast. My mental health has never been better!
The major problem with this episode is the varying degrees of hindsight bias. Einstein expected an improving economic situation to take the wind out of the Nazis’ political sails, hence why he did not expect them to be a major threat. The cruel irony is that this almost happened, just as the Nazis were invited to form a coalition cabinet in 1933 (internal Nazi documents show how worried the leadership was that the party’s electoral support had crested). Similarly, Italy as a bulwark against communism should be seen in the light of the widespread fears of communist subversion and a world revolution, not necessarily as a direct confrontation with the Soviet Union. Hell, geography alone would have made that prospect very unlikely before Hitler had Mussolini send troops to join the German attack. Sure, there was a lot of complacency and outright cheering on of fascism and Nazism in many news outlets prior to WWII, but it’s easy to be wise after the fact with 20/2 hindsight.
It was also hardly a bizarre stance for Adolph Ochs to be worried that a Jewish owned newspaper might either not be believed if it published stories of Jewish suffering, or, worse, might be targeted and used by antisemites as an example of nefarious, Jewish media. As for Sulzberger’s stance, it was indeed both cruel and narrow, but even more so, because the Jews persecuted in Germany were generally not, as portrayed here, poor, rural or refugees from the east, but mainly a well integrated and urban minority (as seen by, say, their service in WWI). Hence, German Jews were not only highly literate (as was the rest of the populace), but they tended to speak German, rather than Yiddish. They often looked down on “Jewish educational institutions”, preferring the ordinary German education system and making their mark in academia, though they never dominated the latter (in contrast to what Nazi conspiracy theories would claim). It’s thus telling that, just like other, similarly well integrated Jewish communities in Northern and Western Europe, Germany’s “established” Jewish community had a clear wish to see the Jewish refugees from the east quickly sent on to The United States, Palestine or wherever faraway destination would be possible, out of a (well-founded) fear that these “Eastern Jews” would inflame domestic antisemitism. This had been the case ever since the pogroms of the late 19th century had begun pushing Jews out of the Russian Empire, but, in another cruel irony, The United States had decided to sharply curtail immigration, especially from Eastern and Southern Europe (and basically barring it entirely from Asia) in the Immigration Acts of 1917 and 1924. Conversely, the Holocaust would not have reached the huge number of Jewish victims it did, if the Nazi conquests (especially in Poland and the Soviet Union) had not expanded the regime’s reach far beyond the comparatively small the number of Jews living within the borders of Weimar Germany.
Borderland is literally one of the most shallow pointless games I've ever played and someone thought it should be made into a film... I think the 2000s era of "haha so rand0m" is back
Don't justify terrorism Robert, that was pretty gross. To put another way, one problem with terrorism is that it often strengthens repression. It fails more often than it succeeds at achieving its goals. Terrorism is not just immoral but also impractical in reality.
They aren’t conservative… but that doesn’t mean they can’t critique liberals/liberal media. There are also more types of political views than conservative and liberal; just because that’s how the US tends to portray it, doesn’t mean it’s accurate.
Watching Robert's voice come out of his mouth in real time after listening to him for with no video for 6 years is mind blowing.
I know right 😂
This but with sophie saying 'Robert!?'
Agreed!!! 😅
MIND BLOWING
Workers: “What if our bosses paid us more?”
Rich people: “Welp, I guess it’s time to kill democracy.”
Why do I feel like Sophie is Robert's wrangler, not just producer
Yep
Robert's exchanges with Sofie exude more dad energy than from any actual dad I've ever met.
Funny, I thought "little bro"
Short answer: "Money."
Long answer: "On a big bed of money."
REALLY long answer... take it away, Robert!
A quote from one of my favorite George Carlin bits: "If Crime Fighters fight crime, and Fire Fighters fight fires, what do Freedom Fighters fight?"
The euphemism bit of Carlin’s routine that this is a part of falls apart when it’s taken out of context like this.
It's a damning statement and a good quote, if you read it a certain way in relation to a specific cause or operation. At the same time, when read more broadly or in relation to a cause which has the opposite intent, then it fails miserably.
As a standalone line, it's pretty edgelord shit, but in context it's calling out how specific groups' actions were obscured by calling them "freedom fighters". The specific bit this comes from is formed around this and this is the actual quote:
“Israeli murderers are called commandos. Arab commandos are called terrorists. Contra killers are called Freedom Fighters.
Well if crime fighters fight crime and firefighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part of it to us, do they?”
The scene the bit was set to was criticizing the entirety of America’s invasion of the Middle East in the early 2000’s.
@@SomaCruz500I appreciate this context! You explained it well and very clearly, which is also something that I greatly appreciate. Thank you! 🤙🏽
The way Michael’s face lit up and the mention of Dreamcast was a nice way to end the episode. Jet Set Radio
This is definitely one where I'm delighted to have the video, lol. Finally I can see the long suffering look Sophie gives Robert
That eye roll near the beginning was epic.
This and, importantly, Christian Nationalists and Priests and Pastors who preached Antisemitism and agreement with the Nazis, were hugely important to making the Nazis seem "reasonable".
And that continues with Trump and white nationalism today
Yep
Italy did in fact fight the Red Army in WW2; it went *exactly* as well as you'd expect. The Italian Army in Russia had 235,000 men. They lost 114,520 of them.
BIG OOF.
Perpetual Italian L.
At least they managed to take Rome
🤌🤌🥶🥶💀💀
Don't diss the Italian Army in Russia, I mean they charged tanks on horseback armed with satchel charges... won the engagement! OK it was a desperate gamble with what they had at hand but still.
My mental image of Robert was always that photo of him in a jacket holding a handgun. It’s just now dawning on me that that photo is probably 10 years old
It's really hard to talk about extremism without sounding like you're being hyperbolic! I often think about the Trunchbull telling Matilda and her classmates no parent will believe that she throws kids over the fence, because who's going to believe that really happens?!
Am I the only one who misses the bumper music where the ads go?
Twas a sweet baseline 😘 👌
WaPo killing it the other day. Oh, I meant getting us killed.😂
"We dont have to go all Miles O'brien"! (Best line of the whole thing)
I look at a crocodile and say... is that an alligator
Please, PLEASE make a short of the part where Robert talks about the Maquis and supporting the bombing of Cardassian infrastructure!
38:35 Awesome Star Trek DS9/Voyager reference, my outer nerd thanks you! 🖖😂
I listened to this on Spotify, and the actual ads I'm getting are for the state of Ohio, so mattresses are a step down in weirdness. I've never lived in Ohio, wanted to live in Ohio, or been to Ohio, btw
I live in Ohio and even voluntarily moved back to Ohio (if you count moving back home because broke) and it eventually grew on me enough to want to stay...
...and I still can't fucking imagine anyone listening to an ad and deciding to move to Ohio.
But it's a whole thing that has funded several massive boondoggles in Cleveland. Check out the "medical mart" project, and realize that the premise was that building it would somehow draw one in four medical conferences to Cleveland over the currently popular destinations of [checks list] Vegas, Florida and Hawaii.
How did they come up with that number? Working backwards from the conclusion that funding the project would be worthwhile.
And then there's the hyper loop project. "What if people could commute to Chicago from Cleveland" was a project people spent serious money on for years.
I'd argue it was better thought out than dozens of attempts to replicate things that worked in Chicago... as if Chicago already existing is irrelevant to trying to turn Cleveland into Chicago.
Anyway, what I'm saying is that there's a good chance that ads pitching Ohio are probably unrelated to selling anyone outside of Ohio on moving here, and are probably better explained as some real estate guys trying to get taxpayers to keep lining their pockets.
If I wasn't morally opposed to being a landlord I would probably consider investing in property here though. It's probably going to stay a reasonable place for lots of climate refugees to end up in coming decades.
I live in Finland and get movie trailers IN DUTCH on spotify. Sometimes there is just no rhyme or reason to these things.
So Cal
Low Cal
Calzone
Zone
is a wonderful idea
It would be a great catchy jingle too.
Autozone
“The best lack all conviction, while the
Worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
~W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming
Yeats was one of those worst people. A fascist for a good portion of his life
These video versions of the pod do nothing to dilute my unsettlingly strong love for Robert ❤️
10:51 Sophie "I have a great axe" 🤣🤣🤣🤣
I like how Robert implies that Italy fighting the Red Army was just a hypothetical, when they actually did fight on the Russian Front. It went about as poorly for the Italians as Robert said, though.
There's a Polish war comedy, made in 1960s, called "Giuseppe w Warszawie" [Giuseppe in Warsaw]. Giuseppe is Italian soldier sent to R&R from Eastern Front. The train he's in gets derailed by resistance group and he hitches a ride on civilian train, full of local Polish people. And that's just the beginning of his adventures...
"Every Todd I've seen has been a Todd." So true...
Done forever... WELCOME BACK! Great opening
This is really reminding me of some arguments in the LGBT+ community in the mid 2000s where some activists felt that marriage was essentially an impossible goal, and so they wanted to argue only for equal access to healthcare, housing, adoption, and employment. They felt like these were fundamentally less threatening and more achievable goals (and I guess the "reasonableness' of the rhetoric felt safer or like it'd draw less negative attention). Granted, the Love is Love campaign finally made a cultural dent and then the Supreme Court ruled on marriage equality as a form of gender equality and right to privacy in 2015.
And I guess the people who were feeling cautious were both right and wrong in a way. The rise in public openness about LGB life, families, and visibly loving commitment has made it much harder for people to attack gay people for being married. But now all that fury is falling on the broader queer community, especially on trans folks who already had it hard enough. Of course, the Heritage Foundation already got Roe vs Wade thrown out, and that was the foundation for all our legal wins so far. So we're not nearly as secure as we could be either.
How am I supposed to listen to Robert if you put a cute dog in the frame?
Rob’s Pizone reference was off the hook
I listened to this while I was literally painting multiple original paintings. Certainly offered perspective...
I have listened to one hour of Michael's novel and from what I've heard so far I love it!
I kind of miss the intro jingle at the ad breaks :0
@@DMKleinArts I actually enjoy listening/watching without ads; I have to fast-forward through them on Spotify and it can get annoying quickly
@@KB_5280I've never heard any ads on YouSued, but I did enjoy the jingle...
@@KB_5280Yes, but the jingle was nice
@@KB_5280 oh, I bet the ads were a slog. I've only listened to BtB on RUclips, so never got the ads, just the little jingle.
While I appreciate the pivot to video, the changes to the thumbnails make new episodes harder to spot in my feed. I'd also prioritize a better naming convention for the episodes over creating unique thumbnails for each episode.
The post-TNG Star Trek commentary just made my night, Cheers!!
When you have one person saying it's raining and another person the opposite, a good journalist doesn't simply report both sides - they open the window and look
I realized Michael sounds like Doug Benson and now I can't unhear it.
Part one was one of the best episodes I've heard on BtB, hoping this one brings it across the finish line
There are a concerning number of people, especially people in power, who believe in the necessity of absolving themselves of all moral stances, all moral agency, in all situations, to maintain legitimacy. As if a situation where their moral abstinence lets them permit atrocity to happen is not an inevitability of that stance.
Love seeing the support for the Maquis! Down with the spoon heads! 🖖
Just noticed the bottle of Lagavulin on Robert's shelf, very nice.
Haberman isnt the only one guilty of putting their own profits above the good of our democracy.
Woodward did the same thing, more than once.
Heya, could you add the source books mentioned to the description? Thanks.
37:45 I wrote a paper in a college philosophy class in 2004 comparing the firebombing of Dresden to 9/11. I got an A.
Every todd I've seen HAS been a todd
god damn it my brain went to star trek like 10 seconds before michael's did what the hell i love you
Michael, Kyle didn't get kicked out of Tenacious D. They're just laying low for a while and Jack even said so in a statement a week or two ago.
The D will rise again!
Glad to hear we're on the same page regarding Chakotay, but you have to admit that O'Brien did have some personal growth in his feelings about Cardassians while on Empok Nor.
26:24 - i learned about the tutsi and hutu from a warren zevon song "bujumbura"
I realized I've never seen sophie until now and I've for some reason been picturing her in a tweed jacket the whole time.
honestly i kinda like that yall are doing these in video now
There is no such thing as neutral when people are dying. You are either want it to stop or you don't.
I'm trying to think of a good Maquis joke, but I got nothing. I'm just here for the reference. And I'm a Kira Nerys stan
The Climb is excellent. I highly recommend it.
I adore Michael Swaim ❤
I hope this pivot to video goes better than at cracked ❤
To be fair, the actual pivot to video was fine and made a bunch of shows people loved, it was the subsequent liquidation of the video department that worked out poorly.
@@bfish89ryuhayabusaabsolutely, I enjoyed the videos. Just associate that phrase with the fall of Cracked
Oof
Nothing could ever be any better than Sex House
Oh damn, Sex House was from the Onion. My bad. Cracked must have had some great video too though
As an Italian American, yeah Robert is right... He would have been at least mildly alright with the ladies provided he was SOMEWHAT smooth. He had that classic look 🤷🏼♀️
5:08-5:19 -- The death screen from the game Marauders
The Fire and Fury guy said about Trump that meeting Trump and Bannon was kind of similar to what you're saying about Mussolini. Basically, he said that if you ever got invited to dinner with them you should go, because it will be great! And the incredible love-bombing that Trump does. When you're around him, he loves you, and thinks you're great, and wants to do great things with you. And the second you're on the bad side, he always knew you were awful, and he never trusted you. But he talked about kind of believing it as long as he was around.
I think Trump's is really convenient, because he's so openly gross. People love that they have access to Trump and Bannon, and they are pretty transparent about their lust for power. Trump is transparent about the switch between people he can use and people he can't. And everyone in his circle seems to fall for it. They see him as somehow a conduit for their personal elevation, and the achievement of their desires, and constantly he betrays that, and nobody seems to ever learn anything. Somehow he has an aura that makes
You see similar stories with Boris Johnson. One of the best ones is Rory Stewart talking about being promised a job in the cabinet in the exact same time as being not promised it. Nadine Dorries believing that he grew up in poverty like she did. Lots of Tory politicians explaining how this guy that absolutely couldn't be trusted could somehow be trusted and was somehow their ticket to victory. £350 million on the side of a bus.
But the same things happen with most politicians. They're just less obviously lying. Either because they're playing the game more, or because they're just less convincing and less apparently able to do anything about it. For politicians, it's the game. Your fave does it too.
And outside of politics, people do it. Your boss will deny you a raise and have you believing that if you just buckle down and work hard, the money is coming, knowing fully well that they would never give you the money.
This is a natural process, and people are always vain enough to believe that they're not going to fall for it, which means that they almost inevitably fall for it. That vanity causes a lot of people to be unable to process the fact that they fell for it. Even when they turn against the things they believed, their embarrassment causes them to deny that they ever thought anything different, in the hopes that nobody is going to notice.
And media reporting on things means that they're necessarily having to flirt with the ideas that are being sold. If they write a hit piece about that politician, that might be the end of their access, so they have incentives not to do that. If they have access to the politician, the politician is using it to influence them. If they are reporting on that politician, then they are looking for the most interesting story they can write. If that politician throws something insane into the mix, then the story is inevitably going to be about the insane thing they said, whether or not that's a useful story to be telling.
Ultimately, grifters get away with it because they know how to play the game, and the media just isn't set up to deal with grifting, and they rapidly work out how to control access so that anyone who might try is kept away from them.
59:03 HOW DID THEY CALL THE TIME WALZ CRAZY TAXI STREAM WHAT THE HELL
I though the trains running on time was the result of jigging the timetables to reflect actual journey times.
God, I LOVED PiZones from Pizza Hut
39:03 woah! Michael with the "ies". Did you learn nothing from the war orphans episode?!
I love the idea that social pressure and innate human awkwardness was weaponized by fascists to control the news media. So simple but also so fuckin real lmao
Trapped on the ISS? Where do I sign?
Simpsons Road Rage is Crazy Taxi, Hit & Run was GTA
hey, what does Sophie's cap say?
I couldn't hear anything?
I think it says, "How you likin' the rain, girl?" Twilight quote, I think.
Is the weird little guys podcast gonna be on RUclips?
Had missed the Maggie story completely. Insane.
Does anyone know the guest's name? Michael, something?
Or what he's from?
10:20 I love being able to witness Sophie contemplate interrupting Robert's shenanigans with a "Robert!", weigh the effort, and dismiss it as not the right time/not far enough over the line yet.
"Impartial" just means siding with the oppressor.
Why is Sophie mirrored?
4:33 Little did she know, NASA would say they’re not coming home for a while merely a day after posting. Seen plenty of memes since saying “Starliner can’t” using the graphic Boeing made to say it could be reused 10 times lmao
32:00 "The Hitler Vote is a symptom; not necessarily of anti-Jewish hatred, but of momentary resentment caused by economic misery..."
You guys laugh abd immediately say it was absolutely caused by Jew-Hatred, but you have entire episodes about how people voted for Hitler without actually being antisemitic themselves specifically because it made sense economically.
The only true way to start a podcast is to end it. 6 out of 10 prominent Jim Croce cover bands can agree.
No war but class war.
Oh hell yeah 51:47
The So-Cal low-cal calzone zone? Is it local?
People get very sick in low-no gravity situations. Your immune system shuts down.
Ahh, the illusion of movement...
I really disagree with the reaction of the cast to the Einstein quote.
He was saying that people voting for Nazism weren't just crazed with race-hatred. They were people who felt threatened by the upheaval to the status quo. An idea you have entire podcast episodes dedicated to exploring.
Then they voted for upheaval to the status quo. There's no apologia for fools and hate-filled bigots.
@@johnmckiernan2176 lol yea you have to be pretty crazed with race hatred to do the exact thing you say is bad and feel threatened by.............
@@johnmckiernan2176 I don't think it's apologia to point out that hatred alone doesn't get you a Nazi Germany. Hatred in general and anti-semitism in particular was (and indeed is) widespread within *and* without.
Is this show gonna talk bout the red/brown alliance at all?
I’d say make Greeland your allly. Sohpie “wow”. MkJ, PROP, and All of the it could happen here. Molly, Jamie ” Let’s go!
32:41 Why was Einstein wrong? Many of the issues of pre-war Germany may have been due to economic anxieties, of which the Hitler vote would have been a symptom. Einstein probably did not paint the picture accurately, as there was certainly anti-Jewish sentiment in the Nazi party and in Germany. But I got the impression that Einstein's nuanced take of German politics was not misinformed or naive, but misinterpreted as authoritative by the U.S. media (i.e. the entire picture).
Yeah, Einstein tended to have a pretty nuanced understanding of world politics, from the few things I've heard of his political insights
"Economic anxieties" were cited for January 6th, wherein small business owners like, um,...realtors and people with precarious employment like...off duty police officers on fat public pensions flew at great expense across a massive country like the US to participate in a would-be coup against the electoral process. Because "economic precarity and anxiety". Or something.
Hang on, that nararative is total nonsense. And so is the narrative that Nazi supporters weren't whole-hearted anti-Semites, anti-Ziganists, homophobes and fans of political assassination. I guess, for Einstein, we have to reverse the "even a stopped clock" aphorism. Even Einstein got things wrong sometimes.
PS the curse of the intelligent and the reasonable, ie the Einsteins of this world, is to project their own intelligence and reason on the large minority of humans who unfortunately lack these attributes. I'm always perturbed at the "evil genius" portrayal of the Nazis and of Hitler in particular. Hitler failed to get into art college, ffs. I did that, and I graduated to become an art teacher and art historian, and I'm a complete schlub. They ran IQ tests on the Nuremberg trial detainees. Only one, Hjalmar Schacht, had an IQ score that was in any way rare, (147, 99.9th percentile) and he was a late joiner to the party, an economist and academic who joined the Nazis after Hitler's rise to power. The rest were the definitive "dumb people's idea of a smart person". Even Goering, the next highest on this particular (somewhat arbitrary) scale, scored a 138. Think a mildly gifted engineer or software programmer. Not an ubermensch. Not by a long shot. I'm good at these puzzle solving tests and I am, in many ways, a moron. The prospect that high ranking Nazis were mostly dumber than me is not a comforting one. Their voters must have been utter dribblers. You would have to be to believe Nazi BS.
TBF everyone knew he wouldn't leave office even before he got into office
I was going to get mad about the Miles O’Brien slander, but then you compared him to Einstein, and now I’m not sure what to think. Either way, fuck the Cardassian Empire, and never forget Sito Jaxa!
Macron is doing exactly the same thing in France right now, but as a politician
Is anyone else only here to see sophie say "Robert" in disappointment?
and now the rocket blew up and theyre stranded even longer
Gah, finally ❤
How are you going to beat Ethiopia when they have the arc of the covenant
52:41 this was a terrible first episode to watch high
Love hearing about people being brutally hacked apart in the Rwandan genocide on LLbD just to hear Robert defend hacking people apart on his podcast. My mental health has never been better!
The major problem with this episode is the varying degrees of hindsight bias. Einstein expected an improving economic situation to take the wind out of the Nazis’ political sails, hence why he did not expect them to be a major threat.
The cruel irony is that this almost happened, just as the Nazis were invited to form a coalition cabinet in 1933 (internal Nazi documents show how worried the leadership was that the party’s electoral support had crested).
Similarly, Italy as a bulwark against communism should be seen in the light of the widespread fears of communist subversion and a world revolution, not necessarily as a direct confrontation with the Soviet Union. Hell, geography alone would have made that prospect very unlikely before Hitler had Mussolini send troops to join the German attack.
Sure, there was a lot of complacency and outright cheering on of fascism and Nazism in many news outlets prior to WWII, but it’s easy to be wise after the fact with 20/2 hindsight.
It was also hardly a bizarre stance for Adolph Ochs to be worried that a Jewish owned newspaper might either not be believed if it published stories of Jewish suffering, or, worse, might be targeted and used by antisemites as an example of nefarious, Jewish media.
As for Sulzberger’s stance, it was indeed both cruel and narrow, but even more so, because the Jews persecuted in Germany were generally not, as portrayed here, poor, rural or refugees from the east, but mainly a well integrated and urban minority (as seen by, say, their service in WWI).
Hence, German Jews were not only highly literate (as was the rest of the populace), but they tended to speak German, rather than Yiddish. They often looked down on “Jewish educational institutions”, preferring the ordinary German education system and making their mark in academia, though they never dominated the latter (in contrast to what Nazi conspiracy theories would claim).
It’s thus telling that, just like other, similarly well integrated Jewish communities in Northern and Western Europe, Germany’s “established” Jewish community had a clear wish to see the Jewish refugees from the east quickly sent on to The United States, Palestine or wherever faraway destination would be possible, out of a (well-founded) fear that these “Eastern Jews” would inflame domestic antisemitism.
This had been the case ever since the pogroms of the late 19th century had begun pushing Jews out of the Russian Empire, but, in another cruel irony, The United States had decided to sharply curtail immigration, especially from Eastern and Southern Europe (and basically barring it entirely from Asia) in the Immigration Acts of 1917 and 1924.
Conversely, the Holocaust would not have reached the huge number of Jewish victims it did, if the Nazi conquests (especially in Poland and the Soviet Union) had not expanded the regime’s reach far beyond the comparatively small the number of Jews living within the borders of Weimar Germany.
I feel like Robert is going to get cancelled by both sides for that "terrorism" speech.
Borderland is literally one of the most shallow pointless games I've ever played and someone thought it should be made into a film... I think the 2000s era of "haha so rand0m" is back
It was dumb fun. There’s not really a story. Just aesthetics and lots of guns. The idea that anyone thought it would sustain a film is hilarious.
I don't know about the movie, but to be fair the Telltale Borderlands game worked and was able to tell a story in that universe.
Don't justify terrorism Robert, that was pretty gross. To put another way, one problem with terrorism is that it often strengthens repression. It fails more often than it succeeds at achieving its goals. Terrorism is not just immoral but also impractical in reality.
After that facist coded speech from momala this is well timed
Delusional.
When Harris says "I am your retribution!" you might have a point. Until then, all offense, no due respect, sit down before you fall down.
@@miguelvelez7221 Amazing
@@avalokiteshvara113Literally the preschool "No, you are" response.
@@SageWon-1aussie what are you on about man
Is there something wrong with being liberal? I didn’t think you guys were conservatives.
Being liberal they're fine with. Liberals actively assisting the rise of Facism they find distasteful.
Have you watched both videos?
liberals are right-of-center at best, they're no anarchists
They aren’t conservative… but that doesn’t mean they can’t critique liberals/liberal media. There are also more types of political views than conservative and liberal; just because that’s how the US tends to portray it, doesn’t mean it’s accurate.
‘lazyman’ is an apt description.