March 20, 2025
Horror Vacui
Nature abhors a vacuum, as Aristotle once said. With America seemingly receding from the world stage, how does it feel to be its citizen? What exactly is the plan and what is the rationale behind the actions taken?
Are actions even being taken in the first place? And how did we ever get to this point? In this psycho-therapeutic episode we make sense of all the chaos surrounding current events and explore the power of policy objectives in analyzing leaders' actions through their rhetoric.
Transcript
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I never knew it, by the way. So I Well ,
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Yeah, because why would you as a Russian, right? .
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The Islamization is Islamism. The Islamization
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.
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People have been asking me to make sense of what's been going on lately. So I invite them down to the studio and we sit down and they get to say, I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions, and I want them answered
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Immediately. Give these people air , give these people air. Come
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On co Hagen , give these people Air
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Bon Hungry
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Bon . Dimitri,
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How are you
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Today? Alright , how you doing? Good.
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So let's continue. It is our second podcast. Yeah. And I think I have even more questions than I had , uh, last time. That's
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The mark of a good conversation, right? You end up with more questions than , uh, answers.
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I think that the topic for this conversation, if I may. Yeah,
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Of course.
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There are so many things that I do not understand, and I would like to hear your opinion. So the subject of this , uh, discussion, I would say is my curiosity. So I have so many questions and I want to hear that from you, . Now, just to recap, the , our previous discussion was about how good Trump is or bad Trump is, and we understood that it's , uh, very subjective, if I may say.
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Yeah. I mean, what I always like to tell people is , uh, except for on very specific circumstances, I'm not gonna say whether someone is good or bad for sure. Uh , for me, it's all about, okay, tell me what your policy objectives are, and I will tell you if their plan of action meets those policy objectives. And then of course, we can have a separate conversation about, okay, are your policy objectives good or bad? That's that. But I guess for the specific thing about , uh, yeah , last conversation was that, okay, this is their stated policy objective, whether or not it's or not, you know, we can have that as a separate conversation. Yeah . But even if you accept a policy objective at face value, it's a bad plan. It doesn't fit the policy objective.
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I agree. I agree. Okay. Let me ask you this, just to warm up. Mm-hmm . There were so many things happening in the world since our last , uh, meeting. It looks and sounds overwhelming. Right? Is it overwhelming for you?
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Uh , just yes and no. Okay . I mean, it's kind of like you gotta keep things in perspective. And also, like, I kind of know what their plan is, so I try to separate the wheat from the shaft mm-hmm . And then , uh, you know, basically stick to, okay, these are the specific things I need to focus.
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Okay . So you do know the plan? That's a good,
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Well, no , I don't know. I , I , I don't wanna say I know the plan. It's not like I'm some, like, you know , right .
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Lost . At least you understand. You feel where it should be going to, and Yeah .
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Okay . Well, yeah . Well, part of it is because I know how Trump thinks, because again, like I said last time is I grew up, you know, as a kid in the 1980s and 1990s around Trump. So I have a very unique perspective now. I'm being kind of like, maybe fool of myself, but I feel like, you know, people, my generation and older who lived in New York City, we know intimately what Trump is all about. Because I mean, frankly, like he's a simpleton, right? And he , he hasn't really changed so much since the 1980s to the 2020s. So we know exactly what he's about. Everyone else is trying to rationalize what he's saying. But like, if you're a New Yorker and you lived in the eighties and nineties, you know exactly what Trump is doing. It's the same stuff.
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And my question is about a different thing. Let's forget for for a second about Trump. Yeah. Being an American, have you ever seen the same density of events in American history?
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Never. Maybe with the exception of, I guess 1776, but of course, obviously you weren't alive then. .
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Yeah. Yeah. But , uh, and , and this is my question. How does it, how's it feel for you? You are abroad, but still, how does it make you feel being American these days?
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No , it's like , it , it's tough. I kind of like to equate this to , uh, I'll , I'll give a couple of different examples. I know specifically, 'cause I have a lot of friends , um, well, yeah, friends, but they're not my contemporaries that're older, like Gen X . But basically in New York, we had to have several like Gen X Iranians, and they would describe how they felt, because Iran, back then it was like pretty proper country. And then the 1979, you know , Islamic revolution happened, and they're just like, okay, what the hell is going on with my country? I'm Iranian, this is my identity. But now, like, my whole country has flipped. Do I maintain my Iranian identity with the new Islamic Republic, or do I maintain the old way and try to, you know , uh, insulate my Iranian identity or, you know, Iranian American identity based on the old ways. And then, you know, you have similar things like , uh, the Turks with Erdogan , when he came into power, it's like a similar thing. I mean, it wasn't a complete full blown Islamic , uh, revolution, but his, the Islamization is islamis, whatever that word , , the Islam, , it's like banana. You don't know about that . But , okay , the islamization of , uh, Turkey under Adon was a clear, maybe not as clear as Iran, obviously their break . 'cause that was very stark. But the, I mean, it was more gradual in Turkey, but still, like you have a lot of, you know, secular old guard Turks from like, you know, a Turk and like, okay, this is their identity. But then now, you know, it's like, okay, well now turkey's kinda like a pariah state. 'cause nowadays it kinda like bounces back and forth between pariah and friend based on whatever , uh, international policy is going on. But, you know, so they're saying like , okay, well what is my identity? And then I imagine this is the same thing for like , uh, this is how like Germans felt in , uh, world War I , right ? Or in even World War ii , actually during , um, social studies history class, when we were in like junior high school, for example, in America, we were taught, obviously we were learning World War I . And it was like interesting, like our teachers were telling us that , uh, 'cause back , you know, world War ii, obviously, okay, Germany's bad, we all know that. But World War I wasn't so , uh, clear cut . I mean, if anything, the Germans, you can argue like they were to quote the good guys, right? Because they were defending the Austria-Hungarian with the unprovoked tactic against the arch Duke Ferdinand. Right? And then, so of course , nevermind the fact that everyone hated r Stu Ferdinand, but that's not an entirely different podcast episode, like history and whatnot . But the thing is like, okay, in America, you had the two biggest immigrant groups during the 19, early 19 hundreds, like 1908 and 10, whatever, is that you had the biggest group was Germans. And the second group , uh, biggest group was the Irish who hated the Brits, right? Especially like, you know , potato, famine and all that other jazz. So there was a strong, popular upswell, if you will, of Americans being sympathetic to the German Empire, right? Again, when I say German empire, I mean like , uh, Bismarck, Wilhelm not, you know, Hitler not Third Reich, right? So, so there was like really, I guess like our teachers were telling us, like they were even like showing old newspapers and stuff on micro fish film, right? 'cause back in the day, we used to do that. And uh, we show like a lot of the , uh, the newspaper headlines about trying to form the public opinion. I mean, the default one was, okay, we got an ally with the Brits. Right? You know , that was the easy one. But because you had these large Irish and German populations, there was a really big push to , uh, ally with the , uh, with the German side. And then , now this is not part of our, our lessons, but I imagine part of the isolationism of the United States was because we couldn't figure out which side to be on, because there were two big groups within the United States, and we couldn't really decide. And that's probably why we waited until, you know, sinking of the Lucita and then all that other jazz. And then finally they made the, the decision on going, you know, allying with the Brits. But , uh, I forgot what I was saying , but yeah, but there was like a big group. Yeah , there was a big upswell of saying like, Hey, we could have very realistically joined on the sides of Germans. And then history would've been obviously very different. But why were we talking about this? I
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Forgot my question. Original question. How does it feel to be, oh, right , right, right , right . Yeah , sorry. And then you started about Iranians, and then he continued with , uh, Turkish. Yeah ,
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Yeah ,
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Sorry. No , no , that's okay.
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Yeah. So my point there is that, okay, you have big portions of the United States specifically in the north, where it's like, basically like it's, it's Germany, right? It's like New Germany. You even had in states like, you know, Minnesota and the Dakotas and whatnot , where like school was taught in German, not in English, right? Because again, like up until recently before Trump said it , that we didn't have official language. And I don't , I don't even know if, like, we still don't him , because I don't think the president can actually declare that. I think that's a congressional thing, but, you know, I'm not a legal expert. But anyway, back then you had little like schools and communities where everyone was speaking German. So I imagine there's a big portion of the population of Americans we're like, okay, this is my German identity. I'm very proud, I speak German, you know, blah, blah, blah . And then all of a sudden, then we enter on the side of , uh, the Brits against the Germans, how would they feel? Right. And it's probably even more stark, obviously, with World War ii . So you had that. And then , uh, then I feel like I'm kind of like that right now. It's like, okay, is this just some temporary hiccup that we're gonna like rectify and self-correct? Or is this the beginning of holy crap, you know, America may no longer be the quote leader of the free world. Are we going to be a pariah state? And that, frankly, yeah, that scares me, obviously. 'cause I don't want that to be the case.
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So what is your personal feeling? Where would America go? Is it the beginning of , uh, of the next new era, or is it just a hiccup as you mentioned?
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Well, obviously I can't answer that 'cause I don't know the future. Okay . But I, I would very much want this to be a hiccup. . Yeah . Okay . Okay . Especially because, again, as a former government employee, if you will, at the very base sense of the word, they're basically, right now, they're dismantling my entire, my adult life's work. Right. I spent a lot of time either through the military or through diplomatic means or whatnot , working on behalf of strengthening America's image abroad and standing abroad. Right. And then now it's all like , uh, basically being erased right in front of me. So it's like, what was the point of everything I did during my , uh, okay . Adult life.
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I understand. Speaking about hiccups.
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Yeah. Hiccups.
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Do , do you think that , uh, how many, two or three weeks ago already, that Epic Friday with three people in one room was at a hiccup, JD Vance , Trump, and , uh, Mr. Zelensky, thousands of people, if not millions of people , uh, spoke about that and share their opinions. I wanted to hear yours.
