Speaker 1: The first several episodes of this podcast have gotten a
Speaker 1: more enthusiastic reaction than I could have ever guessed. I'm
Speaker 1: very grateful for that. My motivation for doing the show
Speaker 1: comes out of a very deep fear I feel towards
Speaker 1: where this country is headed and what might happen if
Speaker 1: our present destructive course is not somehow arrested and averted.
Speaker 1: So I'm glad that this has gone the podcast equivalent
Speaker 1: of viral. I'm proud that so many people have reached
Speaker 1: out to tell me the impact it's had on them.
Speaker 1: But I'm also troubled by some things, and I hope
Speaker 1: you'll indulge me in a little bit of creative narcissism
Speaker 1: as I analyze my own work, because the success thus
Speaker 1: far of it could happen here has also given me
Speaker 1: a very clear understanding of some of its flaws. For
Speaker 1: one thing, it's become very clear to me that this
Speaker 1: show has terrified an awful lot of people. To some extent.
Speaker 1: That was my goal from the beginning. I've been scared
Speaker 1: about this for a long time, and I wanted political
Speaker 1: moderates and liberals to see the dangers I see. But
Speaker 1: a number of people have reached out to me and
Speaker 1: expressed feelings of hopelessness and an ear panicked feeling that
Speaker 1: there is nothing they can do to stop This was
Speaker 1: my plan to build to an episode about, you know,
Speaker 1: things people could do to help make the Second American
Speaker 1: Civil War less likely and in this series on an
Speaker 1: optimistic note. Uh, there's certainly more than a little bit
Speaker 1: of narcissism in that as well. But from a storytelling standpoint,
Speaker 1: it makes sense to keep building tension right up until
Speaker 1: the end and then close out on a hopeful note. However,
Speaker 1: this is not just an exercise in storytelling. It's a
Speaker 1: work of journalism, and given the kind of emotional impact
Speaker 1: podcasts have on their listeners, I think it would be
Speaker 1: irresponsible to go that long without providing some suggestions for
Speaker 1: how folks might stop all of this. There's more darkness
Speaker 1: to come in this series, I will promise you that,
Speaker 1: but I've decided this little mini episode should act as
Speaker 1: an intermission to provide some practical advice on how to
Speaker 1: make everything I've talked about so far a little bit
Speaker 1: less likely to happen. Now. The key to that is this,
Speaker 1: we have to get better at building solidarity across our
Speaker 1: political divide. I want to make a couple of things
Speaker 1: clear before we get deeper into this. There is a
Speaker 1: right way and a wrong way to foster communication between
Speaker 1: the right and the left. Many primetime television journalistic hats
Speaker 1: than the way to do this is to provide a
Speaker 1: platform to hate mongering nationalists like Candice Owens. Others think
Speaker 1: debate is the sav for all of our wounds. NPR
Speaker 1: recently published an article titled keeping it Civil. How to
Speaker 1: talk politics without letting things turn ugly now. NPR shared
Speaker 1: this article on Twitter, and the first response was from
Speaker 1: my friend Molly. She said, simply, no others shared the
Speaker 1: same sentiment. Molly is a fan of my work, as
Speaker 1: I am a fan of her activism, and I understand
Speaker 1: her reaction. She was deeply intimately impacted by the violence
Speaker 1: at the Unite the Right rally in two thousand seventeen,
Speaker 1: and she has literal Nazis threatened to kill her on
Speaker 1: a near daily basis. She's one of the people I
Speaker 1: was talking about in the first episode of this series
Speaker 1: when I mentioned that for some of us, the Second
Speaker 1: American Civil War has already started. So I want to
Speaker 1: make it clear that I'm not saying The solution to
Speaker 1: all of this is for us to have polite debates
Speaker 1: with people we disagree with. I think debate is useless.
