Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Ah, that sound you just heard, listeners was me opening
Speaker 2: up a can of whoop ass on your sense of
Speaker 2: emotional well being because it's behind the bastard's back for
Speaker 2: the first time in twenty twenty four, which is statistically
Speaker 2: gonna be one of the worst years of all of
Speaker 2: our lives. So I hope everybody's excited having a good
Speaker 2: time feeling happy.
Speaker 1: Did you like rehearse that in the mirror?
Speaker 2: No, No, that all came. I had a totally different
Speaker 2: bit to do, Sophie. But then I realized I hadn't
Speaker 2: opened my can of Aura Bora herbal sparkling water. This
Speaker 2: is cactus rose flavor.
Speaker 3: Mmmm. Sounds like soap, but go on, ah.
Speaker 2: It's tasty. That's a great way to enjoleep oout me
Speaker 2: sipping the.
Speaker 3: Hillacious year that will be with your cactus rose water. Yeah, Robert,
Speaker 3: it'll be it'll be fine.
Speaker 2: Everything's fine, It'll be fine. Yeah, be content for you
Speaker 2: if you.
Speaker 3: How many bastards will be born? Bastards we don't even
Speaker 3: know about who are going to come around this year?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Hey, Robert, Sophie, Yes, do you want to.
Speaker 1: Introduce our guest?
Speaker 2: No? Yes, I'm maybe perhaps perhaps I will introduce our guest,
Speaker 2: who is Francesca Fiorentini, returning beloved guest, host of Habituation
Speaker 2: Room and partner in life of Matt Lieb.
Speaker 1: Everyone's partner that you just said that, But does that
Speaker 1: hurt you at all?
Speaker 3: Oh? No, no, no, I enjoy Look he's I always
Speaker 3: live in his shadow, and it's fine. I'm glad I
Speaker 3: get some time from myself. No, of course he First
Speaker 3: of all, he is a thirsty mf or who is needy.
Speaker 3: And every time I get recognized for anything on the street,
Speaker 3: he will go to that person and go, what about me?
Speaker 2: You recognize me?
Speaker 1: Love?
Speaker 2: I know so good matt leab Dirt.
Speaker 3: Here so good, there's so much good matt leab Dirt.
Speaker 3: But yes, I love my baby matt Leeb fat Dueb,
Speaker 3: and we have a baby together. I also love her.
Speaker 3: And it's so good to be here on the first
Speaker 3: of the year. I mean not the first, but one
Speaker 3: of the first days of the year. It's our first
Speaker 3: twenty four bastard.
Speaker 2: It's several days into the actual year, but this is
Speaker 2: the first day that we're recording behind the Bastards, which
Speaker 2: legally makes it the only day that's mattered so far
Speaker 2: this year, you know, those of you who had important days,
Speaker 2: I don't care.
Speaker 1: And I really don't think this year could be that
Speaker 1: bad because you have a live show coming up. Is
Speaker 1: that right, Francesca.
Speaker 3: That's such a great segue to tell you the hell yeah,
Speaker 3: before we get started, Everybody, if you don't know me,
Speaker 3: you know Matt leeb and so by association you love
Speaker 3: me in the podcast The Situation Room, as Robert just mentioned,
Speaker 3: I'm going to be live in San Francisco at SF
Speaker 3: Sketch Fest on Sunday, January twenty eighth at seven pm
Speaker 3: at the Gateway Theater, and I'm bringing the Daily Zeitgeist
Speaker 3: co host Miles Gray.
Speaker 2: So, oh my.
Speaker 3: Gosh, he's gonna be there. People. It'll be so good,
Speaker 3: Emma Bigland of the Majority Report. Also for the like
Speaker 3: political heads. Damn yeah, it's gonna be It's gonna be
Speaker 3: a good show. And Robert of course helps sell it out.
Speaker 3: Last year was so fun. Sadly, Robert's not gonna be
Speaker 3: there again, but what damn it. I don't know. Maybe uh,
Speaker 3: maybe in the future, but yeah, anyone who's in the
Speaker 3: Bay come through.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're very familiar with our our dear friend Miles
Speaker 1: Gray and if you would like poor info on this,
Speaker 1: I'm linking in our episode descriptions.
Speaker 2: Speaking of live performances. No, no, speaking of the worst
Speaker 2: year that any of us has ever had. Maybe, uh, Francesca,
Speaker 2: how do you feel about the Republican Party? Oh?
Speaker 3: Like, not really my thing? You know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Like I like, I no, just not into it, like
Speaker 3: Lime's not doing you know, like I don't. I don't
Speaker 3: want anything to do with it. You know, I've never
Speaker 3: really tried it, but I don't want to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'm a pretty tolerant guy, but I've just
Speaker 2: I've just gotten too many death threats from like Republican
Speaker 2: legislators to people.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's it's not my thing either. But you
Speaker 2: know what is even worse than the Republican Party in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four. Orange County, California in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 2: What do you know about the OC?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: God, Okay, the OC stands for Orange County. There you go,
Speaker 3: That's all I know. No, I feel a lot of
Speaker 3: like obviously, there was a show. It's pretty like rich
Speaker 3: White People drama, a little bit of red State Maga
Speaker 3: of California growing Asian American voter population. I know that
Speaker 3: lot of a lot of Asian Americans who vote them. Recently,
Speaker 3: they fliped the districts in the OC.
Speaker 2: YEP. But maybe I'm feeling like i'me since like this sixties.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, I'm feeling some retired police officers. I'm feeling
Speaker 3: some cacake vibes. I'm feeling it's clansy over there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, a little. It's it, you know, to be
Speaker 2: fair as you just as you mentioned, the Orange County
Speaker 2: has has really turned around recently politically and is not
Speaker 2: nearly the kind of Republican stronghold it used to be,
Speaker 2: which is great. It is becoming, like, at least demographically,
Speaker 2: more of a normal suburb than what it was during
Speaker 2: the period of time we're about to talk about. Which
Speaker 2: is the uterus from which the Trump Republican partyest. It's
Speaker 2: not a US base. Well, it's it's warm, it's got
Speaker 2: palm trees. No, it is a past biology in high school.
Speaker 3: It's a moldy gym towel in a men's spa where
Speaker 3: there's lots of boys talk. As Milania would say, it's
Speaker 3: like it's like a mushroom growing on like that a
Speaker 3: gym towel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Ronald Reagan masturbated it into a gym sawe and
Speaker 2: left it in a hot shower floor in a boys
Speaker 2: locker room. Yeah, thirty years or so has nothing to
Speaker 2: do with this. Okay, Well, you know, people can describe
Speaker 2: it however they feel in their hearts. Although I am
Speaker 2: I am now more on board team dirty Gym, but yeah,
Speaker 2: Orange County, whatever you however you want to describe it
Speaker 2: to yourself. The Republican Party that is we're all dealing
Speaker 2: with right now, and the Republican Party that gave us
Speaker 2: Reagan and everything terrible that came with Reagan, you know,
Speaker 2: the birth of the anti abortion movement, right, the birth
Speaker 2: of the religious right as a as a powerful political entity,
Speaker 2: and the fact that it has gotten increasingly acceptable for
Speaker 2: Republican candidates to talk about having their enemies purged. All
Speaker 2: of that. The story of all of that starts in
Speaker 2: Orange County, and it heavily involves an Orange County local,
Speaker 2: a guy named John Schmidts, who was the kind of
Speaker 2: the first Trump. He was a dude who ran for
Speaker 2: president you haven't heard of, but who was really the
Speaker 2: guy playing around with a lot of very early Trumpist politics,
Speaker 2: kind of taking the torch from Goldwater and handing it off.
Speaker 2: You know, he didn't actually like Reagan, but a lot
Speaker 2: of the crazier shit that came out of Reagan was
Speaker 2: at least partially people in the GOP who liked Schmitz
Speaker 2: or who at least saw a value in courting his electorate.
Speaker 2: So this is a really interesting story. And in order
Speaker 2: to really properly talk about the bastardury of John Schmitz,
Speaker 2: we have to start with the birth of Orange County,
Speaker 2: California itself, because there's a reason why so much of
Speaker 2: the modern right was born in Orange County.
Speaker 3: I'm so fascinating because it is a mystery to me
Speaker 3: that you can live in proximity to a beautiful beach
Speaker 3: and Disneyland and still be a miserable piece of shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really has something to do with we'll talk
Speaker 2: about what it's got something to do with, but you're right,
Speaker 2: it is like a lovely place to be a piece
Speaker 2: of shit at. Orange County includes about forty miles of
Speaker 2: sunny beachland, starting at Seal Beach in the north and
Speaker 2: extending to San Clemente down south. If you're you might
Speaker 2: think of Orange County as like, if you are from
Speaker 2: the DFW area like me, it's a little bit like
Speaker 2: the Plano to Dallas, right, and both in terms of
Speaker 2: like kind of the how long it takes to get
Speaker 2: there from the city, you know, although yeah, both those
Speaker 2: cities have doug shit traffic, and in terms of how
Speaker 2: much more like conservative it is out there, and also
Speaker 2: kind of how much less dense it is, you know,
Speaker 2: both places and there's a lot of places like this
Speaker 2: in the United States are kind of masses of suburbs.
Speaker 2: Now there's not as I think it's a little bit
Speaker 2: better now certainly than it was in the sixties, but
Speaker 2: like not a lot of shared community spaces like you
Speaker 2: have in any kind of city, just by default, because
Speaker 2: that's the way like dense cities work.
Speaker 3: It's where people go to escape cities because they're like,
Speaker 3: there's crme, am, I need to live in a mansion.
Speaker 2: And then they don't talk to anyone for four straight months,
Speaker 2: but rush Limbaugh and they lose their minds.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So around the turn of the century, this was
Speaker 2: all still farmland, right. It was just owned by a
Speaker 2: few people who had huge tracts of it, and it
Speaker 2: had primarily been used for like grazing cattle before. Right,
Speaker 2: they wind up finding a lot of natural gas and
Speaker 2: stuff in Orange County, So obviously the oil industry gets
Speaker 2: the fuck in there, and there's some guys who make
Speaker 2: a bunch of money buying up land for that. And
Speaker 2: by the nineteen twenties kind of it was very clear
Speaker 2: to people who had money and knew how it worked
Speaker 2: that like, well, whatever, we're going to be able to
Speaker 2: keep getting for this place, because like ranchland is going
Speaker 2: to be a lot less money than we'll get if
Speaker 2: we parcel it up into little lots and sell it
Speaker 2: off to developers to build suburbs. Right, and this is
Speaker 2: kind of ahead of the curve, Right, This isn't the
Speaker 2: first place where suburbs start developing, but it's like one
Speaker 2: of the early places where you start to get the
Speaker 2: developments that are going to and kind of the post
Speaker 2: war period become like the fame miss American suburban culture. Right.
