WEBVTT - Part Two: How Conservatism Won 0:00:01.800 --> 0:00:10.520 Also media, Ah, what's probably I feel like saying something 0:00:10.520 --> 0:00:12.920 about what happened in Baltimore, but there's really no respectful 0:00:12.920 --> 0:00:16.079 way to do that. The fucked up though, right it. 0:00:16.079 --> 0:00:18.680 Seems that way people. Yeah, you see that Twitter is 0:00:18.680 --> 0:00:20.480 already blaming DDI. 0:00:20.720 --> 0:00:24.200 Yeah, that would have stapped the boat from shorting out from. 0:00:24.160 --> 0:00:26.080 Yeah, having a fucking blackout. 0:00:26.760 --> 0:00:29.960 Well, they're obsessed. It's also shows none of them understand 0:00:30.000 --> 0:00:32.760 how fucking container ships work, because they're all like, look 0:00:32.840 --> 0:00:36.199 because the they had like a DEI captain aboard this 0:00:36.320 --> 0:00:39.559 mask vessel. Marisk has a DEI program. No one from 0:00:39.560 --> 0:00:42.320 Marisk was piloting the ship. They're never allowed to in 0:00:42.360 --> 0:00:44.720 a harbor's it's never a pilot who works for the 0:00:44.760 --> 0:00:45.839 company anyway. 0:00:45.840 --> 0:00:50.000 Whatever, I still think it's batshit that like, for hours 0:00:50.040 --> 0:00:54.120 and hours after this happened, that like National News wasn't 0:00:54.160 --> 0:00:57.080 covering it at all, they had like, yeah, they had 0:00:57.120 --> 0:01:03.560 like two dollars trust every journalist, commemorative commercials going on. 0:01:04.200 --> 0:01:08.480 They had just like the stupidest interviews. 0:01:07.840 --> 0:01:09.520 Like why why did we need. 0:01:09.319 --> 0:01:11.759 One on one with Alf Franken in the middle of this, 0:01:12.280 --> 0:01:17.200 and like that's why we still use fucking Twitter. 0:01:20.400 --> 0:01:24.480 Yeah, it is it's all bad. I do think you 0:01:24.520 --> 0:01:26.560 could get a job doing that, Dave. But you've got 0:01:26.560 --> 0:01:28.959 to lay in on the DEI stuff, you know, be like, 0:01:29.600 --> 0:01:32.399 are you do you have any Daves? You know, Dave, 0:01:32.560 --> 0:01:34.840 equity and inclusion. You got to put some Dave's on 0:01:34.880 --> 0:01:35.199 the team. 0:01:36.080 --> 0:01:39.160 Equity and inclusion. Yeah, I'm going to push that now. 0:01:39.360 --> 0:01:41.080 I'm going to put that on my resume. 0:01:41.880 --> 0:01:45.520 Now. I definitely have this is behind the Bastards. I 0:01:45.520 --> 0:01:48.360 don't think I introduced the podcast that this is. That's 0:01:48.360 --> 0:01:51.920 what you did. And David Bell's here again, and David 0:01:51.920 --> 0:01:58.640 Bell's here again. Yeah, Dave, speaking of this. You you 0:01:58.720 --> 0:02:00.920 in your writing for Some More News. You also help 0:02:01.040 --> 0:02:04.320 on a podcast network called Gamefully Unemployed. You to do 0:02:04.400 --> 0:02:08.560 a lot of great stuff, including chronicle Fox Molders, baffling 0:02:08.600 --> 0:02:11.880 career decisions in the X Files. But a big part 0:02:11.880 --> 0:02:14.840 of what you do for Some More News is research 0:02:15.160 --> 0:02:19.800 the increasing right word veeer of our society and the 0:02:19.800 --> 0:02:24.160 growth of conspiracy culture, which relates to this whole boat 0:02:24.200 --> 0:02:27.480 problem in Baltimore as people have blamed it on DEI, 0:02:27.680 --> 0:02:31.080 and it relates to like kind of everything that's wrong 0:02:31.120 --> 0:02:34.800 with our country, this like fracturing of consensus reality that 0:02:34.880 --> 0:02:38.720 has kind of made it impossible to like fix anything. 0:02:39.400 --> 0:02:43.280 The fact that everything I would argue, and I know 0:02:43.320 --> 0:02:46.799 that conservatives would say the literally the exact same thing 0:02:46.880 --> 0:02:50.239 about the left, but I would argue that conservatives have 0:02:50.320 --> 0:02:53.679 politicized pretty much everything in the country at this point. 