Speaker 1: All 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
Speaker 2: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 2: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
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Speaker 1: Good morning podcast fans, and welcome to it could happen here.
Speaker 1: It's me James today and I'm joined by my friend
Speaker 1: and colleague Garrison Davis Hige.
Speaker 3: Hello.
Speaker 1: Hey, So what I want to talk about today is
Speaker 1: a little piece I wrote. I wrote it on my Patreon,
Speaker 1: but I want to kind of discuss it here, read
Speaker 1: it to you and talk about it about what we
Speaker 1: talk about when we talk about immigration. So if he
Speaker 1: recently sent me an Associated Press piece on the Daddy
Speaker 1: and Gap, and the piece was reflecting on the lost
Speaker 1: of economic opportunity for the MBRA people who had previously sold,
Speaker 1: as you heard in my series right products services accommodation
Speaker 1: to migrants coming through a Garyan gap. But if you
Speaker 1: read that whole piece you'd never know they were Ember
Speaker 1: because the word Embur doesn't occur once in the piece, right,
Speaker 1: you'd never know that the Ember people existed. They never
Speaker 1: appear in the story. Instead. The ap which is currently
Speaker 1: going toe to toe with the Trump administration on whether
Speaker 1: it should call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of
Speaker 1: America or not, and was ejected from the White House
Speaker 1: Press Pool at one point for refusing to call it
Speaker 1: the Gulf of America, used the phrase comarca Indigenous Lands
Speaker 1: in its reporting, which I don't know where this came from.
Speaker 1: It has kind of a strange capitalization. If you were
Speaker 1: just reading the piece, you might think that that was
Speaker 1: the name of the comarca, like that it was a
Speaker 1: proper noun, but it's not. The commark is like I
Speaker 1: guess you could. You could reughquate that to an American state.
Speaker 1: It's like an administrative division of Panama. The name of
Speaker 1: the comarca is Embera Unan, but that doesn't appear anywhere
Speaker 1: in the appiece, and you could to be clear, Like
Speaker 1: I understand that some reporters don't speak Spanish. I understand
Speaker 1: that some reporters, like you know that they are not
Speaker 1: like particularly expertly given region. Neither am I that was
Speaker 1: my first time in Panama, But like this is something
Speaker 1: you could find out on Google Maps, right.
Speaker 3: It's not unique to the AP.
Speaker 1: It happens all the time, right, and I want to
Speaker 1: talk about that today because it happens at the US
Speaker 1: is southern border too. One of the reasons that I
Speaker 1: wanted to go to the Dallian was because I felt
Speaker 1: like the Emberda story was not being told when people
Speaker 1: talked about the Darian Gap. When they're mentioned at all,
Speaker 1: it's kind of in passing or not as people who
Speaker 1: have agency, right, And even I think these stories about
Speaker 1: like the lack of income that they have off to
Speaker 1: migrants leaving kind of strip them in a of agency
Speaker 1: in the way that they're told. When people talk about
Speaker 1: the Darien Gap in media, they kind of use this
Speaker 1: heart of darkness construction. Obviously it's justed Comrade novel, but
Speaker 1: like this idea that like it's where the wild things are,
Speaker 1: I don't know, like it strikes me as very almost orientalist.
Speaker 4: Yeah, orientalist is what I was going to say.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's like it completely discounts that there are
Speaker 1: thousands of people who live there who've raised their families there,
Speaker 1: Their children play fucking basketball there, right. They spend their
Speaker 1: whole life there, and they bury their elders there, and
Speaker 1: they have done for thousands of years.
Speaker 3: For them, it's their home, right.
Speaker 1: And I understand that the jungle could be scary, and
Speaker 1: I think anyone who's listened to my series will will
Speaker 1: understand that, Like the jungle was scary for me sometimes,
Speaker 1: and it could be a very harsh environment. But if
Speaker 1: you're someone who belongs there, if you're comfortable there, it
Speaker 1: can also be home, and it could be beautiful and
Speaker 1: it could be bountiful. And I think the same thing
Speaker 1: is true of the mountains and deserts and rivers that
Speaker 1: make up the USA southern border. As it can kill people,
Speaker 1: I'm well aware of that, But for the people who
Speaker 1: call it home, the desert is somewhere that contains their
Speaker 1: memories and their sacred spaces, their childhood recollections, and the
Speaker 1: remains of their ancestors.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: And the emission of indigenous perspective is something that we
Speaker 1: saw again when CHRISTI Genom decided to waive a number
Speaker 1: of laws in order to facilitate faster construction of the
Speaker 1: border wall.
Speaker 3: So I want to pud that.
Speaker 1: Again the AP coverage there the AP and again they're
Speaker 1: far from unique in this, right, Lots of other outlets
Speaker 1: did this too. They seem to have only engage with
Speaker 1: the DHS press release as opposed to the actual proclamation
Speaker 1: by knowing, which you can find in the federal register. Right,
Speaker 1: So the press release only focused on the environmental laws
Speaker 1: she was waving, DHS said, and I quote to cut
Speaker 1: through bureaucratic delays. DHS is waving environmental laws, including the
Speaker 1: National Environmental Policy Act, that could store vital products for
Speaker 1: months or even years. This waver a clears the path
Speaker 1: that are rapid deployment of physical barriers where they're needed most,
Speaker 1: reinforcing our commitment to national security and the rule of law.
Speaker 1: The rule of law thing kind of made me laugh
Speaker 1: as they were like, here we are waving like a
Speaker 1: dozen or so laws. But I'm not a big rule
Speaker 1: of law person, so I guess, like that's fine. It
Speaker 1: seems that almost every outlet though, like that's what they
Speaker 1: read and that's what they ran with, like that they're
Speaker 1: waving these environmental laws, and I think that can sometimes
Speaker 1: be this like we still see this all the time
Speaker 1: in the legacy press, like when they talk about environmental laws,
Speaker 1: it's this idea that it's like some kind of like
Speaker 1: people who want to protect the flowers and the plants,
Speaker 1: and like that it's not that serious, you know, and
Speaker 1: that like these environmental laws are something that's not that
Speaker 1: are nice but not necessary.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And like some of.
Speaker 1: These environmental laws, like specifically the ones that regulate water,
Speaker 1: will determine the future of places like California, like and
Speaker 1: oviously places south of the border, right the water doesn't
Speaker 1: know where the border is. And like in the previous
Speaker 1: Trump administration, they wave some environmental laws, including ones about floodwater,
Speaker 1: which that combined with the expedited way which they built
Speaker 1: the border wall, I guess, led to them not putting
Speaker 1: floodgates in part of the wall, which then led to
Speaker 1: the wall damming up with like dead trees and dead
Speaker 1: cacti right when it rained heavily, and then the wall
Speaker 1: becoming a barrier to water, and then the wall getting
Speaker 1: broken or washed away, right because it didn't have like
Speaker 1: sluice gates so they could open to let the water out.
Speaker 1: The AP went to someone called Earth Justice for comment,
Speaker 1: and to their credit, that person said quote waving environmental,
Speaker 1: cultural preservation and good governance laws that protect clean air,
Speaker 1: clean water. Say if God precious cultural resources and preserve
Speaker 1: vibrant ecosystems of biodiversity will only cause further harm to
Speaker 1: our border communities and ecosystems. That person is the only
Speaker 1: person who mentioned the cultural damage it's been done here,
Speaker 1: unless a reader themselves that the Federal Register isn't linked
Speaker 1: in any of these pieces, right, it really is. I
Speaker 1: try and link to it when we talk about something
Speaker 1: in executive disorder. But unless you've found that yourself, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't know that. Along with waving these environmental laws, and
Speaker 1: like I've said, those are important, they also wave something
Speaker 1: called the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act, according
Speaker 1: to the Department of the Interior. I was kind of
Speaker 1: surprised this was still up on their website. Actually, I
Speaker 1: thought this might have been purred, so like a lot
Speaker 1: of maybe it.
Speaker 4: Just maybe it's just like screwed it by Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like well, I mean no, apparently no one fucking
Speaker 1: talks about it, so yeah, maybe they got away with it,
Speaker 1: you know, Like it's always funny going on government websites
Speaker 1: now being like oh it's gone, like finding dead links
Speaker 1: to so much even in stories I've written in like
Speaker 1: twenty twenty that those links are dead now. NAGRA requires
Speaker 1: any federally funded entity to return human remains, sunery possessions,
Speaker 1: objects of cultural patrimony, and sacred objects to the deceased
Speaker 1: persons and their descendants by and I'm quoting for website
Speaker 1: now consulting with lineal descendants, Indian tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations,
Speaker 1: or Native American human remains and other cultural items, Protecting
Speaker 1: and planning for Native American human remains and other cultural
Speaker 1: items that may be removed from federal or tribal lands,
Speaker 1: Identifying and reporting all Native American human remains and other
Speaker 1: cultural items in inventories and summaries of holdings or collections,
Speaker 1: and giving prior notice to repatriating or transferring human remains
Speaker 1: and other cultural items.
Speaker 3: So the waiver allows.
Speaker 1: Them not to do these things right crucially, in the
Speaker 1: context of border wall construction, what allows them to do
Speaker 1: is not to conduct an archaeological survey before they dig
Speaker 1: the border wall. And again, like, I don't know why
Speaker 1: this isn't something the legacy media isn't concerned about. It
Speaker 1: wasn't in twenty twenty either right when they started doing this,
Speaker 1: they were blasting areas where something called miden soil was found.
Speaker 1: Mid and soil is soil or that contains evidence of
Speaker 1: cremated human remains. Right. I wrote a piece in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty for Sierra about this. And normally before these digs
Speaker 1: there would be an archaeological survey done by a tribal
Speaker 1: representative would be there to take part in that. Right,
Speaker 1: that would take time and it would delay construction. Instead,
Speaker 1: right now, the construction will continue without considering a damage
Speaker 1: done to the cultural patrimony and ancestral remains of the
Speaker 1: Kumii people here in San Diego, whose homeland spanned both
Speaker 1: sides at the border, and who were here long before
Speaker 1: the US or Mexico was talking of. I can't think
Speaker 1: of a good fucking ad pivot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there really is no good at pivot for.
Speaker 1: Stuff like this.
Speaker 3: No, there's not.
Speaker 1: We're just going to do adverts now and we are back.
Speaker 1: The Cumi not the only indigenous people who homelands have
Speaker 1: been significantly permanently damaged by the construction of border barriers.
Speaker 1: Right further east, in the homelands of the Tornada people,
Speaker 1: where I've spent a lot of time. Wall construction has
Speaker 1: destroyed Sacred Cuaro's. Soguaro's. That's the big cactus, like when
Speaker 1: you think of a cactus, right, like the cactus Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah with the two arms. You could put a
Speaker 1: little hat on that cactus if you wanted to, maybe
Speaker 1: give it like a little six shooter and it would
Speaker 1: look like it was a cowboy. Yeah, it's the it's
Speaker 1: literally the cactus. It's in all the Western films that
Speaker 1: were filmed out at Old Tucson there. Yeah, we used
Speaker 1: to ride our bikes from the passcalt Yaki Reds to
Speaker 1: the place where they filmed all those Western films. That
Speaker 1: that was our loop. A very very weird experience that place.
Speaker 1: It's like a one day I will write my fucking
Speaker 1: five part documentary about the myth of the Old West.
Speaker 1: But you can find it. You can find it there
Speaker 1: in Tucson. The Soguaro's people aren't aware of orded the
Speaker 1: highest respect as ancestors by Otam people, and they play
Speaker 1: an important role in ceremonial and culinary traditions that have
Speaker 1: been kept alive despite centuries of genocide and assimilationist policies
Speaker 1: from state and local government. Under the Biden administration, the
Speaker 1: Government Accountability Office wrote a report about damage done by
Speaker 1: border wall construction. Again for now, this is on the
Speaker 1: internet and I will link it in the show notes.
Speaker 1: I don't know how long that will remain on the internet.
Speaker 1: It's a pdf, so it's going to be out and
Speaker 1: about that. It can't be taken down, but maybe it
Speaker 1: won't be on government websites. They highlighted the case of
Speaker 1: Monument Hill, which was damaged by explosives in the previous
Speaker 1: Trump administration, despite being a sacred place for Odham and
Speaker 1: the site of ceremonies conducted by the Here said Odham,
Speaker 1: who are their ancestors. Quito Bakito Springs, which is a
Speaker 1: sacred site and oasis in the Sonoran Desert and it's
Speaker 1: a really special place, was irreparably damaged in the last
Speaker 1: Trump administration, including the destruction of a burial site that
Speaker 1: the Tripe had sought to protect. In some cases, the
Speaker 1: Biden administration made this worse. One of those was that
Speaker 1: on entering office, Biden said they were going to build
Speaker 1: not one more foot of border war in twenty twenty one. Right,
Speaker 1: he was full of shit. They built lots more border wall,
Speaker 1: but they didn't put a pause on some of the contracts, right.
Speaker 1: It sort of they finished some of them and they
Speaker 1: were like, oh, we can't go back on this federal funding.
Speaker 1: Who's has not been an issue for Donald Trump for years.
Speaker 1: Later they were in Congress approved it, so we have
Speaker 1: to pay it, which was great. But the bits that
Speaker 1: they were able to cut included a program that had
Speaker 1: people taking care of so that they attempted to transplant
Speaker 1: the Saguaros. They didn't just cut down because they were sacred,
Speaker 1: right and they're very old. They wanted to take them
Speaker 1: somewhere else, and this was part of sort of the
Speaker 1: agreement that they came to. Unfortunately, the Biden administration cut
Speaker 1: the funding for the people who were taking care of
Speaker 1: them in their new location, so nearly all of them died.
Speaker 1: They were being watered and stuff to get them settled
Speaker 1: into their new route structure, and because of by administration
Speaker 1: cutback funding, it stopped them from being watered, and so
Speaker 1: many of them died in areas where barriers were built,
Speaker 1: but drainage culverts were not finished. The colverts were never
Speaker 1: install so that was the flooding I was talking about.
Speaker 6: Earlier.
Speaker 1: Right, sometimes they just went ahead and built war that
Speaker 1: when they build the wall, it comes in about fifty
Speaker 1: foot sections, and they truck those out there and like
Speaker 1: just deput them on the ground flat and pull them
Speaker 1: up right, and they dig a foundation. They mix the
Speaker 1: sand made concrete and put the war sections up. But
Speaker 1: then they I guess it's my understanding that in the
Speaker 1: end of the last Trump administration, Trump made a claim
Speaker 1: in a debate about the number of miles of wall
Speaker 1: that had been built, and that claim was largely inaccurate,
Speaker 1: but they sort of started trying to expost facto justify
Speaker 1: it by claiming repairs were miles of war right, And
Speaker 1: in the final months of the Trump administration, maybe like from
Speaker 1: late summer to January, it was certainly to November, they
Speaker 1: would really speed running wall construction. And part of that
Speaker 1: was putting sections up where there should have been culverts
Speaker 1: and just putting regular wall sections there and then attempting
Speaker 1: to come back later and do the culverts, which because
Speaker 1: of the funding pause.
Speaker 3: It didn't do.
Speaker 1: So then we've seen a huge change in how the
Speaker 1: desert drains, right, because it backs up at the or
Speaker 1: the detritus or the dead branches and stuff get caught
Speaker 1: in the wall, and then the water gets sort of
Speaker 1: pushed along the wall until it finds a weak point
Speaker 1: to undermine it, I'll push it over. Very little of
Speaker 1: this gets reported at all. Right, Occasionally there are media
Speaker 1: moments when everyone wants to report on the borders damage
Speaker 1: to Indigenous communities. We had one in twenty twenty when
Speaker 1: they started destroying segualas at the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.
Speaker 1: But these appear to be when they just pop up
Speaker 1: like this, it seems like it's without context or precedent, right,
Speaker 1: And when outlets ignore Indigenous people for ninety percent of
Speaker 1: their border reporting, it doesn't give the context it's necessary
Speaker 1: to explain these incidents, which are outrageous in decades of
Speaker 1: policy which has been outrageous. If our listeners are not
Speaker 1: aware that the border is on Native land, all of it,
Speaker 1: just like all of America, right, it can seem confusing
Speaker 1: for them, right when they see something like Organ Pipe
Speaker 1: Cactus National Monument and they think, well, that's not on
Speaker 1: a reservation, because a lot of outlets don't give that context.
Speaker 1: Right that obviously, reservations not contain all spaces that are
Speaker 1: sacred to Indigenous people, and like a reservation is a
Speaker 1: legal not a cultural construct, it can seem alien to them.
Speaker 1: And lots of these spaces that are being military that
Speaker 1: will be militarized under it's Roosevelt Reservation declaration that the
Speaker 1: reservations are not militarized under that, but spaces that are
Speaker 1: sacred to people still will be. But because are reporting
Speaker 1: so often lacks that context, people don't understand it. The
Speaker 1: admission of tribal lands was again like missing in lots
Speaker 1: of pieces on the Roosevelt Reservation right Washington Post Arctic
Speaker 1: on the Rust Reservation, the one that broke the story.
Speaker 1: It doesn't contain the word tribal lands at all, right,
Speaker 1: it doesn't mention the fact that these areas are not
Speaker 1: part of the militarization proclamation. The problem here isn't just
Speaker 1: the ongoing a rage or Indigenous people. It's a failure
Speaker 1: in basic journalistic practice. In my mind, right, we can't
Speaker 1: properly understand borders unless we acknowledge the people they impact.
Speaker 1: There's no way I could have experienced dairying Gap in
Speaker 1: the way that I did if it wasn't for the
Speaker 1: Mbire people who literally let me live in their homes.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: Without the same generosity that they showed to me, the
Speaker 1: people crossing would die in much greater numbers. And it's
Speaker 1: precisely because migrants to arrive in indigenous villages and not
Speaker 1: in like a government Panama, that a system exists where
Speaker 1: they're ferried up river on those pit agworks that are
Speaker 1: reports it on, right, And it's precisely because they enter
Speaker 1: government custody at Las blancas a place at the ap
Speaker 1: court of Riverport, by the way, which I mean, it's
Speaker 1: one of the more miserable places that one can end up.
Speaker 1: It's terrible, and calling it a riverport fundamentally under cells
Speaker 1: how appalling, and it's what happens to people. People are
Speaker 1: stalled there for months, right, And that is because they
Speaker 1: are entering the system of bureaucracy, the system of the state,
Speaker 1: the system of fees and identification papers and all these things.
Speaker 1: More importantly, I think we can't understand the relatively new
Speaker 1: and invasive nature of borders, especially borders with physical barriers,
Speaker 1: without acknowledging the much much longer history of indigenous people
Speaker 1: moving freely through these areas. Like I said, it's much people,
Speaker 1: it's water and wildlife in all cases, the damage down
Speaker 1: will be unforeseen and likely irreparable. But if we only
Speaker 1: treat the border of the rhetorical thing like something to
Speaker 1: discuss in congress, not a physical place, then we miss
Speaker 1: what's really happening, and we miss the people it really impacts.
Speaker 1: I don't want to pick solely on that app it's
Speaker 1: a tendency in the whole US right where the overwhelming
Speaker 1: media narrative eraises the existence of indigenous people unless it's
Speaker 1: some kind of novelty or trope through which they can
Speaker 1: be deployed. The Darrect example was a particularly stark one
Speaker 1: to me because I spend theatle amount of time there,
Speaker 1: and I obviously have a great deal of affection for
Speaker 1: the people who looked after me. But as more and
Speaker 1: more laws are waived, both in terms of border wall
Speaker 1: construction and human rights, more damage will be done. It's
Speaker 1: already the case that people who speak indigenous languages tend
Speaker 1: to have much worse outcomes in the US immigration system right.
Speaker 1: I've seen this first hand, Like it could be very
Speaker 1: difficult when someone arrives and they speak, you know, an
Speaker 1: indigenous language from Mexico, from Peru, from these places where
Speaker 1: like the people speak these digits languages their first language,
Speaker 1: and it's hard for them to very hard for them
Speaker 1: to get legal representation, right even US citizens.
Speaker 4: Like that incident from just a few weeks ago with
Speaker 4: that nineteen year old who was born in the state
Speaker 4: of Georgia but primarily spoken indigenous language was like put
Speaker 4: into ice attention overnight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like, which I think kind of these two narratives
Speaker 1: sort of play into each other, right, Like, because indigenous
Speaker 1: people don't exist so much in so much coverage, it
Speaker 1: can be much easier for the state to make them disappear,
Speaker 1: right like that guy.
Speaker 4: Well yeah, and literally being arrested in charge with like
Speaker 4: like entry as an unauthorized alien.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like absolutely, And it's happened to indigenous people who
Speaker 1: are like indigenous to the United States, right like yeah,
Speaker 1: and it will continue to I think I've heard some
Speaker 1: stuff about happening on a Navajorez relatively recently. Obviously, I
Speaker 1: should say if that has happened to you or someone
Speaker 1: you know, you can reach out to us. Call Zone
Speaker 1: tips at proton dot me. And like, I know that
Speaker 1: there are lots of big border reporters, that big outlets
Speaker 1: who fucking hate me, And I really don't care. I
Speaker 1: just want to, Like, any one person coming into this
Speaker 1: country who needs a bottle of water is more important
Speaker 1: to me than all of their collective opinions, right, Like
Speaker 1: my job is not to make them happy. My job
Speaker 1: is to tell the stories of the people who come
Speaker 1: into this country and often stuffer greatly to do so.
Speaker 1: I care more about them than like my ability to
Speaker 1: be objective, which you know, I don't think we should
Speaker 1: be objective in these situations, and like I want to
Speaker 1: kind of end on this idea of objectivity, because objectivity
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm glad that the Washington Post is
Speaker 1: writing a story about a Venezuelan teacher who got deported today.
Speaker 1: I'm glad that they're giving these people human faces now.
Speaker 1: But it's fucking hard to look at the reporters who
Speaker 1: wouldn't drive half an hour down a dirt road to
Speaker 1: come and see people in concentration camps when Biden was president,
Speaker 1: because I don't know, they were worried about getting their
Speaker 1: rental car dirty, or they don't speak Spanish, or the
Speaker 1: desert's cold at night. Like I don't know why people
Speaker 1: didn't come. I suspect it's because their commitment to writing
Speaker 1: about migrants is more a commitment to doing it when
Speaker 1: it makes money than it is to doing it because
Speaker 1: it's the right thing to do. And like, when we
Speaker 1: write these stories now about deportations being terrible, they seem
Speaker 1: to pop up without context, right, and the context of
Speaker 1: how these people came into this country and the amount
Speaker 1: that they were forced to suffer by choice by the
Speaker 1: Biden administration in twenty twenty three, it's completely absent from
Speaker 1: these stories, right, Like, the reason folks, some folks that
Speaker 1: are choosing to leave is because what they've seen of
Speaker 1: the US government a week in an outdoor attention camp
Speaker 1: where the government didn't even bring them food or water, right,
Speaker 1: and then their passage through this system which doesn't give
Speaker 1: them a pathway to permanent residency, which doesn't give them
Speaker 1: a pathway to citizen, and then they see these deportations. Like,
Speaker 1: from the migrant perspective, this is just a sort of
Speaker 1: steady escalation. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: what's happening now is the same as what happened before.
Speaker 1: It's worse, it's considerably worse, and it's abhorrent. But like
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that we shouldn't tell the truth about
Speaker 1: what happened before either. And it doesn't mean that we
Speaker 1: should ignore the physical border as well as the sort
Speaker 1: of rhetorical and internal and technical border, right, all these
Speaker 1: things that we're seeing now, And like the way that
Speaker 1: borders have worked in this country is that it's like
Speaker 1: a ratchet that only moves to the right, and the
Speaker 1: Republicans move it to the right, and the Democrats never
Speaker 1: move it back, and until we hold them accountable for this,
Speaker 1: it will continue to get worse. Like, the Democrats completely
Speaker 1: ceded the narrative on migration under the Biden administration, and
Speaker 1: that's part of why they lost right. Rather than like
Speaker 1: making an argument that these people have a right to
Speaker 1: come here, that many of them are a massive benefit
Speaker 1: to our society, and it doesn't matter whether they are
Speaker 1: or not, they still deserve to be treated with dignity
Speaker 1: and respect, and even if you're a big la law
Speaker 1: in order person, like according to international and United States law.
Speaker 1: They didn't do that. It didn't treat them according to
Speaker 1: international life to States law, nor did they make an
Speaker 1: argument that it's morally right to do so. And that's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons they lost right.
Speaker 3: This is why.
Speaker 1: I really think that we need to be conscious in
Speaker 1: our media consumption and be conscious as journalists of like
Speaker 1: why we do this, because I'm finding it really hard
Speaker 1: to see this outpouring of care from people who I
Speaker 1: know didn't care when they were shivering little babies in
Speaker 1: the desert, from people who could have said something, could
Speaker 1: have done something right, like this could have stopped earlier
Speaker 1: if there were big, major legacy media op ed. You know,
Speaker 1: the pictures of shivering babies were like on the nine
Speaker 1: o'clock news, right coming into people's houses every night. This
Speaker 1: wouldn't have lasted for as long as it did. People
Speaker 1: wouldn't stuff that, people wouldn't have died. But because I
Speaker 1: guess Joe Biden was in ourviice, it didn't matter. And
Speaker 1: I'm glad that people care now, don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: but like I want especially listeners to think about holding
Speaker 1: those people accountable to caring when it's not profitable, caring
Speaker 1: when it's not convenient, and our listeners have to be fair. Right,
Speaker 1: We raised almost fifty thousand dollars for migrants in the desert,
Speaker 1: and that was fantastic, But yeah, I still think we
Speaker 1: do immigration reporting wrong. I still think for most outlet.
Speaker 1: That's because they treat migrants as a rhetorical device, not
Speaker 1: as people in the same way that they are, and
Speaker 1: that upsets me and I wanted to write about it,
Speaker 1: so I have. I guess that's all I've got. It's
Speaker 1: not the best ending. If you are somebody who wants
Speaker 1: to get in touch, right, like I said, especially with
Speaker 1: regard to immigration activities, on reservations or indigenous people, you
Speaker 1: can reach us at cool Zone tips at proton dot me.
Speaker 1: If there's other stuff that you want to share with us,
Speaker 1: you can do it there too. It is end to
Speaker 1: end encryptid only if you send from another proton email address.
Speaker 1: And that's all I got.
Speaker 3: Welcome Jack, it happened here a podcast about transgender I
Speaker 3: am your host, Na Wong. Now we have spent a
Speaker 3: lot of time on this show covering a bunch of
Speaker 3: really bad stuff and also maybe some cool stuff. We've
Speaker 3: had some cool trans things on this show too. We're
Speaker 3: gonna have some more in like the coming weeks. But
Speaker 3: it is a bleak time to be trans really anywhere
Speaker 3: in the world. The United States is also pretty fucking
Speaker 3: bad right now. But in the words of Lengths and Hees,
Speaker 3: between the darkness and the dawn, the rises a red star.
Speaker 3: And one of the things that that has happened as
Speaker 3: this sort of like you know, sort of the crisis
Speaker 3: of transphobia and the crisis of the genocide and the
Speaker 3: sort of multiple genocides the government's doing, and as sort
Speaker 3: of transphobia as like an institutional state discourse has like solidified.
Speaker 1: Is that.
Speaker 3: I mean, honestly, multiple generations of trans journalists have really
Speaker 3: kind of like risen to the forefront. And yeah, we've
Speaker 3: we've been We've been seeing a bunch of extremely cool
Speaker 3: reporting and a bunch of very very good work from
Speaker 3: a bunch of like more radical trans journalists. And that's
Speaker 3: a thing that kind of like there's been so few
Speaker 3: of us for so long and suddenly there's several and
Speaker 3: it ripped and I'm really happy about it. And with
Speaker 3: me to talk about sort of, you know, what transjournalism
Speaker 3: is like in this moment, how it functions and you know,
Speaker 3: and how how how it can be sustained going forward
Speaker 3: and why it's sort of important is David Forbes, who
Speaker 3: is the editor of the Asheville Blade and also an
Speaker 3: independent journalist. Mira Lasine, who is a freelance journalist who
Speaker 3: recently launched the outlet Free Radical and medi Cast again,
Speaker 3: who's an independent journalist and the creator of medi cast News.
Speaker 3: All of you welcome to the show. Thank you, hap
Speaker 3: Byby on.
Speaker 1: You're having me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm ecstatic to have all of you on to
Speaker 3: get to talk about this because I don't know, I
Speaker 3: guess the place that I want to start is, like
Speaker 3: I I remember this kind of like period in like
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four, twenty twenty twenty four where it was like,
Speaker 3: I mean, it still is really bleak for trans journalism
Speaker 3: in a lot of ways, but like, you know, I'm
Speaker 3: just in transmedia in general. Like I was just watching
Speaker 3: like the space that had been opened a little bit
Speaker 3: in like the twenty tens for there to be trans
Speaker 3: people in media, just like closing, you know, And like
Speaker 3: I've been watching like pretty immediately around me, like I've
Speaker 3: been watching the number of like transforms, especially like non
Speaker 3: white transferms just like disappearing from media. And it was,
Speaker 3: you know, it was it was like watching the stars
Speaker 3: disappear from this guy and the thing for the stars
Speaker 3: disappearing from the skies. You know, there's you don't notice
Speaker 3: it's unless you're looking at them, in which case the
Speaker 3: light has fucking gone forever and it was this really
Speaker 3: really bleak thing. But also, you know, as it's happening,
Speaker 3: and as we've been sort of like resisting this, I've
Speaker 3: been getting to watch like the stars go back on
Speaker 3: in the sky and like watching new like people emerge,
Speaker 3: and watching people who've been doing cool work for a
Speaker 3: really long time sort of like come out into the
Speaker 3: open and like get more sort of national recognition. And Yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't know, I guess, so I guess that's the
Speaker 3: sort of place I wanted to start, is just talking
Speaker 3: a little bit about like what it's like to be
Speaker 3: fucking doing journalism right now.
