Hi, I'm Jesse Hirsh, and welcome to another episode of Metaviews, recorded live in front of a herd of goats with some horses and some pigs are hanging in the background. And today, that good midge, Mike Oppenheim is back to play the role of the radical American wackadoo.

I was gonna call the title Understanding America, because that is fundamentally what I've been relying up from you, and we'll probably still have to rely upon from you as we try to make sense of our shared insanity.

It used to be that this insanity was kind of isolated and people experienced it on their own, but we've reached a level of mania where we are all part of the shared hallucination. We may be experiencing it differently depending on where we're at and what our relationship is with media, social media, the local barbershop.

But these are wild times. Wild times, Mike. And, you know, before we started, we were talking a little bit about solar power, which I may want to come back to.

And I do like to give my guest a heads up before we begin that today.

The three pillars I've chosen for our chat are money, boomers and union, which you can sort of see the connection, although there is some randomness to my thoughts, as I was thinking before you joined. But we start every episode with the news. Metaviews publishes a daily newsletter, which I published a post.

I wrote it Friday, I guess it was published on Saturday on how Canada can win against Trump. And it's currently doing the modest going viral on Substack.

And when I say modest, I think all these platforms, when you go viral, it's like a leveling up. Like the first time you go viral, usually it's modest and then a little more modest and a little more modest at some point.

Mike, if you ever want me to tell you the story of how I got a dog video on TikTok with 18 million views. It's a really interesting algorithmic anecdote.

And today's issue was Boston Fights Back, which is kind of a look at how Boston is resisting ice and creating its own narrative, which is problematic, but interesting. But, Mike, you know that this is the opportunity for our guest to share news that they have been thinking about paying attention to.

Could be personal news, could be industry news, could be world news. So what have you got for us today?

Yeah, first of all, I just want to weigh in that I actually get most of my news from Metaview News now, and I am a paying subscriber. And if you're not, what is wrong with you? Right on. I Actually don't know how.

Maybe it's a Canadian law, but you charge less than they allow me to charge less. Like, there's a rule on my American substack that I cannot lower. And I wanted my number to be lower because, like you, I need support.

And I do feel support from paying subscriptions. But like you, I'm not looking to set this, like, weird bar at the number they picked.

So anyway, I just want to throw it out there that if you're listening, I support this show that I'm on. Like, I fully, fully have allegiance to the. The spirit of the show. But that's also where I'm going to kind of get nitpicky today.

Although, let me just quickly interject to your technical point about substack. It's because Canada is a developing country and they recognize that we just don't have the same income expectations as American creators.

Sorry, go ahead. Please continue. Do with your nitpicks.

So I don't have a nitpick, but my news story is, first of all, I was going to come in and talk about. I'm a film major and a filmmaker, and I love film. And I have.

It has gotten so bad here in the film world that I didn't watch any of the nominees for best picture this year. I didn't even know what they were.

And so I woke up today and when I checked the news, I did look at who won the best picture and all that, because I do always try to watch it. Yet again, I feel hopeless and lost. So I'm going to talk about the other news article that made me feel hopeless and lost.

Although can you quickly tell us? Because I didn't pay attention either. Although I did see some funny clips from monologues and jokes being made and Adam Sandler saying, shadow me.

But what. What one best picture, it's called.

I think it's like a noro or nara.

Okay.

Honestly.

Yeah, I've heard the name. Haven't seen it.

Yeah. And Best act. Well, now they say actor for both categories, which I'm fine with. I'm not making a transgender joke. I'm making a.

I'm confused and old joke. But the best actor, that is not a male. Whatever. They.

I don't know how they do this anymore, because if it was just one category called actor, I would get it. But they do still pick one that seems to be the kind who would have a hole for the Ken doll to put his Audi in.

So I don't know if I already misstepped and lost you your viral cachet that you just worked so hard to get.

Or alternatively, you may have in the Trump world, the Trump social media world, you may have just gotten us our first viral hit right there. Please, please continue. We Jazz yeah.

So I don't like anything that's going on in our world. And I have not liked following the Ukraine or Russia controversy. And I'm not even talking about since the last time it fake started.

I also don't like this guy Trump and I don't like this guy Vance. But I'm going to say the following for the news. I now long I now think J.D.

vance is the person I dislike the most out of every major character in and it's and I have two reasons. I'm 43 years old. So this is the first time in my life where someone younger than me has immense power, like in my world.

And it's shocking and startling and awful to see someone who it hurts, doesn't, it doesn't represent anyone I know from my age group. He like acts like kids in public speaking, debate classes and when I was 18 would act who like smelled funny and had trouble wiping properly.

And like, just like I don't like anything about him. And what he did was more hack and more stunted than what Trump did. Like, Trump was actually just being Trump.

Like, I actually have seen Trump since the 80s. That's Donald Trump. Like he would actually talk to someone that way with or without cameras.

I believe so that even though it's a shame and awful and I'm like horrified by everything I saw, the JD Vance show was what I what I want to talk about today as far as the news. And it's that there why impeach Trump at this point? Like, you'd have to impeach both of them.

Like, and to your point, this is why I will never support anyone saying assassinate Trump. No, not at all. He's far more important alive today.

Yeah. Yeah. And then I read your article. It was wonderful on how Canada can resist a lot.

And I was very surprised in a good way by how viral it went just because I don't know what makes things go viral either. Like, so I was happy though. I just want to make sure that's clear.

And what was interesting to me is reading something intelligently Anti American from someone I know and actually feeling, like, weird senses of loyalty towards everything. Like, it was a.

And I want to talk about that because, you know, I'm your wackadoo American correspondent and, like, it's a weird feeling to see you guys talk about us.

Like, and it's even weirder to have someone I know because I have a best friend from college who's Canadian, and she actually was nice enough when we were 18 to give me a chance to fake marry her to move to Canada. But when I went to the embassy and, like, inquired about, like, legally getting citizenship, they, like, laughed me out of the room.

They're like, oh, you're a writer and a musician and you play guitar and you want to move to Canada? I was like, I don't like George W. Bush at all. They're like, you can leave now.

And so I just want to point out, like, that's how much I do actually like Canada. However, I'm.

Can I quickly, quickly interject?

There's a lot of misinformation going out there right now amongst American progressives saying, you know, hey, let's go to Canada and, you know, get find refuge status. Let's get citizenship without understanding how strict Canadian immigration law is. And basically, no one from America will qualify coming to Canada.

Like, you can't flee to Canada, American friends. It's just not on the table. Not until the border falls apart, at which point, yeah, by all means.

But insofar as there is a Canadian seat, it's the customs. Anyway, the Canadian equivalent of the custom patrol will not be friendly to a lot of Americans, I'm afraid.

No. And I have a lot of stories about that. I have some reentry and entry stories that, like, have blown my mind.

Like, anyone who's like, oh, Mounties, they're so delightful. No, they're, like, as scary as American cops. And then I have been. And.

And they're not Mounties. Like, they're a dedicated police force the way Homeland Security is. So they got their own corruption and bullshit. And. Anyway, please continue.

Yeah, so I got sidetracked. But I did just want to explain my loyalty issues, which is that I have actually, actually tried to leave America before.

Like, like, literally driven across the border, went to Toronto, went to a real embassy, had my passport. Like, I'm not effing around here to our audience. However, with that said, I was in my early 20s.

I've now seen you guys have Trudeau and all your other weird stuff. Go on. I've seen, like, the Kickstarter crisis with the truckers. Like, your country is not America, but, like, let's, let's relax a bit. World.

Like, we. And so your article was interesting because it was still, like, very, like, Western American.

Like, like, here's how we fight to keep in, like, especially the part about, like, and we can reverse engineer, like, their technology because there's nothing wrong with what you said, but it was, like, ironic to me because it wasn't like, peaceful. It wasn't like the language of, like, love and peace, which, again, Jesse, I respect you and like you for that. I'm not like.

But it was so interesting to read that because I'm like, first of all, I was kind of laughing in a haughty American way. I was like, try your best. Make your Chinese EVs. Like, you know, it was like. But that's not a real voice in my head. It's just one of the many crazy.

So anyway, that's, that's what I want to talk about is how weird it would be to fight us in a war, to be us.

Like, yeah, like, it is a civil war. Right? And that's, that's the weird part because as a tangent, I.

I had a conversation with my parents who are in the process of starting to sell their home. I mean, not literally in that it's going to take a while for them to get. Deal with their stuff, deal with their memories, deal with the emotions.

But I sort of said to them, the value of your house ain't gonna be going up. The scenarios in which Canadian real estate continues to increase are not there, except if there's an American civil war before they attack Canada.

And then there's a lot of Americans wanting to buy property in Toronto. But that seemed very slim possibility at this point. But we don't know. And to your point, I was being facetious in that post.

I was role playing, but I was role playing in such a way that acknowledges that I don't think enough Canadians are taking this seriously in the sense that this is not idle chatter. This is not some guy doing this for shits and giggles. This is part of a larger plan.

And as an aside, I am one of the rare people who dislikes Trump, dislikes the Republicans, and also dislikes the entire Russia hypothesis. And I'm not saying that Russia doesn't benefit from a lot of this shit, but I'm just saying it's never that simple.

And there's a lot of interest at the table, of which Russia is just one of many. And by turning it into this simplistic conspiracy that he's a Russian agent and Russia has taken over.

You know, it, it, that's where you lose a lot of the MAGA people, right? That's where it becomes this kind of Russian paranoia.

So these are difficult times for me to your point, because there is so much disinformation, but there is so much not disinformation that sure feels like disinformation because it's so fucking crazy that I, I, I kind of have trouble making sense of it all. And I struggle in that regard. But you started off, I really liked how you're setting Vance apart from the rest.

I took that not just as an analytical decision, but as an intuitive kind of gut decision because that's kind of how you articulated it. And it made me reflect. And this is why I love our conversation so much.

Because on the one hand, we get to aspire to be better human beings, more enlightened human beings.

We get to collaborate on our kind of project to think about these deep thoughts and move forward with them, but to do so with humility and acknowledge how we fall short, right? And all the things that make us human. Because the one I thought is, on the one hand, I like to be open minded about people.

I like to not so much reserve judgment, but, you know, always give an opportunity to find a new side, to find a new reason to like them, to love them, to get along with them. But I kind of have never hesitated to trust my intuition about people.

And when my intuition says fuck no, get out of here, I can never think of a time where I regretted it.

And I don't know if I told you this story and I won't get into it in detail because I think I have talked about it on this podcast and I'm, I can only tell it once every six months, otherwise it really draws conflict. But I met the people who started Ethereum. Before Ethereum, they were giving me bitcoins.

I had all this stuff and I got rid of all of it because I disliked them. I just did not like them as people. They just gave me a bad vibe.

And so my news for today, which I didn't write about, I will write about, is this American cryptocurrency reserve that on the eve of the Trump administration sabotaging the American economy and bitcoin all weekend was crashing because everyone's panicking.

They do this announcement and that did reverse crypto prices, puts all this attention on crypto when the American dollar is about to get fucked and fucked royal again. That previews our feature Conversation. But let's talk about the future a little bit in our wtf what's the Future? Segment.

It's a really tough time to see the future, my friend. But we gotta. We gotta be trying to, you know, see the good spots, past the past a little.

Harriet here is pestering me because she wants to see L U N C H, and I'm not responsible for that today, so she's gonna have to wait to hear the call from elsewhere. But what do you see in your future, Mike?

You know what? It's weird. I'm just gonna go with my intuition. I see a lot of warm, collaborative friendships forming. You and me.

You and your actual listeners and readers. Me and some of your readers. Like, I see a beautiful marriage of people who. Because, again, I can't stress this enough.

You and I would find many things to disagree with after the storm. Like, after we've, like, made shelter and made everything peaceful, but then we're locked in the same crazy house.

We would start disagreeing about, like, well, I think forks are better than spoons, you know, so it's like, there's always, like, room for people to disagree. But the difference is the way you and I would disagree would be fine. We wouldn't end up taking knives to each other's throats.

So I think there's a big group of people who are not afraid of violence, but want it to be the last of all resorts who are slowly being compelled to mention that to people like, hey, I'm not violent. I don't support violence, but I'm not the kind of person who sides with the Nazis and grabs a gun and fights their fight.

I do get shot in the fucking throat while my children are in the corner of the room crying like, I. I will resist. Like, if you push me past, we're not there. But you're asking about the future.

And now we're in the roaring second twenties. What do you think is happening here? What is building up? How are people behaving? How did Hitler use blitzkrieg?

What was the typical response to blitzkrieg? Why was Neville Chamberlain laughed out of leadership?

And why did this Churchill guy become a leader who, by the way, laughed out of leadership as soon as war was over? Not exactly the greatest peacetime politician. So, like, we're seeing that right now.

So I think we're gonna see wartime politicians, we're gonna see all this, and we're gonna see people like you and me actually resisting on different levels. Hopefully not getting to that boiling point where, you know, violence would actually be imposed on us. And then as a retaliation maneuver. Necessary.

Well, and serendipitously, I was earlier today thinking that, you know, while I pride myself on being able to be.

To spend time with anybody, to break bread, to kind of be in anyone's presence, I was thinking this morning that I wouldn't be able to be in Vance's presence, that. That I. I might be moved to violence, that.

That it would be difficult for me because he is so reprehensible, he is so worthy of, you know, that kind of go yourself, that I thought I would just have to abstain. I would just have to turn down, decline the invitation. Right. Or find a go. A place to go take a dump. Sorry, you were gonna say.

No, just my rage meter went off because I have a son who's half white, half Asian, and he has two children who are half. Not white, and he is currently, like, fighting a crusade and then some for white people and anti.

And so that's, like, why I'm, like, I just am horrified by anyone who was a Democrat, wrote about being poor bootstraps going to law school, and then now they're, like, siding with every person they hated to get famous and popular and rich by. And now they're there, and it's just like. It's not an act, but it's an act.

Well, and to your other point, the other thought I've been having lately is, you know where on that Pre World War II timeline, are we thinking about.

This all the time?

Yeah. Because I love that phrase that history doesn't repeat itself. It rhymes.

Which is to say the repetition is there, but the rotation's a little off and the sequencing can be a little off, because to your point, there are a lot of people now who are consciously choosing to side with the regime, and they're lying to themselves, they're lying to other people. And like, the media example, of course, is a Morning Joe. Right.

And how they sort of spent all this time up to the election trashing Trump, and then as soon as he won, ran to Mar a Lago to kind of curry favor and kiss his ass. And you're seeing that across the board, and it's scary, right?

I mean, that's the kind of the part of the rise of fascism where those who are openly out there and openly believe it, it's kind of easy to go, yeah, well, fuck them, right?

But those who are the slippery, those who sort of consciously decide to switch sides because they think the other side is winning, cause they think that they can profit because they think that's the moral slippery slope that I think is the most dangerous and what I find the, the most disturbing. And I suppose being the communicator that I am, I wonder what kind of rhetoric can undo it.

Either to get the person to absolve themselves from those lies and that slide, or to use them as an example so others don't. Right. Like, if they're not willing to make the change, then how do we, you know, prevent others from falling prey to the virus?

Because to me, that's what I always thought conspiracy thinking is, was that it is a kind of mental virus. And unfortunately, it's still ravishing the population.

Yeah. Like, and the, the rhyme repeat thing is really interesting to me. And this is totally going to segue into money.

But, like, you know, the first time they rounded, they said like, hey, you're an intellectual. Come to town hall. We'll have a peaceful meeting.

They show up to town hall, they shoot them all, and then there's not as many smart people left to lead. Less smart, less informed people. So that's not going to work this time.

Like, obviously people like you and I are not going to, like, rush to town hall, but, like, they still want to collect and kill people who are vocal and strongly opinionated and not afraid to back down. Like we're. And so knowing your public enemy won your whole life just based on the way schools treated you.

You know, any interaction with police, even if it's friendly, you just still, like, they sense it. You sense it. They're like, oh, yeah, you're. You're pretending to respect me and you're doing it so I can't do anything to you.

But, like, we both know you don't respect this. Yeah, you clearly actually want to smoke pot. Like, you're not like, like getting my directive. You know, I'm speaking from a young kid in Birmingham.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But to your point, like, I gotten a lot of during school for things like not standing up for the national anthem.

And they'd go, why aren't you standing up for the national anthem? I'd say, well, because nationalism is one of the most lethal man made inventions. More people have died from nationalism than anything else.

Why would I support that? And they would just look at me like, we are not gonna engage this kid. You keep sitting Right. We're fucking not going there.

But the other thing I would point out, and this is where I have a sense of hope, a modest sense of hope, is I think where this go round is currently different. And I don't think this is gonna last. This is why I say it's a small piece of hope. They only try to kill people reputationally, right?

They're not yet killing people like us who have a different voice, who are doing different work. They're not yet showing up at our house or, you know, to your couple episodes ago, having our perfectly tuned car accidentally go off a road. That.

That phase will probably come. But now, you know, they try to do it reputationally, and that's where there is still an opportunity to create constituency, right?

Because that's really what I think of in terms of metaview subscribers and metaviews readers, is that I'm building a constituency. These are the people who are going to go to the Free Jesse rally when I'm in jail. Right? That's sort of the logic of what you're thinking about. And.

And that's where I do think things are a little bit different this time. And we have a little more of an opportunity before that next phase to reach people, right?

To mobilize people, especially in the kind of grassroots phenomena that is podcasting, which I think is far more valuable.

And when I was thinking about today's issue, quite frankly, I was thinking a lot about what I want to talk about tomorrow on your show, because I really love your podcast and I love the conversations you have on your podcast, because you are in a completely different cultural space than anywhere else in the media that I've encountered. And I say this because I kind of hang out in a Canadian.

I hang out in a couple of Canadian podcasting communities, but one of the podcasting communities I hang out with has a podcast run by a funeral home guy. Like, he owns a funeral home. And the podcast is designed as like a promotional vehicle for the funeral home.

And while it is well done, it does not even compare to the work that you're doing because you're taking it to another level of philosophy and accessibility that I think speaks to the power of podcasting in this kind of revolutionary moment. And that's where we will segue into our feature conversation. And as a quick aside, you know that video of Prez.

Prez is dead precisely because of that practice, because she used to love running off into the woods and finding some place to roost. And the fox eventually just showed up and had her for lunch. But she was a fantastic bird. A fantastic bird. Again, we could defer that until tomorrow.

But speaking of death, let's talk about money. Cause I've always found that money has the stink of death and the kind of connection to death. I'm riffing right now.

This is not actually where I wanted to go. I was initially wanting to talk about money. Cause I think this is gonna be the week where we get a sense of the future of money.

And this isn't just because of this bitcoin bullshit and this cryptocurrency reserve. It's because right now, hedge funds and hedge funds are the high temples of money.

They are shorting the American stock market because they are anticipating that when the asshole in chief institutes these tariffs that stock markets are gonna crash, that the American economy is gonna crash. So I think this is a big week for money on a bunch of different levels. And again, I don't have much. I don't really have any money.

I don't know much about money. I kinda. I'm repulsed. But I have a gut instinct that this is going to be a week where money plays into the big picture. Money, Mike, the mensch.

What are your thoughts on money? You're a really smart guy, a wise guy.

I have a hunch I could ask you almost any question topic in the universe and you'd come up with something that at the very least is a little different from everybody else. So what's your take on money, Mike?

Yeah, I have a lot to say on this. Too much. And I understand my role, so I'm going to narrow it, but I'm going to start early.

And then let me modify and say your role is to be crazy. The. Because that is the radical American wackadoo, the practice that we try to cultivate here on Meta Views, which you are already very good at.

But I would encourage you to use this as your gym is the art and science of the sound bite.

Because there is nothing more powerful in our attention deficit society than a powerful wound up sound bite that you can throw out there and cause fireworks.

Please. The future of money is not money. It's your social credit. And your social credit score is all that's gonna matter.

And the amount of money you have is not gonna matter. Your social credit score is what's gonna get you access to what money used to get you. How does that get created and how does that work?

Well, first of all, you could watch the show called Black Mirror, which has an excellent episode about what it'll actually really probably look like.

And I think while very few people who have maintained their sanity have watched all Black Mirror episodes, I think everyone's watched that episode.

I mean, it's such a good cautionary tale. That and the one about the robotic war dogs that are accidentally released in a factory. I think those are the two things.

Like, you should know that Boston Dynamics is real and you should know that Boston Dynamics only shows you what they want to show you. So if what they show you scares you, imagine what's behind door two.

We are getting a little off track, but no, we are real dogs are an actual threat, my friend. Like people don't really and like res dogs are kind of the warning of this.

But when American society, and I include candidates that when American society breaks down and all these dogs start fending for themselves, they are going to be a fucking force to reckon with. Please. I continue.

Yeah, so I grew up in a town full of rich people with parents who not only didn't act rich, but had actively like lost money and made money enough times that they just raised me like very like middle income kid. So I felt poor growing up. But then when I graduated and went to college, I was aware of the fact that I had immense privilege.

Other people don't have who come across the same way I do. So I can walk in any room and fit in much better with people who don't have money and weren't brought up with money.

But I'm also repulsed by and very used to being in rooms with people who have too much money and didn't earn it themselves. With all that said, that's going to explain why my dad is. He was like a legal gambler for a while. He's done like a lot of different jobs.

But then he switched to investing. That was what my dad did almost all my life. That's why we were.

That's legal gambling.

Yes, exactly. And then he would say that. And I'm not like. And my dad is. I love my dad. He's a great man, he's very ethical.

He has never voted for a Republican or a Democrat. That should give you a little idea.

But the reason he's applicable in this situation is he has always believed in holding real gold, physical gold, not the etf, not attached to the markets. And he said even if no one's there to buy it, and even if it didn't work, if it did work, you want it. And it always made sense to me.

And so when he said why he wasn't getting crypto, his exact reason was, I mean, the dollar is crypto and so is the euro and so is any other currency. So if you want to be in a different, like, world storm of that, that's fine.

But as my dad said, and he's actually proving right, every central bank is buying a ton of gold. Gold is skyrocketing. They're actually trying to cap it very hard right now. Silver is bleeding up because of it, but silver.

The issue is China's not manufacturing enough right now to need as much silver. So silver actually has a real use, whereas gold doesn't. But gold has a perceived use and a perceived storage of wealth.

All of this is to say that money is definitely on the way out, but there's always going to be a system for bartering, trading and communicating.

And even more importantly, there needs to be a system where people get to have more than others, because that is an imperative that is built into all of our global societies at this point.

Well, I think more specifically, we need to have a system that measures status, because that is primarily the function currently of money, is that money is the measurement of status. And that's where social media on its own is a threat to money, because it is a new form of measuring status, a very flawed form.

And I think that's why a lot of people still abstain or reject it.

But I think we will continue to iterate in these types of metrics of status, and the more people who consent to them or the more that it is imposed upon people, the more that that system will take its place. So, brilliant answer.

And I want to kind of force you to bend that theoretical into impractical by speculating, really, on the political weeks and months to come. Because here's my kind of hunch. It's not even a hunch. It's half thought that I would love you to help me with.

I kind of suspect that the logic of the Trump regime right now, given who they represent, given who they serve, is that the impact of tariffs on prices of American goods, especially cars, won't mean shit to the rich. That if you got enough money, it's really like, if the price of a car doubles, that's nothing to you.

If the price of your groceries triples, that's nothing to you.

Am I correct in thinking that we may have such a bifurcated American society that we've finally come to the point in which the ruling class is not literally ruling, is not just literally ruling for the rich, but like, they're basically going to say, go fuck yourself to everyone else in the sense that they're Going to allow the economy to tank because to them, the price increase really will be negligent.

Yeah. Okay. So they can allow the economy to tank only if they don't plan on.

Yeah. So, okay, as long as we're on the same page.

Yeah, yeah. Because there'll be two wars. There'll be the wars against the cartels in Mexico, which you know will be like Afghanistan but way worse.

And then there'll be the war in Canada, which won't be as messy, but it won't be resolvable either. Right. Like there will always be war in Canada insofar as America is here trying to be here at all.

So actually, you're touching on exactly where I'm conflicted to give an exact answer for my speculative abilities in the eight, ten, let's say, up to two years from now. Yeah.

And that's where you can give multiple answers. Right. Because I like to think about futures in terms of probabilities. There's a chance this will happen, but there's also a chance this will happen.

So the weirdest thing when history rhymes or repeats or whatever to understand is it was very different in the Napoleonic wars how you conscripted soldiers to fight, and then it was very different in the draft wars, meaning, like, all men of an age have to be drafted. A lot of people dodged the draft in World War II in America, that's something our country doesn't talk about or like to advertise.

But it was not as popular as people think. And there were plenty of, like, Vietnam had more, but it still was enough that it was a big, big, big issue.

Well, and the difference was Vietnam. They televised the draft dodging versus in World War II, it was easier to suppress it.

Yeah. So they're having trouble suppressing resistance. But here's the main caveat for, like, where things could go very wrong for Trump and Vance.

No matter what, you need young people who are willing to die, and they need to be willing to go into American homes with, with guns and point them at Americans. That's a really hard sell.

It's one thing to tell young white Aryans that you're going into the homes of non Aryans in an era that, where nationalism hadn't really taken its grip yet. But telling Americans being American isn't a real thing is going to be a hard sell, actually.

Well, and that's, that's what we're witnessing now with immigration. Right. Is they're trying to say, and to your point, it is driven by white supremacy. But whether they'll be successful or not is.

Is a crucial litmus test.

Yeah. So. So that I say all this with, like, a good heart, not a heavy heart. It's the opposite.

Like, I actually know enough people in the military who literally would never do. They would not obey those orders. They would actually say no. Like, I can't. Like, I.

I enlisted to do X and Y, and I had a problem with Y, but Z, not at all. You know, so, like, X is, hey, there's a real war with a real enemy. Go in there and fight. Of course, any soldier who signs up would do that.

Y is more like, this seems political, but it. We have explained the domino theory to you enough times that you should just listen and trust our sponsors. So that still can work on a lot of people.

But this is where, again, the cartels strike me as a very easy, legitimate target. For the regime to focus on the collateral damage of that will be obscene and insane.

And to your point, the cartel, it will be a war in America because the cartels are not going to limit the battleground to Mexico. Right. And that's where I agree with your logic.

Because the other thing I love about the American military is it is currently, in present terms, one of the largest socialist enterprises in the world. Right. Because if you think about the average person who gets admitted to the US Military, they get free food, free housing, free health care. Right.

Free training, all sorts of safety. Like, the American military is literally breeding socialists within its own ranks. So I agree with you.

It would be very difficult for them to mobilize the American military in an illegitimate conflict, especially after what we've seen in the world. And I think Trump also got elected because he offered isolationism.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

But my point is, because we got this because we both assume that there isn't going to be an opportunity to unelect a guy, and that war will be that opportunity. Now, let's take a moment to speculate. On the Canadian side, this is where I think your gut instinct gave a little bit of a preview.

But I don't think it's going to be that hard for Americans to other Canadians or to dehumanize Canadians, especially when those Canadians are ludicrously violent towards American invaders.

And I'm not saying all Canadians because there are many who are peaceful, loving civilization, but there are, like, hockey's a violent sport, you know, more so than football. And there are certainly a lot of violent undertones in Canadian society that would respond to.

But again, I think the civil war, if there were a civil war, would be continent wide. And that might be the ultimate outcome of these types of conflicts. We're going down a real dark tunnel here. Bail me out.

We're still on the money side here.

But I have a fun like question to kind of ask you because I'm curious if you would guess the right answer.

What do you think the average person who voted for Trump but did it reluctantly is currently saying when asked, do you really think Trump wants to make Canada the 51st date? I'm just curious if you've like heard and again, not what an idiot who loves him would say. We're a guy who. Reluctant guy or girl.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm assuming, correct me if I'm wrong, that they would think he's bluffing.

Yes. It's a negotiating tactic is all you need to know if you're a Canadian. That's all that.

All the, the current Trump loyalists, there's the Die Hards, they're not going to get lost. I mean, it would take almost, I mean it would take something weird to get them off.

But that's actually really probably only of his base, 30% at this point. And then I would say the other 70, which used to be like a higher, you know, because he has lost some support already.

Sure.

The people. There's hubris and pride. I don't want to admit I made a mistake. That's a huge issue and that's what I'm spending all my time trying to knock is.

No, no, no, you're not admitting you made a mistake. It's not like that at all. It's just enough is enough time to move on. Like, that's the attitude.

I'm, I'm not finger wagging and I strongly suggest this, Canadian or otherwise, do not finger wag at people who you want to come to your side. You need to make them feel like they're making their own decision and you need to help them make that decision.

But to clarify, remember, that's your job. You're the American. Right, The Canadians. We're not trying to convince anybody. You motherfuckers pick this fight. Right.

You can get your guy out of the picture and stand him down. Right. But it's not our job to persuade anybody. Right. It's our job to defend ourselves. That's the moral superiority of the victim.

We didn't pick this fight. We've been your best friends forever. Right? And that's where I agree with you, those who are seeing it as a bluff or as a negotiating Tactic.

I think that they are the most disappointing, right, because they're enabling it to happen, right? Like at a certain point, you just have to change the government, right? He has to be removed from power along with Vance.

There is no sane argument otherwise. Which appropriately segues us to the second poll of the feature conversation, which is Boomers. Boomers has become a bit of a dirty word.

It's kind of like the B word. And I have a couple of biases to disclose.

On the one hand, I think professionally following up on the subject of money, I have probably made the vast amount of my money in my career from boomers. And I suspect that the rest of my life potentially will be financed by boomers, unless the war or revolution changes that, because fuck, who knows?

So I've always been kind of partial to boomers. I've always spent a lot of time consuming boomer culture, and I probably know boomer history as well as someone of my generation would.

But at the same time, I'm really starting to get a bad vibe, a kind of bad feeling about how all this boomer stuff goes.

And while I have prided myself my entire life on kind of fighting against ageism and really doing my best to dispel all the stereotypes about age, and I think about generations a lot because of your podcast. What are your thoughts on boomers, Mike? I'm conflicted now myself.

And as an extension of where our conversation has been, a lot of MAGA supporters are boomers. To what extent do we need to be reaching out to boomers to help them understand the role that their wealth, the role that their influence?

I'm starting to babble here. Bail me out, Mike. Boomers.

Yes. Growing up, my best friend was an in the closet gay guy who I didn't know was gay. No one did. He was like the real deal.

Like one of those guys who definitely I didn't. Even after he told me, I, like, was like, really like, you know, and.

When is this going to change? And he said, I will never forget it when all the boomers die.

And so that was the first time I heard boomer and associated it with not wanting to change world for the better. And so I will start with that, but then I will immediately Say, my parents are boomers. They have always supported gay people's right to get married.

They've always supported your right to do drugs in your own home and be crazy and walk around naked with people.

And, you know, so it's like, I'm very conflicted because, as you know, for my podcast, I ask intentionally every guest, what generation are you a member of? If and if, usually if they don't know what a generation is, I'm, like, delighted. But the only thing that I.

I never really hear, thank God, is I am this and it's the best, you know? But a lot of the boomers say it now. Like, over four years, I've heard a shift in the way baby boomers answer this question.

Some of them are like, well, I guess toe twirling into the floor. I'm a boomer, you know, because they're ashamed now. So the okay Boomer campaign run by millennials.

First of all, millennials are now getting okay Millennials by Gen Z. Thank God. I love that. I think that's hilarious, because seriously, a giant. I'm allowed to swear you to anyone doing that to anyone.

So ageism works in two directions. And the reason young people tend to get mad at old people is it seems to be coming straight down at them. I have two little kids.

They could accuse me of ageism. I didn't let my girl throw the bread against the wall this morning and demand a waffle and tell me to go fuck myself.

So clearly I am an authoritative older asshole, like, to my literal, like, three and a half daughter. So I get it.

I also, like, thought when I was young, I would listen to, like, off Ivy and, you know, rancid, and I would, like, sing, like, lyrics that talked about old people sucking. So with all that said, the boomers are a precious part of the world because they did actually change the world.

And like it or not, they changed it in ghostly ways for the better. Then they stopped changing it. That's my issue with boomers. They became yuppie. Yuppie is a boomer who stopped being a hippie.

So boomer all the way through.

So let me riff off that because.

Yeah, you know, I'm good.

I don't know about that statement of whether they change the world. What if the world was changing and they were just there to be part of it? And what happened in the 80s is they got insecure and they flipped, right?

And all of a sudden got to be yuppies and got to be part of the kind of Reagan culture and the 80s culture given that in the 60s and 70s, as a generation, they were the counterculture. And this is where my.

And we can talk about this tomorrow, my skepticism of generation is not so much in the falsity of the grouping, because I think there is some value in the grouping. It's the falsity of the agency, the idea that generations do anything right, or that they change shit, I don't think they do.

I think that they are witnesses to change. Right? In the sense that they're there, they're part of it, they can comment on it.

But I kind of feel that change happens on a larger scale that maybe we don't perceive.

And that's where I am a little conflicted, because on the one hand, I do want to absolve the boomers who are now feeling guilty, who are now saying, you know, we fucked up, this is our fault. And on the one hand, I also want to say, well, you did kind of fuck up. You know, we can learn from that. And there's, you know, humility there.

So I'm conflicted because I can play either side. I can make either argument.

And the reason that I'm interested in this is not just because fundamentally, I think boomers need to play a role in dealing with this political crisis we all find ourselves in. Right. Like I will acknowledge, there are a lot of young people who support maga, who support Trump, who support white supremacy the same way.

There's a lot of young people who are ready to take to the streets and ready to sacrifice their physical well being to stand up for all of us and all of our rights. But boomers vote and boomers have money and they have resources and they have attention.

Because the other, the piece I haven't fully written and I'm still working it through, is what I articulated earlier about how they're not trying to kill us anymore, they're trying to kill our reputation. We are in a media society. We are being led by a media dictator.

And so much of our behavior, our culture, our resistance, or lack thereof is media centric. And the baby boom were the first media generation. And the only reason CNN still exists today is because of the boomers.

Real quick.

There was no. No, but the boomers. But the boomers were there, okay? They were, yeah, they were in a voting age.

Like, I mean, I definitely agree with that.

Yeah, like power is power. Right. Media power is different than power. Right. Power. This is why there's this whole adage, information is power. No, information is information.

Power is power.

I think fundamentally they are the first media generation and they still are part of the nexus of media power, attention and money. And I'm really curious before they die, because some boomers are not going to die for a couple of decades yet.

Whether they flip back, whether there's an opportunity to reach them, them and get them back on side with, you know, anti authoritarianism to just take a big umbrella, let alone a better society for all of us. Thoughts?

Yeah, let's put a real focus on, because I've wanted to bring it up actually three times for different reasons now, but like, how much is medical technology going to actually keep us alive? Like, we know the average kid born today is supposed to live to be over 100. The average.

I mean, that's like, if you don't believe that, you're the same person who said the Internet won't work, cell phones won't work. Like, honestly, if you don't believe these projections at this point, I don't know how you understand. Like, if we think it, we do it.

But the moon landing happened, what was it, 60 years after the first plane flew? Like, I mean, it's crazy how quickly we dream of things and accomplish them. Which, speaking of coffin talk, this is my wheelhouse.

Like, we can pretend all day and I know you're not like this, but that all that matters is here and this and that and that. But we know we get funny feelings. We know we have intuition.

We know that, like we would die for causes which makes no sense if you're actually just an animal. Like, it does not make sense.

Yes, it does. Yes, it does. Because we are going to talk a lot about animals tomorrow.

It makes absolute sense if you are an animal, but your logic is otherwise sound. Please continue.

I actually can. I know. Yes, I'm Vegan, by the way, so.

I will help you with that. You must eat meat. But that's a whole other conversation.

Look, you and I are out in the northeast and we're like hunting. I'm hunting and eating. I've killed.

Fair enough.

Eating animals. Yeah, fair enough. I have luxury living in Phoenix, Arizona, where it's easy to eat plant based food.

And I know, but you, you still, on a certain level, you still need to be eating meat because those vegetables wouldn't exist without the animals.

Why? Yeah, okay.

Yeah, like we'll, we'll defer this to our next meta views because I have a real ax to grind against veganism for a bunch of reasons which I'm sure you would enjoy. So we'll punt that to a future one. But you were talking about we got distracted on the who killed themselves for a cause. Please go ahead.

I have never referred to myself as a vegan until that moment. And I only said it as a shortcut word. I actually never call myself that.

I do, I do think I have nothing positive to say about vegan culture to the point where I have gone out of my way to yell at people in a public setting when they refer to me as a vegan. I tell them, no, I'm a guy who isn't eating that food that was, came from that place. Like, because that's for me, it's a thousand percent.

But I think to your language, a different way to frame it is that you eat meat responsibly and it's been many years since you had. Have had access to responsible meat.

I. Jesse, seriously, I'm just gonna break. Thank you. I will actually, word for word, repeat that from now on.

Part of the reason you and I get along is we like words and we like the value of words and what they mean and how they can be used. Not a lot of people do these days.

Thank you. For real. I actually feel better about life from just that phrase because I have so much trouble articulating.

Big word for people who don't have words.

I forgot where we were going. You got to get us back on track, my friend.

All right, okay. Boomers and media. Yeah, media.

And then we were talking about food.

Yeah. But it was the change. Do people change? So first of all, I'm gonna, I'm gonna say right up, straight up, I do agree with you.

I don't think people change the world. I don't think there's a world to change.

I think there's television show going on and you tune in from the time you start tuning in and you stop tuning in from the time dementia sets in or you die or quit following it. So who is still following this technology? Staying alive? That's where we were.

Yes. Longevity. Longevity.

So what, what no one thought of when Joe Biden was failing in front of us, like cognitively, is that Trump, who's never had a drop of alcohol in his entire life. I cannot stress this enough to people. That's not a coincidence.

Like, as much as you want to hate this guy's guts, his older brother died of alcoholism and he made a very intelligent decision to never drink. And that is why he can eat McDonald's food and be overweight and still have his cognitive function and his Persona.

So, like, the reason he's probably going to actually live long enough to run multiple terms if he runs as a. Because I do, by the way. I think that he will legally win election after election. I do think that he's that type of guy.

I don't think he's going to like.

Yeah, I will debate that in the future. I'm not. I could see either going on. But you were talking about longevity, the correlation to not a lot of alcohol.

And so this matters, I think, because boomers are not just going to die the way my friend thought.

And so if they're not just going to die the way my friend thought, that means that we need to include them, which means we need to speak not negatively at the very least about them. And we can't other them and we have to us them stop it and come together.

So my solution to the boomer issue is one, have some respect for people who tried hard even if they failed, and have respect for people, people who are still trying. If you lose respect for people who stopped trying and. Or think that just the fact that they didn't die makes them smarter and better than you.

I get that. It doesn't. It doesn't at all. I know 20 year olds who are a better person than an 80 year old. I, you know, I know 80 year olds. I knew a guy.

This is a great story to end this with. I knew a guy who knew a guy who pushed people off the ladder on the boat in Vietnam to get on as a refugee.

And then people bludgeoned him to death on the ship on the way to LA because he was, he stopped good people from getting on. And the point that the person who told me the story made is he had a partner who they didn't kill.

And that guy is still alive and he's still a horrible scumbag and so that was my. My friend's point.

As, like an old man, he's like, don't ever forget that just because we lose our teeth and look like diminutive, that we're not still like a total inside. Like, there's some of us who we still hate. And so that's how I would, like, just transcend generations.

Yeah.

And to bring it back to kind of where you started this, because I remembered, I suspect we are going to have a class disparity of longevity in that while there is a lot of knowledge that anyone can have access to, like not drinking, like eating lots of plants that will dramatically improve your health, stem cell technology, for example, is phenomenal, and it is a revolution in medicine. And there are other revolutions in medicine that are going on right now which are, again, phenomenal.

Unfortunately, not everyone's going to get access to it.

And that to your point about maybe at some point the elderly will only be the biggest assholes, there is a bit of a bias as to who gets the age and who doesn't. Again, I think that may be another excellent subject for us to get into.

I was thinking tomorrow I was going to talk a little bit about the Canadian healthcare system, only because I think it gets into mortality, and that might give you an opportunity to talk about the American healthcare system. I don't know. Medivue's listeners right now should be sure to check out Coffin Talk, not just for my appearance, but for all episodes.

That is a fantastic podcast and that conveniently brings me to my third pillar of our feature conversation.

I wanted to bounce this idea off you, which over the last couple of weeks, three weeks, I've gotten from completely excited about the idea to completely indifferent about the idea. And like, all things in my head, it really depends on my blood sugar, my cannabid levels, and just everything else kind of going on.

But I find ourselves here in this moment of history.

And while I feel good about the work I'm doing on a communications level, on a podcast level, on a farming level, on a knowledge level, I still feel this compulsion to be part of something larger. So I have been having an ongoing conversation with two other podcasters, Cameron Cowan, who is the Cameron Journal, and David.

I always forget David's last name because I know so many Davids in my life. Anyway, this guy David, he runs a great podcast, which I can't even remember right now either. I got Outrage Unplugged. Outrage overload. That's it.

Outrage overload. And we've been talking about, like, what can we as podcasters do in this dire moment in history.

And my idea, which I think they were scared of, but they haven't totally, they haven't mentioned again, but we have another session coming up, is a podcasters union. And this would basically be a union for people like you and I, where, like, we are the labor of our show, right?

And we should have a union that allows us to scale up, that fosters education, that, you know, organizes mutual aid, that potentially allows us to take political positions like enabling the podcasters not be imprisoned or when that happens, to demand freedom for the podcasters who have been imprisoned. And I had some. So that was when I was sending you those thoughts of like, do you use a messenger? Right.

I was starting to think about that, but again, the enthusiasm, the ebbs and flows of my, is this a good idea or is this a bad idea idea? What are your thoughts? Would you be a member? Are you interested in a podcasters union?

Any thoughts, spontaneous responses to this half baked idea that I have thrown upon you rather spontaneously?

Well, I have three answers and two are very quick. One is I tend to take the Groucho Marx approach to groups, which is any member that would have me, I, you know, so that's a hard sell.

But two, any group that Jessie Hirsch starts, I want to be a member of. So it's like I'm torn between, between those two weird answers.

And then my third answer is, one of my best friends ever became a teacher and he was the best teacher in his school his first, second and third year. And the union dues he paid were enormous. And he was paying them and always complaining.

He's like, not only that new teacher with the lowest salary in the school, but I'm paying into this union and I actually don't care if I'm in it or not. Anyway, three years later there was funding cuts and he was the best, highest rated teacher in his school by administration and by students.

And the union said, bye, bye, you're the newest member. So they took his money to then fire him instead of people who were older and totally assholes and sucked at their job and had tenure.

So I am so anti union because of literally that one experience, plus just famous alpha stuff.

And here's the paradox, because I've had absolutely similar experiences and have been very alienated, and this is, as a hardcore leftist, been very alienated from unions. And my understanding of the history of unions has only made me even more cynical and skeptical. And that's why I kind of want to do this different.

And the Paradox too, of a podcaster's union is we're all kind of capitalists because we're all kind of entrepreneurs in the sense that we're not working from somewhere else because there is like, iheartradio has a union for their podcast staff. So there actually are some actual unions who represent podcast workers.

But this is different in that we're not just workers, we're also kind of owners. And it has that different cultural flair.

But here's the other crazy idea I had, and just so serendipitously it matches our conversation today about money. I was thinking that dues would not be paid in money, they'd be paid in attention.

Because fundamentally that is the currency that podcasters have, that podcasters want, that podcasters need. And as, again, I don't want to do too much work before we as a union.

And all of our meetings, of course, would be podcasts, and every member of the union would host the union meeting on their podcast.

So it would be this way to foster a podcast kind of network, using the culture of a union, but again, not paying dues, but paying attention and using attention as the kind of currency, especially when recruiting other members into the podcasters union.

So I'm riffing and you have identified my own internal conflicts, which is, on the one hand, I'm a Groucho Marxist, and on the other hand I'm a Larry David Jew. So that's a very potent combination that has left me alone on the margins doing my own thing.

But that also makes me vulnerable when the state starts rounding people up. And I'm already starting to figure out, who do I need to have to promote the free Jesse campaign or the free Mike campaign.

So again, I'm still in the brainstorm phase, but your reaction is encouraging other comments or thoughts before we roll to shout notes?

Yeah, I would just say that the only other issue I can see is, like, what about the podcasts that are promoting the very ideas that you and I are against? Like, how is this going to work in like.

Because you can't say only podcasts on the left or moderate or this angle, and then if you include the right, they would be actively preaching against union. So there's like, I do agree with it in theory, and the attention part is where it would work. You're. You're smart for sure.

But great question, my radical American wackadoo friend. Because yes, we would have to come up with a criteria, because I. Here's my paradox.

I believe in inclusivity, except when it comes to organizations generally Speaking in which I believe in exclusivity. And we will at a future time, maybe tomorrow, but probably not.

Total inclusivity, which was a source of power, but also the source of our destruction.

And so that's where I think our first few meetings of the union, if we did it would be designing our criteria of who we want to include and who we want to exclude.

Because there's a lot of leftists I would want to exclude and there are some rightists who I would want to entice and seduce and give them space to believe in whatever their democratic right wing ideology was. Right. So again, I think that would be a fucking fascinating conversation. Right.

Who do we want to include in our club and who do we not want to include in our club? And at least when you got two Groucho Marxists amongst whoever the other weirdos we engage, I think that we could come up with a very weird criteria.

Right. Because I could see. Go ahead.

You just reminded me of one last thing which I'd love to discuss also in the future, which is the positives and benefits and also just like how it worked out when Canada decided to tell Facebook they have to be fair about which organizations for news are included. Because that was, in my opinion, a shit show.

It was a shit show and a nightmare.

Yeah.

And to your point, because that's a fascinating topic which I have to indulge just for a moment, the paradox of that, and I'm sure there's similar dynamics in the state is now all news on Facebook in Canada is banned. Like completely banned. But in every single small town and rural community, news is the Facebook group. So it's more than just a ban.

They have monopolized the news in Canada and that's why MAGA has got a good chance of taking over Canada from within. And on that note, we go to our shout outs. We like to end every Metaviews episode. Didn't even have the video play there, man. I have to press that.

Oh, there it goes. My hard drive gets a little slow sometimes.

So, Mike, we've had another excellent, fantastic, far reaching, stimulating political, philosophical, theological conversation. Any shout outs you'd like to end with?

Yeah, it's actually a really fun one.

We talked about boomers and one of my favorite boomers who talks facetiously constantly about boomers and how annoying they are, but yet owns it, is Dave Barry. He is a former Miami Herald columnist. He's a humorist. He's a fascinating man, a great writer. He's still alive and kicking.

He's also on Substack, so he's actually a fellow colleague of ours. So I'm going to give my shout out to Dave Barry today. He's a man of the people. He's hilarious.

And if you read how he writes and what he writes about, he uses humor and satire, which is always my favorite. Mark Twain, Jonathan Swift, Kurt Vonnegut, these are my heroes. So Dave Barry is my shout out to that.

Right on. Fantastic. Well done. And you know, interestingly enough, Substack is not banned by Facebook in Canada.

And it's one of the reasons why I went back, because it is another one of the backdoors or loopholes in the policy process, which is kind of funny. And to your point, the boomer that I'll give a shout out to. And like most boomers, his narcissism is so raging as to almost be obnoxious.

But I am nonetheless enjoying his podcast. Keith Olbermann, formerly of ESPN SportsCenter and then he was a big part of MSNBC's success.

His, he is on fire right now with his podcast, except when he's. His narcissism takes over and it just becomes him telling these kind of misogynist stories.

Like his two episodes ago he told this misogynist but entertaining story of when he dated Laura Ingram.

And again, very narcissistic, very misogynist, but I hate to say it also entertainment, entertaining, problematic, but that is my boomer shout out for today, Mike.

I hope you go right to the calendar and book another session here for the radical American Wackadoodle on Meta Views because you are fundamentally driving this podcast at this point. Because I love our chats, man. They're, they're, they're a lot of fun. This is the kind of kibitzing that, you know, I aspire to.

So Coffin Talk with Mike Oppenheim is a fantastic podcast, which I will look forward to speaking with you on tomorrow. Other than that holy fucking shit show of the news cycle.

I, I, I, we, we shelved a lot of topics today, which I hope we will get into in our next Metaviews episode. But I suspect the news will also be an ongoing source. So thanks again, Mike. We will hear you soon. Talk to you soon.

Metaviews is available on all the podcast platforms and our YouTube. Some of the shorts that I've been producing Mike out of our episodes are actually starting to kind of Riff and TikTok.

Also, we're starting to get some little play. So maybe we'll talk about how to go viral in our next episode, because I think I'm developing a formula that actually might have some merit.

Other than that. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you soon. Talk to you soon. And yeah, stay fresh.