Analyzing JD Vance's New Book...IT'S REALLY BAD...

Yeah, I mean let's start really with let's talk about his views on economics and uh and and the the extent and the way in which religion inspires them or his Catholic Catholic religion inspires him. >> So let we have to start from the religious part because if we don't understand this we won't understand anything. I'll just read a small passage from his book because I think it's the most telling part of the whole book. He says, "We confine Christianity to the most private of questions, relations between husbands and wives, reproductive decisions, and then we're surprised when kids like me grow up in the faith and then discard the faith." So basically, he's telling if we confine Christianity to our everyday lives, Christianity is weak. Christianity is timid >> which is which is which is the way the enlightenment viewed Christianity and the way arguably the founding fathers viewed Christianity. Christianity is what you do at home. It's it's and and the whole achievement of the enlightenment. The whole achievement of the one of the big achievements of the enlightenment is the relegation of religion to the home and [snorts] away from public the public sphere away from science and away from politics. So, and here's how he evaluates >> what you just said. >> Yeah. >> We have to do better. >> If Christianity is true, it must be true for the whole human person at all times of life. To quote the famous theologian Abraham Quiper, there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ who is sovereign over all does not cry mine. So everything everything belongs to the Christ. and and he repeats this theme throughout the book that in all aspects of your life, the solution to everything from racism to the epidemic of loneliness to sexual frustration to everything, the solution is Christianity. And the state should stop pretending that it hasn't got a say on these things because then the result is what we see. He keeps using this phrase something like judge them by their fruits. >> Yeah. >> So judge the culture by what it has produced. It has produced opioid epidemics, loneliness. We don't have children anymore. Therefore, reject the culture that gave us this result and go back to embracing the culture that gave us this country that gave us Europe which is Christianity. >> Yes. which is a misdiagnosis of history because the culture that gave us this country and gave us modern Europe is the culture of the enlightenment exactly that culture that relegated Christianity to the home and away from politics because the culture that actually embraces Christianity in every part of the world in every part of life was the culture that gave us the 30-year war which is you know and what what the enlightenment was rebelling against the mass slaughter in the name of Jesus And it's very interesting that he never mentioned these times. So he says look what Christianity has given us. He talks for example about a trip he went and there's a nice castle in Wales and he says this is what Christianity gave us. Nothing about the wars, nothing about the stagnation. Yesterday you were talking about civilizations going backwards, going extinct and then we have to reinvent ourselves. Isn't this something that what happened at some point in the Middle Ages? He doesn't even pose the question because I know some historian will say, "No, this is not what happened." But there's zero curiosity about that. It's just everything that is nice. Here's a nice castle. That was Christianity. >> Yeah. I mean I I don't know why you would associate castles with Christianity. [snorts] Castles exist. Oh, Christianity. >> What's that? >> Beauty. >> Beauty. Yeah. I mean I mean Christianity adopts beauty for political reasons. It adopts beauty when uh when beauty is is deemed necessary to establish its power which is really at the beginning of the Renaissance. the beauty has started to be creating around the church and the church embraces beauty as as a way to to attract people to it and to keep them there. Um, but yeah, I know people think cathedrals are the most beautiful thing in the world. that the Gothic cathedrals are the are the pinnacle the pinnacle of human creation and and uh you know of of of human creation is beautiful which is bizarre to me. >> Well, I I'll I'll confess something. I lived in York for 3 years. There was not a single time when I crossed your cathedral with a Richard the Lionhe Heart statue y >> that I didn't pause for a moment and say wow. So, but yeah, I'm not an expert, but there was ambition, there was grandeur. So, there was something there. There was something there. >> Yeah. I mean, the willingness to sacrifice the lives of hundreds of peasants for the glorification of a makebelieve, [snorts] you know, gremlin, uh, who who doesn't exist, right? It's it's an expression of power. If you if you go to Egypt and you look at the pyramids, wow. Wow. But it's a muzzle for the glorification of a dead pharaoh. And cathedrals are the same thing. They're like pyramids. But uh but you know, in in a sense uh in a sense worse. But anyway, >> and I'm not the criterion for good architecture because I also like Stalinist architecture and the palace of the people in Romania. So >> yeah. Yeah. >> Ask me about football. Don't ask me about >> and the Bobby in London. So >> don't ask me about architecture. But let's concretize a bit. We said that Jay Devans believes that religion should have a say on everyday things in politics. Let's give an example. Actually he gives the example. >> Yep. >> He says notice how we've stopped going to church on Sunday. But how can you go to church on Sunday if you have to work on that day or if you are tempted to go to the mall? So maybe maybe we should nudge people, encourage people not to work on Sunday. And he the next obvious step is maybe we should ban work on Sunday. There should be a decree on whether you should work on Sunday. Or he says he says imagine how many people need to stand up from the table on Thanksgiving because they have to go to work. He says, "A healthy society should recognize that it is gross for a 16 year old to go to a 12-hour shift on Thanksgiving." And I thought, I was doing shifts when I was a PhD student at the most ungodly hours on the most ungodly days. And thank God I did it. Thank God there was no JD Vans who tell me it's gross for you. No, it's not gross for me. It would be gross for me not to get the extra money that I got in these days. But you see, he knows better. He and actually not he, the Bible, the the the Christian creed knows better. And based on that, we should decide things like when the shops should actually be open and when the shops should be closed. >> And there there is a long American tradition of doing that. So when I lived in Boston in the 1970s, it was illegal to open a store on Sunday. All the stores were closed on Sunday. And some grocery stores stayed open because they made more business than the fine, right? So it was profitable for them to stay open on a Sunday and pay the fine, but they were fined. It was it was it was illegal. So I I can't remember the name of the laws. Uh >> Sunday trade laws they were called in the UK. And of course in the in every socialist seat hole it's the same. In Greece it's like that. Of course all the cafes are open. So apparently there's no sin for uh for these people. But anyway but you could say okay this is very specific. Okay. Sunday trade laws. >> This is the principle. Yeah. >> But let's see how this applies to his worldview on economics. So whether you read the book or you watch his interviews, Jay Devance heavily quotes Pope Leo VI, this was a pope from the late 19th century and his rarum novarum encyclical. Rum novarumo means new things. So the pope released an encyclical about new things in the late 19th century. Of course these new things were capitalism. >> Yes. And this reads like the program of a social democratic party. It calls for fair wages, protection of workers rights and a reconciliation between labor and capital. The pope says we are not of course communists. And you know it's the most hilarious moment is in an interview Jay Devan says obviously we're not Marxist. Like he has to make the clarification we're not Marxist. because he says Marxism and the Catholic Church have a lot of theological divisions. That's the problem. But anyway, so and this pope has the idea that we need to find a way to reconcile labor and capital through them sitting on the same table and labor unions could play a role. Of course, this is what later becomes the third position. This is how fascists view themselves as reconciling labor and capital. And Jay Deance put it or the pope I don't remember and J de Vance quotes him something like no man has the right to deny another man of a living wage. Notice how simplistic and clueless this view is. No man has the right to deny another man a living wage. >> Yes. >> As if the capitalist it is his duty. So jobs grow on trees and then you go and take a job and the capital is now he given you the job and now he has also have a duty to pay you a wage which is good for you and uh and your family. And then Jay Devans does a little historical overview. Of course, he praises FDR's New Deal. [snorts] He praises the role of the church in making the do the New Deal digestible and attractive to people. And the reason he likes this pope and the encyclical of the pope is he says this shatters the myth of individual responsibility that each one is responsible for his own life. And he said the pope recognized that there needs to be a political framework so that people are nudged to make the right choice. So the capitalist needs to be nudged which means forced >> at the end of the day to understand that he has a duty a Christian duty to the worker. Again >> I think there's a name for this. The name is social democracy. Jay De Vance and the Pope have discovered social democracy and they think they've found something very profound. >> Well, but but yes, I think that's right. guided by and excused by you know Christian moral principles and so he constantly says look um you know I'm not a socialist u but if you know if you uh if you continue along this path of capitalism you will get socialism because the the the working class will rebel and uh they'll give you socialism so what I What we need to do, which by the way is the same argument every fascist has always made, right? What we need to do in order to prevent the rise of socialism is you need to give me power and I need to control the markets. I need to preempt socialism with socialism or with fascism, you know, if you want to call it something different. But he he he constantly in every interview I've seen particularly recently the last few you know since the book came out he makes this argument look the reason socialism is on the rise the democratic socialists in America are being so successful in elections is because the people are rebelling against capitalism we as a political party can't can't represent capitalism because the people are rebelling against it we have to answer to their concerns about capitalism and And the only way to do that is to be socialist without being socialist. And really what he means is being socialist without what really pisses off the right. The right doesn't care about economics. What really makes the right upset is you know uh trans people in Christopher Nolan's movie or or or you know a black Helen of Troy. That really pisses them off, right? That they get super upset about. They couldn't care less about free markets or capitalism or economics or anything like that. So to prevent woke which is associ with socialism we need socialism but with a Catholic veneer or Catholic you know