Latest / Mechonomist Podcast / Kamala, Imperialist

Transcript

Kamala, Imperialist · Mechonomist Podcast

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't been a live stream in three months.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: I've been raising a kid and working a new job and setting up plans for the future.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Just a little bit of news.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: The documentary on the Automotive Free Clinic did come out and it was really well received.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't really been watching the DNC, but I have been watching the reactions to the DNC.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: The love for Kamala, I don't understand it.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: I get voting for her,
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: I get not wanting for Trump,
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: but the enthusiasm for someone who's going to continue the expansion of the
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: American empire and the global brutality
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: of American interest abroad is striking.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there are people who I respect, who are good people, who are celebrating Kamala.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't understand why.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: And to me, it's just the same as the Trump phenomenon.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: This is no content, zero content whatsoever.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's just vibes.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a great TV show.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's entertaining.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: It makes you feel good.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: It makes you feel like you're a part of something.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: And to the Democrats credit, they crafted all this stuff.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: They know what they're doing.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: They know how to manipulate people's emotions into supporting what is essentially, uh,
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: run-of-the-mill imperialist.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: She's going to be an effective administrator,
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: unlike the Trump administration,
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: and her domestic policy will be better.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's not going to be anything to write home about.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to be center-left.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe center-left for the United States,
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: but there is a genocide happening in Palestine,
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: and there is no end to it in sight,
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: and there is
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: No plan to habit it.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: There's a war in Ukraine.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: There's saber rattling with China.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: And if she continues Biden's hawkish foreign policy, we're headed to World War III.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just, yay, it's a black woman.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: So fucking what?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: So fucking what?
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: one of my friends said today,
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: a guy I really respect,
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: that the black petty bourgeoisie is a feature.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: of power in the Democratic Party is central to it.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: The Democratic Party is the most powerful political organization in the history of the planet.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: They've won every popular vote for president for 30 years,
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: except one in 2004,
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: and that was right after 9-11.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: These people have to be criticized, and we're going to have to come to a conclusion that
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: black people across the board cannot be seen as oppressed anymore,
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: or women,
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: or gay people,
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: or anything like that.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: If you're in the center of the Democratic Party,
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: if you have political positions in the administration,
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: you can't be seen as not having political power.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: We can't allow people like Lloyd Austin,
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: who's a black man who is the Secretary of Defense,
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: to use racism as a shield against
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: criticism for the brutal things that they're doing overseas.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I just, it's just, it's striking.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: The cult of personality,
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: the making political decisions based on feeling good about yourself and not based
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: on
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: what they're going to do and what they have done.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it's no different than Trump.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's exactly the same.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's exactly the same as Trump.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Rednecks like Trump because it made them feel good about themselves.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, everybody else likes Kamala because she makes them feel good about themselves.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: It has nothing to do with policy.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: It has nothing to do with what they want to do.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: It has nothing to do with imperialism.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: It has nothing to do with brutality.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's just, this makes me feel good.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: And they've cultivated this.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: They've cultivated this for freaking years and years and years.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: They co-opted the civil rights, the Black Lives Matters movement.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: They put black people in positions of power.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: And now it's like the oppressed have won.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well,
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Paulo Freire tells us that when oppressors get power,
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: they just become oppressors because they have no model for what liberating
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: leadership looks like.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: We really don't have those models in the United States or many places in the world.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: We've got to stop this.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: We really do.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: We have,
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: we've got,
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: we've got to stop making political decisions based on how good,
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: how much we like the candidate.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: And we have every bit of information available to us right now.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you can look at Twitter and you can see a lot of bullshit, but you can see a lot of good shit.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: You can look at Facebook and you can see a lot of bullshit, but you can see a lot of good shit.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, the internet,
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: infinite amount of information.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really wild that we have all this information at our fingertips and we're
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: just like,
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: this person makes me feel good.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's stupid.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's dumb.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I love my friends and I think y'all are really stand up people.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think Trump people are stand up people too.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think you're a bad person.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think Trump people are bad people.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: I only think people I think are bad people are the people with power who are
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: manipulating y'all and manipulating us,
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: attempting to manipulate us.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: But you can't just make political decisions based on attractiveness.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, I hope things change.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um,
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: I got a son now and it's going to be difficult to teach him,
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: what's up because media is so powerful.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: it's just the ability to just put something on TV and beam feelings into people's
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: foreheads is just,
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think that,
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think people are really,
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: have really grappled with how powerful a medium is.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: visual media is especially television because it just it's just a tool for the
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: manipulation but hopefully we'll get out of this mess and we'll start a new social
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: movement and you know the social movement cycle has officially ended in my opinion
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: and we've got to start from scratch
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: with a new type of social movement,
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: to me based on property,
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: whether it's intellectual or real property.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, we'll see y'all later.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Peace y'all.