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Speaker 1: All Zone media.

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Speaker 2: First, no matter what happens, remember to breathe. It's always

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Speaker 2: good advice to breathe. But taking good advice is easier

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Speaker 2: said than done. Sometimes the world is so overwhelming that

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Speaker 2: any added weight, even the weight of oxygen in your lungs,

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Speaker 2: feels like it might be enough to drag you down.

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Speaker 2: This is one of those times. The last week has

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Speaker 2: brought about ten years worth of news, and we are

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Speaker 2: all processing the seemingly inevitable coronation of a dictator and

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Speaker 2: the sudden hope and possibility inspired by Joe Biden stepping

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Speaker 2: down from the nomination. Welcome to it could happen here.

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Speaker 2: I'm Robert Evans, and this is a podcast about things

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Speaker 2: falling apart and sometimes about how to put them back together.

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Speaker 2: The last time I sat down to talk with all

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Speaker 2: of you like this was in the immediate aftermath of

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Speaker 2: the Trump assassination attempt, just before the Republican National Convention.

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Speaker 2: I told you not to panic. That's still good advice.

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Speaker 2: I also told you that no matter how bad or

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Speaker 2: good things may look, literally anything can happen in US politics,

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Speaker 2: and by god, it has. I felt it was necessary

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Speaker 2: to deliver that message because I saw an awful lot

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Speaker 2: of people declaring We're doomed. Fascism is inevitable, and quite frankly,

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Speaker 2: I think shit like that only helps the fascists. Well,

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Speaker 2: it turned out I was right. A lot has happened

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Speaker 2: over the last two weeks, and the situation now is

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Speaker 2: very different than it was the day the former president

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Speaker 2: took that grazing blow from a sniper's bullet. As is

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Speaker 2: usually the case and instances like this, I've had a

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Speaker 2: lot of people reach out to me since that episode

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Speaker 2: saying versions of how did you know? And as good

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Speaker 2: as it might be for my career to lean into

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Speaker 2: that side of my reputation, the truth is that I

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Speaker 2: am white knuckling it through every twist and turn like

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Speaker 2: everyone else. I spent the RNC wondering if I'd been

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Speaker 2: foolish telling people not to panic, And yes, I feel

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Speaker 2: a hell of a lot better right now. Of course,

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Speaker 2: I don't know what comes next. I just know that

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Speaker 2: we're done with the portion of this mess where we

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Speaker 2: spiral in a hopeless mier that was last week. This week,

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Speaker 2: the outlook is a lot better, and not because Kamala

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Speaker 2: Harris is our savior or because Nancy Pelosi is a

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Speaker 2: three D chess master. But because men age and die.

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Speaker 2: This is a fact I tried to remind myself of

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Speaker 2: as I'd grown through that disastrous debate with the rest

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Speaker 2: of the country. On one hand, I felt like we

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Speaker 2: were all about to watch one ailing, power hungry man

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Speaker 2: hand the keys to the kingdom over to a cadre

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Speaker 2: of bloodthirsty fascists. But on the other hand, there's always

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Speaker 2: something inherently optimistic in this simple reality. The people who

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Speaker 2: would be our rulers will all die someday, and so

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Speaker 2: long as men die, liberty will never perish. So long

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Speaker 2: as men die, we have hope. I stole that line

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Speaker 2: from Charlie Chaplin. He put it in the mouth of

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Speaker 2: his character from The Great Dictator, a movie he produced

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Speaker 2: at great personal cost in nineteen forty Riot. As Hitler

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Speaker 2: and the Nazis reached the apex of their power, a

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Speaker 2: rational analyst staring out at the playing field after the

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Speaker 2: fall of France could be forgiven for having seen the

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Speaker 2: outcome as certain Great Britain stood alone, Hitler's armies victorious

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Speaker 2: on every theater, and the future of democracy and human

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Speaker 2: liberty gasping for breath. One such rational analyst was Joseph Kennedy,

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Speaker 2: US Ambassador to Great Britain and patriarch of the Kennedy family.

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Speaker 2: Joseph was a man of wealth and power, whose sober

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Speaker 2: judgment and cunning had seen him short the entire US

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Speaker 2: stock market and the kind of fortune that let him

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Speaker 2: buy his way into the ranks of global royalty. He

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Speaker 2: was a man who had predicted the future once one big,

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Speaker 2: and he let that convince him that he had the

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Speaker 2: second sight. And so in November nineteen forty, less than

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Speaker 2: a month after the release of The Great Dictator, Kennedy

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Speaker 2: found himself in an interview with the Boston Globe, looking

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Speaker 2: out at the ruin of Europe and the bombs falling

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Speaker 2: on London. He told a reporter democracy is finished in England.

