Episode 269: Death Hilarious (Blood Meridian, Pt. 2)

[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist Dave Pizarro, having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say, and knowing my dad, some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:00:17] I can see your soul at the edges of your eyes. It's corrosive, like acid. Think of the demon, little man. The queen has spoken! Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! I'm a very good man. Good.

[00:00:51] They think deep thoughts, and with no more brains than you have. Pay no attention to that man! Anybody can have a brain. You're a very bad man! I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard.

[00:01:16] Welcome to Very Bad Wizards, I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. Dave, the Patriots suck, the Red Sox are abominable, the Celtics might be too soft to win a championship, my daughter's away at college, I mean, do you think maybe the Gnostics are right?

[00:01:34] There is an evil demiurge just like right behind you. All you have to do is take some peyote and you'll realize this whole time there's been a demon controlling everything you care about. Boston sports.

[00:01:47] It is a little rich for somebody with our success in the last 20 years to say that, but right now it's not... You can't compare suffering. Stubbing my toe sometimes feels like theodicy, like I'm yelling to God. It's a refutation of the existence of God.

[00:02:07] You and I were talking about the duo two-factor authentication being the bane of our existence every time we have to log in. That's the kind of evil we deal with on a daily basis.

[00:02:18] What benevolent God would allow everything to just be like fine, but then a year later now you have to do duo authentication or whatever the fuck. Like just always, every time, for no reason.

[00:02:32] Every once in a while those things will say like, hey, if this is your device, just tell us and you won't have to do this anymore. But it never sticks. It never sticks. So today we are going to complete our discussion. Complete? You can't complete a discussion.

[00:02:48] You could just stop it. We'll stop it at the end of this episode. At least right now it feels like the first episode, which I think turned out pretty good. But it was more our kind of disorganized spilling out thoughts about the book. Although make no promises.

[00:03:06] There is no order to this world. So we'll see about that. That's in the second segment. But in the first segment, what do we got? We're talking about two papers that have to do with cheating and dishonesty.

[00:03:18] And I saw these on Twitter, J. van Bevel, to give him credit for tweeting out the first one, which is about cheating on Wordle. Which just had a specific significance to me because you and I, of course, play word games every day.

[00:03:32] Quite a bit of time is devoted. Quite a bit of time dedicated to word games. And so we're talking about that. And then there's another paper on honesty across countries like around the globe.

[00:03:44] And it's a paper about what percentage of people return a wallet that they found or try to contact the owner of the wallet they found. But let's talk about Wordle first. So this is Alexander Wormley and Adam Cohen from Arizona State University.

[00:03:59] And the gist of this paper is that you can look up an index of how many people cheat on Wordle. Where here cheating means specifically Googling for the answer. Just like blatant, like not even searching Google for Wordle answer today, Wordle or Wordle word today.

[00:04:21] And they can make an estimate of geographical region for how much controlling for like the population and for the number of people playing Wordle using whatever fancy statistics. An estimate of how many people are cheating in these various geographical regions.

[00:04:38] And they could also come up with an estimate of religiosity and this other construct called tightness that is like how punitive the state is and how culturally permissive it is. I don't know much about that one.

[00:04:50] But basically, they find that the more religious the states, the less they cheat. Right. So the Northeast, like the godless Northeast. The people who like to hold themselves up as the moral exemplars of like the universe.

[00:05:10] Just like we've been building towards the moral rectitude of New England and New York. And look at you guys with Wordle cheating. Well, I feel like there's some people in the South who feel that way about themselves. But I'll leave it there.

[00:05:28] For me, it was more like, aren't these people who pride themselves on their intellect? You know, these are like New York Times crossword puzzle, like sitting at the kitchen table on Sunday morning. And no, if you look at the heat map, it's like the brightest red right around.

[00:05:45] Like Vermont is the highest cheating state. Those motherfuckers. They're all white and they just cheat at Wordle. Right. And so then they looked at the correlation between cheating behavior on Wordle and religiosity. And it's like negative point five, six, which is big.

[00:06:04] That's like a big effect for it to be that negatively related. But I would say that like if you're in Mississippi or Alabama, you're not that likely to be like, you know, hey, Billy Bob, check out my like Wordle streak. Look at how many threes I have.

[00:06:21] Like, you know, like that's not going to be that impressive. Whereas you people hold yourself up. You people hold yourself up as like really smart and clever and quick on your feet. And, you know, if you bring up something that's that's important.

[00:06:40] So like they tried to control for how many people in the state play Wordle. And what you said made me think, yeah, like the people there are more people with Wordle streaks or whatever in the Northeast.

[00:06:54] But that should be controlled for just by number of people playing, I would think if you play every day. But the way that they had to control for that was they used Google searches.

[00:07:05] No, sorry. They looked at tweets, like how many people in the state tweet about Wordle. And they use that as a metric for how many people play Wordle. And I think that's just as the French say, n'importe quoi.

[00:07:18] It's just like anything goes for like, oh, how should we measure this? Oh, let's look at number of tweets. Like, just unbelievable. Yeah. And so that seems like isn't there like a Twitter effect here that more people in the Northeast are going to be on Twitter?

[00:07:36] Like if you're playing Wordle in the South, aren't the chances that you tweet about it lower than if you're in the Northeast? Yeah. Is this a good journal? Yeah, it is. It is. It's a good journal. In fact, they probably require the data to be shared.

[00:07:51] Yeah, they're like one of the journals. This is Perspectives on Psychological Science. They care a lot about like open science and all that stuff. I mean, I'm sure I'm probably missing something here. But here's what I really wanted to ask you. Is it cheating?

[00:08:07] I know that there are rules that we might hold ourselves to, but is this cheating? Is it fair to say that this is like some sort of metric of moral behavior? I don't think they're saying it's a metric of moral behavior. It's just...

[00:08:22] Well, cheat is a thick, like it's a thick word, right? I mean, it sounds like what you're saying, like Wordle cheating is related to religiosity. Like you were telling us, you were just saying that we're like such hypocrites, you know.

[00:08:36] I don't understand. Like why do you think it's not cheating? Because it's a game, like because it's you. It's just you. Who are you cheating? It's like playing golf on your own and writing a different number on the card. It's like if nobody's playing with you.

[00:08:51] Yeah, I guess that depends then. Well, first of all, if you can always just guess the six words, they give you the answer at the end. So like if you really don't want to have it look like you didn't fail,

[00:09:04] if you don't want to have it look like your streak got broken or that you got a worse score than you did, like that's the only way to do it. That's the only reason I can think of to do it.

[00:09:14] Except that, you know, on the other hand, like I see what you mean. It's sort of like when you're playing chess against the computer and you make a stupid mistake and you take it back. I remember my dad used to do that.

[00:09:27] And I'd be like, well, why are you playing it then if you're just going to, you know, and he's like shut the fuck up. And he was kind of right. Or what about, so how do you feel about, we were talking a little bit about this,

[00:09:37] about looking up the answer on a crossword if like you're stumped? Well, yeah, this is like because I do that and I'll do it without much compunction. Compunction, yeah. Yeah, it's purely just something from my own.

[00:09:50] But that doesn't solve the whole crossword, like looking up the word old. You know, like this is more like pushing the button that just says reveal the whole puzzle, you know? Right.

[00:10:01] So if somebody did that every day, like they loaded up the New York Times app and they just said reveal. Like I wouldn't call it cheating. I would call it not playing the game. Right, right.

[00:10:12] Unless they were going around like showing people, you know, like their streaks or their, which I think you people do, but I just don't think goes over that well in Birmingham. By the way, you can't both like have weeping and gnashing of teeth about Boston sports

[00:10:28] and identify with New England in that way and then just throw New England under the bus. Well, that's my form of cheating. That's my looking up shit on the word. I was born in Argentina for fuck's sake.

[00:10:43] I will say that like I for the streak thing I get because, as you know, I have a very good word hurdle streak going. And there was a really hard one and I was down to the last word. And but you can't really look up word hurdle anyway.

