Seeking a Fren for the End of the World: Episode 1 - This is Really Just the Beginning
In a new series by Felix, Josh (@ettingermentum), and Spencer, we ask: how did the Republican Party, once the dominant force in American culture for almost a generation, become a group of bowtied cosplayers and rapist streamers yelling about Litterboxes? We trace this development back to the empires built by two men—Paul Weyrich and James Dobson—as well as the failures of one Pat Buchanan.
This episode draws from Dan Gilgoff’s The Jesus Machine and David Grann’s “Robespierre Of The Right.” For a full list of sources, check our works cited doc here: www.chapotraphouse.com/seeking
Comments (149)
This is my third time going through this series and that "hot knifing dog chemo meds" bit stil kills me.
Tex!
Pastor TL Barrett 💞
Great for a Christmas drive home 👌🏽
It’s a bit dry
No, that's your penis.
Apologies to the surely excellent work of the others involved but please begin giving ettingermentum the same amount of content appearance/contribution time as is currently allotted to virgil
Great stuff. Would love to hear more.
Bro Ive seen all of Schaeffer's videos and at one point had a complete volume of books. I read about half of them. I read A Christian Manifesto at least 3 times. Nobody talks about the man but he is critcal in understanding the theology/politics of that era of conservative Evangelicalism. He also looked like an elf and wore lederhosen.
Father I stretch my hands at the end?
The bibliography is 48 pages long 👏🏼
This is so goddamn boring
Oh next time listen while watching family guy best clips and mazerunner streamers
Great work, very into this, thank you.
I live like 10 minutes from the Amway world headquarters. "Rich" DeVos went by "Dick" DeVos. I thought you would all like that. Unfortunately his dumbass name is on every other university building in the area so the DeVos family has an open invitation to have their balls licked by honors students two or three times per semester. The DeVos family has been trying to retroactively erase history, that cunt will always be a Dick.
Felix, Spencer, and Josh this was awesome. I’m hooked
Loving this
May have missed it, did they say this would be a weekly release on Patreon?
I am not still following it! (abstinence) not voluntarily anyway. I’m voluntarily involuntary abstinent wait….
My current addiction to podcasts probably can be traced back to FoF’s Adventures in Odyssey. Salute to Dobson for introducing me to the audio drama format
Right? Spent 8th grade binging those off their website
"It must've resembled a version of O block populated by lemon party participants" lmao. this is so fucking good you guys
Am I confused or isn't Rich Voss the comedian, Rich Devos is someone else
Oh Felix! I didn't know you cared...
Christ Felix, it's Paul WHY-rick!
Damn Unc is cooking fr.
You spend money. I rape money. We are not the same.
We love the sicko deep lore. Ran through this a couple times. Once gooning. Once falling asleep post goon sesh. Maybe once more paying attention.
This made my 3rd eye open wide and I discovered swag for the first time
What’s the title of the outro song?
Pastor tl barret: father I stretch my hands
Ok some praises and criticisms: I like the music seques. A good look into how Democrats got spooked into their current political meta. My only gripe: Felix is just not suited to reading a script not written by himself. It's not terrible or anything. I listened to the whole podcast in two sittings. Maybe add a conversation interlude between the scripted stuff?
Damn this is amazing, Felix and the boys knocked it out of the park.
Felix lookin for Affrin at the end of the world. We love him folks we do
bit disappointed Joshingermentum isn't speaking on this, i really enjoy his Nick Mullen on nootropics drawl
why would you wnat to hear what he wants to say, he framed himslef as Mr. Too-Damn-Elections for the apst year and he was 100% wrong on every level about the election lmao
Actually laughed out loud a few times. Well written.
A corner of history I never cared to read about, since the hilarious media from that time sorta speaks for itself. Thanks Felix
its so crazy cause ive never seen heard or participated in any of these things… closest ive been was 4chan but its a whole world of crazy right wing media. is the mid ass shit i see on tv and internet just “lib shit”?
Hey Felix, I'm more than happy to edit and mix your all of your audio files for cheap. I enjoy the content but I'm so annoyed from not only the phasing on the phasing in episode 892, but now the utterly obvious separate takes with different gain structures and/or mic positioning in this episode. It's distracting for those of us who are even slightly sensitive to this and it's relatively easy to fix. Ive worked in the music industry for +20 years. Please feel to reach out or dm me.
On top of that I'm 15 mins from Glendale
How does Felix’s audio quality still suck after a decade? You should actually pay Metro Boomin to fix the file plus you get a good tag on the intro
"and, if you're listening to this program, there's a good chance it worked so well that you're still following it!"
if young metro don’t trust you I’m gon shoot you
Oh boy, another podcast that makes me wish hell was real
The fingerprints of the disgraced fraud Ettingermentum are all over this one.
I felt burned for buying into his electoral predictions, but on policy he usually seems to have the right ideas.
Is this going to be released weekly or are we getting a batch release? I really like the topic and don’t wanna wait 😘
This is a common mistake but DeVos is pronounced Dee-vaws not Dee-vose. Great first episode.
I remember Erik Prince correcting a congressional representative on that when he was testifying about Blackwater atrocities in Iraq.
so good
I’m lovin it
What was that Pat Buchanan theme drop at like 28:00? You guys who didn't grow up in a rich Catholic fascist milieu have no idea how large a presence Pat Buchanan was in the millennial teenage Political Guys of the News World pantheon
I think he might've been my first realization that there was a whole world of guys fucking everything up who weren't even in the government and that I was to become accordingly pissed
Thank you for a series like this!!
Subscribed for this, great insights. As someone that grew up in Grand Rapids, MI. The Devos family have funded every right wing hack for the last century. I wasn’t surprised to hear how far their ties go.
Awesome guys
Real good work
Very dope, very cool Felix!
“Trent Lot of Elvira fame” lololol
In listening to this, I realized that I don't think I ever actually heard the original "read my lips" speech, just the people making jokes later. That was such a catchphrase for a while.
banger. been listening to blowback, and i LOVE this style of series.
I was raised on that Dobson shit. My step dad even worked for Focus On The Family. Not a day goes by that I don’t wish pain upon James Dobson
Same, it was actually kind of infuriating hearing the old shit's voice again
Loved the El-vi-raaa echo
series artwork kinda rules
Real ones got that Rich Vos joke
Hell yeah love Spencer
I love the guys but it's killing me to hear them always say "renumerate" when they mean to say "remunerate"
Man they love re-numeration, even when reading off a script that says remunerate. I guess they think money is written in numerals so you “re-numer” yourself? It’s so funny to me.
Such s great episode. Looking forward to all the subsequent ones. Thank you for the peerless collab.
who was choosing the music? i'd guess spencer or chris based on the taste. nice XTC track
ah so Dobson inspired Shower With Your Dad Simulator 2015
This shit fire bro
Xtra Eloquent felix is cool. Truly 😎 a voice made for poetry. ❤️
Never thought I'd see Chapo x Manic Street Preachers lol
or Chapo x XTC
I grew up in rural South Carolina, and anywhere you went as a child has focus on the family children's magazines, they were everywhere. Every doctor, dentist, and divorce lawyers office I was in as a kid had them, hell My pediatricians office played videos from them as well on their early flat screen TV's that I found so cool. Haven't thought about that in years and hearing "focus on the family" hit me like a sleeper agent hearing his activation code
My gf grew up in Colorado Springs, and when she went to an exchange term in Chile, at one point she stayed at an indigenous family with two books: a Bible and a Focus on the Family book
Excellent music choices. Looking forward to the rest of the series
Amazing. I only wish this one was split into two or three longer episodes. For any dumb-dumbs like myself: “fren” is apparently slang for “Far Right Ethno-Nationalist”
Comeback zinc!
Framing this as an obituary for a failed movement seems uh, bold given how election went? Or have I missed something?
Two fail movements fighting for votes in a fail state. Whoever won the election, it doesn't prove the party's vitality, it proves the expiration of a country's political institutions
It was good. I enjoyed it. I’ll be listening to the rest of the series for sure. I think the style of it especially at the beginning can be distracting from the point by being verbose, spoken quickly, and having a lot of video game/pop culture references. I find myself having to press the rewind 10 sec button a lot to catch the main point.
Came here to find this comment. Having the same experience. There are a number of highly concentrated references and metaphors and jokes very close together, the way you’d normally find see in a pithy essay (with interesting footnotes). EDIT: I’ll say it does get a lot better.
Big ups Felix
This Felix guy is super interesting, they should have him on the pod more often
This is the start of a great series! Thank you Felix!
Why do people have such weird fucking beliefs man. All these men are freaks. It baffles the mind to even think people connect with their ideas
Closeted bi/gay usually.
"My opponent now says he will raise [taxes] as a last resort or a 3rd resort. But when a politician talks like that, you know that's one resort he'll be checking into!" 🔥 Full Bush bars right there.
Both an incredible episode and an incredible birthday present to me lol. Can't wait for the rest of the series
Happy birthday!
Love the Blowbackian opening starting with the Crowder humiliation ritual. A great use of the format
Reminded me of that propagandhi song that starts with pigs squealing in an abbotoir, which was only marginally more distressing than whatever Stephen Crowder was doing
Its like a prequel to all that Warhammer lore (probably idk)
Hey Travis! What time does Felix start talking?
I home school our kids - mostly because the schools in our area are poor quality and our kids have higher needs than what the schools can offer. There are a few families I know that home school that aren’t crazy, but most are reactionary Christian’s or reactionary woo-woo RFK types. It’s hard to know what to do with our kids -send them to the terrible public school or home school them and run the risk of it hurting them socially in the long run.
Send them to school man. Basically 0 ppl have the bandwith to fully teach 6 different subjects. If they start spouting nonsense, correct them, put the right book in their hands, but you are likely leaving something out yourself or at the very least de-socialising them
Just started this, and the first ten minutes are honestly kind of embarrassing . . . How does Felix not know how to pronounce Weyrich and Viguerie’s names? Did he not watch or listen to any interviews with them that included introductions, nor any other A/V media referencing them? And, how does no one else catch the issues during editing? If you guys are going to make dedicated, in-depth podcasts, you gotta make a de minimis effort to get basic shit like subjects’ names right.
You’re talking about a guy who still mispronounces Kamala’s name
Felix, this is so fire. Abstinence Only at work.
God we gotta get a soundtrack for this series put together, some of the best transition music we’ve had from a Chapo ep/series yet
hell yea this rocks. thanks felix
Excellent
please tell me you give spencer a mic in one of these
Max Blumenhal’s Republican Gommorrah gives a very good account of the truly wicked pastoral care-direct mail-political influence machine.
51:08 that was OD
So Stoked on the Don Fagen IGY cut in E1. I feel seen.
Hell yeah
This that kinda series you gotta sit and listen to with your browser open
First
The section on James Dobson made me realize some things about my childhood. Holy shit.
Building a left political Acapella group to perform at events: Lu-i-gi! 🎵
Luigi from UEG
elvira mentioned
Perlstein interview >>>>
This rocks
I appreciate the list of sources and the crediting of scholars’ work.
The needle drops- dang imma want a playlist at the end of all this.
Huge grin on my face hearing XTC, even though that's their worst song
O BLOCK POPULATED BY LEMON PARTY PARTICIPANTS HAHAHAHA
Felix is so brilliant
My parents listened to Focus on the Family when I was young. Pretty odd, since we were Catholic (they are still devout), and there was quite a bit of anti-Papist "Whore of Babylon" content that was confusing to me ("Mom, do we worship the devil?"). Hey, it was the 80s. Anyways, they stopped listening after a while, probably when they realized a lot of their friends were also listening and decided to leave the Church for some of the more "fun" evangelical denominations.
Did you ever listen to ‘Adventures in Odyssey’? Only exposure to it is through relisten episodes talking about it on ‘Worse of all possible worlds’ podcast.
🤠 El-vi-ra 🎶
The Earworm has escaped containment again! God help us all....
Felix Mindset Returns 🔥
HELL YEAH
I like podcast
Congrats on the release Felix! I'm gonna listen as soon as I'm home from work at approximately 3:04ET
24:00 IGY one of my favorite Fagwn tunes. Yacht rock? Possibly
Felix first speaks at 00:40
Ooof this doesn’t work because it was made when it assumed a defeat due to Trump world being freaks, due to ettingermentum being WRONG on predicting this election. Not a genius, he just got lucky when others were wrong. Turns out being a freak wins, and the normal people lost, and Dobbs wasn’t that important
Idk about that- I think he was right that the senate was lost, and the house was narrowly going to be close to 50/50. My main takeaway is that Trump isn't Trumpism, and non-college educated voters (while having inscrutable political and cultural beliefs) do have material interests not being met by the democrats. Someday in the future, we'll find out that Biden threatened to outright endorse Trump if she broke with him publicly on his foreign or domestic policy, depressing democrat turnout.
Been ready for this Felix series LFG!
She's so many women. He can't find the one who was his fren.
🙌
Came at a good time. Im freakin pumped. Been drinking green tea all god damned day
Let's go baby
Let’s goooooo
Fourth!
How’d they know?
My boy pussy is quaking for this slop, can’t wait to look for cum with a black light with this!
we love a new series don’t we folks
Many say it's the most beautiful series
Fresh slop
No sleep for me I guess.