The General Eclectic Podcast #3 with Rod Dreher

[Music] hello everybody and welcome back to the general eclectic podcast with roger i'm your host ko zeldin and we are back for episode number three rod how you doing over there i'm doing so much better than i was i've been in home quarantine for coved for like five or six days but we finally got the test back today my wife and kids are negative and i'm sprung so you were out of jail right so you were in the back room just sort of hanging out by your lonesome for what four or five days uh five yeah i think five days it was it seemed like forever but uh you know it's really weird because i i've been in the house like everybody else for almost what a year now but it's different when you can walk around the whole house when you can only go from the bedroom to the bathroom it feels so claustrophobic i can imagine and and and of course you forget things like oh i need that book or i want that thing i want and you can't you're sort of stuck there i know but but um look you know i i i've used the time to try believe it or not to get off of ambien this the sleep med right my doctor put me on back in 2008 and like oh this is great this is so awesome who knew sleep could be so easy and then i couldn't get off of it yeah for 12 years but um so i've been doing the cold turkey detox thing and it has been completely miserable but i think we're over the hump now well i'm pulling for you here this is exciting news i know that uh these kind of things are tough but um it's good we we were not able to record on our typical tuesday but we're here on wednesday and you know perhaps probably appropriate we saved uh our our recording of episode three uh for inauguration day so um here we are and the um trump era uh is at least for this one uh is officially done uh we'll see uh what the senate does if there's gonna be a part two but anyway um it really it's the the beginning of the the biden presidency and the inauguration was early today what are your what are your sort of thoughts as you sort of watched the tail end of it i know you said yeah you know i was not a fan of joe biden i'm not a fan of joe biden i expect bad things from joe biden but what did surprise me about watching the speech and watching the the uh the ritual is what a relief it was to be done with donald trump and that did surprise me because i i i think what it was is i'm so used to watching the president meaning president trump and being made anxious and angry by what he has to say either angry at him for something he said or angry with him meaning that the people he's angry at i'm also angry at and he's gotten me fired up and this was like a normal guy and i'd forgotten what it's like to hear a normal president so this might be the only day for the next four years that i have something good to say about something joe biden said but i i was strangely relieved today it was interesting i i um i happened to catch some of trump's um outgoing message i don't know if you had a chance to listen to any of that and and i i must admit it struck me as you know i was sort of conflicted you know i i it was a good speech right and it was not ridiculous and it kind of made me sort of i don't know sad of what could have been if if he had been in any way kind of disciplined or on message but you know that's what happens when you when you get hired because of your sort of rebellious character that you know you lack the kind of discipline to do things and so i don't know i was a i was a little struck by you know uh uh regret a real deep feeling of regret again and uh as someone who has you know been a skeptic um since before he even won the nomination for the republican um presidential ticket back in 2015 it was you know i just it was uh kind of sad honestly you know we as conservatives we have always said always heard said on our side character is destiny character really counts so then along comes trump and suddenly a lot of conservatives were saying things like well i didn't hire him to be a pastor right and look i i get that but the the character thing really came through with him not in the the crude things he said necessarily though that was part of it the real character flaw was a total lack of discipline and the the self-infatuation because he came into office and nobody expected him to win but he came into office uh he had a republican majority in both houses of congress he could have done some things if he had just stuck with doing two or three things that he promised to do uh infrastructure jobs for the working class things like that uh it could have really he could have had a really good presidency as a as it happens you know i'm glad we got the judges we got i'm glad we got the supreme court we've got but yeah i think that mostly his presidency is one of missed opportunities yeah and just quickly i think that you know many people in the audience perhaps might mistakenly sort of categorize you as a kind of never trumper and and i anytime that comes up with with my personal conversations with friends like that that has never been sort of your perspective it's you know you know you have regularly sort of um i get the sense from a lot of never trumpers that they were sort of into what you've dubbed other people have dubbed kind of zombie reaganism yeah um but uh that's why i think it's it's upsetting is that there seemed to be an opportunity that that perhaps electorally um a conservative movement could have broadened itself out and kind of talked its way off of the the cliff of you know the worship of markets and and all of that and and sadly here we are and at the end and you know really botched it more than anything and i think the character thing for me where it really manifested itself was