WEBVTT - The Age of Cowards and What Happens Next 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:09.879 Call Zone media, Robert Evans here and this is it 0:00:09.920 --> 0:00:14.920 could happen here, and boy it sure is now. I 0:00:14.960 --> 0:00:17.760 don't know where we go from this point, and neither 0:00:17.800 --> 0:00:20.680 does anyone else. On the moment before I wrote this, 0:00:20.800 --> 0:00:23.799 I woke up, groggy from my chemically assisted sleep to 0:00:23.840 --> 0:00:27.840 a barrage of horror. Donald Trump signing Anti Tran's legislation 0:00:28.040 --> 0:00:32.280 into law, Elon Musk giving a double fascist salute. Donald 0:00:32.320 --> 0:00:36.000 Trump saluting and dancing with the village people, proud boys 0:00:36.080 --> 0:00:39.159 tramping through the streets of our nation's capital, reveling in 0:00:39.159 --> 0:00:43.720 their newfound impunity. The dark days have come again because 0:00:43.760 --> 0:00:47.120 they never really left. All the battles and street fighting 0:00:47.159 --> 0:00:50.199 and organizing from twenty seventeen to twenty twenty brought us 0:00:50.280 --> 0:00:54.560 four years of badly negotiated peace while the rot continued 0:00:54.600 --> 0:00:59.360 unabated rot. It's a term I see a lot these days. 0:01:00.000 --> 0:01:02.640 A colleague and friend ed Zeitron refers to the hell 0:01:02.680 --> 0:01:05.760 our tech oligarchs continue to force upon us as the 0:01:05.840 --> 0:01:09.680 rot economy. Charlie Angus, a member of the Canadian Parliament, 0:01:10.040 --> 0:01:13.080 use the term rage rot to refer to now President 0:01:13.080 --> 0:01:16.920 Trump's Christmas Day message suggesting Canada should become the fifty 0:01:16.959 --> 0:01:19.880 first state. Over the last year, I've seen a slew 0:01:19.920 --> 0:01:24.600 of articles bemoaning democratic decay, the rot plaguing democracy, and 0:01:24.680 --> 0:01:27.720 the deep rot at the heart of our political system. 0:01:27.959 --> 0:01:30.199 One thing I have done over the last four years 0:01:30.280 --> 0:01:33.960 is learn how to efficiently process the carcasses of wild animals. 0:01:34.120 --> 0:01:37.160 So I hunter, raise, and slaughter, but many are roadkill, 0:01:37.400 --> 0:01:40.440 harvested from the side of the road. My family comes 0:01:40.440 --> 0:01:44.480 from rural Oklahoma, so perhaps there's some epigenetic hillbilly memory 0:01:44.520 --> 0:01:47.400 that makes this so satisfying to me. But it's also 0:01:47.600 --> 0:01:51.960 changed the way I understand the word rot. Rot starts 0:01:51.960 --> 0:01:54.320 from the bone. If you look at the back leg 0:01:54.360 --> 0:01:56.280 of an animal that's been hit by a truck, you'll 0:01:56.320 --> 0:01:59.280 see it spreading a deep black bruise from the ball 0:01:59.320 --> 0:02:02.680 and sockage. Point out. If your goal is to preserve 0:02:02.720 --> 0:02:04.919 good meat, then the key is to remove those limbs 0:02:04.920 --> 0:02:07.160 from the body and then the meat from the bone 0:02:07.360 --> 0:02:10.560 sooner rather than later. When I think of rot and 0:02:10.600 --> 0:02:14.639 how to arrest it, I think of dismemberment. This seems 0:02:14.680 --> 0:02:17.680 to be the one thing that almost every political person 0:02:17.680 --> 0:02:21.120 in the country agrees with the United States as it is, 0:02:21.240 --> 0:02:25.120 must be dismembered, disassembled, sliced from the rotten bone, and 0:02:25.240 --> 0:02:29.440 changed into something more palatable for whoever holds the knife. 0:02:29.560 --> 0:02:33.120 Joe Biden and the Democratic Party failed primarily because they 0:02:33.120 --> 0:02:36.880 refuse to start cutting. Their successors will not make the 0:02:36.919 --> 0:02:40.600 same mistake on the opposing side of the isle. Today, 0:02:40.600 --> 0:02:42.919 I see a lot of angry people arguing about what 0:02:43.040 --> 0:02:45.480 the knife ought to be cutting, and how much better 0:02:45.520 --> 0:02:48.480 they'd use it if it passed into their hands. That 0:02:48.520 --> 0:02:51.640 doesn't help any of us Right now. Migrants are dying 0:02:51.639 --> 0:02:55.399 of thirst while vigilantes destroy water drops left by activists 0:02:55.440 --> 0:02:58.480 who themselves will likely be criminalized in the near future. 0:02:59.000 --> 0:03:01.720 Homeless Americans trying not to freeze to death at knight 0:03:01.840 --> 0:03:04.960 may soon find themselves arrested, forced into camps where they'll 0:03:04.960 --> 0:03:08.440 be made to labor for pennies. Neo Nazi's cheer as 0:03:08.440 --> 0:03:11.360 the billionaire behind the throne makes fascist salutes from the 0:03:11.360 --> 0:03:15.560 White House with smirking impunity. The knife is so far 0:03:15.639 --> 0:03:18.720 away from our hands, I find myself distrusting anyone who 0:03:18.800 --> 0:03:22.200 wastes time bemoaning how it ought to be used. Where 0:03:22.200 --> 0:03:24.840 does that leave us, though? Is there anything to do 0:03:25.000 --> 0:03:28.240 in this deep winter besides listen to the jackals howling 0:03:28.280 --> 0:03:32.600 outside our doors. I have an answer to this question. Yes, 0:03:33.320 --> 0:03:36.839 now is the time to try to test the boundaries 0:03:36.880 --> 0:03:40.680 of our collective cage. Now is the time to experiment. 0:03:41.640 --> 0:03:44.000 Since the time of the founding fathers, this country and 0:03:44.040 --> 0:03:47.360 its system have been referred to as the American Experiment. 0:03:48.160 --> 0:03:51.880 One could see the very terms narcissistic, yet another solipsistic 0:03:52.040 --> 0:03:55.400 gasp of American exceptionalism. But I tend to think the 0:03:55.440 --> 0:03:59.000 appellation is one we've earned. This country is and always 0:03:59.040 --> 0:04:02.360 has been a test for new, often bad ideas about 0:04:02.400 --> 0:04:07.040 how a society ought to run. American civilization's only core 0:04:07.160 --> 0:04:10.600 value is throw shit at the wall and see what sticks. 0:04:11.720 --> 0:04:13.880 That also happens to be the only real way to 0:04:13.920 --> 0:04:18.599 fight back against authoritarianism. There's a scientific paper I bring 0:04:18.720 --> 0:04:22.039 up often, the evolution of overconfidence, which set out to 0:04:22.080 --> 0:04:26.160 explain why people so often badly overestimate their own abilities. 0:04:26.600 --> 0:04:31.560 The authors pondered quote, overconfidence also leads to faulty assessments, 0:04:31.680 --> 0:04:36.039 unrealistic expectations, and hazardous decisions. So it remains a puzzle 0:04:36.040 --> 0:04:38.960 how such a false belief could evolve or remain stable 0:04:39.200 --> 0:04:45.760 in a population of competing strategies that include accurate, unbiased beliefs. Now. 0:04:45.800 --> 0:04:49.120 The conclusion these researchers came to was that when significant 0:04:49.200 --> 0:04:53.279 resources are contested between two organisms, the organism most willing 0:04:53.360 --> 0:04:56.200 to try to take said resources, even if it is 0:04:56.279 --> 0:04:59.760 not the strongest, tends to succeed often enough to make 0:04:59.760 --> 0:05:05.120 over confidence evolutionarily beneficial. This is the most basic explanation 0:05:05.279 --> 0:05:09.960 for how fascist movements continue to arise and improbably take power. 0:05:10.600 --> 0:05:15.560 Put simply, they always go for it. January sixth provides 0:05:15.640 --> 0:05:19.200 us with a fine example. It was a ludicrous, idiotic, 0:05:19.360 --> 0:05:23.400 reckless burst of stupidity, mocked for years by everyone except 0:05:23.440 --> 0:05:27.920 the perpetrators, who four years later find themselves with ultimate power. 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:31.520 They didn't win because they were the strongest. They won 0:05:31.760 --> 0:05:34.680 because they kept trying, and the people who should have 0:05:34.680 --> 0:05:38.359 stopped them feared bad press, the pushback of looking unfair, 0:05:38.720 --> 0:05:42.120 and so stood back while the fascists made smaller grabs, 0:05:42.360 --> 0:05:45.360 gobbling up bits of the media, local school boards, and 0:05:45.560 --> 0:05:50.800 narrative oxygen around issues like immigration and now, well, we're 0:05:50.839 --> 0:05:55.560 here and we'll continue to talk about here after these 0:05:55.600 --> 0:06:11.840 ads we're back. The coming days will be ugly. Yet 0:06:11.880 --> 0:06:14.080 I feel it's my job to remind you that bad 0:06:14.120 --> 0:06:17.120 as this is, we are not vymar Germany, and this 0:06:17.279 --> 0:06:20.800 is not nineteen thirty three. Trump and his lieutenants aren't 0:06:20.800 --> 0:06:24.159 battle hardened trench fighters. They're elon musk and a coterie 0:06:24.200 --> 0:06:28.240 of half enthusiastic, half frightened billionaires who got rich gambling 0:06:28.279 --> 0:06:31.400 on apps to let you rate your classmates tits. They're 0:06:31.440 --> 0:06:35.839 foot soldiers, are used car salesmen from Encino, not freikorps. 0:06:36.520 --> 0:06:39.720 The United States is not starving to death crippled by war. 0:06:40.160 --> 0:06:43.760 It's irritated anxious because it's working people have been robbed 0:06:43.760 --> 0:06:48.280 blind by the same billionaires standing behind Trump. Now. The 0:06:48.279 --> 0:06:50.520 one thing we do have in common with Vimar is 0:06:50.520 --> 0:06:53.000 that our fascists now find themselves at the head of 0:06:53.000 --> 0:06:57.000 a state that capitulated to them, not out of enthusiastic consent, 0:06:57.480 --> 0:07:01.400 but exhaustion, cowardice, and above all, a feeling that it 0:07:01.440 --> 0:07:05.720 didn't really matter that last one, the feeling that nothing matters. 0:07:05.760 --> 0:07:09.080 The system as fucked. There's no point in engaging or organizing. 0:07:09.520 --> 0:07:12.480 That is the most powerful weapon they have right now, 0:07:12.920 --> 0:07:16.320 because that feeling stops you and everyone else from opposing them, 0:07:16.560 --> 0:07:19.560 from interrupting as they reach out. Yet again to take 0:07:19.640 --> 0:07:23.560 something you love or need. But there's a danger here too. 0:07:23.920 --> 0:07:26.480 In moments of stress and anger, the desire to do 0:07:26.560 --> 0:07:31.480 something anything, can be intense, and when we're swept up 0:07:31.520 --> 0:07:35.120 in that mood, the natural tendency is defaulting to the 0:07:35.120 --> 0:07:38.680 things we know best, the things we've done before, the 0:07:38.760 --> 0:07:41.800 marches and chants and poster boards we've been walking and 0:07:41.840 --> 0:07:46.080 shouting and carrying all century long. Going back to those 0:07:46.160 --> 0:07:50.640 tactics without iteration or acknowledgment of their limitations and failures 0:07:51.120 --> 0:07:54.320 is a road to more failure. I've been to a 0:07:54.320 --> 0:07:57.640 lot of protests, starting at Zukati Park in twenty eleven 0:07:57.640 --> 0:08:02.000 an ending last year in Chicago. At one of the 0:08:02.000 --> 0:08:04.760 most dispeariting moments of my life was listening to young 0:08:04.800 --> 0:08:08.200 anti genocide activists bow to shut down the dn C 0:08:08.520 --> 0:08:12.160 to quote make it great like sixty eight. This was 0:08:12.200 --> 0:08:15.800 a reference to the nineteen sixty eight Democratic Convention. Mass 0:08:15.840 --> 0:08:19.000 protests were ignited there when the favorite anti war candidate, 0:08:19.000 --> 0:08:23.200 Eugene McCarthy was ratfucked by Democratic Party insiders in favor 0:08:23.240 --> 0:08:27.440 of Vice President Hubert Humphrey. The protests were quashed violently 0:08:27.480 --> 0:08:31.480 with tear gas and truncheons. Protesters chanted, the whole world 0:08:31.560 --> 0:08:35.440 is watching, and it's been a chant ever since. The 0:08:35.480 --> 0:08:38.240 world may have been watching then, but the war went on. 0:08:38.679 --> 0:08:42.000 Nixon won election, then re election, and then finally pulled 0:08:42.120 --> 0:08:45.520 US troops out of Vietnam after dropping enough bombs on 0:08:45.559 --> 0:08:49.839 Southeast Asia to have ended several Third Reichs. In twenty 0:08:49.920 --> 0:08:53.199 twenty four, a new batch of anti war protesters chanted, 0:08:53.280 --> 0:08:56.880 the whole world is watching, and I can say unequivocally 0:08:57.360 --> 0:09:01.120 it was not. The Only people watching were me, several 0:09:01.120 --> 0:09:05.200 other journalists, and of course some people on Twitter. The police, 0:09:05.240 --> 0:09:08.680 as they kettled Macedon arrested members of the crowd barely 0:09:08.720 --> 0:09:12.880 seemed to care. The DNC didn't shut down. Kamala Harris 0:09:12.920 --> 0:09:15.600 was made the nominee. There wasn't even a real anti 0:09:15.640 --> 0:09:18.800 war candidate for party insiders to rat fuck in her favor. 