0:02:54.080 --> 0:02:56.480 I am literally looking at a picture of a car 0:02:56.520 --> 0:02:59.360 with Honda with Texas plates that has a dozen different 0:02:59.360 --> 0:03:02.480 bumper stickers that say variations of Helen Keller is a fraud. 0:03:02.720 --> 0:03:04.440 Helen Keller was not deaf. 0:03:05.160 --> 0:03:07.160 It's well, that's just facts problem. 0:03:08.400 --> 0:03:10.400 What was she What did she have to gain? 0:03:10.680 --> 0:03:13.600 I have a sub reddit, I'll link it to you. 0:03:14.160 --> 0:03:18.400 He's got a Denier bumper sticker. How is that a thing? 0:03:20.040 --> 0:03:23.520 Incredible? I mean, yeah, I'm not surprised. We got to 0:03:23.600 --> 0:03:26.480 a point where the CDC where a fucking pandemic happened 0:03:26.480 --> 0:03:29.480 and it was let's take some basic precautions and that 0:03:29.560 --> 0:03:30.560 became political. 0:03:30.880 --> 0:03:31.079 Yeah. 0:03:31.080 --> 0:03:33.960 It's real bad. It's real bad right now. 0:03:34.320 --> 0:03:38.560 Yeah, It's it's shocking how bad some stuff has gotten. 0:03:38.640 --> 0:03:40.920 And that relates to what we're talking about today, because 0:03:41.000 --> 0:03:44.960 we ended our last episode talking about the Powell Memorandum, right, 0:03:45.040 --> 0:03:48.360 which was this document that was written for the Chamber 0:03:48.400 --> 0:03:51.800 of Commerce that that a a a lawyer who is 0:03:51.840 --> 0:03:55.080 going to become a Supreme Court justice by the name 0:03:55.400 --> 0:03:59.440 of Lewis Powell, whose previous work had been fighting against 0:03:59.600 --> 0:04:02.760 d s ggregation and cheering on the bombing of Dresden, 0:04:03.520 --> 0:04:06.760 wrote this thing where he's like, we need to attack 0:04:06.880 --> 0:04:12.000 liberalism everywhere it exists, and we need to in a 0:04:12.040 --> 0:04:15.760 comprehensive method destroy it. Part of that was destroying people 0:04:15.840 --> 0:04:18.960 like Ralph Nader, who at this time was like forcing 0:04:19.400 --> 0:04:21.800 had basically done a lot to force the auto industry 0:04:21.839 --> 0:04:24.560 to add basic safety features to cars. Right, So a 0:04:24.640 --> 0:04:25.960 chunk of this is we need to be able to 0:04:26.000 --> 0:04:30.200 destroy people who want to make extremely modest changes that 0:04:30.279 --> 0:04:34.159 cost corporations money and save countless lives. I'm going to 0:04:34.200 --> 0:04:36.760 guarantee you a significant percentage of the people listening to 0:04:36.800 --> 0:04:40.040 this podcast, including probably me, would be dead if not 0:04:40.080 --> 0:04:43.040 for seat belts. Oh yeah, it's not a minor chunk 0:04:43.080 --> 0:04:43.599 of us. 0:04:43.800 --> 0:04:47.960 I've raced on the highway multiple times. It's just funny 0:04:47.960 --> 0:04:52.760 because this is that point where let's go after liberalism. 0:04:52.880 --> 0:04:56.159 Liberalism is not defined as any effort to make things 0:04:56.200 --> 0:05:00.720 marginally better in a very practical way. Like we talked. 0:05:00.760 --> 0:05:02.520 I think of the last episode about how like like 0:05:02.560 --> 0:05:03.919 I was talking about how I don't even know the 0:05:03.960 --> 0:05:06.800 definitions of things anymore. And that's because things like this 0:05:06.880 --> 0:05:10.200 where I'm like, yeah, is that liberal? Like is it 0:05:10.279 --> 0:05:14.039 liberal to want to take safety precautions? Yeah? To I 0:05:14.080 --> 0:05:15.760 guess it is if it costs. 0:05:16.160 --> 0:05:18.440 If you would go back in time to even to 0:05:18.560 --> 0:05:22.119 Richard Nixon and tell him what modern conservative media people 0:05:22.240 --> 0:05:25.120 call liberalism, Nixon would be like, what the fuck are 0:05:25.160 --> 0:05:27.440 you talking about? What do you mean? They won't take vaccines. 0:05:27.800 --> 0:05:30.360 It's like it's like the term wokeness, you know, it's 0:05:30.680 --> 0:05:34.280 it's that same shit. Yeah, the vaccine stuff is always like, yeah, 0:05:34.320 --> 0:05:37.520 you know how these hippie liberals love vaccines. It's like, no, 0:05:37.640 --> 0:05:38.239 they don't. 0:05:38.920 --> 0:05:41.640 No, it was the opposite. They were so long they 0:05:41.680 --> 0:05:42.080 were the. 