Unlearn16: Class is in Session - The One Where I Take You To Cuba...US Version

00:00:00.000 class is in session hey everybody and welcome to unlearn 16 class is in session um guys today

00:00:10.820 we're going to go to cuba we're going to go to cuba because i honestly believe that the more

00:00:16.060 that i do these back histories and i and i do mean very old pieces of historical data that

00:00:23.600 people have kind of gleamed on or have little bits and pieces the more that you can see the

00:00:28.100 whole picture, the more you can understand how the international system works, the more you can

00:00:33.460 understand the United States' role, the more you can understand the driving force that is either

00:00:40.240 colonialism or imperialism. And again, I don't think, I can make all the judgments in the world,

00:00:47.780 in all fairness. I think it's very easy to judge the countries that sit in those powerful

00:00:55.140 positions the way that I tend to judge the United States. However, here's the problem,

00:01:00.920 and this has always been the case. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. I firmly believe that.

00:01:07.580 I firmly believe that having a multitude of middle powers makes a lot more sense in an

00:01:16.880 international system in order to have one that promotes more peace, more stability,

00:01:24.480 more significant progress in the future. When we have superpowers, they tend to be

00:01:35.740 the ones that are wielding so much power with no care, with no concern, with no serious

00:01:44.980 expectation of a backlash. And they do so with impunity. And that's because the rest of the

00:01:51.440 countries can't formulate enough of a stance in order to stand firmly opposed. We decide who the

00:01:58.080 good guys and the bad guys are, we make our stances, and we solidify our alliances. And

00:02:04.700 those alliances don't always benefit everybody else. And I'm going to be very, very honest.

00:02:09.960 superpowers maybe have brought great things to this world but i promise you they have brought

00:02:17.080 great things with great uncertainty with an imbalance of power and a lack of justice that

00:02:24.520 will catch up to us all and the only reason i'm not sitting here condemning canada as as hard as

00:02:30.340 other countries because we never sat in the seat i want to be clear about that okay so what i want

00:02:36.560 to talk about today is Cuba. I'm going to go back to, I can't go so far back. Spain colonized Cuba

00:02:44.920 for all intents and purposes, wiped out the entirety of their indigenous population.

00:02:51.880 There are no people indigenous to Cuba because Spain wiped them, Spain colonized and wiped them 0.69

00:02:58.300 out so completely that Cuba was Spanish, by all means, all right? And as Cuba was a colony of

00:03:09.560 Spain, eventually, as do all colonies, they want freedom. Not necessarily freedom, because they 0.68

00:03:17.460 don't have any alliances or similarities with their colonial masters, but because, especially

00:03:24.200 when you fill it with people from the country at which you are the masters of, those people

00:03:30.880 understand the rights, the freedoms, and the demands that they should be allowed to have.

00:03:37.880 How do you think you got the United States of America? You got the United States of America

00:03:42.280 because you had a bunch of British people, very wealthy British people, go over, start a bunch

00:03:47.380 of businesses, make a bunch of money, and then watch it all leave the colony, knowing full well

00:03:52.000 what their rights were. I'm going to skip ahead from colonization, from the slaughter, and I'm

00:03:59.080 going to skip right until 1898, which was the Spanish-American War. In 1898, Cuba wanted to 0.79

00:04:10.560 have their independence from Spain. They fought against Spain to develop their independence.

00:04:17.760 Now, here's the best part. In order to gain their independence, they leaned in 1889 heavily

00:04:26.780 on a very geographically close and economically aware United States of America. Okay? You got

00:04:37.700 to know that in 1898, America's really starting to come into their own, right? They're starting

00:04:43.300 to pretend to be this. You have the Manuro Doctrine. We're going to free everybody. We're 0.97

00:04:48.500 going to take care of everybody as long as our interests are there. And Cuba is 90 miles off

00:04:53.500 the coast of Florida. So their interests are clear. Their proximity to the United States is

00:04:59.500 impressive. And what's on the island is actually quite impressive as well. So the United States

00:05:06.800 free them. And as soon as they gain their independence, the United States then occupies

00:05:12.340 them until 1902. Why? Well, a couple reasons. Number one, they're now a colony of the United

00:05:21.780 States. Full stop. Full stop. And what I mean by a colony, because it's not in the pure sense

00:05:29.400 anymore, the United States did something and has been doing something that is quite brilliant that

00:05:36.200 the British Empire never did. The British Empire colonized with their military, then their

00:05:41.160 education, then their language, then all of their culture, right? They went full send into each.

