“We’re at an inflection point – a civilizational crisis. Western imperial dominance is ending, and its dying spasms are only accelerating the collapse.” Aaron Good 

Aaron Good, author of American Exception: Empire and the Deep State, is back to talk with Steve about the crisis of the US-led imperial order and the manufactured “common sense” that keeps people trapped inside a rigged system. 

Centuries of Western imperial dominance are unraveling, and the US responds with flailing, genocidal actions in Gaza and Ukraine. These aren't signs of strength; they're the death rattles of a corpse that doesn't know it's dead yet. 

“Realizing you’re not voting your way out of it might be the most terrifying ‘aha moment’ of them all.” Steve Grumbine 

At home the two major US parties are presented as alternatives, the ballot is a participation trophy in the “managed spectacle” of elections. Obama? Trump? Biden? Different brands, same oligarchy. Corporate media and algorithmic “alternative media” work together to keep people confused, divided, and clinging to the fantasy that if they just vote harder, donate more, and binge the right “left” YouTubers, they can reform a system designed to crush them. The empire’s to-do list (crush dissent, steal resources) remains the same. 

What are we to do? Maybe we can't break the system yet, but we can stop being dupes. See the Matrix. 

Aaron Good holds a doctorate in political science from Temple University. He is the author of American Exception: Empire and the Deep State. He is the host of American Exception podcast https://americanexception.com/podcast/ 

Follow Aaron’s work at americanexception.substack.com/  

@Aaron_Good_ on X

STEVE GRUMBINE:

All right, folks, this is Steve with Macro N Cheese. And you know, I

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have talked a lot, you think about the last several episodes. We've really dialed

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our focus on kind of how does common sense come to be and the

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rugged individualism that has been turned into the cultural norm by the ruling elite.

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And we've looked at the concept of libertarianism and liberalism and the self-made man

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and the whole apparatus that makes us selfish, zero-sum thinking and hating our neighbors

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and all the other machinations that have been used and leveraged against collective power,

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against collective strength, atomizing us to like little teeny consumption units that are  jerked

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around by the latest headline and jerked around by the latest oligarch whims. A

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lot of people just can't seem to wrap their head around that because it's

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scary. Once you go there, you have to answer a whole bunch of other

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questions. The dominoes don't just stop there, the dominoes keep falling. And as you

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continue to follow the path, it gets scarier and scarier because realizing you're not

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voting your way out of it might be the most terrifying "aha moment" of

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them all. Because then you're left standing there looking in the mirror saying, "now

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what?" And "now what?" is terrifying, right? It's absolutely terrifying because your whole life

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you grew up believing that it was simply, you're going to go. You're going

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to head to the polling booth. You're going to put an "I voted sticker"

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on your forehead. And good things were going to happen. And what we're watching

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now is something quite terrifying. It's even more terrifying if you understand hegemony and

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you understand how vital oligarchy is in terms of addressing and shaping cultures and

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the way that we view ourselves and view each other. So to discuss this

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phenomenon with me today, I brought on the author of the American Exception, Aaron

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Good, who is just a brilliant guy who's done lots and lots of great

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historical work on JFK, but he's also done a lot of work in this

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space as well. And that's why we're bringing Aaron on, to add to the

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conversation, but to give a new perspective and a new flavor and some of

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his recent work and updated work plays right into this. So without further ado,

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let me bring on my guest, Aaron Good. Welcome to the show, sir.

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AARON GOOD:

Hey, thanks for having me.

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

Yeah, so you heard the intro there. Why don't we get started with, I guess, I

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don't know, a rebuttal, response or whatever, but then we can get into the meat and

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potatoes of the current situation. There's so many of them. I just will say situation to

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kind of be a catch-all for this kind of weird timeline we're living in. But if

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you wouldn't mind, go ahead and address the intro and we'll get started.

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AARON GOOD:

Well, we are certainly at an inflection point and something that I think should

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be called a civilizational crisis, an existential crisis for the prevailing order, as it

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stands, because centuries of Western imperial dominance over the rest of the world are

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coming to a close, this does not seem to be irreversible. And in typically

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dialectic fashion, as is often the case, probably invariably the case with dying empires,

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the actions of the empire in terminal decline are only exacerbating and accelerating its

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demise. And, you know, the Ukraine war, the Gaza genocide, the potential attack on

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Venezuela, these are all symptoms of this. And seeing the continuity of policies now

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should make it very clear that the electoral process is a managed spectacle. If

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you consider that people want to blame Trump as this unique aberration, you know,

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and if only the Democrats were in there. Well, it was Obama who signed

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this ridiculous order. I mean, of course, the US tried to overthrow Chavez in

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Maduro had said. And honestly, when you look at the West and the way

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it has all these sophisticated ways of killing people, I think he was likely

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given some sort of cancer bioweapon. That's what Maduro thought. And I mean, it

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just seems pretty likely to me. But under Obama, he declared a state of

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emergency regarding Venezuela to justify whatever covert actions or policies or sanctions against Venezuela.

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And it's clear that there's no threat represented by Venezuela. Venezuela is not the

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vanguard of a revolution that's going to take over the United States. This is

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all about the hegemony of Western capitalism over the resources of Latin America and

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the Global South, of course, in general, but especially Latin America. And it's so

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obvious whether it's Obama, whether Trump. The only difference is in, you know, the

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tone, the style, and then maybe how far they're willing to go to pursue

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imperialist ends there. And if you look at Biden vs Trump in Ukraine and

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Gaza. I mean, there aren't big fundamental differences in the policy, despite what they

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say. I mean, what Trump said about "heat" in the war today, it was

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obviously not true. And you know, the Gaza genocide was aided and the US

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was a co-conspirator under two regimes to genocidal crimes in Palestine. And if you

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go back, of course the genocide didn't really begin following October 7th. It's of

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course been ongoing since the '40s. So it's just the West cannot really withstand

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any honest scrutiny and it's causing a crisis among the elite. It's a frightening

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spectacle. And it's also hopeful in a sense because the US empire, Western imperialism,

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the rule of white supremacy, as a political project, we could think of it

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as this has to end for humanity to advance and it's hard to imagine

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a way that it would end without any turmoil. So we're going through something

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that is necessary one way or the other, and we have to hope it

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doesn't kill us all.

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

That's brilliantly stated. I'm curious though. You know, we're sitting here talking and I don't

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consider myself to be exceptional. I like to think I'm a decent dude and I

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try really hard. But there's nothing exceptional about me necessarily. And I won't speak for

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you, but my point is we're sitting here talking and we're talking about how this

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timeline is playing out in the worst possible fashion. But you rightfully point out how

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this was not a partisan thing. This is an oligarch thing. This has been going

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on for probably since the dawn of this nation as a colonial project. But looking

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at the current setup, you've got media manufacturing consent for each move, you've got a

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whole host of players within, you know, the theater that this is playing their role.

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And it's all to get us to either do something or believe something or say

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something.  And I consider the election season part of that. I consider the campaigning part

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of that. But I look at Fox News, which is the easy whipping boy because

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it is just so atrocious. You listen to the way people that listen to that

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come out. They come out with a very interesting worldview, a very much a makers

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and takers hating the poor. They just assume everyone is a moocher, a taker, a

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thief. "You're stealing my hard-earned tax dollars" and on and on and on.   And then

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on top of it, each of these manufactured wars, I mean, you've got the same

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people coming out going, "We gotta get rid of the fentanyl crisis. That's why Trump

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is gonna blow Venezuela to pieces."  And, you know, on and on and on while

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simultaneously accepting that the US is broke, while watching Trump give $20 billion to Argentina. 

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Every one of these dialectical, like the contradictions are so unbelievably loud. Yet when we

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watch the folks that listen to these various programs, and I don't want to spare

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MSNBC, CNN and all the other not so alternate media, they're the mainstream vocal messaging

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arm of these oligarchies. The Larry Ellisons of the world owning TikTok and on and

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on and on. And it's just across the board, the oligarchs control the messaging.   What

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is it about us as a people that makes it so that we refuse, or

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maybe not refuse, we don't even realize we're being lied to? Or if we do

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realize we're being lied to, then we end up suckling into the convenient lie. I

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mean, is that just human nature or is this the plan? Is this what they

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already know at the top? This is why they do it. So they do it.