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Speaker 2: It may be here here, of course, being the United

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Speaker 2: States now. The resulting blowback to all of this saw

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Speaker 2: Kennedy forced to resign his ambassadorship. The very next year,

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Speaker 2: Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, and for several brutal months

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Speaker 2: it looked like Joe had been right. Not only might

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Speaker 2: democracy be finished, but every system besides fascism might be

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Speaker 2: hurtling towards annihilation and bondage under the Swastika, depending on

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Speaker 2: how you count it. The Third Reich and fascism as

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Speaker 2: a whole, reached its greatest extent of territorial power in

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Speaker 2: either mid August or September nineteen forty one. By November

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Speaker 2: of nineteen forty one, a year after Joe Kennedy's remarks

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Speaker 2: to the Globe, Operation Barbarossa had been wrenched to a

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Speaker 2: bloody halt, and the long battle to push the fascists

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Speaker 2: back and drown them in the waters of their birth

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Speaker 2: had begun. And so in the end it was Charlie Chaplin,

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Speaker 2: not Joe Kennedy, who had the proper measure of things.

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Speaker 2: Liberty survived because men died, many millions of them, from

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Speaker 2: Kiev to Canterbury. We live in very different times now.

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Speaker 2: The arm armies of fascism are not primarily conquering land

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Speaker 2: under arms. The primary terrain of our present conflict exists

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Speaker 2: within the hearts and souls of men and women. And

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Speaker 2: while populism is still a favorite mechanism of action among

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Speaker 2: the fascists, they have in this country at least given

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Speaker 2: up on victory by sheer weight of numbers. It's true

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Speaker 2: what they say war never changes. Weapons do, but the

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Speaker 2: core of all human conflict revolves around the capture and

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Speaker 2: denial of territory. If you can't occupy ground yourself, you

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Speaker 2: must at least deny it to the enemy. In infantry combat,

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Speaker 2: this is the primary use of a machine gun, not

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Speaker 2: to kill people, but to blanket an area in bullets

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Speaker 2: and stop the enemy from moving through it. In our

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Speaker 2: modern war of thoughts and feelings, the machine gun has

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Speaker 2: yielded to the fire hose of propaganda and disinformation. These

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Speaker 2: have always been parts of the fascist arsenal, but the

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Speaker 2: Internet has allowed an increase in the scale and speed

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Speaker 2: of their deployment that is very much comparable to the

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Speaker 2: replacement of bolt action rifles with automatic ones. The forces

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Speaker 2: of basic human decency have a natural advantage in terms

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Speaker 2: of human terrain that should be impossible for the fascists

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Speaker 2: to counter. No matter what the bastards say. Most people

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Speaker 2: want to be left alone with the people they love

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Speaker 2: to live their lives. The forces of hate, the people

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Speaker 2: who want to throw trans kids in their parents in

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Speaker 2: gas chambers and drown migrants in the Rio Grande, tap

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Speaker 2: out at a little over a third of the population max.

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Speaker 2: If you want to return to World War II metaphors,

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Speaker 2: and why wouldn't you? The monsters are stuck in tiny,

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Speaker 2: landlocked Germany without any gas or steel. The only way

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Speaker 2: for them to access the resources in territory they need

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Speaker 2: to maneuver themselves into a victory is by cutting us

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Speaker 2: off from each other and keeping us too confused and

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Speaker 2: divided to surround the bastards and smother them all for good.

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Speaker 2: They do this by convincing you that you are isolated,

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Speaker 2: alone and surrounded by them. Our hopelessness is their force multiplier.