00:05:48.200 At some point, the sun never sat on the British empire because they own 25% of the known world. 0.57

00:05:55.240 The United States understood that colonizing militarily and occupying places and forming

00:06:02.920 governments and establishing a level of control and thus actual connection to those people and

00:06:10.400 then a dependency or a responsibility to that population. That was too expensive. There was

00:06:17.680 no need to colonize like that. The better way, the cleaner way, the cheaper way was to descend

00:06:27.140 McDonald's. And I mean that with no disrespect to McDonald's. I mean, maybe a little bit, but I mean

00:06:33.720 that in a metaphoric way, meaning I am going to send business owners, business leaders, I am going

00:06:40.200 to send individuals that want to make a boatload of money. I am going to send them to these places.

00:06:47.140 They are going to establish an imperialistic connection. Just wait till I talk about what

00:06:52.980 goes on in South America. They're going to establish an imperialistic connection. And

00:06:57.280 that imperialistic connection is going to allow the majority, the lion's share of the natural

00:07:03.740 resources and the money to be siphoned from that particular territory, head back to the United

00:07:12.260 States all while under the illusion, the pretense, everybody's doing really, really well. We're just

00:07:20.040 making money. We're just good capitalists here. Everybody be on their day. So the United States

00:07:25.900 occupy Cuba. And they make Cuba include something called the Platt Amendment in their constitution.

00:07:37.440 And the Platt Amendment basically guarantees the United States the right to intervene at any point

00:07:45.480 into Cuban affairs, to restrict foreign policies, to make the right deals, to be a protecting force.

00:07:56.700 of cuba in the international system

00:08:01.580 technically they colonized them they colonized them without ever having to put a single dollar

00:08:08.460 or a single individual on cuban territory they virtually said we're your daddy now

00:08:15.980 right and as they did this the cuban people did not benefit so what ends up happening is the

00:08:23.500 the United States ends up forming these incredible ties with Cuba, and they send businessmen over

00:08:30.640 to the sugar plantations, tobacco plantations, mining plantations. They owned utility companies.

00:08:41.300 U.S. business leaders basically were the entire Cuban economy, and all of the lion shares of the

00:08:50.840 profits went right out of Cuba and into American business owners pockets. Now that's only going to

00:08:58.440 last for so long because the people of a country are going to start to have an issue with and take

00:09:05.760 issue with, rightly so, that the places they're working at, the places they depend on, the places

00:09:11.420 that are integral to their everyday lives and their jobs, they're not actually making money. 0.59

00:09:17.380 It's not making Cuba any better. It's barely paying them a livable wage while siphoning out 0.85

00:09:23.460 the lion's share of the profits out of country. And so what ends up happening is the United States

00:09:29.500 through this particular mess ends up supporting dictatorial regimes, such as the Batista regime,

00:09:37.880 not the cool baseball player that the Blue Jays used to have. They end up supporting this level

00:09:43.960 of dictator and corrupt business leader that has made ties and has made connections with

00:09:53.340 American businessmen in order to bolster, in order to protect, in order to solidify

00:09:59.060 their power and their economic interest in Cuba, all the while oppressing the rest of

00:10:04.980 the actual Cuban people below. 0.96

00:10:07.240 This doesn't last for long, right? 0.95

00:10:10.660 Now, did it make the United States a boatload of money?

00:10:13.220 Of course it did. Of course it did. And are some people going to say, well, they weren't Spanish

00:10:19.100 colony or Spanish colony because that was happening to them? Sure. But again, it's like

00:10:25.020 trading baseball cards. Who owns Cuba now? So all of this injustice leads to the revolution 1959 led

00:10:35.880 by Castro. Now we can debate communism and capitalism all we want. We can talk about how

00:10:42.320 Castro did some good things, how he eventually turned into this horrible dictator. Again,

00:10:47.520 power corrupts an absolute power corrupts absolutely. I promise you that is true,

00:10:51.920 no matter if you're talking about a capitalist or a communist. The reason why the revolution

00:10:58.700 happened is what we should be focused on because the people of a country were so so angry and so

00:11:08.180 desperate to kick out the regime that was oppressing them and benefiting a foreign country

00:11:15.600 they were willing to take anybody who was going to step in next any other form of economic sort of

00:11:22.080 a structure that would then be imposed upon them they didn't care they were sitting in a place

00:11:29.760 where this wasn't a viable useful system

00:11:36.880 desperate people will do anything and what i want to get at here is as we go through this whole

00:11:43.200 thing when you allow any country the united states included to wield a foreign policy

00:11:50.480 with absolutely no check or balance on said forum policy,

00:11:56.940 when the only two people playing in the sandbox

00:12:00.160 are going to be the Soviets and the Americans,

00:12:03.960 and they're going to fight about, as we're going to get to the Cold War,

00:12:06.500 they're going to fight about what Cold War issue is more beneficial to them.

00:12:16.920 The people will rebel.

00:12:18.640 so castro has a revolution turns it to communism here's what he does and here's the worst part

00:12:28.300 obviously to all americans and all american business owners he nationalizes all of those

00:12:34.340 things they own he takes it all away billions of dollars he takes it all the way it is no longer

00:12:40.320 yours it was sold out you stole it you took us at a weak point you took our natural resources

00:12:46.380 you installed a dictator to oppress us, so you would continue to be able to siphon this out.

00:12:52.380 Now, the Americans upset. The American government upset. The American business leaders upset. And

00:12:59.320 we all know which one has more power there in order to force new political leadership.

00:13:05.380 So they put immediate. They sever all diplomatic relations. They put huge embargoes on Cuba.

00:13:13.100 And you know what that does? Instantaneously, it pushes. It drives Cuba in order to find

00:13:21.980 other alliances. And in 1959, guess who they're going to find? They're going to find the Soviet

00:13:27.860 Union. Now, this is only going to be made worse with the Bay of Pigs invasion. The CIA led a Bay 0.96

00:13:36.700 of Pigs invasion, attempts to overthrow Castro. It's an utter disaster. It's an utter disaster

00:13:42.180 For a couple of reasons, Eisenhower orders it. JFK then comes into power, doesn't want to send air support, but sends the men anyways. They get absolutely decimated.

00:13:51.920 But this action by the United States in order to overthrow and topple a publicly windfall, like a leader that the public supports en masse, is going to push them into the hands and into the protection of the Soviet Union in opposition to the United States.

00:14:19.780 Now let's also clarify

00:14:22.220 Dead in the middle of the Cold War

00:14:24.400 The Cold War is a battle

00:14:26.660 And I'm going to say this for the people at BAC

00:14:28.420 Because heaven help me if people don't understand this

00:14:30.700 The Cold War is a battle

00:14:32.220 Of economic ideology

00:14:34.640 Not political

00:14:36.620 Meaning

00:14:37.200 The United States would support

00:14:40.420 Many a dictatorship

00:14:42.120 As long as they were capitalist

00:14:44.200 Loved Batista

00:14:45.900 Has loved dictator after dictator

00:14:48.860 as long as they play by the right capitalist rules, which include allowing American business

00:14:58.080 interests back into the country to take over the resources they once took in the first place.

00:15:04.500 And this battle back and forth will culminate in the Cuban Missile Crisis 1962. Now the Cuban

00:15:12.040 Missile Crisis is one of my, I don't want to say favorite because that sounds horrible because it

00:15:16.180 was terrifying, but there's a time period. There's a movie called The 13 Days, and it's based on

00:15:24.880 Robert McNamara's actual journal. So it's very relatively true to life from what I've read.

00:15:32.680 And it really documents what went on during that particular crisis. So to sum up, Cuba,

00:15:40.680 90 miles off the coast of Florida, everybody's terrified about nuclear weapons. The United

00:15:45.760 States, still to this day, the only country to ever drop nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and

00:15:49.860 Nagasaki. But right after that, the Soviet Union procures, invents, has a nuclear arsenal on their 0.72

00:15:56.440 own, and you start seeing a huge nuclear arms race be built up between the Soviet Union and 0.54

00:16:03.000 the United States of America. The Soviet Union now is trying to place nuclear missiles in strategic

00:16:11.060 locations in order to make them a true threat to the United States. Now, when JFK steps into the 0.76

00:16:20.900 ring, he wants to de-escalate all of the nuclear armament. He's considered to be soft on communism,

00:16:28.160 which people don't like. He gets on the phone with Khrushchev, has a line put in the Oval Office

00:16:33.220 in order to have a direct link to try to minimize the expansionist nature of the Cold War, and

00:16:39.260 especially minimize the explosive nature of nuclear proliferation. At some point, he's sitting

00:16:46.640 in a cabinet meeting, and I'm not going to specify dates and whatever, because I don't know how much

00:16:51.460 that matters. We get wound up in dates and times, and we miss the bigger picture. At some point,

00:16:56.680 somebody says, Khrushchev, the Soviets are putting nuclear warheads on Cuban soil. This is an

00:17:03.200 intelligence gathering. He says, there's no way. Gets on phone with Khrushchev. Khrushchev talks

00:17:07.560 him out of it. Says, absolutely not, Mr. President. Kennedy sits in front of his cabinet and says,

00:17:12.160 I just spoke to Khrushchev. He assures me there are no nuclear weapons on Cuban soil. You have

00:17:18.300 nothing to be worried about. He vouches for Khrushchev to his own cabinet. And in a very

00:17:25.500 short order, you have spy plane photos put directly on his desk that show Khrushchev was

00:17:34.760 lying, and there are one, two, three, four, five nuclear missiles being offloaded from a Soviet

00:17:40.920 warship onto Cuban soil. Kennedy gets this. Now, we understand the damage to an ego that has made

00:17:50.580 a statement and it made a very public one, right? So Kennedy at this point, and there's also

00:17:56.360 obviously the threat of nuclear war, and it was very real and probably never as real before or

00:18:04.320 since then, then during the 13 days. So, so all of this is happening and he's, he's livid. He's

00:18:11.660 like, that's it. Bomb them. Do whatever you got to do. Get them done. Let's go. Let's go. Bobby 1.00

00:18:17.000 Kennedy from all reports is the guy that calms him down. Bobby Kennedy's his brother. He was his

00:18:22.720 attorney general. He says, you can't do that. You fire, they fire. We all lose. We need another

00:18:28.120 option. So he talks Kennedy into building a naval blockade around Cuba. In my head,

00:18:36.980 I think Red Rover, but it's probably a little bit more of a game of chicken. If you don't know what

00:18:41.300 red rover is you're not living in the right you know generation uh pony up give it a go it's a

00:18:47.540 horribly dangerous game that kids play so he puts warships all around cuba tells khrushchev

00:18:55.300 take your missiles out of cuba or else

00:18:58.240 you then have this 13 days of build-up you also have khrushchev who's also working the same line

00:19:09.340 but back at his own cabinet meeting, back at his own table, back with his own people telling him 0.93

00:19:14.440 he's being soft on the United States and this capitalist pigs, right? The same thing barbs 0.97

00:19:22.000 going on over in the Kremlin as going on in the United States. And what does this guy do? He packs

00:19:27.440 up another warship, sends it off and says, we'll see. He's going to try to call their bluff.

00:19:32.240 So in comes a Soviet warship, and the blockade is set up.

00:19:38.420 Now, this is probably the closest to nuclear war the United States and the Soviet Union ever came to.

00:19:45.640 Because the United States and the Soviet Union are very used to fighting proxy wars, but not proxy war meaning you have two countries fighting on your behalf that you fund that maybe you arm, but you don't arm with nuclear weapons.

00:19:59.380 And you sort of use them as a giant game of risk

00:20:02.580 Laugh about it with your friends later

00:20:04.580 As you try to take over more and more territory 0.95

00:20:07.680 So as the Soviet ships coming closer 0.97

00:20:10.700 The American warships are here 0.97

00:20:12.840 We know

00:20:13.580 I wasn't alive in 1962

00:20:16.700 Just so everybody knows

00:20:17.940 But everybody knows

00:20:19.640 That if one of those ships fire

00:20:21.960 They're both armed with nuclear weapons

00:20:24.380 We're all done

00:20:25.820 They fire, we fire

00:20:28.040 everybody is done. So everybody is terrified of that, but also understanding you can't blink.

00:20:35.420 This is why it's more like chicken. I don't know if you've ever seen like the outsiders, 1.00

00:20:38.640 you have car A driving a car B, they put their pink slips on the line and they drive at each 1.00

00:20:44.260 other until one turns away. The first guy to turn away, he loses his car. I can't believe

00:20:48.960 they've been betting cars in the 1950s, but that's beside the point. So this particular

00:20:54.140 incident felt very much like that who is going to turn first is the united states going to make way

00:21:00.100 and allow the warship through or is the warship going to turn around and they get from what i

00:21:04.840 understand within a football field's length it's not very far of each other and at the very last

00:21:13.940 conceivable moment the soviet ship turns around and as they turn around in that moment in my

00:21:24.420 opinion the soviet union lost the cold war they should have called it a day right then because

00:21:28.980 from 1962 on they lost their pink slip and i mean that literally and metaphorically because everybody

00:21:37.940 every Soviet person wanted a pair of Levi's jeans. Their economy started to dive into the 0.70

00:21:43.800 toilet. Stalin increased the amount, not Stalin, sorry, the regime increased the amount of

00:21:51.880 purges and totalitarian dictatorships. They expanded. They were losing industrial control.

00:21:59.540 Everything was on a downward slope as the bigger that they got. 0.66

00:22:06.360 Because right in that moment, the whole world watched the USSR blink. 0.71

00:22:12.840 And in all fairness, and I can wrap this up to Putin, guess who was around? 0.67

00:22:18.000 You got it, maybe not during the Cuban Missile Crisis, although he would have been, but

00:22:22.520 right? He would have been around, but he was around during the death of the Soviet Union.

00:22:31.380 And that embarrassment, it wasn't a military death. It wasn't this grand war that happened.

00:22:37.940 It was this slow, suffocating, you lose because your way of life was worse and what you tried to do

00:22:46.380 was dismissed. It's worse than losing on the battlefield. It is losing the political

00:22:59.480 face value. It is losing the cultural game that the United States played better.

00:23:05.940 Again, I think Levi's pretty much helped them win that war, but nonetheless,

00:23:10.740 Probably a little bit of the rock genre as well

00:23:14.540 So you have the Soviet Union turning away

00:23:18.400 And now here's where it gets interesting 0.51

00:23:20.840 You then have

00:23:22.880 You then have the Soviet Union turning away

00:23:26.720 And Khrushchev agrees to remove these missiles

00:23:29.760 Puts them all in a boat

00:23:32.740 Makes a big deal about it 0.99

00:23:33.920 Sends it back to the Soviet Union 0.82

00:23:35.640 The United States flex 1.00

00:23:37.060 Everything is great

00:23:38.440 Except for the fact that eventually we find out, another great documentary called The Fog of War,

00:23:45.380 eventually we find out that those were only the handful of weapons that they caught,

00:23:51.120 that the Soviet Union had been seditiously putting weapons there for a very long time,

00:23:56.360 and there was many stockpiles all around the Cuban island that the United States had no idea about

00:24:03.400 and sat very comfortably for the duration of the Cold War.

00:24:07.100 Now, the hypocrisy of all of this, and this is where we have to understand the foundations

00:24:15.700 of these issues, during the time the United States, with all of their righteous indignation

00:24:23.600 about how dare they tip the scales of balance, how dare they get so close to our border and

00:24:31.340 threaten us at the exact same moment the united states already had jupiter missiles nuclear

00:24:38.300 missiles in turkey pointed at the soviet union within striking distance

00:24:45.420 same moment same weaponry same capacity same tactical and strategic advantage

00:24:53.260 yet we almost came this close to a call to an actual nuclear war because the playing field

00:25:03.760 was about to get leveled and the United States wouldn't stand for it now the United States won

00:25:10.120 and again guys you have to understand in no way shape or form am I advocating for the elevation

00:25:18.280 Or for the brilliance or the character of the Soviet Union under any leadership

00:25:28.800 You understand? I am not advocating that

00:25:32.180 But I am saying that you can't be the good guy for too long 0.94

00:25:38.120 You can't have the good guy image for too long when you're built on a mound of hypocrisy

00:25:44.660 When you're built on

00:25:47.340 When you claim to be just

00:25:50.920 When you claim to be the better of the adversary

00:25:55.220 When you claim to be the better place in this world

00:25:59.380 You can't sit there

00:26:01.120 And ignore the means with which

00:26:04.100 You've gained your political, economic, and military power

00:26:07.940 You can deny it

00:26:09.980 But the chickens, what do they say?

00:26:13.300 They always come home to watch TV, something like that.

00:26:18.840 I've watched videos, everybody's watched videos of everybody during that crisis and these little

00:26:23.620 kids hiding under their desks, covering their head, and I watch those and think, did they

00:26:29.640 think that was going to help?

00:26:32.000 Did the powers that exist actually tell these children that if the countries were to go

00:26:40.300 a nuclear war that's sitting under your wooden desk and covering your head was somehow going

00:26:46.780 to stop you being from being cooked as though you were in a microwave because then i fast forward to

00:26:53.820 today right you have bigger sanctions after the soviet union collapses you you would think it

00:27:05.020 would lessen but it doesn't they don't stop being communist but they're still angry right you have

00:27:12.220 obama trying to open things up and now you have the trump administration reversing everything that

00:27:17.900 that uh that that he did why will the very strong underpinning of we used to own it i want it back

00:27:27.420 that is our money our territory in our sphere of influence any de-escalation that has happened

00:27:35.020 has happened from Trump's perspective, from weak presidencies that aren't willing to stand up and

00:27:45.000 take what is America's. Now, you have to understand that all of this taking is what got us this close

00:27:55.660 to a nuclear war. That all of the, it is mine, not yours. We don't care about empowering the

00:28:05.980 people. We really don't care about democratic reform and what democracy is and what the people

00:28:13.740 of that region want. There have been many, many presidents, secretaries of defense and secretaries

00:28:19.320 of state that have made asinine. Kissinger was one of my favorites. I'm going to mess up this 0.97

00:28:24.360 quote because i can't remember it exactly he said something to the effect of we will not let a 0.99

00:28:29.560 country fall to communism due to the stupidity of its own people when you don't have justice 0.99

00:28:39.780 as your foundation when you're exerting foreign policy with literally no check or balance based 1.00

00:28:47.920 On what the US

00:28:49.600 Has to say

00:28:51.200 And all of these guys really went out the window

00:28:53.520 Come 1991

00:28:54.380 1991 you have the collapse

00:28:57.600 Of the Soviet Union

00:28:58.440 The collapse of the Soviet Union 0.66

00:28:59.740 The only person sitting at the head of this table anymore

00:29:01.760 Is the United States of America

00:29:02.960 The Soviet Union and the United States of America

00:29:04.980 At the height of the arms race

00:29:07.580 Had built up enough nuclear arsenal

00:29:09.660 That they could both kill the world 0.70

00:29:11.420 10 times over 0.99

00:29:12.320 When the Soviet Union collapsed

00:29:14.860 Where do you think those nuclear weapons went

00:29:17.920 when nuclear weapons start to degenerate, where do you think they put them?

00:29:24.560 I mean, I think in Superman 4, maybe Superman 3, he wrapped them all up into some mesh and

00:29:29.180 threw them into the sun. I don't advocate that. I don't know what it would do to the sun,

00:29:32.640 but I'm guessing we don't have that potential power because as they start to degenerate,

00:29:37.240 as they disintegrate, they start to off-gas. They start to leach into the surrounding systems.

00:29:43.460 From what I understand, a lot of them were placed in huge concrete cement pillars or cinder blocks and dropped into the ocean.

00:29:53.220 Did nobody see Godzilla?

00:29:56.180 This is what I say by, and this is what I mean when I say, means will matter.

00:30:04.300 They just might not matter today when you think you've won, but I promise you they're going to matter 10, 20, 30 years down the line.

00:30:12.380 when your chickens come home to roost.

00:30:14.480 Ah, that's the same.

00:30:17.200 That's what I'm talking about.

00:30:20.200 And what's going on right now

00:30:22.300 as Trump is looking to who he can take

00:30:24.840 and how he can take them,

00:30:26.120 it is no different than Manifest Destiny of 1812.

00:30:31.520 It is no different than the ideas

00:30:35.720 that the American Constitution

00:30:37.800 for freedom and justice and...

00:30:42.380 Power to the people, and all of that only applies to U.S. citizens.

00:30:51.180 That the president is allowed, and when I say allowed, there literally is nobody to stop.

00:30:58.860 When Trump said the only thing that can stop him is his morality, here's the reality of that.

00:31:04.200 Here's the truth bomb that nobody wants to hear.

00:31:08.580 He's not wrong.

00:31:09.580 Nobody else has said it

00:31:13.700 But he's not wrong

00:31:15.820 Because no other country and no other group of countries

00:31:20.760 Have been or are willing to stand in their way

00:31:24.960 Because they know their military and economic power

00:31:28.800 He's not wrong

00:31:31.160 The UN is not an international body

00:31:35.200 That has a military capacity

00:31:37.620 It is not a supra, and I'll do a whole thing on the UN, it is not a supranational organization.

00:31:44.400 If it was, our democracy kind of takes a fly, right?

00:31:47.700 If we've established the UN as being stronger, better, more wise than our government, then

00:31:54.460 the laws we pass don't mean anything unless the UN agrees.

00:31:58.860 First rule of the UN kind of lies, everybody's sovereign.

00:32:02.640 Sovereign nations get to decide what goes on in their own territorial integrity.

00:32:06.060 Now, there's rules about what you can do. There's international law, but international law only has cause and effect if people are willing to back it up or if the country themselves, whoever's in trouble with the international law, is willing to succumb to international economic, military, or social pressures.

00:32:25.680 guess what the military the united states isn't there's no international police force

00:32:33.440 judge dread isn't knocking on trump's door saying you i can't do a sylvester stallone

00:32:42.320 right so if there's no international police and the power corrupts an absolute power corrupts

00:32:51.120 absolutely and the united states is no longer under this administration and to be honest under

00:32:59.160 others as well we can talk about obama and dropping bombs in syria we can talk about clinton and what

00:33:06.700 he didn't do during the collapse of the soviet union which is a disaster there's lots of people

00:33:11.680 to talk about but the reality is is that trump is saying all the quiet parts out loud and he's doing

00:33:20.380 it brazenly and he's doing it ridiculously and what he's doing is he's pointing out that the

00:33:28.520 united states is only for freedom and democracy in the united states the only obligation that

00:33:34.780 government has is to the people within the united states that's it the united states has no

00:33:42.680 constitutional obligation to do what's right for this world and the only thing that's standing in

00:33:50.240 their way or should be standing in their way is a bunch of other countries with armies behind them

00:33:54.580 that say no more. And since they're not willing or capable of doing it, the only person stopping

00:34:01.380 the United States and its foreign policy, Donald Trump, or whoever sitting in the presidential

00:34:08.280 house at that particular time, he's not wrong. This is the flaw in our international system.

00:34:15.340 this is the this is the the broken link in the chain this is the reality

00:34:24.760 we used to have superpowers that would balance each other out we no longer have that now do i

00:34:32.100 see the rise of different superpowers sure absolutely but the rise of them are still

00:34:40.200 feeding into the narrative and the idea of what the biggest kid in the room has to say. And you

00:34:48.440 know, there's that old adage, like the craziest person in the room sets the tone. Everybody is

00:34:55.020 going to accommodate the craziest person in the room because the craziest has the most will and

00:35:03.160 the most will wins the day. Period. He or she who has the most will to do the dangerous, crazy thing

00:35:16.080 will win. It really isn't about military power. It really isn't about economic might. It is the

00:35:27.800 will. And what worries me about the international system and the international climate right now

00:35:33.420 is the United States could send in the military and the US military wins.

00:35:41.260 But what everybody's forgetting about is there's lots of people in desperate, desperate situations

00:35:48.340 who have nothing to lose. The United States has a lot to lose. Men and women in the United States

00:35:52.480 Army have a lot to lose. When you have nothing to lose, you will do anything. Your will is bigger.

00:35:57.800 When your will is bigger, you will do more horrific, more damaging, more, more surprising

00:36:05.880 things. The way the United States won the Revolutionary War was guerrilla warfare.

00:36:12.660 Their homelands, they were willing to do everything. They broke all sorts of battle

00:36:19.060 rules, codes of conduct, the rules of war, which I can barely get out because it always sounds

00:36:25.780 hypocritical anyways why would you think that lesser nations that don't have the power that

00:36:35.660 don't have the military might that are more desperate won't do whatever is necessary

00:36:42.100 in order to fight a battle they might not ever win

00:36:46.560 they might not ever get to the head of the table but how many

00:36:53.380 hundreds and thousands and possibly millions of people will they take down while they try

00:36:59.960 that's what he's creating and the history that i gave you is the precursor the history that i gave

00:37:09.140 you is the proof of the injustice of it all of the shaky foundations through which we have built

00:37:18.360 international law and we have been given and accepted the illusion that certain countries

00:37:25.240 albeit the united states at this particular moment who sits at the head of the table

00:37:29.960 is somehow morally ethically culturally superior

00:37:38.360 and i would say to you this they might seem to be all of those things because they won

00:37:44.440 And the only difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter

00:37:49.780 Is who won

00:37:53.000 Thanks so much for hanging out with me guys

00:37:56.880 I will see you next week

00:37:58.740 Same bat time, same bat channel 1.00

00:38:01.920 Dismissed 1.00

Unlearn16: Class is in Session - January 20, 2026

The One Where I Take You To Cuba...US Version

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