Demolishing the White House is just the beginning.

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ANNOUNCEMENTS:

First: we are going to be soon starting a new audiobook series - this time it will be To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf - I will release it chapter by chapter, and the first chapter or two should be out within a week, if the Great Tao should accommodate. You can get updates on that and future open source audiobooks, narrated by me on the Patreon page.

Second is that as we approach the finish line with Hubert Dreyfus’s Great Books course, I am looking for suggestions about where to go next, in terms of content - so if you are on Spotify please check the audience survey in this episode and vote on the things you want - If you’re not on Spotify then just email me with your desires, fantasies, crackpot ideas, and degenerate art and I will respond to you there: [email protected]

Last is that this is an episode about politics in America, and William Sanchez and I leave no stone unturned, so if that’s not your cup of tea, then watch out for the fascism-free Virginia Woolf stuff that I’ll be making, as well as the more lighthearted project that I’m doing with my buddies Thomas and Richard over on Bad Role Models. But if it is your cup of tea, then you should support William’s work on Substack, and listen to my other interview with him. Links in the thing, as always.

REFERENCES

Paying for the Ballroom with Silicon Valley Tribute Money:

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/youtube-to-pay-24-5-million-to-settle-lawsuit-brought-by-trump-808f6823?reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

$50K Signing Bonus for ICE Officers

https://bbc.com/news/articles/cqle5newg0no

Bipartisan Bill to Force Release of Epstein Files Being Jammed

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5482096-massie-discharge-petition-epstein/

Reagan and US Indicted by ICJ in 1986 for Terrorism Against Nicaragua

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua_vUnitedStates

Book: Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State by Garry Wills

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7254108-bomb-power

Bernie Sanders' Saving American Democracy Amendment

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_reform_amendment#Saving_American_Democracy_Amendment

Even the dead are not safe.

“It is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.” This statement, deliberately provocative, was made first by Continental philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard before its later canonization by Mark Fisher in his 2009 theoretical masterpiece Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative?. For Fisher, it is a call to action, and a structuring limit. Strictly speaking, it is probably an overstatement, at least without the implicit qualifier:

As long as things continue as they have up until now.

This is the statement: that our world is more likely to collapse from trophic exhaustion, reactive warfare, and molecular violence, than it is to shed capitalist practices and norms in favor of any of the many proposed alternatives. This same thought was expressed in another form - a case of convergent evolution emanating elsewhere in the landscape of literary Quotatia - humanity will go down in history as the first society that wouldn’t save itself because it wasn’t cost-effective.

Advisory: discussion of death and suicide.

References, Media Usage, and Sources:

"NO" by Joy Harjo - September 2004

"Resisting Left Melancholy" by Wendy Brown

NB: If you cannot access this, try using sci-hub.se

"Theses on the Philosophy of History" by Walter Benjamin - 1940

Cover Art: "Smoldering Ghost: Happy Painting" by Michael Prettyman

Ambience Tracks (Creative Commons) from Nemo's Dreamscapes

Outro Song: Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 30, Movement 3, performed by Anastasia Huppmann (Creative Commons, YouTube)

Excerpt from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson.

Ode to Mark Fisher: Part 1 - Introduction to Fisherology (Hemlock Substack)

Support the perpetuity and integrity of this work for just $5 per month, or hang out in the Patreon for free.

Originally published as "On Wings of Art" (1984).

"In this six-part series, renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell introduces and explores the unifying themes and mythological symbolism in James Joyce's three greatest literary works--A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegan's Wake--arguing that these three major works were the precursors to a fourth, even greater novel that Joyce never got to write."

From A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916):

He turned away from her suddenly and set off across the strand. His cheeks were aflame; his body was aglow; his limbs were trembling. On and on and on and on he strode, far out over the sands, singing wildly to the sea, crying to greet the advent of the life that had cried to him.

Her image had passed into his soul for ever and no word had broken the holy silence of his ecstasy. Her eyes had called him and his soul had leaped at the call. To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life! A wild angel had appeared to him, the angel of mortal youth and beauty, an envoy from the fair courts of life, to throw open before him in an instant of ecstasy the gates of all the ways of error and glory. On and on and on and on!

He halted suddenly and heard his heart in the silence. How far had he walked? What hour was it?

There was no human figure near him nor any sound borne to him over the air. But the tide was near the turn and already the day was on the wane. He turned landward and ran towards the shore and, running up the sloping beach, reckless of the sharp shingle, found a sandy nook amid a ring of tufted sandknolls and lay down there that the peace and silence of the evening might still the riot of his blood.

He felt above him the vast indifferent dome and the calm processes of the heavenly bodies: and the earth beneath him, the earth that had borne him, had taken him to her breast.

He closed his eyes in the languor of sleep. His eyelids trembled as if they felt the vast cyclic movement of the earth and her watchers, trembled as if they felt the strange light of some new world. His soul was swooning into some new world, fantastic, dim, uncertain as under sea, traversed by cloudy shapes and beings. A world, a glimmer or a flower? Glimmering and trembling, trembling and unfolding, a breaking light, an opening flower, it spread in endless succession to itself, breaking in full crimson and unfolding and fading to palest rose, leaf by leaf and wave of light by wave of light, flooding all the heavens with its soft flushes, every flush deeper than other.

----------------------

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The ultimate theological journey through the midlife crisis, presented by existentialist philosopher Bert Dreyfus in 2006 at UC Berkeley. (REPUPLOAD)

Please consider donating to support humanitarian relief and lifesaving medical care in Gaza. The links below are verified and reputable charities and individuals who are desperate for medical care, asylum, shelter, and safety in Palestine.

Fundraisers, Palestine Support, and Good Programs:

⁠⁠Amjad Hamad and his Family⁠⁠

⁠⁠Rulin and Family⁠⁠

⁠⁠Sammar and her Husband⁠⁠

⁠⁠MSF (Doctors Without Borders)⁠⁠

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Read more about Bert Dreyfus

Support the show on Patreon!

A nice change of pace for me as I am put on the hot-seat and forced to properly explain myself for once. Interview by Roubin Thind, a social media manager and podcast connoisseur, running down topics ranging from diplomacy to education and back.

And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

John 1:5, King James Version

This is Part Four of a multipart series on the Great Books of the Western Tradition by Berkeley Professor of Philosophy Bert Dreyfus, which you can begin here.

The source material is found here on Internet Archive.

Who is God? What does it mean to be anointed (chrīstós, in Koine Greek), emptied of self (kénōsis), or resurrected? What is the world, seen through the eyes of love? How does philosophy encounter Christianity? In this two-lecture episode, Dreyfus takes these concepts apart and analyzes them in the terms of Heidegger, literary theory, and the hermeneutic approaches of different Continental thinkers.

Please consider donating to support humanitarian relief and lifesaving medical care in Gaza. The links below are verified and reputable charities and individuals who are desperate for medical care, asylum, shelter, and safety in Palestine.

Fundraisers, Palestine Support, and Good Programs:

⁠⁠Amjad Hamad and his Family⁠⁠

⁠⁠Rulin and Family⁠⁠

⁠⁠Sammar and her Husband⁠⁠

⁠⁠MSF (Doctors Without Borders)⁠⁠

⁠⁠Palestinian Youth Movement

Paul Thomas Anderson made this when he was 28. So did Richard and Will.

A celebration of the greatest movie of our greatest living director. Hats off to you, man.

advisory: child abuse, self-harm, suicide.

“Ever since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you.”
―Hafez

Music Credits:

Violin version of Habañera by Katy Adelson

Aria version of Habañera by Deutsch Opera Berlin

Tom Cruise Leaked Scientology Interview

Everything becomes its opposite.

cw: animal harm, general doom.

If this work is important to you, consider supporting my financial and creative independence on Patreon, for only $5 per month.

"All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace" (1967) by Richard Brautigan

I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky. 
I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms. 
I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

Poem: Batter my heart, three-person'd God by John Donne

Credits:

Richard Brautigan Reading "All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace"

Palantir CEO Alex Karp Speaking in February 2025 in New York (End of Episode)

Rachmaninoff, Prelude Op. 3 No. 2 in C-sharp Minor performed by Mr. Forte (Creative Commons)

George Kennan, Memo PPS23, February 24th 1948. Declassified in June 1974.

Books:

The Assassination Complex by Jeremy Scahill and the Staff of The Intercept

The Power Elite by C. Wright Mills

Times are tough for everyone, but if you can spare $5 per month to support the History of Philosophy, my political writing, open source audiobooks, and simple intellectual entertainment, please consider joining my Patreon and helping me escape my day job.

YouTube original video credit (Plum Village). Apparently first delivered in the "late 1980s".

Read more about Thích Nhất Hạnh here.

Music Credit: Schubert, Impromptu No. 3 in G-flat Major, performed by Max John.

The great Michael Parenti returns to HoPAA to enlighten us about capitalism's leading myths and legends. As the man says, 'brothers and sisters, WE own the airwaves'.

Times are tough for everyone, but if you can pitch in $5 per month to support this project - a humanity and humanities-focused ad and spook-free education platform since 2023 - it would mean the world to me over on Patreon.

This talk was uploaded in 2013, but the date of the lecture itself is unknown.

Music Credit: Schubert, Impromptu No. 3 in G-flat Major, performed by Max John.

Summary (Bot Generated):

This podcast episode, featuring political scientist Michael Parenti, offers a critical deconstruction of the self-legitimating myths propagated by "the one percent" and giant corporate capitalism. The central thesis is that no ruling class rules nakedly, and the powerful actively take "strenuous efforts to justify their rule" through themes like the rags-to-riches mythology, fair play, and equal opportunity. The discussion focuses on two core capitalist myths: that the system creates general material prosperity and that it bolsters democracy. Parenti challenges the prosperity myth by citing "consumer realities" such as the corporate-driven replacement of public rail transit with polluting auto systems and the industrialization of food supplies. He concludes that the history of capitalism is one of great wealth and great poverty, which exist in a "dynamic interrelationship," with the wealth of the few resting on the poverty of the masses.

Michael John Parenti (born September 30, 1933) is an American political scientist, academic historian, and cultural critic who writes on a wide range of scholarly and popular subjects. Known as a leading intellectual of the American Left, he has taught at numerous universities and is the author of over twenty books, including Democracy for the Few and Blackshirts and Reds. You can find more information about him on his Wikipedia page or his official website: The Michael Parenti Political Archive.

Keywords: Corporate Capitalism, Ruling Class, The One Percent, Myths, Prosperity, Democracy, Wealth Inequality, Poverty, Horatio Alger, Transnational Corporations, Public Transit, Pollution, General Motors, Tobacco Industry, Nicotine, Perjury, Corporate Crime, Consumer Realities, Third World.

This text was generated from a transcript by Gemini.