Speaker 1: Coolso media, Welcome to it could happen here. On today's episode,
Speaker 1: we have Robert Evans, Harrison Davis, Miowong, James Stout, Margaret Kildroy,
Speaker 1: and I'm Sophie Lickterman.
Speaker 2: This is the post election episode.
Speaker 3: Robert, Yeah, it happened here, is happening has continued to
Speaker 3: happen here.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. This has been a podcast from the beginning about
Speaker 3: things falling apart, which is a great business to be in,
Speaker 3: I guess because they keep doing that. I want to
Speaker 3: start by kind of talking about yesterday's episode, the one
Speaker 3: that I dropped before the election, because I thought a
Speaker 3: lot about like what to put out on the day
Speaker 3: of the election, and I kind of made the call,
Speaker 3: which I don't know regrets the wrong word. I made
Speaker 3: the call yesterday that like, Okay, we've got this new
Speaker 3: poll from Selzer. People are starting to feel like, you know,
Speaker 3: some of this late breaking news is good for Harris.
Speaker 3: Some of the post posters are hurting back in that direction.
Speaker 3: I probably should do something to kind of like pump
Speaker 3: the breaks on enthusiasm and remind people that even if
Speaker 3: she wins, there's still a lot of dangers out there,
Speaker 3: right because That's what I saw as like the big
Speaker 3: threat model is Harris is likely to win, and then
Speaker 3: people are going to forget about these constitutional sheriffs and
Speaker 3: all these different kind of like right wing gules that
Speaker 3: will still be a problem if we don't take care
Speaker 3: of them, right, if we don't do anything to actually
Speaker 3: like hamper their ability to exercise power. So I wrote
Speaker 3: that episode with that in mind, and it turns out
Speaker 3: I was being overly optimistic, and I think it was
Speaker 3: being overly optimistic in part. You know, I tend towards pessimism,
Speaker 3: which is why this show exists in the first place.
Speaker 3: You Know, one of the things that's happened is we've
Speaker 3: gotten bigger and more people have listened. Is whenever like
Speaker 3: shit happens in the world, we get bombarded on the
Speaker 3: subreddit and just like in emails to myself with people
Speaker 3: saying versions of like I don't know what to do,
Speaker 3: using language that's like very worrying sometimes about how hopeless
Speaker 3: they feel. And so I've kind of felt a growing
Speaker 3: responsibility to like spread calm and hope, and I think
Speaker 3: that merged to a degree with the you know, after
Speaker 3: my dad died, this desire to like not just be
Speaker 3: sad and de doomer. And I think it led me
Speaker 3: to have, I guess, more of an optimistic Like I
Speaker 3: forced myself into an unreasonably optimistic frame of mind just
Speaker 3: because I thought that was the responsible thing to do.
Speaker 3: And I guess I'm kind of like evaluating that now,
Speaker 3: like what should I have done differently, you know, if
Speaker 3: I'd been in a more logical state of mind. And
Speaker 3: I guess the answer is, I don't know how to
Speaker 3: be in a more logical state of mind. Like the
Speaker 3: problem is there's so much, you know, you've got this
Speaker 3: hyper object of a political realignment happening in our country
Speaker 3: in this very dark direction you're also trying to deal
Speaker 3: with and I'm sure everyone listening is dealing with versions
Speaker 3: of this on their own. You know, people you care
Speaker 3: about getting sick and dying and you know, losing or
Speaker 3: having to start new ones and embarking, you know, starting
Speaker 3: to become a parent or whatever. Like everybody's got all
Speaker 3: these massive things in their own lives, and like trying
Speaker 3: to keep a completely rational perspective on the political happenings
Speaker 3: in this country while remaining unaffected from like the way
Speaker 3: in which your own life is going to color your
Speaker 3: optimism and biases is probably a hopeless cause to some extent,
Speaker 3: which I guess is part of why we're here to
Speaker 3: try and as a collective offer people our most reasonable,
Speaker 3: sort of averaged opinion about what's going to happen. So
Speaker 3: I guess that's what we're going to try to do here.
Speaker 3: That's what I've got to start with.
Speaker 1: I mean, hope is illogical, but it is necessary, and
Speaker 1: I think that's really where we have to start. I'm
Speaker 1: going to toss over to Margaret real quick about hope.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Margaret, fix this for us.
Speaker 1: Well, I just to say just to say, I woke
Speaker 1: up today with some hope, and I think a lot
Speaker 1: of that is from my friendship with Margaret, and I
Speaker 1: don't think there's a better person to talk about that
Speaker 1: than her.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Margaret, I appreciate that.
Speaker 4: I often make the joke about the fact that I
Speaker 4: name myself kill Joy in my twenties and then became
Speaker 4: a professional optimist. But I think that and I think
Speaker 4: that actually it could happen here. I think folks here
Speaker 4: do it really well. Sometimes determination is almost sometimes the
Speaker 4: right word instead of hope, right because or like optimism
Speaker 4: is always the right word, because you're like, well, bad
Speaker 4: things are happening, and they're going to happen, and they're
Speaker 4: going to keep happening, right, And so sometimes we look
Speaker 4: at like like climate change, for example, which is the
Speaker 4: broader problem. You know, you're like, well, no matter what
Speaker 4: we do, it's going to get worse. And so the
Speaker 4: immediate electoral problem in front of us, like, no matter
Speaker 4: what happens, it's going to get worse before it gets better.
Speaker 4: But we need to stay aware of that and stop
Speaker 4: pretending like the bad things aren't coming. Well, then still
Speaker 4: looking at saying like, well, what can we do? And
Speaker 4: for me, the thing that I focus on. I have
Speaker 4: a therapist friend who talks about how agency is the
Speaker 4: opposite of trauma and that the more that we act
Speaker 4: with agency while bad things are happening, the less that
Speaker 4: they destroy us emotionally. And so I think that focusing
Speaker 4: on what can we do is just incredibly useful and necessary.
Speaker 4: And also the fact that things are in turmoil right
Speaker 4: now and that means lots of bad things are happening
Speaker 4: and the old status.
Speaker 3: Quo is gone.
Speaker 4: We saw that with the defeat of the Democrats. Their
Speaker 4: whole thing is that they doubled down on the old
Speaker 4: status quo, and people don't want that. People want something different,
Speaker 4: and Trump offers something different, a very horrible nightmare thing
Speaker 4: that's different, and the Democrats did not offer something different.
Speaker 4: And so I actually think in a weird way, we
Speaker 4: are in a good position to on a grassroots level
Speaker 4: build something different and say that people want something different.
Speaker 4: And I think that by working towards something different and better, well,
Speaker 4: it's the best way to keep our own spirits up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, Thanks mac Buye, I absolutely agree, James.
Speaker 2: What's your perspective here?
Speaker 5: Yeah, Like it goes without saying that, like Trump's proposed
Speaker 5: border policies are horrific, and his propos migration policies are horrific.
Speaker 5: Horrises were also bad. I think like that that doesn't
Speaker 5: mean that that Trumps are acceptable or the same, they're not.
Speaker 5: But also, like I think, having spent as much time
Speaker 5: as I have with refugees, having spent as much time
Speaker 5: as I have with people who have gone through things
Speaker 5: that are horrific and like state hostility, state violent, civil war,
Speaker 5: et cetera, like I have a lot of hope that, like,
Speaker 5: like Margaret said, right, there's there's this quote from de Rooti,
Speaker 5: it probably isn't real about how like we're not afraid
Speaker 5: of ruins, and we've lived in ruins our whole lives,
Speaker 5: and we'll build our future in the ruins of the
Speaker 5: old world. But like, when I think about the next
Speaker 5: four years, like the state will be absent or hostile
Speaker 5: right now, absent at best and hostile at work. It's
Speaker 5: been that way at the border for a very long time. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and we've built our little community and our little world.
Speaker 5: And like when I am sad, when I'm despairing, when
Speaker 5: I'm scared, I think about the things that we did
Speaker 5: in the last year, right we fed tens of thousands
Speaker 5: of people by ourselves, and in doing that, we demonstrated
Speaker 5: how powerful we are in the absence of the state.
Speaker 5: Because the state wasn't there, or the state was actively hostile,
Speaker 5: we were able to step in and from nothing, we
Speaker 5: were able to build something that took care of people
Speaker 5: who needed to be taken care of. And that like
Speaker 5: we're not special or unique, you know, we didn't have
Speaker 5: like some incredible structure here before. People just showed up
Speaker 5: to help people, and like more people will need to
Speaker 5: do that now, and that will mean that there are
Speaker 5: more people in difficult places who need help, right, But
Speaker 5: that doesn't mean that you can't do it. If we
Speaker 5: can do it, you can do it. And having done
Speaker 5: it has made me less. Yes, I just I'm not
Speaker 5: as scared as I would be if I felt like
Speaker 5: I was on my own, or if I felt like
Speaker 5: that we can't deal with this, because we can and
Speaker 5: I know that because we have and I want. Obviously
Speaker 5: that's something we're going to focus on. Right we have
Speaker 5: between now and the middle of January. I have no
Speaker 5: idea how many weeks or days that is, but it's
Speaker 5: a lot of time to organize, and it's a lot
Speaker 5: of time to put aside some of the differences we
Speaker 5: might have, some of the petty disagreements, we might have,
Speaker 5: some of the ship that people have said on Twitter
Speaker 5: dot com and like, get together and organize and build
Speaker 5: a way of taking care of each other that doesn't
Speaker 5: rely on the state, because that's always been what we
Speaker 5: needed and we need it now even more so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, speaking of what we need now, here's some ads.
Speaker 3: Oh Robert, what else? You just can't stop him? That
Speaker 3: was just physics. There was no other way for.
Speaker 5: That to go. An object in motion.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that was like the oceans forming after the
Speaker 3: moon hit the Earth. Well, whatever happened to make oceans?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't know how oceans came about.
Speaker 5: Even they're gonna call him Rubbitt tectonic plate efforts.
Speaker 1: All right, welcome back to it could happen here where
Speaker 1: it is happening here, And Robert still can't help himself
Speaker 1: to make strange ad transitions.
Speaker 2: Garrison, what do you got for us?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I don't know. I I feel like I am
Speaker 6: not an optimist, and I also put a lot of
Speaker 6: work into not being a doomer. I try to be
Speaker 6: pretty realistic about a whole bunch of my like thoughts
Speaker 6: and analysis on this sort of thing, and I tend
Speaker 6: towards survival as kind of one of my main, my
Speaker 6: main priorities. And i'd like to we talk a little
Speaker 6: bit about kind of some of what we actually saw
Speaker 6: on election night and some maybe some small like misconceptions
Speaker 6: going around, mainly this kind of idea that the country
Speaker 6: has like wildly swung to the right, like people have
Speaker 6: like overwhelmingly, like more so than ever before, have have
Speaker 6: have voted for like far right figures have voted for
Speaker 6: far right like bills basically wanting this this complete like
Speaker 6: nationalistic takeover. If you look at you know, their presidency,
Speaker 6: the Supreme Court, the House, the Senate, and I mean
Speaker 6: the final count is still coming in. We are recording
Speaker 6: this Wednesday afternoon. It's noon on the West coast right now,
Speaker 6: and Trump has almost the same number of votes as
Speaker 6: he gotten twenty twenty. I think it's a little bit
Speaker 6: under at this point. Now, there is some demographic changes,
Speaker 6: certain groups may have leaned more towards or against Trump
Speaker 6: than in past elections, but the final like averaged popular
Speaker 6: vote number is at this point pretty much the same. Now.
Speaker 6: Kind of why this has happened, why he's still kind
Speaker 6: of sweeping all of these swing states is we've kind
Speaker 6: of had a collapse of trust in the Democratic Party,
Speaker 6: and you could attribute this to a lot of things.
Speaker 6: I don't think it's a single thing. It is obviously
Speaker 6: a confluence of events. I think of one of the
Speaker 6: big things is like nine percent inflation is kind of
Speaker 6: hard to beat if people, to Margaret's point earlier, they're
Speaker 6: looking for something different, and Harris meaningfully was not offering
Speaker 6: anything like substantially different. She's the VP right like it's
Speaker 6: she has that legacy. I don't think Biden could have
Speaker 6: done much more to alter the inflation, but like that,
Speaker 6: that doesn't matter. People people feel this and that's very strong.
Speaker 6: And there's other reasons why people have kind of lost
Speaker 6: faith in the Democratic Party or aren't as willing to
Speaker 6: come out in as high numbers as we saw back
Speaker 6: in twenty twenty. And crucially, but back in twenty twenty,
Speaker 6: in a lot of the swing states, the vote was
Speaker 6: very close. Although the popular vote swung pretty heavily towards
Speaker 6: Biden in a lot of the crucial swing states, in
Speaker 6: some of the states he was only like twenty thousand
Speaker 6: votes ahead. Like it was, it was a pretty tight
Speaker 6: race in some of those states.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Now, the other thing I'm kind of seeing which kind
Speaker 6: of reflects this idea that like the country has it wildly,
Speaker 6: like the average people haven't wildly become a more fascist.
Speaker 6: It's that even in states that have elected Trump, they
Speaker 6: have also passed like a decent number of progressive initiatives,
Speaker 6: including abortion rights. Voters in Arizona and Missouri approved ballid
Speaker 6: initiatives that will serve to protect abortion rights until further
Speaker 6: laws are in the books, and in Maryland, in Montana, Nevada,
Speaker 6: and New York where abortion is legal, and Colorado, where
Speaker 6: there's no laws restricting abortion, they all passed measures that
Speaker 6: enshrine those rights into law. Now, Florida, unfortunately was not
Speaker 6: able to do this due to the super majority rules.
Speaker 6: Even though majority of people did vote for this in Florida,
Speaker 6: they did not reach the sixty percent threshold, so that
Speaker 6: did not pass in Florida.
Speaker 3: But fifty seven, yeah, close, and it was an outright majority.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So people are willing to vote for these types of things,
Speaker 6: even if they're unwilling to vote for a Democrat at
Speaker 6: the top of the ticket, and like, this is something
Speaker 6: that is worth considering when trying to figure out what
Speaker 6: exactly happened here and consider why people have kind of
Speaker 6: lost faith in the Democratic Party as a reliable institution
Speaker 6: to improve their lives or represent the things that they
Speaker 6: believe in, the gaza issue being kind of the prime
Speaker 6: example of this in the past year. One other thing
Speaker 6: I was thinking about this morning when trying to kind
Speaker 6: of look forward and imagine what the next four years
Speaker 6: would look like, specifically with the concern of figures like
Speaker 6: Elon Musk and RFK Junior being put into pretty important
Speaker 6: positions of government. Right, the idea that RFK Junior is
Speaker 6: going to be in charge of the CDC and determine
Speaker 6: public health policies for the country is a very worrying prospect.
Speaker 6: Having Elon Musk in a senior advisory role in some
Speaker 6: kind of governmental department of efficiency doesn't sound. But as
Speaker 6: I was having my coffee next to a beautiful river
Speaker 6: in the mountains of North Georgia this morning, I was
Speaker 6: thinking about Steve Bannon because my brain is just fucked
Speaker 6: up like that, but specifically how Trump used Steve Bannon
Speaker 6: to get elected back in twenty sixteen, even though Bannon's
Speaker 6: actual tenure at the White House was quite short lived
Speaker 6: for whatever reasons like personality clashes with Trump happen all
Speaker 6: the time, and he loses friends and advisors at a
Speaker 6: pretty frequent rate. And I think, because Trump is just
Speaker 6: like petty and you know, ablest and a bad guy,
Speaker 6: he might just find RFK Junior and Elon Musk annoying
Speaker 6: to be around. Considering rf K Junior's his speech impediment
Speaker 6: and Elon Musk's apparent neurodiversity, Trump just might not want
Speaker 6: to be around them. So even though he did utilize
Speaker 6: both these figures to get elected, albeit slightly later on
Speaker 6: in the campaign, it took a while for Musk to
Speaker 6: kind of worm his way into Trump's or bit. I
Speaker 6: am not convinced that they will have direct access to
Speaker 6: Trump for very long. Now. This could happen, but if
Speaker 6: you look at Steve Bannon, who was similarly a worrying figure,
Speaker 6: he did not last very long beside Trump. So something
Speaker 6: like this could happen now, I don't think it'll happen
Speaker 6: the exact same way. Elon Musk has been positioning himself
Speaker 6: to have the government be reliant on him for contracting,
Speaker 6: and he'll probably continue to exist in some form in
Speaker 6: that regard, but in terms of his like direct influence
Speaker 6: on the White House and controlling sectors of government, this
Speaker 6: won't necessarily be a four year thing. I think that
Speaker 6: is most of what I had on this topic.
Speaker 5: I guess.
Speaker 6: I guess. The other thing is, like it turns out
Speaker 6: in Harris's efforts to kind of court independence and court
Speaker 6: like Republicans that largely that largely failed.
Speaker 3: Massive failure, massive failure.
Speaker 6: I mean again, it turns out when you have a
Speaker 6: party that's running as kind of like a mini fascist party,
Speaker 6: and then you have another party that's as just a
Speaker 6: conservative party.
Speaker 3: We've got Dick Cheney.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's not a solid opposition party. Like, why like
Speaker 6: this hasn't worked for like the second time in a row.
Speaker 6: The stats are almost identical to twenty twenty on this
Speaker 6: issue of Republicans voting for the Republican Party. In fact,
Speaker 6: it was slightly few slightly fewer of them voted Republican
Speaker 6: back in twenty twenty. More of them voted Republican in
Speaker 6: twenty twenty four. I think it's about one percent.
Speaker 1: Trying to court the conservative vote means that the conservatives
Speaker 1: are going to vote for conservative.
Speaker 6: Maybe we should have an actual opposition party if you
Speaker 6: believe in electoral politics.
Speaker 3: Yeah no, I mean, like the lesson people should take
Speaker 3: from trump Ism. Trump did not get where he is
Speaker 3: by courting the conservative vote. Now, Trump took over the
Speaker 3: Republican Party and made it the Trump Party. And yeah,
Speaker 3: like that is what worked, right, Like, and that's that's
Speaker 3: the actual lesson. Like, the reason why Dick Cheney was
Speaker 3: fucking doing appearances with Kamala Harris was because conservatives, what
Speaker 3: we had known as conservatives prior to Trump coming to
Speaker 3: power largely are out of the picture, right, Like the
Speaker 3: new crop of guys are all weirdos that have molded
Speaker 3: themselves in the image of Trump since his rise to power. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And one of the things that is, like, the lesson
Speaker 3: is not we need to make our own Trump, although
Speaker 3: by god, some people are going to take that lesson
Speaker 3: out of this. The lesson is that, sure, you have
Speaker 3: to come to people with a vision, right, Like, you
Speaker 3: don't come to people by saying, well, what if we
Speaker 3: put a Republican in our cabinet? Right, what if it's
Speaker 3: basically the same as this last thing that you're not
Speaker 3: really that happy with, but instead with more Cheney. Right,
Speaker 3: it turns out that doesn't drive foot or enthusiasm, and hey,
Speaker 3: like that's you know, I'm hitting the Libs pretty hard
Speaker 3: because this is like the most catastrophic failure of any
Speaker 3: political party in living memory. Right, So they do deserve
Speaker 3: to be hit. But it's not like the left accomplished
Speaker 3: anything right, either electorally or otherwise. Right, there is no
Speaker 3: organized national left wing movement that is worth talking about
Speaker 3: in any kind of building power way, Like it simply
Speaker 3: doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: And ignoring the blind loyalty that people have for Trump
Speaker 1: was a mistake. Yeah, not considering like targeting that audience.
Speaker 6: It doesn't seem like all of the January sixth ads
Speaker 6: did anything at all.
Speaker 3: No, did fuck all.
Speaker 6: I mean, in fact, in fact statistically they did they
Speaker 6: did nothing. They did nothing to hurt Trump. Yeah, if
Speaker 6: Trump gets essentially the same total number of votes, they
Speaker 6: didn't do anything to hurt him like that, Like that
Speaker 6: strategy was not that was not successful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you have to.
Speaker 6: Offer something, and just the large swath of like electoral
Speaker 6: nihilism that the that the Democratic Party keeps keeps running
Speaker 6: up against continues to be its most like existential threat.
Speaker 1: Robert Gary and I at the RNC talked to a
Speaker 1: variety of people who who did not give a flying
Speaker 1: fuck about Trump's record.
Speaker 6: Well, of course not.
Speaker 2: All they cared about was no, they had blind loyalty.
Speaker 1: Timp I posted this on Twitter dot com, and I'm
Speaker 1: thinking specifically of the woman that was like compared Trump's
Speaker 1: evil for lack of a better word, Oh, sometimes he's ridiculous,
Speaker 1: like my husband, and that blind loyalty and the Democrats
Speaker 1: weren't gonna fucking flip those people. That was not gonna happen.
Speaker 1: They took a gamble, wasn't even really a gamble. They
Speaker 1: took a gamble on the wrong crowd, and like that
Speaker 1: that's not effective, But you know it's not really here
Speaker 1: or there at this point. It happened kind of like
Speaker 1: now what, Yeah, we haven't really heard from me much,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna I'm gonna shoot over to Mia.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and I mean I think I think where I'm
Speaker 7: at is that Okay, we're in this moment. Are one
Speaker 7: of our biggest advantages is that were not the Democrats. Right,
Speaker 7: this has been a fairly comprehensive refer random on the
Speaker 7: failure of the Democrats to offer anything. We also like
Speaker 7: screwed up offering a better world.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 7: This is you know, if you look, if you look
Speaker 7: at what happened to twenty twenty, and you look at
Speaker 7: the places that we actually sort of like, I mean
Speaker 7: took power as a strong word, but like there are
Speaker 7: places where we ran the cops out, and we screwed
Speaker 7: up making those places like a world that was like
Speaker 7: ideologically compelling it off to spread. And like we're not
Speaker 7: going to get like a third do over of that, right,
Speaker 7: we have to be able to sort of like when
Speaker 7: the moment arise, we have to be able to actually
Speaker 7: create a world that is better enough than this one
Speaker 7: that we can move. But that's not impossible. Yeah, I
Speaker 7: think what we have right now is we have a
Speaker 7: period of time before Trump takes power, and we have
Speaker 7: this time to sort of wash our beasts. We have
Speaker 7: this time to organize, We have this time to plan
Speaker 7: and I think the at least part of what we
Speaker 7: need to do. And we'll get into this more like
Speaker 7: in other episodes and totally later too. You know, there's
Speaker 7: there's there's the obvious tasks of organization. There's getting people
Speaker 7: involved in things, there's getting into meetings. I also think,
Speaker 7: and this is something that's I think easier to do,
Speaker 7: like literally immediately, is that we've been fighting completely defensively
Speaker 7: on the cultural front for four years and it's been
Speaker 7: a complete disaster, and we need to have a large,
Speaker 7: skilled cultural offensive. There needs to be something other than
Speaker 7: fucking TikTok Mormonism, like we need we need some alternatives
Speaker 7: to trad wife ship, We need alternatives to this like
Speaker 7: terrible like the fucking influencer sphere. There needs to be
Speaker 7: something else. We need to create that very very fast.
Speaker 4: Anarchist tradwife stuff like Christ.
Speaker 3: That's what you're gonna save us, all right, Yeah, everybody,
Speaker 3: everybody go buy us sun dress right now, get out.
Speaker 5: There, both of you to assume we don't have them,
Speaker 5: robit and.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna I'm gonna pull Robert everything.
Speaker 1: Speaking of buying things, it's time for our last ad break.
Speaker 2: All right, we're back.
Speaker 1: And I do want to get I do want to
Speaker 1: get into, you know, a little bit more specifics of
Speaker 1: what can we do now? And I just want to
Speaker 1: say a fucking lot. The cards are on the table.
Speaker 6: It's going to be a busy four years.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I attended Margaret's book books signing last week, and I've
Speaker 1: attended lots of our events. And one of the questions
Speaker 1: and q and a's, and one of the questions that
Speaker 1: gets asked all the time is how do I get involved?
Speaker 1: How do I how do I find how do I
Speaker 1: meet people? How do I do these things? And you know,
Speaker 1: I want to get into that. I also want to
Speaker 1: give some very basic tangible advice. You know, don't post
Speaker 1: stupid things on the internet.
Speaker 3: If somebody tells you we need to go out and
Speaker 3: engage in revolutionary activity. Maybe sit at home right now.
Speaker 3: You don't want to come into this thing with the
Speaker 3: criminal record. Nobody, nobody is making good plans right now.
Speaker 3: Go make good ones. Don't just reactively show up and
Speaker 3: follow someone with a clipboard in the streets.
Speaker 2: Don't post actionable threats on the internet.
Speaker 6: Don't post that picture of that comedian that gave that
Speaker 6: really funny joke. Just don't do it. There's no reason to.
Speaker 6: It's not cool. Yeah, Like, don't if you know what,
Speaker 6: if you know what comedian I'm talking about, you'll get it.
Speaker 6: You'll get it.
Speaker 3: If you're going to, you know, get messed up. Use
Speaker 3: substances in order to cope with things. Log out of
Speaker 3: social media on all of your devices first, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sounds like that's some advice you were giving yourself.
Speaker 3: Sober as a church mouse, Sophie, just just coffee and
Speaker 3: clean mountain air.
Speaker 2: For me, A very basic recommendation that I have for
Speaker 2: people is to get delete me.
Speaker 3: Yeah mm hmm.
Speaker 2: It is worth the investment. It is a good product
Speaker 2: that That's what I'll say.
Speaker 3: Yes, delete me as a service that helps purge aspects
Speaker 3: of your public record from the internet. Right there's a
Speaker 3: lot of different site like, yeah, you have been involved.
Speaker 3: If you are a person who participates in the economy
Speaker 3: through the internet, right, if you buy things through the internet,
Speaker 3: your shit has been leaked right there.
Speaker 1: You know. Tagline is your private information is no longer private, right.
Speaker 1: And so essentially what they do is they scour the
Speaker 1: internet and remove your personal data from online and they
Speaker 1: don't do that once.
Speaker 2: They continuously do it.
Speaker 1: This is like a fantastic plug for the product they
Speaker 1: are not paying us. Yeah, let's just say the trucier
Speaker 1: scientology could not find me.
Speaker 4: Hell yeah, so I.
Speaker 6: Will say there is some alternatives to delete me that
Speaker 6: are trying to get up and running. We might do
Speaker 6: a full episode on data removal in the.
Speaker 2: Future, Yeah, we definitely should.
Speaker 6: It does require you to also do manual inputs. There
Speaker 6: are certain sites that delete me when they send takedown
Speaker 6: requests to data brokers. Certain sites will not comply. You
Speaker 6: have to send requests manually. It's pretty simple. But they
Speaker 6: will give you a list of certain sites as well
Speaker 6: to do to go through this process manually. Yeah, but
Speaker 6: I think like kind of the last thing we want
Speaker 6: to talk about is, like we have seventy five days
Speaker 6: right to like prepare for stuff. We have seventy five
Speaker 6: days to prepare for the next four years. In some ways,
Speaker 6: it's going to kind of be like twenty seventeen to
Speaker 6: twenty nineteen again, which was a very busy time. Kind
Speaker 6: of all of the right wing gules that have been
Speaker 6: hiding under the rocks the past few years because of
Speaker 6: the liberal doj will probably start coming out of the woodwork.
Speaker 6: There's going to be, you know, a lot more stuff
Speaker 6: going on. And you know, those of us that are here,
Speaker 6: we're able to make it through those years. Some of
Speaker 6: your friends probably weren't able to. And it is up
Speaker 6: to us to take care of each other, to try
Speaker 6: to ensure that ourselves and people we know have a
Speaker 6: better chance of making it through these next four years.
Speaker 6: And I think kind of lastly, I'd like to kind
Speaker 6: of just go around talking about like what that will
Speaker 6: look like and how to kind of start that process,
Speaker 6: especially during these first seventy five days. Like, brunch is over.
Speaker 6: Brunch has been over for a while, Brunch should have
Speaker 6: never started. Yeah, but brunch is over now, So what
Speaker 6: can what can we do in these next to seventy
Speaker 6: five days.
Speaker 2: It's a share your black coffee with friends time.
Speaker 3: Share your black coffee with friends, maybe cork the champagne.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, cork the champagne.
Speaker 3: You're drinking that orange juice though you don't have enough
Speaker 3: vitamin C.
Speaker 4: Or when you and your anarchist trad wife friends get
Speaker 4: together for brunch, just make sure to actually talk about
Speaker 4: real radical things you can do, because if you already
Speaker 4: have a way of gathering with your friends, you should
Speaker 4: just turn it into talking about more than just how
Speaker 4: your day is.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, yeah, I feel like I need to put on
Speaker 7: the record that what I said, that what I was
Speaker 7: trying to say is we need feminism, not anti tradwife.
Speaker 7: I don't know how many was conveyed.
Speaker 4: I was trying to recruit you into my tradwife.
Speaker 1: Called no, thank you for clarifying me, y, But that
Speaker 1: was very much understood.
Speaker 2: But being a little bit literal right now is not bad. Yeah, there,
Speaker 2: so true.
Speaker 1: I think about like the ways that I've found my
Speaker 1: people and the way that.
Speaker 2: I have made my community.
Speaker 1: Obviously, like the taglines of you know, talk to your
Speaker 1: neighbors and things like that are absolutely important. But the
Speaker 1: recommendation you know, obviously joining orgs are great. Sure, that's
Speaker 1: a great talking point, but that's not really how I
Speaker 1: met my community. The people that are essentially my family now,
Speaker 1: I met by going to content and different creators shows
Speaker 1: and music and different events where we had mutual interests,
Speaker 1: even if that meant that I had to drive pretty
Speaker 1: far and found people that liked the things that I like.
Speaker 1: And it turns out a lot of the people that
Speaker 1: like the things you like believe the things you believe,
Speaker 1: and if they don't, they're usually pretty open to hearing
Speaker 1: you out. Yeah, and I think it's super important to
Speaker 1: listen to your friends and also, like I've said this
Speaker 1: quite a bit, support your friends weird how be Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's super crucial.
Speaker 2: Listen to the people around you. And it's not easy.
Speaker 1: I had basically no friends for a very long time
Speaker 1: because I did not have the right people around me.
Speaker 1: And it took a lot of effort to find my
Speaker 1: core humans. I mean, I'm not recommending this. If and
Speaker 1: several of us did do this, I moved to a
Speaker 1: different state. You save up for it. It's it's definitely
Speaker 1: not affordable thing to do, definitely not an easy thing
Speaker 1: to do. But I don't know where I would be
Speaker 1: without those people, and I love them.
Speaker 6: Yeah, politics and culture do go hand in hand in
Speaker 6: so many ways, and kind of yeah, cultural engagement and
Speaker 6: ways to kind of grow your social network, especially you
Speaker 6: know in places where there's probably where there's I mean
Speaker 6: in my case, you know, like trans people, queer people,
Speaker 6: people that I'm kind of around, and people who I'm like,
Speaker 6: you know, concerned about, like personally who people are like no,
Speaker 6: you know, going into these next four years, I guess
Speaker 6: like the biggest thing I was kind of thinking about
Speaker 6: last night is like, yes, these next four years are
Speaker 6: going to suck, and in many ways it'll just be
Speaker 6: like everything will just get slightly worse. But like I
Speaker 6: know that myself and those I know like immediately around
Speaker 6: me will be fine, Like we will be Okay, things
Speaker 6: will be worse, but we already have networks, We already
Speaker 6: have community. We have these things built up to take
Speaker 6: care of each other and provide the things that we need.
Speaker 6: And this is something that we'll be talking more about
Speaker 6: in the kind of the next few months. Like we
Speaker 6: have we have that, and that's taken effort. That doesn't
Speaker 6: just happen by itself. It requires effort, and it requires
Speaker 6: resistance to this idea like community nihilism, this kind of
Speaker 6: belief that like community is like not a real thing
Speaker 6: that doesn't actually exist, which is a very privileged thing
Speaker 6: to believe, because there's people out there who rely on
Speaker 6: this and will continue to rely on this even more
Speaker 6: in these next few years. But there are those without that,
Speaker 6: and that's and that's the people I'm most concerned about. Yeah,
Speaker 6: it's it's queer kids, it's trans kids who do not
Speaker 6: have those networks, do not have those communities, people who
Speaker 6: are isolated like that is who I am most concerned
Speaker 6: about that. And I understand the impulse to kind of
Speaker 6: isolate and just go online because that's safer than having
Speaker 6: to go out into the real world, or at least
Speaker 6: it feels safer, But I don't think that's actually real.
Speaker 6: I think that leads to its own forms of detrimental harm.
Speaker 6: So like it requires like a getting off discord and
Speaker 6: like a going into your community and trying to make friends,
Speaker 6: which can be scary, but it is like incredibly crucial.
Speaker 6: I think we should talk about like joining actual orgs
Speaker 6: as well. I think some other people on this call
Speaker 6: can speak more to that and like the utility of
Speaker 6: those as well. But I think first and foremostly even
Speaker 6: getting a network of friends outside of orgs. It's also
Speaker 6: a very is a very good It's not even crutch.
Speaker 6: It's just like a life support system that it's going
Speaker 6: to be super important.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd like to throw it to Margaret for a
Speaker 1: socond because she looks like she really wants to say something.
Speaker 4: Oh and I don't actually disagree with anything that they're saying.
Speaker 4: I think, no, not at all. It is absolutely crucial.
Speaker 4: I wanted to just say that, like, I think there's
Speaker 4: actually a weird blurriness in the lines between an organization
Speaker 4: and a friend group, right totally. And the problem isn't
Speaker 4: necessarily subculture. The problem is a sort of if we
Speaker 4: have this idea that there's a hegemonic subculture, like in
Speaker 4: order to be a radical, you have to be part
Speaker 4: of our click, right, And that's a problem. Whereas if
Speaker 4: whatever click you're already part of, or already subculture you're
Speaker 4: already part of, you turn that radical. I think that
Speaker 4: is you know, it's what Sophie was talking about. But
Speaker 4: then yes, there's a lot of people who have no
Speaker 4: access to any of that, and some of it, as
Speaker 4: I think you're saying, is well, if you only hang
Speaker 4: out with your friends on discord, like maybe it's time
Speaker 4: to start meeting up in person, and even if that's
Speaker 4: very complicated to do. But I also think that there's
Speaker 4: a huge importance to open door organizing and organizing. Like
Speaker 4: when I say orgs, I don't mean like go join
Speaker 4: PSL or any authoritarian cult, right, or that there should
Speaker 4: never be a one organization that's this is the strategy
Speaker 4: that we have to use to fight this. But instead,
Speaker 4: if you get together with the people that you want
Speaker 4: to get together with and say, this is the problem
Speaker 4: we're dealing with, how do we deal with it? And
Speaker 4: that is how you can create an organization. And if
Speaker 4: you do that, many of those organizations I would hope
Speaker 4: would have open door policies and be public because there
Speaker 4: are so many isolated people who want to be involved
Speaker 4: who don't have any kind of like cultural cachet with
Speaker 4: which to get into a more subcultural group. I think
Speaker 4: this is why churches are very good at recruiting unfortunately
Speaker 4: depending on the church, but like because you can just
Speaker 4: show up and they will be like, okay, you have
Speaker 4: a community now, right, And that is what people desperately
Speaker 4: want I think right now, And we have to be careful.
Speaker 4: We don't want to just be like, oh, therefore we
Speaker 4: should replicate what they do. But I think that overall
Speaker 4: what our movement needs is instead of gatekeepers, we need ushers.
Speaker 4: We need people to help people find their way into
Speaker 4: the movement, to help bring them in and figure out like, hey,
Speaker 4: what are you good at or what are you interested
Speaker 4: in being it at? Here's how you can apply it.
Speaker 4: And I want to really quickly use a case study
Speaker 4: that happened from the last Trump election that I think
Speaker 4: was actually fairly useful. It was living in a small town,
Speaker 4: a small city with a fairly vibrant to anarchist community,
Speaker 4: and when Trump was elected, we called for anarchist assemblies
Speaker 4: and they were open door and they were places where
Speaker 4: you don't get together to plan crime, but all of
Speaker 4: these different mutual aid groups would come and bring representation.
