Red Scare - Scamopticon

Episode Date: April 20, 2021

The ladies discuss Foucault's posthumous reckoning over pedophilia allegations, Kanye's post-divorce dating moves, and Anna Delvey's appearance on Aussie 60 Minut

Okay. We're back. We're back. I hit again. Yeah. How do you feel? I'm okay. I've been working a lot this week. So I'm exhausted. I bet you are too. Yeah, we're both we're both exhausted. It's not just me. Yeah. We have a lot going on. And yet, we show up every two and a half weeks. Every 10 to 14 days, we buckle down and bring you some piping hot content, unedited podcast full of spicy takes. Yeah. Oh, we have merch that we should plug. Oh, yeah. Redscaremerch.com. The I guess we can say it's sopranos tired. Though for legal purposes, we call it the the capo tea. Yeah. And the Tony and arena sets. Yeah, I'm really like into coming up with creative ways around copyright law. Like I like naming things like

my dream job would be like, I don't know if this job exists, but to name like makeup colors or nail polishes. Yeah, I mean, that's definitely someone's job. Yeah, it is. But I don't know if it's like a separate designation. Yeah, I don't think you can apply to do that exclusively in the cosmetic industry. I would love to be a grocery bagger. I just rewatched American Beauty and I love the part where Kevin Spacey quits his job, extorts him out of money and then gets a job as like a fast food worker. Yeah, that's really cool. And he starts smoking weed and lifting. Why did you what prompted your rewatch of American Beauty? I was doing research for our episode today, which is all about paedophilia. No,

I don't know. I just felt compelled. The fee but it's a good question. Yeah, I got it. It's a pretty good movie. It's good for an American movie. I'll say that much. It's been a long time since I've seen it. But I remember holding it in some esteem. Yeah, I mean, it does a good job of like diagnosing and depicting stifling suburban dread. Yeah. And Thora Burge reveals her big, big naturals. Yeah, I was surprised by that. How old were Thora Burge and Mina Savari? Like 21. Yeah, in their early 20s. They look 16. They're playing team. Yeah. They both show off their Mina Savari, her small naturals. Yeah. She's pregnant now. She's one. Yeah, she's another one of these like COVID pregnancies. Oh, wow. Yeah.

Great. Congrats, Mina Savari. You will never hear this because you're probably a normal person who doesn't listen to the pod. You're not a total degenerate. How far along is she? I don't know. I have no clue. Jackson Brittany had their baby. I know. I know. It like looks like my baby from the back. It has the same like art mallet. I hope they get to meet one day. Yeah. Like who will be serving whom a drink? What's this tube? Oh, that's my breast pump tube. Sorry, it doesn't it's sterile. It does not come into contact with any milk. You don't even have to wash it just pumps air. Right. Yeah. Does this the suction? Yeah. Cool. I hate being like breast pumping. Breastfeeding. Yeah. No, I don't mind breastfeeding, but I

hate breast pumping because I feel like a giant factory farm udder. Yeah. It sucks. And the equipment looks really it's not like medical beige color. Yeah. It's unpleasant. Yeah. It's they should look cute. They need a neoliberal rebrand, I think. Yeah. They should make it look like a kind of like Kiki de Montparnasse like lingerie trunk or something not like a defibrillator intubation device. Libertine baby for your anti racist Libertine baby. My gender non conforming progressive baby congrats to Brittany and Jack. Yeah. Mazel tov. Yeah. Miracle of life. And to Jack's future mistresses. I'm sure he's already cheated while Brittany's been pregnant. I shouldn't say that. I'm not sure. Yeah. So like, like we can only speculate.

Yeah, I'm trying to be like extra charitable now. Are you? Yeah, I'm not going to say anything. Actually I might say something mean about Foucault today, but probably not even. I don't care. The thing is like, you I realize how stupid I am because I literally don't give a shit about anything. Like sometimes I like go on Twitter and I'm just like somebody like fill me in on the latest and like mass shootings and anti racism, but I really don't give a shit. I mean, yeah, I feel like there was like a couple mass shootings last week. Yeah, there's a lot like 10 maybe increasing and like frequency and if there's not like a racial element, they basically don't get a lot of play. Yeah. And why should they? It's we're

all exhausted. Yeah, there's nothing. America's favorite hobby. Going postal. By the way, I read a really cute headline about how like, actually, because I remember like at the start of COVID, there was a lot of like really kind of plausible hot takes that like at least we're going to have a moratorium on mass shootings. But I think 2020 was like the biggest year for American gun violence. Yeah, they thought that like the gunmen would observe social distancing and yeah. Hashtag stay home to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Yeah, sure enough. Yeah, they're they're not beholden to those those conventions. No, mass shooters have their own agenda. Yeah, they're not like into COVID protocol. It's Ramadan. Oh, happy

Ramadan. Do you say that? Yeah, I think so. Is it a joyful occasion or is it? I mean, fasting is always a joy. It's always something to celebrate. My parents came to town last weekend. It was nice. I took them around and we took them to a hockey game in Jersey. Yeah, which was fun. My dad seemed to have a good time. We the paddock shooting did come up over dinner because I'm big, a strong and my parents still live there. And they had friends who were at the one of my dad's friends was like a lighting technician at the country music concert that Steven Paddock did the shooting. And he said that there was no way there was just one one gunman. Okay. And I believe it. I guess I'll also take your dad's

friend on day. Yeah, well, he's Russian, then I'll definitely take his word for it. Yeah, but he was like, he didn't get shot, obviously, but there was so much shrapnel and like gunfire that he had like burns on his legs because he was wearing shorts like up on like a on a rigging platform or something. Anyway, we still have happy Ramadan. All of that is to say we still really haven't gotten to the bottom of the paddock thing. So yeah, I don't anticipate there being a lot of productive conversations about these more recent mass shootings. Yeah, or like clarity or any progress and alleviating just senseless violence around. And that's the one of the principles this country was why should it be any different just like France

was founded on the principles of pedophilia, child worship. They they love beauty and leisure. They do so did the kids is just part of the court. It's a decadent pastime. Yeah, it's certainly symptomatic of a kind of depraved moral rot, I think. Yeah, the French, their moral rot, the pedophilia in general, I think specifically in a in a in the context of French culture, which you know, invented liberalism. And that's sort of its logical conclusion, you could say. Yeah, they kind of they invented liberalism directly and then invented wokeness indirectly. Yeah. So they're to blame for our current predicament. It's there's a lot going on. There's a lot to unpack. Yeah, in the Foucault conversation. Yeah, yeah. American

