Jeff Schulenberger (3:11)

Not even you can oppose that, Stephen. No.

Steven Adubato (3:14)

Who can? We love love. Love is love, as we all know by now. But yeah, I mean, just all very predictable, the reactions to it. You know, my whole thing is that we're just kind of following a script at this point. Very Baudrillardian. But, yeah, I mean, I find his music to be fun, but it's not revolutionary. It's not gonna change the world. So I don't, you know, I think we just gotta accept that it's just pop music, it's just for fun, not much more than that.

Unnamed Male Commentator (3:44)

Can I point out that seemingly a wedding was performed in the course of the performance within Bad Bunny. Right. Within Bad Bunny's performance, a, you know, traditional heterosexual, one man, one woman wedding was. Was performed. So is this, you know, evidence of the. The trad dimension of. Of or the. The sort of trad faction of, of the resistance?

Steven Adubato (4:17)

Yeah, I mean, what's really going on here is the far right is kind of co opted this, you know, hashtag diversity politics to push their trad agenda. This is, you know, what they don't want you to know. But.

Jeff Schulenberger (4:32)

Well, these facetious remarks may strike some listeners as more plausible than my more seriously intended observations. Yeah, I guess I thought of a couple things. One, though I didn't see the halftime show, I did take note of a moment at which the announcers described in very admiring terms how Roger Goodell, the head of the NFL, had decided that nine games would be played internationally next year, a record for the NFL. And so I do think that people who saw the Bad Bunny show, the performance in Spanish as a move away from kind of a central and historic American identity. I think that's absolutely right. That's what it meant and that's what it was intended as. But I would place it not so much in the context of wokeness as of these corporate imperatives to try to grow an audience. The NFL's aspiration really to be an international sport, drawing an international audience makes perfect sense. I do think there are risks to that because the NFL has enjoyed such huge success in America by wrapping itself in the flag much more tightly than really any other major American media property, let alone corporation is willing to do So. I think how will the NFL balance its desires to be this international product with its need to maintain a customer base, a very particular kind of customer base in the United States? I think that's a good question. This is very far from a kind of Bud Light moments where the attempt to appeal to a new constituency while retaining an old backfires is very far from that. But I think it's not inconceivable that the NFL will face one in the future. I also thought of the halftime show last year with Kendrick Lamar and he sang his hit song they Not Like Us, which was a anti Drake diss track. I think we discussed it on the podcast last Year. So always come to the Compaq podcast for detailed discussions of super bowl halftime shows. But the kind of cosmopolitan, open accepting nature of the kind of anti hate message that I gather the Bad Bunny halftime show has, I think, stands in real contrast to the message of last year's super bowl halftime show. Because they not like us, as its wonderful title expresses, is about distinguishing yourself from the other and rejecting the other.

Unnamed Male Commentator (7:28)

In very strong terms, especially the Canadian other.

Jeff Schulenberger (7:31)

The Canadian other, because Drake, as we know, is Canadian. He's also Jewish. One of the lines, and they not like us, is, he ain't a colleague, he's a colonizer. And, you know, also Drake highlights, or excuse me, Kendrick highlights Drake's associations with people who have been convicted of sex crimes with minors. And so there's this kind of suggestion that Drake is, you know, he's not a colleague, he's a colonizer, he's not a real member of the community. He's instead this kind of globalists involved in a pedo network. I think that's a form of rhetoric that's increasingly common and increasingly familiar to Americans. So I think it's worth thinking of Bad Bunny in relation to that previous halftime show. And one is this maybe kind of like resistance, liberal message of openness and we embrace migrants. And the other one is like, we hate the transnational elites who exploit our communities and are and are destroying the innocence of children. They are colonizers. Pretty distinct messages.

Unnamed Male Commentator (8:56)

And also Bad Bunny included some pro Canadian messaging in his otherwise southern facing.

Jeff Schulenberger (9:04)

Wow.

Unnamed Male Commentator (9:05)

Otherwise southern facing performance in his, you know, bringing in the flags of all the Americas, saying, you know, God bless America, and then the. The flags representing all the nations of this hemisphere, but the Greenland. I know, exactly. I was gonna say, I. I mentioned this before you came in to the call, actually, that Greenland was left out, which seems. Seems concerning. But. But no, the. There. But he did include Canada at the end, so. So that was interesting. But, Stephen, go on.