Speaker 2: The strip mall, Yeah, yeah, the straight the Giants, the
Speaker 2: endless series of strip malls.
Speaker 3: That's beautiful, truly, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is like a breathtaking natural beast, just like
Speaker 2: running by us on the Serengetti of our souls making
Speaker 2: reminding us all what the fucking concrete looks like and
Speaker 2: how many.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, just how dude, Earth's Earth? Like
Speaker 3: this is such a corny thing. Do you think, like
Speaker 3: like the top soil like tells the other layers of Earth?
Speaker 3: How fucking ugly humans made it up there? You know
Speaker 3: what I'm saying, Like they're like, you should see it
Speaker 3: up here. They got strip malls it is.
Speaker 2: I was thinking of moving out mantles kind of boring. No, man,
Speaker 2: you want to you don't want to get up here
Speaker 2: right now?
Speaker 1: There's definitely a dirty little group.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there is.
Speaker 2: Thirty more years they'll get rid of all the buildings.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, they're all die off. Well we're coming through
Speaker 3: the cracks of that concrete. But okay, so right, urban sprawl.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, well, I mean it actually starts kind of
Speaker 2: separately from the urban sprawl, right, because Los Angeles isn't
Speaker 2: nearly as big in the twenties. But yeah, you get
Speaker 2: these rich people who start with like beach homes on
Speaker 2: the coast, and then a little later in the thirties
Speaker 2: or so. Oh no, yeah, probably like the fifties, like
Speaker 2: the Irvine Company comes in, they see you know, there's
Speaker 2: already there's demand for this land. A bunch of rich
Speaker 2: people have houses on it already. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: space out here, and it's kind of adjacent to Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: Let's start cutting this up into tracts and selling it
Speaker 2: to people. Right, This opened up a lot of a
Speaker 2: huge amount of high end homes. Right. These are not
Speaker 2: the like super affordable, like low wage, middle wage working
Speaker 2: class guys they're going for here. They're going for this
Speaker 2: big population of white war veterans who were educated and
Speaker 2: who were in industries that paid well, and largely that's
Speaker 2: going to be the defense industry, right, which is hugely
Speaker 2: we'll talk about this a bit more later, but hugely
Speaker 2: focused in southern California. So most of these guys, again,
Speaker 2: World War two is just in it. A lot of
Speaker 2: these guys were veterans, and they would have been veterans
Speaker 2: who had, like in a lot of cases, maybe more
Speaker 2: technical jobs. But Southern California has and has had military
Speaker 2: basis for a while. A lot of training gets done
Speaker 2: out near San Diego and had I think in this
Speaker 2: point too, And so a bunch of these dudes who
Speaker 2: had passed through, they'd gone they'd come from like Bumfuck,
Speaker 2: Iowa or something and wound up in southern California and
Speaker 2: we're like, well, this is so much better than nine
Speaker 2: feet of snow in the winter. This is where I
Speaker 2: want to go if I survived the Germans. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's that's kind of the start of it, right.
Speaker 3: It is crazy. I'm from northern California, and southern California
Speaker 3: does have just like like such like random war planes
Speaker 3: overhead that you're like, it's the Rose Bowl, Why is
Speaker 3: there a war plane like doing very suspicious, weird donuty
Speaker 3: alien shit things overhead and so loud.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was weird moving out here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Right, I'm just like, what if I were in
Speaker 3: the actual war, you know.
Speaker 1: And I'm just like, that's normal.
Speaker 2: That's what I grew up. Yeah. I didn't even hear
Speaker 2: that shit grown up in Texas. Like the number of
Speaker 2: warplanes that I see I saw overhead in California, or
Speaker 2: like showing up at Seattle randomly and it's just all
Speaker 2: sailors on the street because it turns out there's a
Speaker 2: week for that. I didn't know these things were factors
Speaker 2: of life for other people, because people don't come to
Speaker 2: the suburbs of Dallas.
Speaker 3: Did you kiss one? I mean Fleet Week.
Speaker 2: I would have, but I never got around to it.
Speaker 3: An opportunity didn't present it.
Speaker 2: So I was too nervous. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, you know there's still time.
Speaker 2: All those men in their terrible, terrible uniforms. God, the
Speaker 2: Navy uniforms look like shit. Okay, sorry, So you get
Speaker 2: these guys, these houses start getting built and whatnot, and
Speaker 2: kind of from the start of the OC's development into
Speaker 2: a community, power and land there is held almost entirely
Speaker 2: by this tiny consortium of tin lands, most of whom
Speaker 2: had more than two hundred thousand acres each. So right,
Speaker 2: the whole community that exists there today starts off with
Speaker 2: like ten guys who just bought up everything back when
Speaker 2: it was really cheap.
Speaker 3: I was like, mister Huntington Beach.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Johnny Huntington Iron Beach. Yeah. They
Speaker 2: combined their palates Santa and Anna, Yes, Santa and Anna, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: their marriage was a big deal. And of course Johnny
Speaker 2: and Sino, the star of the biopic and Sino, yeah,
Speaker 2: we all remember that great film. These dudes are all
Speaker 2: they're all businessmen. Some of them are in oil too.
Speaker 2: A lot of them are in oil to or ranchers.
Speaker 2: That's a conservative demographic, right, and they make the decision like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we'll make more money off these ranches by like kind
Speaker 2: of transferring them into real estate. Empires to really take
Speaker 2: advantage of the housing boom. And you know, this kind
Speaker 2: of explosion in suburban living after the war, and this
Speaker 2: boom and home buying is largely subsidized by the Department
Speaker 2: of Defense. Right, there's a BET's a big part of it.
Speaker 2: If you're a veteran, and damn near everybody is at
Speaker 2: this point, you get mortgage aid and yeah, I want
Speaker 2: to quote here from the book Suburban Warriors by Lisa McGirr. Quote.
Speaker 2: By nineteen sixty two, defense had become the nation's largest business,
Speaker 2: and from nineteen forty six to nineteen sixty five, sixty
Speaker 2: two percent of the federal budget went to defense. These
Speaker 2: huge expenditures catalyzed the affluent society and directly and indirectedly
Speaker 2: affected the lives of every American.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: Defense money drove national economic growth. The regions that profited
Speaker 2: most directly were the Sun Belt, South and West, and
Speaker 2: the biggest beneficiary was southern California. And yeah, I don't know. Again,
Speaker 2: California has this like kind of driven by a lot
Speaker 2: of conservative media reputations being hippie land, but like it's
Speaker 2: where we make our killing instruments to a significant extent, right,
Speaker 2: it's where we train our soldiers.
Speaker 3: My question is, what about black veterans? Right? Was this cause?
Speaker 3: Like why aren't there I mean, there's a Latino in
Speaker 3: a black bas population in oc but this sounds like
Speaker 3: very white.
Speaker 2: Well that's a great question. And there's no black veterans
Speaker 2: because they're not allowed to buy homes there.
Speaker 3: Oh easy, simple, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Because it's simply not allowed. There's gonna be a bunch
Speaker 2: of cases where even like you know, Korean American fans
Speaker 2: of Vietnamese American families, there's this because this region is
Speaker 2: so conservative. After the Vietnam War, ins a bunch of
Speaker 2: Vietnamese citizens who had been pro us, Right, we ship
Speaker 2: a bunch of those people back over here and give
Speaker 2: them citizenship. It's like one of the things that kind
Speaker 2: of happens at the end of the war. And when
Speaker 2: that happens, there's this big initial celebration and so and
Speaker 2: then they're like, well, you know, we've fought against the communists,
Speaker 2: we'll move into the super anti communist, right wing neighborhood,
Speaker 2: and all those guys are like, oh, but we don't
Speaker 2: want you here, No, absolutely not. And they you know,
Speaker 2: they still like like build a community for themselves there
Speaker 2: to a significant extent. It's just there's a there's a
Speaker 2: great deal of opposition.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, not the nice bluffs.
Speaker 2: No no, no, it's like a whole it's a whole deal.
Speaker 2: So yeah, Southern California broadly speaking, is going to get
Speaker 2: most of like the largest single chunk of the money
Speaker 2: in defense contracts that comes during like the entirety of
Speaker 2: the Cold War, Like that is a huge amount of
Speaker 2: what this country spins on defense in that period just
Speaker 2: all gets hoovered up by Southern California. And most of
Speaker 2: the people working in the companies that are doing the hoovering,
Speaker 2: a lot of them live in Southern California. So before
Speaker 2: the war had started, defense basically had not been an
Speaker 2: industry in Orange County, whereas by nineteen fifty there's about
Speaker 2: thirty one thousand workers like in the defense industry who
Speaker 2: live just in Orange County, you know, And this is not, like,
Speaker 2: to be fair, that's not the only place in southern
Speaker 2: California where there's a lot of defense money. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of these companies will have their headquarters in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: LA gets like like like a lot of building in
Speaker 2: LA basically happens in order to serve the defense industry
Speaker 2: in the post war period. And yeah, a lot of
Speaker 2: the most affluent of these guys, and many of them
Speaker 2: may work in LA because that's where the companies are headquartered,
Speaker 2: but they live in Orange County. Are are these defense
Speaker 2: industry contractors, and especially like the very well educated ones,
Speaker 2: the guys making rockets and guidance systems and optics and stuff,
Speaker 2: the guys making like space weapons. Right that a lot
Speaker 2: of those dudes wind up living in and around Orange
Speaker 2: County because the houses are bigger and nicer and they
Speaker 2: can afford them. From nineteen forty to nineteen sixty, the
Speaker 2: county population grew by roughly three hundred and eighty five percent.
Speaker 2: So that's how quickly this place explodes just because of
Speaker 2: the end of World War II, in the birth of
Speaker 2: the Cold War. And it's always been conservative here as
Speaker 2: long as there has been any kind of community or
Speaker 2: in Orange County, it's always been conservative. In the nineteen
Speaker 2: twenties when the second KKK kind of starts showing up
Speaker 2: in the United States, two of the largest Yeah, oh yeah, no,
Speaker 2: you were very very prescient on that. The two biggest
Speaker 2: counties in californ for clan membership are Anaheim and Fullerton,
Speaker 2: which yeah, yeah, I don't have trouble seeing that. I'm
Speaker 2: afraid it's also a stronghold for the temperance movement. This
Speaker 2: is like the part of California that wants to ban
Speaker 2: drinking the most, which I get it, you wouldn't that
Speaker 2: shit don't fly in northern California.
Speaker 3: No, it's also you know, do you know there's the
Speaker 3: John Wayne Airport here Robert, which is, yeah, so perfect
Speaker 3: because we did that series on John Wayne, and I
Speaker 3: was like, ah, yeah, I know a thing or two
Speaker 3: about that psycho, a whole deserter.
Speaker 2: I do prefer his airport to lax.
Speaker 3: But yes, I don't know, dude. I was there and
Speaker 3: it was a zoo. I was like, yet me, let
Speaker 3: me go out of a like a smaller airport. It'll
Speaker 3: be chiller. No, no, no, it was fucking crazy. It's just
Speaker 3: less space. But anyway, I digress.
Speaker 2: Well, it's been a while since i've flown there.
Speaker 1: See, I like lax, but I'm the only one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah you are, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yes, indeed, I'm like it's just yeah.
Speaker 2: So again, one of the things you have to remember
Speaker 2: here is that in this post war period, Southern California
Speaker 2: is not a cool place for hippies and like space
Speaker 2: cadets and left wing type people, right, Like, that's not
Speaker 2: what it's thought of at all. It's one of the
Speaker 2: most conservative regions in the country at the turn of
Speaker 2: the century. Huntington Beach in the twenties was advertised as
Speaker 2: a town where quote there are no saloons or drinking,
Speaker 2: and Lisa mcger writes that there were also incredibly strong
Speaker 2: social norms in the region and laws against any kind
Speaker 2: of sexual behavior. Quote in nearby Long Beach in the twenties,
Speaker 2: ordinances forbade caresses hugging, fondling, embracing, kissing, or wrestling with
Speaker 2: any person or persons of the opposite sex in or
Speaker 2: upon or near any public park, avenue, Court Street, or
Speaker 2: any other public place, which I feel like that means
Speaker 2: you could embrace or fondle someone of the same sex.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like a lot of Huntington Beach magachuds
Speaker 3: really took that to heart and definitely wrestle and fondle
Speaker 3: one another on the beach and caress each other. But
Speaker 3: it's like, you know, no homo or whatever. Yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 3: that's what I know about Huntington Beach. It was just
Speaker 3: like when Trump won, was like, oh wow, again, you
Speaker 3: can live in a beautiful place, have access to a
Speaker 3: beach and still somehow think that immigrants at destroying the country.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, just a bunch of bunch of angry men
Speaker 2: with faces as red as a California sunset. Awful. But
Speaker 2: if you're if you're heavily invested in creatine like me,
Speaker 2: it's also like, at least you know you're going to
Speaker 2: be able to retire right off all that sweet sweet
Speaker 2: creatine money are putting it into the economy. So it's
Speaker 2: a part of the country with a lot of moral
Speaker 2: busy bodies from a pretty earlier period. And in fact,
Speaker 2: this kind of southern California in the area that's going
Speaker 2: to become known as Orange County, like I mean that
Speaker 2: it is the county, but that it's going to become
Speaker 2: known in pop culture is Orange County actually has one
Speaker 2: of the highest ratios of churches or capita of any
Speaker 2: place in the country, like this is the most Jesusist
Speaker 2: chunk of the country in that period of time. Pretty much.
Speaker 2: There's not many places that beat it. And it's actually,
Speaker 2: I don't think a lot of people know this. It's
Speaker 2: the literal birthplace of fundamentalist Christianity, because modern Fundamentalist Christianity
Speaker 2: comes out of a series of essays titled The Fundamentals
Speaker 2: A Testimony to the Truth that had been published from
Speaker 2: nineteen ten to nineteen fifteen at the behest of a
Speaker 2: California oil company founder named Lyman Stewart who lives in
Speaker 2: Orange County.
Speaker 3: Nice, right, I see what I'm saying. Like California, Yeah, true, truly,
Speaker 3: NorCal number one. And secondly, it's not a blue state.
Speaker 3: It's not like there aren't a bunch of liberals here.
Speaker 3: We have these parts and I used to think it
Speaker 3: was just east of the Five, you know, but it's
Speaker 3: west of the Five too. Again in these beautiful, beautiful areas.
Speaker 3: God damn it. Really Okay, okay.
Speaker 2: You often get this whole belief, yeah, that that California
Speaker 2: has always kind of been this progressive part of the country,
Speaker 2: and it has. It's just there's the most people here,
Speaker 2: so it does the most of everything, and it is
Speaker 2: also one of the most conservative states in the country
Speaker 2: and always has.
Speaker 3: You guys know this used to things. That's cool.
Speaker 2: No, no, yeah, yeah, there's like forty something million people.
Speaker 2: You can do two things.
Speaker 3: It's true, it's true.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So these guys, these fundamentalists, you know, who are
Speaker 2: kind of basing a lot of their their beliefs and
Speaker 2: kind of political organizing, are the ideas in this These
Speaker 2: series of essays are kind of characterized with it. There's
Speaker 2: this hatred of the Catholic Church, which used to be
Speaker 2: a real big thing in US politics. There's this hatred
Speaker 2: of socialism, which is a much newer concept at the time,
Speaker 2: but they're very angry about it. Mormonism. There are very
Speaker 2: anti Mormon and they also were really pissed that people
Speaker 2: were teaching Darwinism. Right, So you can see where again
Speaker 2: abortion is not that much of an issue for them yet,
Speaker 2: but you can see this hatred of evolution, of science,
Speaker 2: of socialism that's all coming together and coming out of
Speaker 2: this period in like an organized way.
Speaker 3: Where did the hatred of Mormonism go? Like, where did
Speaker 3: that happen? Yeah? I feel like everything else got its
Speaker 3: own little war, but like what about the white on
Speaker 3: white war, Like you know, like when are we going
Speaker 3: to see that? Or Mormons are just too nice you
Speaker 3: don't want to fight them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean they they are generally very polite. I
Speaker 2: think it does. It is there, It is somewhere what
Speaker 2: present if you find when you find like really hardcore
Speaker 2: Southern Baptists and stuff, like a lot of them have
Speaker 2: very nasty things to say about Mormons. I think it's
Speaker 2: just less of a thing because people who are like
Speaker 2: extreme Christians and conservative feel more under siege today and
Speaker 2: they know that the Mormons are basically in agreement with
Speaker 2: them on there, So then may think those people are
Speaker 2: going to hell, and in fact do, but they'll caucus
Speaker 2: with them. You know. It's kind of thea's always been better.
Speaker 3: They're not under siege. They just have a greater imagination
Speaker 3: now because somehow demographic demographic shifts blah blah, Yes exactly
Speaker 3: the woke Disney movies, which is in Orange County. All right,
Speaker 3: so take it up with Yeah, they're going to be
Speaker 3: these are the descendants of these people are going to
Speaker 3: be protesting the new the fact that like, uh, what
Speaker 3: is it the song of the South Ride was terminated
Speaker 3: at Disneyland. It's been replaced by The Princess and the Frog,
Speaker 3: which stars a black princess. Like these are the people
Speaker 3: who are going to be protesting the opening of that
Speaker 3: because it's gone woke.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just I'm thinking of how funny it would
Speaker 2: be if like you get all these you get these
Speaker 2: these protests that that tend to be seen as more
Speaker 2: left wing, where people are doing stuff like having like
Speaker 2: like a fake you know, everyone lies down and pretends
Speaker 2: to be dead right to protest so horrible war crime
Speaker 2: happening in Gaza or something. I'm imagining those same tactics
Speaker 2: being used by guys who are angry that the Song
Speaker 2: of the South Ride has got You've got a bunch
Speaker 2: of dudes in to die in in front of them.
Speaker 2: They're all in black faces and the Frog ride all of.
Speaker 3: Them in black. Absolutely yeah, no.
Speaker 2: They this is in honor of my favorite racist cartoon.
Speaker 3: They've got all their little like Disney mugs waiting for
Speaker 3: a refill. They're protesting the fact that like, yeah, wasn't
Speaker 3: one of on the the Jungle Cruise or whatever it was,
Speaker 3: like the the that ride, Like I guess one of
Speaker 3: the trader Sam or one of the like you know,
Speaker 3: voodoo traders got also taken out. They're gonna be dressed
Speaker 3: as them. It'll be it'll be good. It's like your
Speaker 3: grandfather foun a fucking war. This is this is your shit,
Speaker 3: is what you're doing now.
Speaker 2: But yes, I guess we'll see what they're doing in
Speaker 2: a couple of years. But during the Great Depression World
Speaker 2: War two, OC voters, you know, they go for FDR
Speaker 2: like everybody else. There is this period of time where
Speaker 2: like things are really bad and a Democrat gets elected,
Speaker 2: but they vote for a Republican again in nineteen forty,
Speaker 2: and they keep doing so for three quarter of a
Speaker 2: century afterwards, right, And you know a big part of
Speaker 2: this is that after nineteen forty, which is when the
Speaker 2: region grows in that next twenty years again three hundred
Speaker 2: and eighty five percent, all of the new people coming
Speaker 2: in pretty much are wealthy, right, or at least comparatively
Speaker 2: wealthy right to their predecessors moving into the area. They're
Speaker 2: these people who have gotten cushy jobs in the new
Speaker 2: tech industry basically, which is very defense focused at this point,
Speaker 2: and they're all flooding these these increasingly rapidly built homes.
Speaker 2: We start to get some real luminaries and the conservative
Speaker 2: movement out of southern out of Orange County in an
Speaker 2: early era. One of your favorite guys, you were just
Speaker 2: talking about how much you miss him as president, your
Speaker 2: Belinda presidential future presidential candidate, Richard Nixon, who gets voted
Speaker 2: into office in nineteen forty six into Congress by the
Speaker 2: good people of Orange.
Speaker 3: County is from the OC.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's from the OC. He's from your Belinda.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh god.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's Dick Nixon. Baby, he's like a
Speaker 2: southern California boy. He grows up when it's much more
Speaker 2: rule rural.
Speaker 3: But yeah, god damn it. It's a little bit like
Speaker 3: the way that like Stephen Miller, although Steven Miller's from
Speaker 3: like La, Like Steven Miller makes me sense.
Speaker 2: He grew up like Santa Monica or some shit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Steve Miller does not make sense. But uh
Speaker 3: but yeah, Nixon very much makes sense. Also, just born
Speaker 3: with like that old Nixon face, Like he came out
Speaker 3: looking exactly like he does.
Speaker 2: What a hero, What a fucking hero? Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: So culturally it's just also no experience with the outside world,
Speaker 3: especially because the outside world in every.
Speaker 2: Direction is very isolating, is just.
Speaker 3: As conservative and white but again beautiful. But so it's
Speaker 3: it's like it's like two nice, you gotta have an enemy.
Speaker 2: It is. It is like isolated. It this is like
Speaker 2: the suburbs. There's not nearly the same kind of connectivity
Speaker 2: people have through technology. And a lot of these guys
Speaker 2: are people who do they do their term of service.
Speaker 2: They're like, Wow, the world's fucking scary. Let me go
Speaker 2: hide and at one pretty place and make missiles for
Speaker 2: the rest of my life. That's what's gonna That's what
Speaker 2: I'm gonna do. You know, Like that really is for
Speaker 2: a lot of these guys more or less the path
Speaker 2: that they take. So, yeah, Dick Nixon comes out of
Speaker 2: Orange County. He runs for Congress as an anti communist
Speaker 2: right in nineteen fifty. Nixon, you know, pairs up with
Speaker 2: Joe McCarthy and you know, it's good good for him
Speaker 2: as a as a candidate, right and endears him to
Speaker 2: the voters. It starts to provide him with like a
Speaker 2: base of popularity and whatnot. You know, Nixon's going to
Speaker 2: build his career on attacking communists and his alignment with
Speaker 2: Joe McCarthy to a very significant extent, and it's too
Speaker 2: early for it to work in nineteen sixty in part
Speaker 2: because he is Dick Nixon and he is running against
Speaker 2: John F. Kennedy and that's just not going.
Speaker 3: To work for him, even though he's a Catholic.
Speaker 2: Though he's a Catholic. Yeah, we vote one of those
Speaker 2: that really pisses off the Orange County people, right, BAF.
Speaker 2: So we put a papist in.
Speaker 3: This is not part of our fundamental.
Speaker 2: Yeah, speaking of papists, Francesca, how do you feel about papistry?
Speaker 2: Do you think we can trust the papists? Do you
Speaker 2: think that Catholics are an inherent third column in our
Speaker 2: society waiting to sell us out to the Vatican?
Speaker 3: I mean yes, I mean the Biden crime family is
Speaker 3: very much in bed with the inner workings of the Vatican.
Speaker 3: I don't know when you say papistry though I never
Speaker 3: say that word, but I have gotten past my mind
Speaker 3: is like the papistry is like what happens when you
Speaker 3: get a pap smear, Like I'm just taking in this
Speaker 3: beautiful papistry of your you know, cervix is how I feel,
Speaker 3: or like if you're a really good gynecologist. You practice papistry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm imagining some very like confused young Nazi both
Speaker 2: like listening to this podcast and reading a book about
Speaker 2: pap smears and then carrying out attack that makes no
Speaker 2: sense to anybody afterwards.
Speaker 3: Don't wish that? Like, Hey, listeners, are you a young
Speaker 3: confused Nazi? Listen to Behind the Bastards?
Speaker 2: Well, that's I can't imagine a better thing to lead
Speaker 2: into ADS with. Great, We're back. Sophie's gonna have fun
Speaker 2: editing that last throw to ads.
Speaker 1: I'm not doing it. I'm leaving it as is.
Speaker 3: I enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: Oh oh wow, okay, well perfect, no notes, listeners, check
Speaker 2: out my LinkedIn the joy that.
Speaker 3: It brought Francesca to look on her face.
Speaker 1: I'm not cutting that shit.
Speaker 2: Okay. So Orange Countiers they vote for Nixon in forty six.
Speaker 2: They like McCarthy when he's doing his thing, but they're
Speaker 2: not really fans of Nixon by the time he runs
Speaker 2: for president against Kennedy, right, in part because you know,
Speaker 2: Nixon is he's come down as like our political boogeyman, right,
Speaker 2: and he was a terrible, terrible monster, but he, like Nixon,
Speaker 2: is the guy later in his career who will like
Speaker 2: hang out and be friends with Mao. Right, because he
Speaker 2: recognizes the geopolitical benefit of the US being aligned with
Speaker 2: China against the USSR right, That's why he does it.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying he's doing this as a good person,
Speaker 2: but it's like a rational political move that he makes,
Speaker 2: whereas these Orange County guys are saying, like, no, we
Speaker 2: need to all communists are working together to destroy capitalism,
Speaker 2: and we should just keep building more missiles to kill
Speaker 2: them all rather than trying to build like economic and
Speaker 2: political agreements that include these states.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: It just makes me think of like when Trump met
Speaker 3: with Kim Jong un with like no pretext, no promises, nothing,
Speaker 3: just because he's like I'm a strong man, Like you know,
Speaker 3: you idiot, Like anyone could have done that. You got played,
Speaker 3: and yet we're just not supposed to. Like if it
Speaker 3: were anyone else would have done that, the right would
Speaker 3: have freaked the fuck out. This is what Orange County
Speaker 3: worked for, and you're throwing that all away.
Speaker 2: It is interesting that like you're able to get away
Speaker 2: with that if you're Trump, because they just can't like
Speaker 2: hate the guy, and Trump's willing to do it just
Speaker 2: because he does not come out of Conservatism as a movement, right, Like,
Speaker 2: he didn't really im bite any of this propaganda. He
Speaker 2: was just looking for a place where he could fit
Speaker 2: and grow like a mold.
Speaker 3: Speaking of the Yeah, the Jim rag or whatever it is.
Speaker 2: Speaking of Ronald Reagan's cum sock. Yes, yes, Sophie, can
Speaker 2: we talk to the merch people about that? I feel
Speaker 2: like that's a that's a branded that's a branded item. No, okay, Well, Sophie,
Speaker 2: I bought a fifty gallon drum of Ronald Reagan's preserved seamen.
Speaker 2: But I guess I'll have to find a different use
Speaker 2: for that, you know what. I think it'll be fine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let me know what you decided to use that for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm just going to drive through Florida and out
Speaker 2: those little cups you get it, like a Sam's ferm
Speaker 2: me tire.
Speaker 3: We could retire off this sperm.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I like. I like the idea that someone's doing because
Speaker 3: you know, the IDF is doing that to soldiers who
Speaker 3: are killed. Now the what is it? The semen something
Speaker 3: something should seeman astraction, something awful, But that that's oh god,
Speaker 3: oh they're gonna do that to Trump. Oh, I'm sorry, Robert,
Speaker 3: but they're gonna do it to Trump. They're gonna you know, yes,
Speaker 3: what if they do it to Trump?
Speaker 2: Honestly, it would be kind of funny. So let's I
Speaker 2: think it's I think it's fine. I think it's fine.
Speaker 2: Go ahead, do it.
Speaker 3: Have his babies in the future? Will Trump at Dad?
Speaker 2: You're the only thing he hasn't sold of his.
Speaker 3: But how much is it come? That's the future for him?
Speaker 2: Yeah. So these guys in Orange County, you know Nixon,
Speaker 2: they love him for a while and then they like
Speaker 2: feel betrayed by him because he just kind of does
Speaker 2: things that are rational and not purely based on reactionary hatred,
Speaker 2: and that really pisses them off. A bunch of these
Speaker 2: pissed off, insane business leaders in Orange County formed the
Speaker 2: Better American Foundation, And this had actually been formed a
Speaker 2: bit earlier, but it kind of after, you know, the
Speaker 2: Cold War really get started in earnest they turned it
Speaker 2: into this like civilian spy agency where they're building these
Speaker 2: dossiers on every identified Communist in the area. And when
Speaker 2: I say the era, I mean in Los Angeles, like
Speaker 2: and it's down from like Hollywood actors and stuff who
Speaker 2: actually were members of the Communist Party or like writers
Speaker 2: to just like like plumbers and shit that somebody thinks
Speaker 2: is a communist and sends these guys a letter being like,
Speaker 2: here's why I think this man, my neighbor's a communist.
Speaker 2: I saw him wearing a red shirt one time. So
Speaker 2: put him on your murder.
Speaker 3: You know one of the comics, he had a sickle
Speaker 3: and a hammer. Yeah, he's the handyman, you dumb ass. No,
Speaker 3: but there was a that's the communist sign.
Speaker 2: That is it is literally that dumb and like lazy. Right.
Speaker 2: It's not a good database, but it's taken seriously by
Speaker 2: the major law enforcement agency in the area. The LAPD
Speaker 2: partners with these guys to use their records, and it's
Speaker 2: because one of the things these people are keeping track
Speaker 2: of legitimately is labor organizers. One of the reasons why
Speaker 2: is Orange County. There are a lot of farms in
Speaker 2: the area. Those farms are worked primarily by Mexican migrants
Speaker 2: and a lot of folks. Folks would periodically come in
Speaker 2: and try to organize those workers right to get them
Speaker 2: into a union so that they were not exploited to
Speaker 2: the same extent, and that would get these guys on
Speaker 2: a list, and that one way or the other is
Speaker 2: going to get sheriff's deputy or something on your ass,
Speaker 2: and then it's probably not going to end super well
Speaker 2: for you. Right, Like, there's the police kind of partner
Speaker 2: with these folks in this mutually beneficial you know, they
Speaker 2: get busts and stuff and people to go fuck with.
Speaker 2: And you know, these business leaders in Orange County get
Speaker 2: rid of some of their problem, right, and.
Speaker 3: Then they went to go pick their own grapes obviously,
Speaker 3: just you know, because they wanted to be ideologically you know,
Speaker 3: in sane we're going.
Speaker 2: To do that. Farming doesn't mean actually harvesting food. It
Speaker 2: just means sitting on your porch making a lot of money.
Speaker 3: Skulls of those who try to earn a living.
Speaker 2: Yeah, being incredibly angry at all times about the idea
Speaker 2: of Martin Luther King junior. Just pissing yourself with rage.
