This episode dives into the complexities of contemporary politics and media, focusing on the roles of the fourth and fifth estates in shaping narratives around fascism and far-right movements. Host Jesse Hirsh engages with guest Rick Salutin to explore the shifting landscape of Canadian politics, particularly in the wake of Justin Trudeau's leadership and the rise of Pierre Polievre. The conversation also touches on the challenges of engaging with mainstream media narratives, the importance of grassroots movements, and the potential for new coalitions to emerge. Salutin shares insights on the evolving discourse around issues like Zionism and anti-Semitism, highlighting how these topics are increasingly being addressed in a more open and critical manner. With humor and depth, the duo examines the implications of these narratives for the future of democracy and social movements in Canada.
Takeaways:
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Hi, I'm Jesse Hirsch.
Jesse Hirsch 00:00:03
Welcome to Metaviews, recorded live in front of an automated audience.
Jesse Hirsch 00:00:12
And today we're gonna get into the.
Jesse Hirsch 00:00:16
The chaos of our moment with the fascist fourth and fifth estate.
Jesse Hirsch 00:00:20
A fun alliteration on my part, but I'm joined by my good friend Rick Salutin to kind of break down this moment in media, in politics, in society.
Jesse Hirsch 00:00:31
And you know, Rick, we like to start every show with the news, partly because Metaviews publishes a daily newsletter.
Jesse Hirsch 00:00:42
And today's issue is what I call the illusion economy.
Jesse Hirsch 00:00:46
And it kind of gets into the distance between the marketing of AI and the substance of AI you know, had Trump not been elected, I was predicting that the AI bubble would burst right about now.
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:01
But of course, with Trump in the White House, bullshit reigns.
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:06
And that means that AI is very much going to continue in its meteoric pace, especially with the state support that was announced this week.
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:16
But really, Rick, the purpose of our news segment is to give an opportunity to our guest to share news.
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:25
It's meant to be spontaneous, intuitive.
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:28
This could be personal news.
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:29
This could be world news.
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:31
The challenge, of course, is many of the guests we have are not news consumers.
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:37
They're not people who necessarily.
Rick Salutin 00:01:40
I'll step into that.
Rick Salutin 00:01:41
Yeah.
Rick Salutin 00:01:41
No, I'm a news consumer.
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:43
Yes.
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:43
This is where you are very much both intellectually and professionally engaged in the news milieu.
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:52
So the question fundamentally is what do you have your eyes on that you think our audience should be paying closer attention to?
Rick Salutin 00:02:02
I'm sort of pleased with the way Canadian politics, federal politics is going at the moment.
Rick Salutin 00:02:09
I thought we're just going to have to suffer through another kind of latter day coming of Brian Mulroney, but it's at least got shaken up now and we don't know what's going on.
Rick Salutin 00:02:24
And it's just nice not to know how it's going to come out.
Rick Salutin 00:02:28
I, I did not think that Justin Trudeau was the.
Rick Salutin 00:02:32
The devil.
Jesse Hirsch 00:02:34
You didn't want to fornicate with him.
Jesse Hirsch 00:02:36
You didn't fly.
Rick Salutin 00:02:37
No, no, no, I did not.
Rick Salutin 00:02:40
But I think he was cr.
Rick Salutin 00:02:41
He was wackier than we thought.
Rick Salutin 00:02:44
We knew he was wacky and it was endearing.
Rick Salutin 00:02:46
And he did nutty stuff.
Rick Salutin 00:02:48
Like he got into that boxing match with the, the Conservative member.
Jesse Hirsch 00:02:55
I want to say.
Jesse Hirsch 00:02:56
Brazo.
Rick Salutin 00:02:57
Yeah.
Rick Salutin 00:02:58
Something.
Rick Salutin 00:02:58
Yeah.
Rick Salutin 00:03:00
And he, he had a sort of a, A tendency to have outbursts in the House of Commons, like yelled at Peter Kent that he was a piece of.
Rick Salutin 00:03:13
And those were his good moments.
Rick Salutin 00:03:15
Like those are his endearing moments, because anybody could Identify.
Rick Salutin 00:03:19
But the, but he, he was, he always reverted to that high school drama teacher Persona and it was so irritating.
Rick Salutin 00:03:31
You know, you just, when he was in there, you never wanted to hear a word from him again.
Rick Salutin 00:03:36
But he was, he was not, he was wacky, he was not psychotic.
Rick Salutin 00:03:41
He was not.
Rick Salutin 00:03:42
But like that India trip that he took with his family was really beyond, beyond words, really.
Rick Salutin 00:03:49
It was all pictures in fact.
Rick Salutin 00:03:52
So I think he did have to go and he wasn't going to go and probably ever built his, the, his, his whole campaign on two things.
Rick Salutin 00:04:06
One, Justin Trudeau is responsible for everything bad that is happening in the world.
Rick Salutin 00:04:13
And the second one was ax the carbon tax.
Rick Salutin 00:04:17
So now Justin is gone and the, the contenders to replace him are going to ax the tax themselves before Pierre gets a chance to do it.
Rick Salutin 00:04:28
So we don't know what's going to happen.
Rick Salutin 00:04:30
I think it's at least it's, it's re.
Rick Salutin 00:04:31
Engaged me in that.
Rick Salutin 00:04:33
What I can tell by which, which news shows I, I switch to while I'm cooking or whatever it is and if I go to the BBC or the American nets, it's because things are just not interesting here.
Rick Salutin 00:04:47
But I'm actually spending, you know, grim as it is.
Rick Salutin 00:04:52
I'm spending more time on CBC and CTV than I was.
Rick Salutin 00:04:55
So, you know, is that to say.
Jesse Hirsch 00:04:59
And I think we are going to, as part of our conversation today, I think dig into why Canadian politics is particularly interesting right now for a range of reasons.
Jesse Hirsch 00:05:10
And it struck me that while Justin Trudeau probably saw himself as a kind of social media politician, at least on superficial or kind of image side, where Poliev has kind of built his own Potemkin village is around authentic.
Jesse Hirsch 00:05:28
Like on the one hand, he's the most fake professional politician, cardboard, you know, two dimensional personality, but he has somehow, you know, created the grift that he is, you know, like the convoy supporters, you know, salt of the earth.
Jesse Hirsch 00:05:48
And I'm not sure how long that's going to last.
Jesse Hirsch 00:05:51
I'm not sure that that is going to survive the test of a campaign that's not all about Trudeau.
Rick Salutin 00:05:57
No.
Rick Salutin 00:05:58
And the campaign is, it's, it's, it's in contrast to Trudeau or whoever else the opposition is that he gets support.
Rick Salutin 00:06:11
He's not an endearing fellow except for that weird breed of basically young conservatives.
Rick Salutin 00:06:20
A bizarre term in itself, I think.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:22
Although I think the core appeal there because he is, I think, quite repulsive.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:29
He's a troll.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:31
And there are a lot of young conservatives who love trolls.
Rick Salutin 00:06:35
Absolutely no no, and they better because they haven't got anything else to say as far as I can see.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:40
Right.
Rick Salutin 00:06:41
I do play.
Rick Salutin 00:06:42
I pay close attention to them.
Rick Salutin 00:06:44
They seem bright, mostly white and male.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:48
Yeah.
Rick Salutin 00:06:49
And they love him because he's like them.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:54
Yes, yes.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:55
Well.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:55
And, you know, we.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:57
We are going to get into the F word today in terms of fascism that while he is not, I think, at this moment, openly fascist, he is a gateway drug.
Jesse Hirsch 00:07:07
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:07:08
He.
Jesse Hirsch 00:07:08
He certainly helps normalize, you know.
Rick Salutin 00:07:10
Yeah, far right.
Rick Salutin 00:07:11
No, no.
Rick Salutin 00:07:13
Yeah.
Rick Salutin 00:07:13
The nastiness, the meanness, the.
Rick Salutin 00:07:16
The ability to just smirk while somebody shudders.
Jesse Hirsch 00:07:21
Yes, yes.
Jesse Hirsch 00:07:22
So our.
Jesse Hirsch 00:07:23
Our second kind of opening segment that we have on every episode is called wtf or what's the future?
Jesse Hirsch 00:07:32
Obviously a riff on what the fuck?
Jesse Hirsch 00:07:34
So you could think of it as what the fuck is the future.
Rick Salutin 00:07:37
Thanks for pointing that out.
Jesse Hirsch 00:07:38
We.
Jesse Hirsch 00:07:39
We have some American listeners.
Jesse Hirsch 00:07:40
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:07:41
So it's important to me that I spell everything out.
Jesse Hirsch 00:07:44
One of my great.
Rick Salutin 00:07:47
It is a stupid and ignorant population, but it is not their fault.
Jesse Hirsch 00:07:53
Oh, absolutely.
Jesse Hirsch 00:07:54
And not only that, I would say further that there is a real desire to learn.
Jesse Hirsch 00:08:01
And what we have as an opportunity as part of the podcast revolution is provide some of our counter view, our counter environment, our counter perspectives to our American friends and comrades.
Jesse Hirsch 00:08:16
But there is a phrase that keeps ringing through in my head, which is, you know, no one ever went bankrupt underestimating the intelligence of the United States.
Rick Salutin 00:08:25
It rings in my head too, quite often.
Rick Salutin 00:08:27
Yes.
Jesse Hirsch 00:08:27
So I ask you, Rick, what do you see on the event horizon?
Jesse Hirsch 00:08:32
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:08:32
What in the future?
Jesse Hirsch 00:08:33
And it doesn't have to be positive or negative.
Jesse Hirsch 00:08:36
Could be personal, could be societal.
Jesse Hirsch 00:08:38
But what do you see when you look out your window?
Rick Salutin 00:08:40
Well, I see good stuff.
Rick Salutin 00:08:43
And to my surprise, because my son, who's now 26, has been in the process of persuading me that I'm the most hopeful and optimistic person.
Rick Salutin 00:08:57
I always thought it was the opposite, but I think he has the evidence on his side.
Rick Salutin 00:09:01
I mean, when 911 happened, the first column I wrote for the Globe and mail after 911 was great.
Rick Salutin 00:09:09
This is an opportunity to solve the hardest problem in the world, which is the Mideast.
Rick Salutin 00:09:15
And I mean, that didn't work out.
Jesse Hirsch 00:09:18
Too well, but it was the right idea.
Rick Salutin 00:09:21
Not yet.
Rick Salutin 00:09:24
And similarly, with October 7th in Gaza, again, I thought, okay, it's back on the agenda and it's a chance to do something I do.
Rick Salutin 00:09:37
I amaze myself because I was convinced I'd go to my grave snarling and doer what I think has happened.
Rick Salutin 00:09:47
That's really encouraging in the last year, which has in a way been the year of Gaza for me, year and a half.
Rick Salutin 00:09:56
Is that a narrative that I grew up with, which was a very, very false one, basically.
Rick Salutin 00:10:05
Which was that the Zionist narrative that basically, I mean, I, I'm, I, I consider myself in a certain way a Zionist in the sense that Israel has the right to.
Rick Salutin 00:10:20
Jewish people have the right to have a country the way everybody else does.
Rick Salutin 00:10:23
It does lead to racism, it does lead to problems.
Rick Salutin 00:10:26
It's inconsistent.
Rick Salutin 00:10:27
And yet, you know, you, you, you make do.
Rick Salutin 00:10:31
But the narrative has been that the heroic Jewish state which was under siege by anti Semites, et cetera, et cetera, this is what Pankaj Mishra, the Indian writer, describes as the dominant Western narrative, which is a story of anti Semites and racists gradually being beaten back during the Second World War and then the Cold War and all that.
Rick Salutin 00:11:01
And he says the alternate narrative is that these people who were the good guys were actually the, the dominators.
Rick Salutin 00:11:10
And from a Third World perspective, which is the majority of the world, the real narrative has been the attempt by countries led by the United States to control, dominate, and kick the shit out of the rest of the world.
Rick Salutin 00:11:30
What I am amazed at, I mean, I started writing about this question, the Mideast and Israel during the first Lebanon, second Lebanon invasion in 1981.
Rick Salutin 00:11:40
I wrote a piece in McLean's, which was then a big deal, called Hitler's Last Laugh, that the Jewish state had become a kind of parody of what it thought it was.
Rick Salutin 00:11:53
And it changed my life.
Rick Salutin 00:11:54
I've had trouble not.
Jesse Hirsch 00:11:57
I mean, you mean the response and the reaction.
Rick Salutin 00:12:00
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rick Salutin 00:12:01
It just came down on me like a hammer.
Rick Salutin 00:12:04
Being critical of Israel has been much harder than being a leftist, a socialist.
Rick Salutin 00:12:09
Yeah, revolutionary, none of that matters.
Rick Salutin 00:12:12
They don't give a damn.
Rick Salutin 00:12:14
You can, you know, you can attack the Pope, you can do anything, but don't attack the state of Israel.
Rick Salutin 00:12:23
But what's happened is somehow in the last year and a half, that narrative has been, hasn't been supplanted, but it's been.
Rick Salutin 00:12:34
There's now a counter narrative beside it.
Rick Salutin 00:12:37
Yes, it's driving people in power nuts.
Rick Salutin 00:12:39
Has a lot to do with social, Huge amount to do with social media.
Jesse Hirsch 00:12:42
Well, TikTok, fundamentally, I think that's why TikTok fell into the crosshairs.
Jesse Hirsch 00:12:47
Was it absolutely subverted the American discourse on Israel, 100%.
Rick Salutin 00:12:52
I should watch more TikTok.
Jesse Hirsch 00:12:54
I mean, it's changed, unfortunately, what happened last Sunday with this Trump, you know, false flag operation.
Jesse Hirsch 00:13:01
Where they took TikTok off for 15 hours and then brought it back up saying, thank you, President Trump.
Jesse Hirsch 00:13:07
Users in the United States have noticed a marked difference in how TikTok operates, in the content they're seeing, in the stuff that trends out.
Jesse Hirsch 00:13:17
But previous to that, it was arguably a leftist platform where a lot of radical voices were finding a global audience in a way that those American voices, quite frankly, had always been suppressed.
Rick Salutin 00:13:31
And I don't even think of them.
Rick Salutin 00:13:33
I mean, this is partly dreamy on my part, but I don't see them particularly radical.
Rick Salutin 00:13:39
I see that the, an empirical, common sense response.
Rick Salutin 00:13:46
You just look at those pictures.
Rick Salutin 00:13:47
Come on.
Jesse Hirsch 00:13:48
But that's what a radical would say.
Jesse Hirsch 00:13:52
But I agree entirely.
Jesse Hirsch 00:13:55
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:13:55
This, this is the, the irony of fascism is it's based on lies, it's based on bullshit.
Jesse Hirsch 00:14:01
And it, the paradox is this is right when liberalism, even neoliberalism, was embracing evidence based policy and was kind of.
Rick Salutin 00:14:10
An alternate idea about.
Jesse Hirsch 00:14:11
Go ahead.
Rick Salutin 00:14:12
Which, which I have been brought to by my, my, and I don't want.
Jesse Hirsch 00:14:17
To, I don't want to drop the Zionist piece.
Jesse Hirsch 00:14:19
I'm going to come back to that because I think that's.
Rick Salutin 00:14:21
Go ahead.
Rick Salutin 00:14:22
When we've talked.
Rick Salutin 00:14:23
He works at a think tank in the UK and he says, look, the truth is the fascists said a lot of things that were true, that people were miserable, that they had been, that the peace after World War I was terrible for the, for the defeated, that unemployment and housing and all of this stuff.
Rick Salutin 00:14:52
He says, they say all these things that actually make sense and that people perk up and then they go crazy and they say, so the answer is kill all the Jews.
Jesse Hirsch 00:15:01
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jesse Hirsch 00:15:02
Or the answer is violence, right?
Rick Salutin 00:15:04
Because yes, the answer is violence.
Jesse Hirsch 00:15:07
That is their medium.
Rick Salutin 00:15:08
The answer is, you know, the race, the evil race, so we got to kill them all.
Rick Salutin 00:15:14
And that's.
Jesse Hirsch 00:15:16
And to your point, and again, I want to come back briefly to the Zionism piece.
Jesse Hirsch 00:15:21
We can explore this later in the conversation.
Jesse Hirsch 00:15:24
Fascism's ascent to power is based on a critique of capitalism.
Jesse Hirsch 00:15:29
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:15:30
It's the right wing's critique of the way in which liberalism and neoliberalism with unrestricted wealth accumulation becomes an unjust society in which you have a lot of people with legitimate grievances.
Jesse Hirsch 00:15:45
To your point, that the solutions they offer don't actually address the problem.
Rick Salutin 00:15:50
No, no, they're not in the same universe.
Jesse Hirsch 00:15:52
Yeah, yeah, they're on Mars as, as we're starting to find out.
Jesse Hirsch 00:15:56
You were going to say.
Rick Salutin 00:15:57
And they're smarter than us.
Rick Salutin 00:15:58
What's going on now with this round of.
Rick Salutin 00:16:03
I don't think of it as populism, although.
Rick Salutin 00:16:05
Or it is.
Jesse Hirsch 00:16:06
No, no, no, no.
Jesse Hirsch 00:16:07
But right.
Rick Salutin 00:16:08
Populism, not left.
Jesse Hirsch 00:16:09
But hold on.
Jesse Hirsch 00:16:10
This is a good opportunity.
Jesse Hirsch 00:16:12
The center calls it populism because the center is jealous of their popular support.
Jesse Hirsch 00:16:18
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:16:18
But it's not populism because it does not reflect policies that serve the populace, that serve the people.
Rick Salutin 00:16:24
Well, it's.
Rick Salutin 00:16:25
I think it's right.
Rick Salutin 00:16:25
Yeah, that's right.
Rick Salutin 00:16:26
But the.
Rick Salutin 00:16:27
As long as people think its policies will answer it and you know, they're smart with immigration and stuff like that.
Jesse Hirsch 00:16:34
But I got to push back also on the idea that they're smart.
Jesse Hirsch 00:16:40
I've always considered myself a left wing populist, and unfortunately, I am on the hinterlands, the margins of contemporary political discourse.
Jesse Hirsch 00:16:51
I'm further out than Bernie Sanders, and I don't mean that I have different politics than him.
Jesse Hirsch 00:16:56
I mean he has a platform.
Jesse Hirsch 00:16:58
You and I today are speaking with my mom, my dad, and a few other friends.
Jesse Hirsch 00:17:02
And that's fundamentally it.
Jesse Hirsch 00:17:03
I'm leaving this up there for the kids of the future who will discover this after the fact.
Rick Salutin 00:17:07
Yes.
Jesse Hirsch 00:17:08
But if I could make my point quickly, I'll throw back to you.
Jesse Hirsch 00:17:11
And as good Jews, we will talk over each other and bounce back and forth.
Jesse Hirsch 00:17:15
I think the left is smart, but not the left in power.
Jesse Hirsch 00:17:19
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:17:20
The left that is marginalized.
Jesse Hirsch 00:17:21
The left that with myself for my entire life has always been, no, shut up.
Jesse Hirsch 00:17:26
Stay in your lane.
Jesse Hirsch 00:17:27
That's technology.
Jesse Hirsch 00:17:28
Don't talk politics.
Jesse Hirsch 00:17:30
And that's where to bring it back to Zionism.
Jesse Hirsch 00:17:33
I too felt, and it's paradoxic to say this because October 7th was a tragedy, but I did feel a room in the narrative, a space in the narrative open up that allowed us to talk about Zionism critically as Jews and be like, not in our own name.
Jesse Hirsch 00:17:51
And even the way colonialism as a word has kind of come back in a more like not colonialism of the past, but colonialism of the present, especially in American discourse.
Jesse Hirsch 00:18:05
I find encouragement.
Jesse Hirsch 00:18:07
I find optimism in that.
Rick Salutin 00:18:09
Yeah, no, no, I agree.
Rick Salutin 00:18:10
I had not expected to see that opening in my lifetime.
Rick Salutin 00:18:15
I just didn't think it would happen.
Rick Salutin 00:18:18
It had such a grip that.
Rick Salutin 00:18:22
And you know the use of the term anti Semitism to beat off any criticism.
Jesse Hirsch 00:18:28
Yeah.
Rick Salutin 00:18:29
And yet.
Rick Salutin 00:18:30
And it just seems to have.
Rick Salutin 00:18:31
It hasn't vanished, but it's really on the defensive.
Rick Salutin 00:18:35
And there is an equally strong and more convincing narrative of the sort that Pankaj Mishra talks about the third World perspective.
Jesse Hirsch 00:18:46
Yeah.
Jesse Hirsch 00:18:46
So this is why I kind of felt, in a provocative manner, I wanted to title this episode the Role of the Fourth and Fifth Estate in Fascism.
Jesse Hirsch 00:18:57
Because where you and I share in common is paradoxical, a joy, a passion in analyzing the narratives in the media and analyzing the way these narratives kind of move and you just hit a big one, which is the way in which antisemitism has been used to prevent any debate around Zionism, to prevent any criticism of Zionism.
Jesse Hirsch 00:19:20
And Jesse Brown, who is a big Canadian podcaster, he's been doing that.
Jesse Hirsch 00:19:27
He's lost a lot of credibility because he continues to use anti Semitism as a blunt instrument to attack anyone who's critical of Zionism.
Jesse Hirsch 00:19:38
And that again, he is someone who under normal circumstances has a lot of critical thinking and it really tries to facilitate dialogue.
Jesse Hirsch 00:19:47
I'm curious, from your perspective, both in the context of Zionism, but also in the larger context of Trumpism and maga, to what extent are we seeing a transformation of the role in media in society and the way that that media in society?
Jesse Hirsch 00:20:02
Certainly not overnight.
Jesse Hirsch 00:20:03
You and I have been talking about this for a couple of decades now, but it does feel, especially with the way in which the tech titans and the social media people were front and center at the inauguration, that we're almost entering kind of a new world of state media, even though it doesn't resemble the old world.
Jesse Hirsch 00:20:22
This isn't Pravda, but again, there's interesting parallels here.
Jesse Hirsch 00:20:27
So I'd love to hear your perspective on that.
Rick Salutin 00:20:29
Well, I don't have anything much to add there.
Rick Salutin 00:20:35
I think that the question, I think when you.
Rick Salutin 00:20:38
We are in a potentially very fertile situation, the question is, how do you grasp it?
Rick Salutin 00:20:45
I mean, you and I have nothing to do.
Rick Salutin 00:20:48
We can claim no credit for this new consciousness that arose.
Rick Salutin 00:20:53
I think just human beings looked at the feeds on their devices and they said, well, this is nuts.
Rick Salutin 00:21:02
This is, you know, okay, October 7th was an atrocity, but it was a more or less garden variety atrocity of the sort that happens in the world from quite frequently.
Rick Salutin 00:21:18
Whereas the.
Rick Salutin 00:21:19
The Israeli response was on its own level.
Rick Salutin 00:21:23
I mean, it wasn't the worst thing that ever happened, but it was on a much more massive, nauseating, even more nauseating level.
Jesse Hirsch 00:21:35
Yeah.
Rick Salutin 00:21:36
And that this, you can't make it drives me nuts.
Rick Salutin 00:21:40
The attempts to make an equivalence between October 7 and what's happened since then.
Rick Salutin 00:21:45
You can deplore both and recognize that they are of a different character.
Jesse Hirsch 00:21:50
Well, one should deplore both.
Jesse Hirsch 00:21:52
That's an interesting kind of metric.
Jesse Hirsch 00:21:55
Of our moment, but please continue.
Rick Salutin 00:21:57
Yeah, no, no, I just.
Rick Salutin 00:21:58
So all I'm saying is people came to that by themselves, so it's not hopeless.
Rick Salutin 00:22:04
And the domination of the media has never been hopeless.
Rick Salutin 00:22:08
But the question is, is there any way to seize that and move it into the realm of formal politics and social decision making?
Rick Salutin 00:22:19
And I'm really not sure what that is.
Rick Salutin 00:22:23
But then I don't think we.
Rick Salutin 00:22:24
It's not honest to come up with that.
Rick Salutin 00:22:28
Then you just hope that it works out.
Jesse Hirsch 00:22:31
So on the one hand, I share that desire for humility, that absorption of guilt and anxiety, that you're right, it's not up to us.
Jesse Hirsch 00:22:42
But then, Rick, you know, there are few intellectuals like us who have read Herald in US.
Jesse Hirsch 00:22:49
There's more who have read Marshall McLuhan.
Jesse Hirsch 00:22:51
Not that they understood the guy, but there aren't a lot of people who approach media with a political economy.
Jesse Hirsch 00:22:58
And those who do, especially in academia, are not incentivized to think about what comes next.
Jesse Hirsch 00:23:06
And I think to your point about impacting policy, part of the social media debate has always been these are just clicks.
Jesse Hirsch 00:23:15
These are just likes, this is just slacktivism.
Jesse Hirsch 00:23:18
And I had a really interesting conversation yesterday around here on the podcast.
Jesse Hirsch 00:23:23
Check it out for everyone listening around the power of community.
Jesse Hirsch 00:23:27
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:23:27
And the power of solidarity and the power of organizing.
Jesse Hirsch 00:23:31
And that brings me.
Jesse Hirsch 00:23:32
And I'm all over the place, but this is how we tend to talk.
Jesse Hirsch 00:23:35
What really upsets me about Jagmeet Singh and the NDP is like Trudeau, they are playing a very symbolic social media game, and they're not actually building community, they're not actually building networks.
Jesse Hirsch 00:23:50
They're not actually mobilizing in the way that politics needs to be.
Jesse Hirsch 00:23:54
They're thinking that it's just about ideas which just draws them to the center rather than being an effective alternative.
Rick Salutin 00:24:01
Yeah.
Rick Salutin 00:24:02
And, you know, fortunately, also, they are not building any kind of success.
Rick Salutin 00:24:08
I mean, in the short term, it would be nice to stymie Polyevre and keep them stuck at the level of a minority government, something like that.
Rick Salutin 00:24:20
And as the NDP goes down, there's the chance of.
Rick Salutin 00:24:24
And the Greens have been dreadful.
Rick Salutin 00:24:26
So, you know, so you're left with the Liberals, which is sort of what has been the.
Rick Salutin 00:24:32
The case in Canada all along.
Rick Salutin 00:24:34
But I would say, Yeah, I don't mean to say that there's no role.
Rick Salutin 00:24:36
I, I do sort of believe in the ring of truth, that in spite of all the cacophony of.
Rick Salutin 00:24:45
I think if somebody.
Rick Salutin 00:24:46
I think that's what happened with the get with the social media and Gaza, that it just.
Rick Salutin 00:24:52
There was a ring of truth to a critical point of view.
Rick Salutin 00:24:55
All of the mass media and most of the sort of influential stuff on the Internet was the old story, the old narrative.
Rick Salutin 00:25:05
But somehow these pictures got through.
Jesse Hirsch 00:25:08
Yeah.
Rick Salutin 00:25:09
And some testimonies.
Rick Salutin 00:25:11
So I think if you just keep saying.
Rick Salutin 00:25:14
You just keep trying to tell the truth as you see it and hope.
Jesse Hirsch 00:25:18
That it resonates, and if I'm going to try to create a through line of our conversation today, we've sort of acknowledged the power of narrative.
Jesse Hirsch 00:25:27
We acknowledge that part of what October 7th created was room for new narratives, room for different narratives.
Jesse Hirsch 00:25:34
So let me bring you to something you wrote about recently, but I'm kind of curious about your thoughts on it as a power, as a narrative, the Manifest Destiny idea of America.
Jesse Hirsch 00:25:47
And I say this because it does seem to be a story that's infecting the people in power, but it's also a story that seems to be rattling Canada to its core and maybe creating new opportunities for new Canadian narratives.
Rick Salutin 00:26:03
Yeah, no, I think that's right.
Rick Salutin 00:26:05
I mean, the last time this happened was the free trade debate in the late 80s.
Rick Salutin 00:26:10
And it was quite remarkable.
Rick Salutin 00:26:12
I mean, I got on board.
Rick Salutin 00:26:13
I'm not sure why, but it changed my life for a number.
Rick Salutin 00:26:16
It changed my life in a lot of ways.
Rick Salutin 00:26:18
And I remember when we put.
Rick Salutin 00:26:19
We set up a coalition and we used to have big concerts and rallies in Massey hall, which nobody on the left had ever tried to fill before.
Rick Salutin 00:26:29
And I remember during the first one, we did a couple of them there.
Rick Salutin 00:26:33
More than.
Rick Salutin 00:26:34
No more than a couple.
Rick Salutin 00:26:35
But I remember standing at the front of the hall as it filled up with people and the reporters looking up at them and saying, jesus, people really care about this.
Rick Salutin 00:26:45
We just don't know.
Rick Salutin 00:26:46
I think we made, you know.
Rick Salutin 00:26:47
You know, we made it.
Rick Salutin 00:26:48
I mean, we made a big mistake, I think.
Rick Salutin 00:26:52
Or maybe it was just of the time we treated.
Rick Salutin 00:26:55
We taught.
Rick Salutin 00:26:56
We.
Rick Salutin 00:26:57
We chose to treat the free trade deal that the US Was imposing on us as a reprise of the War of 1812.
Rick Salutin 00:27:07
The Americans were invading us.
Rick Salutin 00:27:09
And we chose not to emphasize the fact that this was basically a corporate assault on.
Rick Salutin 00:27:15
On society.
Rick Salutin 00:27:16
Really.
Jesse Hirsch 00:27:18
Do you think.
Jesse Hirsch 00:27:19
Do you think that kind of rests on John Turner, though?
Rick Salutin 00:27:22
No, no, on the contrary, Turner was a response to it.
Rick Salutin 00:27:25
Turner was heroic and noble for the one time in his life.
Rick Salutin 00:27:28
If you're right once, it's good to be right on a good thing.
Jesse Hirsch 00:27:31
But my point is his narrative wasn't really attacking the corporate side.
Jesse Hirsch 00:27:36
It Was, to your point, rewaging 1812.
Jesse Hirsch 00:27:39
And this is why, on the one hand, I don't disagree with you, that we may be left with the liberals as the alternative to Poliev, but I keep feeling that the liberals are ideologically morally bankrupt.
Rick Salutin 00:27:55
They are the last free traders.
Rick Salutin 00:27:57
They are the last neoliberals.
Jesse Hirsch 00:27:59
But more than that, I kind of feel that their narrative, especially outside of their own, again, my own bias here is I have met people from across the political spectrum in my life, and never have I met more ambitious people than members of the Federal Liberal Party.
Jesse Hirsch 00:28:16
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:28:17
Like they are not, in my experience, they are driven more by their personal ambition than they are ideology.
Rick Salutin 00:28:23
Absolutely.
Jesse Hirsch 00:28:25
And this is why I just don't feel, in an era as conflicted and as desiring authenticity, that the liberals have a chance in hell other than how they continue to get elected, which is, we're not the other guys.
Rick Salutin 00:28:40
Well.
Rick Salutin 00:28:41
And that they have no principles, so that they can just shift to any position.
Rick Salutin 00:28:45
But that's not bad.
Rick Salutin 00:28:46
You know, if you have a strong social movement and somehow the popular will is going in an enlightened way, they'll go over there.
Rick Salutin 00:28:55
So that's not a bad thing to have.
Rick Salutin 00:28:57
I mean, I even think Doug Ford, you know, who the hell thought he was going to come out the way he has.
Rick Salutin 00:29:02
He's been awful in some ways, but not in all the ways we expect it.
Jesse Hirsch 00:29:06
Well, Doug Ford is, you know, your classic retail politician, where if we had equal access, right, like he bends, he wants to make friends with whoever's in the room.
Jesse Hirsch 00:29:17
So if we had more access to him, absolutely, we'd be getting more out of him.
Jesse Hirsch 00:29:21
And props to Olivia Chow, who she has figured out a way to work with him in a way that I don't think John Tory ever would have.
Rick Salutin 00:29:29
But that's, in a way, good.
Rick Salutin 00:29:30
It means you don't have to join the Liberal Party or the Conservative Party.
Rick Salutin 00:29:34
You just have to do what you can to shape the environment in which they're operating.
Rick Salutin 00:29:39
And then their antenna will pick up.
Rick Salutin 00:29:42
Oh, we should go in this direction.
Jesse Hirsch 00:29:44
So then, you know, for the sake of case example in history, give me a brief unpacking of that Massey hall event and.
Jesse Hirsch 00:29:51
And what it took to put that together.
Jesse Hirsch 00:29:53
And I say this because I don't.
Jesse Hirsch 00:29:56
I'm broke as fuck, but there have been times where I've so been tempted just to rent a hall because I felt that it would be easy to strike a chord.
Jesse Hirsch 00:30:06
And there is so much hunger right now for at the least, like fucking podcasts.
Jesse Hirsch 00:30:14
Successful podcasts are selling out tours because people want to show up and do this thing.
Jesse Hirsch 00:30:19
So give me a little bit of the case example of how that.
Rick Salutin 00:30:22
No.
Rick Salutin 00:30:23
Well, what happened there?
Rick Salutin 00:30:25
And we almost won.
Rick Salutin 00:30:27
I mean, we won the vote, but because of our stupid system.
Rick Salutin 00:30:31
Yeah, Mulroney got a minority of votes, but he got a majority of seats.
Rick Salutin 00:30:39
And that was a mistake we made, too.
Rick Salutin 00:30:42
We discussed whether we should push for a referendum on free trade, and we didn't have the confidence in the population to do it.
Rick Salutin 00:30:50
We thought we have a better chance with electing the Liberals and the NDP to stop the deal, and we were wrong.
Rick Salutin 00:30:58
But the way.
Rick Salutin 00:31:00
But we did gather a consensus, a majority consensus in the country.
Rick Salutin 00:31:04
And the way.
Rick Salutin 00:31:07
It doesn't work to just rent a hall.
Rick Salutin 00:31:10
At least it won't get you where you want to go.
Rick Salutin 00:31:12
What you need is a coalition approach.
Rick Salutin 00:31:15
And that was a massive coalition that I don't think there's been.
Jesse Hirsch 00:31:19
But here's.
Jesse Hirsch 00:31:20
I think the paradox.
Jesse Hirsch 00:31:22
Give me a sense of who was in that coalition and whether they still exist now or if they do exist, whether they are politically engaged in that manner, as they were then.
Rick Salutin 00:31:33
Pretty much, yeah, it's a different constellation, but it's.
Rick Salutin 00:31:36
So they weren't that engaged.
Rick Salutin 00:31:38
I mean, we had a fight with the mainstream labor movement and the ndp.
Rick Salutin 00:31:43
The NDP were hell to deal with because they didn't want the free trade issue, which is the equivalent of the corporate issue today, to eclipse.
Rick Salutin 00:31:56
At the end, if he didn't want the free trade issue to eclipse the.
Rick Salutin 00:32:00
The social welfare issue.
Jesse Hirsch 00:32:03
Sure, yeah.
Rick Salutin 00:32:03
Because they thought it would cut for the Liberals and they would lose seats.
Jesse Hirsch 00:32:06
To the Liberals, which they are probably quite right about that.
Rick Salutin 00:32:10
Yeah, yeah.
Rick Salutin 00:32:11
And they didn't care enough about the country, as no party does.
Jesse Hirsch 00:32:14
Yeah, yeah.
Rick Salutin 00:32:15
To override their own interests, but.
Rick Salutin 00:32:19
And the labor movement was conflicted and we had to work with people, and you have to find people who work.
Rick Salutin 00:32:27
The farmers.
Rick Salutin 00:32:28
The National Farmers Union, and I forget there's an agricultural association or there was anyway, Artists, writers were very important.
Rick Salutin 00:32:37
And they had.
Rick Salutin 00:32:37
They had all.
Rick Salutin 00:32:38
They all have their organizations, so you can work with their organizations and try to get them to deal with their members.
Rick Salutin 00:32:46
We didn't say.
Rick Salutin 00:32:47
We didn't succeed very fully in that either, in the sense that we had the largest coalition that anybody had ever put together.
Rick Salutin 00:32:56
However, it was mostly the leaderships that were involved, not the membership.
Jesse Hirsch 00:33:01
Right.
Rick Salutin 00:33:02
And that's hard to do because.
Rick Salutin 00:33:04
And it's even harder to do now.
Jesse Hirsch 00:33:06
I was gonna say it.
Jesse Hirsch 00:33:07
It.
Jesse Hirsch 00:33:08
And.
Jesse Hirsch 00:33:08
And it's even There's a certain question of legitimacy that, you know, ends up being put on the table if you just have the leaders and you don't.
Rick Salutin 00:33:16
Have coalition of elites.
Jesse Hirsch 00:33:21
But the other dynamic to this, of course, is we live in a different media environment.
Jesse Hirsch 00:33:26
And while I fundamentally believe in the power of narrative, and this is why trolls can be so effective, because you don't actually need a lot of people to seed and launch and distribute a powerful narrative, but we are in a media environment that skews heavily right wing.
Jesse Hirsch 00:33:47
And part of what Zuckerberg just announced in the wake of the inauguration was again, allowing meta platforms to skew further right wing.
Jesse Hirsch 00:33:57
X Twitter skews further right wing.
Jesse Hirsch 00:34:00
And it looks like they just neutered TikTok to also skew right wing.
Jesse Hirsch 00:34:06
Does that by necessity shape the political discourse in the culture, or do you think that the ring of truth, as it were, will still burn through, especially when it comes to these heightened political moments?
Rick Salutin 00:34:21
I think it's the only real hope.
Rick Salutin 00:34:25
I don't think that basically it can't be generated from above.
Rick Salutin 00:34:29
When you say narrative, do you mean what people call storytelling?
Jesse Hirsch 00:34:33
Sure, but when I say narrative, I'm being more inclusive because I mean memes, I mean spin, I mean insults.
Jesse Hirsch 00:34:42
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:34:42
Because, you know, narrative doesn't have to be a full story.
Jesse Hirsch 00:34:45
It can invoke.
Rick Salutin 00:34:46
No, that's the point.
Rick Salutin 00:34:47
Yeah, I agree.
Jesse Hirsch 00:34:47
Yeah.
Rick Salutin 00:34:48
Yeah.
Rick Salutin 00:34:49
I was thinking of Innis when you said that in the oral tradition, there was no storytelling in the sense that there is in the age of print, where you've got in.
Rick Salutin 00:35:04
Within the covers of a book, you've got a real structure, opening, closing, ending, sense of an ending, all of that.
Rick Salutin 00:35:10
And in the oral tradition, it's something like the Iliad starts in the middle and ends in the middle.
Jesse Hirsch 00:35:16
Yeah.
Rick Salutin 00:35:17
And I think that's the kind of environment that.
Rick Salutin 00:35:20
That people that.
Rick Salutin 00:35:21
That kids are growing up in.
Jesse Hirsch 00:35:23
Well.
Jesse Hirsch 00:35:24
And because it speaks to how AI starts in the future and ends in the future.
Jesse Hirsch 00:35:29
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:35:29
It's always a story that never actually exists in the present.
Jesse Hirsch 00:35:33
It's always something that's going to happen.
Jesse Hirsch 00:35:34
And one of the most frustrating things I've had in doing this podcast is on the one hand, I want to have guests who are going to speak to AI because part of what I'm doing is building a critique.
Jesse Hirsch 00:35:46
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:35:46
And trying to kind of break it down.
Jesse Hirsch 00:35:48
But they've all accepted a future that does not exist, and I don't think it's going to happen.
Jesse Hirsch 00:35:55
But they refer to it with such authority, such conviction, and the Biggest one is jobs.
Jesse Hirsch 00:36:02
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:36:02
That AI is going to take all our jobs.
Jesse Hirsch 00:36:04
And I just don't see it on so many different levels, but it's just assumed that there will be no jobs.
Jesse Hirsch 00:36:11
And I'm just like, well, where do you get that from?
Jesse Hirsch 00:36:13
Well, Elon Musk says that I'm like, oh, yeah, you trust that fucker.
Jesse Hirsch 00:36:17
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:36:18
And it's frustrating to me because this is why I keep coming back down to narrative.
Jesse Hirsch 00:36:24
So much of what fascism seeks to do is control our narratives and not allow for any alternatives.
Jesse Hirsch 00:36:32
And as much as I hate the narrative of Wokeness, because it is a narrative constructed by the right, it is a narrative of control.
Jesse Hirsch 00:36:43
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:36:43
The way that this issue of gender, like you were talking about Poliev and his smirk.
Jesse Hirsch 00:36:47
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:36:48
He did an interview yesterday on ctv, which he was like, what?
Jesse Hirsch 00:36:51
There's only two genders?
Jesse Hirsch 00:36:52
And did this smirk.
Jesse Hirsch 00:36:53
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:36:54
As if he's negating the existence of thousands of Canadians.
Jesse Hirsch 00:36:58
And.
Jesse Hirsch 00:36:59
Sorry, I'm rambling.
Rick Salutin 00:37:00
No, no, go ahead.
Rick Salutin 00:37:01
Well, but I think.
Rick Salutin 00:37:02
I think the situation.
Rick Salutin 00:37:03
I find the situation now more hopeful than.
Rick Salutin 00:37:07
I mean, I went through the 60s.
Rick Salutin 00:37:09
That was my sort of, you know, debutante's ball, and I think the situation is much more hopeful now because of the spread.
Rick Salutin 00:37:21
They can't.
Rick Salutin 00:37:23
The Gaza thing has been very encouraging to me that if.
Rick Salutin 00:37:27
If you could break through that narrative, you can break through.
Rick Salutin 00:37:32
Everything is fragile.
Jesse Hirsch 00:37:35
But I mean, with that in mind, where do you see the state of Israel in this kind of emerging global order?
Jesse Hirsch 00:37:41
On the one hand, they seem to have quite an ally in the White House, but on the other hand, they seem to have lost any legitimacy.
Rick Salutin 00:37:49
I don't think they have an ally.
Rick Salutin 00:37:51
You mean with Trump?
Jesse Hirsch 00:37:52
Yeah, I mean, not at all.
Rick Salutin 00:37:54
No, no, please, go ahead.
Rick Salutin 00:37:56
I think he's essentially anti Semitic, like many of his cohort.
Rick Salutin 00:38:02
Yeah.
Rick Salutin 00:38:03
And what his goal.
Rick Salutin 00:38:05
I don't think he has any.
Rick Salutin 00:38:06
Biden was much more of a problem.
Rick Salutin 00:38:08
Biden was of that generation that had sold out almost everything that they'd grown up with from the 30s.
Rick Salutin 00:38:16
And they wanted to feel there was one area of idealism and commitment that still existed, and it was Israel.
Rick Salutin 00:38:23
Yeah, well, because of the Holocaust.
Jesse Hirsch 00:38:25
Yeah.
Rick Salutin 00:38:27
So.
Jesse Hirsch 00:38:27
But you think Trump may not be as effective?
Rick Salutin 00:38:31
Not in that.
Rick Salutin 00:38:32
What Trump is into is controlling the region the way they used to control it, via a collaboration between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Rick Salutin 00:38:46
And for that, the Saudis would love to do it, but they can't do it as long as Israel is slaughtering Palestinians.
Jesse Hirsch 00:38:57
Yeah.
Rick Salutin 00:38:58
So Trump has to stop that.
Rick Salutin 00:39:01
So in that sense, it's more this.
Rick Salutin 00:39:02
The right.
Rick Salutin 00:39:03
In the real politic of it, it's a more hopeful situation.
Rick Salutin 00:39:07
The other reason it's not going to work is because satellites and colonies are not what they once were, and they have much more of a sense of autonomy and self interest than they used to have.
Jesse Hirsch 00:39:22
Well, especially the Netanyahu government.
Jesse Hirsch 00:39:25
They're not listening to anybody.
Rick Salutin 00:39:26
Well, and I think you're gonna find that, you know, elsewhere you can find it with.
Rick Salutin 00:39:33
Well, you certainly find it on the level of India is just, you know, willing to go deal with anybody.
Jesse Hirsch 00:39:39
Yeah.
Rick Salutin 00:39:40
And I don't think.
Rick Salutin 00:39:41
And Saudi Arabia is.
Rick Salutin 00:39:43
Is making its own rapprochement with Iran and China.
Rick Salutin 00:39:47
So it's just not a pretty controllable world the way.
Jesse Hirsch 00:39:50
All right, so what about Canada then?
Jesse Hirsch 00:39:52
Because your answer when I asked this the first time was accurate and fair, but it was still kind of vague in the sense that it was anticipating a continuance of the status quo.
Jesse Hirsch 00:40:05
So if we assume that the status quo is not going to continue, I, for example, don't think that Poliev.
Jesse Hirsch 00:40:13
There's a guarantee on Poliev continuing as leader of the Conservatives.
Jesse Hirsch 00:40:17
Like we are at a situation in which all bets are off.
Jesse Hirsch 00:40:21
And your point about Poliev needs Trudeau.
Jesse Hirsch 00:40:24
And now that Trudeau's gone, Poliev's strengths are certainly no longer in private.
Rick Salutin 00:40:30
He's in mourning.
Jesse Hirsch 00:40:32
Exactly.
Jesse Hirsch 00:40:33
And so given this bully that has now decided to kick us around a little, and we still don't know how or when, but there is a lot of rhetoric on the Canadian side of, hey, we can't kick.
Jesse Hirsch 00:40:46
Be kicked around.
Jesse Hirsch 00:40:47
And I think for some politicians, it seems, especially for Doug Ford, it's an excellent opportunity.
Jesse Hirsch 00:40:54
Give me some speculation on how you seen this play out.
Jesse Hirsch 00:40:57
On the assumption that the status quo doesn't hold.
Rick Salutin 00:41:01
I just, I don't like doing predictions.
Rick Salutin 00:41:04
I've been wrong about everything.
Rick Salutin 00:41:05
I didn't.
Jesse Hirsch 00:41:06
But that's the fun.
Jesse Hirsch 00:41:07
We know we're going to be wrong.
Rick Salutin 00:41:09
It's true.
Rick Salutin 00:41:10
It's true.
Rick Salutin 00:41:12
And I know.
Rick Salutin 00:41:13
I don't know.
Rick Salutin 00:41:14
I just.
Rick Salutin 00:41:16
I think it's very good to actually, you know, to get old and die.
Jesse Hirsch 00:41:22
I agree.
Jesse Hirsch 00:41:23
It's something to look forward to, you know.
Rick Salutin 00:41:25
You know, you offer what you can.
Jesse Hirsch 00:41:28
Okay.
Jesse Hirsch 00:41:29
I'm not going to let you off that easy, so I'll focus it back again.
Jesse Hirsch 00:41:32
Doug Ford.
Jesse Hirsch 00:41:34
Where do you see Doug Ford?
Jesse Hirsch 00:41:36
Because he certainly sees this as an opportunity.
Jesse Hirsch 00:41:39
How do you see him playing this moment in Canadian.
Rick Salutin 00:41:41
I, I welcome this, you know, Captain Canada thing.
Rick Salutin 00:41:45
He's doing.
Rick Salutin 00:41:45
It's way better than his other thing.
Rick Salutin 00:41:48
He's not going to cease to be.
Jesse Hirsch 00:41:49
A, a good old boy.
Rick Salutin 00:41:52
Well, yeah, and you know, just a facilitator of his.
Rick Salutin 00:41:56
You know, he doesn't, he's not into big capital.
Rick Salutin 00:41:59
He doesn't want Elon Musk up there with him.
Rick Salutin 00:42:01
He wants some realtor in, you know, Brampton or something.
Jesse Hirsch 00:42:06
He's happy to be the king of on.
Rick Salutin 00:42:08
Yeah, but you know, but we all have our flaws.
Rick Salutin 00:42:11
Nobody's perfect.
Rick Salutin 00:42:12
We have our flaws.
Jesse Hirsch 00:42:13
But do you think he'd follow through on some of the threats that he's been making?
Jesse Hirsch 00:42:16
Do you think the feds will follow through on some of the threats that they're making or will they just cave to American power?
Jesse Hirsch 00:42:24
Perhaps because there isn't the narrative support to facilitate.
Rick Salutin 00:42:28
Well, I think that's where some coalition building and could, could help, you know, but putting on public pressure.
Rick Salutin 00:42:37
The, the convoy I don't think was a very majority movement, but it was fringe.
Rick Salutin 00:42:43
But it, yeah, but it managed to make itself a force that had to be dealt with.
Rick Salutin 00:42:48
And in some ways Polyevre's leadership is a result.
Jesse Hirsch 00:42:51
Although, and again I, for the record, I'm not endorsing this in the manner that they did.
Jesse Hirsch 00:42:57
They use the threat of violence.
Jesse Hirsch 00:42:59
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:43:00
I mean that's what allows the right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:43:02
When they engage in grassroots actions that are comparable to the left, they tend to get a little more traction.
Jesse Hirsch 00:43:08
A because the police support them and B because they use the threat of violence which the left used to.
Rick Salutin 00:43:15
Absolutely.
Jesse Hirsch 00:43:16
But hasn't in a while.
Rick Salutin 00:43:17
Absolutely.
Rick Salutin 00:43:18
Yeah.
Rick Salutin 00:43:19
Yeah.
Rick Salutin 00:43:20
No, and that was, that was what was, that's what led to the successes that did happen.
Rick Salutin 00:43:26
I mean Canada is not a negligible force in the world, you know and we did have the first socialist government in North America and somehow or other it's, I mean I, I, I hate the CBC but.
Jesse Hirsch 00:43:41
As do I.
Rick Salutin 00:43:42
It's a, but, but it's, it's an achievement.
Jesse Hirsch 00:43:44
Yeah.
Rick Salutin 00:43:45
To have got it going.
Rick Salutin 00:43:46
It was a big fight in the 1930s to get it into existence.
Rick Salutin 00:43:50
It was a mass movement on behalf of the cdc.
Jesse Hirsch 00:43:54
You think Polly have will kill it?
Jesse Hirsch 00:43:58
Because one thing for him to say.
Rick Salutin 00:44:00
So except for radio radio, you know, if they, you would have a violent uprising among those 70 and 80 year olds who listen to CBC radio and I think they know that they're willing to leave it.
Rick Salutin 00:44:16
Plus Radio Canada.
Jesse Hirsch 00:44:17
I also think some backbench Tory mps.
Rick Salutin 00:44:21
Oh yeah.
Jesse Hirsch 00:44:21
In favor of CBC Radio because of its reach in, in small town Canada in a Lot of rural locations.
Rick Salutin 00:44:27
Yeah, but they, yeah, CBC radio will survive and French cbc.
Rick Salutin 00:44:31
It'll be that sort of Canadian compromise that, you know, that does happen.
Jesse Hirsch 00:44:38
How you feeling about your Toronto Star column?
Jesse Hirsch 00:44:40
You still digging it?
Jesse Hirsch 00:44:41
You're still going to keep doing it?
Rick Salutin 00:44:42
No, I am.
Rick Salutin 00:44:44
I'm really.
Rick Salutin 00:44:45
I mean, it's a test for me to see if I turn into an old.
Rick Salutin 00:44:50
It'll be the sign when I turn into an old fart, I'll be able to see it reflected.
Jesse Hirsch 00:44:56
Kind of holds you accountable in the paper.
Rick Salutin 00:44:58
Yeah, yeah.
Rick Salutin 00:44:59
No, no, it's nice to think.
Rick Salutin 00:45:01
Can you still say something?
Rick Salutin 00:45:04
If I surprise myself with what I say, then the readers will probably be surprised.
Jesse Hirsch 00:45:09
Are you still trying to, you know, like the old days in McLean's in terms of the Zionist critique, you're still trying provoke that kind of reaction?
Jesse Hirsch 00:45:18
Are you ever successful?
Rick Salutin 00:45:19
I'm not trying to.
Rick Salutin 00:45:20
I'm not.
Rick Salutin 00:45:20
And, and I try to be very careful.
Rick Salutin 00:45:22
I mean, this has been very tricky to deal with because, you know, a lot of my friends are Jewish and that includes comrades, you know, sort of politically sympathetic people.
Rick Salutin 00:45:35
But there's a carve out for Zionism with many of them.
Rick Salutin 00:45:40
And for a long time I felt this is inauthentic.
Rick Salutin 00:45:44
They can't mean that they really think that the Holocaust is going to happen again.
Rick Salutin 00:45:50
But for a lot of them they do.
Rick Salutin 00:45:52
And I think I've had a, you know, I was wrong about mistrusting them.
Rick Salutin 00:45:57
So then I have to understand why do they feel that way?
Rick Salutin 00:46:01
And, and how can I address this?
Rick Salutin 00:46:04
And it's been extremely interesting.
Rick Salutin 00:46:06
I found it actually, and even with my family, I have, I've cultivated non relations with my family for a long time, but I got into some of it and it was really quite fascinating.
Rick Salutin 00:46:19
And the ones who I thought were the really hardcore pro Israel and won't hear anything else, a lot of them came through with a lot more flexibility, adaptability than I thought.
Rick Salutin 00:46:33
So it's been a good experience.
Rick Salutin 00:46:35
And in terms of, you know, trying to expand my sense of other people.
Jesse Hirsch 00:46:43
Right on.
Jesse Hirsch 00:46:44
And the teaching, how you feeling about, you know, the kids of today and your experiences in the classroom?
Rick Salutin 00:46:51
Really, you know, I, I've been doing that course that you come to for, I think it's 46 years, it's a half course, you know, so it's not what I really do, but I have never felt the students differed much from year to year.
Rick Salutin 00:47:11
Young people are still to.
Rick Salutin 00:47:13
I mean, they're not as open as they were in high school.
Rick Salutin 00:47:17
And in high school they're not as open as they were in public school, but there's still a sort of openness there.
Rick Salutin 00:47:26
When I started in the late 70s, students used to say to me they really regretted having missed the 60s, which seemed like an exciting era.
Rick Salutin 00:47:37
And I took it on myself to absolve them of feeling badly about that because I said it was 90% rhetoric and 10% maybe something worthwhile.
Jesse Hirsch 00:47:48
And where are we today in that rhetoric, something worthwhile ratio?
Rick Salutin 00:47:52
I think ahead of that in some ways.
Rick Salutin 00:47:54
Yeah.
Rick Salutin 00:47:56
I mean, the.
Jesse Hirsch 00:47:58
What, 80, 20, 80?
Rick Salutin 00:48:01
No, no, what.
Rick Salutin 00:48:02
What I regret for the students I have now and have had most of that time is that they do not have.
Rick Salutin 00:48:09
They haven't lived through the illusion of thinking you could change the world significantly within your own lifetime.
Rick Salutin 00:48:16
It was.
Rick Salutin 00:48:18
Yes, but, you know, but people this.
Rick Salutin 00:48:21
Who were like, I worked with people in the labor movement who were active in the 30s, and they had that same illusion back then.
Rick Salutin 00:48:31
Yes.
Rick Salutin 00:48:31
And they still said, but, you know, it really could have happened.
Rick Salutin 00:48:37
And people from the 60s will not say that.
Jesse Hirsch 00:48:41
Yeah, yeah, interesting.
Rick Salutin 00:48:42
Yeah.
Rick Salutin 00:48:43
We just were wrong.
Rick Salutin 00:48:43
We didn't grasp it.
Jesse Hirsch 00:48:45
I mean, the AI people definitely believe that.
Jesse Hirsch 00:48:47
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:48:48
They believe that they're in a moment where radical change.
Jesse Hirsch 00:48:51
They are on the cusp of radical change, and there is this manifest destiny that they have to reshape the human race in.
Jesse Hirsch 00:48:59
In the face of AI.
Jesse Hirsch 00:49:01
It's.
Jesse Hirsch 00:49:01
It's very Christian, it's very American.
Jesse Hirsch 00:49:05
And I agree with you that they're wrong.
Jesse Hirsch 00:49:07
We'll see.
Jesse Hirsch 00:49:08
I don't think you and I are going to be around a few decades from now, but we'll see if they come to the same conclusion.
Rick Salutin 00:49:14
Yeah, but, you know, the same with.
Rick Salutin 00:49:15
Yeah, I think they should get out more often.
Jesse Hirsch 00:49:19
I think the opposite is happening.
Jesse Hirsch 00:49:21
I think that they're getting out less and less.
Jesse Hirsch 00:49:23
In fact, they're falling in love with their own chat bots because only their chatbots understand them.
Jesse Hirsch 00:49:29
The rest of the humans, they just don't see what they see in the future.
Rick Salutin 00:49:35
What is it that they don't understand about how being a human being is different from being a machine?
Jesse Hirsch 00:49:41
The body, Fundamentally, their conception of intelligence is disembodied versus I think all of science's understanding of the human body is that intelligence is central to our bodies.
Rick Salutin 00:49:56
Right.
Rick Salutin 00:49:56
Yeah, the mental.
Rick Salutin 00:49:57
Yeah, the mental process of being human has nothing to do with the mental process of being a machine.
Jesse Hirsch 00:50:03
There is no mental process with being.
Rick Salutin 00:50:05
Yeah, but what passes for it.
Jesse Hirsch 00:50:07
But that's just it.
Jesse Hirsch 00:50:08
It's.
Jesse Hirsch 00:50:08
It's projection.
Jesse Hirsch 00:50:09
They are taking their own deep subconscious putting it on the screen and saying, look, the screen is alive when it's just a magic mirror.
Rick Salutin 00:50:17
No, I've tried to say that.
Rick Salutin 00:50:18
I mean, I don't understand what, you know, large language learning has nothing to do with how human beings learn.
Jesse Hirsch 00:50:24
No, it's a word processor that allows you to put words in the right order if you know how to use the word processor.
Jesse Hirsch 00:50:30
When I first learned how to type, it was initially counterintuitive because I was used to writing.
Jesse Hirsch 00:50:35
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:50:36
But again, it's these stories, it's these narratives that elevate AI to this godlike status.
Jesse Hirsch 00:50:42
And look who's hanging out with the President of the United States.
Jesse Hirsch 00:50:46
So clearly that story has worked for them on a political, economic level.
Rick Salutin 00:50:50
Well, people like to talk.
Rick Salutin 00:50:52
What can you say?
Rick Salutin 00:50:53
You know?
Rick Salutin 00:50:53
And they have a right to this.
Rick Salutin 00:50:56
It's one of the compensations for all of the disappointment you come upon in life.
Jesse Hirsch 00:51:01
I hear you.
Jesse Hirsch 00:51:02
I would prefer a different religion, though.
Jesse Hirsch 00:51:05
I mean, as far as religions go, this one seems to be trying to disconnect us from our body, I don't think.
Rick Salutin 00:51:12
I don't begrudge people this religion.
Rick Salutin 00:51:14
I just begrudge them having.
Rick Salutin 00:51:17
Seizing power through it and wrecking everybody else's life.
Jesse Hirsch 00:51:21
That strikes me as a pretty big grievance for us to have.
Jesse Hirsch 00:51:25
Now, our last segment on every episode is what I call the shout outs segment.
Jesse Hirsch 00:51:32
And you could think of it as a kind of bibliography that on some level it is designed to acknowledge that we stand on the shoulders of giants when it comes to our ideas, our concepts.
Jesse Hirsch 00:51:47
So, Rick, do you have anyone you want to give a shout out to, whether living or dead, real or fictional, that you think our audience should know more about?
Rick Salutin 00:51:58
Oh, well, I was just.
Rick Salutin 00:51:59
I didn't quite understand.
Rick Salutin 00:52:01
That's what it was.
Rick Salutin 00:52:02
I was just thinking of, if you.
Jesse Hirsch 00:52:04
Want to shout out Gideon, you can shout out Gideon.
Rick Salutin 00:52:06
That's cool, too.
Rick Salutin 00:52:08
The three little girls up the street who are the daughters of my friends who are just great, they're between about 4 and 12, and they have a grasp of issues like gender that nobody my age or even between them has.
Rick Salutin 00:52:29
And I don't know, I'm just so privileged to be in touch with them.
Rick Salutin 00:52:34
I just love it.
Jesse Hirsch 00:52:35
That's a perfect shout out, right?
Jesse Hirsch 00:52:37
Shout out to the youth.
Jesse Hirsch 00:52:39
In fact, part of how I'm doing this podcast is I'm using this service called podmatch.com, which has been feeding me all the guests, many of the guests present company excluded.
Jesse Hirsch 00:52:52
And I sent a kind of Complaint to the company saying, I love what you're doing, but it's all geezers.
Jesse Hirsch 00:52:57
Where are the kids?
Jesse Hirsch 00:52:59
Let's get the kids up there.
Jesse Hirsch 00:53:01
They're the ones who've got some really interesting perspectives and are thinking about the world in novel ways that we should be platforming.
Rick Salutin 00:53:08
No, no.
Rick Salutin 00:53:09
Old fartism lurks there waiting for all of us.
Rick Salutin 00:53:13
If you make it through without reaching it, it'd be great.
Jesse Hirsch 00:53:16
Well, to your point, when I was young, people would say, what do you want to be when you grow up?
Jesse Hirsch 00:53:22
And my answer was always old.
Jesse Hirsch 00:53:24
But at the same time, I've internalized Bobby Dylan's line of those not busy being born or busy dying.
Jesse Hirsch 00:53:31
So it is a matter of keeping the farts at bay.
Rick Salutin 00:53:35
Well, Jesse, what I'd say is, in this 46 year long course that I've been teaching, I've had many guests, some of them quite illustrious, including Conrad Black, who came to class at one point.
Rick Salutin 00:53:50
And when you came the first time and you went into your kind of wild man routine, I was thinking, oh, God, what a mistake inviting this guy.
Rick Salutin 00:54:03
And the next week I asked them how they felt and they loved it.
Rick Salutin 00:54:07
And you are the only person I've asked back year after year, you know.
Jesse Hirsch 00:54:12
And the benefit is you get to see the shtick evolve year after year, which is, you know, a bit of a.
Rick Salutin 00:54:18
No, no.
Rick Salutin 00:54:19
You've always.
Jesse Hirsch 00:54:20
You just.
Jesse Hirsch 00:54:21
Yes, but.
Jesse Hirsch 00:54:22
But to your point, it is.
Jesse Hirsch 00:54:24
The shtick is the same, the content changes, but it is fundamentally me indulging my Harold Innis kind of worldview, which I don't get to use anywhere else.
Jesse Hirsch 00:54:35
I could play the McLuhan stuff elsewhere and get away with it, but the Innis stuff, people can't handle it.
Rick Salutin 00:54:41
Innes was more radical.
Rick Salutin 00:54:43
Innes actually thought that the oral tradition was a medium.
Jesse Hirsch 00:54:48
It is, on some levels.
Jesse Hirsch 00:54:50
Absolutely.
Jesse Hirsch 00:54:51
Right on.
Jesse Hirsch 00:54:52
All right, Rick, thank you very much.
Rick Salutin 00:54:54
My pleasure.
Jesse Hirsch 00:54:55
This has been another fantastic episode.
Jesse Hirsch 00:54:58
We've done two in a row, which kind of suggests our next episode is gonna suck.
Jesse Hirsch 00:55:03
If you're listening to this, maybe you want to skip it.
Jesse Hirsch 00:55:06
I can't guarantee if it works out to be great again, I'm gonna get struck by lightning.
Jesse Hirsch 00:55:12
Rick Saluten writes for the Toronto Star, where you can read it regularly.
Jesse Hirsch 00:55:17
I perhaps will encourage Rick to maybe start a sub stack so he could get his ideas out towards the Internet as a whole.
Jesse Hirsch 00:55:25
Although Rick's shaking his head saying, fuck no, not a chance.
Jesse Hirsch 00:55:31
So thanks again, everyone listening.
Jesse Hirsch 00:55:33
You can find us on the interwebs.
Jesse Hirsch 00:55:37
Yeah, that's about it, Jesse.
Jesse Hirsch 00:55:38
Hirsch signing off.
Jesse Hirsch 00:55:40
We'll see you soon.
";}