Like The Whole Damn Marketplace/Message Board/Clubhouse All At Once
"The way that you do it" is what principle (or lack thereof) is all about!
Hey folks, I’m still having screwy hardware trouble with my main confuser, but my brain is bursting, so I sat down and wrote one on the back-twister backup box instead. Thankfully I did recently prune my incoming sources list rather mercilessly, which means I am currently only seven hundred essays behind in my reading, so I’ll have very few essay links today, still some really great talks, though.
First of all I have to mention something which makes me laugh out loud where others are panicking, because of a memory not everyone shares. I was a teenage computer salesman - and very proud of it, even though I was selling quasi-legal clones, in the wild west computer homebuilder scene at College and Spadina in the early 80s – the northern centre, which was complemented by the more musical and artistic (Active Surplus, Active Electronics, Arkon Tools, Steve’s Music and Graphix fed) scene just a few blocks south at Queen W – where many classic music clubs somehow endure even to this day – to our great fortune, culturally.
I actually tried out for a job as a builder first, but I could only assemble and test two full computers per day (soldering every pin of roughly 60 many legged chips) and their aces could do three, so it was the salesman schtick for me (though my longed-for technician status would come, a few years later, as pictured above).
The damn thing was, despite my huge enthusiasm for the things, they were, at that time, almost completely useless for any domestic task. This might make you laugh, I have been playing computer games for almost a half a century now – so long that when I started, I had to hand-enter every step of the program for the game, then debug it, before I could play – then do it all over again, every time I wanted to play!
In those very early days software literally came in book form! (and you had to adjust the syntax yourself) The bonus being that you learned about programming without even realizing it, in order to have fun. (One could even argue that it was organically educational by nature, right up until they started making “educational” software). ;o)
As a salesman, I did try to learn everything I could, and we sold tons of special customization hardware, so you could not only expand memory and interfaces, but even run a whole different computer inside your computer (Z-80 processors were very popular, and let you run the gold standard word processor Wordstar – which has the distinction of teaching us oldtimers ‘cut copy and paste’ keyboard shortcuts that still work, fifty years later! (second most amazing endurance feat in computing, after irrepressible unix).
Sorry – don't mean to bore the non-keeners – my point is, I was a keener (and obsessive about reading and studying everything I could find) and I was even connecting to bulletin board systems all over town, to observe the beginnings of what would soon become the integrated civilian-facing world wide web (begun as a military project, of course, just as google-earth started as a target program).
The most revealing clue about early computing that the modern world has forgotten (or never really did learn) and in retrospect, was also the most obvious blind spot for all the many keeners, was that early computers were complicated and hard to use – so they sorted for extra clever people of high resourcefulness (stubbornness?) naturally, by frustrating the hell out of absolutely everyone else!
I know, I know, they're frustrating the hell out of all of us again right now (enshittification – best new word in years) - but there was a surprisingly long initial seduction window for web2.0 (which was social media and intelligence agency driven from the get-go) just to get us all thoroughly addicted, so that when they decided it was time again to extort and abuse our attention quite mercilessly – they could do it without driving us away this time! – (Greatly though they deserve such flight!)
I have to digress here to make two key points (though they really deserve an entire essay). One of the wisest pieces of advice I got back then, from a computer pro, was “Learn as little as you can about every system – just what you need to do the work. Specifics go obsolete, your brain should not!” I was already mister curious and super-energetic about it, so it took me many years (and uncountable unneeded specifics consuming the finite space in my brain) before I realized how smart that advice really was.
The other point came from a combination of selling systems to many other people, and seeing how satisfied they were with them, and my own lifetime of living with limited means (I work like crazy, always, I’m just not so great at getting top dollar for my particular steam-engine, as some others seem to be).
Whatever you allow yourself to get used to, quickly becomes your new minimum expectation.
When I’m talking to young art students I express this as “If you want to be unstoppable, need nothing” that is, if you train yourself for high productivity without praise or reward (enjoy the effort itself), you will be able to task yourself as you judge best, rather than being helplessly dependent on outside approval or inducements, in order to access your own talent. But artists are kind of crazy though, I admit it.
The civilian or consumer-grade level of the insight is – if you let consumerism spoil you too much, you will become the sucker and slave of a never-ending and also never-satisfied craving. No fun at all.
The balance trick is to consider your own brain, as a part of the exchange, not the gear only. If you get a bigger monitor, you will never be satisfied with a small one again (as an audiophile technician, I later worked on sound systems so fine and completely unaffordable, I gave up the pursuit of audiophile tastes altogether – because I already knew I couldn’t ever afford my own new set-point!)
Here's the thing though, in the early 80s, the kind of people who could get a lot out of computing and/or connecting with other deep thinkers on rare subjects, mostly couldn't afford a computer yet – affordable ubiquity really happened in the nineties (thanks in no small part to clones, just as the weird damage of early file-sharing services led us to modern streaming as the new normal standard – mixed as both “blessings” definitely remain – for matters of quality and creators rights, in particular).
All of which meant that when I was facing an interested customer across the counter, and I had already conversationally deduced that they were not a student, a writer, a researcher, or a deep thinker about odd rare subjects, who would find the bother of the machine worthwhile, just for the newly revealed fellowship, I was left with very little other than "You can use it to store and sort recipes."
Yes of course I knew this was a laughably stupid suggestion, even as I said it – to the great approval of my hawk-eyed boss (I was naive as can be, but not an imbecile). To this day, I can still think of no better solution for recipe storage and retrieval than a nice hardbound notebook where you write down every great recipe you find, or a friend shares with you. For some families, those handwritten recipe books become micro-cultural treasures on the scale of family bibles. I mean sure, a computer can show you a nice retouched picture of Nigella or Ramsaydivy while you're cooking - but so what? That’s an enhancement of marketing and graphics – not any help at all to your cooking!
So – when I see commercials from cell companies, trying to get us excited because their amazing AI can – (by snooping on the phones of everyone you know) set up a freakin’ dinner party? – what I know for sure is – they have no idea what this crap is even good for yet (and there is no reason for anyone to buy it, until they do) all they know for sure is that they spent tens of millions on it, and the investors are getting antsy for some hope of a return! (VR has been the next big thing that you don’t want to miss out on for more than three decades now, without ever actually happening).
To make this distinction even clearer, the killer app which actually gave the world that term, was a program called “Visicalc” for the apple II – the first widely used instantly recalculating spreadsheet program. As soon as accountants and bookkeepers saw the benefits, apple sales to businesses large and small boomed, because for checking the books and making complex financial projections, a spreadsheet that does all of its own math was (and remains) a damn wonder, especially to anyone who ever had to do it manually, and then redo every part of it, over and over, as new data comes in. (think of all the trees that might instead have been turned into badly-chewed pencils).
I would even go so far as to say IBM wasn't interested in making small computers until they saw the value of uniting the best word processor from the Z80/S100 (early home-brew computer) world, and that spreadsheet, with one of their own best tricks from mainframe corporate computing, a flexible relational database – which combo soon made Lotus 123 the early IBM PC killer app for business clients (who bought tons of computers, even back then, but almost never cheap clones from me!) That knocked apple right out of the market they had just pioneered themselves, a couple of years earlier.
I also have to note something really important that younger digital keeners don’t understand.
Bill Gates did not achieve his position of staggeringly high rewards because he is a rare genius, but because he was, from the very beginning, a sneak and a monopolist. Even back when the computer scene was dominated by homebuilders who met in school gymnasiums, when his excited colleagues dreamed aloud of thousands of computer companies in the future, he would respond, “No, only one.”
Legend has it that Gary Kildall began the microcomputer revolution almost singlehandedly by recognizing that the brand new integrated circuits being manufactured (for the military, of course) in the late sixties/early seventies could be used as full computer processors, if only they had the necessary software (amazingly, even the manufacturer of the chips – Fairchild at first, I believe, had no idea what their chips could do – and intel only began designing microprocessors as such – after he and others also, showed that the potential already existed, in a very unrefined form).