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:44.400 First to not like vaccines. What is happening? 0:05:44.480 --> 0:05:47.760 That was what my mom Arch Reagan conservative. One of 0:05:47.800 --> 0:05:50.760 the things she hated about like the left is their 0:05:50.800 --> 0:05:52.800 anti vax shit, because she was like, why wouldn't you 0:05:52.839 --> 0:05:53.840 want to take vaccines? 0:05:54.120 --> 0:05:54.400 Right? 0:05:54.480 --> 0:05:57.960 It's it's wild how much that shit is. Like, but yeah, 0:05:58.000 --> 0:06:02.120 it's this this pal memoranda is it's not just he's 0:06:02.160 --> 0:06:04.839 talking about, like we need to cultivate political power. Wealthy 0:06:04.839 --> 0:06:07.520 people in corporations need to be donating a percentage, like 0:06:07.560 --> 0:06:11.119 a significant percent of their advertising budgets to funding think 0:06:11.160 --> 0:06:15.640 tanks and efforts to put basically to flood the zone 0:06:15.760 --> 0:06:18.960 with shit that make that can act as like a 0:06:19.000 --> 0:06:22.480 defense against any attempt to, for example, add seat belts 0:06:22.480 --> 0:06:25.280 to cars or anything like that. But beyond that, that's 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:28.000 not the only thing the Palm Mirandum orchestrates. He is 0:06:28.080 --> 0:06:32.159 also the first guy, in a real concerted form to 0:06:32.279 --> 0:06:36.720 say the future for the right, because of how demographics 0:06:36.760 --> 0:06:39.200 do not favor us, the future for the right is 0:06:39.240 --> 0:06:42.640 in taking over the courts. He is if you're looking 0:06:42.640 --> 0:06:44.719 at what has happened to the Supreme Court in the 0:06:44.760 --> 0:06:49.240 last eight years, Powell is the guy who starts that process, 0:06:49.279 --> 0:06:52.560 who is laying out the strategy that is adopted by 0:06:52.560 --> 0:06:55.680 the entire conservative movement, at least everyone with money in 0:06:55.720 --> 0:06:59.640 the conservative movement, and his specific goal in having conservatives 0:06:59.680 --> 0:07:03.240 take over the courts is to establish an oligarchy. In 0:07:03.279 --> 0:07:05.919 one section of the memorandum, he uses the title for 0:07:06.000 --> 0:07:09.039 a Neglected Opportunity in the Courts, and he suggests a 0:07:09.080 --> 0:07:13.000 strategy for quote, exploiting judicial action to turn back progressive 0:07:13.000 --> 0:07:16.240 and liberal victories in government and culture. Quote. Under our 0:07:16.280 --> 0:07:20.120 constitutional system, especially with an activist minded Supreme Court, the 0:07:20.200 --> 0:07:23.160 judiciary may be the most important instrument for social, economic, 0:07:23.240 --> 0:07:26.800 and political change. And he is responding to this raft 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:29.880 of Supreme Court decisions that happened during the Civil rights 0:07:29.920 --> 0:07:35.240 era and after that are responsible for really ending the 0:07:35.680 --> 0:07:38.200 Jim Crow and segregation, right, Like, that's a big part 0:07:38.200 --> 0:07:40.760 of what the Supreme Court's doing in this period. And 0:07:40.800 --> 0:07:43.200 he's like, we have to take these back so that 0:07:43.280 --> 0:07:45.280 we can reverse these trends. 0:07:45.680 --> 0:07:53.080 It's wild how mad they were about desegregation. Yeah, and 0:07:53.200 --> 0:07:57.360 about because I'm actually we're going to do a video 0:07:57.440 --> 0:08:02.600 on how the right hi check Christianity And that's kind 0:08:02.600 --> 0:08:06.480 of that moment that it starts happening, is desegregated schools 0:08:06.920 --> 0:08:10.240 caused a bunch of racists to go to private religious schools, 0:08:10.280 --> 0:08:13.880 and then they started using this religious liberty thing yep. 0:08:14.000 --> 0:08:16.840 And so it's it's just that is it's it's wild 0:08:16.880 --> 0:08:20.440 how that's like the moment, you know, it's