#172: Among the Deplorables, with Andrew Marantz

Another intellectual from the not-terribly-left-of-center who finds himself butting heads with Sam over subtleties that Sam seems genetically unable to perceive!

As expected, the Reddit chatter seems to favor Sam over Marantz early on. Yet I was encouraged by the growing group of people who understood what Marantz had to say, didn't dismiss him out of hand, and shared some of the feeling I have that Sam has a rather noticeable blindspot where it comes to "wokeness." Kind of ironic for the author of the Waking Up podcast.

I won't weigh in on the conversation any further than to post this for your entertainment pleasure, the title poem from my recently released collection:

Confession to the Cockroaches

Apparently, you’ve learned to read

and come upon this volume. Know, then:

it lead to your rise.

You might scoff: “These poems didn’t

lead the humans toward their final war!"

But dig a little deeper.

The missiles haven’t launched yet,

but the masses have begun their spiral.

Their vitriol grows daily.

Okay, it wasn’t just this author. It was

the readers, too. All of us who, unmindful,

worshiped the idol of Merit:

“of course the elite should get the best,”

we declared, anointing ourselves

with all rights and privileges. With crowns.

We stacked the deck, blinded by our

narrative of just rewards.

We hogged the wealth. Off-shored it.

As the masses lost livelihoods,

we only shrugged: “Their fault!

They should go to college. Get retrained.”

As though honest work shouldn’t pay.

As though college was for everyone.

As though we deserved our good fortune.

Already I hear the distant drumbeat.

Dumpster fires warm the whole globe.

Cheering, at the precipice.

#169: Omens of a race war

It was amusing to listen to Sam so unwilling to distinguish between white nationalists and white supremacists. He really didn't have much energy for Kathleen Belew's thesis that "white supremacy" is not a useful identifier because it describes most of the world: she thinks the entire structure of western civilization is built around the oppression and exploitation of the non-white races. And one gets the sense that she is not exactly an extremist compared to the rest of academia, where she works.

I have to acknowledge that as a white person it may be too easy for me to dismiss that point. And maybe Sam is just as unwoke as I am. But it may also be that I'm taking a more woke and not less woke position: I say that western civilization is structured around the oppression and exploitation of all races, whites included. I think the one-percenters--those doing all the oppressing and exploiting--really don't give a fig what your race is, so long as they can milk you of your cash and your labor.

Sam and I share another blind spot: we were both uneducated about the role that the white nationalist movement played in Timothy McVeigh's terrorist attack on the federal building in Oklahoma City. But Kathleen does make a compelling case for the circumstantial evidence that adds weight to that role, even if McVeigh never explicitly admitted to it.

One other eye-opening aspect of this conversation was the lackadaisical history of the FBI in investigating and prosecuting white-power terrorist groups. One only wonders if the growing antipathy between the FBI and the kooks who are being taught to fear the "deep state" will ultimately lead the FBI to take a more serious interest in these kinds of movements.