rant · moment 12 of 17

Trump TV, the Mar-a-Lago Rumors, and Obama's Drone Tone

from Bribes and Bruschetta · #19

Audio-only archive episode — no video to seek.

2 min

Discussion of whether Trump secretly just wanted a media empire, comparisons of Obama's and Bush's foreign policy tone versus substance (drone strikes, targeted killing), and the futility of caring about who's president given entrenched systems.

In this bit6 moments
  • 37:52Tim says the country might be too broke to really fix and we're circling the drain, but nobody wants to hear that.
  • 38:10Pointing out systemic problems makes you a bummer at parties because the fatalism leaves no room for action.
  • 38:28Tim argues that wars don't solve economic depressions—they just realign the economy, and the perpetual war machine has kept the U.S. economy propped up for 70 years.
  • 38:56When he tried this argument at a party recently, people agreed but then pivoted back to lesser-evil arguments about Hillary and presidents.
  • 39:17After agreeing the system is broken, people change the subject to veal piccata because there's nowhere productive to go in the conversation.
  • 39:40Telling people the economy is a house of cards and America is a bloated, rotting empire leaves them with no constructive path forward.
Mentioned here

Hillary Clintonthe Federal ReserveWorld War II

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