Steven Adubato (9:44)

I was going to add the fact that Lady Gaga was there was a very beautiful gesture of pan Latina belt solidarity, because as we all know, Italy is part of the worldwide Latina belt. And though some on the left would disagree with that statement, I think we're all one.

Jeff Schulenberger (10:03)

Okay. Mr. Adato.

Steven Adubato (10:06)

The. The Romans were the first Latins, by the way.

Ashley Frawley (10:08)

So let's just go back to the Indo Europeans, if we're going to be technical about this. All right. In which case I would include Greeks.

Unnamed Male Commentator (10:20)

So I. I was going to bring up something that sort of relates to this hemispheric dimension of the performance, which is widely remarked, which is, you know, you saw sort of people saying, oh, Bad Bunny isn't, you know, he's not American, he doesn't speak English, blah, blah, blah. Of course, as a Puerto Rican, he is a US Citizen. And it's worth noting here that I think this brings out some of the tensions in the, the Don Row Doctrine and this kind of new attempts at a, at a more expansionist foreign policy outlook, particularly in this hemisphere, which, simply put, I'd say is, is a useful illustration of a point argued for us in compact by Mark Krikorian, a piece I think called Intervention Causes Immigration. And you know, the Puerto Rican case is about as straightforward as they come. The reason the Bad Bunny is an American citizen is because of previous American leaders pursuing a sort of Monroe Doctrine vision, including intervening in the Spanish possessions in the Americas in 1898, thereby acquiring Puerto Rico as a territory, and thus also acquiring the Puerto Rican people as US citizens. So it's, it's pretty straightforward that, you know, and we could expand this narrative, but the way that, you know, various populations from different points south of the United States have, have established large communities within the US and had an influence on the culture is largely downstream from previous periods of aggressive intervention in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere. And so I think there is just a tension between the expansionist vision of the Don Row Doctrine and the Fortress America vision of closing borders and trying to keep people from all those realms of the world out. Which you saw that the attitude reflected in, in the right wing commentary on this halftime show, right, that it's, you know, sort of showed us like the third world invasion of America. Well, I mean, again, literally the reason that Bad Bunny is, is an American citizen is because of the US intervention in, in other parts of the Western Hemisphere, which is, has now been embraced as part of the maga, you know, the revival of, which has now been embraced as part of the MAGA agenda. And I mean, it's funny, I remember this like when there were early in this presidency when there were sort of the first rumblings of this, you know, you saw these sort of insane MAGA sort of influencers like posting these, these images of the Western Hemisphere with like an American, a US flag like draped across the entire thing to which I responded at the time. Hmm. Okay, so I thought your whole point was to build like the whole starting point of this was to build a wall at the Rio Grande. Right? And I remember now you get, now you get all Those people as U.S.

Jeff Schulenberger (13:49)

Citizens Clinton, Hillary Clinton had, you know, I think it was part of WikiLeaks that came out that she had been addressing a bank and, you know, maybe Brazil and said something like, you know, my hope is that we have free movement of people and goods across the whole Western hemisphere. That's what we should be aspiring towards, something like that. This was taken as being very revealing of her globalist outlook. I guess the distinction there between that Clinton vision and the Trump vision, at least in its kind of meme expression in terms of the ID of the Trump administration, is that there is for Trump more of an aspiration to actually seizing territory and planting a flag, at least in the case of Greenland, not presumably not the entire hemisphere, one would think. But I mean, so there's a certain difference between this idea of, well, Greenland is part of our alliance structure and it's closely integrated with our European allies, are closely integrated with us, and we have a great history of working together and we have all these high level contacts and they join us in taking a whole of society approach or whatever, all of this stuff. And then that's kind of maybe the more Clinton version of this borderless world. And then the Trump vision, at least in moments, a little more like, well, what if I just step over that border and then establish a new one that engulfs this territory? Doesn't look like he's going to make that vision real, though.

Ashley Frawley (15:47)

But isn't, I mean, isn't that fantasy where you can just step over a border, plant a flag, and never have to deal with any of the human side effects of that? Isn't that the whole point, that every time you intervene, you create all of these relationships all around the world and people flow along those paths? I mean, maybe the dream is like next year at the halftime show, you'll have Greenlanders square dancing or something like that.

Jeff Schulenberger (16:13)

Yeah, it absolutely does create those effects as, as Jeff said discussing Mark Krikorian's really great article for us, you know, invasion and whatever, intervention leads to immigration. So, yeah, I think this is a real contradiction in the, in the Trump vision. And it does tend to converge with the globalism it sought to displace in that way. And the distinctions between the two are maybe exist more in the realm of the imagination and in the meme world than they, the differences are greater there than they sometimes are in reality.

Unnamed Male Commentator (16:50)

I just, I want to imagine the Greenlandic bad Bunny of, you know, 2050 or whatever.

Ashley Frawley (16:59)

It's coming. It's coming.

Jeff Schulenberger (17:05)

Anyway. Great performance by the Seahawks defense. Kenneth Walker III was brilliant. Too. Steven, thanks for joining us on the podcast. You do so much to make.

Steven Adubato (17:21)

Great.

Unnamed Male Commentator (17:22)

Of course.

Jeff Schulenberger (17:23)

So the Epstein files roll on. Ashley, you're attentive as always to the British scene. I'd say that Mandelson is not a name to conjure with in America. This seems to be the highest profile casualty of the Epstein case so far. And who is he and what's behind his downfall in the uk?

Ashley Frawley (17:47)

Yeah, so it's, it's interesting because he, what has caused the controversy is that he was appointed ambassador to Washington for. Sorry, to the United states and in 2024. And the point is that Starmer apparently knew about his connections to Epstein when he appointed him. Thing is that he was actually a great choice to act as ambassador to the United States because if you are going to deal with people like Donald Trump, if you're going to deal with people who swim in these kinds of waters, you need somebody who knows how to swim in these kinds of waters, you know, and he, he appear, you know, he had all of these connections. He was the sort of person that spoke their language. He is a brilliant. He, he, he makes connections like that. That is his core talent. I was just listening the other day, this journalist was talking about how she had interviewed him and he was extremely rude to her. And a few weeks later, they're at an event and she happens to be talking to this millionaire potential donor and he walks and he's like, strides into the conversation, says to the journalist, the darling, how are you? And gives her a double kiss. Won't you introduce me to your friend? Like he was, he knew how to make these kinds of connections. He was a snake. And that's the kind of person that you want. I don't know. I, I'm, I'm sorry. I know this is really callous, but everybody pretending like politicians should have made decisions with the victims in mind before they appointed people is just dishonest. You don't make these kinds of decisions. Like, they just don't. They don't make. And I'm not sure that they should. They make decisions on foreign policy on the basis of the best to do the job, not, oh, did we think sufficiently of the victims. Oh, when I, when I make this decision, am I gonna offend somebody or, or hurt someone's feelings? I'm sorry, but that's not how it works. And so he was actually a very good pick for this. But of course, somebody's head needs to roll. And right now Mendelson is being investigated. Now, I said he was the best person for this role. But he was, it appeared at the time, the only thing that has come out that Starmer couldn't have been aware of or might not have been aware of. So he's being, Starmer's being attacked. And there were all these questions about him needing to step down, which is another issue worth talking about because he knew Epstein's links to, sorry, Mandelson's links to Epstein. But what he couldn't have known was that Mandelson was actually leaking important information. And so he's being investigated right now that there might have been some, some market sensitive information. So as soon as something was happening in private meetings, he was texting Epstein and this is obviously a huge problem, but Starmer could have known that. So what, what he's being pursued for is knowing the links. And so his. In, in, in lieu of stepping down, his Chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney. McSweeney resigned, took responsibility for advising Starmer on the Mandelson appointment. And I don't know if that's enough. It seems to, I mean pressure seems to be mounting all over the place. But what I find interesting is that there are more calls, from what I can tell in recent years, increasing calls whenever there is a scandal for the Prime Minister to step down. And this has led to a situation where the UK has had a huge number of Prime Ministers in a short period of time. And this actually proved something that was in the Epstein files. When Epstein was talking to one of the Israeli leaders, he was saying, oh, you know, don't worry, it's really when you come out of power, that's when the money starts coming in. And I had noticed this logic years ago when it was like, everybody seems to want a shot at being British Prime Minister. Oh, it's my turn now, can I have a shot? And then we'll move on to the after dinner circuit. That's what it seemed like. And it seems like this is how it's working. It's just there's no sense with these politicians. There's no sense of responsibility to the role. There's no sense of something being involved in a project that is greater than them. It is purely functional. And I know I'm contradicting myself and that I said before, like, he should have just picked the best person for the role. But I'm saying like, in terms of like the greatness of the country or doing something good for its people or whatever, you're just going to pick the best person for the role. And so all that they have is this very short term, short sighted sense of like optics and, and personal social climbing. And it is so, so obvious in the last few years the way that, that politics has gone. You have these sort of like career politicians who have no passion, no ideology and no purpose. And so it's just this constant kind of shuffling and managing controversies, you know, via PR and this disingenuous talk of like, oh, you appointments on the basis of the victims and all this junk. Simply not the case. So for the moment, Starmer refuses to quit. He's insisting that he's focusing on other government priorities and McSweeney might be the sacrificial lamb. That might just work. I mean, I hope it does. I hope it does. I don't think it's good for the country to have a continuous kind of roll call of all these different leaders. But I just find it to be so annoying and so disingenuous to watch people like pretend like they didn't know that people in power are dirty and they do dirty things and that sometimes to do the job, a good job for your country, it means you deal with dirty people. Nobody's hands are clean.

Unnamed Male Commentator (23:42)

So one of my theories of Epstein is that, you know, this is a guy with, you know, considerable talents and connecting people and bringing them together on various projects. He was, you know, curious about all kinds of ideas. And so, you know, perhaps the, the tragedy of this whole affair is that, you know, he, he came of age in a moment when the, you know, national project of America had sort of dissipated into this vague kind of globalization era. I don't know, directionless, just kind of, I guess, growth for its own sake sort of vision. And so, you know, there was no, there was no project. And you know, if, you know, try to imagine someone of his, of his talents being kind of commandeered into the great sort of nation building projects of the, the American century. You know, perhaps you have some, you know, perhaps, you know, even his sort of unscrupulousness and so on can come to serve a valuable purpose in the nations, in the nation's destiny. And you know, because there was no sort of meaningful national project, he just becomes this kind of dissolute playboy. So you know, Epstein's, Epstein's sort of trajectory is symptomatic of something bigger perhaps in that way. And, and you know, I would connect this to Ashley's remarks by saying obviously kind of the, the nature of his connection with various politicians is, is similarly revealing in terms of the kind of incentives and goals that have been prevalent so I don't know, that's my, my somewhat strangely wistful take on the whole thing.

Ashley Frawley (26:00)

Well, I think it, what you're kind of, it seems to me what you're getting at is that there's this cultural and political ethos of presentism that seems to be guiding politics. And you can see it guiding kind of even our own individual sense of like what we are doing in our individual lives. Our life becomes a project of the self, of self management, of identity formation, finding yourself all these sorts of things. And this is writ large in our political structures where even the project of a country becomes something like identity, something soul searching, a project of the self. What are we as a country, this sort of thing. And it becomes very presentist and very short sighted and uncertain of why it even is bothering to do things. So perhaps that's kind of what gives these things their peculiar kind of shape. That you may be this sort of person who did all these horrible things, might have done these horrible things but alongside a greater project for America or for the United Kingdom or for the Crown or whatever it might be, you know, like, like Henry vii, you know, like by pursuing his own kind of horrible predilections he winds up like revolutionizing like all of the, all of European and eventually what would become of, of like Anglo sphere politics and so on. Now no, you're just like a, you just become a playboy because there's no purpose, there's nothing to do. You make connections, why share? Girls give you a flat in New York when you need it, you know, let's meet up in Paris. It all flattens out because there's nothing, there's no purpose, there's no sense of world building anymore.

Jeff Schulenberger (27:47)

It's funny that this is the scandal that's coming closest to Rocking Starmer, someone who is a confirmed skeptic of the wilder claims made about the Epstein case. I think there are probably more serious failings in Sarmer's record than his appointment of Mandelson. With that, thanks Ashley. Thank you Jeff, Thanks Stephen for joining us. For more go to compactmag.com subscribe.

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