Speaker 1: That's why assholes like Stephen Crowder and Ben Shapiro spend
Speaker 1: their lives trying to have public debates where they can
Speaker 1: destroy people they disagree with and of course sell more
Speaker 1: leftist tears mugs. In fact, I think some of the
Speaker 1: most dangerous people in our society right now, the people
Speaker 1: lurching us ever closer to bloody, bullet riddled calamity, are
Speaker 1: fools with large platforms who provide a bullhorn for the
Speaker 1: most hateful among us and justify it by saying that
Speaker 1: they're just having conversations. Joe Rogan and Logan Paul come
Speaker 1: most immediately to mind. Both men recently hosted Alex Jones
Speaker 1: on their popular podcast and YouTube channel, respectively. Rogan has
Speaker 1: continued to platform Jones after the latter repeatedly threatened to
Speaker 1: expose and destroy him in a series of Unhinged Info
Speaker 1: Wars rants. Joe Rogan does this because he considers Alex
Speaker 1: Jones a friend and because he has built a career
Speaker 1: off of hosting unhinged conspiracy theorists. Rogan paints himself is
Speaker 1: just a simple, open minded guy willing to listen to anyone.
Speaker 1: I think if he were here right now, he'd say
Speaker 1: he doesn't see the harm and just talking to someone
Speaker 1: with different opinions. Logan Paul would probably admit, if pressed,
Speaker 1: that he hosted Alex Jones because he thought it was
Speaker 1: funny and because he saw how incredibly popular Rogan's recent
Speaker 1: five hour podcast with Alex Jones was. As of the
Speaker 1: writing of this episode, that podcast has been watched nearly
Speaker 1: thirteen million times on YouTube alone. Thankfully, Paul's platforming of
Speaker 1: Jones was less productive. That YouTube video was at around
Speaker 1: four hundred and fifty three thousand views right now, but
Speaker 1: it still helped introduce Alex Jones to a much younger demographic,
Speaker 1: some of whom will follow him back to in full Wars.
Speaker 1: Speaking of infull Wars, Within a couple of days of
Speaker 1: that Logan Paul appearance, Alex Jones dedicated the better part
Speaker 1: of an episode of his show to an unhinged rant
Speaker 1: against the drag Queen's Story Hour. Now. This is an
Speaker 1: advocacy organization all over the US and in several other
Speaker 1: countries based around having drag queens read story books to
Speaker 1: kids at local libraries. The goal is to introduce these
Speaker 1: kids to the idea that queer people exist in the
Speaker 1: world and are members of their communities too, like anyone else.
Speaker 1: At least that's how most sane people interpret it. To
Speaker 1: Alex Jones, it's part of a violent conspiracy to rape
Speaker 1: and murder children. These drag queens stand ins for all
Speaker 1: queer people are just trying to get children used to
Speaker 1: their presence so they don't fight back when they're abduct
Speaker 1: it and ritually murdered. That's an inductee right there. That's
Speaker 1: rim Field, a demon posing as a woman, a woman
Speaker 1: that gives life, that nurtures babies, And these poor babies.
Speaker 1: The last thing they see when the inner hell is
Speaker 1: men dressed as women. The last thing they see is
Speaker 1: they're hacked up and torn into pieces, and as their
Speaker 1: blood is slobbingly delict into the mouths, and no men
Speaker 1: will stand against them. And unless we convince ourselves that,
Speaker 1: no one really listens to Alex Jones when he says
Speaker 1: this crazy ship. Here's a clip from later in the episode,
Speaker 1: when a caller who identifies himself as a cop talks
Speaker 1: about his desire to murder drag queens without consequence. One
Speaker 1: thing you say that I like is you don't need
Speaker 1: orders from headquarters, well as of the civilian, a parent
Speaker 1: or a legal guardian doesn't need the police. In my eyes,
Speaker 1: I've being the cop to go to school and grab
Speaker 1: that drag queen and drag him out the parking lot
Speaker 1: and dispose of them. If you're in that school and
Speaker 1: you're in kids, and somebody's not stopping it, I should
Speaker 1: have the legal right to go in and and put
Speaker 1: you down. And we're already percussions. Thanks to Dan from
Speaker 1: the Knowledge Fight podcast for both of those clips. So
Speaker 1: I think I've made it clear at this point that
Speaker 1: there is absolutely a wrong way to talk to the
Speaker 1: other side of the aisle. We do not need to
Speaker 1: talk to Alex Jones or Miloianopolis or Richard Spencer or
Speaker 1: Candice Owens. Ben Shapiro does not need to be debated
Speaker 1: about his racist claim that eight hundred million Muslims are
Speaker 1: dangerous radicals. None of these people deserve to be platformed
Speaker 1: or debated. They need to be ignored. The people we
Speaker 1: need to talk to the people. We cannot ignore our
Speaker 1: fellow citizens. They are people who may have fallen under
Speaker 1: the spells of some of these demagogues or of Trump himself,
Speaker 1: but many of them are fundamentally decent human beings acting
Speaker 1: based on their imperfect knowledge of the world. In episode
Speaker 1: two of this series, I talked about the revenge of
Speaker 1: rural America. I tried and perfectly, I'm sure, to make
Speaker 1: the point that these people have legitimate grievances before detailing
Speaker 1: how they could bring this country to its knees if
Speaker 1: pushed far enough. I think it's important for liberals to
Speaker 1: understand this because a lot of the rhetoric I've seen
Speaker 1: from scorn Clinton supporters towards conservative America is extremely dangerous.
Speaker 1: Here's one example. In March of two thousand nineteen, the
Speaker 1: news dropped that an Ohio g implant was shutting down
Speaker 1: Trumpet campaign in the area on the promise that he
Speaker 1: would keep this factory open. Many liberals reacted jubilantly at
Speaker 1: seeing their political enemies take a hit. The first comment
Speaker 1: I found on one article about the story read quote
Speaker 1: to all of the union members that placed an X
Speaker 1: beside that nazi bastard's name, you got what you deserved.
Speaker 1: Since Trump's upset victory, there's been a lot of talk
Speaker 1: on the left about eliminating the electoral College. Now, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to defend that institution because it's just super dumb,
Speaker 1: But I don't think people who urge its destruction really
Speaker 1: think about the implications of what they're suggesting. Yes, it
Speaker 1: is unjust that three million more people voted for Hillary
Speaker 1: Clinton and she's still laws, But it's also unjust to
Speaker 1: say fuck it, we enlightened city dwellers should get to
Speaker 1: decide everything for rural Americans and funk what they want
Speaker 1: if they disagree with us. That impulse right there will
Speaker 1: lead us to a civil war as surely as anything else. Now,
Speaker 1: the good news is that the vast, vast majority of
Speaker 1: rural Americans don't want to become violent insurgents. They don't
Speaker 1: want to kill you. They do want their world to
Speaker 1: stop falling apart. They want to stop being ignored and
Speaker 1: written off as hicks by people in the cities. More
Speaker 1: than anything, they want to have hope for the future.
Speaker 1: There are many committed, bone deep Trump supporters out in
Speaker 1: rural America, but those people are outnumbered by the folks
Speaker 1: who just voted for him because they saw no hope
Speaker 1: for politics as usual. To deal with the crippling opioid
Speaker 1: problems in their communities, the collapse of rural infrastructure, and
Speaker 1: the utter lack of hope they see on the faces
Speaker 1: of their children. That sense of terror at what comes
Speaker 1: next is actually one area where we can all find
Speaker 1: common ground. I know this because I've seen it on
Speaker 1: the faces of many urban liberals and leftists as we
Speaker 1: digest the latest heart wrenching story about climate change or
Speaker 1: read about the concentration camps our government has built in
Speaker 1: El Paso. Once we start talking, we may find that
Speaker 1: we have more points we can agree on than we thought.
Speaker 1: We should not be debating each other. We should be
Speaker 1: focusing on finding solutions to the problems that we can
Speaker 1: all see. Climate change is actually a good example. Eight
Speaker 1: and ten Americans believe the climate is changing, bringing with
Speaker 1: it more extreme weather conditions. This includes more than sixty
Speaker 1: percent of Republicans. A healthy majority of Americans consider climate
Speaker 1: change a serious problem. Just this spring, South Dakota, Nebraska,
Speaker 1: and southern Minnesota experienced apocalyptic mud slides after unprecedented spring rains.
Speaker 1: The mud did billions of dollars in damage and obliterated
Speaker 1: many local economies. These mud slides in the north and Midwest,
Speaker 1: echo equally apocalyptic mud slides experienced by Californians in early
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen. Solidarity is a word with a long
Speaker 1: and confusing ideological pedigree. It crept into popular political discourse
Speaker 1: in the eighteen forties, as socialism began to take off
Speaker 1: around the world and utopian experiments where launched throughout the West.
Speaker 1: By nine hundred, the concept of solidarity was so widely
Speaker 1: understood that it would be fair to call it the
Speaker 1: global cornerstone of progressive politics. Around the turn of the century,
Speaker 1: the great sociologist Emil Durkheim explained, quote, the sense of
Speaker 1: solidarity is the foundation of morality, since it is necessary
Speaker 1: to show the young that human beings are by no
Speaker 1: means isolated within themselves, but are part of a totality
Speaker 1: from which they cannot be separated other than in their thoughts,
Speaker 1: that society lives and operates in them and represents the
Speaker 1: best aspect of their own. Nature. Of fascist political success
Speaker 1: relies wholly on separation. The people who want to raise
Speaker 1: the temperature in our society and provoke open, bloody violence
Speaker 1: between left and right thrive when the rest of us
Speaker 1: isolate ourselves. Their ideas metastasized when rural Americans hide on
Speaker 1: their farms and in their small towns, and urban Americans
Speaker 1: preached to each other from the safety of their ideological bubbles.
Speaker 1: A two thousand fourteen Pew survey found that thirty one
Speaker 1: percent of consistent conservatives and forty four percent of consistent
Speaker 1: liberals have muted or unfriended a follower based on political disagreements.
Speaker 1: During the two thousand sixteen election, seventy five percent of
Speaker 1: Clinton voters did not have a single Trump supporter in
Speaker 1: their network. More than half of Trump and Clinton voters
Speaker 1: reported not regularly discussing politics with someone who disagreed with them.
Speaker 1: Only about twenty percent of voters on either side had
Speaker 1: truly mixed social networks and discussed politics regularly with people
Speaker 1: they didn't agree with. When we don't talk to each
Speaker 1: other at all, we miss opportunities for solidarity. I've been
Speaker 1: fortunate enough to spend a lot of my life as
Speaker 1: a leftist in deeply read territory, so I'd like to
Speaker 1: expand on another opportunity for solidarity. The end of the
Speaker 1: billionaire Class. Dan Riffle, Alexandria Accacio Cortes's senior policy adviser
Speaker 1: made the news recently when he changed his Twitter name
Speaker 1: to every billionaire is a policy failure. Now, this is
Speaker 1: not a statement you're likely to get most conservatives on
Speaker 1: board with if you phrase it that way, But when
Speaker 1: you get into the meat of what Accassio, Cortes and
Speaker 1: other Democrats suggest in order to reduce income inequality, there's
Speaker 1: actually less daylight between right and left than you might suspect.
Speaker 1: Seventy six percent of registered voters want the wealthiest Americans
Speaker 1: to pay more in taxes. Sixty one percent of us
Speaker 1: support the sort of wealth tax proposed by Elizabeth Warren,
Speaker 1: which boosts the taxes on those with a net worth
Speaker 1: of over fifty million dollars. Forty five percent of Americans
Speaker 1: support Alexandria Acasio Cortes's seventy percent top marginal tax rate
Speaker 1: on people who make more than ten million dollars. Across
Speaker 1: the political spectrum, Americans increasingly agree that the rich are
Speaker 1: not paying their fair share and that they ought to.
Speaker 1: Hammer and simple flags and talk of guillotines will not
Speaker 1: convert anyone to supporting a higher marginal tax rate, but
Speaker 1: you might see some success in talking to them about
Speaker 1: the Sackler family. The Sacklers are the billionaire clan behind
Speaker 1: Perdue Pharmaceuticals. Starting in nineteen ninety five and running right
Speaker 1: up until the present day, they conducted a fraudulent advertising
Speaker 1: campaign to hide the addictiveness of their most profitable product, OxyContin,
Speaker 1: and get it into the bodies of as many Americans
Speaker 1: as possible. Because of the Sacklers, opiate pain killers went
Speaker 1: from something only the seriously ill were prescribed to something
Speaker 1: commonly handed out for the kind of chronic pain they
Speaker 1: do not help with. As a result, more than two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand Americans have died of prescription pain killer overdoses.
Speaker 1: Whole towns in rural America have been decimated, in some
Speaker 1: cases nearly wiped out by a plague of addiction. And
Speaker 1: while small town Americans have died in their thousands, the
Speaker 1: Sacklers have increased their net worth from tens of millions
Speaker 1: of dollars to around fourteen billion dollars. They've spent a
Speaker 1: tidy chunk of that Monday funding a number of radical
Speaker 1: anti Muslim organizations dedicated to stoking right wing fears of Islam.
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but I like the idea
Speaker 1: of fighting a war against the billionaires through the ballot
Speaker 1: box alongside conservatives more than I like the idea of
Speaker 1: fighting conservatives with bullets while the Sacklers and their ilk
Speaker 1: fleeted compounds in New Zealand. There are other opportunities for
Speaker 1: cross political solidarity. Some of them are nestled in the
Speaker 1: things that seem most frightening about our current political climate.
Speaker 1: In episode one, I talked about the increased prevalence of
Speaker 1: left wing gun advocacy groups. This can be seen as
Speaker 1: a proto insurgency situation, something that leads to more fear
Speaker 1: and division and eventually violence, but it could also be
Speaker 1: another opportunity to find common ground. I've spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time in Los Angeles gun stores. There's some of
Speaker 1: the only places in this city where you're regularly run
Speaker 1: into vocal Republicans. I also recently went out to a
Speaker 1: shooting range with a John Brown Gun Club, a leftist
Speaker 1: gun organization. In both places and surrounded by both groups
Speaker 1: of people, I heard a lot of the same complaints
Speaker 1: about California's confusing and often unproductive gun laws. In the
Speaker 1: weeks since the first episode of this podcast launch, dozens
Speaker 1: upon dozens of liberals and leftists have reached out to
Speaker 1: me asking if they should buy firearms. Many told me
Speaker 1: they were already in the process of buying their first guns.
Speaker 1: I realized that these people on the left were starting
Speaker 1: to feel something that many on the right have felt
Speaker 1: for a while, the desire to arm up in the
Speaker 1: face of an uncertain future. I do worry that all
Speaker 1: these guns might wind up being used in violence, absolutely
Speaker 1: I do. But I also have hope at the presence
Speaker 1: of a left wing gun culture might foster some productive
Speaker 1: conversations across the political chasm, because the current conversations we're
Speaker 1: having about guns in this country are not productive. This
Speaker 1: is embodied well by a message Eric Swawell, a Democratic
Speaker 1: representative from California, recently received from a furious gun nuts.
Speaker 1: Eric's all, well, here's a little duty for you. Thirty
Speaker 1: round clip. You're all gonna drop and I'll give up anymore.
Speaker 1: Your mother, I think you've got some new young motherfucker
Speaker 1: going to take over the constitution. You want to go
Speaker 1: to war, We're going to war, and you're going to
Speaker 1: be a mother. Now. That's obviously terrifying and fucked up,
Speaker 1: and I'm afraid that reperative. Swallow's response only made it worse.
Speaker 1: Immediately after playing that audio, he played this text on screen.
Speaker 1: We recently passed background check bills in the House. We
Speaker 1: must ban and buy back assault weapons next. Now, this
Speaker 1: probably sounds reasonable to many of you, and I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to talk you out of whatever your views on
Speaker 1: this issue are. But I also see it as another escalation,
Speaker 1: taking this nuts violent rhetoric and giving him exactly what
Speaker 1: he wants, a left wing boogeyman coming for his guns.
Speaker 1: Of American households own a gun, and the A R
Speaker 1: fifteen is by far the most common single firearm in
Speaker 1: this nation. Gun ownership in America is on a significant
Speaker 1: upward trend. After dropping form much of the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: it's ticked steadily higher in the twenty first century. Drawing
Speaker 1: a hard political line by saying fuck you, We're going
Speaker 1: to take your weapons is not nearly as bad as
Speaker 1: threatening murder, obviously, and I'm not trying to equate the two,
Speaker 1: but it is not a productive step forward either, because
Speaker 1: most gun owners are not literal madman like the guy
Speaker 1: who threatened. Representative Swallow of n r A members support
Speaker 1: comprehensive background checks. Not only is that number nice, it
Speaker 1: shows widespread support for an into unregulated face to face sales,
Speaker 1: what some pundits referred to as the gun show loophole.
Speaker 1: Seventy eight percent of non n r A gun owners
Speaker 1: like myself support universal background checks. Now when we tell
Speaker 1: about other gun control measures like gun violence restraining orders,
Speaker 1: raising the age required to purchase firearms, and implementing waiting
Speaker 1: periods in more states, things get more controversial. But still
Speaker 1: half of American gun owners support a national firearms Purchased database.
Speaker 1: There is clearly room for conversation and for real progress
Speaker 1: on these issues. The n r A and certain politicians
Speaker 1: stand the most extreme versions of their respective policies, but
Speaker 1: most American voters, including gun owning voters, can be convinced
Speaker 1: to support more nuanced policies that still have a real
Speaker 1: impact on gun violence. I've been shooting since I was
Speaker 1: seven years old, and I own what most people would
Speaker 1: describe as a funkload of firearms, and I can tell
Speaker 1: you that much of the frustration rational gun owners feel
Speaker 1: towards politicians like Representative Swallow comes from the fact that
Speaker 1: most gun control laws are written by people who don't
Speaker 1: understand firearms. Some laws make objective sense to me, waiting
Speaker 1: periods are sane and sensible. I can get behind banning
Speaker 1: people under twenty one from purching semi automatic weapons, But
Speaker 1: then there's California's assault weapons ban. Most liberals probably think
Speaker 1: it means I can't own air fifteens or a K
Speaker 1: forty sevens, but I own both in the city of
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. The largest means that I've had to stick
Speaker 1: as silly and very easily removable plastic flipper on the
Speaker 1: pistol grip of my rifle, so it doesn't technically count
Speaker 1: as a pistol grip. This is part of why I
Speaker 1: think more firearms ownership among the left could lead to
Speaker 1: more effective gun control if the people writing those laws
Speaker 1: know what they're talking about, and if gun owners on
Speaker 1: the right see broad support for a reasonable interpretation of
Speaker 1: the Second Amendment. If they see a lot of people
Speaker 1: on the other side of the aisle also own firearms
Speaker 1: and are trying to take their guns, they might be
Speaker 1: more open to talking about common sense gun control policies.
Speaker 1: I think one of Barack Obama's biggest mistakes during his
Speaker 1: first presidential campaign was referring to rural Americans as people
Speaker 1: who cling to their guns and Bibles. If you live
Speaker 1: in a major urban area, don't regularly go to church,
Speaker 1: and have never fired a gun. Obama's words probably rang true.
Speaker 1: They jelled with what you believed, especially about rural Americans.
Speaker 1: But think about how those words would feel from the
Speaker 1: perspective of someone whose town has an unemployment rate more
Speaker 1: than double the national average. Someone who has lost multiple
Speaker 1: friends and family members to opiate addiction. Someone for whom
Speaker 1: the center of their social life is church on Sunday.
Speaker 1: Someone from whom access to a firearm is the best
Speaker 1: way to get affordable meat. Someone who's best memories of
Speaker 1: their granddad, father, or uncle involved learning how to shoot.
Speaker 1: To that person, Barack Obama's words sounded less like an
Speaker 1: apt diagnosis and more like a slap to the face.
Speaker 1: We don't all right. None of this is an apologia
Speaker 1: for the literal Nazis among the right wing people like
Speaker 1: that gang of fascists arrested in Florida with a rocket
Speaker 1: launcher earlier this year. Fuck those people. But most conservatives
Speaker 1: are not those people. And if we can reach out
Speaker 1: to them in solidarity over the problems we share, if
Speaker 1: they can be shown they have cause and pain in
Speaker 1: common with poor people, in inner city America. If they
Speaker 1: can see that the socialists yelling about billionaires are pissed
Speaker 1: at the same people whose poison pills killed their mom, well,
Speaker 1: that presents a path forward, and to be honest, it's
Speaker 1: the only path I can see that isn't drenched in blood.
Speaker 1: So this brings us to the question of what you,
Speaker 1: the listener, can start doing right now to help with this.
Speaker 1: The bad actors in our society, people like doctor Jordan Peterson,
Speaker 1: don't want you to do anything. Dr Peterson, who was
Speaker 1: also platformed into the mainstream by Joe Rogan, says this quote.
Speaker 1: The proper way to fix the world isn't to fix
Speaker 1: the world. There's no reason to assume that you're even
Speaker 1: up to such a task. But you can fix yourself.
Speaker 1: You'll do no one any harm by doing so, and
Speaker 1: in that matter, at least you will make the world
Speaker 1: a better place. I think that's horseship. Self improvement is
Speaker 1: all well and good, but we are heading towards a
Speaker 1: gaping precipice of murder right now. The world and the
Speaker 1: country needs you to get out there and try to
Speaker 1: unfunck this nation more than it needs you to clean
Speaker 1: your room and do sit ups. Martin Luther King Junior
Speaker 1: cheated on his wife. Mahatma Gandhi was a racist with
Speaker 1: a terrible temper. Both men made the world a measurably
Speaker 1: better through their activism. You don't have to be perfect
Speaker 1: to help build a more perfect world. So what do
Speaker 1: I recommend? What can you do right now? If you
Speaker 1: live in Oregon, I'd suggest volunteering and donating to the
Speaker 1: Rural Organizing Project. The r o P evolved out of
Speaker 1: a fight against a rural far right political insurgency based
Speaker 1: around anti gay politics and turned into an aggressive counter
Speaker 1: messaging campaign aimed at de radicalizing rural conservatives and helping
Speaker 1: to show them areas like environmental protection and an opposition
Speaker 1: to foreign wars where they agree with their progressive urban cousins.
Speaker 1: Another group you might consider donating to or volunteering with
Speaker 1: is Light upon Light. They focus on de radicalizing extremists
Speaker 1: of all types. They currently have a go fund me
Speaker 1: set up that is badly in need of support. In
Speaker 1: episode two, I talked about the role literal neo Nazis
Speaker 1: and other such violent criminals play in raising the temperature
Speaker 1: high enough to allow for a civil war. Light upon
Speaker 1: Light in other groups with similar missions, like Life After Hate,
Speaker 1: dedicate themselves to lowering that temperature. Their work is important.
Speaker 1: It buys all of us more time to fix the
Speaker 1: underlying causes of this budding civil war. If you have
Speaker 1: emergency medical experience, you might consider volunteering your time time
Speaker 1: with Remote Area Medical. This is a volunteer medical charity
Speaker 1: that provides healthcare options to people in impoverished, underserved rural communities.
Speaker 1: They are not a political group, but the work they
Speaker 1: do is invaluable, and letting rural Americans know they aren't
Speaker 1: forgotten or abandoned by the rest of us, that too,
Speaker 1: lowers the temperature. Another important way to lower the temperature
Speaker 1: is education, connecting people to good information about the world
Speaker 1: to push back against the bullshit pedled by the Alex
Speaker 1: Joneses and Joe's Rogan of the world. Many small, impoverished
Speaker 1: rural towns lack convenient access to libraries. Of rural Americans
Speaker 1: say they have not read a book in the last year,
Speaker 1: compared to twenty three percent of city dwellers. Bookmobiles exist
Speaker 1: to fight back against this problem. Now, the number of
Speaker 1: active bookmobiles has declined in recent years, but that trend
Speaker 1: seems to be changing, and you can be a part
Speaker 1: of that by donating money or by volunteering your time
Speaker 1: to create a book mobile of your own. Mutual Aid
Speaker 1: Disaster Relief is a nationwide volunteer organization geared towards supporting
Speaker 1: disaster survivors in the immediate term with food and medical aid,
Speaker 1: and in the long term through education on things like permaculture.
Speaker 1: Their motto is solidarity not charity, and they represent a
Speaker 1: method of spreading leftist principles and building class consciousness through
Speaker 1: something that works a hell of a lot better than
Speaker 1: handing out pamphlets direct action. Thanks to climate change, nightmarish
Speaker 1: natural disasters are only going to grow more common in
Speaker 1: the coming years. If you are someone who has been
Speaker 1: deeply worried by the things I've talked about on this podcast,
Speaker 1: you should really consider volunteering with Mutual Aid Disaster Relief.
Speaker 1: Not only can the actions of a group like this
Speaker 1: help to de radicalize and lower the temperature in parts
Speaker 1: of the country, but if fighting does spark off, it
Speaker 1: will be handy to already be in contact with a
Speaker 1: group of activists who have practical experience dealing with calamity.
Speaker 1: And then, of course there's political action. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's hyperbolic to say that the election will be the
Speaker 1: most important election of our lifetimes, and may in fact
Speaker 1: be the most important election in this nation's history. Even
Speaker 1: a narrow Democratic victory could be disastrous, as it would
Speaker 1: give President Trump an opportunity to deny the legitimacy of
Speaker 1: his defeat. We will not insure a healthy margin of
Speaker 1: victory and reduce the odds of a violent right wing
Speaker 1: insurgency just by preaching to our bubbles about how much
Speaker 1: we hate Trump. We need to get out in rural
Speaker 1: communities and talk to these people, like Leslie Cockburn did.
Speaker 1: In two thousand eighteen, Leslie was the Democratic candidate in
Speaker 1: Virginia's fifth district. She did much of her campaigning in
Speaker 1: rural and small town Virginia, talking to conservatives whose minds
Speaker 1: were not closed to the possibility of voting for a Democrat. Now,
Speaker 1: Leslie did not win her election, but that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: her outreach and the outreach of her campaign's workers and
Speaker 1: volunteers was useless. She lost by under seven points. For comparison,
Speaker 1: the Democratic candidate in two thousand sixteen in Virginia's fifth
Speaker 1: district lost by seventeen points. Leslie's defeat is evidence of
Speaker 1: serious progress. While she was campaigning, she said this to
Speaker 1: the Intercept quote, if you talk to people in these
Speaker 1: rural areas, you find out that there are a huge
Speaker 1: number of very what I call just mainstream, old fashioned Democrats.
Speaker 1: It's simple basic. They believe in a living way age,
Speaker 1: they believe in collective bargaining. They believe in decent health
Speaker 1: care for everyone. I think a lot of people listening
Speaker 1: to this episode we're probably surprised by the fact that
Speaker 1: most conservatives now accept the reality of climate change finally,
Speaker 1: and that most gun owners actually support more gun control regulations.
Speaker 1: In the same way, many Republicans are shocked to realize
Speaker 1: how many liberals and leftists are devoutly religious, own firearms,
Speaker 1: or agree that raising taxes on gasoline and middle income
Speaker 1: Americans is a dumb idea. There's quite a lot of
Speaker 1: evidence that Democrats and Republicans are very, very bad at
Speaker 1: understanding what the other people on the other side of
Speaker 1: the aisle, not the politicians, but the people look like
Speaker 1: and believe. A few research center Pole last year backs
Speaker 1: this up. It found that Republicans estimated LGBT people made
Speaker 1: up thirty eight percent of the Democratic Party actual number
Speaker 1: six percent, and that Democrats estimated forty four percent of
Speaker 1: Republicans made more than a quarter of a million dollars
Speaker 1: a year actual number two percent. Five thirty eight summarized
Speaker 1: the research by saying, in short, the parties in our
Speaker 1: heads are not the parties in real life. The question
Speaker 1: everyone hearing this should ask is this, if we're getting
Speaker 1: all this basic stuff wrong about the other side, what
Speaker 1: else might we be missing. Is it possible that a
Speaker 1: lot of this division, which seems to be inching inexorably
Speaker 1: closer to violence, is the result of bad actors in
Speaker 1: the media and shiphead politicians rather than truly insurmountable visions
Speaker 1: of the world. I want to be clear here. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that, say, racism and anti LGBT bigotry on
Speaker 1: the right is not a problem. Nor am I saying
Speaker 1: that there aren't political disagreements in our country where there
Speaker 1: isn't room for compromise. But there are things we can
Speaker 1: agree on and other things we can compromise on, And
Speaker 1: if we work on those things without compromising things like
Speaker 1: trans rights, racial justice, or abortion, we might be able
Speaker 1: to build enough goodwill to reduce some of this pressure.
Speaker 1: Working together to say, tax billionaires and fight the opiate
Speaker 1: crisis and reduce the impact of climate change doesn't just
Speaker 1: help with those problems. It helps to quench the hatreds
Speaker 1: that have been building for years. It might stop us
Speaker 1: from going over the edge. I think it's worth a shop,
Speaker 1: and I know it's better than shooting h I'm Robert
Speaker 1: Evans and I'm just exhausted from reading all of that.
Speaker 1: You can find me on Twitter at I right, okay.
Speaker 1: You can find this show on Twitter at happen here pod,
Speaker 1: and you can find the show online at it could
Speaker 1: happen here pod dot com. Our music, as always, is
Speaker 1: from Four Fists