Economic Update: Capitalism: One Big Push Against Capitalism

Summary

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Economic Update (Aug 9, 2018): "Capitalism: One Big Push Against Capitalism"

Host: Richard D. Wolff
Guests: Matt Christman & Will Menaker (Chapo Trap House podcast)
Theme: Critique of contemporary capitalism, its contradictions, systemic impacts, and signs of pushback – including within culture and politics.

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Episode Overview

Richard D. Wolff examines how capitalism addresses its inherent problems, often creating larger crises as it does so. He provides current examples—legal marijuana, corporate conglomeration, policing, and financial entanglements—showing how limited solutions frequently lead to unintended (and expensive) consequences. In the second half, Wolff interviews Matt Christman and Will Menaker of the comedic political podcast Chapo Trap House, exploring how their show rose with the failures of liberalism and the resurgence of openly leftist critique in American culture.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Capitalism: Solving Problems by Creating Bigger Ones

• Process of Contradiction:
  • Capitalism, like all economic systems before, faces internal problems, sometimes resolving them, but often in ways that fuel future, larger issues.
  • "That's what happened to slavery, what happened to feudalism... it's reasonable to look at capitalism as likely repeating that process." (Wolff, 00:53)
• Example - Marijuana Legalization (Colorado & Washington, 2010–15):
  • Policing shift: Legal marijuana meant drastic drops in possession arrests, freeing police to address burglary/auto theft.
  • Stat: In 2016, 600,000 people arrested nationwide for simple possession—more than all violent crime arrests. (01:48)
    • "Imagine if the rest of the country had done what Colorado and Washington had... have those cops work on issues of violent crime." (Wolff, 02:44)
  • Racial & Political Motives:
    • The Nixon administration criminalized marijuana to target people of color and young radicals, affecting voter participation (03:48).
    • Clinton-era welfare reform led to increased incarceration, shifting costs to taxpayers (05:07).
• Cost Implication:
  • Incarceration costs: $30,000–$40,000 per inmate annually. "And there's why the taxes went up for many of us... the system shoots itself in the foot." (06:13)

2. Corporate Conglomeration & Worker Disempowerment

• Case Study – JAB Holding Company:
  • Little-known Luxembourg parent company now owns major brands: Krispy Kreme, Insomnia Cookies, Peet’s Coffee, Panera, Snapple, Dr. Pepper, Au Bon Pain, Pret a Manger, among others (07:12).
    • "Here we go. Ready? Krispy Kreme... Peet’s Coffee... Dr. Pepper..." (Wolff, 07:30)
  • Result: Monopoly power allows management to threaten relocating or closing shops to suppress wage demands; workers lack comparable power.
    • "Workers have no comparable organization that can fight that. And that's why wages don't go up. No mystery there." (Wolff, 08:29)
• International Example:
  • Workers in Indian factories facing beatings for organizing; highlights how global capitalism prioritizes low wages over worker welfare (09:01).

3. Finance, Politics, and Corruption

• Signature Bank Example:
  • Lesser-known NYC bank entangled with Trump, Kushner, and associates:
    • Board included: Ivanka Trump, Barney Frank (co-author of Dodd-Frank bank regulation), and Al D'Amato.
    • "[Barney] Frank... author of the Dodd Frank bill... received $280,000 in stock plus annual fees of $60,000..." (Wolff, 12:14)
  • Conclusions:
    • Demonstrates deep ties between finance, real estate, and political elites—contradictory to the anti-corruption "drain the swamp" rhetoric (13:30).

4. Emerging Pushback – Policy Changes & Social Movements

• New Zealand Domestic Violence Leave Law:
  • Recently enacted: 10 days paid leave for victims, a world first; supported by the Green Party; opposed due to alleged small business burden (14:18).
    • "Any victim of domestic violence can... must be given 10 days of paid leave..." (Wolff, 14:34)
    • Wolff criticizes assumption costs fall to small businesses, suggests taxing big businesses to support broad social needs (15:10).
  • Seen as analogous to historic milestones like outlawing child labor.

