Speaker 1: You wake up before your alarm. No sunlight peaks through
Speaker 1: your window. It's far too early for that. You're confused
Speaker 1: for just a moment, and then you hear another explosion.
Speaker 1: It echoes in the night, rattling the walls in the
Speaker 1: window of your apartment. This is not the first bomb
Speaker 1: you've heard, and it sounds far enough away that you
Speaker 1: know the danger isn't a minute. That surprises you a
Speaker 1: little bit, the fact that you recognized it's not close.
Speaker 1: You realize you've now heard enough explosions to have a
Speaker 1: pretty good ear for them, and when they're close enough
Speaker 1: to worry about. It's weird how quickly life in a
Speaker 1: war zone becomes just life. You get up, there's no
Speaker 1: sense trying to get back to sleep. As you stumble
Speaker 1: over to the kitchen to grind some coffee, you hear
Speaker 1: the crack of rifle fire. It's distant, too far enough
Speaker 1: away that it sounds almost like firecrackers, but you know
Speaker 1: it's not. You fill the grinder, put on the top,
Speaker 1: and press down. Nothing happens. You realize, belatedly in your
Speaker 1: sleep fogged brain that the powers out again. You wonder
Speaker 1: which of the dozen different rebel and insurgents groups in
Speaker 1: your state might be responsible. You don't even bother to
Speaker 1: get at your phone and check the news. It doesn't
Speaker 1: really matter, and you've got shipped to do. It's still
Speaker 1: dark outside, and since you're already up, you might as
Speaker 1: well take advantage of the situation and beat the crowd
Speaker 1: to the grocery store. They've been short on everything lately,
Speaker 1: thanks to separatists in northern California. Most nuts are basically unavailable.
Speaker 1: Rebel insurgents have been bombing highways in West Texas, so
Speaker 1: beef is way up. You don't tend to buy much
Speaker 1: meat these days anyway, though. All the blackouts make your
Speaker 1: fridge unreliable, and you can't afford to spend money on
Speaker 1: stuff that goes bad. You throw on a light jacket
Speaker 1: and roll downstairs. Two or three years ago, before all
Speaker 1: this started, you'd have popped in your earbuds and put
Speaker 1: on some music to accompany the walk. Today, you figure
Speaker 1: it'd be best to have your wits about you. You're
Speaker 1: lucky you live so close to the grocery store. There's
Speaker 1: a police checkpoint on the way, and the vehicle line
Speaker 1: is always a nightmare this time up day. As you
Speaker 1: close and lock your door behind you. You try to
Speaker 1: ignore the pop and chatter of not so distant gunfire.
Speaker 1: You have friends on the separatist side of town. You
Speaker 1: have a cousin up in the hills. You're not sure
Speaker 1: what he's doing there exactly, but it's probably part of
Speaker 1: why AIGs have gotten so expensive lately. They all have
Speaker 1: reasons for what they're doing, and you don't believe the
Speaker 1: government lying about any of the sides anymore. But you're
Speaker 1: also not dumb enough to want to stand up and fight.
Speaker 1: The official death toll is still just a few thousand,
Speaker 1: but international monitors claim it must be much higher. There
Speaker 1: are days when you do feel like doing something, maybe
Speaker 1: even joining your friends, but most days, like today, you've
Speaker 1: got shipped to do. It's twenty four, an election year.
Speaker 1: Every candidate is doing their level best to not call
Speaker 1: this what it is, a civil war. You hear that
Speaker 1: phrase out on the street, though, more and more every day.
Speaker 1: You reach a crosswalk and start to step across on
Speaker 1: the left. Your eyes are drawn to the massive bulk
Speaker 1: of a police bear cat as it trundles across the
Speaker 1: street parallel to you. A man sits up top in
Speaker 1: the couple up his hands on a machine gun that
Speaker 1: for now has its nose pointed up in the air.
Speaker 1: He stares at you, and you try not to stare back.
Speaker 1: As you hurry along with the supermarket. You ask yourself
Speaker 1: the question you've asked almost every day for the last
Speaker 1: three years. How did it get this bad? Did that
Speaker 1: seem far fetched? You outlandish? If so, let me try
Speaker 1: to show you why the preceding passage might well be
Speaker 1: reality for millions of Americans startlingly soon if something isn't done.
Speaker 1: The second American Civil War doesn't sound like a crazy,
Speaker 1: distant possibility to me, and it hasn't for a while.
Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans, and it's my job to help you
Speaker 1: see what I see. Two thousand sixteen was the first
Speaker 1: year I started seriously considering the possibility of a second
Speaker 1: American Civil War. It was the year I reported on
Speaker 1: the major protests surrounding the most contentious election in modern
Speaker 1: American history. I was there at the r n C
Speaker 1: in the d n C, and at both I saw
Speaker 1: tremendous hatred on display. Leftist protesters hated Hillary Clinton and
Speaker 1: mainstream Democrats conspicuously armed. Right wing protesters hated the leftists.
Speaker 1: Every one hated the police, and the police certainly seemed
Speaker 1: to hate the protesters. I also traveled to a Rack
Speaker 1: in two thousand sixteen to report on the siege of Mosel,
Speaker 1: but nothing I saw there, nothing I saw anywhere that year,
Speaker 1: scared me more than watching Alex Jones speak on the
Speaker 1: first day of the r n C. A huge crowd
Speaker 1: had gathered to see him. Many of them were armed,
Speaker 1: dozens of young men wearing body armor and packing a
Speaker 1: R fifteens patrolled in the Ohio summer heat. The speech
Speaker 1: was characteristically for Jones, angry, filled with shouted declarations of hatred.
Speaker 1: That did not surprise me. What surprised me was the
Speaker 1: crowd's reaction to how he labeled the Democratic Party. These
Speaker 1: are not liberal. You can hear the reckless hate in
Speaker 1: the audio, the sheer rage these people had. Seeing dozens
Speaker 1: and dozens of armed Americans calling their political opponents scum
Speaker 1: outdoors and broad daylight at a major party political convention. Now,
Speaker 1: in two thousand nineteen, it's the kind of thing that
Speaker 1: seems normal, but at the time it was new and frightening.
Speaker 1: I was just a few feet away when adult swims
Speaker 1: Eric Andre showed up to troll Jones. I know a
Speaker 1: lot of people watched that moment on TV or on YouTube.
Speaker 1: What you may not have seen was how close the
Speaker 1: crowd looked to tearing Andrea apart. Some of those people
Speaker 1: wanted to fucking kill him. Most of that armed, angry
Speaker 1: crowd was polite enough to me, lily white bearded Southerner
Speaker 1: that I am, but several of them made it clear
Speaker 1: that they believed a fight was coming. We have to
Speaker 1: take back our country no matter what. Was the general
Speaker 1: sentiment coming from the mouth of someone dressed like they
Speaker 1: just stepped out of downtown Fellujiah, It's sent a chill
Speaker 1: down my spine. By the time September rolled around, I
Speaker 1: had started seriously thinking about the possibility of a second
Speaker 1: American Civil War. I decided to write an article about
Speaker 1: it for Cracked, where I worked as an editor. I
Speaker 1: didn't want it to just be my speculation, so I
Speaker 1: reached out to a number of experts, ex federal agents
Speaker 1: and military officers and civil war scholars. One of these
Speaker 1: experts was David Kilcolin, former chief strategist for the U. S.
Speaker 1: State Department and a major architect of the surge in Iraq.
Speaker 1: He's one of the world's leading counter insurgency experts. When
Speaker 1: I reached out to these people, I had very little
Speaker 1: faith that any of them would respond to me. My
Speaker 1: topic seemed too far fetched and ridiculous, and these were
Speaker 1: all serious people. I didn't think they'd waste their time
Speaker 1: with my speculative sci fi bullshit. To my surprise, every
Speaker 1: one of them responded to me, and to my growing discomfort,
Speaker 1: none of them thought the topic was ridiculous. David Kilcolin
Speaker 1: told me he'd been researching the idea for a while.
Speaker 1: He did not think a Civil War two was imminent,
Speaker 1: but he worried about it. Everyone I talked, too, worried
Speaker 1: about it. They all saw warning signs that our nation
Speaker 1: might be inching closer to unspeakable violence. In the years since,
Speaker 1: the rest of the world seems to be catching up
Speaker 1: to this possibility. Since President Trump's election, we have seen
Speaker 1: a mighty surge in political violence across the country. Antifa
Speaker 1: in groups like the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer have
Speaker 1: battled in the streets of multiple American cities. Heather Higher
Speaker 1: was murdered in a fascist terrorist attack on counter protesters
Speaker 1: in Charlottesville. The magabomber and the Tree of Life synagogue
Speaker 1: shooter both struck at political and racial enemies of the
Speaker 1: far right in the same week. In June of two
Speaker 1: thousand seventeen, almost exactly a year after Alex jones Is
Speaker 1: rally at the r n C, Dana Losh of the
Speaker 1: n r A put up a video that seems almost
Speaker 1: tailor made to highlight how much worse things got in
Speaker 1: the months after the election. They use their media to
Speaker 1: assassinate real news. They use their schools to teach children
Speaker 1: that their president is another hitler. They use their movie
Speaker 1: stars and singers and comedy shows and award shows to
Speaker 1: repeat their narrative over and over again. And then they
Speaker 1: use their ex president to endorse the resistance. All to
Speaker 1: make them march, make them protest, make them scream racism
Speaker 1: and sexism and xenophobia and homophobia, to smash windows, burn cars,
Speaker 1: shutdown interstates and airports, fully and terrorize the law abiding
Speaker 1: until the only option left is for the police to
Speaker 1: do their jobs and stop the madness. And when that happens,
Speaker 1: they'll use it as an excuse for their outrage. The
Speaker 1: only way we stop this, the only way we save
Speaker 1: our country and Our freedom is to fight this violence
Speaker 1: of lies with a clenched fist of truth. I'm the
Speaker 1: National Rifle Association of America, and I'm Freedom's safest place.
Speaker 1: A year later, Roger Stone, famed Trump ally and recently
Speaker 1: indicted asshole, had this to say, Try to impeach you,
Speaker 1: just try it. You will have a spasm of violence
Speaker 1: in this country, an insurrection like you've never seen. You think,
Speaker 1: no question, You think if you go in peach like
Speaker 1: the country sides are heavily armed, My friend, yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: this is not in nineteen seventy four. They the people
Speaker 1: will not stand for impeachment of politician. Who votes for
Speaker 1: it would be endangering their own life. There will be
Speaker 1: violence on both sides. And of course Alex Jones's own
Speaker 1: rhetoric has escalated considerably over the last two years. I
Speaker 1: know the instinct here is to write him off as
Speaker 1: a nut shouting into the wilderness, but more than a
Speaker 1: million Americans watch or listen to his show each month.
Speaker 1: He is not nearly as fringe as you want him
Speaker 1: to be. You're trying to start the civil war with people.
Speaker 1: You're taking our kindness for weakness. Do you understand the
Speaker 1: American people will kill all of you. If you want
Speaker 1: a real war a seventeen seventy six. I'm not the
Speaker 1: one that's called for violence. You're gonna get wrecked, bads.
Speaker 1: I don't want a war. I don't need some you know,
Speaker 1: coming of age deal to kill a bunch of liberals.
Speaker 1: I just can't. But I also feel like I'm in
Speaker 1: dereliction of as a citizen of my duty not saying
Speaker 1: we have to start getting ready for insurrection and civil war.
Speaker 1: After two years of constantly escalating rhetoric and violence, even
Speaker 1: America's political moderates have started to worry. Last October, the
Speaker 1: New York Times published an opinion article titled the American
Speaker 1: Civil War, Part Two. The National Review, a mainstream conservative magazine,
Speaker 1: published The Origins of Our Second Civil War a few
Speaker 1: months later. So maybe this all still sounds ridiculous to you,
Speaker 1: but let the record show that a whole mess of
Speaker 1: heavily armed people are already loudly fantasizing about mass violence.
Speaker 1: That's not the only ingredients you need for a vicious
Speaker 1: civil war, but it is certainly one of them. Even so,
Speaker 1: to most people, the idea of a second American Civil
Speaker 1: war feels more like science fiction than a possible future.
Speaker 1: I even feel that way sometimes when I step away
Speaker 1: from Twitter and ignore my news feed and walk the quiet,
Speaker 1: tree lined streets of my neighborhood. It feels silly when
Speaker 1: I stand in line at the d m V or
Speaker 1: hop onto a public bus or train. The systems that
Speaker 1: govern our lives here are so intricate, so seemingly stable,
Speaker 1: and so settled that any kind of mass upset feels
Speaker 1: almost impossible, fantastic even. But I have walked through cities
Speaker 1: where the public buses still run, just without windows because
Speaker 1: the blasts from mortars have blown them all out. I've
Speaker 1: watched people stand in line and fill out forms and
Speaker 1: government buildings while howitzer shake the foundation and machine guns
Speaker 1: chatter half a mile away. I have seen systems collapse.
Speaker 1: Everything I've seen and everything I've read over the last
Speaker 1: two years has convinced me that the United States is
Speaker 1: closer to that kind of terror than almost anyone is
Speaker 1: willing to admit. And so I can't ignore Alex Jones
Speaker 1: as a cook on the fringe. I think he's dangerous,
Speaker 1: and I think he represents a strain of ideology that
Speaker 1: could collapse this nation into apocalyptic violence. We welcome to
Speaker 1: It Could Happen Here, a podcast where every season I
Speaker 1: take some fantastic, unlikely scenario and explain how it could happen,
Speaker 1: why it might be closer than you'd think, and how
Speaker 1: it will look when or if it comes. This season,
Speaker 1: we are talking about the Second American Civil War, and
Speaker 1: this episode we're exploring one possible way that war could start. Today,
Speaker 1: the perpetrators will be Donald Trump and the American far
Speaker 1: right in its most armed, vicious, and violent incarnation. The
Speaker 1: show will be on the other foot for the next episode.
Speaker 1: My sympathies are with the left, but my goal here
Speaker 1: is not partisan fearmongering. It's an exploration of the possibilities.
Speaker 1: I want to start by dispelling sub myths. I think
Speaker 1: the main reason many people have trouble imagining a second
Speaker 1: Civil war is the First Civil War. And if you
Speaker 1: think of the second Civil War is a replay of
Speaker 1: the first, where a huge junk of the nation decides
Speaker 1: to secede, there are two cleanly defined sides and two
Speaker 1: opposing militaries that clash in the field, then yes, it
Speaker 1: probably does seem impossible. But war doesn't look like that anymore.
Speaker 1: In eighteen sixty one, an army was just a bunch
Speaker 1: of men with rifles, horses, and some cannons. Most of
Speaker 1: the kit and modern soldier would take into battle with
Speaker 1: stuff that many normal people owned already. The existence of aircraft, drones,
Speaker 1: satellite guided missiles and tanks has changed things. A bunch
Speaker 1: of dudes with rifles marching on Washington, d C. Would
Speaker 1: be wiped out by a single eight in war tawk.
Speaker 1: Older wars tend to have real clear beginnings. The U
Speaker 1: s Civil War started with the capture of Fort Sumter,
Speaker 1: the Revolutionary War started with a fighting at Lexington and
Speaker 1: conquered World War two started with the invasion of Poland.
Speaker 1: But the Syrian Civil War didn't suddenly start so much
Speaker 1: as it evolved from popular protests and clashes with police
Speaker 1: in the street, to brutal state repression of those protesters,
Speaker 1: and eventually to a shooting war. And when that war started,
Speaker 1: there were way the funk more than two sides, the
Speaker 1: Free Syrian Army, Jabbat al nusra Isis, the YPG, and
Speaker 1: dozens of other groups all took different positions, many fighting
Speaker 1: against both the Syrian state and other rebel groups. It's
Speaker 1: a gigantic, confusing mess. Any mass civil conflict in the
Speaker 1: U s would probably look similar. So forget the Union
Speaker 1: and the Confederacy, forget clear sides in a clear beginning.
Speaker 1: Imagine you're sitting at home one day, browsing the Internet.
Speaker 1: You read about the beginning of a protest in Wall Street.
Speaker 1: The first pictures and videos that start circulating on social
Speaker 1: media probably look a lot like Occupy Once did. I
Speaker 1: imagine these protesters are angry at Trump. As I write
Speaker 1: this in February of twenty nineteen, protesters have assembled in
Speaker 1: d C and several other points around the nation to
Speaker 1: attack the president's declaration of a state of emergency over
Speaker 1: what he calls a crisis at the border. So let's
Speaker 1: say Trump does something else, fucked up a set of
Speaker 1: mass deportations. Maybe people take to the street to protest
Speaker 1: in huge numbers, millions of folk across the country. Some
Speaker 1: of the largest protests are in New York, right outside
Speaker 1: of Trump Tower. It will be hot. Most large protests
Speaker 1: occur in the dead of summer, and as I write this,
Speaker 1: we're edging ever closer to that time of the year,
Speaker 1: So you'll have thousands of people crowding in around Trump Tower.
Speaker 1: They're hot, sweaty and furious. So far nothing new. The
Speaker 1: first pictures and video clips that you see look normal
Speaker 1: to anyone who's paid attention to the news for the
Speaker 1: last decade. Folks with funny signs, people in costume packed
Speaker 1: crowds of marchers. You go about your day, checking Twitter
Speaker 1: or Facebook every now and again. You visit the gym
Speaker 1: and see footage from the rally on CNN, Wolf Blitzer
Speaker 1: talking to some black clad activist with a mask over
Speaker 1: his face. Lines of riot cops stand ominously in the background,
Speaker 1: sweating through their body armor. It seems pretty normal, at
Speaker 1: least for twenty nineteen, and then, rather suddenly it's not.
Speaker 1: The tone of the news dripping out from New York
Speaker 1: Changes becomes chaotic, erratic, and violent. Now you see people
Speaker 1: running away, blurry footage of blood and bodies on the street,
Speaker 1: evidence that something terrible has happened. For a while, all
Speaker 1: you know is that people are dying in the Big Apple.
Speaker 1: Gradually the story comes out. The police opened fire with
Speaker 1: what we're supposed to be less than the full rounds,
Speaker 1: but they were piste off or legitimately scared, and they
Speaker 1: hit several people in their faces and heads. Several of
Speaker 1: those folks died and others were horribly injured. For the
Speaker 1: rest of the day. For the next week, every new
Speaker 1: station rotates the same grim footage of corpses under streets
Speaker 1: and weeping activists shaking from the aftermath of lethal violence.
Speaker 1: There's video of the shooting. When I see it, I'm
Speaker 1: sure it looks like the police fired without cause. My
Speaker 1: conservative parents disagree, pointing to what might be protesters throwing something.
Speaker 1: We get into a fight about exactly how much force
Speaker 1: that could possibly justify the whole country has that argument
Speaker 1: who you blame for the deaths winds up depending on
Speaker 1: where you stand politically. Remember the confrontation between Nathan Phillips
Speaker 1: and Nick Sandman at the March for Life in January
Speaker 1: of twenty nineteen. As I write this, it's just a
Speaker 1: few weeks old. You can watch hours of video from
Speaker 1: multiple angles, and yet on social media, right wing pundits
Speaker 1: say the full video completely exonerates those kids. Left wing
Speaker 1: pundits say the exact opposite, And these people are all
Speaker 1: working from the same evidence. The inciting incident for theoretical
Speaker 1: civil war will be like that. What was done will
Speaker 1: matter less than how it's interpreted by different segments of
Speaker 1: America in their different social media bubbles. After the murder
Speaker 1: of Heather Higher at Charlottesville, a narrative developed on the
Speaker 1: fascist side of things that claimed James Fields, the killer,
Speaker 1: had been assaulted by antifa will in his car. They
Speaker 1: argued that he'd accelerated into the crowd in a panic,
Speaker 1: and that Heather Higher had actually died from a heart attack.
Speaker 1: None of this was true, but hours of video and
Speaker 1: countless picture based arguments were concocted by Internet Nazis in
Speaker 1: an attempt to exonerate their guy. This narrative did not
Speaker 1: spread widely because fucking nobody wanted to be associated with
Speaker 1: the Charlottesville Nazis. But that will not be the case
Speaker 1: for this protest. We're imagining no one's wearing a swastika
Speaker 1: or holding a tiki torch. You've got cops in riot
Speaker 1: gear and activists in black masks. Both sides are sympathetic
Speaker 1: to one chunk of the country and reviled by the other.
Speaker 1: Even at Charlottesville, President Trump was unwilling to fully condemn
Speaker 1: the neo Nazi demonstrators, declaring that there were good people
Speaker 1: on both sides. So who do you think he'll support?
Speaker 1: In a battle the between cops and protesters outside of
Speaker 1: his big dumb tower. He literally ran as the law
Speaker 1: and order president. Just last October two thousand eighteen, President
Speaker 1: Trump declared Democrats to be anti police and the party
Speaker 1: of crime. Now, this one bloody protest would not lead
Speaker 1: inevitably to a civil war. It just starts a process.
Speaker 1: Crossing the bridge from civil unrest to civil warfare doesn't
Speaker 1: require a magical and improbable shift in the firmament of reality.
Speaker 1: It just takes a bunch of the same fucked up
Speaker 1: ship that's always happening in America, happening all at once
Speaker 1: and in quick succession. One bloody protest on Wall Street
Speaker 1: and a defensive response from the Republican President would lead
Speaker 1: to more protests all around the country. Activists across the
Speaker 1: nation would take to the streets in numbers not seen
Speaker 1: since the Iraq War protests in two thousand three. We
Speaker 1: can look to our last two years of history to
Speaker 1: guess where these demonstrations would be most violent. Berkeley, California,
Speaker 1: and Portland, Oregon are probably right at the top of
Speaker 1: that list. For the last two years, far right and
Speaker 1: far left activists have clashed bloodily in the streets of
Speaker 1: both cities. Portland has seen more street action in the
Speaker 1: last two years than any other city in the country.
Speaker 1: This is thanks in large part to the activism of
Speaker 1: a fellow named Joey Gibson. He's the head of a
Speaker 1: far right protest group called Patriot Prayer, and he's led
Speaker 1: dozens of rallies that have ended with hundreds of injuries
Speaker 1: from minor to life threatening. Recently, the Portland Police Bureau
Speaker 1: were revealed to have been collaborating with Patriot Prayer and
Speaker 1: Joey Gibson via text messages. The collaboration seems to have
Speaker 1: gone as far as to include police advising right wing
Speaker 1: demonstrators where smaller groups of leftist activists were located, and
Speaker 1: giving them suggestions on how they might avoid being searched
Speaker 1: for weapons. At one demonstration last summer, Patriot Prayer members
Speaker 1: were caught on the roof of a nearby building with rifles,
Speaker 1: presumably so they could open fire if ANTIFOD did something
Speaker 1: they considered to be a step out of line. Now
Speaker 1: Portland is a famously liberal city, but it's lodged in
Speaker 1: the middle of some extremely conservative rural and suburban communities
Speaker 1: in a state with an extraordinarily high rate of gun ownership. Portland,
Speaker 1: Oregon is actually a great microcosm for the entire country.
Speaker 1: That way, you've got conservative gun owning America versus bleeding
Speaker 1: heart gun grabbing liberals. So tempers are high in that area.
Speaker 1: And at this set of protests we're imagining the crowd
Speaker 1: is huge and furious about what they see as the
Speaker 1: murder of their comrades in New York. In the middle
Speaker 1: of this, Joey Gibson and his goons show up to
Speaker 1: rep their side of what's still just a culture war.
Speaker 1: They're shoving and punches, as there have been so many
Speaker 1: times before in Portland, but this time someone pulls a gun.
Speaker 1: This person kills two people. There's video of the event.
Speaker 1: It's blurry, confusing, but we get one clear shot of
Speaker 1: the shooter, his hand on a smoking gun and a
Speaker 1: Maga hat on his head. The left sees a mass
Speaker 1: murderer firing on unarmed demonstrators. The president embraces his supporter.
Speaker 1: There's an investigation, of course, but rather than shutting up,
Speaker 1: the shooter does what people do now in nineteen when
Speaker 1: something like this happens. He goes on TV. Nick Sandman's
Speaker 1: response to his kerfuffle with Nate Phillips is now the
Speaker 1: blueprint for how to deal with this kind of public incident.
Speaker 1: So the shooter is embraced as a hero by a
Speaker 1: lot of people. His name becomes a catchphrase on the
Speaker 1: fire right, the term used to describe giving protesters what
Speaker 1: they deserve. Right wingers on Twitter post gifts of him
Speaker 1: holding his gun when they get into arguments with liberals.
Speaker 1: The left responds, of course, with more protests, some outside
Speaker 1: of the same Fox News offices where this man talks
Speaker 1: to Morning Joe or Laura Ingraham or whoever. Americans see
Speaker 1: what they want to see in that too, a murderer
Speaker 1: being celebrated for killing liberals, or a horde of unhinged
Speaker 1: leftists banging at the gates. The cops in New York
Speaker 1: and the Portland shooter all have their trials, and the
Speaker 1: nation holds its breath waiting to see whose version of
Speaker 1: justice will be done. The Portland shooter walks free, so
Speaker 1: do the NYPD officers. In April, a jury acquitted four
Speaker 1: l a p D officers for the violent and videotaped
Speaker 1: beating of Rodney King. Tens of thousands of primarily black
Speaker 1: and Latino citizens took to the streets, overwhelming the police
Speaker 1: and doing more than a billion dollars in damage. The
Speaker 1: seventh Infantry Division in the first Marine Division, along with
Speaker 1: every federal law enforcement agency imaginable, were called in to
Speaker 1: contain the violence. Now that was one city. Imagine riots
Speaker 1: like that in three or four cities, while dozens of
Speaker 1: other cities hosts peaceful but still massive and disruptive protests.
Speaker 1: That's how I imagine this would go. Rage spreading virally
Speaker 1: in the age of the smartphone. Occupy Wall Street was
Speaker 1: the first clear example of this, and I think it
Speaker 1: was important of things to come. In a matter of weeks,
Speaker 1: more than six hundred communities in the United States hosted
Speaker 1: their own occupy rallies and camps. So imagine large chunks
Speaker 1: of multiple American cities effectively rendered uncontrollable to the federal government.
Speaker 1: Government buildings, ice headquarters and the like occupied and blockaded.
Speaker 1: In the cities that host riots. The Army and the Marines,
Speaker 1: as well as the National Guard are called in to
Speaker 1: restore order, or at least to attempt to do that.
Speaker 1: What if they can't. In two thousand and thirteen, protesters
Speaker 1: in Ukraine angry about policies introduced by a controversial right
Speaker 1: wing president, Victor Yennikovitch, organized in their nation's capital. Yenikovitch
Speaker 1: was an unspeakably wealthy, out of touch asshole who deliberately
Speaker 1: inflamed divisions between the rural and urban parts of his
Speaker 1: country and stole huge amounts of money from the taxpayer.
Speaker 1: The man had a private lake with a private boat
Speaker 1: restaurant in his private palace, all built with grifted cash.
Speaker 1: Many modern and liberals and leftists certainly look at Donald
Speaker 1: Trump as if he is that sort of man. The
Speaker 1: protests started in Kiv's Independent Square, otherwise known as the Maidan.
Speaker 1: It's essentially like a giant protest in the National lawn
Speaker 1: or at Wall Street. It's that kind of central location
Speaker 1: to the Ukrainian people, and these protesters basically, you know,
Speaker 1: picked a central chunk of valuable real estate in a
Speaker 1: place that the government couldn't ignore, right in the middle
Speaker 1: of the capitol. Now, the Madon protests were a normal
Speaker 1: example of street activism until they weren't. The police cracked
Speaker 1: down on protesters brutally, and suddenly social media flooded with
Speaker 1: pictures of beaten and battered college students. This prompted more
Speaker 1: people to take to the streets, friends and family members
Speaker 1: of those activists who were livid at the violence done
Speaker 1: to their loved ones. For days, the violence escalated and
Speaker 1: the number of protesters grew. The activists turned the Midon
Speaker 1: into a camp, something like a temporary city within a city.
Speaker 1: When happened in keV was not at that point so
Speaker 1: very different from things we have experienced in the United States.
Speaker 1: Occupy Wall Street and the Standing Rock protests were both
Speaker 1: examples of activists essentially seizing a crucial chunk of real
Speaker 1: estate and refusing to leave. Unlike those protests, the Maidan
Speaker 1: occupation did not fizzle out. The activists did not go home.
Speaker 1: They fought with the police and battled the federal government
Speaker 1: for several epic and bloody weeks, until finally President Yanukovich
Speaker 1: was forced to flee power in the country. The Ukrainians
Speaker 1: resisted the worst violence their state could throw at them.
Speaker 1: It was not an easy task. More than a hundred
Speaker 1: people died, mostly to a combination of police, snipers, and
Speaker 1: brutal hand to hand combat. When I reported on the
Speaker 1: Maidan Revolution in two thousand and fourteen, I did not
Speaker 1: think that American activists would be capable of the same badassary.
Speaker 1: I was at Occupy Wall Street for a couple of
Speaker 1: nights back in two thousand eleven, and at the time
Speaker 1: I wrote it off as kind of a bust. But
Speaker 1: what I didn't see then, because I was young and dumber,
Speaker 1: was that all these links were being formed between different
Speaker 1: left wing organizations and activists. I met people at Standing
Speaker 1: Rock five years later who started their activist careers at
Speaker 1: occup Pie and bent a protests all over the country
Speaker 1: Ever since, they've gotten good at organizing and it being organized.
Speaker 1: With a long enough history of unrest and street activism,
Speaker 1: a nation's people build up a sort of protest infrastructure
Speaker 1: that can sustain hardcore resistance to the state for longer
Speaker 1: and longer periods of time. Occupy Wall Street was not
Speaker 1: good at sustaining itself, Standing Rock did better. Those protests
Speaker 1: cost the state of North Dakota thirty nine million dollars
Speaker 1: to suppress and cost the company building the pipeline as
Speaker 1: much as four point four billion. As time has gone
Speaker 1: on and political tensions have ratcheted up, the American people
Speaker 1: have grown more capable of resisting their government in the streets.
Speaker 1: In an organized way. Now, assuming all this happens later
Speaker 1: in two thousand nineteen or two twenty, this unrest would
Speaker 1: be going on at the same time as the economy
Speaker 1: shifts its metaphorical pants. Most economists agree that our nation
Speaker 1: is currently heading towards a pretty steeped fiscal cliff, and
Speaker 1: a quote from the Washington Post here, more than a
Speaker 1: third of top economic forecasters now predict a US recession
Speaker 1: in according to the latest blue Chip forecast, and forty
Speaker 1: percent of fund managers in the latest Bank of America
Speaker 1: Maryland survey expect global growth to slow in the next year,
Speaker 1: the worst outlook for the world economy since November two
Speaker 1: thousand eight. So let's say the economists are right and
Speaker 1: that happens, the economy slides off a ledge and into
Speaker 1: the goddamn sea. So in the middle of all these protests,
Speaker 1: all these murders, all this fury, there are waves of
Speaker 1: layoffs and foreclosures. Not only does the greatest recession in
Speaker 1: a generation cause more unrest, more anger at Donald Trump
Speaker 1: and his fellow billionaires, but it frees a shipload of
Speaker 1: people up for street activism. The recently laid off, the evicted,
Speaker 1: the desperate, all flood the ranks of a left wing
Speaker 1: activist movement with enough experienced organizers to make use of them. Now,
Speaker 1: mass protests and bloody riots have long been a part
Speaker 1: of American life. So far, none of these has ever
Speaker 1: sparked a civil war. It's kind of like how literal
Speaker 1: sparks don't always start fires. You need more than just
Speaker 1: a spark. You need fuel to burn, dry logs and
Speaker 1: sticks with plenty of tender or big rolling hills covered
Speaker 1: in dead grass. In past bloody civil disturbances, like the
Speaker 1: riots after Martin Luther King Junior's murder, the Kent State shootings,
Speaker 1: or the l A riots, there just wasn't enough fuel
Speaker 1: in the rest of the country for the fire to
Speaker 1: release spread. Modern American history is filled with examples of
Speaker 1: individuals who've tried to spark civil wars or revolutions in
Speaker 1: this country. That was the stated goal of the Columbine
Speaker 1: Shooters when they started their rampage. It was Tim mcveigh's
Speaker 1: goal when he bombed the Murra building in Oklahoma City.
Speaker 1: Neither of those sparks caught either. That's because the most
Speaker 1: critical ingredient for any hypothetical civil war, the tinder for
Speaker 1: this blazing inferno exists in the hearts and minds of
Speaker 1: the populace. Before a civil war can start. Before any
Speaker 1: of this could be real enough, people have to want
Speaker 1: to kill their countrymen. I don't know if we're there yet,
Speaker 1: but I think we're getting close. In nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: the National Opinion Research Center carried out a survey rating
Speaker 1: each region of the country based on what percentage of
Speaker 1: its population believed most people can be trusted. In the
Speaker 1: Old South the former Confederate States, that number ranged from
Speaker 1: between thirty and forty In the rest of the country,
Speaker 1: it was between fifty and seventy percent. The national average
Speaker 1: was forty six point two percent. Now, in two thousand
Speaker 1: and twelve, the same n o r C survey found
Speaker 1: very different results. Most regions in the nation were well
Speaker 1: under forty percent, with a national average dropping from forty
Speaker 1: six point two percent to thirty two point four percent.
Speaker 1: Other surveys back up this unsettling trend up on our site.
Speaker 1: It could happen here pod dot com will showcase a graph.
Speaker 1: It charts the results from several decades worth of Pew
Speaker 1: Survey questions from nineteen fifty eight to two thousand fifteen,
Speaker 1: all asking whether or not respondents quote trust the federal
Speaker 1: government to do what is right just about always or
Speaker 1: most of the time. That number peaked at nearly eighty
Speaker 1: percent of the population in nineteen sixty one. By two
Speaker 1: thousand fifteen, it had dropped to roughly twenty percent. With
Speaker 1: some brief spikes during the Carter administration and immediately after
Speaker 1: September eleventh, the graph has shown a shockingly steady rate
Speaker 1: of decline. There's actually a huge amount of data the
Speaker 1: tracks that decline in trust among Americans toward our fellow Americans. Edelman,
Speaker 1: a global communications marketing firm, has run a trust barometer
Speaker 1: for several years now. It marked a fourteen percent decline
Speaker 1: and trust of the US government from two thousand seventeen
Speaker 1: to two thousand eighteen. Trust in businesses, in in g
Speaker 1: O s, and in the media all suffered similarly steep declines.
Speaker 1: These are the sharpest drops Adelman has seen in its
Speaker 1: eighteen years of measuring trust. Here's Richard Edelman, head of
Speaker 1: the firm, quote. This is the first time that a
Speaker 1: massive drop in trust has not been linked to a
Speaker 1: pressing economic issue or catastrophe like Japan's two thousand and
Speaker 1: eleven Fukushima nuclear disaster. In fact, it's the ultimate irony
Speaker 1: that it's happening at a time of prosperity, with the
Speaker 1: stock market and unemployment rates in the US at record
Speaker 1: highs Now, it's worth noting that this quote from Edelman
Speaker 1: came from a January two thousand eighteen Atlantic article. Back then,
Speaker 1: the economy was booming. Uh, it is currently somewhat less booming.
Speaker 1: And uh, it's my opinion that we're unlikely to trust
Speaker 1: each other more in the midst of the deep recession
Speaker 1: most economists say is coming now. Back in two fourteen,
Speaker 1: only twenty percent of California residents supported peaceful secession from
Speaker 1: the United States. By January of two thousand seventeen, thirty
Speaker 1: three percent of California supported secession. This poll was talking
Speaker 1: about peaceful secession. Of course, Californians aren't champing at the
Speaker 1: bit to take up arms against the Union, but the
Speaker 1: numbers are still compelling. Only sixty percent of California Republicans
Speaker 1: were against the idea of a peaceful secession. Data from
Speaker 1: the other states supports this simple fact. More Americans and
Speaker 1: more states now support secession than at any point within
Speaker 1: the lifetime of anyone listening to this podcast. Nationwide, two
Speaker 1: percent of Americans support their state secceeding. One way to
Speaker 1: look at this is that seventy eight percent of Americans
Speaker 1: don't want to seceed. But it's worth noting that back
Speaker 1: when the whole Revolutionary War thing kicked off, most people
Speaker 1: in the colonies did not support seceeding from Great Britain,
Speaker 1: or at least not openly. Now, obviously, Epsos and Gallop
Speaker 1: weren't doing surveys back then, people still drank mercury to
Speaker 1: cure their colds. Statistics were not anyone's back in seventeen
Speaker 1: seventy six, but historians have spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: trying to figure out precisely how many people in the
Speaker 1: thirteen colonies supported independence. Most estimates you'll find suggest that
Speaker 1: about a third of colonists were loyal to the crown,
Speaker 1: a third were fence sitters who didn't really land on
Speaker 1: either side of the issue, and only a third of
Speaker 1: early Americans actively supported the revolution. So if that's the
Speaker 1: threshold three percent, while then the twenty tent of Americans
Speaker 1: who currently support secession is a little bit more worrying,
Speaker 1: and it gets worrying or because this increased support for
Speaker 1: the idea of secession has occurred alongside something darker. More
Speaker 1: Americans hate their fellow Americans now than at any point
Speaker 1: in living memory. I'd like to quote from a two
Speaker 1: thousand sixteen Pew Research Center report on partisanship and political animosity.
Speaker 1: Quote for the first time and surveys dating back to
Speaker 1: nineteen nine, two majorities in both parties expressed not just
Speaker 1: unfavorable but very unfavorable views of the other party, and today,
Speaker 1: sizeable shares of both Democrats and Republicans say the other
Speaker 1: party stirs feelings of not just frustration, but fear and anger.
Speaker 1: More than half of Democrats say they're publican party makes
Speaker 1: them afraid, while forty percent of Republicans say the same
Speaker 1: about the Democratic Party. Among those highly engaged in politics,
Speaker 1: those who say they vote regularly and either volunteer for
Speaker 1: or donate to campaigns, fully seventy of Democrats and scent
Speaker 1: of Republicans say they are afraid of the other party.
Speaker 1: This increasing fear has led both sides to arm themselves
Speaker 1: to an unprecedented level. That's been happening on the right
Speaker 1: since at least two thousand eight, but the American left
Speaker 1: has not been associated with gun ownership until recently. In
Speaker 1: the wake of the two thousand sixteen election, the BBC
Speaker 1: published an article titled y U s liberals are now
Speaker 1: buying guns too quote FBI background checks for gun transactions
Speaker 1: sewed to a new record for a single day, a
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty five thousand, seven hundred and thirteen during
Speaker 1: the Black Friday sales on twenty five November. Some of
Speaker 1: this has been put down to gun retailers selling off
Speaker 1: stock at reduced prices, but there have also been reports
Speaker 1: of more non traditional buyers, such as African Americans and
Speaker 1: other minorities, turning up at gun shops and shooting ranges.
Speaker 1: Laura Smith, national spokesperson for the a Rural Gun Club,
Speaker 1: says her organization has seen a huge rise in inquiries
Speaker 1: since November's election and a ten percent increase in paid members.
Speaker 1: In the years since Trump's election and the subsequent street
Speaker 1: fighting between fascist and anti fascists, there have been a
Speaker 1: surge in new left wing gun organizations. These include Redneck Revolt,
Speaker 1: the John Brown Gun Club, and the Socialist Rifle Association.
Speaker 1: There are now numerous left wing and right wing political
Speaker 1: groups that center their identities around being armed advocates of
Speaker 1: a political ideology. Back in two thousand sixteen, before any
Speaker 1: of those far left gun groups existed, former State Department
Speaker 1: strategist David Kilcolin told me this quote. I think what
Speaker 1: we're seeing now is what I would describe as a
Speaker 1: proto insurgency situation. The ingredients are out there. If somebody
Speaker 1: knew what they were doing, they could pull together in
Speaker 1: effective movement. In places like Kurdistan, you see political parties
Speaker 1: that have their own armed wing. Every political party has
Speaker 1: its own armed wing. It's an artifact of a broken
Speaker 1: political system that people start arming themselves just in case.
Speaker 1: I might be arming defensively and that looks offensive to you,
Speaker 1: and it starts to escalate. On my first trip to Iraq,
Speaker 1: I was embedded with the Peshmerga, a Kurdish military force
Speaker 1: made up primarily of soldiers loyal to the two major
Speaker 1: Kurdish political parties. It's the equivalent of the Republican and
Speaker 1: Democratic parties each having armed wings. That sounds silly to
Speaker 1: imagine here in America, but only because most Americans trust
Speaker 1: their political process more than they trusted gun. That trust
Speaker 1: erodes a little more every day. As Adelman researcher David
Speaker 1: bursof explained to The Atlantic quote, the lifeblood of democracy
Speaker 1: is a common understanding of the facts and information that
Speaker 1: we can then use as a basis for negotiation and
Speaker 1: for compromise. When that goes away, the whole foundation of
Speaker 1: democracy gets shaken. On a campaign stop in February, presidential
Speaker 1: candidate Elizabeth Warren publicly questioned whether or not Donald Trump
Speaker 1: would even be a free person in a lot of
Speaker 1: people want the president at least impeached. Imagine how much
Speaker 1: more firm and more aggressive the calls to force him
Speaker 1: out of office will become in the wake of mass
Speaker 1: rioting and protests. Thirty eight percent of Americans roughly support
Speaker 1: the wall. Donald Trump just called a state of emergency
Speaker 1: to build. That number probably represents a pretty good estimate
Speaker 1: for his floor of support. There is ideologically nothing but
Speaker 1: daylight between these people and the liberals they despise. There
Speaker 1: are already calls on the far right for the president
Speaker 1: to assume what amounts to dictatorial powers. On January nine,
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen, President Donald Trump addressed the nation on
Speaker 1: what he called the border crisis. Rampant speculation at the
Speaker 1: time theorized that he would declare a state of emergency
Speaker 1: that night. Here's what Alex Jones's guest Mike Adams wanted
Speaker 1: the president to do. It's the appropriate role of the military.
Speaker 1: It's a constitutional role for the military to defend the borders.
Speaker 1: And also, by the way, Alice, you know posse commentatus.
Speaker 1: It prevents the military from acting as police on the
Speaker 1: streets of America, but it does not prevent military police
Speaker 1: from pursuing enemy combatants and domestic enemies of America who
Speaker 1: are on American soil. Military police can be dispatched to
Speaker 1: arrest and seek out treason US traders, you know, war criminals,
Speaker 1: enemy combatants who are on US soil that there is
Speaker 1: no restriction against that. Let's just keep all of this
Speaker 1: in mind because America is under attack now. Alex Jones
Speaker 1: has been suggesting that the president violently suppresses enemies for
Speaker 1: quite some time. Dan host of the fantastic Alex Jones
Speaker 1: focused podcast Knowledge Fight, sent me this clip from a
Speaker 1: show in mid two thousand seventeen. Donald Trump could have
Speaker 1: them all arrested, just like Lincoln did. Lincoln had members
Speaker 1: of the State Department arrested, Lincoln had judges arrested, and
Speaker 1: hundreds of newspaper editors arrested because they were in open
Speaker 1: sedition falling for the overthrow of the Republic. There's already
Speaker 1: some evidence that President Trump's most violent fans are willing
Speaker 1: to go out shooting in order to ensure his political survival.
Speaker 1: Early in two thousand nineteen, Coast Guard Lieutenant Christopher Hasson
Speaker 1: was busted by the FBI with a kill list of
Speaker 1: the president's political enemies and a sizeable arsenal. In the
Speaker 1: weeks prior to his arrest, Hassen's Google searches included what
Speaker 1: if Trump illegally impeached? And civil war if Trump impeached.
Speaker 1: In a situation where President Trump's very political survival is imperiled,
Speaker 1: and where police around the country find themselves overwhelmed and
Speaker 1: pushed past the breaking point, it's not hard to imagine
Speaker 1: Donald Trump turning to his most fervent supporters for help,
Speaker 1: militiaman and so called Second Amendment people like Lieutenant Hassan.
Speaker 1: He already called on those folks quickly during the election.
Speaker 1: You think there's no chance he would call for violence
Speaker 1: if his freedom was at stake. Michael Cohen, donald Trump's
Speaker 1: lawyer and close confident for fifteen years seems to hold
Speaker 1: the same worries I do. Near the end of his
Speaker 1: multi hour house hearing in February two thousand nineteen, Cohen
Speaker 1: made these closing remarks, indeed, give him my experience working
Speaker 1: for mister Trump. I fear that if he loses the
Speaker 1: election in twenty twenty, that there will never be a
Speaker 1: peaceful transition of power. And this is why I agreed
Speaker 1: to appear before you today. In the event the president
Speaker 1: was impeached or in the likelier event he has voted
Speaker 1: out of the threat of violence is very real. When
Speaker 1: I first wrote those words in February of two thousand nineteen,
Speaker 1: it did seem kind of unlikely to me that that that,
Speaker 1: you know, the president would call on militia's to help
Speaker 1: him maintain power. But then, just a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: after I wrote those words, in an interview with bright
Speaker 1: Bart News, President Donald Trump said this, I can tell
Speaker 1: you I have the support of the police, the support
Speaker 1: of the military, the support of the bikers for Trump.
Speaker 1: I have the tough people, but they don't play it
Speaker 1: tough until they go to a certain point, and then
Speaker 1: it would be very bad, very bad. And let me
Speaker 1: note just for your reference. When I listened to Alex
Speaker 1: Jones speak at the Republican National Convention in two thousand sixteen,
Speaker 1: the armed security for that event where the Bikers for Trump,
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of Americans on the far right are
Speaker 1: already preparing for violence. It's an almost religious belief for
Speaker 1: some of them. If you spend enough time browsing q
Speaker 1: and On Focus sub credits and Twitter conversations, you will
Speaker 1: find ample evidence of this. These people believe, with a
Speaker 1: dedication of a cultist, that the Democratic Party is the
Speaker 1: center of a vast pedophilic conspiracy. There have already been
Speaker 1: three attacks by deranged q and On followers, including one
Speaker 1: man who tried to block off transit to the Hoover Dam.
Speaker 1: It was an attempt to force the president to openly
Speaker 1: go after his political enemies. As the days and weeks
Speaker 1: where on, the hardened core of Q and On believers
Speaker 1: grow angrier and more prone to violence. Here's one post
Speaker 1: I found on a r fifteen dot com, the largest
Speaker 1: firearms forum on the Internet. It's from a thread full
Speaker 1: of q and On discussion. Quote. The left is used
Speaker 1: to getting their way, so much so that they will
Speaker 1: do anything to retain their power. If we the people
Speaker 1: truly desire to remain free, then we shall, in small
Speaker 1: or large groups, have to do what can be done.
Speaker 1: And here's another post from a q and on fan.
Speaker 1: I found part of a Twitter change in which one
Speaker 1: person threatened the impeachment of Donald Trump and called the
Speaker 1: Q and Honor a cultist. Go ahead, my cult is winning.
Speaker 1: And after you placed articles of impeachment, you just wait
Speaker 1: to see how many patriots pick up their guns and
Speaker 1: solve this problem. You may want to join my cult
Speaker 1: before it's too late for you and your family and friends.
Speaker 1: How many deaths would it take? How many soldiers deployed
Speaker 1: to quell the rioting before we'd recognize this conflict as
Speaker 1: what it was the Second American Civil War? That fact
Speaker 1: is anyone's guess. But every society has a breaking point,
Speaker 1: and I can guarantee you that point would take almost
Speaker 1: everyone by surprise. That's sort of how conflict starts. It
Speaker 1: boils up from protests since police violence and builds to gunfights, bombings,
Speaker 1: and dead cities. Back in two thousand sixteen, when I
Speaker 1: was working on that Civil War article for Cracked, I
Speaker 1: interviewed Status Calvious. He's a scholar who specifically studies the
Speaker 1: sociology of civil wars, and he's also the survivor of
Speaker 1: a civil war. During our interview, I brought up some
Speaker 1: of my experiences in Ukraine, conversations i'd had with people
Speaker 1: who'd been at the Maidawn. I mentioned the status that
Speaker 1: these people had all felt bewildered by the speed with
Speaker 1: which the situation had gone from protests to shooting. Statis
Speaker 1: told me this quote, what most other people experienced in
Speaker 1: civil wars is that they seemed to come out of nowhere.
Speaker 1: Everybody shocked, even the people who are studying these conflicts.
Speaker 1: There is an element of contingency always present. It's more
Speaker 1: about that kind of sense of shock and fear and
Speaker 1: loss of trust and security, which I think is one
Speaker 1: of the key features of any civil war. I found
Speaker 1: another salient quote in a Fortune article from eighteen talking
Speaker 1: about how the Brexit vote had spurred support for secession
Speaker 1: among many Americans. The speaker is Sanford Levinson, a polypy
Speaker 1: professor of the University at Texas at Austin. Quote. I
Speaker 1: grew up assuming the Soviet Union was simply part of
Speaker 1: the status quo. All of us grew up assuming the
Speaker 1: United Kingdom was part of the furniture. Why do we
Speaker 1: think the United States is etched in Stone? On two
Speaker 1: thousand seventeen, Jeremy Christian got on a Portland max Light
Speaker 1: rail train. Christian had an extensive violent criminal history. He
Speaker 1: was also a member of the far right protest group
Speaker 1: Patriot Prayer. One popular clothing item among Patriot Prayer members
Speaker 1: is a T shirt with pinochet did Nothing Wrong written
Speaker 1: on the front and r w DS written on the
Speaker 1: sleeves that stands for right Wing Death Squad. During his ride,
Speaker 1: Jeremy Christian saw two young Muslim teenage girls. He began
Speaker 1: cursing at them and hurling racial epithets. Three male passengers
Speaker 1: intervened and tried to get him to back down. He
Speaker 1: pulled a knife, stabbing two of them to death and
Speaker 1: critically wounding the third. When police took him away, Jeremy
Speaker 1: Christian shouted, that's what liberalism gets you. Whatever else you
Speaker 1: take out of this episode, I want you to remember
Speaker 1: one thing. The Second American Civil War is not theoretical
Speaker 1: for everybody. For some people, it's already started. They're just
Speaker 1: waiting for the rest of us to catch up. Most times,
Speaker 1: gun shots are chair vows. Round here huh cool. Sleep
Speaker 1: We could show sleep time the chair repos me. Come,
Speaker 1: we don't fight, we don't right. Even when we don't fight,
Speaker 1: we don't right. Even when I'm Robert Evans and I'm
Speaker 1: just exhausted from reading all of that. You can find
Speaker 1: me on Twitter at I right, okay. You can find
Speaker 1: this show on Twitter at happen here pod, and you
Speaker 1: can find the show online at it could happen here
Speaker 1: pod dot com. Our music, as always, is from four
Speaker 1: Fists