SurrealPolitiks

When I was a kid, my parents bought my younger brother and I the original Nintendo Entertainment System, and I loved it. I later owned a Sega Genesis, and my friends and I used to play Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 for hours upon hours on a near daily basis for some years. Our girlfriends hated this, and when I discovered that people were streaming games online, I thought this was absolutely bizarre because that had previously been the limits of my experience with people's interest in watching others play video games. On the PC, I spent a few months back in the early 2000s playing a multiplayer hack of Grand Theft Auto 3, and offline I got quite a kick out of putting this into "God Mode" and seeing how long I could last in battles with the police. I own the consoles I do because, as I mentioned above, I had bought them largely for the entertainment of a prior girlfriend. I liked having her around all of the time, but I would have to deprive her of my attention for long periods of time so I could get work done. She enjoyed playing Call of Duty and Fortnite on the PS4, and this seemed like a very worthwhile investment to have her nearby when my work reached a point I could take a break for some cuddles. She had introduced me to Wii Sports Resort, and we much enjoyed the bowling game together. I'd later obtain the Wii Fit board and the game named after it, which would become my first introduction to Yoga. While on house arrest in Virginia, I found Mario Party to be a low stress time waster, with the notable exception of the fact that I find wasting time to be, in itself, stressful. The Switch I purchased with the same idea of entertaining a (now different) girlfriend in mind, after she had gotten me addicted to Pokemon Go on my cell phone. I thought maybe both of us would get some enjoyment out of the Pokemon games for that system. Having obtained Let's Go Eevee and Pokemon Sword, I was unimpressed, but I did find that Fitness Boxing went well with my exercise goals. Before I got much enjoyment out of this, the FBI broke my door down and dragged me off to prison. All of which is to say, I am not much of a gamer. I tend to view these things as terrible wastes of time, and as mentioned, I do not like that concept. If I were playing video games without some kind of business purpose in mind, I would be consumed by feelings of guilt, and anxiety over what else I ought to be doing to achieve my goals and be worthy of the financial support I receive from my audience. Giving myself this excuse has allowed me to enjoy the experience more. I am pretty impressed, even using these now years old systems, in how far gaming technology has come since I was playing a two dimensional fighting game, high on marijuana in my teens. The largest TV I ever owned before getting out of prison was 32". I primarily use TV to watch the news, and I could get 99% of the information I need from this without any visual element at all. It didn't make much sense to me to spend money on a larger screen, but after three years of fighting with blacks over the television, now having one all to myself, I decided to take advantage of a sale at Walmart to get my first 55". Given the detail of modern video games, I am glad to have done this. My brother owned the first PlayStation, and managed to obtain what was then a very difficult to come by copy of the first Grand Theft Auto. This was the first exposure I had to adult themes in video games (aside from the violence we now consider it uncontroversial to expose kids to), and we thought it was absolutely hysterical back then to run around stealing cars and assaulting prostitutes. Today, gaming has largely caught up to the rest of pop culture in its degeneracy. Sex and profanity and crime are ubiquitous in gaming now. This is admittedly very amusing to me, although it does give me some apprehension about branding concerns as I mix this with my media business. I have been running the Radical Agenda name and font as a watermark on the videos, and playing the SurrealPolitiks music as an outro, which as an aside, has a very cool effect to it as the character gets into his car and drives off to end the show. My original idea was to use the game streaming as a way to bring new eyes and ears to the political content, so from this perspective it makes sense to mix the brands, but as I'm running around as a black car thief in Grand Theft Auto 5, I find myself tempted to register a new LLC and domain name to separate these things from one another...

While I was in the custody of the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, I met a man by the name of Matthew Hale. He was perhaps best known for his role in something called the World Church of the Creator, which outfits like the Southern Poverty Law Center would describe as a White Supremacist organization. Mr. Hale would certainly find more meaningful things to disagree with them on than this characterization, because he was, above all, concerned for the wellbeing of his people.

Due to a series of competing concerns, I will not be able to do a live show tonight. But I would not dream of leaving you hanging. Fortunately, I have a great deal of old audio I have been meaning to re-release. Among these are the archives of what might be described as the predecessor to SurrealPolitiks, a show I had titled Outlaw Conservative. Many, though not all of you, have heard this already. Still more, though again, not all, know the background. Namely that, I've been doing an uncensored production for a very long time and some of the consequences associated with that uncensored production made it very obvious to me there was a meaningful need for something that was more broadly palatable, while still address the issues that show sought to address. Outlaw Conservative was my first attempt to fill that need. SurrealPolitiks, is my second go at it. As I began to prepare this audio for you today, I was more than a little surprised myself. I had the idea in my mind that Outlaw Conservative was not very good, frankly. The show met a great deal of resistance when launched and, according to a bad habit of mine, I internalized much of that criticism. To be sure, Outlaw Conservative was not nearly so well thought out as SurrealPolitiks. Like much of what I do, it could charitably be described as imperfect. But there's meaningful value here that I myself didn't fully appreciate until pretty recently. So what follows here are Outlaw Conservative Stage 1 Episodes 0, 1, and 2, released as a single MP3. I'll soon publish the full archives of that production, but here is your teaser. I'll be back Wednesday for the live Members only show, and of course Friday for the uncensored production.

Donald Trump was hit today with a gag order in his federal case pertaining to his effort to see the will of the voter upheld in 2020. The gag order will bar Trump and others "from making any public statements targeting special counsel Jack Smith and his staff, as well as court personnel" according to the Associated Press. A written ruling has not been issued at the time of this writing, but is expected soon. The Judge issued the order orally at a hearing, during which Trump himself was not present. This order is more sweeping that the gag order imposed on his New York fraud trial (which I mean in both the sense that it is a fraud and that is what he is accused of) wherein he is barred from targeting the staff of the Judge in that case. Here, the President is barred from "targeting" (whatever that means) the maniac prosecutor who is an attack dog for his political opponent. Smith sought a more expansive order which would prohibit “disparaging and inflammatory or intimidating statements about any party, witness, attorney, court personnel, or potential jurors.” This was done under the claim that Trump's social media posts were intended “to undermine confidence in the criminal justice system and prejudice the jury pool through disparaging and inflammatory attacks,”. Of course, undermining faith in the criminal justice system is not exactly a heavy lift these days, and all the less so for Trump. If these people were so concerned about their credibility, perhaps they should be more cautious about their lies. Undermining faith in the Court system is evidently the purpose of people like Mr. Smith, and Roberta Kaplan, who are, at base, anarchists trying to wreck civilization entirely, and who are only using the levers of State power to do so because they are personally weak and lack the physical strength to do it with their own hands. The order presents an interesting opportunity for Trump if he cares to gamble. There is a reasonable expectation that he will appeal the order, and a decidedly non-zero chance that he will prevail in some part. If Trump continues to criticize Jack Smith, Smith will move the Court to sanction Trump in some way, and the Court will be rather limited in its enforcement options. They can fine Trump, but he's spending your money anyway, and Trump can just refuse to pay, counting on an appellate victory. They cannot impose adverse inferences because this is a criminal case and not a civil one. Are they going to lock him up? Are they going to put him in a Communications Management Unit if they do? Of course, you can put nothing past these people, but this would be quite the escalation of the conflict. He could call their bluff, and while the outcome of this would be anything but certain, it would certainly serve to undermine credibility in Smith and in the Court. It would also place extreme pressure on the Supreme Court to vacate the order. The Supreme Court can refuse to take a case, but good luck doing that if Trump is incarcerated. Roberts was reported to have echoed concern that "there will be riots" when deliberating the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health case overturning Roe v. Wade. He is conscious of the potential for public backlash and it impacts his rulings. It is not seriously in dispute whether the case is politically motivated, and the Court can expect to hear an appeal of his conviction and sentence when the case is over. If they mean to uphold that conviction, they'll be inclined to bargain on the gag order so as to appear that they are not out to get the man who appointed them. Trump is in no danger of losing the Republican Primary. It is too late for a dark horse. He has teams of people handling his affairs 24/7, and if he has to sit in solitary for two weeks, all that needs doing will still get done. Republicans insufficiently loyal will make fools of themselves during the time he is locked away. His opponents will be seen celebrating his incarceration and making themselves look like monsters. And in short order he will be released. He will claim victory. He will be lauded by his supporters. He will continue to attack Jack Smith and there will be nothing anybody can do about it. He'll still be looking at prison when all is said and done, but at this point Trump cannot choose to be safe. Only powerful. SurrealPolitiks airs live every Monday at 9:30 pm US Eastern.

Nothing brings America together like its devotion to Israel, or at least, this is the impression one gets when watching television. American media finds much to disagree about, generally. How many genders are there? Liberals tell us it is an infinite variety. Conservatives, being quite moderate, are generally skeptical of greater than six, and of course insist one fill out the proper forms before entering spaces reserved for the opposite sex. Should America have borders? Liberals say no. Conservatives, say "kinda". Is America a racist country? Liberals say yes. Conservatives say "it's complicated". Plenty of vigorous debate on these subjects. The country is totally divided. But when Israel is under threat, we are all Americans. What defines us as Americans more than any other factor - more than ethnicity, or language, or culture, or territory, or even our much worshipped diversity - is our undying devotion to a foreign ethnostate, spun out of whole cloth, less than a century ago. These borders, unlike our own, are holy and inviolable. Hundreds of thousands of Americans died bravely fighting the most evil force in history, the Nazis, to rescue God's chosen people and deliver them to the promised land. For this, we are blessed by God and endowed with the right and the obligation to rule the Earth by force until Jesus returns and every tongue is made to confess. This compulsory State religion skirts the First Amendment's establishment clause by parading as objective fact. It is not doctrine, it is history, you see. To disagree is to confess one's guilt, to renounce one's citizenship, and one's humanity. And yet some still do. Anti-Semites, mostly. Though not all of them confess their thought crime. Not immediately, anyway. Some might actually even believe they are innocent of the sin of anti-Semitism. They say they are merely criticizing a foreign Right wing government, but eventually they are made to know that criticizing Israel is, by definition, anti-Semitic, and once they know this, they accept that they are anti-Semites. This, as you might expect, has the effect of breeding much anti-Semitism. Here at SurrealPolitiks, we are, officially, anyway, agnostic on that subject. Value free, as it were, in the vein of the best economists. Calling balls and strikes. It seems to us reasonable that Jews would prefer there to be less anti-Semitism, and that non-Jews would have substantially more diverse opinions on that subject. Though it is not at all certain this is the case, and this we think one can objectively call peculiar. As Israel announced yesterday it was at war, one informed as to the nature of media and online propaganda might be less than surprised to see that all systems were go. The television was instantly converted from a device of questionable utility into one more soldier of the IDF, entirely unambiguous in its reason for existing. Every Twitter/X trend pertained to the conflict. Short, grainy videos with zero explanatory power went viral along with wild descriptions providing alleged context unsupported by the image and sound. And, notably, a trend not too often seen. The name "Nick Fuentes". For those unfamiliar, Nick Fuentes is a Mexican child who purports to be the "main leader of the dissident Right for the last five years or so". That is no arbitrary number. Mr. Fuentes tracks his supposed leadership back to shortly after the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville Virginia, when the honor was bestowed upon him by what was then thought to be the most popular neo-Nazi website on Earth. Now widely understood to be a subversive element, the Daily Stormer was largely the creation of two men. Andrew Anglin, previously a detached conspiracy blogger without much notoriety, and Andrew Alan Escher Auernheimer, aka weev, a Jewish computer hacker who fled the United States for Ukraine after being released from prison on computer hacking charges. The site's popularity was largely a fabrication of weev's making. He was manipulating Alexa ranks (a now defunct, but then widely used, metric for estimating website popularity) to make the site seem more relevant. The site used this perceived popularity to drive American journalists insane, and to aid them in their mission to smear Donald Trump as the second coming of Adolf Hitler. I'll have much more to say about this when SurrealPolitiks airs live as we do every Monday at 9:30pm US Eastern on Rumble

At the time of this writing, Ian Freeman, whom I interviewed for Episode 20 of this production, awaits sentencing in a Federal District Court in Concord, New Hampshire, for the crime of selling Bitcoin to willing and vetted buyers. Prosecutors are seeking a 20 year sentence and more than $3M in restitution, which it is worth noting, defies the recommendations of the pre-sentence investigation and the evidence presented at trial. Restitution is for victims, and there is no material dispute about whether Freeman victimized anyone. He did not, and even the prosecution does not argue that he did. Freeman's customers lied to him when he asked if they were being coerced or asked to purchase the cryptocurrency by strangers. The strangers who were coercing and defrauding them, told them to deceive Freeman, and the prosecution simply asserts that Freeman should have somehow known this was the case, and lacking psychic powers, he should be held responsible for the fraud of others, whom the FBI has made no attempt to find. Freeman is fortunate that the Judge dismissed one count of money laundering post-conviction, though the fact that this took place tells us much about our legal system. Prosecutors charged Freeman with money laundering because an FBI agent posing as a drug trafficker purchased Bitcoin from one of Freeman's vending machines miles away from where Freeman stood at the time. He did this after Freeman explicitly refused to transact with the agent, once the agent asserted his unlawful purpose. Since refusing to commit a crime is not a crime in most jurisdictions, the Judge dismissed the charge after the Jury had convicted him of it. Of course, such blatant abuses by government are why pre-trial motions exist. The more charges a Defendant must defend against, the greater the burdens at trial, and the looser the rules of evidence become for the prosecution. Without the money laundering charge, the government could not have introduced evidence insinuating that Freeman was in league with drug traffickers, and since perceptions of character carry much weight in a Jury trial, fake accusations like this lend credence to other allegations. The Court, knowing the circumstances of the allegation, refused to dismiss the charge pre-trial, and also at the close of the prosecution's case. Only after Freeman was convicted by a Jury, did the Court intervene to dismiss the conviction for a crime Freeman plainly did not commit, and which the Judge knew in advance of the trial he had not committed. So while Freeman is fortunate not to be facing an additional 20 years this morning, he is unfortunate to be facing sentencing based on the verdict of a Jury proven willing to convict him of a crime he did not commit, before a Judge proven willing to deny him a fair trial, against prosecutors proven willing to ignore investigators and posit assertions not supported by fact. About a four hour drive South, Donald Trump is attending a fraud trial in New York. This is a fraud trial in every respect. Trump is accused of fraud, and the trial is just such a crime itself. Though Freeman, myself, and many others, including Trump himself owing to the civil verdict against him stemming from E Jean Carroll's fake rape lawsuit, demonstrate the limited utility of a Jury, Trump will enjoy not even those meager benefits. This trial will be decided by a Judge. That same Judge has already found Trump liable for fraud, granting a motion for summary judgement by the New York Attorney General, Letitia James. James ran on a platform that she would "Get Trump" and in pursuit of "racial justice" set real criminals loose on the street. She may be a liar, but at least she keeps her campaign promises. Her office is seeking the dissolution of the Trump Organization through the revocation of their "business certificate" which amounts to what has been called a "corporate death penalty" as well as a $250 Million fine. On the other side of the country, Robert Rundo awaits trial at a Federal Detention Center in Los Angeles. Rundo stands accused of conspiring to riot, and despite his charge being dismissed as unconstitutional by a District Court Judge years ago, FBI agents tracked him to Romania and extradited him here to face trial anyway. This small sampling of abuses, and my own adventures in legal land, demonstrate powerfully a simple truth. Letitia James this morning uttered a phrase all too familiar in a press conference, "No one is above the law". This oft cited Democrat catch phrase stands in some contrast to the havoc set loose on our Country by those who consider illegal immigration to be among our greatest strengths, and whom warned of our country becoming a "Banana Republic" if Hillary Clinton were to be prosecuted for some portion