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No , I , I mean, whether or not it's a hiccup is irrelevant because it's , uh, it's happening right now and we're dealing with the ramifications of it. I guess whether it's going to be a hiccup is really based off of , uh, what are going to be the policy decisions. And then is this going to be a fundamental shift or like a realignment of United States with the axis of evil as George W. Bush would say? Or is it going to be , uh, in order for it to be a hiccup, it basically has to self-correct. So right now, it's not self-correcting. We're definitely on a path where, I mean, especially with the un vote, United States is voting with, you know, Russia, North Korea, rn , that's pretty ridiculous. And then also you have the Europeans saying, okay, we're going to act on this. Now, of course, is Europe actually going to be doing anything ? 'cause there's a lot of talk, but typical of the Europeans, they're not really doing much separate the wheat from the shaft . There's a lot of talk in the news, but I'm like, okay, whatever. That's just talk. I wanna see actual concrete actions. I see concrete actions from United States, but I don't see concrete actions from Europe in the sense that Europe is saying, oh, we're going to help Ukraine now , blah, blah, blah. Yeah. But they haven't been doing that yet. And United States, well , they pulled the intelligence , uh, sharing with Ukraine and sure , they restored it, but the damage is already done. 'cause obviously the salient is essentially, I mean, depending on when this thing's released, it's gone or it's , it's about to be gone
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Still. Let's come back to that particular day. Yeah . Was it a setup in your opinion?
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I,
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Or it just evolved due to the emotions , uh, and finished, I'm speaking about only one day, only one meeting.
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I, I mean, obviously I can't really, I wasn't in the room, right? I mean, of course not. But we saw what was going on. But what I can say is there's definitely a push. There's a , definitely an anti Ukrainian sentiment or pro-Russian sentiment within that administration. And, and I think there's a lot of naivete within the lower portions of the administration, as well as with the media to excuse a lot of the things that were happening. Because basically, if you're having diplomatic conversations, especially at the head of state level, you have these things in closed door . You don't invite people over. Like it's a , you know, a wrestling match. Right. And even like, I mean, this is, again, Donald Trump, again, he's a simpleton . To anyone listening who's a New Yorker from the eighties and nineties, they know exactly what's going on because this is what Trump does. He loves, he loves tv, he loves ratings, he loves drama and stuff like that. And even mentioned again, 'cause he is a, and he just blurts out the silent parts out loud. He says, this is gonna make for great television. Right? And he was like laughing about it when these are like real consequences. But normal, you know , adults in the room, you would have, okay, you have your first photo op where, you know, everyone shakes their hand and everyone takes the pictures. Then you have the closed doors, you iron out the discussion and you talk, blah, blah , blah, blah . And then afterwards, then you open it back up and there's like a grand signing, pomp and circumstance, and everyone takes pictures again. Right? So all the ugly making of the sausage is supposed to be behind closed doors. And not in front of everyone. We're here. This was in front of everyone. I mean, I'm definitely more sympathetic to the setup style, but again, I can't really just like flippantly say that because for most of the meeting, like 44, 50 minutes of it, it was like relatively cordial. Of course, at the end, you know, it blew up. But it was also kind of naive to say, oh, well it just blew up. And like a lot of people were saying like, oh , you know , Zelinsky, he , uh, he didn't handle himself. I was like, you know what? Excuse me. Yeah . He's being egged on here. And he's like, he has to push back at a certain point over the , uh, specific accusations that they're giving. 'cause the point is like, he's not there for making quote television, as Trump said. He's there to secure the military support of the United States so that they can reclaim their land. So at , at a certain point, you have to come down to brass tacks and also a general Kellogg, right? Who was the specific advisor for Zelensky told them , oh yeah, you should come to the White House to do this thing. And again, like, I don't know about Kellogg himself. And then , you know , and this is all completely personal. If you're a former general and you're working for the Trump administration like this, you're a freaking traitor. I mean, I'm , I'm just gonna say , you know , just say it like that. And the way he's been talking you , like , he's basically betrayed. I mean , I guess we wouldn't say he betrayed his oath to the Constitution because he's retired now. But what he's doing is basically betraying his life's work as a general and advising zelensky to go to the White House before, or the lower level diplomats have ironed a deal. You don't do that. This is just, this is like diplomacy 1 0 1. You have your low level underlings, iron out the deals, and then when the heads of state come , it's like, again, a pomp of circumstance. The handshakes, the signing of the ink and everything like that. Especially with someone as erratic as Trump. It's like, I'm sorry. Especially when you have his main henchman, right? JD Vance and Elon Musk clearly saying anti Ukrainian stuff. It was basically a setup . So either Kellogg is incredibly stupid, stupid, and naive right? By saying, oh, Zelensky, you should totally go there and then figure this out with Trump. Or he was in on it. And again, that's not my position to judge. I'm just looking at the effects of it. 'cause that's the only , the only thing I care about is what are the actual effects.
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So you , you are saying that , uh, you have known Donald Trump for like all your entire life, right? Yeah . You've grown up with him.
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Yeah, I've grown up with him. Exactly.
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Now, do you remember if he ever, if he has ever been sympathetic to anyone else? I mean, you mentioned , uh, like couple of minutes ago that , uh, he's sympathetic to, to Russia. Has he ever been sympathetic to anybody else before, like that?
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I'm giving a lot of , uh, I'm trying to be , uh, cordial to him when I say he's being sympathetic to Russia. Sure, sure, sure. Right. But , uh, but we do know, especially like if you go back into the New York Daily News or the New York Post and things like that, or even like New York Times and the like, local section of the New York Times, which I don't know if you can read in the local section outside of New York City, but of course nowadays with the internet, you probably can. And also everything's on like microfiche, right? But anyway, the point is , uh, there was a lot of the articles and reporting on Donald Trump's real estate yields and the fact that no one, like , basically the banks would not loan him money. 'cause he's basically toxic and he is gonna lose all his money. And it was only the Russian mobsters. 'cause back in the day, the little Odessa, it's funny that we call like the , the Russian area , little Odessa, you know , especially with the whole Ukrainian thing. But , uh, you know, that's , uh, I mean this is like New York City, right? We have a lot of Russians in New York , uh, in New York City. And , um, Brighton Beach also, you go there, it's funny , like you go to Brighton Beach and then , uh, you see a lot of these old Russian guys in like , uh, Adidas tracksuits and giant crosses. They're all like sitting there drinking tea and playing backgammon and stuff. It's like, it's pretty wild back in the day. But , uh, anyway, so like these Russian mobsters, 'cause back in the day, the mob was pretty , uh, prevalent. Everyone knows about the Italian mobsters, but , uh, people forget about the Russian mobsters, I guess, because no one really, you know , Martin Scorsese didn't make a movie about the Russian mobsters. Well , that's why people don't talk about them, but yeah. But there was a lot of Russian mobsters and , uh, they were like reporting on this that they were financing a lot of his ventures. Right? And then of course, now, I mean obviously none of this can be corroborated until someone actually like releases all the, the evidence and whatnot. But you can put piece all the breadcrumbs together. The prevailing , uh, understanding is that yeah , he owes a ton of money to these mobsters and a lot of them based on oligarch, he obviously he climbs all the way up to , uh, Putin and whatnot . So it's beholden to them somehow,
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Whatever he's doing right now towards Russia. Is it , uh, just part of his regular game that he used to play when he was a businessman back in the day?
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What exactly is he quote , dueling to Russia?
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Right. And that's what I want to disclose My understanding how I understand that he, as you, I like the word simpleton . He does what he promised during, and we are coming back to our previous discussion. So when he was saying that I will stop this , uh, war for, yes, for 24 hours, then for three days, then probably a couple of weeks, but then he told that he was sarcastic saying that , uh, you know, 24 hours, he needs a bit of more time, but he does what he intended to do. But the way how he does it, that's what I'm interested in how I see things. Mm-hmm . You make a cut a deal with two people who do not stand each other, who are in, in the state of war with each other. So you push the first who depends on you. Then at the same time, you don't want to deteriorate your situation with the second one. So you please him as much as you can. Once you get what you want from the first one who depends on you, you go to the second one and say, okay, so half of the deal is done. So it's just , uh, up to you to sign the whatever we agreed , and that's it. And you'll be the greatest person on earth. And , uh, you don't pay attention to the situation. So you , of course it is war and you have to stop it. But there is no aggressor or there is no, there is no victim. There are two participants here. And you have to play whatever it takes to, to get what you want.
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Well, okay, so you're throwing a lot of pronouns. Yeah. Yeah. It's very abstract. So
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I'm specifically about three people here, Donald Trump, Zelensky, and Putin. Right. Okay. Now , uh, Zelensky depends on, on the us and that's why Donald Trump has more power on him, I believe.
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Well, that's, your statement is correct in the sense that you have control over Ukraine. Like, is your policy objective to Dom , again , going back to the specific things like what is your policy objective? And then my answer changes based on that. Is your policy objective to dominate Ukraine? Or is your policy objective is to maintain the international world order? 'cause if it's to dominate Ukraine, yes, he has leverage over Ukraine. But if it's, if it's the opposite, it's to maintain international order. It's almost like Ukraine has leverage over you. It's kind of like, imagine like your son or your daughter is competing in a swim meet or, or tennis match or whatever in school mm-hmm . Right ? Like you train them and everything like that. You try to give them the best opportunity they can so they can compete in the sport, but then once they're , uh, at the tennis court, or once they're in the swimming pool, it's on them. And then you're basically like hoping that everything was going well. So in this sense, like under Biden administration, it was more like that, you know, your son or your daughter is at the swim meet tennis match. Whereas now with Trump, it's more like, no, this is my little pet and I'm going to dominate it or whatever.
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Well, this looks different. Um , it is good that you mentioned it because I wanted to touch that point a bit later, but since you mentioned it earlier, I don't think that, I don't see that there is objection, there is a goal of , uh, dominating the world. Trump keeps repeating that he doesn't want to domin the world. He wants to make a America great again. And , uh, he wants to get back home. Uh , focusing , uh, let's, okay , let's park it for, for like some time. All right ? I want still come back to what he's trying to do again, how I understand things, and I'm super happy to understand your position here. He doesn't want to ate the world. He wants to solve this conflict as he promised during his election course mm-hmm . So that he can come back home and , uh, continue doing what he wants to do at home. Right? I want to ask later on, on how you feel about that. But now my question is, do you feel that the way how he manages this conflict is , uh, efficient enough to get whatever he wants to do? First of all, do you understand what he wants to do? Do we both understand it the same way?
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Yeah . So you're asking me to take what he's saying at face value, assuming he's being truthful? Yes . Okay, fine. We can, we can play that game. All right . Let's assume everything he's saying is truthful. Well, then you're basically trying to mediate something between Russia and Exactly. And , and Ukraine. Fine. Okay. We'll , we'll accept that. It is , but we'll accept it. Okay. Oh , nice. Nice. All right . Okay. So if you're doing this, why are you having a public discussion with Zelensky? But everything is private and very opaque and obtuse with Russia, right? That's one.
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I have an answer for that, by the way. So mm-hmm . I asked myself this question a hundred times, and I think I know the answer.
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Sure. What ?
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Because Zelensky, and that's what I mentioned already, Zelensky depends on you. So you want to show everyone, you , you control the situation 100% with him. Mm-hmm . And that's why it's opened and it's home discussion. You do not control the situation with the Putin. So it's not public yet, and you keep it private until you are able, until you're sure you're gonna control him fully. Mm-hmm . And then of course you will make another show. That's my position.
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Okay, fine. See, but the premise of what you're, what you're explaining there is then basically you're automatically making it so that, okay, I control zelensky , but I don't control Putin. So if I'm going to stop this war, basically I have to suppress Zelensky and then let Putin do what he needs to do. So already, if we're going back to treating this as at face value, you're already bargaining from a weak position, and supposedly for someone who's a deal maker, your client, if you will, right? Solinsky is , you know , uh, he's Trump's client , right?
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To some extent. Yeah , yeah , yeah .
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Kind of, right? You're basically, you're publicly exposing his weaknesses. And then the antagonist, like the person across from you who you're supposedly deal making with is Russia. Basically you're showing all the cards to, to your , uh, antagonist. And I mean , antagonist in the , uh, in the clinical case, not like as in bed , right? Just the person across from you basically sees all the negative cards that are on the table for the client that you supposedly represent. So from a bargaining standpoint, already there's an asymmetry. And if there's an asymmetry that the antagonist can build on, well then that's going to keep moving the, the accepted outcome more and more to the favor of the antagonist, and then less and less to your clients . So you're not being an honest client here , uh, and your , or excuse me, a faithful client here in trying to create a deal that is equitable for both sides. If, again, we're taking things at face value here, the policy objective, even when you accepted a face value, the policy objective does not match the actions being taken. And just more concretely to move this outta the abstract a bit, is that the goal is to have a ceasefire here, right? You want Ukraine, he
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Repeat it all the time. Yep . Right?
00:26:00.704 --> 00:27:38.684
Yeah. That's what he says. Yeah. He wants to have a peace deal , a ceasefire. Well, if you allow, actually, it's funny that we're talking about World War I , because it's a good , um, it's a good reminder of a history because when the arm diss was signed and everyone said, okay, we're gonna stop at 1111 on November 11th, right up until that day, there was an increase in fighting because basically every side, they were basically trying to grab as much land as possible before the ceasefire day ended. And actually, there's a really nice , uh, clip, I won't call it nice, but whatever. There's a , there's a audio clip of like all the artillery going, and boom, boom, boom, boom , boom , massive chaos, and then 1111 and everything stops. And all of a sudden you start hearing the birds chirping. And this is when the arm , this was , uh, put into effect, but it just shows you that there wasn't then a decrease in fighting when the ceasefire was announced. There was actually an increase. So in this case, if you know that there's going to be increase in fighting with the ceasefire, why would you hamstring, Ukraine's ability to fight when you know that Ukraine's gonna get, or when that Russia's going to get more and more land? And we've actually seen it with Kursk when he pulled the intelligence, right? The Ukraines didn't know what was going on, and then the Russians cut through the kis Salient,
00:27:39.585 --> 00:28:15.595
Super quick answer here, if I may. Uh , yeah . Because you don't care about who is right, who is wrong in this war. You don't , uh, care about who started and who is , uh, protecting himself or defending himself. Yeah. And in this case, in order to stop things, you need to, sorry, sounds terrible, but still Sure, sure. You support the one who started to let him get whatever he wants as to , to the maximum. It's not, again, I think he doesn't really support Putin, but he wants to stop the fire. He , he wants to seize the fire. So let me give an analogy. Um,
00:28:16.345 --> 00:29:21.914
Hold on Dick . 'cause the thing is, a ceasefire implies that both sides want to stop fighting. There's no incentive for two parties to have a ceasefire unless they both feel like they can't accomplish anything more . I mean , okay, we're accepting a lot of things at face value and giving a lot of credence to, you know, statements. But we have to stop the , we have to draw the line somewhere. Sure. Maybe and basic , okay . We have to agree that a ceasefire can only be implemented when both sides feel like they've had enough. Okay? So hobbling, I mean, I get what you're trying to say here, but hobbling Ukraine at the expense of Russia, that doesn't give incentive for Russia to do a ceasefire. So that's contrary to your policy objective of establishing a ceasefire. And in fact, Trump even said that in the beginning. It's like, okay, I'm going to arm Ukraine as much as possible to force Russia to make a ceasefire that made sense. But of course, he didn't do that. Instead, he did the complete opposite and hobbled Ukraine so that Russia could gain more and more land. So in the current timeline that we're living in, there is absolutely zero incentive for Russia to sign ceasefire because they're, quote winning.
00:29:23.055 --> 00:29:28.515
And , uh, Russia never wanted, never claimed they wanted to take over the full country Ukraine. Right.
00:29:30.384 --> 00:29:32.194
Okay, fine. We , we'll accept that even though
00:29:32.244 --> 00:29:40.035
Again, I am not defending , uh, them now , uh, I just want to say that how I see things, and if you, okay,
00:29:40.625 --> 00:29:54.875
Well, okay, well , at the very least you could say this, we can hang our hat on the fact that under Russian Federation law, Crimea, Donbas , Luhansk , and , uh, Isha , yes. Right? Are all , uh, part
00:29:54.875 --> 00:29:55.234
Of the,
00:29:55.494 --> 00:30:29.634
Are all part of the Russian Federation. Yes. And , uh, with the exception of Crimea, the other three oblasts are not fully under Russian control. Yes. So we can hang our hat and sense that right now, according to the Russian perspective, their , their territory is occupied. So they have an incentive to quote , liberate those , uh, three oblasts according to their legal , uh, perspective. So, okay, we can argue about whether Russia wants to take over all of Ukraine, fine, but we have to agree on the fact that these four OBLs have to be part of Russia according to Russian .
00:30:29.855 --> 00:30:59.035
And that's what Trump does. He lets them , uh, lets Russia take over these liberate, right? Liberate, yeah. Right . Those , uh, all blessed , quote unquote all blessed . And this is where it stops, at least as it sounds. Mm-hmm . Again, I accept that probably it sounds a bit strange. Well, not strange, but as you mentioned, right . Your words. Yeah . And I'm super happy, more than happy to jump to your point of view on that. But let's finish this.
00:30:59.144 --> 00:30:59.674
Sure. Yeah .
00:30:59.825 --> 00:32:00.714
This, this picture for now, I'm coming back to my original question. Trump, what he does, he oppresses one part who depends on him, he pleases the second one who started all of that. All , all , all of that crap. Yes . , whatever, . And , uh, just to make the draw line saying, okay, you have eaten enough. You never told that you want to take more, you liberated what you wanted. This is where you stop . Thank you. And the second one, you don't just give him any voice because he depends on you. And he has already stopped. So this is how he plans to finish the conflict. This is how I, it is seen probably for common people like me, , for , for the rest of the world, again, before, before judging even. Does it sound like accomplished picture or does it sound like a, like a plan? Like , um, like a plan? Yeah.
