Speaker 1: A zone media. You wake up before dawn. This was
Speaker 1: once abnormal for you, but ever since the election, you
Speaker 1: found it harder and harder to sleep. You just barely
Speaker 1: drifted off when the sound of shouts wafted in from
Speaker 1: across the street. Reflected sirens bounce off your bedroom window.
Speaker 1: Through a fog of sleep, you reflect on the last
Speaker 1: few days. Voting went better you'd feared. It's what happened
Speaker 1: in the days after that's kept your spine at a
Speaker 1: constant eerie tingle. Several Republican led states are refusing to
Speaker 1: certify their election results. Most analysts say the blizzard of
Speaker 1: lawsuits launched on behalf of Trump have no chance at winning,
Speaker 1: But that didn't stop the candidate from declaring victory and
Speaker 1: promising to carry out his own inauguration no matter what
Speaker 1: the courts decide. It's all absurd, laughable. But you live
Speaker 1: on the border of a majority red county and your
Speaker 1: sheriffs just announced support for the real winner of the election.
Speaker 1: Your local PD have been notably silent, while right wing
Speaker 1: provocateurs online have started circulating allegations of election fraud that
Speaker 1: the sheriff has promised to look into. That was yesterday, today,
Speaker 1: just after five, you're jolted awake in your bed by
Speaker 1: the sound of breaking glass and screaming. You stay low
Speaker 1: and crawl to your front window to peep out across
Speaker 1: your yard and into the street. Before you, three police
Speaker 1: cruisers are stacked up in front of your neighbor's house.
Speaker 1: You can't imagine why. You know he did some volunteer
Speaker 1: canvassing a few weeks back. He volunteered at a voting precinct.
Speaker 1: Could they be there because of that? You try a
Speaker 1: few different search terms on social media to puzzle out
Speaker 1: the truth. It looks like a few people around the
Speaker 1: country are reporting similar raids, but most of the posts
Speaker 1: register is deleted before you can click on them. There's
Speaker 1: more shouting from inside your neighbor's house, and within seconds
Speaker 1: a pair of birdly deputies drag him out in front
Speaker 1: and into a waiting squad car. It's dark outside, but
Speaker 1: you think you might see blood.
Speaker 2: On his face.
Speaker 1: Your heart starts to pound. You feel the urge to
Speaker 1: call someone, but the cops are already here. Who else
Speaker 1: is there? As your mind raises, one of the officers
Speaker 1: stationed outside turns back and looks towards your window. Recognition
Speaker 1: sparks his eyes, he sees you, He starts to walk
Speaker 1: over you, turn back, drop the shades, and with a
Speaker 1: pounding heart, retreat to your bedroom. Maybe he won't knock,
Speaker 1: Maybe he just wanted to scare you.
Speaker 2: Maybe hello, everyone, hand welcome to It could happen here.
Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evanson. Back in early twenty nineteen, I released
Speaker 1: the first season of this show. It wasn't a daily
Speaker 1: news and politics podcast back then. Instead, it gave a
Speaker 1: focused argument for why a new US civil war was
Speaker 1: more frightening and possible than you might guess. Over the
Speaker 1: last few years, that belief has become unfortunately mainstream. It
Speaker 1: is no longer fringe or unique to talk about a
Speaker 1: new civil war or as a real possibility. There was
Speaker 1: a blockbuster movie earlier this year based around presenting what
Speaker 1: it called a realistic picture of such a possibility. I'll
Speaker 1: leave my thoughts on that for another time. A Marist
Speaker 1: poll from earlier this year showed that forty seven percent
Speaker 1: of Americans consider a second civil war likely or very likely.
Speaker 1: This is a massive shift considering where things were when
Speaker 1: I wrote this podcast series in twenty nineteen. That number
Speaker 1: includes an expected fifty three percent of Republicans, but also
Speaker 1: forty percent of Democrats and forty one percent of independence.
Speaker 1: Depending on how you want to see it, I've either
Speaker 1: been vindicated as much as as possible for someone in
Speaker 1: my line of work, or I've played an outsized role
Speaker 1: in creating a particularly dangerous eggregore in the collective unconsciousness
Speaker 1: of our nation, effectively talking this possibility into being. I'm
Speaker 1: really not sure either way. My conscience has been troubled
Speaker 1: on that matter ever since the first episode started coming out.
Speaker 1: Remember midway through the first season, we dropped an extra
Speaker 1: episode I hadn't initially intended as part of the run,
Speaker 1: just trying to stop people from panicking, and ever since
Speaker 1: I've kept that as a particular goal in my head. However,
Speaker 1: you want to, you know, think about this. The first
Speaker 1: season of It could happen here undoubtedly helped to make
Speaker 1: my career today. Sophie and I run an entire network
Speaker 1: that employees several dozen people, largely on the strength of
Speaker 1: that series. And yet I have no issue telling you
Speaker 1: that I don't have any idea how election Day is.
Speaker 2: Going to go.
Speaker 1: You know, we've had a lot of polls lately that
Speaker 1: seem much better for Harris. A number of pollsters are
Speaker 1: starting to shift. You know, there's a good chance that
Speaker 1: they were hurting in the direction of Trump because they
Speaker 1: didn't want to underestimate him again. But there's also a
Speaker 1: good chance that, you know, that Sealzer poll is an outlier,
Speaker 1: and now these guys are hurting in the direction of
Speaker 1: Harris winning because they don't want to be embarrassed. I
Speaker 1: really have no idea what's going to happen. My official
Speaker 1: stance is that it's probably pretty close to a coin flip,
Speaker 1: although maybe one that favors Harris now you know, more
Speaker 1: than one that favors Trump. Whatever happens, I don't know
Speaker 1: what's going to happen, let alone what's going to happen
Speaker 1: the day after. And as I sat down to write
Speaker 1: this episode, which is going to air on the day
Speaker 1: of the election, I went back and forth as to
Speaker 1: where the focus should be. I did consider doing another
Speaker 1: Don't Panic style episode. Perhaps that would have been the call.
Speaker 1: You know, depending on how today goes, people might either
Speaker 1: be listening to this and you know, relaxing, or listening
Speaker 1: to this and in a heightened state of panic. You know,
Speaker 1: it really depends on where things are and where things
Speaker 1: are and the counting of votes by this period of time.
Speaker 1: My reasoning on what I decided to do is pretty simple,
Speaker 1: which is that I think there's a good chance we
Speaker 1: either know or have a strong inkling of how this
Speaker 1: election is going to shake out by the time this
Speaker 1: episode airs, and at the time I write this, the
Speaker 1: indicators do look better for Harris than for Trump, enough
Speaker 1: that I'd say the election leans in her direction, and
Speaker 1: so I think there's a lot of value in talking
Speaker 1: about what might happen in the aftermath of that. If
Speaker 1: Trump tries to protest the election results, and if he
Speaker 1: goes particularly trying to protest by force, and if that's
Speaker 1: the case, if that's the direction he lands in, I
Speaker 1: think these shooters that we have to worry about. And
Speaker 1: I mean that in the figurative sense, right, you know,
Speaker 1: people who support him, will who will put skin in
Speaker 1: the game in order to try to force him into office.
Speaker 1: I think they're different than they were last time. I
Speaker 1: don't think the threat here is that a bunch of
Speaker 1: proud boys and the like raid the capital next January.
Speaker 1: I think the threat here has a lot more to
Speaker 1: do with licensed law enforcement officers who have already declared
Speaker 1: themselves in the tank for Trump. We ran an episode
Speaker 1: just the other day about the Constitutional Sheriff's movement. There's
Speaker 1: a lot to say about that. One in four law
Speaker 1: enforcement officers today report to a sheriff. They make twenty
Speaker 1: percent of all arrests in the country. Earlier this year,
Speaker 1: Wired published an article on the are right sheriff's ready
Speaker 1: to disrupt the election? It focused heavily on dar Leif,
Speaker 1: who sits on the board of the Constitutional Sheriffs and
Speaker 1: Peace Officers Association or CSPOA. Leif, a Trump supporter and
Speaker 1: sheriff in Berry County, Michigan, has spent the lead up
Speaker 1: to this election investigating the twenty twenty election. He's tried
Speaker 1: to seize voting machines and run militia training courses where
Speaker 1: he offers to teach potential jurors, homeschoolers, ladies, and gentlemen
Speaker 1: how to form an ad hoc posse, each member armed
Speaker 1: with quote a standard Air fifteen type military grade weapon
Speaker 1: and at least five hundred rounds of AMMO. Speaking of
Speaker 1: five hundred rounds of AMMO, he probably can't buy that
Speaker 1: from our sponsors, but here they are. We're back and
Speaker 1: we're talking about a constitutional sheriff who sits on the
Speaker 1: board of that organization named dar Leaf. Leif has already
Speaker 1: promised to have his posse patrolling stations in Barry County
Speaker 1: to watch for evidence of fraud and the legal immigrant
Speaker 1: voting in what's expected to be one of the swing
Speaker 1: states this election might hinge on. Deeply reported articles like
Speaker 1: that Wired piece have warred in my own personal paranoia
Speaker 1: with troubling accounts on social media. The day before the election,
Speaker 1: which is when I wrote this, I came across a
Speaker 1: post on the Pennsylvania subreddit from a Philly voter titled
Speaker 1: my dad just got harassed by a police officer about
Speaker 1: the election.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 1: He was driving down the Old Lincoln Highway when a
Speaker 1: trooper stopped him and asked him if he was voting tomorrow. Trooper,
Speaker 1: Will you be voting tomorrow, dad? That's none of your business, trooper.