of the many crimes she committed. In 2016 we were to believe that prosecuting one's political opponents was verboten, whatever the merits, but in 2023 it is the obligation of all decent people to prosecute exclusively their political opponents, while murderers, rapists, carjackers, looters, and arsonists skip gleefully through a lawless hellscape. So if Letitia James and those in league with her assert to believe that nobody is above the law, and yet she does not believe that criminals ought to be held to account, one might presume this disparity in word and deed were just one of many Democrat lies. By any measure, this would be a safe assumption. With as much reliability as one might aspire to set a watch to, one might safely organize their life around the notion that if a Democrat is speaking, their purpose is to deceive. But this is hardly the only reasonable interpretation of the apparent disparity between word and deed. Suppose James et al really do believe that nobody is above the law. What then? She might presume we all stand in some other directional relation to it. Namely, beneath it. And you might reasonably conclude precisely this if you have ever been a crime victim. Forget about the fake prosecutions and lawsuits for a moment. At least with regard to these you can in most cases avoid them by not challenging those in power. While challenging those in power in an alleged democracy ought not be punishable by conjured legal allegations, that is at least something most people can sanely organize their lives around. What is perhaps more frightening than these is what precedes them, and has been accepted as an uncontroversial fact of our legal landscape. The government long ago decided that they have "no duty to protect" and there is "no right per se to have a case brought". You are obligated to pay for Courts, Prisons, and Police. You are obligated to respond to subpoenas and submit to the jurisdiction of those elements of our legal apparatus. That same apparatus purports no obligation to you at all. Rob Rundo is accused of conspiring to riot, because he allegedly went to places where violent criminals were expected to commit violent crimes. He is accused of acting with the intent of confronting those criminals, and to mete out his own justice, after having witnessed countless incidents where Trump supporters and other decent people were violently attacked without provocation. Having witnessed, time and again, that those criminals went unpunished, he and his friends are accused of trying to help those people. Had police declared that those criminals were not above the law, had the prosecutors sought harsh sentences for them, had the Courts imposed some portion of those recommendations, there might have been no Rise Above Movement. You likely would never have heard the name Rob Rundo, or for that matter, Christopher Cantwell. Trump stands accused of overestimating the values of his properties. That seems an unlikely thing for a man who pays property taxes to do, but let us assume the accusation is true. Suppose that, as alleged, Trump did this for decades and so long as he kept showering Democrats with campaign contributions instead of insults, nobody seemed to mind, least of all the banks who gave him the loans on that basis and were able to collect their interest when he paid them on time. Would a New York real estate developer know if such practices were common in his jurisdiction? Would he be put out of business if his competitors engaged in this practice while he stubbornly refused to do anything so disreputable? Quite certainly, but because we are all beneath the law instead of above it, one must do what one must do to compete in a lawless environment, and as soon as he criticized those who had fostered this lawless environment, they used their powers to destroy him. While this message was being composed, Ian Freeman was sentenced to 8 years for his convictions. None of the bankers who facilitated the transactions will join him there. Neither will any of the fraudsters who instructed Ian's customers to lie to him. The fake trials would be less offensive, if we held a real one from time to time...

I had a very troubling experience over the weekend which I think is worth sharing with you because it helps provide some much needed perspective on what is important in our politics. One of the things I've really liked seeing in recent years is outraged parents. Sure I would prefer they were happy and right to be so. I should hope that would go without saying, but since a parent would have to be terribly uninformed to be content with what is going on in the world these days, their outrage is preferable to their acquiescence. Few things have outraged parents more, or more rightly, than the atrocities carried out in the name of COVID 19. I remember watching this masking lunacy on TV from jail, and then prison, and joking with guys inside that the people outside the walls had it worse than us. Among the things that upset me the most about this was when it was pointed out that children who were supposed to be learning to speak were not seeing faces, and since children learn to speak in significant part by watching people's lips move when they talk, they would as a consequence of this have their speech development impeded. As a guy who understands and appreciates the importance of speech perhaps better than most, this really, really upset me. Now, I don't spend a lot of time talking to four year olds. But there is one I come into contact with on a semi regular basis since I get out of prison, and he's a really sweet kid. He was just a baby when I went away, so he didn't know me at all when our regular interactions began, and these have been roughly weekly. Time goes forward, he's a little bit more familiar with me as of late, and over the weekend I'm at the grocery store with with his him and his mother. Typically when we do this, we split up, I go do my thing they go do theirs, we meet outside. This time he says "I want to go with Chris!" and he's kind of insistent upon this. I was honored by the sheer gravitas of his assertiveness. Now, when he's talking to his mother and father, they understand each other just fine for the most part. But this whole time I've managed to understand maybe 80% of what this kid is saying. I do not off the top of my head know what the normal development timeline of a child's speech is, and since I know his parents are smart and they love him and care for him and everything else about the boy seems fine, I have been operating under the assumption that he probably talks better than most 4 year olds and this will work itself out on what will be, comparative to other kids his age, an accelerated timeline. But when we're alone in the store, I try to bond with the boy a bit, and I'm unsure of myself because this is the most in depth conversation I've had with a child in a very long time. "What's your favorite dinner that Mom makes?" "What games do you like to play" I'm not understanding his responses, and in my mind, I'm not doing this kid any favors by saying "Yeah go ahead keep babbling kid, and I'll keep nodding like I understand". So, I realize that I'm the one who is failing to grasp the situation, not him, and I stop trying to push the boy. We get in the car, and I ask his mother about the expected development timeline of a child's speech. So she begins to explain the importance of seeing people's lips move when you're learning to speak, and before she could even get started it made perfect sense to me. He has no shortage of words. He understands everything. He's having trouble with pronunciation, and being aware of this trouble, he keeps on trying to find other words. This was the first time I had actually witnessed this thing that I was dreading from prison, and it was with this kid who might as well have placed a crown on my head half an hour ago. That's a dangerous combination, when a political issue you're really passionate about hits home in a very personal way. SurrealPolitiks airs live every Monday at 9:30pm US Eastern

The following aired as paywall content on the SurrealPolitiks Member Chat for Wednesday July 12th 2023. I am very proud of it. The members enjoyed it a great deal. I think the content is important enough to share with the public. You as a non member have had to wait over a month to receive this, and you have missed a great deal of other enjoyable experiences. You can change that today if you like by becoming a member at https://SurrealPolitiks.com/join. It is normally $10/month, but if you sign up using code agenda33 you can get your first three months at 33% off. Enjoy... I had occasion to contemplate beauty for awhile. Hours, as it were. I ended up binge watching videos by this female violinist named Lindsey Stirling. Turns out I have her discography up to like 2017 in my MP3 collection, but I don't listen to a lot of music and as far as I was concerned I was seeing and hearing this beautiful and amazingly talented woman for the first time that night. After watching these videos I started to compose much of what I am about to say, and I was proud of it because I had poured my heart into it.