Speaker 2: Now we're talking about a lot of social conservatism here
Speaker 2: so far. But obviously, you know, a huge amount of this,
Speaker 2: especially the anti communism, comes out of economic conservatism, which
Speaker 2: is why you get this really interesting early marriage in
Speaker 2: southern California in the fifties of hardline libertarian economic theory, right,
Speaker 2: the stuff that's going to really get a lot more
Speaker 2: prominent and actually get a lot of time in the
Speaker 2: sun under Reagan. And kind of ever since, one way
Speaker 2: or the other, you have that kind of merging with
Speaker 2: social conservatism for the first time, right, because while you
Speaker 2: do have a huge number of churches here, you also
Speaker 2: have a lot of these like super tech oriented engineers
Speaker 2: who may be like socially may or may not be
Speaker 2: socially conservative, but are extremely their libertarians, right, And so
Speaker 2: they don't, you know, they'll partner with these religious wackos
Speaker 2: that they may not like, may think are ignorant because
Speaker 2: they don't want to pay any money in taxes. They
Speaker 2: hate the idea that somebody might use a road that
Speaker 2: their tax dollars went towards. Sure, so that merger, which
Speaker 2: is absolutely a critical part of their Republican Party today
Speaker 2: and ever since, that merger starts in Orange County. And
Speaker 2: I'm going to quote from Suburban Warriors again by mcghear
Speaker 2: Leonard Reed, who in nineteen forty five would organize the
Speaker 2: Foundation for Economic Education and Institution devoted to promulgating the
Speaker 2: message of free market, private property, and the moral principles
Speaker 2: which underlie these concepts. Converted to libertarianism during his tenure
Speaker 2: as the manager of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce
Speaker 2: in the nineteen thirties and forties. Reed had been influenced
Speaker 2: by William C. Bulendor who was then vice president of
Speaker 2: the Southern California Edison Company and a board member of
Speaker 2: Spiritual Mobilization, a conservative group of Los Angeles businessmen and clergymen,
Speaker 2: and also in nineteen fifty nine. In nineteen sixty was
Speaker 2: one of twenty five to thirty prominent businessmen invited by
Speaker 2: Robert Welch to organize the John Birch Society on the
Speaker 2: Pacific Coast. Great, so that's a lot of heavy hitters
Speaker 2: like that. This is all coming out of Southern California,
Speaker 2: a huge amount of this. Yeah, yeah, I'm mad.
Speaker 3: I even went to Disneyland.
Speaker 2: Yeah fuck it. Yeah. The next time I see a
Speaker 2: steamboat Willie costume, I'm just gonna kick him right in
Speaker 2: the ass.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, that's what he deserves.
Speaker 2: That's my promise.
Speaker 1: Those tros are really good though. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you'r s is public domain, motherfucker.
Speaker 3: No, honestly, hmm, what I run on to go off
Speaker 3: about Disneyland. But this is wild. So here's the question.
Speaker 3: Is it it's sort of a convergence of interest. Is
Speaker 3: it It's like, Ooh, we can use fake you know,
Speaker 3: religiosity and morals to cover for our blind greed and
Speaker 3: like desire to like not pay anything in taxes like that?
Speaker 3: Or is it I'm religious and I also am wealthy
Speaker 3: and don't want to pay anything in taxes. Therefore I'm
Speaker 3: going to add to my religion libertarianism as part of
Speaker 3: my religion, like or is it just kind of chicking
Speaker 3: into the egg conversation where they both converted at the
Speaker 3: same time.
Speaker 2: It's interesting again, this is another thing you've kind of
Speaker 2: predicted because it is. It is very much a factor
Speaker 2: of let me graft this weirdly like this weirdly libertarian
Speaker 2: capitalist economic theory onto my religion. Because another thing that
Speaker 2: is later going to come out of Southern California that's
Speaker 2: a product of Orange County in a lot of ways
Speaker 2: is prosperity gospel, Christianity.
Speaker 3: I thought it was a Florida will come.
Speaker 2: Florida plays their role, but a huge amount of that
Speaker 2: shit comes out of southern California. That's a that is
Speaker 2: a major center of like where kind of the prosperity
Speaker 2: gospel comes together as like a concept is the OC.
Speaker 3: So we're rich because God wanted us to.
Speaker 2: Be, Yeah, exactly. And you can just pray for money,
Speaker 2: but also it helps if you send several thousand of
Speaker 2: it right here, don't pay taxes. That's less money than
Speaker 2: you could send to my scam church that buys me
Speaker 2: a plane.
Speaker 3: Jesus actually didn't really help the poor. His first instinct
Speaker 3: was ill, gross, do you even go here? Yeah, but
Speaker 3: then he had to.
Speaker 2: Jesus sold the poor makeup that had a seven hundred
Speaker 2: percent markup that he bought on an installment plan. So now, again,
Speaker 2: while we're talking about all this and all this stuff
Speaker 2: that is very common, I'm on the right right now
Speaker 2: that starts in Orange County. That is not the mainstream
Speaker 2: conservative movement at this period of time. And the best
Speaker 2: evidence for that is that a guy who has become
Speaker 2: hated in Orange County, Richard Nixon, wins the presidency. You
Speaker 2: know that, like that is a thing that is eventually
Speaker 2: going to happen, right, and not that far much longer
Speaker 2: in here, right in like the late sixties and so
Speaker 2: while this stuff is starting to take off and take
Speaker 2: holden is eventually going to spread County very much. Is
Speaker 2: kind of weird. Right on a national level. It's not
Speaker 2: the only place that's this conservative, but it's character of
Speaker 2: conservatism is kind of unique. And that's also going to
Speaker 2: contribute to this sense of isolation that we're talking about
Speaker 2: right where this is. This is really it's like a
Speaker 2: petri dish that you've added ingredients to and you're keeping
Speaker 2: it away from the ret and just seeing what grows
Speaker 2: there before you dump it into the tank. Which again,
Speaker 2: that's that moment is is Ronald Reagan, Right, So yeah,
Speaker 2: one of the things that's going to become an early
Speaker 2: hobgoblin of the Republican Party. And you know, the right
Speaker 2: wing movement in Orange County is the ACLU, and this
Speaker 2: causes a problem. On June twenty fourth of nineteen sixty,
Speaker 2: there's this Anaheim resident John Devorman, who is kind of
Speaker 2: one of the rare progressives in the area, and he
Speaker 2: is a member of the ACLU and also an elected
Speaker 2: member of the school board. Right, so these guys do
Speaker 2: not like the ACLU. They think it is a communist organization.
Speaker 2: They think anyone in it is a communist civil liberties Yeah, yes,
Speaker 2: Like so these guys love McCarthyism. And one of the
Speaker 2: things that happens as a result of McCarthy and the
Speaker 2: House Committee on American Activities is, you know huac is.
Speaker 2: You get a number of state committees on un American activities,
Speaker 2: and California has one. It is beloved by these Orange
Speaker 2: County businessmen. They use it a lot in order to
Speaker 2: harass again, like union organizers and stuff that they view
Speaker 2: as enemies. Devorman, as a progressive, wants to abolish it.
Speaker 2: So he hosts a meeting at his house of the ACLU,
Speaker 2: and a bunch of you know, there's a gathering. People
Speaker 2: give speeches about why they need to remove this thing,
Speaker 2: about how to organize to do it, and it kind
Speaker 2: of becomes a local story that like this dude invited
Speaker 2: an acl you meeting at his fucking house. These communists,
Speaker 2: you're holding meetings and are sanctuary of Orange County. And
Speaker 2: I'm going to quote from suburban warriors here. The response
Speaker 2: was swift and forceful. Angry neighbors denounced Worman for importing
Speaker 2: communist ideas into their suburban enclave. Heeding their neighbor's call.
Speaker 2: Citizens whose lives had previously revolved around work, church, and
Speaker 2: family became involved in a contentious legal battle.
Speaker 3: I mean, and this is all like a reaction, as
Speaker 3: you mentioned the MLK thing, Like, this is just reactions
Speaker 3: to the civil rights movement.
Speaker 2: This is just like, yeah, the civil rights movement is
Speaker 2: really kicking off.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly, this is let's flee people who want full
Speaker 3: like yes, to be treated equally, full citizenship, to not
Speaker 3: be barred from Yeah, they're voting the ballot box all
Speaker 3: that shit. That's just all this is. It's like because
Speaker 3: you're like, where does this communism stuff come from? Oh,
Speaker 3: it's just your reaction. It's just the white reaction to
Speaker 3: the black civil rights movement.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's all that this is here. And Devorman
Speaker 2: is unfortunately, he's the kind of dude who's like made
Speaker 2: in a lab to piss off right wingers. Right. He
Speaker 2: was born in New York, he went to Yale. He
Speaker 2: was a lifelong progressive and as a bonus, was also Jewish.
Speaker 2: So these guys like, once they get a load of
Speaker 2: this guy, they are like, oh, fuck, this dude lives here.
Speaker 2: This dude's on the school board. Of course, it turns
Speaker 2: out he's been called up by the California Committee on
Speaker 2: un American Activities before, and he had on principle refused
Speaker 2: to say if he'd ever been a communist or not.
Speaker 2: So within days there's like newsletters going around claiming this
Speaker 2: guy is a trained Communist agent who has infiltrated Orange
Speaker 2: Counties and he's on the school board. He's gonna groom
Speaker 2: our kids, you know, like it's it's it's this is
Speaker 2: not an unfamiliar thing today.
Speaker 3: Tail is old as fucking time. And it's the same
Speaker 3: sort of like this or as old as this, and
Speaker 3: it's the same sort of like yeah, anti semitic, like
Speaker 3: true anti semitic trope of like yeah, it's the Jews
Speaker 3: who are bringing in the migrants and giving black people rights.
Speaker 3: Same same stuff, same stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the story of how people find out that
Speaker 2: this guy has held an ACLU meeting at his house
Speaker 2: is really interesting. It all comes down to this dude
Speaker 2: named James Wallace, who very very conservative and is also
Speaker 2: a production engineer at Auto Netics. You probably haven't heard
Speaker 2: of Auto Neetics, but they are the people who built
Speaker 2: all of the navigation systems for our ICBMs, like if
Speaker 2: you want a nuke to go kill a specific city,
Speaker 2: you hired James Wallace to help make it happen, right,
Speaker 2: Like he's one of these guys. He's a production engineer
Speaker 2: at this company that like that's what they do. So
Speaker 2: and he has decides he's got some free time from
Speaker 2: planning for the apocalypse, and he blazes a trail that
Speaker 2: right wing activists like James O'Keefe would follow for decades.
Speaker 2: He blows up and infiltrates the ACLU meeting, right Like
Speaker 2: he does this, so I'm this conservative sitting in there.
Speaker 2: I'm taking notes, right, And then he writes a letter
Speaker 2: to the local newspaper where he talks about what he
Speaker 2: saw and describes the ACLU rep as a trader and writes,
Speaker 2: I wonder what we would have done in nineteen forty
Speaker 2: two if mister Devorman had a German American booned meeting
Speaker 2: at his house. And it's like, man, I know in
Speaker 2: nineteen forty two, I think I know where you would
Speaker 2: have been.
Speaker 3: Yeah, honestly, but that's the other thing that booned meeting exactly. No,
Speaker 3: I don't know. It's wild to meet that these descendants
Speaker 3: of I guess world War two vets and heroes are
Speaker 3: just echoing, not like they're creating them. Basically American Nazi movement, right,
Speaker 3: or a version of a white nationalist movement, which you know,
Speaker 3: staple of it being anti communist or saying you're anti communists.
Speaker 2: It is extra messed up to accuse a Jewish man
Speaker 2: of wanting to start a German American booned meeting in
Speaker 2: the nineteen forties.