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Speaker 2: When leftists in the US look out at Ukrainians strike

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Speaker 2: for survival and write them off as Nazis, as deluded

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Speaker 2: tools of imperialism, When liberals and blue cities to cry

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Speaker 2: college students protesting on behalf of dying Palestinian children as

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Speaker 2: agents of hamas the lines of solidarity between a snap

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Speaker 2: rather than wrapping like a garret around the throats of

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Speaker 2: our opponents. This is why you've seen so much allegiance

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Speaker 2: and sympathy between the cruelest and most eluded segments of

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Speaker 2: the Western left. The people who laughed at Syrian civilians

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Speaker 2: sheltering from Brishah al Assad's bombs and called them the

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Speaker 2: CIA and the agents of Putin's Russia and Peter Teal's

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Speaker 2: neo monarchist right. The Teals, Bannons, Putins, Airdoins, Trumps and

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Speaker 2: Modis of the world know how lonely they are. The

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Speaker 2: only way they can win is to convince you that

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Speaker 2: you're alone. Then they have you at a disadvantage. Then

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Speaker 2: they can kill us one by one. You know, there's

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Speaker 2: no smooth way to transition to an ad and a

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Speaker 2: piece like this, but here it is. We're back now.

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Speaker 2: I'm not a young man, but I do sometimes tend

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Speaker 2: to think of humanity as a single, vast, gestalt organism

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Speaker 2: groping for survival and comfort in a world that mostly

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Speaker 2: exists beyond what we can see. Majority of people are

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Speaker 2: happy existing as part of that vast whole. We take

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Speaker 2: comfort and safety in our communion with the rest of

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Speaker 2: the species. But there are a few diseased minds out

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Speaker 2: there that don't believe in the rest of us. These

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Speaker 2: sollipsists see themselves as the only minds, and the perpetuation

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Speaker 2: of their own power and will as the only real good.

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Speaker 2: That's why men like Peter Teel seek physical immortality, and

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Speaker 2: it's why men like Vladimir Putin or Hitler seek the

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Speaker 2: kind of immortality that comes from welding the edifice of

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Speaker 2: a nation state to themselves. Hitler is Germany, and Germany

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Speaker 2: will last forever. Elon Musk sees his children as an

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Speaker 2: extension of himself, and his fantasies of space colonization are

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Speaker 2: really just a fantasy that he will remain central to

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Speaker 2: humanity's future down through eternity. Musk has repeatedly identified himself

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Speaker 2: as a pro natalist, and he believes his responsibility is

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Speaker 2: to have as many children as possible to secure a

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Speaker 2: pro human future. The term pro human might confuse you,

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Speaker 2: given the lack of concern he has for the children

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Speaker 2: being bombed in Gaza or who will surely die in

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Speaker 2: the mass deportation camps through a publican party is currently

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Speaker 2: salivating to open. But the only real human Elon ses

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Speaker 2: is himself, which is why he equates the survival of

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Speaker 2: the species with his own ability to breed. As I type,

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Speaker 2: this video has begun circulating around the Internet from an

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Speaker 2: interview Musk conducted with Jordan Peterson for The Daily Wire.

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Speaker 2: In it, Musk explains why he has now fully embraced

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Speaker 2: politics endorsing Donald Trump and declaring himself at war with wokeism,

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Speaker 2: which he describes as an existential threat to the species.

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Speaker 2: He claims that what cinched this for him was his

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Speaker 2: daughter deciding to transition.

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Speaker 3: It happened to one of my my older boys where

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Speaker 3: I was, I was essentially tricked into signing documents for

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Speaker 3: one of my older boys. There was a lot of confusion,

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Speaker 3: and you know, I was told, oh, you know, might

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Speaker 3: commit suicide if it's incredibly evil. And I agree with

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Speaker 3: you that people that have been promoting this should go

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Speaker 3: to prison. So I was, I was stricked into doing this.

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Speaker 3: You know, it wasn't explained to me that puberty blockers

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Speaker 3: are actually just sterilization drugs. So I lost my son essentially.

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Speaker 1: So you know, they.

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Speaker 3: They're callot dead naming for a reason, all right. So

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Speaker 3: the reason it's called dead naming is because so my

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Speaker 3: son is dead, killed by the Wok mind virus.

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Speaker 2: Musk's child is not, in fact dead, but they have

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Speaker 2: expressed an identity utterly separate from Elon, an identity he

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Speaker 2: cannot understand because Musk can only see his children as

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Speaker 2: an extension of himself and his ego. This is in fact,

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Speaker 2: worse than death. It is a threat to Musk's own life. This, incidentally,

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Speaker 2: is why Musk and his fellow travelers see transgender kids

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Speaker 2: as such a threat. Accepting a trans child, even if

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Speaker 2: you don't fully understand how and why they feel the

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Speaker 2: way they do, is one of the most radical acts

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Speaker 2: of love imaginable. To do this means that you've accepted

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Speaker 2: on a fundamental level that your children are autonomous beings,

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Speaker 2: not an extension of you, but something new, wonderful, and unique.

