Latest / Normal Men / Episode 70 - Harps and Minds

Transcript

Episode 70 - Harps and Minds · Normal Men

• 0:08
  Ed: Hey. Hi. Hello. I'm Ed. And for the Ed likers who were sad about the last episode, don't worry, I'm in this one. But I am going to be honest with you all. I'm going to be vulnerable. And the truth is, I'm on vacation. And when I opened this week's project and saw just how many naughty word flags there were, I went, nah, I simply do not have enough funny clips to properly bleep each and every one of the times. This foul mouth podcast said foul mouthed words and I've been banned from using ok for at least the next calendar year. A ruling that I am, I assure you, appealing. So this week's absolute train wreck, and it is will not bleep any of sh. Or. And you can live with it. Enjoy the show.
• 0:56
  Normal Men: This is Normal Men, a podcast from four men who are clinging desperately to normalcy in an era when that's asking a bit too much.
• 1:02
  Normal Men: I'm George in Shar Charlotte in dc.
• 1:04
  Normal Men: I'm Propter Malone in Outer Florida. I'm Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer.
• 1:08
  Normal Men: And I'm Ed in Boston.
• 1:15
  Lowtax: All right, we're sewing the penises back on very strongly, folks. I can tell you what, he's just
• 1:22
  Propter: totally hallucinating that shit, right?
• 1:24
  Ed: Like, stop this immediately. Explain.
• 1:28
  George: Oh, Ed, you've been offline today, buddy.
• 1:30
  Ed: Yeah, I have. It's great.
• 1:32
  George: Well, congrats on lacking the brain damage the rest of us are recovering from or in process of digesting.
• 1:38
  Propter: Yeah, this is going to be a high brain damage episode. All right. I. Yeah, if you don't.
• 1:43
  George: If you don't want to get brain damage with us, that's totally fine. We love you for that. You're wonderful people. Just turn off the episode. Come back next week. Brain damage is about to ensue across, like, all sorts of different dimensions too. So anyhow, Propter, do your thing, man.
• 1:59
  Propter: So Trump has started using as a stump speech anecdote, you know how he kind of goes off on these. These rambles regularly. This. This bit about how he has forced hospitals to start reversing transgender surgeries and nobody knows what the hell he's talking about. I mean, like, one can divine directionally what he thinks he might be talking about, but as far as we can tell, there is no actual real world referent.
• 2:24
  Lowtax: They gave him this so that he would shut up about Japan and the bowling ball test.
• 2:30
  Ed: This is another thing. I'm really glad I don't know, aren't I?
• 2:34
  Propter: No, that one's better than the sewing penises back on Lowtax. You want to handle that one?
• 2:37
  Lowtax: Sure. So, yeah, back in 2016, Trump would rant about how Japan would conduct testing on cars where they would drop bowling balls onto the hoods of cars. And if the hood dented, then the Japanese would say, nope, that doesn't pass our test. You can't sell that here. Now, my theory of this, Everybody had a theory about this. I believe, I believe David Roth's theory was that he was, he was thinking of an old Lexus commercial where this little marble runs across the smooth contours of the car and running it through, you know, the Trump brain filter. My theory of this is that he is. And my theory is not without problems, but my theory is that he is thinking of the old David Letterman bit where he would have Rupert the deli guy and an audience member drop bowling balls onto cars from atop the studio. Now, the problem with my theory is that, like, we've all known Donald Trump long enough that to know that he's absolutely a Leno guy and not a Letterman guy.
• 3:53
  Ed: True, true.
• 3:55
  Lowtax: Like he's not going to get any David Letterman's bits, but that's the best I got on it.
• 4:02
  Propter: They did, they did document a variant of this practice in the documentary Street Fighter 2, I think.
• 4:07
  Ed: Ah, yeah, that's, that's a good point. That's a good point.
• 4:12
  George: I'm just trying to imagine a production car that could survive that test without having to have its hood replaced. And it's like an MRAP and maybe one of those, like, fancy, like, custom bulletproofed cars that some of the rich people in San Diego county are driving around these days.
• 4:26
  Propter: Oh, the tanks.
• 4:28
  George: Yeah.
• 4:28
  Lowtax: It's like that only doesn't work for the cartels.
• 4:33
  George: The crypto lady, that definitely doesn't do a lot of money laundering as a side gig.
• 4:38
  Propter: If we're talking, if we're talking about the lady who was like, who was like a former TV producer who has one of those tanks. This is, this is how deep we're going on the brain worms.
• 4:46
  George: We're just, we're leaning into it this week. Last week you got a nice little politics horse race episode. You know, Brett came in a couple weeks ago and did such a good job being sober about the Odyssey, and we had some big thoughts there. And now, folks, it' brain worms.
• 5:00
  Propter: Art politics, brain worms. That's, that's what we're doing. It's going to be a 3, 3 topic rotation from here on out. Yeah. So, so the TV producer who was interviewed for that article on these $300,000 SUVs that she's driving around Southern California that are, you know, designed. The part that was evocative about the description, like they've got bulletproof glass. You can apparently not tip them over no matter how big a mob of people you have because they weigh frickin like £12,000. They've got, they've got lots of features. But the one that really sticks out in memory is that it's possible to electrify the door handles. So if someone is trying to get in your car, you can electrocute them from the inside.
• 5:45
  Lowtax: My favorite bit of it was so they, they were selling a headliner, a Starry Night headliner for the interior of the car. And that was like $6,000 as an option. But then they had another option which was an EMP, and that was only 2500.
• 6:05
  Ed: I have some follow on questions about how that is supposed to defense the emp.
• 6:11
  Lowtax: I, your guess is as good as mine, Ed.
• 6:14
  Ed: Good, good, good, good. I hate everything. Thank you. I, when I am going for a walk after this and having a long dark evening of the soul, I will have to remember one thing I did ask.
• 6:31
  Propter: Yes, EMPs do lose like 30% of their value the minute you drive them off the lot. So I would be concerned about that if I were.
• 6:41
  George: Do you all remember in Ocean's Eleven where Don Cheadle's character is queuing up the EMP and he's standing behind the van and he sort of like crosses his legs and covers his nuts a bit. Such a good metaphor for our time. Like if you, if you're that close to something that powerful, which for the record, I don't think think there's any reason to believe an EMP would have an effect on your testicles. But I, I, I'm not a doctor,
• 7:08
  Ed: so I'm going to be so sure about that.
• 7:13
  George: You know, let's assign RFK Jr to test this and we'll figure it out that way.
• 7:19
  Propter: You're going to ruin the harvest, George.
• 7:21
  Lowtax: I don't know that you'd be able to, you'd be able to tell a difference with RFK at this point, like with all the he's on.
• 7:30
  George: Look, does enough sauerkraut actually make you immune to EMPs? Make you sterile?
• 7:37
  Propter: Possibly.
• 7:37
  George: I, I'm not in a position to say no. Look, I bet enough sauerkraut has a bigger effect than an emp. How about that?
• 7:43
  Propter: I gotta say that I sympathize with the, with the immediate impulse to shield your testicles if you're Doing anything that is even potentially dangerous or explosive, like, it's kind of a free roll. Right. Like. Like.
• 7:55
  George: Well, but that's the thing. So Don Cheadle's whole bit in that movie is that his charact, super, super, super smart, like. Like, his whole thing, he knew it wasn't going to blow up. Like, that wasn't the concern, Right?
• 8:06
  Ed: Yeah.
• 8:07
  George: Like, which makes it that much funnier because changing your angle and putting your hand down there, if. If the concern is radiation. Right? Like, if you're on the electromagnetic spectrum, that your hand ain't gonna help.
• 8:19
  Lowtax: No.
• 8:20
  Propter: So you feel it undermined the character. Is. Is that it was.
• 8:23
  George: No, it's less that and more just. It's such a funny avatar or like. Like, sort of metaphor for playing with forces beyond your control and realizing a little late that things might have gotten a bit out of hand and that there are risks here that you're maybe not comfortable with. But enough about politics.
• 8:44
  Propter: Okay.
• 8:44
  George: Anyhow, sorry. We were talking about the president d. Transing people.
• 8:48
  Lowtax: Yes.
• 8:48
  Propter: Right.
• 8:48
  Lowtax: So the good thing is, I don't think that's happening.
• 8:53
  Ed: I feel like we would have heard. Yeah.
• 8:55
  George: Like, is there. I mean, I'm not expecting anyone to have an answer to this, but, like, has there ever been evidence of someone either being forcibly transitioned? And I don't mean, like, you know, maybe like an intersex person in the 1950s or something like that. I'm talking about, like, now someone who was forcibly transitioned against their will or the other way around. Detransitioning as their will. Is that something that's ever been documented? I mean, I would hope not. Honestly, I hope that's never happened to anyone ever, like, either direction. Is that a thing anywhere in the world?
• 9:28
  Propter: Certainly. Like, medical detransition. I'm sure you've had people in jail, but without meds.
• 9:35
  George: Okay, I. Sorry. I meant surgical detransition. Not. Not with the med side of things, because. Yes, that's a very good point. That has absolutely happened. Thank you for the correction.
