WEBVTT - Part Two: John Schmitz: The First Trump 0:00:01.760 --> 0:00:10.639 Also media that sound Listeners was me opening a bottle 0:00:10.720 --> 0:00:14.920 of my very favorite productivity beverage, club Mate, which you 0:00:14.960 --> 0:00:17.200 can get now in the US in some places. It's 0:00:17.239 --> 0:00:21.520 it's effectively a Yerba Mate soda that I started drinking 0:00:21.600 --> 0:00:25.200 in Berlin because you get dehydrated when you're doing ketamine 0:00:25.480 --> 0:00:27.440 and then eventually you get tired when you're at one 0:00:27.440 --> 0:00:29.880 of those like underground sex clubs that's open for four 0:00:29.920 --> 0:00:33.360 days in a row. And club Mate it's really really 0:00:34.159 --> 0:00:35.120 really hits the spot. 0:00:35.360 --> 0:00:37.640 I like how they let you in the club and 0:00:37.680 --> 0:00:39.320 not Elon Musk Robert. 0:00:39.880 --> 0:00:42.159 Yeah, because I didn't. I didn't bring my phone, you know, 0:00:43.200 --> 0:00:44.440 right right let me in. 0:00:44.600 --> 0:00:48.080 You weren't wearing a dumb ass Zoro mask, they were, Yeah, 0:00:48.320 --> 0:00:48.880 yeah you had. 0:00:49.080 --> 0:00:54.240 I can be separated from Twitter occasionally. Yeah. Now, speaking 0:00:54.280 --> 0:00:58.040 of guys who are not allowed in German sex clubs, 0:00:58.120 --> 0:01:03.400 John George Schmidt, it's uh that is the best too. 0:01:04.480 --> 0:01:08.120 Whenever we go out, the people below way shout they go. 0:01:08.360 --> 0:01:10.560 John George Smith is a piece of shit. 0:01:10.680 --> 0:01:13.240 La la la la. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's pro. 0:01:13.400 --> 0:01:16.120 He's got to be related to John Jacob Jingleheimer. You know, 0:01:16.319 --> 0:01:18.520 they both have the Schmitz at the end, more or 0:01:18.640 --> 0:01:23.280 less so. Our John Schmitz was born on August twelfth, 0:01:23.400 --> 0:01:26.880 nineteen thirty, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, at the very mouth of 0:01:26.920 --> 0:01:30.440 Hell itself. Now, there are unfortunately few details that I 0:01:30.520 --> 0:01:33.280 ran into on his very early life. His mother was 0:01:33.360 --> 0:01:36.759 named Wilhelmina, which is a red flag right that name 0:01:37.200 --> 0:01:40.560 in nineteen thirty. That name means I love Kaiservillehelm or 0:01:40.600 --> 0:01:44.800 at least my parents did. And his father was Jacob John. 0:01:44.880 --> 0:01:47.680 There you go, there he does basically between them and 0:01:47.720 --> 0:01:53.920 his dead Jacob John Schmitz. You're okay, no, no, that's him, baby. 0:01:53.960 --> 0:01:56.160 Where's the jingle Heeimer? Or was that just like a 0:01:56.240 --> 0:01:58.840 like a sort of unknown s s officer. 0:01:59.400 --> 0:02:02.160 Look, nineteen thirty, you still did get some people who 0:02:02.200 --> 0:02:04.680 were anti German racists. I would not be surprised if 0:02:04.760 --> 0:02:10.640 Jingleheimer was a slur, like specifically, really it's like sausage eater. Yeah, totally, totally, 0:02:10.680 --> 0:02:16.480 totally schnitzelheads. Yeah. They were devout Catholics. John would remain 0:02:16.520 --> 0:02:19.080 a devout Catholic his entire life. And again we don't 0:02:19.080 --> 0:02:21.480 know nearly as much about his childhood, but his family 0:02:21.480 --> 0:02:24.160 seemed to have been comfortable middle class or upper middle class. 0:02:24.160 --> 0:02:25.959 There's some hints that he may have had a degree 0:02:25.960 --> 0:02:28.960 of family money, but it is unclear whatever it was, 0:02:29.040 --> 0:02:32.280 either it wasn't that much, or his parents still wanted 0:02:32.360 --> 0:02:34.400 him working a job, and he did have a job 0:02:34.440 --> 0:02:36.920 as a young man, scrubbing out vats of beer. That 0:02:36.960 --> 0:02:40.400 will be relevant for a very stupid reason. Later his 0:02:40.400 --> 0:02:42.720 family was again comfortable enough that he's able to go 0:02:42.760 --> 0:02:45.320 straight from high school into college, where he received a 0:02:45.440 --> 0:02:49.560 BS at Marquette University in nineteen fifty two and subsequently 0:02:49.639 --> 0:02:52.880 joined the US Marine Corps. He qualified initially as a 0:02:52.960 --> 0:02:56.280 jet fighter pilot and then as a helicopter pilot. From 0:02:56.280 --> 0:02:58.640 what I can see, he didn't do any combat tours. 