Speaker 1: It's an introduction. Good for you. We did. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: love that. What what show is this? Uh? This is
Speaker 1: this is it could happen here a show that is
Speaker 1: also currently in the middle of about seventeen thousand personnel disasters.
Speaker 1: But it's fine. Uh yeah, I am I am Christopher
Speaker 1: Wong and with me is Garrison. Hello, Hi, good morning
Speaker 1: or afternoon or evening, depending on when you're listening. And
Speaker 1: also Sophie Hello, Hi. So we are we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about something that is I guess technically over, but
Speaker 1: it was extremely weird and did a lot of harm.
Speaker 1: And that is the very weird stuff that Texas General
Speaker 1: General Jesus hopefully not Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who had
Speaker 1: general the General of Texas. Greg, I mean, like you're
Speaker 1: kind of not wrong, but he wished like that, he
Speaker 1: wishes he wishes he was the General of Texas. I mean,
Speaker 1: I feel like that's one of those things where like that,
Speaker 1: that's when we know the coup started, is when he himself,
Speaker 1: the general, takes over Texas. So Greg Abbott is extremely mad,
Speaker 1: and he's actually mad because Biden finally decided to end
Speaker 1: one of like the absolute worst Trump era border policies
Speaker 1: just called Title forty two, and it's he was like
Speaker 1: nominally an anti pandemic measures, like the CDC. That's so,
Speaker 1: I don't know why it took me like five seconds
Speaker 1: to remember the name of the CDC, the Central Defense Agency. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that one. Yeah. So it's normally supposed to be a
Speaker 1: thing where it's like, okay, you can you cut off
Speaker 1: migrants from coming into the country because there's a risk
Speaker 1: of a pandemic. Now, okay, if if if you have
Speaker 1: lived the last two years, you know that the US
Speaker 1: just literally does not give a single ship out the
Speaker 1: pandemic at all, like ending. Yeah. Yeah, so this, this
Speaker 1: whole thing really has just been a justification to just
Speaker 1: boot out, this prevent every like asylum seeker in refugee,
Speaker 1: an immigrant for getting into the country. And you know
Speaker 1: that you can tell this because the title forty two
Speaker 1: when it was originally invoked, didn't cover people who were
Speaker 1: like driving trucks across the border. Like he didn't cover
Speaker 1: economic activity of course not. Yeah, so it's it's it's
Speaker 1: just a way for the US to like not have
Speaker 1: asylum seekers. And Biden let this go for like another
Speaker 1: fucking year while he was in office, and so like
Speaker 1: it's like like late last monthy like he finally got
Speaker 1: rid of it. And you know, this means that like
Speaker 1: immigrants and refugees now once again have their legal right
Speaker 1: under both American and international law to a petition for asylum,
Speaker 1: which again the US doesn't give a shit about, because
Speaker 1: you know, the US doesn't care about laws unless they
Speaker 1: do bad things. But this finally happens and Greg Abbott,
Speaker 1: who is once again we must remind of you one
Speaker 1: the great habbit is, is running for election in November,
Speaker 1: and she's it's justus just literally running through the entire
Speaker 1: right wing like every single right wing scary we can
Speaker 1: possibly think of. Don't worry, Chris, don't worry Chris. Beto
Speaker 1: will get him. I believe. I believe in Beto this
Speaker 1: time by like slide. Yeah, well okay, So the thing
Speaker 1: that could stop him from this is Greg Abbott decides
Speaker 1: you like two PR stunts, and one of them is
Speaker 1: he's taking busses of of immigris throt asylum seekers and
Speaker 1: just busting them. The d C and I want to
Speaker 1: talk about this for a little like a second, because
Speaker 1: like this is really shitty and that shouldn't be legal,
Speaker 1: shouldn't be allowed to really traffick. You're trafficking people across
Speaker 1: the country for a political stunt. That's like that that
Speaker 1: shouldn't be allowed. Yeah, Like and like I think like
Speaker 1: everyone's like, oh, this is book like it is. But
Speaker 1: like the thing with American political sence is that real
Speaker 1: people get hurt constantly. Yeah, And we're gonna come back
Speaker 1: to that theme more in a second. As we talked
Speaker 1: about the second stunt that he did, which was so
Speaker 1: essentially what Abbott did, is there are an enormous number
Speaker 1: of trucks that cross the US Mexican border into Texas
Speaker 1: like every day, right, I mean they're like there are
Speaker 1: individual bridges that are moving six seventy billion dollars of
Speaker 1: just produce like every day. And so that produced when
Speaker 1: it when it comes into the US, it goes to
Speaker 1: a bunch of checks by the border patrol and stuff.
Speaker 1: And there's all these checks and this is this whole thing.
Speaker 1: But uh, Abbott went on this incredibly bizarre rants about well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's not bizarre. I guess if you're right.
Speaker 1: When we went on this rant about like the cartels
Speaker 1: and there's immigrants of need to stop them, and so
Speaker 1: she's very scary. Yeah, it's really weird. Okay, So he's
Speaker 1: he's doing all the birds faymongering, and he's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we need to stop the people from getting across the border.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna inspect all of these trucks, which again
Speaker 1: like they're already being inspected by the FEDS. This is
Speaker 1: this is you know, this is where like the horrible
Speaker 1: ice budget is going. Right. So he he does this,
Speaker 1: and he he calls in a bunch of just like
Speaker 1: the border patrols to just literally do all of the
Speaker 1: same checks again. And this has an enormous economic impact. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm going to read a quote from the American Statesman.
Speaker 1: The delays have resulted in a six drop in commercial
Speaker 1: traffic at the border, according to ums U S Customs
Speaker 1: and Border Protections. The agency said the delays are a
Speaker 1: direct results of quote additional and unnecessary inspections being conducted
Speaker 1: at Abbot's request. I I do like that the same
Speaker 1: people who were shooting moms in Portland now inspecting produce
Speaker 1: at the Texas. It's it's pretty well. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think I think that there there there's an important thing
Speaker 1: to note here. Writes like, so, why why are these
Speaker 1: the people who are like doing both these things. And
Speaker 1: the answer is that, like those organizations like that, the
Speaker 1: thing that they're designed to do is to protect the
Speaker 1: interest of American capital. And you know, so the interest
Speaker 1: of American capital are we need to move capital across
Speaker 1: the we need to move goods across the border, and
Speaker 1: we need to just like absolutely obliterate like a bunch
Speaker 1: of teenagers who don't like us. That is pretty much
Speaker 1: their bit um. I mean, yeah, I know we've talked
Speaker 1: in the past about us like customs and border and
Speaker 1: word protections and the weird the weird like agencies and
Speaker 1: weird kind of almost militias that they operate and how
Speaker 1: they get deployed into certain areas if they're you know,
Speaker 1: x x miles away from the border. Um, it would
Speaker 1: be worth talking about more in depth in the future,
Speaker 1: because I know Robert has done some historical background on
Speaker 1: them from Bastards, um. But I think, yeah, that is
Speaker 1: something I would I would be down to talk more about. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think they are a very bizarre agents. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: very weird. They're also really not like in this story,
Speaker 1: they're basically really just sitting there being mad because it's
Speaker 1: taking longer at what they do. Yeah. And and you
Speaker 1: know because because again like these these actual spections are
Speaker 1: being run by like state troopers, and because because because
Speaker 1: Abbott has more direct control overy stage. Yeah, because yeah,
Speaker 1: Abbot dr power for them. And this means that like, okay,
Speaker 1: so you have your truck, right, your truck has a
Speaker 1: bunch of produce in it, you would be it across
Speaker 1: the border. Um. This usually takes about two hours of
Speaker 1: you know, being like sitting there in a truck while
Speaker 1: you're stop your every once cargo gets inspected and stuff,
Speaker 1: which I will say the truckers don't even get paid
Speaker 1: for that when they're waiting two hours. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: and you know what would make that worse, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: now it takes between ten and thirty hours because intentionally,
Speaker 1: on purpose was like okay, we're just we're gonna put
Speaker 1: six thousand like people total to do this whole thing.
Speaker 1: And so you know, like hundreds of millions of dollars
Speaker 1: of produce like since like onions and tomatoes and avocados
Speaker 1: are just sitting in these trucks, rotting in the textas heat. Yep,
Speaker 1: hopefully the trucks are refrigerated, but still, well, the trucks
Speaker 1: are refrigerated, but like the people in them, I'm sure
Speaker 1: the cabins are not. Yeah, I'm sure it gets mighty well.
Speaker 1: You know, I do have some family who would truckers,
Speaker 1: and some of the cabins can be nice. But still
Speaker 1: that's sitting for thirty hours without getting paid because the
Speaker 1: only get paid when you are moving. Um, which is
Speaker 1: oh uh not a great way to you know, run
Speaker 1: our entire economy. Yeah, I'm gonna read a quote. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna read a suction from the paragraph of the Texas Tribune. Felix,
Speaker 1: a sixty year old Mexican trucker who was transporting tomatoes,
Speaker 1: onions and avocados, waited about thirteen hours in line at
Speaker 1: the bridge. He has to be identified only by his
Speaker 1: first name for fear of retribution and targeted inspections from
Speaker 1: CPB officials. Hearing of the delays at the border, he
Speaker 1: packed water and food for a few days, but other
Speaker 1: truckers didn't come as prepared, and we're sitting in stand
Speaker 1: still traffic without anything to eat or drink. Felix said
Speaker 1: he was told by a CPB official that the agency
Speaker 1: would be putting portable bathrooms along the bridge for the
Speaker 1: gridlocked truckers, but he never saw them. Once Felix made
Speaker 1: it to the state troopers inspection point around nine pm,
Speaker 1: he said they didn't even peer into his truck, which
Speaker 1: had been sealed since Mexican had already's inspected about six
Speaker 1: hundred miles away in the state of Sineloa. There's no
Speaker 1: possibility of bringing legal immigrants in the merchandise or in
Speaker 1: the cabin, he said, referencing one of Abbott's explanations for
Speaker 1: the inspections. I can't bring any illegal immigrants here for
Speaker 1: money because I know inspectors are going to discover them.
Speaker 1: It's not a thing here. I don't know what the
Speaker 1: politicians ideas are. I don't know what they're talking about.
Speaker 1: So that seems not good. Yeah, it's it's really bad.
Speaker 1: And like again, like this is this whole thing is
Speaker 1: nonsense like that. I didn't even I didn't even think
Speaker 1: about having to, you know, use the bathroom for hours. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like do you think the thing with this is
Speaker 1: like this, the backups are eight miles long, so like
Speaker 1: if you want to go to the bathroom, you have
Speaker 1: to walk for like miles, depending depending on where you
Speaker 1: are in this backup. And you know this is having
Speaker 1: like these just enormous horrifying that there's like these normous
Speaker 1: horrifying knock on effects. Um, because you know, it's not
Speaker 1: just the truckers are affected by this. There's a bunch
Speaker 1: of workers whose job it is you know, it's the
Speaker 1: process is these goods rights, take them out of trucks,
Speaker 1: put them into American trucks to like sort through the
Speaker 1: vegetables and figure out like which ones are good and
Speaker 1: which ones are not. And again, like just enormous amounts
Speaker 1: of just produce that is like fresh and good to eat.
Speaker 1: It's just being intentionally destroyed because it's being forced to
Speaker 1: sit at the border for this long. Uh. There's a
Speaker 1: bunch of these people whose whose job like who who
Speaker 1: are contract workers whose job it is to like go
Speaker 1: through this stuff, and they're all getting fired because they're
Speaker 1: like there's no work for them to do. Um. There's
Speaker 1: all of these people who like their their jobs that
Speaker 1: they run bodegoes that they run like like they run restaurants.
Speaker 1: Did they run a much of stuff on the border
Speaker 1: for these truckers, and they also don't have any work.
Speaker 1: And those people have to on a day by date,
Speaker 1: like it's like I think it's per day to rent
Speaker 1: a terminal in Yeah, and they're making nothing, and it's
Speaker 1: it's it's horrifying. There's all there's there's just enormous economic
Speaker 1: devastation that that that's been sort of like you know
Speaker 1: that that that that's been happening because of this and
Speaker 1: well you know, you know what else reminds me of
Speaker 1: economic devastation, Ah, the fact that the fact that our
Speaker 1: paychecks are solely reliant on the products and services that
Speaker 1: support this podcast. It's true. Yeah, Well we'll talk about
Speaker 1: the problems they're having in a second after this break. Yep,
Speaker 1: one second. Wow, that was that was a fast second.
Speaker 1: That just that that flew right by time is not real?
Speaker 1: Destroy the clocks decided to start the police, all right,
Speaker 1: if you press if you press the if you press
Speaker 1: the thirty second button four times, yes, yeah, real speedy.
Speaker 1: Now this is having other problems because, as we talked
Speaker 1: about the show, literally ad nausea and our supply chains
Speaker 1: are really bad. And it turns out, yeah, that does
Speaker 1: seem to be a recurring character on the pod. Is
Speaker 1: that supply chains uh not the most stable thing we've invented. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and especially with especially with with with fruit and vegetables. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, well we will be getting some of the
Speaker 1: other supply chains that are like fun because of this,
Speaker 1: but like prudent vegetables in particular, like the way that
Speaker 1: we do them, they're they're designed to be in motion
Speaker 1: for like a very specific amount of time so that
Speaker 1: when they show up to you they're ripe. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, you add a few hours onto that everything
Speaker 1: falls apart. And this like I'm not sure if it
Speaker 1: happens because I'm not in Texas, but there was there
Speaker 1: were a bunch of articles were talking about like yeah,
Speaker 1: like avocados and Texas are gonna cost five more dollars,
Speaker 1: Like like a single avocado is price is gonna increase
Speaker 1: by like five dollars over the weekend because like because
Speaker 1: it was just the enormous amount of produces that that's
Speaker 1: being destroyed here. And you know, there's there's a lot
Speaker 1: of other stuff going on here because American and Mexican
Speaker 1: supply chains are enormously integrated. It from now. I mean
Speaker 1: they've always been in good to some extent, but like
Speaker 1: particularly post NAFTA, there's a lot of like auto supply
Speaker 1: chains in particular that are that are tied to two
Speaker 1: plants in Mexico, and you actually this occasionally has like
Speaker 1: interesting effects, like Mexico's has a lot of auto strikes
Speaker 1: and you get like you get these things where like
Speaker 1: people will like tuck messages into like auto parts and
Speaker 1: like send them to the US. People will open these
Speaker 1: messages from like a worker in Mexico too. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: need and it's it's cool that there's lots of there's
Speaker 1: interesting stuff there, but this also means that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: so if those parts are moving across the border, there
Speaker 1: was just in time, production schedules are even more Omega
Speaker 1: screwed than they've been already. And so yeah, there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of sort of economics stuff that's been happening here.
Speaker 1: And you know the other people who are getting just
Speaker 1: completely screwed by this are are the Mexican truckers and
Speaker 1: so yeah and so so so this this this starts
Speaker 1: on April six, on Monday, April eleven, I the truckers
Speaker 1: are just like funck this and they start just completely
Speaker 1: blockading the largest border crossing between like this it's on
Speaker 1: the Giant bridge. They started they literally just blockade the
Speaker 1: bridge and but prevent any goods from from getting in.
Speaker 1: And this this has an enormous impact because again, like
Speaker 1: you know, it was going like yeah it was production
Speaker 1: was down by by sixty percent, but that means still
Speaker 1: means goods are getting through. And now you know, and
Speaker 1: bye bye bye. By the eleventh, it's just nothing. Um.
Speaker 1: I do. I do hope the one the one good
Speaker 1: thing that can come out of the whole Canada COVID
Speaker 1: isn't real protests, um, is that people have learned that
Speaker 1: blocking off supply chains it's a really effective way to
Speaker 1: do protest. Use. You can stop the import of thousands
Speaker 1: and millions and billions of dollars of trade um pretty
Speaker 1: easily actually, And it would be cool if more people realize, Hey,
Speaker 1: obviously the COVID stuff that we're talking about and the
Speaker 1: whole over the in the government part um to install
Speaker 1: a right wing dictator that part it's obviously bad, but
Speaker 1: some of their tactics were actually pretty interesting. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: we're going to get more into that, uh like later, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I would say, like I think that the
Speaker 1: thing with the U S is that, like I think
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of focus on the American left
Speaker 1: on ports because yeah, there's a lot of reasons for that,
Speaker 1: but like, yeah, you can do the border crossings too,
Speaker 1: and the the mexicge rucker is really effective. I mean, okay,
Speaker 1: so that's this has been a thing where it's it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to get information from. I saw
Speaker 1: a few like newspapers talking about um, like cartel people
Speaker 1: like like attacking the blockaded, lighting trucks on fire to
Speaker 1: try to force goods to go through again, which it's possible.
Speaker 1: I I don't know, um, but this, you know, once
Speaker 1: once there are like once the block like the border
Speaker 1: is completely blockaded, this completely ages like the entire political
Speaker 1: situation because now, like you know, ab Abbot's been running
Speaker 1: this thing sort of as a political stunt and as
Speaker 1: this game he's playing with you know, I suppose he's
Speaker 1: trying to play a game with Biden, right, and he's like, okay, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta decently go about the border or whatever, like
Speaker 1: you know's he's been challenging Biden over like immigration bullshit.
Speaker 1: But you know, now now there's a there's a third
Speaker 1: party involved, and that third party is for Mexican truckers.
Speaker 1: And now and now Abbot's not just in the It's
Speaker 1: like Abbot's in a confrontation with the people that he
Speaker 1: needs to make the entire Texan economy run. Yep. And
Speaker 1: this starts going very badly for him. And the other
Speaker 1: thing that starts going very badly for him is that
Speaker 1: I it turns out if you shut down cross border trade,
Speaker 1: you really really piss off the bourgeoisie. Turns out, it
Speaker 1: turns out that will happen if you ain't careful. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really interesting and and you know, and and I
Speaker 1: think I should mention like stressed this, Like they're piste
Speaker 1: off on both sides of the border. And like obviously
Speaker 1: you could talk about the excient which like yeah, like
Speaker 1: they're the same class. But like capitalists on both sides
Speaker 1: of the border start exerting their political pressure because they're
Speaker 1: I mean, they're losing enormous amounts of money off of this,
Speaker 1: that's what they do. Yeah, and you know, the way
Speaker 1: their ability to do capitalism as capitalists, they're going to
Speaker 1: be mad. Yeah, which again you think you would think
Speaker 1: that the Abbot would like get this, but he just
Speaker 1: he it seems to have not occurred to him. That
Speaker 1: he was going to piss off like either or like
Speaker 1: he thinks he didn't care enough and thought it wouldn't matter,
Speaker 1: but like, no, it turns out like you know, one
Speaker 1: of the things that happens. Yeah, it's it's amazing, Like
Speaker 1: he's you know, like I mean, I think this is.
Speaker 1: This is you know, I think this is. This is
Speaker 1: sort of a symptom of like people lose like right
Speaker 1: wing politicians losing sight of what their actual basis because
Speaker 1: like this is all this is all supposed to be
Speaker 1: like campaign trail feeding the anti immigrant base, but like,
Speaker 1: you know, you you are a politician in the US.
Speaker 1: Your actual constituency is the capitalists and and like you
Speaker 1: have an actual job and let's make the economy keep
Speaker 1: going and keep the people in power to have all
Speaker 1: the power, Like you're not just like that. That's one
Speaker 1: interesting thing that Trump was kind of one of the
Speaker 1: first big um indicators for which is like a politician
Speaker 1: now is just the endless cycle of campaigning and they
Speaker 1: don't actually have a job. It's just always campaigning and
Speaker 1: then it's always campaigning, uh, and they're like, oh, I
Speaker 1: guess I should do my actual job that I was
Speaker 1: elected for or I could just do more rallies and
Speaker 1: that seems like it would be less work. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I think I think what Trump was like
Speaker 1: there was those instet to which the bureaucracy kept functioning,
Speaker 1: and so you know, like like he like Trump got
Speaker 1: Trump got the tax cut, right, yeah, and like he
Speaker 1: didn't really start getting in trouble with him until he
Speaker 1: started doing the anti China stuff, which was sort of
Speaker 1: a disaster because there was a lot of people who
Speaker 1: turned out like need those trade connections to make money.
Speaker 1: And you saw like like it was weird. It was
Speaker 1: very weird thing. Like you started to see even some
Speaker 1: of his like like domestic like small business base. I
Speaker 1: started to get really mad at him because he's putting
Speaker 1: all these sanctions up and it's like, oh, hey, look
Speaker 1: all these sanctions mean at all these people who are
Speaker 1: reliant on Chinese supply chains have to pay this stuff
Speaker 1: and an Abbott. Abbott has like done this in microcosm,
Speaker 1: and like these these people like they start going to
Speaker 1: the press. Um, I'm going to read a quote from Bloomberg. Uh.
Speaker 1: Some retailers, particularly those in the grocery industry, have experienced
Speaker 1: supply chain delays resulting from the extended wait times along
Speaker 1: the Texas Mexico border. John McCord, the executive director of
Speaker 1: Texas Retailers Association, wrote in an email, so, like, you
Speaker 1: know these are like like the Texas Retail Association is
Speaker 1: like this is like the most republican solidly institution in
Speaker 1: the country and and you can watch them over time,
Speaker 1: like these people are getting really mad. Like one of
Speaker 1: I was like, like, what if Abbot's like I forget
Speaker 1: the exact title, Like what one of Abbot's like secretaries,
Speaker 1: like they're like at the secretary or some one of
Speaker 1: the like economic bureaus was like, yeah, man, avoca are
Speaker 1: gonna cost five more dollars. And you know this really
Speaker 1: hits me hard because everyone knows it's about me. I
Speaker 1: care a lot about retail um, retails like my one
Speaker 1: of my big core personality traits UM. And you know
Speaker 1: who else wants you to care about retail? Oh my
Speaker 1: goodness is that the washing st Patrol. That is right, Sophie,
Speaker 1: it's the Washington State Patrol. Are are are good friends? Um?
Speaker 1: So here here is some here's some messages about about
Speaker 1: how you can improve your retail decisions. Okay, I can't
Speaker 1: find this George Bush quote instead of that, we will
Speaker 1: return to this. And you know, one thing I think
Speaker 1: we should also mention is if you ran into this
Speaker 1: on Twitter, um you will see a lot of videos
Speaker 1: of people like Democrats like standing at the border and
Speaker 1: pointing at the trucks and going, uh, this is this.
Speaker 1: This is Abbot attempting to like make inflation to get
Speaker 1: worse by sabotaging the economy. Cringe and like cringe cringe moments. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like okay, Like uh, I cannot rule out that this
Speaker 1: was like a part of what he wanted to do,
Speaker 1: but that's not really why he's doing this. Like this,
Speaker 1: this is this is like mostly and I some people
Speaker 1: talking about like, oh, this is like the trucker's buckage
Speaker 1: and Chile and I'm like, no, no, it's not at all,
Speaker 1: like like yeah, yeah, yeah, Like yes, Chile has a
Speaker 1: bunch of right had I had a bunch of right
Speaker 1: wing anti communist truckers unions that tried to shut down
Speaker 1: the government, But like that's not what's happening here. This
Speaker 1: is the state and Abbott trying to do this is
Speaker 1: like an immigration pr thing like this isn't like he's
Speaker 1: not actually he's not actually trying to destroy government, because
Speaker 1: the the only way you can get stuff like that
Speaker 1: is if like, is is it the capital's classes like
Speaker 1: genuinely afraid that they're about to get like like wiped
Speaker 1: up by communists And it turns out that is not
Speaker 1: about to unize the entire us. I don't think that's
Speaker 1: actually a looming threat at the moment. No, So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like no, it's like it's it's not it's not
Speaker 1: really about that, Like it's it's it's it's mostly about
Speaker 1: this sort of this sort of like border game that
Speaker 1: the communities are coming for your avocados. Well, this is
Speaker 1: sort of this is the interesting thing here because it's
Speaker 1: like you have this really weird scenario where like it's
Speaker 1: it's it's the right wing governor like shutting down the
Speaker 1: flow of commodities, and like the liberals are like, we
Speaker 1: must restore the flow of commodities, and the like we
Speaker 1: must restore the flow of commodities, and like even the
Speaker 1: cartels or something sentire like come on, like we all
Speaker 1: we all need the border open. Uh. It really it
Speaker 1: really does just showcase the entire bit. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: but I mean, like we've been talking a lot about
Speaker 1: the human cost of this and the reason this stuff
Speaker 1: works is because American politics is literally just a machine
Speaker 1: that turns human suffering into stories and then turns those
Speaker 1: stories into percentage points at the polls. And that's Abbot's
Speaker 1: entire weight. Am I getting him confused with no Greg
Speaker 1: Abbots the governor. I momentarily got him confused with the
Speaker 1: UK guy Tony emmett Ri, also bad in very similar ways. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think I think we're allowed to have two
Speaker 1: bad Abbots. Yeah. I thought there's kind of Australia too,
Speaker 1: But well, the bad appots that are multiplied. Someone has
Speaker 1: got to get on this. We need we need to
Speaker 1: deal with the anglos theory before they pro the fourth
Speaker 1: produced a fourth one and we get the four horsemen
Speaker 1: of the apocalypse. That would be funny if you just
Speaker 1: have four Abbots bringing the apocalypse. Yeah, but I think
Speaker 1: I think that think that's important to understand about Like
Speaker 1: about Abbott is like that that everything that Abbott does
Speaker 1: is just about inflicting suffering on people and trying to
Speaker 1: use that to do polls. Right, Like he he has
Speaker 1: genuine right wing beliefs, but like the timing of everything
Speaker 1: that he does That's what all of his that's that's
Speaker 1: that's what all has had anti trans stuff is is
Speaker 1: that he couldn't beat his primary challenger, who was trying
Speaker 1: to campaign a little bit fur them to write than
Speaker 1: Abbott was. Yeah, And this is the thing where like
Speaker 1: politicians are allowed to play games with all people's lives
Speaker 1: like that that's their job. But they're allowed to do
Speaker 1: this up until the exact moment at which those real
Speaker 1: people are the bourgeoisie, and the moment this is this
Speaker 1: The thing that Abbott is learning is that you can
Speaker 1: do this kind of stunts all you want, Like you can,
Speaker 1: you can, like you can shoot every trans kid, you
Speaker 1: can like I don't know, like you can you can
Speaker 1: ban like every school from like saying the word race.
Speaker 1: But you can't funk with the bourgeoisie. And and you
Speaker 1: know this, this is this, This is the problem that
Speaker 1: he has is bye by like by like the middle
Speaker 1: of last week. He has the like the ruling classes
Speaker 1: turning on him. The truckers a up blockading the bridges
Speaker 1: that preventing all travel, and Abbott is like basically scrambling
Speaker 1: to find a way out. And the thing that he
Speaker 1: does to do this is he like, he goes to
Speaker 1: a bunch of Mexican governors who who are like that,
Speaker 1: the governors of border states, and these governors have like
Speaker 1: sent him letters being like hey, like what are you doing,
Speaker 1: Like we need like we we we need our economies
Speaker 1: to function. Can can you can you actually do this?
Speaker 1: And you know, so he starts doing these negotiations with
Speaker 1: him where he's like, well, okay, if you guys like
Speaker 1: inspect all of these trucks or whatever before and you
Speaker 1: ensure that there's no immigrants in them where whatever before
Speaker 1: they get here, like we'll reopen the borders. And you know,
Speaker 1: so they do this, and I think there's a couple
Speaker 1: of interesting things about this. One is that most of
Speaker 1: these I think there's one guy who's from the p
Speaker 1: r I, but like almost all of these governors are
Speaker 1: from the p A N, which is Mexico's like far
Speaker 1: right wing party, and like these guys, these guys are
Speaker 1: also like hard right, like we're on drug hard liners,
Speaker 1: you hate immigrants and and this this has been another
Speaker 1: big part of how the sort of border regime works,
Speaker 1: which is that like, yeah, on the one hand, you
Speaker 1: have you have Abbo and you have like Texas so
Speaker 1: you have just the US government like projecting its power
Speaker 1: like into Mexico, which is you know, another big part
Speaker 1: of what this is. But the other part of it
Speaker 1: is has been the US essentially outsourcing its its border
Speaker 1: regime and border policy just in like to Mexico. And
Speaker 1: so you get a lot of there. There's been a
Speaker 1: lot in the last especially dridern Trump administration. Uh, I
Speaker 1: mean it goes back much further than that, but like
Speaker 1: in the in the last like five years have been
Speaker 1: a lot of really egregious examples of just like border
Speaker 1: patrol ship but by the Mexican police, because it turns
Speaker 1: out there's also a bunch of people in Mexico who
Speaker 1: fucking hate Central American refugees and b uh the police
Speaker 1: or the police literally everywhere. And this also for example,
Speaker 1: like this, this is how this is how a lot
Speaker 1: of the border regime stuff works in um in Europe,
Speaker 1: front acts of the European border like thing makes you
Speaker 1: to do like makes like basically just negotiates with like
Speaker 1: literally every like I don't even know what you call them,
Speaker 1: like border state, I guess in Africa to ensure that
Speaker 1: like refugees coming up to North Africa, like don't ever
Speaker 1: get to Europe, and like this is that they make
Speaker 1: deals with Gadaffi. They made deals with the people who
Speaker 1: came after Gadaffi. Um, yeah, there's the border system is
Speaker 1: horrible and this is sort of the border system like
Speaker 1: working as intended. Now, the other thing that we should
Speaker 1: mention is that like, okay, so they're they're stopping and
Speaker 1: like supposedly searching all of these trucks and they find
Speaker 1: literally nothing the entire time, because like there's there's you know,
Speaker 1: there's never anything there. But you get all these press
Speaker 1: companies they were like, well, yeah, of course there is nothing.
Speaker 1: It's because the cartels were tipped off of the raid
Speaker 1: because we did press conferences about it, and that's why
Speaker 1: they announced. We announced the thing that we were gonna do.
Speaker 1: So it gave him a chance to smartest Wow whoa. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So that that that that's been fun. Um And the
Speaker 1: last thing I wanna talk about, Yeah, this was part
Speaker 1: of what we were talking about earlier, which is that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the second time this year that we've seen
Speaker 1: right wingers like block off a border for political reasons.
Speaker 1: And I think there's a few interesting things here. Um.
Speaker 1: One is that This is the kind of stuff that
Speaker 1: from like basically from the start of occupy and even
Speaker 1: before then until like the Bernie campaign. This is like
Speaker 1: the core of like what Marxist we're thinking about in
Speaker 1: the US, and also anarchists or something sent like if
Speaker 1: if you go and read anything from that period, like
Speaker 1: it's all about logistics and kinter logistics and how you
Speaker 1: can like disrupt them and whether or not we shuld
Speaker 1: try to take control of logistics, and you know, and
Speaker 1: I think you see here like like attacking logistics is
Speaker 1: a very powerful political tool, but it's tool that has
Speaker 1: like limited um, like it has limited utility for the
Speaker 1: right because you know, the right depends on the backing
Speaker 1: of capitalists for the politics to work. They really really
Speaker 1: need buy it the capitalists. Those capitalists need cross border
Speaker 1: trade and you know, and the other thing like they
Speaker 1: also need they also need market workers to make their money.
Speaker 1: And if you cut that stuff off, your political base
Speaker 1: starts to collapse. And the second part of it that's
Speaker 1: interesting is you get to see how powerful this is
Speaker 1: as a weapon for you know, like the working class
Speaker 1: because of just like how instantaneously Abbott back down when
Speaker 1: the trucking buckhead starts because this this is all over.
Speaker 1: Um last Friday, I think the what date is that?
Speaker 1: That was good Friday, I mean the goodest, the goodest Friday. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Abbott was like, oh oh it's all over. We secured
Speaker 1: the border. Yeah everything here to the border, sure buddy, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know and you but like that's the thing,
Speaker 1: like you can see like, yeah, you gotta see. You
Speaker 1: gotta see a rare moment of like Mexican workers and
Speaker 1: also like the the sort of international capital class working
Speaker 1: on the same side. And you've got to see how
Speaker 1: fast they just like collaborate their politicians because yeah, like yeah,
Speaker 1: like that the state is that the state is a
Speaker 1: powerful force, but it turns out it's it's class politics
Speaker 1: all the way down. And I think I don't know
Speaker 1: between this in Canada, I think there's a couple of
Speaker 1: interesting things. One is which, Okay, yeah, you're like if
Speaker 1: you're on the left, like already automatically you're going to
Speaker 1: be fighting the capital business Oshi is just always mad
Speaker 1: at you. That's less concern. You will face more suppression
Speaker 1: immediately obviously. This this is this is how the game
Speaker 1: is played. Yeah, your face, more supression benediately. But it's
Speaker 1: also like that that's not like a you're based turning
Speaker 1: on you, Like that problem doesn't stem from capital is
Speaker 1: not making money. The problem you have with your base
Speaker 1: turning on you is about being being able to provision.
Speaker 1: It applies to people, and I think this is you know,
Speaker 1: I guess you know more about this than I do,
Speaker 1: but I will finish the sentence and then stop talking.
Speaker 1: Which is that like like, yeah, if you should look
Speaker 1: at Canada, it was like part of the reason their
Speaker 1: occupations failed was that like yeah, like just like a
Speaker 1: bunch of ordinary people got really really mad at them
Speaker 1: because their whole their cities were being locked down. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they started impacting not just the economic drivers, but the
Speaker 1: people who live in those areas regularly and need them
Speaker 1: to operate. And that gave politicians enough enough of incentive
Speaker 1: to be like, see, it's actually hurting real people. It's
Speaker 1: not just hurting the economy, but it's hurting you know,
Speaker 1: your grandma who could be living in like Ottawa or something. Right,
Speaker 1: So when you when you use these tactics, it's about
Speaker 1: balancing the propaganda of like not severely impacting the people
Speaker 1: who actually live in these places very much. But but
Speaker 1: targeting the economics, policies and the you know, you know,
Speaker 1: the corporate elite or whatever kind of framing you want
Speaker 1: to use, because as as soon as you start doing
Speaker 1: tactics that just hurt you know, regular people, that is
Speaker 1: such an immediate like propaganda l as the kids would say, um,
Speaker 1: because yeah, you're you're just giving them the tools to
Speaker 1: easily fight you back. And yes, they're gonna they're gonna
Speaker 1: try to invent tools to to to stop you no
Speaker 1: matter what. Like they're they're gonna, they're gonna they're gonna
Speaker 1: try to do something via propaganda lens. But there's some
Speaker 1: propaganda is way easier and uh much harder than others.
Speaker 1: So I think a big part of these types of things,
Speaker 1: when you're starting to like block off you know, roots
Speaker 1: to cities, block off supply chains as you need to
Speaker 1: be cognizant of making sure that the people who are
Speaker 1: like immediately next to kind of things that are also cool,
Speaker 1: because that can give you so much more legs. I mean,
Speaker 1: we saw this in the Red House in Portland. There
Speaker 1: was a there was a lot of effort um to
Speaker 1: make the immediate neighbors not hate the occupation there to
Speaker 1: to stop the family from being evicted. Um. And there
Speaker 1: was a lot of debate around like how much graffiti
Speaker 1: should be allowed out in the surrounding area because you know,
Speaker 1: you don't want to piste off the neighbors too much.
Speaker 1: Now that this can obviously stem in bad directions in
Speaker 1: terms of like there was then like self self appointed
Speaker 1: security guards like beating up and shooting people with paintballs
Speaker 1: who were doing graffiti, which is obviously like not not
Speaker 1: not how you do good anarchism, um. But then there's
Speaker 1: other stuff being like no, we should just trash this
Speaker 1: area anyway, it's all in the process of being gentrified,
Speaker 1: which mean it is, but you're like, yes, I understand
Speaker 1: that emotional impulse. Um. And you may be right in
Speaker 1: a lot of senses, like like more like more correct morally,
Speaker 1: but to play the propaganda game to actually stop a
Speaker 1: black family from being evicted, maybe we can actually to
Speaker 1: look at this at a more tactical level. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think that there's a lot of examples of things
Speaker 1: we can learn from strikes that is very efficiently. Like
Speaker 1: one of the things one of the reasons the wildcats
Speaker 1: in West the wildcat teacher strikes West Virginia, and he
Speaker 1: doesn't seventeen worked was that the striking teachers in West
Speaker 1: Virginia were very very careful about making sure that they
Speaker 1: did things like you know, like making making sure that
Speaker 1: kids got like the meals that the school would have
Speaker 1: been like providing like like you know, like this is
Speaker 1: why this is when mutual aid is extremely important because
Speaker 1: it lets you it lets you provision services, not just
Speaker 1: when they collapse because of like you know, oh hey
Speaker 1: the government's doing weird stuff or like there's a plague.
Speaker 1: It lets you do it, lets you shut down logistics
Speaker 1: slignes yourself and still have community support and still be
Speaker 1: able to provide people to think that provide people things
Speaker 1: that they need. And this is like you know, if
Speaker 1: if you carry this all the way to like the
Speaker 1: macro macro level, it's like yeah, okay, so like why
Speaker 1: did why did the Russian Revolution not work? And you know,
Speaker 1: like like why did the Pairs Commune fail? And it's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's because instead of like giving peasants things, they went
Speaker 1: into the countryside and shot them into decepting to get
Speaker 1: those things. And it's like yeah, like you have to
Speaker 1: what what what whatever? The thing that you're doing is
Speaker 1: in in in your sort of like base area, right whatever,
Speaker 1: you're like, hey, you're you're doing a ch you're shutting
Speaker 1: down a bridge. You're like, you know, you're blocking up border,
Speaker 1: you're trying down to support, Right, you have to make
Speaker 1: sure you're constantly expanding and building out support outside outside
Speaker 1: of that, outside of that action, and making sure you're
Speaker 1: you're you're able to provision the people who are affected
Speaker 1: by it. And if you don't do this, you end
Speaker 1: up like Abbott. And it's like, yeah, you know he
Speaker 1: Abbott had like the entire power of the American state
Speaker 1: behind him, and he was able to keep this up
Speaker 1: for like less than two weeks before he had to
Speaker 1: just pull out. So yeah, we can do this better
Speaker 1: and for things that are good and in ways that
Speaker 1: don't hurt people or at least hurt people significantly less
Speaker 1: or you know, don't not hurt the wrong people instead
Speaker 1: try to try to hurt the right people. Just like
Speaker 1: an incredible lack of like thinking that's my that's my summaries. Yeah,
Speaker 1: better do thing like yeah, And I think also like again,
Speaker 1: like Abbott, Abbott's politics like is entirely about like infercting
Speaker 1: old to young people right and ours like shouldn't be
Speaker 1: and shouldn't And the fact that we actually care about
Speaker 1: people makes our politics were effective and I guess I
Speaker 1: should in theory. In theory they should um and any
Speaker 1: time when we take a misstep from that, I think
Speaker 1: is of it is a big loss. Ye. There's there's
Speaker 1: one more strike thing that I just remembered that I
Speaker 1: was going to talk about, which is I So it's
Speaker 1: also trains a lot. There's there's a type of striker's
Speaker 1: name I'm forgetting because I'm a hack and a fraud
Speaker 1: where like the people, the people, the people will just
Speaker 1: like take over a train and they'll run it, but
Speaker 1: they just won't take fars. That is incredibly big. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, so that's that's that's like level one
Speaker 1: of it. And then level two of the strike is
Speaker 1: inside of just we're on strike, but we're running the
Speaker 1: series and not taking any money. It's we now control
Speaker 1: this train and that that has happened on several occasions,
Speaker 1: and well, yeah you hear that. It's cool. You heard
Speaker 1: it here first to take over your local train, Um,
Speaker 1: it could happen here. We could we we can do
Speaker 1: it anarchism can make the trains run on time. Oh hi,
Speaker 1: I am not sure about that. Punk punk time is
Speaker 1: as an unstoppable Okay. Here, here's the thing. Here's the thing,
Speaker 1: right like punk time Like okay, so you don't have
Speaker 1: the punks running the trains. You have the train nerds
Speaker 1: running the train, people who should spend all of their
Speaker 1: time playing train simulator running the trains. Okay, that the
Speaker 1: trains will run great? Alright? That is that is completely fair. Um.
Speaker 1: Where can people find you and or the show on
Speaker 1: the internet. You can find me at three on Twitter
Speaker 1: if you want to do that for some reason. You
Speaker 1: can find us that happened here pod on Twitter, Instagram. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's also the Cool Zone. We have Zone Media. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have a We have a new podcast that is
Speaker 1: coming so if you do want to want to go past,
Speaker 1: we actually got we got two new ones for you
Speaker 1: coming soon. We have a Ghost Church by Jamie Loftus.
Speaker 1: Episode one is out April. And then we have Cool
Speaker 1: People Who Did Cool Stuff hosted by Margaret Killjoy. Trailer
Speaker 1: is out next week and episode one is out on
Speaker 1: May second. Check both of them out. So many, so
Speaker 1: many pods in the pipe as you say that is
Speaker 1: that is the technical term pods in the pipe. These
Speaker 1: these are genuinely, legitimately very good shows and you should
Speaker 1: listen to them. And I'm really excited, so yay, alright, well,
Speaker 1: thank you for listening, and uh go go take over
Speaker 1: a train. It Could Happen Here is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
Speaker 1: us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources
Speaker 1: for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone
Speaker 1: media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening,