WEBVTT - An Election Episode feat. Robert 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:06.880 A zone media. You wake up before dawn. This was 0:00:06.920 --> 0:00:09.600 once abnormal for you, but ever since the election, you 0:00:09.760 --> 0:00:12.920 found it harder and harder to sleep. You just barely 0:00:13.000 --> 0:00:15.520 drifted off when the sound of shouts wafted in from 0:00:15.520 --> 0:00:19.320 across the street. Reflected sirens bounce off your bedroom window. 0:00:20.040 --> 0:00:22.360 Through a fog of sleep, you reflect on the last 0:00:22.360 --> 0:00:26.480 few days. Voting went better you'd feared. It's what happened 0:00:26.480 --> 0:00:28.680 in the days after that's kept your spine at a 0:00:28.720 --> 0:00:32.800 constant eerie tingle. Several Republican led states are refusing to 0:00:32.880 --> 0:00:36.440 certify their election results. Most analysts say the blizzard of 0:00:36.479 --> 0:00:39.760 lawsuits launched on behalf of Trump have no chance at winning, 0:00:40.000 --> 0:00:42.839 But that didn't stop the candidate from declaring victory and 0:00:42.920 --> 0:00:45.879 promising to carry out his own inauguration no matter what 0:00:46.000 --> 0:00:50.240 the courts decide. It's all absurd, laughable. But you live 0:00:50.320 --> 0:00:53.080 on the border of a majority red county and your 0:00:53.159 --> 0:00:56.400 sheriffs just announced support for the real winner of the election. 0:00:56.920 --> 0:01:00.000 Your local PD have been notably silent, while right wing 0:01:00.080 --> 0:01:05.080 provocateurs online have started circulating allegations of election fraud that 0:01:05.160 --> 0:01:10.480 the sheriff has promised to look into. That was yesterday, today, 0:01:11.040 --> 0:01:13.640 just after five, you're jolted awake in your bed by 0:01:13.640 --> 0:01:17.400 the sound of breaking glass and screaming. You stay low 0:01:17.480 --> 0:01:20.040 and crawl to your front window to peep out across 0:01:20.080 --> 0:01:23.160 your yard and into the street. Before you, three police 0:01:23.200 --> 0:01:25.760 cruisers are stacked up in front of your neighbor's house. 0:01:26.400 --> 0:01:29.399 You can't imagine why. You know he did some volunteer 0:01:29.480 --> 0:01:33.479 canvassing a few weeks back. He volunteered at a voting precinct. 0:01:33.720 --> 0:01:36.280 Could they be there because of that? You try a 0:01:36.280 --> 0:01:39.039 few different search terms on social media to puzzle out 0:01:39.080 --> 0:01:41.440 the truth. It looks like a few people around the 0:01:41.440 --> 0:01:44.640 country are reporting similar raids, but most of the posts 0:01:44.680 --> 0:01:47.880 register is deleted before you can click on them. There's 0:01:47.920 --> 0:01:50.760 more shouting from inside your neighbor's house, and within seconds 0:01:50.760 --> 0:01:53.240 a pair of birdly deputies drag him out in front 0:01:53.520 --> 0:01:57.240 and into a waiting squad car. It's dark outside, but 0:01:57.320 --> 0:01:58.920 you think you might see blood. 0:01:58.640 --> 0:01:59.240 On his face. 0:01:59.600 --> 0:02:02.160 Your heart starts to pound. You feel the urge to 0:02:02.200 --> 0:02:05.520 call someone, but the cops are already here. Who else 0:02:05.600 --> 0:02:08.519 is there? As your mind raises, one of the officers 0:02:08.560 --> 0:02:12.360 stationed outside turns back and looks towards your window. Recognition 0:02:12.440 --> 0:02:15.320 sparks his eyes, he sees you, He starts to walk 0:02:15.360 --> 0:02:18.440 over you, turn back, drop the shades, and with a 0:02:18.480 --> 0:02:21.880 pounding heart, retreat to your bedroom. Maybe he won't knock, 0:02:22.400 --> 0:02:23.880 Maybe he just wanted to scare you. 0:02:24.880 --> 0:02:35.799 Maybe hello, everyone, hand welcome to It could happen here. 0:02:36.040 --> 0:02:39.600 I'm Robert Evanson. Back in early twenty nineteen, I released 0:02:39.600 --> 0:02:42.360 the first season of this show. It wasn't a daily 0:02:42.480 --> 0:02:45.960 news and politics podcast back then. Instead, it gave a 0:02:46.000 --> 0:02:48.920 focused argument for why a new US civil war was 0:02:48.960 --> 0:02:52.640 more frightening and possible than you might guess. Over the 0:02:52.680 --> 0:02:56.880 last few years, that belief has become unfortunately mainstream. It 0:02:56.960 --> 0:02:59.400 is no longer fringe or unique to talk about a 0:02:59.440 --> 0:03:01.639 new civil war or as a real possibility. There was 0:03:01.680 --> 0:03:05.560 a blockbuster movie earlier this year based around presenting what 0:03:05.639 --> 0:03:09.520 it called a realistic picture of such a possibility. I'll 0:03:09.600 --> 0:03:13.400 leave my thoughts on that for another time. A Marist 0:03:13.400 --> 0:03:16.120 poll from earlier this year showed that forty seven percent 0:03:16.160 --> 0:03:19.960 of Americans consider a second civil war likely or very likely. 0:03:20.280 --> 0:03:23.680 This is a massive shift considering where things were when 0:03:23.720 --> 0:03:27.600 I wrote this podcast series in twenty nineteen. That number 0:03:27.639 --> 0:03:30.760 includes an expected fifty three percent of Republicans, but also 0:03:30.919 --> 0:03:34.480 forty percent of Democrats and forty one percent of independence. 0:03:35.120 --> 0:03:37.440 Depending on how you want to see it, I've either 0:03:37.480 --> 0:03:40.280 been vindicated as much as as possible for someone in 0:03:40.280 --> 0:03:43.160 my line of work, or I've played an outsized role 0:03:43.280 --> 0:03:47.920 in creating a particularly dangerous eggregore in the collective unconsciousness 0:03:47.960 --> 0:03:52.440 of our nation, effectively talking this possibility into being. I'm 0:03:52.480 --> 0:03:56.680 really not sure either way. My conscience has been troubled 0:03:56.720 --> 0:03:59.600 on that matter ever since the first episode started coming out. 0:04:00.040 --> 0:04:03.360 Remember midway through the first season, we dropped an extra 0:04:03.400 --> 0:04:06.000 episode I hadn't initially intended as part of the run, 0:04:06.160 --> 0:04:09.400 just trying to stop people from panicking, and ever since 0:04:09.800 --> 0:04:13.600 I've kept that as a particular goal in my head. However, 0:04:13.640 --> 0:04:15.960 you want to, you know, think about this. The first 0:04:15.960 --> 0:04:18.680 season of It could happen here undoubtedly helped to make 0:04:18.760 --> 0:04:21.760 my career today. Sophie and I run an entire network 0:04:21.760 --> 0:04:25.120 that employees several dozen people, largely on the strength of 0:04:25.160 --> 0:04:28.720 that series. And yet I have no issue telling you 0:04:28.800 --> 0:04:31.240 that I don't have any idea how election Day is. 0:04:31.200 --> 0:04:31.760 Going to go. 0:04:32.360 --> 0:04:34.599 You know, we've had a lot of polls lately that 0:04:34.640 --> 0:04:37.360 seem much better for Harris. A number of pollsters are 0:04:37.400 --> 0:04:40.400 starting to shift. You know, there's a good chance that 0:04:40.440 --> 0:04:43.280 they were hurting in the direction of Trump because they 0:04:43.360 --> 0:04:45.880 didn't want to underestimate him again. But there's also a 0:04:45.920 --> 0:04:49.279 good chance that, you know, that Sealzer poll is an outlier, 0:04:49.320 --> 0:04:51.400 and now these guys are hurting in the direction of 0:04:51.440 --> 0:04:55.240 Harris winning because they don't want to be embarrassed. I 0:04:55.320 --> 0:04:58.040 really have no idea what's going to happen. My official 0:04:58.080 --> 0:05:01.080 stance is that it's probably pretty close to a coin flip, 0:05:01.120 --> 0:05:04.680 although maybe one that favors Harris now you know, more 0:05:04.760 --> 0:05:08.640 than one that favors Trump. Whatever happens, I don't know 0:05:08.920 --> 0:05:10.920 what's going to happen, let alone what's going to happen 0:05:10.960 --> 0:05:13.440 the day after. And as I sat down to write 0:05:13.440 --> 0:05:15.440 this episode, which is going to air on the day 0:05:15.440 --> 0:05:17.680 of the election, I went back and forth as to 0:05:17.720 --> 0:05:20.880 where the focus should be. I did consider doing another 0:05:21.040 --> 0:05:25.000 Don't Panic style episode. Perhaps that would have been the call. 0:05:25.320 --> 0:05:27.960 You know, depending on how today goes, people might either 0:05:28.000 --> 0:05:33.039 be listening to this and you know, relaxing, or listening 0:05:33.040 --> 0:05:35.479 to this and in a heightened state of panic. You know, 0:05:35.680 --> 0:05:38.320 it really depends on where things are and where things 0:05:38.320 --> 0:05:40.799 are and the counting of votes by this period of time. 0:05:41.320 --> 0:05:44.880 My reasoning on what I decided to do is pretty simple, 0:05:44.920 --> 0:05:47.000 which is that I think there's a good chance we 0:05:47.080 --> 0:05:49.560 either know or have a strong inkling of how this 0:05:49.680 --> 0:05:51.800 election is going to shake out by the time this 0:05:51.920 --> 0:05:54.479 episode airs, and at the time I write this, the 0:05:54.520 --> 0:05:57.360 indicators do look better for Harris than for Trump, enough 0:05:57.360 --> 0:06:00.120 that I'd say the election leans in her direction, and 0:06:00.160 --> 0:06:02.880 so I think there's a lot of value in talking 0:06:02.920 --> 0:06:06.680 about what might happen in the aftermath of that. If 0:06:06.720 --> 0:06:10.760 Trump tries to protest the election results, and if he 0:06:10.880 --> 0:06:13.920 goes particularly trying to protest by force, and if that's 0:06:13.960 --> 0:06:16.839 the case, if that's the direction he lands in, I 0:06:16.839 --> 0:06:19.480 think these shooters that we have to worry about. And 0:06:19.640 --> 0:06:21.839 I mean that in the figurative sense, right, you know, 0:06:21.880 --> 0:06:24.640 people who support him, will who will put skin in 0:06:24.720 --> 0:06:27.360 the game in order to try to force him into office. 0:06:27.960 --> 0:06:30.080 I think they're different than they were last time. I 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:32.160 don't think the threat here is that a bunch of 0:06:32.160 --> 0:06:35.800 proud boys and the like raid the capital next January. 0:06:36.240 --> 0:06:38.080 I think the threat here has a lot more to 0:06:38.160 --> 0:06:41.880 do with licensed law enforcement officers who have already declared 0:06:41.920 --> 0:06:45.120 themselves in the tank for Trump. We ran an episode 0:06:45.160 --> 0:06:48.800 just the other day about the Constitutional Sheriff's movement. There's 0:06:48.839 --> 0:06:51.840 a lot to say about that. One in four law 0:06:51.920 --> 0:06:54.960 enforcement officers today report to a sheriff. They make twenty 0:06:55.000 --> 0:06:58.000 percent of all arrests in the country. Earlier this year, 0:06:58.080 --> 0:07:01.200 Wired published an article on the are right sheriff's ready 0:07:01.200 --> 0:07:04.679 to disrupt the election? It focused heavily on dar Leif, 0:07:04.960 --> 0:07:07.480 who sits on the board of the Constitutional Sheriffs and 0:07:07.560 --> 0:07:13.560 Peace Officers Association or CSPOA. Leif, a Trump supporter and 0:07:13.680 --> 0:07:16.520 sheriff in Berry County, Michigan, has spent the lead up 0:07:16.600 --> 0:07:20.440 to this election investigating the twenty twenty election. He's tried 0:07:20.480 --> 0:07:23.480 to seize voting machines and run militia training courses where 0:07:23.520 --> 0:07:27.240 he offers to teach potential jurors, homeschoolers, ladies, and gentlemen 0:07:27.480 --> 0:07:30.400 how to form an ad hoc posse, each member armed 0:07:30.400 --> 0:07:33.720 with quote a standard Air fifteen type military grade weapon 0:07:33.800 --> 0:07:38.080 and at least five hundred rounds of AMMO. Speaking of 0:07:38.320 --> 0:07:40.720 five hundred rounds of AMMO, he probably can't buy that 0:07:40.720 --> 0:07:54.400 from our sponsors, but here they are. We're back and 0:07:54.440 --> 0:07:57.920 we're talking about a constitutional sheriff who sits on the 0:07:57.960 --> 0:08:02.480 board of that organization named dar Leaf. Leif has already 0:08:02.480 --> 0:08:06.080 promised to have his posse patrolling stations in Barry County 0:08:06.360 --> 0:08:08.920 to watch for evidence of fraud and the legal immigrant 0:08:08.960 --> 0:08:11.000 voting in what's expected to be one of the swing 0:08:11.040 --> 0:08:14.800 states this election might hinge on. Deeply reported articles like 0:08:14.840 --> 0:08:18.000 that Wired piece have warred in my own personal paranoia 0:08:18.040 --> 0:08:21.640 with troubling accounts on social media. The day before the election, 0:08:21.720 --> 0:08:23.800 which is when I wrote this, I came across a 0:08:23.840 --> 0:08:26.840 post on the Pennsylvania subreddit from a Philly voter titled 0:08:27.120 --> 0:08:29.720 my dad just got harassed by a police officer about 0:08:29.760 --> 0:08:30.280 the election. 0:08:30.640 --> 0:08:31.080 Quote. 0:08:31.240 --> 0:08:33.320 He was driving down the Old Lincoln Highway when a 0:08:33.360 --> 0:08:36.680 trooper stopped him and asked him if he was voting tomorrow. Trooper, 0:08:36.720 --> 0:08:40.480 Will you be voting tomorrow, dad? That's none of your business, trooper. 0:08:40.679 --> 0:08:42.280 Who are you voting for tomorrow? 0:08:42.520 --> 0:08:42.880 Dad? 0:08:43.000 --> 0:08:43.960 None of your business? 0:08:44.080 --> 0:08:44.480 Trooper. 0:08:44.720 --> 0:08:48.800 Oh sir, you're illegal now. The poster's dad, who is Hispanic, 0:08:48.880 --> 0:08:51.439 stated that he didn't have to answer that and asked 0:08:51.440 --> 0:08:54.439 if he was being detained. The trooper let him go, 0:08:54.800 --> 0:08:58.280 but later, according to the poster. This happened when my 0:08:58.400 --> 0:09:00.960 dad went to the precinct three other people there to 0:09:01.000 --> 0:09:04.560 report the exact same story election harassment at a traffic stop. 0:09:04.840 --> 0:09:07.280 Turns out the officer or officers doing it art even 0:09:07.320 --> 0:09:10.800 from Bucks County or Pennsylvania. Their new Jersey State troopers 0:09:11.120 --> 0:09:14.560 wild across state borders to harass people driving down the highway. 0:09:15.800 --> 0:09:17.880 In the lead up to the twenty twenty election, we 0:09:17.880 --> 0:09:20.679 were all deeply worried about the dangers of different far 0:09:20.800 --> 0:09:24.200 right groups, militias and organizations like the Proud Boys who 0:09:24.280 --> 0:09:27.160 wore right wing death squad patches and threatened to throw 0:09:27.240 --> 0:09:32.000 leftists out of helicopters when their god Emperor won reelection. Today, 0:09:32.160 --> 0:09:34.920 most of those figures are either a spent force or 0:09:35.000 --> 0:09:38.840 something that cannot act on its own, reliant upon the 0:09:38.920 --> 0:09:42.880 backing of groups like the aforementioned constitutional sheriffs, or being 0:09:42.880 --> 0:09:45.400 empowered by a Trump controlled White House if they want 0:09:45.440 --> 0:09:49.040 to have any hope of being directly relevant. Again, the 0:09:49.080 --> 0:09:51.200 positive side of this is that it allows us to 0:09:51.280 --> 0:09:56.080 triage our fears. The downside is that independent paramilitary actors 0:09:56.120 --> 0:09:59.719 are in fact something we can easily combat as individuals 0:09:59.760 --> 0:10:03.200 and ins communities. Portland proved that when it eventually won 0:10:03.280 --> 0:10:06.079 its five year street battle to oust these sundry right 0:10:06.080 --> 0:10:09.840 wing groups from constant occupations of the city. When groups 0:10:09.880 --> 0:10:12.560 like the Proud Boys crossed the line into outright violence, 0:10:12.679 --> 0:10:15.960 it is legal to meet them with defensive violence, and 0:10:16.000 --> 0:10:19.720 they can and have been beaten this way. That's simply 0:10:19.760 --> 0:10:23.720 not something the extant left wing community defense organizations and 0:10:23.800 --> 0:10:27.440 political groups in this country can say and do against, 0:10:27.600 --> 0:10:31.240 For example, law enforcement entities hell bent on executing a 0:10:31.280 --> 0:10:34.640 purge against the left. In rallies prior to the election, 0:10:34.800 --> 0:10:38.559 Trump has often merged promises to prosecute his political opponents 0:10:38.760 --> 0:10:41.840 US with promises to use ice to deport twenty million 0:10:41.880 --> 0:10:45.360 illegals and descend in the military or federal law enforcement 0:10:45.400 --> 0:10:48.120 to clean up cities. I want to quote now from 0:10:48.120 --> 0:10:50.600 an article in The New Republic reporting on a rally 0:10:50.640 --> 0:10:54.160 earlier this year in Wilmington, North Carolina. Today, I am 0:10:54.200 --> 0:10:56.920 announcing a new plan to end all sanctuary cities in 0:10:57.000 --> 0:11:00.000 North Carolina and across our country, said Trump, no more 0:11:00.160 --> 0:11:02.880 or sanctuary cities. As soon as I take office, we 0:11:02.880 --> 0:11:05.720 will immediately surge federal law enforcement to every city that 0:11:05.840 --> 0:11:08.200 is failing, which is a lot of them to turn 0:11:08.200 --> 0:11:10.520 over criminal aliens, and we will hunt down and capture 0:11:10.559 --> 0:11:13.559 every single gang member, drug dealer, rapist, murderer, and migrant 0:11:13.559 --> 0:11:16.680 criminal that is being illegally harbored. The article goes on 0:11:16.720 --> 0:11:19.960 to note Trump has previously vowed to militarize US law 0:11:20.040 --> 0:11:22.800 enforcement to restore law and order to our cities, which 0:11:22.800 --> 0:11:25.400 he claimed to have become cesspools of bloodshed and crime 0:11:25.520 --> 0:11:28.960 under President Joe Biden. Trump has argued that additional federal 0:11:29.000 --> 0:11:32.719 funding and forces would help supplement supposedly defunded police departments, 0:11:32.960 --> 0:11:34.960 but that extra help would only go to cities that 0:11:35.000 --> 0:11:38.800 complied with ICE. Now, this is scary stuff and it 0:11:38.840 --> 0:11:42.080 would necessitate some sort of response if it were to happen. 0:11:42.480 --> 0:11:44.000 But I don't really know how to tell you to 0:11:44.120 --> 0:11:47.719 organize against it right now. There are so many unknowns 0:11:47.760 --> 0:11:50.720 that one would need to factor into any plans. I 0:11:50.760 --> 0:11:54.480 could theorize about underground railroads to help people avoid deportation 0:11:54.960 --> 0:11:57.839 or to avoid being raided for their past political activism, 0:11:58.120 --> 0:12:00.559 and I could base those theories on, for exampample, how 0:12:00.600 --> 0:12:03.719 activists in Nazi Germany helped tide people from the Gestapo. 0:12:04.320 --> 0:12:07.160 But those heroes of yesteryear existed in a world where 0:12:07.160 --> 0:12:10.760 the technological tools available to the enemy were primitive beyond 0:12:10.760 --> 0:12:14.880 compare to what exists today. Perhaps the most chilling article 0:12:14.920 --> 0:12:16.880 I read this year had nothing to do with ice 0:12:17.000 --> 0:12:19.360 or right wing paramilitaries and everything to do with the 0:12:19.440 --> 0:12:22.800 technology that has been standard among law enforcement for years. 0:12:23.400 --> 0:12:27.760 License plate recognition systems like motorolas dr in use optical 0:12:27.840 --> 0:12:31.360 character recognition technology to identify the text of a vehicle's 0:12:31.400 --> 0:12:34.440 license plate and put it in a searchable database. The 0:12:34.520 --> 0:12:38.360 policing implications of this are obvious and not all negative, 0:12:38.600 --> 0:12:41.000 although it's far from clear if they actually work too. 0:12:41.400 --> 0:12:43.440 The idea is that if someone carries out a drive 0:12:43.480 --> 0:12:45.599 by shooting, or assaults a woman on the street, or 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:48.640 is seen fleeing some other form of dangerous crime by 0:12:48.640 --> 0:12:50.880 someone who gets the car, make and model and maybe 0:12:50.880 --> 0:12:53.640 the first couple letters of the plate. Dn r's database 0:12:53.640 --> 0:12:57.079 of more than fifteen billion vehicle sidings, built from automatic 0:12:57.120 --> 0:13:00.120 recordings of license plate reading cameras on police cruisers and 0:13:00.160 --> 0:13:03.200 tow trucks and the like, might well help identify and 0:13:03.280 --> 0:13:06.520 stop someone before they hunter kill again. Now their serious 0:13:06.559 --> 0:13:10.240 reason to question whether or not this system actually works 0:13:10.280 --> 0:13:12.520 this way. I'm not claiming to take the stance on 0:13:12.559 --> 0:13:14.760 this one way or the other. I'm not an expert 0:13:14.760 --> 0:13:17.600 on this, but the issue here from a privacy standpoint, 0:13:17.640 --> 0:13:21.320 when we imagine what might happen in a future Trump 0:13:21.520 --> 0:13:25.160 dominated government, is that you can't train a system like 0:13:25.240 --> 0:13:28.559 this to only pay attention to license plates, nor is 0:13:28.600 --> 0:13:31.520 there any benefit to Motorola in doing so. In recent 0:13:31.600 --> 0:13:35.040 investigations conducted by a private detective with access to dn 0:13:35.120 --> 0:13:37.760 r's database for her work have shown that someone with 0:13:37.920 --> 0:13:40.760 access to this database can search based on more than 0:13:40.840 --> 0:13:44.400 just license plates. They can look up signs supporting political 0:13:44.440 --> 0:13:46.920 candidates and match them to front yards and thus to 0:13:47.040 --> 0:13:50.920 people's addresses. They can find individuals who were captured by 0:13:50.920 --> 0:13:53.320 these cameras, and there are again billions of these photos wearing, 0:13:53.360 --> 0:13:57.600 for example, planned parenthood shirts. This is not an idle fear. 0:13:57.720 --> 0:14:00.920 This is a weapon that could very easily be used 0:14:00.920 --> 0:14:03.840 by the enemy within months of you listening to this. 0:14:03.840 --> 0:14:06.200 This is also a weapon that, in an event like 0:14:06.240 --> 0:14:08.640 the one I forecasted at the start of this episode, 0:14:08.880 --> 0:14:12.800 could be used to crack down on activists and voters 0:14:12.840 --> 0:14:15.520 in counties that are loyal to Trump in some sort 0:14:15.520 --> 0:14:20.640 of national schism. Situation. Police officers already misused databases like 0:14:20.680 --> 0:14:24.000 this with comic regularity. In twenty twenty two, a different 0:14:24.040 --> 0:14:27.800 Wired investigation showed that hundreds of ICE employees and contractors 0:14:27.840 --> 0:14:31.680 had been caught abusing similar databases made via license plate 0:14:31.720 --> 0:14:36.000 recognition systems. Some had used them to stalk citizens. Stuff 0:14:36.000 --> 0:14:39.360 like this pairs forebodingly with threats made by emboldened pro 0:14:39.440 --> 0:14:43.240 Trump cops earlier this election season. I'm talking about something 0:14:43.280 --> 0:14:46.320 that happened in September, when Ohio Sheriff of Portage County 0:14:46.360 --> 0:14:49.880 Bruce Sukowski posted a screenshot of a Fox News segment 0:14:49.960 --> 0:14:53.400 criticizing the current president over his immigration record and the 0:14:53.440 --> 0:14:57.520 impact of Haitian migrants on Springfield, Ohio, from an article 0:14:57.520 --> 0:15:01.120 in The ap by Michael Rubicam likening people in the 0:15:01.200 --> 0:15:04.640 US illegally to human locusts, Zukowski wrote on a personal 0:15:04.640 --> 0:15:07.560 Facebook account and his campaign's account, when people ask me, 0:15:07.640 --> 0:15:10.560 what's going to happen if the flip flopping, laughing hyena wins, 0:15:10.600 --> 0:15:13.200 I say write down all the addresses of the people 0:15:13.240 --> 0:15:16.920 who had their signs in their yards that way, Zukowski continued. 0:15:16.920 --> 0:15:19.600 When migrants need places to live, we're already have the 0:15:19.600 --> 0:15:23.640 addresses of their new families who supported their arrival. Now, 0:15:23.800 --> 0:15:26.800 as the full context of that statement makes clear, Zukowski 0:15:26.880 --> 0:15:29.760 was not technically threatening Harris voters. But it's pretty much 0:15:29.760 --> 0:15:32.200 impossible for me to take that as anything but a threat, 0:15:32.400 --> 0:15:35.560 just one dressed up enough for plausible deniability and an 0:15:35.640 --> 0:15:38.600 environment where the future ability of Zukowski and those like 0:15:38.680 --> 0:15:42.320 him to punish Democrats is still unclear. And we're going 0:15:42.360 --> 0:15:45.840 to talk more about that, but first here's another ad break. 0:15:56.640 --> 0:15:56.880 Now. 0:15:57.080 --> 0:15:59.440 I don't mean to make it sound like that there's 0:15:59.440 --> 0:16:02.400 nothing that can be done to fight against technological tools 0:16:02.440 --> 0:16:05.360 in the arsenal of repression like this, but I have 0:16:05.400 --> 0:16:07.800 no doubt that if the Republicans do take total power, 0:16:07.880 --> 0:16:10.160 they will read any positive election result for them as 0:16:10.200 --> 0:16:12.440 a mandate to punish the left and purge the people. 0:16:12.440 --> 0:16:15.640 Trump is already repeatedly called the enemy within, and I 0:16:15.720 --> 0:16:18.160 worry that in the event of any sort of national schism, 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:20.840 either where there's an extended period of time where Trump 0:16:20.880 --> 0:16:23.280 is claiming to have been the winner, or if there's 0:16:23.320 --> 0:16:26.640 a situation where he just has himself inaugurated in Florida 0:16:26.680 --> 0:16:29.240 and you have a bunch of these counties and states 0:16:29.280 --> 0:16:31.920 around the country sign up for Trump, that the first 0:16:31.920 --> 0:16:34.240 thing we'll see law enforcement do in these areas is 0:16:34.280 --> 0:16:37.360 punished the enemy within, especially if they declare themselves on 0:16:37.400 --> 0:16:39.800 a war footing with the rest of the country. These 0:16:39.840 --> 0:16:43.600 are all things that are maybe not the likeliest possibility here, 0:16:43.640 --> 0:16:45.840 but they are something to keep in mind, and they 0:16:45.840 --> 0:16:48.920 are something that represents a real danger at this point. 0:16:48.960 --> 0:16:51.040 I don't think anyone who's paid attention to the kinds 0:16:51.040 --> 0:16:54.000 of thing the Republicans have been saying lately can deny that. 0:16:54.720 --> 0:16:57.640 Now it is important to remember that whatever plan these 0:16:57.680 --> 0:17:01.080 people try won't work as as well as they hope. 0:17:01.120 --> 0:17:03.320 We've been watching them for years, and if there's one 0:17:03.360 --> 0:17:05.240 thing you know about all of the people around Trump, 0:17:05.280 --> 0:17:07.600 it's that they're fuck ups. That doesn't mean they can't win, 0:17:07.680 --> 0:17:10.480 it doesn't mean they're not dangerous. It just means that 0:17:10.520 --> 0:17:13.439 they're going to make mistakes. Now, those mistakes aren't going 0:17:13.480 --> 0:17:15.880 to be survivable for everybody that we care about, which 0:17:15.920 --> 0:17:19.040 is something that should be on your mind. Bruce and 0:17:19.119 --> 0:17:21.840 most of the Trump aligned police, local and federals still 0:17:21.840 --> 0:17:24.680 feel a need to couch their threats in deniable terms, though, 0:17:25.119 --> 0:17:27.360 but many on the far right have been less careful, 0:17:27.359 --> 0:17:29.920 and one thing we've seen is this election has lurched 0:17:30.240 --> 0:17:33.639 closer to its conclusion. Is a lot of people, people 0:17:33.760 --> 0:17:38.240 like particularly Elon Musk, have absolutely taken their masks off. Now. 0:17:38.280 --> 0:17:39.720 I think this had a lot to do with the 0:17:39.760 --> 0:17:42.280 fact that Trump was looking more like the favorite a 0:17:42.280 --> 0:17:45.359 couple of weeks ago, and they felt like after years 0:17:45.400 --> 0:17:48.120 of having to do what Bruce did, having to cover 0:17:48.280 --> 0:17:51.959 up their outright eliminationist impulses, they no longer had to 0:17:52.040 --> 0:17:55.400 do that now. Obviously, some influential people on the far 0:17:55.520 --> 0:17:57.760 right have been mask off from much longer, and this 0:17:57.840 --> 0:18:00.159 is something that should concern you as well. One of 0:18:00.160 --> 0:18:02.919 the most sinister examples of this is Jack Pisobic, a 0:18:02.960 --> 0:18:07.439 former US Navy intelligence officer whose recent book Unhumans is 0:18:07.480 --> 0:18:10.760 framed as a secret history of communist revolutions. From an 0:18:10.840 --> 0:18:14.240 article in Mother Jones quote they being Pisobic and his 0:18:14.320 --> 0:18:16.479 co author, claim, for as long as there have been 0:18:16.520 --> 0:18:18.560 beauty and truth, love and life, there have also been 0:18:18.600 --> 0:18:21.439 the ugly liars who hate and kill, and these people 0:18:21.480 --> 0:18:26.520 of anti civilization have always gone by different names communists, socialists, leftists, 0:18:26.520 --> 0:18:29.160 and progressives. The pair contend that these folks be they 0:18:29.160 --> 0:18:32.280 the Bolsheviks of Russia or the BLM activists of this decade, 0:18:32.520 --> 0:18:36.159 are better called unhumans. It's a hard edged message. The 0:18:36.200 --> 0:18:39.119 foes of conservatism are not merely misguided souls pushing the 0:18:39.160 --> 0:18:42.760 wrong policies, but people who seek to annihilate civilization. They 0:18:42.880 --> 0:18:45.880 rob and kill. Pisobic and Lysek, his co author, maintain 0:18:46.160 --> 0:18:48.000 they don't believe what they say. They don't care about 0:18:48.040 --> 0:18:50.359 winning debates. They don't even want a quality. They just 0:18:50.400 --> 0:18:53.440 want an excuse to destroy everything. They want an excuse 0:18:53.480 --> 0:18:57.200 to destroy you. Now, Jack has been a laughable character 0:18:57.240 --> 0:18:59.840 for much of his career, but his outright eliminationist rhetoric 0:18:59.800 --> 0:19:02.520 has had an audience in the howls of power. Jd 0:19:02.640 --> 0:19:05.239 Vance himself provided a blurb for the book, claiming it 0:19:05.320 --> 0:19:08.439 shows us what to do to fight back. Steve Bannon 0:19:08.520 --> 0:19:12.119 meanwhile wrote the forward. Now, I started this episode with 0:19:12.119 --> 0:19:15.119 a fictional vignette imagining what might happen if Trump chooses 0:19:15.160 --> 0:19:17.680 to contest the election without right force, and he might. 0:19:18.280 --> 0:19:20.119 The good news is I think that such an effort 0:19:20.119 --> 0:19:22.359 would be doomed to fail if he sticks to the 0:19:22.359 --> 0:19:25.280 courts trying to refuse certifications and kick the election to 0:19:25.320 --> 0:19:28.320 the House is a better chance at succeeding, and it 0:19:28.359 --> 0:19:31.320 is possible that isolated thefts of ballots and arrests of 0:19:31.359 --> 0:19:34.119 poll workers could play into a broader effort like this, 0:19:34.640 --> 0:19:37.480 but doing so is a big risk. My gut tells 0:19:37.520 --> 0:19:40.879 me that moving so openly resorting to violence first creates 0:19:40.920 --> 0:19:43.800 a situation in which the Biden administration and the incoming 0:19:43.840 --> 0:19:46.920 Harris administration would have to respond with force. There would 0:19:46.920 --> 0:19:49.960 have to be consequences, and given that they currently control 0:19:50.000 --> 0:19:52.320 the arsenal of state power, I think they would win 0:19:52.440 --> 0:19:54.480 even in the event that you have all of these 0:19:54.520 --> 0:19:58.200 sheriffs break for Trump in some sort of insurgent situation develop. 0:19:58.920 --> 0:20:02.120 If that were to happen, and having backed this insurgency 0:20:02.160 --> 0:20:04.600 would put Trump in real jeopardy, and it would put 0:20:04.640 --> 0:20:06.720 a lot of his backers in jeopardy as well. It 0:20:06.800 --> 0:20:10.440 might even force consequences for provocateurs like Basobic and even 0:20:10.440 --> 0:20:14.000 Elon Musk. Backing an outright violent coup is almost the 0:20:14.000 --> 0:20:17.440 only thing I can imagine putting Musk behind bars. There 0:20:17.480 --> 0:20:20.080 are pieces of this logic train that I find comforting, 0:20:20.080 --> 0:20:22.800 but there are also pieces that aren't. Many of us, 0:20:22.840 --> 0:20:26.080 me included made the mistake of assuming that after January sixth, 0:20:26.160 --> 0:20:29.800 twenty twenty one, Trumpism might finally be a spent force. 0:20:30.240 --> 0:20:33.159 He'd gambled too much and he'd lost too big, But 0:20:33.200 --> 0:20:36.119 despite the existential threat, he presented himself as being The 0:20:36.160 --> 0:20:39.720 Democratic Party and the Merrick Garland Justice Department largely chose 0:20:39.760 --> 0:20:43.320 mercy for the main players. I suspect anything short of 0:20:43.440 --> 0:20:46.520 armed insurrection will see a similar reaction from them this year. 0:20:46.840 --> 0:20:49.360 I don't believe Musk's fears that the Democrats will throw 0:20:49.400 --> 0:20:51.920 him in prison if Harris wins are real, or read 0:20:51.960 --> 0:20:55.280 that instead as his own predictive justification for the violence 0:20:55.320 --> 0:20:59.119 he'd like to support against his political enemies. That desire 0:20:59.280 --> 0:21:02.159 won't go away just because Trump rides off into the 0:21:02.200 --> 0:21:04.919 sunset and the Republican Party has to go searching for 0:21:04.960 --> 0:21:08.119 another feurer. If we defer their dream, it will simply 0:21:08.160 --> 0:21:11.720 sit under the floorboards, infester, waiting for the next opportunity, 0:21:11.800 --> 0:21:15.400 and that won't take long. Kamala will inherit a broken 0:21:15.520 --> 0:21:18.040 system and a world where climate change and conflict are 0:21:18.080 --> 0:21:21.680