Speaker 1: Also media. What's confused my me because I just watched
Speaker 1: a video of the new Tesla event where they are
Speaker 1: releasing what appears to be an Art Deco brick that
Speaker 1: is designed as.
Speaker 2: An insult to Art Deco. It looks I would agree.
Speaker 1: It is an insult to art Deco, but nonetheless, that
Speaker 1: is what it looks like.
Speaker 2: No, it looks like a toaster. It does look like
Speaker 2: a rolling toaster.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's what I don't understand is how it's
Speaker 1: like there's no clearance on it, like zero, it's just
Speaker 1: flat to the ground. I guess there he's trying to
Speaker 1: replace city buses. But I feel like, yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: bus for rich people. It's a bus for rich people. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a bus that will exist in San Francisco and
Speaker 1: nowhere else.
Speaker 2: Maybe so then you don't have to ride with the poors,
Speaker 2: Like that's all.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think I'm guessing this is just something they're
Speaker 1: trying to get off the ground with their self driving shit.
Speaker 1: It is funny that they've gone from like everyone's Tesla
Speaker 1: will be able to work independently as a profit making
Speaker 1: cab when they're not driving it too. We have this
Speaker 1: brick that you can sit in with nineteen other people.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know why you want this
Speaker 1: as opposed to any other kind of bus. But they
Speaker 1: also had all of the Tesla robots out and he
Speaker 1: apparently these twenty thousand dollars robots that can hand you
Speaker 1: bags of goodies at a party are going to solve poverty.
Speaker 1: So I'm excited to see how that works out.
Speaker 2: Revolutionary.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the biggest, the biggest step forward for
Speaker 1: mankind since we invented I don't know, hitting kids. Garrison
Speaker 1: speaking of children.
Speaker 2: Speak of hitting kids.
Speaker 1: Actually, yeah, YouTube, I'm glad we're getting to that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, me too, me too.
Speaker 1: Also, this is behind the Bastards. You know that you
Speaker 1: listen to this show.
Speaker 2: This is part four. You're not jumping in on part four,
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, start back with part one if you haven't
Speaker 1: seen the other parts, or do a reverse listen. If
Speaker 1: you have come unstuck in time and can only process
Speaker 1: human lives going backwards to forwards like a Benjamin Button
Speaker 1: kind of deal, you know, then maybe it makes sense.
Speaker 2: So last episode, the people of Georgia rejected Eugene Talmage
Speaker 2: as the representative in the US Senate, but as World
Speaker 2: War Two loomed over the country, they welcomed him back
Speaker 2: to the governor's office, as Gene signified the comfort of
Speaker 2: the past. So we're now in the early nineteen forties
Speaker 2: and the first cracks in the Jim Crow South are
Speaker 2: starting to appear. Since Jane lost his battle against the
Speaker 2: New Deal, all that was left of the Old South
Speaker 2: for Gene to defend was its white supremacy. As Southerners
Speaker 2: grew to accept and enjoy new deoliberalism, the incongruity of
Speaker 2: the racial divisions began to manifest itself. And now, just
Speaker 2: like how the manufactured uproar over like a critical race
Speaker 2: theory a few years ago, kind of put racism back
Speaker 2: into our political conversation, the education system would be the
Speaker 2: target for Jean's new distinct focus on racism and white supremacy.
Speaker 2: Is because this is going to be one of these
Speaker 2: other like overlaps between what Gene pioneered and how this
Speaker 2: kind of carries over to like this modern like dictatorial
Speaker 2: conservative strategy. I'm going to quote from William Anderson, Jane's biographer, quote,
Speaker 2: Georgia remained a secreationist society in nineteen forty one, and
Speaker 2: Gene Talmadge remained its greatest advocate. Prior to nineteen forty one,
Speaker 2: he had not made racism a major part of his
Speaker 2: politics because he had no reason to. Practically every white
Speaker 2: Georgian was racist to some degree. Every candidate could be
Speaker 2: expected to treat the black of the same, which was poorly,
Speaker 2: and any issue of race had been previously overwritten by
Speaker 2: the New Deal or personality. Racism had been a part
Speaker 2: of his career, but it was far from crucial until
Speaker 2: the nineteen forties. So during this time, schools in Georgia
Speaker 2: were undergoing badly needed reforms, and the University of Georgia
Speaker 2: hired an admin named Walter D. Cocking to improve the
Speaker 2: College of Education. So there you go, Yes, get it
Speaker 2: out now, doctor Khaki. I'm going to say it a lot.
Speaker 2: To say it a lot, Walter, Doctor Walter d Kky,
Speaker 2: We're gonna say it a lot. You can get it
Speaker 2: out now, did he go?
Speaker 3: The D feels like you put that in there, gear.
Speaker 1: The d's in there. The D is in but you
Speaker 1: is always there. It's all about that D.
Speaker 3: To me, Well, that's.
Speaker 2: Audience. Can I what can I say? I don't know,
Speaker 2: I know, but I feel like you one could have
Speaker 2: omitted the D. The D.
Speaker 1: No, No, that would have I would have fired them
Speaker 1: on the spot. The D is in the historical record.
Speaker 1: I have the duty to include the D. Yeah, Sophie,
Speaker 1: this is this is journalistic ethics, one oh one. I
Speaker 1: always include the D.
Speaker 3: I guess the D.
Speaker 2: The D is in the D? Is it?
Speaker 1: I guess? Huh uh huh. That's why I'm coming out
Speaker 1: with a blockbuster piece of journalism in the next couple
Speaker 1: of weeks. That's just every photo I found of Hunter
Speaker 1: Biden's cock uh, no text at all, just many stitch
Speaker 1: pass over and over again. The New York Times is
Speaker 1: putting it up front.
Speaker 3: Paid very excited, Robert no Garrison, please.
Speaker 2: Please. The Georgia Boardive Regions commissioned multiple studies from doctor
Speaker 2: Cocking and his faculty on how to fix the education system,
Speaker 2: the results of which recommended more funding for black schools
Speaker 2: and partial integration of certain facilities. Graduate students were in
Speaker 2: forming Talmage that there were rumors of integration, and a
Speaker 2: disgruntled former high school teacher at a school ran by
Speaker 2: the university blamed doctor Cocking for her firing, so she
Speaker 2: sent Talmich reports on the black studies programs. A Talmwich
Speaker 2: supporter in Athens its pread of rumor about doctor Cocking
Speaker 2: having an affair with a black cook that grew to
Speaker 2: such prominence that the university president investigated and disproved the claim. Now,
Speaker 2: things all came to a head in a May nineteen
Speaker 2: forty two Board of Regents meeting where Talmadge singled out
Speaker 2: another progressive educator for removal the president of the Georgia
Speaker 2: Teachers College, doctor Marvin Pittman Gene accused him of being
Speaker 2: engaged in local partisan politics. Jane then attacked doctor Cocking,
Speaker 2: calling him to be fired as dean, saying that doctor
Speaker 2: Cocking quote made a statement that he wanted to see
Speaker 2: the time when a school for negroes would be established
Speaker 2: at Athens so that negroes and white boys could associate
Speaker 2: together unquote okay. Jane then promised to remove any person
Speaker 2: in the university system advocating communism or racial equality. Oh,
Speaker 2: this motion passed, so that we see very classic tactics here.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That is. That is an important thing to understand
Speaker 1: American politics is that up to the present day, racial
Speaker 1: equality and communism are synonyms for about a third of
Speaker 1: the country.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean we even we even see this with
Speaker 2: like the whole critical race theory thing. Yeah, they're trying
Speaker 2: to what I'm saying, yeah, yeah, like they're trying to
Speaker 2: inject cultural Marxism and they're like blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: All this that we talked about for years.
Speaker 1: It's been going on for longer than either of us
Speaker 1: has been alive. But yeah, that's that's important to know now.
Speaker 2: The president of the University of Georgia, Hermann Caldwell, was
Speaker 2: furious about his staff being fired and submitted his own
Speaker 2: resignation in protest of Cocking's termination. In response, on June sixteenth,
Speaker 2: the board held a hearing in Jean's office reassessing the
Speaker 2: firing of doctor Cocking. The office was packed with faculty
Speaker 2: in support of Cocking. The only ones there against him
Speaker 2: were Talmadge and this former high school teacher that Jane
Speaker 2: brought to complain that doctor Cocking was trying to integrate Georgia.
Speaker 2: Cocking was reinstated in a seven to eight vote. Jeene
Speaker 2: whined about this affair in The Statesman, writing quote, I'm
Speaker 2: not going to put up with social equality. We don't
Speaker 2: need no n words and white people taught together unquote.
Speaker 2: A hearing for doctor Pittman was scheduled for July fourteenth,
Speaker 2: but this time in public at the General Assembly instead
Speaker 2: of the privacy of the Governor's office. Talmadge instructed doctor
Speaker 2: Cocking to attend this hearing as well, promising to present
Speaker 2: new evidence. This evidence focused on the Rosenwald Fund, which
Speaker 2: financed one of Cocking's studies. Yeah, you can see where
Speaker 2: this is not right.
Speaker 1: I think I know where we're headed here. The word
Speaker 1: Rosenwald is really all the all the id.
Speaker 2: So this was a philag the prefoundation from the north
Speaker 2: that sought to improve the conditions of southern schools. Gene
Speaker 2: referred to this fund as quote jew money for n words.
Speaker 1: Hey, you know what, at least he picked the J
Speaker 1: word and not the K word, right, he could have
Speaker 1: doubled down on the slurs and he is, Yeah, but
Speaker 1: two of that it makes him, that makes him woke
Speaker 1: by these that decade's standards.
Speaker 2: Who woke? Talmach No, I mean you can see Gene's
Speaker 2: kind of previous, like decades decades long attacks on like
Speaker 2: bankers is kind of as is coded in anti Semitism, certainly,
Speaker 2: and like his main political inspiration, Tom Watson was rapidly
Speaker 2: anti Semitic, and we're we start to see more of
Speaker 2: that anti semitism come out during Gene's kind of last
Speaker 2: brush with politics, because Gene just got increased increasingly like
Speaker 2: openly racist, because he had like nothing else to like
Speaker 2: base his politics on as liberalism progressed in this South.
Speaker 2: So Talmadge also ordered the Statesboro College Library to search
Speaker 2: for books containing quote communism or anything except Americanism unquote
Speaker 2: to use as evidence against the men in the hearings.
Speaker 2: Again very similar to all of the attacks on school
Speaker 2: and education that we've seen the past few years here
Speaker 2: in the United States. Before the hearing, Gene pressured two
Speaker 2: oppositional members of the Board of Regents to resign. One
Speaker 2: was a lifelong friend and classmate, the other was an
Speaker 2: editor at the Constitution, the newspaper now. Friends and political
Speaker 2: advisors to Jene strongly discouraged him from doing this, as
Speaker 2: he didn't need to make more enemies at the Constitution.
Speaker 2: But more importantly, this whole affair, in Gene's increased meddling
Speaker 2: in Georgie's education system was actually going to threaten the
Speaker 2: accreditation of George's universities. Now I'm going to quote from
Speaker 2: William Anderson as he discusses the hearing. Quote. Prior to
Speaker 2: the hearing, Gene began mounting a public campaign that painted
Speaker 2: the two men as communists, financed by Jews and bent
Speaker 2: on destroying George's culture. The public hearing was a public spectacle.
Speaker 2: The hall was packed mostly with Tallemich people, and down
Speaker 2: front center stage, white suited, smoking a huge cigar and
Speaker 2: wearing a ten gallon hat, sat Jean. It was all show.
Speaker 2: Flash bulbs sparked the air, people cheered, police swarmed, and
Speaker 2: the show opened by reading excerpts from Brown America, The
Speaker 2: book written by Rosenwald chief Edwin Embry, had been found
Speaker 2: in the Statesboro College Library. Board regent member James S.
Speaker 2: Peters said, throughout this book, the thought runs erase the
Speaker 2: feeling of superiority of the white man. They want them,
Speaker 2: they want them to put the white men down and
Speaker 2: draw the races together. They want them to use the
Speaker 2: same schools, right, the same trains. It means they want intermarriage.
Speaker 1: That's what it means. Yeah, there we go, there we go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so some good old fing. I mean this does show
Speaker 1: you slightly where some of the progress has been because
Speaker 1: you're still angry about the same things today, but you
Speaker 1: can't say that your issue is intermarriage. We're still it's
Speaker 1: still bad to complain about race mixing, although they're working
Speaker 1: on that one.
Speaker 2: So they sure are working to bring that back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll see if we'll see how far they get.
Speaker 2: The fact that like this like great replacement stuff was
Speaker 2: like a cringe Lauren Southern posting in twenty seventeen yea,
Speaker 2: and is now like a mainstream Republican talking point.
Speaker 1: By not optimistic. Yeah, very worrying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So as as h as James Peters talked about
Speaker 2: how they want intermarriage, Jean shouted in response, they won't
Speaker 2: do it, and the galley and the galley's rocked with
Speaker 2: laughter and applause. Now you can you can see these
Speaker 2: tactics are the exact same that people are using now,
Speaker 2: like reading books found in school libraries to like paint
Speaker 2: the to paint these people as like radical and like
Speaker 2: trying to destroy America or trying to destroy Georgia. This
Speaker 2: is the same stuff that's happening now. To continue from
Speaker 2: Anderson quote, the purpose of reading the book was to
Speaker 2: find doctor Cocking and Pittman guilty by association with the
Speaker 2: Rosenwald Fund. Shocking A. Rose gave a brief denial of
Speaker 2: the charges and noted his shock at this circus hearing,
Speaker 2: saying that such tactics should be employed in any count
Speaker 2: draw on Earth is hard to believe that they are
Speaker 2: employed in Georgia. Has all the earmarks of a terrific nightmare.
Speaker 2: The galley shouted Yankee teacher quote.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's I mean, that's what I would shouted any
Speaker 1: of my teachers who were born north of the Mason Dixon,
Speaker 1: So I get it.
Speaker 2: The new Talmaged approved Board of Regents voted ten to
Speaker 2: five to fire doctor Cocking once again. President Pittman was
Speaker 2: next on the chopping block. They read from another book
Speaker 2: on race titled Calling America, and a disgruntled professor testified
Speaker 2: that five black men from the Tuskegee Institute toured Statesboro
Speaker 2: College and eight in the cafeteria while no white people
Speaker 2: were on campus. This was Jane's single witness against the educator. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: Pittman had thirty six witnesses, but the board voted once
Speaker 2: again ten to five to terminate doctor Pittman. This whole
Speaker 2: incident caused a degree of uproar, and Gene responded by writing, quote,
Speaker 2: doctor Cocking favored the teaching of white and Negro children
Speaker 2: in the same classrooms. My god, I am opposed to
Speaker 2: social equality, and as long as I am the governor
Speaker 2: of Georgia, no such teaching will be permitted in our
Speaker 2: school system. Doctor Cocking, as you know, was reared into Iowa,
Speaker 2: where white and colored are taught in this same classroom.
Speaker 2: His conducts, his conduct since being in Georgia is proof
Speaker 2: of the fact that he retains the views and ideas
Speaker 2: gained to him in the state of Iowa. I am
Speaker 2: not in favor of such foreign ideas being taught in
Speaker 2: our university system. Unquote.
Speaker 1: You know, there's no nice way to say this, so
Speaker 1: I'm just going to say it straight out, because I
Speaker 1: just read an article this morning about like all the
Speaker 1: death threats meteorologists to getting because Republicans have decided that,
Speaker 1: like you need just threaten to kill people if they
Speaker 1: say that there's going to be a hurricane. That's you know,
Speaker 1: and that's inconvenient to your belief system because hurricanes are
Speaker 1: clearly getting worse, and you've denied climate change for years,
Speaker 1: Like all of this shit you know, the current push
Speaker 1: against any kind of like integration, all of the fucking
Speaker 1: white genocide panics. Like back in the day, in Talmadge's day,
Speaker 1: when you had all of these fucking freaks complaining about
Speaker 1: the idea of black and white kids going to school together.
Speaker 1: The only thing that overcame their disinformation and paranoia and
Speaker 1: bigotry was sending men with machine guns in and saying,
Speaker 1: we will fucking kill you if you don't integrate these schools.
Speaker 1: That's what the government had to do. Anyway, food for thought.
Speaker 2: So after this second hearing, the Southern Accrediting Commission on
Speaker 2: Institutions of Higher Education announced that it was investigating the
Speaker 2: governor's interference in the state's education system. Gene responded to
Speaker 2: panicked parents concerned that the universities might lose their accreditation
Speaker 2: by saying, we credit our own schools down here, which
Speaker 2: is also similar to some of Trump's Agenda forty seven
Speaker 2: plans to improve the university system.
Speaker 1: He's just offering them what they've wanted forever. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, this apparently didn't help calm things down as was,
Speaker 2: as Gene was forced to give a radio address defending
Speaker 2: his racist actions, which he signed off by saying the
Speaker 2: good Negroes don't want any co mixing of the races.
Speaker 2: Not great again. Like when Eugene Talmadge is forced to
Speaker 2: defend his own racism on radio in nineteen forty two,
Speaker 2: Sure that shows how bad he is, because at this
Speaker 2: point everyone is racist, Like people in the university in
Speaker 2: the university system aren't actually calling for like mass integration
Speaker 2: like that, that's not what they're doing. Gene is just
Speaker 2: so like fucked up on racist that he thinks any
Speaker 2: any small step that might eventually lead to lead to
Speaker 2: that outcome has to be like fundamentally opposed. But like
Speaker 2: doctor Cocking isn't actually calling for all the schools to
Speaker 2: be integrated, like that's like he's like, that's that's simply
Speaker 2: not what's happening right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, the Attorney General, a guy named Ellis Arnold, who
Speaker 2: was previously like a longtime Chalage supporter, that he was
Speaker 2: worried that Jane's forced resignation of the Board of Regents
Speaker 2: was actually just illegal. Gina knew that the AG was concerned,
Speaker 2: so when Arnold was out of town for a few days,
Speaker 2: Gene instructed the AGI's office to write an opinion affirming
Speaker 2: the governor's actions, and then when the AGI returned, he
Speaker 2: had to countermand this opinion and announced that he would
Speaker 2: be running for governor against Gene to secure academic freedom.
Speaker 2: Henry Sperlin, one of Jean's longest friends, did claim that
Speaker 2: Gene actually tried to have the ag arrested while he
Speaker 2: was vacationing in Florida, just to bring him back to
Speaker 2: Atlanta during the legislative session to affirm his actions. Although
Speaker 2: I think I think Arnold denies this. There's there's some
Speaker 2: some conflicting reports over whether Gene tried to have the
Speaker 2: h arrested.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Great now.
Speaker 2: In September, the Southern Accrediting Commission suspended ten of Georgia's
Speaker 2: white schools for quote unprecedented and unjustifiable political interference quote.
Speaker 2: The next month, the Southern University Conference dropped the University
Speaker 2: of Georgia from its membership. Jane told the Board of
Speaker 2: Regents that they could undo some of his meddling to
Speaker 2: protect the system. However, he was canceling meetings to ratify
Speaker 2: an agreement between the regions and the accreditation Committee. Jane
Speaker 2: also refused to sign a letter stating that he did
Speaker 2: not have complete control over the entire university system, saying quote,
Speaker 2: I think it's a mistake for the governor to write
Speaker 2: any letter which might limit his authority as the governor. Quote.
Speaker 2: One of Jean's allies on the board begged him to reconsider,
Speaker 2: warning that if the accreditation issue did not get resolved soon,
Speaker 2: it could turn thousands of families and students against Jane.
Speaker 2: His wife and his advisors also wanted him to back down,
Speaker 2: but fan mail from racist to support told him otherwise.
Speaker 2: Not fan mail. Gene received so much fan mail from
Speaker 2: like racist like I've sure rule supporters, and he listened
Speaker 2: to that way more than he listened to any of
Speaker 2: his like actual political advisors, because like this was this
Speaker 2: is this is what, this is what the people were
Speaker 2: actually wanting. He really, he really enjoyed reading through his
Speaker 2: fan mail. This is like a really this was really
Speaker 2: important to the way Gene operated as.
Speaker 1: An em that's an a's evidence that you're unhinged because
Speaker 1: as someone who gets a lot of fan mail, I
Speaker 1: appreciate all of the fans, but reading through fan mail
Speaker 1: is at best a mixed experience, right, because for every
Speaker 1: person who is like really nice and giving you like
Speaker 1: honest you know, it's like, oh, this is great, I'm
Speaker 1: glad I've had a positive impact on this person. There's
Speaker 1: someone who will like message you with something that is
Speaker 1: so that is evidence that like that they're they're having
Speaker 1: a problem, right, Like that happens a lot when you're
Speaker 1: a contactable person with any level of fame, and it's
Speaker 1: deeply upsetting. It's it's not I'm not complaining, it's just like, oh,
Speaker 1: you are messaging me because you think that I have
Speaker 1: some sort of special inform like knowledge that can help
Speaker 1: you when you're like very serious problem. And that is
Speaker 1: like every fifth letter you get you when you're famous,
Speaker 1: and it's it's not fun.
Speaker 2: It doesn't. I mean, I don't think that matters to Gene,
Speaker 2: because gen doesn't actually care about helping people.
Speaker 1: When he just likes that they're reaching out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, ways to maximize his racism. That's that's his primary motivation. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and a lot of this fan mail affirms his racism,
Speaker 2: so he greatly enjoys it. To quote Anderson quote, he
Speaker 2: did not believe that the voters wanted integration. He did
Speaker 2: not believe that they gave a damn about the accreditation association.
Speaker 2: He believed that their opposition to racial equality was so
Speaker 2: strong that they would risk almost to any loss. Jeane
Speaker 2: felt the implications and the threat were of a far
Speaker 2: greater magnitude than even the New Deal, though he saw
Speaker 2: them both as a common conspiracy by outside to take
Speaker 2: over the lives of Georgians unquote. So, after attempts at
Speaker 2: an agreement between the regions and the Accreditlation Committee failed,
Speaker 2: finally in December, they've they voted to end the accreditation
Speaker 2: of all of Georgie's state schools. The Saint Louis Dispatch wrote, quote,
Speaker 2: here in the heart of Dixie has developed a prize
Speaker 2: of specimen of full blown American fascism. The dictatorship is
Speaker 2: just as effective and just as vicious as the Huey
Speaker 2: Long dictatorship. Unquote.
Speaker 1: Okay, very very brave.
Speaker 2: You don't have the New York Times saying saying such
Speaker 2: stuff now, full full blown American fascism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, what other kind of American fashions being going
Speaker 1: to have? Garrison? You don't, you know, you don't want
Speaker 1: half blown American fascism.
Speaker 2: So this, this whole instant is called the Cocking Affair.
Speaker 2: I just think that's a really good name. Wow, you
Speaker 2: just you just said half blown and that reminded me, anyway,
Speaker 2: we should take it break, Yeah, speaking should Yeah.
Speaker 1: Anyway, here you go, awful, Ah, we're back. Ah, good stuff.
Speaker 2: And what a cocking affair it was.
Speaker 1: What a cocking affair it was.
Speaker 2: So the next election would be framed as choosing education
Speaker 2: or racism, though this wasn't like really truly the case
Speaker 2: because again both candidates Talmadge and Arnell were were segregationists.
Speaker 2: One just preferred to not shut down the entire school
Speaker 2: system to exert personal power over two academics whom he
Speaker 2: personally disliked. Right like that That is the main difference
Speaker 2: between between Talmadge's racism and Arnold's racism. Sure Anderson notes Arnell,
Speaker 2: emerging as Jen's only opponent, said that the issue was
Speaker 2: not the black man, not the mixing of races, but
Speaker 2: whether George's children would be denied quality education unquote. Now
Speaker 2: to Arnold's success was that this election only be a
Speaker 2: two man race, and he successfully convinced others not to
Speaker 2: run as it would split the county and vote, giving
Speaker 2: Gene an almost automatic victory. Arnell knew that a large
Speaker 2: number of people would vote for racism and that he
Speaker 2: was not equipped to beat Gene in a quote unquote
Speaker 2: n word hating contest. Education remained the only remaining vector
Speaker 2: of attack against Gene. Now, on top of fixing the
Speaker 2: school crisis, Arnell also called to put more limits on
Speaker 2: the governor's individual power. In campaign speeches, Arnell called Talmadge
Speaker 2: George's own version of Hitler, and he called for Georgians
Speaker 2: to quote awaken to the dangerous trend in our state government.
Speaker 2: Unquote Yeah, that would be nice, That would be nice
Speaker 2: if people, Oh.
Speaker 1: I think George is going to turn it around. Now.
Speaker 1: I don't know where this story ends, Garrison, but I
Speaker 1: got a good feeling.
Speaker 2: This story has a mixed ed dig but yeah, yeah, Now.
Speaker 2: Jeane's nineteen forty two reelection campaign was riddled with unforced
Speaker 2: errors and self sabotaging betrayals. He turned his old friend
Speaker 2: and political ally Tom Linder against him by refusing to
Speaker 2: return a political favors once again. This is a continued
Speaker 2: trend that throughout his career, and he even sabotaged Linder's
Speaker 2: post as Agricultural Commissioner, which pissed off Linder so much
Speaker 2: that he began campaigning against Gene to quote Anderson quote.
Speaker 2: The Atlanta Journal noted that Jeane's candidacy had soured because
Speaker 2: of too much racism. Old friends seemed to be leaving
Speaker 2: him in droves, and it became a part of every
Speaker 2: Arnol speech to have ex Talmach people turn in their
Speaker 2: red suspenders. Students protested, rallies chanting to hell with Talmage. Unquote,
Speaker 2: Dick Chady has come out against Eugene Talmage. All of
Speaker 2: Talmadge's former cabinet has come out against Euchene Talmage. Great,
Speaker 2: all these guys had also sucker, Like, yeah, Gen sucks
Speaker 2: a little.
Speaker 1: It's not entirely and pot like inconceivable that Dick Cheney
Speaker 1: would have been around, and that's true. Needing to give
Speaker 1: a comment back then.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a little like five year old Dick Cheney.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, a little five year old Dick Cheney shooting
Speaker 1: a man in the face and then gives a quote
Speaker 1: on Eugene Talmadge.
Speaker 2: Scary, scary thought.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah he was. He was a hard drinker at
Speaker 1: five too, So yeah, I believe that.
Speaker 2: That is different, dis unbelievable. So was Talmadge. Uh, Talmadge
Speaker 2: was drinking a lot later in his life and throw
Speaker 2: this whole race. His health was his health was plummeting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's probably for the best.
Speaker 2: No. University of Georgia students were putting on anti Talmadge
Speaker 2: skits at football games and canvassed for the Arnold campaign
Speaker 2: in large numbers, because like, this guy had just taken
Speaker 2: away their education and at this point in like Georgia history,
Speaker 2: this kind of marked the turn point where education wasn't
Speaker 2: just like a luxury for the super rich, it was
Speaker 2: finally becoming like something that regular people could afford to enjoy,
Speaker 2: and like specifically, it marked a path to escape from
Speaker 2: this like endless cycle of like crop farming that your
Speaker 2: family and your parents, your grandparents, their grandparents had all
Speaker 2: been doing for their entire lives. Like education was their
Speaker 2: way out, was their way out of this system, and
Speaker 2: Gene was stealing it from them. So massive, massive student
Speaker 2: organizing happened against Gene Talmadge during during this race, so
Speaker 2: much so that Talmage supporters in Athens, where the University
Speaker 2: of Georgia is thought it would be too dangerous for
Speaker 2: a Gene to speak in town while school was still
Speaker 2: in session, and instead he was advised to hold rallies
Speaker 2: in surrounding towns, and at Statesboro College, Gene's driver and
Speaker 2: sometimes bodyguard teargast a group of student protesters while Gens
Speaker 2: spoke instance like this bolstered arnold'sttacks on Gene as a
Speaker 2: dictatorial strong man, saying that Governor Talmadge was quote carrying
Speaker 2: a bunch of strong arm runts and and plug ugly
Speaker 2: is ready to use a mustard gas on children.
Speaker 1: Plug, well, we all do like mustard gasing children.
Speaker 2: I am glad. I do not associate with machine gun operators.
Speaker 2: I am glad. I do not live in fear of friends.
Speaker 2: I have double crossed unquote again, I think there actually
Speaker 2: is a way for Arnel to solve some of these
Speaker 2: problems by getting a little friendly with some machine gun operators.
Speaker 1: Hey it historically, it's the only thing that works.
Speaker 2: So violence continued at Talmage rallies. He's now tear gassing students.
Speaker 2: The Atlantic Journal commented on why violence seems to often
Speaker 2: accompany Jean's campaign, quoting quoting from the Atlantic Journal, quote Talmagism,
Speaker 2: by its very nature, tends to produce this sort of thing.
Speaker 2: It means bullying, browbeating, dictatorship. Its resilience is not on reason,
Speaker 2: but on arbitrary force. Its appropriate emblems are a gas
Speaker 2: attack and a blackjack unquote. Now, this was either slang
Speaker 2: meaning a police baton or like coercion via threats.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: On his way to his traditional Fourth of July speech,
Speaker 2: Jean had his driver stop at a farm just outside
Speaker 2: of town to use the outhouse. This was an old
Speaker 2: Gene tactic, just to win another rule voter. Now, this
Speaker 2: was a rainy and overcast day, a first in his
Speaker 2: series of Fourth of July speeches. Jane returned from the
Speaker 2: outhouse in pain, rubbing his butt and exclaimed, the driver
Speaker 2: a goddamn black widow spider bit me on the ass.
Speaker 2: Oh no, they found a doctor in town. Gene was
Speaker 2: given medication and told to cancel the speech, which, of course,
Speaker 2: he refused to do so. He began his our long
Speaker 2: speech suffering from great pain and not in and not
Speaker 2: long into the speech, torrential downpour caused most of the
Speaker 2: audience to abandon Jane, leaving only a handful of attendees
Speaker 2: in the rain and a few others listening from their cars.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna read from Anderson quote. The rain pelted Jean's
Speaker 2: lonely figure slightly bent with pain, but he kept talking
Speaker 2: hard and loud, so that those in their cars could hear.
Speaker 2: The water pounded in the paper bunting, washing its fragile red,
Speaker 2: white and blues all over the pine planking in gashes
Speaker 2: of color. It drenched Jean's suit and plastered his hair
Speaker 2: against his head, but he still went on, wet to
Speaker 2: the bone, alone and herding badly from the bite. After
Speaker 2: twenty five minutes he could give no more. He hobbled
Speaker 2: dejectedly from the platform to the applause of honking car horns.
Speaker 2: Only one prompter had remained with them, and when he asked,
Speaker 2: what about the Negroes going to our schools? Jean Talma responded,
Speaker 2: Before godfriend, the n words will never go to a
Speaker 2: school which is white. While I am governor, he blamed
Speaker 2: the whole mess on carpetbaggers, communists, and the newspapers.
Speaker 1: That's that's the one similarity is that I also do
Speaker 1: blame all of my problems on carpetbaggers.
Speaker 2: You live in Oregon, what do you do?
Speaker 1: I know they're all carpet baggers here, Garrison. That's why
Speaker 1: you got to really watch out.
Speaker 2: You're the carpet bagger.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, No, I'm through a cat. I'm pulling
Speaker 1: up carpets and throwing them in the trash. Baby, I
Speaker 1: got a wood floor. Uh huh, Sophy, I called you
Speaker 1: a carpetbagger the other day because I had to wake
Speaker 1: up at eleven thirty.
Speaker 2: I'm okay with that.
Speaker 1: Imm hmm, Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2: Jean was right in the way that, like the extremely
Speaker 2: isolated rule Georgians didn't much care for the educational issue,
Speaker 2: as like it hardly affected them, and instead they saw
Speaker 2: the vague spe of racial integration as a much more
Speaker 2: frightening threat, and to his credit, William Anderson does discuss
Speaker 2: like the hypocritical nature of this election, how Talmadge was
Speaker 2: widely framed as the racist candidate while his pro education
Speaker 2: liberal opponents could could get away with making very similar statements.
Speaker 2: For example, at one of his rallies, Elis Arnold stated quote,
Speaker 2: why if a negro ever tried to get into a
Speaker 2: white school in the section where I live, the sun
Speaker 2: would not set on his head? Unquote good Lord Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: So yeah, like everyone's bad. During a radio appearance, while
Speaker 2: Arnell thought he was off mike, he was accidentally broadcast
Speaker 2: saying quote any n word who tried to enter the
Speaker 2: university would not be in existence the next day.
Speaker 1: Jesus.
Speaker 2: We don't need a governor or a sheriff to take
Speaker 2: care of that situation, unquote. And like that's the difference, right,
Speaker 2: is that like Talmadge wants this to be like like
Speaker 2: a part of like state law. He wants this to
Speaker 2: be like he wants to be like pre eminently making
Speaker 2: sure this this, this, this never happens, while Arnell is
Speaker 2: just comfortable and like the racism of his general constituency
Speaker 2: will be like no, like we don't need the government
Speaker 2: to do that. We'll have like regular white people kill
Speaker 2: the like it's we'll just have the regular white people
Speaker 2: like kill black people if they try to get into
Speaker 2: the schools like that. Like that that that's that's where
Speaker 2: what's That's where the line comes down. It's like it's
Speaker 2: the it's the specific it's the specific focus that the
Speaker 2: racial issue is framed in their politics. That shows like
Speaker 2: the difference between the two candidates, even though both are
Speaker 2: like kind of raging, murderous racist Georgians in the nineteen.
Speaker 1: That's just who's that. Yeah, I mean that's always going
Speaker 1: to be the case.
Speaker 2: Now like everyone rallying against Jean were we're very racist
Speaker 2: and pro segregation. They just didn't want to sacrifice privileges
Speaker 2: enjoyed by white Georgians for Jane's quest for personal power
Speaker 2: and his idealistic commitment toward its supremacy, even when it
Speaker 2: was politically inconvenient. Ultimately, Arnell beat Jane by fifty thousand
Speaker 2: in the popular vote and by over one hundred points
Speaker 2: in the county unit vote. This year there was low
Speaker 2: voter turnout, with over one hundred thousand less votes than
Speaker 2: just a few years ago. The New Deal elections just
Speaker 2: drew out much more enthusiasm and a greater number of votes,
Speaker 2: and World War II was certainly a contributing factor to
Speaker 2: there being less votes this year. Now. Unlike his last defeat,
Speaker 2: this time there was no stop this Deal, and Gene
Speaker 2: admitted that the university accreditation issue lost him the election. Still,
Speaker 2: the vast, vast majority of Georgians were still incredibly racist,
Speaker 2: Elis Rnel among them, but all he had to do
Speaker 2: was present his prejudice in a more responsible way. I'm
Speaker 2: going to quote from Anderson quote. Gene's defeat did not
Speaker 2: mean that Georgians were ready to embrace black people or
Speaker 2: allow integrated schools. But the vote was a significant statement
Speaker 2: which testified to the profound changes that had occurred in
Speaker 2: the white Georgian's mind. They had faced the racial issue,
Speaker 2: and for the first time in history, they had blinked
Speaker 2: thereby showing a flexibility. Not much, but some the voters
Speaker 2: did show that they valued something more than white supremacy.
Speaker 2: Probably few other issues would have caused such a vote,
Speaker 2: but the fact that one issue did cause the white
Speaker 2: reaction was historically significant. Jean had misread Georgian's willingness to
Speaker 2: reject the old way for a second time. He had
Speaker 2: shown again how his personality politics could not withstand a
Speaker 2: confrontation with great issues. Reality had again defeated idealism. So
Speaker 2: that's the situation in nineteen forty two. Now after the election,
Speaker 2: Jean's race controversies continued. In the last month of office,
Speaker 2: it was learned that for two years Jeane had been
Speaker 2: receiving monthly food deliveries of vegetables and meat grown and
Speaker 2: processed by inmates at the state prison farm. The slave
Speaker 2: labor deliveries were sent both to his house in Atlanta
Speaker 2: and his farm in MCA. When questioned about this, Jean
Speaker 2: seemed proud, saying I didn't pay for a penny of it.
Speaker 2: I'd advise the next governor to try the same plan.
Speaker 2: It helps keep expenses down. Rumors also circulated that Mitt,
Speaker 2: Jean's wife, was using prison labor to help keep the
Speaker 2: farm up and running, with an old neighbor saying quote,
Speaker 2: Mitt worked the cheapest nwords she could find. That's one
Speaker 2: of the reasons that she made such good money out
Speaker 2: on the farm unquote. And then after the election, our
Speaker 2: old journalist's friend, Ralph McGill reported that Jean had been
Speaker 2: spotted at a KKK meeting, a claim that Jane did
Speaker 2: not dispute, instead writing to McGill, Ralph, I don't hate anyone.
Speaker 2: I know that hatred dwarfs the man who carries it
Speaker 2: in his soul and does not affect the one whom
Speaker 2: he hates at all. Everyone had a great time, and
Speaker 2: I wish, Ralph that you could have been there unquote.
Speaker 2: So this is what g was getting up to in
Speaker 2: his semi retirement.
Speaker 1: Sure you know, amongst us.
Speaker 2: Me, I've never been to a KKK rally.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, okay, okay, I mean I've been to a
Speaker 1: KKK rally. But but I have eaten at a Sizzler
Speaker 1: and those are not dissimilar experience. No, yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like the KKK rally of restaurants.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Sophie, is that true.
Speaker 3: My only memory of Sizzler is that my brother really
Speaker 3: liked the commercials when we were younger and begged my
Speaker 3: mom to take us there, and then he was really
Speaker 3: disappointed because the food was terrible.
Speaker 1: It's got awful.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry to Sizzler, but I've never been to I've
Speaker 2: never been to Clan rallies for like, not for work.
Speaker 2: Me and Robert have attended a great number. Racist rally
Speaker 2: is for work.
Speaker 1: I will say, going to like any of the restaurants
Speaker 1: that exclusively cater to elderly people on Sundays and like
Speaker 1: North Texas is a similar experience. You're going to hear slurs.
Speaker 2: So as as Gene was now in semi retirement, he
Speaker 2: still ran a law office, but he didn't have like
Speaker 2: imminent plans to run for election and no longer having
Speaker 2: to appeal to voters. Jean moved further to the right
Speaker 2: and attacked Roosevelt for using the war to globalize the
Speaker 2: New Deal in further in furtherance of a quote unquote
Speaker 2: world regimentation. The Jene's primary objection to the war was
Speaker 2: that it would lead to calls for more black civil
Speaker 2: rights and compromise the segregationist South. A headline in Jean's
Speaker 2: newspaper The Statesman read a quote election of Roosevelt means
Speaker 2: promoting negroes in Georgia unquote, I mean and great. So
Speaker 2: like after the war, certainly there was that there were
Speaker 2: more calls for black civil rights because a whole bunch
Speaker 2: of black people had just like fought for the United
Speaker 2: States overseas. And it's like Gene knew that that was
Speaker 2: gonna happen, and that was one of his primary objections
Speaker 2: to the war, as well as this like proto Illuminati
Speaker 2: conspiracy theory that that Roosevelt was like specifically getting into
Speaker 2: the war so that he could spread like a globalized
Speaker 2: new deal. That was so like we can see little
Speaker 2: seeds again of talking points that that will become more common,
Speaker 2: you know, once we got to like the John Birch
Speaker 2: Society like a decade or so later. Now as a
Speaker 2: last fuck you from FDR all the way back in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty five, when Gene was eyeing up the presidency,
Speaker 2: Roosevelt sent the IRS to investigate Gene's finances, and after
Speaker 2: a fruitless ten year search, the IRS came to Jean's
Speaker 2: law office and gave him a three thousand dollars bill
Speaker 2: for all of the work that they had done. I
Speaker 2: don't know that's how the IRS is supposed to work.
Speaker 1: That doesn't sound like the way it's supposed to work.
Speaker 2: But critical support to the IRS for billing Gene for
Speaker 2: them investigating his finances for ten years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, honestly, like I could use a
Speaker 1: little bit more of that energy in the modern era.
Speaker 2: Yes, Now, after World War Two, society had essentially like
Speaker 2: progressed passed the need for a Eugene Talmage. The war
Speaker 2: accelerated liberal progress and Georgia was dragged into the modern era.
Speaker 2: But by the end of the war, when the men
Speaker 2: came home, a reactionary spirit was growing to comfort those
Speaker 2: who found themselves in an unfamiliar, changing world. Unable to
Speaker 2: completely undo all the vast reforms that had been done
Speaker 2: in the FDR years, the last vestige of the past
Speaker 2: to fall back on was again racism. In spring of
Speaker 2: nineteen forty six, the Supreme Court ruled that the whites
Speaker 2: only primary elections were unconstitutional and that black citizens must
Speaker 2: be allowed to vote in primaries. This sent shockwaves through
Speaker 2: the South. In response to the court ruling, Gene called
Speaker 2: for the state's primary election laws to be completely abolished,
Speaker 2: leaving the primary regulations up to the party. Then the
Speaker 2: Democratic Party could decide on having an all white primary.
Speaker 2: That no serious politician like this plan, as it would
Speaker 2: mean an end to the county unit system and all
Speaker 2: the legal safeguards against election fraud. Basically, Gene's idea would
Speaker 2: seriously jeopardize Georgia's ability to function as a legitimate state. Okay,
Speaker 2: this is this is in line with like his whole
Speaker 2: thing during the Cocking affair, right, Like he's able, like
Speaker 2: he is willing to jeopardize the legitimacy of the government
Speaker 2: and end of the state just to ensure white supremacy,
Speaker 2: and like this is what separates him from the other politicians.
Speaker 2: Right the other politicians are like, no, we still need
Speaker 2: to have like a working state, Like we still need to,
Speaker 2: we still need to, we still need to be able
Speaker 2: to function. And Jan's willing to like sabotage like the
Speaker 2: state's own ability to operate, just to ensure his white
Speaker 2: supremacist like ideology is going to be intact after his death.
Speaker 2: So like, regardless of whatever Gene was up to, Governor
Speaker 2: Arnold refused to call for a session to alter voting laws,
Speaker 2: taking the somewhat bold stance of requesting that the good
Speaker 2: people of Georgia let black people vote in their primary.
Speaker 2: This was actually like pretty progressive for the time, especially
Speaker 2: for a governor in the South. For all of Arnold's
Speaker 2: racism that we've already discussed, this was like one of
Speaker 2: the better things he did, and this kind of helped
Speaker 2: to improve his legacy as a governor, the fact that
Speaker 2: he did not oppose black people voting in party primaries.
Speaker 2: So unable to abolish or change primary law, Gene decided
Speaker 2: to give the governor's race one last shot in a
Speaker 2: campaign to save the white primary. Gene was now sixty
Speaker 2: one and was getting increasingly ill. He drank too much
Speaker 2: and he barely ate. Friends and family, including his wife,
Speaker 2: Met pleaded with genea not to run, worry that the
Speaker 2: campaign might literally kill him. But Jene thought there was
Speaker 2: no one else more qualified to run a white supremacist
Speaker 2: campaign than himself. Anderson says, quote Jane considered the Negro
Speaker 2: the vulnerable spot in the liberals armor. His son, Herman,
Speaker 2: now back from the Navy, and a number of other
Speaker 2: astute advisors, were in disagreement with Gene over the degree
Speaker 2: of emphasis that should be placed on the racial issue.
Speaker 2: Hermann had seen his father ride race to defeat in
Speaker 2: nineteen forty two, and while Georgia was still very much racist,
Speaker 2: she had allowed her attitudes towards Black Americans to suffer erosion,
Speaker 2: not by very much, but there had been movement. The
Speaker 2: Supreme Court decision provided Gene with some badly needed angles
Speaker 2: on the racial issue, which needed some substantiation. It had
Speaker 2: generally been felt that the black cause had advanced, but
Speaker 2: there had been comfort in knowing that the advancement had
Speaker 2: been more myth than reality. The court ruling changed all
Speaker 2: that and thrust the Negro into the foreground as an issue.
Speaker 2: It also sent a shudder through George's liberal establishment, for
Speaker 2: very few of them favored social integration. It would cost
Speaker 2: them their reressive credibility to join the chorus against Black Americans.
Speaker 2: But worse than that, they feel that an outburst of
Speaker 2: white supremacy would obliterate them at the polls. Unquote, So
Speaker 2: Gene equated this post war period with the reconstruction right
Speaker 2: in his main campaign platform was to ensure quote a
Speaker 2: democratic white primary unfettered and unhampered by radical communism and
Speaker 2: alien forces unquote. Jean's son, Herman, was heavily involved in
Speaker 2: the nineteen forty six selection campaign and wrote the rest
Speaker 2: of his platform. Hermann tried to soften some of his father's,
Speaker 2: like Harsher ultra conservative edges. The first draft of Herman's
Speaker 2: platform shocked Gene, saying, good God Almighty, who wrote this stuff?
Speaker 2: But Gene eventually agreed. The strategy was to please the
Speaker 2: predominantly racist white Georgians as well as attract Talmadge skeptic
Speaker 2: liberals with Herman's economics. The results saw Gene call for
Speaker 2: quote social reforms to be protected and maintained, and we
Speaker 2: must protect the news grow from the communist influence unquote.
Speaker 2: That was his basic like combined platform. He was kind
Speaker 2: of embracing some of the more liberal economics that he
Speaker 2: had spent his whole career deriding, while doubling down on
Speaker 2: like the race issue. Jene formally started his campaign in May,
Speaker 2: for going the typical barbecue cookout and his rallies were
Speaker 2: smaller and more docile than usual. Crowd sizes across the state,
Speaker 2: across all campaigns were smaller than they used to be.
Speaker 2: This is attributed to a number of factors of like
Speaker 2: the mass adoption of home radio, less bountiful food post war,
Speaker 2: and for this summer especially, people were staying home out
Speaker 2: of fears of like a so called race riot now
Speaker 2: adding to the racist focus in the campaign. In June,
Speaker 2: Gene announced that if elected, he would cease all interstate
Speaker 2: bus travel through Georgia in response to a new federal
Speaker 2: ruling that declared that black people have the right to
Speaker 2: sit anywhere they wanted on a bus crossing state lines.
Speaker 2: To maintain segregated seating, Gene proposed a system where to
Speaker 2: enter or exit the state, passengers would have to leave
Speaker 2: their bus on the state line and get a special
Speaker 2: ticket for travel within Georgia. This was the length he
Speaker 2: was willing to go. H just a completely ludicrous, a
Speaker 2: completely ludicrous system. Or you have to get off the bus,
Speaker 2: get a special ticket, re enter the bus with segregated seating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now I love that. It's it's this is always
Speaker 1: the way these things go, right. It's like the same
Speaker 1: with most of the fair evasion things, where it's like, hmmm,
Speaker 1: like what what can we do? Like how do we
Speaker 1: solve this problem that we have largely created as a problem.
Speaker 1: Let's just make the whole thing worse for everybody.
Speaker 2: It's emblematic of what all of his solutions end up being.
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, and I haven't really thought through the problem,
Speaker 1: let alone like what the solution will do.
Speaker 2: It's all theater.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's it's all invented. I invented an issue,
Speaker 1: or at least like my can sticks invented an issue.
Speaker 1: I probably know that it's bullshit, but I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: make things. I guess there's some intelligence there, because like,
Speaker 1: if your response to all my racist voters are angry
Speaker 1: about integration and your solution to deal with integration in
Speaker 1: public transit is to make public transit worse, everyone will
Speaker 1: get angrier. And as a general rule, the primary resource
Speaker 1: you have as a guy like Talmage is the anger
Speaker 1: of life, the anger of your regular dumb people. Right,
Speaker 1: Like that's it. So yeah, I guess it all makes
Speaker 1: sense in the end. Make everything worse. Yeah, So other
Speaker 1: Republican Party works today, sure.
Speaker 2: In parallels to our current situation. In the past decade,
Speaker 2: Jean played a sort of cat and most game with
Speaker 2: the big Atlanta newspapers. Reporters would gleefully follow the Talmadge
Speaker 2: campaign trail, and though both parties were critical of each other,
Speaker 2: they relied on each other right like the Talamage helped
Speaker 2: the newspapers because he helped them sell a whole bunch of papers,
Speaker 2: and Talmage needed papers to cover himself. But in the
Speaker 2: forty sixth race, this dynamic fully tipped over into open hostility,
Speaker 2: with each side now viewing the other as legitimately dangerous
Speaker 2: and no longer useful. As the papers attacked Gene, reporters
Speaker 2: received threats and harassment from his supporters and had to
Speaker 2: go undercover at campaign rallies. At one small kind of
Speaker 2: backwater town, Jean spotted a talmidch critical reporter whom he
Speaker 2: banned from visiting his office, hiding in the crowd, and
Speaker 2: he started ranting about them lying Atlanta newspapers. And then
Speaker 2: he pointed to the lone reporter, thar he is, now,
Speaker 2: I do love that it is spelled t haar. The
Speaker 2: reporter braced for like a gang assault, but Gene ordered
Speaker 2: his boys to let him up on stage. As he
Speaker 2: climbed on the platform, Gene whispered in his ear, I
Speaker 2: know you're a pretty good fella, you just right that
Speaker 2: way unquote. Well, so that is the situation in the
Speaker 2: uh in the campaign at this point in time. Do
Speaker 2: you know what we also think are pretty good fellas? Sometimes?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I'm This podcast is sponsored by all
Speaker 1: of the guys who survived Goodfellas. So thank god we
Speaker 1: remain free of Leonardo DiCaprio spoilers for Goodfellas.
Speaker 2: All right, we are we are back for our last section,
Speaker 2: looking at Eugene Talmage and by god, it gets worse.
Speaker 2: Oh good now. This entire summer the campaign was marked
Speaker 2: by escalating racist violence and intimidation. On May ninth, a
Speaker 2: massive cross burning and KKK recruitment rally promising a quote
Speaker 2: unquote rebirth of the Clan was held on Stone Mountain,
Speaker 2: overlooking Atlanta. The second iteration of the Clan, started thirty
Speaker 2: years prior, was also founded on Stone Mountain, and Stone
Speaker 2: Mountain is currently the largest Confederate monument in the country,
Speaker 2: and it's still often home to white nationalist rallies. To
Speaker 2: quote William Anderson quote, rumors of the affair swept the state,
Speaker 2: causing near hysteria and giving Gene most of the credit
Speaker 2: for bringing the Klan back to life with his demagogery.
Speaker 2: The event itself was a comical ragtag affair, which embarrassed
Speaker 2: its leaders because they kept running out of sheets to
Speaker 2: give to new members. Many of them were forced to
Speaker 2: wrap themselves in paper and handkerchiefs. They were psychologically impoverished
Speaker 2: of the new age, the cultural laggers, the indebted, the uneducated,
Speaker 2: the scared, the have nots, in the age of the Halves.
Speaker 2: They grasped the clan in desperation. It was the only
Speaker 2: club in town that invited them. Its mysterious sounding rights
Speaker 2: and verbiage, its hoods and ornaments, and its history of
Speaker 2: resistance to the blacks, and its dedication to the past
Speaker 2: gave them a feeling of power and belonging unquote. Now,
Speaker 2: I kind of disagree with some of Anderson's characterization of
Speaker 2: this rally. Anderson writes that like those gathered on Stone
Speaker 2: Mountain were like a sad, pathetic lot who had been
Speaker 2: left behind by changing society. And it's not that they
Speaker 2: were left behind, it'said they were like stubborn, cruel and cowardly,
Speaker 2: like they refused to join society. Like Anderson, both discounts
Speaker 2: their agency and the threat of violence they posed, saying
Speaker 2: it was high irony that society would look at the
Speaker 2: souls with such fear and dread, as though they were
Speaker 2: a well disciplined horder that could sweep from the mountain
Speaker 2: and destroy at will unquote, and like, I get what
Speaker 2: Anderson's saying here. I don't want to give them too
Speaker 2: much credit. I don't want to give like, like you know,
Speaker 2: current day white supremacists too much credit for being like
Speaker 2: a well organized faction that can destroy democracy at like,
Speaker 2: at any moment.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: But on the other hand, it is wrong to downplay
Speaker 2: the violent potential of racial extremism. Yes, this is evidenced
Speaker 2: by the Moore's Ford lynching that happened later that summer.
Speaker 2: On July twenty fifth outside Monroe, Georgia, while two black
Speaker 2: couples were on their way home, a lynch mob forced
Speaker 2: their car to pull over, and the mob dragged them
Speaker 2: out of the vehicle, broke the girl's arms, tied them
Speaker 2: to a tree, and shot all of them until their
Speaker 2: bodies could no longer be recognized. Over over sixty shots Jesus.
Speaker 2: One of the victims was seven months pregnant, and she
Speaker 2: sorted that the unborn baby was cut out of the
Speaker 2: mother's body by the mob.
Speaker 1: Oh my, oh my god.
Speaker 2: It's one of the most brutal lynchings. And this is
Speaker 2: considered the last quote unquote like mass lynching.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now, I.
Speaker 2: Would say there's incidents that have happened since then, which
Speaker 2: certainly qualifies lynchings. But also this is historically like the
Speaker 2: final of like the Jim Crow lynchings.
Speaker 1: I would also add that, like in World War One,
Speaker 1: when the Western Powers were trying to build up like
Speaker 1: hate and a justification to really we have to destroy
Speaker 1: Imperial Germany, they told stories of German soldiers cutting babies
Speaker 1: out of women's wombs, like one of the things that
Speaker 1: was largely used as as like this is why the
Speaker 1: Empire of Japan is so evil, as stories of them
Speaker 1: doing that in China, and like, I don't disagree that
Speaker 1: that's pretty much the ultimate evil, but like that does
Speaker 1: kind of bring to mind, well, then if this was
Speaker 1: something that a lot of people in the White South
Speaker 1: were fine with doing, what should we have done in
Speaker 1: this period to the White South anyway?
Speaker 2: Whatever a Monroe local told a reporter, quote, this thing's
Speaker 2: got to be done to keep mister Enward in his place.
Speaker 2: Since the court said he could vote, there ain't been
Speaker 2: any holding him back unquote. President Truman called for an
Speaker 2: FBI investigation, but the town protected all of the assailants.
Speaker 2: The FBI also looked into Talmadge's possible involvement, and though
Speaker 2: rumors that he like personally led the mob were certainly untrue,
Speaker 2: Jane did campaign in town shortly before the lynching, and
Speaker 2: witnesses reported that Gene spoke with one of the futurest
Speaker 2: suspects and offered impunity to anyone quote unquote taking care
Speaker 2: of the Negro unquote. An FBI memmo suggested that Talmadge
Speaker 2: may have sanctioned the killings in order to help win
Speaker 2: the badly needed rule County unit vote shortly after. The
Speaker 2: county did indeed go to Talmadge at the very least.
Speaker 2: Jean's nineteen forty six campaign rhetoric was widely blamed for
Speaker 2: prompting the brutally racist murders. Later that summer, hooded KKK
Speaker 2: members held rallies at county courthouses to scare black people
Speaker 2: away from voting just like during reconstruction. Anderson notes, quote
Speaker 2: Gene said it would be an accident if he got
Speaker 2: even one black vote. Unquote. The liberal candidate James Carmichael
Speaker 2: did win the popular vote with three hundred and thirteen
Speaker 2: thousand votes to Jean's two hundred and ninety seven thousand,
Speaker 2: but Talmadge pulled through in the county unit vote by
Speaker 2: about a hund undred points. The campaign of yester Year's
Speaker 2: racism had won the state That summer, The Charlotte News wrote,
Speaker 2: the South will one day be rid of its talmages,
Speaker 2: but not until we have completed the long and painful
Speaker 2: process of purging ourselves of the sickness upon which they feed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that would have been that would have been the call.
Speaker 2: That is, I mean, that is something we are still.
Speaker 1: Yeah, working, Perhaps we should have purged ourselves from of
Speaker 1: the sickness from which they feed.
Speaker 2: Eighty years later, we are still purging ourselves of the sickness.
Speaker 1: It's more that, like eighty years ago, it was very
Speaker 1: clear to people like this that like we were eating,
Speaker 1: you know, we were consuming something rancid that had made
Speaker 1: us sick, and we just kind of doubled down, like
Speaker 1: Homer Simpson with that old submarine sandwich and just kept
Speaker 1: on eating it.
Speaker 2: After the votes were tallied, Jean said that winning the
Speaker 2: race must have cost him ten years of his life,
Speaker 2: which might literally be true if he was meant to
Speaker 2: live to seventy two instead of sixty two.
Speaker 1: May it happen to Trump? Yeah?
Speaker 2: He He made almost three hundred speeches this campaign, and
Speaker 2: by the end of the race his health was in
Speaker 2: a dire state, and after the election it did not improve.
Speaker 2: At this point in his marriage, Mitt was refusing to
Speaker 2: cook him dinner, so he'd often have to eat at friends' houses,
Speaker 2: and while on vacation in Jacksonville, Jeane collapsed unconscious onto
Speaker 2: the dinner table of one of his friends while eating stew.
Speaker 2: He was rushed to the hospital and treated for a
Speaker 2: ruptured vein in his stomach.
Speaker 1: Stu got him. Huh, comrade Stu. Look ever since, ever
Speaker 1: since twenty twenty, we've been saying that soup is antifa.
Speaker 1: That is true. This just really proves the case.
Speaker 2: Jane was getting blood transfusions, and upon awaking, Jean told
Speaker 2: a young reporter that stuck into the hospital quote, it
Speaker 2: ain't nothing but an old bleeding vein. The doctors said
Speaker 2: that Gene wouldn't be able to attend the state convention,
Speaker 2: so Herman gave the speech in his place, and though
Speaker 2: Jane had an initial quick recovery, his friends and fanily
Speaker 2: started to doubt that he would survive his four year term.
Speaker 2: Then in early December, Gene was rushed to the hospital
Speaker 2: again due to hemorrhaging. While in the hospital, Talmuch's team
Speaker 2: was still working on plans to save the White primary,
Speaker 2: this time by disqualifying all of the registered voters in
Speaker 2: the state. But by mid December. But by mid this,
Speaker 2: I mean this is actually also like what the modern
Speaker 2: right is doing to affect the upcoming election, where they're
Speaker 2: doing like mass like unvoter registrations again like specifically targeting
Speaker 2: like black areas, especially in Texas. I know that they
Speaker 2: have that they have done this as well as well
Speaker 2: as in Georgia. Like this is this tactic of like
Speaker 2: of of disqualifying registered voters just to sway elections is
Speaker 2: still being used now. By mid December, Gene contracted a
Speaker 2: cute tepatitis and at this point he knew he was dying.
Speaker 2: I'm going to quote from the book Race and Racism
Speaker 2: in the United States, quote on his deathbed, he told
Speaker 2: his Baptist preacher that the black race was created inferior
Speaker 2: by God. He said the white race was on top,
Speaker 2: the yellow race next, and then the brown and red races,
Speaker 2: and at the very bottom the black race, who were
Speaker 2: created to be servants to all other races. Unquote deathbed remarks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the standard line on the right. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anderson notes quote. During his illness, a rather morbid joke
Speaker 2: circulated saying that Gene Talwich was the only man in
Speaker 2: Georgia that could have the whole state, preying at once,
Speaker 2: one half that he would die, the other half that
Speaker 2: he would live. Now. Some of his last recorded words
Speaker 2: are on a phone call to his friend Henry Sperlin,
Speaker 2: who was out buying cattle for Jane's farm, and with
Speaker 2: with Jean's dying breaths, he whispered over the phone, Spud's
Speaker 2: that was Sperlin's nickname, Spud, don't buy no more cowsquote tragic.
Speaker 2: Eugene Talwich fell into a coma and died that next morning,
Speaker 2: That was December twenty one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: May all of his descendants follow him soon.
Speaker 2: This was just weeks before being sworn in as governor
Speaker 2: for the fourth time as his coffin sat in the
Speaker 2: state Capitol, it was decorated with a klu klux Klan
Speaker 2: wreath and currently a statue honoring Eugene Talmadge stands in
Speaker 2: front of the Georgia Capital. That that probably shouldn't be there.
Speaker 2: Might want to pull that one down, and and with
Speaker 2: that that should be the end of the dictatorial reign
Speaker 2: of Eugene Chalmadge. It should, and yet somehow it is not.
Speaker 2: There's one more pick. So with Jene dying before being
Speaker 2: sworn in as governor, the office should have been passed
Speaker 2: down to the Lieutenant governor elect, Melvin E. Thompson. As
Speaker 2: Thompson asserted his claim to the governor's office, Jean's son,
Speaker 2: Herman Talmadge, announced that he was instead going to take
Speaker 2: the governor's office. So as Gene was dying, he was
Speaker 2: calling up political associates to ask to ask that they
Speaker 2: help Herman pick up the baton from Gene after his death,
Speaker 2: and Herman himself had actually already prepared for this contingency
Speaker 2: before the general election. A friend of Herman uncovered an
Speaker 2: old clause in the state constitution stipulating that if the
Speaker 2: governor elect dies before taking office, the General Assembly could
Speaker 2: appoint whoever had the second most votes in the general election.
Speaker 2: Though Jane ran unopposed in the general Hermann suspected that
Speaker 2: the Liberal candidate might receive write in protest votes, so
Speaker 2: for insurance, Hermann launched a covert write in campaign for
Speaker 2: himself and claimed to receive a thousand votes, beating the
Speaker 2: other right in candidates. Governor Arnold rejected Herman's claim to
Speaker 2: the office and stated that he himself would remain governor
Speaker 2: indefinitely until the mess was sorted out. So there was
Speaker 2: now three men claiming to be the rightful governor of Georgia,
Speaker 2: all citing different clauses in state constitution. A joint Assembly
Speaker 2: met on January fourteenth to decide who was governor. The
Speaker 2: Assembly counted the write in votes for Herman, and it
Speaker 2: appeared that there were far less than Talmadge proclaimed, with
Speaker 2: the official count losing Herman the right and race. This was, however,
Speaker 2: until a box of fifty eight additional votes mysteriously arrived
Speaker 2: from Telfair County, which was Herman's home county, and these
Speaker 2: spontaneously appearing extra votes gave Talmadge a small lead. Mysteriously
Speaker 2: appeared ah, well, we'll get to it cool. I'm going
Speaker 2: to quote from the AJC quote. As the vote neared,
Speaker 2: one of the weapons of choice was alcohol. Each side
Speaker 2: hoped the other might be too drunk to vote.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's what I'm hoping for.
Speaker 2: Herman Talmadge remembers, quote, some of our people were reacting
Speaker 2: strongly to Melvin Thompson's liquor. A state senator of ours
Speaker 2: was found in the Capitol grounds passed out. The sheriff
Speaker 2: of vurstyinth County came to our office with the Thompson man,
Speaker 2: and the sheriff was about to kill him. The sheriff
Speaker 2: said he caught the Thompson man serving knockout drops. It
Speaker 2: was sort of like the date rape drug of today, apparently.
Speaker 2: So we had some of our friends organize a rehab
Speaker 2: hospital down in the Public Service Commission in the Capitol
Speaker 2: where they would be where they would try to keep
Speaker 2: our people functioning unquote. So, after a series of fights,
Speaker 2: offensively deployed alcohol and some sketchy political maneuvers, Herman was
Speaker 2: voted governor by the legislature and sworn in at two am.
Speaker 2: Eight to ten thousand Talmadge supporters broke into the capitol
Speaker 2: and joined Herman as he went to take the governor's office.
Speaker 2: Governor Arnold refused to leave. He saw Talmadge's ascension as
Speaker 2: illegitimate and called Herman a pretender. A massive fistfight broke
Speaker 2: out in the capitol. Furniture was smashed and Arnell's staffers
Speaker 2: were assaulted by the mob. Herman climbed onto a desk
Speaker 2: to tell his orders to leave. Arnell was escorted out
Speaker 2: of the Governor's office and Talmage had the locks changed.
Speaker 2: Arnell was still asserting that he was acting governor. Instead
Speaker 2: of leaving the capitol, he set up a desk in
Speaker 2: the rotundra and tried to conduct business as usual. So
Speaker 2: we had two men in the capital with separate desks,
Speaker 2: both claiming to be governor now. The next day, Herman
Speaker 2: carried a thirty eight caliber pistol to work, as he
Speaker 2: did for the remainder of his term, scaring that he
Speaker 2: might have to use it against an Arnold man.
Speaker 1: So okay.
Speaker 2: Six weeks after Herman was sworn in, a journalist at
Speaker 2: the Atlanta Journal named George Goodwin started to look into
Speaker 2: those mysterious fifty eight extra votes from Telfair County. He
Speaker 2: located the list of writing votes and noticed that thirty
Speaker 2: four of them had apparently voted in alphabetical order, starting
Speaker 2: with A and stopping with K. Finding this highly improbable,
Speaker 2: Goodwin tried to track down these individuals voters, only to
Speaker 2: discover that some of these people did not exist, others
Speaker 2: had died before the election, and Moore had either moved
Speaker 2: away prior to the election or abstained from voting. Goodwin
Speaker 2: won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on this, and
Speaker 2: seventeen days after his expose, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled
Speaker 2: that the General Assembly exceeded their jurisdiction by electing Hermann
Speaker 2: Talmadge and that the Lieutenant governor elect from the time
Speaker 2: of Jean's death, Melvin Thompson, would indeed serve as governor.
Speaker 2: So that that's how Jane tried to actually extend his
Speaker 2: power past his death in the so called three governors controversy.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's one of the basiest things.
Speaker 1: It's it's definitely like Trump, he could he might try
Speaker 1: something like that.
Speaker 2: I dont trouble Will for the reason that I don't
Speaker 2: think Trump cares enough. It cares enough about either of
Speaker 2: his oldest sons to ever do this.
Speaker 1: No, well, yeah, maybe maybe maybe Barn maybe Baron.
Speaker 2: If he tries to put like seventeen year old Baron
Speaker 2: into office, maybe I don't know. I don't know how
Speaker 2: that will work. But no, I think the only thing
Speaker 2: stopping Trump from trying like a similar like forced political
Speaker 2: dynasty is the fact that he just does not like
Speaker 2: either of his oldest sons nearly as much as a
Speaker 2: Gene liked Herman. But now, this is one of the
Speaker 2: crazier moments in Georgia history, when when you have three
Speaker 2: people claiming to be governor of one of them. Herman
Speaker 2: has never has never been elected. His only claim to
Speaker 2: fame is that he's the son of Eugene Talmadge. That
Speaker 2: I have, I I have one final kind of closing
Speaker 2: note on Townwdge's rain over Georgia. So Talnwridge's intermittent rain
Speaker 2: over the state arose during the start of substantial progress
Speaker 2: in the South, and Gene was the reactionary embodiment of
Speaker 2: resistance to change. He was the vessel for his Confederate
Speaker 2: ancestors as the modern world invaded Georgia. Jean mastered the
Speaker 2: politics of theater and white. Georgia was enthralled with his performance.
Speaker 2: For two decades, people either loved or hated Jane. There
Speaker 2: was very little in between. His core supporters were the
Speaker 2: rich businessmen and the dirt poor little guy. Jane's economics
Speaker 2: paved the way for the intense corporate control over Georgia
Speaker 2: that continues to this day. Yeah and I will I
Speaker 2: will finally close with with some of the some of
Speaker 2: the words of the last page of Gene's biography quote,
Speaker 2: if the businessman supplied the money, the poor farmer supplied
Speaker 2: the court vote that gave Talmage his power. He had
Speaker 2: no real solutions for these people. His solutions had all
Speaker 2: been proven wrong by the very past he revered. He
Speaker 2: served them as an emotional crutch when their consciousness was
Speaker 2: being shattered by the catastrophic depression and the subsequent radicalism
Speaker 2: of the New Deal. As long as he played by
Speaker 2: their rules, they supported him. But when he tried to
Speaker 2: take the new fruits away from them, or sought real
Speaker 2: power by running for the Senate, they denied him. They
Speaker 2: wanted him basically powerless, though they reveled in his power plays,
Speaker 2: which was a prisoner of history. A culturalizlationist lost in
Speaker 2: a time frame, that he was unable to leave on
Speaker 2: his own, and that his supporters finally refused to help
Speaker 2: him leave. Gene Talmadge strode the decade when Georgia got
Speaker 2: up and went along. When she began to pull up stakes,
Speaker 2: learned to say yes and became less preoccupied with self
Speaker 2: and looking beyond, she lost something and gained something. Her
Speaker 2: people had looked beyond the tall pines at the end
Speaker 2: of the field and realized for the first time that
Speaker 2: something better must be out there, and in doing so
Speaker 2: they admitted defeat, admitted they could no longer go it
Speaker 2: at their own. In nineteen ten, sixty sixty one percent
Speaker 2: of all Georgians were rural farm dwellers. By nineteen forty
Speaker 2: the figure it hit forty four percent. There is drama here,
Speaker 2: There is preparation for profound change. And the drama of
Speaker 2: Eugene Talmage is that he arrived in the dead middle
Speaker 2: of this great physical and mental shift. The fact that
Speaker 2: he was elected to state office four times during this
Speaker 2: period does not indicate that the shifts were meaningless. To
Speaker 2: the contrary, they illustrate the eg in the passion of
Speaker 2: the move. These were people briefly awash. Having pushed off
Speaker 2: from a safe shore and uncertain of the new ground
Speaker 2: they were testing, eyes darted quickly back to the old place.
Speaker 2: Hearts were touched instantly by its recollections. Hands formed on
Speaker 2: the plow handles unconsciously grasped for worn grain. Geene was
Speaker 2: the shore that they had left, and that was his
Speaker 2: ultimate loss. I what do you think, Robert, I.
Speaker 1: Mean, I'm thinking actually of his ultimate victory, which is
Speaker 1: the Georgia environmental official in Atlanta, who was like investigating
Speaker 1: the biolab fire, which was the result of private of
Speaker 1: this corporatism of private equity hollowing out a company that
Speaker 1: operated this chemical facility, and so they didn't have proper
Speaker 1: safeguards and used water to put out a fire that
Speaker 1: water should not have been used on, and it blanketed
Speaker 1: the entire city, or at least a large portion of
Speaker 1: it in fucking chlorine gas fumes. The guy who was
Speaker 1: investigating it for the state collapsed like while giving a
Speaker 1: state or giving testimony about.
Speaker 2: Right fire right after giving testimony.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and people online, a whole bunch of them with
Speaker 1: thousands of likes per person, are suggesting that he was
Speaker 1: attacked by a CIA heart attack gun, because obviously that's
Speaker 1: the only thing that could have done this. I see that,
Speaker 1: as you know, the real triumph of Talmach's legacy is
Speaker 1: that shit like that is not only the Norman Georgia,
Speaker 1: but it's becoming the norm everywhere in this great country
Speaker 1: because ultimately he and the people like him tend to win.
Speaker 1: Because again we could talk about the men with machine guns.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, I mean, and specifically, the corporate control
Speaker 2: over Georgia that he helped established is like one of
Speaker 2: the prime reasons why we now have copp City. The
Speaker 2: way that Atlanta is completely controlled by like five corporations,
Speaker 2: the way that they completely exert power over city Council,
Speaker 2: the Atlanta Police Foundation, like all of that can be
Speaker 2: traced back to Eugene Talmage. And yeah, in some ways,
Speaker 2: although he lost the battle for segregation in the next
Speaker 2: like ten twenty years, he really did kind of win
Speaker 2: in the end in some ways. I mean, especially if
Speaker 2: you look at how we've talked about these last four episodes,
Speaker 2: how the template that he laid out is now being
Speaker 2: followed by DeSantis, by Trump, by by by all of
Speaker 2: these guys seeking power, and it works, and I think
Speaker 2: it's not again, Like it is a travesty that Jeane
Speaker 2: died before being sworn into office for a fourth time.
Speaker 2: The fact that he died of like liver failure instead
Speaker 2: of many other means, and or the fact that that
Speaker 2: he died on his way to taking office once again
Speaker 2: on an explicit platform of white supremacy shows that maybe
Speaker 2: he actually did kind of win in the end. And
Speaker 2: I think I am looking at him as like, like
Speaker 2: he is like the last real like Southern den Democrat,
Speaker 2: right he is. He's the last guy before the South
Speaker 2: moves to being racist Republicans. Yeah, and like that that
Speaker 2: is his legacy, is that this is that this is
Speaker 2: that this Democrat party man actually paved the way for
Speaker 2: Republicans to completely ruin the country and the states, uh
Speaker 2: for the next like eighty years.
Speaker 1: And that's why he's my hero. Anyway, Well, there we go.
Speaker 2: That is a that is a story of a Eugene
Speaker 2: Talmage and his dictorial reign over the state, over the
Speaker 2: state of Georgia.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, everyone, all I got to say is
Speaker 1: keep your fingers crossed. Soon we'll have a better dictator
Speaker 1: in charge of Georgia. That's what I believe.
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