Speaker 1: You know the French call orgasms little deaths. I actually
Speaker 1: I actually call Poop's little death. I'm gonna go have
Speaker 1: a little death real quick.
Speaker 2: But then you're coming on the toy.
Speaker 1: No, like the eldest death. It's a little Elvis.
Speaker 2: Okay, they're still having an orgasm. I'm also having a
Speaker 2: full blown orgasm. Is that the wait? Is that the
Speaker 2: Latin or that's a French? Oh they say the French
Speaker 2: phrase for orgasm is little right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just like a saying yeah.
Speaker 3: I have not asked any of my French friends if
Speaker 3: this is true or not.
Speaker 1: The very hopeful idea of death, the death is actually
Speaker 1: just a giant orgasm. If that's a little one, I
Speaker 1: feel like I would also smoke. If I thought that's
Speaker 1: what death was, I.
Speaker 3: Wouldn't be super surprised.
Speaker 2: Oh that it is.
Speaker 3: I feel like when I went on I mean this
Speaker 3: is it wasn't very orgasmic. But like when I went
Speaker 3: under to have my like teeth polled recently, like some
Speaker 3: wisdom teeth, I was like, it's like when I was
Speaker 3: flooded through with whatever chemicals they put into the IV.
Speaker 3: I was like I went in super nervous, right, I
Speaker 3: do not like going under, or I thought I didn't,
Speaker 3: and instead I was just like, oh, I'm not worried
Speaker 3: about anything. Yeah. They could have been like, and now
Speaker 3: we're killing you, and I would have been.
Speaker 2: Like, that's eight. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I got my wisdom teeth out in my early twenties
Speaker 1: and was told secondhand that when they took me out
Speaker 1: from under, I was like, hey, could I have more
Speaker 1: of whatever? You just like, I go take me back.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be here. Hello the Internet, and
Speaker 1: welcome to season three sixty five, Episode two of At
Speaker 1: Least I Die. It's a production of iHeart Radio. It's
Speaker 1: a podcast where you're taking deep to have into American
Speaker 1: shared consciousness. It's podcast that now has a YouTube tube
Speaker 1: channel at Daily z eyke Guys Pod. On YouTube, you
Speaker 1: can go see what we look like when we're saying
Speaker 1: stuff like this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, see the contorted faces. Now for your viewing pursures,
Speaker 2: these are my words. Happy season three sixty five.
Speaker 1: We've done it. We've done it, We've done it. We've
Speaker 1: gone a whole year around the sun. Our little trip
Speaker 1: around the Sun, true.
Speaker 2: Daily z Eye Guy's challenge. Listen to an entire, entire
Speaker 2: season's worth of episodes every day, and you can do
Speaker 2: that for a full year and now get through every
Speaker 2: episode we've had on the show.
Speaker 1: Wow, yeah, do that.
Speaker 2: Please don't actually don't do that.
Speaker 1: Fantastic for our numbers and horrible for your mental health.
Speaker 4: My name?
Speaker 1: Oh wait, no, I didn't even tell them what date
Speaker 1: it is. No, that's my part. Okay, Tuesday, Yeah, November nineteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: Let's just see. I'm just trying to see if there's
Speaker 2: any interesting birthdays. Shout out Meg ryan a if anyone
Speaker 2: wants to impress a young Jody Foster, maybe today on
Speaker 2: her birthday born in nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 1: It worked.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm saying you can. You can impress her with
Speaker 2: your knowledge of her films, like quoting lines from the
Speaker 2: movie Now or Contact.
Speaker 1: Okay the Beaver, Yeah Noil Gibson is funny.
Speaker 2: Also, what it is, right, November nineteenth is also National
Speaker 2: play Monopoly Day. We're already living it. That's okay, but hey, Jack,
Speaker 2: it's your day. It's National carp This is so so vague,
Speaker 2: National carbonated beverage with caffeine Day. So all of God's
Speaker 2: children are in the sun today.
Speaker 1: But that was like a day invented by cavemen. Like that,
Speaker 1: I feel like by Encino man coming forward and experiencing
Speaker 1: coca cola for the first.
Speaker 2: It's like something in cone Heads. He's like, yes, more
Speaker 2: carbonated beverage with caffeine.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Anyways, shout out to the of us who used
Speaker 1: to enjoy that and can't really anymore.
Speaker 2: Well, you're not drinking die coke.
Speaker 1: I haven't been drinking diet coke. I haven't been drinking
Speaker 1: mountain dew, mountainkies, or.
Speaker 2: You haven't even touched everything. Okay, I haven't mountain dew.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know. I'm only on my second one and
Speaker 1: I haven't indented it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Do you feel judged when you go through the line
Speaker 3: at checkout for not having a two liter?
Speaker 1: Yeah, everybody's looking, hey man, you forgot your two liters
Speaker 1: of mountain dew.
Speaker 2: No, that's a different guy. No, you're dude Jack.
Speaker 1: Trying to eat healthy, and they look at the food
Speaker 1: that I actually have on there. You know you're not at.
Speaker 2: These are Pillsbury Crescent rolls, just those tubes of them. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they're they're really underrated. Those are so good.
Speaker 1: Holy shit, they're not carbonated exactly, or no caffeine either
Speaker 1: the difference between like fresh break baked bread and not
Speaker 1: fresh baked bread is a powerful thing. And like I will,
Speaker 1: I will go through a whole canister of those crescent
Speaker 1: Those things are great.
Speaker 2: You just bunch them up into one mego role basically
Speaker 2: just eat like an app. Have done that?
Speaker 3: You ever forget to put him in the fridge?
Speaker 1: No, I don't think so.
Speaker 3: They just start popping.
Speaker 1: Right right right, yeah, too warm. It's rising. Things are
Speaker 1: rising in here. My name is Jack O'Brien aka Haty.
Speaker 1: The snow Man has a dirty carrot peen. He was
Speaker 1: brought to life to fuck your ex wife with the
Speaker 1: mind of a preteen courtesy of Cleo Universe. It's too
Speaker 1: Hot Frosty, which I haven't seen, Miles. What is the
Speaker 1: mental age if you had to pinpoint it at a
Speaker 1: years old of hot Frosty? Definitely under ten, under under ten,
Speaker 1: because I guess it counts as pretty simple.
Speaker 2: Simple shit is having to be explained to the hot
Speaker 2: snow Man. The one thing that they do, and this
Speaker 2: isn't really a spoiler, is that like he catches onto
Speaker 2: shit really quick. I think that's the way they make
Speaker 2: it seem like, and he's able to like mature pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: I know he started off presenting as a childlike mind,
Speaker 2: but by the end he's about like a seventeen year
Speaker 2: old dude, probably.
Speaker 1: With the mind of a pretty smart preteen, so it's
Speaker 1: okay smart. Yeah. Anyways, thrilled to be joined as always
Speaker 1: by my co host, a man who I can count
Speaker 1: on to have watched Hot Frosty and Ye first weekend
Speaker 1: of release. It's mister Miles. Great, Miles Great.
Speaker 5: Okay, Carrit Dicken, he's melting slowly. Hot Frosty's coming to
Speaker 5: save us, car Dicken, He's melting slowly.
Speaker 1: I shout out to Richard B.
Speaker 2: Three sixty. I know, I got a flurry of a
Speaker 2: lot of people on the Blue Sky asking for the
Speaker 2: Discord invites. I've I've not seen this name, so welcome
Speaker 2: to the server and shout out everybody that's been joining
Speaker 2: the Discord server. Hit me up on Blue Sky. Miles
Speaker 2: of Gray over there for the invite, y'all. But you
Speaker 2: gotta sign up for Blue Sky. Okay, let's sign Just
Speaker 2: leave the other place, go to Blue Sky.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's getting better that I feel like the longer
Speaker 1: it goes, the less of the content. Will be about like, hey,
Speaker 1: a lot of people are on Blue Sky.
Speaker 2: Now right right right, We'll get hey, who do I
Speaker 2: know on here?
Speaker 1: Where are my people at?
Speaker 2: I hate everyone's first Blue Sky skeet or whatever we're
Speaker 2: calling it that they do and it's like, hey, trying
Speaker 2: this thing out. It's always some version of that, like
Speaker 2: an ellipsis. I'm like, yeah, I get it. I mean
Speaker 2: I did something similar, but look, that's what you do.
Speaker 1: So much of my Blue Sky contest is like Mark
Speaker 1: Hamil is here and people think that's pretty neat.
Speaker 3: The second one is always were so much better than
Speaker 3: everyone who's still on Twitter?
Speaker 2: Yeah right, exactly, Yeah, don't which.
Speaker 3: Is true, but not worth that.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, don't don't let that be part of
Speaker 2: your personality out loud.
Speaker 1: No. Then they're like just posting fire over on Twitter.
Speaker 1: Well posts is terrible.
Speaker 3: This is actually what I did for about a year. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I joined Blue Sky early enough to get the name
Speaker 3: Margaret on it.
Speaker 1: Margaret straight up Margaret killing it.
Speaker 2: I know part of me wanted to just go on
Speaker 2: a run of just owning every handle I could. That's
Speaker 2: that a brand would want, and just be like I
Speaker 2: am bed bath and Beyond on Blue Sky. But I
Speaker 2: think they're a defunct company, know, so maybe it's not
Speaker 2: the best idea.
Speaker 1: I got in there early, but I've decided instead to
Speaker 1: Jacob one or jack Ob one, but it does look
Speaker 1: like Jacob. Yeah. Anyways, Miles are thrilled to be joined
Speaker 1: in air third seat by an author, musician, podcast host
Speaker 1: of the anarchist survivalist podcast Live Like the World Is
Speaker 1: Dying and the podcast Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff
Speaker 1: on Cool Zone Media. Her substack Birds Before the Storm
Speaker 1: is a must read. Please welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2: Margaret killed Joe.
Speaker 1: Margaret.
Speaker 2: Hi, she's back with the wisdom and she's great to
Speaker 2: have you, Margaret, great to have you, great to have you.
Speaker 3: I just went on a book tour and I met
Speaker 3: people who came up and said they knew me because
Speaker 3: of this show.
Speaker 1: So oh, I love Gang Zeigang.
Speaker 2: We love you. We love that. Shall support the people
Speaker 2: that come on this show. That's really dope. That's super dope.
Speaker 2: How was the book tour?
Speaker 3: Oh it was amazing. I'm incredibly exhausted. I did twenty
Speaker 3: seven cities and twenty eight events because somehow I went
Speaker 3: to Brooklyn twice. Wow, I got years ago, and I
Speaker 3: don't want to go anywhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh man, also shout out to the people we have
Speaker 1: on this show who are worth going to visit in person.
Speaker 1: Mm hm, that's awesome. Can you talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about the books? What's the book?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want to or the book called The Sapling Cage,
Speaker 3: which is a it's technically not a YA. It's a
Speaker 3: crossover which is YA, but you're admitting that adults read
Speaker 3: it too, about a young trans girl witch who dresses
Speaker 3: up as a girl to run away and join the
Speaker 3: witches in a fantasy world and then has to help
Speaker 3: everyone else save the world from people consolidating power through
Speaker 3: destroying the environment, which is completely unrelatable to anyone who's reading.
Speaker 2: Where do you come up with this stuff? Coming drugs
Speaker 2: of drugs and think this wacky stuff up?
Speaker 3: No, I spent a lot of time alone in the woods, honestly,
Speaker 3: that is the actual answer, just right, meditating on what
Speaker 3: it is, kind of losing my mind, but yeah, yeah, total.
Speaker 2: It.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, yeah, losing your mind in the woods, the
Speaker 1: original drugs. All right, Margaret, we want to talk to
Speaker 1: you about where we're at. A lot of people having
Speaker 1: trouble moving forward, or from the election, you had a
Speaker 1: great substack posts. That was one of the few things
Speaker 1: that I think made us feel hopeful or you know,
Speaker 1: like there are things to be done and that there
Speaker 1: is a way to move forward in time. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna get into that, what fascism, what living under fascism
Speaker 1: might look like, all of that, But first we do
Speaker 1: want to get to know you a little bit better
Speaker 1: by asking you, what is something from your search history
Speaker 1: that's revealing about who you are?
Speaker 3: Okay, I swear this is because of work, but Irish
Speaker 3: Woman who tried to kill Mussolini was a very recent
Speaker 3: search string for me.
Speaker 2: Go on.
Speaker 3: An awful lot of people tried to kill Mussolini. Eventually,
Speaker 3: some partisans succeeded, right, and they hanged them upside down
Speaker 3: and all of that, But.
Speaker 1: I succeeded all at once. Yeah, failed, and then a
Speaker 1: lot of people.
Speaker 2: Succeed Hey, get your licks in on the street.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: The first person actually tried was this anarchist who immediately
Speaker 3: snitched out and became a fascist. And then like his
Speaker 3: like friends were like, hey, go kill Mussolini. He was
Speaker 3: like totally and then he went over and was like,
Speaker 3: they told me to kill you and what do I get?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: But then there was this Irish woman named Violet Gibson,
Speaker 3: who I don't know enough about yet. I haven't finished
Speaker 3: in the episode that I'm going to write about all
Speaker 3: of the people who tried to kill me Mussolini, which
Speaker 3: of course is coming up for no reason at all.
Speaker 2: Right, He does Mussolini have like the record for most
Speaker 2: attempted hits in terms of being like a dictator?
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know. I mean I can point to
Speaker 3: four off the top of my head, right. One of
Speaker 3: him was like a fifteen year old m But I
Speaker 3: like this woman who shot him in the nose because
Speaker 3: everyone was like she was crazy and she might have
Speaker 3: actually just been crazy. I'm not sure yet Violet Gibson,
Speaker 3: but she she shot him in the nose and then
Speaker 3: it like grazed his nose and then tried to shoot again,
Speaker 3: but the gun jammed.
Speaker 1: Ah wow, a grazing of a single facial append whatever
Speaker 1: those things are called, the things hanging off our faces?
Speaker 1: And he yes, again unheard of. Where do you come
Speaker 1: up with this stuff?
Speaker 2: Lightly graized? Yes?
Speaker 3: And it's funny because that this actually turned everyone. This
Speaker 3: Mussolini was able to use this to like consolidate a
Speaker 3: lot of power. I think this is what Trump was
Speaker 3: hoping would happen, and then it just didn't. I mean
Speaker 3: he won the election clearly, right right right, but no
Speaker 3: one was like it dropped out of the news cycle
Speaker 3: like and like we felt well.
Speaker 2: I think that was a lot of people's reactions were like,
Speaker 2: holy shit, the way he's going to use this, And
Speaker 2: then most people are like Joe Biden dropped out? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: or not even based on the Google search is maybe
Speaker 2: not everyone knew that so debatable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Irish having a moment, But first we talked
Speaker 1: before the election about how the Irish model of politics
Speaker 1: post the Trebles is one that we should look to,
Speaker 1: especially with regards to local politics, proportional representation, that to
Speaker 1: go through the troubles, to get still to go through
Speaker 1: the troubles. And speaking of which, there's a new Hulu
Speaker 1: show about the Travels that is apparently very good. Some
Speaker 1: of the worst billboard advertising I've seen because they have
Speaker 1: a woman's face and then the same woman's face but
Speaker 1: she has like a black I think it's like a balaclava,
Speaker 1: but it looks like she's dressed as a ninja and
Speaker 1: it just I think it's called don't speak or say
Speaker 1: nothing is the show?
Speaker 2: But the the.
Speaker 1: Image had me confused. I was like, ah, yes, the silence.
Speaker 2: You know something ignorant dudes like do finally a white
Speaker 2: ninja show?
Speaker 3: White women get to be ninjas?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Or the other verse like great a woke white woman
Speaker 2: ninja series. Everything except understanding what it's about.
Speaker 1: That's supposed to be good Say nothing the sequel to
Speaker 1: say anything? It is not, apparently, Margaret, what is something
Speaker 1: you think is underrated?
Speaker 3: I think underrated is organizing with your friends and community
Speaker 3: assemblies of any scale, getting together with people and talking
Speaker 3: about the problems you're facing and figuring out how to
Speaker 3: deal with them together. People do it all over the world,
Speaker 3: both instinctively and in an organized fashion, and it never
Speaker 3: gets talked about, right.
Speaker 2: I feel like there's a like a lot of this
Speaker 2: stuff online will be like how do you like, how
Speaker 2: do you organize? Like hang out with your friends? And
Speaker 2: I feel like to just be like hang out with
Speaker 2: your friends, but also like to your point, it's not
Speaker 2: merely that. It's to collectively understand what you're up against
Speaker 2: and just and then articulate something with then do some
Speaker 2: kind of analysis with your friends.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like get a whiteboard and then be like, what
Speaker 3: is the problem, What are the things that can be
Speaker 3: used to solve the problem? How do you get those things?
Speaker 2: Sure? Sure? Sure? Yeah? Yeah? Do you think that's like
Speaker 2: an intentional thing? Like how organizing is sort of obscured
Speaker 2: or made to be more digestible in a way that
Speaker 2: is I don't know, like leaves out the real details,
Speaker 2: because I feel like sometimes it the impression i'd get
Speaker 2: on the internet is people it's been like and you
Speaker 2: just hang out with people, and I do get I
Speaker 2: mean understanding like building community like that is obviously one
Speaker 2: aspect of it. But is that truly doing the kind
Speaker 2: of like work you're describing.
Speaker 3: That's a really interesting question because it is the step one, right,
Speaker 3: is get people to actually go meet up with each other.
Speaker 3: But the really important step, too is the outline your
Speaker 3: problems and how you want to deal with it, right,
Speaker 3: And leaving that out does seem like a dereliction of duty.
Speaker 3: And I wonder whether it's because a lot of the
Speaker 3: people writing about it, because writing is a different job
Speaker 3: than organizing, and I write about organizing and I used
Speaker 3: to do a lot of organizing, right, But I don't
Speaker 3: do a lot of organizing anymore. I do a lot
Speaker 3: of writing, so like maybe it's coming from there. More
Speaker 3: people are like, it's the question mark question mark, profit
Speaker 3: it part of the problem, right, But they're actually a
Speaker 3: ton of like books and resources about the question mark
Speaker 3: question mark of community organizing and they just don't get
Speaker 3: they don't fit as well into your little Instagram slideshow
Speaker 3: or whatever.
Speaker 1: Right, right, right, sure, Yeah. The most insidious portrayal I've
Speaker 1: seen of organizing is bringing this up a lot because
Speaker 1: I'm old as fuck. Forrest Gump where where he goes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the scene where he goes to Washington, d C. During
Speaker 1: a protest and they just put him in a line
Speaker 1: and they like all march around from place to place
Speaker 1: like aimlessly, and like the idea is like they're just
Speaker 1: organizing for the sake of following a leader, and everyone's
Speaker 1: like performatively angry, but nothing is actually happening. And I
Speaker 1: do think, yeah, I do think that the portrayal of
Speaker 1: organizing in American mass media is specific designed. Like PCU
Speaker 1: is another example of that, where it's just like these
Speaker 1: people don't actually believe in what they're saying. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: just doing all this hard work because it makes them
Speaker 1: feel superior and cooler than you.
Speaker 3: Which is what people tell themselves to get themselves off
Speaker 3: the hook for not doing something that they think maybe
Speaker 3: they should. And you could just not organize. You don't
Speaker 3: have to, Yeah you could, but yeah, like if you
Speaker 3: feel like morally you should and they're and you're not,
Speaker 3: so then you just turn around and be like, oh,
Speaker 3: well those people are all posers.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: When's when's uh yeah, when's Ron Howard making a movie
Speaker 2: about stokely Carmichael. I think that's gonna come out.
Speaker 1: I mean that was Robert Zemeckis Forrest Gump. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: much just.
Speaker 2: You know, but it feels like one of those things
Speaker 2: that they're like, this could be a great story to
Speaker 2: tell and will take out all the teeth from it.
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah.
Speaker 3: What is something, Margaret that you think is overrated? I
Speaker 3: think party politics are overrated?
Speaker 2: I think you want Trump to win?
Speaker 3: Huh yeah, no, yeah exactly, like, yeah, it's overrated. Not
Speaker 3: refuse to ever deal with or in knowledge, but yeah,
Speaker 3: that attitude that you're talking about a butt. As soon
Speaker 3: as the election is over, people are like, well, we
Speaker 3: tried and we lost, so now we're done and we'll
Speaker 3: just have to accept and wait for the next tournament
Speaker 3: in four years. Like that's not what the world.
Speaker 2: Is, right, that's how sports works. And maybe that's the
Speaker 2: things like, well, we dust ourselves off and we'll get
Speaker 2: them next time. It's like, yeah, there's that whole in
Speaker 2: between part we need to think about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, like the part so you vote, your side loses,
Speaker 1: and then you get the t shirt that says, don't
Speaker 1: don't blame me, I voted for her, and that's that's
Speaker 1: the second step, right, Yeah, yeah, I think you.
Speaker 4: Wear that And well, yeah, alright, let's take a quick
Speaker 4: break and we'll come back and talk about the reaction
Speaker 4: the election and just generally where do we go from here.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back and we're back, We're back, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think a lot of people are
Speaker 1: having trouble dealing with the aftermath of the election, the loss,
Speaker 1: the resounding defeat of the Democratic Party. To your point
Speaker 1: about big party politics. I think people are like, well,
Speaker 1: what do we.
Speaker 2: Blewing on?
Speaker 1: Should we just like join bluing on and say the
Speaker 1: election was stolen?
Speaker 2: Startling?
Speaker 1: What do we do from here?
Speaker 2: I think? Yeah, yeah, I mean like for me personally,
Speaker 2: I think my first reaction was like, oh, fuck, bro,
Speaker 2: they're going to do the thing. They won and they're
Speaker 2: going to do the thing. And I think as people
Speaker 2: process with the future, sure will bring it's important to
Speaker 2: like grieve and just sort of like process what's happening.
Speaker 2: But then also we have to begin to sort of
Speaker 2: turn a page on some level. But I'm curious, Margaret,
Speaker 2: just from like what you've seen, did anything strike you
Speaker 2: in terms of how people have reacted to the election.
Speaker 3: I think that there's a lot of people to almost
Speaker 3: don't know how to feel. Like obviously in certain communities
Speaker 3: you're like, well, this directly affects me immediately. I have
Speaker 3: friends who are running around trying to get their gender
Speaker 3: markers to match what they look like or what they
Speaker 3: want to look like. By the time then you know,
Speaker 3: the whole thing's over, and like you know, are people
Speaker 3: who are like running out trying to get their tubes
Speaker 3: tied and stuff right, and like just trying to get
Speaker 3: all of the healthcare that they might not be able
Speaker 3: to get. Sure, but I think that there's this kind
Speaker 3: of people aren't sure whether we're just looking at there's
Speaker 3: like this like more radical than now cynicism where you're like, oh,
Speaker 3: it's going to be twenty sixteen again, and we survived
Speaker 3: it last time, which isn't entirely true, but most people did,
Speaker 3: you know, and so we'll survive it again and it'll
Speaker 3: just be the same. And everyone who's saying Trump is
Speaker 3: that much worse, is you know, giving into it, is
Speaker 3: not successfully critical enough of America as an evil empire
Speaker 3: or whatever, right, And then there's the people who are like, well,
Speaker 3: Trump two point zero might be hitler and I mean
Speaker 3: the whole spectrum as possible, and that's what's so terrifying, right,
Speaker 3: And we don't know, and so I feel like it's
Speaker 3: going to be like halfway between the two. But that's
Speaker 3: the main thing I'm seeing is people are kind of
Speaker 3: sorting themselves into the sky is falling, it's over right, right,
Speaker 3: get the hell out, we gotta go. And then there's
Speaker 3: the like, what are you panicking about? It'll just be
Speaker 3: the same thing as always, you know.
Speaker 2: Look, it's a bunch of stupid people he's appointing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, they'll be ineffective and we're good here. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: either way, as long as I don't have to do
Speaker 1: anything I'm good with either of these potential theories.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, It's exactly that. It's the well, I'm no,
Speaker 3: it's ways for our brain to trick us in a
Speaker 3: no feeling obliged to take action.
Speaker 2: Right right. Yeah. I think that's the thing that I
Speaker 2: think a lot of people, I think for me personally,
Speaker 2: like when you looked at the binary between Harris and Trump,
Speaker 2: you're like, well, Harris allows us to kick the can
Speaker 2: down the road for just a little bit longer. It'll
Speaker 2: still be grinding people down to dust, but it won't
Speaker 2: be as on the same sort of trajectory as a
Speaker 2: Trump presidency would. And I think that is one of
Speaker 2: the like, to your point, it is one of those things.
Speaker 2: Now it's like, there's no way at this point having
Speaker 2: you know, an articulated project twenty twenty five or what
Speaker 2: their goals are and who he's putting into positions of power.
Speaker 2: It does feel like, yeah, there's really no space to
Speaker 2: just be like, I don't know, like, can I be
Speaker 2: passive at this point and expect everything to go okay?
Speaker 2: Because I don't think the examples in history are sort
Speaker 2: of demonstrate that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they're not kind to the people who are
Speaker 3: passive during the rise of fascism in their country, right right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think people who get their worldview from the mainstream media.
Speaker 1: You know, for a long time, I think this was
Speaker 1: you know, this was me have a hard time imagining
Speaker 1: where to go from here because the world in your
Speaker 1: substack post, which is really good. Everybody should go check
Speaker 1: it out.
Speaker 2: Youta dot com.
Speaker 1: There you go. You you quote this crime Think article
Speaker 1: that says a Trump victory means that all the institutions
Speaker 1: that centrists have counted on to protect them electoral politics,
Speaker 1: the court system, the police, ordinary citizens inclination to obey
Speaker 1: the law and respect the authorities are now weapons in
Speaker 1: the hands of their enemies, which I think is just
Speaker 1: it's such a radical shift for And by the way,
Speaker 1: you don't quote that part, but when I went to
Speaker 1: the article you linked off to, that was something that
Speaker 1: jumped out to me as like kind of summarizing what
Speaker 1: is so different for from like where we were in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, and how people could like get on board
Speaker 1: with all, right, well, we're going to root for a
Speaker 1: good guy at the FBI to counterbalance Trump, and now
Speaker 1: it feels like, no, the they've captured kind of all
Speaker 1: of that. This needs to be kind of coming from
Speaker 1: a different what's next needs to look a lot different
Speaker 1: than cheering for a Robert Muller investigation and like, you know,
Speaker 1: checking for hourly updates on MSNBC of the various things
Speaker 1: that Trump is doing that are wrong and violating norms.
