Speaker 1: Also media. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to let you know this is a compilation episode. So
Speaker 1: every episode of the week that just happened is here
Speaker 1: in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for
Speaker 1: you to listen to in a long stretch if you want.
Speaker 1: If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
Speaker 1: you can make your own decisions.
Speaker 2: Welcome to it. Could that be here? A podcast where
Speaker 2: the ancient leftist adage there is power logistics has finally
Speaker 2: been realized by one Donald Trump. I am your host,
Speaker 2: Mia Wong, and with me is Gere. How are you doing.
Speaker 3: Gear Just another great day in America.
Speaker 2: It's great, it's great. There were resting judges. It's a
Speaker 2: good time.
Speaker 1: It's great.
Speaker 3: Something that Mia has probably called for before, but under
Speaker 3: different circumstances.
Speaker 2: Hey, look, have I ever publicly called for the arrest
Speaker 2: of the judge?
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I have.
Speaker 3: Maybe probably not, because like a resting power itself is
Speaker 3: a little bit problem hashtag problematic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean this is this is this is a
Speaker 2: car sural solution to this is garrison, Like we kind
Speaker 2: of using carcialism to solve the problems of the cultural system. Sure,
Speaker 2: speaking of carceral systems, there is the economy that we're
Speaker 2: all living under, which is also quite literally a cucural system,
Speaker 2: because so much of it is based on prisident and
Speaker 2: slave labor of various kinds across the world. Now I
Speaker 2: have good news and I have bad news about this.
Speaker 2: I don't remember what the good news was, so we're
Speaker 2: only getting the bad news, which is that, well, the
Speaker 2: good news and the bad news is that this the
Speaker 2: system that we all grew up on. That the economic
Speaker 2: system that has, you know, supported us our entire lives,
Speaker 2: or not supported us for our entire lives. The thing,
Speaker 2: you know, the system that encompasses everything we have ever known,
Speaker 2: is fucking dead. It is dead as shit. The economic
Speaker 2: system that existed literally at the end of last year
Speaker 2: does not exist anymore. It is it right now in
Speaker 2: the process of dying. And the thing that is emerging
Speaker 2: has not emerged yet, which means we get to go
Speaker 2: to Gramsy quote where he says, this is the time
Speaker 2: of monsters.
Speaker 3: The Chinese century. My favorite whatever Gramsky, how do we
Speaker 3: say this guy's name? Gromski, Gramm gram sheet, see you
Speaker 3: fucked up too. Yeah, my favorite gram Sheet quote. We're
Speaker 3: entering the Chinese century.
Speaker 2: Look, okay, So here's the thing I I, on a
Speaker 2: fundamental level think that Gramsy is like the harbinger of
Speaker 2: the entire retreat of the twentieth century left. So I
Speaker 2: hate him and therefar if you say his name properly. Also,
Speaker 2: we're gonna get into a little bit about white. The
Speaker 2: Chinese century is going to also be a complete shitcho
Speaker 2: for them too.
Speaker 3: But you know, the Canadian century, I don't know. Finally,
Speaker 3: the Yugoslavian century with God Emperor Mark Carney in charge,
Speaker 3: he will usher in a new era of Canadian progress
Speaker 3: and global supremacy. As climate change worsens, the Canadian economy
Speaker 3: will suck up all of the independency and resources from
Speaker 3: the US in the late twentieth century. And finally, we
Speaker 3: will have a Tim Hortons in every country in the planet.
Speaker 2: I'm so excited for us to finally get our first
Speaker 2: war between two countries with Tim Hortons in it.
Speaker 3: That will be exciting.
Speaker 2: So there is a story that we have told on
Speaker 2: the show many many, many, many, many many times, and
Speaker 2: it is the story of the structure of the modern
Speaker 2: world economy, the birth of theoliberalism, the ascendancy of free trade,
Speaker 2: the decline of the US as the world's grand manufacturing power,
Speaker 2: the collapse of the clower of the global working class,
Speaker 2: and the generalized ascension of capitalism, and this specific form
Speaker 2: of capitalism as the structuring force of the world system.
Speaker 2: It is a story of how structural forces and contingent choices,
Speaker 2: technological changes in class wears, domestic politics, and grand international
Speaker 2: maneuvers and international relations built a political and economic structure
Speaker 2: that ruled the world for half a century of American hedgem.
Speaker 2: And we are going to tell a very very abbreviated
Speaker 2: version of that story for one final time because that
Speaker 2: world the world.
Speaker 3: Because you'll probably do this again in two years. But okay, the.
Speaker 2: World that we were all born into, that world is
Speaker 2: fucking dead and Donald Trump has killed it.
Speaker 3: This is how it died.
Speaker 2: Garrison. Yes, in the beginning, there was war, sure, in
Speaker 2: the ashes of a continent's read by the flames of fascism.
Speaker 2: Two army's stood triumphinch over a new world. One of them, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: was the United States. The second one, unfortunately was the USSR.
Speaker 2: Now it's also worth mentioning that very briefly, both the
Speaker 2: French and the British assumed they would also be like
Speaker 2: superpowers and no jokes, washed, failed, failed powers, zero out
Speaker 2: of ten absolute dipshits destroyed.
Speaker 3: Oddly enough, Japan walked away with more power than either
Speaker 3: of those countries. Yes, yeah, a little bit, a little
Speaker 3: bit odd considering the conditions that led to this happening.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I mean, but the actual shift here though,
Speaker 2: and this is and this is you know, like this
Speaker 2: actually is a lot of what this episode it's about,
Speaker 2: is that the thing that World War One or World
Speaker 2: War two did was was one also do this, but
Speaker 2: was fundamentally break the power of the old world empires, right,
Speaker 2: because the world had been ruled for several hundred years
Speaker 2: by various combinations of the French, the British, and the Germans.
Speaker 2: And you know, this is some extent like Spain, but
Speaker 2: Spain was sort of gone, right, But like those old
Speaker 2: world empires had been what had structured everything in the world,
Speaker 2: and at the end of World War Two that suddenly
Speaker 2: wasn't the case anymore. And the product of this was
Speaker 2: that if if you look at the places in the
Speaker 2: world that had the largest remaining industrial reserves, right, you
Speaker 2: know there, I mean, there was obviously some industrial production
Speaker 2: in Latin America, particularly Argentina. There was some like Chinese
Speaker 2: manufacturing belts that were run by Japan in China that
Speaker 2: weren't destroyed. And then there was the entire manufacturing power
Speaker 2: of the United States. And this meant that alone among countries, right,
Speaker 2: the US was in the most dominant position, like one
Speaker 2: of the most positions of great power has ever been.
Speaker 2: And even though there technically was a second great power, right,
Speaker 2: they had an unbelievable percentage of the world's total manufacturing power.
Speaker 2: We had an unhinged percentage of the world's total gold reserves.
Speaker 2: We had I mean, I guess, like the second largest
Speaker 2: army in the world, but you know, like we were
Speaker 2: significant the more technologically advanced than the USSR. And this
Speaker 2: had a bunch of extremely weird consequences because there was
Speaker 2: really no way for the amount of like concentrated industrial
Speaker 2: power the US had to go but down because we
Speaker 2: controlled so much of the world's wealth and so much
Speaker 2: of the world's manufacturing capacity that the only thing that
Speaker 2: could ever possibly happen was that the rest of the
Speaker 2: world would catch up and this was the thing that
Speaker 2: was actually necessary. And this is something that was that
Speaker 2: was spurred on by the American industrial class, right because
Speaker 2: they suddenly had all of these like jeep factories you're
Speaker 2: trying to make cars out of, and they needed people
Speaker 2: to buy the cars, and the only way to do
Speaker 2: that was to rebuild Europe and to rebuild Japan in
Speaker 2: order to sort of rebuild these places as markets and
Speaker 2: so for like a very brief time. And this is
Speaker 2: the sort of like golden age that all of these
Speaker 2: Trump people and all of these like weird dipshits like
Speaker 2: harkened back to. Was this like part time of like
Speaker 2: unmatched American power, but also it was it was a
Speaker 2: time in the world economy where you could have multiple
Speaker 2: powers industrializing at the same time without it being zero sum.
Speaker 2: And that just was not going to last because at
Speaker 2: a certain point, and this is accelerated by things we've
Speaker 2: talked about in other episodes, like this attempt by a
Speaker 2: bunch of what we're called the non Aligned Movement or
Speaker 2: sort of the G seventy seven, you know, also like
Speaker 2: the Third World Movement, a bunch of these countries that
Speaker 2: were non alliance to like Yugoslavia, India, Pakistan, which you
Speaker 2: can immediately tell how this alliance is going to ship
Speaker 2: because these two countries are like in the same alliance, right,
Speaker 2: like you know, this is the Chido's Yugoslavia's in this
Speaker 2: with like Saudi Arabia, these countries sort of like economic
Speaker 2: strategy was to create something that actually is in a
Speaker 2: lot of ways kind of like what Trump is trying
Speaker 2: to do, which is like using their control of resources,
Speaker 2: although again the resource of the US has now is
Speaker 2: like moneyasually took all of the fucking world's resources, right,
Speaker 2: but using that to develop your own local industrial basis
Speaker 2: so you can have your own local manufacturing economy. And
Speaker 2: this is something that like a lot of countries pursued this,
Speaker 2: like Venezuela pursues this, like Bolivia pursues it. This is
Speaker 2: this is something that like everyone like kind of across
Speaker 2: the political spectrum is trying to do in like the
Speaker 2: sitties and seventies and through the eighties. But the thing
Speaker 2: is it's destroyed by the second thing that's sort of
Speaker 2: a model for what these people are trying to do,
Speaker 2: which is what Reagan was able to do to the
Speaker 2: American economy. In the sort of nineteen eighties. And what
Speaker 2: Reagan is able to do is Reagan actually does something
Speaker 2: that sounds really bizarre now, but he was actually successfully
Speaker 2: able to temporarily for about maybe like six years, six
Speaker 2: or seven years, was able to actually like dramatically ramp
Speaker 2: up American like like industrial production and like was able
Speaker 2: to do the whole sort of like we're bringing the
Speaker 2: jobs back to the US. But the thing is, the
Speaker 2: way he did this was not the way the Trump
Speaker 2: administration is doing it.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: What he did was, on the one hand, he blew
Speaker 2: a smoking crater in the entire world economy. And that
Speaker 2: garrison will sound familiar to you because these people are
Speaker 2: trying to blow a hole in the American economy, right,
Speaker 2: like you have seen this.
Speaker 3: Yes, I have seen the stonks and the trade and
Speaker 3: the shipments, yes I am.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But but even like like Elon Musk would like
Speaker 2: deliver like post about this right like very deliberately about
Speaker 2: how he wants to destroy the economy so that there
Speaker 2: could be like a oh yeah, brief economic hardship and
Speaker 2: that a golden age, right.
Speaker 3: Necessary hardship will have to endure for a short period
Speaker 3: of time to then reach the like Utopia, which surely
Speaker 3: around the corner.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's interesting because when when when serious people
Speaker 2: have to defend this, like Fox Okay, I say serious people,
Speaker 2: I'm taking this and I'm saying Fox News because like
Speaker 2: Sevi serious, Look look here's.
Speaker 3: A serious clouds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't have to defend this, right, Like, Okay,
Speaker 2: you know we're not dealing with like you know, we're
Speaker 2: not dealing with like intellectual titans here. But like when
Speaker 2: someone who is mildly more intelligent than Elon Musk has
Speaker 2: to defend this, it is Reagan, they point you, because
Speaker 2: Reagan and Carter was also had a hand in this.
Speaker 2: But Reagan does this thing called the Volker shock, right,
Speaker 2: like working working hand in hand with Paul Volker's the
Speaker 2: head of the Federal Reserve, which, notably, Trump just spent
Speaker 2: a bunch of time threatening to fire the head of
Speaker 2: the Federal Reserve and then had to back off on
Speaker 2: that because all of the markets were like, this is
Speaker 2: our fucking rubicon, Like we don't give a funck about
Speaker 2: any of the other thing. Well, I we kind of
Speaker 2: give a fuck up the other things you be doing,
Speaker 2: but like if you fire the head of the Federal reserve,
Speaker 2: like we're going ape shit. But like you know, the
Speaker 2: the FED and Reagan work together in order to do
Speaker 2: this thing, which is the jack interest rates to just
Speaker 2: like unhinged levels, causing everyone else's debt in the world
Speaker 2: to become like unbelievably unsustainable to repay. This like annihilates
Speaker 2: boast of the world's economies. This also creates like a
Speaker 2: double dip recession where the US has like almost twenty
Speaker 2: percent unemployment.
Speaker 1: But he's able to.
Speaker 2: Write this out specifically because like this thing actually benefits
Speaker 2: a bunch of sections of the American capitalist class. Like
Speaker 2: if you are someone who holds debt, right, this is
Speaker 2: fucking great for you. And this is something very different
Speaker 2: from what's happening right now because nobody is winning the
Speaker 2: trade war, Like everyone is just having the very worst
Speaker 2: time I've ever had.
Speaker 3: It does seem like a globe of losers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But the thing that Reagan does that actually allowed
Speaker 2: him to temporarily restore the profitability of a lot of
Speaker 2: American manufacturing. And there is still a lot of American manufacturing.
Speaker 2: We'll get to that in a bit. But the thing
Speaker 2: he was able to do was the thing that Garrison
Speaker 2: I was threatening at the beginning of the show. By
Speaker 2: the time I am done doing this, pot like maybe
Speaker 2: not this podcast, but I finish doing it could happen
Speaker 2: here when I like die on the battlefield in fifteen years,
Speaker 2: everyone will be able to fucking explain the Plaza Chords
Speaker 2: and the reverse Plaza Chords because they're they're the central
Speaker 2: thing that got us to this alt to this fucking place,
Speaker 2: which is that Ronald Reagan goes to Japan and goes
Speaker 2: to like West Germany, and the subtext of what he's
Speaker 2: saying is like you are American military protectorates and because
Speaker 2: you are American build or Japan by the way, it's
Speaker 2: like the great industrial power of the nineteen eighties right
Speaker 2: and through the nineties, Like they are like the defining
Speaker 2: like they are the thing that everyone thinks about China today.
Speaker 2: Like if you want to find every argument people make
Speaker 2: about China from the entire political spectrum, like all the
Speaker 2: way from like people in the one hands going like
Speaker 2: this is they're gonna destroy American hegemony to people on
Speaker 2: the other hand being like this is what socialism is,
Speaker 2: you can find all of those same arguments people made
Speaker 2: about Japan in like the eighties but you know, what
Speaker 2: Reagan forces these countries to do is to increase the
Speaker 2: value of their currency relative to the dollar. Right, So
Speaker 2: the dollar is suddenly worthless, and because the dollar is
Speaker 2: like worthless relative to other international currencies, it makes US
Speaker 2: manufacturer more competitive. And this like temporarily restores American techleological production,
Speaker 2: but then they have to reverse them because that nukes
Speaker 2: the entire Japanese economy, and the Japanese economy becomes an
Speaker 2: entire thing of real estate speculation, which you know, I Gars,
Speaker 2: I know you may be too young to remember what
Speaker 2: happened the last time that we based the.
Speaker 3: Entire economy of speculation.
Speaker 1: But that's not true.
Speaker 3: You're like a few days older than me. Come on,
Speaker 3: that's unbelievably not sure. I am over half a decade
Speaker 3: older than you.
Speaker 5: Is that real?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 3: Yeah, real, Yeah, we'll talk about this afterwards. I don't
Speaker 3: I don't think that's true. Let me pull up my
Speaker 3: mea wong docs file to check once, all.
Speaker 2: Right, while Garrison checks to be a wog docs file.
Speaker 2: The economy that is built up from all of us, though, right,
Speaker 2: is an economy based on a few different things. One,
Speaker 2: it's based on an entire network of global supply chains
Speaker 2: with you know, like very very minimal tariff barriers between them.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 2: It is based on the sort of doctrine of free trade,
Speaker 2: which is you know, not really free, but obviously like
Speaker 2: the ways that these were written structurally benefited the US,
Speaker 2: right where like the US is allowed to do all
Speaker 2: of this shit for like its corn production that nowhere
Speaker 2: the country is allowed to do. Like all of the
Speaker 2: market tampering that all these people scream about is just
Speaker 2: what the US does with corn. But you know, the
Speaker 2: entire canoxicism was based on being able to cheaply produce
Speaker 2: different components of goods in different countries, assemble them, and
Speaker 2: then move them across the world cheaply in order to
Speaker 2: sort of avoid the localized power of workers movements. It
Speaker 2: is based on the US running a series of bubble economies,
Speaker 2: so the tech bubble, the housing bubbles, heata, et cetera.
Speaker 2: And it is based on the US dollar and the
Speaker 2: bond as like the fundamental aspects of the like as
Speaker 2: the world reserve currency, the fundamental thing that drives the system.
Speaker 2: And when we come back, we will talk about this
Speaker 2: literally all exploding and what it's going to do for
Speaker 2: all of you, which is not good. Yay, okay, we
Speaker 2: are back now. One of the things that have in
Speaker 2: a lot of ways locked the system in place was
Speaker 2: that because of the way that these these manufacturing like
Speaker 2: networks are set up, right, because they're all so interlinked,
Speaker 2: because they're all dependent on like exploiting differences between production
Speaker 2: capacity and like labor costs in different countries. They are
Speaker 2: all so interconnected that if you try to pull one
Speaker 2: thread out of it and do a major change to
Speaker 2: the system, the entire thing is at risk immediately. And
Speaker 2: this meant that there has always been an enormous structural
Speaker 2: incentive to keep things the way they were, even if
Speaker 2: everyone can also already like realize that they're kind of
Speaker 2: fucked up. And this days all the way back to
Speaker 2: like things that most people largely have forgotten about. But like, oh, Alma,
Speaker 2: for example, ran on renegotiating NAFTA, and he never like
Speaker 2: intended to do that, but like even if he had
Speaker 2: the moment he got into power, you know, like Trump
Speaker 2: renegotiates NAFTA too, right, But he renegotiates NAFTA and it's
Speaker 2: just like the same trade deal because for a long time, right,
Speaker 2: if if you were going to run the capitalist economy
Speaker 2: in a functional way. The only thing you could possibly
Speaker 2: do was run it the way he had already been
Speaker 2: set up, because there were so many structural factors about
Speaker 2: how this is snow production works, that this is only
Speaker 2: that this is the only way you could run it
Speaker 2: and still like have the economy not explode. But now
Speaker 2: we have finally produced a group of men so stupid
Speaker 2: that they are unconstrained by the structural limits of the economy.
Speaker 2: And this is where we get into the lebrond of
Speaker 2: turf terrasom'er on right now, and we get into something
Speaker 2: that is very important to understand about this, which is
Speaker 2: that this shit is not about economics right in the
Speaker 2: sense that you or I were understand them. This is
Speaker 2: none of this stuff is about like we want the
Speaker 2: economy to grow. It's this is not something that like
Speaker 2: really any of the major sectors of capital want because
Speaker 2: it is just nucleus whole thing. And this is why
Speaker 2: you've seen a split between even Elon Musk has like
Speaker 2: openly criticized the trade policy, even if he's been sort
Speaker 2: of hedging it. What we've been seeing is this widening rifted.
Speaker 2: And we talked about this in the last executive disorder,
Speaker 2: where like different factions of the Trump administration were literally
Speaker 2: trying to like isolate Trump from like Navarro, who's the
Speaker 2: guy who wants to do all of the all of
Speaker 2: the tariff bullshit they've been, you know, like literally try
Speaker 2: to get them alone in a room so that they
Speaker 2: can they can implement their trade policy. But the actual
Speaker 2: underlying urge here is completely ideological, right it is. It
Speaker 2: is this idea that like if you run a trade
Speaker 2: deficit with a country, or if you're if you are
Speaker 2: buying things from a country, they are ripping you off,
Speaker 2: and you always need to be selling more things than
Speaker 2: you're buying, which is just like so okay on one level,
Speaker 2: like this is just so fucking nonsense that like attempting
Speaker 2: to explain why is bullshit is kind of pointless, But
Speaker 2: we're gonna do it anyways, because someone fucking has to somewhere.
Speaker 2: And this actually does also reveal something about the way
Speaker 2: that money has always worked under these systems. Okay, so
Speaker 2: before we get to like what this is going to
Speaker 2: do to the entire world economy, we need to talk
Speaker 2: about Garrison. Do you know what balance of payments.
Speaker 3: Is that sounds like something I would ask my accountant about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is a technically an accounting thing, right,
Speaker 2: But the balance of payments of a country, it is
Speaker 2: like a leisure thing, right, But it's the measure of
Speaker 2: like their accounts, right in terms of all of the
Speaker 2: money coming out of the country and all of the
Speaker 2: money coming into the country. That's you know, that's like
Speaker 2: trade balance stuff, right, And the balance of payments is
Speaker 2: actually very important for a lot of countries because specifically
Speaker 2: most countries in the world need to buy things in
Speaker 2: a currency they can't print. This has always been the
Speaker 2: structural limit of things like modern monetary theory, which talks
Speaker 2: about how like your country's ability to like have things
Speaker 2: isn't constrained by just like the pure money supply of
Speaker 2: your country as long as you're buying things in your
Speaker 2: own currency, right. Like the purpose of money is the
Speaker 2: thing that move assets around. But inflation isn't a product.
Speaker 2: I mean, like, yeah, okay, if you just like hammer
Speaker 2: the fucking printer button, right, Like, yeah, you can cause
Speaker 2: hyper inflation, but substantively because money is something that is
Speaker 2: a production of the government, because it is literally government debt, right,
Speaker 2: It's not a commodity in the conventional sense where you
Speaker 2: have to like figure out how much of it there is,
Speaker 2: and there's like a limited supply of it, and you
Speaker 2: have to like manage limited supply and make sure the
Speaker 2: economy doesn't explode. You can just use the money that
Speaker 2: you have, and you can use debt like deficit spending
Speaker 2: effectively to continue to circulate goods around the economy. The
Speaker 2: problem is if you have to buy something that is
Speaker 2: not in your currency, that's where you need trade because
Speaker 2: you need to find a way so you know, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna taken example that we're gonna come back you later,
Speaker 2: which is Bolivia.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: If you are Bolivia, you need to get American dollars
Speaker 2: so you can buy like gas, right, so people can
Speaker 2: like fucking fuel their cars. And the problem is you
Speaker 2: can only buy oil in American dollars, so you have
Speaker 2: to find something to export to a place where you
Speaker 2: can get American dollars for it. And in this sense,
Speaker 2: balance of payments actually matters enormously, right, And balance of
Speaker 2: payments is also just like a function of all of
Speaker 2: your trade deficits and all of your trade share pluses
Speaker 2: sort of combined. Right, But think about the US. This
Speaker 2: is a notable thing. Everyone uses the dollar to buy shit.
Speaker 2: There's like nothing that you can't buy with the dollar.
Speaker 2: So for the United States, none of this shit matters
Speaker 2: at all, none of the balance of payment stuff.
Speaker 3: It is completely.
Speaker 2: Irrelevant, like literally completely totally and utterly irrelevant. Right now.
Speaker 2: If you are like Bolivia and you run out of dollars,
Speaker 2: then what you have is a spirally economic crisis where
Speaker 2: like people looking suddenly can't buy food because no one
Speaker 2: can buy oil, so no one can move things around,
Speaker 2: so like the entire economy literc collapses. This is a
Speaker 2: very very very common mode of economic collapse. But you know,
Speaker 2: none of the things that the right is talking about,
Speaker 2: like in terms of like, oh you have like the
Speaker 2: United States has like a trade deficit with China is
Speaker 2: like yeah, great, that means that we're buying things from them.
Speaker 2: Like the one good Rand Paul quote ever, was like, yes,
Speaker 2: I have a trade deficit with my grocery store, like
Speaker 2: and that's fine.
Speaker 3: Mia goes full Rand Paul on the podcast today.
Speaker 2: Yeah I know what. But the thing is, the thing is,
Speaker 2: it is very very funny that Rand Paul is now
Speaker 2: complaining about this because it's like well, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: If all of you motherfuckers hadn't spent all this time
Speaker 2: like fucking polling around with like Alex Jones and the Klan,
Speaker 2: like we probably wouldn't be here right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, zero falls is definitely like the Tea Party does
Speaker 3: have a sizeable chunk of the blame here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like like that's the thing, like this, this is
Speaker 2: your all of your fucking fault. Lock them up quick,
Speaker 2: zero to ten, zero to ten, Get him out, Get
Speaker 2: him out, gethim out.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: Do you know what else we need to get out?
Speaker 2: Gett a stock?
Speaker 3: Oh it's these fucks and services. Yeah, get them out
Speaker 3: of stock.
Speaker 2: Get them out of stock while you still can.
Speaker 3: Well, we still have an economy.
Speaker 2: We are back now again, as I was saying, like
Speaker 2: this attempt to make the American economy function in a
Speaker 2: way that it has trade surpluses with every other country.
Speaker 2: And also, and this is also important, these people don't
Speaker 2: think that like services are real and a lot of
Speaker 2: what the US exports as services. But because they're all
Speaker 2: these really weird like me, because they're all fascists, right,
Speaker 2: they all have this all of this weird ideological shit
Speaker 2: about masculinity and about the favoring of the concrete over
Speaker 2: the abstract, because the concrete is like masculated. It is
Speaker 2: like it is the nation, right like this, like steel
Speaker 2: workers and people who fucking hammer coal out like this.
Speaker 2: This is what masculinity is. This is what nationalism is.
Speaker 2: This is what men are supposed to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you have the materialists on the evil side, and
Speaker 3: you have the post materialists on well.
Speaker 2: No, okay, so this is a long time ago. I
Speaker 2: did a bunch of episodes called The Class and the
Speaker 2: Culture War, and one of the points that I make
Speaker 2: in that episode is that one of the arguments that
Speaker 2: the Canadian Jewish Marxist historian Moish Pistone makes about what
Speaker 2: the Holocaust was was this attempt to pit the concrete
Speaker 2: part of capital against the abstract part of capital. Right
Speaker 2: where the concrete part of capital is like the nation
Speaker 2: and the worker and the factory and like the boss,
Speaker 2: right and all of these like concrete things were pitted
Speaker 2: against the like the quote unquote abstract part of capital,
Speaker 2: which is to say, like quote unquote like Jewish financiers
Speaker 2: and all of the sort of like weird collection of
Speaker 2: like modifiers that gets associated with like you know, the
Speaker 2: rootless positive politanism, like the globalism, like all of this shit, right,
Speaker 2: And what the Nazis did was embody all of that
Speaker 2: stuff into just the figure of the Jewish person and
Speaker 2: his arguments. And this is arguing about like sort of
Speaker 2: structural anti semitism and what the Holocaust was was that
Speaker 2: the like that was what the Nazi revolution was. That's
Speaker 2: what the liquidation of like and this is how episode describes,
Speaker 2: like liquidation of Jesus is what this is what the hall,
Speaker 2: this is what the genocide was, which their attempt to
Speaker 2: destroy the like abstract part of part of this thing
Speaker 2: by pitting it against the concrete part of this thing.
Speaker 2: And this is what these fucking people are also are
Speaker 2: also doing in their own way, right, Like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're just doing it with like the price of
Speaker 3: eggs or like the availability of housing.
