The first couple days of the Trump White house, Elon's fascistic cosplay, and advice on how to cope.

Wilson, or RAW, was maybe one of the more prolific authors of the twentieth century, not only in terms of just the sheer number of words he put on pages, but in the intensity and the complexity of the thoughts he was expressing.

Despite all that work, he’s still somehow largely unknown to the public.

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Robert Anton Wilson has been introduced as a stand-up philosopher and a sit-down comic. He edited Playboy in the 1960s, co-authored Illuminatus, wrote Cosmic Trigger, the Schrödinger’s Cat Trilogy, Prometheus Rising, and too many others to mention in this short introduction. 

He did all this while helping to raise a family, dropping acid, speaking to crowds all over the US and Europe, and rubbing elbows with some of the most illuminated people in the Western world.

RAW continues to stand out among other philosophers and thinkers because as intelligent and insightful as he was, he never seemed like he was presenting the last word on a subject. 

With that ground laid, I would like to welcome our show, Gabriel Kennedy, author of the recently published, and the first biography of Wilson, Chapel Perilous: The Life and Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilson.

Buy Chapel Perilous: The Life and Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilsonhttps://www.amazon.com/Chapel-Perilous-Thought-Crimes-Robert-ebook/dp/B0DHV9PLTX

Find Gabriel Kennedy online:

https://chapelperilous.us/

https://bsky.app/profile/propanon.bsky.social

Welcome to 2025! It’s the month of Janus. We’re looking forward, looking back, we’re right on the edge! The New Year’s resolutions scrawled on a sepia tone bar napkin are ready to be framed and followed to the letter.

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A few new things in store for us include a new president! Well, it’s the old president, but he’s back. He took some gap years to study abroad. We’ve got a looming Tiktok ban on the 18th. That was tried a few times before it stuck, but this time it might happen, maybe, unless it doesn’t. Let’s see, more Elon Musk, Israel is still committing genocide, Russia is still trying to occupy Ukraine, neo-nazis, Isis–again?, and I guess Tariffs, since the 30s and the 19th century didn’t extinguish that.

Happy reruns year! All the old cast is back this season. We have the same senators and representatives that we get term after term.

Music:

Airglow - Spliff and Wesson (CC BY 4.0)

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This is a sample of a premium episode. Sign up for a free or paid membership to listen to the entire episode. Happy New Year!

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We recorded this episode just over a week after the anniversary of the death of the liberation activist and revolutionary leader Fred Hampton. 55 years ago, at the age of 21 years, Hampton was murdered while he slept by members of the Chicago police department. His killing was the culmination of years of harassment by Chicago police and surveillance by the FBI.

Craig Ciccone is an independent researcher who has been studying the events surrounding Fred Hampton’s murder. In the process, he’s collected an astounding number of FBI documents.

We get into Hampton's legacy, his harassment by the Chicago police and the FBI (part of COINTELPRO), and how they eventually planned and carried out his murder.

Find Craig Ciccone online:

https://craigciccone.blog/

Cut down in his prime, our nation mourns the lost of one of its beautiful CEOs.

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We thought it would be fun to follow up on our recent episode with Karl Mamer where we talked about a few of the founders of the survivalist movement.

Premium Episode 43: Gold Bugs and Survivalists feat Karl Mamerhttps://www.patreon.com/posts/premium-episode-111096234

In that episode, Jules and I put forward the idea that Cold War fears about a nuclear holocaust combined with the post WWII super boom economy created an anxious tension that rippled though US culture—specifically White culture in the US.

This is a society that was reading articles in Popular Science with titles like “If Your House Were A-Bombed”.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/3882775649/in/album-72157622015478740/ 

It wasn’t just nuclear war that was squeezing people’s imaginations. After WWII, pretty much every aspect of life had been altered for huge numbers of people in the US. 

The US went into that war flying bi-planes and came out of it with jets, rockets, and nuclear bombs.

All that sublimated anxiety can’t stay contained. One of the ways it burbled up to the surface was in movies.

That brings us to the 1971 post-apocalyptic fantasy, Omega Man starring Charlton Heston, Anthony Zerbe, and Rosalind Cash and directed by Boris Sagal.

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Circling back to some news from a few weeks ago when The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former Defense Secretary Gallant.

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The ICC named them as “co-perpetrators for committing the acts jointly with others: the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.”

The ICC’s Preliminary Chamber “also found reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Netanyahu and Mr Gallant each bear criminal responsibility as civilian superiors for the war crime of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population.”

Now that world leaders have had some time to react and the media has had the chance to settle on the messaging we can see what we’re dealing with.

It’s pretty ugly. How do you wrap your head around the size and reach of this political and media machine designed to convince you that it’s not wet out when it’s raining?

Some reading:

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2024/USspendingIsrael

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/france-says-israels-netanyahu-has-immunity-from-icc-arrest-warrant/ar-AA1uRHrn

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/cuomo-joins-netanyahu-s-legal-defense-team-against-icc-warrants-as-he-mulls-2025-nyc-mayoral-run/ar-AA1uRGIm

https://www.wsj.com/search?query=icc&mod=searchresults_viewallresults

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-11-22/ty-article/.premium/netanyahu-brought-the-icc-ruling-on-himself-and-now-hes-whining-about-antisemitism/00000193-505c-d68e-a1db-f85ce7f60000?v=1733368678410

https://www.csmonitor.com/1989/1012/ekri.html#main-content

Music:

Airglow - Spliff and Wesson (CC BY 4.0)

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Dems are still kicking the corpse of the 2024 election, trying to figure out how to cope with a world and a voting public (or in this case, a non-voting public) that they clearly don’t understand.

After a such a devastating loss, the next thing to do is figure out who to blame. And in the process of trying to figure out where to point the finger, Pundits are taking to the opinion pages to air their grievances.

One of the more popular excuses is that everyone in the US is just more racist and sexist than anyone realized. They just couldn’t bring themselves to vote for a Black and South Asian Woman.

Joy Reid (she’s the one who said that Harris ran a “flawless” campaign) said that white women let Harris down.

Fetterman said Harris should have been stronger on the border and illegal immigration. Pete Buttigieg said Harris was too online. She relied too much on memes. The funniest one of all is that Harris was just too woke!

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Last week we introduced some of Trump’s cabinet picks. Marco Rubio at State, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at Health and Human Services, and when we recorded it Matt Gaetz was still up for Attorney General. That one didn't last, though.

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Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for Secretary of Defense, stands out among them. I don’t know if it’s the Transphobia, the Zionism, the sexual assault allegation, his complete lack of experience, or that he doesn’t believe germs are real and that climate change is a hoax.

More than a couple of those things could also be said about many of Trump’s other cabinet picks. But Hegseth is the total package.

Pete Hegseth, as an author and as a host on Fox and Friends, has regularly expressed his critical views about trans people serving in the military and is firmly against women serving in combat roles. He’s concerned that the Muslim birthrate is too high and that refugees have “infiltrated” US cities.

He writes in his 2020 book American Crusade that:

“Our present moment is much like the 11th Century. We don’t want to fight, but, like our fellow Christians one thousand years ago, we must. Arm yourself — metaphorically, intellectually, physically. Our fight is not with guns. Yet.”

In the tradition of many Christian Nationalists today, Hegseth is also tatted up with his beliefs.

We talked a little about his distinctive tattoos last time. While a member of the National Guard, he was removed from his security detail during Biden’s 2020 inauguration for some of those tattoos.

We drew our descriptions of his tattoos and their meanings from a piece in the Bulwark by our friend Thomas Lecaques. So we asked him to come back on the show so we can get a better idea of their context and try to understand what we’re dealing with.

Music:

Airglow - Spliff and Wesson (CC BY 4.0)

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Trump fills out some of his cabinet, Dems try to make sense out how they got absolutely smeared on election day, and everyone else figuring out how to live with what the next fours years might look like.

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