A Geek History of Time - Episode 159 - Henry Ford, Nazis, and Square Dancing Part IV

Episode Date: May 21, 2022

You know, Stalin and the Nazis were these welfare state types. One of us is a stand-up comic. Can you tell what it is? Ladies and gentlemen, everyone, brick. Um. But the problem. Oh my god. That's like, I could use that to teach the whole world. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha 1.5-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1- This is a geek history of time where we connect nursery to the new home and live on the world history and English teacher here in Northern California.

And I had the opportunity just last night, actually, as we recorded this, to chaperone my first school dance in 20 years. Back at the very beginning of my teaching career. Before I took my decade hiatus from the profession, for reasons that we don't need to get into, I was teaching high school elsewhere in Northern California and shaperone to dance at the end of that year. And then I never went back and did it again until just last night. And it was white and experience. I was really struck by the fact that most of the music that they were playing was older than many

of the students in attendance. Like about 15 minutes into the dance, I'm standing there, you know, doing my circuit around the edge of the dance floor, you know, looking out for safety hazards, whatever. And all of a sudden, here, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, and I'm like wait what no you mean you're like all right stop collaborate and listen oh let's not get man from BMG yeah well yeah but like wait that was on the radio when I was in high school and I'm older than the parents of many of my students by a couple of at least a couple of years oh Oh, you crossed that threshold. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I mean, not by a lot of years,

but by, by enough for me to notice it. Like, way, no, hold on. So yeah. And then the one that really got me was a little bit later. They actually played Rick Astley. Never going to give you up without any trace of irony. You know, the fact that you named the song is funny to me. Yeah, because what else would they play? Astley, what else would they play? Right.

You know, it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. They played Rick Astley. The one where he else would they play? You know, it's like yeah, yeah, they played Rick Astley The one where he covers at a James, you know, it's like Nice. That's good. That's true But like yeah, and and then the the other one that I feel Really deserves mention here is they also played baby got back Which number one was a huge hit with the crowd, and also left me legitimately looking for a set of pearls to clutch,

because I remember back when that song first came out, that would be banned from being played at school dances. And that was the only indication to me of how much the world has changed. Otherwise, middle school never changes. It was still clusters of boys and clusters of girls. And you know, all the boys kind of stand around kind of like, you know, bopping their heads and bouncing. And the girls actually like no shit getting into it dancing. So yeah, no, it was, it was quite the experience. Nice. So now that I'm monopolized,

all that time talking about it, who are you? And what have you been up to lately? Well, I'm Damien Harmony. I am a Latin teacher and a drama teacher up here in Northern California. And I also had kind of a similar first, again, for a long time at my school. But this fills me with dread and fear for the next 10 days.

We had a rally. Now it was outdoors. It was outdoors. So much less likely to be what ails you. But as you know, masks are now optional. it's kind of like having a smoking section. Yeah. You know, which means everybody gets to breathe it. But we had a rally and to be perfectly honest, all of that worry aside, it was lovely. It wasn't particularly great. No.

But what it was was a chance for several different groups of kids to show what they're capable of. Several singular sets of kids to show what they're capable of for the audience of all the other students to and the audience of students got performed for, which I think is a wonderful thing. They got to see excellence, they got to see enthusiasm. And although the acoustics of an outdoor rally are, you know, fair to Midland at best, it was still really nice.

And the logistics of it went off pretty darn well, actually. They had a pretty good game plan and stuff like that. So as far as rally in and of itself, hey man, that was awesome. Could there, you know, I'm not unicorn hunting here. Could there have been improvements, of course. I'm sure there could have. I don't care. It was good in all kinds of ways. There could have happened. I'm going to say I'm fatically no. But I'm, I'm airing always on the side of caution when it comes to that.

So, yeah. Well, you know, as you should, as, you know, somebody in the position that you and I are in. Mm-hmm. So, I think that's our responsibility as to air on that side. One would think the other depressing number of people that I saw were, you know,

the unmasked folk. Again, if we tested, we might actually have data as to how hurtful this is. But that is that is one thing I'm going to give my own district some credit for is they have been some credit for is they have been very comparatively anyway. You know, nobody's perfect, but compared to a lot of districts. They've been very, very good about testing and like not like not mandatory testing, but they've been going out of their way to make it available to students and staff. See, and I'm going to give that a C-minus. And frankly, when it comes to epidemiology, I'm not an epidemiologist. I am an historian. It seems to me that epidemiology and cliff diving are very similar.

Unless you're doing it right, you are going to end up killing people. Okay. So, you know, C-minus still going to kill people. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, you know, it end up killing people. Okay. I'm sorry. You know, see minus still going to kill people. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But anyway, you know, it was a lovely rally. It was nice to see kids genuinely enjoying each other and themselves.

And so that made me very happy. It really did. Yeah. So now the last time we talked, we were speaking of Henry Ford. And we got to the point where it was pretty clear that America had actually exported

vibrant anti-Semitism to Germany because the Germans had kind of a dullish gray anti-Semitism that was just kind of baked into the Google um, happy coloring. Yeah, well, no, that would be in England. Um, this is more like it's, it's around the pan of the Google, uh, kind of anti-semitism. And ours was, uh, much more vibrant. And we also, uh, exported a sense of, uh, hey, you two can do an ethnic cleansing or genocide. A you two can be a white supremacist to the nth degree. American chickens, as I think I said last time, found another home in which to roost. So I believe I believe you

did in fact use that very analogy. Yeah. And you know, I made a lot of hay about a certain book that had been written, which you and I had a lot of fun beating up on. And it was, as I recall, what was the fellow's name? It was, it was a book written, I think, in 1916. And it was about the great American, or the great European races, et cetera, et cetera. Oh, yeah. And yeah, it's just, you know, Oh, yeah. And yeah, it's just, you know, I did some more research on that book because I wanted to see how commercially successful it was and it wasn't. It wasn't that commercially viable.

But what it was, it was, by the way, it was called the passing of the Great Race or the racial basis of the European history by, oh God, he was a lawyer, Madison Grant, self-professed anthropologist. But, and he was dumb as shit and made stuff up to just justify his, his white supremacy. Now, having said that, it was not that commercially viable. It was not that commercially successful. But what it did do was it found the eyes and ears of several people who would look for shit like that. It's kind of like, honestly,

and this is maybe I'm drawing too straight-aligned, but I do think there's a lot here. When you look at the commercial success of the Turner diaries. look at like the commercial success of the Turner diaries. I knew that's where you were going to go. I didn't want to spit it out because I didn't know. Appreciate it. I ruined your thread. No, I know.

But if you look at the commercial success of that book, not very commercially successful. There isn't any. Right. But boy, does it find just the right kind of people to influence, to blow up federal buildings with daycare? Right with a capital R, quite frankly. So, you know, we talked about that and that, you know, very much made its way over to the house arrest that Hitler found himself under.

You remember, they kicked out Anton Fucka's name from that not quite cell. And Hitler was reading that stuff. And sure enough, people testifying in Nuremberg were talking about how great Henry Ford was. And Henry Ford was obsessed with blaming the Jews for everything. And he and Hitler both really, really blamed the Jews for modernism. So that's where we're gonna pick up here. Okay, wait. Yeah.

The movement, modernism. The modernism in art, modernism. Mostly in art. Art, music, literature. Okay. Essentially departure from the mythical traditional good. From the, you know, Dutch masters school of art, and, you know, portraiture, and yeah, okay.

So, and that brings us back to square dancing quite frankly, because I started with that, and I'm going to close with that. There's nothing so anti-modern as square dancing. Which if you think about it for three seconds, you'd be like, yeah, that's actually pretty fucking anti-modern. Now one of the modern things that Ford was really, really hot against was jazz. And so was Hitler, by the way. In fact, I'm going to fast forward to 1941 in August. There was a huge crackdown on German jazz, specifically because it had black origins and Jewish performers. There's a gentleman named Henry Cowell who linked Jewish and black cultural influences in jazz in a magazine in 1930. He said, quote, the fundamentals of jazz are the syncopation and rhythmic accents of the Negro.

Their modernization is the works of is the work New York Jews. So jazz is Negro music seen through the eyes of the Jews. That's what this music theorist said in a magazine in 1930. And I think that there's a lot of meat on that bone. In 1935, jazz was banned on German radio. And in 1938, in Dusseldorf, there was an exhibition on degenerate music specifically, which stated that quote, Negro music, end quote, was another Jewish plot to destroy German culture. So that's happening in 1938 in Dusseldorf. Okay.

So, setting aside the like that shit craziness of the idea that any musical form is a plot by anybody to do anything, but you know, get laid and, you know, make money. Yeah. Like, you know, because that's what that there's any kind of conspiracy behind it. I find it interesting the way that every nationalist, hyper nationalist, rightist, fascist movement takes an idea that's like, well, you know, this is this is a plot by, you know, this group and this group to rot us from within to to rot us from within and it's like, okay, you just said it's a plot by black people and no, no, no, it's not a plot. It's a combination of those things. It's degenerate

by its very nature. It is not a plot according to Hitler. Oh, I thought there was something said about that, you know, there was a Jewish plot to degrade German culture. Um, let me see. There was... I thought there was something... No, no. Just the part that I was going to say was it mentions New York Jews. And that it's, you know, to degrade German culture. And I'm like, why would Jewish people in New York give us? No, it was not, it was not to degrade German culture.

Specifically, it was not that pointed. It was, okay, it was degrading to German culture. It had a corrosive impact because it was, it was degenerate because it was inherently misogynistic, misoginating. Yeah, misogination, misogynistic. Yeah, but that just sounds too close to misogynistic. It sounds too close to misogynistic. Yeah. Anyway, it was inherently monrelizing to use terms that they probably would have.

Because it is good German children. And again, notice it's aimed at the children. We have to protect the children. It's self-appointed guardians. Always always the children, right? They're always the excuse. Of course, because they, they didn't ask you to protect them. They don't ever have to ask. It's, it's the easiest group to, to stand up for. And they, and they can't say anything about, I didn't ask you to protect me because they don't have legal status to. Yeah. and you could even point out like they don't know any better. So even if they are saying, no, daddy, I like it, doesn't matter, right? We kind of talked about this when I discussed Ace of Base.

It's going back around in some ways. So the idea was that, you know, it's basically you're taking black people's music and Jewish performers and then German kids are listening to it and they don't know any better. So it's degenerating the culture from within and you have to have the pure culture because the German strength of the culture apparently won't stand up to a little tiny needle on a piece of wax. But you know, and also in fairness, it's the most powerful culture of the superior race of people.

Right. Right. The Nordic folk. They always have to have it both ways. Yeah. Well, I would point out though, Hitler was absolutely obsessed with the idea of infection. And at that time, you do have germ theory. So I can draw the lines within his adult, you know,

methadicted brain. With the wall of crazy, his brain. And he was, by the way, addicted to meth by this point because he was taking it as a medication to stop his spontaneous and explosive flatulence. These are facts. Stop. Yep.

Hold on, hold on. Yeah. Hold on. Yeah. He had a farting problem. Okay, so he had some kind of bowel thing that was giving him. The dude was in World War One in the trenches, had been gasped. I could have actually see his gut being fucked for good.

Yeah, no, yeah. That totally understand how how he don't have penicillin yet. You could just have a slow growing bacterial thing. Yeah. Systemic infection. Yeah, right. And what they give him is meth. Essentially. Yeah. So amphetamines. Well, because of course amphetamines are one of the one of the earliest, you know, synthetic compounds that you figured out. But like, and I mean, it was being used as a as much route, too. And so instead of using the crystals for the vapors, you would crush them. And then, you know, you'd you'd inject them in all kinds of shows. Crazy. Yeah. Yeah. But

to stop the farting. I really want to know what the mechanical or pharmaceutical action is that's involved in emphetamine stopping you from farting. I don't know that it worked. Like, okay. I mean, unless it binds you up and constipates you, like heroin does, heroin's known. I mean, that's why they give you stool softeners when you're on morphine. Yeah. But, okay. So, I don't know. But, you know, this is going the opposite when you're on morphine. Yeah. Um, but, okay. So I

don't, but you know, this, this is going the opposite way. So I don't know. Okay. I don't know my math from, from my farting. So, but anyway, so you have a music critic who has identified the fact and it is a fact that it is a, a, a black creation, a black musical creation. And you do have a lot of Jewish artists. So you do have those are facts, and that makes its way over to Germany, to the culture-confed people, and they absolutely are like, this is degenerate, here's the facts. So you do see that. Now, here's the thing, Ford was way ahead of them. They were doing this in 38. See, for Ford, the problem was also the urban origins of jazz,

because an urban origin means that it's a place where multiple groups would intermingle, and he's a farm boy from Michigan. Why, okay. Why is it? Why is it that in this country, so many of our, so many of the bullshit elitist, culturally elitist ideas in our culture are rooted in this idyllic idea of ruralism. Like Jeffersonianism and it's like the Lies idea of the gentleman farmer. When Jefferson never picked up a plow, like Jefferson never operates in the house.

It's not about the life. It's not about the work. It's about the lifestyle and the exposure and the space that you have around you. I mean, we are talking about a country that's made up of people who were English, who wanted more space and more land, couldn't get it back at home. And I mean, you're the one that did the episode on first, uh, first edition fighters. Yeah, no, I know. I know.

So, and, you know, the Jefferson ideal, you can go back to Rome if you want. And I mean, Horace was writing about this shit. You've always had this tension between city and country life. You've always had this idealization and fetishization. You see this in Russia, by the way. You know, the Tsar's like fetishized peasants, never met them. Potemkin villages were a thing for a reason.

Yeah, you know, they never met them, but they certainly fetishized them. And it's this, you know, these are the real people. They are, I mean, Bismarck himself Yeah, you know, they never met them, but they certainly fetishized them. Um, and it's this, you know, these are the real people there. I mean, a Bismarck himself said, you know, the people, the blood and the iron, the blood and the soil. It's the German people like, all of that's always there. Yeah. Um, so, and, and you know, honestly, I could even point to, uh, you know, chief Seattle, you know, and like we are of the earth. Okay. Good point. You know, I don't know what was said by Montezuma about how awesome cities were.

I do know what was said by Ben Franklin about how awesome cities were, but that's because I read English better than I read. You know, a bottle. Yeah. So, yeah. You know, but but there's always been this and quite frankly, farmers are prone to it themselves because, and fuck those city people, we feed them. You know, there is this this aspect of that. Yeah. You know, it's true. We can live without them. They can't live without us. There is that that tension that's there. Now Ford, he was a factory man, but he was also a rural man And he had little to no exposure to people of different ethnic groups beyond what people had said happened in the big cities And in the big cities many more different groups interacted right and he stated that this was the same problem as was with baseball

Which I was like what the fuck okay? Okay, Henry, tell me more. And he said, quote, if fans wish to know the trouble with American baseball, they have it in three words. Do you want to remember baseball segregated at this point, right? There is no black players in baseball. You want to guess at what his three words were? Negro league. No, no, too much. I'm like, what the fuck? Okay, back up outside of the Yankees. Like, like, back at that point.

Any city, any East Coast city is going to have a higher proportion of Jews. I'm like, what the fuck? Okay, back up outside of the Yankees. Like, like, back at that? Any city, any East Coast city is going to have a higher proportion of Jews in it after the 1890s. Yes. Because of the pogroms. Yes.

Then, then the countryside will. But also any East Coast city is going to have a higher proportion of horses in it than the country's will. Because, you know, because you have like that's just a thing. Right. But he saw that as the problem with baseball, which I can't imagine. Well, okay. He said this after 1919, so this is after the scandal.

So you do see corruption and stuff like that. And you certainly, you remember he absolutely blamed World War One on the Jewish bankers. So if it's people trying to cheat to make a dollar, he's going to pin that on Jews. That's what he does. Yeah, okay. And there's a part of me that wants to be like, okay, hold on a second. I got to go Wikipedia who the players were on the black socks because like come on. There were none of them were Jewish. None of them were Jewish. There was a guy.

There were Italians. There were Swedes. Well, okay. And there were cornpone people. Okay, but but Italians. True. It's true. It's true.

I, I, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But he didn't say too much Italians. He said too much Jews. Not too much Jews. Yeah, too much Jew actually. Not even Jews. juice. Yeah, too much juice. Actually, not even juice. Yeah.

So it was in these cities that jazz also first sprang up. It started in New Orleans, specifically a very cosmopolitan southern city, which saw blending of blues and ragtime music. And because it was in New Orleans, it necessarily began with black American musical expression that collided with several European cultural traditions at the same time as well. The term jazz itself came about through a multi-layer of etymologies that I found fascinating.

In the 1860s, the word jazz-em meant energy or pep, similar to spasm, I suppose. In 1912, a minor league baseball pitcher described his pitch as a jaz ball because it essentially had no spin and would thus appear to wobble in the air. It moved as though it had lots of pep or energy. Now musically, this term is first used to describe New Orleans music in 1915, but it's spelled J-A-S, jazz, as in jazz band, and then it turned into J-A-S-S, jazz. And UB banks said, quote, when Broadway picked it up, they called it J-A-Z-Z. It wasn't called that. It was spelled J-A-S-S.

That was dirty, and if you knew what it was, you wouldn't say it in front of ladies. Which tells me even they knew better than George Lucas when he called the music Jizz. Yes. Yeah. Which, yeah. The less said about that, the better. I suppose, yeah. Yeah. Sorry, Fangrundan. Now, the integration is nature of this kind of music, as well as the segregationist nature of industrialization and urbanization lent itself to the recording studios of some place called Tin Pan Alley, who primarily used Jewish musicians to record music with mass consumption as the goal and sale. The Jewish Americans were specifically able to thrive here because of their proximity to the whiteness at the time, relative to that of black Americans, proximity to whiteness, whose music was so popular. So the music's popular, but if we get a white guy to do it, it'll sell, it'll more, move more units.

I mean, we've seen this in our lifetime. Yeah, repeatedly. You know, and honestly, we've seen this in our lifetime when it comes to light skin versus dark skin artists, and when it comes to sexy versus soft dig. For instance, CNC music factory had to pay a ton of money to the actual singer of the gal who screamed everybody dance now because that woman can belt it out. And she's been on a lot of albums. She was actually part of its reign and meant.

She was part of that group. And so she came up at another recording artist. And yeah, I don't remember. But yeah, but yes, it like it twidges my brain. I'm sure I'll, you know, when I when I listen to this in edit, I'll be like, ah, that's what I meant. Um, but yeah, so black and and literally black artists just weren't allowed in the studios to play the music, whereas Jewish artists were because they passed for white. Now, that gets back to the Eugenicist bullshit too, the whole passing

for white, two week in, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, Mason said that very thing that they would weaken. Yeah. Okay. So by their own logic. If somebody is, I'm going to use the term find featured enough, if they have a European enough looking features. And, you know, they're like a more pointed narrow, angular, yeah, in that sense, if somebody is, is, is your is, is northern European looking enough? Sure. To get away with passing. Mm hmm.

If you're going off the idea that these traits are inborn, right? Mm hmm. What's the difference between a Jewish person who looks that way and a European person who looks that way since you're being essentialist about this? Oh, you would get into the, you know, now you could start using biology and genetics to make your case, which is such disingenuous bullshit. Like you only pull it out to actually argue your essentialism. Yeah.

You know, yeah. So it's, well, it. So it's in the blood that you don't see. You know, you're like, oh, shit. Screw you. Yeah. Okay. So now, since Jewish American story has always involved a lot of music and performance, especially in urban settings. This was a really easy porting over of, you know, a talent into this type of music and for artists to make money, etc., etc. This is an easy transition. And also, as both Black and Jewish Americans were disfranchised minorities, both in America and worldwide, both had a shared sympathy back and forth to each other. Many live performances had integrated

bands of Jewish and Black American musicians. This is more in Black clubs than it is anywhere else because white clubs would still do just the amount of mental gymnastics to go in the front door, enjoy the music of Black people in an illegal speak easy. And then the black people have to leave out the back door, like just Jesus, an illegal establishment. Right. So okay, wait. It's like, God damn it. Hold on. But it's again, it's that fetishization shit, you know, yeah, yeah. It's one thing that that Americans love to do is fetishize. So now all of this integration was a threat to those who identified with the Eugenicist and anti-Semitic fantasies that were being offered as a response like I'd said

You don't want to get impure white people the wrong kind of white people in there to start fucking the right kind of white people And you certainly don't want black people and white people dancing because then that'll lead to fucking. And you certainly don't want that. Henry Ford, Fred Trump and Adolf Hitler all had bought into such narrative and as such, all three had a problem with jazz. Really? Uh huh. Red bump is on record. Have a problem with jazz. Yes. Okay. Now Henry doesn't surprise me at all.

Especially considering he was one of seven people arrested at a KKK rally in New York. Especially since he was a racist as hell. Real estate mobile. Slum lord. Slumlord. But Henry Ford, we're talking about him mostly. Henry Ford just actually decided to do something specific and expensive about this because he had the money. He needed to save white people from the corrupting influence of black interaction, which was

brought about by Jewish musicians trying to make more money. That's some pathological shit. Ed mutered himself so that we don't hear the thump thump thump of him smashing the microphone. Oh my god. How many men who how many troops? Right. Do you have to jump through? Right. To get to, dude, can you just accept the fact that like, people like the music?

It's okay to be old and not get it. Yeah, like, it's okay. It's okay, like me talking about my students. Right. It's like, okay, I'm, I'm an old now. Right. Yeah. Fine.

But like dude, really? Yeah. Yeah. Now, since jazz brought people together to dance specifically since it brought black and white young people together to dance and young people like to fuck, he needed a great white hope in terms of music and dancing to keep white people from wanting to fuck black people. Yeah. Now Ford has specific quotes on jazz because of course he does. There is something you beat me to that. Because of course he does. Yeah. There's there's something that bothers me to know

end about proximal expertise or assumed proximal expertise. Yes, assumed. What are you really good at? I'm good at building engines. All right. Cool. Hey, what are your thoughts on jazz? Like what the fuck? To hear? Yeah, who gives us shit? I also get this pistol when people like misquote or misattribute every quote to Albert Einstein, you know, where he talks about bees. I'm like, I don't care what a theoretical physicist who know a lot about gravity thinks about botany.

I'll listen to what a botanist says. Yeah. So, but. Or antimology or whatever. Or something, yeah. What, but or antimology or something. Yeah. Yeah. At least that's closer. Is this about theoretical physics? Right. Yes. That's awesome. If no, fuck off. Well, it's just I'm going to get out my salt lick and go ahead and listen. Right. That's good. Yeah. So Henry Ford said this.

Quote, many people have wondered whence came the first, he said whence unironically. That alone is a disqualifier like unless you're writing a Robert E. Howard fantasy epic, you don't use a word like whence. Right. Anyway, yeah. Yeah. It makes me wince. you don't use a word like wince. Right. Anyway, yeah. Yeah, it makes me wince. Uh, so all right, many people have wondered whence came the waves upon waves of origin or I'm sorry, the waves upon waves of musical slush that invade decent homes and set the young people of this generation, imitating the drivel of morons. Popular music is a Jewish monopoly. Jazz is a Jewish creation. The mush slush and the sly suggestion, the abandoned sensuousness of sliding notes are of Jewish origin. What? Like, I feel that he verges on words salad. Like, yeah, how do you, how do you use work like mush to describe melody?

I think he's not talking about melody. I think he's talking about the improvisational aspects of jazz. And to him, again, to him, he would want fiddle-plicken, you know, he would want. I try to think of what he would want. And there are very clear notes when you're listening to what was folk music back then, right? And in jazz, there is a sliding of things. There's a blurring of things. There is a give and take of things where it's not so regimented. And this man who is so mechanically minded, where this thing does this thing and this thing does this thing and this man who is so mechanically minded, where this thing does this thing, and this thing does this thing,

and this worker does this thing, and this guy beats this worker, like everything has its place. And this other guy is basically shooting a 45 in the back office. Right. Everything has its place. And I think when you have the give and take of jazz,

when you have the improvisational aspects of jazz, and frankly, when you have music, that kind of jazz. And frankly, when you have music that kind of taps into a more sensual kind of sound and feel to the music. And it's played in a sweaty grimy nightclubs because air conditioning's not quite a thing yet. And they're smoking in the air. You get all those things.

And it's absolutely gonna offend his rural sensibilities. And so the mush and the slush and the sliding and all that, that makes sense to me that he would have those critiques. There's a type of thing that happens and I'm going far afield here, but I'm putting way too much effort into at least understanding the logic behind his bigotry. But there was this wonderful documentary I listened to on Yiddish. And they actually talked about Yiddish music specifically as well. And what it was was like you could play on a violin and you could make it sound like a fiddle, right? There were styles that you can do to make it fiddly. There are also styles that you can do to make it sound yiddish. And there's a thing that they do with the bow and they

would do it. And you know, my girlfriend is a string player, violin and viola. And I had her listen to it. She's like, Oh, okay, that yeah, I know what they're doing. And she showed me. And it gives it a Jewish sound. And I say that because that's what the musician who is Jewish was highlighting in a documentary about Yiddish. So I'm not, you know, I'm not Henry Fording this, but like it absolutely is there, you know, you can, you can tell like Russian music. You can tell Russian music. You can tell Mexican music. You could even tell Spanish music. Exactly.

And you can tell Yiddish music. You could tell New York Yiddish 1890s music. Like you can smell the pastrami as you're hearing it, kind of music, you know what I mean? And I think that's, that's, that is a thing that he is identifying and then immediately using it to build his, his wall of, of bigotry again. Because I swear this man is just like a cure in search of a disease, but he's always naming the disease as being the Jews. And, I mean, it's all to him, it's all part of a larger plot, right? Get black people and white people to interbreed, and then the Jews can take over the world because our blood will be weaker.

That's what he thinks is going to happen. Okay. But, like... Well, and to do this, you set the setting, right? You've got a jazz club where you've got drinking, cigarette smoking women and sexiness. And the more that will happen, the less white we all become. Okay. Here's really good at repairing watches.

He really was. He really was. I don't, I, like I, I still don't understand how all of these people forward and everybody else associated with this. And anybody, like anybody from a rural background, I still don't understand how anybody who had even even a one generation like removal from dealing with livestock

could think that interbreeding was going to weaken anybody. Well, like you have m Well, you have mules. You have mules and mules are sterile. Yeah, but like, I mean, that is, I mean, straight up, you can do, that doesn't matter. Cause now you're thinking in terms of being able to propagate the species.

Oh, okay, all right. Every fucking KKK guy was a doctor or a dentist. Like the grand wizards of all that shit, there were always some sort of medically trained guide, or he was, you know, so one of them was up high in the list, and they would always bring up mules, and they would always bring up that birds don't interbreed.

You don't see a scrub, Jay, fucking a finch, you know? And the only ones that you do, you see a parasitic brooders, like cucks, and they're sneaky bastards, you know, and shit like that. Like, I mean, like, okay, but yeah, but okay, but all right, granted, there are those examples out of the animal world. Well, that's all they need. I mean, there's how many quotes in the Bible say don't be gay, like none, but there's a couple that say maybe don't fuck people in the ass. Maybe. There's like three of those, right?

And, well, it's, yeah, it's actually even more narrow than that. You're not supposed to engage in petarasti. But, yeah, see, and that's the thing. But like, even if we're gonna, and the whole reason for that, and the whole reason for that is because petarasti's fucked up. Well, that should be the whole reason. That should be the whole reason, but the actual reason was because that's what the Greeks do and by God, we're not Greek, right? So, but like, where do the chosen of?

Yeah, if we want to be what's the word I'm looking for charitable and and paint with a slightly broader brush and say, okay, where are they? Anti-Gay and it's these two verses or this one verse, but then you look at how much ink has been spilled based on that bullshit. Oh, yeah, no, over and over, you know, I mean, I get that. Yeah, like given given that there are those the examples of, you know, you will okay, fine mules, hurts your breed. Okay, but a horse and a donkey are actually two different species. Well, go back to what's his fuck. Beesys. Yeah, and what's his face said that you've got these three Nordic races, or these three European races, and notice he's distinguishing, he's drawing latitude lines

for just a white folk. Yeah. He doesn't really like, I didn't go into his focus on on, uh, you know, non white folk on the vast majority of the world. I didn't go into the planet. Yeah, I didn't go into his shit on that, but like to him species, even though we can make babies, right? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. It's almost as though white supremacy causes a short in the system when it comes to critical thinking. We still have this weird logic circuit, but now you don't have anything going, wait a minute, this is fucking stupid. It turns a perfectly good circuit breaker into some sort of Rube Goldberg machine

that at the end of it all, like kicks you in the butt. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Okay. So Ford feared that quote, if the conditions in America continue to develop along the same lines as the last generation, if the immigration statistics and the same proportion of births amongst all nationalities remain the same, our imagination may picture the United States of 50 or 100 years hence as a land inhabited only by slaves, Negroes, and Jews wherein the Jew will naturally occupy a position of economic leadership.

Okay, back up. Okay. He said slaves, Negroes, and Jews. Uh-huh. back up. Okay. He said slaves negros and Jews. So is he saying that like the the to him mon girl hybrid descendants of white people and and black people are going to be slaves? Pretty much. Yeah. Okay. Now you see the way he needed labens drum. Oh wait, that was a different guy. Yeah, that was a different one. But I mean, this is the same shit. Okay, so, wow. Did I?

The, the, the hatred is, is repugnant. Like, like, the hatred causes one to recoil. But it's hard for that to compete for the sheer level of, what the fuck are you? High? Yeah, the bafflement at the amount of energy he puts into that hatred. And the amount of like intellectual capital

he puts into explaining why that hatred is a valid thing is astounding. Yeah, it's mind-boggling. Like, I just don't have the energy to be that toxic. And he's been publishing the shit in his newspaper this whole time, right? Well, in 1926, he publishes a manual that promoted old-timey music,

as well as how to actually conduct a square dance. And this was because guests had so much fun in a 1923 gathering that he and his wife had hosted. He promoted square dancing clubs everywhere, and he paid newspapers, paid newspapers to publish full-page square dancing instructions. 34 colleges started teaching early American dancing as a course of study, similar to how the Koch brothers funded a chair of libertarian economics in a whole bunch of different colleges. So he is. And just the intellectual bankrupt. Yeah, well, at least Square dancing gets you out and moving them.

It is codified. It does draw on a tradition that actually, you know, is of interest instead of just like justifying why we're rich. But this is that whole like billionaires are unethical to exist. I mean, the existence of them is an immoral thing. Look at what they fucking do with all their money. And I don't even know if we're crack the billionaire level

at that point. Well, I'm sure based on value of the dollar at the time. He almost certainly did. But yeah, I mean, you know, the literal billionaires, another question. But yeah, the point still, I mean, you know, it's a literal billionaire's. Another question. Right. But yeah, the point still stands that like, you know, you should, it should be like on a pinball machine. Shout out to Derek, friend of the show, should be like on a pinball machine where you hit

$999,999,999 and then every dollar after that, we keep and put towards stuff and you don't get to say, and we'll name a park after your assumption. Yeah. But instead, or like the Athenians did, which was, you know, so, hey, you've been named one of the three richest people in Athens. Yeah. What are you going to do this year? Yeah.

Which of these three richest projects are you gonna do for the public? Yep. Yeah. Now, I say that we should, you know, name a park after it. Instead, in America, you get to keep all your money, fuck with the entirety of civilization, definitely subsume the media and still name parks after yourself.

Yeah. So what do I know? So Ford invited 200 dancing instructions from Ohio and Michigan to deer born specifically to make sure that they learned various dances. And because I'm a sucker for names, his favorite dance was called the Varsovian. Okay. Oh, cool name. Okay. Now, there was also the Virginia reel, the Gavot, the Ripple, the Minuet, and the Shotsky, Shautesky, the Shautes' Shea, the SCHOTT ISCHE.

Othes? Yeah, that's way better than anything I had. Yeah. He also had his own private orchestra play old-fashioned dance music on radio networks on radio networks when his new cars unveiled in January 26 and January 27. He had them buying up airtime and playing that kind of music. dealerships had dance floors. This guy is putting so much energy into square dancing as a thing. dealerships had dance floors. And remember, the dealership would always throw one of his newspapers in with the new purchase. And in some communities, this was a huge hit. White folks were back, baby. They never fucking left. Well, there's that. By the way,

I messed it up. Okay. Shotish. Shotish. And it is a slow polka. There you go. Mid 19th century from German dare, shotish times. There a times. The Scottish dance. The Scottish dance. Yeah. Yeah. Now Ford also made financial arrangements and other influences to get square dancing into the Dearborn public school system. And at first, parents were aghast.

You're going to teach my, yeah, you're going to teach my children to dance with boys and girls. Right. Right. 200 of them petition the school board to stop these immoral dances. Now here's what's different between parents clutching their pearls back then

and parents clutching their pearls now. First off back then, they actually clutch their pearls. Now they're throwing shit, literal shit. Two, that should be as funny as that. Once the parents had actually seen the dance performed, they were like, oh yeah, no, that's fine. They actually changed their mind and came down from their screeching and shrieking

and over 500 of them voted to continue the dancing. Ford sent his dancing fixer, that's right. He had a dancing fixer. A man named Benjamin Loveit on a publicity and codification junket to various colleges and schools. Autification? Yeah. So if you remember a couple episodes back back I talked about how square dancing had essentially three main latitudes in the United States. You had a certain yeah, and then there was the blending as it went further west. Well, he's in Michigan and you know, it's it's spreading westward. So if we want kids dancing to the right kind of dancing music, then we need to make sure that we have, and his whole thing is that, look how sloppy jazz is. It gets you sensual, it gets you moving, and you don't

necessarily know what your next step is going to be, and that's dangerous. Oh my god, he even turned into a fucking Nazi on, on square dancing. Yes. Why could these kind of motherfuckers never Kidney's kind of motherfuckers never like sit down and just take a nap. Why do we just why do we listen to these assholes? He was good, really good at building engines. Yeah. It doesn't mean he was good at business. He was shrewd at business. He was not good at business.

He was good at engines. He was good at watch repair. He was a good, he was a at engines. He was good at watch repair. He was a great mechanic. He was not, I repeat, not an expert on dance. He was not an expert on socio-economic politics, etnology, anything. But in 1926, he saw his star rising and when it came to dancing, he's like, yes, this is the great white dance step.

And there was an American National Association of Masters of Dancing. Fucking names. Convention. So there's a convention for the American, the American National Association of Masters of Dancing. And it was in New York. And they declared, quote, the Charleston is dying. The black bottom can never be king. And during the past year, there has been a great revival in old time dancing. End quote. They, the American National

Association of Masters of Dancing, because I'm going to play the fuck out of that name. They specifically named Henry Ford as the reason for why that was. Well, you throw enough money at anything, you can get shit to stick. Yeah. When they call themselves masters of dancing, am I the only one who like pictures a character out of an Italian opera? Yes, you are. Like with very specific, and really, really cuffs, and like a cane tapping on the floor. Yeah, I don't see that. Yeah. Maybe it's just because I dove

so deep into fucking square dancing for a few days. Yeah, because I hear, I hear that, and I think dancing master, and like, I go to Italian Renaissance of like, and now, we've got to bow before household dancing master who's going to teach all of the nobles children of the menu at any claps up by his ear and just barely on the palm. Yeah. Now, I see how you got. Yeah. Now Ford also liked specifically to play Turkey in the straw on his $75,000 strat of various. Now $75,000 back then was $1.2 million in today's money. Of course he had a strat

and of course he played Turkey in the straw and he was of course very bad at it but he was super happy to find other Fiddlers whose music blended nicely and widely with square dancing and who's gonna tell Henry Ford, yo, you suck at that, right? So other people, it was kind of like when Bob Dylan had a birthday concert and he started singing and all the other guitarists who were there, GE Smith, Prince, George Harrison, Eric Clapton before he was really out and out about being an anti-everything. All these great guitars stepped forward and started singing louder to drown out Bob Dylan's voice

because it was so embarrassingly bad. That's kind of what these people did. So he sounded great because all these other people sounded great, but he himself was dog shit. Yeah, which is fine. I mean, he's really good at building watches and cars. Now, he brought fiddling into the zeitgeist as a result as well.

Now, it had previously been very rural, very regional, and he made it a popular thing. Now, this is also marrying with radio at the time. Well, he's buying radio time, yet old-timey music hours and shit like that. So these two prongs are aimed at combating the Jewish menace of jazz-based miscellination. And it did not work.

Because jazz is kickass. Yeah. Because jazz is awesome. And young kids like to dance and boy, fuck can they fuck? And, you know, you need to have a rhythmic element to something in order for it to really be compelling. Yeah, square dancing is a mix. Square dancing is, well, it is, it is, and it's codified. And it's, you can count on it. and you can do it whether or not you know how to move your hips. You know what I mean?

Like, yeah, like you do not have to be good at dancing to be good at square dancing. That's true, but if you want to move your hips, it really helps to have a good percussion line or a baseline. Yeah, yeah, which you don't get that in all of its many charms. And I am a great fan of roots music and and bluegrass. Sure. They don't that's not an element. They're you know, yeah, That's not the point of it. Yeah. Yeah.

Everybody plays together and it's a different communal thing. Yeah. It's not pairs matching off and, you know, having foreplay. Yeah. And again, this didn't work. But what it did do was it popularized square dancing in schools at the time when most public schools were segregated to the point where 28 out of 48 states had square dancing as their official state dance. And plenty of other schools would receive

encouragement, curriculum, money aimed at the same thing. So he is spending money, money, hand over fist, getting it into all the school districts that he can to get kids square dancing in school. And square dancing became entrenched in most school curriculas, both PE and music. And if you think about your friends who are elementary teachers, there is usually two prep teachers on each site, PE, and music, and this marries them both. And since an elementary school, like I said, has those, this is a good way to get kids out of the classroom, get their teachers a break, and have fun with each other. Quite frankly, they do get to have fun and they get to interact with the opposite sex in a codified safe way, a white way, a carefully contrived way, a way that Ford would like. But the real fun comes in 1928.

So, Henry Ford established a planned town in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil called Ford Landia. The idea was to have the means to produce and manufacture their own rubber, thus making it cost even less to produce his cars and rely less on the British monopoly of rubber, which had existed after Belgium's genocide of the Congo had raised enough eyebrows to break their monopoly. Brazil's governor, yeah, Brazil's governor of the state of Para in Brazil had come to negotiate with Ford to bring his production down there in 1926, and this agreement gave Ford access to 2.5 million acres in an area called Boa Vista, and he was of course exempted from the export taxes, and he gave back 9% of his profits to Brazil, 2% of which went

back to the local area. Now it took two years to build it, but by 1928, Fort Landia was up and running and it was set up as a factory town and it offered local workers good wages. But because Henry Ford was Henry Ford, he wanted full control over the lives of his employees who came to work in these towns. And remember, this is long before he's forced to unionized. So he lures them by promises of good wages, which were of course quickly lowered. And then he says, well, if you're going to work for me, you have to abstain from booze, prostitutes, carousing, football, which we call Soccer, Smoking, all of that is, yeah. Why did he hate soccer?

Like, idleness, sports, yeah. Okay, so he wouldn't have sponsored a baseball team. It was just like No, I was too much doing that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Granted. Yeah. But like actually he might have sponsored a baseball team because that's an American sport. But I think there was just some, you know, like your culture sucks kind of shit going on there. Yeah, that's kind of what I was leading up to there. Yeah. And he even forbade these things in people's own homes. Like, a little bit because of the company town

and they're rising the homes. Exactly. Now workers had almost every aspect of their day planned and it was tightly controlled and tightly regulated by hired investigators. Again. Oh, Jesus, really? Yep. It's good money in it. And as usual, people are going to find a way to do what they want, which means in this case, the same thing that it meant in the United States, river boats. So there were river boats that were set up

outside of the municipal jurisdiction. And this leads, of course, to revolts in the 1930, in 1930, by the way, which were then put down by the Brazilian government because the Brazilian government took the side of a corporation. This only ever happens in Brazil. Thank goodness that in America, we don't have the government shooting striking workers with the army anytime they run a foul of large business. Yes? Did I miss it? No, never mind. Okay, no, don't worry about it.

Don't worry about it. I'll just put it down. Because of course, Brazil is that corrupt. No one else says. Yeah, no. Yeah, we certainly wouldn't see such a thing in America. No. So some of the mining,, certainly not the mining industry. No, not at all, not at all. And wilds true similar things would happen two years later in the Ford Hunger March and seven years later in the battle. Overpass, I'm sure that those were both isolated incidents, just like the other over over 100 isolated incidents that happened in the United States, wherein the local police, or the state police, or the National Guard, or the army actually shot at and killed workers who said, hey, it'd be really cool to, you know, have a living wage.

But I know. I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, no. I digress. So this control in Brazil over the people who worked for him in that spot included in insisting that they live like suburban Michiganers by mandate. And this meant you have to eat hamburgers. And even more importantly, this means mandatory square dancing. I'm going to say that again, mandatory square dancing, literal mandatory fun. Yes. You can see why they were involved in 1930.

And okay, that was, that was, that was a joke when, when, you know, I was a kid. My dad was, was a navy. It was, no, where we, we, you know, there'd be a party or something being thrown by the, but the CEO of the squadron. It's mandatory fun. Right. Right. Oh, like, and that's the military. Right. Like, like, it's, it's one thing in the culture where you're actually signed on to be their property. Yeah, yeah, where you, yeah. And, and, and where, you know, the, the, the military culture is, is a thing. But like, dude, I signed up to help you produce vulcanized rubber.

Right. And you're paying me. And you're paying me. And this is kind of at will employment since we're not unionizing. Yeah, like the fuck, man. Yeah. So unsurprisingly for landia fails. And by the way, there are pictures of native Brazilians

square dancing and the looks on their dead, dead eyes. Um, it's just so sad. So Brazilian square dancing also failed, uh, and international anti-semitism. Well, we can agree that it had one hell of a horrifying run in the 1930s and 40s. And international white supremacy went for even longer. And here's a few instances that are 100% Ford inspired. So you might remember in May of 2020, our president at the time said, quote, the company founded by a man named Henry Ford, good blood

lions, good blood lions, if you believe in that stuff, you got good blood while standing in a Ford plant. Yeah. Do you remember when very fine people in Charlottesville shouted with their tiki torches that Jews will not replace us in 2017? Yeah, I do. Mm hmm. Remember when when when Trump in September of 2020 said, quote, he was in Minnesota and 2020 said, quote, he was in Minnesota. And he said, quote, you have good genes. You know that, right?

You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn't it? Don't you believe the race horse theory? You think we're so different? You have good genes in Minnesota. Minnesota is 79% white. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In 2018, the son of a slum lord who got arrested in New York in the 1920s, his son later grew up to be president said, quote, I'm a big believer in natural ability. If Obama had that psychology, Putin wouldn't be eating his lunch. He doesn't have that psychology and he never will because it's not in his DNA. I believe in being prepared and all that stuff, but in many respects, the most important thing is

an innate ability. And when I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I'm basically the same. The temperament is not that different. Talk about telling on yourself. Without knowing. Talk about telling on yourself without knowing. Like without you don't you don't see a cell phone like that very often. Yeah. I mean, it's it's like a triple gainer of a cell phone. But I mean, how is any of this different than Ford or the guy that he was reading or it isn't any different.

No, it's all the same. It's all the same horse shit. I mean, no race horse. Yeah, dude, once it goes through the animal, it doesn't matter what kind of horse it was. It's just horse shit. Okay, fair enough. You know, and and again, you know, racehorse theory, okay, that's great. Look at a thoroughbred. And look at what happens when a thoroughbred say, takes a turn to sharply. You have to put the animal down because it's been manipulated over generations of conscious breeding to the point that you can't like trying to get a purebred race horse to

a heel a fractured limb. Right. It's not happening. It just doesn't happen. You you have to put the animal out of its misery. Well, Aesop's fable had one about a draft horse and a race horse. Yeah. That's more than 2000 years old. Yeah. Like, people knew this stuff for a while, but, you know, talk about missing the point. Yeah, yeah, of course. He also, the son of Fred Trump. He also said he didn't have to study very much or consult experts or learn anything, because he would reach the right decisions, quote, with very little knowledge other than the knowledge I had plus the words common sense, because I have a lot of

common sense and I have a lot of business ability. A lot of people said, man, he was more accurate than the guys who have studied it all the time. How how Alan Ginsburg can you get with your cell voting? Well, just stream of consciousness. Well, okay, everything, everything that man does now is stream of consciousness because he can't maintain a coherent thought long enough to speak in an actual paragraph. These are facts. You know, yeah.

Like, I'm sorry, but there's, I don't know what form it is. I've heard multiple theories, but he's clearly suffering from some kind of dementia. Well, I also think that this is, this is what happened. I think it's, there's not a term, there's not a syndrome for it, but it's essentially your gaslit by your own success or by well, honestly, gaslit by your gaslit by your own privilege. Isn't even that a way.

Yeah, there's there's part of it is a gaslit by your own privilege. And there's actually a term that's now being applied to the state that everybody believes Putin has stuck in right now, which is the dictators trap. Yeah, where nobody can say nobody nobody can say no to you. Nobody can say no to you. Nobody can give you the unvarnished truth because it's afraid of you. Or there's the, I think it's called,

what is it? It's the over earnest trap where only one person can give you the gym varnished truth. No, I mean, nice. Thank you. Hi. So now one of Neo Nazi websites, No, what do I mean? Nice. Thank you. Hi. So now one of neo-Nazi websites, not even mad about that one.

Well good. Good. This will piss you off. neo-Nazi websites, dipshits and very fine people today still engage in Ford's bullshit. The international Jew is still sold on Amazon. A reviewer said quote, it's just amazing how enlightened Henry Ford became while living in a world of Jew contrived deception and ramping up in the USA. The European converted fake Zionist Jew has conquered America, spelled it with a K. Judaism equals communism

five stars. I couldn't find the date on that review and I looked for way longer than it deserved, but really one of the weirdest moments of Ford's influence and Ford's anti-Semitic reach just coming from beyond the grave that I saw where Ford's stain was still noticeable was when NBC aired Schindler's list on network TV on February 23rd of 1997. Commercial free. You know who sponsored it? Ordinboater company? Yes. And so before Schindler's List starts, the logo appears on a black screen and just hangs there silently. And then it disappears. Now, like, and then you start the movie all about the Holocaust. Now when Ford was 83 years old, he was actually reportedly shown newsroom footage of the concentration camps.

And his reaction was to collapse and have a stroke, to which I say good, because I'm petty that way. And it's very likely that it was, I think, I'm theorizing, but it's very likely that this stroke came about as a recognition of his own contribution to what the Nazis had actually done. I certainly hope so. But what I want to finish on is a funnier note.

So I don't know how to transition from an old man who deserved it, had a stroke when he saw a newsreel footage of the Holocaust that he helped legitimize and propagate and yeah and stoke. So I don't know a funny way to transition from that. Maybe there shouldn't be. It should just be this jarring. But so something funnier than an old racist having a stroke. Do you remember a few years ago when Amazon was trying to decide where to locate its next fulfillment center and city leaders were like falling over each other to get to lick Jeff Bezos' taint the best. Yeah, yeah. Well, I always thought the perfect town should have been Dearborn Michigan. Okay. I mean, you've got low wages, anti-union mechanized process, strict monitoring of the workers' activities down to the second,

and a city that's ready to sacrifice its workers for a slightly lower cost because they'd soon do that then demand the head of a company actually take a smaller paycheck, checks every single box. Yeah, and since Ford had failed going from Dearborn to the Amazon, I thought it'd be nice to bring back the Amazon back to Dearborn. Nice. Nice. Nice. That's...

That's... That's Jesus. Henry Ford, Nazis, and Square dancing. Wow. You know, and the interesting parallel that you never got around to saying anything about, but I kind of want to touch on. Now that we're, now that we're absolutely out of that, is the goal on the radio between urban hip hop radio and country as a genre. Because what you were talking about about old, old, timey music hours in the 1920s, one of the unintended kind of positive consequences of that was the, I don't know if I want to say revival, but the continuation or revitalization of bluegrass

and those musical traditions, which then morphed over the years ironically because of exposure to rockabilly and rock and roll and two lesser extent jazz. And turned into country music. Right. Which has then gone through multiple iterations. Interactions. Yeah.

There was a country, country, Western, and then yeah, I mean, there was the Nashville sound in the Baker's Field sound. Mm-hmm. And then what I find interesting is there is simultaneous lives. It's this weird thing in modern radio culture where you have stations that are very, very clearly you know, focused on hip hop as a genre.

Right, you have narrow casting. Yeah, and then what you have on country radio, if you tune into a country station, you're going to find a, I don't know, 25, 30% of what you find is gonna be very clearly very much. Okay, this is clearly directly descended from the quote unquote old-timey music that Henry Ford would have wanted to propagate

and their continuation of that tradition. And then I can only imagine Henry Ford having another stroke when he heard any level of top 40 modern country music. Sure. Because it's all so heavily influenced by rap and hip hop. Well, you know, that's not a new new phenomenon. Well, no, it's not. But, you know, the not. But you know, the interesting, you know, the thing that I find interesting though is people who are really, you know, in more recent with millennials and younger folks, it might not be as much a thing. But I know when I was going through high school and

through college, and I mean, this is 20 years ago. So, you know, take this. That's when the last time terrestrial radio was relevant. Yeah, you know, and so as you say, take this with a lick of salt, but I remember there was a lot of kind of antagonism to buy country fans to ward hip hop and to ward urban music and kind of vice versa. But I mean, I witnessed it from the one side, you know, being, you know, descended from Oakes. You know, and yeah, it's just it's it's weird to me that this modern genre that has its roots in this very racist, anticultural blending instinct has now turned into something that's like, okay, well, if you take the twang out of the singer's voice,

you could be hearing this on any other radio station, including a hip hop radio station. Well, you know, I think, I think the point that you're bringing up there is actually it's a cyclical one, because what you just said is you take that one aspect of style out of it, suddenly you've got music that is made essentially for the young masses. And if you go back to country music in the 1930s,

it was working class, supporting strikers, et cetera, et cetera stuff, right? And then if you go a little bit further forward, you get R&B and you get country music blended together in Memphis by Elvis Presley, commercially successfully done. He was sneaking into black clubs all the time, but he he blended those two things. Despite his Nickzonean tendencies politically, he he absolutely was an integrationist when it came to music. His his music had an integrational component to it. To the point where, you know, the again, you

got the whole Ed Sullivan not showing his hips back to the hips, by the way. But also, if you go forward just a little bit longer, you got the whole Ed Sullivan not showing his hips back to the hips, by the way. But also, if you go forward just a little bit longer, you get to the Alan Fried Concerts. And the Alan Fried Concerts would play, oh god, it's a group of brothers that would do country music. And I forget who it is, it'll come to me later, but he would play country music, very clearly country music. And then right afterwards, Alan Fried was a disc jockey. And he would play country music, and then he would play rhythm and blues. And then he would play rock and roll.

And the effect was essentially that all the kids, all the kids would dance together black and white. And the police raided an Alan Frieden concert in New York, in New York. They raided this and beat the living shit out of the kids, screaming, get those little cock suckers. And the parents of those kids supported the police, society supported the police. They raided a dancing hall, and there was no crime being committed, but they raided a dance hall because the police and frankly,

most of the adults that weren't Alan Fried were in a state of cultural rage at the blending of these barriers. And what you're talking about is a revisitation of that because what we saw in the 1990s, early 1990s, you've got, you know, Pat Buchanan, and then suddenly you've got Garth Brooks. And several other people like that. But if you look at how Garth Brooks dressed, he was wearing the cross-color shirts, but they were just black and white. They weren't the Pan-African colors that you saw,

a lot of hip-hop artists and rap artists wearing who were wearing cross-colored shirts, like DJ Jazzy Jeff, play from Kid and Play. I had responded to that. Oh yeah, but you're okay. You're right. But he's he's wearing cross-colored shirts as well. And he is reclaiming it on some level for white America. And you start to see this this splitting of white and black music. MTV starts playing Yo MTV Raps. And parents are really getting upset at all of these kinds of things. Oh, working out, yeah. Yes. And on the other side, they were getting freaked out about heavy metal and lamb metal. So there's

the, there's this narrowing of what's acceptable to the mainstream culture. But then you start to see that feeding its way into the top 40. So the top 40 becomes much more sanitized music, much safer. And now, and then you had like this essentially segregational buffet of music, where the music doesn't blend, even though you had public enemy and anthrax playing together. You had run DMC and aerospace playing together. You had various collaborations like that,

but they were groundbreaking collaborations, which is in itself telling. But then in the 2000s, you see it fracturing completely where I live here in Northern California, there is a station called 100.5. I forget what its tag is. But it used to be a top 40s and then it went to top 40s without the rap. It specifically was, and even in one of the commercials for it was like, oh, I hate rap. Like that was a girl's voice behind when it said top 40 music without the rap. And then there was another top 40 station that had the rap. Meanwhile, you had the modern rock station, you had the hard rock station, you had the

classic rock station, you had the soft rock station, you had three hip hop stations, et cetera, et cetera. And it became much more of a, if you want this kind of music, you go to this station, if you want this kind of music, you go to this station. Now, if you want to hear Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd at any time of the day, there's three stations. One of them will be playing it, but the rest of them, it's kind of like finding Gene Hath been a Robert Nero on TV. You know what, you don't know. I'm sorry, I know, I know which station you need to go to and you only have to wait 10 minutes.

Or you don't want to wait 10 minutes. Don't worry, it's two stations over. Yes, sure. So you had like this fracturing and it was acceptable. Everybody was kind of in their lane. Yeah. And you had people starting to blend genres again. You started to have, really you had like the Dixie chicks,

now the chicks, blending that rock sound with the country sound in a way that was new enough. And then of course they stood up for something they believed in, so of course everybody had been in them. But they kind of kicked that door open, and you start to see that happening in country all over again. And of course, 9-11 happened, so you had jingoism. But it's so for a while, it separated out,

and again, white national identity and stuff, kind of clung to that. But then you start to see, oh, I like this kind of music. And you had Hick Hop. You had, you know, a few musicians who were black who actually liked that kind of music and started breaking ground there, Cowboy Troy, Darius Rugger of Hoodie and the Blue Blowfish. And most recently, you had Little Nas X. I'm sorry, little Nas X. And you... Yeah, who used Trent Rezner's music as the background for his country music,

which by the way was a top country hit until the country music people said this isn't country. Yeah. And when that happened, people were like, how is it not country? Talks about horses, talks about being a solitary person, talks about cowboy lifestyle. How is this not country? And the answer was, we have ephemeral reasons. And it's because the dude's black and queer. Let's let's talk about why it's not yeah. Yeah. So I mean, you know, again, Henry Ford. Yeah, pretty much. So okay, so that's that's what

