How Both Parties Work for ‘Tyranny, Inc.’

Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté

Useful Idiots, LLC

News Commentary, Politics, News

4.6 • 4.5K Ratings

🗓️ 25 August 2023

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Click here for the full interview with Sohrab Ahmari: https://open.substack.com/pub/usefulidiots/p/how-both-parties-work-for-tyranny?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web Read Tyranny, Inc. here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/708057/tyranny-inc-by-sohrab-ahmari/ For $5 a month, become a Useful Idiot! Get extended interviews, Thursday Throwdowns, and chat live with Katie and Aaron in the Absurd Arena at http://usefulidiots.substack.com Watch this week's Thursday Throwdown: NATO Pinky Swears that it's a "Defensive Alliance" https://open.substack.com/pub/usefulidiots/p/nato-pinky-swears-that-its-a-defensive?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web Join the Absurd Arena live chat with Katie and Aaron every Tuesday at 12pm est at https://usefulidiots.substack.com/chat After claims of fraud in the 2020 election and the rise of Trump’s pseudo-populist wing of the GOP, Sohrab Ahmari wrote Tyranny, Inc. In the book, the journalist and founding editor of Compact magazine gives a tour of our political economy from the point of view of ordinary people who faced private tyranny and paid the price for it. Private being the key word. Ahmari, even as a conservative columnist for the NY Post, can sometimes sound more leftist than some Congressional progressives. “Conservatives are quite used to thinking of government as the only potential source of coercion,” Ahmari tells us, “so the fact that a segment of the right was suddenly alert to what big tech could do to you, seemed to me an opening to say, ‘Hey, let me show you other kinds of private coercion which are less visible, but all the more insidious.’” Sohrab Ahmari’s in-depth reporting and bipartisan critiques emerge as some mix of conservative populism and Marxist theory. It’s a fascinating perspective that, in a world ruled by tech censorship and private coercion, is increasingly rare to hear anywhere other else than on Useful Idiots. Watch the full interview to hear his response to Jacobin excluding him from a left-right coalition because of his cultural views, Oliver Anthony’s controversial country song, the actual difference between his critique of capitalism and the leftist one, and the unprecedented support by the US so-called left of the military industrial complex and the Ukraine proxy war. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to Useful Idiots. I'm one of your host, Katie Halper.
0:10.3	And I'm the second host, Aaron Mate. Hello, everybody. And reminder to go to Useful Idiots.substack.com
0:16.6	or Useful Idiots.locals.com to support the show and get bonus content, including extended
0:23.0	interviews and Thursday through down, which is your midweek dose of media madness, where
0:27.5	we react to very interesting, provocative, funny media clips.
0:33.5	But first up, we have the four basic food groups, Democrats suck, Republicans suck. Isn't
0:38.9	that weird? Isn't that terrible? Let's kick it off with Democrats suck. And remember, Joe Biden
0:44.2	was going to resolve the issue of student debt? Well, he ran into some roadblocks, but guess what,
0:49.2	everybody's got a new plan. And here it is. My fellow Americans, you know, I'm a firm believer in
0:54.6	education beyond high school. And that should be a ticket to the middle class. Not a burden
0:59.2	that weighs people down for decades to come and find and pay their debt. On day one of my
1:03.4	administration, I promised to fix the problems that the existing student loan program that hurt borrowers
1:08.4	for much too long. And I'm proud we're keeping that promise. We've already approved over $116
1:13.7	billion in debt cancellation for 3.4 million Americans, no matter how many lawsuits,
1:19.6	challenges, or roadblocks, Republican elected officials, or specialists just try to put in our way.
1:24.6	It's a day I'm proud to announce a new program called a save plan. It's the most affordable
1:30.2	student loan plan ever. And here's how it works. To pay back that loan, you had to pay 10% of your
1:35.9	discretionary income. That's all the income available to you after you pay for food, housing,
1:41.1	and all your basic needs. Under my new plan, reducing that payment to just 5% of your disposal income.
1:48.5	That's going to save the typical borrow around $1,000 a year. It's going to give borrow a little
1:53.5	bit more breathing room. And if your annual income is less than $30,000, your monthly payment will be
1:59.5	zero until it gets above $30,000. As long as you pay what you owe under this plan, you'll no longer
	...

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