uh o oversight. Actually Vance takes it a step further. He wants to go straight to the socialist. He doesn't even care about fighting war. He actually says that the problem with the Republican party is that all these years they tricked us. They tricked us into selling us conservative culture wars whereas what they wanted was to cut taxes. And he said the average Republican doesn't even want to cut the taxes of big corporation. So he goes straight to the point the point is straight the socialist economics. >> And he and he's right. Right. Because all Republicans have ever done since Reagan, the only thing that differentiated them from Democrats is they want to cut taxes. That's it. And and there's, you know, people say, "Look how Trump is great. He cut taxes." Every single Republican except George Bena has cut taxes. So there's nothing unique about Trump. It's the only thing that differentiates economically Republicans and Democrats really in any fundamental sense in terms of actual governing policy. So, um, he's right that the Republicans have failed because that's the only thing they focused on and it's not that important. >> And also, while the more he goes in his economic policy, you realize that the guy is actually clueless, which is weird >> for someone with this education. So, I wonder if he's clueless or he's just lying. >> So, he says, for example, that, and these are the words that he's using. I'm not exaggerating them. He says that the robber barons of the industrial revolution raised inequality so much that this is what brought communism and therefore then fascism. >> Yes. >> The guy has the arguments of a leftist but actually the arguments of a clueless leftist. >> Yeah. >> And he's using all the time leftist talking points and actually leftist talking points from the early 2000s. He brings for example he wants to talk about against outsourcing to China and he says you know workers in China was jumping from the roofs of the apple factories in China and this is why they had to install suicide nets and or he has this other point that England and the US became the success stories of capitalism. Why you think because of trade unions? These are not just leftist points. These are strong old left socialist points that it was trade unions that made these countries what they are. >> And a theme a theme across his work >> is that stronger unions are needed. Stronger labor unions. And he says one of the problems of immigration is that it weakens the cohesion of the labor movement. Again, this is a old leftist argument from the >> Bernie Sanders argument. Bernie Sanders has made this argument. That's why Bernie Sanders has said explicitly he's not for open immigration because it [clears throat] weakens the unions. It >> weakens the unions. Yeah. So he has this big idea to create this forum where labor and business takes the the decisions together. And there's a name for this. The name for this is corporatism. And it was actually the economic model of fascism. and Jay De Vance takes it out of the closet of history a century later and he thinks that he has discovered something but I want I want to read one quote verbatum so that because you know people might think we have Trump or V derangent problem so I'm going to read a very short quote and I want our audience to think if I told you that this quote came forget Bernie Sanders if I told you this quote came from Hassan Per which is a quote that as you'll see could easily come from per how would you judge it quote we're going to wake up and realize that rich people have gotten way richer the average person has stagnated and people really hate relative poverty post quote relative poverty is when it's not that I'm poor but someone has way more than I am. So now I'm envious. Continuing the quote, you can give people iPhones and the creature comforts of a 21st century economy. But if you make rich people way richer, you're going to have significant problems. Pause. Notice, by the way, if you make rich people richer, this is how this guy understand production. Someone somewhere makes rich people richer. And finishing the quote, the idea that we're going to allow to allow these companies, he talks about big business, big tech to accumulate trillions and trillions of wealth and then we'll be able to successfully redistribute it to workers. I'm very skeptical of that. So he's not going to allow >> Yeah. >> And the problem if these people get too rich is then it's difficult to redistribute. So we need to find better redistribution models which are not going to be first let them be rich and then redistribute because then you're going to have relative poverty. Again these are I grew up with these arguments. These are socialist hardcore socialist talking points. >> Yes. And they're hardcore fascist talking points. And I think that's that's that's where he's coming from. That is this is this is the new right. This is the the kind of the fascist right. they, you know, maybe they're not yet quite authoritarian like the fascists that maybe they're not quite yet as racist as fascists, although some of them are getting there. Uh, but in the name of stopping the left, they they they completely adopt the left and he has his what makes him more committed, I think, is the fact that his views are coming from religion. that is he is embracing Christian egalitarianism and that that is what is really motivating him um you know to to to really commit to this. So, it's it's not just it's not just he's playing. He's I'm I'm actually curious and I don't know how to I I need to ask Peter Teal at some point this question. Um because I don't think Peter believes any of that, right? I I I don't think Peter believes in it, but I think Peter believes that you have to say it because the average person believes in it today, right? But, you know, Peter's a self-made man. I mean, he again, he founded PayPal. He's he's got one of the most successful venture capital funds ever. He's got a hedge fund. He's he's an incredibly successful and he knows he's read Atlas Shrugged. He studied Atlas Shrugged. He knows the economics. I don't think he would ever talk quite this way. But what Peter, I think, would say is if we don't if we don't get the working class on our side, socialism wins and they kill us. So we to get the working class on our side, we need to play the socialist card. So the question is, is JD Vance doing that or does he really believe it? Now I think he really believes it because I think he's bought into the integralist world view in a way that Peter Thiel has not. >> It's interesting. Our friend, our common Italian friend, Luca, was asking me on Twitter, how come Peter Thiel support that crap? And I said, I have no clue. But I told him, I promised him I would ask you. So, but you've already you've already answered it. >> I think it's he he believes it's necessary for survival. I think if if if we don't and this is why I supported Trump, if we don't cater to the worst elements in our society, they will rise up against us and kill us all. So, or bring us bring us socialism when woke socialism. So, his view is you gota you got to pander to them uh in order to in order to buy us time. Um, I I think that's I think that's Teal's view, but I do remember every time I see Peter Teal, I'll ask him. >> Do you remember that scene in Atlas Ragd where after Rean's court speech, he's in that party with other businessmen and all are telling him, "Oh, why did you go that far? Now they're going to think that we're just after money." And he tells him, "Hey, but aren't we after money?" And he says, "Yeah, but you shouldn't tell it because then they're going to come after us." And he says, "So if you I'm butchering it, but he says something like, "So if you tell them that your money is not yours, then you think they're going to leave you." >> Yeah. >> And he leaves the party by saying something like, "Gentlemen, h I'm really sorry. I'll have to save your goddamn neck while I'm saving mine." Or something like that. Do you remember that scene? >> Yes. Yes. >> That's exactly I think what's happening here. >> Yes. I think so, too. And it's so sad because yesterday in your show you were talking about Nolan the director. >> Yeah. >> Who has the same view that I have to cater to the lowest common denominator. How sad that these great spirits are broken and are defeated. >> Yep. I I I think that's absolutely right. But you know this is this is the cost you pay for losing the intellectual battle, right? So, so uh you know these great spirits in production, Peter Teal and and Lon Musk and people like that, who do they turn to for intellectual inspiration? Well, Peter Teal turns to Gerard. He's exposed to Rand, but he can never really embrace Rand. She's too she's too radical. Um and and and and he doesn't want to lose the the world the culture. He views Rand as if he embraces Rand, he's lost kind of the the world. Um so yes, I mean uh this is what happens when businessmen don't have the intellectual ammunition provided to them by the intellectuals. It's our job. It is anyway. So to to Phoenix, he has also this absolute caricature view. people can find I quote him on my last tweets on that where oh everyone the the the mainstream is a neoliberal libertarian market worshippers and he says you know whenever you spend time caring for your elder parents this takes time from work from GDP and you know the powers to be don't like that and he has this stupid idea that there is this it's like either the economy or your values economy or life and it's like the one or the other and he said we want people over spreadsheets again these are arguments of a first year not particularly bright sociology student >> and th this is where I start thinking he can't believe these things he can't be that stupid he's probably pandering he's probably appeasing the lowest common denominator but the lowest common denominator of the other side the all the lowest common denominator of the left >> it turns out that the lowest common denominator of both sides is the same person [laughter] or the same people. I mean, that's that would explain him pandering would explain Peter Teal because Peter Teal would sit Peter Teal is not going to pander, right? He's not a pander, but he would support pandering as a survival strategy. Um I I could see him saying, "Okay, JD, go panda. Uh here's here's here's here's the millions. go panda because uh we need you to panda because we need to appease these people so that they don't come after us, they don't slit our throats and and and and that's I think Peter Teal's kind of thinking. Whether Vance really believes it, I think he has to. I think ultimately he is a believer. Uh I I I think you see that in his relationship with um with Denine and the integralists. He's a truly a fan of Den. He's read Denine. Um he he has praised Denine. Uh I I you know he repeatedly goes on these uh at these conferences the national conservative conferences and talks about these kind of issues and he talks about it in a way that sounds very authentic. Uh I think he is an he is a Christian conservative. He very much believes in Christianity and applying Christianity to the world. I I think from Tio's perspective as the puppet master if you will, Tio thinks he needs people like JD Vance out there, but I don't think JD Vance is doing the pandering. I think it's Tio pandering through JD Vance. >> Right. >> JD Vance is a believer. >> You mentioned Denin. By the way, when we're going to talk about him, the guy's literally quoting Karl Marx and he's using Marxian categories. He's using the marks and category of alienation not as a coincidence. He's actually telling you Marx was right on alienation. I'm going to use the marks and category of alienation.