[00:11:00] No, nobody cares. Yeah, exactly. Nobody's putting it on. But like I remember having that thought. Is this really how this is going to go down? Yeah, I think that streak. I think you're right. The streak probably is the driving force here.

[00:11:16] It would be interesting if we had if I were. I'm sure New York Times has the data like it would be hard to put the two together. But I bet you people only look it up when they're at the fifth, the last guess.

[00:11:26] Right. Yeah, probably because they don't. Then yeah, that would further research may reveal when they cheat. This is NSF grant 401. Do you want to talk about the other one? Yeah. OK, so here is this is published in Science. So you can ask if that's a good journal.

[00:11:48] This is a paper that came out in 2019 that somebody tweeted about recently, but I had never come across it. And it's looking it's called Civic Honesty Around the Globe.

[00:11:59] And it looks at they ran experiments in 40 countries, dropping more than 17000 wallets containing some containing money and some not containing any money. The measure of honesty here was whether somebody returns not return.

[00:12:19] Somebody emails the owner of the wallet because they have the contact info very clear in the wallet. In fact, they were clear business card wallets. So you didn't even have to open it to see their contact info.

[00:12:30] And some of them contain money. All of them contained a key and contact information, maybe ID. This is again across 40 countries. They manipulated whether there was money in there. And it was about 15, 14 dollars of U.S. money sort of.

[00:12:47] So that purchasing power of that amount in all these different countries. And they got this nice estimate of all these 40 countries of what proportion of these wallets the email gets sent.

[00:13:00] And so when you look, it's a nice little graph that has one side of a line is the wallets with no money in them. And the other side is wallets with money in them.

[00:13:11] And what you get is a pretty big effect across the whole sample that wallets with money are returned more often than wallets without money. Often by a lot. Often by more than double. Yeah, exactly. It's crazy.

[00:13:26] So at the top of the chart, no surprise here, Switzerland, Norway, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Poland. Because they all have money because of their either Switzerland, like dirty money that gets laundered through there or the Scandinavians, just socialism.

[00:13:42] Right. The rates at the top are like we're talking like 80 percent of these wallets got a contact. Like the game, if it has money like that, you can get you can just drop your wallet in Denmark and you'll be fine. Right. It's pretty nice. Just meet somebody. Yeah.

[00:14:00] At the bottom is China, where the wallet with no money was like below 10 percent. Somebody said maybe because they don't use email in the same way. But who knows? But if it has money, it's higher than a lot of countries.

[00:14:14] Yeah, it's like that's right. It's 20 percent. It's like 7 percent to like 21 percent. And then heading up the bottom of this list, Morocco, Peru, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Malaysia, United Arab Emirates, which kind of surprised me. I guess they don't chop your arms off anymore. Indonesia, Ghana, Turkey, India, Mexico.

[00:14:42] And then in the middle, you have like Portugal, U.S., United Kingdom, Middle East countries. Israel, UK. We're all bunched together. Romania, I'm a little surprised is as high as it is. Russia's for all you people with your Ukraine flags in your Twitter profile.

[00:15:01] Russia is way higher than the United States and Israel, UK, Canada, even Canada. They're just like it's just fear in Russia. They're just afraid. Like Putin is going to track them down for. Yeah, or with some it was some mobsters wallet, you know?

[00:15:18] Yeah. Oh, yeah. Maybe some oligarch like. With 13 dollars in their clear wallet. So one thing that popped out to me in looking at this chart is that while South America is represented, Argentina is kind of the middle of the pack.

[00:15:39] And then toward the bottom you get Chile and Peru. Peru's very low. Yeah. Argentina is much higher than any other South American. It's weird. I would not have predicted. Well, Chile, I would have predicted as low.

[00:15:51] But those countries have this like hilarious thing where there is barely any difference between the no money and the money. Like having money in the wallet is not causing people to be more likely to return it. So, like, are they just taking the money?

[00:16:07] I mean, it's a weird dynamic that they return it with the money. And Mexico is the only country where it's way lower if you have the money. Like if there's any money in it. And Peru is also like that. Those are the only two countries.

[00:16:25] Yeah. Peru is like they're identical, like they're just overlapping. It's like it makes no difference. Mexico has flipped around in this crazy way. And I was thinking, like, is it that I don't know why it would be Mexico specifically,

[00:16:37] but I can see one reason for being less likely to return a wallet with money is that you might get accused of having stolen some money. Like if you returned a wallet with $13 and somebody said, but there were $100 in here.

[00:16:51] Where's the rest of my money, buddy? So maybe they're just afraid of getting accused. But that happens only in Mexico is so weird. Yeah, I don't know where you want to take that. I'm not taking it anywhere. I've already said too much.

[00:17:08] I'm just, you know, I was a little proud of my Chile and Argentina and South America in general. Not not giving a fuck about the money. Okay, so I'll say they did one more follow up in just Poland, the UK and the United States,

[00:17:22] where they did instead of $13, which might not be enough, they put $95 and the equivalent in money. And in all three of those countries, the rate goes up like by 10% easy.

[00:17:36] So the moral of this story is if you're going to lose your wallet, put like a lot of money in it. It's the only way you'll get it back.

[00:17:44] I wonder if it's like at that point you feel like you're getting tested either by some like annoying psychologist or by God. Right. God does do things like that. He does. People don't talk about it, but he'll like test you.

[00:18:01] It could be that those people thought that the $94 person was going to give him a little reward. They're just gonna be like, here's a solid, you know, take a 50. But you could have like a $94 reward if you just kept it.

[00:18:16] I like the way you think. Are you Peruvian? I'm Mexican. We'll stick with the word we'll study. We'll be right back to talk about Blood Meridian. Today's episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. You know when you're trying to fall asleep and your brain just won't stop talking?

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[00:24:41] We are going to dive into the second part of our discussion of this book, which I think we've both in the time since we've last talked.

[00:24:50] I know we've had a few conversations and like it's kind of a singular experience reading this book and thinking about it to this extent. I don't know. Like, I'm kind of amazed that I could get this old and still feel this way about a book.

[00:25:05] Like, I feel like this is how I felt when I read like Dostoevsky or something for the first time. And to some extent, like, this is high praise.

[00:25:14] Like, when I really went back and dug into The Odyssey and The Iliad, which I hadn't done since high school, like, that was also just this mind blowing experience. Like, and like this, I feel like this is up there. You know? Yeah.

[00:25:29] So here's the plan, at least the plan that we think we have. We're going to talk a little bit about a few characters in the Glanton gang. And then we're going to, we each kind of wanted to talk about a few scenes.

[00:25:41] There was a lot of overlap there. So then we'll dive into a few key scenes and then that'll be it for today. But, you know, who knows? Maybe we will just do that'll be the next ambulator. So it'll just be the blood. What would it be called?

[00:25:56] I don't know. But, you know, we could do a McCormick McCarthy. There's so much material, although I don't know. I don't know if anything. The Delawares? I feel like you and I are like the Delaware. We're just scouts. Which one of us gets dragged away by a bear?

[00:26:12] Yeah. Certainly one of us is going to die. I could totally see myself getting just dragged away by a bear at some point, you know? We're good trackers, I think. I'm the worst. But yeah, sure. All right. Let's start with the kid.

[00:26:32] Do you want to start with the kid? Yeah. We touched on the kids character a little bit, right? And I mean here, his moral character, did we in the last episode? Yeah. And especially in relation to the judge, I think. Right.

[00:26:49] Because the judge has taken this keen interest in the kid. And that's, I think, one of the big kind of little puzzles of the book is what the judge sees in the kid.

[00:26:59] And there are various times where the judge explicitly—and I think it starts with the scene where the kid is running away from the fire he started. And the judge just staring at him like he's already noticed something about him. Yeah. Right.

[00:27:15] I think you in the last episode, as I was editing, I very much resonated with you saying that the thing that the judge is bothered by with the kid, but also impressed by, is he seems like he has some autonomy in the way these other people don't.

[00:27:35] Like all these other people come into contact with the judge and to greater or lesser extent become like him. This kind of just gruesome, horrific, but gleeful violence. Though they're usually not as gleeful as him. But the kid is always a little bit standoffish about that.

[00:27:54] And I think the judge kind of notices that early on. And I don't know. It's interesting in that opening scene where he sees them, maybe the judge just sees another person to fold into his weird cult. Yeah. Okay. Let me run something by you.

[00:28:19] Because as I was thinking about this. So I had been thinking about what exactly the judge sees about the kid and what we know about the kid.

[00:28:29] And what we know about the kid early on, given his history and the first actions that we see him perform, is that he seems to have a real affinity for violence. Like he is not bothered at all. I think that the judge might have been drawn to that.

[00:28:46] Like the judge wants somebody maybe as part of the gang, like you were saying, he likes those kinds of people. But then the judge sees this is somebody who is not just callous, but also has this capability for good, this capacity for good.

[00:29:08] And by dint of that, his evil is a choice. Like just because he's capable of these acts of charity, he is more autonomous in his morality. And I feel like the judge the whole time is struggling to make him an agent of like the...

[00:29:25] He wants the kid to be like him and just be indifferent to the universe. But do it with this autonomy that you were just talking about. And so he's struggling when the kid shows over and over again throughout the book this willingness to be good to people.

[00:29:42] And we could talk about those scenes, but yeah. It's funny. I've kind of gravitated in the other direction. I kind of disagree to some extent with the premise of what you're saying, which is that he has this special affinity for violence.

[00:29:59] I think he has an ability to do violence, certainly not an aversion to violence. But I don't think he has an affinity, a particular affinity for violence. He is... So one of the things like we had this little disagreement, slight disagreement in the last episode about just...

[00:30:18] I had kind of thought that maybe the kid disappears a little bit during the middle of the book. Not disappears. He's not the focus of the novel anymore. And sometimes he's not even in the scenes. You didn't feel that way.

[00:30:33] And I think we're both right in one sense. Like you're right that there's not that many scenes where he's just gone, like we have no idea where he is. But he is absent in a lot of the scenes of brutality and violence.

[00:30:50] And I remember thinking like, I don't think the kid participated in a lot of these things. And I think it's true. There are only like two or three people that the book says that he kills for sure.

[00:31:04] The first two are like the Yuma, like way towards the end of the book, just in self-defense trying to get away. And then the little Elrod, right? And I think that's pretty much it. And then, you know, like I was looking that up because I was interested.

[00:31:20] And yeah, like I think those are the only ones. So he is kind of conspicuously absent in a lot of the violence and brutality. And in that sense, I guess I feel like he doesn't have a real affinity or taste for violence.

[00:31:35] He just doesn't have anything. It's like the only path for him that he can see. Maybe. Like he was born into it. He definitely is not bothered by it, though, that he can ride with the Glanton gang and participate in these things without really like objecting.

[00:31:52] I mean, no. Right. Yeah. So here's what actual resistance comes at the very end. But the judge, as the judge says, detects in him someone who's not all in on what they're doing.

[00:32:06] Maybe. But that's kind of what I'm saying is that like the that that the evil would be a choice for the kid makes him more appealing as a target for the judge.

[00:32:15] Whereas like somebody like Glanton, who we'll talk about, is not a pensive, violent person or like he just seems to like be a sadist. But here's I think this set the stage for what I was saying. And you may be right that this changes later in his life.

[00:32:33] But the book opens in describing the kid. And when he says that he's born and that his father was like a drunk who left when he was 14, his mother died in birth.

[00:32:48] And he says, The father never speaks his name. The child does not know it. He has a sister in this world that he will not see again.

[00:32:53] He watches pale and unwashed. He can neither read nor write. And in him broods already a taste for mindless violence. All history present in that visage, the child, the father of the man.

[00:33:03] So I feel like there is something that McCarthy thinks that is in the heart of this kid. And then he goes on to describe like how he engaged in fights with anybody and everybody that he could.

[00:33:15] Yes, I completely agree with you up till like he gets, you know, into the Comanche War. And it's true. Like I don't get me wrong. He is present at some of the most gruesome scenes of violence and he doesn't actively resist.

[00:33:29] Even Toadvine resists more than him, like at least token resistance more than he just doesn't seem to really enjoy it once he gets like really at any point.

[00:33:42] So can I just say really quickly, just in like agreeing with what you're saying, I think that from the beginning McCarthy is saying something like what we're both trying to get at, because he also says really within that when he's 14 years old, that that his eyes remain oddly innocent.

[00:33:59] Yeah. Right. So it's both like it's a fight in him.

[00:34:04] I think in some ways, I think the non autonomous part of him is more pulled towards violence. And there's a couple of things that like I think as we talk about the scenes that this will come out. But one scene that we're not going to talk about it is very early in the book where he this is before he joins the Mexican army where he meets an old man.

[00:34:26] You know what I'm talking about that scene and the old man says to him, lost you way in the dark. The way of the hermit. Yeah, the hermit. Yeah.

[00:34:36] The way of the transgressor is hard. God made this world, but he didn't make it to suit everybody, did he? And then the kid says, I don't believe he much had me in mind. I said the old man. But where does a man come by his notions? Where what world is he seeing he liked better? I can't think of better place, better places and better ways. That's what the kid says.

[00:34:57] only thing that the world is offering him right now, given like his, you know, his father, his mother's and everything. And it's like, I guess I'm just doing this because I'm good at it. Like I can get into a fight with Toad Vine and like, you know, live to tell about it. Yeah, this guy with no ears.

[00:35:16] And like just be balls out, like not he doesn't seem scared of any dying of anything. Just wants his boots. The hermit, by the way, after reading that, the tarot card scene that we're going to talk about later. The hermit is also a tarot card.

[00:35:34] Definitely. Yeah, just predicts there's so much like that. We'll talk about that as we get into that. Should we talk about some of the good things that he does?

[00:35:42] Yes, because the first thing that is in my notes is when during the Comanche attack, there's a guy that has an arrow through his neck. And the kid is just his impulse is to help him out. So he goes to try to help him. He's willing to like help him get that arrow out of his neck, but he realizes the guy's dead.

[00:36:04] And so he can't help him, but that he was moved in that way is like an early indication. And there's a mirror of noticing that somebody's dead later on when he's the man. Oh, with the old woman. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:36:19] It's weird. It's sort of like the violence of the war. It's like a very like your goodness can't stop the fact that like this shit's going to happen.

[00:36:29] Yeah, they're all dust and brittle and kind of nothing anyway. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you mentioned that scene, I think we're going to not end up talking about it. But I went back and just looked at like that whole reading the end, I realized felt like it was a dream.

[00:36:46] Like, because I can't like all of a sudden he's 28. There's no clear demarcation. Like now he's 28. And then he's 40 something.

[00:36:56] No, no. But I think when he finds the woman, he's 28. But this is how reading this book is. It's like you're struggling to like keep track of the details and something as potentially huge as the passage of 30 or 15 years can go by in like a paragraph.

[00:37:20] Yeah, it's literally like three pages or something where it goes from from him getting healed by the doctor from his injury. And then he's the man like, But I think he's in 28. There's that like little middle period.

[00:37:36] Yeah, you're right. In the spring of his 28th year, he set out with others. Yep. It's a little it's yeah, it's the mezzanine of the book.

[00:37:43] Yeah, but before like he's covering all these years. He saw men killed with guns and with knives and with ropes. And he saw women fought over to the death whose value they themselves had set at $2. Yeah.

[00:37:53] Well, this is the thing about him, right? He also helps this guy out. What's his name? Sproul. After the Comanche attack. Yeah, he has an infected arm. He's unwilling to let him go. He keeps saying save yourself. And he's like, No, I'm not gonna leave you.

