Speaker 1: Alsome Media. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to let you know this is a compilation episode. So
Speaker 1: every episode of the week that just happened is here
Speaker 1: in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for
Speaker 1: you to listen to in a long stretch if you want.
Speaker 1: If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
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Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to It Can Happen Here podcast about
Speaker 2: things falling apart and people putting them back together. I
Speaker 2: am back after us for a lengthy court battle, have
Speaker 2: been allowed to return to the podcast, which I'm very
Speaker 2: grateful for. And I'm joined today by John and Haval,
Speaker 2: two friends of mine who volunteer out here in Cucumber
Speaker 2: a lot, a lot more than I do, and we're
Speaker 2: going to explain some developments that have happened, give you
Speaker 2: all an update on the situation here, and let you
Speaker 2: know how you could help soon. Welcome to the show,
Speaker 2: both of you.
Speaker 3: Hello, thank you, good to be back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, welcome back. If you'd like to just introduce yourself,
Speaker 2: like your name, like whatever role you play out here,
Speaker 2: pronouns and any affiliation with any organization you feel is relevant.
Speaker 4: So my name is John. I'm someone that lives in
Speaker 4: the area. This situation just kind of showed up in
Speaker 4: my backyard. I was kind of forced into it rather
Speaker 4: than volunteered into it, and I've been dealing with it
Speaker 4: NonStop since the beginning. Yeah, I'm one of the main
Speaker 4: sets of boots on the ground.
Speaker 5: Have all I used, they them pronouns, and I organized
Speaker 5: with Direct Action, Drumline and Zene Distro doing a lot
Speaker 5: of mutual aid, which is how I got involved in
Speaker 5: all this, and also with Alo Gelato helping out on
Speaker 5: the ground since the beginning with John, pretty much just
Speaker 5: a little after John started.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so that's what nearly six months if you're
Speaker 2: not counting me. Yeah, yeah, wow yeah.
Speaker 4: So yeah, it started in May and then it stopped
Speaker 4: during the summer time. It picked up again in September,
Speaker 4: and we've been dealing with it NonStop.
Speaker 2: Since the people have heard briefly from John's father Sam
Speaker 2: in our May episodes about Title forty two, which we did. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it seems like forever ago. It also doesn't seem like
Speaker 2: very long ago. It's just one big weird collapsing of time.
Speaker 2: So last time we spoke, last time I spoke with Haval,
Speaker 2: we had this situation where we had three distinct concrete
Speaker 2: camps right adjacent to gaps in the wall, which volunteers
Speaker 2: were servicing with food, water, warm blankets, were building shelters,
Speaker 2: and we've heard a lot about those camps. Does one
Speaker 2: of you guys want to explain how things have changed
Speaker 2: since then, and really particularly in the last six weeks.
Speaker 6: So, yeah, it's changed quite radically.
Speaker 4: Actually, So between the months of September and December, we
Speaker 4: were servicing these three camps kind of more or less
Speaker 4: in our immediate area.
Speaker 6: It was pretty straightforward.
Speaker 4: Our routine would consist of stopping to each camp two
Speaker 4: times a day and feeding people, providing them with all
Speaker 4: of the different things that the US government was not
Speaker 4: and I kind of wish things were simpler like they
Speaker 4: were back then.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So at the end of the month of December, Secretary
Speaker 4: Blincoln made a visit to Mexico, and I suspect that
Speaker 4: he pressured the Mexican government to police our border for US.
Speaker 6: One of the immediate changes.
Speaker 4: That we saw as a result of that was the
Speaker 4: foundation of two Mexican National Guard camps at two of
Speaker 4: the gaps that feed into those camps in our area,
Speaker 4: and that has basically stopped any people coming through those areas.
Speaker 4: This has not made any less people come into the country. Actually,
Speaker 4: the numbers have been fairly consistent. It's just that people
Speaker 4: have been forced to go in through other areas. So
Speaker 4: there've been many many new oads that have popped up
Speaker 4: west of us. We have to drive quite a bit
Speaker 4: further into towards San Diego to go and service those areas,
Speaker 4: the main one being Sliders, which we're seeing about two
Speaker 4: hundred people come in sometimes in a night.
Speaker 6: It's it's not a good scene.
Speaker 4: Whereas those three ones that we were originally servicing had
Speaker 4: dumpsters and porta potties at the very least.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they still do.
Speaker 6: They still still there exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm moving at the speed of government.
Speaker 4: The new ones don't have that and people are having
Speaker 4: to spend Well, how long were the people there most
Speaker 4: during that crazy, crazy time, just like a few days ago.
Speaker 4: I think they were up. They were there for up
Speaker 4: to like nineteen hours.
Speaker 2: See it going on a day right now. Yeah, because
Speaker 2: we first to back crack to people like we heard
Speaker 2: from a member of the community that there have been
Speaker 2: people seen held there right at sliders. And then we
Speaker 2: went out there and we kept finding like warm fires,
Speaker 2: like where people hopefully been there and built fires. We
Speaker 2: could see where people have scavenged to brush, and a.
Speaker 3: Lot of documents ripped up around there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the little hill signs, Yeah, yeah, all these signs,
Speaker 2: And so we were able to use that to suppose
Speaker 2: that was a place where people were and then I
Speaker 2: guess was it. Eventually someone stayed the night there and
Speaker 2: that was what allowed us we bumped into people there.
Speaker 2: Someone bumped into people there.
Speaker 4: Well, we have an acquaintance that's been very helpful towards
Speaker 4: the cause that lives just close by to there, and
Speaker 4: he's kind.
Speaker 6: Of one of the one that sounded the alarm.
Speaker 2: And from there, it's like you said, it's a lot
Speaker 2: more difficult, right, Like it's probably a thirty minute drive.
Speaker 2: It's a steep off road, so like when it rains,
Speaker 2: it's hard to get to, So that makes it more
Speaker 2: difficult for us to provide stuff for people there. And like,
Speaker 2: I guess people should realize that we didn't find out
Speaker 2: about this because Border Patrol called us and said like, hey,
Speaker 2: there are people here without food, water, or show they
Speaker 2: don't do that. But yeah, that's not a thing that
Speaker 2: they did.
Speaker 3: We actually did one.
Speaker 5: Another volunteer, Brendan and I were driving out and we.
Speaker 3: Stopped on the road.
Speaker 5: I don't think you were with us, John, but we
Speaker 5: started talking to one of the agents because there was
Speaker 5: two or a group of people from I think Egypt.
Speaker 5: That was the day everyone did the mass exodus from
Speaker 5: one seven seven. So we stopped and we're talking to
Speaker 5: one of the agents and he did slip that there
Speaker 5: was another camp. He didn't name it, didn't say where
Speaker 5: it was, he just said it was that way. And
Speaker 5: that was around the same time that Morgan had mentioned
Speaker 5: it to us. So it's you know, we kind of
Speaker 5: pulled it out of this agent because we were talking
Speaker 5: very nonchalantly with him and he was being generally nice.
Speaker 3: But yeah, they don't tell us about this stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we have to find him myself. And what
Speaker 2: I think that brings up is that there are potentially.
Speaker 6: More, right we think know for a fact there are.
Speaker 2: We know that there are more, and like I think
Speaker 2: it's obviously people and people think of California and I
Speaker 2: think of La and I think of San Diego and
Speaker 2: they think of the beach and like pleasant weather. But
Speaker 2: can you explain, like, it's been really cold out here.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty miserable right with the wet weather we've been having.
Speaker 4: Pretty unknown part of southern California. You know, we're a
Speaker 4: mountainous region just just east of San Diego, within San
Speaker 4: Diego County. It's I mean it's not it's not crazy high.
Speaker 4: It's you know, it's about on an average of three
Speaker 4: thousand or four thousand feet above sea level. But yeah,
Speaker 4: it gets very windy over here, gets very unpleasant. It
Speaker 4: often drops down of freezing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's if you're out there all night and
Speaker 2: you have any shelter and any anyway to get warm
Speaker 2: and you're potentially wet from crossing a river or crossing
Speaker 2: a stream that often pops up in the desert. Can
Speaker 2: be a really miserable situation. So, like, it's important that
Speaker 2: these people receive help. And right now it's just through
Speaker 2: word of mouth and the local community that we're able
Speaker 2: to find them right and give them that help.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So going forward, like we've seen like this movement
Speaker 2: of migration west, what does that mean for the ability
Speaker 2: of volunteers to provide services to migrants, And what does
Speaker 2: it mean for the safety Like you said that the
Speaker 2: push factors haven't changed, right, So people are still coming here.
Speaker 2: They still have things to get away from that lead
Speaker 2: them to come here, but they're not coming the same
Speaker 2: way where we could so easily help them in these
Speaker 2: three concrete sites.
Speaker 4: So like, what does that mean, Well, it's uh, takes
Speaker 4: a lot more time out of our day just to
Speaker 4: drive there. For one, the main one, Sliders is up
Speaker 4: a very shitty road.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I think they call it sliders because it's
Speaker 5: so muddy and slidy over there when you're trying to
Speaker 5: be Yeah.
Speaker 2: I put someone's head into the roof of my trucks
Speaker 2: driving that so long ago.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And uh, you know, we're not the only ones
Speaker 4: that are displeased with this. It's more it makes the
Speaker 4: life for the border patrol more difficult, makes life for
Speaker 4: the emergency medical services more difficult, and of course it
Speaker 4: makes life for the migrants more miserable. And the owner
Speaker 4: of the property and the owners of the property in
Speaker 4: which they're hosting these you know, detaining these migrants.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we I think every single one has been on
Speaker 2: private property, so far right. And I think we spoke
Speaker 2: to most of the property owners at this point and
Speaker 2: it just seems to come out of the blue at them.
Speaker 2: It's it's very.
Speaker 6: Strange, permission is never sought.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think one of them is suing the
Speaker 2: Border Patrol for it, but fake months. But obviously it
Speaker 2: does have an impact on a landscape as well. People
Speaker 2: understand to be a coal so they're cutting down whatever
Speaker 2: they can to burn to make shelter, to make their
Speaker 2: experience a little bit less miserable.
Speaker 6: So that's the Yeah, that's that's kind of a.
Speaker 4: Bargaining tool that we try and use when trying to
Speaker 4: convince the property owners to allow us to build shelters
Speaker 4: over there. It's just to try and convince them that
Speaker 4: it'll be good for them to have migrants not be
Speaker 4: in a position to be forced to have to cut
Speaker 4: down the vegetation on their land and trash their land.
Speaker 4: And you know, by allowing us to build shelters on
Speaker 4: their property and give firewood to the to the to
Speaker 4: the migrants that are being held on their property, it's
Speaker 4: better for them in the long run.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And the first time we went out there, they had
Speaker 5: created these shelters by just ripping brush and creating these
Speaker 5: like semi circles that were maybe about a footage.
Speaker 6: Some of them are very impressive. Yeah, yeah, like.
Speaker 5: Two three feet high and it was nice, you know,
Speaker 5: and enclosed, so they had some sort of shelter. But yeah,
Speaker 5: they had to rip all that from the vegetation around
Speaker 5: the area, which just ruins the ecosystem there, I'm sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it must tear up your hands as well.
Speaker 2: It goes slowly bushes and stuff. Yeah, yeah, it's not
Speaker 2: desirable for anyone talking of things aren't desirable. We unfortunately
Speaker 2: have to take an advertising break, so we will do that.
Speaker 2: Hit some stuff that you don't need. All right, we're back.
Speaker 2: Those are some products and services. Now we're going to
Speaker 2: talk about the way John being very local to Kumba, right,
Speaker 2: how it is like organizing in a rural community, and
Speaker 2: the way that obviously you have people of very disparate
Speaker 2: political leanings in the area, and like how you've managed
Speaker 2: to like phrase what we're doing and to organize in
Speaker 2: such a way that the very least people aren't like
Speaker 2: actively pissed off at you.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So, first of all, I'm a Quaker, come from a
Speaker 4: Quaker family, and first and foremost, I am doing this
Speaker 4: for religious reasons, and I like to try and remind
Speaker 4: people of that. So when people try and come at
Speaker 4: me with anti immigrants sentiment, I just try and remind
Speaker 4: them that, you know, this is basically what you're supposed
Speaker 4: to do according to the Bible, and you know, to
Speaker 4: hate on any of these people is very Unchristian, and
Speaker 4: when I do so, it's very hard for them to
Speaker 4: come at me with any of that stuff. But still, yes,
Speaker 4: for the most part, the community over here have not
Speaker 4: been very helpful towards this. They have not been very
Speaker 4: enthused with all these migrants coming in, and you know,
Speaker 4: they've been very regrettably misinformed about it all. They're still
Speaker 4: looking at various crazy sources for their new use, like
Speaker 4: YouTube channels and stuff like that, and it's kind of
Speaker 4: kind of hard to believe. It's like, you guys live
Speaker 4: in the area. You can just drive straight out there.
Speaker 4: You can talk to me a person that you guys know,
Speaker 4: yet you still choose to look up all these various
Speaker 4: whack jobs on YouTube.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, we've had something of a problem with the
Speaker 2: YouTube people, right, Like, there's a whole info, a whole
Speaker 2: ecosystem of right wing YouTubers that I think probably most
Speaker 2: folks don't know about, even if you take an interest
Speaker 2: in other like right wing conspiracy stuff, as a whole
Speaker 2: ecosystem of right wing border YouTubers who have been I mean,
Speaker 2: describe what you've seen.
Speaker 3: Right, We've had like a new right wing fascist out
Speaker 3: every day.
Speaker 5: It seems there's Oreo Express, Anthony Aguero has been out here,
Speaker 5: JLR Investigation JLR, Roger Ogden.
Speaker 2: Was out here the other day. Classic.
Speaker 4: It's kind of calmed down though in the last last
Speaker 4: couple of days.
Speaker 6: But there was a period in late February where it
Speaker 6: seemed like they were coming out every single day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just a different guy in a different lifted jeep.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly, just after that whole border what was it that.
Speaker 2: Take back our Border?
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I got them all raled up to come out.
Speaker 4: Actually, what really set them off to be aware of
Speaker 4: all of this is when Fox did their big piece
Speaker 4: out here and they were out here for multiple days.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's what kind of like turned on the tap.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's very common anyway you go on the border, right,
Speaker 2: like Fox has a border reporter Bill Malugan. People will
Speaker 2: be familiar with Bill Malugan from publishing a story in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty which suggested the police officer had a tampon
Speaker 2: used tampon put in his Starbucks coffee, which was demonstrably
Speaker 2: false and didn't really very much look like a tampon.
Speaker 2: You can google more about that if that's interesting to you.
Speaker 2: But like someone who preps should have lost a generalistic
Speaker 2: credibility at that point, is now doing border reporting for Fox.
Speaker 2: And this is when I speak to people all along
Speaker 2: the border right here Arizona, Texas. Yeah, the stuff that
Speaker 2: Fox puts out very strongly correlates with anti migrant sentiment,
Speaker 2: both both locally and with like these these folks coming
Speaker 2: in and streaming and they're always asking for donations, right,
Speaker 2: Like it's not a then they're they're not like advert
Speaker 2: funded or like publicly funded like that. They're funded by
Speaker 2: donations for what.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I forget the channel that Aguero is on
Speaker 5: that he's constantly asking for the nations and like.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you, you just dropped ten dollars, thank you
Speaker 2: for the five spot.
Speaker 7: Other of like they're.
Speaker 6: Sitting in his car ling'. That's what they're grifters.
Speaker 4: That's that's what they're out there for every it seems
Speaker 4: like a third of their broadcast time is spent asking
Speaker 4: for donations, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, it's like a like a charity stream excepted
Speaker 2: so it's the opposite of charity, I guess exactly, So
Speaker 2: pay me to do hateful things streams. Yeah, And I
Speaker 2: think like that as we get, as we look between
Speaker 2: now and November, I think it's really important that, like,
Speaker 2: the border will be a topic that people who never
Speaker 2: come to the border will argue about constantly between now
Speaker 2: and November. Right, Fox News will have reporting on it,
Speaker 2: NBC will have reporting on it, like, and both of
Speaker 2: them will have reporting that isn't anchored on what we
Speaker 2: see every single day out here, which is a whate
Speaker 2: variety of people from whatever the world who are having
Speaker 2: a very difficult time right here and need our help,
Speaker 2: right and we're doing what we can to help them.
Speaker 2: So I guess what, like, people who are listening to
Speaker 2: this will in the next I don't know how long
Speaker 2: it is to a November, what six months, seven eight months,
Speaker 2: they'll have conversations with their family members, with their friends,
Speaker 2: with people in bars, whatever regarding the border. What do
Speaker 2: you think they should know about, like, what we're seeing,
Speaker 2: and like because there's this whole border invasion narrative, right,
Speaker 2: and like, this is not an invasion. We were just
Speaker 2: out joking with some people and helping them get their
Speaker 2: firewood prepped. Like these people are not a threat.
Speaker 4: I think people often make the mistake of considering this
Speaker 4: issue to be a political issue. It really is just
Speaker 4: a humanitarian issue. Vast majority of the people that I've
Speaker 4: talked to have very legitimate reasons for needing to time
Speaker 4: into this country, whether they're from Ecuador, you know, you
Speaker 4: know the situation over there recently there were gangsters that
Speaker 4: took over a TV station, Or in Guatemala, where I
Speaker 4: spoke to a man who told me that his children
Speaker 4: with college degrees can make enough family money to feed
Speaker 4: their families, or even in Afghanistan where people have literally
Speaker 4: had the Taliban threatened their families lives.
Speaker 3: The same with and the Iatola escaping.
Speaker 6: Kurdish people in Turkey. I mean, the list goes on.
Speaker 4: Or you know, climate refugees like the Mauritanians that we
Speaker 4: just spoke with earlier. Yes, they're they're coming, and they
Speaker 4: have really reasonable grounds for asylum over here.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and it wouldn't be such an quote unquote invasion
Speaker 5: if they were just allowed to walk through the port
Speaker 5: of entry. This it's this process is so silly because
Speaker 5: they cross. They could just do this all at the
Speaker 5: port of entry. They really could be safe. The policies
Speaker 5: just choose not to do this. Yeah, that's the part
Speaker 5: that really doesn't make sense. It's like we're letting them
Speaker 5: in anyways. Why do we need to make their lives
Speaker 5: so uncomfortable, you know and dangerous?
Speaker 6: Right? Dangerous?
Speaker 2: I mean, John, you and I were on a water
Speaker 2: drop maybe two months ago now six weeks ago in
Speaker 2: slightly west of here, right, do you remember? We were
Speaker 2: driving down to where we're going to get off, and
Speaker 2: we met that family from Guinea. There was like, do
Speaker 2: you want to just describe what you saw because I
Speaker 2: think it was like, at least for me, that was
Speaker 2: like I've seen it a lot, but it still emotionally
Speaker 2: affected me.
Speaker 4: So yeah, there was a there was a Guinean woman
Speaker 4: and her kid. I think he might have been like
Speaker 4: what four or something three three? Yeah, and there was
Speaker 4: also a Nigerian woman and you know, Nigerian speak English
Speaker 4: and Guineans speak French. They weren't really able to communicate
Speaker 4: with one another, and yet they were still traveling side
Speaker 4: by side because they they just teamed up because they
Speaker 4: were in a desperate situation together. One of them was
Speaker 4: was she and sandals.
Speaker 2: One of them didn't have shoes at all.
Speaker 6: Didn't have shoes at all.
Speaker 4: Right, yeah, yeah, it's six weeks is a long time,
Speaker 4: you know what you're doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you see horrible things every day.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's been a very eventful time. Yeah, every day
Speaker 4: feels like a news story.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah. And they just kind of sat on the.
Speaker 4: Side of the road and uh, we're out of breath,
Speaker 4: and they were just basically asking us to help them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I remember the little girl because we were obviously
Speaker 2: concerned with the lady who didn't have shoes and trying
Speaker 2: to help like bandage her feet and stuff. But then
Speaker 2: I remember the little girl just wasn't saying anything, and
Speaker 2: I suddenly realized, oh, this little girl is probably very cold.
Speaker 2: She was like, you know, early, like mildly hypothermic.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I had her wrapped up in a little mylaud
Speaker 2: blanket with me to warm her up. And it's just,
Speaker 2: I know, it's just for one reason or another, that
Speaker 2: was a moment where I was like, why on earth
Speaker 2: are we doing this to a three year old? Like
Speaker 2: what what possible reason could there be this three year
Speaker 2: old girl to have hypothermia here and like the country
Speaker 2: in the world.
Speaker 4: Who could possibly agree that this is a good thing? Yes, yeah,
Speaker 4: Or another experience I had in the beginning of February
Speaker 4: where there was this Colombian man who was in tears,
Speaker 4: who approached me and told me that his daughter was very,
Speaker 4: very ill, and he dragged me over to a porta
Speaker 4: potty and she was there, bundled up with like nine
Speaker 4: blankets or something, not really responding to my questions. He
Speaker 4: was trying to contact nine to one one, but the
Speaker 4: responder on a nine to one to one or the
Speaker 4: dispatcher didn't speak Spanish, so I had to communicate with
Speaker 4: them and navigate the whole situation. Turns out she did
Speaker 4: have hypothermia. Yeah, but the ambulance would not take him
Speaker 4: along with the mother and the child to the hospital.
Speaker 4: So again it's another case of family separation. Who knows
Speaker 4: what might have happened. They would have gotten processed separately.
Speaker 4: He could have ended up in Louisiana and she could
Speaker 4: have ended up in Riverside or somewhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and at that point, once again, it's not the
Speaker 2: government or your tax is it were paying for those
Speaker 2: people to be reunified, right, that's work that's done by
Speaker 2: NGOs and modern trey organizations exactly. Yeah, despite the massive
Speaker 2: amount of money we spend on And we were just
Speaker 2: talking the other day about how they like the architectural
Speaker 2: marvel of sections of the border wall right where they've
Speaker 2: poured concrete at like a forty five plus degree angle
Speaker 2: and spent millions of dollars for every yard of that,
Speaker 2: and we don't have enough money to give this three
Speaker 2: year old girl a blanket or to get that family
Speaker 2: back together.
Speaker 5: It's pathetic, it's it's yeah, it's mind boggling. Yeah, even
Speaker 5: today with that dude from Brazil. He came up to
Speaker 5: me when we first got here, they were starving, wanted food, water,
Speaker 5: and he was like, I'm sick, I have a fever.
Speaker 5: So I hooked him up with some cold medicine that
Speaker 5: we had in our medkit, and then later when we
Speaker 5: went back to do the second round of feeding, he
Speaker 5: got more food and he was like, thank you so much.
Speaker 3: We're starving.
Speaker 5: We were told to when we were dropped off to
Speaker 5: wait in the mountains at six pm to six am,
Speaker 5: so they were just hadn't really I don't know if
Speaker 5: they were on the American side yet or how that worked.
Speaker 5: Didn't really describe it, but had to wait in the
Speaker 5: mountains before crossing, and so people are getting sick out there.
Speaker 3: We ran into that dude with.
Speaker 5: The dog bite on at at one seven seven. He
Speaker 5: was just so we we always go check this one
Speaker 5: camp because there hasn't been out since Squaddi and SNL
Speaker 5: have put their camp on the other side. There hadn't
Speaker 5: been a whole lot of people crossing in this area,
Speaker 5: but we go check it periodically. In one morning, yeah,
Speaker 5: we saw this man hobbling towards us as we're driving
Speaker 5: down the road with a stick and we're like, why
Speaker 5: is he walking like this? Pulled over and he was
Speaker 5: bitten by a dog. He said he went to take
Speaker 5: a drink of water and some dogs attacked him, two dogs.
Speaker 6: I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he'd described it to the wolf, right, yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So we called the MS and they picked them
Speaker 5: up and took them to the hospitals.
Speaker 2: Right, but you hadn't been there. It's a long way
Speaker 2: to walk with a dog bite in your.
Speaker 5: Leg Yeah, and who knows, Bordevite might not even even
Speaker 5: if ems them out. They might have just tried to
Speaker 5: process them with the dog bite.
Speaker 3: Yeah get it could have gotten infected or infect toward us.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4: But just to go back on the mutual aid question
Speaker 4: that you had earlier, it hasn't all been negative. It's
Speaker 4: actually been a really great experience in which I've met
Speaker 4: really great people from all kinds of walks of life
Speaker 4: who have just joined together because they see a problem
Speaker 4: and know that they're the only they're the only ones
Speaker 4: that can make a difference. And it is a sure
Speaker 4: easy way to be really important and make a difference
Speaker 4: in other people's lives. You don't really need to have
Speaker 4: much more than a good heart and a willingness to work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, I think we should talk about that more
Speaker 2: because not that some of us had some prior life
Speaker 2: experience right working with refugees or migration, but I think
Speaker 2: most of us just were people who were like, yeah,
Speaker 2: this isn't right, and I am able to help, and
Speaker 2: so I'm going to help. So can you talk about
Speaker 2: like how people can help? And then, like you said,
Speaker 2: I think I've actually got a lot out of this
Speaker 2: and that I feel more affirmed in my belief that
Speaker 2: we can look out after each other without the need
Speaker 2: to control each other, and like we don't necessarily need
Speaker 2: people with guns and badges to create a society that
Speaker 2: cares for people who need taking care of. So prep
Speaker 2: you could describe like how people can help, and then
Speaker 2: what it is that you've got out of this that
Speaker 2: keeps you wanting to do this.
Speaker 6: Well, first of all, yeah, we don't.
Speaker 4: We don't have a clear structure of authoritative structure over here.
Speaker 4: It's we take ideas as a collective. Different people have
Speaker 4: contributed different things. There's a woman that really nailed down
Speaker 4: the PB and J making system and we've all just
Speaker 4: been following her lead.
Speaker 6: There.
Speaker 4: Some people came up with the idea of having a
Speaker 4: cell phone charging station.
Speaker 6: That was you, And uh, it's just the list goes on.
Speaker 4: And if you wanted to help, you could just come
Speaker 4: by to the border, come to one of these sites
Speaker 4: and just start distributing food or teaming teaming up with
Speaker 4: us somehow, or by donating to the GoFundMe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what's the good fund Me?
Speaker 6: John?
Speaker 4: So it's a go fundme that was set up by
Speaker 4: my by my dad I don't actually know what it's
Speaker 4: titled Cucumba Migrant Aid.
Speaker 2: Go fund Me had Cumba Migrant eight.
Speaker 3: It comes up Samuel Schultz. I think is by Samuel.
Speaker 2: Schultz, so you'll know because it has like fifty thousand
Speaker 2: dollars on it and like maybe seven woods as a description.
Speaker 2: It's like Google because not much else is going down here,
Speaker 2: I guess. But yeah, people can help that way, and
Speaker 2: we've had people come who listened. We had two people
Speaker 2: this morning right who'd heard about it on the podcast
Speaker 2: and it come and helped. Yeah, and it made a
Speaker 2: really really great difference.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they camped out at the Sliders and really held
Speaker 5: it down, which is really important. I mean for some
Speaker 5: of us, we you know, like John and I, we
Speaker 5: kind of do like a morning shift where we get
Speaker 5: up really early and make sure to do everything that
Speaker 5: we need to do, prepping sandwiches, checking on all the camps.
Speaker 5: But a lot of people come in in the middle
Speaker 5: of the night. Sliders had people come in what at
Speaker 5: midnight or one am?
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, all throughout.
Speaker 4: A group came at midnight, a group came at like
Speaker 4: one am, and then there were also more that came
Speaker 4: at four am.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so like having someone on site camping, you know,
Speaker 5: making sure that people's needs are met and that if
Speaker 5: any emergencies take place, that they're taken care of, and
Speaker 5: it's just that smiling face when they get here.
Speaker 3: It makes a huge difference.
Speaker 5: Like that dude from Brazil, like earlier he was saying
Speaker 5: to me, he was like, thank you so much, Like
Speaker 5: this is like this is humanity right here, Like I'm
Speaker 5: a human and I'm like, yes, we will treat you
Speaker 5: like humans here.
Speaker 4: Like at the end of the day, you know, these
Speaker 4: people coming through Central America and Mexico, they go through
Speaker 4: so much, you know, extortion, people ripping them off, just
Speaker 4: feeling unwelcome throughout that whole voyage. Yeah, just having a
Speaker 4: group of people welcome them into the country and treat
Speaker 4: them with dignity is worth more than any bottle of
Speaker 4: water or sandwich that we can give them. And you know,
Speaker 4: that's that's the main thing that we're doing.
Speaker 2: I would say, I want to emphasize that people can
Speaker 2: help in so many ways that you can send us stuff,
Speaker 2: you can send us money, or you can just show up.
Speaker 2: If you just have a weekend that's totally fine, or
Speaker 2: a day it's totally fine. Or if you just want
Speaker 2: to come and make sandwiches, that's totally fine. Like like it,
Speaker 2: We're a very diverse group of people, and some people
Speaker 2: have had more time than others. But yeah, everyone I
Speaker 2: think is valued, and like you said, I think like
Speaker 2: we're the way that we organize without anyone, like we
Speaker 2: organized horizontally has allowed us to be so much better.
Speaker 2: Like do you remember the day there was a day
Speaker 2: when we ran out of plates and we we were
Speaker 2: like down in Willow and it was just it was
Speaker 2: like chaos. And then someone who just arrived that day
Speaker 2: was like, oh, what if we put the beans in
Speaker 2: a sandwich bag and give people? That was actually Peter,
Speaker 2: who's back now after going on rowing it for a while.
Speaker 2: But yeah, like if we had been like, no, I'm
Speaker 2: in charge, we've been doing this for longer, then those
Speaker 2: people wouldn't have got fed, right, But because we were
Speaker 2: like willing to listen, then the people got fed, and
Speaker 2: like we were all happier because the people got fed, right,
Speaker 2: Like it worked better that way. So like as things change,
Speaker 2: because like border patrol have said explicitly that they're trying
Speaker 2: to push people west, right, what do you think, like
Speaker 2: what do we need going forward, what do you see
Speaker 2: like the situation being, and like it would be good
Speaker 2: to explain the context of like the changing seasons here
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 4: Yes, so I think what we're going to see more
Speaker 4: of is people that are crossing in unorthodox areas, more
Speaker 4: people that are hopping the fence, more people that are
Speaker 4: cutting holes in the walls, just popping up all over
Speaker 4: the place.
Speaker 6: So, yeah, it would be great to have eyes.
Speaker 4: Along the border, people that are willing to travel up
Speaker 4: and down along the border to find out where these
Speaker 4: people are coming through, because for the most part, we
Speaker 4: don't know a lot oftentimes where these people are coming through.
Speaker 4: There are a couple of new oads open air detention
Speaker 4: sites that are relatively close to us that we can't
Speaker 4: find even.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, like maybe if we had a super fancy
Speaker 2: drone we could find them, or just boots on the ground,
Speaker 2: nice road vehicle. Yeah yeah, yeah, then these are all
Speaker 2: things that cost money that we don't have. But like
Speaker 2: we've all put lots of miles on our trucks and
Speaker 2: lots of miles on our boots trying to trying to
Speaker 2: help out.
Speaker 3: My exhaust is falling off all these bumps.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my transfer case to competing. But like, yeah, if
Speaker 2: we had more people, some of us could focus on
Speaker 2: feeding people here because there was how many people were
Speaker 2: there when we just left now one hundred and twenty
Speaker 2: something like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh no, actually probably more if you count the
Speaker 4: new group. I think you know what a conservative estimate.
Speaker 6: Would have been maybe one hundred and forty.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So that's we'd made one hundred and forty sandwiches
Speaker 2: to feed them today, and we'd chopped firewood and taken
Speaker 2: that out and we'd be given all that out right.
Speaker 2: That was after the same thing at breakfast time. That
Speaker 2: doesn't leave much time to go meander along the border
Speaker 2: and look for another site. So if we had more people,
Speaker 2: we could do that and that would be really valuable.
Speaker 3: Also, if you have connection to firewood.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, if you're a person who can bring
Speaker 2: us a lot of firewood.
Speaker 5: We have one homie right now and breaking his back.
Speaker 2: For us.
Speaker 3: So yeah, that's a definite big need out here.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Is there other stuff like that that people who maybe
Speaker 2: aren't here but have connections to or they could they
Speaker 2: could send that's particularly needed.
Speaker 3: A nice off road vehicle, got one lying around.
Speaker 4: Firewood is definitely a big thing. That's that's a huge need.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's getting really cold up here, and especially in
Speaker 5: like sliders too.
Speaker 3: I think it's higher in elevation, so.
Speaker 2: So exposed to there's nothing between you and the wind. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's very cold out there.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: But and and just other things that are that are
Speaker 4: easier for us to get, but we just constantly need,
Speaker 4: such as breads, blankets, bread.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, tents, all these things.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 2: The wind and the sun destroys everything that we've stockpiled
Speaker 2: after a while, and we have to keep rempanking the wheel.
Speaker 2: And then sometimes borter patrol destroys our stuff as well,
Speaker 2: or sometimes some some chubs come and destroy our stuff,
Speaker 2: which oh, the chuts destroying our Yeah, we should talk
Speaker 2: about the destruction of the shelters before we finish, I guess,
Speaker 2: just to end on a sad note. We was happy,
Speaker 2: not because we built them again and they're fine. So
Speaker 2: there were some shelters I think mostly they were ones
Speaker 2: that had been built. What they were ones that have
Speaker 2: been built volunteers. Yeah, and what joh and you saw
Speaker 2: what happened to those shelters.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, So we built some shelters at one of
Speaker 4: the sites at one of the main sites. You know,
Speaker 4: it was very simple just by having of plywood as
Speaker 4: the frame holding it up and then nailing down some
Speaker 4: tarps on it with batons. It was It was a
Speaker 4: nice thing. It stood up to the heavy winds that
Speaker 4: we have here very well.
Speaker 2: It's incomparably better to not having a shelter there.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, it's a completely different They're instantly use once
Speaker 5: people across and it's awesome to see, like adults that
Speaker 5: are alone will get out and force family shelters like, yeah,
Speaker 5: you get it first for sure.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and yeah, we built those. It was working out good.
Speaker 4: And then one day the Border Patrol showed up or
Speaker 4: a company that was subcontracted by them and demolished them
Speaker 4: all using skiploaders and bulldozers and such. We showed up
Speaker 4: the following day we rebuilt all the shelters and we're
Speaker 4: really happy about it.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: It was kind of a big fuck you to them.
Speaker 4: You can tear down our stuff, but we'll just come
Speaker 4: back and build more.
Speaker 6: Yeah. But then what was it like a three four
Speaker 6: days later.
Speaker 2: Or the next day maybe I'm not the day.
Speaker 6: Two days it was close.
Speaker 4: Ye, some guys just showed up and they tore it
Speaker 4: all up with hammers.
Speaker 6: They are finishing a tiny little finishing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, luckily they didn't really come equipped, like maybe.
Speaker 6: With the tools, they didn't really know what they were doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's fair to say that, but still
Speaker 2: it's annoying when you've put the time into building it. Right,
Speaker 2: and Border Patrol didn't destroy contractors didn't destroy the shelters. First,
Speaker 2: we were like, oh, maybe they're not using this, but
Speaker 2: there are one hundred and forty people there right now,
Speaker 2: like in the shelters that got rebuilt for a third time.
Speaker 2: So like, I guess even we do appreciate people donating,
Speaker 2: and we understand that people's resources are scarce, and like
Speaker 2: the economy is bad and the rent is too damn high,
Speaker 2: et cetera. But like every time we build up enough stuff,
Speaker 2: we have to like we're always running uphill because like
Speaker 2: stuff just gets destroyed either by the weather or by
Speaker 2: the Border patrol or by volunteer Border Patrol judge, Like
Speaker 2: we could, I guess desperately need your help. And like
Speaker 2: at some point the news cycle will move on from
Speaker 2: the border, and that doesn't mean that we will be
Speaker 2: able to move on from having people to help here, right, because,
Speaker 2: like John said, there were people and people always deserve
Speaker 2: to be treated with dignity. Is there anything else that
Speaker 2: you guys think that people should know about the situation? Here?
Speaker 2: We wrap ups kind of chill. It is really nice.
Speaker 2: I like being here. Come here because it makes me happy,
Speaker 2: and my friends are here.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And like the Slider's location is located in a
Speaker 5: really awesome like you can see down just past the
Speaker 5: border wall. There's like a nice little train track that
Speaker 5: used to go from us into Mexico, I guess, and
Speaker 5: just beyond that there's like sheep on a farm in
Speaker 5: the distance, like rolling hills, the clouds come through, and
Speaker 5: like say, it's a really beautiful place to be and
Speaker 5: to hang out. And a lot of the locals that
Speaker 5: don't hate what we're doing are very nice.
Speaker 3: The people at the hotel are very supportive.
Speaker 4: And yeah, we're a great group, really good people. It's
Speaker 4: always really fun to do anything like this. People are
Speaker 4: generally enamored by our project and want to be involved
Speaker 4: and come back a second time. I mean we're kind
Speaker 4: of like cowboys. I mean we're doing this all on
Speaker 4: our own. We're driving up and down looking at the
Speaker 4: sites looking around and all that whole responsibility is on
Speaker 4: our shoulders.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it feels good to take responsibility.
Speaker 6: It definitely does.
Speaker 2: We're doing this.
Speaker 7: It's like no one else will, so yeah, just do it.
Speaker 2: Like that's fine. It's very like it reminds me of
Speaker 2: the punk scene growing up, but like it's a big
Speaker 2: important thing. Get Like you said, Fox, every national news
Speaker 2: network has been down here, every drifting streamer has been
Speaker 2: down here. But the end of the day, it's a
Speaker 2: few dozen random people who are actually the ones making
Speaker 2: sure that people don't die here. For all the government
Speaker 2: attention and for all the millions of dollars spent, it's
Speaker 2: just us.
Speaker 6: Yeah, working on a fraction of the butt.
Speaker 4: I mean, it costs them more to fly a helicopter
Speaker 4: for a few hours than we've ever spent.
Speaker 2: In our entire GOFUNDB. Yeah, and yeah, like we get
Speaker 2: it done. We're very efficient, I guess in that sense.
Speaker 2: But yeah, we would love more people. People have come
Speaker 2: because I listen to podcasts and that also like just
Speaker 2: for me personally means the world to me. Like most
Speaker 2: of the time we just talk into a microphone and
Speaker 2: then you can't really see who you're talking to us
Speaker 2: unless you go on like social media, and that's not
Speaker 2: always the best reflection of humanity. So like, it really
Speaker 2: means the world to me that someone like listens to
Speaker 2: this when they're driving to work or you know, going
Speaker 2: on a jog or whatever I'm doing, and it's like, no,
Speaker 2: I will I will go and I will help, because
Speaker 2: I think that is how we solve so many of
Speaker 2: our problems. Like there is a massive problem with people
Speaker 2: not being able to afford rent living on the street
Speaker 2: in this country, and we solve it in the same
Speaker 2: way by just showing up for each other.
Speaker 5: And there's also different ways to get plugged in, like
Speaker 5: if the desert's not your thing, it doesn't I mean,
Speaker 5: this is like where the process starts as far as
Speaker 5: like the spectrum of the whole border crisis or not crisis,
Speaker 5: but the whole border humanitarian situation.
Speaker 3: We have going on here. So this is what we're
Speaker 3: doing out here. But there's also airport runs.
Speaker 5: A lot of them get ditched in the airports, so
Speaker 5: I think we all we got SD and maybe m death.
Speaker 3: And at last center kind of hold down.
Speaker 5: They do airport runs, border patrol just I guess at
Speaker 5: night they don't drop them off like after ten or something.
Speaker 5: They don't drop them off at the IRIS station. They'll
Speaker 5: just drop them straight off at the airport. So they
Speaker 5: need help being fed. A lot of them don't have
Speaker 5: plane tickets. They need to kind of some you know,
Speaker 5: people need blankets because they have to sleep there. So
Speaker 5: we all, I mean we all we got is great
Speaker 5: for that. You can plug in with them, and I
Speaker 5: think Alochlado and who else is it? M Deef as well,
Speaker 5: that's doing the Irish street releases. So when the Border
Speaker 5: Patrol just releases them on the street, like a lot
Speaker 5: of people just getting a cab and go. They have
Speaker 5: the resources they can do that, they're already planned. But
Speaker 5: some people don't have any money or they got robbed
Speaker 5: on the way here, so they have nothing. They need
Speaker 5: a lot of help. They need to figure out where
Speaker 5: to go, they need a place to stay. So there's
Speaker 5: the street releases, there's the airport, there's I think that's
Speaker 5: kind of.
Speaker 4: Or or by just helping with shelters and organizations in
Speaker 4: whatever city you happen to be living in. You know,
Speaker 4: the majority of the migro well not the majority, but
Speaker 4: a very typical answer migrants give me when I ask
Speaker 4: them where in the United States they're going to? Is
Speaker 4: New York City or Chicago or any of these major cities.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Lincoln, Nebraska. Yeah, it's gonna be Idaho, have fun.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was beautiful.
Speaker 2: It was a guy have on and I met from
Speaker 2: a minority ethnic group in Russia. We met in September,
Speaker 2: Like I remember one of those first really cold nights,
Speaker 2: and I was talking to this person and they were
Speaker 2: in Pennsylvania and I checked in with them a few
Speaker 2: weeks ago and they're like happily living in Pennsylvania. Can't
Speaker 2: understand a word anyone else is saying. It's nice to
Speaker 2: see and yeah, you can help those people, lily in
Speaker 2: whatever community you're in. And like, if you're further along
Speaker 2: the border, there's Aarha Samaritans, there's no massive worth days,
Speaker 2: there's humane borders, two Songsamaritans as well. Right, yeah, all
Speaker 2: along the border, you know there are the there are
Speaker 2: lots of good people in Texas, right, there's a sidewalk
Speaker 2: school and Blainoso Matamoros, the people at the National Butterfly
Speaker 2: Center who are very nice people who we've heard from before.
Speaker 2: Like all along the border and like all around this country.
Speaker 2: There are there are things you can do to help,
Speaker 2: and I want to reinforce it. It's not like this
Speaker 2: penurius thing we do that's miserable and we all get
Speaker 2: together and cry every night. Like we do have a
Speaker 2: nice time, even though we have seen some really stressful things.
Speaker 2: Like we all look after one another and held space
Speaker 2: when people do need help or extra time to process something.
Speaker 2: But it's a very supportive community and we support each
Speaker 2: other through lots of other things, like aside from this,
Speaker 2: and I think a lot of people in general in
Speaker 2: the twenty first century America struggle with isolation. And that's
Speaker 2: a thing that capitalism does to people, right, it isolates
Speaker 2: us from each other. And so hopefully, like I think
Speaker 2: this is a solution for me this this has been
Speaker 2: a really positive thing, but like generally my sense of
Speaker 2: hope and.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and like what we're doing this kind of does
Speaker 5: it's disaster humanitarian relief effort.
Speaker 3: It's kind of with the.
Speaker 5: Way the climate is going in the world in climate
Speaker 5: climate are going to.
Speaker 2: Get less common.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this will just be getting more common, and like
Speaker 5: this kind of like preparing and building community and like
Speaker 5: this disaster scenario is going to Yeah, definitely be more
Speaker 5: in commons.
Speaker 6: And it's not that easy to do. I mean, it's
Speaker 6: not that hard to do.
Speaker 4: You know, you just got to have the intention and
Speaker 4: then you just got to get together and that's all.
Speaker 4: That's all you really need to do.
Speaker 2: Don't think that it's like this. If someone had said
Speaker 2: to us, what plus or minus fifty thousand people probably
Speaker 2: have come through, I have no idea on the numbers,
Speaker 2: but somewhere around.
Speaker 6: There, yeah, probably more than that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if we like I remember in May when we
Speaker 2: cleaned up the first o ads when we were like
Speaker 2: when I first met your mum and dad, John, we
Speaker 2: were cleaning up the first o ads and we were like, Wow,
Speaker 2: that was a horrible thing that happened. That was really fucked.
Speaker 2: If someone had said, right, well, between now and next March,
Speaker 2: fifty thousand people will come through here and it's mostly
Speaker 2: going to be you guys who are here picking up trash,
Speaker 2: and that's that's all. It's going to be. Like it's
Speaker 2: on you, it would have been it would have seemed overwhelming, right,
Speaker 2: But I don't think people should feel afraid to confront
Speaker 2: these big problems because like, between the group of people
Speaker 2: who we've assembled here we've been able to confront this
Speaker 2: problem and make it survivable and treat people with dignity
Speaker 2: and bring some dignity and humanity into a situation where
Speaker 2: there wasn't any right.
Speaker 3: No, yeah, And there's a role for everybody.
Speaker 5: No matter what you do, you can find your niche
Speaker 5: of what know you makes you feel good or something
Speaker 5: that you're good at, you know. Yeah, it's finding the
Speaker 5: little fascists that destroyed our things online and doing all
Speaker 5: that online footwork, or it's building shelters, or it's making
Speaker 5: PB and j's or.
Speaker 2: Our friends made a website and made a really good website.
Speaker 5: Website, yeah, or even yeah, just being someone that speaks
Speaker 5: multiple languages is a huge need out here, especially I
Speaker 5: mean Spanish is pretty common, but the harder languages, like
Speaker 5: I mean Mandarin.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, if you speak Mandarin and then you reach
Speaker 2: out to us and when we can call you, then
Speaker 2: that would be huge.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 2: That can be really in a medical emergency, that could
Speaker 2: be a life or death thing. So there were there
Speaker 2: are a ton of ways to help and re encourage
Speaker 2: people to kind of go off to they can where
Speaker 2: can people follow along with you? Two? Do you have
Speaker 2: like social media or anything that you want to plug.
Speaker 6: I don't. I'm gonna keep minding.
Speaker 2: The world beautiful.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 5: One of the how I got involved in this is
Speaker 5: through members of a drum line that I am part of,
Speaker 5: So we show up for protests, have been since twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: Direct Action drum Line on Instagram.
Speaker 5: We post a lot of different stuff from organizing for
Speaker 5: Palestine to you know, we were doing a lot of
Speaker 5: Black Lives Matter stuff early in twenty twenty and now
Speaker 5: it's you know, kind of cross mixed with border raide
Speaker 5: since I've been out here. So we occasionally will make
Speaker 5: posts so you.
Speaker 3: Can follow along there.
Speaker 5: Alo Gelato is a good one to follow on social media.
Speaker 5: Income Paul Wellness on Instagram Borderlands Relief Collective. I'm sure
Speaker 5: a lot of the people listening already follow a lot.
Speaker 3: Of these people.
Speaker 5: But yeah, there's a network through all of that, and
Speaker 5: so once you start following one or the other, we
Speaker 5: all tag each other and we share each other's stuff,
Speaker 5: so you can get involved that way and figure out
Speaker 5: what's going on. Yeah, and the is it bored? What's
Speaker 5: the website for? That's a great resource.
Speaker 2: Border Rade don't get helped to IO. I think if
Speaker 2: you give it a Google somewhere somewhere around that you'll
Speaker 2: find it. It's a good website. And like if you
Speaker 2: face seen similar issues in your community, wherever you are,
Speaker 2: whatever it is, Like, we've definitely made a lot of
Speaker 2: mistakes and we've learned a lot, and so we've tried
Speaker 2: to document the things that we've learned so that you
Speaker 2: guys don't have to reinvent the wheel somewhere else. Right,
Speaker 2: Like you know, you can be an efficient PB and jamaker,
Speaker 2: just like us.
Speaker 6: Learn Suirly's technique.
Speaker 2: All right, thank you so much, guys. I really appreciate
Speaker 2: your time.
Speaker 3: Question, Thank you, jeers.
Speaker 7: Welcome to It could happen here, the show about how
Speaker 7: a small group of people are trying to keep making
Speaker 7: bad things happen, and we're going to tell you what
Speaker 7: they are. I'm Garrison Davis and joined with me is
Speaker 7: doctor James Stout. Hello, doctor, Hi Garrison. Thank you for
Speaker 7: having me fitted some respect on my name.
Speaker 2: Appreciate it.
Speaker 7: So today we're going to be talking about something called
Speaker 7: Agenda forty seven, and actually we're going to be talking
Speaker 7: about this this whole week. We've gotten a lot of
Speaker 7: quests to talk about the heritage Foundation's Project twenty twenty five,
Speaker 7: which is a kind of an a road map for
Speaker 7: how a Republican president could change the country if they
Speaker 7: get elected next year. And although this proposal is scary
Speaker 7: and quite big, it's a massive, massive book. Yeah, Trump
Speaker 7: certainly listens to these types of guys, but he doesn't
Speaker 7: always like really like them.
Speaker 3: Oa.
Speaker 2: He does what the fuck he wants. And again, no
Speaker 2: one controlling Trump.
Speaker 7: He kind of does whatever he wants, right, Yeah, And
Speaker 7: I mean there certainly are other people like in Congress,
Speaker 7: including the Speaker, who are definitely pushing this Project twenty
Speaker 7: twenty five. And I think we'll probably talk about this
Speaker 7: on the show at some other point. But Trump actually
Speaker 7: has his own plans for if he's gonna be elected
Speaker 7: president again, and we're gonna be talking about that, and
Speaker 7: that is called Agenda forty seven, which I believe is
Speaker 7: a subtle reference to the forty seventh president, which will
Speaker 7: be him if he gets elected.
Speaker 2: Yeah, also the forty fifth president. So yeah, sell more
Speaker 2: merch that way.
Speaker 7: So the next the next next few episodes, we're gonna
Speaker 7: be diving into Trump's plans for if he becomes the
Speaker 7: forty seventh president of the United States called Agenda forty seven.
Speaker 7: He has all of these listed on his website, and
Speaker 7: one of my favorite parts is that to accompany each
Speaker 7: one of these, like policy proposals, he has a video
Speaker 7: of him like reading out something on a like a teleprompter,
Speaker 7: and he very often will go off script, just completely
Speaker 7: and just start talking, which which they include the entire
Speaker 7: transcript for underneath each video, which is just fascinating to read,
Speaker 7: totally divorced of like how he talks. It's just amazing. Also,
Speaker 7: all of the videos are embedded on his website via Rumble,
Speaker 7: which is just amazing, an amazing stuff happening.
Speaker 2: It's perfect.
Speaker 7: So that that's that's kind of the uh, the overview
Speaker 7: of what we're gonna be doing this next week and
Speaker 7: why and the reason why I have James here. James
Speaker 7: you you you work in education, right I do?
Speaker 2: I do some educating.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so you have you have opinions on education, I
Speaker 7: would assume.
Speaker 2: Yeah strong ones as a doctor, yeah yeah, a doctor
Speaker 2: of mond European history. Just to be clear before anyone, yes,
Speaker 2: pictures of their illnesses, please don't.
Speaker 7: So, I'm gonna be talking about Trump's plan for education,
Speaker 7: and by the end we can see if it gets
Speaker 7: the James Stout approval. As someone who works in education.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I mean, I'm up in minded. Let's see
Speaker 2: what he's got.
Speaker 7: So Trump, Now, the problem with us doing these episodes
Speaker 7: is that all of these are like videos right for
Speaker 7: his policy proposals. And I don't want to subject to you,
Speaker 7: the listener, to just videos of Trump talking.
Speaker 6: I don't.
Speaker 7: You don't need to hear that. But there's a part
Speaker 7: of me, just deep down, a shameful part of that
Speaker 7: when I'm reading these quotes, I really want to like
Speaker 7: slip into like a like a bad transgender Trump impression,
Speaker 7: which I've tried to suppress. I've tried to suppress the surge,
Speaker 7: but every once in a while, it just it just
Speaker 7: sneaks out. So as I'm going through these quotes, I
Speaker 7: cannot promise that that certain things might start happening. And
Speaker 7: it's just it's just a part of the deal.
Speaker 2: You've been possessed by the spirit of Donald Trump.
Speaker 7: Oh God. So on this note, Trump opens his education
Speaker 7: proposal with this line quote, our public schools have been
Speaker 7: taken over by the radical left maniacs, which really sets
Speaker 7: a tone for the rest of what we're gonna be
Speaker 7: talking about today.
Speaker 2: I do want a highlight that I've been trying for
Speaker 2: more than a decade, But obviously it's about people have
Speaker 2: been more successful than me in that regard.
Speaker 7: So over these next like twenty five minutes, I'm gonna
Speaker 7: try to explain what he calls his quote plan to
Speaker 7: save American education and give power back to American parents
Speaker 7: and the American parents line is going to be a
Speaker 7: reoccurring trend here. So in kind of a broad overview,
Speaker 7: Trump believes that regular public schools, as well as colleges
Speaker 7: and universities are just so far gone to not only
Speaker 7: require like massive, massive regressive changes, but also frankly whole
Speaker 7: new alternatives are needed, which leads us to our first
Speaker 7: policy proposal. So Trump says that Americans are horrified that
Speaker 7: quote once respected universities express support for the savages and
Speaker 7: jihattists who attacked Israel unquote. So that's obviously not great there.
Speaker 7: It is savages, very very quick, just immediate, immediately getting
Speaker 7: this sort of stuff. Despite spending more money on higher
Speaker 7: education than any other country, schools are quote turning our
Speaker 7: students into communists and terrorists and sympathize of many many
Speaker 7: different dimensions. What does that even mean. They're sympathizing with
Speaker 7: the alternate dimensions, you know, the oh I see the
Speaker 7: near universe version. They're gaining too much sympathy. Yeah, as
Speaker 7: well as turning into communists and terrorists.
Speaker 2: To be fair, he is right that like one of
Speaker 2: the areas where you will find like the the few whole. No,
Speaker 2: actually Twitter is the other area, unreconstructed Marxist leninists.
Speaker 7: He's in the Academy that it's there and on x
Speaker 7: dot com formerly known as Twitter. So to combat this
Speaker 7: communist and savage and g hottest incursion into universities, Trump
Speaker 7: is proposing something quote unquote dramatically different. His plan is
Speaker 7: to seize quote billions and billions unquote of dollars through taxes,
Speaker 7: finds in lawsuits against quote excessively large private university endowments unquote,
Speaker 7: and use that money to quote endow a new institution
Speaker 7: called the American Academy unquote.
Speaker 2: That's already the American Academy's already. But is he spending
Speaker 2: it with an E or or it's why? Like no,
Speaker 2: it's why, Okay, So it's a place not like the institution.
Speaker 7: So the American Academy will seek to quote make a
Speaker 7: truly world class education avaiable to every American free of charge,
Speaker 7: without adding a single dime to the federal debt. And
Speaker 7: then to do this, quote, the institution will gather an
Speaker 7: entire universe of the highest quality educational content unquote. And
Speaker 7: I love the phrase educational content.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is this sounds like the short prayer you
Speaker 2: videos that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, what are you like? You're starting to You're starting
Speaker 7: to suspect certain things, right like, Yeah, what do you
Speaker 7: think the American Academy is going to be here? Based
Speaker 7: on the limited information you have?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it doesn't seem like a credible university, does it.
Speaker 2: It seems to look like if you're.
Speaker 7: World made, that's education.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's what Barry Weiss is doing in Texas, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe she's gonna be helming the American Academy. It sounds
Speaker 2: like Jordan Peterston's Grift University.
Speaker 7: It's a world class education after you gather an entire
Speaker 7: universe of the highest quality educational content. So this content,
Speaker 7: Trump claims will quote cover the full spectrum of human
Speaker 7: knowledge and skills and make that material available to every
Speaker 7: American citizen online for free. Unquote that's just a library.
Speaker 7: Where he's describing as a library, we already have those,
Speaker 7: not quite the content. It's not just a library because
Speaker 7: quote the Academy will utilize the latest breakthrough in computing unquote,
Speaker 7: as well as study groups, mentors, and industry partners to
Speaker 7: provide a truly quote top tier education option for the people.
Speaker 7: For the next part, I have to do it in
Speaker 7: the Trump voice, because otherwise the grammar won't make any sense.
Speaker 7: Whether you want lectures or an ancient history, or an
Speaker 7: introduction to financial accounting or a trading at a skilled trade,
Speaker 7: the goal will be to deliver it and get it
Speaker 7: done properly. I love the phrase whether you want lectures
Speaker 7: or an ancient history?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Like you can give yourself a history, like
Speaker 2: you could go back to Samaria and it'sert yourself.
Speaker 7: Whether you want lectures or an ancient history, or an
Speaker 7: introduction to financial accounting or training in a skilled trade.
Speaker 7: So you will be able to learn all of this
Speaker 7: online for free, getting a truly topp tier education, which
Speaker 7: sounds like okay, But Trump specified that your American Academy
Speaker 7: education will be quote unquote strictly non political unquote.
Speaker 2: Good.
Speaker 7: I'm really excited to learn an ancient history from a
Speaker 7: strictly non political standpoint. That's that's great.
Speaker 2: We can't discuss the formation of the state because there
Speaker 2: will be a political stance.
Speaker 7: Furthermore, Donald Trump promised that at American Academy quote, there
Speaker 7: will be no wokeness or jihadism allowed. None of that's
Speaker 7: going to be allowed.
Speaker 2: How will I teach without jihadism? My personal jahad is
Speaker 2: is to educate the youth of America, But now I
Speaker 2: can't by taking it.
Speaker 7: Sorry, not allowed, not allowed, going to Trump, very sad,
Speaker 7: very sad. So this plan also seeks to help the
Speaker 7: forty million Americans who have some college education but no
Speaker 7: complete degree, by granting credit for past course work at
Speaker 7: quote unquote legacy institutions and giving Americans quote the chance
Speaker 7: to complete your education at the American Academy for free
Speaker 7: and much more quickly than is now possible or available unquote.
Speaker 7: So now, if there weren't red flags going off already,
Speaker 7: there certainly should be now with that last line, more
Speaker 7: quickly that is now possible or available, which is which
Speaker 7: is a classic tell of an online university scam. Now,
Speaker 7: the exact details of how the American academy is supposed
Speaker 7: to work. Are kind of unclear, probably because it hasn't
Speaker 7: been figured out yet because it's bush and quite possibly
Speaker 7: never will get figured out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, many such cases and Agenda forty seven as it
Speaker 2: turns out.
Speaker 7: But Trump University founder Donald Trump did say that his
Speaker 7: American Academy proposal does plan to quote compete directly with
Speaker 7: existing and very costly four year university systems by granting
Speaker 7: students degree credentials that the US government and all federal
Speaker 7: contractors will henceforth recognize.
Speaker 2: The other, recognize them as fucking useless.
Speaker 7: Not degrees. Degree credentials. Yeah, degree credentials.
Speaker 2: Gonna put my degree credential up on my wall.
Speaker 7: This is just another Trump University, an uncredited scale that
Speaker 7: Trump is hoping to prop up with the federal government,
Speaker 7: this time instead of his business empire. It's it's not
Speaker 7: it's it's not his entire thing, isn't it, Like, yes,
Speaker 7: that is the whole thing. It's not real. It's not real.
Speaker 7: He's he's framing this plan as a quote unquote revolution
Speaker 7: in higher education that will provide life changing opportunities by
Speaker 7: awarding American citizens with quote the full and complete equilovent
Speaker 7: of a bachelor's degree.
Speaker 2: I love it when he just fucking sends it on
Speaker 2: there's gonna be one in my in my episode, which
Speaker 2: you're here later this week, when he just cannot say
Speaker 2: the word film, and I love that he doesn't fucking try.
Speaker 2: He just he just owns it.
Speaker 7: The full and complete equivalent. That's not neither. That's neither
Speaker 7: full nor complete if it's an equivalent anyway. Trump Trump
Speaker 7: ends this video with an eloquent quote, enjoy it, learn
Speaker 7: from it, and thank you, which is just.
Speaker 2: I'm going to finish you on my legsures that way,
Speaker 2: and then I'll do like a smoke puff and just disappear.
Speaker 7: So yeah, this is this is the first plan to
Speaker 7: save American education. That sounds great. I cannot wait to
Speaker 7: get a fully complete equivalent the bachelor's degree credential. Very
Speaker 7: very cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, wonderful stuff.
Speaker 7: But do you know what isn't a scam?
Speaker 3: James?
Speaker 2: Can we say that, like I we might be absolute sure.
Speaker 7: I trust my life on every single product and or
Speaker 7: service that follows this musical sting we are back. Do not,
Speaker 7: I repeat, do not send me any of the advertisers
Speaker 7: that just aired. I don't care what they are. My
Speaker 7: life is indebted. I don't care. I don't care.
Speaker 2: You can send them to you can send them to Sophie.
Speaker 2: Her Twitter is at I right, okay.
Speaker 7: I write, okay, Senator Sophie.
Speaker 6: All right.
Speaker 7: So while this Trump University, too will remain uncredited. Donald Trump,
Speaker 7: creator of the Donald Trump board game that did not
Speaker 7: sell very well in nineteen eighty what, yeah, didn't you? Yeah,
Speaker 7: creator of the Donald Trump board game.
Speaker 2: Yeah? Wow, okay, is it like monopoly? But you just
Speaker 2: look lie and generate.
Speaker 5: I didn't.
Speaker 7: I didn't look too far into it for the bit.
Speaker 7: I'm gonna be honest here.
Speaker 2: This is yah. Disappointed. I was ready to go to
Speaker 2: deep dive.
Speaker 7: But Donald Trump also plans to attack the current accreditation
Speaker 7: system for being run by a communist scourge, which leads
Speaker 7: us to our second Agenda forty seven, topic titled quote
Speaker 7: protecting students from the radical Left and Marxist maniacs infecting
Speaker 7: educational institutions. But I believe he's talking about you, James.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is ironic. I'm an akiss, not a Marxist.
Speaker 7: You're not an artist maniac?
Speaker 2: No, No, sadly, not many such cases, but I do
Speaker 2: make them read the Communist Manifesto in my one oh
Speaker 2: one class.
Speaker 7: It's okay, it's okay.
Speaker 2: You got to read it. You got to it. It's
Speaker 2: something you should emerge from history education having read.
Speaker 7: So, Trump starts for talking about how quote unquote academics
Speaker 7: are quote obsessed with indoctrinating America's youth at colleges and
Speaker 7: universities while charging a ballooning tuition fee. Trump claims to
Speaker 7: have a quote unquote secret weapon that he will use
Speaker 7: to quote reclaim our once great educational institutions from the
Speaker 7: radical left, the college accreditation system. It's called accreditation for
Speaker 7: a reason. It's called accreditation for a reason. He never
Speaker 7: extravolates on that. I genuinely don't. I can't fathom what
Speaker 7: I think he means. That could go in so many directions.
Speaker 7: There's no way to know. There's no way to know.
Speaker 2: It just leaves a hanging.
Speaker 7: So Trump explains that quote accreditors are supposed to ensure
Speaker 7: that schools are not ripping off students and taxpayers, but
Speaker 7: they have failed totally unquote, which is not really what
Speaker 7: college accreditors do. Both government run and private accreditation organizations
Speaker 7: exist to develop criteria and CONDUCTI valuations to ensure educational
Speaker 7: quality and authorize if a school qualifies for student aid
Speaker 7: programs from the Department of Education. That's generally what accreditation
Speaker 7: institutions do. They don't look out for if students are
Speaker 7: being ripped off, like that's not really their role, but whatever.
Speaker 7: So upon returning to sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC,
Speaker 7: Donald Trump promised that he will quote fire the radical
Speaker 7: left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated
Speaker 7: by Marxist maniacs and lunatics. So he believes that there's
Speaker 7: like communists that are running the accreditation system and that's
Speaker 7: what's currently ruining colleges. That is his belief.
Speaker 2: They come in, they sit at the back, and this
Speaker 2: is the right. The little book has to be read,
Speaker 2: and then we have a criticism circle afterwards where they
Speaker 2: check how many marked references you've made in your lecture.
Speaker 7: So after sending all these communists to the goolag, Trump
Speaker 7: will then begin to quote accept applications for newer creditors.
Speaker 7: Now it's unclear if he's talking about just like the
Speaker 7: public or private sector here, but these newer creditors will
Speaker 7: quote impose real standards and colleges once again, and once
Speaker 7: and for all. Now what such standards you ask? Thank you?
Speaker 7: James Wells. Trump gave us a handy little list which includes,
Speaker 7: like some of the more average conservative to libertarian esque
Speaker 7: positions like protecting free speech, eliminating wasteful administrative positions that
Speaker 7: drive up costs, offering options for accelerated and low cost degrees,
Speaker 7: providing meaningful job placement and career services, and implementing college
Speaker 7: entrants and exit exams to prove that students are actually
Speaker 7: learning or getting their money's worth, right, Which all that
Speaker 7: sounds like kind of standard politician talk, right, It's like, okay, sure,
Speaker 7: but Trumpe did mention a few other standards that will
Speaker 7: be imposed once again by this new generation of accreditors,
Speaker 7: which will also include quote defending the American tradition and
Speaker 7: Western civilization and removing all Marxist diversity, equity and inclusion
Speaker 7: be a regrets unquote. So i dei the right's new
Speaker 7: favorite boogieyman that's responsible from everything from rising university costs
Speaker 7: to botched surgeries, aviation incidents, and boat's malfunctioning in cladding
Speaker 7: with bridges. It is it is the villain of the
Speaker 7: of the conservative right at the moment, and so because
Speaker 7: this has been a trending topic among conservatives, Trump's trying
Speaker 7: to jump on this DEI train, which sounds incredibly dangerous
Speaker 7: from their perspective because this term he probably never even
Speaker 7: heard of before, like a year ago.
Speaker 2: Like, come on, no, I don't think he. I don't
Speaker 2: think he implemented DII in his business institutions. I think
Speaker 2: this is. Yeah, it's a word they say when they
Speaker 2: can't say slurs. They think they've found a funny workaround
Speaker 2: to saying slurs.
Speaker 7: I mean, that's this thing with like every time someone
Speaker 7: says like like critical race theory, woke or DEI, they're
Speaker 7: really just trying to say a slur. And if and if,
Speaker 7: if you replace those three terms with just a slur,
Speaker 7: their sentences make a lot more sense because the way
Speaker 7: they use the word woke does not mean anything in
Speaker 7: a lot of cases. But if you just replace it
Speaker 7: for a racial slur, you're like, oh, now I can
Speaker 7: understand what they're saying. It's it's it's a handy trick
Speaker 7: that really is not fun to think about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or subtle.
Speaker 7: As a part of this DEI frenzy. Trump has promised
Speaker 7: to quote direct the Department of Education to pursue federal
Speaker 7: civil rights cases against the schools they continue to engage
Speaker 7: in racial discrimination unquote, which also kind of calls upon
Speaker 7: like older, like affirmative action complaints that conservatives have been
Speaker 7: talking about for years.
Speaker 2: Now, That's what I wanted he was going after.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it kind of it ties into that as well.
Speaker 7: And and Trump added that this race based discrimination quote
Speaker 7: includes discrimination against Asian Americans unquote, which is definitely invoking
Speaker 7: that style of affirmative action conservative rhetoric from like, yeah, ten,
Speaker 7: five years ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even more recent, when was that Supreme Court case?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that was that was that was just like
Speaker 2: last year Becky with the bad grades. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 7: So beyond just threatening to sick the DOJ on woke schools,
Speaker 7: Trump also made the more specific promise that if schools
Speaker 7: quote persist in explicit unlawful discrimination under the guise of
Speaker 7: equity unquote, he will not only make sure that their
Speaker 7: endowments be taxed, but also quote, through budget reconciliation, I
Speaker 7: will advance to measure to have them find up to
Speaker 7: the entire amount of their endowment. Quote.
Speaker 2: Did he realize that, no, no schools have endowments, Like I
Speaker 2: teach you the community college, We ain't got an endowment.
Speaker 7: No, he's I'm sure that he's gonna go after like
Speaker 7: the Harvard endowment. Yeah, that's gonna track. Yeah, I have
Speaker 7: fun finding fifty billion dollars from Harvard. That's totally gonna happen.
Speaker 7: But his plan after he seizes these endowments quote, a
Speaker 7: portion of the seized funds will then be used as
Speaker 7: restitution for victims of these illegal and unjust policies, policies
Speaker 7: that hurt our country so badly. Colleges have gotten hundreds
Speaker 7: of billions of dollars from hard working taxpayers, and now
Speaker 7: we're gonna get this anti American insanity out of our
Speaker 7: institutions once and for all. So that's cool, Like, okay, sure,
Speaker 7: you're gonna use this to pay back white people who've
Speaker 7: been if we've been denied college admission. Okay, cool, that
Speaker 7: sounds like a winning electoral strategy.
Speaker 2: You have finally the reparations people.
Speaker 7: Yeah, exactly, exactly. You know who's had it too hard
Speaker 7: for too long?
Speaker 2: Chance it's white people who didn't make it through college garrets.
Speaker 7: Uh, it's it's because they didn't get it's because they
Speaker 7: didn't go to Yale. Now they have to go to Princeton.
Speaker 2: Yeah, embarrassing, right, why would you even bother?
Speaker 7: So it's but it's not just colleges. Trump also threatened
Speaker 7: to quote cut federal funding for any school or program
Speaker 7: publishing critical race theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual,
Speaker 7: or political content onto our children. We're not going to
Speaker 7: allow it to happen, folks.
Speaker 2: Very cool, Great, Yeah, I used to teach a gender
Speaker 2: sociology course forward to defund defund. Yeah, yeah, I know
Speaker 2: we're going down fight together. We're gonna do that shit.
Speaker 2: They will have to fight that way in don't say
Speaker 2: that on air.
Speaker 7: You can't say that you're gonna turn your community college
Speaker 7: into a you can't say that. So, yeah, he's gonna
Speaker 7: go after school, regular schools, both colleges, universities, regular schools.
Speaker 7: If there's doing any any CRT gender ideology, you can
Speaker 7: tell that some of this was written like a year
Speaker 7: and a half ago, because no, no one's talking about
Speaker 7: critical race theory anymore.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah he missed it. But like, can you
Speaker 2: imagine teaching a sociology course and just being like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we're gonna skip past race and gender.
Speaker 7: Oh so politics past politics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a man who himself went to Like,
Speaker 2: did he go to Harvard or Yale?
Speaker 7: No, he did not go to either. He was sent
Speaker 7: to a military school by his father when he was
Speaker 7: thirteen for being annoying. Then he think he went to
Speaker 7: a school in Pennsylvania, respect And then what other school
Speaker 7: did he go to?
Speaker 2: Critical respect to his dad?
Speaker 7: He yeah, he went to the New York Military Academy.
Speaker 7: That he went to Fordham University and then the University
Speaker 7: of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Wharton Business School. Yeah, not a real graduate degree.
Speaker 7: So the reason why this is also evils because Trump
Speaker 7: thinks that a lot of this stuff is basically forming
Speaker 7: a new religion. All this woke stuff. Quote, the Marxism
Speaker 7: being preached in our schools is totally hostile to Judeo
Speaker 7: Christian teachings, and in many ways it resemblesablishing a new religion.
Speaker 7: Can let that happen. I can't let that happen.
Speaker 2: One thing we take a big swing at is Judeo
Speaker 2: Christian institutions.
Speaker 7: To combat this growing threat of religious Marxism.
Speaker 2: His administration, I'm sorry, I can't, I cannot wrote.
Speaker 7: Oh, his administration will quote aggressively pursue potential violations of
Speaker 7: the establishment clause and the free exercise clause of the Constitution.
Speaker 7: That's very simple.
Speaker 2: I think you quite understand before we met of that
Speaker 2: that luckily we do Russian Orthodox Marxism at my university,
Speaker 2: so we should say, god, yeah, well a lot of beards.
Speaker 7: So and then, in kind of like a laundry list
Speaker 7: of policies and talking points, Trump pledged to quote veto
Speaker 7: the sinister effort to weaponize civics education, we will keep
Speaker 7: men out of women's sports and will create a new
Speaker 7: credentialing body that'll be the gold standard anywhere in the
Speaker 7: world to certified teachers who embrace patriotic values, support a
Speaker 7: way of life, and understand that their job is not
Speaker 7: to indoctrinate children, but very simply to educate them.
Speaker 2: No one's ever done. No one has ever created a
Speaker 2: credentialing body for patriotic teachers who embrace quote our way
Speaker 2: of life before, it's never been done.
Speaker 7: Their efforts to weaponize civics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just imagine him looking for the Civics bill.
Speaker 7: Yeah, very funny, So probably distract him for a while.
Speaker 2: Stuff, I'm doing some actual terrible shit.
Speaker 7: A little bit with that last part was like indoctrinating children,
Speaker 7: And this next little bit will kind of demonstrate how
Speaker 7: stuff like QAnon didn't simply go away like some have postulated. Instead,
Speaker 7: it's just been absorbed into the fabric of American politics.
Speaker 7: No longer does the boogeyman have to be a DNC
Speaker 7: pedophilic elite. Now it's been territorialized and destroyed and mutated
Speaker 7: into just being any school teacher and or like every
Speaker 7: trans person right or God forbid a transgender school, which
Speaker 7: is like the prime evil of the current conservative society.
Speaker 7: And Trump promises on day one of his new presidency
Speaker 7: he will quote begin to find and remove the radicals, zealots,
Speaker 7: and Marxists who have infiltrated the Department of Education, and
Speaker 7: that also includes others. And you know who you are,
Speaker 7: because we are not going to allow anyone to hurt
Speaker 7: our children. You are, you know who you are. So
Speaker 7: this is the weaponization of nearly eight years of QAnon rhetoric, right,
Speaker 7: that is, that has grown past the ney to actually
Speaker 7: invoke q and on plus the two years of the
Speaker 7: Republican Party, The Daily wire and limbs of TikTok working
Speaker 7: to shift q Andon's kind of disgrace and unfocused momentum
Speaker 7: towards a manufactured continuation in the form of this transgender
Speaker 7: groomer craze that's taking over American schools. Quote Joe Biden
Speaker 7: has given these lunatics unchecked power. I will have them
Speaker 7: fired and escorted from the building, and I will tell
Speaker 7: Kung any appropriations bill I sign must reaffirm the president's
Speaker 7: ability to remove defined employees from the job. It's all
Speaker 7: about our children.
Speaker 2: Ute just imagining an executive order to remove someone from
Speaker 2: their lecture.
Speaker 7: I am going to be signing an executive order on
Speaker 7: this podcast. To go to another ad break, we are
Speaker 7: back and thank you James Berg for reaffirming my ability
Speaker 7: to remove defiant ads.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, why you were all away that several federal
Speaker 2: agents came in and in certain an ad break.
Speaker 7: In this last section here, we're going to return to
Speaker 7: Trump's conception that entire alternatives are needed to America's broken,
Speaker 7: woke school system, now focusing on the grade school side
Speaker 7: rather than just the post secondary. So in this vein,
Speaker 7: Trump is courting the growing now number of homeschooling families, though,
Speaker 7: according to a Washington Post poll from last year, Republican
Speaker 7: homeschoolers outnumbered Democrat ones two to one, so he kind
Speaker 7: of already has the majority of that vote, but still
Speaker 7: something he is going after. According to Trump, ever since
Speaker 7: quote the China virus, America has seen an estimated thirty
Speaker 7: percent increase in homeschool enrollment unquote. It's just a funny
Speaker 7: term as homeschool in roll. Yeah, yeah, just going to
Speaker 7: the homeschool to enroll. I'm going to be enrolling at homeschool.
Speaker 7: Very funny an if elective president for a second time,
Speaker 7: he will do everything to support quote parents who make
Speaker 7: the courageous choice of homes school unquote. Again, the way
Speaker 7: he uses home the word homeschool is unlike anyone else
Speaker 7: has ever heard.
Speaker 2: Talk.
Speaker 7: It is a very odd use of the English language.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he doesn't seem to understand parts of speech like no,
Speaker 2: just what won no.
Speaker 7: And Trump said he'll work to ensure that homeschoolers will
Speaker 7: be entitled to all the benefits available to non homeschool students,
Speaker 7: able to participate in athletic programs, clubs, after school activities,
Speaker 7: educational trips, and more. He pledged that in his next term,
Speaker 7: he will allow five to nine education savings accounts to
Speaker 7: be used for quote costs associated with homeschool education. A
Speaker 7: current five to nine savings accounts allow families to withdraw
Speaker 7: up to ten thousand dollars a year to spend tax
Speaker 7: free on tuition for private schools, which Trump called a
Speaker 7: quote tremendous win for his school choice, very important school choice.
Speaker 7: To remember that term unquote, that term never comes up
Speaker 7: again in this video. Great, So Trump is pledging to
Speaker 7: expand this tuition savings program to include homeschooling families as well,
Speaker 7: with a very unknown system of checks and balances to
Speaker 7: determine what exactly qualifies as costs related to homeschooling. And
Speaker 7: often homeschooling is used by abusive parents to just have
Speaker 7: kids do free labor around the house, and they try
Speaker 7: to make it count as like education. And like if
Speaker 7: you're now allowing parents to put money to a savings
Speaker 7: account to remove ten thousand a year tax free spent
Speaker 7: on education, like what does what does that mean? Does
Speaker 7: that mean just curriculum? Does that mean like household supplies?
Speaker 7: Because that's being put towards their homeschool because they're schooling
Speaker 7: at home. Like very very unclear, and it's kind of
Speaker 7: refers back to some of the general problems homeschooling, especially
Speaker 7: in like conservative homeschooling or just as a large way
Speaker 7: to abuse children, not in like the groomer way that
Speaker 7: right wing people talk about. It's like, no, you're just
Speaker 7: literally like limiting your kids' access to the outside world
Speaker 7: because you think if they go outside they're going to
Speaker 7: turn gay. So but even if oh sorry, there's there's
Speaker 7: one one final quote from this homeschooling video, which are
Speaker 7: just fucking phenomenal to every homeschool family. I will be
Speaker 7: your champion. Do not vote Democrat. They're looking to destroy you.
Speaker 7: If you don't mind me saying that Joe Biden can't
Speaker 7: put two sentences together and yet he's looking to destroy you.
Speaker 7: Do not vote Democrats. Do not vote for crooked Joe.
Speaker 7: Vote for honest Donald, Thank you very much. It's funny
Speaker 7: because in the video when he says vote for honest Donald,
Speaker 7: he also starts to crack up because he knows how
Speaker 7: ridiculousness is.
Speaker 1: God.
Speaker 7: Do not vote for crooked Joe, Vote for honest Dundald,
Speaker 7: thank you very much, very very cool, looking to destroy you.
Speaker 7: If you don't mind be saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you don't mind me a man who rarely
Speaker 2: asks permission to say the most extame shit.
Speaker 7: So, even if parents are not choosing to homeschool, Trump
Speaker 7: wants to let voters know that he will fight for parents' rights.
Speaker 7: Which isn't quite a dog whistle, but it does refer
Speaker 7: to a very specific style of patriarchal rhetoric popularized by
Speaker 7: hyper religious conservative think tanks. I propose an extremely narrow
Speaker 7: version of how the American family should operate within society.
Speaker 7: More on this later. But so, what can Trump do
Speaker 7: to let right wing religious parents know that he will
Speaker 7: be their champion even in like blue states or big cities.
Speaker 7: As much as Trump might want to be a dictator,
Speaker 7: he doesn't have unlimited power to impose his war on
Speaker 7: wokeness in liberal cities. But Donald Trump, who was impeached
Speaker 7: for trying to blackmail the president of Ukraine in summer
Speaker 7: of twenty nineteen, does have a plan. He wants to
Speaker 7: quote implement massive funding preferences and favorable treatment unquote for
Speaker 7: states and school districts that make four specific quote historic
Speaker 7: reforms and education that Trump has decreed. These four specific
Speaker 7: reforms include abolishing tenure for K through twelve teachers so
Speaker 7: that we can quote remove bad teachers and adopt merit
Speaker 7: pay to reward good teachers. The second is to quote
Speaker 7: drastically cut the blowed number of school administrators, including the
Speaker 7: costly and divisive and unnecessary deibureaucracy. Third to ad to
Speaker 7: parental bill of rights that includes complete curriculum transparency in
Speaker 7: the form of universal school choice, and lastly, quote implement
Speaker 7: the direct election of school principles by the parents. Trump
Speaker 7: calls this last bit the ultimate form of local control,
Speaker 7: something our country has never had, or at least has
Speaker 7: not had for the last fifty years. So those are
Speaker 7: his four reform plans, which is like, yeah, you know
Speaker 7: who's had it too easy for too long, teachers. Let's
Speaker 7: abolish ten year adopt merit pay a disaster of a system,
Speaker 7: cut administrative roles to put more work on teachers, have
Speaker 7: parents be able to fire fire principles by voting, and
Speaker 7: a vote to elect their own principle, and universal school
Speaker 7: choices is actually more of a dog whistle that it
Speaker 7: just refers to a series of like very racist, like
Speaker 7: urban planning policies to direct rich white people's funding into
Speaker 7: a very few selected number of schools instead of where
Speaker 7: they actually like live and instead of the actual district
Speaker 7: they live in. So there's all of that, and like
Speaker 7: what Trump keeps coming back to among all these quote
Speaker 7: unquote reforms, it all kind of relates to complete parental dominance.
Speaker 7: And part of this was the parental Bill of Rights,
Speaker 7: which you've probably seen some conservatives talking about more these
Speaker 7: past few years. And this is another quote from Trump here.
Speaker 7: It's all about the parents for their children more than
Speaker 7: anyone else. Parents know what their children need. And if
Speaker 7: you haven't heard of a parental bill of rights directly,
Speaker 7: you most certainly have heard of one by another name
Speaker 7: that don't say gay bill, that was a parental rights bill,
Speaker 7: a sensibly targeting education, but these bills often end up
Speaker 7: giving parents just complete control over every aspect of the
Speaker 7: child's life. They dictate how children are allowed to express themselves,
Speaker 7: and allow parents to impose nearly any discipline or punishment.
Speaker 7: They desire total control over what the child eats, what
Speaker 7: they wear, what they read, what they watch, what they
Speaker 7: see online, and what they're allowed to learn in school,
Speaker 7: who they're allowed to socialize with. Some of these bills
Speaker 7: that I read through for this also bar mandatory masking
Speaker 7: policies and schools back when that was the thing, and
Speaker 7: are often full of anti vax talking points and attempts
Speaker 7: to ban sex ed and quote unquote gender politics. As
Speaker 7: a part of these bills, teachers in school administration are
Speaker 7: legally required to act as parental surveillance tools to report
Speaker 7: how a child behaves, how they socialize, how they dress,
Speaker 7: how they like to be referred to in who they
Speaker 7: are friends with. This includes outing children as gay or
Speaker 7: trands to parents if anyone in the school suspects that
Speaker 7: the student has a non heterosexual sexual orientation or is
Speaker 7: acting in any way inconsistent with their assigned gender at birth.
Speaker 7: These types of bills often have other consequences as well.
Speaker 7: In states where some of these bills have passed, like
Speaker 7: North Carolina, due to legal risks, some elementary schools have
Speaker 7: been unable to talk about or give out educational materials
Speaker 7: on consent or how to identify when child sexual abuse
Speaker 7: is taking place as a part of the Safe Touch programs.
Speaker 7: These programs are basically unable to happen because teachers will
Speaker 7: now be held personally legally liable if any parent objects
Speaker 7: to this material so parental rights bills have been signed
Speaker 7: into law in six states over the past two legislative years,
Speaker 7: famously Florida, as well as Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Iowa, and
Speaker 7: North Carolina. Since then, similar bills have been introduced in
Speaker 7: more than twenty five states, many of which have passed
Speaker 7: through at least one chamber. Some of them are still
Speaker 7: in the process of either passing through a second chamber
Speaker 7: or being signed by the governor. I'm gonna end with
Speaker 7: two quotes here from Trump that kind of reiterate this
Speaker 7: parental dominance thing that he's really pushing for. And also
Speaker 7: people like Ronda Santis have been pushing for Ted Cruz
Speaker 7: a lot of writing politicians quote as the saying goes,
Speaker 7: personnel is policy. And at the end of the day,
Speaker 7: if we have pink haired communists teaching our kids, we
Speaker 7: have a major problem. When I'm president, we will put
Speaker 7: parents back in charge and give them the finals say.
Speaker 7: We will get back to teaching reading, writing, and math
Speaker 7: called arithmetic, and we will kill our kids the high
Speaker 7: quality pro American education they deserve. They're gonna teach you
Speaker 7: math called arithmetic.
Speaker 2: Magnificent, amazing.
Speaker 7: We may spend the most. But we're going to be
Speaker 7: tops in education no matter, no matter where you go
Speaker 7: anywhere in the world, We're gonna be tops in education.
Speaker 2: There will be no bottoms in the American education system
Speaker 2: going forward.
Speaker 7: So this is this is Donald Trump, the second host
Speaker 7: of the TV show The Apprentice, who's run for public office.
Speaker 7: This is his plan for education. Doctor James Stout, how
Speaker 7: do you feel about about these education reform proposals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it doesn't. It doesn't seem like a weird idea,
Speaker 2: if I'm being honest, Having having listened to it, I
Speaker 2: think perhaps he hasn't got the sharpest grasp on what's
Speaker 2: going on in the education system. The reason we have
Speaker 2: education is because your parents don't necessarily know what's best
Speaker 2: for you, right, Like your.
Speaker 7: Parents can't be an expert in everything.
Speaker 2: Yes, so some of us go and get PhDs so
Speaker 2: we can, and then we teach your people how the
Speaker 2: important things about that like you, by definition, your parents
Speaker 2: cannot fulfill all the roles in an education system fulfills and.
Speaker 7: Like unlike pink haired communists who have complete who have
Speaker 7: complete total control over every aspect of what a child
Speaker 7: should learn.
Speaker 2: It's one of the things when you enter the university,
Speaker 2: you know, like they did a tuberculosis test and then
Speaker 2: they pass you a pink hair dye and I mean
Speaker 2: you get a nose piercing as well.
Speaker 7: A lot of this is very much reminiscent of like
Speaker 7: the the fears of like communist education that you see
Speaker 7: in like the nineteen thirties. How there's a lot of
Speaker 7: political a lot of political tension trying to be raised
Speaker 7: over the fear that there's communists teaching you in universities
Speaker 7: and schools.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting because at the same time.
Speaker 7: Like Frankfurt school style stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I've written a lot about like anarchist ideals,
Speaker 2: educational ideals rights at the same time, they were anarchists
Speaker 2: in Spain being like, you know, we should do we
Speaker 2: should do all our classes in the forest. Let's just
Speaker 2: go out into the forest. Or absolutely there was a
Speaker 2: school by the sea where they talked kids like they
Speaker 2: were just having this incredible utopian education dream, which in
Speaker 2: many ways we still haven't adapted to some of the
Speaker 2: things that that really could offer, and instead, yeah, we're
Speaker 2: having this McCarthyism Part two.
Speaker 7: Well, great, that is Trump's plan for education. In case,
Speaker 7: in case you didn't know, so watch out for those
Speaker 7: pink cared communists. Keep an eye out for any parental
Speaker 7: bill of rights being proposed in your state. And it
Speaker 7: is probably has little little to do with actually protecting
Speaker 7: children and more to do with making parents just complete
Speaker 7: dominating force and controlling every aspect of their child's life.
Speaker 7: And I mean the other sins we're thinking about this,
Speaker 7: it's like it removes access to for kids to talk
Speaker 7: about things that they may be upset.
Speaker 2: About, and access to mandated reporters, like exactly, a mandated
Speaker 2: reporter like this seems to exactly it's away from that exactly.
Speaker 7: And and I mean the idea that that that schools
Speaker 7: are going to be legally required to out a child
Speaker 7: if he's if they're acting like perceived to be deviant
Speaker 7: in some like gender sexual way. Like all of these
Speaker 7: things are just ways to enable parental abuse in a
Speaker 7: variety of like ways that are explicit and non explicit.
Speaker 7: And it's it's it's it's it's quite it's quite upsetting.
Speaker 7: And that's the that's the thing that conservatives are are
Speaker 7: currently trying to push for. This is a big topic.
Speaker 7: This stuff was talking about in the Republican primaries that
Speaker 7: were completely useless, constantly stuff like this is something this
Speaker 7: is referred to while invoking the sphere of like this
Speaker 7: pink haired transgender communist teacher, which is currently like the
Speaker 7: biggest threat to America according to most conservatives.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're taking us down from the inside.
Speaker 7: That and jihadism, which are probably linked somehow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think, Well it's the pink head jahttiest famous.
Speaker 2: Well that isn't for us today. What are we going
Speaker 2: to be learning about next for Agenda forty seven games, Well,
Speaker 2: we're going to be learning next about immigration. Don Donald
Speaker 2: Trump's border policies. Many of you will be shocked to
Speaker 2: hear that they're not very good. And well, I have
Speaker 2: two classes this summer if you're if you're in San
Speaker 2: Diego and you want to get in before they take
Speaker 2: the Marxism out of the education system, you can but
Speaker 2: strike now.
Speaker 7: I do love how I do love how much of
Speaker 7: this is. Like do you know who's had it easy
Speaker 7: for too long? Transgender teachers there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the people who are so fucking
Speaker 2: broke they have to have like go fundmes up for
Speaker 2: their gender reassignment surgery.
Speaker 7: Great wonderful stuff. Yeah, all right, we will be back
Speaker 7: tomorrow to talk about Trump's border policies. Things that will
Speaker 7: probably be totally normal, totally chill.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very very similar to fucking Faddy. They are
Speaker 2: similar to Biden's but that's a whole other just terpy.
Speaker 7: That's a whole other discussions. All right, See you are
Speaker 7: the other side.
Speaker 8: Bye, Hello, and welcome back to It could happen here
Speaker 8: in your daily dose of the horrors that are in
Speaker 8: fact already happening all around us. I'm your occasional host,
Speaker 8: Molly Conger, and I am delighted to be joined today
Speaker 8: by the critically acclaimed author of Culture Warlords, journalist researcher,
Speaker 8: sword enthusiast, Sandwich expert, and my friend Talia Lavid.
Speaker 2: Hello.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I once introduced myself at an event as a
Speaker 9: Sandwich historian, which I think was the pinnacle of my
Speaker 9: public speaking career. But this is a second pinnacle. Hey, Molly,
Speaker 9: what's up?
Speaker 8: Thank you so much for coming on today to talk
Speaker 8: with me about your new book, Wild Faith, is coming
Speaker 8: out in just a few weeks October fifteenth.
Speaker 9: Right, Yeah, Wild Faith, How the Christian Right is taking
Speaker 9: over America. Not the terrible b movie entitled Wild Faith.
Speaker 8: Yeah, the SEO is scrambled on that one. But the book, however,
Speaker 8: is very good. I mean, first of all, I just
Speaker 8: want to say, like I've been reading the gally copy
Speaker 8: that you sent me, which I honestly made me feel
Speaker 8: very fancy. I've never received a galley copy of a
Speaker 8: book that's not out yet before, so I felt, you know,
Speaker 8: kind of a kind of a broadcasting professional with my
Speaker 8: special book.
Speaker 9: It's an exclusive club. You're one of like five people
Speaker 9: thus read it.
Speaker 8: Oh my god, that is that's very exclusive.
Speaker 9: Yeah, well it's about to become a lot less exclusive,
Speaker 9: so feel special while you can, right.
Speaker 8: But I realized while I was reading it, you know,
Speaker 8: I have my little sticky tabs because I'm reading a
Speaker 8: lot more books lately, regrettably not not big time book guy.
Speaker 8: It's always reading. I read a lot of court documents,
Speaker 8: but I'm reading a lot of books right now for
Speaker 8: research for my show, and it's like my little sticky tabs.
Speaker 8: And as in reading it, I realize I'm not marking
Speaker 8: passages that I think would be useful for us to
Speaker 8: talk about in this interview. I'm just putting my little
Speaker 8: tabs on passages that just like punched me in the gut,
Speaker 8: you know.
Speaker 9: Ah, sorry for punching you.
Speaker 8: No, but I mean, I mean with the way the
Speaker 8: power of your words, because like a lot of what
Speaker 8: I'm reading sucks. It's just right, Like I spent all
Speaker 8: day yesterday reading like twenty five year old Issues of Resistance,
Speaker 8: which was the quarterly magazine for a white power music label.
Speaker 8: So this, I mean it's a real departure, So you know,
Speaker 8: really just reveling in the richness of the pros and
Speaker 8: the fact that it, you know, didn't want to kill me.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 9: No, I also have experienced neo Nazi research fatigue, and
Speaker 9: also just like the sort of relentless grimness of flowing
Speaker 9: through these like fundamentally hostile texts, and also like academic texts,
Speaker 9: which are difficult in their own way. I try to
Speaker 9: write accessively or just like excitingly. I find that a
Speaker 9: lot of especially nonfiction sort of journalism me books tend
Speaker 9: to be a little dry, and I'm like, let's not
Speaker 9: be dry. Let's be like spicy, and you know, like
Speaker 9: form and function, Like you're more likely to be moved
Speaker 9: by a message if you find the writing compelling.
Speaker 10: You know, it's just you have.
Speaker 8: Such a way with words. I mean, you know this,
Speaker 8: You're a professional writer. I don't want to embarrass you
Speaker 8: on the show.
Speaker 9: So I'm twirling my hair like, yes, but I do
Speaker 9: write for a living.
Speaker 8: If you'll indulge me, if it's legal, if the publisher
Speaker 8: will allow this. I just want to read this passage
Speaker 8: from the introduction that I think is a good jumping
Speaker 8: off point, and it was one of the first things
Speaker 8: I marked because I was just like, oh, hell yeah,
Speaker 8: we're getting into this. There's good words in here, okay.
Speaker 8: The Christian Right is a force in American politics and
Speaker 8: has been for decades, half a century to be precise,
Speaker 8: during which it has steadily gained power. It started in
Speaker 8: school rooms, continued in court rooms, and perseveres with the
Speaker 8: aid of people who are perfectly willing to call in
Speaker 8: bomb threats to hospitals and attempt to overturn elections. It
Speaker 8: features self proclaimed prophets with a distinct interest in politics,
Speaker 8: newly minted apostles with very definite ideas about spiritual battle
Speaker 8: and its earthly components, and pastors eager to usher in
Speaker 8: the end of the world. Its adherents have hymns and
Speaker 8: devotionals and speaking tongues on occasion, and the showiest among
Speaker 8: them are known to march their cities, blowing Ram's horns
Speaker 8: in an effort to topple, as Joshua once did, the
Speaker 8: wicked cities of the world. They have their own insular world,
Speaker 8: their own media apparatus. They have legislators who could fire
Speaker 8: in Brimstone's speeches from the badly carpeted rooms where laws
Speaker 8: are made. They have lawyers too, And in case the
Speaker 8: lawyers fail, there's always the promise of congregations that might
Speaker 8: coalesce into mobs or arsonists whose burning holy zeal coalesces
Speaker 8: into the tiny pinpoint of a molotop cocktail. And I
Speaker 8: knew from the intro that we were in for a ride.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's like cast of characters, the worst people ever,
Speaker 9: but like, let's write about it in an exciting way.
Speaker 9: I think that one of the themes of the book
Speaker 9: is really how these extra legal extremist movements like the
Speaker 9: anti abortion terror movement, and the legal framework of a
Speaker 9: movement work together. I actually initially heard about this from
Speaker 9: a friend who was talking about how, like during the
Speaker 9: gay rights movement, you had sort of the act up
Speaker 9: built demonstrations, the diants and then you have the sort
Speaker 9: of like more respectively coded like gay people who you know,
Speaker 9: we're talking to the government and trying to get elected
Speaker 9: and you know, really trying to influence research, and that
Speaker 9: every movement needs sort of a radical outside and then
Speaker 9: a respectable inside. And I'm like, oh, this works in
Speaker 9: like the acratic movements too, where you have like this
Speaker 9: you know, fringe that's burning down clinics, and then people
Speaker 9: steadily working for fifty years to like ban abortion, and
Speaker 9: they have the same DNA and they have the same goals.
Speaker 9: They just go about it differently but complement each other.
Speaker 9: And I think that's like a running theme in the book,
Speaker 9: is that like you have lawyers and you have legislators,
Speaker 9: and then you have mobs and they're sort of all
Speaker 9: working towards the same goals. And that's really what we're seeing,
Speaker 9: I think, on the Christian Right after decades of building power.
Speaker 8: Yeah, one of the notes that I wrote down in
Speaker 8: that vein while I was reading was that you know,
Speaker 8: the Christian Right drives its power across a spectrum, right
Speaker 8: from the clinic bomber to the senator, but it's not
Speaker 8: you know, you might say the two sides of the
Speaker 8: same coin. But to me it looks like this isn't
Speaker 8: two different spheres of power too sort of separate but
Speaker 8: coexisting or comorbid ideologies. They're just different numbers on the
Speaker 8: same dial, right, it's turning up and turning down.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's like the hand that lights the torch and
Speaker 9: the hand that puts it to the you know, pire.
Speaker 9: They perform different functions, but they have really the same goals.
Speaker 9: And if like me, you view stripping half the populace
Speaker 9: of its bodily autonomy, imposing a theocracy, hounding queer people
Speaker 9: out of public life, slash into death as fundamentally violent goals, Yeah,
Speaker 9: I don't think there's like a respectable iteration necessarily. There's
Speaker 9: just cosplaying respectability and right.
Speaker 8: You can say it with a tie on on the
Speaker 8: Senate floor, but it's it's the same message.
Speaker 9: Yeah, And I think so much of our media apparatus
Speaker 9: and governmental apparatus is really sort of views like again
Speaker 9: this like four and function, right, Like if you are
Speaker 9: if you say something politely, it doesn't really matter what
Speaker 9: you're saying, Like if you say something with a suit
Speaker 9: on in the register of like you know, in a
Speaker 9: calm sort of Mike Pencian, Rush Limbaugh and decaf as
Speaker 9: he called.
Speaker 10: Himself a boy, She says.
Speaker 9: Did he say that, Yeah, that's what he called himself
Speaker 9: when he read it, did a like evangelical radio show. Yeah, no,
Speaker 9: no matter what you say, as long as you are
Speaker 9: like white and you say it politely, like this is
Speaker 9: fundamentally sort of fine. And then if you look at
Speaker 9: it from you know, a step or two back, and
Speaker 9: you're like, no, actually, no matter how politely say it,
Speaker 9: this is like a violent, deeply unpopular theocratic agenda that
Speaker 9: like fundamentally is incompatible with multiracial democracy. I also think,
Speaker 9: and I keep running into this, like well meaning liberals
Speaker 9: being like, but isn't there a separation of church and state?
Speaker 9: And I'm like, I don't know. Do you fucking think
Speaker 9: there is a in Alabama? Do you think there is
Speaker 9: in Arkansas? And all of these you know in Texas,
Speaker 9: Like all of these figures are like, we're Christians, We're
Speaker 9: making laws for Jesus, and.
Speaker 8: We have covenant marriages and we want you to too.
Speaker 9: Yeah, like we're gonna outlaw divorce because of God. And like,
Speaker 9: you know, women dying of sepsis in hospital parking lots
Speaker 9: is what Jesus wants and like, and I experienced this,
Speaker 9: I think you probably have to when you like report
Speaker 9: on you know, zealots and extremists, and people inevitably wind
Speaker 9: up like measuring other people's weep by their own bushel.
Speaker 9: In other words, they're like, they can't really believe this stuff,
Speaker 9: and it's like, no, they really do. They can't really
Speaker 9: have these goals. First of all, they do, but also
Speaker 9: doesn't matter, right, I mean the question of like impact
Speaker 9: versus intent. First of all, I think it's perfectly possible
Speaker 9: to be both a grifter and a true believer at
Speaker 9: the same time.
Speaker 8: That's just synergy.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 9: And also fundamentally, this is a world premis done grievance,
Speaker 9: where it's this idea that like the world has got
Speaker 9: one oh, we're on you. And so in a sense,
Speaker 9: grift is just like, well, you know, the world's corrupt
Speaker 9: and I'm fighting a righteous cause, So what does it
Speaker 9: matter the ethics that I sort of skip on along
Speaker 9: the way.
Speaker 8: I mean, once you've amped the stakes up to we're
Speaker 8: fighting the literal devil and everyone who's getting in my
Speaker 8: way is animated by actual demons from hell. I mean
Speaker 8: the steaks couldn't be higher, so you do what you
Speaker 8: have to do.
Speaker 9: Exactly, and it's this theory of power. And so then
Speaker 9: people sort of standing outside of that paradigm who are
Speaker 9: not keyed into this idea of like we're in an
Speaker 9: ethical spiritual battle, like and we must create like a
Speaker 9: kingdom of Christ on earth in America to win against
Speaker 9: the devil, and then people outside being like, you're hypocrites,
Speaker 9: and it's like it's not a valid criticism to them
Speaker 9: because they're like, first of all, you're not like a
Speaker 9: Christian if you're a liberal, but also like you're not
Speaker 9: on our level, like we're fighting Lucifer and you're probably
Speaker 9: a stand like on his team if you oppose us. So,
Speaker 9: you know, a multitude of apparent hypocrisies can be excused
Speaker 9: by the idea that like this is a holy war
Speaker 9: and in war there's like all kinds of avert behavior.
Speaker 8: That's doing holy war crimes.
Speaker 10: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 9: I mean this is why, for example, you see a
Speaker 9: lot of like prominent female figures from Philish Lafley, you know,
Speaker 9: in the seventies and eighties to like the trad wives now,
Speaker 9: and it's like, how does this fit in with your
Speaker 9: overall sort of idea that women should be chaste and
Speaker 9: submissive and meek and silent. I mean, first of all,
Speaker 9: tradwife stuff is often fetish.
Speaker 8: Spanish content, but yeh, I mean pilish laffy made a
Speaker 8: living professionally saying that women shouldn't make a living professionally,
Speaker 8: but that contradiction doesn't matter.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean I think I call them valkyries for
Speaker 9: feminine submission in the book.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean, at the.
Speaker 9: End of the day, like if you believe that this
Speaker 9: is your your calling, your mission, you know, your mission
Speaker 9: field in the service of the Lord to undo the
Speaker 9: demonic sort of influence of feminism, Like of course you're
Speaker 9: going to.
Speaker 8: Speak, You've been moved by God to do so.
Speaker 9: Yeah, And of course, like female leaders with the evangelical community,
Speaker 9: like sort of minority Republicans can be like knocked off
Speaker 9: their pedestal quicker and easier, but like they still can
Speaker 9: come out and exist and testify and Schlaughley throughout her
Speaker 9: very long prolific and lucrative career, you know, was like
Speaker 9: I'm a housewife with six kids, and that was her
Speaker 9: that was how she defined herself even while being this
Speaker 9: incredibly prominent figure and one of the sort of key
Speaker 9: architects of the current Christian right coalition of like when Catholics,
Speaker 9: she and Paul Leric and Leonard Leo and some other
Speaker 9: right wing Catholics brought these Catholic values of being all
Speaker 9: about abortion to the evangelical right, which prior to the
Speaker 9: seventies is like, that's a weird Catholic thing.
Speaker 10: You don't really care I.
Speaker 8: Wanted to talk about that. So I'm not sure how
Speaker 8: sort of common knowledge this is, but the Protestant Christian
Speaker 8: community in the United States did not care about abortion
Speaker 8: until the seventies. It was not an issue in their communities.
Speaker 8: They were generally pro abortion. They were you know, the
Speaker 8: Baptists were in favor of Roe V. Wade.
Speaker 9: Yeah, the fucking Southern Baptist Convention came out in like
Speaker 9: seventy four, I think it was, and was like, yeah,
Speaker 9: we approved of rov Wade.
Speaker 8: So it's not like, you know, opposition to abortion is
Speaker 8: baked into Christianity. It is baked into the American Evangelical
Speaker 8: Christianity of post nineteen seventy five or so.
Speaker 7: Because of this sort of conscious cynical political.
Speaker 8: Decision, and that I think is so interesting because you know,
Speaker 8: you get into this conversation of well, what are their
Speaker 8: deeply held beliefs and do they really believe it and
Speaker 8: does that matter? But we can pin down the moment
Speaker 8: they started believing this and we know why, and it's segregation.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean, first of all, I would say, like
Speaker 9: people can still like this is like several generations later
Speaker 9: of like constant barrages of extremely violent propaganda against abortions.
Speaker 8: So right, so the belief is sincere today, but you
Speaker 8: could look at it where it was born. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 8: you should have been aborted, right, Yeah.
Speaker 10: No, it definitely should not have been carried to term.
Speaker 10: But like it's it's crazy.
Speaker 9: And in addition, Tomah's book Randall Baumer does some really
Speaker 9: good coverage of this. So the sort of general arc
Speaker 9: is like three sort of nineteen seventies, you had this
Speaker 9: like generally conservative population of Southern Baptists who we're like
Speaker 9: on board with McCarthyism, hated the godless Reds, but kind
Speaker 9: of viewed politics as like worldly and not really their
Speaker 9: sphere and we're not particularly politically engaged. And then brown
Speaker 9: versus a board of Education passes immediately the white Christian
Speaker 9: populist just disinvests these from the public schools, leaving multiple
Speaker 9: counties in the South without functionally any public education at all.
Speaker 9: And this mushroom after rain, kind of like patch of
Speaker 9: patches of parochial schools with church or Christian in the
Speaker 9: name start popping up, and they're all white schools. Their
Speaker 9: segregation academies is the sort of term of art for these,
Speaker 9: and they're explicitly under a Christian agis they're religious schools.
Speaker 10: Their tax exempt as a result.
Speaker 9: And then in like the late sixties and seventies, the
Speaker 9: government was like, you can't be tax exempt and like
Speaker 9: considered a charitable organization if you are segregated and don't
Speaker 9: have any black.
Speaker 10: Students or minority students.
Speaker 9: And that is what woke the sleeping dragon of the
Speaker 9: Christian right really like, you know, get your filthy government
Speaker 9: hands off our tax exemptions.
Speaker 10: Like they just went, you know nuts.
Speaker 9: They were really mobilized, you know, like these are the
Speaker 9: people who are like growing tomatoes at Ruby Bridges, Like
Speaker 9: you know, they're really politically motivated for the first time
Speaker 9: because they're experiencing like a consequence for segregation.
Speaker 10: And so this is when like Jerry.
Speaker 9: Fowell and Ralph Reid and you know, James Dobson start
Speaker 9: sort of coming forward and being more prominent. And then
Speaker 9: by the sort of mid seventies to eighties, you had
Speaker 9: these like savvy or political operators coming out and saying, hey, guys,
Speaker 9: segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever. Is like, it's great
Speaker 9: that it really fired y'all up, but it has sort
Speaker 9: of a limited appeal.
Speaker 8: And they shot George Wallace. It's over.
Speaker 9: Yeah, Like there's gonna be a ceiling on that, and
Speaker 9: a lot of people think you suck. So why don't
Speaker 9: you get it on the ground on this new civil
Speaker 9: rights struggle abortion, where you can fight for the unborn
Speaker 9: who conveniently will never.
Speaker 8: Disagree with you, right, their voices don't have to be
Speaker 8: centered here. We can speak for them.
Speaker 9: I mean, they're the most convenient political constituency in history.
Speaker 8: Right because they're so innocent and you can't milkshake duck
Speaker 8: a fetus. He's not even here.
Speaker 9: Yeah, he can't talk, but he's not gonna say shit.
Speaker 9: So I mean that's like the very capsule history. And
Speaker 9: then of course becomes this idea of like the moral
Speaker 9: majority and where the Guardians of America's soul and we're
Speaker 9: gonna get really weird about sex.
Speaker 10: Also, it's just.
Speaker 8: Like if you strip it all the way down to
Speaker 8: the studs, Like the core of this is women are
Speaker 8: bleeding to death in hospital parking lots because Jerry Folwell
Speaker 8: didn't want to pay his taxes or stop being racist. Yeah,
Speaker 8: I mean that's not fair.
Speaker 9: No, people sometimes like are a little skeptical when I'm like,
Speaker 9: all of the hatreds are interconnected. But then you look
Speaker 9: at like concrete historical examples of like this world historical
Speaker 9: wave of misogyny.
Speaker 10: I mean, it's not.
Speaker 9: That this population wasn't like weird about sex or weird
Speaker 9: about women.
Speaker 7: Like to start with.
Speaker 8: I mean maybe they would have gotten here a different way,
Speaker 8: but that's how we got here.
Speaker 9: Yeah, we got here by just like, no, we will
Speaker 9: pay taxes on our segregation academies. Bob Jones University's inter
Speaker 9: racial dating ban is perfectly great, and we're gonna mobilize
Speaker 9: about it. And so what you have then now is
Speaker 9: just like fifty years of political lock step because and
Speaker 9: you see this in like.
Speaker 10: Other religious communities, I mean, like I know.
Speaker 9: Like it's sort of notorious how much corruption slides by
Speaker 9: in New York because like the consident communities vote as
Speaker 9: a block, Like it is very useful to have a
Speaker 9: congregation that all votes the same way.
Speaker 10: It's politically useful.
Speaker 8: I mean, what other populations can you get together once
Speaker 8: a week as a captive audience and speak to with
Speaker 8: authority if you can mobilize those people. And that's what
Speaker 8: Jerry Folwell saw, right, is like this is a great
Speaker 8: way to get a lot of people to vote the
Speaker 8: way I want them to vote.
Speaker 9: Yeah, And you know, the church has always been like
Speaker 9: a really prominent institution in American civil society, especially as
Speaker 9: the rest of sort of civil society has fallen away
Speaker 9: and degraded. Like churches are some of the only social
Speaker 9: outlets that Americans have. And what's interest when you talk
Speaker 9: to evangelicals and next evangelicals is just like being a
Speaker 9: Republican is like part of their religious identity in a
Speaker 9: major way. It's like this is how you vote, and
Speaker 9: this is you know, how you dress, and this is
Speaker 9: how you go to church and so on. But like
Speaker 9: the idea of being a democrat is like not only
Speaker 9: you know, a little bit out of step with your community,
Speaker 9: it's heretical.
Speaker 8: I mean, that's how the demons give in.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, demoncrats, I mean, and like, yeah, it's stupid.
Speaker 9: But it's also like half of the people saying demoncrats,
Speaker 9: like literally mean democrats are aligned with Lucifer.
Speaker 8: And I think that's a point that I don't want
Speaker 8: to get lost on the listener. This you know, this
Speaker 8: idea that people literally have demons in them, that demons
Speaker 8: are active in the world, that demons are motivating the
Speaker 8: actions of their enemies. It's real for them. And I'm
Speaker 8: not saying that to be derisive or you know, it's real.
Speaker 8: It's real. It is an animating factor for a lot
Speaker 8: of these people. And that's hard to wrap your mind around.
Speaker 8: I mean, I struggle with the idea that that is
Speaker 8: real for them. But like that's how you get things
Speaker 8: like satanic panic, and we see echoes of satanic panic
Speaker 8: in this idea of you know, groomers in kids' schools,
Speaker 8: they really have this fundamental, like foundational belief in this,
Speaker 8: you know, whether or not they're calling it demons, that
Speaker 8: the existence of some sort of ontological evil that is
Speaker 8: coming for their children. And like, once you arrive at
Speaker 8: the place where like where you understand that that's real
Speaker 8: for them, their actions make more sense, like they're not
Speaker 8: behaving irrationally if you if you truly believe that these
Speaker 8: things were happening, you'd act crazy too.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean it's really hard to get people to
Speaker 9: step outside their own worldviews, and in both directions, right,
Speaker 9: Like I don't believe that demons are you know, abroad
Speaker 9: in the world and motivating like every element of political
Speaker 9: action to someone who.
Speaker 8: I'm starting to see them some places, but generally no.
Speaker 9: To someone who does my viewpoint is incomprehensible and vice versa.
Speaker 9: So I think part of I mean not that I'm
Speaker 9: like one of those people that's like polarization is the
Speaker 9: big problem, like you know, as opposed to anything with
Speaker 9: like concrete policy, like you know where it's like the
Speaker 9: big problem is we all don't like each other enough.
Speaker 9: And I'm like, no, the big problem is like people
Speaker 9: are espousing policies that will cause deaths, and like also
Speaker 9: that people like believe their political enemies are like literally
Speaker 9: agents of Satan, I would say, is like a bigger
Speaker 9: problem than polarization and the abstract. But yeah, I mean
Speaker 9: this this doctrine of sort of spiritual warfare, which if
Speaker 9: you like google it it's just like, oh, this is
Speaker 9: the mindset, and it's like you the listener to it
Speaker 9: could happen here, like you've been drafted into the spirit
Speaker 9: war from like birth.
Speaker 8: Congratulations, private, and.
Speaker 9: You're probably on the side of the devil, so good job.
Speaker 9: I mean, I don't know, like a lot of Americans
Speaker 9: believe in angels and demons, and that's fine, but it's
Speaker 9: like when that starts impinging on the political sphere in
Speaker 9: a very serious way, It's like, how far would you
Speaker 9: go if you believed your opponent was under the thrall
Speaker 9: of like Satan, you would go pretty damn far's.
Speaker 8: I mean, that's why you know clinic bombings were and
Speaker 8: I guess are on the rise again, right, like these
Speaker 8: arsins of clinics. It's not like other kinds of crime
Speaker 8: in my mind, right, it's not a crime of passion
Speaker 8: or an interpersonal dispute. It is people who have been
Speaker 8: motivated by this belief that this is a place where
Speaker 8: a genocide is happening, that there's a holocaust going on
Speaker 8: in there, that people are ripping you know, actual living
Speaker 8: babies limb from limb, and if you really did believe
Speaker 8: that their actions make sense and that's why it happens
Speaker 8: so often, right, because these people are motivated by this
Speaker 8: belief that God commands them to take this action.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean there's your dual element to that. I mean,
Speaker 9: first of all, absolutely yes, Like I've read some anti
Speaker 9: abortion terror manuals speaking of extremely unpleasant research, and it's
Speaker 9: just really like these people are murderers. It's mass murderers,
Speaker 9: Like you're like killing Hitler, right.
Speaker 8: And wouldn't you wouldn't you kill baby Hitler?
Speaker 9: Exactly poetical about baby Hitler and like a countrywide scale
Speaker 9: and when specific abortion doctors have been mentioned in right
Speaker 9: wing media, those guys end up dead and that's not
Speaker 9: a coincidence. So there's that element of it, which is
Speaker 9: the majority of it.
Speaker 10: It's huge.
Speaker 9: But there's also this idea of demonic geography, where like
Speaker 9: demons can possess sort of places like abortion clinics or
Speaker 9: institutions like Planned parenthood or even the Democratic Party, which
Speaker 9: you know, I read a lot of demonology books like
Speaker 9: Taxonomies of Demons. Pigs in the Parlor was this really
Speaker 9: big hit in like the seventies, and it's been like
Speaker 9: reissued and reissued and millions of copies and it's just like,
Speaker 9: on one level, it's really compelling because it's like, are
Speaker 9: you tired, are you sad? Are you feeling clumsy? Do
Speaker 9: you have like persistent stomach aches? It's demons and here's
Speaker 9: how you deal with that. And like in a country
Speaker 9: with shitty health care, I can totally see why someone
Speaker 9: who's like really depressed might go to like an exorcist
Speaker 9: or a deliverance minister, which is the Protestant.
Speaker 8: If you'll try anything, and this guy's going to do
Speaker 8: it for free.
Speaker 9: I watch so many videos of deliverance ministers doing their thing,
Speaker 9: and it's like freezy. It's like people you know, are
Speaker 9: just like sitting there and they're like people praying over
Speaker 9: them and screaming in their face, like and they wind
Speaker 9: up vomiting and crying and it's all very like intense.
Speaker 9: And you know, if you think about it from a
Speaker 9: placebo effect perspective for like one second, you're like, obviously
Speaker 9: this person would feel a weightlifted from them. They've had
Speaker 9: this ecstatic experience. And this isn't the majority of it.
Speaker 9: This is about fourteen percent of America identifies this as
Speaker 9: white avengels. So many Protestants, it's still so many people,
Speaker 9: because people keep asking me, like, how many people really
Speaker 9: believe shit like this, and I'm like, well, about eighty
Speaker 9: to ninety percent of like people who identify as white
Speaker 9: evangel Protestants vows most of these beliefs.
Speaker 8: So that's like, that's like thirty million people.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 10: Yeah. And then you add in the Catholic.
Speaker 8: Right, which is getting weirder every day.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Jd Vance, I hate women exist to reproduce, breathe you
Speaker 9: filthy sow. But like, even beyond the adult Catholic convert
Speaker 9: style weirdness, like right wing Catholics are an integral part
Speaker 9: of the Christian right, like Amy Cony Barrett, you know,
Speaker 9: antonin Scalia, that kind of thing. That's another bunch of millions.
Speaker 9: So this reactionary force has like numerically significant constituency. On
Speaker 9: the other hand, it definitely punches way above its weight
Speaker 9: in terms of right.
Speaker 8: They have an outsized influence of both you know, on
Speaker 8: the legislative floor and when it comes to you know,
Speaker 8: who's racking up the most bodies.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 9: And also even like the culture wars right, like the
Speaker 9: sort of loudest culture warriors tend to at least come
Speaker 9: from like a background of I'm speaking for God or
Speaker 9: Christ is king or whatever it is, Like how many
Speaker 9: times have you and I encountered that an extremist contacts
Speaker 9: But also like the sort of more mainstream me.
Speaker 10: What the fuck the mainstream is? I don't know, it's
Speaker 10: full of piss.
Speaker 9: But like the more mainstream me, like Christian grifter, right,
Speaker 9: they come from this. I'm speaking from my faith. These
Speaker 9: are my religious principles. But like it is with noting again,
Speaker 9: just to rewind in our conversation, but like the whole
Speaker 9: concept of religious liberty and religious freedom absolutely was like
Speaker 9: an ad slogan coined in the seventies around segregation, right.
Speaker 8: Religious freedom to do what? I mean, it's like states rights,
Speaker 8: states rights to do what?
Speaker 11: Right?
Speaker 7: Yeah, like you answer the question.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's religious freedom to have segregated schools, is the
Speaker 9: answer to that.
Speaker 8: And you still see echoes of that with either still
Speaker 8: religious schools that can't accept federal grant money because they
Speaker 8: don't let students be gay, right, Like it's not racial
Speaker 8: segregation anymore, but they are, you know, refusing to admit
Speaker 8: gay students, and that is a violation of federal civil
Speaker 8: rights law.
Speaker 9: Yeah, but that's where I mean that's where that slogan started,
Speaker 9: and then it's blossomed to include basically like a gay
Speaker 9: person came into my shop, except they didn't, right, I know,
Speaker 9: there's no standing, right, Like that whole case was built
Speaker 9: a lie.
Speaker 7: Whatever.
Speaker 9: That's yeah, it's like and the standing in the Supreme
Speaker 9: Court is so ridiculous. This, I mean, in many ways,
Speaker 9: this Supreme Court is the culmination and embodiment and a
Speaker 9: botheosis of like Christian right theocracy, because you have these
Speaker 9: like absolutely bat shit religious zealous I mean Amy Cony
Speaker 9: Barrett is like from a cult, and in this unaccountable body,
Speaker 9: they're passing unpopular theocratic principles that the majority of the
Speaker 9: American public disagrees with. But like specifically what they are
Speaker 9: trying to enact and what they are what they are
Speaker 9: enacting is this theogratic agenda, where like the government is
Speaker 9: in your bedroom, the government is in your doctor's office,
Speaker 9: like the government is sniffing your panties, and it's it's
Speaker 9: gross and it's upsetting and fundamentally like theocracies are just
Speaker 9: very famously all up in your junk, like they're obsessed
Speaker 9: with like controlling and censoring sexuality of all kinds of
Speaker 9: a particularly female sexuality and queer sexuality, like sniff those out.
Speaker 9: And so that's part of the reason why so many
Speaker 9: abortion arguments, Like, first of all, you have the like
Speaker 9: the you're murdering this cluster of cells, which is a
Speaker 9: full human baby. Like do you remember that article in
Speaker 9: The Guardian a couple of years ago that like showed
Speaker 9: the actual size of like fetuses at various stages of development,
Speaker 9: and it was like you were just like so little,
Speaker 9: like these little like little fingernails.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and it doesn't look like a tiny baby doll.
Speaker 7: That's just very small.
Speaker 9: Yeah, exactly, it's not like a mini baby like it
Speaker 9: like tides of gore. It's like literally like a tiny
Speaker 9: cluster of cells. So the anti abortion propaganda, like you
Speaker 9: are not immune to propaganda. It has like wormed its
Speaker 9: way into the popular consciousness just by virtue of its
Speaker 9: ubiquity and constant repetition being the key to successful propaganda.
Speaker 9: But so many of these arguments, in addition to this
Speaker 9: abortion is murder, staff is also just like you should
Speaker 9: have kept your legs closed.
Speaker 8: Right, this is a this is a consequence God did
Speaker 8: this to you.
Speaker 9: Yeah, like sex for your sins immortal sin and sex
Speaker 9: should be punished, and.
Speaker 8: I think must be doing it wrong.
Speaker 9: Like, I'm like, why do you want sex to have
Speaker 9: consequences and be punished? The like intensity of the misogyny
Speaker 9: around purity culture is so intense.
Speaker 8: Ask you, you know, about the experience of writing the book, right,
Speaker 8: So you know, your first book, Culture Warlords, was traumatizing
Speaker 8: for you to craft, right, because you had to spend
Speaker 8: so much time in these digital spaces in some in
Speaker 8: some cases physical spaces with you know, neo Nazis, four
Speaker 8: Chan guys, you know, aspiring terrorists, and so that's traumatic
Speaker 8: to experience, you know, But largely that experience was alone,
Speaker 8: like at your computer screen, sort of consuming this content
Speaker 8: that was eroding your soul. But the second half of
Speaker 8: this book is about child abuse, right, And like you
Speaker 8: interviewed people who grew up in this movement about their lives,
Speaker 8: about their husband's raping them and their parents beating them
Speaker 8: as children, and like how did those experiences compare? And
Speaker 8: like what was that?
Speaker 6: How?
Speaker 8: I mean, how did you prepare to do that? I
Speaker 8: don't know even know how it would begin to do
Speaker 8: that with care.
Speaker 9: I mean, I think my goal going in is like
Speaker 9: I'm not going to betray you. Like that was my
Speaker 9: guiding ethos of just like I view like your trust
Speaker 9: in me as a sacred thing, not like sacred in
Speaker 9: any formal religious sense, but just like you know, I
Speaker 9: view your trust in me as something that I hold
Speaker 9: very dearly.
Speaker 10: It's very important.
Speaker 9: I'm going to treat your pain with as much gentleness
Speaker 9: and respect as I can. And like I interviewed over
Speaker 9: one hundred people, largely about their experiences with experiencing child
Speaker 9: abuse in an evangelical milieu, as is laid out with
Speaker 9: pain steaking instructions, and like all of these parenting manuals. Actually,
Speaker 9: like I think reading the parenting manuals was even more
Speaker 9: disturbing than talking to people, because like people were like
Speaker 9: this fucked me up and it was wrong. And then
Speaker 9: these books are like, no, you must beat your toddler
Speaker 9: because Jesus says so, and like here's exactly how to
Speaker 9: beat your toddler, and here's what you should use to
Speaker 9: beat your toddler, and here's the like supremely fucked up,
Speaker 9: like weird ritual that we prescribe. And then like reading
Speaker 9: those in tandem with like like the accounts of people
Speaker 9: who were like this specific thing like sucked me up
Speaker 9: for life and really messed up my ability to have
Speaker 9: like intimacy or self confidence or whatever all of that stuff.
Speaker 10: I mean, it was tough.
Speaker 9: I definitely took more time. Like I wrote Culture Warlords
Speaker 9: in nine months, so I was like totally immersed constantly.
Speaker 9: It just like didn't come up for ayer, yeah at all.
Speaker 9: And this one I was like, I need a little
Speaker 9: more time, guys, Like I wrote it over you know,
Speaker 9: almost three years. I also pretentiously started calling this philosophy
Speaker 9: Guarding your Heart because I really got lost in the
Speaker 9: sauce with Culture Warlords, Like I was in a dark
Speaker 9: place while I was writing it, and afterwards I was
Speaker 9: also the like it came out in mid COVID, so
Speaker 9: that didn't help either. But uh, it was a really
Speaker 9: really rough experience with this. I was like, I'm going
Speaker 9: to keep writing. I'm gonna write about sandwiches all the
Speaker 9: way through. I'm gonna like make sure I have friendships
Speaker 9: and stuff that's grounding me. And I think consciously having
Speaker 9: that at the forefront of my mind really helped.
Speaker 6: That.
Speaker 9: Being said, like, what was really encouraging was all of
Speaker 9: these people who had experienced this sort of child abuse
Speaker 9: industrial complex in the evangelical community, where like we really
Speaker 9: value that someone wants to hear what we have to say,
Speaker 9: and also that it's someone from outside the community is
Speaker 9: like paying attention and thinks this is important, which is
Speaker 9: not to denigrate like expangelical voices, but more to say that, like,
Speaker 9: I guess there's a certain validation when someone who's like
Speaker 9: not didn't grow up in your corner of religiosity, dark corner.
Speaker 8: And sort of bringing it to an outside audience too.
Speaker 8: I think a lot of expangelicals their audience is largely
Speaker 8: their fellow expangelicals exactly.
Speaker 10: And I'm someone who, like I grew up as a Jew,
Speaker 10: and I'm like, yeah, this sucked. This is terrible.
Speaker 9: I'm like appalled reading like to Train Up a Child
Speaker 9: by The Pearls or The Strong Willed Child by jam Stobson, which,
Speaker 9: like to be clear, the strong willed child is a
Speaker 9: bad thing.
Speaker 10: It's a bad thing to have a child with us.
Speaker 8: You have to beat it out of them, sure, literally,
Speaker 8: And I'm ring into this in the wild recently. I
Speaker 8: don't know if you have come across this guy online.
Speaker 8: Do you know the nineties movie The Little Rascals.
Speaker 9: Oh my god, alf from The Little Rascals turns out
Speaker 9: to be able Salfa.
Speaker 7: The guy who played Alfalfa's name is Bug Hall.
Speaker 8: He like, really like I don't got into a sort
Speaker 8: of main character situation over some posts about how he
Speaker 8: beats his infants. He beats infants because that's I guess,
Speaker 8: a good way to raise a baby.
Speaker 10: Yeah. Also I think he's homeless.
Speaker 7: No, he's a surf.
Speaker 8: Oh he's a voluntary serfdom arrangement.
Speaker 9: Oh my god. Okay, well he sounds like a big rascal. Yeah,
Speaker 9: he's continued that trajectory of Rascal theom But don't be
Speaker 9: your kids.
Speaker 10: I mean, I will also say the.
Speaker 9: Reason why this book focuses so much on child abuse, which,
Speaker 9: like I encountered some haters and losers and doubters along
Speaker 9: the way who were like, why are you focused so
Speaker 9: much on child abuse? And I was like, there are
Speaker 9: a lot of different theories about like how authoritarianism develops,
Speaker 9: but one of the big ones is focusing on the
Speaker 9: pedagogy in authoritarian societies. The societies that become authoritarian, you know,
Speaker 9: evolve from democracy to authoritarianism and beating the shit out
Speaker 9: of people from when they're in infancy, and particularly when
Speaker 9: they display disobedience or ask why, or you know, just
Speaker 9: deviate from expectations.
Speaker 8: It's a great way to make an obedient brown shirt.
Speaker 9: Yeah, exactly, Like this is a recipe for future authoritarians.
Speaker 9: Like the people I spoke to had sort of broken
Speaker 9: away largely from this culture, but many of the sort
Speaker 9: of most obedient soldiers in the armies, Army of God
Speaker 9: like are that way. Because again, I can't overemphasize how
Speaker 9: much these parenting manuals, which spanned from like nineteen seventy
Speaker 9: to twenty fifteen, these texts, you know, the dates that
Speaker 9: they were published, emphasize having an obedient child. What you
Speaker 9: want is not like a child who's kind or curious
Speaker 9: or thoughtful or smart. It's obedient, instantly obedient. Don't make
Speaker 9: me count to three is the title of one of
Speaker 9: the books. And like, what you're creating is a culture
Speaker 9: of people who a like empathize with the aggressor at
Speaker 9: all times. So hence this admiration for strength and even
Speaker 9: admiration for cruelty. People who are trained to obey and
Speaker 9: obey without question, and people who are very acclimated to
Speaker 9: the use of violence.
Speaker 8: I mean, you're doing fascism in the home right.
Speaker 9: So the the author, like Alice Miller, the the author
Speaker 9: of the book For Your Own Good, lays out a
Speaker 9: pretty she was also a Holocaust survivor. She lays out
Speaker 9: a pretty strong case for like, you know, early twentieth
Speaker 9: century Germany having this poisonous pedagogy that also involved beating
Speaker 9: the shit out of your kids until I was like
Speaker 9: illegal to love your children, yeah, to obey you, and
Speaker 9: how basically this is how you make a torture.
Speaker 10: And the book is called for.
Speaker 9: Your Own Good and yeah, I mean I really think
Speaker 9: it is like under valued in politics, Like how much
Speaker 9: this culture of corporal punishment, which is yeah, Americans have
Speaker 9: like moved away from universal approval of corporal punishment, we're
Speaker 9: still like a lot higher than other Western democracies in
Speaker 9: that regard. And like on a national level, we're the
Speaker 9: only country in the world that hasn't ratified the UN
Speaker 9: Conventions on the Rights of a Child, which include like
Speaker 9: having a name and like not being beaten and not
Speaker 9: being thrown into like juvie solitary.
Speaker 8: Oh well, that's why America can't touch that. We need
Speaker 8: to incarcerate the children.
Speaker 10: Yeah, the children yearn for the cells.
Speaker 9: But it's also just like a lot of it actually
Speaker 9: was like worries that like evangelicals like would sort of
Speaker 9: object to the the interference in there.
Speaker 8: It's an infringement on their religious freedom to be the
Speaker 8: shit out of babies.
Speaker 10: Yeah, and their parental rights, which is another buzzword of this.
Speaker 8: This movement pnal rights is a red flag for me.
Speaker 9: Oh yeah, no, I hear parental rights and I think
Speaker 9: you want to beat the shit out of your kids.
Speaker 8: You don't want your children to learn science.
Speaker 9: Yeah, you at a homeschool and under educate your kids
Speaker 9: or miseducate.
Speaker 8: You want to cause a Measle's outbreak exactly.
Speaker 9: But that's like for us because we're weirdos. We're like
Speaker 9: obsessively clued into this stuff. If you're not, Like parental
Speaker 9: rights is like religious freedom is, like it sounds good, Yeah,
Speaker 9: it's an effective marketing slogan, but like what it means
Speaker 9: is like we're going to show up at the school
Speaker 9: board and yell about how I mean.
Speaker 10: And Trump is like bought.
Speaker 9: Into this obviously because he knows where his bread is buttered.
Speaker 9: He has savvy, Like he's like you guys do the policy.
Speaker 9: But like his current parental rights based his biggest like
Speaker 9: policy that he's advocating is like denying federal funding to
Speaker 9: any school with any vaccine a mandate, which is basically
Speaker 9: just like make measles great again, like bring back diphtheria.
Speaker 9: I think, like, yes, the Maga movement, ister of the
Speaker 9: the efflorescence, the apotheosis of this steadily building power, but
Speaker 9: like there's also just like fifty years of power building
Speaker 9: behind it. And like even if Trump was defeated at
Speaker 9: the federal level, which like I profoundly hope he is
Speaker 9: sorry to come out as like a you know, partisan
Speaker 9: a voter, like a hashtag a voter, but like I
Speaker 9: think it would be just a nauseatingly it's a horrifying
Speaker 9: thought that he I mean, first of all, you would
Speaker 9: absolutely enact every item in this theocratic agenda, starting with
Speaker 9: a national abortion band like that would happen in the
Speaker 9: first hundred days, I think, which would just functionally plunge
Speaker 9: American women into like a very very dark septocemic nightmare.
Speaker 7: Yeah, the dark place that we're going as a coffin.
Speaker 9: Yeah yeah, yeah. But even should he lose, which you know, hope.
Speaker 9: There's still twenty two states where abortion is outlawed or
Speaker 9: severely restricted, and these places are becoming care deserts.
Speaker 10: Like medical residents.
Speaker 9: My extremely sexy partner is a medical residen so I
Speaker 9: know more about the state of medicine than I otherwise would.
Speaker 9: But like residents don't want to do their residencies in
Speaker 9: states with abortion restrictions.
Speaker 10: They're like, right, given.
Speaker 8: A choice, gynecological providers just aren't practicing there anymore. Like
Speaker 8: even if you know, even your primary focus is not abortions,
Speaker 8: or even if your primary focus is you know, pregnancy care,
Speaker 8: they just don't want to They just don't want to
Speaker 8: work there.
Speaker 9: Well, also, first of all that, but second of all,
Speaker 9: it's like, if you're in the er, you're going to
Speaker 9: experience pregnancy loss because it happens in one in five pregnancy.
Speaker 8: Right, So they're choosing to work in states where they're
Speaker 8: not going to go to jail for doing medicine.
Speaker 9: Yeah, Like they don't want to incur the moral injury
Speaker 9: of not being able to apply the standard of care
Speaker 9: to patients in extremely common situations such as incomplete miscarriage
Speaker 9: and you know, pregnancy loss, whether you know self induced
Speaker 9: or just like miscarriage is super common and nobody talks
Speaker 9: about it.
Speaker 8: It's more common than we an Ectopic pregnancy is so
Speaker 8: much more common than people realize. Like there are so
Speaker 8: many things that your body can do to betray you
Speaker 8: that you need a doctor's help with just ordinary pregnancy.
Speaker 8: And then after the baby is born, then your lustrous
Speaker 8: hair all falls out.
Speaker 9: Yeah, like ordinary pregnancy is so fraught with like weird
Speaker 9: body horror like, but anyway, that's besides the point.
Speaker 10: Whatever.
Speaker 9: The point is someone presents with abdominal pain and er
Speaker 9: and it turns out to be an a topic pregnancy,
Speaker 9: and like you can't do standard of care like dilation
Speaker 9: and cure tash procedures without checking with the hospital lawyer.
Speaker 9: Like that is a really bad position for a care
Speaker 9: provider to be in. So when you have these fundamentally
Speaker 9: unscientific laws, right that are produced by people who don't
Speaker 9: know anything about pregnancy and are like very intentionally ambiguous
Speaker 9: so that cautious institutions will sort of interpret them at
Speaker 9: maximally interpret them. Like the life of the mother, how
Speaker 9: dead does she have to be?
Speaker 6: First?
Speaker 9: Yeah, she has to be almost dead, right, and then
Speaker 9: sometimes she winds up dying because almost dead is tough
Speaker 9: to judge, Like, it just winds up this grotesque sort
Speaker 9: of farce of medicine and very directly, like residents don't
Speaker 9: want to train, doctors don't want to practice in these places,
Speaker 9: and so, you.
Speaker 8: Know, right, so this ends up killing more people than
Speaker 8: just the ones hemorrhaging in the parking lot. There are
Speaker 8: people who have completely unrelated problems who are now unable
Speaker 8: to access unrelated kinds of care because the doctors just
Speaker 8: aren't there.
Speaker 9: Yeah, Or people who have ordinary wanted pregnancies who can't
Speaker 9: access neonatal care, who have to drive hours and hours
Speaker 9: and hours to like get checkups, like you know, I mean,
Speaker 9: human reproduction is like a pretty major part of like life.
Speaker 7: And a lot of people are doing it.
Speaker 9: Yeah, like it's sort of how you know, it's just
Speaker 9: people do it all the time, and like not being
Speaker 9: able to access medical care around like the entire spectrum
Speaker 9: of like reproduction is pretty catastrophic. But yeah, it also
Speaker 9: impacts all the people not engaging in reproduction at this
Speaker 9: moment in time, like doctors who are just like fuck this,
Speaker 9: I'm not wearing out a dar in Tennessee, you know,
Speaker 9: because I want to be able to treat patients.
Speaker 7: Without a lawyer in the room.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 9: I mean, and then there are doctors who are bigots
Speaker 9: and doctors who are happily on board with with abortion bands.
Speaker 9: But like, do you want that to be the only
Speaker 9: doctor in your county? I don't think so, you know,
Speaker 9: it's just it's a really grim situation. And I just like,
Speaker 9: I'm such an absolutist about bodily autonomy. It's like, if
Speaker 9: you don't own your body, you are not a full citizen, period,
Speaker 9: end of story. Like if if a major organ in
Speaker 9: your body is treated as a controlled substance, like you
Speaker 9: are not a full and equal citizen with rights, which
Speaker 9: I would like to be.
Speaker 8: I aspire to it. Yeah, So I want to ask
Speaker 8: you one more question about your book and I will
Speaker 8: let you go. I told you that I wouldn't keep
Speaker 8: you very long, and I lied.
Speaker 9: But it's like, it's just because I like talking to you.
Speaker 10: So it's I think I've done the majority of the topics.
Speaker 3: You can't.
Speaker 9: You can't be like, oh, it's about your book, which
Speaker 9: you should buy listeners.
Speaker 8: Pre order it now wherever you buy a books.
Speaker 9: And if you like the delcent tones of my voice,
Speaker 9: which are I shouldn't have had you to I rate
Speaker 9: in my audience books.
Speaker 10: You brush that passage.
Speaker 8: I'm a professional talker now, yeah.
Speaker 9: Yeah, well I narrated the audio book and then was like,
Speaker 9: why did I write such complicated sentences?
Speaker 10: Afterwards?
Speaker 8: So now that I read my own writing like on
Speaker 8: a regular basis out loud, which is new for me. Right,
Speaker 8: so you know, I have my podcast and I'm writing
Speaker 8: my little scripts and then I'm reading into a little microphone.
Speaker 8: Now that I struggle with that. I noticed while I
Speaker 8: was reading your book that oh I wouldn't be able
Speaker 8: to read this out loud. Where would I breathe? I
Speaker 8: know it was because I write like that too, and
Speaker 8: it's something I'm like really grappling with right now.
Speaker 10: She's like call me ten clubs.
Speaker 9: I'm like, ah, fuck, this sentence is this paragraph? This
Speaker 9: sentence is a paragraph. Stop it.
Speaker 8: Like I really really lost, really lost momentum on that one.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I know, but like I managed to get through it.
Speaker 9: And if you if you enjoy the dulcage sounds of
Speaker 9: my voice, you can hear it for like I don't know,
Speaker 9: eight hours or whatever. I as so weird being like
Speaker 9: listen to my voice, but you know, invite me into
Speaker 9: your mind. Yeah, but I do think it's nice as
Speaker 9: an author to read your audiobook because I can like
Speaker 9: get mad and like, you know, emphasize stuff that I
Speaker 9: think is important.
Speaker 10: And also I'm a.
Speaker 9: Theater kid, like, like, I don't have many opportunities to perform,
Speaker 9: and it is a performance and it's it's fun.
Speaker 8: But yeah, and that comes out at the same time
Speaker 8: as the physical book.
Speaker 9: Yes, it comes out audio ebook, physical book with a
Speaker 9: cool snake on it.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, Oh, I guess this is an audio medium.
Speaker 8: The listener can't see that I'm showing the cool cover.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's got a cool snake, a red and black
Speaker 9: snake on the cover. I've named him Rocco. He has
Speaker 9: a cross for a tongue. If you're looking for a
Speaker 9: book to give to the metal head in your life,
Speaker 9: oh yeah, it's metal heads, atheists, degenerates.
Speaker 10: Everyone is going to love this book.
Speaker 8: It's perfect for everyone.
Speaker 10: And if you're light on cash flow want it.
Speaker 9: For supporting the authors is ask your library to stock
Speaker 9: it or your local bookstore, because library orders are really
Speaker 9: important and you can just like put in a request
Speaker 9: in your library system and that is super helpful.
Speaker 8: Hell yeah, everybody go to your library's website right now
Speaker 8: and request that they purchase a copy of Wild Faith
Speaker 8: by Talia Lavin. Yeah, tallywhere else can people find you online?
Speaker 9: So I have a newsletter. It's on button down. I
Speaker 9: left Substack because they were like, we're never going to
Speaker 9: censor Nazis, but we will sensor porn. And I was like,
Speaker 9: I don't like your priorities, so I left for button down.
Speaker 9: So it's buttondown dot com. Slash the Sword in the Sandwich,
Speaker 9: or if you just google, the Sword in the Sandwich
Speaker 9: comes up. Most Tuesdays I write about like the horrific
Speaker 9: state of politics, et cetera. And then Fridays I write
Speaker 9: an essay about a different sandwich on Wikipedia's list of
Speaker 9: notable sandwiches, and so far I've written one hundred and
Speaker 9: eleven sandwiches.
Speaker 8: The sandwich content alone is worth the price of admission.
Speaker 8: You need to find out about these sandwiches.
Speaker 9: I mean it just and I get really deep into
Speaker 9: like the history and the provenance and like like ah,
Speaker 9: the shifting of people's led to this sandwich. But so
Speaker 9: I get really deep into it, and then you can
Speaker 9: also find me on Blue Sky, where I most of
Speaker 9: the time now because Twitter is just like robots and
Speaker 9: Nazis and Nazi robots. Where I'm at Swords Jew. I'm
Speaker 9: still on Vishy Twitter as Mobi Dick Energy, and you know,
Speaker 9: if you want to say hi or invite me to
Speaker 9: speak at your synagogue or bookstore, I'm at Tealill even
Speaker 9: writes at gmail dot com.
Speaker 10: Or church if you're like cool.
Speaker 8: Yeah, if it's like a cool church, Yeah, you show
Speaker 8: up and they pass you a snake.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 10: Oh God, I didn't do enough speaking of times for
Speaker 10: this book.
Speaker 8: Well, Telly, thank you so much for coming on today again.
Speaker 8: The book is Wild Faith by Talia Lavin, and you
Speaker 8: can pre order it now wherever books are sold, and
Speaker 8: you should request it from your library.
Speaker 9: Yeah, we stand civic services, and I'm a huge fan
Speaker 9: of public libraries and also of Molly Conger.
Speaker 10: So thanks for having me on and take care, Bye.
Speaker 1: Bye, Welcome back to It Could Happen Here and our
Speaker 1: special two part series Irregular Naval Warfare and You, where
Speaker 1: James and I teach you how you too can challenge
Speaker 1: the US Navy's dominance of the seas, or at least
Speaker 1: the coasts for fun and profit. Actually, today, last episode
Speaker 1: we talked about people challenging the US Navy's coastal dominance.
Speaker 1: Today we're talking about doing the same thing for the
Speaker 1: Russian Navy. So that's gonna be fun. And of course
Speaker 1: the Navy of mianmar which is a bit of a
Speaker 1: different class from the US and Russian Navy, but no
Speaker 1: less interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, still fun. I'd love to see a boat lose.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, I just like boats going down, you know,
Speaker 1: I just hate a boat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, US, the jocas many many such cases.
Speaker 1: I'm going to start with Ukraine, and then we're going
Speaker 1: to throw to James to talk about our friends in
Speaker 1: Myanmar and how they have repurposed civilian technology and stolen
Speaker 1: weapons to counter a navy without really having one of
Speaker 1: their own. But first Ukraine. In twenty fourteen, when the
Speaker 1: Russian Army invaded eastern Ukraine and took Crimea, Ukraine lost
Speaker 1: a significant portion of it's already not that impressive navy.
Speaker 1: Most of their boats were just taken by Russia, along
Speaker 1: with a number of sailors who defected, a lot of
Speaker 1: other sailors fled the region, leaving behind their homes and
Speaker 1: cities like Sebastopol to continue serving their country in a
Speaker 1: war that a decade later is still ongoing. One of
Speaker 1: these sailors, who is a Sebastopol native and had to
Speaker 1: flee his home, possibly forever, in order to continue serving
Speaker 1: his country, is the current commander of Ukraine's navy, Admiral Nazpapa.
Speaker 1: He leads a navy that is almost without manned ships,
Speaker 1: and on paper, it is utterly incapable of challenging Russia's
Speaker 1: legendary Black Sea Fleet. Since the age of the Czars,
Speaker 1: the Black Sea Fleet has been infamous as a pillar
Speaker 1: of Russian military power. However, also since the age of
Speaker 1: the Tsars, it's had a nasty tendency to get utterly
Speaker 1: housed by enemies that should have been able to beat.
Speaker 2: It, right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, not the first time it's
Speaker 2: taken an unexpected loot.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It has a legendary history that doesn't mean good.
Speaker 2: There's bad legends out there, you know. Yeah, it's well known. Yeah,
Speaker 2: today that.
Speaker 1: Enemy is Ukraine. Since the expanded Russian invasion in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two, just two years, Ukraine has destroyed or badly
Speaker 1: damaged more than a third of the Black Sea fleet,
Speaker 1: despite having no battleships or destroyers in the sea to
Speaker 1: counter Russian naval power, they have done enough damage to
Speaker 1: reopen Odessa and at least one other port on the
Speaker 1: Black Sea to international commerce, which has provided Ukraine with
Speaker 1: a crucial economic and strategic lifeline. And that's a remarkable achievement,
Speaker 1: sinking a third of the Black Sea fleet. And basically
Speaker 1: when you reopen a port, that means that you have
Speaker 1: taken away naval dominance from a country that has a
Speaker 1: navy and you don't. That's pretty good, pretty good stuff.
Speaker 1: Over the last two years, Ukraine had damaged, irreparably or
Speaker 1: sunk seven active landing ships and one to seven active
Speaker 1: landing ships and one landing vessel. I don't know the difference.
Speaker 1: They've fucked up a lot of boats. They have destroyed
Speaker 1: a submarine with seed to ground capability that was docked
Speaker 1: for repairs. They have sunk a cruiser, the capital ship
Speaker 1: of the entire Black Sea fleet.
Speaker 2: The Moskva.
Speaker 1: They've also sunk a supply vessel and a handful of
Speaker 1: patrol boats and missile bow and a number of other
Speaker 1: boats have been damaged. That's a significant rate of casualties,
Speaker 1: especially when you consider that every actually destroyed vessel, we're
Speaker 1: looking at a year's multiple years lead time to replace.
Speaker 1: You cannot make naval vessels very quickly anymore. Back during
Speaker 1: the big dub dub dose, the US did, but nobody
Speaker 1: really does that anymore, not with the big ones at least.
Speaker 2: You just roll through that.
Speaker 1: We were just we were just yeating aircraft carriers into.
Speaker 2: The sea, just just flotting them out. Yeah, don't take
Speaker 2: them out a week. Yeah, it's because it's because Rosy
Speaker 2: de Riveto was really riveting at a high speed.
Speaker 1: She was, she was, she was quite a riveter. So
Speaker 1: at the start of hostilities, Turkey, which controls access to
Speaker 1: the Black Sea forbade any additional military vessels, or at
Speaker 1: least military vessels of significant size, from entering the area.
Speaker 1: What this means this has a significant impact on how
Speaker 1: well Ukraine strikes work, because even if Russia can replace
Speaker 1: the losses physically, they can can't actually get replacements into
Speaker 1: the Black Sea easily. They can't sail new shit past
Speaker 1: the Turks. The Turks are not allowing that right now.
Speaker 1: So again this is a situation that has kind of
Speaker 1: favored the way in which Ukraine has adapted to countering
Speaker 1: Russian naval dominance. It is possible that at the present
Speaker 1: rate of attrition, the Black Sea Fleet could be rendered
Speaker 1: inoperable in less than two years. Like if they keep
Speaker 1: going at this rates, like eighteen months or something before,
Speaker 1: there's not really much of a fleet anymore now. If
Speaker 1: Ukraine had accomplished this task with a traditional navy using
Speaker 1: standard naval tactics, this would have been an impressive victory
Speaker 1: given the disparity in resources between the two nations. But
Speaker 1: they have done all this with a mix of cruise missiles,
Speaker 1: many of which are produced in country, aerial drones, and
Speaker 1: new bespoke locally produced suicide drone boats. This irregular naval
Speaker 1: warfare has been successful enough that one Rand Corporation engineer
Speaker 1: and analyst, Scott Savatz, described the Black Sea Fleet as
Speaker 1: a fleet in being quote, it represents a potential threat
Speaker 1: that needs to be vigilantly guarded against, but one that
Speaker 1: remains in checks for now. And I'm going to quote
Speaker 1: from a New York Times article on the topic. It
Speaker 1: brought a little more context. Ukraine has effectively turned around
Speaker 1: ten thousand square miles in the western Black Sea off
Speaker 1: its southern coast, into what the military calls a gray zone,
Speaker 1: where neither side can sail without the threat of attack.
Speaker 1: James Heapy, Britain's Armed Forces minister, told a recent security
Speaker 1: conference in Warsaw that Russia's Black Sea fleet had suffered
Speaker 1: a functional defeat, and contended that the liberation of Ukraine's
Speaker 1: coastal waters in the Black Sea was every bit as
Speaker 1: important as the successful counter offensives on land and Cersona
Speaker 1: and Kharkiv last year. The classical approach that we studied
Speaker 1: at military maritime academies does not work now, Admiral Nese
Speaker 1: Papas said. Therefore, we have to be as flexible as
Speaker 1: possible and change approaches to planning and implementing work as
Speaker 1: much as possible, not at articles about a year old
Speaker 1: or so.
Speaker 6: So.
Speaker 1: The Neptune anti ship missile is one of the prides
Speaker 1: of Ukraine's Nascon arms industry. Neptune missiles are credited with
Speaker 1: destroying the Moskva in April of twenty twenty two. Ukraine
Speaker 1: also has access to several Western anti ship missiles, including
Speaker 1: these storm Shadow and Scalp missiles. I believe the storm
Speaker 1: Shadow comes from your your folks, right, James, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and these seem to be pretty effective missiles. These obviously
Speaker 1: much more advanced, and these are modern naval weapons, right,
Speaker 1: These are much more advanced than, for example, the weapons
Speaker 1: to who these have. These are the kind of things
Speaker 1: that can counter to some extent modern anti missile technology.
Speaker 1: For an example of kind of how that tends to work,
Speaker 1: they used a barrage of I believe it was mostly
Speaker 1: storm shadows to rain death on the crime import of Sebastopol. Recently,
Speaker 1: seven out of eighteen of the missiles fired made it
Speaker 1: through Russian air defenses, and these damaged or destroyed four
Speaker 1: landing ships in a single strike. And these are sizeable
Speaker 1: naval vessels. This is the most recent attack, although as
Speaker 1: after I wrote this, there was another attack on the
Speaker 1: Kirch Bridge. I'm not really sure how that took place
Speaker 1: yet that seems to have shut it down again. But
Speaker 1: that gives you an idea of like what you actually
Speaker 1: have to do. How much of these missiles you have
Speaker 1: to put in the air to get some through? And
Speaker 1: that's not too bad, right, eighteen missiles seven get through
Speaker 1: four ships down. That's a really good rate of return.
Speaker 2: Especially when you consider that, like you know, we were
Speaker 2: talking in our first episode about how the US is
Speaker 2: spending significant resources on maintaining its defending its carriers, right,
Speaker 2: Russia does not have the same ability to keep good
Speaker 2: lord saying munitions no, and so like that's a finite resource, right,
Speaker 2: they're their means of defining that. Defending their ships and
Speaker 2: defending really anything against missiles are a finite resource. So
Speaker 2: any time you can even if the ship doesn't get sunk,
Speaker 2: if the ship has to deploy one of these missiles,
Speaker 2: which it doesn't, which the whole country doesn't have very
Speaker 2: many of, that they're still a win.
Speaker 1: Now, this is we are talking about irregular naval warfare.
Speaker 1: And then this is not This is not what most
Speaker 1: people would have considered a traditional naval conflict prior to
Speaker 1: the expansion of hostilities in Ukraine. However, we are talking
Speaker 1: this is very different than the case of the Huthies.
Speaker 1: Ukraine is a state. It doesn't have a massive arms industry,
Speaker 1: but it has one, and it has the support of
Speaker 1: nations with sizable arms industries. Right, so we are not
Speaker 1: talking about this. We are going to talk about the
Speaker 1: aspects of Ukrainian a regular naval warfare. That are some
Speaker 1: guys that are hobbyists building shit. Yeah, this is not
Speaker 1: that part yet, but I think this information is kind
Speaker 1: of significant and that it shows the tactical use of
Speaker 1: anti ship cruise missiles and their ability to significantly shape
Speaker 1: an operational environment even when the country using them has
Speaker 1: minimal conventional naval assets of their own. It is largely
Speaker 1: through the use of these missiles that Ukraine has been
Speaker 1: able to reopen their black Sea ports. That matters to
Speaker 1: people seeking to understand both this conflict and the future
Speaker 1: of unconventional naval warfare. I mean, I guess you could
Speaker 1: say this is the future of conventional naval warfare, but
Speaker 1: I think we're still leaning on the unconventional side at
Speaker 1: the moment, at least in terms of how doctrine is
Speaker 1: changing as a result of this. So maybe I should
Speaker 1: update how we're defining this. But for our purposes as
Speaker 1: people unlikely to have access to cruise missiles but significantly
Speaker 1: likely to find ourselves waging an unconventional war than having
Speaker 1: cruise missiles, it's more relevant to look at the new
Speaker 1: weapons systems Ukraine has developed that have helped them lock
Speaker 1: down the Black Sea fleet using civilian hobbyists, And this
Speaker 1: is where we get to drones. Ukraine's conventional aerial drones
Speaker 1: are a mix of actual military hardware. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: stuff like the Bairaktar, the Turkish drone, which is like
Speaker 1: kind of like the Predator A right, it's like an
Speaker 1: actual military product. But the majority in terms of numbers
Speaker 1: of drones that Ukraine is fielding are civilian drones, or
Speaker 1: at least drones that started out a civilian technology. A
Speaker 1: lot of these are now built to be military, but
Speaker 1: they're still based on these designs that started with people
Speaker 1: hacking and cobbling together civilian drones and outside of naval stuff.
Speaker 1: Prior to the war, there had been a lot of
Speaker 1: veterans and hobbyists who were veterans trying to convince the
Speaker 1: Ukrainian military that it needed to adopt drone warfare on
Speaker 1: a large scale, the kind of drone warfare that you
Speaker 1: can do with these less expensive drones, and they received
Speaker 1: a lot of pushback until the war started and these
Speaker 1: guys just took to the field and started fucking murking
Speaker 1: Russian armed units and infantry and killing generals and shit.
Speaker 1: And now Ukraine has integrated in a way that everyone
Speaker 1: is going to follow, like Ukrainian like battalions have like
Speaker 1: companies now that are drone assault companies, and like line battalions, and.
Speaker 2: Within infantry you have people used artillery eating transit forward observers.
Speaker 6: Yes, all over.
Speaker 1: They have set a goal for this year producing at
Speaker 1: least a million and ideally more like two million drones
Speaker 1: and at least from what I read, that looks like
Speaker 1: very plausible. And most of these are quite small, right,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean obviously ineffective.
Speaker 2: I know they buy a lot of their drones in
Speaker 2: the UK because the UK has consistently kicked itself in
Speaker 2: the nuts when it comes to like Brexit, and so
Speaker 2: the pound is significantly weaker, and so they're able to
Speaker 2: get the drones at a cheaper price and then drive
Speaker 2: them all the way across. Yeah, you know people who've
Speaker 2: done that. I was going to go join them, but
Speaker 2: never worked it out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know there are a number of different
Speaker 1: like these. These drones earlier in the war had an
Speaker 1: easier time being effective and causing casualties on the Russians
Speaker 1: then later This is something that you know, kind of
Speaker 1: the hooplaw and support, which I think is necessary that Ukraine.
Speaker 1: It's lead some people to discount the degree to which
Speaker 1: Russian forces have adapted and gotten smarter. And one of
Speaker 1: the ways in which they've adapted and gotten smarter is
Speaker 1: in blocking drones and using drones of their own. You know,
Speaker 1: one of the stories the last couple of weeks is
Speaker 1: that Russia has succeeded in carrying out strikes on advanced
Speaker 1: weapons systems like samsites deep in Ukrainian territory. They've extended
Speaker 1: their kill chain beyond what they used to be capable of,
Speaker 1: and that's because they've adapted. They're also adapted with less
Speaker 1: efficacy at blocking drones. In attacks on naval vessels, some
Speaker 1: of this has been kind of funny. I want to
Speaker 1: read a quote from a Business Insider article here. Russia
Speaker 1: is painting silhouettes on naval vessels on land to try
Speaker 1: and trick Ukraine, which keeps destroying its warships. In an
Speaker 1: intelligence update on Wednesday, the UK Ministry of Defense said
Speaker 1: that silhouettes of vessels have also been painted on the
Speaker 1: side of ks, probably to confuse the uncrude aerial vehicle operators.
Speaker 1: They showed there's some images of this. They don't seem
Speaker 1: convincing to me. I don't know if I think this
Speaker 1: is working.
Speaker 2: This is great these I love this, like they have
Speaker 2: a cardboard navy next. Yeah, it's very bugs bunny. Yes,
Speaker 2: they're not working as well as bugs would. They've a
Speaker 2: hole in the side of the cliff face and crushing
Speaker 2: into it, keeps throwing. It's very funny.
Speaker 1: I mean obviously they just Ukraine just sank like or
Speaker 1: damn it badly damaged four boats. So I don't think
Speaker 1: this is I haven't seen evidence that this is working well.
Speaker 1: Their actual like jamming efforts have been much more successful.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, they always will be on civilian One of
Speaker 2: the thing that's really interesting compared to Mianma is that
Speaker 2: Ukraine tends to rely on modified off the shelf civilian drones. Right,
Speaker 2: your dji is that kind of thing in Meanma because
Speaker 2: of where a lot of the PDFs are. Because but
Speaker 2: they increasingly do control the borders, but they haven't always.
Speaker 2: They have been making their own drones. The group called
Speaker 2: Federal Wings you can find them on telegram, who make
Speaker 2: their own drones, and I think those seem to be
Speaker 2: less the jammers that the essays that the Tamado has
Speaker 2: uh Chinese made that Jamma rifles you see them all
Speaker 2: the time in captured weapon cashes, but they don't seem
Speaker 2: to be having as much impact on these homemade drones,
Speaker 2: which is really interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and it's you know, I've mentioned a couple
Speaker 1: of times we're doing this in part because the odds
Speaker 1: that people listening might be involved in an a regular
Speaker 1: conflict are not zero.
Speaker 6: You Know.
Speaker 1: What I think about when I say that is not
Speaker 1: that there's high odds for any individual person fighting themselves
Speaker 1: in that situation.
Speaker 6: But there is.
Speaker 1: Given the number of people who listened to this podcast,
Speaker 1: probably someone who is not currently involved in a conflict
Speaker 1: that will find themselves that way in the future. And
Speaker 1: I base that in part on the fact that all
Speaker 1: of our friends in Myanmar who are currently fighting a
Speaker 1: war were a couple of years ago delivery drivers and
Speaker 1: you know, playing pubg online and not really thinking they
Speaker 1: would wind up as insurgents.
Speaker 2: Now I've spoken to a number of people who are
Speaker 2: currently fighting not in Mianma, who have listened to our
Speaker 2: Meanma podcast and realized the capacity of three D printing, yeah,
Speaker 2: to be very useful and and so like, even in
Speaker 2: that sense, it's already happening. But yeah, don't no one
Speaker 2: in the IMA, Like many of them said that their
Speaker 2: entire combat experience is playing pubg Yeah, now they're lurking ships.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So anyway, it bears thinking about this stuff. And this
Speaker 1: brings me back to Ukraine's irregular drone warfare units, which
Speaker 1: again a lot of these guys started out as civilian
Speaker 1: enthusiasts who expanded responded to the outbreak or at least
Speaker 1: expansion of hostilities by expanding their hobby into a real
Speaker 1: world military effort that had a real world effect. Civilian
Speaker 1: drones were crucial in the Battle of Kiev, allowing Ukraine
Speaker 1: to do severe damage to that massive Russian armored column
Speaker 1: heading towards the city and providing intel that led to
Speaker 1: the assassination of multiple general level officers. So it is
Speaker 1: perhaps not surprising that Ukraine looked to the same group
Speaker 1: of volunteer hobbyists when it came time to expand their
Speaker 1: naval arsenal. And there's a really good article I found
Speaker 1: in CNN by Sebastian Shukla, Alex Marcott and Daria Tarasova.
Speaker 1: And I actually want to give you the title of
Speaker 1: this article. Yeah, I'll try to thriller into the show.
Speaker 1: Notes is exclusive rare access to Ukraine's sea drones part
Speaker 1: of Ukraine's fight back in the Black Sea. Haven't really
Speaker 1: seen the word fight back use that way, but there
Speaker 1: you go. So I'm going to read a quote from
Speaker 1: that article. A government linked Ukrainian fundraising organization called United
Speaker 1: twenty four has sourced money from companies and individuals all
Speaker 1: around the world, pooling funds to disperse it to a
Speaker 1: variety of developers and initiatives from defense to soccer matches.
Speaker 1: The entire outfit is very security conscious, insisting on strict
Speaker 1: guidelines on filming and revealing identities. Those who seen and
Speaker 1: met with declined to give their full names or even
Speaker 1: their ranks within Ukraine's armed forces. On a creaky wooden jetty,
Speaker 1: a camouflaged sea drone pilot says he wants to go
Speaker 1: by shark. In front of him is a long, black
Speaker 1: hard show briefcase. He unveils a bespoke multi screened mission control,
Speaker 1: essentially an elaborate gaming center combined complete with levers, joysticks,
Speaker 1: a monitor, and buttons that have covers over switches that
Speaker 1: shouldn't accidentally be knocked with labels like blast. The developer
Speaker 1: of the drone who asked to remain anonymous, said their
Speaker 1: work on sea drones only began once the war started.
Speaker 1: It was very important because we did not have many
Speaker 1: forces to resist the maritime state Russia, and we needed
Speaker 1: to develop something of our own because we didn't have
Speaker 1: the existing capabilities. So again, these are hobbyist design I mean,
Speaker 1: this guy's not really a hobbyist any more, but that's
Speaker 1: how he started. He's only not a hobbyist because the
Speaker 1: military recognized the value of what he was doing. And
Speaker 1: the current iterations of this sea drone weigh a little
Speaker 1: over two thousand pounds with an explosive six hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty one pound payload, a five hundred mile range and
Speaker 1: a max speed of fifty miles per hour. That is
Speaker 1: a significant weapons system. Yeah, multiple sea drones have been
Speaker 1: used to strike Russian assets in the Black Sea, and
Speaker 1: drones were involved in a successful attack that severely damaged
Speaker 1: the Kirch Bridge last July, rendering it impassable since until September.
Speaker 1: So these have had a real battlefield effect and they
Speaker 1: probably will continue to do so. The developer of these
Speaker 1: drones told CNN these drones are a completely Ukrainian production.
Speaker 1: They are designed drawn and tested here. It's our own
Speaker 1: production of holes, electronics and software. More than fifty percent
Speaker 1: of the production of equipment is here in Ukraine. And
Speaker 1: that's really significant because you know, I think we're all
Speaker 1: aware of the difficulty Ukraine has had getting weaponry lately
Speaker 1: from the West as a result of fucking around in Congress,
Speaker 1: and so it is a necessity for them to be
Speaker 1: able to develop weapon systems like this that can interdict
Speaker 1: and counteract more advanced and expensive weapon systems and can
Speaker 1: be produced indigenously. You know, I don't think we have
Speaker 1: seen a mass suicide boat attack. I'm interested in what
Speaker 1: happens when we do, like with more significant numbers than
Speaker 1: we've seen deployed. I kind of wonder the degree to
Speaker 1: which the Russians have gotten good at spotting this stuff.
Speaker 1: I've come across at least a couple of stories of
Speaker 1: these boats likely destroyed on approach. So they certainly don't
Speaker 1: always work even a majority of the time. But given
Speaker 1: the cost of these things they don't have to get
Speaker 1: through the majority of the time, very much worth it
Speaker 1: right now. In that interview with The New York Times,
Speaker 1: Admiral Najpapa caution that Ukraine is still outgunned in the
Speaker 1: Black Sea. Even though the Russians no longer have supremacy,
Speaker 1: they still have air superiority. They are still able to
Speaker 1: lunch from the sea long range missiles at Ukrainian targets,
Speaker 1: including civilian targets. So this is not again a situation
Speaker 1: that should be portrayed as them having their own way.
Speaker 1: Their ability to kind of interdict the sea has been
Speaker 1: The primary effects of it have been number one, the
Speaker 1: reopening of trade in the Black Sea, and earlier in
Speaker 1: the war, by locking down the ability of these landing
Speaker 1: ships to put more troops on ground and by doing
Speaker 1: damage to the Kurch Bridge, they were able to slow
Speaker 1: Russian reinforcements in Russian materiel from entering the war zone
Speaker 1: in order to this aided in some of the advances,
Speaker 1: particularly in areas like Carson. At this moment, the situation
Speaker 1: has changed because again the Russians aren't just kind of
Speaker 1: like sitting around doing the same thing over again, or
Speaker 1: at least not always. And we don't tend to talk
Speaker 1: as much about successes on the Russian side of things,
Speaker 1: but that is an important part of the story and
Speaker 1: one of the things the Russians have done is kind
Speaker 1: of acknowledged that the Black Sea Fleet may not be
Speaker 1: a fleet in being forever and certainly cannot be relied
Speaker 1: upon to handle everything they initially thought it would handle.
Speaker 1: And so Russian engineers spent a significant period of time
Speaker 1: building a sizeable new railroad that connects Rostov and southern
Speaker 1: Russia to Mariopol and occupied southern Ukraine. This has allowed
Speaker 1: them to get high volume shipments into the area and
Speaker 1: supply troops to the area along Ukraine's southern front without
Speaker 1: relying on that bridge or relying on naval landings.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 1: So, the fact that Ukraine has been able to take
Speaker 1: out for landing ships recently is good. That's a wind
Speaker 1: for Ukraine. It reduces Russian capability, but it is not
Speaker 1: half the same effect that it would have had, for example,
Speaker 1: two years earlier. Right, Yeah, because Russia has also evolved,
Speaker 1: and among other things, railroads are a lot easier or
Speaker 1: a lot harder to destroy to take out.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 1: It's easy to damage a railroad, but they're easy to fix.
Speaker 1: It doesn't take a lot to get some guys over
Speaker 1: to fix a damage sunk of railroad, fixing a bridge
Speaker 1: that's been blown up, or a sunk boat is a
Speaker 1: lot harder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, I mean, and there are people within Russia
Speaker 2: even who are sabotaging railways say it's like it's very
Speaker 2: high stakes for them, and it's relatively low cost for
Speaker 2: the Russian state to fix that stuff, so like it's
Speaker 2: not as effective.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I think this gives you an idea of
Speaker 1: kind of like what we're looking at when we look
Speaker 1: at this kind of ongoing A regular conflict is the
Speaker 1: side that does not have access to a functional navy,
Speaker 1: not able to interdict or destroy fleets, but able to
Speaker 1: stop them from dominating the coast. And when you can
Speaker 1: stop them from dominating the coast, you have effectively denied
Speaker 1: them terrain that they can act in without being countered,
Speaker 1: and you have also denied them from stopping you from
Speaker 1: acting in that same terrain, even if you don't have
Speaker 1: total safety in that area. That opens up the operational
Speaker 1: possibilities substantially. And this is something that I kind of
Speaker 1: don't think is going to get put back in the bag.
Speaker 1: Even if some of these Star Wars ass weapons systems
Speaker 1: do come out in the near future, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: that'll have an impact in the immediate term on people
Speaker 1: like the houthies. But I don't think think that it
Speaker 1: really will on you know, for example, what Ukraine's doing right, Yes, Russia.
Speaker 2: Can't keep up with getting decent small arms, body armor,
Speaker 2: grenades and ship legs. There's no way it's going to
Speaker 2: implement some kind of massive star Wars system over its navy.
Speaker 2: Not right now, not in the middle of a conflict.
Speaker 2: That's it's struggling to supply.
Speaker 1: Yep, you know what, here's an ad break.
Speaker 2: All right, we're back and we are traveling around the world.
Speaker 2: Spend your little globe in your head and look for Meanma,
Speaker 2: which is of course in Asia. Now I'm talking about
Speaker 2: two different I guess anti ship sabotage or attack or
Speaker 2: two different ways ships have been sunk in the EMMA.
Speaker 2: I'll start with the first one, which is undoubtedly the flashiest,
Speaker 2: just because it's fun. So a ship in the port
Speaker 2: of Yeah, about about a month ago, so we're recording
Speaker 2: on a twenty. It's about the first of March. It
Speaker 2: was in the river, in the river in yangon right,
Speaker 2: and it was carrying allegedly carrying jet fuel. Now, if
Speaker 2: you follow Burmese activists, people in the Burmese Freedom Movement,
Speaker 2: they will. One of their demands for a long time
Speaker 2: has been to stop supplying the Hunter with jet fuel,
Speaker 2: which would in turn stop it being able to bomb villages, schools, civilians,
Speaker 2: PDF formations, just about anyone in the country. It's bombed
Speaker 2: at some point in the last couple of years. And
Speaker 2: they haven't been exactly right. They haven't been able to
Speaker 2: stop the supply of jet fuel coming to the Hunter.
Speaker 2: So they've taken it into their own hands. And what
Speaker 2: they did on the first of March was that they
Speaker 2: snuck onto a boat. So two this is the story
Speaker 2: from the Burmese National Unity Government's Ministry of Defense. Anyway,
Speaker 2: combat divers snuck onto this boat planted a kilogram of
Speaker 2: TNT or a charge equivalent to kilogram of TNT. Robert
Speaker 2: and I've both spoken to people who make explosives in memrs.
Speaker 10: We do.
Speaker 2: We definitely know the PDF has access to a range
Speaker 2: of explosives. They said it on a five hour fuse
Speaker 2: and it blew up in the middle of the night,
Speaker 2: and there's definitely footage of the ship on fire having
Speaker 2: blown up. Now, this is pretty remarkable for never real
Speaker 2: like this is like why the United States has units
Speaker 2: like the Navy seals right, like the higher speed guys,
Speaker 2: because it is not easy to scuba dive across a harbor,
Speaker 2: climb onto a ship, send an explosive charge without being detected,
Speaker 2: and then leave that ship and have the charge go
Speaker 2: off and sink the ship without you being compromised, without
Speaker 2: the charge itself being like compromised, and the ship being saved. Right,
Speaker 2: this is some like this is some classic like this
Speaker 2: is why they are a special units within the US military.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 2: The PDF very obviously did not have combat dives. Two
Speaker 2: years ago, I was looking into hobby scuba diving in Yangon.
Speaker 2: The rivers in that area are extremely muddy and visibility
Speaker 2: is very low, So the people who you find diving
Speaker 2: in that area are not so much like hobby scuba
Speaker 2: divers or free divers. But there's salvage divers and there's
Speaker 2: a whole little industry of people. And these people are
Speaker 2: diving in equipment that I would not consider safe or reliable.
Speaker 2: It's clamping an air hose in between your teeth and
Speaker 2: diving down and trying to find there's a large deposit
Speaker 2: of coal in one of the rivers in Yangon because
Speaker 2: of a ship that's sunk. There was a coarse copper
Speaker 2: which everyone all around the world, including the bigcong in Santia,
Speaker 2: are stealing copper. There's iron, right, So these people are
Speaker 2: diving down and trying to collect scrap and sell that
Speaker 2: for whatever minimal amount they can.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 2: It's an extremely dangerous and extremely low income. It's one
Speaker 2: of the sort of really high risk, low reward jobs
Speaker 2: that you get in economies where people are struggling to
Speaker 2: make ends meet. Right, So those are the only divers
Speaker 2: I can find evidence of in Yangon. I don't think
Speaker 2: it was them who did this, because you have to
Speaker 2: have a boat above you with a pump if you're
Speaker 2: diving with a rubber hose in your teeth, right, So
Speaker 2: it seems like somebody in within the They said it
Speaker 2: was a Yangon PDF, that's what they attribute it to,
Speaker 2: so that would be one of these. It would likely
Speaker 2: be an underground group within the PDF, right, some people
Speaker 2: living in the city who were able to sneak onto
Speaker 2: this boat, set a charge and blow it up, and
Speaker 2: they would also had to have intelligence at the boat
Speaker 2: where it was, what it was carrying, et cetera. It's
Speaker 2: a pretty pretty daring mission that this is the first
Speaker 2: one like this we've seen and we haven't seen anything since.
Speaker 2: But it's of course possible that this is a story
Speaker 2: that we're being told. In fact, they had like someone
Speaker 2: undercover on the ship, right or like they had some
Speaker 2: other means of getting this charge onto the ship, but
Speaker 2: one way or another they managed to blow up this
Speaker 2: ship carrying few, which is a significant detrimu Yeah, right,
Speaker 2: that's how they get most of their shit. It's not
Speaker 2: over land, especially with more the.
Speaker 1: Terrain there is just absolutely, like even with modern technology,
Speaker 1: difficult to get significant amounts of shit through.
Speaker 2: They're resupplying some of their outposts that are ten miles
Speaker 2: from a town with helicopters right now, like a the
Speaker 2: terrain is burly, and b they don't have the PDF
Speaker 2: has denied them access that any time they send out
Speaker 2: a convoy, it gets attacked, so sending out plus you
Speaker 2: know that their land border crossings are increasingly falling into
Speaker 2: the hands of the PDFs and the ROS, So getting
Speaker 2: stuff through the ocean is one of the ways that
Speaker 2: they can still get stuff. And if this keeps happening,
Speaker 2: then they will make that more expensive for them. And
Speaker 2: they're not exactly a wealthy hunter even though, I guess
Speaker 2: Minna Lung just made himself an air Force one recently.
Speaker 2: I was just looking at it. Today's good. He's got
Speaker 2: himself too luxury. Yeah, they called it dictators like he's
Speaker 2: upgraded from president class. Nice. Yeah, yeah, yes, he has
Speaker 2: in many ways. So yeah, that's one way that the
Speaker 2: PDF has been blowing up ships in the Yangon, Robert,
Speaker 2: do you know who else has been blowing up ships
Speaker 2: in the yang in Yangon?
Speaker 1: Well, we are sponsored entirely by the British Navy circa
Speaker 1: the mid eighteen hundreds, so I would guess them, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. Lots of repressed, repressed feelings and growing up
Speaker 1: a lot of cabin boys with deep trauma. Anyway, here's
Speaker 1: the ass.
Speaker 12: Yeah, all right, we beca We hope you enjoyed that.
Speaker 2: That pivot one of our best ones yet. And we're
Speaker 2: talking about the Arakan Army now. So the Arakan Army
Speaker 2: not to be confused with the Rakhan Range of Salvation Army,
Speaker 2: different group. Arakan is a name of what is now
Speaker 2: a Rakaine state before it was colonized by the Burmese.
Speaker 2: That was I think Arakan was a king before it
Speaker 2: was colonized by the Burmese, so that that's where that
Speaker 2: refers to. It's a geographical appellation rather than like necessarily
Speaker 2: an ethnic one. The Rakaine would be the ethnic group.
Speaker 2: So what the AA have done is sunk I think
Speaker 2: at least four Hunter ships now, and most of these
Speaker 2: ships are kind of they're like the They look like
Speaker 2: big Higgins boats. They're like landing craft or like car ferries,
Speaker 2: like flat bottom with a bow that goes down. Right.
Speaker 2: I rode around a lot in the Marshall Islands in
Speaker 2: little landing craft like that because they can get them in.
Speaker 2: They don't have like docks, so they can just ride
Speaker 2: that right up to the beach and then drop the
Speaker 2: front and off you go. And they use them a lot.
Speaker 2: The Hunter doesn't have like per se marines that they
Speaker 2: don't have maritime infantry, but they use them to transport
Speaker 2: their regular army around, right, and they use them to
Speaker 2: transport them up river. They also use them a lot
Speaker 2: in Rakaine State to shell AA positions and any townships
Speaker 2: that they've decided they want to wipe off the map
Speaker 2: and kill all the people in right. So these these
Speaker 2: boats have been a real like thorn in the side
Speaker 2: of the Aracan Army after Operation ten twenty seven, when
Speaker 2: they joined with two other groups to form the Three
Speaker 2: Brotherhood Alliance, A launch attacks on the Hunter all over VMA,
Speaker 2: and so what they've been doing, it appears, is using
Speaker 2: underwater mines to sink these ships, which is interesting, right, Like,
Speaker 2: I guess the mines are like a very old technology, right,
Speaker 2: it's probably one hundred years plus underwater mines have existed.
Speaker 2: It seems the way that, like, the reason they're able
Speaker 2: to get away with using what is the relatively dated
Speaker 2: technology is because the Hunter doesn't expect to encounter anything, right,
Speaker 2: and so has not equipped its ships as such, Like
Speaker 2: they do have stuff like submarines, but that's not what's
Speaker 2: getting sunk. What's getting sun to these big kind of
Speaker 2: landing craft riverboats. And it seems that they're using mines
Speaker 2: and then once they disabled the ship, they're then attacking
Speaker 2: it with small boats, small arms like indirect fire mortars
Speaker 2: and stuff. I saw one post that suggested they'd use
Speaker 2: which is pretty cool if they did. The Burmese military
Speaker 2: has these like tank destroyers. It's a tank, it's what
Speaker 2: it is. And they've captured the AA has captured a
Speaker 2: number of these, right, And I've seen suggestions that they're
Speaker 2: using some of these on like they just set up
Speaker 2: an ambush along the banks of the river, right and
Speaker 2: as the ship comes in they can they can maybe
Speaker 2: disable it with a mine and then attack it with those.
Speaker 2: But there are videos online you can find them of
Speaker 2: the AA sinking these ships, and then they've done some
Speaker 2: amazing drone photography of like they obviously they then like
Speaker 2: staged their units on the ships, like all saluting the
Speaker 2: drone and they had the Arakan Army flags and they're
Speaker 2: actually really cool photos of them taking these ships. But again,
Speaker 2: like I think this might be the first sinking of
Speaker 2: a Burmese naval ship since since independence from Britain. Like,
Speaker 2: I can't think that they were. They really haven't played
Speaker 2: much of a role at all in its conflicts with
Speaker 2: the Eros, aside as from like basically kind of just
Speaker 2: shelling places when they want to do that. But there's
Speaker 2: never really been any significant opposition to them, and that's
Speaker 2: changed now they have to obviously, just like everywhere else,
Speaker 2: watch out for drones, right, drones have been used to
Speaker 2: a massive extent in Myanmar, and like the AA doesn't
Speaker 2: have as many like associated PDFs. I haven't seen them
Speaker 2: doing as much of the drone stuff as the PDFs.
Speaker 2: The pdf tend to be like the more urban folks, right,
Speaker 2: the younger folks and the gen Z folks that we've
Speaker 2: spoken about before, and a lot of them have been
Speaker 2: very savvy with their use of drones. Like I said,
Speaker 2: you can look up Federal Wings and you can see
Speaker 2: them dropping bombs with drones on all kinds of stuff
Speaker 2: with their heavy metal soundtracks that they like. But that
Speaker 2: it wasn't even drone here. It's pretty simple. It was
Speaker 2: just mine so things they love, mines and mead mines
Speaker 2: all over that country. But in this case, these I guess,
Speaker 2: massive what mines in the rivers. Given that the Hunter
Speaker 2: is the only only entity sending big boats up and down,
Speaker 2: you could set them at a certain depth where these
Speaker 2: small boats wouldn't hit them, and eventually one of the
Speaker 2: Hunter boats is going to hit them, I guess. And
Speaker 2: so it's pretty basic technology, but it's still a massive
Speaker 2: step forward in terms of like a place where the
Speaker 2: state had complete impunity, it now doesn't. Right, they can't
Speaker 2: just cruise up and down these rivers shelling people. They
Speaker 2: were actually using some of the ships to evacuate soldiers
Speaker 2: and their families from a position. The soldiers they were
Speaker 2: trying to like, rather than surrendering, they were trying to
Speaker 2: evacuate them and move them to somewhere else. The AA
Speaker 2: asked them to surrender, and they didn't. They tried to
Speaker 2: evacuate them, so then they mined the ships and took
Speaker 2: those out. I think the hunters like tried to spin
Speaker 2: this as like the AA is attacking civilians, but I
Speaker 2: think a Burmese Navy ship with a Burmese Navy flag,
Speaker 2: when those ships have just been shelling you, seems like
Speaker 2: a legit fro the target. To me, I think it's
Speaker 2: very hard. It's you know, it's a hunter, but children
Speaker 2: on one of their naval ships rather than the AA
Speaker 2: who attacked the ship because it had children. You can
Speaker 2: hear in one of the things you can hear the
Speaker 2: AA are like attacking the ship in small boats and
Speaker 2: they're shouting like there are children on board, and you
Speaker 2: can hear them acknowledging it. And there are videos of
Speaker 2: the AA rescuing people who jumped overboard, rescuing them from
Speaker 2: the river, and then like, I guess they've just held
Speaker 2: us POWs cool. Yeah, it's cool, it's interesting. Obviously, not
Speaker 2: many of us have access to underwater minds, but you know,
Speaker 2: maybe in a fictional future we might. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, there you go, folks. This has been irregular naval warfare.
Speaker 1: And you a podcast about a regular naval warfare, and you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, send us to your videos of yourselves in a
Speaker 2: regular naval war.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, go out there.
Speaker 1: Look how about this, Every listener, go out and sing
Speaker 1: one naval vessel, you know, doesn't matter who's.
Speaker 2: Just any boat.
Speaker 1: Any go sink a boat, any boat, take out, superyot,
Speaker 1: knock it out. You see a dinghy, take that fucker out,
Speaker 1: people kayaking, fuck them up, you know.
Speaker 2: On a boat?
Speaker 1: Absolutely, a banana boat for sure. One of those weird
Speaker 1: duck boat car things that they have in some city.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, actually, you know what, you don't need to
Speaker 1: do anything with that that'll kill everybody on board on it.
Speaker 2: Those things are traps. Just pray for those.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Any other boat. Yeah, you see a doughnut, you know,
Speaker 2: behind being behind a speedboat?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, murk it anyway, everybody go away.
Speaker 11: Welcome to dick it app and here a podcast about
Speaker 11: things falling apart and putting it back together again. I'm
Speaker 11: Mia Wong, I'm with Garrison, and it is my singular
Speaker 11: honor and pleasure to introduce our guest, doctor Julia Serrano.
Speaker 11: She is the author of many books including Excluded, Making
Speaker 11: Feminist and core movements more inclusive, Sex Stop, How Society
Speaker 11: Sexualizes Us, and How We Can Fight Back, Outspoken, A
Speaker 11: Decade of Transgender Activism and Transfeminism, and most famously, Whipping Girl,
Speaker 11: a new edition of which is coming out in March.
Speaker 11: Doctor Serrano, welcome to the show.
Speaker 13: Hi, thanks for having me.
Speaker 11: I'm really really I'm really happy you can join us.
Speaker 11: So okay. Whipping Girl, I think is really one of
Speaker 11: the one of quietly the most influential books of the
Speaker 11: twenty first century, to the extent that in kind of
Speaker 11: classic trans woman fashion. I don't think I don't think
Speaker 11: people realize that the ideas that it introduced have an origin.
Speaker 11: So so for people who haven't read the book, and
Speaker 11: you should, this book is great. I guarantee you have
Speaker 11: seen its influence. If you've ever heard someone like who's
Speaker 11: not trans referred to as sis like, that's that's from
Speaker 11: this book. The concept of misgendering is also from this book.
Speaker 11: The word trans misogyny like also from this book, and
Speaker 11: this I think gets at something from the twenty fifteen
Speaker 11: second edition preface that you wrote, which is something I've
Speaker 11: been wondering about, is what is it like to sort
Speaker 11: of experience writing a book and have it just like
Speaker 11: ripple across society like this.
Speaker 13: Yeah, it's uh.
Speaker 14: I was very much hoping, and you know, as I
Speaker 14: was writing it, I was hoping that I thought that
Speaker 14: it would resonate with a lot of trans female and
Speaker 14: trans feminine people, and I hope trans communities more generally,
Speaker 14: and the book. This is something that a lot of
Speaker 14: times people who pick up the book now and like
Speaker 14: the twenty twenties don't necessarily realize, is that he was
Speaker 14: reading anything about trans people outside of feminists and LGBTQ
Speaker 14: plus communities, and so I was basically just speaking to
Speaker 14: those groups, and I thought it would resonate with some people.
Speaker 14: But yeah, definitely it kind of went out into the
Speaker 14: world and did a bunch of stuff that I wasn't
Speaker 14: necessarily expecting. And I'm very glad that the book has
Speaker 14: kind of touched a lot of people's lives and changed,
Speaker 14: you know, kind of societal understanding and quote unquote discourses
Speaker 14: about trans people.
Speaker 7: So yeah, it must be kind of bizarre, like being
Speaker 7: twenty years ago writing about you know, caniche term like
Speaker 7: cis and now the richest man in the world thinks
Speaker 7: it's like the most evil word.
Speaker 14: Yeah, it's quite bizarre, and I do want to definitely
Speaker 14: kind of clear this up, but I kind of make
Speaker 14: this clear in the preface. So I didn't in vet
Speaker 14: like sis versus trans like a that's like a prefix
Speaker 14: that has existed a long time, and I've since seen
Speaker 14: other people like point out, oh, this person was using
Speaker 14: it in nineteen ninety something, or some German writer like
Speaker 14: coined cis vestism or something like back a million years ago.
Speaker 14: So what I will say is that when I when
Speaker 14: I put out the book, I was inspired by Emi Koyama,
Speaker 14: who was and is an awesome activist, intersex activist who's
Speaker 14: written a lot of really influential trans related essays over
Speaker 14: the years. And it was from her blog post that
Speaker 14: was the first time I saw sis and trans and
Speaker 14: the idea of cis sexism. And at the time, it
Speaker 14: was while I was writing the book, and it really
Speaker 14: I was like, oh my god, this is kind of
Speaker 14: the overall idea I was talking about all these different
Speaker 14: facets of basically double standards between trans and non trans people,
Speaker 14: and so I kind of grabbed on to it, and
Speaker 14: I was really worried about it actually because nobody, almost
Speaker 14: nobody was using those terms. It was very niche at
Speaker 14: the time, and so the book popularized that language. And
Speaker 14: so now it is kind of funny every once in
Speaker 14: a while seeing yes, over reactions by SIS people to
Speaker 14: the idea of SIS being a slur or whatever. So yeah,
Speaker 14: and so yeah, so that's definitely something that is kind
Speaker 14: of is the one thing I one thing I did
Speaker 14: coin in the book that has kind of also taken
Speaker 14: a life on its own is trans misogyny. So that
Speaker 14: is something that kind of originated with this book and
Speaker 14: particularly a chap book that I wrote in two thousand
Speaker 14: and five that some of those essays became chapters of
Speaker 14: the book. And yeah, and so there are other ideas
Speaker 14: that kind of are out there, Like I think it
Speaker 14: was one of the first. I think it was the
Speaker 14: first book to talk about like the idea of SIS
Speaker 14: privilege misgendering is an idea was out there, but I
Speaker 14: kind of dove into it a little bit deeper. So yeah,
Speaker 14: So there are definitely things I was doing at the
Speaker 14: time that I didn't know whether be to abstract or
Speaker 14: how they'd be taken up, And so yes, it's been
Speaker 14: very interesting.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I wanted to talk about misgendering a bit because
Speaker 11: I think it's become this word that just means not
Speaker 11: saying someone's pronouns correctly, and I think that's, at the
Speaker 11: very best, like an incredibly reductionist and simplified version of
Speaker 11: the analysis that you were presenting. So I guess I
Speaker 11: have two questions here. One, can you briefly sort of
Speaker 11: talk about what you were trying to get at when
Speaker 11: you sort of did your analysis of the process of gendering,
Speaker 11: and too, what do you think about the way that
Speaker 11: it's kind of become flattened into this I don't know,
Speaker 11: kind of weirdly narrow thing in modern discourse.
Speaker 14: Sure, and a lot of the miss gendering definitely dovetails
Speaker 14: with the idea of passing, and a lot of my
Speaker 14: kind of diving into it in a particular way came
Speaker 14: from critiques that I had and other trans people had
Speaker 14: as well, but I kind of, you know, put them
Speaker 14: together in a particularly in the dismantling I think it's
Speaker 14: dismantling Sexual Privileged chapter where I kind of go through
Speaker 14: all these steps that lead to miss gendering, because I
Speaker 14: think people talk about trans people passing and also the
Speaker 14: people will talk about other marginalized groups passing is whatever
Speaker 14: dominant majority group. The term obviously had long been used
Speaker 14: with regards to people of color passing is white and
Speaker 14: in kind of white racist, you know, us and other societies.
Speaker 14: So it's an old term, and a big problem with
Speaker 14: it is that it makes it sound like we're doing
Speaker 14: something active, that trans people are actively trying to deceive
Speaker 14: other people, with huge scare quotes around the word deceive.
Speaker 14: And I really wanted to highlight to people that actually
Speaker 14: all of us very unconsciously and very compulsively gender every
Speaker 14: single person we meet, or at least that's how we're
Speaker 14: socialized to be.
Speaker 13: And you know, you can work towards.
Speaker 14: Getting you know, overcoming that, but I wanted to really
Speaker 14: highlight the fact that we see people, we automatically gender them,
Speaker 14: and that puts people who do not quite who your
Speaker 14: presumptions are wrong about. It puts us in difficult situations.
Speaker 14: It's a double bind, where do you reveal what you
Speaker 14: supposedly really are, or do you just allow people to
Speaker 14: read you that way? And it works out very differently,
Speaker 14: for instance, between trans and say CIS gay people, because
Speaker 14: when cis gay people talk about passing is straight, their
Speaker 14: passing is something that they know that they are not,
Speaker 14: whereas for a lot of trans people, people read me
Speaker 14: as a woman and I understand myself.
Speaker 13: To be a woman.
Speaker 14: There's it's a very different dynamic because it's not like
Speaker 14: I'm not hiding anything, but people are presuming what I'm
Speaker 14: really passing as is I'm passing a CIS gender and
Speaker 14: people are assuming I'm sis gender when the trans is
Speaker 14: the thing that I might need to or feel like
Speaker 14: I need to clear up or other people might put
Speaker 14: pressure on me to either tell them that I'm trans
Speaker 14: or be accused of deceiving them. So that's a little
Speaker 14: bit of kind of how I was approaching it when
Speaker 14: I started working on that idea and really stressing the
Speaker 14: idea of you can't understand miss gendering unless you understand
Speaker 14: that we make assumptions all the time, We gender people
Speaker 14: very actively, and you know, so trans people are often
Speaker 14: just reacting to that and dealing with that double bind.
Speaker 11: Yeah, and this is something that I think is interestingly
Speaker 11: discussed in the book about like kind of this this
Speaker 11: issue with some of the sort of prevailing gender theories
Speaker 11: which thought of which think about sort of like femininity
Speaker 11: and gender is pure performance. But and this is I think,
Speaker 11: like the argument that you were making that I think
Speaker 11: is really interesting is that something that I think is
Speaker 11: is very obvious to trans people is that so much
Speaker 11: of gender is how people perceive you and how you
Speaker 11: know and stuff that like you don't have any control over.
Speaker 11: It's how people sort of gender you. It's how people
Speaker 11: like construct a gender around you in ways that you
Speaker 11: don't really have control over.
Speaker 14: Yeah, and that was a big thing. So in kind
Speaker 14: of I was writing the book in the mid two thousands,
Speaker 14: and so the nineteen nineties is when Judith Butler publishes
Speaker 14: Gender Trouble, which Butler never said all genders performance are
Speaker 14: all genders drag, Yeah, but that is, but that those
Speaker 14: are like slogans or soundbites that other people took from
Speaker 14: their book, right, and they were very popular at the time.
Speaker 14: There's also there's a famous sociological article about doing gender,
Speaker 14: and so people were very focused on the way in
Speaker 14: which we create gender by doing it particular ways, and
Speaker 14: a lot of the slogans within trans communities were sort
Speaker 14: of like, oh, well, you know, I just have to
Speaker 14: do my gender differently, like more transgressively, and that will
Speaker 14: like tear down all of gender. And I felt that
Speaker 14: there was you know, that is an aspect of things,
Speaker 14: and most of us, whether trans or cists, most of
Speaker 14: us have had the experience of maybe trying.
Speaker 13: To perform our genders in a particular way in.
Speaker 14: Order to like, you know, not you know, in order
Speaker 14: in order to get by in the world, in order
Speaker 14: to not be harassed by other people.
Speaker 13: So we've all had that experience.
Speaker 14: So while that's true, there's the other partner of that dance,
Speaker 14: and that's perception, and we're all perceiving people very actively,
Speaker 14: and we're like projecting our ideas and meanings onto them.
Speaker 14: And I felt like that was being under discussed at
Speaker 14: the time, and that was not only a huge part
Speaker 14: of Whipping Girl, but that's become a part of a
Speaker 14: lot of my other books, like including my most recent book,
Speaker 14: sext Up, How Society sexualizes us and.
Speaker 13: How we can fight back.
Speaker 14: One way that I would describe that book is it's
Speaker 14: talking about sex and sexuality, not from what people do,
Speaker 14: but from how we perceive and interpret sex and sexuality,
Speaker 14: because there are a lot of unconscious ideas, often really
Speaker 14: horrible ideas, really hierarchical ideas that are kind of built
Speaker 14: into the way we view the world. And interrogating that
Speaker 14: and so, yeah, that was a very big part of
Speaker 14: both Whippen Girl.
Speaker 13: And then my writings since then.
Speaker 11: Yeah, and I think I think that is something where
Speaker 11: things have gotten better in terms of in terms of
Speaker 11: how we think about gender, which I don't know, like
Speaker 11: things aren't perfect, but it definitely it definitely improved things
Speaker 11: a lot.
Speaker 13: Agreed, we're going.
Speaker 11: To take an ad break and when we come back,
Speaker 11: we're talking trans misogyny.
Speaker 2: We're back. Yeah.
Speaker 11: So then other thing I wanted to sort of talk
Speaker 11: about was I think, in like exactly the opposite process
Speaker 11: that happened to misgendering, trans misogyny has become a lot
Speaker 11: more expansive than your original sort of kind of narrow
Speaker 11: conception of it. And I think this has been changing
Speaker 11: a lot, especially in the last about half decade or so.
Speaker 11: So I was wondering what you think about the way
Speaker 11: that this concept has kind of taken on a life
Speaker 11: of its own. In recent years and what it's been
Speaker 11: doing since.
Speaker 14: Yeah, So I feel like trans misogyny that there are
Speaker 14: a lot of different dialogues and discourses about it coming
Speaker 14: like people coming from different perspectives with it, and some
Speaker 14: people feeling like the world is doing things that I
Speaker 14: never suggested it was doing.
Speaker 13: It's kind of hard to know like where to actually.
Speaker 14: Come in on this, but for me, when I was
Speaker 14: first writing about it, I was first just noticing that
Speaker 14: a lot of the quote unquote transphobia that I was
Speaker 14: facing when people know as a trans woman was actually
Speaker 14: a lot of it was just misogyny, and a lot
Speaker 14: of it targeted like kind of my femininity rather than
Speaker 14: my transness, And so I wanted to write about that,
Speaker 14: and kind of the way that I framed it in
Speaker 14: the book was, which I think is a really useful
Speaker 14: kind of model for thinking about it, is that there
Speaker 14: most of the types of sexism that feminists have described
Speaker 14: over the many years fall into two sort of camps,
Speaker 14: one of them being oppositional sexism, which is the idea
Speaker 14: that men and women are kind of perfectly opposite, mutually
Speaker 14: exclusive sexes that have different interests and attributes and desires,
Speaker 14: and so a lot of transphobia and homophobia are kind
Speaker 14: of like built into this idea that men and women
Speaker 14: are completely distinct.
Speaker 13: And then the other one is traditional.
Speaker 14: Sexism, which is the idea that femalists and femininity are
Speaker 14: less legitimate than malness and masculinity.
Speaker 13: And a lot of CIS feminists have kind of.
Speaker 14: Viewed all of that as just sexism, right, But when
Speaker 14: you break it down like that, it makes it clear
Speaker 14: that the double bind that a lot of feminists have
Speaker 14: talked about is actually kind of these two different forms
Speaker 14: of sexism. So if a CIS woman acts appropriately femininely,
Speaker 14: so appropriate with scare quotes. If a SIS woman acts femininely,
Speaker 14: she'll be seen as appropriate, but she'll be dismissed because
Speaker 14: femininity is dismissed in our culture, so that's the way
Speaker 14: that she'll be delegitimized. Whereas if she acts in ways
Speaker 14: that are coded as masculine, and if she acts assertive
Speaker 14: or aggressive, then people will malign her for being kind
Speaker 14: of a barrant or deviant. Right, And so oppositional sexism
Speaker 14: helps keep traditional sexism in place because you can say
Speaker 14: that maln is a masculinity or superior but that only
Speaker 14: works if you can also make a clear distinction between
Speaker 14: you know, those people and people are female and.
Speaker 13: Feminine, and so I think this plays out differently.
Speaker 14: And I want to be really clear about this because
Speaker 14: some people have interpreted trans misogyny to mean that trans
Speaker 14: mail and trans masculine people don't experience misogyny, which is
Speaker 14: something I have never said. And obviously the fact that
Speaker 14: oppositional sexism is a form of sexism, and obviously trans
Speaker 14: maild trans masculine people experience that. But also depending upon
Speaker 14: how you're viewed by other people, I feel like this
Speaker 14: same double pined that affects this woman affects transmeild trans
Speaker 14: masculine people differently. Where there's this tendency, like in a
Speaker 14: lot of anti trans discourses to dismiss trans masculine, especially
Speaker 14: trans masculine youth as being merely girls quote unquote who
Speaker 14: are like you know, misled or seduced by gender ideology, right,
Speaker 14: And there's a lot of real anti feminine and anti
Speaker 14: misogynistic ideas in there in addition to the fact that
Speaker 14: it it misgenders transmeld trans masculine people. And then if
Speaker 14: trans mail trans masculine people when they experience transphobia. There's
Speaker 14: often you know, like they're seen as deviant for kind
Speaker 14: of breaking that role, but often the malness or their
Speaker 14: masculinity themselves are not, you know, denigrated in the same
Speaker 14: way because being now being masculine and are seen as
Speaker 14: good in our culture. It's just that if you trans male,
Speaker 14: trans masculine, it's like, well, you're quote unquote just a woman,
Speaker 14: so you can't do it. So I think it plays
Speaker 14: out in this very complex way for a lot of
Speaker 14: trans mail trans masculine people, I think for trans female
Speaker 14: and transfeminine people, because our crossing of oppositional sexism also
Speaker 14: involves us kind of moving towards the female towards the feminine,
Speaker 14: that there's kind of those two forces intersect in a
Speaker 14: way so that it's like exacerbated. And some of the
Speaker 14: ways I talk about this in Women Girl is that, well,
Speaker 14: we live in a world where masculinity is seen as
Speaker 14: natural and femininity is seen as artificial, and since trans
Speaker 14: people are also seen as artificial compared to sis gender people,
Speaker 14: a lot of times we're viewed as doubly artificial. Furthermore,
Speaker 14: the idea that like women are seen as sex objects
Speaker 14: whereas men aren't seen as sex objects often are transitions
Speaker 14: or gender transgressions towards a female towards a feminine are
Speaker 14: presumed to be driven by sexual motives that can play
Speaker 14: out in all sorts of ways. Whether this is the
Speaker 14: idea that we're like hypersexual or promiscuous, or that we
Speaker 14: want to be sexualized by other people, or you can
Speaker 14: see it a lot with the kind of the transgender
Speaker 14: predator is often coded as like a man who either
Speaker 14: has some kind of fetish or perversion or is just
Speaker 14: literally deceiving people to get into women's restrooms to do
Speaker 14: something horrific. So those are some of the ways that
Speaker 14: it plays out. I feel that sometimes people view it
Speaker 14: in a cut or dried way that either they'll assume
Speaker 14: that trans misogyny means that trans mental trans mascum people
Speaker 14: don't experience misogyny, which again is not what that's about.
Speaker 14: Or sometimes people will like try to make really clear distinctions.
Speaker 14: There's kind of language like trans misogyny effect did versus
Speaker 14: trans misogyny. Exempt are the terms yeah, TME and TMA,
Speaker 14: which are not terms I've used.
Speaker 13: And which or that I didn't coin them. They're not
Speaker 13: in the book.
Speaker 14: And I think that when I first saw that language,
Speaker 14: and I've seen people use it in a way that
Speaker 14: appreciates the fact that some people are non binary, so
Speaker 14: it's a non identity based way.
Speaker 13: Sometimes this can.
Speaker 14: Play out in a really cut or dried sort of
Speaker 14: manner that you know, sometimes you know, whether it's intended
Speaker 14: this way or not, it can make it seem that, like,
Speaker 14: you know, just boiling down of really complex experience, people's
Speaker 14: complex experiences with different types of sexism into some people
Speaker 14: are privileged and some people are marginalized, which I think
Speaker 14: is a more general problem that happens kind of throughout
Speaker 14: all social justice movements.
Speaker 7: So yeah, it turns people are not alien to having
Speaker 7: complex experiences be boiled down to three and four letter acronyms.
Speaker 7: So yeah, I mean.
Speaker 14: I did this in Twitter form, so it was like
Speaker 14: a thread, so like now, people can't access threads unless you.
Speaker 13: Have an account with Twitter. And it's from a couple
Speaker 13: of years ago.
Speaker 14: But one of the things that I talked about was
Speaker 14: I wrote this essay about ten years ago about how
Speaker 14: CIS and trans is kind of a useful Those are
Speaker 14: useful terms, but sometimes people fall in between CIS and
Speaker 14: trans and sometimes they can be used in a way
Speaker 14: to talk about different double standards, like CIS people are
Speaker 14: treated one way, trans people are treated another.
Speaker 13: But sometimes it can be used in like a sort
Speaker 13: of reverse.
Speaker 14: Discourse way, where it's like, you know, CIS people of
Speaker 14: all the privileged, trans people of none of the privilege,
Speaker 14: and it can be used to kind of create this
Speaker 14: strict dichotomy that ends up excluding and invisibilizing some people's experiences.
Speaker 14: And I feel the same thing is happening with TMME
Speaker 14: and TMA. So I don't think that those terms need
Speaker 14: to necessarily be like, I don't think there's anything bad
Speaker 14: about those terms per se in and of themselves, but
Speaker 14: I think sometimes they can be used in ways. And
Speaker 14: part of why I reference this this SIS and trans
Speaker 14: essay that I wrote many years ago. It appears in
Speaker 14: my book Outspoken. I forget the complete title right now,
Speaker 14: which is but the reason why I bring that up
Speaker 14: is so sometimes what happens is that when people learn
Speaker 14: about SIS sexism, CIS people might be like, oh, I
Speaker 14: face the sexism, right If I'm a woman and I
Speaker 14: don't shave my legs, I'm facing sexism, And so then
Speaker 14: trans people say yeah, but it kind of plays out
Speaker 14: differently for us, and so sometimes in order to stop
Speaker 14: people from kind of making those claims, which I think
Speaker 14: it is true that you know, a woman not shaving
Speaker 14: their legs, or if a man decides to put on
Speaker 14: a dress one day, regardless of whether they're sis or trans,
Speaker 14: they could experience sis sexism or transphobia. But it plays
Speaker 14: out differently for people who are actually members of that
Speaker 14: marginalized group. And then so then the marginalized group makes
Speaker 14: a distinction even sharper, and it just kind of becomes
Speaker 14: this escalating situation where the language and kind of battles
Speaker 14: over it become even more intense. In a recent piece,
Speaker 14: one of the most recent pieces, if you go to
Speaker 14: like my medium site where my essays usually are now
Speaker 14: is it talks about the trans mass versus trans discourse
Speaker 14: in terms of what I call the cultural feminist doom loop,
Speaker 14: where and the doom loop refers to kind of these
Speaker 14: ideas where everyone like both sides are trying to talk
Speaker 14: about the reason why their experiences are legitimate, and then
Speaker 14: that seems as though the other sides are not legit,
Speaker 14: and then that kind of cascades in a way that
Speaker 14: ends up not being very productive, but takes up a
Speaker 14: lot of energy on.
Speaker 13: Places like Twitter.
Speaker 11: Yeah, and I think I think that's something We've still
Speaker 11: seen about one trillion times variety of toxic ways. But
Speaker 11: what isn't toxic is the new third edition of Whipping
Speaker 11: Girl coming out in March with You can ask your
Speaker 11: local bookstore or pre order now and Yeah join us
Speaker 11: tomorrow for our discussion with Doctor Serrano of the Anatomy
Speaker 11: of Moral Panics. This is when it Could Happen Here.
Speaker 11: Trans people are great.
Speaker 1: Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
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