Interview: "Savior and Seducer" by Thaddeus Russell | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas

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Hey there, you're watching DeProgram with
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Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas. We're very pleased
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to be joined today by Thaddeus Russell. He's
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a historian, the host of the Unregistered podcast,
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and the founder of Unregistered Academy. Born
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and raised in Berkeley, California. Russell graduated
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from Antioch College. That's from my old stomping
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grounds. I grew up in Dayton. And received a
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PhD in history from Columbia University, where
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I got my bachelor's degree. He's the author of
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Out of the Jungle and A Renegade History of the
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United States. He's been a professor of history
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at Columbia University, Barnard College, Eugene
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Lang College, the New School for Social Research,
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Occidental College, and Willamette University.
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And he lives in California. He is also the author,
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most notably here, of Savior and Seducer: A
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Renegade History of the United States in the
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World. This is a sequel to a prior volume, just
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A Renegade History of the United States. And
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this one, obviously, from the title, the focus
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is on America's relationship going back all the
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way to the colonial era in terms of its foreign
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policy. And so we're going to sort of, the way
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Jamarl and I like to do it is we kind of switch
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back and forth to ask questions. And Thaddeus,
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thank you so much for joining us. Oh, thank you
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so much for having me. This is great. So we
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so I love the book. I was wondering, the
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first thing that leapt out at
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me in terms of as a big surprise was sort
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of the colonial settlement of Maryland.
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So basically we have this, the
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well, maybe the central thesis of the book. Correct
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me if I'm mistaken or getting any of this
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wrong, is that the United States basically has
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a good cop, bad cop approach to the world. And
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it kind of basically breaks down like this. Going
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even to the British colonial era, we have an
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aggressive, often militaristic, thuggish foreign
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policy that involves neocolonialism and so on.
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But it's aggressive. And it's very
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sort of our way or the highway. That's the savior,
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kind of like we want, we're here, we're
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the exceptional nation, shining nation, shining
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city on a hill. We're trying to show the rest
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of the world how it's done. We're the
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great light that the world should follow. And
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then, on the other hand, you have the seducer
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side, the side that exports so many great movies
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and so much pop culture, so much great music.
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And also, basically that's the fun side, the
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seductive side, the sensual side. And that part
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seems to be generally, generically more effective
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in terms of spreading American influence. The
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soft power is better than the hard power. If
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that's correct, and please again correct me if
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I saw you shaking your head a little bit.
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But tell us about sort of the
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how far back this goes, because sort of the
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mainstream view of American history is that we
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didn't become a seriously outward-looking power
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until the Spanish-American War and Theodore Roosevelt.
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And before that is all prequel. And even the
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prequel is kind of like you have to go to the
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Barbary States. But we were not an aggressively
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external, external exporting power kind of
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society until at least American independence.
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Yeah. So that's a great introduction, and thank
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you for that. And the only thing I quibble with,
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or I just want to make it more nuanced, is the
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use of the term thuggish. So I'm sure you noticed
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that I take great pains to be very, very clear
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about exactly how much death and destruction
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the United States has visited upon the world,
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because it's very important to me for people
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to actually know and, if possible, feel the effects
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of empire, American imperialism. However, I
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don't call it thuggish, and I wouldn't call it
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thuggish, believe it or not, in its intent. The
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intent comes from the first word in the title,
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the savior. The savior, you could call it a complex.
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The savior complex of, and this is not an exaggeration,
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every single American foreign policymaker until
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Donald Trump. Trump is different. And we can
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talk about him. That's the epilogue is devoted
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largely to him. But until Donald Trump,
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beginning with the founding fathers and
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all the way through Abraham Lincoln, not just
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during the Spanish-American War, the
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United States political leadership has been uniquely
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committed to the idea that our nation was determined
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by God to uplift, reform, and essentially Christianize
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the world, Americanize the world. We, meaning
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speaking for the American political leaders,
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have always believed it in our souls.
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Presidents and senators, the foreign policymakers,
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State Department officials, et cetera, believed
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in our souls that we are obligated to be the
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world's savior, policeman, father. If we find
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out any, I'm sure, and I'm speaking of the
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American policy elite, right? If we as the elite
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find out that there's some oppressed, as we see
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it, impoverished people somewhere in the world,
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the national religion has been, it is our duty
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to go save them. Now, the problem is, of course,
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that in virtually every single case, maybe every
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single case, there has been some opposition to
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another country coming in and reforming the place.
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And so that has meant that to save these people
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in these other countries who are benighted, oppressed
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under the thumb of some dictator, we've had to
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kill a lot of people to do it. And in fact, we've
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had to kill a lot of the people we are purportedly
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trying to save. This is not news to either of
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you, I'm sure, nor to your audience, right? But
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I think that the anti-war movement, and I think
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the left in particular, has been a bit off on
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that. They tend to, and I devote a section that
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we can talk about this, think about American
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wars as somehow the product of capitalism or
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some kind of greed. There have been, of course,
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American politicians who have been driven by
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greed. They often end up in prison on corruption
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charges. But I am here to tell you, and this
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is what I think the book has more than enough
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evidence to show, that in every single case,
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and this is from Thomas Jefferson to George Washington,
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Abraham Lincoln to Woodrow Wilson and the rest.
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Nah, they really believe this stuff. They really
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in their heart believe that it was their duty
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given to them by God. This is the way they spoke
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incessantly to go raise up to make the Filipinos
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into Americans, to make the Germans into Americans,
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to make the Japanese into Americans, to make
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Iraqis and Vietnamese into Afghanis into Americans.
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Right. In almost no case did the presidents and
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senators gain any economic advantage, by the
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way, from these foreign policies. Dick Cheney
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is the most famous example that's used and trotted
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out. He actually divested all of his holdings
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in Halliburton before they went to war in Iraq.
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George W. Bush could have made many, many, many
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millions of dollars just resting on his parents'
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businesses and fortunes, but instead he chose
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to become president with a salary of, what is
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it, half a million dollars a year or whatever
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it was? So, no. These guys, there are greedy,
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rapacious capitalists, of course, but they tend
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not to run for president or senator. These guys
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uniformly have believed in their hearts. It has
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been their duty to be imperialists. So that's
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the savior part. And then the seducer part. So
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that's why I don't call it thuggish, right? The
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intent is not thuggishness. We all here see them
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as being. To me, I don't care what your
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intent is. If you come and bomb my house, I still
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think you're a thug. I completely understand
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that. But I think it's time to analyze why the
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bombing of the houses across the world has happened.
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We have to understand what was in the heads and
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hearts, really, of the men, and it's almost always
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been men, who have determined these policies.
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So that's the savior part. And then the seducer
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part, yeah, you nailed it. And this is where
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the book is almost totally original. The book
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has two arguments. One is this critique of
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imperialism, which has sort of the blowback thesis,
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which your audience will vibe with, I'm sure,
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with no problem. The popular culture piece is
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largely untold, and half the book is devoted
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to this. Yes, since really the blackface minstrels
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in the 1830s started doing their thing, American
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popular culture has been wildly popular around
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the world. Again, this is not news, I'm sure,
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either. Although the extent of it might be news,
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because as I said, it started deep in the 19th
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century. It's not a recent phenomenon in Michael
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Jackson and Madonna. It goes all the way back.
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So that has been not the intention of American
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foreign policymakers. They have all been puritanical,
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by the way, and have disliked almost uniformly
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American popular culture, especially American
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popular culture that emanates from black culture,
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which has been the center, I argue, of what I
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call the renegade culture that has liberated
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much of the world. They hate that stuff. There
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have been Senate hearings devoted to the evils
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of rock and roll led by John F. Kennedy and Barry
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Goldwater. Notice that. John F. Kennedy, the
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hero of liberals, and Barry Goldwater, the arch
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conservative, whatever you want to call him,
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were united in their hatred of rock and roll.
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This was 1957. The Senate under them held hearings
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about, as I said, the evils of rock and roll
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and how it should be banned. But all the while,
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the United States is invading countries, shooting
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up villages, bombing towns. This stuff, completely
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voluntarily, purely consensually, other people
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in the world have been bringing it in, consuming
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it, largely loving it. And that music, those
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movies, those styles, the fashions have represented
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to the rulers in their countries also an existential
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threat. Because if you want it, it doesn't matter
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what your ideology is. You need your people.
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If you're a dictator or even a democratic president,
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you need the citizenry to be disciplined, orderly,
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follow the law, follow your authority. Rock and
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roll, jazz, blues, dancing, disco, Marilyn Monroe
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all militate against that. We don't, we're
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not interested in following people's orders or
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necessarily following the law if we're dancing
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if we're listening to music. So for
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200 plus years this dual thing's been going on
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where the government, the national government
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has been going abroad waging war to uplift the
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peoples. Meanwhile, the peoples in those other
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countries have been consuming Jay-Z and the
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rulers in their countries have been cracking
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down on Jay-Z, cracking down on Louis Armstrong,
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cracking down on Hollywood and all the rest of
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it. And then I have examples, as you know, in
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the book from nationalist China, communist China,
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the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan,
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Egypt, Islamic Algeria. Every single case, in
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every single case, those governments have sought
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to eradicate what they called the virus of American
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popular culture. So what I am, the political
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sort of, I guess, what I'm, the implicit political
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statement, I guess I'm making with this book
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is, let's not send our troops abroad. Let's keep
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our defense as a defense. It's never been a defense,
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by the way, the American military has not for
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one second in its history been a defensive military,
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never once fought a defensive war in any way,
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shape or form. Let's keep it actually at home
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inside the borders as a truly defensive military.
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And it's not about changing policy vis-a-vis
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the popular culture. It's simply about letting
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it flow, getting out of the way of artists, musicians,
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all the rest to do their thing and including
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capitalists. Yes. That's part of the
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deal, is that to get these things exported and
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distributed, you need sort of a capitalist structure
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to do that. Just let the people make their freedom.
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Let the people make their freedom felt. Let their
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freedom be distributed across the world. And
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I think we'll be living in a better world in
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which people don't hate America and don't want
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to fly airplanes into our buildings. And we will
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no longer be at war. So that's the political
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message of the book. Thank you so much. No, that's
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a great breakdown. A great thesis in regards
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to the breakdown. I agree with you on the second
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point. This idea that American culture is infectious,
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it's insidious, and you can see it in a foreign
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policy thing, right? When Putin comes out and is
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talking about Christian values.
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He's aiming that. That's not the homosexuality
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of these things. Immigration and the change that
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immigration brings to the countries. When they're
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having this conversation, they're having this
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conversation in many cases about this cultural
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issue that they see as being somewhat insidious
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into their countries. Now, I agree with you on
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this. First part of it, I'm slightly more dubious.
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And let me explain why. That's surprising. Okay.
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I love it. I love it. I love it. I love the argument.