like it's 0:08:20.480 --> 0:08:24.000 like the it's like the dance in Back to the Future, 0:08:24.280 --> 0:08:28.320 Like that was the that day is like where everything 0:08:28.720 --> 0:08:31.040 went down, and it's the same with this. 0:08:31.240 --> 0:08:33.280 And that is what's we've done a two part of 0:08:33.320 --> 0:08:38.080 ourselves on how Christianity got co opted from Christianity as 0:08:38.120 --> 0:08:41.440 a political force is more tied to progressivism in the 0:08:41.559 --> 0:08:44.400 nineteen teens and twenties. Right, it's like the labor movement 0:08:44.480 --> 0:08:47.559 and stuff, right, and that all starts to change in 0:08:47.600 --> 0:08:49.840 the post war period, but it's it's during the same 0:08:49.920 --> 0:08:52.600 period where the pal Memorandum hits in the seventies that 0:08:52.600 --> 0:08:55.120 the religious right becomes a thing, and a lot of 0:08:55.160 --> 0:08:57.880 the same money that the guys that Powell is speaking 0:08:57.880 --> 0:09:00.760 to are going to pump into think tanks also pumping 0:09:00.800 --> 0:09:04.880 money into what becomes the religious right. This is all 0:09:04.920 --> 0:09:06.640 happening at the same time. This is kind of the 0:09:06.679 --> 0:09:09.640 other side of that story. And this is one of 0:09:09.679 --> 0:09:13.400 those things. The success that Powell sees, the fact that 0:09:13.480 --> 0:09:17.080 this memorandum is followed and becomes it's considered a foundational 0:09:17.120 --> 0:09:20.840 document of neoliberalism, right, Like, that is a big part 0:09:20.840 --> 0:09:23.920 of the privatization of everything, Right, Like, that's why you 0:09:23.960 --> 0:09:25.840 want to take over these think tanks to make the 0:09:25.880 --> 0:09:29.840 case for cutting government services, for cutting the idea that 0:09:29.840 --> 0:09:33.160 there should be any kind of like shared social responsibility 0:09:33.160 --> 0:09:37.240 in our society and turning everything into a profit driven machine. Right, 0:09:37.520 --> 0:09:40.200 that's part of what he's suggesting. But also, like the 0:09:40.320 --> 0:09:42.280 end of Roe v. Wade, you can tie it directly 0:09:42.280 --> 0:09:44.920 to this memorandum because he's talking about, like we if 0:09:44.960 --> 0:09:48.000 we're going to turn back these victories the left and 0:09:48.080 --> 0:09:50.880 liberals have had, we have to do it through the courts. 0:09:51.120 --> 0:09:53.440 And I really think I talk a lot about Osama 0:09:53.440 --> 0:09:56.400 bin Laden on this show and how I think historians 0:09:56.440 --> 0:09:58.600 when historians are writing about this one point where none 0:09:58.640 --> 0:10:00.600 of them are angry about nine O Elove because it's 0:10:00.600 --> 0:10:03.520 too distant, right, the way that people aren't angry about 0:10:03.559 --> 0:10:06.520 the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand today, Right, we could just 0:10:06.559 --> 0:10:07.640 sort of like talk about it. 0:10:07.760 --> 0:10:11.679 Yeah, maybe some are still, but yeah. 0:10:10.640 --> 0:10:12.200 I think he should I think they should have killed 0:10:12.240 --> 0:10:13.880 him twice. But that's my opinion. 0:10:14.160 --> 0:10:17.560 No, it's the farther we get away from nine to eleven, 0:10:17.600 --> 0:10:20.760 it's going to become this weird abstract and yeah, kind 0:10:20.760 --> 0:10:21.680 of fascinating to me. 0:10:22.559 --> 0:10:24.440 And my opinion tends to be that when we get 0:10:24.600 --> 0:10:28.440 enough distance, historians will generally agree that Osama bin Laden 0:10:28.600 --> 0:10:31.000 was one of the best strategic minds of the twenty 0:10:31.040 --> 0:10:33.640 first century. He had a plan, he had a plan 0:10:33.720 --> 0:10:35.720 for what would happen in the long term as the 0:10:35.720 --> 0:10:38.360 result of that attack, how it would damage American power, 0:10:38.960 --> 0:10:41.280 and it worked the way he thought it would. And 0:10:41.320 --> 0:10:44.600 I think Powell is probably a similar mind for the 0:10:44.640 --> 0:10:48.240 twentieth century in terms of like political strategy. He lays 0:10:48.320 --> 0:10:50.559 out what the right is going to do from the 0:10:50.640 --> 0:10:54.640 nineteen seventies to today, and it's worked very well for them. 0:10:54.800 --> 0:10:58.680 With a significant demographic disadvantage, they have in fact captured 0:10:58.679 --> 0:11:02.480 the courts and over time turned this country to the 0:11:02.559 --> 0:11:04.840 right in a way that people in the seventies would 0:11:04.840 --> 0:11:07.920 not have really thought possible. So, yeah, that's cool. 0:11:08.040 --> 0:11:11.160 Yes's frog and a hot plate stuff. Yeah, where it's 0:11:11.240 --> 0:11:14.800 like we we talked about this last last episode of 0:11:14.920 --> 0:11:17.800 how Like when people try to say, like, you know, 0:11:18.960 --> 0:11:22.240 Trump is gonna is going to spell the end for democracy, 0:11:22.400 --> 0:11:24.679 that doesn't necessarily mean it's gonna happen right away, right, 0:11:24.720 --> 0:11:27.520 It's like these things just have lasting harm that it's 0:11:27.559 --> 0:11:28.680 gonna be really hard. 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:32.240 To yeah verse, yeah, it doesn't even mean he'll necessarily 0:11:32.320 --> 0:11:34.240 win again. And I don't take that as a given 0:11:34.320 --> 0:11:35.960 the way some people do, I certainly think it's at 0:11:36.040 --> 0:11:39.600 least a fifty to fifty shot. But even if Biden 0:11:39.679 --> 0:11:44.440 wins reelection, like the idea has been normalized that you 0:11:44.520 --> 0:11:47.320 can just try to take over to the capital with 0:11:47.400 --> 0:11:50.760 a bunch of angry goons, and that's really bad for 0:11:50.840 --> 0:11:52.079 the future of democracy. 0:11:52.240 --> 0:11:52.960 It's pretty bad. 0:11:53.280 --> 0:11:58.400 Yeah, it's not great. So Pal's memo is at first 0:11:58.440 --> 0:12:01.240 circulated mostly among the chain of commerce, which is again 0:12:01.600 --> 0:12:05.079 all these wealthy business owners and CEOs, right, that's where 0:12:05.120 --> 0:12:07.400 they interface with the government, is the chamber of Commerce. 0:12:07.600 --> 0:12:10.760 So this is a private memo, and he's basically using 0:12:10.800 --> 0:12:14.120 a government agency to send this memo about how to 0:12:14.200 --> 0:12:17.400 capture the courts for the right to all of these 0:12:17.440 --> 0:12:20.960 guys and asking for their money. David Harvey, who's a 0:12:21.000 --> 0:12:24.400 Marxist anthropologist, cites this is kind of the foundational document 0:12:24.440 --> 0:12:27.280 in the birth of neoliberalism. It's like the neoliberal declaration 0:12:27.320 --> 0:12:30.040 of Independence. Right, that's how some people tend to see this. 0:12:30.880 --> 0:12:33.439 Its influence, though, is much larger than just that, and 0:12:33.480 --> 0:12:35.760 it's much larger than I'm going to cite today. But 0:12:35.880 --> 0:12:39.599 one of the things that absolutely did was supercharged donations 0:12:39.640 --> 0:12:44.080 and the establishment of right wing think tanks. Wealthy conservatives 0:12:44.160 --> 0:12:47.840 realized the power of having organizations that were like RAND 0:12:48.160 --> 0:12:51.880 but were geared entirely towards espousing an ideology. And the 0:12:51.920 --> 0:12:55.200 ideology they wanted these organizations to espouse was that taxes 0:12:55.240 --> 0:12:58.160 should be low, workers should know their place, and school 0:12:58.200 --> 0:13:01.319 should probably be segregated. Also, they should be allowed to 0:13:01.400 --> 0:13:04.760 jail anti war protesters, right, sure, sure. 0:13:04.559 --> 0:13:07.760 Why not? Yeah, fuck it. If we're thrown at all 0:13:07.840 --> 0:13:09.640 on there might as well put some bonuses. 0:13:10.000 --> 0:13:13.400 Yeah yeah. And the opportunity to do that came when 0:13:13.400 --> 0:13:17.920 the economy shit the bed in the nineteen seventies, quote, 0:13:18.280 --> 0:13:22.319 A corps of politically active conservative intellectuals, most prominently Irving Crystal, 0:13:22.360 --> 0:13:24.880 began to argue in publications like The Public Interest and 0:13:24.920 --> 0:13:27.400 The Wall Street Journal that if business wanted market logic 0:13:27.440 --> 0:13:29.720 to regain the initiative, it would have to create a 0:13:29.760 --> 0:13:33.120 new class of its own scholars whose career prospects depended 0:13:33.160 --> 0:13:36.559 on private enterprise, not government or the universities. You get 0:13:36.559 --> 0:13:39.400 what you pay for, Crystal in effect argued, and if 0:13:39.400 --> 0:13:42.160 businessmen want an intellectual horsepower, they would have to open 0:13:42.200 --> 0:13:46.520 their pocketbooks. Traditionally, corporate philanthropy had been directed either towards 0:13:46.600 --> 0:13:49.800 charity or towards independent organizations like the Ford, Rockefeller, and 0:13:49.840 --> 0:13:53.360 Carnegie foundations. Pressured by the media and by academics to 0:13:53.400 --> 0:13:56.319 make gestures of broad mindedness. Businessmen seem to feel that 0:13:56.360 --> 0:13:59.400 they could gain social approval only by sharing their proceeds 0:13:59.480 --> 0:14:02.480 with credential intermediaries would use the money to fund attacks 0:14:02.480 --> 0:14:05.520 on capitalism. Paying to have oneself attacked was a kind 0:14:05.559 --> 0:14:09.560 of corporate abolution. So that's that's what a big thing 0:14:09.640 --> 0:14:12.040 Crystal is saying, And Crystal is kind of the most 0:14:12.040 --> 0:14:15.600 influential of this first wave of like think tank guys, 0:14:15.800 --> 0:14:18.480 is you're spending all of this money on foundations that 0:14:18.559 --> 0:14:21.600 do actual charity, and that partly funds the work of 0:14:21.600 --> 0:14:24.200 people who are critical of you. Why not give your 0:14:24.200 --> 0:14:26.040 money to someone who's going to say you should have 0:14:26.080 --> 0:14:28.800 even more power and money and work to make that real, 0:14:28.880 --> 0:14:30.720 you know. And obviously that's a good deal for you 0:14:30.840 --> 0:14:32.080 if you're a rich psychopath. 0:14:32.320 --> 0:14:34.080 Yeah, if you're going to pay people, you might as 0:14:34.120 --> 0:14:35.560 well pay people to say you're great. 0:14:35.920 --> 0:14:39.880 Yeah. Yeah, that's that's why we hired Garrison. It didn't work, 0:14:40.080 --> 0:14:44.040 actually worked with terrible disaster there there's very mean. 0:14:44.160 --> 0:14:45.040 In your place. 0:14:45.840 --> 0:14:50.400 Yeah, correct, that I tried, but they just moved to Atlanta. 0:14:50.680 --> 0:14:54.640 M man, damn him. You gotta get them, get. 0:14:54.520 --> 0:15:00.640 Them back, got to get them back. Kinda fish about 0:15:00.440 --> 0:15:03.400 new party. The work of men like Crystal was like 0:15:03.480 --> 0:15:06.440 a refreshing, cool breeze on the faces of rich fail 0:15:06.520 --> 0:15:08.880 sons whose daddies had been disappointed by the side the 0:15:09.000 --> 0:15:11.040 US took in World War Two. Some of these guys 0:15:11.080 --> 0:15:13.520 are literally the business plot guys, right. The guys were 0:15:13.520 --> 0:15:16.080 telling Smedley Butler, what if you tried to become a dictator? 0:15:16.560 --> 0:15:19.880 And Smedley's like, sure, let me just talk to Congress 0:15:19.880 --> 0:15:25.800 real fast. Henry Ford the Second resigned from the board 0:15:25.800 --> 0:15:28.280 of the Ford Foundation around this time in the seventies, 0:15:28.520 --> 0:15:30.560 furious because it was putting out work he viewed as 0:15:30.640 --> 0:15:34.560 anti capitalist. Other Men like Joseph Coors, you know, the 0:15:34.560 --> 0:15:37.400 beer guy, and the inheritors of the Olin Chemical and 0:15:37.480 --> 0:15:41.560 Smith Richardson pharmaceutical foundations started looking for places they could 0:15:41.560 --> 0:15:44.400 pour money to generate opinions that coincided with their endlist 0:15:44.480 --> 0:15:46.560 need for more money. This is a big part of 0:15:46.640 --> 0:15:49.720 why the pharmaceutical industry is the way that it is, 0:15:49.800 --> 0:15:52.120 right is that these guys start putting money in the 0:15:52.200 --> 0:15:54.280 think tanks that say, hey, you know what would be 0:15:54.280 --> 0:15:56.520 great for everybody's health if these guys were allowed to 0:15:56.560 --> 0:15:59.880 jack up the price of fucking insulin, you know, to 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:04.120 umpteenth degree. What if we really fucking deregulate healthcare as 0:16:04.120 --> 0:16:06.320 an industry, wouldn't that make everybody healthier? 0:16:07.160 --> 0:16:09.720 And what we're learning now is that it's way harder 0:16:09.720 --> 0:16:11.000 to reverse these things. 0:16:11.240 --> 0:16:14.080 Yes stuff, yes, yes, once you get this stuff. And 0:16:14.120 --> 0:16:16.200 that's one of the things they know is once you 0:16:16.320 --> 0:16:19.320 get this stuff established, it's like the war on drugs. Right, 0:16:19.800 --> 0:16:21.880 Once you have the war on drugs, anything you do 0:16:22.040 --> 0:16:24.440 to try to fix it, people, there will still be 0:16:24.560 --> 0:16:28.760 drug epidemics, right, Like No, like fentanyl gets into the 0:16:28.760 --> 0:16:32.560 country and suddenly everybody who's been working very hard to 0:16:32.680 --> 0:16:35.280 try and reform things has to deal with the fact 0:16:35.320 --> 0:16:38.200 that people are dying of this new substance. And there's 0:16:38.240 --> 0:16:41.480 this built in infrastructure to say, just to have more cops, man, 0:16:41.560 --> 0:16:43.600 we just got to lock people up. That's what's going 0:16:43.680 --> 0:16:44.480 to fix it, you. 0:16:44.440 --> 0:16:47.320 Know, right. Because it's also it reminds me of when 0:16:47.320 --> 0:16:50.040 we built our highways, because we consulted with car companies 0:16:50.040 --> 0:16:53.480 for that, and so it's that thing where they get 0:16:53.480 --> 0:16:57.320 together they decide to do this thing that's kind of irreversible, 0:16:57.800 --> 0:17:01.840 that's like a foundational idea. Uh. And then by the 0:17:01.920 --> 0:17:06.080 time we realize that it doesn't work, yeah, it's already there, 0:17:06.160 --> 0:17:06.840 firmly there. 0:17:06.920 --> 0:17:07.119 You know. 0:17:07.119 --> 0:17:10.400 We only realize these things over time of going like, wait, 0:17:11.040 --> 0:17:14.320 this strategy was bad. It's resulting in bad things. And 0:17:14.359 --> 0:17:15.720 at that point it's like, well, what are we going 0:17:15.800 --> 0:17:18.360 to do? Uproot everything, start over. 0:17:18.720 --> 0:17:21.159 And this can work on the good side of positive example, 0:17:21.200 --> 0:17:23.520 this would be Obamacare, which is deeply flawed, but like 0:17:23.680 --> 0:17:26.119 we saw, the Republicans tried to kill it and realized 0:17:26.119 --> 0:17:29.480 in the Trump administration, we really fucking can't. 0:17:29.480 --> 0:17:30.919 This is social security, right. 0:17:30.840 --> 0:17:34.720 Yeah, social security. Libraries or you would never get libraries 0:17:34.760 --> 0:17:37.000 to be a thing today. If it was a new concept. 0:17:37.359 --> 0:17:39.880 People would be willing Conservatives would be willing to kill 0:17:39.920 --> 0:17:43.080 and die to stop libraries from existing. But they're just 0:17:43.119 --> 0:17:46.040 a thing now, you know, still under attack, but they're 0:17:46.040 --> 0:17:46.360 a thing. 0:17:46.600 --> 0:17:50.320 Yeah. Yeah, you try ever, try to like harass a 0:17:50.400 --> 0:17:53.639 librarian like they can handle themselves, and they have all 0:17:53.680 --> 0:17:57.040 those library ghosts on their side too. And because a 0:17:57.320 --> 0:17:58.680 library is haunted, I. 0:17:58.680 --> 0:18:04.119 Believe strongly, Dave in like ending firing everybody in the 0:18:04.160 --> 0:18:07.240 Department of Homeland Security. But we take all of their guns, 0:18:07.280 --> 0:18:09.800 all of their weapon and we give it to the librarians. 