0:02:58.680 --> 0:03:02.160 He was instead stationed in North Carolina and then Japan, 0:03:02.360 --> 0:03:05.280 flying F two H four Banshees and F nine F 0:03:05.320 --> 0:03:08.200 eight cougars. Part of why I think he doesn't actually 0:03:08.280 --> 0:03:10.679 get sent anywhere because obviously the US during the time 0:03:10.720 --> 0:03:15.799 he's in the military is in Korea, and then kind 0:03:15.800 --> 0:03:18.680 of while he is still in the military, we start 0:03:18.720 --> 0:03:21.800 being in Vietnam. But he is in the Marines and 0:03:21.840 --> 0:03:24.760 he is part of like kind of an experimental Marine airwing. 0:03:24.800 --> 0:03:28.120 The Marines really hadn't had like that previously to the 0:03:28.160 --> 0:03:30.360 same extent that they did at least with jet fighters, 0:03:30.840 --> 0:03:33.280 and so his unit is not sent anywhere because they're 0:03:33.280 --> 0:03:34.880 still trying to figure out if like that's a thing 0:03:34.920 --> 0:03:37.520 that they think will work for the Marine Corps. His 0:03:37.600 --> 0:03:40.400 career is then of little note but for one fact, 0:03:40.440 --> 0:03:42.760 which is that after he retires from active duty in 0:03:42.840 --> 0:03:46.760 nineteen sixty and transitions to being a reserve officer, he 0:03:46.920 --> 0:03:50.680 volunteers to teach a class on communism for the Fleet 0:03:50.720 --> 0:03:54.280 Marine Force Pacific Leadership School, which is based at the 0:03:54.320 --> 0:03:57.440 El Toro Marine Corps Base. And the El Toro Marine 0:03:57.440 --> 0:04:02.480 Corps base is in you guessed it, or County, California. Now. 0:04:03.880 --> 0:04:06.840 Doing this series of anti communism lectures seems to have 0:04:06.880 --> 0:04:09.960 basically been an excuse for Schmidz to rant about Communist 0:04:10.000 --> 0:04:12.880 plots to conquer the world and how piece is impossible 0:04:12.960 --> 0:04:15.640 with the Soviet Union in China to an audience of 0:04:15.720 --> 0:04:18.080 young men who then went over to Vietnam and did 0:04:18.120 --> 0:04:20.480 the kind of things that you did in Vietnam, most 0:04:20.480 --> 0:04:24.040 of which you're not very nice. His lesson plan seems 0:04:24.040 --> 0:04:27.720 to have been deeply inspired by Frederick Schwartz's. Again a 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:32.240 lot of Schwarzy names flying around here, very frustrating, but 0:04:32.480 --> 0:04:36.040 Frederic Schwartz's anti communism school. And so given the mood 0:04:36.080 --> 0:04:37.920 at the time, the fact that this dude is doing 0:04:37.920 --> 0:04:41.240 basically the version of this big public anti communism school 0:04:41.440 --> 0:04:43.960 that the Knotsbury Farm guy is funding, and that this 0:04:44.480 --> 0:04:49.320 Australian fascist is doing the lesson planned for the fact 0:04:49.320 --> 0:04:54.360 that John Schmidz is like doing a class on communism 0:04:54.360 --> 0:04:57.000 for the military, it makes him fit in really well 0:04:57.000 --> 0:04:59.160 with this whole whole fucking zeitgeist, right. 0:04:59.320 --> 0:04:59.599 Yeah. 0:05:00.120 --> 0:05:02.679 Leaving active duty in nineteen sixty, he became a history 0:05:02.720 --> 0:05:05.880 and philosophy professor at Santa Ana College. He quickly became 0:05:05.920 --> 0:05:08.919 a fixture in the arch conservative Orange County political scene. 0:05:09.000 --> 0:05:11.839 He joined the John Birch Society. He also attracted the 0:05:11.839 --> 0:05:15.560 attention of local far right businessman, including Carl Karcher, the 0:05:15.640 --> 0:05:19.280 founder and namesake of the Carl's Junior fast food Empire. 0:05:19.440 --> 0:05:22.120 Everything truly, everything. 