Cw extremely annoying

Intro excerpt

Guest: While it was cultural stuff that got me out of paleo conservatism, the only thing that made the left attractive was materialist analysis (Chuckles), because everything else that I dealt with with the left felt very debutante-y, for lack of a better phrase. (Laughs)

:amogus:

Sean: Nah, nah that sounds about right, very small bore too. I feel like you and I might've talked about this on the epic 2.5 hour stream that we did a couple weeks ago. Where we pretty much covered everything, touched on everything that could possibly be touched on.

:libertarian-approaching:

Sean Cont: Really really good and the inspiration for this too. Yeah but like for me, getting involved in a serious way in politics and analysis only came from the 2008/2009 financial crisis, or the Great Recession, because finally something broke through the capitalist realism, you know, of the 1990s and 2000s, and the only way I stay sane is through economic analysis, is through understanding class, understanding class composition, looking at the global economy, trying to understand these trends? Because otherwise there's so much noise in the background, and as you say, the left is so backbiting and so kind of small bore about cultural and electoral issues and stuff like that. It's really disheartening unless you have some sort of grounding, you know?

Guest: Yeah, and honestly there understanding of geopolitics also, if I was to generalize I would say delusional. (Laughter from Sean) And the reason I would say that is because, not even because like the left is wrong this or that country, although they often are, its more a die hard dedication, which I seriously think comes out of nostalgia, for cold war times that they, that most of the left, being that they're younger than me didn't live through.

:galaxy-brain:

Sean: Right.

Guest: Where you have a moral clarity by inverting whatever the bad imperialist is doing? And I can tell you, the bad imperialist is as bad as they say, in some ways actually worse... but the other situations and powers are almost never as simple or as easy or as left wing as they're often being portrayed.

:very-smart:

Guest Cont: And I wanted to bring that up because one of the global economic indicators right now, is that if you're listening to discussions about China, if you're listening to it coming out of the developing world, you hear a lot of talk of China's economy crashing. If you hear it from the developed world, particularly the west, maybe a little bit Japan, you hear about how China's got a super economy.

?????

Sean: Right.

Guest: Now the raw data is that China's economy is [sic] faired Covid better than any other major economy, but that the business cycles have kicked in (Sean grunts), GDP is averaging around 6%...

Sean: Very respectable in the United States, we haven't seen that in decades...

:curious-marx:

A new special collaboration series for VarnVlog and Antifada patrons featuring Sean and C. Derrick Varn. In this first episode we tackle to outlines of the present moment: what is the state of geopolitics? How does China fit into the world system? What is the state of American decline? How is US politics reflecting this decadence? What do the Democrats and Republicans stand for at the present moment, if anything? And more!

The full episode is available for patrons now at our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/diving-into-ep1-59884519

This will be an ongoing collaboration so there will be more episodes soon. In the meantime, be sure to check out Varn's work: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/varn-vlog/id1567634170 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMuZYE1Q9yNpzn4dzsPtmcQ