Kildall, the prototype of that clever/resourceful/stubborn computer nerd, along with the also brilliant Kathryn Strutynski, had to write the very first high-level (english-like) microcomputer programming language PL/M (Programming Language for Microcomputers) before they could use that language they’d just created, to write the world’s very first microcomputer operating system CP/M (control program for microcomputers) which let the processor bring information in, and send information out to storage and display devices – the key set of invariant rules between input, processor, storage and display interface – that gets all the bits talking to each other usefully. Intel, which was happy to pay the team to write PL/M was uninterested in CP/M, which Kildall knew was the key part, so he formed his own company to sell it to hobbyists homebuilders and researchers, which created the extraordinary and almost forgotten S100 boom – based on a 100 pin interface card-cage, and such a huge range of choices for memory, storage, processors and displays that CP/M was ultimately adapted to run on more than 3000 different systems thanks to one last ingredient.
Early commercial computers were frustrating – but the scratch-built S100 systems which came just before them, were downright crazy-making! (Meaning the early digital partisans who cut their teeth there, were extra relentless and determined forever after – and always among my best customers).
The final ingredient Kildall contributed, to make CP/M work on such a wide range of hardware, was the BIOS – Basic Input Output System – a very simple program which is hard-coded on a chip, loads when the computer starts, then tells it how to use a drive to load CP/M, and truly wake-up (boot).
The BIOS was also the ingredient which made my computer salesman job kind of sketchy. The law could not prevent a clone manufacturer from using the same chips and connecting them in the same way as a major player like apple or IBM, as long as you ran the ‘traces’ (connections) in different routes. At the time, copyright law saw a circuit board as art, rather than function – change the art and you could skate, even if you were stealing every bit of the function, another company developed.
BUT – you still needed an apple II or IBM BIOS, which absolutely was subject to copyright law, or your super cheap clone computer wouldn’t be able to run like the corporate machine it was copying. So, at some point in the sale, I would say, “Now I can’t sell you this chip, and you definitely need it, but I am going to leave a phone number on the counter and turn away for a minute, and if you write it down and call that guy, you’ll be fine.” (and when I did visit that reclusive eprom-burning renegade at his apartment once, it truly was a wonderland – open chassis computers everywhere, connected to a mix of hilariously obsolete and cutting-edge gear – a first generation practical cyberpunk outlaw. (Back when “cosplay” would still get you punched in the face).
To give him credit, Gates did do some coding of his own, on the pathetic Algol, one of many early systems which tried and failed, before apple ultimately became the hit that proved the market. BUT – like I say, early computers lacked a killer app (obvious marketing strategy) and only when that emerged thanks to apple and visicalc in combination, did big money become interested in computing.
Naturally, with IBM already being the established corporate computing monopoly, they sought out the gold standard in software, for their own system – and contacted Gary Kildall directly. He did agree in principle to licence his excellent (still evolving) CP/M for the IBM PC, but wanted to be well paid for it.
The corporate lawyers from IBM (very CIA adjacent in mindset and approach, at the time) got to work, thing is, they showed-up on a day when he wasn’t there (gone flying, another sympathetic obsession) and they told his wife and business partner Dorothy that she would have to sign their non-disclosure agreement, before they even showed her the proposed contract that they had worked out.
She refused to sign it, until he could read it too (very sensible, they were rare at the time, but almost always very nasty legal traps, with the trickery buried in the fine print). IBM were not best pleased.
Thing is, Kildall was never the monopolist that Gates was from the start, so he had already licensed key parts of his system to other manufacturers, to give them a boost. Paul Allen, the almost invisible early partner of Gates, negotiated with that other manufacturer, to buy those rights for microsoft, who then licensed them to IBM. To get away with this, IBM did have to offer Kildall’s CP/M system also, but they made the microsoft (inferior rip-off) version forty bucks, and CP/M over two hundred, so no one developed software for CP/M on the IBM and we all got stuck with MSDOS instead (blech!)
Kildall did keep going, even after his business was essentially stolen (though he also got more resentful, and his eventual alcoholism may have contributed to his early death, in what may have been an accident, or may have been a biker bar-fight, over the wearing of inappropriate ‘colours’).
But the last time he was well known it was as the co-host of “Computer Chronicles” on PBS (back when it was actually smart as hell and informative – so long ago now as to be beyond describing).
So – the nice guy doing the real innovation and best work is forgotten by history, while the greed-head who doesn’t care about quality (I haven’t seen a known-bug count for windows lately, but for many early years it was somewhere in the forty thousand range) rises to the top and gets power over the whole industry.
Sort of tempting to say that within apple, Wozniak was the real Kildall and Jobs overrated, even though his weird pickiness did contribute a lot to the aesthetic standard of computing (something which Gates’ own efforts prove he would never have spent money on, unless forced by competition).
Okay sure but – ‘killer app’ is about business markets and capital strategies – keeners are different. Some people get into music because they want to be rock stars and have sex with strangers, but for some there is no further reward required to drive them – the music IS the call and the full reward. Computers (and a surprising number of other STEM subjects also) are just the same – there is a siren call within them, not heard by many who work in those fields, but common to all great innovators.
So what about those really fun and funky customers, who, on a good day, really made that dumb salesman job feel worth-it? The people who had no practical concrete business-sensible reason to own a computer at all, but just happened to be insanely curious about everything? (my natural tribe)
My friends, they were into EVERYTHING – especially all of the potential links of mutual advantage.
I avoided the early years of social media. It seemed like a whole lot of sound and fury, signifying very little deep thought indeed, until it finally subsumed all other forms of discourse and forced me to engage or go silent. But I did watch the early cultural flowering of the Bulletin Board Systems with great enthusiasm, and I swear the pattern is much older than that still. (New media is always tech).
Perhaps the single most frustrating thing about the so-called “left” this century (ninety percent fakes, I insist) and over the last decade or so especially, is their extraordinary levels of denial and dishonesty. Factionalism, it has been very clearly shown, is now far more powerful than any combination of memory or principles, for millions of certain (ignorant) moralizing fools (very sad, but again, anything but new).
The wild mix of alternative ideas which were being energetically debated on the left and right in the early 80s had a huge and at the time well recognized overlap. Many still understood in common that the perverted state itself was always the most frightening threat, and respect for common rights for citizens was the only proven balance – and even that worked only if it was defended widely – not by tiny numbers of sub-factionalists, showing up only for their personal favourite custom-vitriol events.
Vaccine skepticism? That one was almost one hundred percent left at the time and for decades after (organic macrobiotic, allopathic skepticism, etc). The idea that personal taxation in general and the IRS in particular represented a fundamental undermining of citizens rights, in clear violation of constitutional intent, was mostly held on the right (though that overlap grew fast, when we asked why does the fed, instead of congress, control the supply of money, and in whose interests?) It is also worth remembering (as libertarians in particular, do) that when the federal reserve was first proposed, many BANKERS across the USA opposed the plan bitterly, because they said (quite correctly, as it turned out) that this would put control of the whole national economy (and huge influence over the world economy) into the hands of a tiny incestuous club of New York bankers, whose operations were the most cruel and rapacious (already rent-seeking, a century ago) of any banks in the entire nation.
History keeners reminded us then (and ever since) that income tax was proposed as “An Emergency War Measure” which they understood citizens all saw as a fundamental violation of rights – but was needed because we have to smite those Krauts! See: eternally suicidal Europe, right the heck now.
It was almost entirely leftists (back then) who said “Smash the State” and wanted to Abolish NATO, because they recognized that the cold war, while used by both sides for social control, delivered huge corporate profits to the USA capitalist system (that is, sent taxpayer money to weapons makers), while for the Soviets, the costs of arms came always at the direct expense of their civil society.
Last time I mentioned the large-scale societal disruption which was so widespread in the cold-war world, that it came to seem (to us, who were indoctrinated into it) like a kind of normalcy – even though it was clear at every stage (and despite all dogmatic framing) that it never quite worked, multi-generationally.
You can’t consume your way to freedom, purpose, duty or love. You can’t exploit others ruthlessly, right up to the limits of the law, and thereby create community and good enduring works for others. Most of all, you can’t live a rich human life if you think of other people as things to use, hard no on that one.
I will attach a very old link below (if I can find it) of a wild little rant from Danny Sugarman, which perfectly captures the hopeful (and yet in retrospect, hopelessly naive and misguided) rebel spirit of the 1960s and the way it crested then collapsed into the narcissistic let-down of the 1970s (mass retreat from chilling demonstrations of state force and mass juvenile cop-out, in equal measure).
The funny thing is, despite his personal association with a famous icon of the time, when it comes to talking about the spirit people felt (and how that made big change feel possible, for an exciting moment) we mostly have to rely on personal witness like his, or funny and surreal stories from our grandparents (if we’re lucky).
But when it comes to the grand scale – thinking about the whole world as an interconnected thing (which it is) where pretty much every change you make, changes something else you didn’t expect – we almost never talk about the shape of a positive vision. Almost as if hope itself is obsolete (and some crazy moralist rationalizers even take it so far as to say – we caused this mess – so we deserve disaster and hopelessness!)
My math-head is sympathetic to the assertion that we set into motion consequences, which now have an almost thermodynamic inevitability to them – but that is about function, not moralizing for purposes of arrogance or self-flagellation (also always arrogance, only adding willfully pathetic to the already foul mix!)
BUT the whole point of the rule of law (which was always about limiting, not seeking, revenge) which really is the fundamental underpinning of civilization, is that you either do it with principle, or you don’t get it. (and by “it” I mean civilization).
As I’ve mentioned many times before, Adam Smith, Marx and many other thinkers who continue to influence the shape of the world were all profoundly influenced by a grotesque (Victorian supremacist) misunderstanding of the work of revolutionary systems-scientists like Darwin.
Survival of the fittest was not a justification of the rule of nobles (or a declaration of war on them, since only one faction could triumph) it was always an observation about fit and well adapted COMMUNITIES, not individuals.
AND when we supposedly sapiens primates actually do use our best strategies to advantage entire communities – that is, feed them work and hope and decent food and good education – the communities grow themselves into the basis of a healthy society very naturally. People actually like peace and basic prosperity (hope-adequate) – a lot.
Win-win is actually the best play in pretty much every large balancing situation, create reasons for everyone to like the balance, and you have achieved policy which is both widely useful, and will be widely defended – and so stable enough to do long term work. (impossible to perfect that recipe, I know, but surely the goal).
The problem is that win-win distributes power and benefits more widely, and for some who enjoy the concentration of power, and use the concentration to suck money out of societies (financialization) all genuinely helpful policy of this kind is a threat – whether it is demanded by the left or the right!
They want us to live in eternal scarcity, precarity fear and dependance. To them, social collapse means fantastic profits! The point of big media propaganda is to convince us our team was really asking for heaven on earth, and only got cheated by finks, whereas their team is after purest hell, and must be stopped, all trace of principle be damned!
Our PEOPLE may be asking for heaven (or closer to) on both sides. Our politicians? Really not so much!
All of the new and progressive social ideas which the now corrupted left (call it whatever you will, if woke offends) has increasingly, ever since the time of Clinton, sought to use institutions of state power to promote as ‘the new normal’ arose in the first place, in direct unified political defiance of state power. THATS WHY THEY HAD REBEL ENERGY (and why they don’t have any of it left, now, just dogma and bleating).
Power enshittifies – absolute (cooption and corruption by) power enshittifies absolutely!
This exact same whipsaw thing is happening, faster than it ever has before, for millions of once-hopeful people on the right.
What they actually sincerely meant as hope (not “hate” as bourgeois propagandists insist) is being perverted toward that very caricature they resisted, in search of a break with our deeply corrupted pattern. This isn’t the revolution they were asking for (nor were Clinton/Obama/Biden any help at all to the sincere and humane people on the left).
Time for a new basis for cooperation and a new movement, broader than any in almost a century. We can’t beg the aristocracy for our rights, we must claim them together.
Now let me explain my title (and the reason for my ramble around recent, yet already murky history).
The range of ideas which are being talked about by various people in the new Trump administration aren’t new at all, and they aren’t all aligned hard-right either. They come from all over the spectrum, libertarians and leftist economists, cliquish intellectual rebels and outsider policy thinkers. The whole clubhouse, all at once.
They are the kinds of ideas you might be tempted to try, if your entire economic system was collapsing fast, and you knew you needed to find a new and different footing to survive, but had no idea at all what that footing was.