[00:38:07] Right, right. He has this thing where he will not let a person die. And I think he actually struggles to take somebody's life. Yeah, I think so. You're right. He doesn't often kill at all.

[00:38:19] Yeah, like I think he's really even with Elrod. He's trying to avoid killing him like the whole time. And there is a scene where he takes he's the only one who will take the arrow out of David Brown. Yeah, after they've been ambushed, I think by the Apache.

[00:38:38] Yep. He I think before that he tries to help an injured guy, McGill. And Glanton orders him not to and just shoots. He just shoots me like this is where Glanton there's like four injured guys. And Glanton would rather just shoot them all so they die and not have to worry about him.

[00:38:59] He also there's that scene where he and I think the judge is kind of dissonantly involved with this. He picked the arrow. Yeah, he has to kill Shelby.

[00:39:11] Can we talk about this a little bit in more detail because it fits with this like it really reminds me of Chigurh's like coin flipping here because Shelby is injured and they want somebody to kill him. But the way that they're going to choose is they're going to have them essentially draw straws.

[00:39:29] Like the judge clearly wants the kid to be among the candidates and that kid reaches in, sees the judge looking at him and then switches his choice. Yeah. But nonetheless gets the red arrow. So it's like it's just faded.

[00:39:45] That was the battle. The battle was won by the judge. Exactly. Yeah. Right. But not the war or maybe the war.

[00:39:53] And like a lot of these cases when you really think about it like this guy it's not maybe doing him a huge favor to save him at this point and not to just mercy kill him. But it is a choice like you said. And he's just like I'm not gonna I'm not gonna like kill a guy that I've been riding with.

[00:40:11] Yeah. When we were talking offline I said something about like the Huck Finn case that's well known in moral philosophy where Huck Finn has an allegiance to Jim but he believes that he should turn him in as a slave. Like he believes that's the right thing to do but he can't help but try to save Jim.

[00:40:32] Now that's used as an example of somebody being pulled emotionally. But the kid is like it's not like a war between emotion and reason. It's just these two sides of him. And I think that that's just like the sides of like a human spirit. I don't know. It sounds cheesy but like those are just two ways that he has of being.

[00:40:58] But do you think he has a side that wants to kill Shelby. That's what I'm not sure. Yeah no in that case no. No. Yeah I think he doesn't like killing any innocent people.

[00:41:08] I think he's just annoyed that he has to deal with it. But like I kind of feel like he makes a firm decision like I'm not going to shoot this guy. Like I'm not going to give him a gun. I'm not gonna give I'll give him a little water but not too much. But a little water at that point is you know that is very philanthropic.

[00:41:27] And he hides him under a bush I think.

[00:41:29] He hides him under a bush. Now like if he gets found the same thing happens then he catches up to somebody else whose horse is injured and he also just walks with them. He gets off his horse and walks with them. He's really just not willing to give up on anybody except right at the end when the Glanton gang is murdered by well yeah murdered justly.

[00:41:55] I don't want to I don't want to make that sound pejorative. He just makes the decision there like a clean decision. I am breaking from the judge right now. These people he's he feels bound to them but not towards the judge.

[00:42:10] I think that's like a building resentment toward the judge. It occurs over time like it's not like it's that explicitly stated but you're getting this sense that by the time he splits with the judge he really has had it.

[00:42:23] He you only get any sense that he is an antagonist of the judge really when he's the man in the bar at the end. He there's other people that seem to more than him seem to be uncomfortable with what the judge is doing. We can talk about that.

[00:42:42] There's something the judge says to him at the end. He says you of all men are no stranger to that feeling the emptiness and the despair is that which we take arms against. Is it not is not blood the tempering agent in the mortar which bonds the judge lean closure closer.

[00:43:01] What do you think death is man of whom do we speak when we speak of a man who was and is not. Are these blind riddles or are they not some part of every man's jurisdiction. What is death if not an agency and whom does he intend toward.

[00:43:17] This is getting at some of the stuff we were talking about in the last episode. But I think this idea is this kid has that feeling of emptiness and despair and the world is meaningless and violent and vile.

[00:43:35] But I am not going to participate like the judge's response to that is to dive into it and control it and lead it. And the kid has no interest in doing that. That's the thing that drives the judge crazy. That's why the judge is still focused on him.

[00:43:54] And I think that's what I'm going to say to him 30 years later is like I thought I had you pegged. It's like what you said at the beginning. I thought I had you pegged in that town and you were never like that. You were never you. You absolutely kept your distance from it even though you rode with us. And unlike a lot of other people never thought of abandoning us.

[00:44:15] Yeah, totally. And I think that the judge from everything else we learn about the way the judge is toward the world like his obsessive cataloging of the natural world. So he'll do things like, you know, he was copying down like the images of like this artwork on the walls, but then destroy it. He'll destroy it.

[00:44:41] He's like consuming the world. Like when he makes the notes about something, he then destroys that thing. And I think that's why that guy is so freaked out about him drawing his picture right here at some level senses that this is the judge's way of consuming devouring the world around him because that's the judge's relation to the world. He wants everything under his control.

[00:45:04] And he can't catalog the kid. No, he cannot catalog the kid. That's why that last scene he enveloped. Until the end, maybe he catalogs him. He consumes him like he devours the child.

[00:45:15] So that leads to this question then, like, does he fail in the end, the kid? And maybe he does. And if he does, why does he fail? You know, is it because he killed Elrod? Why can't I remember his name?

[00:45:29] I don't think that he fails. There's no winning. Like, I think that's the whole point. There is no winning. Like the kid resisted. And I think that it's a good thing that he resisted the way that he did. But there is nobody that comes out of this world alive. Right? We're all going to be devoured by something. And there's no way around like, I don't, you know, like McCarthy can't redeem this kid because this is not a real thing.

[00:45:59] This is really a moral tale. This is a tale of the heartlessness of the universe. So like, I think the kid was shadowboxing with the universe. And that's, I think that's good.

[00:46:11] Yeah. So I guess I shouldn't say did he fail in that sense? Like, he didn't win. And because there's no winning. You can't shadowbox with the universe. Like the universe will win in this novel anyway. But there's this scene, you know, the scene where he does break from the judge after the Yuma and he's with the ex-priest Tobin.

[00:46:35] And the judge says to the priest, weigh your counsel, priest. We are all here together. Yonder sun is like the eye of God and we will cook impartially upon this great salacious griddles. I think for salacious griddle, there's a lot of words like that in McCarthy. Salacious griddle, I do assure you.

[00:46:56] I'm no priest and I have no counsel, said Tobin. The lad is a free agent. And then it says the judge smiled quite so, he says. So that's then. And I guess my question about whether he failed or not is, is he a free agent in the end? Or does he, has everything been leading him towards that port-a-potty where he's going to get devoured by the judge or whatever happens to him?

[00:47:23] The jakes. Yeah, that's interesting. And you bringing up the killing of the kid at the end makes me, what do you think about that? So there's this scene at the end where the kid is now the man and he's in his late 40s, much like me. So I totally relate to this.

[00:47:44] I remember those days. And one of them in particular is like testing him in the way that like sometimes the youth do where this, this kid, I think. That's what you say when you're in your late 40s. That's how you refer to kids. The youth.

[00:48:00] Yeah, it's true. The man totally can see that this kid is a bad seed and that he is really just trying to poke the barrel. Like he's really trying to test, like he's saying, I don't believe that you actually killed any engines like you say you did. And he's just pushing every button. That's when he says what you were saying earlier. Like I'm trying, I'm trying not to kill you.

[00:48:24] Like this is him trying. He tells his friends, like keep that kid away because I, you know, like I don't, I can't make any promises. But the next morning he wakes up to like that kid leaning over him and the kid has a, does the kid have a gun?

[00:48:38] He has a rifle. Yeah.