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The argument makes sense. The issue is, I think,
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more than anything else, I don't believe that
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these people believe this stuff. If you want
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to go back, just let me make my point. In the
00:14:51.100 --> 00:14:54.279
very beginning, revolutionary spirit is usually
00:14:54.279 --> 00:14:56.980
infectious. And people believe that stuff in
00:14:56.980 --> 00:14:59.059
the very beginning. But at a certain point, there's
00:14:59.059 --> 00:15:02.539
a turn. The Department of War was first
00:15:02.539 --> 00:15:05.019
named, honestly. At some point, it became the
00:15:05.019 --> 00:15:06.779
Department of Defense. And as you point out,
00:15:06.899 --> 00:15:08.820
that's not because they were using it for defense.
00:15:09.370 --> 00:15:11.649
They were using it in the same way of this kind of
00:15:11.649 --> 00:15:14.389
aggressive foreign policy but they coded it with
00:15:14.389 --> 00:15:16.769
language. They didn't do it openly. So it's the
00:15:16.769 --> 00:15:19.029
Department of Defense. Everything is now defense.
00:15:19.029 --> 00:15:22.110
We're defending the stuff. I agree with you that
00:15:22.110 --> 00:15:23.809
Trump comes back and is more honest and it's
00:15:23.809 --> 00:15:25.210
the Department of War. We're killing
00:15:25.210 --> 00:15:27.730
people. Let's call it what it is. We're going to
00:15:27.730 --> 00:15:29.629
call this the Department of War. My point of view
00:15:29.629 --> 00:15:31.470
is, yes, that's more honest. Let's go with
00:15:31.470 --> 00:15:35.509
that. I don't like the dishonesty of it. When
00:15:35.509 --> 00:15:41.539
I think there is a differential between politicians
00:15:41.539 --> 00:15:45.039
with a geopolitical expansionary interest, meaning
00:15:45.039 --> 00:15:47.340
I'm not in this necessarily to get rich. I'm
00:15:47.340 --> 00:15:49.139
in this because I want to expand America's
00:15:51.159 --> 00:15:54.139
influence. Expand America's what? I missed the word. I want
00:15:54.139 --> 00:15:55.899
to expand America's influence across the world,
00:15:55.960 --> 00:15:58.259
meaning they have it in their mind. Joe Biden,
00:15:58.440 --> 00:16:00.740
whether he was out of his mind or not, fully
00:16:00.740 --> 00:16:04.440
understood we need to go at Russia. He didn't
00:16:04.440 --> 00:16:06.799
know anything else to do that. That's not because
00:16:06.799 --> 00:16:08.759
he was necessarily getting rich. That was because
00:16:08.759 --> 00:16:12.539
in his mind, he had this idea of American expansion.
00:16:12.539 --> 00:16:15.799
This is what I'm here to do. This is my job. But
00:16:15.799 --> 00:16:17.679
the people who are giving Joe Biden money certainly
00:16:17.679 --> 00:16:20.679
know full well that they want to get their hands
00:16:20.679 --> 00:16:23.100
on Russian resources. Oh, this is what I guess
00:16:23.100 --> 00:16:24.840
I'm quibbling with. This maybe this is semantics.
00:16:24.840 --> 00:16:27.580
There are people who are putting money in politicians'
00:16:27.580 --> 00:16:29.580
pocket to do exactly what they're doing from
00:16:29.580 --> 00:16:32.240
the expansionary standpoint. They're not in that
00:16:32.240 --> 00:16:34.480
with this idea of we're doing this for the betterment
00:16:34.480 --> 00:16:36.429
of people. They're in this. We're in it because
00:16:36.429 --> 00:16:38.309
we want to get Russian resources. And if we can
00:16:38.309 --> 00:16:40.110
split Russia up in a particular way, we can get
00:16:40.110 --> 00:16:42.169
our hands on those resources. Same thing with
00:16:42.169 --> 00:16:44.129
Venezuela, same thing with any other random country
00:16:44.129 --> 00:16:47.529
where the U.S. had initiated either attempts
00:16:47.529 --> 00:16:49.289
at overthrowing their governments, like in Venezuela
00:16:49.289 --> 00:16:52.669
with Hugo Chavez. All of the wars that took place
00:16:52.669 --> 00:16:54.230
that the U.S. was involved in, either under
00:16:54.230 --> 00:16:58.429
Reagan from this idea of the Iran-Contra affair,
00:16:58.590 --> 00:17:00.490
or even overthrow of the governments in South
00:17:00.490 --> 00:17:02.370
America that were taking place where we're knocking
00:17:02.370 --> 00:17:04.009
over Chile, knocking over Honduras, knocking
00:17:04.009 --> 00:17:07.339
over these countries. They weren't
00:17:07.339 --> 00:17:09.079
doing that because they were helping the natives.
00:17:09.079 --> 00:17:11.299
They full well understood that this was about
00:17:11.299 --> 00:17:14.019
resources. I don't believe that in the full moment
00:17:14.019 --> 00:17:15.980
that in their minds they were thinking we're
00:17:15.980 --> 00:17:18.869
doing this to help. They may have used the language
00:17:18.869 --> 00:17:21.289
of that where liberals are more inclined to be
00:17:21.289 --> 00:17:23.430
dropping bombs in order to
00:17:23.430 --> 00:17:26.390
save people, whereas right-wingers are less
00:17:26.390 --> 00:17:29.049
inclined to use that language. But both were going
00:17:29.049 --> 00:17:32.029
in the same direction in regards to policy regardless
00:17:32.029 --> 00:17:34.190
of how they talked about it. You really believe
00:17:34.190 --> 00:17:36.980
that in their minds, they thought we're here
00:17:36.980 --> 00:17:40.140
to help the people as we fleece those people.
00:17:40.259 --> 00:17:42.680
The money we stole from Iran. I'm sorry, from
00:17:42.680 --> 00:17:44.400
Iraq and oil. The money we stole from Venezuela.
00:17:44.880 --> 00:17:51.069
This was before. Yeah. So fantastic point. And
00:17:51.069 --> 00:17:56.369
it requires at least a two-part response. So.
00:17:57.380 --> 00:18:02.960
So, number one, the accumulation of resources
00:18:03.740 --> 00:18:06.660
from other countries has always been sent just
00:18:06.660 --> 00:18:08.579
for on its own sake, for its own sake, just the
00:18:08.579 --> 00:18:11.559
economic power the United States has gained from
00:18:11.559 --> 00:18:13.240
its imperialism. I think we need to use that
00:18:13.240 --> 00:18:15.119
word, by the way. I hope that's OK. To
00:18:15.119 --> 00:18:18.000
me, that's just the only word that really explains
00:18:18.000 --> 00:18:24.480
American foreign policy. So they have always
00:18:24.480 --> 00:18:28.660
understood that to be the savior nation, to send
00:18:28.660 --> 00:18:32.109
our troops here, there and everywhere. To occupy
00:18:32.109 --> 00:18:34.450
foreign countries, essentially colonize them,
00:18:34.509 --> 00:18:37.680
to remake them, to save them, we've needed to
00:18:37.680 --> 00:18:42.730
be a rich nation. We cannot be a rich nation
00:18:42.730 --> 00:18:44.690
and do that. We can't accomplish that without
00:18:44.690 --> 00:18:47.529
being the wealthiest nation. So that's always
00:18:47.529 --> 00:18:49.309
been at the forefront of foreign policymakers'
00:18:49.670 --> 00:18:51.869
minds. We've got to accumulate, too, as we're
00:18:51.869 --> 00:18:56.200
raging across the world. But that has always
00:18:56.200 --> 00:18:59.369
been in the service, as I said, of the greater
00:18:59.369 --> 00:19:01.170
goal, and this is in the minds of the presidents
00:19:01.170 --> 00:19:04.940
I'm talking about, serve the greater goal of
00:19:04.940 --> 00:19:09.349
uplifting the world. That's number one. Number
00:19:09.349 --> 00:19:11.329
two, actually, it's a three-part response. Number
00:19:11.329 --> 00:19:17.130
two is that there is a section in chapter five,
00:19:17.269 --> 00:19:20.609
I believe, where I talk about capitalism and
00:19:20.609 --> 00:19:24.269
its relationship to imperialism. And I believe
00:19:24.269 --> 00:19:29.240
that Lenin was wrong about this, his famous
00:19:29.240 --> 00:19:35.019
theory published in 1916 that imperialism is
00:19:35.019 --> 00:19:38.200
the highest product essentially of capitalism,
00:19:38.380 --> 00:19:40.059
that capitalism produces imperialism because
00:19:40.059 --> 00:19:43.059
capitalism chronically overproduces for domestic
00:19:43.059 --> 00:19:45.460
markets, forcing the nation states to then go
00:19:45.460 --> 00:19:48.359
outward to find new markets to offload their
00:19:48.359 --> 00:19:55.059
surplus. There's a handful of statements by presidents.
00:19:55.420 --> 00:19:58.869
I actually can only think of one. McKinley did
00:19:58.869 --> 00:20:01.009
say that in 1898, but he said a lot of other
00:20:01.009 --> 00:20:02.890
things, too. That was one statement he did make,
00:20:02.970 --> 00:20:07.309
that seizing the Philippines was a route to the
00:20:07.309 --> 00:20:11.109
China market. Sure. But he mostly talked about
00:20:11.109 --> 00:20:13.430
the benevolent, he called it benevolent assimilation
00:20:13.430 --> 00:20:18.289
of the Filipinos. And they spent 40 years after
00:20:18.289 --> 00:20:22.200
1898 colonizing the Philippines. And it wasn't
00:20:22.200 --> 00:20:24.599
just a resource extraction project. In fact,
00:20:24.599 --> 00:20:26.539
they got very little in terms of resources from
00:20:26.539 --> 00:20:28.480
the Philippines. What they did was they spent
00:20:28.480 --> 00:20:31.559
untold millions of dollars over several decades
00:20:31.559 --> 00:20:34.920
establishing schools across the Philippines,
00:20:35.059 --> 00:20:37.980
bringing in teachers from the United States to
00:20:37.980 --> 00:20:40.859
teach Filipinos how to be Americans in various
00:20:40.859 --> 00:20:43.839
ways, how to dress properly, how to speak properly,
00:20:44.099 --> 00:20:47.630
how to have the Puritan work ethic. Girls should
00:20:47.630 --> 00:20:50.130
be learned to be mothers and wives, and boys
00:20:50.130 --> 00:20:53.089
should learn to be workers and soldiers, serve
00:20:53.759 --> 00:21:00.990
the United States. So capitalism, capitalists
00:21:00.990 --> 00:21:05.220
in this country at least, have, and there's lots
00:21:05.220 --> 00:21:07.720
of evidence I present in the book of this, have
00:21:07.720 --> 00:21:10.579
overwhelmingly, not totally, but overwhelmingly
00:21:10.579 --> 00:21:13.799
opposed every single American military conflict
00:21:13.799 --> 00:21:18.579
since 1898. Bankers, the banking class, Wall
00:21:18.579 --> 00:21:21.640
Street was uniformly opposed to the Spanish
00:21:21.640 --> 00:21:23.720
-American War, to the conquest of the Philippines,
00:21:23.859 --> 00:21:25.900
to the colonization of the Philippines. Andrew
00:21:25.900 --> 00:21:29.279
Carnegie founded, actually a bunch of bankers
00:21:29.279 --> 00:21:32.440
founded, the Anti-Imperialist League of 1898,
00:21:32.579 --> 00:21:34.759
the first anti-war organization in our country
00:21:34.759 --> 00:21:36.920
was the Anti-Imperialist League. And it was
00:21:36.920 --> 00:21:38.619
founded by a bunch of bankers in New York City
00:21:38.619 --> 00:21:44.420
and Boston. The banks, the oil companies, the
00:21:44.420 --> 00:21:49.380
oil companies in 1953 and 1954,
00:21:50.819 --> 00:21:53.880
they outrightly opposed the coup against Mossadegh
00:21:53.880 --> 00:21:57.720
in Iran. They told the British government and
00:21:57.720 --> 00:21:59.380
the American government, don't do it because
00:21:59.380 --> 00:22:01.359
all it's going to do is produce more blowback
00:22:01.359 --> 00:22:05.099
against us. There will be more attempts to nationalize
00:22:05.099 --> 00:22:08.299
our oil if you do this, if you wage a coup in
00:22:08.299 --> 00:22:11.289
the middle of the Middle East. And they were
00:22:11.289 --> 00:22:15.809
right, of course, about that. But the MI6 overruled
00:22:15.809 --> 00:22:17.890
them and convinced Eisenhower to do it anyway.
00:22:20.349 --> 00:22:23.990
Even the Iraq war. There were many, many large businessmen
00:22:23.990 --> 00:22:27.470
who came out in 2002, 2003, and even 2004 opposing
00:22:27.470 --> 00:22:30.170
the Iraq War for the same exact reasons. Not
00:22:30.170 --> 00:22:31.490
because they're great humanitarians, because
00:22:31.490 --> 00:22:34.349
it's bad for business to have war. You can't
00:22:34.349 --> 00:22:36.569
trade across borders when there's a war going
00:22:36.569 --> 00:22:39.609
on. So there's rational reasons. Now, there have
00:22:39.609 --> 00:22:43.549
been a handful of very important business sectors
00:22:43.549 --> 00:22:48.490
that have supported the wars. The sugar industry
00:22:48.490 --> 00:22:52.519
in 1898 was fine with invading Cuba and saving
00:22:52.519 --> 00:22:54.920
the sugar plantations owned by Americans but
00:22:54.920 --> 00:22:57.099
that was about it. And shipbuilding, shipbuilders
00:22:57.099 --> 00:22:59.819
too were for the war, but that was. Arms manufacturers
00:22:59.819 --> 00:23:02.740
have uniformly been in favor of every single
00:23:02.740 --> 00:23:05.400
American war of course for obvious economic reasons
00:23:05.400 --> 00:23:08.000
but they're basically alone. They're basically
00:23:08.000 --> 00:23:14.349
alone. So that's. So we need and that's
00:23:14.349 --> 00:23:16.690
never taken seriously. It's always just assumed
00:23:16.690 --> 00:23:18.430
that business, all the wars are for business's
00:23:18.430 --> 00:23:22.309
interests. Is a war for oil, that's just simply
00:23:22.309 --> 00:23:25.970
not true. I'll make those two
00:23:25.970 --> 00:23:29.140
points and send it back to you. No, I accept
00:23:29.140 --> 00:23:31.619
that. Okay. Look, I don't think all businessmen
00:23:31.619 --> 00:23:34.619
are the same. Business interests will
00:23:34.619 --> 00:23:36.839
diverge depending upon whether they can get some
00:23:36.839 --> 00:23:39.640
advantage off of it or not. Well, they all
00:23:39.640 --> 00:23:41.519
want profit. That's what
00:23:41.519 --> 00:23:43.839
makes them. Exactly. That's kind of, I guess
00:23:43.839 --> 00:23:46.029
that's my point. Whether they take advantage of
00:23:46.029 --> 00:23:47.450
it or where they can't be, whether they're going
00:23:47.450 --> 00:23:49.480
to be disadvantaged. It's going to make a large
00:23:49.480 --> 00:23:50.980
decision on whether or not they're going to be
00:23:50.980 --> 00:23:53.500
for war or against the war. I guess I'm trying
00:23:53.500 --> 00:23:56.049
to point out that there are two strains of American
00:23:56.049 --> 00:23:58.809
foreign policy. You have this capitalist element
00:23:58.809 --> 00:24:02.170
that wants profit and you have this geopolitical
00:24:02.170 --> 00:24:05.910
expansionist element. Both dovetail in U.S.
00:24:05.930 --> 00:24:08.089
policy. I don't think it's one or the other.
00:24:08.150 --> 00:24:10.210
I think it's both. And maybe you can call it
00:24:10.210 --> 00:24:13.950
the savior complex. But I think I don't get the
00:24:13.950 --> 00:24:17.650
sense that these at 3 a.m. between them and
00:24:17.650 --> 00:24:21.299
their God. They know this is about American expansion.
00:24:21.559 --> 00:24:25.240
Playing this imperialist game of sorts. How many
00:24:25.240 --> 00:24:27.759
bases can we get? Yeah, we want the Philippines.
00:24:27.980 --> 00:24:29.740
The capitalists may not have cared about the
00:24:29.740 --> 00:24:32.259
Philippines, but would the U.S. care about making
00:24:32.259 --> 00:24:33.980
more Americans in the Philippines? Of course
00:24:33.980 --> 00:24:36.700
they would. It allows our geopolitical expansion.
00:24:37.119 --> 00:24:38.920
And I would argue that something is true for
00:24:38.920 --> 00:24:42.319
the way we colonize Europe. Not specifically.
00:24:42.759 --> 00:24:46.039
So, as I said, number one, though, war has always
00:24:46.039 --> 00:24:48.859
been bad for business for most businesses so
00:24:48.859 --> 00:24:50.940
that's why the Chamber of Commerce
00:24:50.940 --> 00:24:54.180
has usually opposed wars and on and on. Even the
00:24:54.180 --> 00:24:56.160
oil companies, as I said, opposed coups in
00:24:56.160 --> 00:24:58.400
the Middle East and were overruled by
00:24:58.400 --> 00:25:00.119
their imperialist governments. The imperialist
00:25:00.119 --> 00:25:01.480
governments know we're going to do the coups
00:25:01.480 --> 00:25:02.920
even though you don't want it, even though it's
00:25:02.920 --> 00:25:05.279
bad for business, even though it will create more
00:25:05.279 --> 00:25:07.359
blowback by these crazy Arabs who are going to
00:25:07.359 --> 00:25:09.079
seize more of your oil, which is exactly what
00:25:09.079 --> 00:25:11.539
happened. Because what did Nasser do right
00:25:11.539 --> 00:25:13.640
after that, in Egypt, he's seized.
00:25:13.640 --> 00:25:17.740
So but let me. So this is the third
00:25:17.740 --> 00:25:21.119
part of the third answer to your amazing, very
00:25:21.119 --> 00:25:25.380
important question, which is I spent a lot of
00:25:25.380 --> 00:25:27.720
time in the book on biographies of the great
00:25:27.720 --> 00:25:31.549
American imperialists. Yeah. So just run through
00:25:31.549 --> 00:25:33.950
that, man. And again, this has largely been
00:25:33.950 --> 00:25:36.329
hidden because there's this myth on the right
00:25:36.329 --> 00:25:39.470
in particular that as I think Ted mentioned this
00:25:39.470 --> 00:25:43.150
earlier, that the founding fathers were isolationists,
00:25:43.190 --> 00:25:45.170
man. Washington didn't want to, he didn't want
00:25:45.170 --> 00:25:49.339
to be entangled with other countries. Yes. Yeah.
00:25:50.509 --> 00:25:55.809
So John Adams, arguably the most important of
00:25:55.809 --> 00:25:57.210
the founding fathers, but certainly obviously
00:25:57.210 --> 00:26:01.069
one of the top five or whatever. He graduates
00:26:01.069 --> 00:26:03.950
from Harvard in the 1850s, gets a job as a school
00:26:03.950 --> 00:26:07.809
teacher in Worcester. Yeah, Worcester. Just a
00:26:07.809 --> 00:26:13.019
little job teaching 10-year-old kids. He's
00:26:13.019 --> 00:26:16.480
writing diaries. And by the way, John Adams'
00:26:16.640 --> 00:26:18.880
diaries, I recommend to everyone, the man was
00:26:18.880 --> 00:26:21.220
a psychotic. If he were put on a couch today,
00:26:21.460 --> 00:26:25.150
no. And this goes for most imperialists in my
00:26:25.150 --> 00:26:27.210
view. Churchill was one of the great psychotics
00:26:27.210 --> 00:26:30.089
in modern history. Just read their words.
00:26:30.130 --> 00:26:32.849
If you didn't know it was John Adams and I had
00:26:32.849 --> 00:26:35.109
you read his diary, you would be, this guy should
00:26:35.109 --> 00:26:40.029
be locked up. He's fantasizing in his diary
00:26:40.730 --> 00:26:43.269
in tremendous detail, and I have excerpts in
00:26:43.269 --> 00:26:46.740
the book, about what he will do when he is the
00:26:46.740 --> 00:26:49.380
ruler of the world, how he will assign people
00:26:49.380 --> 00:26:52.079
to particular positions in life. He would look
00:26:52.079 --> 00:26:53.880
at little Johnny in the corner scribbling and
00:26:53.880 --> 00:26:56.660
say, I'm going to make him the town writer and
00:26:56.660 --> 00:26:59.359
the little dunce kid. Well, he's going to be
00:26:59.359 --> 00:27:02.440
the dog catcher. And it goes on and on. He has
00:27:02.440 --> 00:27:04.660
this whole taxonomy of what he's going to assign
00:27:04.660 --> 00:27:06.920
to every one of his little pupils. These are
00:27:06.920 --> 00:27:14.720
children, by the way. Thomas Jefferson in Monticello
00:27:14.720 --> 00:27:19.690
had busts in the, I actually think it was throughout
00:27:19.690 --> 00:27:22.990
the mansion, but certainly in the entryway to
00:27:23.529 --> 00:27:27.329
Monticello, he had busts of Caesar and Alexander
00:27:27.329 --> 00:27:32.589
the Great, who at that point, as of the 1770s
00:27:32.589 --> 00:27:34.910
and 80s, were, of course, the greatest imperialists
00:27:34.910 --> 00:27:38.490
in world history. They kind of invented imperialism
00:27:38.490 --> 00:27:41.769
that we know of, right? And George Washington
00:27:41.769 --> 00:27:46.609
carried a copy of Caesar's Chronicles in his
00:27:46.609 --> 00:27:50.269
satchel on his horse as he was riding through
00:27:50.269 --> 00:27:52.230
the Pennsylvania wilderness, fighting the French
00:27:52.230 --> 00:27:55.529
and Indians to conquer that land and make it
00:27:55.529 --> 00:28:00.130
into America. That's just the founders. Then
00:28:00.130 --> 00:28:02.970
you get into the abolitionists who, again, this
00:28:02.970 --> 00:28:04.849
is where the left is screwed up. The left has
00:28:04.849 --> 00:28:07.230
really radically misunderstood the abolitionists.
00:28:07.230 --> 00:28:09.450
And my Renegade History book, the book prior
00:28:09.450 --> 00:28:11.809
to this. I have a whole extensive critique about
00:28:11.809 --> 00:28:15.049
the abolitionists being essentially a different
00:28:15.049 --> 00:28:17.430
form of racist, but we can talk about that. But
00:28:17.430 --> 00:28:20.029
the abolitionists were, most of them, not all,
00:28:20.069 --> 00:28:22.809
but most were arch imperialists. And in fact,
00:28:22.829 --> 00:28:25.690
the Civil War and Reconstruction, and this is
00:28:25.690 --> 00:28:27.769
going to be hard for a lot of probably your audience
00:28:27.769 --> 00:28:33.400
to hear, was simply a colonial conquest.
00:28:33.400 --> 00:28:35.859
That was the purpose. We all know that it wasn't
00:28:35.859 --> 00:28:39.180
to free the slaves. Abraham Lincoln was an outright
00:28:39.180 --> 00:28:43.630
racist, talked about exporting them back to Africa,
00:28:43.710 --> 00:28:49.029
etc. No, they talked about. Real quick, I need
00:28:49.029 --> 00:28:50.869
to bow out just because I have another prior
00:28:50.869 --> 00:28:52.529
commitment. They're going to continue this interview.
00:28:52.809 --> 00:28:55.490
I want to say, this is great meeting you, and
00:28:55.490 --> 00:28:56.990
I hope to be able to talk to you again further.
00:28:57.309 --> 00:29:00.609
Thank you so much. It's been wonderful talking
00:29:00.609 --> 00:29:04.519
to you. Great questions. Thank you. Thanks, Jamarl.
00:29:04.640 --> 00:29:07.480
I'm going to pipe in. Yeah. Robby West is our
00:29:07.480 --> 00:29:10.299
producer. And I know he's very interested in
00:29:10.299 --> 00:29:11.839
what you're just starting to talk about right
00:29:11.839 --> 00:29:14.920
now. So please continue. Yeah. So if you simply
00:29:14.920 --> 00:29:17.339
look at the words and the words that they
00:29:17.339 --> 00:29:20.400
were expressing throughout their lives, the abolitionists,
00:29:20.440 --> 00:29:22.779
the radical Republicans, Abraham Lincoln, Charles
00:29:22.779 --> 00:29:25.359
Sumner, all those guys who basically led the
00:29:25.359 --> 00:29:28.839
Civil War and then Reconstruction. It was all
00:29:28.839 --> 00:29:33.529
about for them remaking the South into the Yankee
00:29:33.529 --> 00:29:36.009
North. And that's why, what do they do? They put
00:29:36.009 --> 00:29:39.549
thousands of schools across the South staffed
00:29:39.549 --> 00:29:43.289
by mostly women from New England who were all
00:29:43.289 --> 00:29:46.309
abolitionist Puritans who went down to the South
00:29:46.309 --> 00:29:48.910
and taught the ex-slaves, guess what? How to be
00:29:48.910 --> 00:29:51.349
good Americans the same way they taught the Filipinos
00:29:51.349 --> 00:29:54.809
20 years later which was the Puritan
00:29:54.809 --> 00:29:59.250
work ethic, basically sexual repression,
00:29:59.809 --> 00:30:02.009
conventional gender norms. The girls were trained
00:30:02.009 --> 00:30:03.950
to be moms and wives, and the boys were trained
00:30:03.950 --> 00:30:07.559
to be soldiers and workers. Proper etiquette,
00:30:07.559 --> 00:30:11.460
proper language, don't use slang, eradicate every
00:30:11.460 --> 00:30:15.849
vestige of black culture. That's what the purpose
00:30:15.849 --> 00:30:17.930
of Reconstruction was. And they wanted to do
00:30:17.930 --> 00:30:20.589
the same thing to whites in the South as well.
00:30:20.750 --> 00:30:23.369
And they remade the South in terms of infrastructure,
00:30:23.829 --> 00:30:27.670
sort of physically remade it, but then made it
00:30:27.670 --> 00:30:30.660
illegal to be an opponent of the United States
00:30:30.660 --> 00:30:32.720
government, right? And that's why we often think,
00:30:32.779 --> 00:30:34.420
oh, well, the Confederates were all racist and
00:30:34.420 --> 00:30:35.980
bad and anything they had coming to them when
00:30:35.980 --> 00:30:39.059
they deserved, fine. But the purpose of that,
00:30:39.119 --> 00:30:42.279
again, was to remake that region, the South,
00:30:42.460 --> 00:30:48.180
to look like and be like the North. I agree.
00:30:48.500 --> 00:30:53.099
I'm a Southerner. I reckon you can tell that
00:30:53.099 --> 00:30:55.940
from the way that I talk. Which state? Where
00:30:55.940 --> 00:30:59.130
are you from? Florida. Okay. Well, that's debatable,
00:30:59.269 --> 00:31:04.029
friend. Are you from the Panhandle? Then I'll
00:31:04.029 --> 00:31:05.609
give it to you. Oh, okay. Then you're from the
00:31:05.609 --> 00:31:07.789
South. Then you're from the South. The further
00:31:07.789 --> 00:31:10.470
north you go, the more Southern you get. Basically,
00:31:10.470 --> 00:31:12.089
it's South of Gainesville and you're good to
00:31:12.089 --> 00:31:14.210
go. You're not from Miami. Right. Got it. No,
00:31:14.230 --> 00:31:16.470
absolutely not. I don't speak enough Spanish
00:31:16.470 --> 00:31:19.369
to be from Miami. Exactly. I'm reading a book
00:31:19.369 --> 00:31:24.670
about the Meiji Revolution. In Japan? And what
00:31:24.670 --> 00:31:28.599
you're talking about, you can see where the
00:31:28.599 --> 00:31:32.240
Meiji government really picked up, and also their
00:31:32.240 --> 00:31:35.640
successors, what Abraham Lincoln did with the
00:31:35.640 --> 00:31:39.000
South. The first Sino War, they took over Formosa.
00:31:39.319 --> 00:31:42.000
They banned Chinese. They started trying to make
00:31:42.000 --> 00:31:45.500
the Formosans Japanese. When they annexed Korea
00:31:45.500 --> 00:31:47.819
in 1910, it was actually a death penalty offense
00:31:47.819 --> 00:31:51.579
to speak Korean. It's just like what you're talking
00:31:51.579 --> 00:31:53.359
about doing. They were trying to make these people
00:31:53.549 --> 00:31:59.660
Japanese. Is that because Japan was industrialized
00:31:59.660 --> 00:32:03.319
in such a scale that it was becoming a true fascist
00:32:03.319 --> 00:32:04.960
state where there's a merger between capitalism
00:32:04.960 --> 00:32:10.420
and government? Or was it just greed? It was
00:32:10.420 --> 00:32:15.200
defense, actually. Because of Admiral Perry?
00:32:15.779 --> 00:32:18.220
Yeah, well, beginning with Perry and the European
00:32:18.220 --> 00:32:21.680
powers in general, just almost literally walking
00:32:21.680 --> 00:32:25.640
in and forcing the Japanese to submit to their
00:32:26.089 --> 00:32:28.869
very favorable trade terms for the United States
00:32:28.869 --> 00:32:33.049
and the West. Oh, no, that was top of mind for
00:32:33.049 --> 00:32:36.470
Japanese political leaders through the 19th and
00:32:36.470 --> 00:32:40.490
early 20th centuries, for sure. And so this is
00:32:40.490 --> 00:32:43.390
why I believe and this is borne out
00:32:43.390 --> 00:32:45.769
by a lot of the research scholarship. I'm not
00:32:45.769 --> 00:32:48.670
a Japan expert, but I had to do significant research
00:32:48.670 --> 00:32:51.960
for the book on it. But also it has no. And this
00:32:51.960 --> 00:32:53.259
is the thing people don't realize about Japan.
00:32:53.319 --> 00:32:56.119
It has basically zero natural resources in Japan.
00:32:56.299 --> 00:32:58.480
It's a volcanic rock in the middle of the ocean.
00:32:59.930 --> 00:33:02.450
There is not enough arable land to produce food
00:33:02.450 --> 00:33:05.690
for a modern industrial population. And to defend
00:33:05.690 --> 00:33:11.930
themselves from further imperialist depredations
00:33:11.930 --> 00:33:14.150
from the West, they needed a modern industrial
00:33:14.150 --> 00:33:17.859
population and a modern industrial economy. And
00:33:17.859 --> 00:33:20.700
this is why they moved outward. And they did
00:33:20.700 --> 00:33:23.490
it in phenomenally vicious ways. Every
00:33:23.490 --> 00:33:26.029
empire, as I've said, they find
00:33:26.029 --> 00:33:28.809
out once they start conquering other lands, they
00:33:28.809 --> 00:33:30.670
got to kill a bunch of people in disgusting ways.
00:33:30.849 --> 00:33:33.609
So Manchuria, that's why
00:33:33.609 --> 00:33:36.470
they went into Manchuria, because of the agriculture
00:33:36.470 --> 00:33:40.430
and the cheap labor in Manchuria, basically slave
00:33:40.430 --> 00:33:43.589
labor in Manchuria. And then once Roosevelt starts
00:33:43.589 --> 00:33:46.650
cutting off the supplies of oil and other resources
00:33:46.650 --> 00:33:50.869
from the U.S. in 39, 40, 41. They
00:33:50.869 --> 00:33:53.670
have to move south into Southeast Asia. They
00:33:53.670 --> 00:33:56.049
take over pieces of Southeast Asia for the rubber,
00:33:56.170 --> 00:33:58.930
for the oil, and then into the East Indies. But
00:33:58.930 --> 00:34:02.309
no, it was. This is how they talked.
00:34:02.490 --> 00:34:03.890
They didn't. I don't think they wanted
00:34:03.890 --> 00:34:08.190
to mix their pure race. Japan has been
00:34:08.190 --> 00:34:14.159
formally a racist country for at least in the
00:34:14.159 --> 00:34:18.860
modern era. Quite explicitly, formally
00:34:18.860 --> 00:34:21.340
racist. You can't be, I think other than Israel,
00:34:21.360 --> 00:34:22.940
I think Israel is the only other country where
00:34:22.940 --> 00:34:27.489
an ethnic identity is required for citizenship.
00:34:28.949 --> 00:34:34.530
So yeah, they simply could not protect themselves
00:34:34.530 --> 00:34:38.269
from the rapidly advancing West unless they became
00:34:38.269 --> 00:34:41.090
rapidly advancing themselves. So they adopted
00:34:41.500 --> 00:34:46.380
the Roman model, an aggressive defense. Bingo.
00:34:46.440 --> 00:34:48.909
I think so. Again, I'm not an expert on Rome
00:34:48.909 --> 00:34:50.210
either, but yeah, that's what it looks like to
00:34:50.210 --> 00:34:53.110
me. That's what it looks like to me. Yeah. So,
00:34:53.210 --> 00:34:54.949
back to, I wanted to finish that sort
00:34:54.949 --> 00:34:57.530
of point about all the American foreign policymakers
00:34:57.530 --> 00:34:59.489
through history and how they were committed to
00:34:59.489 --> 00:35:03.809
this idea of saving and uplifting the world primarily
00:35:03.809 --> 00:35:07.289
and never interested in making money from politics
00:35:07.289 --> 00:35:09.650
because you just don't. These guys were
00:35:09.650 --> 00:35:12.909
all from, almost all from, of course, upper class
00:35:12.909 --> 00:35:16.070
families. They were born wealthy. They didn't
00:35:16.070 --> 00:35:18.190
need to do a damn thing to be wealthy. And to
00:35:18.190 --> 00:35:20.250
make more wealth, they would have just continued
00:35:20.250 --> 00:35:22.210
to work in their family's businesses, right?
00:35:23.179 --> 00:35:25.139
But no, they chose to be senators and presidents
00:35:25.139 --> 00:35:32.519
because Franklin Roosevelt was 16 years old in
00:35:32.519 --> 00:35:36.360
high school, writing to his mother about how
00:35:36.360 --> 00:35:41.550
we need to invade Japan. It's in 1899. He's reading
00:35:41.550 --> 00:35:45.070
Admiral Mahan's books. Admiral Mahan was the
00:35:45.070 --> 00:35:47.690
great sort of foreign policy imperialist theorist
00:35:47.690 --> 00:35:51.090
of the 19th and early 20th centuries. And Mahan
00:35:51.090 --> 00:35:53.050
was obsessed with Japan because he was obsessed
00:35:53.050 --> 00:35:54.829
with the idea of the United States controlling
00:35:54.829 --> 00:35:57.050
the Pacific, and Japan stood in the way of that.
00:35:58.179 --> 00:36:00.940
Young Franklin Roosevelt, 16 years old, read
00:36:00.940 --> 00:36:04.360
his books and was totally turned on by this idea
00:36:04.360 --> 00:36:07.440
and committed for the rest of his life to going
00:36:07.440 --> 00:36:11.719
to war with Japan. This is in 1899. This is 42
00:36:11.719 --> 00:36:15.539
years before Pearl Harbor. He gets the job as
00:36:15.539 --> 00:36:17.559
assistant secretary of Navy in the Wilson administration
00:36:17.559 --> 00:36:21.420
in 1914. What does he do? He's so crazy. This
00:36:21.420 --> 00:36:22.900
is Wilson. This is the Wilson administration,
00:36:23.159 --> 00:36:25.599
one of the sort of most famous imperialist administration.
00:36:26.719 --> 00:36:29.559
FDR is so crazy that Wilson and the secretary
00:36:29.559 --> 00:36:32.119
of defense have to reprimand him repeatedly because
00:36:32.119 --> 00:36:34.199
he keeps calling for new wars when they're busy.
00:36:34.300 --> 00:36:37.469
They're busy talking about Europe. And what to
00:36:37.469 --> 00:36:39.929
do about Europe is 1914. World War I has just
00:36:39.929 --> 00:36:43.010
begun. Nothing's happening in Asia. But FDR keeps
00:36:43.010 --> 00:36:45.449
saying, we need to launch a preemptive war against
00:36:45.449 --> 00:36:48.840
Japan right now. He gets reprimanded. It's amazing
00:36:48.840 --> 00:36:50.900
he kept his job. He had in his office, there's
00:36:50.900 --> 00:36:53.039
photographs of it. It's amazing. Just walls full
00:36:53.039 --> 00:36:56.139
of maps and then ships, battleships, models
00:36:56.139 --> 00:36:57.639
of battleships. And he would just sit and stare
00:36:57.639 --> 00:37:00.420
at these maps and fantasize about these other
00:37:00.420 --> 00:37:02.659
countries and what he would do to them, what
00:37:02.659 --> 00:37:05.699
he would want to do to them. So 1914, he's calling
00:37:06.300 --> 00:37:09.719
for the U.S. to go to war with Japan. His very
00:37:09.719 --> 00:37:12.960
first meeting when he's elected president, cabinet
00:37:12.960 --> 00:37:15.699
meeting, first day in the Oval Office with his
00:37:15.699 --> 00:37:18.969
cabinet, he lays out these maps and battle plans
00:37:18.969 --> 00:37:23.469
to launch a war against Japan. He has a whole
00:37:23.469 --> 00:37:25.809
strategy. We're going to have naval bases and
00:37:25.809 --> 00:37:27.829
air bases in the Aleutian Islands and Hawaii.
00:37:28.090 --> 00:37:29.730
We're going to launch this attack from there.
00:37:30.449 --> 00:37:35.329
And his cabinet members, and by the way, if you
00:37:35.329 --> 00:37:39.150
know my last book, I argue that they were dominated
00:37:39.150 --> 00:37:41.570
by basically fascist thinking, the New Dealers,
00:37:41.670 --> 00:37:43.369
the first New Dealers, so I'm not a fan of these
00:37:43.369 --> 00:37:47.690
guys. They were horrified. Rexford Tugwell,
00:37:47.849 --> 00:37:48.929
all these guys, they wrote in their diaries,
00:37:48.949 --> 00:37:51.690
what the hell is he talking about? The first
00:37:51.690 --> 00:37:55.550
day we have a depression to deal with. A little
00:37:55.550 --> 00:38:00.230
bit. Yeah, a little bit in 1933. So, no, the
00:38:00.230 --> 00:38:02.429
first thing you want to do is not close the banks
00:38:03.090 --> 00:38:05.190
and not launch the first New Deal. The first
00:38:05.190 --> 00:38:07.349
thing he wanted to do was go to war with Japan
00:38:07.349 --> 00:38:08.949
and the Pacific in the middle of the depression.
00:38:09.190 --> 00:38:12.869
So these are psychos. They really are.
00:38:12.909 --> 00:38:16.650
I've been in politics my whole life. I've been
00:38:16.650 --> 00:38:19.250
in academia my whole life. I've been around people
00:38:19.250 --> 00:38:21.809
like this. Roosevelt's entire cabinet came from
00:38:21.809 --> 00:38:23.730
Columbia University. I spent a decade at Columbia.
00:38:24.289 --> 00:38:27.929
I have never met anybody that I'm aware of who
00:38:27.929 --> 00:38:31.070
has had any fantasy about conquering another
00:38:31.070 --> 00:38:36.960
country. It's a very rare subset of the population
00:38:36.960 --> 00:38:40.469
that always tends to become presidents and senators.
00:38:41.090 --> 00:38:43.010
I'm really glad that you brought up what you
00:38:43.010 --> 00:38:45.590
did about the War of Northern Aggression. That's
00:38:45.590 --> 00:38:48.489
how we like to call it back home. People always,
00:38:48.530 --> 00:38:50.989
they try and paint it, as you said, as a crusade
00:38:50.989 --> 00:38:53.420
against slavery. Well, they immediately forget
00:38:53.420 --> 00:38:56.559
that the Union had four slave states. The Emancipation
00:38:56.559 --> 00:38:59.070
Proclamation did not address northern
00:38:59.070 --> 00:39:03.550
slavery at all, nor did it address the conditions
00:39:03.550 --> 00:39:05.869
that the child workers had to go with in the
00:39:05.869 --> 00:39:09.110
northern factories. It was all about how southern
00:39:09.110 --> 00:39:13.389
states nullified tariffs that only impacted southern
00:39:13.389 --> 00:39:16.650
ports because there was no income tax at the
00:39:16.650 --> 00:39:20.909
time. And I still have my grandfather's grandfather,
00:39:21.170 --> 00:39:24.429
his diary, where he was trading tobacco for some
00:39:24.429 --> 00:39:26.510
coffee for a Yankee soldier in the Rappahannock.
00:39:26.880 --> 00:39:29.820
And this Yank asked him, so, well, Johnny, why
00:39:29.820 --> 00:39:31.639
are you fighting us? He goes, come, Johnny Rebs.
00:39:32.300 --> 00:39:33.780
And he's, well, Billy, it's because you're
00:39:33.780 --> 00:39:37.329
down here. It was a pretty straightforward
00:39:37.329 --> 00:39:41.969
thing. Yeah, so I'm going to say two things to
00:39:41.969 --> 00:39:44.929
that. So I love the South for many reasons. This
00:39:44.929 --> 00:39:53.500
is one of them. So I would say I would urge you
00:39:53.500 --> 00:39:58.960
to look at culture and psychology more to prove
00:39:58.960 --> 00:40:01.380
your thesis and this is why I spend
00:40:01.380 --> 00:40:04.019
much of the book as I said on the biographies
00:40:04.019 --> 00:40:06.300
and the actual words of these men who led American
00:40:06.300 --> 00:40:09.480
foreign policy around the Civil War, the radical
00:40:09.480 --> 00:40:12.199
Republicans, the abolitionists, the people who
00:40:12.199 --> 00:40:14.119
made the Civil War happen and Reconstruction
00:40:14.119 --> 00:40:18.869
happen. They were very upset that the South was
00:40:18.869 --> 00:40:21.570
different than the North and they were upset
00:40:21.570 --> 00:40:24.449
that it was different in particular ways. They
00:40:24.550 --> 00:40:27.670
hated that the slave masters didn't have to work
00:40:27.670 --> 00:40:30.949
and therefore were lazy. They hated that the
00:40:30.949 --> 00:40:34.309
slaves were lazy because they only worked because
00:40:34.309 --> 00:40:36.690
they were forced to work. They had no incentive
00:40:36.690 --> 00:40:38.730
to work and therefore the Puritan work ethic
00:40:38.730 --> 00:40:41.190
fell on deaf ears among the slaves. And so they
00:40:41.190 --> 00:40:43.789
worked only so much that they wouldn't get whipped,
00:40:43.949 --> 00:40:46.730
which is not good for Yankee Puritans who want
00:40:46.730 --> 00:40:48.630
you to believe that work in itself is a good
00:40:48.630 --> 00:40:51.170
thing always. Because of this, they said, the
00:40:51.170 --> 00:40:54.340
South is underdeveloped. Because of this, they
00:40:54.340 --> 00:40:57.059
said the South is not modern the way the North
00:40:57.059 --> 00:40:59.940
is. Because of this, they said, and this is in
00:40:59.940 --> 00:41:03.710
the new book, we can't launch imperial wars.
00:41:03.849 --> 00:41:07.530
They wanted to conquer Cuba. A lot of senators,
00:41:07.849 --> 00:41:10.449
including a lot of the radical Republicans, wanted
00:41:10.449 --> 00:41:13.489
to conquer Cuba in the 1850s and 60s. We can't
00:41:13.489 --> 00:41:15.190
do this if we have a divided nation and half
00:41:15.190 --> 00:41:18.030
the nation is made up of a slave-holding class
00:41:18.030 --> 00:41:22.579
that's lazy and unproductive. So it got in the
00:41:22.579 --> 00:41:26.210
way of empire as well. Right. And so that's why
00:41:26.210 --> 00:41:27.909
they went to war with the South. And that's why
00:41:27.909 --> 00:41:30.670
they spent so many resources over 12 years during
00:41:30.670 --> 00:41:32.610
Reconstruction. Although you could say Reconstruction
00:41:32.610 --> 00:41:35.789
starts in 1861. I do. So it's really a 16 year
00:41:35.789 --> 00:41:37.190
project because every time they would conquer
00:41:37.190 --> 00:41:39.469
a part of the South, they would send in the schools,
00:41:39.570 --> 00:41:41.690
the contraband camps where they would instruct
00:41:41.690 --> 00:41:45.769
the slaves how to be Americans now. They spent
00:41:45.769 --> 00:41:49.150
so many resources and the army itself to enforce
00:41:49.150 --> 00:41:53.230
this whole thing to remake the culture and the
00:41:53.230 --> 00:41:57.449
psychology of the South. This is the heart of
00:41:57.449 --> 00:41:59.789
imperialism. This is what real imperialism is.