• 9:44
  Lowtax: I think there's a. There's like, a weird policy in Iran where. Because, like, obviously it's illegal to be homosexual in Iran, but they will let you transition. So if you're. If you're a guy who's attracted to guys, you can transition to a gal, and then you're in the clear. I don't know if that policy is still around, but.
• 10:14
  Propter: So this is. This is like the exact opposite of J.K. rowling's new stance. Right. Like,
• 10:24
  Ed: This is actually fascinating. Like, yeah, gender Transition has been legal in Iran since the 80s. Yeah, I did not know.
• 10:34
  George: I guess. Do we have general Akam on the like, transitioning situation? Like, is that something that the scholars have dug into the Quran and found evidence for either way? I mean, obviously if Iran's doing it that way, there must be something in there.
• 10:51
  Ed: But I think there might be some other not great stuff going on in there too. But I am not qualified to. Yeah, yeah.
• 11:01
  George: I'm just curious what the state of this, of the, you know, there's, there's Islamic thought is on this. Not, not to defend it either way.
• 11:08
  Propter: Of course, I don't know the state of Islamic thought. I know that there are significant Judaic thought on this. So my guess is that is that the imams have taken their crack at it too. You know, this is, this is one of these things that comes up as a corner case, right? Because yeah, gender is, gender is complicated and, and even if you're not doing interventions, you have people who fall into corner case situations on gender and you kind of got to figure out what to do with them.
• 11:37
  Lowtax: So could you imagine if we had like, if he were still alive, if we had like, Ruhala Khomeini vs. JK Rowling on Twitter?
• 11:49
  Propter: Yes.
• 11:49
  George: And it's delightful.
• 11:51
  Propter: We were so close to greatness.
• 11:55
  George: I mean, like, of course, any thing as voluminous as the Quran, let alone all the scholarship that's come out of it, the Torah, the Bible, like, you're gonna have a lot of corner cases. And like, I don't know if we've mentioned Dan McClellan before on here, but super interesting scholar of the Bible. He's, I think, actually lds, which was the source of a minor controversy on Tick Tock recently where he has a big presence, but he's done some really good work on like, what does the Bible actually say about homosexuality? Etc, And I'm not. We don't have to get into it here, but suffice to say that like, it doesn't say what you think because, like, what the words that they're using mean, you know, 2,000, 3,000 years ago do not mean the same thing today. And if you read it that way, you are going to be woefully misinformed. So I wouldn't be surprised if something similar applies in the Quran or, or any other religious text. Honestly, I have to keep to the peoples of the book here. So.
• 12:57
  Lowtax: Anyhow.
• 12:58
  George: All right, we got serious there for a minute. Let's get back to the brain worms. What's next?
• 13:03
  Propter: Just to break in with one more thing on that I'm not going to do. I'm not going to attempt to do it justice by relating what I've just skimmed. But it looks like, yeah, Sharia law takes, takes a full whack at this and has what sounds like a pretty exhaustive classification of.
• 13:19
  George: Sorry, it's not actually funny, but like, it's pretty funny.
• 13:22
  Propter: No, I mean, like they've, they've done, they've done the legwork on this anyway. Yeah, they've thought about it.
• 13:29
  George: Do we have a quick takeaway or is it too detailed for that to.
• 13:33
  Propter: I mean, the quick takeaway is that they've thought about it and, you know, they thought about how to fit people with a variety of gender traits into society. So I don't know if that encourages transition. Exactly, but it's better than we can
• 13:46
  George: say about a large section of the American Christian community. So.
• 13:49
  Propter: Yeah, like they've got a framework for it for sure. How that's practiced in different communities, I don't know.
• 13:56
  George: Yeah. Just to be clear, none of this is an endorsement or indictment of any particular religious practice except the one I just mentioned.
• 14:03
  Propter: Or gender, for that matter.
• 14:06
  George: Of course. Yes, of course. Okay, Natalie, we're talking. Natalie.
• 14:12
  Propter: Oh, we jumping right in on the harp brainworm.
• 14:15
  George: Brainworms, man.
• 14:16
  Ed: Brainworms.
• 14:16
  George: Like, let's get into it. We're gonna get into international trade brainworms later. But for right now, let's stick to much more legible subjects.
• 14:25
  Propter: Okay, so this has been kind of a. A burning fuse for the past. God. When did the story break? Week and a half ago, maybe.
• 14:33
  Lowtax: It feels like about. It feels like three years, but I think it was only like five days ago.
• 14:40
  Ed: Yeah, something like that.
• 14:42
  George: There's been reporting on her dating back like two years though, hasn't there? It's just like kind of burst into the consciousness. Because Ossoff mentioned her. Yes, yes. And Ossoff mentioned her, I believe on Monday or Tuesday. Yeah, it's Sunday, August 23rd.
• 14:56
  Lowtax: It wouldn't have burst into the discourse if they all hadn't lost their. Over it.
• 15:01
  Propter: Yeah, you know, it kind of reminds me, I, I can't remember who it was who put like Project 2026 and sort of in the bloodstream in like spring of 2024. But there was, there was somebody who mentioned it on like an award show or something. And it went, it went tick tock viral. And all of a sudden everybody was talking about Project 2026 and it sort of felt like kind of the same deal.
• 15:21
  George: 20, 20, 25.
• 15:23
  Propter: Yes, that thing.
• 15:24
  George: Yeah.
• 15:24
  Propter: Project 2025.
• 15:25
  George: This was the Heritage foundation roadmap for what the next Trump administration or next Republican administration should do. And they've basically followed the playbook. Yeah, not exactly, but it. Broad strokes. It's the exact same thing. Yeah, sorry, go ahead, Propter.
• 15:37
  Propter: You have kind of structural similarities where you have a story that's actually had a fair amount of ink on it already that suddenly gets a lot of pickup because of something that doesn't necessarily seem like it ought to have shined that brighter light on it. But all of a sudden, the topic of the discourse changes and we are laser focused on, in this case, Natalie Harp. Who is Natalie Harp?
• 16:00
  Ed: I'm really afraid you're about to tell me.
• 16:04
  George: I was really hoping he was gonna go. I have no idea. What do you guys know?
• 16:07
  Ed: No, unfortunately, I know this one.
• 16:09
  Propter: I'll start us, I'll start us off on this, but if anybody else wants to jump in, I would rather not proceed.
• 16:16
  Ed: This is literally why you're here.
• 16:18
  Lowtax: She is the personal assistant to the President. So if you, for you, West Wing heads out there, if you remember delay Hill, she's that guy. Except that she's seemingly sort of seized the powers of the Chief of staff.
• 16:35
  Propter: Yeah. So she's kind of serving as something between nursemaid and interpreter and mouthpiece and possibly lover. It really presidential.
• 16:52
  George: Like, how broad of a definition on lover do we want to use here?
• 16:57
  Ed: I don't want to go anywhere near that topic.
• 17:00
  George: I mean, Ed, you can sit this one out. Low tax.
• 17:02
  Lowtax: What do you think?
• 17:03
  Propter: Neither do you.
• 17:04
  Lowtax: I, I don't think they're sleeping with each other. I agree.
• 17:10
  George: It's definitely non sexual love.
• 17:12
  Propter: Okay. So I gotta push back on that a little bit.
• 17:15
  Lowtax: I think Trump is a lonely old weirdo and this woman is clearly insane. If you read the letters she writes to them, to him. Although with, I said this on Bluesky with the bizarre capitalization and the EM dash uses and all of this stuff, like, she is his soulmate. Like, he should just straight up leave Melania and go with her.
• 17:41
  Propter: Yeah, I mean, okay, I don't think that, I don't think they're having sex. At least I don't think they're having, you know, PNV sex because I don't think Trump can do that at this stage of the game.
• 17:55
  George: I, I agree.
• 17:57
  Propter: You know, like, like there's probably something that works, you know, why are you
• 18:01
  Ed: choosing to have this conversation?
• 18:04
  Lowtax: But like, I, I, before you, before you continue, I do want to note that you guys have declared Trump dead about 1500 times now since he came back into office.
• 18:17
  George: Excuse me, I was always very measured with my, with my opinions in those. Leave me out of this.
• 18:22
  Lowtax: When we assume that he can't do it anymore, you know, maybe, maybe exercise a little caution here.
• 18:29
  Propter: You're right. There is some chance that he is still fuck capable and we have to, we have to respect that, I guess. But regardless of whether or not they're having sex, I think they probably are in some sense sweeping together because there was reporting that at, I think this was at Bedminster, that she spent a summer, I'm making air quotes with my fingers right now, sleeping in the locker room. And I do not believe that she was sleeping in the locker room. Like at this point he's gonna need some kind of round the clock care, at least accessible. She's with him like all the freaking time. There's, there's this great set of photos of her sprinting after him in a golf cart that I encourage you to check out if you haven't seen him. Like, like there's, you know, there's, there's some real like bunny boiler behavior happening here.
• 19:29
  George: But what did you just, what is that reference?
• 19:34
  Propter: I'll put that in the show notes.
• 19:35
  George: Please do, Please don't.
• 19:40
  Lowtax: No, I think you need to explain yourself on that one prompter.
• 19:45
  Propter: That was Fatal Attraction, right?
• 19:47
  Lowtax: I don't know that I've ever seen Fatal Attraction, motherfucker.