I had the pleasure of being featured on Night Nation Review last night. It was a very engaging conversation and I am sure you will enjoy it. Please note this contains some curse words and mentions of racial topics, but none of which is gratuitous. Originally posted to NNR's channel at; https://odysee.com/@NightNationReview:5/NNR730:6?r=Bk7Fo6SYXoefKxwn5WRNJkG4RR7Y9fYi

When one attains a certain depth of understanding about politics and world affairs, it can have a psychological effect referred to in some circles as the "black pill". This is essentially a sort of depressive state in which hope becomes hard to come by, as evidenced by real or imagined factors. It stands in contrast, as one might expect, to the "white pill" in which hopeful news is delivered, and messenger and recipient alike may do some celebrating. (We had some problems with the live stream, so I recorded this off air and uploaded it after) There is little good news to be had in the world today, and far less of this from Eastern Europe, wherein a fratricidal war fueled by Western malfeasance rages on, and exacts a steep toll in blood and treasure from all involved. A startling reminder of how intelligence agencies have been allowed to run amok, the Ukraine conflict factors heavily into inflation in the United States and throughout the world, has destabilized food and other commodities markets, created dangerous shortages in US arms supplies, and piggybacked onto COVID hysteria as an excuse for censorship of social media, as it was recently revealed that the FBI was passing on requests from Ukraine's SBU for social media companies to censor accounts posting disfavored information. Then there are the pregnant Ukrainian women on the front lines, and all of what might be described as the more routine horrors of warfare. While this has been a boon to Blackrock and human traffickers (who already had a booming business in Ukraine) and other nefarious types, scarcely can anyone of good character be said to have benefited from this mayhem. But in the midst of all this wreckage one very tasty white pill has emerged. At the recent Turning Point Action Conference in West Palm Beach, Florida, a poll was taken of attendees which asked if they favored continued US involvement in the Ukraine/Russia conflict. A stunning 95.8% said they do not favor this, a consensus nearly unheard of in conservative politics, and exceeding even Donald Trump's 85.7% support in a poll asking who attendees favored in the upcoming Republican Presidential Primary. Those numbers could not be more out of step with the donor class and the Mitch McConnell wing of the GOP, elements of our society more inclined to let the Democrats wreck the country than to forfeit their own positions within the Party. While Americans as a whole are more evenly divided over the Ukraine issue, and questions of degree predominate in that broader spectrum of opinion, it is clearly becoming the position of the Republican primary voter base that involvement in the Ukraine conflict is against American interests and should stop entirely. Because of this, Republican Presidential hopefuls like Nikki Haley and Mike Pence, have signed their political death warrants by co-signing Biden's subsidy to his financial benefactors. At a recent event, Tucker Carlson interviewed GOP hopefuls in front of a large studio audience. "Not my concern" trended on Twitter as Mike Pence offered a poorly worded response to a question of his priorities. Carlson had listed a staggering illustration of how America is falling apart internally, and contrasted this with Pence's support for the Ukraine conflict by saying "And that's your concern?". Pence responded by saying "That's not my concern" and the line was seized upon, arguably unfairly, by commentators who said Pence expressed a lack of concern for America falling apart. The traction this quickly got says something in itself. Even though Pence's words were unfairly seized upon, such is the nature of politics. Fairness has little to do with it. He was, for some time, to some number, seen as caring more about Ukraine than about America, and whatever he meant to say, that was easily believed by many Americans, and not without ample justification outside of this rhetorical error. There is precisely zero benefit to America meddling in Eastern Europe on behalf of the Zelensky regime. If there was anything for America to be doing there, it would be to make better relations with Russia and to return to the Nixon/Kissinger strategy of playing Russia and China against each other. Biden's failure to heed this wisdom has pushed these two powers into an alliance that threatens American hegemony, and is destabilizing the world order with results that cannot be predicted. Republican primary voters, perhaps better than any other subset of the population, understand this. They understand also that the Bidens got rich in Ukraine through corruption, and that the Democrats' Russia hoax was little more than an attempt to distract from their own malfeasance in Ukraine, and the SBU's interference in American elections on their behalf. This has the effect of exposing Republicans who prostrate themselves before Zelensky in the name of "democracy and freedom" as frauds and traitors, and presents for us an avenue to power within the GOP. Be what helps a conservative faction oust these traitors from party leadership in your area, and you will have gained a foothold within the Party. Play your cards right from there, and in a few years it would be you they curse when speaking of "the establishment". There is more good news to speak of, and I look forward to sharing it with you, and taking your calls, this and every Monday at 9:30pm US Eastern on Rumble, Odysee, and the GetMeRadio App for Smartphone, Roku, and FireTV.

If you accuse of wrongdoing, anyone in government who happens to be held in favor by the Leftist media, you will likely be accused of being a “conspiracy theorist”. The term is left intentionally vague, of course. It shares this feature with epithets like “racist” and other Left wing buzzwords which serve little purpose in the mind of the informed other than to identify the target the attack as a “non-Democrat”. These are catch phrases which have become more a reliable standby for the most disgusting people in our society to silence critics, than they are actual terms of any linguistic value. Rather than explain, they confuse. Rather than provide meaning, they hinder discernment. For the informed observer, the person hurling these epithets is a crime suspect. They are not informing the community of a problem by shouting warnings, they are trying to divert suspicion from their nefarious behavior by shouting nonsense distractions. This was perhaps never clearer than in the recent controversy over a film titled “Sound of Freedom”. Your humble correspondent has not at this time seen the film to speak of it, but I what I have seen is a familiar pattern of behavior by the usual suspects which sheds light on a very important subject closer to home. The film in question asserts what is now a controversial value judgement. Namely, that molesting children is bad. Because of this crimethink, the film has been branded a “QAnon Conspiracy Theory” and outraged people in the media are panicking that anyone might dare say something so dangerous as “Molesting children is not okay”. What I know of QAnon is Telegram spam, so I have no use for this, quite clearly, but I too happen to hold child predators in disfavor, and in this I am in the good company of popular opinion, a rare accomplishment for your humble correspondent. But it is conspicuous indeed how the media and many people in government seem to hold the unpopular view that child predators are somehow less dangerous that the people who express outrage at their proclivities. It also explains a great deal, I’d say. I plan to open tonight’s show with the story of a child pornography bust that shocked the conscience of many. Few realize that the FBI actually ran several child porn sites for a period of time, installed viruses on thousands of computers with the purported aim of tracking down the people who used the site. Then, in some number of cases, either simply declined to do so, or waited many months, only to pounce at a politically opportune moment. This, I suspect ties into many modern political phenomena. The Epstein story is almost too obvious to need mentioning, but also the case of a Federal Judge’s wife in Charlottesville, a Patriot Front member who got a conspicuously sweet plea agreement, and surely many more to come. In Realpolitik terms, it is important to understand the depths of depravity that the regime will sink to for their grip on the reigns of the State, and cautionary tale to all those who would Right the ship. SurrealPolitiks airs every Monday at 9:30pm US Eastern on Rumble, Odysee, GetMeRadio and MyTuner.

Here at SurrealPolitiks, when speaking of power, there is a well reasoned tendency to speak of matters pertaining to electoral victory. This on account of the fact that the State is the ultimate arbiter of disputes, and its capacity to use force without repercussion renders State power the supreme means of imposing one's will upon society. But we have been careful to note from time to time that much happens before election day. The inner workings of the Party have featured most prominently in our prior discussions, as one example. Of course, as Andrew Breitbart famously noted, politics is downstream from culture. Culture is a many faceted thing, but at the center of culture's impact on politics, are the stories we tell ourselves. And since few of us are the creators of these stories, they are in large part the stories we are told by others. The stories might be true or false, and while their veracity is by no means irrelevant, it is rather besides the point as to whether or not they impact our politics. If people believe it, this will be reflected in culture, and it will transmit to politics, and ultimately, to State imposition. It might go without saying that the Left has enjoyed near total dominance in this arena for as long as many of us have been alive, and near certainly for as long as any of us have been paying attention to politics. There are a lot of reasons for this, not the least of them ethnic in origin, and those are best discussed elsewhere. Today I want to discuss reclaiming the narratives of our politics. If you get to decide what people believe, then the outcome of the election is rather besides the point. The narrative shapes the conversation, the conversation dictates the terms of the debate, and if the people are left to choose in a term of years between two candidates who are equally immersed in your narrative then the outcome of that contest is rather besides the point. You won long before the primary. I have a couple of prominent examples of this to discuss. One was a story that brought me great joy to discover. I had, years ago, written a story about an abortionist who bragged graphically about the horrors she carries out on a daily basis. Someone had asked her on Twitter if she hears the screams of the children she murders, to which she responded “You know fetuses can’t scream, right? I transect the cord 1st so there’s really no opportunity, if they’re even far enough along to have a larynx. I won’t apologize for performing medicine. I’m also a ‘uterus ripper outer,’ if that’s how you’d like to describe hysterectomy,” I just found out that, while I was without Internet access, she had he medical license suspended pending an investigation. She was allowed to return to practice, but in the wake of the Roe reversal, her Alabama practice is in jeopardy and she claims to live in fear. The Guardian wrote up a 4,100+ piece, making her out to be a hero under assault. I won't trouble you to read the whole thing on the air, but I will provide some choice excerpts and discuss the implications. Another pertains to Taylor Lorenz, a Washington Post propagandist who made it her life's work to destroy the lives of decent people. She doxed the creator of the Libs of TikTok account, in violation of Twitter rules, and rather than be kicked off the platform like the people she targets, she was actively protected by the upper echelons of the company. It turns out Lorenz had a working relationship with Twitter's censors, and used it to great effect. She was not the only Left wing "journalist" manipulating the platform in this way. Now that Elon Musk has fired most of these people, Twitter is a very different place. Though "hate speech" policies still exist, and one must be careful what one says about subjects like race, Twitter now abounds with videos depicting migrant and inner city crime, as well as entire popular accounts dedicated to showcasing the lunacy of the transgender movement. Lorenz said Musk was "opening the gates of hell". But I would go so far as to say, he is closing them. All this and more, plus your calls, tonight at 9:30pm Eastern. GiveSendGo https://GiveSendGo.com/spm Other payment options https://SurrealPolitiks.com/donate/ Podcast https://SurrealPolitiks.com/start/ Newsletter https://SurrealPolitiks.com/newsletter

We know the US government is lying about Ukraine. It’s a war, and they would be lying even if they weren’t nefarious. Given that they are nefarious, we can expect them to lie all the more, and this idea that Ukrainian conscripts are defeating the Russian war machine is preposterous on its face, even with American materiel. So any leaked documents about that conflict would necessarily prove embarrassing. The New York Times cites an unnamed “senior intelligence official” in calling the leaks “a nightmare for the Five Eyes,” in a reference to the United States, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, the so-called Five Eyes nations that broadly share intelligence. If true, some of the revelations could be perceived as damaging, for example that the United States is spying on its supposed allies in the UK, South Korea, and Israel. Then again, if the United States wanted to plant disinformation, it would have to publish something that appeared embarrassing, but was ultimately controllable. A good way to do that would be for these allies to be in on the gag. America may not have gotten “caught” at all. These allies could very well have consented to the scheme, as a means by which to add credibility to disinformation. You can, and should, pay me. Become a SurrealPolitiks Paying Subscriber https://SurrealPolitiks.com/join GiveSendGo https://GiveSendGo.com/spm Crypto Bitcoin: bc1qcg97hwdy8d463794wm0uq3np0px49acw6505gm Ethereum: 0xa29441bF858c529E374960A34e16f21abc0970E8 Litecoin: LQsN4hA761RPrUNTva58nQhJ4BYsAQgYet Bitcoin Cash: qplamajpkvhp2g53q4thnu4cakf882er4ge9pqvfdu Monero: 46Li94X1o95GaKPxMdsqds3FPJmc2tTvQi3zSuLHbttWTMLbtV9jHGU86wxqvKyVBVRUGhY78uA1HJ5aQn53zc7uRinB96q ZCash: t1cXJJsnohToMTukCNXBkcqNPDdwvwnfS3p Dash: Xu957ZZqY6ciMZKdUmu5vVUmyxu4jMWEto You can send me checks, cash, money orders, etc… at