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Speaker 1: You stand in line. Ahead of you, dozens of other

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Speaker 1: ragged figures stretch up to the horizon and the looming

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Speaker 1: edifice of the Canadian border station. You're cold, of course,

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Speaker 1: but so is everyone. You all shivered together. The sound

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Speaker 1: of chattering teeth is louder than the few muffled conversations

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Speaker 1: you hear around you. Almost no one is in any

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Speaker 1: mood to talk. Everything you own is stuffed into your backpack. Fleetingly,

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Speaker 1: you think about your old TV, your gaming consoles, the

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Speaker 1: comfy couch you used to relax on while watching Netflix. Netflix.

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Speaker 1: You almost tear up thinking about it. You can't remember

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Speaker 1: the last time you relaxed, the last beer you sipped,

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Speaker 1: the last good meal you enjoyed. A cold wind blows

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Speaker 1: across the line, and you feel it most acutely in

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Speaker 1: the bit of shrapnel that's been buried in your shoulder

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Speaker 1: for the last several months. Every twinge of pain it

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Speaker 1: brings you is rather ironically or reminder of how lucky

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Speaker 1: you are to have gotten out alive. There's been very

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Speaker 1: little news from home since you fled. The little bit

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Speaker 1: you've received during snippets of time when you've had both

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Speaker 1: power and electricity has been dire. Most of your friends

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Speaker 1: have gone dark. You try not to think about what

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Speaker 1: that means for them. It's taken three long, hungry, unshowered

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Speaker 1: weeks for you to reach the border. Your body is

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Speaker 1: at the edge of its endurance. For the last several days,

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Speaker 1: you've felt perpetually on the edge of collapse. But now

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Speaker 1: with the border in sight, you've been filled with a

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Speaker 1: peculiar new energy. You made it. You're going to survive.

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Speaker 1: You watches a van rolls up from the Canadian side

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Speaker 1: of the hastily thrown up border barricades. A film crew

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Speaker 1: steps out, a reporter begins chatting to some of the

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Speaker 1: people who've already made it through. You can't hear what

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Speaker 1: they say, but you can guess the questions well enough,

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Speaker 1: and makes you think back to times years ago when

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Speaker 1: you lazily flipped through ch V channels and caught footage

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Speaker 1: from some mainstream news station of a journalist talking to

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Speaker 1: Syrian refugees. You doubt you watch the story for more

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Speaker 1: than a few minutes. Now you wonder about all those

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Speaker 1: people where they are now, how many of them are

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Speaker 1: still alive. The line moves slowly, but cheerly, and in

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Speaker 1: time you're just a couple of people away from the

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Speaker 1: border guards. In front of you is a family of five.

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Speaker 1: The mother clutches the family Bible, holding on to it

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Speaker 1: as if for dear life. The father has a crucifix

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Speaker 1: hung around his neck. You think relatively little of this.

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Speaker 1: You grew up in America, after all, but the border

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Speaker 1: guards seemed to pick them out a suspicious Several of

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Speaker 1: them crowd around the family, hands wearily on holstered guns.

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Speaker 1: As you watch, their bags are unceremoniously emptied out and searched,

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Speaker 1: layers of clothing stripped off of even their bodies. You're

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Speaker 1: confused for a bit. The other families passing through hadn't

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Speaker 1: been subjected to that kind of treatment. And then you

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Speaker 1: think back to a few days ago, hanging out in

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Speaker 1: that bus station in Montana, the last time you'd been

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Speaker 1: able to charge up your phone and find some WiFi.

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Speaker 1: There'd been a terrible shooting in Vancouver. Half a dozen

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Speaker 1: Christian dominionists, terrorists from America had smuggled guns up, probably

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Speaker 1: from somewhere in Washington. They'd hit up a concert venue,

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Speaker 1: killing dozens dozens of people. For a moment, you're ashamed

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Speaker 1: that it took you so long to remember that attack,

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Speaker 1: you realize that it didn't really stand out to you

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Speaker 1: at the time. Your last few months have been filled

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Speaker 1: with violence so much more extreme and indiscriminate that the

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Speaker 1: news of this tragedy just sort of rolled over you

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Speaker 1: like morning fog. It didn't even stick in your head.

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Speaker 1: You notice now, though, that the Canadian soldiers and border

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Speaker 1: guards manning this crossing look conspicuously less friendly than you'd expected.

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Speaker 1: Friendly is, of course the first word that comes to

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Speaker 1: mind when you think about Canadians, but these men and

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Speaker 1: women seem anxious, jittery, and perhaps even a little bit angry.

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Speaker 1: After a long search, the family ahead of you was

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Speaker 1: walked through the border crossing. Border patrol men follow them in,

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Speaker 1: and they're led to a separate waiting area from the

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Speaker 1: other refugees. The lion moves up. You step forward, that

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Speaker 1: much closer to safety. You look up at one of

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Speaker 1: the guards. He glares back at you, and once again

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Speaker 1: you feel less certain about the future. What stereotypically is

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Speaker 1: an American. I've spent a lot of time traveling, and

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Speaker 1: I've made friends from all around the world, most notably Israel, Serbia, Germany, France, England,

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Speaker 1: and Iraq, So I hope you'll forgive my arrogance and

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Speaker 1: starting with my own opinions on stereotypes about Americans before

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Speaker 1: we get into a little bit of research. We Americans

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Speaker 1: are first and foremost seen as a loud people. Most

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Speaker 1: foreigners I know have emphasized that about US. Americans have

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Speaker 1: a reputation for being fun to great party goers, were

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Speaker 1: seen as passionate and of course fat. That's definitely another stereotype.

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Speaker 1: And we are obviously seen as a heavily armed people.

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Speaker 1: When I first started traveling and people would find out

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Speaker 1: that I came from Texas, many of them would ask

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Speaker 1: if I owned guns, which I did and do. I

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Speaker 1: can remember one particularly poignant conversation I had with the

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Speaker 1: Venezuelan man and a hostel in Belfast, Ireland. It was

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Speaker 1: three or four days after the Sandy Hook shooting in

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Speaker 1: late two thousand and twelve. Now, Venezuela has and had

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Speaker 1: plenty of problems with violence and a nightmarishly high murder rate,

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Speaker 1: but I'll always remember the confusion in this guy's voice

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Speaker 1: when he said to me, but nobody shoots up a school.

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Speaker 1: Nobody does that. So maybe add that to the list

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Speaker 1: of stereotypes about Americans. An awful lot of us are

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Speaker 1: willing to shoot up schools. I found a fun CBS

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Speaker 1: News article how Americans look to the rest of the world,

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Speaker 1: and I figured some of those anecdotes would be good

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Speaker 1: to pat out my own experience in the matter. I

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Speaker 1: want to read to one from an actor in Toronto

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Speaker 1: and another from a retired banker in Copenhagen. Quote. The

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Speaker 1: first word that comes to mind when I hear the

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Speaker 1: word America is arrogance. They are big and loud, and

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Speaker 1: they are in charge of everything. And the next capitalism,

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Speaker 1: money rules everything. Overweight people, Donald Trump elections shootings. Now.

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Speaker 1: One thing that's interesting to me about this article is

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Speaker 1: that while positive opinions did outnumber negative ones, people fromation,

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Speaker 1: is generally considered culturally closer to the United States were

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Speaker 1: more likely to refer to US as arrogant or violent.

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Speaker 1: Here's a representative opinion on Americans from a twenty six

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Speaker 1: year old in New Delhi. Has a very liberal culture,

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Speaker 1: great people in a country that drives innovation. Another interviewee

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Speaker 1: from the Philippines said America welcomes all different races. That's

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Speaker 1: what she believed about us. It's interesting food for thought.

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Speaker 1: At least, why am I talking about all this? What

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Speaker 1: does it have to do with the Second American Civil War? Well,

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Speaker 1: what are some stereotypes you know about iraqis Afghan people, Syrians?

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Speaker 1: We don't wars mean refugees. It is one commonality that

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Speaker 1: literally every conflict in modern history shares. If there is

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Speaker 1: shooting in American cities, if there are bombings in the

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Speaker 1: hills and on the highways, there will be people who flee.

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Speaker 1: Many of them will become internally displaced within the country,

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Speaker 1: fleeing bombed out neighborhoods and unsafe chunks of the country

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Speaker 1: ahead of growing militias and insurgent groups. Now, you probably

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Speaker 1: don't know much about Syria in two thousand ten, the

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Speaker 1: year before the Arab Spring. That's fine. Until pretty recently,

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Speaker 1: I didn't either. That year, Syria was one of the

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Speaker 1: fastest growing, lower middle income countries in the world. It

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Speaker 1: was host to a huge amount of tourism and agriculture,

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Speaker 1: decent industry, healthcare and college were free. It had a dictator,

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Speaker 1: Bashar al Assad, but he was widely seen as at

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Speaker 1: least a mild reformer. Things seemed to be slowly opening

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Speaker 1: up when I was eighteen. In my first year of college,

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Speaker 1: I took two semesters of Arabic from a Syrian professor

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Speaker 1: named Yasser. Yaser hailed from Aleppo, and he was deeply

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Speaker 1: proud of his city. He taught us about how it

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Speaker 1: gave birth to the alphabet. He spoke lovingly and at

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Speaker 1: length about its beauty, about the wonderful food. He introduced

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Speaker 1: me to Arabic coffee and thoroughly convinced me that Syrian

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Speaker 1: were better at brewing the drink than anyone else on

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Speaker 1: this planet. I've traveled through a decent chunk of the

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Speaker 1: Middle East now, and I still believe that the war

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Speaker 1: began in two thousand eleven, five years after my classes

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Speaker 1: with Yasar. By two thousand fifteen, more than three million

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Speaker 1: Syrians had fled the fighting for neighboring countries like Lebanon,

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Speaker 1: which is considered by me and only me, to be serious.

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Speaker 1: Canada two thousand fifteen was the first year my journalism

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Speaker 1: intersected with the Syrians civil war. A few days after

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Speaker 1: my trip to report on the war in Ukraine, I

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Speaker 1: found myself crossing the Hungarian Serbian border on foot. One

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Speaker 1: million Syrian refugees made it over to Europe that year,

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Speaker 1: and the bulk of them traveled on foot from Greece

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Speaker 1: up through the Balkans and into Western Europe. We spent

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Speaker 1: a couple of days on the refugee trail, watching endless,

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Speaker 1: unbroken lines of refugees trudged closer and closer to their

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Speaker 1: ultimate goal, usually Germany or somewhere in Scandinavia. A huge

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Speaker 1: number of these people spoke English. They were just normal people,

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Speaker 1: like anyone you'd meet on the street. Many of them

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Speaker 1: had smart phones, which they used to show me pictures

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Speaker 1: of Bashar al Assad's war crimes. Some of them were

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Speaker 1: young men, fresh college graduates, who saw no future in

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Speaker 1: their home country and hoped Europe could use their skills

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Speaker 1: in medicine, engineering, or whatever. Other young men were fleeing

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Speaker 1: the draft issued by the government. I met one man

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Speaker 1: who had been a pilot for the Syrian Air Force.

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Speaker 1: He'd grown tired of bombing his countrymen. I don't think

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Speaker 1: I've ever met a man with older eyes. I wrote

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Speaker 1: an article about the things these refugees told me for

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Speaker 1: Crack to the Side I worked for at the time.

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Speaker 1: Been Shapiro of The Daily Wire wrote an article too.

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Speaker 1: His article was titled the Left keeps saying all Syrian

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Speaker 1: refugees are Western friendly, they should learn to read. The

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Speaker 1: crux of his argument was that Syrian refugees were not

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Speaker 1: compatible with Western society since only seventy of them were

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Speaker 1: totally negative on isis quote from Ben So what does

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Speaker 1: this all mean. It means that the evidenceless picture all

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Speaker 1: of all Syrian refugees is Western friendly doesn't hold water.

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Speaker 1: But don't look for the media or the international left

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Speaker 1: to pay attention to such facts. After all, these are

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Speaker 1: the same people who keep stating, without evidence that only

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Speaker 1: a tiny minority of Muslims hold extreme views. When fact

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Speaker 1: conflicts with pretty fiction, the left chooses its own pretty

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Speaker 1: fictions every time, which just means that more Westerners will die.

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Speaker 1: And this brings me back to the point I started

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Speaker 1: this episode with, what are the rest of the world

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Speaker 1: stereotypes about Americans? And how will those stereotypes evolve after

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Speaker 1: several years of escalating violence in surgeon attacks and terrorist murder.

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Speaker 1: Once insurgents start bombing highways, shooting cops and assassinating politicians,

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Speaker 1: once separatists start fighting against the government and whole cities

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Speaker 1: are beyond the reach of the law, Once the Second

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Speaker 1: American Civil War really gets going, the violence will not

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Speaker 1: stay contained to our shores. In June of two thousand fourteen,

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Speaker 1: the forces of the Islamic State captured Mosel, the second

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Speaker 1: largest city in Iraq. Isis is generally portrayed in Western

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Speaker 1: media as having sort of come out of nowhere, but

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Speaker 1: that is not the truth. In Iraq, it evolved out

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Speaker 1: of long standing hardline, sunny dominionist movements. They framed themselves

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Speaker 1: as resistance against both the growing secular aspects of Iraqi

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Speaker 1: society and their long standing religious nimessies. The Shia in

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Speaker 1: Portland and in Dallas. In Cleveland and northern California, I

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Speaker 1: have seen angry, heavily armed men preached their desire for

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Speaker 1: a Christian dominated United States. The crosses tattooed on their

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Speaker 1: arms and sewn on to their body armor were just

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Speaker 1: as prominent as their three percent tattoos and Confederate flags.

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Speaker 1: Right now, an American traveling abroad might face uncomfortable questions

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Speaker 1: about Donald Trump. Imagine what an American fleeing from Texas

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Speaker 1: might face as he tried to enter the EU or

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Speaker 1: Canada in the wake of a series of brutal Christian

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Speaker 1: nationalist pograms against LGBT Americans. If you remember, Omar Matinees

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Speaker 1: ISIS credited mass shooting at a gay night club was

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Speaker 1: used as justification by the Trump campaign for why Syrian

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Speaker 1: refugees should not be accepted into the United States. A

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Speaker 1: few months after my time on the refugee trail, in

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Speaker 1: November of two thousand fifteen, a handful of ISIS commandos

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Speaker 1: carried out a brutal attack on Paris, killing more than

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Speaker 1: a hundred and thirty people, most of whom were concert

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Speaker 1: glowers at the Bottaklan Theater. According to ISIS, the attack

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Speaker 1: was retaliation for French air strikes and Syria and Iraq. Now,

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Speaker 1: as imaginative as I can be, I have a hard

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Speaker 1: time seeing France or Canada or any other country carrying

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Speaker 1: out air strikes on the United States. We have nukes,

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Speaker 1: for one thing, and that's really the only thing that

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Speaker 1: matters when it comes to discouraging air strikes. But I

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Speaker 1: can imagine other countries providing financial aid to the struggling

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Speaker 1: federal government as it battles to maintain control. I can

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Speaker 1: imagine them sending in peacekeepers and humanitarian aid to try

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Speaker 1: and save gay people and people of color and areas

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Speaker 1: threatened by white nationalist or dominionist violence. And I can

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Speaker 1: imagine Christian terrorists striking back at them with attacks similar

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Speaker 1: to the ones launched by ISIS. And if that happens,

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Speaker 1: millions of American refugees might find themselves judged by the

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Speaker 1: actions of a few of their most violent countrymen, just

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Speaker 1: as the Syrian and Afghan refugees I met in two

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Speaker 1: thousand fifteen were judged by the actions of a handful

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Speaker 1: of terrorists, most of whom were not even from Syria

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Speaker 1: or Afghanistan. By two thousand fifteen, after four years of

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Speaker 1: civil war, nearly five million Syrians had been forced to

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Speaker 1: flee their homeland. Syria's pre war population was just twenty

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Speaker 1: three million. If our imagined second American Civil War grew

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Speaker 1: to anything approaching that kind of intensity and a proportionate

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Speaker 1: number of Americans were forced to flee the fighting, we

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Speaker 1: could see as many as eighty million of our countrymen

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Speaker 1: and women made refugees. Now, most of these people would

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Speaker 1: stay within the bounds of the United States, becoming internally

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Speaker 1: displaced persons. In Iraq, the acronym I d P was

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Speaker 1: used for the folks who had fled from the fighting

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Speaker 1: and Mosle and other areas captured by ISIS. Most I

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Speaker 1: d p s were herded into vast, tense cities, living

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Speaker 1: in canvas and provided for by the UN Humanitarian Crisis

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Speaker 1: Relief Organization and eating food provided by the Qatari Red Crescent.

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Speaker 1: They brought what they could carry and nothing more. We

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Speaker 1: don't In the event of a second American civil war,

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Speaker 1: the government would do its best to take care of

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Speaker 1: millions of displaced citizens. But in the midst of a

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Speaker 1: war and a failing economy, I do not think these

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Speaker 1: camps would be overwhelmingly pleasant places. My mind is drawn

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Speaker 1: to the treatment of the homeless and modern America, we

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Speaker 1: as a culture sort of suck assid taking care of

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Speaker 1: our needy in good times. A government prosecuting a brutal

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Speaker 1: internesting war probably wouldn't win any awards for cleanest, best

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Speaker 1: fed refugee camps. Stories of these miserable places would spread

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Speaker 1: as millions of other Americans watched anxiously and considered whether

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Speaker 1: or not they ought to flee themselves. Increasing numbers of

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Speaker 1: US would seek shelter in Canada or northern Mexico. The

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Speaker 1: rich would flee first, of course, probably to Europe. They

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Speaker 1: would have the resources to pay their way into visas

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Speaker 1: and replant their lives and cities like Berlin. The first

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Speaker 1: wave of vulnerable refugees, Activists, people of color, gay and

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Speaker 1: trans individuals would also probably have a relatively simple time

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Speaker 1: earning refugee visas and places like Europe. But as the

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Speaker 1: number of fleeing Americans increased from thousands to tens and

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Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands, and eventually to millions, the world's patients

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Speaker 1: with US would wear out. Stories of terrorist attacks by

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Speaker 1: American extremists would color world opinion of US. Canada is

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Speaker 1: the world's seventh most peaceful society, Iceland is the world's

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Speaker 1: most peaceful society. Most European nations are fairly high on

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Speaker 1: that list. The United States, however, is currently number ninety four.

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Speaker 1: We will not rise higher during a second American Civil war.

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Speaker 1: One of the people interviewed in that CBS article about

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Speaker 1: world stereotypes of Americans was a thirty nine year old

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Speaker 1: from Toronto. He said, what identifies an America in loudness?

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Speaker 1: All of the Trump stuff in the US has been depressing.

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Speaker 1: You would like to think people are smarter than that,

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Speaker 1: but definitely surprising and depressing to see how much support

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Speaker 1: he has and how much support his ideas have. Imagine

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Speaker 1: how this guy's opinion of us would harden after stories

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Speaker 1: of gay people being gunned down or burned alive by

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Speaker 1: Christian nationalists, after terrorists bombings from eco fascist cadres, after

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Speaker 1: right wing militias and leftist guerrillas shoot up home neighborhoods.

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Speaker 1: How long will it take that guy and millions of

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Speaker 1: Canadians like him to go from Americans are loud and

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Speaker 1: kind of annoying too. We need to shut down all

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Speaker 1: American immigration until we figure out what's going on now.

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Speaker 1: That might have been a good note to end this

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Speaker 1: episode on, but the unofficial motto of this show is

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Speaker 1: it can always get darker, and it's about to because

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Speaker 1: human beings will not be the only people displaced by

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Speaker 1: the Second American Civil War. There are currently roughly one

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Speaker 1: hundred and eighty million cats and dogs living in the

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Speaker 1: United States. Their numbers are actually close to eve and

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Speaker 1: cats out numbered dogs by around five million or so.

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Speaker 1: Both species are capable of surviving on their own, or

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Speaker 1: at least certain members of both species are, but they

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Speaker 1: seem to vastly prefer life with human beings to life without.

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Speaker 1: If you're listening to this, the odds are pretty good

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Speaker 1: that you have a pet, a cat or a dog,

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Speaker 1: or both, or possibly several of both, and you certainly

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Speaker 1: love them as much as they love you. Right now,

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Speaker 1: it may be impossible for you to imagine abandoning them.

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Speaker 1: Perhaps you would try to take them with you as

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Speaker 1: the mortars started falling on your neighborhood, as the death

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Speaker 1: squads broke through to your street, as the government helicopters

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Speaker 1: began reigning hell fire down around you, But most of

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Speaker 1: you would leave them. I know that, because I know

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Speaker 1: the citizens of Abdifka, Ukraine, loved their cats and dogs

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Speaker 1: as well as you do. But when the Russian backed

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Speaker 1: separatists started pounding the town with a hundred and fifty

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Speaker 1: five millimeter howitzer shells and grad rockets, the ones who

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Speaker 1: could leave, the young and the moneyed left, and many

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Speaker 1: of them left their beloved pets behind. There was simply

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Speaker 1: no other option. War does not stop for your sentiments,

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Speaker 1: and so has the town of ev Dievka, emptied of

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Speaker 1: human beings, it filled with abandoned animals. Cats and dogs

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Speaker 1: hid at first in the abandoned homes of their masters,

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Speaker 1: but once it got too cold, they began to congregate

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Speaker 1: around the heating pipes that ran from building to building,

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Speaker 1: providing the central heating necessary in Ukraine's unbelievably harsh winters.

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Speaker 1: The junction boxes, where several of these pipes met, were

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Speaker 1: particularly popular, and the remaining denizens of Abdivka, mostly older people,

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Speaker 1: started setting out food and building small shelters for the

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Speaker 1: abandoned animals. It was not lost on me when I

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Speaker 1: visited in two thousand fifteen that while human beings murdered

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Speaker 1: each other a mile away, cats and dogs had learned

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Speaker 1: to get along and share the same home and food.

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Speaker 1: One optimistic thing I can tell you is that for

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Speaker 1: all the violence and of bloodshed a second American Civil

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Speaker 1: War would bring, I suspect there would be numerous figures

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Speaker 1: on every side, leaders of right and left wing militias alike,

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Speaker 1: who would take time out from the fighting to care

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Speaker 1: for abandoned animals. In two thousand thirteen, I read a

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Speaker 1: fantastic article on the conflict journalism website war is Boring

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Speaker 1: about a Syrian rebel commander named Jamal. I'm going to

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Speaker 1: quote from that now. He commands rebel forces in the

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Speaker 1: ruins of an ancient mountaintop village in northern Syria. He

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Speaker 1: daily dodges bombs and rockets from regime warplanes and silent,

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Speaker 1: invisible bullets from enemy sharpshooters. He leads his men in

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Speaker 1: battle unarmed, equipped only with a walkie talkie for issuing orders.

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Speaker 1: He also rescues abandoned cats, hundreds of them hiding out

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Speaker 1: in the ruins of Adaha, one of the most important

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Speaker 1: battlegrounds of the three year old Syrian Civil War. Jamal

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Speaker 1: was a farmer in his mid fifties when the war started.

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Speaker 1: He was just a normal man with a love of

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Speaker 1: animals who found himself thrust into vicious fighting. And when

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Speaker 1: he wasn't fighting, he fed and cared for countless kittie

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Speaker 1: cats left behind by their owners. Quote. The felines are everywhere,

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Speaker 1: sleeping into rebel bunkers, to mew at officers conferring over radios,

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Speaker 1: rolling in the sun baked dirt between mounds of rubble,

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Speaker 1: lounging under tree sheared of their branches by gunfire and artillery.

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Speaker 1: An accurate count is impossible, but during our day long

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Speaker 1: visit in early October, we saw scores of them in

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Speaker 1: just one small section of the village. Jamal loves cats.

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Speaker 1: Who doesn't, he says. Indeed, his family, his wife, two sons,

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Speaker 1: and two daughters have two cats of their own at

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Speaker 1: their home in southern Isleb. When his forces occupied the

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Speaker 1: mountain village, they found almost no people but countless hungry kitties.

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Speaker 1: The rebels in Araja survive on cantuna, sardines and processed meat,

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Speaker 1: and now so do the cats. As I write this episode,

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Speaker 1: Russian and Syrian war planes are currently pounding id Lib

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Speaker 1: Jamal's home with indiscriminate bombs from above. Jamal is almost

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Speaker 1: certainly dead now, along with most of the courageous men

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Speaker 1: and women who dared to defy Bashar al Assad. But

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Speaker 1: we will see his like again if a second civil

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Speaker 1: war comes to this land and forces hundreds of thousands

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Speaker 1: of men and women to fight a war they never

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Speaker 1: thought would come. All friends, you can can you get

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Speaker 1: me home? Can you tell the two with so much

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Speaker 1: friends a fence? Perhaps the birds? That is pretty intensive

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Speaker 1: because it wants I'm Robert Evans and I'm just exhausted

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Speaker 1: from reading all of that. You can find me on

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Speaker 1: Twitter at I right, Okay, you can find this show

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Speaker 1: on Twitter at happen here Pod, and you can find

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Speaker 1: the show online at it could happen here pod dot com.

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Speaker 1: Our music, as always, is from four Fists