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Speaker 1: Al Zone Media.

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Speaker 2: Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about

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Speaker 2: it happening here, which is, you know, these days normally

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Speaker 2: about the fact that it's happening here, But today we're

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Speaker 2: here to talk about a show where it happens somewhere else,

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Speaker 2: a place that people aren't yet but may one day

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Speaker 2: be in the future. We're talking about the Martian Revolution,

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Speaker 2: with the great Mike Duncan of the Revolutions podcast Mia

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Speaker 2: Wong joining me on this interview. Welcome to the show.

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Speaker 3: Mike, Thank you very much for having me.

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Speaker 2: So let's talk about this because you know, I've kept

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Speaker 2: up and been listening to Revolutions for years, and I

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Speaker 2: started seeing messages earlier this year that, like, Mike Duncan

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Speaker 2: is doing this fictional revolution podcast on the Martian Revolution,

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Speaker 2: and it seems to map really really closely with a

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Speaker 2: lot of stuff that's happening right now in the United States.

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Speaker 2: And I'm wondering, kind of to what extent did you

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Speaker 2: anticipate that being an initial reaction to this when you

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Speaker 2: started really finally laying down like the text for these episodes.

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Speaker 3: I did not expect that at all, not at all.

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Speaker 3: What has been happening to me, has been one of

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Speaker 3: the most surreal six months of my life in terms

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Speaker 3: of what I am writing and dropping out into the world.

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Speaker 3: And then I turn on the news three weeks later,

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Speaker 3: four weeks later, and I'm just watching exactly what I

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Speaker 3: wrote down in the show come to life. It is

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Speaker 3: horrifying and I hate it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, welcome to the club.

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Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, I mean, you guys have to change the

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Speaker 3: name of your show because there's no good about it.

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Speaker 2: Man, We're just here. It's just going.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: You know, I've had the notion to do this Martian

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Speaker 3: Revolution series for years, Like I think I first came

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Speaker 3: up with it back during like the French Revolution days,

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Speaker 3: is when I was like, you know, what would be

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Speaker 3: a really cool thing to do. It's like, once I've

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Speaker 3: got all these under my belt, just like make up

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Speaker 3: a fictional revolution that kind of follows along like many

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Speaker 3: the plot points of previous revolutions. And so this has

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Speaker 3: been kind of like years in the making and a

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Speaker 3: lot of the sort of like plot points and ideas

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Speaker 3: that I wanted to do. You know, I wanted it

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Speaker 3: to be like a monopoly corporation because I also wanted

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Speaker 3: to do some like social commentary and like what are

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Speaker 3: the issues that we're kind of dealing with right now?

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Speaker 3: And you know, and then I'm like, Okay, then there's

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Speaker 3: this thing called the New Protocols that is going to

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Speaker 3: you know, help jump start the revolution. And this is

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Speaker 3: somebody coming in and just you know, implementing whole new

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Speaker 3: software programs and hardware programs without any care for like

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Speaker 3: what it does to people. Then there's mass layoffs that

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Speaker 3: are a part of this. And then deportations are you know,

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Speaker 3: like all a part of the story of how the

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Speaker 3: Martian Revolution gets going. And you know, this stuff was

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Speaker 3: plotted out in October. And I got to tell you,

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Speaker 3: you know, maybe I was naive, maybe I had my

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Speaker 3: head in the sand. I thought she was going to win. Yeah, man,

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Speaker 3: like I thought Harris was going to win the election.

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Speaker 3: That's where I That's where my head was at in

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Speaker 3: September and October, going into November. I was like, it'll

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Speaker 3: be close. Of course, well it's a toss up, but

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Speaker 3: I think she'll pull it out in the end. It

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Speaker 3: sure feels like it because they were running a terrible

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Speaker 3: campaign and like they didn't have any field operations and

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Speaker 3: like the whole thing just kind of seemed like she

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Speaker 3: was going to win, so for Trump to win and

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Speaker 3: then start doing all of these things that were just

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Speaker 3: supposed to be fictional plot points. Oh they were references. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: Like now I'm just like Jesus Christ. This is terrible.

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Speaker 2: Well, that's what's so so interesting is because yeah, so

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Speaker 2: much of so much of the initial like as you

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Speaker 2: imagine it, the opening stages of like the Martian Revolution

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Speaker 2: in your series are based on like a guy who

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Speaker 2: is a quote unquote like partly like an auto dite act, right,

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Speaker 2: like a dude who is raised believing that his ideas

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Speaker 2: are good because they're his ideas, and yet he can

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Speaker 2: kind of jump into any field of human endeavor and

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Speaker 2: make things work better than the people who have been

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Speaker 2: studying and working in that field for their entire lives.

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Speaker 2: And he just starts changed everything based on his whims. Now,

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Speaker 2: you don't have him staying up until four in the

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Speaker 2: morning on ketamine bendors and then tweeting out his ideas

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Speaker 2: for how to change the government. But I guess I'd say,

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Speaker 2: like that's the one the one thing that doesn't map

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Speaker 2: onto right now. And I think this is this almost

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Speaker 2: just goes inherently with the active crafting fiction. Even your

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Speaker 2: bad guys are a lot more sympathetic than our current ones. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: which I think is to your credit. But like I've

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Speaker 2: enjoyed the degree to which the decisions that are being

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Speaker 2: made that are kind of making this Martian revolution inevitable

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Speaker 2: are the kind of decisions that you make when you've

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Speaker 2: been raised in these sorts of bubbles where you are

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Speaker 2: expected to just sort of be able to run things,

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Speaker 2: because like that's the strata that you come from, and

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Speaker 2: it maps directly to like what we're seeing right now

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Speaker 2: with these Silicon Valley guys who have spent the last

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Speaker 2: few decades getting impossible amounts of money and having that

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Speaker 2: convinced them that they know how to do everything. But

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Speaker 2: it also maps back to like Versailles. I find that compelling.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, the Timothy Werner character, he's like

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Speaker 3: sort of the figure against whom the revolution is going

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Speaker 3: to start, Yeah, after he comes in and starts doing

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Speaker 3: all this stuff, like the number one. Of course, as

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Speaker 3: I'm releasing this, people are just like this is just

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Speaker 3: a cardboard cutout of Elon Musk, right, and which I

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Speaker 3: would point out the first thing is like, actually no,

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Speaker 3: because I very specifically wrote it, so he was a

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Speaker 3: good husband and father. Yes, Oh, it's it's obviously not.

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Speaker 3: It's obviously not Elan Musk because he loves his kids.

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Speaker 2: He's allowed to be in the same room as all

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Speaker 2: of them.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, they like they get along great and everything. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: so obviously it's not. But honest to God, like it

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Speaker 3: wasn't meant to be just Musk, but it was meant

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Speaker 3: to be those tech guys, right, Like this is meant

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Speaker 3: to be thinking about the guys who come in and

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Speaker 3: they're like, we're gonna we're gonna move fast and break things, right,

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Speaker 3: and then what they break is like one hundred and

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Speaker 3: twenty years of like labor law, and that's the only

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Speaker 3: thing that is actually being broken here, Like this is

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Speaker 3: what you know, what what uber is and all of

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Speaker 3: those kinds of like all that stuff that came out

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Speaker 3: Adison the last like ten or fifteen years. And they

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Speaker 3: think that yes, because they can code well, or because

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Speaker 3: they have this one ability to like, you know, market

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Speaker 3: something in an effective way, that that means that they

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Speaker 3: are brilliant and can do everything and everywhere for everybody,

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Speaker 3: and like we're going to reinvent this and we're going

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Speaker 3: to reinvent that, but they have no idea what they're

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Speaker 3: doing or what they're talking about. And you run into

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Speaker 3: these people on Twitter all the time. This phenomenon of

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Speaker 3: people being good in one area, yes, and then becoming

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Speaker 3: sort of all purpose general knowledge experts when it's like,

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Speaker 3: you don't have any idea what you're talking about. And

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Speaker 3: so the line, there's a line that's in there where

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Speaker 3: it's like Werner, the way that he thought is I'm smart.

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Speaker 3: Therefore the ideas I have must be smart. Yes, And

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Speaker 3: that is something that's not about Musk. That's about like

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Speaker 3: just people I run into on Twitter all the time.

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Speaker 3: That's a phenomena that's a generalizable phenomenon.

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Speaker 2: No, I mean yeah, we talk about that constantly on

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Speaker 2: the show, Like we just did that four parter are

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Speaker 2: on the Zizians. That out of like the rationalist Bay

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Speaker 2: Area tech industry cult, which is both influential that a

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Speaker 2: lot of the people who wound up working at DOGE

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Speaker 2: and just to the general tech mindset, and it is

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Speaker 2: it's the human embodiment of that idea that like, well,

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Speaker 2: I know it a code coding's difficult. That means I'm smart.

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Speaker 2: This must mean I know how to run the schools. Right,

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Speaker 2: this must mean I know how to replace medicare, right, yep.

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Speaker 2: And it's this kind of like reasoning from first principles

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Speaker 2: without ever actually like having to sit face to face

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Speaker 2: with the consequences of your decisions. And I think you

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Speaker 2: do a great job of showing how that cascades into

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Speaker 2: a calamity and in a way that feels very realistic,

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Speaker 2: even though we're talking about Mars. And there's also like

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Speaker 2: gravity generators in the light.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's and what you know, what

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Speaker 3: Werner does here is so much of what Doze basically

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Speaker 3: started doing. When they start going into these systems, they

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Speaker 3: start changing codes, they have no idea what are the

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Speaker 3: key things that are actually underpinning our society. The most

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Speaker 3: recent thing I saw that made me think of this

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Speaker 3: is like they're shutting down all the regional offices of

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Speaker 3: the Social Security Administration and like all communications are now

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Speaker 3: going to be run through Twitter. Right. And one of

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Speaker 3: Timothy Werner's things is the centralization of all decision making

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Speaker 3: and the centralization of really everything. And in his mind,

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Speaker 3: it would be more efficient if the company just had

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Speaker 3: one brain and that was his brain, and every decision

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Speaker 3: is made by the one brain, and so he's got

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Speaker 3: all this stuff and he's got to make all these decisions.

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Speaker 3: Except that is that's crazy. That is not actually how

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Speaker 3: you can run anything, and it just creates all of

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Speaker 3: this like basically everybody, I forget if I wrote this

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Speaker 3: in no, I definitely did that. Like the dreaded like

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Speaker 3: request pending screen that people started getting. They would submit,

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Speaker 3: they would submit stuff like a fuel requisition order and

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Speaker 3: it would just say request pending, and like request pending

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Speaker 3: would never go away, it would just that's what it

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Speaker 3: would say. And then you look at what they're doing

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Speaker 3: now and that they are trying to centralize everything that

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Speaker 3: it's it's a generalized authoritarian power grab, but you know

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Speaker 3: they are, they are doing these things. Yeah.

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Speaker 4: One of the things that it reminds me the most of,

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Speaker 4: like from the other revolutions, is I immediately went, wait,

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Speaker 4: this is ur Nicholas, where you know you have less

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Speaker 4: of the reform package. Well, like, yeah, like the way

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Speaker 4: that all of the power gets concentrated and centralized and

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Speaker 4: there's one guy who's a micromanager and then can't do

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Speaker 4: it because like no human could possibly have done it.

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Speaker 4: But they're not they're you know, because of just there

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Speaker 4: they're sort of affective power and the way that they

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Speaker 4: think about micromagic anything they're incapable of, like letting their

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Speaker 4: subordinates do things.

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Speaker 3: Yeah yeah.

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Speaker 2: It also scans with the loves his kids part.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean that's the thing is like everything

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Speaker 3: that's in the show also is like basically something that

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Speaker 3: comes from history, right, like, and I am trying to

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Speaker 3: do that, and it is it is something that you know,

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Speaker 3: like Charles the First, Louis, sixteenth Zar Nicholas, these guys

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Speaker 3: are all great family men. Their kids love them and

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Speaker 3: they love their ki right. Like one of the reasons

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Speaker 3: the French Revolution happened is because Louis's son died, like

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Speaker 3: on the eve of the Estates General, and he was

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Speaker 3: just not there because his son had just died. That's

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Speaker 3: a real thing that happened. And the other stuff is

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Speaker 3: like that sort of centralization of power is a lot

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Speaker 3: like what I was trying to get at. There was

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Speaker 3: actually like the reforms that went in for the European

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Speaker 3: colonial powers after the Seven Years War in the Anglo

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Speaker 3: colonies and the Spanish colonies and the French colonies, all

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Speaker 3: of those governments sort of undertook a reorganization of their

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Speaker 3: colonial structures after the Seven Years War. It kind of

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Speaker 3: like reshuffled who had what territory, and all of those

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Speaker 3: moves were about sort of an increasing presence of the

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Speaker 3: metropol in colonial life. And this is what triggers, you know,

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Speaker 3: the American Revolution, because there was going to be like

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Speaker 3: two more customs officials in Boston Harbor and so like

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Speaker 3: we went into refolt about this. Yeah, but this is

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Speaker 3: also true of like the Bourbon Reforms in Spanish America.