moral rot is like, you know, like a decaying piece of like burger meat. But like a French moral rot is like a ripening piece of soft cheese. Yeah, they're like a little bit different or a nice vintage wine. It's a little more sophisticated. So yeah, Foucault, should we jump right? Yeah, I guess let's get into to Foucault, who has fallen under fire and has been trending these past few weeks. After Guy Sorman, I'd like to call him, but I know better. That's the French pronunciation. Okay. I did a really clever thing today at the fancy cheese shop in Essex Market, where I made the guy behind the counter recommend a bunch of soft cheeses just so he would pronounce them so that I could learn the pronunciation

because I'm such a provincial bumpkin that I'm like, afraid of going to French restaurants like I don't even go to Lucien, because I don't know how to pronounce steak a poivre. Moules free. Anyway, yeah, Guy Sorman, who I guess who I've never heard of, but I some like conservative thinker of note. Yeah, France gave in interview promoting a new book of his on like a late night talk show and then did a follow up interview with the Times in the UK, which was also like a Tory newspaper, where he described Foucault's time in Tunisia in the late 60s as being riddled with pedophilic activity. And he specifically claimed that he had sex with boys between the ages of eight and 10 in Tunisian graveyards. Yeah, the graveyard

detail really did it for me. Yeah, which is a pretty salacious accusation to make, especially considering Foucault is long dead and unable to defend himself. But I yeah, I sent you an article like a week ago from a public seminar with James Miller, who's like a preeminent biographer of Foucault's, which was translated from an interview he did with like a Chilean newspaper. That was called like why we shouldn't cancel Foucault, even though he had sex with minors in Tunisian graveyards. And this was all sort of in response to the claims made by Guy Sorman. And in that article, they link to, this is a good episode because neither of us can pronounce French stuff. They linked to a website called JeuneAfrique.com that

the article submitted. That sounds pornographic. Anyway, this interview with James Miller said that the that Norman's claims were sort of backed up by the reportage done by this like Franco African website. But then I read that article through like Google Translate and they really didn't. That article basically debunked them a bit and said that though he did fuck lots of like young Tunisian guys that they were primarily like ifebes who were like in their late teens. Yeah. So like, yeah, was he fucking nine year old male prostitutes in Tunisia or 16 year old male prostitutes in Tunisia? I mean, there's a difference. Yeah. You know, sure. Yeah,

I agree. But so but it's funny. What's interesting for me is how reticent everyone is to cancel Foucault. I mean, if you're going to cancel him for anything, it should be his crimes against language, not his crimes against children, but which have probably contributed also to other people's crimes against children. But like, yeah, it's funny, because he's sort of like the grandfather, like the patron saint of wokeness. So like, it's hard to cancel him because he's like the main guy that appears in all like queer studies, books and manuals. Right. You could say that he's sort of pioneered identity politics in a way. Yeah. But because I'm a charitable person made even more charitable by the pregnancy

hormones leaving my body. I have to, you know, you really have to question like the veracity of these allegations. Like how do you prove that he was diddling kids in Tunisia? Well, the kind of discrepancy and the claims as to their ages is really besides the point because I'm sure that he was and there's a lot of evidence to sort of corroborate that he was definitely having sex with like younger people who may have technically been minors, though all of this is also underscored by that open letter that him and all those other French and electoral pedos wrote in this in the late 70s calling for me. Yeah, that was like an interview that they did sort of after the fact about the letter. But so in

the late 70s, he was advocating for like decriminalizing sex with minors and abolishing an age of consent in France, which I didn't realize sort of was was the case. Until recently they succeeded. They succeeded earlier this week in passing legislation that established 15 as the age of consent in France, whereas prior it was, I think there was sex with minors was criminalized, but there wasn't like a hard line age of consent, right? And Foucault was of the opinion that it was a little bit that an age of consent was sort of arbitrary and that it should be up to like a judge to decide whether the child is hot enough to tell her exactly. Yeah, I mean, like on one hand, he's not wrong. Like what 15 is a really

weird French age of consent to implement, because it's like, on one hand, the French have to fall in line with the changing mores of the day and become like more woke and more progressive or whatever. But on the other hand, they have to be like annoying contrarians about it and introduce like a fuck you clause and make it 15 and not like 16, you know, it's like a little too young, but it's not 14, which is like way too. I mean, that's the thing, right? Like, where do you, where do you draw the line? And Foucault and the French post structuralists, whole thing was sort of like about obliterating those lines, which they saw as sort of like oppressive and Foucault, especially for him,

I think the discourse around age of consent was the thing that what James Miller says in that interview, basically, is that he does essentially believe Guy Swarman's claims, but that they are very much sort of in line with with Foucault's thinking. Yeah, well, that's the other thing. It's like, I then sent you that article from that guy Al Jazeera, some journalist or opinion columnist who was arguing that it's time to have a reckoning for Foucault that he must be held accountable, all these are contemporary woke buzzwords or whatever. And the Foucault, you know, he likens him to Paul Gauguin, who famously molested Tahitian girls and then made paintings about it or whatever.

But yeah, in that Al Jazeera article, he says that like, while Gauguin sort of like grappled and embraced his his demonic explanations, Foucault was somehow more discreet or obfuscated them. But I don't think he did. I mean, literally, he spoke on at length and on record about the question of child sexuality, which like I hate this topic because I hate to even ponder the child sexuality. But like, I don't he wasn't hiding anything or being strategic about anything, it just like at the time, the mores were different. And like in a broader sense, having nothing to do with pedophilia specifically. And your sexual preferences or predilections were not it was not expected

that you those were codified or canonized as a sexual identity, which is what everything is now. Yeah. And that's sort of what he I think took umbrage with was that he he saw like criminalizing sex with minors or establishing some kind of age of consent as expanding a legal category from like a crime or a transgression against a person into like the pedophile as being just like a categorically deplorable criminalized category of person. Yeah, they talk about it in that interview. It's like him. What's the other guy's names? It's like John Denay and Gee, something else hot hog and ham.

I don't know. They ham hog. They talk about how it's actually like a really interesting point that they make, they talk about how the that all these kind of psychiatrists and doctors and sociologists are lobbying to change the law, claiming that they have the interest of certain marginalized or vulnerable or high risk groups in their mind, when in reality, they're just looking to kind of elbow their way into the and take over kind of like the legal definition themselves. To seize arbitrary forms of power. Right. Or discipline as as would call it. And psychiatry has made itself sort of indispensable

in the realm of childhood and childhood development as a way of exerting sort of discipline and control. Yeah. Systematically. Inventing kind of creating new unforeseen arbitrary forms of power. It's like a power grab. And I agree, you know, I agree that there's something like Freudian in and something kind of damning in Americans, moral panic over pedophilia specifically, but sex crimes in general.

