WEBVTT - Did the Houthis Sink the USS Eisenhower? 0:00:01.760 --> 0:00:02.880 Al Zone Media. 0:00:04.559 --> 0:00:08.399 Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about 0:00:08.560 --> 0:00:11.960 things falling apart, and today, the thing that's falling apart 0:00:12.280 --> 0:00:16.800 is our shared concept of reality, our ability to exists 0:00:16.920 --> 0:00:20.840 as a population within the same world, or at least 0:00:20.920 --> 0:00:24.720 versions of the same world that even slightly interact with 0:00:24.760 --> 0:00:27.159 each other. And my guest for this episode about the 0:00:27.200 --> 0:00:31.760 breaking of reality Garrison, Davis Garrison, what do you know 0:00:31.920 --> 0:00:33.440 about the USS Eisenhower? 0:00:35.560 --> 0:00:37.320 Is that is that from Star Trek? 0:00:37.560 --> 0:00:40.040 Is that a yeah? Huh, that's the ship that they 0:00:40.080 --> 0:00:42.760 all fly around and in Star Trek, the many voyages 0:00:42.800 --> 0:00:46.120 of the Starship Eisenhower. It's continuing mission. 0:00:48.280 --> 0:00:49.760 It's such a different show. 0:00:50.280 --> 0:00:54.240 Every every episode they're just fucking with Guatemala, Like every 0:00:54.280 --> 0:00:58.600 single episode, the Cards just finding another way to overthrow 0:00:58.640 --> 0:01:02.320 the government of Guatemala. 0:01:02.440 --> 0:01:02.640 Yeah. 0:01:02.680 --> 0:01:05.399 No, that's like alternate universe evil Gene Roddenberry. 0:01:05.600 --> 0:01:08.880 Yeah yeah, yeah, if Gene Roddenberry had been like a 0:01:08.959 --> 0:01:14.679 hardcore conservative. Yeah, speaking of hardcore conservatives, we are talking 0:01:14.720 --> 0:01:18.160 again about alternate realities and the USS Eisenhower is relevant 0:01:18.200 --> 0:01:20.840 to that because it's kind of been the subject of 0:01:20.880 --> 0:01:24.959 a reality fracture recently. Just talking in terms of like 0:01:25.040 --> 0:01:28.120 things that are actually true. The USS Eisenhower is a 0:01:28.240 --> 0:01:30.959 very big aircraft carrier. It's got something like five thousand 0:01:31.000 --> 0:01:34.520 people and its crew. It's nuclear powered. It can stay 0:01:34.560 --> 0:01:37.120 I think up to like twenty five years. Potentially, it 0:01:37.160 --> 0:01:40.240 could stay in the field without needing to like refuel 0:01:40.360 --> 0:01:41.880 or anything like that. 0:01:41.880 --> 0:01:42.440 That's wild. 0:01:42.840 --> 0:01:46.200 Yeah, Yeah. Aircraft carriers are insane things. And it is 0:01:46.240 --> 0:01:48.960 the center of an air Force carrier group, which is 0:01:49.000 --> 0:01:50.400 a group of I think there's something like ten or 0:01:50.440 --> 0:01:53.000 eleven other ships in it, a combination of like you've 0:01:53.000 --> 0:01:55.800 got like destroyers, these little like missile ships. I think 0:01:55.800 --> 0:01:59.040 there's some submarines, probably an ice cream ship in there somewhere. 0:01:59.040 --> 0:02:01.800 That's kind of like a Keith thing the US military does. Anyway, 0:02:02.200 --> 0:02:04.640 the Eisenhower is the ship that's out in the Gulf 0:02:04.680 --> 0:02:08.280 of Aiden right now, throwing down with the Houthis. And 0:02:08.600 --> 0:02:13.040 on the thirty first of last month, there was a 0:02:13.360 --> 0:02:17.880 series of attacks launched by the Eisenhower along with some 0:02:17.960 --> 0:02:22.720 of our British allies, striking thirteen Hoothy targets at various 0:02:22.760 --> 0:02:25.520 locations in Yemen. This was in response to a number 0:02:25.560 --> 0:02:28.640 of attacks that the Hoothies had launched recently on shipping 0:02:28.919 --> 0:02:31.080 in the region, including I think they hit a Greek 0:02:31.120 --> 0:02:34.120 ship a couple of times. The strikes came also a 0:02:34.200 --> 0:02:36.880 day after the Hoothis shot down an m Q nine 0:02:37.040 --> 0:02:40.240 Reaper drone, which was the third downing of a Reaper 0:02:40.320 --> 0:02:43.440 drone in May, so the Hoothies have been dropping Reapers 0:02:43.480 --> 0:02:46.200 pretty regularly. So anyway, all of this led to a 0:02:46.240 --> 0:02:49.280 massive series of strikes that were kind of you know, 0:02:49.480 --> 0:02:54.440 launched from the Eisenhower on Houthy targets. Houthy rebels said 0:02:54.440 --> 0:02:56.720 that the air strikes killed at least sixteen people and 0:02:56.760 --> 0:02:59.320 wounded thirty five others. I think that death toll has 0:02:59.400 --> 0:03:02.360 risen since the article, the Washington Post article I'm looking 0:03:02.400 --> 0:03:04.120 at now, and that you know, we're going to be 0:03:04.120 --> 0:03:06.960 talking about things that are credible and not credible. If 0:03:07.000 --> 0:03:09.919 the Hoothies say, given the attacks launched, that death toll 0:03:09.960 --> 0:03:12.840 seems pretty credible to me, just based on other strikes 0:03:12.840 --> 0:03:16.960 that I've read about. The Houthis launched a retaliatory strikes 0:03:17.120 --> 0:03:19.880 on the Enterprise, or at least they claim that they did, 0:03:20.320 --> 0:03:24.080 wait on the on the Eisenhower. We did used to 0:03:24.120 --> 0:03:26.400 have an aircraft carrier name the Enterprise. I don't. I 0:03:26.440 --> 0:03:30.359 think we've decommissioned it since I'm blaming real fast. 0:03:30.400 --> 0:03:32.240 He would he would not, he will, he. 0:03:32.160 --> 0:03:34.680 Would, he would be fucking his way through the Houthis 0:03:34.720 --> 0:03:40.720 already Kirk would have. That's ah, God, Star Trek is 0:03:40.720 --> 0:03:43.760 so much more fun to talk about than actual geopolitics, uh, 0:03:44.000 --> 0:03:48.480 which are mostly depressing with the genocide and all. Anyway, 0:03:48.920 --> 0:03:51.080 the Houthis claimed that they launched an attack on the 0:03:51.120 --> 0:03:55.520 Eisenhower the US. The do O D says that they 0:03:55.560 --> 0:03:58.839 did not. The Houthy press person stated that they hit 0:03:59.120 --> 0:04:03.000 the Eisenhower. The hit was accurate and direct. Again, there's 0:04:03.160 --> 0:04:07.320 no evidence of this whatsoever that's been posted. The story 0:04:07.400 --> 0:04:10.880 seems to have started percolating out into kind of lefty 0:04:10.920 --> 0:04:14.720 media when Huthy Press people made this announcement. I think 0:04:14.760 --> 0:04:18.320 the first direct statement I found about it outside of 0:04:18.400 --> 0:04:24.160 like Hoothy press resources was a Twitter account called for 0:04:24.200 --> 0:04:28.080 an online news magazine calling West Asian geopolitics called The Cradle. 0:04:28.680 --> 0:04:31.320 I'm not wildly familiar with the Cradle. They've got something 0:04:31.400 --> 0:04:35.279 like one hundred and nine thousand followers on Twitter, and 0:04:35.320 --> 0:04:37.360 they seem to mostly be you could say, like a 0:04:37.400 --> 0:04:42.200 broadly sort of anti imperialist left. Most of their content 0:04:42.279 --> 0:04:46.000 lately is very pro Gaza. You know, there's stuff like 0:04:46.480 --> 0:04:50.359 articles about Israeli organ trafficking networks in Turkey. You know, 0:04:50.400 --> 0:04:53.680 they've got like video clips of like pro Palestinian protesters 0:04:53.680 --> 0:04:57.320 getting dunks in on pro israel protesters, a like protests 0:04:57.320 --> 0:05:01.160 and stuff like that, very standard stuff. On the thirty first, 0:05:01.279 --> 0:05:05.360 they posted a they made a post, yeah, basically restating 0:05:05.839 --> 0:05:08.960 what the Houthis had said, although they instead of saying 0:05:09.000 --> 0:05:11.240 the Houthis made a claim that they had struck the Eisenhower, 0:05:11.279 --> 0:05:13.840 they claimed it was ye Many armed forces. It's an 0:05:13.880 --> 0:05:16.520 easy way to tell that someone is not accurately reporting 0:05:16.520 --> 0:05:19.120 on what's happening in Yemen because the Houthis are actively 0:05:19.160 --> 0:05:21.440 at war with yem Many armed forces. Like that is 0:05:21.760 --> 0:05:24.600 the actual reality of the situation on the ground over there. 0:05:25.279 --> 0:05:29.080 So this got picked up by chunks of lefty media, 0:05:29.120 --> 0:05:32.440 and particularly like American lefty media. I think one of 0:05:32.480 --> 0:05:35.680 the first big accounts to take this story was a 0:05:35.680 --> 0:05:38.279 guy named Ashton Forbes. You know Ashton. 0:05:39.120 --> 0:05:41.560 I don't think I've heard of Ashton Forbes. This is 0:05:41.880 --> 0:05:47.719 this whole like left media. Yeah, anti imperialism bubble has 0:05:47.800 --> 0:05:50.800 just gotten so big the past like six months. 0:05:51.360 --> 0:05:53.640 These are mostly accounts, and I believe this is true 0:05:53.680 --> 0:05:56.640 for Ashton too, who like they blew up in the 0:05:56.680 --> 0:06:00.919 wake of October seventh once, particularly once the Israeli started 0:06:01.000 --> 0:06:05.839 launching massive strikes on Gaza. And they primarily exist within 0:06:06.200 --> 0:06:11.119 the profit ecosystem that Elon established in Twitter, right, where 0:06:11.480 --> 0:06:13.800 if you have a verified account and you get a 0:06:13.800 --> 0:06:16.400 lot of engagements from other verified accounts, you get a 0:06:16.480 --> 0:06:19.720 chunk of money from Twitter, right, And so all these 0:06:19.720 --> 0:06:23.599 people figured out that, like there's a huge appetite for 0:06:24.240 --> 0:06:27.640 reposted videos from Gaza, or videos that you just claim 0:06:27.720 --> 0:06:29.800 are reposted videos from Gaza. A huge number of them 0:06:29.839 --> 0:06:32.200 are from Syria, and if they make people really angry 0:06:32.320 --> 0:06:35.039 or horrified, they'll get shared and get a ton of 0:06:35.080 --> 0:06:38.000 engagement and you will get a check, right, Like, That's 0:06:38.120 --> 0:06:40.120 that's where Ashton comes out of. That's where all these 0:06:40.160 --> 0:06:43.240 guys come out of. So Ashton sees, I don't know 0:06:43.279 --> 0:06:45.400 if he picked it up directly from the Hoothy Press people. 0:06:45.440 --> 0:06:46.560 I don't know if he picked it up from that 0:06:46.560 --> 0:06:49.200 thing on the cradle, but he posts the next day 0:06:49.680 --> 0:06:53.680 breaking and he's got Of course, of course I'll show you. 0:06:53.680 --> 0:06:55.760 I'll share screen Garrisons. You can see he's got he's 0:06:55.760 --> 0:06:58.400 got the two sirens. Yeah, he's got the two little 0:06:58.480 --> 0:07:01.800 signs on either side. Oh yeah, No, of course there's 0:07:01.839 --> 0:07:04.960 a million of this guy. This guy is all over 0:07:05.000 --> 0:07:08.239 the internet. A source has informed me that the USS 0:07:08.240 --> 0:07:12.480 Eisenhower has been sunk all caps. Mainstream media reports from 0:07:12.560 --> 0:07:15.280 yesterday claim the ship was not hit by houthy missiles. 0:07:15.520 --> 0:07:19.480 Social media shows conflicting reports of damage. I'm seeking corroboration 0:07:19.600 --> 0:07:23.160 on this potentially huge story. So first we see the 0:07:23.600 --> 0:07:26.920 escalation of the HOUTHI say, we shot at the Eisenhower 0:07:27.000 --> 0:07:29.360 and we hit it right. They didn't claim they'd sunk it. 0:07:29.400 --> 0:07:31.480 I think because the houthis are like they're not dumb, 0:07:31.640 --> 0:07:34.840 and like that's an easy claim to disprove. Whereas, yeah, 0:07:34.880 --> 0:07:37.320 you can kind of like there's not as much live 0:07:37.760 --> 0:07:39.480 footage of this, you could kind of get away for 0:07:39.480 --> 0:07:41.280 a while with making people think maybe you damaged it 0:07:41.320 --> 0:07:43.160 a little bit, or at least you got close, you know. 0:07:43.840 --> 0:07:47.680 But a source a source, yes, a source from citizen 0:07:47.800 --> 0:07:49.960 journalist Ashton Forbes. 0:07:50.040 --> 0:07:51.360 Speaking Truth to power. 0:07:51.800 --> 0:07:55.240 Yeah, the evidence that Forbes post because he says, like 0:07:55.320 --> 0:07:58.400 social media so there's conflicting reports of damage. Is a 0:07:58.440 --> 0:08:01.560 screen grab of what looks like an aircraft carrier that's 0:08:01.640 --> 0:08:05.120 on fire. You can see a water very bying. 0:08:05.280 --> 0:08:06.920 Very very blurry picture as well. 0:08:07.040 --> 0:08:09.400 Yeah, and there's there's there's a watermark. I don't know 0:08:09.400 --> 0:08:11.160 if you can see it clearly on this gear, but 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:14.160 like that says Arabic journal So he clearly took it 0:08:14.240 --> 0:08:18.160 from another website. Right now, I would describe the image 0:08:18.200 --> 0:08:21.320 quality of this as cell phone camera circa two thousand 0:08:21.360 --> 0:08:21.800 and seven. 0:08:22.400 --> 0:08:26.120 That's accurate. Yeah, it roughly at like three DS camera. 0:08:26.640 --> 0:08:30.160 Yeah, yeah, it looked It's not even super clear to 0:08:30.200 --> 0:08:34.560 me that that's an aircraft carrier. Forbes's post obviously, you know, 0:08:34.679 --> 0:08:36.800 does not occur in a vacuum here, And it would 0:08:36.840 --> 0:08:38.920 be deeply fucked up for me to say, like citizen 0:08:39.040 --> 0:08:42.680 journalists shouldn't exist, Like if someone identifies themselves as that, 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:45.120 it's a sign that they're dangerous or that they're they're 0:08:45.120 --> 0:08:48.520 full of shit, right, because recent history is filled with 0:08:48.800 --> 0:08:51.960 people who call themselves citizen journalists putting out bullshit. But 0:08:52.040 --> 0:08:55.000 like it's also filled with instances of citizens doing crucial 0:08:55.040 --> 0:08:58.040 journalism in the absence of credential professionals. 0:08:57.920 --> 0:08:59.360 Especially in Gaza right now. 0:08:59.480 --> 0:09:01.680 Oh yeah, I'm and that's basically everything right, in part 0:09:01.720 --> 0:09:04.400 because most of the journalists who have tried to report 0:09:04.440 --> 0:09:06.480 on it have been fucking murdered. But even in the 0:09:06.600 --> 0:09:08.959 US we have the recent case of Darnella Fraser, who 0:09:08.960 --> 0:09:10.800 was the eighteen year old woman who filmed the murder 0:09:10.800 --> 0:09:13.080 of George Floyd on May twenty fifth, twenty twenty. She 0:09:13.120 --> 0:09:17.680 received a Pulitzer Prise the next year for her video. However, journalism, 0:09:17.720 --> 0:09:20.679 while again there's a lot of value in citizen journalism, 0:09:20.920 --> 0:09:23.920 journalism is also a technical trade and there are in 0:09:23.960 --> 0:09:26.560 fact some things that random dirbs on the Internet should 0:09:26.559 --> 0:09:30.320 not report on, and an attack on the Eisenhower is 0:09:30.400 --> 0:09:33.080 maybe one of them. To make a long story short, 0:09:33.280 --> 0:09:36.880 the USS Eisenhower was not sunk. It is virtually impossible 0:09:36.920 --> 0:09:39.400 for non state forces like the Houthies, with the weaponry 0:09:39.400 --> 0:09:43.160 that they currently enjoy, to sink a vessel like the Eisenhower. 0:09:43.400 --> 0:09:45.240 And for a little bit of context on why that 0:09:45.360 --> 0:09:47.960 is the case, I want to talk about another aircraft 0:09:48.040 --> 0:09:51.800 carrier called the USS Independence. The Independence was one of 0:09:51.840 --> 0:09:54.680 many many aircraft carriers produced by the United States to 0:09:54.720 --> 0:09:57.160 curb stomp the Empire of Japan during World War Two. 0:09:57.800 --> 0:10:00.720 After that war, we found ourselves with way more aircraft 0:10:00.800 --> 0:10:03.800 carriers than we needed or could afford to operate indefinitely 0:10:03.840 --> 0:10:06.880 at peacetime. So we decided to do the smartest thing 0:10:06.920 --> 0:10:09.720 we could with all these extra aircraft carriers and nuke them. 0:10:10.240 --> 0:10:10.959 That was swait. 0:10:12.920 --> 0:10:19.920 Yes, yes, well, it's classic nineteen forty six America logic. 0:10:20.080 --> 0:10:21.480 That is true. That is true. 0:10:21.600 --> 0:10:26.640 That is so the Independence didn't brave nuclear hell fire alone. 0:10:26.720 --> 0:10:30.400 As part of Operations Crossroads, we detonated two nuclear bombs 0:10:30.400 --> 0:10:33.520 within seventeen hundred feet of a fleet of ships. That's 0:10:33.559 --> 0:10:36.520 pretty close to point blank range in nuclear weapons terms. 0:10:37.000 --> 0:10:40.000 Fourteen ships were sunk out right by these nukes, and 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:43.040 the remainder were badly damaged. The Independence was one of 0:10:43.080 --> 0:10:46.080 the boats that remained floating, though, and it actually was 0:10:46.200 --> 0:10:51.120 towed back to San Francisco after being nuked twice. Two 0:10:51.240 --> 0:10:54.960 nukes could not sink a nineteen forty six aircraft carrier. 0:10:55.440 --> 0:10:57.600 What are they building these things out of? 0:10:57.880 --> 0:11:01.079 They're very big, and they are if you are attacking 0:11:01.120 --> 0:11:04.560 them above the water line, it's really hard to sink 0:11:04.640 --> 0:11:07.360 one of these boats, right, Like, that's kind of the thing. 0:11:07.400 --> 0:11:09.960 You can lob huge missiles and hit them with huge 0:11:10.000 --> 0:11:12.200 missiles on the top of the thing, and that can 0:11:12.480 --> 0:11:14.800 stop them from being able to launch aircraft. It can 0:11:14.880 --> 0:11:18.160 kill crew, but unless you're actually blowing a big hole 0:11:18.200 --> 0:11:20.600 in it below the water line, you're not going to 0:11:20.640 --> 0:11:23.120 send one of these fuckers to the bottom of the ocean. Right, 0:11:23.160 --> 0:11:25.360 that's just kind of sure physics, you know. 0:11:25.559 --> 0:11:27.400 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. 0:11:27.440 --> 0:11:30.760 So we towed the Independence back to San Francisco. They 0:11:30.760 --> 0:11:33.480 actually built a radiation lab in the boat itself for 0:11:33.520 --> 0:11:37.600 a while. And then that's again because the United States 0:11:37.640 --> 0:11:40.640 be how the United States do. We filled this massive 0:11:40.640 --> 0:11:44.199 boat with concrete drums full of radioactive waste and sunk 0:11:44.240 --> 0:11:46.760 it thirty miles off the coast of California with your tour. 0:11:47.000 --> 0:11:50.959 That's fucking hilarious. That rules. 0:11:51.320 --> 0:11:58.720 Hell yeah, brother, this country man. So again, once we 0:11:58.760 --> 0:12:01.679 started lobbing tour, you know, is it this fucker underneath 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:04.200 the boat? It was not wildly hard to sink the 0:12:04.240 --> 0:12:06.280 son of a bitch, right, And that's the reality of 0:12:06.320 --> 0:12:08.120 the situation. If the houthies were able to get like 0:12:08.160 --> 0:12:11.319 some subs that were capable of like actually getting through 0:12:11.840 --> 0:12:15.160 you know, the dragnet of boats that are defending the Enterprise, 0:12:15.200 --> 0:12:17.600 and they could get any kind of you know, decent 0:12:17.679 --> 0:12:20.720 sized torpedo underneath it, they might have a chance of 0:12:20.760 --> 0:12:21.280 sinking it. 0:12:21.360 --> 0:12:26.200 Photon torpedoes, photon torpedo for the Enterprise, yes, yes, yes, yes, 0:12:26.440 --> 0:12:27.520 or a quantum torpedo. 0:12:27.559 --> 0:12:29.480 If we've moved on to d S nine garrison. 0:12:30.000 --> 0:12:31.880 Oh I've not started DS nine year. 0:12:31.840 --> 0:12:34.679 Oh oh it's great. It's the horniest Star Trek Garrison, 0:12:34.720 --> 0:12:40.880 which which is shocking to it is shockingly horny. So 0:12:40.920 --> 0:12:42.599 I want to note while while I'm talking about the 0:12:42.600 --> 0:12:45.680 impossibility of the Houthies using their current methods, which are 0:12:45.960 --> 0:12:49.599 basically when it comes to how they've been attacking the Eisenhower, 0:12:49.600 --> 0:12:52.000 they've been either flying drones at it, trying to ram 0:12:52.040 --> 0:12:55.480 it with an explosive drone, or launching cruise missiles at it, right, 0:12:55.480 --> 0:12:58.079 and all of these are basically aiming for the top 0:12:58.160 --> 0:13:00.439 of this boat, because that's kind of the option they have. 0:13:00.800 --> 0:13:04.400 I was not aware that they had like advanced submarine capabilities. 0:13:04.679 --> 0:13:07.240 They sure don't, as far as I'm aware, they don't. Yeah, 0:13:07.280 --> 0:13:10.400 now it is it's worth noting potentially it could be 0:13:10.480 --> 0:13:15.760 surprisingly easy sometimes to sink a modern aircraft carrier if 0:13:15.800 --> 0:13:18.440 you have a decent submarine. And there's evidence of this 0:13:18.520 --> 0:13:21.720 that came from a joint Franco US naval exercise off 0:13:21.760 --> 0:13:24.480 to the coast of Florida in March of twenty fifteen 0:13:24.520 --> 0:13:27.400 where basically we're doing this exercise with the French at 0:13:27.440 --> 0:13:30.680 one point. This French submarine is part of the OP four, 0:13:30.679 --> 0:13:33.679 which is like opposition forces during a war game, and 0:13:33.760 --> 0:13:36.720 it sinks the Roosevelt and most of its escorts in 0:13:36.920 --> 0:13:41.520 like a simulated battle. And this is you know, it's 0:13:41.600 --> 0:13:44.800 very funny because like the French military posted about this 0:13:44.880 --> 0:13:46.760 and then had to delete it because it was really 0:13:46.800 --> 0:13:49.520 embarrassing for the Navy, and it's seen as evidence by 0:13:49.520 --> 0:13:52.520 people who actually know their shit about naval power and 0:13:52.600 --> 0:13:57.880 naval warfare. Is like, oh, US anti sub interdiction tactics 0:13:57.920 --> 0:14:01.080 and technology really took a hit in the post Cold 0:14:01.080 --> 0:14:03.400 War period. We stopped putting money into it because like 0:14:03.440 --> 0:14:06.000 we thought, well, who's going to send subs after us 0:14:06.000 --> 0:14:07.440 if the Russians are gone? Right? 0:14:07.520 --> 0:14:09.360 Yeah exactly, yeah, ye yeah yeah. 0:14:09.400 --> 0:14:10.960 So I don't mean to say that like these boats 0:14:11.000 --> 0:14:14.000 are invulnerable. Nothing can stop the US Navy. In fact, 0:14:14.040 --> 0:14:18.400 the evidence suggests that like a modestly powerful naval power 0:14:18.400 --> 0:14:20.560 could do some serious damage to a carrier group in 0:14:20.600 --> 0:14:23.640 the right circumstances. It's just the way the houthis. The 0:14:23.640 --> 0:14:26.080 claims people are making about how the houthis sunk the 0:14:26.080 --> 0:14:28.880 Eisenhower is not a way in which the Eisenhower could 0:14:28.960 --> 0:14:32.360 realistically be sunk. Right, Some bootleg Iranian missiles are not 0:14:32.480 --> 0:14:35.320 going to sink the most advanced carrier in the world today. 0:14:35.520 --> 0:14:39.080 Two nukes couldn't do a comparatively shitty carrier in nineteen 0:14:39.160 --> 0:14:41.960 forty six. Now, this is all pretty obvious to anyone 0:14:42.000 --> 0:14:44.680 who knows the first thing about modern naval warfare. But 0:14:44.720 --> 0:14:48.640 it was not obvious to our citizen journalist friend, Ashton Forbes. 0:14:48.920 --> 0:14:50.920 When numerous people pointed out to him that his claims 0:14:50.960 --> 0:14:53.760 were absurd, he replied, yeah, I wanted to hold back 0:14:53.800 --> 0:14:55.880 on this story in case it's not true, but I 0:14:55.920 --> 0:14:58.400 trust my source and the media reports stink to me. 0:14:58.600 --> 0:15:00.440 If this ends up being wrong, all ready tracked. But 0:15:00.480 --> 0:15:02.680 the implications are too huge not to report. 0:15:03.480 --> 0:15:05.480 Sure, sure, yeah, sure, buddy, why not. 0:15:06.240 --> 0:15:09.240 We're going to dig into that and the ethics of 0:15:09.280 --> 0:15:13.440 the journalism that he claims to be uh practicing. But first, 0:15:13.800 --> 0:15:17.240 the ethics of my journalism are that you should buy 0:15:17.280 --> 0:15:32.960 whatever these advertisers are selling, and we're back. So I 0:15:33.000 --> 0:15:36.760 really hate the too huge not to report justification. That's like, 0:15:37.480 --> 0:15:41.200 that's that's incredibly unethical journalism, because like, if a story 0:15:41.240 --> 0:15:42.320 is that huge. 0:15:42.160 --> 0:15:44.720 Actually, Robert, no, no, no, I just got an update 0:15:44.720 --> 0:15:48.680 from a source that nine to eleven two just happened. 0:15:49.320 --> 0:15:51.800 Oh wow, I have I have, I have a very 0:15:51.800 --> 0:15:54.720 blurry picture. I'm going to post it up on Twitter 0:15:54.800 --> 0:15:58.200 right now. I can't verify, but this is if true, 0:15:58.840 --> 0:16:02.960 this is groundbreaking, literally in case of you know the ground. 0:16:03.120 --> 0:16:05.840 Yeah, and I know listeners, you're like, there's no way 0:16:05.960 --> 0:16:08.920 nine to eleven two happened several days ago by the 0:16:08.920 --> 0:16:10.720 time you listened to this episode, and I haven't heard 0:16:10.720 --> 0:16:13.320 about it. I want to remind you about the film 0:16:13.360 --> 0:16:15.760 Mad Max Fury Road. You know, when that came out, 0:16:15.920 --> 0:16:19.080 none of us were expecting another Mad Max movie and 0:16:19.120 --> 0:16:20.800 we got a great one. And I think nine to 0:16:20.800 --> 0:16:24.040 eleven two could be the Fury Road of terrorism attacks. 0:16:24.600 --> 0:16:28.240 Real promise, real promise. They also could be censoring the story. 0:16:28.240 --> 0:16:29.640 They may not want you to know. In case you 0:16:29.680 --> 0:16:30.320 haven't heard. 0:16:30.280 --> 0:16:32.000 The news doesn't want you to know that nine to 0:16:32.000 --> 0:16:34.400 eleven two already happened because it's going to destroy the 0:16:34.440 --> 0:16:38.000 market for nine to eleven one memorabilia. You know, that's 0:16:38.880 --> 0:16:42.600 everybody needs to read Manufacturing Consent by Chomsky. He lays 0:16:42.600 --> 0:16:43.400 it all out. 0:16:46.960 --> 0:16:47.800 As you're saying. 0:16:48.240 --> 0:16:51.160 So obviously, if a story is as big as this 0:16:51.360 --> 0:16:53.280 and the sinking of the Eyes, and how would be 0:16:53.360 --> 0:16:58.200 like the most significant military reversal in the twenty first century? Maybe, 0:16:58.320 --> 0:17:00.200 you know, I guess you could argue like the US 0:17:01.160 --> 0:17:04.800 leaving Afghanistan. Maybe, But honest, from a technological standpoint, at 0:17:04.880 --> 0:17:07.919 least the whoth he's managing to drop an aircraft carrier 0:17:08.240 --> 0:17:10.320 would be massive. And if a story is that big, 0:17:10.520 --> 0:17:13.120 you have a responsibility not to report on it until 0:17:13.160 --> 0:17:15.920 you have any reason at all to believe that it's true. 0:17:16.359 --> 0:17:19.399 So when somebody says the implication or too the implications 0:17:19.400 --> 0:17:21.080 are too huge not to report on what they mean 0:17:21.160 --> 0:17:23.399 is I wanted the clout in traffic from getting this 0:17:23.480 --> 0:17:26.800 out first, and I don't really care if it's true. Now, yeah, 0:17:27.240 --> 0:17:29.159 it happens to be quite easy to prove that the 0:17:29.240 --> 0:17:32.000 US S. Eisenhower is still among the living because the 0:17:32.040 --> 0:17:35.399 captain of that boat is a poster. His name is 0:17:35.400 --> 0:17:39.680 oh God, Oh. This man posts like you wouldn't believe Garrison. 0:17:39.680 --> 0:17:43.360 I've never seen a commanding officer in the US military 0:17:43.400 --> 0:17:44.880 who posts like this man. 0:17:45.560 --> 0:17:48.760 Do you think Riker would be a poster. I don't know. 0:17:49.320 --> 0:17:51.760 Riker would be. He would do a lot of dming. 0:17:51.840 --> 0:17:57.359 He would be sliding into DMS an awful loss like yeah, yes, absolutely. 0:17:57.520 --> 0:17:59.960 He would constantly be trying to fuck. But I think 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:02.240 the only reason he would actually post is when like 0:18:02.320 --> 0:18:04.760 something broke and he couldn't figure out how to fix it. 0:18:04.920 --> 0:18:08.120 He would he would be like adding Jordie constantly like yes, 0:18:08.880 --> 0:18:10.479 I can't kill my computer working. 0:18:11.280 --> 0:18:12.000 That makes sense. 0:18:12.440 --> 0:18:15.720 So the captain of the Enterprise is Christopher F. Hill, 0:18:15.800 --> 0:18:18.240 and again he's a poster for reasons that I have 0:18:18.320 --> 0:18:20.640 not bothered to look into and don't care to learn. 0:18:20.880 --> 0:18:23.960 He goes by chowda on Twitter like with a with 0:18:24.000 --> 0:18:26.600 a dah I don't I don't know why, and within 0:18:26.680 --> 0:18:31.600 minutes of the Forbes post about uh or of Forbes's post, 0:18:31.880 --> 0:18:35.080 he himself posted videos of the bakery on board the Eisenhower, 0:18:35.280 --> 0:18:38.159 which showed no signs of being underwater. I think that 0:18:38.280 --> 0:18:39.800 was kind of his subtle way of being like we 0:18:39.840 --> 0:18:43.679 are still making like cinnamon rolls, like everything is fine 0:18:43.720 --> 0:18:47.600 on board this ship. In short order, Internet Salutes discovered 0:18:47.600 --> 0:18:51.240 that the the video clip posted by Forbes that claimed 0:18:51.240 --> 0:18:54.560 to show the Eisenhower in flames was Garrison. Do you 0:18:54.560 --> 0:18:56.880 want to guess where this what this was a screenshot from? 0:18:57.400 --> 0:18:58.359 Is this a video game? 0:18:58.520 --> 0:19:00.119 It is a video game. It's the video game from 0:19:00.200 --> 0:19:04.840 ARM three. It's from ARMA three. Every time, every time, 0:19:05.160 --> 0:19:08.640 whenever this happens in the war in Ukraine too constantly 0:19:08.680 --> 0:19:10.960 they'll be like, we've shot down you know, a bunch 0:19:11.040 --> 0:19:13.200 of these MiG twenty ones, or you know, shot down 0:19:13.240 --> 0:19:16.479 this massive Russian jet that's never been shot down before. 0:19:16.640 --> 0:19:20.200 Every time it's ARMA three, like every single time. 0:19:20.600 --> 0:19:21.320 Unbelievable. 0:19:22.119 --> 0:19:25.280 Yeah, like eighty percent of the time, fake videos of 0:19:25.359 --> 0:19:29.440 military vehicles being destroyed. It's just clips from ARMA three. Now, 0:19:29.720 --> 0:19:32.480 a brief glance into the backstory of Ashton Forbes would 0:19:32.480 --> 0:19:34.600 have made it clear that his claims were nonsense, As 0:19:34.600 --> 0:19:37.320 this write up by George Allison in the UK Defense 0:19:37.440 --> 0:19:40.800 Journal notes, Ashton Forbes, despite his self identified role as 0:19:40.800 --> 0:19:43.919 a citizen journalist, has I'm told history of posting sensational 0:19:43.960 --> 0:19:48.400 and often unverified claims, particularly about Malaysia Airlines Flight three seventy. 0:19:48.600 --> 0:19:51.760 It almost seventy was a commercial flight that disappeared in 0:19:51.800 --> 0:19:54.639 twenty fourteen we'll en rout fro Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, 0:19:54.840 --> 0:19:57.680 leading to numerous conspiracy theories. Now we don't actually know 0:19:58.080 --> 0:20:01.080 why MH three seventy went down. I think probably the 0:20:01.160 --> 0:20:04.479 leading theory was that the pilot committed suicide. But even that, 0:20:04.520 --> 0:20:07.120 I don't think that there's like strong. I don't think 0:20:07.119 --> 0:20:10.000 it's it's very unclear, could have just been a fuck up, 0:20:10.000 --> 0:20:12.440 something like It's we really don't know, which is why 0:20:12.480 --> 0:20:13.800 there's so much conspiracy. 0:20:13.840 --> 0:20:14.840 Could have gone into a wormhole. 0:20:14.960 --> 0:20:17.359 So it could have gone into the wormhole right now. 0:20:17.640 --> 0:20:21.200 Forbes's belief, according to I found a post by Swift 0:20:21.240 --> 0:20:24.320 on security, who's a popular security expert, who states that 0:20:24.359 --> 0:20:28.080 Forbes believes MH three seventy had secret free energy tech 0:20:28.119 --> 0:20:30.880 on it that was raptured into a wormhole by reptilians. 0:20:31.000 --> 0:20:34.880 Are you so yeah? You actually got it? He's doing 0:20:34.920 --> 0:20:38.479 a bit So you got it right, Garrison? Oh my god. 0:20:42.080 --> 0:20:45.680 Swift provides an example of another one of the citizen 0:20:45.800 --> 0:20:51.520 journalist's big scoops free energy announcement. Free Energy, otherwise known 0:20:51.560 --> 0:20:54.480 as over Unity, is one hundred percent real. The devices 0:20:54.480 --> 0:20:57.320 exists already. I have been told exactly how an operational 0:20:57.320 --> 0:20:59.840 device works. I signed an NDA, so won't be able 0:20:59.840 --> 0:21:01.879 to disclosed specifics. 0:21:02.240 --> 0:21:03.280 One hundred. 0:21:04.440 --> 0:21:07.840 That's great. I love that the people who figure out 0:21:07.880 --> 0:21:10.680 free energy would let you post about it as long 0:21:10.720 --> 0:21:12.600 as you don't explain how it works. 0:21:13.200 --> 0:21:14.960 I like that you signed an NDA so you can't 0:21:14.960 --> 0:21:16.840 talk about it except for this post in what you 0:21:16.920 --> 0:21:20.280 do talk about it and which have absolutivate about classic 0:21:20.400 --> 0:21:22.680 classic move now. 0:21:22.920 --> 0:21:26.200 Once Forbes's post started to gain traction, the entire ecosystem 0:21:26.200 --> 0:21:29.000 of infogrifters who cropped up like mushrooms to profit off 0:21:29.040 --> 0:21:32.320 the massacre in Gaza, swung into gear thanks to Elon's 0:21:32.320 --> 0:21:35.240 new ownership of Twitter. Being able to draw viral crowds 0:21:35.280 --> 0:21:37.959 to your content by latching onto the most discussed topics 0:21:37.960 --> 0:21:40.720 of the day is very profitable, as we discussed, and 0:21:40.800 --> 0:21:43.040 into this mix you do have some state funded actors. 0:21:43.040 --> 0:21:45.679 You've got people working for Iran, for Israel, for Russia, 0:21:45.720 --> 0:21:48.080 for the United States, all trying to push their own 0:21:48.119 --> 0:21:51.639 sundry lines of propaganda using the engines of algorithmic virality. 0:21:52.160 --> 0:21:54.960 And then, of course there are the legitimately hopeful but 0:21:55.040 --> 0:21:57.439 ill informed. And these are the people that I have 0:21:57.520 --> 0:22:01.000 sympathy with and who I'm kind of like total focusing on. 0:22:01.160 --> 0:22:05.359 These are people who are understandably numb from constant exposure 0:22:05.359 --> 0:22:08.320 to a barrage of photos and videos of war crimes, 0:22:08.720 --> 0:22:12.080 and they are desperately ready to believe in some kind 0:22:12.119 --> 0:22:15.439 of miraculous underdog victory. Right, Hollywood fiction has trained us 0:22:15.440 --> 0:22:18.000 all to see that as possible. This is being thought 0:22:18.000 --> 0:22:20.920 of by a lot of people who are just numb 0:22:20.960 --> 0:22:24.359 and broken from videos of horror as like, well, I 0:22:24.400 --> 0:22:26.720 don't know, maybe we could have our Star Wars moment, right, 0:22:26.760 --> 0:22:30.400 maybe we've got a Luke Skywalker downing the death Star. Now, 0:22:30.480 --> 0:22:34.240 the Hoothies aren't Luke Skywalker, and the Eisenhower isn't entirely 0:22:34.320 --> 0:22:39.480 the death Star. It's like it's got shades of Death Star, 0:22:39.720 --> 0:22:42.879 it's got some Death Star DNA and it sure, yeah, 0:22:43.000 --> 0:22:45.000 I mean it's closer to closer to a Star destroyer, 0:22:45.200 --> 0:22:47.879 closer to a Star destroyer, right right, right. One of 0:22:47.880 --> 0:22:51.159 the posts I came across Researching this was Alden Marky, 0:22:51.280 --> 0:22:54.760 who describes himself as a counter propagandist and researcher with 0:22:54.760 --> 0:22:57.439 a focus on Yemen. He posted a photoshop of the 0:22:57.440 --> 0:23:00.560 Eisenhower from above with a dagger in the water beneath it. 0:23:00.880 --> 0:23:03.560 This was accompanied by the text uss Eisenhower was just 0:23:03.560 --> 0:23:05.679 struck for the second time in twenty four hours and 0:23:05.720 --> 0:23:08.159 it had something like two thousand likes two hundred and 0:23:08.160 --> 0:23:12.080 fifty thousand views when I came across it. Another account 0:23:12.160 --> 0:23:15.080 quote tweeted this and got nearly five thousand likes, saying 0:23:15.119 --> 0:23:17.320 it won't happen, but it would be so fucking funny 0:23:17.359 --> 0:23:20.320 if Yeman sinks an aircraft carrier, like can you imagine? 0:23:20.720 --> 0:23:23.280 And I think that guy represents the more common attitude, 0:23:23.320 --> 0:23:26.000 which is this mix of on we and desperation. Right, 0:23:26.440 --> 0:23:29.560 nothing is going to stop this massacre. It seems like that. 0:23:29.640 --> 0:23:32.040 It really feels like that, right, But wouldn't it be 0:23:32.119 --> 0:23:34.440 rad if something did? And to be realistic, I don't 0:23:34.480 --> 0:23:36.879 know that. I think there's a real odds that dropping 0:23:36.920 --> 0:23:39.919 the Eisenhower somehow would stop net Yahoo from what he's doing. 0:23:40.000 --> 0:23:42.720 I mean maybe it would, like it would certainly reduce 0:23:42.760 --> 0:23:45.960 the ability of the United States to interdict Iranian missiles 0:23:46.000 --> 0:23:48.720 coming into Israel. But I don't know that. I think 0:23:48.720 --> 0:23:51.480 that it's realistic that that's going to stop Netan Yahoo 0:23:51.480 --> 0:23:54.320 from doing the shit that net Yaho's doing. You can 0:23:54.320 --> 0:23:57.720 feel however you want about that. It's not irrational to 0:23:57.760 --> 0:24:00.720 be like, boy, I don't think this is real, but 0:24:00.960 --> 0:24:03.600 like I wish it was right, So you can feel 0:24:03.600 --> 0:24:06.600 however you want about this guy wanting, you know, thousands 0:24:06.640 --> 0:24:10.080 of US soldiers to get murdered. I get both, Like, 0:24:10.640 --> 0:24:13.960 I don't think that realistically anything the Hoothies are doing 0:24:14.160 --> 0:24:17.080 is going to stop what Israel's doing at this point, 0:24:17.480 --> 0:24:21.600 but I also understand just desperately wanting some violence to 0:24:21.680 --> 0:24:24.320 come down on the other side of this thing after 0:24:24.440 --> 0:24:28.680 months of watching videos of the slaughter in Gaza, you know, especially. 0:24:28.280 --> 0:24:31.800 As you have you have like Nikky Haley signing right 0:24:31.840 --> 0:24:35.280 bombs that that is sending over like come on, Like yeah, no, 0:24:35.480 --> 0:24:37.680 I could understand the emotional like. 0:24:37.760 --> 0:24:40.840 Yeah, braw, it doesn't speak to the best angels of 0:24:40.880 --> 0:24:44.200 our nature, right because you're what you're thinking, You're hoping 0:24:44.240 --> 0:24:47.239 for huge amounts of human death either way, But like, 0:24:47.320 --> 0:24:50.320 I get it, and it's not irrational right, saying there's 0:24:50.320 --> 0:24:52.040 no way this is real, but I wish it was 0:24:52.119 --> 0:24:54.879 is not an irrational feeling, right. You can contrast that 0:24:55.240 --> 0:24:59.679 to the posts of independent journalists and newsgrifter Richard Medhurst 0:24:59.760 --> 0:25:03.199 with four hundred and eighteen thousand followers, who posted this 0:25:03.240 --> 0:25:05.800 on June second, yem instruct the best ship in the 0:25:05.880 --> 0:25:08.119 US Navy with ballistic and cruise missiles. The ship is 0:25:08.160 --> 0:25:10.280 fleeing and the captain of the US S. Eisenhower tried 0:25:10.280 --> 0:25:12.080 to do damage control by posting a video of the 0:25:12.119 --> 0:25:14.520 deck on Twitter. But it's an old Instagram reel from 0:25:14.560 --> 0:25:20.000 thirteen weeks ago. Left Yemen never lie. 0:25:19.119 --> 0:25:21.680 And this is just an alternate reality that they've entered into. 0:25:21.800 --> 0:25:27.679 Now, yes, yes, you have departed reality in favor of 0:25:27.720 --> 0:25:31.359 one that you are crafting because it's more comforting than 0:25:31.400 --> 0:25:34.159 the one in which nothing seems to be able to 0:25:34.200 --> 0:25:37.399 actually alter the course of violence in Gaza, Right, So 0:25:37.480 --> 0:25:41.680 you're just deciding to believe in something else. Now. Community 0:25:41.760 --> 0:25:44.480 notes flagged this post, but it still has something like 0:25:44.480 --> 0:25:46.400 three hundred and fifty thousand views and more than four 0:25:46.480 --> 0:25:50.720 hundred thousand likes. Medhers tis hundred thousand or four thousand 0:25:50.920 --> 0:25:54.960 likes sorry, four hundred and eighteen thousand followers, four thousand 0:25:55.080 --> 0:25:56.960 likes on the post I see four thousand likes? Is 0:25:57.000 --> 0:25:59.520 still a mess? Is a sizable super? 0:26:00.000 --> 0:26:00.919 What's for large number? 0:26:01.160 --> 0:26:04.280 Yeah? Medhurst has leaned hard into repeating claims that the 0:26:04.320 --> 0:26:07.200 Houthis have sunk or damaged the Eisenhower, and another post 0:26:07.200 --> 0:26:09.159 with six thousand likes in eight hundred and twenty one 0:26:09.160 --> 0:26:11.560 thousand views, he describes the IKE as being hit with 0:26:11.560 --> 0:26:13.960 ballistic and cruise missiles and add, yeomen never lie in 0:26:14.000 --> 0:26:17.159 their press breathings, so I'm inclined to believe them. In 0:26:17.160 --> 0:26:21.280 one post, he I know it's. In one post, he 0:26:21.359 --> 0:26:23.359 notes that the Houthis recently shot down an m Q 0:26:23.520 --> 0:26:26.120 nine Reaper drone, which did happen, and claims the US 0:26:26.160 --> 0:26:30.120 won't admit to that either, and like, I haven't run 0:26:30.160 --> 0:26:33.240 into the US denying that this happened. There's three clear 0:26:33.320 --> 0:26:36.760 cases of m Q nine's being shot down last month alone, right, Like, 0:26:36.800 --> 0:26:39.120 we actually know a lot about this, which is part 0:26:39.119 --> 0:26:41.320 of why I don't believe the Eisenhower shot down, as 0:26:41.359 --> 0:26:45.159 they the Houthis were able to prove quite readily that 0:26:45.200 --> 0:26:47.920 they had shot down the MQ nine's. I have seen 0:26:47.960 --> 0:26:51.320 no proof that the Eisenhower's been hit. Right, And this 0:26:51.400 --> 0:26:53.359 isn't just a case where like the Houthis should be 0:26:53.400 --> 0:26:56.040 able to provide some actual proof if they'd done this. 0:26:56.400 --> 0:26:59.760 The Eisenhower is a floating city with a population of thousands. 0:27:00.040 --> 0:27:01.840 There's like seven or eight thousand people. I think at 0:27:01.920 --> 0:27:04.280 least in the whole strike group. I will conceie that 0:27:04.320 --> 0:27:07.080 the military could probably keep a lid on an attack 0:27:07.240 --> 0:27:10.560 against the Isenhower and might even temporarily be able to 0:27:10.640 --> 0:27:13.159 hide the fact that it had suffered minor damage. But 0:27:13.240 --> 0:27:17.000 you're not keeping any anything significant secret for the long haul, right, 0:27:17.080 --> 0:27:20.000 Like you just you can't. You can't keep secrets like that. 0:27:20.680 --> 0:27:23.160 There's too many people. They're going to talk to their families. 0:27:23.359 --> 0:27:26.119 If the boat goes down with thousands of people on board, 0:27:26.320 --> 0:27:28.119 family members are going to be like, boy, none of 0:27:28.200 --> 0:27:30.840 us have heard from our loved ones in a while. Right. 0:27:30.960 --> 0:27:33.960 Also think also like the government would say something and 0:27:34.000 --> 0:27:37.320 like start like a massive batch of retaliation, Like it's 0:27:37.359 --> 0:27:40.600 not like America would be like, oh, sh quiet, we just. 0:27:40.560 --> 0:27:42.280 Have to pretend this didn't happen. 0:27:42.520 --> 0:27:45.159 Yeah, No, they're going to be talking about a NonStop 0:27:45.200 --> 0:27:47.880 for the past like three months. 0:27:47.520 --> 0:27:49.680 We sent the Eisenhower and its crew to a nice 0:27:49.720 --> 0:27:56.000 farm up state exactly. So why why would the Hoothies, 0:27:56.080 --> 0:27:58.080 this is a question to ask, And why would the 0:27:58.080 --> 0:28:00.920 Hoothies make fake claims that are obvious fake claims about 0:28:00.920 --> 0:28:02.040 striking the Eisenhower? 0:28:02.200 --> 0:28:02.360 Right? 0:28:02.680 --> 0:28:04.560 And I think it's because at this point, for a 0:28:04.560 --> 0:28:08.040 sizeable chunk of people, fake Hoothy attacks on US assets 0:28:08.080 --> 0:28:10.240 are just as good as real ones. And I think 0:28:10.280 --> 0:28:13.160 there are people within the leadership cadres of the Houthis 0:28:13.240 --> 0:28:16.560 who know that perfectly well, it is entirely possible that 0:28:16.560 --> 0:28:19.679 the Hoothies find themselves low on munitions after months of 0:28:19.760 --> 0:28:23.760 conflict with the US, and somebody smart realized, like, what 0:28:23.800 --> 0:28:26.080 if we just say we shot at them, right, It'll 0:28:26.119 --> 0:28:28.840 have the same propaganda impact and we won't have to 0:28:28.880 --> 0:28:29.639 waste a missile. 0:28:29.760 --> 0:28:32.520 Right, No, you'll still be able to talk about it 0:28:32.560 --> 0:28:36.199 on your Los Angeles Twitch stream to your hundreds of 0:28:36.200 --> 0:28:38.080 thousands of followers, right. 0:28:39.000 --> 0:28:43.560 The ongoing genocide and if that's what actually is happening here, right, 0:28:43.600 --> 0:28:46.120 I could see that as a reasonably cunning move, you know, 0:28:46.160 --> 0:28:48.920 the ongoing genocide and gaza, the other inability of protest 0:28:49.000 --> 0:28:52.160 or arm resistance to change it in any way leads 0:28:52.200 --> 0:28:55.720 some people to a kind of mad desperation. In this desperation, 0:28:55.800 --> 0:28:57.760 the Houthis have become a symbol of hope to many 0:28:57.800 --> 0:28:59.959 people for the simple reason that they seem to be 0:29:00.080 --> 0:29:04.040 capable of taking action against the forces protecting Israel as 0:29:04.080 --> 0:29:07.240 Israel commits war crimes. Now, the reality of the situation 0:29:07.320 --> 0:29:09.720 is that the Huthis themselves have committed their share of 0:29:09.760 --> 0:29:12.040 war crimes, some of which are reminiscent of the very 0:29:12.040 --> 0:29:14.920 crimes committed by Israel. In December of twenty fourteen, the 0:29:14.960 --> 0:29:18.800 Houthis laid siege to Yemen's second city, Taies, leading to 0:29:18.840 --> 0:29:23.040 a humanitarian catastrophe, as this article from The Guardian lays out. Quote. 0:29:23.320 --> 0:29:26.360 Sincerely April, when the resistance, an alliance of local forces 0:29:26.400 --> 0:29:29.120 dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, fought off the Houthi's attempt 0:29:29.120 --> 0:29:32.320 to control the city, the militia retaliated by cutting off roads, 0:29:32.440 --> 0:29:35.240 preventing food and medical aid from getting in. Access is 0:29:35.280 --> 0:29:38.400 only allowed through a single checkpoint dubbed the Rafa Crossing 0:29:38.480 --> 0:29:40.960 by the residents after its more famous namesake, on the 0:29:41.000 --> 0:29:44.680 Egypt Gaza border. Every morning, long queues form outside the 0:29:44.680 --> 0:29:47.560 crossing by those wanting to enter the city, Huthi malicious 0:29:47.560 --> 0:29:50.960 search and confiscate medicine, cooking, gas, cigarettes, bottled water, or 0:29:51.000 --> 0:29:53.640 anything more than a small shopping bag of food. In 0:29:53.760 --> 0:29:56.640 order to survive. The city has for months been relying 0:29:56.640 --> 0:29:58.920 on groups of young boys and long trains of donkeys 0:29:58.960 --> 0:30:02.160 to bring its supplies a long and arduous journey through 0:30:02.200 --> 0:30:04.920 the mountains. But donkeys alone can hardly fulfill the needs 0:30:04.920 --> 0:30:07.480 of the city. Medicine and food have all but disappeared 0:30:07.480 --> 0:30:09.240 from the market, and the prices of what are left 0:30:09.240 --> 0:30:11.600 have jumped in the last few months, pushing most of 0:30:11.640 --> 0:30:16.080 the population below the poverty line. Now the comparison between 0:30:16.080 --> 0:30:20.000 Ties and Gaza are striking, right, Like the crossing was 0:30:20.000 --> 0:30:21.040 called Rafa you know. 0:30:21.160 --> 0:30:23.960 Yeah, no, they literally name that for the crossing. 0:30:24.400 --> 0:30:26.320 Yeah, and you know, you hear a lot of the 0:30:26.360 --> 0:30:29.120 same stories, like the hospitals basically were out of you know, 0:30:29.160 --> 0:30:31.480 anything to actually treat the injured. One of the one 0:30:31.520 --> 0:30:33.800 doctor at one of the two functioning hospitals in the 0:30:33.840 --> 0:30:36.760 city told the Guardian, we can't do operations, we can't 0:30:36.760 --> 0:30:38.960 put people in intensive care. We can only patch wounds 0:30:39.000 --> 0:30:42.000 and tell the patient you are welcome. To die here. Now, 0:30:42.120 --> 0:30:43.800 I want to be clear here, the other side in 0:30:43.840 --> 0:30:48.280 this conflict was inarguably even worse. The Saudi led coalition, 0:30:48.440 --> 0:30:51.520 using US weaponry put the whole country in a state 0:30:51.560 --> 0:30:56.080 of siege that like led to catastrophic famines and situations 0:30:56.200 --> 0:30:58.160 very similar and in some cases worse than what the 0:30:58.240 --> 0:31:02.600 Huthi did to Ties. Right, Like, this is the this 0:31:02.680 --> 0:31:05.640 is I mean, it's war, right, this is like unspeakable 0:31:05.720 --> 0:31:11.120 suffering compounding on unspeakable suffering. Right. You've probably heard that 0:31:11.160 --> 0:31:14.080 old saying when you stare into the abyss, the abyss 0:31:14.120 --> 0:31:17.160 stares back. And there's a corollary to that statement that 0:31:17.200 --> 0:31:19.480 I think is relevant to some of the fantasies that 0:31:19.560 --> 0:31:22.240 some people on the left have about the hoovies. When 0:31:22.240 --> 0:31:26.640 you start giving yourself up to false realities, eventually you 0:31:26.680 --> 0:31:29.960 can lose yourself entirely. And we're going to talk a 0:31:30.000 --> 0:31:34.760 little bit about that, but first lose yourself to these products. 0:31:46.120 --> 0:31:50.240 We're back. So people like Medhurst, you know, postlike by 0:31:50.240 --> 0:31:53.160 these guys, they aren't meant to inform people about the 0:31:53.200 --> 0:31:57.320 real world. Medhurst's fans, the people who take him seriously, 0:31:57.760 --> 0:32:00.840 have departed reality in favor of a fantasy. Because that 0:32:01.000 --> 0:32:04.360 fantasy world is the only place in which victory feels possible. 0:32:05.400 --> 0:32:07.160 There's a term that you and I talk about a 0:32:07.200 --> 0:32:10.000 lot garrison, coined by the author Robert Anton Wilson, that 0:32:10.040 --> 0:32:12.840 I think is useful in dealing with situations like this, 0:32:12.920 --> 0:32:16.120 and that term is reality tunnel. The concept is complex 0:32:16.120 --> 0:32:18.680 and explanations of it tend towards long, but the basic 0:32:18.720 --> 0:32:20.600 idea is that we in the modern world are all 0:32:20.640 --> 0:32:23.760 constantly flooded by information from our senses and from the 0:32:23.760 --> 0:32:26.800 different information delivery devices that we filled our world with. 0:32:27.160 --> 0:32:29.800 In order to function, we have to triage that information, 0:32:30.120 --> 0:32:32.520 to pare it away until we get to a reality 0:32:32.520 --> 0:32:35.320 that we can live inside. The fact that human beings 0:32:35.320 --> 0:32:38.760 can and perhaps inherently do this is not necessarily bad, 0:32:39.160 --> 0:32:41.480 and in fact, I might argue that without the ability 0:32:41.520 --> 0:32:45.160 to choose and flip between different realities to change the channel, 0:32:45.240 --> 0:32:49.040 as Wilson put it, positive progress is impossible. I found 0:32:49.080 --> 0:32:51.320 this explained well in an essay on Wilson's work by 0:32:51.360 --> 0:32:55.560 Mikola Bilokonski. Quote, we can slide between reality tunnels by 0:32:55.560 --> 0:32:58.520 consciously choosing to pay attention to things we might normally ignore. 0:32:58.840 --> 0:33:00.719 It's hard at first, but is skill that we can 0:33:00.760 --> 0:33:03.640 develop with practice. Train yourself to pay more attention to 0:33:03.640 --> 0:33:05.840 the emotions of the people you're speaking to, for instance, 0:33:05.840 --> 0:33:08.320 and you'll be surprised at how much richer the world gets. 0:33:08.600 --> 0:33:11.040 Train yourself to pay attention to your caloric intake, and 0:33:11.120 --> 0:33:15.040 eating fundamentally changes. Train yourself to hear the voices of minorities, 0:33:15.040 --> 0:33:20.320 and suddenly you see racism and sexism everywhere. Now, those 0:33:20.360 --> 0:33:23.480 other reality tunnels like that you can key yourself in 0:33:23.520 --> 0:33:26.680 on are always there. They always exist, right, You just 0:33:26.840 --> 0:33:30.120 had to actually learn the filters that you existed within 0:33:30.160 --> 0:33:31.440 in order to access them. 0:33:31.480 --> 0:33:34.240 You know, whether or not you're tuned in doesn't mean 0:33:34.280 --> 0:33:35.959 like they just don't exist. 0:33:36.000 --> 0:33:40.080 They're still there. Yeah. Yeah, So again the constant, you know, 0:33:40.120 --> 0:33:42.320 the fact that people can like pick and choose which 0:33:42.360 --> 0:33:44.800 reality chair and can change the channel, so to speak, 0:33:45.160 --> 0:33:48.719 isn't necessarily bad and in fact is part of you know, 0:33:48.880 --> 0:33:52.560 necessary positive progress. But some people don't want to hop 0:33:52.600 --> 0:33:57.000 between tunnels and explore the dazzling variety of realities that exist. 0:33:57.280 --> 0:33:59.240 They want to pick a tunnel in which they feel 0:33:59.280 --> 0:34:02.080 comfortable and then burrows so deep into it that no 0:34:02.200 --> 0:34:04.920 other realities can find them. I want you to think 0:34:04.960 --> 0:34:07.840 of one of my favorite recent Trump World grifts, right, 0:34:08.040 --> 0:34:10.600 is these kind of this company that started putting out 0:34:10.600 --> 0:34:13.759 these like ads with an obvious AI Donald Trump or 0:34:13.760 --> 0:34:16.640 Elon Musk voice where they're like, Trump is going to 0:34:16.760 --> 0:34:19.440 change the monetary system, and if you buy these like 0:34:19.600 --> 0:34:24.040 trump Bucks debit card things or fake checks, he's going 0:34:24.080 --> 0:34:25.759 to like when he changes it, they'll be worth a 0:34:26.120 --> 0:34:28.160 ten thousand times what you put in. So if you 0:34:28.160 --> 0:34:29.840 put in two or three thousand dollars worth of this, 0:34:30.000 --> 0:34:33.000 you'll be rich. He's doing this to reward his loyal fans. 0:34:33.280 --> 0:34:36.360 He's gonna like he's gonna fix everything, and you'll finally 0:34:36.440 --> 0:34:38.919 be rich. Right, you know you deserve to be rich, right, 0:34:39.320 --> 0:34:42.839 And a bunch of people bought these like fake promisary 0:34:42.880 --> 0:34:44.719 notes and then like went to Bank of America to 0:34:44.760 --> 0:34:46.960 cash them in, and the bank was like, well, no, 0:34:47.360 --> 0:34:50.320 that's not this, this isn't real, this, this is nothing 0:34:50.360 --> 0:34:53.240 at all, right, And you know, these people got fleeced. 0:34:53.280 --> 0:34:54.759 And one way to look at the people who got 0:34:54.760 --> 0:34:57.680 fleeced is like, well they're dumb, right, These people are stupid. 0:34:57.719 --> 0:34:59.640 You know, they did a stupid thing. They believed something 0:34:59.640 --> 0:35:03.960 that was obviously fake, and you can take that out 0:35:04.000 --> 0:35:08.480 of their story if you want. I don't think that's helpful, though. 0:35:09.040 --> 0:35:12.640 The reality is that these people represent a cautionary tale. 0:35:13.120 --> 0:35:15.360 They didn't start out believing that the guy from The 0:35:15.400 --> 0:35:19.600 Apprentice was their messiah. Their break from consensus reality began 0:35:19.719 --> 0:35:23.040 years or decades earlier, and it's going to be different 0:35:23.120 --> 0:35:25.560 for every individual person. When I think about my own 0:35:25.640 --> 0:35:29.680 family members who came to believe pretty unhinged things that 0:35:29.840 --> 0:35:32.800 you know, figures within the Republican Party or Trump himself 0:35:32.800 --> 0:35:36.680 told them, I tend to trace their break from reality 0:35:37.280 --> 0:35:40.040 back to well back to the day when the calming, 0:35:40.160 --> 0:35:43.360 charismatic voice of Ronald Reagan said this about the Iran 0:35:43.440 --> 0:35:46.600 Contra scandal, a deal in which his administration gave Iron 0:35:46.680 --> 0:35:50.840 weapons in exchange for hostages. And this is Reagan. A 0:35:50.840 --> 0:35:53.160 few months ago, I told the American people, I did 0:35:53.160 --> 0:35:55.879 not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best 0:35:55.920 --> 0:35:58.360 intentions tell me that's true, but the facts and the 0:35:58.360 --> 0:36:02.239 evidence tell me it is not. Yes, And I think 0:36:02.320 --> 0:36:07.000 that line is an important moment in the shattering of 0:36:07.440 --> 0:36:11.560 what we might call reality, consensus reality, right, The undeniable, 0:36:11.960 --> 0:36:14.480 actual truth is that Ronald Reagan and many members of 0:36:14.480 --> 0:36:17.400 his administration committed high crimes and light about it. But 0:36:17.480 --> 0:36:20.719 Reagan's supporters, his fans, people like my parents, loved him 0:36:20.719 --> 0:36:24.080 too much to accept this, and old Ronnie offered them 0:36:24.080 --> 0:36:26.920 a way out, ignore the facts and the evidence, and 0:36:27.040 --> 0:36:30.640 embraced the deeper truth of his heart and his best intentions. 0:36:31.200 --> 0:36:33.680 And in that moment, I think that's where a lot 0:36:33.800 --> 0:36:36.360 of Americans, who are now in an even more unhinged place, 0:36:36.680 --> 0:36:40.200 started burrowing down and started tunneling away from their friends 0:36:40.200 --> 0:36:43.399 and family and towards the heart of something dark. As 0:36:43.400 --> 0:36:45.960 the years went on, the consequences of many Reagan era 0:36:46.040 --> 0:36:49.960 economic and social policies became impossible to ignore. No wealth 0:36:50.000 --> 0:36:53.800 trickled down, Mourning did not return to America. The promise 0:36:53.800 --> 0:36:56.280 of the Internet boom yielded to the dot com bubble 0:36:56.320 --> 0:36:59.560 bursting September eleventh sobered us up from the hallucination of 0:36:59.600 --> 0:37:02.279 permanent victory. After the end of the Cold War, the 0:37:02.360 --> 0:37:06.359 housing market crashed, the hideous reality of climate change became unavoidable, 0:37:06.600 --> 0:37:09.720 The promise of a bright future faded, and people buried 0:37:09.719 --> 0:37:13.400 themselves deeper in fantasies to avoid oblique and empty horizon. 0:37:14.239 --> 0:37:17.400 And all Throughout this the left prided itself on a 0:37:17.440 --> 0:37:21.320 sort of logical sobriety, a willingness to stare into the abyss, 0:37:21.320 --> 0:37:24.000 to accept the reality of our dire moment, and to 0:37:24.040 --> 0:37:28.120 propose radical solutions. Yet one by one, the different protest 0:37:28.200 --> 0:37:31.640 movements put out by the left flopped and fizzled. Promising 0:37:31.719 --> 0:37:34.920 organizers and ideological leaders were revealed as frauds or became 0:37:34.920 --> 0:37:39.200 corrupted by the system. Capitalism failed to fall or reform, 0:37:39.800 --> 0:37:43.040 and rather than confront the dire complex reality that leaves 0:37:43.120 --> 0:37:47.280 us in, increasing numbers of leftists found alternative realities, served 0:37:47.320 --> 0:37:51.799 eagerly by an alliance of conmen and paid propagandists. Now, 0:37:52.680 --> 0:37:56.280 leftists have always been just as vulnerable to vicious fantasy 0:37:56.320 --> 0:37:59.680 as conservatives. This has proven well in the last century. 0:37:59.680 --> 0:38:03.480 There's a case of a Marxist academic named Malcolm Caldwell, 0:38:03.800 --> 0:38:06.800 who I think is which I think is valuable depending 0:38:06.800 --> 0:38:10.839 on who you talk to about Caldwell. He's the Scottish academic. 0:38:10.920 --> 0:38:15.440 He was a college professor, apparently a pretty good economist, 0:38:15.920 --> 0:38:21.600 and he also had this weird thing for agrarian communist movements, 0:38:21.640 --> 0:38:23.960 which he thought were He believed that there was this 0:38:24.000 --> 0:38:27.120 like massive global famine coming, and he believed that these 0:38:27.239 --> 0:38:30.960 like back to the land Marxist movements sweeping Southeast Asia 0:38:31.000 --> 0:38:34.000 where the only way forward for a lot of humanity. 0:38:34.040 --> 0:38:36.360 He was this like third worldist. A lot of his 0:38:36.440 --> 0:38:38.800 belief was kind of centering that, you know, the United 0:38:38.840 --> 0:38:41.920 States was the source of all evil in the world effectively, 0:38:42.320 --> 0:38:44.600 but this kind of led him to he became a 0:38:44.640 --> 0:38:47.560 stan of every communist state, even the ones that were 0:38:47.560 --> 0:38:49.799 in conflict with each other. He traveled to like North 0:38:49.880 --> 0:38:52.799 Korea and came back like talking about all of the 0:38:52.840 --> 0:38:56.480 wonderful accomplishments of Jucha ideology. You know, he was in 0:38:56.520 --> 0:38:58.440 love with Vietnam, and he was also in love with 0:38:58.560 --> 0:39:02.319 Khmer Rouge in Cambo. And that's kind of part of 0:39:02.320 --> 0:39:05.040 the evidence that like he had entered a reality tunnel 0:39:05.040 --> 0:39:07.520 that had taken him away from any kind of logical reality, 0:39:07.560 --> 0:39:12.280 because like Cambodia and Vietnam went to war, right, Vietnam 0:39:12.320 --> 0:39:16.520 invaded Cambodia, Like these these two were not like Communist 0:39:16.600 --> 0:39:20.320 fellow travelers on the same side of a conflict. Whenever 0:39:20.360 --> 0:39:23.240 this would get brought up to Caldwell when he'd argue about, 0:39:23.320 --> 0:39:25.640 you know, Vietnam and the conflict that Vietnam was having 0:39:25.680 --> 0:39:28.040 with Cambodia, or he you know, people would try to 0:39:28.120 --> 0:39:30.680 argue with him about the realities of the Khmer Rouge system. 0:39:30.920 --> 0:39:33.400 He would just kind of shut down like he was 0:39:33.200 --> 0:39:38.160 he was, yeah, he couldn't talk about it right now. Eventually, Caldwell, 0:39:38.239 --> 0:39:40.600 because he's an academic, he travels to a lot of 0:39:40.600 --> 0:39:42.759 these countries and you know, it's fine. He travels to 0:39:42.800 --> 0:39:45.040 the USSR, he gets a tour there. He travels to 0:39:45.040 --> 0:39:46.719 North Korea, he gets a tour there, he gets a 0:39:46.760 --> 0:39:50.120 tour at Vietnam. That's all fine. All of those states 0:39:50.160 --> 0:39:52.560 are saying states, right, which is not to say that 0:39:52.680 --> 0:39:55.600 like they don't do bad things, but they're they're run 0:39:55.640 --> 0:39:58.600 by people who like, there's no benefit in us to 0:39:58.600 --> 0:40:00.880 anything bad happening to this guy who's out there in 0:40:00.920 --> 0:40:04.560 the West writing nice things about our regimes. Right, Polepot 0:40:04.600 --> 0:40:07.840 was not sane, The Khmer Rouge was not sane. So 0:40:08.239 --> 0:40:11.960 he goes to Cambodia with two American journalists, one of 0:40:12.000 --> 0:40:15.480 whom had been in Cambodia in the years prior to 0:40:15.520 --> 0:40:18.880 the Khmer Rouge overthrow of the US backed government of 0:40:18.960 --> 0:40:21.600 Law Nol and knew the country well, and when she 0:40:21.760 --> 0:40:24.120 got there, they had all these arguments where he was like, 0:40:24.360 --> 0:40:26.720 I think the revolution is working. You know, it's not perfect, 0:40:26.760 --> 0:40:29.000 but it needs its time. Look at all the wonderful 0:40:29.040 --> 0:40:32.359 accomplishments already. And she would point out, I have been 0:40:32.880 --> 0:40:37.120 to these cities years ago, and there's no people anymore. 0:40:37.360 --> 0:40:41.000 All of the people are gone. Something is terribly wrong, 0:40:41.400 --> 0:40:44.040 and he just couldn't listen to her. So they're there 0:40:44.080 --> 0:40:46.719 a couple of weeks and he gets invited to have 0:40:46.760 --> 0:40:50.000 a meeting with Polepot, and you know, he has a 0:40:50.040 --> 0:40:53.200 meeting with him right after these journalists do, and he 0:40:53.239 --> 0:40:55.480 comes back from it really excited, being like we had 0:40:55.520 --> 0:40:58.080 a great talk. He's such a smart man. You know, 0:40:58.120 --> 0:41:01.239 we talked about economics. I feel he's invited me back 0:41:01.320 --> 0:41:03.640 next year, you know. And by the way, within like 0:41:03.760 --> 0:41:06.840 weeks of this, Vietnam invades and forces Polepot out of 0:41:06.840 --> 0:41:12.040 the capitol, right like the state of the Khmer rouge 0:41:12.080 --> 0:41:14.800 was deeply precarious at this point. But he comes out 0:41:14.840 --> 0:41:19.040 super optimistic, and then later that night a gunman shoots 0:41:19.080 --> 0:41:21.839 him to death and then shoots himself to death. It 0:41:21.920 --> 0:41:24.040 is really unclear to this day. It's a bit of 0:41:24.040 --> 0:41:28.520 a mystery what happened. The most likely explanation is that 0:41:28.600 --> 0:41:32.319 the Khmer Rouge wanted to pin the murder of a 0:41:32.440 --> 0:41:37.759 leftist Western academic on Vietnam to try and generate international 0:41:37.760 --> 0:41:42.880 outrage against Vietnam who was about to invade. It's possible 0:41:43.080 --> 0:41:45.440 Vietnam killed him for but I don't really see a 0:41:45.480 --> 0:41:49.440 benefit to Vietnam and doing that again. They invade right 0:41:49.520 --> 0:41:54.319 after this. It seems like one of the journalists who 0:41:54.360 --> 0:41:56.120 was there basically was like a poppot, was out of 0:41:56.160 --> 0:41:58.120 his fucking mind. Of course he would do this. There's 0:41:58.160 --> 0:42:00.560 no like, there's no trying to lay out like the 0:42:00.640 --> 0:42:04.040 rationality behind this man's actions. I think what's more interesting 0:42:04.120 --> 0:42:08.920 is Caldwell had been presented with plenty of evidence that 0:42:09.000 --> 0:42:13.520 the Khmer Rouge regime was deeply evil and violent, and 0:42:13.520 --> 0:42:15.759 in fact, he had published right before he went over there, 0:42:15.920 --> 0:42:18.839 he published an article about like the successes of their 0:42:18.880 --> 0:42:22.800 agrarian reforms and the Khmer Rouge government official that he 0:42:23.000 --> 0:42:25.799 cited in that paper that's like the basis of most 0:42:25.800 --> 0:42:27.720 of his claims about how well the reforms had worked 0:42:28.000 --> 0:42:30.160 with it like a couple of weeks before he arrived 0:42:30.160 --> 0:42:33.200 in Cambodia was tortured to death in the S twenty 0:42:33.239 --> 0:42:33.840 one prison. 0:42:34.400 --> 0:42:35.600 Well, that's not a great sign. 0:42:36.000 --> 0:42:39.520 Not a great sign anyway. I bring this guy up 0:42:39.560 --> 0:42:41.400 because I think he's maybe the best example of like 0:42:42.400 --> 0:42:45.399 the damage that you do to yourself when you let 0:42:45.480 --> 0:42:48.480 yourself fall into these tunnels. Because Caldwell, he's not one 0:42:48.480 --> 0:42:50.440 of these like gray zone guys. He didn't make a 0:42:50.480 --> 0:42:54.480 bunch of money being a stand for dictatorships. He seems 0:42:54.520 --> 0:42:56.719 to everyone who talked, even the people who thought he 0:42:56.880 --> 0:42:59.239 was like out of his mind and his opinions on 0:42:59.239 --> 0:43:02.120 the Khmer rouge, he was a really nice man. He 0:43:02.200 --> 0:43:05.000 was a family man, he was a good teacher. He 0:43:05.640 --> 0:43:09.759 just completely left reality in this one thing, and it 0:43:09.840 --> 0:43:10.880 led him to oblivion. 0:43:11.000 --> 0:43:13.920 You know, I've been thinking about a lot of similar 0:43:13.960 --> 0:43:17.120 stuff in terms of like what Israel's currently doing, and 0:43:17.160 --> 0:43:20.440 like there's so many people who are just vocally supportive 0:43:20.480 --> 0:43:23.080 every single action that's being done. And there's even been 0:43:23.719 --> 0:43:28.600 attacks where I've seen people like Vietnam ly uh like 0:43:28.719 --> 0:43:30.600 defend what happened. It's like, no, this was like a 0:43:30.640 --> 0:43:34.399 necessary strike. It did for all these reasons, blah blah 0:43:34.400 --> 0:43:36.839 blah blah blah. Even if even if someone like net 0:43:36.840 --> 0:43:39.200 and Yahoo then like like comes out and says like, actually, no, 0:43:39.280 --> 0:43:41.440 this was like quote unquote like terrible accident or whatever, 0:43:42.120 --> 0:43:46.000 there will still be people defending it. And like, I 0:43:46.040 --> 0:43:50.799 don't know if all of these people are literally like bloodthirsty, 0:43:50.880 --> 0:43:53.080 like I don't know if they actually really want to 0:43:53.120 --> 0:43:57.480 see like everyone in Gaza killed. I'm sure there's there's 0:43:57.760 --> 0:44:01.440 maybe some people who are like just bad, But I 0:44:01.440 --> 0:44:04.960 think the reality tunnel version, I think is a lot 0:44:05.000 --> 0:44:08.600 more useful for understanding how there's so many otherwise very 0:44:08.680 --> 0:44:13.120 like normal, normal people who feel totally fine about cheering 0:44:13.160 --> 0:44:15.520 on the actions of the State of Israel right now 0:44:15.760 --> 0:44:17.919 as there you know, as the death toll just gets 0:44:18.000 --> 0:44:20.960 higher and higher and higher every single day. No, it's 0:44:20.960 --> 0:44:25.880 certainly been something I've thought about very often these past 0:44:25.880 --> 0:44:28.879 few months, as I as I'm sure many other people are, 0:44:28.920 --> 0:44:31.880 you know, both staring into the abyss on on Twitter 0:44:31.920 --> 0:44:34.440 dot com, where everyone has a take. But then also 0:44:34.520 --> 0:44:36.560 you know, if if you're ever going outo any like, 0:44:36.680 --> 0:44:39.080 if you're ever going into any of these protests, there 0:44:39.120 --> 0:44:41.640 will probably be like a group of Zionist counter protesters 0:44:41.880 --> 0:44:46.320 yelling something and it's it's a really tricky thing to navigate. 0:44:47.520 --> 0:44:51.760 Yeah, it is like it because like and I guess 0:44:51.800 --> 0:44:55.360 what the scary question to me is, like how do 0:44:55.480 --> 0:44:58.239 you communicate with someone who is not living in the 0:44:58.280 --> 0:45:01.799 same reality? And like, totally, I don't think you really can. 0:45:02.360 --> 0:45:05.320 I think sometimes, I know sometimes because I've seen it happen. 0:45:05.680 --> 0:45:09.600 Sometimes people just get out of that alternate reality on 0:45:09.640 --> 0:45:12.879 their own. Right, that does happen, thank god, But it's 0:45:12.920 --> 0:45:16.360 not like reliable that it happens. And I have you know, 0:45:16.400 --> 0:45:19.840 as someone who has been in this space of researching cults, 0:45:19.840 --> 0:45:24.279 of researching disinformation for years now, I'm not aware of 0:45:24.280 --> 0:45:28.319 any reliable ways to break people out of these now 0:45:28.560 --> 0:45:31.359 you know, the these tunnels when they get themselves in. 0:45:31.440 --> 0:45:34.759 And that's the scariest thing to me. Right, there's a 0:45:34.880 --> 0:45:36.680 number of people. I don't think it's huge in an 0:45:36.680 --> 0:45:39.760 electoral sense, but it's probably thousands or tens of thousands 0:45:39.760 --> 0:45:42.319 of people who now believe that the Eisenhower is either 0:45:42.360 --> 0:45:44.839 badly damaged or at the bottom of the sea, and 0:45:44.880 --> 0:45:47.400 they will keep believing that the same way that like 0:45:48.239 --> 0:45:50.239 a chunk of people believe that when they look up 0:45:50.239 --> 0:45:54.400 and see clouds, every cloud they see is like poison. 0:45:54.440 --> 0:45:57.279 The US government shot out into the sky using our 0:45:57.320 --> 0:46:01.120 secret planes to murder people with fucking whatever. I don't 0:46:01.160 --> 0:46:03.680 know it's anyway, or. 0:46:03.600 --> 0:46:06.480 The belief that literally ever university in Gaza has been 0:46:06.480 --> 0:46:08.400 secretly turned into a military base. 0:46:08.480 --> 0:46:10.160 Right, yeah, yeah, exactly. 0:46:10.640 --> 0:46:13.600 It's they're like underground tunnels. It's like, you know, it's 0:46:13.600 --> 0:46:16.439 all of all of all of these things that it's 0:46:16.480 --> 0:46:18.439 not just like a I don't know if this switch 0:46:18.480 --> 0:46:21.680 happens immediately. I don't think it does. They're there there. 0:46:21.960 --> 0:46:24.200 There may be like a tipping point. It is often 0:46:24.200 --> 0:46:27.600 a very gradual shift into different reality tunnels, and then 0:46:27.640 --> 0:46:31.040 you don't realize how far you are in one until 0:46:31.080 --> 0:46:33.200 you're like fully in it, and then in that case 0:46:33.239 --> 0:46:35.640 you probably don't even realize yourself. People on the outside 0:46:35.840 --> 0:46:38.480 will point out, oh wow, this is this is uh, 0:46:38.560 --> 0:46:43.000 this is some interesting beliefs you have suddenly fallen into. Yeah, 0:46:43.080 --> 0:46:45.680 but it it doesn't, It doesn't happen overnight. It is 0:46:45.760 --> 0:46:47.960 it is. It is a slow shift in a lot 0:46:47.960 --> 0:46:51.080 of cases, and yeah, laying out you know, quote unquote 0:46:51.120 --> 0:46:54.319 facts and logic often cases does not help at all 0:46:54.360 --> 0:46:57.400 and will actually hurt. It will produce a backfire effect. 0:46:58.000 --> 0:46:59.640 That's not the case for everybody, but that is the 0:47:00.120 --> 0:47:03.480 case for a lot of people. And it's easy to discount, 0:47:03.560 --> 0:47:06.880 you know, people yelling horrible things at you at a protest. 0:47:06.920 --> 0:47:10.919 It's easy to discount people you know, saying horrible things 0:47:10.960 --> 0:47:14.319 on Twitter. But it's more frustrating when it's like you're 0:47:14.400 --> 0:47:17.120 on who you like previously, like had a good relationship with, 0:47:17.840 --> 0:47:20.759 and yeah, no, I mean this, this this kind of 0:47:20.800 --> 0:47:23.680 reminds me of like, you know, attempts at QAnon and 0:47:23.719 --> 0:47:26.759 deprogramming back in like twenty nineteen, where you know, we 0:47:26.840 --> 0:47:30.560 had this influx of influx of older people and boomers 0:47:31.480 --> 0:47:34.799 and sometimes just like not super old people either also 0:47:34.880 --> 0:47:37.440 just like like moms in their thirties who started like 0:47:37.600 --> 0:47:41.880 leaving all this stuff and cutting them off from you know, 0:47:42.520 --> 0:47:46.359 contact with you or other people doesn't help, obviously, but 0:47:46.440 --> 0:47:48.239 they can also be really hard to maintain, like a 0:47:48.280 --> 0:47:51.399 good relationship. And yeah, it's a weird balance of being 0:47:51.400 --> 0:47:54.279 able to provide a little bit of like compassion to 0:47:54.480 --> 0:47:57.360 someone and not completely cut them off while also maintaining 0:47:57.360 --> 0:48:00.160 your own personal boundaries. It's it's a really tricky thing. 0:48:00.200 --> 0:48:02.240 But in a lot of the cases of the QAnon stuff, 0:48:02.719 --> 0:48:04.919 all the most successful things that I've heard about people 0:48:04.920 --> 0:48:09.360 getting out of it. It did require a line, like 0:48:10.040 --> 0:48:12.840 there had to be some connecting thread to the person, 0:48:13.440 --> 0:48:18.040 and over time that thread could be pulled upon and 0:48:18.080 --> 0:48:20.840 maybe the person would use that thread as like as 0:48:20.920 --> 0:48:24.719 like a crutch when the reality so slowly started to 0:48:24.719 --> 0:48:27.879 crumble around them. And it's really tricky and I don't 0:48:27.920 --> 0:48:30.520 have any good solutions for this. Nobody does. Anyone who 0:48:30.560 --> 0:48:33.879 does say they do is also a grifter who's lying 0:48:33.880 --> 0:48:35.880 and trying to make money. 0:48:36.000 --> 0:48:38.960 Yeah, I will agree with you. The closest we come 0:48:39.080 --> 0:48:43.240 to there being a solution is don't cut off ties 0:48:43.280 --> 0:48:45.239 with the person. I mean unless you have Obviously, there 0:48:45.239 --> 0:48:47.480 are some things that people can come to believe and 0:48:47.600 --> 0:48:49.640 advocate for that you have to, Like, I'm not saying 0:48:49.680 --> 0:48:52.520 that that line doesn't exist. Like I had someone reach 0:48:52.560 --> 0:48:54.680 out about a family member who had started to believe 0:48:55.520 --> 0:48:59.200 some conspiracy stuff regarding extra terrestrials that was like obviously 0:48:59.320 --> 0:49:01.560 untrue and it worried them, and I was like, well, look, 0:49:01.920 --> 0:49:03.279 you know, you don't have to tell them that you 0:49:03.480 --> 0:49:05.319 believe them. You can say like, I don't you know, 0:49:05.680 --> 0:49:07.440 really feel the same way you do about this, But 0:49:07.440 --> 0:49:09.520 I'm always down to talk about it, right or like 0:49:09.640 --> 0:49:12.080 you know, I'm always you know, here to to listen 0:49:12.120 --> 0:49:13.719 if you want to talk about this and let him 0:49:13.760 --> 0:49:16.360 know that like they have a connection still, if you 0:49:16.400 --> 0:49:18.279 make sure that there's like still a way they can 0:49:18.280 --> 0:49:20.840 get out of that tunnel and back up to something 0:49:20.840 --> 0:49:23.200 that resembles reality, maybe they will, you know. 0:49:24.120 --> 0:49:28.560 Yeah, I I really wish Robert Ana Wilson could have 0:49:28.600 --> 0:49:33.440 seen the twenty era Internet. I'm sure he would have 0:49:33.520 --> 0:49:34.240 had some thoughts. 0:49:34.480 --> 0:49:36.840 He would he would have had some fascinating things to 0:49:36.880 --> 0:49:37.440 write about it. 0:49:37.560 --> 0:49:40.720 Yeah, well this is this has been an exciting tale. 0:49:40.800 --> 0:49:43.200 Yes, indeed, so, I don't know, go. 0:49:43.239 --> 0:49:44.520 Aircraft carrier down. 0:49:44.600 --> 0:49:46.880 We did it, Joe, Yeah, we did it. Joe. Go 0:49:47.000 --> 0:49:50.319 destroy the USS Eisenhower in your own life, just like 0:49:50.560 --> 0:49:52.600 the fake Koothies. Pretend did. 0:49:58.160 --> 0:50:00.560 It Could Happen year as a production of Kools Media. 0:50:00.760 --> 0:50:03.440 For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website 0:50:03.480 --> 0:50:06.600 coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, 0:50:06.600 --> 0:50:09.799 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can 0:50:09.800 --> 0:50:12.520 find sources for it Could Happen here, updated monthly at 0:50:12.520 --> 0:50:15.800 coolzonemedia dot com slash sources, thanks for listening.