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Speaker 3: Is that kind of like centralization of a community of

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Speaker 3: colonies that had grown very used to managing their own affairs,

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Speaker 3: and so they're coming in and saying, well, yeah, this

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Speaker 3: is ours, and we here on Earth should be making

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Speaker 3: these decisions for you Martians. And the Martians were like, well,

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Speaker 3: we've been making these decisions for ourselves for like seventy

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Speaker 3: years now. That's where that stuff is coming from. And

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Speaker 3: then history is always the place that I can point

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Speaker 3: to and then I have to watch it also on

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Speaker 3: the TV.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I've had that same experience of like I'm

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Speaker 2: writing out kind of like this possible, you know, this

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Speaker 2: story about what a future conflict is civil conflict in

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Speaker 2: the US might look like, and I'm I'm just taking

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Speaker 2: from stuff that happened in the last like ten years

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Speaker 2: in a lot of cases that I saw in different countries,

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Speaker 2: And people are like, how you know, how did you

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Speaker 2: like anticipate this, And my answer is like, I didn't.

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Speaker 2: This is just stuff that happens all the time, right,

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Speaker 2: because people don't learn the mastery as a rule, Like

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Speaker 2: no one's ever learned a lesson from history. Is the

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Speaker 2: thing I've kept repeating to people over the last few

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Speaker 2: years as I continue to fail to learn lessons from history.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, we all do and no. But like one of

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Speaker 3: the things that's getting kicked around the other day was like,

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Speaker 3: had I came to this point where Werner is going

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Speaker 3: to start firing people? He's going to start firing people

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Speaker 3: because he's changed the metrics for how your employment status

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Speaker 3: is being rated, and he's firing just people essentially randomly,

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Speaker 3: like you are firing the head of this department and

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Speaker 3: now that department can't run anymore. But he's like, it'll

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Speaker 3: be more efficient. And when I was writing it, it

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Speaker 3: was originally supposed to be like a kind of a

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Speaker 3: more dramatic ten percent across the board layoff, and as

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Speaker 3: I got closer to actually trying to type that up

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Speaker 3: and write it down, I was like, this doesn't actually

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Speaker 3: feel believable to me, Like people are going to really

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Speaker 3: push back, and I mean this sincerely, like people are

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Speaker 3: going to push back that nobody would be so stupid

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Speaker 3: as to just across the board to a ten percent

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Speaker 3: layoff of something so critical, as you know, Mars is

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Speaker 3: to Earth, because in the story, Mars is absolutely critical

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Speaker 3: to how Earth is able to function with the resource

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Speaker 3: that they're able to get from there. So I changed

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Speaker 3: it around and actually look to like the sullen prescriptions

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Speaker 3: from from Roman history to kind of give it a

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Speaker 3: different take, where really it was like you woke up

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Speaker 3: every day and there was like fifteen more names on

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Speaker 3: the list, one hundred more names on the list, and

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Speaker 3: there was something equally sort of dramatic and cool about

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Speaker 3: that without this like unbelievable, you know, ten percent across

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Speaker 3: the board cut. And I wrote a paragraph in there

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Speaker 3: being like I know that people are going to think

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Speaker 3: that this is like unrealistic, but you just have to

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Speaker 3: understand that, like throughout history we have seen these things,

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Speaker 3: like people do stupid stuff and they stubbornly cling to

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Speaker 3: it all the time. Yea, because that is something that happens,

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Speaker 3: and life as we know it is actually less. Like

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Speaker 3: if I wrote up what was happening right now, Like

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Speaker 3: if I was just got like a window into an

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Speaker 3: alternate world and we're living in a different world where

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Speaker 3: Trump lost and I brought all this stuff back, they'd

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Speaker 3: be like this is implausible, Like this is crazy. They

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Speaker 3: would never be allowed to get away with that. They

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Speaker 3: would never be not allowed to do that. They would

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Speaker 3: never be so stupid as to blow up the global

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Speaker 3: economy with a bunch of tariffs that make no sense

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Speaker 3: to anybody.

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Speaker 2: Wouldn't want their reserve currency. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, none of nothing that is happening right now is

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Speaker 3: plausible in the in a storytelling in a fictional storytelling setting, Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 3: you know this.

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Speaker 4: This this is also gets something that I've been saying

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Speaker 4: on this show that I want I want to get

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Speaker 4: your take on, which is, like, you know, one of

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Speaker 4: the things that you you wrote about in your sort

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Speaker 4: of like I guess like recap series of your experience

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Speaker 4: going through the Revolutions was about like how how much

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Speaker 4: of the stuff is driven by like the Great idiots

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Speaker 4: of history and my god, Elon Muskins Trump look to

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Speaker 4: me like two of the gretty dacy history and that

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Speaker 4: doesn't like guarantee that it'll happen, but like.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, they're there. The great idiot theory of revolutions is

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Speaker 3: a very simple thing, which is just saying that it's

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Speaker 3: revolutions don't happen because some tyrant is in power and

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Speaker 3: they are intolerably oppressing their people, like people have been

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Speaker 3: intolerably oppressed for a long time. And like Trotsky's got

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Speaker 3: this quote is if peasant discontentment was the cause of revolution,

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Speaker 3: then there would be a revolution happening every single day,

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Speaker 3: because the peasants are always discontented, right, So what it

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Speaker 3: takes to really have a revolution is for somebody in

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Speaker 3: power to be kind of incompetent and to start doing

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Speaker 3: stupid things that allow the situation to get out of hand,

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Speaker 3: and on top of that, really piss off the other

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Speaker 3: elites around them, because it's the mismanagement of the state

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Speaker 3: that allows the elites that that are kind of necessary

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Speaker 3: for a full blown revolution, Like you need their resources,

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Speaker 3: and you need their money, and you need them being

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Speaker 3: close to a position of power to be able to

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Speaker 3: pop whoever's in there at the time, and you've got

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Speaker 3: to be pretty incompetent to like wreck an elite consensus, right,

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Speaker 3: Like that is in and of itself catastrophically stupid if

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Speaker 3: you're trying to stay in power. Yeah, and so yes,

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Speaker 3: the great idiot theory is getting quite a workout lately.

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Speaker 4: That's actually something else that I wanted to ask you

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Speaker 4: about in terms of, like you see this in terms

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Speaker 4: of Mabel Door right where Mabel Door is this kind

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Speaker 4: of example of like the sort of local I guess

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Speaker 4: said local colonial elite to some extent.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I almost saw her as like, yeah, a lot

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Speaker 2: of these kind of American revolutionary figures right where you

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Speaker 2: have this person who holds a fairly high position in

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Speaker 2: the colonial state as a result of you know, their

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Speaker 2: birth and the family they come into, but also is

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Speaker 2: identifies more as a member of that state, of the

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Speaker 2: colony than of the colonizing state.

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Speaker 3: Yep.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think this is something this is a

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Speaker 4: part of the revolutionary process that I think is really

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Speaker 4: really badly understood on the left in terms of, in

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Speaker 4: a lot of ways, the necessity of parts of this

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Speaker 4: elite flipping and like the other The example I think

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Speaker 4: most people kind of are more familiar with is fleepygality,

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Speaker 4: like the Duke de orlone like funding a bunch of

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Speaker 4: these sort of revolutionary groups that eventually kind of like

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Speaker 4: get out of his control. But can you talk a

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Speaker 4: bit more about sort of the role of these sort

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Speaker 4: of like elite defections and how they end up sort

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Speaker 4: of funding and enabling these revolutionary movements.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's a it's a mix of things,

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Speaker 3: and I mean you got it. Like Mabel door is

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Speaker 3: meant to be sort of the colonial elite, and she's

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Speaker 3: also meant to be sort of the liberal nobility in

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Speaker 3: lots of different revolutionary settings, and she is doing that

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Speaker 3: like and when she is, like when I talk about

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Speaker 3: her like funding the Society of Martians and like funding

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Speaker 3: all these like philanthropic you know, enterprises to help Martians,

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Speaker 3: Like that's a lot of philipicality, like straight up like

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Speaker 3: that that's what the Duke Doorleon was doing in you know,

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Speaker 3: seventeen eighty six, eighty seven, and eighty nine. And so

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Speaker 3: that's the role that she's playing. But you know, if

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Speaker 3: the elites are unified, it is very difficult for any

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Speaker 3: kind of like peasant or worker uprising to actually get

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Speaker 3: traction and succeed in overthrowing the state. Like peasant insurrections

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Speaker 3: have happened throughout history without any sort of elite support,

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Speaker 3: they have often accomplished great things. But when you think

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Speaker 3: about the great revolutions in history, there really have always

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Speaker 3: been people in the inner corridors of power who are

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Speaker 3: ready to get rid of whoever the sovereign is in

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Speaker 3: that moment. And you know, you can advance all the

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Speaker 3: way to the Russian Revolution, and this is you know,

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Speaker 3: this is the prototypical like the workers have risen up

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Speaker 3: and the army is mutinying, and it is the people

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Speaker 3: who overthrow this are And what that story misses is

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Speaker 3: all of the people, even inside the Romanov family itself,

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Speaker 3: who are like so fed up with what Nicholas and

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Speaker 3: Alexander are doing that they're just like, we don't know

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Speaker 3: what to do anymore. But like he's, yeah, I guess

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Speaker 3: he's got to go, you know, Like we can't get

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Speaker 3: him to see reason, we can't get him to change course,

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Speaker 3: we can't get him to do anything. Like the situation

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Speaker 3: is completely out of hand. And without those people leaning

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Speaker 3: on Nicholas to force his abdication, and also to say, like,

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Speaker 3: we're not going to back you up. If you try

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Speaker 3: to bring the hammer down on all these people, then

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Speaker 3: that's when sovereigns are actually overthrown.

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Speaker 2: Yes, And I love that you bring that up because

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Speaker 2: it gets to the failure to see that. And this

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Speaker 2: is especially common with people who kind of idolized the

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Speaker 2: nineteen seventeen revolution, but it's certainly not limited to that.

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Speaker 2: I mean, in every revolution, you have people who are

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Speaker 2: fans of that revolution or who see it as a

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Speaker 2: model for what they want to do, and also ignore

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Speaker 2: the realities on the ground that like made it possible.

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Speaker 2: I think one of my favorite examples is the quote that, like,

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Speaker 2: you can't dismantle the master's house with the master's tools.

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Speaker 3: Well, I don't know.

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Speaker 2: In those pictures of the nineteen seventeen revolution, I see

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Speaker 2: a lot of mosins that used to be property of

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Speaker 2: the czar, right, Like it happens all the time, and

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Speaker 2: I think that we always need to be cautious of

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Speaker 2: like seeing just what we want to see in revolutionary

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Speaker 2: history as opposed to seeing what was there.

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Speaker 3: And the thing is is Lenin understood this right, Like

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Speaker 3: Lenin understood what the game was, and he understood what

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Speaker 3: was going on. And you don't have to, like, if

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Speaker 3: you're a revolutionary and you're sympathetic to the communists in

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Speaker 3: nineteen seventeen, you don't have to say, oh, well, the

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Speaker 3: elites were necessary for this first revolution and we need

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Speaker 3: you know, we need a break inside the ruling class.

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Speaker 3: We need divisions inside the ruling class. That doesn't mean

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Speaker 3: you have to say, and what those people want out

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Speaker 3: of overthrowing the czar is what we want and what

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Speaker 3: we're going to accept, right, you know, obviously, like the

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Speaker 3: cousins of the of Zar Nicholas and the people who

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Speaker 3: are in those inner circles of power, they wanted him

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Speaker 3: out of there just so they could run the empire

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Speaker 3: a little bit better. They were frustrated with how poorly

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Speaker 3: the empire was being run. They didn't want a social revolution.

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Speaker 3: But if you're going to take down that whole system,

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Speaker 3: creating a destabilization event at the very top is necessary.

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Speaker 3: But you don't have to support the ultimate aims of

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Speaker 3: those people. It's just it's an ingredient. And this is

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Speaker 3: and you see this in the course of revolutions, and

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Speaker 3: you see this in nineteen seventeen. You see this seventeen

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Speaker 3: eighty nine and then seventeen ninety two where there is

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Speaker 3: that first wave of sort of revolution that overthrows the sovereign,

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Speaker 3: and then there is a second wave that overthrows the

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Speaker 3: people who did it first. And so you know, you

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Speaker 3: can hold out hope for you know, getting the job

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Speaker 3: done without thinking that elites do play some role in

435
00:21:06,160 --> 00:21:06,560
Speaker 3: all of that.

436
00:21:06,960 --> 00:21:15,200
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I think that's a great point.

437
00:21:19,760 --> 00:21:21,280
Speaker 4: One of the things that I wanted to ask you

438
00:21:21,320 --> 00:21:24,160
Speaker 4: about sort of shifting gears a little bit, was about

439
00:21:24,560 --> 00:21:27,560
Speaker 4: how you were thinking about the deportations when you were

440
00:21:27,560 --> 00:21:29,520
Speaker 4: writing it, and how you were thinking about the way

441
00:21:29,560 --> 00:21:33,479
Speaker 4: that kind of this like generalized anti deportation organizing like

442
00:21:33,720 --> 00:21:37,080
Speaker 4: turns into that, and the sort of mutual aid networks

443
00:21:37,119 --> 00:21:40,080
Speaker 4: that the society emortians are doing like directly turns into

444
00:21:40,080 --> 00:21:42,520
Speaker 4: this thing. And that's something that I don't know, It

445
00:21:42,520 --> 00:21:45,919
Speaker 4: feels very prescients in ways, even though it was written

446
00:21:45,920 --> 00:21:47,560
Speaker 4: out before a lot of this stuff happens.

447
00:21:48,240 --> 00:21:52,800
Speaker 3: Yeah, the deportation stuff is just because of my own

448
00:21:53,080 --> 00:21:57,840
Speaker 3: personal political commitments all over the course of my adult life, right,

449
00:21:57,960 --> 00:22:04,080
Speaker 3: which is that we have an insanely cruel immigration system

450
00:22:04,320 --> 00:22:07,280
Speaker 3: in this country, you know, and and you know, we

451
00:22:07,800 --> 00:22:10,240
Speaker 3: they say like, oh, we've got this like open borders,

452
00:22:10,240 --> 00:22:12,760
Speaker 3: Like we do not have open borders. It is actually

453
00:22:12,880 --> 00:22:16,600
Speaker 3: really really hard to like navigate your way properly through

454
00:22:16,640 --> 00:22:21,600
Speaker 3: the American immigration system. That's true. The system itself is broken.

455
00:22:22,320 --> 00:22:23,960
Speaker 3: And we did all of this, you know, we did

456
00:22:24,000 --> 00:22:26,600
Speaker 3: the worst of the horrors with Trump, right, Like obviously

457
00:22:26,640 --> 00:22:29,119
Speaker 3: that is on my mind with you know, with family

458
00:22:29,160 --> 00:22:31,840
Speaker 3: separations and putting people in camps and abusing people and

459
00:22:31,920 --> 00:22:34,639
Speaker 3: rounding people up, like all of this stuff which happened

460
00:22:34,680 --> 00:22:37,600
Speaker 3: under Trump, Yes, but it also happened under Obama for

461
00:22:37,640 --> 00:22:40,760
Speaker 3: eight years, and it happened for another four years under Biden.

462
00:22:40,880 --> 00:22:43,040
Speaker 3: It's just that we kind of stopped talking about it

463
00:22:43,119 --> 00:22:46,200
Speaker 3: because it wasn't Trump who was doing it. And there

464
00:22:46,280 --> 00:22:50,720
Speaker 3: is there is a through line of cruelty inside of

465
00:22:50,760 --> 00:22:55,199
Speaker 3: this system towards immigrants. So that issue of deportation and

466
00:22:55,240 --> 00:22:58,680
Speaker 3: like rounding people up and evicting them, especially those who

467
00:22:58,680 --> 00:23:01,440
Speaker 3: have lived in this place their entire life. Like that's

468
00:23:01,480 --> 00:23:03,320
Speaker 3: one of the points that I make, Like the people

469
00:23:03,359 --> 00:23:06,040
Speaker 3: who are being fired are like born and raised on Mars.

470
00:23:06,119 --> 00:23:08,520
Speaker 3: Like one of the main characters, Alexandra Clare she is

471
00:23:08,560 --> 00:23:12,000
Speaker 3: a fourth generation Martian, and she just gets caught up

472
00:23:12,040 --> 00:23:16,879
Speaker 3: in these like stupid layoffs that Timothy Werner is pushing through.

473
00:23:16,920 --> 00:23:20,000
Speaker 3: And now the only choice that she has is to

474
00:23:20,119 --> 00:23:23,680
Speaker 3: either hide or get deported to Saturn, where and nobody's

475
00:23:23,720 --> 00:23:25,879
Speaker 3: ever come back from Saturn. We have no idea what

476
00:23:25,920 --> 00:23:28,000
Speaker 3: happens on Saturn, because all they know is that nobody

477
00:23:28,000 --> 00:23:30,440
Speaker 3: ever comes back from Saturn. And this is a thing

478
00:23:30,600 --> 00:23:33,679
Speaker 3: like taking people who are born and raised in America.

479
00:23:33,720 --> 00:23:35,720
Speaker 3: This is the only place that they have ever known,

480
00:23:36,000 --> 00:23:37,640
Speaker 3: right even if they came here when they were like one,

481
00:23:37,720 --> 00:23:39,760
Speaker 3: Like okay, they weren't born here, but like they here

482
00:23:39,800 --> 00:23:41,679
Speaker 3: since they were one, and then you're like, okay, we're

483
00:23:41,680 --> 00:23:44,800
Speaker 3: gonna send you back to Mexico. They're not from Mexico.

484
00:23:45,119 --> 00:23:47,680
Speaker 3: They don't know anybody in Mexico. They don't probably even

485
00:23:47,720 --> 00:23:50,880
Speaker 3: speak Spanish half the time, you know, And doing this

486
00:23:50,960 --> 00:23:54,560
Speaker 3: to people is cruel. It is unconscionable what we do

487
00:23:54,640 --> 00:23:57,439
Speaker 3: to people. And so yeah, so when I was thinking

488
00:23:57,440 --> 00:23:59,840
Speaker 3: to myself, Okay, I'm all right, this like fictional revolution,

489
00:24:00,040 --> 00:24:01,679
Speaker 3: it's going to be on Mars. What are some of

490
00:24:01,720 --> 00:24:03,880
Speaker 3: the things that I want to do that will make

491
00:24:04,760 --> 00:24:08,000
Speaker 3: the revolution happen. Yeah, some of this does is like

492
00:24:08,080 --> 00:24:10,160
Speaker 3: a little bit of like this is these are Mike's

493
00:24:10,160 --> 00:24:14,120
Speaker 3: political interests and the deportation issue and trying to highlight

494
00:24:14,160 --> 00:24:17,719
Speaker 3: the horror of the deportation issue and laud those who

495
00:24:17,800 --> 00:24:20,640
Speaker 3: would hide those people and help those people and bring

496
00:24:20,720 --> 00:24:23,720
Speaker 3: those people food. Like the bravest people going are the

497
00:24:23,720 --> 00:24:26,600
Speaker 3: ones who like go out and leave you know, water

498
00:24:26,760 --> 00:24:28,760
Speaker 3: jugs out in the middle of the desert so people

499
00:24:28,840 --> 00:24:31,600
Speaker 3: don't die, right, And the cruelest thing is these guys

500
00:24:31,600 --> 00:24:34,280
Speaker 3: who go out and then break those knowing that people

501
00:24:34,320 --> 00:24:36,320
Speaker 3: are going to knowing that people are going to like

502
00:24:36,520 --> 00:24:39,199
Speaker 3: die of dehydration and die of starvation, but just not

503
00:24:39,440 --> 00:24:42,280
Speaker 3: care because they don't care about those people.

504
00:24:42,640 --> 00:24:44,600
Speaker 2: That's one of the sickest things to me. Like it's

505
00:24:44,640 --> 00:24:47,640
Speaker 2: just there's information coming out now that there's that horrible

506
00:24:47,720 --> 00:24:50,720
Speaker 2: video of that ICE agent smashing the window of that

507
00:24:50,800 --> 00:24:53,280
Speaker 2: woman's car to deport her, and then the informations come

508
00:24:53,320 --> 00:24:56,880
Speaker 2: out that he is a deputized volunteer border guy. And

509
00:24:57,680 --> 00:25:00,520
Speaker 2: you know what's really happened if you look at it,

510
00:25:00,600 --> 00:25:05,880
Speaker 2: is we've kind of recreated in a decentralized form the Eindsetsgrupa, right,

511
00:25:06,200 --> 00:25:08,800
Speaker 2: like instead of having a centralized state having to raise

512
00:25:08,840 --> 00:25:11,879
Speaker 2: these organizations that are going to be carrying out this

513
00:25:12,040 --> 00:25:16,080
Speaker 2: kind of violence. Like it's it's largely become something that

514
00:25:16,240 --> 00:25:19,719
Speaker 2: vigilantes have gotten into on their own as part of

515
00:25:19,760 --> 00:25:22,840
Speaker 2: like just their special interest in hurting people at scale.

516
00:25:23,520 --> 00:25:26,680
Speaker 2: And it's it's such a uniquely it's so uniquely tied

517
00:25:26,720 --> 00:25:30,040
Speaker 2: to like this American individualism. It's such a uniquely sick

518
00:25:30,119 --> 00:25:32,880
Speaker 2: thing about the way things work here that that's happening,

519
00:25:32,920 --> 00:25:36,119
Speaker 2: Like that wouldn't have happened, not that Germany is you

520
00:25:36,119 --> 00:25:38,240
Speaker 2: know that German culture in the thirties was better, but

521
00:25:38,280 --> 00:25:40,119
Speaker 2: it just wouldn't have happened because it was a different

522
00:25:40,240 --> 00:25:40,960
Speaker 2: kind of culture.

523
00:25:41,359 --> 00:25:45,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. And then it's really important to remember

524
00:25:45,119 --> 00:25:48,040
Speaker 3: that this is not just a Trump problem, Like what

525
00:25:48,080 --> 00:25:50,600
Speaker 3: he's doing right now is like of course, like we

526
00:25:50,680 --> 00:25:55,200
Speaker 3: are entering next levels beyond next levels of what he's doing.