we've leaned and we got an an extra little jolt there of a really quick tiptoe through the tulips. What are you reading my friend? Well, right now I'm reading a lot of student work because you only say that. Why are you assigning so much student work? They don't know how to write. You don't want to read it. I don't, why do you keep doing this to yourself? Because I teach English, my job is to teach them to write. Could you teach them English without teaching them to write and not having them read those

pesky books? Can you find some way and don't teach grammar either because that'll just turn them off? Can you teach English without teaching them to write and not having them read those pesky books. Can you find some way and don't teach grammar either because that'll just turn them off. Can you teach English without those three components? Because I think that'll make it so more kids pass. When did you start running for school board? Well, I'm taking administrative classes. So I'm just trying to make things more accessible to people who don't want to do worse. Yeah. Yeah. But beyond that, I tried and I'm going to continue trying to pick up and reread a stranger in a strange land by Robert Heinlein. He's the one that wrote Dune. God damn it. He's not the one that wrote Dune. I wish I was joking just to mess with

you. I'm not. That's how God I am. No, no, Herbert wrote Herbert Hoover. Now I'm kind of fucking with you. Yeah, okay. Yeah. No, Highland Road Starship Troopers. Okay, got it. Which we talked about on the show. And he also wrote, Stranger in a Strange Land, which, well, I'm, it's a classic of the genre. And at some point, I'm going to have to educate you about it. Because again, you confused timeline with Herbert there.

So like somebody has to do this for, for the, you know, literature. And because I'm a glad for punishment. But, you know, I'm, I'm but I'm rereading it. There's some really interesting insight to Heinlein's personality and his view of himself. I really think that Stranger is a strange land is number one. It's a huge departure from Starship Troopers. Like ideologically, it's operating on oddly on a same level, while on a completely different one at the same time. And it's also a much more philosophical book,

as opposed to polemical. Okay. And it is very, very revealing very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very clearly a self-insert. Okay. And it's not the protagonist. Okay. So yeah, anyway, I'm trying to find the time in liminal spaces within my day to pick that up and read it. Are you able to like hold a stitch together, reading of a book in the liminal spaces,

10 minutes, here, 20 minutes there? Are you able to do? I I have to sit down for half an hour at a time. If it's only if it's only 15 minutes, it's harder. Okay. But if I can find like you say if it's if it's like half hour, right 25 minutes, half an hour that I can get far enough into something. Sure. That it doesn't evaporate in my head. And depending on depending on the book, the other thing, the other thing that has happened frequently, like it took me forever to finish Shogun Majem's Clivell, which is like a doorstopper of an all on his huge book. Right. And I picked it up and I would read that's the one about the second amendment, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Show gun. Right. No, it's it's about fat, hairy queer men, not wearing sleeves. The right to bear arms. Yeah. Nice. I like, I like the way you managed to tie both of those together. Good job. You're welcome. Um, shout out to my old friend Keith. So, I, okay, I'm not going to be a bear. It's okay. All right. So, um,

like, but when I, when I was reading it, I'd be able to sit down and like over the course, and just back when I was a student. So I was able to sit down for like two days, I'd be able to spend a couple of hours each day reading it. And then stuff would happen, and I wouldn't pick the book up for a month. Oh wow. But because I'd had two good days, right, I was, I was

then able to come back to it after a month, and I'd maybe have to go back to your three pages. Then I'd be like, okay, sure, sure, remember I am. There's no way I could do that now. Okay, yeah, yeah, I could do that now. So, so this, we'll see how successful I am and how long it takes me to get through it, but I'm working on that. Okay, cool. About you. And I do, by the way, highly recommend the book.

Two and a half years. Stranger and strange lines. Stranger and a strange line. Okay. Highly recommended. Okay. And you, sir. Yeah, I've got two books I'm going to recommend.

The first one is called Mushroom in the Rain. And it's by Mira Ginsberg, but it's an adaptation of a Russian story called Ryzen Shine by I think it's Vasilie Suteyev. Don't quote me on that. Just look for Mira, M-I-R-R-R-A Ginsberg mushroom in the rain and I'm also going to recommend Swimmy by Leo Leoni. recommend Swimmy by Leo Leoni. Now both of these are children's books. Okay. And actually I'm going to give you one third one. It's called the Day of the Cow Stopped Typing. Oh no, I'm sorry, it's called Clack Clack Move, the Day of the Cow Stopped Typing. And I might give you that book to read to your young and because all three of these are absolutely books that have to do with collective action. And I figure finishing up forward with children's books to say, fuck you to industrialists,

seems like the best way. So the mushroom in the rain is about finding shelter in a storm and how even though you don't think you have enough, you always have a little bit more, and you can, by taking a little bit of discomfort, everybody can be safer. Swimmy is about a fish who does not fit in with all the other fish. He looks nothing like them, therefore they want nothing to do with him, until a predator who is very big comes at them,

and he says, I will be the eye. And they all basically form into the shape of a much bigger fish, and he is now the will be the eye. And they all basically form into the shape of a much bigger fish, and he is now the eye of the fish. And in many ways, it's a self-insert, speaking of which of Leoleonius, because he's like, well, as an artist, I see what other people don't, and I will be their leader.

But also, everybody has a role to play. There are different ways to be leaders, and you can all protect each other. Clack, Clack, Moo is about cows that type for farmer brown, and they basically say, we need electric blankets and farmer brown says, fuck you. And they say, all right, fine, we're not typing anymore. Fuck you.

And then they have a labor dispute. Okay. Three children's books that I hope We're not typing anymore. Fuck you. And then they have a labor dispute. Three children's books that I hope to goodness people buy and send to Henry Ford's relatives. So again, mushroom in the rain, swimming, and clack, clack, moo. So those are the ones I recommend. Read them to your children. Cool. Yeah. So, you know, on social media, people can find me at the Harmony on Twitter and Instagram, the Harmony one on TikTok, although I've been so busy with striking and everything else that I've not put out any good content lately. Some would say ever, but any new good content lately. And also you can find me the first Friday of every month

at Luna's in Sacramento, Slee and Pun. So if you have proof of vaccination, double-vaxed at least and a mask and $10, you should come see capital punishment at the first Friday of every month at Luna's unless there's a huge uptick in the pandemic or we find that our precautions are not enough at which point we're going to have to go silent for a while. But for right now it's on. We're going to be able to find you. I can be found on TikTok as Mr. underscore play lock, where so far, I've mostly ranted about Star Wars.

Fight English. I didn't, yeah, no, I understand. But I don't know if I want Star Wars to be that niche because fans are nuts. That means engagement. Don't you know how this works? True. Also death threats.

I don't know if I'm down for that. Get your tenure first, then. Yeah. Yeah, okay. On Twitter, I can be found at eHBladeLock. And we collectively can be found on Stitcher. Stitcher? Stitcher.

Sorry. On Stitcher and in the Apple podcast app, at look for Geek History of Time. Our website is www.GeekHistoryTime.com. And our collective Twitter account is Geek History Time. So if we have made some kind of terrible error if you want to share some detail with us that you know about the history of Ford Landia, which I didn't say anything at the time, but what a fucking name. Like, do you think you're an emperor? Like, yes, he did. Yeah, obviously. But like, yeah, if you have something you want to argue with us about there, that's the place to do that. Send all corrections and expect retractions from us on there. We absolutely do read and make retractions we have in the past.

Yeah, so yeah. And so if you are just now finding us, then please hit the subscribe button and give us a review, give us the five stars that you know we deserve in whatever app it is that you're viewing us or listening to us. Also, if you're just now finding us, you started by listening to episode four of something. Yeah. Who are you? Right.

Go back and let's do a one shot. You know, it'll be less depressing. It will. One, it'll, well, maybe depends on the one shot we did. But, um, I think we've any done any depressing one shots. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Usually it takes at least two shots for it to truly be really, yeah, real downer. Yeah, that's true. Um, so yeah, uh, but go go back check the buffet. And yeah, thank you for joining us. Well, for a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blaylock. And until next time, swing your partner around and round. And I shall be the I. you