And I agree with their point that all of these people are jostling to create new power networks and power relations. That's for sure. But I also think on the flip side, there's a reason why most people's like reflexive instinct is to condemn pedophilia. Right. Well, because it's deviant. Yeah. And I think in the in the 60s and 70s, amongst the French intelligentsia, there was this sort of reactionary conflation of deviancy as it was applied, like not only to pedophilia, but also it's like homosexuality and other kinds of like non procreative sexual activity.

So I understand why, like, as a gay guy, Foucault was also sort of, yeah, preoccupied with like, obliterating these like arbitrary definitions of deviance and normalcy. Yeah. But oh, he's getting upset about about this. I know it's, it's, it's, it's, it's disgusting. But with, sorry, I got distracted by your sweet fussing. So France is basically having their like, me too, reckoning in a delayed way. There was an article in the New York Times last week by Nora Mitsoni, she called Powerful Men Fall one after another in France's delayed hashtag me too. And it, with like, this rush sort

of provision, establishing the age of consent in France and all of these other various like flash points, amongst other French intellectuals, most notably Gabriel Mattsnev, who is this like French petto, like very explicit petto writer who was kind of celebrated in France. What, what is, what is his profession other than pedophile? He was a novelist. Okay. He's like the Wellbeck of pedophilia. He was a novelist and a writer. And he published very explicit accounts of his like pedophilic exploits with girls and like Filipino boys. Okay.

So the sort of referendum on Foucault to me feels a little bit dubious and like it's sort of riding the wave of the, of the Mattsnev, the Mattsnev backlash and just the larger me too activity happening in France. But it's interesting because it's in a larger way. It's kind of a referendum on the whole 68 mentality in general that has been prevalent for so long. Well, I'll quote this interview with, with James Miller. Foucault was clearly clearly not the only one who tolerated sexual relations with minors in the 1977 letter in favor of modifying the consent law and decriminalizing consensual sexual relations with persons under

15 years of age was signed by numerous intellectuals including Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Gilles Deleuze, among others. Today, that position is untenable. Did it correspond to the cultural context of the French intelligentsia or to the morality of the time? James Miller says, I don't agree with you that the position was untenable. They were trying to provoke a debate. And even today, I believe this is a debate worth having. It's also true that the open letter of 1977 reflects a moment in human history when many of us inspired in part by authors like Foucault had come to believe that modern society suffered from a needless surplus of guilt and shame, much of it aimed at regulating sexual desire.

One motto of May 68 was, it is forbidden to forbid. My generation's glorification of excess and transgression was sometimes self-destructive and it sometimes facilitated egregious new forms of domination as Foucault himself came to understand and write about in his later work on quote, care of the self. So yeah, so this was all Foucault came to prominence in a period of like, not just post structuralism, but kind of like extreme permissiveness. But what I don't really understand about the 77 like age of consent debate that they were trying to provoke is like, if you're having consensual sex with a minor, then in what situation do you then even face like criminal prosecution? You know, it seems to me like

establishing an age of consent is a very like reasonable protective measure. Yeah. And though it might make like minors unduly subject to forms of power and discipline regarding their own like autonomy and consent, I think like if they really want to have sex with adults, they can basically do so discreetly after 15. Well even before if they like, if you're following like Foucault's reasoning that it's possible to have consensual sex with a minor, then it's sort of pod the age of consent in that case is still arbitrary because they could still you can still sort of do things that

are criminalized. Yeah. And people do constantly and don't aren't prosecuted for it. Yeah. And I think most people would argue that like children cannot consent to sex. Yes. That's a very good reason. Yeah. And that's, you know, it goes back to kind of that whole idea that was promoted most recently on the left and before that by the Clintons that that children are autonomous

actors and should be treated as such and should be allowed to engage in their own freedom of choice and all of this sort of thing. Following the example of other quote, vulnerable and marginalized groups like women in blacks being two good examples, right? But like, again, comparing children to like racial and gender categories is like comparing apples and oranges because children are at a different stage developmentally. Well, this is all also in line with Foucault's like ideas about the family, which he described as a space of constant surveillance and mentioned parents are quote, assigned and joined to take charge of the meticulous detailed almost ignoble surveillance of their children.

Well, that's true. And he's interested in the surveillance of children because to him it appears to be one of the historical preconditions for the generalization of psychiatric knowledge and power. Thus, by focusing more and more on the little corner of confused existence that is childhood psychiatry was able to constitute itself as a general authority for the analysis of behaviors. Yeah, sure. He he has a point, but I think this the family relationship predates psycho analysis.

Well, yeah. And also, like, you know, it's true that that parents are anxious about and effectively surveil their children. But that's the job of the family. I would rather have that job done by the parents rather than some opaque, like shadowy state institution or private institution, even worse, that like swoops in to take over the role. It's like, you know, I don't think you would advocate for that either. For him, it's sort of like surveillance, discipline and power kind of function all the way down from the smallest units of control, like the family until you know, the this is this whole like discipline and punish blah, blah, like everything's everything's a prison, including your mom

and dad kind of. Yeah, but it's great that your mom and dad are a prison because you learn to rebel against them and form a character and become your own person. Yeah. It's like people, you know, it's like people who object to Catholic school, the principle of Catholic school, because it's oppressive and stifling and the education often sucks and the priests might diddle you and the nuns look the other way. And it's like, yeah, barring this certain extremities like molestation and abuse. Catholic school is great because

it breeds people who are primed for rebellion. Foucault would disagree with you, but it's, you know, I had a boyfriend who would who shall remain unnamed who went to Catholic school and his whole polemic was railing against Catholic school and more broadly Catholicism. And I was like, the only reason you're such a raging ideologue is because you went through the experience of being oppressed by a major religion. Right. You'd be like a mouth breathing nub if there was no kind of conflict or tension introduced

into your life because God knows you had like permissive boomer parents. Yeah. Well, I think who are of the 68th generation, right? Yeah. Yeah. Who were smart enough to put him in Catholic school because they knew that they couldn't fulfill the role of disciplinarian, right? And they saw sort of probably firsthand the, the failings of mid century progressivism, which Foucault probably also eventually did. And I'm, I'm only, I've only read discipline and fun punish and the history of sexuality and not honestly, since college, but at the time I'm not defending Foucault. I think he's

an interesting writer. I think his like ideas have endured for a reason. I think they've had a lot of like negative consequences, like identity politics. And he is sort of as the, as the times interview says, like he's a sort of an early champion of like woke ideology. Basically, before, before we, before it was woke, you know, I forget what I was going to say. Well, I mean, this, I think the thing with Foucault is that he, sorry, go ahead. Right. Yeah, for Foucault, it's not just, yeah, he's a gay pervert. And for him, it's not just

Catholic school. It's any school. It's any sort of institution that the point of which is to, is to generate docile bodies as he called them are like perfect sort of like subjects. Yeah. But I mean, what's the alternative? I think Foucault is smart enough to acknowledge that Well, the alternative, yeah, it's like a libertine free for all. Which, by the way, is also a series of networks and institutions that are just more clandestine and opaque and beneath the surface. And there's other kind of like pressure groups and pressure points that pertain

in those situations that are probably even more devious than the original traditional institutions, because those you can openly rebel against here, you're constantly misfiring because you don't know what you're rebelling against. Right. That's like the pitfall. I mean, I'm not, I don't know enough about Foucault. I'm a person who has never read Marx, but like, you can see where his ideas are like unresolved or unexamined and breed the sort of society that he explicitly came out against. Yeah. And I think, you know, that is sort of, I think regardless of the ages of the boys

that he did old in Tunisia, you know, he did do a Orientalism and he did a colonialism. And he did, I think, in his fixation on child sexuality, a kind of bourgeois perversion. Wait, say more about that. Well, I, I am of the opinion of the opinion that pedophilia is incredibly deviant and more so than other forms of non procreative sex because it is a kind of symptom of bourgeois decadence. And I think that Foucault as a member of the French intelligentsia as an incredibly privileged and powerful person was sort of blind to his own place within, within a power structure.

Or he was aware of it, but was deviously concealing his self-knowledge in the face of the public. I mean, this is like what Poglia accuses him of, uh, deviously concealing his sources. I think also an advocate for man boy love, by the way. So that's an interesting horseshoe theory. Yeah. That Venn diagram is, is, yeah, it's really interesting that they're, they were both kind of like, the liberal to libertarian pedophile horseshoe. Michael Lynn should write an article about that.

Um, yeah. I mean, it's interesting. I understand their, uh, argument, but I don't agree with it. I think that certain things should remain sacred and like not diddling kids. And I think it is healthy for a society to demonize and criminalize certain kinds of desire as opposed to just behaviors. Yeah. Um, and I think pedophilia is one of those that's called me crazy. No, totally. It's a weird thing to like, again, defend. I, I understand, again, I understand their point intellectually. I think that they both produce a solid intellectual defense

of man boy love, but I think certain things, uh, are kind of irrational or sub-rational and should not be defended intellectually because you can find a kind of rational argument for anything. And right. I love the mind that pedophilia is like beyond the pale, especially with pre pubertal children. Of course. I mean, that's, it's truly, I think, I think it's a, I think, you know, say what you will about, um, psychiatry and psychoanalysis. I think, uh, it is a sickness and that psychoanalysis psychology does have some claim to like the domain of childhood and childhood development

and as such should, you know, we should heed the warnings of, um, of psychology of psychologists as they pertain to like the effects of sexual, I guess, I abuse. I mean, I would want my instinct is to call it like abuse or misconduct, but in, in, to be charitable, to fucolic sexual activity with children as having long lasting ramifications and traumas. Um, and I do think Americans probably are a little bit too uptight about, you know, child adolescent sexuality. It's clearly like something that we're, well, it's hypocritical because they don't really care about children otherwise. They like consistently again, thrust them into the market, make them suffer all manner of like indignity. Right. They don't really, there's no investment in

future generations in American society. So it's very kind of like telling that everybody's so fixated on pedophilia and consent in general, all this stuff. Yeah. Sort of the shoehorning of consent into like a purely sexual realm. Yeah. Because the children are robbed not only of their freedom, um, which they should only have an unlimited quantities because they're children, but, um, they're, they're robbed of their, um, future by kind of the nature of American society all the time. Like they're not to sound like a boomer, but they're like pumped full of sugar and meds from like the most tender of age. Well, that's why I think Americans are so preoccupied with pedophilia and pedophilic

conspiracies and child sexual abuse. And, um, because I think in a, in a Yungi way, um, uh, all, everyone is kind of like molested by society. Yeah. Molested by big pharma. But it was truly true. You know, there's, you know, we're like transgressed upon and violated in innumerable ways. Yeah. And it's very sort of small minded the way that Americans and now it seems France, um, we sort of put blinders onto all these other things and, and, and focus in a, a salacious and perverted way on like sexual abuse. Yeah. Well, with France, it's understandable. That's like their national compulsion, sexually abusing people in a racist way. That's what French people excella. They're like really

great. When I first heard the Foucault thing, I was like, well, yes, of course, classic, classic friend, French, French, classic French, but the guy that this reminds you of this thing that like, um, uh, this guy in LG in the Al Jazeera article wrote, he said, it's worth noting that none of the main newspapers in France, such as Limand or liberation or even in Tunisia had reported on Swarman's accusation. This absence of media reckoning with Foucault's alleged pedophilia in Tunisia can be linked with to the distortions and silencing that have characterized the way Swarman's claim has been framed by the Sunday Times. Um, it's really funny when like what I assume are progressive columnists fall in

line with like a conservative figure looking to denounce a progressive one, you know, um, but it's not about lies and distortions. It's the fact that like posthumous media reckonings are a very American and therefore Anglophone thing. It like, so of course the British and Irish rags and tabloids will pick up stuff happening in America because they speak the same language. Right. It's not really like France has a different, uh, kind of like moral outlook. I was thinking about this in terms of like, uh, But I think, I think it's changing very quickly, which the age of consent legislation is sort of testament to because only three years ago they, they rejected it. Um, and then sort

of in the wake of me to gaining traction there, now there's this sort of massive referendum that's a little bit not incoherent, but it's interesting because it's, it's grappling with a, a lot of foundations of French philosophy and thought that was started by people like Foucault. Yeah. It's kind of funny that he's like the victim of his own move, but like, I don't think he will be in the long run because, um, he's, he's too, um, dear and precious for, and the claims ultimately are a little baseless and clearly like politically motivated there. They're like dubious enough. Yeah. Foucault can't be canceled.

He won't be canceled. Yeah. He's like the Corona virus of ideology. He's like too strong to, he's like the chief ideal and double mutant strains. Yeah. I mean, proliferate themselves. And yeah, I, I really want to, I want to hear what Wellbeck thinks about this. Maybe he can get out of his alcoholic stupor and pen another little letter, a pistol that can be translated by somebody in the art community. My, my sense of it is it's really is it's like a pendulum swimming, uh, swinging like the way that, um, May 68 gave way to overpermissiveness and degeneracy. Now it's sort of like swinging the other way and is quickly going to become like overly corrective and punitive.

It'll become another form of degeneracy. Exactly. And then it'll swing back and people will like, there will be backlash. I think we're in a, in a paradoxically very conservative moment in the West ultimately. And you know, me too, does have a, a, a puritan bedrock. Yeah. And I mean, it, this is a very also kind of like cold take and boomer take, but the progressives have become the conservatives as like literally everybody has pointed out. Yeah. Um, the problem is that their conservatism is like incoherent and bipolar and like arbitrary, which is scary and does not respect due process or like freedom of speech. Exactly. And uses this framework of social justice,

um, in a way that isn't truly in line with progressive values, which I don't particularly care about because I am kind of conservative. I mean, you have to be because like, I think like all creativity, um, and all liberation comes from constraint fundamentally too much freedom is like inviting, um, the kind of pathological situation that we have in America, like, you know, where it's like a slippery slope from, uh, you know, uh, the me too movement to, uh, cancel culture, run a mug. Yeah. To then in 10 years we'll be like promoting pedophilia, but only if the kid gets paid for it, you know, like it'll be that kind of thing. There'll be an app for it. And it's crazy because, you know, like Bernie Madoff

just died and like, I guess the other big theme of this episode, other than pedophilia is like conning or grifting or whatever. People don't really use the word grift or anymore. Um, and I saw, I think it was like Will Manniker who was tweeting about how ridiculous it was that Bernie Madoff was made into escape goat for the financial industry. Um, which is a take that, um, we can all agree with now, but was fairly controversial at the time. And I was like, well, how do people not see that Harvey Weinstein is this for sex crime? He's the scapegoat for sex crime. He is to sex crime. What Bernie Madoff is to financial crime. Um, an ugly, unlikable Jewish guy who did some bad shit, like indisputably and

undoubtedly, um, who is now going to, you know, be the kind of like person who gets nailed to the cross for the systemic abuses of like an entire industry or system that will continue to rage on unabated. Yeah. Well, it's interesting because in, um, Hollywood and academia, you know, the, um, they're liberal institutions and they have pedo problems because they were, they're very closely ingrained with sort of liberal fundamentals, which are per, like a permissiveness and freedom and that like May 68 credo of like it's forbidden to forbid, but it's very dialectical actually the way that that gives way to like, um, extremely punitive and forbidding ideology. Yeah.

Around language and sex and et cetera. Yeah. And it's also dialectical how like pedophiles spawn pedophile vigilante groups. Yeah. Like losers be getting losers. It's like an aroboros of molestation. It's yeah. I don't know. I don't actually know what dialectical means. By the way, I'm just like coming my, my mask off moment is that I like don't know anything about anything. It's not that I'm conservative. That's okay. Yeah. I'm looking at my notes. Uh, well, I was like, uh, preparing for the pod at home and Maddie asked what I was doing and I was like, Oh, they're like canceling Foucault and she was like from way back when and then she was like, like F O C A U L T like that guy. She was like, didn't he die like

a long as time ago? And I was like, yeah, you're, you're lucky that you don't have to waste any energy thinking about this shit. Mike Foucault, the great grand nephew of Michelle who's a model in New York city. Freud has like a great, great grandson who's a model, right? Oh, the guy that follows you on Instagram. Yeah, Jimmy. Yeah. That's cool. And his great or great, great granddaughter and or not Anna Freud. What's her about that sweater and candle girl? Yeah. Yeah. Um, anyway, uh, yeah, I don't know. This, this Al Jazeera article was very kind of like indicative of there's like a microcosm of everything because like the, you know, the title was like reckoning with Foucault's alleged sexual abuse of boys

in Tunisia. I'm not calling for Foucault to be canceled, but we need to address recent reports about his predatory behavior in Tunisia. And I thought how like weird and arbitrary that was like, you know, you would call for, we've called for plenty of other people to be canceled for much lesser offenses. And if these offenses are indeed true, he should be canceled, right? For being like a pedophile, according to their logic, not mine. But like, I mean, they're as good as true. I think they're the claims that that he made. Yeah. Are overblown and fabricated and clearly like the, um, the June F freak article I read made the point that like Tunisian cemeteries are very highly like surveilled. So what if it's very implausible

that he was like raping boys on gravestones and stuff? It's like a very, it's a very dramatized account of like, it's very cinematic, something that he, but I'm positive that he was like, you know, fucking like 17 year olds and definitely had a febophilic inclinations. And that's, you know, very French. And it's like many of his contemporaries, why they were so preoccupied with the page of consent and stuff. Well, yeah, that's the other thing. It's like, you know, all polemics, like I've said many times before, certainly all bad polemics and many good ones are inspired by some personal fixation or insecurity in the polemicist, obviously. Yeah. James Miller makes his biographer makes this case as well. I'm going to quote him

again. Um, they asked him, is it possible that Foucault developed his theories on sexuality to justify his behavior or that his ideas were born out of his sexual preferences? James Miller says, my own book argues that virtually everything that Foucault wrote was part of an effort to understand who he was and who he might yet become in part through an inquiry into limit experience undertaken both in theory and in practice. As the literary scholar, Leo Borsani, who knew Foucault Berkeley remarked to me, the life of his body was as important to the life of his mind. Foucault had always to wonder, should he consider himself as others in the past would have and some today still would as mad, abnormal, a criminal and a pervert?

Such questions, I think, were at the root of his most important philosophical and historiographic inquiries. Well, I've never read Foucault, but the answer is yes. Yeah. But that's, you know, that's what fringe thinkers are ideally. But this just goes to show kind of like, how narrow-minded and parochial and incurious the kind of contemporary academic or media discourses, like even the question, did X thinker write about why topic to justify his compulsions or indiscretions is the wrong question to ask. People write to understand and to examine and on a, not to justify or rationalize, you know, if we're talking out like good faith, like inquiry or whatever. And of course, like narcissistically, like in a benign way, you

are interested in things that directly concern you. Right, of course. Like I am suddenly having given birth interested in maternity labor and delivery as a microcosm of this whole like Ivan Illich discourse about the threshold when modern interventions and medicine and science become more harmful than helpful. And I feel kind of stupid about it because it's like very obviously kind of like a self-interested inquiry. But that's how, you know, people think you, you only kind of like learn, you can only learn from experience, right? Yeah, I think it's far more suspect to conserve concern yourself with sort of the plights and struggles of things that you have no relationship to.