0:05:22.040 --> 0:05:26.560 Really really a remarkable set of things there, right, not 0:05:26.880 --> 0:05:30.120 very far I love the both very Farm and Carl's 0:05:30.279 --> 0:05:32.599 Junior are funding the fascist movement. 0:05:33.360 --> 0:05:37.360 Yeah, seriously, what else? Like like the giraffe from toys. 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:41.000 R us is just is a fucking oh like. 0:05:41.120 --> 0:05:44.400 Oh he he he. He actually is in Leavenworth still 0:05:44.440 --> 0:05:48.680 for crimes he committed during the Vietnam War. Jeoffrey went 0:05:48.800 --> 0:05:51.560 went went too far for even yeah, for even even 0:05:51.560 --> 0:05:56.480 the army in that period. That's right, Yeah, Geoffrey. Geoffrey 0:05:56.520 --> 0:06:00.200 is the name of the giraffe. Has been just a 0:06:00.240 --> 0:06:01.800 mountain of blood behind him. 0:06:01.920 --> 0:06:06.719 Yeah, he had the Melai massacre was his idea. 0:06:06.800 --> 0:06:11.320 He invented the concept of saturation bombing. That was him. 0:06:11.400 --> 0:06:13.080 Geoffrey the giraffe. 0:06:13.200 --> 0:06:16.680 He's made of agent orange like what other loved it. 0:06:17.839 --> 0:06:21.440 They got it from glands in his skin and folio 0:06:21.440 --> 0:06:26.040 aided the jungle. If only I could blame a giraffe 0:06:26.080 --> 0:06:30.400 for all of our country's worst crimes. Alas so we'll 0:06:30.400 --> 0:06:33.680 blame the Schmidt's. You know. He gets out of the military, 0:06:33.720 --> 0:06:36.679 he becomes a history and philosophy professor at Santa Ana College, 0:06:36.839 --> 0:06:40.360 and he quickly becomes a fixture in this political scene. Right, 0:06:40.400 --> 0:06:43.400 and he's working with the Carl's junior guy, with the 0:06:43.480 --> 0:06:46.760 nots Berry farm guy. He had married while he was 0:06:46.760 --> 0:06:49.839 still in the Marine Corps to a significantly younger woman. 0:06:50.160 --> 0:06:52.720 I'm not sure exactly. But one newspaper I found from 0:06:52.760 --> 0:06:55.720 when he was like in his forties described her as 0:06:55.839 --> 0:06:58.800 youthfully pretty in contrast to him. So I'm gonna guess 0:06:58.839 --> 0:07:02.160 a decent bit younger Mary is just as conservative as 0:07:02.160 --> 0:07:04.720 her husband and almost as hungry for power. But I'm 0:07:04.760 --> 0:07:08.840 getting ahead of myself here. So in nineteen sixty two, right, 0:07:09.360 --> 0:07:13.840 the family Schmidts get their first daughter, a young girl 0:07:13.880 --> 0:07:16.360 named Mary Kay. And we will be talking about who 0:07:16.400 --> 0:07:19.480 Mary Kay Schmitz becomes a little bit later, because I 0:07:19.520 --> 0:07:22.480 think it might surprise you, not that Mary Kay. 0:07:23.320 --> 0:07:25.160 Not the call leader, not that Mary Kay. 0:07:25.760 --> 0:07:29.200 No, no, no, don't forget she exists though, because boy howdy, 0:07:29.320 --> 0:07:33.160 it's going to really be a satisfying end to this series. Now. 0:07:33.320 --> 0:07:35.920 The same year that Mary Kay is born, her father 0:07:36.000 --> 0:07:39.119 would carry out an act of probable heroism that helped 0:07:39.160 --> 0:07:41.640 make him into a local celebrity. He was leaving the 0:07:41.680 --> 0:07:44.400 Marine Corps base one day after a long day of 0:07:44.560 --> 0:07:48.240 screaming about communism to teenagers when he encountered a man 0:07:48.400 --> 0:07:52.000 stabbing a woman by the roadside. Quote. With nothing more 0:07:52.040 --> 0:07:54.320 than the sheer authority of his voice. According to the 0:07:54.440 --> 0:07:59.679 La Times, Schmids disarmed the assailant. Right, So the story 0:07:59.760 --> 0:08:02.200 is he finds this man stabbing a woman and he 0:08:02.280 --> 0:08:04.960 yells at him, and that his voice is so commanding 0:08:05.000 --> 0:08:10.360 that it disarms this guy. Now, that is I think 0:08:10.840 --> 0:08:14.280 literally what happened in that this guy Schmid's yells at 0:08:14.280 --> 0:08:16.920 this guy and he stops the attack. I think that 0:08:17.000 --> 0:08:20.080 the casual descriptions these sources get tend to minimize a 0:08:20.120 --> 0:08:23.720 crucial detail. And I want to make it very clear 0:08:23.720 --> 0:08:26.120 that that details that the woman dies. Right. This is 0:08:26.160 --> 0:08:28.160 not a case where he saves a life by stopping 0:08:28.200 --> 0:08:30.360 an attack. This is a case where a man stabs 0:08:30.400 --> 0:08:32.840 a woman to death, probably in a fit of rage, 0:08:32.920 --> 0:08:34.800 and then someone yells at him and he realizes what 0:08:34.840 --> 0:08:37.000 he's done and he stops. Right, He doesn't. He doesn't 0:08:37.040 --> 0:08:39.800 commit a spree killing, because most killers aren't spree killers. 0:08:39.880 --> 0:08:40.080 Right. 0:08:40.320 --> 0:08:43.199 He murders this woman for some specific reason, and then 0:08:43.200 --> 0:08:45.280 someone yells at him and he realizes, Oh my god, 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:49.840 what have I done? Right, He says, Hey, don't stab 0:08:49.880 --> 0:08:50.360 that lady. 0:08:50.400 --> 0:08:51.600 He knock it off. 0:08:51.800 --> 0:08:56.240 Knock it off, Hey, knock it off. You you crazy kids. 0:08:56.240 --> 0:09:01.240 Hey that's enough, She's not enough. You did it again. 0:09:01.760 --> 0:09:03.800 I'm not saying he didn't do anything bad, but like 0:09:03.840 --> 0:09:05.800 you should. In fact, if you see someone getting in 0:09:06.280 --> 0:09:08.200 stabbed at least yell at the stabber. 0:09:08.480 --> 0:09:10.000 Sure you know at least you can do. 0:09:10.440 --> 0:09:13.000 But it's framed us like he disarmed this man, and 0:09:13.040 --> 0:09:14.959 I really don't think that's exactly exactly. 0:09:14.960 --> 0:09:18.439 They didn't talk about the thirty seconds he spent watching 0:09:18.440 --> 0:09:20.640 it happen and then was like, all right. 0:09:20.679 --> 0:09:25.760 Buddy tweaking his nipples. Yeah. Well, it's also the thing 0:09:25.800 --> 0:09:27.800 that's really weird because I will I'll shit on him 0:09:27.800 --> 0:09:30.040 for everything, but this isn't a bad thing. But the 0:09:30.080 --> 0:09:32.600 way the news describes it, they always talk about how 0:09:32.880 --> 0:09:34.600 cool it is that he disarms this guy with his 0:09:35.040 --> 0:09:37.960 voice and then just casually announced, oh, yeah, the lady died, 0:09:38.200 --> 0:09:41.200 Like the La Times just summarizes it this way. Although 0:09:41.240 --> 0:09:44.200 the woman died, Schmid's his reputation as a hero was 0:09:44.240 --> 0:09:47.280 made just like, yeah, she died, but what a cool 0:09:47.320 --> 0:09:51.679 thing this guy got to do. Very funny. I love 0:09:51.720 --> 0:09:53.920 that all of the newspapers write at the same way. 0:09:53.920 --> 0:09:58.000 It's just as afterthought. I find that darkly interesting. 0:09:58.280 --> 0:10:01.520 That is funny. It is it's it's so unremarkable that 0:10:01.920 --> 0:10:05.479 like it only is remarkable. If she lives, it's not remarkable. 0:10:05.480 --> 0:10:07.840 If she dies, is everyone we get that right? 0:10:07.880 --> 0:10:11.720 Stop something? Yeah? Yeah? Or if he's like stabbed multiple people, 0:10:11.800 --> 0:10:14.480 and then you could genuinely say, yeah, maybe he somehow 0:10:14.559 --> 0:10:17.800 stopped more people from getting stabbed. But I'm seeing here 0:10:17.800 --> 0:10:19.760 as she came upon the end of a murder. 0:10:20.280 --> 0:10:22.599 Exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. 0:10:22.160 --> 0:10:25.600 You witnessed the very end of a murder. But I think, 0:10:25.679 --> 0:10:27.360 if I can put my conspiracy hat on, I think 0:10:27.400 --> 0:10:30.559 what's happening here is that, like Schmitz is a pr 0:10:30.679 --> 0:10:33.400 savvy guy. He has a degree of charisma, He knows 0:10:33.400 --> 0:10:36.360 how to spin things, and as soon as he realizes 0:10:36.400 --> 0:10:38.560 what's happened here, like this is too good a story 0:10:38.600 --> 0:10:40.760 to waste, I can really make this work for me. 0:10:41.280 --> 0:10:44.040 And by nineteen sixty four, Schmitz had become one of 0:10:44.080 --> 0:10:47.840 Orange County's leading political lights. He is still working as 0:10:47.880 --> 0:10:51.359 a professor of philosophy and political science at Santa Ana University, 0:10:51.720 --> 0:10:53.720 and he's already he's become very active in the John 0:10:53.760 --> 0:10:56.880 Birch Society. His support for the Carl's Junior Guy and 0:10:56.920 --> 0:10:59.800 several other wealthy conservatives ensured that he had enough donation 0:11:00.120 --> 0:11:03.480 to run his campaign. So Schmidts, who regularly joked that 0:11:03.520 --> 0:11:06.120 he joined the John Birch Society to get moderates to 0:11:06.200 --> 0:11:09.400 vote for him, comes out blazing in this like local 0:11:10.000 --> 0:11:14.680 state Congress election with a raft of absolutely bug fuck 0:11:14.840 --> 0:11:18.720 policy proposals. He wants to ban sex set in public schools. 0:11:19.000 --> 0:11:22.240 He wants to encourage citizens to carry loaded handguns in 0:11:22.360 --> 0:11:25.880 their cars, which the corollary to that is he wants 0:11:25.920 --> 0:11:29.000 citizens to leave loaded handguns in their cars whenever they 0:11:29.080 --> 0:11:33.400 leave their cars. He wants to sell all California state 0:11:33.520 --> 0:11:36.680 universities to private corporations so they can use violence to 0:11:36.720 --> 0:11:39.400 crack down on student protests against Vietnam. That's why he 0:11:39.440 --> 0:11:42.320 wants to privatize colleges so that the corporation can use 0:11:42.720 --> 0:11:46.439 security guards to beat up students. This all occurred during 0:11:46.480 --> 0:11:49.280 a very special time for the United States when the 0:11:49.280 --> 0:11:54.200 most prominent Republican is again Barry Goldwater. Barry is such 0:11:54.200 --> 0:11:57.000 for an idea of how freaked out people are about 0:11:57.000 --> 0:12:00.000 what a fascist this guy is when Goldwater is running 0:12:00.360 --> 0:12:04.040 like is in this campaign. This is lbj's re election campaign, right, 0:12:04.600 --> 0:12:07.000 gold Well not reelection because he was never elected the 0:12:07.000 --> 0:12:08.760 first time. But you get what I'm saying right. LBJ 0:12:08.840 --> 0:12:11.479 has been president a little while since the Kennedy assassination. 0:12:11.880 --> 0:12:14.839 He's running to continue to get to be president, and 0:12:15.200 --> 0:12:20.160 Fidel Castro sends a private letter to LBJ basically saying, hey, man, 0:12:20.800 --> 0:12:23.600 I really want you to win reelection. If you need 0:12:23.640 --> 0:12:26.400 to bomb us a little bit right so you can 0:12:26.400 --> 0:12:29.160 brush up your anti communist credentials for the election, I 0:12:29.280 --> 0:12:31.559 get it. You just give me a heads up before 0:12:31.600 --> 0:12:34.000 you fuck with us, and I won't respond like I 0:12:34.040 --> 0:12:39.520 love you, bro, like good luck. That's it is because 0:12:39.600 --> 0:12:41.760 like Castro is a rational actor. He's like, yeah, man, 0:12:41.760 --> 0:12:44.760 Goldwater my fucking nucas, Like he's this guy might actually 0:12:44.800 --> 0:12:48.640 be crazy. Like Goldwater is the namesake for what's called 0:12:48.640 --> 0:12:51.120 the Goldwater Rule, which is this rule where if you're 0:12:51.160 --> 0:12:54.960 a mental health professional, you cannot diagnose a presidential candidate 0:12:55.120 --> 0:12:57.440 that like you know, isn't coming to you for medical 0:12:57.480 --> 0:12:59.880 help or whatever. Because there were so many people in 0:13:00.080 --> 0:13:03.200 media being like Goldwater may actually be insane. Like that's 0:13:03.200 --> 0:13:06.400 how crazy we think his policies are, and he is. 0:13:06.480 --> 0:13:09.839 It's also worth noting Goldwater a big reason people think 0:13:09.840 --> 0:13:12.880 he's crazy is that he is one of these guys 0:13:12.920 --> 0:13:15.800 like Henry Kissinger, who thinks low yield nukes should be 0:13:15.880 --> 0:13:20.000 used tactically in battlefield situations, like we need we need 0:13:20.000 --> 0:13:22.360 to win this battle in Vietnam. We should drop a 0:13:22.400 --> 0:13:23.240 little nuke on him. 0:13:23.559 --> 0:13:28.600 So Goldwater's rule is you can't diagnose someone running even 0:13:28.600 --> 0:13:32.320 if you're should not absolutely saying insane shit. 0:13:32.880 --> 0:13:35.240 Yeah, you should not use that to diagnose someone with 0:13:35.280 --> 0:13:36.319 a mental health. 0:13:36.040 --> 0:13:40.719 Condition someone else or this candidate, yeah, okay. 0:13:40.480 --> 0:13:44.160 This candidate. Like basically, if someone's running for election, you 0:13:44.160 --> 0:13:47.600 shouldn't say if you haven't like worked on them or whatever, 0:13:47.679 --> 0:13:49.920 and can't. You shouldn't be like, this person has this 0:13:50.000 --> 0:13:50.680 mental illness. 0:13:50.840 --> 0:13:53.200 Right, So we can't say Trump, yeah, as a sociopathic 0:13:53.280 --> 0:13:56.040 narcissist because we don't know clinic Yeah exactly. 0:13:55.800 --> 0:13:58.559 Is yeah, yeah, you're not gonna get. You're not gonna get. 0:13:58.640 --> 0:14:01.880 A psychologist should say that, right, that's the Goldwater rule. 0:14:02.679 --> 0:14:04.640 It's fine for regular people to say, I think that 0:14:04.640 --> 0:14:07.880 guy's a fucking psychopath. Right, I think we've gone Yeah, 0:14:07.920 --> 0:14:08.800 that's probably good. 0:14:09.000 --> 0:14:11.599 Yeah, yeah, we might have jumped the sharkody. So I 0:14:11.640 --> 0:14:12.600 feel like this a few people. 0:14:12.679 --> 0:14:16.960 Yeah, I know it's always debatable, but it tells you 0:14:17.000 --> 0:14:19.560 how crazy people think. Goldwater is. Right, you have a 0:14:19.600 --> 0:14:23.160 whole rule about not declaring presidential candidates crazy because of 0:14:23.200 --> 0:14:26.240 how crazy everyone fact this guy was. Now. Another big 0:14:26.240 --> 0:14:28.240 thing that Goldwater is a proponent of, and this is 0:14:28.280 --> 0:14:30.880 a less controversial thing than the nukes, is the idea 0:14:30.880 --> 0:14:33.360 that positive change for people who aren't white men means 0:14:33.360 --> 0:14:38.000 that society is in collapse. Right, Goldwater opposes the Civil 0:14:38.080 --> 0:14:41.520 Rights Act, as does John Schmidz and the rest of 0:14:41.600 --> 0:14:44.160 Orange County. And this is the beginning of a new era, 0:14:44.600 --> 0:14:47.040 one in which you can't be as racist. 0:14:47.200 --> 0:14:47.360 Right. 0:14:47.400 --> 0:14:50.200 You can't say I don't want the Civil Rights Act 0:14:50.240 --> 0:14:51.440 because I hate black people. 0:14:51.560 --> 0:14:51.720 Right. 0:14:51.960 --> 0:14:54.680 Instead, you have to say, I love everybody, but my 0:14:54.840 --> 0:14:57.520 property rights are more important than that right. And if 0:14:57.520 --> 0:15:00.360 you're saying we have to integrate the school like private school, 0:15:00.400 --> 0:15:03.040 so you're saying private schools can't be whites only, that's 0:15:03.080 --> 0:15:05.520 bad for property rights. Or if you're saying I have 0:15:05.560 --> 0:15:08.880 to serve black people at my restaurant, that's a violation 0:15:08.960 --> 0:15:11.400 of property rights. And so I don't oppose the Civil 0:15:11.480 --> 0:15:14.160 Rights Act because I'm racist. I oppose it because it's 0:15:14.200 --> 0:15:16.880 a violation of property rights. And that's the most important 0:15:16.880 --> 0:15:20.120 thing in the world. Yeah, this all comes down to 0:15:20.240 --> 0:15:21.800 like fair housing, right. 0:15:22.280 --> 0:15:27.000 Yes, exactly, and schooling and their education yep, access. I mean, 0:15:27.120 --> 0:15:29.720 but again it's sort of what's running cover for what 0:15:29.920 --> 0:15:33.920 Your libertarianism running cover for your racism, and then your 0:15:34.000 --> 0:15:37.080 religion running cover for all of it, like just like 0:15:37.160 --> 0:15:38.200 blanketing the whole thing. 0:15:39.240 --> 0:15:41.520 Yeah, And this kind of comes to a head in 0:15:41.560 --> 0:15:46.240 California politics in nineteen sixty four because there's this proposition 0:15:47.080 --> 0:15:51.240 backed by the California Real Estate Association to rescind the 0:15:51.320 --> 0:15:53.520 Rumford Act, which is a state law that makes it 0:15:53.560 --> 0:15:59.360 illegal to discriminate housing based on race, right, And the 0:15:59.400 --> 0:16:01.360 proposition to like say no, we want to be able 0:16:01.400 --> 0:16:04.640 to be racist in who we let buy houses places 0:16:04.880 --> 0:16:07.600 is obviously like Orange County had kept black people out 0:16:07.640 --> 0:16:10.880 for a long time by doing shit like that. So 0:16:10.960 --> 0:16:14.800 the mobilization for Prop. Fourteen to let people discriminate when 0:16:14.840 --> 0:16:18.800 they sell houses and shit, that's hugely centered around Orange County. 0:16:18.840 --> 0:16:22.960 And I'm going to quote from the book Suburban Warriors here. Indeed, 0:16:23.040 --> 0:16:26.440 one activist Tom Rogers of San Juan Capistrano, who served 0:16:26.440 --> 0:16:29.520 as the campaign finance manager for John Schmitz's state Senate 0:16:29.560 --> 0:16:32.440 run in nineteen sixty four, and who shortly afterwards served 0:16:32.440 --> 0:16:35.400 as co editor of that Catholic traditionalist paper, The Wanderer, 0:16:35.680 --> 0:16:38.280 asserted years later that for him and many others, Proposition 0:16:38.400 --> 0:16:41.600 fourteen was what the movement was all about. Goldwater's frequent 0:16:41.640 --> 0:16:44.800 references of freedom of association, his belief that prejudice is 0:16:44.840 --> 0:16:47.920 the immoral issue that cannot be legislated, and his strong 0:16:47.960 --> 0:16:50.480 advocacy of property rights placed him firmly on the side 0:16:50.480 --> 0:16:54.720 of those opposing the Rumford Act. Moreover, Goldwater's determination to 0:16:54.720 --> 0:16:57.720 fight lawlessness, his references to rising crime rates, and his 0:16:57.760 --> 0:17:00.720 linkage of crime to lawlessness of other sorts a reference 0:17:00.760 --> 0:17:02.960 to the civil rights and students movements, appealed to the 0:17:03.040 --> 0:17:07.760 white middle classes in Orange County. So Goldwater does not 0:17:07.920 --> 0:17:11.240 succeed in his dream of becoming the president. But Schmidtz 0:17:11.480 --> 0:17:16.760 does get elected to the California State Senate representing Orange County, 0:17:16.760 --> 0:17:18.800 and he is the first member of the John Birch 0:17:18.880 --> 0:17:22.720 Society to make it into local California politics. He immediately 0:17:22.720 --> 0:17:26.480 gets to work being the loudest, craziest asshole in the Capitol. 0:17:26.800 --> 0:17:29.520 The first full year that he served, nineteen sixty five, 0:17:29.680 --> 0:17:32.280 is the year of the Watts riots. Now, if you 0:17:32.320 --> 0:17:36.399 know anything about anything, you know that this becomes like 0:17:36.440 --> 0:17:40.359 a massive political issue for the right in California. His 0:17:40.400 --> 0:17:44.080 attitude is not, well, this was a response to generations 0:17:44.160 --> 0:17:47.040 of abuse by the local government and by the police. 0:17:47.280 --> 0:17:51.280 This was a communist operation. He's so incensed that he 0:17:51.359 --> 0:17:54.480 sponsors a bill to investigate the backgrounds of every public 0:17:54.520 --> 0:17:57.919 school teacher in the state for communist affiliations. Like his 0:17:58.000 --> 0:18:00.479 response to the Watts riots is we need to have 0:18:00.560 --> 0:18:04.080 build a CIA basically to go after school teachers and 0:18:04.119 --> 0:18:07.240 make sure they're not communists. That's clearly what this case is. 0:18:08.400 --> 0:18:12.600 John develops. Yeah, he is just a maniac. Now, what's interesting, 0:18:12.640 --> 0:18:15.880 We've been talking a lot about how Reagan is such 0:18:15.880 --> 0:18:19.640 an important development for like the far right getting increasingly 0:18:19.680 --> 0:18:24.040 into legitimate conservative politics in this country. John Schmiz hates Reagan, 0:18:24.400 --> 0:18:27.040 so do a lot of Birchers, because they see Reagan 0:18:27.920 --> 0:18:31.200 as a compromiser right, and a compromiser is the same 0:18:31.359 --> 0:18:35.920 as a communist sympathizer. Schmidz is the only Republican Senate 0:18:36.000 --> 0:18:40.280 member who votes down Governor Reagan's nineteen sixty seven tax program, 0:18:40.520 --> 0:18:42.320 and his issue is that as much as they'd cut 0:18:42.440 --> 0:18:44.960 taxes are still too high, and I'm going to quote 0:18:45.000 --> 0:18:48.480 next from an article on cafe dot com by David Kerlander. 0:18:49.160 --> 0:18:51.679 Over the next three years, Schmiz took many, often lonely, 0:18:51.760 --> 0:18:55.520 far right stands. He argued for eliminating state income taxes altogether. 0:18:55.760 --> 0:18:58.399 He sponsored a bill to repeal fair housing laws. He 0:18:58.520 --> 0:19:00.359 argued that there should be no sex at you education 0:19:00.440 --> 0:19:03.600 in public schools. He led an successful effort to censure 0:19:03.720 --> 0:19:07.400 University of California, Berkeley for allowing black panther leader Eldridge 0:19:07.440 --> 0:19:10.440 Cleaver to speak on campus. He fiercely spoke out against 0:19:10.480 --> 0:19:14.920 abortion in women's rights. He also continued to buck fellow 0:19:14.920 --> 0:19:18.240 conservative leaders. Schmids declined to endorse a presidential candidate in 0:19:18.320 --> 0:19:20.960 nineteen sixty eight, telling the press, George Wallace is too 0:19:21.040 --> 0:19:23.800 moderate for me. Hubert Humphrey is taking a dive, and 0:19:23.880 --> 0:19:26.720 if I endorsed Richard Nixon, he might repudiate it the 0:19:26.760 --> 0:19:30.080 next day. Like again, George Wallace is like the guy 0:19:30.119 --> 0:19:33.720 who became famous for loving segregation as a governor of Alabama. 0:19:33.760 --> 0:19:35.879 But that's what they want, I mean, that's effectively what 0:19:35.960 --> 0:19:36.679 this sounds like. 0:19:36.760 --> 0:19:36.920 Right. 0:19:36.960 --> 0:19:39.280 They can't They've never gotten over it. And here's what 0:19:39.320 --> 0:19:43.200 I've realized. Now we're in part two, could we say, 0:19:43.240 --> 0:19:45.800 as a native Californian myself, I mean not like you know, 0:19:45.920 --> 0:19:48.200 native to the land, but someone who's born and raised 0:19:48.200 --> 0:19:51.840 in California obviously nor cal for life, but that these 0:19:51.880 --> 0:19:56.280 are a kind of transplants that ultimately the OC is 0:19:56.320 --> 0:20:00.440 a blight, is an anomaly, that it's not really California. 0:20:02.200 --> 0:20:05.560 They're all from somewhere else. It's it can me disign 0:20:05.920 --> 0:20:07.320 the OC, is what I want to know. 0:20:08.840 --> 0:20:12.400 I feel like you can't, because I think a crucial 0:20:12.480 --> 0:20:17.080 aspect of Californian culture, at least over the last going 0:20:17.119 --> 0:20:21.359 back two hundred years or so, is the gold Rush mentality. Yeah, 0:20:21.400 --> 0:20:23.680 the idea that the culture in this area, and this 0:20:23.720 --> 0:20:25.280 is big thing in North cal too, right, it's a 0:20:25.280 --> 0:20:28.479 big part of northern California San Francisco culture is like 0:20:29.000 --> 0:20:31.760 a bunch of the people who live here now are 0:20:31.800 --> 0:20:34.159 descendants of folks who rushed here to try to grab 0:20:34.200 --> 0:20:36.880 a bunch of money from a social phenomenon that had 0:20:37.080 --> 0:20:40.280 a ticking time frame to it, right, right, These upper 0:20:40.320 --> 0:20:43.720 middle class and rich people who fill out the OC, 0:20:44.000 --> 0:20:46.800 and who are you know, these kind of fascist maniacs 0:20:47.119 --> 0:20:49.679 running the defense industry. That's a gold rush. That is, 0:20:49.920 --> 0:20:52.200 one day there's nothing, the next there's all the money 0:20:52.200 --> 0:20:53.960 in the fucking world, and you get a sprint over 0:20:53.960 --> 0:20:56.200 there as fast as you fucking can to pick it up. 0:20:56.760 --> 0:20:59.000 Totally, It just depends on the industry. Like Silicon Valley 0:20:59.080 --> 0:20:59.880 and the dot com. 0:21:00.080 --> 0:21:03.240 Coon Valley is another gold rush, righty, same idea, same 0:21:03.320 --> 0:21:05.800 cultural and so is the pod industry as a matter 0:21:05.880 --> 0:21:06.280 of fact. 0:21:06.480 --> 0:21:08.480