Speaker 3: All the time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that is ooh, that's dark. Yeah. So in short order,
Speaker 4: there's mobs showing up at school board meetings where Devorman
Speaker 4: is going to be present, right, and they're just kind
Speaker 4: of shouting down anyone trying to accomplish anything, like whenever
Speaker 4: they're trying to like actually do the school board shit,
Speaker 4: they're yelling at Dorman being like, were you ever a
Speaker 4: member of the Communist Party? Where you ever remember the
Speaker 4: Communist Party? Eventually his colleagues are like, you're not allowed
Speaker 4: to be both an ACO you.
Speaker 2: Member and a school board member. And he was censured
Speaker 2: and forced into a recall.
Speaker 1: Gee.
Speaker 2: Now the head of the recall effort is another aerospace
Speaker 2: industry employee, an engineer named Dixon Miles. He worked at
Speaker 2: Northonyx now I don't think you've you probably haven't heard
Speaker 2: of Northronics. Uh no, what else?
Speaker 3: What other horrible machine of death that they create? I
Speaker 3: love all this.
Speaker 2: The name is changed a little over the years, you
Speaker 2: know them better today is Northrop Grummen.
Speaker 3: There we go, there we are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is like a Northrop Grumman guy.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: He called the efforts to end a government committee that
Speaker 2: existed primarily to destroy lives, this Unamerican Activities Committee. He
Speaker 2: calls the attempt to take it down a threat to
Speaker 2: our heritage, our beautiful heritage of holding committees to destroy
Speaker 2: people who vote differently.
Speaker 3: No, And then also like that's the other thing that's
Speaker 3: so fucking like the dissonance is so deafening in this
Speaker 3: story and this origin story of like the modern right
Speaker 3: because of the way they I mean, we should have
Speaker 3: said this earlier. But like, these are supposedly religious people
Speaker 3: who are creating weapons of like death every single day,
Speaker 3: and there's no again, there is no contradiction in their minds.
Speaker 3: And yeah, and then again the same shit where it's
Speaker 3: like this guy's like, hey, we have this committee who
Speaker 3: is kind of terrorizing our community in different ways and
Speaker 3: interrogating us. We should probably have some sort of sovereignty,
Speaker 3: we shouldn't be subject to this kind of surveillance. And
Speaker 3: they're like, nah, you like, yeah, it's just it's just
Speaker 3: the same fucking like projection, the acl use the one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're trying to take away our freedom to take
Speaker 2: away other people's freedom, which is what it all comes
Speaker 2: down to. It comes down and this successful effort to
Speaker 2: force Vormen off the school board is a catalyzing moment
Speaker 2: for Orange County conservatives who had always been dicks. Right,
Speaker 2: These people had been shitty people for a spell, but
Speaker 2: they also had never felt like they were organized together
Speaker 2: into any like cohesive political whole. Right, there's this attitude
Speaker 2: that like, well, you know, we're all pretty conservative here.
Speaker 2: None of us like communism, we don't accept in our community.
Speaker 2: But now they realize how many of them there are
Speaker 2: who are that angry about the state of the world.
Speaker 2: And again, the civil rights movement is a big part
Speaker 2: of this, and it gives them this sense of power.
Speaker 2: You know, again, this is not a thing that's going
Speaker 2: to be alien to anyone who's been paying attention in
Speaker 2: the last few years. So it turns out that as
Speaker 2: we've kind of been making The case for the set
Speaker 2: of unique coincidences that formed Orange County in its early
Speaker 2: stages was basically tailor made to create explosion of paranoid
Speaker 2: people with no community connections beyond those geared towards expressing
Speaker 2: fear or anger at imagined political enemies.
Speaker 3: Right, it's just a land of Karens, a rolling, rolling
Speaker 3: hills of Karens.
Speaker 2: It's mostly houses. Everything is like very far apart from
Speaker 2: any spaces where people are going to like gather, you know,
Speaker 2: outside of households regularly. Basically all of the public space
Speaker 2: in the county has been shopped up and sold to
Speaker 2: developers at this point, which has made very clear there's
Speaker 2: a good passage in suburban warriors about this. A segment
Speaker 2: of its middle class found a sense of community in
Speaker 2: the politics and social interaction preferred by local businessmen, right
Speaker 2: wing ideologues, and conservative church leaders. Thus, one woman said
Speaker 2: of conservative activism, it became a social thing. Much of
Speaker 2: the county followed the planned sprawl model of development. This
Speaker 2: led to chaotic spatial arrangements, with one track developed after another.
Speaker 2: Streets were bisected by new housing tracts, increasing a perception
Speaker 2: of discontinuity and chaos. This form of growth created what
Speaker 2: one may term free enterprise cities, with a strong emphasis
Speaker 2: on private development and growth and little regard for public
Speaker 2: or community spaces. By neglecting public space in favor of growth,
Speaker 2: such arrangements weakened the sense of community. In fact, even
Speaker 2: the existing central spaces of the old downtowns were undermined
Speaker 2: in favor of convenience, privacy, and shopping malls. The most
Speaker 2: extreme result of this pro growth attitude was the eventual
Speaker 2: demolition of the old downtown city centre and Ana him
Speaker 2: to make loom for development. So they just they just
Speaker 2: blast everything that isn't a single family dwelling. Basically they
Speaker 2: knew get and pave it. And this is by the way,
Speaker 2: this is where kind of a trail is blazes, like
Speaker 2: the first place where Americans are building developments and walling
Speaker 2: them off from each other in like an organized way,
Speaker 2: like it happens in New York too, kind of in
Speaker 2: a contemporaneous period. You get pieces of that, but like
Speaker 2: you get this, it starts in Orange County with these
Speaker 2: old folks homes right where you basically have this is
Speaker 2: a retirement community. They're not like old folks homes like
Speaker 2: homes for retired people that are all part of a
Speaker 2: community that they like wall and gate off in order
Speaker 2: to like because these people are scared of everything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's like who it's definitely I've the times
Speaker 3: I've been to the OC is like, who are you
Speaker 3: trying to keep out here? Because there's just other gated communities?
Speaker 3: Like are you are there? Is this some kind of
Speaker 3: like you know warriors like fight you know, gang gated community,
Speaker 3: gang situation because that'd be tight, But like, I literally
Speaker 3: don't know who you're keeping out anyone who like you
Speaker 3: can't even walk here, like there are no sidewalks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, which is I mean, all of that is
Speaker 2: part of why it is the way it is there, Right,
Speaker 2: These are the geography and the development makes these very
Speaker 2: isolating places. Also, nobody comes from here. Your whole family,
Speaker 2: like generations of it, doesn't live in Orange County, right,
Speaker 2: you moved here from somewhere else. And by the same note, like,
Speaker 2: so as a result of that kind of the only
Speaker 2: public spaces are churches, and the only organizations that people
Speaker 2: are likely to be members of other than their church
Speaker 2: is their political party. So when you have that and
Speaker 2: you add into it, there's suddenly this fight over perceived
Speaker 2: communism in the neighborhood and everybody rallies together and they're
Speaker 2: all doing a thing together in the real world, and
Speaker 2: that's like addictive, and you're going to get that's the
Speaker 2: origin of a lot of what's going to wind up
Speaker 2: infecting the rest of the Republican Party. It starts with this, right,
Speaker 2: It starts with this community starved group of people who
Speaker 2: find a sense of like identity and just excitement and
Speaker 2: going to war with this dude who just wanted to
Speaker 2: host an say ACLU meeting. That's a huge moment in
Speaker 2: the history of American conservatism. Yeah. So the real gift
Speaker 2: that Vorman had gave these people was a threat to
Speaker 2: rally behind, and once they had felt that high, they
Speaker 2: didn't want to give it up. Local business leaders, who,
Speaker 2: as we've stayed it have always been the engine of
Speaker 2: conservative politics in the area, saw opportunity. A group of them,
Speaker 2: headed by Walter Nott, owner of k Notsberry Farm, organized,
Speaker 2: which is like the first theme park in the US,
Speaker 2: I think. Yeah, so the nots Ery Farm guy organizes
Speaker 2: a committee and sponsors what he calls the Orange County
Speaker 2: School of Anti Communism. Oh god, Oh yeah, that just
Speaker 2: sounds like a great.
Speaker 3: Time over a Notsbury farm. You know why. At least
Speaker 3: Disney doesn't have like a shady past, yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: or any kind of right wing over app or any
Speaker 3: kind of Nazi.
Speaker 2: No, you know, none that I've heard of. Not they're
Speaker 2: woke as hell.
Speaker 3: Hey, they're super woke. Desanta said it himself. Okay, Sonosbury, Yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: another theme park's been ruined.
Speaker 2: Yeah, organizes the Orange County School of Anti Communism. Now,
Speaker 2: initially this is like a series of local community college classes, right,
Speaker 2: but they're so over attended, Like most the community college
Speaker 2: is drowning in suburbanites who want to attend this anti
Speaker 2: communism school. So mister Not is like, all right, well,
Speaker 2: we got to do it bigger and a month before
Speaker 2: the Bay of Pigs invasion in the spring of nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty one, more than seven thousand students and parents, many
Speaker 2: of whom had skipped Workers School, gathered in La Palma
Speaker 2: Park Stadium in Anaheim to attend a five day Christian
Speaker 2: anti communist school organized by Not. And I'm going to
Speaker 2: quote from the La Times to talk about give you
Speaker 2: a little insight into how this thing goes This is
Speaker 2: a speech by Herbert Philbrick, who's a former FBI agent,
Speaker 2: when he gives a crowd of people of like seven
Speaker 2: thousand on March eighth. Right, now, we have a fifty
Speaker 2: to fifty chance of defeating the communist threat, but each
Speaker 2: day our chances grow less. And that's like that, that's
Speaker 2: the tenor of this whole thing, right, Like the communists,
Speaker 2: it's gonna be an uphill battle. I don't know if
Speaker 2: we can beat them, but if we, you know, we've
Speaker 2: got to turn things around. Now. Obviously the event includes
Speaker 2: Birchers who one of the things that happens at this
Speaker 2: meeting is they declare President Dwight D. Eisenhower to have
Speaker 2: been a communist tool. Now it's not just not he's
Speaker 2: not the only famous name here. John Wayne is in attendance,
Speaker 2: and so that's good. Yeah, Yeah, everybody's favorite fucking goblin
Speaker 2: of a man. Yeah, it's a it's it's a big deal.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: This is a huge moment in American conservatism as well.
Speaker 3: You know, I always you always wonder, like is their
Speaker 3: imagined threat still the same? Right, they call it communism,
Speaker 3: they call it socialism, they call it woke. They're getting
Speaker 3: closer to just saying people of color with the word
Speaker 3: woke or anti woke. But you're like, at the time,
Speaker 3: was it just sort of I guess I'm wondering, like
Speaker 3: when they said communism, they knew they just meant like
Speaker 3: Jewish people, black people, women having any kind of like
Speaker 3: equal rights. And it's always this threat. They're just afraid
Speaker 3: that they would have to give up their what beautiful,
Speaker 3: beautiful strip mall.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that is that's a huge part of it.
Speaker 2: I will say, it's not just people of color and women.
Speaker 2: They also have a particular hatred of college students. Right.
Speaker 2: This is also starting to be the early stages of
Speaker 2: protests in the early sixties against not just in favor
Speaker 2: of civil rights, but against the Vietnam War, and that's
Speaker 2: a huge these that's also a big bugbear for these
Speaker 2: people is college students.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So, more than sixteen thousand Americans or Orange County ends,
Speaker 2: I guess, wind up attending the event, and Ronald Reagan
Speaker 2: is going to be the most popular speaker there. He's
Speaker 2: also an attendance. You've got Reagan, You've got John Wayne,
Speaker 2: and you've got the knots Berry farm guy. And the
Speaker 2: event is such a hit, and that Ronald Reagan's speech
Speaker 2: is particularly such a big deal that the knots Berry
Speaker 2: Farm guy helps to organize. Following this a three hour
Speaker 2: Hollywood Bowl event called Hollywood's Answer to Communism, which is
Speaker 2: described by TV critic John Crosby as a monster three
Speaker 2: hour concentration of pure venom on television, in which patriots
Speaker 2: suggested again and again that the United States was largely
Speaker 2: peopled by traders. So that sounds cool, obviously, John Wayne. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that everyone who isn't one of these weird right wingers
Speaker 2: is a trader to the country. High up in the
Speaker 2: list of conservatives who hate it are the celebrities who
Speaker 2: attend this Hollywood Answers Communism, which include John Wayne obviously,
Speaker 2: Roy Rogers not a surprising as well. This one's going
Speaker 2: to hurt people though. Jimmy Stewart's a speaker. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: that's a bummer. That's a bummer. Not shocking. If you
Speaker 2: know the guy, you can't do it. Jimmy Stewart, Why,
Speaker 2: I sure do hate it when people love civil rights.
Speaker 2: I don't know. That's not a good Jimmy Stewart, Well.
Speaker 3: No, they want to be equal.
Speaker 2: Now they've gotten off something like that. So both events
Speaker 2: are organized by a famous piece of shit and Australian
Speaker 2: gift to conservatism, Frederick Schwartz, and he founds the Christian
Speaker 2: Anti Communist Crusade, and he moves his headquarters to Orange
Speaker 2: County in nineteen sixty. Schwartz's claim to fame is a
Speaker 2: book called You Can Trust the Communists to Be Communists,
Speaker 2: which had a stunningly subtle sequel You Can Still Trust
Speaker 2: the Communists to mean Communist, Socialist and Progressives too, so
Speaker 2: great titles like really creative, good work man, speaking of
Speaker 2: weird fascists here's nope, shit ads ah, we're back. So
Speaker 2: both these events, you know, you've got notts kind of
Speaker 2: providing the funding. But the guy who is organizing them
Speaker 2: is Frederick Schwarz. He's this dude who founds the Christian
Speaker 2: Anti Communist Crusade, which which moves to Orange County. He
Speaker 2: writes these two books with almost the same title about
Speaker 2: how communism is scary and.
Speaker 3: Communism is a communists, no communists, popularly the communism You
Speaker 3: can't spell communists without Khan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, without like most of the words in Cohn right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: So his his brand of propaganda it's going to be
Speaker 2: different in some critical ways from mainstream far right propaganda
Speaker 2: because he bases a lot of his pitch on the
Speaker 2: interests of specifically people in southern California right. His first
Speaker 2: book includes a lengthy passage where he complains that communists
Speaker 2: are graduating more engineers than the United States, which has
Speaker 2: given them an edge in making new weapons. And there's
Speaker 2: there's some wild life in here. The question is which
Speaker 2: system of education will win this universal war. I was
Speaker 2: visiting an American college. Before I had been there ten minutes,
Speaker 2: the president told me with great pride of a young
Speaker 2: man who had brought glory and honor to their school.
Speaker 2: Wherever I went on campus, I heard his praise as sung.
Speaker 2: At last I met him, and a fine young man
Speaker 2: he was. His Boddy was lithe and slender, and he
Speaker 2: stood some six feet two inches tall. He was their
Speaker 2: leading basketball player. His skill at the game was so
Speaker 2: great that he had been chosen to go to Melbourne,
Speaker 2: Australia to represent the United States and the Olympic Games
Speaker 2: in nineteen fifty six. What an honor for the school.
Speaker 2: Frequently I asked, who's your leading science student? He looked
Speaker 2: up at me with wonder and amazement. He could not
Speaker 2: answer the question. So he says, we're teaching our kids basketball,
Speaker 2: but not how to make missiles. God, it's such a
Speaker 2: funny thing to like half the year primary concern like
Speaker 2: that an anyone could have ever thought, like the answer
Speaker 2: to the Cold War, like that we would not have
Speaker 2: enough missiles. So that was ever a thing in the
Speaker 2: US if you know anything about this country. No, as
Speaker 2: soon as missiles were a thing, we were going to
Speaker 2: have the most of them. That was always in the
Speaker 2: cards for this country. Like that is that is.
Speaker 3: Truly a trick that I don't know. The you know,
Speaker 3: military industrial complex definitely pulled on everybody, but I guess
Speaker 3: including people. And like I said, vets the idea that
Speaker 3: you're victors. You won. Yeah, no one even pails in
Speaker 3: comparison to the kind of military you have. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't know. I think you can play some basketball,
Speaker 3: you know what I'm saying, Just like take a load off,
Speaker 3: like chill out.
Speaker 2: Like you are geographically defended because of like the way
Speaker 2: North America is set up. You have so much more
Speaker 2: money and so many more guns than anybody else on
Speaker 2: the planet, and yet you're terrified because you saw a
Speaker 2: kid who was good at basketball, but the school didn't
Speaker 2: have any future missile designers. Like what the fuck? Man,
Speaker 2: that's a nuts.
Speaker 3: So so ridiculous.
Speaker 2: But you can see why this goes well, goes over
Speaker 2: well in Orange County because not only are a lot
Speaker 2: of employees of defense contract but a lot of people
Speaker 2: who are like running these these defense companies. And like
Speaker 2: this guy is saying America is not graduating enough missile
Speaker 2: IT designers, and they're like, yeah, we need more missiles.
Speaker 2: I make money off of every one of those. We
Speaker 2: fucking sign right, Like Northrop Grumming is paying the fucking
Speaker 2: mortgage on a lot of these ranch style houses, you know.
Speaker 2: And so the people who are you know, financially invested
Speaker 2: in this, they like it that Schwartz is saying there's
Speaker 2: no way to have peace. There's no way to ever
Speaker 2: decrease our defense spending. We only need to spend more
Speaker 2: and more and more.
Speaker 3: This is just it's such a nightmare VENN diagram of
Speaker 3: the like the OC is just this like nightmare fucking
Speaker 3: what's the longitude and latitude like nightmare coordinates of every
Speaker 3: single Yeah, like libertarianism, the Christian right, and the weapons industry,
Speaker 3: which of course they don't admit to it all now
Speaker 3: when they're like, well, we need to not send any
Speaker 3: more money to Ukraine or whatnot, and they're just like, no,
Speaker 3: all y'all love the weapons industry. You want to send
Speaker 3: more money and make more worn of it.
Speaker 2: You would have send them so many more places than that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you just don't want to do it for a good
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, that's would it be an asshole about it? Yeah? No,
Speaker 2: But it is like you know, we're talking about like
Speaker 2: the attitude towards people who are like running these companies,
Speaker 2: but regular people don't want to feel like they're warmongers.
Speaker 2: And so part of what makes Schwartz interesting is he
Speaker 2: very interestingly creates this sort of image of like Americans
Speaker 2: want peace, right, we actually value peace, and when we
Speaker 2: say peace, we mean an into violence.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Communists talk about peace a lot, but communists don't view
Speaker 2: peace as the same thing. In communism, peace doesn't mean
Speaker 2: ending violence. Peace means ending conservatives, right. That's basically what
Speaker 2: ending capitalists, right, Like, that's that's how they say it, right.
Speaker 2: And so like when we say we want peace, we
Speaker 2: mean we don't want violence. But if that means if
Speaker 2: we actually advocate for peace, we're dooming ourselves because the
Speaker 2: only piece they'll accept is one in which we don't exist. Now,
Speaker 2: if you're rational at all, you can say that, like, well,
Speaker 2: all you're saying is the only real piece is one
Speaker 2: in which the communists don't exist, right, Yeah, there's no
Speaker 2: difference between what you're saying. They're saying and what you
Speaker 2: are saying. Those are the same two things. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it works, right, This is popular with.
Speaker 3: These Conservatism is all premised on future tripping about a
Speaker 3: reality that has not come to bear and will not
Speaker 3: likely come to bear. They just well, you know, it's projection.
Speaker 3: They're going to do it to us. They're trying to
Speaker 3: eliminate conservatism, so we need to eliminate them first.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they've said that they have to put an end
Speaker 2: to capitalism, so we have to put an end, you know,
Speaker 2: to communism.
Speaker 3: A thing we don't have, do not live under it.
Speaker 2: But that doesn't make us bloodthirsty. We're still good Christians,
Speaker 2: right sure, Yeah, I mean these are just everyone finds
Speaker 2: ways of doing this. It's not an uncommon like this
Speaker 2: is not that this was not invented by this guy.
Speaker 2: But I find the way in which he's speaking to
Speaker 2: these Orange County voters to be kind of telling about
Speaker 2: how people in general like to look at themselves. Yeah
Speaker 2: so yeah. As a side note, of the things that's
Speaker 2: really interesting when you read a lot of Schwarz's writing
Speaker 2: is how frequently he praises the quality of communist literature,
Speaker 2: Like I don't know any communists who use the word
Speaker 2: beautiful to describe like communist propaganda as much as this
Speaker 2: guy does, Like he fucking loves it. He writes about
Speaker 2: how like a wonderful book like Problems of Leninism by
Speaker 2: Joseph Stalin can be acquired for just a few cents
Speaker 2: in any bookstore in America, Like why can't we do
Speaker 2: that with our propaganda. There's so much better at it
Speaker 2: than us, all.
