.jpg)
Zombie Book Club
Welcome to Zombie Book Club! We're a Podcast that's also a book club! We talk about Zombie / Apocalyptic horror novels, TV and movies.
Zombie Book Club
America's Funeral... I mean 4th of July YAAAAAAAY! | Zombie Book Club Ep 103
In 2025, The Fourth of July hits different. In this episode, we host a funeral for America—mourning the death of democratic norms, health care access, and legal protections, while challenging the myths we’ve been fed about exceptionalism. With recent Supreme Court rulings dismantling nationwide injunctions, millions losing healthcare, and fundamental freedoms under attack, we confront the uncomfortable fact that the America we were promised may never have existed—and that the one we have might not survive.
In this critical episode, we look to an ancient model for renewal: the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Formed in 1142 CE and deeply influential on the U.S. Constitution, this Indigenous democratic union embraced consensus governance, women’s leadership, and seven-generation thinking. Amid laughter, tears, and apocalypse-ready peanut butter riffs, we dig into its radical lessons and ask: what rises when America dies—and how do we channel the revolutionary spirit we desperately need now?
🏛 Relevent Links
- Official website: Haudenosaunee Confederacy
haudenosauneeconfederacy.com
📚 Educational & Historical Context
- Great Law of Peace & Constitutional Influence: insights and detailed explanations on the clan system and governance can be found via the official site’s clan‑system and historical-life sections
haudenosauneeconfederacy.com/clan-system
- Wikipedia overview: a useful primer on Haudenosaunee history and structure
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois
Zombie Book Club Links
Sign up for our Newsletter!!!! --- https://zombiebookclub.io/newsletter/
Join the Brain Muncher’s Zombie Collective: https://discord.gg/rn3nPDa4CB
ZBC Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zombiebookclubpodcast/
Dan's BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/danthezombiewriter.bsky.social
Zombie Book Club Voicemail: (614) 699-0006
Zombie Book Club Email: ZombieBookClubPodcast@gmail.com
Our Secret Website That Isn't Finished: https://zombiebookclub.io
Our Merchandise Store (Where you can find our Evil Magic Chicken Zombie Shirts): https://zombie-book-club.myspreadshop.com
Welcome to Zombie Book Club, the only book club where the book is a funeral, and we're all invited, everybody's invited, and we're all invited, everybody's invited, we're all invited to the funeral.
Speaker 2:Is it the President of the United States?
Speaker 1:Unfortunately. No, damn it. I'm Dan, and when I'm not wearing all black to the 4th of July celebration event, I'm writing a book about the death of America and, honestly, I thought this was speculative when I started writing it.
Speaker 2:No, comment I'm Leah, speculative when I started writing it. No comment I'm Leah and today I bought a 3D printed green raccoon because I wanted to make a kid feel good in our community. I also got some free native plants, a Canada clear and a evening primrose from our 4th of July funeral. I guess they didn't call it that. We're calling it that.
Speaker 1:It's pretty uniquely us calling it a funeral, but, yeah, it's a celebration of revolutions, of freedom, really.
Speaker 2:so, free freedom and independence from tyranny just go back and listen to the episodes about negan and tyranny for your thoughts on that. Yeah, uh, today we're hosting a funeral for the united states. Is america undead, dan?
Speaker 1:I wish do you know it's, uh, it's, it's dying and I don't think it's gonna come back. I don't think it's being resurrected in any form today we are hosting, facilitating a funeral yeah, who? Who is a person that hosts a funeral?
Speaker 2:well in one of my favorite teenage. Uh, when I was a teenager, one of my favorite series was called ender's game and it's like a wild sci-fi series by an author's whose name I don't remember right now because it's been a long time, but anyways, there's a point where ender is living on a planet where there's pig trees. They're pigs and then they get uh dismembered at the end and then they grow into trees, yeah, and there's this concept of the speaker for the dead. So that's what we're doing today. I guess we're funeral directors. We need to do some mourning, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and some people might be confused as to why we think America's dead, In which case I would say look at the news. We release episodes every Sunday, so subscrue you. Is what is written here.
Speaker 2:I know that I'm truly mourning, because nothing is funny to me right now. Normally I would laugh at that bad joke and you know what.
Speaker 1:The fact that nothing is funny to you is hilarious to me, and I don't know what that says.
Speaker 2:Well, that made me laugh too.
Speaker 1:I don't know what to think about. It's dark humor. I'm infecting you with it. You have infected me with dark humor. Hey, leah, guess what? What? America's dead Yay.
Speaker 2:Isn't that what some other groups around the world have been chanting for a long time? Is death to America, yeah, and they won. We're going around the world, have been chanting for a long time is death to america. They won. I, I, I we're gonna have to unpack this, we're gonna get there, folks. Um, if you have not shut this off, congratulations. Yes, this is not a normal zyba club episode. I, because things aren't normal.
Speaker 1:Yeah it's our fourth of july episode.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I should specify that yes, this is our fourth of july episode, even though you're listening to this on the 6th maybe.
Speaker 1:Or later, who knows?
Speaker 2:In the future. This is 2025 for folks who don't know, and before we get into the funeral, we thought we could dissociate again for a moment, because we're really good at that and have some groans from the horde.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, about the yeah, the good things in our lives. Yeah, let's hear some good things. Um, we have a very kind message from one of our zombesties, z martin brown, author of the non-essentials one and the non-essentials two, who was working on, I believe, right now, the non-essentials three, while also going to college. Wow, um, and they sent us a really nice message for our 100th anniversary episode and this is their follow-up to that. I think they just listened to the 100th episode right, I?
Speaker 1:I was gonna say I've. I thought that that z martin did send us something pretty great yeah, I.
Speaker 2:Um, I really feel like this is necessary to read for everybody because it's about to get wild. Oh you ready? Oh okay. Z says talking about the 100th episode, I had no idea that my preferred apocalypse food of peanut butter had such a profound influence on you, dan, dan and other listeners. I'm touched. But maybe there's a market out there. That's so American of you, z. Yes, how can we sell it? He says peanut butter for the apocalypse. Let's brainstorm. Here's my spin on some names for a new afterlife nut butter, peanut brains. Okay, chunky chomp, I like that.
Speaker 1:One pb and slay that's pretty great too, this is also a good one.
Speaker 2:Skippy the end apocalypso butter oh yeah um this one has so many layers dead nut spread that sounds gross. Zombienut, just with a capital.
Speaker 1:B.
Speaker 2:Just no Last lick on earth.
Speaker 1:I mean, you know what it's coming back around on me. It feels like an aftertaste kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Peanut Butcher, nut of the Living Dead. That sounds potentially.
Speaker 1:X-rated.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that sounds like a movie, um, and then he says your turn. So, dan, can you beat any of this? How?
Speaker 1:could I follow any of that? All the best.
Speaker 2:No, I can't which one will we pick for our company that we're going to start with z? Oh boy, um skippy.
Speaker 1:The end is my favorite skippy the End is pretty good. Chunky Chomp also kind of resonated with me, but I feel like that is a type. So if you have Skippy the End, you get Chunky Chomp or what would Smooth be Dead Nut Spread or Peanut Butcher, because they're fully butchered, pulverized. It's got to tell you how smooth it is.
Speaker 2:Well then he says then you guys slap a badass ZBC sticker on the jar and we'll call it a fucking day. Ha, yeah, I'm not not serious. Z says. I guess the question is, folks is, would you buy our Skippy? The end. Also, z, do you live in a climate where you can grow the peanuts? Because I learned recently we can't grow peanuts here, so this is my other. I guess, if neither of us can grow peanuts, who's listening? That wants to be the third in our little um, yeah, incorporated is there a peanut farmer in georgia that listens to us?
Speaker 1:or south carolina maybe?
Speaker 2:maybe you might.
Speaker 1:We don't know who's listening half the time so get on your tractor and farm us up some nuts well, you know, maybe this is like you know.
Speaker 2:There's all the survival. It's peanuts. Peanuts, a legume, yes, oh my god. Um, I have a hard time seeing them. The same as a lentil, but I guess they are. Yeah, anyhow, my point was is that we could sell this as a like life sustaining have to have in your um apocalypse preparedness bag, right?
Speaker 1:yeah, and you don't want to buy it from. You know, like those, the grocery store big guys, big, big peanut, big nut, you don't want to buy it from big nut. They are they just. They're just greedy for your money and they add chemicals. Oh, it has chemicals. Nope, not ours.
Speaker 2:No chemicals food is made up of chemicals. Nope, like unprocessed food is still chemicals. I hate to tell you this ours is different then he says but on a more serious note, school is kicking my ass, but I like it when my ass gets kicked, okay we're learning a lot about you today. See, I hope your girlfriend likes that. Um sorry, I couldn't help myself. Book three of the non-essentials is happening full throttle and it's getting weird for max madison, like twin peaks meets the twilight zone.
Speaker 1:Weird, you know that I'm loving it we've recently watched some of the twin peaks, so this reference is resonating it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, I need to read that also. It's 117 degrees here in the valley of the sun.
Speaker 2:Okay, that scratches the idea that you're going to be growing the peanuts yeah, there's no peanuts coming from that so I'm preparing my body for the real, very real likelihood of nuclear war. Bring it on. You can't burn skin twice. I think we don't go over nuclear war. Follow in my biology class until year three. That's too late. Geez, not to be that guy. What's with the world right now? Right Between you, me and Mark Z, who's reading this while taking a giant crap on his G5 jet. I'm terrified, and the only way I can cope with this is by baring my face in books, typing my feelings in quotation marks into a word processor and listening to your freaking podcast. Anyway, I think peanut butter has a strong future now, now it does bad segue.
Speaker 2:I know talking about pb calms my nerves. It's like listening to enya while taking a bubble bath. Scented candles are there somewhere too? Peanut butter scented can't. Why can't I say scented? I think I'm gonna sing scented.
Speaker 1:Yeah, peanut butter scented, we're gonna call up and yeah, and anya is going to make us an album that's about peanut butter peanut butter scented candles pb and slay. Perfect. Now, uh, we get those scented candles and we maybe we make our own brand of bubble bath and you have yourself a peanut butter bubble bath.
Speaker 2:Well then he goes on to say I'm glad to hear Dan picked up the powdered PB shit. That's the good stuff, is it? I have an entire drawer full myself. Hundred year shelf life. Foods like powdered PB are now the essentials. We're going to need it. Yeah, the essentials, not the non-essentials. These are essential. The ones with the oil, those PBs are non-essentials. Yeah, add your own oil. Yeah, or water or whatever, but you got to have the oil though. I don't know what the shelf life of peanut butter actually is Me neither but it did make me think that powdered PB could be compressed into like a bath bomb.
Speaker 1:Yeah, bath bomb, yeah, okay, I don't know if we're just going with, like, a bath product. Yeah, no, you're right, it could be. Um and so, like you compress the powdered peanut butter into a bath bomb, drop it in your bath, then what happens then?
Speaker 2:you drink it when you're done you. Water is something that has always, always should be respected, but especially in the apocalypse, you've got to multi-purpose it what better way to respect water than by dumping a bunch of peanut butter into? It well. No, you bathe in it and then you drink it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean the peanut butter drinking your own soap too.
Speaker 2:You know this is falling apart quickly. Yeah, I will say, though it could be very lovely under some red light therapy, like max madison loves in book one of the non-essentials. Do you think you could have access to red light therapy in, uh, the apocalypse? Yeah?
Speaker 1:I mean the sun has all the colors of light oh so just lay in the sun. Yeah, um also, you know when the nuclear bombs go off that that's probably red probably okay, back to back to z's message.
Speaker 2:I'm lost, right. So the last thing that he said was powdered PB are now the essentials. We're going to need it, but what we're going to need even more is entertainment An hour or so a week where listeners can get lost in the genius behind ZBC man, you know how to make us feel nice, no matter how freaking nuts I saw that, z, I see you. No matter how freaking nuts it gets out there, you guys can't stop. No pressure, but the lives of many rest on your show, ha. But seriously, thanks for keeping us simpletons entertained, thanks for keeping us informed and, above all, thanks for supporting authors, creators and artists alike. Cheers to 100 plus episodes. You guys, freaking, rule the underworld of entertainment and soon our apocalyptic future. Okay, back to studying. Bye, yeah, z.
Speaker 1:Future okay, back to studying. Bye, yeah z in in the apocalypse, everybody can come to us for tips about how to make peanut butter bath bombs that's what we should do, like you know where we're talking about having our apocalypse prep parties.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we can teach everybody how to make peanut butter bath bombs yeah, then that'll be a hit.
Speaker 1:And peanut butter scented candles you know, just imagine you're like I'm gonna get in, get in the bath and use, use all this water that I have to take a bath because when I get out I want to be covered in peanut butter what if it turns out that peanut butter it like deters zombies though?
Speaker 2:oh, it could, and maybe it's like a natural sunscreen.
Speaker 1:It absolutely is. If you cover yourself in peanut butter, you're not getting a sunburn. I guarantee it Head to toe peanut butter.
Speaker 2:A lot of bugs would climb on you though, yes, and the neighborhood dogs would absolutely just destroy you. God, I really needed that laugh today. Thank you, z. It was very fun to read your uh unhinged message to us and thanks for the no pressure requirement to uh rule the underworld of entertainment and our real apocalyptic future. Are we the the kings and queens of the apocalyptic future, dan?
Speaker 1:I think so, um, and I think it's okay to say that, because anyone who disagrees will just waterboard them with peanut butter water I mean, at least they get nutrients, yeah, but can you imagine that getting in your eyes I can't, because I I can't even imagine getting it in my mouth, because I haven't tried it you haven't tried your powdered peanut butter, it's like a very sad version of regular peanut butter.
Speaker 2:Have you ever had powdered milk?
Speaker 1:A long long time ago. Do you remember thinking this?
Speaker 2:is bad. Yeah, yeah, I mean like it's great to put in like smoothies, because then you have other flavor profiles. That just adds the peanut to it. If you're looking for a low fat thing, alternative to regular peanut butter, you just need some powder, alternative to regular peanut butter powder. You get that peanut butter powder and I agree, probably better shelf stable.
Speaker 1:But I think the key to peanut butter in the apocalypse is the fats yeah, so in the apocalypse, you know you could probably scrounge up a bunch of other powdered things too. Like you could get some like powdered ensure baby formula powder.
Speaker 2:Mix that in with your powdered peanut butter are we working towards like a, a peanut butter sauce for some?
Speaker 1:sort of a tofu it could be. I'm kind of imagining more of like a, like a, like a, like an ice cream substitute at this point, like it just become like a thick, thick, nightmare of flavors. That's our tagline for our peanut butter. It's a nightmare of flavors. That's our tagline for our peanut butter. It's a nightmare of flavors.
Speaker 2:BB and Slay yeah, I love the Slay Also. Do you think I have a career as the new Enya in the apocalypse, like if all the good singers are dead?
Speaker 1:Yeah, enya is not making it through the apocalypse. We know this.
Speaker 2:Okay, but Lori Salcaterra is a good singer, and so is Joe Salazar. Can we just, can I outsource that to them?
Speaker 1:I think that we're looking at a super group.
Speaker 2:A super singing group.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like in the apocalypse, you know we're going to be, we're going to need the music. We need to put together the survivors best vocal trio. Well, I'm not in that trio. You are no, because you're one of the survivors can I snap my fingers instead of saying yes, okay, yeah, you can do that well, I guess.
Speaker 2:Um, we have to go back to this life, but that was fun to imagine for a little while. Thank you again z. That was thanks z. Just a delight to read. I got to enjoy it twice. Dan got to react to it live just now yeah, what an experience life updates. Life updates leah what's? Happening in our world. I am eating peanut butter toast every day for breakfast.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah ezekiel bread sesame ezekiel bread specifically have you tried spreading powdered peanut butter on it instead I have in the past and you know what I determined, what I don't want to do.
Speaker 2:That Okay, I like my full fat. All natural peanut butter, specifically Teddy's all natural peanut butter. I'm shilling for Teddy's right now. Also, there's a teddy bear and I think that there's something about that from my childhood, because in my childhood we had Kraft peanut butter, which was also, which was like the corn syrupy salted peanut butter. What we never heard of Kraft peanut butter, no.
Speaker 2:And it had a green lid and a green label and two cute brown teddy bears on it, if I remember correctly here in America I did not grow up in America Kraft only makes cheese products.
Speaker 1:Kraft makes a lot more than cheese products and none of them should be considered dinner.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm just saying that the teddy on the teddy's peanut butter, all natural, makes me think about the one from my childhood.
Speaker 1:And that's how marketing works all right well.
Speaker 2:Now I'm sad why, craft makes peanut butter you're just sad you never experienced it. Honestly, it's probably made in the same factory as skippy, uh, or sorry, um, skippy and slay. What is it pb? Skip and slay, I'm forgetting now skip and slay skippy, the end pb and slay. I'm putting you know what pb, skip and slay. That's my contribution to this. Anyways, my point is, skippy is probably the same as craft peanut butter. Probably is just at the different label. Who?
Speaker 2:knows, yeah, craft just slaps their labels on things in canada so that's my important life news still eating my peanut butter toast yeah, um, want to know.
Speaker 1:My life update is yes, uh, no one died at work this week, except for america, except for america, uh. But you know what? America has been dying for a long time since it was born.
Speaker 2:Some might say yeah well, that's the thing was it ever?
Speaker 1:whatever, I yeah that's the thing about life is that we're all dying since the day we were born. That is true, uh, I, I don't know. I don't know if I mentioned in the previous episode, but yeah, somebody died at work. It was sad. Uh, they had a steamroller roll over them, which sounds hilarious, but I assure you it wasn't.
Speaker 2:I'm probably gonna delete that if it makes you feel any better. One of my friends the friend I always reference and make fun of because I know she'll never listen to this podcast uh, I did tell her about it and she did laugh, yeah, and then she was like is it awful that I laughed? And I was like I mean, that's on you. And then she told me about somebody else she knew recently who died in a horrible way, and then laughed again and I was like I, I'm not laughing that's how we deal with things now I mean laughing is how I express pain a lot of the time yeah um, but yeah, I'm glad no one died.
Speaker 2:That worked this week. I'm glad that you didn't die. I'm sorry that that person died. Yeah, your job is very scary.
Speaker 1:I don't really know who the person was. They were on a different crew, but they were working on the same road as us, and that's the only reason that I know about it, because this stuff tends not to get out. Oh, you almost killed somebody, though. Oh yeah, that's a different story. That's a much longer story. Do it? Do we have time? Can I tell you?
Speaker 2:I'll tell you the short version, since I don't think you can tell that the short version. Short version is dan at the speed limit, not above, not below, maybe a little below because it's you and you're in a dump truck and dan, just for I'm going to say on, I will testify to this with an oath, that dan does not drive over the speed limit. He also doesn't drive under the speed limit usually, although sometimes I'm like dude, can you just like speed it up by two kilometers an hour. Oh, sorry, miles, americans is your stupid fucking miles. Anyhow. Um, and he's driving along and there's a very bendy part of the road on the way back to the shop where he leaves his truck, because it's vermont, everything's bendy. And as he's going around, a corny, a corny, a corner, a subaru very slowly pulls out in front of him, does not acknowledge his presence, and dan has to slam on his brakes and drive into the ditch to avoid hitting it. There you go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there are tire marks of dan's truck going into the ditch short of it yeah yeah, and they were oblivious.
Speaker 2:They did something very dangerous.
Speaker 1:Even after I ran into the ditch and stalled out the truck, um, after screeching tires and and and tire smoke just billowing out in every direction, uh, they just continued down the road at like 15 miles an hour and never even they didn't speed up, they didn didn't slow down, they just kept going, clearly never even saw me. I was inches and I mean inches away from hitting them. You have a dangerous job. Yeah, that person almost died and they have no idea. Yeah, I like to think that if you come close to death, that you should use that in the future. You should learn from that mistake. You should be like whoa I had no idea how close to death I was just then. I'm going to think about that really hard and try to adjust my behavior in the future.
Speaker 2:This is you assuming that the universe has some kind of actual moral compass and that always there's going to be a lesson? But what I've learned is, statistically, the people who cause accidents are not the people who are in the accidents.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, but what I mean, though, is that that person is just oblivious to that lesson, because there is a lesson you can learn from almost dying.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, check, check to the right, before you make a left.
Speaker 1:Yeah, look, check to the right before you make a left. Yeah, look, look, look at all, just any direction, really Just be aware. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2:But this isn't the Road Rage podcast. It could be it. Could you have a lot of stories, yeah. On a happier note, I'm doing more garden stuff because my feets are doing okay. I had a little bit of a flare up, they're doing okay. I had a little bit of a flare up, they're doing all right again, but I'm doing way more than I have done in almost three years, so I'm very pleased about that.
Speaker 2:And on to the tofu of this episode our 4th of July July 6th actually episode. We went to the 4th of July event today in the morning and we saw our librarian friend who's our neighbor, and we looked at each other and dan and I were dressed in black and she was dressed in black and we were all just were like I said, we all planned for the same thing today and she's like yeah, it's a funeral, uh, and then she had to share that. She had to be like happy and nice all day, even though she was sad and depressed, um, because it's bad out there yeah, um, there was a lot of fun things.
Speaker 2:There was like a little craft fair going on yeah, I think we should explain why we decided to go yeah, why did we go? Um, because I think it's important to support the local community and the people who who did try to put on like a nice event for a very small town it's like 600 people yeah, community is important yeah, and I was like I'm gonna support a couple of like small local vendors and also I figure there could be something interesting I'd learn with the community, which I did.
Speaker 2:We, we met the folks who run the sustainability committee and they gave me free plants yeah, um, which was cool and a bunch of free seeds, of native plants and seeds, and then we were costed by a bunch of old ladies who would not let us leave and tried to sell us things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we had a lengthy conversation about art. Yeah, I luckily was able to deter them from talking about selling me things by just bringing up more art things. And then, once I so like we're going down a line, and the one that you avoided talk to me and then, as you moved on, the one that was talking to you started talking to me too, and I'm like I'm never gonna get away from these people. So I devised a plan to make them talk to each other. That was brilliant, and as they were talking to each other, I ran away I feel like this is a skill you develop from living dead weekend.
Speaker 2:But it was good. It was good. I'm glad we went.
Speaker 2:I didn't want to stay for the parade because I just couldn't handle like an obnoxious level of patriotism right now the parade would make me mad yeah, even before now, like for many years, I've had discomfort around celebrating the fourth of july and celebrating canada day, which, for those who don't know because I forget people don't know that is. It's basically like independence day, except for we're still part of the British Commonwealth in Canada, but it's like when Canada was born day, which is July 1st, incidentally, and it's felt more and more weird the more I learn about the history of both countries and basically concluding that countries that are built on settler colonialism probably need to be dismantled.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I just so we're on the right path. I didn't want to go to the parade. We're getting. We're getting closer to that dream, leah I mean, that's the fucked up part of all of this, because we are.
Speaker 2:It's falling apart yeah, it's going to be this man being deliberately falling apart, but in a way that's so harmful, yeah, to people. Uh, I would have preferred a less destructive way, but I guess sometimes you have to have that, but I don't. I, I don't even like saying that, because there's people I know right now who are going to lose access to health care, are going to be even more afraid to leave their house, are going to wonder if their citizenship matters anymore, because they were natural or their parents, um, are undocumented, like I. It's. I, it's too much. It's too much. There could have been a different way to do it, but this is what we've got now, so we've got to figure out how to move on from here.
Speaker 1:Something that's been echoed quite a lot lately is that the cruelty is the point. Yeah, and they, they, they are doing it for the sole purpose of being cruel, and that sucks. I wrote a thing. Do you want to hear the thing that I wrote? I do. I always like hearing things you wrote. So this is something I've been thinking about this week because as the 4th of July crept closer and closer, I've been wondering what the fuck am I supposed to be celebrating this week. So here is something that I wrote trying to express some of those thoughts and feelings. I don't know if I got the whole gist of it, but here we go.
Speaker 1:The 4th of July means many things to many people Fireworks, grilling outdoors, lounging by the lake with friends and family, drinking beers beneath a waving American flag. We often speak of freedom and liberty, reflecting on our good fortune to live in a nation born from rebellion against tyranny, a nation whose foundations rest upon democratic ideals. Wonderful Love, that for us. But this year especially, I've found myself wondering what theme should we be celebrating. Are we still celebrating freedom from tyranny? Are we celebrating the return of tyranny Some people are, some people are or has this holiday become an exercise in blind patriotism A loyalty test? Perhaps Are we celebrating turning our backs to injustice and authoritarianism and ignoring the erosion of our rights and the use of force against our own people? Or is there another reason to celebrate, a reason more aligned with the true spirit of this day?
Speaker 1:The 4th of July was originally a declaration that our inherent rights liberty, autonomy and representation are not negotiable. The Revolutionary War was not just about defeating a distant empire. It was about challenging the very notion that absolute power should exist unchecked and beyond accountability. On this Independence Day, we must honor the revolutionary spirit by reflecting on not only what this nation is, but what it can and must become. It means actively resisting injustice and authoritarian overreach. It means echoing the convictions of revolutionaries who knew their rights, their dignity and their freedom was worth defending. The revolutionary spirit isn't confined to history. It lives whenever people decide that tyranny in any form must never be quietly accepted. Happy independence day.
Speaker 2:and this is where the fireworks go off fireworks barking dogs shaking dog in my bed terrified yeah.
Speaker 1:So I don't know, I I've never really fully um embraced the whole blind patriotism of the holiday yeah like some people. They go out there with their fucking american flag hats and their american flag shirt and their american flag shorts and they drink their american flag bud light while uh shooting off uh roman candles with each hands, while driving their lifted diesel pickup truck and listening to country music. It's a party in the usa.
Speaker 2:They're yeah, that's what they're singing, they're definitely they're definitely listening to party in the usa.
Speaker 1:Um, I've, you know I'm a veteran and some some some people might know that because I mention it sometimes um, and you know the whole fighting for freedom thing. Most veterans don't believe that's true. We know that we were there just oppressing people for oil. Um, it had nothing to do with freedom. No war that we've ever fought was about freedom.
Speaker 1:Um, if you believe the propaganda, you could make some arguments about world war ii, but we're not going to talk about that because that's a whole different story, about a whole different authoritarian nightmare and a whole bunch of movies that back up the idea that we're the good guys because we were there last or something. I don't know. I'll probably delete that part, but my point is that this blind patriotism stuff always bothered me and it bothers me even more now that the things that we're supposed to be celebrating are just being trampled over, like freedom, justice for all, liberty. Um, you know are celebrating the idea that we defeated tyranny back in 1776, or at least began the war against tyranny again in 1776, but like are we? Are we just supposed to be like, yeah, I love that we did that back then. I hope we don't do it now that we have it here, because this is a different brand of tyranny and I love it because america that was deep yeah, I don't know where I'm going with this anyways okay
Speaker 2:uh, let's move on yeah, I think I just want to say that what's complicated for me about the united states, um, I think I've said this before, but I'll say it again is, even as you were reading your piece there I think it was very powerful I was thinking about how, like, okay, independence, but independence for who?
Speaker 2:white men, yeah, on land that was stolen, and it was specifically for rich guys who were upset about being taxed for their products yeah um, and so there's like I think in almost every piece of history of the united states even the things that are celebrated as quote unquote good there's like a very dark shadow side. Yeah, um, and when I think about the funeral of the united states of america, it's it's like a human being, it's like a really fucked up as just one person, because it's a country, it's made of millions of people and the ancestors all came before us, but it just feels complicated. You can't have a funeral or a day of patriotism for the United States and be like this is all good or this is all bad. It's some sort of fucking messy thing with really really, really dark and problematic roots.
Speaker 1:Yeah, really dark and problematic roots. Yeah, and that's when in my essay, if I was going to write a longer essay, I would have touched on that idea itself, because that's also something that bothers me. We're told this version that we're supposed to be really happy about, like truth and liberty and justice for all, and that's not what we have, but the idea that we need to, we need, we need to make america great again.
Speaker 2:No, please, no, I'm trying to say it I feel like all the slogans have been fucking stolen, like build back better also good, yeah, but like not what I mean my point is is that there are, there are things that america are supposed to stand for and they haven't.
Speaker 1:It hasn't, yeah, um, and probably never has, and we need to demand that america stands for those things, and that's what I think needs to be done in the revolution. We need to, we need to say yeah, it's not good enough just to go back to where we started. We need big changes, we, we need the america. You've been telling us that.
Speaker 1:We've been pledging to every morning of elementary school yeah like the, the things that you tell us this country is and the things that you tell us that we're fighting for when we go to wars. That's what we need and that's what we deserve.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's I. I'm grateful that I grew up somewhere else. Yeah, I'm going to be honest about that. I I'm grateful that I live here now. It's my chosen home, although we you did show me recently signs that are when you're entering Vermont or no. Is it when you're leaving Vermont to go to New Hampshire? You're like goodbye Canada.
Speaker 1:Yeah, somebody put up a banner on the border between Vermont and New Hampshire yeah, on the highway that goes from Canada down through to New Hampshire, and it said you are now leaving canada, yeah, so I mean, I did choose a state, ultimately, that was more aligned with my values or closer um to what I, what the united states is, I forget my point.
Speaker 2:I think, oh, that's what it is. Is that I was? I was given a different form of colonial brainwashing. Yeah, um, and I would dare say slightly better. Oh, canada, of course. Well, it's. I still learned all of the. I learned a bunch of myths and I'm still unlearning them to this day.
Speaker 2:But I feel like the way that you will have to pledge allegiance every day and the deliberate and ongoing suppression of information that is not coming from rich white people, which right men. Specifically, the way the education system works here in this country, like it just really sets people up to not know what the fuck is actually going on and to perpetuate their own oppression. And I can't even blame those people that are in that situation, because I've met I met so many, being a university professor in Georgia where I was like you've had no chance to know anything outside of what you've been told. And not only that, you learned that any critical thinking is bad. Yeah, jesus hates that. Questioning is the worst possible thing you could do. Conformity is very important and everything you're told by your parents and at church and in school is the absolute, ultimate, 100% truth, and there is no other truth. So, like, how do you stop that? Like I don't have.
Speaker 2:I guess what I'm trying to say I'm just going on a random rant is that I don't have that kind of indoctrination about the United States which allows me to see things more easily. Also, I've been in a country that has obviously not to the degree of any other place, pretty much, but we have experience being under the shadow of the United States and there's always been a lot of animosity towards the United States from Canadians. So I think that helps me a little bit. See it, and I was going to go into a piece here about all the terrible things that have happened since we recorded our last episode. But now I'm like, do we even need to do that? We can just give a quick, very quick overview. Like we even need to do that, we can just give a quick, very quick overview. Like, since we last recorded, I made a joke about like what other terrible things gonna happen after the war in iran and then more things did.
Speaker 2:The big ugly ass bill passed yeah that's gonna strip millions of people from their medicaid and and so many other terrible things.
Speaker 2:So many, so many others. We're gonna put a link in the show notes to an article that is publicly available and free, um, but I think that we could. We could just do that news for hours, so I think the better option is to just read about it. And then the other one that is frankly more disturbing, which is saying a lot. That is more disturbing, was the supreme court's birthright citizenship decision, which wasn't so much about um the. They didn't rule on the constitutionality of whether or not, uh, you could take away naturalized citizens or like so, not naturalized um birthright citizenship, whether that was constitutional, but they did ultimately rule that any injunctions from lower courts don't fucking matter.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Anytime. So now, if Trump makes a, an executive order, that's like I am banning abortion pills, for example. A clinic can fight back against that and if the clinic wins, the clinic can distribute abortion pills, but it no longer applies to all of us anymore. So essentially it makes it even more obvious. It already was this way, but now it's's like extra that justice is only afforded people who have the resources to do it and the rest of us are fucked. Um. So that really really really scared me, and that's when I started to be like okay, even the like basic systems, uh, of checkpoints and balances the united states government had that made it somewhat tenable as a country, have been thrown out the fucking window. Yeah, yeah, um. So I kind of came to the conclusion that we need a funeral and then to fight.
Speaker 2:So I know you're like in revolutionary place, but I'm in funeral place and I want to start with a quote by frederick douglas, who uh was an american social reformist, abolitionist, orator, writer and statesman. He was the most important leader for the movement of african-american civil rights in the 19th century, and he wrote this 4th of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn, and I think that that's an important thing to sit with, because what we're looking at today is always been true for a lot of people in this country and I feel like these are things we've said before and I'm going to have to keep saying them because, frankly, I need to remember it as somebody who is white and English speaking, because the more that I dissociate and think about like, well, my little world is good, you know my. Right now I have a job. Right now I have a wonderful husband. Right now I have cute dogs, a great house, I have food in my fridge, like all these things are are wonderful, and that allows me to feel just safe enough to not fight back.
Speaker 2:And I think I have to mourn the concept of that safety even because it's not real and it is coming for all of us. And whatever safety I had was borrowed off of the uh or on the backs of violence and oppression of other people. So I just can't live like that anymore. I can't sit like that. I can't sit and pretend that I'm gonna be okay and just like hope somebody else does something yeah, and then, and then revolution, yeah, and I and I, I agree, like you know.
Speaker 1:I think that, um, we're in this weird place, as as as we're going out and we're protesting and we're making our opinions known about how terrible the things are that are happening. There's this idea of like let's fix the things that got broken in this process and get everything back to normal.
Speaker 1:Or there's the other direction, which is let's just tear it down, let's tear it down being torn down yeah, and I think that, like this idea of the funeral is exactly, is exactly the reality of the situation, because it's never, it's never going back the way it was. We're not, we're not getting Barack Obama as a third-term president.
Speaker 2:I just need to remind us all, even when Barack Obama was the president also third-term problematic but even when he was the president, he was bombing Pakistan with drones.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And he was very pro-Israel and he deported a shit ton of fucking migrant people. So not perfect, and that's why I think it's like we need to talk today. But like, what are we? What are we mourning? What are we saying goodbye to? What are we burying? And I think the biggest one is myths, a lot of myths about what america is, that it was founded on liberty and justice for all, was it? I don't believe it. I don't believe it because it excluded people from the very beginning and it was on stolen land. How can that be? Liberty and justice for all?
Speaker 2:yeah I wish people could see dan's face. He looks so sad with what I'm saying. I'm curious what your reaction is to that no, I mean it's, it's true.
Speaker 1:Um, and this goes back to like what I was saying about, like the promise of of these things like these these were all things that we were told, like liberty and justice for all you know, the Statue of Liberty and huddled masses and whatnot. These were the things that they said we had and those were the reasons to think that America was great, and it just never was that way. It's just like this is something that I've been grappling with ever since my time in the army, is like ever since the first person walked up to me and thanked me for my service, for, like, defending freedom or whatever the fuck, and I'm just like, but I didn't do that. I didn't do any of that, yeah, and then, as I kept on going down that rabbit hole and learning more and more and unlearning the things about America specifically that just aren't true, I'm just like none of this is what they say it is. It could be, it could so easily be, but it isn't.
Speaker 2:That is true. I think that those ideals of liberty and justice for all are beautiful, but, yeah, it's never been that and that is what we need to mourn and really sit with it and accept that the roots of this system we live in are fucking rotted. Yeah, rotted, infested with rotted. Yeah, rotted, infested with um.
Speaker 2:Actually, I saw a like zoomed in image of this like bacteria eater thing. It's like a vampire and it looks, it's very strange looking. It's like a. It's a, it's something that preys on bacteria and like infects it almost like a zombie and then turns that bacterial cell into like itself and then does more destruction and it's like the strange thing. That was kind of like a spider and then the head of it is like a kind of like a diamond, but it's really tall and lanky and fucking nightmare fuel. I'll try and find a link and put it in the show notes if I can, but either way, I feel like whatever that is was there from the very beginning, eroding any hope that we had for true liberty, justice, liberty and justice for all, and the other thing about it is that that myth, like you said, has pacified us. It's been our fucking pacifier in the mouths of people with relative privilege. Yeah, like you and I, um, and this again still true.
Speaker 2:I'm not being oppressed. Yeah, and like I'm doing great, why can't you do so great over there? This is the country of liberty and justice for all. Add in a little bit of bootstraps. Yeah, maybe you're just not trying hard enough. Nothing to do with my skin color.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Maybe if you stop complaining about the police beating you oh my God.
Speaker 2:And I think, like when we let ourselves believe that we are exceptional, like I've been grappling with thinking about all the places that currently have dictators in place and I've always thought of them as like it's like until cancer happens to you or somebody you love, it's always something that happens to somebody else and that is how america and I think canada also sees themselves as, yeah, these are things that happen to other people and other places and like we're too good for this. Again, that's from the position of people in relative power who, frankly, we have been brainwashed and manipulated into oppressing everybody else so that we can maintain this position. Yeah, clear, we've got a. I don't. The thing that scares me is like I don't know how to. I don't know how to reform it, I don't know if that's possible, and I also know that scrapping it, like what we're seeing happening now, is causing immense pain.
Speaker 2:But I also know we can't just fucking sit here yeah and we can't pretend that, like voting in a couple of years is the solution it isn't.
Speaker 1:I saw a video from somebody earlier this week, one of the co-hosts of the Colonial Outcasts podcast, which I have very mixed feelings about the two of them. One of them is Greg Stoker, who's an army vet and self-proclaimed black flag anarchist. He has a lot of really good ideas and he's very intelligent, and sometimes he says things that I just shake my head at. But my point is that they think very much about this kind of stuff all the time, and this guy was talking specifically about revolution and talking about how countries that have revolutions um, the people of that country tend to do very well after the revolution interesting. Um, the people have a lot to gain by having a revolution because they're being oppressed, they have nothing, they have nothing left right yeah, I mean we're stripping away health care.
Speaker 1:Yeah, access to food for people who really need it and what if the people rose up and, uh, tore everything down and then built it back up the way that they thought it should be built up? So like suddenly we go from being oppressed, a police state, everybody's just scrapping by for food and resources to, oh, we've got all the resources now and we're making it so that you have healthcare and also, let's divide up the booty. Suddenly you know the, the, the 1% of the 1% having 50% of the wealth suddenly becomes the 99% are now dividing up the 1% of the 1% 50% of the wealth between them and we're suddenly much better off.
Speaker 2:I mean, there's no question of that. There are so many models out there of different ways to do this. Um, specifically, one of them that I want to talk about today ironically has some origins in connection with the United States government. Dan, have you heard of the Haudenosaunee before?
Speaker 1:You've mentioned them.
Speaker 2:At breakfast this morning.
Speaker 1:At breakfast this morning.
Speaker 2:But have I mentioned them before? Yeah Well, who are the Haudenosaunee? I don't know. You're in good company, most people don't. I did not know about them until university. I learned about the Haudenosaunee Confederacy in university in Canada, specifically about indigenous history, because they border they sort of border both what's considered now the United States and Canada in their own territory. But then I also had to learn more about the Haudenosaunee Confederacy because of teaching cultural anthropology down in Georgia and one of the articles that was like a required one from the book that we used was about how the Haudenosaunee Confederacy used was about how the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, which has been around since 1142, it's a pretty old confederacy actually provided the blueprint for Benjamin Franklin to write the Constitution. Wow.
Speaker 1:Did they also discover electricity?
Speaker 2:I don't think so.
Speaker 1:I was just wondering if Benjamin Franklin just stole all of his best ideas maybe maybe like the, the hodna shodan is like yeah, so uh, we've got this kite and a piece of metal and it's a lightning storm and just watch what happens. It'll blow your mind, and then benjamin franklin's like.
Speaker 2:I discovered that I mean, that's a very white person thing to do, just to be like. I think that already exists. Oh, you'll be doing forever.
Speaker 1:I discovered it, it's and then the next day he's like I have an idea for the united states postal service.
Speaker 2:The whole show is like what the fuck, dude, that was our postal service well, I did a quick quiz to see how people knew about this because, like I said, I didn't know about it until adulthood, and less than 50 percent of people in a poll on our Instagram stories had any idea what the Haudenosaunee Confederacy was, and when I asked people on Discord if they knew what it was, it was a resounding no, except for one person who also took the poll on Instagram. So I don't think they count. So, other than that one person, everybody had no idea what the Haudenosaunee Confederacy is, and you're probably still wondering a little bit more about them If you've never heard of the Haudenosaunee. They are.
Speaker 2:Uh, the English term is the Iroquois, or the Iroquois, as Americans say, but it is a French. I think it is a French origin word. Um, but it is a French. I think it is a French origin word. This happens a lot with indigenous peoples across the world is that we give them and by we I mean my ancestors, literally would give them names that were not actually their names, just like we love to name places and like the mountain we live by, which is Kaskadanak, but it's called Mount Ascutney.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:By settlers. Settler colonial, people S colonial people, that's us I.
Speaker 1:I remember this story and I wish I remembered it better, but like it was about uh, some, some european, uh travelers who discovered a, a group of native people to a different land than they were familiar with, and because they couldn't grasp the concept that these people didn't understand what they were saying. When they asked, like, like what do you call yourselves? They said a word and they're like that's, that's what your, what your name is now, and it turns out that that word was like what is he saying? Like they were just like huh.
Speaker 2:And now they're referred to as the huh confederacy. Well, I mean, there's so many examples of that which is just wonderful, demonstrations of the ignorance of the colonizers, like even the. The name of the country I'm from, canada, is a hero, a hero on iroquois word, so hodno shani language, word uh, kanata, which means village, yeah, or settlement, um, and they? That was basically because some white folks were like where are we? And they're like you're in this village. Maybe that's the story I'm thinking of, possibly, um, that happens a lot in colonial history. But to get to back to the hodno shoni confederacy, I think it actually provides, in its in its original form, developed by the six nations of the hodenoshone peoples, which were six different uh groups that united together to create the confederacy and to protect each other from any outside encroaching forces, have some really good elements that made sense, but unfortunately a lot of the other important parts of it were stripped and removed because, to benjamin franklin's very western eye, probably seen as kind of useless, and you'll understand why in a minute. So, first of all, these six nations united under the great law of peace, which is one of the oldest participatory democracies across the world, and again, I said it was formed in 1142, so this is a pretty old, uh, nation.
Speaker 2:Um, just a little fun anthropology fact. The state as a political organizing force for people is only about 5,000 years old. It's the most unstable, meaning it's the most likely to crumble, and it's very recent in our history if we're a 200,000-ish year old species, something like that. We've only been doing this version of like the United States, or even the hodno shoni confederacy, for 5 000 or fewer years, and most of them are unstable as fuck and like die every couple, yeah, every 500 years or so, constantly changing. Um. Their system emphasized peace, balance, unity and collective decision making and basically it was formed by a ground, sorry, a grand council of chiefs who govern by consensus. Those chiefs were nominated essentially by the clan mothers of their nation, so women nominated them, so your mom has to nominate you.
Speaker 2:I mean not your mom, oh, the clan mother is like the leader of the clan. They were matrilineals or are matrilineal societies, I should not say were. That is my inner colonizer talking because I was taught my entire life that indigenous people are no longer here and always talked about in past tense, but the Haudenosaunee Confederacy persists today. So, anyways, the model influenced Benjamin Franklin specifically about this idea of federalism and uniting states. Right, you know. Is this really surprising?
Speaker 1:uh, no, I mean, I I know you've talked to me about things like this, but I haven't heard like in depth the uh, you know anything beyond that?
Speaker 2:this is a direct quote from benjamin franklin. This is obviously before um the original 13 colonies became the united states. He said it would be a strange thing if the hodno shoni could exec I can't speak today, I think it's the lack of sleep it would be a strange thing if the hodno shoni could execute a union that persisted ages and appears indissoluble. Yet a like union is impractical for 12 colonies to whom it is more necessary and advantageous. I don't know why he's thinking it's more necessary and advantageous, other than he's being european-centric in that moment. But the point is is that he clearly admired their system and the us borrowed key structures or key elements from the hodanashoni confederacy, and you can still see it in the way that we run our government today, except for they're being, you know, dismantled. So yeah, uh, in 1988, so a long time after, 200 years after ish uh, the constitution congress officially recognized the influence of the hodonoshoni confederacy in the formation of the US Constitution.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm surprised they did it at all. Yeah, key differences. I'm going to go over a list of some key differences and similarities between the Haudenosaunee's Great Law of Peace and the US Constitution. Are you ready? Okay, okay.
Speaker 2:Great Law of Peace, union of Six Sovereign Nations. United States at that time, union of 13 States, great Law of Peace they had a council of representatives, chiefs, for every one of those six nations or clans. In the United States Constitution, the equivalent of that is our senators and house of representatives. Right, they come from the state level, they represent the state at the federal level, but they have unique responsibilities within the state and are or in the nation, in the case of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, and their job is to manage the affairs of that nation. That was very much the same. So each nation of those six nations minded their own business, essentially, but then, when they were making collective decisions for the full Confederacy, they would come together, together, each of the representatives, and make decisions as a group.
Speaker 2:Um, here's where it gets fun. Uh, the hodonoshoni confederacy, sometimes called league of nations, was a consensus-based governance process. So voting is not so much how it worked, it was consensus. You talk things through until everybody agreed, which is slow, wow, um, I love slow but important. I love to use the ents from lord of the rings as an example. That's consensus, and they use a thing called moots, where you basically just keep talking about it until you agree, until you find full agreement could you imagine?
Speaker 1:that now?
Speaker 2:I mean it wouldn't be the worst idea. Can you imagine if we had to all fucking talk it out until we agreed? It would take a long time, but the decisions that were finally made might not be fucking horrifying or maybe we just never make any decisions I don't know.
Speaker 2:Um, we can get into why. I think the united states is destined to fail another time. Yeah, um, but in the us constitution we have the checks and balances and the separation of powers as a way of dealing with this. In the us constitution, elected officials can be impeached, so Confederacy, the leaders could be removed by the clan mothers. So if you're the chief in this context and I'm the clan mother and I think you're doing a fucking shit job, I can just be like dude, it's not your job anymore, and then I would appoint somebody else.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that. Let's do that.
Speaker 2:So the clan mothers chose and advised the leaders and had a very significant position of power. Here's where this is quite different. Were there women involved in the writing of the constitution? Oh, if they were, they got no credit if they were. It was like take down a note, susan, if they were allowed to read and write, which only the loftiest and richest white women would be allowed to do.
Speaker 2:That, yeah, and get that and it was only for like I don't even know I'm clout, because they weren't supposed to use it for anything. Yeah, um, and still, to this day, right, women are excluded from politics completely, first of all, until much, much later, white women get first entry point, using the idea that any other woman of any other race is inferior. That's how they actually justified, um, the white suffragette movement is pretty fucking racist. But even today we have 535 members of Congress. 151 are women. That's less than 30%. So you tell me which one is a more sophisticated system.
Speaker 1:Oh, I mean, it doesn't sound good.
Speaker 2:Doesn't sound good for America.
Speaker 1:These numbers aren't numbering.
Speaker 2:It was, see uh, it was, uh, see was. I hate this, but I want you to keep it all in here because it just shows you how my brain fucking works. Because if you go to the hodan oshoni confederacy website, you will see for each nation who the chiefs are and who the clan mothers are.
Speaker 1:This persists to this day oh, so they're still doing it. Yes, they're still doing it. How's it going?
Speaker 2:I mean, they're doing their thing all right um, I don't think I'm qualified to say how it's going. We'd have to ask them, let's yeah, let's do that uh, but they're a matrilineal society, meaning that you're um, who you are in connection to and consider family or your clan is through the woman's side, and they obviously held a lot of political power constitution.
Speaker 1:Women weren't even people, so we can just move on from that you know, let's, let's hang on that for a second, because the idea that I inherit my father's name and somehow my father's side of the lineage is more important doesn't make sense, especially especially in the society that we have now, where we're like a like a like a post-divorce kind of place. Um, like I, I don't know my father at all.
Speaker 2:I have his last name, but I don't know that motherfucker well, we do live in a bilateral system now, yeah, we have the heritage of patrilineal system I'm just saying, though, that like to to take, to take all of your heretical, heretical hereditary hereditary, um hereditary.
Speaker 1:Hereditary identity from your father makes no sense because you came from your month.
Speaker 2:You lived inside of a person for nine months yeah, I'm not gonna pretend that I don't have a strong positive bias for matrilineal societies yeah, it makes more sense.
Speaker 1:That's what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 2:Let's move on um, speaking of values right, the united states government or is formed on this idea of liberty and justice for all, representation for the great law of peace and the um holden sherman confederacy. They're focused on peace, equity and unity. So even the ideals. I think we should still question them and like what's best, because the US's ideals are very individualistic.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think ultimately it doesn't do us a service as a community as a whole. Here's where it gets really interesting. Here's where it gets really interesting. The people who were chiefs or representatives at the Confederacy level for their nations were called sachems and they were unpaid leadership roles. I mean, there was not money in the way that we have money, although there were wampum belts. There was trade, obviously, but there was no like monetary, not monetary. There was no like resource benefit. You're not going to have a nicer house or more stuff if you were the person representing your nation. Uh, it's seen as a sacred responsibility. It's not meant to be done for personal gain at all you know, that's it's.
Speaker 1:I don't know if it's actually how it was, but that's kind of how it was taught to me that leadership in Roman society was. It was a public service. You didn't do it because you got paid a lot of money. You did it because they asked you to the emperor.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the Caesar, they were doing all right. I'm curious, okay, yeah well, I'm curious, okay.
Speaker 1:Well, there's there's a lot of different roles in roman society, and they were all considered um public servant roles, and it wasn't something that you could strive for or achieve you. They made you that like, like you are going to be this, this leader person, because you are the most qualified for the job. At least that's how it was taught to me. I don't know how much of that is true.
Speaker 2:I'm just going to say that sounds like some propaganda shit, but we can look into it more later. And the reason why it makes me raise my eyebrow is Roman societies like an example of colonizers, imperialists, wealth hoarding, nepotism, like just I'm like, yeah, okay, well, they gave you the role. Why did they give you the role? Because you must qualify. I don't know, that sounds really.
Speaker 1:Rose-colored glasses, yeah, of rome, I mean much like, but that's just my much like. Uh, talking the promise of america and where we are now. I think that there were many, many different stages of roman empire. True I don't know which one you're talking, then it probably started off in a place where they're like we have a lot of really great ideas that we think are going to work out maybe, and they're like first one rhodes, second one aqueduct, third, caesar yeah, that's then nero, let's bring it down, um, but I don't.
Speaker 2:I don't know enough about roman history to speak on that, but obviously me either. What I can say is that I do think that in the early days of the constitution my understanding it was not meant to be a position that made you a ton of money. Yeah, but that has since changed. Considering our current president can get a yacht from another foreign leader and have that be okay. Does he have a yacht now? I thought he got a yacht from somebody. He got an airplane. Was it an airplane? I don't know.
Speaker 1:It was a yacht of an airplane.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or you can be given all kinds of fucking money, and having that kind of political power equals access to more money, essentially.
Speaker 1:You're also not supposed to have stocks and things, but that's kind of just a joke now. Yeah, now you just use your position to influence your stocks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the number one thing that we need to do is get money out of politics and make it a sacred duty again. This is not the only example I can think of of other cultures where the way that they were politically organized was around how much can you give away, not how much can you take and keep. That's where you got influence from was like helping people. Speaking of that, leadership is focused on humility, service and peace, versus today where in the US Constitution, it's tied to personal ambition, status or party loyalty, as we see voting down party lines over and over and over again. And here's one that I think cannot bear enough repeating I know we've talked about on the show before which is that decisions are made in the Haudenosaunee Confederacy with long-term thinking, like what's the impact on the next seven generations, which is a long time from now. In fact, seven generations from now is around 2200. So I want you to think about every decision you make every decision.
Speaker 2:If imagine, if the US government was considering the decisions it was making today and whether that would be good for the people who lived here. They're not even considering 2200.
Speaker 1:Four years from now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, decisions are made purely on short-term goals and power moves for the moment, elections markets.
Speaker 1:it's ridiculous I'd be surprised if they're even thinking a week in advance yeah.
Speaker 2:So what's sad is like the great law of peace, I think, has some foundations that benjamin franklin found useful, but it was abstracted and taken from its original um form and set of values and has now become the fucking nightmare that it is today. Obviously I also want to say it's not. The us constitution was clearly not only formed from the hodono shoni confederacy. That was one space of inspiration when they were looking for alternative models to what they were dealing with, which is a monarchy, yeah, um, but I still think we could learn a lot from the hodenosaunee confederacy and um.
Speaker 2:I remember being told once by a person who I don't know if I can name, but this was back in the day when I used to work with a lot of indigenous folks in canada. They basically said to me like hey, if you think about it this way, um, settlers here are like our literal, our little sibling. We're your older sibling, like we've been here for a while, we know how things work here, we can help you, but unfortunately, your people have decided that you know what to do and kind of fucking it up. That was the. That was a much less eloquent way that this person actually explained it to me, but it's always sat with me like these are um, native people in the united states and canada have a claim to this place that we don't.
Speaker 2:They have a history that we don't, and I, when I say we, I mean you and me I don't know who else is listening to this and they are not perfect. I'm sure the hodno shoni confederacy is not perfect. I'm sure they have all kinds of political fucking weird shit going on, because we're people, yeah, but I think there's still a lot to learn. Yeah, and we could look back to that model, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Like could we go and look at the original model of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy for a blueprint for what we could be doing today?
Speaker 1:Or could we just give it back to the Haudenosaunee?
Speaker 2:Well, they had never gave it up. Like I said, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy still exists.
Speaker 1:Oh, you mean give back the land? Yeah, well, that would be great. Just like guys, we don't want to run it anymore. Can you do better? And they're like all right, well, we'll fix it after you fucked it all up, yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, I just got to say like this is a way of politically organizing that has sustained itself through a fucking apocalypse of colonization. It's still here. We are only 249 years old as of today. In this country, the confederacy, is 883 years old.
Speaker 1:They did the math, yeah, and the guy at breakfast this morning, um, said something that you loved, I forget.
Speaker 2:He said, uh uh, 249 years is pretty good for for a republic yes, I just like, so badly, want to put on my teacher hat and share more stuff about, uh, our species and how we politically organize and why it's so insane to think that a state like the united states, like canada, like germany, like britain, like any of them, are going to continue to exist.
Speaker 2:It's going to change yeah there's really no way around that. That is. That is the kind of form of political organization we have, and it's incredibly unstable. Do you want to know the oldest state is in the entire world? Can you take a guess? In the whole world? In the whole world.
Speaker 1:The oldest state? Yes, delaware.
Speaker 2:No state. Okay, I should clarify.
Speaker 1:Per capita.
Speaker 2:When we're in the United States, we think of state as like the state inside of the United States. But the terms when I'm using the term state now I'm using it from from an anthropology definition lens, which is like a state is a political territory that has the right to defend itself. Oh, okay, I'm gonna change my answer and basically has power over the people within that, uh, physical geographic territory I'm gonna change my answer.
Speaker 1:Per capita, the oldest state is vermont no uh, so who? Who is the oldest state?
Speaker 2:japan, oh japan is more than 1500 years old now yeah, that adds up but I want to give you context they've also gone through many eras too yeah, they have um, but they are in terms of the uniformity of the geography and control over that geography.
