Hey, everybody. Welcome to a Fourth of July version of the weekend during the Look Rick podcast. I'm J.J. Sexton. Happy America's birthday, Nick. It feels great today. Yeah, thanks. That feels great. What? Yeah. It feels good. Feels real good today. Like it. Love it.

Yeah.

You know, it's funny because some many people, like on their Twitter accounts

have like the American flag patriot in their thing.

And at what point did this become a signal that this is someone you might not want to interact with?

2003 AD the Year of our Lord.

Okay, so when we went into Afghanistan?

No, when we went into Iraq.

I mean Iraq.

Yeah, I think that was when the worm turned a little bit.

I think it started feeling less like a symbol of patriotism and more like an aggressive posture.

Okay. Yeah. I suppose that was the beginning. You're right. It definitely feels like it's probably

that old at this point. But now it's a little tough. It's tough to sort of want to have pride

in what's going on in this country. It's a tough time, but we hope that you're going to be hearing this

on Friday, July 5th. We hope you had a decent 4th of July. Maybe you were able to hang out with your family. Maybe you were able to grill outside. That's the thing I'm doing as long. And also, I like fireworks. I know that they're obnoxious. I know that they scare a bunch of people. I wish that they didn't. I do enjoy them. I wish that they

had a more ethical sort of way of happening, but that's, that, that, that maybe isn't the topic for

today. We have a full episode. I have a really, really good conversation on Guajahad Ali, who is a

friend of the pod. Also, now the author of a new substack left hook, left hook. You'll be able to watch the video of this over at my substack dispatches from a collapsing state if you're so interested. But before we get to that, oh, and by the way, go to patreon.com slash my Craig podcast. You're going to want to hear the conversation with Wajahat.

You're going to want to hear this entire show. You listen to the previews. You know that this is one of the most wild times of American politics that we're ever going to see in our lives.

Nick and I are right there on the front lines, giving you exclusive independent analysis.

And we kind of told you where this thing was going. And maybe you

want to listen in. Yeah. And also, you know, I think the plan is we're going to be at the

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