Christopher Cantwell 497 Hooksett Road Unit 312 Manchester, NH 03104 Find us elsewhere, and keep in touch! Entropy https://entropystream.live/SurrealPolitiks ChristopherCantwell.net Newsletter https://christophercantwell.net/subscribe/ SurrealPolitiks Newsletter https://surrealpolitiks.com/newsletter/ Chris on Twitter https://twitter.com/TalkRadioGod Chris on Telegram https://t.me/followchris SurrealPolitiks on Telegram https://t.me/surrealpolitiks All Cantwell Content on Fountain.fm Podcasts https://fountain.fm/show/1Lqmd1jltAvvw0Xvg1bC All Cantwell Content on Podcast Addict https://podcastaddict.com/podcast/3106093 All Cantwell Content on RSS https://christophercantwell.net/feed/podcast/ SurrealPolitiks on Fountain.fm Podcasts https://fountain.fm/show/iGn8lVloyYswtye00Jsa SurrealPolitiks on Podcast Addict https://podcastaddict.com/podcast/4329471 SurrealPolitiks Podcast RSS https://surrealpolitiks.com/feed/podcast/surrealpolitikspodcast Gab https://gab.com/realChrisCantwell Truth Social https://truthsocial.com/@realChrisCantwell Gettr https://gettr.com/user/realchriscantwell Substack https://surrealpolitiks.substack.com/ Chris on Locals https://locals.com/member/ChrisCantwell SurrealPolitiks on Locals https://surrealpolitiks.locals.com Parler https://parler.com/Cantwell Odysee https://odysee.com/@ChrisCantwell:9 DLive https://dlive.tv/SurrealPolitiks JoshWhoTV https://www.joshwhotv.com/plugin/Live/?c=RadicalAgenda Rumble https://rumble.com/user/ChristopherCantwell Brighteon https://www.brighteon.com/channels/cantwell BitChute https://www.bitchute.com/channel/mr8b7UVzfOLH/

What is political power? One way to think about it, is as the capacity to alter the behavior of others. In this sense, the formal acquisition of such power, as in the assignment to a position within the government, or political party, is merely the acknowledgement of a previously existing state of affairs. One obtains the assignment, by having influenced the behavior of the person or group responsible for such a designation, and so he has necessarily already displayed the power at issue. The title only bestows a sense of officialdom. Though, of course, this officialdom does have the impact of amplifying the power in question. See the full show description, and join other members on SurrealPolitiks.com https://surrealpolitiks.com/2023/03/24/surrealpolitiks-s01e002-choice-architect/ In more shallow analyses of government and politics, there is a tendency to think political power derives from office, rather than the other way around. This confusion of the order of operations is no less vexing in politics than it is in mathematics. If one does his math from right to left, ignores parenthetical equations, or subtracts before he multiplies, he is fortunate to fail in his education. Should he make such errors later in his career, he could cause airplanes to fall out of the sky, or create any other manner of tragedy that may ensue from miscalculation. When men believe that they "deserve" political power, and consider it an unnatural state of affairs that they do not hold office, similar frictions apply. The most vivid example of this is terrorism. Men believe it is "unfair" that they cannot access the levers of power, and they go on to demonstrate why they are unfit to the task, by harming the innocent. None of us are entirely devoid of power. Some have more than others, to be sure, but each of us influence people every day. Even if one chose to live a life of solitude, hiding in the wilderness and living off the land, his choice ultimately has no less an effect on the price of goods and services by refraining from their purchase than if he made it his life's work to acquire all that he could. In one case he subtracts from demand, in the other he adds, but the fact of his existence is going to be part of that equation, whether he likes it or not. Socials Entropy https://entropystream.live/SurrealPolitiks Telegram https://t.me/followchris Fountain.fm Podcasts https://fountain.fm/show/1Lqmd1jltAvvw0Xvg1bC Podcast Addict https://podcastaddict.com/podcast/3106093 RSS https://christophercantwell.net/feed/podcast/ Gab https://gab.com/realChrisCantwell Truth Social https://truthsocial.com/@realChrisCantwell Gettr https://gettr.com/user/realchriscantwell Substack https://surrealpolitiks.substack.com/ Locals https://locals.com/member/ChrisCantwell Parler https://parler.com/Cantwell Odysee https://odysee.com/@ChrisCantwell:9 DLive https://dlive.tv/SurrealPolitiks JoshWhoTV https://www.joshwhotv.com/plugin/Live/?c=RadicalAgenda Rumble https://rumble.com/user/ChristopherCantwell Brighteon https://www.brighteon.com/channels/cantwell BitChute https://www.bitchute.com/channel/mr8b7UVzfOLH/ I am a student of persuasion. By listening to this show, you too will become one, if you are not already. On another production I recently spoke at some length about a behavioral psychologist named Robert Cialdini, and his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. While a recap of that discussion will be beyond the scope of our task today, we can briefly say that Cialdini and others who study persuasion, make the case that our decisions are largely subconscious processes. These are influenced by identifiable factors, upon careful observation, but are generally unknown to the decider. For example, a voter typically convinces himself that he supports this or that candidate for prudent reasons pertaining to policy positions, but studies show that decidedly non-policy-oriented factors like physical appearance can be decisive in elections. People tend to favor political slogans more if they were eating something they enjoyed when they heard them, and liked them less if undetectable levels of a putrid odor were circulating in the room at the time. I titled today's show "Choice Architect" as a nod to Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler, from whom I heard the term for the first time recently as I listened to the audio version of their book, Nudge: The Final Edition: Improving Decisions About Money, Health, and the Environment. Sunstein and Thaler coined another term in the first edition of the book, which drew a great deal of justifiable criticism. The phrase "Libertarian Paternalism" drove their fellow Leftists insane, because they hate freedom and cannot bare to hear the word libertarian mentioned absent some derisive comment. It should almost go without saying that the libertarians did not much care to be associated with paternalism. The book garnered controversy among those less concerned with terminology as well. Like most Leftists, Sunstein and Thaler lack faith in their fellow man. They view the average person as something of a pinball bouncing off the components of his environment, and see it as the responsibility of an elite to shape that environment in ways that will convince the poor dupe that he is making his own choices, though they doubt this is really even possible, much less desirable, and certainly not actually the case. If the reader detects in this description a tone of contempt, he is not conjuring this in his own imagination. Your humble correspondent considers these men dangerous and malicious, though more because of how they apply this view of mankind, than because of the view itself. Clearly, there is some truth to the idea that environmental factors inform a person's decision making. This is almost too obvious to need stating. Less obvious, but no less true, is the fact that these environmental factors are in no small part shaped by intentional actors, who hold the awesome power and responsibility of directing people's behaviors. It is quite prudent that a book should be written to describe this phenomenon, and one might hope that responsible people would read such a book. Let us consider a rather mundane example used in the text. The authors ask the reader to imagine a woman named Catherine who is the director of food services for a large city school system. Catherine is responsible for the cafeterias in hundreds of schools, and hundreds of thousands of children will have their dietary choices informed by Catherine's decisions. It should almost go without saying that Catherine can impact the dietary options of the students by changing the menu, but this is not the only decision she will make. Will the French fries be the first thing on the line? Or will carrots be made more salient? Will cookies and other sweets be at eye level, or will the student need to request one? While taking the French fries out of the school might be described as a shove, Thaler and Sunstein refer to intelligently choosing their placement as a nudge. They purport a desire to preserve the perception of free will, and to avoid coercion, but to guide people toward decisions the authors deem preferable, through what they refer to as choice architecture. As the authors point out, so long as Catherine maintains her position as the director of food services, she cannot help but make these decisions, and those decisions unavoidably influence the decisions of the students. Even if she abandons the post, she is choosing to put someone else in charge, and thus she chooses all the same. It is not a question of whether or not she will inform the dietary