Speaker 1: And I think people sense that because nobody's watching MSNBC anymore.
Speaker 1: But I think they're trying to figure out, like, where
Speaker 1: where do we go now?
Speaker 3: I mean, I think you're right. I think it's that
Speaker 3: they are absolutely positioning themselves to take all of the
Speaker 3: different chunks of the state and apply it towards a
Speaker 3: potentially fascist end. Like the de wocification of the military
Speaker 3: that they're talking about doing, right, you know, is right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: which it creates an interesting situation and I want to
Speaker 3: use interesting to not say good, But it creates an
Speaker 3: interesting situation where you're now going to probably have a
Speaker 3: bunch of like generals and like a pretty large chunk
Speaker 3: of the most powerful military in the world suddenly kicked
Speaker 3: out of the most powerful military in the world. And right,
Speaker 3: that's complicated.
Speaker 1: That has historically not gone that well for the people
Speaker 1: who kick them out. Right, Yeah, the country in which
Speaker 1: they get kicked.
Speaker 3: Out, and yeah, and and have the institution of power,
Speaker 3: like the the different parts of the state potentially being
Speaker 3: in conflict with each other. Like actually, or rather in
Speaker 3: this case, if you have the capture of the entire state,
Speaker 3: instead of having this sort of like oh, the FBI
Speaker 3: is like a little bit investigating Trump or whatever, It's like, well,
Speaker 3: now if I don't know if Trump runs all of it,
Speaker 3: I don't know where I'm going with this.
Speaker 2: I maybe the DOJ will. Yeah, I mean, they can
Speaker 2: definitely do a lot to not tell them to be like, no,
Speaker 2: we're not looking into that. Yeah, pretend to like they
Speaker 2: did with Brett Kavanaugh. Yeah, when he was like on
Speaker 2: his way to confirmation.
Speaker 3: And if anything that goes to the Supreme Court is
Speaker 3: just not we're just screwed on, you know, right. But yeah,
Speaker 3: but it puts us in a situation where it's like, Okay,
Speaker 3: well we have to we can no longer count on
Speaker 3: daddy state to save us, right, because you can still
Speaker 3: look at the fact that actual progressive values are massively
Speaker 3: popular in this country, even in the deepest red states.
Speaker 3: You know, people are going like fifty seven sixty percent
Speaker 3: on abortion rights, and you know, we're getting like Muslim
Speaker 3: and trans and like a lot of different people are
Speaker 3: like winning these local elections, even in these areas that
Speaker 3: didn't go for for Harris, you know, and and so
Speaker 3: the people we shouldn't give up on yet, you know,
Speaker 3: we just need methods by which to organize ourselves to
Speaker 3: counter the stuff that's happening.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that was another sort of immediate election
Speaker 1: response that I was actually at least happening in my brain,
Speaker 1: where you're just like being in public and just being like,
Speaker 1: like fifty over half of these people are you know,
Speaker 1: over And that first of all isn't a safe assumption
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, but also just yeah, I feel like
Speaker 1: people are a lot of the values that are important
Speaker 1: to me are important to a lot of Americans and
Speaker 1: have been like demonstrably so. But that there are all
Speaker 1: sorts of reasons that we've talked about that people voted
Speaker 1: for Trump. None of them good, but I don't think
Speaker 1: all of them are. Just there are half the people
Speaker 1: I see on a daily basis are evil, and I
Speaker 1: should be afraid of them. It is probably not the
Speaker 1: way to move forward through time.
Speaker 2: Like I just I think the other thing that is
Speaker 2: affecting people a lot. Is just like when you look
Speaker 2: at the media right now, especially in this last week,
Speaker 2: it just feels like the capitulation is just it's on
Speaker 2: right now, you know, it's bend the knee fest at
Speaker 2: mar A Lago. Like on MSNBC on Monday morning, Joe
Speaker 2: Scarborough and Meeker Brazinski, they're like, so, we went to
Speaker 2: mar A Lago to speak with President elect Trump, just
Speaker 2: to begin to restart our lines of communication, but it
Speaker 2: totally read as this sort of thing like, hey, viewers,
Speaker 2: we should just lay down and die and be nice
Speaker 2: to them because we don't know what the fuck they're thinking.
Speaker 2: And I think it's really hard to watch sort of
Speaker 2: the Fourth Estate like erode even further in real time
Speaker 2: like this, and that's very disorienting. But it just feels
Speaker 2: like at the moment, you're just getting a lot of
Speaker 2: stories that creates this feeling that this impending experiment with
Speaker 2: fascism should just be accepted. And I think that's kind
Speaker 2: of like this fork in the road that we're at.
Speaker 2: There's the version where people like, so should I just
Speaker 2: watch it but be internally upset by everything I'm seeing?
Speaker 2: Or is there also a path where I'm I can
Speaker 2: do something that invigorates me. And I think that's kind
Speaker 2: of I feel like most people, I think, for us
Speaker 2: to really resist this with any kind of intention and effectiveness,
Speaker 2: we have to take the path where we begin to
Speaker 2: prepare ourselves for action. Doesn't mean you're brawling in the streets,
Speaker 2: but that politics and the direction that the country's going
Speaker 2: isn't just merely a thing that we're going to watch
Speaker 2: just completely burn up in flames. That there is some
Speaker 2: you know, like you said in your substack posts, that
Speaker 2: we need to sort of get in touch with our agency.
Speaker 2: What how do you like? So is it good to
Speaker 2: look at it as this sort of like forking off,
Speaker 2: Like there's a version of what this administration looks like
Speaker 2: if we all just say, oh my god, it's over,
Speaker 2: it's cooked, We're cooked, and there what's And then there's
Speaker 2: the version where we can at least get a little
Speaker 2: bit more in touch with what we're able to do
Speaker 2: as people collectively.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, and I think that I think that
Speaker 3: the fork in the road is accurate. And there's also
Speaker 3: like wild Pie and the Sky dreams are worth articulating
Speaker 3: and fighting for. You know, there is a version of
Speaker 3: this where okay, the pie in the sky dream is
Speaker 3: not what I'm about to say, but there's a version
Speaker 3: of this where he crashes the US economy right where
Speaker 3: tariffs just destroy the US economy and therefore the world
Speaker 3: economy and so like, that would be bad. But if
Speaker 3: we are able to articulate, like our wild pie and
Speaker 3: the sky dreams about what we can do during crisis,
Speaker 3: we will be better positioned to do that. And so I,
Speaker 3: like I went and did only for a couple of days,
Speaker 3: but I went immediately after Hurricane Helene to Asheville, North Carolina,
Speaker 3: because that's where I lived for a long time, and
Speaker 3: my friends needed some of the stuff I had, and
Speaker 3: I went to go drive supplies around everywhere, you know,
Speaker 3: And in the middle of the worst disaster that that
Speaker 3: area has faced in recorded history, I saw people just
Speaker 3: building amazing communities and mutual aid and a lot of
Speaker 3: people including not just like the anarchists and the socialists
Speaker 3: and the you know, lefty Christians and stuff like this,
Speaker 3: not just the people who normally say this stuff. Everyone
Speaker 3: is like, well, what if we just live this way?
Speaker 3: What if we just take care of each other?
Speaker 1: You know, And.
Speaker 3: That is not what's likely to happen in North Carolina
Speaker 3: in the immediate future, right, But some of those systems
Speaker 3: have now been deepened, And so I think that getting
Speaker 3: ready to fight for some of the immediate problems that
Speaker 3: are likely to come up with the Trump presidency also
Speaker 3: positions us really well to articulate what we really want,
Speaker 3: and if the opportunity for those things occurs, to positioners
Speaker 3: ourselves well to try and fight to get it. And
Speaker 3: I think that, for example, I would say, off the
Speaker 3: top of my head or not the top of my head,
Speaker 3: the thing I've been thinking about for a couple of
Speaker 3: weeks is probably the most clear and important organizing that
Speaker 3: needs to happen on a mass level is to fight
Speaker 3: the mass deportation.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: I know that like trans people and migrants are the
Speaker 3: two groups that are likely to become after to come
Speaker 3: after that, the state is likely to come after the
Speaker 3: most in a Trump presidency. And I don't mean to
Speaker 3: put down the importance of trans organizing, but it just numerically,
Speaker 3: I think organizing to protect migrants is the most important whatever, right,
Speaker 3: And I think that we can do that, and I
Speaker 3: think that we can do that, and we can build
Speaker 3: a movement around that that is like heterogeneous and not
Speaker 3: just one voice, one name, one tactic, one group, Right,
Speaker 3: I think that we can have multiple groups working in coordination.
Speaker 3: I think it's the most effective method anyway. And I
Speaker 3: think that if we do that, we can really start
Speaker 3: looking at saying like, well, what if, like we can
Speaker 3: take care of each other. And since we can take
Speaker 3: care of each other, why do we need to listen
Speaker 3: to you know, this increasingly fascist state in the first place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a really good point.
Speaker 2: So, like, because I think for a lot of people
Speaker 2: who I think listening to this show, people have like
Speaker 2: varying degrees of involvement and activism, But I think most
Speaker 2: people that listen to this show are deeply disturbed by
Speaker 2: what a Trump presidency can bring. And I mean, if
Speaker 2: they're they're still listening at this point, are pretty much
Speaker 2: bought in on the fact that we really all have
Speaker 2: to look after each other in order for any like
Speaker 2: for this kind of collective sort of mutual aid or
Speaker 2: action to work. What for for people who are dipping
Speaker 2: their toe into this for the first time, what do
Speaker 2: you say to them to sort of begin to say, look,
Speaker 2: I get it. For the most part, you've probably not
Speaker 2: had you've been able to be on the sidelines and
Speaker 2: just observe what's happening. Maybe you've donated, maybe you've gone
Speaker 2: to a march or two, But here is the work
Speaker 2: that we can all be thinking about without you know,
Speaker 2: to understand that it's incremental or however deep you want
Speaker 2: to jump in. But what do you think is like
Speaker 2: a first step, just mentally for someone to take to say, Okay,
Speaker 2: there are some things we're going to have to resist.
Speaker 2: I do care about my community. What do I do now?
Speaker 2: What's my frame of mind I need to enter and
Speaker 2: think about the actions I can take That sort of
Speaker 2: help take that first step down that road.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think one thing to do is, both personally
Speaker 3: and with your groups of friends, think about what kind
Speaker 3: of actions you're willing to take, what kind of risks
Speaker 3: you're willing to take, and also who you're willing to
Speaker 3: support who might be taking further risks than you, And
Speaker 3: then also think about what you're good at or what
Speaker 3: you would like to be good at, and then how
Speaker 3: to apply it to those things. So, for example, if
Speaker 3: you get together differends and you could say, look, none
Speaker 3: of us have any protest experience, but Honestly, if someone
Speaker 3: who's helping organize tells us where to stand in front
Speaker 3: of buses, we will go stand in front of buses
Speaker 3: to keep them from taking migrants out.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: This is a tactic that has been used effectively in
Speaker 3: the United States before. Right, And maybe that's a level
Speaker 3: of risk you're willing to take, but maybe it's not
Speaker 3: a level of risk you're willing to take. And in
Speaker 3: which case you're like, well, I'm I'm the sole provider
Speaker 3: for my family, or I have panic attacks, or you know,
Speaker 3: whatever it is, Right, you could also say, well, who
Speaker 3: do I know who is willing to take those risks?
Speaker 3: What kind of support work do they need?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: What kind of do they need? You know, are there
Speaker 3: legal support lines that will crop up? Because one of
Speaker 3: the things is during crisis, opportunity arises, and that also
Speaker 3: includes opportunities to get involved. So if you're kind of
Speaker 3: preparing yourself to be ready and then you start seeing
Speaker 3: these groups that start doing a thing, well, then you
Speaker 3: can start saying like, oh, okay, I am prepared to
Speaker 3: go sit by a phone and bail people out of jail. Right,
Speaker 3: that is a level that I am willing to do. Right,
Speaker 3: And then when something comes up, you can reach out
Speaker 3: to that group and say, hey, I'm willing to do this.
Speaker 3: The other thing you can do is you can reach
Speaker 3: out proactively to anywhere that you live the groups that
Speaker 3: help migrants in those areas, because those are likely to
Speaker 3: be the sort of nukeli of larger coalitions or organizations
Speaker 3: that are.
Speaker 1: Likely to come up.
Speaker 3: And then you could also start something. If you don't
Speaker 3: find something in your area that like matches your vibe,
Speaker 3: you can start something and then be in communication with
Speaker 3: those groups. And maybe you start with something that like, well,
Speaker 3: then maybe there aren't any buses to block yet because
Speaker 3: of where you live, right, you probably shouldn't go around
Speaker 3: and like compile lists of all the undocumented people in
Speaker 3: your area. That's probably a bad idea, right, you know.
Speaker 2: Just to support you, can I get your name? Yeah
Speaker 2: and you live here? Yea great? Great?
Speaker 1: Great?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: But yeah, so I think that reaching out to groups
Speaker 3: that are already doing it and or forming like there's
Speaker 3: a there's a concept called the ffinity group, which is
Speaker 3: as the sort of cell level of a decentralized movement.
Speaker 3: It's the like group of three to seven people or
Speaker 3: twenty people whatever.
Speaker 1: I don't care you.
Speaker 3: Know that all have each other's backs really deeply. And
Speaker 3: that doesn't mean that everyone's necessarily going to go out
Speaker 3: in the streets, but they are. But they're the people
Speaker 3: that you're going to organize with to get involved in
Speaker 3: other things. And this maximizes your ability to come at
Speaker 3: those to join those groups with agency. It also helps
Speaker 3: prevent you from there's this kind of thing that you
Speaker 3: should be careful when you're new at activism, especially direct
Speaker 3: action activism like blocking buses or something right where some
Speaker 3: of the cynical older organizers are going to be like, oh,
Speaker 3: you're young and impressionistic. Why don't you take all the risk,
Speaker 3: you know, right? And that's like not great, right, And
Speaker 3: so the more that you think about this ahead of time,
Speaker 3: the more you can go into a meeting and being like,
Speaker 3: I won't get peer pressured into the following action because
Speaker 3: I know ahead of time that I'm not willing to
Speaker 3: do that right now. Maybe three actions down from now,
Speaker 3: you decide you aren't willing to go get arrested, you know, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's uh let's take a quick break. We'll come
Speaker 1: back and we'll keep talking about specific things we can
Speaker 1: do and uh, other other aspects of your posts that
Speaker 1: are giving us hope We'll be right back, and we're back.
Speaker 1: You have this sentence about kind of a psychological dynamic
Speaker 1: that I've found to be true that I thought was
Speaker 1: really important that you write. A therapist friend of mine
Speaker 1: reiterates to me all the time that acting with agency
Speaker 1: is the primary way to avoid being traumatized but by
Speaker 1: negative experiences. This is this is a big thing in
Speaker 1: recovery from like addiction. There's like the serenity prayer that
Speaker 1: I think everybody has heard, where it asks for the
Speaker 1: courage to change the things you have power over. But
Speaker 1: I've had somebody who I've worked with pointed out it's
Speaker 1: actually like the reverse.
Speaker 2: A lot of the.
Speaker 1: Time, you change the things that need to be changed,
Speaker 1: and the courage comes from that. But you need you
Speaker 1: need that first action to build on and hopefully it's
Speaker 1: not an action that kind of meets with Yeah, like
Speaker 1: you were saying, like manipulation or shame or dismissiveness. So
Speaker 1: I like that so far, you've been kind of emphasizing
Speaker 1: building with people you know and trust to begin with,
Speaker 1: and then like plugging into existing existing groups. But yeah,
Speaker 1: doing so kind of in a in a well informed way. Yeah, yeah, anyways,
Speaker 1: I thought that was cool where you also talk about
Speaker 1: this need to de escalate conflict that isn't with the enemy.
Speaker 1: And one thing that's come up a few times in
Speaker 1: the aftermath of the election for me is this idea
Speaker 1: that I feel like we need to really in some
Speaker 1: political way that feels real, like target the mainstream Democratic
Speaker 1: Party and it like more specifically like not allow them
Speaker 1: to do the thing they do with activism. That is, basically,
Speaker 1: any anything that you are doing that doesn't like fall
Speaker 1: within the realm of like neoliberalism is actually unrealistic and
Speaker 1: childish basically. But I guess I'm curious when you say
Speaker 1: de escalate conflict that isn't with the enemy, like who
Speaker 1: is the enemy? Are you deciding that kind of person
Speaker 1: by person and just or group by group, or how
Speaker 1: are you thinking about that?
Speaker 3: I make that decision conflict by conflict. If I find
Speaker 3: myself like kind of in a conflict, I have to
Speaker 3: think to myself, like, is this person my enemy? And
Speaker 3: sometimes even if they're like ideologically the same as me,
Speaker 3: in surface ways, they might be my enemy, right if
Speaker 3: someone is trying to hurt me or my friends, Right,
Speaker 3: you know, But then even then I'm kind of like,
Speaker 3: on the other hand, I've successfully de escalated conflicts with
Speaker 3: people who are trying to hurt me physically, you know,
Speaker 3: and that is a better solution to that problem, right
Speaker 3: than if I had like beat them up or gotten
Speaker 3: beaten up. Right. But I do think that I can't
Speaker 3: dictate for other people what counts as the enemy as
Speaker 3: much as like say, if you are in a conflict,
Speaker 3: just really saying yourself, is this person actually my enemy?
Speaker 3: And most of the time they're not. And it is
Speaker 3: interesting to me because overall people, individual people are unlikely
Speaker 3: to be my enemy. There are individuals like just fascists, right,
Speaker 3: people who are like, I'm a fascist. I like fascism, right,
Speaker 3: But if they stop being fascists, they probably stop being
Speaker 3: my enemy. And I think we need to have like
Speaker 3: an off road for people to leave hate groups and
Speaker 3: things like that. But there's also I live in like
Speaker 3: a center, right the I live in West Virginia. There
Speaker 3: is not a county in West Virginia that went for Harris,
Speaker 3: which is depressing because West Virginia exists because it's the
Speaker 3: part of Virginia that didn't want to die over slavery right,
Speaker 3: and you know, actually died on the other side, like
Speaker 3: fighting against slavery. But it is what it is. It
Speaker 3: is now a center right state or a deep right state,
Speaker 3: depending on where you're at.
Speaker 1: But I don't believe.
Speaker 3: I don't conceive of my neighbors as my enemies, and
Speaker 3: I'm grateful that they do not appear to conceive of
Speaker 3: me as their enemy either, right, But the Republican Party
Speaker 3: is my enemy, and yeah, frankly, the Democratic Party is
Speaker 3: also my enemy, at least structurally. I believe that the
Speaker 3: Democratic Party exists to co opt protest energy and like
Speaker 3: movement energy and turn it into this thing that has
Speaker 3: never proven once that it can shift things to the left.
Speaker 3: All it can do is slow, not even stop slow
Speaker 3: right word creep right, right right. And so they are
Speaker 3: doing the work that I oppose, and I want to
Speaker 3: oppose it, and so I'm going to organize to oppose it.
Speaker 3: And I I have enemies on the left. I specifically
Speaker 3: strongly disagree with authoritarian like communist tendencies and not the problem.
Speaker 3: My problem here isn't the word communism. The problem here
Speaker 3: for me is the word authoritarian like I And I'm
Speaker 3: not trying to tell anyone in the crowd what to think.
Speaker 3: But I like, I am opposed to people trying to
Speaker 3: advocate for a totalitarian society, regardless of what it's.
Speaker 1: Called, you know.
Speaker 3: And but but then the people who are necessarily sometimes
Speaker 3: the people who are arguing for that are could be
Speaker 3: fellow travelers, and they've just been convinced that there's this
Speaker 3: strategy that will magically work that has never worked, you know.
Speaker 3: And and so enemy is weird. It is weird to
Speaker 3: have enemies. But I also don't want to be like
Speaker 3: there is no enemy. We're all friends, right, sometimes.
Speaker 2: Hug everyone Thanksgiving?
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, like.
Speaker 3: You were saying earlier, like hey, it doesn't necessarily mean
Speaker 3: rumble in the streets, but like sometimes it does, right,
Speaker 3: And like maybe you don't want to go rumble in
Speaker 3: the streets, dear listener, but you should support the people
Speaker 3: who beat up fascist in the streets, because overall, fascism
Speaker 3: is a coward's ideology. And once they get beat up
Speaker 3: in the streets, they stop coming into the streets, and
Speaker 3: then they stop building successful movement. That is not the
Speaker 3: only or the most effective strategy with which to confront them.
Speaker 3: But the people who go and fight them are my friends?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: Right yeah, I'm like, because right now I think you're
Speaker 2: we're beginning to see a lot of misidentifying of quote
Speaker 2: unquote enemies yea, because you know, because the Democratic Party
Speaker 2: is in total free fall and you have people who
Speaker 2: were on the verge of like sort of seeing the
Speaker 2: light about being like this party is actually truly ineffective,
Speaker 2: and it just feels it's the really good at empty
Speaker 2: promises and co opting that. Like twenty twenty, it was
Speaker 2: like we need to do something about the police, and
Speaker 2: then Joe Biden's like we should just be a little
Speaker 2: bit nicer to them. You're like, wait, what the fuck?
Speaker 2: And they're like this just makes your head spin. And
Speaker 2: then there's this version too where you see a lot
Speaker 2: of people who are now from like the you know,
Speaker 2: sort of establishment side of the party, people who are
Speaker 2: like blue no matter who types. Immediately now going after again,
Speaker 2: we're seeing like the woke is broke, like why was there,
Speaker 2: why were we trying? Why are we bothering to protect
Speaker 2: vulnerable people like the trans community or what or the
Speaker 2: people who are like, hey, Arab voters. I hope you're
Speaker 2: happy now because look who Trump just appointed yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: and that's where I'm seeing, like, that's that's a that's
Speaker 2: gonna be a huge setback for sort of like bring
Speaker 2: like creating a larger coalition. But the way those people
Speaker 2: speak at the moment, they're not ready. I think for
Speaker 2: the bigger picture, they are still very much hyper focused
Speaker 2: on the pain of the election loss and are just
Speaker 2: trying to be like it wasn't because of the policies,
Speaker 2: it's because of them. Don't ask me to interrogate what
Speaker 2: the policies are, because I'm not I'm just not interested
Speaker 2: in that conversation.
Speaker 1: What how do you like?
Speaker 2: I guess historically when you see like sort of a
Speaker 2: party that was in power, seemed like it was quote
Speaker 2: unquote doing the right things, then collapsed to sort of
Speaker 2: like usher in fascism, what happens to like the scraps
Speaker 2: of like the people that were supporting that party, And
Speaker 2: like how important is it for to find to remind
Speaker 2: people of like what the larger issue is because more
Speaker 2: people you see more people people blaming than system blaming. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And I think that's what's interesting is like the needles
Speaker 2: definitely a lot of people, plenty of people are blaming
Speaker 2: the system but it feels like more people are blaming
Speaker 2: other people at the moment.
Speaker 3: I think that's a really important point, that people are
Speaker 3: blaming people instead of systems. And I think overall we
Speaker 3: need to try and be doing like coalition building and
Speaker 3: stuff with people who are looking to do coalition building,
Speaker 3: who are looking to find to work pluralistically, like to
Speaker 3: you have this kind of a tolerance paradox. You know
Speaker 3: that if you tolerate intolerance, then you lose your tolerance
Speaker 3: or whatever, right, And I think that that's the same
Speaker 3: is true for like working logically put pluralistically, where there
Speaker 3: are so many people that we can work with who
Speaker 3: have no problem not trying to dominate the movement and
Speaker 3: tell everyone what to do. You know, in an activist
Speaker 3: spaces we see this really easily, where like the average
Speaker 3: church group isn't trying to convert you, you know, if
Speaker 3: they're if they're activists, if they're Christian nationalists, they're trying
Speaker 3: to convert or kill you, right, But the average like
Speaker 3: we're the Catholics of the Protestants who bring food to
Speaker 3: the border and give it away, Like those people aren't
Speaker 3: trying to like save your soul. They're just trying to
Speaker 3: feed you and because they understand those as related, you know,
Speaker 3: or in their own theological understandings, and so you can
Speaker 3: work in coalition, you could, they would work with like
Speaker 3: Satanists for feeding migrants, right, And and so it's I know,
Speaker 3: I'm kind of only going with half of what you
Speaker 3: were saying, and I apologize for that.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no.
Speaker 3: But but then to the other part of your question
Speaker 3: about what happens when totalitarian takes over. One of the
Speaker 3: things that I think that people aren't quite as much
Speaker 3: as like, my goal is to spread hope, but not
Speaker 3: ignorant hope, right. My goal is to we have to
Speaker 3: soberly look at how bad this situation is so that
Speaker 3: we can successfully confront it. And one of the things
Speaker 3: that could happen and has happened a lot, is that
Speaker 3: when totalitarian and totalitarianism comes in, it comes in fast.
Speaker 3: You know, when Hitler came to power, he was arresting
Speaker 3: his enemies of the night he came to power, right,
Speaker 3: And that's not always the case. I actually don't think
Speaker 3: that's going to be the case in the United States.
Speaker 3: That is, I'm still in the United States, you know,
Speaker 3: like making my decisions based on the fact that I
Speaker 3: don't think that Trump is going to come to power
Speaker 3: and then immediately arrest all the leftist podcasters in the
Speaker 3: progressives and whatever. Right, he might criminalize a bunch of stuff,
Speaker 3: and he will make organizing hard, and he will start.
Speaker 3: But on the other hand, there actually are already groups
Speaker 3: he's planning to criminalize and do horrible things too. And
Speaker 3: so it's almost like self important for like for those
Speaker 3: of us who are citizens to like, oh, well, he
Speaker 3: might do the following. He's like, he said, which very
Speaker 3: large group of people he wants to put into camps.
Speaker 1: He doesn't mean it. We've all learned. Yeah, he tells
Speaker 1: us the horrible thing he's about. Oh wait a second, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he always does. He's done it every time. That's right.
Speaker 3: He's actually the most honest politician we've had in this
Speaker 3: country for a very long time. Someone's gonna use that
Speaker 3: out of context. He he tries to hold to his
Speaker 3: campaign promises. Right, they're monsters. He's like, I'm going to
Speaker 3: be a monster, and everyone's like, hooray, He's going to
Speaker 3: be a monster, and then he is so, and then
Speaker 3: of course all of the people who are going to
Speaker 3: go benth and knee and I really like that framing
Speaker 3: of it. I think that's a good framing of it.
Speaker 3: There's no safety in that, like there's no Yeah, there's
Speaker 3: the all of the people who voted for him and
Speaker 3: are like now gonna all of their stuff is going
Speaker 3: to be twice as expensive. You know, it's anyway whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he could kill it on eBay as a seller.
Speaker 3: He just bought a ton of like some Chinese made
Speaker 3: stuff and yeah, just.
Speaker 1: Something something else that you raised that. I think the
Speaker 1: election results should probably have made clear to a lot
Speaker 1: of people. But you're right that moderate reforms are won
Speaker 1: by making radical demands. If you demand moderate reforms, you
Speaker 1: generally get nothing. And it just also it seems like
Speaker 1: the suppressing of the protests helped cause the democratic kind
Speaker 1: of cratering that we just saw. Both the suppressing of
Speaker 1: the pro Palestinian protests on college campuses, but just protests
Speaker 1: in general by the Democratic Party is like something they
Speaker 1: feels like they've been pretty hostile towards and thus it's
Speaker 1: been harder for people on the left to build kind
Speaker 1: of community and sort of the structures that we're talking
Speaker 1: about needing. But give examples of like the two types
Speaker 1: of movements like the radical demands versus like the ones
Speaker 1: that make moderate demands. Yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Could do that.
Speaker 3: But first of your point about the suppressing protests, I
Speaker 3: think the Democratic Party is very good at building off
Speaker 3: of the momentum of protests and from my point of view,
Speaker 3: co opting it. But that's not the only way to
Speaker 3: view it. And so yeah, of course, but then they
Speaker 3: want to be the only adults in the room, so
Speaker 3: when they're in charge, everyone is a bunch of children
Speaker 3: if they protest against them, and so yeah, of course
Speaker 3: it doesn't work. Like I think if they were smarter,
Speaker 3: they would have been like, we too, support free Palestine
Speaker 3: without doing anything. They would have to All they would
Speaker 3: have to do is give lip service, right, And you
Speaker 3: see Biden try to pull this at the last minute,
Speaker 3: being like thirty days and then later being like just kidding,
Speaker 3: I don't care.
Speaker 1: Do whatever you want. Psch. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But in terms of radical and moderate demands, okay, the
Speaker 3: abolition of legal chattel slavery in the United States, it
Speaker 3: the reformist abolition. They tried that for a century or so.
Speaker 3: And the primary argument that they would make is they
Speaker 3: came up with all these like you know, They saw
Speaker 3: it as like very mature and compromising positions where they're like, well,
Speaker 3: what if we slowly buy people out of slavery, Like
Speaker 3: what if we allow you know, we have to of
Speaker 3: course we have to pay back the slave owners, right.
Speaker 3: You know, they of course need to because their property
Speaker 3: has been taken away from them, you know. And there's
Speaker 3: all of these arguments that they made for a very
Speaker 3: long time. And now some of the reforms that they've
Speaker 3: pushed for, I will say actually did accomplish things like
Speaker 3: stopping importation of enslaved people had some impact, but it
Speaker 3: very clearly took a zealot, right, well, it took a
Speaker 3: lot of zalots and a lot of blood to stop
Speaker 3: legal chattel slavery in the United States. It took a
Speaker 3: whole ass war, and it took the demand We're going
Speaker 3: to kill you if you don't stop enslaving people, right.
Speaker 3: That was the demand that made any of this possible.
Speaker 3: And what's funny is that they actually could have the
Speaker 3: South could have at that point probably sued for peace
Speaker 3: in a way that there was like, okay, we accept
Speaker 3: the compromise. Pay us for what we could have, pay
Speaker 3: us for our losses and we'll stop, like that was
Speaker 3: a that was an offer that they that was on
Speaker 3: the table more or less, right, and so they could
Speaker 3: have gotten the moderate thing, but instead they were like
Speaker 3: wanted to go whole hog and got killed.
Speaker 1: And to help with them.
Speaker 3: But another example of this, like gaining moderate things by
Speaker 3: being a radical group is you have the Young Lords,
Speaker 3: which is a Puerto Rican radical movement comparable to the
Speaker 3: Black Panthers in the nineteen sixties and seventies, and they
Speaker 3: were in Chicago and New York City primarily. They're actually
Speaker 3: still around, but they're like sort of heyday, and some
Speaker 3: of the things that they accomplished are really tangible. We
Speaker 3: have the Patient's Bill of Rights. They did a lot
Speaker 3: of healthcare focused work, right. They like took over hospitals
Speaker 3: time and time again, well maybe only twice, I don't remember,
Speaker 3: but they did it a bunch.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: They would like go in carjack X ray vans and
Speaker 3: bring them into neighborhoods like where minorities were living, because
Speaker 3: the x ray vans were only going into these white
Speaker 3: neighborhoods in order to search for tuberculosis and stuff in
Speaker 3: the community.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: And they also got trash pickup in New York City.
Speaker 3: They completely got it overhauled. And it wasn't that they
Speaker 3: formed the coalition of concerned voters who care about trash pickup,
Speaker 3: could you please change the way that trash is picked up.
Speaker 3: They just started collecting all the trash and burning it
Speaker 3: in the streets. And then instead of doing it in
Speaker 3: their own neighborhood, they'd drag it out to like the
Speaker 3: busy intersections where like the rich people had to drive,
Speaker 3: and then they would just throw street parties and burn
Speaker 3: all the trash. And finally the city was like, all right,
Speaker 3: we'll we'll start doing this. What they were fighting for
Speaker 3: was a free Puerto Rico, right, right, And they didn't
Speaker 3: get that right, but by trying to get that, they
Speaker 3: got an awful lot, and they got stuff that people
Speaker 3: who were asking for moderate demands weren't going to get ever.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, because in your subject you also point to
Speaker 2: the summer of twenty twenty, like it rightly, It wasn't
Speaker 2: like we're like we want Joe Biden, so we're out here,
Speaker 2: you know, because people are in the streets been like
Speaker 2: we need to defund this ship. These people like we
Speaker 2: have authoritarian anti black racism, like with people who are
Speaker 2: have been given the blessing by the state to take
Speaker 2: people's lives. We need to fucking end this.
Speaker 1: Find the police phrase ever come up with the swamps?
Speaker 2: I know about it, Luso, but like he does this,
Speaker 2: like you know, that was a point where we were asking.
Speaker 2: There were a lot of people came together to ask
Speaker 2: for these larger reforms. You got it in varying degrees
Speaker 2: in some places. But what it did do in the
Speaker 2: end was fully blunt the momentum of a Trump reelection,
Speaker 2: which in that moment, Yeah, that that was that was
Speaker 2: a that was a that was a nice thing that
Speaker 2: we got that we had an end at least to
Speaker 2: the Trump administration. Now, the co opting definitely happened. I
Speaker 2: mean we saw it all the time. All I can
Speaker 2: think about is Nancy Pelosi with the can take cloth
Speaker 2: on and the rotun and I'm like, it's over. They
Speaker 2: did it.
Speaker 1: That was it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's worse than it was before.
Speaker 2: Right exactly. But to that point is if enough people
Speaker 2: clearly become incensed about a thing and come together to
Speaker 2: do that something, things happen, whether directly or indirectly. And
Speaker 2: I think that was one of the biggest takeaways for me,
Speaker 2: reading the sub stack was when people are able to
Speaker 2: act collectively, there are going to be results. It might
Speaker 2: not be the intended top of the list thing, but
Speaker 2: other things do come from it that end up being
Speaker 2: somewhat of a positive or at least begin to beget
Speaker 2: you know, create conversations that you have like in LA,
Speaker 2: where the city controller became someone who's like, my whole
Speaker 2: thing now is just posting police budgets on the billboards,
Speaker 2: so people of LA understand like where the money's going. Wow,
Speaker 2: And you just get these like sort of smaller things
Speaker 2: and more people become a little bit aware. And I
Speaker 2: think that's the thing that we sort of have to
Speaker 2: sort of emphasize for ourselves is to know that a
Speaker 2: the time will come where we will need to sort
Speaker 2: of figure out a way that how we're going to
Speaker 2: contribute to make something better and that it is possible,
Speaker 2: and you can do it in a way that is
Speaker 2: specific to whatever your level or ability is of whether
Speaker 2: if you're your ability you're like whether it's physical abilities
Speaker 2: or just whatever your your comfort level is with being
Speaker 2: in physical space or putting yourself in a situation where
Speaker 2: you might have to be confronted by law enforcement, et cetera.
Speaker 2: But there are many ways to do this, so it
Speaker 2: doesn't have to feel like, well, it's either I'm putting
Speaker 2: on a uniform and I'm out there in the streets
Speaker 2: doing my thing cracking heads. No, no, that there is
Speaker 2: a There are many other ways, And I think it's
Speaker 2: important that we get together identify within our own communities
Speaker 2: or like we all need to talk about this, like
Speaker 2: if I need medication, do you like, like what how
Speaker 2: far out can you get? How far can you drive?
Speaker 2: Do you have a generator? Do you have these kinds
Speaker 2: of skills? Who does Oh are they down to? Do
Speaker 2: they think? Like us? Okay? Cool? Now we have fit
Speaker 2: teen people then and among us we have an engineer,
Speaker 2: we have someone who has a medical background, we have
Speaker 2: someone with the skills for horticle whatever. It is that
Speaker 2: you begin to understand that they're like, collectively, we can
Speaker 2: actually do a lot of things that will keep us
Speaker 2: safe while also keeping an eye on the larger goal,
Speaker 2: which is to, you know, again, try and blunt the
Speaker 2: momentum of fascism in the country. So I think that's
Speaker 2: the one thing I hope a lot of people are
Speaker 2: able to sort of get in touch with It's it's
Speaker 2: as easy as you need it to be. But the
Speaker 2: hard bit is just to take that first step, and
Speaker 2: you can take it as comfortably as you want, but
Speaker 2: make sure you are focusing on how you either you're
Speaker 2: going to keep yourself safe, your friends safe, whatever, and
Speaker 2: then from there so many other things can branch off
Speaker 2: and it doesn't have to look like, you know, whatever
Speaker 2: the scary thing is in your mind that might be
Speaker 2: putting you off from wanting to take action, because it's
Speaker 2: it's very easy and you'll find many other like minded
Speaker 2: people out there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, Margaret Killjoy, thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 1: It's you know, it gives me hope that someone who
Speaker 1: has a much deeper knowledge of the history of these
Speaker 1: sorts of movements. Is optimistic feels like the wrong word
Speaker 1: because it's not like we're optimistic that this thing is
Speaker 1: going to take care of itself. Not the way I
Speaker 1: was optimistic based on the Seltzer poll, where I was like,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be good, but that we can come together
Speaker 1: to strategically do things to help one another. So I
Speaker 1: really appreciate you coming on. Where can people find more
Speaker 1: about you? Follow you all that good stuff?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can follow me on Blue Sky at Margaret
Speaker 3: whatever the thing that comes after your name on yea
Speaker 3: and which is newish to me. But and then you
Speaker 3: can follow me on Instagram market kill Jo. You can
Speaker 3: follow me on substack. Half my posts are free, though
Speaker 3: always like more important posts are always going to be free,
Speaker 3: so you can subscribe for free. And then if you
Speaker 3: want to know more about like my personal life as
Speaker 3: a weird person who lives in the woods and used
Speaker 3: to ride trains or whatever, you can pay for the
Speaker 3: premium version where you can read my journals and things.
Speaker 3: And I have a podcast. I have a podcast on
Speaker 3: this very network on iHeartRadio, and it is called Cool
Speaker 3: People Who Did Cool Stuff. It's part of Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 3: And if you want to know more about individual and
Speaker 3: community preparedness, then I also have a podcast that's not
Speaker 3: on this very network, and it is called Live Like
Speaker 3: the World Is Dying. And I have a bunch of
Speaker 3: co hosts on that and every week on Friday, we
Speaker 3: talk about how to get prepared as both individuals and
Speaker 3: communities to get ready for things that are happening.
Speaker 1: Awesome. Is there a work of media that you've been enjoying?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: No, this was in the prompt and then but I
Speaker 3: have this thing where I forgot to write it down
Speaker 3: and then my brain turns blank every single time. Okay,
Speaker 3: I just read this book called The Deluge and I
Speaker 3: don't have the author's name in front of me, and
Speaker 3: it's a climate change book and is.
Speaker 1: It and what is it?
Speaker 2: Stephen Markley.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I listened to it on audiobook, so I wasn't
Speaker 3: like picking it up every single time and seeing the cover.
Speaker 3: And then Kim Stanley Robinson has a book called The
Speaker 3: Ministry for the Future, and together these are two of
Speaker 3: the most in depth analyzes of possible futures as relates
Speaker 3: to climate change and the fight for it that I
Speaker 3: have ever read, and so I guess I would recommend those,
Speaker 3: not as like neither one is like the plan that
Speaker 3: I'm signing off on, especially The Deluge, which is not
Speaker 3: very optimistic. Well, actually it kind of is actually anyway,
Speaker 3: I don't want to spoil anything, but.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming it's basically a novelization of water world, is
Speaker 1: that it's not the furthest thing from that. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: did a whole episode just me giving a book report
Speaker 1: on The Ministry for the Future.
Speaker 3: Oh amazing. I actually need to go back and listen
Speaker 3: to that.
Speaker 1: Then it's a lot of fun. Great, that's a great recommendation. Miles.
Speaker 1: Where can people find you as their work media you've
Speaker 1: been in?
Speaker 2: Yeah, find me on all the social media's, but check
Speaker 2: me out on Blue Sky, Miles of Gray, Besky dot
Speaker 2: social you know where I'm just chatting shit and talking
Speaker 2: to all you guys. So thank you for reaching out.
Speaker 2: Find me on or actually find Jack and I actually
Speaker 2: on the basketball podcast Miles and Jack Got Mad Maths
Speaker 2: where we talk about the NBA.
Speaker 1: And then my other hobby, which is watching reality TV.
Speaker 2: I do that talking on four to twenty Day Fiance.
Speaker 2: The piece of media that I like is actually also
Speaker 2: the song we're gonna go out on. But the reason
Speaker 2: it's the piece of media I like is because there
Speaker 2: is a video version of this track that I think
Speaker 2: is cool to watch, and it's nice to watch people
Speaker 2: make music and just be kind of feeling it while
Speaker 2: they do it. So I'm just gonna do two birds
Speaker 2: in one stone. It's it's the artist djon d I
Speaker 2: j O and and he like who does a lot
Speaker 2: of work with the artist McGee, who's really popular right now.
Speaker 2: Mk dot ge you might have seen that name floating
Speaker 2: around lot. This guy Mike Gordon, who's like a really
Speaker 2: good producer guitar player. The track is called Big Mics,
Speaker 2: but it's the live version, and it's really cool because
Speaker 2: it's just like one take in this like dining room
Speaker 2: and everybody's just it's such a dope track. It reminds
Speaker 2: me of like almost like di'angelo voodoo esque kind of
Speaker 2: like feeling, because it's really soulful and simple and builds
Speaker 2: in this way that is really nice. So this is
Speaker 2: also the song we're going out on, but it's dijon
Speaker 2: Big Mics, but the live version, which you should watch
Speaker 2: on YouTube, and that will be in.
Speaker 1: The footnotes footnotes. Yeah, we'll link after that in the
Speaker 1: foot notes. It's very good. I've not seen Miles quite
Speaker 1: this smitten by a work of media in a long time.
Speaker 2: He's nice to watch jam.
Speaker 1: We entered the Monday morning recording and this recording. He
Speaker 1: was listening to this song and it's great. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can find me on Blue Sky at jack ob One,
Speaker 1: who can find us on Twitter at daily Zeitgeist. Oh work,
Speaker 1: you've been enjoying. We've got a lot of recommendations for
Speaker 1: English Teacher on FX finally watched it really really enjoyable
Speaker 1: eight episode sitcom series. Blow right through it real quick
Speaker 1: and it's it's a lot of fun. So shout out
Speaker 1: to all the guests who recommended it as their working
Speaker 1: media that is now also a work media. I would
Speaker 1: recommend you check out. You can find us on Twitter
Speaker 1: at daily Zeitgeist. We're at the Daily Zekeeist on Instagram.
Speaker 1: We have a Facebook fan page and a website Daily
Speaker 1: zeikeist dot com where we post our episodes and our
Speaker 1: footnotes to the information that we talked about in today's episode,
Speaker 1: as well as the song that Miles just recommended. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you can that's Big Mike's Live or watch it.
Speaker 1: The Daily Zeikeist is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows. That is going
Speaker 1: to do it for us this morning. We are back
Speaker 1: this afternoon to tell you what is trending and we
Speaker 1: will talk Sheldon, Bye bye. M