#522 - CJ Werleman

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The Joe Rogan experience.

Train by day. Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. My guest today, CJ Werleman, will definitely ruffle some feathers. Ladies and gentlemen, if you are of the religious inclination, if you are ultra sensitive, if you have a problem with seeing Uncle Sam crucified on the COVID of a book that says crucifying America, and on top of it, he's not even a fucking American. When you hear him talk, you're going to go, hey, pal, you're not even from here. What's going on? Why are you shitting on us? What about your country, man? Thanks for joining me, man. I appreciate it.

Thanks, Joe. Thanks for having me on, mate.

Please. I appreciate it. I watched a very fascinating interview today, or conversation that you had today, about the religious right and how much hate do you get on a daily basis because you're going hard here, man. You got Uncle Sam crucified on your off.

I always tell people when they ask me, where do you live? I always say Southern California. And I never give the exact address because there is a fatwa put out on me actually, and no joke, the Westboro Baptist Church, which we all know very well, when my first book was released in nine, the title is God hates you. Hate him back. They saw the title without understanding what the content of the book was and thought that I must have been on their side. And they thought, hey, we got somebody who's written a book in pro of our mission. Once they took a look at my book, they realized how off base that was and I was attacking them for some of their beliefs. And Fred Phelps actually issued a public fatwa to have me killed. So I want to leave my address in Southern California because I do have kids.

But he's dead, right? Does that fatwire have any teeth?

I don't know. Do you inherit a fatwa?

It's a good question.

Just get passed down? I'm not sure.

Well, whatever happened to Rushdie? Like, he's around now.

Yeah, he's now out in the open. I think that maybe people who want other people dead, particularly literally literal people, they have short memories, maybe.

Well, that was a weird one, man. He wrote a book that people had interpreted as being about the prophet Muhammad, but it wasn't necessarily right.

No, it's more about the poetry, which was written on a segment of Islam and it wasn't actually taking scripture from the Quran itself. So, I mean, what he wrote would be very mild in, say, comparison to a South pask episode where the prophet Muhammad is dressed up like a bear.

Islam is a very fascinating religion to me in so many different ways. But it's also fascinating in that liberals have, for whatever reason, chosen that as being the one to defend in some weird sort of a way. Like anytime someone criticizes Islam, they become islamophobic. But you will never hear, like certain segments of the progressive population shit on someone who is criticizing Christianity. You don't become a christianophobe mate.

You've hit on a very important point here. The problem, I mean, Chris Hedges wrote a great book called the death of liberalism in America. The liberal class no longer exists in America. It has no voice. And to underscore that point, Hillary Clinton's popularity. Hillary Clinton doesn't, she doesn't stand for populist economics or she doesn't stand for progressive causes. She's a causer. She's a brand and a brand only. So the liberal class has been left to be the political police force for pc correctness. And that's whilst you have Democrats in office who are attacking liberalism, things like the welfare state, free trade and so forth. You had President Clinton, who'd gutted the unions, destroyed welfare and implemented NAFTA, which outsourced 800,000 jobs abroad. You're left with a liberal class that all they do is eat wine and wines and cheeses and pick up people who are saying the wrong things. Politically. I have a problem with political correctness.

Yeah, pick on people who are saying the wrong things. That's the big one. Saying the wrong things, not actions, not picking on people. And the islamophobic one, that to me is a weird one. Man, if you're going to be scared of any religion, in my opinion, it's a good one to pick. Islam is a good one. The number one suicide bombers, the number one people that are the things that they're doing to women in islamic countries, the things that you're seeing in the news on a daily basis that are from predominantly islamic countries. If you're going to be scared of a religion, that seems to be a good one.

Yeah, but my point is that that's happening over there. If we're going to worry about what's happening here, you're far more likely to be killed by a right wing terrorist than you are by an islamist terrorist. Since 1990, there's been 345 Americans killed by american Muslims, whereas there's only been 20 Americans killed by Muslim Americans. You can't count the 911 attackers as Muslim Americans because they're external. They were foreign fighters fighting for a foreign cause. So that's why I think the most dangerous threat to american democracy in our secular values is not Islamicism. It really is these christian theological whack jobs that represent what is the tea Party, which is really a proto fascist.

Movement in this country. In this country, yeah. In this country, yes. You're definitely less likely to be attacked by an islamic terrorist, and that's because America is doing its job keeping us safe over here. We fight over there so we can keep you safe over. I mean, I'm not exactly sure if that is a zero sum game. I'm not sure how that is working or if it's working or if it's just some massive debt that we're going to have to come back and pay. Sort of like the housing cris. It kind of seems like it, doesn't it?

Well, it's blowback. I mean, we've meddled in the middle eastern fairs for so long, and we wonder why shit happens. I mean, if you listen to the conservatives, they'll say that they want to attack us for our freedoms. They want to attack us because we like drinking beer or watching porn on the Internet. They have a very, very specific agenda. They hate the fact that we have our fucking military bases in the middle of the holy land. They hate the fact that we're not willing to operate in a bipartisan manner to solve the israeli palestinian situation. And so that's why they're angry. It's got nothing to do, really with religion. And if you actually look at all terrorist attacks over the world, 95% of all suicide bombs, bombing attacks have been committed against occupying forces, rather than being a religiously motivated event.

So religiously motivated in that they have inspired these people to attack and blow themselves up with religion.

Good point. What it is, you got the power structure, whether that's if you go all the way back to Osama bin Laden and say he's the top of al Qaeda, they have very, very specific political objectives. Obviously, the, you know, lowest common denominator in society, who's starving and doesn't have a job, has no future, they're the ones they recruit to carry out the deeds. But they're certainly a very rather politically motivated. Rather than religiously motivated.

Yeah. I would assume that if you are living in a country and you have a giant, huge empire that has invaded not just your country, but hundred different countries, we have military bases in more than 100 different countries all over the world, I would feel like you would want to resist that. That would naturally be something that people would be resisting.

Imagine if JFK airport was a saudi national airport. And they're flying their fighter jets in and out there and doing loops of New York City all day long. Yeah, I mean, you've got guys in the south and the confederate states that love to blow up the Capitol because there's a black man in the White House. Imagine if there was an airport.

Well, I'll tell you what, CJ, with your fancy accent, you tell me how else we're going to keep America safe at this point. How can you? I mean, that is the big question. I don't know what the real number is, but it's more than 100. More than 100 military bases in more than 100 different countries all over the world. People talk about the Roman Empire. Rome doesn't have shit on America. It's a joke. It's like, not even close. Like, this is the craziest empire. Fuck Genghis Khan. Fuck all those other people, those amateurs that came before us. This is the nuttiest empire that's ever existed. How do you pull that? Like, look what's going on in Iraq right now, this void that is being filled now by these jihadists. Once we're pulling out, the american troops and the Iraqis are being inundated with these various terrorist groups, this ISIS organization. And it's scary stuff when you see what happens when the predominant power, military power in the area, pulls out and then it's left this vacuum and this power struggle. What is the solution?

Well, you first have to look back at the root cause of it all. And the root cause was we drew up fictitious, we the west, not just the US, but we the west, drew up.

Not me, buddy. I wasn't it.

So we drew up fictitious borders and we said here, basically said the three different people, the Kurds, the Sunnis, the Shias, here's a country. We're going to draw the borders now. The borders now coexist and get along, and Kumbaya, what happens, of course, those three different sectarian sects can't get along. So you needed a hard man, a dictator, to keep the people suppressed and controlled. So it leaves internal strife out, remove him like we did, and then not replace it with a suitable alternative. Leaves this massive power vacuum. And that's why we have the situation where we're today, where we have all that civil war. So is the solution. Do you continue having a hardline dictator like Saddam Hussein, which was obviously