Speaker 4: People would say this is what we're working on, this
Speaker 4: is what we can use help with. And they weren't
Speaker 4: decision making bodies, they were information sharing bodies. And a
Speaker 4: lot of different groups spun up out of it that
Speaker 4: are still around, like herbal clinics and different mutual aid organizations.
Speaker 4: Because we just said, hey, everyone who cares about this,
Speaker 4: let's get together and talk about what we want to do.
Speaker 4: And I found that to be an incredibly useful thing.
Speaker 4: And it's like the kind of thing I would pitch
Speaker 4: to people is not necessarily and if you're not an anarchist,
Speaker 4: don't do it as the anarchist thing. Yeah, that's what
Speaker 4: I'm that's what I care about. That's what I'm excited about.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I just wanted to offer, like, first of all,
Speaker 5: like get outside if you can, like touch and touch
Speaker 5: grass can be very condescending. And I don't mean it
Speaker 5: like that. I just like I was feeling stressed last
Speaker 5: week and I went off and I climbed to the
Speaker 5: top of a mountain and I sat there by myself
Speaker 5: for a while and it was nice and it was
Speaker 5: so quiet. I could hear like this little hawk's wingspeeding,
Speaker 5: and that was really good for me. That's what I
Speaker 5: like to hear. It would not have changed the outcome
Speaker 5: one bit if I had stayed and sound twister dot
Speaker 5: com for four hours instead of doing that. So I
Speaker 5: want you to all take time for yourselves and do
Speaker 5: things that kind of make you feel hopeful. I want
Speaker 5: to build a for what Margaret said, there are so
Speaker 5: many skills that all of you had that you could
Speaker 5: share with someone. I think when I started being an
Speaker 5: anarchist it was largely because I was going to a
Speaker 5: bike co op, and like, people shared their skills with me,
Speaker 5: and I shared my skills with them, and we all
Speaker 5: shared our stuff with each other, and I worked out
Speaker 5: that we could just rely on other people for that shit,
Speaker 5: and they did need to be hierarchical or based on
Speaker 5: transfer of material goods. People just want to help each other,
Speaker 5: And a lot of people have messaged me saying that,
Speaker 5: like they know that I participate in mutulae and they
Speaker 5: want you to. If you can't see it, then you
Speaker 5: have to start it. And that's okay. You can change
Speaker 5: the world if you make a caller full of sandwiches
Speaker 5: and give them to people who are hungry. I guarantee
Speaker 5: if you start doing that shit, you will find other
Speaker 5: people and they will say, hey, what are you doing?
Speaker 5: Oh I'm feeling people? Why because they're hungry? Can I help? Yes,
Speaker 5: It's that easy, and like we can build from there.
Speaker 5: We don't have to agree with them on everything, first
Speaker 5: of all, but we can build from there. And I
Speaker 5: think it can be really scary. But like now. It's
Speaker 5: the time to start, not once things get worse, you know,
Speaker 5: four eight years ago was the time to start. But
Speaker 5: we can't go back. And I want to kind of
Speaker 5: finish up with that that, like, we can't go back.
Speaker 5: I don't care where someone was yesterday. I don't care
Speaker 5: where they were last week. I don't care where they
Speaker 5: word last year, like all the malices where they are now,
Speaker 5: and we can build forward from here. We cannot go
Speaker 5: back and change things. And it is not worth doing
Speaker 5: endless recriminations. It doesn't matter it's happened. It's on us
Speaker 5: to decide how we react now. And you can react
Speaker 5: in a way that strengthens our communities and that builds
Speaker 5: ways are taking care of each other, which aren't way
Speaker 5: they of controlling each other. That that's all that you
Speaker 5: need to do to make this so much less despairing,
Speaker 5: so much less terrible, and so much less deadly for
Speaker 5: some people. And I know that we're doing that here.
Speaker 5: Check in on my friends. I'm in and Daddy and Gap,
Speaker 5: I'm checking in on my mutual aid friends. And if
Speaker 5: you don't have that, I want you to build that.
Speaker 5: And I promise it's not something that's out of reach
Speaker 5: like you can do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I want to add one last thing. I think a
Speaker 7: lot of people think they don't have skills. You do
Speaker 7: have skills. The thing that I did when I started
Speaker 7: organizing was I move chairs around so that people could
Speaker 7: have meetings by moving chairs, and I helped take.
Speaker 3: Care of people's kids.
Speaker 7: That like, helped put posters up right.
Speaker 5: People.
Speaker 7: People can do things. You have things that you can do,
Speaker 7: And it's it's time to lock in. That's that's what
Speaker 7: that's what we have from here. It is it is
Speaker 7: time to lock in. It's time to organize, it's time
Speaker 7: to get prepared to fight.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is just the first episode after the election.
Speaker 1: In the coming weeks, coming days, coming months, we're going
Speaker 1: to go into very specific detail on things. We are
Speaker 1: going to provide different information and resources and continue to
Speaker 1: defend against disinformation and misinformation. And this is a fucking
Speaker 1: daily show.
Speaker 6: We will we will be getting into all of all
Speaker 6: of these topics, especially in these next seventy five days,
Speaker 6: to help prepare this topic by topic.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's going.
Speaker 6: To be it's gonna be a long four years.
Speaker 2: It could happen.
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Speaker 2: You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 8: You can now find sources for it could happen here,
Speaker 8: listed directly in episode descriptions.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.