527
00:25:55,200 --> 00:25:58,199
Speaker 3: And even you know, just this morning, we've got an

528
00:25:58,200 --> 00:26:01,040
Speaker 3: American citizen who has been held and they are not

529
00:26:01,080 --> 00:26:04,800
Speaker 3: being released despite the passport and the Social Security card

530
00:26:04,840 --> 00:26:06,240
Speaker 3: being shown to the judge, and the judge is like,

531
00:26:06,280 --> 00:26:08,840
Speaker 3: I don't I can't actually release this person. Yeah, that's

532
00:26:08,880 --> 00:26:11,920
Speaker 3: sort of where we're at now. But this has been

533
00:26:11,960 --> 00:26:16,639
Speaker 3: an ongoing thing for twenty years across both parties and

534
00:26:16,680 --> 00:26:20,760
Speaker 3: both administrations, and nothing really has like sort of churned

535
00:26:20,800 --> 00:26:25,280
Speaker 3: my stomach more since Trump got elected than all of

536
00:26:25,320 --> 00:26:28,240
Speaker 3: the Democrats and people doing like sort of post mortems

537
00:26:28,280 --> 00:26:30,680
Speaker 3: on the election and being like, well, you know, we

538
00:26:30,720 --> 00:26:34,240
Speaker 3: really should be tougher on the border, and we really

539
00:26:34,280 --> 00:26:37,080
Speaker 3: should sort of like buy into this framing that there

540
00:26:37,119 --> 00:26:39,720
Speaker 3: is this like invasion and we just need to do

541
00:26:40,359 --> 00:26:44,359
Speaker 3: border enforcement better. Like then even moving positioning themselves to

542
00:26:44,359 --> 00:26:46,359
Speaker 3: a place where it's like Trump's not even doing a

543
00:26:46,359 --> 00:26:48,840
Speaker 3: good job protecting the border. And like there was somebody

544
00:26:48,880 --> 00:26:50,560
Speaker 3: I forget even who it was, but somebody one of

545
00:26:50,600 --> 00:26:54,640
Speaker 3: them senators like tweeted, you know, this time last year,

546
00:26:54,760 --> 00:26:57,320
Speaker 3: Biden had deported this many people and Trump isn't even

547
00:26:57,320 --> 00:26:59,240
Speaker 3: deporting that many people. And he was like trying to

548
00:26:59,280 --> 00:27:01,520
Speaker 3: make this point that like Trump wasn't following through on

549
00:27:01,560 --> 00:27:03,080
Speaker 3: his promises or something. But it was like do you

550
00:27:03,119 --> 00:27:06,960
Speaker 3: even hear yourself? Like do you even hear yourself? Yeah, yeah,

551
00:27:07,119 --> 00:27:10,480
Speaker 3: it really is And I can't, you know, stomach the

552
00:27:10,520 --> 00:27:13,840
Speaker 3: fact that the Democrats are are going to take away

553
00:27:13,880 --> 00:27:17,720
Speaker 3: from all this that the American people love cruelty towards

554
00:27:17,720 --> 00:27:19,720
Speaker 3: immigrants and that we need to lean into that. Yes,

555
00:27:19,760 --> 00:27:22,480
Speaker 3: And then you see the polls before all the tariffs

556
00:27:22,480 --> 00:27:24,399
Speaker 3: stuff and all this stuff is going on, and he

557
00:27:24,600 --> 00:27:26,639
Speaker 3: Trump is still sitting in like fifty percent approval, and

558
00:27:26,680 --> 00:27:28,199
Speaker 3: it's like, I don't know, maybe they're right, Maybe the

559
00:27:28,200 --> 00:27:29,679
Speaker 3: American people really do just love this.

560
00:27:30,560 --> 00:27:32,440
Speaker 4: So I mean, I think the other the other side

561
00:27:32,440 --> 00:27:34,080
Speaker 4: of that though, and this is you know, part of

562
00:27:34,119 --> 00:27:36,240
Speaker 4: the reason I brought up specifically like the resistance to

563
00:27:36,280 --> 00:27:38,680
Speaker 4: it was it like the other aspect of the kind

564
00:27:38,680 --> 00:27:41,280
Speaker 4: of individualism of American culture was that it also meant

565
00:27:41,280 --> 00:27:43,000
Speaker 4: that there, you know, a bunch of people went out

566
00:27:43,000 --> 00:27:44,719
Speaker 4: to the desert. Like our coworker James spent a lot

567
00:27:44,760 --> 00:27:48,240
Speaker 4: of time during the Biden administration like at these just

568
00:27:48,280 --> 00:27:50,120
Speaker 4: like the open air prisons they built in the middle

569
00:27:50,119 --> 00:27:53,280
Speaker 4: of the fucking desert, like on the border, and you know,

570
00:27:53,359 --> 00:27:55,040
Speaker 4: and like like one of the stories that he covered

571
00:27:55,040 --> 00:27:58,080
Speaker 4: extensively was that like probably most of these people would

572
00:27:58,080 --> 00:28:01,200
Speaker 4: have died if it wasn't for like border volunteers like

573
00:28:01,400 --> 00:28:05,680
Speaker 4: passing food and water to the bars. And that's something

574
00:28:05,720 --> 00:28:07,800
Speaker 4: that I was thinking about a lot looking at the

575
00:28:07,840 --> 00:28:09,480
Speaker 4: mutual aid networks and looking at the kind of mutual

576
00:28:09,480 --> 00:28:11,480
Speaker 4: aid networks that trans people are building up right now,

577
00:28:11,560 --> 00:28:13,600
Speaker 4: and like, I mean, I okay, like there's I mean,

578
00:28:13,600 --> 00:28:15,920
Speaker 4: there's always been a million mutual aid networks because it's

579
00:28:15,920 --> 00:28:19,760
Speaker 4: just impossible to survive if you're trans without like getting

580
00:28:19,760 --> 00:28:21,160
Speaker 4: stuff from other trans people.

581
00:28:21,400 --> 00:28:23,480
Speaker 3: We're not supposed to do anything alone, man, We're not

582
00:28:23,480 --> 00:28:25,800
Speaker 3: supposed to do anything I want. Yeah, well right, yeah,

583
00:28:25,840 --> 00:28:28,680
Speaker 3: that's nothing. We're not supposed to be doing anything alone. Yeah.

584
00:28:28,720 --> 00:28:33,160
Speaker 2: And that's honestly the most optimistic thing about your podcast

585
00:28:33,240 --> 00:28:36,760
Speaker 2: is that, like Martian society develops this very communal because

586
00:28:36,800 --> 00:28:39,880
Speaker 2: it's we're living in like an artificial habitat and if

587
00:28:40,000 --> 00:28:42,719
Speaker 2: shit goes really wrong, everyone dies at once. You have

588
00:28:42,800 --> 00:28:46,640
Speaker 2: to have this more collaborative, collective attitude towards safety and

589
00:28:46,720 --> 00:28:50,840
Speaker 2: security that is just so completely absent from American culture.

590
00:28:50,960 --> 00:28:53,960
Speaker 2: It's the thing that continually sends me into the darkest

591
00:28:54,000 --> 00:28:58,720
Speaker 2: spirals is because there's there's no fixing the fundamental underlying

592
00:28:58,760 --> 00:29:00,080
Speaker 2: problems without fixing that.

593
00:29:00,520 --> 00:29:02,800
Speaker 3: Yeah, And like on Mars, you know that that sort

594
00:29:02,840 --> 00:29:05,120
Speaker 3: of communal stuff is like they're also living in close

595
00:29:05,200 --> 00:29:09,640
Speaker 3: quarters yeah, so you can't really be somebody who needs

596
00:29:09,680 --> 00:29:11,920
Speaker 3: to be alone, right, That's that's the thing. And then

597
00:29:11,960 --> 00:29:16,200
Speaker 3: also like in terms of like the early colonization of Mars, like, yeah,

598
00:29:16,240 --> 00:29:18,840
Speaker 3: you have to do this stuff together, and like there's

599
00:29:19,000 --> 00:29:21,120
Speaker 3: there's a like when I was doing like cultural like

600
00:29:21,160 --> 00:29:23,960
Speaker 3: there's cultural background like like works and and you know,

601
00:29:24,040 --> 00:29:26,479
Speaker 3: like music that was going on that the Martians were creating.

602
00:29:26,800 --> 00:29:28,200
Speaker 3: And I didn't quite get into this, but there is

603
00:29:28,200 --> 00:29:30,040
Speaker 3: a song that I've got like half written called the

604
00:29:30,040 --> 00:29:33,080
Speaker 3: Ballad of Lonely Joe, which is like a it's like

605
00:29:33,080 --> 00:29:36,560
Speaker 3: a Martian folk song about lonely Joe who went off

606
00:29:36,560 --> 00:29:38,880
Speaker 3: and tried to like do it himself, but and then

607
00:29:38,920 --> 00:29:41,160
Speaker 3: he never comes back, and now Lonely Joe like wanders

608
00:29:41,200 --> 00:29:44,040
Speaker 3: the red sands of Mars because like he tried to

609
00:29:44,080 --> 00:29:46,000
Speaker 3: go out and not do it like with the group

610
00:29:46,040 --> 00:29:47,800
Speaker 3: and not do it with the community, because you can't

611
00:29:47,840 --> 00:29:50,520
Speaker 3: survive alone on Mars. Yeah, But to your other point,

612
00:29:51,080 --> 00:29:53,040
Speaker 3: like one of the things that I definitely wrote into

613
00:29:53,080 --> 00:29:56,400
Speaker 3: the show is that everybody on Mars has a skin

614
00:29:56,520 --> 00:29:59,760
Speaker 3: chip in their hand, and the skin chip in their

615
00:29:59,760 --> 00:30:02,760
Speaker 3: hands and is what like opens door. It like literally

616
00:30:02,800 --> 00:30:05,640
Speaker 3: opens doors and it gives them access to the commissary,

617
00:30:05,640 --> 00:30:07,840
Speaker 3: and it gives them access to restaurants, it gives them

618
00:30:07,960 --> 00:30:11,840
Speaker 3: access to food and employment. Like everything goes through that skinship.

619
00:30:12,000 --> 00:30:15,440
Speaker 3: And when the people get fired by Werner, their skin

620
00:30:15,560 --> 00:30:18,840
Speaker 3: chips just get turned off effectively, and it doesn't it

621
00:30:18,880 --> 00:30:21,440
Speaker 3: doesn't open doors anymore. They can't get food anymore. They

622
00:30:21,480 --> 00:30:23,720
Speaker 3: have they are living inside of a society that they

623
00:30:23,800 --> 00:30:28,200
Speaker 3: literally cannot interact with anymore. And so it took other

624
00:30:28,280 --> 00:30:30,760
Speaker 3: Martians around them. And so there's a thing in the

625
00:30:30,800 --> 00:30:34,320
Speaker 3: show called the no Doors movement, which is Martians jamming

626
00:30:34,400 --> 00:30:37,560
Speaker 3: open doors so that the people who have they were

627
00:30:37,560 --> 00:30:40,600
Speaker 3: called the annulled because their their contracts were annulled. Yeah,

628
00:30:40,640 --> 00:30:42,960
Speaker 3: but so so that the annulled could get from here

629
00:30:43,000 --> 00:30:45,400
Speaker 3: to there without needing their skinship. Yeah. Those are the

630
00:30:45,480 --> 00:30:49,680
Speaker 3: kinds of things that you know are are necessary, and

631
00:30:49,720 --> 00:30:51,080
Speaker 3: those are the kinds of things that are going to

632
00:30:51,120 --> 00:30:54,320
Speaker 3: protect people. And I hope that those things are going

633
00:30:54,360 --> 00:30:56,320
Speaker 3: on out there, and I hope that none of us

634
00:30:56,960 --> 00:30:59,280
Speaker 3: publicly state right now what we may or may not

635
00:30:59,400 --> 00:31:02,640
Speaker 3: be doing that front. So let's just go ahead and

636
00:31:02,720 --> 00:31:03,840
Speaker 3: keep that words at.

637
00:31:05,120 --> 00:31:07,440
Speaker 2: I'm a big fan of the don't fed post on

638
00:31:07,520 --> 00:31:10,240
Speaker 2: social media or in your podcast thing.

639
00:31:11,440 --> 00:31:14,320
Speaker 4: Yeah, something you touched on there. I think is interesting

640
00:31:14,880 --> 00:31:19,440
Speaker 4: about the way that being forced to live together like

641
00:31:19,520 --> 00:31:22,200
Speaker 4: creates this consciousness. It reminds me a lot of But

642
00:31:22,320 --> 00:31:24,360
Speaker 4: I was a student. I was an anthropology student, and

643
00:31:24,400 --> 00:31:26,360
Speaker 4: one of the things that we read was this this

644
00:31:26,400 --> 00:31:29,760
Speaker 4: sort of classic of I guess, I guess you'd call

645
00:31:29,800 --> 00:31:33,160
Speaker 4: it like structurals Marxists, like anthropology from the eighties. But

646
00:31:33,240 --> 00:31:35,320
Speaker 4: it's this book called We the Mines and the Minds

647
00:31:35,360 --> 00:31:38,840
Speaker 4: eat Us, which is about these indigenous Bolivion tin miners.

648
00:31:39,520 --> 00:31:41,160
Speaker 4: And one of the things that I always struck me

649
00:31:41,200 --> 00:31:43,360
Speaker 4: about that was, you know, like because they're all they're

650
00:31:43,360 --> 00:31:46,840
Speaker 4: all literally like sleeping next to each other, like in

651
00:31:46,880 --> 00:31:49,880
Speaker 4: these rooms, you can literally hear like the stomach of

652
00:31:50,000 --> 00:31:52,560
Speaker 4: like the child next to you, like rumbling at night

653
00:31:52,560 --> 00:31:55,200
Speaker 4: because I don't even have food, and that like turns

654
00:31:55,240 --> 00:31:57,760
Speaker 4: them into like one of the most militant sort of

655
00:31:57,840 --> 00:31:59,680
Speaker 4: like working class I mean, for like a hundred years

656
00:31:59,760 --> 00:32:03,080
Speaker 4: they are like like they're syndicalists and then their communists

657
00:32:03,080 --> 00:32:05,040
Speaker 4: and like they're they're one of those Milton things, and I,

658
00:32:05,240 --> 00:32:09,000
Speaker 4: I don't know, it's it's interesting to me that that

659
00:32:09,040 --> 00:32:10,920
Speaker 4: this is like this aspect of the society that that

660
00:32:11,480 --> 00:32:14,560
Speaker 4: you've you know, you've sort of drawn out of of

661
00:32:14,600 --> 00:32:17,760
Speaker 4: these historical revolutions where a key element of it again

662
00:32:17,840 --> 00:32:20,960
Speaker 4: is this sort of cllactivity. And also there's this like

663
00:32:21,000 --> 00:32:22,719
Speaker 4: if you look at like the trajectory of like the

664
00:32:22,760 --> 00:32:26,440
Speaker 4: modern American state and like the modern just the modern

665
00:32:26,480 --> 00:32:28,960
Speaker 4: development of capitalism, it's been specifically trying to make that

666
00:32:29,000 --> 00:32:32,560
Speaker 4: stuff not happen by like kicking people into suburbs and

667
00:32:32,680 --> 00:32:35,800
Speaker 4: like trying to physically alienate people. And I was, I

668
00:32:35,800 --> 00:32:37,000
Speaker 4: don't know, I was wondering how much you were sort

669
00:32:37,040 --> 00:32:38,920
Speaker 4: of thinking about that kind of stuff when you were

670
00:32:38,960 --> 00:32:41,320
Speaker 4: like writing the cultural aspects of this.

671
00:32:41,520 --> 00:32:43,440
Speaker 3: Sure, No, that's that stuff is all in my mind.

672
00:32:43,440 --> 00:32:45,200
Speaker 3: And like I said, like we're not meant to do

673
00:32:45,240 --> 00:32:49,240
Speaker 3: anything alone, like humans are communal creatures. Like you don't

674
00:32:49,640 --> 00:32:52,720
Speaker 3: go anywhere in history, like all the way back to

675
00:32:52,760 --> 00:32:56,760
Speaker 3: the dawn of this species, you do not find individual

676
00:32:56,960 --> 00:32:59,480
Speaker 3: humans like living by themselves. We have always done this

677
00:32:59,520 --> 00:33:02,400
Speaker 3: as a group. This has always been a group project.

678
00:33:02,720 --> 00:33:05,080
Speaker 3: And like when you go back, because this is something

679
00:33:05,120 --> 00:33:06,320
Speaker 3: that comes out of sort of like I study a

680
00:33:06,360 --> 00:33:08,920
Speaker 3: lot of like political theory in school and those state

681
00:33:08,960 --> 00:33:12,000
Speaker 3: of nature sort of works, you know, these thought experiments

682
00:33:12,000 --> 00:33:13,800
Speaker 3: that like Thomas Pain would do or Rousseau would do,

683
00:33:13,880 --> 00:33:16,280
Speaker 3: and you know it's like, how did we come together?

684
00:33:16,360 --> 00:33:18,520
Speaker 3: Why did we come together? Well, let's first imagine like

685
00:33:18,560 --> 00:33:21,040
Speaker 3: an individual human wandering through the forest and like they

686
00:33:21,280 --> 00:33:23,920
Speaker 3: encounter another one, so they come together for defense and

687
00:33:23,960 --> 00:33:26,000
Speaker 3: they come together, you know, to share food and do

688
00:33:26,040 --> 00:33:28,680
Speaker 3: some division of labor. And it's like, no, there's no

689
00:33:28,800 --> 00:33:32,040
Speaker 3: such thing as a human wandering alone. That's not a thing.

690
00:33:32,160 --> 00:33:35,640
Speaker 3: Like any outgrowth that comes from our description of what

691
00:33:35,720 --> 00:33:37,960
Speaker 3: human society is, like, whether it's defense or the division

692
00:33:38,000 --> 00:33:41,080
Speaker 3: of labor, begins with the fact that we are already

693
00:33:41,120 --> 00:33:43,440
Speaker 3: a group. There is a mother, there is a child,

694
00:33:43,520 --> 00:33:46,840
Speaker 3: there is a father. There there are aunts and uncles

695
00:33:46,840 --> 00:33:49,760
Speaker 3: and others. Like whatever the group is, there's we are

696
00:33:49,800 --> 00:33:54,520
Speaker 3: always doing this as a group. And hyper individualization and

697
00:33:54,640 --> 00:33:59,719
Speaker 3: hyper adamization of our society is something that is trying

698
00:33:59,760 --> 00:34:02,640
Speaker 3: to undo one of the most fundamental parts of what

699
00:34:02,680 --> 00:34:05,120
Speaker 3: it means to be human. This is something that I

700
00:34:05,160 --> 00:34:07,520
Speaker 3: thought about a lot too, because when I started having kids,

701
00:34:08,120 --> 00:34:11,640
Speaker 3: and you know, I have two kids, and the model

702
00:34:11,719 --> 00:34:14,160
Speaker 3: for like having a family at this point is like

703
00:34:14,200 --> 00:34:17,560
Speaker 3: you have a mother, a father or whatever, you have kids,

704
00:34:18,000 --> 00:34:20,400
Speaker 3: but the point being that they are a unit that

705
00:34:20,520 --> 00:34:23,319
Speaker 3: is unto itself, and they live in their own house,

706
00:34:23,400 --> 00:34:25,319
Speaker 3: and they have to supply their own food, and they

707
00:34:25,360 --> 00:34:27,600
Speaker 3: are in charge of getting their own money, and everything

708
00:34:27,640 --> 00:34:30,560
Speaker 3: that happens is just up to that little nuclear family.

709
00:34:31,000 --> 00:34:34,799
Speaker 3: And the nuclear family is not really how we've ever

710
00:34:34,840 --> 00:34:37,960
Speaker 3: done it before. Now, there's always been a broad network,

711
00:34:38,000 --> 00:34:41,439
Speaker 3: a broad family friend network that has been a part

712
00:34:41,560 --> 00:34:44,720
Speaker 3: of you know, raising our kids and having our families.

713
00:34:44,760 --> 00:34:47,399
Speaker 3: And you know, if something bad happens, we don't just say,

714
00:34:47,400 --> 00:34:49,920
Speaker 3: oh wow, bad luck for them. You know, you support

715
00:34:49,960 --> 00:34:52,600
Speaker 3: that person. And that is something that we've really gotten

716
00:34:52,640 --> 00:34:55,240
Speaker 3: away from as a society obviously.

717
00:34:54,920 --> 00:34:58,440
Speaker 2: And it's something that we've been pulled away from purposefully.

718
00:34:58,560 --> 00:35:01,239
Speaker 2: Right like the atomization is isn't It isn't just a

719
00:35:01,320 --> 00:35:05,000
Speaker 2: byproduct of incentives, right like is a It is a

720
00:35:05,080 --> 00:35:07,200
Speaker 2: directed move. I mean, you just got to look back

721
00:35:07,239 --> 00:35:09,399
Speaker 2: to some of the shit Thatcher was saying. Right, there's

722
00:35:09,400 --> 00:35:11,160
Speaker 2: no such thing as a society. There are men and

723
00:35:11,200 --> 00:35:15,239
Speaker 2: women and there are families. Right, this is a directed change.

724
00:35:15,640 --> 00:35:18,080
Speaker 2: And I'm not saying this in like the conspiratorial since

725
00:35:18,120 --> 00:35:20,360
Speaker 2: I'm saying this a a This is what a lot

726
00:35:20,400 --> 00:35:22,719
Speaker 2: of people, a lot of the worst people in our

727
00:35:22,760 --> 00:35:26,360
Speaker 2: society believe because it's convenient for them, and they have

728
00:35:26,520 --> 00:35:29,840
Speaker 2: pushed to make that belief more common and done so

729
00:35:30,000 --> 00:35:32,759
Speaker 2: by funding think tanks and funding media organizations.

730
00:35:32,760 --> 00:35:34,400
Speaker 3: In part, right, I was.

731
00:35:34,400 --> 00:35:36,680
Speaker 4: Actually about to quote literally that exact thing. But the

732
00:35:36,680 --> 00:35:38,960
Speaker 4: interesting part to me about that Thatcher line is that everyone,

733
00:35:39,719 --> 00:35:42,359
Speaker 4: almost everyone who quotes that line only quotes the part

734
00:35:42,360 --> 00:35:44,560
Speaker 4: about their are only individuals and then leaves out the

735
00:35:44,560 --> 00:35:47,040
Speaker 4: part about the family. Yes, which I think is a

736
00:35:47,080 --> 00:35:49,279
Speaker 4: really important connection to to what you were saying, where

737
00:35:49,280 --> 00:35:51,879
Speaker 4: it's like your vision of the family is also still

738
00:35:51,960 --> 00:35:56,680
Speaker 4: fundamentally this isolated group, because yes, they still need some

739
00:35:56,800 --> 00:35:59,680
Speaker 4: kind of collective because again, you can't just like leave it,

740
00:35:59,760 --> 00:36:02,480
Speaker 4: leave a baby like out in the woods.

741
00:36:02,680 --> 00:36:03,320
Speaker 3: It just dies.

742
00:36:03,400 --> 00:36:06,680
Speaker 4: Right, But like they had, they had to like create

743
00:36:06,800 --> 00:36:10,440
Speaker 4: this version to to be the like the political base

744
00:36:10,600 --> 00:36:12,399
Speaker 4: of their thing. They had to create this this one

745
00:36:12,440 --> 00:36:15,200
Speaker 4: collective that would be cut off from everything else that

746
00:36:15,239 --> 00:36:16,440
Speaker 4: had normally made it a collective.

747
00:36:16,719 --> 00:36:20,640
Speaker 3: Yep. You know people think these days that that atomized

748
00:36:20,719 --> 00:36:24,080
Speaker 3: nuclear family is like the law of nature, right, that

749
00:36:24,160 --> 00:36:26,319
Speaker 3: this is like, this is the way it's always been,

750
00:36:26,400 --> 00:36:31,120
Speaker 3: and like that's not true. It's just not true. There's

751
00:36:31,120 --> 00:36:32,719
Speaker 3: a great line. I don't have it right in front

752
00:36:32,719 --> 00:36:36,400
Speaker 3: of me at the moment, but in Tokeville's austieon Regime

753
00:36:36,400 --> 00:36:38,920
Speaker 3: in the French Revolution, which is really dynamite book everybody

754
00:36:38,920 --> 00:36:41,120
Speaker 3: should read, at the end of it, he lays it

755
00:36:41,120 --> 00:36:44,839
Speaker 3: out he's writing this in like the eighteen forties and

756
00:36:45,160 --> 00:36:48,080
Speaker 3: eighteen fifties, and he's he straight up says that like

757
00:36:48,320 --> 00:36:52,560
Speaker 3: what liberal capitalism is doing, which he was himself. I mean,

758
00:36:52,600 --> 00:36:54,560
Speaker 3: he's a conservative liberal. Like it's not like he's on

759
00:36:54,600 --> 00:36:58,279
Speaker 3: the left or anything, but he's he's watching as the

760
00:36:58,320 --> 00:37:02,120
Speaker 3: atomization of families and individuals is happening, and he's like,

761
00:37:02,160 --> 00:37:06,719
Speaker 3: and that's how that's what tyranny thrives on. Tyranny thrives

762
00:37:06,880 --> 00:37:10,200
Speaker 3: when everybody is disconnected from everybody else and everybody is

763
00:37:10,239 --> 00:37:13,160
Speaker 3: in competition with everybody else, because that's the other key

764
00:37:13,200 --> 00:37:15,760
Speaker 3: part of it is your family is now pitted against

765
00:37:15,800 --> 00:37:19,600
Speaker 3: every other family in terms of like getting money, getting jobs,

766
00:37:19,680 --> 00:37:22,520
Speaker 3: like getting that, getting this other thing. Like we're all

767
00:37:22,560 --> 00:37:25,520
Speaker 3: scrambling out there in a competition to get a little

768
00:37:25,520 --> 00:37:27,480
Speaker 3: bit more, a little bit better, or just you know,

769
00:37:27,600 --> 00:37:29,400
Speaker 3: have enough. Like I feel this every time I have

770
00:37:29,400 --> 00:37:31,480
Speaker 3: to sign the kids up for like summer camp, you know,

771
00:37:31,600 --> 00:37:34,160
Speaker 3: like I'm at war with every other family in the

772
00:37:34,160 --> 00:37:36,520
Speaker 3: neighborhood because I'm just trying to get my kid into

773
00:37:36,560 --> 00:37:38,960
Speaker 3: this camp and some people aren't going to make it

774
00:37:38,960 --> 00:37:40,359
Speaker 3: and other people will, and you got to be there,

775
00:37:40,360 --> 00:37:42,479
Speaker 3: and you gotta have strategies about ending to log onto

776
00:37:42,520 --> 00:37:45,200
Speaker 3: the thing like because they because they they're pitting us

777
00:37:45,200 --> 00:37:47,640
Speaker 3: against each other like all the time, in all those

778
00:37:47,680 --> 00:37:49,040
Speaker 3: little subtle ways. Yep.

