Speaker 1: Al Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about
Speaker 2: things falling apart, and today, the thing that's falling apart
Speaker 2: is our shared concept of reality, our ability to exists
Speaker 2: as a population within the same world, or at least
Speaker 2: versions of the same world that even slightly interact with
Speaker 2: each other. And my guest for this episode about the
Speaker 2: breaking of reality Garrison, Davis Garrison, what do you know
Speaker 2: about the USS Eisenhower?
Speaker 3: Is that is that from Star Trek?
Speaker 2: Is that a yeah? Huh, that's the ship that they
Speaker 2: all fly around and in Star Trek, the many voyages
Speaker 2: of the Starship Eisenhower. It's continuing mission.
Speaker 3: It's such a different show.
Speaker 2: Every every episode they're just fucking with Guatemala, Like every
Speaker 2: single episode, the Cards just finding another way to overthrow
Speaker 2: the government of Guatemala.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, that's like alternate universe evil Gene Roddenberry.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, if Gene Roddenberry had been like a
Speaker 2: hardcore conservative. Yeah, speaking of hardcore conservatives, we are talking
Speaker 2: again about alternate realities and the USS Eisenhower is relevant
Speaker 2: to that because it's kind of been the subject of
Speaker 2: a reality fracture recently. Just talking in terms of like
Speaker 2: things that are actually true. The USS Eisenhower is a
Speaker 2: very big aircraft carrier. It's got something like five thousand
Speaker 2: people and its crew. It's nuclear powered. It can stay
Speaker 2: I think up to like twenty five years. Potentially, it
Speaker 2: could stay in the field without needing to like refuel
Speaker 2: or anything like that.
Speaker 3: That's wild.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah. Aircraft carriers are insane things. And it is
Speaker 2: the center of an air Force carrier group, which is
Speaker 2: a group of I think there's something like ten or
Speaker 2: eleven other ships in it, a combination of like you've
Speaker 2: got like destroyers, these little like missile ships. I think
Speaker 2: there's some submarines, probably an ice cream ship in there somewhere.
Speaker 2: That's kind of like a Keith thing the US military does. Anyway,
Speaker 2: the Eisenhower is the ship that's out in the Gulf
Speaker 2: of Aiden right now, throwing down with the Houthis. And
Speaker 2: on the thirty first of last month, there was a
Speaker 2: series of attacks launched by the Eisenhower along with some
Speaker 2: of our British allies, striking thirteen Hoothy targets at various
Speaker 2: locations in Yemen. This was in response to a number
Speaker 2: of attacks that the Hoothies had launched recently on shipping
Speaker 2: in the region, including I think they hit a Greek
Speaker 2: ship a couple of times. The strikes came also a
Speaker 2: day after the Hoothis shot down an m Q nine
Speaker 2: Reaper drone, which was the third downing of a Reaper
Speaker 2: drone in May, so the Hoothies have been dropping Reapers
Speaker 2: pretty regularly. So anyway, all of this led to a
Speaker 2: massive series of strikes that were kind of you know,
Speaker 2: launched from the Eisenhower on Houthy targets. Houthy rebels said
Speaker 2: that the air strikes killed at least sixteen people and
Speaker 2: wounded thirty five others. I think that death toll has
Speaker 2: risen since the article, the Washington Post article I'm looking
Speaker 2: at now, and that you know, we're going to be
Speaker 2: talking about things that are credible and not credible. If
Speaker 2: the Hoothies say, given the attacks launched, that death toll
Speaker 2: seems pretty credible to me, just based on other strikes
Speaker 2: that I've read about. The Houthis launched a retaliatory strikes
Speaker 2: on the Enterprise, or at least they claim that they did,
Speaker 2: wait on the on the Eisenhower. We did used to
Speaker 2: have an aircraft carrier name the Enterprise. I don't. I
Speaker 2: think we've decommissioned it since I'm blaming real fast.
Speaker 3: He would he would not, he will, he.
Speaker 2: Would, he would be fucking his way through the Houthis
Speaker 2: already Kirk would have. That's ah, God, Star Trek is
Speaker 2: so much more fun to talk about than actual geopolitics, uh,
Speaker 2: which are mostly depressing with the genocide and all. Anyway,
Speaker 2: the Houthis claimed that they launched an attack on the
Speaker 2: Eisenhower the US. The do O D says that they
Speaker 2: did not. The Houthy press person stated that they hit
Speaker 2: the Eisenhower. The hit was accurate and direct. Again, there's
Speaker 2: no evidence of this whatsoever that's been posted. The story
Speaker 2: seems to have started percolating out into kind of lefty
Speaker 2: media when Huthy Press people made this announcement. I think
Speaker 2: the first direct statement I found about it outside of
Speaker 2: like Hoothy press resources was a Twitter account called for
Speaker 2: an online news magazine calling West Asian geopolitics called The Cradle.
Speaker 2: I'm not wildly familiar with the Cradle. They've got something
Speaker 2: like one hundred and nine thousand followers on Twitter, and
Speaker 2: they seem to mostly be you could say, like a
Speaker 2: broadly sort of anti imperialist left. Most of their content
Speaker 2: lately is very pro Gaza. You know, there's stuff like
Speaker 2: articles about Israeli organ trafficking networks in Turkey. You know,
Speaker 2: they've got like video clips of like pro Palestinian protesters
Speaker 2: getting dunks in on pro israel protesters, a like protests
Speaker 2: and stuff like that, very standard stuff. On the thirty first,
Speaker 2: they posted a they made a post, yeah, basically restating
Speaker 2: what the Houthis had said, although they instead of saying
Speaker 2: the Houthis made a claim that they had struck the Eisenhower,
Speaker 2: they claimed it was ye Many armed forces. It's an
Speaker 2: easy way to tell that someone is not accurately reporting
Speaker 2: on what's happening in Yemen because the Houthis are actively
Speaker 2: at war with yem Many armed forces. Like that is
Speaker 2: the actual reality of the situation on the ground over there.
Speaker 2: So this got picked up by chunks of lefty media,
Speaker 2: and particularly like American lefty media. I think one of
Speaker 2: the first big accounts to take this story was a
Speaker 2: guy named Ashton Forbes. You know Ashton.
Speaker 3: I don't think I've heard of Ashton Forbes. This is
Speaker 3: this whole like left media. Yeah, anti imperialism bubble has
Speaker 3: just gotten so big the past like six months.
Speaker 2: These are mostly accounts, and I believe this is true
Speaker 2: for Ashton too, who like they blew up in the
Speaker 2: wake of October seventh once, particularly once the Israeli started
Speaker 2: launching massive strikes on Gaza. And they primarily exist within
Speaker 2: the profit ecosystem that Elon established in Twitter, right, where
Speaker 2: if you have a verified account and you get a
Speaker 2: lot of engagements from other verified accounts, you get a
Speaker 2: chunk of money from Twitter, right, And so all these
Speaker 2: people figured out that, like there's a huge appetite for
Speaker 2: reposted videos from Gaza, or videos that you just claim
Speaker 2: are reposted videos from Gaza. A huge number of them
Speaker 2: are from Syria, and if they make people really angry
Speaker 2: or horrified, they'll get shared and get a ton of
Speaker 2: engagement and you will get a check, right, Like, That's
Speaker 2: that's where Ashton comes out of. That's where all these
Speaker 2: guys come out of. So Ashton sees, I don't know
Speaker 2: if he picked it up directly from the Hoothy Press people.
Speaker 2: I don't know if he picked it up from that
Speaker 2: thing on the cradle, but he posts the next day
Speaker 2: breaking and he's got Of course, of course I'll show you.
Speaker 2: I'll share screen Garrisons. You can see he's got he's
Speaker 2: got the two sirens. Yeah, he's got the two little
Speaker 2: signs on either side. Oh yeah, No, of course there's
Speaker 2: a million of this guy. This guy is all over
Speaker 2: the internet. A source has informed me that the USS
Speaker 2: Eisenhower has been sunk all caps. Mainstream media reports from
Speaker 2: yesterday claim the ship was not hit by houthy missiles.
Speaker 2: Social media shows conflicting reports of damage. I'm seeking corroboration
Speaker 2: on this potentially huge story. So first we see the
Speaker 2: escalation of the HOUTHI say, we shot at the Eisenhower
Speaker 2: and we hit it right. They didn't claim they'd sunk it.
Speaker 2: I think because the houthis are like they're not dumb,
Speaker 2: and like that's an easy claim to disprove. Whereas, yeah,
Speaker 2: you can kind of like there's not as much live
Speaker 2: footage of this, you could kind of get away for
Speaker 2: a while with making people think maybe you damaged it
Speaker 2: a little bit, or at least you got close, you know.
Speaker 2: But a source a source, yes, a source from citizen
Speaker 2: journalist Ashton Forbes.
Speaker 3: Speaking Truth to power.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the evidence that Forbes post because he says, like
Speaker 2: social media so there's conflicting reports of damage. Is a
Speaker 2: screen grab of what looks like an aircraft carrier that's
Speaker 2: on fire. You can see a water very bying.
Speaker 3: Very very blurry picture as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's there's there's a watermark. I don't know
Speaker 2: if you can see it clearly on this gear, but
Speaker 2: like that says Arabic journal So he clearly took it
Speaker 2: from another website. Right now, I would describe the image
Speaker 2: quality of this as cell phone camera circa two thousand
Speaker 2: and seven.
Speaker 3: That's accurate. Yeah, it roughly at like three DS camera.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it looked It's not even super clear to
Speaker 2: me that that's an aircraft carrier. Forbes's post obviously, you know,
Speaker 2: does not occur in a vacuum here, And it would
Speaker 2: be deeply fucked up for me to say, like citizen
Speaker 2: journalists shouldn't exist, Like if someone identifies themselves as that,
Speaker 2: it's a sign that they're dangerous or that they're they're
Speaker 2: full of shit, right, because recent history is filled with
Speaker 2: people who call themselves citizen journalists putting out bullshit. But
Speaker 2: like it's also filled with instances of citizens doing crucial
Speaker 2: journalism in the absence of credential professionals.
Speaker 3: Especially in Gaza right now.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I'm and that's basically everything right, in part
Speaker 2: because most of the journalists who have tried to report
Speaker 2: on it have been fucking murdered. But even in the
Speaker 2: US we have the recent case of Darnella Fraser, who
Speaker 2: was the eighteen year old woman who filmed the murder
Speaker 2: of George Floyd on May twenty fifth, twenty twenty. She
Speaker 2: received a Pulitzer Prise the next year for her video. However, journalism,
Speaker 2: while again there's a lot of value in citizen journalism,
Speaker 2: journalism is also a technical trade and there are in
Speaker 2: fact some things that random dirbs on the Internet should
Speaker 2: not report on, and an attack on the Eisenhower is
Speaker 2: maybe one of them. To make a long story short,
Speaker 2: the USS Eisenhower was not sunk. It is virtually impossible
Speaker 2: for non state forces like the Houthies, with the weaponry
Speaker 2: that they currently enjoy, to sink a vessel like the Eisenhower.
Speaker 2: And for a little bit of context on why that
Speaker 2: is the case, I want to talk about another aircraft
Speaker 2: carrier called the USS Independence. The Independence was one of
Speaker 2: many many aircraft carriers produced by the United States to
Speaker 2: curb stomp the Empire of Japan during World War Two.
Speaker 2: After that war, we found ourselves with way more aircraft
Speaker 2: carriers than we needed or could afford to operate indefinitely
Speaker 2: at peacetime. So we decided to do the smartest thing
Speaker 2: we could with all these extra aircraft carriers and nuke them.
Speaker 3: That was swait.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, well, it's classic nineteen forty six America logic.
Speaker 3: That is true. That is true.
Speaker 2: That is so the Independence didn't brave nuclear hell fire alone.
Speaker 2: As part of Operations Crossroads, we detonated two nuclear bombs
Speaker 2: within seventeen hundred feet of a fleet of ships. That's
Speaker 2: pretty close to point blank range in nuclear weapons terms.
Speaker 2: Fourteen ships were sunk out right by these nukes, and
Speaker 2: the remainder were badly damaged. The Independence was one of
Speaker 2: the boats that remained floating, though, and it actually was
Speaker 2: towed back to San Francisco after being nuked twice. Two
Speaker 2: nukes could not sink a nineteen forty six aircraft carrier.
Speaker 3: What are they building these things out of?
Speaker 2: They're very big, and they are if you are attacking
Speaker 2: them above the water line, it's really hard to sink
Speaker 2: one of these boats, right, Like, that's kind of the thing.
Speaker 2: You can lob huge missiles and hit them with huge
Speaker 2: missiles on the top of the thing, and that can
Speaker 2: stop them from being able to launch aircraft. It can
Speaker 2: kill crew, but unless you're actually blowing a big hole
Speaker 2: in it below the water line, you're not going to
Speaker 2: send one of these fuckers to the bottom of the ocean. Right,
Speaker 2: that's just kind of sure physics, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: So we towed the Independence back to San Francisco. They
Speaker 2: actually built a radiation lab in the boat itself for
Speaker 2: a while. And then that's again because the United States
Speaker 2: be how the United States do. We filled this massive
Speaker 2: boat with concrete drums full of radioactive waste and sunk
Speaker 2: it thirty miles off the coast of California with your tour.
Speaker 3: That's fucking hilarious. That rules.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, brother, this country man. So again, once we
Speaker 2: started lobbing tour, you know, is it this fucker underneath
Speaker 2: the boat? It was not wildly hard to sink the
Speaker 2: son of a bitch, right, And that's the reality of
Speaker 2: the situation. If the houthies were able to get like
Speaker 2: some subs that were capable of like actually getting through
Speaker 2: you know, the dragnet of boats that are defending the Enterprise,
Speaker 2: and they could get any kind of you know, decent
Speaker 2: sized torpedo underneath it, they might have a chance of
Speaker 2: sinking it.
Speaker 3: Photon torpedoes, photon torpedo for the Enterprise, yes, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 3: or a quantum torpedo.
Speaker 2: If we've moved on to d S nine garrison.
Speaker 3: Oh I've not started DS nine year.
Speaker 2: Oh oh it's great. It's the horniest Star Trek Garrison,
Speaker 2: which which is shocking to it is shockingly horny. So
Speaker 2: I want to note while while I'm talking about the
Speaker 2: impossibility of the Houthies using their current methods, which are
Speaker 2: basically when it comes to how they've been attacking the Eisenhower,
Speaker 2: they've been either flying drones at it, trying to ram
Speaker 2: it with an explosive drone, or launching cruise missiles at it, right,
Speaker 2: and all of these are basically aiming for the top
Speaker 2: of this boat, because that's kind of the option they have.
Speaker 3: I was not aware that they had like advanced submarine capabilities.
Speaker 2: They sure don't, as far as I'm aware, they don't. Yeah,
Speaker 2: now it is it's worth noting potentially it could be
Speaker 2: surprisingly easy sometimes to sink a modern aircraft carrier if
Speaker 2: you have a decent submarine. And there's evidence of this
Speaker 2: that came from a joint Franco US naval exercise off
Speaker 2: to the coast of Florida in March of twenty fifteen
Speaker 2: where basically we're doing this exercise with the French at
Speaker 2: one point. This French submarine is part of the OP four,
Speaker 2: which is like opposition forces during a war game, and
Speaker 2: it sinks the Roosevelt and most of its escorts in
Speaker 2: like a simulated battle. And this is you know, it's
Speaker 2: very funny because like the French military posted about this
Speaker 2: and then had to delete it because it was really
Speaker 2: embarrassing for the Navy, and it's seen as evidence by
Speaker 2: people who actually know their shit about naval power and
Speaker 2: naval warfare. Is like, oh, US anti sub interdiction tactics
Speaker 2: and technology really took a hit in the post Cold
Speaker 2: War period. We stopped putting money into it because like
Speaker 2: we thought, well, who's going to send subs after us
Speaker 2: if the Russians are gone? Right?
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly, yeah, ye yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: So I don't mean to say that like these boats
Speaker 2: are invulnerable. Nothing can stop the US Navy. In fact,
Speaker 2: the evidence suggests that like a modestly powerful naval power
Speaker 2: could do some serious damage to a carrier group in
Speaker 2: the right circumstances. It's just the way the houthis. The
Speaker 2: claims people are making about how the houthis sunk the
Speaker 2: Eisenhower is not a way in which the Eisenhower could
Speaker 2: realistically be sunk. Right, Some bootleg Iranian missiles are not
Speaker 2: going to sink the most advanced carrier in the world today.
Speaker 2: Two nukes couldn't do a comparatively shitty carrier in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty six. Now, this is all pretty obvious to anyone
Speaker 2: who knows the first thing about modern naval warfare. But
Speaker 2: it was not obvious to our citizen journalist friend, Ashton Forbes.
Speaker 2: When numerous people pointed out to him that his claims
Speaker 2: were absurd, he replied, yeah, I wanted to hold back
Speaker 2: on this story in case it's not true, but I
Speaker 2: trust my source and the media reports stink to me.
Speaker 2: If this ends up being wrong, all ready tracked. But
Speaker 2: the implications are too huge not to report.
Speaker 3: Sure, sure, yeah, sure, buddy, why not.
Speaker 2: We're going to dig into that and the ethics of
Speaker 2: the journalism that he claims to be uh practicing. But first,
Speaker 2: the ethics of my journalism are that you should buy
Speaker 2: whatever these advertisers are selling, and we're back. So I
Speaker 2: really hate the too huge not to report justification. That's like,
Speaker 2: that's that's incredibly unethical journalism, because like, if a story
Speaker 2: is that huge.
Speaker 3: Actually, Robert, no, no, no, I just got an update
Speaker 3: from a source that nine to eleven two just happened.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, I have I have, I have a very
Speaker 3: blurry picture. I'm going to post it up on Twitter
Speaker 3: right now. I can't verify, but this is if true,
Speaker 3: this is groundbreaking, literally in case of you know the ground.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I know listeners, you're like, there's no way
Speaker 2: nine to eleven two happened several days ago by the
Speaker 2: time you listened to this episode, and I haven't heard
Speaker 2: about it. I want to remind you about the film
Speaker 2: Mad Max Fury Road. You know, when that came out,
Speaker 2: none of us were expecting another Mad Max movie and
Speaker 2: we got a great one. And I think nine to
Speaker 2: eleven two could be the Fury Road of terrorism attacks.
Speaker 3: Real promise, real promise. They also could be censoring the story.
Speaker 3: They may not want you to know. In case you
Speaker 3: haven't heard.
Speaker 2: The news doesn't want you to know that nine to
Speaker 2: eleven two already happened because it's going to destroy the
Speaker 2: market for nine to eleven one memorabilia. You know, that's
Speaker 2: everybody needs to read Manufacturing Consent by Chomsky. He lays
Speaker 2: it all out.
Speaker 3: As you're saying.
Speaker 2: So obviously, if a story is as big as this
Speaker 2: and the sinking of the Eyes, and how would be
Speaker 2: like the most significant military reversal in the twenty first century? Maybe,
Speaker 2: you know, I guess you could argue like the US
Speaker 2: leaving Afghanistan. Maybe, But honest, from a technological standpoint, at
Speaker 2: least the whoth he's managing to drop an aircraft carrier
Speaker 2: would be massive. And if a story is that big,
Speaker 2: you have a responsibility not to report on it until
Speaker 2: you have any reason at all to believe that it's true.
Speaker 2: So when somebody says the implication or too the implications
Speaker 2: are too huge not to report on what they mean
Speaker 2: is I wanted the clout in traffic from getting this
Speaker 2: out first, and I don't really care if it's true. Now, yeah,
Speaker 2: it happens to be quite easy to prove that the
Speaker 2: US S. Eisenhower is still among the living because the
Speaker 2: captain of that boat is a poster. His name is
Speaker 2: oh God, Oh. This man posts like you wouldn't believe Garrison.
Speaker 2: I've never seen a commanding officer in the US military
Speaker 2: who posts like this man.
Speaker 3: Do you think Riker would be a poster. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Riker would be. He would do a lot of dming.
Speaker 2: He would be sliding into DMS an awful loss like yeah, yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2: He would constantly be trying to fuck. But I think
Speaker 2: the only reason he would actually post is when like
Speaker 2: something broke and he couldn't figure out how to fix it.
Speaker 2: He would he would be like adding Jordie constantly like yes,
Speaker 2: I can't kill my computer working.
Speaker 3: That makes sense.
Speaker 2: So the captain of the Enterprise is Christopher F. Hill,
Speaker 2: and again he's a poster for reasons that I have
Speaker 2: not bothered to look into and don't care to learn.
Speaker 2: He goes by chowda on Twitter like with a with
Speaker 2: a dah I don't I don't know why, and within
Speaker 2: minutes of the Forbes post about uh or of Forbes's post,
Speaker 2: he himself posted videos of the bakery on board the Eisenhower,
Speaker 2: which showed no signs of being underwater. I think that
Speaker 2: was kind of his subtle way of being like we
Speaker 2: are still making like cinnamon rolls, like everything is fine
Speaker 2: on board this ship. In short order, Internet Salutes discovered
Speaker 2: that the the video clip posted by Forbes that claimed
Speaker 2: to show the Eisenhower in flames was Garrison. Do you
Speaker 2: want to guess where this what this was a screenshot from?
Speaker 3: Is this a video game?
Speaker 2: It is a video game. It's the video game from
Speaker 2: ARM three. It's from ARMA three. Every time, every time,
Speaker 2: whenever this happens in the war in Ukraine too constantly
Speaker 2: they'll be like, we've shot down you know, a bunch
Speaker 2: of these MiG twenty ones, or you know, shot down
Speaker 2: this massive Russian jet that's never been shot down before.
Speaker 2: Every time it's ARMA three, like every single time.
Speaker 3: Unbelievable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like eighty percent of the time, fake videos of
Speaker 2: military vehicles being destroyed. It's just clips from ARMA three. Now,
Speaker 2: a brief glance into the backstory of Ashton Forbes would
Speaker 2: have made it clear that his claims were nonsense, As
Speaker 2: this write up by George Allison in the UK Defense
Speaker 2: Journal notes, Ashton Forbes, despite his self identified role as
Speaker 2: a citizen journalist, has I'm told history of posting sensational
Speaker 2: and often unverified claims, particularly about Malaysia Airlines Flight three seventy.
Speaker 2: It almost seventy was a commercial flight that disappeared in
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen we'll en rout fro Kuala Lumpur to Beijing,
Speaker 2: leading to numerous conspiracy theories. Now we don't actually know
Speaker 2: why MH three seventy went down. I think probably the
Speaker 2: leading theory was that the pilot committed suicide. But even that,
Speaker 2: I don't think that there's like strong. I don't think
Speaker 2: it's it's very unclear, could have just been a fuck up,
Speaker 2: something like It's we really don't know, which is why
Speaker 2: there's so much conspiracy.
Speaker 3: Could have gone into a wormhole.
Speaker 2: So it could have gone into the wormhole right now.
Speaker 2: Forbes's belief, according to I found a post by Swift
Speaker 2: on security, who's a popular security expert, who states that
Speaker 2: Forbes believes MH three seventy had secret free energy tech
Speaker 2: on it that was raptured into a wormhole by reptilians.
Speaker 2: Are you so yeah? You actually got it? He's doing
Speaker 2: a bit So you got it right, Garrison? Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Swift provides an example of another one of the citizen
Speaker 2: journalist's big scoops free energy announcement. Free Energy, otherwise known
Speaker 2: as over Unity, is one hundred percent real. The devices
Speaker 2: exists already. I have been told exactly how an operational
Speaker 2: device works. I signed an NDA, so won't be able
Speaker 2: to disclosed specifics.
Speaker 3: One hundred.
Speaker 2: That's great. I love that the people who figure out
Speaker 2: free energy would let you post about it as long
Speaker 2: as you don't explain how it works.
Speaker 3: I like that you signed an NDA so you can't
Speaker 3: talk about it except for this post in what you
Speaker 3: do talk about it and which have absolutivate about classic
Speaker 3: classic move now.
Speaker 2: Once Forbes's post started to gain traction, the entire ecosystem
Speaker 2: of infogrifters who cropped up like mushrooms to profit off
Speaker 2: the massacre in Gaza, swung into gear thanks to Elon's
Speaker 2: new ownership of Twitter. Being able to draw viral crowds
Speaker 2: to your content by latching onto the most discussed topics
Speaker 2: of the day is very profitable, as we discussed, and
Speaker 2: into this mix you do have some state funded actors.
Speaker 2: You've got people working for Iran, for Israel, for Russia,
Speaker 2: for the United States, all trying to push their own
Speaker 2: sundry lines of propaganda using the engines of algorithmic virality.
Speaker 2: And then, of course there are the legitimately hopeful but
Speaker 2: ill informed. And these are the people that I have
Speaker 2: sympathy with and who I'm kind of like total focusing on.
Speaker 2: These are people who are understandably numb from constant exposure
Speaker 2: to a barrage of photos and videos of war crimes,
Speaker 2: and they are desperately ready to believe in some kind
Speaker 2: of miraculous underdog victory. Right, Hollywood fiction has trained us
Speaker 2: all to see that as possible. This is being thought
Speaker 2: of by a lot of people who are just numb
Speaker 2: and broken from videos of horror as like, well, I
Speaker 2: don't know, maybe we could have our Star Wars moment, right,
Speaker 2: maybe we've got a Luke Skywalker downing the death Star. Now,
Speaker 2: the Hoothies aren't Luke Skywalker, and the Eisenhower isn't entirely
Speaker 2: the death Star. It's like it's got shades of Death Star,
Speaker 2: it's got some Death Star DNA and it sure, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean it's closer to closer to a Star destroyer,
Speaker 2: closer to a Star destroyer, right right, right. One of
Speaker 2: the posts I came across Researching this was Alden Marky,
Speaker 2: who describes himself as a counter propagandist and researcher with
Speaker 2: a focus on Yemen. He posted a photoshop of the
Speaker 2: Eisenhower from above with a dagger in the water beneath it.
Speaker 2: This was accompanied by the text uss Eisenhower was just
Speaker 2: struck for the second time in twenty four hours and
Speaker 2: it had something like two thousand likes two hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty thousand views when I came across it. Another account
Speaker 2: quote tweeted this and got nearly five thousand likes, saying
Speaker 2: it won't happen, but it would be so fucking funny
Speaker 2: if Yeman sinks an aircraft carrier, like can you imagine?
Speaker 2: And I think that guy represents the more common attitude,
Speaker 2: which is this mix of on we and desperation. Right,
Speaker 2: nothing is going to stop this massacre. It seems like that.
Speaker 2: It really feels like that, right, But wouldn't it be
Speaker 2: rad if something did? And to be realistic, I don't
Speaker 2: know that. I think there's a real odds that dropping
Speaker 2: the Eisenhower somehow would stop net Yahoo from what he's doing.
Speaker 2: I mean maybe it would, like it would certainly reduce
Speaker 2: the ability of the United States to interdict Iranian missiles
Speaker 2: coming into Israel. But I don't know that. I think
Speaker 2: that it's realistic that that's going to stop Netan Yahoo
Speaker 2: from doing the shit that net Yaho's doing. You can
Speaker 2: feel however you want about that. It's not irrational to
Speaker 2: be like, boy, I don't think this is real, but
Speaker 2: like I wish it was right, So you can feel
Speaker 2: however you want about this guy wanting, you know, thousands
Speaker 2: of US soldiers to get murdered. I get both, Like,
Speaker 2: I don't think that realistically anything the Hoothies are doing
Speaker 2: is going to stop what Israel's doing at this point,
Speaker 2: but I also understand just desperately wanting some violence to
Speaker 2: come down on the other side of this thing after
Speaker 2: months of watching videos of the slaughter in Gaza, you know, especially.
Speaker 3: As you have you have like Nikky Haley signing right
Speaker 3: bombs that that is sending over like come on, Like yeah, no,
Speaker 3: I could understand the emotional like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, braw, it doesn't speak to the best angels of
Speaker 2: our nature, right because you're what you're thinking, You're hoping
Speaker 2: for huge amounts of human death either way, But like,
Speaker 2: I get it, and it's not irrational right, saying there's
Speaker 2: no way this is real, but I wish it was
Speaker 2: is not an irrational feeling, right. You can contrast that
Speaker 2: to the posts of independent journalists and newsgrifter Richard Medhurst
Speaker 2: with four hundred and eighteen thousand followers, who posted this
Speaker 2: on June second, yem instruct the best ship in the
Speaker 2: US Navy with ballistic and cruise missiles. The ship is
Speaker 2: fleeing and the captain of the US S. Eisenhower tried
Speaker 2: to do damage control by posting a video of the
Speaker 2: deck on Twitter. But it's an old Instagram reel from
Speaker 2: thirteen weeks ago. Left Yemen never lie.
Speaker 3: And this is just an alternate reality that they've entered into.
Speaker 2: Now, yes, yes, you have departed reality in favor of
Speaker 2: one that you are crafting because it's more comforting than
Speaker 2: the one in which nothing seems to be able to
Speaker 2: actually alter the course of violence in Gaza, Right, So
Speaker 2: you're just deciding to believe in something else. Now. Community
Speaker 2: notes flagged this post, but it still has something like
Speaker 2: three hundred and fifty thousand views and more than four
Speaker 2: hundred thousand likes. Medhers tis hundred thousand or four thousand
Speaker 2: likes sorry, four hundred and eighteen thousand followers, four thousand
Speaker 2: likes on the post I see four thousand likes? Is
Speaker 2: still a mess? Is a sizable super?
Speaker 3: What's for large number?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Medhurst has leaned hard into repeating claims that the
Speaker 2: Houthis have sunk or damaged the Eisenhower, and another post
Speaker 2: with six thousand likes in eight hundred and twenty one
Speaker 2: thousand views, he describes the IKE as being hit with
Speaker 2: ballistic and cruise missiles and add, yeomen never lie in
Speaker 2: their press breathings, so I'm inclined to believe them. In
Speaker 2: one post, he I know it's. In one post, he
Speaker 2: notes that the Houthis recently shot down an m Q
Speaker 2: nine Reaper drone, which did happen, and claims the US
Speaker 2: won't admit to that either, and like, I haven't run
Speaker 2: into the US denying that this happened. There's three clear
Speaker 2: cases of m Q nine's being shot down last month alone, right, Like,
Speaker 2: we actually know a lot about this, which is part
Speaker 2: of why I don't believe the Eisenhower shot down, as
Speaker 2: they the Houthis were able to prove quite readily that
Speaker 2: they had shot down the MQ nine's. I have seen
Speaker 2: no proof that the Eisenhower's been hit. Right, And this
Speaker 2: isn't just a case where like the Houthis should be
Speaker 2: able to provide some actual proof if they'd done this.
Speaker 2: The Eisenhower is a floating city with a population of thousands.
Speaker 2: There's like seven or eight thousand people. I think at
Speaker 2: least in the whole strike group. I will conceie that
Speaker 2: the military could probably keep a lid on an attack
Speaker 2: against the Isenhower and might even temporarily be able to
Speaker 2: hide the fact that it had suffered minor damage. But
Speaker 2: you're not keeping any anything significant secret for the long haul, right,
Speaker 2: Like you just you can't. You can't keep secrets like that.
Speaker 2: There's too many people. They're going to talk to their families.
Speaker 2: If the boat goes down with thousands of people on board,
Speaker 2: family members are going to be like, boy, none of
Speaker 2: us have heard from our loved ones in a while. Right.
Speaker 3: Also think also like the government would say something and
Speaker 3: like start like a massive batch of retaliation, Like it's
Speaker 3: not like America would be like, oh, sh quiet, we just.
Speaker 2: Have to pretend this didn't happen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, they're going to be talking about a NonStop
Speaker 3: for the past like three months.
Speaker 2: We sent the Eisenhower and its crew to a nice
Speaker 2: farm up state exactly. So why why would the Hoothies,
Speaker 2: this is a question to ask, And why would the
Speaker 2: Hoothies make fake claims that are obvious fake claims about
Speaker 2: striking the Eisenhower?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: And I think it's because at this point, for a
Speaker 2: sizeable chunk of people, fake Hoothy attacks on US assets
Speaker 2: are just as good as real ones. And I think
Speaker 2: there are people within the leadership cadres of the Houthis
Speaker 2: who know that perfectly well, it is entirely possible that
Speaker 2: the Hoothies find themselves low on munitions after months of
Speaker 2: conflict with the US, and somebody smart realized, like, what
Speaker 2: if we just say we shot at them, right, It'll
Speaker 2: have the same propaganda impact and we won't have to
Speaker 2: waste a missile.
Speaker 3: Right, No, you'll still be able to talk about it
Speaker 3: on your Los Angeles Twitch stream to your hundreds of
Speaker 3: thousands of followers, right.
Speaker 2: The ongoing genocide and if that's what actually is happening here, right,
Speaker 2: I could see that as a reasonably cunning move, you know,
Speaker 2: the ongoing genocide and gaza, the other inability of protest
Speaker 2: or arm resistance to change it in any way leads
Speaker 2: some people to a kind of mad desperation. In this desperation,
Speaker 2: the Houthis have become a symbol of hope to many
Speaker 2: people for the simple reason that they seem to be
Speaker 2: capable of taking action against the forces protecting Israel as
Speaker 2: Israel commits war crimes. Now, the reality of the situation
Speaker 2: is that the Huthis themselves have committed their share of
Speaker 2: war crimes, some of which are reminiscent of the very
Speaker 2: crimes committed by Israel. In December of twenty fourteen, the
Speaker 2: Houthis laid siege to Yemen's second city, Taies, leading to
Speaker 2: a humanitarian catastrophe, as this article from The Guardian lays out. Quote.
Speaker 2: Sincerely April, when the resistance, an alliance of local forces
Speaker 2: dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, fought off the Houthi's attempt
Speaker 2: to control the city, the militia retaliated by cutting off roads,
Speaker 2: preventing food and medical aid from getting in. Access is
Speaker 2: only allowed through a single checkpoint dubbed the Rafa Crossing
Speaker 2: by the residents after its more famous namesake, on the
Speaker 2: Egypt Gaza border. Every morning, long queues form outside the
Speaker 2: crossing by those wanting to enter the city, Huthi malicious
Speaker 2: search and confiscate medicine, cooking, gas, cigarettes, bottled water, or
Speaker 2: anything more than a small shopping bag of food. In
Speaker 2: order to survive. The city has for months been relying
Speaker 2: on groups of young boys and long trains of donkeys
Speaker 2: to bring its supplies a long and arduous journey through
Speaker 2: the mountains. But donkeys alone can hardly fulfill the needs
Speaker 2: of the city. Medicine and food have all but disappeared
Speaker 2: from the market, and the prices of what are left
Speaker 2: have jumped in the last few months, pushing most of
Speaker 2: the population below the poverty line. Now the comparison between
Speaker 2: Ties and Gaza are striking, right, Like the crossing was
Speaker 2: called Rafa you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, they literally name that for the crossing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, you hear a lot of the
Speaker 2: same stories, like the hospitals basically were out of you know,
Speaker 2: anything to actually treat the injured. One of the one
Speaker 2: doctor at one of the two functioning hospitals in the
Speaker 2: city told the Guardian, we can't do operations, we can't
Speaker 2: put people in intensive care. We can only patch wounds
Speaker 2: and tell the patient you are welcome. To die here. Now,
Speaker 2: I want to be clear here, the other side in
Speaker 2: this conflict was inarguably even worse. The Saudi led coalition,
Speaker 2: using US weaponry put the whole country in a state
Speaker 2: of siege that like led to catastrophic famines and situations
Speaker 2: very similar and in some cases worse than what the
Speaker 2: Huthi did to Ties. Right, Like, this is the this
Speaker 2: is I mean, it's war, right, this is like unspeakable
Speaker 2: suffering compounding on unspeakable suffering. Right. You've probably heard that
Speaker 2: old saying when you stare into the abyss, the abyss
Speaker 2: stares back. And there's a corollary to that statement that
Speaker 2: I think is relevant to some of the fantasies that
Speaker 2: some people on the left have about the hoovies. When
Speaker 2: you start giving yourself up to false realities, eventually you
Speaker 2: can lose yourself entirely. And we're going to talk a
Speaker 2: little bit about that, but first lose yourself to these products.
Speaker 2: We're back. So people like Medhurst, you know, postlike by
Speaker 2: these guys, they aren't meant to inform people about the
Speaker 2: real world. Medhurst's fans, the people who take him seriously,
Speaker 2: have departed reality in favor of a fantasy. Because that
Speaker 2: fantasy world is the only place in which victory feels possible.
Speaker 2: There's a term that you and I talk about a
Speaker 2: lot garrison, coined by the author Robert Anton Wilson, that
Speaker 2: I think is useful in dealing with situations like this,
Speaker 2: and that term is reality tunnel. The concept is complex
Speaker 2: and explanations of it tend towards long, but the basic
Speaker 2: idea is that we in the modern world are all
Speaker 2: constantly flooded by information from our senses and from the
Speaker 2: different information delivery devices that we filled our world with.
Speaker 2: In order to function, we have to triage that information,
Speaker 2: to pare it away until we get to a reality
Speaker 2: that we can live inside. The fact that human beings
Speaker 2: can and perhaps inherently do this is not necessarily bad,
Speaker 2: and in fact, I might argue that without the ability
Speaker 2: to choose and flip between different realities to change the channel,
Speaker 2: as Wilson put it, positive progress is impossible. I found
Speaker 2: this explained well in an essay on Wilson's work by
Speaker 2: Mikola Bilokonski. Quote, we can slide between reality tunnels by
Speaker 2: consciously choosing to pay attention to things we might normally ignore.
Speaker 2: It's hard at first, but is skill that we can
Speaker 2: develop with practice. Train yourself to pay more attention to
Speaker 2: the emotions of the people you're speaking to, for instance,
Speaker 2: and you'll be surprised at how much richer the world gets.
Speaker 2: Train yourself to pay attention to your caloric intake, and
Speaker 2: eating fundamentally changes. Train yourself to hear the voices of minorities,
Speaker 2: and suddenly you see racism and sexism everywhere. Now, those
Speaker 2: other reality tunnels like that you can key yourself in
Speaker 2: on are always there. They always exist, right, You just
Speaker 2: had to actually learn the filters that you existed within
Speaker 2: in order to access them.
Speaker 3: You know, whether or not you're tuned in doesn't mean
Speaker 3: like they just don't exist.
Speaker 2: They're still there. Yeah. Yeah, So again the constant, you know,
Speaker 2: the fact that people can like pick and choose which
Speaker 2: reality chair and can change the channel, so to speak,
Speaker 2: isn't necessarily bad and in fact is part of you know,
Speaker 2: necessary positive progress. But some people don't want to hop
Speaker 2: between tunnels and explore the dazzling variety of realities that exist.
Speaker 2: They want to pick a tunnel in which they feel
Speaker 2: comfortable and then burrows so deep into it that no
Speaker 2: other realities can find them. I want you to think
Speaker 2: of one of my favorite recent Trump World grifts, right,
Speaker 2: is these kind of this company that started putting out
Speaker 2: these like ads with an obvious AI Donald Trump or
Speaker 2: Elon Musk voice where they're like, Trump is going to
Speaker 2: change the monetary system, and if you buy these like
Speaker 2: trump Bucks debit card things or fake checks, he's going
Speaker 2: to like when he changes it, they'll be worth a
Speaker 2: ten thousand times what you put in. So if you
Speaker 2: put in two or three thousand dollars worth of this,
Speaker 2: you'll be rich. He's doing this to reward his loyal fans.
Speaker 2: He's gonna like he's gonna fix everything, and you'll finally
Speaker 2: be rich. Right, you know you deserve to be rich, right,
Speaker 2: And a bunch of people bought these like fake promisary
Speaker 2: notes and then like went to Bank of America to
Speaker 2: cash them in, and the bank was like, well, no,
Speaker 2: that's not this, this isn't real, this, this is nothing
Speaker 2: at all, right, And you know, these people got fleeced.
Speaker 2: And one way to look at the people who got
Speaker 2: fleeced is like, well they're dumb, right, These people are stupid.
Speaker 2: You know, they did a stupid thing. They believed something
Speaker 2: that was obviously fake, and you can take that out
Speaker 2: of their story if you want. I don't think that's helpful, though.
Speaker 2: The reality is that these people represent a cautionary tale.
Speaker 2: They didn't start out believing that the guy from The
Speaker 2: Apprentice was their messiah. Their break from consensus reality began
Speaker 2: years or decades earlier, and it's going to be different
Speaker 2: for every individual person. When I think about my own
Speaker 2: family members who came to believe pretty unhinged things that
Speaker 2: you know, figures within the Republican Party or Trump himself
Speaker 2: told them, I tend to trace their break from reality
Speaker 2: back to well back to the day when the calming,
Speaker 2: charismatic voice of Ronald Reagan said this about the Iran
Speaker 2: Contra scandal, a deal in which his administration gave Iron
Speaker 2: weapons in exchange for hostages. And this is Reagan. A
Speaker 2: few months ago, I told the American people, I did
Speaker 2: not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best
Speaker 2: intentions tell me that's true, but the facts and the
Speaker 2: evidence tell me it is not. Yes, And I think
Speaker 2: that line is an important moment in the shattering of
Speaker 2: what we might call reality, consensus reality, right, The undeniable,
Speaker 2: actual truth is that Ronald Reagan and many members of
Speaker 2: his administration committed high crimes and light about it. But
Speaker 2: Reagan's supporters, his fans, people like my parents, loved him
Speaker 2: too much to accept this, and old Ronnie offered them
Speaker 2: a way out, ignore the facts and the evidence, and
Speaker 2: embraced the deeper truth of his heart and his best intentions.
Speaker 2: And in that moment, I think that's where a lot
Speaker 2: of Americans, who are now in an even more unhinged place,
Speaker 2: started burrowing down and started tunneling away from their friends
Speaker 2: and family and towards the heart of something dark. As
Speaker 2: the years went on, the consequences of many Reagan era
Speaker 2: economic and social policies became impossible to ignore. No wealth
Speaker 2: trickled down, Mourning did not return to America. The promise
Speaker 2: of the Internet boom yielded to the dot com bubble
Speaker 2: bursting September eleventh sobered us up from the hallucination of
Speaker 2: permanent victory. After the end of the Cold War, the
Speaker 2: housing market crashed, the hideous reality of climate change became unavoidable,
Speaker 2: The promise of a bright future faded, and people buried
Speaker 2: themselves deeper in fantasies to avoid oblique and empty horizon.
Speaker 2: And all Throughout this the left prided itself on a
Speaker 2: sort of logical sobriety, a willingness to stare into the abyss,
Speaker 2: to accept the reality of our dire moment, and to
Speaker 2: propose radical solutions. Yet one by one, the different protest
Speaker 2: movements put out by the left flopped and fizzled. Promising
Speaker 2: organizers and ideological leaders were revealed as frauds or became
Speaker 2: corrupted by the system. Capitalism failed to fall or reform,
Speaker 2: and rather than confront the dire complex reality that leaves
Speaker 2: us in, increasing numbers of leftists found alternative realities, served
Speaker 2: eagerly by an alliance of conmen and paid propagandists. Now,
Speaker 2: leftists have always been just as vulnerable to vicious fantasy
Speaker 2: as conservatives. This has proven well in the last century.
Speaker 2: There's a case of a Marxist academic named Malcolm Caldwell,
Speaker 2: who I think is which I think is valuable depending
Speaker 2: on who you talk to about Caldwell. He's the Scottish academic.
Speaker 2: He was a college professor, apparently a pretty good economist,
Speaker 2: and he also had this weird thing for agrarian communist movements,
Speaker 2: which he thought were He believed that there was this
Speaker 2: like massive global famine coming, and he believed that these
Speaker 2: like back to the land Marxist movements sweeping Southeast Asia
Speaker 2: where the only way forward for a lot of humanity.
Speaker 2: He was this like third worldist. A lot of his
Speaker 2: belief was kind of centering that, you know, the United
Speaker 2: States was the source of all evil in the world effectively,
Speaker 2: but this kind of led him to he became a
Speaker 2: stan of every communist state, even the ones that were
Speaker 2: in conflict with each other. He traveled to like North
Speaker 2: Korea and came back like talking about all of the
Speaker 2: wonderful accomplishments of Jucha ideology. You know, he was in
Speaker 2: love with Vietnam, and he was also in love with
Speaker 2: Khmer Rouge in Cambo. And that's kind of part of
Speaker 2: the evidence that like he had entered a reality tunnel
Speaker 2: that had taken him away from any kind of logical reality,
Speaker 2: because like Cambodia and Vietnam went to war, right, Vietnam
Speaker 2: invaded Cambodia, Like these these two were not like Communist
Speaker 2: fellow travelers on the same side of a conflict. Whenever
Speaker 2: this would get brought up to Caldwell when he'd argue about,
Speaker 2: you know, Vietnam and the conflict that Vietnam was having
Speaker 2: with Cambodia, or he you know, people would try to
Speaker 2: argue with him about the realities of the Khmer Rouge system.
Speaker 2: He would just kind of shut down like he was
Speaker 2: he was, yeah, he couldn't talk about it right now. Eventually, Caldwell,
Speaker 2: because he's an academic, he travels to a lot of
Speaker 2: these countries and you know, it's fine. He travels to
Speaker 2: the USSR, he gets a tour there. He travels to
Speaker 2: North Korea, he gets a tour there, he gets a
Speaker 2: tour at Vietnam. That's all fine. All of those states
Speaker 2: are saying states, right, which is not to say that
Speaker 2: like they don't do bad things, but they're they're run
Speaker 2: by people who like, there's no benefit in us to
Speaker 2: anything bad happening to this guy who's out there in
Speaker 2: the West writing nice things about our regimes. Right, Polepot
Speaker 2: was not sane, The Khmer Rouge was not sane. So
Speaker 2: he goes to Cambodia with two American journalists, one of
Speaker 2: whom had been in Cambodia in the years prior to
Speaker 2: the Khmer Rouge overthrow of the US backed government of
Speaker 2: Law Nol and knew the country well, and when she
Speaker 2: got there, they had all these arguments where he was like,
Speaker 2: I think the revolution is working. You know, it's not perfect,
Speaker 2: but it needs its time. Look at all the wonderful
Speaker 2: accomplishments already. And she would point out, I have been
Speaker 2: to these cities years ago, and there's no people anymore.
Speaker 2: All of the people are gone. Something is terribly wrong,
Speaker 2: and he just couldn't listen to her. So they're there
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks and he gets invited to have
Speaker 2: a meeting with Polepot, and you know, he has a
Speaker 2: meeting with him right after these journalists do, and he
Speaker 2: comes back from it really excited, being like we had
Speaker 2: a great talk. He's such a smart man. You know,
Speaker 2: we talked about economics. I feel he's invited me back
Speaker 2: next year, you know. And by the way, within like
Speaker 2: weeks of this, Vietnam invades and forces Polepot out of
Speaker 2: the capitol, right like the state of the Khmer rouge
Speaker 2: was deeply precarious at this point. But he comes out
Speaker 2: super optimistic, and then later that night a gunman shoots
Speaker 2: him to death and then shoots himself to death. It
Speaker 2: is really unclear to this day. It's a bit of
Speaker 2: a mystery what happened. The most likely explanation is that
Speaker 2: the Khmer Rouge wanted to pin the murder of a
Speaker 2: leftist Western academic on Vietnam to try and generate international
Speaker 2: outrage against Vietnam who was about to invade. It's possible
Speaker 2: Vietnam killed him for but I don't really see a
Speaker 2: benefit to Vietnam and doing that again. They invade right
Speaker 2: after this. It seems like one of the journalists who
Speaker 2: was there basically was like a poppot, was out of
Speaker 2: his fucking mind. Of course he would do this. There's
Speaker 2: no like, there's no trying to lay out like the
Speaker 2: rationality behind this man's actions. I think what's more interesting
Speaker 2: is Caldwell had been presented with plenty of evidence that
Speaker 2: the Khmer Rouge regime was deeply evil and violent, and
Speaker 2: in fact, he had published right before he went over there,
Speaker 2: he published an article about like the successes of their
Speaker 2: agrarian reforms and the Khmer Rouge government official that he
Speaker 2: cited in that paper that's like the basis of most
Speaker 2: of his claims about how well the reforms had worked
Speaker 2: with it like a couple of weeks before he arrived
Speaker 2: in Cambodia was tortured to death in the S twenty
Speaker 2: one prison.
Speaker 3: Well, that's not a great sign.
Speaker 2: Not a great sign anyway. I bring this guy up
Speaker 2: because I think he's maybe the best example of like
Speaker 2: the damage that you do to yourself when you let
Speaker 2: yourself fall into these tunnels. Because Caldwell, he's not one
Speaker 2: of these like gray zone guys. He didn't make a
Speaker 2: bunch of money being a stand for dictatorships. He seems
Speaker 2: to everyone who talked, even the people who thought he
Speaker 2: was like out of his mind and his opinions on
Speaker 2: the Khmer rouge, he was a really nice man. He
Speaker 2: was a family man, he was a good teacher. He
Speaker 2: just completely left reality in this one thing, and it
Speaker 2: led him to oblivion.
Speaker 3: You know, I've been thinking about a lot of similar
Speaker 3: stuff in terms of like what Israel's currently doing, and
Speaker 3: like there's so many people who are just vocally supportive
Speaker 3: every single action that's being done. And there's even been
Speaker 3: attacks where I've seen people like Vietnam ly uh like
Speaker 3: defend what happened. It's like, no, this was like a
Speaker 3: necessary strike. It did for all these reasons, blah blah
Speaker 3: blah blah blah. Even if even if someone like net
Speaker 3: and Yahoo then like like comes out and says like, actually, no,
Speaker 3: this was like quote unquote like terrible accident or whatever,
Speaker 3: there will still be people defending it. And like, I
Speaker 3: don't know if all of these people are literally like bloodthirsty,
Speaker 3: like I don't know if they actually really want to
Speaker 3: see like everyone in Gaza killed. I'm sure there's there's
Speaker 3: maybe some people who are like just bad, But I
Speaker 3: think the reality tunnel version, I think is a lot
Speaker 3: more useful for understanding how there's so many otherwise very
Speaker 3: like normal, normal people who feel totally fine about cheering
Speaker 3: on the actions of the State of Israel right now
Speaker 3: as there you know, as the death toll just gets
Speaker 3: higher and higher and higher every single day. No, it's
Speaker 3: certainly been something I've thought about very often these past
Speaker 3: few months, as I as I'm sure many other people are,
Speaker 3: you know, both staring into the abyss on on Twitter
Speaker 3: dot com, where everyone has a take. But then also
Speaker 3: you know, if if you're ever going outo any like,
Speaker 3: if you're ever going into any of these protests, there
Speaker 3: will probably be like a group of Zionist counter protesters
Speaker 3: yelling something and it's it's a really tricky thing to navigate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is like it because like and I guess
Speaker 2: what the scary question to me is, like how do
Speaker 2: you communicate with someone who is not living in the
Speaker 2: same reality? And like, totally, I don't think you really can.
Speaker 2: I think sometimes, I know sometimes because I've seen it happen.
Speaker 2: Sometimes people just get out of that alternate reality on
Speaker 2: their own. Right, that does happen, thank god, But it's
Speaker 2: not like reliable that it happens. And I have you know,
Speaker 2: as someone who has been in this space of researching cults,
Speaker 2: of researching disinformation for years now, I'm not aware of
Speaker 2: any reliable ways to break people out of these now
Speaker 2: you know, the these tunnels when they get themselves in.
Speaker 2: And that's the scariest thing to me. Right, there's a
Speaker 2: number of people. I don't think it's huge in an
Speaker 2: electoral sense, but it's probably thousands or tens of thousands
Speaker 2: of people who now believe that the Eisenhower is either
Speaker 2: badly damaged or at the bottom of the sea, and
Speaker 2: they will keep believing that the same way that like
Speaker 2: a chunk of people believe that when they look up
Speaker 2: and see clouds, every cloud they see is like poison.
Speaker 2: The US government shot out into the sky using our
Speaker 2: secret planes to murder people with fucking whatever. I don't
Speaker 2: know it's anyway, or.
Speaker 3: The belief that literally ever university in Gaza has been
Speaker 3: secretly turned into a military base.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: It's they're like underground tunnels. It's like, you know, it's
Speaker 3: all of all of all of these things that it's
Speaker 3: not just like a I don't know if this switch
Speaker 3: happens immediately. I don't think it does. They're there there.
Speaker 3: There may be like a tipping point. It is often
Speaker 3: a very gradual shift into different reality tunnels, and then
Speaker 3: you don't realize how far you are in one until
Speaker 3: you're like fully in it, and then in that case
Speaker 3: you probably don't even realize yourself. People on the outside
Speaker 3: will point out, oh wow, this is this is uh,
Speaker 3: this is some interesting beliefs you have suddenly fallen into. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but it it doesn't, It doesn't happen overnight. It is
Speaker 3: it is. It is a slow shift in a lot
Speaker 3: of cases, and yeah, laying out you know, quote unquote
Speaker 3: facts and logic often cases does not help at all
Speaker 3: and will actually hurt. It will produce a backfire effect.
Speaker 3: That's not the case for everybody, but that is the
Speaker 3: case for a lot of people. And it's easy to discount,
Speaker 3: you know, people yelling horrible things at you at a protest.
Speaker 3: It's easy to discount people you know, saying horrible things
Speaker 3: on Twitter. But it's more frustrating when it's like you're
Speaker 3: on who you like previously, like had a good relationship with,
Speaker 3: and yeah, no, I mean this, this this kind of
Speaker 3: reminds me of like, you know, attempts at QAnon and
Speaker 3: deprogramming back in like twenty nineteen, where you know, we
Speaker 3: had this influx of influx of older people and boomers
Speaker 3: and sometimes just like not super old people either also
Speaker 3: just like like moms in their thirties who started like
Speaker 3: leaving all this stuff and cutting them off from you know,
Speaker 3: contact with you or other people doesn't help, obviously, but
Speaker 3: they can also be really hard to maintain, like a
Speaker 3: good relationship. And yeah, it's a weird balance of being
Speaker 3: able to provide a little bit of like compassion to
Speaker 3: someone and not completely cut them off while also maintaining
Speaker 3: your own personal boundaries. It's it's a really tricky thing.
Speaker 3: But in a lot of the cases of the QAnon stuff,
Speaker 3: all the most successful things that I've heard about people
Speaker 3: getting out of it. It did require a line, like
Speaker 3: there had to be some connecting thread to the person,
Speaker 3: and over time that thread could be pulled upon and
Speaker 3: maybe the person would use that thread as like as
Speaker 3: like a crutch when the reality so slowly started to
Speaker 3: crumble around them. And it's really tricky and I don't
Speaker 3: have any good solutions for this. Nobody does. Anyone who
Speaker 3: does say they do is also a grifter who's lying
Speaker 3: and trying to make money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I will agree with you. The closest we come
Speaker 2: to there being a solution is don't cut off ties
Speaker 2: with the person. I mean unless you have Obviously, there
Speaker 2: are some things that people can come to believe and
Speaker 2: advocate for that you have to, Like, I'm not saying
Speaker 2: that that line doesn't exist. Like I had someone reach
Speaker 2: out about a family member who had started to believe
Speaker 2: some conspiracy stuff regarding extra terrestrials that was like obviously
Speaker 2: untrue and it worried them, and I was like, well, look,
Speaker 2: you know, you don't have to tell them that you
Speaker 2: believe them. You can say like, I don't you know,
Speaker 2: really feel the same way you do about this, But
Speaker 2: I'm always down to talk about it, right or like
Speaker 2: you know, I'm always you know, here to to listen
Speaker 2: if you want to talk about this and let him
Speaker 2: know that like they have a connection still, if you
Speaker 2: make sure that there's like still a way they can
Speaker 2: get out of that tunnel and back up to something
Speaker 2: that resembles reality, maybe they will, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I I really wish Robert Ana Wilson could have
Speaker 3: seen the twenty era Internet. I'm sure he would have
Speaker 3: had some thoughts.
Speaker 2: He would he would have had some fascinating things to
Speaker 2: write about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well this is this has been an exciting tale.
Speaker 2: Yes, indeed, so, I don't know, go.
Speaker 3: Aircraft carrier down.
Speaker 2: We did it, Joe, Yeah, we did it. Joe. Go
Speaker 2: destroy the USS Eisenhower in your own life, just like
Speaker 2: the fake Koothies. Pretend did.
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