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Speaker 2: The essence of parental love is to give your children

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Speaker 2: to the world. This means accepting that you are finite

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Speaker 2: that the world goes on without you. If you see

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Speaker 2: all humanity as an extension of your own ego, nothing

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Speaker 2: could be more frightening. The people who feel this way,

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Speaker 2: people like Elon, are mutations, a glitch in the human

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Speaker 2: system that starts as a glitch within the heart of

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Speaker 2: an individual. It comes as a byproduct of success and

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Speaker 2: the very visible, spectacular ways that feed narcissism. When I

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Speaker 2: think about stuff like this, I refer often back to

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Speaker 2: a great article by the anthropologist Richard Lee, Eating Christmas

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Speaker 2: in the Kalahari. Lee spent years living among the Ikung Bushmen,

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Speaker 2: a Bantu speaking hunter gatherer group who were seen by

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Speaker 2: anthropologists as some of the people still living in a

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Speaker 2: manner most similar to our ancient ancestors. One Christmas, as

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Speaker 2: a show of gratitude to his hosts, Lee purchased a

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Speaker 2: massive ox for the holiday feast. He was excited to

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Speaker 2: show this great gift off to his new friends, and

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Speaker 2: he was proud of himself for having gotten it, and

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Speaker 2: he was utterly shocked when they responded to his pride

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Speaker 2: with mockery of him and his ox, insulting it as scrawny, tiny,

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Speaker 2: hardly fit to eat now. This shockedly because the ox

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Speaker 2: he had purchased was, of course quite large, and it

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Speaker 2: was eventually explained to him that his friends were reacting

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Speaker 2: with mockery not to his gift, but to the evident

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Speaker 2: pride he had shown in it. Bringing in a great

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Speaker 2: beast way of meat, either as a hunter or from

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Speaker 2: buying it as Burton did, is the kind of thing

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Speaker 2: that can go to a young man's head. If you

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Speaker 2: are the one with the pocket book or the one

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Speaker 2: who fires the arrow, you can forget that the meat

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Speaker 2: before you, the meat that you've brought into the community

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Speaker 2: is not the product purely of your own genius, but

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Speaker 2: is a product of all of the time and resources

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Speaker 2: invested in you by the community. The shaming of the meat,

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Speaker 2: as this tactic was called, is a time honored way

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Speaker 2: of correcting the glitch in young men of the Ukun

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Speaker 2: before it can turn terminal. As one elder in the

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Speaker 2: tribe eventually explained to Lee, when a young man kills

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Speaker 2: much meat, he comes to think of himself as a

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Speaker 2: chief or a big man, and he thinks of the

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Speaker 2: rest of us as his servants or inferiors. We can't

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Speaker 2: accept this. We refuse one who boasts, for some day

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Speaker 2: his pride will make him kill somebody. So we always

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Speaker 2: speak of his meat as worthless. This way we cool

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Speaker 2: his heart and make him gentle. And speaking of cooling

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Speaker 2: your heart, why don't you cool your heart with some ads.

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Speaker 2: And then we'll come back to conclude this in a

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Speaker 2: little bit, we're back. It has been theorized that the

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Speaker 2: shaming of the meat is a social construct that may

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Speaker 2: help to explain one of the evolutionary values of satire,

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Speaker 2: perhaps even why humanity keeps producing comedians. They act as

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Speaker 2: a part of our species immune system when this glitch

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Speaker 2: in the hearts of young men isn't punctured. When it's

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Speaker 2: allowed to take off and dominate them, then it changes

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Speaker 2: them on a fundamental level, and the being that it

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Speaker 2: leaves in its wake seems to understand instinctively that laughter

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Speaker 2: is a danger to it. This ultimately explains why Musk

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Speaker 2: purchase Twitter and why Barack Obama's mockery of Donald Trump

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Speaker 2: during that White House Correspondence Center set us all down

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Speaker 2: the dark path that we currently are walking. So clearly,

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Speaker 2: humor alone doesn't always save us from these kinds of

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Speaker 2: people either. What will I have several times and my

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Speaker 2: various shows identified myself as an anarchist, and I tend

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Speaker 2: to do that even though I don't feel fully comfortable

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Speaker 2: with the title, because brevity matters. I'm speaking to a

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Speaker 2: mass audience, and using that word gets as close enough

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Speaker 2: for the sake of a podcast. But I'm not an

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Speaker 2: anarchist in the sense that I have some sort of

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Speaker 2: clear vision for how to build a utopia. Obviously, I

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Speaker 2: do think anarchism has some answers for how human beings

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Speaker 2: might build a better world. That's why I went through

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Speaker 2: a Java, It's why we cover a lot of the

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Speaker 2: things that we cover on these series. But I am

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Speaker 2: primarily an anarchist because I understand that hierarchy kills, because

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Speaker 2: I understand that hierarchy separates us from each other and

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Speaker 2: acts as a petri dish within which this glitch can propagate.

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Speaker 2: I'm an anarchist because I love the people around me,

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Speaker 2: because I understand that I am human, and because I

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Speaker 2: see that my role in the human immune system is

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Speaker 2: to remind other people of that fact and to point

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Speaker 2: a finger at the people who have forgotten that they're human.

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Speaker 2: I promised in the title of this little piece that

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Speaker 2: I would tell you how we can win, and I

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Speaker 2: can do that in a few words. We have to

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Speaker 2: remember that we are humans. Kamala Harris is an authoritarian.

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Speaker 2: The fact that she wants to be president at all

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Speaker 2: should make you leery of her. But she's not a

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Speaker 2: Trump or a Musk. She has not separated herself entirely

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Speaker 2: from humanity, if you'll forgive the reference. She understands that

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Speaker 2: she exists in the context of all that came before her.

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Speaker 2: Joe Biden has been hungry for power all his life.

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Speaker 2: The glitch is in him. It has consumed most of him,

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Speaker 2: but as we all learned recently, not all of him.

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Speaker 2: He too understands that he is a part of humanity,

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Speaker 2: indivisible from it. Now you can and should still view

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Speaker 2: the man with disgust, even hatred. He ought to be

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Speaker 2: in the Hague. But he also stepped down and gave

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Speaker 2: up the thing that a week ago I'd have said

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Speaker 2: probably mattered most to him in the world. This was

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Speaker 2: not a purely selfless gesture. I'm sure he acted in

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Speaker 2: large part to try and salvage his own legacy, but

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Speaker 2: it is also not a thing Donald Trump could ever do.

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Speaker 2: You certainly wouldn't see a man like Vladimir Putin make

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Speaker 2: a similar choice. And we've all seen the kind of

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Speaker 2: slaughter bb Netan Yahoo is willing to back to hold

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Speaker 2: on to power. None of this redeems Biden or makes

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Speaker 2: him a good person or any less complicit in genocide

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Speaker 2: than he was a week ago. I think it does

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Speaker 2: put us in a better position when it comes to

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Speaker 2: fighting for a ceasefire in Gaza. Everyone in US politics

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Speaker 2: knows that Biden's political end started with the surge of

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Speaker 2: uncommitted voters in Michigan. The loss of a second term

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Speaker 2: is not a sufficient punishment for Biden's actions, but it

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Speaker 2: is a punishment that has the ability to reshape the

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Speaker 2: kind of risks US presidents will and won't take for

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Speaker 2: Israel from now on. It has also helped me make

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Speaker 2: sense of something that happened in twenty twenty. You all

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Speaker 2: remember the moment during the one presidential debate that year

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Speaker 2: President Trump attacked Biden over the numerous scandals of his son, Hunter,

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Speaker 2: a troubled drug addict who tried and largely failed to

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Speaker 2: use his father's name to secure wealth and standing for himself.

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Speaker 2: Hunter's troubles have been tremendously embarrassing to his father, but

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Speaker 2: up in front of the country and world, Biden refused

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Speaker 2: to throw his son under the bus. He embraced him

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Speaker 2: and expressed the kind of unconditional love that is utterly

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Speaker 2: alien to men like Trump and Musk. Biden, for all

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Speaker 2: the evil that he has done in the raw selfishness

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Speaker 2: that allowed him to reach the presidency in the first place,

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Speaker 2: is a man who loves his son. Most importantly, he

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Speaker 2: loves Hunter as Hunter and not purely as an extension

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Speaker 2: of Joe Biden. There's an excellent series of articles out

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Speaker 2: in the Atlantic right now by Tim Alberta, who might

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Speaker 2: be the finest political journalist writing today. Tim had the

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Speaker 2: good instincts to look behind the scenes at the team

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Speaker 2: Trump picked to orchestrate his twenty twenty four campaign, and

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Speaker 2: he's delivered deep reporting about why they've made some of

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Speaker 2: the baffling decisions they've made. Chief among bafflements was the

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Speaker 2: selection of J. D. Vance as Vice President. Vance barely

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Speaker 2: won his seat in Congress with the help of tens

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Speaker 2: of millions of teal dollars. He is a liar without

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Speaker 2: principal who has repeatedly expressed his desire to tear up

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Speaker 2: the Constitution and usher in a new red caesar to

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Speaker 2: bring this nation to heal under men like him. I

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Speaker 2: watched Vance's speech at the RNC live at a Heritage

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Speaker 2: Foundation party, surrounded by the rightest of the right. Not

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Speaker 2: one of them offered a single word of praise Vance.

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Speaker 1: Was that bad.

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Speaker 2: JD is the sort of pick Trump's handlers were sure

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Speaker 2: that they could afford to make. Vance would bring the

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Speaker 2: Silicon Valley billionaire set to the table, open up their

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Speaker 2: purse strings, convince them they were welcome in the new

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Speaker 2: ruling class. Sure he wouldn't bring any votes, but a

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Speaker 2: week ago, running against Sleepy Joe, the sick man of

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Speaker 2: US politics, Trump's team felt they had votes to spare well.

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Speaker 2: Now the worm has turned. The Poles still point to

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Speaker 2: an election that is deeply in doubt. But Poles don't

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Speaker 2: say everything. The panic of their responses to Biden's stepping down,

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Speaker 2: the chaotic spree of hate points to a single truth.

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Speaker 2: They don't know what to do now. The monsters are

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Speaker 2: off balance, stumbling, unable to find the ground. We can

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Speaker 2: see some evidence of this and the fact that Musk

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Speaker 2: just came out and canceled has promised forty five million

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Speaker 2: dollar monthly donations to the Trump campaign. This is the

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Speaker 2: first chain of solidarity between our enemies to crumble, and

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Speaker 2: it won't be the last. Every time that happens, we

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Speaker 2: get more room to move and maneuver. The fascists may

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Speaker 2: well regain their footing and time to crush us. But

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Speaker 2: something else has happened in the last few days as well. People,

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Speaker 2: we humans, as a vast, blurry mob, have started to

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Speaker 2: remember how many of us there are and how much

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Speaker 2: potential the weight of our numbers gives us. We have

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Speaker 2: started to reconnect with each other, and that has also

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Speaker 2: opened up possibilities that did not exist before. Kamala Harris

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Speaker 2: and the Democratic Party aren't going to bring an end

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Speaker 2: to global capitalism or drive a stake into the heart

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Speaker 2: of the oil and gas industry. There remains so much

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Speaker 2: else to do, so many other fights ahead of us.

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Speaker 2: But if we can crush the Republicans here, it will

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Speaker 2: be the fourth election cycle in a row where the

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Speaker 2: Right made a war on trans people, on the concept

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Speaker 2: of diversity, on any kind of open, secular society the

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Speaker 2: core of their electoral efforts, and it will be the

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Speaker 2: fourth time that they have done that and lost. If

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Speaker 2: we break their lines and send them fleeing into the hills,

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Speaker 2: we have an opportunity to shatter their power and use

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Speaker 2: the momentum of that victory to start building something better.

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Speaker 2: There's no cleaner, easy route to a better future, but

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Speaker 2: our chances are a hell of a lot better the

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Speaker 2: more of us that stay alive, and the more scattered

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Speaker 2: and frightened that we can make our enemies. Our strength

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Speaker 2: has always come from solidarity, from the understanding that we

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Speaker 2: need each other and that we are part of each other.

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Speaker 2: The Putins and Trumps and Musks and Teals of the

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Speaker 2: world are, of course a part of humanity as well,

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Speaker 2: but they are incapable of seeing or accepting that. And

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Speaker 2: so long as that is the case, we outnumber them.

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Speaker 2: So long as that is the case, we can win.

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Speaker 1: It Could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.

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Speaker 1: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website

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Speaker 1: coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can

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Speaker 1: find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at

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Speaker 1: coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening,