Speaker 1: Sacred twenty three, extremely extremely exciting. It's finally, finally, two
Speaker 1: thousand twenty three. That means only funny things can happen
Speaker 1: this year. That's right, selfie. Welcome to Welcome to Christy.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't hear any criticism. Welcome to Well. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I'm gonna say they're welcome, but it is good,
Speaker 1: good work. Enjoy your year of discord um as if
Speaker 1: any year of the last, like ten, has not been
Speaker 1: a year every every year previously was totally normal and
Speaker 1: not chaotic. Downhill from here. First off, welcome, welcome back.
Speaker 1: We we love some of you. Probably presumably I haven't
Speaker 1: met you, any of the ones that I love, but
Speaker 1: I assume that you're out there. How's everybody doing, how's
Speaker 1: everyone's new year? Absolute slap in the face to anyone
Speaker 1: you've met on any of your live events, that's a fairy.
Speaker 1: So nice to meet you. Thank you for coming in person. Also,
Speaker 1: fuck you. That's what this whole episode is a series
Speaker 1: of slaps to the face, because it's not for us.
Speaker 1: We're lying. We're all lying to them. Who knows if
Speaker 1: we make it that far today we're recording this on
Speaker 1: December two, and what is it? What has happened today? Friends? Also,
Speaker 1: who are you? Who is on this episode? Garrison's here?
Speaker 1: As I've already spoken into the microphone, you know who
Speaker 1: else has spoken into the microphone? Serene? Question work? Now
Speaker 1: you have Sophie, Sophie, ye, James? Oh? Miss any one left? Oh? No, Mia,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think I've actually spoken into this
Speaker 1: episode yet. So now I have. You've started the day? Didn't?
Speaker 1: So that's how you introduced a PODCT so incredibly awkward.
Speaker 1: It was perfect, magnificent, as if we had never done
Speaker 1: a podcast. But before we get to this, to some
Speaker 1: of the q days of what has happened today when
Speaker 1: we're recording it? Oh, well, today is the day? Is
Speaker 1: the one day anniversary of me showing Garrison the movie
Speaker 1: Strange Days, written by James Cameron um a New Year's classic.
Speaker 1: Such a good movie. Not seen it? Oh you gotta
Speaker 1: you gotta watch it? It is Robert got an alert
Speaker 1: on his phone that was just like Memories one year,
Speaker 1: a lot of one day, one day, a lot of
Speaker 1: violence against the l a p D in that film. Today,
Speaker 1: that's what's happened has happened? Yeah, definitely not a pro
Speaker 1: l a p D movie. Um. Also you you get
Speaker 1: to repeatedly see a couple of now prominent actors oh
Speaker 1: faces um, which is which is great in a slightly
Speaker 1: problematic context, deeply problematic context, but a good movie. What
Speaker 1: actors are in this movie? What's his? What's his? Ralph Find? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Ralph find is the main character, and he looks exactly
Speaker 1: like ten years ago Bradley Cooper. Bradley Cooper in this movie.
Speaker 1: So don't insult Ralph. Don't do that. They that's what
Speaker 1: I mean. Okay, well, that's cool. Um, he's great and
Speaker 1: Angela Bassett is fucking incredible in it. Queen. Yeah. Tom
Speaker 1: Sizemore is present in the movie. Alright, Well my favorite
Speaker 1: is Vincent din Afrio looks exactly like Tim Heidecker's character,
Speaker 1: and that I think you should leave sketch where they're
Speaker 1: at the UFO themed restaurant. It's it's uncanny, um that
Speaker 1: you're still doing. Uh. I think you should leave references
Speaker 1: in the Lord's I showed my family before before they
Speaker 1: left to go see other family for Christmas. I sat
Speaker 1: I sat my family down to watch the second half
Speaker 1: of season two and magnificent. Yeah, it's defined, and that
Speaker 1: that leads into my only prediction for the next year,
Speaker 1: which is this is, oh God, come on all right,
Speaker 1: who's what's the first question? Then? Well, want to know, um,
Speaker 1: in an alternate universe where it could happen here, has
Speaker 1: a corporate office, does the staff get a Robert Evans
Speaker 1: book for holiday presence or a gift card? And we
Speaker 1: can we can actually answer this because despite not having
Speaker 1: a corporate office, there's still there still was a holiday
Speaker 1: gift which I have not actually with mine yet, so
Speaker 1: I can't say what line is, but I know other
Speaker 1: people have received theirs. I don't know, Sophie, I ordered
Speaker 1: yours for well, well, Sophie, you know sometimes it would
Speaker 1: be like that tracking it's probably gonna be yes. So
Speaker 1: if you're about to ruin some ups drives day, But
Speaker 1: what did what did everyone else received for their Scarrison?
Speaker 1: Will be delivered PM today out for today? There there
Speaker 1: you go. It's okay, Garrison. I didn't get shipped either.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, did buy you something that hasn't come yet? Devastatingly,
Speaker 1: what did what did what did everyone else get for
Speaker 1: for their holiday gift? Was it a Robert Evans book? No,
Speaker 1: it wasn't God would be Oh my god, imagine you're
Speaker 1: that fucked up, that unchanged that you're like, you should
Speaker 1: do that ar gift. The second job I ever had,
Speaker 1: which was our third job, I guess, which was working
Speaker 1: for this accountant guy that's like like he was like right,
Speaker 1: he was a retirement like an advisor guy. He would
Speaker 1: help old people get their money in order to retire.
Speaker 1: It was mostly like helping him host events at like
Speaker 1: a Texas roadhouse where we would try to get old
Speaker 1: people to buy annuities. But um, so I worked for
Speaker 1: this guy. In the day I started the job, he
Speaker 1: gave me a copy of his self published novel Operation
Speaker 1: night Watch, which was about a group of Navy seals
Speaker 1: going rogue to stop drug dealers and is one of
Speaker 1: the worst things I've ever read. I mean I attempted
Speaker 1: to someone when I mentioned it once on the show.
Speaker 1: Somebody found and bought a copy and give that money
Speaker 1: to someone else. Oh, he can't be alive anymore. There's
Speaker 1: no way he said it was. It was probably all
Speaker 1: the eBay or something. Yeah, yeah, that that man has
Speaker 1: been dead for years. I'm sure we still we still
Speaker 1: have an we still have, we got time. He can's
Speaker 1: mace to to a little personal maces on the left
Speaker 1: hand one for your right hand. I really like it.
Speaker 1: It's very compact. New pepper spray has been on my
Speaker 1: tables for like months because mine was expired like a
Speaker 1: year ago. But I've never actually bought in one, and
Speaker 1: so it was perfect and I was just so tiny.
Speaker 1: I can put it in like my Fannie pack and
Speaker 1: just continue on my day. How do you know it
Speaker 1: won't work if it's expired. I just poked it up.
Speaker 1: I looked it up, and I was just like, I
Speaker 1: don't want to like, I don't know. I just it
Speaker 1: was on my tables. I obviously didn't buy it yet.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like you don't want to hurt somebody with
Speaker 1: expired pepper spray. It's a propellant that expires. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: kid itself gets like yourself. Yeah I got it. Yeah Yeah,
Speaker 1: well there you go, there you go. Um let's see,
Speaker 1: so we're going to be going through some of the
Speaker 1: questions that we got for the previous Sorry my cats
Speaker 1: are making Also. I do like that that, but that
Speaker 1: person really thought that Robert was that person that was like, hey,
Speaker 1: happy holidays, here's my book. I do get the royalties.
Speaker 1: You're welcome. We should, we should. We should use the
Speaker 1: corporate cards to buy more copies of my book. That's
Speaker 1: a good idea. So we can just ship them to
Speaker 1: the sea, though it doesn't matter where they go. For
Speaker 1: the next question, and we're using the questions from the previous,
Speaker 1: it could happen in your livestream for this, by the way,
Speaker 1: So if we didn't get to your question, we're getting
Speaker 1: to some more of them right now. Unless your questions sucked. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: very personal. Yes, that's that's that's what I meant by sucked. Um.
Speaker 1: So do you know of a way to get involved
Speaker 1: in mutual aid without using social media? I don't really
Speaker 1: use it for mental health reasons. Good decision there to
Speaker 1: not use social media. Continue using social media. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: A lot of mutual aid organizing or you know, like
Speaker 1: requests happen on social media. Um, but I mean there's
Speaker 1: I guess it depends on how you use social media.
Speaker 1: I suppose like it might be useful to have a
Speaker 1: friend that follows some of the some of the social
Speaker 1: media stuff in your local area, whether that be on
Speaker 1: Twitter or mastered on or Instagram. Um, and then can
Speaker 1: like relay relay to you if there's local events um,
Speaker 1: or you can just like section off like once a
Speaker 1: week you check on just a few of those things
Speaker 1: and then you then you delete the app from from
Speaker 1: your phone again. Um. Because once you are like plugged
Speaker 1: into a local community, then people can just like directly
Speaker 1: send you flyers and stuff. Um. But you have to
Speaker 1: have those connections there in the first place. And those
Speaker 1: connections are really best made by going to things on
Speaker 1: the ground, whether it be you know, a food not
Speaker 1: bombs type thing, whether it be you know, like a
Speaker 1: clothing swap. Um. Lots of local events do happen in
Speaker 1: in in people's cities, and once you actually go there
Speaker 1: in person, that's where real community actually gets built. So
Speaker 1: it's it's just it's just it's kind of just breaking
Speaker 1: the ice to actually get to act go to a
Speaker 1: few in person things and then and then people can
Speaker 1: send you, you know, direct fires and stuff. If you
Speaker 1: don't want to be doom scrolling well looking for things,
Speaker 1: you don't have to even have an account if you
Speaker 1: don't decide not to. You can like view profiles on
Speaker 1: Twitter and Instagram without an account that you can't like
Speaker 1: see the comments or whatever. But if you just want
Speaker 1: to see their profile every once in a while and
Speaker 1: check in on what they're doing. You can do that
Speaker 1: online with no account. Yeah, often as well, like and
Speaker 1: well we're doing mutual aid things here. It tends to
Speaker 1: focus on the border a lot or on house people,
Speaker 1: and like in both cases you can just show up
Speaker 1: and you'll meet someone who's helping in most instances, and
Speaker 1: then they can direct you and they can text you
Speaker 1: or signal you whatever. Like there were tons of people
Speaker 1: when the migrant caravan arrived who were much older and
Speaker 1: not on social media, often with church groups, and they
Speaker 1: didn't hugely like have UM I would say a lot
Speaker 1: of experience in that kind of area, but they deeply
Speaker 1: wanted to help and they showed up and people were like, hey,
Speaker 1: can you go to us, go and get base and
Speaker 1: they want to ga absolute and yeah, and we use
Speaker 1: what's happened? It was fine, and like check around. Another
Speaker 1: option to be obviously if if you if you have
Speaker 1: like like a radical meeting space in your city, you
Speaker 1: can check their um If you don't have those, you
Speaker 1: can even check see if there's any like radical coffee
Speaker 1: shops or cafes that maybe have like a bulletin board
Speaker 1: people will often put up flyers for stuff there. Um,
Speaker 1: just you really have to do start to start trying
Speaker 1: to be like plugged into your actual like I r
Speaker 1: L local community and that's generally how that goes. Um,
Speaker 1: you have to be more proactive than if you had
Speaker 1: social media is the main thing. You still have to
Speaker 1: show up either way, right, Like, Yeah, and do you
Speaker 1: know who else wants you to show up online? Evans?
Speaker 1: I don't these products and services that want you to.
Speaker 1: We're now exclusively only sponsored by Robert's books. Yes, and
Speaker 1: here's an excerpt. All right, and we're back speaking of
Speaker 1: the Internet. Robert or anyone I suppose, do you think
Speaker 1: there's a way to get back to fulfilling the promise
Speaker 1: of the early Internet? Uh? No, Um, I don't. I
Speaker 1: think the early Internet was a thing that happened that
Speaker 1: in part was the way that it was because our
Speaker 1: brains did not have any kind of tolerance or or
Speaker 1: or like we're not like prepared for it. Um, And
Speaker 1: it it kind of grew up as we became capable
Speaker 1: of like I don't know, like the the the Internet
Speaker 1: grew more social as we got used to it. And
Speaker 1: I don't think that can ever happen again, like those
Speaker 1: those weird little moments where I don't know ye that
Speaker 1: my answer is no, I don't think it will ever
Speaker 1: happen again, in the same way that like you're never
Speaker 1: going to get those weird little moments that you you had,
Speaker 1: like the birth of you know, the printing press or whatever.
Speaker 1: Like you know, it was a unique moment in history
Speaker 1: and it's never going to come again. Which doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that something else won't happen. Um, but the Internet is
Speaker 1: not Like the fact that we've all lived through the
Speaker 1: social media era means even once all these companies go bust,
Speaker 1: our brains have still been changed by them too much
Speaker 1: to ever go back to posting the way we once did. No,
Speaker 1: we're too far gone, I think. On a kind of
Speaker 1: similar note, in a few days, we have an episode
Speaker 1: from Andrew on digital commons and this that kind of
Speaker 1: involves around this same kind of question. So in a
Speaker 1: few days we'll have we'll have an episode kind of
Speaker 1: about this topic ran by Andrew. Um, but James, you
Speaker 1: had you had something, Yeah, Sometimes like obviously like the
Speaker 1: Internet is terrible in many ways, but like when we
Speaker 1: talk about like what happened in myanma that series of
Speaker 1: Robert and I did. Like that seems to me like
Speaker 1: it's delivering on some of the promises of the early Internet,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's mad that you know, a young person
Speaker 1: like who is facing a coup and wants democracy in
Speaker 1: this part of Asia can go online speak to some
Speaker 1: dude in these aren't real places, like people are spoken
Speaker 1: to about like some some guy in his garage in
Speaker 1: Ohio who's threely printing guns, and that person can help
Speaker 1: the other person on themselves and defend their right to
Speaker 1: choose who governs them or if they're governed at all,
Speaker 1: Like that is really fucking cool, and that doesn't happen
Speaker 1: without the Internet, and so yeah, there's also yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's not that there's not going to be good things
Speaker 1: done with the Internet, or that it can't be made better,
Speaker 1: but it's never going to be what it was because
Speaker 1: we simply know too much. Um, let's see what are
Speaker 1: some inspiring recent examples of cooperation increasing survival odds to
Speaker 1: know the type that thinks they just need AMMO to survive.
Speaker 1: Another good touchstone with for this would be the movie
Speaker 1: trimmers Um which which shows unfortunately actually he's survival player
Speaker 1: nobody lives with that community. Unfortunately, unfortunately, I think Rabbit
Speaker 1: actually is correct here. More broadly, this person is like
Speaker 1: and coned sleep paraphrasing Kurparkian, right, but like we have
Speaker 1: all just lived through a pandemic, and they are stilling
Speaker 1: through a pandemic. I guess which has changed the world
Speaker 1: killed hundreds of thousands, millions of people, and like, the
Speaker 1: reason a lot of people got through that, A lot
Speaker 1: of people who didn't weren't able to work or were
Speaker 1: immuno compromised. You can't go out as much is because
Speaker 1: other people helped them, Like no one shot COVID and
Speaker 1: no one fed themselves in the lockdown because they had
Speaker 1: tons of five or five six stocked away, like a
Speaker 1: ton of mutual aid happened. A lot of terrible ship
Speaker 1: happened as well, But that's a bigger example. I think, mm, yeah,
Speaker 1: what genres of music have each of you been listening
Speaker 1: to lately? M I'm a big classical head. I don't
Speaker 1: care if it's like I also listened to a lot
Speaker 1: of classical the best. When you're driving, everything becomes like
Speaker 1: cinematic and it's calming, and sometimes words distract me, so
Speaker 1: my go too is classical to what I would consider
Speaker 1: classical music, which is second and third wave SCAA basically
Speaker 1: the only classical music in my opinion. I listened to
Speaker 1: the Clash Suade and the manicx Ree Preacher is more
Speaker 1: or less exclusively. Yeah, they're the only bands that matter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think if it's not classical, I'm trying to like
Speaker 1: be I don't know, I'm like dancing around. So it's
Speaker 1: either like it's like two extremes for me, either classical
Speaker 1: and I'm like chill, going to sleep, or I'm getting
Speaker 1: ready and I want to feel something. M what if
Speaker 1: I man, I have the most absolutely dogship music, but
Speaker 1: the music that I listened to it, I think it's
Speaker 1: legitimately good. That's not like hower metal or like weird
Speaker 1: ship is I've I've been going back to like my
Speaker 1: Youth and my Youth is a combination of like surf rock.
Speaker 1: I was like, this is a safe space like what okay,
Speaker 1: like Pat Pat Benatar sort of like that that there's
Speaker 1: a sort of era of like I don't know what
Speaker 1: you call it, like lesbian glam rock. I don't know yourself.
Speaker 1: This is the safe space you keep saying that I
Speaker 1: don't think we ever agreed to this. I usually listened
Speaker 1: to a lot of music, well, writing and researching. I
Speaker 1: just finished up to two pretty big writing projects. I've
Speaker 1: been listening to a lot of music. Um, most of
Speaker 1: it's like ambient electronica. Uh, some classicals thrown in there
Speaker 1: if I need to get a little bit more like energy.
Speaker 1: But listening to some Trent Resiner kind of ambient stuff um,
Speaker 1: and like a lot of I also listened to a
Speaker 1: lot of remixes of the Mario Galaxy soundtrack. Okay, I
Speaker 1: like that. Wait, okay, okay, okay, all right, I need
Speaker 1: to I need I need to plug a truly awful song. No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: we got it. Okay, look Donkey Kong has to slam
Speaker 1: this way. It has to be this way, X space
Speaker 1: Jam x d k Rap. I need, I need to
Speaker 1: know that this exists, is there's there's it is incredible.
Speaker 1: It is another worldly experience. That's also a version of it.
Speaker 1: That's the k but also what do we mean angel? Okay,
Speaker 1: I think this said. Do you listen to Max Richter?
Speaker 1: I think he would like Max Richter. He's like he
Speaker 1: had a lot of soundtracks for shows. So stuff is
Speaker 1: kind of like melancholic and piano ee, but I think
Speaker 1: you might like it. I will look him up. Good name, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's spelled Richer. Yeah, okay, great. Yeah. You should also
Speaker 1: listen to the Mighty Mighty Boss Towns, who did a
Speaker 1: wonderful album. No No, don't don't speak out the album
Speaker 1: That George Floyd song is incredibly appropriate, deeply appropriate. Yet,
Speaker 1: speaking of listening to things, speaking speaking of things that
Speaker 1: are problems, what is what is the most troubling thing
Speaker 1: that isn't being reported on or isn't taken seriously by
Speaker 1: the wider public. The fact that none of you said
Speaker 1: you listened to any rap music or any type of
Speaker 1: music that wasn't just I thought Tupac was a give okay, okay,
Speaker 1: trachical questions I listened to. I listened to a little
Speaker 1: bit of Biggie every now and again, and I got
Speaker 1: my most deaf always loaded up, especially around the New Year.
Speaker 1: I love listening to Life and Marvelous Times, both sides
Speaker 1: as a hell of an album. I've always been more Biggie.
Speaker 1: There's a guy Code and Christian Parish takes a gun.
Speaker 1: He rapped by Superman. He's like from the coronation. I
Speaker 1: think his stuff is cool. The most troubling thing that
Speaker 1: isn't that isn't being reported on are taken seriously enough
Speaker 1: by the wide republic besides our musical tastes. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: going to be and always say like Atal East your
Speaker 1: news and Palestine and like air and balance reporting and
Speaker 1: even like Syria and uh Yemen and all of that stuff.
Speaker 1: I think none of that gets enough attention. Absolutely, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say, fucking scams um, Like just on a daily basis,
Speaker 1: I feel like my phone gets uh, six to eight
Speaker 1: scam calls scam calls at least, and like it's uh
Speaker 1: and someone making a note of this earlier because like
Speaker 1: a bunch of scam stories have been people have been
Speaker 1: sharing them this year. But like there's all sorts of
Speaker 1: fucked up things like if a relative gets arrested, as
Speaker 1: soon as the police post um the like the they're
Speaker 1: the fact that like like publicly posted they've been arrested,
Speaker 1: Like the family if they have numbers that scammers can find,
Speaker 1: will start getting auto dialed by like accounts claiming to
Speaker 1: be the police saying that like you need to put
Speaker 1: money in their account now where they're going into general population.
Speaker 1: And it's all these are all like low hanging fruit
Speaker 1: things like they're they're they're not they're targeting people who
Speaker 1: are not very savvy UM often people who have some
Speaker 1: sort of like mental disability. Right, So folks who are
Speaker 1: kind of living a marginal existence in a lot of
Speaker 1: ways as it is, UM and they are like it
Speaker 1: it's making it incredibly difficult for and and folks who
Speaker 1: have like are cognitively impaired for whatever reason, including the
Speaker 1: fact that they're they're elderly. There's just like this. It's
Speaker 1: never been like this before, the sheer density of scams
Speaker 1: that people have to wade through. And again, most of you,
Speaker 1: we've all kind of noticed it getting more common, but
Speaker 1: you may not have noticed how kind of brutal it's
Speaker 1: gotten because you're not the target demographic for this stuff, right.
Speaker 1: That's why they all have like filters in them to
Speaker 1: try and weed out the people who are savvy enough
Speaker 1: to know that they're being scammed. But it's there's a
Speaker 1: number of things. This is the result of decisions that
Speaker 1: the the FTC made um like like in order to
Speaker 1: like make it a lot easier for people to use
Speaker 1: ship like auto dialers and to carry out like phone
Speaker 1: based scams. But it's it's just been punted on by
Speaker 1: every presidential administration in our lifetime. Is the Internet has
Speaker 1: made it easier to automate this stuff, and the the
Speaker 1: explosion of machine learning tools that are widely available, these
Speaker 1: kind of AI s that people are joking about right now,
Speaker 1: like it's all going to create the capacity to more
Speaker 1: effectively automate scams. I had one that could have gotten
Speaker 1: me the other day where I got a call from
Speaker 1: my bank that was listed as from my bank is
Speaker 1: and like on it like it was my bank's phone number,
Speaker 1: like it was. It came up as them on the
Speaker 1: and they were like, hey, you know someone has there's
Speaker 1: some some charges. Can we run them by you? We
Speaker 1: want to make sure And they were like charge things
Speaker 1: I had not bought. They were like wire transfers and
Speaker 1: ship and they're like, oh, it looks like you know,
Speaker 1: somebody's gotten access to your account. And the call dropped
Speaker 1: before I could finish it, so I called them back,
Speaker 1: and when I called my bank back, they were like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was someone spoofing our number. They were trying to
Speaker 1: get personal information out of you. Um, this ship is
Speaker 1: so fucking endemic, and no one is doing a goddamn
Speaker 1: thing about it. There's like one anemic attempt in Congress
Speaker 1: to slightly address it, primarily through like education, but it
Speaker 1: is a massive problem. It's part of what's breaking society,
Speaker 1: the fact that like everyone is constantly flooded by this
Speaker 1: low level cloud of people trying to destroy their financial lives. Um,
Speaker 1: It's it's real bad. Do you know what else is
Speaker 1: trying to destroy your financial lives? Of the products and
Speaker 1: services that support this podcast, Garrison and Robert's books, and
Speaker 1: we are back for one final time for this episode.
Speaker 1: This is This is actually a question that I feel
Speaker 1: is pretty important that I wish people thought about a
Speaker 1: bit more, at least within like, you know, our our
Speaker 1: general sphere. Where do you draw the line between fascist
Speaker 1: politics and non fascist conservative politics. Well, at the moment
Speaker 1: in the United States, I don't think there's a line
Speaker 1: to be drawn, because the mainstream of the Republican Party
Speaker 1: completely thrown themselves in behind one of or both of
Speaker 1: two fascists. Um. In terms of like personally, I guess
Speaker 1: it depends on whether or not people support their being
Speaker 1: like things like penalties on on on it. Do people
Speaker 1: like does somebody's support banning books, to somebody's support arresting
Speaker 1: folks for expressing political opinions that differ from there's does
Speaker 1: somebody support, um, you know, expanding the penalties for petty
Speaker 1: crimes to include like violence, Like those are all things
Speaker 1: that can suggest that somebody is a fascist. But at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, anybody who supports the Republican
Speaker 1: Party right now is supporting a fascist movement. So I
Speaker 1: don't feel there's any sort of I don't draw a
Speaker 1: line in my head anymore, to be entirely honest, because
Speaker 1: they they alighted the line. I try to be very
Speaker 1: specific when I say fastist versus just like a regular conservative.
Speaker 1: In my reporting, like when we were inside Colorado, we
Speaker 1: talked to people who were Conservatives, who were who were
Speaker 1: against fascists and against local fascists in their community and
Speaker 1: actually doing things to help stop fascists from gaining power
Speaker 1: within their local community. UM. I think if you look
Speaker 1: at a lot of the rhetoric around queer people right now,
Speaker 1: whether it be like drag shows or trans people, that's
Speaker 1: a specific style of rhetoric that is like innately fascist. UM,
Speaker 1: like talking about like there was there was there was
Speaker 1: a tweet from um is his name, like lindsay James,
Speaker 1: what's that? What's what's that? Guy? Yeah, he put out
Speaker 1: he put out this little like meme being like, don't
Speaker 1: call them drag queens, call them um like like it
Speaker 1: was some some bullshit groomer thing, Like I forget the
Speaker 1: exact thing, but like that that specific style of rhetorical
Speaker 1: framing is is is like a pretext to ex termination
Speaker 1: and genocide, Like that is that is what that is
Speaker 1: what they're doing, and I think that is right now.
Speaker 1: Is what it crosses the line is when when they're
Speaker 1: creating these scapegoat groups that that are going to be
Speaker 1: targeted and posing these groups as like a threat to civilization. Um,
Speaker 1: that's where I kind of use that word like fascists
Speaker 1: like that that is generally in in my research where
Speaker 1: I start employing that versus you know, some random guy
Speaker 1: who I'm talking to who you know wants there to
Speaker 1: be lower taxes and less regulation. Because yeah, that that position,
Speaker 1: as we've seen now, can eventually lead to the type
Speaker 1: of fascist policies. But I think that there is when
Speaker 1: it comes to like people in your personal life, and
Speaker 1: when it comes to like regular people who are not politicians.
Speaker 1: I think having a little bit more discretion is useful
Speaker 1: because I think there's still a chance that some people
Speaker 1: who are currently conservative can not become fascist. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would agree. I think in the US context one sort
Speaker 1: of useful litmus test for people on the right. It's like,
Speaker 1: are the rules of the game more important than the
Speaker 1: outcome of the game. Like, so when you look at
Speaker 1: like the sort of fascism we saw around Donald Trump, right,
Speaker 1: like there was a point where the outcome of the game,
Speaker 1: the maintenance of power right became more important than the
Speaker 1: rules of the game. I like basic human rights, and
Speaker 1: I think that that's a useful definitely a useful sort
Speaker 1: of it's this person dangerous, it might like I like
Speaker 1: Paxton's definition of fascism. Generally it's not great, but it's
Speaker 1: which has elements useful. Yeah, it's useful. And I think
Speaker 1: your scapegoat group group one is really key when people
Speaker 1: a scapegrowing people and they don't really give a funk
Speaker 1: about how they eliminate those people stop quote unquote, right,
Speaker 1: when when people are seeking to use the machinery of
Speaker 1: state to eliminate people and ideas that they find uncomfortable
Speaker 1: by using the force of law against them, Um, they're fascists.
Speaker 1: And when people are supportive of ending democratic like ending
Speaker 1: the democratic transfer of power in order to support an
Speaker 1: individual that they think embodies their conception of like what
Speaker 1: their country is, those people are fascists. Um. And I
Speaker 1: think that it's one thing, And I don't think it's
Speaker 1: usually useful if you're having a conversation with an individual
Speaker 1: to call them a fascist, even if they're behaving in
Speaker 1: ways that are kind of fashy. If you think that
Speaker 1: a productive conversation can be had, Um, that might move
Speaker 1: them in one direction or the other. But at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, if somebody is supportive, for example,
Speaker 1: of a third term for Donald Trump, um, that person
Speaker 1: is supporting a fascist movement. And I don't think that
Speaker 1: there's a I don't think I don't think it matters that,
Speaker 1: like their individual reasons for doing it maybe less fascy
Speaker 1: than someone else's, Like, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: they are supporting that, and that's that's kind of what
Speaker 1: matters to me. I think. I think it's also worth
Speaker 1: taking a little bit of a look at what happened
Speaker 1: to your conservatism in order to sort of understand what's
Speaker 1: going on here, because I think there was an important
Speaker 1: sort of fracture a in terms of the fact that
Speaker 1: George Bush like basically orchestrated like yeah, like bait bait,
Speaker 1: Like he didn't technically at a coupe, but he like
Speaker 1: he he he rigged an elections such as to put
Speaker 1: it it's like, so as to put him in power, right,
Speaker 1: Like that's what the Brookes Brothers riot was. That's what
Speaker 1: that's that's sort of the process that gets us the
Speaker 1: Bush wouldn't shoot in two thousands and there you know
Speaker 1: that this is this is an interesting moment because if
Speaker 1: you look at what happens to conservatism over the sort
Speaker 1: of like the I don't know, the last twenty five
Speaker 1: years of the twentieth century, there's this interesting pivot where
Speaker 1: they they make where in order to you know, if
Speaker 1: you look at like what what is the conservative response
Speaker 1: to communism in nineteen like thirty nine, right, it's just
Speaker 1: like we're going to be fascists, right, It's like literally
Speaker 1: we are going to be the Nazis. But you know,
Speaker 1: by by by the time you get to like post
Speaker 1: world wortching, by time it gets really to like the
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties, they start realizing that like people don't
Speaker 1: generally like fascism that much, and so the form of
Speaker 1: anti communism that they take starts to be this sort
Speaker 1: of like rights based like weird support like like freedom
Speaker 1: and human rights and like free markets and democracy. And
Speaker 1: there there there's this point where that stuff meets with
Speaker 1: like another kind of fascist politics, which is sort of
Speaker 1: like the two one era of state of exception stuff
Speaker 1: that happened after nine where you know, like people are
Speaker 1: talking about the gloves coming off, and this is this
Speaker 1: is this is getting into your sort of like like
Speaker 1: looking at like multa Benjaminans like conceptution of what fascism
Speaker 1: is or am I blanking on the guy's name like
Speaker 1: Carl Schmidt's stuff right where it's like here was a
Speaker 1: part of the state that can just like destroy like
Speaker 1: they had to have sovereign power and can just sort
Speaker 1: of trample over the entire legal order in order to
Speaker 1: serfatuate it. Right, So this is like okay, suddenly after
Speaker 1: two thousand one, like after nine eleven, they were just
Speaker 1: like people disappearing into torture dungeons, right, and you get
Speaker 1: this moment where, on the one hand, yeah, like because
Speaker 1: George w. Bush is one of these people who's like
Speaker 1: the sort of like freedom democracy people, but then beneath
Speaker 1: him is you know, it collapses very quickly into this
Speaker 1: we are the torture dungeons stuff and this willingess literally
Speaker 1: to rig elections. And I think that's the sort of
Speaker 1: important because because like there are sort of normal conservatives
Speaker 1: right who still have that kind of like freedom and
Speaker 1: liberal democracy whatever thing, and they're not really that fascist
Speaker 1: kind of but in some sense it doesn't it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter that much institutionally because the part of the Republican
Speaker 1: Party that survived was a combination of the torture dungeon,
Speaker 1: which is like Gina Hospital like and then Trump, who
Speaker 1: is this the sort of emblem of this like like
Speaker 1: the sort of sort of like we're gonna we're gonna
Speaker 1: take the election, We're gonna take power. We're gonna use
Speaker 1: the power of the state to just like murder everyone
Speaker 1: we like. And I don't know, like I think, I
Speaker 1: I think like you can find individual people who are
Speaker 1: conservatives who I guess like art Nazis, but the the
Speaker 1: way that neo conservatives and fragmented and the way that
Speaker 1: that kind of state of exception politics and that politics
Speaker 1: have sort of just like mass torture, and then also
Speaker 1: the willingness to just steal elections like that. I don't
Speaker 1: know that stuff I think forms is this another sort
Speaker 1: of core fascism, that's they're alongside the sort of queer
Speaker 1: extermination of stuff And there I don't know, these things
Speaker 1: fused together in ways. And yeah, I've rambled for long enough.
Speaker 1: We're gonna do one more question. And I think we
Speaker 1: cover a lot of upsetting things on the show, some
Speaker 1: things that maybe are not you know, super fun to
Speaker 1: think about. Um, but we also cover some like hopeful
Speaker 1: stuff as well. But what's what's one thing that the
Speaker 1: crew who works in the show due to decompress and
Speaker 1: clear our minds after you know, wading through the trenches
Speaker 1: of the digital hellscape. Uh pass. I feel like we
Speaker 1: might have answered something similar to this on the line.
Speaker 1: I saw Robert playing cyberpunk last night, so I know
Speaker 1: there's at least at least one thing. It does allow
Speaker 1: me to pretend that Keanu Reeves is my friend, which
Speaker 1: is nice to meet him first. I like to go camping.
Speaker 1: I like to go outside like I like to swim
Speaker 1: in the ocean and raban bike and hiking, camping. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I second that I need to go outside and just
Speaker 1: even like a simple walk with trees and hiking. I
Speaker 1: think it really helps me just decompressed and be present again,
Speaker 1: hanging out with queer people's not and intentionally not talking
Speaker 1: about Twitter bullshit, just like going and do doing something,
Speaker 1: just like varying around in the grass, just like talking
Speaker 1: about gay ship. It rules. It's the self that heals
Speaker 1: the heart. Absolutely. Well, uh, thank thank you everybody. Me.
Speaker 1: Oh see, I was gonna try to just like nope,
Speaker 1: just just just like that, wrap up the episode in
Speaker 1: a nice little bow. Um. I don't know. I've I've
Speaker 1: been trying to get back into doing more kind of
Speaker 1: art stuff with my camera and whether that be photography
Speaker 1: or filmmaking, um in like short form stuff. Uh what
Speaker 1: else I've been doing Yeah, I don't know. Taking drugs. Sure,
Speaker 1: there it is. Shrooms are healing, shocking, shocking, incredible on
Speaker 1: the podcast. Now now you can wrap it up if
Speaker 1: you want to. Well, thank you everyone for listening to
Speaker 1: our episode. That's what I do to thank you. See,
Speaker 1: that's the thing to do. That's actually actually actually there's
Speaker 1: one person who has tried to skirt past this this question, Sophie. Yes, Sophie,
Speaker 1: what the hell she looks? What do you want, Sophie,
Speaker 1: You not only have to deal with, you know, all
Speaker 1: of the bed stuff that we talked about, but you
Speaker 1: also have to also have to deal with us. Um,
Speaker 1: So what what do you do to compress? And clear
Speaker 1: and clear clear, comprest Each and every one of you
Speaker 1: are the best. So let's let's start there. Uh. I
Speaker 1: really like uh making food for my friends, and uh
Speaker 1: like meeting a friend for coffee and just like walking
Speaker 1: outside or like finding like a little place that's like
Speaker 1: a local place and just when and when you go in,
Speaker 1: there's like barely anyone in there, but then you get
Speaker 1: to talk to the people that work there and then
Speaker 1: order a nice little dessert or something. It's that kind
Speaker 1: of thing that I'm like, I'm like, I have friends.
Speaker 1: That's literally what I read it. I said it and
Speaker 1: sounded horrible. Um. And then like as obviously like having
Speaker 1: pets and being around animals is really solid, but um,
Speaker 1: it's also just like having a healthy balance of you know,
Speaker 1: focusing on a lot of the negative stuff but really
Speaker 1: also putting your energy into a lot of the positive stories.
Speaker 1: I know that a lot of people feel like it
Speaker 1: could Happen Here is tends to lean towards the negative.
Speaker 1: But I really feel like we're a hopeful show, and
Speaker 1: I feel like as as a network cools, the media
Speaker 1: tries to to to lean lean towards the hope and find,
Speaker 1: you know, the good and the bad. And you know,
Speaker 1: that's what we have shows like cool People did Cool Stuff,
Speaker 1: which is with Margaret Killjoy that that really helps balance
Speaker 1: out a lot of the other things. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: think finding the good in the bad, uh, eating yummy
Speaker 1: food with your friends and petting all the you can.
Speaker 1: You know. I also think a huge thing for all
Speaker 1: of us is taking plenty of alpha brain supplement. Um,
Speaker 1: all right, thank you, thank you for listening to It
Speaker 1: could Happen Here. If you have have have a have
Speaker 1: a good year of discord. It could Happen Here is
Speaker 1: a production of cool Zone Media and more podcasts from
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. Visit our website cool zone media dot com,
Speaker 1: or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
Speaker 1: find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media dot com. Slash sources. Thanks for listening,