Now – to be clear – the way they are being implemented – tariffs and war plans in particular – pretty much destroys any potential value the ideas might have contained if done with wisdom and balance. But that is still a very different thing from dismissing them as entire categories of argument. It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it, really counts, when it comes to idealism driven policy.
Any five bored kids on the corner could as easily stimulate each other into forming a whole new school of art or thought, or a formidable and destructive street gang. The principles we apply are crucial.
For my chums on the left who still get irritated when they hear someone say “Woke” is bad or dumb, please understand, “Woke” absolutely did demand speech control and loyalty oaths (diversity statements) and purged many institutions relentlessly, using one-sided hopelessly dogmatic abuses of power.
Please don’t get stuck arguing about the content – the biggest problem was always that it opposed common principles and the right to dissent, which the left had relied upon and supported for decades – in favour of tribalist power dynamics – even in realms where that middle class tribe never worked!
My long time readers will remember that I criticized Obama (at the time) for normalizing extra-judicial drone assassinations (look up “Murder Tuesdays” sometime) and thus handing that grotesque tool (and intense contempt for law and due process) on, to all succeeding presidents, in their turn.
Be clear – the idea that the way we’ve been doing things was great (because we had trained ourselves to ignore the murder, false scarcity and thwarted potential, it was always based on) is crazy. Like Boomers going “Can’t we just go back to confiscating the future of all subsequent generations again – that was working out great for us.” NO WE CAN’T (and also, no we won’t).
This is why I keep insisting that DENIAL is what my friends on the left have to work hardest on – and please hurry it up, will you? If you can’t admit you were wrong to hold principle in second place, after tribalism, then you aren’t yet fit as allies, for the millions on the right who are already regretting voting for Donald Trump – not because they disagree with what he said, but because he ain’t doing that!
The left campaigned against principle, and for using the system to correct morality, society wide – that was an evil tool to introduce to the fight, with that intensity, but though the new government clearly does, many citizens on the right do not want to pick up that weapon and use it back – they want a return to common rights, a fair playing field and constitutional guarantees against state power.
They actually believed the principled criticism of the harms of leftist tribalism, denials and power plays, and as they become dissafected by the completely incoherent implementation of a whole encyclopedia full of (contradictory anyhow) ideas, they will be looking for a new path to principle.
BE READY (sane, humble and open to learning enough) TO DESERVE TO BE THEIR ALLIES.
Or else get used to being “The System” that everyone with a brain heart and humour wants to defeat.
“But I’m a rebel” doesn’t count for shit anymore. We all are – and we ought to have bothered to notice that a society of nothing but egotistic rebels does not work! (if it was going to work, it would have by now). That experiment has been run – like Soviet Communism – TRIED and FAILED – MOVE ON!
Not to an endless mind-numbing idiotic slap-fight, but to actual freakin’ hope – for a change!
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’ll share one story link only today – because it is way out there, well beyond hilarious.
What kind of a guy is our new prime minister Mark Carney? The kind of a guy who runs a tax shelter for oligarchs and pension funds with hundreds of billions under management FROM THE FIFTH FLOOR OF A TWO STOREY BUILDING! And if that doesn’t tell you who he is, you ain’t been paying attention. Electing Carney would be electing our closest possible Trump equivalent – a rich greedy asshole who has spent his life representing rich assholes, and making money for and with them.
Want to see the evidence (rather pretty invisible fifth floor, I will give him that). Here’s the local news version.
Now I began by noting that I’m way behind in my essay reading, but I have been watching a few really great discussions lately, between incredibly smart people with very unusual perspectives.
The funniest thing about this mix is that I have several people who are life-long conservatives (ex CIA no less), saying things that my socialist comrades from the eighties would have outright cheered – and then I also have some super well informed leftist thinkers who have enough knowledge of history and economics to understand the difference between the ideas, and their ruinously bad implementation (“I have nothing against tariffs, as a general idea, however...” one laughs).
Zero idiots, anyhow (and isn’t that a more tempting promise than anything idealogical, these days?)
Enjoy!
One thing I value more than ever, is smart people with rare information and witness who can debate without bile, and hosts and thinkers who encourage civility and learning so we get maximum information, minimum emotionally manipulative and mutual-understanding-destroying infotainment.
Nima Alkhorshid is one my current heroes for his always civil forum, with always interesting guests.
Judge Napolitano continues to have many truly fantastic interviews, and Danny Davis is inspiring for his insider military knowledge and his principled courage as well as smart thinking guests, but people like Nima (and the superb Alex Christoforu, Alexander Mercouris and Glenn Diesen at the Duran) bring us many fine and stimulating insights about the increasingly mad state of the world, without making us grind our teeth with stress the whole time (if I see one more clip of Lindsay freakin’ Graham sneering for war, I may just punch a hole in the (concrete) wall!)
Anyhow – like I say, you’ll love Nima – and Pepe Escobar, perhaps even more so – IN YEMEN, no less!
Here’s Nima again with two of my favourite wise old grandfatherly geopolitical thinkers (if your grandpa happened to be a cold war intelligence analyst, that is)
Here’s the much younger Danny Haiphong who has great guests, higher energy, selective pronunciation (either skipped or overstressed T’s – definitely generational) but a great sense of principle, scope and mission (an old style anti-war internationalist – a type much missed by many – so good to know they’re still making new ones!) He talks here to the amazing Brian Berletic – who is also impressive for being so young, and yet so full of knowledge. This one is a great counterweight to some especially loud senior international analysts, who have gone cold and cynical since Trump proved he never meant the particular ten percent of his message that gave them the most hope.
Seriously – smart and political young people who aren’t full of shit – Hope for survival, for sure!
Here is an especially wild ride for my fellow Canadians. I’ve shared several superb essays from Matt Ehret and his wife Cynthia Chung (from their Rising Tide Foundation) before – both are brilliant, scholarly and VERY unconventional thinkers – way outside simplistic boxes like left and right. This long form discussion with the two Alexes of the Duran is extraordinary. Ehret says several things which are absolute blasphemy for many Canadians, and yet still finds his way to a sincere nationalist vision which is not about being a subsurvient and suppressed toady for any empire, but instead participating in the internationalist future with vigor!
To be clear, I still have a lot of digging to do (several conclusions raise new questions) but for those who know a lot of Canadian history, he draws many thrilling new connections which explain much that is otherwise opaque – and for those who know nothing about us at all, you will never think Canadian history is boring again!
Here’s the Duran’s other star thinker, Glenn Diesen talking to Professor Michael Hudson (one of my favourite economists) about the mess Europe is in, and how much worse they are making it. (What I keep saying – TWO THINGS AT ONCE – right now – the enemy of our enemy IS ALSO OUR ENEMY).
Here’s the link for Alex Christoforu – he does great daily walks, talking about the state of the world (again – a really friendly relaxing way to take in information which is stressful enough, as it is).
https://www.youtube.com/@AlexChristoforou
And here’s his partner Alexander Mercouris – who makes sense of the latest confusion in a long piece every single day, and adds much to the news from his own wide experience and erudition. Pretty much all the reality big news wants you to ignore.
https://www.youtube.com/@AlexMercouris
And for a last-minute add (haven’t even watched it yet, but I know he can be relied upon) I should also share Judge Napolitano, talking to (horrified, one presumes) economist Jeffrey Sachs. Always a great pairing (and Alestair Crooke on mondays remains a must-watch briefing)
For anyone who doesn’t believe me, when I say they don’t know what AI is really for yet, try going to youtube without signing-in to your profile sometime – and just check out the deluge of AI slop, which is rapidly displacing the thoughtful and intentional culture made by human beings in every general category I can find.
So far, the one thing the great digital super-mind created from the sum knowledge of humanity seems to be absolutely sure of, is that the future will be retro, heavily cyan and magenta – and all the women in it will have n+1 cup breasts! ("You'll poke your eye out, kid!").
Which just says so damn much about the dream of the ‘world wide web’ as repository of all human wisdom, eh?
Finally – here is that truly spectacular Danny Sugarman rant (so glad it’s still online) – talking about the rebel spirit of the sixties, Jim Morrison and the great big candy coloured copout which followed that moment of promise and false certainty.
For my chums on the right with revolutionary spirit, there is a ton to learn here, from old mistakes.
(repeats twice – actual rant is only seven minutes and change)