[00:48:41] And, but the man gets the drop on the kid, you know, and shoots him before he can. So like that's kind of self-defense-y. But I almost feel like that just was another, another true moment of agency. Like he wasn't, he chose that. Like he wasn't mindlessly doing it.

[00:48:59] I guess I think maybe, I don't know. But one way of looking at it is that led straight to the outhouse, to the jacks. He could have figured out a way to save that kid. He says to himself, you would have died anyway. Like if you're going to be like this, if you're going to be like that, you won't live for another year anyway.

[00:49:20] But there's a reading where he, that kid is him. You know, like he was, when he says I was 16 before I ever got shot, he sees like this shit talking, illiterate orphan, essentially an orphan, which that kid is. And he has this little brother. He sees like himself in there and he lived to be the man, you know?

[00:49:44] Yeah.

[00:49:45] So he shouldn't have killed the kid. He should have found a way to make it so that, but like, this is like, I think the judge's point is there will always be some way to drag you into the like void, the abyss, the dance of violence and indifference.

[00:50:05] And I think maybe if you want to say that like the kid failed, it's in that not in like going to the whorehouse and the dancing bear scene and, and saying, yeah, but it's there.

[00:50:18] Kind of convincing me that that might be because I think really in line with the McCarthy view of the, of the world, the universe is so determined by fate that I think that the kid was born in blood and to blood and that's just who he was going to be maybe. And that maybe that's why he can't escape it.

[00:50:40] But like you said, there's a nobility in resisting, especially with this judge having this like this beam. What do you call those beams that the aliens put on the? Like a tractor?

[00:50:52] Tractor beam. Yeah. Like the judge has this like tractor beam on him trying to draw him in and can't, and actually gets so frustrated with that. Whereas everybody else kind of, they either fold right at the beginning or they fold eventually, but the kid lasted 30 years or something like that.

[00:51:11] You know, I can't help but think that this gets us to some of the themes in the tarot card scene. I don't know.

[00:51:19] Yeah. Can we talk just quickly about some of the other Glanton gang people and then get to that scene? Because I think it'll actually be both those things go together. Yeah. So Glanton, how about Glanton?

[00:51:33] Yeah. What is he exactly? So he is a, everything that's in the book, you know, like kind of factually is kind of true about him. He did lead this gang. He did go get paid by Mexican government officials to try to clear the area of Apaches.

[00:51:52] He would get money for bringing back scalps. All the Yuma stuff is true. He was killed by the humans. The judge is his second in command, but he's also to some extent the judge's second in command. He has this pact with him, but he seems different, very different than the judge.

[00:52:12] He's not a philosopher. His violence is more arbitrary. He has a couple of good traits, I would say. Like what are some examples of good things that he's done?

[00:52:26] Like he has a dog that unlike like the judge will just throw puppies in the water, he'll actually like have a dog and treat it well and like having the dog.

[00:52:37] Who explodes the, is it Glanton or the judge who explodes the cats when they're testing out the weapons?

[00:52:43] It's him. It's Glanton. He's not good with cats. He stands up for Black Jackson at the cantina when the guy says you can't sit here. Like I'm happy to serve you, but you have to sit in a different place or something.

[00:52:59] He's like anybody who looks at this crew like knows that we're not gonna like get up and move because someone throws us to. And he takes his death like a man. Those are the only three things. He takes his death like a man.

[00:53:11] You know, like when the Yuma's come in, he's just like I do it. You know. Other than that, he is like an automaton.

[00:53:17] You said this about the Glanton gang last time. They're kind of automatons in the sense that you don't get that there's much inner life going on. There's not a lot of deliberation. Exactly. With the Glanton gang, you know?

[00:53:32] Yeah. It's interesting, you know, I think of Glanton in relation to the judge all the time because I'm not sure what their pact is. But Glanton is such an ultimate instrument of doing whatever. Like he has, he's clearly a leader and clearly commands respect from his crew. And that's hard to do. Like it's hard to have like a crew of psychopathic killers who all have loyalty to you.

[00:53:59] Does the kid have loyalty to him? I think he does for whatever weird reason.

[00:54:04] I find it very hard to assess whether the kid has loyalty to any of these. Like we don't hear, we don't like know that much about what the kid is thinking. Like clearly he's hanging out with them like they got him out of jail. And I think that while he's with them, it offers him some sort of something to do.

[00:54:22] The reason I say that he does is the judge, when he's visit in those kind of fever dreamy scenes where he's in prison, the judge visits him and he says, you really think Glanton wouldn't have killed you? Like I think the judge is pissed. Like you never like resisted when Glanton was in charge. But now that he's dead, it's like, that's it. Like the kid is severed from the group.

[00:54:47] And I think like for whatever weird reason, the kid respected Glanton. Like he maybe because he just didn't like carry on as much. Yeah, he's not like a weird philosophizing child molester. Maybe because he didn't fuck children. Like seriously, you know, like gleefully killed children and puppies.

[00:55:07] Yeah, like you were talking about that scene where the judge is calling out to Tobin and the kid after they left the gang. And, you know, in the scene, it's like, I imagine it as sort of a Mad Max world where like this bald judge has like the idiot like on a leash next to him and he's walking across the desert, you know?

[00:55:29] Remember when the gang that Tobin tells the story of when the gang first came up on the judge, came upon the judge and he was just sitting on a rock and they ended up meeting him. And immediately Glanton and the judge start talking and writing together. Like there is this immediate connection that they have. And I keep wondering what that connection is.

[00:55:49] Was Glanton autonomous at all? You were saying something about like how the judge doesn't care. Like he doesn't care for people who are not agents. And there was there is a scene where the judge, they asked the judge something and the judge tells them the answer. And they're like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. And he laughs at them. And he seems to be laughing at them because they were so quick to like change their mind or believe whatever it was that the judge said. And it's like he was not respecting them.

[00:56:16] Yeah, that's totally right. And you I think you brought this up last time. A lot of them will say you're crazy or that's insane. Like I don't know. But when they say it, they're kind of capitulating to it. Or whereas the kid when he says, I don't like craziness, like that he doesn't like that. Like he actually doesn't like this. He is taking a stand against this.

[00:56:44] Like you people in the Northeast who cheat at Werdel, you gussy up your like brutality and immorality and in like these grandiose philosophical ways. The kid and me, we just don't like that. Sorry.

[00:57:00] You just reminded me of like Boston Celtics fans like shaking the basket during free throws.

[00:57:08] So does the does Glanton is Glanton just a pawn for the judge like a powerful pawn that he because he clearly it seems like the judge planned this meeting. Like you don't meet randomly. I think I was reading somebody saying this, but it made sense to me. Like the vast expanse of the Southwest doesn't afford like coincidences. Like you just come upon the judge sitting on a rock. Yeah. It seems like he planned that whole thing.

[00:57:32] Yeah, I think he might be like the most like maybe the queen, like the most powerful automaton, you know, like and I think he can also have a tiny little bit of a code. And as long as that doesn't go against that, he's fine with Glanton just deciding I'm going to be nice to this dog. This is my dog. Yeah, I think he might be the like the most sophisticated. He's like chat GBT for like not like chat GBT one, which is right.

[00:58:02] Yeah, like Sonny either one. Yeah. So he he probably gains not just utility, but maybe even some something in the friendship and that's fine for him.

[00:58:12] I don't know. Like there's something that separates Glanton, you know, like there's a little echo, like a distant echo of the Western villain that still has something redeeming about him. I guess the other one that I want to talk about just really briefly is toad.

[00:58:27] Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I don't have that much to say, except that I think Toad Vine is an example of somebody who could have resisted and even does some kind of token attempts to resisting. Like the climax of that is when the judge has the little kid on his knee and he's playing with them and then scalps him like 10 minutes later and kills him. And Toad Vine puts the gun to his head and the judge says, do it or don't.

[00:58:56] And he doesn't. And then that's echoed later where Toad Vine goes to the judge like he leaves the kid and goes to the judge. And I think like he's he is definitely an example of someone who try maybe tried but failed to resist the judge.

[00:59:14] But he's definitely a more complex moral character than the rest of the gang, I think, or at least we're told more about it. He does seem uncomfortable with like just, you know, just like the murder of innocents. He killed like I actually missed this, I think, but he he kills the prison overseer. They never say that he did.

[00:59:39] But the prisoner overseer who was like, is he like abusing the prisoners or something? But Toad Vine hated him and he had gold teeth, like a mouthful of gold teeth. And then a couple scenes later, we just see that Toad Vine is wearing a necklace of gold teeth. But you get the sense that this was because the guy deserved it. So so he seems I agree with you exactly like he could have been. He's just not quite there.

[01:00:05] He's not. He just doesn't have the strength of that. This is what's special about the kid is that I think Toad Vine was more talk than actual resistance, although more actual resistance than anybody else in the gang.

[01:00:19] Yeah, because the kid never gets even until he starts shooting at him, you know, in the desert when he's being chased by the judge. Like the kid never stands up to him like the kid's resistance is like this weird psychic resistance.

[01:00:33] Yeah, totally. And Toad Vine like that was his time. Like he could have joined the kid side or he joined the judge side and he joined the judge side and then he got hung in, I guess, L.A.?

[01:00:48] Yeah, yeah. L.A. or San Diego? No, L.A., I think. Yeah.

[01:00:52] Do you have anything to say about the Delawares or maybe we can move on? I just think it's weird that you have these like Native American tribe that's part of this scalp hunting gang and they kind of keep their own council and they seem like both part of the group but then also not part of the group.

[01:01:09] Yeah, you get that scene by the fires where Black Jackson wants to sit with the white guys. But the three Delawares and the Mexican are keeping like it's just naturally segregates and they think he should go there.

[01:01:23] I thought about the Delaware as being yet another instance of McCarthy going out of his way to say like nobody's good here. Like the Native Americans were fighting with each other. They were happy to scalp each other as just as much as, you know, like the whites were scalping the Apache or the Comanches.

[01:01:42] And you get that just brutality like men are men. Like these guys, for some reason, they're also you never get inside their head. But in my head cannon, I'm just like maybe they had beef with some of the tribes.

[01:01:58] Yeah. And they just were like, yeah, we'll join up with these guys, get some money for killing these fuckers.

[01:02:02] Or maybe they're like the kid who just feels aimless and lost. And like this world is not has nothing for me. So I'll just do this. I don't know. But they at least have some kind of loyalty or community to each other with each other.

[01:02:17] Yeah. And they we don't really get a sense of them as individuals. It really is just one of the Delaware's Delaware, you know, like, yeah, that's kind of interesting. Yeah. And they don't seem like they're like the kid. They don't seem like they're reveling in the violence. Do you have anything any other characters to talk about?

[01:02:36] No. The only other characters that I thought of was the two John Jacksons, the black and the white. It's interesting that he creates just two guys named John Jackson, who really are only different because one's black and one's white. And they have like a Cain and Abel thing going on where where one of them is going to kill the other one. And yeah, black, black Jackson kills white Jackson.

[01:02:59] Kill Bill.

[01:03:01] And they just leave his headless corpse standing by sitting by the fire. Take his gun, but they leave his boots. So to me, it seemed like it was a mic that animosity between those two humans who were just sort of like different in this one way just seemed like a microcosm to like the. Yeah. You know, the situation we're all in.

[01:03:21] Yeah, I think so. So there's this article I came across that talks about optical democracy in Blood Meridian, meaning that like everything is equal in Blood Meridian in the sense that humans rocks the fauna flora. It's like nothing has some sort of special moral kind of dignity or anything like that.

[01:03:51] Yeah.

[01:03:52] And so I think there's a way to look at the Glanton gang kind of progressive in its, you know, like they I always got the sense they liked black Jackson more than white Jackson. They thought he was more valuable. And anyway, the fact that he like decapitates white Jackson, like just cements it.

[01:04:12] And nobody ever says anything about it.

[01:04:13] Yeah. They don't tell him to, you know, not sit by the fire and not they don't even tell the Delaware's not to do it. Like they don't even seem to look down in any way on the Delaware's. Of course, they say racist stuff and they use the N word freely and all that.

[01:04:28] Yeah. I'm sure they're racist. They just don't it doesn't extend to like their innermost circle, I guess. Or maybe it does, but it doesn't in any like way that's not easily defeated by swift knife to the neck.

[01:04:43] There is an interesting scene where to get back to Toadvine for a second, where Toadvine is asked, is it Bathcat who asks him if he's willing to wager on which Jackson will kill which and Toadvine refuses? That's another instance where Toadvine is showing something like his unwillingness to be to partake in that.

[01:05:05] Yeah. Like this isn't a fucking cockfight. Those are human beings. You know, this isn't like we're throwing dice and or whatever. But but there there is a kind in that sense, a kind of equality to these people. They're not prejudiced because they they're willing to kill everybody.

[01:05:22] Yeah. There is, as you were saying, it reminded me of Peter Singer's moral circle idea where you have moral regard, where Peter Singer wants to expand the moral circle to include moral protection for all sentient beings. This is just like a rock and a human. It's no moral circle. Like they're they all just have like no moral circle.

[01:05:44] Yeah, it's a circle of viciousness. Almost not even for themselves. Like they almost don't even value their own life. You know? That's right. Yeah, totally. And that's definitely the judge.

[01:05:54] They will try to save themselves like they would rather live than die. And they will even do but like.

[01:06:00] But like in the moment, you know, it's like almost just like callous indifference in their decisions for the future. Like they happily walk into a fight and then, you know, when they're dying, they're like, come on, help me.

[01:06:13] And the kid will still help them. But none of the other people. None of those, yeah. Yeah. You wanted to talk briefly about the Comanche attack. Yeah, only because the Comanche attack is early, early on when the kid is with the general. Is it General White?

[01:06:30] Yeah. Yeah. White. Yeah. When they're fighting their illegal war. The Mexican-American War is over.

[01:06:40] Yeah. And they're continuing to like try to fight. And they get just brutally attacked by the Comanches. And that scene is so freaky to me. So first of all, the way that they like General White is sort of like stupidly walks into it. He's like, oh, it looks like a whole herd of horses and cows. Like, you know?

[01:07:02] We might have some sport.

[01:07:04] Yeah. And then he's like, oh, but maybe we're, you know, maybe we're in for a fight, fellas. And then through the dust, they see that behind all of those were just like an army, like a ragtag group of Comanches. And the descriptions are incredible. And the violence is incredible. And it's just like, it's the level of description that in my memory I may as well have seen it.

[01:07:30] Totally. No, it's a nightmare. It's like, it's a nightmare. Yeah, it's a nightmare. Yeah. I think that's sufficient. That's really what I want to say.

[01:08:08] The other thing I wanted to say about this is there's a little comedy in this book that's not, it doesn't happen that often. But when he's with Spruill afterwards, Spruill says, what kinds of Indians was them? And Kidd says, I don't know. Spruill coughed deeply into his fist. He pulled his bloody arm against him. Damn if they ain't about a caution to the Christians, he said.

[01:08:37] It's a nice understatement to bet. That's good. All right, should we go to the tarot scene? Yeah, let's go to the tarot scene. I guess I'll just jump into it. They've picked up, they come across like a group of performers.

[01:08:50] Where is this? Let's set the stage. Like where is this in the story? Like it's pretty early in the Glanton gang. Yeah, it is. Let's see. Chihuahua? They've just come out of Chihuahua maybe with their first.

[01:09:04] Yeah, so it's early on in their adventures, I guess. And they come across a family of jugglers, like performers. I take it, you know, like just traveling. Gypsies, like there are four of them. Yeah, but Mexican version.

[01:09:21] And so they, the jugglers want to ride with the Glanton gang, I guess. So that night they're camping together. And so that night it's Glanton who asks the jugglers to come out and ride with him.

[01:09:45] And so that night it's Glanton who asks the juggler, do you guys tell fortunes? And he says, yeah, actually. So he pulls out some tarot cards.

[01:10:00] And the process by which they do this is that the man has one of the Glanton gang pick a card, but he, they whisper. He says like, okay, who do you want me to have pick a card?

[01:10:15] And when the card is picked, he says the card aloud and the old woman who has been blindfolded says who the card belongs to. Who picked it. Yeah. Is there a psychic thing or it's some trick like they do?

[01:10:31] Yeah, like a mentalism. I was thinking like in mentalism you do this where the way that you ask the woman, you know, who picked this? Like it's like secret code.

[01:10:41] But so the first person to, to get a card is black Jackson. Black Jackson picks a card. The card is the fool. It's like a picture of a fool and a Harlequin and a cat. And she, the old woman announces that it's the black guy.

[01:10:58] And so she, I guess, begins telling the black guy's fortune, but we don't, we're not privy to this. Like she's just saying it and he starts getting like anxious. He's like, what is she saying? What is she saying? And the judge is like, don't worry about it.

[01:11:13] And this is actually something I wasn't sure about when, when the judge says, don't worry about it. But what she's saying is that your fortune is tied up, is wrapped up with ours. I think she means to say that in your fortune lie our fortunes all.

[01:11:29] Yeah. What does that, what did that mean? I think she is reading their future. That is their fortunes all. I think the judge might exclude himself, but when he says, are you a drinking man, Jackie? And he's like, yeah, I mean, I guess. No more than some.

[01:11:47] It's like a Tamlor answer.

[01:11:50] Yeah, exactly. Totally. And then he says, I think she'd have you beware of the demon rum. Prudent counsel enough, don't you think? That's how they die. That's how like they all just get drunk and eventually that's going to like come back to haunt them.

[01:12:09] Yeah, one of the things about the Glanton gang is that when they are without an immediate goal of violence, like when, when they're not like fighting or planning to fight or doing whatever, they like lose it. They have no, it's like they have, they've lost all purpose and all they do is like go to towns and get really drunk and have sex and murder people.

[01:12:29] Yeah. And that's just not sustainable, I don't think. And I think the judge, he kind of knows this already. And I think when he says this is a little like that optical democracy thing too, now that I think of it, it's like, it's not because you're black that you're getting the fool. It's that you're like a human, you know? And this is what we do.

[01:12:53] And eventually it will come back and bite us in the ass, except for me because I never die. Right, exactly. But like, I think you can make a case as we go through the different tarot cards that they're really accurate, you know?

[01:13:07] Yeah. No, and there's something about, yeah, about like the kids specifically that is super interesting. So that's the next person. In fact, it's when the juggler, the man says, okay, who's next? It's the judge who says young, glossarious yonder.

[01:13:24] Okay. I got to give this guy credit because he had something really interesting to say about this. Aaron Gwin, he has a substack called The Night Does Not End, which is totally devoted to Blood Meridian. And what he says about glossarious, he's quoting somebody else, but this is where I got it is that's like an arson of some kind.

[01:13:46] And the last the judge saw of him is when he was like participating in burning down the inn. But anyway, I wanted to throw out Aaron Gwin into it. Yeah, that's great.

[01:13:58] Yeah, the young glossarious, the incendiary. So he goes over and tells the kid pick a card. And like, he's a little not sure, but he takes one. And he says that it seemed familiar to him. And that's because he actually has seen that card before. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

[01:15:18] Did you come across any of that?

[01:15:20] So I looked this up. What I found, again, like the same just kind of bullshit research is lost chances, guilt. It may also represent, this is what I thought seemed right about the kid. It may also represent becoming engrossed in oneself as a result of despair, dissatisfaction or lethargy.

[01:15:42] Yeah. And particularly tarot cards have a different meaning if you pick them up and they're reversed. Yes.

[01:15:49] And so the reverse four of cups, like what you were saying, what I found is four of cups reversed reflects a period of introspection and withdrawal. You're retreating into your own inner world so you can concentrate on what is integral to you and what grounds you.

[01:16:02] Yeah. I guess I didn't notice that it was reversed. It's reversed with the glanton, like the woman says that it's reversed. The chariot is reversed. But I didn't get that it was reversed with the kid until right now. Or at least he turns it both.

[01:16:18] That's weird. Like his agency is he turns it around. Like he turns it upside down and looks at it. And it's like, why?

[01:16:27] Yeah. So he makes it reversed. That's interesting. I do think there's a kind of lethargy in the kid, like even though he's like he's clearly got a lot of energy and survival instinct. He doesn't have this kind of desire to make something of his life. Yeah.

[01:16:46] That's the thing that like the judge is trying to prey on and can't even with that, like given that the kid should be the perfect target for the judge. But he's still not. But he still but he has it.

[01:16:59] So he says when the woman says in Muchacho called the juggler, he turned the card for all to see. The woman sat like that blind interlocutrix between Boaz and Jakin inscribed upon the one card in the juggler's deck that they would not see come to light, which is referring to another tarot card of a woman standing between the two pillars that are supposed to be the Temple of Solomon.

[01:17:20] In the juggler's deck that they would not see come to light, true pillars and true card, false prophetess for all. She began to chant. We never hear what she's chanting, by the way. And then the judge says the judge was laughing silently. He bent slightly the better to see the kid. The kid looked at Tobin and David Brown and he looked at Glanton himself, but they were none laughing.

[01:17:39] The juggler kneeling before him watched him with a strange intensity. He followed the kid's gaze to the judge and back. When the kid looked down at him, he smiled a crooked smile. Get the hell away from me, said the kid.

[01:17:51] What is he? What do you make of that?

[01:17:52] Oh, man. I don't know. But it is such a scene of antagonism there with the judge's dismissal. Maybe the judge is like laughing because he is like that card is meaning like you're just you're withdrawn and lethargic and you're not going to do anything like the judge and nobody else laughing at him is like mockery.

[01:18:15] Like you can feel I can feel the kid's anger at this and that the kids, the kid again, the kid staring back at the judge is a huge thing.

[01:18:24] Yeah. You know, what do you make of the fact that he has seen that card before, although he says it's unfamiliar?

[01:18:31] You know, all I can the only thing that came to mind was, again, this idea of like fate being so strong in the McCarthy universe where where it somehow was bound to happen. I don't know if there is a deeper meaning. I read somewhere that this this whole thing was inspired by Cormac McCarthy having a dream where he saw that card hanging in a house.

[01:18:55] Yeah. Did you do a little tarot card deep dive? Dude. I did a little bit. You're going to laugh at me. I ordered a tarot card deck.

[01:19:05] That's so awesome. Like this is you are just the mystic of the podcast. Like I pretend I can, you know, say goes blah blah blah. You know, UFOs, whatever. You're the real fucking mystic of this podcast.

[01:19:21] I haven't arrived yet, but when it comes like I'm going to do a reading. I will be your first customer if you'll have me. Yeah. Yeah. So I did. I did some. I've done some before. Like they're they're really interesting.

[01:19:36] The symbolism really comes from some real shit. But to this is such a dynamic, I think, in the podcast. It's like I'm kind of getting interested in this stuff, but I'm still a dilettante. You're already like way more advanced than I am down this path. You just resist it like the kid or like who knows.

[01:19:56] For some weird shit. I am down for some weird shit.

[01:20:02] I was excited. I was like just today. I was like, I'm going to get I was like reading about the different like there's historically like different kinds of tarot cards. And I was like reading about which one to buy.

[01:20:15] Yeah. So I could totally see that actually. A hundred percent.

[01:20:19] So, yeah. So that the judge then calls out that that Glanton should have his fortune read. And we had already gotten an inkling that Glanton did not want his fortune read. But the judge says it. So the judge is just fucking around with people, you know, like he's fucking with people, I think.

[01:20:39] You know, Glanton did say, do you guys tell fortunes? He just didn't feel like he wanted it at that point. But like right at the beginning. But like he takes the card, right?

[01:20:50] Yeah, he does. He takes the card. But then when Glanton takes the card, the juggler, it says the juggler folded shut the deck and tucked it among his clothes. He reached for the card in Glanton's hand. Perhaps he touched it, perhaps not. The card vanished. It was in Glanton's hand and then it was not.

[01:21:06] The juggler's eyes snapped after where it had gone down the dark. Perhaps Glanton had seen the card's face. What could it have meant to him? The juggler reached out to that naked Beldam beyond the fire's light, but in the doing he overbalanced and fell forward against Glanton and created a moment of strange liaison with his old man arms about the leader as if he would console him at his scrawny bosom.

[01:21:31] Glanton swore and flung him away. And at that moment, the old woman began to chant. And then Glanton gets mad. Can you do a little Spanish translation here for what?

[01:21:45] Yeah, so she says she's chanting and she's starting to say the chariot, the chariot inverted the card of war card of vengeance. I saw it without wheels on a dark river. And I think that is just and then she says lost, lost. The card is lost in the night.

[01:22:08] Yeah. And, you know, I think this is really the fortune of the way that he ends up. They do die on a river. Yeah. Black Jackson is pissing like on a some sort of cart with no wheels. Yeah.

[01:22:25] When the Yuma kill him. So here's what I got about the chariot inverter or reverse. This is not about Blood Meridian. This is just me looking. So the chariot tarot card when it's not reversed is like it's almost like Plato's like from the phaedrus, you know, like reason and it's in charge of spirit and reason is in charge of appetites.

[01:22:49] And you're all working together. But when it's reversed, it can indicate that you feel powerless and lacking direction. You need to take control of your own destiny and not let outside forces determine your path. When the chariot reversed, you are still moving, but you have let go of the reins. Like that feels like a good description of the Glanton gang.

[01:23:14] You know, like they are still moving, but they have let go of the reins. Like there are not there's no nothing in charge of like what they're doing and like prudence. Certainly not morality. I mean, it's never morality, but even just self preservation. Anything. It's like it's the outside forces are determining their path. And like the judge. That's what the judge likes. He seems to revel in that.

[01:23:40] So yeah, totally. Absolutely. And what I don't know is, is it that the judge, I mean that Glanton did see the card and somehow like in his gut knew that this was like a terrible fortune to have read? What are we to make of it just disappearing from his hand? It's so weird.

[01:24:02] This is where the book becomes like, it just is always on the border of being just magical, surreal. Just, you know, like even though like he's a real guy and a lot of this stuff really happened, like it's like that's what's so cool about it.

[01:24:18] You know what? We were talking on the phone about this and I actually wrote down something you said because I thought it was, you phrased it well. You described the book as cosmic and phantasmagorical. And I wrote down those words too. I wanted to like, cause it's.

[01:24:36] Well you had said cosmic in the previous episode. You had described it like that and like, but to do that and also be this kind of historical is pretty amazing.

[01:24:49] You know what I also like is that both for this and the coin trick, you think maybe this is just like stupid, like bullshit. Like maybe it's sleight of hand. Maybe it's the judge. Maybe the judge is just a regular dude who's fucking crazy and he's just like learned a couple of tricks and says some pseudo deep things. There's not a whole, I mean there could be consistent with that reading. I don't think eventually it's not, but it could just be that this is a weird fucking guy.

[01:25:19] Kurtz. He's Kurtz. If he, gun to my head, well I don't think there's necessarily a determinate answer to this question, but like I don't think there's anything necessarily that makes you think he has supernatural power.

[01:25:32] No. And you know, I mean the woman knowing what the card was like, we don't even know that that was the card. Like she just chants it and you put two together and you think, well, she's guessed who picked the other cards. But as I was reading it, I was like, wait, they're whispering to him who should pick the card. And like, and she's blindfolded. But I mean, it's very plausible that this is just like a parlor trick.

[01:26:02] Which is also lost on almost all of them because they can't speak Spanish. So they don't even know like that they're guessing right. Only the judges are like the pro, the real, well actually I mean there's a Mexican in the gang.

[01:26:16] Yeah. They're definitely committing to the bit if this is all a trick because she's like crying. She's saying like Perdida, Perdida, like, you know, this is what does he say? What is Maleficio I can imagine. Yeah, like an evil, like a bad guy.

[01:26:35] And Glanta now is about to shoot her and the judge saves her. Yeah. And the judge describes the judge as like jumping up like a djinn, which is. Like a great ponderous djinn. Yeah, which is also a demigod in, you know, like Arabic mythology. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:26:55] Stepped through the fire and the flames, delivered him up as if he were in some way native to their element of the fire.

[01:27:02] So like if you want to say that he has a kind of demonic Gnostic, whatever, he's an archon or a demiurge, like you can definitely do that.

[01:27:13] He is giving you every reason to think this. I do love the thought and you'll, I think this goes with my personality. I love the thought that all of this is just actually very not mundane, but just not.

[01:27:28] It's not the super, it's not the supernatural events that you think it is. It's just these choreographed. Yeah. Yeah. We're not going to talk about this, but speaking of the judge's demiurge in that scene where that we already talked about where he creates the gunpowder.

[01:27:43] He uses bat guano and human urine. And I couldn't help but think of there's this famous quote that sometimes attributed to St. Augustine, but it's probably not him. That's in Latin that I can't pronounce, but it's between urine and feces we are born.

[01:28:01] And Freud loved this quote because he thought it said something about the position that humans are in. Like we think of ourselves as lofty, God-like minds, but we need to remember that between urine and feces were born, referring to vaginal birth.

[01:28:19] And that will get us maybe to the next scene that we're, or another thing that we're going to talk about that symbolism of birth.

[01:28:27] That in that creating of gunpowder, that mixing of fire with this sort of like, I think a metaphor of birthing that the judge is doing.

[01:28:37] Yeah. Can I say one thing before we go to that scene about just like the coda of the tarot scene is the juggler on his burrow. Like the next day, he like moves to the front. It's a nice grace note. It's a beautiful, like little grace note.

[01:28:53] The juggler on his burrow, like Don, not Don Quixote, but Sancho Panza goes and just falls in with Glanton and they rode together and they were riding. So in the afternoon when the company entered the town of Llanos.

[01:29:10] Yeah. Yeah. I didn't know what to make of that, but it was a cool, I was about to shoot your mom or whatever. Yeah. But we're cool now. For no reason. It's not like there was a like reconciliate, restorative justice or something.

[01:29:26] And it's not even like, at least McCarthy doesn't say like, and Glanton called him to the front. He just falls in. Like, yeah. They did a restorative circle. They got all the stakeholders together of the relevant parties.

[01:29:44] All right. As they are riding off into the afternoon, we might have to ride off into the night because I think we still have a ton of shit to say about this.

[01:29:55] Yeah. We came in with the grandiose intentions to cover all of the scenes that we wanted to. And I think we got carried away. But that energy is good. Like this was so fun. I can't, I regret nothing.

[01:30:08] I regret nothing too. I'm sorry to those of you who haven't read it, but we got to do a part three. We have three more scenes to talk about. We're going to just go back and reread them and probably have totally different ways of thinking about them.

[01:30:23] So yeah, I think we're going to push this off to a part three, but hopefully you know, this is like, it's a fucking nihilistic world. If we want to do three parts, it's the summer of Cormac McCarthy. He died. We can do a three part Blood Meridian episode.

[01:30:38] Our doing a three parter is us shaking our fist at the cold nihilistic universe. We're imposing our order. It is a form of resistance that will ultimately lead to the Jacks. Join us next time on Very Bad Wizards.

[01:31:31] Very bad man. I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard.