Hi, I'm Jesse Hirsch, and welcome to another episode of Metaviews, recorded live in front of an automated audience and some goats who are running to get their seats because they're a little late. They were eating some hay. And today I'm gonna ask my good friend Mike about anxious and angry Americans because they've been getting to me, Mike.

They've been getting to me. In fact, I even shouted you out in the last episode of Met Abuse because I. I was starting to lose my shit. And I was kind of like, you know, shout.

And we came to death. And I almost said something like, I want to die. I want to die right now. Shout out to Coffin Talk with my friend Mike Oppenheim. I.

I didn't go that far, but it was pretty surreal. But as you know, we start every Metaviews episode with the news. And Mike, by far a model Meta Views reader liking almost every issue. Restacking.

This is the kind of mutual aid and solidarity that I look for. It's why I'm unconsciously doing the same with your fantastic substack. But what do you got in terms of news for our audience?

What are you paying attention to? What has caught your mind so far this morning?

Plane crashes.

No. Eh. What the.

I mean, I've flown, like, I used to fly 30 times a year. I've always been afraid of flying, but still done it. And I want to explain that before people jump on me. I know statistically it's safe.

I've been in, like, seven car accidents that weren't my fault, so I don't feel like statistics matter much to me. I just don't like the idea of dying in a plane.

And I. I would further say that it was statistically safe in the past tense. We are seeing those stats change in real time, people. Do you want to elaborate?

You want to share more of the details? Although I kind of know what you're talking about.

Yeah, well, so today's issue, like, because again, if you are checking in on any of the last months of, like, I mean, I'm pretty sure every single week for about a month straight now, there has been a major plane crash. One was, the one I'm not referring to was outside D.C. and it was involved a military helicopter.

Then there was a private crash in the city of Philadelphia that killed people in the city of Philadelphia because it flew down and created a huge explosion. And then the one I'm talking about today was a plane flipped and overturned a Delta plane from America in, I believe, Toronto.

So this is also perfect for our podcast, because I'm an American talking to a Canadian and soon we're going to be best friends, sharing the same bitcoins and, you know, prospering from the demise of others. But until that moment, you're still my rival. And so I insist that the Canadian soil ruined the Delta plane and caused it to flip. Right.

I mean, obviously.

And we're not talking soil, we're talking snow. Right? It was the Canadian snow.

Like, this is a warning to the American military contemplating their president's order to annex us that, you know, snow warfare is maybe not something you guys have trained properly on, hence our little threatening incident. No, I watched to your point. So when it happened yesterday, on the one hand, I fly out of that airport all the time and it's a fucking shit show.

Like, it is just. It is a real nasty, just over capacity. It is a high traffic airport that really doesn't have the ability to handle the traffic it has.

They, I'm sure, would love to come on the show and disagree with me, which, hey, come, come on, step to me, bro. But I was anxious, I'm always anxious about that airport and I know a lot of people right now, just in the group chats I'm in, who are flying.

And so the crash yesterday totally threw off everyone trying to get home because they're all trying to fly into Pearson and we've had snowstorms and now this crash. And then this morning I woke up and I saw some really, what's. I shouldn't say firsthand, but an excellent angle of video of the crash.

And so I was kind of able to watch it in usual TikTok style, over and over and over and over again. You know, and to your point, it seems like this is happening increasingly. And now, all jokes aside, you were like, that's a terrible way to die.

I yesterday said to my partner Jeanette, I was like, you know, on the one hand, there's all the people who experienced that crash, but on the other hand, there's all these people stranded in all these airports desperately trying to get home. At least the people in the crash got home. I think I'd rather be in the crash because that way I don't have to wait at some airport to come home.

I'm already home. And thankfully, healthcare here in Canada doesn't cost any extra money. Again, both terrible takes on a terrible tragedy.

But like a mike for your news segment today, I would say enter your bitcoin wallet now for your deposit, but we're not there yet, as you inferred so let us go to our second segment, WTF or what's the Future? When the present is so sensational, so spectacular in terms of planes crashing, it's kind of hard to look to the future.

But nonetheless, the challenge is upon you.

You've offered us a great news thing to sort of be aware of when it comes to your event horizon, when it comes to what you're looking to in the future. What do you see, Mike? What do you think our audience should be looking at?

Okay, I'm going distant future, because somebody asked me in a group chat that is actually composed evenly between Democrats, Republicans, all Americans. I should say that Democrats, Republicans and Independents, which is what I consider myself.

So. So no. No block Quebecois yet.

No.

Right. Is Congress ready for the block Quebecois? Please go on.

Yeah, but I think that was. Right, I took.

Yeah, you did, you did.

You're going. So I think in 15 years, a long time from now, but I think in 15 years, my party is going to win and my party is no party.

So I am rooting for the demise of not the two party system, but the actual two parties in control right now. I believe America will still have a two party system, but I believe a third party is going to emerge and take over as one of the two.

And I'm okay with that because I really, at this point, strongly dislike both parties.

And I honestly, I did not anticipate what you were going to say. But again, I stand by my spontaneous intervention. That could be the Bloc Quebecois, because here's the scenario, right?

I'm increasingly of the mind that it won't be an annexation, that it will be some type of terrible political deal, because for all of Canada to be the 51st state, we need at least 16 states. Give us 32 senators and a whole bunch of congresspeople, but whatever.

Even if it was just the 51st state, you're gonna have some block Quebecois because fundamentally they will vote their own party in, just as they have in the Canadian federal government. And that will be the third party that finally attains status within the US Congress.

And then on a cultural level, they'll just start winning Americans over. Right? Like, you know, sin today, forgive tomorrow, you know, Putin for everyone who wants it. You know, things like pornhub, that's based in Montreal.

Right, I know that.

Yeah. A lot of Americans consume Quebecois culture already. They just don't realize it.

So, you know, again, the block Quebecois could be the prophecy that you have foretold. Not because all of a sudden Americans start supporting Quebec independence or even start speaking French or the Quebecois version of France. Carlos.

But they could be that kind of protest vote where people like, at least it's none of the above.

Yeah. And I would say that the protest vote is actually, I think in America, if a protest vote was a vote, it would work differently. Most of us.

I'm not one of these people, but most of we believe not voting is a protest vote. So when you look at these staggering numbers of like, my God, half the Americans don't vote.

I know it's hard to understand this, but that is mostly out of protest. And it doesn't ever come up in the media that way.

Although we can't fault felons.

No.

Right. I suspect there are a lot of felons who would love to vote, given the opportunity.

And vote for me, Jesse Hirsch, and I will find some way to give that status to my felonious friends. You also evoked in me the memory of the Richard Pryor version of Brewster's Millions, where he tried to.

In order to comply with the condition of spending the. What was it, 30 million in 30 days, he tried to get on the ballot as voting. None of the above. Do you recall that movie? Any memories from that movie?

I've watched it 5 million times. It's one of my favorite movies ever, and I have too many.

And you're just making my mind explode because I'm just so happy thinking about my childhood before I understood politics and any of the structures that governed me.

And wasn't it. And am I correct to thinking it was a John Candy movie?

I don't think.

Who played the catcher?

Well, Dan Aykroyd. Wait, you're talking about Brewster's Millions? Oh, that's where. Yeah, he's the pitcher. No, no, that's Stir. Wait, is that Stir crazy?

No, Stir Crazy is with Gene Wilder.

Yeah, but I think that's where he's the pitcher. I think Brewster's Millions. Isn't it? Because that's where he's the big. The rich businessman. I think it's Dan Aykroyd. We're definitely.

I'm conflating two different movies.

But you're right about Aykroyd and I'm right about Candy. It is John Candy and he was the catcher.

Because this is where Pryor was a pitcher, like a minor league pitcher, and then he inherits the money, which was different than the original Brewster's Millions.

Yeah, we talked about it last time. But John Candy. Hopefully I'll be on your show again.

And hopefully I will bring up you or I will bring up John Candy every single time, because he's just amazing.

Well, I. On that note, I will have to program him into the soundboard because my partner Jeanette, often when she says thanks to me, she says, shanks.

And I go, no, you gotta say Tommy Shanks, along with Johnny LaRue. And we digress.

But let us move to our feature conversation, which, ironically, is a similar iteration to our first feature conversation, where we talked about Murica. But today, I want to talk about Americans. In addition to the topic we had agreed upon last time, which was class.

And then after re listening to our last episode, I also thought we should talk about the self and the paradox of the self. But selfishly, I wanted to talk to you about talking to Americans because I've been doing that a lot lately, and it's something.

You have way more experience and wisdom than I do because it's really fucking depressing me. And I say this because obviously the Americans that I'm talking to are, you know, people who want to be on podcasts, right? Because we share.

You also infected in me. You made me become a little more honest about how much I'm enjoying rejecting people who want to come on the podcast.

But for a long time, and I'm still dealing with the dregs of it, I was kind of accepting anybody. And my attitude was, A, I'm open for a good conversation, and B, I'm ready to learn. I can learn from anyone, anytime.

So these were often, like, technology people or business people or what looked like smart people that I felt I would have a chance to talk to. But there's two observations I've had that I'm going to throw at you before I get to my kind of deeper questions about talking with Americans.

And one was, on the one hand, a lot of people who I really would love to talk to, I would really love to open up more, are fucking closed down. Like a safe. Like, they're so scared. They're so afraid that they really are. They don't want to answer any questions that they're not prepared for.

So they really don't fare well in my spontaneous conversation approach, right? Because even when I ask them a question, they flip like a politician into the script, you know, rather than give me what I want.

And then the other is that I don't want to call them magas because, like, they could be maga adjacent or adjacent to the maga adjacent, but it's incoherent fucking nonsense. And I'm not saying that they're not intelligent in some areas because, like, I did, you know, there was one guy who.

He was a black man who's a lawyer who's into crypto and AI and loves Kanye and loves Trump. So when I kept him talking about Bitcoin and AI, he was pretty coherent.

I disagreed with most of what he had to say, but it was said in a manner that demonstrated that he was thinking about it and he was making it his own. But because I was feeling dangerous, I decided to end the conversation. And he didn't know that I was Canadian. I ended.

Ended the conversation by asking him about current Trump's rhetoric towards Canada. And while, again, he had earned the respect of the host by that point, I didn't totally, you know, rip him a new one. It was just incoherent nonsense.

And I sort of had to gently let him know that. Right.

And sort of be like, look, you're a really smart individual, and when you speak about things, you know, it's really quite interesting, but you know nothing about this and you are just mimicking what you've heard elsewhere. And. And that's dangerous because, you know, it has implications for our economic livelihood, our well being, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I trapped him, right? Like, I totally let him into the dark alley. But I offer this as an archetype because he was one who I respected.

There's many who I haven't been able to respect, and it's total incoherence. I would love to engage them in an interesting debate, but there is no common language because they're. So.

Anyway, that's what I'm throwing at you, Mike. On the one hand, those who are too scared to speak, and on the other, who are speaking in tongues and is completely incoherent.

What is going on with Americans? How are you faring when you speak to them?

Because you are clearly far more leveled up than I am, and yet I suspect you are encountering the same phenomena. So my first question is, am I nuts? Is what I'm encountering legit or am I projecting?

And alternatively, what's your tips on how to talk to these folks?

I definitely can address all of your questions and all of your concerns. I do want to say something that's going to sound snarky, but I actually don't mean it to sound snarky. It's 100 going to come across that way.

I taught foreign languages, and I'm a language like expert. I have a master's and stuff, so maybe it's from that.

But I Also went to school in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I befriended a ton of Canadians in my life.

You clearly have a Canadian accent, and you clearly are a Canadian, and it would be impossible to talk to you for more than five minutes without using the word about at least and hearing your intonation of it and not know you're from Canada. So that.

So, for the record, I am up in my accent a little bit with you. I confess. I am the kind of performer who, to your point, reads the room. Right.

And I am for sure hamming it up a little, and I hamm it up even more when I was Canadians. But that's a valid point you make. Please continue.

Yeah, and I think even with all that said, I still would research and vet the person whose show I'm fucking coming on.

I definitely watched an episode years before I came on, and I'm glad I did because I would have done fine with the news and all that, but it was nice to actually prepare because, I don't know, maybe I'm a guest on a podcast and I should prepare for it. Like, maybe I should respect the person who's giving me a platform with his own listeners that he built up over years or however long it is.

And maybe I should, like, curry a little favor with the host. I don't know.

I mean, maybe I'm just crazy here, but when you tell your agent to send me a letter on Pod Match and you're trying to sell a book, and then I write your agent back, sure, as long as they don't mention the book or come across as salesy. And if they agree to listen to an episode and then you leave me read, but not replied, which is. Keeps happening to me. So I know I kind of tangented.

Out there, but that was not a tangent. That was not a tangent. Please continue.

So the.

In my opinion, the number one thing to understand about most Americans, not all of us, is we are so deeply ingratiated, so deeply drinking the Kool Aid of capitalism, that we are obnoxiously salesy and trying to always sell something. And that includes our Persona and our reputation.

So when you ask a question that could risk the facade of that reputation, I think those of us who are not okay with being unpopular and not selling things, we break down. We just lose. And I think that's all over legacy media. I think it's all over politics. And it's really sad.

It's really sad to have people be like, off the record. Like, f you. Off the record.

There is no off the record. It's a Surveillance society, for crying out loud.

And I mean, this is gonna sound so shameless, but, like, I do read all of your missives and I do. I call them misses, I don't call them blogging. And I do subscribe, and avidly.

Like, not just because I went on your podcast and I like you, I probably would have subscribed and then unsubscribed a few days later just to be full, like, honesty. But I like how you write. I like what you write.

I don't even agree with all of what you say, but I appreciate, especially today's where you said we just need independent journalists who aren't driven by, like, a bottom at line. So, like, I don't care if Jesse Hirst says something that I don't agree with.

I care that Jesse Hirsch is not a afraid of saying what he thinks, and he's not beholden to a corporate entity that he's hiding behind. And, you know, like, it's not, oh, like, south park is the only model I trust, which is denigrate everyone, scorch all of the earth, or scorch none.

Like, don't you know. Now I will say the following. I am a little scared of talking subversively about my own government. For the first time in my life.

I don't believe that the mechanics that hold free speech in place are actually working anymore. The Doge department is basically the reason for this.

If you can pass an executive order to create a branch of government that then can kind of like not use due process, which is, I believe, the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, then you're not acting constitutionally, which means I should probably fear a little bit, if not more, my free speech. So I will say I will give a pass to any American who for that reason, doesn't want to talk to you about something that could be subversive.

I will actually give them.

Yeah, and. And that's fair. And as an aside, do you have an external mic? Am I correct that you're not just working off.

I think the mic is on those, so if you click the little settings at the bottom there, it should allow you to switch your mic. I just realized that at this moment. Apologies, I'm a little out of it today. Your latter point is fair.

And it's fair in the sense that I think there is a chilling climate at play. But for me to acknowledge that, for me to respect that, people have to do what you just did, right? They have to spell that out.

And even then, they can say, here's What I'm going to talk like that is a skill, because on the one hand, while I think there are a lot of people who feel that way to your snark, and you didn't want it to be snark. I love snark. Then don't be on a fucking podcast. And especially a podcast that is obviously political. Right.

I'll help you sell your book as long as you help me have fun with my politics. That's the social contract that I'm happy to enter into with guests. But at the same time, I think.

And this is where I like talking to you, and I like talking to people who understand history, who understand politics. You know, my point about there is no off the record. This is a surveillance society.

Like, you Google George Orwell, they know you Google George Orwell. Like, you know my. The metaview's line I'm gonna keep using is if you don't leave your comfort zone, your comfort zone's gonna get taken from you.

So learn how to do that shit now before it's too late. And, you know, again, that's what history teaches us over and over and over. And I don't really think Americans have anywhere to hide.

So it's about time you start learning how to talk to your neighbors, which is why I really like what you're doing. Cause talking to neighbors about death is a skill level even higher than that.

But to bring it back to kind of what I'm looking for in terms of tips, how do you navigate that chat room you were talking about, where it's people across the political spectrum, or conversely, or should I say more specifically, how do you deal with people who are talking nonsense? Because you sort of alluded to how to deal with people who don't want to talk, but how do you deal with people who do want to fucking talk?

And all they're talking about is shit, to use the technical phrasing.

No, no. Yeah, yeah. So there's three situations where I could see that happening in my life. Okay?

The first is like, an airplane or a line situation where you're stuck next to a stranger and they keep trying to talk to you about their stupid talking point from Fox News, cnn. I don't give a shit which agency. Again, I'm a. A full partisan hater. Like, I don't. I don't really care which goofy talking point you're making.

If it's a talking point, I'm annoyed just like you. So in that situation, you're. There's no tip. I have, like, none, literally. Smile or if you feel like wasting your time, engage.

But it's a total waste of time to engage with all those people. They will leave lying about what you said. They will use you as an example in future arguments. It will do you no good.

And no one on earth has ever changed their mind in one of those situations. I mean, maybe, like, one person ever, but. So that's the first situation. The second on your actual podcast.

I have a lot of tips for that, but I think I'll hold that and give the real one that you want, which is like, okay, it's a real friend, a real acquaintance. You're at a dinner party, you do want to respect this person. But they're sitting there talking about how, like, no, no, no, Bitcoin is the future.

There's no conspiracy to, like, drive the price up and then sell. All the people holding the bag are, like, as you wrote about today, like, in those situations, I try to be polite but firm.

And that's my main strategy. First of all, be polite and say, even if I don't agree with your opinion, I do respect your right to have one.

And so even if I'm going to disagree with you, before I get into all that, I just want to let you know you're safe with me. I'm not judging you, blah, blah, blah. That isn't lip service if it comes from me.

I mean, I can't tell you a script for your personality, but, like, I'm not lying to those people when I say that I do actually listen to people and I do try to hear them. I had someone recently accuse me of being racist in a group.

I run and I listened to him, and I really tried to hear and understand from his eyes, and I ended up writing him back. I didn't say, yes, you're right, I'm racist, because I don't agree with that. I said, I can understand your point of view.

I understand where you're from and what you're saying, and you did reach me, and I'm very sorry. Like, I did not want you to feel that way. And it didn't, like, work or not work, because that's not how I look at life.

I just know that I was able to sleep that night because that person can keep thinking I'm whatever they want, but I know I did everything I could to be actually contrite and polite. So with these people, set up a situation where they're going to at least have slightly, like, hearing you. If they start interrupting you, give up.

It's just like the Person in the line interrupters, I have no patience anymore for them. Screw that. And if they over.

Over talk, of course you can, like, politely put a finger up and like, you know, I'm not talking about that hyperbole thing. So as far as. So that's my main tip is, is do that. But. But be firm is the second part of it, which is don't relent. Don't just say, like, you're right.

Don't ever do that.

No, I don't. I'm not capable.

Yeah.

And my favorite phrase ever, and it's actually sort of ironic because last time in my shout out section, I said this comedian Bill Burr that I really, really like. His favorite saying ever is fair enough. And I'm gonna write about this this week, but he doesn't say fair. He says, fair enough.

Yeah.

So when a person says something that is fair enough, use that phrase, they may or may not actually understand what you're saying, but you're not saying. You're right. You're saying, okay, yeah, fair enough. You come from this. Yeah, sorry, go ahead.

My equivalent is understood.

There you go.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, understood. I get it. I understand what you're saying. It doesn't mean I like what you're saying or doesn't mean.

I think, you know, but that's my point about the incoherence. And I think to your point, it's just a waste of time. And that is where, you know, ironically, on the. This.

The Meta Views YouTube channel of this current, what I call Season 2 of Metaviews, the most popular video is a guy who rage quit. And he was a Canadian Trump supporter, and this was still in the early days of the tariffs and the whatever.

And he was saying, well, look, Trump will stop doing this once we secure the border. And I said, well, you do understand that the Canadian border is the largest unsecured geographic border in the world.

I understand why Trump would want us to pay the bill to secure it. You're a Canadian taxpayer. Is this something he's like, well, you know, we had it secure under Harper, who was his previous prime minister.

And that's where I drew the line. I was like, no, I acknowledge that under Trudeau, the border is insecure. I acknowledge the border has always been insecure, will always be insecure.

I didn't say it so outrageously. And he couldn't fucking handle it. He couldn't fucking handle the assertion that I just would not agree with him at this ludicrous policy assertion.

And he rage quit. This is the most popular Episode I had. So to your point, I will try to engineer Rage quits.

That's why with these guys, I keep using the line that this is now a game show and you got to pass the news segment, then you got to pass the future segment, then maybe you make it to the end. Because the guy, again, the guy I had yesterday, who I shouted out.

I shouted you out in the episode, you know, he a young, really young rich guy, you know, top of the world. So to him doesn't want to die.

And he's really into genetic medicine, really loves talking about immortality, you know, and he didn't understand why I was pushing back a little, why I wasn't impressed.

And, you know, he was like, well, you know, what if the doctor told you that, you know, you had a month to live, but at the same time there was this medicine that would save you? And I go, I don't know, I might have one hell of a fucking bender for a month, right? Like, again, he just, he couldn't.

So then I flipped it on him and I said, well, you know, I wrote this paper about five years ago called the Ethics of Immortality. And it sort of said, well, what happens if we invent this technology but we don't use it in the way we think?

So, for example, I get arrested and I get sentenced to 200 years in jail, and those motherfuckers keep me alive to make sure I do my time. What a fucking hellscape, right? I would much prefer to die in that regard.

So I, you know, so you addressed my primary concern, and I'll shift to class in a moment.

But the last thing I want to ask when it comes to speaking to Americans, because this is where you are breaking my stereotypes most of the time when I try to talk to Americans. To your earlier point, their Overton window is very narrow.

Like, the amount of things that they are willing to entertain before they dismiss me as a complete crazy nut is generally really small. Unless you play the MAGA game, in which case, no holds barred. How do you expand your Overton window?

How do you introduce topics that you know are kind of crazy, like death, but that, you know, other people are not ready to talk about, but you want to broach them, you want to go there. What tips do you have in that regard?

My gut reaction, my intuition tells me to be honest. I have, like, the charisma and charm and ability to do it. I know that's a cop out answer.

No, but that's, that's not a copa. What you're saying is be Charming.

Yeah. Be charming.

Right. Rather than confrontation.

Yeah. And like, look, we're two peas in a pod.

We're.

I think by choice you're somewhat of an outcast based on where you've moved and lived.

And I think also you're the kind of person that gets pushed to the fringe by people who are threatened by you, but hugged and welcomed in by everyone else. I'm very similar. All my friends like me. They don't respect my opinions. Like, I'm not saying that you.

I'm not like, talking about you, just to be clear.

No, no. But you know that. That matches my chat group experience too. Right? It's like they know that Jesse guy's smart.

Yeah.

But shit. What he has to say. Whoa. No.

So our Overton Window is like. I mean, first of all, I just. I know this is like, annoying for viewers. I really like you. I felt like an instant connection to you.

I like your show, I like your style. I have two kids, so I'm not gonna be able to watch all your shows. But I do genuinely like you.

If I was a 20 something, I would be like, heavily into you and blah, blah, blah. That makes sense. Like, you have that personality that attracts my types, you know, And.

And I was like a fan of like, Nirvana and like punk rock, you know, so Dead Kennedys, you know, like, even if their songs kind of suck, I'll still listen to it because I love the lyrics. Like. Yeah, so it's like. So I think, like part of it is just you are secretly and without ever being told it. Okay.

There's a phrase called remain true, and so be impervious to praise and ridicule. And that's how I live my life. Yeah.

People will praise us and they will ridicule us when it's convenient, but we push people to expand their Overton Window by just bringing up the Overton Window with intelligence and politeness.

And I can tell, like, at the end of the day, I have a feeling you would apologize and hug someone if you really wrong them, even if you didn't agree with them. And that's the same way I am. And I think that's the charisma charm that really works is just like, when people feel like you will still love them.

I use that word very differently than most people. Like a Jesus way, if you will.

Yeah. In the real sense of the word, not the commodified sense of the word.

Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, that's kind of my, like, my life mission. I. I'll open up just A tad bit. My ex wife abducted my son. I did not deserve it.

No one who knows me thinks I deserve it. Even they wrote a letter kind of saying, you don't deserve this. They did it for selfish reasons, but it changed my life.

And ever since then I've just been like, life is very short. I'm going to be, I'm going to try very hard to make people feel appreciated. So bringing up death is one of the forms of doing that.

But I just want to keep relating it back to you because I am trying to help you when you're talking to Americans.

But, but for the record, I'm also in theory asking for my audience because while I am ask, asking for myself, this is coming up amongst a lot of the people that I care about that they're having these same problems. And I'm anticipating that the talking to Americans thing is going to be more prominent when we are the 51st state. But go on.

No, I do have a good answer then. For anyone who wants to talk to an American.

If you come in with an air of arrogance or lack of respect, get fucked like you don't respect them, why should they listen to you? So respect the person you're talking to. It's okay to say the American culture as presented by the media pisses me off and I don't like them.

But seriously, fudge you, if you're going to tell me that I'm an American and I'm just like my peers. I'm not. You're not a Canadian. So like the identity politics, that's the only probably good thing that MAGA is sort of eradicating.

Not eradicating identity, not eradicating trans rights. I'm not talking about that. I'm saying the political attachment to identity. Like catering. Yeah.

You know, my, my, my line to equally disparage identity politics is the primary thing that it's accomplished is to reinforce white supremacy.

I agree with that.

Right. And that in and of itself is why we should be saying, hey, maybe we should be moving beyond identity politics.

There is a lot of spinoffs that were positive, like trans rights, but identity politics has given us white supremacy at a scale that we did not previously think was fucking possible for sure.

To your larger point, I have always had a formula that's not always easy to deliver on, which is the secret to an open mind is either a full belly, which is food, or a laughing belly. Right. Which is comedy. And those are the two ways that you can get a closed mind to open up. But easier said than done.

It's a simple formula, but definitely difficult to execute. And you alluded to some stuff I want to get to when we get to the self or the paradox of the self.

But if we are going to shit on identity politics, let us pivot hard into class.

Because in, in episode one of our never ending Journey, you I think really alluded to class as one of the lenses that you use to really understand American society and understand American politics. And that is exceptional. That's rare as Canadians.

When we look at British society and compare it to American society, it really is one in which class and Britain is so entrenched and so visible and class in America is so entrenched and visible, but no one talks about it. Right. It's like death. It's something that is just. People don't want to go there.

So how did you get clued into class and how has it become a kind of, dare I say it, a through line of your analysis when making sense of the world?

Yeah. So my background is when I was, okay, I was born and outside New York City. My parents were not wealthy and neither of them grew up wealthy.

My dad is, and this is huge air quotes. But I'm just telling my story the way it was told to myself and all that.

My dad's a self made man and he's had a career where he has been bankrupt like many, many times. But my parents always hid it from me. But we moved a lot because of like stuff like that.

But we ended up settling into the Bay Area and then my dad did really well for like 18 years. So we ended up, they raised me from like five to graduation of high school in an affluent Bay Area suburb.

So it means I was raised in a liberal but affluent area. There's only one other pocket. There's two other pockets like that in America. One is Miami and one is Washington D.C. but I won't talk about D.C.

because that's just like so effing different. But so I was raised like, like with feminism and environmentalism and respect. Black have not have community.

And because my parents didn't want to raise spoiled brats, I was like the only kid without like the new Reebok pumps for example. And so my parents fake made me feel poor.

So it's very important that I'm telling this the right way to people because if you like vet me or research me, I don't want to give the false impression. But a child impression is all that matters. That's all you need to know.

So the through line in class for me is because I grew up seeing class in my own town and I hated it. I hated the class because I wasn't like them. And I felt it.

And I felt parents even like kind of sensing that now that I'm older, I wonder if, is it because I was one of the few Jews in the town and I'm Cuban? Like, you know, was that. I don't know.

But my point is, I went to college in the most blue collar city ever in America, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on purpose. I wanted to live with normal people and see what they're like. And then I got hooked.

I started moving only to like places where rich people don't really live, but maybe come through. And I found out it's not terrifying. I didn't get shot. I never got mugged. I had friends who got mugged.

I have a theory on why I didn't, but it's not relevant. My point is I really wanted to just live in different class environments.

And now for the first time ever, I live in like a middle class place in America. First time ever. And it's very pleasant. I won't lie. Like, it's nice because we're not better or worse than people in like a weird way.

But the point is, I don't see the people who voted for Trump as like race divided because they're not. It's really a class division of like who is appealing and catering to which class. Which is why I brought up the two party system.

I don't think it's a Democratic party or a Republican Party anymore. I think it's a. That's so funny.

That's awesome.

Do you want to be rich in the future? Are already. Are you already rich? That's the red party. And do you feel guilty about your wealth or do you think you're never going to be rich?

That's the Blue party. So I believe they're divided by class in that exact way.

But what's weird is that poor people who think they're going to be rich someday side with rich people in America.

Yeah.

And poor people who have given up hope and just want like handouts and favors and like whatever, have cited. And again, I'm not belittling that. Giving up hope and wanting handouts, I don't actually belittle that. I think.

And for the record, no one gets more handouts than the rich. Right. Like, totally true. In the societies we live in, handouts go to everybody.

But it's the people who only have handouts that end up being stigmatized versus the people who have Handouts in yachts and you know, other facilities. Yeah, yeah.

And so that's.

I mean I have more thoughts, but I think to just kind of start our conversation, I would just say my through line with class is I've always been a wide eyed kid who couldn't wait to grow up just so that I could be left alone. It wasn't any other reason, but I didn't like parents and teachers and authority figures telling me what to do.

I also respect authority because I absolutely have been in panics and riots and I've been in like a situation that was very scary with people breaking car windows on my street and like chanting and fire and shit and it's not fun. I am not an advocate of anarchy. I am not an advocate of like blow up the system and see what happens.

I think good people get murdered in communist movements and revolutions. I think bad people tend to not get murdered in those situations actually and they tend to take power.

So I'm not a fan of the traditional revolution model. I'm a fan of what we talked about.

Yeah, I want to respond to a lot there, but just at the end, unpack some of it. Yeah. For the record, anarchy means social harmony, not chaos. It's the capitalist who framed that as.

I think what you dislike fundamentally is violence, assassinations and murder, which under 99.9% of all circumstances. I fully agree.

I think the revolutions that we are going to see in our lifetime, the one we are currently seeing in the MAGA case, are media revolutions. So they tend not to be violent in the overt, although they do involve some violence.

And that's where we will come back to the communism piece in a moment since we're talking about class.

Because I also disagree with the way in which you characterized communism because I think that kind of political corruption and political violence is endemic to political parties and not necessarily ideological. But go ahead.

I just want to set the record straight because I may have misspoken. I can't go back and do it. What I meant to say was the process of the revolution to communism, not about communism itself, but.

But again what you just described was, was fiction because we haven't seen a process towards communism, for example, in Soviet Russia. Right. Lenin was about to say, hey, let's transition to communism when he died and Stalin took over.

And then Stalin basically said we can't transition to communism. We got to focus on what we're doing here. And that's why a lot of communists would say that Stalinism is not communism.

The same way a lot of those people would say that Maoism is not communism for similar reasons. So I think what you just described was an aspiring event, but not an event we've witnessed.

And where I suspect we share a certain level of cynicism is I don't fucking trust political parties, regardless of their ideology.

Cuz to what you inferred, at a certain point, the leaders of political parties do whatever the fuck they can to maintain their power, regardless of where they are on the political spectrum. We digress though. I want to come back to a few things you said. When it comes to class.

And what's interesting about America, to your point, is how visible class is. Because the first time I ever went to New York City, because class in Canada is different, it does exist.

And Toronto, for example, has a huge class disparity.

But it was when I first went to New York City that I was like, oh my fucking God, the amount of wealth and the amount of poverty kind of right there in total juxtaposition. Juxtaposition. It is something that made me think, how do Americans digest this? How do they compute this?

And that may be why New York tends to be more conflictual, more violent, more politically polarized than a lot of other cities.

But at the same time, your point about the aspirational nature that many poor people aspire to be rich and therefore they vote for policies that will benefit them when they're rich. And even a lot of middle class people still aspire to be rich, although there are many who are perfectly content in their position. Right.

And you know, would potentially vote Democrat because they like the middle class, they want the middle class, they want to stay the middle class.

I think it's awesome that you have this opportunity to live in a middle class neighborhood at the very moment when the middle class may be going extinct. It's kind of like me driving a Ford F150 truck after being a militant cyclist and anti fossil fuel activist for most of my life.

It's nice to have these moments of contrast. Do you think? And this, I think you brought up Luigi last time. Luigi Mangione. Do you think class consciousness in America is changing?

And I say this partly because to your point, MAGA is they're not just kind of smashing identity politics, they're smashing a lot of the liberal narratives of, you know, the American dream, especially in terms of the middle class, especially in terms of, you know, things like Medicare. So it does feel like it is a new era of American class consciousness. I'm curious to get your thoughts on that.

Yeah, I do Think that's happening. And I think ironically, because I brought up dog. I don't know how to pronounce it.

Because it's doge.

Yeah. Is it doge, like.

Yeah. Because it's based off a cryptocurrency.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Which is shocking because I'm usually clever, but, no, not in that case. I actually did not make that connection. Mostly because I hate bitcoin, so I try my hardest to not pay attention to it.

Yeah. Yeah.

But anyway, so doge to me is what's going to push it, because no one came for the Gypsies when the blah, blah, blah. No one came for the blah, blah. Win the blah, blah, blah. No one cares.

Spoke out for the Jews when they came for the Jews, and then no one was there to speak out for me. That's happening with layoffs and it's. That's what's going to happen with class in America is the Great Reset, which, by the way, I sort of.

It's so hard to agree with some.

Parts of what's going on to reciprocate on the affection that you've showed me in this episode. I very much enjoy chatting with you. I enjoy the vulnerability that you bring in terms of your thoughts. So I, as part of your.

And before we end today, we have to come up with your title, what kind of correspondent you are.

But as part of your regular appearances on the Metaviews podcast, what I will offer to you is a way to rhetorically and intellectually figure out how to articulate what it is about the Great Reset that excites you and that draws your hope?

And what about the adjacent elements that you want to discard so that you can come up with a narrative of describing the Great Reset that doesn't cause you to feel apprehension or qualification? So you can say, hey, guys, I acknowledge the shit show that's going on, but here's an opportunity and here's why I want to focus on it.

Yeah, go ahead. You were saying about class consciousness.

Yeah, yeah. Actually, I came up with a good metaphor for what we're talking about, which is. So I used to be overweight in high school.

When I graduated, I was £275. And it was because I was a glutton. But.

And height. You got to give me a height for that to make.

Yeah, sorry. I was short. I was like 5:3. And I had a huge growth spurt. But I was like. I would say. I mean, I was. It's hard because if you're six, six.

And you weigh that?

Oh, yeah. Because we've never met in person. No, no, I'm 5 10, 5 11. Okay, 511. But I'm shrinking because I'm getting older. So.

But I'm 5 11, and when I graduated high school, I was probably like 5 9. I weigh 275 pounds. No one, like, like boys made fun of me, but like, girls always were like, cool me, you know?

So I don't, like, I have body dysmorphia to this day. So it's hard to talk about that. Like your specific question.

But what I wanted to make as an analogy is I see the body positivity movement very different than most Americans because I lost weight the good old fashioned hard way when I was 18, and I've kept it off my whole life. Keeping it off is a. It's not easy. And body shaming helps me keep it off.

So I have like, a weird approach to, like, how to deal with all this stuff because I don't think any size is okay for health reasons, but I think any size is okay for whatever I can drink. Okay, pint of vodka and kill myself.

So, so, so let's. No, no, let's. Let's do the work right there. Because. Let's unpack that. Because one of the mistakes that I feel Americans make when using language is.

And fuck this, this is a paradox which is leading us into the self conversation. On the one hand, Americans are so individualistic, except when it comes to the use of language.

Because when it comes to the use of language, you guys are so fucking conformist. Like, you know that you can make up your own words on the fly. Like, language is a virus that you can use however you want. So what is it?

Let's get into it. What is it about body shaming that works for you and that motivates you and that allows you to. Because I agree with your larger point.

We have to be healthy, we have to eat healthy, we have to be physically active. So what is it about the body shaming that facilitates that for you?

Okay, intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation is what we're about to talk about. I don't care what the intrinsic motivation is for me to succeed in my goals. I do care about the extrinsic coding and all that kind of stuff.

So when I talk about body shaming, for me it's an internalized voice that says, tomorrow morning you're gonna hate yourself when you see how bloated you are.

If you eat that bag of cookies in the, in the cabinet, you Promised yourself if you smoked that second joint that you wouldn't eat the bag of cookies in the cabinet. So keep your word to yourself. Honor your own plan. This is if you want to be able to get away with X and do Y. This is how it works.

There's no such thing as a free lunch. So don't eat the cookies, fatty. Like. Like something like that.

Yeah. Yeah.

But if I was talking to a friend, like, I have, I am. Anytime I meet someone who's overweight, my. My impulse is to be like, hey, I once was really heavy.

And if you have trouble losing weight or need tips, I will help you. I'll be your phone buddy. I'll give you anything I can do to help you.

Because the greatest gift I ever learned was the gift of learning how to lose weight and keep it off without, like, extreme body, without eating disorders.

Yeah.

And. And that took a long time. I've had on and off eating disorders and body dysmorphia my whole life. But I'm actually healthy now.

And mainly it's because I have kids. And I knew that when I had kids, it would be inappropriate to, like, skip meals in front of them and set up, like, because they're.

They're your external accountability. See, and that's where, again, as a language nerd, what you're really talking about is peer pressure.

And that peer pressure can be internalized, right? Because we can't go on for too long because my bladder is minimal. So we may be punting some of this to the next episode.

Look, this is how spontaneous conversations work. That's the methodology here. But as a Canadian, what is evident to me is how difficult it is to eat healthy in America.

When I travel to America, and I have health issues, which we'll get into in future episodes, but when I travel to America, I really fucking struggle because it is really difficult to eat healthy. So that's where I have a lot of empathy for Americans.

Because to your point, takes a lot of discipline, takes a lot of work, takes a lot of fucking effort, counterintuitive effort to eat healthy in America, given all the advertising, all the temptation and the fact that the cheaper food is the shit that will kill you. Right? So, like, I have a lot of empathy there. And that's why I'm saying it's not really shaming. It's quite the opposite. The odds are against you.

And that's where to your point of solidarity, when you see someone else who's struggling with it, you're like, oh, oh, what do you need? I Want to be your peer, I want to help you. So that's where I would say I understand why you use the word body shaving. But maybe it's peer pressure.

Maybe it's peer pressure. And to your point, we need more peer pressure as part of healthcare because we are responsible for each other's health.

And if we all are obese and dying, that actually hurts the society as a whole.

And actually you just explained in reverse the arrogant talking point of why Americans don't believe in social health care and medicine. Why should I pay for a smoker who. Blah, blah, blah.

But like the average person who says that is overweight because the messaging says all bodies, all sizes. Keep buying Fritos, keep drinking coke.

And to my beer. And to my point about how everybody gets social programs, right?

The person who thinks that they're not paying for the smoker, they are paying for the smoker through insurance premiums, right? Through extra medical visits. Like, like the. Okay, we're transitioning now to the self.

The individualized concept of a member in society is entirely mythological. We share costs, we just don't know where those costs are. And roads are the best example, right?

Like I fucking hate driving in Michigan cause their roads fucking suck, right? Cause they have such an individualist notion versus roads benefit us all.

If you a fucking street stroke and you want to get to the hospital, you want the road to be good, right?

And that is what so frustrates me, and this is true in Canada as much as it is in America, is this idea of the self that we are individuals to me is one of the most dangerous and potent misleading myths of society. And yet it's understandable. And the analogy I give, and I'm not sure I have a question, so I may just throw to you and you riff as you see fit.

I understand why people think the earth is flat. Like when you look out your window when you walk around, it sure fucking feels flat.

So if you are so small minded as to be so subjective to think that that's all there is, so it must be flat. I get it. The same thing applies to the self. We experience the world as the self, but that doesn't mean it fucking exists.

Maybe the earth actually is round.

Okay, my shout out after because we're gonna run out of time is my answer to the self. Masaga Dada Maharaj Masagada. Oh, God damn. I can't believe him now butchering his name. I feel horrible. He's one of my favorite people ever.

His name is Nisagada Maharaj and you can look him up. He wrote a book called I Am that.

And he says if you keep honest inquiry about who the self is, eventually you will realize no such thing exists and you will never suffer again. It's not Buddhism, it's not Hinduism, but it's like a sort of both lead to this road.

And I have been practicing it every day of my life for 20 something years. I actually make progress.

Well, talk about that a little. Talk about your progress. And, and I say this because again, after I re. Listened to our last conversation, I.

I kind of felt we had to zero in on this because I could hear the wisdom in your comments. I could hear that this is something that you've already been wrestling with, as paradoxic as it may be. Right?

Because the great gurus of the world are the ones who wrestled with this for fucking decades and were only able to become gurus because they admitted they still knew shit. But please, with that said, tell us a bit about your progress.

Yeah, so what I first started doing was analyzing who. Who am I? And I started really thinking about it because last night I had trouble sleeping.

And the reason I had trouble sleeping is because someone out there thinks I'm racist, and I don't think I'm racist. But then I was like, wait, who is keeping me up right now? Because it's not me.

There's like a dissonant thing in my head that has a refrain that's like, you need to somehow make this person not think you're racist, but that thing is referring to you, and yet you isn't the person talking.

And so like, even just like in those moments, a normal person with a normal IQ like me can actually see that this is true, that you're not who you think you are, because you have too many things in your head at once to be one of them. So if you're not one of them and then you're the totality of all of them, that's like a step in the right direction.

Now, that can still lead you to believe that I am the product of these many voices in my head. And I'm just going to pretend. Look at what I do to your screen. How do I do this? Guys?

Now, now, for those listening to the audio podcast, you know, Mike is using this software. When he gives a thumbs up, it does graphics. And he just did a heart signal and it gave hearts and it was very dramatic. Please continue.

I just turned it off and I saw how to.

Don't turn it off. That was so good.

Okay, if you're a listener. I am through hereditary. I'm obviously American, but I am. Large percentage of me is Sicilian, and Sicilians talk with their hands.

And so I keep using my obnoxious.

Yeah, Jews also. Jews also talk with their hands, Mike. Anyway, go on.

I want my correspondence to be stopping. No, we can't do that.

But no, we're not there yet. We're not ruling anything out. We're not there yet. Please continue.

Because I kind of want it to be something on that vibe just like what you just said.

Yeah.

Something hyperbole to represent me, to misrepresent me. Like, both at once.

Excellent.

And then.

All right, so, okay, so if you think you're the, like, conglomerate of these many voices in your head, that creates a paradox, at least in American culture. Because if you hear voices or you mention that there's voices in your head, you're.

I mean, you're gonna go to an insane asylum and people are just gonna look at you strange. Yet everyone would admit that they have voices in their head when I present it the way I did. So, okay, so that's step one.

I'm past that step, but I think that's the best first step. But so now what is the self?

Well, the self is, like this myopic, one dimensional, egomaniacal person who wants everyone to go to mycap.com, sign up for my substack hard. Every single post I make, re tweet, every single post I make, block quote me, put me on YouTube, blah, blah.

I mean, like, there is a part of me that wants that. I'm not gonna lie. Like, there's a part of me that watched Kurt Cobain sing about punk. And I was like. And people love him. Like, wow.

Like, you can, like, tell the truth and have girls like you. This should go back to. I was overweight and very obsessed with losing my virginity for a long time.

And so all of this is my way of saying, like, my love for this is so hard to articulate. There's a spot in you that wants to hug everyone and love everyone, and it never talks. That's you.

And it's hard to see that because the rest of it is so loud. So when you meditate, this is why you're supposed to meditate, is when your mind quiets, you feel peace, but you don't think peace. You feel peace.

And as a person who's been meditating Since I was 13, I can speak with much, like authority on this. It can and will happen if you give it enough time. It takes, like, 10 years of like, dedication to meditation for it to start really working.

And most people just aren't going to do that. They'd rather take a pill called Prozac or something to feel that feeling. But you still have other voices. You're just diminishing them.

This is different. This is. You go to a spot where those voices don't exist, and then you come back and then you go to a spot and it's just like how you make a candle.

You dip a string in wax, you lift it up, let it dry, and you keep putting it in. And then eventually it grows into a candle. So I have been.

Eventually I'm going to dip into the state where I don't exist enough that when I resurface, I will be more of that awareness wise than the awareness that currently makes me a dick. And that's my goal in life.

So that, that, that was an excellent articulation and kind of responding in reverse.

I, I actually believe, as the heretic that I am, that while you described the tried and true method of meditative practice, which to your point works unequivocally, centuries have proven it. I actually believe there are other, harder, more elusive methods which we can talk about in a future episode.

But they do lead to that same place of selflessness, of the dao, as the daoist would call it, but to your earlier aggregate metaphor.

So I came to a kind of similar place of kind of recognizing that there is no inner child, there's inner children, that we create a different self for every person we meet, for every trauma we experience, for every social situation we might find ourselves in. And those inner selves accumulate to your point of aggregation. And in the last couple of years I've reframed that as. It's my parliament, right?

I am not a unitary individual that I have within me a parliament that includes different factions, different parties, different ideologies, that allows me to have contradictory positions.

Some days the most cranky motherfuckers stage a coup and take the whole thing over, but they get defeated the next day by a coalition of the willing who, who intervenes. And that helps me reconcile both my inner contradictions.

But to your point, the fact that there is these forces at play, there are these voices that might keep me up where the other majority might be, shut the fuck up and go to bed and try to balance that out.

And that's been very helpful for me as a metaphor in terms of recognizing the need to not just meditate, but to have inner debates and allow these sides of me to talk Things out and to develop positions that can change. Right, because conditions can change. And therefore I can come up with a different idea. Now, that's one conception of the self I've been working on.

The other, more accurate conception of the self that I am less articulate about, less certain about. No, I shouldn't say less certain, less aware.

Maybe it's this is an idea information that I still have difficulty articulating, but it overwhelmingly feels like what is actually happening to me in this particular plane of existence, and that I am a federation of bacteria, and that as a federation of bacteria, I am really secondary to what is happening. So the Parliament is not the executive, Right? The parliament is just the congress that talks about shit. The executive is the bacteria.

And it is the bacteria that is actually deciding whether I eat, whether I sleep, whether I shit, whether I'm happy, whether I'm sad. And I feel a certain amount of distance from that bacteria in the sense that it is me, but it's not me.

And that, again, is somewhere I'm going to have to keep thinking.

And it goes back to my point about the path to the open mind is the giving the food or giving the laugh, that it is fundamentally the belly, because that is where the bacteria is, that we are fundamentally trying to appease our bacteria, serve our bacteria, and if we do so, we do a pretty good job of it. And that's why your point about the fat shaming and the obesity in the food is so difficult.

Because I think the most tyrannical, most powerful, most, I don't want to say evil, but maybe villainous bacteria that we face are the ones fueled by sugar. Because holy fuck, is it hard to defy them or resist them? And when they take a hold in your body, man, you know, it's crazy, right?

I mean, to your earlier point, one of the greatest life skills I developed long ago was not having the munchies when I get high. And I get high as often as I can because to your point, that combination makes the sugar viruses really quite capable. I digress.

An opportunity to respond before we go to shout outs.

Sure, yeah, I have a lot to respond, but I'll actually make it pretty concise. I would say that all of your analogies and metaphors and all of your things made sense to me.

But I would still beg you to consider who is the thing evaluating the bacteria? Who is the thing evaluating the parliament? And that is what I think we are. But here's the weird thing.

I do think that I used to do yoga and I, you know, like you, like I, I cycled only, like, we're very similar. It's crazy. The more you talk, I'm like, oh, wow, we could have been best friends for the last 30 years.

And like, the shifting dynamics, like, admitting that you're gonna change. And I don't care if someone calls me a hypocrite. Like, who gives a shit? I'm. Yeah, you know, I am where I am.

And. Quick tangent and we'll get into this in a future episode. In a racist society, especially one as racist as America, we're all kind of implicated.

You and I have a moral commitment where we want to counter it at all points. But for people to call us racist is going to happen because we live in such a racist society anyway. Please. I digress. Go ahead.

I do agree with that. Yeah. So I think the self is real, but it's not you.

And so, like, calling itself is kind of weird, but like subjectivity and the bacteria, like you said, is not part of the self. It's. It really is the triangle of mind, body, soul. And so I guess what I'm getting at is the soul has no opinions. The soul is an observation unit.

It's very Schrodinger's cat. It's very quantum mechanics. Consciousness only exists when consciousness reflects on consciousness. Am I creating you? Are you creating me? Are we co.

Creating? How on earth could I know? Would I care? Would the thing that's doing both care? That's the point.

I mean, if you really think about it, consciousness would be bored without consciousness. And like, I don't understand how this all makes sense, but I am convinced that when you graduate Earth, it enough makes sense that Earth makes sense.

Sense. But then there's still something beyond that probably.

Yes, yes. And, and to your point, I think it does make sense. And I think that's why there's pleasure in us discussing it. Right?

There's pleasure in us making sense of it.

But, but to your larger point, I think it is, you know, degrees, like when I, when I, I forget when the age I, I, when I first really started to smoke dope. I loved astronomy because I loved just, just scale, right?

The idea that you could just scale up infinitely or scale down infinitely and in each layer there's a new type of consciousness and it goes on and on and on.

So you did exercise your shout out already today, and I am now having to enforce one shout out only because I've had people who just fucking went on and on and on and kind of blew their chance. But there is the subject of what kind of correspondent? And you don't have to use the word correspondent. Correspondent is the metaphor.

But I'm trying to create a cast of characters, right. The, you know, the way that as meta views continues to mature, that I can be described like what again is like a Motley Crue. Right.

Or, you know, a League of Superheroes. So that's why I'm trying to encourage folks, folks to, to come up with these types of different titles.

So you, you alluded to earlier that you thought you had something that was kind of incendiary and particularly controversial.

Yeah. So I mean, I'm thinking just because it's funnier, I'm thinking go with like, there needs to be something before the next two words.

But American wackadoo, like official American wackadoo, like, are like something like you're. Because I don't want to represent American. Because I don't. But I want to recommend.

And so. So wackadoo's W, right?

Yeah, W H A C K. No, no, no.

But I'm just thinking acronym, like radical. Radical American Wackadoo. Raw.

Yeah, I like that. I like that because I do think. Yeah. And then the other thing, I mean, like the identity components on the inside are the opposite on the outside.

But you know, I consider. Consider myself a peaceful loving hippie, but I think when I compare myself to peaceful loving hippies, I'm nothing like them.

So I can't like, use that term. Meanwhile, projection wise, it's weird when someone calls me white because white people don't really call me white.

So I've always, like, felt homeless. But if I try to claim I'm like, oh, Well, I took a 23andMe and I have this percent, you know, no one's gonna care.

So look, and, and this is the tyranny of America.

People who currently identify as white should understand that they can and should reject whiteness because race as a construct is fucked up and white supremacy as a concept is fucked up. And to use the language of the skinheads, we need more race traitors who are willing to. Now I personally remember when Jews were not white, right?

When Italians were not white, when Cubans were not white. So I am here to say, while we have to acknowledge we are beneficiaries of white privilege and that comes with a certain amount of responsibility.

Fuck white supremacy and fuck being white. Ethnicity is a far better way to describe ourselves. I digress. But yeah, are you okay with Radical American Wackadoo?

I like it. I like it a lot.

And I I love your show and I would love to be a semi regular, whatever term you want to use, but it reminds me of the Daily show and it would just be like, I mean, seriously, like, I. Yeah, yeah, I love coming on here. It's a good time for me. And it like, works. And I just. When you said that, you blew my mind just now.

I just want to repeat what you said. Talking about who we are to someone who respects that conversation is probably my favorite part of living it really.

Like, it really is because I feel like there's this giddy collective behind us just laughing like they're so close. That's how I feel every time. Like, I feel like there's forces behind us dying for us to get it. Like, they're like, you fucking idiot.

Like, like watching a kid in a corn maze and you're just like, oh, she's lost. And you're like, as an adult, you're above the corn maze. So you can just see how easy to zoom it out.

And I'm going to do the old playing the music to wrap it up. But to your point, point, we should also talk about animals, because I experienced that with animals.

Like, animals are teaching me a lot that that which gives us pleasure is probably what we should be doing. That there's a certain intuition to those types of instincts.

So you got the calendar link and you've now also got the URL because we're trying not to use Google Meet, but using this free and open source software. So Mike Oppenheimer can be found@mikeyopp.com his substack kicks ass. His podcast Coffin Talk is also fantastic. I.

I wanted actually to talk to you today about Ayahuasca and purging, but I forgot, so I may have to come back to that because that was in your, I believe recent episode. Metaviews is broadcast semi regularly available on all the social socials. Harriet here needs some lunch.

I've neglected her and she's telling me, papa, papa, it's time to eat. So we'll be back again soon. This has been an excellent episode. Thank you, Mike.

We were on a bit of a dry spell, so I'm glad that we were able to get as high as we could today. And we're coming back tomorrow with another fantastic episode.

Mike, I know that you're not able to listen or watch all of them, but you should definitely check out tomorrow with Taz Latif joining us from the uk. And I think it's gonna be a fucking barn burner in particular around similar issues we talked about today in terms of class and identity and self.

So again, we'll see you soon. Thanks again. And we're out.