Benedict Beckeld: Western Self-Contempt

You're listening to Deconstructive Criticism. I'm Aaron Flamm. Benedict Bechtel has written the book on Western self-contempt. We will be talking about what that means for the current state of the world.

But first, a huge thanks for supporting Deconstructive Criticism on patreon.com slash Aaron Flamm or swish 0768 9437 0768 9437 you can also buy my own book. This is a Swedish tiger in English at my website, although it might be more practical since the shipping costs are huge to buy it as an ebook on Amazon Kindle. This is a Swedish tiger can be found on Amazon. Please purchase your copy today.

Benedict Bechtel was born in Uppsala, Sweden and grew up in both Uppsala and Stockholm before moving to New York in his early teens. His academic journey is remarkable, spanning continents and prestigious institutions. He has a PhD in philosophy Greek and Latin from Heidelberg University and has lived, studied and taught in France, Italy and Germany. Benedict speaks several languages that we use today as well as ancient Greek and Latin.

He has a deep understanding of history, art, philosophy. In short, they don't make them like this anymore. Benedict is a prolific writer whose work spans philosophy, memoir and poetry. His intellectual pursuits focus on aesthetics, contemporary culture, political philosophy, the philosophy of history and ancient Greece, fields in which he continues to make significant contributions.

In this episode, we will be talking about his book on the history of Oikofobia in the West with a very apt title, Western self-content. Although I don't agree with Benedict on free will, I found the book very entertaining and interesting and I think as a study of Oikofobia in the West, it is indispensable, not only because this might be the only real book on the subject, but also because he shows in a very convincing way that the fall of civilizations is baked into their eyes and that history seems to behave in helical, cyclical fashion because of human nature. If all that sounds a bit complicated, we are fortunate enough to have the author here explain what he means. Enjoy.

So welcome to deconstructive criticism Benedict Beckled. Thank you very much for having me. Full disclosure, we didn't hang out as children, but your mother was my bar mitzvah teacher. Yes, that's my understanding.

Because you were born and raised for the first 12 years of your life here in Sweden. For the first 14 years actually, yeah. Born in Uppsana, but then we lived in Stockholm for three years before we immigrated here. My kid brother David remembers you.

Go with us. Okay, was he and I in the same year? I wonder. Well, he was born early in 81 in January.

I was born January 80, exactly so one year older. So I guess maybe we were at Hillel's school in Austen. I was going to be at the same time possibly. Probably.

And since then you have been doing what exactly? Since then I've been well, so we went to the United States to New York City, which has been sort of my base ever since, but much of my university studies I completed in Germany, actually at the University of Heidelberg. And I was an academic researcher and a professor also in France for a while in Italy, mostly in France. France and Germany sort of spent about 10 years there academically.

Professor of philosophy and classical philology. And I've been back in the United States for about the last 10 years, basically just focusing on my writing books, articles, everything like that. Can't really teach in the United States because even though overall the United States is more right-wing than Europe, specifically the academic world is so radically left-wing in the United States, I think even more so than here for people like me, there are no jobs. But what do you mean when you say people like you?

Because you taught philosophy in Italy and France and Germany that would make it continental philosophy? Well, I didn't teach in Italy. I was just researching but in Germany and in Germany, I just taught Latin and Greek but philosophy also taught in France. But is it like continental philosophy that you adhere to?

Not especially. I mean, I don't really distinguish between them but I guess yes, I do work more. If I'm going to talk about my own philosophy, people would probably call it more continental in analytic. But to me that distinction is rather unimportant.

I write whatever is interesting. But in terms of what I taught, yes, I did teach more continental than analytic. You write out of what is interesting. I think that would summarize the book quite well.

Actually, I read your book. I think the title is very apt, Western self-content, where you map out the history of Western oikofobia, which you deem much better than African or Semitic oikofobia. Well, it's whenever Africans, I mentioned that it's just about one page in there because sometimes people ask if such a thing is non-Western oikofobia and there is. But it tends to happen because of Western influence.

So there oikofobia is a bit of an imitation of our service because it happens in many other areas as well. I think we'll get back to that. So you go through the term oikofobia, which is a rather new terminology to describe self-contempt really or specifically contempt for one's nation at home. For one's nation, one's own culture, one's own people, yes, and one's own history.

Basically everything that can be associated with one's own culture. I was just asking you about where you stand epistemologically because I read the entire book and you talk a lot about epistemology. More than a comedian would want really. But you also studied philosophy, didn't you?

I think you did. Well, I've read philosophy on the side. But not in an academic setting. But it was still kind of hard to place you and that's why I asked.

That's actually I've gotten some critique from the right. I mean, most of the critique I've gotten, as you probably would expect, has been from the left. But some critique from the right because they feel that I don't take a strong enough stand against it and that I don't sort of militate against the left and against the oikofobes in the book. And my reply to that is always that's not really my job as a philosopher.

I mean, anyone who reads the book can tell that I'm not a left winger for sure. But my job, there are already enough books, shall we say, by political scientists and various pundits, political commentators who rail against left-wing self-hate. But what I'm trying to do in this book is to give the first proper philosophical systematic treatment of cultural self-hate. And this is really the first book, if I'm a flatter myself, this is really the first book that does so.

You have certain screeds against left-wing self-hate and so on. But what I try to do in this book is really to lay it all out and to understand it why it happens, how it works and so on. And so in a book like that, there isn't a whole lot of room for me to come in and sort of just start a tirade against left-wing oikofobia. So I'm fairly, in that sense, I'm more descriptive in the book.

But of course, personally, I am certainly against oikofobia. No question about that. But you go through, and it is decidedly a Western phenomenon. You go through Greece, Rome, France, Britain and the US.

Yes. Would you like to tell us a bit about Greek oikofobia? Yeah, so it all starts in Greece, which makes sense, because that's where the West starts, really. Obviously, our mutual Jewish culture is also part of the West, but that really enters later through the Lake Roman Empire, through Christianity.

So Greece gives us the first example of oikofobia. And it really comes about, and we see this pattern repeating itself. Motat is Motat is obviously the details change. But we see the same pattern writ large, repeat itself in future civilizations, including our own.

And I think that's why it's so important to start with Greece, because that really helps us understand why we hate ourselves. So many segments of our own culture is self-hating. Everybody recognizes the phenomenon, but most people don't. And you see this all the time, people asking themselves, why is this even happening?

Why do people act this way? And so to understand that, we start with Greece and then move forward and in Greece, it basically happens. It starts to happen. There's certain signs of it arising before it actually happens.

But it starts in the late fifth century BC in Athens. And it's not a coincidence that it starts in Athens, as opposed to other Greek cities, because Athens is the city where we have the most freedom, intellectual freedom, the most democracy, not by our standards, obviously, but by their standards, the most democracy, the most freedom for intellectuals to start self-questioning and to criticize their own culture without fear of the powers that be, without fear from the government. And Athens is, especially after the Persian wars, Athens becomes the wealthiest city, certainly one of the wealthiest cities in Greece, certainly the most powerful, the Athenian Empire. And when you have this sense of security, this sense that there's no existential threat, which there isn't really because they've defeated the Persians, so they're not afraid for their lives anymore.

That was the generation of the grandfathers who fought in the Persian wars in the early fifth century. Once that happens, you have a free intellectual space, a certain sense of egalitarianism, again by Greek standards, obviously not by our standards, a certain sense of egalitarianism, a certain sense of being able to write what you want without having anything to fear, a certain degree of wealth, these other circumstances for equifobia. And this is also why it tends to... You express it in your book as the creation of a large leisure class.

People who not only have the freedoms, but also the time to engage in them. Yeah, exactly. And this is... You have leisure classes also in other civilizations, but they tend first of all to be much smaller, and they also tend to be closely more closely tied to the government or to the powers that be a small clique around the emperor or whatever the king, whatever the case is.

In Greece and Athens specifically, you have a leisure class that is large enough without being tied to, for example, Pericles, the Archon of Athens, or without being tied specifically to the government. They're just sort of... It's a layer of aristocrats who sort of just do what they want, but they're still operating in a free intellectual space. And that's very important.

That's why it's also Western because we've had much more of that than non-western civilizations. And so when they no longer feel the threat of the Persians, they start to look at their own culture. When the Persians are just about to invade and to destroy your city, you don't have time to look at your own culture's shortcomings. You're focused on the external threat.

But all of us need... Some are not, but every people needs an enemy. It needs something against which to define itself. And when that enemy has disappeared, it's no longer on the horizon.

It's been defeated. Then you need to define yourself vis-a-vis something else. You always need an other. And that other than becomes your own civilization, your own culture, more precisely other people within your own culture.

More commonly. Yes, exactly. More commonly other people within your own culture, because nobody remembers the Persians anymore. That was what our grandfathers had to deal with.

Now you have to deal with Joe down the street. Or whoever's not going to do something street. And so that's what becomes the cause of the next generation's self-definition. And so that's when you start your only way then of rising.

And we all want to aggrandize ourselves to something we rather. Your only way of rising then is to define yourself against other Greeks or against other Athenians. And that's when the self-questioning phase starts coming in. One starts to question one's own religion.

That's usually the first sign before actual ochophobia. So you have somebody like your rippities in his place who questions Greek religion. He's not an ochophobe. He was still quite a patriotic Athenian.

But that's sort of the first step. And then later on, especially now we're getting into the early fourth century BC, sort of the students of Socrates. I mentioned a bunch of the names that are relevant. They're the ones who then really become ochos.

They're relevant, I think. Antisthenes. Antisthenes, yeah. He was definitely a he's a significant one.

And I think personally you misread Diogenes. Oh, yes. You take him as an example of a full fetish ochophobe in Athens. Yes.

But he was from Cinope. Yeah, I do mention that in the book. Yes. Yes.

But you don't delve into it really, because you say there are people who would differentiate and you talk about a general Greek mentality, which I imagine you, you think, stretched to Cinope and should encompass that. No, it's more Athenian. And I do focus more on Athens. But he comes to Athens fairly hard.

I mean, he's most of his career as a philosopher. So you're right. He's not from there. But most of his career as a philosopher is in Athens.

Because Athens in those days was, even though they had lost in the Peloponnesian war and they were certainly declining power, nonetheless, Athens had such a reputation by then. So it was sort of like later on Rome or later on London or later on New York City. It was the place, it was Alexandria for that matter in the Hellenistic era. It was the place where you went to if you wanted to be active.

If you wanted to be somebody. And so he went there and he was. Not so good parties. Good parties.

For sure. Yeah. No doubt. Yes.

I'm sure. That's, they don't really teach us much about that at university. But yes, you're probably right. But so you're right.

He's not from there. But he still defines himself very much against that tradition. And he spends most of his life there. So I still think it's fair to say that he's an ochofob in that.

It would be, I can take myself. No, I think he's an ochofob. I agree on that part. What I think is, because as my impression was when I read about him in your book, was that he is sort of the personification of his time, side-guys.

And as a comedian, I think you read him incorrectly, because I think that he appears when they are the most xenophobic, according to your definition, at the same time as they don't really have anything to back it up with anymore. Do you understand? Yes. Although I don't think that's when they are the most xenophobic, the Athenians in the early 4th century.

I wouldn't know. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's in Rome.

Yeah. I think I think there is an ophobia is earlier. The Athenians specifically, I would say, are probably the most xenophobic in the mid 5th century. So that's when they've already defeated the Persians.

So they have something to pry themselves in. And with some justice say that they were the saviors of Greece. They weren't the only ones, but they did bear the brunt of it. And they were pressuring, at that point, they were pressuring other Greek cities into joining the empire and into paying, if that wasn't the official stance, but it essentially brought down to protection money, basically, to themselves.

I would say that was when they were the most xenophobic. Into the Peloponnesian War, they were very full of themselves. So for example, there was a phase early on in the Peloponnesian War where they had the Spartans cornered, and they had an opportunity to make peace with Sparta with honor, and a peace advantageous to themselves. And they turned down the opportunity and decided to continue to fight, because they really wanted to humiliate Sparta.

And they should have known to stop while they were ahead, but they didn't and ultimately they lost. But I would say that's when they were the most xenophobic and the most vainly proud. And that was pretty much still one generation before D'Argeny's. Because I would imagine, as a comedian, that he is a contrarian against something that he sees as dominant, but incorrect.

Yeah, so I mean, look, and this is an important point you raised. And this is also why, to go back to your earlier question, that I'm not really positioning myself so strongly against it, that I'm taking more descriptive role, because I don't want the reader to think that simply because someone is an ochofob, or because I call someone an ochofob, that I'm therefore criticizing everything they do. I mean, I mentioned your rippities earlier. He was an ochofob, but I mentioned that he starts to plant certain seeds that will then lead to ochofob, and I absolutely love your rippities.

It's one of my favorite poets ever. And so simply because someone is an ochofob, or does something ochofobic, I wouldn't thereby say that therefore we have to criticize everything that this person does. And the seed he plants, your rippities, is a critique of religion, basically. Exactly.

Which you posit as one of the most important cohesive factors of early civilization. Yeah, absolutely. And Tisten is another example. There are certain parts of his philosophy, which I wholeheartedly agree.

But there are certain aspects that I think can be fairly described as ochofobic. In the Argines' case, the Argines is, I would say, a little more, and maybe a little more obnoxious. He does certain things that are sort of just so typical ochofobic, because one of the big things about ochofobia is vanity. A person becomes an ochofob because he or she is vain, and feels that he wants to raise himself above other people in his immediate surroundings.

So vanity is a big engine of ochofobia, and the Argines acts in a way that really shows he is very vain. But that doesn't mean that some of the critique can't be justified, absolutely. And I mean, I talk about Plato, for example. Plato is not an ochofob.

Plato is what I quote an expression of reversal, a reaction ochofobia that is to say a conservative who is reacting against the decline of his own civilization. And that's critique that I can certainly agree with. I mean, chapter 10 in the book is a pretty sharp critique against the United States, my own country, my adopted country. So critique can certainly be justified.

But there is a certain point at which that critique sees us to be very specific. Like if you're criticizing a specific aspect of your own culture, or you criticize a specific action of your own government, that's obviously not phobic. But it comes to the point that you sort of have almost a level of disgust at any aspect, that anything that reminds you of your own culture, and you act out that disgust at every possible opportunity. And sort of you become allergic to everything that is typically Athenian or typically American or typically Swedish, whatever it may be.

And that's when you're talking about ochofobia. And that doesn't mean that such a person can't have valid contributions to offer in some other area, certainly. So if I say that he's an ochofobia, I mean, I wouldn't say that he's all bad. But no, no, personally, I really, I think I connected with him as a very young person through the anecdotes because there's no writings.

It was the one where he walks down the street to the Athens with a lamp looking for a human, but all he can find is rascals and whatever old bad word for people could be. Yeah, that's actually one of the reasons why I do think he's an ochofobia because of that anecdote. And it's because it's a little bit... But is that...

Well, there might be a measure of vanity in him being the only human looking for his kin. Right. Sure. Absolutely.

But is it not also aimed at the vanity of the Athenians for believing themselves to be human? So absolutely. I would say if that were the only thing he had done in this regard, I'd say you're right. But the thing is...

And yeah, I mean, it's anecdotal from other writers because as you say, we don't have anything directly. But supposedly by the best accounts that we have, and this is what we have to go by, obviously, he really acted out. It's not only that he did that, he also acted out foreign customs as opposed to whenever he had an opportunity, when there was an Athenian way of doing something and a foreign way of doing something, he always did it a foreign way. And if you take that coupled with the anecdotes, for example, that he was working around with a light looking for a virtuous person and honest person, yes, then I think that other anecdotal dimension is an additional expression of ochofobia.

Obviously, that doesn't mean that there wasn't a certain conceit and a certain false pride that was worthy of criticism and Athens. I think you're absolutely right. But they, you know... Yeah, no, I've just explained it to critics, but I think coupled with the other things we know about the Arginis, I think that fits the pattern, even if one can say, in certain sense, okay, some of that critique was justified.

And then we move on to Rome, where how does there sort of ochofobia express itself then? Yes, ochofobia among the civilizations that I discuss in greater detail in the book, which you mentioned, Greece, Rome, France, Britain, and the United States, Rome is the one that has the least of it. And that's because... Well, there's several reasons.

I mean, partly they're managing such a vast empire, that sort of by necessity, they have to be very martial, they have to be very aggressive, which is, as one can imagine, rather antithetical tochofobia. But even from the very beginning, if we compare Rome with Athens, specifically Athens always prided itself on its... I shouldn't say always, but certainly in the relevant period, 5th century and 4th century, prided itself on its intellectualism, on its artistic prowess and so on. And as is always the case, artists and intellectuals, they tend to be the ones who are more prone to this vice, whereas Rome always prided itself on its manliness, on its martial prowess.

And it had a much stronger sense of hierarchy and patriarchality, and in its culture well before the empire, I mean, in the Republic, certainly as well. And so in those circumstances, as one can imagine, it's more difficult for kofobia to develop. And so if one is to compare it, there is relatively less of it. In Rome, however, the exact same pattern, it doesn't grow as intense, but the exact same pattern is visible in Rome as well.

That is to say, it starts with questioning of the religion. By the time you're in the early empire already, people don't believe in the gods anymore. And they sort of think that Roman traditions are something old-fashioned in quaint, and they start to flirt more with Eastern religions and with Eastern fashion and things like that. And they start to criticize Tacitus as a good example.

Seneca, you have a bunch of them. They start to criticize their own martial nature, their own imperialistic nature. And again, one can certainly say, and I mentioned that in the introduction, one can certainly criticize Roman imperialism. I mean, from our point of view, we would probably tend to agree with those Romans who said that maybe we're being a little too imperialistic, and we're being too brutal to other peoples.

But that's not really the point. The point is that we see the same pattern develop. Okofobia does develop where you start to express disgust. Petronius is another good example.

You start to experience this sort of disgust at your own traditions. And I think that we're discussed as important. It doesn't have to express itself through disgust, Okofobia. But it is something that is very common, both in antiquity and modernity.

Like you see a manifestation of your own culture and you just sort of have this expression of, I don't want to deal with that. And that is very typical. And you see that in Rome as well. Because I think when you get to finish the chapter you've written about Rome, by then you have established a rather interesting pattern or discovered a pattern regarding how you look at it of first strong religiosity, a nation as you would describe it, not really aware of itself.

But then through war and an external threat that it overcomes, it becomes self-aware and also thinks itself superior to other cultures. And the more superior they become, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? That they believe themselves to be superior, so they adorn the trappings of superiority. The external threat diminishes and then Okofobia sets in through the large leisure class that's developed and how they start in-group fighting.

And fragmentation into smaller and smaller entities, all fighting each other for power within the state. Or status. And we mention religiosity, it declines. But also androgenity increases.

So will you tell me a bit about that? Yeah, so Okofobia is the central, I think it's the most useful concept because it's about being against one's own history and one's own traditions. But yes, so you have a bunch of ancillary phenomena that start to pop up around Okofobia because all the traditions for all civilizations tend to be more patriarchal, more hierarchical and so on. It might sound a little hacky but that is how it is.

And once that is rejected, that then leaves room for other things to crop up. So you have Andrajani as you mentioned, you have vegetarianism actually is another one. That's not a very popular one for me to mention. A lot of people get upset at that.

But it doesn't mean that obviously that if you're a vegetarian you're an okofobe, but it doesn't mean that vegetarianism starts to become popular at the same time as you're rejecting older traditions. Yes, but you said that in the book at least you write that that has something to do with vanity and superiority. Yes, exactly because you're measuring yourself against other people. Part of Okofobia, this is stronger in modernity because we have Christian values today that value the weak, which they did not have in ancient Greece and Rome.

But there is still a certain sense of victimhood. Again, it's weaker in antiquity. So I'm not going to say that it's exactly always the same. It's not.

But there is that certain sense as well. I mean, Tacitus talks about how the German tribes and the Britannic tribes are victims of Roman imperial aggression, something that would have been a silly thought to 300 years earlier. But not just because they hadn't yet conquered that far, but simply because it's obvious that we're superior to everyone else. But when you have then defeated these other enemies, you cannot consider yourself superior to the Germans anymore because they're no longer relevant.

So you have to find a way to consider yourself superior to your neighbor, to quintess down the street. And vegetarianism is one way of doing that. You say you savage barbarians, you eat other animals, you see I'm more enlightened. So I'm not going to hurt the animals.

And so vegetarianism is another one. Pop spirituality, Eastern cults, again, Eastern religions, including Judaism, by the way, because from the point of view of Rome, of course, Judaism is just an Eastern cult of kind. And so that becomes popular as well, just like Buddhism is popular amongst many other folks today. Again, doesn't mean that you're a local folks, because you're a Buddhist, but there is a connection to a lot of people.

Androgyny, of course, is very relevant for us now. The fact that we have this whole debate now about what is a woman and whether a trans woman is a woman and so on, that is an expression of a civilization of the client. There's absolutely no doubt because that is an expression of androgyny. Again, every expression of androgyny is not exactly the same from civilization to civilization, but the fact that there is a movement toward androgyny in some way is absolutely clear as a cophelia sets in in every civilization, including our own.

Now, many of these things, and I will explain the reason for that in the book, become more and more extreme with every iteration. Now, Rome again is the exception to that. It's always Eastern cults that come in, not for instance in Rome's case, Celtic or Goli cults. No one seems to be interested in the Goli tradition.

Right, yes, it's true. Yeah, it's a good point. Or the city and the child sacrifice or anything like that, or human sacrifice. No, that's true.

I think part of the reason for that is, it's not something I talk about in the book, but it's a good point. I think the reason for that is that in many ways, and to some extent, I think that's still true today, the East is considered very advanced. And I mean, for us now, of course, Gala, G when Roman women go to Jewish soothsayers instead of their own traditional temples in Rome, there is a little bit of that sense, you know, these wise women from the East that they don't really know anything about. They don't understand it very well, just like most of the folks today don't understand the East very well.

But yeah, but there is that lore that other civilizations don't have. But I think probably their earlier development has something to do with it. But lack of understanding of the other is part of Oikofobia, right? So you can't be an Oikofo if you understand other cultures fully.

So that's interesting. In many, if your own culture is reprehensible. Right, I mean, ignorance certainly helps. Yes, there are, of course, Oikofobes, in fact, academics tend to be more Oikofobic.

As I mentioned before, that's one of the reasons I can't teach in the United States because I'm not sufficient to Oikofobic. But and they tend to be relatively educated, of course, as at least relative to the rest of the population. And I talk, by the way, I give a 10 point list in the book about why intellectuals are the ones who tend to be most prone to treason. But part of that is that intellectuals aren't as educated as they used to be.

They're not as intellectual as they used to be, first of all. But part of it is also that I don't really think it knowledge really matters so much anymore. Once you become vain enough that you become an Oikofob and you have to show your superiority at any price to your fellow citizen, I think knowledge of one's own civilization and knowledge of the fault of other civilizations becomes less relevant because one is always more, and that in itself is normal, but one is always more open or knowledgeable about the faults of one's own home than about other homes. So even if one knows in the abstract that yes, there has been genocide, other civilizations have also committed genocide, other civilizations also have forms of racism or whatever it may be, head slaves, exactly.

It's just not as present in people's minds. There are, of course, Oikofobes who genuinely believe, who are very uneducated, who genuinely believe only America heads slaves or only we are the only ones who are racist. Obviously, they're extremely ignorant. But I think even for more educated people that tends to be the case as well.

And so when people ask me, what's the cure of Oikofobia and the answer that's often expected is more education, I think that's not, I don't really think that's true, unfortunately, because in some individual cases, yes, but the kind of education at least there are public schools can offer is just not enough for people to really work against Oikofobia because it tends not to help. If anything, knowing that you're more educated than your fellow man than your fellow citizen, if anything just tends to raise your idea of self-worth and with that Oikofobia as well. So there are a few more points, I think, with the fall of Rome that corresponds to our own predicament in the West today. Let's see if we can go through them.

We did Androgyny, men can be men or men can be women and vice versa. The idea, the Roman ideal of the muscular war like man sort of dissipates and becomes a slender, non-muscular youth without a beard who is very androgynous. And we have a receding religion or a replacement by Eastern cults. And then there were the government subsidies, right?

Yeah, so that's more, yes. So that's about, yeah, and Greece as well. But that starts already in the Republic. I mean, one example I mentioned is the grain doll of Claudius, which is still in the late Republic, but certainly continues into the Empire.

Dependents on the government most certainly goes hand in hand with Oikofobia. I mean, again, it's not, it's a correlation. It's not a necessary connection. But historically, if you simply look at how it happens, that tends to be the case.

And why? Right. So because basically it can be boiled down to the entitlement mentality. The entitlement mentality is something that arises when a civilization has sufficient wealth.

When the when the Persians are about to invade or whatever civilization we're talking about, when you're dealing with an existential threat, you don't feel entitled to anything. You're happy just to survive. When you have wealth and when you see the people around you having wealth, the entitlement mentality starts to rise again, quite naturally. And this is why also I call the Oikofobia a natural phenomenon in the book, by which I don't mean that it's good, obviously not, by which I mean simply think it's something that naturally happens because of all the circumstances that come together.

We should still fight it, but it does happen naturally in that sense. And the entitlement mentality in Oikofobia go hand in hand because you consider yourself superior as an Oikofob. You consider yourself individually superior by the end of the fact that the rest of your civilization is inferior, supposedly. And that is a sort of entitlement mentality.

I have the right to this because I'm better than you. The government should give me this. And so again, you don't have to be a socialist just because you're an Oikofobia or vice versa. There is one form of socialism, especially early on, early socialism that's actually quite naturalistic.

And I mean, one looks obviously- National socialism. Right. Right. Exactly.

Yes. Yeah, I was thinking more of this obviously, but yeah, certainly. But so, and I'm glad you make that point actually because that's a whole lot of discussion, but the fact that you know, National Socialism being always called far right, which is questionable. But in any case, they tend to go ahead and hand for that reason, Oikofobes tend to be socialist and vice versa.

I mean, there are exceptions, but even socialists who are very nationalistic, they tend to be nationalistic in terms in a very modern sense. They still tend to reject their own traditions. Actually, Japan is a good example of this when they went through their reforms in the 1860s. And so they're about to start to reject the samurai class and everything like that.

They were extremely nationalistic, but they were nationalistic in the sense that they wanted to westernize and they wanted to be more powerful than the West on Western terms. And so they were nationalistic and yet sort of anti-Japanese or before begin a certain sense at the same time, because they rejected their own traditions. They can never defeat the West if we, if we all run around with sorts. But at the same time, no, because as I remember, the emperor at the time, whose name eludes me, I think he said we will do all the things that the rest of the world does, but we will do it much better than them.

Because it didn't need to be, he didn't need to follow up because we're Japanese because that was the subtext. Right. Yeah. No, right.

So it's certainly, it's neither completely one or completely the other. But so even nationalism isn't always completely anti-monophobic. But yeah, it's a good reminder also not to say that everything is exactly the same. One mustn't make the mistake that I think people like Spangler make or Tony Biggs, especially Spangler, my big problem with him, my book has been compared a little bit a couple of times compared to Spangler.

Yeah. But my point, I mentioned Spangler only in the footnotes, actually, but I say why I think it's quite different from Spangler, which is that he has this one model and then he tries to do it. He cramps everything into it. And there are, if one reads Spangler carefully, once he makes a lot of mistakes, there's simply a lot of inaccuracies in it.

He bases every civilization on its modal mathematics, basically. And it's reducing everything into one variable. Exactly. And he can't do that without just having a lot of inaccuracies and making a lot of mistakes in the book.

In mind, I try to say, well, so first of all, I'm not talking about every aspect of the civilization. I'm talking specifically about agitobia and ancillary phenomena, but with, of course, still with differences from civilization to civilization. But that was why I was careful to call it an essay or a study, I think. I think this was a few calls.

I simply called it a book or I called it a monograph on agitobia, but yeah. Monograph is nice. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

I don't always use it because it always sounds a little bit academic, sometimes it turns some people off. But I call it, yeah, probably study more. I think with the title, you've turned a lot of people at the onset. Yeah, that's rather true.

Yeah. No, no, no. Another similarity with Rome is immigration, right? Yes, absolutely.

So that is less the case in Greece. The Greeks, even as they become more homophobic, they tend to have a very protective view of their own citizenship. If you're an Athenian, then that's very special. And not anybody can become an Athenian.

But with Rome, yes, because they are, of course, a territorial power, unlike Athens, which was more, they had islands and so on under the control, but they weren't Athenian. They were still their own cities. Rome, by being a territorial power, necessarily has to incorporate a lot of peoples into their orbit. It's not necessarily immigration, the sense that people are coming from outside the empire into the empire, but of course, the empire grows and so it starts to include more and more people.

It's internal immigration in the sense that then once they have incorporated other civilizations into their empire, a lot of the people in those peripheral civilizations move to Rome, of course, and so on, that's since they have a great influence on the culture. I mean, if you walk down the street in Rome in 100 AD, you see all different kinds of people, people from all over the known world, walking around and walking down the street in those days. And especially a third, fourth century AD, that also has an effect on the government in this sense already. I mean, that development starts earlier.

It already starts under Julius Caesar, actually, so quite early. But certainly by the third century AD, you have a lot so many Greek speaking senators, fourth century, certainly from the eastern part of the empire that basically you cannot say that the Roman government is genuinely Roman. Officially, the Roman citizens, because Roman citizenship is extended later on under Caracalla, for example, in other emperors as well. But that certainly is the case today as well.

I mean, you can think of certain governmental officials in various Western countries today, whose culture is who have their cultural origins in another country, which could be okay, like it's not a problem in and of itself, but it does often lead to not in every case, but it does often lead to a disloyalty toward the traditional values of that particular culture. I mean, I forget his name, but I think of that Scottish Parliamentarian a few months ago who became a famous social media because he complained about the fact that almost everyone in this Scottish government is white. Yes. Right.

I remember him. I don't know his name. Yeah, exactly. But you know, who I mean, and so that again, this is another example.

And I think it's good to try to modern examples so that people really understand that when we're trying to make sense of what's going on now, when we're trying to understand it, we can see that yes, these things have happened before, and that allows us really to understand why all of this is happening. When you when half the Senate in Rome is consists of Greek speaking people who speak Latin as a second language from the Middle East, then yeah, of course, that is going to have an effect on the way policies done. Of course, that's going to have an effect on the culture. It's an erosion of the institutions because they don't feel that they are represented anymore.

I mean, when you were Roman and all the senators were Roman, then you felt a certain connection. But when they're Greek or God forbid from Gaul or Germania, or how would you pronounce it? Well, I'll technically get money on this. Okay.

Then obviously, you start to lose faith in your institutions. Exactly. Yeah, absolutely. And that is what happens.

And the various senators start to become more concerned with the Rome, they start to feel that they represent more the people where they come from rather than Rome as a whole. And yeah, it would again, and that's why we call it natural, which is not that it's a good thing. It's simply that it would almost be strange if it didn't happen that way considering the circumstances. So the US is still ways away from Rome.

Yes. So far, we have Androgyny, a receding religion, which leads to replacement religions or cults or prejudices. In our case, ideologies, we have huge government subsidies, which make people dependent. And you wrote that in a very beautiful way, you made a connection to being entitled is actually a form of victim mentality.

Yes. Because being entitled is a form of victim mentality, because it shows that I am a victim of the system, which I certainly don't deserve to be from the point of view of the Okafob. And we see the same thing, well, it's clear we see the same thing today. But if you have this noxious, cruel and oppressive, hierarchical patriarchy that has always controlled everything, then yes, they owe me something.

And it's clear that having that kind of attitude, which then of course leads to support for socialism, not that they had that word in antiquity, but for similar phenomenon handouts, as you mentioned, that particular connection is made because But if you can get based on the keep day, long days away, it might be a little more free to get in it, not in South China, but it's a little more and you might click at the bottom of the grid. If I deserve a handout from these evil people, because they have been traditionally oppressive and patriarchal and so on, well, then it stands to reason that everything that they represent, their traditions, their culture, their gods and so on, that that is evil. And so this is another reason why the entitlement mentality in Okafob had go hand in hand, yes. Which also leads to more fragmentation, because suddenly you have your own interest and you probably belong to an interest group, and that leads to more infighting.

Yeah, and this is what I call neo tribalism in the book, because tribalism and early civilization, of course, is also tribal in the sense that it's very conservative and very sort of set in its ways and it's usually small also because it hasn't yet been successful in spread itself. But so it's tribalism in a holistic way that the civilization constitutes one tribe, whereas then you have these later on, as Okafob has said, and you have tribalites, small tribes within the civilization. And so that's a neo tribalism where the civilization as a whole, as a tribe has disappeared, it's too big to be a tribe. And rather, you have your own little tribe within the civilization.

So that happens in certainly Rome, to some extent, increase, but more in Rome, and absolutely modern civilizations, of course. And it also leads to inflation, which devalues the currency. Yes. So this is all going on in Rome at the same time as the barbarians are literally at the gates, turning to France, because well, we could go through the Middle Ages, at least, but you can explain why this didn't Okafob get into a cure during the Middle Ages, because that's something one can learn from them.

Right, exactly. So what happens in the Middle Ages, and we're talking about Europe, Western Europe here, of course, but basically, southern Europe as well, to some degree, but what happens essentially is that no civilization is able to be successful enough. So as we talked about before, the prerequisites of Okafobia are a certain sense of security and wealth and leisure, and so on, at least for a portion of the population. And those circumstances simply do not obtain in the Middle Ages.

And you have a very small class of educated people, monks and monasteries, basically, but very often, even the King himself doesn't know how to read and write. And so you're not talking there about a broader leisure class that can sort of come together and criticize each other and criticize their own civilization. So none of those prerequisites really hold, which is not to say, of course, that there isn't any scholarly or scientific advancement during the Middle Ages, there certainly is. But it's simply not strong enough, and it's not cohesive enough.

It's another important term, I think. It's not cohesive enough for such a thing to develop. You have little islands of innovation, certainly within the Middle Ages, but it's not connected to a broader successful culture and to a broader successful civilization that is able to insist on itself. And that has been sufficiently successful against outside forces to be able to sort of relax, so to speak and say, well, aren't we great and aren't we successful?

And now it's time to start looking at ourselves. That never happens during the Middle Ages. And it's again, it's not until modernity that any civilization is able to really do that. Well, the Middle Ages hits the Renaissance, and then from the Renaissance, it's just a short jump to the Enlightenment and French revolution.

So why does it occur in France? So the French, of course, always have to be the at the forefront of everything. They have a guard for both good and bad. That's what they do.

But it starts in France because France is in modernity. It starts in France, simply because they are the first civilization to be sufficiently successful in this sense. You could say the Spanish Empire to some extent, but in Spain, I don't really talk so much about it a little bit in the book. I don't talk so much about Spain, because that sense of egalitarianism simply hasn't been matured sufficiently in Europe yet at that point as a philosophy.

You have a certain I mean, Cervantes is obviously is probably the most obvious name, where you can see a little, a certain poking fun at certain of one's own tradition. But he's certainly not an Okofob. I mean, he fights at the Battle of Lepanto. He's certainly no one can make that accusation against him.

It's really in France where we have a sufficiently large leisure class and sufficient security. And now obviously, when it starts, it's basically under a Louis XV when it starts, and France, of course, is not a democracy at that time. But the king and the same had been true under Louis XIV. The king is still tolerant enough for most of these people to be able to do what they do in relative peace.

You know, you might have the government censors striking certain passages in the text or something like that, but it's nothing compared to the dictatorships of the 20th century. So people like Voltaire, or Condorcet, or these people, they're still able to write what they write did there was another important name in this regard. There's another thing actually you said that Voltaire has not been very critical of Islam. Right.

That's not true. Have you read the... Yeah, he does he certainly criticize Islam as well. I mentioned Hinduism as the religion to which he's the friendliest.

His and Christianity, the religion, of course, because he's an Okafob, to which he's the unfriendliest. Islam is mixed. He does criticize Islam, you're right. But he also has, as compared to Christianity, there are also passages where he's a little friendier, whereas off the top of my head, I don't think I can think of any passage where he's outright friendly toward Christianity.

He's the idea of God in general. He's not some sort of militant atheist in the sense that he pokes fun of God, like the modern atheists today. So he's still a bit more circumspect than that regard. But Christianity as an institution, he's certainly the most critical of that.

But yeah, Islam is a bit of a gray area. Okay. Sorry that I interrupted you just came to me. No, yeah, but so the government in those days is still tolerant enough of this and voices.

I mean, there's certain things you can't say, but they're still tolerant enough of this and voices that they're able to do what they do relatively undisturbed. And that is a pre-equisitive Okafobia. I mean, Louis XIV, now Louis XIV is still before Okafobia has begun in France, but Louis XIV seems to... I mean, he was brutal in many other ways.

He waged brutal wars against the countries around him. But in terms of internal policy, it seems like he had a sense of humor. There were certain plays that were presented that were critical of certain aspects of the government, and there's a record of Louis XIV kind of laughing at it thinking that it's funny and so on. So he's not some sort of rabid...

Well, not some sort of rabid paranoia or something like that. And nor is Louis XV. Louis XV even tries to institute certain reforms, not very competently, but so the French kings by and large are tolerant enough that Okafobia can still become possible. And France is at this time the most powerful nation in Europe.

England is giving them a run for their money, but basically the English at this time, they're a lot more bourgeois for lack of a better word. They are more focused on commerce and things like that. They have other things to Okafobia comes in Britain later, and when it does come, it comes very intensely. But that's well over 100 years after it starts in France.

And the ideas of the Enlightenment, which do... There is, of course, other forms of enlightenment outside of France that I think are much better. The Scottish Enlightenment, of course, especially. But the German Enlightenment, in some sense, especially the Scottish Enlightenment, I think is the best Enlightenment.

And the French Enlightenment is the worst, now because the French Enlightenment is the one where the critique of religion and critique of traditional Catholic and French ways, which one can sympathize, of course, in specific instances. I mean, as a non-religious person myself, I can certainly sympathize with certain critiques of religion. But the problem is that since religion is the cornerstone of every society, it is the most fundamental thing of every civilization, whether we like it or not. There is no exception to that rule.

It's always religion. So if you pull out that foundation, everything else stumbles. And that is what happens in France. And you don't find people criticizing religion in France and leaving everything else alone.

Once you start criticizing religion, you know they're going to start criticizing other aspects of French culture as well, and that is what happens. And other things start to take over as well, which might seem fairly innocuous to us today. But it's a point of understanding how it works relative to their own tradition. So if they start to talk about the quality of all human beings, regardless of whether you're from Europe or Africa or anywhere else.

Which is a sympathetic thought. Right, exactly. Which is why to us today, that seems well, what's wrong with that, we might say. But the point is from their point of view, from the more traditional point of view, that is a sort of tearing down of French tradition, because that is not the traditional French opinion.

For reasons I talk about in the book, every manifestation of okofobia becomes more severe. Yes, there's a word spiral motion that you identify. Exactly. You call it helio.

Helical. Yeah, exactly. And so like helicopter moves in the spiral. But and so.

Because for every collapsing civilization, the following civilization can start at a higher ground. Exactly. So to speak. And so we sort of build on what other civilizations have already accomplished.

And it's also because the circumstances that we've talked about, the free intellectual space, egalitarianism, wealth, all of those circumstances, all of those prerequisites for okofobia, they all apply in greater measure with every civilization again, Rome is the exception. Because first the civilization doesn't know itself. And it's like super xenophobic, and it goes and concurs someone else. And it's like we're the greatest.

And then it loses some war and they're like maybe we're not the greatest. Maybe the others had it right. And they start looking for explanations in other cultures. And then they start importing concepts.

Yes. Which at first might even be good for them because it might enrich their culture. But eventually it fragments and falls. Yes.

Yeah, exactly. And that's important. That's also another reason. And I'm glad you raised that point because we mustn't say that simply because we've imported some other aspect of another culture, that that's a manifestation of okofobia.

Not at all. Every culture does that. And it can often be a very good thing. It's a necessary thing very often certainly in the earlier stages of a culture.

But it comes a point where that those foreign elements just simply start to take over. But but because these circumstances, because these prerequisites are present in a much stronger form today, our egalitarianism is more egalitarian than was Greek egalitarianism. Our wealth is greater. Our intellectual space is more open and freer.

Now that's maybe starting to change a little bit, unfortunately. But traditionally, it has been. And so therefore, it makes sense that our okofobia would also be more intense because again, because the prerequisites of okofobia are even stronger today than they were in the past. And that's why every manifestation of okofobia becomes more and more extreme.

And so this is why we can look back in history at certain manifestations of okofobia in the past and say, well, that wasn't so bad, was it? But the point is that when it comes to understanding why we are where we are today, whether we agree with past self-haters or not, the point is to understand ourselves by looking at them. And although I would still say that there are many manifestations of okofobia in the past that are still worthy of blaming critique, even from our point of view today. I mean, both Ere, as we mentioned him recently, when he defends Hinduism as against Christianity, for example, I think he's completely wrong.

And he defends the vegetarianism of certain Indian tribes as compared to meeting Frenchmen. Again, I think he's completely wrong. Here we return. Vegetarianism as a sort of a, a symptom of a falling civilization.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Because to people early on in a civilization, you did not have all of the luxury of choice that we have. I mean, now you can go to any vegetarian restaurant and get a great meal.

And early on in a civilization, of course, you don't have that eating animals, eating animal flesh is luxury. It's luxury. It's something you can do. It's a festive thing.

It's something you look forward to. The Greeks, actually, the Greeks were mostly vegetarian, but not for moral reasons simply because that's what they had. When there was a religious festival, they sacrificed an animal to the gods, then you partook in the sacrificial meat of the animal. And so was a wonderful thing.

And so vegetarianism again, as you say, yeah, it is a sign of a decline in the civilization. Well, we recognize from the French Revolution that you have seen in the previous, and what sets it the French, the French fall from civilization, height apart from previous. Yeah. So what happens, so what we recognize from previous civilizations in French homophobia is the vegetarianism, the attack on one's own religion, most certainly, where it's a bit different is in this universalism.

The Greeks did not have a sense of universalism, this sort of sense. Now it starts, I shouldn't say that completely. It's the, I mean, we mentioned the Arginis before and some of those others. They do consider those cosmopolitan in the sense that he has some of the citizens of the world.

But that's something that's still very abstract to them, because they don't really have much of a sense. Well, not for Diogenes, he was excited from Cinope. Yes. So he was, he didn't have a choice.

Right. Right. No, exactly. No, this is true.

I mean, after Alexander the Great, that starts to change a little bit. They come more into contact with other civilizations. But then we're not talking about a cohesive re-xylization anymore anyway, or about a cohesive Athenian civilization. Whereas the French, that's a much more concrete thing, because by then, of course, they actually have an understanding.

Most people have never met an Indian or somebody from the jungle of Africa or what have you, but they're much more aware of these other peoples in a much more real sense. And so I would say that this more concrete universalism is something which sets the French apart. The Indrogeny again, French Indrogeny is well known, but that's the same as in previous civilizations. Again, it doesn't take exactly the same form, but the concept itself does take place.

And that's the same in that sense. I would say universalism is probably what the French sort of contribute, or that's the most French manifestation of their ochophobias. And then Britain. So Britain becomes a lot more modern every time we see it, a little more recognizable to us every time we see it.

Again, some of these ancillary phenomena are very recognizable to us, even now going all the way back to Greece. What Britain adds to it, what we see in Britain for the first time is ochophobia more in the lower classes as well. So in France, as in Greece and Rome, it's still rather an upper class phenomenon, not necessarily an aristocrat phenomenon, but maybe upper middle class, at least you don't like not all of the ochophobias in France were aristocrats, but they were educated. They were...

It was with time money. Time money and exactly, who could sit around in the cafe by the San River and drink coffee and drink 40 cups of coffee a day, as one could supposedly do to the firm member correctly. Which maybe explains why he was so hyper all the time. But in Britain, you start to see it seeping into the lower classes as well.

Certainly with, it's still mostly an upper class phenomenon or intellectual phenomenon as it is today, but around the time of the Bower War, so 1899 to 1902, and a little bit, it starts 1880s, 1890s around there in Britain, so still well over century after France, one sees that it comes, and here we see it go very cold hand in hand with the socialist mentality. You have left wing members of parliament who come who represent and themselves come from lower class groups, or at least lower middle class, certainly not from aristocratic groups who attack British norms, British customs and so on, and who consider the powers to be in the right, for example, in the Bower War. And again, it's not a question of... And the Bower War, that was after they lost the colonies or in the United States, just called non-days, or the White Open, actually.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that was over, so that was a well over century after, and so France is ochophobic at the time of the American Revolution, the British are not. And so it's interesting, I think also to see why it happens at different times, in different nations. But yeah, so that's around when it starts, and that is really also, it starts a little bit after the civilizational peak, if you will.

When you think of when is the civilization the most powerful, these are the its neighbors, in Athens it's the mid-5th century BC, and ochophobia starts in the late 5th century BC. In Rome it's a little harder to say because they just have such a long history, but it certainly starts, it starts still after they have reached their peak. It depends what you consider their peak. It's a little hard to say exactly in the case of Rome, but maybe something like Lake Republic or the Empire, whereas in France...

Yeah, obviously. Yeah, yeah, you're probably right. It would depend... What is there to argue about?

Well, I guess it depends a little bit because I'm thinking in terms of territorial expansion, right? So they have a little more territorial later on. Okay, yeah. But yeah, it was good days.

It was good days. Yeah, in many ways. I mean, the Augustan Peace. I mean, they didn't have a word.

They had little skirmishes here and there, but they basically had a century or piece, which in the Roman case, of course, is very unusual. In France, they're peak. I mean, you have Napoleon, of course, later on, but that's a very brief sort of end flourish, if you will. Overall, the peak is really under Louis XIV, in ochophobia starts on the Louis the 15th.

And in Britain, you would say their peak is about sort of the mid-Victorian era, 1860s, 1870s. That's about their geopolitical peak, if you will. Yeah. And ochophobia starts to set in a couple decades after that.

And for us in the United States, our peak was arguably in the 1950s or so after working. Well, it depends on how you count it. I think Top Gun. When the first Top Gun movie came out.

So you're right in the sense that late 20th century is our peak and so far as once you no longer have the Soviet Union, where the only superpower left on the planet. In that sense, it is our peak, yes. But you have, but it's still other civilizations. The move toward a multipolar world, which of course we're seeing very much now, has already kind of begun there.

If you think about the 1950s, in the 1950s, the American government could change the government of Iran with a fusi apparatus, basically, because everybody else was ignorant and illiterate over there. Nowadays, even in the 1990s, they couldn't do such a thing because other countries were relatively stronger. And so, again, it depends a little bit on how you measure it. But if you take at least the exception of the Soviet Union still existing, I would say about the 1950s and then the October 40th.

I buy the 1950s, man. And I think the 1980s was one of those flourishes. Yeah, right. Yeah.

I mean, Reagan, yeah. That's like towards the end of the Soviet Union. And then you have the listless 90s. Yeah, right.

When I was intelligent enough to move to the United States, exactly. But the, and Reagan, I think helped a lot in that regard in bringing about that little flourish people. But overall, again, in the United States, the October 40th starts about 15, 20 years, 60s, 70s, everybody knows what happened then. But that's really one of the popular starts.

You see certain signs of it in the 50s, even earlier in the 20s in the United States. But that's really when it starts as a mess phenomenon. And so, yeah, I'm not actually sure now how I got into the timing here, but of the, when it starts. We jumped from Britain to the United States, which is your second last chapter, actually.

Yes. Right. I spend the book. Yeah.

And also, I think, the chapter with the least examples of oilophobia. It's mostly a method discussion. I think, well, because I have kind of two chapters on the United States, but they're different. I have one the past, the United States, the past, I kind of just talk about historical developments.

So just at the very end of that chapter, we see the first sort of examples of oilophobia, whereas I then have, because I think the United States is the most relevant. I mean, partly it's my own country, but also because the United States is still the one superpower in the world. I mean, that's changing now slowly. But, and so I think it's very relevant to see exactly how it plays itself out there.

So that's when in that chapter, the United States, the present, that's when I sort of talk about the cultural expression of oilophobia in the United States today. And I think that kind of deserves a chapter of its own. But yeah, in terms of Britain, I think it's the fact that the lower class is kind of joined a mix to some extent that we see in Britain for the first time, and which also makes sense because the lower classes are relatively speaking, more powerful vis-à-vis the rest of their civilization than is the case in earlier civilizations. And that is, of course, the ironic thing.

And that's the internal contradiction of ochophobia, because you can only become ochophobic if you're relatively successful, because that sort of gives you a sense of your own self-worth and that feeds that vanity. And so it makes sense, in France, the lower classes weren't in the same position as they were in England, because England, again, ironically, right, it's a bit pro-oxical, but because the British had been relatively speaking successful in elevating also their lower classes economically and so on, and in terms of political participation. That it would make sense that that's when we also, even though it's still kind of an elitist phenomenon, that's where we sort of started to see it also elsewhere. And the Church of England increased literacy because they started preaching in English.

Right, yes, exactly, no good point. And yeah, the English have always and traditionally, and with good reason, consider themselves, even before the United States came into existence, the English traditionally consider themselves the free people, as they compare themselves to the French, to the German states, and so on, they always considered, I'm English, I'm free. And so yeah, that sense the reason. Freedom and liberty, we will get to that.

But first, the United States, because the United States, I think, is the Rome of our day. I don't mean to label you as such, but you have built a capital, pretty much model-dimensioned Rome. So I mean, it looks like Rome, and they have divided the world up into effectively military governance, or some becomes. Right, yes, that's true.

Yeah, right. Now, you can be a woman, a woman can be a man. We're very proud of that, of course. Democratic socialists of America are the fastest growing political movement in your country.

Don't remind me. They are egalitarian. I await November with the dread. Yes.

They just want an all-powerful dictator, and then everyone else should be the same. Yes. Primo's Inter-partisan as the Romans said, the first among equals. Yeah, yeah, precisely.