choices of the students. It is not even a question of degree. The question is what she will do with the power. She could, at least in theory, choose to place food items at random in an effort to avoid transmitting her subjective value judgements to the students, but that is itself a value judgement, and one doubts this would improve anything save perhaps Catherine's opinion of herself. She could try to maximize profits or cut costs, depending on whether most of the students in the school district paid for their meals or were receiving them at taxpayer expense. She could take bribes from food vendors and try to improve her own material situation. She could maliciously try to feed the children unhealthy food out of some kind of ethnic or other animus. Considering the full range of all Catherine's options, I hope you will agree that the most reasonable thing that Catherine can do with the power of her position, is to intelligently arrange the cafeteria in a way that will gently guide the students toward a healthy and enjoyable meal. In this, your humble correspondent agrees with the authors. So why the contempt? Sunstein and Thaler demonstrate during the text that they are not fools. Thaler is an economist. Sunstein, a legal scholar. They understand better than most the fundamental principle of their respective fields of study, which is that human beings respond to incentives. Moreover, they articulate their comprehension of the fact too many libertarians overlook, which is that those incentives are not always measurable in dollars. From this we may infer that they understand what they are advocating, and are capable of contemplating the long term effects of such advocacy. Yet the authors specifically disavow any such contemplation. They call this "bathmophobia" - a technical term for an irrational fear of falling down an incline - which they invoke to deride the concept of the "slippery slope" argument. They bring up gun control as their featured example, as I quote from the book; Slippery slope arguments are popular in the United States among those who are opposed to gun control. In this case, X is any restriction on an individual’s right to own a gun (say, a ban on the ownership of assault weapons), and Z would be the government comes and confiscates all weapons, including steak knives and water pistols. Well, that is an exaggeration, but you get the idea. The problem with most slippery slope arguments is that they do not provide any evidence of an actual slope: that is, a reason to believe that doing X makes it more likely, much less inevitable, that we will get Y and Z. This has not stopped people from making such arguments that on their face are rather dubious. For example, there was a Supreme Court argument about the Affordable Care Act in which the issue being discussed was whether the government could constitutionally require citizens to purchase health insurance. Justice Antonin Scalia famously argued that if this requirement were legal, nothing would stop some future government from requiring people to eat broccoli. Talk about scare tactics! The student of persuasion, or for that matter, anyone who has read Saul Alinsky, can clearly discern here a deceptive tactic being deployed. Most glaringly, there exists no shortage of examples in which governments gradually chip away at the liberty and property of their citizens. That this gradual process would accelerate subsequent to their being disarmed hardly needs stating, much less the predictive powers of a fortune teller. The authors mockingly point to the absence of a thing every student of history knows is anything but lacking, and and on this basis invite the reader to conclude that their critics are unthinking fools. The informed observer of the Supreme Court of the United States must doubt that Antonin Scalia was ever an unthinking fool, or that his greatest fear was an act of congress instituting compulsory broccoli consumption. His example was obviously not chosen out of lachanophobia (a clinical term describing an irrational fear of vegetables), but rather to illustrate the absurdity of a legal argument in which the Constitution of the United States grants Congress the power to do whatever it thinks might conceivably improve the health of the citizenry. Politics inevitably involves disagreement over what is and is not "good" for the country, and this is by no means lost on Sunstein and Thaler. Notably, the authors invoke, in the final edition of the book, the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision, which conjured from the penumbras a heretofore undiscovered constitutional right to same sex marriage. And at that, one notably less subject to infringement than the explicitly stated second amendment which they just finished mocking. In the first edition of the book, they had been advocates of so called "civil unions" because they had not predicted the public ever being willing to accept such a thing. This was itself a "nudge" in their view, designed to normalize homosexuality among a people who would reject it, given the choice. They were right, of course, in that the population never did accept it. This was forced upon them by the Court through the vote of five unelected Justices who had uniformly been nominated by Presidents who insisted they believed marriage was between one man and one woman, including Barack Obama. Whatever your thoughts on gay rights, it is not in dispute that certain health problems plague the gay community. If Congress has the power to do whatever it deems may improve the health of its citizens, then it hardly makes sense that they and the States under their jurisdiction would have no say in something so consequential as marriage. One also doubts Sunstein, a legal scholar, had any trouble discerning the distinct absence of any such right being mentioned in the Constitution of the United States. The authors deride another supposed slippery slope argument, pertaining to opponents of women's suffrage, from whom we sadly hear little today. Quoting from the book; The track record of slippery slope forecasts in the political domain is not exactly stellar. An opponent of women’s suffrage once predicted that giving women the right to vote would create a “race of masculine women and effeminate men and the mating of these would result in the procreation of a race of degenerates.” Another opponent, noting that women represent more than half the population, predicted that allowing women to vote would mean that all our political leaders would soon be women. For the record, in 2021, women held only 26 percent of the seats in Congress. We only wish that slope had been a bit more slippery! We might consider ourselves fortunate that most women have not seen fit to degrade themselves by becoming legislators, whatever the authors may wish. And, one might have difficulty drawing a straight line from women's suffrage to the transgender craze plaguing our public schools. But anyone with a familiarity of voter demographics would have a hard time making the case that anyone would even be capable of imagining this situation, had the electorate remained entirely male. Examples abound, but I'll let those suffice to illustrate this point. Sunstein and Thaler are Left wing fanatics whose malice is demonstrated by their hypocrisy. They dress up their fanaticism in social science jargon, and describe their scheming as being born of a libertarian impulse, but they celebrate each opportunity to transition from nudge to shove. On this subject, they make another mocking comment, which one suspects they realize is more confession than denial. Quoting again from the book; We bring up slippery slope arguments because critics have used them to criticize nudging and libertarian paternalism. “First it’s nudge, then it’s shove, then it’s shoot,” as they say. (But why? The whole point of nudging is to avoid shoving, let alone shooting.) Which is to say, they have a loose preference not to shoot you, but it's an option. So, take the hint, or else. So, why bring this up on SurrealPolitiks? I imagine some of you may recall a controversy that emerged during the 2012 Republican Presidential Primary, in which former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who was then seeking our Party's nomination, told David Gregory on Meet the Press, that "I don't think Right wing social engineering is any more desirable than Left wing social engineering." The remark was in response to a budget plan proposed by Paul Ryan, and it involved some controversial changes to the Medicare program which might more accurately be described as libertarian-ish than Right wing, but the substance of the issue is almost besides the point. Here, Gingrich expressed a view that pervades among conservatives to this day, and is costing our Party and our Country dearly. Whatever one's views on the desirability of social engineering, it is a fact of life, and most certainly it is among the defining characteristics of government policy, second only to its coercive element. Like Catherine deciding where to place the French fries, government decides, whether through action or inaction, where to take money, where to give it, who to put in prison, and who to kill. One who seeks to abstain