Speaker 7: Because Jesus Christ, I'll go ahead and start. I've been
Speaker 7: a journalist for over twenty years. And for those who
Speaker 7: might be wondering, since you refer to transfems, I am
Speaker 7: a transwoman. I U she the pronounce I also like
Speaker 7: the name David so. But I have seen it kind
Speaker 7: of wax and lane. I've seen it go up and down,
Speaker 7: and to some degree, what we're facing now it is
Speaker 7: a much worse and escalating version, but it is also
Speaker 7: some of what I've seen trans journalists face period. I
Speaker 7: came out in publicly in twenty sixteen. I started my
Speaker 7: transition in twenty fifteen, and immediately my freelance career basically
Speaker 7: died overnight. And it wasn't like I was writing for
Speaker 7: you know, right wing outlets or something. And you know, honestly,
Speaker 7: the fact is, and this is I think unusual among
Speaker 7: trans journalism because a lot of it admirably focuses on national,
Speaker 7: international level stuff because what we face is so vast.
Speaker 7: But if it had not been for the local support,
Speaker 7: because the Blade, a lot of the Blades subscribers are
Speaker 7: local that we certainly welcome people to subscribe from wherever
Speaker 7: they are, you know, I would be homeless, and there's
Speaker 7: a good chance I wouldn't be talking to you all
Speaker 7: right now. But at the same time, in this kind
Speaker 7: of what I kind of call the quiet purge, which
Speaker 7: I think has been escalating in recent years that you
Speaker 7: talked about about, you know, just we've got trans journalists
Speaker 7: who used to write for national magazines living out of
Speaker 7: their cars. Now that is the reality we face our publications,
Speaker 7: all working class trans people. And you know, we've had
Speaker 7: journalists arrested twice, yeah, oh my for doing their jobs.
Speaker 7: Two of our journalists were were taken to trial in
Speaker 7: twenty twenty three on a minor trustpassing charge, which is
Speaker 7: almost unheard of in the US as bad as US
Speaker 7: often is.
Speaker 3: As you mention, also, this was like trespassing for fucking
Speaker 3: reporting on the cops doing a helpless and camp and
Speaker 3: sleep like on Christmas. Yeah yeah, oh Christmas. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 3: Like I just like unhinged police state shit, like yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Even in LA they'll like sometimes they'll act like accidentally
Speaker 8: a arrest journalist, but then they'll be like, Okay, we'll
Speaker 8: let you go because they're a journalists. They don't actually
Speaker 8: take you to trial.
Speaker 7: This is one of those kind of welcome to Ashville moments,
Speaker 7: because I think people buy the marketing sometimes and think
Speaker 7: we're this super progressive city and actually it's an incredibly
Speaker 7: repressive like tourism Fife and that's this is kind of
Speaker 7: really still point though, Like the city got city council
Speaker 7: here is six Democrats and one kind of like Bernie
Speaker 7: Sanders type independent though even more tepid, and the DA
Speaker 7: is a Democrat. And still you know, they were hell
Speaker 7: bent to persecute trans journalists. Yeah, one of our journals
Speaker 7: until the Bliss was openly mistreated and misgendered based on
Speaker 7: her genitor during that So to some degree what's happening
Speaker 7: now is certainly a worsening, but it is also an
Speaker 7: extension what's been going on for a very long time.
Speaker 7: So okay, like it is getting worse, I don't know
Speaker 7: we're going to be in a two, three, even one year,
Speaker 7: but also like this is not a new fight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can speak to it a little bit too.
Speaker 8: And I've been a journalist for I guess a lot
Speaker 8: last six months because it's a long story, but I
Speaker 8: kind of got into it more out of fear for myself.
Speaker 8: Sometimes people think I'm selfless, and maybe I am a
Speaker 8: little bit, but a lot of it is really selfish
Speaker 8: and just feeling like I have to do stuff to
Speaker 8: protect myself and my friends basically. But even in that
Speaker 8: short period of time, I have faced a lot of
Speaker 8: bad stuff from honestly predominantly the left and liberals and
Speaker 8: sometimes even other queer people being a trans woman of color,
Speaker 8: and that wasn't really initially what I was afraid of,
Speaker 8: you know. I was afraid of like I'm going to
Speaker 8: get death threats and Nazis up in like fandox being
Speaker 8: actually none of that's happened. I can't really explain why
Speaker 8: other than that I just don't use Twitter, and I
Speaker 8: guess so they don't know why exists. But I have
Speaker 8: like one of the first national news story that I broke,
Speaker 8: or one of them, I guess. It was about like
Speaker 8: Medai being like super racist, and I like kind of
Speaker 8: figured that out. I like proved that it was racist
Speaker 8: basically just like use my brain to make it tell
Speaker 8: on itself and explain it's prompt and all that, and
Speaker 8: it became the huge international news story, but it was
Speaker 8: like immediately co opted by a Washington Post journalist who
Speaker 8: retreated me and then recreated the conversation and posted it again.
Speaker 8: And then I had to go on like this weeks
Speaker 8: long like kind of campaign to try to just get
Speaker 8: basic credit for that. And eventually she did credit me
Speaker 8: in the column to give her credit, but that was
Speaker 8: not something that was forgiven, and a lot of others
Speaker 8: that I said the thing to you also didn't credit me.
Speaker 8: And that's just been a recurring trend that, uh, yeah,
Speaker 8: like I'm kind of invisible even though I make a
Speaker 8: lot of important news.
Speaker 3: So that kind of sucks. So yeah, there's something happens
Speaker 3: fucking constantly. I'm like, my, my, like, welcome to the
Speaker 3: this this is before I was out too. And it's
Speaker 3: also like, you know, part part of what's going on
Speaker 3: here is like one of the things you learned really
Speaker 3: quickly in media is the extent to which so much
Speaker 3: national media is just like what they do is steal
Speaker 3: stories from like people like who are you know, from
Speaker 3: sort of like like more regional media or people that
Speaker 3: think they can get away with taking stuff from like if.
Speaker 3: And this goes all the way up the chain, right
Speaker 3: like if if. If you want to know what's gonna
Speaker 3: be on Rachel Maddow show, look at look at what's
Speaker 3: happening on behind the bastards whenever they cover someone on
Speaker 3: the right, And within about three weeks you will get
Speaker 3: a Rachel Mattour episode that is five minutes a thing.
Speaker 3: But like you know, but like you know, it's obviously
Speaker 3: like it'significantly worse with like trans people, because like, yeah,
Speaker 3: they can just fucking stell stories to mess Like I remember, god, my,
Speaker 3: like my fucking like the first like journalism well that's
Speaker 3: not true, but the first journalism stuff that I did
Speaker 3: with like thoson people was like we would dream in
Speaker 3: like the Atlanta spash shooting. We tracked down there there's
Speaker 3: like that there was a Facebook post that people were
Speaker 3: circulating reportedly from the shooter that was like basically blaming
Speaker 3: like anti China media stuff for it. And we tracked
Speaker 3: down that this person did not have a Facebook and
Speaker 3: that all of this was fake, but that person that
Speaker 3: post had been circling into the national news and we
Speaker 3: were like, well, yeah, this is like fake, right, and
Speaker 3: then like every single news, like every single like CNN,
Speaker 3: fucking Fox News, like every single major dwe outlet just
Speaker 3: like took all of our work and like repackaged it
Speaker 3: and then never fucking mentioned that it was like Gary
Speaker 3: and I who did this, because you know, why would
Speaker 3: you credit the transgender anarchists when you could simply repackage
Speaker 3: the story yourself. And this is a problem that's like
Speaker 3: goes all the way up to like this is part
Speaker 3: of the reason we're here right now, right Like we're
Speaker 3: complaining about this on sort of like professional level because
Speaker 3: like it's annoying, but also like the reason we're fucking
Speaker 3: here right now is because the person who got to
Speaker 3: write about trans stuff was fucking Jettison gall who is
Speaker 3: a sis man whose only qualification it was the thing
Speaker 3: he previously wrote about was men who fuck other men
Speaker 3: who don't consider themselves gay. And because he was the
Speaker 3: person who got to write all of the like trans
Speaker 3: cooveraging with though, he's just like some fucking cis dipshit right,
Speaker 3: Like he's now the guy who's like been being cited
Speaker 3: in fucking legal cases for ages and ages for why
Speaker 3: you should restrict trans healthcare, oh.
Speaker 4: The Atlantic and its consequences on society disaster yas.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I meriad you want to talk a bit about
Speaker 3: your exp with it.
Speaker 6: Honestly, what you just described has been happening to me
Speaker 6: this week. So I've been in the industry for about
Speaker 6: three to four years now, consistently inconsistently for a little
Speaker 6: bit longer, And initially it was way easier for me
Speaker 6: to get eggs, Like within the first few months of
Speaker 6: me seriously starting, I got accepted pitches into Discover magazine
Speaker 6: and places like that, and then like within like six
Speaker 6: months after that, it became a nightmare to get pitches accepted. Yeah,
Speaker 6: it just so happened. I became more out as trans
Speaker 6: off the time frame definitely not a coincidence at all.
Speaker 6: But more recently, this week I launched my independent newsletter,
Speaker 6: The Free Radical. Go subscribe it, goes subscribe it. It's
Speaker 6: legitimately great.
Speaker 3: You will get reporting there that you won't fucking get well, okay,
Speaker 3: you will get recording there that you won't get from
Speaker 3: anyone else until about three weeks later, when all the
Speaker 3: national out let's pick it up, and it will be
Speaker 3: better and you will have it first to the person
Speaker 3: who actually reported it.
Speaker 6: In every artguard retons so far, I've taken a second
Speaker 6: to basically be like, Okay, here's some anarchist shit you
Speaker 6: should read. Y'all. Audience is mostly like libs, and I'm
Speaker 6: just like here, here, read this please. But my first
Speaker 6: story I broke this week was about a trans woman
Speaker 6: who was legally held in Guantanamo Bay, and that story
Speaker 6: got picked up by big remedia outlets pretty quick. But
Speaker 6: in the first like twelve hours, the news uplet then
Speaker 6: did a very good story that basically just cited me
Speaker 6: every chance they got. Come to find out, this is
Speaker 6: because a trans woman wrote that she's awesome. I just
Speaker 6: followed her to the other day. Oh but then bazillion
Speaker 6: dus out like started picking up on this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this was a Brazilian trans woman who got like
Speaker 3: sent to Guantanamo.
Speaker 6: Yeah. And the first one to do this was the
Speaker 6: newspaper Forgive me if I am mispronounced in this full
Speaker 6: holdais self polo. I believe it's called I might be
Speaker 6: mispronouncing that. I apologize if I am. But they are
Speaker 6: one of the biggest newspapers in Brazil and definitely one
Speaker 6: of the oldest. And that story was all right, you know,
Speaker 6: they credited me, you're breaking the story. Yeah, I was
Speaker 6: talking to the person who wrote that. She's sweet and
Speaker 6: even did original recording. It's awesome. And then right after that,
Speaker 6: like dozens of other outlets came. Then none of them
Speaker 6: credited me, and they posted like social media stuff about
Speaker 6: the story. Not a single one of those credited me,
Speaker 6: and they're getting like thousands of lights and comments and shares,
Speaker 6: and most egregious I think is I've seen a few
Speaker 6: of them credit the journalist with fulha as breaking the story,
Speaker 6: and I've seen one sake them as breaking the story.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, who's art?
Speaker 6: Go mind you literally in a subheading says I broke
Speaker 6: the story.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and I didn't check in on it today yet,
Speaker 9: but last night I was like up late just looking
Speaker 9: at all the news outlets that was boosting, and it's like,
Speaker 9: and why the stories getting coverage.
Speaker 6: Don't get me wrong, it's an important one. It's just like, yeah, no,
Speaker 6: it's great. Yeah, almost none of them are seeing where
Speaker 6: they got the story from. It's just like, oh, wow,
Speaker 6: there's this bigger outlet covery. I'm gonna credit the bigger outlift.
Speaker 3: So did to explain why we're also sort of concerned
Speaker 3: about like the way this attribution stuff works, right, this
Speaker 3: is an incredibly material problem for us, right, And like
Speaker 3: I am very lucky in that, like in terms of transjertionalism,
Speaker 3: I have like a stable job. But the thing is,
Speaker 3: right unless unless you fucking got really lucky and you
Speaker 3: got hired like as assis person, and then you have
Speaker 3: a bunch of very very supportive like coworkers, and like
Speaker 3: your bosses are supportive. You are like trying to cobble
Speaker 3: together like every scent that you can possibly pull out
Speaker 3: of a fucking couch cushion, because like you know, I've
Speaker 3: said this other show before, right, Like, if you're a
Speaker 3: transperson in the US, even when even before all the
Speaker 3: turf tariffs hit right like you you were living in
Speaker 3: the night in like nineteen thirty six, great depression levels
Speaker 3: of unemployment, and you know, and so and so that
Speaker 3: means that, like it actually matters a lot when when
Speaker 3: other outlets do your stories and don't attribute it to you,
Speaker 3: because like, you have to find a way to fucking
Speaker 3: make money, and like, almost all trans journalists are like
Speaker 3: the most hideously broke people you've ever heard of in
Speaker 3: your entire fucking life. Like, and this is also you know,
Speaker 3: and this is this is also part of the way
Speaker 3: that like class plays out in the transmitting you see,
Speaker 3: is like, you know, the people with the biggest platforms
Speaker 3: tend to be trans people who were already doing okay,
Speaker 3: because those are the only people who can afford to
Speaker 3: fucking do this. And like that's why most of you
Speaker 3: have heard of me, and most of you probably have
Speaker 3: not heard of David and Miira, even though David and
Speaker 3: Mirra do like quite frankly more important journalism than I do,
Speaker 3: and like and in terms of especially in terms of
Speaker 3: like like and like break a lot way more fucking
Speaker 3: stories than I do. Because it's not kind of like
Speaker 3: not exactly like my thing, right, But that's because I was, like,
Speaker 3: you know, like I was already sort of like in
Speaker 3: a place that was financially secure, and everyone else is
Speaker 3: so unbelievably fucking broke all the time. And it matters
Speaker 3: when fucking stories get stolen, because the only way that
Speaker 3: if if you're a trans journalist and you're you know,
Speaker 3: you're working at your own outlet, because an outlet won't
Speaker 3: fucking hire you because that's just the way that the
Speaker 3: fucking media is structured. The only way for you to
Speaker 3: get paid is by like people seeing your stories. And
Speaker 3: that's part of why there's like just not that many
Speaker 3: trans journalists because like the level of discrimination on top
Speaker 3: of the kind of like erasure of independent journalist that
Speaker 3: already happens, makes it just like financially impossible to fucking
Speaker 3: do it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's it's not just uh liberal media, or it's
Speaker 8: not just like the cist liberal meat too. Sometimes, Like
Speaker 8: I had a similar thing with when I broke the
Speaker 8: story of rain and some other sexual abuse nonprofits removing
Speaker 8: all of the trans people from their websites. That became
Speaker 8: a national news story, and the Washington Post kicked it
Speaker 8: up also, and I think part of that was because
Speaker 8: I complained so much about the previous time where they
Speaker 8: almost didn't cite me, that maybe they were a little
Speaker 8: bit more cautious about me, is my theory. But anyway,
Speaker 8: after that initial news story that cited me, same thing
Speaker 8: happened where it's like everyone's like, oh, well, we can
Speaker 8: just cite the Washington Post now, and so this person
Speaker 8: no one knows. And the first website to do that
Speaker 8: was like a queer news outlet, and then I just
Speaker 8: kept watching as like I think it was like three
Speaker 8: or four different queer or like feminist women focused news
Speaker 8: outlets did the same thing of not citing me, And
Speaker 8: there was even like a really long piece from this
Speaker 8: other like, oht that was it felt like it was
Speaker 8: going out of its way not to cite me because
Speaker 8: it was talking about this entire issue about nonprofits censoring people,
Speaker 8: and that was an entire conversation that was started specifically
Speaker 8: because of the news article I wrote, but it specifically
Speaker 8: did not cite me, even though they mentioned how one
Speaker 8: of the organizations that I reported on had reversed course,
Speaker 8: which is something that they emailed me and said it
Speaker 8: was because of me. So that's how that's how deep
Speaker 8: this goes, they will like go out of their way
Speaker 8: to like carve you out of a story that exists
Speaker 8: because of you, even if they are extensively you know,
Speaker 8: not just a liberal like a New York Times outlet,
Speaker 8: but like a left wing like progressive facing outlet that's
Speaker 8: trying to like market itself like that. They they just
Speaker 8: want to exclude trans women from their own stories. Even
Speaker 8: it's kind of crazy.
Speaker 7: Yeah, the extent of it is actually telling of the
Speaker 7: local level too. Here the blade Diddle number of reporting
Speaker 7: and we also featured some like really well thought out
Speaker 7: and pretty sharp opinion columns, which is one thing we
Speaker 7: kind of specializing because they're really good for like raising
Speaker 7: issues in the local level about how awful the tourism
Speaker 7: Development Authority is, which is this hotel or cartail that
Speaker 7: takes every dime of all the local hotel tax, every
Speaker 7: bit of it, and then uses it to market the
Speaker 7: place to more rich people and push crackdowns on pretty
Speaker 7: much everyone else.
Speaker 3: So we pushed this.
Speaker 7: It became a widespread public demand, A lot of organizing
Speaker 7: happened around it, and there was zip Zilch zero mentioned
Speaker 7: that like spurred by investigations and editorials in the Asheville Blade.
Speaker 7: Even one of the people who wrote that editorial, who
Speaker 7: was a local resident activist who dealt with some tourism stuff,
Speaker 7: was literally being quoted the fact she'd written a piece
Speaker 7: for the Blade and that you know, was just not mentioned,
Speaker 7: and it actually became kind of a running kind of
Speaker 7: grim joke because we're all working class Trains people, and
Speaker 7: you know, half of us are transferm is just the
Speaker 7: Asheville Blade does not exist. And some of that was
Speaker 7: for liberals, but honestly, Ashville has a massive trains massaging problem.
Speaker 7: Which think we were the first meet outs to do
Speaker 7: like a quick guide to trans misogyny in which we
Speaker 7: did kind of like a slide show about it in
Speaker 7: our Patreon and stuff, because it was that extensive. But
Speaker 7: even the left to Nashville has some real problems with
Speaker 7: trans misogyny. So and it's applied everything out just from
Speaker 7: trans issues, but even to bread and butter kind of
Speaker 7: local stuff, which we also do a lot of reporting on.
Speaker 7: You know, it's we can't admit that trans leftists and
Speaker 7: anarchists are shaping the discussion in any way, shape or form.
Speaker 4: MHM.
Speaker 3: It's funny because like like even us like even like
Speaker 3: the podcast it could happen here, which is like a
Speaker 3: pretty big national thing, like there's no one else talks
Speaker 3: about us. It's fucking amazing. You could just like see
Speaker 3: you could like literally watch like every other podcast that's
Speaker 3: like a tenth of our size there's like media coverage
Speaker 3: of and there's nothing and they will never admit that
Speaker 3: we fucking did anything. It's awesome. It's so cool, And
Speaker 3: I think like a conversions of facturacy too, because like
Speaker 3: you know, on the one hand, like in terms of
Speaker 3: sort of the way that hypervisibility works, right, hypervisibility for
Speaker 3: transferms only works negatively, like there's only the kind of
Speaker 3: like you get fucked by it. But then also on
Speaker 3: top of it, you get the reverse version of it,
Speaker 3: where it's like, yeah, you know your labor was stolen
Speaker 3: all and this is you know, this is true both
Speaker 3: in movements. This is true of the way the sort
Speaker 3: of capitalist media functions. And then on top of that
Speaker 3: we have the kind of like trifecta of like we
Speaker 3: will never mention that you exist, which is trans independent
Speaker 3: and radical at the same time, and like this is
Speaker 3: the thing happens like every fucking transferm like journalist, like
Speaker 3: friend of the show Maya Arsen crime w has had
Speaker 3: this happen to it like a billion fucking times. I
Speaker 3: want to talk a bit more about kind of just
Speaker 3: like the financials of how this plays out and how
Speaker 3: independent media is sort of being so ported in this era,
Speaker 3: because you know, like it's also really true that like Eve,
Speaker 3: even the like nominally trans outlets, like a lot of
Speaker 3: it functions a labor exploitation. And yeah, let's let's talk
Speaker 3: a bit about that.
Speaker 6: I have a lot of strong cakes, seen some shit.
Speaker 6: Oh boy, I have so many opinions, So I mentioned
Speaker 6: I kind of more formally got to start three to
Speaker 6: four years ago. My first article was published in like
Speaker 6: twenty eighteen, and it was just like a local thing
Speaker 6: when I was living in Scranton, Pennsylvania area where bathing happens,
Speaker 6: but I found something to report on. The reason I
Speaker 6: got started that would have been like early twenty twenty two.
Speaker 6: Reason I got started then because I was homeless and
Speaker 6: I needed a way to make money, and where I
Speaker 6: was living at the time it was a complete job
Speaker 6: desert there. I didn't have a car and there was
Speaker 6: nothing in walking distance to me. The only things that
Speaker 6: were like minimum wage food service jobs that over half
Speaker 6: an hour walk and my lon disabled. My body is
Speaker 6: in pain if I stand up too long. So those
Speaker 6: jobs did not last long because I physically couldn't. And
Speaker 6: so I tried to find something that I could do remotely,
Speaker 6: more consistently, and I went all in into freelance writing
Speaker 6: and journal.
Speaker 5: With the.
Speaker 3: Real really the money making career.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, I'm totally I'm just in this for the money,
Speaker 6: you know.
Speaker 1: I made such.
Speaker 6: Amazing profits that year, which is why I ended up
Speaker 6: homeless again, and by the end of the year I
Speaker 6: was living in a hotel.
Speaker 3: God yeah.
Speaker 6: And a lot of the writing I was doing at
Speaker 6: that time was very generalist and I hadn't really found
Speaker 6: much of my niche yet. But as I began to
Speaker 6: zero it more on trains, issues over time and just
Speaker 6: politics and stuff like that. Because as an aside, I
Speaker 6: also tried to break into gaming journalism because I unfortunately
Speaker 6: am a gamer regredibly many such cases, many such cases,
Speaker 6: and that industry is just dead. It was dying at
Speaker 6: that point and now it's just like, if you want
Speaker 6: to get a job as a gaming journalist, you're not
Speaker 6: gonna I tried. We need more people to do it,
Speaker 6: but it does not pay. So I ended up going
Speaker 6: into politics journalism, which pays like marginally better, and by
Speaker 6: marginally better, let me talk about some of my rates.
Speaker 3: Oh god, yeah.
Speaker 6: One outlet I've written for pretty consistently goal for a while.
Speaker 6: To start, it paid me about one hundred bucks an
Speaker 6: article flat rate. And this includes for highly research and
Speaker 6: death recording articles.
Speaker 2: My god, yeah, this.
Speaker 3: Is again like shit that's going to be stolen by
Speaker 3: a national outlet in two days, like and by you.
Speaker 6: A lot of these stories took weeks to make and
Speaker 6: fell for a hundred bucks, And so I eventually got
Speaker 6: quote upcradated to that outl it to doing seventy five
Speaker 6: a piece, but four pieces in a month, and so
Speaker 6: that was great. You know that two hundred dollars a
Speaker 6: month for each individually reported piece. That really paid the bills.
Speaker 6: And eventually it changed into one fifty a piece for
Speaker 6: indef reporting pieces that often took over a month's worth
Speaker 6: of work to get going. And I had to meet
Speaker 6: my deadliner as they would get really angry at me
Speaker 6: and they would be really dickish. And that was one
Speaker 6: of my better experiences, certainly, not the best I've had.
Speaker 6: Plenty of people who were wonderful, who I've riten for
Speaker 6: and I've had great times with. But the through line
Speaker 6: of all of it, even the places that pay that
Speaker 6: are they're for one off stories. They're for things that
Speaker 6: do not giveing key a source of and come long term.
Speaker 6: Even the places that have paid me the best for
Speaker 6: individual storyes, it's not enough, not the least of which
Speaker 6: because you know, the cost of living is borable right now,
Speaker 6: terrorists are going to show up and oh God, or
Speaker 6: what the fuck is happening, But also because none of
Speaker 6: it's consistent. The closest to consistent I had was overworking
Speaker 6: myself by writing like upwards of like ten articles a week,
Speaker 6: sometimes upwards of like five to seven in one day
Speaker 6: and all of them being reported and in that And
Speaker 6: it's not sustainable doing that, No, no, but that's just common.
Speaker 6: That is just normal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And it's and it's like the sort
Speaker 3: of bleak thing about it is your your options are
Speaker 3: you have money already, you won the fucking lottery basically,
Speaker 3: and like you got a stable position, you work at
Speaker 3: a rate that is like genuinely hideous, or you have
Speaker 3: a side job, and sometimes it's a lot of these
Speaker 3: things combined. Yeah, yeah, I think there's a tendency to
Speaker 3: talk about discrimination as something that's sort of like abstract
Speaker 3: or something that's even just kind of like point of
Speaker 3: hiring stuff, which is all true and like, you know,
Speaker 3: it is like yeah, like part of the problem with
Speaker 3: this is that it's impossible to get like fucking staff
Speaker 3: positions and like and like I could say this is
Speaker 3: like so I mean I got hired like as a
Speaker 3: SIS person, right, and like and like they would have
Speaker 3: hired me if I was trans, But like that's also
Speaker 3: just true for a lot of people, which is that
Speaker 3: like that's like the way that you can do it.
Speaker 3: So like there is the like front toward discrimination. But
Speaker 3: then also the second aspect of it is that like
Speaker 3: the way that all of this stuff plays out structurally
Speaker 3: in the economy is that you get reduced to sort
Speaker 3: of contract labor unless you try to go go it
Speaker 3: by yourself. And because of the incredible just my material
Speaker 3: financial oppression of trans people, this is another big part
Speaker 3: of the reason why there's just so few, you know,
Speaker 3: and like there's there's becoming more right and I'm incredibly
Speaker 3: like you know, like I'm fucking talking with three trans
Speaker 3: journalists this rules. And also the reason is all more
Speaker 3: of us, which is important because like sis, people trying
Speaker 3: to cover our stori is a fucking disaster, Like that's
Speaker 3: how we got here. But like part of the reason
Speaker 3: why there's not more is just that, like it's so
Speaker 3: difficult to survive doing this and yeah, you know, and
Speaker 3: that's also I'm gonna gona tur this into a minor plug,
Speaker 3: which is like, go subscribe to the Ashful Blade, go
Speaker 3: subscribe to Free Radical, goes subscribe to mane cast News,
Speaker 3: because like literally the difference between like people being able
Speaker 3: to have an apartment and pay their rent or like
Speaker 3: living in a car is like the amount of support
Speaker 3: that you get from this stuff.
Speaker 7: That's absolutely true. Yeah, and I should note the you know,
Speaker 7: the Blade's a co op. We've been one for for
Speaker 7: half a decade now, and part of the reason for
Speaker 7: that was we've seen how unfairly like income was treated
Speaker 7: just in the press in general. And also I'm an
Speaker 7: anner kissed and while I love being an editor, I
Speaker 7: don't want to be a boss. I want to like
Speaker 7: work with other people, and it's made us a lot
Speaker 7: more effective. I would say we wouldn't exist if we
Speaker 7: hadn't become a co op, but also when we do
Speaker 7: hit a difficult financial spot and we operate in a
Speaker 7: shoestring budget, especially post to Lene as sadly a lot
Speaker 7: of folks have been driven out of Ashville by the
Speaker 7: refusal of various governments to do anything about rental aid,
Speaker 7: by the resumption of like very quick resumption of fvictions,
Speaker 7: and a lot of other horrible stuff Like it's a struggle.
Speaker 7: We all are working class folks, we all work of
Speaker 7: their jobs and face transis, the discrimination, trans misology, and transphobia.
Speaker 7: So it's it's difficult. And even with being a co op,
Speaker 7: we do the best we can, and we do, unlike
Speaker 7: other places, pay freelancers fair rate. But sometimes it's legitimately
Speaker 7: difficult to divide up our tiny budget, and at some
Speaker 7: points we say, look, we can't cover this right now,
Speaker 7: or we have to say okay, yeah, in some cases
Speaker 7: I've done it before, certainly I'm covering this, but I
Speaker 7: am going to literally have to split up payment forward
Speaker 7: over multile months because we just don't have the money
Speaker 7: in there. But I feel it does need, it does
Speaker 7: need to get out there. And even if those decisions
Speaker 7: are made more fairly, it is still a real problem
Speaker 7: that we are dividing up a fairly small pool of resources.
Speaker 7: We do a lot with that, but it is real limitation.
Speaker 4: Mm hmm.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I'm kind of in a similar boat in terms of
Speaker 8: my publication, Maddie cast News. So I've in one of
Speaker 8: the categories you mentioned. Actually I'm in two of them,
Speaker 8: where I find what I'm doing not from my work
Speaker 8: but from.
Speaker 3: My first job, my main job. I guess which I got.
Speaker 8: I guess pretending to be assis or maybe you know,
Speaker 8: non binary, be them or whatever and then kind of
Speaker 8: jump scare them. But anyway, that job pays pretty well thankfully,
Speaker 8: you know, software engineering one of the one of the
Speaker 8: lottery professions for trans women. You get your healthcare, you
Speaker 8: get your money. But I've been trying to go beyond
Speaker 8: just me and try to help other people as well.
Speaker 8: So recently we just applied for fiscal sponsorship with five
Speaker 8: to one C three, which hopefully hopefully let us become
Speaker 8: a charity tax deductible and all that. And I've also
Speaker 8: been putting a bit of my own money. And I've
Speaker 8: also been you know, pretty much begging all my readers
Speaker 8: to give us money because one of the biggest goals
Speaker 8: of my publication has It kind of started off more
Speaker 8: about like, you know, reporting on the news, of course,
Speaker 8: but now it's reporting on the news and also you know,
Speaker 8: making sure the people who report on the news aren't homeless.
Speaker 8: Actually maybe that's a bad thing. Everyone I know in
Speaker 8: my life knows people like all these journalists who report
Speaker 8: on this news, but a lot of them probably don't
Speaker 8: even know how much like they suck as they struggled
Speaker 8: just like getting through their daily lives. So I'm really
Speaker 8: trying to hopefully create some structure for us to have
Speaker 8: at least one nonprofit that will fund trans journalists at
Speaker 8: like a living wage of at least, you know, twenty
Speaker 8: five dollars an hour, which I honest I don't think
Speaker 8: it's a lot, especially like in a place like LA,
Speaker 8: but twenty five dollars an hour is probably more than
Speaker 8: you can get almost anywhere as a trans journalist.
Speaker 3: Also, I've heard a lot of jokes.
Speaker 8: About, you know, we're passing around the same trade dollars
Speaker 8: in the trans community, and it's a little bit more
Speaker 8: of that. But I'm also hoping to see if I
Speaker 8: can try to fundraise from other people and try to,
Speaker 8: you know, raise awareness for this issue because I don't
Speaker 8: have a lot of time myself to be read in
Speaker 8: articles these days, because I do have a full ten job.
Speaker 8: But yeah, hoping to kind of make a dent on
Speaker 8: this issue and raise awareness. And it's really a win
Speaker 8: ran for all trans people that you know, if we're
Speaker 8: paying people who need this money to survive, but they're
Speaker 8: also creating really important news coverage that literally is like
Speaker 8: life changing for hundreds of thousands, millions of people at
Speaker 8: many times. And that's how I see it's an exceptionally
Speaker 8: important issue that is completely unaddressed.
Speaker 3: This is also part of the issue with the way
Speaker 3: that like trans issue who are reported on by the
Speaker 3: media is that they're they're largely you know, and it's
Speaker 3: not things like healthcare aren't important, right, but like just
Speaker 3: the raw class dynamic of all of this just does
Speaker 3: not get talked about, right. The homelessness rates that I
Speaker 3: don't I don't, actually fuck I should have the homelessness
Speaker 3: race off top of my head. Things like three or
Speaker 3: four times at the very least more likely across the
Speaker 3: entire transpopulation to be homeless than people. And like you
Speaker 3: can just fucking see that if you know trans people.
Speaker 3: It's like, yeah, fucking everyone's spent a bunch of time
Speaker 3: being homeless, and like, you know, that's just the conditions
Speaker 3: of this. And you know, this is the thing that like,
Speaker 3: as you the listener, like it is possible for this.
Speaker 3: It doesn't have to fucking be like this, Like it doesn't.
Speaker 3: You have the power in your hands, like to keep
Speaker 3: people off the street and like with a roof above
Speaker 3: their head. And you can do this by clicking the
Speaker 3: links in the.
Speaker 7: Description from our co O. Thank you for repeatedly mentioning
Speaker 7: that aspect. I think also, this does, this classynemic does
Speaker 7: shape the type of trans coverage you see two quite
Speaker 7: a bit. We did, sir, importing one time on the
Speaker 7: city of Ashville spending over a million dollars to the
Speaker 7: Salvation Army, which is basically a queer and transphobic cult.
Speaker 7: But that piece is reported very differently from if it
Speaker 7: been reported by say a trans journalist who'd been very
Speaker 7: well off their entire lives. You know, because a lot
Speaker 7: of us people in our co op have either been
Speaker 7: close to or been homeless before, and so we were
Speaker 7: able to bring in the experience of knowing that if
Speaker 7: you are a trans homeless person, the Salvation Army isn't
Speaker 7: letting you in or is one of the worst possible
Speaker 7: shelters you can end up in. And that piece was
Speaker 7: written and read very differently because we were drawing from
Speaker 7: that from that on the ground experience.
Speaker 6: Yeah, on that note, I've I've written so many stories
Speaker 6: that have been about the poverty rates of trans people
Speaker 6: and what we've all gone through. I used to be
Speaker 6: a daily contributor for LGBTQ Nation. They were one of
Speaker 6: the outlooks that I was trying to crank out as
Speaker 6: many articles as I could for and the editors lovely people.
Speaker 6: There no issues with them, Lovely folks. Yeah, they just
Speaker 6: they don't. They didn't have enough money to begin with
Speaker 6: to pay me enough, so you're gonna do. I remember
Speaker 6: working on a story or something like the summer of
Speaker 6: last year for them where I was I was writing
Speaker 6: about some new report that came out talking about just
Speaker 6: like poverty rates, job discrimination rates of trans people. And
Speaker 6: one thing I've noticed is, like David mentioned, there is
Speaker 6: a huge disconnect between even if you have like wealthier
Speaker 6: trans people write about an issue versus those who are
Speaker 6: in poverty. Like a lot of the sources I had
Speaker 6: for specific article. I don't remember that headline because I
Speaker 6: wrote like five hundred or goalster q Nation last year.
Speaker 6: But a lot of the sources I used for that article,
Speaker 6: and like other ones like it, are like big nonprofits.
Speaker 6: And you know, obviously your mileage may very depending on
Speaker 6: whur's nonprofit. But most of the folk who like were
Speaker 6: writing these reports or who were doing the press releases
Speaker 6: and stuff like that, you could just kind of tell
Speaker 6: that they maybe did not have quite the same experiences
Speaker 6: as say, trans people who have been homeless, trans people
Speaker 6: who have had to deprive themselves of medical care because
Speaker 6: they couldn't afford it, trans people who have had to
Speaker 6: go without food because not enough money. And it's almost
Speaker 6: like a lot of people who didn't have to go
Speaker 6: through this stuff like intellectualize it more. They see it
Speaker 6: as like these abstract numbers and they know it's bad,
Speaker 6: but they don't have that like individual connection. Like even
Speaker 6: many of the nonprofit folks, a lot of their friends,
Speaker 6: even their social circles are all going to be on average,
Speaker 6: you know, I can't say for every single person. Obviously,
Speaker 6: like on average more wealthy, more stable, they have family
Speaker 6: to back them, up. They have plenty of options, and
Speaker 6: I don't know, rambling a bit, but there's just a disconnect,
Speaker 6: you know, whenever reaching out to folk who won the
Speaker 6: birth lottery a little bit.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 8: One of the most the most expensive article that we
Speaker 8: did Mady cast News earlier last month was about Maryland
Speaker 8: prisons and how they're basically torture chambers for trans women,
Speaker 8: as most prisons are, but it seems like they're especially
Speaker 8: bad in Maryland, you know, despite it being supposedly a
Speaker 8: safe trans to date, you know, seventy percent Democrats. And
Speaker 8: that was a kind of example of just like how unprofitable,
Speaker 8: how possible to not just unprofitable, because when you think unprofitable,
Speaker 8: it's like, oh, you're not making money.
Speaker 3: It's not about that.
Speaker 8: It's like if you're losing like eighty percent of the
Speaker 8: money you put into these articles because it takes so
Speaker 8: many Like I'm a very strong believer of paying people,
Speaker 8: you know, a living wage. So I was paying the
Speaker 8: journalists like well over twenty five dollars an hour for
Speaker 8: you know, dozens of hours of work, and that adds
Speaker 8: up really fast. And then court fee like pacer fees,
Speaker 8: all these other costs are adding up and it ends
Speaker 8: up being like around the thousand dollars for the single article,
Speaker 8: and it's a really important article that you know, raise
Speaker 8: a lot of awareness. Everyone in Maryland in the trans circle,
Speaker 8: they're talking about it. But at the same time, it's
Speaker 8: basically a charity product, right, This is why I'm trying
Speaker 8: to become a nonprofit because there's simply no other way
Speaker 8: to be able to fund this stuff. There's no capitalist
Speaker 8: model for reporting on trans women in prison. It's not
Speaker 8: a it's not something that people are you know, like
Speaker 8: I definitely get there's a lot of people who support
Speaker 8: us out of the goodness of their hearts, and that's
Speaker 8: really nice, but even that is not enough because of
Speaker 8: that's just how it is. There's just not enough people
Speaker 8: who care about these issues, especially the more intersectional it is.
Speaker 8: You know, even a lot of people in the queer
Speaker 8: community aren't as worried necessarily about people in prison. They're
Speaker 8: more aggorry about people not in prisons. And you know,
Speaker 8: of course everyone matters, but I think it's really important
Speaker 8: to focus on those most intersectional issues because when you
Speaker 8: really think about it, like prisons are basically you know,
Speaker 8: where they do everything they want to do to transform
Speaker 8: and aren't in prison. That's where they get to do
Speaker 8: all of it, and no one's looking on, no one's
Speaker 8: watching them, no one's holding them accountable. But yeah, I
Speaker 8: think it's basically a complete failing of capitalism. Like it's
Speaker 8: there's definitely be some outlets that, you know, maybe they
Speaker 8: could be doing better, but at the same time, a
Speaker 8: lot of the time it's basically, you know, be really shitty.
Speaker 4: The people are closed down.
Speaker 3: And neither of those are great options.
Speaker 8: And personally I would close down, but I can't tell
Speaker 8: other people what to do. And I think really it's
Speaker 8: a systemic issue that society doesn't care about us, that
Speaker 8: the sists, people who really should be funding these things
Speaker 8: and trying to solve these issues, just pretend like we
Speaker 8: don't exist, and you know, go go out of their
Speaker 8: way to even erase our presence even when we do,
Speaker 8: you know, create national needs.
Speaker 3: You know, I think part of part of the difficulty
Speaker 3: of it, right, and this specifically the way the transit
Speaker 3: she's functioned about. Class and journalism are a microcosm. It's
Speaker 3: like the most intense version of the stuff that's happening
Speaker 3: to the entire journalism industry, right or like, you know,
Speaker 3: part of what we're seeing is like is just that
Speaker 3: it's been the destruction of local news, right and and
Speaker 3: the product of this is that the only people who
Speaker 3: can be journalists are like a bunch of fucking rich
Speaker 3: dipshits and you know, like, yeah, you've all fucking read
Speaker 3: like New York Times columnists. Is like the platforming a
Speaker 3: genocide denier today, right, like that, and that's that's sort
Speaker 3: of the product of this. And it means that like
Speaker 3: unless like literally like people like you, the fucking listener,
Speaker 3: and I guess doesn't apply to you if you're you know,
Speaker 3: like statistically a good number of you are like you
Speaker 3: are also transgender and you make like fucking nine dollars
Speaker 3: an hour like running a forklift or something like. This
Speaker 3: is not this is not on you, Like I know
Speaker 3: much of you are gonna be like, holy shit, I
Speaker 3: actually give funy these people. It's like, okay, but like
Speaker 3: this stuff is only possible if people are actually fucking
Speaker 3: willing to support it, like until we can like fundamentally
Speaker 3: change the way that the entire political and economic system
Speaker 3: works in this country and in this world. And until then,
Speaker 3: it's like, yeah, like it's this is a fucking problem
Speaker 3: for like us here too, cause you know, like again,
Speaker 3: like I got fucking lucky, Like I am extremely dissimilar,
Speaker 3: Like I am the transferman, like one of the transfomens
Speaker 3: who you will hear from the most, and I have
Speaker 3: like a stable job. I haven't been homeless and I
Speaker 3: haven't done sex work, and this makes me completely unlike
Speaker 3: a huge portion of trans people, especially transforms, right, and yeah,
Speaker 3: it's like, yeah, I fucking colors is the way I
Speaker 3: do this shit in ways that like I don't see
Speaker 3: because like I haven't had to like do this shit,
Speaker 3: and this is a real fucking problem. The only way
Speaker 3: that it can not be like this is if people
Speaker 3: are actually willing to support the people who understand these
Speaker 3: things because they've fucking gone through it. And so your
Speaker 3: options are, like all of our stuff gets reported on
Speaker 3: by Jesse Sentall and we all fucking die, or we
Speaker 3: find trans journalism and we fight them and we all
Speaker 3: live in a fucking better world.
Speaker 6: My backup option if trans journalism doesn't work. You mentioned
Speaker 6: sex work is quite literally to write furry smut and
Speaker 6: hope that pays.
Speaker 7: The last year, The Ashville Blade marked our tenth anniversary
Speaker 7: so I think I think that is worth mentioning too,
Speaker 7: Like I think sometimes things and they truly are precarious,
Speaker 7: they truly are difficult in some ways, they're only getting
Speaker 7: more precarious and more difficult. But at the same time,
Speaker 7: despite our journalists being arrested, despite being kind of like
Speaker 7: targeted and ignored by a lot of liberals and even
Speaker 7: some leftists in town, we're still here. We're still doing journalism.
Speaker 7: We just put out a really powerful investigation about you know,
Speaker 7: more mouth yet more mouthfeasance in the police department.
Speaker 4: So so yeah, like it.
Speaker 6: Can be done.
Speaker 7: It's not impossible, and as tight as things are, there
Speaker 7: is also a lot of resilience and we do get
Speaker 7: a lot of very genuine support. I do think that's
Speaker 7: worth emphasizing too. So like there is strengthened, there is
Speaker 7: some hope here. Yeah, and you know, and again it's
Speaker 7: like it's it's not impossible. It just requires it requires
Speaker 7: a bunch of fucking work from the trans people who
Speaker 7: are doing it. And then also it requires you know,
Speaker 7: putting on my fucking MPR pledge to my voice. It
Speaker 7: requires viewers like you to you know, it requires people
Speaker 7: to care enough about it to support it and make
Speaker 7: it exist. And yeah, I think that's a that's a
Speaker 7: kind of good note to start sort of wrapping up.
Speaker 7: Do you have anything else that you want to make
Speaker 7: sure you get in? Yeah, before we move too plugs.
Speaker 8: I guess so yeah for me as I'm also kind
Speaker 8: of in that spectrum of like being a little bit
Speaker 8: more privileged as far as trans women go financially. And
Speaker 8: my message to other people who make especially since if
Speaker 8: you're a SIS person you make over one hundred thousand dollars,
Speaker 8: you're comfortable and you're feeling bad listening to this, you know,
Speaker 8: go give a trans person money, Go give my relazine money,
Speaker 8: Go give David Forbes money, Like we have to. We
Speaker 8: really need everyone to start pitching in, especially people who
Speaker 8: aren't trans, and we really need like it's it's literally
Speaker 8: life saving the money. Like, and I think one thing
Speaker 8: to consider is, you know, one thousand dollars to someone
Speaker 8: who makes a lot of money is completely different from
Speaker 8: one thousand dollars to someone who is like a month
Speaker 8: away from being homeless.
Speaker 3: And twenty dollars functions like that.
Speaker 8: Like, yeah, twenty dollars even like no, I know so
Speaker 8: many people like one thousand dollars, like they'll go, they'll
Speaker 8: spend a thousand dollars in a couple of weeks on restaurants. Right,
Speaker 8: And then there's people there's trans of a thousand dollars,
Speaker 8: it's like changed their life forever.
Speaker 3: The look on mirror's face, Like those people spend and
Speaker 3: I don't even do twenty thousand dollars a year on.
Speaker 7: Sushi, Holy shit, having worked in the service industry, Yeah.
Speaker 6: I feel bad when I spend like twenty bucks on
Speaker 6: Popeyes once a week.
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 8: So if you spend twenty thousand dollars a year on sushi,
Speaker 8: please spend nineteen thousand dollars a year this year and said,
Speaker 8: and give one thousand dollars to transperson.
Speaker 3: That's my advice for you. Double the income of a
Speaker 3: transperson today. This is also, like, you know, part of
Speaker 3: what I'm talking about with like the Great Depression, Like
Speaker 3: we don't live in the same economy that everyone else does,
Speaker 3: Like it is literally a different fucking world. And the
Speaker 3: more fucked you are, like down the fucking scale of
Speaker 3: like of like trans poverty, the more it's like you
Speaker 3: literally like the reality that like the people live in
Speaker 3: is just completely alien to you, it's like, what the.
Speaker 6: Fun want that kind of money?
Speaker 3: You're a David Diah Do you have anything else you
Speaker 3: want to say before.
Speaker 1: You like that?
Speaker 6: Please support trend journalists, please, Dear God. Please, everyone I
Speaker 6: know who is primarily a journalist for work is broke.
Speaker 6: We need the money, please, Dear God.
Speaker 7: Yeah I would, Yeah, I'd add to that. But another
Speaker 7: thing is, look, you should support trans jernals because trans
Speaker 7: people deserve to you know, to be supported and to
Speaker 7: be able to make a living. Also, frankly, we're really
Speaker 7: good at this, like generally as a whole, like we
Speaker 7: have a lot more perspective I think on how this
Speaker 7: healthscape social structure actually does and doesn't work, and a
Speaker 7: lot more determination to actually tell the truth in general.
Speaker 7: And so you know, dollars to the actual blade for example,
Speaker 7: or to or tamra ortomaticasts like they go to journalism. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 7: you know, they're not going to like some baroque hierarchy
Speaker 7: of you know, of gentry administrators or something or CEOs like.
Speaker 7: It goes to journalism. It goes to actual interesting reporting
Speaker 7: and views and things that need to be said. So
Speaker 7: if people are even just looking if it's some journalism.
Speaker 7: It is something they care about or think needs to
Speaker 7: be stronger. This is the way to do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And like, like this is also a directly political
Speaker 3: thing because like the word that you'll do, like I
Speaker 3: have literally watched it change the sort of political landscape
Speaker 3: like that. That's just that's just like a thing that happens,
Speaker 3: you know, Like, and I think we're all we're all
Speaker 3: very cynical about sort of the power of like the
Speaker 3: truth to do anything, because it requires people to act
Speaker 3: on it. But you know, if you don't know anything
Speaker 3: is happening, it is not possible to act on something. Yeah, So,
Speaker 3: like you know, you are simultaneously you were supporting, like
Speaker 3: you're supporting trans people in like the most vicarious position
Speaker 3: you've been in in fucking ages. You are like supporting
Speaker 3: your supporting journalism and you are not even poking a stick.
Speaker 3: You are helping build a lance to like stab into
Speaker 3: the side of the people who are like destroying this world.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I think that's fucking important. So if if
Speaker 3: people want to support you, where do they go? Where
Speaker 3: do they go?
Speaker 5: Go? Go go go.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So if you want to support me, go to
Speaker 6: the free radical dot org. That that that is my newsletter.
Speaker 6: There's stuff to subscribe and and and give money. You
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Speaker 7: is more of their cup of tea.
Speaker 3: Statistically, in our audience, I know there are a bunch
Speaker 3: of you whose special interest either is or could be
Speaker 3: medieval peasant uprisings. You are not going to find better
Speaker 3: writing on medieval and uprisings anywhere else. Yes, there is
Speaker 3: a limit to the extent to which you can actually
Speaker 3: talk about the structural problems that are happening, and you
Speaker 3: can't fucking talk about how to solve them. And this
Speaker 3: is also partially why I have a coxsault journalistic. I
Speaker 3: kind of jokingly refuse to call myself a journalist because,
Speaker 3: like I fucking I refuse to be associated with like
Speaker 3: all of those goddamn Atlantic motherfuckers who in institutional jobs
Speaker 3: to endanger trans people like you know.
Speaker 6: But also ground fascists.
Speaker 3: Though that's true, that's true, yeah, you know, because it's
Speaker 3: like we're the ones actually fucking doing this shit. But
Speaker 3: also yeah, like this is you know, to do my one,
Speaker 3: to do my one Karl Marx quote. It's like, you know,
Speaker 3: like philosophy has hitherto only sought to describe the world.
Speaker 3: The point is to change it. And that's a thing
Speaker 3: that we could that like, we like have the power
Speaker 3: to collectively do together. And that's something that like the
Speaker 3: New York Times does not want you to know that
Speaker 3: you can change things.
Speaker 6: Now. Yeah, they to borrow a term that David has
Speaker 6: recently gotten into my vocabulary. A bunch the gentry really
Speaker 6: fucking do not like the idea of solutions. Their idea
Speaker 6: of a solution is go vote for Pete Boudage Egg,
Speaker 6: go sign the acl YUS petition.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want to read this, this fucking post that
Speaker 3: I saw forbout Kendra Rights about the New York Times,
Speaker 3: I think a lot about the top New York Times editor,
Speaker 3: who I told the historians were warning were in a
Speaker 3: similar period to the ramp up to the Holocaust and
Speaker 3: maybe we could look back and see what NYT had
Speaker 3: done wrong. Did not repeat his mistakes. He shrugged. New
Speaker 3: York Times didn't really cover the Holocaust.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: What So don't support these people, support the people who
Speaker 3: actually do this shit, you know, Like I go, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna I'm gonna make a kind of comparison. But it
Speaker 3: was like, at the time this shit was happening, there
Speaker 3: was a bunch of very good coverage of the Holocaust
Speaker 3: of what was happening, but it was because it was
Speaker 3: all happening from fucking like because it was like largely
Speaker 3: Jewish radicals who were doing it. All that shit fucking
Speaker 3: got ignored and shit that could have been fucking prevented wasn't.
Speaker 3: And we don't have to live in a world where
Speaker 3: that shit fucking happens, and we can make it not
Speaker 3: be like that. But like the structural, the structural like
Speaker 3: structural dature of the media is one of the ways
Speaker 3: that this fucking happens. And we don't have to let
Speaker 3: the New York Times do this again.
Speaker 7: No, And that's a good reminder there is another way
Speaker 7: with journalism.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 7: Ido Well's was able to detail the extent and horror
Speaker 7: of American segregation and lynching and also called for people
Speaker 7: to shoot the clan.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is the.
Speaker 7: You know, the modern idea that you have to be
Speaker 7: detached andeverably attached from pretty gentry perspective. You know, there's
Speaker 7: a world elsewhere, there's other ways to do things.
Speaker 10: Welcome to another episode, if it can happen here, I
Speaker 10: am your guest co host Bridget Pod, host of There
Speaker 10: are no girls on the Internet. I'm joined by the
Speaker 10: lovely Molly, host of award winning podcast on Pool Zone,
Speaker 10: Weird Little Guys.
Speaker 5: Molly, how you doing great? Glad to be here in
Speaker 5: bridget Okay.
Speaker 10: So I wish we were here to talk about all
Speaker 10: the exciting stuff going on in your life. But I
Speaker 10: wanted to bring this topic to the it could happen
Speaker 10: here audience because I live in the district. I know
Speaker 10: you're a Virginia Gail, so you might know a little
Speaker 10: bit more about how it works in the district than
Speaker 10: your average person. But I don't know that people really
Speaker 10: understand what is happening to residents of the District of
Speaker 10: Columbia like myself. So I live in DC. I've lived
Speaker 10: here for most of my life. I have a lot
Speaker 10: of like hometown pride. This is not just where I
Speaker 10: happen to live. It's like my city, my home.
Speaker 5: Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 11: And you don't have representation, It's true, right, It's something
Speaker 11: that infuriates me.
Speaker 10: And so you know, the first thing to know about
Speaker 10: DC is that it's it's not a state, so that
Speaker 10: means that what happens federally has a huge impact on
Speaker 10: the day to day minutia of the life of people
Speaker 10: like me who live in the district.
Speaker 5: If you don't live in the district, when it comes
Speaker 5: to decisions.
Speaker 10: About how your like local tax dollars are spent, that
Speaker 10: usually lies with like your state and local leaders. That's
Speaker 10: not really the case for me and the other like
Speaker 10: over half a million residents of the district. All of
Speaker 10: this has made worse but the fact that we are
Speaker 10: essentially disenfranchised just like you said, right, all of this
Speaker 10: stuff is playing out in our home, like all of
Speaker 10: these big national conversations are happening in our own backyard,
Speaker 10: and we arguably have less electoral power and agency because
Speaker 10: we aren't a state. Fun fact, DC residents only got
Speaker 10: the right to vote in nineteen.
Speaker 5: Sixty one in presidential elections.
Speaker 3: What I know, Like I didn't know that we have.
Speaker 10: Not been voting in presidential elections for very long when
Speaker 10: you think about it, in the fullness of time. So
Speaker 10: when people are like, oh, you know, call your congress person,
Speaker 10: call your lesson official to oppose x y Z, we
Speaker 10: really have like nobody to call our congressional representative.
Speaker 3: Eleanor Holmes.
Speaker 10: Norton cannot vote on bills that are being considered by
Speaker 10: the full House, and so we really just like don't
Speaker 10: have us say whenever those big campaigns are going on,
Speaker 10: I'm like, oh, it must be nice to have even
Speaker 10: if that person ignores you, it must be nice to
Speaker 10: have someone you can call.
Speaker 3: Wouldn't know.
Speaker 11: It almost seems disrespectful to be like, oh, yeah, you
Speaker 11: guys have a representative. But it doesn't do anything exactly.
Speaker 11: It's just vibes.
Speaker 5: It's just vibes.
Speaker 10: So all of this matters for Trump's return to my
Speaker 10: hometown because as President, Trump has a lot more authority
Speaker 10: to dictate how things are run locally for DC residents
Speaker 10: like myself. You know, we all know that the Trump
Speaker 10: administration is hell bent on making all of our lives worse.
Speaker 10: But imagine if Trump was also in charge of how
Speaker 10: your local police force in your city policed your city.
Speaker 5: Like that would be horrible, right, That.
Speaker 10: Sounds like a nightmare, And that is that threat is
Speaker 10: like literally the reality that we are faced with here
Speaker 10: in DC. So there's been some pretty big changes this
Speaker 10: time around in the Trump administration. During his first administration,
Speaker 10: I feel like Trump largely ignored DC like he would
Speaker 10: pick a fight every now and then, but he didn't
Speaker 10: really seem the meddle and how DC was run like locally,
Speaker 10: That does not mean that he was not like out
Speaker 10: in the district doing terrible things, which he very much was.
Speaker 10: You might recall in twenty twenty, during the racial Justice
Speaker 10: uprisings in the wake of George Floyd's death, Trump cleared
Speaker 10: protesters using chemical agents so that he could go out
Speaker 10: in front of Saint John's Church and.
Speaker 5: Like post upside down Bible Bible.
Speaker 3: Remember that distressing.
Speaker 5: It was distressing.
Speaker 10: I was there that day, and I'll say, like it
Speaker 10: was like genuinely very excessive. I'm not going to get
Speaker 10: into the nitty gritty of it, but in the aftermath
Speaker 10: of that event, internal reports made it clear that like
Speaker 10: it wasn't exactly clear what happened and underw what authority,
Speaker 10: Like was it DC's local police force, Metropolitan PD, was
Speaker 10: it federal Park Police?
Speaker 6: Like?
Speaker 10: It really underscored the of DC locally versus the federal government.
Speaker 11: And it doesn't help that there's half a dozen different
Speaker 11: police forces operating on any given block of d C.
Speaker 10: Oh my god, girl, Like you genuinely never know when
Speaker 10: you see flashing blue and red lights, you genuinely.
Speaker 5: It's like this could be federal, Like this could be federal.
Speaker 11: You never know if I just committed a federal traffic
Speaker 11: violation exactly.
Speaker 10: And so the New York Times actually described that event
Speaker 10: as quote a burst of violence unlike any scene in
Speaker 10: the shadow of the White House in generations, and possibly
Speaker 10: one of the defining moments of the Trump residency. And
Speaker 10: so I remember that as like a moment that played
Speaker 10: out nationally, but also it felt very local and like
Speaker 10: I think it underscored how we really felt the impacts
Speaker 10: of how militarized the city could locally get during Trump's
Speaker 10: first administration. So that was like something that really sticks
Speaker 10: out to me.
Speaker 11: I mean, I I rarely visit DC because I'm afraid
Speaker 11: of traffic, Like just the act of driving through northern
Speaker 11: Virginia too yet to d C is too frightening for me,
Speaker 11: So I try not to go. But I think people
Speaker 11: who don't live in the area don't think of DC
Speaker 11: as a place where people live. They don't think of
Speaker 11: it as anyone's home. Right, It's like Congress lives there,
Speaker 11: the laws live there, but like a lot of people
Speaker 11: live there, people who have nothing to do with the
Speaker 11: federal government, mostly a lot of black people.
Speaker 3: Honestly, I mean.
Speaker 10: DC used to be called chocolate City for a reason.
Speaker 10: These things were more like like a latte city. But
Speaker 10: exactly I can confirm that people don't think of the
Speaker 10: you know, over half a million DC residents who have
Speaker 10: nothing to do with the federal government sometimes who nothing
Speaker 10: with politics, who just like live here and is our home,
Speaker 10: Like I was born in DC, like this is I
Speaker 10: didn't just you know, move here to work in politics,
Speaker 10: like my family can be traced back to our roots
Speaker 10: in the district through generations. And so I have to
Speaker 10: be in my bonnet about this because I feel very unseen,
Speaker 10: and I think the way that the Trump administration is
Speaker 10: playing out, I feel like the reporting really can sometimes
Speaker 10: overlook the way that this is playing out in the
Speaker 10: lie the life of your average you know, DC resident
Speaker 10: who might have nothing to do with politics or you know,
Speaker 10: the federal government.
Speaker 5: Like seventh grader's trying to get to middle school. Exactly
Speaker 5: that exactly that.
Speaker 10: So during Trump's first administration, after the incident at Saint
Speaker 10: John's Church, our mayor, DC's mayor, Muriel Bowser.
Speaker 5: She's still the mayor. She's still the mayor. She's the mayor.
Speaker 5: She's a young girl, old and strong.
Speaker 10: She erected what became known as Black Lives Matter Plaza,
Speaker 10: where she wrote black Lives Matter in like big yellow
Speaker 10: letters outside of the White House.
Speaker 5: You remember this. I've had some unpleasant experiences in that zone.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, you and me both.
Speaker 5: This could be a separate conversation.
Speaker 10: And so I will say when she did that, it
Speaker 10: was largely like a symbolic move, and a lot of
Speaker 10: DC activists thought the mayor was kind of co opting
Speaker 10: or racial justice ethos that she didn't really embody and practiced.
Speaker 5: But I do think that that really is at.
Speaker 10: The tone for the mayor's relationship with Trump during his
Speaker 10: first term. Like she was defiant. She was someone who
Speaker 10: was going to stand up to him publicly. And something
Speaker 10: to know about DC's Mayor Muriel Bauser is that Jakinda
Speaker 10: has two modes. Defiant, like the version of herself that
Speaker 10: painted Black Lives Matter outside of the Trump White House,
Speaker 10: and then sort of diplomatic, right like somebody who like
Speaker 10: wants to find common ground, which I think is the
Speaker 10: is the version of her that we're seeing this time
Speaker 10: around that is very different than how she was the
Speaker 10: last time around, like she started trump second term sort
Speaker 10: of counting the goals they have in common, and like
Speaker 10: she met with him even before he was in office.
Speaker 10: And so I have a lot of critiques about DC's marriage,
Speaker 10: like anybody would have their political leader.
Speaker 5: But I do think it is.
Speaker 10: Important that folks understand that she is navigating something that
Speaker 10: literally no other elected official in the United States has
Speaker 10: to because of DC's lack of statehood. Like we our
Speaker 10: city is uniquely threatened by Trump, and she knows this,
Speaker 10: and Trump knows this, and so he really has to
Speaker 10: like walk a tight rope, greased and shit if you will.
Speaker 10: She's like navigating this public relationship with an unstable, lying
Speaker 10: fascist and has to do so in a way that's
Speaker 10: going to end up with like what's best for the city.
Speaker 5: So you could say whatever you want about Mayor Bouser.
Speaker 10: Like I certainly do, but this is a complicated thing
Speaker 10: to navigate. I do not advocate for anybody complying in
Speaker 10: advance with a fascist, but in this situation, I do
Speaker 10: think it's fair to ask life, well, would being defiant
Speaker 10: toward Trump make things worse for DC residents like myself?
Speaker 11: But it results in martial law in the city.
Speaker 10: Exactly exactly, So like, I don't like it, but I
Speaker 10: get it. I guess if there was like a mantra
Speaker 10: for my feelings on this, it's like, I don't like
Speaker 10: it at all, but I get it.
Speaker 5: It's a no win situation. It is a no win situation.
Speaker 10: And you know, Trump spent even when he was on
Speaker 10: the campaign trail before he was president, he talked this
Speaker 10: time around about how he was planning to take over
Speaker 10: this and because DC is not a state, like any
Speaker 10: president does have the authority to interfere with how DC
Speaker 10: is run. Like any president can take over the police
Speaker 10: department and the powers of the mayor and the DC
Speaker 10: City Council. Any president has the power to federalize DC's
Speaker 10: like local police force, metropolitan police, deputize the national Guard,
Speaker 10: and give law enforcement powers in DC, and activate the
Speaker 10: military and federal law enforcement agencies such as the park
Speaker 10: Police in DC.
Speaker 5: So oh, I didn't need so.
Speaker 11: Like the governor of any state has control of their
Speaker 11: national guard, but DC has its own national guard, right, correct,
Speaker 11: and they don't have a governor, so those are the
Speaker 11: president's national guard.
Speaker 5: Correct. That's not great, So it's not great. It's not great.
Speaker 10: And you know the prospect of just just like let
Speaker 10: that sink in the prospect of Trump having its own
Speaker 10: military and police force in the district. Like I cannot
Speaker 10: tell you how much this terrifies me. Like I cannot
Speaker 10: stress to listeners how much of a shit hitting the
Speaker 10: fan moment this would be for the city. To give
Speaker 10: you a sense, like I have a go bag, and
Speaker 10: I like, get the fuck out plan for that scenario
Speaker 10: playing out.
Speaker 3: Virginia's so close.
Speaker 10: I no, I mean yeah, honestly, anybody in the DMV,
Speaker 10: if you're in Maryland, Virginia, you should all be thinking
Speaker 10: about this. So Trump has continued to like pressure the
Speaker 10: mayor and threatening to like take over if she will
Speaker 10: not do the things that he says, things like clean
Speaker 10: up the city.
Speaker 5: Trump notified Mayor Bowser that she.
Speaker 10: Has to clean up all the unsightly homeless encampments in
Speaker 10: the district, especially around federal buildings.
Speaker 3: If she is not capable of doing.
Speaker 5: So, we will be forced to do it for her,
Speaker 5: he said.
Speaker 10: And so far, her strategy has really been one of
Speaker 10: like quiet appeasement, so that Black Lives Matter plaza that
Speaker 10: she erected in defiance during his first term that came.
Speaker 5: Down, did it really they'd painted over it? I think
Speaker 5: they they dismantled it.
Speaker 10: I think that they were like, Oh, we're going to
Speaker 10: like take it up so that it can go someplace else,
Speaker 10: but we're removing it from this part of the city, if.
Speaker 5: That make sense.
Speaker 11: That's I mean, that's a symbolic moment, right, just like
Speaker 11: pouring the asphalt over the words black Lives Matter.
Speaker 10: Yeah, And I do really think it it underscores this
Speaker 10: moment that we're in right now.
Speaker 5: Where it does, I mean, I'm curious for your thoughts.
Speaker 10: It does sort of feel like a pendulum swing in
Speaker 10: some ways where all of these like largely symbolic gestures
Speaker 10: are now like being bulldozed over, oftentimes like voluntarily, like
Speaker 10: without even really being pressured into doing so.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 11: I guess it's hard, right because like painting Black Lives
Speaker 11: Matter on the sidewalk did nothing for black people, right,
Speaker 11: Like did that help you to that materially improve your life?
Speaker 5: No, it was purely symbolic.
Speaker 11: But negating that symbolic gesture I think does a lot
Speaker 11: more harm than never having had it, right, because that
Speaker 11: is a that is an imposition of will over over
Speaker 11: what was again a symbol that did nothing in accomplis nothing.
Speaker 11: It didn't actually help anyone or change any situation. But
Speaker 11: taking the time out of your day to bulldoze that
Speaker 11: symbol sends a strong message.
Speaker 10: I feel the exact same way, and Republican Representative Andrew
Speaker 10: Clyde actually wants it to go further. He introduced a
Speaker 10: bill that would have amended the US Code to withhold
Speaker 10: certain funds from DC unless Black Lives Matter was taken
Speaker 10: off the street and that area was renamed quote Liberty Plaza,
Speaker 10: and for the district to remove all Black Lives Matter
Speaker 10: Plaza references from city websites and official documents. So they
Speaker 10: want to like memory, hold it and be like it
Speaker 10: never happened.
Speaker 11: That's such cripeyby bullshit too for the like these free
Speaker 11: speech warriors right like, oh the facts don't care about
Speaker 11: your feelings. Free speech is the most important thing, like
Speaker 11: the marketplace of ideas, Like I guess you can't compete
Speaker 11: in the marketplace of.
Speaker 5: Ideas, buckoh exactly.
Speaker 10: Clyde said, quote it's time for our nation to leave
Speaker 10: this failed agenda behind, starting with the removal BLM plaza
Speaker 10: from America's capital. Trump is what one hundred percent right.
Speaker 10: We must clean up DC for the American people. I
Speaker 10: believe that removing ba m Plaza must be part of
Speaker 10: this critical effort. After all, BLM is a radical defund
Speaker 10: the police organization, but we are not a defund the
Speaker 10: police nation.
Speaker 3: So I know this.
Speaker 11: You know, clean up the city rhetoric is sort of
Speaker 11: fascist in and of itself, right, that that's scary rhet regardless,
Speaker 11: but pairing it with like back to back in the
Speaker 11: same breath, like we have to clean up the city,
Speaker 11: we have to get rid of BLM plaza. Like are
Speaker 11: you saying being reminded that black people have civil liberties
Speaker 11: is dirty to you? That that's what's making the city
Speaker 11: dirty is the black people.
Speaker 10: I would argue that's exactly what he's saying. But DC
Speaker 10: is like getting upset about black people. It's like going
Speaker 10: to the beach and getting upset with than when they're sand.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 10: It's like, we could have a whole conversation about DC's demographics,
Speaker 10: but like a, we are a black city, like that
Speaker 10: is what makes DC what it is. It's like why
Speaker 10: I continue to live here? Right, It's like, I think
Speaker 10: that's exactly what he's saying. Is we don't want our
Speaker 10: nation's capital to be one that honors the you know,
Speaker 10: agency of black people, black bodies and black lives.
Speaker 3: Right, Like, I think that's like what he said.
Speaker 5: Then move the White House to South Boston. I guess
Speaker 5: I don't know what.
Speaker 10: So, you know, the mayor pretty quickly relented and bielm
Speaker 10: plazas no more. She basically said, like, you know, we've
Speaker 10: got bigger fish to fry, like focusing on DC's autonomy
Speaker 10: and budget, and to be honest, like a lot of
Speaker 10: residents agreed with her that like it probably was not
Speaker 10: worth the fight.
Speaker 5: That's kind of that's kind of the theme.
Speaker 10: Here, is that all of these little things that individually
Speaker 10: are probably not worth the fight, but then collectively you're like, well,
Speaker 10: who is.
Speaker 5: Sort of in charge of this city?
Speaker 11: You know when if none of these little things are
Speaker 11: worth the fight, are you fighting?
Speaker 10: That's a great question. Are you fighting? If nothing is
Speaker 10: worth the fight? Are you fighting?
Speaker 11: And I feel like that's kind of I don't know,
Speaker 11: on a larger scale, sort of the National Democratic Party's
Speaker 11: line has always been we got to keep a power dry,
Speaker 11: we got to keep her powder.
Speaker 3: Dry, keep it drive for fucking what, dog?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 11: You're gonna end the war, you know, with a pile
Speaker 11: of bodies and a bunch of dry powder.
Speaker 5: Exactly.
Speaker 10: So the next demand that Trump made of Bowser was
Speaker 10: the need to clear homeless encampments near the White House,
Speaker 10: saying that if Bowser didn't do it, he would be
Speaker 10: forced to do it for her. So, within hours of
Speaker 10: Trump's call to Bowser, DC City Creuz arrived at these
Speaker 10: encampments to tell residents they had to be out the
Speaker 10: next day. It's not great, like, to be clear, it
Speaker 10: is not like our mayor does not clear encampments in DC.
Speaker 10: In fact, her administration said they had been planning to
Speaker 10: clear the encampment in question, but just doing so in
Speaker 10: like a more planned, rolled out way. So it's not
Speaker 10: like she's like someone who is not, you know, down
Speaker 10: with clearing encampments. The Washington Post spoke to some of
Speaker 10: the people who were residents of those encampments when they
Speaker 10: were cleared. Shelley Buyer's is someone they spoke to who
Speaker 10: has been chronically homeless in DC for three years. She
Speaker 10: was living at an encampment that was cleared in twenty
Speaker 10: twenty three before winding up at the one that Trump
Speaker 10: wanted cleared, and she said they were basically given no
Speaker 10: notice that they needed to vacate. She said, now we
Speaker 10: have only less than twenty four hours to get out,
Speaker 10: as she threw her clothing out of her tent.
Speaker 5: I liked it here.
Speaker 10: They keep shoving us off from place to place, making
Speaker 10: it so we don't have anywhere to go.
Speaker 5: The Post also spoke to the.
Speaker 10: President of Miriam's Kitchen, which is a big nonprofit here
Speaker 10: DC that provides services for the homeless, and he said
Speaker 10: that it wasn't even clear, like he wasn't even sure
Speaker 10: if the city followed proper protocols with this hasty encampment
Speaker 10: clearing at Trump's direction. Encampment residents are meant to be
Speaker 10: given two weeks notice, but people who were cleared so
Speaker 10: that they only learned about that action within twenty four hours.
Speaker 5: And so I think that's part of the issue here.
Speaker 10: DC, like any city, has issues like crime and homelessness,
Speaker 10: but like hitting people housed takes time. Like just wanting
Speaker 10: to quickly move people who might have anywhere else to
Speaker 10: go because they look, as Trump said, unseemly or unsightly
Speaker 10: is not solving the problem. What you're actually doing is
Speaker 10: just traumatizing people who are already vulnerable and then forcing
Speaker 10: them to go elsewhere, exactly like that woman.
Speaker 11: Told the Post, even in the best case scenario, even
Speaker 11: the most organized clearing of an encampment is I mean,
Speaker 11: it's violent, and it's inhumane, and it doesn't really serve
Speaker 11: a greater purpose other than I don't know, so that
Speaker 11: people don't have to think about homelessness on their way
Speaker 11: to work. But there is a way to do it
Speaker 11: that is, at least theoretically could result in something that
Speaker 11: is not monstrous, you know what I mean. Like I said,
Speaker 11: there's no good way to clear it encampment unless you're
Speaker 11: giving everyone an apartment. But right like, you're giving people
Speaker 11: two weeks notice, Lets social services get involved, lets them go,
Speaker 11: you know, tent to tent for those two weeks, talking
Speaker 11: to people about where they could go, giving them options,
Speaker 11: connecting them with services if that's what they choose. But
Speaker 11: if you're just rolling up overnight and throwing people' shit away,
Speaker 11: you're not You're not solving a problem.
Speaker 5: You're not even trying to solve a problem. You're not
Speaker 5: even pretending that you're trying to solve a problem.
Speaker 10: But I think that's exactly how Trump thinks about this issue.
Speaker 10: It's just like looks bad and unseemly to him. So
Speaker 10: I don't care where they go. I don't care how
Speaker 10: you do it. Just I don't want to be looking.
Speaker 11: At them, right, because for him, it's not about getting
Speaker 11: these people connected to services so that they might eventually
Speaker 11: find stable housing. It's about I don't want to fucking
Speaker 11: see these people because they're gross exactly.
Speaker 10: And like he is encroaching on how our city is run, right,
Speaker 10: and so like, if that is the ethos that you have,
Speaker 10: I don't want to see these gross people. I don't
Speaker 10: care where they go. This is not an ethos that
Speaker 10: that responsibly is able to run a city like that
Speaker 10: is really disruptive.
Speaker 11: Yeah, it's absolutely disruptive because they'll go somewhere else. They'll
Speaker 11: go somewhere else, and now their lives have been uprooted,
Speaker 11: they don't have maybe the documents got thrown away, and
Speaker 11: it's going to be even harder for them to find stability.
Speaker 5: Like you have not addressed the problem.
Speaker 10: Exactly, and I think that's what that's like the name
Speaker 10: of the game, with the way that Trump has already
Speaker 10: been you know, meddling in the way that DC runs
Speaker 10: its local affairs. This next example, I got to say,
Speaker 10: it really gets to me. So DC's Attorney General Ryan
Speaker 10: Schwab recently dropped a lawsuit against the Proud Boys and
Speaker 10: the Oathkeepers for their behavior during January six so. The
Speaker 10: suit was initially filed by the former DC Attorney General,
Speaker 10: carl A.
Speaker 5: Racine.
Speaker 10: It initially marks the first effort by a government agency
Speaker 10: to hold the individuals and organizations civilly liable for violence
Speaker 10: at the Capitol on January sixth, but a federal judge
Speaker 10: in DC granted the district's request to dismiss that case.
Speaker 10: The suit was fashioned after a modern version of the
Speaker 10: eighteen seventy one law known as the klu Klux klan
Speaker 10: At that was enacted after the Civil War to safeguard
Speaker 10: government officials carrying out their duties to protect civil rights.
Speaker 10: This is actually a similar challenge that prevailed against groups
Speaker 10: involved in the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, which Molly,
Speaker 10: I know you might know a thing or two about.
Speaker 11: Let's just see, very familiar with Clan Act lawsuits.
Speaker 5: And they are effective. They're effective.
Speaker 11: It's one of the only things that we still have
Speaker 11: from reconstruction that hasn't been taken away from us. Is
Speaker 11: this civil remedy for civil rights violations?
Speaker 5: And it works, it.
Speaker 10: Works, but like you have to carry it out, and
Speaker 10: basically the city decided that it wasn't worth it given
Speaker 10: all of the threats to DC's autonomy by the Trump administration.
Speaker 3: So it's extortion.
Speaker 5: I mean, yeah, like that's exactly what it feels like.
Speaker 5: I mean, this is extortion.
Speaker 11: They're being prevented, They're being prevented from seeking a viable
Speaker 11: civil remedy through the courts out of fear of retaliation.
Speaker 5: That seems very bad.
Speaker 10: It's like, I mean, I'm glad that you use the
Speaker 10: word extortion, because it really does feel like if you've
Speaker 10: seen one of my favorite movies, Goodfellas, it feels like
Speaker 10: what Henry Hill the mobster calls real grease ball shit, right, like, ooh,
Speaker 10: great city you have here. It would be a shame
Speaker 10: if something were to uh happen to it.
Speaker 11: Like extortion, right, God, But usually, I mean sometimes you
Speaker 11: get something out of a protection racket. DC's not even
Speaker 11: fucking getting anything out of it.
Speaker 10: I guess you could argue that they are like not
Speaker 10: raising the iyre further of the Trump administration and that
Speaker 10: like that might lead to DC having more autonomy and
Speaker 10: like DC, you know, like Trump officials not meddling in
Speaker 10: DC's affairs.
Speaker 11: I mean, I don't know if any of these people
Speaker 11: have read a book, but appeasing of fascist has historically
Speaker 11: not resulted in you getting what you want.
Speaker 10: No, And I gotta be honest, girl, this one's fucking stung.
Speaker 10: Like it sucks hearing people like the Proud Boys leader
Speaker 10: Enrique Terrio basically brag about having this case dropped. The
Speaker 10: Oathkeeper's founder, Stuart Rhoades, his attorney, said, we are very
Speaker 10: pleased to see the District of Columbia has come to
Speaker 10: the same conclusion that the American public and President Trump
Speaker 10: have the narrative that January sixth was some sort of
Speaker 10: armed insurrection to overthrow the government plus falls from the
Speaker 10: very beginning. Enriquetario posted after the district requested to dismiss
Speaker 10: this lawsuit, saying another exoneration. If God is with us,
Speaker 10: who can be against us? Like it just chaps my
Speaker 10: ass to hear this shit.
Speaker 5: Like God didn't do this, baby, God didn't do this.
Speaker 10: You also have DC's Metro Police investigating the vandalization of
Speaker 10: tesla's as a hate crime. This again, like it really
Speaker 10: makes me wonder, Like, as far as I know, Trump
Speaker 10: is not in charge of our Metropolitan Police Department, but
Speaker 10: stuff like this makes me wonder.
Speaker 3: We're like, is he a kind.
Speaker 2: Of in charge?
Speaker 11: I mean, pressure's clearly being exact.
Speaker 10: Basically, somebody wrote quote political hate speech on a Tesla.
Speaker 10: The statement from the Metropolitan Police Departments that they were
Speaker 10: investigating these offenses as being motivated by hate or bias clear.
Speaker 10: Mayor Bowser was like, I didn't tell them to do this,
Speaker 10: Like she was like, I have nothing to do with
Speaker 10: the police department's decision making on this, Like that's them.
Speaker 11: I hate crime typically implicates a protected class like race, gender, religion,
Speaker 11: national origin. What is the protected class of being a
Speaker 11: Tesla owner? It's like it's being a big loser of
Speaker 11: protected class unclear.
Speaker 10: And they wouldn't even say, like what was the nature
Speaker 10: of what was written on this car that made it
Speaker 10: a potential hate crime? Like we don't even know, which is.
Speaker 11: So funny because these guys never believed in hate crimes before, unless.
Speaker 10: It's against like Elon Musk and people who like him.
Speaker 5: Something that's the best I.
Speaker 11: Can figure, but I've heard full throadd arguments against the
Speaker 11: existence of the category of hate crime, and now suddenly
Speaker 11: they're very important. Yeah, now they're very important.
Speaker 10: And I do you think I mean, like, when I
Speaker 10: heard about this, it really made me think about how
Speaker 10: different categories of crime and legislation around it is like
Speaker 10: very well intended and well meaning, and like I understand
Speaker 10: who hate crime legislation is meant to protect, but then
Speaker 10: you also have the ways it can be sort of
Speaker 10: like perverted to protect a protective class that is not
Speaker 10: a protected class, right, Like it.
Speaker 11: I mean, it's the same as the language around terrorism,
Speaker 11: right that, Like, terrorism wasn't something that we were talking
Speaker 11: about or charging. It's not even very well defined in
Speaker 11: the law, to be honest, But it's something that became
Speaker 11: part of the conversation when America became very afraid of Muslims,
Speaker 11: became very afraid of Middle Eastern people, Right, So terrorism
Speaker 11: had that implication for a very long time, and then
Speaker 11: there was this brief window in the last couple of
Speaker 11: years where they were using it against domestic white extremists.
Speaker 11: And now they're not doing that anymore, and they're just
Speaker 11: going to charge you with terrorism. For looking sideways at
Speaker 11: a Tesla exactly.
Speaker 10: Here's how my co host and friend Michael Schaeffer, who
Speaker 10: writes the Capital City's column for Political put it. He says,
Speaker 10: now the White House is beating the drums about Tesla vandalism,
Speaker 10: creating another incentive for locals to play ball. The FBI
Speaker 10: director called Tesla vandalism domestic terrorism. The President suggested sending
Speaker 10: vandals to jail and El Salvador if likening the run
Speaker 10: of the mill political graffiti to criminal bigotry, it's what
Speaker 10: it takes to keep the feds from have locking city Hall.
Speaker 10: The logic goes, maybe it's worth it.
Speaker 5: No, it's not. I would say it's not.
Speaker 11: No, it's not Maybe they want to do through you
Speaker 11: extraordinary rendition to vandals, but maybe it's worth No.
Speaker 5: It's not worth it, babe, it's not worth it.
Speaker 11: You're not gonna you're not holding back the tide of
Speaker 11: fascism if you allow fascism to happen.
Speaker 10: Unlike local governments in Cleveland or Boston, DC is really
Speaker 10: stuck between a rock and a hard place. And I mean, like,
Speaker 10: I understand why city officials are taking this like appeasement angle,
Speaker 10: but like I guess, as you said, like, I don't
Speaker 10: know how you can make the argument that it's like
Speaker 10: worth it, Like, what are we getting if every single
Speaker 10: day it's going to be a new threat to DC's autonomy,
Speaker 10: a new threat to DC, a new EO from the
Speaker 10: Trump administration?
Speaker 5: What are we really getting by playing ball in this way? Right?
Speaker 11: And if you're saying you're saving your energy for the
Speaker 11: big fight, it's like, well, what do you think the
Speaker 11: big fight is going to be If it's not the
Speaker 11: slow erosion of the safety and civil liberties of everyone
Speaker 11: who lives here. Exactly what is the big fight?
Speaker 10: Well, some might say the big fight is DC's tense
Speaker 10: budget showdown, which is ongoing. It's a little in the
Speaker 10: weed ze, So like, I'm not going to get too
Speaker 10: too into it, but I'll try to give the quick
Speaker 10: and dirty version of what's going on. The district is
Speaker 10: overseen by Congress thanks to provision in the Constitution, So
Speaker 10: this means that DC is occasionally treated like a federal
Speaker 10: agency rather than like a city or a local government
Speaker 10: under various laws. This used to mean that DC's budget
Speaker 10: was regularly delayed. Because of this, The city had to
Speaker 10: wait for Congress to approve DC's local budget alongside other
Speaker 10: federal agencies, which Congress is like almost never does on time.
Speaker 10: So pretty much everybody agreed like this was a problem.
Speaker 10: So in the early two thousands they changed it so
Speaker 10: that as Congress was behind schedule, DC could just keep
Speaker 10: spending at its current budget levels without disruption until Congress
Speaker 10: is able to formally approve a new budget. But in
Speaker 10: March that alt change because the language was omitted from
Speaker 10: a new funding bill that Congress passed in March that
Speaker 10: would basically force DC to omit one billion dollars from
Speaker 10: its budget. This to be clear, like, if DC were
Speaker 10: to omit one billion dollars from the budget, we basically
Speaker 10: could not function as a city. The things that you
Speaker 10: need to run a city, schools, garbage collection, all of
Speaker 10: that would be cut to the point of like not
Speaker 10: being viable. I'm not even sure what that would mean
Speaker 10: for the city to make that deep of a cut.
Speaker 10: And the worst part is nobody really knows why Congress
Speaker 10: did this. Like, in my capacity as co host for
Speaker 10: a local DC podcast, City CASTC, I've spoken to a
Speaker 10: lot of people in DC government and reporters, and the
Speaker 10: best I can come up with is that Congress just
Speaker 10: really does not understand what they have done. A reporter
Speaker 10: that I spoke to you said that there seemed to
Speaker 10: be confusion with lawmakers that we were talking about DC's
Speaker 10: local tax money and not federal money. And so this
Speaker 10: was happening in March, during the height of like doge efficiency.
Speaker 10: I'm putting a fish see in like heavy scare quotes.
Speaker 10: It was at the height of that, and so the
Speaker 10: best I could think was that lawmakers thought, like, oh,
Speaker 10: this will we will be able to like say that,
Speaker 10: you know, making DC cut a billion dollars from the
Speaker 10: budget will be a big show of federal tax dollar savings.
Speaker 10: But we're not talking about federal money. We're talking about
Speaker 10: local tax money, not federal money. Doesn't save anybody any
Speaker 10: federal money. And so I think that from what I've heard,
Speaker 10: it sounds like people like Mike Johnson just maybe like
Speaker 10: did not really have a good understanding of that. It
Speaker 10: is a little bit complicated, but like if you're a lawmaker,
Speaker 10: like come on, dude, but.
Speaker 11: Again, because you have no representative who is really involved
Speaker 11: in this process, Like there's nobody in that room going
Speaker 11: to bat for DC. There's nobody in that room whose
Speaker 11: constituency is DC, who understands what it means to run
Speaker 11: DC exactly.
Speaker 10: And what's funny is that, like for all the talk
Speaker 10: about like how how like we're not a defund the
Speaker 10: police nation, this bill would kind of defund DC police.
Speaker 5: It would have to.
Speaker 3: Mean who defund everything?
Speaker 10: Like it would' I mean like sixty seven million dollars
Speaker 10: caught from the DC police budget, along with cutting funding
Speaker 10: for DC public schools and the Department of Human Services,
Speaker 10: which serves the city's forest residents. Right, So, like it
Speaker 10: would defund everything.
Speaker 5: Including the police.
Speaker 10: So it's like funny to be like, we're not down
Speaker 10: with defund the police, but we are down with this
Speaker 10: bill that kind of does it.
Speaker 11: We're like, who do you think is gonna fill the potholes?
Speaker 11: Who's gonna mow the grass? Like nothing will get done,
Speaker 11: the city will fall apart.
Speaker 10: Well, so our mayor has really been doing her diplomacy
Speaker 10: thing and appealing to exactly that, right, Like Trump has
Speaker 10: been really clear about all these goals he has for
Speaker 10: the district, like beautifying DC and cracking down on crime
Speaker 10: and homelessness. There is no way to do that if
Speaker 10: you are slashing the budgets of these departments that are
Speaker 10: meant to work on those things by tens of millions
Speaker 10: of dollars.
Speaker 5: Who's gonna prune the cherry trees?
Speaker 4: Donald?
Speaker 3: I mean it Tho's gonna prove.
Speaker 10: Almost as if Trump doesn't really care about doing any
Speaker 10: of this stuff. He's just like talking big and doesn't
Speaker 10: give a shit about how it actually plays out.
Speaker 5: He doesn't know how anything works.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean that's really the bottom line for me
Speaker 10: is that when you have Trump loudly talking about the
Speaker 10: ways that he is meddling in the way that DC
Speaker 10: is run, He's not someone who is good at efficiently governing.
Speaker 10: And so like, you know, say what you little about DC?
Speaker 10: We had a function we have a functioning local government,
Speaker 10: a functioning city. Putting somebody like Trump in charge of
Speaker 10: how things get done, what happens to encampments, what happens
Speaker 10: to education, what happens to crime? Like, like, that's just
Speaker 10: a terrible, terrible move for the city.
Speaker 11: I mean it's like, you know, at a shitty retail job,
Speaker 11: you get a new assistant store manager and they try
Speaker 11: to change the way the schedule gets made just so
Speaker 11: they can look like they're doing something, so they can
Speaker 11: feel like they're in charge, and it's like, yeah, dog,
Speaker 11: that's just not how things work at this store, Like
Speaker 11: it won't function if the keyholder doesn't open.
Speaker 10: I wish I could tell Trump that, Like I'm taken
Speaker 10: back to my days of working retail at the mall
Speaker 10: or where you could just be like, actually, Greg, that's
Speaker 10: not how it works here at this Claire's.
Speaker 5: I used to work at Claires. It just won't work
Speaker 5: like that.
Speaker 11: Like, I know you're very important and you're in charge here,
Speaker 11: but it's just like it won't work.
Speaker 5: It won't work.
Speaker 10: So yeah, I mean, as of today, there has not
Speaker 10: been a vote on DC's budget. Trump actually signaled that
Speaker 10: he is on board for a fix that would prevent
Speaker 10: this billion dollar cut, and he urged the Senate to
Speaker 10: vote for it. He posted, the House should take up
Speaker 10: the DC funding fix that the Senate passed and get
Speaker 10: it done immediately, all caps. But everybody's on recess and
Speaker 10: so in the meantime, like it's not clear what's going
Speaker 10: to happen, And the city did announce that they're looking
Speaker 10: at making cuts and furlowing staff because it's not clear
Speaker 10: what's going to happen.
Speaker 11: So, you know, so it's not It's not that the
Speaker 11: city doesn't have them. It's not like the city's broke.
Speaker 11: Like the city has the money, they're just not allowed
Speaker 11: to budget it.
Speaker 5: Yes, exactly that and for no reason. Problems. It's a
Speaker 5: fake but it's a fake problem.
Speaker 10: But again, I don't know that people like Mike Johnson
Speaker 10: understand that there are people who live here who you know,
Speaker 10: just want to have their trash taken out, just want
Speaker 10: to be able to educate their kids, just want to
Speaker 10: be able to like live our lives in the city.
Speaker 5: And I think I've said this on it could happen
Speaker 5: here before.
Speaker 10: But I have to feel like it's punitive, right like
Speaker 10: DC nobody didn't vote for Trump, Like DC didn't vote
Speaker 10: for Trump, like you know, Nicky Hayley won DC's Republican primary,
Speaker 10: not even Trump, right, so, like we have made it
Speaker 10: very clear that we don't like him and we don't
Speaker 10: want him here. And I guess I just have to
Speaker 10: say the only thing that makes sense as to why
Speaker 10: Congress would do this it's punitive, is to be like
Speaker 10: fuck DC and the progressive, hippie, dippy educated people who
Speaker 10: live there, Like it just feels like like a punitive
Speaker 10: attack on the district.
Speaker 11: But again just like shooting themselves in the dick, because
Speaker 11: like if the city falls apart, like you still work here,
Speaker 11: you still have to drive on the streets here.
Speaker 10: Well, I mean, if Trump gets his way and DC
Speaker 10: just becomes like a instead of a city, like a
Speaker 10: military compound that is controlled by like his goons.
Speaker 11: Like it's sort of a like a Trump Vatican City
Speaker 11: where he's the king of this little tiny country.
Speaker 10: That is my ultimate, biggest fear about what is on
Speaker 10: the horizon for DC. That is like the ultimate ultimate
Speaker 10: like negative fear that I have.
Speaker 5: And I guess bottom line is like this is.
Speaker 10: Why DC needs statehoods, Like we are facing such unique
Speaker 10: threats from the Trump administration that no other place in
Speaker 10: the United States faces. You know, there are a million
Speaker 10: reasons for DC to become a state, but this just
Speaker 10: I think that the way that Trump is acting.
Speaker 5: Toward our city, toward our mayor toward our council.
Speaker 10: With regards to our budget, like it all just makes
Speaker 10: so much sense that our residents should not be at
Speaker 10: the behest of somebody like Trump.
Speaker 5: To have our city run the way that we want
Speaker 5: it to be run. And yeah, it just doesn't make sense.
Speaker 5: It doesn't make sense.
Speaker 11: It doesn't the city should be able to make its
Speaker 11: own budget. There's no reason for it to function like this.
Speaker 10: There is no reason for it. So from your lips
Speaker 10: to God's ears.
Speaker 11: Yeah, So, like, I guess what should people look for,
Speaker 11: Like what's the next step in this process?
Speaker 5: Like when's the next vote on this?
Speaker 10: So when lawmakers are back in session, we should have
Speaker 10: some sense of what's going on with DC's budget. The
Speaker 10: thing I would end with is like, give a shit
Speaker 10: about DC, Like, don't be somebody who perpetuates the idea
Speaker 10: that the only thing happening in DC is like national politics,
Speaker 10: and like where national conversations are happening, Because you know,
Speaker 10: there are six hundred thousand people who live here and
Speaker 10: we want to be able to control our city and control.
Speaker 5: Our tax money.
Speaker 10: Like I pay taxes just like anybody else, and it's
Speaker 10: ridiculous that I get less of a say than everybody else.
Speaker 10: So if you don't live in DC and you hear
Speaker 10: about Congress or the Senate voting on stuff that impacts
Speaker 10: DC residents, like you might hear about them voting on
Speaker 10: the DC budget fixed bill, you can call your representatives
Speaker 10: and advocate on our behalf and kind of be our
Speaker 10: voice because we don't really get one. Hopefully this all
Speaker 10: gives you a sense of what's at stake for us,
Speaker 10: So please give a shit about DC.
Speaker 11: Give a shit about DC, and hopefully you guys still
Speaker 11: have garbage services.
Speaker 10: We'll see Molly, thank you for running through all of
Speaker 10: this with me.
Speaker 5: You're such a good co host. Yeah, this was fun. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I listened to Bridges' podcast. There are no girls on
Speaker 5: the Internet listen to Weird Little Guys, a Webby.
Speaker 11: Award winning podcast.
Speaker 10: Yes, so deserved. Are you like keeping your wedding secret?
Speaker 10: Is that something I can talk about?
Speaker 11: Well, I did tell the listeners just because there's gonna
Speaker 11: be some reruns coming out. I'm getting married soon, so
Speaker 11: I will be out of town for a little bit.
Speaker 11: But yeah, so I got a lot going on. I
Speaker 11: got my Weird Little Guys, I got my weird little wedding.
Speaker 5: Well, congratulations. I was telling you off.
Speaker 10: Mike that, like, I love it when women who do
Speaker 10: work in the like extremism right wing space have happy,
Speaker 10: thriving personal lives, so it brings me a lot of joy.
Speaker 5: Deeply congratulations, thank you. Yeah, I am experiencing a lot
Speaker 5: of joy. You deserve it. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to It could Happen Here? A podcast normally
Speaker 2: about it happening here, being you know, the real world
Speaker 2: where you live, but for the next two weeks after this,
Speaker 2: and for the week before us, and for this week,
Speaker 2: we're talking about it happening in a galaxy far far away.
Speaker 2: That's right. This is the second in our four part
Speaker 2: series reviewing and discussing and Or Season two, which, due
Speaker 2: to a series of incredibly unlikely events, has become the
Speaker 2: most radical media to reach a wide audience in the
Speaker 2: United States and quite some time. I am here with
Speaker 2: Mio Wong and Garrison Davis. How are we all doing today.
Speaker 3: Hanging in there, hanging in there as we always are.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I just watched episodes seven through nine last night,
Speaker 2: which is really helping with the hanging in there.
Speaker 3: I have not seen that shit yet.
Speaker 4: So yeah, that's for next week, though we have to
Speaker 4: say that for next week.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, we're not talking about them now, but we
Speaker 2: watched them this week and I'm happy.
Speaker 4: Did watch them, and oh boy, but we still have
Speaker 4: a lot to talk about for episodes four to six.
Speaker 4: It does kind of set up what we see later on,
Speaker 4: but I think there's a lot of interesting stuff there
Speaker 4: with like building an underground resistance, a lot of spies
Speaker 4: an espionage mixed in with like the personal cost of
Speaker 4: rebellion and how it affects like your personal life, your relationships.
Speaker 4: So there is a lot to discuss here. But oh boy,
Speaker 4: I am excited for next week.
Speaker 2: Yes, I am very excited for next week. I'm very
Speaker 2: excited for this week, which we should talk about so
Speaker 2: kind of there's a few themes running through these three episodes.
Speaker 2: One of them is, yeah, the cost in terms of
Speaker 2: your personal life on being part of a rebellion, And yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm interested kind of what are some of the I mean,
Speaker 2: there's one real standout moment in these episodes that I
Speaker 2: know we're all going to want to talk about, which
Speaker 2: is a speech given by Saul Gerrera saw Yeah, played
Speaker 2: by Forrest Whitaker, just just amazingly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the nitrous speech. Yeah, we'll get to it.
Speaker 3: We'll get to that.
Speaker 2: But yeah, we should start with the first of these episodes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, episode four. Ever been to Gorman? I guess once again,
Speaker 4: if you do not want to be giving Disney Plus
Speaker 4: your money, you can be like Hondo Anaka and acquire
Speaker 4: the show that way.
Speaker 3: Remember the torrent combinations, Remember the variations, gotta keep them
Speaker 3: all in your.
Speaker 4: Head, Yes, yes, all nine or eight variations. Let's do
Speaker 4: a quick recap of this episode, then we'll talk about
Speaker 4: some of these aspects. So one year later from the
Speaker 4: previous episodes, Cassian and Bix are on the planet Coroissant,
Speaker 4: staying at a safe house in between running missions for Luthen.
Speaker 4: Bix is severely struggling with PTSD, while Cassian is stressed
Speaker 4: about having to avoid surveillance while hiding in the capital city.
Speaker 2: And Bix is also we find out abusing space santas.
Speaker 4: Yeah, later on we can we can see that she's
Speaker 4: she's using using space drugs to help her cope with
Speaker 4: the massive amounts of trauma that she's been forced to
Speaker 4: deal with the past few years. Now, our favorite weasel,
Speaker 4: Cyril Karn, has been transferred to the planet Gormant, where
Speaker 4: he's running the local Bureau of Standards in the capital
Speaker 4: city of Palmo. He refutes Imperial propaganda about Gorman while
Speaker 4: on a FaceTime call with his Fox News addicted.
Speaker 2: More talking about like, yeah, the Imperial the Imperial News
Speaker 2: says the Gormans are super arrogant, just real assholes.
Speaker 4: You gotta stop watching Imperial news Man. But this may
Speaker 4: be a ploy from Cyril, because Cyril knows he's being
Speaker 4: monitored and surveilled by members of the Gorman Front, a
Speaker 4: small underground resistance group, while working as a double agent
Speaker 4: for his ISB girlfriend Dedra. Sirtle gets invited to a
Speaker 4: town hall meeting where he's introduced to the leader of
Speaker 4: the Gorman Front, a local businessman and city councilor, and
Speaker 4: then Cyril is recruited into the resistance.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I want to say a little about the Gorman
Speaker 2: Front because they're very clearly French resistance in World War Two.
Speaker 2: Coded they developed a whole like language for them to speak,
Speaker 2: which is basically like.
Speaker 4: French French phonics, but different words but.
Speaker 2: Different words, and so it sounds a little bit like
Speaker 2: French and German, like got mashed together. People who speak
Speaker 2: both have told me, I don't know, I'm not a
Speaker 2: not a language guy, but it sounds distinctive and they're
Speaker 2: very clearly like Again, their whole the whole industry of
Speaker 2: this planet is high quality textiles that come from like
Speaker 2: spider silk, but also clearly the the the guy who's
Speaker 2: leading the resistance. His business is kind of meant to
Speaker 2: evoke sort of like a classic like French vineyard. Like,
Speaker 2: so he's like he's not a poor man, right, Like.
Speaker 4: No, he's like he's like wealthy, he's like well off. Yes, yes,
Speaker 4: I mean that's a big part about like Gorman is
Speaker 4: this is like a you know, middle upper class like
Speaker 4: status planet.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: This is like a big part of like Luthen's interest
Speaker 4: in the planet is if he can bring a planet
Speaker 4: with that status into the rebellion, that could have a
Speaker 4: whole bunch of advantages. And that's kind of why he's
Speaker 4: at least like looking into them as an option and
Speaker 4: eventually kind of setting them up for like an accelerationist
Speaker 4: to push.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I actually think it's a slightly different even
Speaker 2: than that. But we'll talk about that and up when
Speaker 2: we get to episode nine. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Sure, there's an Iceby board meeting where they discuss a
Speaker 4: batch of new raids and arrests on rebel activity and
Speaker 4: how to deal with this influx of arrests that's making
Speaker 4: it hard to process and obtain useful information. Luthn's Iceby
Speaker 4: spy informs them of the Empire's increased interest in Gorman
Speaker 4: and that the Ice be is running covert operations on
Speaker 4: the planet. Meanwhile, Senator Manmathma unsuccessfully lobbies against the Emperor's
Speaker 4: resentencing directive, and at Saguerera's hideout, Willem teaches Saws partisans
Speaker 4: how to safety deploy a fuel pipeline of.
Speaker 2: Verter Yeah, and specifically, Saw puts him with one of
Speaker 2: his guys who's kind of coded as being like a
Speaker 2: close to Saul, Like this is somebody that he really trusts,
Speaker 2: and it's kind of implied fairly soon that like Saw
Speaker 2: doesn't want this guy going back to Luthen with information, right.
Speaker 4: He wants to keep Willow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's just like kidnapping this guy. It's like, well,
Speaker 2: he wants to kill him at first. That's the statement
Speaker 2: he makes to his guy, is like, once you have
Speaker 2: these variations down, we're going to ice him.
Speaker 4: Saw does a they trusts Luthen very much anymore.
Speaker 3: He never did well luth.
Speaker 4: And slowly losing a lot of the trust that he's
Speaker 4: built up throughout the galaxy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But like one of the things that's interesting here
Speaker 2: is that like we kind of see Saws paranoia where
Speaker 2: there's a bunch of variations you need to know to
Speaker 2: get fuel out of any number of different things, and
Speaker 2: the guys like I have to memorize too many if
Speaker 2: you just let us know which one we're trying to
Speaker 2: go after, but that would make it clear which fuel
Speaker 2: station they're going after, So Saw doesn't want to say
Speaker 2: shit initially.
Speaker 4: So this episode we're introduced to the planet Gorman. Like
Speaker 4: in person, it's basically like northern Italy mixed with French culture. Yeah,
Speaker 4: the massive set they built is just gorgeous, a huge,
Speaker 4: huge town square for the capital city of Palmo.
Speaker 3: The amount of money they spent on this show. The
Speaker 3: protesters I think is really interesting.
Speaker 4: Because it's like protesters at like the monument of the
Speaker 4: Tarkan massacre.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, they're kind of fascinating because like the way
Speaker 3: that their banners are designed really really remind me of
Speaker 3: like pictures you see from like nineteen seventeen. It's like
Speaker 3: very very similar to that. And also they have a
Speaker 3: thing that's a very common protest thing where it's like
Speaker 3: there's as you know, there's protests going on, so there's
Speaker 3: like just like ten guys in the square all the time. Yes,
Speaker 3: kind of like chantons.
Speaker 4: Yeah, always making noise.
Speaker 2: They're kind of keeping a vigil because basically what happened.
Speaker 2: And this is another interesting Tony Gurroy is kind of
Speaker 2: famously not a Star Wars fan like prior to working
Speaker 2: on this, and so there was a lot of like
Speaker 2: anxiety from big Star Wars nerds that like, oh, this
Speaker 2: isn't going to feel like Star Wars, but it clearly
Speaker 2: has a lot of folks who understand, not just like
Speaker 2: the stuff that's come out, you know, since Disney started
Speaker 2: in the different books and comics, but like the legend
Speaker 2: stuff because in Legends, like a major spark of the
Speaker 2: whole rebellion was the Gorman massacre, which is in tarkan Lands,
Speaker 2: and Tarkan's the old guy in the Death Star in
Speaker 2: a New Hope, right, Like, he's the guy who's Darth
Speaker 2: Vader's boss in the first movie, and he lands a
Speaker 2: craft on a crowd at Gorman, And that's supposed to
Speaker 2: have been one of the major sparks, And they've retconned
Speaker 2: it a little, but to the point where that's still happened,
Speaker 2: but it's clearly the setup for a larger massacre that
Speaker 2: this season is building towards.
Speaker 4: Yeah, man, Spacebox News very good. We see the Ministry
Speaker 4: of Enlightenment efforts to weaponize public opinion and how much
Speaker 4: it's working on someone on someone like Cyril's mother, who
Speaker 4: who then becomes convinced that like the propaganda that she's
Speaker 4: being fed is the stuff that she like already believed
Speaker 4: absolutely right, is stuff that she she's like red conned
Speaker 4: into her own memory of being like no, like I've
Speaker 4: I've always never trusted the Gore. Yeah. Meanwhile, she's like
Speaker 4: sitting in front of her like TV like twenty four
Speaker 4: to seven, watching this like the garbage get beamed into
Speaker 4: her brain.
Speaker 2: And I'm wondering, did y'all wonder for a second if
Speaker 2: Cyril was legitimately getting pilled by totally the GORMANSI yeah,
Speaker 2: because it's good. Right, there's like that moment like, well, fuck,
Speaker 2: is he is our boy like starting to have a
Speaker 2: break already, and then he realized like no, that's.
Speaker 4: That's what we're getting. Like that's kind of what's being
Speaker 4: set up, is like how like will will this experience
Speaker 4: for Cyril like change him as a person? And like,
Speaker 4: I think, yeah, the audience is meant to not fully
Speaker 4: know and I think I think it's it's definitely like possible.
Speaker 4: But but Cyril might be more of a hard ass
Speaker 4: than what some people give him credit for. Yeah, because
Speaker 4: he is. He's very excited to get invited to this meeting.
Speaker 4: He purchases a spider from one of like the Gorman
Speaker 4: Front like recruiters that has information on how to how
Speaker 4: to go to this like public town hall, where he
Speaker 4: talks about, hey, you know, if maybe maybe we can
Speaker 4: start working together, maybe we can start feeding information. One point, hilariously,
Speaker 4: he gets he gets accused of being an Imperial spy
Speaker 4: in like a joking manner yeah, and denies it, and
Speaker 4: then he gets on the phone with his IP girlfriends
Speaker 4: like I'm in also, this is this.
Speaker 3: Is this is one of the first times we see
Speaker 3: is the Gorman Front people. These people have no idea
Speaker 3: what the fuck they're doing. They are amateurs. They are
Speaker 3: like yeah, like their operational security is unbelievably dog shit.
Speaker 3: They like wiretapped one guy and were like, hey, let
Speaker 3: me introduce you to the leader of our organization. We
Speaker 3: have met you one time. We have listened to one
Speaker 3: phone call. You're in now. I just I think they
Speaker 3: probably listened to more than they've definitely been watching him
Speaker 3: for a while him much. They just were kind of like, hey,
Speaker 3: you're going to like meet their leader now at the
Speaker 3: first meeting you've shown up to he met like the
Speaker 3: public facing aspect, I guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can see the Gorman like they have some
Speaker 2: degree of sophistication and that they're tapping like him, and
Speaker 2: they've been listening probably for quite a while. And they
Speaker 2: sweep their shit every day for bugs, so you understand that,
Speaker 2: like they have an idea of what they need to
Speaker 2: be doing. But when it comes to all of the
Speaker 2: in person stuff, that's where they're incompetent right where they
Speaker 2: they don't have the actual operational experience to know when
Speaker 2: someone feels off right, Like that's the stuff that they're missing,
Speaker 2: Like man to man on the ground is where the
Speaker 2: problems come in. Like you can tell they're thinking this
Speaker 2: stuff through, but they just don't know what they're doing enough.
Speaker 3: This is this is the thing you I mean, this
Speaker 3: is the thing you genuine wine you run into, like
Speaker 3: in the field a lot where there's people who like
Speaker 3: have read a lot of soft bought operational security but
Speaker 3: haven't done anything and so they don't under and there's
Speaker 3: there's varying levels of this, right, but you get this
Speaker 3: to do people where it's like they don't know what
Speaker 3: the important things are. So they do some of the
Speaker 3: stuff right that they've read, but they don't understand how
Speaker 3: to put all of it together to like do something securely.
Speaker 3: And so you'll get these things where like some of
Speaker 3: their stuff is like unbelievably secure to a point where
Speaker 3: it's useless, and then some of it is like very open. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they're just like hey have I don't know. Yeah, they'll
Speaker 3: just bring people into stuff that instantly compromises everything that
Speaker 3: they're doing because they haven't like thought it through.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, and this is something that that Cassian
Speaker 4: talks about in the next episode, which we will get
Speaker 4: yeah shortly. Yeah, I mean, so much of these episodes
Speaker 4: is built around like paranoia and like surveillance. Like Cassie's
Speaker 4: talking about not wanting to go like on a walk
Speaker 4: in the park because the Empire just put up cameras.
Speaker 4: He's nervous about like where they go grocery shopping. Like
Speaker 4: he's trying to like do everything right, but it's like
Speaker 4: hurting his relationship with Bicks, and it's just making their
Speaker 4: life like very very challenging encorre assant as they're like
Speaker 4: stationed there in between missions. Like meanwhile, like Luthan's just
Speaker 4: trying to gain as much information on Gorman as possible.
Speaker 4: He has a line that I like, a smear campaign
Speaker 4: is an opening move, not an endgame. I need the
Speaker 4: end game. Yeah, talking about like the limits of you know,
Speaker 4: the Empire's Fox News style propaganda is only is only
Speaker 4: like a starting position, like this is obviously leading somewhere,
Speaker 4: and I need to know where that is. And he's
Speaker 4: gonna obtain that information slowly over the course of the
Speaker 4: next few episodes. And then I think the other thing
Speaker 4: I want to talk about before we go on break
Speaker 4: is Mon Mathma's lobbying against like the prison sentencing guidelines.
Speaker 4: She says, quote sector boundaries, civil liberties, personal freedom, respect
Speaker 4: for local traditions. You've been voting with me on these
Speaker 4: issues for years. And the Gorman senator replies, this is security. Mon,
Speaker 4: You're confusing criminality and politics here. Mon says, really, are
Speaker 4: we finding criminals or are we making them? Yeah, this
Speaker 4: is where you see senators parenting like fake crime stats
Speaker 4: about how there's been like you know, this increased wage
Speaker 4: surgery front.
Speaker 3: But that's not true.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because just because just because they're arresting more peoples,
Speaker 4: that makes there be more crime. And like you see
Speaker 4: this in season one where Cassidean's arrested at the Beach
Speaker 4: planet for like no reason and then sentenced to the
Speaker 4: Forever prison. Yeah, like, yeah, they are arresting more people.
Speaker 4: So if you just look at those stats by itself
Speaker 4: without any context on like how how other policing is working,
Speaker 4: then yeah, I can look a certain way. And this
Speaker 4: is what Mon's trying to push back on. And and
Speaker 4: the other senators are just too like bought into the
Speaker 4: empire or too scared, like the Gorman senator believes that
Speaker 4: voting against the emperor at this point would further endanger
Speaker 4: his planet. Yeah, even though this type of thing is
Speaker 4: actually going to end up biting him in the ass
Speaker 4: in the next few years.
Speaker 2: Yes, And yeah, he is like very much desperate to like, no, please,
Speaker 2: we can we can calm this down if we just
Speaker 2: don't piss the empire off enough.
Speaker 6: No.
Speaker 3: The the thing I think is actually it's interesting about
Speaker 3: the crime statistic stuff is that this is actually a
Speaker 3: more sophisticated operation than what happened in real life. We're
Speaker 3: in real life. All the actual crime statistics were like
Speaker 3: crime is falling, but everyone just kept saying there was
Speaker 3: more crime. Totally, yeah, totally, this is like arresting more
Speaker 3: people to jack the crime rates. That he's a more
Speaker 3: sophisticated thing than what we actually dealt with, which was
Speaker 3: the media just love.
Speaker 4: Our own version of this are not outer space version
Speaker 4: of like propaganda news. Media can just say something and
Speaker 4: you don't even need this stats to back it up. Yeah,
Speaker 4: let's go and break and we'll come back to talk
Speaker 4: about episode five. I have friends everywhere, ah, and we're back.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah, let's start with the summary of this episode.
Speaker 4: All right, Luthen wants a first person assessment of the
Speaker 4: Gorman front, but he's like too high profile to go himself,
Speaker 4: so he sends Cassie and undercover as fashion designer Vary
Speaker 4: in Sky. The ISB stages a performative raid of Cyril
Speaker 4: Karan's office to gain more cred with local rebels as
Speaker 4: Cyril begins to feed them select information.
Speaker 2: And he does such a good job of seeming pissed
Speaker 2: at it.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, he loves he loves pretending to be pissed
Speaker 4: at the ISB. He has so much fun kicking his
Speaker 4: little trash can.
Speaker 2: Across the room.
Speaker 4: This is outrageous. Yeah, very good stuff. And I do like, like, yeah,
Speaker 4: like the weaponization of like state repression as a tactic
Speaker 4: to actually increase state repression, like long term doing this
Speaker 4: like performative show so that Cyril like builds trust and
Speaker 4: like solidarity with the other rebels. Very good. Luthen visits
Speaker 4: Bicks at the safe house and grows concern for her
Speaker 4: well being as she uses space drugs to cope with trauma.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Cyril arrives back on Courissant to report to ice by Command,
Speaker 4: has a one hour meeting with his girlfriend where they
Speaker 4: turn off the lights.
Speaker 2: Yeah, after arguing because she's had him followed.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's a little bit pissed that she's having a
Speaker 4: followed and then she orders into trount the lights and
Speaker 4: then they do something for an hour in their apartment.
Speaker 3: God only knows. I don't want to know. I don't
Speaker 3: want to know what they're enough to this fascist weirdness.
Speaker 4: But at V Command they plan how to like carefully
Speaker 4: push the Gorman Front into taking action against the Empire.
Speaker 4: Cassian makes contact on Gorman and is unimpressed with their
Speaker 4: operational security, and Warren's against trusting an imperial source as
Speaker 4: the ISB could be feeding false intel.
Speaker 2: Some of the best moments in the episode so far,
Speaker 2: because it's it's they don't know shit about Cassian, so
Speaker 2: they don't know who they're talking to, and when he's like,
Speaker 2: you guys shouldn't do fuck right now because you don't
Speaker 2: know shit about fuck, they're like, well, you're not a
Speaker 2: real revolutionary.
Speaker 4: You don't get it, and like, honestly, I understand what
Speaker 4: what's being expressed there too, and like, well, we'll get
Speaker 4: ahead in a sec Like the Gorman Front is adamant
Speaker 4: that their source is vetted and reliable, even though they
Speaker 4: haven't really been vetted.
Speaker 3: The plan is is that the resistance seeks.
Speaker 4: To expose the construction of an imperial military based on Palmo,
Speaker 4: something that the Empire denies, though it seems most of
Speaker 4: the citizens actually already take this to be true and
Speaker 4: or questions the necessity of this plan and relations sour
Speaker 4: with the group. Back on Corriscant, Clea learns through radio
Speaker 4: chatter that one of Luthan's listening devices may be discovered
Speaker 4: during an artifact reappraisal, Saw Hills, an imperial spy, and
Speaker 4: his crew forcibly recruits Willem, and while on mission installing
Speaker 4: a fuel diverter, Saw convinces Willem to huff the fuel fumes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll talk about that in a second.
Speaker 4: I want to talk a little bit about like Cassian
Speaker 4: on Gorman. Yes, and there's there's a lot of interesting
Speaker 4: stuff there, and like specifically when the Gorman Front leader
Speaker 4: like calls Cassian out for like not being a real revolutionary,
Speaker 4: which I think is kind of true. Like Cassia at
Speaker 4: this point is a thief and a soldier. He thinks
Speaker 4: about things purely from that like operationally like like tactical
Speaker 4: point of view. He doesn't have like a large like politics.
Speaker 4: He's like focused on right, like like Luthan is more
Speaker 4: of like a revolutionary, a very like manipulative one, but
Speaker 4: like he is focused on like this like larger political game.
Speaker 4: And this is something that at this point Cassian's not
Speaker 4: fully like interested in. He's more interested on like on
Speaker 4: the ground like tactical preparedness.
Speaker 2: He is interested in what he can do and get
Speaker 2: away with right exactly as opposed to Luthen is interested
Speaker 2: in what does more damage to the Empire. Now, what's
Speaker 2: interesting to me is that the Gorman Front are actually
Speaker 2: in the middle. They think totally that they are willing
Speaker 2: to do whatever, but they don't understand what that is.
Speaker 2: And part of what you are seeing here is the
Speaker 2: Gorman Front are adamant, we are ready for war. We're
Speaker 2: already in a war. Yeah, and they're not technically wrong
Speaker 2: about that because the Empire is planning to wipe them out.
Speaker 12: Right.
Speaker 2: We know the Empire does not plan for there to
Speaker 2: be a Gorman in the future. So the stakes are
Speaker 2: where they're saying they are. But even though they're saying that,
Speaker 2: most of them don't truly believe or understand it. And
Speaker 2: Cassian understands what war is, and what he is telling
Speaker 2: them is that you are and he's at right about this.
Speaker 2: You are not ready for what you think you're ready
Speaker 2: for totally because what you're going to do is die
Speaker 2: all of you.
Speaker 4: That's what makes all their interactions so interesting, because there
Speaker 4: is that unspoken tension which slowly gets like aired because
Speaker 4: like they're really assessing different things, Like what Cassie's assessing
Speaker 4: is different from what Lusen wants assessed, and that's different
Speaker 4: from what the Gorman Front actually want to do. Like
Speaker 4: they're okay with a degree of casualties like being had
Speaker 4: because they just want to like have control over their
Speaker 4: planet again and put up any resistance even if it
Speaker 4: ends up like leading to hardship.
Speaker 3: But I think the other angle of that too, though,
Speaker 3: is it like they don't know what they're doing right, No,
Speaker 3: Like they like their plan, their plan is not genuinely
Speaker 3: really bad, right. Like the plan is that they want
Speaker 3: to like steal an imperial weapons shipment and then reveal
Speaker 3: that the Empire shipping weapons in. But if you do
Speaker 3: that then you've just like and Andrew points it out,
Speaker 3: like okay, so if you do this, then you reveal
Speaker 3: that you did you hijacked the shipment, So they're just
Speaker 3: going to like raid you all.
Speaker 4: And they're okay with you. Yeah, And they're like okay
Speaker 4: with that visibility at this point.
Speaker 2: And there's this this very standard. It's also this very
Speaker 2: common and this is part of what Casside recognizes, this
Speaker 2: common myopic thing that you get with people who again
Speaker 2: think they want a war that they don't truly understand
Speaker 2: the meaning of, where they're like, we need we need
Speaker 2: weapons and when they think of weapons. They think of
Speaker 2: guns that they can hold, and so that's what they're
Speaker 2: focused on getting, and that's what they think will let
Speaker 2: them fight the Empire. When Casside understands there's no fighting
Speaker 2: the Empire with what you can possibly get from a
Speaker 2: raid like this. All there is is suicide. And then
Speaker 2: there's the other level of what Luthan understands.
Speaker 4: Is so the fuck what sometimes that needs to happen.
Speaker 2: What matters is that these people die in public and
Speaker 2: it pisses people off. Yeah, right, And that's there's this
Speaker 2: there's this escalation of like the Gormans think having guns
Speaker 2: means you can fight back.
Speaker 4: Like guns guns means that they'll be safer, right.
Speaker 2: And they're wrong. Cassie and thinks staying alive for a
Speaker 2: future moment means that you can fight back, and he
Speaker 2: is wrong. Luthan understands that the only ammunition that really
Speaker 2: counts in this war is human life, and that sucks,
Speaker 2: and that sucks. That's why he's lost his mind and soul.
Speaker 4: Yes, and that's why people are starting to really like
Speaker 4: dislike working with him. Yes, because he's even though he
Speaker 4: might not be like completely wrong here, Yeah, I like
Speaker 4: so much of this episode is built around finding bugs. Yeah,
Speaker 4: the ISB looks for bugs in Cyro's office, the iceba's
Speaker 4: planting bugs in Zero's office. Bugs are hidden in the
Speaker 4: artifacts that Luthen's telling to high society. Everyone's listening, everyone's
Speaker 4: always everyone's trying to collect more intel, and.
Speaker 2: There's this this this issue the Empire and Luthen's organization
Speaker 2: of having with like we're getting too much, you know.
Speaker 2: The Empire's like we're releasting too many people like Yah
Speaker 2: number one. It's like cutting into our ability to get
Speaker 2: into these organizations. And it also is just like we're drowning.
Speaker 2: And Luthen says the same thing. I'm always spacing on
Speaker 2: her name, but she's wonderful to his his his college lady,
Speaker 2: Like we're drowning, we have too much shit.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Something I love is when when Cyril's talking with
Speaker 4: the Gorman Front about the ISB rate of his office,
Speaker 4: the Gorman Front remarks, quote, we think the ISB is
Speaker 4: running a shadow government without the Emperor's.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and it's a real you hear this when
Speaker 2: you read about histories of like Tsarist Russia, like even
Speaker 2: a lot of people who take part in the nineteen
Speaker 2: seventeen revolution right right up till it started. Their attitude
Speaker 2: was like, oh, if the Czar knew what his advisors
Speaker 2: were doing in his name, he'd exactly it'd be on
Speaker 2: our side. And the same thing happened in the Third Reich.
Speaker 2: If only Hitler knew was a common phrase. We're like, well, Hitler,
Speaker 2: who doesn't know the Gestapo's doing all these awful things?
Speaker 4: Of course, Yeah, And it's it's so sad because like
Speaker 4: this is this is their like local like resistance group
Speaker 4: who still has that level of delusion because they come
Speaker 4: from like high society, right, they come from this like
Speaker 4: diplomatic background where they can like solve solved through through
Speaker 4: like free trade. And they're like like, sure, surely, surely
Speaker 4: the Emperor doesn't actually know what's going on here. It
Speaker 4: must it must be like the CIA, it must be
Speaker 4: the FBI. It's like the I s B is running
Speaker 4: a shadow government. They're the ones that are actually like
Speaker 4: ruining things. Yes, and you're like, no, your enemy is
Speaker 4: the entire empire. Yes, your enemy is the ISB, but
Speaker 4: it's also Cyril karn and it's also Emperor Palpatine.
Speaker 2: Yes, And I love that's part of What I love
Speaker 2: about that that laddered interaction between them and Cassian and
Speaker 2: Cassian and Luthan is they're not really revolutionaries either. They
Speaker 2: they are protesters right totally. They still think that the
Speaker 2: overall Empire, once it realizes how bad things are, will
Speaker 2: be on their side, and Cassian thinks they can wait. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it's Luthan who's like, no, no, no, there's one
Speaker 2: way out, right, you know, back going back to season one,
Speaker 2: there's one way out.
Speaker 4: Before we talk about the Sagerera stuff at the end,
Speaker 4: I do want to point out how wonderful it was
Speaker 4: to see Cyril Karn in the ISB control room where
Speaker 4: he remarks that this is the greatest day of his life.
Speaker 2: Oh god, just.
Speaker 3: It's like Libby finally getting to spy.
Speaker 2: And part of Guys even makes that great, that great
Speaker 2: comment where he's directly talking about the Gorman Front and
Speaker 2: he's like, yeah, there's a lot of people who think
Speaker 2: they understand shit better than they do because they're new
Speaker 2: to it. But he's also he's clearly talking to Cyril
Speaker 2: like you don't know what you're doing, but I'll use you.
Speaker 3: Fine.
Speaker 4: It's so good. Cyril gains cred amongst the Gorman front
Speaker 4: when they find out that his background is that he
Speaker 4: lost his job because the ISB found out how badly
Speaker 4: he fucked up Ferriks like they're like, ah, I see,
Speaker 4: Cyril must have good reason to hate the Empire because
Speaker 4: of that.
Speaker 3: You're like, no, he's like the fuckers.
Speaker 4: He's desperately trying to like become some like ISB secret agent.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Like he just wants approval from like the Daddy state,
Speaker 4: like and from.
Speaker 2: His girlfriend right and has taken over for his mom
Speaker 2: in being like the primary source the person he's trying
Speaker 2: to impress.
Speaker 4: The last we're talking about in this episode is this
Speaker 4: episode displays like two different types of drug use. Yes,
Speaker 4: we have we have Bix, who's trying to get over
Speaker 4: the immense amount of fucked up stuff that's happened to
Speaker 4: her by taking space XENX if you will.
Speaker 2: She's barred out every night holding a gun, watching TV
Speaker 2: and Y and it's like who amongst us?
Speaker 4: It is disrupting her personal life. It's also disrupting her
Speaker 4: like operational capacity.
Speaker 2: She has been sent out in the recent past and
Speaker 2: she can't be sent back out again. And the specific
Speaker 2: we don't even see the mission that most recently fucked
Speaker 2: her up, but we're through her nightmares were lid to
Speaker 2: In first, she and Cassie and captured an Imperial pilot
Speaker 2: and Cassian killed the guy because he'd seen her face,
Speaker 2: and she's, in addition to having been tortured in season one,
Speaker 2: fucked up because like we didn't need to kill him,
Speaker 2: and Cassiean's like, yeah we did, Like he saw your face.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 4: The weight of Resistance is really getting to Bix. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and like like Luthen comes over to like check on
Speaker 4: her and so like see if she's able to like
Speaker 4: work and see if she can like appraise some like
Speaker 4: weapons or something, and he realizes like she is not
Speaker 4: like well enough to work at this point, Yeah, and
Speaker 4: becomes like getting worried for her and like like try
Speaker 4: to like plead with her, like you have to. You
Speaker 4: have to make sure that you like stay healthy. I
Speaker 4: don't know, it's it's it's definitely it's it's definitely hard
Speaker 4: to watch. I think this is definitely like this moment.
Speaker 4: It's like I don't look. Bix has always had a
Speaker 4: lot of agency taken away from her, Like we see
Speaker 4: this like in season one and we see this kind
Speaker 4: of now and I definitely would like to would like
Speaker 4: to see her get put back in like the driver's
Speaker 4: seat of her own life at a certain point. But
Speaker 4: like like like living through like PTSD and living through
Speaker 4: like these types of like you know, political movements does
Speaker 4: does like destroy people and like this does happen well, and.
Speaker 2: Just what torture does, right, Like, Yeah, torture breaks people,
Speaker 2: that's its purpose, you know.
Speaker 3: So we have Space n X and then we have Sagerera. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we fucking do.
Speaker 2: So let's I want to talk a little bit about
Speaker 2: his background, some stuff that's not in the show, and
Speaker 2: the show you see him when we when he is
Speaker 2: already basically the hardest son of a bitch in the rebellion, right,
Speaker 2: he is the only leader of a rebel faction that
Speaker 2: Luthen treats as an equal. Right where like Luthan is
Speaker 2: meeting with him, we see Luthan meeting with him directly.
Speaker 2: Luthen is not willing to sacrifice he and his men
Speaker 2: and like in order to maintain the cover of a spy.
Speaker 4: Which he is serious mien.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they are serious there, and every time we see
Speaker 2: them there's more of them and they have more ships
Speaker 2: they're the first ones. They're the first rebels to use
Speaker 2: ex qust ones to X wings, yeah and saws background
Speaker 2: and you have. This is way a bunch of the
Speaker 2: expanded stuff. But he's he started out as essentially a
Speaker 2: local rebel on this planet during the Clone Wars that
Speaker 2: was not aligned between either major faction, but basically the Jedi,
Speaker 2: taking the role of Space Cia, armed him and his
Speaker 2: sister to lead like a rebel group against the other
Speaker 2: power they were fighting in the Clone Wars occupation, like
Speaker 2: separatist forces. He was meant to be Mujahideen coded right initially, right,
Speaker 2: So he's like a space musja Hideen who's armed by
Speaker 2: the Space Cia, who are the Jedi. And then when
Speaker 2: the Republic ends, he immediately starts fighting the Empire. And
Speaker 2: one of the kind of like moments that form saw
Speaker 2: is his sister dies in the process of this failed
Speaker 2: attempt to gain independence for their homeworld, this place called Hoduran.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 2: You don't need to know any of that to perfectly
Speaker 2: get and enjoy his character in these shows, but the
Speaker 2: moment that we're talked about to talk about means more
Speaker 2: if you understand his backstory with his sister, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and he's been doing this ever since he was
Speaker 4: like a kid.
Speaker 2: Yes, and yet this has been his whole life, right,
Speaker 2: I think he's supposed to be like forty six when
Speaker 2: he dies in Rogue one had forty six. If you
Speaker 2: look at him, you know, he looks clearly older, but
Speaker 2: also he looks like, well, yeah, he's been fighting his
Speaker 2: entire life. That age is a teacher and he has this.
Speaker 2: So the first thing that he does is he executes
Speaker 2: this guy who was set up as his friend. When
Speaker 2: it becomes clear that that guy was a spy and
Speaker 2: it's insinuated, he thinks it's a spy for the Empire.
Speaker 2: That guy might have been a spy for Lutheran or
Speaker 2: someone else. We don't actually know. We know he was
Speaker 2: sending info to someone.
Speaker 4: He was transmitting, Yeah, saw things that they were going
Speaker 4: to set up like an ambush at their next mission. Yeah,
Speaker 4: And instead they evacuate their base.
Speaker 2: And Saw blasts him and basically says, hey, to the kid,
Speaker 2: your mind now, and we're going to go steal this
Speaker 2: fucking fuel. So the next time we see them, they
Speaker 2: they've busted onto this Imperial fuel lot and they're fueling
Speaker 2: up their ships and while the kid is like working
Speaker 2: out to set this thing up to allow them to
Speaker 2: take the ribo, which is the rionium riydonium rhydo sorry,
Speaker 2: the starship fuel. While the kid is like doing this
Speaker 2: job that we've been told if you don't do it perfectly,
Speaker 2: it kills you and everyone around you. Saw is monologuing
Speaker 2: and he's talking about his childhood where he was like
Speaker 2: I was a child slave, you know, forced to labor
Speaker 2: in these rhido mines, right, and one day there was
Speaker 2: a gas leak and all everyone ran and you know
Speaker 2: this stuff. It was so bad out there. The old
Speaker 2: people would and you'd come back the next day and
Speaker 2: the jungle was so thick they'd been eaten down to
Speaker 2: bones and want everybody has to flee because of this leak.
Speaker 2: But I don't run away because, like I'm huffing this gas,
Speaker 2: I get high and I like realize for the first time,
Speaker 2: I'm alive.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: He has this like this moment, and then when the
Speaker 2: kid figures out how to get the fuel hooked up,
Speaker 2: Saw immediately leans in and starts huffing what is effectively
Speaker 2: gasoline and going and the kid's like, what the fuck.
Speaker 2: The kid who's wearing gas mask, who's like wearing gas
Speaker 2: is like, what are you doing? And he's like, she's
Speaker 2: my sister, right, Oh, she's my sister and she loves me.
Speaker 4: I want to read it here. I sure have this
Speaker 4: back of the monologu quote. Yeah you feel how badly
Speaker 4: she wants to explode. Yeah, remember this moment. You think
Speaker 4: I'm crazy? Yes, I am. Revolution is not for the samee.
Speaker 4: Look at us, unloved, hunted, cannon fodder. Will all be
Speaker 4: dead before the Republic is back. And yet here we are.
Speaker 3: Where are you?
Speaker 4: Boy?
Speaker 3: You're here.
Speaker 4: You're not with Luthin, you're here. You're right here, and
Speaker 4: you're ready to fight. We're the rido kid, We're the fuel.
Speaker 4: We're the thing that explodes when there's too much friction
Speaker 4: in the air. Let it in, boy, that's freedom calling
Speaker 4: Let it in, Let it run, let it run wild.
Speaker 2: And he is just for one thing. The kid is
Speaker 2: choking on the on the fumes, is nearly dying from
Speaker 2: the gas fumes that clearly saw as barely affected by anymore. Right,
Speaker 2: it's again this thing I love that they do in
Speaker 2: terms of they're calling back to the older lore when
Speaker 2: he calls this his sister. Yeah, but you don't need
Speaker 2: to know that his sister died to get this moment.
Speaker 2: It just makes it adds an extra layer of meaning
Speaker 2: if you're a nerd for the lore, which I appreciate
Speaker 2: a lot. And it also sets up in Rogue one
Speaker 2: when we see Saw near death, he's huff he's on
Speaker 2: he's on oxygen. He's well, I think he's on O
Speaker 2: two because he's destroyed his lung stuffing.
Speaker 4: He's houghing this now, this is this is what he's huffing.
Speaker 4: That has been like like like retcond.
Speaker 3: Confirmed it wasn't oxygen.
Speaker 4: Okay, yes, bo the writer Ye called Tony Gilroy and said, hey,
Speaker 4: what if we have him huff and fumes?
Speaker 3: And they went for it.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, but I but I think that was to
Speaker 2: try to explain because because Tony said he didn't know
Speaker 2: why Saul was on oxygen when YE put it in
Speaker 2: Rogue one, and so they came to explain it. But
Speaker 2: I think he's on oxygen because I.
Speaker 4: Think it's been retconto to being that he's just huffing.
Speaker 3: Risy, I don't know.
Speaker 4: I saw it in an article. You yeah, so either way,
Speaker 4: we'll see, we'll see. I could be wrong. I was
Speaker 4: wrong last beekause of one thing, I miscredited the quote
Speaker 4: about about the Empire's grip tightening and systems falling through
Speaker 4: because the Theory Twinks British actor has a has an
Speaker 4: accent very similar to the one Carry Fisher poorly tries
Speaker 4: to imitate in a New Hope where she says that line,
Speaker 4: so sorry, George, Sorry George, that was your line.
Speaker 3: Good line.
Speaker 4: The Theory Twink just has some very similar ones. So
Speaker 4: I got confused.
Speaker 2: Accountability Wow, mean to Carry Fisher Garrison.
Speaker 3: Everyone knows her accents bad in that movie. We all
Speaker 3: know it.
Speaker 2: I fucking love this speech by Oh.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is the most Robert thing I've ever seen it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's perfect, It's perfect. Everything about it makes me
Speaker 2: so happy. Bo Willman continues to be like maybe the
Speaker 2: best monologuest writing for TV right now. It's just such
Speaker 2: a raw scene and it explains both like why Saw
Speaker 2: is still around, because he's the most paranoid, crazy son
Speaker 2: of a bitch there is, and because he unlike everyone
Speaker 2: else and unlike the Gorman's, unlike even Cassie, and he's
Speaker 2: the only guy who understands what Luthan understands, which is
Speaker 2: that likely. We're not here to see the other side
Speaker 2: of this. Now, we're here to catch on fire, you know,
Speaker 2: like that's the.
Speaker 4: Whole thing, and hopefully that fire will grow. Yeah, and yeah,
Speaker 4: if that means we get burned up in the process,
Speaker 4: that is, that's how it be. Yeah, if the fire
Speaker 4: will burn very brightly, yes, all right, let's go and
Speaker 4: break and then come back to discus the final episode
Speaker 4: in this arc.
Speaker 3: Okay, we are back.
Speaker 4: And Or Season two, episode six, What a festive evening.
Speaker 4: Luthen sends mon Mathma's cousin Val to re establish relations
Speaker 4: with the Gorman front after Cassian's icy reception. Cassian and
Speaker 4: Bicks reunite on Corroussant, but then Cassian shows up at
Speaker 4: Luthen's shock confront him about checking in on Bicks at
Speaker 4: the safe house while and Or was on mission. In
Speaker 4: a possibly like OPSEC irresponsible, huge OPSEC.
Speaker 2: Fuck up, huge oxexo CACI and Andor's face is known.
Speaker 4: Yeah, not good. This is like the Cassian's emotions getting
Speaker 4: the better of him here. Senator mon Mathma and her
Speaker 4: husband parent attend a party of the Empire's elite, where
Speaker 4: she debates Krenik on Imperial cruelty and the mindset of
Speaker 4: a rebel underdog. Meanwhile, Claya uses their undercover ice B
Speaker 4: agent to help remove a listening device hidden in the
Speaker 4: Price collection of artifacts. Vell reunites with Sinta as they
Speaker 4: helped to lead the Gorman Front's first attack, stealing imperial
Speaker 4: weapons on a cargo transport. At first, things go according
Speaker 4: to plan. Cyril watches from a distance and reports to
Speaker 4: icebyhead quarter.
Speaker 2: We should note ahead of this that during the meeting
Speaker 2: where they had about this, one point that they had
Speaker 2: made is none of you have guns. None of you
Speaker 2: carry guns on this Me and her are the only
Speaker 2: people with blasters. You don't need them, you're not competent
Speaker 2: to use them.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So, near the end of this operation, a civilian confronts
Speaker 4: the rebels but what they're doing and in the struggle,
Speaker 4: Sinta is accidentally shot and killed by one of the
Speaker 4: members of the Gorman Front, a guy named Sam with
Speaker 4: two ms. I love Star Wars. This episode ends with
Speaker 4: Bix and Cassian going on a mission to kill the
Speaker 4: Imperial interrogation expert doctor Gorst, which they succeed and then
Speaker 4: walk away heroically from the explosion, similar to.
Speaker 2: Kill him by torturing him the way he tortured her.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then they love the building and they play
Speaker 4: the music cue from the very first arc, Yeah, the
Speaker 4: very first season where Cassian is walking away with that
Speaker 4: fast drum beat. So this episode has so much about
Speaker 4: like like relationships complicating political activity.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 4: We have we have and orn bicks. We have the lesbians.
Speaker 4: Valin Senta be killed by lesbian. They did kill your lesbian?
Speaker 4: H we'll talk about that, yeah, we'll second. They also
Speaker 4: have they also have Cyril and Dedra. We have like
Speaker 4: like a lot of a lot of like how relationships
Speaker 4: and politics like function, how where there's friction, when things
Speaker 4: can go well, with things can go bad. Let's talk
Speaker 4: I guess a little bit of about this party where
Speaker 4: where where uh Luthen talks with Cretic very very briefly
Speaker 4: and at the end, I mean this is this is
Speaker 4: a very effective scene where they like build tension with
Speaker 4: Clay trying to remove this bug while critics like in
Speaker 4: the room seeing seeing these other artifacts and it's like
Speaker 4: debating Mond. But when when Luthen and Claya leave, they
Speaker 4: jokingly remark, oh, good man, we should have killed critic
Speaker 4: when we were up there and they laugh and you're like, yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, you guys should.
Speaker 5: Have that's.
Speaker 3: You really should have killed critic.
Speaker 4: You really should have killed critic. It would have bummed
Speaker 4: things up. But then the Death Star may not have
Speaker 4: been completed. Yeah, and this whole thing would have gone differently,
Speaker 4: although you know, you know, in a way, the deskto
Speaker 4: operation does lead to the fall of the Empire in
Speaker 4: like the paradox that a way.
Speaker 3: To be fair, they should they don't know exists some business.
Speaker 4: But he's like he's like a super high up guy. Yes,
Speaker 4: and man, yeah, that is tough.
Speaker 3: That's that's a tough scene.
Speaker 2: It's a's also what's interesting is that it's a tough
Speaker 2: scene in light of the rest of the lore. It's
Speaker 2: a really nice because they've been fighting, bickering for this
Speaker 2: whole cycle of episodes and like you're, yeah, things are
Speaker 2: breaking down, and this is a moment where like they
Speaker 2: get back on the same page and you're like, eases.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well because part of it, because like part of
Speaker 3: what's going on here is like losing is losing it, right,
Speaker 3: and this is the thing because like he's he's struggling
Speaker 3: and like, yeah, everyone's fucking seen this, Like yeah, your
Speaker 3: friend is struggling fifteen products at once. They're losing their
Speaker 3: goddamn minds and then like the girl in your group
Speaker 3: was on top of it, has to just slap them
Speaker 3: and be like locked the fuck in.
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, Klay is a scary monster.
Speaker 3: She is on it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, it's made really clear in these cycles. She is
Speaker 2: not his subordinate.
Speaker 4: Oh no, they are.
Speaker 2: They are handling very different parts of the operation, but
Speaker 2: she is not working under him.
Speaker 3: No, and she is like the one who like is
Speaker 3: the reason any of the shit works. Absolutely, And it's
Speaker 3: like that's the thing you see very often.
Speaker 2: There's a line in the season one where things are
Speaker 2: looking bad for them and he specifically asks her is
Speaker 2: your go bag ready? And he doesn't check his own,
Speaker 2: so he I think he understands if one of us
Speaker 2: has to get out, it should be you.
Speaker 4: She has to survive. Yeah, totally. Yeah, And I think
Speaker 4: that is that is where things are going to are
Speaker 4: going to be moving.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean when when Cassiean's coming back from Gorman, like
Speaker 4: Luthen picks him up and they start like arguing over
Speaker 4: like is the Gorman front like a real thing to
Speaker 4: like spend effort and like time on, like they're kind
Speaker 4: of all like like green, they don't really have good
Speaker 4: op sex. They're not they're just not like ready yet. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and and and Luthen pushes back and says to Cassie
Speaker 4: and like you're thinking small, you're thinking like a thief.
Speaker 4: And Cassian robuts like, no, I'm thinking like a soldier.
Speaker 4: And you have to think like a leader. You have
Speaker 4: to actually and like from Luten's point of view, a
Speaker 4: leader is like a very like manipulative rule and like
Speaker 4: like you you have to start using these guys as
Speaker 4: pawns for this like larger game, because the empire is
Speaker 4: bigger than just Gorman. The Empire is bigger than us.
Speaker 4: We have to think bigger. You can't just you can't
Speaker 4: just think like a you know, a small illegalist who
Speaker 4: is gonna steal your food and not pay for parking
Speaker 4: and and just like get by while still doing crying.
Speaker 4: But like you know, try that like outsmart the empires
Speaker 4: like no, like we we are we are we are
Speaker 4: beyond that.
Speaker 2: We ain't robbing banks anymore.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly right, like we are beyond the illegalist like
Speaker 4: point of view, we have to start thinking like much
Speaker 4: more much more like strategically and with like the bigger
Speaker 4: picture in mind, because like we are we are slowly
Speaker 4: getting closer to the Battle of Yavn. Here, Yeah, and
Speaker 4: their little argument they're really really interesting. And then their
Speaker 4: secondary meet up where where Cassian's mad about Luthen checking
Speaker 4: in on bicks and I think, like I can understand
Speaker 4: both their point of view here is this. I think
Speaker 4: this is still a big fuck up from Cassian, but
Speaker 4: it's like it makes sense, but like, yeah, the relationship
Speaker 4: is getting like the better of him on like a
Speaker 4: strategic standpoint, like at this at this plot point, and
Speaker 4: Luthen still trusts them though, like Luthen still gives them
Speaker 4: the assignment to kill doctor Gores, So like Luthen still
Speaker 4: is able to work with these people, and he's still
Speaker 4: actually like oddly enough like prioritizes empathy and like he
Speaker 4: says like like like empathy, like you can you cannot
Speaker 4: have a you cannot have a revolution without empathy. That's
Speaker 4: what this is built on. And and and even though
Speaker 4: he's a bit of a hard ass sometimes he still
Speaker 4: does like trust them, yeah, yeah, but he's he also
Speaker 4: is deliberately fucking with him, Like yeah, totally he's very
Speaker 4: minific like he like he's like he's being unbelievagnit of
Speaker 4: like like like one of the things there is like
Speaker 4: he deliberately gives Bis, tells Bis about this assignment that
Speaker 4: he was going to give her and then doesn't specifically
Speaker 4: to see if she would tell about it.
Speaker 3: And that's how Andrew would react to that, which is like,
Speaker 3: don't do that. That's unhinged, Like that's like not and
Speaker 3: this is like also part of like, you know the
Speaker 3: thing you have to like balance here, right is like
Speaker 3: you know, you have to be able to balance like
Speaker 3: getting people to do things that need to be done
Speaker 3: with like not being a fucking asshole and alienating everyone.
Speaker 3: And this is like a and especially when you yourself,
Speaker 3: because like Luthor is also falling apart, and he's not
Speaker 3: going to change.
Speaker 4: He's not he's never gonna change.
Speaker 3: No, he's not changing.
Speaker 2: But he's like he's like the thing though that's not
Speaker 2: his job, right, His job was to make the later
Speaker 2: stages of this where people act differently inevitable totally, and
Speaker 2: he understands that you need something that horrifies people to
Speaker 2: do that, right, Like, and that's that's all he's trying
Speaker 2: to set.
Speaker 4: Up Luthid is absolutely like a moral very manipulative.
Speaker 6: I am.
Speaker 4: I am still I'm still teaming even though he like
Speaker 4: sucks as a dude, Like I would hate to work
Speaker 4: with him.
Speaker 3: Well it's like, but like I a god have the
Speaker 3: team Luthen and the yet Yeah, well I would just
Speaker 3: say like like if the thing is like, if you
Speaker 3: try to act like this in like an actual organizing space,
Speaker 3: this isn't gonna work. You're just gonna putter. He's not organizing,
Speaker 3: He's not doing that, right, That's that's what I'm saying, though,
Speaker 3: you're right, right, like like this this works because of
Speaker 3: the exact specific thing that he's doing, which is he
Speaker 3: is the guy who is coordinating a bunch of networks.
Speaker 3: The thing is, in order for networks to hold together
Speaker 3: and work, people have to have relationships with each other,
Speaker 3: and if you behave like this in that situation, it
Speaker 3: will funck out everything. And this is like the conflict
Speaker 3: that's happening, like even inside of his own limited network
Speaker 3: is that like he's he is like fucking with everyone
Speaker 3: And we'll get to that with the lesbian you.
Speaker 2: See you see how you see the different levels at
Speaker 2: which networks work here, like the Gorman Front works because
Speaker 2: they're all friends and neighbors who care about each other, right,
Speaker 2: And that's why they are like real tactles albody, and
Speaker 2: they're able to stick together even though they're not they
Speaker 2: don't have perfect competence. We see Saws group where someone
Speaker 2: made the comment that like, well, he's basically a fascist
Speaker 2: and because of like the hold he has on his group,
Speaker 2: which is not what I saw at all. I saw
Speaker 2: as soon as he shoots the spy, he has but
Speaker 2: he's not a fashion. He has to prove to the
Speaker 2: rest of his group that guy was a spy and
Speaker 2: needed to die. And once he does, they're like, all right,
Speaker 2: well back to the job, right, I mean yeah, But
Speaker 2: and he gets he has to get fucked you know,
Speaker 2: he gets fucked up as part of like the just
Speaker 2: the necessity of it's it's literally the only thing he
Speaker 2: has in between acts of terrifying violence. But that's how
Speaker 2: that group bands together. And then we see, you know,
Speaker 2: these smaller cells of experts, right who they have their
Speaker 2: connections with each other and they have their little moments
Speaker 2: of vengeance, and that's what keeps them going and the
Speaker 2: only thing that keeps Luthen going is the pure logic
Speaker 2: of the calculus of what he's put together. That's all
Speaker 2: he's got.
Speaker 4: Yeah, information collecting boyfriend, always collecting information. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 4: let's talk about the space lesbians who are running the
Speaker 4: French Resistance. So I liked I liked a lot of
Speaker 4: what they did with them in this episode. I liked
Speaker 4: how they were like reuniting. I liked the way they
Speaker 4: talked about the on again, off again style of their
Speaker 4: relationship based on like having to live in this rebellion
Speaker 4: like life, Like they can't always see each other, they're
Speaker 4: always being moved around by Luthern. But they both specifically
Speaker 4: took this assignment like hoping and like and I think
Speaker 4: like knowing that it would mean that they could see
Speaker 4: each other. So I liked the development that we had
Speaker 4: with them as people who like you, are like in
Speaker 4: the same spaces, but do not have the luxury of
Speaker 4: actually having like a life together at this point in time.
Speaker 4: They advised the little resistance group, they're they're much more
Speaker 4: friendly than than than Cassie and is oh, well they
Speaker 4: do come in or like.
Speaker 3: All right, you motherfuckers like you people are amateur? Yes,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, yeah, no, fucking guns.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like no, Like, I guess they have more
Speaker 4: of a willingness to put up with the amateurs than
Speaker 4: Cassie does. And I think, I think is kind of
Speaker 4: what's going on there. And you know, they're they're hoping
Speaker 4: that after this mission's over, maybe they'll be able to
Speaker 4: spend more time together. And then Cinta does get killed.
Speaker 4: And I've seen a lot of criticism of this. I've
Speaker 4: seen people invoking like a like a like a barrier
Speaker 4: gaze type crope, and I don't think that's my personal
Speaker 4: outlook on what's going on here. I think a lot
Speaker 4: of people die throughout this show. We had Brasso die
Speaker 4: and this sort of thing like just happened.
Speaker 2: It happens. That's that's the point is Yes, she's really good,
Speaker 2: she's really good, she's incredibly.
Speaker 4: And it feels so like purposeless and like welcome to war.
Speaker 4: I think that is part of the problem, part of
Speaker 4: the point. And like the upset like a reaction that
Speaker 4: you have I think is like that's that's showing I
Speaker 4: think the strength of the strength of this, Like it
Speaker 4: sucks to see a lesbian get killed, but I think
Speaker 4: we're seeing so many relationships like fall apart. We're seeing
Speaker 4: a lot of people get killed.
Speaker 2: Brasso didn't die for any better reason. This is just
Speaker 2: how war works.
Speaker 3: No, I mean I think I think the reason and
Speaker 3: this isn't It has been an interesting part of this.
Speaker 3: I talked a bit about this last episode was like
Speaker 3: this is the most like this is by far the
Speaker 3: most like gay Star Wars River had right, and it's
Speaker 3: the most Like I'm trying to think of the number
Speaker 3: of other shows the only time they didn't lean away
Speaker 3: from it or insinuate it. Yeah, no, like, well they
Speaker 3: just kissing this episode. It's like I'm legitimately like I'm
Speaker 3: like racking my brain. I'm trying to think, like the
Speaker 3: number of like major TV shows I have ever seen
Speaker 3: in my life run non white lesbian gets to kiss someone.
Speaker 3: It's like not that high. And I think that's why
Speaker 3: people because like, yeah, like this is this is this
Speaker 3: is an this is the best representation of my culture,
Speaker 3: which is like the leftist lesbian. Yeah, they're gonna see
Speaker 3: each other I've ever seen And then it's like yeah,
Speaker 3: and she fucking dies.
Speaker 4: It's it hurts, Like I think like we were able
Speaker 4: to watch these characters develop over the course of like
Speaker 4: a few arcs, right, Like we saw these in the
Speaker 4: Aldanni heist where they were like basically the only two
Speaker 4: people to survive besides casting and like everyone else on
Speaker 4: that ont heist died, right, Yeah, so the lesbians made
Speaker 4: it out of that. They they struggled to maintain their
Speaker 4: relationship in the interim as as things happened. They had
Speaker 4: this emotional reunion here. I think, you know, you could
Speaker 4: you could make an argument maybe you'd be better to
Speaker 4: kill Vow, But we've we've had more development with Vow
Speaker 4: because of being related to mon So, Like, yeah, it is,
Speaker 4: it is, it is. It is tough with like the disposability,
Speaker 4: but that is that is that that is a part
Speaker 4: of us fighting in an environment like this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not that they're disposable, it's that combat is random,
Speaker 2: like and fuck ups are random, like this this exact thing.
Speaker 2: Somebody screws up and shoots when they're not supposed to
Speaker 2: and the bullet doesn't stop. Happens all the goddamn time,
Speaker 2: and like it's part of what fucks people up. If
Speaker 2: you talk to people about there who have war experiences,
Speaker 2: one of the things that will fuck someone up the
Speaker 2: most is watching someone they know and care about get
Speaker 2: turned into pink mist And it's usually a situation where
Speaker 2: somebody hits or steps on or whatever an ied or
Speaker 2: takes a rocket at a bad time, and there's this
Speaker 2: person that you knew and you care about and they're
Speaker 2: three dimensional to you and you probably plan to keep
Speaker 2: knowing them after that, and then they're just fucking missed,
Speaker 2: and it just it shatters people's minds, and that's what happens,
Speaker 2: like and.
Speaker 4: Like yeah, vow's little like speech to to Sam afterwards,
Speaker 4: being like like you are you now have to live
Speaker 4: your entire life knowing that you took this person away,
Speaker 4: and like every action you take for the rest of
Speaker 4: your life is going to be like it's gonna be
Speaker 4: all in all an attempt to like make up for this,
Speaker 4: Like every every every imperial you kill will just be
Speaker 4: one for Cinta, Yeah, because like the Cinta was like
Speaker 4: a professional. This is like the life that she led,
Speaker 4: Like you will never be able to understand how important
Speaker 4: she was. You'll never be able to understand like how
Speaker 4: good she was at this. And you're like a fucking
Speaker 4: like French kid, Yeah, like you don't know what you're
Speaker 4: doing and now you have to spend your entire life
Speaker 4: making up for it. And it was a very hard speech.
Speaker 4: But I think Val did a really good job with
Speaker 4: that and like understanding like the political necessity of like
Speaker 4: you can't let this be like in vain either, like
Speaker 4: you have to like you have to be using him,
Speaker 4: making making his life like worthwhile. Yeah, yeah, and I
Speaker 4: mean yeah, it's it was rough. I mean I would
Speaker 4: love I would love more more like gay characters living
Speaker 4: happy lives in Star Wars, but we rarely see anyone
Speaker 4: living a happy life in Star Wars.
Speaker 2: This is not about happy lives.
Speaker 4: I also, that's not what we're seeing love.
Speaker 2: The thing that doesn't get a huge amount of attention
Speaker 2: in these episodes but is interesting to me is the
Speaker 2: guy that he was he pulled that Matt or whatever
Speaker 2: his name was, Sam Samama, the guy that Samon Man
Speaker 2: told his gun to try to stop, is just this
Speaker 2: random Gorman dude who's like, hey, no, I'm not gonna
Speaker 2: like leave, this is like my city, What are you
Speaker 2: doing here?
Speaker 4: What's going on?
Speaker 2: As soon as he realized that he carries her body
Speaker 2: like he goes with them, you know, and we it's
Speaker 2: kind of unclear is he likes some sort of spot
Speaker 2: or is he literally a Gorman who it the whole
Speaker 2: time was looking for a way to get involved, and
Speaker 2: once he realized what was happening, he's like, yeah, these
Speaker 2: are my people I'm with this.
Speaker 3: Was that the guy from the meeting or was it
Speaker 3: a different the one from the He wasn't.
Speaker 2: He wasn't the Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, so I guess
Speaker 2: he just wasn't in the inner circle. But like he
Speaker 2: hops on, you.
Speaker 4: Know, yeah, but no, I do understand like the racial
Speaker 4: disposability and like the barrier gaze like aspect that could
Speaker 4: be read into this. It's a tough thing to to
Speaker 4: thread here. And I think if if you view this
Speaker 4: in context of all of the people that we have
Speaker 4: seen like get killed, like the entire Aldnnie Crewe, like
Speaker 4: Brass so basically you know, the droid from season one
Speaker 4: gets like abandoned on that planet, I think, like it
Speaker 4: does it does make sense. I think in that larger context,
Speaker 4: I think there's a way that not everyone like has
Speaker 4: to die to lead to rogue one like besides Cassian, No,
Speaker 4: not everyone, but but someone like since and like frankly,
Speaker 4: like someone like Sinta the type of militant she is
Speaker 4: they do have a short life span, like that is
Speaker 4: that is part of the specific thing Sinta is doing.
Speaker 4: Is like you burn fast and you burn bright, and
Speaker 4: sometimes you will die in a way that's like really
Speaker 4: purposeless and that fucking sucks. And that happens in war,
Speaker 4: that happens in like activist spaces, like that happens. That
Speaker 4: happens in the United States with people here and often
Speaker 4: they are like non white gay people. Yeah, like that's
Speaker 4: what happened in Atlanta. So like these these things happen.
Speaker 2: The number of people who committed suicide too after twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: you know, like, yeah.
Speaker 4: Do we have anything else you want to want to
Speaker 4: say me?
Speaker 3: Do do you have anything?
Speaker 4: When I close that on as the president, non white
Speaker 4: lesbian on the podcast.
Speaker 3: They killed by lesbian. So it's sad there aren't. What
Speaker 3: is the next time I'm getting a non white lesbian
Speaker 3: in Star Wars is gonna work? Like I Am going
Speaker 3: to be right, like raising a black flag over Shensend.
Speaker 3: But the next time we get another one.
Speaker 4: Of these characters of the series, you know, we had
Speaker 4: we we had a non white lesbian uh in Acolyte
Speaker 4: who also taught it. Yeah, yeah, I do not see
Speaker 4: people talking about the barrier gay stuff with the Acolyte as.
Speaker 3: Well, nobody because because it wasn't bad.
Speaker 4: But I think it's also worth I think it's also
Speaker 4: where remembering like like this is this is a show
Speaker 4: starring like a non white leading role, like like a
Speaker 4: Cassian is not white. So I think that the racial
Speaker 4: politics are a little bit, a little bit more more complex.
Speaker 4: I think some people are discussing.
Speaker 2: But yeah, all right, well these episodes have been amazing.
Speaker 2: Everybody get into inhalance, uh and steal fuel from the military.
Speaker 2: That's the message of vandor.
Speaker 4: Run wild.
Speaker 5: Don't do that.
Speaker 2: That's a joke legally, Okay.
Speaker 4: This is it could happen here. Executive Disorder our weekly
Speaker 4: newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world,
Speaker 4: and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis today,
Speaker 4: joined by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Robert Evans. This episode,
Speaker 4: we're covering the week of April thirtieth to May seventh.
Speaker 2: Yes, when you think of ED, you think about rigid
Speaker 2: cylindrical things now flying at high speed towards miss That's
Speaker 2: a bad way to introduce the facts. There's now a
Speaker 2: war going on between India and Pakistan. Chris, I don't
Speaker 2: know what else are we supposed to do? How are
Speaker 2: we supposed to go into this? Pakistan and India are
Speaker 2: are shooting.
Speaker 3: Yeah's okay, okay, I'm going to attempt to do a
Speaker 3: very very very very brief Please God like, do not
Speaker 3: let this be the extent of your knowledge about this conflict.
Speaker 3: But yeah, okay, here is one paragraph about this. So
Speaker 3: when India gains and Pakistan eventually gained independence from the
Speaker 3: UK and the British Empire, there was the partition. This
Speaker 3: is a process in which millions died and India and
Speaker 3: Pakistan were split into two states.
Speaker 2: Millions die as a result of the disruption to infrastructure
Speaker 2: and as a result of mascular.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and again people fleeing like back and forth between
Speaker 3: the two places. There's been a studio territory for fucking ever.
Speaker 3: One of the most contentious parts of this has always
Speaker 3: been Kashmir. Large walk There's a whole complicated thing here.
Speaker 3: But so Kashmir was sort of split in two. There's
Speaker 3: an almost entirely Muslim like territory that ends up under
Speaker 3: the control of India and India has waged a brutal
Speaker 3: military occupation of Kashmir since they got it. Basically, it
Speaker 3: ramps up and down in terms of like how bad
Speaker 3: it is, but it's never good. Yeah, And this has
Speaker 3: been a constant source ofttension between India and Pakistan, where
Speaker 3: you know, Pakistan has played its card of like we
Speaker 3: are like the defenders of Muslims in in India. And
Speaker 3: there's been a series of wars also, but this this
Speaker 3: is one of the few times where you can say
Speaker 3: there were gedocides on both sides and it's true because
Speaker 3: like one of the wars that they fought was because
Speaker 3: of the jedicide that Pakistan did in what became Bangladesh.
Speaker 3: So like, there are no heroes in this story. There
Speaker 3: is only I mean, I guess, like you know, there
Speaker 3: are people resisting repression from both states.
Speaker 2: There are good people, but neither of the states have
Speaker 2: clean ams.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but the states suck shit, right, Like you know,
Speaker 3: let let's be clear about that Kashmir is one of
Speaker 3: the most militarized places in the world. It got much
Speaker 3: much worse after twenty nineteen, when India withdrew the autonomous
Speaker 3: status that kashmiir had had. This sparked a bunch of protests.
Speaker 3: They're horribly repressed. There's been staggering numbers of people have
Speaker 3: died over the past like thirty years. There look a
Speaker 3: lot of like Hesbra's accesis, the outside world has been
Speaker 3: cut off. It's difficult to get people like in to it.
Speaker 3: And obviously, you know, the thing about occupations is that
Speaker 3: there's been a very very long running series of sort
Speaker 3: of insertion sees and militant groups in Kashmir of various kinds.
Speaker 3: Pakistan has funded some of these groups as a way
Speaker 3: to sort of like poke a stick at India, and
Speaker 3: in late April a group killed twenty odd twenty six
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, twenty six, I think yeah, I think
Speaker 3: that's the final number, like Hindu tourists in Kashmir. It's
Speaker 3: worth noting that there's no actual evidence that Pakistan is
Speaker 3: behind this, but.
Speaker 2: No, but that's India's claim.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's India's claim. And this is causings to get
Speaker 3: really really bad in Kashmir itself, which is the part
Speaker 3: of this I think has gotten lost in a lot
Speaker 3: of the discussions here, which is like like if you
Speaker 3: if you read statements from from like I mean, like, A,
Speaker 3: there's just been like an incredible intensification of oppression and
Speaker 3: b if you read statements from Indian officials, they are
Speaker 3: they're just straight up talking about quote like Indian style
Speaker 3: final solutions for Kashmir. It's completely unhinged. The Indian state
Speaker 3: has gone into this. I mean, like, you know, it's Mody, right.
Speaker 3: Mody is running probably the world's most effective fascist government
Speaker 3: and his thing is always like a huge part of
Speaker 3: it has always been specifically about like wanting to repress Muslims,
Speaker 3: and this, you know, has has kicked the homophobia into
Speaker 3: an absolute fever pitch. And the product of this is
Speaker 3: that they have started doing strikes inside of Pakistan. I'm
Speaker 3: going to pass it over to Robert talk about like
Speaker 3: what does have looked like in what this conflict has been. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, and it's important to know that during this terrorist attack,
Speaker 2: one of the big things that is alleged is that
Speaker 2: husbands were executed in front of their wives. Yeah, that
Speaker 2: is going to be relevant for the name of the
Speaker 2: operation that India is in the process of carrying out
Speaker 2: right now. Prior to in the immediate wake of that attack,
Speaker 2: everyone knew some shit was going to go down on
Speaker 2: the border. India was going to do something, in part
Speaker 2: because India said they were going to do something. Right JD. Vance,
Speaker 2: the Peacemaker, as we call him, I don't believe anyone
Speaker 2: else has ever been called that, and they history of
Speaker 2: government or popular media. So yeah, that seems like a
Speaker 2: good nickname for him. Went to India like a day
Speaker 2: or two before this all happened to calm things down.
Speaker 3: This is often making a visit to the Pope or
Speaker 3: to tell.
Speaker 2: Mody do whatever. Like, we don't know actually what he said.
Speaker 2: Some people are like Vance must have given him the
Speaker 2: go ahead. I think it's just as likely Vance was like, hey,
Speaker 2: we don't really want a war right now? Can he
Speaker 2: calm shit down? And Mody didn't listen, or that Vance
Speaker 2: just didn't even have anything meaningful to say. We actually
Speaker 2: don't know at the moment. But last night India started
Speaker 2: carrying out what they are calling operations Sindoor si Indo
Speaker 2: R is how it is generally anglicized. The name of
Speaker 2: the operation comes from. Again. I mentioned a little earlier
Speaker 2: that during that terrorist attack in Kashmir, Hindu men were
Speaker 2: killed in front of their wives, Sindoor is a word
Speaker 2: that refers to this kind of colored dye that I
Speaker 2: believe it's like a bridal thing that like women put in.
Speaker 2: I think it's in their hair. But it's a reference
Speaker 2: to something that is part of like a traditional Hindu
Speaker 2: wedding and something that the bride does. And so it
Speaker 2: was specifically named this in order to make it very clear,
Speaker 2: this is vengeance for that attack. Right, Like that's why
Speaker 2: it was named what it was. Okay, does that all
Speaker 2: make sense? Yeah, sorry, I've got here. Sindor is the
Speaker 2: Hindi word for vermilion, which is the red pignant Hindu
Speaker 2: women applied to their forehead, right, So like that, and
Speaker 2: so it's a reference also to the fact that these
Speaker 2: terrorists are said to have like shot their victims in
Speaker 2: the forehead.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot going on there basically. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: that's what's relevant. So when it comes to this what's happening,
Speaker 2: first off, perfectly reasonable to call what's happening war. India
Speaker 2: has launched cross border strikes. They appear to have launched
Speaker 2: both cruise missiles and air strikes using modern jets.
Speaker 10: Right.
Speaker 2: Pakistan has responded with modern military air defenses. What we
Speaker 2: can safely say right now is that this is the
Speaker 2: first full twenty first century here on peer military action.
Speaker 2: And I know, as came up in the meeting, people
Speaker 2: are gonna say, well, Ukraine, not entirely Ukraine and Russia.
Speaker 2: There is a degree to which that is true, because
Speaker 2: Ukraine is armed by states that are peer or more
Speaker 2: than peer to Russia in terms of military technology. But
Speaker 2: Ukraine does not have an industrial base that is in
Speaker 2: any way comparable to Russia's. They're not capable of manufacturing
Speaker 2: the weaponry that they need to compete with Russia on
Speaker 2: the battlefield on their own. That's why international aid has
Speaker 2: been so critical. Pakistan and India are both effectively peers
Speaker 2: in that they both do purchase weaponry a lot from
Speaker 2: other countries, but they also have domestic arms industries, and
Speaker 2: they have potent domestic militaries that are armed to a
Speaker 2: comparable standard. Right, And so there's a few things happening here.
Speaker 2: I do not want to lose count of the fact
Speaker 2: that people are dying. Obviously, civilians died in that attack
Speaker 2: in Kashmir. At the moment, it looks like the death
Speaker 2: toll from the initial Indian strikes is somewhere around forty.
Speaker 2: Pakistan is claiming the vast majority of those are civilians.
Speaker 2: India is claiming that they only hit infant structure associated
Speaker 2: with the terrorist group that they believe carried out the
Speaker 2: attacks in Kashmir that they claim is being supported by Pakistan.
Speaker 2: There is substantial evidence the majority of the dead are civilians.
Speaker 2: People have claimed that large chunks of their families were
Speaker 2: wiped out in these strikes. I don't see any reason
Speaker 2: to doubt that, knowing how air strikes work. A good
Speaker 2: number of the dead, though, have also occurred as a
Speaker 2: result of cross border artillery fire, and it's unclear to
Speaker 2: me if India and Pakistan have had a full on
Speaker 2: artillery duel across the border, or if this is Pakistan's
Speaker 2: artillery firing back in response to the air strikes. That
Speaker 2: part is unclear. There are also videos where you can
Speaker 2: hear small arms fire, so machine guns and the like,
Speaker 2: and reports that that is coming from Pakistan's side too.
Speaker 2: It's possible there is a cross border direct arm engagement.
Speaker 2: It's possible no one died as a result of the
Speaker 2: small arms fire. Given the distances that this is occurring
Speaker 2: at right that the only nets have been due to
Speaker 2: field artillery and due to missile strikes. Right, that seems
Speaker 2: likely at this point. It's possible to death is much
Speaker 2: higher than forty. But that's somewhere around there is what's
Speaker 2: been confirmed right now. Now we have talked about the deaths. Obviously,
Speaker 2: the biggest concern is the loss in human life. Here,
Speaker 2: I am going to talk about what this means on
Speaker 2: a military level, because that is relevant both how this
Speaker 2: conflict is going to proceed and how future conflicts are
Speaker 2: going to proceed, because we have not seen a peer
Speaker 2: on peer fight like this before in this century.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: So, one of the more important things as to how
Speaker 2: this has preceded is that a number of the jets
Speaker 2: that India launched across the border are what are called
Speaker 2: refalls our afal e. This is a French fighter jet.
Speaker 2: It is broadly considered to be equivalent to an F
Speaker 2: eighteen super Hornet. Now, I say that if you go
Speaker 2: online and you listen to people who are nerds about
Speaker 2: fighter jets, they will pull a knife on you for
Speaker 2: claiming that, right, there are major differences between the two airframes.
Speaker 2: One of them is that the Refall is a larger plane,
Speaker 2: which means it's theoretically capable of got theoretically it is
Speaker 2: capable of a significantly higher payload. However, there's a couple
Speaker 2: of problems that come with that. One is that the
Speaker 2: super Hornet not only is it a smaller craft, but
Speaker 2: it is built for carrier duty, which means it's wings
Speaker 2: fold yeata. You can fit more of them on a carrier.
Speaker 2: They take off and land more easily from a carrier,
Speaker 2: or a fall can take off and land from a carrier,
Speaker 2: but it has to have a different load out right.
Speaker 2: The other issue, a super Hornet can stay supersonic with
Speaker 2: its full payload for longer periods of time. That means
Speaker 2: that it can be breaking the sound barrier consistently, not
Speaker 2: just using its after burner for like a quick burst
Speaker 2: of speed. That matters because the faster you're going, the
Speaker 2: harder you are to shoot down. The primary eritor ground
Speaker 2: package it has is what's called a hammer, and that's
Speaker 2: an acronym hammer. I don't know what it stands for
Speaker 2: off the top of my head, but they are between
Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty and one thousand pounds each.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: These are their air to ground munitions that they are
Speaker 2: equipped with. Standard it's possible India has a separate load
Speaker 2: out for them. I don't actually know. This is their
Speaker 2: standard armament now. They can only have their full complement
Speaker 2: if they're not going supersonic, so they cannot go supersonic
Speaker 2: for a comparable period of time to a super Hornet
Speaker 2: if they have a full compliment. From a military technology standpoint,
Speaker 2: the biggest news from the initial stage of the strike
Speaker 2: is that at least one of these refalls has been destroyed.
Speaker 2: There's decent evidence that potentially another two. If India lost
Speaker 2: three of these jets, they have thirty six. That is
Speaker 2: a meaningful degradation of their entire air force capability to
Speaker 2: strike right Losing these jets and they cannot be replaced
Speaker 2: on any kind of timeframe that is comparable to how
Speaker 2: quickly they're being shot down. Pakistan is claiming significantly more
Speaker 2: that they Pakistan's claim is that they've downed three Rafalls,
Speaker 2: one MiG twenty nine, one SU thirty MKI and at
Speaker 2: least one Israeli made Herondrone. People generally say Pakistan is
Speaker 2: probably exaggerating. However, French authorities have confirmed at least one Refall,
Speaker 2: and there's two more than possibilities that are being looked into.
Speaker 2: It's possible three planes were downed, but only one are
Speaker 2: a fall. We don't really know yet, right, but even
Speaker 2: one is a meaningful loss, and the fact that it
Speaker 2: was downed says a couple of things. One thing is
Speaker 2: that there's a decent chance. What I suspect we might hear,
Speaker 2: especially if three of these went down, is that India
Speaker 2: sent these things off with a full strike package, so
Speaker 2: they were not able to go as fast as they
Speaker 2: normally can, and thus we're not able to evade Pakistan's
Speaker 2: anti air defenses. Right, That may be what happened. The
Speaker 2: other thing that we're seeing here is that Pakistan is equipped.
Speaker 2: They buy the best part and Pakistan has a lot
Speaker 2: of S three hundreds and S four hundreds, I believe,
Speaker 2: which are like what we've seen in Ukraine. Those have
Speaker 2: had a very mixed operational history in terms of their
Speaker 2: capability to take out modern aircraft. Pakistan also has a
Speaker 2: lot of PL fifteen radar guided anti air missiles. These
Speaker 2: are Chinese anti aircraft missiles. They have never been used
Speaker 2: in combat before. If you're a nerd for like modern
Speaker 2: military technology, one of the things people have been talking
Speaker 2: about in that field for a long time is like
Speaker 2: how are these going to function? And we just I
Speaker 2: know that they've been used because wreckage from them has
Speaker 2: been found and photographed and people who are experts in
Speaker 2: these missiles online have confirmed this is from this weapons package.
Speaker 2: It is very likely that the Rafaal that was down
Speaker 2: was downed by this missile, and if more than one
Speaker 2: was down, that they were all downed by these missiles.
Speaker 2: So that tells us a lot about the comparable capabilities
Speaker 2: of both this modern Western fighter that the French are
Speaker 2: selling and of this Chinese anti aircraft missile. Right, And
Speaker 2: so that's really relevant if we're looking at both how
Speaker 2: this conflict is going to proceed, because I don't want
Speaker 2: to be coming at from this bloodless like, oh, I'm
Speaker 2: just interested in the military strategy part. This is relevant
Speaker 2: because if India has lost three of these advanced fighters
Speaker 2: that they cannot replace on any kind of comparable timeframe
Speaker 2: in the first few hours of strikes, that suggests one
Speaker 2: of two potential future outcomes. Number One, the tempo of
Speaker 2: use of advanced aircraft and this war is going to
Speaker 2: change considerably as it drags into the next stages, right,
Speaker 2: because they simply can't maintain that tempo, that can't continue
Speaker 2: to take those sort of risks, and that either means
Speaker 2: moving on to a lot more ground engagements between infantry,
Speaker 2: between tanks, between artillery, like direct face to face shit
Speaker 2: or a potential for escalating things to the next level
Speaker 2: And the only next level higher than where we're at
Speaker 2: is nuclear, right. I don't think that is the likeliest outcome.
Speaker 2: I do not think a nuclear exchange between Pakistan and
Speaker 2: India is the likeliest thing at this point. However, the
Speaker 2: rate at which India is a tritting air assets means
Speaker 2: that they're going to have to make a choice in
Speaker 2: the not too distant future. Right, Although it's also worth
Speaker 2: noting we don't know entirely the degree to which Pakistan's
Speaker 2: anti air defenses have been attreated by this. Right, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of open there's a lot of unknown unknowns
Speaker 2: and known unknowns here.
Speaker 12: Right.
Speaker 2: As our good friend Rumsfeld would say, I will say
Speaker 2: the other issue here, if there is a nuclear exchange,
Speaker 2: it's going to be the greatest humanitarian catastrophe of the century.
Speaker 2: That doesn't mean it's going to be a nuclear war
Speaker 2: across the entire world. And that shouldn't be your first concern.
Speaker 2: Your first concern should be that that would still mean
Speaker 2: millions of deaths in India and Pakistan, potentially at least
Speaker 2: hundreds of thousands.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: The concern is not they start so everyone else does,
Speaker 2: it's they start and thus the worst humanitarian disaster since
Speaker 2: World War Two occurs.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean some of the most densely populated cities on
Speaker 1: Earth are in this region. Like a strike in any
Speaker 1: major city that would be devastating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a strike in Islamabad would be the worst thing
Speaker 2: that's happened, possibly since the Holocaust in terms of like
Speaker 2: human death told due to human actions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty bad.
Speaker 5: I know.
Speaker 1: India claimed that they were launching a quote non escalatory
Speaker 1: strike in it so much as that means shit.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 1: They also claimed that they PL fifteen didn't have its
Speaker 1: intercept ahead, which I guess the French intelligence refuted.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is all There's a lot that's unknown
Speaker 2: about kind of how these weapons have performed. Still, but
Speaker 2: these are from a in terms of both how this
Speaker 2: conflict is going to proceed and how future conflicts will proceed.
Speaker 2: These are things you should be looking at because these
Speaker 2: weapons platforms, these are this is important in terms of
Speaker 2: what war is going to continue to look like.
Speaker 3: I think it's also worth noting a couple of things.
Speaker 3: One is that this is by far the largest like
Speaker 3: clash that these countries have had in a long time.
Speaker 3: But also like there have been like periodic like cross
Speaker 3: border skirmishes around cashume for a while now, right like
Speaker 3: there was a pretty big flare up in twenty twenty
Speaker 3: that kind of less than twenty twenty one, And so
Speaker 3: there is a chance that this doesn't turn into a
Speaker 3: full scale war and that you get something more like
Speaker 3: what happened sort of recently with Israel and Ran where
Speaker 3: they like bomb each other a few times and then
Speaker 3: everyone sort of packs up their bags and goes home
Speaker 3: and continues to like poke each other with milton groups
Speaker 3: instead of it being like tanks. And I think that
Speaker 3: is like orders of magnitude more likely than like nukes flying.
Speaker 3: Just it's sort of like, yeah, like the chance at
Speaker 3: which these people start shooting dukes to each other is
Speaker 3: not very high. Like yes, just like in the history
Speaker 3: of nuclear weapons too, you have to underst that, like
Speaker 3: some of the most unhinged people who have ever lived,
Speaker 3: like Curtis le may like the US and the Soviets
Speaker 3: never did it like Mao Mao and the Soviets never
Speaker 3: did it. Like apartheid South Africa had nuclear weapons and
Speaker 3: never used them. Some of the worst people who have
Speaker 3: ever lived have had access to nukes, have never fired them.
Speaker 3: The odds that you're gonna die in nuclear fire are
Speaker 3: very very very very very low. It's not good. No,
Speaker 3: everything that's happening here is very bad. But like you
Speaker 3: do not need to be like living in existential terror
Speaker 3: of like fire ring from the sky. That's not like
Speaker 3: a reasonable reaction to this, and I've been seeing a
Speaker 3: lot of that.
Speaker 2: So no, it's far from the likeliest outcome, and your
Speaker 2: primary concern should be to people who are living there
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, right.
Speaker 2: You know, it's worth noting that the nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 2: the Cargo War, that was not an insignificant death toll, right,
Speaker 2: Like you're talking probably like certainly more than a thousand,
Speaker 2: I think a thousand to a couple of thousand people,
Speaker 2: So that would not be that's not certainly not out
Speaker 2: of the question without it escalating in that way. I
Speaker 2: think the primary concern that you always have, and why
Speaker 2: I bring up weapons systems. Is that countries think in
Speaker 2: terms of stuff like this a lot. This is a
Speaker 2: big part of why we get World War one, Right.
Speaker 2: You have these nations that are arming, and they're always
Speaker 2: concerned with how do my weapons compare to my neighbors
Speaker 2: if we go to war. Now, I feel pretty good
Speaker 2: about where I'm at, and if I wait another two years,
Speaker 2: maybe they'll be in a better position. And thinking like
Speaker 2: that is part of the planning that's going on in
Speaker 2: these states, and the planning about when do we escalate
Speaker 2: and how do we escalate? Right, do we move to
Speaker 2: a point where we've got masses of infantry shooting at
Speaker 2: each other, Well, maybe if we can't risk the continued
Speaker 2: attrition of our advanced air assets, we do that, or
Speaker 2: maybe we make another decision. That's why it's relevant to
Speaker 2: know about this stuff, not because you want to nerd
Speaker 2: out over who's got the coolest missile and who's got
Speaker 2: the coolest planes, but because that is very much how
Speaker 2: states think. Right Anyway, before we got to add this
Speaker 2: back to the executive dysfunction, because that is what this
Speaker 2: is a yeah, not the current Wars podcast. In the
Speaker 2: immediate wake of all of this, President Trump was asked about, Hey,
Speaker 2: how about these two nuclear armed states going to war?
Speaker 2: What do you think about that? And he gave a,
Speaker 2: you know, just a traditionally eloquent, you know, Donald Trump response,
Speaker 2: It's a shame we just heard about it. I guess
Speaker 2: people knew something was going to happen based on a
Speaker 2: little bit of the past. They've been fighting for a
Speaker 2: long time. I just hope it ends quickly. Me too, buddy, correct,
Speaker 2: I guess I guess they've been fighting for a long time. Okay, anyway,
Speaker 2: let's go to ads.
Speaker 4: All right, we are back. I'm gonna talk now about
Speaker 4: some other horrifying geopolitical news. Hey, this is Garrison from Friday,
Speaker 4: May ninth. I have a correction to make on the
Speaker 4: original copy of this episode. I made an error in
Speaker 4: saying Greta Thunberg was aboard a humanitarian aid ship off
Speaker 4: the coast of Italy that was airstriked by Israel. The
Speaker 4: ship was indeed attacked, but she was not on that ship.
Speaker 4: I watched a video of her discussing the attack and
Speaker 4: it sounded first person, and then we recorded shortly thereafter.
Speaker 4: But now it's clear she was not on the ship
Speaker 4: but instead planned to board later that day on the
Speaker 4: way to Gaza as a part of the humanitarian aid
Speaker 4: organization the Freedom Flotilla Coalition. More than a dozen other
Speaker 4: aid workers were aboard the vessel when it was hit,
Speaker 4: and this relates to the larger humanitarian aid crisis in Gaza.
Speaker 4: Now back to the episode. The past two months, Israel
Speaker 4: has forcibly cut off all food, water, machines, supplies, and
Speaker 4: other humanitarian aid to Gaza, starving the Palestinian people as
Speaker 4: not now who continues to reject see fire deals. Reports
Speaker 4: from the UN say that Gaza will run out of
Speaker 4: food in days.
Speaker 2: Yep, I mean it looks like a starvation genocide. I
Speaker 2: don't know how else to phrase this. There's really nothing else.
Speaker 2: This isn't the time to mince words. Like every piece
Speaker 2: of evidence suggests this is a starvation genocide being carried out.
Speaker 2: But they're trying to starve this population to death or
Speaker 2: until they all leave, which is the same. Genocide does
Speaker 2: not necessarily mean you kill everyone. It is the forced
Speaker 2: killing and or displacement of a population.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Israel says that the Palestinians still have food for a
Speaker 4: few months, but the Yuan and other eight organizations say
Speaker 4: that is not true now. Last Sunday night, Israel's Security
Speaker 4: Cabinet approved a plan to reoccupy and hold the Gaza
Speaker 4: Strip if a new Seaspire deal isn't reached by May fifteenth,
Speaker 4: while Yahoo and Israel officials continue to undermine negotiations for
Speaker 4: a permanent ceasefire. This plan is called Gideon's Chariots.
Speaker 2: Jesus fucking Christ.
Speaker 4: The plan is for the idea to invade with four
Speaker 4: to five armored infantry divisions, mobilizing uproots of seventy thousand reservists,
Speaker 4: which would gradually occupy and secure basically the entire Gaza Strip.
Speaker 4: According to Israel's Finance Minister, this IDF occupation would be permanent,
Speaker 4: not even pulling back with the release of any remaining hostages,
Speaker 4: though other Israeli officials disagree on this and say this
Speaker 4: would be a temporary occupation. Pretty hard to take their
Speaker 4: word on that all remaining buildings would be destroyed, flattening
Speaker 4: the entirety of the strip, just like Rafa and the
Speaker 4: northern side. Amir Aviv, the founder of the Israel Defense
Speaker 4: and Security Forum think tank and a former deputy commander
Speaker 4: of the Israeli forces, say, quote, this is the only
Speaker 4: way to eradicate Hamas militarily and governmentally is to take
Speaker 4: over Gaza and to conquer the area and destroy them unquote.
Speaker 4: There's some added complications with like legally like occupying Gaza
Speaker 4: under the Geneva Convention, a formal occupation would require Israel
Speaker 4: to have the capacity to operate as an official government
Speaker 4: authority in this region. Now there's no indication that Israel
Speaker 4: will follow the Genema Convention as they haven't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's Israel. They never have given a shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't see why we'd expect that.
Speaker 4: But if they do occupy, they would be more like
Speaker 4: liable for the well being of the Palestinians that would
Speaker 4: be inside the territory, and the IDEF doesn't have a
Speaker 4: plan for this. They are planning to forcedly relocate around
Speaker 4: two million Palestinians to a single quote unquote humanitarian area
Speaker 4: which is positioned in the rubble of Ratha, where secure
Speaker 4: quote unquote compounds are being constructed to distribute food and
Speaker 4: supplies to Palestinians who are screened and approved as not
Speaker 4: being members of Hamas. This area will be managed by
Speaker 4: private US companies and a quote unquote new international foundation
Speaker 4: which works with Israel and the United States. Established aid
Speaker 4: organizations in the un announced that they would not be
Speaker 4: participating in running these quote unquote compounds, calling this a
Speaker 4: tactic to give the Israeli military even more power over
Speaker 4: how aid is distributed, saying in a statement, quote it
Speaker 4: contravenes fundamental humanitarian principles and appears designed to reinforce control
Speaker 4: over life sustaining items as a pressure tactic as a
Speaker 4: part of a military strategy. It is dangerous driving civilians
Speaker 4: into militarized zones to collect rations threatening lives, including those
Speaker 4: of humanitarian workers, while further entrenching forced displacement.
Speaker 1: On quotep Yeah, an.
Speaker 4: Israeli official said the only alternative to being moved to
Speaker 4: this quote unquote humanitarian area would be to leave Gaza
Speaker 4: quote unquote voluntarily to other countries, citing Trump's plan to
Speaker 4: resettle displaced Palestinians. Robert James, Mia, do you wanna comment
Speaker 4: on this?
Speaker 1: It's not much to say, is that, Like it's they're
Speaker 1: just saying the thing that they've been going for for
Speaker 1: a while now, which is the removal of ale panistin
Speaker 1: Gut people from the Goddess trip, either in body bags
Speaker 1: or to live somewhere else.
Speaker 3: I guess it's just straight up a genocide, Like they're
Speaker 3: describing a genocide.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's no doubting it. Like I don't even know, Like,
Speaker 2: is what is there to say?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Like at this point, I almost think other than obviously
Speaker 2: documenting what's happening is important, the only important thing to
Speaker 2: try to talk of it is like how can this
Speaker 2: be stopped? And or how can a degree of like
Speaker 2: what does justice look like at some point down the line?
Speaker 2: What should be done? You know, Like these are questions
Speaker 2: to ask, but like to just like I don't know
Speaker 2: what to keep saying other than like, yep, they're trying
Speaker 2: to wipe out Gaza like.
Speaker 4: Well, and specifically the use of these like quote unquote compounds,
Speaker 4: You're like rounding up and keeping people inside one secure.
Speaker 3: Area, concentrating them in camps.
Speaker 4: Like come on, guys, you're just setting up camps for
Speaker 4: Palestinians on the south side of the Strip and like
Speaker 4: that's all that this is as they reoccupy and hold
Speaker 4: the entirety to quote unquote eliminate Hamas. So this Monday,
Speaker 4: Trump's going to start a three day visit to Saudi Arabia,
Speaker 4: Cutter and the United Arab Emirates. This is while the
Speaker 4: US government has taken a backfoot on Gaza negotiations while
Speaker 4: still backing up net Yahoo and any actions taken by
Speaker 4: the Israeli military. Yeah, so we will know more about
Speaker 4: what Israel is actually going to do immediately in the
Speaker 4: region in like a week's time, though. It looks like
Speaker 4: they are going to be going forward with this May
Speaker 4: fifteenth reoccupation plan.
Speaker 6: Cool.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, so more good news from me. Immigration update.
Speaker 1: The New York Times today on the this is Wednesday,
Speaker 1: the seventh is reporting that the Trump administration is as
Speaker 1: soon as today. I checked this before recording. The plan
Speaker 1: hadn't taken off planning to ship people to migrants to Libya.
Speaker 1: Nationalities of people being renditioned there are not clear, but
Speaker 1: my guess would be that these are third party nationals
Speaker 1: that the US can't deport to their home countries like
Speaker 1: they previously deported these people to Panama and to Elsabadov.
Speaker 1: If you're not familiar with migrant detention in Libya, conditions
Speaker 1: are horrific, like among the worst things that can happen
Speaker 1: to people. The situation in Libya is currently the country
Speaker 1: is divided between the Tripoli government, which is recognized by
Speaker 1: the UN and which the US has formal government government
Speaker 1: relationships with, and Hafta's government based in Benghazi, which the
Speaker 1: Trump regime has associated with. Before. We have covered conditions
Speaker 1: in Libyan migrant detention camps before, which I'll check in
Speaker 1: the show notes. And we also talked about the dangers
Speaker 1: faced by people leaving Libya towards the EU in a
Speaker 1: different episode which I also list but to recap. Reports
Speaker 1: document starvation, rape, murder, slavery, and organ harves occurring in Libya.
Speaker 1: Mass graves, including one last year that was found with
Speaker 1: sixty five bodies in it, are not uncommon. To quote
Speaker 1: from David Yambio. David Yambio is someone who was He
Speaker 1: was sold and then forced to fight in a militia
Speaker 1: in Libya, and I think I believe he escaped and
Speaker 1: he is now in I think he's in Italy, but
Speaker 1: he's ready to be outspoken on this stuff. The slave
Speaker 1: trade is alive and thriving in Libya. It thrives in
Speaker 1: the silence of nations, in the shadows of complicit systems,
Speaker 1: and then the unchecked racism that dehumanizes black lives in
Speaker 1: other Immigration News. The government's attempt to delay Rumsa Oztek's
Speaker 1: return to Vermont was rejected by the second Circuit, so
Speaker 1: that means that she will have to be returned to
Speaker 1: She was arrested in Massachusetts, if you remember, for writing
Speaker 1: an op.
Speaker 4: Ed at tux University.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, moved across state borders to Vermont and from their
Speaker 1: Central Louisiana. So the habeas case was transferred to Vermont
Speaker 1: and has a rule that the government cannotter laboring her
Speaker 1: back there anymore. Another flight containing eighty one migrants left
Speaker 1: Panama yesterday at the United States expense. This is a
Speaker 1: continuation of a plan that the Biaen administration installed in
Speaker 1: summer last year, and the Trump administration has continued whereby
Speaker 1: the US funds deportations from Panama. Meanwhile, Tokyo Weekender in
Speaker 1: Japan is reporting that the United States is asking people
Speaker 1: to show five years of social media history in order
Speaker 1: to obtain a student visa, just to like put that
Speaker 1: in perspective for people. So you have to eventher those
Speaker 1: accounts are deleted or no longer used. You have to
Speaker 1: declare them all on your form. If you're applying for
Speaker 1: a student visa and you're at the younger end of
Speaker 1: a traditional aged undergraduate. You could have to list every
Speaker 1: social media account you've had since you were twelve on
Speaker 1: this form. And the US has required disclosure for a while,
Speaker 1: but like, it hasn't been a practical thing. I have
Speaker 1: really ever heard from any one of anybody's visa being
Speaker 1: denied or asylum being denied based on social media posting.
Speaker 1: But this is now something that that they are asking
Speaker 1: people to disclose well and requiring, not like requiring it,
Speaker 1: not asking it is it is. It is going to
Speaker 1: be like an enforced requirement in a way that before
Speaker 1: it really hasn't been. It's the term that the law
Speaker 1: firm used in this piece is like in the past,
Speaker 1: this has been mostly quote unquote negligible. Yeah, and now
Speaker 1: this is something that the Department of State is really
Speaker 1: being adamant about, yeah, which will massively delay the time
Speaker 1: to process visa applications on top of everything else.
Speaker 4: People in Japan have compared this to two policies similar
Speaker 4: to that of China's Cultural Revolution.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean I've been to other countries to be clear,
Speaker 1: where they open up your social media and look at
Speaker 1: it when when you're entering. But this is not a
Speaker 1: thing that anyone has ever associated with the United States. Finally,
Speaker 1: I guess the Freedom of Press Foundation got some documentary
Speaker 1: reliefs under a federal Freedom of Information Act. The outline
Speaker 1: that the intelligence community did not believe that the Madua
Speaker 1: regime was controlling tender Agua, which was one of the
Speaker 1: claims that Trump administration has made in its invocation of
Speaker 1: the Alien Enemies Act. Right, So it's just kind of
Speaker 1: I think most people who pay any attention to the
Speaker 1: situation weren't really buying that, but it's showing that this
Speaker 1: was documented by the US intelligence community as well. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: any anything to add that the Libya stuff is bleak,
Speaker 1: Like it hasn't got much coverage in the US. We
Speaker 1: have covered it before, but the European Union is already
Speaker 1: complicit in the terrible treatment of migrants in Libya, and
Speaker 1: oh yeah, and for ages it has happened, for ages
Speaker 1: like the so called Libyan Coast Guard of bringing people
Speaker 1: back to Libya and like literally selling them from shelters
Speaker 1: to human traffickers. I mean, we've more or less kind
Speaker 1: of lined up behind some of the worst places on Earth,
Speaker 1: like in terms of migrant detention. Right with SECOT and this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, more and more families are figuring out that like
Speaker 4: their family members have been sent to SCOT, like people
Speaker 4: who have not been named an official documentation. They've been
Speaker 4: able to like search through these propaganda videos and identify
Speaker 4: more people. So they're launching court cases to have them returned,
Speaker 4: people who very clearly have had no gang affiliation. Not
Speaker 4: that that should even matter when you're sending people to
Speaker 4: the forever prison.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I saw one guy we had a Donald Duck tattoo,
Speaker 1: and that was I guess the decisive claim there. Right,
Speaker 1: there's a form that ICE agents fill out and there's
Speaker 1: a number of points they after a mass. I believe
Speaker 1: it's three points, and one of the things that can
Speaker 1: allow you to a mass three points. It's like, I
Speaker 1: think two points come from a tattoo which they decide
Speaker 1: to be gang affiliated and.
Speaker 2: No, and again, like they seem to just be saying
Speaker 2: tattoos period, right, Like anything is trindagua, right, yeah.
Speaker 4: Right, people who have like soccer tattoos, people who have
Speaker 4: of my mom and dad tattoos, It doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: There's an autism awareness tattoo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so some guy had an autism awareness Yeah, that
Speaker 1: one like haunts me because I have met young neurodivergent
Speaker 1: people and their families who are bringing them to the
Speaker 1: US to get what they thought was a better standard
Speaker 1: of care, right to allow their children to progress and
Speaker 1: have a beautiful life. Yeah, man, that one, like, like,
Speaker 1: I honestly really struggled with that. I have spent lots
Speaker 1: and lots and lots of time with Venezuelan migrants and
Speaker 1: like they're my friends. And that particular one, like people
Speaker 1: whose children have any need for medical care right are
Speaker 1: overrepresented the migrant population because they just can't access it
Speaker 1: there and so they upend their whole lives and carry
Speaker 1: their children across the continent to give them a chance
Speaker 1: had a better life And like that, that one is
Speaker 1: particularly hard for me to Winness, I did just want
Speaker 1: to mention on the topic of asylum. I've heard from
Speaker 1: so many migrants stuck in Mexico who are having a
Speaker 1: god awful time to include you know, robbery, kidnapping, sexual violence,
Speaker 1: all of the things that we know can happen to
Speaker 1: migrants on the migrant trail because they have no pathway
Speaker 1: to get to the US. They're now just stuck there
Speaker 1: right Mexico continues to take migrants and move them back
Speaker 1: south if it catches them near the United States border,
Speaker 1: even if some of them move up as far as
Speaker 1: Mexico City, right because they have access to services there,
Speaker 1: and then again sent back south to places where migrants
Speaker 1: have routinely been murdered. So I know, we're focusing a
Speaker 1: lot on migrants being kicked out of the US deported.
Speaker 1: Renditioned conditions for migrants who aspired to come to the
Speaker 1: United States who took great risks to be Americans and
Speaker 1: are stuck in Mexico are also dire.
Speaker 4: All right, Let's go and break and then come back
Speaker 4: for a few more updates before we close out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're back. And wait a second, is that is
Speaker 2: that the tariff song?
Speaker 12: Locking jas Rocking Jaspar Sorry, Locking, Locking jas Rocking Jazz Bob?
Speaker 2: All right, guys, I actually don't know. Do we have
Speaker 2: anything to say about tariffs this week?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 3: We actually actually do us some on tariffs, So okay.
Speaker 2: All right, very good. I'm just we gotta get all
Speaker 2: of our use out of that song, because again, we
Speaker 2: really do. We really had to suspend the whole team's
Speaker 2: healthcare to pay for it. It was monstrously expensive.
Speaker 3: The full cut of that.
Speaker 2: Song is seventeen and a half hours. We actually brought
Speaker 2: in the remaining members of Fleetwood Mac as well as
Speaker 2: several Rolling Stones.
Speaker 9: It was.
Speaker 2: It just just disastrous.
Speaker 1: So far attempts to resurrect Joe Strama failed that we
Speaker 1: spent million.
Speaker 2: We only used the clip with our friend the Narcissist Cookbook.
Speaker 2: But yeah, there there is a twenty six minute drum
Speaker 2: solo with the guy from Rush Gedty Lee. He's still alive, right,
Speaker 2: was it, Getty Lee? Yeah, yeah, he's still alive. The
Speaker 2: joke works. The joke works.
Speaker 4: Not cheap, not cheap.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's much like the dire Wolf thing. We've put
Speaker 1: Joe's drummer's DNA into another court.
Speaker 3: Yeah, man, and does he worried?
Speaker 1: We've released him into the wild and we're going to
Speaker 1: see how he developed.
Speaker 2: So far, he just has a lot of blood clots.
Speaker 3: But we have we're homefielder on.
Speaker 4: The case though. He's training him up.
Speaker 3: Well, we'll get him. We'll get him on here, all right.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, parraffs good bad?
Speaker 1: What do you think?
Speaker 3: Okay, So all right, let's let let's let's let's actually
Speaker 3: do this shit. So is it One of the things
Speaker 3: that we've been talking about along on this show is
Speaker 3: the Deminimus exemption, which was this exemption that formerly allowed
Speaker 3: you was particularly used in trade with China, where you could,
Speaker 3: like if you were setting a package that was under
Speaker 3: like seven hundred dollars, you didn't have to like it
Speaker 3: didn't have to like go through in the way that
Speaker 3: you would normally would have to do it. That shit's gone.
Speaker 3: That ended on Friday of last week. This has already
Speaker 3: skyrocketed the cost of doing imports of shit from China
Speaker 3: because huge amounts of stuff being shipped from China was
Speaker 3: you know, like reliant on shipping it in packages that
Speaker 3: were exactly six hundred and ninety nine dollars, and you know,
Speaker 3: this has like like Temu's entire business model has changed
Speaker 3: basically over night, where like they're no longer shipping stuff
Speaker 3: in from China, They're only selling stuff from like American distributors.
Speaker 3: This is going to have catastrophic effects on so many
Speaker 3: supply chains you've never even thought of in the weeks
Speaker 3: to come, because again, there are so many different like
Speaker 3: tiny screws and shit, like just like really really small
Speaker 3: items that you used to be able to get from
Speaker 3: China for like fucking five dollars for like one hundred
Speaker 3: of them that now have like unbelievable tariff rates on
Speaker 3: them and have to go through a really, really convoluted
Speaker 3: customs process. There have already been sort of massive supply
Speaker 3: chain disruptions in a large number of industries. It's going
Speaker 3: to continue to get where Sophie was talking about metal
Speaker 3: imports hitting the construction industry, because there's you know, there's
Speaker 3: terraffs on a bunch of different kinds of metal, as
Speaker 3: we've covered on the show, aluminum.
Speaker 2: God knows what's gonna happen to diet coke.
Speaker 3: We'll put it in lead like God intended.
Speaker 4: Maybe that'll finally change Trump's outlook is when his diet
Speaker 4: coat stop.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Trump and Musk both become inoperable.
Speaker 2: But you know, Garrison, we will know when that's hit
Speaker 2: when the missiles are in the air, like oh shitty
Speaker 2: ran out.
Speaker 4: Federal occupation of the Coca Cola headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know, and this is also like this,
Speaker 3: this is going to have a profound impact on Chinese economy. Again,
Speaker 3: we're still in sort of the waiting room until sort
Speaker 3: of Midsummer when all of the rest of the tariffs
Speaker 3: that were supposed to go into effect go back into
Speaker 3: effect and literally everything collapses.
Speaker 2: You're probably three to five weeks out from really starting
Speaker 2: to see it hit hard in like the stuff you
Speaker 2: buy on a day to day basis. Right, People who
Speaker 2: are doing stuff like remodeling houses or building houses are
Speaker 2: starting to notice.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think people car prepare businesses and one of
Speaker 2: people have to order parts. That is starting to hit.
Speaker 2: But your grocery store, that's really going to be most
Speaker 2: noticeable somewhere between three and five weeks from now. Maybe yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe sooner, probably not much longer.
Speaker 3: Well, and and other things are about to get sniffy
Speaker 3: and the worse. So this has been talked about for
Speaker 3: a long time. The buzz right now is that they're
Speaker 3: happening soon. I don't know exactly what that means, but
Speaker 3: there has been for a long long time. Trump has
Speaker 3: been talking about doing tariffs on pharma, so congratulations, get
Speaker 3: excited for all of your medication costing a lot more money.
Speaker 3: He also put into place of one hundred percent terrafund
Speaker 3: foreign movies.
Speaker 2: Well, we'll see, yes, yeah, But then he walked that back,
Speaker 2: he had a conversation with John Voight and announced, Yeah,
Speaker 2: they're getting to that hundred percent tariff on all movies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not made in the US. No one knows what
Speaker 3: that means. How can you do that?
Speaker 2: What taraffun a movie? What are we talking about?
Speaker 3: It's literally it's literally just like like he's doing tariffs
Speaker 3: in the way that like the is that but the
Speaker 3: guy for the Wolf of Wall Street is like what
Speaker 3: guy walks out of the room and goes short. Everything
Speaker 3: is ever touched like it's like that thing. Yeah, like
Speaker 3: he's gonna be terriffing like fucking ocean currents in two months.
Speaker 2: The responses to it have been have been so funny
Speaker 2: because Gavin Newsome, arch dipshit of the Democratic Party, was
Speaker 2: immediately like, we love the idea of working with our
Speaker 2: president to keep the film jobs in California.
Speaker 10: You know.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, Trump immediately was like, well, maybe we won't do that.
Speaker 2: I think because they're still at the very head of
Speaker 2: the studio system. Some scary old mob type dudes, right,
Speaker 2: and I think a few of them also Tom Cruise
Speaker 2: is terraf Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise like sat down, listen, Donald,
Speaker 2: you know, no one's heard from David Mskovich's wife in
Speaker 2: a long ass time, and they don't have to hear
Speaker 2: from you either, Like you don't want to fuck with me?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Trump believes he actually is the mission impossible guy.
Speaker 3: And you could given some you could give he he
Speaker 3: convinced him. Yeah, someone convinced him. To Nero's is, like,
Speaker 3: didn't he reopen Alcatraz? Off to the Alcatraz film? Add
Speaker 3: on the.
Speaker 2: Yes, but it was the it was the Clint Eastwood one,
Speaker 2: and not the much better Alcatraz film The Rock starring
Speaker 2: Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage a banger ages perfectly watch it.
Speaker 2: Everyone watch it tonight. Fu reading any more news?
Speaker 3: Okay, there's more news though unfortunately Yeah, well okay, there
Speaker 3: there's one funny thing, and there's a like the actual
Speaker 3: news here is part of what's going on here is
Speaker 3: just everything is just chaos. And this is something that like,
Speaker 3: I mean, I've had this conversation with a bunch of
Speaker 3: people who work in shipping of the last couple of weeks.
Speaker 3: Is that like it's just chaos, right, Like everything is
Speaker 3: changing all the fucking time, and this means every time
Speaker 3: one of these things changes, a bunch of like the
Speaker 3: import codes and like stuff just changes on the level
Speaker 3: of like the customs people, and like just like like
Speaker 3: literally the process of importing this stuff changes, and it's
Speaker 3: just a complete fucking disaster. People are getting laid off
Speaker 3: constantly too, so like every single part of the government
Speaker 3: that's supposed to be doing this suddenly has less people.
Speaker 3: It's an absolute rolling detachment for you will continue to
Speaker 3: get worse. There's also good evidents that like they know
Speaker 3: that it's gonna get worse. I'm gonna read this quote
Speaker 3: from USA today, Well, this is from Trump. I don't
Speaker 3: think a beautiful baby that's eleven years old needs to
Speaker 3: have thirty dollars, Trump told Meet the Press House Kirsten Welker.
Speaker 3: I think they can have three or four dolls because
Speaker 3: what we're doing with China is just unbelievable. We have
Speaker 3: a trade deficit of hundreds of billions of dollars for China.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying they don't need to have thirty dollars.
Speaker 3: They can have belief. They don't need to have one
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty pencils. They can have five five pencils.
Speaker 4: Everyone five pencils and three dollars. This Christmas. Imagine if
Speaker 4: Joe Biden annow, it's like, all right, we're gonna have
Speaker 4: to cut down on Christmas gifts this year.
Speaker 3: We can't do it.
Speaker 4: The Fox News would be like freaking the fuck out.
Speaker 4: We're like, Joe Biden's taking away your kid's Christmas and
Speaker 4: the pencils and yeah, who cares?
Speaker 3: Yeah, But I mean, like like the actual song thing
Speaker 3: here is like yeah, no, like these people understand that
Speaker 3: you're going to suffer. They don't give a shit.
Speaker 4: I want you to suffer their political project. Yeah, so
Speaker 4: you know, yeah, owning the Libs anyway? Is that all
Speaker 4: for tariff Talkbia?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's all we got on. That's how we got
Speaker 3: on the tariffs.
Speaker 4: I am excited for for Trump to meet Ethan Hunt
Speaker 4: on his last mission, So there's still hope.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 4: I have a few more updates before we close out here.
Speaker 4: One on the federal judge back and forth of last week.
Speaker 4: US District judge blocked the Trump Admin's efforts via executive
Speaker 4: order to require what they deem as proof of citizenship
Speaker 4: to register to vote. The judge stated that this case
Speaker 4: was about separation of powers and undue presidential interference in
Speaker 4: how states in Congress run and regulate elections, writing quote,
Speaker 4: our Constitution entrusts Congress and the States, not the President,
Speaker 4: with the authority to regulate federal elections. No statutory delegation
Speaker 4: of authority to the executive branch permits the president to
Speaker 4: short circuit Congress's deliberative process by executive order. Yeah, so
Speaker 4: we'll see how that develops. Foreign now, I'll also be
Speaker 4: doing an uphit on the Save Act as it makes
Speaker 4: its way through Congress as well, for those interested another
Speaker 4: kind of voting suppression bill.
Speaker 1: It's getting a push.
Speaker 4: Through this Tuesday, the Supreme Court upheld the trans military ban,
Speaker 4: at least for now. It'll still process through appeals, but
Speaker 4: the Trump administration is now allowed to enforce the ban,
Speaker 4: which they previously couldn't because a lower court put the
Speaker 4: enforcement on hold.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, I think the actual scariest part about that is
Speaker 3: if you read the if you read the language of
Speaker 3: what the court was talking about, they've been describing it
Speaker 3: as like someone who thinks that like they are a
Speaker 3: woman when they're actually a man. Like isn't someone who
Speaker 3: can perform at like the standards of like honor and
Speaker 3: whatever that like a soldier needs and This is I
Speaker 3: think a ramp up to the really really dangerous thing
Speaker 3: that is coming, which is their attempt to just straight
Speaker 3: up brand being trans as fraud.
Speaker 4: I mean, this is this is the Trump Admin's argument, correct,
Speaker 4: this is what they were writing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, this is the statement.
Speaker 1: I guess that the DoD is claiming that expressing a
Speaker 1: quote false gender idea entity divergent from an individual sex
Speaker 1: can't satisfy the rigorous standards necessarily for military service. And
Speaker 1: they specifically talk about a soldier's commitment to an honorable, truthful,
Speaker 1: and disciplined lifestyle, even in one's personal life, and they
Speaker 1: then go ahead to claim that being trans inherently contradicts that.
Speaker 4: That's the Trump admins argument, which is going to be
Speaker 4: like used to undermine transmitter rights in the future, possibly
Speaker 4: threatening Title nine.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very concerning.
Speaker 4: So the fact that they were able to, like at
Speaker 4: least at this point when this case in the Streame
Speaker 4: Court extremely worrying.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I will just say that if this impacts you someone
Speaker 1: you care about, so when you know you can reach
Speaker 1: out to us. Obviously there's a very little we can
Speaker 1: do about it, but we are here to listen to
Speaker 1: report the News and you can do that at cool Zone,
Speaker 1: tips at proton dot me tonly an encrypted email and
Speaker 1: to end if it comes from an encrypted email address
Speaker 1: to a encrypted email address.
Speaker 4: We are reading all of those. We may not respond
Speaker 4: to all of them, but we are taking note of them,
Speaker 4: and we'll report on stuff in the future. The last
Speaker 4: thing I do want to add is like a raid
Speaker 4: that happened last week in California. Homeland Security Investigations ICE
Speaker 4: and Secret Service right to the house in southern California
Speaker 4: looking for a man who months ago posted flyers around
Speaker 4: Los Angeles last January warning about ICE agents in the
Speaker 4: area with names, photos, and phone numbers reading in Spanish
Speaker 4: quote careful with these faces. The FEDS served a criminal
Speaker 4: search warrant on the home of this guy's parents, even
Speaker 4: though he moved to New York last March. At least
Speaker 4: fifteen armored vehicles pulled up to this upscale neighborhood with
Speaker 4: full militarized federal swat. They seized routers and hard drives.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 4: Acting ICE director Todd Loins was on the scene for
Speaker 4: this operation. He told Fox News that he took it
Speaker 4: personally that someone would put a target on his agents
Speaker 4: in an effort to interfere with them and put them
Speaker 4: at risk, saying the person will be held accountable. What
Speaker 4: they're using here is probably likely US Code one nineteen
Speaker 4: Protection of Individuals performing certain duties. Whoever knowingly makes restricted
Speaker 4: personal information about a covered person or a member of
Speaker 4: the immediate family of that covered person publicly available with
Speaker 4: the intent to threaten and intimidate or incite the commission
Speaker 4: of a crime of violence against that covered person or
Speaker 4: a member of the immediate family. So this is likely
Speaker 4: what they're using, arguing that posting a photo on a
Speaker 4: flyer with the person's name and phone number is enough
Speaker 4: to threaten, intimidate, or facilitate the commission of a crime.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what constitutes covered persons?
Speaker 4: And it is that's a good question, James.
Speaker 3: That's a screenshot, right, so you can't click that.
Speaker 4: That is a screenshot and probably a question for a lawyer.
Speaker 4: But they are they are arguing that that the ICE
Speaker 4: agents like fall under this purview.
Speaker 1: Yes, the term covered person means a an individual designated
Speaker 1: to Session one fourteen B, a grand dura, petty jura witness,
Speaker 1: or rather officer of the court, an informal witness in
Speaker 1: a federal criminal investigation or prosecution, state or local officer
Speaker 1: or employee whose restricted personal information is made publicly available
Speaker 1: because of the participation in or assistant provided to a
Speaker 1: federal criminal investigation. So it's part C.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's that's what they're going to argue. The
Speaker 4: people's addresses weren't posted here, it was just their names
Speaker 4: and photos. But ICE and HSI are being very protective
Speaker 4: of the faces of the agents doing immigration raids and
Speaker 4: student crackdowns right now. They're they're really nervous about about
Speaker 4: agents possibly being targeted, so any attempt to identify these
Speaker 4: is being treated as like a threat. A Homeland Security
Speaker 4: spokesperson told Fox News quote, these pathetic activists are putting
Speaker 4: targets on the backs of our law enforcement as they
Speaker 4: shield Ms thirteen, Trendilagua and other vicious gangs at traffic,
Speaker 4: women and children, kidnapped for ransom, and poison Americans with
Speaker 4: lethal drugs. These individuals will be held accountable for obstructing
Speaker 4: the law and justice. This shouldn't be controversial.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So five people died after a panga carrying migrants capsized
Speaker 1: off Del Mar, which is in North County San Diego.
Speaker 1: The search is on going. I believe another five are
Speaker 1: still missing. One of those is a ten year old
Speaker 1: girl from India, and Christie Nohan has said she wants
Speaker 1: the DOJ to pursue death penalty charges against the smugglers
Speaker 1: who brought these people over. These boats have been a
Speaker 1: thing for a while, but this is not the first
Speaker 1: of these tragedies. And it's obviously like we shouldn't lose
Speaker 1: focus of the fact that someone's little child died, which
Speaker 1: is horrific.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, tough news week as usual.
Speaker 2: I guess tough news week.
Speaker 3: The only way to feel better is by fighting.
Speaker 4: But we did report the news.
Speaker 2: We did, 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.
Speaker 13: It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
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