Dismantling the Oligarchy: The Political Class is Intellectually Bankrupt.
Unf*cking The Republic
UNFTR Media
4.9 • 683 Ratings
🗓️ 29 April 2023
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode explores both the majesty of our democracy and its failures. No matter the issue that motivates you as a voter and citizen, there is an artificial barrier that exists between our desire for change and ability to manifest it. The whims of an increasingly wealthy donor class ensures that each of the major parties play their respective roles in maintaining the status quo. Well intentioned political figures inevitably cave to the pressures of the donor class and unrelenting requirements of campaign funding. The founders of the nation crushed monarchical tyranny with the innovation of temporary rule. Modern oligarchs have found a way to negate this innovation and install a permanent ruling class of elites.
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Resources
The New York Review: Hannah Arendt: From an Interview
Hoover Institution: Make Ticker Tape Parades Great Again: A Conversation with Peter Thiel
Ludwig von Bertalanffy: General System Theory; Foundations, Development, Applications
Reuters: Chile's lithium nationalization shines light on emerging tech
NPR: Can Brazil's Lula save the Amazon?
Book Love
Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Social Contract
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Puritan settlers to the shores of this continent witnessed the abundance of these lands. |
| 0:15.0 | The unvarnished expanse, raw and diverse. A temptation like no other. |
| 0:21.6 | Here in the early modern period, white Europeans set the roots of Renaissance idealism |
| 0:26.6 | and soaked them with the blood of mercantilism and genocide, setting the stage for the new world to break free of the futile shackles of monarchical rule. |
| 0:35.6 | This break delivered the most profound shift in social, |
| 0:38.9 | economic, and political thinking in human history. |
| 0:45.8 | To downplay the significance of the United States and the role it played in leading and |
| 0:53.5 | influencing global systems is childish. |
| 0:56.0 | The concept of American exceptionalism is not all that far-fetched when it comes to evaluating empires on a historical timeline and scale. |
| 1:05.0 | This is an exceptional framework. |
| 1:09.0 | There have been larger empires, periods of ethnic or quasi-nationalistic rule that were geographically more significant and enduring, |
| 1:16.6 | but none had the power to so meaningfully transform life on this planet through science, technology, |
| 1:23.6 | military might, and political thought. |
| 1:25.6 | The modern and postmodern periods have been shaped by |
| 1:28.6 | theorists who fuse the democratic principles of the classical period with innovative economic |
| 1:33.8 | theories of the Enlightenment. We take this alchemy for granted today with the cynicism of hindsight. |
| 1:40.0 | Postmodernism at its core is built on cynicism, irony, and nihilism. |
| 1:44.8 | It's all critique and no vision. |
| 1:47.2 | The same can be said of the major political parties that dominate the governing bodies |
| 1:50.9 | of the major so-called market economies, most notably the United States. |
| 1:56.0 | We're in a protracted period of stasis when the compounding horrors of environmental catastrophe, poverty, disease, |
| 2:02.4 | inequality, hunger, homelessness, and war are sold to us as features of a functioning system, |
... |
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