from this decision making has no place in politics. If Republicans abstain from social engineering, they do not free their citizens from its influence, they simply forfeit the influence to people like Cass Sunstein, and Richard Thaler. I might be overstating matters just a bit to say that the entire point of this show is to stop that from happening, but it closely enough approximates my point, that I ask the reader to infer all appropriate caveats and accept the gist. Thaler and Sunstein get what they want politically, and not because their fanaticism is uncompromising. The whole entire point of the concept of nudge is distinctly progressive in its effort to unravel society in stages. Though they mock the concept of a slippery slope, they explicitly aim at bringing about precisely such rapid declines, celebrate their coming to fruition, and make only the most meager effort to dress this fact in a thin layer of plausible deniability. Wikipedia provides a flattering illustration of Sunstein's life and career, and I beg the reader's pardon for my using this Antifa blog as a source, but I think for our purposes it will serve just fine. Sunstein was born in 1954. He reportedly said he was influenced in his early life by Ayn Rand, but quickly turned Leftward politically, before graduating high school. He didn't declare the system he hated corrupt and bow out. He didn't pick up a rifle and embark upon a suicide mission. He didn't try to start a new political party. He went to Harvard Law School. He was never shy about his political views, but he made efforts to dress them up in respectable terminology, exemplified to some degree by the citations above. Same sex marriage used to be something only extremists talked about, as a noteworthy example, so Sunstein proposed civil unions and compared it to the now uncontroversial position of supporting women's suffrage. This allowed him to advance rapidly in law and in education, culminating in his 2009 nomination by Barack Obama to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. His nomination was not without controversy, but after a robust debate in the Senate, he was confirmed 57-40. In 2014, studies of legal publications found Sunstein to be the most frequently cited American legal scholar by a wide margin. This despite, or perhaps because, he advocates legal theories that are a direct attack on the very concept of law and order. If you're anywhere near my age, it's probably a little late to go to law school, but that's hardly dispositive of the point I mean to make. Just like Catherine can choose to ban French fries from the cafeteria, you can choose to demand radical political changes that almost nobody supports. You can impress a small group of people with your uncompromising stance on some unpopular position, and you may derive some psychological benefit from doing so. But Catherine is a lot more likely to positively impact the dietary choices of the students if she is less overt in her guidance of their decisions, and you are far more likely to influence people's political thinking if you are not chasing away those whose ideas you seek to influence. For all the hysteria surrounding Donald Trump, it is a popular and moderate position to say that illegal immigration is illegal, and should accordingly be prevented and punished. Leftists tried to make him out to be the second coming of Adolf Hitler, because they reasonably anticipated this would not be the end of the story. Addressing this very real and serious problem is a nudge toward recognizing that, however the laws may be organized, a society that ceases to reproduce, and replaces itself with foreigners, is a dying society. That realization carries implications that cannot help but shatter the Leftist narratives which plague us today, and there is literally nothing they would not do to stop that little bitty nudge from taking hold. Conservatives warn us that "First it's nudge, then it's shove, then it's shoot" and from this conclude that one ought not nudge. They would do far better in politics if they nudged a little harder, while looking for the opportunity to shove, instead of impotently cursing the nature of politics, and waiting for the pronoun police to blow their brains out. Recall from episode one that progressivism emerged not in contrast to conservatism, but to revolution. It was a question of means, not of ends. While the Weather Underground were waging a campaign of terror, Cass Sunstein was finishing law school. Today, if you search "Weather Underground" your first results will be from the Weather Channel. You'll have to specify that you're talking about a terrorist organization to find any reference to Bill Ayers. He narrowly avoided prison for his crimes, when it was discovered that the FBI had acted in ways it sought not to brag about, and federal prosecutors dropped the charges which had kept him on the run as a fugitive for years prior. Given that many leftists are closeted or not so closeted revolutionaries, and as such hold Ayers in high regard, it would be overstating matters to say is has no power. He has more than me, and likely more than you, but only to the extent that he is an inspirational figure for fanatics with violent plans or fantasies. Sunstein, by contrast, would go on to influence pubic policy through scholarly citations, authorship of influential books, and formal employment with the Obama administration in a Senate confirmed position. Long after he is dead, those citations and books will continue to deform our society. Even if none of us ever achieve anything resembling Sunstein's success, we would still do well to learn from it. Moreover, we have a choice to make, as to whether we nudge the people around us toward that kind of influence, or toward mere infamy. Nudge is a vital text for people seeking to understand progressivism. I encourage you to it, or listen to the audiobook. The way it is structured does not permit the sort of analysis we've made elsewhere of Cialdini, and though it contains valuable insights into the subject of persuasion, the book is more about policy than psychology, which in our view, renders it less interesting as podcast fodder. The authors' tendency to put forth extremist Left wing political ideas as obvious and objective social goods, we warn will grate against the sensibilities of the sane, but keeping one's enemies closer than one's friends is a cliche for the truth it conveys, and we think good people are well served to understand their opponents. Recognizing the scarcity of time, we offer this briefest of summaries before ending this segment, and taking your calls. You can extrapolate much of the book's premise from the story of Catherine and the cafeterias. She will influence the people in her sphere whether she likes it or not, and so the best course for her is to understand that influence and wield it responsibly. The same goes for anyone involved in business, politics, media, or anything else. The idea that any of us can be neutral is nonsensical, and can only lead to miscalculation. You don't have to agree with Paul Ryan to see the problem with Newt Gingrich's disdain for Right wing social engineering. Social engineering is the norm, not the exception. It can be Right wing or it can be Left wing, but it cannot be neutral. A lot of what would now be deemed Right wing social engineering used to be considered obvious. Encouraging healthy families, and productive enterprise. Discouraging vice, and communism. Protecting the country from invasion, and instilling in the population the love of country that makes men willing to sacrifice their lives in service of that protection. This is what we have abandoned, in the misguided pursuit of free will, and what we have obtained is something that does not bear one bit of resemblance to greater freedom. It has been replaced by hookup culture, abortion, gender ideology, inflation, bank failures, and rampant drug addiction. We watch on television as millions pour in to our country illegally. We empty our weapons stockpiles into a foreign country, and our military fails to meet its recruitment goals. As the consequences of these things inflict suffering on the population, the government moves to silence and disarm and imprison its critics. This is not organic. It is not the outcome of revolution. It is the consequence of Left wing social engineering. A nudge here, a shove there, every now and then, a shot. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Right wing social engineering is, indeed, more desirable than this. The perceived restrictions it imposes, are akin to prohibiting a child from playing in traffic. Done skillfully, it will, over time, not be recognized as social engineering. It will once again be accepted as the expected and desirable behavior of responsible Statesmen, educators, and media personalities. With any luck, this unfortunate period of our history will be mocked by future generations. They will appreciate their freedom to tell the truth, and view the freedom to change one's gender or kill one's offspring, in the way most today view the freedom to own slaves. But we are very far from that point today, and if we hope to get there, we'll have to nudge a little faster.