Speaker 3: These wood cuttings and it's great, and they've got good mustard.
Speaker 3: We need some good must He.
Speaker 2: Writes about this this Chinese communist magazine called Chinese Pictorial,
Speaker 2: and he's like, the color photography is beautiful, the moral
Speaker 2: tone is excellent. There's no violence, no crime, no nakedness,
Speaker 2: no sex, no alcohol.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, it's like we need to do that,
Speaker 3: but for money, you know, like for us and our side.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it is fun because he is saying a
Speaker 2: lot like wow, the way these the way that these
Speaker 2: maoists portray they're like fantasy future society looks great. There's
Speaker 2: none of the things I hate. Right, It's like, okay,
Speaker 2: well then why are these people your biggest enemy? Well,
Speaker 2: I don't know. Whatever it's it's it is funny to me,
Speaker 2: like he writes, he clearly so enjoys. It reminds me
Speaker 2: of Jordan Peterson, right, keeping like communist propaganda all over
Speaker 2: his walls. He's like, that's kind of odd if you're
Speaker 2: if you're not into it at all, to just surround
Speaker 2: yourself with it all the time. That's very interesting to me.
Speaker 3: You got to keep the enemy cleos.
Speaker 2: Now, I think they would probably describe it as like, well,
Speaker 2: I want to understand the enemy so I can know
Speaker 2: how to fight them, which exactly you know, Okay, like.
Speaker 3: It's there, but yeah, it is. It is a weird obsession,
Speaker 3: but it's also just again, I was at the California
Speaker 3: Republican Party like convention, California Republican Convention in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3: I guess it would be and uh, the best moment
Speaker 3: of that whole convention for all these Republicans was when
Speaker 3: they could see the protests happening outside of the building
Speaker 3: because Trump was speaking. It's when Trump had to like,
Speaker 3: you know, walk in like the alley of the or
Speaker 3: like the shoulder of a highway and whatnot because of
Speaker 3: you know, protesters had closed the stop, the entryway, whatever.
Speaker 3: And the faces of these Republicans were so excited. They
Speaker 3: loved watching themselves be hated, and they loved seeing what
Speaker 3: the other side was doing. And so I do think
Speaker 3: there is sort of a weird fascination they see.
Speaker 2: I think there's this a significant degree of like admiration
Speaker 2: for well, these guys were a tiny, unpopular chunk of
Speaker 2: the country and using a variety of methods were able
Speaker 2: to like build parties and organizations that allowed them to
Speaker 2: reach and radicalize a huge number of people and take power.
Speaker 2: And that's exactly what we want to do, but specifically
Speaker 2: so that we have to pay less taxes.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 2: They have a lot of power, but they're not the
Speaker 2: only power, right, because shit happens like the civil rights movement, right,
Speaker 2: and then you know, you get a law that they hate,
Speaker 2: that forces changes in society that they hate. You have
Speaker 2: you know, prior to the government, like you know, the
Speaker 2: government doing like enforcibly integrating school. So they they would
Speaker 2: say it is like we're fighting for our lives here,
Speaker 2: and what we need to do is what those communists
Speaker 2: did just like take total power, right, Like, that's very
Speaker 2: much why they're kind of looking to this propaganda. And
Speaker 2: Schwartz has again he's very like positive towards communist propaganda,
Speaker 2: and he in this very weird passage compares it to
Speaker 2: like a pedophile with a candy van, which is a
Speaker 2: really I didn't realize that sort of like image went
Speaker 2: back this far to like the early sixties, but evidently
Speaker 2: it does. Yeah, so anti communism is going to remain
Speaker 2: a central interest for Orange County conservatives who all start
Speaker 2: to see the Cold War, as you know, the acceleration
Speaker 2: of the Cold War is not simply like just for
Speaker 2: ideological reasons, but also as important for their bottom line. Right,
Speaker 2: this is going to make us all rich. The Orange
Speaker 2: County Research Institute, which also did surveys in other parts
Speaker 2: of the US, noted in the early sixties that Orange
Speaker 2: County dwellers were likely or to either be interested in
Speaker 2: or have bomb shelters than people anywhere else. So I
Speaker 2: think that's funny, Like Midwesterners aren't buying bomb shelters exactly.
Speaker 3: This is like after nine to eleven people, Yeah, like
Speaker 3: in fucking I don't know, think of a random ass
Speaker 3: like in just like yeah in the OC being like
Speaker 3: they're coming for us, Like, no, they're not, They're not gonna.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, yorba.
Speaker 2: Everybody had to feel we all want to feel like
Speaker 2: we're part of the news though, right, we all have
Speaker 2: to make it about ourselves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, they're gonna come right for us. Now they're not.
Speaker 3: You wish they're coming.
Speaker 2: It's not.
Speaker 3: No one cares enough about Irvine.
Speaker 2: For just cannot spell your Belinda, I'm exactly like you're okay.
Speaker 2: So in nineteen forty eight, again Dick Nixon's anti communism
Speaker 2: had embodied the values of Orange County pretty well, but
Speaker 2: over the next decade and change, like it had radicalized
Speaker 2: to the point where he starts to be hated in
Speaker 2: the area. Right, And this becomes particularly the case once
Speaker 2: he becomes the president, right in late sixties, you know,
Speaker 2: early seventies, when Nixon is in power, he becomes like
Speaker 2: a huge enemy of them. For the fact that he's
Speaker 2: willing to talk with communists, He's willing to make deals
Speaker 2: with the Chinese government. Right, he's kind of the first rhino.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: You know, that's a term that has a lot more
Speaker 2: cachet now politically. They weren't using it then, But the
Speaker 2: Bircher right wing are the first people to really go
Speaker 2: after Nixon in that way. I think he first wound
Speaker 2: up on their shit list in sixty two when he
Speaker 2: had run for governor of California and the society had
Speaker 2: attacked him. The John Birch Society had gone against Nixon
Speaker 2: in sixty two by they backed the candidacy of this guy,
Speaker 2: Joe Schell, who was a local assemblyman. He was a
Speaker 2: high school football idol turned independent oil producer. So he's
Speaker 2: just like the perfect man for them to all rally behind.
Speaker 3: Yeah, libs of right wing identities.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: And there's this real quote farmer.
Speaker 2: There's this really good quote. Yeah, he's a football oil farmer.
Speaker 2: The La Times gives a really good quote of the
Speaker 2: tenor of the election. He has, like his competition with
Speaker 2: and its impact on Nixon. Piloting his own Beechcraft bonanza
Speaker 2: from one campaign stop to the next. Shell aimed his
Speaker 2: pitch squarely at fellow conservatives. I've gotten sick and tired
Speaker 2: of calling people liberals when they're basically socialists, he said.
Speaker 2: First elected to the Assembly in nineteen fifty three, Shell
Speaker 2: was the minority leader when he decided to run for governor.
Speaker 2: One hallmark of his campaign he repeatedly accused former Vice
Speaker 2: President Nixon of tried to use the California governorship as
Speaker 2: a stepping stone to the presidency. Although Nixon won the
Speaker 2: primary handily, Shell captured thirty five percent of the vote.
Speaker 2: Nixon had been substantially weakened because the ultra conservative Shell's
Speaker 2: challenge caused a split in the party. Former Defense Secretary
Speaker 2: Casper Weinberger said in his two thousand and one memoir,
Speaker 2: So again, it's its Orange County and particularly the John
Speaker 2: Birts there that really stops Nixon from winning the governorship
Speaker 2: because they they kind of hobble his campaign. They create
Speaker 2: all this animosity, you know, because they back this fucking
Speaker 2: football football oilman Joe Shell. Yeah, God, that's funny. So
Speaker 2: Nixon irritates the John britseidy again. In nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 2: when Barry Goldwater, who was then kind of in the
Speaker 2: early sixties. He's the craziest fascist in America. He's going
Speaker 2: to whine end his life in like the nineties as
Speaker 2: like pro marijuana, in pro gay marriage. But he is, like,
Speaker 2: he is the scariest fascist in public life in the
Speaker 2: sixty It's a weird. Yeah, he winds up I guess
Speaker 2: being okay at the end of his life, I don't
Speaker 2: know what was going on.
Speaker 3: A lib. He just dies a LIB.
Speaker 2: Like, Yeah, he kind of dies a LIB.
Speaker 3: Right. Yeah, Weed's cool.
Speaker 2: Love is love, Yeah, Yeah, it's interesting. He's got a
Speaker 2: fascinating arc. But he's the dude. His big famous quote
Speaker 2: is he just he declares that the Republican can mention
Speaker 2: that year extremism in defensive liberty is no vice. And yeah,
Speaker 2: so that's you know, that's the guy who's kind of
Speaker 2: like the fucking big Republican in sixty four or the
Speaker 2: big far right Republican in sixty four. Obviously, Nixon's gonna
Speaker 2: wind up being the guy who actually gets to become
Speaker 2: president in sixty eight, right, Like, eventually it's not Goldwater
Speaker 2: but Nixon. And that's another thing that pisses off these people,
Speaker 2: right that Nixon becomes the standard bearer of the Party
Speaker 2: Bury Goldwater, the guy they fucking love does not. And
Speaker 2: that has all set the stage more or less for
Speaker 2: the man who's going to make the first big crack
Speaker 2: in the dam between Orange County Conservatism and the broader
Speaker 2: National Republican Party. The guy who's going to shatter that
Speaker 2: wall and lead let all of that filth really spill
Speaker 2: into the rest of the country in a big way
Speaker 2: is a dude named John Schmidtz. And we're going to
Speaker 2: talk about Ja Schmitz in part two. Yeah, so, Francesca,
Speaker 2: that's the end of the episode. Do you have anything
Speaker 2: to plug before we roll out?
Speaker 3: Uh? You know the Situation Room podcast. We're going to
Speaker 3: be live in San Francisco on January twenty eighth, which
Speaker 3: is a Sunday, seven pm at the Gayway Theater. Miles
Speaker 3: Gray of The Daily Zeitgeist will be there. But yeah,
Speaker 3: listen to the situation pod Room, listen to the Bituation
Speaker 3: Room podcast wherever your podcasts, you know, Queue it up.
Speaker 2: Baby, excellent, Yeah, queue it up, queue it out, and
Speaker 2: also get a Cooler Zone Media subscription to listen to
Speaker 2: this shit without the ads. Just give us Sophie, what
Speaker 2: is it? Seventy thousand dollars a week. Yep, a bargain
Speaker 2: at any price.
Speaker 3: That's deal.
Speaker 2: Uh huh, No, it's less than seventy thousand dollars. That's
Speaker 2: the guarantee that we make.
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: Or more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Speaker 1: zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.