Speaker 1: Who are you voting for tomorrow?
Speaker 2: Dad?
Speaker 1: None of your business?
Speaker 2: Trooper.
Speaker 1: Oh sir, you're illegal now. The poster's dad, who is Hispanic,
Speaker 1: stated that he didn't have to answer that and asked
Speaker 1: if he was being detained. The trooper let him go,
Speaker 1: but later, according to the poster. This happened when my
Speaker 1: dad went to the precinct three other people there to
Speaker 1: report the exact same story election harassment at a traffic stop.
Speaker 1: Turns out the officer or officers doing it art even
Speaker 1: from Bucks County or Pennsylvania. Their new Jersey State troopers
Speaker 1: wild across state borders to harass people driving down the highway.
Speaker 1: In the lead up to the twenty twenty election, we
Speaker 1: were all deeply worried about the dangers of different far
Speaker 1: right groups, militias and organizations like the Proud Boys who
Speaker 1: wore right wing death squad patches and threatened to throw
Speaker 1: leftists out of helicopters when their god Emperor won reelection. Today,
Speaker 1: most of those figures are either a spent force or
Speaker 1: something that cannot act on its own, reliant upon the
Speaker 1: backing of groups like the aforementioned constitutional sheriffs, or being
Speaker 1: empowered by a Trump controlled White House if they want
Speaker 1: to have any hope of being directly relevant. Again, the
Speaker 1: positive side of this is that it allows us to
Speaker 1: triage our fears. The downside is that independent paramilitary actors
Speaker 1: are in fact something we can easily combat as individuals
Speaker 1: and ins communities. Portland proved that when it eventually won
Speaker 1: its five year street battle to oust these sundry right
Speaker 1: wing groups from constant occupations of the city. When groups
Speaker 1: like the Proud Boys crossed the line into outright violence,
Speaker 1: it is legal to meet them with defensive violence, and
Speaker 1: they can and have been beaten this way. That's simply
Speaker 1: not something the extant left wing community defense organizations and
Speaker 1: political groups in this country can say and do against,
Speaker 1: For example, law enforcement entities hell bent on executing a
Speaker 1: purge against the left. In rallies prior to the election,
Speaker 1: Trump has often merged promises to prosecute his political opponents
Speaker 1: US with promises to use ice to deport twenty million
Speaker 1: illegals and descend in the military or federal law enforcement
Speaker 1: to clean up cities. I want to quote now from
Speaker 1: an article in The New Republic reporting on a rally
Speaker 1: earlier this year in Wilmington, North Carolina. Today, I am
Speaker 1: announcing a new plan to end all sanctuary cities in
Speaker 1: North Carolina and across our country, said Trump, no more
Speaker 1: or sanctuary cities. As soon as I take office, we
Speaker 1: will immediately surge federal law enforcement to every city that
Speaker 1: is failing, which is a lot of them to turn
Speaker 1: over criminal aliens, and we will hunt down and capture
Speaker 1: every single gang member, drug dealer, rapist, murderer, and migrant
Speaker 1: criminal that is being illegally harbored. The article goes on
Speaker 1: to note Trump has previously vowed to militarize US law
Speaker 1: enforcement to restore law and order to our cities, which
Speaker 1: he claimed to have become cesspools of bloodshed and crime
Speaker 1: under President Joe Biden. Trump has argued that additional federal
Speaker 1: funding and forces would help supplement supposedly defunded police departments,
Speaker 1: but that extra help would only go to cities that
Speaker 1: complied with ICE. Now, this is scary stuff and it
Speaker 1: would necessitate some sort of response if it were to happen.
Speaker 1: But I don't really know how to tell you to
Speaker 1: organize against it right now. There are so many unknowns
Speaker 1: that one would need to factor into any plans. I
Speaker 1: could theorize about underground railroads to help people avoid deportation
Speaker 1: or to avoid being raided for their past political activism,
Speaker 1: and I could base those theories on, for exampample, how
Speaker 1: activists in Nazi Germany helped tide people from the Gestapo.
Speaker 1: But those heroes of yesteryear existed in a world where
Speaker 1: the technological tools available to the enemy were primitive beyond
Speaker 1: compare to what exists today. Perhaps the most chilling article
Speaker 1: I read this year had nothing to do with ice
Speaker 1: or right wing paramilitaries and everything to do with the
Speaker 1: technology that has been standard among law enforcement for years.
Speaker 1: License plate recognition systems like motorolas dr in use optical
Speaker 1: character recognition technology to identify the text of a vehicle's
Speaker 1: license plate and put it in a searchable database. The
Speaker 1: policing implications of this are obvious and not all negative,
Speaker 1: although it's far from clear if they actually work too.
Speaker 1: The idea is that if someone carries out a drive
Speaker 1: by shooting, or assaults a woman on the street, or
Speaker 1: is seen fleeing some other form of dangerous crime by
Speaker 1: someone who gets the car, make and model and maybe
Speaker 1: the first couple letters of the plate. Dn r's database
Speaker 1: of more than fifteen billion vehicle sidings, built from automatic
Speaker 1: recordings of license plate reading cameras on police cruisers and
Speaker 1: tow trucks and the like, might well help identify and
Speaker 1: stop someone before they hunter kill again. Now their serious
Speaker 1: reason to question whether or not this system actually works
Speaker 1: this way. I'm not claiming to take the stance on
Speaker 1: this one way or the other. I'm not an expert
Speaker 1: on this, but the issue here from a privacy standpoint,
Speaker 1: when we imagine what might happen in a future Trump
Speaker 1: dominated government, is that you can't train a system like
Speaker 1: this to only pay attention to license plates, nor is
Speaker 1: there any benefit to Motorola in doing so. In recent
Speaker 1: investigations conducted by a private detective with access to dn
Speaker 1: r's database for her work have shown that someone with
Speaker 1: access to this database can search based on more than
Speaker 1: just license plates. They can look up signs supporting political
Speaker 1: candidates and match them to front yards and thus to
Speaker 1: people's addresses. They can find individuals who were captured by
Speaker 1: these cameras, and there are again billions of these photos wearing,
Speaker 1: for example, planned parenthood shirts. This is not an idle fear.
Speaker 1: This is a weapon that could very easily be used
Speaker 1: by the enemy within months of you listening to this.
Speaker 1: This is also a weapon that, in an event like
Speaker 1: the one I forecasted at the start of this episode,
Speaker 1: could be used to crack down on activists and voters
Speaker 1: in counties that are loyal to Trump in some sort
Speaker 1: of national schism. Situation. Police officers already misused databases like
Speaker 1: this with comic regularity. In twenty twenty two, a different
Speaker 1: Wired investigation showed that hundreds of ICE employees and contractors
Speaker 1: had been caught abusing similar databases made via license plate
Speaker 1: recognition systems. Some had used them to stalk citizens. Stuff
Speaker 1: like this pairs forebodingly with threats made by emboldened pro
Speaker 1: Trump cops earlier this election season. I'm talking about something
Speaker 1: that happened in September, when Ohio Sheriff of Portage County
Speaker 1: Bruce Sukowski posted a screenshot of a Fox News segment
Speaker 1: criticizing the current president over his immigration record and the
Speaker 1: impact of Haitian migrants on Springfield, Ohio, from an article
Speaker 1: in The ap by Michael Rubicam likening people in the
Speaker 1: US illegally to human locusts, Zukowski wrote on a personal
Speaker 1: Facebook account and his campaign's account, when people ask me,
Speaker 1: what's going to happen if the flip flopping, laughing hyena wins,
Speaker 1: I say write down all the addresses of the people
Speaker 1: who had their signs in their yards that way, Zukowski continued.
Speaker 1: When migrants need places to live, we're already have the
Speaker 1: addresses of their new families who supported their arrival. Now,
Speaker 1: as the full context of that statement makes clear, Zukowski
Speaker 1: was not technically threatening Harris voters. But it's pretty much
Speaker 1: impossible for me to take that as anything but a threat,
Speaker 1: just one dressed up enough for plausible deniability and an
Speaker 1: environment where the future ability of Zukowski and those like
Speaker 1: him to punish Democrats is still unclear. And we're going
Speaker 1: to talk more about that, but first here's another ad break.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I don't mean to make it sound like that there's
Speaker 1: nothing that can be done to fight against technological tools
Speaker 1: in the arsenal of repression like this, but I have
Speaker 1: no doubt that if the Republicans do take total power,
Speaker 1: they will read any positive election result for them as
Speaker 1: a mandate to punish the left and purge the people.
Speaker 1: Trump is already repeatedly called the enemy within, and I
Speaker 1: worry that in the event of any sort of national schism,
Speaker 1: either where there's an extended period of time where Trump
Speaker 1: is claiming to have been the winner, or if there's
Speaker 1: a situation where he just has himself inaugurated in Florida
Speaker 1: and you have a bunch of these counties and states
Speaker 1: around the country sign up for Trump, that the first
Speaker 1: thing we'll see law enforcement do in these areas is
Speaker 1: punished the enemy within, especially if they declare themselves on
Speaker 1: a war footing with the rest of the country. These
Speaker 1: are all things that are maybe not the likeliest possibility here,
Speaker 1: but they are something to keep in mind, and they
Speaker 1: are something that represents a real danger at this point.
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone who's paid attention to the kinds
Speaker 1: of thing the Republicans have been saying lately can deny that.
Speaker 1: Now it is important to remember that whatever plan these
Speaker 1: people try won't work as as well as they hope.
Speaker 1: We've been watching them for years, and if there's one
Speaker 1: thing you know about all of the people around Trump,
Speaker 1: it's that they're fuck ups. That doesn't mean they can't win,
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean they're not dangerous. It just means that
Speaker 1: they're going to make mistakes. Now, those mistakes aren't going
Speaker 1: to be survivable for everybody that we care about, which
Speaker 1: is something that should be on your mind. Bruce and
Speaker 1: most of the Trump aligned police, local and federals still
Speaker 1: feel a need to couch their threats in deniable terms, though,
Speaker 1: but many on the far right have been less careful,
Speaker 1: and one thing we've seen is this election has lurched
Speaker 1: closer to its conclusion. Is a lot of people, people
Speaker 1: like particularly Elon Musk, have absolutely taken their masks off. Now.
Speaker 1: I think this had a lot to do with the
Speaker 1: fact that Trump was looking more like the favorite a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks ago, and they felt like after years
Speaker 1: of having to do what Bruce did, having to cover
Speaker 1: up their outright eliminationist impulses, they no longer had to
Speaker 1: do that now. Obviously, some influential people on the far
Speaker 1: right have been mask off from much longer, and this
Speaker 1: is something that should concern you as well. One of
Speaker 1: the most sinister examples of this is Jack Pisobic, a
Speaker 1: former US Navy intelligence officer whose recent book Unhumans is
Speaker 1: framed as a secret history of communist revolutions. From an
Speaker 1: article in Mother Jones quote they being Pisobic and his
Speaker 1: co author, claim, for as long as there have been
Speaker 1: beauty and truth, love and life, there have also been
Speaker 1: the ugly liars who hate and kill, and these people
Speaker 1: of anti civilization have always gone by different names communists, socialists, leftists,
Speaker 1: and progressives. The pair contend that these folks be they
Speaker 1: the Bolsheviks of Russia or the BLM activists of this decade,
Speaker 1: are better called unhumans. It's a hard edged message. The
Speaker 1: foes of conservatism are not merely misguided souls pushing the
Speaker 1: wrong policies, but people who seek to annihilate civilization. They
Speaker 1: rob and kill. Pisobic and Lysek, his co author, maintain
Speaker 1: they don't believe what they say. They don't care about
Speaker 1: winning debates. They don't even want a quality. They just
Speaker 1: want an excuse to destroy everything. They want an excuse
Speaker 1: to destroy you. Now, Jack has been a laughable character
Speaker 1: for much of his career, but his outright eliminationist rhetoric
Speaker 1: has had an audience in the howls of power. Jd
Speaker 1: Vance himself provided a blurb for the book, claiming it
Speaker 1: shows us what to do to fight back. Steve Bannon
Speaker 1: meanwhile wrote the forward. Now, I started this episode with
Speaker 1: a fictional vignette imagining what might happen if Trump chooses
Speaker 1: to contest the election without right force, and he might.
Speaker 1: The good news is I think that such an effort
Speaker 1: would be doomed to fail if he sticks to the
Speaker 1: courts trying to refuse certifications and kick the election to
Speaker 1: the House is a better chance at succeeding, and it
Speaker 1: is possible that isolated thefts of ballots and arrests of
Speaker 1: poll workers could play into a broader effort like this,
Speaker 1: but doing so is a big risk. My gut tells
Speaker 1: me that moving so openly resorting to violence first creates
Speaker 1: a situation in which the Biden administration and the incoming
Speaker 1: Harris administration would have to respond with force. There would
Speaker 1: have to be consequences, and given that they currently control
Speaker 1: the arsenal of state power, I think they would win
Speaker 1: even in the event that you have all of these
Speaker 1: sheriffs break for Trump in some sort of insurgent situation develop.
Speaker 1: If that were to happen, and having backed this insurgency
Speaker 1: would put Trump in real jeopardy, and it would put
Speaker 1: a lot of his backers in jeopardy as well. It
Speaker 1: might even force consequences for provocateurs like Basobic and even
Speaker 1: Elon Musk. Backing an outright violent coup is almost the
Speaker 1: only thing I can imagine putting Musk behind bars. There
Speaker 1: are pieces of this logic train that I find comforting,
Speaker 1: but there are also pieces that aren't. Many of us,
Speaker 1: me included made the mistake of assuming that after January sixth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, Trumpism might finally be a spent force.
Speaker 1: He'd gambled too much and he'd lost too big, But
Speaker 1: despite the existential threat, he presented himself as being The
Speaker 1: Democratic Party and the Merrick Garland Justice Department largely chose
Speaker 1: mercy for the main players. I suspect anything short of
Speaker 1: armed insurrection will see a similar reaction from them this year.
Speaker 1: I don't believe Musk's fears that the Democrats will throw
Speaker 1: him in prison if Harris wins are real, or read
Speaker 1: that instead as his own predictive justification for the violence
Speaker 1: he'd like to support against his political enemies. That desire
Speaker 1: won't go away just because Trump rides off into the
Speaker 1: sunset and the Republican Party has to go searching for
Speaker 1: another feurer. If we defer their dream, it will simply
Speaker 1: sit under the floorboards, infester, waiting for the next opportunity,
Speaker 1: and that won't take long. Kamala will inherit a broken
Speaker 1: system and a world where climate change and conflict are
Speaker 1: on the rise. Low information voters, less literate by the day,
Speaker 1: will continue to swing back and forth. The feral beast
Speaker 1: we've heard growling all year long, will surge forward, all
Speaker 1: the hungrier for being made to wait. If you've kept
Speaker 1: up with our election coverage this year, you've probably noticed
Speaker 1: that we haven't endorsed any candidates, and I haven't wasted
Speaker 1: any time advising our listeners to vote. I happen to
Speaker 1: be someone who does think a Harris win represents substantially
Speaker 1: less harm than a Trump win to a lot of people.
Speaker 1: But I don't think that the folks who listen to
Speaker 1: our podcast are waiting for me to make that decision
Speaker 1: for them. I don't agree with the anti electoralist side
Speaker 1: of things on every matter, but one place where I
Speaker 1: do agree with them is that a Harris win won't
Speaker 1: fix what's broken. It represents the historic equivalent of jinking
Speaker 1: out of the way in a dog fight. Necessary maybe,
Speaker 1: but not something that guarantees future security. Hey, everybody, Robert here,
Speaker 1: I've changed locations, so sorry if it sounds a little
Speaker 1: bit different. I'm currently in a cabin waiting out the election,
Speaker 1: trying not to think too much about it. But I
Speaker 1: wrote a new ending to this because I just thought
Speaker 1: that what I had there was incomplete. Now, when it
Speaker 1: comes to what does work in the long run to
Speaker 1: beat these people, my mind is drawn back constantly to
Speaker 1: perhaps an odd place. A twenty eleven article in the
Speaker 1: scientific journal Nature titled the Evolution of over Confidence. Now
Speaker 1: The gist is that this was an attempt by two
Speaker 1: scientists to solve the evolutionary mystery of the Dunning Krueger effect.
Speaker 1: It seems to be extraordinarily common for people who know
Speaker 1: very little about a subject to overestimate their competence in it.
Speaker 1: This is probably why so many Americans think they could
Speaker 1: win fist fight with a bear. Such a phenomenon seems
Speaker 1: profoundly maladaptive. How could overestimating our abilities provide any kind
Speaker 1: of benefit to evolutionary fitness? The explanation devised in this
Speaker 1: paper is that overconfidence is beneficial more often than not, because,
Speaker 1: in a hypothetical situation where two organisms are competing for
Speaker 1: a resource and evenly matched in the event of a fight,
Speaker 1: the organism that is more confident is likelier to reach
Speaker 1: for that resource. If they do, one of three things
Speaker 1: can happen. They fight and win, they fight and lose,
Speaker 1: or the other organism backs away insecure in its chances
Speaker 1: of victory, and they get that resource. Without even fighting
Speaker 1: for it. Such a scenario favors the overconfident individual, so
Speaker 1: much so that it might explain why many of us
Speaker 1: seem to have a build in tendency to irrationally judge
Speaker 1: our own capabilities.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I first became aware of this research almost a decade
Speaker 1: ago when I started work on my first published book,
Speaker 1: A Brief History of Vice. At the time, I found
Speaker 1: it interesting because it posited a likely adaptive basis for
Speaker 1: a kind of bad behavior, and that's what my whole
Speaker 1: book was about. In the years since, though, I've come
Speaker 1: to see it as the fundamental underlying explanation for how
Speaker 1: fascists win. It's well established that fascist regimes and individuals
Speaker 1: themselves are bad at threat modeling. We can bring up
Speaker 1: examples as varied as the invasion of the Soviet Union,
Speaker 1: or that proud boy who got shot in Portland after
Speaker 1: picking the wrong fight, and of course January sixth. There
Speaker 1: are many examples to choose from, but as often as
Speaker 1: they fail. The success of these movements is also based
Speaker 1: entirely on their willingness to dare, and the fact that
Speaker 1: liberals in particular are often too frightened and cautious to
Speaker 1: confront them. We are still dealing with Donald Trump and
Speaker 1: his foot soldiers in twenty twenty four because no one
Speaker 1: quite had the guts to confront him to the degree
Speaker 1: he needed to be confronted. Doing so would have meant
Speaker 1: taking unprecedented legal steps and risking wing backlash that likely
Speaker 1: would have included acts of terrorism. In the end, most
Speaker 1: people with any say in the matter chose to either
Speaker 1: back away or at best pull their punches until after
Speaker 1: the election. On other episodes of this show, our correspondent
Speaker 1: Mia and I have talked about the actual path destroying
Speaker 1: the far rights organizational and electoral base. We are up
Speaker 1: against a coalition a fused car dealers, supplement salesman, multi
Speaker 1: level marketing goals, sheriffs taking blatantly unconstitutional stances on their
Speaker 1: own power, and churches that, by any decent measure lost
Speaker 1: their justification for tax exempt status years ago. These are
Speaker 1: all forces that can be targeted and neutered through the
Speaker 1: courts in the legislative system, with consistent activism and pressure
Speaker 1: applied to elected leaders Sitting here, I think that the
Speaker 1: odds the Democrats embraced such a strategy are exceptionally low,
Speaker 1: but we do have to try to make them, because
Speaker 1: when you're sitting across from a monster, one that's fattened
Speaker 1: on overcome confidence, and you see him start to reach again,
Speaker 1: the only same response is to swallow your fear and
Speaker 1: take a swing.
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