779
00:38:00,000 --> 00:38:03,120
Speaker 4: That's what's optimistic kind of about the Martian Revolution is like,

780
00:38:03,160 --> 00:38:04,520
Speaker 4: you know, on the one hand, there is this kind

781
00:38:04,520 --> 00:38:07,560
Speaker 4: of like collective society, but on the other hand, you know,

782
00:38:07,600 --> 00:38:10,400
Speaker 4: this is a this is a society entirely ruled by corporations,

783
00:38:10,480 --> 00:38:12,760
Speaker 4: right and it is it is literally every single aspect

784
00:38:12,800 --> 00:38:16,360
Speaker 4: of it is specifically designed to get to do this,

785
00:38:16,480 --> 00:38:21,759
Speaker 4: pitting each other like people against each other. And yet anyways,

786
00:38:21,800 --> 00:38:25,520
Speaker 4: somehow they you know, even even if it is by accident,

787
00:38:25,600 --> 00:38:28,520
Speaker 4: which is to be fair, how a lot of revolutions start,

788
00:38:28,680 --> 00:38:30,160
Speaker 4: they they do it.

789
00:38:30,560 --> 00:38:33,000
Speaker 2: I think the key thing is here is that we

790
00:38:33,120 --> 00:38:36,799
Speaker 2: see throughout time, like really extreme societies that try to

791
00:38:36,880 --> 00:38:40,560
Speaker 2: mold people in certain ways with the idea of permanently

792
00:38:40,680 --> 00:38:43,799
Speaker 2: changing them. And what happens in the past, at least

793
00:38:43,880 --> 00:38:46,719
Speaker 2: to every one of those societies, is that the society

794
00:38:46,800 --> 00:38:49,760
Speaker 2: dies and people go on being people, right.

795
00:38:50,080 --> 00:38:52,840
Speaker 3: Mm hmm, yeah, Yeah, there's no there's no year zero

796
00:38:53,080 --> 00:38:57,000
Speaker 3: they're create new There's there's no there's no new Man

797
00:38:57,360 --> 00:38:59,760
Speaker 3: right now, that's not ever going to happen. That's actually

798
00:38:59,920 --> 00:39:02,520
Speaker 3: I mean, just I wouldn't even have thought that. I'm

799
00:39:02,520 --> 00:39:05,160
Speaker 3: going to tie this back again to Tofield, which the

800
00:39:05,200 --> 00:39:09,160
Speaker 3: reason I would recommend Onnian Regime is because that is

801
00:39:09,200 --> 00:39:11,920
Speaker 3: a book about how much of the revolution was a

802
00:39:11,920 --> 00:39:14,400
Speaker 3: continuation of what was going on before it and not

803
00:39:14,560 --> 00:39:17,880
Speaker 3: actually caused by the revolutionary break And even if you

804
00:39:17,960 --> 00:39:20,040
Speaker 3: believe in the revolution and believe it was this way,

805
00:39:20,480 --> 00:39:22,759
Speaker 3: I actually believe in the revolution because it accomplished these

806
00:39:22,760 --> 00:39:26,720
Speaker 3: great things, but there was no year zero thing that happened.

807
00:39:27,000 --> 00:39:30,359
Speaker 3: A lot of this stuff like is just on a continuum.

808
00:39:30,400 --> 00:39:32,640
Speaker 3: And you know, like, I don't want to get in

809
00:39:32,640 --> 00:39:34,880
Speaker 3: a fight with somebody about whether human nature is a

810
00:39:34,880 --> 00:39:38,200
Speaker 3: thing that exists or doesn't exist like an as an

811
00:39:38,239 --> 00:39:41,920
Speaker 3: abstract thing, because because I'm not sure that it's true,

812
00:39:42,000 --> 00:39:44,520
Speaker 3: but there sure are a lot of things that keep

813
00:39:44,600 --> 00:39:48,040
Speaker 3: popping up, right, Like we're interested in sex, and we

814
00:39:48,160 --> 00:39:50,560
Speaker 3: have to eat food, and we live in shelters, and

815
00:39:50,600 --> 00:39:53,080
Speaker 3: we make music, and there do there does seem to

816
00:39:53,120 --> 00:39:57,040
Speaker 3: be some very like human qualities that exist across all

817
00:39:57,040 --> 00:39:58,960
Speaker 3: time and across all space. And if you just say

818
00:39:58,960 --> 00:40:01,360
Speaker 3: to yourself, like, well, like, I mean, this is one

819
00:40:01,400 --> 00:40:04,360
Speaker 3: of the things. I'm very sympathetic to anarchists, but like

820
00:40:04,440 --> 00:40:08,120
Speaker 3: there's a point with anarchism, like especially the early stuff,

821
00:40:08,120 --> 00:40:10,280
Speaker 3: where their idea was that if you smash the state,

822
00:40:10,320 --> 00:40:12,760
Speaker 3: and you destroy the state, then humans will be allowed

823
00:40:12,800 --> 00:40:17,040
Speaker 3: to flourish in their natural goodness and communalism, which is,

824
00:40:17,200 --> 00:40:20,200
Speaker 3: you know a little bit what we are moving towards

825
00:40:20,280 --> 00:40:22,800
Speaker 3: right now. But I'm not sure even that exists, because

826
00:40:22,840 --> 00:40:25,120
Speaker 3: if you if you crash the state out, it's not

827
00:40:25,200 --> 00:40:27,600
Speaker 3: the state that's necessarily making us this way. There is

828
00:40:27,680 --> 00:40:30,480
Speaker 3: there is stuff inside of human nature that's that we

829
00:40:30,560 --> 00:40:32,800
Speaker 3: created the state to begin with. So the whole, the

830
00:40:32,840 --> 00:40:35,040
Speaker 3: whole thing is like a very it's a balancing act

831
00:40:35,520 --> 00:40:38,920
Speaker 3: that has gone way too far in a certain direction.

832
00:40:39,400 --> 00:40:42,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that's something I always I always

833
00:40:42,719 --> 00:40:45,879
Speaker 2: try to keep in mind, like it's not that societies

834
00:40:45,920 --> 00:40:50,080
Speaker 2: can't alter or improve aspects of like how things are

835
00:40:50,320 --> 00:40:53,279
Speaker 2: right by changing the incentives, but by altering like the

836
00:40:53,280 --> 00:40:57,360
Speaker 2: way things work, you can reduce the prevalence of certain problems.

837
00:40:57,400 --> 00:40:59,839
Speaker 2: You can make things better in some ways. But there's

838
00:40:59,880 --> 00:41:01,320
Speaker 2: so and stuff that you're just never going to Like

839
00:41:01,360 --> 00:41:02,800
Speaker 2: when I look at when I look at what the

840
00:41:02,800 --> 00:41:05,439
Speaker 2: white supremacists want to do, right well, you're never going

841
00:41:05,480 --> 00:41:09,480
Speaker 2: to get people to stop mingling with other kinds of people.

842
00:41:09,600 --> 00:41:12,239
Speaker 2: You simply can't. It's never worked and it never will

843
00:41:12,400 --> 00:41:15,040
Speaker 2: right like that, that's an impossible dream. So I can

844
00:41:15,120 --> 00:41:18,760
Speaker 2: just say, like, that's a thing. No matter how tightly

845
00:41:18,840 --> 00:41:20,680
Speaker 2: you grab a hold of the reins of state and

846
00:41:20,680 --> 00:41:23,640
Speaker 2: how many weapons you deploy, you simply won't succeed in

847
00:41:23,640 --> 00:41:25,279
Speaker 2: the long term of doing this because it's just not

848
00:41:25,440 --> 00:41:28,080
Speaker 2: something we can do. You can't stop people from mingling.

849
00:41:28,440 --> 00:41:31,560
Speaker 3: This is actually one of my points about immigration and

850
00:41:31,600 --> 00:41:36,480
Speaker 3: migration is that no matter how tightly you try to

851
00:41:36,520 --> 00:41:39,560
Speaker 3: control it, no matter you could build every wall you want,

852
00:41:39,600 --> 00:41:41,520
Speaker 3: you can make as hard as you want, people are

853
00:41:41,560 --> 00:41:43,320
Speaker 3: still going to move here. People are still going to

854
00:41:43,360 --> 00:41:44,920
Speaker 3: move away from here. People are still going to go

855
00:41:44,920 --> 00:41:46,920
Speaker 3: from here to there and from there to here, and

856
00:41:46,960 --> 00:41:50,200
Speaker 3: that is something that is going to happen no matter what,

857
00:41:50,800 --> 00:41:53,720
Speaker 3: and especially if we're going into the twenty first century

858
00:41:53,760 --> 00:41:58,560
Speaker 3: with all of its various climate disasters that are facing us. Route,

859
00:41:58,760 --> 00:42:00,959
Speaker 3: yeah is going to make such Yeah, it's gonna. It's gonna.

860
00:42:01,000 --> 00:42:03,880
Speaker 3: It's already making some places less habitable and other places

861
00:42:03,880 --> 00:42:05,680
Speaker 3: will be more habitable. And what's going to happen is

862
00:42:05,680 --> 00:42:07,480
Speaker 3: that people who are living in less habitable areas are

863
00:42:07,520 --> 00:42:09,800
Speaker 3: going to want to go to where there are areas

864
00:42:09,800 --> 00:42:12,040
Speaker 3: that are still habitable. And so there is there's going

865
00:42:12,120 --> 00:42:15,319
Speaker 3: to be movements of people. And the question before us

866
00:42:15,400 --> 00:42:17,919
Speaker 3: in the twenty first century is not, you know, can

867
00:42:17,960 --> 00:42:20,960
Speaker 3: we keep people in the places that they are now

868
00:42:21,600 --> 00:42:24,200
Speaker 3: and you know, like sort of lock in rigidly to

869
00:42:24,320 --> 00:42:27,840
Speaker 3: like these xenophobic nation states and that will actually stop

870
00:42:27,880 --> 00:42:31,799
Speaker 3: those migrations from happening. Or do we open ourselves up

871
00:42:31,840 --> 00:42:33,319
Speaker 3: to the idea that this is going to happen and

872
00:42:33,360 --> 00:42:38,000
Speaker 3: simply make it more humane and more more rational. That's

873
00:42:38,080 --> 00:42:41,360
Speaker 3: the question. It's not whether the migrations will happen or not,

874
00:42:41,600 --> 00:42:44,560
Speaker 3: it's simply how cruel they will be. When they happen,

875
00:42:44,640 --> 00:42:47,360
Speaker 3: and right now we are choosing maximum cruelty.

876
00:42:47,760 --> 00:42:53,839
Speaker 2: Yep, sucks, Yeah, it does. Like that's that's so much

877
00:42:53,880 --> 00:42:56,799
Speaker 2: of our our present society is like, well, yeah, this

878
00:42:56,880 --> 00:42:59,080
Speaker 2: is the cruelest way I can imagine this happening, you know,

879
00:42:59,239 --> 00:43:01,560
Speaker 2: like and we are we are staring down the barrel

880
00:43:01,600 --> 00:43:04,480
Speaker 2: of the worst case scenario, right, Like that's the thing

881
00:43:04,640 --> 00:43:08,160
Speaker 2: everyone's had to make peace with. You know, even once

882
00:43:08,200 --> 00:43:10,400
Speaker 2: Trump won, there was still a degree of like, well,

883
00:43:11,040 --> 00:43:14,080
Speaker 2: I guess we'll see and we've seen, right, and we

884
00:43:14,160 --> 00:43:16,840
Speaker 2: do just kind of have to guide off that without

885
00:43:17,000 --> 00:43:20,799
Speaker 2: pretending it's otherwise. Like the That's one of the few

886
00:43:20,840 --> 00:43:22,720
Speaker 2: things that does give me hope is that the people

887
00:43:22,719 --> 00:43:25,760
Speaker 2: who are insistent upon pretending otherwise seem to be getting

888
00:43:25,800 --> 00:43:29,760
Speaker 2: increasingly marginalized. I mean, we'll see Gavin Newsen still hasn't

889
00:43:29,800 --> 00:43:33,920
Speaker 2: been sort of choked off of access to the public,

890
00:43:34,000 --> 00:43:36,480
Speaker 2: but you know, the statements he's been making recently about

891
00:43:36,520 --> 00:43:40,839
Speaker 2: Abrego Garcia, it's just like, yeah, I just can't I

892
00:43:40,880 --> 00:43:45,960
Speaker 2: can't imagine this guy being the future of the Democratic Party.

893
00:43:46,000 --> 00:43:49,200
Speaker 2: If this is just looking at where popular discourse is

894
00:43:49,280 --> 00:43:49,960
Speaker 2: right now.

895
00:43:50,280 --> 00:43:52,319
Speaker 3: Right, and there's a lot of them who would like

896
00:43:52,360 --> 00:43:55,319
Speaker 3: it to be the future of the Democratic Party because

897
00:43:55,360 --> 00:43:59,280
Speaker 3: they don't care as much as Republicans don't care about

898
00:43:59,360 --> 00:44:01,879
Speaker 3: the lives of these people who are living on this earth,

899
00:44:01,880 --> 00:44:05,480
Speaker 3: who are living, breathing human beings, who are just someplace

900
00:44:05,520 --> 00:44:08,279
Speaker 3: else and living in a world where like, yeah, the

901
00:44:08,360 --> 00:44:13,360
Speaker 3: United States and Europe we suck up the world's wealth

902
00:44:13,360 --> 00:44:16,560
Speaker 3: and resources, like that's where the imperial center of the globe,

903
00:44:16,960 --> 00:44:19,279
Speaker 3: and people are like, oh that. And even when people

904
00:44:19,360 --> 00:44:21,360
Speaker 3: say like, well, why do people come here, and you know,

905
00:44:21,400 --> 00:44:25,200
Speaker 3: there's a kind of a standard American exceptionalist notion which

906
00:44:25,239 --> 00:44:26,640
Speaker 3: is like, well, they come here because they want their

907
00:44:26,800 --> 00:44:29,760
Speaker 3: because they want freedom, and freedom is what America offers,

908
00:44:29,760 --> 00:44:31,640
Speaker 3: and like the American dream and all that stuff, like

909
00:44:31,920 --> 00:44:35,239
Speaker 3: the entrepreneurial spirit, et cetera, et cetera. But mostly it's

910
00:44:35,239 --> 00:44:37,359
Speaker 3: because this is where you can come and get the

911
00:44:37,440 --> 00:44:40,759
Speaker 3: world's money. Yeah, this is where it always. It's sitting

912
00:44:40,800 --> 00:44:42,880
Speaker 3: in my pocket, it's sitting in your pocket. Right, we

913
00:44:43,400 --> 00:44:45,880
Speaker 3: are the ones who have all of the world's money,

914
00:44:45,880 --> 00:44:48,600
Speaker 3: and so that is why they are coming here. Yep.

915
00:44:48,880 --> 00:44:51,720
Speaker 3: So you just have to like fit that in your brain.

916
00:44:52,120 --> 00:44:55,800
Speaker 3: And what is happening is is this this constant division

917
00:44:56,320 --> 00:45:01,759
Speaker 3: between like Americans being more important and anybody else, and

918
00:45:01,840 --> 00:45:05,560
Speaker 3: I understand why that exists politically, and even these questions

919
00:45:05,560 --> 00:45:08,279
Speaker 3: are like citizens versus non citizens. Like one of the

920
00:45:08,280 --> 00:45:12,000
Speaker 3: things that got me when I was reading Bakunin was

921
00:45:12,320 --> 00:45:14,319
Speaker 3: like he had it was a throwaway line. It wasn't

922
00:45:14,320 --> 00:45:16,280
Speaker 3: even like a point he was making, but he referred

923
00:45:16,360 --> 00:45:19,680
Speaker 3: to something as mere citizenship, which kind of struck me

924
00:45:19,719 --> 00:45:21,919
Speaker 3: because I grew up very liberal, Like I come from

925
00:45:21,960 --> 00:45:25,000
Speaker 3: like the liberal suburbs of Seattle, and I had very

926
00:45:25,000 --> 00:45:28,880
Speaker 3: liberal notions, and citizenship, in sort of the liberal imagination,

927
00:45:29,000 --> 00:45:31,040
Speaker 3: is the highest thing that you can be, be a

928
00:45:31,080 --> 00:45:34,200
Speaker 3: citizen of a polity with rights, there's a constitution, you

929
00:45:34,239 --> 00:45:37,040
Speaker 3: get to participate in the government. Like citizen and citizenship

930
00:45:37,040 --> 00:45:39,960
Speaker 3: are these words that had great, profound meaning, and it

931
00:45:40,000 --> 00:45:41,799
Speaker 3: really kind of like knock me sideways to have them

932
00:45:41,840 --> 00:45:46,719
Speaker 3: be like mere citizenship. Right, You've been reduced to simply

933
00:45:47,280 --> 00:45:50,520
Speaker 3: a part of a polity, and your humanity has been

934
00:45:50,520 --> 00:45:53,399
Speaker 3: taken away from you. You're no longer being recognized as

935
00:45:53,400 --> 00:45:56,319
Speaker 3: a human being. You're being recognized as a citizen. And

936
00:45:56,360 --> 00:45:58,520
Speaker 3: if you're not a citizen, then you just don't count

937
00:45:58,560 --> 00:46:01,360
Speaker 3: at all. And it totally went out their humanity. So

938
00:46:01,440 --> 00:46:03,960
Speaker 3: not only do I not have humanity because I'm simply

939
00:46:04,520 --> 00:46:08,440
Speaker 3: a part of some polity rather than being me, Mike Duncan,

940
00:46:08,480 --> 00:46:12,360
Speaker 3: a human being, but it's erasing our human obligations to

941
00:46:12,400 --> 00:46:16,080
Speaker 3: each other, to non citizens and the idea like and

942
00:46:16,120 --> 00:46:18,319
Speaker 3: you just see this very casually, like right now, like

943
00:46:18,360 --> 00:46:20,560
Speaker 3: all over the place. It's just like, they're not citizens,

944
00:46:20,560 --> 00:46:23,279
Speaker 3: so they don't deserve due process. They're not citizens, so

945
00:46:23,320 --> 00:46:26,000
Speaker 3: we can just send them to Al Salvadoran torture prisons

946
00:46:26,000 --> 00:46:28,200
Speaker 3: and it's fine because they're not citizens and therefore they

947
00:46:28,200 --> 00:46:31,600
Speaker 3: don't have rights. It's like, what about, you know, just

948
00:46:31,800 --> 00:46:35,200
Speaker 3: being a person thinking about other people. And one of

949
00:46:35,239 --> 00:46:37,520
Speaker 3: the greatest, one of my one of my very favorite.

950
00:46:37,560 --> 00:46:39,600
Speaker 3: And I know i'm steamrolling here. I'll I'll let you

951
00:46:39,600 --> 00:46:41,400
Speaker 3: get a word in edgewise here in a second. But

952
00:46:42,320 --> 00:46:45,080
Speaker 3: there the I forget what the court case was, but

953
00:46:45,320 --> 00:46:47,360
Speaker 3: there was a court case out of Texas, you know,

954
00:46:47,440 --> 00:46:50,840
Speaker 3: like back in like the sixties, when they decided that

955
00:46:51,239 --> 00:46:56,040
Speaker 3: the Texas school districts had to open the schools to

956
00:46:56,360 --> 00:47:00,359
Speaker 3: undocumented children. And they they said that because it says

957
00:47:00,360 --> 00:47:03,560
Speaker 3: in the Fourteenth Amendment persons. It doesn't say citizens. And

958
00:47:03,560 --> 00:47:05,279
Speaker 3: they were resting a lot of this on the notion

959
00:47:05,400 --> 00:47:08,680
Speaker 3: that like it's it says person has these rights, not

960
00:47:08,719 --> 00:47:11,400
Speaker 3: citizen has these rights. And this is what conservatives and

961
00:47:11,440 --> 00:47:14,120
Speaker 3: MAGA hate, hate hate, This is why they're going to

962
00:47:14,120 --> 00:47:16,799
Speaker 3: try to undo the fourteenth Amendment. But to have the

963
00:47:16,840 --> 00:47:19,920
Speaker 3: Supreme Court at one point in the past be like, no,

964
00:47:20,040 --> 00:47:22,080
Speaker 3: you have to do this because you owe an obligation

965
00:47:22,160 --> 00:47:24,000
Speaker 3: to them as a person, not just as a citizen.

966
00:47:24,000 --> 00:47:26,800
Speaker 3: That's like mind blowing. I could not see the Supreme

967
00:47:26,840 --> 00:47:30,439
Speaker 3: Court today making that same decision, But like, that's that's

968
00:47:30,480 --> 00:47:34,040
Speaker 3: the kernel of something really good, I think for the

969
00:47:34,080 --> 00:47:36,560
Speaker 3: future of humanity, rather than like clinging to this like

970
00:47:36,600 --> 00:47:37,960
Speaker 3: citizen or non citizen thing.

971
00:47:38,320 --> 00:47:41,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess kind of. For me, the most important

972
00:47:42,640 --> 00:47:45,640
Speaker 2: belief I ever came to was the understanding that, like,

973
00:47:46,120 --> 00:47:49,280
Speaker 2: I don't care about citizenship and I don't care about

974
00:47:49,560 --> 00:47:52,520
Speaker 2: who is supposed to be in a specific place, right.

975
00:47:53,120 --> 00:47:56,759
Speaker 2: I think one of the most toxic ideas possible is that, like,

976
00:47:56,840 --> 00:48:00,200
Speaker 2: your rights as a person are dependent on where you

977
00:48:00,239 --> 00:48:02,960
Speaker 2: were born. Yeah, that's just the thing I'll never believe.

978
00:48:03,160 --> 00:48:06,160
Speaker 2: And it's the fight we've lost. The worst as the

979
00:48:06,239 --> 00:48:08,560
Speaker 2: left or you know, I should even say getting beyond

980
00:48:08,600 --> 00:48:11,560
Speaker 2: left and right, because I really think those are not

981
00:48:11,680 --> 00:48:13,320
Speaker 2: the most useful ways to look at things. It's like

982
00:48:13,440 --> 00:48:16,600
Speaker 2: human beings. The fact that that that battle, the battle

983
00:48:16,640 --> 00:48:20,920
Speaker 2: to just see people as humans with inherent value as humans,

984
00:48:20,960 --> 00:48:23,040
Speaker 2: regardless on their place of birth, the fact that has

985
00:48:23,080 --> 00:48:27,400
Speaker 2: been botched so badly is maybe the greatest calamity of

986
00:48:27,440 --> 00:48:30,400
Speaker 2: the twenty first century. Although there's a few, there's a

987
00:48:30,440 --> 00:48:31,839
Speaker 2: few contenders, don't get me wrong.

988
00:48:31,960 --> 00:48:34,239
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a lot well, And it's so.

989
00:48:34,520 --> 00:48:37,359
Speaker 4: It's so deeply ingrained. Something I'm going to talk about

990
00:48:37,400 --> 00:48:40,080
Speaker 4: more like in different places, but like, one of the

991
00:48:40,080 --> 00:48:42,200
Speaker 4: things that's been driving me the most up the walls

992
00:48:42,320 --> 00:48:43,920
Speaker 4: is like, so I've had to read like every single

993
00:48:43,920 --> 00:48:46,360
Speaker 4: piece of terrorist tariff coverage has been written by like

994
00:48:46,400 --> 00:48:49,360
Speaker 4: fucking all these analysts, all of these media people, like,

995
00:48:49,840 --> 00:48:52,879
Speaker 4: and every single one of them only fucking talks about

996
00:48:52,880 --> 00:48:55,359
Speaker 4: its impact on Americans, right, yep. And if you look

997
00:48:55,400 --> 00:48:57,799
Speaker 4: at the like the Liberation Day like turf tariff package, right,

998
00:48:58,320 --> 00:49:00,560
Speaker 4: the single country that is the most from this is

999
00:49:00,600 --> 00:49:03,560
Speaker 4: Sri Lanka. And if those tariffs go back into effect

1000
00:49:03,640 --> 00:49:06,960
Speaker 4: in like in like fifty days whatever, like eighty days.

1001
00:49:07,280 --> 00:49:10,880
Speaker 4: Like the entire country of Shri Lanka is fucked. They're doomed,

1002
00:49:11,080 --> 00:49:13,360
Speaker 4: They're completely fucked. And all of these countries, you know,

1003
00:49:13,480 --> 00:49:15,960
Speaker 4: these countries need US dollars in order to like literally

1004
00:49:16,000 --> 00:49:18,440
Speaker 4: to buy fucking fuel. And then suddenly, oh wait, hold on,

1005
00:49:18,480 --> 00:49:20,160
Speaker 4: you can't do experts of the US, and like the

1006
00:49:20,320 --> 00:49:23,080
Speaker 4: entire is something that affects literally the entire world. Right,

1007
00:49:23,120 --> 00:49:24,680
Speaker 4: you can look at the terrif rates on every single

1008
00:49:24,719 --> 00:49:29,520
Speaker 4: country like in the world, and everyone writing about it

1009
00:49:30,040 --> 00:49:32,680
Speaker 4: only writes about its effect upon the US because there's

1010
00:49:32,719 --> 00:49:35,839
Speaker 4: this just like like there's this this this pure sort

1011
00:49:35,840 --> 00:49:38,600
Speaker 4: of Americ centrism thing where like people and this I

1012
00:49:38,640 --> 00:49:40,560
Speaker 4: see this on the left too, where's like they fundamentally

1013
00:49:40,600 --> 00:49:43,080
Speaker 4: don't see anyone who's not in the US as human,

1014
00:49:43,360 --> 00:49:45,040
Speaker 4: and the people in the US who are who are

1015
00:49:45,040 --> 00:49:47,839
Speaker 4: seen as like people who seems like humans who you know,

1016
00:49:48,000 --> 00:49:52,760
Speaker 4: like think and feel and like act and like hurt

1017
00:49:52,840 --> 00:49:55,759
Speaker 4: in the same way that we do. Like that's only

1018
00:49:55,840 --> 00:49:57,839
Speaker 4: a thing that happens if you're a very specific kind

1019
00:49:57,880 --> 00:50:00,640
Speaker 4: of American citizen and if you're not, or God help

1020
00:50:00,680 --> 00:50:03,839
Speaker 4: you, you were born in like most of the like the

1021
00:50:03,880 --> 00:50:07,520
Speaker 4: rest of the world, which is again it hitteous super

1022
00:50:07,560 --> 00:50:11,720
Speaker 4: majority of everyone on Earth. You just you don't matter, and.

1023
00:50:12,440 --> 00:50:16,480
Speaker 3: Yep, they don't. Yeah, not in all this, And like

1024
00:50:16,560 --> 00:50:18,360
Speaker 3: I mean to bring it back to the Martian Revolution,

1025
00:50:18,520 --> 00:50:21,040
Speaker 3: like one of the things that is happening right now,

1026
00:50:21,080 --> 00:50:22,680
Speaker 3: Like in the series, you know, it's going to be

1027
00:50:22,719 --> 00:50:27,560
Speaker 3: thirty episodes long, and I'm writing episode twenty three right now.

1028
00:50:27,600 --> 00:50:30,560
Speaker 3: But like we've gone through the revolution, there's been I

1029
00:50:30,560 --> 00:50:32,880
Speaker 3: don't want to give away too many spoilers, but obviously

1030
00:50:32,920 --> 00:50:35,560
Speaker 3: like they win, you know at certain points, otherwise it

1031
00:50:35,560 --> 00:50:38,799
Speaker 3: wouldn't be a very interesting story. And there is a

1032
00:50:38,840 --> 00:50:43,839
Speaker 3: debate right now among the victorious Martian revolutionaries about who

1033
00:50:43,840 --> 00:50:46,879
Speaker 3: should count inside of the Martian constitution and this thing

1034
00:50:46,920 --> 00:50:49,200
Speaker 3: called the Republic of Mars that they have just declared

1035
00:50:49,200 --> 00:50:51,080
Speaker 3: they're no longer a part of a corporation. They're going

1036
00:50:51,160 --> 00:50:53,399
Speaker 3: to be this thing called the Republic of Mars. And

1037
00:50:53,600 --> 00:50:57,120
Speaker 3: there is a guy who is passionately committed to Mars

1038
00:50:57,520 --> 00:51:00,359
Speaker 3: and to the Martian people, and he hates Earthlings, doesn't

1039
00:51:00,360 --> 00:51:03,040
Speaker 3: trust Earthlings, and there's no reason for him to trust Earthlings.

1040
00:51:03,080 --> 00:51:05,040
Speaker 3: They have tried to screw them over a bunch of

1041
00:51:05,040 --> 00:51:07,480
Speaker 3: times and it caused nothing but pain and so but

1042
00:51:07,560 --> 00:51:10,280
Speaker 3: there are a bunch of earth born Earthlings on Mars,

1043
00:51:10,560 --> 00:51:13,200
Speaker 3: and he wants to exclude them from the Republic of Mars.

1044
00:51:13,440 --> 00:51:15,120
Speaker 3: And if you're born on Mars, then you should get

1045
00:51:15,120 --> 00:51:17,600
Speaker 3: to participate, and if you're not, then you shouldn't have rights,

1046
00:51:17,920 --> 00:51:20,200
Speaker 3: you shouldn't be a part of this project. And I

1047
00:51:20,239 --> 00:51:22,480
Speaker 3: would love to just I would love to deport you.

1048
00:51:22,960 --> 00:51:25,440
Speaker 3: That's what he's going to be arguing. And then there

1049
00:51:25,520 --> 00:51:29,839
Speaker 3: is another side that has a more universalist take on this,

1050
00:51:29,920 --> 00:51:33,000
Speaker 3: And my character Alexandra Clair, who's like a d class.

1051
00:51:33,040 --> 00:51:36,000
Speaker 3: She comes out of the warrants she can just that's

1052
00:51:36,000 --> 00:51:39,319
Speaker 3: basically like the working class, you know. She's like when

1053
00:51:39,360 --> 00:51:41,719
Speaker 3: Earthlings come here, Yeah, I don't like it when they

1054
00:51:42,000 --> 00:51:44,520
Speaker 3: bungle things because they're new and they don't know what

1055
00:51:44,560 --> 00:51:46,520
Speaker 3: they're doing. Like I'm as annoyed by the new guy

1056
00:51:46,600 --> 00:51:50,279
Speaker 3: as anybody, But like they've suffered right alongside me, like

1057
00:51:50,440 --> 00:51:52,480
Speaker 3: suffering the same conditions, Like the fact that they were

1058
00:51:52,520 --> 00:51:56,040
Speaker 3: born on Earth doesn't mean that they're not suffering right now,

1059
00:51:56,080 --> 00:51:59,080
Speaker 3: that their contracts weren't annulled, that they are not suffering

1060
00:51:59,080 --> 00:52:01,359
Speaker 3: from the new protocol, Like and you know when during

1061
00:52:01,400 --> 00:52:04,200
Speaker 3: these revolutions, did they hold neutron guns in their hands

1062
00:52:04,200 --> 00:52:06,839
Speaker 3: and fight and die for Mars? Yeah they did, and

1063
00:52:06,920 --> 00:52:10,839
Speaker 3: so probably we should say that it's not Martian good,

1064
00:52:11,000 --> 00:52:13,640
Speaker 3: Earthling bad. But like, let's just open it up to

1065
00:52:13,680 --> 00:52:17,000
Speaker 3: everybody and we will sort out like you know, who's

1066
00:52:17,440 --> 00:52:19,640
Speaker 3: you know, who's in on this and who's who's actually

1067
00:52:19,640 --> 00:52:22,359
Speaker 3: trying to undermine us, because you know there is there

1068
00:52:22,360 --> 00:52:24,600
Speaker 3: are loyalist fifth columnists that they are going to have

1069
00:52:24,640 --> 00:52:25,040
Speaker 3: to deal with.

1070
00:52:25,280 --> 00:52:29,399
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, uh, I think we're encroaching on an hour here,

1071
00:52:29,440 --> 00:52:32,080
Speaker 2: so we're I think we need to probably uh call

1072
00:52:32,160 --> 00:52:35,640
Speaker 2: this for the day. But Mike, I really appreciate your time.

1073
00:52:35,680 --> 00:52:38,360
Speaker 2: You've been so generous and I can't wait to see

1074
00:52:38,400 --> 00:52:40,480
Speaker 2: where you end. I know that you're also can't wait

1075
00:52:40,520 --> 00:52:42,080
Speaker 2: to see where you land on all of.

1076
00:52:42,040 --> 00:52:45,680
Speaker 3: This, right right right, I've got all the plot points,

1077
00:52:45,760 --> 00:52:48,680
Speaker 3: you know, I know where it's going, but just getting

1078
00:52:48,680 --> 00:52:51,279
Speaker 3: there is is. Yeah, it's weird because sometimes when you

1079
00:52:51,320 --> 00:52:54,440
Speaker 3: write fiction, characters are like you weren't supposed to do that,

1080
00:52:54,680 --> 00:52:56,239
Speaker 3: and now I've got to deal with that, and like

1081
00:52:56,480 --> 00:52:59,200
Speaker 3: what do you well, she wouldn't do that in this moment,

1082
00:52:59,239 --> 00:53:00,680
Speaker 3: So I guess I was going to have her do it,

1083
00:53:00,719 --> 00:53:02,840
Speaker 3: but I just can't believe that she would ever do

1084
00:53:02,920 --> 00:53:04,880
Speaker 3: that in that situation. So I guess she can't do it,

1085
00:53:04,880 --> 00:53:06,239
Speaker 3: and I'll have to figure that out. And that's my

1086
00:53:06,280 --> 00:53:07,479
Speaker 3: weekly struggle these days.

1087
00:53:07,760 --> 00:53:11,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's that's the struggle of releasing fiction before

1088
00:53:11,200 --> 00:53:12,319
Speaker 2: you're entirely done with it.

1089
00:53:13,520 --> 00:53:15,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I write it. I mean I wake up,

1090
00:53:15,640 --> 00:53:17,719
Speaker 3: I wake up every Monday morning with a blank piece

1091
00:53:17,719 --> 00:53:19,600
Speaker 3: of paper and have to have that week's episode done

1092
00:53:19,600 --> 00:53:22,480
Speaker 3: by Sunday night, And so I'm writing these in real time. Yeah.

1093
00:53:22,520 --> 00:53:25,239
Speaker 2: Well, I congratulate you on trapping yourself in such an

1094
00:53:25,280 --> 00:53:28,520
Speaker 2: exquisite Hell, I'm enjoying listening to it, and I know

1095
00:53:28,560 --> 00:53:29,239
Speaker 2: everyone else's is.

1096
00:53:29,400 --> 00:53:30,080
Speaker 3: Well, it's great.

1097
00:53:30,200 --> 00:53:30,640
Speaker 1: I love it.

1098
00:53:31,640 --> 00:53:38,800
Speaker 2: All right, that's the episode, everybody, Thank you by.

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00:53:37,440 --> 00:53:39,920
Speaker 1: It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.

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00:53:40,120 --> 00:53:43,120
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website

1101
00:53:43,239 --> 00:53:46,840
Speaker 1: Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

1102
00:53:46,880 --> 00:53:50,480
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can

1103
00:53:50,480 --> 00:53:52,840
Speaker 1: now find sources for It Could Happen Here, listed directly

1104
00:53:52,840 --> 00:53:55,160
Speaker 1: in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening,