rant · moment 13 of 17
The Empire is Rotting and Nobody Wants to Hear It
from Bribes and Bruschetta · #19
Audio-only archive episode — no video to seek.
6 minTim expands into a bleak riff about the perpetual-war economy propping up America, how conversations about the country's decline are conversation-enders at parties, MKUltra, the CIA's Cold War tricks, and why he refuses to get emotionally worked up like true believers on either side.
- 40:10People who worry about being thrown in camps would actually be better off in one, where their day is planned for them.
- 40:42Obama's drone strikes blew up weddings in Pakistan while he maintained a different tone than Bush on foreign policy.
- 41:20The CIA rebranded targeted assassinations as targeted killing, just changing the name of the same practice.
- 42:00Every war in history, including Hitler's, has been justified under some version of just war theory.
- 42:26Once you understand how society actually operates, you have nowhere to go and can't function normally.
- 42:45Russ Baker, a serious researcher, has descended into posting pictures of goats on Twitter from Jamaica.
- 43:27Somebody's always going to be president, so people pick their guy to hate—it's a game where the fundamentally true facts don't change.
- 44:11Tim jokes that if the government wants to put gay people in camps, they'd need informants, and he's already sent his availability.
- 44:56The CIA admitted to testing LSD on children during MKUltra, so of course they'd overturn Roe v. Wade and make it harder for gay people to get jobs.
- 45:30People love Obama because he plays basketball and dances with Ellen, ignoring that he blows up Pakistani funerals.
CIAMK UltraBarack ObamaBrennanRuss BakerGeorge W. BushReaganBrzezinskiDavid Talbot