Well, right, which is why I'm still obviously based in in some kind of some lack, psychological lack. But that's why I'm always suspicious of the contemporary American left who care more about Palestinians than what's going on in their own backyard. Like that whole issue, I understand that it's, you know, troubling and upsetting. It doesn't concern you. It's somebody else's conflict, you know? Solidarity is important if you're a, you know, that's that's a big thing for leftists. Sure, I think it's more like displacement and distraction. But like, yeah, I'm far more suspicious. No, I know, but I'm far more suspicious of caring about some like foreign

or international cause that has nothing to do with you than I am of like being interested in kind of like sexual or medical topics that possibly concern you directly on a psychological level, you know, Right. And it's far easier to like examine structures of oppression than examine the way that you tear an eyes over others in your own life. Yeah, definitely. But yeah, I can't believe I'm defending Foucault now, but I think like, obviously he wrote about these things, not out of any kind of like nefarious desire to naturalize or justify

his improper inclinations, but because his inclinations meant that he was interested in the topic. Yeah, he was like nefarious subject of his time who was able to think about things in a historical macro theoretical way and, you know, made a lot of great contributions along the way. Yeah, no, I mean, it's true. And like, you know, the last thing I'll say is that, you know, in reading, you know, I was perusing the Saljazeera article and I was thinking about how the title and the lead, I can't tell if they're like a dog whistle to sick

people on canceling Foucault or they're like a kind of like legitimately legitimate claim that he doesn't want to cancel the guy. But that's like, this is the legacy of Foucault is like spawning this kind of like indirect exercise of power where it that's like decentralized and outsourced to other people, right? Like you'll never be the one to cast the first stone, but you sit back and relax as others are canceled around you. Well, that's the penoplin action. We've really come full circle.

Yeah. Should we talk about Anna Delvy? Yeah. Oh, and Kanye. Oh, yeah, Kanye. Yeah. That's a little, a little story, but he broke his silence post divorce and said that the next person he wants to date is a child, a teenager, is an artist, which is an artist.

Which as I text to do is a euphemism for gay guy. Yeah. Congratulations on coming out. Yeah. He said he wanted to date an artist so they could speak the, speak the same language Foucaultian. The same gay language, he should just come out. He's yeah. It's an open secret.

It's, it's okay. Everyone loves gay guys. It's 2021. Exactly. Like he should date Pete Buttigieg. That guy's some kind of artist. Who, who do you think you'll date next? It is a little shady because Kim is kind of an artist.

Yeah. She's, she's like an artist in her own right. She has skims, she has a KTW beauty. I mean, she has a reality empire that in its own way is a kind of elaborate artwork. Yeah. Yeah. I'll take that. I'm trying to stretch the definition of artists to, to include podcasters.

There you go. So like any, every little bit helps. I think he was clearly drawn to Kim and the reason their relationship endured for so long was because she is like, I mean, he's clearly an astheed. Yeah. But she functions in her own way as a kind of, I don't know, aesthetic figure. Yeah. Like a totem of a modern femininity, I don't know.

And I think he wanted to be her stylist, but also wanted her to be his mother. And I think he like made the mistake. It's like that thing that like Jewish guys, when they date Asian chicks and they, they make the mistake of thinking that they're getting a reprieve from their demanding and domineering mother and getting something like submissive and docile, but they're actually getting their mother in like a different. They get a tiger, a tiger mom in return. Yeah.

I think maybe like Kanye thought he was getting like a warm and traditional Mediterranean woman and not like a commercial automaton. And that's like what he got. Cause Kim seem like, I've said this before too, for somebody who has all the trappings of like a domesticity and warmth, Kim is a really weirdly cold and functional person. Like she's like tan and curvaceous and like Armenian, but she doesn't have like, she doesn't have any like authentic maternal qualities in spite of popping out for kids, you know? There's a warmth there, but yeah, I wouldn't necessarily characterize it as maternal.

Yeah. She's not like Courtney is very maternal. Yeah. Kim has been. I remember when the keeping up with Kardashians came on the scene, my mother was like, well, that one's very pretty, but mark my word. She's going to have fertility issues about Kim. I don't know if that's, cause she didn't actually.

So my mom was like wrong. I mean, who knows. Yeah. That's true. My mom was like wrong for once, but like, I see what she's saying. Like she's like a weird kind of like, she's like a secretly entrepreneurial. Yeah. And in that way, not totally like cut out for, for motherhood though, I think she's doing

a decent job. Yeah. Probably. She's risen to, she's risen to the occasion, but yeah, she doesn't seem like a natural mother. Yeah. Um, but so Kanye wants to date a guy next. Yeah.

An art, an artistic guy. Yeah. So he should come to New York and come up on the pod. This is a great way to spread your message to a homosexual audience. Someone should send him a copy of drunken canal since he likes being kind of like having his finger on the pulse of what's new and hot. Maybe he could put a personal ad out and yeah, he should drunken canal and meet the man of his dreams and maybe he can date Kyle, Kyle, go gay for pay for Kanye.

Kyle's like, yeah. He's dabbling in, in a homoerotic, uh, fashion aesthetics, I think so. If you could see Kanye with an artist, male or female, who would it be? Um, hmm, I mean, Azalea Banks, uh, who posted about it. Yeah. And I think that they would be an, they would be an interesting pairing that's, but that's a lot of much like her, um, relationship with Ryder Rips. That's a lot of BPD energy.

Yeah. He should eat Ryder Rips. Yeah. There you go. Um, yeah, no, I think, uh, Kanye and Azalea would be a cute couple gay BPD hose. I was going to be charitable and say it would, it, it would be untenable because there would be like too much Gemini energy. I don't think two Gemini's could date each other.

That's like four people. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I'm trying to think of like who among us, Kanye, could date Glenn, Greenwald or Cox, um, Glenn formerly of Baccarato, not Greenwald. He's very happily married and, you know, not artistic. Yeah. Yeah, but I mean, that is a compliment. Yeah.

Um, what else about Kanye? I mean, it really was just a blurb. A blurb. Okay. We can, you can date Anna Delby. Interesting. Yeah. What is she?

She's not a Gemini. Is she? Good question. We actually don't know her sign. Um, let's look. Anna Sorikin, January 20th. She's an Aquarius. Oh, wow.

Very cool. Yeah. There you go. Makes sense. Um, she's creative. So she was on 60 minutes, but I guess it was Australia in 60 minutes. It took me a while to, I was like, why is this guy speaking with a retarded accent? Really funny.

Yeah. I think the same, right? Yeah, I think this is the first interview she's given since getting out of jail. To Australia in 60 minutes. That's depressing. She, she's deserving of American 60 minutes. She could do better. Yeah.

But I think she's got things. She's got things in the works. Yeah. I think. Well, she has her Netflix series and she probably has a book or something. Right. She's gonna be rich. And she's working on a merch line with Paul Koopa or something.

We have an inside track. I bet we should. We should try. We should have her on the podcast. Together, together on the show. Um, she's a, she looked great. She wants to dissociate from her, from her middle class Russian, Russian identity though. Um, well, it's funny because, you know, the media's line has always been like that she

convinced people that she was a German heiress and she's always like, I didn't convince anyone. Um, but it's like, no, she, she didn't, and she speaks to the thick Russian accent. You have to be a real idiot to like both think she's a German heiress. I mean, in that original piece about hers, the Soho Gryptor, they said that she sort of affected a weird aristocratic accent that was neither Russian nor German. So maybe she's talking in her more authentic voice in 60 minutes. So she's still, I don't know, that would be that, I would, that would be interesting.

I kind of, I mean, she definitely did con people, but I sort of believe her, uh, and I don't think she's a very sophisticated scammer and that she, yeah, she didn't maybe even actually like overly lie. Yeah. I don't think she did. Um, she also, I mean, again, like the framing is also very like Western and Anglophone that she's like, you know, in America as Bernie made off a test to you only get punished if you scam rich people.

Right. I mean, that's like, everybody knows this and she, I think the, the Russian philosophy is more like every rich person is a criminal and she's 30 years old. So she's like a child of the post-collapse era when like, you know, in Russia, she grew up in Germany, but, you know, she's close enough to Russia to like understand that kind of outlook, like in Russia, businessman and criminal were synonymous, you know? Right. And you're sort of entitled to what you can, whatever gains you can make regardless of

your tactics. Yeah. I mean, that's 60 minutes in every year. I thought it was great. Um, well, I also really liked the sort of Australian framing of New York city that called the loud mouth capital of the world. She has more front than Bloomingdale's. It was very funny, like the, the, it made me realize like how remote Australia kind

of is, how sort of the Australian 60 minutes had a very funny provincial quality to it. Yeah. Well, in that they think that people who before COVID, uh, tried to get into real estate and ordered bottle service at clubs were like the top tier of, uh, New York's like social elite. Well, they asked her. Yeah. So you want to be on the top.

Yeah. And that's really about it. She said, um, yeah. And she said that to her, it seemed that the people at the top did not strike her as particularly smart or talented, which is very cool. She understands. Yeah. Like she understands that, that like the ultra rich and their fail sons and failed daughters

are very mediocre. Yeah. They're completely susceptible and I liked when she said, um, if you're impressed by a hundred dollar bill, I don't know what to tell you. Yeah. And she's right. Like in, you know, she was being a little bit disingenuous, but she was like, well, no one in New York is impressed by that kind of money.

Right. They're not impressed by 50 or 60 million. They're impressed by like maybe a billion. They were impressed enough to sort of welcome her into their, the mid tier echelon that she was grifting in. Yeah. I like how the, um, all the footage is like her in different outfit changes, walking out of the courthouse or like taking selfies, but they make, they sort of are bullying

her a little bit in the interview and, um, insinuating that she sort of created this house of cards with her fake real estate nightclub Soho house ventures that didn't actually have any financial backing and it was all sort of, they say a house of cards. And she says something to the effect of like, well, everything is a, is a house of cards. And I think that's true. I mean, what American business is not a house of cards. We kind of learned, uh, during, uh, the COVID times that like 90% of the American economy is a house of cards.

Right. So how is it any different from, from Anna, uh, pretending like she was going to start a, an alternate Soho house. How is that any different from something like from companies like Uber or like other platforms that aren't even profitable and completely are bankrolled on like speculative investments. That's what literally, literally being a startup pitching to investors is. Yeah. And it's like attempting to erect your flimsy house of cards and hoping it doesn't get like

blown down and that's literally, like everything is that now. And if she had pulled it off, yeah, she would have pulled it off. Yeah. And it's funny that they got this, this other Russian chick, this like Russian Jewish shrink, Maria Kunyukova to, to like, uh, weigh in and they, they try to get, you know, this girl to like psychoanalyze her, um, and then they try to get her in this interview to play a kind of Hannibal Lecter role where she's psychoanalyzing, um, some woman named Melissa Cattock who's like an Aussie scammer.

Right. Yeah. So that's why they have her on to, to shed light on the scammer. So yeah. And you know, this shrink woman says, you know, says something to the tune of like, well, you know, narcissists, they don't really think about, um, when they harm other people or like the consequences of harming other people. And I was with her until that second part because it's like, well, you and the anchor

guy interviewing Anna Delvy are just as bad as her. Like they're also hacks, these people and scammers. And to me, it's always been questionable how much harm Anna Delvy really reeked. Yeah. She like harmed that one girl's credit card and then that, and then that, that chick got like a book deal. Exactly. The only person who got harmed in this, by the way, is me because I got four copies

of that book sent to my house and I had to dispose of them. It created a real moral dilemma because I don't like throwing out books. I know. I don't like putting books in the garbage. I will never burn a book, um, but this was barely, you know, this barely qualifies as a book. So they were just, you know, as you remember, just like, I, they were working for a while and I thought that you got them out of here and we were never going to crack those open.

So I was directly or indirectly harmed by Anna Delvy because I had to live with this burden in my apartment. So she's, she owes us. Yeah. Yeah. So you should come, come on the podcast to a tone, to, to promote, how are you going to rectify this, which I'm sure will be, will be a much more entertaining read. Yeah.

And it's like, you know, it's funny because like, you know, a grifter is just somebody who's figured out how to make money in a way that you haven't thought of. Exactly. Yeah. A grifter is just someone who can coast on their charisma. Yeah. And I think like people weren't, I don't think people were impressed with Anna Delvy's, um, little wads of cash or tipping practices.

I think they were just impressed with how like confident and charismatic she seemed. Yeah. Compared to everybody else. And that's like, you know, it reminds me of like, it reminds me of that whole like, um, Tony Soprano thing of like, why people love sociopaths, aka narcissists, um, and people think they love sociopaths because they have the power and freedom to do things that you can't, um, but actually they love them because they have the, they actually don't, you know, very often they don't have any power or freedom and they're subject

to the same shitty compromises and constraints as all of us, but they have, um, a kind of like cool, effortless and fixed story that everybody, they actually have a lot of constraint, which is what makes them enviable. Well said. They like operate within limits. Yeah. And again, it doesn't surprise me that Delvy Sorokin, um, was able to coast on her, on her charms.

Yeah. Because as she says, especially amongst like the fail sons and daughters of the elites, charm is in very limited supply. Yeah. And anyone who has spent any time like amongst rich people understands that. Yeah. Just look at the royal family. It's like an extremist institution.

Is there like a single charming person in the royal family? Princess Di doesn't count cause she's dead. Markle actually is charming, but she's also arguably kind of like scammed her way into it. Yeah. Riding that anti-racism wave. Um, but you know, it's like you, the reason people love kind of fictional sociopaths and now kind of like tabloid sociopaths or like Twitter sociopaths is because these people

are like you in every respect. They also have no values, morals, ethics, decency, whatever, but they're just more effective in getting what they want. Yeah. And like you think you wish you could be like them, but you really don't because if you actually examine their lives, what do they have? It's like sad alienating. It's like the Tony Soprano thing again.

It's like, what did he really have, a nagging bitch, wife, uh, who was a hypocrite, a shitty fail son, expenses up the ass. Yeah. Well, he had power, which was constantly being undermined and compromised. Yeah. It's not a, is not a stable, peaceful, enviable position to inhabit for me. He had like a giant beer gut and around the clock, Adjida and lived under threat of getting whacked.

Like, who wants that life if you really like break it down? For sure. He's not a glamorous or aspirational figure, you know? And like the same with Anna Dalvi. It's like when people are like, um, yes, queen, I like, I don't, I'm not down with the people that kind of unequivocally condemn her because they're full of shit because they just wish they were more like her and they are clinging to their moral superiority. And besides the people that she immediately kind of scammed and randomly these Australian

60 minutes, people seem to really condemn her. I guess besides the, the courts that literally did condemn her, uh, I think she, her status as a kind of like cult icon hero is pretty well cemented. I think for the most part, she's pretty celebrated. Yeah. But that's also like, you know, what's sort of celebrate at the end of the day? I mean, it's like, I think it's admirable that she, I'm, I don't know. I think here's what I, I like to see anyone kind of like actualize, especially in a non-linear

way. Yeah, totally. And I think that she's, uh, I'll, I'll put it this way. I think that she's smart and articulate and it's refreshing to see a Russian excellence represented that way. But like, is she an aspirational figure and would you really want to be her? No. Well, no, but I don't covet the lifestyle that she does, but I think she is admirable

in that she sort of like Lana Del Rey, kind of like actualized and like created this identity for herself out of basically nothing. And that I think is, is admirable if that's the kind of thing that you want. Yeah, and I hope that she like lands on her feet and comes out. Okay. Which I'm sure she will because she's, she's very industrious and resourceful. Yeah. Exactly.

Um, which Russian excellence. Yeah. Yeah. Which is like an attractive quality in a woman. Maybe if she wants to, she can get married and start a family, I don't know. She has time. She has time to figure that all out. She's just got out of jail.

Yeah. I did like how, um, she sort of lied through her teeth and said that Rikers is a valuable experience. Just like rub it in the face of these 60 minutes people. Yeah. She's like, actually I liked it. I wouldn't, I wouldn't change anything about it. I didn't regret a thing.

Yeah. She has a good attitude. I'll give her that. Yeah. It's nice. It's rare to see kind of remorseless like, like that in this age also. Yeah. Of people feeling the need to preemptively apologize for all of their microaggressions

and indiscretions. It's nice to see someone like Delvi just sort of remorselessly own her, her character and her exploits. Yeah. And I guess, you know, to that point about having kind of an identity, I mean, the thing that she has that other people don't have weirdly, even though she's, you know, a grifter and a scammer is credibility because she has a coherent worldview. That's what it is.

Right. It's, even if it's fabricated or fictionalized, it's coherent. And I suppose that, that is really kind of, I think for, for modern kind of like alienated fragmented people who flip, you know, in a moment's notice, I think that is truly enviable. I also think it's impressive. It's a difficult time to scam in the information age. Yeah. I feel like it used to be so much easier, like, you know, when you could like steal someone's

passport and put your own picture in it or like, you know, there used to be all of these kind of, when things were more analog, there were more avenues for, for, for scamming and grifting and it's something that's become increasingly difficult and are increasingly surveilled. Panopticon. Exactly. So for someone to sort of subvert the, the panopticon and to leverage modernity to their advantage is impressive.

Well, yeah. I mean, the beauty of following the logic of the pan, panopticon, even scamming has been kind of like outsourced and individuated, so you don't need kind of a central scammer. Everybody's just scamming themselves at all times and they're like surveilling themselves. But I think, I think it's just scamopticon. Yeah. There we go. There you go.

Yeah. Um, uh, very impressed with us. We both have like, what, like three hours of sleep. I know. But, um, yeah, I think we pulled it off another grift. Well done. I know. Every episode of this pod is a, is an elaborate con, they just won't stop where we're trying

to, uh, manipulate you into accepting our, it's like subliminal messaging. Um, but yeah, I forgot what I was going to say, something about scamming or surveilling. I don't remember. Oh yeah. It's not, I think it's like, it's not, it is more difficult, but it's also easier in certain respects, it's different, um, because you're right now you can't just paste a janky photo of yourself into somebody else's passport and like, uh, go to an Italian hotel. And millennials especially have just really, really inquish all of their like personal

data and information to tech platforms. Yeah. And in that way, yeah, you can't just sort of like a suit. It's more difficult to just assume a new identity and yeah, but because there's such an overload of information and people have grown kind of fatigued and lazy and complacent. Nobody's doing any due diligence or fact checking. So you really can get pretty far pretending to be someone you're not. Yeah.

Which is what she did. It's like, this is the thing. It's like the media narrative around Anna Delvey is that she was brilliant and strategic and, uh, set a series of traps and, and lies and maneuvers, but she really didn't have to lift her finger that hard. It was a lot like podcasting in that she just showed up and people were willing to be duped cause. Yeah.

And she was naturally impressive because the standard again, especially amongst really rich people is incredibly low. Yeah. Yeah. And if you, yeah. So in that way she's more so a testament to the, to the low value system. Yeah. The system failure rather than her own excellence.

I mean, this is like a very Russia gate thing. It's like when, when American pundits melt down about like Putin and Russia and, um, make Putin slash Russia or Putin as like a metaphor for Russia into this kind of like omnipotent nefarious thing. And it's like, well, you know, that's a very unflattering view or a flattering narrative because it makes America look weak. It undermines their own democracy exactly, which is, has been revealed to be incredibly flimsy.

Yeah. So it's like a kind of narrative that's like ultimately like telling on itself. And I think that like a smaller and lower stakes version of that narrative pertains to Anna Delvy. I agree. Anyway, Russian excellence. See you in a minute. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, man. Oh. You