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Know Your Enemy

TEASER: Le Carre's Cold War (w/ Jamelle Bouie and John Ganz)

Know Your Enemy

Matthew Sitman

Right Wing, National Review, History, Socialists, Reactionaries, Conservative Movement, Conservatism, News, Society & Culture, Ronald Reagan, Leftists Look At Conservatism, William F Buckley, Politics

4.71.8K Ratings

🗓️ 22 February 2023

⏱️ 2 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sam is joined by Jamelle Bouie and John Ganz to discuss the Cold War espionage thrillers of John le Carre and the 1984 film "The Little Drummer Girl." Sign up on Patreon to hear the rest.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Especially, Tinkertail or Soldier Spy.

0:02.9

I came away from that very much with the feeling that what we've witnessed are real, valuable

0:12.0

things in the world, like loyalty to those you love, intelligence, perception, things

0:20.4

that are valuable, to terrible use, to terrible waste, for essentially nothing, right?

0:26.8

For what actually is accomplished or gained here, just sort of like the satisfaction

0:32.1

to be go, the context of this like closed system for, you know, the people outside of

0:37.3

it couldn't give a shit, like to me, all of these stories are just like tragedies of

0:43.0

waste, of admirable qualities used in the worst ways.

0:47.6

Right, it's just like the destruction, and I think that what makes him, again, very British

0:52.2

and not American, and I think this is part of living in a very class written, and even

0:57.4

cast written society is, there's only so much you can really do, right?

1:01.8

There's only so far you can rise, you're located, right?

1:05.5

And you're stuck in certain ways, and trying to break out of that can bring a great deal

1:12.4

of doom is dangerous.

1:15.5

And these characters that, characters that want to escape from that, either through

1:18.7

idealism or through using betrayal, using adultery, like all of these efforts to kind of

1:25.5

existentially dodged your role in life and get more out of it, usually come to tragic

1:32.0

conclusions.

1:34.0

It's a little conservative in the sense that like, you know, a person who does their job

1:39.2

and is humble and knows their station, which of all kind of very victory and idea of having

1:45.1

like a station in the duty in life, is the hero.

1:48.4

Smiley is archetypal hero, and the flamboyant characters, the idealists, these people come

...

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