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Jimmy Carr Doesn't Think America is Collapsing Like the Roman Empire

5 minutes 52 seconds

🇬🇧 English

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Speaker 1

00:00

The Jurogan experience.

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Speaker 2

00:02

Imagine the research that could go into that with that budget. And you go, look, you're not going to win the war on drugs. You don't even, like, there's prisons, high security, category A prisons, and they've got drugs in them.

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Speaker 2

00:15

You can't even keep the drugs out of there. Good luck with the borders. It strikes me as like you go, just admit you're not going to win that fight. And what are we going to do?

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Speaker 2

00:29

And that best practice of going, well, that's going on in Portugal now. They've done a 15 year test case. We know it works. I mean Lisbon now, have you been to Lisbon?

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Speaker 1

00:38

No. You should go to Lisbon.

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00:40

Yeah? Food is, I mean, I mean the Portuguese. It's fabulous. Such a great city.

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00:47

Such a great city. Lisbon and Porto, I mean, I don't really know the rest of Portugal that well, but they're both phenomenal places to play gigs and they love stand-up comedy. It's just a wonderful place.

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00:56

Isn't it crazy that that little country was like conquering the world at 1 point in time?

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01:00

Sorry, I'm from Great Britain. Hi. Hi.

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Speaker 2

01:02

Hi. Yeah, you can't

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Speaker 1

01:03

do it too.

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01:04

We had a great run.

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01:05

Wasn't bad.

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01:06

I'll tell you what we used to own, this. Sort of. Crazy.

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01:11

Yeah. Crazy, right?

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Speaker 1

01:12

It is crazy. It's crazy how empires rise and fall. And that's 1 of the things that people are wondering currently about America, if we're in the last throes of a dying empire.

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01:21

Well, here's my, I got a hot take on this. Please. I don't think they do.

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01:25

So I don't think the Roman Empire fell. I think it became a church. I think the, so the Rome fell, but the Roman Empire became the church. Where's all the money from the Roman Empire?

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01:39

Vatican

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01:39

in the basement of the Vatican is where it is. Yeah, that's that's I don't think the British the Vatican. Yeah, poof It's incredible

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01:46

bizarre. It's incredible

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01:48

the city within a city

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01:49

the wealth The the sheer wealth in art is overwhelming. Yeah. Like St.

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01:55

Peter's Basilica, when I walked in there, I, my mouth was open the entire time I was there. Like, you just can't believe the amount of craftsmanship, the architecture, the art, the painting.

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Speaker 2

02:09

Well, I mean, if you think about culturally what happened, every song, every painting was about God until 100 years ago. And now, every song's about love. I think they're talking about the same thing, but that's me being an old hippie.

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Speaker 2

02:24

So, Roman Empire became a church. British Empire became a bank. So we gave our empire back. We said, oh yeah, sorry about that.

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02:33

You can have that back. We gave Saudi Arabia back and all these other places that we'd sort of taken the resources. And then they had their own money. And then we went, oh, what are you doing with that money?

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02:47

Because we've got this thing called the City of London. I'll tell you what, it's your money, but we're going to hold it. We'll have it over here. Is that OK?

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02:56

Yeah, fine, great. So we've still got that thing of like, and culturally, I think, you know, America is, I mean, America's extraordinary. It's an extraordinary place. It's kind of based on this amazing premise.

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Speaker 2

03:08

It strikes me that America is, It's better now, objectively, than it has ever been, and subjectively worse than it's ever been. So you go, the experience, it seems bad, but objectively when you look at the metrics, it's good, so that's kind of Steven Pinker thing. But I mean, subjectivity is important. Like people aren't, people feel like they're at war.

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Speaker 2

03:39

And actually this is the land of milk and honey. And I think It's still got a bit of that thing of like the, you know, Austin, Texas maybe has it as much as anywhere. It's whispering, you know, go and be yourself. The pursuit of happiness.

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03:57

It's still got that kind of, that dream.

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04:00

Well, I'm always fascinated how people from other parts of the world see it. That's what's interesting. When someone comes here and they just look around.

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04:09

I had the trigonometry guys here the other day. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Francis and Constantine.

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04:15

And when we were here and we were coming to the club, they were like, mate, this place is incredible. Like, just the freedom that you guys have and the wildness that's in the air. Like, it's so intoxicating and exciting. Like, this is something, something's really happening here.

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Speaker 2

04:33

Well, you know, it's that it's a beacon. It's always been a bit of a beacon, America, because it's kind of founded on an idea. And, you know, it's that, the devil's in the detail.

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04:44

I always think of the Statue of Liberty. There's a thing in Paris in the Musee d'Orsay. There's the model. They made a model of the, because it was crowdfunded, the Statue of Liberty.

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04:55

It was a gift from the people of France to the people of America. Kind of post-revolution. They thought, well, that's a good idea. We'll get them something nice.

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05:03

We'll get them a nice statue. So they funded it, the French people gave money. And when you see it, when you see the model of the Statue of Liberty, you realize she's not just carrying a torch, she's walking forward. You realize she's moving forward.

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05:16

And it kind of changes it. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's potential for, I mean, I think America hasn't seen its finest days yet, I would hope.

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05:28

I would hope as well.

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05:29

I mean, Britain has to find a new place in the world. Brexit and everything happened. We need to find its purpose.

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05:35

I think with people, with nations, with the world, it's like finding purpose is very important. And what's the next purpose going to be? How are we going to fit in? What's our place going to be?