Latest / DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas / Interview: "Savior and Seducer" by Thaddeus Russell | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas

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Interview: "Savior and Seducer" by Thaddeus Russell | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas · DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas

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Hey there, you're watching DeProgram with
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Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas. We're very pleased
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to be joined today by Thaddeus Russell. He's
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a historian, the host of the Unregistered podcast,
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and the founder of Unregistered Academy. Born
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and raised in Berkeley, California. Russell graduated
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from Antioch College. That's from my old stomping
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grounds. I grew up in Dayton. And received a
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PhD in history from Columbia University, where
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I got my bachelor's degree. He's the author of
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Out of the Jungle and A Renegade History of the
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United States. He's been a professor of history
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at Columbia University, Barnard College, Eugene
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Lang College, the New School for Social Research,
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Occidental College, and Willamette University.
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And he lives in California. He is also the author,
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most notably here, of Savior and Seducer: A
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Renegade History of the United States in the
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World. This is a sequel to a prior volume, just
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A Renegade History of the United States. And
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this one, obviously, from the title, the focus
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is on America's relationship going back all the
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way to the colonial era in terms of its foreign
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policy. And so we're going to sort of, the way
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Jamarl and I like to do it is we kind of switch
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back and forth to ask questions. And Thaddeus,
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thank you so much for joining us. Oh, thank you
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so much for having me. This is great. So we
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so I love the book. I was wondering, the
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first thing that leapt out at
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me in terms of as a big surprise was sort
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of the colonial settlement of Maryland.
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So basically we have this, the
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well, maybe the central thesis of the book. Correct
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me if I'm mistaken or getting any of this
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wrong, is that the United States basically has
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a good cop, bad cop approach to the world. And
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it kind of basically breaks down like this. Going
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even to the British colonial era, we have an
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aggressive, often militaristic, thuggish foreign
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policy that involves neocolonialism and so on.
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But it's aggressive. And it's very
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sort of our way or the highway. That's the savior,
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kind of like we want, we're here, we're
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the exceptional nation, shining nation, shining
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city on a hill. We're trying to show the rest
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of the world how it's done. We're the
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great light that the world should follow. And
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then, on the other hand, you have the seducer
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side, the side that exports so many great movies
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and so much pop culture, so much great music.
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And also, basically that's the fun side, the
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seductive side, the sensual side. And that part
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seems to be generally, generically more effective
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in terms of spreading American influence. The
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soft power is better than the hard power. If
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that's correct, and please again correct me if
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I saw you shaking your head a little bit.
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But tell us about sort of the
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how far back this goes, because sort of the
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mainstream view of American history is that we
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didn't become a seriously outward-looking power
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until the Spanish-American War and Theodore Roosevelt.
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And before that is all prequel. And even the
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prequel is kind of like you have to go to the
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Barbary States. But we were not an aggressively
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external, external exporting power kind of
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society until at least American independence.
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Yeah. So that's a great introduction, and thank
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you for that. And the only thing I quibble with,
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or I just want to make it more nuanced, is the
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use of the term thuggish. So I'm sure you noticed
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that I take great pains to be very, very clear
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about exactly how much death and destruction
4:12
the United States has visited upon the world,
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because it's very important to me for people
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to actually know and, if possible, feel the effects
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of empire, American imperialism. However, I
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don't call it thuggish, and I wouldn't call it
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thuggish, believe it or not, in its intent. The
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intent comes from the first word in the title,
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the savior. The savior, you could call it a complex.
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The savior complex of, and this is not an exaggeration,
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every single American foreign policymaker until
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Donald Trump. Trump is different. And we can
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talk about him. That's the epilogue is devoted
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largely to him. But until Donald Trump,
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beginning with the founding fathers and
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all the way through Abraham Lincoln, not just
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during the Spanish-American War, the
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United States political leadership has been uniquely
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committed to the idea that our nation was determined
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by God to uplift, reform, and essentially Christianize
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the world, Americanize the world. We, meaning
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speaking for the American political leaders,
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have always believed it in our souls.
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Presidents and senators, the foreign policymakers,
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State Department officials, et cetera, believed
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in our souls that we are obligated to be the
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world's savior, policeman, father. If we find
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out any, I'm sure, and I'm speaking of the
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American policy elite, right? If we as the elite
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find out that there's some oppressed, as we see
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it, impoverished people somewhere in the world,
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the national religion has been, it is our duty
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to go save them. Now, the problem is, of course,
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that in virtually every single case, maybe every
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single case, there has been some opposition to
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another country coming in and reforming the place.
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And so that has meant that to save these people
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in these other countries who are benighted, oppressed
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under the thumb of some dictator, we've had to
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kill a lot of people to do it. And in fact, we've
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had to kill a lot of the people we are purportedly
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trying to save. This is not news to either of
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you, I'm sure, nor to your audience, right? But
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I think that the anti-war movement, and I think
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the left in particular, has been a bit off on
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that. They tend to, and I devote a section that
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we can talk about this, think about American
6:56
wars as somehow the product of capitalism or
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some kind of greed. There have been, of course,
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American politicians who have been driven by
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greed. They often end up in prison on corruption
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charges. But I am here to tell you, and this
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is what I think the book has more than enough
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evidence to show, that in every single case,
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and this is from Thomas Jefferson to George Washington,
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Abraham Lincoln to Woodrow Wilson and the rest.
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Nah, they really believe this stuff. They really
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in their heart believe that it was their duty
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given to them by God. This is the way they spoke
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incessantly to go raise up to make the Filipinos
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into Americans, to make the Germans into Americans,
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to make the Japanese into Americans, to make
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Iraqis and Vietnamese into Afghanis into Americans.
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Right. In almost no case did the presidents and
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senators gain any economic advantage, by the
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way, from these foreign policies. Dick Cheney
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is the most famous example that's used and trotted
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out. He actually divested all of his holdings
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in Halliburton before they went to war in Iraq.
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George W. Bush could have made many, many, many
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millions of dollars just resting on his parents'
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businesses and fortunes, but instead he chose
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to become president with a salary of, what is
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it, half a million dollars a year or whatever
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it was? So, no. These guys, there are greedy,
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rapacious capitalists, of course, but they tend
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not to run for president or senator. These guys
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uniformly have believed in their hearts. It has
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been their duty to be imperialists. So that's
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the savior part. And then the seducer part. So
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that's why I don't call it thuggish, right? The
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intent is not thuggishness. We all here see them
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as being. To me, I don't care what your
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intent is. If you come and bomb my house, I still
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think you're a thug. I completely understand
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that. But I think it's time to analyze why the
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bombing of the houses across the world has happened.
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We have to understand what was in the heads and
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hearts, really, of the men, and it's almost always
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been men, who have determined these policies.
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So that's the savior part. And then the seducer
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part, yeah, you nailed it. And this is where
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the book is almost totally original. The book
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has two arguments. One is this critique of
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imperialism, which has sort of the blowback thesis,
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which your audience will vibe with, I'm sure,
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with no problem. The popular culture piece is
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largely untold, and half the book is devoted
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to this. Yes, since really the blackface minstrels
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in the 1830s started doing their thing, American
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popular culture has been wildly popular around
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the world. Again, this is not news, I'm sure,
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either. Although the extent of it might be news,
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because as I said, it started deep in the 19th
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century. It's not a recent phenomenon in Michael
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Jackson and Madonna. It goes all the way back.
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So that has been not the intention of American
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foreign policymakers. They have all been puritanical,
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by the way, and have disliked almost uniformly
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American popular culture, especially American
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popular culture that emanates from black culture,
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which has been the center, I argue, of what I
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call the renegade culture that has liberated
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much of the world. They hate that stuff. There
10:18
have been Senate hearings devoted to the evils
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of rock and roll led by John F. Kennedy and Barry
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Goldwater. Notice that. John F. Kennedy, the
10:28
hero of liberals, and Barry Goldwater, the arch
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conservative, whatever you want to call him,
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were united in their hatred of rock and roll.
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This was 1957. The Senate under them held hearings
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about, as I said, the evils of rock and roll
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and how it should be banned. But all the while,
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the United States is invading countries, shooting
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up villages, bombing towns. This stuff, completely
10:55
voluntarily, purely consensually, other people
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in the world have been bringing it in, consuming
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it, largely loving it. And that music, those
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movies, those styles, the fashions have represented
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to the rulers in their countries also an existential
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threat. Because if you want it, it doesn't matter
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what your ideology is. You need your people.
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If you're a dictator or even a democratic president,
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you need the citizenry to be disciplined, orderly,
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follow the law, follow your authority. Rock and
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roll, jazz, blues, dancing, disco, Marilyn Monroe
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all militate against that. We don't, we're
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not interested in following people's orders or
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necessarily following the law if we're dancing
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if we're listening to music. So for
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200 plus years this dual thing's been going on
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where the government, the national government
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has been going abroad waging war to uplift the
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peoples. Meanwhile, the peoples in those other
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countries have been consuming Jay-Z and the
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rulers in their countries have been cracking
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down on Jay-Z, cracking down on Louis Armstrong,
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cracking down on Hollywood and all the rest of
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it. And then I have examples, as you know, in
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the book from nationalist China, communist China,
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the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan,
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Egypt, Islamic Algeria. Every single case, in
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every single case, those governments have sought
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to eradicate what they called the virus of American
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popular culture. So what I am, the political
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sort of, I guess, what I'm, the implicit political
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statement, I guess I'm making with this book
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is, let's not send our troops abroad. Let's keep
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our defense as a defense. It's never been a defense,
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by the way, the American military has not for
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one second in its history been a defensive military,
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never once fought a defensive war in any way,
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shape or form. Let's keep it actually at home
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inside the borders as a truly defensive military.
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And it's not about changing policy vis-a-vis
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the popular culture. It's simply about letting
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it flow, getting out of the way of artists, musicians,
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all the rest to do their thing and including
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capitalists. Yes. That's part of the
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deal, is that to get these things exported and
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distributed, you need sort of a capitalist structure
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to do that. Just let the people make their freedom.
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Let the people make their freedom felt. Let their
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freedom be distributed across the world. And
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I think we'll be living in a better world in
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which people don't hate America and don't want
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to fly airplanes into our buildings. And we will
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no longer be at war. So that's the political
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message of the book. Thank you so much. No, that's
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a great breakdown. A great thesis in regards
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to the breakdown. I agree with you on the second
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point. This idea that American culture is infectious,
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it's insidious, and you can see it in a foreign
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policy thing, right? When Putin comes out and is
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talking about Christian values.
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He's aiming that. That's not the homosexuality
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of these things. Immigration and the change that
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immigration brings to the countries. When they're
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having this conversation, they're having this
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conversation in many cases about this cultural
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issue that they see as being somewhat insidious
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into their countries. Now, I agree with you on
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this. First part of it, I'm slightly more dubious.
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And let me explain why. That's surprising. Okay.
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I love it. I love it. I love it. I love the argument.
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The argument makes sense. The issue is, I think,
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more than anything else, I don't believe that
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these people believe this stuff. If you want
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to go back, just let me make my point. In the
14:51
very beginning, revolutionary spirit is usually
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infectious. And people believe that stuff in
14:56
the very beginning. But at a certain point, there's
14:59
a turn. The Department of War was first
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named, honestly. At some point, it became the
15:05
Department of Defense. And as you point out,
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that's not because they were using it for defense.
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They were using it in the same way of this kind of
15:11
aggressive foreign policy but they coded it with
15:14
language. They didn't do it openly. So it's the
15:16
Department of Defense. Everything is now defense.
15:19
We're defending the stuff. I agree with you that
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Trump comes back and is more honest and it's
15:23
the Department of War. We're killing
15:25
people. Let's call it what it is. We're going to
15:27
call this the Department of War. My point of view
15:29
is, yes, that's more honest. Let's go with
15:31
that. I don't like the dishonesty of it. When
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I think there is a differential between politicians
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with a geopolitical expansionary interest, meaning
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I'm not in this necessarily to get rich. I'm
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in this because I want to expand America's
15:51
influence. Expand America's what? I missed the word. I want
15:54
to expand America's influence across the world,
15:55
meaning they have it in their mind. Joe Biden,
15:58
whether he was out of his mind or not, fully
16:00
understood we need to go at Russia. He didn't
16:04
know anything else to do that. That's not because
16:06
he was necessarily getting rich. That was because
16:08
in his mind, he had this idea of American expansion.
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This is what I'm here to do. This is my job. But
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the people who are giving Joe Biden money certainly
16:17
know full well that they want to get their hands
16:20
on Russian resources. Oh, this is what I guess
16:23
I'm quibbling with. This maybe this is semantics.
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There are people who are putting money in politicians'
16:27
pocket to do exactly what they're doing from
16:29
the expansionary standpoint. They're not in that
16:32
with this idea of we're doing this for the betterment
16:34
of people. They're in this. We're in it because
16:36
we want to get Russian resources. And if we can
16:38
split Russia up in a particular way, we can get
16:40
our hands on those resources. Same thing with
16:42
Venezuela, same thing with any other random country
16:44
where the U.S. had initiated either attempts
16:47
at overthrowing their governments, like in Venezuela
16:49
with Hugo Chavez. All of the wars that took place
16:52
that the U.S. was involved in, either under
16:54
Reagan from this idea of the Iran-Contra affair,
16:58
or even overthrow of the governments in South
17:00
America that were taking place where we're knocking
17:02
over Chile, knocking over Honduras, knocking
17:04
over these countries. They weren't
17:07
doing that because they were helping the natives.
17:09
They full well understood that this was about
17:11
resources. I don't believe that in the full moment
17:14
that in their minds they were thinking we're
17:15
doing this to help. They may have used the language
17:18
of that where liberals are more inclined to be
17:21
dropping bombs in order to
17:23
save people, whereas right-wingers are less
17:26
inclined to use that language. But both were going
17:29
in the same direction in regards to policy regardless
17:32
of how they talked about it. You really believe
17:34
that in their minds, they thought we're here
17:36
to help the people as we fleece those people.
17:40
The money we stole from Iran. I'm sorry, from
17:42
Iraq and oil. The money we stole from Venezuela.
17:44
This was before. Yeah. So fantastic point. And
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it requires at least a two-part response. So.
17:57
So, number one, the accumulation of resources
18:03
from other countries has always been sent just
18:06
for on its own sake, for its own sake, just the
18:08
economic power the United States has gained from
18:11
its imperialism. I think we need to use that
18:13
word, by the way. I hope that's OK. To
18:15
me, that's just the only word that really explains
18:18
American foreign policy. So they have always
18:24
understood that to be the savior nation, to send
18:28
our troops here, there and everywhere. To occupy
18:32
foreign countries, essentially colonize them,
18:34
to remake them, to save them, we've needed to
18:37
be a rich nation. We cannot be a rich nation
18:42
and do that. We can't accomplish that without
18:44
being the wealthiest nation. So that's always
18:47
been at the forefront of foreign policymakers'
18:49
minds. We've got to accumulate, too, as we're
18:51
raging across the world. But that has always
18:56
been in the service, as I said, of the greater
18:59
goal, and this is in the minds of the presidents
19:01
I'm talking about, serve the greater goal of
19:04
uplifting the world. That's number one. Number
19:09
two, actually, it's a three-part response. Number
19:11
two is that there is a section in chapter five,
19:17
I believe, where I talk about capitalism and
19:20
its relationship to imperialism. And I believe
19:24
that Lenin was wrong about this, his famous
19:29
theory published in 1916 that imperialism is
19:35
the highest product essentially of capitalism,
19:38
that capitalism produces imperialism because
19:40
capitalism chronically overproduces for domestic
19:43
markets, forcing the nation states to then go
19:45
outward to find new markets to offload their
19:48
surplus. There's a handful of statements by presidents.
19:55
I actually can only think of one. McKinley did
19:58
say that in 1898, but he said a lot of other
20:01
things, too. That was one statement he did make,
20:02
that seizing the Philippines was a route to the
20:07
China market. Sure. But he mostly talked about
20:11
the benevolent, he called it benevolent assimilation
20:13
of the Filipinos. And they spent 40 years after
20:18
1898 colonizing the Philippines. And it wasn't
20:22
just a resource extraction project. In fact,
20:24
they got very little in terms of resources from
20:26
the Philippines. What they did was they spent
20:28
untold millions of dollars over several decades
20:31
establishing schools across the Philippines,
20:35
bringing in teachers from the United States to
20:37
teach Filipinos how to be Americans in various
20:40
ways, how to dress properly, how to speak properly,
20:44
how to have the Puritan work ethic. Girls should
20:47
be learned to be mothers and wives, and boys
20:50
should learn to be workers and soldiers, serve
20:53
the United States. So capitalism, capitalists
21:00
in this country at least, have, and there's lots
21:05
of evidence I present in the book of this, have
21:07
overwhelmingly, not totally, but overwhelmingly
21:10
opposed every single American military conflict
21:13
since 1898. Bankers, the banking class, Wall
21:18
Street was uniformly opposed to the Spanish
21:21
-American War, to the conquest of the Philippines,
21:23
to the colonization of the Philippines. Andrew
21:25
Carnegie founded, actually a bunch of bankers
21:29
founded, the Anti-Imperialist League of 1898,
21:32
the first anti-war organization in our country
21:34
was the Anti-Imperialist League. And it was
21:36
founded by a bunch of bankers in New York City
21:38
and Boston. The banks, the oil companies, the
21:44
oil companies in 1953 and 1954,
21:50
they outrightly opposed the coup against Mossadegh
21:53
in Iran. They told the British government and
21:57
the American government, don't do it because
21:59
all it's going to do is produce more blowback
22:01
against us. There will be more attempts to nationalize
22:05
our oil if you do this, if you wage a coup in
22:08
the middle of the Middle East. And they were
22:11
right, of course, about that. But the MI6 overruled
22:15
them and convinced Eisenhower to do it anyway.
22:20
Even the Iraq war. There were many, many large businessmen
22:23
who came out in 2002, 2003, and even 2004 opposing
22:27
the Iraq War for the same exact reasons. Not
22:30
because they're great humanitarians, because
22:31
it's bad for business to have war. You can't
22:34
trade across borders when there's a war going
22:36
on. So there's rational reasons. Now, there have
22:39
been a handful of very important business sectors
22:43
that have supported the wars. The sugar industry
22:48
in 1898 was fine with invading Cuba and saving
22:52
the sugar plantations owned by Americans but
22:54
that was about it. And shipbuilding, shipbuilders
22:57
too were for the war, but that was. Arms manufacturers
22:59
have uniformly been in favor of every single
23:02
American war of course for obvious economic reasons
23:05
but they're basically alone. They're basically
23:08
alone. So that's. So we need and that's
23:14
never taken seriously. It's always just assumed
23:16
that business, all the wars are for business's
23:18
interests. Is a war for oil, that's just simply
23:22
not true. I'll make those two
23:25
points and send it back to you. No, I accept
23:29
that. Okay. Look, I don't think all businessmen
23:31
are the same. Business interests will
23:34
diverge depending upon whether they can get some
23:36
advantage off of it or not. Well, they all
23:39
want profit. That's what
23:41
makes them. Exactly. That's kind of, I guess
23:43
that's my point. Whether they take advantage of
23:46
it or where they can't be, whether they're going
23:47
to be disadvantaged. It's going to make a large
23:49
decision on whether or not they're going to be
23:50
for war or against the war. I guess I'm trying
23:53
to point out that there are two strains of American
23:56
foreign policy. You have this capitalist element
23:58
that wants profit and you have this geopolitical
24:02
expansionist element. Both dovetail in U.S.
24:05
policy. I don't think it's one or the other.
24:08
I think it's both. And maybe you can call it
24:10
the savior complex. But I think I don't get the
24:13
sense that these at 3 a.m. between them and
24:17
their God. They know this is about American expansion.
24:21
Playing this imperialist game of sorts. How many
24:25
bases can we get? Yeah, we want the Philippines.
24:27
The capitalists may not have cared about the
24:29
Philippines, but would the U.S. care about making
24:32
more Americans in the Philippines? Of course
24:33
they would. It allows our geopolitical expansion.
24:37
And I would argue that something is true for
24:38
the way we colonize Europe. Not specifically.
24:42
So, as I said, number one, though, war has always
24:46
been bad for business for most businesses so
24:48
that's why the Chamber of Commerce
24:50
has usually opposed wars and on and on. Even the
24:54
oil companies, as I said, opposed coups in
24:56
the Middle East and were overruled by
24:58
their imperialist governments. The imperialist
25:00
governments know we're going to do the coups
25:01
even though you don't want it, even though it's
25:02
bad for business, even though it will create more
25:05
blowback by these crazy Arabs who are going to
25:07
seize more of your oil, which is exactly what
25:09
happened. Because what did Nasser do right
25:11
after that, in Egypt, he's seized.
25:13
So but let me. So this is the third
25:17
part of the third answer to your amazing, very
25:21
important question, which is I spent a lot of
25:25
time in the book on biographies of the great
25:27
American imperialists. Yeah. So just run through
25:31
that, man. And again, this has largely been
25:33
hidden because there's this myth on the right
25:36
in particular that as I think Ted mentioned this
25:39
earlier, that the founding fathers were isolationists,
25:43
man. Washington didn't want to, he didn't want
25:45
to be entangled with other countries. Yes. Yeah.
25:50
So John Adams, arguably the most important of
25:55
the founding fathers, but certainly obviously
25:57
one of the top five or whatever. He graduates
26:01
from Harvard in the 1850s, gets a job as a school
26:03
teacher in Worcester. Yeah, Worcester. Just a
26:07
little job teaching 10-year-old kids. He's
26:13
writing diaries. And by the way, John Adams'
26:16
diaries, I recommend to everyone, the man was
26:18
a psychotic. If he were put on a couch today,
26:21
no. And this goes for most imperialists in my
26:25
view. Churchill was one of the great psychotics
26:27
in modern history. Just read their words.
26:30
If you didn't know it was John Adams and I had
26:32
you read his diary, you would be, this guy should
26:35
be locked up. He's fantasizing in his diary
26:40
in tremendous detail, and I have excerpts in
26:43
the book, about what he will do when he is the
26:46
ruler of the world, how he will assign people
26:49
to particular positions in life. He would look
26:52
at little Johnny in the corner scribbling and
26:53
say, I'm going to make him the town writer and
26:56
the little dunce kid. Well, he's going to be
26:59
the dog catcher. And it goes on and on. He has
27:02
this whole taxonomy of what he's going to assign
27:04
to every one of his little pupils. These are
27:06
children, by the way. Thomas Jefferson in Monticello
27:14
had busts in the, I actually think it was throughout
27:19
the mansion, but certainly in the entryway to
27:23
Monticello, he had busts of Caesar and Alexander
27:27
the Great, who at that point, as of the 1770s
27:32
and 80s, were, of course, the greatest imperialists
27:34
in world history. They kind of invented imperialism
27:38
that we know of, right? And George Washington
27:41
carried a copy of Caesar's Chronicles in his
27:46
satchel on his horse as he was riding through
27:50
the Pennsylvania wilderness, fighting the French
27:52
and Indians to conquer that land and make it
27:55
into America. That's just the founders. Then
28:00
you get into the abolitionists who, again, this
28:02
is where the left is screwed up. The left has
28:04
really radically misunderstood the abolitionists.
28:07
And my Renegade History book, the book prior
28:09
to this. I have a whole extensive critique about
28:11
the abolitionists being essentially a different
28:15
form of racist, but we can talk about that. But
28:17
the abolitionists were, most of them, not all,
28:20
but most were arch imperialists. And in fact,
28:22
the Civil War and Reconstruction, and this is
28:25
going to be hard for a lot of probably your audience
28:27
to hear, was simply a colonial conquest.
28:33
That was the purpose. We all know that it wasn't
28:35
to free the slaves. Abraham Lincoln was an outright
28:39
racist, talked about exporting them back to Africa,
28:43
etc. No, they talked about. Real quick, I need
28:49
to bow out just because I have another prior
28:50
commitment. They're going to continue this interview.
28:52
I want to say, this is great meeting you, and
28:55
I hope to be able to talk to you again further.
28:57
Thank you so much. It's been wonderful talking
29:00
to you. Great questions. Thank you. Thanks, Jamarl.
29:04
I'm going to pipe in. Yeah. Robby West is our
29:07
producer. And I know he's very interested in
29:10
what you're just starting to talk about right
29:11
now. So please continue. Yeah. So if you simply
29:14
look at the words and the words that they
29:17
were expressing throughout their lives, the abolitionists,
29:20
the radical Republicans, Abraham Lincoln, Charles
29:22
Sumner, all those guys who basically led the
29:25
Civil War and then Reconstruction. It was all
29:28
about for them remaking the South into the Yankee
29:33
North. And that's why, what do they do? They put
29:36
thousands of schools across the South staffed
29:39
by mostly women from New England who were all
29:43
abolitionist Puritans who went down to the South
29:46
and taught the ex-slaves, guess what? How to be
29:48
good Americans the same way they taught the Filipinos
29:51
20 years later which was the Puritan
29:54
work ethic, basically sexual repression,
29:59
conventional gender norms. The girls were trained
30:02
to be moms and wives, and the boys were trained
30:03
to be soldiers and workers. Proper etiquette,
30:07
proper language, don't use slang, eradicate every
30:11
vestige of black culture. That's what the purpose
30:15
of Reconstruction was. And they wanted to do
30:17
the same thing to whites in the South as well.
30:20
And they remade the South in terms of infrastructure,
30:23
sort of physically remade it, but then made it
30:27
illegal to be an opponent of the United States
30:30
government, right? And that's why we often think,
30:32
oh, well, the Confederates were all racist and
30:34
bad and anything they had coming to them when
30:35
they deserved, fine. But the purpose of that,
30:39
again, was to remake that region, the South,
30:42
to look like and be like the North. I agree.
30:48
I'm a Southerner. I reckon you can tell that
30:53
from the way that I talk. Which state? Where
30:55
are you from? Florida. Okay. Well, that's debatable,
30:59
friend. Are you from the Panhandle? Then I'll
31:04
give it to you. Oh, okay. Then you're from the
31:05
South. Then you're from the South. The further
31:07
north you go, the more Southern you get. Basically,
31:10
it's South of Gainesville and you're good to
31:12
go. You're not from Miami. Right. Got it. No,
31:14
absolutely not. I don't speak enough Spanish
31:16
to be from Miami. Exactly. I'm reading a book
31:19
about the Meiji Revolution. In Japan? And what
31:24
you're talking about, you can see where the
31:28
Meiji government really picked up, and also their
31:32
successors, what Abraham Lincoln did with the
31:35
South. The first Sino War, they took over Formosa.
31:39
They banned Chinese. They started trying to make
31:42
the Formosans Japanese. When they annexed Korea
31:45
in 1910, it was actually a death penalty offense
31:47
to speak Korean. It's just like what you're talking
31:51
about doing. They were trying to make these people
31:53
Japanese. Is that because Japan was industrialized
31:59
in such a scale that it was becoming a true fascist
32:03
state where there's a merger between capitalism
32:04
and government? Or was it just greed? It was
32:10
defense, actually. Because of Admiral Perry?
32:15
Yeah, well, beginning with Perry and the European
32:18
powers in general, just almost literally walking
32:21
in and forcing the Japanese to submit to their
32:26
very favorable trade terms for the United States
32:28
and the West. Oh, no, that was top of mind for
32:33
Japanese political leaders through the 19th and
32:36
early 20th centuries, for sure. And so this is
32:40
why I believe and this is borne out
32:43
by a lot of the research scholarship. I'm not
32:45
a Japan expert, but I had to do significant research
32:48
for the book on it. But also it has no. And this
32:51
is the thing people don't realize about Japan.
32:53
It has basically zero natural resources in Japan.
32:56
It's a volcanic rock in the middle of the ocean.
32:59
There is not enough arable land to produce food
33:02
for a modern industrial population. And to defend
33:05
themselves from further imperialist depredations
33:11
from the West, they needed a modern industrial
33:14
population and a modern industrial economy. And
33:17
this is why they moved outward. And they did
33:20
it in phenomenally vicious ways. Every
33:23
empire, as I've said, they find
33:26
out once they start conquering other lands, they
33:28
got to kill a bunch of people in disgusting ways.
33:30
So Manchuria, that's why
33:33
they went into Manchuria, because of the agriculture
33:36
and the cheap labor in Manchuria, basically slave
33:40
labor in Manchuria. And then once Roosevelt starts
33:43
cutting off the supplies of oil and other resources
33:46
from the U.S. in 39, 40, 41. They
33:50
have to move south into Southeast Asia. They
33:53
take over pieces of Southeast Asia for the rubber,
33:56
for the oil, and then into the East Indies. But
33:58
no, it was. This is how they talked.
34:02
They didn't. I don't think they wanted
34:03
to mix their pure race. Japan has been
34:08
formally a racist country for at least in the
34:14
modern era. Quite explicitly, formally
34:18
racist. You can't be, I think other than Israel,
34:21
I think Israel is the only other country where
34:22
an ethnic identity is required for citizenship.
34:28
So yeah, they simply could not protect themselves
34:34
from the rapidly advancing West unless they became
34:38
rapidly advancing themselves. So they adopted
34:41
the Roman model, an aggressive defense. Bingo.
34:46
I think so. Again, I'm not an expert on Rome
34:48
either, but yeah, that's what it looks like to
34:50
me. That's what it looks like to me. Yeah. So,
34:53
back to, I wanted to finish that sort
34:54
of point about all the American foreign policymakers
34:57
through history and how they were committed to
34:59
this idea of saving and uplifting the world primarily
35:03
and never interested in making money from politics
35:07
because you just don't. These guys were
35:09
all from, almost all from, of course, upper class
35:12
families. They were born wealthy. They didn't
35:16
need to do a damn thing to be wealthy. And to
35:18
make more wealth, they would have just continued
35:20
to work in their family's businesses, right?
35:23
But no, they chose to be senators and presidents
35:25
because Franklin Roosevelt was 16 years old in
35:32
high school, writing to his mother about how
35:36
we need to invade Japan. It's in 1899. He's reading
35:41
Admiral Mahan's books. Admiral Mahan was the
35:45
great sort of foreign policy imperialist theorist
35:47
of the 19th and early 20th centuries. And Mahan
35:51
was obsessed with Japan because he was obsessed
35:53
with the idea of the United States controlling
35:54
the Pacific, and Japan stood in the way of that.
35:58
Young Franklin Roosevelt, 16 years old, read
36:00
his books and was totally turned on by this idea
36:04
and committed for the rest of his life to going
36:07
to war with Japan. This is in 1899. This is 42
36:11
years before Pearl Harbor. He gets the job as
36:15
assistant secretary of Navy in the Wilson administration
36:17
in 1914. What does he do? He's so crazy. This
36:21
is Wilson. This is the Wilson administration,
36:23
one of the sort of most famous imperialist administration.
36:26
FDR is so crazy that Wilson and the secretary
36:29
of defense have to reprimand him repeatedly because
36:32
he keeps calling for new wars when they're busy.
36:34
They're busy talking about Europe. And what to
36:37
do about Europe is 1914. World War I has just
36:39
begun. Nothing's happening in Asia. But FDR keeps
36:43
saying, we need to launch a preemptive war against
36:45
Japan right now. He gets reprimanded. It's amazing
36:48
he kept his job. He had in his office, there's
36:50
photographs of it. It's amazing. Just walls full
36:53
of maps and then ships, battleships, models
36:56
of battleships. And he would just sit and stare
36:57
at these maps and fantasize about these other
37:00
countries and what he would do to them, what
37:02
he would want to do to them. So 1914, he's calling
37:06
for the U.S. to go to war with Japan. His very
37:09
first meeting when he's elected president, cabinet
37:12
meeting, first day in the Oval Office with his
37:15
cabinet, he lays out these maps and battle plans
37:18
to launch a war against Japan. He has a whole
37:23
strategy. We're going to have naval bases and
37:25
air bases in the Aleutian Islands and Hawaii.
37:28
We're going to launch this attack from there.
37:30
And his cabinet members, and by the way, if you
37:35
know my last book, I argue that they were dominated
37:39
by basically fascist thinking, the New Dealers,
37:41
the first New Dealers, so I'm not a fan of these
37:43
guys. They were horrified. Rexford Tugwell,
37:47
all these guys, they wrote in their diaries,
37:48
what the hell is he talking about? The first
37:51
day we have a depression to deal with. A little
37:55
bit. Yeah, a little bit in 1933. So, no, the
38:00
first thing you want to do is not close the banks
38:03
and not launch the first New Deal. The first
38:05
thing he wanted to do was go to war with Japan
38:07
and the Pacific in the middle of the depression.
38:09
So these are psychos. They really are.
38:12
I've been in politics my whole life. I've been
38:16
in academia my whole life. I've been around people
38:19
like this. Roosevelt's entire cabinet came from
38:21
Columbia University. I spent a decade at Columbia.
38:24
I have never met anybody that I'm aware of who
38:27
has had any fantasy about conquering another
38:31
country. It's a very rare subset of the population
38:36
that always tends to become presidents and senators.
38:41
I'm really glad that you brought up what you
38:43
did about the War of Northern Aggression. That's
38:45
how we like to call it back home. People always,
38:48
they try and paint it, as you said, as a crusade
38:50
against slavery. Well, they immediately forget
38:53
that the Union had four slave states. The Emancipation
38:56
Proclamation did not address northern
38:59
slavery at all, nor did it address the conditions
39:03
that the child workers had to go with in the
39:05
northern factories. It was all about how southern
39:09
states nullified tariffs that only impacted southern
39:13
ports because there was no income tax at the
39:16
time. And I still have my grandfather's grandfather,
39:21
his diary, where he was trading tobacco for some
39:24
coffee for a Yankee soldier in the Rappahannock.
39:26
And this Yank asked him, so, well, Johnny, why
39:29
are you fighting us? He goes, come, Johnny Rebs.
39:32
And he's, well, Billy, it's because you're
39:33
down here. It was a pretty straightforward
39:37
thing. Yeah, so I'm going to say two things to
39:41
that. So I love the South for many reasons. This
39:44
is one of them. So I would say I would urge you
39:53
to look at culture and psychology more to prove
39:58
your thesis and this is why I spend
40:01
much of the book as I said on the biographies
40:04
and the actual words of these men who led American
40:06
foreign policy around the Civil War, the radical
40:09
Republicans, the abolitionists, the people who
40:12
made the Civil War happen and Reconstruction
40:14
happen. They were very upset that the South was
40:18
different than the North and they were upset
40:21
that it was different in particular ways. They
40:24
hated that the slave masters didn't have to work
40:27
and therefore were lazy. They hated that the
40:30
slaves were lazy because they only worked because
40:34
they were forced to work. They had no incentive
40:36
to work and therefore the Puritan work ethic
40:38
fell on deaf ears among the slaves. And so they
40:41
worked only so much that they wouldn't get whipped,
40:43
which is not good for Yankee Puritans who want
40:46
you to believe that work in itself is a good
40:48
thing always. Because of this, they said, the
40:51
South is underdeveloped. Because of this, they
40:54
said the South is not modern the way the North
40:57
is. Because of this, they said, and this is in
40:59
the new book, we can't launch imperial wars.
41:03
They wanted to conquer Cuba. A lot of senators,
41:07
including a lot of the radical Republicans, wanted
41:10
to conquer Cuba in the 1850s and 60s. We can't
41:13
do this if we have a divided nation and half
41:15
the nation is made up of a slave-holding class
41:18
that's lazy and unproductive. So it got in the
41:22
way of empire as well. Right. And so that's why
41:26
they went to war with the South. And that's why
41:27
they spent so many resources over 12 years during
41:30
Reconstruction. Although you could say Reconstruction
41:32
starts in 1861. I do. So it's really a 16 year
41:35
project because every time they would conquer
41:37
a part of the South, they would send in the schools,
41:39
the contraband camps where they would instruct
41:41
the slaves how to be Americans now. They spent
41:45
so many resources and the army itself to enforce
41:49
this whole thing to remake the culture and the
41:53
psychology of the South. This is the heart of
41:57
imperialism. This is what real imperialism is.
42:00
Trump's imperialism is just for the grabs, for
42:03
the power, for the money. It's very naked. It's
42:06
very stripped down. It's completely amoral.
42:09
Trump has been very clear. He doesn't care
42:10
about saving anybody, uplifting anybody, being
42:14
the world's policeman. He's there for power and
42:16
money. But everybody up until him was not. They
42:19
were true believers in this. So the South, I've
42:22
said the South was the original Afghanistan.
42:25
It was the first. And by the way, I was, I loved
42:28
one passage in the book and I want to talk about
42:31
the cultural stuff. I spent, I've been to Afghanistan
42:34
five times and during, including during the U.S.
42:38
occupation. Wow. And it was kind of one
42:41
funny thing is I did a whole comic series, a
42:44
couple of books about trips and one for
42:48
example you talk about the influence, this
42:51
the dichotomy that's described in your book was
42:54
really just so clear on the ground. The
42:59
U.S. troops were sort of universally reviled.
43:03
They drove around scared to death,
43:07
overly armed, running around sometimes
43:11
shooting and robbing people randomly just for
43:14
fun because they were bored or whatever. But nevertheless
43:19
American culture was spreading. Even
43:22
as early as December 2001 I found American porn
43:26
in a bazaar. There was. And then by
43:32
2010 there was pizza in Herat and in Mazar-e
43:36
-Sharif and all over Kabul. Not good pizza, but
43:40
pizza. Afghan Star, Ted. Were you there for Afghan
43:43
Star, the TV show? Based on American Idol? Based
43:46
on American Idol. They had their own American
43:48
Idol called Afghan Star, yeah. That's amazing.
43:51
So, yeah, and they'd always
43:53
had an influence from Iran and historically
43:55
and from India, pop culture. But
43:58
Bollywood is all over Afghanistan. But it
44:02
was just it was so interesting to see. I really
44:04
wanted to get into the psychology here.
44:08
You described these psychos
44:10
who basically I always call the Puritans people
44:13
too uptight to get along with the English. Yeah
44:18
true. The English are too footloose and fancy
44:23
free for us. We're out. And so this country is
44:27
founded by those people. They come here.
44:30
What is the psychology and culture that
44:33
makes you think that you have all the answers
44:36
that you and because you don't see
44:39
a lot of when King Leopold
44:43
took over Congo, he didn't think of it. I know
44:47
there's, yeah, some Christianizing missions and
44:50
stuff like that. But for the most part, this
44:52
is a cash grab. Right. I'm here to
44:55
loot the place. What makes people think
45:00
that they are the ultimate embodiments of culture
45:04
and power and that they have the right and the
45:08
desire to do this to other people? And then,
45:12
it's sort of, why doesn't
45:16
everyone else just sort of tell them to fuck
45:19
off? Well, why is Christianity popular? To me,
45:24
it's essentially a Christian impulse. It's an
45:28
evangelical missionary impulse, which I see only
45:31
in Christianity. Certainly the global version
45:35
of it, the idea that we are responsible for the
45:38
entire world. Caesar had no designs on the globe.
45:42
He had designs on Gaul and then the rest of Europe,
45:44
and maybe that was. And he didn't really.
45:46
He just didn't speak in these terms. Yeah, the
45:49
Belgians, less so, less the savior, more the
45:52
looter. The British, though, right? The British
45:57
one could say, I suppose, invented the idea,
46:00
although the Spanish did too. But there was something
46:03
in Cecil Rhodes. Cecil Rhodes, if you
46:05
look at his language, he is the ultimate
46:08
savior imperialist. To him, all
46:11
the conquests of the British Empire were in service
46:14
of the people they conquered. We are helping.
46:16
This is good for them. And by the way, he wasn't
46:18
entirely wrong. If you look at
46:21
the infrastructure in India. Now and the infrastructure
46:25
in South Africa and much of Africa etc. It's
46:29
greatly improved just like in Iraq there is now
46:31
a working electrical grid where there wasn't
46:34
in 2003. Now has paved roads. Yeah exactly and
46:38
they didn't have that in 2000, 2002. So
46:42
it's a Christian evangelical
46:44
missionary psychology that, again, I can't relate
46:49
to and no one I've ever known can relate to.
46:51
And it's just a strange thing that's only emerged
46:53
in the West and really Anglo-America, Western
46:57
Europe, I guess. I think that the rapid
47:01
accumulation of Western countries, which outpaced
47:04
the rest of the world sort of in the early modern
47:06
era, that kind of when you have all the guns,
47:08
when you have most of the guns, I think it becomes
47:10
easier to have that impulse, right? If I were
47:15
the president of
47:18
Botswana, it's a little more difficult to sort
47:20
of fantasize endlessly about assigning people
47:23
their jobs and the rest of the world. But when
47:26
you know that you're in this, John Adams and
47:28
Jefferson and the founders all spoke about this
47:30
all the time. They knew that they were a rising
47:32
power because the American economy, even during
47:34
the revolution, was rapidly increasing in power
47:39
and size. And so they saw that they were eventually
47:41
going to overtake Britain. So they knew that.
47:44
And I think that's sort of facilitated their
47:46
fantasizing. So, Robby, I just want to say really
47:49
one quick because I meant to say this earlier,
47:51
which is not even in the book.
47:53
But one of the reasons I love the South is they
47:56
until 1945 were as a population were absolutely
48:02
anti-imperialist, from the Civil War through
48:05
the Reconstruction. And then I don't know if
48:07
you know this. There's an amazing book called
48:10
Rich Man's War. It's about Southern resistance
48:19
to the draft during World War I. And when we're
48:25
talking about resistance, this is 1916, 17, 18,
48:28
19. We're talking about holing up in a holler
48:34
with a bunch of shotguns when the draft agent
48:38
comes to town and shooting them. It was a war.
48:44
They were shooting at draft agents. There was
48:47
such violent opposition to serving in this ridiculous
48:51
rich man's war in the South among. And again this
48:53
is working class and poor Southerners right entirely
48:56
that the draft board gave up. They gave up I think
49:02
by 1918 they just stopped sending draft agents
49:05
into conscription agents into the South. So
49:08
what happened though of course as you know and
49:10
most people should be able to glean this, is
49:13
that after World War II, they started, the United
49:15
States started, there it is, Rich Man's War.
49:18
Phenomenal book, absolutely high. If you have
49:20
any interest in anti-imperialism, look to the
49:24
American South before 1945. Unfortunately, and
49:27
this is just one of the most cruelest, disgusting
49:30
things that I think the national government has
49:32
ever done, and almost no one talks about this.
49:33
After World War II, they move all these military
49:36
bases where? Into the South. So much of the South
49:39
has been since then completely dependent on these
49:41
military bases for employment, for local economies,
49:44
etc. They basically made the South into a ward
49:48
of the state, but a particular state. They made
49:51
the South into the ward of the imperial state.
49:54
And this is why the red, white, and blue flag
49:56
is flown most aggressively in the South. But
49:59
that wasn't usually the case in the past. It
50:00
wasn't the case before 1945. So I just wanted
50:02
to interject that. No, very much so. God bless
50:06
the South. He lied about his age. I'll have to
50:08
go after this, have another show I got to do.
50:11
But he lied about his age. He went to France,
50:14
he was 12 or 13 years old, to go fight for the,
50:17
he went and fought with the French volunteers.
50:22
And the men that he was fighting with, they're
50:24
pretty much all Southerners. I don't know what
50:26
the name of the village was, but they would fly
50:28
Confederate battle flags over their trenches.
50:31
And the Germans had no idea what the hell this
50:33
even was. So they came across, if you go up shooting
50:35
squirrels with a rifle, shooting a person is
50:37
not that big of a problem. And we've got this
50:43
old wax cylinder. It's about a quarter of an
50:45
inch thick. You can barely hear it anymore. It's
50:47
called, you'll find Dixieland in France. And
50:50
their commanding officer was this dude who was
50:52
in his 70s who was a Confederate veteran. And
50:56
he said, we're here to fight the damn Yankees.
50:59
That's why he's calling them the Germans. Oh.
51:01
Right. They got a little confused by
51:03
then is my point. Yeah.
51:07
Read, definitely read Jeanette Keith's book.
51:09
It is awesome. And you will see that the South
51:11
has never been this wasn't always the South as
51:13
we know it now. So anyway, Ted, sorry.
51:17
Now y'all thank you very much. It's a pleasure
51:19
to meet you. Thank you. Thank you, Robby. Appreciate
51:21
it. So yeah, this is why this
51:25
book and my last book are primarily cultural
51:28
and psychological analyses because I think that's
51:31
where it's at. I'm kind of a if you want to get
51:33
philosophical I'm not a materialist. I used to
51:35
be. I used to be a Marxist materialist and now
51:37
I'm a Hegelian idealist. So I think that
51:39
history is driven by ideas. So and this is
51:44
why I think it's important to understand what's
51:45
in the heads of these people who actually make
51:47
these wars who make these policies. No,
51:50
for sure. There's an old punk song
51:54
called Missiles by a group called The
51:57
Sound. And the lyrics are, who the hell
51:59
makes those missiles when they know what they
52:01
can do? And it's, who the hell?
52:05
In the time that we have left, in the few minutes
52:08
we have left, I'm wondering if you could sort
52:10
of talk about the seductive side of
52:14
the book, sort of the, how is it that
52:20
American foreign policymakers have, I don't know
52:23
if have they failed to see soft power
52:27
gets mentioned in the opinion pages of the Washington
52:29
Post every now and then but the truth is it's
52:32
not really something that people focus on.
52:36
I don't think Donald Trump's spending
52:37
any time thinking we got to get some
52:40
more money to the USO. We gotta have
52:43
we have to have Lady Gaga go to Ukraine
52:49
or whatever. It's whatever, Taylor Swift,
52:53
although he hates her. Why is this such an unappreciated
52:59
form of power projection? Because they're Puritans.
53:05
Until Trump. Trump is the first non-Puritan.
53:08
When I say Puritans, officially,
53:10
formally, outwardly Puritans. I don't know what
53:13
goes on in their bedrooms, but what they say,
53:15
how they behave publicly, every president until
53:18
Trump has been a Puritan. Trump has, of course,
53:21
violated that rule completely, but just a little
53:24
bit. So yeah, and so this, as I said earlier,
53:27
John F. Kennedy and Barry Goldwater held hearings
53:29
about the dangers of rock and roll in the 1950s.
53:31
Every single president and major senator has
53:34
been on that side of the war against sensual
53:37
pleasure. So jazz is a great example. Jazz, of
53:41
course, becomes extremely popular in the 1910s,
53:45
blows up totally in the 20s, becomes the world's
53:48
music in the 1930s with swing and then World
53:51
War II as well. So yeah, why on earth? And then
53:54
it's huge, as I show in the book, it's enormously
53:56
popular all across the world, not just in Europe.
53:58
Yeah, so why didn't they send Louis Armstrong?
54:02
Well, they did send Louis Armstrong, but they
54:04
sent him in the 1960s. By that point, after World
54:07
War II, jazz became, and anybody who knows the
54:09
history of jazz knows this, jazz became respectable.
54:12
It became known as America's classical music.
54:16
Louis Armstrong and his cohort sort of became
54:18
heroes all of a sudden. They became the good
54:20
Negro. They became the example for the civil
54:23
rights movement. Look, we can be just as talented
54:25
and musically adept as white people, and our
54:28
music is just as good as classical European music,
54:31
etc. Then they started to send, the CIA and the
54:35
State Department started to send jazz bands into
54:38
Europe. But Dave Brubeck was one, the Dave Brubeck
54:42
Trio, Quartet, whatever, which was
54:45
not dance music, by the way. They were never
54:48
interested in dance music because that is dangerous,
54:50
sensual, liberatory in all sorts of ways, always
54:52
has been. Yeah, so, no, it's because they're
54:55
Puritans. They never sent rock and roll. They
54:57
could have sent Elvis Presley in the 1950s. What
55:01
would that have done to the Soviet Union? Right.
55:02
But no, they didn't. Because Elvis in
55:05
the 1950s was dangerous. Rock and roll was dangerous
55:07
in the 50s. Jazz was dangerous in the 20s. So
55:11
that's why they just yeah, they were opposed
55:14
to sensual freedom. So what does Trump represent
55:17
in the grand theory of your book here?
55:22
Yeah. So that's the epilogue. And I've written
55:24
about Trump on my Substack as well.
55:26
People have thought, I thought
55:31
this previously about Trump, that he's incoherent,
55:33
essentially. He's clearly not an intellectual.
55:35
He doesn't read books. So therefore, his ideas
55:38
are not going to be coherent. His policies don't
55:40
emerge from some ideology that is identifiable.
55:44
Well, I think that's not true anymore with his
55:48
foreign policy. So he issued in December of 2025,
55:52
just a little less than a year ago, his national
55:55
security strategy document, which is, I think
55:58
it's annual. It's released by the White House.
56:00
I believe it's annually. So his comes out and
56:03
everybody needs to read that if you want to know
56:06
what's going on, because he has been following
56:08
the script of that thing almost perfectly ever
56:10
since, which is, it's an amazing document. It
56:14
is not overthrowing the American empire. But
56:19
it is refashioning it and reorganizing it. So
56:22
what he wants to do and what he has been doing
56:25
is to gradually withdraw from Eurasia. Eurasia
56:31
historically has been identified by imperialist
56:35
foreign policy advisors to be crucial. If you're
56:38
going to have a global empire, you have to control
56:40
Eurasia, sort of for obvious reasons. It's the
56:42
biggest landmass with the biggest population,
56:44
the most resources. And the United States has
56:47
spent most the bulk of its resources on Eurasia
56:50
for the last hundred or so years. Right. Latin
56:52
America secondarily. But really, Eurasia is where
56:55
we've spent most of our money and our troops
56:56
and all that blood and treasure. Trump doesn't
56:59
like that. It's too far away. I think he just
57:01
doesn't. I think honestly, he just doesn't relate
57:03
to those countries. He's not interested. I think
57:06
he's been to Europe once in his life on vacation.
57:08
I looked this up. I think once with Ivanka,
57:11
he went skiing in Switzerland. That's it. He's
57:12
just not. He's not a cosmopolitan. He goes to
57:15
Scotland. Okay. Oh, that's right because of his
57:18
mom, right. And his golf. No, but that's for business
57:20
too. It's always for business. So
57:26
all the imperialists by the way have been cosmopolitans.
57:27
Another thing to remember, they've all been really
57:30
interested in European culture. Some of them have
57:32
been interested in Arab and Asian cultures too
57:34
except for George W. Bush, right? No, I looked this
57:39
up too. No, he spent a considerable amount of
57:41
time in Europe on vacation. Maybe that's because
57:44
of his wife. But no, any events, some interest.
57:47
Trump has just evinced none. But the great imperialists
57:49
were all worldly. You have to know about these
57:53
other countries to want to invade them, right?
57:56
So he wants to withdraw the bulk of US forces
58:00
from Eurasia. This is why he's been talking about
58:03
NATO the way he has for the last 10 years. He
58:06
wants to basically get out of NATO. This is known.
58:08
He wants Israel to be the more active proxy to
58:13
control the Middle East on our behalf, and he
58:15
wants to leave and let them, and the UAE and
58:17
Saudi, but that's falling apart. But the idea,
58:20
at least, is to arm them, arm the proxies, the
58:23
kingdoms, the Gulf kingdoms and Israel, so that
58:27
they police that region and keep it stable for
58:29
us. Great Britain, he wants to be basically the
58:33
proxy controlling Europe. He probably is not
58:36
saying this. He probably wants Putin in that
58:39
deal as well. He's fine with Putin controlling
58:43
Russia so long as they basically preserve order
58:45
and trade routes and all that. And he wants to
58:50
withdraw to the Western Hemisphere, which that
58:55
explains Venezuela. That explains Greenland.
59:00
Who thought about Greenland? I've been
59:03
studying foreign policy my entire life. I'm 61
59:05
years old. I never even once thought an American
59:07
president would go after Greenland. But actually,
59:09
if you look at his national security strategy
59:10
document. Yeah. And if you look at his words,
59:16
it makes perfect sense. It does. Sort
59:18
of there is a logical coherence to this. He wants
59:22
the entire Western Hemisphere in red, white and
59:24
blue and gold I guess. Gold plating with red, white
59:27
and blue flags something like that. So yeah
59:30
it's a reorganization of the American empire
59:34
not the elimination of it and also he
59:37
of course he's eliminated the morality of it
59:39
right? It's no longer as I said earlier it's no
59:41
longer evangelical, moralistic, missionary. It's
59:44
just for power and wealth accumulation for Trump.
59:48
Is that last question. Is that sort of a
59:53
refreshing form of honesty in a way? Oh, yeah.
59:56
Don't you prefer it? I prefer it. Yeah.
59:59
Yeah. I'd rather know what's actually
1:00:01
going on. Although in a sense, I'm not
1:00:02
I am saying the foreign policymakers in the U.S.
1:00:05
before Trump were honest, largely.
1:00:08
They did largely say, yeah, we're doing it. We're
1:00:11
invading. We're funding the Contras
1:00:14
so that Nicaraguans can be free. Right. And Nicaraguans
1:00:19
can be democratic and determined and be self
1:00:22
-determining. And it's always for
1:00:24
the other people that we're invading or conquering.
1:00:27
So, yeah, I prefer it. But a lot of
1:00:31
people will be killed along the way. Trump, by
1:00:33
the way, has killed far fewer people than the
1:00:35
great imperialist presidents. His body count,
1:00:37
which I call it, is still not even close to the
1:00:40
top 10. If you look at Nixon, LBJ, Eisenhower
1:00:47
maybe certainly FDR Truman and FDR the two greatest
1:00:50
mass murderers in American history. It's
1:00:52
not even Wilson, Lincoln who I also didn't talk
1:00:55
about but a great imperialist. These guys killed
1:00:59
orders of magnitude more people than Trump has.
1:01:02
True. That's all true. And he hasn't even
1:01:06
deported as many people as Obama.
1:01:08
As Obama. That's right. That's right. So Thaddeus
1:01:12
Russell, thank you so much for joining us. Thaddeus
1:01:15
is the author of Savior and Seducer: A Renegade
1:01:18
History of the United States in the World. It
1:01:22
was a pleasure. Hope you'll come back. Tremendous
1:01:24
pleasure. I'd love to. Thank you, Ted. Great.
1:01:26
Take care. Bye.