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Interview: Matt Christman & Will Menaker (Chapo Trap House)

(15:39–28:31)

What is Chapo Trap House?

• Origin & Nature:
  • Started for fun among friends (Matt, Will, Felix); combined news, politics, pop culture, and humor (15:55).
  • "It's a podcast that started... just decided to do something to entertain ourselves on a whim..." (Menaker, 15:55)
  • Show demonstrated rapid, organic growth despite amateur production due to the timing (16:49).

Popularity & Political Context

• Growth Factors:
  • Rose during Bernie Sanders vs. Hillary Clinton primary (2016); only pop culture broadcast fully embracing democratic socialism (17:13).
    • "We were basically the only emergent pop culture broadcast... saying... socialism is possible..." (Christman, 17:28)
  • Trump’s election accelerated listenership due to audience disillusionment with liberal promises (18:33).
• Satire’s Target & Impact:
  • Post-election, the show’s anger focused on the liberal class for failing to prevent Trump.
    • "The anger directed at not the Republicans or Trump for getting elected, but the anger at the failure of the liberal class..." (Menaker, 20:25)
  • Their critical tone toward liberals, once rare, found eager listeners searching for deeper left critique.

The Democratic Party’s Identity Crisis

• Wolff’s Question: Is socialism now baked into US culture? (21:42)
  • Menaker: Show’s popularity reveals hunger for political alternatives—liberalism has failed, and policies deemed 'socialist' poll well (22:08).
    • "There is a real hunger out there for people who have realize that the liberalism that they've grown up with... has failed." (Menaker, 22:08)
  • Christman: Democratic Party is institutionally resistant, but disillusionment is real. “It is a house divided moment...” (Christman, 24:33)
  • Menaker: Liberal project is “buying time”—running out of options as crises mount; doubts the party can reform in time (25:53).
    • "They're basically run out of time, and we're going to see another economic crisis or another war..." (Menaker, 26:08)
• Is the Left a Lasting Cultural Force?
  • Menaker: Socialism is now in the culture—maybe not yet a movement, but “not going away.”
    • "We're mean to liberals in a way that was previously only reserved for the loony right wing..." (Menaker, 27:40)
  • Satire and criticism directed at liberals is part of the new political landscape.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On capitalist contradictions:
  • "The system shoots itself in the foot. It solves its contradictions, but often by making them worse." (Wolff, 06:13)
• Regarding marijuana arrests:
  • "600,000 people arrested for simple marijuana possession... more than all violent crimes in 2016." (Wolff, 02:24)
• On why Chapo Trap House resonated:
  • "It gave people who felt that but didn’t see it reflected in the media around them sort of a validation." (Christman, 17:38)
• Satirizing both parties:
  • "We're mean to liberals in a way that was previously only reserved for the loony right wing." (Menaker, 27:40)
• On the Democratic Party's struggle:
  • "The institutional controls that establishment Democrats have... is very strong... electoral monopolies..." (Christman, 24:57)
  • "The best case scenario is the Whigs—that they just, like, overnight just collapse." (Christman, 26:40)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:09–06:30 — Marijuana, policing, incarceration economics
• 07:12–10:35 — JAB Holding, conglomeration, worker relations
• 10:36–14:18 — Signature Bank, finance-politics nexus
• 14:18–15:39 — New Zealand law; cultural/policy change as pushback
• 15:39–17:13 — Introduction to Chapo Trap House
• 17:14–21:41 — Chapo’s rise and critique post-2016 election
• 21:42–27:40 — American left, Democratic Party conflict, is socialism here to stay?
• 27:41–28:31 — Closing reflections

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Summary

This episode presents a sharp critique of the self-defeating results of contemporary capitalism, showing how attempted fixes to its contradictions—be it through criminal justice, consolidation of corporate power, or finance—often inflame deeper problems. Wolf’s first-half analysis sets the stage for a cultural case study: Chapo Trap House’s rise amid the failures of mainstream liberalism. The interview with Christman and Menaker underscores that an appetite for left critique and even socialist ideas is now intrinsic in US political culture, perhaps marking a historic shift in public discourse and potential future change.

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Transcript

[A]

Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic dimensions of our lives. Jobs, debts, incomes, our own, our children's. I'm your host, Richard Wolff. I've been a professor of economics all my adult life and, and I hope that that has prepared me to offer you these updates. You know, we talk a lot about capitalism, the system we live with and under on this program. And I want to stress today in our program how capitalism has lots of problems, like all economic systems always did, and that it solves those problems most of the time. But again, like all economic system, the way it solves its problems often provoke even bigger problems. And eventually that process produces a set of problems it can't solve and then the system passes out of existence. That's what happened to slavery, what happened to feudalism, what happened to all the systems before. And it's reasonable to look at capitalism as likely repeating that process. So here are some examples of how that plays out in our concrete world. I want to start with something that may surprise you. Marijuana. Marijuana use has been legal the longest time in two states, Colorado and Washington. And that has allowed some studies to be done about what the effects are of legalizing marijuana since the rest of the country, or most of the rest of the country either hasn't done it yet or did it later than Colorado and Washington. And so my attention was caught by a report in the police journal, certainly a well structured and believable Source, that from 2010 to 2015, this is the period of time they studied things in Colorado and Washington changed dramatically. And here's what it was that caught my attention. The number of arrests for marijuana basically disappeared because it was legalized, which allowed the police to do all kinds of other work so that the arrests for burglary and auto theft, particularly things that really do annoy people and shake up your life if you get burgled or if you lose your car, were much more in evidence in those two states. That is, the police went from marijuana to, to other things that the Police Journal thought were more important. Then another study was done. And in this one, in the year 2016, about 600,000 people were arrested. In other states where it isn't legal yet, 600,000 people were arrested for simple marijuana possession. Now here's what I want everyone to think. 600,000 people arrested for simple marijuana possession. That is more people arrested than were arrested for all violent crimes in 2016. So imagine if the rest of the country had done what Colorado and Washington had. Stop criminalizing simple possession and have Those cops work on the issues of violent crime, which for almost everyone I know, is a much more serious concern. As I looked into it more, I discovered something else. The big surges in arrests for simple possession happened at two interesting times, as a result of the Nixon administration, which has since admitted that it criminalized marijuana in order to throw the maximum number of people of color and young radical people who were the smokers in those days in jail so they couldn't vote, so they were out of political action. And the second time there was a surge was when President Clinton got rid of the welfare system. You notice the attempts of the system to avoid taxing rich people for all kinds of socially useful purposes, to allow Republicans who are against taxing rich people more than anybody else, to stay in power under Nixon and to curry favor with them. Which is why Clinton got rid of welfare, had the peculiar effect of incarcerating huge numbers of people, distracting police from the jobs we need them more to do. And here comes the kicker. What do we do with all the people we arrested? We put them in jails. And that costs 30,000 to $40,000 a year per inmate. And there's why the taxes went up so badly for many of us. You notice the system shoots itself in the foot. It solves its contradictions, but often by making them worse. Here's another way the system works that kind of undercuts itself. I wanted to bring you into a familiarity with a company. My guess is you never heard of Jab Holding. Well, why would you not have heard of it? Because it's based in Luxembourg in Europe, and the name means kind of nothing. I'm now going to read to you some of the companies that you are familiar with that are owned by this Luxembourg capitalist. Here we go. Ready? Krispy Kreme doughnut shops. 1400 in the US and in 32 other countries. It just bought Insomnia Cookies. That's 135 shops across America. What else does Jab holding own? Here we go. Pete's Coffee, Panera Sandwich Shop, Snapple Beverages, Dr. Pepper Beverages, Au Bon Pain, a sandwich shop. And Pret au Manger, another sandwich shop. What is going on here? Is the conglomeration. Huge corporations buying up smaller ones. We used to call that monopolizing. And then they can play off workers in one place after another. If workers in one of these businesses fight for a decent wage, say $15 an hour, they can say, well, we'll close those shops. We'll put our investment in another shop in another country, in another place, and wait out These workers till they have no job at all and then are willing to work for less money, etc. Workers have no comparable organization that can fight that. And that's why wages don't go up. No mystery there. That's why we have economic recovery. That leaves most people out because of the conglomeration of capitalism. It produces tensions and conflicts between capitalists and workers because of the unequal way they go about in their antagonistic relationship, trying to survive and trying to grow. As if to illustrate it in another way, my attention was caught by an article in the British newspaper the Guardian July 19 to be particular about how efforts by workers in India in clothing factories particularly, have been fought with beatings. Really a terrible story, but I'm not interested so much in the details. It's not about India or even about clothing. It's about the way this system works, that the advantage to profits is if you can keep your wages down. And the advantage to the worker is, of course, to take care of his or her family by having more wages to afford a decent home, to afford a proper diet, send your kids to school. So what the workers need confronts the employer as a problem. And what the employer wants more of profit confronts the worker as a problem. And if they're not nice and if they get on each other's nerves, they treat each other in a horrible way. But the problem is the capitalist has much more resources at his disposal to fight this fight than workers do. It's the way this system works, and it produces anger and bitterness. From India to the Krispy Kreme parlor in your neighborhood. There's another way capitalism works. Capitalists need financing, and so they turn to banks. Banks need corporations because that's the most lucrative lender relationship they can have. So there's a cozying up between them. And that, of course, builds out of control when the profits make them behave in ways that are, if not illegal, certainly unethical. And I wanted to give you an example that you might find interesting. Perhaps you've never heard of the Signature bank in New York City. Let me introduce it to you. What's famous about relatively small bank, big enough deals in hundreds of millions of dollars, but not one that you've heard of. Well, let's go through some of the things you might find interesting. It is a major lender to the Donald Trump family. It is a major lender to the Kushner family, father and son. Kushner is Trump's son in law. It has also lent significant amount of money to Mr. Cohen, who used to be Mr. Trump's lawyer, including for his $17 million apartment in 2015. Sitting on the board of directors of the Signature bank, it turns out from 2011 to 2013 was one in Ivanka Trump. Current board members include Alphonse D', Amato, former Republican senator from New York. That might not surprise you. He's a friend of Trump's. But Barney Frank, that might surprise you. He was the author of the Dodd Frank bill to rein in banks from doing illegal and unethical things. Mr. Frank sits on the board of the Signature bank, and he received $280,000 in stock for joining the board, plus annual fees of $60,000 from the bank. The chairman of the board, Scott Shea, was a former director of the bank Hapo Alim, that is an Israeli bank that has been involved in all kinds of real estate deals, problems with Palestinian land, problems being taken from Palestinians. You get the picture. Close ties between the government and a private bank. Between a private bank and real estate dealings and holdings. You get the picture. I think that's what Mr. Trump meant when he talked about draining the swamp. He's not draining it, he's filling it up. But I don't want to leave the impression that in all of these contradictions and internal problems solved creating new problems that capitalism displays, that there aren't also the kinds of problems that produce a pushback from people who demand something better than capitalism. And I want to conclude the first half of today's program by telling you about one of those. The country of New Zealand recently passed a law, and the law provides 10 days of paid leave for victims of domestic violence. That's right. Any victim of domestic violence can go to. I was about to say his or her, but it's mostly hers that are involved here as victims to her employer and must be given 10 days of paid leave to move to find psychological and other supports for children and herself and so on. The members of Parliament in New Zealand voted 63 to 57 to pass this law. It was led by the Green Party Member of Parliament, Jan Logie. New Zealand is not the only country to do that. It does exist in a few others. Indeed, in Canada, Manitoba and Ontario have similar laws. They don't provide as many days, but they're close. Even in Australia, there was a bill to give five days. Okay, what's going on here? Well, domestic violence is a tragedy, but it's also something that really hampers the productivity of the victim in terms of what job she can perform. And it leaves scars on the children that will affect their productivity throughout a lifetime. It is a very bad thing for capitalism. And yet it took a long time now to deal with this, to try to cope with this, to give women, who are the victims, a chance to fix the damage or at least limit it from what it might others have been. And I was struck in conclusion by all those who voted against it. And here's where the arguments they gave, I found them stunning. One, that the cost of this would be too big a burden on middle and small businesses. Notice the interesting assumption that the cost of this would have to be borne by the small businesses. If you had any courage, Mr. Member of Parliament, you could pass a tax on the big businesses to compensate the small businesses for doing something that the whole society needs. But you can't even think like that, can you? You think anything done for people who need it is going to be a burden on people, little people, because you're protecting the big ones, even though you don't seem to know it. In any case, it wasn't enough. And the people of New Zealand, through their elected representatives, said, this has to stop. We have to help these people. It's a little bit like outlawing child labor. We've come to the end of the first half of today's Economic Update. I want to remind you that you will continue in the second half with our guest. Please remember also to go to the YouTube channel. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Check out democracyatwork.info and a particular thanks to our Patreon community for the support they give us. Stay tuned. We'll be right back. Welcome back, friends, to the second half of today's Economic Update. I'm very pleased today to have as my guests two people whose work I've admired and on occasion, even participated in. The first is Matt Christman, and the second is Will Menaker. And they are both key folks in making a phenomena happen that I think many of you have probably heard about. Chapel Trap House, a remarkable kind of mixture which they're going to explain to us, that puts together comedy but serious social criticism all at the same time in a remarkable mix. And I want to talk about what they do, why it's grown the way it has, and what it tells us about what's happening here in the United States. So welcome, gentlemen.

[B]

Thank you for having us.

[C]

Pleasure to be here.

[A]

Good. Let's start by having you tell our audience, in case there are a few who may not know yet, what is Chapo Trap House? Where does it come from? Give us a rough description before we Jump into asking questions about it.

[C]

Well, it's a podcast that started when Matt, myself, and our friend Felix basically just decided to do something to entertain ourselves on a whim. And then slowly but surely, it began to grow at an exponential rate. It started as just an opportunity for us to talk about the things that interested us, which was mostly the news and politics and pop culture, but also as a venue for our senses of humor. And I think the more the show has gone, the more the show has gone on, I think the more we realize that politics and our sense of humor are. It's like the snake eating its own tail. Like, you know, you can't have one without the other. And our senses of humor and the content don't really make sense without the political climate that we live in.

[A]

So how has it grown? Give us an idea of you started that way. What's today? How has it developed?

[B]

Well, I think the main reason it did explode as quickly as it did because our first episodes were very, very lo fi. We didn't even know how to edit video or audio. We were recording things on publicly available live YouTube streams, and then we would just take the audio from those and put them onto the Internet to listen to. And they were very cracky. We were all calling in, and it was very hard to listen.

[C]

It sounded like we were talking to each other through cans and strings.

[B]

But it immediately blew up almost. I mean, we were. Articles were being written about it in pop culture sites within a few weeks of it starting. And I think it's because of the timing. We were really the only. We started during the Democratic primary, the Bernie Hillary primary in 2016, and we were basically the only emergent pop culture broadcast that kind of took the point of view of saying, you know, that socialism is possible, that the idea of democratic socialism is a viable idea. And it gave people who felt that but didn't see it reflected in the media around them sort of a validation. And I think that's why it grew so much that it did. And so the big explosions we had were first just an exponential growth over the course of the primary campaign, and then after the election of Donald Trump, after the disastrous failure of the Clinton campaign, after the promise of incremental liberalism was finally revealed to be hollow and incapable of holding back the rampaging tide of reaction. We saw a giant explosion in listenership, I think, because people felt like they had either been validated in their suspicions of that idea or they were newly disillusioned by it.

[C]

And then also, to echo Matt, the accelerant for the show really was the 2016 primary and the Bernie Hillary split. But the election of Donald Trump, which we didn't see coming either, we thought it would ruin the show.

[A]

We thought.

[C]

We basically, we did a live show on election night and we had prepared all this material expecting Hillary was gonna win. And then we were on stage calling the live results as the world ended in front of us, basically.

[A]

But you thought that would be the death knell of your show.

[C]

Because we were really forward to doing a show with Hillary as president because we thought that that would be by far the best material for us, because.

[B]

There would be the. There would be the artifice, there'd be the pretense of politics. Hillary would try to present a face of liberal competence while going through all the awful looting and imperial bloodletting that any president does. And we were going to. Our comedy was going to come from pointing out that the difference. But then Trump got in and there is no artifice. There's just the proscenium has collapsed and it's just the bare stage walls. And there's really nothing to point to because it satirizes itself. And that's why we were worried on election night. I was recorded. There's. We have a short film on YouTube that someone took a documentary of that live show. And I was saying, the show's over now. How are we going to talk about politics in the age of Trump without becoming sort of a daily show with sort of easy jokes about the goofy president? And I think that we were pleasantly surprised to see that that wasn't the case because people felt vindicated and also because we have spent most of our real effort since then not talking. We do talk about Trump because he is inherently hilarious, but we have really tried to focus on pointing out the absolute insufficiency of the Democrats as an opposition to Trump. And that's really where I think that our political valence and power comes from.

[C]

And the episode we did right after the election was a huge one for us and it really blew up. And I think it was because the anger which we expressed on that episode, the anger directed at not the Republicans or Trump for getting elected, but the anger at the failure of the liberal class of liberal politicians and the liberal media to allow this to happen, because I feel like as long as I've been alive, like the Democrats, their best pitch to someone like me is, look, you may not like us, we may not be exactly what you want, but at least we're preventing the far worse option of just total right wing control. And I think it just gave us an opportunity to say, well, you know what? You're not even doing that for us anymore, so what are you offering us? And the satire and the sense of humor on the show creates a space for which that anger and that sense of disappointment rage at these people who have failed us and the world to be expressed. And much of the political comedy that you see now is, I think, very soggy and very safe because it is still part of a kind of stale liberal consensus. And this idea that there are the good guys and the bad guys and if only the good people were in charge, things would be better.

[A]

Tell me, does that then give evidence for a large part of the population of this country responding to you saying, we want to listen, we want to hear, we want a criticism that is deeper or further to the left or whatever phrase you want? I mean, I would like our audience who wants to answer that question to hear your answers.

[C]

Well, look, I mean, our show has become very successful, but we still have to be realistic about the reach we really do have. However, the fact that we've gotten as successful as we have, as Matt said, basically starting out being totally incompetent, not having the slightest tinge of professionalism whatsoever and having it take off, I think to the extent that it has absolutely does show that there is a real hunger out there for people who have realize that the liberalism that they've grown up with and largely taken for granted has failed. It's failed them. It's failed to create even what it's. Even the things that it's promised to its adherents ideologically. So, yeah, and regardless of just us, I mean, I think you're seeing now as a more openly democratic socialist wing tries attempts to push the Democratic Party. I think what you're seeing is all of these policies that are described as socialist or could be accused of being so by the right wing are broadly popular. And what we're seeing in the Democratic Party now is an attempt to obscure that fact or come up with some, as it always does, some kind of compromise that sounds like the thing everyone wants, but isn't that because they can't?

[A]

Yeah, they've been doing that a long time.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ideas that. That sound good, as you said, sound like they're moving in the left direction, but that fundamentally don't conflict with the donor interests of the party. And that, I think, is, as you said, what they've been doing for very, very long. And I think what we're seeing now, and I think our show is a symptom of it is just a general disillusionment with the grift that's been going on. People are less likely to buy it when they see it.

[A]

Do you thinki know this is a difficult question. Do you think that struggle inside the Democratic Party or inside the liberal establishment, assuming they're roughly the same, between a democratic socialist Bernie wing, if you like, and an old establishment center wing, where's that going to go? What do you think is going to happen both in turn, because it's important for your audience and your future, but obviously for the country. Where do you think that's going, given where you sit and what you feel and see as you do your program?

[B]

The pressure on the Democrats to move left is very, very real. And you see it in things like the Ocasio Cortez upset and all over the country. And the effort to push back on it is very real, too. I do think that there it is sort of a house divided moment where the Democratic Party as it currently exists is essentially, I think, doomed. It will either lose its base or it will be fundamentally transformed. As to which is more likely to happen, I don't know. I do know that the institutional controls that establishment Democrats have over the actual, like, electoral system is very strong because as people have pointed out, we have this insane system in this country where we have basically two party state system because the two parties are intertwined with the state. The state's govern the way that elections are run. And those lines, those ballot lines that the Democrats and Republicans have are essentially monopolies, electoral monopolies. And that infrastructure is all in the hands still of the establishment neoliberal Democrats. And that is where I think the real point of conflict is going to come. And as to how it's going to shake out, I don't know. I'm more optimistic, I think, than I was maybe even a few months ago. But still, anything could happen, really.

[C]

I mean, I think the liberal project is still trying to buy time. It's still trying to buy a little bit more time so that they can make peace with both capitalism and all the problems created by it and give people something. I think we're getting to the point where they basically have run out of time and we're going to see another economic crisis or another war or whatever Trump is going to do, or even scarier than Trump, whoever comes after him in the Republican Party, who is maybe going to be even more openly fascist. I think we're at a crisis point where there is no more time left to buy and again, I have to be very skeptical about whether the Democratic Party can, as it's currently constituted, make that change.

[B]

The best case scenario is the Whigs that they just, like, overnight just collapse. That would be ideal.

[A]

Look, Bernie will go down in history as having opened this space in America so that socialism can be talked about again after half a century of a taboo that basically made it impossible. Your program getting tens, hundreds, I don't know what the numbers are of people that are listening and want to hear your programs each time suggests, as you've put it, that this socialism idea, this explicitly saying, I don't like capitalism, I don't want it anymore, I want something else. Is that now a fixture of American politics? From where you stand, is your program giving you the sense, since you're right, the core of it, that this is now a real movement, not knowing where it'll go or how successful it'll be, but it's part of our culture in a way that two or three years ago it just wasn't.

[C]

It's definitely part of the culture. I don't know if the left or democratic socialism in America is a movement yet or like a real political force, but it's definitely in the culture, and that's not going away. And you know, again, back to what I think why the show took off and why the show remains sort of controversial and divisive is because we're mean to liberals. We're mean to liberals in a way that was previously only reserved for the loony right wing. And we find them as contemptible in many ways as the right. And I think, like, opening up that thing that, like, you know. No, actually, you can use humor and satire against liberals, which they think is their own purview, you know, like that they have a monopoly on that. When it's turned against them, they don't like it. And that's certainly not going away.

[A]

Folks, I have to stop us here for time. I want to thank all of you for joining us in this interview of Chapo, Trap House's Will and Matt. I want to thank you as always, for following us. Please stay with us. For those of you that follow us on Patreon, this interview will be [e-mail] economicupdatesite otherwise, I look forward to speaking with you again next week.