um was just the the abomination of of the sixth you know it yeah that's where i think the character thing really um [Music] came into play for me just in terms of my assessment of the whole era obviously there were plenty of issues being good things and bad things but you know again not as not an apologist but what um if you don't mind i'd like to take us in this direction you know earlier today you uh on your blog you you had a lengthy sort of you talked a little bit about you know how you were surprised that you were kind of relieved by the kind of normalcy at least even just for a few hours there was sort of a relief of normalcy but at the at the end of that post you um brought up maddie glacious um once a vox.com if i'm not mistaken right um can you talk a little bit about why you were moved to sort of bring mata glaciers up and just remind us of the tweet sure matt iglesias who is now an independent writer but he's on the left he said that conservatives need to stop and think about how the things that concern them the most do not have answers in electoral politics and uh i don't know if you can say that generally about conservatives across the board but certainly you can for social and religious conservatives like us you know i i think that it's certainly true that the thing that concerns me the most is that our country has forgotten god and is forgetting god well no president that's not the fault of the president and no president can make us remember god uh the families our family is falling apart and families are falling apart there's not a whole lot that any president can do to make a major difference there maybe around the margins but this is something that has to happen that we have to do for ourselves loss of cultural memory yes that that's yeah that's where i think that's great too right family but this cultural memory thing can you talk a little bit about the culture the story you know yeah well uh i talked about this in my book live not by lies about how one thing totalitarian governments do is to try to erase the cultural memory of a people by which i mean the things that people remember about their their culture and their cultures past and their history that tell them who they are and what they're supposed to be doing well we are losing that in a big way here in america today uh and we're losing it in part because it's being erased by universities by the media and who all want to deny the past and create a new past for us to remember as a way of controlling the future but it's also being erased by the fact that we just don't care you know we're yeah i know you know and i saw that a lot you know as you know i'm a teacher and i saw that a lot with students and and just sort of perspectives on on history for instance and you know i i i think conservatives in general have have in large part focused on you know legislative issues and political issues and economic issues and and all the while you know departments of history and education have really done a number on the framing of of of history right and so i think in many respects you can uh you can say that the millennials the and and those folks who have sort of followed them into um kind of uh sort of a largely kind of woke perspective um are really kind of like the howard zinn um uh generation you know they have learned nothing but problematized history in which they've learned to hate everything about the founding of the country and i i i agree with what you've said before about this sort of this this business with the 1619 project that the 1619 project is kind of the apotheosis of of that whole movement right that the founding of the country is not based upon these ideals and this idea um as enumerated in the declaration and the constitution and the founding fathers and all that it is instead 1619 is it it is instead you know that the founding of the country is this this sort of originary slavery and i and and who can be proud of that i mean rightfully right who could be proud of that yeah that's true and i i think that you know it's it's certainly correct i would say that this only heroic kitschy idea of america the cherry tree george washington the cherry tree that sort of thing you know we don't need that we need something that's more balanced and truthful but the 1619 project and things like that woke history strikes me as just you know the left-wing mirror version of kitschy right-wing history but so true yeah it's just it's frustrating to me because this really does matter what the way people remember the country really does matter and i was reading something this week maybe christopher ruffo that yeah the the blogger and the writer for the pacific northwest who writes about wokeness and education i think he retweeted something talking about the standards in maybe minnesota schools where they're going to talk all about lgbt contemporary racial figures and all that but some of the major events like world war one get only like a page yeah these are the new standards and this is incredibly political and incredibly damaging here's the thing though we the people have the capability if our schools won't give it to us and we can't our elected school board leaders are going along with this we have not only the the capability but the responsibility to do this for ourselves and to teach our kids ourselves in the same way that vatsala benda the the the anti-communist dissident in prague that i i write about a lot in my work he and his colleagues did this for their kids and their young people in the communist era they knew these kids were getting nothing but lies and propaganda in the government schools so they would bring people together in their private time and lecture them about real history about real literature it was something they did as a matter of cultural survival not because it seemed good to them because it took a lot out of their kids lives but they did it so their kids would not forget who they were yeah and that that idea of like the controlling of the memory and and you know uh i think both of us are as suspect of the kind of whitewashed you know vision of of of american history uh as as as we are a suspect of the it's all you know genocide from you know from from soup to nuts um but uh there doesn't seem to be a recognition on the part of many people that that this this style this attitude this positionality toward uh the story of the country um matters you know i i get the sense you know it's a i don't know why i just had the image of rex matrum pop into my head you gotta explain who that is from brideshead revisited he's this american industrialist i think right one of the sort of canadian canadians sorry north american um you know figure and he's really he's all about business and and and this is in brides had revisited and and that figure in british literature especially from you know mid victorian period all the way into into uh the middle of the of the 20th century there's this sort of stock figure of the kind of crass north american who like just cares about business they're all basically versions of henry ford right and you know henry ford's classic line is history as bunk right that you know fine like you can waste all your time talking about history and talk about literature and stories but really like i'm here to make money and and and i think that that we are paying dearly honestly for that kind of attitude toward our story as a nation and as a culture and that doesn't mean that you have to sit here and lie about slavery or what we did to the native americans as a as official you know policy it doesn't mean that we have to lie about what what the fdr government did to japanese americans during and before and during the second world war and in fact i think the great antidote to any of these sort of um very simple binary black and white you know good and bad history is to sort of teach the the whole story it's kind of warts and all right um and yet we we really have neglected that we've we've abandoned it entirely it seems to me um and and it seems to be taken up entirely by motivated um actors who are explicitly ideological in the way that they see the world and the way that they operate in the world you know it's interesting you bring that up i i have been reading in my confinement a book called uh destiny denied i think that's name of it the author's tamim ansari a-n-s-a-r-y and it's a history of the muslim world or history of the world told through muslim eyes and it's a fascinating book it's written for the general reader like me and what he what i'm sorry sets out to do is to explain to western reader how the history of the world looks well from muslim eyes but what for me was so so interesting about it is to i'm learning things i've never learned about how the muslim community came into being and how it was from the very beginning because this is in the structure of islam how the state and the religious community are the same thing what's so interesting at this point yeah i'm about 600 years into islamic history now and we've gone through a number of generations of muslim leadership so interesting to see how everything started out so pure in the generation of muhammad but the further you get away from that founding generation the more the complexities of the world and the complexities of human nature uh compromise the purity and then people start to split apart why do i bring that up here in this discussion because history is so fascinating you know i can look back i'm reading this muslim history and i'm somebody who as a christian doesn't believe that god had anything to do with this except maybe in the broader sense of his permissive will so i i see the the religious conflicts going on there as uh as purely human things but um but if you're muslim you believe that god's hand was in this and was on one side or the other so uh i i think all of this is so important for us to learn because if once you look at uh on the outside looking in at the muslim community and also being given a muslim insider view you can understand how the currents of history work in our society and uh the reason i brought it up and for here is that why history matters so much last night the part i was reading was about this medieval islamic scholar named gazali and he was like probably the greatest scholar of all time and the he was so good at what he did that his work ended up basically crushing the islamic medieval philosophical tradition which was bringing all the greeks and you know they were really on top of the world at that time when in the west you know we were just learning how to read after the dark ages that's right and um it was incredible to me how the victory of this man of gazali and his he was so talented that he and there were some other things involved too but it just crushed islamic science the development of islamic science and philosophy and led to the downfall of islamic influence so this stuff does matter ideas do matter ideas do have consequences so when you and i are talking about what's happening in our society and in our schools about not learning certain kinds of history or learning history from a really narrow rigid ideological point of view this is going to have consequences yeah and and they become you know i think they it shrinks the world unnecessarily right rather than giving you uh a sort of a perspective from which you can kind of take things in and expand expand out um you know you you you shrink down and so you look for kind of i guess sort of perspective hacks right you know ways of sort of uh taking complexity and simplifying it and i'm struck with the way in which we as human beings cultures have a pro i have a problem i think with complexity right i mean complexity uh uh robs us of your sort of a quick ability to sort of you know what's good what's bad right and and i i am in this moment right you know uh you know the a new fight that i see kind of emerging especially in the wake of of the capitol hill riot um you know that it's it's you know and one of my favorite podcast hoats by the way shout out to eric weinstein at the portal podcast but he was on a glenn beck podcast the other day and he talked about the sort of the emergence of wokistan versus magastan you know sort of the forces of the woke left and their own versions of a kind of very simplified history you know taking out all of the complexity of history and then the maga the magistan you know that that's similar but on the opposite side of the so-called spectrum of um sort of oversimplifying it and this goes back to something that you and i have been talking about maybe offline but the um but the you know the emergence over the summer this past summer of of the blm riots and and and in the world clap there but then of course you know i was hit like a ton of bricks with um something that i have completely ignored to be honest with you which is the cue phenomenon and yeah and i i really and and i i i do think it's worth a deep scrutiny um just in terms of it as a phenomena um especially since i had completely ignored it personally you know it was so absurd uh on the face of it for me personally um but um you actually sent me to an article from the atlantic by adrian lafrance i believe um uh i think it's called the prophecies of q or something or or what yeah she writes about it as a new religion yeah and i actually quibble with her a little bit about it as a new religion um i think this might be a little bit of a tangent but i'm going to say it because that's just how i am i i really like what she's brought together in that article i'll link to it in the in the in the show notes later on if you're interested but she suffers from the way that the cathedral as you have talked about before she really doesn't understand religion well let's say let me just stop you i think for a second the cathedral is a neo-reactionary term that they use to describe this sort of the blob of the state of the media the university all of the the the institutions that set the official reality it's a term of a program but i think it's a great term yeah i think it works and and you know and i look i i live up in new england and i think new england is one of the epicenters right of the sort of the articulators of the cathedral and you know so i i i'm reading this piece and she does a wonderful bit of she pulls together some some amazing things but i do think she misses something essential by calling it a new religion i think it shows that she doesn't fully understand what religion is at any rate q really deserves uh our discussion because we especially those of us who are social conservatives and religious conservatives need to recognize the deep uh tentacles that it has had on american christianity and i i you know again i i feel like i've whipped on this one a little bit um and as i'm reading this piece you know it's hard to ignore you know that q comes out of a deep american sort of apocalyptic tradition you know i'm reminded when i reminded of the 90s you know and when everybody was getting worked up about the y2k thing and and all of my evangelical friends were obsessed with the left behind series and the and the imminent you know emer you know uh rapture was going to happen any moment and so i think what lafrance misses is that this is part of christianity right not not you know it's a crippled version of christianity you know um clearly but it's part of the sort of the christian messianic tradition but you know i i would even quibble with that a little bit because one of the things i learned in researching live not by lies is how bolshevism uh it was anti-christian but it did appropriate christian messianic apocalyptic tropes and um so yeah i'm going to trump you again on that one so do it so yeah so taking a cue from tom holland right in his book dominion you know he would argue and i think there's there's there's real textual evidence for this although he doesn't get into this so much that marx has essentially taken the christian eschaton that is the christian promise of the heaven that awaits the righteous at the end of time and has placed it inside of time and so the division of communism right this communist utopia um is basically it's a fundamentally christian idea it's an atheist christian idea but it's a christian idea right so so i would agree that that that marxism trafficks on this very same thing so i'm not surprised that the bolsheviks were triggered for you so it's interesting to think of q and wokeness are as paral a parallel parallel phenomena yes and they feed off of one another by the way they do and you know i've said something like that on my blog or on twitter and people on the left get so crazy like how dare you say woke this and cure the same thing because q is crazy but clearly we on the woke side you know we mean well and we're standing talking about real things and i think that they are own they're different only superficially but what i think so interesting about the q thing is how it was a religion of a pseudo religion of uh of revelation they kept waiting for the prophet q to tell them these these gnomic statements about what was really about to happen i noticed the queue droppings they called cue droppings yeah and today uh we're talking our inauguration day i saw twitter some some tweets some statements from q message boards about some of these people are having real cognitive epistemic crises because they can't deal with the fact that it's not true and one of the guys who was one of the chief facilitators of of queue online and some people thought he might have been cue himself he put a tweet up saying well you know i enjoyed that we all got to meet each other and maybe the real cue was us becoming friends in this journey stay tuned for my next project amazing by the way amazing that that that that emerged that oh well maybe i was all wrong and you know people are really i mean you know look to me as i as i looked at all all of the footage of of the riot um on capitol hill you know you know you have a lot of evangelical hand-wringing because they're saying oh this is sort of christian nationalism and and all that i i don't fully think it is but it's clearly q inflected and q infected uh sort of messianic christianity i don't think there's any getting around that yeah and uh i think that i don't think that q and magda are the same thing necessarily they become tangled up with each other but i think there's some people who don't even know who q is or what what the q phenomenon is who do believe very donald trump is sort of a secular messianic figure uh and a lot of these people are christians but they they see him as being him and his person as being a figure on whom everything hung somebody said the other day and maybe it's one of my comments on my blog said that trump has driven all debate about principle out of the republican party and now the only debate is whether you're pro or anti-trump i think that's a really shrewd observation because i can't think of the last time i had an argument with a fellow conservative about anything that the right is supposed to be in favor of or against it's all been about trump the man yeah which is how trump wants it well and i think yeah you know maybe doing a little mind reading of my own with you i think perhaps that's in part what you that was the kind of relief i think you were were sensing today is that maybe in the coming days as a social conservative i can think about something else besides whatever it is he's tweeting about today right i mean i think there's a reality to that right but talking about reality right i i think what uh the the woke left and the cue right for lack of a wilkerson versus magastan right as eric weinstein would have it you know i think this gets into another thing that you posted over the weekend which was uh the lengthy and i think brilliant piece by james lindsey on his website new discourses on psychopathy i don't remember the name of the piece off the top by hand again i'll put the the the link to the article uh in the in the in the in the description of the video here today but uh he talks about pseudo-realities in the emergence of uh of literally of alternate realities and and i think that what you're seeing with both of these crippled ideologies or these crippled world views which is i think what an ideology is um this uh you know it's it's a world view meant to service people who don't have a full grasp on reality right right yeah it's um it's i think it's an interpretation of reality that people mistake for reality itself you know and that piece by lindsay is really really good it's very long it's very dense but it's it's rewarding uh and he talks about how we should understand what we're getting what we're living through right now as a um as a conflict of realities you know and and that's a really dangerous thing because if you remember aleister mcintyre back in the early 80s in his book after virtue he talked about how discourse was uh difficult and almost impossible because we couldn't even agree on basic premises he's talking about moral philosophy and moral discourse this takes it even a step further where we can't even agree on what happened you know yeah right i mean what is at stake is is precisely reality and and you know people i think is sort of in a sort of a fit of exasperation might be like i don't even think we're looking at the same reality and i think the answer to that is you're correct we are not looking at the same reality right because you know uh you know for a variety of different reasons but what i loved so much about uh lindsay's p psychopathy and the origins of totalitarianism is that he really doesn't pull any punches and he says that the the consequences of these crippled world views right these world views in which um are are explicitly crafted for people who he just lays it out he says it must be observed i'm quoting here it must be observed that people who accept pseudo-realities as though they are real are no longer normal people and one of the things i love about reading lindsay is that you know he knows this stuff backwards and forwards if you listen to him and you read his stuff you know this is this is a smart guy but he doesn't have the kind of uh ivory tower niceties uh that you would expect for someone who knows this sort of stuff because he's not jockeying for a job you know he he's not part of of the show and he'll just say and we know exactly what he means by this when you get him say one more time you know it must be observed that people who accept pseudo-realities as though they are real are no longer normal people and and we have to just be able to say that out loud but this is not normal here's where i the a problem i had with what lindsay had to say though and i'd be interested to talk to him about it he is an atheist he's been open about being an atheist i wonder to what extent he realizes that atheism and empiricism is itself a constructed world view you know and he doesn't i think he would probably say that you and i as christians live in a pseudo-reality sure how do we deal with that and and live in reality in the sense that you and i think we should live in reality sure but for us believing in god and believing in jesus christ as part of that reality sure okay well this is what my my fantasy my dream here is to have you know you and i sitting down with james lindsey and tom holland because i think that lindsay's issue here is that i don't think he understands fully the genealogy of liberalism as the as the the as an outgrowth of of a christian worldview right like there's a reason why liberalism exists uh in the west right in my you know issue with a lot of these sort of former new atheists in in people of good will like lindsay and and some of his of some of his friends is that they aren't fully aware of where these so-called quote-unquote enlightenment values come from right and i think holland the the british historian tom holland especially in his book dominion really traces out this this long story you know that that the difference maker in in his way of thinking is ultimately christianity and i think he would even get more specific and more granular than he would say saint paul right but but uh lindsay in uh so he writes this piece is funny he he publishes it on on christmas day on on december 25th and then about a week later he puts out a podcast which is kind of a hour-long sort of explanatory podcast on what what he wrote and uh it's a great thing i recommend it i guess i'll put that in the notes too for this show but in the podcast he ends the podcast by saying guys we cannot let go of the imago day we cannot let go of the idea that we are made in the image and likeness of god now lindsay is an out loud atheist he is not shy about any of this sort of stuff but i think he's starting to grasp the the inescapability of that particular miracle you know i i i've listened to hours and hours and hours of jordan peterson's podcast and whatnot and he himself as a as a a non-believer right um but but somebody who knows the the tradition very well and he himself says that there are a few things that are that are not at all evident right but and then he says and and i can only see them as being miracles and what he talks and he says it's a jewish thing it's the jewish thing which is simply all of us are icons of the divine creator he says that there's no such thing as law without um the imago day there's no such thing as human dignity without the imago day and so i think that i'm fascinating as i kind of watch these guys break these things down and they're doing great work and i this is no i'm trying to take no shine off of somebody like lindsay but but to your point do they fully appreciate do that would they would perhaps you know maybe james and again he seems like a nice enough fellow um might say that well kale you know you and rod you're living in a pseudo gal sure sure and and but i guess the question i'm asking too it's how do how does somebody like you and me talk about people need to live in reality and not in wokestand or magazine uh and at the same time defend the fact that we believe that when a priest a validly ordained priest you know says certain words over certain gestures over over bread and wine they become the body and blood of jesus i think the answer to that is along the lines of the overlapping magisteria of truth you know that um that what do you mean by that right well i mean by that is science let me back up a little bit the uh uh ansari who said the read the book about islam i was talking about he talks about how the west figured out the the whole revelation versus versus empiricism questioned by deciding that certain questions belong to the realm of theology and philosophy and some certain questions belong to the realm of science in islam they all were part of the same realm and rather than separating them out and find a way to separate them out revelation ended up overtaking everything which crushed the development of science so uh what does what does that have to do with us i think it means that you know when you and i are talking about as christians about the ultimate nature of reality we would say it is divine it is theological um but we can sit around with our neighbors of different faiths or no faith at all and should be able to agree on basic facts and principles you know for which we can therefore reason and we can we can rule some things as out of bounds for political discussion because they're not real so put some meat on those bones what what do you give me an example maybe why are you doing this to me i'm sorry i'm sorry no i can't well i'm kidding no um well i i think about think about the cue people right i got into an argument this is when i first really heard about q it was about a year ago i was in was at a wedding and i saw somebody or wealthy uh educated businessman i know and he started asking me about q he knows that works for work the american conservative started asking me about q and he started laying out this conspiracy because he's a believer and i said but that doesn't make any sense how can you how do you know that's true he kept saying well uh how do you know what's not how do you know it's not right there kale is an example and say wait a minute time out we don't say that because you can't prove something that makes it true but this guy was was that a dog yes are you a question are you it's just this is it it was a squishy toy but seriously though that that that right there is an example of not being able to talk in reality you know we don't i could talk with the democrat um who we may disagree on principles on political principles but he's not going to be the sort of person unless he's woke who comes in and you know with this pseudo science or the pseudo-logical claims and take a stand on that and say the only way you can if you disagree with me then you're evil right but but this is where i want to push back a little bit i think we can't do [Music] we can't do this move where we just simply ignore q as clear back crappery and not look at how and why it has some kind of explanatory power because i think it does for it to have the kind of influence that it has it has to some way speak to an experience of reality and so i lay it out this way as a conservative rod do you feel like our cultural and religious and political elites have lied to us oh absolutely there's no no question about it okay so so right so correct you and i would both agree so so right now you and i are at least sort of nodding along with the queue folks right because one of their predicates is that there's a there's a cabal of elites who run everything right and this is the kind of thing i mean gosh this is i mean you go back to the middle ages and in fact i wanted to bring up another book if if anybody in the audience is interested in this kind of thing norman cohn wrote a a an incredible mid-century history on uh medieval millenarian movements um that really show that it's kind of baked into the cake of christianity but but and and and and my sense of that is that you know as christians there's always a tension between this basic quotation you know not the time nor the hour period and the other quotation which is you always must read the signs of the times right so as christians we're kind of stuck they're not stuck but we're we're we're in between those two things right and both of them sort of there's a sense of knowing right so there's a kind of so you can see why i think gnosticism you know this this gnosticism is attractive right and so what q allows for the adherent is that ah i can see what's going on sure this this is this is this is the truth and nobody wants to admit it right right it gives you a sense of security in the face of chaos you know because even though things look like they're chaotic and crazy you know what's really happening and and you you alone you and your and your confereers have the key to understanding reality i that makes perfect sense what we're going through right now we're going through a time of great turmoil in this country certainly in the wake of covet of so many things happening and we have evidence with the epstein stuff with the scandal and the catholic church and on and on and on that elites corrupt elites really do exist within our institutions but this is human nature i i think that another thing too that this sort of apocalyptic millenarian ways of thinking it gives you a sense and a reason to hope that there will be a day of reckoning at which all things will be revealed the you know the sheep will be separated from the goats the goats be thrown into the fire and so on and so forth this is what happened with the bulls fix this is part of the reason they they won over so many people because poor people thought finally finally you know we will see real justice and i think in the case of the q people when you look at their crazy prophecies you know you want if you understand it through the point of view of this is how millenarianism works that they speak it speaks to a fear of chaos and a logging for justice correct amen that's exactly right you know you you you you long to see the order in the perception of utter and total chaos and that it means something and that it's ordered towards something and there's justice at the end right so so i get you know again i i i think cue is a huge problem i think that there's sort of a specific version of it in evangelical circles i think there's a specific version of it in sort of conservative catholic circles that's worth a sort of a deeper dive on but but it it it they're all they're they're both pseudo gospels right and and you know one thing that lindsay says in that essay and this is really uh important he says that when the pseudo realities when they get what they're after but when when they achieve what they're after and the world has not become utopia then they have to double down on it and have to push even harder and harder this is exactly what happened in the soviet union right they they and and and it will you know if q if trump had won reelection they would have continued the conspiracy out further and further and further because the they that was the only way to keep the prophecy from being unfulfilled and in the same way with wokeness you know if they got everything they wanted and still we didn't live in utopia what would be their answer then you know there's none there is there's none no all right well we're we're here at the end here and i promised you that we would talk a few minutes about happy things or hopeful things not happy things hopeful and meaningful things maybe that's what we'll call this this segment but uh what where have you found some hope and and and and and light here in the midst of all of this you know believe it or not i found one of the happiest moments i had in this past week was in the company of fran uh lebowitz the rock hunters in new york she was a big celebrity in the 70s she's uh she's a public speaker and a writer that she hasn't written anything for decades she was a big 70s figure she's just grumpy dorothy parker-like new york jewish woman and there's a new movie out it's like an hour and 15 minutes martin scorsese did it for netflix it's called pretend it's a city and it just follows fran love wits around new york city and takes bits of her giving her public speeches she gives an interview to scorsese making jokes and witticisms about life in new york this made me so happy to watch it kale because not only is she so wonderful in her cumuliness but i lived in new york from 1998 to 2003 and for me this was probably your best time in my life i was newly married i was young new to the city no kids to sort of you know which is hard to live in the city with with kids but you know my wife and i would just gallivant around manhattan and fran lebowitz brings it all back plus i have to say just the joy of jewish culture of being in a city where there are people like fran level wits everywhere with that kind of humor that kind of uh liveliness that kind of urbanity i i just loved it and in the the movie go it's stitched together these little set pieces with fran levoitz with this jazzy soundtrack and i it just had me it was like listening to um um gershwin or something you know rhapsody in blue i just i just was thrilled by it that's great well my my sort of joy that i've i've sort of stumbled into this week uh maybe we can talk uh at length about it later on but uh is a a i'm actually listening to a book on tape which is something i don't usually do i've got an audible um um membership uh over christmas and i'm listening to uh a book called the memoirs of saint peter and it's a translation by dr pacoluck i think that's how you say his name and for our audience if you haven't heard it you should pick it up it's as if you're sitting next to saint peter or peter you know simon peter listening to him tell stories about this guy um this this this god man that he knew in galilee i mean it's just really an amazing um book it really has a it brings you right there to the actions so to speak and and by the way the commentary that's appended to the end of each of the chapters of the 16 chapters of the of the gospel of mark are there and they're brilliant so well he thinks that uh saint peter wrote mark is it is that the basically that mark is his secretary and that sort of saint peter was sort of telling him the story which again there's a and he has a little explanat explanation at the opening of it as to why he's sort of going with this and it's part of tradition of course um but it's just wonderful it's a wonderful book i i recommend you listening to it it's been a great part of my morning my morning routine so well can i tell you kale this people who are listening to this won't see see this but those who watch it can i'm wearing this brooklyn sweatshirt it's a it's a hoodie i got this in 98 or 99 it was dark blue and now it's very faded kind of blue gray but um it is decidedly decidedly not dark blue no no not dark blue it is um it is sort of a relic of that time but um i can remember my wife and i toward the end of our time in new york we had a baby by then and we're getting ready to leave and she said you know new york is like living in disneyland you know everything is so vivid and magical but it costs five times more than it does in the real world that's right that's right it's like i remember that the last time i was in the city i was at a wedding and i felt like i had to spend 30 bucks just walking from one corner of the block to the next block i just money just sort of flies out of your pockets because everything is there but you know i i miss the city yeah no one i i know we only got a couple minutes left but i want to make a plug briefly for this another great netflix movie called my octopus teacher it's a nature documentary and normally that would make me fall asleep right there nature documentary but this is so different it's about a nature filmmaker guy named craig foster south african who got to the middle of his life burned out he started diving in a lagoon near his house on the south african coast and he started exploring a kelp forest got to know quote unquote this octopus who lived there and started following her around and it ended up they developed this really interesting relationship occupied really smart and uh by the time it was over i was almost in tears but what's so interesting about it is foster talks about how just spending the year of that octopuses live because i only live about a year exploring and following her and getting to know the natural world that pulled him out of himself and re-enchanted the world for him i watched that and i loved it so much and i've been recommending it to everybody but for me it made me realize how nature doesn't do anything for me going to big cities around the world meeting people like friend love wits and other people that i met that's what re-enchants the world for me and that's why i cannot wait for kova to be over so i can travel again and meet people and become re-enchanted again well it would be nice of course to be able to do a session or two in person uh together as we're both sort of in different different regions of the country right now so um here here hopefully this uh this this coronavirus is on its last leg so all right well rod uh this has been a great uh episode thank you for sitting with me and talking uh a variety of different things folks if you could like and subscribe to the podcast here on youtube we do um expect this to be up and on the major podcast audio formats very shortly here and we have some more announcements coming next episode so until then how's our sign off rod don't get nothing on you all right uncle mama take care all right bye-bye [Music] you

Channel: Kale Zelden

Views: 1,030

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: TGE #3 youtube, Rod Dreher, Kale Zelden, Live Not By Lies, Eric Weinstein, Glenn Beck podcast, QAnon, Adrienne LeFrance, Tom Holland, Dominion, James Lindsay, New Discourses, After Virtue, Norman Cohn, Pursuit of the Millenium, Pseudo Realities

Id: 4nqrxDfs0_k

Length: 50min 34sec (3034 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 21 2021