Speaker 2: Right, and you know, and it's also knowing like these
Speaker 2: people are like unhe and anti Semitic, right, because this
Speaker 2: is all part of the same ideology. They just sort
Speaker 2: of like they're doing the shit in different ways and
Speaker 2: they haven't like yeah, I don't know, like if these
Speaker 2: people are in power for like a decade, we might
Speaker 2: just get this right where they're literally doing the Holocaust again,
Speaker 2: but like we're not at that point yet, but we're
Speaker 2: at the point is where like this this kind of
Speaker 2: like under like this kind of fascist understanding of the
Speaker 2: nation and masculinity and like the concrete versus the abstract,
Speaker 2: and like these figures can be like embodied in anti
Speaker 2: these things. And this is also what like what the
Speaker 2: like this is what the administration is doing with immigrants, right,
Speaker 2: is like passing them in that role of like the abstract,
Speaker 2: like the foreigner, they the national, the like the anti
Speaker 2: the anti national.
Speaker 3: Those things are are is causing our economic problems, our
Speaker 3: housing problems. And then you have other instances like with
Speaker 3: like Mexico and Canada where they tie in the trade
Speaker 3: war with this like ventanyl thing, being like you know,
Speaker 3: like immigrants are bringing fentanyl over the border and we're
Speaker 3: using tariffs as a negotiating tactic to stop ventinyls. Like
Speaker 3: they're they're bringing in even more like aspects regarding like
Speaker 3: immigration and tying it directly to like our trade wars
Speaker 3: with these with these you know, massive massive countries some
Speaker 3: of our most important trading partners.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is causing an interesting split because Trump's
Speaker 2: like political coalition right has a bunch of kind of
Speaker 2: different kinds of fascists in a lot of ways. We're
Speaker 2: like Trump and Navarro and like, i mean, Trump is
Speaker 2: instinctually pro tariff and like he can be talked out
Speaker 2: of it because again this guy's brain, like we saw
Speaker 2: this last administration, Like the last person in the room
Speaker 2: with him can convince them, but basically anything. But you know,
Speaker 2: those people are structurally committed to like thisacivic version of masculinity.
Speaker 2: And there's a lot of portions of the right that
Speaker 2: are and that are committed to like this trade policy
Speaker 2: is like the America first American nationalist thing. But like
Speaker 2: someone like Elon Musk isn't that committed to this. And
Speaker 2: like even a lot of the people who are like
Speaker 2: the inner circle sort of like Jarvin like tech fascist
Speaker 2: right are like okay, but hold on, like we make
Speaker 2: all of our shit in China, so like you know,
Speaker 2: and this is why, like Elon is coming against the
Speaker 2: terrorists because like, yeah, they're gonna fuck him, like because
Speaker 2: he has to import stuff and export stuff from China
Speaker 2: because that's where a bunch of his production facilities are, right,
Speaker 2: and you know, and if once you get out of
Speaker 2: the circle of of like that kind of like tech
Speaker 2: fascist right, and the tech people are the people who
Speaker 2: are the most closely aligned with this administration, right, like
Speaker 2: an internships of like all the sexus of the capital,
Speaker 2: tech is the most closely aligned one. But you know,
Speaker 2: you can get out into like places like fucking Walgreens
Speaker 2: and Walmart, right, and these are also like like the
Speaker 2: Waltons as a family are like traditional backers of the
Speaker 2: right for ages and ages and ages right, there've been
Speaker 2: backers of far right causes. They also don't want this
Speaker 2: because also their entire supply chains work you fucking China
Speaker 2: and work through moving a bunch of like commodities around,
Speaker 2: and the further route you go when you when you
Speaker 2: start getting into like actual finance capital. These people are
Speaker 2: fucking terrified because they're looking at this and like, holy shit,
Speaker 2: we're about to lose all over goddebt money. And the
Speaker 2: consequence of this is that all of this stuff is
Speaker 2: shaping out in a sort of political battle in the
Speaker 2: administration over who can get Trump in the room last
Speaker 2: to try to figure out how how the economy is
Speaker 2: going to work. But the problem is, and I have
Speaker 2: been vindicated in this In the very brief amount of
Speaker 2: time between when the episode of Friday came out and
Speaker 2: when we're recording this, there are no negotiations with China,
Speaker 2: Like they haven't started. There's no process for starting them.
Speaker 3: Trump does keep lying about starting negotiations, and yeah, he's
Speaker 3: just lying about this, right, Chinese government says, no, we
Speaker 3: have not started negotiations.
Speaker 2: It's like, no, there's no negotiations. Yeah, and there and
Speaker 2: and again, like structurally there can't be negotiations because there's
Speaker 2: no actual way for the US to like not have
Speaker 2: a trade deficit with China, Like there's no way you
Speaker 2: can do that. And that's the thing that will satisfy
Speaker 2: these people. So all of this means that the economy
Speaker 2: is fucking dead, right. This is the sort of like
Speaker 2: free trade economy we've all grown up in that functions
Speaker 2: off of like you know, like fucking drop shipping and
Speaker 2: all this cheap production of a bunch of other countries
Speaker 2: and you know, like assemblies of a bunch of different
Speaker 2: like goods in different places, and the US is like
Speaker 2: the economic center of the world is just fucking gone. Now.
Speaker 3: One of the reasons I.
Speaker 2: Started writing this episode in the first place is that
Speaker 2: I have read so much fucking analyzes of these goddamn
Speaker 2: turf tariffs, and do you know how many of them,
Speaker 2: for a single fucking second considered what this was going
Speaker 2: to be like for anyone who doesn't live in the
Speaker 2: United States.
Speaker 3: What the fuck is wrong with people?
Speaker 2: Why does nobody fucking care about a single goddamn person
Speaker 2: who lives outside the United States. I have read so
Speaker 2: many fucking analyzes of this fucking shit. I have read
Speaker 2: these things from I have read these things from the
Speaker 2: business papers. I have read these things from fascists. I
Speaker 2: have read these things from the center left. I have
Speaker 2: read these things from leftists. Do you know how many
Speaker 2: of these things have said anything about actual fucking people
Speaker 2: who do not live in the goddamn United States. Fucking
Speaker 2: none of them. Every once in a while you'll get like,
Speaker 2: this will be bad for the economy of China, and
Speaker 2: this is this is a catastrophe because the people who
Speaker 2: are going to be most affected by this when when
Speaker 2: the fucking turf terrorists some liberation they come back into
Speaker 2: effect over the summer are the working classes Sri Lanka.
Speaker 3: This is going to be the.
Speaker 2: Fucking apocalypse for a bunch of people who have been
Speaker 2: going through hell for years and years and years and years.
Speaker 2: It's going to be places like fucking Bolivia, who which
Speaker 2: is already facing a dollar crisis and is struggling to
Speaker 2: import fuel.
Speaker 3: It is going to be places like Bangladesh. It is
Speaker 3: going to be places.
Speaker 2: Like Vietnam, which is, you know, structurally in a better
Speaker 2: position than a lot of the rest of these countries,
Speaker 2: but like fucking won't be in a structurally better like
Speaker 2: balance for a structurally better position when it has like
Speaker 2: ninety percent goddamn tariffs on it. And yes, the US
Speaker 2: is going to be real fucking bad, right. Everything is
Speaker 2: going to cost a lot more money. All of us
Speaker 2: are going to have a lotless jobs. The people who
Speaker 2: are in jobs are going to make a lot less money.
Speaker 2: There is going to be a lot of people fucking homeless.
Speaker 2: There is going to be a lot of people who
Speaker 2: can't get fucking food. It is going to be a catastrophe.
Speaker 2: And also at the same time, the US is going
Speaker 2: to look like fucking fully automated, luxury gase based communism
Speaker 2: compared to fucking Shri Lanka. This kind of sort of
Speaker 2: wrote American nationalism that has consumed the brains of basically
Speaker 2: this entire goddamn country on a level so deep Americans
Speaker 2: don't even fucking think about it, Like, is the reason
Speaker 2: why we fucking have all of this bullshit in the
Speaker 2: first place. And this is why, like in like four
Speaker 2: fucking months, literally no one in the entire country social
Speaker 2: security is actually going to show up because nineteen year
Speaker 2: ol grow up doesn't understand sequel, because nobody in this
Speaker 2: fucking country gives a single shit about anyone who lives
Speaker 2: outside of the country enough to try to do a
Speaker 2: single goddamn word of analysis about how this is going
Speaker 2: to affect everyone. Because the death of the global economy
Speaker 2: will be felt here, it is going to be felt
Speaker 2: so much fucking worse everywhere else on goddamn Earth. And
Speaker 2: I am, like, I am losing my fucking mind at
Speaker 2: the extent to which everyone is just fucking refusing to
Speaker 2: engage with this completely. This is gonna be being unbelievably
Speaker 2: fucking angry because, like I don't know, a bunch of
Speaker 2: my family doesn't live in this country, which means I
Speaker 2: have to deal with the fact that, like everyone else
Speaker 2: who lives in another country is a human being who's
Speaker 2: exactly the same as fucking we are, and this is
Speaker 2: the thing that nobody else appears to want to fuck
Speaker 2: deal with. I am losing my shit. Please God, stop
Speaker 2: talking about the tariffs as if they only affect the
Speaker 2: United States and aren't mostly going to be born by
Speaker 2: everyone else. I didn't write a transition for this, but
Speaker 2: you know, I will transition out of this by again
Speaker 2: going back to the fact that all of the reason
Speaker 2: this is going to be so bad is that the
Speaker 2: global economy is based on, you know, a combination of
Speaker 2: resource extraction and a combination of logistical supply lines that
Speaker 2: all rely on there not being one hundred percent tariffs
Speaker 2: on goods and importers to the US. And when this
Speaker 2: shit goes through, and when the rest of the tariffs
Speaker 2: go through and make it you know, the thing that's
Speaker 2: happening right now is an attempt to avoid this stuff
Speaker 2: is everyone you know, and this is something like Nintendo
Speaker 2: has been talking about right where they were, like, okay,
Speaker 2: our plan to avoid the tariffs on China is to
Speaker 2: move a bunch of our production into Vietnam. And that
Speaker 2: was happening anyways before the tariffs because of sort of
Speaker 2: rising labor costs in China, and you know, a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of sort of factors like that, but none of
Speaker 2: that shit, none of that stuff that's like to sort
Speaker 2: of like keep the current global economy on a lifeline,
Speaker 2: is going is going to be able to function once
Speaker 2: the tariffs on basically of the country on Earth go
Speaker 2: into effect. And there's a second problem here, which is that, Okay,
Speaker 2: so what is the new economy going to look like?
Speaker 2: These people, like the people running like the administration, right,
Speaker 2: like people like Navarro and people like Trump, and a
Speaker 2: lot of the sort of like, right, who is driving
Speaker 2: the policy thing here think that that the production that's
Speaker 2: happening everywhere else in the world will just be replaced
Speaker 2: by the US. And there was a trap that people
Speaker 2: fall into with Chinese economics. And I do this too
Speaker 2: sometimes because it's, you know, it's a fast and easy
Speaker 2: way to think about the Chinese economy, and it's not accurates. Well,
Speaker 2: it's not like, isn't capital the whole picture of what's
Speaker 2: going on. But the way that people think about the
Speaker 2: Chinese economy tends to be that the reason that things
Speaker 2: are made in China is because labor is cheap there,
Speaker 2: because either the culmination of exploitation and poverty, and that's
Speaker 2: true to an extent, right, But the actual sort of
Speaker 2: genius from capitalist perpective of capitalis returned to China was that,
Speaker 2: you know, from a capitalist perspective, the Chinese workforce, and
Speaker 2: this continues to be true thirty or forty years into
Speaker 2: the transition, is highly educated and highly skilled. And the
Speaker 2: education was paid for not by capitalism, right, it was
Speaker 2: paid for by the sort of socialist system like this,
Speaker 2: This combination of things of a highly educated and an
Speaker 2: increasingly highly skilled as they've been, you know, working these jobs,
Speaker 2: means that there is an extremely high skilled migrant labor
Speaker 2: population that knows how to do a bunch of shit
Speaker 2: like circuit board assembly and like stuff with like chip assembly, right,
Speaker 2: that is vital to making electronics. And the US does
Speaker 2: not have a couple of one hundred thousand migrant workers
Speaker 2: that you can just have and like exploit and not
Speaker 2: pay healthcare costs to to know how all of the
Speaker 2: chip manufacturing shit works. Right, There are people in the
Speaker 2: US who know how to do some of these kinds
Speaker 2: of things. But we're talking, you know, even though the
Speaker 2: US does have a manufacturing economy and it is very
Speaker 2: high tech, it is not on the scale of these things, right.
Speaker 2: And the second, the second big reason why things are
Speaker 2: producing in China, and this is the reason why production
Speaker 2: didn't just shift all shift out of China after twenty
Speaker 2: eleven when there were huge protests there and huge riots
Speaker 2: there over sort of labor conditions, is that there was
Speaker 2: an unbelievable amount of like capital outlet, like this physical
Speaker 2: factory infrastructure that is in China that you can't easily
Speaker 2: just move out to another country. And this is this
Speaker 2: is the basic things like the power grid functions right,
Speaker 2: and you can't really easily replicate that, and you can't
Speaker 2: just have this thing that there's all these people want
Speaker 2: to do where like the US will just suddenly, you know,
Speaker 2: have all of these factories, right and well suddenly like
Speaker 2: all these things will just like come back and miraculously
Speaker 2: like there will be all of these jobs because like
Speaker 2: who the fuck is going like we don't we literally
Speaker 2: we don't have the technology for this. We'll not technlogy.
Speaker 2: It was like, who is going to build all of
Speaker 2: the factories? Right, Like the factories don't exist here, the
Speaker 2: like the inter technical systems for them don't exist here.
Speaker 3: You don't want to switch to costing fifty thousand dollars
Speaker 3: available in ten years pre order now Sorry, no available
Speaker 3: in twenty years. I forgot about the environmental impact surveys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, iPhone, iPhone twenty years.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But like you know, and like and like a lot
Speaker 2: of this is because like you know, you're hearing a
Speaker 2: lot of reports now with like small business owners. We're
Speaker 2: talking about like, yeah, it's so much easier to work
Speaker 2: with Chinese manufacturers, is like impossible to work with American manufacturers,
Speaker 2: And part of that is just exploitation, right, Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of things that like there there were
Speaker 2: like labor conditions that are very common in China that
Speaker 2: do happen in the US, but are much easier to
Speaker 2: do there. But also, like I don't know, like China
Speaker 2: has like an entire network of like the ability to
Speaker 2: basically do this sort of like pop up light and
Speaker 2: media manufacturing that can like retool itself really quickly, and
Speaker 2: the US doesn't fucking have that, right, Like, we do
Speaker 2: have a bunch of manufacturing in the US, right, Like
Speaker 2: that is the thing that we have, but it was
Speaker 2: largely pushed into like the suburbs to get rid of
Speaker 2: sort of like the masses of workers that are rose
Speaker 2: and cities like Detroit to like atomize them, right, And
Speaker 2: this is actually like also happening in China right now, weirdly,
Speaker 2: Like China has been pivoting to a service economy for
Speaker 2: a long time, but think this thing as those service economies,
Speaker 2: A lot of that shit is like also like drop
Speaker 2: shipping production, right but like, you know, there's no actual
Speaker 2: way for you know, befure like capital atl like costs
Speaker 2: and things like that. There's no actual way to replicate
Speaker 2: the conditions in China that make it like an effective
Speaker 2: like source of global production in the US or even
Speaker 2: in like a country like India, Like there's just not
Speaker 2: the infrastructure there to do it, and there's not the
Speaker 2: sort of like migrant labor population. It's not the sort
Speaker 2: of things that you need. And what this means right now,
Speaker 2: right is that like there is not a future lined
Speaker 2: up to replace the one that we're in right now.
Speaker 2: We literally don't know what this is going to do
Speaker 2: because no one has ever bothered planning this shit out.
Speaker 2: Because this is just like taking a sledgehammer to fucking everything,
Speaker 2: like they are trying to extract the copper wires from
Speaker 2: the house and in order to do this, they like,
Speaker 2: you know, A, because they think they think that's how
Speaker 2: the economy works, is they attract the copper wires, and
Speaker 2: b their plan to extract the copper wires is to
Speaker 2: blow the house up with dynamite. And now, no one's
Speaker 2: ever done in environmental impact statements on what if you
Speaker 2: blow the house up with dynamite?
Speaker 3: Because why the fuck would you do that? Right, Sometimes
Speaker 3: the police do that.
Speaker 2: It's true, it's true, but I guess, I guess they
Speaker 2: is the world's police force. But go, you know, like,
Speaker 2: no one has planned for this. But the second thing
Speaker 2: is there isn't another model of capital waiting in the
Speaker 2: wings in the way that there was when the sort
Speaker 2: of Reaganites did this the economy, because the Reaganites had
Speaker 2: an entire ideological apprightus, they had a like a functional
Speaker 2: way for the economy to work and be worse and
Speaker 2: be more exploitive. But there's nothing behind this, right, there's
Speaker 2: just a vision that literally cannot work. And so the
Speaker 2: place that I want to end as we head into
Speaker 2: the end of the economy, and as you know, I
Speaker 2: like I've been trying to grapple with what is it
Speaker 2: going to look like after this is that we just
Speaker 2: don't know. Things in the supply chain are going to
Speaker 2: break that we have never thought about before, Like medical
Speaker 2: systems are going to start breaking down, Right, The supply
Speaker 2: chains for like like really really basic goods that we
Speaker 2: don't even think about the production process of is going
Speaker 2: to start breaking down because it relies on being able
Speaker 2: to cheaply import one very very specific kind of like
Speaker 2: I don't know, like ball bearing that's made in one
Speaker 2: factory and suddenly cost like four hundred times as much
Speaker 2: as it did before, And we don't know what that's
Speaker 2: going to do. And this is on the one hand,
Speaker 2: absolutely horrifying, right, like this is going to mean an
Speaker 2: unbelievable amount of suffering for people across the world. But
Speaker 2: on the other hand, there is no plan, right, They
Speaker 2: don't have a fucking strategy, And that means that the
Speaker 2: future of the global economy is up in the air,
Speaker 2: and it's up to us to make it a fucking
Speaker 2: better one. Right, It's we either drive these people from
Speaker 2: power and we and we destroy the basis of their
Speaker 2: power on such a fundamental level they can never return
Speaker 2: to power, right, Like, we just we just fucking kneecap them.
Speaker 2: We physically seize all of the fucking assets and all
Speaker 2: of the things, of the productive capacity that they have
Speaker 2: that has been allowing you to do this. We make
Speaker 2: sure they can never get it again, and we make
Speaker 2: sure that we fucking control it. And we either do
Speaker 2: that or we all get crushed for a generation and
Speaker 2: we enter a period of just unmitigated global suffering the
Speaker 2: likes of which only a few people in the most
Speaker 2: hideously wardone parts of the world have experienced today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I for one am very excited to see the
Speaker 3: the anarchist liberal reglobalization Alliance finally fighting in the streets
Speaker 3: of Seattle to regain globalization full circle.
Speaker 2: You know, I will point out the reason they all
Speaker 2: called it alter globalization and not anti globalization was that
Speaker 2: like one of the one of the original line of
Speaker 2: them did say anti globalization of them did, right, but like,
Speaker 2: like like a lot of their argument was like the
Speaker 2: West Coast teams, certainly this is true, but like like
Speaker 2: it's also it's also true that like like what like
Speaker 2: one of the arguments they were making was that like
Speaker 2: neoliberal globalization meant that people couldn't move to places, but
Speaker 2: capital could and The thing that they want was a
Speaker 2: world where people can move between things and like, fuck capital, what.
Speaker 3: The fuck like eat shit?
Speaker 2: Right, And that's a world that we can build, right,
Speaker 2: We can build a world where fucking nobody gets arrested
Speaker 2: by the immigration gestapo, where like there isn't a fucking
Speaker 2: line on the ground that dictates whether people can disappear
Speaker 2: you to a concentration camp.
Speaker 3: And that is also globalization.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: We just have to fucking do it and ar co
Speaker 3: Clintonism one day we can look at a beautiful world.
Speaker 2: Look, if Bill Crystal can admit the radicals were right,
Speaker 2: all of these other motherfuckers could come around.
Speaker 3: We've been right all but we've been right the whole
Speaker 3: fucking time. Fuck you assholes.
Speaker 2: All of you broke this world and it is now
Speaker 2: our job to put it back together. And you fuckers
Speaker 2: are going to back us or we are all going
Speaker 2: to be killed by fascism. And those are the terms.
Speaker 3: Deal with it. It's a strange world. Do we live in.
Speaker 8: Boo, Hello and welcome to it could happen here. I'm
Speaker 8: here to ask you if you can imagine a world
Speaker 8: where national borders don't define our identities. This internationalist idea
Speaker 8: has historically been known as cosmopolitanism, and it has some
Speaker 8: deep roots, including interestingly some connection to anarchism, and of
Speaker 8: course that's what we're seeking to explore here today. I'm
Speaker 8: joined once again by the one and only.
Speaker 9: It's James James Stout. Thanks for having me, Andrew, I'm
Speaker 9: excited about this one.
Speaker 8: Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to have
Speaker 8: this conversation. Are you familiar with cosmopolitanism.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and like, look if there gets the more broad
Speaker 9: sphere of like anarchist internationalism, something I'm very interested in, right, Like,
Speaker 9: we had an interview on the show maybe two weeks ago,
Speaker 9: for a few weeks ago, and people hear this with
Speaker 9: people explicitly calling themselves internationalists fighting in Mianmar. Of course,
Speaker 9: I've spent time in re Java and with internationalists there, So,
Speaker 9: like internationalism is something I'm really interested in for sure.
Speaker 8: For sure, I think it's a very compelling and inspiring idea,
Speaker 8: especially in a world that lacks many of those ideas.
Speaker 8: At its core, cosmopolitanism is just the belief that all
Speaker 8: human beings belong to the same shared moral and political
Speaker 8: community that transcends national, cultural, and political boundaries. In the book, Cosmopoulitanism, ethics,
Speaker 8: and the Wilders Strangers. Philosopher Kwame Anthony Appia describes cosson
Speaker 8: Politanism as quote two strands that intertwine in the notion
Speaker 8: of Cossopolitanism. One is the idea that we have obligations
Speaker 8: to others, obligations that stretch beyond those to whom we
Speaker 8: are related, with the ties of kith and kin, or
Speaker 8: even the more formal ties of shared citizenship. The other
Speaker 8: is that we take seriously the value not just of
Speaker 8: human life, but of particular human lives, which means taking
Speaker 8: an interest in the practices and believes that land them significance.
Speaker 8: People are different, the Cossopolitan knows, and there is much
Speaker 8: to learn from our differences, because there are so many
Speaker 8: human possibilities with exploring. We neither expect nor desire that
Speaker 8: every person or every society should converge on a single
Speaker 8: mode of life. Whatever obligations are to others or theirs
Speaker 8: to us, they often have the rights to go their
Speaker 8: own way. So basically, we have obligations to others beyond
Speaker 8: just our immediate infiliations, and that human diversity is something
Speaker 8: to be valued, not just tolerated. So it's not the
Speaker 8: idea of assimilating all of humanity into one singular culture
Speaker 8: or society or government. Is the idea of recognizing and
Speaker 8: embracing the diversity of humans, but recognizing our shared affinity
Speaker 8: all the same. A couple different versions of cosmopolitanism. There's
Speaker 8: some moral cosmopolitanism, or the idea that all humans have
Speaker 8: equal moral worth. There's political cosmopolitanism, the idea that global
Speaker 8: governance or international institutions should supersede national borders. And then
Speaker 8: there's cultural costopolitanism, which is the blending in exchange of
Speaker 8: cultures through migration, trade, and shared histories. But costopolitanism fully
Speaker 8: embraced has I would say an inherent tens with power,
Speaker 8: especially nationalism, the states, and capitalism. And while it's true
Speaker 8: that liberal cosmopolitanism relies on global institutions like the United
Speaker 8: Nations and reinforces hierarchies, anarchist cosmopolitanism envisions of world where solidarity, cooperation,
Speaker 8: and mutual aid emerge from below through free association, rather
Speaker 8: than being imposed from above. So today will be unpacking
Speaker 8: the history of cosmopolitanism, how anarchists have engaged with the topic,
Speaker 8: and why it remains somewhat of a battleground today. Yes,
Speaker 8: the term itself comes from the Greek cosmopolitis, which means
Speaker 8: citizen of the world. The earliest articulation of this idea
Speaker 8: is often attributed to Diogenes of Sinope, who is a
Speaker 8: Synic philosopher who, when asked where he came from, simply replied,
Speaker 8: I'm a citizen of the world. According to Martha Nusbaum,
Speaker 8: Greek stoics like Xeno of Citium, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius
Speaker 8: expanded on this idea, arguing that humanity shares a universal
Speaker 8: reason and should live in accordance with nature, not artificial
Speaker 8: divisions of state or tribe. Of course, many of these
Speaker 8: philosophers didn't have any issue with patriarchy or slavery in Greece,
Speaker 8: so there is some inconsistency in their concept of a
Speaker 8: shared humanity.
Speaker 9: Yeah, the two counts as human I guess, isn't it like?
Speaker 9: Which is pretty bleak.
Speaker 8: Indeed, But let's pass forward a bit. During the Enlightenment
Speaker 8: we see a more structured political philosophy of cosmopolitanism. Emrgin
Speaker 8: Emanuel Kant was one of its most famous proponents. In
Speaker 8: the book Perpetual Peace, kan't imagine a cosmopolitan condition, where individuals,
Speaker 8: not just states, had universal rights, and where a global
Speaker 8: federation of free republics would ensure peace and cooperation. However,
Speaker 8: his version of cosmopolitanism still relied on legal structures and
Speaker 8: state based governance. Another Nightman thinker associated with cosmopolitanism was
Speaker 8: Dni Dederu, who criticized colonialism and argued for a cultural
Speaker 8: exchange free from that kind of domination. He also argued
Speaker 8: against monarchy, the church, and aristocratic privileges, as they were
Speaker 8: obstacles to a truly free and universal human community, which
Speaker 8: then brings us to the French Revolution, which brought these
Speaker 8: ideas into the real world. Revolutionaries declared the Rights of
Speaker 8: Man and of the Citizen, which proclaims universal rights beyond
Speaker 8: national or social status, but the revolution soon became entangled
Speaker 8: with nationalism, early under the Acabins, who suppressed descent and
Speaker 8: waged wars in the name of France. Meanwhile, the Haitian
Speaker 8: Revolution provided a different example of liberation. In practice. Enslaved Africans,
Speaker 8: inspired by the French Revolution's rhetoric of liberty inequality, revolted
Speaker 8: against French colonial rule and established the first free Black republic.
Speaker 8: The revolutionaries, led by tous Saint Levitire argued that liberty
Speaker 8: was a universal human right, not one limited to European citizens,
Speaker 8: and declared Haiti a refuge to all enslaved persons. But
Speaker 8: despite its radical implications, the Haitian Revolution was largely ignored
Speaker 8: or outright opposed by European powers. Their so called enlightenment
Speaker 8: only extended Europe, ignoring our racial and colonial realities. Seeing
Speaker 8: this time the emergence of nationalism, which on the one
Speaker 8: hand promoted self determination for homo pressed nations, but on
Speaker 8: the other hand, saw the nation state as a superior
Speaker 8: form of political organization. So anarchists were among the earliest
Speaker 8: critics of nationalism. Patrons of Pradawn, for instance, rejected both
Speaker 8: the nation state and centralized cosmopolitan governance, instead advocating for federation,
Speaker 8: a frequently misunderstood concept that refers in anarchist literature to
Speaker 8: a decentralized network of freely associated individuals and groups working
Speaker 8: in solidarity. Similarly, Mikhil Vicunen attacked nationalism as a tool
Speaker 8: of ruling elites, arguing that states use national identities of press,
Speaker 8: class struggle, and international solidarity. Bi Cunin did back national
Speaker 8: liberation movements, but he understood the danger of nationalism as
Speaker 8: a force that often replaces foreign rulers with homegrown oppressors. Instead,
Speaker 8: Bcunen promoted an gist internationalism where workers and oppressed peoples
Speaker 8: across borders would unite against both capitalists and state powers.
Speaker 8: By contrast, the Bolsheviks would eventually developed the idea of
Speaker 8: socialism in one country, and the ever paranoid Stalin would
Speaker 8: famously deride Jewish intellectuals as quote rootless cosmopolitans. This, of
Speaker 8: course aligned him with the rest of Europe's nationalists in
Speaker 8: their anti semitism inaccurate cricketerization of cosmopolitanism as opposed to
Speaker 8: cultural identity or sovereignty and ramid defense of national borders. Honestly,
Speaker 8: I would not be surprised if Trump or Putin used
Speaker 8: some equivalent to rule less cosmopolitanism today.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, I did see. It was like a pro
Speaker 9: Trump account. I guess constantly or unconstantly paraphrasing Stalin this week.
Speaker 1: So that was great.
Speaker 9: Really, will they say it's like, how many divisions does
Speaker 9: the judge command? Which is a I think there might
Speaker 9: be a quote from Startin if it's not quotes a paraphrase, right,
Speaker 9: But in this case, it's a reference to the attempts
Speaker 9: by a district court judge in GC to block the
Speaker 9: rendition of people to El Salvador who are accused of
Speaker 9: being members of various gangs, and Mirosalva culture being the
Speaker 9: two main ones.
Speaker 8: Yes, so just being expelled. What's the connection to Stalin?
Speaker 10: Though?
Speaker 9: The quote how many divisions does the judge command? Let me,
Speaker 9: I'm pretty sure how many divisions does the pope command?
Speaker 9: Was the staling?
Speaker 2: Quite?
Speaker 1: That's right?
Speaker 9: So, like it's referencing this idea that like might makes
Speaker 9: right and like that, you know, if you have the
Speaker 9: bar of the state, then you're not accountable to morally
Speaker 9: or even even within the confines of the state, like
Speaker 9: separation of powers that we're supposed to happen in the US, right,
Speaker 9: like if you have the monopoly on coercive violence and
Speaker 9: you're no longer constrained by those things.
Speaker 8: Right, Yeah, I see, I see. So of course anarchists
Speaker 8: suppose all those things. They opposed what is happening now,
Speaker 8: and they oppose what was happening then. From its inception,
Speaker 8: anarchism has been an internationalist movement rejecting the artificial borders
Speaker 8: imposed by state and champion in global solidarity. Unlike Marxist internationalism,
Speaker 8: which has often relied on the centralized structures of the First, Second,
Speaker 8: or Third internationals, anarchists emphasized decentralized horizontal networks of struggle
Speaker 8: the connected workers, revolutionaries, and stateless peoples across continents. The
Speaker 8: anarchist Saint Emir Internationale, which ran from eighteen seventy two
Speaker 8: to eighteen seventy seven, was one such network. As discussed
Speaker 8: by Lucian van der Waldt and Schmidt in Black Flame,
Speaker 8: that group explicitly rejected nationalism and state power, and throughout
Speaker 8: history anarchists worked a bridge linguistic, cultural, and national divides
Speaker 8: from multilingual anarchist newspapers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
Speaker 8: such as La Protester Argentina, their Camp in Germany and
Speaker 8: The Libertaire in France, through transnational cynicalist movements like the
Speaker 8: Industrial Workers of the World, which organized workers across race, nationality,
Speaker 8: and language in the early twentieth century, and including contemporary
Speaker 8: mutual aid networks where anarchists coordinates across borders to support refugees,
Speaker 8: disaster relief, and addigenous land struggles. Anarchist networks, contrary to
Speaker 8: popular belief often extended beyond Europe into North Africa, Asia
Speaker 8: and Latin America, where anti colonial and labor struggles intertwined
Speaker 8: with anarchist thought. If you're curious, by the way, about
Speaker 8: the anarchist histories of Egypt or the rest of Latin America,
Speaker 8: they could check out my series on it right here
Speaker 8: on the canappen Air podcast. And if you've listened to
Speaker 8: that series, you'll know that because anarchists were constantly persecuted,
Speaker 8: exile became a defining experience which further reinforced the internationalism.
Speaker 8: Folks like Michail Bi Cunan, Pieter Kropotkin, and Erikomana Testa
Speaker 8: moved across continents, spreading anarchist ideas and connecting struggles. Mal
Speaker 8: test in particular was basically a common San Diego. He
Speaker 8: touched multiple continents over the course of his life. So
Speaker 8: bout the late nineteenth century, anarchists like Groulph Rocker developed
Speaker 8: an alternative to both statist nationalism and liberal cosmopolitanism, which
Speaker 8: sorts of balance cultural diversity with global solidarity from below.
Speaker 8: Rocker argued that people should be free to maintain their
Speaker 8: cultural traditions without being bound to the state or nationalist identity.
Speaker 8: So liberal Costopolitanism was pushing a global order through state
Speaker 8: led interventions, international institutions, and legal frameworks. And while this
Speaker 8: form of Costopolitanism has led to some games on people
Speaker 8: in human rights, international refugee protections, and anti genocide treaties, well,
Speaker 8: for one, we see the failures of these institutions in
Speaker 8: practice daily, and for two, they ultimately reinforced the state
Speaker 8: power that creates so much harm rather than dismantling it.
Speaker 8: The UN and the WTO often uphold the interest of
Speaker 8: powerful states above and before the international laws and obligations.
Speaker 8: Whilst sideline and grassroots movements, while liberal Costopolitanism sits on
Speaker 8: its hands waiting for elit driven reforms to the system,
Speaker 8: anarchists engage in direct action to support migrants and other
Speaker 8: marginalized folks without waiting for such reform. I have to
Speaker 8: give a shout out here, of course, to the No
Speaker 8: Borders network, and also a shout out to the work
Speaker 8: that you do, James on the side.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Yeah, yeah, I've see a lot more people
Speaker 1: than me doing.
Speaker 8: It of course. So the sad part is, even if
Speaker 8: it started with some noble ideal the concept of liberal
Speaker 8: cost of politanism today doesn't so much manifest in the
Speaker 8: freedom of people, but more so in the freedom of
Speaker 8: markets and money, the globalization of markets and money. So
Speaker 8: we will bring McDonald's and Netflix to your country, but
Speaker 8: you can't come to our country, or will kill you.
Speaker 11: Yeah, that's about it.
Speaker 9: It was really interesting to like the moment I sort
Speaker 9: of became aware of libertarian left politics was in the
Speaker 9: early two thousands in the context of the movement against
Speaker 9: like the G eight as it was then and at
Speaker 9: the time it would be referred to in the legacy
Speaker 9: media as like anti globalization right, which I don't think
Speaker 9: it ever was right by definition, it was very global,
Speaker 9: like you had people from all around the world tending
Speaker 9: these protests and rallies and speeches as such, Like it
Speaker 9: was a very global movement. The problem was not with
Speaker 9: globalization costopolitanism internationalism. It was with the nature of neoliberal
Speaker 9: capitalist globalization, which let capital move and stop people from moving.
Speaker 8: Exactly. It's some old opposition sugg as the free reign
Speaker 8: of exploitas across the.
Speaker 9: Low Yeah, exactly, we let people take their money and
Speaker 9: employ people at lower wages, but God forbid those people
Speaker 9: ever want better for themselves or attempt to come somewhere
Speaker 9: where they can materially benefit themselves doing the same labor
Speaker 9: in a different nation, for instance.
Speaker 8: Yeah, And to be honest with you, I've never really
Speaker 8: been a respect of borders. I think they're just I
Speaker 8: think they are really really blatantly foolish imposition. I don't
Speaker 8: even think you need to be a radical to see
Speaker 8: the issue with this idea that your sor one point
Speaker 8: has to determine your entire future.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that some.
Speaker 8: People in the past could cut up the earth and
Speaker 8: then decide where you can roam freely.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I think anyone. I see a lot more from
Speaker 9: people who are not by any means radical or even
Speaker 9: on the left, like this, like within Europe, right within
Speaker 9: the Shanngen area, which the UK has decided to remove
Speaker 9: itself from for reasons that are largely racism, Like we
Speaker 9: could move freely. When I grew up, my identity and
Speaker 9: experience was much more European than necessarily British. Right, I
Speaker 9: could go for the weekend to Spain if I wanted to,
Speaker 9: or France, and flights were cheap then.
Speaker 1: So it did.
Speaker 9: Like I used to get on Friday night, take a
Speaker 9: train to Belgium and raise my bike in Belgium and
Speaker 9: come back on Sunday night, very very often, and like
Speaker 9: you see it here too in San Diego, where like
Speaker 9: the border is just a line and a delay. But
Speaker 9: for most people, like we were a very binational community. Unfortunately,
Speaker 9: the one way that that manifests itself is that the
Speaker 9: cost of living in San Diego compares to the average
Speaker 9: wage is vastly disparate because we have this over pressure
Speaker 9: valve where like people can't afford it here, they can
Speaker 9: live across the border where the cost of living is cheaper,
Speaker 9: and that allows people to exploit working class people in
Speaker 9: both contexts sadly.
Speaker 8: Right, Yeah, as you mentioned the UK, by the way,
Speaker 8: I'm not sure if you've heard the news, but trend
Speaker 8: Ad has recently been imposed visa requirements by the UK.
Speaker 1: Fuck sake.
Speaker 8: Yeah really, thankfully we still have Shangani area access. Yeah,
Speaker 8: but just recently the UK was like, due to yeah,
Speaker 8: the usual excuse people abusing the asylum seeking system that
Speaker 8: they're not removed of visa exemption. So our colonizers have
Speaker 8: now decided that you know, we don't want you to
Speaker 8: move free in our country. We want you to pay.
Speaker 8: And visas are not cheap Theyan ever cheap, especially when
Speaker 8: there's no guarantee other than being accepted. Yep, it makes
Speaker 8: it all the more frustrating.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and like this just comes after the British government
Speaker 9: attempting to deport Afro Caribbean migrant kmes, part of what
Speaker 9: we call the wind Rush generation, which is just one
Speaker 9: of the most disgusting and like, yeah, it just it
Speaker 9: just wanted one of the most venopathetic things I've ever
Speaker 9: seen a government do, Like these people who the UK
Speaker 9: asked to come so that it could rebuild this economy
Speaker 9: after Second World War, and then taking advantage of the
Speaker 9: fact that at that time there was no process for
Speaker 9: regularitation and then trying to deport these people who have
Speaker 9: lived their whole lives in the UK.
Speaker 1: It's just horrific.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it is. It's horrific, it's frustrating, it's infury, it's
Speaker 8: in really yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it makes me really angry.
Speaker 9: Like if we didn't have a wind Rest generation, not
Speaker 9: that like you need like popular music to justify their
Speaker 9: existence as part of our community and they should be
Speaker 9: able to stay. But we wouldn't have punk music if
Speaker 9: we wouldn't have scar music. We like so much of
Speaker 9: what is like integral to even like quote unquoite British culture.
Speaker 9: It actually came from these people because they are British
Speaker 9: and they belong there.
Speaker 1: Just as much as anyone else.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 9: I used to teach a class about music and colonial
Speaker 9: culture and colonialism, which is why that comes to mind.
Speaker 8: I actually missed an opportunity to go to the UK
Speaker 8: earlier this year. I didn't want to pay the cost
Speaker 8: to fly to go at that point in time. I
Speaker 8: deeply regrets it because I'm like I could have gone. Honestly,
Speaker 8: I think if you're the UK and your your country
Speaker 8: has stolen so much like I think the UK has
Speaker 8: the least right or justification out of any country if
Speaker 8: you had to concede that a country should be lost.
Speaker 3: And I don't.
Speaker 8: I don't give any country that concession. But if you
Speaker 8: had to give that concession, you could be last to
Speaker 8: receive that concession as far as I'm concerned. You don't
Speaker 8: get to go on roam across the entire planet and
Speaker 8: then shut yourself off. Yeah, you don't get to go
Speaker 8: on steel and pill fall from across the world, shuffle
Speaker 8: it all into your national museum and then block people
Speaker 8: from access in it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 9: It is just like it's just the most clear and
Speaker 9: pathetic like two level standard or whatever, and it like
Speaker 9: it's I mean, the UK has a very I'm sorry
Speaker 9: you didn't get to visit in one sense, and I'm
Speaker 9: sure we have lots of listeners who are in the UK.
Speaker 9: Every time I'm home, I feel this like profound sense
Speaker 9: of like post colonial melancholy that the UK it's just
Speaker 9: sort of it's getting worse and worse and worse.
Speaker 1: And the way.
Speaker 9: Britain is responding is with our government blaming everyone else
Speaker 9: and like trying to strip posterity. Yeah, stealing everything they
Speaker 9: can just mass Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I think that frustration for me as well as
Speaker 8: that it's not to watch the country itself, although I
Speaker 8: would have loved to have visited like Scotland and you know,
Speaker 8: we Ls and that kind of thing, but and all
Speaker 8: the stuff there is to see in London. But the
Speaker 8: biggest frustration for me is that it's a it's a
Speaker 8: connection point. You know, when you impose a visa like that,
Speaker 8: you block people's connections other areas. One of the few
Speaker 8: direct flights outside of this hemisphere you know, to the
Speaker 8: European and African hemisphere is through a flight to the UK,
Speaker 8: and so by adding that in position, it's like it's
Speaker 8: like the world feels like it's being closed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you can see that.
Speaker 8: One more where there was almost a time in the
Speaker 8: recent past where it felt like or the world was
Speaker 8: opening up to people, you know, with the internet, the
Speaker 8: rise of the Internet, and then you had, you know,
Speaker 8: the introduction of things like the Shangan Agreement. Our access
Speaker 8: the Shangan area was fairly recent. I think it was
Speaker 8: twenty fifteen we got that access. Yeah, okay, But to
Speaker 8: go from that point to like just so quickly, you know,
Speaker 8: the tide shifts. So now there's extremely hostile global order
Speaker 8: towards something as fundamental as the movement of people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it, definitely.
Speaker 9: We definitely are entering it in like an era where
Speaker 9: things are becoming more closed off again. Then many of
Speaker 9: us grew up with right, many of us. You know,
Speaker 9: I saw what most of my experience that I can
Speaker 9: remember was being able to move freely through Europe and
Speaker 9: that's not the case anymore for British as citizens. Yeah,
Speaker 9: Like it's getting visas and everything else is getting harder.
Speaker 9: And harder to move around the world, and despite the
Speaker 9: Internet somewhat connecting us like, our physical mobility is certainly
Speaker 9: much more limited.
Speaker 8: Indeed, I think the idea of cosmopolitanism, getting back to it,
Speaker 8: I think it's valuable. I think, you know, the idea
Speaker 8: that we have obligations to others beyond just our mediate
Speaker 8: affiliations is important. You know that human diversity is going
Speaker 8: to be valued, not just tolerated. That that's fantastic. Carl Levy,
Speaker 8: an anarchist scholar who wrote two pieces on cosmopolitanism that
Speaker 8: a link in the show notes, has argued that anarchism's
Speaker 8: history offers a third way between the hierarchical globalism of
Speaker 8: liberal cosmopolitanism, which relies on state driven global governance, and
Speaker 8: exclusionary nationalism, which weaponizes identity and borders, often in service
Speaker 8: to the far right. And that third way that anarchism presents,
Speaker 8: not third way in the sense of fascism, third way
Speaker 8: in the sense of anarchist possibilities, is a kind of
Speaker 8: federated pluralism, the web of self organized groups that interact
Speaker 8: freely without a central authority. This version isn't just theoretical.
Speaker 8: We've seen it in recent history through antiglobalization protests, the
Speaker 8: occupying movement, the Square movements in Egypt, Spain and beyond,
Speaker 8: and so flawed. They show the potential, not yet fully realized,
Speaker 8: for diverse place based struggles that remain connected through mutuality
Speaker 8: and transnational solidarity. We have to avoid this sort of
Speaker 8: abstract universalism that can be found in cosmopolitan thought. We
Speaker 8: must incorporate decolonial struggles and crown cosmopolitan practice in the
Speaker 8: voluntary cooperation of people acted in solidarity across differences. Ultimately,
Speaker 8: the question isn't whether anarchists should engage a cosmopolitanism, because
Speaker 8: they always have. The real question is how anarchists can
Speaker 8: cultivate a cosmopolitanism that is truly liberatory when the connect
Speaker 8: struggles without eraise in difference, foster solidarity without enforcing uniformity,
Speaker 8: and builds a world where cooperation and not domination, defines
Speaker 8: our relationships. That's what happened today. All power to all
Speaker 8: the people.
Speaker 3: Peace, dark woke is back. Ten more years of liberal supremacy,
Speaker 3: bankers in control in the great Nation of Canada. This
Speaker 3: is it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis, I'm joined
Speaker 3: by James Stout. We are discussing the twenty twenty five
Speaker 3: Canadian election, which I maybe slightly exaggerated in the opening there.
Speaker 3: But the election did happen yesterday or two days ago.
Speaker 3: Whenever you're listening to this, I was up all day
Speaker 3: on on CBC and on Elections Dot c A checking
Speaker 3: in on all the charts and all the stats to
Speaker 3: see how this how this kind of upset election went,
Speaker 3: and oh boy, did it did it go? James? How
Speaker 3: much do you do you know about Canada and elections?
Speaker 9: But both of these things are things that I have
Speaker 9: some knowledge about. I've been to Canada twice. That's a
Speaker 9: fellow Commonwealth member.
Speaker 3: I guess, yeah, we are both citizens of the Commonwealth.
Speaker 3: So there we go.
Speaker 5: Just kind of have the Queen on the money. Queen
Speaker 5: is dead, dead.
Speaker 3: Queen Queen is dead, but yes, we do have Queen
Speaker 3: on money money.
Speaker 1: So that's another thing I understand.
Speaker 3: We have a parliamentary system like like yeah, liket do
Speaker 3: I say England or like Britain or UK.
Speaker 5: It's a yeah, it's a United Kingdom I think would
Speaker 5: be the institute that Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Speaker 3: Well we have one of those two, but it's less
Speaker 3: confusing because it's just one country. We don't try to
Speaker 3: be three countries like like you in the UK, Britain
Speaker 3: in England did.
Speaker 5: Where a continent, let a mini continent. That's what we're
Speaker 5: going for. We've left Europe where we run away to
Speaker 5: the Caribbean slowly.
Speaker 3: Oops. Yeah, luckily Canada is doing just fine. Debatable, but
Speaker 3: certainly this election has has gone probably slightly better for
Speaker 3: global stability in stopping the advance of far at populism
Speaker 3: than certainly what it looked a few months ago. Yeah,
Speaker 3: for people wh don't know, Yes, Canada has a parliamentary system.
Speaker 3: People do not elect the prime minister directly. They elect
Speaker 3: the MP in their district, which is called a writing.
Speaker 3: It's a first past the post system, so whoever gets
Speaker 3: the most votes in each writing they get their representatives.
Speaker 3: Since to Parliament, the party with the most representatives they
Speaker 3: take control of the government and that is who the
Speaker 3: Prime Minister is. And the next Prime Minister of Canada
Speaker 3: will be Mark Karney, who assumed the prime minister rule
Speaker 3: like last month, winning the Liberal election after Justin Trudeau
Speaker 3: resigned in January. And before we get into some of
Speaker 3: the results, at first a little bit of an election.
Speaker 3: Kind of background. So Liberals have been in power for
Speaker 3: nearly a decade, slowly getting less and less popular as
Speaker 3: the cost of living has risen. Less election in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty one, the Liberals kept their minority government, but the
Speaker 3: leader of their party, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, continued
Speaker 3: to decline in popularity. By the end of twenty twenty
Speaker 3: four's approval rating was just twenty two percent or net
Speaker 3: negative fifty two. Conservatives were up twenty five points in
Speaker 3: the polls. It was a near certainty that they would
Speaker 3: sweep the next election. Trudeau announced his resignation on January sixth,
Speaker 3: kind of the January sixth of Canada, if you think
Speaker 3: about it. Former banker Mark Karney won the party election
Speaker 3: in March of twenty twenty five. Carney quickly called for
Speaker 3: an election to write off the peak of anti Trump
Speaker 3: sentiment sweeping across Canada. This was following Trump's talk of
Speaker 3: annexing Canada and the global trade war and tariffs directed
Speaker 3: at the American neighbor upstairs, next door, I don't know, yeah,
Speaker 3: downstairs south, No from America. It's a oh I see yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: yeah from yeah, got it. Understand, which is maybe a
Speaker 3: northern standpoint, but who cares.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: This election or an election, would have happened by October
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five regardless, but calling it early was a
Speaker 3: smart move by Liberals as this was the first time
Speaker 3: in three years that they had led in the polls.
Speaker 3: Support for other third parties like the Keebuquad Bloc and
Speaker 3: the National Democratic Party the NDP had slowly been shifting
Speaker 3: towards the Liberals and we saw this in the results
Speaker 3: Monday night. At this point, the Liberals are projected to
Speaker 3: win one hundred and sixty eight seats, falling barely short
Speaker 3: of the one hundred and seventy two majority. There's still,
Speaker 3: as a time of recording, still a possible path for
Speaker 3: them gaining a majority government, but it's fairly unlikely. It'll
Speaker 3: probably be a minority government. The Conservatives have one one
Speaker 3: hundred and forty four seats, the Blackabiquah twenty three, and
Speaker 3: the NDP a measly seven, with the Green Party snagging one.
Speaker 3: Liberals also secured the largest vote share, forty three point
Speaker 3: six percent of the vote compared to the Conservatives forty
Speaker 3: one point four percent, though because of a vote efficiency
Speaker 3: basically how spread apart certain votes are. This has still
Speaker 3: led to much more seats for the Liberals than the Conservatives. Right,
Speaker 3: if you have more Conservatives voting in a district that's
Speaker 3: going to go conservative anyway, those extra votes don't necessarily
Speaker 3: mean there's going to be more representation in Parliament. That's
Speaker 3: the vote efficiency idea.
Speaker 5: Yeah, plus plus supposed to is a very bad system
Speaker 5: as electoral systems go. It leads to an awful lot
Speaker 5: of votes not counting for any representation. Like, for instance,
Speaker 5: to Garrison Davis, party could have fifty one percent of votes.
Speaker 1: In all writing and.
Speaker 5: I could be there at forty nine and I would
Speaker 5: get zero MPs base.
Speaker 3: Hey sounds fine.
Speaker 5: Sounds fine by me, Garrison Davis in control.
Speaker 3: Well, this is kind of what happens in Canada. The
Speaker 3: election system in Canada is pretty swayed towards the Liberals
Speaker 3: because of how much more dispersed they are versus you know,
Speaker 3: most Conservative supporters in the Western provinces Saskatchewan, Alberta in
Speaker 3: BC and a growing presence in Ontario. But yeah, the
Speaker 3: Liberals kind of always get a bit of a boost
Speaker 3: in the election. Now, we did have record high early
Speaker 3: turnout in Canada, seven point three million people cast their
Speaker 3: vote early during Easter week. The full turnout is higher
Speaker 3: than it was the past few elections, but it matches
Speaker 3: pretty much to the twenty fifteen election. So to get
Speaker 3: a majority government you need one hundred and seventy two seats.
Speaker 3: This allows you to not have to worry about like
Speaker 3: no confidence votes which trigger new elections, and you don't
Speaker 3: need to work with other parties to pass legislation. Now,
Speaker 3: this will probably be a minority government, with the Libs
Speaker 3: having to work with a small number of remaining in
Speaker 3: DP and block seats to run the government, which one
Speaker 3: could consider a good thing in terms of being pushed
Speaker 3: maybe towards some better policies rather than just like liberal supremacy.
Speaker 3: But it also in its government will be more unstable
Speaker 3: and it kind of gives the Conservatives more room to wiggle,
Speaker 3: So it's definitely a mixed bag. As reporting first came
Speaker 3: in for Atlantic Canada, it showed that this would be
Speaker 3: a tighter race than what the Liberals were hoping for.
Speaker 3: During election night, it seemed Conservatives were on track to
Speaker 3: pick up two seats in Newfoundland, though in the end
Speaker 3: the Liberal incumbent barely kept their seat, beating the Conservative
Speaker 3: challenger by twelve votes. In Terra Nova the Peninsulas. The
Speaker 3: Libs did fare much better in Quebec, though they flipped
Speaker 3: eleven seats. This was the best performance by Liberals in
Speaker 3: Quebec in years now. Conservatives gained some seats from the
Speaker 3: Liberals in Ontario under Doug Ford, with Conservatives flipping seats
Speaker 3: around the Toronto suburbs. One of the biggest stories of
Speaker 3: this election was just the complete NDP collapse the progressive
Speaker 3: kind of democratic socialist New Democratic Party. They're currently projected
Speaker 3: to lose seventeen of their twenty four previously held seats.
Speaker 3: The NDP basically gave Carny this election. Jack Met Singh
Speaker 3: lost his seat. That's the leader of the NDP. He
Speaker 3: lost his seat to Wade Chung, a Liberal, and stepped
Speaker 3: down as leader on Monday night. Part of what makes
Speaker 3: this such a big setback for the NDP is that
Speaker 3: because they failed to win at least twelve seats, they
Speaker 3: actually lose official party status in Parliament. Parties have to
Speaker 3: win at least twelve seats to be recognized as an
Speaker 3: official party in the House of Commons. Official parties get
Speaker 3: to have offices in Parliament, extra staff, They get to
Speaker 3: ask questions legislative sessions and can sit on committees. Now,
Speaker 3: the NDP did previously lose party status in nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 3: winning only nine seats in that election, but this performance
Speaker 3: was slightly worse, hitting only seven. So this is going
Speaker 3: to be a big shake up. The NDP is going
Speaker 3: to have to be forced to rebuild, which is maybe
Speaker 3: necessary based on kind of a degree of NDP stagnation
Speaker 3: the past decade. They're kind of caught in like twenty
Speaker 3: seventeen politics in my opinion, though saying did lead them
Speaker 3: to pass some significant legislation and progressive policies do have
Speaker 3: a degree of popularity in Canada. The NDP was polling
Speaker 3: about the same as the Liberals just three months ago.
Speaker 3: The movement that we're seeing is from NDP voters scared
Speaker 3: of Polyev and Trump, so they moved to Carney to
Speaker 3: avoid splitting the left vote, as Carney was seen as
Speaker 3: more capable of beating Polyiev than the NDP leader Sing
Speaker 3: and certainly justin Trudeau. Now, Funnily enough, some of this
Speaker 3: quote unquote STRICTGIC voting actually did end up splitting the
Speaker 3: vote in a place like b seen specifically Vancouver, which
Speaker 3: recently has gone strongly NDP. But this year the Conservatives
Speaker 3: were able to snag three seats because enough previous NDP
Speaker 3: voters ended up going liberal in an attempt to gain
Speaker 3: a Liberal majority, but that resulted in neither the NDP
Speaker 3: nor the Liberal candidate actually individually getting enough votes to
Speaker 3: win the riding. Let's talk about vote share compared to
Speaker 3: the last twenty twenty one election, so Liberals did fairly
Speaker 3: well this election, especially compared to previous ones. They gained
Speaker 3: over ten points compared to the last election in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty one. Conservatives also didn't do badly actually like they
Speaker 3: actually did. Okay, this certainly wasn't the result they were wanting,
Speaker 3: but they did not do bad. They gained over seven
Speaker 3: and a half points this race. Reliable Conservative voters still
Speaker 3: voted conservative and they were able to siphon off some
Speaker 3: support from other parties, with Conservatives doing slightly better than
Speaker 3: what polling predicted, but a lot of very close races
Speaker 3: across key districts. Now where all those extra votes or
Speaker 3: vote movement is coming from is all of the third parties,
Speaker 3: the Green Party and the Black EPIQUA both dropped over
Speaker 3: a point. The far right People's Party dropped four points
Speaker 3: and the NDP dropped eleven point six huge huge losses
Speaker 3: for the NDP. Most of those voters probably going liberal,
Speaker 3: although some may just not have voted. One of the
Speaker 3: more interesting parts about this election is that the Conservative
Speaker 3: Party leader Pierre Polliev lost his parliamentary seat. He lost
Speaker 3: to Liberal Bruce Fanjoy by about four thousand votes four
Speaker 3: point six percent of the vote. So this is going
Speaker 3: to probably cause a bit of an upset in the
Speaker 3: Conservative Party. There might be some maternal in over whether
Speaker 3: Polyiev should continue as party leader, though he did not
Speaker 3: step down from that position during his concession speech Monday night. James,
Speaker 3: do you have do you have any thoughts here before
Speaker 3: we pivot to ads.
Speaker 5: It wouldn't be such a like scene, as such a
Speaker 5: humiliation for the Conservatives if it wasn't for all the
Speaker 5: polling until maybe like a couple of months ago. Right.
Speaker 3: Yes, The reason why it's such an upset is because
Speaker 3: they were like destined to win, as almost like divinely
Speaker 3: written into fate like three months ago, and the fact
Speaker 3: that they fumbled this is gonna be like a massive,
Speaker 3: like historical footnote, not even a footnote. This is like
Speaker 3: a historical topic. Is how the Conservatives fumbled this election?
Speaker 9: Yeah, like people, the thing is that the Liberals want
Speaker 9: despite people having been pissed off with them for a
Speaker 9: long time and wanting something different. Yeah yeah, because people
Speaker 9: would just like mad at Trump.
Speaker 3: And we will talk more about the background of the
Speaker 3: lead up to this race and in those dynamics that
Speaker 3: James mentioned in the next segment after these ads. Okay,
Speaker 3: to talk more about the lead up to this race
Speaker 3: and Trump's influence on this election, I talk with Lance
Speaker 3: from the Serfs, of fellow Canadian who talks about politics
Speaker 3: just as much as I do. So here is that
Speaker 3: interview that I recorded just a few hours before the
Speaker 3: polls closed in Canada.
Speaker 10: Hey, my name is Lance. I run a number of
Speaker 10: different channels, usually under the banner of the Serfs. There's YouTube,
Speaker 10: dot Com, Slash, the Surf Times, and at the serf TV.
Speaker 10: On most other social media, I cover news, politics, internet slop,
Speaker 10: usually from a dumpster fire like perspective.
Speaker 3: And you're Canadian importantly, Yes, I am Canadian, but I
Speaker 3: have been resigned to living in this States for quite
Speaker 3: a while. I actually just had some Canadian family visit me,
Speaker 3: and they kept making fun of me for living in
Speaker 3: the States, specifically because the States are trying to, you know,
Speaker 3: take Canadian territories seemingly. So now I'm getting a lot
Speaker 3: of hate for my Canadian family members for living in America,
Speaker 3: which is interesting.
Speaker 10: I was gonna say, it's got to be a scary
Speaker 10: time to be living in the United States as a
Speaker 10: Canadian citizen.
Speaker 3: A little bit, I am. I am dual, but we'll
Speaker 3: see how long that matters. So I want to talk
Speaker 3: talk a little bit about kind of the background of
Speaker 3: this election, because I think this is maybe the most
Speaker 3: interesting Canadian election in the past ten years, specifically because
Speaker 3: of how much the results have always felt it inevitable,
Speaker 3: but the actual results have like flip flop. Three months ago,
Speaker 3: four months ago, I'm sure that me and you may
Speaker 3: may have predicted probably something resembling a conservative sweep. Not
Speaker 3: to put words in your mouth.
Speaker 10: Well, Minorti or Jordi government led by the Conservatives, know
Speaker 10: no question that that was where all the major polling
Speaker 10: was trending. And then the exact opposite on this roller
Speaker 10: coaster election in both directions. I think it's pretty easily explainable,
Speaker 10: especially to your American listeners who might have been wondering
Speaker 10: what was happening. Essentially, the country had a combination of
Speaker 10: burnout on Justin Trudeau and the person who replaced Justin Trudeau,
Speaker 10: Mark Carney, effectively took the number one campaign it was
Speaker 10: the actual campaign slogan of the Conservatives away from him
Speaker 10: immediately after being crowned the new leader of the Liberal Party,
Speaker 10: which was ax the tax, which is what you know,
Speaker 10: fascist Millhouse, who we call Pierre Polievro over here. That
Speaker 10: was his big campaign promise, the Conservatives were going to
Speaker 10: ax the carbon tax, and that had a lot of
Speaker 10: people excited, a lot of people didn't like Justin Trudeau.
Speaker 10: And then along comes Mark Carney and he takes both
Speaker 10: of those things away from the Conservatives. He's not Justin
Speaker 10: Trudeau and he acts the tax and so they had
Speaker 10: to kind of completely reset. And this was before the
Speaker 10: wild card of Trump shows up. Yeah, which of course
Speaker 10: now is airing not only Canada but the world. I
Speaker 10: would say like most countries now are kind of having
Speaker 10: to completely reset how they think and want to do
Speaker 10: geopolitics into the future because of his policies.
Speaker 3: Well, and I know, like a decent chunk of the
Speaker 3: Alberta economy is now in great jeopardy because they can't
Speaker 3: self fuck Trudeau merchandise.
Speaker 10: Which was propping up their entire economy outside of the oil.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, you know, if you ignore the oil, which
Speaker 3: will probably be fine. Yeah, yeah, I guess you could
Speaker 3: talk a little bit about kind of what led to
Speaker 3: this universal hatred of Justin Trudeau in like the past
Speaker 3: like like five years, just like ever so briefly.
Speaker 10: Yeah, for conservatives, a lot of it really became increasingly
Speaker 10: more intense with COVID, and I think internationally there was
Speaker 10: an association with very basic safety protocols and tyranny. So
Speaker 10: I guess some people the United States and Canada both
Speaker 10: saw the idea of wearing a mask gra having to
Speaker 10: wash their hands as some sort of dictatorship akin to
Speaker 10: some of the worst war crimes ever committed on any population.
Speaker 10: That made a schism happen, where a de sentiment kind
Speaker 10: of really started accelerating towards less of you know, blaming
Speaker 10: Trudeau for everything, kind of like Obama that used to
Speaker 10: be a joke, like a Trudeau to actual fuck Trudeau merchandise,
Speaker 10: and the idea of you know, Trudeau being an enemy
Speaker 10: of the state and a communist dictator that was on
Speaker 10: the right side of things. On the left side of things,
Speaker 10: everyone got burnt out from Trudeau because the performative progressive
Speaker 10: politics of his entire character. He was very vocal about
Speaker 10: standing up for a lot of issues that on one
Speaker 10: end he would you know, pretend to care about, such
Speaker 10: as indigenous rights, land backs, stuff like that, and then
Speaker 10: he would be suing the survivors of residential schools in
Speaker 10: federal court to try and prevent them from getting too
Speaker 10: much money from the federal government. So there was a
Speaker 10: lot of Trudeau seems to performatively enjoy being perceived as
Speaker 10: someone who's enlightened and progressive and trying to steer you know,
Speaker 10: the society and a good direction where his policies are
Speaker 10: effectively exacerbating wealth and equality very rapidly, because that's effectively
Speaker 10: what you get with neoliberal centrists, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, like to go back to that COVID thing.
Speaker 3: Like I was in Calgary in like spring of twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two, and I was getting like made fun of
Speaker 3: in like bars and clubs for like wearing a mask
Speaker 3: at that point in time, like and that is that
Speaker 3: is Alberta. But yeah, no, that was definitely like strong.
Speaker 3: We certainly saw degrees of that here in the States
Speaker 3: as well, but yeah, you know, it's a little bit
Speaker 3: of that. Like general anti incumbent sentiment was growing so
Speaker 3: much last year, which which we saw levied against the
Speaker 3: Democrats in the States and certainly against the Liberals. And
Speaker 3: the way that the Liberals in Canada have kind of
Speaker 3: been able to maneuver away from that in the way
Speaker 3: that like the Democrats haven't is super interesting. It's not
Speaker 3: necessarily like replicable, especially for US politics, but it's still
Speaker 3: as interesting, I guess. Like on the Conservative side, their
Speaker 3: leadership changed in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 10: Right, yeah, I think so it was it was twenty
Speaker 10: two or twenty three, but I believe it was around them.
Speaker 3: That's when Holly they became leader of the Conservative Party,
Speaker 3: which is like you know, closed ranks and like coalesced
Speaker 3: the past ten to five years or so, and they've
Speaker 3: been they've been gaining a large it had been gaining
Speaker 3: you know, a large degree of popularity the past two
Speaker 3: three years, not necessarily because of who their party leader is,
Speaker 3: but because they are simply not the Liberal Party at
Speaker 3: least That's kind of what it seemed like to me,
Speaker 3: because like, approval ratings for Paul of Aara's never been
Speaker 3: like great, but the Conservative Party has still been gaining popularity,
Speaker 3: at least previous to the past few months.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I don't want to play, you know, give the
Speaker 10: far right any kind of kudos or points, but I
Speaker 10: think from an analytical standpoint, something that people should realize
Speaker 10: is that within the last i'd say year and a
Speaker 10: half or so, Pierre was really really effective at doing
Speaker 10: faux populism in a way that a lot of people
Speaker 10: were starting to get very worried about. Yeah, and that
Speaker 10: he was starting to see a lot about the working class,
Speaker 10: you know, the housing crisis in the country and the
Speaker 10: fact that the Liberals are out of touch elites who
Speaker 10: only care about enriching themselves, and you know a lot obviously,
Speaker 10: you'd have a lot of the right wing kind of
Speaker 10: nebulous terms like woke ideology being tied into that kind
Speaker 10: of stuff. But he was for a long time kind
Speaker 10: of starting to gain a lot of ground and traction
Speaker 10: as more of a moderate style conservative who was concerned
Speaker 10: with helping the working class, which is astonishing considering the
Speaker 10: man is a lifelong politician like that, that is who
Speaker 10: he is. He was making fun of people like the
Speaker 10: leader of the Social Democrats here, drug bet Singh. He
Speaker 10: was making fun of him for just working for a
Speaker 10: pension and not even caring about the people or the
Speaker 10: working class. The man is never marched with the union.
Speaker 10: I'm talking about Pierre. He's never marched with the union.
Speaker 10: He is a you know, his voting track record is
Speaker 10: decidedly anti worker. It's decidedly exacerbating wealth in the quality.
Speaker 10: Has worked his entire life to make houses more expensive.
Speaker 10: But marketing and branding really work, especially like you know,
Speaker 10: there's compilation clips of him saying things that are JK
Speaker 10: rallying tier in terms of both their nonsensicalness, like talking
Speaker 10: about how electricity is crafted by harnessing the power of
Speaker 10: the lightning bolts into the wire that the electrician holds up.
Speaker 3: Very cool, Yeah, very cool for like powers.
Speaker 10: I'm on board, but like, unfortunately that's just not how
Speaker 10: we usually generate power in this but like it works
Speaker 10: on some people. They like to see a man who
Speaker 10: fakes owlean like different kinds of wood and tools, you know,
Speaker 10: like at Tucker Carlson esque.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've got a wood shop.
Speaker 10: In my back and it's like that, Well, no, I
Speaker 10: think this is the first time you've ever seen that lumber, sir.
Speaker 10: But as you know, again, some voters, they really started
Speaker 10: his rebranding in that respect actually worked pretty successful for yeah,
Speaker 10: the last year and a half against Trudeau.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he had a pretty substantial makeover the past the
Speaker 3: past few years to make himself like presentable in this way. Yeah,
Speaker 3: very like Carlson esque, very like Ben Shapiro goes to
Speaker 3: home depot and gets some wood. It's definitely pulling from
Speaker 3: that vein, although maybe a bit more successfully and like,
Speaker 3: at least from my perspective, it feels like the degree
Speaker 3: to which Pierre kind of hitched himself to like the
Speaker 3: Trump populist wagon the past few years, especially like with
Speaker 3: like sentiments like growing in like the Western provinces, that
Speaker 3: kind of mirrors some of the Trumpian rhetoric, that type
Speaker 3: of stuff was getting popularity. And now because he put
Speaker 3: if not all his eggs, but some of his eggs
Speaker 3: in the Trump basket, this is like backfired in like
Speaker 3: popular opinion when it comes to his ability to succeed
Speaker 3: as like a politician and like gaining support because We've
Speaker 3: seen so much anti Trump polarization based on like the
Speaker 3: fifty first state stuff based on the tariffs, and like
Speaker 3: Carnie has been able to weaponize that pretty effectively against
Speaker 3: against Pierre absolutely like it. Initially, like the way like
Speaker 3: popularity points shifted was like by like twenty points, which
Speaker 3: was like huge. Those have gotten closer, But.
Speaker 10: I think it's one of the biggest reversals or if
Speaker 10: not the biggest reversal Incadian political history. Was the dominating
Speaker 10: lead they had from having it almost an a shirt
Speaker 10: majority to now perhaps losing to a liberal majority, which
Speaker 10: again is unheard of.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 10: One thing that people are also kind of missing is
Speaker 10: that he also really closely started associating himself with Elon
Speaker 10: Musk prior to leader of you know, the US or
Speaker 10: whatever you want to call him, the real president of
Speaker 10: the United States. But he had a number of rallies
Speaker 10: and on the record praising Elon Musk prior to Elon Musk.
Speaker 10: This was pre Elon Musk overt Nazi era kind of
Speaker 10: more just like Nazi light era version Nazi.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 10: But around that time, Pierre was asked, like what do
Speaker 10: you think about being endorsed and praised by Elon Musk,
Speaker 10: and you know, he started making jokes about how his
Speaker 10: kids want to go to Mars, so that's pretty cute,
Speaker 10: and started talking about how he wants Elon Musk to
Speaker 10: build more factories and plants in Canada. Well that's all
Speaker 10: really coming back to hurt him now, because the very
Speaker 10: idea of there being a stronger Tesla presence in the
Speaker 10: country is decidedly rejected by the populace. Like, you know,
Speaker 10: the protests that are going on in the United States
Speaker 10: against Tesla's are going on here as well. Maybe not
Speaker 10: as large scale or perhaps as fire based, but a
Speaker 10: lot of them are occurring here, and so like that
Speaker 10: I think is also really hurting him. So there's been
Speaker 10: this really funny, strange political dance that's kind of happened
Speaker 10: in the last couple of months where everyone is trying
Speaker 10: to say Trump loves you more. It's like a circular
Speaker 10: fine squad. Like at one point the Conservatives were trying
Speaker 10: to market themselves to saying Trump was making fun of
Speaker 10: Pierre in this clip, so look he hates Pierre more. Yeah,
Speaker 10: And then another it was like oh no, no, no, look
Speaker 10: he's talking a lot of smack about Mark Karney. He
Speaker 10: hates Mark Carney Moore, so that that has actually become
Speaker 10: a very strong dynamic of the Canadian election is who
Speaker 10: exactly does Trump like Moore? And that's not going to
Speaker 10: be good for you if it turns out you're the one.
Speaker 3: I guess I'd like to talk a little bit now
Speaker 3: at the end here about Mark Karney himself and kind
Speaker 3: of what this means for the Liberal Party. He was
Speaker 3: the Governor of the Bank of Canada starting in to
Speaker 3: US in eight then he became governor of the Bank
Speaker 3: of England and managed them through the Brexit fiasco. Brexit
Speaker 3: was not his idea. He was not pro Brexit, but
Speaker 3: he just had and to be holding the reins of
Speaker 3: of the Bank of England during that time period. Returned
Speaker 3: to Canada, has served as like an informal advisor to
Speaker 3: Trudeau and now is the is the leader of the
Speaker 3: Liberal Party. He's a very I don't know, he tries
Speaker 3: to like project this sense of like he's like a
Speaker 3: like like a reasonable man, which which which he you know,
Speaker 3: in some ways is like he's like he's like kind
Speaker 3: of boring. He works in banking, right, like he's he's
Speaker 3: not like overtly charismatic, but he doesn't have like the
Speaker 3: the like youthful, like bumbling presence of like Trudeau. Like
Speaker 3: he just he seems he seems kind of basic. I
Speaker 3: don't know.
Speaker 10: Uh yeah, I mean that's a good way putting it. Yeah,
Speaker 10: you're you're totally right. I mean we're talking about a
Speaker 10: lifelong banker. I mean, he's even worked for gold Mill Sacks.
Speaker 10: He has a yes, a very long and sordid Uh well,
Speaker 10: I mean, in some view, it depends on your worldview, right,
Speaker 10: if you were as a person who thinks that the
Speaker 10: solution going forward, especially in the face of actual manifesting fascism,
Speaker 10: is more neoliberal policies, austerity and measures, then you might
Speaker 10: be very, very excited to perhaps get your own, like
Speaker 10: honestly Joe Biden style election here, where we are once
Speaker 10: again going to be choosing centre to center right economic
Speaker 10: policies that are going to undoubtedly exacerbate wealth and equality more.
Speaker 10: They are not going to solve the housing crisis. The
Speaker 10: housing crisis of Canada, while it is portrayed constantly as complex,
Speaker 10: really goes down to fundamentally, there are a lot of houses,
Speaker 10: but there are also a lot of houses being built
Speaker 10: in luxury markets that most people can't afford. Speculation is
Speaker 10: not addressed, and so speculation usually gets blamed on foreign investors,
Speaker 10: which in turn kind of brings up the whole immigration fears,
Speaker 10: which are very successful. But with Carney, I mean, I
Speaker 10: don't see anything dramatic. Not only did he acts the
Speaker 10: carbon tax when he was in power initially, and that
Speaker 10: was again, I think, strategically to remove the power the
Speaker 10: Conservatives had on that policy. He also is getting rid
Speaker 10: of the capital gains tax again is just going to
Speaker 10: be funneling more money towards the ultra wealthy in Canada.
Speaker 10: So the problem for me is that, if anything, I'm
Speaker 10: happy that Pierre it looks like he might not win.
Speaker 10: I don't know what by the time people are listening
Speaker 10: to this, what the results are. But I also recognize
Speaker 10: that this does not solve these crises for simply putting
Speaker 10: band aids on a pause before you know, finally a
Speaker 10: Trump of our own gets elected and then yes, people
Speaker 10: after the facts start realizing, oh my god, he's doing
Speaker 10: a lot of the horrifying things that he promised he
Speaker 10: would do. He's actually trying to enact Project twenty twenty five,
Speaker 10: all these terrible things are happening. Well, I mean, if
Speaker 10: this was an election where it looked like Pierre was
Speaker 10: going to win, I would say he is going to
Speaker 10: follow through on all the aggressive measures and more that
Speaker 10: he's promising right now, which include, you know, suspending the
Speaker 10: Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to people that he
Speaker 10: deems should be worthy of receiving freedoms, specifically because, like
Speaker 10: Donald Trump, he wants to begin silencing people for their
Speaker 10: speech in relation to protesting against Israel and their genocide
Speaker 10: of Palacidians, especially if you are an immigrant toward someone
Speaker 10: on a student visa, and these policies, you can see
Speaker 10: they're a disaster after the fact, and people I think
Speaker 10: wake up to them like Americans are right now when
Speaker 10: they realize Trump's actually doing it. But you know, make
Speaker 10: no mistake, it doesn't require, you know, too long of
Speaker 10: the increase and we ought wealth and equality for people
Speaker 10: to look for an answer because they're not being listened
Speaker 10: to by the libs.
Speaker 2: Are the liberals here? No?
Speaker 3: It is interesting that how much this election has almost
Speaker 3: mirrored the American two party system with the block QEBUQUA
Speaker 3: as well as the MDP, like probably most likely right
Speaker 3: this is before the results, but probably going to be
Speaker 3: losing seats to both the Liberals and the Conservatives. Yes,
Speaker 3: and like I think like a big part of this
Speaker 3: election I think is similarly looking back in the past
Speaker 3: ten years, is how much I think the NDP is
Speaker 3: frankly fumbled and probably needs to do a major overhaul
Speaker 3: to really regain trust in the voters. And yeah, it's
Speaker 3: going to be tough because I think, like for the
Speaker 3: progressives in Canada, it's kind of been convenient for the
Speaker 3: Liberals to have a minority government because then they need
Speaker 3: to work with ENDPT.
Speaker 1: And they've gotten the law accomplished.
Speaker 10: To be fair to Chuck Means, and you know, they're
Speaker 10: for American listeners, the Social Democratic Party of Canada, they
Speaker 10: accomplished some great things working in a minority government setting,
Speaker 10: including a pharmacare program, including a federal feeding program for children,
Speaker 10: a school lunch program, you know, working on paid families
Speaker 10: sickly even extending it. So they've done a lot of
Speaker 10: good and sort of enacting progressive policies. But it's the
Speaker 10: Liberals who are also equally as good at taking credit
Speaker 10: for all the things that people have come to really
Speaker 10: like such as having dental care for the first time
Speaker 10: and having cheaper farmercare and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: Thanks to Lance again for talking with me about the
Speaker 3: Canadian election. It's time for one more ad break and
Speaker 3: we'll come back to discuss the future of the Canadian government. Okay,
Speaker 3: we are back. Let's talk a little bit more about
Speaker 3: Trump's undue influence in the twenty twenty five Canadian election,
Speaker 3: because it is a little bit for a foreign leader
Speaker 3: to be exerting this much influence in the votes of
Speaker 3: you know, a separate country. Now, this was an election
Speaker 3: that was previously about liberal stagnation and wanting change in
Speaker 3: economic policy. This was kind of leading the Conservative popular
Speaker 3: support the past two three years. And very suddenly this
Speaker 3: whole election changed and it became about who Canada trusted
Speaker 3: to oppose Trump and who Canadians wanted to be like
Speaker 3: the face of Canada in this new like global trade
Speaker 3: war and this fight against a hostile neighbor. And Trump
Speaker 3: did not help this. On election morning, Trump released his
Speaker 3: statement basically endorsing himself as the leader of Canada.
Speaker 5: Oh great, saying quote.
Speaker 3: Good luck to the great people of Canada. Elect the
Speaker 3: man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your
Speaker 3: taxes in half in increase their military power for free
Speaker 3: to the highest level in the world. Have your car, steel, aluminum, lumber, energy,
Speaker 3: and all our businesses quadruple in size with the zero
Speaker 3: tariffs or taxes. If Canada becomes the cherished fifty first
Speaker 3: state of the United States of America, oh no more.
Speaker 3: Artificially drawn the line from a many years ago. Look
Speaker 3: how beautiful this land mass would be, free access with
Speaker 3: no border, all positives, with no negatives. It was meant
Speaker 3: to be. America can no longer subsidize Canada with hundreds
Speaker 3: of billions of dollars a year that we've been spending
Speaker 3: in the past. It makes no sense unless Canada is
Speaker 3: a state man.
Speaker 1: Trump the border abolitionist.
Speaker 3: This is the rhetoric that really produced a liberal victory.
Speaker 3: And Trump did kind of back off this stuff in
Speaker 3: the past few weeks. And it's very funny to see
Speaker 3: him go like full throttle the morning of the election
Speaker 3: in case anyone was like on the fence about whether
Speaker 3: they really was worrying about like Trump. This just this
Speaker 3: says like such a crazy hell Mary. And we can
Speaker 3: see this in some polling stats on Trump's Inauguration day,
Speaker 3: the Conservatives in Canada were leading forty four point eight
Speaker 3: percent in the polls, compared to the Liberals twenty one
Speaker 3: point nine percent and the NDP's seventeen point six But
Speaker 3: as Liberals searched for a new leader and as Trump
Speaker 3: took office, the Conservative lead slowly started to slip. The
Speaker 3: President began referring to Canada as the fifty first state,
Speaker 3: called the prime minister quote unquote governor, and threatened to
Speaker 3: impose huge tariffs to stop a non existent fentanyl smuggling
Speaker 3: crisis through the Canadian US border. By April, the Conservative
Speaker 3: lead had fully flipped over to the Liberals, who rose
Speaker 3: to forty four percent in the polls, Conservatives falling to
Speaker 3: thirty seven percent and the NDP around eight point five.
Speaker 3: And these are pretty close to the final results. This
Speaker 3: number is very accurate for liberal support. Conservatives got a
Speaker 3: little bit more than thirty six percent of the vote
Speaker 3: and NDP got a little bit less than this eight
Speaker 3: point five. This is according to data from CBC and ABAGUS.
Speaker 3: This was very much a leader's election, meaning that one
Speaker 3: of the biggest factors driving votes was who people wanted
Speaker 3: the prime minister to be and Mark Carney is much
Speaker 3: more popular despite being kind of an unknown figure, which
Speaker 3: kind of actually helps in popularity. Carney's was so much
Speaker 3: more popular than Poliev. The past three months, Carney has
Speaker 3: steadily gained in popularity, getting forty six percent approval, whereas
Speaker 3: Polyiev has slowly declined in popularity. I talked about this
Speaker 3: a little bit with Lance, but the degree to which
Speaker 3: he's aligned himself with this like anti woke, like far
Speaker 3: right populism rhetoric really bit him in the ass these
Speaker 3: past few months. He would have done fine against Trudeau, certainly,
Speaker 3: he was really writing auth that like anti incumbent wave,
Speaker 3: but he is not like a loved figure across Canadian politics,
Speaker 3: even among some conservatives. The two most important factors driving
Speaker 3: Canadians vote, according to Abacus, was reducing cost of living
Speaker 3: and dealing with Donald Trump. Younger voters seem to be
Speaker 3: more focused on cost of living and changing policy around
Speaker 3: fifty seven percent of voters eighteen to twenty nine, while
Speaker 3: older voters around fifty six percent of boomers were more
Speaker 3: concerned about stopping Trump. The very first topic in the
Speaker 3: Canadian Prime minister debate was tariffs and US threats to
Speaker 3: Canadian sovereignty. This is seen as like a very real
Speaker 3: issue up there, and like hatred against the US is
Speaker 3: genuinely growing, Like people are very upset. Canadians are very
Speaker 3: upset about what Trump and the US has been doing.
Speaker 3: It's being seen as like a genuine like intense betrayal.
Speaker 3: The by Canada movement's been gaining a lot of support
Speaker 3: with people trying to only purchase Canadian products and this
Speaker 3: has resulted in a real cultural moment in Canada united
Speaker 3: against the United States.
Speaker 5: It's genuinely remarkable, Like the Canada of the US have
Speaker 5: always had pretty good relations for it. Well not a
Speaker 5: waste they have.
Speaker 3: Well ever since that one, that one, yeah, yeah, no
Speaker 3: one time, yeah, but the things they have improved it
Speaker 3: in and like it's what's also remarkable is it seems
Speaker 3: to be having an effect in Australia as well.
Speaker 5: And if you've seen that, but like I think I
Speaker 5: saw an ad the other day that just said, doesn't
Speaker 5: wants to make Australia like America, like straight up, you
Speaker 5: know this is our Trump and he wile to align
Speaker 5: with Trump. Like yeah, it's incredible.
Speaker 3: The degree which Trump doing this global trade war has
Speaker 3: catalyzed negative sentiments around this, like far right populism, global
Speaker 3: global wave that we've been seeing has really been a
Speaker 3: boon to neoliberalch enemy the past few mins.
Speaker 9: You'll see like any I mean obviously, like I take
Speaker 9: voter interviews in like legacy media with a huge pinch
Speaker 9: of salt right, it's pretty easy to find someone who
Speaker 9: wants to say what you want them to say. And often,
Speaker 9: you know, certainly some of the US interviews are just
Speaker 9: been ridiculous, but like people saying, Oh, I just want
Speaker 9: to go back to how it was, Like I want
Speaker 9: to go back to you know, the things that we're
Speaker 9: used to. And obviously Trump is trending that for a
Speaker 9: lot of people, and like in a very negative way.
Speaker 9: And so you and as Garrison said, like the politics
Speaker 9: of personality is becoming more important, like voting specifically for
Speaker 9: individuals who they think will have like the negotiating ability
Speaker 9: or just bravery or like whatever it is to stand
Speaker 9: up to Trump.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, And like in Canada, I think it's less
Speaker 3: personality driven, like actually Canadians are very against personality politics. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I guess it's more like competency driven. And this is
Speaker 3: where Carney was really able to succeed. It's because he's
Speaker 3: not a compelling personality, but he is like a professional,
Speaker 3: and that is why he was elected. Carneie helped Canada
Speaker 3: whether the two US and eight financial collapse better than
Speaker 3: almost any other Western nation. He is genuinely good at
Speaker 3: his job of being like a neoliberal, like bank economy guy,
Speaker 3: and specifically with these tariffs. This is the guy that
Speaker 3: you want to handle this global trade crisis because this
Speaker 3: is like what he has done his entire life. He's
Speaker 3: never been elected to office before. He is just an
Speaker 3: economy guy. And we saw this in like head to
Speaker 3: heead matchups with Carnie versus Polier, rating certain things like
Speaker 3: finding common ground to solve a dispute, where carne was
Speaker 3: twelve points ahead, standing up to a bully, Carney's eight
Speaker 3: points ahead, managing household expenses Carney six points ahead. Sitting
Speaker 3: beside you on a long airplane flight, Carneie six points ahead.
Speaker 3: Captaining a ship through a rough storm Carnee five points ahead.
Speaker 5: That's what you need, You need a seafarer five ahead
Speaker 5: on seafaring.
Speaker 3: Hosting the best party Carney one point ahead. And you
Speaker 3: will see.
Speaker 9: It's this reminiscent of that like was it like Tim
Speaker 9: the plumber shit from like the bush Pailian election, like
Speaker 9: the people I would want to have a beer with.
Speaker 3: Well, this is the The funny thing is is the
Speaker 3: Conservatis are still better in like those types of like
Speaker 3: physical things like putting out a kitchen fire, polyev is
Speaker 3: up to and putting up a shelf. Polyev's up six.
Speaker 3: This's the only two ones specured where the conservative candidate
Speaker 3: edged out the liberals is putting out a kitchen fire
Speaker 3: and putting up a shelf. But all other things like
Speaker 3: solving disputes, standing up to bowlies, managing like expenses like
Speaker 3: household expenses. Carnee Carne came out. I'm gonna read a
Speaker 3: few lines from Carney's celebration acceptance speech here, and I'm
Speaker 3: just gonna read them and not play clips because he
Speaker 3: blends English and French and that's gonna be annoying. No
Speaker 3: offense to our French speakers out there. Yeah, Garrison, it's
Speaker 3: gonna be annoying to play for a podcast. It's not
Speaker 3: gonna do for quote. America wants our land, our resources,
Speaker 3: our water, our country. These are not idle threats. President
Speaker 3: Trump is trying to break us. So America can own
Speaker 3: us that will never happen. We are once again at
Speaker 3: one of those hinge moments of history. Our old relationship
Speaker 3: with the United States, relationship based on steadily increasing integration,
Speaker 3: is over. The system of open global trade anchored by
Speaker 3: the United States, a system that Canada has relied on
Speaker 3: since the Second World War, a system that, while not perfect,
Speaker 3: has helped deliver prosperity for a country for decades, is over.
Speaker 3: But it is also our new reality. We are over
Speaker 3: the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never
Speaker 3: forget the lessons. We have to look out for ourselves
Speaker 3: and above all, we have to take care of each other.
Speaker 3: When I sit down with President Trump, it will be
Speaker 3: to discuss the future economic and security relationship between two
Speaker 3: sovereign nations, and it will be with our full knowledge
Speaker 3: that we have many, many other options than the United
Speaker 3: States to build prosperity for all Canadians. We will strengthen
Speaker 3: our relations with reliable partners in Europe, Asia and elsewhere.
Speaker 3: And if the United States no longer wants to be
Speaker 3: in the forefront of the global economy, Canada will quote
Speaker 3: and yeah, this is the type of rhetoric that's going
Speaker 3: to be I think successful in Canada right now and
Speaker 3: probably in the next few decades, is Canada's going to
Speaker 3: try to take the spot that America used to used
Speaker 3: to hold as like the center of like global power,
Speaker 3: especially with climate change, with you know, crop crops slowly
Speaker 3: slowly needed to be moved north. I think as as
Speaker 3: as global warm progresses, Canada is in a spot to
Speaker 3: be a like a new emerging like world power. And
Speaker 3: with the degree to which America is just kind of
Speaker 3: giving up that role under Trumpable, someone like Carney is
Speaker 3: very interested in in gaining that that degree of superiority.
Speaker 3: Now I'm gonna I'm gonna read a few comments from
Speaker 3: from our listeners who I asked to send over their
Speaker 3: thoughts on the Canadian election. And yes, this is a
Speaker 3: limited sample, sask It's based on the politics of people
Speaker 3: who listen to this show. But I still think there's
Speaker 3: there's some interesting points here outlining what's happened in this election.
Speaker 3: Quote Mark Karney might not be far enough left for
Speaker 3: my tastes, but he immediately made gas cheaper a tangible
Speaker 3: improvement for my brokeass. And with the way he's been pulling,
Speaker 3: I'm settling on voting for him to keep the Conservatives
Speaker 3: out with their stated anti woke agenda, pritesis, bigoted, not
Speaker 3: like I have much choice. I would have loved to
Speaker 3: be picking here about my vote, but I don't feel
Speaker 3: confident in the NDP or the Greens to come out
Speaker 3: on top of the cons Another person said, quote, I
Speaker 3: can't believe the country seems to be rallying around a
Speaker 3: neoliberal central banker in the face of American fascism. But
Speaker 3: our resentment to the US seems to kind of override
Speaker 3: all other political considerations. So much of the way this
Speaker 3: election is panning out is a display of our culture's
Speaker 3: profound inability to take necessary risks. We're running scared to
Speaker 3: the serious administrator, man in the blind hope things will
Speaker 3: be safe and normal again. When he fails, will take
Speaker 3: a late and stupid risk again unquote. And this is
Speaker 3: something I've seen other people express, is like with this
Speaker 3: kind of Obama esque, you know, serious man in charge,
Speaker 3: this like return of neoliberalism. Will this just set the
Speaker 3: stage for, like the material conditions for someone like Trump
Speaker 3: to emerge in the next ten years. This is a
Speaker 3: fear that I've seen people express. I don't think it
Speaker 3: is an inevitability, because this is not America in twenty
Speaker 3: twelve or twenty sixteen. This is Canada in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3: The world is different, but I can understand this fear. Lastly,
Speaker 3: i'll read from one other comment or from Blue Sky quote.
Speaker 3: I understand the drive to keep the Conservative Party out
Speaker 3: of office, but I'm also terrified of what the Liberal
Speaker 3: Party will do to this country if they can keep
Speaker 3: campaigning on that very basis in perpetuity. It's good that
Speaker 3: we will probably avoid the worst. It's terrible that progress
Speaker 3: is on hold until the Conservative Party is no longer
Speaker 3: a contender, which could take decades. I also do not
Speaker 3: expect the Liberal Party to meaningfully change the conditions that
Speaker 3: are pushing voters towards reactionary politics. To be again with
Speaker 3: unquote so kind of a similar sentiment there. I think
Speaker 3: that the role for progressives in Canada right now is
Speaker 3: either to rebuild the NDP or infiltrate the Liberals, probably
Speaker 3: rebuilding NDP in most cases, because they are going to
Speaker 3: have to have new leadership and seriously reevaluate their strategies
Speaker 3: going forward. James any notes here. I guess, yeah, I.
Speaker 5: Think like I guess kind of to echo what a
Speaker 5: lot of those people said, Like in the US, we
Speaker 5: had Biden for four years, right, essentially because he was
Speaker 5: elected on not being Trump, and he was able to
Speaker 5: get away well, he thought he could get away with
Speaker 5: more than he actually was able to get away with
Speaker 5: as it turns out electorally, but like we were admonished
Speaker 5: to vote for the person who wasn't Trump, right, and
Speaker 5: what we got is open air detention for migrants, what
Speaker 5: we got is inflation, what we got as a genocide
Speaker 5: in Gaza, right. And this fear that a lot of
Speaker 5: other nations in the global north right, like these neoliberal
Speaker 5: economies are feeling, is going to lead to lots of
Speaker 5: that like, yeah, we need a serious man, we needed,
Speaker 5: we need a statesman's stand up to Trump, and that's
Speaker 5: going to reinforce a one of that neoliberal orthodoxy and
Speaker 5: that's going to make it very hard to make any
Speaker 5: meaningful progress to electoral politics in those countries for the
Speaker 5: next few years, which sucks.
Speaker 3: I think this is why some people are excited about
Speaker 3: the minority government, although it is less stable. They could
Speaker 3: be swayed by some more of the progressive agendas from
Speaker 3: the NDP because they'll need NDP or block cooperation to
Speaker 3: run the government.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they can't do a by the date, which like
Speaker 5: I mean.
Speaker 3: Also like Carney isn't Biden like and the Canadian Liberal
Speaker 3: Party is not necessarily the like American Democratic Party, like.
Speaker 5: They're they're different.
Speaker 3: Stuff on Gaza is different, like that the Canadian Liberals
Speaker 3: have have restricted arms, arms trades and arms deals to
Speaker 3: Israel the past year. Carney has not thrown trans people
Speaker 3: under the bus the same way some Democrats have the
Speaker 3: past year. Like these are these are different people. I think,
Speaker 3: you know, Canada is a different country than the United
Speaker 3: States for now. Garrison and I think what we can
Speaker 3: see here is that this Canadian election, although it was close,
Speaker 3: it still was a rejection of Trump's style politics. Most
Speaker 3: Canadians do not want Canada to go the way of America.
Speaker 3: There's there's been a subset of Canadians, especially in Alberta
Speaker 3: and and and Saskatchewan, who have been trying to push
Speaker 3: for this like mega style like Canada first rhetoric and
Speaker 3: and this was denied. I think you were seeing more
Speaker 3: support for Conservatives under Doug Ford with this more like
Speaker 3: moderate conservatism. I think that's something to like watch out
Speaker 3: for more. But like this, this Trump style of politics
Speaker 3: was was rejected across the country. Yeah, and and and
Speaker 3: Carney was able to figure out a way to make
Speaker 3: people trust him to be a genuine like combatant against
Speaker 3: against Trump and and usher and a new a new
Speaker 3: golden age of neoliberal trade in the face of Trump's
Speaker 3: Trump's chaotic and and anti market sentiments.
Speaker 9: Hopefully it does put an end too, like this, this
Speaker 9: tendency among liberals, especially in the US but also in
Speaker 9: the UK, to like feel that they need to engage
Speaker 9: on right wing culture war talking points and like, I
Speaker 9: guess quote unquote give some ground, Like we've seen that
Speaker 9: in the UK right with with like really transfer a
Speaker 9: big ship coming out the Labor Party, And like I
Speaker 9: would hope that like people can see where this leads
Speaker 9: to and that they're not going to vote for liberal
Speaker 9: politicians who are going to throw trans people under the bus,
Speaker 9: and like that that will be like a deciding factor
Speaker 9: in their support.
Speaker 1: But I guess that's just my hope right now. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, and and frankly, you know, a better liberal party
Speaker 3: or a liberal NDP coalition would would be would be
Speaker 3: willing to engage with the idea of like taking trans
Speaker 3: refugees from these extremely hostile countries sighly, which is just
Speaker 3: something they've they've not like you know, publicly talked about.
Speaker 3: But as things get worse than the States, we will
Speaker 3: we will see. So yeah, but that is what I
Speaker 3: have to say as a as a Canadian who lives
Speaker 3: in the United States, my thoughts on the Canadian election.
Speaker 3: You know, it could have been worse.
Speaker 9: It is.
Speaker 3: It is odd to see Canada almost accidentally replicate America's
Speaker 3: two party system. So even if this was a rejection
Speaker 3: of trump'style politics, this this this climate of fear did
Speaker 3: result in replicating America's two party system, which is kind
Speaker 3: of interesting the amount of which, like the third parties
Speaker 3: lost support, with support going just towards conservatives and liberals.
Speaker 3: That is, you know, one of the big stories of
Speaker 3: this election, the the NDP blowout one of the big stories,
Speaker 3: and poliv losing his seat. I think is is is
Speaker 3: at least, at the very least a nice cherry on
Speaker 3: top for this for this election.
Speaker 1: Whoa welcome back to it could happen here a podcast
Speaker 1: about you know it happening here, which is what we
Speaker 1: all what we all you know, we know what's happening.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, and the it being rebellion in the here
Speaker 3: being a galaxy far far away, and then now being
Speaker 3: long long ago for this episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah we are. These are our may Day episodes and
Speaker 1: nothing could make more sense on May Day than talking
Speaker 1: about and or the new season of the show and
Speaker 1: or if you're not familiar with and Or it is
Speaker 1: a Star Wars show, and if you don't like Star Wars,
Speaker 1: or you just don't like the Disney Star Wars, if
Speaker 1: you've not enjoyed a Star Wars since you were six,
Speaker 1: This is not that kind of thing. This is a
Speaker 1: treatise on how revolutions do, can and should work, written
Speaker 1: by people who have a deep bed of knowledge, including
Speaker 1: a degree of on the ground knowledge of what some
Speaker 1: of this looks like. And it is an immensely important
Speaker 1: piece of media to be getting out right now. And
Speaker 1: we'll start by saying Disney evil, bad corporation. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying pay them for Disney plus Torrents exist.
Speaker 3: Yeah, raise the black flag, Raise, raise the black flag.
Speaker 2: Once again.
Speaker 1: I don't care how you get this. And you know
Speaker 1: what I'll say this, I suspect the people making and
Speaker 1: Or don't really care how you get this. This has
Speaker 1: been the most financially successful show and generations. Fuck it.
Speaker 1: Get it, like, don't don't pay Disney money if you
Speaker 1: don't want to. I have no issue with that. I
Speaker 1: don't know whose login I'm using it. I haven't for years.
Speaker 1: Garrison can vouch for that. Just just watch it.
Speaker 3: Be like Cassie and Or and Liberate and Or season
Speaker 3: two from from Disney, and watch it however however you
Speaker 3: feel comfortable doing so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, use your f.
Speaker 2: Movie is use your here's your whatever. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This is a podcast about the current season of and Or,
Speaker 1: which is coming out in three episode blocks every Tuesday.
Speaker 1: The second three episodes, we're now up to six episodes,
Speaker 1: came out yesterday as we record this Tuesday of this week,
Speaker 1: and there's two more weeks of and Or coming. So
Speaker 1: this episode we're going to be talking about episodes one
Speaker 1: through three. We should probably start with a little If
Speaker 1: you haven't watched it, go watch it. Just watch season one,
Speaker 1: and then you know, you can watch season two and
Speaker 1: listen along with us. If you're not, if you're a
Speaker 1: crazy person who's not going to do that will summarize
Speaker 1: season one for you, which is that there's this guy
Speaker 1: who grew up on a planet that was destroyed by
Speaker 1: the Empire. He essentially like lived as a hunter gatherer
Speaker 1: until you know, the war came to him and he
Speaker 1: was forced out of his home and grows up very angry,
Speaker 1: is taken in by some people who are kind of
Speaker 1: like petty criminals and petty almost petty rebels, you know,
Speaker 1: but not in the rebel alliance sense, just and that well,
Speaker 1: we're going to commit some crimes around the edges and
Speaker 1: try to get by. And the show is about this
Speaker 1: guy getting inducted into a revolutionary organization run by a
Speaker 1: man named Luthen that that is simultaneously very centralized around
Speaker 1: him and also very decentralized, and that it's primarily him
Speaker 1: arming and getting information and attempting to direct cells that
Speaker 1: are themselves autonomous and often in conflict with each other,
Speaker 1: which is very realistic to how things like this start.
Speaker 1: On a historical level, everything that's happening in and Or
Speaker 1: is based in real history. Tony Gilroy, who is the showrunner,
Speaker 1: has stated that the kind of bank robbing years of
Speaker 1: Joseph Stalin were one influence behind this, But there are
Speaker 1: a lot you can see, and in fact there's a
Speaker 1: little bit of Portland at the end of season one.
Speaker 1: There's a number of things that have influenced this show,
Speaker 1: a lot of moments in history the IRA.
Speaker 3: Some of the IRA like post al Qaeda, like prison
Speaker 3: resistance rebellion. Yes, for how terrorist cells like form underneath and.
Speaker 2: Also very explicitly he talks about this in an interview
Speaker 2: like the Revolutions podcast by Mike Duncan. Is an influence
Speaker 2: on how on how this one is?
Speaker 1: Yes, was an influence on this Yes. So that's all
Speaker 1: to set this up. We're now going to talk about
Speaker 1: what happens in episodes one, two, and three of season two.
Speaker 1: You want to summarize them, gear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's start with the first episode. So, undercover rebel
Speaker 3: agent Cassian Andor steals in experimental tie Avenger, crashes it
Speaker 3: on a jungle planet, and then finds himself in a
Speaker 3: sectarian split between this other rebel cell who just had
Speaker 3: like a DISASTERUS operation.
Speaker 1: Their leader got killed, so no one's really sure who
Speaker 1: should be running things.
Speaker 3: They capture Cassian because they think he's an Imperial pilot,
Speaker 3: and he tries to negotiate with them as their infighting continues. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: Imperial intelligence agents converge to develop a plan on how
Speaker 3: to squash potential resistance on the planet Gorman as they
Speaker 3: plan to extract calkite minerals from the planet's core, potentially
Speaker 3: endangering the stability of the planet to build a dust
Speaker 3: star by the way, Yes, to build a dust star.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So what's happening is these minerals are necessary to
Speaker 1: collect the system that makes the death stars big planet
Speaker 1: destroying gun work. But at this point, basically no one
Speaker 1: knows that, and the imperial like intelligence yeah, and they're
Speaker 1: being told that it's part of an energy independence project.
Speaker 3: Mon Mathma, the senator from Tandrella who eventually becomes a
Speaker 3: rebel leader in the Star Wars movies, is helping to
Speaker 3: plan the Traadcath wedding for her daughter against Mathema's own wishes,
Speaker 3: and she runs into some difficulties with someone who helped
Speaker 3: her clean up some of her financial blemishes to help
Speaker 3: finance the rebellion. So this is most of what happens
Speaker 3: in this first episode. We have some of and Or's
Speaker 3: previous comrades and planet Ferriks are on this like farming
Speaker 3: planet and they're nervous about potential inspection. So I guess specifically,
Speaker 3: do you have anything we want to talk about on
Speaker 3: this first episode.
Speaker 1: Yes, I want to talk about the scene where they
Speaker 1: talk about clearing out Gorman, because when they talk about
Speaker 1: mining it for this mineral that's necessary to make the
Speaker 1: Death Star, they're talking about basically doing deep fracking at
Speaker 1: the core of the planet that is going to make
Speaker 1: it uninhabitable, right Like, they're basically tearing out the core
Speaker 1: of this world that produces high quality textiles, right Like,
Speaker 1: it's famous kind of a luxury goods exporter. That's really
Speaker 1: all they make. There's these spiders there that make a
Speaker 1: nice kind of silk. That's what the planet does. And
Speaker 1: it's got this population of people who are used to
Speaker 1: being given a lot of autonomy because they make very
Speaker 1: this nice, this like luxury product that all they're rich
Speaker 1: people like, right, So that the folks running there are
Speaker 1: public and in the early years when there was still
Speaker 1: more the public, the Empire was still more on their
Speaker 1: republican side. Still people didn't want to talk with them
Speaker 1: too much because they make a luxury good.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 1: There was a massacre there kind of early on in
Speaker 1: the Empire when Tark and the target Yeah, landed a
Speaker 1: cruiser on a bunch of protesters killing them. But other
Speaker 1: than that, it's been pretty quiet for a while. There
Speaker 1: is like a small and not super competent or armed
Speaker 1: rebel cell starting up on the planet, and they have
Speaker 1: this big meeting the Empire does, where everybody gathers at
Speaker 1: a castle with the guy who's in charge of building
Speaker 1: the Death Star to talk about how to clear off
Speaker 1: this planet. The meeting itself in this part of the
Speaker 1: episode is based off of the Vonse Conference, which was
Speaker 1: a conference held in nineteen forty two by Reinhart Heidrich
Speaker 1: and kind of managed by Adolf Eichman to plan the holocaust.
Speaker 1: This is where they actually sat down and talked about
Speaker 1: how are we going to build death camps, how are
Speaker 1: the death camps going to operate, how will we evacuate
Speaker 1: people to the death camps? All of that right, there
Speaker 1: was a meeting. A bunch of guys showed up. There
Speaker 1: are minutes of the meeting. Tony has stated, if you've
Speaker 1: watched there's a great TV movie it's like twenty years
Speaker 1: old at this point, called Conspiracy. It stars Kenneth Brannaw
Speaker 1: as Reinhardt Heidrich, who is the architect who was like
Speaker 1: the guy running the Holocaust. Initially it's stars Stanley Tucci
Speaker 1: as Adolph Eichmann, an incredible iikman by the way, and
Speaker 1: this scene is deeply influenced by that movie. Right, There
Speaker 1: was another German movie also that, like the movie with
Speaker 1: Brannaw was based off of. But but Tony Gilroy has
Speaker 1: said that that movie was an influence and that this
Speaker 1: is based on the Bonse conference, and there's a couple
Speaker 1: of lines that are almost word for word. One of
Speaker 1: the big differences is there's a point at which they
Speaker 1: bring in a couple of PR agents who are outside
Speaker 1: of the empire. That's like an outside PR corporation and arm. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I think they're an outside contractor who does marketing normally
Speaker 1: and is doing propaganda if I'm remembering right.
Speaker 3: I think they're part of the Ministry of Enlightenment is
Speaker 3: what they call it. Yeah, yeah, credimful name. They have
Speaker 3: some of the best bits, yes, from this meeting.
Speaker 1: Their job is to put out propaganda that makes the
Speaker 1: Gormans look arrogant and unloyal and bad to everyone else,
Speaker 1: so that when they're massacred no one will care. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Quote, hasn't there always been something a little arrogant about
Speaker 3: the gour.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very good. It's it's very good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're talking about how they like create false news
Speaker 3: stories and like influence public opinion to be weaponized in
Speaker 3: favor of the imperial project the Ministry of Enlightenment. Stuff
Speaker 3: is very good. The other line I really like is
Speaker 3: from Dedra, one of the main characters from like the
Speaker 3: previous season, who has this like female isb agent and.
Speaker 1: She's sort of being made the aikman of the the
Speaker 1: Gorman Project.
Speaker 3: And like she talks with a chronic Ben Mendelssohn's character
Speaker 3: like about how propaganda really only gets you so far,
Speaker 3: and instead what they will need to need to work
Speaker 3: on is actually like controlling the Gorman resistance from the inside,
Speaker 3: Like you need to count on rebels to do like
Speaker 3: the wrong thing at the right time. So about like
Speaker 3: like like astroturfing some kind of insurgency that can actually
Speaker 3: in the end service the Empire's interests, and like this
Speaker 3: is what she's talking about for her project being is
Speaker 3: actually like helping to influence the way that the resistance
Speaker 3: operates on the planet instead of just just focusing on
Speaker 3: like public opinion and propaganda and like military might.
Speaker 1: Yeah, What I really appreciate about this scene is the
Speaker 1: degree to which it shows, Number One, how information is
Speaker 1: siloed in a situation like this, how people are on
Speaker 1: a need, Like this room is informed at the start. Whoever,
Speaker 1: your bosses, if they're not in the room, they don't
Speaker 1: know about this. Yeah, and you don't tell them, Like
Speaker 1: we do not want the tightest of closed services. We
Speaker 1: are doing a genocide and we're not talking about it
Speaker 1: to other people.
Speaker 3: They report directly to the Emperor. No other people beneath
Speaker 3: the emperor knows what's happening. Yeah, and even the Emperor
Speaker 3: doesn't really know all of the details at this point,
Speaker 3: Like yeah.
Speaker 2: And this is like like the people are cutting out,
Speaker 2: like like they're cutting out, like the director of Imperial
Speaker 2: of the ISP, Like they're cutting out, the director of
Speaker 2: Material intelligeny're cutting off, like grabbing off Tarkin, like they're
Speaker 2: cutting out, Like the most important people in Star Wars
Speaker 2: have no idea. Like it's not even going to be
Speaker 2: the Vader. I mean, Vader probably knows, but there's no
Speaker 2: fucking mention of him at all either.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he can read mine, so I assume he's been
Speaker 1: able to like glean some things, But Yes, he's.
Speaker 2: Not not involved in any of this shit because he's
Speaker 2: not a Dutch star guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and again, this isn't like a massive population, so
Speaker 1: they're viewing this primarily as like a pr problem. So
Speaker 1: both you need to get out messaging that these people
Speaker 1: are arrogant and bad so that nobody supports them when
Speaker 1: we start killing them. And we need a terror cell
Speaker 1: that can be trusted to carry out attacks against the
Speaker 1: empire that will justify what we need to do, right,
Speaker 1: So that that's the point of this meeting. It's very
Speaker 1: well shot, it's very well done. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: understanding of like just history in it that I appreciated
Speaker 1: as a Holocaust nerd. That's a bad way to frame it.
Speaker 3: But yeah, that is a bad way to frame it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nope, nope, nope.
Speaker 1: Anyway, No, if you've watched these episodes and you loved
Speaker 1: them and you found that scene chilling, go watch Conspiracy
Speaker 1: with Kenneth Brannaw and Stanley Tucci. Oh, the Tuc, the Tuc,
Speaker 1: the Twoch playing Iikman Garrison.
Speaker 12: Dad.
Speaker 3: Alright, let's go on a break and then come back
Speaker 3: to talk about episode two.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we're back.
Speaker 1: Did you guys know Stanley Tucci super pro Palestine.
Speaker 3: That's cool.
Speaker 1: Oh nice with an actor like that that I've really enjoyed.
Speaker 1: I always am like white knuckling it if I when
Speaker 1: I decided to google that, and I was pleasantly surprised
Speaker 1: with the tuc All right, that's what I got here.
Speaker 3: Let's do Episode two. The Empire arrives on this farming
Speaker 3: planet to complete inspections on Coruscant. Our little slimy weasel
Speaker 3: Carril Karn keeps rising through the the Imperial ladder at
Speaker 3: the Bureau of Standards. Man Mathma's financial schemes to help
Speaker 3: secretly fund the rebellion start coming undone as one of
Speaker 3: her like backers or like the.
Speaker 2: Guy who's moving the money around for.
Speaker 1: Her, yet he's helping her wash her money.
Speaker 3: One of her collaborators, take Kola, starts to kind of
Speaker 3: back out or ask for ask for some assistance, and
Speaker 3: is getting a erratic in his behavior as he's going
Speaker 3: through a divorce.
Speaker 1: And is making kind of vague threats about well, maybe
Speaker 1: I'll talk to someone about what I know.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, if I if I don't get something out
Speaker 3: of this relationship, I might be forced to do something
Speaker 3: else to ensure like my safety and financial security. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: Cassian is still on this jungle planet, held captive by
Speaker 3: these by these sectarian leftists start firing at each other
Speaker 3: and totally totally break down.
Speaker 1: Literal circular firing squad and it's beautiful.
Speaker 3: They go full, they go full Red.
Speaker 1: Army, Japanese Red Army, thank you very.
Speaker 3: Much, Japanese Red Army, and Cassie and barely barely escapes.
Speaker 3: Over the course of this like multi day like conflict
Speaker 3: with the UH, with the remnants of this rebellion cell,
Speaker 3: let's talk a little bit about this UH leftist infighting
Speaker 3: plot point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is something something I've never actually really seemed
Speaker 2: to pick it in you kind of like mainstream media thing,
Speaker 2: which is something that that happens in real movements, which
Speaker 2: is that when when movements suffer serious setbacks or when
Speaker 2: you know, and we see this more commonly in real life,
Speaker 2: when sort of like you know, the tide of a
Speaker 2: movement falls and everything starts falling apart. And these are
Speaker 2: people who just got absolutely obliterated in a battle of
Speaker 2: their leaders dead, a bunch of their comrades died. One
Speaker 2: of the things that happens is in this is that
Speaker 2: this is when the this is when social movements evolve
Speaker 2: into infighting, you know, and this this is what was
Speaker 2: happening inside of like the American Left roughly from twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one to twenty twenty four was you got you
Speaker 2: got this giant, really vicious cycle of infighting, because this
Speaker 2: is this is what happens when there's no longer grow
Speaker 2: threat to hold. They'veyone together, and people have this tendency
Speaker 2: to because they've just lost. Right, everyone's trying to process
Speaker 2: the emotions of their defeat, of like the really serious
Speaker 2: psychological damage that they've suffered. Like in these battles, people
Speaker 2: lash out at each other because it's easier than trying
Speaker 2: to fight an enemy that has just defeated you. And
Speaker 2: you know, there's a complicating factor in this, which is that,
Speaker 2: like you know, these are also the periods when like
Speaker 2: rapists tend to get ran out right and when like
Speaker 2: abusers in the scene tend to get ran out. But
Speaker 2: on the other hand, yeah, it turns into these really
Speaker 2: really nasty sort of sometimes just sectarians. Sometimes they're just
Speaker 2: sort of like, you.
Speaker 1: Know, I never liked this guy. People are getting in
Speaker 1: trouble for being bad I'm going to just accuse this
Speaker 1: guy of some.
Speaker 3: Shit personality conflicts stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. And this is something
Speaker 2: that happens like every time there's a cycle. I mean
Speaker 2: I remember this God like, I mean you see the
Speaker 2: shit and scenes are like from like like two thousand,
Speaker 2: like thirteen twenty fourteen, there was like a huge cycle
Speaker 2: of this. We're kind of cycles of this in like
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen. What they we're kind of falling a part
Speaker 2: as occupy isis this is just like something that's a
Speaker 2: reality of social movements that you don't ever really is.
Speaker 1: He depicted it.
Speaker 2: And the everything I think is fascinating about it is
Speaker 2: because and Or is the person who's watching it right,
Speaker 2: Andor has no idea what the fuck is going on
Speaker 2: with the chulton ams of this group.
Speaker 1: No, No, my pay is famous.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he knows who like the leader is because Lutherin's
Speaker 3: team has been like supplying them with weapons, but they
Speaker 3: don't know about like the internal structures of those groups
Speaker 3: for like op sec reason No.
Speaker 1: And the leaders dead, like the leader got killed in
Speaker 1: this ambush. Right, there's you hear about her. She's named
Speaker 1: in the first season My Pay. She's one of when
Speaker 1: when Forrest Whitaker in season one gives that very famous
Speaker 1: rant where he's talking about all because he's the anarchist
Speaker 1: militant leader and he's talking about all the different groups.
Speaker 3: Separati galaxy, they're lost, all.
Speaker 1: Of them, clarity of purpose. He talks, he names my
Speaker 1: pay along with the other different So she's clearly a
Speaker 1: fairly well known I think she's a republic restorationist kind
Speaker 1: of person, So basically a social democrat militant leader, and
Speaker 1: her group's just gotten fucked and she is dead. So
Speaker 1: he knows of them, but he doesn't know them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and because of that, you get, you get, you get,
Speaker 2: You get two things at the same time that I
Speaker 2: think are both really important. One is that you get
Speaker 2: to see what this kind of like infighting looks like,
Speaker 2: right like like actually depicting television. You get to see
Speaker 2: what happens when when movements fail and when people start
Speaker 2: to invite. In two, you get to see what it
Speaker 2: looks like from the outside, from Andrew's perspective where he's
Speaker 2: looking at these people, He's like, what the fuck is
Speaker 2: wrong with you people? All of you guys are clowns.
Speaker 3: These are fucking children, Like I'm doing a serious job.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is also a thing that you get this.
Speaker 2: This is a real movement dynamic where it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: you're watching people who after twenty twenty or something, you
Speaker 2: know you've been through your first movement and you're in
Speaker 2: your first movement cycle collapse, right if you've been doing
Speaker 2: this and I'm like, you know, if you're doing this
Speaker 2: for like a fucking decade and you're watching all of
Speaker 2: these people do this shit again, and it's just like,
Speaker 2: oh god, fucking damn it. Like the kids are like,
Speaker 2: you know, they haven't been to this before. It's really traumatic,
Speaker 2: and they're doing all this like completely incomprehensible bullshit, which
Speaker 2: is also like on the outside, if you look into
Speaker 2: this as someone who's not part of one of these
Speaker 2: scenes and you're seeing all this drama, it's just like
Speaker 2: what the fuck is wrong with you? People? Like why
Speaker 2: are you doing this? And the fact that you're getting
Speaker 2: all of this like you know, fucking Disney show is fascinating.
Speaker 1: It's why, I mean, And it shows the depth of
Speaker 1: knowledge and the the sheer amount of understanding that the
Speaker 1: people writing this have of how movements go. Again, it's
Speaker 1: granular and it's to a degree like based in some
Speaker 1: real experiences that some people on this team have had,
Speaker 1: Like you don't understand stuff like this otherwise.
Speaker 3: And as this group is like interrogating Cassie and try
Speaker 3: to trying to figure out who he is, Like they
Speaker 3: keep trying to dig into like what rebel group Cassiine
Speaker 3: is like a part of, and like who he's working with,
Speaker 3: and he's like refusing to give them this information because
Speaker 3: that's good security culture. And they're like, but you know
Speaker 3: who we work with, and he's like, yeah, you shouldn't
Speaker 3: have told me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she didn't have said that.
Speaker 3: That was bad, very very good stuff.
Speaker 1: And it's got it starts, you know, we didn't say
Speaker 1: this with with episode one. Episode one starts with another
Speaker 1: beautiful Cassian speech when he's because he's he's infiltrating as
Speaker 1: a tie fighter pilot this base where he's stealing an
Speaker 1: experimental craft and there's a young woman there who's like
Speaker 1: a technician, who is his in right and who's clearly
Speaker 1: just made her break with the Empire, and she like
Speaker 1: meets him briefly. She's like, sorry, I know I'm not
Speaker 1: supposed to look at you. I'm not supposed to talk
Speaker 1: to you, and he like grabs me. He's like, no,
Speaker 1: this is what it's all about, is the moment of
Speaker 1: connection between us where we both after all of like
Speaker 1: this being frightened and alone in the dark, were together
Speaker 1: and we know that we're doing something. This is what
Speaker 1: every this is, This is everything.
Speaker 3: And this is the moment you find yourself.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, from yourself and this is an everything that
Speaker 2: that That was the moment in this season where I
Speaker 2: was like, oh, okay, so the people are it's still
Speaker 2: the same people. It's like these are people who are
Speaker 2: just of the left in a way that you don't
Speaker 2: really ever see even with like old communists who are
Speaker 2: writing stuff. It's like I have given this speech to people, yeah,
Speaker 2: like dozens and dozens of times, like this is the
Speaker 2: thing that if you do this work, Like you have
Speaker 2: literally given this speech to a new person about like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: like this is the reason where and like it's just
Speaker 2: fucking I'm just like that mind is blown that this
Speaker 2: shit is just like appearing in mass media where people
Speaker 2: who aren't from these movements are just like encountering this.
Speaker 1: And the reason why again when I say and or
Speaker 1: is like historically profitable after the first season. Every year afterwards,
Speaker 1: for a couple of years, the number of people watching
Speaker 1: it increased, which by which I mean each year after
Speaker 1: it came out, more people watched it than had watched
Speaker 1: it in the year it came out. And that doesn't
Speaker 1: happen to TV. Yeah, it simply is not how television works,
Speaker 1: which is why Disney was like, here is a quarter
Speaker 1: of a billion dollars make and or season two.
Speaker 3: Man, this is the first time Star Wars has like
Speaker 3: visually looked good in like a decade.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh my god, and it looks incredible.
Speaker 2: It looks gorgeous, gorgeous.
Speaker 3: There's so many super long like tracking shots this season
Speaker 3: where they're going through like massive sets yea, with all
Speaker 3: like like singular like one takes and like you know,
Speaker 3: all the previous Star Wars shows are filmed on these
Speaker 3: like digital sound stages with like you know, led screen backgrounds,
Speaker 3: but like you cannot achieve this level of like in
Speaker 3: real life like fidelity on like a digital background screen.
Speaker 3: Like these are huge sets, Like specifically the Chandrilla set
Speaker 3: is like massive. As you walk around like modern mathma's
Speaker 3: like Senate estate or whatever for this for this Tradcath
Speaker 3: wedding that we'll talk more about in the next episode. Yeah,
Speaker 3: just like, really really like excellent craftsmanship going into this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just beautiful. Okay, speaking of beautiful set design. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about the nally of this little three episode arc.
Speaker 3: Cassian's trying to contact Lutheran and learns that his friends
Speaker 3: on the farming planet are actually being subject to some
Speaker 3: kind of imperial inspection. He's advised to not go there,
Speaker 3: but of course he does anyway to check on his
Speaker 3: friends as his Star Wars tradition a lah Luke skywalker.
Speaker 3: In episode five, people on this planet are trying to
Speaker 3: evade this inspection by forging emergency work orders, but their
Speaker 3: scheme falls apart. They might have been rated out by
Speaker 3: one of the top guys running the silo, and imperial
Speaker 3: officers arrest and interrogate people for not having proper work visas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the people on this planet are Cassian's friends
Speaker 1: from season one who he lived with, like the guy
Speaker 1: who was effectively his big brother, Brasso.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Brasso, the guy who hits the cop with the
Speaker 3: brick in the finale season one.
Speaker 1: Your goddamn righty, Brick's a cop And then Bicks, who
Speaker 1: is his girlfriend partner type person kind of off and on,
Speaker 1: and the because of her connections to him, gets horribly
Speaker 1: tortured in season one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and as well as young terrorist Willem, who throws
Speaker 3: a pipe bomb into a crowd of stormtroopers in the
Speaker 3: finale of season one. So these three are in hiding
Speaker 3: on this farm planet and are now in trouble because
Speaker 3: these Imperial Inspections and immigration officers are are on their tail.
Speaker 3: On Triandrilla, Man Mathma talks to Luthen, who's there for
Speaker 3: for work because he's like he's like an he's like
Speaker 3: an artifact, like a dealer. But she tells Luthen that
Speaker 3: the guy that that they were working with to to
Speaker 3: help Man Mathma secretly fund the rebellion is showing some
Speaker 3: erratic behavior and and and may and may need to
Speaker 3: be like, you know, bribed to keep quiet. Luthen, being
Speaker 3: smart and serious, knows that no, no, no, no no,
Speaker 3: you cannot simply bribe this man into silence. This man
Speaker 3: needs to get taken out right now. You need to
Speaker 3: close this.
Speaker 1: He brought in the cops like he brought in the
Speaker 1: fucking cops like he brought He has to die. That's
Speaker 1: the way these.
Speaker 3: Threatening to snitched. This guy needs to get dealt with immediately.
Speaker 3: The other plot point that I don't think we'll have
Speaker 3: much talk about but is very excellent. Our slimy weasel
Speaker 3: Cyril Carn and his new abusive girlfriend Dedra have have
Speaker 3: Cyril's wonderful mother over for dinner in just a fantastic,
Speaker 3: fantastically uncomfortable seed In less happy occurrences, as the Imperial
Speaker 3: officers investigate and search this farming planet, one of them
Speaker 3: tries to sexually assault Bix inside their little r V home.
Speaker 3: Bix kills him, and eventually and Or arrives with a tie.
Speaker 3: Avenger takes out this this Imperial battalion and Bix and
Speaker 3: and Or and the kid are able to escape, and
Speaker 3: Brasso unfortunately dies in a in a high speed speeder chase.
Speaker 1: He dies. It's it's it's an under It's like a
Speaker 1: believable move. Someone would make it under fire. But like, man,
Speaker 1: there's tall fucking grass. Just drop go to the ground,
Speaker 1: don't get on a motorbike. Well you're above the fucking crops. Like,
Speaker 1: get on the ground, high stressful environment.
Speaker 3: Right, It's it sucks, but it's but it's really people.
Speaker 1: Do stuff like that all the time in gunfights. Yes,
Speaker 1: so it's it's one of those where I was like no,
Speaker 1: but also like, yep, that's what happens. Yeah.
Speaker 2: One of the things that isn't really being talked about
Speaker 2: with the show, but I think it is actually is
Speaker 2: very important, is that it is absolutely unflinching in its
Speaker 2: depiction of patriarchy. Like I mean there's you know, there's
Speaker 2: this sort of obvious, horrifying scene of like this ice guy.
Speaker 2: I mean, increasingly over over the course of this thing,
Speaker 2: like just going from like hey, if you like date me,
Speaker 2: you can not get deported because we have to maintain.
Speaker 3: The I know you're illegal, and that's fine.
Speaker 1: We know we need a bun. We're not here to
Speaker 1: arrest everyone, right because we need the crops from this planet.
Speaker 1: But I am going to arrest some people, and I
Speaker 1: can make sure it's not you if you go on
Speaker 1: a quote unquote date with.
Speaker 2: Me, yeah, and then you know, and it's just and
Speaker 2: escalates from there and is just straight up like sexual assault, right,
Speaker 2: And this is really really I mean obviously it's jarring
Speaker 2: because it's you know, like it's an non sconscript depiction
Speaker 2: of a tempt of sexual assault and then she like
Speaker 2: does a fight and she kills them. Right, But this
Speaker 2: was also very very jarring to a lot of people
Speaker 2: because people are very and this is a Star Wars
Speaker 2: thing too, they are very used to seeing fascism depicted
Speaker 2: through its own self perception.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: People are very very used to seeing fascism as something
Speaker 2: that is strong, that is ordered, as discipline that is dangerous.
Speaker 2: And the problem is the reality of fascism is that,
Speaker 2: like a lot of it is just a bunch of
Speaker 2: tipshit rapists who are like pretending to be those guys. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and you know, and this is one of the things
Speaker 2: Andrew has always been very very good at. Is you
Speaker 2: saw this last season right with with Dedra. Who is
Speaker 2: her thing is that she is, you know, of the
Speaker 2: very common amerror an archetype of the cop who breaks
Speaker 2: all the rules to get the job done. And then
Speaker 2: you know, and then like that that's how she first
Speaker 2: is first introduced, and then you see what that actually
Speaker 2: looks like in public, which is, you know, she is
Speaker 2: just straight up torturing bis with like the screams of
Speaker 2: an entire the death room of an entire species.
Speaker 3: And that's in season one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's the season one And and what's powerful
Speaker 2: about this is something and Or also does into the
Speaker 2: prison Break episodes is like this this fascist self perception,
Speaker 2: right of this sort of strong ordered, discipline, unified thing
Speaker 2: that is just propaganda. They are not actually like that
Speaker 2: behind the scenes, right, It's just these fucking incredibly violent,
Speaker 2: like petty losers doing this fucking shit. And then you know,
Speaker 2: I mean the other thing about about the sort of
Speaker 2: patriarchy side is that you see this on the other
Speaker 2: side with with mon Mathma's like, you know, her sort
Speaker 2: of like money cleaner, who's who's what her old friend
Speaker 2: take Coleman like like literally is is demanding that like
Speaker 2: Ma Mathma have sex with him in order for him
Speaker 2: to keep keep doing this money washing shit. And this
Speaker 2: is also something you see in bits all the time,
Speaker 2: which is like guys with resources using their access to
Speaker 2: resources to force themselves on women, like in the movements
Speaker 2: and this, and you know, and there's there's like a
Speaker 2: third dynamic here with with take Homa, which is like
Speaker 2: another thing you see all the time in movements is
Speaker 2: guy going through a divorce who goes completely off the
Speaker 2: fucking rails and starts doing shit that dangers everyone and
Speaker 2: you know, starts doing sort of like weird predatory shit,
Speaker 2: and I think, I don't know, there just hasn't been
Speaker 2: much analysis of like, yeah, this is these are all
Speaker 2: ways things like if you have been in movements, you
Speaker 2: have experienced patriarchy in all of these ways, you have
Speaker 2: experienced cops doing shit to you, you have experienced stuff
Speaker 2: from inside the movement.
Speaker 1: Fuck. A big part of how the major Greens organizations
Speaker 1: that were dismantling the Green Scare were taken down was
Speaker 1: through members of these different groups who had been doing
Speaker 1: direct action who were misogynists. Right. That is always an easy,
Speaker 1: easy way to break into and shatter a movement is
Speaker 1: find the guy who's got that going on about him
Speaker 1: and turns.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, and you have that on one hand.
Speaker 2: On the other hand, with like the cops, this is
Speaker 2: like a very very common like cops just like sexually
Speaker 2: assaulting people for fun. It's like a thing that they
Speaker 2: do all the fucking time. And same thing with ice
Speaker 2: because I mean this is obviously like I don't think
Speaker 2: it say like this, this is just literally one to one.
Speaker 2: They're doing ice raids and star wars. Yeah, and the
Speaker 2: heroes are the people who like and or coming back
Speaker 2: with a tie fighter blowing them up right, like you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: Also I do want to someone landa know, I do
Speaker 2: want to point out that like this show also quietly
Speaker 2: has had like the most realistic lesbian relationship in all
Speaker 2: of Star.
Speaker 13: Wars, and this season is like, oh, someone on this
Speaker 13: crew is a lesbian because they have depicted my culture perfectly,
Speaker 13: which is uh the you know okay, so like the
Speaker 13: rich girl lesbian and the like broke.
Speaker 2: Non white like gorilla lesbian who came from nothing, his
Speaker 2: family was killed by the Empire, get together as an
Speaker 2: intense item dread in operation and then the moment the
Speaker 2: operation is over there broke girl was like, fuck, this
Speaker 2: was a bad idea. And now they're keep running into
Speaker 2: each other in movement things that are like they're sort
Speaker 2: of avoiding each other, and one of them is still
Speaker 2: the perfect in fiction to lesbian culture. Incredible, No notes
Speaker 2: loved the lesbian rebels. I'm happy for them.
Speaker 1: Oh incredible, Yeah, it's it's it's beautiful stuff. The quality
Speaker 1: of the writing, like everyone was worried who loved or
Speaker 1: season one, like well fuck how could it? How could
Speaker 1: they possibly how could they possibly compare with season one?
Speaker 1: And uh, it's just getting better. It's just they did
Speaker 1: it again somehow, you crazy bastards, You did it again.
Speaker 2: The thing I want to close on was with this wedding,
Speaker 2: which is there's a bunch of really fascinating things about it.
Speaker 2: One is that, okay, so on the very nonsubtle level,
Speaker 2: like they are cutting back and forth between everyone dancing
Speaker 2: to this like sort of tech upbeat techno thing, like
Speaker 2: they're cutting back and forth between like mon Mothma dancing
Speaker 2: at this wedding, and like the ice raid that's happening,
Speaker 2: which is like, you know, this is the level of
Speaker 2: political subtlety that you need to be working on with
Speaker 2: the American people. You have to just be like I'm
Speaker 2: hammering you over the head with the point which is
Speaker 2: like all of you motherfuckers are going to brunch and like, yeah,
Speaker 2: the ice rays are happening.
Speaker 3: Well, that is an aspect. I think it also proves
Speaker 3: there you can operate in that zone because men Mouthma
Speaker 3: is still a very important figure.
Speaker 1: Yes, starting is not just a useless lib right, She's critical.
Speaker 3: And you have someone like like Lucian who can put
Speaker 3: on nice clothes, can can do this persona and extract
Speaker 3: intel at this party. In one in one of the
Speaker 3: previous episodes, he's like talking with this guy who introduces
Speaker 3: his son who is in the Imperial Navy, and he
Speaker 3: was talking about like like like a like a recent
Speaker 3: operation on a planet, and Luten was like, oh, really
Speaker 3: tell me more, and like it's like you can, you can.
Speaker 3: You can still extract information at these like places where
Speaker 3: power is like flaunted and exchanged. Yes, they are still bad.
Speaker 3: But if you are like an aspiring rebel, yeah you
Speaker 3: can use these places to your advantage. But no, there
Speaker 3: absolutely still is. This is this juxtaposition of yeah, this
Speaker 3: like you know, riotous party with with like this horrific
Speaker 3: ice raid and yeah, like the material conditions in these
Speaker 3: people's lives is very different. Even even if man Mathma's
Speaker 3: doing good stuff still as like an Imperial senator, her
Speaker 3: everyday life is very different to complete someone who's having
Speaker 3: to hide from like ice agents.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: The other thing though, that is going on in this scene.
Speaker 1: It's not purely these are the wealthy partying as these
Speaker 1: nightmare raids go down. The other thing that's going on
Speaker 1: is mon Mathma is emotionally accepting this guy who was
Speaker 1: my lover for a long time and who is a
Speaker 1: dear friend of mine is going to be killed. And
Speaker 1: I have accepted the necessity. And the only thing for
Speaker 1: me to do right now is to get so drunk
Speaker 1: that I can't feel it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, is to do drugs, wreck drink. And that's how
Speaker 3: you exist under like the horrific conditions that the Empire
Speaker 3: forces you to live under.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And there's this fascinating thing. And I know this
Speaker 2: especially watching back season one. If you look, if you
Speaker 2: go back and watch those scenes and you look at
Speaker 2: the way it's lit. You look at the way that
Speaker 2: there's just the stark like white light coming through the windows.
Speaker 2: This is not how it's lit in season one, right,
Speaker 2: This is a very deliberate choice. Almost everyone else who
Speaker 2: does this scene would do this sort of like warm, rich,
Speaker 2: like golden lighting, because that's like that's how you do
Speaker 2: these sort of like fancy wedding things. And this the
Speaker 2: way that it is lit is the same way that
Speaker 2: they're lighting all of the like like the stark white
Speaker 2: imperial corridors, and there's this very you know, and so
Speaker 2: like like it's working on like all of these sort
Speaker 2: of like levels of like like visual metaphor of of
Speaker 2: all of this, just like oh yeah, this is also
Speaker 2: imperial space, right, and everyone here is operating either like
Speaker 2: regardless of what side they're on, they're operating like in
Speaker 2: imperial terrain in this sort of like thing. As Asma
Speaker 2: Motha also was just dealing with like her kid becoming
Speaker 2: a tradcath and like trying to talk her kid out
Speaker 2: of being a tradcath or a kid FU share at
Speaker 2: her for being like, hey, maybe you shouldn't do this
Speaker 2: like weird marriage thing when you're like.
Speaker 3: A chire like twelve year old marriage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think I think the place I want
Speaker 2: to end on is there was a really interesting thing
Speaker 2: where like the Disney account like just posted a video
Speaker 2: like I think it was on Twitter that was just
Speaker 2: one the like one hour of Mathmaed dancing. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: there was like a fascinating reaction to this of like
Speaker 2: like cause on the one hand, there's always people like
Speaker 2: who I know, Victoria Zeller, who's a trans writer, who
Speaker 2: I follow, who up probably we're talking to on the
Speaker 2: show at some point soon I had this thing, but
Speaker 2: like oh yeah, like there are also there's just gonna
Speaker 2: be weddings that are like based on this Chandulaine wedding thing,
Speaker 2: and like in like two or three years, we're gonna
Speaker 2: be seeing this And there's just interesting dynamic where like
Speaker 2: on the one hand you have the people who were
Speaker 2: just completely focused on the aesthetic, and then the other hand
Speaker 2: you have the people who were like, oh yeah, I
Speaker 2: like this is this is fucking me getting just absolutely
Speaker 2: fucked up as like all of the fucking horrors play
Speaker 2: out around us and having to like deal with and
Speaker 2: fight all the fucking horrors, while like all of the
Speaker 2: people around me are just like kind of just completely
Speaker 2: checked out.
Speaker 1: And I thought it was just like fascinating.
Speaker 2: Watching that's to play out on social media and on
Speaker 2: in real life like this. You know, they're being very
Speaker 2: very literal about how it works, and it's working.
Speaker 3: I'm seeing people do it.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The last thing I do want to mention is just
Speaker 3: a big shout out to Cyril, to Cyril Karn's Italian
Speaker 3: Jewish mother.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, the best, the best villain in Star Wars,
Speaker 1: Darth Vader ain't got shit.
Speaker 3: Not nearly as scary as Cerrel Krn's other No.
Speaker 1: I would take him in a fight over her any day.
Speaker 3: How However, one of the interesting parts about this little
Speaker 3: like like dinner party is how Cyril Krn's like FBI
Speaker 3: agent abusive girlfriend. The moment Cyril is out of the room,
Speaker 3: she like takes control of this mother, using like all
Speaker 3: of her like imperial interrogation and like intimidation tactics, and
Speaker 3: it's like, no, no, no, you don't understand how this
Speaker 3: relationship is going to go. I am in charge here.
Speaker 3: I will dictate when Cyril can see you, how I
Speaker 3: will dictate how your relationship with your son is going
Speaker 3: to go, because like Cyril is like my like pet,
Speaker 3: like I run everything and things will go according to
Speaker 3: my wishes.
Speaker 1: See. I had a very different interpretation of that really,
Speaker 1: because number one, she is not on board she's going
Speaker 1: to be doing part of the Gorman genocide. She doesn't
Speaker 1: like the plan. She doesn't like that she's involved. This
Speaker 1: is not what she wants to be doing. She wants
Speaker 1: to be hunting Luther. Yes, I agreed, And I think
Speaker 1: part of it is that she doesn't like and I
Speaker 1: think this will become increasingly clear. She's not thrilled that
Speaker 1: Cyril's going to get involved in this shit because it's
Speaker 1: dangerous what I thought they were kind of showing we've
Speaker 1: been seeing her like abuse him. I don't think we've
Speaker 1: seen her be mean to him other than like initially
Speaker 1: when that before they were dating, she didn't take him
Speaker 1: seriously until she saved her life.
Speaker 3: Well, I know, he's like a weird stalker beforehand.
Speaker 1: He is a little bit of a stock and.
Speaker 3: She is, like I think you can absolutely interpret some
Speaker 3: of some of her behaviors as like a degree of
Speaker 3: like emotionally.
Speaker 1: Abu says, it's not just a couple before their dating.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe I don't know fascist for fascist couple. I
Speaker 3: think there's elements and including like the earlier scene of
Speaker 3: them in the apartment, where like both of them are
Speaker 3: like very uncomfortable around each other.
Speaker 1: They're awkward people, but like they're I one of the
Speaker 1: things I appreciated about this is that, like she is
Speaker 1: a monster. We see her doing exclusively evil things. And
Speaker 1: then Cyril, because his mom is so cruel to him,
Speaker 1: does the most relatable thing anyone does in this show
Speaker 1: and goes and lies down on his bed and has
Speaker 1: a panic attack in the middle of their dinner. And
Speaker 1: that's when she and that's when she says look, bitch,
Speaker 1: this is how shit's and she's being a good girlfriend
Speaker 1: in that moment, she's getting his mom off his back.
Speaker 3: I definitely interpret this scene differently. She did also threaten
Speaker 3: to arrest his uncle, like she does threaten to send
Speaker 3: his uncle to forever jail. Yeah, no, I can see
Speaker 3: how you would read it that way. I think I
Speaker 3: definitely do interpret this scene a little bit differently, And
Speaker 3: I I think the beauty of good writing is this
Speaker 3: ability to look at this relationship in multiple ways.
Speaker 1: What I like about the way The Empire is written
Speaker 1: is that they're not caricatures, but not in a way
Speaker 1: where they're being like, well, the Empire's got a point,
Speaker 1: but in the way that like, yeah, these are people,
Speaker 1: and I understand how folks, why folks would want to
Speaker 1: be a part of this system outside of just like
Speaker 1: the cruelty that it does. Like Partigaz, who is like
Speaker 1: the leader of the ISB section that we're watching, is
Speaker 1: a really good boss. He listens to his subordinates, he
Speaker 1: tells them when their ideas suck. He does not spare
Speaker 1: their feelings, but he's he rewards initiative and he's willing
Speaker 1: to like be proven wrong or argued with like when
Speaker 1: people are forceful against him and make a good point,
Speaker 1: He's like, all right, well let's try it. And I
Speaker 1: love showcasing that in the same way that like, if
Speaker 1: you talk to people who worked for like work for
Speaker 1: companies like Raytheon, they'll be like, yeah, it was a
Speaker 1: nightmare evil that we were making, and like a very
Speaker 1: healthy working environment. And that is often the case with
Speaker 1: some of the most evil organizations on the planet, Like
Speaker 1: people who are very good at managing people often wind
Speaker 1: up like That's what makes fascist systems so dangerous. It's
Speaker 1: not that everyone in this is incompetent. It's that there
Speaker 1: are sometimes people who are very good organizers and very
Speaker 1: competent leaders who wind up in these systems, and that's
Speaker 1: part of what allows the evil to happen.
Speaker 2: The point of Android, the point of Star Wars is
Speaker 2: that also you could out organize them and beat them.
Speaker 2: So message of hope.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I mean fundamentally the show is very hopeful
Speaker 1: because the empire number one, we know the empire falls,
Speaker 1: but number two we're seeing we're seeing like why right,
Speaker 1: which is this attempt to control everything that inevitably creates
Speaker 1: more fires than you can put out. Yeah.
Speaker 3: The tighter they hold their grip, the more systems will
Speaker 3: slip through their fingers. Yeah, yep, which is the line
Speaker 3: from the theory twink in season one.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I think what makes Androws some specials is this
Speaker 3: does fill in this gap of like when we jump
Speaker 3: into like a new hope, you have this fully like
Speaker 3: complete like rebel alliance, right it is. It is an
Speaker 3: alliance of different rebel cells that have come together to
Speaker 3: do like like a large scale military action. It takes
Speaker 3: a lot of build up to get an alliance of
Speaker 3: rebel cells, a whole bunch of like individual like rebel
Speaker 3: terrast cells have usually have a very hard time working
Speaker 3: with each other. Yes, and it's very hard forget them
Speaker 3: to coordinate. And and Or is the story of watching
Speaker 3: these like many different cells slowly start to figure out
Speaker 3: that maybe it would make more sense if we work
Speaker 3: together instead of just doing random small crimes and like
Speaker 3: hits on individual planets or imperial processing plants. The ability
Speaker 3: to see these cells come together is what makes I
Speaker 3: think and Or so special. And And for the rest
Speaker 3: of the season, We're going to move forward a year
Speaker 3: at a time all the way up to the beginning
Speaker 3: of rogue where then we do have the like the
Speaker 3: completed rebel alliance. So I am I'm excited to watch
Speaker 3: that development.
Speaker 1: Yep, all right, well see you next week. This is it, sorry,
Speaker 1: Garrison in you.
Speaker 3: It's we have a whole thing that we've been doing.
Speaker 1: Happen we have been.
Speaker 3: This is the first episode that started differently in like twelve.
Speaker 1: You're right, you're right. Why don't you why don't you
Speaker 1: introduce erectile dysfunction or whatever we call this?
Speaker 3: That's not what it's called. This is it could happen here.
Speaker 3: Executive Disorder, the weekly newscast where we cover, you know,
Speaker 3: everything happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and
Speaker 3: what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. I'm joined
Speaker 3: by Federal No No New Mexico, State.
Speaker 1: Magis Mexico, Municipal Judge.
Speaker 3: Municipal Judge, Robert Evans. That's right, Neil Long and James Stout.
Speaker 3: We're recovering the week of April twenty fourth to April thirtieth.
Speaker 1: Yes, and we're sponsored by Hymns. Not yet, but hopefully.
Speaker 9: When they release THEMS, we will we will accept that
Speaker 9: contract money one day.
Speaker 3: Robert, what's going on? With your fellow judges.
Speaker 1: I want to get to that garrison. Some very important
Speaker 1: news just dropped from the real raw news Twitter account.
Speaker 1: Oh boys, sharing what you don't want shared one hundred
Speaker 1: and seven thousand followers. Special forces that accompanied President Trump
Speaker 1: to the Pope's funeral arrested Biden for treason afterward, but
Speaker 1: it turned out to be a body double.
Speaker 14: So breaking news turns out breaking us. Joe still has
Speaker 14: a trigger two up his sleep. Patriots not in control.
Speaker 3: What a beautiful world people must live.
Speaker 1: I desperately want to lift in the world where like
Speaker 1: Joe Biden is a Saga Rara type rebel figure, like
Speaker 1: tricking special forces with body doubles, hiding in the mountains.
Speaker 5: They called him Joe the Jackal for a reason.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he locked up in a Vatican vaults where he's
Speaker 3: scheming his return.
Speaker 1: He just stolen nuke from Fort Leonard Wood.
Speaker 9: Oh boy, he's in a tiny submarine making its way
Speaker 9: to keep it right.
Speaker 3: Now, I guess you know, speaking of the Pope, But
Speaker 3: Trump himself has announced his running for the pope ship paper.
Speaker 1: Why not let him have it. Let him have it.
Speaker 3: We will keep a close eye on that.
Speaker 1: Let him have it. But make Stanley Tucci do whatever
Speaker 1: job Stanley Tucci had in conclave.
Speaker 3: Make him the lib A cuck cardinal why not?
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right, speaking of lib No, speaking of
Speaker 1: judges who actually exercised a great deal of personal courage.
Speaker 1: There have been two cases in the last week or
Speaker 1: so of judges being arrested and charged by the Trump
Speaker 1: administration with crimes that are all related to aiding and
Speaker 1: abetting undocumented immigrants. Right, yeah, I'm going to start with
Speaker 1: the case of Hannah Dugan. Hannah Dugan is is a
Speaker 1: Wisconsin She's a Milwaukee County Circuit judge. She was sworn
Speaker 1: in in twenty sixteen. So she's I wanted to say,
Speaker 1: I wanted to say she hasn't been doing this very long,
Speaker 1: but no, that's literally like nine years, eight or nine years,
Speaker 1: so she's been doing this a spell. She's sixty five
Speaker 1: years old. And on March twelfth, there was a fellow
Speaker 1: Flora's Ruiz is his last name, He's thirty years old,
Speaker 1: who was arrested after basically there was a confrontation between
Speaker 1: him and his roommates for him playing loud music. He
Speaker 1: was confronted for this on March twelfth, and he allegedly
Speaker 1: fought with a male roommate in the kitchen. A woman
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if she was a roommate or just there,
Speaker 1: tried to break them up. Two women eventually did. One
Speaker 1: of them got elbowed in the arm, allegedly by Flores Ruiz.
Speaker 1: One of them was struck while trying to break them up.
Speaker 1: It is unclear to the degree to which I'm hearing
Speaker 1: a lot of people like I went to the centrist
Speaker 1: subreddit to season they're like, well, a serial abuser of women.
Speaker 1: That's not really what he's being accused of. There's like
Speaker 1: a fight between him and another guy, and it got chaotic.
Speaker 1: One person elbowed in the arm. I'm sorry, I don't
Speaker 1: consider that serious domestic abuse unless it's part of a pattern.
Speaker 1: If it's literally he was fighting a guy and other
Speaker 1: people swarmed in and some of them one of them
Speaker 1: got elbowed. I don't know about this woman that he's
Speaker 1: alleged of striking. To what degree did he haul off
Speaker 1: and punch he or was it again, there was this
Speaker 1: chaotic struggle and several people got struck in the middle
Speaker 1: of it. Right, this isn't like great, but this is
Speaker 1: certainly not. The evidence that has been provided by the
Speaker 1: state here in this case is not that this is
Speaker 1: a serial domestic abuser of women. It's a guy who
Speaker 1: was involved in a chaotic fight with a roommate and
Speaker 1: a couple of other people. Right, So he's being charged
Speaker 1: with misdemeanor domestic battery as a result of this. He
Speaker 1: faces up to nine months in prison and a ten
Speaker 1: thousand dollars fine on each count if convicted, and he
Speaker 1: has not been convicted and is innocent until proven guilty.
Speaker 1: So he went up in front of Judge Dugan literally
Speaker 1: a few days ago when we record this, and while
Speaker 1: she was in the midst of like having this like
Speaker 1: court meeting. Basically, I think this was kind of like
Speaker 1: a pre trial deal right where they're where they're kind
Speaker 1: of like setting the ground rules of things. She finds
Speaker 1: out that Ice is in the courthouse and that they
Speaker 1: are looking for Flores Ruiz, and so she gets really
Speaker 1: angry because based on what Wisconsin has stated, like the
Speaker 1: actual like law in the state, they are not supposed
Speaker 1: to be interfering in actual court proceedings. And part of
Speaker 1: the reason why is that the courts don't want people
Speaker 1: to be dissuaded from dealing with their state level court
Speaker 1: issues by the fact that Ice might pick them up. Right,
Speaker 1: It will stop people, It will make people go on
Speaker 1: the run. It makes it very difficult to enforce law
Speaker 1: and order.
Speaker 9: And it also think victims, right, Like I've said, at
Speaker 9: least to have some makes it difficult.
Speaker 1: For victims to get any sort of justice. Yes, yeah.
Speaker 1: The FBI FI David describes her as getting visibly angry
Speaker 1: when Immigration shows up and she leaves the bench, right,
Speaker 1: and she retreats to her chambers and I think confers
Speaker 1: with another judge, and she and that judge then approached
Speaker 1: the arrest team inside the court courthouse. The affidavit describes
Speaker 1: her as having a confrontational, angry demeanor. She basically keeps saying,
Speaker 1: show me a fucking warrant, right, And they don't have
Speaker 1: a quote unquote real warrant, right, They do not have
Speaker 1: a criminal arrest warrant. They have an administrative warrant, which,
Speaker 1: based on the actual law, they do not. She does
Speaker 1: not have to let them in, right, That is not
Speaker 1: the way these things fucking work right into the courtroom
Speaker 1: to like interrupt the proceedings. On the strength of this warrant.
Speaker 1: She tells them to speak with the chief judge, and
Speaker 1: she leads them away from the courtroom. Right. Once she
Speaker 1: sends them to the chief Judge's office, this is where
Speaker 1: the thing that may in fact be criminal behavior comes in.
Speaker 1: Dugan goes back into the courtroom and says something along
Speaker 1: the lines of weight, come with me, and then takes
Speaker 1: Flora's Ruiz and his lawyer through the jury door into
Speaker 1: a non public area of the courthouse. Right, this is
Speaker 1: not normal behavior. And Ice is alleging that this is
Speaker 1: interfering with the duties of federal agents. Right, that she's
Speaker 1: basically hiding an undocumented immigrant who is being actively tracked
Speaker 1: by Ice, right, and that that is a federal crime.
Speaker 1: And so that is the situation. Right when it was
Speaker 1: found out that this was happening, the FBI and ICE
Speaker 1: arrested her. She has since bailed out. She is facing
Speaker 1: several federal charges, and it's, you know, kind of unclear
Speaker 1: where this case is going to go. In terms of
Speaker 1: her initial behavior, she was absolutely legally in the right
Speaker 1: that administrative warrant did not give Ice the right to
Speaker 1: interrupt the court proceedings. She led them to the chief
Speaker 1: judge that was all entirely within the law. We're going
Speaker 1: to learn how the law adjudicates what she did afterwards, right,
Speaker 1: taking these people through, because it's not illegal to lead
Speaker 1: people through a backdoor. It's not a crime to tell
Speaker 1: people to leave this way. But what may be adjudicated
Speaker 1: as a crime is that by doing this, she was
Speaker 1: helping to aid in a bet the escape of a fugitive. Right,
Speaker 1: And that is the argument that the federal government is
Speaker 1: making here.
Speaker 9: Yeah, they didn't leave the building at that point, right,
Speaker 9: because in the charging documents, then an ice agent gets
Speaker 9: in the elevator with them, yeah, and decides not to
Speaker 9: detain them at that point for some reason.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I believe that's what happened. And that part
Speaker 1: of is why I think they picked this case, because
Speaker 1: they thought it was close enough on the edge enough
Speaker 1: that they could charge a judge. And I think that
Speaker 1: is the purpose of this more than going after this,
Speaker 1: And that's why they've been going to these courtses. They
Speaker 1: have been looking, they've been shopping for a situation like this, right,
Speaker 1: And part because one of the first things that happened
Speaker 1: is the Wisconsin Supreme Court suspended Judge Dugan right because
Speaker 1: She's been charged with two federal counts, and this is
Speaker 1: a normal thing. If a judge gets accused of federal crimes,
Speaker 1: you would, in normal terms, want them to be suspended
Speaker 1: because those crimes are probably something like they were selling
Speaker 1: children to a child prison, which is a thing that
Speaker 1: happened to Trump. Pardon the judges responsible, right, you would
Speaker 1: want those people not trying cases while this was going on.
Speaker 1: But what's going to be done here, and what's already
Speaker 1: being done here, is that judges that are friendly to
Speaker 1: and sympathetic to undocumented people and who are not gigantic
Speaker 1: pieces of shit. And Judge Dugan comes out of a
Speaker 1: public defense background. This is somebody who defended people like
Speaker 1: the defendant in this case in her previous life as
Speaker 1: a lawyer, and I think acted with tremendous courage in
Speaker 1: this situation to try to protect somebody. They are going
Speaker 1: after her because number one, they want to chill other
Speaker 1: judges from doing this, and number two, they can keep
Speaker 1: her off the bench right and assume she will be
Speaker 1: replaced with somebody worse, or that they will just clog
Speaker 1: up the system, either way of which works in their favor.
Speaker 1: So it will be unclear how things are going to
Speaker 1: work out in this case. I can't tell you legally
Speaker 1: what's going to happen. That could go either way. I
Speaker 1: can tell you, and I think this is a very
Speaker 1: important point. It's a point Jared Yate Sexton, who's a
Speaker 1: scholar on fascism, made online about this particular case, is
Speaker 1: we shouldn't give a shit if she broke the law.
Speaker 1: She did the right thing. These people are doing the
Speaker 1: wrong thing and they need to be stopped right And
Speaker 1: that is my overall stance. What she did was heroic
Speaker 1: and we should support her and fuck these people. I
Speaker 1: don't know, yeah, yep, yep. I don't have a complicated
Speaker 1: take on this.
Speaker 3: Solidarity with the Wisconsin judiciary or at least one of them.
Speaker 3: At least one of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I have a friend who knows her and says
Speaker 1: she's a very nice person, and her actions in this
Speaker 1: case certainly would seem to suggest that she's a very nice,
Speaker 1: good courageous person.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and like just to there's conceivably like a person
Speaker 9: listening who thinks that I know, these deportation things are okay.
Speaker 1: I know if you are, fuck you, why this isn't
Speaker 1: for you? Go away?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, we don't make it. You know what, you
Speaker 1: put rocks in your pockets and yeah, there's bodies of it.
Speaker 1: Whatever the.
Speaker 9: Even if you fucking like the deportation for whatever reason,
Speaker 9: you should be able to understand that doing this in
Speaker 9: court houses is bad. Like if a let's just take
Speaker 9: an example, right, Like, if a woman who is undocumented
Speaker 9: is subc to domestic violence, right, going to testifying court
Speaker 9: could lead to her being deported, Like, this is fucking bad.
Speaker 3: It could subject her to even more violence from the
Speaker 3: state from yet wherever she's trying to flee from, yeah.
Speaker 5: To being detained with people, yeah, yes, if you believe
Speaker 5: in the judicial system, right like, this stops it functioning.
Speaker 1: Also, I want to say this too, if you're purely
Speaker 1: coming at this from a perspective of like, well, I'm
Speaker 1: still a law and order guy, this also vastly endangers
Speaker 1: Wisconsin police because if every undocumented person who gets accused
Speaker 1: of a crime knows that, well, the instant I'm accused,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be sent to a fucking concentration camp,
Speaker 1: might as well start shooting, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, It's why you don't see very many of these
Speaker 3: things happening in states where people regularly carry firearms.
Speaker 1: Yes, so again you know that's all I'm saying. No,
Speaker 1: that's not my primary concern, but I'm going to make
Speaker 1: that point.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 3: What about the other like weirder case of the New
Speaker 3: Mexico case, the judge in New Mexico.
Speaker 1: Yes, so now back to my fellow New Mexico municipal judge.
Speaker 1: Actually I think he was in a missige yeah, county magistrate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he and I basically the same. So there's this
Speaker 1: guy Nancy Cano who's a former police officer, his wife
Speaker 1: was a cop. And Joel Cano, who is the Donna
Speaker 1: Anna County magistrate judge. These two are really you wouldn't
Speaker 1: have expected what happened from this group. These two are
Speaker 1: a cop and a judge.
Speaker 3: Couple radical lefty lunatics.
Speaker 1: There are wealthy landlords who own at least eight properties
Speaker 1: and they hire three men to do like you know,
Speaker 1: contracting work. And those men included a guy, Christian Ortega
Speaker 1: Lopez twenty three years old, right, who is a Venezuelan migrant.
Speaker 1: And first off, because these are cops or a cop
Speaker 1: and a judge, they like check his papers which saved,
Speaker 1: do not deport right like he is in the the
Speaker 1: system not subject. This person is not subject to removal. Right,
Speaker 1: those are on his papers. They check his papers. They
Speaker 1: work for these three guys, work for them for a
Speaker 1: while and develop a close relationship with the Canos to
Speaker 1: the point that they refer to them as the boys.
Speaker 1: And when they get kicked out of their apartment, they
Speaker 1: let them live with them, I think for free or
Speaker 1: at least for a nominal fee. And as they describe it,
Speaker 1: they came to consider them part of the family. And
Speaker 1: there's like photo evidence of that, including photo evidence of
Speaker 1: them like going to the gun range together as like
Speaker 1: a family day at the gun range and shooting, and
Speaker 1: like this guy Artago Lopez like posts pictures of these
Speaker 1: people and these like family outings on his Facebook, Like
Speaker 1: they really do seem to have all been very close. Yeah,
Speaker 1: earlier this year, Ice comes for these guys, the boys,
Speaker 1: these three dudes who are living on their property, in
Speaker 1: a small guest house on the Canos property, and they
Speaker 1: allege or Tega Ortiz to have been a member of
Speaker 1: trind Agua. And it's based on and I hate most
Speaker 1: of the reporting on this because it's all just like
Speaker 1: the alleged alleged gang member alleged trind to Agua member.
Speaker 1: And you look at it, well, well, he has tattoos,
Speaker 1: and there's pictures of him with guns, pictures him with
Speaker 1: guns that are legally owned by Americans at a gun range.
Speaker 9: Yeah, he's a twenty three year old guy coming to America.
Speaker 9: Like there's a high correlation with those people and people.
Speaker 1: Going to a gun range. Yeah, nothing illegal with that,
Speaker 1: but they're like a gang member. Photos of guns on
Speaker 1: his Facebook. Oh my god. So these guys get arrested, right,
Speaker 1: and it's initially and this is like a month or
Speaker 1: so ago. It's a big scandal. Canos resigns from his
Speaker 1: position as a magistrate, right and gets permanently barret serving
Speaker 1: as a judge in New Mexico because these guys had
Speaker 1: been on his property, even though again there's not any
Speaker 1: evidence that I have seen anywhere that he actually did
Speaker 1: anything illegal. At this point. Now, yeah, here's where things
Speaker 1: get problematic. At this point, the boys are being you know,
Speaker 1: the government is treating them as people who are here
Speaker 1: I legally, and they are trying to kick them out
Speaker 1: and they are accusing them, these three guys of being
Speaker 1: evolved in Trindagua. At this point, Nancy Kno provides them
Speaker 1: with legal assistance in complying with the procedures of their
Speaker 1: pending immigration cases, right, which shouldn't be illegal. She's literally
Speaker 1: helping them abide by the law.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: But there's some other things, So Joel Cano, this is
Speaker 1: where this guy turns from like fucking married a cop,
Speaker 1: he's a landlord. He smashes or take a Lopez's phone.
Speaker 1: He admits, he's admitted that he's done this. This is
Speaker 1: not an allegation with a hammer to stop Ice from
Speaker 1: getting it. So, first off, based illegal, super illegal, super illegal,
Speaker 1: but not a like a good person act, I would argue. Secondly,
Speaker 1: Nancy tries to help, and this is I think a
Speaker 1: grayer area. Tries to help Ortago Lopez delete his Facebook account,
Speaker 1: and I don't actually think there's any evidence of him
Speaker 1: doing anything illegal on there. I think it's just they
Speaker 1: knew the photos he'd posted of him not breaking any
Speaker 1: laws would be used as an argument that he had
Speaker 1: I think that that's defensible in court, although they will
Speaker 1: allege that it's destruction of the evidence, they may win
Speaker 1: on that breaking the phone is. You know, that's going
Speaker 1: to be a tough one for them. That's just going
Speaker 1: to be a tough one for them. Now the knos
Speaker 1: are currently being charged and they have been released. They
Speaker 1: can't leave the county. There was the prosecutors were attempting
Speaker 1: to have them separated so that they couldn't talk about
Speaker 1: the case. But thank god the judge ruling was like,
Speaker 1: they're married, they have a constitutional right to be together.
Speaker 1: You don't get to do that. But obviously they have
Speaker 1: to like hand in their passports any guns they'd had,
Speaker 1: which they seem to have already done. The good news
Speaker 1: is that these are rich people, right, Like the judge
Speaker 1: even makes a comment that, like, these are the wealthiest
Speaker 1: people I've ever had in my courtroom, So they have
Speaker 1: the resources to fight this. And again fucking politics making
Speaker 1: strange bedfellows.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: Yeah, critical support to the landlord, judge, cop couple who
Speaker 1: tried to protect these EMM grits. I don't know, like whatever,
Speaker 1: they did the right thing, you know, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: again not the legal thing, and I'm not urging you
Speaker 1: to follow them and breaking the law, making very clear
Speaker 1: it is illegal to break the phone of somebody that
Speaker 1: you know the police are looking for because they've been
Speaker 1: charged with crimes. That is a crime. I'm just saying
Speaker 1: I think what they did was out of love and brave. Anyway,
Speaker 1: That's what I gotta say.
Speaker 3: Speaking of love, I love these ads. All Right, we
Speaker 3: are back. I am now going to discuss a I
Speaker 3: believe the word is a flurry of executive orders that
Speaker 3: half in the past week, because there was a ton
Speaker 3: This was a huge week for actions through through through
Speaker 3: executive order. We've tried to summarize a few of these
Speaker 3: that have like or a few orders that have come
Speaker 3: in the past few months, but but yeah, definitely the
Speaker 3: ones that happened last week are much more notable, and
Speaker 3: I will go through them one by one. Starting off
Speaker 3: with an attempt to possibly repeal large sections of the
Speaker 3: Civil Rights Act, Trump side in order to quote eliminate
Speaker 3: the use of disparate impact liability in all contexts to
Speaker 3: the maximum degree possible. Disparate impact is a legal theory
Speaker 3: that seeks to address discriminatory policies that, on their face
Speaker 3: may appear neutral but actually continue decades old discrimination and segregation.
Speaker 3: This order from Trump provokes presidential approval for Title six
Speaker 3: antidiscrimination regulations from the sixties and seventies, and orders all
Speaker 3: agencies to quote deprioritize enforcement of all statutes and regulations
Speaker 3: to the extent that they include disparate impact liability. The
Speaker 3: order calls for the Attorney General to quote initiate appropriate
Speaker 3: action to repeal or amend the implementing regulations for Title
Speaker 3: six the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four. Cabinet
Speaker 3: members were also instructed to review all pending investigations, civil suits,
Speaker 3: consent judgments, permanent injunctions, and government positions rely on spared
Speaker 3: impact theory. That includes Titles seven and eight of the
Speaker 3: Civil Rights Act, which protects equal employment and fair housing.
Speaker 3: This is kind of part of a larger attack on
Speaker 3: civil rights in general, like obviously the past few months,
Speaker 3: who've seen this with like DEI stuff. But last week
Speaker 3: the DOJ essentially closed its existing civil Rights office, resigned
Speaker 3: a dozen senior career attorneys, curbed investigations into police misconduct
Speaker 3: and violations of voting and disability rights. Plus, the Education
Speaker 3: at Discrimination Division is now being directed to protect women's sports,
Speaker 3: and the Immigrant and Employee Rights Division was told to
Speaker 3: investigate companies that quote unlawfully discriminate against US workers in
Speaker 3: favor of foreign visa workers unquote. So that's how they
Speaker 3: think they're going to be defending civil rights is by
Speaker 3: keeping trans girls out of sports and going after foreign
Speaker 3: visa workers. Basically, they're trying to turn federal civil rights
Speaker 3: infrastructure against those whom they were meant to to protect
Speaker 3: in the first place. The next order kind of outlies
Speaker 3: something I'm calling cop Nation. It's called quote strengthening and
Speaker 3: unleashing America's law enforcement to pursue criminals and protect innocent civilians.
Speaker 3: This is kind of like a proto martial law order.
Speaker 3: It's what you would do beforehand to strengthen police, but
Speaker 3: not actually like declare martial law. It's setting kind of
Speaker 3: the path towards that, or at the very least like
Speaker 3: strengthening law enforcement to the degree to which it like
Speaker 3: butts up against what martial law would be.
Speaker 2: The order calls to.
Speaker 3: Quote unleash high impact local police forces, protect and defend
Speaker 3: law enforcement officers wrongly accused and abused by state or
Speaker 3: local officials, and surge resources to officers in need unquote.
Speaker 3: It directs the Attorney General to create a mechanism to
Speaker 3: have private sector law firms provide pro bono legal defense
Speaker 3: to police officers who quote unjustly incur expenses and liabilities
Speaker 3: for actions taken during the performance of their official duties
Speaker 3: to enforce the law. So this tries to make it
Speaker 3: harder for police to be held accountable for a civil
Speaker 3: and criminal misconduct, basically extending qualified immunity to the criminal realm.
Speaker 3: According to Business Insider, quote, following previous executive orders targeting
Speaker 3: a number of elite firms, nine law firms have agreed
Speaker 3: to deals with the President and collectively agreed to provide
Speaker 3: nine hundred and forty million in pro bono legal services
Speaker 3: to support the President's policies. This order also calls to
Speaker 3: use federal resources to increase pay, expand training, and strengthen
Speaker 3: legal protections for police officers, as well as to quote
Speaker 3: seek enhanced sentences for crimes against law enforcement officers, promote
Speaker 3: investment in the security capacity of prisons, and increase the
Speaker 3: investment in and collection, distribution and uniformity of crime data
Speaker 3: across jurisdictions. The Attorney General is directed to review and
Speaker 3: remove any previous accountability restrictions placed on to local or
Speaker 3: state law enforcement agencies that might unduly impede the performance
Speaker 3: of law enforcement functions. And then, finally, quote, Attorney General
Speaker 3: and the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Secretary
Speaker 3: of Homeland Security and the heads of agencies as appropriate,
Speaker 3: shall increase the provision of excess military and national security
Speaker 3: assets in local jurisdictions to assist state and local law enforcement.
Speaker 3: And shall determine how military and national security assets, training,
Speaker 3: non lethal capabilities, and personnel can most effectively be utilized
Speaker 3: to prevent crime unquote, so moving more national security resources
Speaker 3: over to state and local law enforcement, and directs the
Speaker 3: ag to go after state and local officials that struckt
Speaker 3: criminal law by quote, prohibiting law enforcement officers from carrying
Speaker 3: out duties necessary for public safety or unlawfully engage in
Speaker 3: discrimination or civil rights violations under the guise of DEI
Speaker 3: do you want to discuss anything with this you know,
Speaker 3: anti ACAB executive order here and what it might actually
Speaker 3: like do in reality besides you know, expanding like legal
Speaker 3: protections for cops.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think the worrying one to me is
Speaker 2: that they're very explicitly talking about using military national security
Speaker 2: assets like in the US against Americans, and the thing
Speaker 2: right now we are doing is like to prevent crime.
Speaker 2: But like I think, very obviously everyone is look at
Speaker 2: this is immediately gone. Like part of this obviously is
Speaker 2: about like trying to defeat any attempt to even moderately
Speaker 2: reform the police, but a lot of it is also like, yeah,
Speaker 2: they're expecting giant they're expecting giant protests this summer. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and they want to be able to use military assets here.
Speaker 2: And what they're doing with this, the Secretary of Defense
Speaker 2: is developing a plan to use military assets like presumably
Speaker 2: against protesters either that or you know what I mean,
Speaker 2: Like cercific thing here is like used to prevent crime,
Speaker 2: which is just like the deployment of the US military
Speaker 2: against like US Right, that's I think a pretty cut
Speaker 2: in dry. They are developing the apparatus through which they
Speaker 2: are going to attempt to deploy the army against the
Speaker 2: US citizens in the US.
Speaker 3: Well, and it's also specifically like empowers like individual police
Speaker 3: officers against any like received restrictions that like local or
Speaker 3: state officials might be putting on them. Yeah, And I
Speaker 3: think that's what makes it more super worrying for me.
Speaker 3: It's like it's like enabling like the police state aspect
Speaker 3: of like of the of the executive branch saying, hey,
Speaker 3: like individual cops, we support you more so than whatever
Speaker 3: like local jurisdiction you are like under. And if if
Speaker 3: the local jurisdictions start to like restrict your ability to
Speaker 3: like to to to do violence, restrict your ability to
Speaker 3: do your job, we are going to help you to
Speaker 3: make sure that you have the legal and like physical
Speaker 3: capacity to continue your job as you see fit.
Speaker 1: We will throw the high dollar lawyers that we have
Speaker 1: threatened into working for us at these states and municipalities.
Speaker 3: Yeah, both to like defend your individual actions and then
Speaker 3: also go after the people in charge of you, like
Speaker 3: like like both of them.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it's more like CPD black site shit, like yeah,
Speaker 2: Nazi gang shit, like you know them just like shooting people. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Like that's the kind of shit.
Speaker 9: The torture the data sharing, I think is something people
Speaker 9: should be aware of. The Like that seem to be
Speaker 9: what I would imagine we'll be funding for more federal
Speaker 9: fusion centers and then equipping them with like home land
Speaker 9: security assets, intelligence assets that are already used outside the US.
Speaker 9: Like that is concerning especially in a climate of like
Speaker 9: migration crackdown, right, Like this data sharing will help them
Speaker 9: further target migrants well.
Speaker 3: And this relates to another executive order for protecting American
Speaker 3: communities from criminal aliens. Basically, it targets sanctuary cities. The
Speaker 3: Attorney General and the DHS Secretary will publish a list
Speaker 3: of sanctuary jurisdictions that obstruct the enforcement of federal immigration
Speaker 3: law and federal funds. Those districts will be suspended or terminated,
Speaker 3: and if those districts remain sanctuary districts after officials have
Speaker 3: been notified of their status, then necessary legal remedies and
Speaker 3: enforcement measures shall be pursued to quote end these violations.
Speaker 3: Section one of this order lists several federal criminal laws
Speaker 3: that they say are being violated by these sanctuary districts,
Speaker 3: including quote obstruction of justice on lawfully harboring or hiring
Speaker 3: illegal aliens, conspiracy against the United States, and conspiracy to
Speaker 3: impede federal law enforcement. Assisting aliens in violating federal immigration
Speaker 3: law could also violate the Racketeer, Influenced and Corrupt Organizations
Speaker 3: Act unquote, So they're even rapid and rico here for
Speaker 3: state and local officials who are trying to protect immigrants
Speaker 3: in their communities. There's a few other executive orders I
Speaker 3: want to mention, including one that requires professional truck drivers
Speaker 3: speak English. I think this is actually just to mask
Speaker 3: the consequences of like the tariffs, with the.
Speaker 1: Fact that a lot of truck drivers are losing their jobs.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, so this is to like hide those layoffs
Speaker 3: or trying to force people to get laid off if
Speaker 3: they don't speak good enough English, or to like to
Speaker 3: create pretext to have these layoffs be justified as we see,
Speaker 3: you know, the shipping industry slowly collapse because of the tariffs.
Speaker 3: Another order that's just more frustrating, I guess to me
Speaker 3: and like worrying long term about the future is quote
Speaker 3: advancing Artificial Intelligence Education for American youth. And I'm actually
Speaker 3: going to play a video here of Trump's signing this order.
Speaker 4: This next executive order relates to artificial intelligence educations. There,
Speaker 4: you've obviously done a lot in the artificial intelligence space already.
Speaker 4: The basic idea of this executive order is to ensure
Speaker 4: that we properly train the workforce of the future by
Speaker 4: ensuring that school children, young Americans are adequately trained in
Speaker 4: AI tools so that they can be.
Speaker 1: Competitive in the economy.
Speaker 4: Years from now into the future as AI becomes a
Speaker 4: bigger and bigger deal.
Speaker 6: That's a big deal. US AI is where it seems
Speaker 6: to be at. We have literally trillions of dollars being
Speaker 6: invested in AI, and there are some money today. Very
Speaker 6: smart person said that AI is the way to the future.
Speaker 6: I don't know if that's right or not, but certainly
Speaker 6: very smart people are investing in it heavily.
Speaker 3: This clip is super interesting to be he said, demonstrates
Speaker 3: just how little Trump knows what's really going on. Like
Speaker 3: this is the first time he's seen this order. He
Speaker 3: has to get explained to what it is before he
Speaker 3: signs his name on it. They're just handing him these
Speaker 3: things and he's just signing papers. He is not like
Speaker 3: dictating which things he actually wants to happen. He just
Speaker 3: gets handed stuff and there's cameras on. He's like, hey,
Speaker 3: this is to help AI with kids, and you're so
Speaker 3: smart about AI, mister President. He's like, yes, I am.
Speaker 3: As he signs his name. The actual text disorder is
Speaker 3: really freaky. Quote. By fostering AI competency, we will equip
Speaker 3: our students with the foundational knowledge and skills necessary to
Speaker 3: adapt and thrive in an increasing digital society. Early learning
Speaker 3: and exposure to AI concepts not only demestifies this powerful
Speaker 3: technology but also sparks curiosity and creativity, preparing students to
Speaker 3: become active and responsible participants in the workforce of the future.
Speaker 3: To achieve this vision, we must also invest in our
Speaker 3: educators and equip them with the tools and knowledge to
Speaker 3: not only train students about AI, but also to utilize
Speaker 3: AI in their classrooms to improve educational outcomes. Unquote James,
Speaker 3: how do you feel about that at a as a
Speaker 3: as an educator yourself.
Speaker 9: Probably fifty percent of my time in the classroom right
Speaker 9: now is trying to explain to people where they shouldn't
Speaker 9: copy paste the assignment into chat GPD And like every
Speaker 9: year for the past three or four years, we have
Speaker 9: dealt with like bots, like students in my class who
Speaker 9: are not real people. I've dealt with more and more
Speaker 9: and more use of AI. It's from people who I think,
Speaker 9: like the folks who are coming through my classroom now,
Speaker 9: like many of their like high school years when they
Speaker 9: should have been getting good solid like writing tuition work
Speaker 9: during COVID lockdowns, right and so like. I'm not entirely
Speaker 9: blaming like the folks coming through my class here, but
Speaker 9: it is it's a fuck situation. That's only getting worse.
Speaker 1: It's fucked.
Speaker 9: It's the like I've been educating people for nearly two
Speaker 9: decades and like I've never come across anything this bad.
Speaker 9: It is fundamentally damaging people's engagement with education and their
Speaker 9: ability to learn.
Speaker 1: It's giving them permanent brain damage. It is life altering
Speaker 1: their ability to think and in a way that may
Speaker 1: never be recoverable for a lot of people. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't want to be a boomer. There's data on this.
Speaker 1: The AI companies have. Microsoft has data on this. It
Speaker 1: damages people. It needs to.
Speaker 9: Be finding good solutions for that. Writing assignments AI can't
Speaker 9: write like it's not that hard. But before people come
Speaker 9: into my mentions right saying like, oh you can use
Speaker 9: this to detect AI. I can detect it because the
Speaker 9: assignments it submits a shit. The problem is that people
Speaker 9: keep using it, like because it's Roberts said that, they're
Speaker 9: running out of other options, right.
Speaker 3: And they're like really committing to this. The end of
Speaker 3: the order directs the Secretary of Education to provide grant
Speaker 3: funding to quote improve educational outcomes using AI, including but
Speaker 3: not limited to AI based high quality instructional resources, high
Speaker 3: impact tutoring and college and career pathway exploration advises and navigation.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean sadly like these federal and to extend
Speaker 9: state level too, Like dictats, I guess do impact what
Speaker 9: you're supposed to put on your syllabus, right, Like, especially
Speaker 9: for like high school students, these can genuinely impact what
Speaker 9: high school teachers are supposed to teach. It changes a
Speaker 9: little bit like once you get to the university level.
Speaker 9: And I guess we'll we'll see how this goes. But
Speaker 9: like this, this genuinely could have a very damaging impact
Speaker 9: on and it already has had a damaging impact on
Speaker 9: the US education system.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have one more thing I want to read here.
Speaker 3: This is actually a presidential memorandum, not an executive order,
Speaker 3: but this cause to investigate Democrat and grassroots funding platform
Speaker 3: Act Blue, a legend quote schemes to launder excessive and
Speaker 3: prohibited contributions to political candidates and committees quote. Actlue has
Speaker 3: been the target of conspiracy theories for years, starting with
Speaker 3: James o'keef and Elon Musk has recently targeted Act Blue
Speaker 3: with with bizarre theories on how Act Blue functions and
Speaker 3: is used to funnel money to like Antifa, and and
Speaker 3: you know, George Soros money get getting moved over to
Speaker 3: all of these you know, Tesla Vandal's crazy stuff. But specifically,
Speaker 3: Trump is calling the Attorney General and Treasury Secretary to
Speaker 3: quote investigate allegations regarding the unlawful use of online fundraising
Speaker 3: platforms to make straw or dummy contributions or foreign contributions
Speaker 3: to political candidates and committees, and to take appropriate action
Speaker 3: to enforce the law unquote. I think this whole thing
Speaker 3: beyond trying to you know, harm the Democrats' ability to
Speaker 3: like win elections in the future as a form of
Speaker 3: collection meddling is also just like a spig smoke screen
Speaker 3: away from a CNN investigation last year into deceptive practices
Speaker 3: used by political fundraising platforms Win Red and Act Blue,
Speaker 3: which found that the Republican platform had more than seven
Speaker 3: times the fraud complaints sent to the FCC than Act
Speaker 3: Blue during the period of twenty twenty two to twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four, with the fundraising platform targeting aging seniors who
Speaker 3: thought they were personal friends of the Trump family with
Speaker 3: propaganda and emails that trick them into signing up for
Speaker 3: recurring donations. And what they thought was a personal correspondence
Speaker 3: to President Trump. It's a really worrying investigation. It'll be
Speaker 3: linked below. And like, you know, meanwhile, you have Elon
Speaker 3: Musk literally offering people millions of dollars to like get
Speaker 3: people to sign up to vote and sign petitions. And
Speaker 3: and yet they're gonna try to try to investigate, you know,
Speaker 3: fraud in Democrat and grassroots fundraising, which I'm sure there
Speaker 3: is a little bit of, but according to this investigation
Speaker 3: by CNN, so much more fraud on the on the
Speaker 3: on the Republican fundraising platform. You know, there is actually
Speaker 3: one Democrat who we can verifiably claim did a bunch
Speaker 3: of weird fundraising ship and did straw donations from foreign donors.
Speaker 3: And it is Eric Adams, who is Trump's favorite Democrat.
Speaker 3: Trump is personally keeping out of prison. Oh gotastic. Anyway,
Speaker 3: that is the that's the flurry. We're gonna go one
Speaker 3: more break and then come back to close out on
Speaker 3: some immigration and tariff updates.
Speaker 12: Hell yeah, we're back.
Speaker 1: And wait, what's that? Do you hear? The dulcet tones
Speaker 1: of an angel?
Speaker 5: Sorry locking jazz rocky jazz Bart Sorry lock.
Speaker 12: Locking jazz rocking jazz.
Speaker 5: Bo We're gonna get to the rest of the class catalog.
Speaker 1: We got four years. Yes, yes, I'm really looking for
Speaker 1: secrating the temp. We're working on a cover of Lost
Speaker 1: in the supermarket where there's just nothing in the supermarket
Speaker 1: because of the terriffs. It's actually very easy to find
Speaker 1: my way around in the supermarket now because there's nothing
Speaker 1: on sone.
Speaker 2: So, all right, what's actually happening with with the Turff tariffs.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna I'm just gonna start by reading Trump's incredible
Speaker 2: cope about why everything's going to shit. This is Trump,
Speaker 2: This is a truth from true social This is Biden's
Speaker 2: stock market, not Trumps. They didn't take over until January twentieth.
Speaker 2: Terrorifts will start kicking in. We soon start kicking in,
Speaker 2: and companies are starting to move to the US and
Speaker 2: record numbers. Our country will boom, but we have to
Speaker 2: get rid of the Biden quote overhang. This will take
Speaker 2: a while, has nothing to do with the tariffs all caps,
Speaker 2: only that he left us with bad numbers. But when
Speaker 2: the boom begins, it will be like no other.
Speaker 1: Be patient.
Speaker 3: This is Biden's stock market.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the reason he's saying this is that So today
Speaker 2: we got a report that the US for the first
Speaker 2: quarter suffered the first like actual economic contraction of the
Speaker 2: economy since like twenty twenty two, and that basically there
Speaker 2: was like one quarter in twenty twenty two. We're contracted,
Speaker 2: and and it like basically since like the lockdowns, it's
Speaker 2: been expanding. We are probably already in the recession. And
Speaker 2: the other thing there's think that's very important to note here,
Speaker 2: right is you're seeing a lot of reporting about this
Speaker 2: being a contraction, and a lot of the reporting we'll
Speaker 2: talk about how like, yeah, this is because people are
Speaker 2: like rushing to do their all their imports right now
Speaker 2: before the tariff's hit. The thing is, right, this economic
Speaker 2: contraction is like before the actual substantive impact of the
Speaker 2: tariff's hit. So this is just the beginning of like
Speaker 2: the rolling economic collapse, and all of these turf tariffs
Speaker 2: are going to generate. There's been a little bit of
Speaker 2: movement in the sense that like, Okay, so when I
Speaker 2: last talked about sort of the declines in like shipping
Speaker 2: from China or just shipping in general, it was mostly
Speaker 2: like sort of I don't know what you'd call them,
Speaker 2: chipping industry, trade press this has hit like the mainstream
Speaker 2: press now that you know, and some of these indicators
Speaker 2: are doing sixty percent import drops from China, and it
Speaker 2: looks like China is maybe kind of starting the preliminary
Speaker 2: things to figure out how to figure out negotiations, and
Speaker 2: that they've been the Chinese government has been going behind
Speaker 2: the scenes and talking to a bunch of like high
Speaker 2: profile American companies and has been like quietly repealing some
Speaker 2: of their one hundred and twenty five percent retaliatory tariffs
Speaker 2: in the US on like very specific goods. We'll see
Speaker 2: what happens there. There hasn't been more movement than that.
Speaker 2: What is also very interesting is that so okay, so
Speaker 2: like obviously like a bunch of prices are just increasing
Speaker 2: already in places like like Temu and like Sian And
Speaker 2: Amazon was going to have like a counter that showed
Speaker 2: how much additional money you were spending because of the tariffs,
Speaker 2: and they announced they were going to do this, and
Speaker 2: then President Trump like got on the phone with Jeff
Speaker 2: Bezos and yelled at him, and then Jeff Bezos said
Speaker 2: he wasn't gonna do it. But this is also an
Speaker 2: interesting thing because we're actually starting to see cracks between
Speaker 2: Trump and like people like bezis, like the tech people
Speaker 2: can really have been his like closest basis support right
Speaker 2: for this whole the entire project in terms of like
Speaker 2: sect like large scale sectors of capital, it's been these
Speaker 2: people who've been backing him. And I think as as
Speaker 2: the stuff continues, we're going to continue to see rifts
Speaker 2: between them and the Trump administration over shit like this,
Speaker 2: because you know, like people get really really is something
Speaker 2: we've talked about a lot in episodes we've done on
Speaker 2: pricing and inflation, is that people get really pissed off
Speaker 2: and prices go up, and that's a way to like,
Speaker 2: you know, this is a problem for these companies because
Speaker 2: this is the way you lose sort of brand loyalty,
Speaker 2: and that's like how everything goes to shit. And Trump
Speaker 2: has to is doing all these deflections to be like
Speaker 2: it's not actually the terrorifts that are doing this because
Speaker 2: people are gonna be really pissed about this and yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know, welcome, Welcome to quarter one of the recession.
Speaker 2: This is going to be the best quarter of the
Speaker 2: economy for a long time.
Speaker 9: Yeah, tariff talk, Okay, so it's cuds out with immigration update.
Speaker 9: I'm just gonna run a few speed run a few
Speaker 9: of these, and we'll get a bill deep in some
Speaker 9: of them. The New York Times is reporting that once again,
Speaker 9: the Trump administration is separating, has separated a child from
Speaker 9: their parents.
Speaker 2: Jesus fucking Christ YEP.
Speaker 9: A federal court denied the government's motion to dismiss a
Speaker 9: First Amendment challenge to its policy of deporting pro Palestine
Speaker 9: anti genocide activists. So that allows the case to go ahead, right,
Speaker 9: So it allows a First Amendment challenge to be mounted,
Speaker 9: which is a good thing, right, given that this is
Speaker 9: like their policy right now, is a frontal assault on
Speaker 9: the First Amendment for people who are not citizens. In
Speaker 9: the Brego Garcia case, both sides agreed to a seven
Speaker 9: day pause in the discovery process after the passing of
Speaker 9: sealed motions. Then on Tuesday, Tuesday this week, the DOJ
Speaker 9: filed another sealed motion. We can speculate, and you will
Speaker 9: see people speculating if you go into the blue skuy
Speaker 9: or Twitter or whatever. I don't think it's beneficial to
Speaker 9: do that in this case. Right, what we should be
Speaker 9: focusing is that a man is in a prison camp
Speaker 9: who did nothing wrong. It doesn't matter that justice system
Speaker 9: is continuing to fail him, because he is still there
Speaker 9: and so are hundreds of other people. The experimental quote
Speaker 9: National Defense area in New Mexico. So we spoke last
Speaker 9: week about the Roosevelt Reservation, right, and they are starting
Speaker 9: this militarization of the Roosevelt Reservation with an area in
Speaker 9: New Mexico. And we've seen the first charges that are
Speaker 9: filed against migrants. According to Washington Post, at least twenty
Speaker 9: eight people have been charged or added to their charges
Speaker 9: a penalty for violation of security regulations in addition to
Speaker 9: the mad charges entry without inspection.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 9: Hegxeth visited the area this week and he talked about
Speaker 9: how they were going to post signage in English and
Speaker 9: Spanish to indicating that crossing the area would be trespassing
Speaker 9: on US military property. Increasing numbers of migrants over the
Speaker 9: last few years have not spoken either of those languages.
Speaker 9: It doesn't seem to be something they've accounted for here.
Speaker 9: The US Attorney for New Mexico allegedly, according to the
Speaker 9: Post quote can't wait to begin charging people who cross.
Speaker 9: So that's great, and so it does seem that they
Speaker 9: are using this. As we talked about a week or
Speaker 9: so ago as a way to quickly charge and then
Speaker 9: deport people who are entering the United States between ports
Speaker 9: of entry.
Speaker 1: And other court news.
Speaker 9: A judging Colorado places attentative restraining order on the use
Speaker 9: of the Alien Enemies Act there without twenty one days
Speaker 9: of notice in a language of person understands advising them
Speaker 9: of their right to bring a Habeast challenge. So that
Speaker 9: means if someone is going to be removed under the
Speaker 9: AEA right, they have to get three weeks of notice,
Speaker 9: and that notice has to advise them that they have
Speaker 9: the right to bring a challenge and then as opposed
Speaker 9: to what they're doing right now, which is deporting people
Speaker 9: extremely quickly. Right And this was upheld by the Tenth Circuit,
Speaker 9: so that's in place there. It'll be interesting to see
Speaker 9: how many of them are able to bring. Still, bringing
Speaker 9: a habeas challenge is complicated. It could be expensive and
Speaker 9: require a lot of legal time, and I know most
Speaker 9: lawyers who work in immigration are overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: Currently.
Speaker 9: Yes, in California, a judge has ruled that CBP can't
Speaker 9: carry out warrantless stops and arrests after the ACLU filed
Speaker 9: a suit in response to the CBP sector's operation returned
Speaker 9: to sender, which happened in late twenty twenty four. So people,
Speaker 9: this is one of the things that people may have
Speaker 9: already forgotten about. But in December of twenty twenty four,
Speaker 9: CBP started detaining residents, migrants, laborers outside a home depot,
Speaker 9: a grocery store, and at road checkpoints up in California
Speaker 9: Central Valley. Right, people are thinking, oh, the Central Valley
Speaker 9: is a very long way from El Centro, what are
Speaker 9: they doing up there. I've included a map of border
Speaker 9: Patrol sectors in the sources today so people can see.
Speaker 9: But although the l Center sector only spans seventy one
Speaker 9: miles of linear border, it goes a lot further north.
Speaker 9: So that's what they were doing out there. The judge
Speaker 9: in this case, who is US District Court Judge Jennifer Thurston, quote,
Speaker 9: you just can't walk up to people with brown skin
Speaker 9: and say give me your papers. There's a very good
Speaker 9: reporting on this in cow Matters, which I have also
Speaker 9: linked in the sources today. Notably, I looked through the
Speaker 9: order today, the core order, and one of the things
Speaker 9: we get is kind of a vision into how border
Speaker 9: patrol is expediting these deportations. Right, So I'm going to
Speaker 9: quote from the order here, quote, once Border Patrol agents
Speaker 9: transported the people they're rested to the El Centro station,
Speaker 9: they would quote extract voluntary departure agreements from as many
Speaker 9: people as possible without explaining the consequences.
Speaker 2: And this is all that.
Speaker 1: This is the Plaincliff's contention, which is aclu.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 9: So we've seen this a lot, right, like we saw
Speaker 9: it in the case when they detained a citizen in
Speaker 9: Tucson not so long ago. That they're trying to get
Speaker 9: people to sign these documents. Sometimes you're not actually, in
Speaker 9: most cases, I believe you're not actually signing a physical document.
Speaker 9: You're signing one of those little pad screens, and you
Speaker 9: might be given an iPad to read the document on,
Speaker 9: but you don't get a chance to look and flick
Speaker 9: through the document and then sign it left, sign a
Speaker 9: physical copy of the document.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 9: The injunction that happened here only applies in the Eastern
Speaker 9: District of California. The judge also ordered Border Patrol to
Speaker 9: record all arrests and stops and report them within forty days.
Speaker 9: The government argued this would be too burdensome, which is
Speaker 9: odd because they're already required to do paperwork when they're
Speaker 9: arrest or stop someone, right, but that was a rule
Speaker 9: by the judge. Despite this, so the old Central Sector
Speaker 9: has still been carrying out operations way north of land border,
Speaker 9: including recently outside a home depot in Pomona. So this
Speaker 9: is CBP not ICE, right for people are familiar with
Speaker 9: that distinction. But at least in the Eastern district, they
Speaker 9: can't be stopping people now without warrants, So that's a
Speaker 9: good thing from the courts. I guess those are I know,
Speaker 9: we've got a long episode today. Those are the most
Speaker 9: important immigration things that I've come up with this. I'm
Speaker 9: sure something will happen between us recording this coming out,
Speaker 9: but yeah, that's what I've got for you.
Speaker 3: The last thing that we'll mention is that Mosen Motowi,
Speaker 3: the US screen card holder who was arrested by ICE
Speaker 3: at his citizenship interview, has been released from ICE custody
Speaker 3: as of April thirtieth, by order of a Vermont judge.
Speaker 3: This is really the first piece of good news we've
Speaker 3: had in relation to Trump's crackdown on Palestinian protesters and
Speaker 3: student protests. So yeah, Motowi's case will still continue, but
Speaker 3: you will not be in ice custody for the duration
Speaker 3: of this case.
Speaker 5: And I think we saw in the Mapood Khalil case
Speaker 5: the judge has ordered that New Jersey is a correct
Speaker 5: jurisdiction for that case to proceed. So that offers a
Speaker 5: possibility of the same that it's essentially the same charge
Speaker 5: that both of them have right or the same reasoning
Speaker 5: for trying to remove them, So hopefully we will see
Speaker 5: a similar result there.
Speaker 3: We'll be following up on both these stories as the progress.
Speaker 3: But that does it for us today. Here at It
Speaker 3: Could Happen Here, We reported the news.
Speaker 1: We reported the news. Hey, We'll be back Monday with
Speaker 1: more episodes every week from now until the heat death
Speaker 1: of the Universe.
Speaker 15: It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 15: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 15: Coolzonemedia dot com for check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 15: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
Speaker 15: now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly
Speaker 15: in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.