00:32:02.345 --> 00:32:37.285
By the strictest definition, yeah. It's a plan. But by doing this again, what exactly is the policy objective? I keep going back to that because mm-hmm . Doing this doesn't make sense and says , okay, you get these four OBLs , right? And then what's next? Because Ukraine said no matter what, they're not accepting it. Right. So those four OBLs are gonna be constantly under threat, either through girl activity or whatever. And the thing is, where's the incentive for Russia to stop? Because they said they're going to stop. Right? But they also said a lot of other things beforehand, whether it's the Munich agreement ,
00:32:37.484 --> 00:32:38.684
A lot of people said a lot of things
00:32:38.755 --> 00:36:06.324
Here. Yeah. Right. So I know we said we're gonna part this later, but I think this is a good transition to start to go into, into the Let's go. Yes. Yeah. Because the thing is, okay, I can't answer this question because I don't know the mind of , uh, I , I mean, I have a reasonable assumption and guess of the mind of Putin, right? But the thing is, we can't possibly know the minds of the individual state actors, but we can look at what is the governing philosophy behind their actions. And the thing is, by accepting the four oblasts to be under Russian control, you essentially cede territory of one sovereign state to another sovereign state. Right? And you basically undo all the international rules based order where we all committed in 1945 to say, Hey, we're gonna stop having these wars of conquest. Okay? So on one hand you're saying, okay, well if war of conquest, it's uh , that's back on the table, boys, right? Go at it so everyone can start fighting and everything like this, which means now, now all of a sudden, all this , uh, diplomatic high ground that we had with Taiwan, because again, according to Trump, right? According to policy objective, this is to accomplish Obama's pivot to Asia. Although he'll never admit its Obama's. 'cause you know, he has his own things against Obama, but that's neither here nor there. This is the pivot to Asia so that United States can focus on Taiwan and China. But the thing is, if you accept and allow the fact that , uh, wars of conquest are now back on the table, well then China can just go into Taiwan and everything about us saying, Hey, no , you can't do , uh, war of Conquest. Those things don't apply anymore. And then more importantly, you're talking about hegemony. One of the things about the United States, you know, 'cause there's a lot of people, especially like on the far left , uh, they like talk about , oh, America's an empire and everything like that. And then in that case, you know , in a lot of cases they're not wrong. But the thing is, the American Empire Project, if you will, is an empire of alliances. So our strength comes from our alliances and our interactions with , uh, different countries. We don't actually control them like, you know, traditional empires in the past do . So when you seed like these international agreements to the concept of war of conquest, then you actively diminish your own American empire, which goes contrary to this quote America first policy objective. And you're basically reestablishing this hegemony. 'cause like right now, we have , we can say for , we're talking about like America first, again, in the pure like Steelman argument. Well then, right now we're in a unipolar world, essentially, where America's number one, nobody can match or counteract against America. And basically everyone pretty much listens to what we do. And we say it's a great, it's a great system except China. Right? But no, but America, yeah , China is a rising power, right? That's trying to counteract that. So then our point is, if we maintain the international rules-based order of these , uh, empire of Alliances, then China will have a harder time to , uh, establish their own hegemony on the global stage. 'cause their aspiration is to , to match the United States. But if we're basically, if we're in a unipolar world where we have our alliances are strong, from the diplomatic perspective, there's going to be a very tough time for China to actually challenge the United States. They can only challenge through the military. And if the international rule-based order prevents military means to rise to power, well then America's dominance is secured. Again, we're just taking this from the America first.
00:36:07.085 --> 00:36:26.994
Probably more questions from my side. Sure. Well, so first, do you believe that Trump wants to get back home without any global aspirations? He wants to focus on what is happening in America, and he doesn't want to spend his time and efforts on the rest of the world.
00:36:29.315 --> 00:37:02.244
What I believe is what Trump wants to do, he just wants to sit around and golf all day. Which, if you look at this presidential schedule, okay , that's what he's doing. He doesn , well , he's letting all these other people handle this, and then he comes in and signs stuff and make these things. His whole goal was to avoid all his legal issues that he, he was having. And now that he's prison , he , he's basically New Yorkers, we call him Teflon Don , because nothing ever sticks to him. And , uh, and sure enough, he lives up to his name all he had all this stuff that was going on and all these legal problems, and now they're all gone away 'cause he's president. So that's all he cares about. So if this is everyone else doing stuff , if
00:37:02.244 --> 00:37:42.704
We follow your, I I like your example. Uh , if you follow , uh, if we follow your example, he, whatever is happening right now in the world is not letting him play golf as he used to. So he just want to eliminate all of those distractions so that he can come back home and spend more. I've heard that he has spent more than several hundred millions getting back home for playing golf during his presidency during the last, I dunno , couple of months. Yeah. Since he became a president. So again, coming back to your , uh, analogy, he wants to eliminate this dissection to play golf safely. I mean,
00:37:42.855 --> 00:39:43.764
Sure. But he also has obligations, again , when we're talking about , uh, his , uh, obligations to his Russian backers who bailed him out a lot of things. Well, now, now they're calling in the receipts. So , uh, again, if , if you're coming from this, from the perspective of a, of a New Yorker from the 19 nine eighties and nineties. Yeah , you understand, and you know this obviously it's hard to prove unless you actually, you know, go into the FSB and pull out these files . But , uh, but the point is like, yeah, the chickens have come home to roost, if you will, and they're asking for, for him to pay, pay back on all the support that they've given him. So there's that, there's also from the, his conservative backers who've bankrolled his entire campaign, right? They have their, also their , um, their interests that they are , um, that , that he has to satisfy with all these laws and tax breaks and dismantling of , uh, of the government because of their own techno fascist philosophy, which I guess we can talk about in a , I guess in a different conversation. But, so he has all these obligations that he has to do. And there's also, like some people, he's been saying because of his simpleton mind, he stated this in the past before, where he doesn't like anything that Obama has ever done, and he has his own grudge. It's completely bonkers and insane. But again, we have to deal with the person that we're dealing with. And this is Trump. And this is , and a lot of times when he says things, they are kind of the truth, right? Maybe not. The the actions that he is going to see in the future are not the truth. They're lies. But his justification for things, nine times outta 10, he's saying the truth because he's just, I mean, some people call it like, you know, narcissistic personality disorder, but whatever. But the point is, he blurts things out. And he is specifically said numerous times in the past that he wants to dismantle everything that Obama's done. And he's, and the fact that, and one of the things people were saying is that , well, he said , uh, well, Obama has a Nobel Peace Prize. So in his like weird simpleton, naive mind, he's like, oh, if I bring, you know , a ceasefire, then I can get a peace prize again. It's completely bonkers. Insane. But you know, this is
00:39:44.125 --> 00:39:46.724
Speaking about peace prize . Why does he care about a peace prize? Some , because
00:39:46.724 --> 00:39:47.925
Obama won it. Yeah,
00:39:48.425 --> 00:39:48.844
That's
00:39:48.925 --> 00:39:52.164
It . That's , that's there . There's no more further analysis.
00:39:52.824 --> 00:40:20.965
No, no, no, no, no. Noble peace prize is some, some metal from the European institution. He doesn't care about European institutions. It's just , uh, old slacker. Well, he's also old, but , uh, useless people from the old continent. They invented something. He can, he can do his own noble peace prize with twice as much as gold with statues of him standing everywhere. Why does he care about Noble Peace prize?
00:40:21.114 --> 00:40:26.605
Because Obama got it. You're trying to inject logic into something where there's no logic. Okay .
00:40:27.034 --> 00:40:30.925
Okay. So he still compares himself to previous presidents. Yeah.
00:40:31.085 --> 00:40:56.045
I mean, even the inauguration, right? They moved it indoors. 'cause he knew he wasn't going to get a big crowd out there, and they made the excuse of cold weather. And nevermind the fact that, you know , other inaugurations have been ridiculously cold too. And, and for him, again, like this shouldn't matter about the crowd size shouldn't matter. Like , but again, in his simpleton mind, it's like quote ratings like a television, and he wants to have better ratings than Obama did. Okay?
00:40:56.744 --> 00:40:58.005
Now , um, and
00:40:58.005 --> 00:41:38.485
Again, it's completely stupid and bonkers, but again, this is the person that we're dealing with mm-hmm . You can't try to, for , and this is my criticism of, of news reporters and analysts and all these supposed quote experts trying to inject logic. And I think it's like some people are using the word sane washing , which I really like. They're trying to create sanity of veneer of sanity over Trump when he, he doesn't have that. And again, don't take my word for it. Ask any New Yorker who's lived during these times, they will tell you the exact same thing when we lived through this. We know the type of person he is. This is how, how he is. There's no, you cannot inject logic into something, into a being that does not operate under logic.
00:41:39.934 --> 00:41:46.965
Which means for me that he's solving the issues of today without thinking about the long future.
00:41:47.644 --> 00:41:48.684
Oh , of course not. Okay.
00:41:48.985 --> 00:42:29.764
That's a good point. Because , uh, that will be probably our transition to my next question. Mm-hmm . Which I raised already, he stated several times, or at least I understood it, he stated several times that , uh, America is , uh, not going to dominate across all the globe. And he stopped financing and funding quite a lot of global organizations all across the globe because he doesn't understand what they do. Right. He doesn't understand the profits, he doesn't understand the meaning. He doesn't understand anything. So he just closed quite a lot of usaid , by the way, how is , uh, correctly pronounced USAID or U-S-A-I-D ?
00:42:30.565 --> 00:42:32.684
I would say SAID , but yeah, U
00:42:33.195 --> 00:42:36.364
Okay. Matter . I always thought it was usaid, but , uh, no .
00:42:36.525 --> 00:42:55.885
Well , yeah, yeah . I mean , because it's more cutesy that way. I know, but I , I mean, when I was working with the State Department, they always say A ID, but yeah, USAID sounds , uh, usaid . I , I guess 'cause USAID US gives a lot of aid . Yes. So when you're talking, okay , do you mean US aid on the general concept, or do you mean the actual organization? So I think what I've always dealt with State Department people, okay . And they've always said a ID to me,
00:42:56.184 --> 00:43:14.525
So he, whatever you call it, he closed funding almost everywhere. At least, again, at least as it's seen right now, according to you. I , I believe I stopped asking these , uh, naive questions last time, but I , I would still want to try it a couple times more. Do you think it's a good idea?
00:43:15.105 --> 00:44:47.644
No, of course not. It's a stupid idea. Stupid idea. By , even again, even if you take his his point at face value, it just, it doesn't make sense because you're saying, okay, you wanna pull back, but yet at the same time you wanna pivot towards China, like, which one is it? Do you wanna pull back and let China do whatever they want to do? Or in Russia want do everyone they wanna do, like, you know , you're talking about trade and everything like that. If you wanna pull back, fine. But that means everyone's gonna be able to do wars of conquest as what they want to do , and they're gonna be able to do trade as they want to do. So if that's your policy objective, then why are you starting all this other things? Why are you doing trade? Why are you doing these trade wars? Why are you trying to antagonize China over Taiwan? They're not congruent. The stated policy objective does not match the actionable well actions the actions that we see on the ground. So that's why it's impossible to quote saying , wash this, because there's a fundamental disconnect between the, the objectives and the actions taken. And I have the cynical, which I think is a correct answer, but it doesn't make sense other than the aspect of he's catering to all these different interests that he has, whether it's the Republican conservatives, whether it's the tech bros who bankrolled his , uh, campaign, or whether it's the Russian oligarchs who bailed them out during all these past decades. And they all have competing objectives. And he's just basically, I don't wanna deal with any of this. I got what I need to do, which was get rid of all these criminal charges off of me. And now, yeah, sure. I'll just sign whatever the hell you guys need me to sign, and then just leave me alone.
00:44:49.974 --> 00:44:53.275
So, obviously American, okay, go ahead . Mm-hmm .
00:44:54.635 --> 00:48:07.844
U-S-A-I-D is essentially, it's the extension of the Marshall Plan. You remember the Marshall Plan? Mm-hmm . Right ? The general thing is, okay, after World War ii, everyone was pretty much destroyed. United States pretty much had all the gold, because back then we had gold standard, and they had all the means to actually finance everything. And also we had the industrial capacity. And then basically Britain seeded their role as the preeminent superpower and fell onto United States and we're like, okay, well, let's rebuild everyone and also make a lot of money and jobs for Americans by rebuilding Europe. Right? And then you had the Marshall Plan, which was specifically about, okay, let's rebuild as much of Euros as possible so that they, so that they don't fall under the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union. Mm-hmm . Mm-hmm . And then after that all ended well , they said , Hey, this is a really good thing and also is really good for peace, and it's also really good to counteract the Soviet Union. So let's create an organization, which I think started under JFK. Well , I'm not quite sure. I think it was 1961 if I remember, but someone can fact check me on that. But anyway, the point is, okay, Marshall Plan has ended, let's actually institutionalize this and make this a permanent fixture of United States Foreign Policy. 'cause A, it's good for diplomatic relations with countries, and B, it's good because it counteracts the Soviet Union's influence. And that's what we did. And then now of course, the Soviet Union collapsed, but it's still a good thing because the first policy objective of U-S-A-I-D , which is, you know, good diplomatic relations with people is obviously still relevant. And also, if you really wanna look at this from a eternal class struggle, if you will, between communism and capitalism, okay ? Soviet Union may have collapsed, but the People's Republic of China still exists, and they're trying to now expand with their own economic interests, right? With the One Belt One Road Initiative and whatnot . So U-S-A-I-D is a concrete institutional function that's very cheap, right? Like their budget, I forget what their budget is, but it's only like in the couple billions, which is like very tiny compared to the One Belt One Road Initiative, or at least the stated , uh, one Belt One Road Initiative. Because I mean, you can't really trust anything that comes out of the Chinese Communist Party's mouth. But the point is, it's a good counteraction. It's , it's a very, I like to use their words, a quote efficient institution that counteracts global communism, which before it was Russian based and now it's Chinese based . So from that perspective, USAID D is a good thing. Yet they candid course , those of us that cut through the SANE washing , we know why it was canceled, right? Because it a, from a Republican , uh, destroying the , uh, size of the government perspective, there's that. And also from Elon Musk, he's his own weirdo crazy guy, and he has his own grudge against USID because apparently they did something for one of his , uh, projects, which I don't remember. 'cause again, I'm not trying to get into the whole drama and soap opera of this whole thing, but he, he had a grudge and , uh, ax to grind with the USID . So he, he canned him as , as petty and ridiculous as that. This is going back to the original questions. This is why I feel like it's so embarrassing to be American because the things that they're doing are just so petty. They fundamentally do not make sense on the international scale or foreign policy , uh, scene. So just petty actions that have grave consequences for people.
00:48:08.715 --> 00:48:31.605
Okay. I now better understand your original sentence when you say that it is , uh, probably not so nice to be American these days. But , uh, what if , uh, it is the right time for America to step down a bit and probably, I don't want to say Euro , but uh , for example mm-hmm . Just , uh, just for as a crazy thought, let someone else step in.
00:48:32.195 --> 00:50:06.085
Sure. That's great. Again, as a self-admitted transatlanticists, again, my days in working in NATO really formed a lot of my , uh, adult perspective on life. And I don't like labeling myself or labeling others, but if you had to put a label on me, I'm a very firm trans atlanticist, right? I believe in the philosophical underpinnings of the NATO alliance, there's a lot of people when they think of nato, they think, oh , military article five, blah, blah, blah. No, the real power from the NATO alliance is the dialogue and close interaction and integration of Canada, United States with the European continent and where global , uh, the liberal, and I don't mean like, you know, left wing liberal, but like liberal, like philosophical liberal, the liberal world order has a platform to flourish through our specific institutions. NATO being the biggest or sexiest example of it. So from a self-admitted transatlanticists , uh, perspective, if I'm gonna be like, okay, if I'm gonna take off my American hat, which is very difficult to do as an American citizen, but fine, you force me to take off my American hat. What matters is the liberal world order , the international rules-based order codified with the Declaration of Rights of man and citizen and the UN charter, right? If we look at that, sure, United States can take a seat back and Europe can now lead. And I'm perfectly fine with that because then this international rules-based order still has a chance to flourish and continue and everything's good. Well , one A, if you do that, the first thing is it runs afoul of the America first policy objective.
00:50:06.945 --> 00:50:08.324
And I don't understand why, to be honest,
00:50:08.324 --> 00:52:26.264
Because again, America is an empire, right? If you take the far left , uh, assertion, again, it's not a territorial empire like in the past, whether it was the Russian Empire or the German Empire or the British Empire, it's an empire based on alliances and bilateral trade and everything that they're doing. This administration is doing a, it's killing all these diplomatic , uh, connections and precedents that we've had. And also it's destroying these bilateral trade networks. So he's actively self-harming this American empire and this empire, it's economically, is backed by the US dollar as the global reserve currency. So when you retreat from the world, then there's no need for the US dollar to be the global reserve country because you're not actually out there doing trade, doing things that work . Mm-hmm . Again , the US dollar, your currency is basically the economic manifestation of your economic power. And the American Empire being an empire of business trade and diplomatic alliances by retracting trade and diplomatic relations, U-S-A-I-D being one, like you mentioned, then there is no economic incentive. Again, forget about the diplomatic part for a second. There is no economic incentive for countries to hoard and hold onto US dollars. And when you do that, you weaken the US dollar stance as the reserve currency and the people are going to be looking at other currencies. And therefore that further erodes. And it's kind of like a pro-cyclical feedback loop of diminished economic might , which destroys the quote American Empire. So if your stated policy objective is America First, this is actively harming that America first policy objective. Now the broader points of Europe. And now, okay , now I'm gonna , I'm glad you brought this up 'cause this is what I really wanted to talk about is that Yes, take off my American hat, put on my trans Atlantis hat. It doesn't matter what America's doing because Europe can pick up the slack and everything's good to go. International rules-based order is still good to go, but even Europe is not acting in the best interest of a, the international Rules-based order. And Europe in general because as much as I love what, for example, Macron is saying about willing to fight and everything like that, and , uh, they're not actually doing anything to help Ukraine right now.
00:52:26.844 --> 00:52:27.824
No, they don't. Yeah,
00:52:28.224 --> 00:52:53.824
I mean , it , it's a lot of talk and maybe again, like , I don't wanna on Macron right now, you know, frankly. 'cause I , you know, a , I love in this country , but also like , I generally like what he's, at least what he's saying and the actions that he's taking for France and for Europe. And I'm 100% on board with , uh, international Macron . Right. I know a lot of , even like some of my French friends here are saying domestic Macron we hate, but International Macron we love, right. ,
00:52:54.105 --> 00:53:02.224
Interestingly enough , uh, my French colleagues say that , uh, unfortunately he sucks both , uh, domestically and , uh, internationally.
00:53:02.284 --> 00:53:02.985
Oh, really? Why?
00:53:03.054 --> 00:53:47.885
Because , um, it's interesting that we're discussing that, but , um, first it was, I think it was last Friday when he , um, he approached the nation with a , with a speech of like 20 minutes and he mentioned that Russia is threat and , uh, they have to start fighting. And I was terrified. And the first thing I did, I tried to text three or four of my French colleagues mm-hmm . It was like eight o'clock in the evening. 8:00 PM uh , last, not this Friday, but one before. And , uh, none of my French colleagues responded back to me at the same time. So they waited for a couple of hours and the earliest was , uh, saying me. Um , but that's , uh . They, he does it from time to time. Don't pay attention to that. And the rest French confirmed it.
00:53:48.244 --> 00:53:52.125
What do you mean the grandstanding? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He does that. Yeah, exactly. That's also
00:53:52.125 --> 00:53:57.405
Three or four times he did it. And he doesn't mean a thing to be honest, according to French, I mean, it , it's , yeah.
00:53:57.485 --> 00:53:59.244
Yeah , I've heard that . I've heard that too. Exactly. Yeah .
00:53:59.644 --> 00:54:10.965
So whatever he says, whatever Europe says, doesn't mean a lot because they don't want to get out of the comfort zone by all any means.
00:54:12.074 --> 00:55:02.125
Yeah. That jives with what I've been hearing and also like seeing as well. And that , that goes back to the, you know, the point that we were talking about here is the stated policy objectives of Europe do not match their specific actions. Or rather, it's more of lack of actions. Because if your goal is to A, maintain the international rules-based order and b usurp them , uh, the mantle of global superpower for the European Union from the United States, what they're doing right now is not accomplishing either of those things. Because lemme ask you this, what's stopping anyone, any country from going into Russia right now, because clearly their military is completely like decimated, right? And they can barely move like a kilometer in Ukraine. What's stopping any country just grow rolling up into Moscow and just deposing Putin and then ending this whole thing?
00:55:03.664 --> 00:55:06.835
Because , uh, um, it's
00:55:06.835 --> 00:55:09.474
One word and it starts with no , and it starts with N
00:55:10.525 --> 00:55:11.295
Nato. No, no ,
00:55:11.315 --> 00:55:11.534
No
00:55:12.335 --> 00:55:14.494
Nonsense. No ones .
00:55:15.414 --> 00:55:20.054
No , no, it's not . It's very basic. What's stopping any country from going into Moscow right now? Nuclear .
00:55:20.815 --> 00:55:21.304
Nuclear.
00:55:21.614 --> 00:55:58.824
Yeah. Nukes. Exactly. Okay. Right . So this is the point, right? It's that the stated policy objective of the Europe, 'cause now we're just talk focusing on Europe right now, is that they want to prevent nuclear war, right? Mm-hmm . So they're trying to do this half-assed support of Ukraine because they recognize Ukraine's in the right, but also more importantly is they don't wanna start in a nuclear war, correct? Mm-hmm . So if your state of objective policy objective is to not have nuclear war, which means it's not just Russia, it's the entire globe, right? We need to address nuclear non-proliferation. And when you say incentivize countries not to have nukes. Yes.
00:55:59.405 --> 00:56:00.414
Correct. Right ? Yes.
00:56:00.894 --> 01:02:28.144
'cause if I'm wrong, please stop me because No , no , I'm building up my case here. So if that's the state of policy objective of Europe, well, how did this entire mess with Ukraine actually start? It started in 1994 with the Budapest member . Oh , right, yes. Right. Okay . Yeah . Ukraine gave up the nukes. Now, okay, you can argue. Well, and they never actually had physical control. I mean, they had physical control, but they didn't have have the codes for it. You know, blah, blah , blah . But from an international diplomatic standpoint, Ukraine had nukes, and both us and Russia both signed and agreements saying, Russia will take these nukes, but in exchange, the sovereignty of the Ukrainian territory, including Crimea will be maintained. And this was a signal 'cause . And this is obviously, you know, good for Ukraine, Russia, United States and everything like that. But more broadly, again, from the international rules based order, which is what Europe supposedly cares about, this was a signal to other countries basically saying, Hey look, you don't need to build nukes because the countries that do have nukes will protect you. And the most important thing is your territorial sovereignty. And we've all made a commitment that the biggest countries, nuclear powers have all agreed that everyone's nuclear sovereignty is the most important thing. So please don't invest in nukes. We don't need more nukes. Nukes are already destabilizing enough as they are, and it could end mankind as we know it. So let's stop doing that right now. We have this ill, the sin of nukes with nuclear nations. We don't need to add to that sin. And sure enough, we've started to reduce our stockpile from 1994 to now, like , as you know, Russia and the United States have been reducing their stockpile nuclear weapons, right ? So this was a signal to everyone. The reason why the invasion of Ukraine by Russia is so egregious, especially to the European mind , because it goes against this understanding for the rest of the world saying that don't build nukes because your territorial sovereignty will be maintained. And the United States has failed on that by not actively intervening. And if Europe is going to pick up the mantle, well then Europe needs to say, Hey, look, we are against nuclear proliferation. We don't want nuclear war. The very reason why we're not marching to Moscow because we don't want nuclear war is exactly the same reason. Like you can't have it both ways. You either march in the Moscow right now and risk nuclear war, or you have to march into Sevastopol and kick Russia out. Because the agreement, again, not just the Ukraine, because yes, on paper it was the agreement to Ukraine, but the broader agreement that the signal to all the other countries like South Africa, South Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, is that your country's borders will be maintained. Do not put nukes because we will protect it and make sure that the international rules based order exists. And this is a gross violation and betrayal of that work where you now you have country like South Korea's talking about building nukes, South Africa and Brazil. Were like, Hey, you know, oh really? I didn't hear about that. Yeah, obviously, I mean, they're all like rumblings. And of course, you know , think of what it is, but the fact that people are even talking about this, and this is actually making the news. Mm-hmm . This is disturbing. I mean, how even Japan, the country that got bombed twice by nukes, who was the most anti-nuke, you know, nation in the world are even there are people in their media, right? And in their , um, what's the name of their , um, parliament's called, I forget the , I forget the word, but their parliamentarians are , um, actively talking about it, but they're breaking the taboo of not mentioning the word nuke. And they're , uh, and they're talking about, Hey, you know what, maybe we should have nukes too. So that's from an international rules-based order standard, this betrayal of not supporting Ukraine by not being steadfast. It's like, no, the Bud Pest memorandum is bigger than what it is . 'cause remember, like in school and class you talked about like Pizza West failure 1648. And that was kind of like the big break between the old way of doing things in the Middle Ages. So like now there's like international sovereignty thing that we have inherited today, this legacy of international nation states. It's kind of like similar to that. I feel like the Budapest memorandum is on an equal footing of humankind history, significance as the piece of Westphalia in the sense that we've collected, decided nukes are bad, nuclear war is bad, and we need to minimize the, the threat and advancement of that. So that's that. Now, secondly, just for on Europe's standpoint, whether it's Macron or Ursula Vander Lane or or whoever else, you know, they're all saying, okay, we want the European project. We wanna build you four , you know, the European Union forces and move more towards a federalized European Union where we can maintain the European power. Okay, well , right now you have an invasion right on your doorstep and you're not doing anything about it. And we know, again, based on how we talked about just previously in like half hour ago or whatever, is that these ceasefire conditions are not sustainable because you're basically hamstring Ukraine and bolstering Russia's ability to fight that allows Russia to continue to menace and harass the territorial integrity of Europe. So you cannot tell me you are a pro-European politician, pro-European statesman by allowing this situation in Europe to continue. You cannot tell me you are a pro-European and allow invasion of European sovereignty. I mean, sure. Like sovereign doesn't exist. But you understand what I'm saying is like the policy objective, the stated policy objective of these pro-European statesmen is to have a more centralized Europe or Europe. First make Europe great again . Make your great again mega . Yeah . Right? So you can't tell me you want that, but then allow all the stuff to happen. This is why I'm kind of like mad at what Macron is saying. 'cause he's having all these heads of state get together for this last week on , I think it was on the 13th, they got all together to discuss what we're going to do after this ceasefire. But no, you can't do that. 'cause ceasefire just freezes the conflict. At the best case, it freezes at the conflict, and it has a menacing threat on European doorsteps that is not good for sovereignty of Europe. Europe is under attack right now. Not only is Europe under attack, but the international rules-based order is under attack. The concept of nuclear non-proliferation is under attack. You cannot allow Russia to re-arm, you know, do a Naville Chamberlain peace in our time thing. And you know, after taking Czechoslovakia and then wonder, oh my God, now they're marching through Poland again, this has to stop. And you cannot say, oh yeah, we agreed to a ceasefire. No, there is no ceasefire because there's a commitment on the Budapest memorandum that this will not happen. Full stop.
01:02:29.125 --> 01:02:31.864
But we haven't heard about Budapest for quite a while already.
01:02:32.054 --> 01:02:33.625
Yeah, of course. And that's what's infuriating.
01:02:34.375 --> 01:02:46.704
Well, okay, that's true. We are hearing about more Minsk and , uh, coming back to Trump, you cannot say that he is not right when he says that he wants to stop people die.
01:02:47.664 --> 01:02:49.425
No . No, I'm sorry. That's wrong.
01:02:49.574 --> 01:02:50.304
Okay, very nice.
01:02:51.304 --> 01:03:00.545
'cause people are dying right now. The oppression of what's going on , I mean, this is why Putin and Lara got the warrants done on the ICC, is that Ukrainians right now are dying
01:03:01.574 --> 01:03:03.715
And he wants to stop that. He says he wants to stop that.
01:03:03.775 --> 01:03:16.635
No, if Russia is holds this territory, they've already shown that they're killing the locals or, and even ethnically cleansing them. It's going to continue with Russia's having permanent control over it over these territories.
01:03:17.635 --> 01:03:58.155
But then, okay, now we're coming back to other , that part of that , uh, possible deal. Um, the statement is that they want to stop the mass killing so that people stop shooting at , at each other. And , uh, they want to stop the people dying thousands and thousands a day. I think what is not being said is that , uh, even if they seize this fire, and I totally agree with you, there will be some murders from time to time or on a regular basis, but not in this , uh, not to this magnitude again, sounds
01:03:58.324 --> 01:03:59.554
Awful. No . Okay. Well ,
01:03:59.914 --> 01:04:14.994
It does sound awful, but as I hear people, what Trump wants to say, and again, he's not saying I , I think he's a , he's wise , well wise, not wise, but , uh, he's not, he's to some extent, he's a smart guy. He understands that people will keep killing each other, but he wants to stop that mass murder.
01:04:16.164 --> 01:04:22.175
It's very easy to stop the mass murder. Russia can just go back home and Russia, and again, like, okay, fine, we'll
01:04:22.335 --> 01:04:24.295
Accept That's what Biden wanted . That's what Biden was saying.
01:04:24.295 --> 01:04:27.255
Okay. But then why are you we having a ceasefire? Why is there not a peace treaty?
01:04:28.454 --> 01:04:29.175
Ah , that's a good point.
01:04:30.534 --> 01:04:42.864
That's just a good point is the point . The point, okay. Because if your stated policy objective is to stop people from dying, well then you have like a peace treaty. But we're not having a peace treaty because obviously you cannot have peace in this type of situation. It is a , it is .
01:04:43.864 --> 01:04:50.945
So the first step , the first step is that you ask people not to shoot at each other, and only then you'll be able, will you be able to start , uh, discussing peace.
01:04:52.355 --> 01:13:00.845
Okay , now we gotta go back to some historical , uh, yes, please. Historical examples here. So at the Air Force Academy, we learned a lot about , uh, specific doctrines of warfare mm-hmm . Right ? You know, you learn about like sun Zu , Kitz , uh oh, yes. You know , um, du hey and things like that. But , um, one of the modern doctrines is , uh, Powell Doctrine, you know, Colin Powell mm-hmm . And , uh, I'm a very big advocate of the Powell Doctrine. And Colin Powell basically said that war is the most destructive thing that humans can ever do to each other and the public, because especially within democracies where the public are the ones that are the leaders, if you will, because the public elects who should represent them. And these representatives then enact the policy on behalf of the people. It is an imperative for people to understand the dangers and the horrors of war. We always say like, our job at the end of the day is to destroy buildings and to kill people. And we don't mince words about that because the public needs to know that war is horrible. And by knowing that war is horrible, that we should do everything in our power to prevent war from actually happening. But once you've made , so you basically, there's kind of like a pushing lever, if you will. Like, you can push the lever very, very far and just prevent war, prevent war, prevent war. But once you finally make the decision, you've exhausted all other possibilities. And war happens. It is imperative that the public understands the credible threat. That war is terrible, that you make war as destructive and brutal and terrible as possible to minimize overall suffering. And I know that's very like counteractive, like what , like what you're saying. But the thing is, like a long prolonged war, like you could especially see with , uh, Palestine and Israel and whatnot going on, causes more human suffering than a very pronounced, precise, destructive focused war. Because you cannot sanitize the brutality of war. And that's why, again, you try to prevent it as much as happens, but once you make that decision that war is going to happen, you need to put all your focus on destroying the national will and means the war finding means of the enemy mm-hmm . To bring peace as quickly as possible. Because the more focus the war is a, there's less of a spreading of the violence, but also the actual amount of violence, you know , from calculus, like the integral, if you will, is a lot lower because then the war ends quicker. Having prolonged graduated wars are actually more destructive because when you focus it on the enemy or the military than the military, the ones that bear the brunt of the destruction and the killing, and that's, again, that's what's supposed to happen, right? That's what the militaries are for. But when it's a prolonged war, then the, the suffering and the , uh, killing and the destruction starts bleeding into the civilian population. And the point is, with Geneva conventions and the hate conventions is about to minimize as much as possibility to destructive aspects to the population. So having this , uh, spread out war or gradual war, it causes more human suffering. And that's what you want to limit. And there's a very clear example of this with the Vietnam War, because obviously, okay, yeah. United States laws hahaha, right? But the thing is, the concept of Powell doctrine was very much on display within the Vietnam War because yes, North Korea, or excuse me, North Korea, north , um, north Vietnam back then mm-hmm . They had the upper hand and they were winning. And the United States was basically fighting in the concept of operation Rolling Thunder, where basically, okay, we don't want it . Same like today, we don't want to antagonize the Soviet Union. You , we don't want a World War III happening. So we're going to limit our strikes into North Vietnam and only focus on the , uh, line of demarcation and avoid hitting North Vietnam as much as possible. Mm-hmm . Like Hano and whatnot, and focus on a , the Vietcong and also the fighting mostly in South Vietnam, which is incredibly destructive to South Vietnam. And also it , it isolated North Vietnam from the horrors and the effects of the war. So that they were able to continue to produce their war fighting capability. And of course, obviously we were losing. And the thing is, at the certain point then the Nixon finally came into power and he basically said, 'cause he was like a huge anti-communist. And he basically said like, I don't care about, okay , obviously I'm like simplifying a lot of things here , right ? Mm-hmm . But he basically said like, you know what, I don't give a rat's about the Soviet Union. I want to end this war, and we're not gonna do this by this piecemeal rolling thunder. And this is when he busted out operation linebacker. And linebacker won in linebacker two, where he took our B 50 twos, loaded 'em up with bombs, and he said, weapons free , drop as much ammunition and destructive power on North Vietnam, what the Soviet Union says. And we are going to bring the North Vietnamese down to their knees. Because the context behind this was that obviously North Vietnam was winning, but because they knew they were winning, refused to sign a peace deal or a ceasefire. Does this sound kind of familiar to something? Right ? Familiar . Yep . So they refused to sign a peace deal because they were, had the upper hand . And then Nixon said, screw it, air Force go bomb the out of them. And it basically, in a very like limited sense that cleared destructive and focused power against North Vietnam made United States quote , win the war in the sense that the policy objective now was for United States to basically leave with a peace treaty in hand. And, and it worked like a, after the Tet Offensive, obviously Vietcong were completely eliminated. They were no longer a viable military force, but the amount of destructive power and bombings that we've done with our bombers, specifically like B 50 twos, that was the big thing with linebacker two specifically the North Koreans didn't see any , or I keep saying North Koreans, 'cause obviously Vietnam, north Vietnam , north Vietnamese, yes . Yeah , the North Vietnamese, they never saw this amount destructive power. And predictably, I mean, okay, that's arguable the word predictably. But the Soviet Union didn't interfere with this and, and enforce the North Vietnamese to sign a peace treaty with the South Vietnamese and the Americans. So that basically America was able to come out. Of course afterwards, then the North Vietnamese rolled in. And once we stopped , uh, providing support to the South Vietnamese, but that's a separate issue. The policy objective was we need to get out. This war is destructive and it's causing lots of human suffering. So the way to to actually end it counterintuitively is to reign massive firepower and destruction in a concentrated area, in a concentrated time so that the opposing party capitulates the point of signing a peace deal. And that's what brings peace. So those lessons that we learned from rolling Thunders , uh, operation Linebacker, it was codified with Colin Powell. And this is exactly what we did with the Gulf War , uh, with the first Gulf War, because again, he was , uh, he was in charge of this and this spread out to most of the generals. And again, the fact that I as a cadet was learning about it, you can see that it was , uh, it institutionalized the point that now most American officers, military officers learned about this and say that , Hey, we do not mince words around here because we don't want the population to think that, oh, war is like this Hollywood thing where it's like, oh, it's all fun and it's all fun and games like, no, war is horrible. You need to know how horrible war is so that you don't willy-nilly make us go into war. But once war happens, it needs to end quickly. And the only way for it to end quickly is if you have a concentrated destructive force so that it minimizes overall suffering. And right now, Ukraine is suffering, Russia is suffering, everyone is suffering because of this gradual piecemeal thing. And if, okay, United States is gonna step back, great, but Europe needs to come in there and basically Europe needs to end this thing and Europe can end this thing. They don't even need to do this themselves. All that really needs to happen is Macron basically says if he wants to actually put his actions behind his words, he says, Hey, look, we're gonna give you your long range weapons. You can go hit inside Russia, you can do these things. Hell, you can even make , uh, an excuse of like, oh , we need to protect the nuclear , uh, power plants of Ukraine. So we're gonna come in here and as like a trip wire force and you know, or peacekeeping so that Ukrainians don't have to man the border of like Belarus or whatnot . And more of them can go down and actually fight and end this thing and actually end this war.
01:13:01.805 --> 01:13:05.765
Believe Europe has , uh, enough of , uh, power and will to, to do that
01:13:06.524 --> 01:15:18.364
Power. Yes. Will no . Okay. And that's the sad part. We can end this war right now. And again, according to the Powell Doctrine of War, you need to have the will to bring violence in a concentrated fashion to end the human suffering. Because right now, again, three years we've been going on this three day military operations now over three years, and the amount of human suffering on both sides, I mean, arguably we can get that in a separate conversation. Arguably Russia has suffered less because most of the people who are dying are, you know , again, we can go the whole racism issue of, you know, it's mostly like the , uh, you know , non quote white Russians that are being , uh, killed from the outer mm-hmm . Of federated states. And also you pretty much emptied all your prisons and all the prisoners are dying. So actually it's kind of like a net positive for Russia, but I mean, that's neither here nor there. Just economically, obviously you can contest that this more than I can like your friends back home. Like economically, they're suffering, right? Everyone's suffering. Ukraine's obviously suffering this war needs to end. But you don't end it by having like the ceasefire, especially a ceasefire that's lopsided in the sense that you hamstring your own clients and allow to give all the signals for the antagonist to have more and more incentive to keep going. That's not how Ceasefires work. Again, we didn't do a ceasefire or peace treaty with the North Vietnamese by saying, oh yeah, come on, come in and everything like that. 'cause we tried to get them to, that was the whole point. If you looked through the Nixon Library, there was discussions that they tried to get to North Vietnamese, to , to the table because United States wanted out. We realized , okay, yes, we lost the war. Let's just get out in a dignified way. And they're like, no, we're winning. Why the hell would we sign a peace treaty with you? We're going all the way. And it wasn't until Nixon said, this, bomb the hell out of North Vietnam. And I know civilians are gonna be listening. Oh, this is so horrible. Yeah, no, it's horrible. That's the whole point of the Powell doctrine. You as a citizen of a democratic nation need to understand war is destructive and horrible. You should not want to go to war. But once that decision's made, it has to be done and it has to be done decisively and quickly. 'cause that's the only way peace will happen. And that was shown in countless wars. Vietnam is obviously the most classic one, but the entire United States military doctrine, again, as a cadet, I learned this. So, you know, it's filtered all the way down. This is the way we operate.
01:15:18.585 --> 01:15:28.564
But the question here is , uh, now I understand the Powell's doctrine, and thank you very much for putting that very clear to me. Do you think that somebody can just , uh, take a stand and explain that to Trump?
01:15:29.545 --> 01:15:43.164
No. A he can't understand it and B, he doesn't have an incentive to do that based on all his interests that we've talked about before. Okay. He is , again , we can't really prove this right in a court of law, but for all intents and purposes, he is a Russian asset.
01:15:44.154 --> 01:15:45.444
Okay. You really believe that?
01:15:46.574 --> 01:15:58.064
Yeah. I mean, I guess belief is the only thing we could say. 'cause again, I can't really prove it, but all indications whether from back from the 1980s to now, you can debate whether he's a willing asset or not, but it is the case.
01:15:58.654 --> 01:15:58.944
Okay.
01:15:59.404 --> 01:16:04.425
So any attempt of sane washing this into saying like America verse is like, no, I'm sorry it's wrong,
01:16:04.704 --> 01:16:06.024
But then he can be easily impeached.
01:16:07.354 --> 01:17:33.645
Well, yeah. I mean that's what's crazy about what's going on in the United States. Yes, there are institutional constructs in place in the United States where none of this should be a problem, but as we see the legislative , uh, branches complicit. So yes, he could be impeached, this could all end tomorrow. But of course it's not. And that's why there's a last time we talked about efficiency versus robustness, right? Yes , yes. Systems, again, difference between system and processes. Systems don't fail. There's a very few single point of failures. There has to be multiple failures. And they call , it's like a cascading failure mm-hmm . Right ? Where multiple things fail within a system. And that cascading failure causes the entire system to collapse. And that's what we have right now, is that you have a bunch of small failures within the system, within the government and all of those things. Now because they're all neutered, essentially we're witnessing a cascading failure. And this will determine ultimately, back to our original question, whether this is going to be a hiccup or a permanent change in what United States is in history of two, 300 years from now. Because the Supreme Court has been compromised, the Congress has been compromised, and now the executive is compromised. And in a sense, the media, which is, you know, the quote , the fourth pillar, right? The fourth state is also compromised based on who owns the newspapers as well as this , uh, constant need to sane wash things and then check logic where is none.
01:17:33.904 --> 01:17:42.685
But , uh, there is good reason behind that. Uh, it didn't happen within a month or several months . No . Yeah , of course not. You cannot do it that quickly. Yeah. It was happening
01:17:43.524 --> 01:17:44.564
Since like 1980s.
01:17:45.274 --> 01:17:53.204
Yeah. So whatever we are having right now is the logical conclusion of what had started back in 1980s, as you say,
01:17:53.664 --> 01:18:00.685
As an American citizen. I don't want to admit to the , to that answer, but I mean, yeah. I have to admit, yes, that's correct.
01:18:00.944 --> 01:18:04.925
But do you know who first pulled the trigger? So who started this domino effect?
01:18:05.194 --> 01:18:09.125
Yeah, it was , um, God , what's the guy's name from Fox News?
01:18:10.045 --> 01:18:10.045
Uh ,
01:18:10.545 --> 01:18:11.885
Not Murdoch, the other guy.
01:18:12.154 --> 01:18:14.444
Yeah, yeah. Uh , the main interview.
01:18:15.284 --> 01:18:20.284
CCEO . Rod Roger Ailes. Yeah. Yeah . Roger Ales. Yeah. So it was like , uh, I dunno ,
01:18:20.404 --> 01:18:20.524
The guy,
01:18:20.635 --> 01:20:16.845
Basically, okay, so when Nixon resigned, like Roger Ailes came to the Republicans , uh, and basically said, Hey look, we cannot have this thing ever again. The reason why this happens is because the news is called Biased against Us. And so we're going to establish a , a media platform that only caters to right wing talking points. It all started from there and then balloon into other things. And where now you have like, think tanks, like the Heritage Foundation and then , uh, this whole concept of uh, lower taxes on the rich. 'cause like our, like top tax rate was like 90% or something because we didn't, we , you know , we don't want kings, we don't want hereditary wealth, right? Because we, we fought against the king, so we're against that type of aristocracy. But that was slowly dismantled way . So they had more and more power. You know , that's a whole long other discussion. But yeah. So this all started with after the resignation of Nixon and the big first , uh, fruit to bear was the Ronald Reagan administration where they were able to enact a lot of these policies and then slowly things kept going. And then you had , uh, another key point was in 2000 between Bush versus Gore, where , uh, the rank was court basically said , uh, 'cause they were like trying to say, okay, do we count the votes in Florida or do we not count the votes in Florida? And then they said the five four decision was basically all the Republican that conservative judges said, we're not gonna count the votes in Florida. But because again, the things like with Supreme Court, any decision they make has the bearing of precedence because it's common law. Mm-hmm . It's not a civil law like in most of Europe. So basically whatever the court says is supposed to be part of law where precedent matters. But they specifically injected a line there, says that this decision will not have precedence for any other future situation, which is completely like bonkers and unheard of and is flies against the face of anything common law. 'cause the whole point of court decisions is they carry the away to precedents. But basically they're saying, Hey, we don't want, we know this is a decision, but we're going to do it anyway. But you know, just so you know, this doesn't have any precedence. 'cause they knew it was wrong, just
01:20:16.845 --> 01:20:17.444
A temporary fix.
01:20:17.475 --> 01:21:00.284
Yeah. And of course, like other like , uh, news, some like independent sources, I think they finally, they recounted the actual Florida votes and you end up finding out that Gore actually would've won if they continued , uh, counting the , uh, votes. But, you know, that's a whole other discussion. But they , so there , so you had George Bush win that thanks to the court and then further eroding, and then of course Obama. And then there's like shenanigans there with not allowing Obama to fill his , uh, judges and whatnot. And then you have like gerrymandering and the like removing of the citizens united where money was introduced back into elections. So to your point, there's many different , uh, failures in the system that were able to manifest themselves for a cascading failure to , uh, manifest itself. But
01:21:00.425 --> 01:21:18.045
All of these chain of of effects, it seems to me, and again, I'm not quite literate there, but it seems to me that , uh, all of these feathers, as you say mm-hmm . Were in favor of Republicans. Yeah . So Democrats never overused it as such. Uh , I mean it never served them.
01:21:19.524 --> 01:21:31.604
I , so this is Okay , personal opinion. I call this the Spaceballs theory. Have you seen Spaceballs? Yes, of course. Okay. You remember the scene at the end where , uh, they're fighting with their Schwartz? Yes. And then , uh, my Schwartz
01:21:31.604 --> 01:21:33.005
Is longer than yours. Yeah ,
01:21:33.085 --> 01:21:47.364
Yeah , yeah. Exactly right. . And then , uh, and then he says, okay, oh, you got me like here, let's handshake. And then he smacks the Schwartz ring from his hands from lone star's ring. And he says, haha, this is why evil will always win. Because good is stupid. Right? True
01:21:47.364 --> 01:21:48.484
To true. I remember that .
01:21:49.284 --> 01:21:59.845
I can't believe it, man. So lone star now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb.
01:22:00.885 --> 01:22:08.204
Right . And that , that's , so I call the Space Wall series that Democrats are just stupid and they allow the Republicans to win because they
01:22:08.484 --> 01:22:08.965
Play by the rules.
01:22:09.074 --> 01:23:42.895
Yeah, exactly. Where the Republicans don't just like what Russia's doing right now, Russia's not playing by the rules, but Europe is insisting on playing by the rules with this Ukraine situation. But that's just my thing. And you could say, okay, that's a theory. But from a broader perspective, we don't have a parliamentary system in the United States. So when we say Republicans versus Democrats, it's not really like that Republicans have managed to consolidate themselves as one party. It's kinda like a FD in Germany, or , uh, like front , or excuse me, Mont Nael here in France. They don't wanna be called front Nael anymore. . But even though I still call 'em front Nal , 'cause that's what they are , right? They're a bunch of Nazis, but whatever. So the Republicans are basically like one party, whereas the Democrats in a parliamentary system, if you put it on, they would be like multiple parties together. 'cause you have the progressives, you have the social Democrats, you have the neo libs, and then you have what the blue dog Democrats, which are basically like Republican light. And they all exist under this quote , democratic tense . And that's why there's constant fighting. So the Democrats can never really organize themselves into one cohesive voice like the Republicans can, because if you put them actually in a Europeans parliamentary system, you would see that they would quickly devolve into multiple parties. So I would say like the Democratic party, yeah, they look like they're one party, but from a European perspective, they're actually like five different parties. And that's why they don't have a , a clear voice like the Republicans do. And of course, in a democracy, a group that has a clear voice is always gonna win against one that doesn't have a clear voice. So that's another aspect of it too. But you know, I like that my space polls theories better .
01:23:43.854 --> 01:24:23.675
Interesting. Okay. Yeah . Now we have , uh, spent quite a lot of time touching quite a lot of topics , uh, today. Yeah . And yeah, I see that we don't have , uh, much time left. But , um, I have , uh, just to start , uh, probably not very small wrapup , but I've heard quite a lot of things that I'll be thinking about in the future. So first of all, I could never admit the fact that Trump doesn't think about the future at all. But , um, well, you clearly stated that it apparently looks like that. I mean, this short term , uh, goals are clear by the way. Do you think that he will achieve them, those short term goals as he sees them?
01:24:24.994 --> 01:24:29.074
Yeah , I , I hope not. Right. Again, this goes back to your original question. Okay . I hope this is a hiccup.
01:24:29.505 --> 01:24:29.795
Okay.
01:24:29.795 --> 01:25:38.404
Okay. But of course I don't, I mean, to be realistic, I don't see where his , we just had the perfect opportunity where the Democrats could have filibuster, which is basically stalled the , the legislation for the funding from this year's funding and basically stopped Trump in his tracks. But they just, they seeded their right to filibuster. And now it looks like it's going to be passed, this budget's gonna be passed with all these disastrous government cuts as well as tax breaks to the super rich. So the one piece of control that the Democrats still had, they refused to use it against space wall theory. They're stupid. 'cause they justify this , oh no, we'll be blamed, blah, blah, blah, blah . And it's like even the opposition has self neutered themselves to the point that there's no credible opposition, there's no concrete institutional opposition against him. So yeah, it's looking pretty bru . Yeah . I mean, I , yeah, I mean, personally I'm scared. I want this to be a hiccup. I want this to be like rectified, but I don't see it happening. And the one chance that we had this past week is the Democrats refuse to use it completely insane. But here we are.
01:25:39.944 --> 01:25:59.244
So to my understanding, I'm not American. That's why I'm not ashamed about that. Yeah. But I , I think that , uh, realistically Trump will achieve his goals and whatever he has been doing recently, he started eight years ago, and as you mentioned, it's had started even before mm-hmm
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