Speaker 1: Cool Media.
Speaker 2: Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let
Speaker 2: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 2: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 2: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
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Speaker 3: Welcome to it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. Admidst
Speaker 3: attempts by President Trump to seize control of Greenland. Last
Speaker 3: month during the World Economic Forum, administration officials started posting
Speaker 3: images of a penguin. On January twenty third, the White
Speaker 3: House shared in artificial image of Trump walking hand and
Speaker 3: flipper alongside a penguin holding an American flag across a
Speaker 3: snowy tundra towards mountains bearing the flag of Greenland. The
Speaker 3: caption read, Embrace the Penguin. The flags look like poorly
Speaker 3: photoshopped stock images, while the rest of the image appears
Speaker 3: to be generated by AI. Immediately, this post sparked ridicule
Speaker 3: across various online platforms based on the fact that there
Speaker 3: aren't any penguins in Greenland. Erm Penguins don't live in
Speaker 3: the Northern Hemisphere save for zoos and the Glapcos Islands
Speaker 3: of Ecuador. So haha, the foolish trump has been bested
Speaker 3: once again in the arena of facts and logic. Except
Speaker 3: this White House penguin post was actually in reference to
Speaker 3: a TikTok meme that was currently going super viral. In
Speaker 3: mid January, remixed footage from Werner Herzog's Arctic documentary Encounters
Speaker 3: at the End of the World, featuring a lone penguin
Speaker 3: breaking off from the flock and marching towards some icy mountains,
Speaker 3: started spreading around TikTok sinked to an organ cover of
Speaker 3: Lemour Tejoure, a song which is adopted by far right
Speaker 3: anti immigration groups in Europe the past few years. This
Speaker 3: combination of music and footage soon spread to other short
Speaker 3: form video platforms like Instagram reels, with the featherless subject
Speaker 3: being dubbed the Lonely Penguin. On January twentieth, a more
Speaker 3: explicitly political version went kind of viral with over twenty
Speaker 3: thousand likes. With the addition of a Frederick Nietzsche quote,
Speaker 3: I know of no better life purpose than to perish
Speaker 3: in attempting the great and impossible quote with the caption
Speaker 3: save Europe hashtag remigration. That same day, an edit with
Speaker 3: thirty six thousand likes by the TikTok account Epic History
Speaker 3: thirty two, captioned do the Hard Thing played the documentary
Speaker 3: footage with herz Aug Generation overlaid with images of historical
Speaker 3: figures and pop culture characters like Alexander the Great, Caesar,
Speaker 3: Joan of Arc, King Richard the First King, Baldwin Fourth
Speaker 3: Genghis Khan, Aragorn, John Snow, Luke, Skywalker, and Spider Man.
Speaker 3: An op ed in Fox News by the daughter of
Speaker 3: Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy referred to these as quote unquote
Speaker 3: Western heroes. To quote this op ed, in the film,
Speaker 3: Herzog shows a lone penguin peeling away from the safety
Speaker 3: of its colony and heading inland towards certain death according
Speaker 3: to Herzog, But the online right saw something else. Users,
Speaker 3: mostly male, saw the penguin as a powerful rebuke of
Speaker 3: secular modernity. They interpreted the penguin not as lost, but
Speaker 3: as a freethinker. To them, he was rejecting the colony.
Speaker 3: In today's terms, that means rejecting secular postmodern orthodoxy and
Speaker 3: marching toward a greater purpose unquote. So though Herzog in
Speaker 3: this documentary refers to this penguin as Drain as a meme,
Speaker 3: users identified with the penguin as a symbol of masculine
Speaker 3: rebellion against what they view as mainstream culture and the
Speaker 3: solitary trek up the mountains as a metaphor for the
Speaker 3: struggle of the individual greatness. Clips of men on outdoor
Speaker 3: adventures and climbing mountains Zarathustra style with the caption be
Speaker 3: the Penguin spread wildly online, the most popular reaching four
Speaker 3: point two million likes, and other penguin themed videos getting
Speaker 3: hundreds of thousands of likes. The Herzog penguin meme piggybacked
Speaker 3: and partially merged with an older, right wing penguin based
Speaker 3: meme video from two years ago of a drag queen
Speaker 3: asking a kid about boys wearing makeup. The kid responds
Speaker 3: that boys can't wear makeup, so the drag queen asks
Speaker 3: the kid who told him that, and this confused child
Speaker 3: looks around and sees a cartoon penguin on the wall,
Speaker 3: points to it and says that penguin over there one
Speaker 3: hundred and eighteen thousand likes.
Speaker 4: What do you think about menwear? Who wear makeup?
Speaker 5: To boys?
Speaker 6: Who said.
Speaker 7: The penguin in there?
Speaker 5: The penguin.
Speaker 3: This video and this figure of the penguin has since
Speaker 3: been used as a symbol for masculine resistance to the
Speaker 3: LGBTQ agenda, and this new penguin meme pertains to tap
Speaker 3: into a uniquely masculine urge, as explained by this TikToker
Speaker 3: who racked up forty two thousand likes.
Speaker 8: I hate to be the one to say it, but
Speaker 8: the penguin didn't make it. But does that mean he
Speaker 8: died in vain? No, his life was not a tragedy.
Speaker 8: It was an inspiration. He left a legacy most of
Speaker 8: us could.
Speaker 9: Only hope for. It would be easy to quote Nietzsche.
Speaker 8: Here, but that wouldn't do it justice. The penguin's spoke
Speaker 8: to something inside all of us men, a desire for more,
Speaker 8: to push our limits and see what we're truly made of.
Speaker 8: Sometimes our purpose is the impact that we leave behind.
Speaker 3: On January twenty third, the Department of War Rapid response
Speaker 3: account posted be a Warrior Embrace the penguin with an
Speaker 3: AI generated image of five men wearing the uniform of
Speaker 3: each military branch walking towards the mountains alongside a penguin.
Speaker 3: Secretary Kennedy posted a Make America Healthy Again edit of
Speaker 3: the penguin meme with the organ music over an AI
Speaker 3: video of RFK Junior and a penguin walking to the mountains.
Speaker 3: Onscreen text reads the mainstream made us sick. Choose the
Speaker 3: healthier path. The Health and Human Services government account quote
Speaker 3: tweeted this video with the caption locking in after watching
Speaker 3: that penguin edit unquote, soy occupied government. An anti immigration
Speaker 3: advocacy account created a viral aiimage of a large, evidently
Speaker 3: prosperous colony of penguins gathered under the banner of multiculturalism.
Speaker 3: It reads that as a giant banner, juxtaposed to a
Speaker 3: lone penguin facing the mountains and a sign reading remigration
Speaker 3: now across the pond. The London mayoral candidate for the
Speaker 3: far right Reform Party in the UK, Lila Cunningham, copied
Speaker 3: Trump's version of the penguin meme with an artificial image
Speaker 3: of her holding hands with a penguin walking towards some
Speaker 3: snowy mountains surrounding the Tower Bridge in London. The caption reads,
Speaker 3: choose a new path for London before it's too late.
Speaker 3: The last penguin post will consider is a video edit
Speaker 3: from the Department of Homeland Security. It starts, like many
Speaker 3: of the viral TikTok and reels videos with footage and
Speaker 3: narration from Herzog's documentary, which I will find play here.
Speaker 10: But one of them caught our eye, the one in
Speaker 10: the center. He would neither go towards the feeding grounds
Speaker 10: at the edge of the ice nor return to the colony.
Speaker 10: Shortly afterwards, we saw him heading straight towards the mountains,
Speaker 10: some seventy kilometers away.
Speaker 9: Doctor Ainley explained.
Speaker 10: That even if he caught him and brought him back
Speaker 10: to the colony, he would immediately head right back for
Speaker 10: the mountains. But why.
Speaker 3: After the narration cuts out, the music continues as a
Speaker 3: fan cam style montage plays Trump, military helicopters, swat style
Speaker 3: home raids, and Icen border patrol arresting people. The video
Speaker 3: is captioned Americans have always known why. In response to
Speaker 3: Herzog's query, this post from the DHS asserts that part
Speaker 3: of the essence of America is breaking away from the
Speaker 3: herd and forging your own path. Those who don't understand
Speaker 3: Trump's desire to control Greenland at the risk of further
Speaker 3: damaging our geopolitical standing just suffer from herd mentality and
Speaker 3: will never be strong enough to take the kind of
Speaker 3: risks that are core to the existence of this country.
Speaker 3: On January twenty fourth, the White House posted the penguin
Speaker 3: does not concern himself with the opinions of those who
Speaker 3: cannot comprehend. For Trump, Venezuela Greenland imperial expansion is an
Speaker 3: existential mission to achieve some mythic frontier greatness, and only
Speaker 3: true Americans can understand why. The Fox News penguin op
Speaker 3: ed by Christian nationalist Sean Duffy's daughter, Wow, that's a
Speaker 3: nightmare sentence reads quote for Trump, the penguin is an
Speaker 3: apt symbol for the President's decade long fight against the
Speaker 3: radical left. Everything Trump does is opposed by the global
Speaker 3: power brokers. Even the president's pushed to obtain Greenland has
Speaker 3: been fanatically opposed by hysterical European elites. America was built
Speaker 3: by penguins, and by that I mean rebels, pilgrims, frontier
Speaker 3: men and women, conquistadors and cowboys. We are a nation
Speaker 3: founded by risk takers who left the colony for the mountains.
Speaker 3: We are descended from men who suffered and died to
Speaker 3: carve civilization out of wilderness. It is our inheritance unquote. Now,
Speaker 3: what this DHS penguin video doesn't include, but has already
Speaker 3: been alluded to by some of the other videos I've played,
Speaker 3: is the actual context of this lone bird's journey and
Speaker 3: its sad fate. We will return to discuss penguin insanity
Speaker 3: after this ad break.
Speaker 11: We're back, though.
Speaker 3: The twenty twenty six version of the penguin meme was
Speaker 3: dubbed the Lonely Penguin. Earlier meme videos of this documentary
Speaker 3: footage from years past carried the titles deranged penguin or
Speaker 3: nihilist penguin. Before the footage of this lone Penguin plays.
Speaker 3: In the documentary, Herzog asks a penguin expert if they
Speaker 3: can experience insanity?
Speaker 12: Is there such thing as insanity among penguins? I try
Speaker 12: to avoid the definition of insanity a derangement. I don't
Speaker 12: mean that a penguin might believe he was. She's lending
Speaker 12: a Napoleon Bonaparte.
Speaker 10: But could they just go crazy because they've had enough
Speaker 10: of their.
Speaker 13: Column Well, I've never seen a penguin bashing his head
Speaker 13: against the rock. They do get disoriented, they end up
Speaker 13: in places they shouldn't be, long way from the ocean.
Speaker 3: The political invocations of this footage largely ignore ourner Herzog's
Speaker 3: own speculation on why the penguin is marching towards the
Speaker 3: mountains in the far off distance and its inevitable state.
Speaker 10: One of these disoriented, deranged penguins showed up at the
Speaker 10: New Harbor diving camp, already some eighty kilometers away from
Speaker 10: where it should be. And here he's heading off into
Speaker 10: the interior of the vast continent with five thousand kilometers
Speaker 10: ahead of him. He's heading towards certain death.
Speaker 3: The penguin is not the uber match. The penguin will
Speaker 3: not achieve individual greatness at the summit of the mountain
Speaker 3: because it's never going to get there. As friend of
Speaker 3: the pod Dan Olsen so eloquently put it, the penguin
Speaker 3: is going to die. Though the penguin does not bash
Speaker 3: its head on a rock. This separation from society is
Speaker 3: still an act of suicide. The deranged penguin has literally
Speaker 3: turned its back on food, water, shelter, and the colony
Speaker 3: to die, wandering towards mountains that it will never reach.
Speaker 3: The Trump administration's embrace of this suicidal penguin as a
Speaker 3: that's literally me figure is a shockingly open display of
Speaker 3: fascism's relation to the death drive. It's just so naked
Speaker 3: to make your mascot a symbol of suicidal defiance against
Speaker 3: perceived cultural norms. They're doing a first as tragedy, twice
Speaker 3: as farce for fascist death emblems. The Nazis get the skull,
Speaker 3: we get a fucking penguin. But the penguin is not
Speaker 3: the first modern American suicidal folk hero. The Kildozer rampage
Speaker 3: of public destruction, which ended in the suicide of the perpetrator,
Speaker 3: has been a mascot for the libertarian right for over
Speaker 3: two decades, and in twenty eighteen, a twenty eight year
Speaker 3: old airport ground service agent named Richard Russell hijacked in
Speaker 3: empty plane at SeaTac to fly over Mount Rainier before
Speaker 3: killing himself by purposely crashing the plane, very similar to
Speaker 3: Herzog's deranged penguin. Russell left behind a wife of six years,
Speaker 3: but became a sort of nihilistic folk hero to overly
Speaker 3: online young men, especially among the online far right on
Speaker 3: places like four Chan and Telegram, where he was dubbed
Speaker 3: sky King. Last August, a Congressional Republican from Georgia, Mike Collins,
Speaker 3: who serves on the Republican Transportation Committee, posted a glowing,
Speaker 3: multi paragraph memorial for Richard Russell on the anniversary of
Speaker 3: his suicide, signing off the message with rest in peace,
Speaker 3: sky King. But the direct identification of the Trump administration
Speaker 3: with a suicidal penguin is a step farther. The fascist
Speaker 3: appetite for death is well understood, but the death drive
Speaker 3: represents a usually subconscious desire to not only harm or
Speaker 3: kill others, but ultimately yourself, an attempt to ease the
Speaker 3: tensions driving social life by returning to a prior in
Speaker 3: organic state. This desire can be channeled through the politics
Speaker 3: of fascism, which allow for violent, paranoid manifestations of repressed
Speaker 3: internal contradictions which attempt to be resolved through death. But
Speaker 3: fascism itself is a contradiction between a primitive war machine
Speaker 3: and a stable state apparatus, and the way that tension
Speaker 3: is released is also self destruction. In the second volume
Speaker 3: of Capitalism at Schizophrenia A Thousand Plateaus by philosopher Jills
Speaker 3: Deluze and psychoanalyst Felix Quattaie, they discuss the ways in
Speaker 3: which fascism and totalitarianism differ. They write that totalitarianism is
Speaker 3: a state affair made up of material components that over
Speaker 3: manage society.
Speaker 11: Quote.
Speaker 3: Even in the case of a military dictatorship, it is
Speaker 3: a state army, not a war machine, that takes power
Speaker 3: and elevates the state to the totalitarian stage. Totalitarianism is
Speaker 3: quint essentially conservative. Fascism, on the other hand, involves a
Speaker 3: war machine. When fascism builds itself a totalitarian state, it
Speaker 3: is not in the sense of a state army taking power,
Speaker 3: but of a war machine taking over this state unquote.
Speaker 3: This analysis from Deluze and Quataree is build holding off
Speaker 3: of an essay by the French writer Paul Verilio called
Speaker 3: the Suicidal State, where Verilio argues that in fascism, this
Speaker 3: state is far less totalitarian than it is suicidal. An
Speaker 3: evolution of this state that quote no longer pretends to
Speaker 3: be guided internally by reason and progress, but rather non
Speaker 3: progress and terror, founded on the repulsion and fear of
Speaker 3: all development in this civil domain unquote. This repulsion and
Speaker 3: fear were manifested in the accelerated destruction of state institutions
Speaker 3: during the first few months of Trump's second term and
Speaker 3: Doge's scorched earth approach to slashing government agencies. Verilio writes
Speaker 3: that during the disappearance of public service quote, infrastructures of
Speaker 3: service are reduced as the wire taps of the vermacht
Speaker 3: are restored colonial geometry of decolonialization. So as the federal
Speaker 3: government rescinds public services, the everyday presence of the federal
Speaker 3: government is reduced to masked armed agents in the streets,
Speaker 3: disappearing our neighbors and shooting civilians, while the president fights
Speaker 3: in court for the ability to deploy the military against
Speaker 3: American citizens within our own territory. During the tension of
Speaker 3: total war or total peace, Filio says, the system expands
Speaker 3: and reproduces itself, a material process without an end, but
Speaker 3: no longer without limits. To quote the Brazilian philosopher of
Speaker 3: Vladimir's Fatley the Suicide State quote, is not just a
Speaker 3: manager of death. It is rather the ongoing agent of
Speaker 3: its own catastrophe, the maker of its own explosion. To
Speaker 3: be more precise, this new state mixes the death management
Speaker 3: of entire sectors of its own population with an ongoing
Speaker 3: and risky flirtation with its own self destruction unquote. Verlio's
Speaker 3: idea of the suicidal state emerges as this new mode
Speaker 3: of governing to solve the crisis of post war liberalism
Speaker 3: in Germany after World War One, as well as risked
Speaker 3: by the United States after each of our many wars.
Speaker 11: Quote.
Speaker 3: One of the keys to the present situation is on
Speaker 3: one side, the overly informed status of experts of the system,
Speaker 3: and on the other the underinformed status of all those
Speaker 3: who are supposedly thinking outside of it. Verlio says that
Speaker 3: the experts no longer know how to use their hordes
Speaker 3: of information except to gain money and status by continually
Speaker 3: adding to their body of work. Meanwhile, the outsiders produce
Speaker 3: the polit and cultural undercurrent of modern folklore and ordinary life.
Speaker 3: But this limp dichotomy cannot last for very long on
Speaker 3: its own, so I Verrelia proposes the new emergence of
Speaker 3: a third category of people who make use of information
Speaker 3: for an end. The ultimate end the directors of the
Speaker 3: suicidal state, while the outsiders, ideologues and artists simply try
Speaker 3: to simulate Catharsis quote. By contrast, the third category, the
Speaker 3: suicidal state it self produces a feeling for the real
Speaker 3: better it aims to retain the exclusivity of its production.
Speaker 3: This feeling is a contempt for and hatred of the
Speaker 3: every day unquote, to paraphrase Verilio, the fascist project exploits
Speaker 3: man's alienation from his environment through pollution, economic insecurity, emotional insecurity, socialization,
Speaker 3: and seeks to replace any legitimate grievance he has with
Speaker 3: society with a more repulsive and expressive force, the fear
Speaker 3: of society, which is superimposed on a new military schema
Speaker 3: of total war and internal invasion, all towards a nihilistic
Speaker 3: end of dropping the bomb on ourselves. The oscillation of
Speaker 3: external and internal destruction epitomized by the death Drive is
Speaker 3: mirrored by the imperial boomerang, where the violence of colonial
Speaker 3: expansion is forced to return to its homeland. Once home,
Speaker 3: the drive remains, resulting in a war on society directly
Speaker 3: or through other means. But this is a war on
Speaker 3: its own people. Whereas Trump would say the enemy within,
Speaker 3: to quote a paragraph from a thousand Plateaus, so called
Speaker 3: total war scene is less a state undertaking than an
Speaker 3: undertaking of a war machine that appropriates the state and
Speaker 3: channels it into a flow of absolute war whose only
Speaker 3: possible outcome is the suicide of this state itself. There
Speaker 3: is in fascism a realized nihilism. Unlike the ttalitarian state,
Speaker 3: which does its utmost to seal all possible lines of escape,
Speaker 3: Fascism is constructed on an intense line of escape, which
Speaker 3: it transforms into a line of pure destruction and abolition.
Speaker 3: It is curious that from the very beginning, the Nazis
Speaker 3: announced to Germany what they were bringing at once wedding
Speaker 3: bells and death, including their own deaths and the death
Speaker 3: of the Germans. They thought they would perish, but that
Speaker 3: their undertaking would be resumed all across Europe, all over
Speaker 3: the world, throughout the solar system. And the people cheered,
Speaker 3: not because they did not understand, but because they wanted
Speaker 3: that death through the death of others. Like a will
Speaker 3: to wager everything, you have every hand to stake your
Speaker 3: own death against the death of others. Unquote in a
Speaker 3: thousand plateaus, Deluze and Guatai quote an excerpt from Klausman's
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty six novel Mefisto, which contains fascist speeches and
Speaker 3: ordinary conversations from Nazi Germany. The quote they include is
Speaker 3: eerily similar to the visuals of Trump as the suicidal
Speaker 3: penguin quote, heroism was something that was being ruled out
Speaker 3: of our lives. In reality, we are not marching forward.
Speaker 3: We are reeling, staggering. Our beloved fear is dragging us
Speaker 3: toward the shades of darkness and everlasting nothingness. How can
Speaker 3: we poets who have a special affinity for darkness and
Speaker 3: lower depths not admire him? Unquote Deluze in Guataye then write,
Speaker 3: suicide is presented not as a punishment, but as the
Speaker 3: crowning glory of the death of others. The insufficiency of
Speaker 3: economic and political definitions of fascism does not simply imply
Speaker 3: a need to tack on vague so called ideological determinations.
Speaker 3: We prefer to inquiry into the precise formation of Nazi statements,
Speaker 3: which are just as much in evidence in politics and
Speaker 3: economics as in the most absurd of conversations. They always
Speaker 3: contain the stupid and repugnant cry long Live death. Even
Speaker 3: at the economic level, where the arms expansion replaces growth
Speaker 3: in consumption, and where investment veers from the means of
Speaker 3: production toward the means of pure destruction unquote. Verilio calls
Speaker 3: this a psychosis which governs its entire politics of production,
Speaker 3: and he writes that the replacement of the American industries
Speaker 3: of the automobile and the cinema with the military industrial
Speaker 3: complex quote does not involve a rational, functional, or useful choice,
Speaker 3: but rather entirely psychological, or rather psychopathological. It stems from
Speaker 3: contempt for an abandonment of productive rapport with the milieu.
Speaker 3: Every investment is made to escape from it. For contemporary reference,
Speaker 3: go check out the stock price of Pallantier. And on
Speaker 3: the larger economic and international level, Trump's tariffs, his trade wars,
Speaker 3: and the self destruction of the United States geopolitical standing
Speaker 3: are all expressions of this suicidal state in action. Filio
Speaker 3: claims the state of total war, where the economy of
Speaker 3: war has become the economy of peace, is facilitated by
Speaker 3: a transformation in the American sense of freedom, where quote unquote,
Speaker 3: the free as a subject as in the Land of
Speaker 3: the Free, Quote is no longer properly spoken of as
Speaker 3: a citizen. He has an anonymous organism, without culture, without society,
Speaker 3: and without memory. This figure has no historical precedent. Assistance
Speaker 3: has become survival, non assistance, a condemnation to death. All
Speaker 3: liberation henceforth has for him invariably the appearance of death
Speaker 3: of the end, suicide or murder unquote. This sort of
Speaker 3: freedom from social services, freedom from this state, freedom from assistance,
Speaker 3: as a movement of the death drive, also provides insight
Speaker 3: into people's willingness to and even desire to vote against
Speaker 3: their own material interests, especially when their political struggle has
Speaker 3: turned against society itself. Only in transformation of ordinary social
Speaker 3: life in to the horrific in the minds of the
Speaker 3: populace can the fascist Quote find their surest means of governing.
Speaker 3: The legitimization of his politics and military strategies, and right
Speaker 3: up to the end, far from weakening the repulsive nature
Speaker 3: of his powers, the ruins, the hoarders, the crimes, the
Speaker 3: chaos of total war will generally only increase in scope.
Speaker 3: In Hitler's nineteen forty five telegram, seventy one, he writes,
Speaker 3: if the war is lost, may the nation perish. Here
Speaker 3: Hitler decides to join forces with his enemies in order
Speaker 3: to complete the destruction of his own people by obliterating
Speaker 3: the last remaining sources of its life support system, civil
Speaker 3: reserves of every kind, putable water fuel provisions. This is
Speaker 3: the normal outcome of the politics of dialectical retreat from
Speaker 3: the man who had written the idea of protection, haunts
Speaker 3: and fulfills life unquote. Fascism hijacks the mechanism of evolutionary
Speaker 3: and revolutionary escape and reverts it into a mechanism of destruction.
Speaker 3: Instead of resolving crises, it produces constant crisis for it
Speaker 3: to feed off of forming as delusion guatris, say, a
Speaker 3: war machine instead of resonating in a state apparatus, a
Speaker 3: war machine that no longer had anything but war as
Speaker 3: its object and would rather annihilate its own servants than
Speaker 3: stop the destruction. To quote a thousand plateaus, this is
Speaker 3: war not for conquest or revolution, but war as its
Speaker 3: own end. The hollowing out of public institutions and social services,
Speaker 3: the divestment from the milieu of life, leads people to
Speaker 3: turn towards the suicidal state as the only force of
Speaker 3: mood movement resting on, as Filio says, quote, the advanced
Speaker 3: exploitation of our instincts for death. A new tatalitarian state,
Speaker 3: defined by the constant ascent of statistics toward planetary death.
Speaker 3: Crime and madness will no longer be the defects. The
Speaker 3: madman and the assassin are the legitimate children engendered and
Speaker 3: recognized by the suicidal state unquote. And what phenomenon has
Speaker 3: risen in the United States the past few years, the conspiracy,
Speaker 3: theorist and the assassin. The embrace of total war and
Speaker 3: the campaign of civil fear necessitates a break from sanity
Speaker 3: and the bizarre strangeness of means that inevitably result in
Speaker 3: a self destructive end. Verilio claims there is an insanity
Speaker 3: at the heart of the fascist project. The imaginary potential
Speaker 3: of the fascist state arises quote from a finished war
Speaker 3: world where insanity has become the goal of order, the
Speaker 3: very product of organization unquote. There's a quote from Goebels
Speaker 3: to one of his aides, Prince Frederick Christian. The world
Speaker 3: in which Hitler moves is a world of absolute fate,
Speaker 3: a world in which even success makes no sense. It's
Speaker 3: not a mistake that the White House has cast itself
Speaker 3: as a lost penguin marching to its own death. They
Speaker 3: know the absurdity of their replies. They know the world
Speaker 3: looks upon them as insane. They know that they'll never
Speaker 3: reach the make America Great Again mountain. The self destruction ice,
Speaker 3: the tariffs, the broken treaties are not for any greater purpose.
Speaker 3: The means are the end. This is total war, the
Speaker 3: psychological purpose of which is terror, which for the fascist
Speaker 3: is synonymous with peace. But let's not forget how Hitler
Speaker 3: and Goebbels finally resolved their contradictions.
Speaker 9: So Trump is kind of moving like a bull in
Speaker 9: a china shop, or rather a bulliner missile shop. You know,
Speaker 9: I think that's a more apt analogy. The system of
Speaker 9: government wasn't exactly benign beforehand, you know. Yeah, I think
Speaker 9: it really needs to click for people that Trump is
Speaker 9: not truly exceptional m hm. Rather, he's a product of
Speaker 9: the normal that people seem to be uni for. Yeah,
Speaker 9: you know, and the other issues we're dealing with too.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think like this is the the crux of what next. Right,
Speaker 5: It's like, we have this, like I don't want to
Speaker 5: I don't want to disparage people. We have this tendency
Speaker 5: in American politics, this liberal tendency, progressive liberal tendency. Even
Speaker 5: to think that like, basically things have been magnificent until
Speaker 5: the first week of November in twenty sixteen, right that
Speaker 5: America was progressing on this like linear pathway towards total
Speaker 5: equality and justice for all, and that what's happening now
Speaker 5: is an aberration. It's the idea that there's a few
Speaker 5: individuals conspiring rather than there is a system which inherently
Speaker 5: creates interests which were opposed.
Speaker 14: To our own.
Speaker 9: I guess, yeah, exactly. It's like all of these these
Speaker 9: these problems, the genocides, were waging long before Trump came
Speaker 9: into power. You know, the economic strains people are feeling
Speaker 9: today that people have been feeling for decades for their
Speaker 9: entire lives. You know, the climate crisis that is only
Speaker 9: worse and this time is going on. You know, all
Speaker 9: of this is a problem of that normal, of that
Speaker 9: pre Trump normal. And I still hear people asking, you know,
Speaker 9: when are things going to go back to normal? When
Speaker 9: can we settle down? When will we go back onto
Speaker 9: the track of normalcy? And well, if you're listening to
Speaker 9: this podcast, I think you already know what time it is.
Speaker 9: This is it could happen here. I'm Andrew Sage and
Speaker 9: I'm joined.
Speaker 5: By James again here to talk about the new normal.
Speaker 9: All right and welcome, thank you. The new normal, the
Speaker 9: ever shifting normal, the phantom of normal and why it
Speaker 9: is that it's really not coming back, and why normalcy
Speaker 9: as a concept is actually pretty weird. So part of
Speaker 9: I think what feeds into this notion of normal is
Speaker 9: this myth of progress that people are obsessed with. You know,
Speaker 9: recently I read this book Progress by Samuel Miller McDonald
Speaker 9: and I would like to do a review of it
Speaker 9: at some point for the podcast. Butt of it is
Speaker 9: it a get into just how pervasive this concept of
Speaker 9: progress is in kind of tripping people up and keeping
Speaker 9: us serving systems that don't serve us. You know, you
Speaker 9: mentioned progressives earlier, and you know even that notion I
Speaker 9: think of being a progressive. He kind of calls that
Speaker 9: into question in the course of the book, going from
Speaker 9: ancient times to talking about a religious sense of a
Speaker 9: promised land to the sort of modern sense of a
Speaker 9: secular or technological progressive improvement or a social progressive improvement.
Speaker 9: He identifies it as a story, and a story that's
Speaker 9: so powerful that it acts like a sedative. You know,
Speaker 9: we don't engage with the degree in reality the world
Speaker 9: around us because be wrapped up in this all powerful
Speaker 9: feet were balance of progress or progress is linear, that
Speaker 9: we are ever striving forward, you know, and we point
Speaker 9: to examples of things like social progress. But as he
Speaker 9: quotes in the book, it's like what Malcolm X said.
Speaker 9: You know, if I stick a knife into you and
Speaker 9: I only pull it out three inches, that's our progress.
Speaker 9: Put it out six inches, that's our progress. Nine inches,
Speaker 9: that's a progress progress will be, you know, removing the
Speaker 9: knife completely and mending the wound. But I would take
Speaker 9: it a step further and say that is it really
Speaker 9: progress to go back to a state that already was?
Speaker 9: Is it progress to abolish slavery when there was a
Speaker 9: time when slavery did not exist? You know, going back
Speaker 9: to a previous default state is not necessarily contributing to
Speaker 9: the nat same thing with patriarchy, you know, patriarchy did
Speaker 9: not always exist. Eroding and abolishing the patriarchy reaching a
Speaker 9: point where the limitations placed on women are no longer
Speaker 9: there can we call that progress or is it just
Speaker 9: rectifying a previously imposed state? And so these are some
Speaker 9: of the questions he grapples with. And there's also, of
Speaker 9: course the techno utopian promise of you know, we can
Speaker 9: in self driving cars any minute, you know, fusion energy
Speaker 9: AI and then work forever. You know, all these things
Speaker 9: are blind to the social or ecological reality of collapse.
Speaker 9: But where else would you say, might see this myth
Speaker 9: showing up in politics? I think I covered a good few,
Speaker 9: but I might be missing something.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Like, I mean it's almost in everything, right, Like
Speaker 5: it's a fundamental myth of liberal capitalism, I guess. Like
Speaker 5: it also underlies a certain logic of colonialism, right, the
Speaker 5: idea that like progress towards that then a neoliberal state
Speaker 5: is this can be like the logic of explicit or
Speaker 5: less explicit colonialism, I guess. But like you see it
Speaker 5: there too, right, Like you see it in the sort
Speaker 5: of do you see a lot in nineteenth century, So
Speaker 5: it's very explicit the idea to uplift, civilize and christianize
Speaker 5: our little brown brothers.
Speaker 9: Yeah, the civil mission, yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: They're the white man's burden, and these things that became
Speaker 5: very very on vogue in the late nineteen thirty twentieth century.
Speaker 5: I suppose you see it a lot there too, right.
Speaker 9: Yeah, this whole notion I think that idents really starts
Speaker 9: with the concept of civilization. When you have that civilized
Speaker 9: other divide that binary of the civilized and the barbaria,
Speaker 9: and or the civilized and the savage, and how that
Speaker 9: gets turned into this mission that civilization expands, that you
Speaker 9: bring those savage peoples into the fold and you slowly,
Speaker 9: you know, bring them up, make them upright men, and
Speaker 9: closer to being human than the state that they were
Speaker 9: in previously. And the whole narrative around that is what
Speaker 9: has as it has evolved with time, led to the
Speaker 9: situation a bit in now.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 9: And there's this idea as well that even when there
Speaker 9: are these ruptures in normal that everything will go back
Speaker 9: to its right place. As of people say, you know,
Speaker 9: history is a series of unprecedented things, you know, And
Speaker 9: one of the unprecedented things in history that I wish
Speaker 9: people would realize is not ever going to come back
Speaker 9: is that sort of post war economic boom, you know,
Speaker 9: that nineteen fifty era growth and excess that has become
Speaker 9: the default day that many people are striving to return
Speaker 9: into when in reality, something like that is a historical
Speaker 9: normally driven by artificially cheap and abundant energy. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 9: the normal that people are talking about. Sometimes it's just
Speaker 9: this fifty to seventy year fossil fuel binge, a binge
Speaker 9: that we are reaching the end of. And I think
Speaker 9: a fantasy to believe that we can replicate for all
Speaker 9: the time.
Speaker 5: Right yeah, but it's the time that so much of
Speaker 5: the like the world that we exist in was created, right,
Speaker 5: And like people almost see themselves as like a different
Speaker 5: species from human beings in the in the nineteenth century, right, Yeah,
Speaker 5: they can't conceive of society that way.
Speaker 9: Exactly exactly, And it's something that I've been well on
Speaker 9: because like, what a time to be alive to see,
Speaker 9: you know, personal cars being so ubiquitous. But the ubiquity
Speaker 9: of personal cars is an aberration. It's a historical laboration.
Speaker 9: It's not one that is likely to be sustainable in
Speaker 9: the long term. You know, even if there are electric
Speaker 9: cars taking a place of gas powered vehicles and we
Speaker 9: run out of gas oil, even the materials in story
Speaker 9: to produce electric cars are not always going to be around.
Speaker 9: They're not always going to exist. We can't supplement each
Speaker 9: and every individual person with a car for all of time,
Speaker 9: you know. Yeah, so many of the rare earth minerals
Speaker 9: that are again quite rare, we've we've spent them on
Speaker 9: things that that may serve a novelty or an interest
Speaker 9: in the short term, but it's something that we can
Speaker 9: maintain forever. You know. I hear people talking about this
Speaker 9: EI bubble, you know, and it is in the sense
Speaker 9: of the financial markets, the financial aspect of AI and
Speaker 9: how it's affecting our perception of the economy and whether
Speaker 9: that bubble is going to boost economically. But I'm more
Speaker 9: interested in the EI bubble in the sense that how
Speaker 9: long can this EI everywhere thing persist when the material
Speaker 9: is necessary to maintain it because it is material, despite
Speaker 9: the sort of cloud marketing they get associated with it.
Speaker 9: How long until we run out of those materials, until
Speaker 9: those material needs cannot be sustained.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we keep shifting, like the goalposts, but like the terrain,
Speaker 5: right like you know, we okay, well we've run out
Speaker 5: of fossil fuel, so that's fine. We will do electric okay,
Speaker 5: we you know, with the electric actu She relies on
Speaker 5: on rares. So that's fine, We're fine. Different thing to
Speaker 5: make batteries out of fra other than acknowledging that like
Speaker 5: we've created a system, or we'll just.
Speaker 9: Go to space.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, yeah, and and trash another planet for another
Speaker 5: few hundred years. You know, when you're driving your track
Speaker 5: and you have a lot of stuff in it and
Speaker 5: it's hitting the end of the rev counter, you know,
Speaker 5: like you're trying to pass someone, it's bouncing. It's in
Speaker 5: the red zone. Like we've been running in the red zone,
Speaker 5: certainly for most of this century, you know, since the
Speaker 5: Industrial Revolution, or certainly since the end of the Second
Speaker 5: World War. And like sustainability is a phrase that's been
Speaker 5: co opted, but like it's just not possible to keep
Speaker 5: doing it.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean, it's really an anomaly, U blipin our timeline,
Speaker 9: I would say, And I think ruptures in that normalcy,
Speaker 9: like the ruptural experience and now provides an opportunity for
Speaker 9: us to you know, take an eggs at ramp to
Speaker 9: kind of control the transition, to control our descent. But instead,
Speaker 9: you know, it seems like we were just rapidly moving
Speaker 9: towards the more forceful transition the transition made so by
Speaker 9: the laws of physics, and that transition I don't think
Speaker 9: will be nearly as pleasant as it could be. You know.
Speaker 9: That's why a lot of people call it collapse, and
Speaker 9: that transition is being delayed currently, both the collapse of
Speaker 9: the material resources and also the collapse of the financial
Speaker 9: economic system. That stuff has been delayed by rent seeking,
Speaker 9: by new frontiers or exploitation, and by ramping up theft
Speaker 9: in parts of the world that we're not as pillaged
Speaker 9: as other parts of the world, or ramping up surveillance
Speaker 9: and violence to make it harder to resist. But eventually
Speaker 9: is going to hit, you know, and I hate that
Speaker 9: it makes me sound like a second comment of Jesus
Speaker 9: conspiracist or something like that, just like well, yeah, it's coming,
Speaker 9: it's coming, you know, like like like I'm a profit
Speaker 9: screaming into the into the streets. But you know, it
Speaker 9: may not be some kind of prophesiede end times, but
Speaker 9: we are approaching that point, you know, where that sort
Speaker 9: of narrative of economic growth going back to normal. You know,
Speaker 9: there's this big group project of making the literature because
Speaker 9: that rise and tide will lift all boats. You know,
Speaker 9: there's this story that everybody wins, that nobody will have
Speaker 9: to lose anything because the pie will just keep getting bigger.
Speaker 9: It has to come to an end.
Speaker 5: It's amazing how long it's lasted, right, Like, certain group
Speaker 5: of society has been able to make the rest of
Speaker 5: society believe that the pie will just keep getting bigger
Speaker 5: when the pie has got smaller for most people, you know,
Speaker 5: certainly for the last few decades, but arguably you know,
Speaker 5: like lives have become worse for us since the Industrial
Speaker 5: Revolution in some ways.
Speaker 9: Right exactly. And you know, people will point to improvements
Speaker 9: in health and sanitation. Sure, you can have improvements in
Speaker 9: health and sanitation without all this other baggage though, Yeah,
Speaker 9: you know, we can have improvements in literacy without literally
Speaker 9: poisoning our fresh water and bleaching our oceans and killing
Speaker 9: off biodiversity by the millions of species.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's not a like a package deal, right, Like
Speaker 5: we can have vaccination against diseases without having super fun sites.
Speaker 5: We didn't need one to make the others. It's not
Speaker 5: a like this way or the Dark Ages.
Speaker 9: Exactly exactly. For example, all London had to do I mean,
Speaker 9: I'm oversimplifying, but all London had to do was stop
Speaker 9: dumping their sewage in the Thames.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah. It's a remarkable It's
Speaker 5: not that hard. But like just look at the disposal
Speaker 5: of hazardous waste and the way that rather than being like, huh,
Speaker 5: maybe we should stop making waste, it will be hazardous
Speaker 5: for centuries. For the better part of one hundred years,
Speaker 5: we've just been finding somewhere else to put it.
Speaker 9: Yeah, just keep just keep dumping it.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Even as a child, I was like, what are we
Speaker 9: supposed to do with all these moms in the garbage? Like, like,
Speaker 9: are we just going to keep on piling it's up
Speaker 9: until we reach the moon?
Speaker 5: I mean, yeah, it's like it in San Diego they
Speaker 5: dump these dump it in the bay. There's a whole
Speaker 5: part of our bay which used to be a landfill site.
Speaker 5: And like I like to to free dive sometimes I
Speaker 5: would be practicing or diving in the bay or whatever,
Speaker 5: and like you dive down and be like, the fuck
Speaker 5: is a barbecue grill doing on the bottom of the ocean?
Speaker 5: And people just continue to chuck shit into the bay, right, Like,
Speaker 5: even though we have another landfill, what we put it now?
Speaker 9: No, But you see games it's like that barbecue grill
Speaker 9: was seven dollars on TMO Yeah, right, you can't pass
Speaker 9: up that deal, you know.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, and then when it when it turns out
Speaker 5: to be absolut crap, it will be on our planet
Speaker 5: for longer than any of us. But we've created a
Speaker 5: system where there's no disincentive to buy a t moou
Speaker 5: barbecue grill, use it once, and then throw it into
Speaker 5: the bay. And like we can't see that that's a problem.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, because of how this system is set up,
Speaker 9: you don't have to think about it. We had a second,
Speaker 9: why is the barbecue grill seven dollars? You know, who
Speaker 9: is suffering so that this barbecue real? For example?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Right, because they were so detached from that, right, Like,
Speaker 5: despite being so connected, we're also so far away from
Speaker 5: the people who the misery is a consequence of our
Speaker 5: consumption or of the system which which makes our consumption
Speaker 5: the way it is exactly.
Speaker 9: And you know, instead of thinking about how we can
Speaker 9: make society resilient, how we can reasonably and ethically, with
Speaker 9: consideration for seven generations, use the resources that we have,
Speaker 9: and without endless throughput all the years, continue to chase growth,
Speaker 9: they continue to progress perpetually like a cancer. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 9: and everybody's seeing the consequences. At this point, the work
Speaker 9: situation is getting worse because these platforms, these these employers
Speaker 9: are finding ways to game the label laws. You know,
Speaker 9: we're seeing shrinking margins and sit in sectors. Because when
Speaker 9: you rely on growth, when that growth comes to an end,
Speaker 9: there's nowhere else to grow. You have to squeeze what
Speaker 9: there is. What's the phrase squeeze blood out of a stone. Yeah,
Speaker 9: you know, you have to force over work. You have
Speaker 9: to and shitify existence services so that you can extract
Speaker 9: more subscriptions, more pay months, more upgrades, whatever the case.
Speaker 9: Maybe the liverability of entire cities of it has been
Speaker 9: wiped out because you know, you have ABNB and a
Speaker 9: private companies holing out something as basic as hose in
Speaker 9: for all, and so the pressure is to keep the
Speaker 9: whole machine run and just how ways any long term considerations.
Speaker 9: I keep saying this normal was never sustainable. I will say, though,
Speaker 9: when we criticize the system and we call it out
Speaker 9: and we talk about how these leaders are pushing things
Speaker 9: in a certain direction, they are, But at the same time,
Speaker 9: it's easy to fall into this notion that they are
Speaker 9: manipulating the whole thing, you know, that they manage the
Speaker 9: system in its entirety. It's tempting to see the system
Speaker 9: as coherent, you know, to act like it's all piloted
Speaker 9: by one vidual or group as some wise or malevolent
Speaker 9: parental figure. And you know, these institutions, they all rely
Speaker 9: to vary lining degrees under the appearance of competence, right.
Speaker 9: But I think what recent times has revealed is that
Speaker 9: things are a lot messier than that. That political leaders
Speaker 9: know that they don't know, but won't admit that they
Speaker 9: don't know, or they don't know that they don't know,
Speaker 9: and in either case, they are pretending or believing that
Speaker 9: they have this grip on things that they can anticipate
Speaker 9: and smooth out the shocks to the system. You know,
Speaker 9: there are those who think that if they share the
Speaker 9: honest truth, that they could trigger a panic into populace.
Speaker 9: So they think they're doing something you know, brave and
Speaker 9: benevolent by not giving people all the information they need
Speaker 9: and whose yet they failed by sharing all the information
Speaker 9: that needed to make accurate decisions, that they might lose investments,
Speaker 9: They might lose investors. You know that the economy will
Speaker 9: take a hitter as results. That's why you have situations
Speaker 9: where like when the Texas grid field in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 9: that the officials were insistent that it was stable and
Speaker 9: so they wasn't, you know, Or for the years the
Speaker 9: UK is has water, it's what infrastructure is used, it
Speaker 9: continues to claim that thing's under control, and sewage were
Speaker 9: still getting into people's reverse. Yeah you know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Like I think a lot about Flint, Michigan, where
Speaker 5: the water that people have to drink to survive is
Speaker 5: killing them. And this has been happening. We've known about
Speaker 5: it for a decade, and there have been a series
Speaker 5: of politicians for both parties who have just been like, yeah, no,
Speaker 5: don't worry, We've got this cupboard, and like that. We
Speaker 5: fundamentally have not got this cupboard right. But the machine
Speaker 5: is moving so far so no one person can can
Speaker 5: stop and turn it around because the machine will just
Speaker 5: bulldoze them.
Speaker 9: Yep. It's not as steady as and stable as it
Speaker 9: puts forward. You know, in fact that that whole image
Speaker 9: of the system as coherent stays stable. I think it
Speaker 9: also seems to keep us from defying it. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 9: because we get this sense that yeah, this is this,
Speaker 9: like this this behema of this all powerful love crafty
Speaker 9: and entity that us may have. Individuals come truly challenge
Speaker 9: when there are things that we can do directly to
Speaker 9: throw you know, spokes in the wheel, if that's the expression, No,
Speaker 9: it's something in this spooks.
Speaker 5: Yeahs Spanner when sticking the spokes maybe right?
Speaker 9: Yeah? Sure? Would you say there was like a pit
Speaker 9: secular moment when you realize that nobody actually knew what
Speaker 9: they were doing? Though, Yeah, I'm trying.
Speaker 5: To think if it was like a momental recognition for
Speaker 5: me or like a sort of gradual one. You know.
Speaker 5: I think a few of the times, like you see
Speaker 5: it a lot when you travel more, right, because the
Speaker 5: perception that, like we are helping here, we've got this
Speaker 5: under control. Like I think with immigration it's a great
Speaker 5: example actually, right, Like so I've obviously spent a lot
Speaker 5: of time with the immigrants, and I think you see this.
Speaker 5: I remember twenty eighteen we had the migrant caravan, right,
Speaker 5: Like there have been many migrant caravans, this one was
Speaker 5: just coincided with a mid term in a way that
Speaker 5: allowed it to become like a political football, and the
Speaker 5: American government is like, we are stopping them at the
Speaker 5: border so we can check if everyone's okay. And government
Speaker 5: in Mexico is like, well, we are taking care of them.
Speaker 5: And you get there and you're like fuck, like these
Speaker 5: people haven't had water today, and like at that point,
Speaker 5: you know, I was already sort of predisposed to thinking
Speaker 5: that perhaps the state didn't have all the answers, and
Speaker 5: like to be clear that Mexican states a lot more
Speaker 5: than the US state in this instance, and provided these
Speaker 5: people with a place to be, which it would have
Speaker 5: been much worse if they hadn't had that, But like
Speaker 5: it was just this realization. I was with a few friends.
Speaker 5: All of us happened at the time to be full
Speaker 5: time bicycle people, so we didn't have jobs that needed
Speaker 5: us to be like in a place at nine am.
Speaker 5: So that realization that like, if these people are going
Speaker 5: to get water today, it's going to be because we
Speaker 5: go to Costco and buy all the water bottles and
Speaker 5: then we we ride back whilst slowly destroying the suspension
Speaker 5: of this pickup truck we've got so much weight in it,
Speaker 5: and give them out, like because no one else is
Speaker 5: going to right and like there's this whole world of
Speaker 5: NGOs and governments and states and like didn't matter right
Speaker 5: this people stidn't have water.
Speaker 9: Yeah, there's a lot of rule for direct action still.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 9: And the part was that be're not as competent as
Speaker 9: they may a first glance appear. In other words, if
Speaker 9: they say they have everything under control, don't believe them.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 9: I think also that instability within this system is part
Speaker 9: of it, you know, it's part of how it works.
Speaker 9: It's part of what's necessary for it to keep going.
Speaker 9: The competitive tune of the capitalist markets, the shifts of
Speaker 9: industries that you know upgroove people's lives just part of
Speaker 9: how the system operates. You know, the booms and bus
Speaker 9: in real estate, they all always for the powers that
Speaker 9: be to expand their wealth in some way, to expand
Speaker 9: their regions and territories, and people, for the most part,
Speaker 9: just go along with it. You know, daily life is
Speaker 9: complex as it is. Without having to grapple with the
Speaker 9: full scale of all the global issues, you know, the
Speaker 9: following the leader, just going along with what they say,
Speaker 9: it does give you some psychological breathing room. You know,
Speaker 9: it's hard to grapple the existential threats that we face.
Speaker 9: I don't have time too in many cases, especially when
Speaker 9: you have an administrative strategy that involves flooding the zone
Speaker 9: with so much mess, with so much drama, with so
Speaker 9: many different controversies and lies and incidents, that it feels
Speaker 9: like the best thing to do is just throw your
Speaker 9: hands up and your foot And then I'm speaking both
Speaker 9: from the perspective of what I'm observing in the Chunitian
Speaker 9: government and what I'm observing in the American government. But
Speaker 9: I see this attitude of our guns, callousness, and corruption.
Speaker 9: So I'm not even trying to maintain a veneer of
Speaker 9: legitimacy or intelligence or anything like that. Studies go through
Speaker 9: the motions to provide the things that it claims it's
Speaker 9: necessary to provide, you know, but they're feeling that even that,
Speaker 9: and they're so cocky about it. They're so careless about
Speaker 9: it too. So they're smiling in your face and lying
Speaker 9: to you. Yeah, people do see what's happening, and they're
Speaker 9: responding in a couple of different ways. You know. They panic,
Speaker 9: of course, or they fall into conspiracies, or they deny
Speaker 9: that there is an actual problem. They continue to insist
Speaker 9: that everything is normal, that everything is fine. If they
Speaker 9: double down, they hustle harder, they consume more, they carry
Speaker 9: on as if nothing's wrong. And there are those who
Speaker 9: see that something is wrong, but they see everybody else
Speaker 9: carrying on as if everything is fine, and so they
Speaker 9: go along as well, you know. Or there are people,
Speaker 9: of course who disengage, who are burnt out to a
Speaker 9: numb who are just drifting or going through the emotions.
Speaker 9: But only a portion have turned to challenge the concept
Speaker 9: of normal itself, whether it is that they're experimenting with
Speaker 9: simpler living, developing some program for survival, some strategy either
Speaker 9: for themselves, for their household, of their community, engaging mutual support.
Speaker 9: And of course this is only a portion of the
Speaker 9: population because many of us, like fishing water, you know,
Speaker 9: we can't really recognize the socioeconomic structure that we are within.
Speaker 9: It's hard to recognize what you are immersed in as
Speaker 9: a thing itself, and so really in seeing and reading
Speaker 9: about alternatives that you can get a glimpse of this
Speaker 9: normalcy and question to realize that this system isn't natural
Speaker 9: or inevitable. There's an aberration destined to decline no matter
Speaker 9: how much we want to believe otherwise that the script
Speaker 9: of work, in consuming career, in accumulating property in all
Speaker 9: is unnormal. That is actually kind of weird, you know, like,
Speaker 9: it's strange that an entire society is dependent upon globe
Speaker 9: spanning supply chains, volatile markets, and oriented entirely around the
Speaker 9: quarterly evenens of elites. You know, it's strange that whiteness, maleness, cis,
Speaker 9: heteronous evilness are treated as the default, the starter kit,
Speaker 9: even though only a fraction of humanity fits in any
Speaker 9: one of those molds, let alone the combination of all
Speaker 9: of the You know, it's strange that normal is so
Speaker 9: narrowly conformist with those who don't conform a marginalized It's
Speaker 9: strange that normal means an illusion of independence, the disguises
Speaker 9: the webs. You will always rely on that. You can
Speaker 9: claim to be independent and say, yeah, well I just
Speaker 9: bought that seven dollar grill of TMU, and not think
Speaker 9: about the the well of relationships that brought that seven
Speaker 9: dollar grill to your doorstep and eventually to the landfill.
Speaker 9: You get to feel self sufficient while the system hides
Speaker 9: the label the ecosystems logistics, and the people hold them up.
Speaker 5: I'm just thinking now about like people whose whole thing
Speaker 5: is being like homesteaders, but their homesteading is in itself
Speaker 5: a performance for the global supply or like the global
Speaker 5: market for distracting or entertainment or whatever you want to
Speaker 5: call it, right Like, and they do not exist outside
Speaker 5: of those supply chains, but like they are doing this
Speaker 5: performance of of like independence because they are so codependent,
Speaker 5: right Like, like they exist to generate like a revenue
Speaker 5: or affiliate links or however influences make money, sponsorships.
Speaker 9: Oh yeah, it's like one of the influencers. Yeah.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Like there's a guy who I remember like a year
Speaker 5: ago am because I'm like, I know, broken inside. I
Speaker 5: had gotten to an argument with someone on x dot com.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, this guy was like posing as a homesteader,
Speaker 5: and like, you know, I grew up on a farm, right,
Speaker 5: Like I've I spent lots of my life around like
Speaker 5: domestic animals and around domestic like I know how to
Speaker 5: fix things, I know what tools look like when you
Speaker 5: use them, and like this guy was very clearly just
Speaker 5: posing and posing a series of photos. It just really
Speaker 5: like I don't know why that particularly threw me for
Speaker 5: a loop, right, But like the idea that this guy
Speaker 5: is performing performing independence for a system he himself is reinforced.
Speaker 5: It was just such a strange thing to understand.
Speaker 9: Yeah, a system means dependent on.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly, a system he's entirely dependent on, like more
Speaker 5: so than most of us even, right, Like, he makes
Speaker 5: nothing other than photographs so that people look at on
Speaker 5: their phones. Like, he makes no tangible product, Like at
Speaker 5: least if you're a you know, you could be a
Speaker 5: cabinet maker, right, and yeah, you install kitchens for each people,
Speaker 5: but you know how to make things with your hands.
Speaker 5: This guy just gets, you know, a saw that looks
Speaker 5: like I hadn't been used since he had Wardian era
Speaker 5: and stands around for photos next to a log in
Speaker 5: the same breath. I guess that I condemn that. I
Speaker 5: feel like the way that we deal with the end
Speaker 5: of this, it's the same way that we help each
Speaker 5: other get through the middle of this and the and
Speaker 5: the collapse of it. Right, Like, I've seen people do
Speaker 5: mutual aid with such scarce resources and manage to make
Speaker 5: such amazing things, both in terms of like physical objects
Speaker 5: and in terms of like these beautiful things we do
Speaker 5: for each other. We're so little and like the ingenuity
Speaker 5: that's still there. It's not like people have forgotten how
Speaker 5: to exist without temu, right, but we just haven't created
Speaker 5: a way a situation where we have to and in
Speaker 5: mutual aid spaces. I sometimes feel like we already have
Speaker 5: the solution to this, which is to depend on and
Speaker 5: care for each other. It's just that we need that
Speaker 5: to be the way we do everything, not just some.
Speaker 9: Stuff exactly exactly. You know, the whole homestead and fantasy
Speaker 9: is very comforting illusion and fiction in my view, because
Speaker 9: if we're talking about going back to the land, people
Speaker 9: who live on the land, who live off of the land,
Speaker 9: they did so in community. Yeah, you know, very very
Speaker 9: very very rarely did someone live entirely by themselves without
Speaker 9: contact and anyone else. Because you can't be an axe
Speaker 9: maker and a carpenter and a cook and you know,
Speaker 9: a farmer and a hood and all these different things,
Speaker 9: all of these different roles, a medicine maker, all these
Speaker 9: different things at the same time. That is why we
Speaker 9: as a species have survived and succeeded, because we are
Speaker 9: able to share our skills with others and you know,
Speaker 9: collectively accomplish more than the summer of our parts.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a fantasy. I was recently in a place
Speaker 5: called Chako Kanyon. I don't know if you've if you're
Speaker 5: familiar with Chako Kanyon at all, No, but there's this
Speaker 5: idea I think that like pre the arrival of capitalism,
Speaker 5: that's how Indigenous people lived. And it's just not like like, yeah,
Speaker 5: this was a large, thriving communitium. I'm interested in Chako
Speaker 5: Kanyon because I'm interested in what you're talking about, like
Speaker 5: a society which consume at an unsustainable level and then
Speaker 5: collapsed and what came.
Speaker 2: Out of it.
Speaker 5: But what came out of it is what kept the
Speaker 5: working class people in that society of life throughout it,
Speaker 5: which is helping each other, right, Like yeah, sure people
Speaker 5: have these little plots where they grew grain, but also
Speaker 5: like by doing their ceremonies, by coming together in community,
Speaker 5: they had something which could sustain them even when the
Speaker 5: economic reality completely changed for them. And it's like it's
Speaker 5: that part that people forget, right that they think they
Speaker 5: can Yeah, they think they can grow their own food.
Speaker 5: Yeah you can, But when you need a new plow,
Speaker 5: what are you going to do? You're going to buy
Speaker 5: a forge on TMU, you know, like it's so detached
Speaker 5: from the way anyone has ever lived.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it is, and it kind of lasts, and me perstatly,
Speaker 9: I would rather not wait until supply chains break down
Speaker 9: completely and stones wipe the sleep and out's cut all
Speaker 9: communication none. I would rather wait for those things to
Speaker 9: create and sustain those networks of dependence, networks of interdependent
Speaker 9: so it's local networks of aid and cultural practice and
Speaker 9: you know, meeting of mutual needs. There's a saying that
Speaker 9: the sort of hustle bros would say that your network
Speaker 9: is your net worth, and to that I must concur
Speaker 9: you know, the community support and the share resources. They're
Speaker 9: going to matter a lot more than your personal purchase
Speaker 9: and power. Being part of something is emotionally easier than
Speaker 9: carrying everything alone. The matter now and the matter even
Speaker 9: more in the future, as crisis makes the invisible all
Speaker 9: too visible. The normal that we remember is an illusion,
Speaker 9: but once you've seen it, you can't unsee. I think
Speaker 9: the departure from normal is an opportunity or chance to
Speaker 9: make something battle, to be adaptable to the shocks that
Speaker 9: come with courage and with clarity, and I hope that
Speaker 9: this conversation is able to put towards when I'm sure
Speaker 9: that I'm not alone in feeling. That's all for me today,
Speaker 9: all about what to old people. Peace.
Speaker 5: Hi friends, and welcome to the show. It's me James today,
Speaker 5: and I'm very lucky to be joined by Sam Hamilton,
Speaker 5: who is the senior litigation staff attorney at Asian Americans
Speaker 5: Advancing Justice Atlanta.
Speaker 7: Hi Sam, Hi James, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 5: Yeah, thanks for joining us. And we are gathered here
Speaker 5: today to talk about the new proposals that DHS has
Speaker 5: to detain people in literal warehouses. Right, if people aren't familiar,
Speaker 5: maybe you could die out by explaining what those proposals
Speaker 5: are and how they specifically relate to the areas where
Speaker 5: you're organizing in Atlanta.
Speaker 15: Sure So, Around December of twenty twenty five, a journalist
Speaker 15: leaked a list of about twenty different cities across the
Speaker 15: country where ICE was intending to open new detention facilities
Speaker 15: in warehouses specifically. And this list contained the names of
Speaker 15: the cities and the expected or projected occupancy of each
Speaker 15: of these facilities. And so I live here in Atlanta, Georgia,
Speaker 15: and there were two cities on that list with warehouses contemplated.
Speaker 7: One is located.
Speaker 15: In the city of Flowery Branch, where the warehouse there
Speaker 15: is is intended to detain up to one thousand, five
Speaker 15: hundred people. And the other is in the city of
Speaker 15: Social Circle, Georgia, where ICE intends to use a warehouse
Speaker 15: that is over one million square feet to detain about
Speaker 15: eight five hundred people.
Speaker 5: That's vast, Like I think that this would dwarf the
Speaker 5: capacity of any Like I'm trying to think if there
Speaker 5: are maybe prisons sort of bigger than that. I don't know,
Speaker 5: but like in immigration terms, I don't think there is anything.
Speaker 15: Yeah, I mean, you know, So for the last four
Speaker 15: years or so, I've worked I've worked on various different
Speaker 15: shutdown ICE campaigns here in Georgia, and for the last
Speaker 15: four years I've been working with the campaign to shut
Speaker 15: down the Folkston Ice Processing Center, which is an ice
Speaker 15: facility in South Georgia pretty close to Florida, but it's
Speaker 15: about a five hour drive from Atlanta, and that ended
Speaker 15: up expanding lasts summer. But the number of beds at
Speaker 15: that facility was projected to be around three thousand, and
Speaker 15: at the time that was going to be the largest
Speaker 15: ice attention facility in the country. So to jump from
Speaker 15: three thousand to eighty five hundred is yeah, it's massive, obviously.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I mean people wanted to like it's not fascism enough.
Speaker 5: It comes from the Fascio Rain area of Italy, right,
Speaker 5: otherwise it's like sparkling authoritarianism or whatever. But like unless
Speaker 5: you're looking for like a gate with our Beckmark Fry
Speaker 5: on it or whatever, like these are concentration camps. Like
Speaker 5: that is what this is. It was really interesting in
Speaker 5: twenty twenty three we had out the outdoor attention under
Speaker 5: the Biden administration, and like we didn't really have much
Speaker 5: coverage in the US media when we were participating in
Speaker 5: mutual aid there, but we'd had a lot from non
Speaker 5: US media, like folks from Japan and Singapore and Italy,
Speaker 5: and they'd just come and be like, oh, yeah, it's
Speaker 5: a concentration camp. And then they'd write the story and
Speaker 5: be like these concentration camps. And I think I would
Speaker 5: never have got that past an editor in LA or
Speaker 5: New York. To them, it seems so self evident. Now
Speaker 5: we're just doing it on an even bigger scale. I
Speaker 5: guess it's it's terrible. It's the ship. So I know
Speaker 5: you've been organizing in social circle specifically, right or part
Speaker 5: of an organizing group, I should say that it's been
Speaker 5: opposing this detention center. So I think it'll be really
Speaker 5: instructive to people because either are all of these are
Speaker 5: going to be all over the country, and this won't
Speaker 5: be the only expansion of immigration detention we see in
Speaker 5: the next few years. I imagine, given the massive budget
Speaker 5: and the priorities to the administration, can you explain a
Speaker 5: little bit about like how that campaign got started and
Speaker 5: then like the nuts and bolts of how this is
Speaker 5: being opposed.
Speaker 15: Yeah, So before I get into that, I think providing
Speaker 15: some context on who the social circle community is it
Speaker 15: will be, you know, would be instructive. So it's a
Speaker 15: pretty small it's a very small city. It's got a
Speaker 15: population of about five thousand people, overwhelmingly Republican, overwhelmingly white,
Speaker 15: and pretty wealthy, Okay, And it's about an.
Speaker 7: Hour drive outside of Atlanta.
Speaker 15: And in December of twenty twenty five, a news article
Speaker 15: was published in the Washington Post announcing, you know, the
Speaker 15: list of the twenty cities where these warehouses would be
Speaker 15: would be popping up. And it was that article that
Speaker 15: told the residents of Social Circle and the elected officials
Speaker 15: of Social Circle for the first time that this ICE
Speaker 15: mega prison was coming to their community. There was no
Speaker 15: notice to the city by ICE or anyone in the
Speaker 15: federal government at all, certainly no opportunity to respond, no
Speaker 15: opportunity for public input.
Speaker 7: So they felt really blindsided.
Speaker 15: Yeah, and I'm not this community, and you know, I've
Speaker 15: met many of these people only for the first time,
Speaker 15: you know, within the last couple of months. But I
Speaker 15: think it would not be so far fetched to say
Speaker 15: that some of these people feel, you know, especially the
Speaker 15: ones who identify as Republicans or as you know, conservatives,
Speaker 15: I think they feel really betrayed by you know, by
Speaker 15: their government, by their party. Yeah, and so you know,
Speaker 15: a lot of these people, I mean I've just described
Speaker 15: the demographic. I think many of them have never been
Speaker 15: involved in organizing of any kind before. Some of them have,
Speaker 15: I think, but I think due to you know, their
Speaker 15: life circumstances, just might not have found themselves in a
Speaker 15: place where they've needed to organize for anything. So a
Speaker 15: bunch of these residents got together and have been holding
Speaker 15: you know, in person kind of town hall community meetings,
Speaker 15: and they held one in January where they were about
Speaker 15: you know, I think forty to fifty people in the room,
Speaker 15: and they wanted to get together and you know, just
Speaker 15: have a public discourse about what could be done. And
Speaker 15: I was invited to this meeting because of my history
Speaker 15: of involvement with shutdown campaigns here in Georgia.
Speaker 7: I got started with shutdown campaigns in.
Speaker 15: Twenty twenty, okay, when a nurse, a whistleblower who worked
Speaker 15: at an immigration detention center here in Georgia called the
Speaker 15: Irwin County Detention Center, alerted the public that there was
Speaker 15: a doctor who was contracting with ICE who had been,
Speaker 15: you know, providing medical services to women detained in this facility. Well,
Speaker 15: he had actually been performing non consensual and medically unnecessary
Speaker 15: medical and gynecological procedures.
Speaker 7: On women in ICE attention.
Speaker 15: Remember this here, Yeah, And when these women spoke out
Speaker 15: about it to their family members, to journalists, to their
Speaker 15: law layers, to members of Congress, our staffers for members
Speaker 15: of Congress, they were retaliated against by being swiftly deported
Speaker 15: and I'm talking put on planes within hours.
Speaker 7: Of speaking to a congressional staffer.
Speaker 15: And at the time, I was working at the University
Speaker 15: of Georgia, School of Laws First Amendment Clinic where we
Speaker 15: were providing you know, free legal services to people across
Speaker 15: the state, including you know, helping people with getting access
Speaker 15: to public records and suing the police and you know
Speaker 15: and federal agents. Yeah, when they were retaliated against. And
Speaker 15: so we represented those women. And it was through my
Speaker 15: work at Irwin and you know, connecting with the organizers there,
Speaker 15: that I got involved with shut down campaigns, or rather
Speaker 15: the shutdown Irwin campaign here in Georgia, and then from
Speaker 15: there later got involved with the shutdown folks in campaigns.
Speaker 15: So I had been asked to speak to this group
Speaker 15: of people who I think were new to the immigrants
Speaker 15: rights struggle, to talk about, you know, what it's like
Speaker 15: to try to prevent a detention center from popping up
Speaker 15: in their community.
Speaker 5: And because they like, it's not a community that might
Speaker 5: traditionally be demographically the same as the people who we
Speaker 5: associate with like microan advocacy, migroan activism. I guess when
Speaker 5: a group like that comes into a moment like this,
Speaker 5: I mean there are some areas of like activism, I
Speaker 5: guess civil society stuff, where like white suburban folks have
Speaker 5: some experience, right planning is one of them, right, Like
Speaker 5: the recent bike planes only go north south in San
Speaker 5: Diego is because they think that those of us who
Speaker 5: can't afford live by the sea don't deserve to cycle safely.
Speaker 5: Like there are many other examples of this. But what
Speaker 5: there were there like thoughts when they when they first met.
Speaker 5: I'm really interested to know that. Like they're obviously upset
Speaker 5: and they feel abandoned and betrayed, but like, how did
Speaker 5: they want to organize to prevent this?
Speaker 15: Well, a lot of them were upset about the decrease
Speaker 15: in their property value. That was what was really breaking down. Yeah,
Speaker 15: that was that was the redicalizing movement.
Speaker 5: Same with the bike lanes.
Speaker 7: Actually, oh yeah, I bet yeah. And you know, but in.
Speaker 15: Addition to the property value stuff, it's also you know,
Speaker 15: the strain that this would impose on their small community.
Speaker 7: I mean, you know a number of the people who.
Speaker 15: Live there might be of you know, well to do means,
Speaker 15: but you know, their city police department employs a total
Speaker 15: of fourteen officers and they have two on duty at
Speaker 15: any given time. They have a fire department of you know,
Speaker 15: comparably you know, small size, and they have you know,
Speaker 15: water and sewer infrastructure that was built to accommodate about
Speaker 15: as many people as live there now, you know, between
Speaker 15: four thousand and five thousand people. And it's that impact
Speaker 15: that is also you know, really maddening and activating and
Speaker 15: agitating to people. Those arguments are not new to us
Speaker 15: who have organized in South Georgia and also very red areas,
Speaker 15: a lot more rural and a lot less wealthy. Yeah,
Speaker 15: you know, we'll try to We've canvas door to door
Speaker 15: in the city of Folkston to try to ask people
Speaker 15: how do they feel about this mega prison opening up
Speaker 15: in their community, and a lot of people, you know,
Speaker 15: we're against it, despite the fact government officials might try
Speaker 15: to bill it as you know, an economic boon, you know,
Speaker 15: unemployment opportunity. A lot of people said like, hey, I mean,
Speaker 15: I don't necessarily want a prison in my backyard, but
Speaker 15: if it's bringing jobs, then you know, that's what this
Speaker 15: community needs. That's something that I think makes Social Circle
Speaker 15: distinct from the previous shutdown campaigns I've worked on in
Speaker 15: Irwin County and in Folkston is that this isn't really
Speaker 15: an area that is starved for employment or starved for
Speaker 15: you know, economic support, Like these people are doing okay.
Speaker 7: And you know, another thing that makes it distinct.
Speaker 15: Is before all of this warehouse business, the vast majority
Speaker 15: of facilities in this country are formed through intergovernmental service agreements,
Speaker 15: you know, or iggsa's for short, is the acronym. But
Speaker 15: there are agreements between the federal government and the county,
Speaker 15: the local government where the local government says, yes, you
Speaker 15: can use our land or our facilities, and in exchange
Speaker 15: you pay us I mean in the case of folks,
Speaker 15: and it's a comparably measly amount. It's only two hundred
Speaker 15: thousand dollars per years. Not much, yeah, even though the
Speaker 15: federal government is giving i mean fifty million dollars a
Speaker 15: year to insert your favorite private prison corporation here, you know,
Speaker 15: whether it's corcivic or geogroup.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean your favorite.
Speaker 5: There are only two, really, yeah, not much of a joice.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 15: And so typically, like we see this sort of like
Speaker 15: co opting and manipulation of the local community and the
Speaker 15: local government by the federal government, you know, coercing them
Speaker 15: economically to you know, to take on these detention centers
Speaker 15: or else. But here I mean social like I said,
Speaker 15: Social Circle is doing fine. They're not starved for economic investment,
Speaker 15: and I didn't you know, consult them at all. It
Speaker 15: really just like, you know, in the dead of night,
Speaker 15: just bought this warehouse from a private company and pushed
Speaker 15: this deal through. So those are some aspects that I
Speaker 15: think might throw you know, some of us who might
Speaker 15: have been involved in these similar fights before, like for
Speaker 15: a loop a little bit, because yeah, there's this assumption
Speaker 15: I think by some of the local officials that the
Speaker 15: supremacy clause governs here and the federal government can do
Speaker 15: whatever it wants. So there's no point in us trying
Speaker 15: to use our local zoning ordinances or what have you
Speaker 15: to try to put a stop to this, because there's
Speaker 15: nothing that we can do, right is at least what
Speaker 15: you know, some people might be.
Speaker 5: Saying, yeah, let's take a break for advertisements. I can't
Speaker 5: think of anything mean to say, I know, buy some
Speaker 5: shit this have come from, or don't buy anything you
Speaker 5: don't need. Okay, we are back. So you were talking
Speaker 5: about this assumption that the supremacy close would mean that
Speaker 5: the federal government could build a mega prison in a
Speaker 5: warehouse in your town without asking you if it could
Speaker 5: do that. First, can you explain, like how people are
Speaker 5: able to use, like you said, like various local tools
Speaker 5: to oppose is like you said, it's a huge burden.
Speaker 5: Like when I first read this story, I remember thinking about, like,
Speaker 5: just like the water and sewage demands of housing eight
Speaker 5: thousand people would be crippling for the infrastructure in a
Speaker 5: lot of places. So how are people opposing this?
Speaker 7: Well, it's been.
Speaker 15: Really inspiring for me to see these local leaders who
Speaker 15: again many of whom have you know, never been involved
Speaker 15: in activism we're organizing before.
Speaker 7: They've been very.
Speaker 15: Consistent in holding demonstrations on a weekly basis at the
Speaker 15: site of this facility and have garnered the attention of
Speaker 15: different media who have come and interviewed them. So that's
Speaker 15: been one way that they've been trying to you know,
Speaker 15: get their message out there. I was just talking about,
Speaker 15: you know, the residents who are concerned from you know,
Speaker 15: sort of fiscal perspective and are concerned about you know,
Speaker 15: their own property values and things like that. But there
Speaker 15: are a fair number of people who are concerned about
Speaker 15: you know, the core human rights abuses and you know sures.
Speaker 15: Some of the line might be well this isn't the
Speaker 15: right place, you know, our city is not the right
Speaker 15: place for a detention center, suggesting, you know, implying that
Speaker 15: there are some places that are suitable for a detention center.
Speaker 7: But there are a fair.
Speaker 15: Number of people in this community who who are opposed
Speaker 15: to detention centers in general. I mean, they see that
Speaker 15: they see the violence that ICE is inflicting in broad
Speaker 15: daylight on public streets, and I think they're they're horrified,
Speaker 15: and they don't want to be complicit in in something
Speaker 15: like that, you know, coming to their community. And I
Speaker 15: do think that along the way, I'm seeing more of
Speaker 15: a shift in the consciousness or at least an openness
Speaker 15: to understanding the different influences that bring us to the
Speaker 15: same table.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it is. It has been very cool.
Speaker 15: Yeah, and we can agree that you know, we're not
Speaker 15: going to have one hundred percent unity of ideas, but
Speaker 15: we can have a unity of action, and you know,
Speaker 15: we can save these debates on you know, I mean,
Speaker 15: whether someone is illegal or not, but you know, we
Speaker 15: can continue to have them along the way, as we
Speaker 15: are also identifying the very concrete ways that we can
Speaker 15: work together.
Speaker 7: And I'm thinking of one, for example.
Speaker 15: I work pretty closely with some staffers for different members
Speaker 15: of Congress I mean in terms of like uplifting you know,
Speaker 15: human rights and civil rights abuses that we see in
Speaker 15: detention centers, because as part of my job, I go
Speaker 15: inside detention centers, immigration detention centers in Georgia pretty frequently,
Speaker 15: also federal prisons, and we'll meet with people and learn
Speaker 15: about the conditions that they're facing and will you know,
Speaker 15: fight for them to get released and also share what
Speaker 15: I learned from them with you know, different members of Congress,
Speaker 15: and most of our connections are with people who are
Speaker 15: aligned with the Democratic Party, you know, I mean to
Speaker 15: be to be frank, you know, I've never initiated correspondents
Speaker 15: with a Republican but I think I kind of just
Speaker 15: assumed that they wouldn't want to that I wouldn't get
Speaker 15: anywhere with them, or that they wouldn't you know, that they.
Speaker 7: Wouldn't talk to me.
Speaker 15: But what's been effective in working with this coalition of
Speaker 15: residents is some of these people, I mean, yeah, like
Speaker 15: they I you know, they've been card caring Republicans for
Speaker 15: a long time and feel that they you know, can
Speaker 15: wield influence over you know, certain Republican elected officials and
Speaker 15: and one of them, you know, I mean, well, I
Speaker 15: don't know how many of them, but a number of
Speaker 15: these local residents have gotten Republican, you know, Mike Collins
Speaker 15: to come out against this ice facility.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's especially right now in the Republican party and
Speaker 5: like that that could be very difficult for them to do.
Speaker 5: And I sort of once it's not hugely sympathetic to
Speaker 5: Republican politicians, and I would still like to see them
Speaker 5: get better, Like that's we want people to get better,
Speaker 5: that's the whole thing. And like I think for these
Speaker 5: people whose politics may not be the same as ours,
Speaker 5: sharing the space, sharing the movement, sharing the struggle, like,
Speaker 5: I hope it makes people better. I hope being exposed
Speaker 5: to people who are not of the same background as
Speaker 5: you be it like class rise, race wise, politics wise, whatever,
Speaker 5: like makes people realize that things are not quite how
Speaker 5: they're presented to them on the television or in the
Speaker 5: media they consume totally. So I'm sure that's yeah, Like
Speaker 5: I hope that it's positive. What can like a local
Speaker 5: government do, or even like elected officials do, given that
Speaker 5: the elect officials on a federal level do, Given that,
Speaker 5: I mean, I suggest appears to be operating like without
Speaker 5: a great deal of oversight right now.
Speaker 15: Yeah, I mean with each of these warehouses, there are
Speaker 15: different circumstances around each of them. I've been really inspired,
Speaker 15: honestly by the folks in Maryland who are dealing with
Speaker 15: a warehouse, maybe multiple warehouses, I'm not sure. Yeah, where
Speaker 15: you know, at both the local and the state level,
Speaker 15: they have really pushed for legislation that would effectively, yeah,
Speaker 15: I mean, prevent these warehouses from existing at all. It
Speaker 15: is a different set of facts than what we're working
Speaker 15: with here in Georgia, because there's more involvement by private actors,
Speaker 15: and so the government, you know, the local government can
Speaker 15: can regulate them more. But Maryland is certainly not the
Speaker 15: only place where where those fights are happening. And so
Speaker 15: I would really encourage folks to, yeah, to learn from Maryland.
Speaker 15: And I get you know, I'm talking about you know, legislation.
Speaker 15: I mean, I will be the first to tell you
Speaker 15: as a lawyer that I don't think legal tools will
Speaker 15: liberate us.
Speaker 7: You know, the law will not make.
Speaker 15: Us free, sure, Yeah, And I do think it's it's
Speaker 15: the people power, it's the coming together, it's the mass
Speaker 15: collective action that is, you know, that's what's going to
Speaker 15: do it. And also there are multiple you know, there
Speaker 15: are multiple tools and multiplement instruments that we can they
Speaker 15: can wield. And so right now, I mean with respect
Speaker 15: to the Social Circle warehouse, ICE is saying that they
Speaker 15: intend to detain people in their starting in April, jeez,
Speaker 15: in less than two months. Yeah, and so right now,
Speaker 15: the strategy truly is to use just like every tool
Speaker 15: at our disposal, identifying Yeah, like what legislation can be filed,
Speaker 15: what litigation you know, what lawsuits can be filed, what
Speaker 15: you know, demonstrations, what kind of you know, canvassing, door knocking,
Speaker 15: you know, you name it? Like, how can how can
Speaker 15: people come together? How can we try to identify which
Speaker 15: companies would be supplying the labor to turn this warehouse
Speaker 15: into something, you know, where people will be detained? I
Speaker 15: mean not that not that I think ICE gives a
Speaker 15: damn about making any type of facility habitable for humans.
Speaker 7: But there's gonna be there's gonna be some work that
Speaker 7: needs to.
Speaker 15: Be done in order to you know, turn this you know,
Speaker 15: would be Amazon warehouse into a place for people. And
Speaker 15: is there work that you know, local organizers, because they're organizers.
Speaker 7: We're all organ you know, we're all organizers.
Speaker 15: Is there work that local organizers can do to try
Speaker 15: to unite with laborers, with workers who you know might
Speaker 15: be working on this facility, to try to like prevent
Speaker 15: them or like city workers, Like can they prevent city
Speaker 15: workers from like actually hooking up this warehouse to the
Speaker 15: city utilities?
Speaker 5: Right? Yeah, yeah, presumably Yeah, that will be a building contractor, right,
Speaker 5: Like they will want to build thousands of cells in
Speaker 5: this giant Yeah. The call of that stuff, and especially
Speaker 5: with it happening so quickly, like you know, anything that
Speaker 5: delays that will cause it to at least slow it down.
Speaker 5: I guess.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 15: I think another angle that we haven't talked about yet
Speaker 15: is the environmental angle, Like with social circle. You know,
Speaker 15: this is I mean a town of five thousand, it's
Speaker 15: gonna trip. It's gonna nearly triple the number of people
Speaker 15: in this place, and I mean and also triple the
Speaker 15: amount of of waste and sewage that's going to be
Speaker 15: coming out of this place.
Speaker 7: I mean, So that's one thing.
Speaker 15: Another thing for people to look at is, you know,
Speaker 15: what would the environmental impact of these warehouses be on
Speaker 15: local waterways?
Speaker 7: For example?
Speaker 15: And that's what you know temporarily put a stop on
Speaker 15: the detention facility in the Everglades in Florida, was a
Speaker 15: legal challenge in federal court under NIPA, the National Environmental
Speaker 15: Protection Act, because the federal government had failed to conduct
Speaker 15: the proper environmental impact assessments. Yeah, and the only thing
Speaker 15: that they actually really had to do was you know,
Speaker 15: something very procedural and you know, tick a box.
Speaker 7: And ultimately the facility ended up moving forward.
Speaker 15: But it was a tool to buy time to figure
Speaker 15: out what other types of organizing can we do.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and it's still like even if it's only time, right,
Speaker 5: Like harm isn't being done in that time, and it's
Speaker 5: still a good thing. Yeah, that makes like a form
Speaker 5: of harm reduction. It reminds me a lot of the
Speaker 5: struggles here against the newer, larger border wall that we've
Speaker 5: seen since twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen when Trump got elected.
Speaker 5: Like I'm thinking about how there have been ecological challenges
Speaker 5: to it, there have been social challenges to it. Right.
Speaker 5: The city of San Diego is currently trying to sue
Speaker 5: the fed to trest bus for part of its war construction, which,
Speaker 5: like I'm not a big fan of our city government,
Speaker 5: but like, I'm glad they did that, and all these
Speaker 5: different tools have at least at least in the last
Speaker 5: Trump administration. I remember in the late summer at twenty
Speaker 5: twenty being out with some Kumai folks who were in
Speaker 5: ceremony because the war construction was destroying Kumia ancestors right
Speaker 5: who are buried there and then the spaces where they
Speaker 5: are buried, And they ran out the clock on the
Speaker 5: Trump administration. Right by using their rights as indigenous people
Speaker 5: to be in ceremony, the refusal of the workers to
Speaker 5: literally drive a trucks through the middle of their ceremonial practices,
Speaker 5: they were able to like run the clock out on
Speaker 5: the Trump administration. Unfortunately now we have another one. But
Speaker 5: like all those different things had to work together to
Speaker 5: mean that, like in that little part of the border,
Speaker 5: somebody's great great grandparents remains weren't dynamited out of the earth,
Speaker 5: and that's still a good thing. Like however we got there,
Speaker 5: that's a good thing. Absolutely, it makes me happy to
Speaker 5: hear that. Like even folks who might have otherwise been
Speaker 5: politically aligned with the project were appalled by this because
Speaker 5: the idea of literally warehousing humans, like it's so fucking bleak,
Speaker 5: Like there's these big warehouses where we fulfill them with
Speaker 5: shit that we don't need, and now definitely in with
Speaker 5: people that apparently we don't want. Like it's it's one
Speaker 5: of the more horrific things that I know. It just
Speaker 5: it's so bleak to me.
Speaker 15: Yeah, yeah, I agree, Like the veil has just been
Speaker 15: totally lifted, Like we know that they don't view immigrants
Speaker 15: as human, Yeah, but now they're like not even pretending anymore,
Speaker 15: just truly treating people like chattel.
Speaker 5: Yeah again yeah again right in the same places, yea,
Speaker 5: in this instance, Like, I guess I'm glad that even
Speaker 5: people who are not politically on the same team maybe
Speaker 5: like are opposed to this because it's, uh yeah, it
Speaker 5: is repugnant.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I guess what if people are hearing about this for
Speaker 5: the first time, right, and will include that link to
Speaker 5: the article so people can look up where these locations are,
Speaker 5: if any of them? What advice would you have for
Speaker 5: people if you're listening to this, you click on that link,
Speaker 5: you find this one half an hour from your house
Speaker 5: or whatever, Like, what advice do you have for those people?
Speaker 15: I think if you're already an organizer, regardless of whether
Speaker 15: you've been in the immigrants rights fight or not.
Speaker 7: Now is the time.
Speaker 15: When it really is like all hands on deck, So
Speaker 15: don't be afraid to get involved. But also, you know,
Speaker 15: like we were talking about before we started, is I
Speaker 15: think guarantee that there is some immigrants rights movement in your.
Speaker 7: Locale or somewhere close by.
Speaker 15: And I think it's just so important to you know,
Speaker 15: approach this work not with the assumption that you are starting,
Speaker 15: you know, launching this new campaign, spearheading this you know, new,
Speaker 15: previously untapped, you know, area of work, because I guarantee
Speaker 15: you that you know, there are people who have have
Speaker 15: worked on this before. And so I think connect with
Speaker 15: you know, connect both with people who have been doing
Speaker 15: this work for a long time and also try to
Speaker 15: connect with people who you might not otherwise have thought
Speaker 15: to connect with. And I think it's important to call
Speaker 15: out the nimbiism, the not in my backyardism of how,
Speaker 15: you know, some people are coming at this issue because
Speaker 15: they're you know, they're worried about their property value.
Speaker 7: But it's also something that we can capitalize on.
Speaker 15: Right It's energy and oftentimes it's people with capital and
Speaker 15: connections that you know that you might not otherwise have
Speaker 15: had access to either. So I think you know, the connecting,
Speaker 15: you know, and the community organizing needs to go in
Speaker 15: multiple directions. But I do think it's important to move. Yeah,
Speaker 15: it's important to move.
Speaker 5: Fast, Yeah seriously, Like that is a very constrained timeline,
Speaker 5: like everybody has to be, but that means it's also
Speaker 5: important to move respectfully, right, because like, if we just
Speaker 5: blow each other ship up, because yet people assume that
Speaker 5: migrant communities have somehow not been advocating for themselves in
Speaker 5: each other for centuries, then we're not going to have
Speaker 5: time to organize because we're going to be dealing with
Speaker 5: that shit. And I've seen that so much just personally, right,
Speaker 5: like having been involved for some time in migrant advocacy
Speaker 5: and seeing folks like pop in and tell us how
Speaker 5: to do everything. It's tiresome, and I understand that you'll
Speaker 5: want to help. But yeah, if this is something that
Speaker 5: like you're organizing around, super easy to find those organizations
Speaker 5: to be like how can I help?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 15: And it's also such a good like this fight in
Speaker 15: particular is such a good vehicle for fighting for abolition overall.
Speaker 15: As someone who's been saying abolish ICE for years. It
Speaker 15: is amazing to see how much traction that phrase has gotten,
Speaker 15: especially over the last six months. And we can't just
Speaker 15: be fighting against you know, preventing.
Speaker 7: New ICE facilities.
Speaker 15: We need to be fighting for shutting down all ICE
Speaker 15: facilities and for abolishing ICE as an institution. We've been
Speaker 15: around before ICE, and we will be around after ICE.
Speaker 15: As you know, as an agency, ICE has only been
Speaker 15: around since since two thousand and three. Sure there was
Speaker 15: a predecessor, there was the in s, but I mean
Speaker 15: it didn't operate in nearly the type of way that
Speaker 15: ICE does now as this you know, law enforcement agency.
Speaker 15: And even before Trump, like ICE was still a really
Speaker 15: you know, horrible like horrible yeah, yeah, agency, And so yeah,
Speaker 15: I think it's important to continue to you know, point
Speaker 15: these things out while also you know, welcoming people into
Speaker 15: the fight.
Speaker 7: And yeah, and pushing them, pushing them further.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that's really it's really important. Like I
Speaker 5: think we have to rebut the assumption that this is
Speaker 5: an aberration and we can fix it and go back
Speaker 5: to normal, because normal was bad and you just couldn't
Speaker 5: see it because it wasn't on your screen, right, like
Speaker 5: children died in outdoor attention and Abiden. I saw people's
Speaker 5: suffer immenseally in outdoor attention under Biden, Like, we don't
Speaker 5: want to go back to that either, And I think
Speaker 5: it's really important that when we build these coalitions we
Speaker 5: build them with that in mind. That like, we're organizing
Speaker 5: very quickly, but also we're in this for the long haul,
Speaker 5: until everybody's free. Is there anything that you'd like to
Speaker 5: leave people with resources or a bit of advice, any
Speaker 5: like closing words you'd like to share with him?
Speaker 7: Abologize?
Speaker 14: That's all I got, perfect, all right, So ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 14: we're gonna dive in politics.
Speaker 11: Prop This is special for me.
Speaker 14: We're calling this the Art of Petty and the playoff
Speaker 14: words you may or may not know is that Petty
Speaker 14: is actually my last name, and like, like literally government,
Speaker 14: it's my last name. And as a child they used
Speaker 14: to bother me. As a grown up, I'm like, not
Speaker 14: us sounds about right. So what made its start? First
Speaker 14: of all was the bio, says the writer of the
Speaker 14: Pettysburg address.
Speaker 11: Yeah, that's one of the funniest things.
Speaker 14: It makes me mad because it's my last name and
Speaker 14: I'm like, why did I not think of that?
Speaker 11: Like, it's so brilliant. Amanda Nelson, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 7: Thank you, thank you so much, and thank you for
Speaker 7: appreciating my ridiculous Abraham Lincoln joke.
Speaker 11: It's brilliant.
Speaker 14: I and super producer Ian separately came across your content
Speaker 14: like at the same time. I know when I first
Speaker 14: hit the follow within a day or two, I was like,
Speaker 14: have you heard of there? Have you heard of this president?
Speaker 14: And he just simulated. I was like, dude, I just
Speaker 14: started fall and it's and I think there's a there's
Speaker 14: a kindred spirit in the sense of like history being
Speaker 14: actually not that difficult to grasp if you just speak
Speaker 14: like a regular ass human you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 14: and politics the same, Like you know, the premise of
Speaker 14: the Hall Show is that like if you understand inner
Speaker 14: city living, you understand politics. Like if you grew up
Speaker 14: in and around our streets, it's really not that different.
Speaker 14: You know, even whether you was like a nerd, you know,
Speaker 14: running as fast as you can to the library, you
Speaker 14: still knew I better not go down Seventh Street, because
Speaker 14: like you still know how this works. You know what
Speaker 14: I'm saying, or whether you were completely outside, like you know,
Speaker 14: stilling people's bikes like you get it, you know. So
Speaker 14: what we appreciated about what you do is the accessibility
Speaker 14: of it.
Speaker 7: So thank you, thank you, well, thank you. That's that
Speaker 7: was the goal from the beginning, especially the you know,
Speaker 7: on Mondays, I do a series called the Whiteboard, which
Speaker 7: is literally just a whiteboard with a bunch of sticky
Speaker 7: notes on it, Yeah, where I track congressional legislation as
Speaker 7: it moved its way through Congress or doesn't, as is
Speaker 7: more often the case. Yeah, And that was one of
Speaker 7: the first things I started doing when I started making content,
Speaker 7: and people were so appreciative of it in a way
Speaker 7: I found surprising. I thought people would find it nerdy
Speaker 7: and boring and silly. Yeah, but it's such an unnecessarily
Speaker 7: complicated process and explaining it in ways that people can
Speaker 7: grasp that. There's been a lot of appreciation for it,
Speaker 7: which I love.
Speaker 14: Yeah, which leads me to the next question, which would
Speaker 14: be like, Okay, so you're formal training your upbringing, like
Speaker 14: I need to know the origin story of the nerdery,
Speaker 14: but before that, this is the week of the super Bowl,
Speaker 14: So I'm just wondering as a Latina who's not a
Speaker 14: Latina who I just found out an hour ago is
Speaker 14: not a Latino. Have you recovered from Benito's performance?
Speaker 5: I am not a Latino.
Speaker 7: That is true. And I just when I was talking
Speaker 7: about it, when I was talking about it online about
Speaker 7: Bad Bunnies halftime show, I got so many people asking me, wait,
Speaker 7: you're not Latina, so apparently I am presenting, which is nice. Yes,
Speaker 7: I have recovered because after the halftime show, I went
Speaker 7: to bed, so I was in mine. It was such
Speaker 7: a boring game, Like I'm not going to say to her.
Speaker 7: Last game was trash, four hours of freaking field goals.
Speaker 7: But then of course I went to bed and it
Speaker 7: gets spiced up a little bit.
Speaker 11: Then it became a game, right, but it didn't matter. Yeah,
Speaker 11: so you're on the East coast.
Speaker 7: Then I am. I'm in Virginia.
Speaker 14: Yep, yeah, no, that's that's absolutely hilarious. We are on
Speaker 14: the West coast, to which the game starts at three pm.
Speaker 14: But definitely my wife was like ready to go after that.
Speaker 14: My wife is a first gin Latina and she was
Speaker 14: just like, wait, there's more game.
Speaker 11: She's being silly, but yeah, do we have to stay?
Speaker 14: We're at my sister in law's house, and she was
Speaker 14: just like, uh, we're good unless you want to stay,
Speaker 14: you know, since I'm a Cali native, I'm like, I
Speaker 14: really don't care about either of these teams and the
Speaker 14: same yeah, and my I mean down to my Mitochandria, Like,
Speaker 14: I cannot ever cheer for a new England team.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I can't.
Speaker 14: Just the Celtics the boss thing as an la boy,
Speaker 14: I can't anybody remotely close to that.
Speaker 11: I just can't cheer for.
Speaker 7: I think I have like twenty ten's PTSD for having
Speaker 7: to constantly listen to the Patriots be off show in everything,
Speaker 7: and so I have an ingrained bias. Also their owners
Speaker 7: like a weird maga dude, and you're weirdo.
Speaker 11: Yeah he's weird.
Speaker 7: So and Tom Brady is also weird, Like he's a
Speaker 7: weird guy.
Speaker 11: You weird man? Did you see his roast?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 11: Yes? I like, yeah, you weird bro like he is.
Speaker 7: And I can't decide if like Giselle leaving made him
Speaker 7: weirder or if he was weird and she left because
Speaker 7: of that. I can't figure it out.
Speaker 11: I don't care that much, but I honestly that's a
Speaker 11: good thought.
Speaker 14: Man like because I've I've considered that a few times
Speaker 14: because I'm like the level of competitive you have to
Speaker 14: be to be someone like a Tom Brady, like Michael Jordan,
Speaker 14: like Tony Hawk, Like you have to be insufferable if
Speaker 14: with your will and drive to be as good as
Speaker 14: you are. And now, my wife has a PhD in
Speaker 14: ed policy. She's one of the most self driven people
Speaker 14: I know. Even with her just doctoral nerdiness, there's a
Speaker 14: level of like, will you chill like about you know,
Speaker 14: certain stuff. But we're both like we're both nerds, you
Speaker 14: know what I'm saying. So we're both nerds a lot
Speaker 14: of ways. But like I can imagine, I can't imagine
Speaker 14: being married to someone where you're just like, can we
Speaker 14: talk about anything anything but this?
Speaker 11: Yes?
Speaker 7: Anything else?
Speaker 13: Yes?
Speaker 7: The answer is no, no.
Speaker 14: Yeah, So okay, so tell me about Okay, formal training
Speaker 14: and upbringing, Like why are you like this?
Speaker 7: Why am I?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 7: Well, I have a history degree and undergraduate history that
Speaker 7: I got. How do I explain why I'm like this?
Speaker 7: That's such an interesting question.
Speaker 5: So I was.
Speaker 7: Raised in South by very conservative white people, Okay, and
Speaker 7: I did not understand why I was kind of singled
Speaker 7: out a lot growing up. Like, as we said at
Speaker 7: the beginning, I'm not Latina. My grandmother's from the Philippines,
Speaker 7: and so that was like enough, like enough one dropness
Speaker 7: to make all the white people around you, yeah, like
Speaker 7: very weird. And I didn't get it. And as I
Speaker 7: grew up and I realized more about understood more about
Speaker 7: the South and about Virginia specifically, which is the capital
Speaker 7: of the Confederacy and all that, I got kind of
Speaker 7: obsessed with history, Like why are these people like this?
Speaker 7: So I've always been into history. I got a history degree,
Speaker 7: and then I became you know, I kind of actively
Speaker 7: once I got out of my parents' house, to be honest,
Speaker 7: and I'm not conservative anymore. But once I got out
Speaker 7: of my parents' house and discovered like a world of
Speaker 7: active I went to college, which is the case for
Speaker 7: so many kids who grew up in you know, the
Speaker 7: rural South. I went to college, discovered activism and organizing
Speaker 7: and people with different opinions. Yeah, and I don't know,
Speaker 7: a whole world opened up for me and I got involved.
Speaker 7: I've been politically involved ever since. I've done all kinds
Speaker 7: of things. I've volunteered for campaigns, I've been a clinic, escort,
Speaker 7: an abortion clinic here in town, all kinds of it.
Speaker 7: But I've worked with the ACLU, so I am like,
Speaker 7: I suppose because my family is strange.
Speaker 11: I respect it.
Speaker 7: Well maybe not strange, maybe just normal for where they're.
Speaker 11: From, normal for where they are from. No, I respect that.
Speaker 14: In your defense, the Philippines, y'all are the black and
Speaker 14: Latinos of.
Speaker 7: Asia, Mexicans specific.
Speaker 14: Yeah, you're the Mexicans and the black people. That's what's
Speaker 14: that's what sucks about being what's great about being Filipino?
Speaker 14: Y'all get to be black and Latino and Asian. It's
Speaker 14: not fair. My step mom's from the Philippines, So like,
Speaker 14: I have this affinity because raised by a Filipino woman. Well,
Speaker 14: I was raised by a black woman and a Filipino woman.
Speaker 11: Long story.
Speaker 14: The point is that that makes a lot of sense, dude,
Speaker 14: Like that thing that radicalized you was I'm using radicalized
Speaker 14: as a stand in word, but just exposure, right, Like
Speaker 14: that's super interesting to know that, like not even the
Speaker 14: awareness of because like you said, like you you existed
Speaker 14: in this white space and you like, I don't understand
Speaker 14: why y'all exactly? Yeah, yeah, what did I do. It's
Speaker 14: like it's cause you're kind of not You're like, well,
Speaker 14: but yeah, I am right, Like it was it was
Speaker 14: kind of kind of one of those scenarios or like
Speaker 14: or did you kind of like I'm maybe putting a
Speaker 14: little more on like you, like you said you weren't
Speaker 14: aware of you you're presenting, but did you did you
Speaker 14: feel sort of culturally that like I.
Speaker 11: Feel like I belong here?
Speaker 9: Is that was?
Speaker 11: Is that true? Yeah?
Speaker 7: I mean I didn't understand. I understood that I looked
Speaker 7: a little bit different than everybody around me. Fine, yeah,
Speaker 7: a little bit not a time, like I'm not you know,
Speaker 7: I'm a core a Filipino. Like it's not. I understood
Speaker 7: that I looked a little bit different. I did not
Speaker 7: understand why that mattered word for a really long time.
Speaker 7: And then like the older I got, the more it
Speaker 7: would be, Like I go out into school and the
Speaker 7: sort of racism that I would get would be when
Speaker 7: people mistook me for being Latina or when people mistook
Speaker 7: me for being black. That's when I would get like
Speaker 7: act like really bad. Because where I'm from in Virginia
Speaker 7: Beach is the largest Filipino population on the East Coast,
Speaker 7: so be if Filipinos being around people were kind of
Speaker 7: used to. But it was when people thought that I
Speaker 7: was not just other, but a whole other other, you know,
Speaker 7: than what they were used to.
Speaker 10: And I didn't.
Speaker 7: I didn't understand, like I was born into this household.
Speaker 7: Like we've all watched the same fucking NASCAR races, we
Speaker 7: eat the same talten. I have to listen to your
Speaker 7: stupid ass Rush Limbaugh, So like, why am I different?
Speaker 7: It doesn't make sense to me.
Speaker 11: That's so interesting.
Speaker 14: I love that my undergrad was going to be history,
Speaker 14: but it kind of switched to like intercultural studies. I
Speaker 14: was just more interested, a little more like sociology. I
Speaker 14: majored in illustration and because I wanted to do art
Speaker 14: and cultural studies and then did social science for like
Speaker 14: grad school. Mine was a little different in the sense
Speaker 14: that listeners know. But like my father was a My
Speaker 14: father was a black panther, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 14: And you know, you know, we grew up in the
Speaker 14: space and it wasn't sort of like like you said,
Speaker 14: like this like light bulb was not my experience. My
Speaker 14: experience was like this is necessary for our survival. And
Speaker 14: I think I was more thrown back because which is
Speaker 14: again what I want to get to about, Like kind
Speaker 14: of the way that you present this stuff is like
Speaker 14: I feel like this information is available for all of us,
Speaker 14: Like it didn't take a lot of digging.
Speaker 11: For you to like I feel like it was not.
Speaker 14: Really I loved even even you talking about your your
Speaker 14: experience in like working in politics and organizing and volunteering
Speaker 14: where it's like a lot of times we feel like
Speaker 14: the access to entry is much harder than it actually is.
Speaker 11: You could just go there, just.
Speaker 14: Go over there and just be like, yo, can I help,
Speaker 14: and it's really like it really be that easy, you know.
Speaker 7: And people will be so happy to have you.
Speaker 14: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but yeah, I just feel like especially
Speaker 14: you're You're I'm jumping around, but like you You're Trump's
Speaker 14: l's for the week are like, I mean, it's right there,
Speaker 14: like you know what I'm saying, Like he'd just be
Speaker 14: saying I.
Speaker 11: Don't take a lot of work, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 14: Like, but obviously us as like you know, having formal
Speaker 14: training and research and fact checking and tumble checks, like
Speaker 14: you know, like having the formal training that definitely helps me.
Speaker 11: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 14: But besides that, sometimes I'll be like, well, this is
Speaker 14: just I mean, this is what he said he was
Speaker 14: going to do, and then it didn't happen. So I'm like,
Speaker 14: that's an l ain't it? Like, I just don't it.
Speaker 14: Don't be that hard. Okay, Now the next question is
Speaker 14: about your sense of humor, so like why are you
Speaker 14: so funny?
Speaker 11: Like what why are you like that? Because I mean,
Speaker 11: I love it.
Speaker 7: I'm mean to people you're not supposed to be mean to, Like,
Speaker 7: you know, there's such an Americans let me rephrase this.
Speaker 7: White Americans have such an ingrained, like inherent respect for
Speaker 7: positions of authority, like like the president, Like how can
Speaker 7: you talk shit about the president?
Speaker 13: You know?
Speaker 7: I don't care.
Speaker 11: Because he trash, because he's garment.
Speaker 7: I don't give a shit the color of a rusted
Speaker 7: out worstrop. What do I care? So I have no
Speaker 7: problems being being mean, and I'm mean in ways that
Speaker 7: give people like permission to be a little like thrilled
Speaker 7: by it or a little delighted by it. And that provides,
Speaker 7: I think, an entry away for people to learn a
Speaker 7: little bit of I love it. I don't know, America,
Speaker 7: We're not We're not great again, I should clarify white America, specifically,
Speaker 7: especially my people.
Speaker 11: I was like, oh no, man, I ever really yeah, yeah,
Speaker 11: you're right.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Like the people that I speak to are a
Speaker 7: lot of like suburban moms, right, I'm a forty one
Speaker 7: year old mom, and they are not used to middle fingers.
Speaker 11: Up at all.
Speaker 7: Especially Yeah recently, you know, like Biden got an office
Speaker 7: and everybody kind of fell asleep. Yeah, a democratic why
Speaker 7: people fell asleep. So being mean and just pulling out
Speaker 7: some claws. It's both like funny and fun for me,
Speaker 7: but it's also strategic because I do want there to
Speaker 7: be I want to present a permission structure for people
Speaker 7: to start learning to have a bit more backbone.
Speaker 11: I love that. I love that. I love that, Like
Speaker 11: you said, the term you use is permission, and that's
Speaker 11: what I enjoyed. I think that.
Speaker 14: Yeah, like knowing that, like you're from the South and
Speaker 14: that like adds even more of a color to what's
Speaker 14: happening here makes me like it even more. Yeah, I
Speaker 14: don't have no second thoughts about dragging a public figure,
Speaker 14: a politician like I. I have no second thoughts about it
Speaker 14: because again, like you asked for this, you know, what
Speaker 14: I'm saying, You signed up for this, you said you
Speaker 14: was gonna be this, Like all right, I'm about to
Speaker 14: get real black, But like there's parts of me that's
Speaker 14: just like, Okay, are you a bitch ass nigga? You
Speaker 14: know what I'm saying, Like, and I'm like, there are
Speaker 14: ways for me to be able to know if you are?
Speaker 14: You presented yourself like you a real one, And I'm like, okay,
Speaker 14: well there's qualifying entry points for me to do that,
Speaker 14: you know what I'm saying, Like we learn I'll respect
Speaker 14: in our culture, you respect your elders for their position
Speaker 14: as elders, But do I respect that person as a person.
Speaker 11: No, you gotta earn that.
Speaker 14: But authority figures are different. You're in a corrupt system,
Speaker 14: this system already don't like me, and you're applying for
Speaker 14: a job, and the job you applying for is governance.
Speaker 14: So I'm like, I don't give fuck about you. Like yo,
Speaker 14: I'm saying, like no, but there is something unique. I
Speaker 14: think about your particular intersections as ethnically ambiguous, from the South,
Speaker 14: highly educated, you know, and unfortunately in a patriarchal, misogynistic
Speaker 14: world of female right which I already know greats at
Speaker 14: so much, which I think I appreciate probably the most
Speaker 14: when you have time to like drag a comments or oh,
Speaker 14: like obviously men are not okay, Like we know.
Speaker 11: That ship is sailed, we're not okay. You know what
Speaker 11: I'm saying.
Speaker 14: Part of me feels like now this is like as
Speaker 14: much as I've evolved in my feminism, and you know,
Speaker 14: I'm the father of two daughters, and you know, I've
Speaker 14: learned to like really not understand how I was the
Speaker 14: problem to become to understand that I'm the problem, you know,
Speaker 14: even in just my ways of communicating, my advocacy stuff
Speaker 14: like that, my blind spots and all that. And I'm with,
Speaker 14: you know what I'm saying, I have nephews. I don't
Speaker 14: have like I said, I don't have sons, but I
Speaker 14: have I have nephews who I've like realized that I
Speaker 14: carried a lot of ways for which I thought I
Speaker 14: was supposed to talk to my daughter versus talking to
Speaker 14: a son, you know I'm saying. And I'm like, and
Speaker 14: I said, well, I'm but talk to my daughter the
Speaker 14: way I would talk to my son, you know, and
Speaker 14: just stupid, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 11: And then but even just being like man.
Speaker 14: Like sometimes my nephew could use like a gentle voice,
Speaker 14: like you know, a man just like him that could
Speaker 14: just be real gentle you know what I'm saying, like bro,
Speaker 14: like man, I'm sorry you sick man. It sucks when
Speaker 14: you get your feelings hurt, Like I get it, you
Speaker 14: know what I'm saying, Like being able to be gentle
Speaker 14: with him too. That said, I feel like I come
Speaker 14: from an era where words have consequences. You know, you
Speaker 14: say something to somebody might slap the shit out of you. Yes,
Speaker 14: you know what I'm saying, so like you watch your mouth.
Speaker 14: You know what I'm saying. Be cause like now, granted, I've,
Speaker 14: like I said, I've grown to where that like I
Speaker 14: don't know what the fuck you think you're talking to,
Speaker 14: Like I don't say that no more, you know what
Speaker 14: I'm saying, Where it's just like, okay, I have learned
Speaker 14: that that's not the person I need to be. However,
Speaker 14: I feel like a lot of these young men, especially
Speaker 14: in your comments sections, like they didn't have no big
Speaker 14: homies like I did. That would be like, m boy,
Speaker 14: if you don't shut you know what I'm saying, Like
Speaker 14: you know and just being like son, like, yes, so
Speaker 14: you can't just be talking. And I come from a
Speaker 14: city where she might slap the shit at you. Will
Speaker 14: you know what I'm saying. She wills, not just like
Speaker 14: you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 11: I'm saying.
Speaker 14: So I'm like, bro, you can't just be talking. So anyway,
Speaker 14: that's a long preamble to say. I appreciate when you
Speaker 14: take the time to drag a comment, So please tell me,
Speaker 14: Please tell me the origins of that.
Speaker 7: Yeah. So I have two sons. Okay, they are twins,
Speaker 7: they'll be fifteen in a few weeks. And I care
Speaker 7: a lot. Actually, I get a lot of shit for
Speaker 7: this from people on the left, from liberals as well,
Speaker 7: especially from women that I care a lot about men,
Speaker 7: and yeah, them not being okay, you know.
Speaker 11: I care, Yeah they're not ok Yeah, because I have two.
Speaker 7: Boys, and I don't want that to be them. I
Speaker 7: see the traps, yeah, that are waiting for them out there,
Speaker 7: that are being placed on purpose for sure by bad actors.
Speaker 7: So I want policy and conversations and acceptance and help
Speaker 7: for the men and the boys.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 7: And also when it's almost always, you know, like some
Speaker 7: Republican mouth breather who follows a bunch of AI pornbots
Speaker 7: gets into my comments to talk to me some kind
Speaker 7: of way. I decided that I was going to make
Speaker 7: an example of them, because these are people who have
Speaker 7: never experienced a consequence.
Speaker 5: Yes, ever, that's what I like.
Speaker 7: If you're a fifty year old white man, you have
Speaker 7: never experienced a consequence for running your mouth. That's what
Speaker 7: I'm saying, and I'm going to be that consequence for you.
Speaker 11: You're welcome, yes, thank you.
Speaker 7: And it just disgusts me because again they're almost always
Speaker 7: following like a bunch of teenage AI bots, you know,
Speaker 7: all of these just yeah, it's completely inappropriate behavior. They
Speaker 7: do not understand the concept of matching energy. They're completely
Speaker 7: shocked when they comment to my comments and give me
Speaker 7: shit and then I match their energy. They're always just
Speaker 7: a gast that like, how dare I? Well you Darren? First?
Speaker 14: What I'm just like, yeah, like for somebody who swear
Speaker 14: they so like you, so tough and hard, I'm like, man,
Speaker 14: little cupcake.
Speaker 11: Ass like one of the earliest.
Speaker 14: I mean, I'm telling you the earliest lesson I got
Speaker 14: as a child, and I still say it to my kids.
Speaker 14: You don't dish out what you can't take, like you don't,
Speaker 14: don't put it out there if you can't handle it.
Speaker 14: You know, So if you go get jokes and that
Speaker 14: person roast you back. I come from. That's our culture.
Speaker 14: It's like even even around family, it's just like bro,
Speaker 14: I was having a conversation with one of the parents, like,
Speaker 14: because I have the type of job I have, I
Speaker 14: do a lot of the pickups, the after school pickups.
Speaker 11: Yeah you know, so I was talking to one of them.
Speaker 14: Yes, yes, so I was talking to one of the
Speaker 14: moms just about like nicknames, growing up whatever, right, And
Speaker 14: my mother biting sarcasm is super funny, brilliant, but like
Speaker 14: fire baptized, speaking in tongues, praying the house down, she
Speaker 14: is a biting sarcasm.
Speaker 11: And I was like, she used to call me the
Speaker 11: before picture she just just cold his ice and I
Speaker 11: was just like dang.
Speaker 14: But again it's like she could she could always give
Speaker 14: it back, you know what I'm saying, So like we
Speaker 14: you just so you just knew, like if you was
Speaker 14: gonna get your feelings hurt, I don't know if you
Speaker 14: can handle that, you know, And even like specifically with
Speaker 14: the young ladies, it's just like, bro, like, I'm like,
Speaker 14: you follow with porn bots. Like part of me like
Speaker 14: again in the most misogynistic possible it's like, nigga, you
Speaker 14: ain't got no flavor cuz like right, you're weirdo, like
Speaker 14: that's why you're doing this.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and they claim like this is a group of people,
Speaker 7: you know whatever, I'm conservative Jena x men, Yeah, who
Speaker 7: claim a level of cultural dominance that that's what they're
Speaker 7: expressing when they come into the my comments section to
Speaker 7: yell at me. This like cultural dominance they think they
Speaker 7: have and it's completely manufactured. Yeah, you dominate no one.
Speaker 7: No one look at you like, and that's kind of
Speaker 7: the point that and I yeah, part of me is like, well,
Speaker 7: maybe I'm being too mean, but also I feel like
Speaker 7: I'm doing them a favor, like you really are you
Speaker 7: have no actual self esteem? You have no self esteem
Speaker 7: is built by doing estimable things. And when you spend
Speaker 7: all of your time online just yelling at women, of course, yeah,
Speaker 7: there's nothing esteemable there.
Speaker 14: It's so silly man, Like, I mean, we're totally off
Speaker 14: the rails here. But I love this because it's very
Speaker 14: important to me because I'm just like when my oldest
Speaker 14: was in like junior high. Like I was trying to
Speaker 14: tell my wife, Like I was like, the thing is,
Speaker 14: we have been experiencing rejection since fifth grade, and it's
Speaker 14: because I'm planning this all week to go actually approach Natasha,
Speaker 14: like you're thinking about it all week when I'm gonna
Speaker 14: wear the right outfit, I'm gonna do this. You go
Speaker 14: over there, you say something to her. She giggles to
Speaker 14: all her friends and runs away and says you it's
Speaker 14: just like, okay, that's the first time you got your
Speaker 14: heartbroken as a little boy, right, So fast forward to
Speaker 14: middle school. Oh my god, will you dance with me?
Speaker 14: You know, okay, you did it again. By time, these
Speaker 14: dudes are in the club and it's like, hey, hey,
Speaker 14: red jeans, red jeans, red jeans.
Speaker 11: You want to dance? No or whatever? Fuck you?
Speaker 14: You know what I'm saying. It's just like, you know,
Speaker 14: you go through this. But all that to say, hopefully,
Speaker 14: if you have a healthy sense, you start learning, like
Speaker 14: hey man, you catch more.
Speaker 11: Bees with honey bro like or you know what I'm saying, Like,
Speaker 11: maybe there's a better.
Speaker 14: Way to communicate with people, and you just got to
Speaker 14: understand that, Like I just think you don't know how
Speaker 14: to talk to people, like you don't know, like she
Speaker 14: got the right to be like no, thank you, and
Speaker 14: you gotta be like okay, word, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 14: You shot your shot, like I'm trying to be like
Speaker 14: as bland as passable. Look, you shoot your shot, you
Speaker 14: don't you don't make every shot.
Speaker 11: Yeah, you know what I'm saying. Like, you don't make
Speaker 11: every shot, You're gonna hit one of them. You know
Speaker 11: what I'm saying.
Speaker 14: Somebody gonna want to dance with you, and you're just like, okay, great,
Speaker 14: you know it was a good time. You know, hey,
Speaker 14: can we No, Okay, you know what I'm saying. It's
Speaker 14: just it is what it is. Your point, I think
Speaker 14: either I don't. It's so weird to be explained because
Speaker 14: I just I don't relate to it. I don't relate
Speaker 14: to somebody who doesn't understand that, like Broll, you're a
Speaker 14: total stranger, Like I don't care about your opinion number one,
Speaker 14: And why do you feel like you have the right.
Speaker 11: To like what is you doing?
Speaker 14: Like it's just it's embarrassing roh, Like yeah, like so anyway,
Speaker 14: I enjoy it, but I think you brought up something
Speaker 14: that I would love to hear you talk more about,
Speaker 14: like all this to say, like this is the note
Speaker 14: I wrote. It's like, I feel like this type of
Speaker 14: dragging is not only needed, but I think it's holy right,
Speaker 14: and I think it's a divine, sacred work to like
Speaker 14: truly roast a person. And I think when it comes
Speaker 14: to you in politics, it's because you know what you're
Speaker 14: talking about.
Speaker 11: It makes it even more important.
Speaker 14: But I guess my question is, like, do you think
Speaker 14: that there is something greater than just this is funny
Speaker 14: going on there?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 7: Yeah, for sure. I know it seems like it's for
Speaker 7: the lulls or whatever, or the views of the clicker
Speaker 7: of your engagement or whatever. But there's very little that
Speaker 7: I do in my content that's not strategic. And again
Speaker 7: it goes back to permission. Like you said, these men
Speaker 7: don't know me. Yeah, I don't care what they think
Speaker 7: about about me. I'm doing great. You know, you know
Speaker 7: you're free to hate me. I don't care. But I
Speaker 7: want to again provide a permission structure, especially for other
Speaker 7: women who exist online and who in this moment especially
Speaker 7: want to start raising their voices, to learn how to
Speaker 7: clap back, like, you have got to learn if you're
Speaker 7: going to be out there, especially right now in the
Speaker 7: world as a woman, you have got to learn how
Speaker 7: to tell somebody to fuck off in a way that
Speaker 7: that matter, that they will hear. Yeah, you know, because
Speaker 7: a lot of times men won't hear no. You know
Speaker 7: that the president doesn't know what the word not means.
Speaker 7: But if you can say it artfully and mean it
Speaker 7: with your whole chest, oftentimes it will work. So it's
Speaker 7: almost like providing an example, especially for women who are
Speaker 7: a little younger than me because I'm in my four now,
Speaker 7: how to detach themselves from the value assigned to them
Speaker 7: by random men who gives a fuck for show.
Speaker 14: And like the seasoning on top of that is just
Speaker 14: corny ass man, Like just yes, you are a cornball.
Speaker 14: Like that's where it's like, it's not the problem, but
Speaker 14: it's the part that just like gets under my fingernails,
Speaker 14: is like you're so fucking corny.
Speaker 11: Like you know what I'm saying. Yeah, So I'm like,
Speaker 11: why are you doing this? Like you're the same guy, bro, Like.
Speaker 7: It's the same guy every time.
Speaker 4: Why are y'all?
Speaker 11: Who where is this aesthetic?
Speaker 14: And then I'm just like speaking your language, like I
Speaker 14: don't know a single female that likes this, Like who anyway,
Speaker 14: let's go back to the to the profession, even though
Speaker 14: I do love that that's a part of the thing,
Speaker 14: like you mentioned before, formerly trained in history, you know
Speaker 14: your whiteboard stuff, like you're obviously very well researched, and
Speaker 14: I have my cynical answer to this, but like it's
Speaker 14: just so bizarre to me how specifically if we're gonna
Speaker 14: use these binaries of like right wing and left wing,
Speaker 14: like especially like content creation, to where I'm just like, Okay,
Speaker 14: we know that that's a grift, we know that's a hustle,
Speaker 14: we know you're doing that, but like but even with that,
Speaker 14: I'm just like they just be factually wrong to where
Speaker 14: I'm just like I'm not even like I'm not even
Speaker 14: worried about your position. I can't even get to your
Speaker 14: positions yet. I'm just saying, like you ain't doing no homework.
Speaker 14: I can't square that circle to me. But like what
Speaker 14: you do and I know what I do too, is
Speaker 14: because I guess, because I guess we care about reality.
Speaker 11: Is like I mean, do a lot of homework. You
Speaker 11: know what I'm saying so.
Speaker 14: Like I would love to know a little bit about
Speaker 14: your process as far as like your homework, your research,
Speaker 14: maybe what.
Speaker 11: Some tools you use before you even put it on.
Speaker 14: Like I mean, I've there's been times I've had to
Speaker 14: be like, hey, guys, hey, I fucked up. I thought
Speaker 14: it was you know what I'm saying, Like I'll come
Speaker 14: back and fact check myself, but I'll just be like,
Speaker 14: I don't understand fact check it all. Like I feel
Speaker 14: like I don't even That's why I won't do like
Speaker 14: jubileese or any to I'll be like.
Speaker 7: Oh I've refused. No, absolutely not. I'm like, yeah that ye, No,
Speaker 7: that's not my actual nightmare a stress stream of being
Speaker 7: in a jubilee. Yeah, I think that the way that
Speaker 7: like you were saying, the way that it's approached makes
Speaker 7: a difference. So like, I'm not here for a media career.
Speaker 7: I'm not here to make a bajillion dollars and become
Speaker 7: an influencer and go work on Chuck Schumer's reelection campaign.
Speaker 7: I don't give a shit about any of that.
Speaker 9: No, thank you.
Speaker 7: I am here. I don't falk what Chuck.
Speaker 11: Suber Yeah, no, thank you.
Speaker 7: I am here with a mission, and my mission is
Speaker 7: to help people who are probably just getting plugged in,
Speaker 7: or even people have been plugged in for a while
Speaker 7: and are getting tired, understand how power operates in America politically,
Speaker 7: historically and now. And that takes a lot of digging
Speaker 7: and a lot of research and a lot of fact checking,
Speaker 7: as you were saying, So I need people to trust me,
Speaker 7: because if they don't trust me, they're not going to
Speaker 7: take my advice. They're not going to get involved in
Speaker 7: the places I tell them to get involved. There's not
Speaker 7: going to be any strategy to the ways that people
Speaker 7: are formulating their resistance with their opposition to rising authoritarianism.
Speaker 7: So it matters a great deal that I am right
Speaker 7: in the things that I'm saying, yeah, and that it's
Speaker 7: accurate at least. I mean, I'm not saying my takes
Speaker 7: are always right. And of course, like you said, I
Speaker 7: make mistakes sometimes and I will go back and correct myself.
Speaker 7: But I mean, you know, I've been an American history
Speaker 7: person for twenty years now, so I do have a
Speaker 7: pretty big base of knowledge. Yeah, but I am going
Speaker 7: to go back before I say a word and like
Speaker 7: double check my dates, double check like was this person
Speaker 7: in the House of the Senate, you know, what was
Speaker 7: the bill number? Like, I am going to do all
Speaker 7: of that, and that takes a lot of digging. Like
Speaker 7: I don't I don't think it's on purpose necessarily, but
Speaker 7: going through congressional records is everything is very scattered. Nothing
Speaker 7: is in one place. You're checking fourteen different you know, resources, Congress,
Speaker 7: dot Gov and all these other things. And I have
Speaker 7: to collalate all of that and put it together and
Speaker 7: it takes hours, you know, hours. Yeah, but it's my
Speaker 7: full time job now, so yeah, that's fine. But when
Speaker 7: I was working full time, when I had like a
Speaker 7: corporate job, I was in big tech up until June
Speaker 7: of last year.
Speaker 1: Wow, So it was it was.
Speaker 7: Just a lot of hours. It was eighteen nineteen hour days.
Speaker 7: I slept almost sees zero. I mean it's better now,
Speaker 7: but yeah, I mean, I am very dedicated to making
Speaker 7: sure that the thing that I'm putting out there is trustworthy,
Speaker 7: is not emotionally reactive like I'm I think that is
Speaker 7: something that separates me from other creators, especially on the left,
Speaker 7: is I'm not trying to get a rise out of you.
Speaker 7: I'm not trying to make you that's so dopanic. I'm
Speaker 7: not doing that, Like that should terrify every American. I'm
Speaker 7: not doing that. Shit. You're an adult. If you want
Speaker 7: to be terrified, be terrified. I don't care. Like your
Speaker 7: feelings are your own problem. Yeah, I'm telling you what's happening,
Speaker 7: how it's rooted in American history, and what you can
Speaker 7: do about it, and like what people have done about
Speaker 7: it in the past. When similar things have happened, something
Speaker 7: similar is probably happened, and so like, yeah, that's my strategy.
Speaker 14: Yeah again, very much so like a kinsman like spirit
Speaker 14: in that. Yeah, Like I'm not I'm ultimately an educator,
Speaker 14: you know what I'm saying, And I'm like, I'm really
Speaker 14: just trying to onboard you to be like hey, bro,
Speaker 14: like these people aren't smarter than you.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 14: Yes, lastly, like I would ask because you kind of
Speaker 14: just brought it up like some sort of like historical
Speaker 14: parallels as far as like lessons from the past, like
Speaker 14: do you have any that like come to mind, like
Speaker 14: off the head?
Speaker 7: Oh yes, how much time do you have?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 7: I know people always always always want to talk about
Speaker 7: Nazi Germany right now, and like I get it, Okay,
Speaker 7: I'm not saying that there are no commonalities. Of course
Speaker 7: there are. It's so important to me that we focus
Speaker 7: on the commonalities that we have in American history because
Speaker 7: we are so different from Germany. Yeah, Germany was like
Speaker 7: very ethnically homogeneous. It's a tactic, a small country compared
Speaker 7: to ours. Yes, they don't have the same issues that
Speaker 7: we had. They had they you know, Nazi Germany came
Speaker 7: out of a very particular time place and people. We
Speaker 7: are a different time place and people. So there's that
Speaker 7: like studying not to German if you want, I'm not
Speaker 7: saying don't, but if you're going to study Nazi Germany,
Speaker 7: but you're not going to look at the Black Panthers,
Speaker 7: and you're not going to look at the Civil rights movement,
Speaker 7: and you're not going to look at reconstruction, and you're
Speaker 7: not going to look at Jim Crow.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 7: Yes, you're not going to come up with any viable solutions. Yes,
Speaker 7: because resistance in Germany came from the Soviet Union coming
Speaker 7: into right and you know, but resistance in America comes
Speaker 7: from black and indigenous and Latino people, yes, and like
Speaker 7: we did it y yes, and labor movements and all
Speaker 7: and so you have got to become more familiar with
Speaker 7: your own people, with your own people. And that's a
Speaker 7: little difficult in America, right because we're like, you know,
Speaker 7: we're not really a melting pot. We're more of like
Speaker 7: a weird mixed chopped salad. Yes, but we tend to
Speaker 7: be in our little on purpose are separated, segregated neighborhoods
Speaker 7: and our segregated schools, and we don't associate with and
Speaker 7: we do like Black History Month, and then we forget
Speaker 7: to read about any other point of Black history outside
Speaker 7: of that. Yeah, and we'll do like Indigenous People's Day
Speaker 7: on Columbus Day and never read another piece of Hitt.
Speaker 7: And all that is is a disservice because those are
Speaker 7: the effect of resistance methods that we can take and
Speaker 7: carry forward as we move through this administration.
Speaker 11: And we will, we.
Speaker 7: Will come out on the other side.
Speaker 11: But like love it.
Speaker 7: Even something like the guilded Age, right, like that I
Speaker 7: think is one of the most important historical analogs the
Speaker 7: late nineteenth century because in the guilded Age, we had
Speaker 7: an oligarchy, there was no income tax like the Rockefellers.
Speaker 7: There was so much corruption at every level of government,
Speaker 7: Jim Crow was on the rise, was being born out
Speaker 7: of that era. Labor unions were coming online and all
Speaker 7: of that, Like, there are so many parallels, but we
Speaker 7: made so many mistakes. Then we made so many We
Speaker 7: let the clan come back, Our labor unions were segregated,
Speaker 7: purposefully segregated. We got lots of things like the FDA
Speaker 7: and government regulations and things like that that were born
Speaker 7: out of all this corruption. But then we went way
Speaker 7: too far into scoldy moralizing and got prohibition, which was
Speaker 7: a terrible idea. So we need to avoid that. We
Speaker 7: need to avoid leaving behind people like we did during
Speaker 7: the Gilded Age, because that's what Americans tend to do.
Speaker 7: We have we like momentum, we like forward, we like progress,
Speaker 7: and we leave behind all these people who've been oppressed
Speaker 7: and marginalized and we just ignore them. So we need
Speaker 7: to we need to look at our own history and
Speaker 7: learn not just from the effective resistance of the past,
Speaker 7: but the mistakes we made in the past. And we
Speaker 7: can't really do that looking at Nazi Germany because that
Speaker 7: ended with.
Speaker 11: Those yeah exactly, I don't like.
Speaker 7: He killed himself and then we you know, set up
Speaker 7: NATO and left yeah, yeah, and that's not what we
Speaker 7: need to do here.
Speaker 14: My biggest gripe was like yeah, like especially with like
Speaker 14: the leftover Nazis, was like we didn't go hard enough
Speaker 14: on you. You know what I'm saying, Like we should
Speaker 14: have like really stamped that out, but you really cook
Speaker 14: him in, Like I mean you already nailed it. I see, Yeah,
Speaker 14: Gilded Age slave catchers, Like to me, this is like
Speaker 14: this some dread Scot shit to me, yes, you know
Speaker 14: what I'm saying, And yeah, all that like because that
Speaker 14: was like we're saying, okay, who's a citizen.
Speaker 11: Yeah, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 14: That was the dread Scott question, right or just like
Speaker 14: you know, States rights versus Federal rights, Marlboi versus Madison,
Speaker 14: like all this stuff like you said, like we've already
Speaker 14: fleshed out that in my mind is playing. But the
Speaker 14: Gilded Age thing is like nah, dude, like you cooking,
Speaker 14: because man, you got me all excited in my history.
Speaker 11: I'm excited now. I wish you could see my toes tapping.
Speaker 14: But like yeah, cause I'm like, okay, you think of
Speaker 14: like the Pinkertons, you think about like the ways for
Speaker 14: which a collective movement being broke in the sense that
Speaker 14: like you had these you know, steel workers in Pittsburgh
Speaker 14: that would strike and then they would just go get
Speaker 14: freed slaves to be like well, y'all could go do this,
Speaker 14: And it's like, man, what the hell you want me
Speaker 14: to do?
Speaker 11: You know what I'm saying, Like.
Speaker 7: Like exactly, yes, I mean any choice.
Speaker 11: I don't have no choice. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 14: It's like to the regime, like touche, it was a
Speaker 14: really good move, you know what I'm saying as somebody
Speaker 14: trying to hold on to a regime, But like what
Speaker 14: like to your point, like it's it's always like and
Speaker 14: this is the hard part for me, even talking about
Speaker 14: Black history, which is something I want to come back
Speaker 14: to with Like the cost of this is different for
Speaker 14: like African American communities. This this costs us more. You
Speaker 14: know what I'm saying, it's going to in the long
Speaker 14: run cost us all. Don't get me wrong, but what
Speaker 14: you're asking, especially at that moment, going back to the
Speaker 14: guilded dage, what you're asking me to step into. We're
Speaker 14: not ponying up the same amount of money here, you
Speaker 14: know what I'm saying, so I just wonder, like you said,
Speaker 14: like what are those lessons me living in Los Angeles,
Speaker 14: like you know, with the ice rage being a part
Speaker 14: of like deeply student in the Latino community, Like what's
Speaker 14: the strategic cause, you know, black people get out there,
Speaker 14: police open fire. You know what I'm saying, Like they
Speaker 14: gonna kill us, you know what I mean? So like
Speaker 14: is this strategic by us? Like kind of like, well,
Speaker 14: we'll be in the back row, Like what's happening here?
Speaker 14: You know what I'm saying? Like, so what are those lessons?
Speaker 14: What are ways for which we can like, like you said,
Speaker 14: like look at how America has responded to its you
Speaker 14: know hydra, that's that's rearing itself.
Speaker 11: Is an interesting thing.
Speaker 14: But I think the last thing before I ask you
Speaker 14: about predictions is this thing about about black history, this
Speaker 14: being Black History Month. So the hard part for me
Speaker 14: is like especially with like like I taught high school
Speaker 14: for six years, you know, when when discussing blackness or
Speaker 14: like you said, Indigenous Day or whatever, like it's this
Speaker 14: carve out, right, that is, you know, a corrective force, right,
Speaker 14: but the carve out a lot of times tends to
Speaker 14: just be like trivia, like vocabulary like, oh.
Speaker 11: Did you know that this person?
Speaker 5: Did you do?
Speaker 11: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 14: And it's like, of course, cause you're trying to like
Speaker 14: I get it, you're trying to wet the appetite, you
Speaker 14: know what I'm saying. But it's a carve out to me,
Speaker 14: that's not in the context. It's not context inbedded, it's
Speaker 14: not a part of history. It's this carveout that's taught
Speaker 14: as trivia, you know what I'm saying, and.
Speaker 7: Like an afterthought, yeah, or an adult it's like an afterthought.
Speaker 14: But then like you said, but then never talked about
Speaker 14: again as if like what it's like, well, we were
Speaker 14: there whole time, We're in every chapter, we're we're in
Speaker 14: all the semesters you're about to talk through like we.
Speaker 11: Was at all of them, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 14: And it's just like, so we're just gonna not point
Speaker 14: at the black people for the rest of the year
Speaker 14: when you talk about this while there needs to be
Speaker 14: and of course I'm a product of it, like the
Speaker 14: specificity of a moment to say, I just want to
Speaker 14: stop right here and say that this person was this
Speaker 14: you know what I'm saying, But like, what are ways
Speaker 14: for which we can reimbed the female voices, the indigenous voices,
Speaker 14: the black voices, back into just the curriculum period, which
Speaker 14: is bastardized by what Maggot's trying to say. You know
Speaker 14: what I'm saying, like the bastardized version of that that
Speaker 14: is clearly obviously racist, you know what I'm saying. It
Speaker 14: was like which so like a lot of times we
Speaker 14: start talking about this, they'd be like, you know what,
Speaker 14: that's our point, and I'm like, hold up, cuz that's
Speaker 14: not your point, Joe'm saying, that's not the point you
Speaker 14: make it, right. The point I'm making is saying we
Speaker 14: were there the whole time. Yeah, and I wouldn't love
Speaker 14: to have the dignity of being there the whole time,
Speaker 14: you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 11: So so I say that to echo.
Speaker 14: Your point about like we're just gonna stop talking about
Speaker 14: natives after indigited like they was there.
Speaker 11: You'll say it like.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and it matters today, Like I just got into
Speaker 7: it on threads or Instagram or whatever some platform with
Speaker 7: some leftist which is I'm not it's not a criticism
Speaker 7: of leftism, but he was saying like he was criticizing
Speaker 7: Kamala Harris's campaign. Fine, I don't care Kamala Harris, but
Speaker 7: he was a white guy and he was saying she
Speaker 7: kept making pitches about what she could do for the
Speaker 7: black community, but she never said what she could do
Speaker 7: for white people. And I was like, my good bitch,
Speaker 7: you made that up, Like she went on all black
Speaker 7: podcasts once and you gek that to mean that she
Speaker 7: didn't care about white people. Yeah, and like, second of all,
Speaker 7: what part of like first time home buyer tax credits
Speaker 7: to you? I only care about black people. Like the
Speaker 7: idea that policies or history books or whatever that have
Speaker 7: black people in them, or that would benefit black people
Speaker 7: only benefit black people is one of the reasons why
Speaker 7: we're in this stupid situation that we're in nout because, Yeah,
Speaker 7: it's bizarre the recognition of how black and Indigenous and
Speaker 7: Latino people have been in this country since the beginning.
Speaker 7: The Spanish have been here longer, the English Spanish has
Speaker 7: been spoken in this country longer than English. Yeah, to
Speaker 7: put open in that that raises everyone's boats, Like policies
Speaker 7: that benefit our marginalized communities benefit everyone else, Like the
Speaker 7: rising tide truly does raise all of the ships. And
Speaker 7: we can't get to an understanding of that without understanding
Speaker 7: the history because like take for example, what we're dealing
Speaker 7: with right now, mostly direct attacks on the fourteenth Amendment,
Speaker 7: which is a Reconstruction era amendment.
Speaker 11: Guys, yes, and we'll attack that, yeh.
Speaker 7: And attacks on the Voting Rights Ade of nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 7: which was which was passed to make to ensure that
Speaker 7: all black citizens could vote for us. So the things
Speaker 7: that are fucking up white people right now are because
Speaker 7: you don't understand what we got them in the first place.
Speaker 5: Yes, that's my rant.
Speaker 14: You couldn't now you know that that was my exact point.
Speaker 14: You're making my exact point. Or I'm just like no,
Speaker 14: this is like we were here, We're part of the country.
Speaker 14: So last thing is like, besides the prediction of not counting,
Speaker 14: Trump going to try to cancel the midterms, which is
Speaker 14: like I was like, I don't know why we talking
Speaker 14: about midtimers, he gonna try to cancel. But besides that,
Speaker 14: like who should we have our eye on?
Speaker 7: What do you think, oh, for the midterms over twenty
Speaker 7: eight midterms? Okay, I think we're going to win the midterms.
Speaker 11: Okay, I think.
Speaker 7: That the decentralization, the federalization of elections, the way that
Speaker 7: every state runs their own elections, I don't see a
Speaker 7: logistical way for him to prevent that from happening. Period,
Speaker 7: he could tell yeah state not to have elections. I
Speaker 7: suppose the only ones that would obey him would be
Speaker 7: red states, in which case we would have a congressional
Speaker 7: election of only Democrats that go to the hill.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 11: Fine, Yeah, that's good to me.
Speaker 7: That's how we got the Reconstruction era amendment, was the
Speaker 7: conservatives in the South state home and didn't go to Congress.
Speaker 7: So fine, But I don't think that's going to happen
Speaker 7: because there are too many Republicans in red states who
Speaker 7: want to run for governors and who want to be senators,
Speaker 7: and they're already having fund raisers. So I do think
Speaker 7: we're going to have the midterms, and I think we're
Speaker 7: going to win. And I'm basing that on the special
Speaker 7: elections that we've been having, sure since January of last year.
Speaker 7: And it's not just you know, I mean, special elections
Speaker 7: are different. We were like plus thirteen on average overperformance
Speaker 7: and special elections. That's not going to replicate itself in
Speaker 7: the midterms because special elections tend to be like very partisan.
Speaker 7: People are very dedicated to coming out. But in the
Speaker 7: last couple of special elections that we've had in Texas,
Speaker 7: New Jersey, Louisiana, Republicans have flipped. Yeah, and that is
Speaker 7: where I'm like, oh, it's in the back, Like maybe
Speaker 7: the majority won't be huge. I don't know that it's
Speaker 7: going to be a landslide because they're going to fuck
Speaker 7: with it whatever. Voter suppression is real, But I do
Speaker 7: think that at least the House we're gonna we're gonna win,
Speaker 7: and the Senate I'm looking at. I think Alaska is
Speaker 7: super interesting. Ohio, North Carolina for sure. Everybody loves word
Speaker 7: Cooper in North Carolina. Yeah, Texas, whether you like Jasmine,
Speaker 7: crocod or Tallerico, either one of them are interesting. You know, Yeah,
Speaker 7: Texas could be interesting.
Speaker 11: So yeah, I think it's love it.
Speaker 7: If I were a Republican, I would be very nervous.
Speaker 14: You better be, because like you can't pretzel yourself any worse.
Speaker 14: Like I think people forget that, like ambition didn't die
Speaker 14: when Trump became president. People still are ambitious and at
Speaker 14: some point you won't realize like shit ain't working, Homie.
Speaker 11: Which rings the last way? If we got time. Yeah,
Speaker 11: let me ask you about twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 9: What do you think.
Speaker 7: It's too it's too No, God, No, he's not gonna.
Speaker 5: Make it that long.
Speaker 14: I was like, he's gonna I keep telling all my friends.
Speaker 14: I was like, I think you have to accept that
Speaker 14: he's gonna die in office anyway.
Speaker 7: But yeah, yeah, he's not gonna make it. It's gonna be.
Speaker 7: It's gonna be Vance. Although I think he'll have some
Speaker 7: competition maybe from Marjorie Tiller Green. I think she's going
Speaker 7: to try to run.
Speaker 11: I think Marjorie's running well. About Tuck.
Speaker 7: Tucker, I think he might go for like a cabinet position.
Speaker 7: You think so he's just like a stupid little bow tie.
Speaker 7: I don't think anybody would go for him. I don't know.
Speaker 11: Okay, stand at me. I really don't, like you can't.
Speaker 7: But yeah, he's so unlikable. Yeah, but so is jd.
Speaker 9: Vance.
Speaker 7: To be honest anyway, on our side, you know, it's
Speaker 7: so early, Yeah, and I think that there are people
Speaker 7: who are starting to poke their heads up now, Like
Speaker 7: I think Osof in Georgia is starting to be a
Speaker 7: little and he's the best fundraiser in seven So the
Speaker 7: two best fundraisers are actually a ticket. I would really
Speaker 7: be interested in, which is OSOF and AOC. They're the
Speaker 7: two best fund raiders in the party, and that's a ticket.
Speaker 7: I would not be upset.
Speaker 11: About, you know, AO, AOC ticket would be crazy.
Speaker 7: I'm not necessarily on the Newsome train. I'm not gonna lie,
Speaker 7: I'm not really on the Newsom train.
Speaker 14: Sister Taylor secret about California feels about I know, I know,
Speaker 14: which is not so much of a secret.
Speaker 7: Yeah, not so hot.
Speaker 14: We we'd definitely be looking at our like our like
Speaker 14: red our Orange counties are our red stations, and they'd
Speaker 14: be like Gavin newsowhere like yeah no.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 7: Sure, hard degree.
Speaker 11: Yeah no for real, same heart degree. Yeah.
Speaker 7: Anyway, I appreciate that he was one of the first
Speaker 7: high profile Democrats to stand up to Trump in this administration.
Speaker 7: I appreciate that That's not good enough reason for me
Speaker 7: to make a president.
Speaker 14: Not the president. Yeah, I'm like, you're not. Yeah, you're
Speaker 14: not a flaming bag of shit.
Speaker 11: I got it. Yeah, you know what I'm saying, Like,
Speaker 11: you're a DC.
Speaker 7: Hell, you're not a fascist.
Speaker 14: Yeah you're not a fascist, Like okay, but you're willing
Speaker 14: to get on a podcast because for some reason you
Speaker 14: want like I don't understand.
Speaker 11: Where your where's your code?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 14: And also I'm like, I don't know, man, you know,
Speaker 14: a grown man like that still slicking his hair back
Speaker 14: is it's just odd to me.
Speaker 7: That's going to do it for some like sixty year
Speaker 7: old ladies in the suffer. He's going to have like
Speaker 7: a Kennedy thing, you know, like, oh he's so handsome,
Speaker 7: but that's but so.
Speaker 11: Is awesome Hoodsop's handsome.
Speaker 14: Yeah maybe I don't know, bro, Yeah, you just I
Speaker 14: feel like you like I feel like, here's the thing.
Speaker 11: Here's the thing about about we need to end this.
Speaker 14: But the thing about Gavin to me is I'm like,
Speaker 14: there's this just like sheen to where it's just like, oh,
Speaker 14: you need to be liked, and like, you know, it's
Speaker 14: this whole like la transplant thing, like you know where
Speaker 14: everybody's like, oh it's so Hollywood and we're like natives
Speaker 14: are like those are all transplants. We're not like that,
Speaker 14: you know what I'm saying. So, but to me, he
Speaker 14: just has that to where I'm just like, oh, you
Speaker 14: need to be the prom king. You need to like, Oh,
Speaker 14: you need this too much? You feel me like, and
Speaker 14: to me, I'm like, oh I don't. I can't. I
Speaker 14: can't ride like this. You need to you, you need
Speaker 14: you need to be popular too much. I don't.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I prefer president.
Speaker 11: I can't trust you.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 7: They need to resent being there a little bit. I
Speaker 7: feel like it needs to feel like you.
Speaker 11: Gotta like you gotta kind of be like, I'll be
Speaker 11: all right if it don't work out.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you know, there needs to be a sense of
Speaker 7: service entitlement.
Speaker 11: Man, my camera turns off every half hour. I don't
Speaker 11: know why.
Speaker 14: I stuff to figure that out anyway, but that's a
Speaker 14: good sign for us to wrap this up. Please, can
Speaker 14: you drop all the at mentions for your stuff so
Speaker 14: that these people can enjoy what I enjoy.
Speaker 7: It's Amanda's mild takes everywhere except not Blue Sky. I
Speaker 7: can deal with that, but.
Speaker 14: Everywhere else, Yeah, Amanda's mile takes with the Pettysburg addressed.
Speaker 14: It's brilliant. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you,
Speaker 14: we appreciate it. Y'all go please, you know she'd be
Speaker 14: alway air dropping gyms.
Speaker 11: It's just a good time.
Speaker 3: This is it could happen here in Executive Disorder, our
Speaker 3: weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the
Speaker 3: crumbling world, and what it means for you.
Speaker 11: I'm Garrison Davis today.
Speaker 3: I'm joined by Sophie Lichtermann, James Stout, and Robert Evans.
Speaker 3: This episode, we're covering the week of February fourth to
Speaker 3: February eleventh. It was the Super Bowl. Wasn't that fun?
Speaker 3: I heard it was streaming on Peacock this year, so
Speaker 3: I built it up my Peacock account, went to the
Speaker 3: sports section and was surprised at how few Americans there
Speaker 3: were and how many other flags there were. And I
Speaker 3: do not remember this much skating typically at previous the
Speaker 3: previous Super Bowl shows or the ski jumping, But I
Speaker 3: mean I was it was still fun to watch people compete.
Speaker 1: Uh huh.
Speaker 11: Yeah, this is because I was watching the Winter Olympics.
Speaker 1: Get it it's I did, I did, I did get it.
Speaker 2: Good work gear, no fun stuff.
Speaker 5: What's your favorite Winter Olympics? And Lane Garrison as a.
Speaker 3: Canadian, Honestly, the ski jumping is pretty exciting.
Speaker 11: They really fly, Yeah, they do.
Speaker 6: That video of that guy that went viral that did
Speaker 6: like a under six minute mile on skis uphill.
Speaker 3: Yeah, going uphill.
Speaker 1: It's crazy to me.
Speaker 5: Clear he's not going for a mile, like, he just
Speaker 5: goes uphill, like the whole course is like a mile. Ash.
Speaker 5: Well yeah, still cross country skis having insane v O
Speaker 5: two maxes cross country ski when I get the chance.
Speaker 5: It's fun. But they don't go that fast.
Speaker 11: But no, we do.
Speaker 3: We do need to discuss this. The actual super Bowl
Speaker 3: halftime show actually, well no, not the actual one, the
Speaker 3: other one. Yeah, the All American halftime show.
Speaker 5: Maybe I'll just say the kid who Bad Bunny gave
Speaker 5: his Grammy too was not the same child who you
Speaker 5: saw being abducted by Ice in a little blue bunny hat.
Speaker 6: It was supposed to symbolize a young beneath him.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, yeah, not anything else.
Speaker 5: It really was not.
Speaker 6: There was a lot of underlying messages in that show
Speaker 6: that were very important.
Speaker 1: But it would be weird.
Speaker 2: It would be weird if he put in a kid
Speaker 2: that looked like the five year old that was abducted
Speaker 2: in prison by Ice to give him a grammy.
Speaker 5: That would have been really would not have been a
Speaker 5: cool move. Yeah, that would that would have been bad.
Speaker 1: Just to say it was a great halftime show. I
Speaker 1: enjoyed it thoroughly.
Speaker 3: And now here's a clip of the All American halftime show,
Speaker 3: the real halftime show, our favorite Kid Rock. Ready, whoa,
Speaker 3: somebody makes some motherfucking.
Speaker 4: Noise in here. There's nobody there.
Speaker 3: This is not This is not from the show. This
Speaker 3: is from Silicon Valley. This was This was a joke
Speaker 3: that they did on the TV show Silicon Valley, which
Speaker 3: looks almost exactly like hilarious the Turning Point halftime show.
Speaker 5: I'm about to say, I didn't hear that aside from
Speaker 5: the Jewels the I thought that was a new angle.
Speaker 2: They did have more people in the crowd, but they
Speaker 2: were hired actors, But they did have more people in
Speaker 2: the crowd.
Speaker 3: Shockingly lines up.
Speaker 6: Our colleague Molly Hunger described his outfit as needed to
Speaker 6: run out the home deep bo to pick up us
Speaker 6: part for something.
Speaker 2: He's in like shorts and has a wristbracer.
Speaker 3: It's great, We'll get to Kid Rock in a sec.
Speaker 3: But let's start at the beginning. While watching the Turning
Speaker 3: Point stream, there was no indication where the show is
Speaker 3: being broadcast from or whether it was live but four
Speaker 3: performers saying back to back to back, indicating the show
Speaker 3: was cut together from previously taped performances. Yes, the venue
Speaker 3: was this dark, narrow, rectangular room with high ceilings and
Speaker 3: studio lights. In the middle was a long stage with
Speaker 3: a small audience on either side, maybe torch people tops.
Speaker 3: But the show was introduced by none other than Jack Pisobek,
Speaker 3: which I will show now.
Speaker 16: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Turning Point USA All
Speaker 16: American Halftime Show.
Speaker 3: And this one's for you, Charlie.
Speaker 2: Great stuff. So they stuff.
Speaker 5: Four hundred and forty six down votes on rumble h
Speaker 5: that's rough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and I watched this. I will admit I
Speaker 2: watched it after the actual halftime show because it was
Speaker 2: on YouTube and there was no reason to actually catch
Speaker 2: it during the Super Bowl. And by the way, the
Speaker 2: viewership number suggests that most people who did catch it
Speaker 2: watched it after the Super Bowl.
Speaker 5: Yes, because it's weird.
Speaker 2: To pause or turn off the sound in the middle
Speaker 2: of the Super Bowl and pull up like a laptop
Speaker 2: or something to go watch the fucking Turning Point USA show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really cumbersome, really really anti social behavior at
Speaker 3: the super Bowl party. To turn off the stream, plug
Speaker 3: in your laptop, go to rumble dot com.
Speaker 2: If you are doing that, your kids have not talked
Speaker 2: to you longer than they've been alive, Like they abandoned
Speaker 2: you before they were born.
Speaker 6: Well, parsident Trump watched the actual Super Bowl halftime show.
Speaker 1: Sure he did, there's photos of him watch it.
Speaker 2: He knows that this is loser shit. It's it's just
Speaker 2: about the loserst loser ship that I have ever seen.
Speaker 2: And right after Jack Besovic introduced it, it cuts to this.
Speaker 2: You've got this black stage and there's like an amp
Speaker 2: on the stage and a guy walks up to it
Speaker 2: with a guitar.
Speaker 17: Not a guy Brandley Gilbert. Okay, that's Bentley. Okay, that's
Speaker 17: that's Brentley. I was going to introduce his name afterwards.
Speaker 17: But Garrison, you miss something important because Brandley Gilbert's band
Speaker 17: is where this guy is from. But the all electric
Speaker 17: guitar performance of the Star Spangled Banner is led by
Speaker 17: the great guitarist Spencer wohsdor.
Speaker 5: Wow, who.
Speaker 17: Where are they finding these guys in Brandley Gilbert's band, Garrison,
Speaker 17: This all sounds like and I think.
Speaker 5: You should leave sketch.
Speaker 11: I'm making up these names.
Speaker 3: The whole performance was that. I think you should leave sketch.
Speaker 3: But no, it's beautiful electric guitar riff of the Star
Speaker 3: Spangled Banner.
Speaker 2: No, I got a clip to play because there's a
Speaker 2: moment here. They had pyrotechnics during the show, like the
Speaker 2: real show had, but they're not good. They were better
Speaker 2: for the kid rock performance. For the electric guitars, they're
Speaker 2: just kind of sad and they make a sad, little
Speaker 2: popping sound. Well, again, a single man is playing guitar.
Speaker 5: Stay Jimmy Hendricks played the Star Spangled Banner on guitar,
Speaker 5: but he was good at playing guitars. But he was
Speaker 5: one of the best guitar players. Yeah, yeah, different. It
Speaker 5: does seem like a high yardstick. They've chosen to measure themselves.
Speaker 2: We'll talk about that in a second, but I gotta
Speaker 2: show you guys. You just need to see the pop
Speaker 2: of these pyro technics just for a second, and you,
Speaker 2: the listener needs to hear it.
Speaker 5: It's giving village fyworks shit.
Speaker 12: It.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Oh that's beautiful.
Speaker 1: It's great. I don't know what you're talking about. I
Speaker 1: loved it.
Speaker 2: Per what you were saying earlier. There's a New York
Speaker 2: Times article for Fox's sake that the original title it
Speaker 2: was published under was the All American Halftime featured an
Speaker 2: electric anthem, unlike Kendricks. Now they changed that title in
Speaker 2: the reporter's notebook article to what does a whaling electric
Speaker 2: take on the Star Spangled Banner mean?
Speaker 5: I'm glad that they are getting to the core of
Speaker 5: the issues the publication that ignored all my pitches about
Speaker 5: me and math for several years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's good. This is much more important. Let's
Speaker 2: listen to a quote from this article that I think
Speaker 2: we can all agree it matters much more than a
Speaker 2: war in musical terms. Wasdorp's version of the Star Spangled
Speaker 2: Banner was conservative too. Despite the bent notes and feedback,
Speaker 2: it largely stuck to the melody and conveyed it reference
Speaker 2: to stubborn form of patriotism.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I kind of loved it. What do
Speaker 1: you mean, you know it's terrible.
Speaker 11: It's terrible.
Speaker 1: Hard watch hard ball.
Speaker 2: That was the best part of it. I hate to
Speaker 2: say it, but unfortunately the pyrotechnics were basically competent for
Speaker 2: the Kid Rock Show, which might have been the only
Speaker 2: competent part of the kid rock Show.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I want to hate the kid rock Show.
Speaker 2: I haven't.
Speaker 3: I think there's some other hits from this from this show, though,
Speaker 3: including including Brandley Gilbert's second song, which starts as a
Speaker 3: slow acoustic ballad and then abruptly changes into whatever this is.
Speaker 11: Jay, maybe we.
Speaker 1: Can learn how to kids and watch include now as
Speaker 1: false and he.
Speaker 7: Says, saying, what you have Rover spread like that?
Speaker 4: Who saw the yallow nose?
Speaker 5: He's trying to rock.
Speaker 11: He's trying to rock.
Speaker 3: He is, he is trying, he is, he is trying
Speaker 3: faults he said. She said, I'm not going to read
Speaker 3: into what those lyrics are trying to express.
Speaker 1: Slow.
Speaker 3: But that was the second song I do. I want
Speaker 3: to skip to the third act, which is Lee Brice.
Speaker 3: He started his second song by saying, quote, Charlie gave
Speaker 3: people microphone so that they could say what was on
Speaker 3: their mind. This is what's on mine. And this next
Speaker 3: song starts like a parody of a conservative country song.
Speaker 3: Here's here's the beginning.
Speaker 4: I just want to catch my fish, drive my true, drink.
Speaker 9: My beer, not wake up all this stuff.
Speaker 5: I just want to catch my fish.
Speaker 3: I'm just a little teary eyed. Honestly, just listen to that.
Speaker 3: The next part is cons the next line.
Speaker 5: Okay, I'm coming at this rule.
Speaker 3: This is the next line of the song. The same
Speaker 3: kind of gun I hunt with just killed another man.
Speaker 3: The only thing mine ever shot?
Speaker 5: Was it?
Speaker 3: Dear from a deer stand? That's the next Sloty.
Speaker 5: Are you including that man?
Speaker 7: Miracle?
Speaker 3: Why would you do that in a song? And the
Speaker 3: way he sings it is so bizarre, it's.
Speaker 11: It's it's about Charlie Cook.
Speaker 1: I would like to hear it.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm just realizing.
Speaker 11: What the same kind of gone a hunt will just
Speaker 11: cute the only thing I shot? What is he doing?
Speaker 16: Why?
Speaker 2: The gun violence problem is bad enough that he has
Speaker 2: to like make a comment about it existing and being depressing.
Speaker 2: He has to do that, but then immediately because the
Speaker 2: next bit after this, the most of the song is
Speaker 2: basically about I don't want to listen to the news, correct.
Speaker 5: Like I don't want to I don't want to watch.
Speaker 3: Things that remind me very The very next verse, yeah,
Speaker 3: I just want to to cut my grass, feed my dog,
Speaker 3: wear my boots, not turn the TV on and sit
Speaker 3: and watch the news.
Speaker 5: That's an option for you, Like you can do that.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, that's very doable, friend.
Speaker 2: That's entirely doable for you folks.
Speaker 1: You could do that.
Speaker 3: And I'm sure he is. But this is what he's
Speaker 3: scared of hearing on the news.
Speaker 4: Told Fatal the little boys a little girl.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there it is.
Speaker 18: This yours.
Speaker 3: Of the creek, and discancel your ass world.
Speaker 11: But then he said it.
Speaker 1: He put it in a sum Oh my god, I
Speaker 1: almost choke.
Speaker 19: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah again, man, you're you're being paid to sing about this.
Speaker 11: It's amazing.
Speaker 5: In fact, it's your job because it's it's you know
Speaker 5: that a few musical abilities. It's your it's your presumably
Speaker 5: well paid job.
Speaker 3: The whole repeated refrain of the song is it's not
Speaker 3: so easy being cut in this country nowadays that you guys.
Speaker 5: Are in charge.
Speaker 11: Entire song.
Speaker 1: Question, question, who is at this event? How many people?
Speaker 11: Where is it?
Speaker 3: About two hundred paid attendees in Atlanta, Georgia at a
Speaker 3: sound stage.
Speaker 6: Paid attendees, paid attendees cucial Yeah.
Speaker 5: Okay, a lot of like fresh stetsons and like unbroken
Speaker 5: in boots in the audience.
Speaker 11: Maybe so many cowboy hats in the audience. You don't understand.
Speaker 5: It's like a bar in Jackson, Wyoming.
Speaker 3: I get the vibe, so many of them, and you're like,
Speaker 3: you're in Atlanta. Not many people wear cowboy hats in Atlanta.
Speaker 11: I'm sorry. That's it's not like Texas or Oklahoma.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, I love. I love to see someone in
Speaker 5: a freshly purchased setting.
Speaker 3: The next song, after this, after this country one, well,
Speaker 3: they're all country songs, but like the next song is
Speaker 3: what I think is a love song that that goes
Speaker 3: quote sometimes I drink too much. Sometimes I test your trust.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I don't know why you stay with me. I'm
Speaker 3: hard to love, which, yeah, that's related to the last
Speaker 3: song you were singing. Maybe a little bit about about
Speaker 3: bullying your children. Wow, sick oh man. But finally, finally
Speaker 3: the main act, right, Well, what we've all been waiting for,
Speaker 3: kid kid rock. I'm gonna play a little over a
Speaker 3: minute for us. We're not gonna include all of this
Speaker 3: in the episode. We're just gonna we're just gonna include
Speaker 3: the I Am a kid section. But I do need
Speaker 3: to show show this all to James.
Speaker 5: Yeah, because this is fun. I think a lot about
Speaker 5: Like there's that Steve Goodman parody country song that you
Speaker 5: couldn't write today because it's better musically and less ridiculous
Speaker 5: than the actual country songs that we're hearing.
Speaker 11: All right, James, are you ready?
Speaker 5: Always I've never seen it before.
Speaker 2: Now that's enough. That's more than enough.
Speaker 11: There's a lot to talk about.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we got to unpack some of this.
Speaker 1: He was better at the rn C.
Speaker 3: He's flipping that. He's flipping that mic NonStop. He loves
Speaker 3: that move.
Speaker 5: But his name is But that's how we got the
Speaker 5: wrist injury.
Speaker 2: I will say the first guys to play had a
Speaker 2: mic with a pair of brass knuckles built into it,
Speaker 2: which I did like, I think we do need a
Speaker 2: version of that. That's a full knuckle duster from World
Speaker 2: War One, so it's got the trench knife on the
Speaker 2: other side.
Speaker 5: Perfect. Yeah we can. Yeah, at least take a risk.
Speaker 5: Don't be a coward every time you.
Speaker 4: Fit them on.
Speaker 5: Take a risk, be a man.
Speaker 3: As the kid rock lights turn on, he explosively jumps
Speaker 3: onto the stage. White fur coat, acid washed jeans, black
Speaker 3: for Dora. Yeah, I used to be a piece of shit.
Speaker 5: It's jeans Garrison. These are jewelts that cut they are
Speaker 5: cut off a bunch of me jeorts and.
Speaker 6: Second correction, it was a white furute code vest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a vest. And I should note also that
Speaker 2: his fedora did not have the safari flaps. I repeat,
Speaker 2: it did not have the safari flaps.
Speaker 5: But it's leather, like a shiny black leather, not a
Speaker 5: breatheable hat.
Speaker 3: It's it's beautiful. It's beautiful to see. It is, really,
Speaker 3: it really is, And I think you should leave sketch
Speaker 3: come to life.
Speaker 5: It's ok.
Speaker 11: He just she just jumps around. It's flipping that mic.
Speaker 1: How long does he perform? How many songs do we get?
Speaker 11: He gets like two or three songs?
Speaker 13: Yeah.
Speaker 5: None.
Speaker 3: None of the audio for this song matches what we're
Speaker 3: seeing on the sinking is totally off, leading a lot
Speaker 3: of people to suspect that that it was it was
Speaker 3: lip SYNCD on stage poorly. We'll get to that in
Speaker 3: a sec. But the next song began with a two
Speaker 3: minute prelude featuring the cello and violin.
Speaker 5: Which is it one of those like it's just the
Speaker 5: frame of a cello. Oh, James, you'll see I'm going
Speaker 5: to see it can offense to god, that's a real cello. Wow.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, that's an interesting outfits. Dressed kind of like
Speaker 5: dressed like that. Yeah, one of the three Musketeers is
Speaker 5: playing cello. For those of you listening, get home, wait.
Speaker 9: Please welcome our brother Robert.
Speaker 3: Richie Robert Richard Ritchie is kid Rock his real government name.
Speaker 3: They reintroduced him under his legal name for the second song.
Speaker 5: Kid Rocks Are Not Born. There may those people who
Speaker 5: introduced him. What was there?
Speaker 2: That was it for them?
Speaker 11: Unclear?
Speaker 3: Okay, they only existed on screen to introduce kid Rock
Speaker 3: as kid Rock the first time, and then as rich Russell,
Speaker 3: Richie Russell whatever is Robert Richie, Robert Richie, whatever his
Speaker 3: real name is. That's the only time they appeared was
Speaker 3: to introduce kid Rock both times. Now, after the show,
Speaker 3: it was revealed this whole thing was pre taped on
Speaker 3: a sound stage Atlanta, and a few days later Kid
Speaker 3: Rock released a video addressing the rumors that his performance
Speaker 3: was lip SYNCD, which he denies.
Speaker 20: You know, we taped it and then they sent me
Speaker 20: a first cut, and my comment was, the sink is
Speaker 20: off they were trying to line up. First off, if
Speaker 20: we would have done it, if we would have recorded
Speaker 20: it and then and then played like we were singing it,
Speaker 20: lip synced it.
Speaker 21: It would have been Pie. It would have been Pie.
Speaker 20: The line up it was very difficult for them because
Speaker 20: somebody clearly wasn't super familiar with the song. Also, when
Speaker 20: I asked him, I go, you know, Freddy raps that
Speaker 20: song with me my DJ, And they're like he does what?
Speaker 20: And I'm like, oh no, I'm like, yeah, do we
Speaker 20: have any cutaways of Freddy?
Speaker 9: And and they know they didn't know.
Speaker 5: He wasn't.
Speaker 21: No, he didn't even line up any TV time. No, sorry,
Speaker 21: So they don't have that.
Speaker 20: Now it's extremely difficult for them to line up the
Speaker 20: sink could have been done if we.
Speaker 21: Had more time.
Speaker 6: Let's pour one out for Freddy DJ no screen time.
Speaker 3: So mister Rock said that Turning Play was having trouble
Speaker 3: lining up the audio with the visuals, in part because
Speaker 3: the song is actually performed vocally by two people going
Speaker 3: back and forth. Wow and Turning Point did not have
Speaker 3: a camera on the other vocalist. So that's why it
Speaker 3: looks weird when there's obviously vocals being heard, but mister
Speaker 3: Rock isn't singing.
Speaker 11: And again, the.
Speaker 2: Reason why no one at Turning Point is familiar with
Speaker 2: Kid Rocks music. Is that even they don't like Kid Rocks.
Speaker 3: Music, and mister Rock demonstrated how this is supposed to
Speaker 3: go in this video with with his DJ which we
Speaker 3: do need to see thirty seconds up.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Oh oh thanks scare care I love you
Speaker 2: so much. No, I'm sorry, Sophie. We need to have
Speaker 2: a conversation about this. This is in violation of several
Speaker 2: rules the company has that I just want to call
Speaker 2: out the fact that there is a pike behind them.
Speaker 2: Do you mean the fish that has been to Dermid Yeah,
Speaker 2: not what you normally expect. I would have expected the
Speaker 2: other kind of pike behind Garrett.
Speaker 3: No, that seems like mister Rock's abode. Actually, this feels
Speaker 3: very on brand for him.
Speaker 4: Is that a drone?
Speaker 3: No, that's that's a It's a deer antler turned into
Speaker 3: a candlestick.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it looks like a turned into a candlestick.
Speaker 5: Classy Okay maybe, although.
Speaker 2: From a distance it does kind of look like a
Speaker 2: bad three D printing of Deep Space nine.
Speaker 20: Yeah, it's Hookers, all Tricken, Mountain, holly Wood, It's one
Speaker 20: hoods of the world, miss understood.
Speaker 21: It's all good, it's all in fun.
Speaker 5: Oh damn, I'm not having a physical reaction. I've cringed
Speaker 5: with every muscle in my body.
Speaker 3: Here's how he explained how it's supposed to go.
Speaker 20: So he's stilling, you know those words for me? Why
Speaker 20: I can boom bang my head keep going and carrying on.
Speaker 20: Now when I'm doing that, you see me. I'm on
Speaker 20: over the stage. Who I'm flipping the mic?
Speaker 21: I'm down here, I'm over here, back boom. I know
Speaker 21: these guys at a difficult time getting that scene together.
Speaker 20: So I have nothing but good things to say, not
Speaker 20: only about Turning Point, but the production team that they
Speaker 20: work with on this and other events.
Speaker 6: My favorite part about live music is when you post
Speaker 6: a over four minute flip video explaining.
Speaker 7: How fifty second video about how it.
Speaker 6: Was supposed to go and explaining to people things that
Speaker 6: don't actually exist.
Speaker 3: No, his whole delivery sounds like good Tim Robinson bit.
Speaker 3: It's it's it's so beautiful, incredible. The Bad Bunny Hat
Speaker 3: Times show averaged one hundred and thirty five point four
Speaker 3: million viewers during the show's time slot, and Half Music
Speaker 3: claims it's now the most watched show in Super Bowl history.
Speaker 3: Me andwhile tpusa's show attracted upwards of six point one
Speaker 3: million concurrent live viewers on Turning Point USA's YouTube channel,
Speaker 3: Dude to licensing restrictions, Turning Point was unable to stream
Speaker 3: the show on x Everything app as they originally planned.
Speaker 1: Which got announced like an hour before.
Speaker 11: Right before.
Speaker 5: But that's probably why they didn't hit one hundred and
Speaker 5: thirty five million, because one hundred and twenty nine of
Speaker 5: them were waiting.
Speaker 11: Otherwise they would have got it.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: The All American Halftime Show now boasts twenty three million
Speaker 3: views on their YouTube and Rumble pages combined. The Bad
Speaker 3: Bunny Show is seventy million. A lot of these views
Speaker 3: are also people like me and other other researchers. Yeah
Speaker 3: for sure, and it gives me curious Americans who are
Speaker 3: who are interested in what they had to throw together.
Speaker 3: But a footage from inside Trump's Super Bowl party shows
Speaker 3: that even he did not turn into the All American
Speaker 3: halftime shown me Mimo comfio. Now it's time for you
Speaker 3: to tune into these ads. Shall we do the real
Speaker 3: news now?
Speaker 5: Sure? So.
Speaker 2: On a Monday, February ninth, twenty twenty six, about three
Speaker 2: days before we recorded this, there was a student led
Speaker 2: walkout protesting federal immigration arrests and protesting in large part
Speaker 2: last year's massive ice actions in Chicago, and students from
Speaker 2: a number of different high schools walked out. This included
Speaker 2: students from East Aurora High School, where there was a
Speaker 2: notable clash. Is the word or skirmish is the word?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 2: Skirmish is what Shaw Local News described it as between
Speaker 2: protesters and police. There's video, and at least from the
Speaker 2: limited clip of video we have, I wouldn't call it
Speaker 2: a skirmish. I would call it police getting pissed and
Speaker 2: assaulting some kids. But we don't see the rest of
Speaker 2: the interaction. This is apparently something that went on for
Speaker 2: a couple of hours, so I don't know what led
Speaker 2: up to this. I can tell you the video shows
Speaker 2: what looks like some high school kids walking in kind
Speaker 2: of a line outside of their high school. There's some
Speaker 2: police by. The police are clearly talking to or maybe
Speaker 2: yelling at, one of the kids, and then as the
Speaker 2: video comes in, an officer just charges in and tackles
Speaker 2: hard like a running tackle, a teenage boy, like a
Speaker 2: child smaller than him, which leads to several other police
Speaker 2: officers grabbing kids. At least one student punches a police
Speaker 2: officer in the head while the officer is on top
Speaker 2: of his friend beating his friend. The police only responded
Speaker 2: by saying, like, look, you know, we had to act.
Speaker 2: A student punched a police officer. From the Shaw Local article,
Speaker 2: the police department said the officer who was punched was
Speaker 2: transported to a local hospital for medical attention for his injuries.
Speaker 2: They don't show he and his colleagues like literally tackling
Speaker 2: kids first, yeh, before they get hit. If somebody tackles
Speaker 2: my friend next to me, I might start punching. That's
Speaker 2: just life.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And.
Speaker 2: This is kind of an ongoing story at the moment.
Speaker 2: I don't know like what's going to wind up being
Speaker 2: the result of this, but it inspired, at least initially
Speaker 2: a lot of anger and there have been further protests
Speaker 2: as a result of the police violence. Students in the
Speaker 2: area are now demanding the resignation of the police chief
Speaker 2: in East Aurora. The police have not really like acknowledged
Speaker 2: those demands yet. I don't know if this is going
Speaker 2: to turn into like a larger protest movement. There's some
Speaker 2: signs that maybe it will, that there may be further walkouts,
Speaker 2: specifically as a result of the police violence. But this
Speaker 2: is a situation we will be watching obviously seeing police
Speaker 2: violently beating kids for you know, speaking for doing the
Speaker 2: thing they should be doing at high school, which is
Speaker 2: experimenting with believing things and taking stands. Yeah, so we'll
Speaker 2: be watching this to see kind of what results next.
Speaker 2: But that's that's sort of where we are at the moment.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that video, it's pretty brutal. Let's talk a little
Speaker 5: bit more about some immigration stuff. Let's start with uh,
Speaker 5: let's start with police in shall we? I have reviewed
Speaker 5: the police report for the ice officer who in late
Speaker 5: January negligently discharged he's issued handgun in a hotel room.
Speaker 5: Bradley's shaver was attempting to fix a backstrap from his glock.
Speaker 5: I'll quote the report here quote with his back facing
Speaker 5: Room three twenty, and the firearm pointed in the area
Speaker 5: of Bradley's torso he attempted to remove the backstrap that
Speaker 5: was currently on the firearm while it was still loaded.
Speaker 5: At some point, the firearm discharged. Luckily, the occupant of
Speaker 5: that room had just checked into the hotel and was
Speaker 5: walking to their room when the shot was fired, so
Speaker 5: there was no one injured. I will quote again from
Speaker 5: the report. Initially, the agent thought the gunshot came from
Speaker 5: somewhere else, and he yelled shots fired, and then told
Speaker 5: his wife he had to go and hang up. Shaper
Speaker 5: then felt heat on the left side of his body,
Speaker 5: looked down and saw the damage to his shirt and
Speaker 5: realized the shot had come from his own weapon. He
Speaker 5: said the round went through his sweatshirt and the shirt underneath,
Speaker 5: but did not penetrate his under armed compression layer or
Speaker 5: injure him. It seems like this person was attending to
Speaker 5: repair or remove apart from his gun that was still loaded,
Speaker 5: and he didn't think to unload the gun.
Speaker 2: All of this is stuff you shouldn't do, right. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you have to check before you do stuff to a
Speaker 2: gun to make sure it's unloaded. And even when you've
Speaker 2: checked to make sure it's unloaded, you should still act
Speaker 2: like it's loaded and do stuff like not have your
Speaker 2: finger on the trigger and make sure it's clear of
Speaker 2: a holster so that there's nothing that like, especially like
Speaker 2: a leather holster, or maybe stuff could get bowed in
Speaker 2: and pull the trigger. You just don't do any of
Speaker 2: the things he was doing with a gun, especially if
Speaker 2: you're a cop. But also you do all the things
Speaker 2: he did with a gun if you're a cop, because
Speaker 2: this happens regularly.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this case a thirty year veteran who had just
Speaker 5: returned after two years of retirement. I want to talk
Speaker 5: a little bit now about Liam Conejo Ramos. This is
Speaker 5: the five year old who was detained in Minneapolis last month.
Speaker 5: People will remember seeing images of him in like a
Speaker 5: blue bunny hat. Liam and his father were detained on
Speaker 5: the twentieth of January in his driveway after returning from school.
Speaker 5: They were order released by Judge Fred Berry, who wrote
Speaker 5: in his order quote, observing human behavior confirms that for
Speaker 5: some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and
Speaker 5: the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds
Speaker 5: and are bereft of human decency, and the rule of
Speaker 5: law be damned. You could tell the judge was incredibly
Speaker 5: pissed off at the government. Now put it that way.
Speaker 5: DHS then attempted to expedite the removal of Conejo Ramos
Speaker 5: and his family that the family were granted a continuance
Speaker 5: by his judge. Liam and his father His father is
Speaker 5: Adlian and Cornehio Adias or adiyas I've seen like various
Speaker 5: permutations of his father's name. I think perhaps because some
Speaker 5: people doing reporting are not familiar with how last names
Speaker 5: are generally configured in the Spanish speaking world, so I'm
Speaker 5: not quite sure how his last name is pronounced. But
Speaker 5: Liam and his father entered in December of twenty twenty
Speaker 5: four when they were detained, they were detained at Dilly.
Speaker 5: Dilly is a detention center for families, right. It is
Speaker 5: a place that I have reported on before. In my
Speaker 5: Dardian follow up series, I spoke about Primrose and Kimberly,
Speaker 5: who were both detained at Dilly, and they went into
Speaker 5: some detail about the conditions there. I'm glad to see
Speaker 5: that Dilly is getting more attention in sort of bigger,
Speaker 5: more legacy media outlets.
Speaker 10: Now.
Speaker 5: I also saw that there was a protest at Dilly,
Speaker 5: seemingly while Liam was there. And we can see this
Speaker 5: because of drone footage of people walking out of the
Speaker 5: buildings and assembling in sort of spaces in between the buildings,
Speaker 5: and they can be heard chanting in some of that footage. Now,
Speaker 5: when to move on to something I've seen DHS doing recently,
Speaker 5: which is they're trying to push back against the evidence
Speaker 5: that they are using schools and children a bait to
Speaker 5: detain non citizens.
Speaker 18: Right.
Speaker 5: I just spoke about how Liam was detained. Right. It
Speaker 5: was the fact that he was at school that allowed
Speaker 5: those agents to target his father. Right. I believe they
Speaker 5: got Liam to knock on the door and his dad
Speaker 5: came out, which obviously was part of the reason that
Speaker 5: this particular intens was so controversial. DHS, in a post
Speaker 5: on x said, quote, Ice is not going to schools
Speaker 5: to arrest children. A dangerous illegal alien, felon fleeing into
Speaker 5: a school, or a child sex offender working as an
Speaker 5: employee may create a situation where an arrest is made.
Speaker 5: To protect public safety, criminals are no longer able to
Speaker 5: hide in America's schools to avoid arrest. Potus Trump and
Speaker 5: Secretary Known trust a brave law enforcement to use common sense.
Speaker 5: We will not tie the hands of law enforcement officers.
Speaker 5: They must be allowed to protect children from public safety threats. Obviously,
Speaker 5: if someone is a sex offender, they can't work at
Speaker 5: a school. Right. That's that's the top background checks work.
Speaker 5: The DHS tweet includes a screenshot of a Houston Chronicle
Speaker 5: article which details how HISD has lost four thousand students
Speaker 5: due to the ICE crackdown. Right, this is students who
Speaker 5: are for the most part, afraid to come to school,
Speaker 5: and they've seen a twenty two percent decline in migrant
Speaker 5: student enrollment. Obviously, I just want to note that ICE
Speaker 5: has detained parents outside schools and a notal inncedent. Last year,
Speaker 5: they dessained a fifteen year old disabled boy in Los Angeles. Finally,
Speaker 5: from me, I want to talk about legislation that is
Speaker 5: being proposed in the state of Washington. To the State
Speaker 5: of Washington's House Builds two three two one proposes legislation
Speaker 5: that focuses on what it calls blocking features that must
Speaker 5: be integrated into three D printers to prevent their use
Speaker 5: in creating firearms. Blocking features are quoting here a software
Speaker 5: controls process that deploys a firearms blueprint detection algorithm such
Speaker 5: that those features identify and reject print requests for firearms
Speaker 5: or at legal firearm path with a high degree of
Speaker 5: reliability and cannot be overridden or otherwise defeated by a
Speaker 5: user with significant technical skill. What this would effectively do
Speaker 5: is either prevent the sale of three D printers in
Speaker 5: Washington state or install state level spyware onto three D printers,
Speaker 5: which would obviously be able to be used for things
Speaker 5: far beyond firearms. And people have notably been three D
Speaker 5: printing whistles a great deal in Minneapolis right there. So
Speaker 5: there's been lots of coverage of this. I think it
Speaker 5: would be very naive for people to think that this
Speaker 5: would start and end with the creation of unregistered firearms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now they'll they'll go, I mean, they'll doff like
Speaker 2: tread to enforce games workshops, copy rights and stop it
Speaker 2: for rent models or whatever, exactly right, Like, it opens
Speaker 2: a whole world of IP enforcement in three D print
Speaker 2: it more or less ends.
Speaker 5: The thing that I find beautiful about three D printing
Speaker 5: is not that like I can make little plastic things
Speaker 5: in my office. It's that it shows me that people
Speaker 5: will choose to create beautiful and innovative things even when
Speaker 5: there is not a profit incentive for doing so. Yes,
Speaker 5: And here's the thing, it would be a different discussion
Speaker 5: if this were a country, We're the only way to
Speaker 5: get a gun was to three D print it.
Speaker 2: But it's not.
Speaker 5: Yes, in Washington State, right, you do not have to
Speaker 5: drive that far from Washington State, to a state where
Speaker 5: it'ld be perfectly legal to do a private party transfer
Speaker 5: in the Walmart parking lot.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 2: And also it's there's just a lot of guns in Washington, Yeah,
Speaker 2: like there are in Oregon, like there is everywhere in
Speaker 2: the country. And to the extent that three D printed
Speaker 2: firearms are used for crime, they tend to be used
Speaker 2: like specifically in gang crime, where if the three D
Speaker 2: printed gun isn't available, the professional criminals will access a
Speaker 2: separate gun. Americans are not overwhelmingly using three D printed
Speaker 2: firearms to shoot up schools. They're using perfectly normally purchased
Speaker 2: firearms to shoot up schools.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's what we do because this country is full
Speaker 5: of guns. The state of California is also pursuing a
Speaker 5: case against three D printed firearms code hosting websites. California
Speaker 5: passing extremely broad law last year that prohibits the hosting, distribution,
Speaker 5: and promotion of the quote unlawful manufacturer of firearms. This
Speaker 5: has significant repercussions for the First Amendment right, Like, the
Speaker 5: code itself is not a tangible thing, it's not a gun.
Speaker 5: It is speech. But in this case, it is the
Speaker 5: instruction to allow the machine to create gun right. It
Speaker 5: appears that there are over one hundred other people indicted
Speaker 5: in this case, and guessing that those are probably the
Speaker 5: designers who posted their STLs for firearms on the gatalogue.
Speaker 2: I think that the evidence also suggests that's unlikely to
Speaker 2: hold up in court because, like, right now, there's a
Speaker 2: case over the Kansas laws that are mandating, like you
Speaker 2: have age, basically restrictions on websites and the like, and
Speaker 2: there were laws. There was a lawsuit from like a
Speaker 2: mom who alleged that despite this, her kid was able
Speaker 2: to access a website that was located out of the
Speaker 2: state because it didn't have any of these restrictions, and
Speaker 2: the judge in Kansas ruled, like, well, our law doesn't
Speaker 2: restrict people in other states. They don't have to have
Speaker 2: like this, Like that's just you can't actually enforce this. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so we'll see how it goes in California. But yeah,
Speaker 2: California is suing for damages in this case. It's a
Speaker 2: civil case on a criminal one, sure, but still, I mean,
Speaker 2: there have been a lot of cases about three D
Speaker 2: printed guns and how they are covered under the under
Speaker 2: the First Amendment. So yeah, I'm going to keep an
Speaker 2: eye on this because I guess like there are attacks
Speaker 2: on the First Amendment from just about every angle right now,
Speaker 2: and I think we should pay attention to that.
Speaker 5: That is all I have. Shall we take a little
Speaker 5: break and then talk about pedophiles? Sure?
Speaker 2: I love talking talking about pedophiles.
Speaker 5: That's what we do.
Speaker 9: I don't.
Speaker 11: We're back.
Speaker 2: This is another yet another episode of the Pedo Files.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I volunteered to do this section.
Speaker 6: These are Epsteine updates as a two day which is Wednesday, Yeah,
Speaker 6: February eleventh.
Speaker 1: There were quite a few things.
Speaker 2: We just finished recording a four part around him for Bastards,
Speaker 2: and there's more new shit.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 5: It just keeps kevin.
Speaker 1: It is endless, it really is.
Speaker 6: I want to start off which at the top of
Speaker 6: the week, Glene Maxwell was supposed to speak to the
Speaker 6: House Oversight Committee, and she was called in for questioning
Speaker 6: and during a video call. Just so folks know, she
Speaker 6: is serving a twenty year sentence for sex trafficking and
Speaker 6: a federal prison camp in Texas, but she invoked her
Speaker 6: Fifth Amendment right to avoid answering questions that would be
Speaker 6: self incriminating.
Speaker 1: This was expected, but her lawyer's statement was interesting.
Speaker 6: So I'm going to read it to the audience now,
Speaker 6: Members of the Committee, on my advice, Glendne Maxwell respectfully
Speaker 6: invoke her Fifth Amendment right to silence and decline to
Speaker 6: answer your questions day. Even though she would very much
Speaker 6: like to answer your questions, she must remain silent because
Speaker 6: Miss Maxwell has a habeas petition clearly pending that demonstrates
Speaker 6: that her conviction rests on a fundamentally unfair trial. For example,
Speaker 6: jurors lie during void Yer to secure seats on the jury,
Speaker 6: and the government promised immunity and then broke that promise.
Speaker 6: Lily Disco's documents now demonstrate these facts conclusively. If this
Speaker 6: committee in the American public truly want to hear the
Speaker 6: unfiltered truth about what happened, there is a straightforward path.
Speaker 6: Ms Maxwell is prepared to speak fully and honestly if
Speaker 6: granted clemency by President Trump. Sure only she can provide
Speaker 6: the complete account. Some may not like what they hear,
Speaker 6: but the truth matters. For example, both President Trump and
Speaker 6: President Clinton are innocent of any wrongdoing. Ms Maxwell alone
Speaker 6: and explain why, and the public is entitled to that explanation.
Speaker 6: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Look, I'll talk to Donald Trump if I can get
Speaker 2: immunity for some thanks.
Speaker 1: It's like, by the way, I would love to speak.
Speaker 5: Got I need immunity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the guy that could grant me clemency. I can
Speaker 1: vouch for that.
Speaker 2: Guy that's the most doesn't commit crimes thing a person
Speaker 2: could possibly say.
Speaker 11: Wild.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm moving on to another guy that was all
Speaker 6: over the Epstein files, Casey Wasserman.
Speaker 5: Casey wass Robert just said that like he knew. The guy.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I know. That's what I always call them.
Speaker 6: Was founder and CEO of Wasserman, which is a talent
Speaker 6: agency slash sports marketing agency. And the reason I'm bringing
Speaker 6: this up is for two reasons. There's two things I
Speaker 6: want to discuss here. The first one is that since
Speaker 6: this got announced, he's had major clients, major stars as
Speaker 6: well as athletes, say that's gross and I'm not going
Speaker 6: to work with you anymore.
Speaker 1: And I've left the agency, which is fucking cool, which
Speaker 1: is good.
Speaker 2: It's what you should do if you find out that
Speaker 2: you are working for someone in the Epstein files.
Speaker 3: Yeah, somebody was specifically communicating consistently with Epstein after his conviction. Right,
Speaker 3: There's a lot of people who are named in the files.
Speaker 2: A lot of random journalists whose articles got shared in
Speaker 2: the files or something that yes, yes, yeah, big.
Speaker 6: Name stars here, we're talking like Chapel Rowelron, you're so annoyed.
Speaker 6: So like Chapel Rone was probably the first big name
Speaker 6: to be like ew, I'm out.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 6: And another big part of this is CAC Wasserman is
Speaker 6: leading the preparations for the twenty twenty eight Summer Olympic
Speaker 6: Games that are going to be located in Los Angeles
Speaker 6: and per Fox LA, the LA twenty twenty eight board
Speaker 6: officially supported chair Casey Wasserman and Wednesday, rejecting calls for
Speaker 6: his recognation following an independent misconduct review. While multiple LA
Speaker 6: elected officials demandity step down, the board sited his strong
Speaker 6: leadership and cooperations as reasons for his retention.
Speaker 3: Ew I can't believe the good name of the Olympics
Speaker 3: finally has a stain on its right now?
Speaker 5: Right? Who would have thought?
Speaker 2: Can you imagine the Olympics being associated with a bad man?
Speaker 11: I love the Olympics? This sucks?
Speaker 3: How will I watch trampoline?
Speaker 19: Uh?
Speaker 2: Huh? What about Louge?
Speaker 4: Wait?
Speaker 5: No, that's only in the thing right now, that's already happening. Yeah,
Speaker 5: you can watch Louge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're right, you're right. The one good sport, the Olympics,
Speaker 2: is already happening. So we're fine.
Speaker 5: We have to be clear on this. Luge has us
Speaker 5: no links to the Jeffrey Epstein files that we.
Speaker 3: Know of the Italian Louge Olympics, completely clean, no problems.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Now I want to move on to probably the biggest
Speaker 6: story of the week, which is Attorney General Pambondi took
Speaker 6: heated questions from lawmakers and a compatitive congressional hearing over
Speaker 6: the Justice Department's handling and the files related to Jeffrey
Speaker 6: Epstein that exposed sensitive private information about victims despite redaction efforts.
Speaker 7: Her the a P.
Speaker 11: She she frame mogged everyone at this hearing.
Speaker 6: In my opinion, this was the most outrageously unprofessional, shameful, centurable,
Speaker 6: and sickening congressional.
Speaker 1: Hearing in history.
Speaker 6: And she is a disgrace and disgusting And yeah, I
Speaker 6: want to get into a little bit of it. I
Speaker 6: want to start by playing a clip from Representative Raskin.
Speaker 6: He's the Democratic congressman from Maryland and he is the
Speaker 6: Democratic ranking House member of the Committee on the judiciary.
Speaker 22: You're running a massive Epstein cover up right out of
Speaker 22: the Department of Justice. You've been ordered by subpoena and
Speaker 22: by Congress to turn over six million documents, photographs, and
Speaker 22: videos in Epstein files.
Speaker 4: But you've turned over only three million.
Speaker 22: You say you're not turning over the other three million
Speaker 22: because they're somehow duplicative. But we know that there are
Speaker 22: actual memos of victim statements in the air. And you
Speaker 22: also took down the Department of Justice's prosecution memo from
Speaker 22: twenty nineteen, so it's clearly not all duplicative. But even
Speaker 22: if it were, why not release it? Just release all
Speaker 22: the duplicative stuff. In the half you did produce, you
Speaker 22: redacted the names of abusers, enablers, accomplices, and co conspirators,
Speaker 22: apparently to spare them embarrassment and disgrace, which is the
Speaker 22: exact opposite of.
Speaker 4: What the law ordered you to do.
Speaker 22: Even worse, you shockingly failed to redact many of the
Speaker 22: victim's names, which is what you were ordered to do
Speaker 22: by Congress.
Speaker 4: Some of the victims had come forward publicly, but many
Speaker 4: had not.
Speaker 22: Many had kept their torm private, even from family and friends,
Speaker 22: but you published their names, their identities, their images on
Speaker 22: thousands of pages for.
Speaker 4: The world to see.
Speaker 18: So you ignored the law, and even with over one
Speaker 18: hundred thousand employees at your disposal, you acted with some
Speaker 18: mixture of staggering incompetence, cold indifference, and jaded cruelty towards
Speaker 18: more than one.
Speaker 22: Thousand victims raped, abused, and trafficked.
Speaker 4: This performance screams cover up.
Speaker 6: I can't even begin to describe how vile and disgusting
Speaker 6: it is that they have doxed these survivors of Epstein
Speaker 6: without their consent. Yeah, it is traumatizing enough that they
Speaker 6: had to endure this. Now they've had what happened to
Speaker 6: them put on display, and now they are going to
Speaker 6: be targeted, and they have not had the ability to
Speaker 6: speak up if they wanted to on what happened. But
Speaker 6: the government, despite being told to not out these survivors,
Speaker 6: did it, but covered the names of the people that
Speaker 6: committed these crimes. It is unspeakably disgusting.
Speaker 2: Sorry, well I feel great.
Speaker 1: It's really upsetting. Yeah, it's really deeply disgusting and upsetting.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 6: I thought Ranking Member Raskin spoke very clearly here and
Speaker 6: I appreciated his statement. Yeah, moving on, Bondi's tactics during
Speaker 6: this were to deflect, deflect, deflect.
Speaker 1: There's a couple instances that I want to play play
Speaker 1: for everyone.
Speaker 5: Now, yeah, you could assign this to a class, and
Speaker 5: like if you're talking about every way that like the
Speaker 5: modern Republican Party tries to deflect culpability for anything negative.
Speaker 5: Like they all got deployed one after the.
Speaker 2: Other in this.
Speaker 6: So there were Epstein survivors in person, and Bondi wouldn't
Speaker 6: even look at them. I want to play a clip
Speaker 6: from when she's asked to address them here to.
Speaker 19: The survivors in the room, if you are willing, please stand,
Speaker 19: and if you are willing, please raise your hands. If
Speaker 19: you have still not been able to meet with this
Speaker 19: Department of Justice, please know for the record that every
Speaker 19: single survivor has raised their hand. Attorney General Bondi, you
Speaker 19: apologize to the survivors and your opening statement for what
Speaker 19: they went through at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 7: Will you turn to them now and apologize for what.
Speaker 19: Your Department of Justice has put them through with the
Speaker 19: un absolutely unacceptable release of the Epstein files and their information.
Speaker 7: Congresswoman, you set before Merrick Garland set in.
Speaker 23: This chair twice, Attorney General von I'm going to finish
Speaker 23: my answer.
Speaker 19: No, I'm going to reclaim my time because I asked
Speaker 19: you to generalific question that I would like question to answer,
Speaker 19: which is, will you turn to the survivors? This is
Speaker 19: not about anybody that came before you. It is about
Speaker 19: you taking responsibility for your Department of Justice and the
Speaker 19: arm that it has done to the survivors who are
Speaker 19: standing right behind you and are waiting for you to
Speaker 19: turn to them and apologize for what your Department of Justices.
Speaker 4: Members.
Speaker 24: Members get to ask the questions, the witness get to
Speaker 24: answer in the way they want to answer.
Speaker 19: That that's not accurate, mister chairman, because she doesn't like
Speaker 19: the answer. So, mister Chairman, I have asked, She Astmaric Garland.
Speaker 4: This I am reclaiming.
Speaker 1: I will claim my time. Get in the gutter for her.
Speaker 7: Theatrics.
Speaker 24: The time belongs to the time belongs to the general lady.
Speaker 24: The general Lady has seventeen seconds.
Speaker 19: Thank you.
Speaker 1: You're not going to answer this question.
Speaker 19: So let me just chair, what a massive question?
Speaker 4: Will you restore her time?
Speaker 7: The witnesses, the rector the gout her with this woman,
Speaker 7: She's let me have.
Speaker 24: My General lady, the general lady from Washington controls the time.
Speaker 24: The General Lady has seventeen seconds, you can you can
Speaker 24: proceed with your final seventeen seconds.
Speaker 19: What a mass of cover up this has been and
Speaker 19: continues to be. Donald Trump may the release of the
Speaker 19: Epstein files the center of his political campaign because he
Speaker 19: thought it would benefit him. Then you got into office,
Speaker 19: Attorney general, claim to have a client list on order,
Speaker 19: say that there was no list. Your deputy Todd met
Speaker 19: alone has expired to a minimum security prison.
Speaker 11: And now you continue.
Speaker 19: She would turn around to the survivors who are standing
Speaker 19: right behind you, and on a human level, chairman.
Speaker 24: Now recognizes the man, the gen You have no time
Speaker 24: to go back to appreciate the thought.
Speaker 1: Despicable, disgusting.
Speaker 6: She did not ever turn around and look at these
Speaker 6: survivors that are in the room. Later, she loses it
Speaker 6: again when asked why she hasn't indicated any of the
Speaker 6: Epstein clients in de flex by saying this.
Speaker 23: The dow, the dow right now is over. The dow
Speaker 23: is over fifty thousand dollars. I don't know why you're laughing.
Speaker 23: You're a great stock trader. As I hear raskin. The
Speaker 23: Dow is over fifty thousand right now, the S and
Speaker 23: P at almost seven thousand, and the Nasdaq smashing records.
Speaker 23: Americans four oh one k's and retirement savings are booming.
Speaker 23: That's what we should be talking about. We should be
Speaker 23: talking about making Americans safe. We should be talking about
Speaker 23: what does a Dow have to do with anything? That's
Speaker 23: what they just ask, Are you kidding, mister Jordan?
Speaker 1: Am I mister Jordan, No, it's not. You are here
Speaker 1: for You are here talking. You are here for hearing
Speaker 1: on the Epstein files.
Speaker 6: You are the Attorney General of the United States, and
Speaker 6: you are a fucking piece of shit, fucking nightmare.
Speaker 3: That's in response to a question about indicting Epstein clients. Yeah,
Speaker 3: she just starts talking with the stock market.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and only did you just start talking about it?
Speaker 5: She clearly came with her stats ready to talk about it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Right, because the message is it's fine that all this
Speaker 2: happened and the Trump was involved as long as the
Speaker 2: economy's good, right, people shouldn't be a complaint.
Speaker 11: It's it's cartoon. It's cartoon behavior.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Like it's not a it's not even some kind
Speaker 5: of sophisticated route. So just going to look over there.
Speaker 3: This would be like in like a British like sketch
Speaker 3: comedy about the government in like the eighties, Like this
Speaker 3: is like, yeah, this is wild.
Speaker 1: It's truly horrific.
Speaker 6: And guess what I still have more to share. Here
Speaker 6: is an exchange and another attempt for her to deflect.
Speaker 6: She tries to bring up Merek Garland again. This is
Speaker 6: with the congresswoman from Vermont.
Speaker 23: Didn't ask Merrit Garland anything about Epstein, not once when
Speaker 23: he was exhaust And also I want the record to
Speaker 23: reflect that, you know, with this anti Semitic culture right now,
Speaker 23: she voted against a resolution contempt condemning.
Speaker 1: Oh do you want to go there?
Speaker 11: Attorney?
Speaker 1: Do you want to go there?
Speaker 24: Are you gentlemen talking.
Speaker 6: To a woman who lost her grandfather in the whole.
Speaker 1: It's pretty disgusting.
Speaker 11: Yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 1: She's like, ah, yes, how can I work in being
Speaker 1: pro Israel?
Speaker 5: Also again right, she clearly had like if this person speaks,
Speaker 5: this is what I will say.
Speaker 6: It's very clear she had a material list of like
Speaker 6: cheat sheet of this is how when this person speaks,
Speaker 6: this is my dirt on this person. When this person speaks,
Speaker 6: this is my dirt on this person. There are even
Speaker 6: photos of the dirt she has piled up on each person.
Speaker 6: She had a sheet of like people's search histories. Just
Speaker 6: unbelievable deflection, to say the least. I have one more
Speaker 6: clip I want to I want to display it, and
Speaker 6: then I'd like to talk about it a little bit more.
Speaker 16: Yeah, I want to discuss another man, Donald Trump, who
Speaker 16: was all over the Epstein files, like former Prince.
Speaker 6: Here's the video and for reference, this is the very
Speaker 6: very popular video of Epstein and Trump.
Speaker 1: Worth Epstein wearing that then, I'm sure, and Trump in
Speaker 1: the pink tie.
Speaker 2: They're kind of like elbowing each other and talking about ladies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, laughing, laughing at a party.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you've seen it.
Speaker 16: Former Prince Andrew. Donald Trump attended various parties with Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 16: I want to know whether any underage girls at that
Speaker 16: party or at any party that Trump attended with Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 23: This is so ridiculous and that they are trying to
Speaker 23: deflect from all the great things Donald Trump has done.
Speaker 23: There is no evidence that Donald Trump has committed a crime.
Speaker 23: Everyone knows that this has been the most transparent presidency.
Speaker 3: He's the one I.
Speaker 4: Got your answer you said no evidence.
Speaker 3: This time belongs to the gentleman from California.
Speaker 16: Okay, I'm gonna put up another document from a witness
Speaker 16: who called the FBI's National Threat Operation Center because I
Speaker 16: believe you just lied under oath. There is ample evidence
Speaker 16: into Epstein.
Speaker 7: Don't you ever accuse me of believe you just.
Speaker 16: Lied under oath. And this is all on videotape. You
Speaker 16: said there's no events crime. I'm showing you. Here is
Speaker 16: a witness statement who called into the FBI's Threat Operation Center.
Speaker 16: He drove Donald Trump around in limo. He overheard what
Speaker 16: Donald Trump said to Jeffrey on his cell phone. He
Speaker 16: was so angry he was gonna stop a limo and
Speaker 16: hurt Donald Trump. And he met a girl who said
Speaker 16: she was raped by Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. She
Speaker 16: later had her head blown off, and the officers at
Speaker 16: the scene said that could not have been suicide. No one,
Speaker 16: no one at the point of justice interviewed this witness.
Speaker 16: You need to interview this witness immediately. Epstein should rot
Speaker 16: in hell. So should the men who patronize this operation.
Speaker 16: And as we say here today, they are over one
Speaker 16: thousand sex trafficking victims, and you have not held a
Speaker 16: single man accountable.
Speaker 4: Shame on you. If you had any decency, you would
Speaker 4: resign right after this.
Speaker 11: Here we conclusive, gentlemen, has expired.
Speaker 6: She did not answer a single question, honestly, she did
Speaker 6: not give a yes or no answer. The Republicans spent
Speaker 6: the time trying to deflect by she had like this
Speaker 6: sheet of like, well, in your state, this person committed
Speaker 6: a crime in your district. This person committed a crime
Speaker 6: and tried to deflect every which way.
Speaker 2: Congress people aren't law enforcement, like no, and.
Speaker 6: The republic and spent the time praising her and praising
Speaker 6: Trump and touting their own agenda.
Speaker 1: And this is not justice. This is sickening.
Speaker 6: I I what precedent this sends to people who are
Speaker 6: survivors of horrific sex crimes.
Speaker 2: I mean the president that they want to send is
Speaker 2: don't say shit, right.
Speaker 6: That's what I'm saying. That's what it sends. And we
Speaker 6: can't allow this to go on. We have to keep
Speaker 6: talking about it.
Speaker 1: Sorry, I'm just very upset. Pam BONDI. She is one
Speaker 1: of the most despicable people in the world.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, to get up there with survivors in the room,
Speaker 6: and to not look at them, to not answer a
Speaker 6: single question, and to continuously deflect and lie. It's impossibly
Speaker 6: disgusting and very very very sad, very very sad.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm okay, yeah, well, I don't know what else
Speaker 2: to say about it.
Speaker 1: It's impossibly disgusting and very very sad.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I hope that these survivors get some kind of
Speaker 6: justice someday. We are not going to forget about them.
Speaker 6: We're not going to stop talking about it. Something has
Speaker 6: to give here. This is This is not justice, This
Speaker 6: is despicable.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't know what's going to happen or if anything's
Speaker 2: going to give in the near future, but people are pissed,
Speaker 2: and hopefully we'll continue to be, which is I guess
Speaker 2: all we can hope for is that before much longer,
Speaker 2: the time comes around where we could make sure that
Speaker 2: these people, including the folks protecting them now pay. So
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, we've got any other news or is
Speaker 2: this no? We it's a real bummer of an ending. Yeah,
Speaker 2: well yeah, it's appropriate right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we reported the news, gear, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I love the news.
Speaker 11: We reported the news.
Speaker 6: Yep, James, anything you want to plug at the end here.
Speaker 5: Yeah, if you want to email us with news tips,
Speaker 5: you can email cool Zone Tips at proton dot me.
Speaker 5: If you want to email us with episode ideas, I
Speaker 5: will make another email for that, but it makes it
Speaker 5: significantly harder for all of us going through the news
Speaker 5: tips email. If you just email us with things that
Speaker 5: you think we should talk about, so we will try
Speaker 5: and partition those two things off so that we can
Speaker 5: deal with both of them separately.
Speaker 2: Okay, bye, we reported the news. Hey, We'll be back
Speaker 2: Monday with more episodes every week from now until the
Speaker 2: heat death of the Universe.
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.