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That's why invest so much into it.

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There is not a monolithic face to this regime. The political and cultural schisms are

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engineered and massaged in different ways and changed over time. So you can't speak of

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the US prevailing order as something that just indoctrinates people with the perspective, you know,

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the point of view, the capital T, truth. They seem to have given up on

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that at some point in the Cold War, and especially I'd say following Watergate and the

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end of Bretton Woods, although it has its roots even earlier than that. But a

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more of a cult of individualism prevailed in different ways that manifests itself in different

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ways in different sectors of society. So you do have this kind of libertarian-minded American

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right wing that really believes in property above all and is suspicious of the government.

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And in recent years, I think that they have become manipulated in kind of a

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certain way and algorithmically managed to have an even bigger footprint in society. Because I

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think there's some recognition that the narratives of the prevailing order are not plausible. And

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so you need some people to address these narratives and have some way of speaking

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to them, to things like the JFK assassination. I mean, it's the wildest thing to

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see libertarians and others talk about the JFK assassination when it was a crime of

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a propertied regime of capitalist oligarchs. And so we're hearing people talk about oligarchs who

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are like libertarians. It's ridiculous. Because every oligarchy is a function of the political economy

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that sustains that civilization, that prevails in that civilization. So if you're saying they're oligarchs,

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if you're saying, "Oh, we gotta unite against oligarchy" it's like, well, how are you

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going to do that when you basically have no problem with the system that invariably

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generates oligarchy and has never not generated oligarchy? And this is, I think, sort of

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by design. It's a kind of cultural social engineering boosting on Internet algorithms. The conspiracism

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of the right is now sort of useful because it's pro-capitalist. So whatever you believe,

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if ultimately you think that property is sacrosanct and that the whatever property one acquires

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under the system is unquestionable and totally legitimate, then you really have no way of

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combating this oligarchy. Because they're the oligarchy because they have all of the money and

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they own everything. And so they get to control the algorithms. They get to control

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the universities. They get to control the media. They get to control the political system

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because it's all animated by money. And so if you are someone who you say

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you don't like the system, or you have a problem with these bastards that are

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running it, but you have an almost religious devotion to the system that cannot but

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be dominated by moneyed oligarchs, then this is politically, essentially an inert kind of formation.

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And that's one thing that we've been going through lately. We have a Left which

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sort of denies a lot of the state criminality, especially the clandestine kind, or, you

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know, is misdirected in different ways. And then a sort of populist Right that is

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also misled about the nature of the system as a whole, and they're sort of

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socially manipulated through essentially psychological operations that we just call mass media, even alternative media

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now, the alternative media that gets boosted by YouTube, et cetera, and every other, you

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know, internet platform. This is a very weird time with an enormous amount of social

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engineering and technocratic manipulation management. I mean, it's like MK Ultra, you know, of course,

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that it's very unlikely that they would just suspend all sorts of research and things

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in this direction. But it's as if it got more and more applied on sort

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of a mass society level in order to politically neutralize the West. And as a

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result, I think that the political sense of the West is so fragmented and atomized

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and stupefied that the moment that we're living through in the collapse of this global

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system or the Western dominance of it is something that we are just spectators at,

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if we're either learned, wise, judicious spectators of it, or we're misled in one way

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or another. And of course, you know, who gets to determine who's correct on these

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issues. But as much as it sucks, I believe, because there's no money in institutional

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support or marketplace of ideas where these things can actually be discussed and adjudicated without

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the people with money putting their weight on the scales. We are totally unable to

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respond and are just spectators to this.

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You know, I've been saying for probably five years, and mind you, I admit

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man, I'm a late bloomer to a lot of this stuff. And I think

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a lot of people are either late bloomers or just now beginning to open

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their eyes a little bit maybe.  I've been talking for a long time that

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we need to kind of look at some of the other resistance movements like

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the Young Lords or Fred Hampton and the Black Panthers and others who understood

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that you had to educate the people, but you had to build dual power.

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You had to have parallel systems in place to support people so that they

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could resist. Because otherwise you're leaving people as prey to a system meant to

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devour them, meant to manufacture a certain kind of consent and condemn and destroy

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those who don't fall into that neat little bucket, if you will, that mold.

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And let's just stay in America, the US in particular, for this moment. How

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would you assess the US's ability to see beyond the electoral system, to function

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outside of, to create even a mental vanguard that. Let me step back, I

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think about, like the Underground Railroad as an example of the kind of times

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we're in right now. If we were being honest, we'd be looking at the

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Underground Railroad as dual power, as actual direct action, as taking kind of action

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towards the system as it is. I feel like in America, people are so

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adept at falling into hero worship. The latest thing with Mamdani and New York

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City as a mayoral candidate, et cetera. I mean, there's so many reasons to

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say, "Yes. Oh, I'm so excited." But having a sober perspective of oligarchy and

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a sober perspective of power within a capitalist system, and power based on history

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and understanding that they're not giving anything away. I mean, if you could vote

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it away, they would have already made it illegal. What are your thoughts on

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the American citizens ability to resist, the ability to fight back, and the willingness

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to see beyond the electoral system?

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AARON GOOD:

Well, you know, I think if you start talking about the Young Lords and

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the Black Panthers, these are communities that were so marginalized and exploited and oppressed

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that there was an element within them that could be brought to basically a

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revolutionary state. That's really a minority of the population in the United States. You

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know, if you look at political science, there's a lot of useless quantitatively-based garbage

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that presupposes the rule of law and transparency and democracy prevailing when we all

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know that's not the case. And so it ends up being very silly and

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irrelevant. Apolitical pseudoscience is really the way you could describe a lot of political

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science. But there are some useful works in political science that are kind of

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commonsensical in a way. And the relevant one here is Theda Skocpol's book on

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revolutions, on social revolutions. Right? She points out that in modern civilizations or in

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modern times, the only real social revolutions were in China, Russia and France, the

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French Revolution. So the American Revolution is not a revolution. And anti-colonial revolutions are

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something different. They aren't a society overthrowing its own, you know, oligarchy or own

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regime and then replacing it with one totally opposite. Right? The only times that

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these have happened were in France, Russia, and China. And these were cases where

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the state essentially lost its capacity to maintain its rule, that the people were

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subjected to so many hardships and difficulties, and that this coincided with a collapse

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of state power that was brought on by foreign wars, essentially, you know, world

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war. In the Chinese case, it was the decades of the Japanese, you know,

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incursions into Manchuria, et cetera, coming after things like the Opium wars, the Boxer

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Rebellion, the Sino Japanese War. I mean, that they had been put through hell

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imperialism and then by the Japanese copycats of Western imperialism. And so this was

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a state of misery that they had to achieve, at which point being a

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revolutionary becomes kind of existential. So for Americans, there are very few people for

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whom, I mean, there's almost zero people for whom a revolutionary action is existential

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for them. And so this is a sobering realization that you're just not going

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to get people in a revolutionary state of mind when it's not existential for

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them. This is, I think, the lesson of history that this is the case.

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However, it's also the lesson of history that empires do fall, and that's what

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we're experiencing now. And this regime is something that's been more or less increasingly

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dominated by a kind of imperialist global dominance mindset. And everything has been geared

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towards this in decades. And because of schisms, I believe, among this oligarchy of

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corporate capitalist wealth we have seen in the 21st century one particular group, which

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is a neoconservative, super Zionist-dominated, I believe, coalition take control of US foreign policy

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and send the US on one imperial disaster after another. I mean, most of

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these can be explained or best understood as really things for the benefit of

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which marked a shift from other imperialists who are not good guys in any

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way, shape or form, but like George H.W. Bush is the most notable one

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here. And this was abandoned in favor of a more neocon super Zionist direction.

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And it has resulted in disastrous wars for the US as this Project for

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a New American Century as it was called. That was the American version of

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the Clean Break Report, except it really didn't frame things around Israel, it framed

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it around global dominance. But this pursuit of global dominance in the wake of

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the fall of the Soviet communism, this has been a disaster. And yet the

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population of the US doesn't have a coherent critique of these things. And no

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political party is, or nobody with a major platform and money behind them and

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institutional support is really able to reach the public on a large enough scale

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to create a new, more reality-based common sense of what this country's situation actually

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is and how it got to be this way. So it's a difficult if

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not impossible time for anybody who is going to be very fixated on the

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idea of how do we fix this system. Because history suggests that this is

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not a revolutionary population, because there's no solidarity. There's plenty of dissatisfaction about the

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terrible regime and the undeniable reality that we have just been facing decline for

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living standards and human indicators in the US for decades, which really shouldn't be

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the case. Technology should be improving and improving people's lives, but it's not. So

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people know that there's like a top-down kind of power that's fixed against them

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AARON GOOD:

and that everything seems more and more like a racket and that you're getting

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screwed by more and more people and that this collectively makes everything more expensive

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and makes life more difficult, makes their children's futures more precarious and uncertain. And

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yet we have no institutions that are going to give people the sense-making ability

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that they would need to understand their plight. And I think that this is

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pretty obviously by design. This isn't something that just happens organically. This is oligarchy

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is doing what they invariably do which is dominating the sense-making and cultural apparatus

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that keeps them in power.

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

Yeah, I love the way you said that. I don't love what you said, by the way, but I absolutely love. How do I say that? I love what you said. But I.

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AARON GOOD:

It's a downer and there's no getting around it. It's not, you can't, there's

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no super happy and positive thing in a sense about dealing with this. Because

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what do you do when there's nothing that you can really do is a

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question. And the first step is perhaps understanding why there's nothing that you can

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do and then somehow managing or it's almost like a Taoist kind of a

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thing. There are powers and historical currents that you just cannot resist. Somehow you

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AARON GOOD:

have to exist even in states of chaos.

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

That's a brutal truth you're laying down there, Aaron. I mean, and it's a brutal

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

truth that I guess I agree with. I think the greater concern from my vantage

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

point, because you just nailed almost 90% of where I'm at, is there's nothing we

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

can do about it now. We aren't living amongst revolutionary people. We're living amongst people

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

who are just fat enough to not want to lose something, yet not fat enough

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

to survive in a good way. And knowing full well that it takes the material

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

conditions of society to reach such contradictory points where the rupture happens. And we're not

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

there because this managed democracy, what it does is it keeps us all just above.

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

Like our nose is just above the water line but our mouth is under. And

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

if we don't stay with the cause, we'll take on water. So it leaves us

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

in this position where it's FUBAR [fucked up beyond all recognition]. And yet the standard

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

ways that we've been told we can handle it, vote harder, vote stronger, donate more,

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

show up to rallies and celebrate and so forth. I mean that's the hopium. That's

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

the LARPing. That's the cosplaying of a democracy that we see especially largely happening even

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

within a lot of my friends' worlds. I mean democratic socialists are busy selling that

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

world right now as if it's a real possible thing that we can just sort

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

of vote our way out of this. And maybe that's because we need the comforting

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

lies to do exactly what you said and that's survive what we cannot change. What's

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

that old saying, you know, "Lord, help me accept the things I cannot change, the

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." I

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

think that there's some truth in that kind of phrasing, given that it feels, I

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don't want to say impossible, but like we're nowhere near where we would need to

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be to take any kind of action. And yet you're watching drones and AI literally

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

begin to run cover for oligarchs to lay the working class off. We're seeing 15,000

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

layoffs come through Amazon. We're seeing tons of layoffs at all these other companies. We're

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

seeing an AI tech bubble. We're seeing where people have placed all their hope and

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

dreams, wrongly, but regardless in these things, in their stock portfolio to try and survive

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

the coming and going of the economic downturns that we experience more and more and

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

more frequently these days. What do you think the average person, how should they process

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

their reality right now? I mean, I know that's intentionally vague to give you room

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

to speak on it, but how do you think the average person should communicate this

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

reality? What do you think is a helpful, healthy way of seeing the world for

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

what it is making do, and at the same time resist in whatever fashion you

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

can?

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AARON GOOD:

I think on some level, if you can't change the reality and the prevailing order,

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AARON GOOD:

you can at least be honest about it. And so for these Social Democrat types,

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AARON GOOD:

I think that I'm not going to say that I have no sympathy for them

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AARON GOOD:

at all. And I think on balance, Mamdani's candidacy is a sign of positive things

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AARON GOOD:

among the American people, that the major city, biggest city in the US would elect

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AARON GOOD:

someone who essentially is for negation of Zionism. I mean, he doesn't quite come out

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AARON GOOD:

and say it, and I haven't followed him that closely because that's just for reasons

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AARON GOOD:

that are pretty obvious. I don't think we're at a revolutionary moment and that revolution

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AARON GOOD:

will come through voting. But I heard him asked, "Do you think Israel has a

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AARON GOOD:

right to exist?" Which is always a stupid question because there's no state has a

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AARON GOOD:

right to exist. States are human contrivances. They are organizations. The humans have rights, not

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AARON GOOD:

states. So it's ridiculous. But leaving that aside, Mamdani said that, "Yeah, he believes that

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AARON GOOD:

there could be an Israel where everyone has equal rights." So that's really not Israel

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AARON GOOD:

at all. Israel's a fascist, essentially Nazified, project. And that's a positive sign that in

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AARON GOOD:

New York, which doesn't have a shortage of powerful Zionists, you would have somebody elected

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AARON GOOD:

the mayor there. That seems to point to something, to some flicker of human cognition

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AARON GOOD:

and decency that's still there even in a political system as corrupt as this. But

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AARON GOOD:

I do find the democratic socialists, the liberals, the faux leftists, the Trotskyites and so

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AARON GOOD:

on, I find them to have an ultimately pretty useless frame of reference because reality

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AARON GOOD:

is that we don't live in a democracy. We live in a lawless, top-down oligarchy

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AARON GOOD:

bent on global dominance. And in maintaining their totally unjust privileges and power over society

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AARON GOOD:

infinite into and you know, as long as they can. It's a system that you

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AARON GOOD:

cannot really justify if you talk about it in an honest way. And I think

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AARON GOOD:

that it's because of institutional manipulation that there are just many dominant influential thinkers or

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AARON GOOD:

institutions, people with institutional backing. To the extent that there is such a thing on

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AARON GOOD:

the Left, it promotes people who are basically safe. They're the loyal opposition because they

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AARON GOOD:

don't point out that whatever the... I mean I have not gone wrong in the

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AARON GOOD:

last 30 years over any major international event as it's gone down in terms of

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AARON GOOD:

determining the Western hand behind it and ultimately imperialist criminality behind it and the responsibility

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AARON GOOD:

behind it in the West. Because if the West explicitly has a grand strategy of

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AARON GOOD:

global dominance forever and it has deployed all manner of covert operations and the manipulation

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AARON GOOD:

of civil society and of democratic processes to maintain this imperialist project. And so whatever

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AARON GOOD:

is going on in this other country where the US wants to intervene, it's essentially

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AARON GOOD:

invariably some nefarious plot, plan, strategy to extend the domination of Western money and oligarchy

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AARON GOOD:

over the world's political economy and its resource-rich areas. I do not understand how there's

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AARON GOOD:

a Left that is fixated on America's enemies. It's the most ridiculous thing. It's pathetic.