0:09:19.679 --> 0:09:23.040 Garrison Davis, my colleague and friend, remarked to me afterwards 0:09:23.080 --> 0:09:26.400 that the DNC had been somehow much more depressing than 0:09:26.440 --> 0:09:31.200 its Republican counterpart a month earlier. He was right on 0:09:31.240 --> 0:09:34.200 the stage floor. All the Democrats had to present were 0:09:34.240 --> 0:09:38.600 aging celebrities and Bill goddamn Clinton drooling out the same 0:09:38.640 --> 0:09:41.160 platitudes that led us to the Trump era in the 0:09:41.200 --> 0:09:44.480 first place, and doing their best to ignore delegates who 0:09:44.600 --> 0:09:47.400 walked out and slept in front of the convention center 0:09:47.640 --> 0:09:51.679 to protest the genocide in Gaza. Meanwhile, in the streets, 0:09:51.720 --> 0:09:55.120 a lot of very nice, earnest people alongside a handful 0:09:55.160 --> 0:09:57.840 of grifters did the only thing they could think of 0:09:57.920 --> 0:10:01.600 doing after months of imbibing footage of war crimes. They 0:10:01.679 --> 0:10:05.640 walked around and shouted. The police, and the city largely 0:10:05.760 --> 0:10:08.000 let them because they knew none of it was going 0:10:08.040 --> 0:10:13.079 to change a goddamn thing. I'd felt tremendous optimism right 0:10:13.120 --> 0:10:16.839 after Joe Biden resigned, not because I loved Kamala, but 0:10:16.840 --> 0:10:20.720 because it was something shocking, an upset, an experiment, or 0:10:20.720 --> 0:10:23.760 at least it seemed that way. At first, the DNC 0:10:24.000 --> 0:10:27.760 made it clear that Biden's advisors and consiglieries, the powers 0:10:27.800 --> 0:10:30.920 behind the throne, still ran the show and would not 0:10:31.040 --> 0:10:34.640 allow any real change. The rot had spread too far, 0:10:34.920 --> 0:10:39.760 spoiling the meat, spoiling everything. It was my accurate belief 0:10:39.800 --> 0:10:42.960 in twenty twenty that the Democratic Party, broken as it was, 0:10:43.360 --> 0:10:46.440 had the numbers and the organizational capacity to slow the 0:10:46.440 --> 0:10:49.720 spread of fascism. For a short time. It was my 0:10:49.800 --> 0:10:52.840 inaccurate belief in twenty twenty four that this might still 0:10:52.880 --> 0:10:56.200 be the case. I had a hope because I'd lost 0:10:56.280 --> 0:11:00.520 any sense of actual productive optimism we lean on when 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:04.439 we have no ideas to brace ourselves against hope, as 0:11:04.480 --> 0:11:07.800 George Miller reminded us, is a mistake. If you don't 0:11:07.800 --> 0:11:11.560 fix what's broken, you'll go crazy. And that's where we 0:11:11.600 --> 0:11:16.079 are now going crazy. Committed Democrats, the decent, regular people 0:11:16.080 --> 0:11:19.120 who fill the party, not the soulless shogoths of capital 0:11:19.200 --> 0:11:23.000 running things, are going crazy because we return to normal, 0:11:23.120 --> 0:11:26.480 decent politician to office. He kept the economy humming along, 0:11:26.559 --> 0:11:30.360 and everyone still hated him. Leftists are crazy for a 0:11:30.360 --> 0:11:33.880 different reason. In twenty twenty, this country saw the largest 0:11:33.920 --> 0:11:38.520 sustained uprising of its modern history, and nothing fundamentally changed 0:11:39.160 --> 0:11:42.640 in its aftermath. The oligarchs who control social media set 0:11:42.679 --> 0:11:46.520 to tweaking, buying, or outright inverting their algorithms to ensure 0:11:46.640 --> 0:11:49.560 no similar movement whatever gain that kind of steam again. 0:11:50.200 --> 0:11:54.359 Their efforts have largely been successful, and yet many organizers, 0:11:54.440 --> 0:11:59.600 be they progressive, social democrats, communists, anarchists, whatever, they're all 0:11:59.640 --> 0:12:03.560 still stuck in the same loops behind each march to nowhere, 0:12:03.600 --> 0:12:06.960 and tired chant is an equally tired hope. The social 0:12:06.960 --> 0:12:11.120 democrats dream of a giant, continent sized Denmark with cyclists 0:12:11.200 --> 0:12:14.760 replacing Ford trucks, universal healthcare, good schools, and a bevy 0:12:14.800 --> 0:12:18.520 of other lovely things. Both political parties will fight tooth 0:12:18.640 --> 0:12:22.000 and nail to prevent. The communists dream of a new 0:12:22.040 --> 0:12:25.520 October revolution, but this one will work and not just 0:12:25.640 --> 0:12:28.520 create a new kind of dictatorship that ages and dies 0:12:28.559 --> 0:12:33.319 inside the space of a single human lifetime. Anarchists tend 0:12:33.360 --> 0:12:35.640 to be very good at seeing the flaws and the 0:12:35.640 --> 0:12:38.880 logic and futility of the hopes of the two previous groups, 0:12:39.480 --> 0:12:42.079 but they are just as bereft of ideas for how 0:12:42.120 --> 0:12:46.320 to stop what's coming. Some tendencies dream of collapse, maybe 0:12:46.400 --> 0:12:50.959 even accelerationism, an end to industrial society, and then either 0:12:51.000 --> 0:12:53.600 living in the woods eating berries, or some kind of 0:12:53.640 --> 0:12:58.479 solar punk day dream wildflowers spouting from rubble. I sympathize, 0:12:58.600 --> 0:13:01.560 but try offering eye their future to a single mom 0:13:01.559 --> 0:13:04.280 who can't afford her five year old's insulin and see 0:13:04.320 --> 0:13:07.520 how excited she gets. On the other side of the 0:13:07.559 --> 0:13:10.360 anarchist coin, you've got the helpers, the people who cheerfully 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:12.680 admit they don't know how to solve the big problem, 0:13:12.760 --> 0:13:15.240 but they do know how to provide free eye exams 0:13:15.280 --> 0:13:17.680 to homeless people once a month, or do water drops 0:13:17.720 --> 0:13:20.520 down at the border so migrants don't die of dehydration, 0:13:21.160 --> 0:13:23.720 or make it more expensive for the state to bulldoze 0:13:23.720 --> 0:13:27.080 a forest and build a police training facility. If you 0:13:27.160 --> 0:13:29.960 are where we all are right now, bereft of ideas, 0:13:30.000 --> 0:13:32.480 staring down the barrel of a nightmare, those are good 0:13:32.520 --> 0:13:35.800 folks to know. Like everyone else, they're defaulting to what 0:13:35.880 --> 0:13:38.840 they've been doing, but at least what they've been doing 0:13:38.920 --> 0:13:43.000 helps people. The larger solutions to our common woes, if 0:13:43.000 --> 0:13:46.640 they ever arrive, will be something new, something we haven't 0:13:46.760 --> 0:13:50.600 tried yet. I feel very confident that they won't take 0:13:50.640 --> 0:13:54.080 the form of another march, or involve everyone finally agreeing 0:13:54.120 --> 0:13:56.640 to be the same kind of communist or anarchist or whatever. 0:13:57.520 --> 0:14:00.600 Sean Fayne, chief of the United Autoworkers Union, has called 0:14:00.640 --> 0:14:02.840 for a general strike in twenty twenty eight, and so 0:14:02.920 --> 0:14:05.320 far that is the only clear plan I have heard 0:14:05.360 --> 0:14:08.040 from anyone that feels like it has a ghost of 0:14:08.080 --> 0:14:12.360 a chance it is audacious, and I recommend reading what 0:14:12.440 --> 0:14:15.120 Sean's laid out about it. But half of why I 0:14:15.120 --> 0:14:19.160 support the idea is because it's audacious. The religious right 0:14:19.360 --> 0:14:21.440 got to where they are right now in this country 0:14:21.480 --> 0:14:25.040 by being bold, as I laid out earlier. Fascists win 0:14:25.200 --> 0:14:29.000 because they try, and this is something we need to copy. 0:14:29.640 --> 0:14:33.240 Shit can be different, but not unless you're willing to 0:14:33.400 --> 0:14:37.800 try different shit. Many pundits and columnists were shocked and 0:14:37.880 --> 0:14:40.600 horrified by the mass of an instant support for Luigim 0:14:40.600 --> 0:14:44.840 Mangioni when he assassinated the CEO of United Healthcare. Both 0:14:44.880 --> 0:14:48.280 the tutting gatekeepers of traditional media and the actually sweating 0:14:48.280 --> 0:14:53.560 oligarchs characterize this as evidence of bloodthirstiness. Some leftists did 0:14:53.600 --> 0:14:57.000 the same and interpreted support for Luigi as proof that 0:14:57.040 --> 0:15:00.920 the body politic did indeed have energy for an uprising. 0:15:01.720 --> 0:15:04.480 I saw something a bit different, more than the actual 0:15:04.560 --> 0:15:07.840 killing itself. I think people were excited to see someone 0:15:07.880 --> 0:15:12.720 try something new. Luigi adopted a novel tactic. He carried 0:15:12.760 --> 0:15:15.480 it out in a novel way, and in doing so, 0:15:15.560 --> 0:15:18.120 he did more to punish one of the oligarchs bleeding 0:15:18.160 --> 0:15:22.560 us dry than the entire occupy movement. Novelty is the 0:15:22.600 --> 0:15:26.520 one thing that ties Donald Trump and Luigi mangione together. 0:15:27.000 --> 0:15:30.880 The enthusiastic public response to both men's actions and the 0:15:30.960 --> 0:15:36.640 simultaneous revulsion of traditional elites are mirrors of themselves. In 0:15:36.680 --> 0:15:40.240 twenty twenty four, Trump still had enough novelty to convince 0:15:40.280 --> 0:15:43.080 people that he might upset the apple cart in a 0:15:43.080 --> 0:15:47.040 way that benefited them. He rode a global anti incumbent 0:15:47.080 --> 0:15:50.480 wave back to the White House. The consequence of this 0:15:50.680 --> 0:15:52.760 is that he and his are now on their way 0:15:52.800 --> 0:15:56.480 to becoming the new establishment. This is the downside of 0:15:56.520 --> 0:15:59.760 the fact that most legacy media outlets have started moderating 0:15:59.760 --> 0:16:03.440 their coverage of Trump. If not embracing him outright, he 0:16:03.520 --> 0:16:07.920 is being normalized. His toadies, Musk Chief among them, are 0:16:07.960 --> 0:16:12.720 now our legitimate powers. What novelty remains will fade rapidly. 0:16:13.400 --> 0:16:15.360 I suspect the same thing will be true of the 0:16:15.360 --> 0:16:19.280 copycats who follow in Luigi Maggioni's footsteps. Most of his 0:16:19.360 --> 0:16:22.680 plagiarists won't be good at what they do. At best, 0:16:22.800 --> 0:16:25.640 newly heightened security will see these people dropped before they 0:16:25.640 --> 0:16:28.720 get to pull a trigger. At worst, innocent folks will 0:16:28.760 --> 0:16:31.160 be killed or maimed by bullets and bombs that fail 0:16:31.240 --> 0:16:34.000 to hit their intended targets, or do but with a 0:16:34.000 --> 0:16:37.640 lot of collateral damage. So I don't know what the 0:16:37.680 --> 0:16:41.360 next new thing to actually work will be. But between 0:16:41.400 --> 0:16:45.080 Trump and Luigi, there aren't many old norms left to shatter. 0:16:45.600 --> 0:16:48.920 We are in a time of enormous potential. Many new 0:16:49.000 --> 0:16:51.200 things are about to be tried, and as awful and 0:16:51.240 --> 0:16:53.440 bloody as the fallout from some of them will be, 0:16:54.200 --> 0:16:57.160 we all have no choice but to strap in and 0:16:57.280 --> 0:17:02.000 roll some dice of our own is ugly, the future unwritten, 0:17:02.680 --> 0:17:04.640 but the only way we'll make it a better one 0:17:05.000 --> 0:17:09.480 is if we embrace boldness, creativity, and perhaps a little 0:17:09.480 --> 0:17:13.000 over confidence of our own. And this is not the 0:17:13.040 --> 0:17:15.359 end of the episode. We've got something else for you, folks, 0:17:15.440 --> 0:17:31.640 But first, here's another ad break. Okay, everybody, we're back, 0:17:31.720 --> 0:17:34.040 And obviously what you just listened to is an essay 0:17:34.280 --> 0:17:37.600 I wrote about my thoughts and feelings today, the first 0:17:37.680 --> 0:17:40.760 day of the new Trump administration. I felt like that 0:17:40.960 --> 0:17:43.680 wasn't quite enough. And the first thing I actually came 0:17:43.720 --> 0:17:46.320 across this morning when I woke up, before I started 0:17:46.320 --> 0:17:49.760 subjecting myself to a barrage of Horrible News was a 0:17:49.800 --> 0:17:53.640 poem written by a friend of mine, Emily Gorchinsky. It's 0:17:53.680 --> 0:17:57.080 called the Time of Cowards, and I think it's a 0:17:57.200 --> 0:18:00.200 very useful thing for you to hear right now. I 0:18:00.200 --> 0:18:02.480 think it's a good companion to what I wrote, So 0:18:02.880 --> 0:18:05.600 I'm going to let Emily take it away before I 0:18:05.680 --> 0:18:07.800 do that. If you want to read the poem and 0:18:07.880 --> 0:18:10.600 text form, or find her other work, you can go 0:18:10.680 --> 0:18:16.360 to Emily Gorchynsky g o r ce n ski dot com. 0:18:16.760 --> 0:18:21.160 That's Emily g O r c e n ski dot com. Here. 0:18:21.160 --> 0:18:22.840 It is the time of cowards. 0:18:27.400 --> 0:18:29.639 It is the time of the coward. It is the 0:18:29.680 --> 0:18:33.119 age of the liar and greed and avarice and lost 0:18:33.119 --> 0:18:37.000 boys and a dopamine hit in fractals and velocity and 0:18:37.080 --> 0:18:40.480 velocity and velocity, and go, go, go, don't stop. Don't 0:18:40.520 --> 0:18:46.440 stop to realize the indecency, the disloyalty, the dishonor, the discreditability, 0:18:46.680 --> 0:18:50.920 the parsimony, the hordes hoarded behind the gates, the gatekeepers keep. 0:18:52.160 --> 0:18:55.240 This is the dawn of masculine energy. Not the energy 0:18:55.280 --> 0:18:58.280 your father taught you about measuring twice and cutting once, 0:18:58.960 --> 0:19:02.160 but picking yourself up and how the sting of hydrogen 0:19:02.240 --> 0:19:06.439 peroxide means it's working. Or your grandfather who spent the 0:19:06.520 --> 0:19:09.520 days you spent smoking weed behind a seven eleven, serving 0:19:09.520 --> 0:19:13.240 on a torpedo boat, waiting for the sharks, who never 0:19:13.320 --> 0:19:16.280 failed to stop to lend a hand to those in need, 0:19:16.720 --> 0:19:19.560 or say grace before dinner, or to help you with 0:19:19.600 --> 0:19:22.199 your math homework, or teach you not to wear a 0:19:22.240 --> 0:19:25.280 necktie at a lathe. This is the year of cutting 0:19:25.280 --> 0:19:28.639 once and never measuring, pencil in the blueprints with whatever 0:19:28.680 --> 0:19:32.399 comes out. It's faster that way. The season of hypocrites, 0:19:32.440 --> 0:19:36.200 and not of confidence, but confidence men, the masculine energy 0:19:36.240 --> 0:19:40.080 of the Khan, the scam, the bamboozle, the fraud, the 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:42.159 pulling of the rug and the begging of the question. 0:19:43.080 --> 0:19:45.800 Now is the killing hour. The clock hands float over, 0:19:45.840 --> 0:19:48.399 the blood in the streets, and the rage, and the rage, 0:19:48.400 --> 0:19:54.119 and the uncorked hatred overflows, the minutes of impotence, expanding overflowing, fizzling. 0:19:54.960 --> 0:19:58.280 Deception gives way to more deception. Not a single promise 0:19:58.320 --> 0:20:02.480 is kept. Rapaciousness and rape and abandonment and the cutting 0:20:02.520 --> 0:20:05.760 of corners and KPIs. A newborn died in a baby 0:20:05.760 --> 0:20:09.199 box in Italy because the alarm sensor didn't work. It 0:20:09.280 --> 0:20:12.240 is an honorless time, a time of only one question, 0:20:13.520 --> 0:20:17.119 not how or may or can or if or whether, 0:20:17.480 --> 0:20:22.800 but when how soon? No legacy, no history, no reputation. 0:20:23.720 --> 0:20:27.320 Build the factories, then abandon them. The soil keeps the memory, 0:20:28.920 --> 0:20:31.400 and the burn scars and the floodwaters, and the clear 0:20:31.440 --> 0:20:34.560 windshields where the splatters of bugguts used to be, and 0:20:34.680 --> 0:20:37.119 the images in the twenty year old magazine still in 0:20:37.160 --> 0:20:40.399 the rack, and the guest bathrooms never used. That showed 0:20:40.400 --> 0:20:42.800 how children used to go sledding. And maybe the house 0:20:42.880 --> 0:20:45.720 is too big. No one comes by. I shoveled the 0:20:45.720 --> 0:20:48.159 neighbor's walk in the snow and salted it so he 0:20:48.200 --> 0:20:50.320 didn't slip on the ice and could receive his mail. 0:20:50.600 --> 0:20:53.640 He's an old man, one of the few black men 0:20:53.720 --> 0:20:57.080 left living in this neighborhood that was theirs. Once he 0:20:57.160 --> 0:20:58.919 sent me a letter, it went all the way to 0:20:59.000 --> 0:21:01.800 Richmond to come to my dea. He's the last man 0:21:01.840 --> 0:21:04.160 with dignity. In the letter, he told me he has 0:21:04.200 --> 0:21:07.200 a new toy, a laptop, which makes him happy because 0:21:07.200 --> 0:21:09.160 he is a big lover of history and he can 0:21:09.200 --> 0:21:11.800 go online and read about it and I weep for 0:21:11.840 --> 0:21:14.840 this last dignified man who proudly wears a cap honoring 0:21:14.880 --> 0:21:18.080 his service, because this is the era of synthesis and 0:21:18.160 --> 0:21:24.000 generation and revision and content content content, and inverifiability and manipulation. 0:21:24.800 --> 0:21:27.959 This is the pseudo scene. I bought a bottle of 0:21:28.000 --> 0:21:31.119 wine from a century's old vineyard, destroyed in a devastating flood, 0:21:32.000 --> 0:21:35.639 an unsyllable bottle in the retail market, fundraiser souvenir. I 0:21:35.720 --> 0:21:38.280 kept it as a memento Mary of our changing world, 0:21:39.000 --> 0:21:41.200 a mud covered reminder of how we all must work, 0:21:41.280 --> 0:21:45.040 little by little to give the world forward. It broke 0:21:45.080 --> 0:21:47.160 when I tried to move it home on my seventy 0:21:47.160 --> 0:21:50.640 second flight of the year. It is the decade of hypocrisy. 0:21:50.800 --> 0:21:54.159 Even for those who can see hypocrisy. They may be 0:21:54.200 --> 0:21:56.720 a vice president. And with every title change, I move 0:21:56.800 --> 0:22:00.119 farther from God, a God I never believed in. I 0:22:00.160 --> 0:22:03.200 was raised in New England towns named for biblical places 0:22:03.440 --> 0:22:06.040 by people who thought working the rocky soil brought them 0:22:06.040 --> 0:22:09.320 closer to God. The only holy men left are those 0:22:09.359 --> 0:22:14.720 in the fields Basra and Lebanon, and the Gilead and Hebron. 0:22:15.440 --> 0:22:17.960 The people who named those towns committed a genocide to 0:22:18.040 --> 0:22:21.119 name them, and four hundred years later in their namesakes 0:22:21.160 --> 0:22:25.760 the same. It is the epoch of cadaverin. It is 0:22:25.800 --> 0:22:30.400 the night of bonfires and Feuershpusche, the twilight of stories 0:22:30.400 --> 0:22:33.359 that dared in poems and albums. And I tried to 0:22:33.400 --> 0:22:36.040 sell a book, and I learned that there's only interest 0:22:36.080 --> 0:22:37.879 in a book when you put yourself into it to 0:22:37.920 --> 0:22:41.399 be consumed. Words are calories, measured in the amount of 0:22:41.440 --> 0:22:45.000 heat they gave a flame. I walked over the Westminster 0:22:45.040 --> 0:22:46.919 Bridge one night with a journalist who told me that 0:22:46.960 --> 0:22:49.960 they can't publish two good stories at a time because 0:22:49.960 --> 0:22:52.600 if one goes viral, it punishes the other. The arcane 0:22:52.640 --> 0:22:56.439 footfalls of the algorithm dance. It is the sunset of 0:22:56.520 --> 0:23:00.679 craft and skills handed down in heritage, waxing of a 0:23:00.720 --> 0:23:04.840 crass and pandering moon of pantomime, a frictionless night, a 0:23:04.920 --> 0:23:08.080 night where nothing dared, nothing gained, a night of shutters 0:23:08.080 --> 0:23:11.600 and locks. These are the dark ages, ages of embarrassing 0:23:11.680 --> 0:23:15.240 the future. There is a shame here that penance cannot satisfy. 0:23:15.920 --> 0:23:20.280 The sturdy empty shells, the blue hyperlinks to nowhere, and 0:23:20.359 --> 0:23:23.320 a generation lost must be lost because profit cannot be 0:23:23.359 --> 0:23:26.760 taken from an idea. I think of the mimiograph machines 0:23:26.800 --> 0:23:30.159 stuck under the floorboards of the Solidara Nosche houses, and 0:23:30.200 --> 0:23:32.760 the punks and the whores who copied radical zines in 0:23:32.800 --> 0:23:37.560 the public library, xerox machines, and the Yugoslavian Galaxia, and 0:23:37.640 --> 0:23:40.120 the novels now considered some of the greatest of all time, 0:23:40.200 --> 0:23:44.800 once banned for obscenity. In Chochescu's house, the original TV remains. 0:23:45.160 --> 0:23:47.800 The revolutionaries didn't bother to steal it because there were 0:23:47.800 --> 0:23:51.359 only thirty minutes of broadcast TV each day. In the 0:23:51.359 --> 0:23:54.080 crepuscular light, birds dare to sing, even though they know 0:23:54.160 --> 0:23:57.520 the cats hunt below. In Vilnius, there is a tile 0:23:57.560 --> 0:23:59.919 in a square. They say, if you make a win 0:24:00.200 --> 0:24:02.760 and spin around it three times, your wish will come true. 0:24:03.560 --> 0:24:06.520 At this tile a human chain formed and spanned three countries, 0:24:06.560 --> 0:24:09.680 and they sang at Hadra Kim. On the right day, 0:24:09.800 --> 0:24:12.320 the morning light filters in over the lonesome island of 0:24:12.359 --> 0:24:15.480 Philflow and fills a hole drilled in the sandstone five 0:24:15.520 --> 0:24:19.159