• 19:51
  Propter: Okay?
• 19:51
  Ed: I was born in 1987. I barely know that that exists.
• 19:55
  Propter: We will put it in the show notes.
• 19:57
  George: I was born in 1989 and I do know it exists, but I would never consume that sort of content because I am a normal man.
• 20:05
  Ed: That's fair.
• 20:06
  Propter: All right. Anyway, she is fixated on him in some, in, in some unhealthy ways. And also nobody spent the summer sleeping in the locker room. I flatly refuse to believe that's true. I, I, I am willing to believe that she was assigned the locker room as sweeping quarters and then swept elsewhere most of the time having slept in
• 20:24
  George: a locker room before. I completely concur. No, I won't be going into the details of that.
• 20:32
  Lowtax: I have never slept in a locker room, but I concur anyway.
• 20:36
  Propter: There is clearly weirdness going on because of the way the White House is reacting to John offsauce speech in which he said all Trump wants to do is travel with Natalie, I think was the quote. And that was all he said. There wasn't, there wasn't any elaboration. There were, he didn't Use any phrases like fuck capable.
• 20:58
  Lowtax: He should, though.
• 20:59
  George: We can completely end the midterms today if Jon Ossoff has the courage.
• 21:05
  Propter: You know, there just. There just wasn't anything else there except what people hung on the phrase, which was, yes, a little bit of an insinuation of something unseemly, but maybe not a specific insinuation of something unseemly, which very much. The White House rallied to the defense of it as an insinuation that they were having sex.
• 21:25
  George: Not just the White House, though, right? Like the White House and every conservative influencer singing from the same song sheet.
• 21:32
  Lowtax: Oh, yeah, they put out. They put out the bat signal to all the chuds on X. The Everything app.
• 21:39
  Propter: Yeah. That you got to. You got to come rally around this thing.
• 21:43
  Ed: Because that has ever reduced the media salience of a topic.
• 21:49
  George: Yeah, yeah. Duck Sauce's best song ever released is your reference there.
• 21:57
  Lowtax: These guys aren't old enough to remember the Streisand effect.
• 22:01
  Ed: I mean, I am.
• 22:06
  George: Where were we?
• 22:07
  Propter: We're still playing the art.
• 22:08
  Ed: Don't say.
• 22:14
  George: Yeah. So for listeners that aren't 38 years old, which there's probably two or three of you, this Tryzan effect is where when you refer to something, you draw attention to it, even if you're pushing back against something in the negative. Like, that draws more attention to it. So if I literally just say, don't think about pink elephants, you're going to think about a pink elephant. Same thing. Right. Like, it's just putting it out there. And that's what they have done with this thing. And it's pretty funny because as Propter said, I, you know, I think it's worth saying, I don't think people on our side of the political spectrum should be calling her names related to her, her being promiscuous or something like that. Like, that is not the angle here. Right. And Ossoff, to be clear, absolutely did not do that. The massive right wing response against him did that for him, which is a neat trick when you can pull. But, like, again, he didn't say that. And I honestly have seen very little of that in the discourse around this. It's more. Trump is deluded and his nursemaid and him are engaged in something. It's not like this woman is like some evil woman who's, like, sleeping with the president. No, that's not the issue. The issue is she's completely bughouse nuts.
• 23:35
  Lowtax: Right? That's the problem, I think. I think the issue is that everybody's going, oh, this woman is terrifying,
• 23:42
  George: terrifying, terrifying. Only if you're in a relationship with her is how I would describe her.
• 23:47
  Lowtax: Yes, yes. Yeah.
• 23:48
  George: So, yeah.
• 23:48
  Lowtax: I mean, first of all, we all owe a friend of the show, Sky Marchini, an apology, I think, for the Nancy Mace discourse.
• 23:57
  Ed: No, no.
• 23:59
  George: Can we fill in the non brain damaged among us what that's all about? I know what you're talking about because I have a lot of brain damage, actually, and not just college football CTE either.
• 24:08
  Lowtax: Okay, so South Carolina Congresswoman Nancy Mace has a YouTube show apparently, and did the YouTube show in a sleeveless blouse and had, what was it, nine tattoos on her arms. And friend of the pod, Sky Marchini said, can I say something?
• 24:35
  Ed: And the answer very thoroughly was no.
• 24:38
  Lowtax: Yes.
• 24:39
  Ed: Agreed.
• 24:40
  Propter: It's important that you understand for purposes of this, that Nancy Mace has fake tits and an eating disorder.
• 24:46
  George: So she also literally wore a scarlet letter on the floor of Congress. So on the floor of the House. So that. That's what we're working with there.
• 24:56
  Propter: Yeah, she's. She is an identifiable American type, put it that way.
• 25:03
  Lowtax: Oh, yeah,
• 25:06
  George: yeah. And also like it.
• 25:08
  Propter: It.
• 25:09
  George: I don't know enough about the details of Nancy Mace's life to say this specifically applies to her, but what I will say in general is the type that Propter is referring to has been at the receiving end of a whole bunch of bad stuff over their life. Again, I don't. That may be true of Mace. I. I just don't have the bandwidth to digest her biography and put that into my context window. So we're just gonna say this doesn't apply to Mace, but certainly it applies to a large number of women who this trope applies to. And as with Natalie Harp, we need to be at least circumspect in terms of the language and the specific mud we are slinging here, because there are people out there who are of this Nancy Mace sleeved. Not they're not sleeves, but they're heavily tattooed arms, you know, boob job, whatever type who are responding to society that is steeped in misogyny, that is steeped in patriarchy, that is steeped in inequality, that is steeped in just general unfairness of all kinds. And that doesn't mean we can't get a bit of a laugh at Mace specifically diving headfirst into the swimming pool that I'm referring to here. But you know, just keep that in mind the next time you're making fun of someone like this. For instance, the grocery store, who is a sitting member of Congress or relatedly whispering in the ear of the President because those are different categories of people, and making fun of them in this way is a different thing, which is also part of the Natalie Harp discourse. And that's my very smooth effort to bring it back to that.
• 26:54
  Ed: I had forgotten, like, somehow, like, I had just, like, assumed Nancy Mace had had decamped from Congress at this point. Like, by the time you're having podcasts, I. I feel like you are no longer a member in good standing. And now this is how I find out I am wrong.
• 27:11
  Propter: You know, she's still. She's still in there, but it's not like they're taking a lot of votes right now.
• 27:15
  Ed: That's true. It has some spare time.
• 27:17
  Propter: Yeah.
• 27:19
  Ed: How good do you think everyone's golf handicaps are getting?
• 27:25
  Propter: One other thing about Nancy Mace I want to mention really briefly is that she was the first woman to graduate from the Citadel, so she's got an interesting biography.
• 27:35
  George: Just for those that don't know, the Citadel is a military academy in Charleston, South Carolina. And if you've ever seen House of Cards, Frank's alma mater is modeled on the Citadel. It's a Southern military academy. There's a very tropey thing if you ever go to Charleston, which Charleston's a fun weekend trip. If you ever get the chance, maybe a longer conversation from the time, because there's a lot to unpack there. But Citadel, you know, recruits or Citadel.
• 28:03
  Ed: What are they.
• 28:03
  George: What do they call students at the Citadel? Cadets. Citadel cadets. Thank you. Citadel cadets wandering around and trying to pick up ufc. University of Charleston coeds is like a whole trope in Charleston, and it's quite good, people watching. If you ever get a chance to see this in action. But, like, I. I don't know what the demographics of the Citadel graduating class are at this point, but being the first woman to graduate from the Citadel is like. You saw some.
• 28:30
  Propter: Yeah.
• 28:31
  George: And you had some done to you, too. For sure.
• 28:34
  Propter: She was. She was also the daughter of the Citadel commandant at that point. So, like, layers still, right? Like.
• 28:41
  George: Yeah. I mean, that. Yeah, yeah, man.
• 28:45
  Ed: But.
• 28:46
  Propter: But in any case, at this point, she is who she is, and who she is is a little bit crazy. But the ink looks pretty good, so
• 28:58
  George: Propter would like to say something real quick.
• 29:00
  Lowtax: They were. They were surprisingly good tattoos. I'll give her that.
• 29:03
  George: Have we got a Go Like Hell Machine ruling on those? Anyone asked him about them?
• 29:08
  Ed: No, I respect him.
• 29:11
  George: That's who I think of when I think of, like, rate this ink is doctor Go Like Hell Machine. So we'll have to get his Take on it. We'll come back to it that next week.
• 29:18
  Ed: No, he won't.
• 29:19
  Propter: One more digression before we get back to that. I played a lot of forum Mafia in my time for my sins.
• 29:23
  George: Of course you did.
• 29:24
  Propter: Which is a game where you're trying to figure out who you know who is, who is, who is a secret faction working against the rest of the players and who is not. And one of the most reliable tells in for a Mafia is if you identify someone as a member of the Mafia, if you identify someone as scum but you caught them for the wrong reason, people will consistently flip out. That is one of the most, One of, one of the clearest tells is that is that if you point the finger at somebody and they, and they flip the hell out, it is very likely that they are in fact guilty. But the way you got there was wrong. That, that, that, that you have, you have walked into the correct conclusion, which in this case is that Natalie Harp has a very weird relationship with Donald Trump, but you have done so through a route that is not accurate. And in this case, I think that the media reaction, the right wing sphere reaction, and the White House reaction are doing the wrongly caught scum thing from Mafia, where they are being, where they are flipping out in defense of her because they think the implication is that she's sleeping with Donald Trump. She's not sleeping with Donald Trump, but whatever's going on there is way weirder.
• 30:37
  Lowtax: But Ossoff didn't say that.
• 30:39
  Propter: Ossoff didn't say any of that. He just said that. No, Trump wants to travel with her.
• 30:43
  Lowtax: Three words.
• 30:45
  Ed: Why do you think that they're. They're going to listen to him either.
• 30:48
  Lowtax: No, I know. Three. Three little words and he sent the entire administration into a meltdown.
• 30:56
  Ed: This will look good in his presidential library.
• 30:58
  Lowtax: Yes.
• 31:00
  George: God, can you imagine how much gold there's going to be in that place?
• 31:03
  Ed: No, I meant in Ossoffs.
• 31:05
  George: Oh, a lot less than that one.
• 31:11
  Ed: Come on, we got to stay on message here.
• 31:13
  George: So. Yeah, fair.
• 31:14
  Propter: We'll kind of see how the Natalie Harp story evolves going forward. At this point, it seems like at least part of the firestorm has passed. We've had the usual suspects like Wolf and Maggie Haberman already released nuggets that they were probably saving for books about.
• 31:31
  Lowtax: Yeah, I'm enjoying that. They keep having to dump all their book material to one up each other.
• 31:39
  Propter: All right, so the Daily Beast has an article entitled Natalie Harp's Intimate Letters to Trump revealed in full. Some excerpts here. She told him that she's envious of women, quote, whose only job seems to be to talk with you and look pretty. I want that job. And we talk about everything and nothing. You are all that matters to me. I don't want to ever let you down. I'm trying to find the one about cussing her out, which lodged.
• 32:10
  Ed: I mean, I'm already uncomfortable, to be honest. I think the idea is clearly established here.
• 32:18
  Propter: And please, when I fail, will you tell me you have the absolute right to cuss me out if need be when I deserve it, because no one knows or cares about me more. We've got layers and layers here.
• 32:28
  George: You are all that matters to me. I don't want to ever let you down.
• 32:36
  Propter: The White House is a high stress working environment, Right. And she was with Trump for years in sort of the. The Trump interregnum. And that leads to some weirdly shaped relationships. But even within the canons of weirdly shaped relationships, this is an extremely weirdly shaped relationship. She sounds deranged.
• 33:01
  Ed: Do you think?
• 33:02
  Propter: Like we. Like we alluded to earlier, there's some evidence that she's been either ghost writing or straight or just straight up writing tweets, truth social posts for Trump and has given how often the administration announces policy through tweets. That's a little bit of a concern. Apparently she declined to do her security clearance for a year. I was unaware you could just decline to do your security clearance.
• 33:34
  Ed: I mean, it was busy, but seems
• 33:36
  George: like there should be a law against that.
• 33:37
  Ed: Yeah.
• 33:39
  Propter: Yeah.
• 33:40
  Ed: What's a law?
• 33:42
  Propter: There's a lot of smoke and a lot of speculation about. About this constellation of weird things, but it seems like, at least for right now, she's not resigning, she's not getting pushed out, so she will continue to be a part of this particular circus for some time. There was even a rumor that she's going to get appointed press secretary. That seems unlikely to me.
• 34:01
  Ed: Jesus. But all right, now I'm in.
• 34:08
  Propter: But it would make for great television
• 34:12
  Ed: or like the country.
• 34:14
  Lowtax: I mean, great television for us, not so much for them. So I'm for it. That's fine.
• 34:20
  Propter: Yeah. So, you know, we're just adding like another. Another character here in season four. That might be important going forward.
• 34:30
  George: I do think it's worth talking a little bit about the meta discourse around her too, because again, the Republican claim is that, oh, you're besmirching this woman who. You're doing a misogyny, which. Lol, now you guys care. But yeah, that's not what's going on. And there was also a really, there was a really revealing post about this from Amy Siskind, who has a history of weird takes in general, fairly prominent activist, but also this is someone who sort of leapt into the media after she had a career as a distressed debt trader.
• 35:10
  Ed: What?
• 35:11
  George: She, yeah, she, she was one of the people that invented distressed debt trading actually at Perla Weinberg, she was a partner there.
• 35:20
  Propter: Can you talk us through what distressed debt is for those who might not know?
• 35:23
  George: Yeah, so distressed debt just refers to a company that's in trouble and owes people money and then you try and figure out what the price is on their debt. So if you're right.
• 35:33
  Propter: Yeah, yeah, so, so at that point, money, money that they owe is going to trade bonds, bonds that they owe, corporate bonds are going to trade at a discount to face value because they're in trouble.
• 35:43
  George: So like, let's say I'm, you know, like corporation A is out there and people stop, they're making cars or whatever and people stop buying their cars or something like that. And so they've got all this debt and they have these assets. And you figure out how much the assets are worth and how much the debt's worth and the debt is either covered or not. The degree to which it's covered by the assets when they're all sold off or someone else buys them, whatever, however it ends up working out. The thing about distressed debt trading is it's like a very zero sum game. It is very much like, how much can I squeeze out of this rock? Whether it's the buying and selling, you know, if you're, if you're trading Treasuries, for instance, right. If you do something off to one of your counterparties, like you misrepresent something and then expect them to make it right or whatever, like there's consequences to that because you got to go back to those same people, trade with them again because it's a, it's a repeat game. Like this is a long, you know, this is a long term thing. But like with distressed debt specifically, it's so zero sum that like that might not apply and you can, there might be a huge leg up to screwing over your counterparties either through a legitimate information advantage or other means, be they legal or otherwise. So if you're, if you come up through that environment like you get what it's like to be in a bare knuckle brawl for a living every day. Like it is more like politics than just about any other career I can think of in that respect, where everything is Zero sum. And everything's like full go all the time, like, fighting with the opposition. Siskind, who has not been in that world for a long time, but nonetheless, again, came up through this world, described her, Described this situation as mocking her, is starting to just look plain mean. I'm starting to feel badly for her. And there have been other takes of this type where it's like, oh, we can't, you know, that this. This vulnerable young woman who, to be clear, it looks like, to my understanding, she comes out of a Christian nationalist background, which if there was ever a factory to manufacture broken people, that's what it would look like. Is Christian nationalism. Like, it is a very good way to break someone permanently, psychologically, and especially women. Like, especially, especially women. Men, too, but much more so women. So again, if Natalie Harp. I sort of winked at this earlier. If Natalie Harp was a woman at the grocery store, I would feel very bad about punching down and making fun of her for her weirdness. My message to both Amy Siskind and listeners of this podcast is, I submit to you that Natalie Harp is not a random woman at the grocery store. She's not a member of your community. She is engaged in a project to immiserate and attack and destroy large swaths of our society. She is very enthusiastically a supporter of that project and doing everything she can to push it forward. And I think there are certain things we should not be leveling against her. Certainly not directly that I will certainly not say. I don't. If there's any sexual relationship between her and the president. That's not the issue. That's not some, like, awful thing, right? Like attack and destroy large swaths of our society. She is very enthusiastically a supporter of that project and doing everything she can to push it forward. And I think there are certain things we should not be leveling against her. Certainly not directly that I will certainly not say I don't like. Like what if there's any sexual relationship between her and the president? That's not the issue. That's not some, like, awful thing.
• 39:33
  Ed: Right?
• 39:34
  George: Like.
• 39:36
  Propter: All right, should we shift gears, move from south to north?
• 39:41
  George: We have to talk about Canada, don't we?
• 39:43
  Propter: I'm afraid I do.
• 39:45
  George: What if Maine was a country? All right, so about a month ago, the Trump administration argued that Canada was dragging their heels in trade negotiations. And trade negotiations, which I should note, were kicked off because the Trump administration tried to unilaterally tariff just about everything Canada sold to us, which is like half a trillion dollars a year. It's like a huge number Right. The Trump administration wanted to pull the whole tariff game on Canada, and it ended up that the USMCA compliance stuff. USMCA is the replacement for nafta. Sorry, we're going to have to do some trade law here. I just. I hate it.
• 40:28
  Lowtax: We're in our. We're in our Mike Black era. We're acronym maxing.
• 40:33
  George: Yeah. Basically, Trump wanted to do that. He realized that the blowback on every conceivable domestic industry, from slapping a 15 to 20% tariff on everything that came out of Canada, was extraordinarily bad. Same deal with Mexico, by the way.
• 40:49
  Lowtax: Same.
• 40:51
  George: So they're sort of haggling over stuff that's not directly covered by the usmca. About a month ago, the Trump administration came out and said, okay, we're going to slap a 25% tariff on a segment. I think it's about 20 billion, maybe 50 billion, something like that, of Canadian exports that fall into these specific categories in order to sort of poke Canada along. Last week, both the Trump administration, U.S. trade Representative Jamieson Greer, and the Canadian negotiators, I think specifically Carney, the Prime Minister, were quite optimistic that a deal would be done by the deadline. Completely artificial. Create a deadline that Trump had decided was going to fall on Friday. Again, just to emphasize these. This dispute is a creation of Trump. The deadline was a creation of Trump. Canadian counterterroriffs are going to be a creation of Trump. It's all just Trump. Like, this is Trump picking a fight and then getting mad when the other country is like, what? No. So they were all talking very optimistically midweek, and then something happened at the last minute. We still don't know what specifically. There have been some reports out about it, but not a lot. Something happened and it blew up. And so now this new package of tariffs is going to be applied to Canada. Are they legal? Probably. I don't know. A lot of the replacement tariffs that replace the IPA tariffs, the IPA tariffs were the Liberation Day goofy chart. We're going to tariff, you know, random islands and near the Antarctica, because we got our list of countries from AI. Those tariffs, those have been ruled unconstitutional and are in the process of mostly being refunded. There are other powers under U.S. federal law that other parts of U.S. code that allow the President to do something similar. And it's some of those other parts of US Code. I think specifically it's national security concerns, or it might be forced labor stuff, which is the fig leaf they're using to justify effectively across the board tariffs on every other country.
• 42:58
  Lowtax: On earth.
• 42:59
  George: So everyone else has forced labor, and so we can charge them all the exact same rate because they're all doing forced labor in the same way. Who knows if that's going to hold up under legal scrutiny, but it might anyhow. That's sort of the state of play. And I just. The Canadians immediately announced on Friday or Saturday that they were gonna release counter tariffs in the exact same amount on the. On the goods of their choosing to respond to the American tariffs. So they're doing tit for tat, which I think is absolutely the right call. I was just up in Canada this past. I got back last Saturday or last Sunday, and I was only with family and with close friends, so I didn't get both barrels, as it were. No one was impolitic enough to blow up a. We only get to see George and his wife and his daughter very infrequently. So, like, let's start a political discussion. I mean, come on, they know where I sit anyways. But Canadians are catastrophically angry, like, and justifiably so, because the US Is trying to blow up arguably the single strongest and most successful alliance between two countries in human history
• 44:23
  Lowtax: over
• 44:26
  George: insane, insane policy goals. Here's a subset of them. Now, I want to caution that this is not stuff that was dropped on the table at the last minute this week. This is a reasonably comprehensive list of stuff that Americans have. The American negotiating team has asked of Canada over the years under Trump, too. Again, we don't know the degree to which this was accepted as a term from Canada. We don't know the degree to which was laughed off the table, but it was certainly on the table at some point from the US Veto over strategic infrastructure partnerships. So, for instance, if China wants to go build a new facility in Canada, some sort of new port facility or whatever, the US can say no restrictions on trade with other countries around the world. So if Canada wants to go sign a free trade deal with the eu, the US can say no. And also matching of US sanctions, matching of export controls, matching of tariffs. So basically just any trade policy gets outsourced to the US entirely.
• 45:26
  Lowtax: Basically. Making them the 51st state without making them the 51st state.
• 45:31
  George: Yeah, a right of first refusal for all exports on critical mineral minerals, which includes stuff like coal, for instance. Not that Canada produces that much coal, but like still lithium, nickel, cobalt, uranium, whatever. Ending interference in domestic policy, which includes ending Canada's digital services tax. And there's an online news restriction in Canada. Don't need to get into the details, but it is as far inside the bounds of sovereignty as you can possibly imagine. And the US Wants to be able to say, no, you can't have that anymore. The funniest one on the list by far is the next one. All right, so Canada has some quirky policies. One of those is called Cancon. When I was growing up, Canadian tv, I was sitting, watching tv. Canadian channels would play American stuff, but they could only broadcast so much of it. At a certain point, you had to start broadcasting Canadian stuff. So, for instance, if you're a. If you're much music, which was Canada's version of mtv, you can play music videos from the United States, but you gotta play Canadian music videos, too. You have to give Canadian content a certain percentage of your airtime. And I can't remember the ratios. I think it differs by medium. It's sort of complicated. But the idea here is to make sure that Canadian culture doesn't just get subsumed into the US Whether that's a good goal or not doesn't matter.
• 47:02
  Lowtax: This is how we got Nickelback, isn't it?
• 47:05
  George: It's not not how we got Nickelback.
• 47:08
  Ed: I didn't know much music was Canadian, but it was available in. In Maine. And, like, now some things make sense.
• 47:16
  George: What if Maine was a country?
• 47:20
  Propter: Yeah. And I mean, to be clear, like, Canada produces excellent media. Like, there's lots of Canadian musicians, there's good Canadian television. Lots of people that. This sort of goes towards the entanglement thing. But lots of actors that at least I think of as being probably American are in fact Canadian.
• 47:43
  George: Yeah.
• 47:44
  Propter: So, like, you know, this is. This is not necessarily a difficult hoop to jump through all the time, but I imagine that on the edges, you notice it, you do the fun.
• 47:56
  George: So the Cancon thing is kind of a curiosity. But also included in this is demand from the American side that Canada roll back language protections for the Kibaqua.
• 48:08
  Lowtax: Yes.
• 48:09
  George: So in case you're not aware, if you've ever gotten a packaged good, consumer packaged good that's sold in both the US And Canada, you'll notice there's a lot of French on the label. And why is that? Well, because in Canada, you are obligated to provide information about your product, whether it's nutrition information, ingredients, branding, all that stuff that's gotta be in French and English. Like, you cannot sell a. You know, and of course there's. There's hurdles for this stuff. So if you're like a single burger shack, that doesn't. It's fine. But, like, if you're selling consumer packaged goods all across Canada. If you're selling, I don't know, a box of pasta in Vancouver, you gotta have it.
• 48:51
  Lowtax: I was gonna say, I believe someone posted today that KFC is actually called PFC in Quebec.
• 49:01
  George: Yeah, yeah, Kentucky or something. Yeah, I can't remember the translation, but yeah, sorry, sorry. Poulet. Free Kentucky.
• 49:15
  Lowtax: Somebody, somebody posted a map of either side of the Atlantic Ocean that labeled Quebec as real Frenchmen and the French as cosplayers.
• 49:26
  George: I mean, it's sort of true, right? Like they're. The Quebecois speak basically 17th century French, which is very funny to actually have people from France when they hear it, because it's like, why, why are you talking like you're in a Shakespearean play? Because they are.
• 49:41
  Lowtax: This was, this was just. Purely because in France, KFC is just kfc.
• 49:46
  George: Yeah, yeah. Stop signs in Quebec say are it. They do not say that in France. So yeah, there are other examples here. They want Canada to get rid of supply management. We will link in the show Notes, a podcast I did 10 years ago with the Financial Times about supply management. But basically it's a quota system for producing dairy in Canada and it includes imports. So that's fun. Cheese in Canada is incredibly expensive compared to the United States and a lot of other countries because of this system. It's a dumb system. They shouldn't have it. But for political economy reasons entirely driven by domestic politics, they have supply management. So the US wants them to get rid of that. Neither thing has a chance in hell of happening, by the way. Like, like, I can't understate to you how insane these requests are. Like, the idea that, that Canada would get rid of bilingual labeling is just nuts. Like that's never going to happen probably.
• 50:49
  Lowtax: That would probably lead to like God's honest terrorism or something.
• 50:52
  Propter: I mean, like, it wasn't that long ago that we had God's honest terrorism.
• 50:55
  Ed: Yeah, yeah.
• 50:58
  George: Just if, if you're not familiar with the history of Quebec, like until roughly, I think the last live referendum would have been like early 90s. I have to look this up. But until my lifetime, Quebec was very close to seceding from Canada. And unlike the US where secession was very bloodily settled in the 19th century, despite being pretty plainly against the constitution. Yeah, not, not, not so much.
• 51:28
  Propter: Yeah. Canada's got like, got like strong, strong, strong federalism. Like, like the individual provinces can set tariffs on each other, I think, and do.
• 51:42
  Ed: So that's where he got the idea,
• 51:44
  Propter: I think every province has the right to secede and that's, that's in the Constitution. So, like, you know, we think of, we think of provinces as being equivalent to states, and we think of the Canadian system of government as being roughly equivalent to ours, but it turns out that of things, it is very different. So, like Kibaqua, separatism was a real thing. There was a real terrorist movement. There were a lot of bombs and they killed people. Yeah, so.
• 52:08
  George: And they got really close to seceding electorally, too. I mean, I think the closest one was in the 80s and it got within a couple percentage points. And now today, I don't. I think it's done. I think it's permanently in the grave because the people that have moved to Quebec, that really. Immigrants. Right. Immigrants think of themselves as Canadian first and Quebec was second. And they would look, you know, that population, and especially younger, younger generations, too. Like, it's just not, you know, I'm sure there will always be, you know, the, the, the fringe in Quebec that really does want separatism, but it, it, it's, it's not going to win electorally at this point. But. Yeah, I mean, unless Ottawa does something stupid like, oh, yeah, sure, we'll let the US Write our rules around bilingual packaging because, of course, which, to be clear, they're not going to do.
• 52:59
  Lowtax: Yeah, and then we're going to get like, the Washington Monument blown up by like the Sons of Beaver Depot or something.
• 53:08
  Ed: Look, they just haven't been the same since the Nordic last town.
• 53:14
  George: Yeah, there are other examples here. Get rid of, by Canadian instructions to federal procurement. Get rid of a bunch of stuff protecting the auto industry, essentially. Remove patent extension or, sorry, extend exclusivity of patents within Canada's patent protection system because their patents roll off faster than the US So that makes drugs cheaper, but means drug companies make less money. The Trump administration wants minimum allocations of Canadian energy output, which. Okay, there's stuff on defense in the Arctic as well. I mean, there's just like, you know, again, I want to, I want to be really clear here. Like, none of this is stuff. I don't think any of this was dropped on the table on Friday night. I think this, these are just sort of asks that were made and laughed out of the room over the course of the last two years. But there are actually people in the Trump administration that think this stuff is negotiable, and they're idiots.
• 54:21
  Ed: Do they think it's negotiable or do they just not care if they're, if
• 54:25
  George: they're dropping it in negotiations? They think it's, they think it's Something that's worth bringing up. So yeah, they think it's negotiable.
• 54:31
  Ed: Do they? Let me rephrase. Are they trying to succeed? Like these are, these people are like.
• 54:38
  George: I mean they're fucking autarchists, right?
• 54:40
  Ed: Like,
• 54:42
  George: okay, so, so okay, let's, let's take Ed's point at face value, which I don't know, maybe Jameson Grierson are talking to that degree.
• 54:50
  Ed: Like he fundament actually is.
• 54:51
  George: Well, I. He. Trump's not in the negotiating room every day.
• 54:55
  Lowtax: Right.
• 54:55
  Propter: Like he wants to.
• 54:57
  George: Trump's not in the negotiating room every day. Leaving aside the insane. We're gonna. Canada's gonna be the 51st state stuff, which. No, that's not going to happen. But like the degree of interdependence between the American and Canadian economies is I imagine Texas just not being able to move stuff across its borders into Oklahoma, New Mexico, Louisiana, fully, I fully get
• 55:24
  Ed: like, I think they're like that big
• 55:27
  George: of a hit to the American economy. No, well, okay, fine, they might be insane, but that just means like if they, if they stick to their guns on this kind of thing and they really are that insane. What that means is we're eventually just going to say screw the usmca, screw all trade movement back and forth that nukes. First of all, the audio industry is dead tomorrow. Like that's just, that's it. The auto industry is dead. Detroit is. They're all dead. And when, I mean dead, I mean the plants stop running for years. Like it's not. Oh, they're going to lose a few, few bucks on EPS this quarter. No, it means Detroit can no longer function.
• 56:02
  Ed: There's tons of that stuff going across the border every day. Yeah, of course, yeah.
• 56:06
  George: If you need gasoline or diesel anywhere between roughly the Great Lakes, the Rocky Mountains and Oklahoma, not kind of that band like the north, the Southern Plains states, anywhere in that region. So Illinois, Wisconsin, the Dakotas, if you need any consumable fuel in there, and we do like 20% tariffs on all Canadian imports, you're dead. Like you don't get your diesel anymore. That's it. Canada can literally stop every car in the Midwest from running tomorrow. That region is entirely dependent on Canadian crude exports. Their refineries are totally tuned for it. They can be adjusted over time, but it would take years. They do not have. There is no physical way to move crude into that region and the volume that would be necessary to replicate those refineries going offline because they no longer have access to Canadian heavy crude. And that's it that. I'm not talking like, oh, like, you know, Diesel goes from 6 to 8. I'm talking diesel goes from 6 to 12. Like it's that bad. Maybe more. They produce some stuff that the rest of us eat in those regions, I think. Right. Am I right in remembering that?
• 57:15
  Propter: Canola. We use a lot of canola oil. And that's, that's Canadian.
• 57:19
  Ed: A lot of it I think is.
• 57:19
  Propter: Yeah.
• 57:20
  George: Oh, you want to build a house? You'd like to build a house. Would you like to use timber frame for that? Oh, well, congrats. You are now 100 dependent on Western Canada. Not 100, but like 85.
• 57:31
  Ed: Idaho erasure. Thank you. Actually not for timber framing. They do really like. They.
• 57:37
  George: We should erase Idaho though. Let's be real here.
• 57:39
  Lowtax: Wait a minute. We're gonna, we're going to get rid of the seed oils and you guys are mad.
• 57:47
  Ed: In honesty, yes, like the Douglas, Douglas fir is better for timber framing, but also we should make timber framing people feel bad. So like, you know, partial victory here, but go on.
• 57:57
  George: Look, if you want to build an apartment or a single family home in this country, you got to use timber frame. I mean, that's just how, that's how our building codes work at this point. The economics are.
• 58:05
  Ed: Oh, I'm talking about like timber framing, not like two by fours. You're, you are absolutely correct about that too. Don't get me wrong.
• 58:13
  Propter: But these are, these are, these are ornate brain worms that we've wandered into.
• 58:18
  Ed: You are now in Woodworker Brainworm.
• 58:20
  George: Have we mentioned the entire power grid basically east of the Hudson?
• 58:25
  Ed: Yeah. It's not great.
• 58:25
  George: Do you like that? Yeah, that, that, that is dependent pretty much 100% on Canada. Pretty much.
• 58:32
  Propter: Like, like, like even, even if it was possible in the long term to economically. Even if it was desirable in the long term to economically se. This is not something where you can flip a switch and have it be okay. No, it is going to be pretty deeply not okay. And I believe the fuse on this is about to run down, which is to say I think that the US Tariffs go into effect tomorrow. We tape we're taping on Sunday.
• 58:53
  Lowtax: It are.
• 58:53
  George: They already went into effect. They're in effect.
• 58:55
  Propter: Okay. The Canadian counter tariffs are supposed to go in Labor Day after Labor Day.
• 59:01
  George: I believe, and to be clear, that those rounds of tariffs are a relatively small percentage of total trade. They're not huge, they're not nothing. But I think it would move the effect of tariff rate on Canadian imports from 3 and change percent to like 5% because it's, it's a 25% tariff, but it's only applied to a small section of exports. But like a thing I need people to understand, if you don't have a Canadian in your life, especially a Canadian who's living in Canada right now, they will put up with so much more pain than you think you can put up with. And I'm talking about you personally, like in just a bad scenario for your life. I'm not talking about the chuds who think not being able to get a crumble cookie cookie via doordash is the equivalent to the Holocaust. Like, the political coalition behind this guy is already gone. It's gone. He's, it's gone, it's disappeared. If Canada really plays the maximal game here, which I don't think they're going to do, but they could, they could literally turn off the power for about 20% of the US population tomorrow and there's no way to get it back on.
• 1:00:15
  Lowtax: Do it until the midterm. So we get, so we make sure we get Collins out this time.
• 1:00:22
  Ed: Maine is actually like, yeah, Canada could do that.
• 1:00:26
  George: They could literally say, we are not turning the power on until you elect a Democrat. That good luck. I, they're not going to do that. But they could.
• 1:00:35
  Lowtax: No, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:36
  Ed: Because I mean, like Maine specifically gets like a assload of power from Hydro. Quebec. Right. Like, it is the, it is one of the most exposed states on that. Right.
• 1:00:46
  George: Like New York, New York State's climate plan is essentially, we'll buy it from Canada, which is not a bad plan from a climate perspective.
• 1:00:56
  Lowtax: No.
• 1:00:58
  George: And honestly, in general, it seems like a pretty reasonable, I mean, gains from trade. Canada has a lot of acreage to produce hydro. Like, that's fine, you know, but like. Yeah. So, you know, I, obviously, I've laid out some pretty extreme scenarios here. I don't think any of that's going to happen. No, I, I think Trump is going to fold in short order when he realized when he gets Detroit on the phone being like, guys, can we not.
• 1:01:27
  Ed: Yeah, no.
• 1:01:27
  George: So it's the same thing as the original tariffs.
• 1:01:29
  Ed: Yeah, yeah, that.
• 1:01:30
  Lowtax: And I mean, why would, why would Mark Carney budge, like, have you seen his poll numbers on this?
• 1:01:35
  George: Him, him caving. He's, he's not only got broad public support on this, he's got support from parts of the political spectrum that should want nothing to do with Alberta after this guy.
• 1:01:46
  Ed: Like, like, yeah, that's a whole.
• 1:01:48
  George: Alberta is a whole separate thing.
• 1:01:49
  Lowtax: I.
• 1:01:50
  Ed: No, I mean like after, after the great reunification, he was still up 60,
• 1:01:55
  Lowtax: 40 on it in Alberta too.
• 1:01:57
  George: Yeah, for sure.
• 1:01:59
  Ed: Like, like I, at this point, I, I wasn't just talking shit a minute ago. To be clear, George. Like, I don't think these people actually believe in trade or they are at least fundamentally willing to subsume any belief in like a functioning global economy to Donald Trump's God king whims. Like that just seems to be the way that they're acting now. I don't see any other way to read it.
• 1:02:24
  George: The thing is though that like we know they have constraints, right? Like we've seen them hit their constraints
• 1:02:30
  Ed: and go, I agree that they are going to try out of this as soon as like human beings who have like some sort of tether to reality are involved. But like.
• 1:02:39
  Lowtax: Yeah, or as soon as the stock market goes down half a point, but
• 1:02:43
  Ed: then it will go up 300. I just made myself sad.
• 1:02:51
  Propter: Yeah. So I, I think that, I think that we're all kind of on the same page and that we think that ultimately this is not going to be a 50% tariff trade war conducted across all industries between Canada and the United States. Because that's obviously freaking crazy. And you know somebody, the United States will blink on that soon. But the long term effect of this that I'm, that I'm worried about, that I think is really corrosive, is that we are making Canadians extremely mad at the United States. Yeah. And we keep doing it like if this was, if this was one and done, it would be different. But it feels like every couple months we have some fresh set of, I'm going to call them insults, but that understates it. Like these are, these are, are, these are, these are fighting words. These are, these are mortal grave insults. These are things that are really, really rankling our brothers to the north. And it can be kind of hard to reverse that once you get that going that, you know, it sounds, it sounds crazy to talk about how we are whipping up anti American Canadian sentiment, but that's exactly what we're doing. And I think we do that at our peril. Long term.
• 1:04:04
  Lowtax: That we're, we're gonna be, we're gonna be the Russians to Canada's Poland.
• 1:04:11
  Propter: Yeah.
• 1:04:12
  George: How is that working out for the Russians? Like, can't. It is not crazy to imagine 20 years from now Canada being an extremely popular and well liked member of the eu.
• 1:04:25
  Ed: Yeah.
• 1:04:26
  Propter: Right. And an extremely popular and, and well, like member of an EU that, that primarily exists in opposition to the United States of America that you Know, there, there are, there are some old bonds that are, that are getting tested here, and some of them may pull through, some of them may not. But just, just as a matter of geopolitical housekeeping, it seems like a bad idea to turn a country that has been our, our, our, our brothers, you know, in good times and in bad for what, a century and a half now
• 1:05:04
  George: into probably since 1870s, I would say. Yeah, century and a half. Spare.
• 1:05:10
  Propter: Yeah, yeah. Like, like, like, like we've gone through long periods of beefing with Canada. It wasn't fun, it wasn't good for the United States, and it was not beef that the United States uniformly won. Like, these were, these were bad times. It is, it is not.
• 1:05:27
  Lowtax: There's a reason we don' Lot of time on the War of 1812 in there.
• 1:05:30
  Propter: Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, that was, that was preseason, but still, you know, we got our ass kicked and they burnt the White House, so that was, that was not a great war for America.
• 1:05:42
  Ed: I mean, go back further than that. Right? Like, the Battle of Quebec did not go very well for the Americans. Right, right, right. I, I think that was what, the fourth time that Benedict Arnold got shot before the, the future unpleasantness. Right. Like, it was, it was not a good time for like, something they lost like a third of the American force trying to, trying to burn down Quebec and failing.
• 1:06:09
  George: Right.
• 1:06:09
  Ed: We have generally not fared very well in this whole fighting Canada thing.
• 1:06:15
  Propter: And I mean, even, even if we're not talking about military fighting, like, it's, it's better to have a good friend on your border than it is to have somebody who hates your guts. And I worry that we are kicking off processes that will in time convert what has been a very good, strong and mutually beneficial relationship into one that is, that is poisoned by mistrust. Like, you've got, you've got Mark Carney out there saying that, you know, the American sign, sign trade agreements in pencil. Like, he's not wrong.
• 1:06:51
  George: Coming soon to a defense agreement near you.
• 1:06:53
  Propter: Yeah.
• 1:06:54
  Lowtax: Like, we'll get, we'll get us. Us in Canada will go and sit down with mom in London and in
• 1:07:03
  Ed: 2029 and low tax, you know she's dead. Right.
• 1:07:13
  Lowtax: At which point Andy Burnham could sit there and say to Canada, look, he's apologized now you need to learn to accept his apology.
• 1:07:23
  George: Yeah, it's, it's not like the, the, another group chat mentioned today that, like, the best way to deal with an elementary school bully is to not be entertaining to that bully anymore. And there are a number of ways to do that. That and Canada is very capable of making things not very fun and not very entertaining anymore.
• 1:07:49
  Ed: And they should do it.
• 1:07:52
  George: I actually, I'm not sure about that. I'm not actually sure about that.
• 1:07:55
  Ed: Okay.
• 1:07:56
  George: I think the, I think tit for tat is totally reasonable and I think that Carney is absolutely right to respond in kind to the US Tariffs. I think if they shut the grid for a large percentage of the country down and conversely pulled energy resources for gasoline and diesel from the. Another large percentage of the country and then made sure nobody could build a house, I think that risks locking in a cycle of distrust that makes it permanent regardless of which American administration is running the show. And I'm not just from a strictly Canadian self interested perspective. I don't think getting into an escalatory cycle and trying to escalate beyond what the US Is doing is a good idea.
• 1:08:44
  Ed: That's fair.
• 1:08:45
  George: I know US as parochial, domestic American political perspective. Like, yeah, make Trump's life miserable. I mean, of course we're going to say that. Right. I don't actually think that's in Canada's best interest.
• 1:08:57
  Propter: Right.
• 1:08:57
  George: But matching what, what the US Is doing is absolutely in Canada's interest. And it's not going to have to match much for this administration full of cowards and generally just weak people to be like, oh crap, okay, we got to move the Eye of Sauron onto something else because this ain't gonna, this ain't gonna work.
• 1:09:14
  Lowtax: Don't go after like oil and electricity and stuff. Mark Carney, like, Mark Carney's people run the banks, as we all know, so he can cause some real damage that way.
• 1:09:28
  Propter: Yeah. Like if Canada turns out the lights on the, on, on. On the Northeast, that is going to make Americans extremely mad. Not, not just going to make American. Yeah, not just going to make Trump mad. Like, that's, that's when gets real. And I don't think they're going to do that for that reason.
• 1:09:46
  Ed: The problem is that is already real. Like, I don't mean like, look, the stuff that they're demanding to your point earlier, George, like, this is effectively like, like surrender yourself sovereignty. Right?
• 1:10:02
  George: Like, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. They're, that's what they're, that's what they're putting on the table, allegedly. We don't know how hard they press those points. You know, like Trump's strategy of always asking for the most crazy possible fucking thing you can find to give him and then settling for a tiny slice of that declaring Massive victory. I mean, I mean this fits that pattern, right? Like we have no idea how hard they press this various stuff. It's not well reported. That doesn't surprise me because nothing happening in these trade negotiations makes the American side look good and the Canadians have extremely good message discipline and a well trained civil service. So of course it's not leaking. Unlike us, you know, but for both sides have different reasons for not leaking. What exactly is going on? You know, like, yes, if the US Was saying any deal has to include these, we are going to the mat on this, no further discussion, then I would agree with you, but I don't think that's what's going on. I just, I just don't, I just
• 1:11:00
  Ed: don't think even mentioning it deserves some extraordinary rendition of the people involved to Toronto.
• 1:11:05
  George: Right, like that, that, I mean, like
• 1:11:07
  Ed: to the dingiest basement you can find there. Right?
• 1:11:10
  George: Like, I'm not defending them, asking to be clear. I'm just saying like, like again, Canada is playing a longer term game here than the Trump administration is, as they should be. That's rational. It's the right way to play it.
• 1:11:24
  Lowtax: I think Toronto is too good for them, Ed. It should be. Montreal.
• 1:11:27
  George: I like, I think Montreal's fine. Saskatoon?
• 1:11:33
  Ed: Too far.
• 1:11:34
  George: Edmonton.
• 1:11:36
  Ed: No. We like people who.
• 1:11:37
  George: White Horse. White Horse, I don't even remember where that is.
• 1:11:43
  Ed: And I know geography.
• 1:11:46
  Propter: I would say that we're more real adjacent than it's getting real right now. That, like, it's clear that we are closer to some extremely bad outcomes than we would like to be. But we're not quite manning the battlements yet. This is still an extreme bluster phase rather than, rather than real serious pain being exacted from people over an extended period of time. That means that there's not a lot of time to get it back together. But they're still, as of this taping, we're not over the cliff yet.
• 1:12:22
  George: Look, we're not going over a cliff anytime soon. If we do go over that cliff someday, it's going to take a lot longer cycles of escalation and there's a lot of negative feedback loops that kick in. There has been enormous harm done to the American Canadian bilateral relationship and we may have permanently altered the trajectory of that relationship. On that I agree. Going over the cliff into a world where Canada is conducting full blown economic warfare against the United States as opposed to simply matching tariffs on roughly 15% of exports or whatever it is, that is a lot of escalation away from where we are. And I think it may Be impossible to recover the closeness of the bilateral relationship that has endured over the past century plus. But I think there are a lot of equilibria where that relationship is not the same. But we are not over any kind of cliff into a, a scenario that involves really bad outcomes.
• 1:13:23
  Ed: He's got two words. Yeah, but no, I, I hear you, but, but I'm ed.
• 1:13:31
  George: He has, he has negative feedback. This is the thing I need everyone to understand about Trump. Like, this is always true and Bluesky is the worst on this. But like I, it's really important to understand he has negative feedback loops. He's an imperialist and an authoritarian, but that doesn't mean he doesn't reverse course all the time when the shit hits the fan. It happens all the time. If he, if, if we have two more years, he can keep escalating forever. If that was true, if that logic was true, there would be 50% across the board tariffs on anything we import right now. And that's not the case because he chickened out immediately when the bond market said whoa in early April of 2025.
• 1:14:10
  Ed: Sure. But he's going to keep pissing on the electric funds every chance he gets. And at some point, somebody is going to be more incentivized than not to not continue to play. Like, yes, I agree with you and I hear you and I, I understand that there are several equilibria in between, you know, here and there. But this dumb fucker doesn't know that. Like, that's the part I struggle with because he's, he's relearning this every time. And at some point you gotta wonder if he's gonna keep actually, like, at what point does, does it break?
• 1:14:44
  George: Is the car going over the cliff? Will not be U.S. canada. I will, I will say that with great confidence right now.
• 1:14:50
  Ed: That's fair.
• 1:14:50
  George: Which is not to say everything's gonna be fine, everything's go back to normal with the next administration, no harm done. Whatever. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying we don't get to apocalypse this way. It may happen in another way.
• 1:15:01
  Propter: The first car over the cliff is not us. Canada.
• 1:15:03
  Ed: Yeah. No, because this is still talking about Greenland.
• 1:15:09
  George: Greenland's not going to be it either.
• 1:15:10
  Ed: Yeah, I agree. But NATO does. Would be very poorly off if they assumed that.
• 1:15:17
  George: Yeah, well, NATO has other problems vis a vis Israel and Turkey.
• 1:15:21
  Ed: Yeah, we're a problem there too.
• 1:15:24
  George: We're not helping. That's, that's for sure. But we're not the root cause of that particular one. Well, okay, we're not the biggest root cause of that particular one.
• 1:15:35
  Propter: You know, friend, friend of the pod and farmer. Normal man. Guest. Hayden likes to describe Trump's foreign policy behavior as a Roomba with cerebrovascular disease characteristics. And like, I think that, I think that speaks, I think that speaks to George's, to George's point about negative feedback that, you know, the Roomba goes until it hits something and then it backs up and then it, you know, it goes. And it tools around and it maybe hits the same thing again or it maybe hits something else.
• 1:16:01
  Ed: But sometimes it falls down the stairs. Stairs.
• 1:16:03
  Propter: It does sometimes fall down the stairs.
• 1:16:05
  George: Like, like, just to be clear, the thing that's getting hurt there is the Roomba, not the furniture. Right.
• 1:16:13
  Ed: Like, have, have you seen the results of a set of stairs after that?
• 1:16:20
  George: They're meant to be walked on. What are the stairs in this scenario? Like, I feel like this analogy is losing its grip.
• 1:16:27
  Ed: I'm looking for real stairs here.
• 1:16:29
  Propter: Okay, well, let's all root for stairs.
• 1:16:40
  Ed: That's only.
• 1:16:41
  George: Should we cap it there? Oh, you know what? Let's cap it on it. Let's cap it on a happy thought.
• 1:16:45
  Ed: So I'm having many happy thoughts right now. They're just not ones I can commit to. Audio.
• 1:16:51
  Propter: Yeah.
• 1:16:52
  George: Bluesky dev and all around. Interesting account on that particular website. Haley at. I can't remember Haley's last name.
• 1:17:00
  Ed: Go.
• 1:17:01
  George: She has brought to my attention an incredibly important product announcement or product discovery that I think the other normal men need to. I need to get your live reaction to this. So this is going to come in two parts. So I'm going to do the reveal part one, and then we'll, we'll, we'll discuss and then we'll come to part two. What would you say if I told you you could procure on Amazon.com dude wipes. So this is the, the branded. You know, the stuff that you really shouldn't flush down the toilet because it's, it's bad for sewer systems. But they marketed as flushable down the toiletable. Supposed to be nicer on your butt than toilet paper. Use up a day like a normal person. Anyhow, dude wipes.
• 1:17:42
  Ed: Especially when Canada starts levying extra tariffs on paper goods.
• 1:17:47
  George: Flushable. Dude wipes. Wet wipes with a menthol scent.
• 1:17:53
  Ed: So this is not like a new thing. This, this is actually like, I know something about this. So this is actually a thing in Japan, not necessarily menthol.
• 1:18:05
  George: Menthol flavor.
• 1:18:06
  Ed: Yes. Like bought. You can buy like Body wipes at pretty much any convenience store. And they are remarkably. They are a remarkably good idea when you are basically walking around in a swamp. Also, day
• 1:18:22
  George: menthol in the brown spot.
• 1:18:25
  Ed: No, the surrounding areas
• 1:18:29
  Propter: concerned.
• 1:18:30
  Ed: The body wipes are more for like sweat and. And other. You know.
• 1:18:35
  Propter: Right.
• 1:18:35
  Ed: The. The specific.
• 1:18:37
  George: But that's. This is menthol in I. Specifically for where the poopy comes from.
• 1:18:43
  Lowtax: For your.
• 1:18:44
  Propter: For your mucous membranes.
• 1:18:45
  Ed: I'm not. Yeah, I'm not sure I believe that. Like, it's probably. I. I recognize. I saw this. I'm just saying that, like, I. I get the feeling that the people who are marketing this product have never used it.
• 1:18:58
  Propter: Right.
• 1:19:00
  George: Okay, so what if I told you, then I said there were two parts. What if I told you then I walked into it? Forget menthol. Forget menthol.
• 1:19:06
  Lowtax: Well, hang on. So I just want to say once again, I love that we have to create these. These batshit crazy marketing campaigns to market stuff to guys now. Like, we have to have like, tactical toenail clippers. And as George knows, I'm still waiting for my Fiat 500 Liquid Death Edition.
• 1:19:27
  George: They actually had a pretty good ad campaign that my wife really appreciated. They have a kegs for pregs thing where it's one of the Kelsey brothers wife who is currently quite pregnant. Get it? You know, heavily drinking kegs of Liquid death sparkling water. I thought that was. That was cute. Okay, well, but I said there was a second part, so there's a second part here. Menthol too much.
• 1:19:55
  Ed: I don't believe that any of these
• 1:19:56
  George: guys actually use their own product.
• 1:19:58
  Ed: I just looked them up.
• 1:19:59
  George: Fair enough. If the menthol is just. Is too much for you, I get it. It would be too much for me. What if I told you you could procure on Amazon.com ice pop scented dude wipes, huh? Like the red, white, and blue popsicles. Yeah, that flavor.
• 1:20:17
  Lowtax: I think this is. This is veering into like, really weird fetish stuff. And I. I have no intention of participating in this discourse.
• 1:20:29
  Ed: Oh, I understand now. Everyone on that show has a head injury. Okay. Okay. Yep. Mark. Mark Cuban, investor. Okay, I understand.
• 1:20:42
  Propter: All right, So I feel like the menthol is just clearly a bad idea and it's. And then. And therefore it's not intriguing to me. Like, like, like maybe. Maybe there are some people who are deeply attracted to that, and I wish them luck with their future experiences.
• 1:20:55
  Lowtax: But menthol is. Menthol is for cigarettes. Not. Not baby wipes.
• 1:20:59
  Propter: Correct? Yes, only. Only the lungs.
• 1:21:02
  Ed: Yeah.
• 1:21:02
  Propter: Fair with that deserve the sweet kiss of menthol. The ice pop thing is intriguing. For a moment, I. I feel that it's crossing streams in a way that I dislike.
• 1:21:15
  George: I actually have an even funnier flavor. What would you say to a little dumpkin spice? Dude wipe?
• 1:21:25
  Propter: Okay, not.
• 1:21:30
  George: That's going to be our show for the evening, so I hope you enjoyed our brain worms covering. God, what did we. Natalie Harp. Oh, we started with something different, didn't we?
• 1:21:41
  Lowtax: Yes, we started with sewing the penises back on very strongly first. Right?
• 1:21:45
  Propter: Yes, right.
• 1:21:46
  George: Our brain worms detransitioning. Not that we support detransitioning. I don't want to get clipped in the wrong way. Natalie HARP. The Canadian U.S. trade Relationship and tactical butt wipes.
• 1:21:58
  Propter: Yeah, this is, this is, this is going to be like a challenging non linear chaptering job for this one.
• 1:22:07
  George: If you get the chance, share this podcast. Maybe not this episode.
• 1:22:11
  Ed: Yeah, don't share this one. Do not rate based on this one. Give us another chance. Next week will be better, we promise.
• 1:22:18
  George: Throw a five star review up and just be like, just lie about it. If this is your frame of reference,
• 1:22:24
  Ed: we'll give you like an IOU for a tolerable episode.
• 1:22:28
  George: Yeah, we'll get a guest next week, maybe, I don't know, something like that.
• 1:22:33
  Lowtax: By next week we'll have. Yeah, by next week we'll have college football results.
• 1:22:38
  Ed: Hey,
• 1:22:40
  George: this guy, this guy, he knows. All right. For normal men in Charlotte, I'm a very brainworm George.
• 1:22:48
  Propter: In DC, I'm Propter.
• 1:22:50
  Lowtax: In outer Florida, I'm Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer.
• 1:22:53
  Ed: In Boston, I'm Ed. And I don't endorse any of this.
• 1:22:56
  George: Stay normal, y'. All.