Pill Pod 200 - Why has America Gone Insane?
Added 2025-02-13 05:00:34 +0000 UTCWe watched the news, and tried out some theories on it. Perhaps it will turn out philosophers were the dupes all along.
Comments
Trump feeds the machine that creates the current conditions for capitalism to reproduce itself.
Greg Ireland
2025-09-02 02:38:12 +0000 UTC1. If the world is self-referential, a closed system, why does it (still) need consensus? A total" shouldn't require reinforcement. 2. Can these systems handle anomalies (a dickhead decoding wrong due to ignorance/on purpose/ for anarchy/insanity? 3. Can a system have no latency, no noise, and no operating cost, or glitch? Is this system not condemned to in-breeding (in contrast to Psychic systems)? 4. Could Bataillian non-functional excess (or even radical uselessness) threaten such a system? 5. Can this system appropriate infinite space, absorb unpredictable (space and natural forces)?
Mrityunjay Awasthy
2025-03-13 21:58:04 +0000 UTCGet ur arse back Pills. People are waiting. Just repeated "Concept Vlog - Derrida on Friendship" (Dec 18, 2020). I come here often for comfort, fix my shit, and go back out there. O friend, Where Art Thou? I thought we knew there's no outside, if there's no crack. Why does it feel, there has to be one?
Mrityunjay Awasthy
2025-03-08 03:55:16 +0000 UTCI would love to see ur channels blow up. You should get on TikTok if you’re not already and just do like 40 second vids of the rhetoric of the image type shit like u did with formula one and Disneyland and trump and then link to full vid on ur YouTube. That content was heat. I could see ur channel blowing up if you posted like a mega theory video of how all the parts of the media and capitalism and bureaucrat fiefdoms fit together.
Landon Rogers
2025-03-07 20:16:23 +0000 UTCI remember that. Back in the ,90's.... Before the madness truly erupted and there weren't deep many bloody fascists around.....I can still recall the feeling of individuals with ideas for, well, not THIS. Mutual aid so as to avoid complete calamity? Yeah, I hope it gets heard above the noise. (I forgot all about the WTO conference, I was only 18 or 19 and didn't see it for what it was just enjoyed the chaos)
Christopher Paul Bettridge
2025-03-06 09:50:26 +0000 UTCHere is my little take using again Luhmann. For him technology is a functional simplification / an evolutionary achievement which conserves consensus. Thus we should not think of society as so innocent as if technology was forced upon it. Instead it can only flourish because it co-evolves with society; Especially digital technology connects to it effortlessly because society was already digital. This however does not mean that technology serves the human individual because there are no humans within society. Take a simple door that automatically opens and closes. It conserves the consensus that one closes that door. Of course, not everyone agreed to these hidden consensus, some e.g. disabled people struggle and would rather like to show their refusal. Technology is a structural coupling which constrains e.g. psychic systems but (and here McLuhan overemphasized the medium) the system stays operationally closed. It seems to me that society's evolutionary steps lead to a more and more loose form of communication. And today we arrived at a point where information de-couples from understanding. Furthermore, the media's function did not change during the last 60 years or so. It still functions as a producer of a reference reality, i.e. it constructs what is known to be known. Otherwise we could not really talk too much with each other. But it seems that duo to the extensive communicative abilities, this reference world is fractured into pieces. There is no longer one reference reality and none is or ever was the "real" one. "The modern society seems to have reached a point where nothing is no longer communicable—except for one thing: the communication of sincerity. [...] The modern computer technology challenges the authority of experts. [...] Of course, this does not change the fact that anyone who relies on communication in one way or another remains dependent on trust. However, in the age of electronic data processing, this trust can no longer be personalized and thus can no longer be translated into social status; it has become merely system trust. [...] Is what is being transmitted accurate, or has it been selectively chosen, stylized, distorted, or even fabricated due to a particular sense of mission? Here, too, one can only navigate by observing observations, including one's own. The trust in fixed forms has dissolved. [...] Society seems to be in the process of experimenting with new intrinsic values that promise stability under the conditions of heterarchy and second-order observation." - Luhmann I am a computer scientist and to me it looks like that self-programmed algorithms are fundamentally in the business of second-order observation. They observe patterns that psychic systems cannot see. They parasitically suck up the contingency of society and project this contingency back to it. In a sense they form an operationally closed system that offers a self-description to society. In that sense, they may turn in something similar to what the mind is to the brain (without being conscious of course) and we are the little cells which are required but do not steer the whole enterprise. Philosophy is dead and politics is a talent show. Its algorithm that sees what we can not. They are the new prophets and oracles of second-order observation. Communicating without understanding.
Dalia
2025-03-04 23:27:06 +0000 UTCThe Fed is what gave control of money creation over to the banks, and banks overwhelmingly loan money to corporations. So it absolutely has greatly impacted the distribution.
tom123b
2025-03-04 23:07:55 +0000 UTCI think you widely overestimate the creation of money and to trace all effects back to 1913? I don't know. The amount of money is not important. What is important is the distribution of wealth and the rate of profits from financial "gambling" vs "real work".
Dalia
2025-03-04 22:56:02 +0000 UTCThis is why I refer to them as foolosophers.
Christian Rios
2025-03-03 21:19:15 +0000 UTCIt goes both ways. There are marginal benefits for everyone if we vote one way (ala funding of public schools) but there are huge ruptures in policy from one side or the other for marginalized groups. For example my wife has a SCI and uses a wheelchair. Finding accessibility is hard enough with the help of the ADA. Now if the expectation that accessibility is a right has disappeared then it matters. Alienation is in the small things that just compound.
P. Reed
2025-02-23 18:43:35 +0000 UTCIn today's theory podcast : "There's no outside. " Next episodes : Infilteration Subversion Radical externality Homelessness as first generation Cosmic Nomadism. And finally - Why art matters as a last cry, if at all.
Mrityunjay Awasthy
2025-02-19 16:31:26 +0000 UTCThe useless tree is one of my favorite stories.
Khemith
2025-02-19 09:13:05 +0000 UTCElon Musk’s role in the Department of Government Efficiency isn’t purely ideological. The U.S. economy is under immense strain due to the effects of de-dollarization, which creates inflationary pressure. This is not a new phenomenon; when banks begin creating money on a large scale, inflation had to be countered. This is precisely why the federal income tax was introduced in 1913—the same year the Federal Reserve was established. The income tax artificially increases demand for U.S. dollars, helping to absorb inflation caused by monetary expansion. Trump’s 2017 tax cuts likely contributed to the inflation seen under Biden. Trump’s tax cuts not only increased deficit spending but also reduced the need for large corporations to hold U.S. dollars to pay taxes. Since corporate tax obligations create a built-in demand for dollars, cutting those taxes weakens that demand. The big change under Biden was the de-dollarization of international trade, accelerated by the war in Ukraine. In response, Musk and Trump are pushing for deep federal budget cuts, hoping this will allow the Federal Reserve to maintain current interest rates rather than being forced to raise them further. In fact, I suspect that Democrats may have quietly allowed Trump to win, knowing that the economy was on the verge of collapse regardless of who held office. The deeper roots of America's political and economic problems trace back to 1913, with the creation of the Federal Reserve. Officially, the Fed was established to reduce the power of private bankers, but in practice, it did the opposite. By centralizing finance, it enabled large-scale fractional reserve banking, allowing banks to create money out of thin air through lending. Today, commercial banks create roughly 90% of the money supply by issuing loans. Every time a bank loans money, it doesn’t lend out existing deposits—it creates new money that didn't exist before. This system ensures that the economy is always reliant on constant growth to sustain itself, as money is continuously created through debt. This also explains why trickle-down economics has effectively existed since the creation of the Fed. Because new money enters the economy primarily through banks issuing loans to corporations, financial institutions, and wealthy individuals, those at the top of the economic hierarchy always have first access to newly created capital. This drives asset inflation in stocks, real estate, and financial markets long before any benefits reach the general population. In this sense, the economic structure is inherently designed to favor the wealthy, as monetary expansion always begins at the top and only "trickles down" to the rest of society through wages, spending, and investment—if at all. The idea that economic growth can be managed responsibly within this system assumes that technological progress will always justify further expansion. But if growth ever stagnates, the entire system risks collapse, as the debt-based money supply requires constant expansion to remain solvent.
tom123b
2025-02-18 23:51:43 +0000 UTCThis is America’s best attempt to be “angelic” as per Allen Ginsberg’s request. We’re just really fucking bad at it.
P. Reed
2025-02-18 14:12:53 +0000 UTCI find the “medium is the message” idea really interesting. the way I think about it is the medium must influence how we respond to the information the medium is mediating. And I actually see the app on the phone as a medium distinct from, but related to, the medium of the phone itself. So if we view war images on an app that was built primarily for amusement, through a phone that is built primarily as a means of communication, that layering of media is going to color our response to those images. Viewing war images on a medium, TikTok, built for amusement as just one video among an endless scroll of videos is different than viewing them on the news or in a documentary. There is no superior medium, but each elicits a different response. I think if we’re viewing the war images on a phone, our responses will likely be phone-based as well, which is exactly what someone waging a war in Gaza would want. Content matters, but I think media can influence what we do with the content.
Jacob
2025-02-17 22:43:51 +0000 UTCfrom the philosophical POV, (which, agreed, is DOA), we “put the blame on mame” or ‘meme” or memephysics, that is, Platonic metaphysics … as ya can’t have had an imaginary amerika without this primary or first ‘disavowal’ of reality: Platonic metaphysics. Tho of course it’s more nuanced as ‘reality’ is a construction (not of individual will blah blah). If philosophy is dead for many decades now, it is also bc it organizes too much around consciousness/ rationality, and not enough around the unconscious. And the latter more involves the human in its dimension as an organism. Body, in a problematizable word. Diego’s point does what tech brained philosophy does: turn the human into a brain and then the brain into a computer. To say the least, not very ‘dialectically material’ an explanation. Still Pills makes a gesture or even claim to the philosophically ‘relevant’, not in its ultimate project but as useful, by reading Marx, for one example, as a philosopher… of value… bc seems to me that the totalization of Media could be read as the maximalizing of the abstraction of human labor ——with “Media” as the crystallization of the congealed substance of labor’s abstraction as the pure relation without inside or out (subject or object). A convergence of economic as well as imaginary and ideational events emerging with it in contingent historicity ( capitalism, robber barons, increasing technologization…[ wished it had been creative text-nologization instead… just to hit back on bunking on literature 😜]. Anyway, delusional insanity of amerika come to roost in the norm. Finally, what’s at bottom IMO is that we feel we cannot DO anything about it. We have empathy, but what to do? we feel we have no power. But these idiots taking power like never before appear to be able to act, do, be agentic. I think agency is simulated in trump n Co. And seeming to Do and act and make power grabs actually…has VERY high ratings indeed!
Zachary Manenti
2025-02-16 01:29:44 +0000 UTCNoooo y'all can't stop doing philosophy! Living in the US (Chicago specifically) I've been coming here to try to figure out how to think about what's happening and it's seriously a mental refuge. Thank you Pills and team for your work. Just re-subbed to the patreon you keep you guys in business!
Angela Dombrowski
2025-02-15 19:25:27 +0000 UTCThis is my last comment (because I don’t think this is the right forum to argue this and it could go on forever), but it’s worth noting the ceasefire began while Biden was still president and the negotiations were spearheaded by Anthony Blinken with input from both Biden and Trump.
Will Wedin
2025-02-15 14:18:19 +0000 UTCI feel he kinda devaluates the vibe. But that os because I'm familiar with Diego's Spanish speaking content and hate it
Federico Ivan Compean Revuelta
2025-02-15 05:56:16 +0000 UTCThe cease fire, even of it's temporary or enables something in the future is factually better than anything that happened under Biden. Gazans actually returned to Gaza and Palestinian celebrated the cease fire on the streets. This doesn't solve anything in any meaningful way but if palestina are happy even for some months, that is way better than materially enabling their destruction. There is no justification for Biden's approach. He didn't only fund the genocide, he enabled it trough PR, and supported it financially, logistically, military, etc. That is a reality. As mentioned, maybe Trump WILL be worst, but right now thay is speculations and he already did more than Biden/Harris were willing to do
Federico Ivan Compean Revuelta
2025-02-15 05:53:16 +0000 UTCPills as an artists in the broad general sense is a great pivot. Philosphy as art maybe? Theory as an aesthetic endeavor
Federico Ivan Compean Revuelta
2025-02-15 05:48:00 +0000 UTCTrump has been president for less than a month, so at the moment you have to judge him by stated intentions, in a year or two we can judge him by results. Maybe I will be pleasantly surprised, but so far the signs are bad. And if you have even a basic understanding of the American public’s preferences when it comes to “defending Israel against Arab terrorists” (which is obviously not what the war is, but how 60% of the public views it) you would understand why Biden continued to send military aid, even if he didn’t approve of Netanyahu’s handling of the war.
Will Wedin
2025-02-14 23:39:27 +0000 UTCYou are telling me Biden/Harris didn't want the genocide? I'm guessing enabling the complete destruction of Gaza, the death of hunters of thousands and being the administration that has historically sent the most military aid to Israel is not wanting the genocide. I find interesting that most American people give Trump "speech" a sort of all powerful status. As if most of the insane things Trump says are worse than actual real things other politicians did do.
Federico Ivan Compean Revuelta
2025-02-14 23:28:11 +0000 UTCFoucault to Badiou- What's the use Dog? https://youtu.be/PFyB09FrtaY?feature=shared
Mrityunjay Awasthy
2025-02-14 21:25:36 +0000 UTC"i would prefer not to"
LesZedCB
2025-02-14 19:57:19 +0000 UTCPills as a poet, that would be interesting. Why not add some seduction to the fray? You already have seductive video editing skills to make people do something, that takes too much energy (perspective from a STEM graduate). I always saw philosophy as being sensitive to my surroundings. Honestly it has made my scientific mind open up and be more creative. I would credit you for that. Although, philosophers have difficulty crossing the bridge between critique (resentment according to Deleuze) and action. Most likely other people get inspired by the philosophers. But there is no pleasure for the masses in this self-examination. But that’s fine, for we dine at the end of time and discuss philosophy. Sing out your woes, my friend, String your bow, Shoot your best, for this is not a test.
TheUltimateBird
2025-02-14 18:12:01 +0000 UTCA somewhat depressing (but probably accurate) episode when it comes to the possibilities of change thru the political system. Also I’m going to NOT give Victor shit because as feckless as the dems are, it’s clearly true that Trump’s way of approaching Gaza/Palestine will be worse for them then a generic sane centrist. He is literally proposing the systemic removal of all Palestinians from Gaza with no right of return while emboldening the worst elements in Netanyahu’s coalition. I’m as cynical as Pills, but even I don’t think there’s no difference between the two, the evidence points to Trump *wanting* a genocide. That is worse.
Will Wedin
2025-02-14 15:16:52 +0000 UTCI mean... If we accept "Baudrillard was too optimistic" I'm not sure what else to conclude but this
Alyn
2025-02-14 11:01:27 +0000 UTCUSA is not a planet
xenon
2025-02-14 08:56:34 +0000 UTCdamn… fuck everything, I guess?
Alex Petty
2025-02-14 05:32:30 +0000 UTCI fall back on the idea of philosophy being an expression of one's type. This is how Nietzsche described the presocratics. This means that philosophy changes the world in so much as people embody the moment.
Khemith
2025-02-14 05:11:23 +0000 UTCPhilosophy may well be useless, but if that's a problem for you, it's only because you haven't read Zhuangzi and learned about the usefulness of the useless, which I highly recommend. For me, I enjoy philosophy because I enjoy philosophy. I find it pleasurable to read and discuss philosophy. And I find that it helps me to find new ways of viewing and experiencing life. What more is there to ask of something we "consume"? There is value to a "contemplative" life and the world, if it were possible, would likely benefit from more people engaging in that kind of life. It poses an alternative the hyperconnected, click-happy technological Armageddon we all find ourselves in the middle of.
Joe Green
2025-02-13 23:27:37 +0000 UTCIf Trump passes significant tariffs, then it will significantly change people's material conditions. So clearly voting can matter in some cases.
Alex Shook
2025-02-13 22:20:54 +0000 UTCWhat The New Yorker article is Pills referring to?
Olive Abbruzzese
2025-02-13 21:28:06 +0000 UTCCongrats on 200 - love the discussion around cell phones and their importance (or not) to emotionality
Andrew Argraves
2025-02-13 19:42:57 +0000 UTCOnce upon a time in Seattle- in the halcyon days of 1998, a populist movement of union blues, environmental greens and pre-FBI co-option black bloc activists came together and went a little crazy at the WTO conference. This was the nail in the coffin of US activism. For something like that to emerge again it would be a ‘wilderness of mirrors’ to quote the Jesus Angleton in the sense that almost every source of counter culture is a setup by federal anti-terror units. But… mutual aid in the face of economic collapse- that will be a ground for organic groundswell- it is a coherent message that can compete in the mimetic environment of predatory falsehood that is needed.
James Aydelotte
2025-02-13 19:11:44 +0000 UTCCongrats on the 200 episodes. Time for Pills’ rightwing pivot
Andy Madeley
2025-02-13 14:55:59 +0000 UTCWelcome to the Empire to my northern brothers in united statehood! Reich Vier Uber Alles!! Hail our technocrat dictator and dine on the meat of the poor, the elderly and sup the blood of our Ukrainian enemies! While your northern mineral rich lands will be annexed, your health care will be privatized and your PM will be fed to MTG in her quest for more CrossFit approved proteins- you will not be voting in any US elections! But fear not- NONE shall vote in the Great American Empire! Huzzah!
James Aydelotte
2025-02-13 12:55:18 +0000 UTCTo summarize the new paradigm as succinctly as possible... We have now entered an era where it's increasingly difficult to know what is real and what isn't, because what is real sounds more and more like an Onion headline. "Trump wants to rename Greenland Red White and Blue Land" case in point. All these new headlines come in, and the immediate question is, is this a joke, or is this actually what happened today. I don't remember having to do a "chat is this real" verification quite as much as in like, just the past two weeks lol, and to the point that this is the new game in town, overload and reacts, you can tell by the sheer frequency of events, that they fully understand this playbook. It's like the first NFL team to figure out that there was an offensive style "other than" running, politics is the run only offense, getting clicks is the new groundbreaking pass offense. Omw to sit in a barrel in Times Square! Occupy 2.0: Electric Barrel Boogaloo It'd be the true test that philosophy is dead in that almost certainly the Diogenes performative would be totally lost on the police that inevitably showed up to kick you out of your barrel and arrest you for public masterbation. But some, elect few would know *the secret*, that before them stood a Diogenes, one who dare to once again barrel in a barrel-barren world. Congrats on the latest nice round big number of the Pillpod: -Just Talking about Interesting Weird Things as a Fun Hobby While the American Empire Goes Batshit Crazy as it Wrestles With its Decline- Podcast. ❤️ Lol Diego's example of the 0.001% chance a meteor is going to hit the earth in 2032 clickbait. Spot on 😂. It's the repeating cycle, mans face melting off "I learn clickbait/am bombarded with the feed/with celebrity gossip against my will" meme Agreed with Pills point that the *new* thing is that most content is now in truth noise, that the frequency or bandwidth of this noise content is near infinite to the point that you can't really even reconstruct or demodulate any signal, and maybe that's because a simple fundamental explanatory frequency or carrier wave never existed in the first place, just scroll/click/react/scroll/click/react/scroll/click/react, so the effect is almost as if we were seated in front of a TV watching white noise static. So not the cell phone, not the internet, not the social media, those all existed in 2008, when Facebook was just a place where all you could even do is search a person's name you met at a party, maybe poke them bc that was something new and novel and funny lol, when no one was yet being drowned in a stream of schizo content and having to react or digest or react to 10,000 new clickbait per minute of scroll. I think the biggest, absolute biggest shift that has just occured is that now "the actual happenings" are resembling prior clickbait or things that if you read the headline, your first reaction would be "surely that's the onion." But now, you'd be hard pressed to know whether something is a real headline or an onion headline.
ageOfBumFires
2025-02-13 11:26:28 +0000 UTClove his presence it really adds to the dynamic of the group
Atelier Minceur
2025-02-13 08:44:36 +0000 UTC#200 heck yeah! Rock on 🤘 I very much hope things are going fine for you all guys
voidvariety
2025-02-13 07:58:21 +0000 UTCIs diego going to be a regular on the podcast for good? Or is it a temporary thing
Paul Sevilla
2025-02-13 07:07:26 +0000 UTCOkay, one more thing-Obama's last comment as he handed over power to Trump v.1 was "Good luck." Why not try crack? Good luck!
Christopher Paul Bettridge
2025-02-13 06:43:59 +0000 UTC'Epistemalogical populism', that's interesting. I saw a short essay on the idea that some sort of 'left populism' might be a necessary antecedent to unraveling the campgrounds of the left. I sort of thought it a bit odd at the time, as it seems to me the whole point of an inclusive leftist ideological endpoint would be to, you know, be inclusive. So the way this argument here unfolds points towards just that, as if somehow actual subversion could be impossible in this world of a unity of disharmony and disbelief as meritorious is coming to be. I think that true subversives always have a combination of forethought and the inclination to immersion in action when action is either favorable or inevitable. Trump is not at the head of an army of subversives. He may be the hero of his own myth, but it's a hollow mythology in the end. There, I engaged in the discourse, I don't have to care for awhile. Wait a second, that doesn't sound right.....
Christopher Paul Bettridge
2025-02-13 06:32:49 +0000 UTC
