1618 After the Fall: Recent Episodes
Teresa and Diana
There seems to be quite a bit of the old "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall" (Mishlei/Proverbs 16:18) going around these days. Your hosts Diana and Teresa give you their take on what's happening and how to practice the art of never being overtaken by events.
This is our first episode for 2023, so let's get into it. Or as we learned from Thumper, "If you can't say something nice," record a podcast!
Questions? Comments? Find us over at Reddit.
It's game day tomorrow.
MAGA Republicans have been told they will win it all (YouTube video). Yet actual early voting data doesn't quite fit the narrative, according to Simon Rosenberg (YouTube video) and Tom Bonier (Youtube video).
Steve Bannon's 2020 Trump playbook to steal victory from the jaws of defeat got derailed when Fox News called Arizona for Biden. Can he pull it off this time, and much more, in this week's episode of 9A.
Leon Trotsky said it best, calling fascism in a sense "a caricature of Jacobinism."
This episode opens with a clip from of The Circus which aired right after we taped the podcast. They followed Marjorie Taylor Greene to the town of Chickamauga for a local Republic Party do. Marge promises to investigate some people, to stop aid to Ukraine and to defund and break up the FBI.
It appears the United States is about to enter the Committee of Public Safety phase of MAGA Terror. Let's discuss.
Podcast episodes recommended are as follows:
- Jared Yates Sexton, The Muckrake Political Podcast: The Right Tells You Exactly What They're About takes apart the MAGA manifesto.
- Mike Duncan, Revolutions: Appendix 7 - The Entropy of Victory
- The Agenda with Steve Paikin: Is it Time to Negotiate with Putin to End the Ukraine War?
Let's discuss over at Reddit!
What to make of the wish to return to the past, to "something they can believe in again, something to restore morality and goodness and trust, the basic fabric of what America is ... a return to just America, the decency of the 50s ..."
They remember the fictional time of the TV show Happy Days, when the reality was that it was great for only a small sliver of the population, and they are hell bent on taking us all back to the era of segregation, McCarthyism and the Cold War.
Let's discuss.
The problem with podcasts is there are just too many good ones. We've spent our time listening instead of making new episodes, but there is a way to this work for everyone by posting our recommendations over at Reddit.
In 1939, Winston Churchill defined Russia as "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." In 2022, not so much. Show notes to follow on Reddit.
We are back with a new name for our podcast, so let's get caught up with what's happening on the world stage.
After Thermopylae, the Greeks went on to achieve great victories at Salamis and Plataea where they decisively defeated the Persians. Leonidas and his men had reinforced the prestige of Sparta and raised the morale of all Greeks to continue fighting against Persia. As Diodorus Siculus wrote: “These men, therefore, alone of all of whom history records, have in defeat been accorded a greater fame than all others who have won the fairest victories.”
Included in today's discussion were the following:
Musk challenges Putin to ‘single combat’ over Ukraine, Russia responds: 'Weakling'
Putin allows Russian airlines to fly $10 billion worth of foreign-owned planes domestically
U.S. holds ‘intense’ 7-hour talks with China amid Russia’s war in Ukraine
International Reserves of the Russian Federation as of February 18, 2022 accounted for $643.2 billion.
The Russian Central Bank is running out of options
Russia reveals exact amount of reserves frozen by West
‘We had no choice’: over 8,000 Russians seek US refuge in six-month period
Sparta's last stand at the Battle of Thermopylae
The West should offer Putin a 'golden bridge' out of conflict
"Putin's Brain" Aleksandr Dugin: 'We have our special Russian truth' (video)
Anti-Liberal Russian Philosopher Dugin: 'Glory To Novorossiya! The Second Great Slavic Reconquista Has Begun'
Miranda Devine: 21st Century EU “Values” (video)
The Spillover In Central Asia From Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine (podcast)
Russia temporarily bans grain exports to ex-Soviet countries
Putin tells ex-Soviet republics: Ukraine was an exception
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz meets with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan amid Ukraine crisis
Fox News Reporter In Ukraine Rebuts Colleague Greg Gutfeld's Ugly Take On War Coverage
Fox News star Greg Gutfeld’s mother-in-law escapes Ukraine
Tristan Harris says 'civil war for profit business model' is harming democracy (podcast)
COVID-19 Wastewater Surveillance Shows Sixty-Two Active Sites
COVID-19: Cases up nearly 50% week-on-week - as expert accuses ministers of 'wanting to get rid of data and move on'
Follow us on Twitter @1618pod
We will start posting on Reddit soon.
In The Storm Before the Storm, Mike Duncan chronicled a short period of intense upheaval between the years 146-78 BC. Necessary social and economic reforms were blocked by the senatorial class and after an episode of unprecedented political violence, self-rule of the Roman Republic gave way to autocracy and caesars.
There's literally a song for everything. This one by "heartland rock" star John Cougar (Mellencamp) dropped in April 1982 when the United States was truly in dire economic shape, but the Boomers were still young then and powered the country ahead to the good times in the 90s and 2000s. How did they lose their way, and what does COVID19 got to do with it?
*Marked explicit since one of us uttered a couple of swear words.
On a November day in 1721, a small bomb was hurled through the window of a local Boston Reverend with the message, “Cotton Mather, you dog, dam you! I’ll inoculate you with this; with a pox to you.’’ 300 years later, the nation has come full circle. Nobody ever learns.
What does the stock market, Star Trek, reading and prospect theory have to do with Afghanistan? Let's discuss.
Here we go again. Sedition Steve is doing his best to re-enact history:
On 14 July 1789, a state prison on the east side of Paris, known as the Bastille, was attacked by an angry and aggressive mob. The prison had become a symbol of the monarchy’s dictatorial rule, and the event became one of the defining moments in the Revolution that followed.
We can't say it any better than Joseph Wittreich in the book Feminist Milton (page 150):
History may not repeat itself but it does rhyme, and every gloss by a deconstructionist need not be a loss, pushing us further into an abyss of skepticism and indeterminacy.
We knew it. This whole mask-off thing was a trap. Or as John McCain liked to joke that something "reminded of the words of Chairman Mao who once said, 'It's always darkest before it's totally black.'"
We discussed the stock market, old brains, and what it all has to do with the current quagmire of crazy that has the nation in meltdown.
Populism, socialism, Marxism, capitalism. So many "isms," but what really matters is rising extremism within democracies in the West, especially within the ranks of the military now that their thought leaders openly call fellow citizens they disagree with domestic enemies and push for regime change in France and the United States?
As Ludwig von Mises wrote,
Facts per se can neither prove nor refute anything. Everything is decided by the interpretation and explanation of the facts, by the ideas and the theories.Your co-hosts Diana and Teresa spend the week mulling over current events and pressing issues, and just in time for the weekend, we present you with how we arrived at our (sometimes controversial) conclusions.
AltWeekend is a stream-of-thought exchange of ideas by two people who believe in looking at facts from different angles, examining them through the lens of history, philosophy, culture and sometimes bitter life lessons. We share our views, explain our thought processes, hoping to spark thoughtful conversations. Join us!
Show notes are posted over at Reddit.