Speaker 1: The Atlantic Magazine is among America's most venerable journalistic institutions.
Speaker 1: It is a serious, sober journal that chronicles our events,
Speaker 1: our democracy, and it has since the heights of the
Speaker 1: most dangerous era in American history, the American Civil War,
Speaker 1: a sectional war between American regions fought over the issue
Speaker 1: of slavery. Not since then has America faced an internal
Speaker 1: danger so grave and a threat so clear, And so
Speaker 1: it is no surprise that it is The Atlantic Magazine
Speaker 1: that is the first to seriously highlight the danger ahead,
Speaker 1: what is coming, what is approaching down the tracks. There
Speaker 1: is still time to prepare for what it is ahead,
Speaker 1: but before we can, it is important to look back,
Speaker 1: because it is essential to understand the loss of democracy,
Speaker 1: the loss of control, the loss of agency that is
Speaker 1: to come is something that has been experienced by many,
Speaker 1: many tens of millions of Americans. They have lost their
Speaker 1: economic agency because they got sick, developed cancer, or their
Speaker 1: child did, or maybe they had a severe injury. It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. Any family in America that is captive to
Speaker 1: their health insurance company and cannot pay the bills to
Speaker 1: live a life worth living is captive and has long
Speaker 1: ago lost their agency. And their democracy to a dictatorship
Speaker 1: of big companies of greed. There are other Americans who
Speaker 1: have lost their lives, their agency, their control to an
Speaker 1: evil deal that existed between companies like Purdue Pharma that
Speaker 1: profited in the billions of dollars while a million Americans
Speaker 1: were left dead and many hundreds of thousands of more
Speaker 1: on the streets addicted, ravaged by opioids, ravaged now by fentanyl,
Speaker 1: ravaged by the cruelty of a system that saw the
Speaker 1: Food and Drug Administration, which is supposed to protect the people,
Speaker 1: instead work with the opiate manufacturers to poison them. It
Speaker 1: was a dictatorship of greed that did them in. What
Speaker 1: the Atlantic magazine is mostly talking about is a loss
Speaker 1: of political agents see and political control. As America is
Speaker 1: transformed by a Trump presidency that will last for as
Speaker 1: long as Trump is alive and able to hold power,
Speaker 1: the Republic will substantially fall. It will be controlled by
Speaker 1: a collection of powerful interests, all interrelated. For example, David's
Speaker 1: ass off this man here in can where he decided
Speaker 1: to throw a party surrounded by the yachts while the
Speaker 1: writers that make his industry function were on strike. Now,
Speaker 1: what's interesting about The business model of the parent company
Speaker 1: that control CNN is that it's reliant on one thing
Speaker 1: to survive, the ability to cut cost enough to pay
Speaker 1: back the massive debt incurred for the purchase of the
Speaker 1: new conglomerate. A plaything, if you will, is what CNN is.
Speaker 1: Here's Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post, the owner. But
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos's money doesn't come from the Post, which loses
Speaker 1: one hundred million dollars a year. It comes from Amazon stock.
Speaker 1: What will happen when the federal government decides to punish
Speaker 1: America's guilded class to keep them in line. This is,
Speaker 1: after all, how it functions in Russia. The oligarchs support
Speaker 1: the power of who putin Kutin allows the oligarchs to
Speaker 1: get as rich as human beings can possibly get. It
Speaker 1: will be the basis of the American economy. Nobody will
Speaker 1: step out of line, particularly with a vindictive, punitive president
Speaker 1: who asserts control and power through the levers of government
Speaker 1: in a way that is now ever been seen. He
Speaker 1: will proclaim the powers of a caesar, and he will
Speaker 1: quickly assert them. His plans are to deploy as many
Speaker 1: as fifty thousand appointees trained yes men and women who
Speaker 1: will carry out the whims of a lawless man as
Speaker 1: he deconstructs the deep state, or as we used to
Speaker 1: call it, the American Civil Service, one of the great
Speaker 1: creations in the history of the country and one of
Speaker 1: the great progressive reforms in the history of the country.
Speaker 1: Decent government will be gone. It will be a government
Speaker 1: that seeks to control, and mostly what it will control
Speaker 1: is its own power, its own destiny, its license to
Speaker 1: enrich itself, its friends, its allies, and to punish it.
Speaker 1: That is what the American dictatorship to come will look like.
Speaker 1: How is it that the American people, on the eve
Speaker 1: of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the independence
Speaker 1: of the country, are prepared to dismiss their agency, to
Speaker 1: give away their democracy, their choice, their ability to control
Speaker 1: their affairs, to a new royalty, to a new type
Speaker 1: of tyranny. Why would they do it? They would do
Speaker 1: it because most of those Americans feel like they lost
Speaker 1: their agency in their control to a different set of
Speaker 1: dictators a long time ago. And what Donald Trump represents
Speaker 1: for them as a philosopher or fuck Uism, is angry
Speaker 1: retribution towards the American power class. That could not see,
Speaker 1: they could not hear, when a million Americans lost their
Speaker 1: lives to addiction caused by the collusion between the opioid
Speaker 1: companies and the federal government, who was indifferent and blind
Speaker 1: to the suffering of the people who weren't in the
Speaker 1: big cities and whose lives were somehow deemed less than
Speaker 1: so unworthy. In fact, they just weren't covered at all. Well,
Speaker 1: now the American people, and their anger and their rage
Speaker 1: and their discontent, are letting it be known that they've
Speaker 1: had enough, and there is an absence of any articulation
Speaker 1: towards better towards the future. But before we can talk
Speaker 1: about what is to come and the defiance that is
Speaker 1: necessary to resist it, to sustain a resistance throughout, it
Speaker 1: is to remember an important moment. The very first thing
Speaker 1: that happened in the Trump administration was something that was
Speaker 1: always of great consequence. Sean Spicer is the spokesperson for
Speaker 1: the government of the United States. The Press Secretary is
Speaker 1: the president's chief spokesperson. And he came out and he
Speaker 1: said to a global audience, like an American Bagdad Bob,
Speaker 1: that a crowd size that was clearly smaller was in
Speaker 1: fact larger than the one that was clearly bigger. It
Speaker 1: was a moment of absurdity. It was not a lie
Speaker 1: to avoid embarrassment. It was a lie of authority that
Speaker 1: demanded submission, submission of agency, of intellectual sovereignty, of personal democracy.
Speaker 1: It required the listener to make a deal. You could
Speaker 1: be part of a community, but it required a basic submission.
Speaker 1: You could check out of deciding what is real and
Speaker 1: what is not, what is true and what is false,
Speaker 1: what is up and down? What is left or right?
Speaker 1: The leader would decided for you. He would decide everything.
Speaker 1: He would tell you what's true or not. What the
Speaker 1: leader said was reality was in fact reality. So when
Speaker 1: it came to pass that he lost an election upon
Speaker 1: which the whole of American civilization is built, his adherents
Speaker 1: went along because they had been trained like dogs on
Speaker 1: leashes over a law period, to be controlled, to be
Speaker 1: easily manipulated. They long ago gave away their control and
Speaker 1: agency when they said that crowd size that was smaller
Speaker 1: was in fact larger, and so on and on. It
Speaker 1: went over thirty thousand times as President Donald Trump lied
Speaker 1: and the news media was overwhelmed by it. When they
Speaker 1: were not complicit with it, making billions in a cynical partnership.
Speaker 1: And so it has come to pass that we stand
Speaker 1: at the edge of profound loss in America, a great
Speaker 1: loss of political control, the inevitable result of a system
Speaker 1: that has allowed the politicians to pick their voters, and
Speaker 1: now they will have the control role that they want
Speaker 1: to do as they wish, for no purpose of greater union,
Speaker 1: no higher moral purpose aimed at perfecting the union, but
Speaker 1: instead to pursue the cause of self interest and greed
Speaker 1: at the expense of the greatest idea in all of
Speaker 1: human history, which is Americanism, the notion that ordinary people
Speaker 1: have the capacity to govern themselves, that there is no
Speaker 1: such thing as a divine right of kings. Instead that
Speaker 1: each of us, and all of us now into the
Speaker 1: twenty first century, are endowed by our creator, beyond the
Speaker 1: reach of the power of government, who is instilled in
Speaker 1: us basic rights as human beings, the right to life,
Speaker 1: liberty in the pursuit of happiness. And these rights, which
Speaker 1: have built for two centuries, include a freedom of speech
Speaker 1: and conscience and choice, and all of that stands at
Speaker 1: risk because of greed and a collapse of faith in
Speaker 1: a detestable error, where Donald Trump stands at the edge
Speaker 1: of becoming an American caesar on the eve of the
Speaker 1: two hundred and fiftieth birthday of American Independence. What an
Speaker 1: appalling moment this is