Speaker 1: Col Zon Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to it could happen here. I'm Robert Evans, and
Speaker 2: this is a podcast about things falling apart, which they
Speaker 2: always seem to be these days, and in particular, this
Speaker 2: is an episode about what to expect out of the
Speaker 2: next six months to a year. If you're not sure
Speaker 2: what else to do, try and spread calm. I first
Speaker 2: learned this lesson back in twenty sixteen hanging out with
Speaker 2: perennial Libertarian presidential candidate Vermin Supreme during the protests around
Speaker 2: that year's Democratic Invention in Philadelphia. If you've never had
Speaker 2: the pleasure of seeing Vermin at a protest, he's essentially
Speaker 2: a rodeo clown for riot cops, and his example taught
Speaker 2: me a lot about how to communicate to a group
Speaker 2: of angry, scared people in tense situations. Those lessons came
Speaker 2: in handy for me back in twenty twenty. But the
Speaker 2: George Floyd Uprising is now almost five years in the past.
Speaker 2: Trump is once again in power, very little to stand
Speaker 2: between him and the exercise of a kind of arbitrary,
Speaker 2: dictatorial violence that this nation has seldom seen within its
Speaker 2: own borders, but as often sponsored elsewhere, including El Salvador,
Speaker 2: where Trump has sent hundreds of American residents and plans
Speaker 2: to send thousands, perhaps tens of thousands more. The purpose
Speaker 2: of this essay is to provide my predictions for the
Speaker 2: next six months to a year. What I'm writing here
Speaker 2: is speculative, but it is based on the best data
Speaker 2: I have available in numerous conversations I've had with activists,
Speaker 2: current federal employees, former soldiers, and retired law enforcement. There
Speaker 2: are a million places where I could start, but I
Speaker 2: feel like the most responsible place to begin is by
Speaker 2: answering this question, is now the time to panic? Last year,
Speaker 2: after Biden's disastrous debate performance, I put out a podcast
Speaker 2: essay titled Don't Panic. It was my most shared episode
Speaker 2: of this podcast that year, and I felt pretty good
Speaker 2: about the response until Trump again, and I found it
Speaker 2: briefly impossible to take my own advice. Since January of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five, the fascist takeover has only accelerated, and
Speaker 2: I have lost count of the number of people who've
Speaker 2: asked me, is it time to panic? The answer to
Speaker 2: that is still no, but not because there's no reason
Speaker 2: to panic. In fact, panic is a natural reaction to
Speaker 2: our present moment. If your fight or flight reflexes haven't
Speaker 2: been triggered, well, they might be broken. Even so, don't panic,
Speaker 2: because in combat and disasters, in any dangerous situation, you
Speaker 2: might find yourself panic is what will kill you as
Speaker 2: surely as anything else. There's a concept in military theory
Speaker 2: I bring up often, something introduced to soldiers undergoing training today.
Speaker 2: It's called the ODA loop. It describes the process people
Speaker 2: go through while acting and reacting under fire, and particularly
Speaker 2: while deciding how to act and react under fire. It
Speaker 2: stands for observe, orient, decide and act. If you can
Speaker 2: interrupt any part of that loop, you can stop your
Speaker 2: enemy from fighting back effectively. The basic principle of the
Speaker 2: ODA loop functions on the grand strategy scale as well
Speaker 2: as it does in a gunfight. This is the point
Speaker 2: behind the flood the zone strategy, orchestrated by Stephen Miller
Speaker 2: and the other intellectual luminaries behind Trump iiO. The fire
Speaker 2: hose of outrage is to distract you from observing everything
Speaker 2: that's happening, to keep you off balance so you can't
Speaker 2: orient yourself, to stop you from deciding and acting. Elon
Speaker 2: Musk's purchase of Twitter helped to supercharge the bullshit. Cannon
Speaker 2: AI accelerated the spread of lies on social media beyond
Speaker 2: all of our worst nightmares, and this has helped blind
Speaker 2: and divide the people who should have linked arms to
Speaker 2: stop this shit before it got to the point that
Speaker 2: it's at today. I want you to think of how
Speaker 2: many prominent leftists have fallen repeatedly for right wing propaganda
Speaker 2: like that Russia would never invade Ukraine, or that Trump
Speaker 2: might actually be somehow better for Gaza. These and a
Speaker 2: million other things have blinded and hobbled potential resistance. I
Speaker 2: might also bring up the whole Maga communist movement, but
Speaker 2: the less set about those people, the better. Meanwhile, columnists
Speaker 2: at liberal legacy publications like The Times have fallen for
Speaker 2: every hyped up story about transgender athletes or woke kids
Speaker 2: on college campuses and the danger the liberal left poses
Speaker 2: to free speech. They've denied genocide and demonized those who
Speaker 2: protest against it, and too many elected Democrats have taken
Speaker 2: their lead as the path of least resistance. Many have
Speaker 2: pulled right for reasons far more sinister. The fact that
Speaker 2: Gavin Newsom, governor of California, is hosting fascists on his
Speaker 2: new podcast while mailing burner phones to tech CEOs points
Speaker 2: towards something dark, immediate, deadly. We live now in the
Speaker 2: culmination of a successful decades long plot two, in the
Speaker 2: words of Curtis Jarvin, repeal the twentieth century and turned
Speaker 2: this nation into a dictatorship where our lives and our
Speaker 2: collective national arsenal are the personal property of some dudes
Speaker 2: who inherited oil money or invested in Facebook back in
Speaker 2: like two thousand and five. The early stages of the plan,
Speaker 2: of course, date back well before Peter Teele or Elon
Speaker 2: Musk or Donald Trump. They began when a coalition of
Speaker 2: would be oligarchs tried to overthrow FDR in what has
Speaker 2: become known as the Business Plot, and were thwarted by
Speaker 2: a Marine general named Smedley Butler. These men wanted revenge
Speaker 2: for the New Deal, but they found seizing power at
Speaker 2: the top harder than they'd hoped, and so they embarked
Speaker 2: on a slower, bottom up approach. Hence the John Birch Society,
Speaker 2: the creation of countless think tanks, and the generation's long
Speaker 2: effort to stack the Supreme Court. The war on abortion
Speaker 2: was a concerted step towards this plan. An artificial creation
Speaker 2: alongside the birth of the religious right as a political coalition.
Speaker 2: There was initially a small group of men at the
Speaker 2: center of the web, guys like William Brignery Won and
Speaker 2: William Brignery Do or Paul Wayrich. But the engine of
Speaker 2: cultural and political change forged from the late forties to
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventies was so successful that at some point
Speaker 2: it became self perpetuating. And when a gaggle of tech
Speaker 2: bros found themselves with more wealth than any humans that
Speaker 2: ever held, the machine was there to mold them and
Speaker 2: to be used by them. It's all worked so damn
Speaker 2: well that many people I know have lost hope entirely.
Speaker 2: We're fucked, goes the script. They're going to send us
Speaker 2: to the camps, and they can't be stopped, at least
Speaker 2: not without apocalyptic bloodshed. Well that's not necessarily so. Now
Speaker 2: people have already died as a result of this administration,
Speaker 2: a lot of them, and that will continue to happen.
Speaker 2: But a collapse into total carnage is not inevitable, nor
Speaker 2: is a future that offers us nothing but a boot
Speaker 2: upon our necks. Despite the money that went into building
Speaker 2: that this is a new house made with cheap materials,
Speaker 2: and there are already cracks in the foundation. So my
Speaker 2: first prediction for the coming months is this, the cracks
Speaker 2: will widen, and we'll talk about that, but first, as
Speaker 2: we're obligated to do, here's some ads. Trump and the
Speaker 2: men who swim in his wake signal only strength. Honesty
Speaker 2: is neither in their interest nor a strong suit. But
Speaker 2: Curtis Yarvin, chief profit of the neo Reactionaries and Peter
Speaker 2: Teel's pet philosopher, is in a different position. He knows
Speaker 2: people in power listen to some of what he has
Speaker 2: to say, and over the last few months his profile
Speaker 2: has risen enormously. I can take credit for an at
Speaker 2: least tiny amount of that. Many normal liberals and elected
Speaker 2: Democrats now know who he is. This exposes him to
Speaker 2: a danger that was not present for him during Trump's
Speaker 2: first term. If the current fascist salient should be pushed
Speaker 2: back and this movement fails, there could be and should
Speaker 2: be prosecutions, and he rightly fears that if this happens,
Speaker 2: he might follow in the footsteps of Alfred Rosenberg, the
Speaker 2: Nazi high theoretician who was executed at Nuremberg. That's why
Speaker 2: on March sixth he published a messi sprawling, seven thousand
Speaker 2: word essay titled Barbarians and Mandarins in his trademark nine
Speaker 2: unreadable style. It comes with the subheading as soon as
Speaker 2: it stops accelerating, it stalls and explodes. If you want
Speaker 2: to spare yourself the headache of reading through one tenth
Speaker 2: of a novel of Yarvins at best turgid prose, there's
Speaker 2: a good article by the nerd Reich that breaks all
Speaker 2: of this down. We'll link it in the show notes.
Speaker 2: But the gist is that Jarvin thinks Musk and Trump
Speaker 2: have been too slow, have embraced too many half measures,
Speaker 2: and the whole authoritarian project is careening towards disaster. Quote.
Speaker 2: Unless the spectacular earthquakes of January and February are dwarfed
Speaker 2: in March in April by new and unprecedented abuses of
Speaker 2: the Richter scale, the Trump regime will start to win
Speaker 2: and eventually dissipate. It cannot stay at its current level
Speaker 2: of power, which is too high to sustain but too
Speaker 2: low to succeed. It has to keep doing things that
Speaker 2: have never been done before. As soon as it stops accelerating,
Speaker 2: it stalls and explodes. Now, the weeks since have seen
Speaker 2: massive and rising public awareness of Seacott the terrorism detention
Speaker 2: facility in El Salvador being used as a concentration camp
Speaker 2: by the Trump regime. This might rightly be called a
Speaker 2: new and unprecedented abuse. But there's a couple of issues here,
Speaker 2: at least as far as Yarvin sees them. For one thing,
Speaker 2: the people targeted there have been migrants, people who are
Speaker 2: in the US, either illegally or in the US on
Speaker 2: visas that have been revoked, people who have been accused
Speaker 2: of being part of Trindagua, but not the people that
Speaker 2: Jarvin wants to see liquidated, because, as he writes in
Speaker 2: this column, the thing that he thinks the Trump administration
Speaker 2: should be doing right now is quite literally gassing media
Speaker 2: personalities and politicians who don't align with his viewpoint, basically
Speaker 2: literally killing the opposition. And since he's shown to be
Speaker 2: unwilling to do that, the fact that he's shipping people
Speaker 2: to concentration camps on its own isn't terrifying enough.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: The other thing that's concerning Yarbon is that while the
Speaker 2: use of this facility in El Salvador as a foreign
Speaker 2: concentration camp by the Trump regime is terrifying and is unprecedented.
Speaker 2: It's also been met with a significant response, one that
Speaker 2: burges on unprecedented itself. I'm not just talking about the
Speaker 2: protests or of the recent Supreme Court ruling ordering a
Speaker 2: temporary halt of such deportations. I'm referring to something else
Speaker 2: that's happened due to the sheer panic caused by the
Speaker 2: knowledge that our president has a concentration camp and has
Speaker 2: been talking about shipping US citizen dissidents there. I'm talking
Speaker 2: about stuff like the fact that formerly conservative columnist Bill
Speaker 2: Crystal is now calling for the outright abolition of ice
Speaker 2: and the arch neoliberal mealymouth David Brooks calling for a
Speaker 2: general strike in the pages of the New York Times
Speaker 2: while quoting from the Communist Manifesto. This is more than
Speaker 2: just a vibe shift. It's an open realization and acceptance
Speaker 2: by prominent people who are neither radical nor revolutionaries that
Speaker 2: any action, even the formerly unimaginable, might be necessary and
Speaker 2: justified in this regime. Now, make no mistake. First off,
Speaker 2: this is because a lot of these people are worried
Speaker 2: about their own privileges going away under a dictatorial regime,
Speaker 2: but that doesn't change the fact that this is a
Speaker 2: crack in the very foundation of the authoritarian power structure.
Speaker 2: Jarvin is scared then, because we weren't supposed to be
Speaker 2: here now. Harvard was supposed to have folded like Columbia
Speaker 2: and then have been slowly and quietly liquidated. The tame
Speaker 2: press was supposed to turn wholly for the regime or
Speaker 2: be disappeared, not to quote Karl Marx, and urge people
Speaker 2: into the streets to do a general strike. So I
Speaker 2: don't find all this cheery because I think David Brooks
Speaker 2: is going to become shithead Shay Govara. I am embraced, however,
Speaker 2: by the failure that this represents for them and above
Speaker 2: us who seek unchecked dominance. Cracks are also visible in
Speaker 2: the recent history of Elon Musk, who has watched the
Speaker 2: value of the stock that underpins his whole empire collapse.
Speaker 2: He fought desperately to convince Trump not to go through
Speaker 2: with the tariffs that would punish it further. The result
Speaker 2: we see Trump assuring his inner circle that Elon is
Speaker 2: on the way out, while Musk himself prepares to step
Speaker 2: back from doge In the hope that it will somehow
Speaker 2: protect the remainder of his ambitions. These are all good signs,
Speaker 2: and the damage will continue to spread. However, and this
Speaker 2: brings me to my next prediction. The Empire's gonna strike back.
Speaker 2: We are in for a hot summer, my friends, and
Speaker 2: there's no way around that. I mean this in the
Speaker 2: literal sense that it will probably be the hottest summer
Speaker 2: on record, although that fact will be true of every
Speaker 2: subsequent summer in our lives. But I also mean this
Speaker 2: in the sense that things are going to cook off
Speaker 2: in the streets very soon. This is something the administration
Speaker 2: has quite openly been waiting to see. Trump has made
Speaker 2: no secret of his desire to use the Insurrection Act
Speaker 2: not only at the border, but to send US troops
Speaker 2: and US cities to crush riots and punish leftist demonstrators.
Speaker 2: This was a desire hatched in reaction to the George
Speaker 2: Floyd uprising, and it always seems to be envisioned by
Speaker 2: the right as targeted against black clad antifa types. The
Speaker 2: reality is that anti fascists have not been a consistent
Speaker 2: presence on the ground around the country for some time,
Speaker 2: at least not organizing in the way that they were
Speaker 2: back when antifa was a buzzword. There are numerous reasons
Speaker 2: for this, but the biggest is that the fascist movement
Speaker 2: has moved beyond waving flags in the street and getting
Speaker 2: into fistfights to try and scare people. A lot of
Speaker 2: them are running federal law enforcement agencies in the military. Now,
Speaker 2: Proud boys just tain't a priority, not for those on
Speaker 2: the left who want to stop this, or frankly, for
Speaker 2: the administration. I expect protests around the country in the
Speaker 2: coming months for several reasons, but the likeliest event to
Speaker 2: provoke severe civil disruption is a right and food prices
Speaker 2: in the rise of everything else in price, as well
Speaker 2: as a collapsing economy courtesy of the president's tariffs. There
Speaker 2: are already numerous signs of this, both in terms of
Speaker 2: the volume of shipping coming into the United States and
Speaker 2: early signs of collapsing crop yields in the United States.
Speaker 2: And this is where a study of history helps one out,
Speaker 2: because nothing but nothing breaks down regimes like rising bread prices,
Speaker 2: and any attempt to crack down will be stymy by
Speaker 2: the fact that a decent chunk of the elites who
Speaker 2: backed Trump before will be suffering too. Obviously, the people
Speaker 2: closest to him are making bank off the economic upswings
Speaker 2: and downswings over the whole tariff issue. But there's a
Speaker 2: lot of other people, people who supported him, people who
Speaker 2: thought he had their back, who aren't quite close enough
Speaker 2: to power, and they're watching Trump shoot their own fortunes
Speaker 2: in the kneecap because they built their money on free trade.
Speaker 2: I won't pretend to know where things are going to
Speaker 2: pop off or will be the hottest, but the evidence
Speaker 2: shows the regime at least SPEC's Washington d C to
Speaker 2: play a central role in what comes next. Republican Congress
Speaker 2: members recently reintroduced a bill to repeal DC's self rule,
Speaker 2: and Trump appointed Ed Martin to be the city attorney,
Speaker 2: a man who, in the words of USA Today columnist
Speaker 2: Chris Brennan quote, lacks experience but loves revenge. Now, the
Speaker 2: fact that Elon Musk and his Doze cronies left so
Speaker 2: many in the city and the surrounding area unemployed after
Speaker 2: their purge of the administrative state means that there's an
Speaker 2: even higher number of motivated, angry people with free time
Speaker 2: and experiencing organizing large, complex systems who have nothing to
Speaker 2: do right now. A similar set of circumstances brought us
Speaker 2: to the twenty twenty uprisings. This was not just a
Speaker 2: product of the months of isolation, or of the brutality
Speaker 2: of George Floyd's murder, but of the sheer number of
Speaker 2: people who were out of work and who were finally
Speaker 2: given a chance to take out their anxiety at an
Speaker 2: authoritarian president tightening his grip. And today that grip is
Speaker 2: even tighter, the danger more real. We have a president
Speaker 2: openly discussing his desire to put American citizens in a
Speaker 2: foreign concentration camp. Trump and his inner circle are hoping
Speaker 2: for protests that stay isolated to DC and perhaps a
Speaker 2: few major Blue cities, Portland and the like. This would
Speaker 2: provide an opportunity to send in the troops, to utilize
Speaker 2: the Insurrection Act, to shoot people in the street, and
Speaker 2: to send some ringleaders off to l Salvador. This would
Speaker 2: be the riskiest option for Trump in some ways. Pete
Speaker 2: Hegseth has not been a competent or popular Secretary of Defense,
Speaker 2: and asking US troops to fire on protesters opens up
Speaker 2: the risk that some junior officer might bulk at that order,
Speaker 2: which could create a cascading chain of disobedience. Such things
Speaker 2: have sparked rapid collapse in other dictatorships throughout history. There's
Speaker 2: also the chance that spectacular and comprehensive violence by the
Speaker 2: military might succeed and thus strangle any protest movement in
Speaker 2: the cradle. So we might call this the high risk,
Speaker 2: high reward option. And I should note that Don Trump
Speaker 2: has more than a few times in the past chosen
Speaker 2: the high risk, high reward option, so I don't consider
Speaker 2: this unlikely. But it won't be lost on Trump or
Speaker 2: his cronies that the violence which met the first protest
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty provoked the largest domestic uprising and living memory.
Speaker 2: People have not forgotten this, and some blue state Democrats
Speaker 2: have even made let's say, confusing noises to that effect.
Speaker 2: Case in point, Governor Bob Ferguson of Washington just signed
Speaker 2: to bill barring other state National Guard units from entering
Speaker 2: Washington without his approval unless they were mobilized by the President. Now,
Speaker 2: as that last part might key you when on, this
Speaker 2: bill doesn't have a lot of legal force or any
Speaker 2: really at all, but it's a sign that even fairly
Speaker 2: milk toast elected Democrats are starting to consider the real
Speaker 2: possibility of a federal invasion of their states. The President
Speaker 2: has discussed sending out of state troops into blue cities before,
Speaker 2: largely in the context of cracking down on immigration and
Speaker 2: sanctuary cities. This is all dangerous language, but going first
Speaker 2: other than just language carries risk for the regime too.
Speaker 2: I would not be shocked if we were to see
Speaker 2: the Texas National Guard or whoever, whichever state occupying let's
Speaker 2: say Chicago, after federal law enforcement makes good on the
Speaker 2: threats that have been made by members of the Trump
Speaker 2: administration to arrest governors who aid in a bet undocumented
Speaker 2: migrants like JB. Pritzker, and an act like that would
Speaker 2: surely spark mass protests in Chicago and very likely elsewhere.
Speaker 2: The fact that a move like that would have such
Speaker 2: a risk of sparking mass resistance as well as further
Speaker 2: legal challenges, might keep the Trump administration focused on smaller
Speaker 2: fish and less dangerous outrages, at least for the time being.
Speaker 2: And if that's the route they choose, I think something
Speaker 2: different might be likely. And I call this potential path
Speaker 2: forward the pressure cooker, and we'll talk about that. But first,
Speaker 2: here's more ads. When public unrest exploded in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: It did so after four solid years of build up.
Speaker 2: If you'll remember, the earliest fascist anti fascist street clashes
Speaker 2: of that period, started before the twenty sixteen elections, were
Speaker 2: largely focused around speeches and campuses by right wing provocateurs
Speaker 2: and dueling demonstrations in a handful of cities. The first
Speaker 2: wave of such activity crested in Charlottesville twenty seventeen with
Speaker 2: tragic results, but the vibe it set and the people
Speaker 2: it trained continued to take part in street actions, and
Speaker 2: many of them formed the infrastructural core of the movement
Speaker 2: that exploded onto the scene after George Floyd's murder. The
Speaker 2: last year of serious protests have focused more on the
Speaker 2: genocide and Gaza than anything, and it's not coincidental that
Speaker 2: the first wave of deportations have heavily targeted legal residents
Speaker 2: who took part in those demonstrations. Since Trump took office
Speaker 2: and DOZE started doing its thing, there have been more
Speaker 2: large scale demos that focused directly on the regime. Now,
Speaker 2: these have been quite manageable from the regime's point of view,
Speaker 2: and they have not yet attracted the same kind of
Speaker 2: crackdown but that won't remain the case as people grow
Speaker 2: more desperate. Any fool can see that the apparatus of
Speaker 2: repression constructed to punish genocide protesters will be turned on democrats,
Speaker 2: former federal employees, and people who are just hungry and
Speaker 2: pissed about rising food prices. However, this represents another tightrope
Speaker 2: scenario for the regime. These demonstrations are large, and unlike
Speaker 2: student protests against Israel, the media has proved less eager
Speaker 2: to marginalize the participants as extremists. As time goes on
Speaker 2: and things get worse, folks who last year scoffed at
Speaker 2: college students occupying campus buildings may themselves consider if perhaps
Speaker 2: it might be time to fox some shit up. This
Speaker 2: will be an uneven process with sudden leaps forward and
Speaker 2: pulls back, and it will provoke an equally uneven state response.
Speaker 2: There will be attempts to send so called instigators and
Speaker 2: organizers overseas to will solve or unless the public reaction
Speaker 2: to this, which is building as I type, continues to
Speaker 2: escalate to the extent that it becomes unfeasible. If so,
Speaker 2: there are ample domestic locations to detain or even disappear
Speaker 2: those the regime considers dangerous. First on the chopping block
Speaker 2: will be the people whose heads are currently closest to
Speaker 2: the blade, organizers and demonstrators against genocide, whose citizenship is
Speaker 2: not at all in question. I expect if large disruptive
Speaker 2: demonstrations do threaten the administration's hold, they will also start
Speaker 2: to our target Antifa again, which will start with the
Speaker 2: targeting of longtime activists, many of whom would have been
Speaker 2: people arrested or at least heavily surveilled in twenty twenty. However,
Speaker 2: it won't end there, and it will quickly expand to
Speaker 2: elected Democrats, new people organizing protests, folks who have never
Speaker 2: had anything to do with any of the kind of
Speaker 2: anti fascist actions that so captivated Fox News back in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty. I will be shocked if we make it
Speaker 2: more than another year without a serious attempt to brand
Speaker 2: Antifa demastic terror organization, and if that succeeds in a
Speaker 2: way that has legal force, then the fact that there
Speaker 2: is no such organization won't matter. Trump's Feds will do
Speaker 2: what we've watched Ice do with Trendagua. They'll break down
Speaker 2: the door of whoever they wish argue tattoos or possessions
Speaker 2: of certain literature or whatever is proof of membership, and
Speaker 2: then those who survive the raids will find themselves in
Speaker 2: the most restrictive detention the regime feels secure placing them in.
Speaker 2: If things follow what I suspect is the likeliest path.
Speaker 2: We will watch this process ebb and flow over the
Speaker 2: next several months each spring and summer. Protests will grow
Speaker 2: and peak in the hottest months, with new cities and
Speaker 2: tactics being attempted regularly by groups constantly reeling from raids
Speaker 2: that are devastating and terrifying, but due to the incompetence
Speaker 2: of an FBI whose investigative capacity has been neutered, fail
Speaker 2: to really disrupt things. As the weather cools off, exhausted
Speaker 2: activists will lick their wounds and make new plans. Scattered
Speaker 2: acts of disruption carried out by small groups or individual
Speaker 2: cells occur year round, but I expect large scale demonstrations
Speaker 2: and clashes between demonstrators and law enforcement to follow a
Speaker 2: pattern not so different from what Afghanistan veterans knew was
Speaker 2: fighting season, hot summers of mass activity, winters of raids,
Speaker 2: and experimentation to scout holes for the next year's offensive,
Speaker 2: and as time goes on, the energy will build, the
Speaker 2: tension will build, and of course we might find ourselves
Speaker 2: reaching towards something that explodes in the not too distant future,
Speaker 2: perhaps a year or two down the line. Now, of course,
Speaker 2: none of this will occur in a vacuum or independent
Speaker 2: of the news churn that we've been drowning in for years.
Speaker 2: And this brings me to my next prediction, which is
Speaker 2: the coming of politics as unusual. I apologize for coming
Speaker 2: back to the David Brooks of it all, but seeing
Speaker 2: a man who in twenty seventeen wrote the Trump had
Speaker 2: changed and we really needed to stop stressing out over him,
Speaker 2: and then wrote a column attacking millennials for their tribalism.
Speaker 2: Call for a general strike is a sign, and it's
Speaker 2: not a sign that Brooks has gotten smarter. It's a
Speaker 2: sign that we've entered radical times, and that radicalization spares
Speaker 2: not even the centrist. If the worst case scenario occurs
Speaker 2: in a few weeks from now, US soldiers are gunning
Speaker 2: down demonstrators while ice officers krt elected Democrats off the
Speaker 2: Seacott feel free to disregard this passage. But if the
Speaker 2: somewhat slower path prevails, I expect to see more politicians
Speaker 2: and news editors chase viewers as they sprint left or
Speaker 2: at least away from the dissolving center. We've watched this
Speaker 2: process occur on the right during the Biden years, and
Speaker 2: to a degree it is still occurring out of a
Speaker 2: fear of reprisals under the Trump regime. I'm finalizing the
Speaker 2: script on the Day sixty Minutes producer Bill Owens step
Speaker 2: down over interference from paramount executives into his coverage of
Speaker 2: Donald Trump. But the polls have started moving against the right.
Speaker 2: Trump's public approval on immigration policy is under water for
Speaker 2: the first time in years, and his approval on everything
Speaker 2: else is, while not always at record lows, diving with
Speaker 2: significant speed. The next several months of shipping data, as
Speaker 2: well as concerning early reporting on farm yields, suggests a
Speaker 2: near future in which a lot less will be available
Speaker 2: for everyone. We saw what a rising price of eggs
Speaker 2: did to Biden, and we've also seen Senator Chris van
Speaker 2: Holland go almost overnight from a marginal figure in US
Speaker 2: politics to one of the most famous Democrats in the nation,
Speaker 2: all because he had the modest courage to fly to
Speaker 2: l Salvador and call the president's use of a foreign
Speaker 2: black site what it was. There will be more people
Speaker 2: like Van Holland who display courage previously unseen in a
Speaker 2: moment of trial. But much more than that, there will
Speaker 2: be opportunists, those who see the wind blowing and chase
Speaker 2: the approval of crowds more willing to countenance radical action
Speaker 2: in the streets than they were a year ago. Most
Speaker 2: politicians and most thought leaders in the old media are reactive,
Speaker 2: and I'm not saying that this will change, merely that
Speaker 2: what they react to will change because of who is
Speaker 2: in charge now, and because of the desperation of the
Speaker 2: times brought on by Republican policies, which is going to
Speaker 2: pay to target on the backs of conservative leaders as
Speaker 2: large as the targets they'd been painting on the backs
Speaker 2: of dissidence. And all of this means one thing, which
Speaker 2: is we're approaching the age of weird terror. So much
Speaker 2: has happened in this shitty, stupid year that I think
Speaker 2: we've all forgotten. Twenty twenty five opened with a military
Speaker 2: veteran blowing himself up at a cyber truck in front
Speaker 2: of the Trump Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. His
Speaker 2: reasoning was based as much on the numerous head injuries
Speaker 2: he'd suffered in his service as it was on his
Speaker 2: exposure to right wing propaganda, which convinced him that the
Speaker 2: Democrats needed to be dealt with. But he saw things
Speaker 2: clearly enough to know that yet another mass shooting or
Speaker 2: self emulation, or even a run of the mill bomb
Speaker 2: wouldn't have garnered him or his manifesto any attention. So
Speaker 2: instead he picked a cyber truck and a Trump building,
Speaker 2: symbols of the two most viral men of our very
Speaker 2: stupid era, and he blew one of those up in
Speaker 2: front of the other. And by gummet, we all did
Speaker 2: pay attention for a few days, at least late last year.
Speaker 2: And Anna, miss gunman the government believes to be Luigi Mangione,
Speaker 2: was even more successful at holding our attention with an
Speaker 2: even stranger attack, a brazen and igh perfectly executed assassination
Speaker 2: carried out by a man with a dazzling smile and
Speaker 2: the wisdom to pick the most universally hated target that
Speaker 2: exists today, a healthcare ceo. We have all watched so
Speaker 2: many mass shootings at schools, at grocery stores, nightclubs, everywhere
Speaker 2: imaginable that they've lost the ability to shock us, But
Speaker 2: targeted assassinations of people at the top of the food
Speaker 2: chain are so rare that they can't help but draw eyeballs,
Speaker 2: and sheer, rollicking strangeness like we saw in Vegas, has
Speaker 2: a captivating power all its own. We will see more
Speaker 2: of both kinds of attacks in the months to come.
Speaker 2: The arson attempt on Governor Shapiro's home, bizarre at least
Speaker 2: for the extensive damage done, might be seen as another
Speaker 2: data point on this list, But as new figures rise
Speaker 2: to prominence within new protest movements, we will see attempts
Speaker 2: to kill them. Furious and deranged Trump supporters armed with
Speaker 2: cars and guns and Trump branded by rocket dives will
Speaker 2: do as they've been doing, and this part won't be new.
Speaker 2: What I do expect will be new is the increased
Speaker 2: threat felt by the oligarchs at the top of the system,
Speaker 2: as intelligent and patient young people continue to plot ways
Speaker 2: to go after them and the places and times where
Speaker 2: they feel invulnerable. And I also expect that editors and
Speaker 2: journalists will continue to learn that these actions draw eyeballs
Speaker 2: more than almost anything else. And while all that's going on,
Speaker 2: the truly unbalanced among us will find ways to hitchhike
Speaker 2: off the well publicized turmoil coming our way and make
Speaker 2: their own confounding statements. There will be public suicides and
Speaker 2: attacks utilizing weapons and tools we can't yet imagine, at
Speaker 2: least not openly on a podcast without receiving a visit
Speaker 2: from some friendly Alphabet boy or another. I don't know
Speaker 2: what exactly to expect beyond the unexpected and the very
Speaker 2: very silly. And of course, as we talk about weird terrorism,
Speaker 2: I don't mean to discount the Nazi accelerationist types here.
Speaker 2: They'll keep trying if they want to raise above the
Speaker 2: chatter and an even more crowded media ecosystem. Even they're
Speaker 2: going to find ways to get weird with it after all,
Speaker 2: and attack No One Notices isn't likely to accelerate much
Speaker 2: of anything. And I guess that's what I've got right now.
Speaker 2: I've got ten pages or so on what I see coming.
Speaker 2: I didn't come up with a smooth, sexy ending for
Speaker 2: this like a writer should, because I'm tired and thinking
Speaker 2: about this isn't fun. But I did a lot, and
Speaker 2: there you are. I suppose the thing you're asking now
Speaker 2: is what the fuck do I do about it? And
Speaker 2: you know, let's what we talk about a lot on
Speaker 2: this show. Organize with your friends, get involved, find ways
Speaker 2: to help people, take us, stop the bleed glass and
Speaker 2: the love of God, keep your eyes open.
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