Hey everybody. It's Jared J. J. Sexton here, Manning the Mothership while Nick Housman is out.

We've been doing this tag teaming now for the past week. We should be back on Friday's

Weekender edition, ready to team up again. Reminder for everybody who is listening to this,

if you want the Weekender edition, go over to patreon.com slash muckgric podcast.

We need your support. We need you to subscribe. It keeps the show ad-free, editorially independent, and rolling on and growing.

I have to assume, first and foremost, that if you are listening to this, you have survived.

The great Chinese balloon terror

of 2023. I've been on the road for the past week doing book tour stuff, and I got to tell you,

watching this hysteria play out from one hotel room and for a bedroom after another has been absolutely surreal.

I am 41 years old, which means that I grew up during the Cold War, and I had my fair

share of Soviet Union paranoia situations. Of course, I grew up in radical evangelical circles, which meant that not only were we

made to be afraid of the Soviet Union, but it was, of course, tinged with satanic supernatural

qualities. A very, very bizarre experience growing up in that situation.

Popular culture, of course, was filled with anti-Soviet propaganda

that was then ran through the lens of American experience and American exceptionalism,

which, you know,

posited the idea that America was the representative of supernatural good and historical good.

This takes place in, you know, everything from movies like Rocky and Rambo, a lot of those Sylvester Stallone

flicks. And, you know, you kind of over time, despite any awareness of it or maybe even

a lack of awareness, you've become indoctrinated by these ideas.

Cold wars are really strange, and they produce very strange circumstances.

This balloon situation was really, really strange.

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