American Seances

Imagine your friend who treats geopolitics like a high-stakes chess match — that’s John Foster Dulles. In this episode we trace how his fierce anti-communist instincts and love of brinkmanship shaped the 1953 Iran coup and continue to echo in today’s U.S.–Iran tensions.He’d view hesitation as a strategic weakness, favoring bold covert action, strong alliances, and forceful deterrence — all while wringing his hands about oil routes and credibility. If you’re into Cold War drama, secret ops, and the bitter irony of unintended consequences, this one’s for you.

Picture Truman sliding his glasses down and asking, “And then what?” — that’s the vibe here. He’d read Iran through the Cold War playbook: no appeasement, protect the Strait of Hormuz, back allies, and show clear resolve to deter aggression.He wasn’t itching for war, just terrified of looking weak. So expect firm, pragmatic moves to preserve trade routes and regional balance — a hard-nosed approach that feels oddly familiar today.

Picture Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette flipping through your insurance plan and sighing. This episode draws a quick line from his fight against railroad trusts to today’s battles with giant insurers, hospitals, and drug companies.
It’s a short, friendly tour of why La Follette might have liked the ACA’s consumer protections but still called it a compromise that leaves too much power with entrenched corporations — now with hold music.

Imagine Teddy Roosevelt charging into today\'s health care mess: equal parts outrage, elbow grease, and unfiltered common sense. This piece walks you through how TR\'s love of national vigor, disdain for concentrated corporate power, and belief in bold government action would shape his take on Obamacare.
It\'s a brisk, slightly cheeky look at where a Progressive-era reformer meets modern health policy—expect admiration for the ambition, scorn for bureaucratic nonsense, and a call to actually fix what\'s broken.

Think of Huey Long as a political showman who believed ordinary people deserved the same grandeur elites enjoyed — and would happily turn a White House ballroom into a stage for the public. He mixed real material reforms with theatrical flair, making politics feel big, emotional, and raw.Long didn’t care about elite opinion; he wanted dignity, spectacle, and power visible to everyone. He’d see a great ballroom not as aristocratic luxury but as proof the people finally owned their government — and he’d probably grin while doing it.

Picture Teddy Roosevelt grinning at a massive White House ballroom—he’d adore the spectacle, the bands, the flags, and the sense that America looked every bit the global powerhouse he wanted it to be.He’d scoff at timid modesty, prefer rugged, heroic grandeur to gaudy excess, and probably want a few battle paintings and taxidermy around the edges. Basically: if the presidency’s going to look impressive, Roosevelt would make sure it was impressively loud.

Quick catch-up: after a short break, we’re circling back to Chester A. Arthur and the whole White House ballroom debate. He wasn’t shy about luxury; he thought elegance and ceremony showed a nation’s dignity, not just vanity.
So whether you love or hate modern spectacle, Arthur would probably tell you to stop pretending grandeur is always corrupt—sometimes it’s how a country signals it belongs on the world stage.

This episode walks you through Marx’s lens on Venezuela and Iran, showing how oil, control, and global circulation turn political dramas into systemic outcomes. It’s less about individual villains and more about a system that needs to expand and secure resources.
We connect production and circulation — who owns the oil, who moves it, and why that makes conflict almost inevitable under capitalism. Short, sharp, and surprisingly relevant.

Let’s finish this five-episode run with a cold, simple thought: what if nothing has gone wrong? What if the strikes, blockades, and rising prices around the Strait of Hormuz aren’t a breakdown but exactly what a world without a referee produces?
Hobbes would shrug and call it sensible precaution: states act to survive, actions breed insecurity, and escalation follows as the system’s natural logic. It’s unsettling, but maybe that’s the point — peace is fragile, rules only matter if someone enforces them, and without that someone, this is just Tuesday.

When leaders say this conflict is "necessary" or "measured," Erasmus would sigh and ask: do you really believe that? He saw this exact script centuries ago—escalate, justify, repeat.
Take a breath and read on: the Strait of Hormuz shows how complex problems get turned into excuses for escalation, and why asking the obvious questions might be the bravest move.