Mark McDonald on navigating ideological extremism | Jerm Warfare

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[00:00:05][music] [music] [music] >> My name is Jim. This is Jim Wolfe, the battle of ideas. Mark McDonald, thank you for joining me in the trenches.

[00:00:38]It's been a really long time since I've been on your show.

[00:00:41]It's been really long. I feel like I feel like I've gone back to a bar that I haven't frequented in years and there you are sitting in the corner and I decided to buy you a drink.

[00:00:54]I've been there the whole time.

[00:00:56]Waiting for me. When is When is Jim coming? Is he Is he ever going to come back? It's me.

[00:01:02]It's not you.

[00:01:02]>> in a bar as a man. Women don't come up to you. So, you've got to wait for somebody else to show up and it's a really passive exercise.

[00:01:11]Unless they identify as women. That happens quite a bit. It's kind of scary, actually.

[00:01:17]Mark, obviously you and I know each other quite well, but uh let's just quickly go through the boring stuff. I sometimes get accused of of ignoring who my guests are. So, quickly give me an overview of you.

[00:01:30]I have worked as a child and adolescent psychiatrist for over a decade, but I really started to branch out in 2020 when the world shut down and everyone lost their minds.

[00:01:40]Speaking, writing, publishing, podcasting.

[00:01:44]In the last couple of years, I've stepped somewhat away from that because I've been largely burnt out from all of the political rabble-rousing and I've been really getting back to what I think is most important for me personally, which is uh my friends, my family, personal growth, travel, health.

[00:02:04]And I've been spending less time out in the trenches, going around to conferences and trying to persuade people to become more rational. What I've What I've in the last few years is that the rational people are already rational and the ones that are not, you can't really persuade them. So, I'm more interested now in finding a place where there are more rational people and settling in there rather than trying to convert the crazies from my own location, which is still, officially, Los Angeles, California.

[00:02:38]But that's That's the way you've started off on the wrong foot. I mean, L That's where I was born. Are you saying I started off on the wrong foot at birth?

[00:02:48]>> I mean that's effectively Sodom and Gomorrah.

[00:02:52]It would be better if it were Sodom and Gomorrah because then there would at least be really good sex involved, but in Los Angeles, I don't think you have that. You simply have highly deranged personality disordered women and men with their tails between their legs, which doesn't really lead to a lot of sex and it doesn't really lead to a lot of masculine energy nor healthy feminine energy. Put simply, I think Los Angeles is really a toxic wasteland interpersonally and for me, I think interpersonal relationships are really one of the most important aspects of life, much more important than the weather, which I have to admit, you really can't beat the weather in Los Angeles. It is damn good, but that's about all that's good left in LA at this point. You haven't been to South Africa.

[00:03:38]If you would have the weather You invited me a few years ago and and >> should have come.

[00:03:43]But you Indian gave it back and so You know, you can't come anymore.

[00:03:51]The invitation was rescinded a couple of years ago. But but I I know you proffered a new invitation, so I I would like to take you up on that. I would love to go to South Africa. It's one of the places that I would love to visit.

[00:04:04]Yeah, I mean, I was talking about the weather. I think politically it's it's a dump in many ways and I mean, I won't get into that, but the weather here at least is is a wonderful thing and I remember you saying to me years ago that being in Los Angeles just absolutely destroys you.

[00:04:22]Yes, I think that is true even more now than I said it a few years ago and I can say that with conviction because having left LA and begun to spend some time elsewhere once again, which I had done for a few years back in the early post-2020 rage debacle time span, I found that I immediately notice and feel a great deal of difference when I'm far away from the culture wars of the West and LA is one of those nexuses of culture war because people elsewhere in the world, they just don't care about this [ __ ] You go to Iraq, you go to Lebanon, you go to Central or Eastern Europe, they're busy living their lives. They have their own domestic problems, they have their corruption and their mafia, but it's not a psychological issue, it's more of just a practical one. You know, how can we get our car repaired without having to pay a bribe? How can we manage to get our kids into college without connections? I'm not saying that's ideal, but it's a lot better than debating over whether or not it's fair and just to men from hanging out with little girls in locker rooms because they happen to have a psychotic disorder and think that they're a woman. That's That's not something that is even discussed here because it's so insane.

[00:05:46]And so, I I really like the fact that there are other places in the world that are not in the West that despite their problems are are largely fairly peaceful, normal places where people are just leading their lives and walking their dogs and getting coffee and having drinks and going out and they're not slamming down uh their fists on the table and yelling about why it's so devastating to peace and harmony to have the Pete's Coffee chain remove the rainbow flag from its marketing campaign.

[00:06:18]Yeah, that's something that I found very annoying in the surge of LGBTQ nonsense is that I can't just buy a beer.

[00:06:28]It has to come with some sort of social message.

[00:06:33]That is the crux of the problem, I think, in the Western culture wars is we're not actually arguing about ideas, we're we're arguing about whether or not it's appropriate for every aspect of our life to be impregnated with some form of ideological extremism. And I don't want to be arguing and fighting about that aspect of my life. I want to go and get a beer without having to read a message on the side of the can or to have to listen to a forced newsfeed overhead on the screen, not of sports, but of messages lambasting the president because he has the wrong color hair. I'm just tired of it. I don't want to be involved in that anymore. I find it exhausting.

[00:07:17]And I would have to say, Jeremy, that the level of anxiety and stress that I see and feel throughout Los Angeles and most urban America is so unhealthy. I've never seen this before in my life and I'm not talking about all the mask nonsense and the medical crap that that sort of is basically water under the bridge at this point. I'm just talking about the stress that I think adults and even younger people now are feeling because there is an unending internal battle that people are fighting to resolve this intrinsic paradox and computational error in their brains between what they know is real and what they're told is real. The chasm is becoming so wide that it's causing these neuronal explosions. People just can't handle it anymore.

[00:08:16]And for that reason, people are not happy.

[00:08:21]People are not content. People are not courteous, they're not kind, they're not generous, they're not they're not spontaneous, they're not fun. People are simply listless and they're mired in these addictive behaviors. A lot of it is drugs, alcohol, empty sex, gambling, hyper exercise. There's all these extreme behaviors that I see people are engaging in in Los Angeles that I I believe are purely an attempt to try to resolve the cognitive dissonance between man plus woman equals baby versus man with a dress can have unlimited children. Can't resolve this. I keep getting back to this whole trans issue because I think it's just such a perfect exemplification of how we've jumped the shark. We've gone from arguing about whether we should be more socially kind to the underprivileged and give benefits to those who are of some form of victimized minority group, which I think is an still an arguable position. I'm not even in favor of that, but let's just say that that used to be a somewhat reasonable forum for debate. And now we're arguing about whether it's okay to have a 40-year-old man having sex with children. This is not This is not a current in a society that can continue if the if the society is to survive. It is not a survivable state that we're in right now, in my opinion.

[00:09:44]And it's a weird kind of chronology. If anyone was joking saying, "I used to be the enemy. Now I'm the guy who's being accused of being the oppressor."

[00:09:54]>> [laughter] [snorts] [sighs and gasps] >> It's crazy how far we have gone to the path of the insane. Think I don't think Americans at least are really even largely aware of this because they don't have any other reference experiences unless they actually leave the country and they go someplace far far away where people are behaving normally. And how many Americans do that? It's it's not it's not very many. Not today.

[00:10:27]I don't mean to say this in a disparaging way, but have you noticed as an American that when you travel outside of America, Americans are not really looked favorably on?

[00:10:42]And it's not because of Americans themselves. You must understand what I'm what I'm trying to get at you.

[00:10:48]I found that it really depends on the country. For example, when I was in Kurdistan last summer, I found that Americans the archetype of of the the American person. So not the individual in front of your face, but Americans plural or American >> the framework was viewed very favorably, but that was specifically because the United States saved the Kurds during the the Clinton administration from essentially a genocide by the Turks and others.

[00:11:18]So clear that in some places there is a very positive connection that the local people have with the United States. Lebanon is another is incredibly pro-America and Americans in Lebanon.

[00:11:35]However when you are looking at places where there's a large tourist component and those tourists are poorly behaved, I think they change their mind. That's the first one. And that would be >> you always hear Sorry, cuz you it's always like uh it's those Americans again.

[00:11:54]When I'm here for example in in in Budapest and I hear these really really loud Brits and Australians and Americans and they're all loud and obnoxious all all three of them and the Canadians as well. They're all obnoxious and they're all drunk. I kind of cringe and I think oh god, I hope that those people are not actually American. And then I hear that big loud accent and all loud they talk like that. They're definitely not American. I don't know where they're from, but they're not from my country, thank god. So >> To be fair though, as a South African, when I travel, everybody's scared of me because I think I'm going to mug them.

[00:12:27]So >> [laughter] >> We've all got our quirks.

[00:12:32]Every They hold their their luggage or their or their stuff close to them.

[00:12:36]>> [laughter] >> It's true. Every every single group of people from every country that travels has a bad reputation in their stereotyped framework and just depends on what the stereotype is. That is very true.

[00:12:49]But there's a second anti-American theme or or vein that runs through certain nations that has nothing to do with the tourist and that has a lot to do with their understanding of America's position in the world. Yeah.

[00:13:06]>> And I'm not saying that they have the good criticisms that I was describing. I think they're good criticisms that the US has just kind of lost its way in allowing nonsense to persist. I'm talking about the the understanding that they have that somehow the United States is not on board with the globalist agenda.

[00:13:29]And they're not. That is true. And I so I I see this largely in Western Europe or in EU nations. Wait, hold on. Hold on. You're saying the US is not on board with the globalist agenda. Not in the way that the EU is, no. Oh, okay. Right.

[00:13:44]The EU seems to be the nexus for globalism in the world and the United States since Trump was elected has been largely opposed to that. Now, prior to that, they were on board. The Biden administration, the Obama administration were all very pro-EU, pro-globalist, pro-international court. They wanted there to be basically no borders, just dissolve everything and to sort of become just one giant potpourri of love and internationalism. And that unfortunately got us to the brink of of collapse right before Trump was was elected the second time. And his international stance has been the opposite. Uh and I think to his credit, he's largely said America first. Uh we need to protect our our nation. We're not responsible for the rest of the world and we're not babysitting the EU.

[00:14:28]We're not going to basically protect all the nations around the world uh particularly in the West at our expense when those nations are not supportive of traditional democratic institutions and traditional liberalism and they're not.

[00:14:43]They're essentially all corporate globalists now that are running a kind of post-modern Marxist campaign anti-borders, anti-language, anti-culture to in my opinion create two classes of people which are the oligarchs on the top and then the peons that that serve them below. A kind of a Hunger Games mentality. That's how I see the EU. I don't see the EU even as a a traditional socialist model. It's it's really quite a feudal system.

[00:15:09]And I think that is the nexus for the anti-American sentiment in the West and I think it's largely misunderstood and it's largely unearned. And I think that the reason for it is primarily the takeover of international media which no longer provides accurate information.

[00:15:29]And from what I've heard by talking to people here in Budapest, their understanding of geopolitics is completely incorrect outside of Europe.

[00:15:39]They have no understanding of politics in the United States because everything they hear is essentially propaganda.

[00:15:48]Going back to the LGBTQ thing, you have worked with kids for for many years.

[00:15:54]Have you found that that has affected them in a in a big way?

[00:15:59]I think it's been a disaster. I think children today are completely confused.

[00:16:04]The ones that are still able to focus on normal binary sexual development, you know, boys will be boys, girls will be girls, are often punished for that, ostracized.

[00:16:18]To to their utter confusion. They don't they don't understand why it's a problem to insist that they play with trucks on the boys' side and the girls play with the dolls. When they resist the cross-sexual fertilization of of games and toys for example, they're upgraded and they're told that they're insensitive and intolerant and they're often sent home.

[00:16:40]And this is happening in classrooms all over the United States which have been taken over by left-wing loons largely but not entirely women with pieces of metal in their face with shaved heads and strangely colored hair pledging allegiance to rainbow flags instead of the United States flag. This is actually quite common and I'm not even embellishing. I mean, you see it all over Libs of TikTok uh which publishes videos on this regularly as well as other social media sites.

[00:17:08]So I see in my day-to-day life and in my practice that that young children from a very very young age all the way up to their teenage years are completely incapable of finding a normal developmental path because they are not allowed to assert it.

[00:17:28]When they try, they are punished and they are isolated.

[00:17:33]And this is true in almost every urban area in the US.

[00:17:36]I've spoken with even people a little older, let's say in their late 20s, early 30s, their entire language system has shifted. They're speaking English in a way that I barely even understand.

[00:17:48]The number of women, the percentage of women for example in their let's say teens and 20s now that don't consider themselves to be strictly heterosexual has exploded. The terms that they're using, I don't even understand. They're they're talking about two-spirit this and binary that and they're into polyamory and they want to be sexually non-exclusive but monogamous in a non-monogamous ethical way. I don't even understand what they're saying. And this is all coming from an externally driven a propaganda campaign. It's not coming from an intrinsic change genetically or biologically or psychologically from the individual herself.

[00:18:27]So that kind of capture that's taken place by what I would say is a an anti-life group which is I think aligned with the globalist group, I think has done a real number on young people and I don't think that we're going to be able to solve this at least in the United States unless we mount a really vociferous campaign against it, but I don't see it happening anytime soon.

[00:18:51]I was chatting to a friend of mine actually earlier today.

[00:18:54]Uh he lives in the UK. South African who emigrated there. Doesn't really matter.

[00:18:58]Anyway, he said to me that I should just live and let live and stop worrying about the LGBTQ stuff. I So what if these are adults making consenting decisions? If they want to chop off their bits, let them. Sure.

[00:19:12]Let them. But I'm talking about something deeper than that. Didn't exist in the 90s. I I don't remember the word transgender ever existing before like 1998 or even 2000 and odd whatever. Do you?

[00:19:27]It because it didn't. There was a very very small less than 1% of the population that was involved in transsexualism which is what it was called back then which was an aberration.

[00:19:38]Or even transvestite although that's simply strict strictly dress related. So how people dress. And but the transsexuals actually had an identity internally that that crossed over to the other gender. It wasn't just that the men like to prance around in women's clothes and then by day they would go to work in a suit. You could even call that perhaps more of a fetish, but transgenderism is not a fetish. It's it's much more deep-rooted than just a a behavior or addiction or a focused sexual proclivity like being aroused by women's high-heeled shoes.

[00:20:14]This this goes much much deeper.

[00:20:16]It's also very much based on a proselytization. You know, I don't recall at any time in my life people who followed certain fetishes ever trying to convince other people to do it or to pull children into it, not that I can recall.

[00:20:31]But now it's not really or is no longer about one's own self-expression, it's about the forced conversion of the rest of the population to come to their side not only for support, but also for championing it and to incorporate it into their own life.

[00:20:49]And I think that crosses a very distinct moral threshold and cultural threshold where live and let live is no longer really the mantra even though that's maybe what this man is using as actual words, it's really let them live, but assume that you will not be allowed to live freely unless you conform to their standards.

[00:21:11]That's not the same thing as actual freedom.

[00:21:14]Yeah, but I'm also kind of hinting at the fact that if this didn't exist you know, more than 20 years ago, then it must be artificially created and then therefore it's been in put into society for a reason.

[00:21:28]You're you're moving towards the meaning behind this or the motivation for it as opposed to the ideology of it. Yeah, I mean, for example, somebody who you might interact with who calls themselves transgender, you don't off the bat hate that person. They are a symptom of something bigger.

[00:21:50]I think that's true. I've said that the biggest victims of the whole transgender movement have largely been young girls and because they're the ones that have been captured.

[00:22:01]And they're also the ones that are mostly preyed upon by the men who are smaller in number than the girls who say that they're transgender, but by the men who are inherently predatorial and are using this movement as a mechanism to virtuously and without responsibility prey on women. And I'm referring to for example, the men that go into women's locker rooms with dresses on because they they voyeuristically view naked young girls or rapists who are in male prisons who announce that they are now women that then actually go and rape women in women's prisons. These are these are sociopaths. These are predators. And and they're being protected under this umbrella of transgenderism. So if if this is being allowed and we as a society are condoning it, then you you must ask the question as you did, what is the intention behind this? Is it to allow people to express themselves freely? I don't think so because there are a lot of areas of free expression that are now banned or illegal in the United States. If you protest against globalism or against the wrong political party, you can be physically assaulted and there's no recourse. So it's not that freedom has now become too free, it's that there has been an unleashing of an irresponsibility within one domain of life which has become very corrosive and which is destroying the fabric of our society. And so if that is the end result, you have to acknowledge that there was an intention in the unleashing of this pathology. And that intention must be nefarious because there is no good that is coming of this.

[00:23:52]So why would someone do that or why would a group of people do that? It's very similar I think to asking the question, why would you allow for open borders with 13 million illegal, largely criminal or militarily engaged against the United States or spy-based Chinese government employees infiltrating your country? Why would you encourage that unless you wanted to destabilize the nation? So I think there is a goal ultimately of destabilization and corrosion of the country so that power can be re-aligned and a small group of people can start to take control. And that's a you can call that a conspiracy I suppose, but I I don't really see how you can argue that this was simply a well-intentioned but failed exercise in democratic freedom. Just a quick caveat cuz whenever somebody now these days says conspiracy or conspiracy theory, they always add a disclaimer.

[00:24:49]And that just shows the power of propaganda and how a word has been weaponized. It's as if conspiracies don't occur, Mark. Julius Caesar just happened to fall on a bunch of knives.

[00:25:01]You know, JFK just happened to be driving down a road where there were just bullets flying, you know, and and one hit him, you know, or nine hit him or whatever. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was just a terrible coincidence. Conspiracies obviously occur. And but people are so scared these days to say the word conspiracy and a conspiracy theory is is just it's just you theorizing over an event, that's all. Until it becomes either real or false.

[00:25:31]The challenges that were put forth in 2020 to obvious lies about the impending destruction of the world and due to a cold virus were immediately slapped with this moniker of conspiracy theory.

[00:25:46]So for that reason it's now been given a dirty name because the people who were opposed to giving up their freedom were appropriately seen as a threat.

[00:26:01]And the best way to to end a threat without going after them and murdering them is to discredit them.

[00:26:10]And once someone is discredited, then they don't have any power anymore. And I think the word conspiracy theory has has been adopted as a weapon of discrediting people who are threats to the movement that you're you're trying to to empower.

[00:26:24]But that's also a very interesting observation about the power of language and how it influences the way we engage with one another. You know, for example, with the LGBTQ thing, you made a reference earlier to how we used to talk about one thing and now we're talking about other things.

[00:26:41]And in conversation sometimes you have to find yourself pausing because you're worried now how the other person might respond because you just make a joke and they go, "No, no, that's offensive. You shouldn't joke like that." You know, like what what is the logical conclusion of this? We just don't really communicate properly anymore.

[00:27:02]We we use euphemisms.

[00:27:04]And we use coded language to announce what tribe we belong to rather than actually arguing real pointed, accurate facts and experiences.

[00:27:19]So the virtue signaling that comes through with symbolism like the coffee chain I think it's called Phil's Coffee that has been posting and placing rainbow flags in their shops for a number of years even though it's just a coffee shop, it's not a bathhouse. There's no reason to be having rainbow flags about gays in a coffee shop when it's not a gay coffee shop. But they're doing that as a as a means of virtue signaling.

[00:27:52]Right now in the United States, if you want to have a conversation about anything if you don't use certain words in a certain way, you will be quickly labeled as a bad person as somebody who is immoral.

[00:28:09]And once that happens, the conversation ends. So people are very very careful about what words they use because they don't want to be ostracized or cut out of the milieu that they belong to. So I I guess what I'm saying is that I think conversation now in the United States has become largely performative.

[00:28:30]I don't think it's function is to exchange information and reach decisions or express disagreements and pursue the truth.

[00:28:43]I think it's largely a display.

[00:28:46]>> It is about exerting power and maintaining power. Mhm. And and displaying that power through the way that you dress and the way that you speak so that you can then be seen as aligned with a group that is in power rather than out of power.

[00:28:58]Yeah, but now what's happened is that those conversations have been relegated to Dave Chappelle and other comedians.

[00:29:08]There are very few comedians left in the US that are still actually practicing comedy. I've been to about 20 comedy shows in LA in the last 6 months and I would say that all but maybe two or three of the performers, the comedians in those shows were using what I would call performative language as opposed to really truly provocative language that is meant to challenge a power structure.

[00:29:35]In fact, I would even say that comedy now largely in the US is simply performs to reassert and reflect the existing power structure, which is the antithesis of comedy. Comedy is always supposed to be about making fun of the king.

[00:29:55]But Yeah, that's what I >> That was their role. That That was their role. Exactly. We don't do that anymore in the US. The people that are that are jesting, the comedians, are essentially attacking the people without any power. It's It's very odd.

[00:30:11]Because the people who are in charge, the people who have the power in the US, are largely those who are pushing all of these crazy movements. And these are the same movements that the comedians are in favor of.

[00:30:24]So, I don't even think comedy serves its purpose like it used to.

[00:30:28]And you're right, Dave Chappelle challenges. There's a couple of of other comedians who who are still speaking.

[00:30:34]They say truth to power, but they're not common anymore.

[00:30:37]Um I I don't think that I don't think that comedy has been successfully resurrected in the US after it was essentially banned during the lockdowns in 2020 because it always has to be done in in front of people. You know, you don't have You don't have comedians talking into a microphone, you know, in a podcasting booth, and then people are like, "I'm going to listen to the comedy podcast that came out yesterday." It doesn't work like that. It always has to be in front of an actual audience. And And that was made illegal for 2 years, and I don't think I don't think comedy has ever come back since then.

[00:31:08]The same can be said, though, about a lot of rock music. I mean, it was all about drugs, sex, rock and roll, and sticking it to the man. You know, now it's all about raging for the machine.

[00:31:22]But how many rock stars have signed up to become poster childs of um Citibank and American Express or performed for the Democrat Party at political rallies?

[00:31:36]I don't think there are many that are still actually trying to challenge the power structure. I mean, even Howard Stern, who was around for decades. I mean, that guy was like the poster child of sticking it to the man in the radio broadcasting world. Kindly, I could describe him as someone who sold out, but I would even go so far as to say he seems to have actually lost his mind. He seems to be irrational at this point and completely controlled by this this kind of mass paranoia that took over the world in in 2020 and hasn't really left us. It's just sort of shifted form away from perhaps the medical to the more cultural.

[00:32:17]And And many other people like him. So, it would be challenging if you were to ask me to identify a cultural icon, either a speaker, a comedian, a musician, somebody that's in a kind of pop culture world who's actually challenging the largely despotic co-mingled movement of government and large corporation and cultural assignment, you know, through magazines and and radio and music, challenging that structure and mocking it in a way that upsets the balance of power. I I would have a hard time naming more than two or three people. I just don't see them anymore.

[00:33:05]When Gavin McInnes was on my podcast, he said that everything is downstream from culture. Would you agree with that?

[00:33:13]No. I don't.

[00:33:16]I think that unfortunately, culture, which used to be largely naturalistic and largely the result of an actual real confluence of decisions, preferences, trends, has now been taken over and manipulated by a very small number of powerful people.

[00:33:45]Therefore, what we consider culture now, I don't believe is actually culture anymore. I think it's actually a campaign.

[00:33:56]And therefore, I think that culture may actually be the beginning, not the end, of the stream of decisions and behaviors and changes in the way that people view their life, which is a very scary thing for me to say because I I always used to think that culture was simply what started and that from that we found our lives and we determined how we wanted to live. I don't believe that culture is a natural life force anymore in many places in the world. I think it's actually completely artificially modeled and injected. And I'm talking about that from the the point of view of the foods we eat, the music we listen to, the books that we read, how we listen to podcasts, uh our our movements and how we move around.

[00:34:54]A simple example in Culver City, which is close to where I live in Los Angeles, the government removed all these parking spaces and turned two or three out of five lanes of traffic into bus zones and and bicycle paths.

[00:35:12]And now the culture, quote unquote, is a walking culture where there's no cars.

[00:35:18]Well, that wasn't the result of people saying, "We really don't want to actually have to use our cars and park and go shopping.

[00:35:26]We'd all love to just ride our bikes 365 days a year." Because those lanes are empty. There's nobody in them. There's a bus every 24 minutes, and there's maybe seven bicycles an hour. And everyone else just doesn't go there anymore because they have nowhere to park, and they can't get through the traffic cuz it's just a It's a mess. It's three lanes down to one.

[00:35:47]So, was all of that All of those changes in people's behavior, was that the downstream effect of of culture? I don't think so.

[00:35:54]Politics. Exactly. Politics masquerading as culture.

[00:36:00]And that's [ __ ] Okay, but then when you speak about culture, what do you mean?

[00:36:04]What I mean is a kind of like a Ouija board where everyone has their hands on the board and no one's really moving it or controlling it. It just sort of goes with the the summation of all the forces of the hands on the board shift it in a certain direction.

[00:36:25]And that's where culture becomes an expression of the direction of the people as a whole.

[00:36:40]And that's when trends start and you start to see movement.

[00:36:45]Back in the Let's say 1960s, there was a cultural fashion trend toward bell-bottom jeans and uh hippy dippy hair and marijuana.

[00:36:56]Was that started because a denim company launched a hippy campaign and won over the youth who were all in very conservative 1950s clothing to start dressing more slovenly with bell-bottom pants and putting flowers in their hair?

[00:37:10]Was that because there was a a series of viral reels on Instagram that were all pushed by a third party that was doing crowdsourcing and funding to get those reels out to capture the minds and attention and change the stuff? No, that wasn't happening.

[00:37:28]Everybody just sort of decided to do that on their own, and it became a fashion statement. But now when you see people dressing differently, it's usually because one corporation that has an investment in a specific type of clothing somehow got an influencer to start posting videos of herself wearing this clothing and paying her about half a million dollars for it to ignite a trend, but it was all ignited by a marketing campaign in New York City. It had nothing to do with an actual girl that really liked that clothing. These are these little points that I'm making about how everything that we determine to be culture now seems to be artificially induced.

[00:38:09]Like Like meat that's grown in a laboratory.

[00:38:14]And I I I don't think that culture anymore in the West is naturally determined. I think it actually is laboratory grown, and I think we're being force-fed it.

[00:38:23]And that's another reason why I'm so concerned about the viability of the West because if you if you no longer have an actual naturalistic culture, if your culture is being fed to you, then you really are kind of living in a matrix to some degree, aren't you? It's not longer organic. Not at all.

[00:38:43]I see this with almost every trend, every popular exercise fad, food, movie, book.

[00:38:55]It all seems to be originating not from the ground up, but from the top down.

[00:39:00]And I find that very troubling because it disenfranchises the people from actually co-creating their culture.

[00:39:08]Their culture is being created for them, and they're being told to just follow it.

[00:39:13]And if they don't follow it, then they're considered to be some kind of an iconoclast outsider who's a rabble-rouser, and that person is then ostracized. So, it eliminates what I see as sort of the organic give and take and development of tools that people need to adapt to a changing environment. I don't think that people are adapting and developing tools anymore. I think they're being told what to do, and then they are being forced into a an adaptation which is not actually of their own choosing and which is not healthy for them. Spending 17 hours a day on a phone which is the average screen time is of a college student now. That's not a cultural trend that the kids just sort of picked this thing up and decided that it was something was really cool and they really wanted to do. They have been neurotransmitterdly addicted to these phones with a very sophisticated multi-billion dollar invested algorithmic always changing weaponized series of apps that they, the children and the young people, are really unable to resist because they don't have the capacity. It would be like dropping packages of cocaine in every single school district in the United States and then a month later saying, "You know, we have this cultural trend now of cocaine addiction. We don't know what I guess kids just really like coke."

[00:40:38]That's what these phones are doing. So, it concerns me and it kind of gets back to what you're talking about earlier that I really do think there is a conspiracy so to speak as opposed to an organic movement towards a way of life in the West which will be our undoing because it is not a sustainable humanistic healthy happy growth oriented reproducing of humans directed way of life. In all ways it is the opposite of that.

[00:41:10]It's a death. It ends in in basically death.

[00:41:13]We were having supper yesterday with friends and me and my mate we were talking about cotton and different styles of cotton that you that you buy now and some cotton is stretchy and other and other cotton isn't. Um Very strange conversation and it I sound very gay now that I'm talking about it but there was a context which I won't get into.

[00:41:33]And he said to me "But I will never buy a linen shirt because I don't want people to think that I work on a yacht."

[00:41:42]Really?

[00:41:46]And that there feeds into what you're saying about about culture because linen is equated to to what you wear on a boat.

[00:41:56]It's that it's that it's that kind of straight material. And I was just thinking about how these fashions do either fall into organic or or artificial trends as you were talking about.

[00:42:09]That's a that's a great example of an artificially driven anti-trend meaning anti-linen.

[00:42:15]Mhm. When if you look at history um linen was probably the most popular fabric during the entire pioneering period in the United States because it's incredibly durable. It's strong.

[00:42:27]It uh wicks uh sweat away. It has a great breathability.

[00:42:34]Uh it can be uh very easily washed and dried.

[00:42:40]Which is why you wear it on a yacht.

[00:42:43]Well, no. That's not why you wear it on a yacht.

[00:42:46]Cuz it gets full of cuz it gets it gets wet and it gets full of salt.

[00:42:51]You could just as easily wear elastin synthetic nylon product on a boat, too.

[00:42:56]It's because the advertisements for clothing that are made out of linen tend to only feature people wearing yachts or not wearing yachts working on yachts as opposed to building wooden cabins out in the forest or preparing uh meals with a linen tablecloths because they're much easier to take care of than silk and cotton.

[00:43:22]It's always perhaps been that way to some degree with advertising for clothing but the association that's incredibly constrained that this guy has about linen only being a type of fabric that one would wear on a yacht is clearly impregnated inside of him. It's not a conclusion [clears throat] he reached on his own. He reached it because of all the advertisements that he's been flooded with. I well, that's the point. And but I mean that feeds into what you're talking about artificial culture. Smoking was a phenomenal example of that. I mean, let's be honest. The greatest advertising ever was tobacco advertising. Yes.

[00:43:59]>> Back in the '80s particularly.

[00:44:03]And we're seeing that now with marijuana and CBD products.

[00:44:07]The switch from the use of tobacco by teenagers as an act of rebellion to CBD and marijuana. I've never seen something that rapid. Well, vaping and vaping is also part of that.

[00:44:21]And it's not intrinsically something that most young people gravitate towards.

[00:44:29]But because of the marketing and because of the anti-tobacco position which opened up a new field of rebellious behavior which is the nicotine delivery products in the CBD and the marijuana. Now, when you walk around and you see kids, you know, junior high school, high school kids, they're all carrying vapes and vape pens with them or they're using marijuana infusion devices to get high.

[00:44:58]And that's all due to marketing. It's not due to any kind of organic movement whatsoever. And now they're all addicted to it and they can't stop because nicotine is highly highly addictive and also marijuana is in a different way.

[00:45:11]It's addictive in terms of the the behaviors that it induces of of lack of productivity and also to some degree the reliance on marijuana to quell anxiety and depression and you have a huge huge degree of rebound effect when you stop marijuana. You become highly anxious and and also depressed when you stop using it. Very similar kind of methodology of addictive capture that was performed after World War with tobacco and smoking. Very very similar.

[00:45:39]So, those sorts of weapons like you said marketing weapons have been in in use for a long time and they're just simply evolving I think into a much much more powerful tool.

[00:45:49]And I think it has a lot to do with social media and and the use now increasing use of AI to help create and generate fake trends that you can do very cheaply and that can accrue enormous amounts of money.

[00:46:06]The control that that potentially that that can be exerted over our minds through AI certainly with the adults but even more so with young people is actually quite terrifying if it's if it's used as a tool of manipulation.

[00:46:21]I was thinking that AI is probably one of the biggest I don't want to call it a black swan event cuz it isn't but something along those lines where it's a huge huge turning point in civilization.

[00:46:39]Um I think the internet itself was one of them. I mean, I remember back in the early '90s logging on with the dial-up modem and Google hadn't existed yet. I think it was like AltaVista and and one or two other search engines that had just about nothing on them.

[00:46:54]But I think that was a big turning point also.

[00:46:59]Um AI I think is a huge huge deal and I don't even think any of us have any idea what the next 25 years is going to look like.

[00:47:11]It's not possible because we don't know how it's going to be used.

[00:47:15]Uh I mean, I see two largely distinct scenarios. One is lovely and the other is horrific.

[00:47:22]And I don't really see how it's going to be anything in between.

[00:47:27]The lovely scenario would be that AI then becomes a replacement for the enslavement that we now suffer from as operators of computer systems. We are basically the slaves to computers today and social media.

[00:47:45]We were promised that they would free us. These are tools that we would be able to use to increase efficiency and improve our lives and and I don't believe that they are. I think on a net basis the smartphone has actually cost us a lot more than it's provided.

[00:48:01]What the AI can potentially do is take over all of the time wasting useless virtual anti-interpersonal events and activities that we're now consumed with and do them for us.

[00:48:16]And if that's possible and if that can happen, then we could go out into the world and actually live our lives again instead of being stuck behind a desk or craning our necks over into a phone.

[00:48:25]That would be lovely. That would actually be a pivotal moment in history similar to let's say the discovery of antibiotics or the industrial revolution of massive increase of efficiency that would free us from a lot of anti-human tasks that I think are robbing us of our of our our lives.

[00:48:45]On the other hand the AI could actually end up doing somewhat the opposite. What it could end up doing if we don't have control over our local manager, our chief of staff AI system that we are now directing it towards and giving it action plans. If the AI as as an entity becomes controlled and taken over by a small group of globalists in the way that medicine has now.

[00:49:15]It could actually be used against us in the way that medicine has recently been used. And that would end up looking like a system where we are fed as we are now like we're talking about trends. We are fed the tasks, the priorities, the decisions about things as basic as what temperature to keep our thermostat at in our home, how far to drive our car, how much food to purchase, when to purchase the food, what types of food, books that we read, the music that we listen to. This is already happening to some degree. But if if AI is taken over not by us as individuals but by corporations and international groups and then it's constrained in its algorithms to not really be able to assist us but actually to act as an assistant to a largely ideological end point which is defined by not us as individuals but by these entities that are trying to take over our lives, then we could end up becoming enslaved to the AI.

[00:50:20]So, that's how I see the future of AI.

[00:50:23]Either we become our masters of it or it starts to master us.

[00:50:28]Mhm.

[00:50:29]And I think it is dependent on two things. One is to what degree these globalist corporate international structures are able to rest away AI from our hands in the way that the whole Bitcoin was taken away from the people.

[00:50:45]How much actual curiosity and independent spirit we as individuals and collectively express towards AI. If we actually try to learn it and we want to incorporate into our lives as a tool, we could potentially win this tug-of-war. But if we sit back >> passively and unfortunately a lot of the problems in the US are due to passiveness, passivity, ordering coffee online, you know, and just picking it up or having it delivered >> Like doom scrolling. It's a passive way of using the tool. If we start using AI like that, just letting AI tell us what it thinks we should be doing instead of acting as an architect for our lives and saying this is what I want to do today, tomorrow and for the next week and the next month, I want you AI to show me how to accomplish these goals that I have decided for myself. If we don't do that, if we just lay back and say, you know what? I don't really know what to do with my life. Give me some ideas. Tell me how I should live. Tell me how I can optimize my environmental footprint and become a better citizen and support the underprivileged.

[00:51:52]And then AI gives us a whole list of tasks and affirmations and lanes and barriers and constraints that we start to follow like little sheep in the same way that many people did after the 2020 debacle, then I think we might we we might wind up becoming horribly enslaved to it. Again, kind of like a matrix scenario. Those are the two outcomes I see with AI and I honestly don't know where it's going to head because we don't really have a lot of evidence yet to see what direction we're going.

[00:52:20]A friend of mine said to me that human progress is a myth. And I found that a really profound statement.

[00:52:26]Technology or technological progress is not a myth but human progress is a myth.

[00:52:31]In other words, have humans actually changed at all in let's say 1,000, 2,000 years?

[00:52:37]You could argue I think that humans have progressed and then retreated from progress.

[00:52:46]Let me give you an example. So so in other words, they go Let me give you an example. So they'll say, okay, uh we don't use spears anymore. Okay, no, sure but we use a different method now. We use bullets. The same thing though.

[00:53:00]Well, you're kind of begging the question which is why do we still have wars.

[00:53:06]And why do we still fight? And you could I suppose argue that we still fight and we have wars because we haven't progressed to a point where we are able to resolve differences largely peaceably.

[00:53:21]So, in that sense, one could argue that there hasn't been much progress.

[00:53:26]But I suppose you could also argue that there's been an acceptance of the reality of the intrinsic flawed nature of humanity and the acceptance of that reality has led some civilizations to develop weaponry in order to protect and advance their people and the cause of what they see as good because they know that there will always be bad people that if left to their own devices will develop even more advanced weaponry will wipe them out.

[00:53:58]So, I think you could you could argue that that to some degree there's been progress in the acknowledgement of the reality of the flaws of man.

[00:54:11]Because if you if you posit that the goal of humanity is to progress to a state of perfection where there's no longer any intrinsic vice that comes out of the human, that's very similar to a sort of Buddhist approach to eliminate all expectations and all desires.

[00:54:32]And that may not actually be attainable because we are not actually perfect beings and we'll always have drives that are inherently destructive.

[00:54:46]Think I think acknowledging that and arming yourself for that battle is actually a sign of thoughtfulness and progress because denying that Mhm. usually ends up causing and guaranteeing your demise against people who are far more flawed than you.

[00:55:05]And in a way, why should there be human progress?

[00:55:13]That's a good question because what is exactly the purpose of life itself? Is it to progress human beings as a species or is it to lead a full life for yourself and perhaps your immediate descendants?

[00:55:24]>> yeah, what is the trajectory of that quote-unquote progress?

[00:55:29]If the trajectory is to allow for the most powerful and meaningful experiences which requires health, it requires transportation, it requires interpersonal connections, it requires mastering the elements of the weather and our surroundings.

[00:55:51]To the degree that we're able to achieve, build the tools to then provide the opportunity to have those experiences, then I think we are progressing.

[00:56:03]But I think you could also argue that even though we have all those tools now, we have better health, we have transportation, we have mastered the elements, we do largely connect interpersonally without stabbing one another to death over small things out in outside of, you know, some of the soccer bars in England.

[00:56:21]Outside of all of that, you could I think very well make the case that there aren't many people actually taking advantage of any of that now. Mhm. What are they doing?

[00:56:32]Certainly outside of tribal Africa, what they're largely doing is sitting in front of their computer and doom scrolling.

[00:56:40]Mhm. They're not taking advantage of any of the experiences that they have available to them. They're not traveling.

[00:56:46]They're not having deep conversations with people. They're not pushing their bodies to their limits of construction or sports or athletics. Very few people are doing any of this. In fact, they're doing less of this now than they did 100 years ago.

[00:57:01]And we can't certainly argue that people are more interpersonally connected. They may be less violent but they're certainly not getting out of their interpersonal experiences nearly what they were getting out before the advent of the phone.

[00:57:14]Mhm.

[00:57:14]>> [clears throat] >> So, in some ways we we we are not actually leading better lives than we were 100 years ago. We may be leading longer lives and perhaps less acutely painful ones but certainly in terms of contentment and a sense of self-achievement, I I don't really see much positivity to be seen broadly speaking anywhere in the West in that regard.

[00:57:40]Well, I mean, I think your progress has been has been fair. I mean, you've progressed from LA to Europe. Now, you need to progress a bit further and go downwards to the bottom of Africa.

[00:57:50]Uh-huh.

[00:57:51]I was I was expecting you were going to go in that direction.

[00:57:55]Well, it's been few years in in making so Mhm.

[00:58:00]I would uh Listen, I live amidst amidst amongst in between. I don't know what the right word is but I live I have a lot of wine around me. Put it that way. A lot of vines. A lot of vineyards. Uh-huh.

[00:58:15]That should be good enough reason to progress a bit more.

[00:58:18]To progress toward the vineyard?

[00:58:20]But what I mean, what is the right word?

[00:58:21]I live amidst vineyards, amongst, between. I don't know what the right right word is.

[00:58:29]Well, between is They would be definitely of me.

[00:58:36]two vineyards which you are smack in the middle of.

[00:58:42]If you were among vineyards, there must be three or more of them.

[00:58:47]And if you were amidst them, that just sort of seems like you're not really sure exactly where you are, just kind of floundering through a bunch of fields.

[00:58:54]And also, you don't really know what you're saying cuz nobody says amidst anymore. No, it doesn't have a very clear definition. No. Okay, well, that's a great way to come in for the final lap. Mark, Are you still I mean, is there still a way I can follow your work or have you kind of gone off the radar? I'm still writing.

[00:59:11]I'm not doing a lot of public speaking anymore but I'm still writing and I'm publishing every week on Dissident MD.

[00:59:18]So, dissidentmd.com is my subscriber site and you can subscribe for free but you won't get to see very much because most of it is paid. With a very small amount of money, the cost of a Starbucks coffee once a month is about what you need to pay.

[00:59:32]And uh you can receive direct full articles, not the limited ones, that I believe are covering subjects that are of great pertinence and import at the time of their writing.

[00:59:45]I'm also still part of a podcast, although I'm taking a couple months off and it's just being published by my podcast co-host and it's still the same.

[00:59:52]It's called Informed Dissent.

[00:59:54]And you can get that on any podcasting platform and we publish that um essentially every week with a new episode, usually with guests. So Dissident MD, the website and Informed Dissent, the podcast, are the two places where I'm now, I'd say most frequently self-representing.

[01:00:12]I think you you could do better than Starbucks. I mean, they're the ones who who give you coffee with some sort of social messaging.

[01:00:21]They do and and so does Phil's and so does Peet's and uh so does Coffee Bean.

[01:00:25]There aren't really many chain coffee places that don't and unfortunately, even the individual ones do the same.

[01:00:31]Yeah, I mean, I don't I don't know how possible it is for you for you in in LA to support like the small guy, but I try and support the small guy as much as possible. The small guy is usually um a Marxist with a Che Guevara flag on his on his shirt.

[01:00:46]>> [laughter] >> And are are often far more strident leftists than the actual corporate coffee shops. Yeah, but how's his coffee?

[01:00:54]Well, this is what I was about to say is that the one area where I think the left has actually competitively won in the quality of their product against conservatives is in making coffee.

[01:01:13]And I think it's the only thing only thing I can think of that the left actually does better than the right is making coffee.

[01:01:22]There is no other example.

[01:01:23]>> But I can tell you why.

[01:01:24]>> reason for that?

[01:01:26]Because they all started off as as waiters and baristas.

[01:01:31]So they're born into it.

[01:01:35]That's true.

[01:01:39]With the with the hipster beard and the ponytail.

[01:01:42]So they can get through college.

[01:01:44]So it's not so much that they have a intrinsic advantage in their genetics in making coffee. It's that they just have more experience with it because >> Correct. that's the only job that they have really ever had where they're making money. Yes, and and the quote-unquote conservatives will never do that because it's below them.

[01:02:05]That's very true.

[01:02:09]I hadn't thought about that. I think you're right.

[01:02:12]>> [laughter] >> So actually, good coffee making is is kind of a sign of lack of ambition in life.

[01:02:22]I think we've opened a can of worms here.

[01:02:25]>> [laughter] >> Pandora's Box. Conservatives are always more ambitious and they work harder, so they skip the coffee making step. And the people that are not ambitious or that are based on I guess life of delusions and grandeur, they start as coffee makers and they they stay that way for a number of years and they often never actually attain real jobs.

[01:02:46]So perhaps the only thing that they can be proud of is their mastery of coffee.

[01:02:54]And that's >> two coffee machines, actually. You do?

[01:02:58]Yeah, the one the one is for grinding beans and the other is for those little capsules.

[01:03:03]So you have the lazy man's coffee machine and then the one that requires some manual labor.

[01:03:08]>> Yes.

[01:03:09]But obviously, nothing beats grinding coffee beans. That smell is just to die for.

[01:03:16]>> It does come out better.

[01:03:18]Mhm. remarkably higher quality, but it does require more work.

[01:03:24]Yes.

[01:03:25]But having said that, we have now destroyed this entire conversation. So let's Let's let's end it by saying Mark McDonald, thank you for joining me in the trenches.

[01:03:34]Thank you.