0:18:10.000 --> 0:18:11.880 No training, We don't tell them how to use any 0:18:11.920 --> 0:18:13.760 of this. That's up to them. Whatever they want to 0:18:13.800 --> 0:18:16.200 do with all those tanks and machine guns is their 0:18:16.280 --> 0:18:17.040 their choice. 0:18:17.200 --> 0:18:19.440 You know what's not going to happen anymore. No one's 0:18:19.440 --> 0:18:21.719 going to be turning in books late. I'll tell that much. 0:18:21.800 --> 0:18:25.080 Well, yeah, get you're condamn right there fucking no knock 0:18:25.200 --> 0:18:26.760 raids for overdue books. 0:18:26.920 --> 0:18:29.800 Yeah, that situation that will be handling. 0:18:32.720 --> 0:18:37.119 So one step in the process of building this like 0:18:37.400 --> 0:18:39.840 think tank network, like one of the things they knew 0:18:39.840 --> 0:18:42.760 they had to do because there weren't a lot of 0:18:42.880 --> 0:18:48.040 really prominent popular right wing media figures right who were 0:18:48.080 --> 0:18:51.239 influential in public policy. That wasn't nearly as common as 0:18:51.240 --> 0:18:54.760 people who would have considered themselves liberals, right, you know, 0:18:54.800 --> 0:18:57.199 in reality, like you would say centrists or whatever. So 0:18:57.240 --> 0:18:59.000 a big part of what they had to do here 0:18:59.359 --> 0:19:02.440 was fine people who were liberals and even some leftists 0:19:02.440 --> 0:19:06.400 who were influential in academia in public policy and turn 0:19:06.560 --> 0:19:09.879 them right. Now we see this happen today. You're seeing 0:19:09.880 --> 0:19:12.920 all of these like formerly liberal left see some of 0:19:12.920 --> 0:19:15.160 the shit that likes the Young Turks guy has been 0:19:15.200 --> 0:19:18.040 saying and about like crime in cities and stuff this 0:19:18.160 --> 0:19:21.360 like weird right wing turn that a lot of guys 0:19:22.200 --> 0:19:24.000 was Jimmy Dre that guy who used to be kind 0:19:24.000 --> 0:19:26.480 of lefty, and then the pandemic hits and he goes 0:19:26.520 --> 0:19:30.400 hard right because he's an anti vax weirdo. Right. Yeah, 0:19:30.400 --> 0:19:32.720 this is like a thing we see today and this 0:19:32.760 --> 0:19:35.520 is really the first time it happens in an organized way. 0:19:35.560 --> 0:19:36.720 And what they would do is they would go to 0:19:36.760 --> 0:19:39.399 these guys who are like influential liberal academics and they 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:42.640 would say, and this is an actual example, iverat hey, 0:19:43.040 --> 0:19:45.440 we're starting this think tank. We would like to hire 0:19:45.520 --> 0:19:48.640 you on as like an expert. 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:48.760 Right. 0:19:48.840 --> 0:19:51.320 We're basically pay you to do whatever research you want 0:19:51.320 --> 0:19:53.399 to do, and occasionally you just have to put out 0:19:53.480 --> 0:19:55.240 some papers that are in line with the stuff that 0:19:55.240 --> 0:19:57.600 we want put out. And in return, and this is 0:19:57.640 --> 0:20:00.000 like in the seventies eighties, you'll get a two hundred 0:20:00.000 --> 0:20:02.600 one thousand dollars a year's salary for life whether or 0:20:02.640 --> 0:20:04.240 not anything gets done. We just need to be able 0:20:04.280 --> 0:20:05.320 to use your name. You know. 0:20:05.440 --> 0:20:07.399 It's like, yeah, that's like a billion dollars. 0:20:07.520 --> 0:20:10.920 That's so much money back then, right, you know, you'll 0:20:10.920 --> 0:20:14.040 have to occasionally rubber stamp some specific ideas. And that's 0:20:14.080 --> 0:20:16.680 what for some of these guys, it literally is I'm 0:20:16.720 --> 0:20:18.600 just like throwing my name on some shit so i 0:20:18.600 --> 0:20:21.920 can get a paycheck. Others really take to the idea 0:20:22.040 --> 0:20:25.000 of being more influential than they'd ever been, of having 0:20:25.080 --> 0:20:27.360 I'm not just being people that got listened to sometimes, 0:20:27.400 --> 0:20:30.840 but people who have this massive, hundreds of millions of 0:20:30.840 --> 0:20:33.920