00:42:00.030 --> 00:42:03.550
Trump's imperialism is just for the grabs, for
00:42:03.550 --> 00:42:06.590
the power, for the money. It's very naked. It's
00:42:06.590 --> 00:42:09.010
very stripped down. It's completely amoral.
00:42:09.010 --> 00:42:10.789
Trump has been very clear. He doesn't care
00:42:10.789 --> 00:42:14.429
about saving anybody, uplifting anybody, being
00:42:14.429 --> 00:42:16.570
the world's policeman. He's there for power and
00:42:16.570 --> 00:42:19.690
money. But everybody up until him was not. They
00:42:19.690 --> 00:42:22.690
were true believers in this. So the South, I've
00:42:22.690 --> 00:42:24.530
said the South was the original Afghanistan.
00:42:25.719 --> 00:42:28.920
It was the first. And by the way, I was, I loved
00:42:28.920 --> 00:42:31.380
one passage in the book and I want to talk about
00:42:31.380 --> 00:42:34.880
the cultural stuff. I spent, I've been to Afghanistan
00:42:34.880 --> 00:42:38.260
five times and during, including during the U.S.
00:42:38.260 --> 00:42:41.960
occupation. Wow. And it was kind of one
00:42:41.960 --> 00:42:44.800
funny thing is I did a whole comic series, a
00:42:44.800 --> 00:42:48.880
couple of books about trips and one for
00:42:48.880 --> 00:42:51.900
example you talk about the influence, this
00:42:51.900 --> 00:42:54.940
the dichotomy that's described in your book was
00:42:54.940 --> 00:42:59.219
really just so clear on the ground. The
00:42:59.219 --> 00:43:03.079
U.S. troops were sort of universally reviled.
00:43:03.079 --> 00:43:07.500
They drove around scared to death,
00:43:07.929 --> 00:43:11.650
overly armed, running around sometimes
00:43:11.650 --> 00:43:14.789
shooting and robbing people randomly just for
00:43:14.789 --> 00:43:19.070
fun because they were bored or whatever. But nevertheless
00:43:19.070 --> 00:43:22.449
American culture was spreading. Even
00:43:22.449 --> 00:43:26.929
as early as December 2001 I found American porn
00:43:26.929 --> 00:43:32.170
in a bazaar. There was. And then by
00:43:32.170 --> 00:43:36.469
2010 there was pizza in Herat and in Mazar-e
00:43:36.469 --> 00:43:40.150
-Sharif and all over Kabul. Not good pizza, but
00:43:40.150 --> 00:43:43.409
pizza. Afghan Star, Ted. Were you there for Afghan
00:43:43.409 --> 00:43:46.710
Star, the TV show? Based on American Idol? Based
00:43:46.710 --> 00:43:48.349
on American Idol. They had their own American
00:43:48.349 --> 00:43:50.710
Idol called Afghan Star, yeah. That's amazing.
00:43:51.110 --> 00:43:53.030
So, yeah, and they'd always
00:43:53.030 --> 00:43:55.849
had an influence from Iran and historically
00:43:55.849 --> 00:43:58.769
and from India, pop culture. But
00:43:58.769 --> 00:44:02.230
Bollywood is all over Afghanistan. But it
00:44:02.230 --> 00:44:04.670
was just it was so interesting to see. I really
00:44:04.670 --> 00:44:08.130
wanted to get into the psychology here.
00:44:08.130 --> 00:44:10.989
You described these psychos
00:44:10.989 --> 00:44:13.929
who basically I always call the Puritans people
00:44:13.929 --> 00:44:18.690
too uptight to get along with the English. Yeah
00:44:18.690 --> 00:44:23.590
true. The English are too footloose and fancy
00:44:23.590 --> 00:44:27.860
free for us. We're out. And so this country is
00:44:27.860 --> 00:44:30.960
founded by those people. They come here.
00:44:30.960 --> 00:44:33.699
What is the psychology and culture that
00:44:33.699 --> 00:44:36.659
makes you think that you have all the answers
00:44:36.659 --> 00:44:39.400
that you and because you don't see
00:44:39.460 --> 00:44:43.690
a lot of when King Leopold
00:44:43.690 --> 00:44:47.349
took over Congo, he didn't think of it. I know
00:44:47.349 --> 00:44:50.429
there's, yeah, some Christianizing missions and
00:44:50.429 --> 00:44:52.090
stuff like that. But for the most part, this
00:44:52.090 --> 00:44:55.050
is a cash grab. Right. I'm here to
00:44:55.050 --> 00:45:00.150
loot the place. What makes people think
00:45:00.150 --> 00:45:04.590
that they are the ultimate embodiments of culture
00:45:04.590 --> 00:45:08.190
and power and that they have the right and the
00:45:08.190 --> 00:45:12.690
desire to do this to other people? And then,
00:45:12.829 --> 00:45:16.889
it's sort of, why doesn't
00:45:16.889 --> 00:45:19.329
everyone else just sort of tell them to fuck
00:45:19.329 --> 00:45:24.250
off? Well, why is Christianity popular? To me,
00:45:24.269 --> 00:45:28.010
it's essentially a Christian impulse. It's an
00:45:28.010 --> 00:45:31.510
evangelical missionary impulse, which I see only
00:45:31.510 --> 00:45:35.389
in Christianity. Certainly the global version
00:45:35.389 --> 00:45:38.349
of it, the idea that we are responsible for the
00:45:38.349 --> 00:45:42.150
entire world. Caesar had no designs on the globe.
00:45:42.230 --> 00:45:44.730
He had designs on Gaul and then the rest of Europe,
00:45:44.789 --> 00:45:46.289
and maybe that was. And he didn't really.
00:45:46.289 --> 00:45:49.230
He just didn't speak in these terms. Yeah, the
00:45:49.230 --> 00:45:52.349
Belgians, less so, less the savior, more the
00:45:52.349 --> 00:45:56.329
looter. The British, though, right? The British
00:45:57.079 --> 00:46:00.099
one could say, I suppose, invented the idea,
00:46:00.340 --> 00:46:03.460
although the Spanish did too. But there was something
00:46:03.460 --> 00:46:05.380
in Cecil Rhodes. Cecil Rhodes, if you
00:46:05.380 --> 00:46:08.300
look at his language, he is the ultimate
00:46:08.300 --> 00:46:11.900
savior imperialist. To him, all
00:46:11.900 --> 00:46:14.500
the conquests of the British Empire were in service
00:46:14.500 --> 00:46:16.599
of the people they conquered. We are helping.
00:46:16.659 --> 00:46:18.880
This is good for them. And by the way, he wasn't
00:46:18.880 --> 00:46:21.440
entirely wrong. If you look at
00:46:21.460 --> 00:46:25.090
the infrastructure in India. Now and the infrastructure
00:46:25.090 --> 00:46:29.429
in South Africa and much of Africa etc. It's
00:46:29.429 --> 00:46:31.869
greatly improved just like in Iraq there is now
00:46:31.869 --> 00:46:34.130
a working electrical grid where there wasn't
00:46:34.130 --> 00:46:38.250
in 2003. Now has paved roads. Yeah exactly and
00:46:38.250 --> 00:46:42.090
they didn't have that in 2000, 2002. So
00:46:42.090 --> 00:46:44.789
it's a Christian evangelical
00:46:44.789 --> 00:46:49.159
missionary psychology that, again, I can't relate
00:46:49.159 --> 00:46:51.340
to and no one I've ever known can relate to.
00:46:51.480 --> 00:46:53.619
And it's just a strange thing that's only emerged
00:46:53.619 --> 00:46:57.260
in the West and really Anglo-America, Western
00:46:57.260 --> 00:47:01.190
Europe, I guess. I think that the rapid
00:47:01.190 --> 00:47:04.969
accumulation of Western countries, which outpaced
00:47:04.969 --> 00:47:06.969
the rest of the world sort of in the early modern
00:47:06.969 --> 00:47:08.829
era, that kind of when you have all the guns,
00:47:08.929 --> 00:47:10.369
when you have most of the guns, I think it becomes
00:47:10.369 --> 00:47:14.989
easier to have that impulse, right? If I were
00:47:15.070 --> 00:47:18.219
the president of
00:47:18.219 --> 00:47:20.960
Botswana, it's a little more difficult to sort
00:47:20.960 --> 00:47:23.659
of fantasize endlessly about assigning people
00:47:23.659 --> 00:47:26.559
their jobs and the rest of the world. But when
00:47:26.559 --> 00:47:28.539
you know that you're in this, John Adams and
00:47:28.539 --> 00:47:30.820
Jefferson and the founders all spoke about this
00:47:30.820 --> 00:47:32.719
all the time. They knew that they were a rising
00:47:32.719 --> 00:47:34.579
power because the American economy, even during
00:47:34.579 --> 00:47:39.179
the revolution, was rapidly increasing in power
00:47:39.179 --> 00:47:41.860
and size. And so they saw that they were eventually
00:47:41.860 --> 00:47:44.269
going to overtake Britain. So they knew that.
00:47:44.309 --> 00:47:46.210
And I think that's sort of facilitated their
00:47:46.210 --> 00:47:49.849
fantasizing. So, Robby, I just want to say really
00:47:49.849 --> 00:47:51.150
one quick because I meant to say this earlier,
00:47:51.269 --> 00:47:53.230
which is not even in the book.
00:47:53.269 --> 00:47:56.889
But one of the reasons I love the South is they
00:47:56.889 --> 00:48:02.730
until 1945 were as a population were absolutely
00:48:02.730 --> 00:48:05.730
anti-imperialist, from the Civil War through
00:48:05.730 --> 00:48:07.289
the Reconstruction. And then I don't know if
00:48:07.289 --> 00:48:09.789
you know this. There's an amazing book called
00:48:10.429 --> 00:48:19.670
Rich Man's War. It's about Southern resistance
00:48:19.670 --> 00:48:25.170
to the draft during World War I. And when we're
00:48:25.170 --> 00:48:28.710
talking about resistance, this is 1916, 17, 18,
00:48:28.849 --> 00:48:34.320
19. We're talking about holing up in a holler
00:48:34.320 --> 00:48:38.440
with a bunch of shotguns when the draft agent
00:48:38.440 --> 00:48:44.539
comes to town and shooting them. It was a war.
00:48:44.739 --> 00:48:47.769
They were shooting at draft agents. There was
00:48:47.769 --> 00:48:51.289
such violent opposition to serving in this ridiculous
00:48:51.289 --> 00:48:53.809
rich man's war in the South among. And again this
00:48:53.809 --> 00:48:56.650
is working class and poor Southerners right entirely
00:48:56.650 --> 00:49:02.150
that the draft board gave up. They gave up I think
00:49:02.150 --> 00:49:05.130
by 1918 they just stopped sending draft agents
00:49:05.130 --> 00:49:08.429
into conscription agents into the South. So
00:49:08.429 --> 00:49:10.929
what happened though of course as you know and
00:49:10.929 --> 00:49:13.469
most people should be able to glean this, is
00:49:13.469 --> 00:49:15.610
that after World War II, they started, the United
00:49:15.610 --> 00:49:17.369
States started, there it is, Rich Man's War.
00:49:18.570 --> 00:49:20.630
Phenomenal book, absolutely high. If you have
00:49:20.630 --> 00:49:24.130
any interest in anti-imperialism, look to the
00:49:24.130 --> 00:49:27.710
American South before 1945. Unfortunately, and
00:49:27.710 --> 00:49:30.070
this is just one of the most cruelest, disgusting
00:49:30.070 --> 00:49:32.329
things that I think the national government has
00:49:32.329 --> 00:49:33.869
ever done, and almost no one talks about this.
00:49:33.929 --> 00:49:36.050
After World War II, they move all these military
00:49:36.050 --> 00:49:39.409
bases where? Into the South. So much of the South
00:49:39.409 --> 00:49:41.809
has been since then completely dependent on these
00:49:41.809 --> 00:49:44.769
military bases for employment, for local economies,
00:49:44.989 --> 00:49:48.030
etc. They basically made the South into a ward
00:49:48.030 --> 00:49:51.250
of the state, but a particular state. They made
00:49:51.250 --> 00:49:53.170
the South into the ward of the imperial state.
00:49:54.119 --> 00:49:56.500
And this is why the red, white, and blue flag
00:49:56.500 --> 00:49:59.119
is flown most aggressively in the South. But
00:49:59.119 --> 00:50:00.980
that wasn't usually the case in the past. It
00:50:00.980 --> 00:50:02.960
wasn't the case before 1945. So I just wanted
00:50:02.960 --> 00:50:06.119
to interject that. No, very much so. God bless
00:50:06.119 --> 00:50:08.969
the South. He lied about his age. I'll have to
00:50:08.969 --> 00:50:10.829
go after this, have another show I got to do.
00:50:11.190 --> 00:50:14.130
But he lied about his age. He went to France,
00:50:14.210 --> 00:50:17.630
he was 12 or 13 years old, to go fight for the,
00:50:17.710 --> 00:50:21.269
he went and fought with the French volunteers.
00:50:22.170 --> 00:50:24.210
And the men that he was fighting with, they're
00:50:24.210 --> 00:50:26.070
pretty much all Southerners. I don't know what
00:50:26.070 --> 00:50:28.429
the name of the village was, but they would fly
00:50:28.429 --> 00:50:31.010
Confederate battle flags over their trenches.
00:50:31.719 --> 00:50:33.539
And the Germans had no idea what the hell this
00:50:33.539 --> 00:50:35.920
even was. So they came across, if you go up shooting
00:50:35.920 --> 00:50:37.659
squirrels with a rifle, shooting a person is
00:50:37.659 --> 00:50:43.199
not that big of a problem. And we've got this
00:50:43.199 --> 00:50:45.420
old wax cylinder. It's about a quarter of an
00:50:45.420 --> 00:50:47.579
inch thick. You can barely hear it anymore. It's
00:50:47.579 --> 00:50:50.500
called, you'll find Dixieland in France. And
00:50:50.500 --> 00:50:52.239
their commanding officer was this dude who was
00:50:52.239 --> 00:50:55.960
in his 70s who was a Confederate veteran. And
00:50:56.250 --> 00:50:59.230
he said, we're here to fight the damn Yankees.
00:50:59.269 --> 00:51:01.389
That's why he's calling them the Germans. Oh.
00:51:01.739 --> 00:51:03.639
Right. They got a little confused by
00:51:03.639 --> 00:51:06.980
then is my point. Yeah.
00:51:07.960 --> 00:51:09.500
Read, definitely read Jeanette Keith's book.
00:51:09.579 --> 00:51:11.639
It is awesome. And you will see that the South
00:51:11.639 --> 00:51:13.760
has never been this wasn't always the South as
00:51:13.760 --> 00:51:16.860
we know it now. So anyway, Ted, sorry.
00:51:17.420 --> 00:51:19.659
Now y'all thank you very much. It's a pleasure
00:51:19.659 --> 00:51:21.940
to meet you. Thank you. Thank you, Robby. Appreciate
00:51:21.940 --> 00:51:25.960
it. So yeah, this is why this
00:51:25.960 --> 00:51:28.780
book and my last book are primarily cultural
00:51:28.780 --> 00:51:31.159
and psychological analyses because I think that's
00:51:31.159 --> 00:51:33.400
where it's at. I'm kind of a if you want to get
00:51:33.400 --> 00:51:35.719
philosophical I'm not a materialist. I used to
00:51:35.719 --> 00:51:37.420
be. I used to be a Marxist materialist and now
00:51:37.420 --> 00:51:39.480
I'm a Hegelian idealist. So I think that
00:51:39.480 --> 00:51:44.280
history is driven by ideas. So and this is
00:51:44.280 --> 00:51:45.800
why I think it's important to understand what's
00:51:45.800 --> 00:51:47.179
in the heads of these people who actually make
00:51:47.179 --> 00:51:50.440
these wars who make these policies. No,
00:51:50.440 --> 00:51:54.219
for sure. There's an old punk song
00:51:54.219 --> 00:51:57.000
called Missiles by a group called The
00:51:57.000 --> 00:51:59.579
Sound. And the lyrics are, who the hell
00:51:59.579 --> 00:52:01.400
makes those missiles when they know what they
00:52:01.400 --> 00:52:04.679
can do? And it's, who the hell?
00:52:05.559 --> 00:52:08.780
In the time that we have left, in the few minutes
00:52:08.780 --> 00:52:10.719
we have left, I'm wondering if you could sort
00:52:10.719 --> 00:52:14.360
of talk about the seductive side of
00:52:14.360 --> 00:52:19.579
the book, sort of the, how is it that
00:52:20.539 --> 00:52:23.880
American foreign policymakers have, I don't know
00:52:23.880 --> 00:52:27.519
if have they failed to see soft power
00:52:27.519 --> 00:52:29.760
gets mentioned in the opinion pages of the Washington
00:52:29.760 --> 00:52:32.900
Post every now and then but the truth is it's
00:52:32.900 --> 00:52:36.239
not really something that people focus on.
00:52:36.239 --> 00:52:37.840
I don't think Donald Trump's spending
00:52:37.840 --> 00:52:40.340
any time thinking we got to get some
00:52:40.340 --> 00:52:43.760
more money to the USO. We gotta have
00:52:43.760 --> 00:52:49.190
we have to have Lady Gaga go to Ukraine
00:52:49.190 --> 00:52:53.670
or whatever. It's whatever, Taylor Swift,
00:52:53.750 --> 00:52:59.320
although he hates her. Why is this such an unappreciated
00:52:59.320 --> 00:53:05.119
form of power projection? Because they're Puritans.
00:53:05.840 --> 00:53:08.360
Until Trump. Trump is the first non-Puritan.
00:53:08.400 --> 00:53:10.420
When I say Puritans, officially,
00:53:10.559 --> 00:53:13.139
formally, outwardly Puritans. I don't know what
00:53:13.139 --> 00:53:15.360
goes on in their bedrooms, but what they say,
00:53:15.480 --> 00:53:18.719
how they behave publicly, every president until
00:53:18.719 --> 00:53:21.000
Trump has been a Puritan. Trump has, of course,
00:53:21.019 --> 00:53:24.179
violated that rule completely, but just a little
00:53:24.179 --> 00:53:27.110
bit. So yeah, and so this, as I said earlier,
00:53:27.230 --> 00:53:29.030
John F. Kennedy and Barry Goldwater held hearings
00:53:29.030 --> 00:53:31.949
about the dangers of rock and roll in the 1950s.
00:53:31.949 --> 00:53:34.230
Every single president and major senator has
00:53:34.230 --> 00:53:37.230
been on that side of the war against sensual
00:53:37.230 --> 00:53:41.679
pleasure. So jazz is a great example. Jazz, of
00:53:41.679 --> 00:53:45.559
course, becomes extremely popular in the 1910s,
00:53:45.559 --> 00:53:48.500
blows up totally in the 20s, becomes the world's
00:53:48.500 --> 00:53:51.420
music in the 1930s with swing and then World
00:53:51.420 --> 00:53:54.179
War II as well. So yeah, why on earth? And then
00:53:54.179 --> 00:53:56.219
it's huge, as I show in the book, it's enormously
00:53:56.219 --> 00:53:58.699
popular all across the world, not just in Europe.
00:53:58.820 --> 00:54:01.420
Yeah, so why didn't they send Louis Armstrong?
00:54:02.219 --> 00:54:04.079
Well, they did send Louis Armstrong, but they
00:54:04.079 --> 00:54:07.559
sent him in the 1960s. By that point, after World
00:54:07.559 --> 00:54:09.519
War II, jazz became, and anybody who knows the
00:54:09.519 --> 00:54:12.659
history of jazz knows this, jazz became respectable.
00:54:12.800 --> 00:54:15.300
It became known as America's classical music.
00:54:16.019 --> 00:54:18.760
Louis Armstrong and his cohort sort of became
00:54:18.760 --> 00:54:20.900
heroes all of a sudden. They became the good
00:54:20.900 --> 00:54:23.039
Negro. They became the example for the civil
00:54:23.039 --> 00:54:25.599
rights movement. Look, we can be just as talented
00:54:25.599 --> 00:54:28.679
and musically adept as white people, and our
00:54:28.679 --> 00:54:31.099
music is just as good as classical European music,
00:54:31.179 --> 00:54:35.769
etc. Then they started to send, the CIA and the
00:54:35.769 --> 00:54:38.730
State Department started to send jazz bands into
00:54:38.730 --> 00:54:42.210
Europe. But Dave Brubeck was one, the Dave Brubeck
00:54:42.210 --> 00:54:45.090
Trio, Quartet, whatever, which was
00:54:45.130 --> 00:54:48.170
not dance music, by the way. They were never
00:54:48.170 --> 00:54:50.190
interested in dance music because that is dangerous,
00:54:50.369 --> 00:54:52.710
sensual, liberatory in all sorts of ways, always
00:54:52.710 --> 00:54:55.730
has been. Yeah, so, no, it's because they're
00:54:55.730 --> 00:54:57.570
Puritans. They never sent rock and roll. They
00:54:57.570 --> 00:55:01.190
could have sent Elvis Presley in the 1950s. What
00:55:01.190 --> 00:55:02.849
would that have done to the Soviet Union? Right.
00:55:02.889 --> 00:55:05.190
But no, they didn't. Because Elvis in
00:55:05.190 --> 00:55:07.710
the 1950s was dangerous. Rock and roll was dangerous
00:55:07.710 --> 00:55:11.829
in the 50s. Jazz was dangerous in the 20s. So
00:55:11.829 --> 00:55:14.570
that's why they just yeah, they were opposed
00:55:14.570 --> 00:55:17.820
to sensual freedom. So what does Trump represent
00:55:17.820 --> 00:55:21.800
in the grand theory of your book here?
00:55:22.219 --> 00:55:24.739
Yeah. So that's the epilogue. And I've written
00:55:24.739 --> 00:55:26.739
about Trump on my Substack as well.
00:55:26.760 --> 00:55:31.119
People have thought, I thought
00:55:31.119 --> 00:55:33.179
this previously about Trump, that he's incoherent,
00:55:33.179 --> 00:55:35.360
essentially. He's clearly not an intellectual.
00:55:35.619 --> 00:55:38.900
He doesn't read books. So therefore, his ideas
00:55:38.900 --> 00:55:40.619
are not going to be coherent. His policies don't
00:55:40.619 --> 00:55:44.739
emerge from some ideology that is identifiable.
00:55:44.880 --> 00:55:48.380
Well, I think that's not true anymore with his
00:55:48.380 --> 00:55:52.539
foreign policy. So he issued in December of 2025,
00:55:52.780 --> 00:55:55.710
just a little less than a year ago, his national
00:55:55.710 --> 00:55:58.170
security strategy document, which is, I think
00:55:58.170 --> 00:56:00.750
it's annual. It's released by the White House.
00:56:00.789 --> 00:56:03.769
I believe it's annually. So his comes out and
00:56:03.769 --> 00:56:06.309
everybody needs to read that if you want to know
00:56:06.309 --> 00:56:08.010
what's going on, because he has been following
00:56:08.010 --> 00:56:10.210
the script of that thing almost perfectly ever
00:56:10.210 --> 00:56:14.050
since, which is, it's an amazing document. It
00:56:14.050 --> 00:56:19.769
is not overthrowing the American empire. But
00:56:19.769 --> 00:56:22.789
it is refashioning it and reorganizing it. So
00:56:22.789 --> 00:56:25.590
what he wants to do and what he has been doing
00:56:25.590 --> 00:56:31.409
is to gradually withdraw from Eurasia. Eurasia
00:56:31.409 --> 00:56:35.090
historically has been identified by imperialist
00:56:35.090 --> 00:56:38.389
foreign policy advisors to be crucial. If you're
00:56:38.389 --> 00:56:40.570
going to have a global empire, you have to control
00:56:40.570 --> 00:56:42.530
Eurasia, sort of for obvious reasons. It's the
00:56:42.530 --> 00:56:44.289
biggest landmass with the biggest population,
00:56:44.309 --> 00:56:47.110
the most resources. And the United States has
00:56:47.110 --> 00:56:50.349
spent most the bulk of its resources on Eurasia
00:56:50.349 --> 00:56:52.570
for the last hundred or so years. Right. Latin
00:56:52.570 --> 00:56:55.050
America secondarily. But really, Eurasia is where
00:56:55.050 --> 00:56:56.630
we've spent most of our money and our troops
00:56:56.630 --> 00:56:59.889
and all that blood and treasure. Trump doesn't
00:56:59.889 --> 00:57:01.889
like that. It's too far away. I think he just
00:57:01.889 --> 00:57:03.610
doesn't. I think honestly, he just doesn't relate
00:57:03.610 --> 00:57:06.309
to those countries. He's not interested. I think
00:57:06.309 --> 00:57:08.289
he's been to Europe once in his life on vacation.
00:57:08.510 --> 00:57:11.090
I looked this up. I think once with Ivanka,
00:57:11.130 --> 00:57:12.889
he went skiing in Switzerland. That's it. He's
00:57:12.889 --> 00:57:15.730
just not. He's not a cosmopolitan. He goes to
00:57:15.730 --> 00:57:18.130
Scotland. Okay. Oh, that's right because of his
00:57:18.130 --> 00:57:20.429
mom, right. And his golf. No, but that's for business
00:57:20.429 --> 00:57:26.190
too. It's always for business. So
00:57:26.190 --> 00:57:27.929
all the imperialists by the way have been cosmopolitans.
00:57:27.929 --> 00:57:30.329
Another thing to remember, they've all been really
00:57:30.329 --> 00:57:32.110
interested in European culture. Some of them have
00:57:32.110 --> 00:57:34.409
been interested in Arab and Asian cultures too
00:57:34.409 --> 00:57:39.179
except for George W. Bush, right? No, I looked this
00:57:39.179 --> 00:57:41.360
up too. No, he spent a considerable amount of
00:57:41.360 --> 00:57:44.139
time in Europe on vacation. Maybe that's because
00:57:44.139 --> 00:57:47.139
of his wife. But no, any events, some interest.
00:57:47.239 --> 00:57:49.519
Trump has just evinced none. But the great imperialists
00:57:49.519 --> 00:57:53.820
were all worldly. You have to know about these
00:57:53.820 --> 00:57:55.679
other countries to want to invade them, right?
00:57:56.800 --> 00:58:00.539
So he wants to withdraw the bulk of US forces
00:58:00.539 --> 00:58:03.940
from Eurasia. This is why he's been talking about
00:58:03.940 --> 00:58:06.019
NATO the way he has for the last 10 years. He
00:58:06.019 --> 00:58:07.780
wants to basically get out of NATO. This is known.
00:58:08.579 --> 00:58:13.199
He wants Israel to be the more active proxy to
00:58:13.199 --> 00:58:15.400
control the Middle East on our behalf, and he
00:58:15.400 --> 00:58:17.500
wants to leave and let them, and the UAE and
00:58:17.500 --> 00:58:20.260
Saudi, but that's falling apart. But the idea,
00:58:20.280 --> 00:58:23.780
at least, is to arm them, arm the proxies, the
00:58:23.780 --> 00:58:27.440
kingdoms, the Gulf kingdoms and Israel, so that
00:58:27.440 --> 00:58:29.380
they police that region and keep it stable for
00:58:29.380 --> 00:58:33.260
us. Great Britain, he wants to be basically the
00:58:33.260 --> 00:58:36.659
proxy controlling Europe. He probably is not
00:58:36.659 --> 00:58:39.340
saying this. He probably wants Putin in that
00:58:39.340 --> 00:58:43.500
deal as well. He's fine with Putin controlling
00:58:43.500 --> 00:58:45.940
Russia so long as they basically preserve order
00:58:45.940 --> 00:58:50.480
and trade routes and all that. And he wants to
00:58:50.480 --> 00:58:55.679
withdraw to the Western Hemisphere, which that
00:58:55.679 --> 00:59:00.110
explains Venezuela. That explains Greenland.
00:59:00.829 --> 00:59:03.090
Who thought about Greenland? I've been
00:59:03.090 --> 00:59:05.510
studying foreign policy my entire life. I'm 61
00:59:05.510 --> 00:59:07.429
years old. I never even once thought an American
00:59:07.429 --> 00:59:09.170
president would go after Greenland. But actually,
00:59:09.250 --> 00:59:10.829
if you look at his national security strategy
00:59:10.829 --> 00:59:16.110
document. Yeah. And if you look at his words,
00:59:16.429 --> 00:59:18.710
it makes perfect sense. It does. Sort
00:59:18.710 --> 00:59:22.159
of there is a logical coherence to this. He wants
00:59:22.159 --> 00:59:24.659
the entire Western Hemisphere in red, white and
00:59:24.659 --> 00:59:27.579
blue and gold I guess. Gold plating with red, white
00:59:27.579 --> 00:59:30.539
and blue flags something like that. So yeah
00:59:30.539 --> 00:59:34.139
it's a reorganization of the American empire
00:59:34.139 --> 00:59:37.840
not the elimination of it and also he
00:59:37.840 --> 00:59:39.559
of course he's eliminated the morality of it
00:59:39.559 --> 00:59:41.780
right? It's no longer as I said earlier it's no
00:59:41.780 --> 00:59:44.440
longer evangelical, moralistic, missionary. It's
00:59:44.440 --> 00:59:48.300
just for power and wealth accumulation for Trump.
00:59:48.300 --> 00:59:53.139
Is that last question. Is that sort of a
00:59:53.139 --> 00:59:55.639
refreshing form of honesty in a way? Oh, yeah.
00:59:56.079 --> 00:59:58.639
Don't you prefer it? I prefer it. Yeah.
00:59:59.000 --> 01:00:01.019
Yeah. I'd rather know what's actually
01:00:01.019 --> 01:00:02.900
going on. Although in a sense, I'm not
01:00:02.900 --> 01:00:05.900
I am saying the foreign policymakers in the U.S.
01:00:05.900 --> 01:00:08.800
before Trump were honest, largely.
01:00:08.820 --> 01:00:11.719
They did largely say, yeah, we're doing it. We're
01:00:11.719 --> 01:00:14.980
invading. We're funding the Contras
01:00:14.980 --> 01:00:19.260
so that Nicaraguans can be free. Right. And Nicaraguans
01:00:19.260 --> 01:00:22.679
can be democratic and determined and be self
01:00:22.679 --> 01:00:24.639
-determining. And it's always for
01:00:24.639 --> 01:00:27.940
the other people that we're invading or conquering.
01:00:27.980 --> 01:00:31.420
So, yeah, I prefer it. But a lot of
01:00:31.420 --> 01:00:33.119
people will be killed along the way. Trump, by
01:00:33.119 --> 01:00:35.320
the way, has killed far fewer people than the
01:00:35.320 --> 01:00:37.599
great imperialist presidents. His body count,
01:00:37.760 --> 01:00:40.760
which I call it, is still not even close to the
01:00:40.760 --> 01:00:47.280
top 10. If you look at Nixon, LBJ, Eisenhower
01:00:47.280 --> 01:00:50.699
maybe certainly FDR Truman and FDR the two greatest
01:00:50.699 --> 01:00:52.860
mass murderers in American history. It's
01:00:52.860 --> 01:00:55.980
not even Wilson, Lincoln who I also didn't talk
01:00:55.980 --> 01:00:59.639
about but a great imperialist. These guys killed
01:00:59.639 --> 01:01:02.340
orders of magnitude more people than Trump has.
01:01:02.340 --> 01:01:06.480
True. That's all true. And he hasn't even
01:01:06.480 --> 01:01:08.900
deported as many people as Obama.
01:01:08.900 --> 01:01:12.360
As Obama. That's right. That's right. So Thaddeus
01:01:12.360 --> 01:01:15.920
Russell, thank you so much for joining us. Thaddeus
01:01:15.920 --> 01:01:18.460
is the author of Savior and Seducer: A Renegade
01:01:18.460 --> 01:01:22.360
History of the United States in the World. It
01:01:22.360 --> 01:01:24.559
was a pleasure. Hope you'll come back. Tremendous
01:01:24.559 --> 01:01:26.760
pleasure. I'd love to. Thank you, Ted. Great.
01:01:26.960 --> 01:01:28.199
Take care. Bye.