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AARON GOOD:

It's embarrassing. [Yes.] And you know the people at Jacobin, people at Democracy Now are paid

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AARON GOOD:

frauds by and large. And it comes down to like, "Well, do you have institutional

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AARON GOOD:

support? Do you have a salary?" Then probably you are co-opted in one way or

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AARON GOOD:

another. There's a handful of like actually radical academics in our universities and some of

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AARON GOOD:

them got in because the times were different when they got in or because they

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AARON GOOD:

managed to maneuver one way or another. But they're eliminating tenured jobs. They're destroying the

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AARON GOOD:

modern university. So even that's not there. And we're just left with these fake annoying

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AARON GOOD:

revolutions that can't appeal to people on a mass level like Breadtube and figures like

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AARON GOOD:

oh man Contrapoints the people that write of Jacobin, Democracy Now, et cetera, et cetera,

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AARON GOOD:

that just when you live under a despotic lawless regime bent on global dominance, that's

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AARON GOOD:

the political situation, that's really the only political issue. Because if you don't even have

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AARON GOOD:

a democracy in any meaningful sense and the regime is lawless, murderous, and bent on

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AARON GOOD:

dominating US and global society forever, if they can do it, then that's your political

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AARON GOOD:

issue. It's not that in Russia they passed a law against gay propaganda. Oh, no.

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AARON GOOD:

Well, you know, as an American, what does that have to do with anything? Like,

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AARON GOOD:

America didn't even strike sodomy laws from the books until the 21st century. So we're

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AARON GOOD:

going to really act like them being a couple decades behind us or more on

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AARON GOOD:

these issues is somehow important. But you hear people make all of these stupid arguments

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AARON GOOD:

about the regimes that the countries that the US wants to destroy. It's embarrassing. And

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AARON GOOD:

I would just urge people to recognize that. Keep their eyes on. Keep their eye

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AARON GOOD:

on the ball. Keep their eye on the real enemy, which is the regime that

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AARON GOOD:

dominates them and seeks to dominate the whole world and has explicitly asserted this strategy

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AARON GOOD:

in different documents and policy pronouncements and also in the historical record. It's pretty much

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AARON GOOD:

undeniable. So I would say that people need to stop being the dupes of their

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AARON GOOD:

enemies.

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

You know, I've got friends here, and I'm sure you have them too, that they don't

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

quite rise up to the level of Breadtube. We'll call them Shitlib-tube. I don't know what

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

you want to call them, but there's like a very acceptable level of progressive, you know,

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

the gatekeepers that, you know, of course, they're the "of course type people" that live and

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

die for every Bernie rally. And I was once a member of this. So I'm calling

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

myself out, past-Steve, years and years and years ago Steve, but still call myself out in

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

that. And they can't fathom that. I wanted to jokingly interrupt you and just say, "but

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

they're for Medicare for all, Aaron. But they're for free student debt relief or whatever. But

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

they're for a bucket of policies, Aaron." And this constitutes to them, you know, "Oh, well,

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

then they're the good guys, right?" Look, what's wrong with that? Why would you think of

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

them as your enemy? And enemy is like a weird word. It really is more a

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

matter of what they're saying. And what they're doing is literally leading you back to believing

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

that this is something you have power to vote your way out of. They're leading you

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

back to helplessness. They're leading you back down a train path, you know, that is then

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

treaded on a million times in the past to lead to nowhere or right back to

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

where you are today, anyway. And ultimately, it's not so much that they're your enemy, it's

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

that they are sucking the oxygen out of the room with their huge platforms and they're,

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

"Of course I'm pragmatic. Of course. What do you want, Trump? Of course I'm just pragmatic."

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

And this faux pragmatism, I think hides more than anything. It's kind of like, you know,

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

"Hey, I can't really live with this world, so give me some good cocaine and let

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

me go out on a high." And I feel like they would rather be lied to.

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

And this is a meme somewhere. I'm sure they would rather a comfortable lie than just

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

acknowledging the truth, just looking this in the eye and saying, wow, I can't just vote

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

for Hillary and make Donald Trump not come back. I can't just. It's not going to

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

change because going back to the Greater Israel Project, which I'd like to talk about here for

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

a minute, they just treat these as like afterthoughts or, like, "That's just your issue, dude.

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

That's just this thing that you're focused on." But they don't realize that is the issue.

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

It is the driving force between all things that are happening. Can you talk a little

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

bit about that and then jump to the Greater Israel Project?

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AARON GOOD:

Yeah. Maybe rephrase the last part again, because I got lost in thought as you were talking about that, but

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AARON GOOD:

I had things I wanted to say, and then I started thinking about them, and then I lost my train

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AARON GOOD:

of thought. So the first part there and now before Greater Israel, you're saying, how do we get these people

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AARON GOOD:

to recognize that they're being led down the garden path to, you know, irrelevance and such, basically?

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

That they're being neutered.

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AARON GOOD:

Yeah, yeah.

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

They're going out there by these left tubers that aren't really left at all. They're kind of like centrist shitlibs.

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AARON GOOD:

Yeah.

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

And they listen to them and they're like,

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

"No, but Kyle's a good guy. You don't

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

understand. Or, no, Cenk is really... No, you

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

just. He's really fighting hard for us." Or.

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

And, you know. Or, you know, and I

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

could list a lot more, but those are

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

the easy ones.

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AARON GOOD:

And then the alternative people, like there's Alex Jones, you know, there's James Corbett.

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AARON GOOD:

Yes, there's a lot of like right-wing conspiracism, which is also a newer thing.

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AARON GOOD:

It's so easy to make arguments about how bad the liberals are and how

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AARON GOOD:

hopeless that is. It's interesting that, I mean, at present we have basically an

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AARON GOOD:

outlaw murderer, you know, who's been just like killing people in the Caribbean for,

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AARON GOOD:

I won't say, for no reason. The whole reason that he's murdering people in

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AARON GOOD:

the Caribbean is so that he can accuse them of being drug dealers, so

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AARON GOOD:

that he can murder more people in Venezuela in order to steal the oil.

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AARON GOOD:

That's literally what the state is doing right now. And the Democrats, to my

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AARON GOOD:

knowledge, aren't speaking to this. They might say, "I don't agree with the policy,"

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AARON GOOD:

but they're not going to speak about the whole reality of it. To my

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AARON GOOD:

knowledge, I must admit I don't follow the pronouncements of senators and so on

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AARON GOOD:

that much anymore because it seems such a waste of time. I think that

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AARON GOOD:

the reason that these platforms exist, the reason that they do end up following

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AARON GOOD:

left coded or branded, you know, productions and personalities, is because those are the

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AARON GOOD:

ones that do have some institutional support. And they're the group that's saying something

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AARON GOOD:

that appeals to some vaguely liberal, lefty-ish people's ideology. And they're sensed to want

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AARON GOOD:

to do something because people don't want to accept that there is like zero

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AARON GOOD:

that they can do. So they take all of this energy and the energy

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AARON GOOD:

that exists in the population instead of being channeled in a meaningful way with

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AARON GOOD:

a critique that actually resonates and could produce some solidarity among people. They end

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AARON GOOD:

up just wasting their time on trifling, silly politics that are doomed when they

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AARON GOOD:

could recognize that in reality, we'll endow one with a kind of revolutionary mindset.

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AARON GOOD:

Even if they're going to have to face the truth that they live in

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AARON GOOD:

a pre-revolutionary or non-revolutionary society or anti-revolutionary society really. And so it's just a

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AARON GOOD:

difficult thing to get people to grasp the sense-making apparatus. The cultural apparatus in

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AARON GOOD:

the US has been manipulated in so many ways and it's done the same

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AARON GOOD:

way now, except in ways that we don't even know. The fakery that exists

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AARON GOOD:

online and on these big platforms like Reddit and Wikipedia and Facebook and Twitter.

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AARON GOOD:

These are essentially, they may as well be run by the intelligence agencies in

427

AARON GOOD:

terms of the algorithms and how TikTok was there they couldn't accept that it's

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AARON GOOD:

the discourse and the numbers that seem to prevail there. You have no idea.

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AARON GOOD:

These people are all anonymous. You know, you have no idea what is meaningfully

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AARON GOOD:

behind things on Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia and so on. It's all top down.

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AARON GOOD:

Everything is top down. And there's so much misdirection. I have no ballpark estimation

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AARON GOOD:

of the number of people who are online, you know, managing personas and multiple

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AARON GOOD:

accounts across multiple websites, who just spend hours creating a false sense of what

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AARON GOOD:

like public opinion is in ways great and small every day. I would guess

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AARON GOOD:

that it's staggering. And I would guess that one of the main things that

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AARON GOOD:

they are really excited about AI for is that they will be able to

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AARON GOOD:

create infinite numbers of anonymous spammers who are engaged in all sorts of propaganda

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AARON GOOD:

operations of every flavor. Whether they're bespoken for different political groups, whether they're conservatives

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AARON GOOD:

or liberals or leftists, or whether they are rural or urban, coastal, interior, et

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AARON GOOD:

cetera, et cetera. They think that AI is going to give them the key

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AARON GOOD:

to basically take away the power of organized workers and to dominate the cultural

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AARON GOOD:

space as essentially a warfare that they're waging on all of us. It should

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AARON GOOD:

be easy to recognize this, and it should endow people with a real disdain,

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AARON GOOD:

contempt, antipathy, hatred even for the oligarchy that does this to us, while pretending

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AARON GOOD:

to be a democracy, which is a country ruled by the demos, when it

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AARON GOOD:

most certainly is not and never really has been. And with the benefit of

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AARON GOOD:

hindsight, we can see that the moments when it appeared more democratic, this was

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AARON GOOD:

more or less an illusion designed to confer legitimacy on the oligarchy when it

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AARON GOOD:

needed it for things like surviving the Great Depression without becoming socialist, or rallying

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AARON GOOD:

the country to fight to win the peace after World War II so that

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AARON GOOD:

the US oligarchs could establish a Wall Street dominated American century, a dollarized empire

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AARON GOOD:

over the whole world that they would like to make last forever, but which

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AARON GOOD:

cannot. And that's the moment that we're in now. And I think that they

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AARON GOOD:

think these technocratic clandestine meta operations of just manipulating the internet and dominating corporate

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AARON GOOD:

media and creating alternative media that's so specialized and niche that it's just going

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AARON GOOD:

to atomize and befuddle people. By and large, they think that this is going

457

AARON GOOD:

to save them. I think ultimately they're going to be transcended by countries and

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AARON GOOD:

emerging great powers whose regimes are animated by something different than capitalist greed.

459

STEVE GRUMBINE:

Wow, powerful. Can we touch on the Greater Israel here real quickly because,

460

STEVE GRUMBINE:

you know, before they clamped down on TikTok and before many of the,

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

if not most of the people of the press that were in Gaza

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

being killed now, it used to be my wall was filled with information

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

and now I have to actually go search for it to find it.

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

The algorithms which are controlled by these oligarchic elements have basically silenced anything

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STEVE GRUMBINE:

that competes with that space. But the elements that we're talking, I mean,

466

STEVE GRUMBINE:

it's so ridiculous to see the narratives surrounding Israel. And you know, I

467

STEVE GRUMBINE:

find it humorous in a sick way that some New York yuppie can

468

STEVE GRUMBINE:

lay claim to property held by a Palestinian over in Gaza. And this

469

STEVE GRUMBINE:

whole concept of Zionism is such a letch, just a wretched, twisted, grotesque

470

STEVE GRUMBINE:

form of colonialism and fascism, quite frankly.

471

AARON GOOD:

Yeah, it's anti-Semitism. I mean, to be real, it basically takes the Nazi argument that Jewish

472

AARON GOOD:

people cannot really [be] full citizens in other countries because of their cultural historical uniqueness and

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AARON GOOD:

so on and the hatred that it engenders in people that so they have to have

474

AARON GOOD:

this state or some of the writings of some of the Zionists who said like that

475

AARON GOOD:

they invoke some of the stereotypes of Jewish people that are like, "Oh, we are weak

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AARON GOOD:

and effeminate, but it's because we don't have a state, you know, and if we had

477

AARON GOOD:

a state we'd be strong and powerful." I mean, it's a form of Nazism really. Nazism

478

AARON GOOD:

emerged, a modern industrialized "blood and soil" fascism with a project that's exterminationist, you know, for

479

AARON GOOD:

Lebensraum and so on. This is so analogous to Israel that it's, you know, it's almost

480

AARON GOOD:

cliche to point it out at this point. And it just flies in the face of

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AARON GOOD:

all of our notions of progress and the enlightenment and modernity, the 21st century has revealed

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AARON GOOD:

the West to be totally morally bankrupt, dishonest, lawless political project at its apex. That's not

483

AARON GOOD:

to speak about the people in the West because they are deprived from, you know, impacting

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AARON GOOD:

power and influencing the policies in any real way. But this is more and more clear

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AARON GOOD:

to people. We're just the villains to most of the world. To the world that's halfway

486

AARON GOOD:

conscious of all the U.S., is this dangerous problem whose decline they need to manage with

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AARON GOOD:

as little carnage as possible.

488

STEVE GRUMBINE:

Well stated.

489

AARON GOOD:

I just want to clarify, and this is where I think the sort of

490

AARON GOOD:

emerging right-wing, anti-Israel people are predictably getting it wrong. The issue is not, "Oh,

491

AARON GOOD:

everything's great. If it weren't for Israel and for Zionism." The problem is we

492

AARON GOOD:

created a system where money and acquiring great amounts of money through political corruption

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AARON GOOD:

and dominating rackets and monopolies and sectors of the economy is the way that

494

AARON GOOD:

political power is achieved and exercised and extended. And Jewish Americans didn't create this,

495

AARON GOOD:

you know, and Zionist Jewish Americans didn't create this. It turns out that they

496

AARON GOOD:

put together a political formation, neoconservatism, that was intertwined with the National Crime Syndicate,

497

AARON GOOD:

Meyer Lansky and the Teamsters and all of that. And that was given protection

498

AARON GOOD:

by this regime of the US because it was useful to these actors in

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AARON GOOD:

terms of dominating US society and also international politics, you know, in fighting the

500

AARON GOOD:

Cold War with this sort of underworld army that's intertwined with capitalism and intelligence

501

AARON GOOD:

agencies. And the role of Zionists in this was foundational because of the Vegas

502

AARON GOOD:

Teamster mob syndicate that Robert F. Kennedy went after. And really nobody else did,

503

AARON GOOD:

except for Nixon to some extent, which is why Lansky had to go to

504

AARON GOOD:

505

AARON GOOD:

the globalists and if it weren't for the Zionists or if it weren't for

506

AARON GOOD:

the Illuminati or the Freemasons or the Jesuits, that everything will be fine." It's

507

AARON GOOD:

a system that is designed around the acquisition of wealth through the exploitation of

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AARON GOOD:

workers and people and also political domination, which allows one to control entire sectors

509

AARON GOOD:

of the economy and establish, you know, essentially monopolies over essential human functions like

510

AARON GOOD:

health care, agribusiness, energy, you know, everything. Every aspect of our economy is essentially

511

AARON GOOD:

dominated by these corporate oligarchs. That's really the root of the problem. So Zionism

512

AARON GOOD:

is uniquely historically impactful in the US because of a number of historical accidents

513

AARON GOOD:

that the world has paid for and has suffered a lot for this. Nobody

514

AARON GOOD:

more than Palestinians and people in the Middle East in the 21st century.

515

STEVE GRUMBINE:

That's extremely well stated. I was going to take us in a

516

STEVE GRUMBINE:

slightly different, but almost exclusively related to the system kind of direction.

517

AARON GOOD:

Yes. I just wanted to establish that. I'm not trying to argue that, "Oh, it's just Israel is all our

518

AARON GOOD:

problems." People don't know my work that well. I would like to clarify that. So thank you for that.

519

STEVE GRUMBINE:

Absolutely. No, and that's exactly what I wanted. It is systemic and it is beyond

520

STEVE GRUMBINE:

systemic, because the system itself isn't failing. It's doing what it is intended to do.

521

STEVE GRUMBINE:

It's been designed this way. And some of the tactics. I spoke with a great

522

STEVE GRUMBINE:

author and a scholar named Clara Mattei about the capital order. And some of the

523

STEVE GRUMBINE:

stuff that she raised was about how austerity is a tool that economists created on

524

STEVE GRUMBINE:

behalf of the ruling elite to discipline labor and to create this otherness, to create

525

STEVE GRUMBINE:

the bad guys, the good guys, the makers and takers, as part of the cultural

526

STEVE GRUMBINE:

tactic, if you will, to manipulate [the] public, to hate the poor, to hate those

527

STEVE GRUMBINE:

that are different, etc. And it's definitely part of the Zionist project, but it's not

528

STEVE GRUMBINE:

the Zionist project that's bigger than that. It's part of this othering that they do

529

STEVE GRUMBINE:

as part of fascism, et cetera, to create the conditions that keep us at each

530

STEVE GRUMBINE:

other's throat instead of looking in the direction where the real problem lies. But what

531

STEVE GRUMBINE:

I wanted to do is just bring your attention to Washington D.C. for a moment.

532

STEVE GRUMBINE:

And Washington D.C. is a non-state that has sort of elected representatives. Not really. It's

533

STEVE GRUMBINE:

kind of like a dog and pony show at best. And there's these sports teams

534

STEVE GRUMBINE:

that are, you know, there that everyone takes great pride in. And I think there's

535

STEVE GRUMBINE:

a lot to be said for just having some sort of distraction to keep you

536

STEVE GRUMBINE:

from slitting your wrist during this period of like, helplessness. But nobody wants to be

537

STEVE GRUMBINE:

the poor. Nobody wants to be the guy on the outside looking in. And so

538

STEVE GRUMBINE:

I wanted to read this to you because this is kind of the way I

539

STEVE GRUMBINE:

believe they keep us as divided as ever as part of that atomized man that

540

STEVE GRUMBINE:

you talked about in the beginning, et cetera. And I said "The cycle create austerity,

541

STEVE GRUMBINE:

cut spending, make it harder for people to survive. Folks break laws when they're trying

542

STEVE GRUMBINE:

to survive. Assholes ignore the cause and effect and want tougher laws, not a return

543

STEVE GRUMBINE:

to the necessary spending. They begin talking about personal responsibility and then blame the poor

544

STEVE GRUMBINE:

for being irresponsible. Cops are called to crack down on the poor. Then they begin

545

STEVE GRUMBINE:

to talk about abuses in the system. They ratchet the austerity. Cut more spending and

546

STEVE GRUMBINE:

more police spending is added. And they act like more police and more tough on

547

STEVE GRUMBINE:

crime is required while not helping the poor. Wash, rinse, and repeat. I said be

548

STEVE GRUMBINE:

careful who you blame." And I think that ultimately people are so bought into this

549

STEVE GRUMBINE:

notion of, "If I have the most toys, that makes me a good person. Whoever

550

STEVE GRUMBINE:

is rich, they must be good because you got to be a good person to

551

STEVE GRUMBINE:

become rich. I'll follow them. I'll worship them. I'll hero worship them." And you don't

552

STEVE GRUMBINE:

have to look farther than Elon Musk and Bill Gates and all these other figureheads

553

STEVE GRUMBINE:

that own all the social media platforms, own the regular media platform platforms, etcetera, but

554

STEVE GRUMBINE:

this whole concept of blaming the poor for our societal problems, punching down on immigrants,

555

STEVE GRUMBINE:

et cetera, why do you think this is so effective and useful to these oligarchies

556

STEVE GRUMBINE:

that do this repeatedly? It's not some new phenomenon.

557

AARON GOOD:

They control our sense-making institutions and they direct the political regimes that have existed in the

558

AARON GOOD:

US and so there's always been various others that have been deployed as props and, or

559

AARON GOOD:

as real adversaries throughout the history of the US. So it wasn't a matter of pitting

560

AARON GOOD:

us against ourselves or I mean, white people pitting themselves against other white people in the

561

AARON GOOD:

early American experience because there's the frontier. Of course there are conflicts in US politics, but

562

AARON GOOD:

this fact that you had the frontier as a way to externalize this conflict and that

563

AARON GOOD:

you had an externalized other that was very useful for them. You know, initially it's the

564

AARON GOOD:

Indians who are not Christian, not white, and didn't have a system of property rights that

565

AARON GOOD:

would give them title to the land in the way that they did back in Europe.

566

AARON GOOD:

And then of course, there are realistic problems about running into wars with Indians and how

567

AARON GOOD:

using European labor would exacerbate these problems. Indentured servants would exacerbate the problems because it would

568

AARON GOOD:

necessitate more westward expansion so that more people would have land if they survived their indenture.

569

AARON GOOD:

And the result of that crisis faced by the colonial class there, the owning class, and

570

AARON GOOD:

especially in the American South, was slavery initially for their tobacco plantations, because that's what made

571

AARON GOOD:

America viable as a colony for England in the first place was tobacco. And eventually they

572

AARON GOOD:

used slaves for this. It was kind of on the decline because tobacco was not as

573

AARON GOOD:

lucrative. But then of course, cotton revived slavery in the U.S. and you know, it's the

574

AARON GOOD:

most important part of the economy for many decades in the US and in the South,

575

AARON GOOD:

you had this system which really did have whiteness. It had what we think of as

576

AARON GOOD:

whiteness in America really takes shape in this time. And it's very useful because it did

577

AARON GOOD:

create a kind of solidarity. In this case, it wasn't dividing Americans as they were thought

578

AARON GOOD:

of at the time, just the white people against each other. It was a way of

579

AARON GOOD:

creating fake solidarity among, you know, white people, because, "At least you're white. You're on Team

580

AARON GOOD:

Whitey and you're part of the good guys. That's how the Confederacy actually could field an

581

AARON GOOD:

army, which when you think about how many people actually owned slaves and such in the

582

AARON GOOD:

South. You wonder how in the world could they have ever fielded an army when most

583

AARON GOOD:

of these people did not own slaves and the best land was owned by these slaveholders.

584

AARON GOOD:

So they were actually fighting for their enemies and dying for them en masse. That was

585

AARON GOOD:

the power of the social cohesion created by whiteness, which is this fake idea. The idea

586

AARON GOOD:

that was created for social cohesion and for support of a prevailing political order. And you

587

AARON GOOD:

know, that persists to this day among some people, like white nationalists and so on, are

588

AARON GOOD:

the dupes of political opportunists in the US you know, once we go sea-to-shining- sea and

589

AARON GOOD:

of course there's Mexico. We fight a war with Mexico to steal Texas and California and

590

AARON GOOD:

everything from them. But then immediately, once that happens, the US keeps going further West because

591

AARON GOOD:

they needed this other. They needed an other to fight against and a project of expansion.

592

AARON GOOD:

So they went West and they just kept going West. They went all the way into

593

AARON GOOD:

Edo [Tokyo] Bay. Even before the US Civil War, Commodore Admiral or whatever you want to

594

AARON GOOD:

call him, Matthew Perry sails into Edo Bay and he forces the Japanese to sign a

595

AARON GOOD:

humiliating treaty with the US to trade with them and has other provisions as well, because

596

AARON GOOD:

they needed that expansion. And that has survived in one way or another through almost all

597

AARON GOOD:

of US history. I think there's a tiny window of like under Roosevelt where you had

598

AARON GOOD:

the good neighbor policy in Latin America and the US was generally sort of contracting inward

599

AARON GOOD:

from the imperialism of the early part of the 20th century. But by and large there's

600

AARON GOOD:

always been boogeymen externally. And increasingly they've turned since the end of World War II, the

601

AARON GOOD:

decades, you know, as the Cold War progressed, it was more and more sort of internal

602

AARON GOOD:

division and culture wars ginned up in different ways. Instead of rallying the population to this

603

AARON GOOD:

American cause in some sort of like Nazi-style global imperialist project, it's more of that the

604

AARON GOOD:

population is atomized and instead of rallying all the youth to be prepared to fight in

605

AARON GOOD:

a big military mobilizations, big wars, they create economic conditions that force some people to regard

606

AARON GOOD:

military service as the best choice they have. And so it's changed in its form, but

607

AARON GOOD:

there's always been an imperialist aspect to it. And it's more a sign of the decline

608

AARON GOOD:

that our rulers have focused more on increasing social division. And they've kind of given up

609

AARON GOOD:

even on any national project for the US at this point. They have the project that

610

AARON GOOD:

they manage, but it really is not something that the public is largely on board with

611

AARON GOOD:

or even understands.

612

STEVE GRUMBINE:

I think most people are probably not even aware of Bacon's Rebellion. But Bacon's

613

STEVE GRUMBINE:

Rebellion, to me, showed the lengths that they will go and how easy

614

STEVE GRUMBINE:

it is to destroy solidarity in these very spaces. The poor black slaves,

615

STEVE GRUMBINE:

the serfs, white indentured servants, you name it, all kind of got together

616

STEVE GRUMBINE:

to fight back. And all the ruling elite had to do was give

617

STEVE GRUMBINE:

the white guys a little extra benefits, and they abandoned all the rest

618

STEVE GRUMBINE:

of them. And it quelled Bacon's Rebellion simply by that economic inequality, by

619

STEVE GRUMBINE:

just dividing right there, by saying, "Here, we'll give you an extra $0.05

620

STEVE GRUMBINE:

to not stand with these guys."

621

AARON GOOD:

Well, they also ceased the use of indentured servants from Europe, meaning that there was going

622

AARON GOOD:

to be less people that were owed land after they survived. So it was this. I

623

AARON GOOD:

don't even know how much they really gave. The people like Bacon weren't necessarily given much.

624

AARON GOOD:

They didn't get much benefit from it. They got crushed. I think Bacon dies of dysentery,

625

AARON GOOD:

you know, because they did sack Jamestown and burn it down, as I understand it, which

626

AARON GOOD:

is, would have been something to see, but that was only after they'd gone out and

627

AARON GOOD:

tried to kill a bunch of Indians. This was a more populist kind of genocidal imperialism.

628

AARON GOOD:

And it just shows you how in the early US among these, like, white colonists, there's

629

AARON GOOD:

virtually no good guys in any meaningful sense.

630

STEVE GRUMBINE:

Absolutely. Right on. All right, final thing. I know that you are in the midst of

631

STEVE GRUMBINE:

doing a rewrite for Japan for your book. Can you talk a little bit about that?

632

AARON GOOD:

Yeah, we have a translation which is basically finished, as I understand it, and I'm working

633

AARON GOOD:

on the new preface for them. I was excited that they wanted to bring this to

634

AARON GOOD:

Japan, because I used to teach Japanese history for three years as a high school teacher,

635

AARON GOOD:

and it was a class for high school seniors. And then I took a bunch of

636

AARON GOOD:

classes in college. I had almost a minor in East Asian Studies, so I knew Japanese

637

AARON GOOD:

history well. And I'd been to Japan on a peace study tour with Peter Kuznick to Hiroshima

638

AARON GOOD:

and Nagasaki on the anniversary of the bomb dropping. And I just find Japanese culture fascinating.

639

AARON GOOD:

The history is just amazing to me, and I was really touched that they would want

640

AARON GOOD:

to publish my book there. And so I'm trying to write about Japanese imperialism, the oligarchy

641

AARON GOOD:

of Japan, and how its history has been shaped overwhelmingly by the United States since Admiral

642

AARON GOOD:

Perry sailed into Edo Bay. And I enjoy doing this, but I also feel a bit

643

AARON GOOD:

of pressure, in a sense, because I'm writing about something that I'm not really a specialist

644

AARON GOOD:

on the way. I'm a specialist on US imperialism. However, I think that because Japan has

645

AARON GOOD:

been dominated by the US and because so few US specialists actually understand what the US

646

AARON GOOD:

really is, I feel like my book explains the US regime very well and that it

647

AARON GOOD:

filled the gap in terms of understanding the American deep state, which is to say the

648

AARON GOOD:

top-down regime or oligarchy of the United States in the biggest sense. That by understanding the

649

AARON GOOD:

forces that really dominated what, how history unfolded in Japan and by having being conversant in

650

AARON GOOD:

Japanese history that I would be able to convey the relevance of American exception to Japanese

651

AARON GOOD:

readers who would be probably of an anti-imperialist bent or they wouldn't be reading the book.

652

AARON GOOD:

Right?

653

STEVE GRUMBINE:

Yeah.

654

AARON GOOD:

So it's a shock when the US sails into Japan and forces them to sign a

655

AARON GOOD:

treaty. They had seen what had happened to China, of a country that they have very

656

AARON GOOD:

centuries long cultural and historical ties to and connections to. They knew about the Opium Wars

657

AARON GOOD:

and the ruin, these things that the west had brought to China, but they couldn't resist

658

AARON GOOD:

the US gunboats and they are forced to concede to the US. However, in Japanese fashion,

659

AARON GOOD:

they decide that they will borrow from these barbarians and reap and take their technology and

660

AARON GOOD:

make it better because they're Japanese. They're better than these barbarians. And so they modernize, they

661

AARON GOOD:

industrialize Japan and they go from having a feudal oligarchy to essentially an imperialist-minded corporate oligarchy

662

AARON GOOD:

of corporate wealth, you know, represented most, I think significantly by the Zaibatsu corporations like Mitsubishi,

663

AARON GOOD:

which is still around today. We think of the Japanese imperialism as like vicious and fascistic,

664

AARON GOOD:

which once, be honest, it pretty much was, if you understand what they did in China

665

AARON GOOD:

and elsewhere in Korea, et cetera. But what's notable about this is that especially in the

666

AARON GOOD:

lead up to or In World War II itself, they were essentially displacing Western colonial regimes

667

AARON GOOD:

with their own Japanese colonial regimes. And they did it by copying the West and using

668

AARON GOOD:

Western technology and even changing their own political structure to be something more Western than what

669

AARON GOOD:

it was before. It was like a big board of directors is how I think of

670

AARON GOOD:

the Japanese eventually during this era where they tried to establish their own empire and then

671

AARON GOOD:

the US nukes them at the end of the war, enters the war really because of

672

AARON GOOD:

the Japanese attacks on supposedly US nominally US territories. But if you look at the US

673

AARON GOOD:

in the Philippines and in Hawaii, you can't really justify that as you being American dominated

674

AARON GOOD:

in any real sense. It just was we took it by force and that's as much

675

AARON GOOD:

legitimacy as it had. But that gets left out of the story. But once Japan is

676

AARON GOOD:

totally defeated, then the US drop essentially because the Soviets have invaded Manchuria and are poised

677

AARON GOOD:

to invade Japan. That's when the US just drops the bomb on two cities, two defenseless

678

AARON GOOD:

cities for a defeated empire that really has no ability to project force outside of its

679

AARON GOOD:

borders anymore. But the US drops those bombs I think partly as a warning to the

680

AARON GOOD:

Soviets that they have this bomb and also because it provides this great pretext for the

681

AARON GOOD:

Japanese to surrender to the Americans. And they knew that the Americans would be much more

682

AARON GOOD:

friendly or they had hoped, I guess and probably had some assurances in some way. I

683

AARON GOOD:

wouldn't be surprised if there's things we don't know about this, that their oligarchy would be

684

AARON GOOD:

essentially preserved. Because if you wipe out this oligarchic class that ran this empire, you probably

685

AARON GOOD:

have a socialist takeover in Japan. And so the oligarchy of Japan got essentially subjugated and

686

AARON GOOD:

made subservient to this US imperial project. And the same happens with Germany and NATO. Gradually

687

AARON GOOD:

after World War II, none of these regions and countries, Europe and Japan and other East

688

AARON GOOD:

Asian countries like South Korea etcetera, have enjoyed real independence. They've been subservient to the US

689

AARON GOOD:

Empire. They have not had any real sovereignty. They've not been independent. They have been subjected

690

AARON GOOD:

to with their own oligarchic political system as kind of the intermediaries, but they've still been

691

AARON GOOD:

subjected to the same mind-scrambling that the US has been subjected to. And it's the same

692

AARON GOOD:

forces that are doing it. And now that we're at this inflection point, Japan is going

693

AARON GOOD:

to have to face the way that it's going to be in the world going forward.

694

AARON GOOD:

They're the biggest holder of US treasury bills in the world. And I don't think that

695

AARON GOOD:

they have a choice in that. I think that for economic reasons, but there's a carrot

696

AARON GOOD:

and steak aspect to it, it helps their exports. But also I think if they didn't

697

AARON GOOD:

have those, who knows what the US would do? They have treaties that we know about

698

AARON GOOD:

that the US is allowed to be stationed on Japanese soil at Okinawa, which is enormously

699

AARON GOOD:

unpopular, but there's also bases on the main islands and they are not at all a

700

AARON GOOD:

democracy. The Japanese ruling party, the Liberal Democratic Party [LDP] which is a very deceptive name

701

AARON GOOD:

for it, it's essentially a one-party state for almost all of the post war history and

702

AARON GOOD:

it was founded by two guys. One of whom was a class A war criminal who

703

AARON GOOD:

should have been executed. He was essentially a yakuza [organized crime] man who worked with the

704

AARON GOOD:

Navy to loot China and other parts of Asia, but especially China, by dominating the opium

705

AARON GOOD:

trade and sucking as much precious metals and diamonds in platinum and such out of China.

706

AARON GOOD:

And then with the money that he had stolen, I think it's like 175 million, the

707

AARON GOOD:

precursor to the CIA sprang him from jail and used that money to create a slush

708

AARON GOOD:

fund for the Liberal Democratic Party that has ruled Japan forever. Not forever, but since the

709

AARON GOOD:

end of World War II, by and large. And this guy was essentially a hard right

710

AARON GOOD:

imperialist gangster who was just repurposed to serve the new gangsters of capitalism, which were headquartered

711

AARON GOOD:

in Washington D.C. at this point they became a satellite. I mean, Chalmers Johnson was an expert

712

AARON GOOD:

on Japan and Japan's economic development after World War II. He was an expert on US

713

AARON GOOD:

imperialism later in his career. And he said that in the 80s he wanted to make

714

AARON GOOD:

a joke that the Sony Walkman tagline should have been "...from the people who brought you

715

AARON GOOD:

Pearl Harbor." Because they. It was the same group was basically the oligarchs were still left

716

AARON GOOD:

in charge, might execute some military officials and so on. But just as in Germany, the

717

AARON GOOD:

real oligarchs were by and large left in positions of power in society and over the

718

AARON GOOD:

political economy in Japan and Germany both. And so now when we see the descent into

719

AARON GOOD:

actual sort of Nazi-style fascism which the US is a party to in Palestine, it should

720

AARON GOOD:

crystallize a lot of things in the minds of people. And I hope that eventually, when

721

AARON GOOD:

it's clear that this system, when it's undeniable that the Western hegemonic project cannot continue and

722

AARON GOOD:

it's no longer viable, that, you know, hopefully I would love for my book and for

723

AARON GOOD:

books of other thinkers, the works of other thinkers to influence them and make them more

724

AARON GOOD:

aware of this political reality that the US and then US-friendly oligarchs in Japan and really

725

AARON GOOD:

elsewhere around the world, in every country under Western sway; It'll break this spell that they

726

AARON GOOD:

have been put under, which is not merely a spell, but it's got a lot of

727

AARON GOOD:

money behind it. All the money in the world essentially. It's the people that control the

728

AARON GOOD:

machines that make all of the money, as you know. [Yes] It's a staggering thing to

729

AARON GOOD:

comprehend. And then I'm hoping that my preface and that the book is well received over

730

AARON GOOD:

there. That would mean a lot to me. But that's what I've been working on of

731

AARON GOOD:

late, in between doing the podcast. And we also have a documentary film. I'll send you

732

AARON GOOD:

the trailer for it, which we can't post publicly because we have some issues to hammer

733

AARON GOOD:

out with that first, but I can send it to you and you can check that

734

AARON GOOD:

out. And I've just been, you know, pretty busy and kind of burned out at the

735

AARON GOOD:

same time, but still trying to juggle all these things. I appreciate the chance to be

736

AARON GOOD:

able to talk about this here on your podcast.

737

STEVE GRUMBINE:

Absolutely. Dude, you're right at the fulcrum. Right? This is what the actual problem is,

738

STEVE GRUMBINE:

and so many things distracting us from it. And you're like right over Berlin, so

739

STEVE GRUMBINE:

to speak. So bravo. I appreciate it and thank you so much for the time

740

STEVE GRUMBINE:

you spent with me today. Where can we find more of your work?

741

AARON GOOD:

The American Exception podcast is on Patreon, so I think it's patreon.com/americanexception. And if you want

742

AARON GOOD:

the book, it's just American Exception, Empire and the Deep State. There's an e-book, there's an

743

AARON GOOD:

audiobook, I think there's an e-book, there's an audiobook, and definitely a hardcover. And I tried

744

AARON GOOD:

to make this more comprehensive in terms of addressing social science perspectives and critiques. Because it

745

AARON GOOD:

was originally a dissertation. I tried to write it to make it a little less academic

746

AARON GOOD:

and turgid with the prose, but I think I succeeded partially. But for the most part,

747

AARON GOOD:

I think it's pretty readable, and most people who are educated, lay people, not social scientists,

748

AARON GOOD:

have been positive about it. So it's a very good resource if you're interested in the

749

AARON GOOD:

suppressed aspects of our politics and history. I think people could benefit from checking it out...

750

AARON GOOD:

and the film when there's more going on with that. I'll circle back to you when

751

AARON GOOD:

we have our news about distribution and everything, but it's basically finished and I'm really excited

752

AARON GOOD:

for it to get out.

753

STEVE GRUMBINE:

That sounds fantastic. Aaron, thank you so much for your time. I'm going

754

STEVE GRUMBINE:

to go ahead and take us out here, folks. My name's Steve Grumbine

755

STEVE GRUMBINE:

and I am the host of Macro N Cheese and the founder of

756

STEVE GRUMBINE:

the nonprofit that sponsors this, Real Progressives. We are a 501[c]3, not for

757

STEVE GRUMBINE:

profit. That means your donations are tax deductible. And I say this every

758

STEVE GRUMBINE:

time, but I think people ignore it. Folks, if you think it's being

759

STEVE GRUMBINE:

funded by some big fat cat, you're wrong. We're getting by the skin

760

STEVE GRUMBINE:

of our teeth, so don't look for somebody else to do it. If

761

STEVE GRUMBINE:

you find value in this. We need you bad. And realize that we're

762

STEVE GRUMBINE:

in the fourth quarter. So while it's still tax deductible for you, so

763

STEVE GRUMBINE:

consider either a one-time donation or becoming a monthly subscriber or monthly donor.

764

STEVE GRUMBINE:

You can get us on patreon.com/real progressives, you can go to Substack/realprogressives and

765

STEVE GRUMBINE:

become a donor. You can go to our website realprogressives.org and become a

766

STEVE GRUMBINE:

donor there as well. I will tell you, every Tuesday night we conduct

767

STEVE GRUMBINE:

a webinar called Macro N Chill. You'll see us feverishly sharing it around

768

STEVE GRUMBINE:

trying to get people there. This is an opportunity for us to get

769

STEVE GRUMBINE:

community and build knowledge together, flex that brain muscle together and develop a

770

STEVE GRUMBINE:

kind of shared understanding of the world. And then on Thursday nights usually

771

STEVE GRUMBINE:

we have a book club. So we are currently going through Lenin's State

772

STEVE GRUMBINE:

and Revolution. All of this is free of charge. We live and die

773

STEVE GRUMBINE:

on your donations and volunteers could be you. So without further ado, let

774

STEVE GRUMBINE:

me say on behalf of my guest, Aaron Good, thank you so much

775

STEVE GRUMBINE:

for joining me today. And for you guests out there who are listening,

776

STEVE GRUMBINE:

thank you so much for taking the time to listen. On behalf of

777

STEVE GRUMBINE:

the podcast Macro N Cheese and the nonprofit Real Progressives, we are out

778

STEVE GRUMBINE:

of here.