Speaker 2:The united states are not yet. Wow, that was weird. Japan is the oldest um. We have some really young ones. This is uh I don't know if there's newer ones, because this is I'm looking at a deck. I wrote in 2016, so it's it's almost 10 years old, but when I wrote this in 2016, one of the newest nations was south sudan became an independent state in 2011. Oh, slovenia was recognized as an independent state in 1991. We see what's happening in Ukraine right now. Like, just think about how many times things have changed in Eastern Europe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Every couple of years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and again we've had this like myth that the United States will be the way it is forever, and that's what I think we need to be open to as we are reforming. Like I'm not saying I want to see the united states disintegrate, but I am saying that like maybe 50 states all functioning effectively together isn't feasible yeah it's a grand experiment. We've never done this before. There's 300 and some odd million people trying to fucking figure it out.
Speaker 1:That's a lot of people yeah, I remember reading something a long time ago and they said that the united states is actually a country of like 11 countries and that, like there's, you could geographically uh divide up the united states into areas that are so distinctly different from the other, like by culture and demographic, and like some of these places are so very, very different from other places. Like, if you go to new mexico and arizona, it is not the same world as vermont, yeah, it's just in the. If you go to georgia, it's not the same as portland oregon.
Speaker 2:Uh, if you go to, if you go to, uh, minnesota, that's very different from florida, and uh, yeah, I don't know, maybe there's something to that I I'm gonna say something that I am worried will be misconstrued, but I think it's important to say with what I know, um, which is that a nation state is very different than a state. A nation state has a uniform culture and typically very are very rare like swaziland is an example of a nation state where it's uh, geographic territories also mirror the, the ethnic group and their sense of like, unified culture. Most of the time, we're like smushing a bunch of people together in large numbers, when we were historically, for most of humanity's existence, living in bands of like 25 to 50 people yeah and I.
Speaker 2:I hesitate to say that because I don't want to say the diversity like that we shouldn't have diversity or that we can't figure out how to get along across difference. But I do think it's harder when it's 300 plus million people to do yeah, it's a lot of people with a lot of different needs.
Speaker 2:A lot of different views, and I think what's important, though, and I think necessary to distinguish, is that and I'm just riffing here, so I'm going to say that I'm speaking in rough draft right now is that what MAGA is trying to do. What Project 2025 is trying to do right now is make this a white Christian ethnostate. That's what they're trying to do. Yeah, and that's because I think there is some truth like there's always some truth inside of every point of view which is that it is easier to rule, it is easier to govern, when everybody has the same set of values and beliefs. But there are plenty of examples nowadays of people coming from all backgrounds and walks of life, who who create shared values together and then live from those shared values.
Speaker 1:It doesn't have to be based on your fucking race or religion most, most of us that live in the united states can do that. We can all coexist together, regardless of who our neighbors are, what they look like and what they have for dinner. We've been doing it for a long time and really it's been pretty clear lately that the people who have a problem with that are the people in power. And the only reason that us, as the people, tend to think that there's a problem with that are the people in power. And the only reason that us, as the people, tend to think that there's a problem is because the people in power purposefully make it so that we are at odds and tell us that we should not be functioning together as a people, functioning together as a people.
Speaker 1:I saw a sign, uh, this week, driving like I do um, it was a trump sign, big one. Uh, right next to a sign that says divided we fall, and I just wanted to get out of my truck and knock on this door and just be like you have conflicting signs in your yard. Yes, divided we fall. The sign next to it. The reason, like, was he trying to be ironic? I don't know, but they're the ones that want to divide us, not us to divide us, not us. The rest of us are perfectly happy, um, you know, going, going, going out to the, the, the indian restaurant, on wednesday and then getting pizza on friday, and then listening to, uh, to, um salsa music reggaeton and salsa at the same time one in each year.
Speaker 1:The rest of us are perfectly happy experiencing this multicultural environment where there are so many new things to experience and learn from that we can use that to fulfill ourselves and discover our own purpose in the world, instead of worrying about who we're supposed to be mad at, for whatever reason.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, it just shows you the roots of racism in this country have really fucked us. Yeah, because another example of what you're saying is you know again this idea of whiteness. We were not white people until relatively recently and you had people coming from all over europe who had layers, toned skin, uh, with varying, different cultures, who have managed now to identify as the same thing and like still, you know, be like, you'll be, like my proud irish heritage, or I'm proud of being um norse, or I'm making shit up now german, french, but we were able to find common ground. But unfortunately, we were able to find common ground because we were. We decided to sign up for a dichotomy where it's like it's us versus them, and them meaning everybody who doesn't have the share, the same complexion as us, basically, and if we subjugate them, then we don't have to subjugate each other. It was essentially the like, very toddler logic of the situation, of how we came to be here, and what I like to remember is that, like, at the end of the day, even people who I virulently disagree with, including my brother, we all have the same basic needs and desires. And if we could learn to talk about that way and to like imagine what the world could be together from that place and set this aside for a minute and just be like what is a good life? Look like to you, to you, not what your neighbors are doing or not doing. We might get somewhere.
Speaker 2:And that's what participatory democracy is. It takes time, it takes conversations, it takes getting to know your neighbors and it takes years to form consensus. It should not be something that just gets voted on and one extra vote is what makes the decision. That is not democracy, that's tyranny, even aside from all the other shit that's happening right now. That alone, like the way that we think of democracy in this country, is not democratic. And that's the end of my rant. For the day I didn't know where this conversation was going to go, but here it is. Here it is one last fact, fun fact the word caucus most people. I asked a bunch of folks on discord what language they thought it was. Some people said russian, latin, um french was a big one.
Speaker 2:Uh, greek is one I often get yeah, and it's not, it's an algonquin word also from the hodno shoni confederacy. It was a form of of informal discussion about a political issue to make those decisions until we got there. And that's until we got there and that's where we got the term US caucus and caucusing with your party to figure shit out together. There's so many things that are derived from other cultures that we give zero credit to. I guess Congress did briefly give it credit, but something tells me that's been taken down from the website lately. Oh, absolutely so that's it. I just wanted to shove that little factoid in there. Thank you, Goodbye everybody.
Speaker 1:Goodbye everyone. Thanks for joining the Zombie Book Club. What an episode today was. I don't know what it was, but thanks for listening. We should probably mention zombies at some point. Oh yeah, zombies, let's make everyone zombies.
Speaker 2:You know what? Go and listen to Zombies by the cranberries. It has very revolutionary energy that, I think, makes sense for this episode. I also want to finish up by saying dan and I aren't experts. You're just listening to two people talking about this and trying to figure it out. Expert um and well, yeah, definitely, neither of us are experts in Rome, so feel free to correct us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, tell us all about Rome, let us know. Um, you could also, uh, leave us a rating or a review. Maybe in that review, you should tell us what what Rome was all about.
Speaker 2:Was it egalitarian? Something tells me now.
Speaker 1:Uh, you could also send us a voicemail again, you could. You could school us on Rome for up to three minutes. I send us a voicemail Again. You could school us on Roam for up to three minutes. I would love that At 614-699-0006. Don't worry, we won't pick up, it just goes to voicemail. Just leave us a voicemail. You could also sign up for our newsletter. I'm trying really hard to keep it out of people's spam folders. I think I figured it out.
Speaker 2:Oh yay, so maybe the next one will go to your inbox. We should just do the last one again, because it was good, nobody got it.
Speaker 1:We'll see. I don't know how many people opened it. I think a couple people did. But yeah, if you want to stay in touch, you can follow us on Instagram at zombiebookclubpodcast.
Speaker 2:Or join the Brain Munchers Collective on Discord. We watch things like Zoombies too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we watch things there.
Speaker 2:And I tag everyone. I put at everyone hey, do you know what the Haudenosaunee Confederacy is? And if you do, don't say what it is, Just say yes or no. You'll get things like that.
Speaker 1:All those links are in the description down below. There's so many links. You can just click links for days, but the revolution is nigh and you're in it whether you like it or not.
Speaker 2:So we gotta do shit, people, and I'm saying that for myself too, because I'm scared as fuck. Bye, bye, bye, bye bye revolution is nigh. Bye, bye, bye, bye.
