Speaker 1: Cool Media. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted
Speaker 1: to let you know this is a compilation episode. So
Speaker 1: every episode of the week that just happened is here
Speaker 1: in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for
Speaker 1: you to listen to in a long stretch if you want.
Speaker 1: If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
Speaker 1: you can make your own decisions. Welcome back to It
Speaker 1: could Happen here, a podcast about it happening here, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, these days normally about the fact that it's
Speaker 1: happening here, but today we're here to talk about a
Speaker 1: show where it happens somewhere else, a place that people
Speaker 1: aren't yet but may one day be in the future.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the Martian Revolution, with the great Mike
Speaker 1: Duncan of the Revolutions podcast Mia Wong joining me on
Speaker 1: this interview. Welcome to the show, Mike, Thank you very
Speaker 1: much for having me. So let's talk about this because
Speaker 1: you know, I've kept up and been listen listening to
Speaker 1: Revolutions for years, and I started seeing messages earlier this
Speaker 1: year that, like Mike Duncan is doing this fictional revolution
Speaker 1: podcast on the Martian Revolution, and it seems to map
Speaker 1: really really closely a lot of stuff that's happening right
Speaker 1: now in the United States. And I'm wondering, kind of
Speaker 1: to what extent did you anticipate that being an initial
Speaker 1: reaction to this when you started really finally laying down
Speaker 1: like the text for these episodes.
Speaker 2: I did not expect that at all, not at all.
Speaker 2: What has been happening to me has been one of
Speaker 2: the most surreal six months of my life in terms
Speaker 2: of what I am writing and dropping out into the world.
Speaker 2: And then I turn on the news three weeks later,
Speaker 2: four weeks later, and I'm just watching exactly what I
Speaker 2: wrote down in the show come to life. It is
Speaker 2: horrifying and I hate it. Yeah, welcome to the club.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I mean, you guys have to change in
Speaker 2: the name of your show. Is that there's no good
Speaker 2: about it, man, We're just here. It's just going.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know, I've had the notion to do this Martian
Speaker 2: Revolution series for years, Like I think I first came
Speaker 2: up with it back during like the French Revolution days
Speaker 2: is when I was like, you know, it would be
Speaker 2: a really cool thing to do it's like, once I've
Speaker 2: got all these under my belt, just like make up
Speaker 2: a fictional revolution that kind of follows along like many
Speaker 2: of the plot points of previous revolutions. And so this
Speaker 2: has been kind of like years in the making and
Speaker 2: a lot of the sort of like plot points and
Speaker 2: ideas that I wanted to do. You know, I wanted
Speaker 2: it to be like a monopoly corporation, because I also
Speaker 2: wanted to do some like social commentary and like what
Speaker 2: are the issues that we're kind of dealing with right now?
Speaker 2: And you know, and then I'm like, Okay, then there's
Speaker 2: this thing called the New Protocols that is going to
Speaker 2: you know, help jump start the revolution. And this is
Speaker 2: somebody coming in and just you know, implementing whole new
Speaker 2: software programs and hardware programs without any care for like
Speaker 2: what it does to people. Then there's mass layoffs that
Speaker 2: are a part of this. And then deportations are you know,
Speaker 2: like all a part of the story of how the
Speaker 2: Martian Revolution gets going. And you know, this stuff was
Speaker 2: plotted out in October. And I got to tell you, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe I was naive, maybe I had my head in
Speaker 2: the sand. I thought she was gonna win yeah, man,
Speaker 2: Like I thought Harris was gonna win the election. That's
Speaker 2: where I that's where my head was at in September
Speaker 2: and October, going into November. I was like, it'll be close.
Speaker 2: Of course it will. It's a toss up, but I
Speaker 2: think she'll pull it out in the end. It sure
Speaker 2: feels like it because they were running a terrible campaign
Speaker 2: and like they didn't have any field operations, and like
Speaker 2: the whole thing just kind of seemed like she was
Speaker 2: going to win. So for Trump to win and then
Speaker 2: start doing all of these things that were just supposed
Speaker 2: to be fictional plot points, Oh they were references. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Like now I'm just like Jesus Christ, this this is terrible.
Speaker 1: Well, that's what's so so interesting is because yeah, so
Speaker 1: much of so much of the initial like as you
Speaker 1: imagine it, the opening stages of like the Martian Revolution
Speaker 1: in your series are based on like a guy who
Speaker 1: is a quote unquote like partly like an auto dite act, right,
Speaker 1: like a dude who is raised believing that his ideas
Speaker 1: are good because they're his ideas, and yet he can
Speaker 1: kind of jump into any field of human endeavor and
Speaker 1: make things work better than the people who have been
Speaker 1: studying and working in that field for their entire lives,
Speaker 1: and he just starts changing everything based on his whims. Now,
Speaker 1: you don't have him staying up until four in the
Speaker 1: morning on ketamine benders and then tweeting out his ideas
Speaker 1: for how to change the government. But I guess I'd say,
Speaker 1: like that's the one the one thing that doesn't map
Speaker 1: onto right now. And I think this is this almost
Speaker 1: just goes inherently with the act of crafting fiction. Even
Speaker 1: your bad guys are a lot more sympathetic than our
Speaker 1: current ones. Yeah, which I think is to your credit.
Speaker 1: But like I've enjoyed the degree to which the decisions
Speaker 1: that are being made that are kind of making this
Speaker 1: Martian Revolution inevitable are the kind of decisions that you
Speaker 1: make when you've been raised in these sorts of bubbles
Speaker 1: where you were expected to just sort of be able
Speaker 1: to run things, because like that's the that's the strata
Speaker 1: that you come from, and it maps directly to like
Speaker 1: what we're seeing right now with these Silicon Valley guys
Speaker 1: who have spent the last few decades getting impossible amounts
Speaker 1: of money and having that convinced them that they know
Speaker 1: how to do everything, but it also maps back to
Speaker 1: like Versailles.
Speaker 2: I find that compelling. Yeah, and you know the Timothy
Speaker 2: Werner character, he's like sort of the figure against whom
Speaker 2: the revolution is going to start. Yeah, after he comes
Speaker 2: in and starts doing all this stuff, like the number one.
Speaker 2: Of course, as I'm releasing this, people are just like,
Speaker 2: this is just a cardboard cutout of Elon Musk, right,
Speaker 2: and which I would point out the first thing is like,
Speaker 2: actually no, because I very specifically wrote it so he
Speaker 2: was a good husband and father. Yes, it's it's obviously not.
Speaker 2: It's obviously not Elan Musk because he loves his kids.
Speaker 2: He's allowed to be in the same room as all
Speaker 2: of them. Yeah yeah, and they like they get along
Speaker 2: great and everything. Yeah, so obviously it's not. But honest
Speaker 2: to God, like it wasn't meant to be just must
Speaker 2: but it was meant to be those tech guys, right,
Speaker 2: Like this is meant to be thinking about the guys
Speaker 2: who come in and they're like, we're gonna we're gonna
Speaker 2: move fast and break things right, and then what they
Speaker 2: break is like one hundred and twenty years of like
Speaker 2: labor law, and that's the only thing that is actually
Speaker 2: being broken here, like this is what you know what
Speaker 2: uber is, and all of those kinds of like all
Speaker 2: of that stuff that came at us in the last
Speaker 2: like ten or fifteen years. And they think that yes,
Speaker 2: because they can code well, or because they have this
Speaker 2: one ability to like you know, market something in an
Speaker 2: effective way, that that means that they are brilliant and
Speaker 2: can do everything and everywhere for everybody, and like we're
Speaker 2: going to reinvent this and we're going to reinvent that.
Speaker 2: But they have no idea what they're doing or what
Speaker 2: they're talking about. And you run into these people on
Speaker 2: Twitter all the time, this phenomenon of people being good
Speaker 2: in one area, yes, and then becoming sort of all
Speaker 2: purpose general knowledge experts when it's like you don't have
Speaker 2: any idea what you're talking about. And so the line
Speaker 2: there's a line that's in there where it's like we're Werner.
Speaker 2: The way that he thought is I'm smart, Therefore the
Speaker 2: ideas I have must be smart. Yes, And that is
Speaker 2: something that's not about Musk. That's about like just people
Speaker 2: I run into on Twitter all the time. That's a
Speaker 2: phenomena that's a generalizable phenomenon.
Speaker 1: No, I mean, yeah, We talk about that constantly on
Speaker 1: the show, like we just did that four parterre on
Speaker 1: the Zizians that who come out of like the rationalist
Speaker 1: Bay Area tech industry cult, which is both influential that
Speaker 1: a lot of the people who wound up working at
Speaker 1: DOZE and just to the general tech mindset, and it
Speaker 1: is it's the human embodiment of that idea that like, well,
Speaker 1: I know it a code, coding's difficult. That means I'm smart.
Speaker 1: This must mean I know how to run the schools, right.
Speaker 1: This must mean I know how to replace medicare, right, yep.
Speaker 1: And it's this kind of like reasoning from first principles
Speaker 1: without ever actually like having to sit face to face
Speaker 1: with the consequences of your decisions. And I think you
Speaker 1: do a great job of showing how that cascades into
Speaker 1: a calamity and in a way that feels very realistic,
Speaker 1: even though we're talking about Mars and there's also like
Speaker 1: gravity generators in the life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's and what you know, what
Speaker 2: Werner does here is so much of what Dose basically
Speaker 2: started doing. When they start going into these systems, they
Speaker 2: start changing coach, they have no idea what are the
Speaker 2: key things that are actually underpinning our society. The most
Speaker 2: recent thing I saw that made me think of this
Speaker 2: is like they're shutting down all the regional offices of
Speaker 2: the Social Security Administration and like all communications are now
Speaker 2: going to be run through Twitter, right. And one of
Speaker 2: Timothy Werner's things is the centralization of all decision making
Speaker 2: and the centralization of really everything. And in his mind,
Speaker 2: it would be more efficient if the company just had
Speaker 2: one brain and that was his brain, and every decision
Speaker 2: is made by the one brain. And so he's got
Speaker 2: all this stuff and he's got to make all these decisions.
Speaker 2: Except that is that's crazy. That is not actually how
Speaker 2: you can run anything, and it just creates all this
Speaker 2: like basically everybody, I forget if I wrote this in
Speaker 2: I know, I definitely did that. Like the dreaded like
Speaker 2: request pending screen that YE started getting. They would submit,
Speaker 2: they would submit stuff like a fuel requisition order, and
Speaker 2: it would say request pending, and like request pending would
Speaker 2: never go away, it would just that's what it would say.
Speaker 2: And then you look at what they're doing now and
Speaker 2: that they are trying to centralize everything that it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's a generalized authoritarian power grab. But you know they are,
Speaker 2: they are doing these things. Yeah.
Speaker 4: One of the things that it reminds me the most of,
Speaker 4: like from the other revolutions is I immediately went, wait, this
Speaker 4: is our Nicholas, where you know, you have less of
Speaker 4: the reform package. We're like, yeah, like the way that
Speaker 4: all of the power gets concentrated and centralized and there's
Speaker 4: one guy who's a micromanager and then can't do it
Speaker 4: because like no human could possibly have done it.
Speaker 2: But they're not.
Speaker 4: They're you know, because of just there they're sort of
Speaker 4: affective power and the way that they think about micromagic
Speaker 4: anything they're incapable of, like letting their subordinates do things.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It also sc with the loves his kid's part. Yeah, well,
Speaker 2: I mean that's the thing is like everything that's in
Speaker 2: the show also is like basically something that comes from history, right, like,
Speaker 2: and I am trying to do that and it is
Speaker 2: it is something that you know, like Charles the First,
Speaker 2: Louis sixteenth Zar Nicholas, these guys are all great family men.
Speaker 2: Their kids love them and they love their kids, right.
Speaker 2: Like one of the reasons the French Revolution happened is
Speaker 2: because Louis's son died like on the eve of the
Speaker 2: Estates General, and he was just not there because his
Speaker 2: son had just died. That's a real thing that happened.
Speaker 2: And the other stuff is like that sort of centralization
Speaker 2: of power is a lot like what I was trying
Speaker 2: to get at. There was actually, like the reforms that
Speaker 2: went in for the European colonial powers after the Seven
Speaker 2: Years War in the Anglo colonies and the Spanish colonies
Speaker 2: and the French colonies, all of those governments sort of
Speaker 2: undertook a reorganization of their colonial structures after the Seven
Speaker 2: Years War. It kind of like reshuffled who had what territory,
Speaker 2: and all of those moves were about sort of an
Speaker 2: in increasing presence of the metropol in colonial life. And
Speaker 2: this is what triggers, you know, the American Revolution, because
Speaker 2: there was going to be like two more customs officials
Speaker 2: in Boston Harbor and so like we went into refolt
Speaker 2: about this. Yeah, but this is also true of like
Speaker 2: the Bourbon reforms in Spanish America. Is that kind of
Speaker 2: like centralization of a community of colonies that had grown
Speaker 2: very used to managing their own affairs, and so they're
Speaker 2: coming in and saying, well, yeah, this is ours and
Speaker 2: we here on Earth should be making these decisions for
Speaker 2: you Martians, and the Martians were like, well, we've been
Speaker 2: making these decisions for ourselves for like seventy years now.
Speaker 2: That's where that stuff is coming from. And then history
Speaker 2: is always the place that I can point to and
Speaker 2: then I have to watch it also on the TV.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I've had that same experience of like, I'm
Speaker 1: writing out kind of like this possible, you know, this
Speaker 1: story about what a future conflict is civil conflict in
Speaker 1: the US might look like, and I'm I'm just taking
Speaker 1: from stuff that happened in the last like ten years
Speaker 1: in a lot of cases that I saw in different countries,
Speaker 1: and people are like, how, you know, how did you
Speaker 1: like anticipate this, And my answer is like, I didn't.
Speaker 1: This is just stuff that happens all the time, right,
Speaker 1: because people don't learn the maactory as a rule, Like,
Speaker 1: no one's ever learned a lesson from history. Is the
Speaker 1: thing I've kept repeating to people over the last few
Speaker 1: years as I continue to fail to learn lessons from history.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we all do and no, but like one of
Speaker 2: the things that was getting kicked around the other day
Speaker 2: was like, had I came to this point where Werner
Speaker 2: is going to start firing people? He's going to start
Speaker 2: firing people because he's changed the metrics for how your
Speaker 2: employment status is being rated, and he's firing just people
Speaker 2: essentially randomly, like you are firing the head of this
Speaker 2: department and now that department can't run anymore. But he's like,
Speaker 2: it'll be more efficient. And when I was writing it,
Speaker 2: it was originally supposed to be like a kind of
Speaker 2: a more dramatic ten percent across the board layoff, And
Speaker 2: as I got closer to actually trying to type that
Speaker 2: up and write it down, I was like, this doesn't
Speaker 2: actually feel believable to me, Like people are going to
Speaker 2: really push back, and I mean this sincerely, like people
Speaker 2: are going to push back that nobody would be so
Speaker 2: stupid as to just across the board to a ten
Speaker 2: percent layoff of something so critical, as you know, Mars
Speaker 2: is to Earth, because in the story, Mars is absolutely
Speaker 2: critical to how Earth is able to function with the
Speaker 2: resource that they're able to get from there. And so
Speaker 2: I changed it around and actually look to like the
Speaker 2: sullen prescriptions from Roman history to kind of give it
Speaker 2: a different take where really it was like you woke
Speaker 2: up every day and there was like fifteen more names
Speaker 2: on the list, one hundred more names on the list,
Speaker 2: and there was something equally sort of dramatic and cool
Speaker 2: about that without this like unbelievable, you know, ten percent
Speaker 2: across the board cut And I wrote a paragraph in
Speaker 2: there being like I know that people are going to
Speaker 2: think that this is like unrealistic, but you just have
Speaker 2: to understand that, like throughout history we have seen these things,
Speaker 2: like people do stupid stuff and they stubbornly cling to
Speaker 2: it all the time because that is something that happens,
Speaker 2: and life as we know it is actually less. Like
Speaker 2: if I wrote up what was happening right now, like
Speaker 2: if I was just got like a window into an
Speaker 2: alternate world and we're living in a different world where
Speaker 2: Trump loss and I brought all this stuff back, there'd
Speaker 2: be like this is implausible, Like this is crazy. They
Speaker 2: would never be allowed to get away with that. They
Speaker 2: would never be allowed to do that. They would never
Speaker 2: be so stupid as to blow up the global economy
Speaker 2: with a bunch of tariffs that make no sense to anyone.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't want the dollar is their reserve currency.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, none of nothing that is happening right now
Speaker 2: is plausible in the in a storytelling in a fictional
Speaker 2: storytelling setting. Yeah, yeah, you know this.
Speaker 4: This this also gets something that I've been saying on
Speaker 4: this show that I want I want to get your
Speaker 4: take on, which is, like, you know, one of the
Speaker 4: things that you you wrote about in your sort of
Speaker 4: like I guess like recap series of your experience going
Speaker 4: through the revolutions was about like how how much of
Speaker 4: the stuff is driven by like the great idiots of
Speaker 4: history and my god, Elon Muskins Trump looked to me
Speaker 4: like two of the gritty dyscy history and that doesn't
Speaker 4: like guarantee that it'll happen, but like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're there. The great idiot theory of revolutions is
Speaker 2: a very simple thing, which is just saying that it's
Speaker 2: revolutions don't happen because some tyrant is in power and
Speaker 2: they are intolerably oppressing their people, like people have been
Speaker 2: intolerably oppressed for a long time. And like Trotsky's got
Speaker 2: this quote that is, if peasant discontentment was the cause
Speaker 2: of revolution, then there would be a revolution happening every
Speaker 2: single day because the peasants are always discontented. Right, So
Speaker 2: what it takes to really have a revolution is for
Speaker 2: somebody in power to be kind of incompetent and to
Speaker 2: start doing stupid things that allow the situation to get
Speaker 2: out of hand and on top of that, really piss
Speaker 2: off the other elites around them, because it's the mismanagement
Speaker 2: of the state that allows the elites that are kind
Speaker 2: of necessary for a full blown revolution, Like you need
Speaker 2: their resources, and you need their money, and you need
Speaker 2: them being close to a position of power to be
Speaker 2: able to pop whoever's in there at the time. And
Speaker 2: you've got to be pretty in competent to like wreck
Speaker 2: an elite consensus, right, Like that's that is in and
Speaker 2: of itself catastrophically stupid if you're trying to stay in power. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and so yes, the great idiot theory is getting quite
Speaker 2: a workout lately.
Speaker 4: That's actually something else that I wanted to ask you
Speaker 4: about in terms of like you see this in terms
Speaker 4: of Mabel Door, right, where Mabel Door is this kind
Speaker 4: of example of like the sort of local I said,
Speaker 4: local colonial elite to some extent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I almost saw her as like, yeah, a lot
Speaker 1: of these kind of American revolutionary figures right where you
Speaker 1: have this person who holds a fairly high position in
Speaker 1: the colonial state as a result of you know, their
Speaker 1: birth and the family they come into, but also is
Speaker 1: identifies more as a member of that state, of the
Speaker 1: colony than of the colonizing state.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think this is something this is a
Speaker 4: part of the revolutionary process that I think is really
Speaker 4: really badly understood on the left in terms of, in
Speaker 4: a lot of ways, the necessity of parts of this
Speaker 4: elite flipping and like the other the example I think
Speaker 4: most people kind of are more familiar with is fleepygalite
Speaker 4: like the Duke de orlone like funding a bunch of
Speaker 4: these sort of revolutionary groups that eventually kind of like
Speaker 4: get out of his control. But can you talk a
Speaker 4: bit more about sort of the role of these sort
Speaker 4: of like elite defections and how they end up sort
Speaker 4: of funding and enabling these revolutionary movements.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's a mix of things, and I
Speaker 2: mean you got it. Like Mabel Door is meant to
Speaker 2: be sort of the colonial elite, and she's also meant
Speaker 2: to be sort of the liberal nobility in lots of
Speaker 2: different revolutionary settings, and she is doing that like and
Speaker 2: when she is like when I talk about her, like
Speaker 2: funding the Society of Martians and like funding all these
Speaker 2: like philanthropic you know, enterprises to help Martians. Like that's
Speaker 2: a lot of philip a galatae like straight up, Like
Speaker 2: that's what the Duke Doorleon was doing in you know,
Speaker 2: seventeen eighty six, eighty seven, and eighty nine. And so
Speaker 2: that's the role that she's playing. But you know, if
Speaker 2: the elites are unified, it is very difficult for any
Speaker 2: kind of like peasant or worker uprising to actually get
Speaker 2: traction and succeed in overthrowing the state. Like peasant insurrections
Speaker 2: have happened throughout history without any sort of elite support.
Speaker 2: They have often accomplished great things. But when you think
Speaker 2: about the great revolutions in history, there really have always
Speaker 2: been people in the inner corridors of power who are
Speaker 2: ready to get rid of whoever the sovereign is in
Speaker 2: that moment. And you know, you can advance all the
Speaker 2: way to the Russian Revolution, and this is you know,
Speaker 2: this is the prototypical like the workers have risen up
Speaker 2: and the army is mutinying, and it is the people
Speaker 2: who overthrow this are and what that story misses is
Speaker 2: all of the people, even inside the Romanov family itself,
Speaker 2: who are like so fed up with what Nicholas and
Speaker 2: Alexander are doing that they're just like, we don't know
Speaker 2: what to do anymore. But like he's, yeah, I guess
Speaker 2: he's got to go, you know, Like we can't get
Speaker 2: him to see reason, we can't get him to change course,
Speaker 2: we can't get him to do anything. Like the situation
Speaker 2: is completely out of hand and without those people leaning
Speaker 2: on Nicholas to force his abdication and also to say like,
Speaker 2: we're not going to back you up. If you try
Speaker 2: to bring the hammer down on all these people, then
Speaker 2: that's when sovereigns are actually overthrown.
Speaker 1: Yes, And I love that you bring that up because
Speaker 1: it gets to the failure to see that. And this
Speaker 1: is especially common with people who kind of idolize the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen revolution, but it's certainly not limited to that.
Speaker 1: I mean, in every revolution, you have people who are
Speaker 1: fans of that revolution or who see it as a
Speaker 1: model for what they want to do, and also ignore
Speaker 1: the realities on the ground that made it possible. I
Speaker 1: think one of my favorite examples is the quote that
Speaker 1: like you can't dismantle the master's house with the master's tools.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know.
Speaker 1: In those pictures of the nineteen seventeen revolution, I see
Speaker 1: a lot of mosins that used to be property of
Speaker 1: the czar, right, Like it happens all the time, And
Speaker 1: I think that we always need to be cautious of
Speaker 1: like seeing just what we want to see revolutionary history
Speaker 1: as opposed to seeing what was there.
Speaker 2: And the thing is is Lenin understood this right like
Speaker 2: Lenin understood what the game was and he understood what
Speaker 2: was going on. And you don't have to, like, if
Speaker 2: you're a revolutionary and you're sympathetic to the communists in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventeen, you don't have to say, oh, well, the
Speaker 2: elites were necessary for this first revolution and we need
Speaker 2: you know, we need a break inside the ruling class.
Speaker 2: We need divisions inside the ruling class. That doesn't mean
Speaker 2: you have to say and what those people want out
Speaker 2: of overthrowing the czar is what we want and what
Speaker 2: we're going to accept, right you know, obviously, like the
Speaker 2: cousins of the of Zar Nicholas and the people who
Speaker 2: are in those inner circles of power, they wanted him
Speaker 2: out of there just so they could run the empire
Speaker 2: a little bit better. They were frustrated with how poorly
Speaker 2: the empire was being run. They didn't want a social revolution,
Speaker 2: but if you're going to take down that whole system,
Speaker 2: creating a destabilization event at the very top is necessary.
Speaker 2: But you don't have to support the ultimate aims of
Speaker 2: those people. It's just it's an ingredient. And this is
Speaker 2: and you see this in the course of revolutions, and
Speaker 2: you see this in nineteen seventeen, You see this seventeen
Speaker 2: eighty nine, and then seventeen ninety two, where there is
Speaker 2: that first wave of sort of revolution that overthrows the sovereign,
Speaker 2: and then there is a second wave that overthrows the
Speaker 2: people who did it first. And so you know, you
Speaker 2: can hold out hope for you know, getting the job
Speaker 2: done without thinking that elites do play some role in all.
Speaker 1: Of that, right, Yeah, Yeah, I think that's a great point.
Speaker 4: One of the things that I wanted to ask you
Speaker 4: about sort of shifting gears a little bit, was about
Speaker 4: how you were thinking about the deportations when you were
Speaker 4: writing it, and how you were thinking about the way
Speaker 4: that kind of this like generalized antideportation organizing like turns
Speaker 4: into that, and the sort of mutual aid networks that
Speaker 4: the Society Martians are doing like directly turns into this thing.
Speaker 4: And that's just something that I don't know, it feels
Speaker 4: very prescients in ways, even though it was written out
Speaker 4: before a lot of this stuff happens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the deportation stuff is just because of my own
Speaker 2: personal political commitments over the course of my adult life, right,
Speaker 2: which is that we have an insanely cruel immigration system
Speaker 2: in this country, you know, and and you know, we
Speaker 2: they say like, oh, we've got this like open borders,
Speaker 2: Like we do not have open borders. It is actually
Speaker 2: really really hard to like navigate your way properly through
Speaker 2: the American immigration system. That's true. The system itself is broken.
Speaker 2: And we did all of this, you know, we did
Speaker 2: the worst of the horrors with Trump, right, Like obviously
Speaker 2: that is on my mind with you know, with family
Speaker 2: separations and putting people in camps and abusing people and
Speaker 2: rounding people up, like all of this stuff which happened
Speaker 2: under Trump, Yes, but it also happened under Obama for
Speaker 2: eight years, and it happened for another four years under Biden.
Speaker 2: It's just that we kind of stopped talking about it
Speaker 2: because it wasn't Trump who was doing it. And there
Speaker 2: is a through line of cruelty inside of this system
Speaker 2: towards immigrants, So that issue of deportation and like rounding
Speaker 2: people up and evicting them, especially those who have lived
Speaker 2: in this place their entire life. Like that's one of
Speaker 2: the points that I make, Like the people who are
Speaker 2: being fired are like born and raised on Mars. Like
Speaker 2: one of the main characters, Alexandra Clare, she is a
Speaker 2: fourth generation Martian and she just gets caught up in
Speaker 2: these like stupid layoffs that Timothy Werner is pushing through.
Speaker 2: And now the only choice that she has is to
Speaker 2: either hide or get deported to Saturn where and nobody's
Speaker 2: ever come back from Saturn. We have no idea what
Speaker 2: happens on Saturn, because all they know is that nobody
Speaker 2: ever comes back from Saturn. And this is a thing
Speaker 2: like taking people who have born and raised in America.
Speaker 2: This is the only place that they have ever known,
Speaker 2: right even if they came here when they were like one,
Speaker 2: like okay, born here, but like they here since they
Speaker 2: were one, and then you're like, okay, we're going to
Speaker 2: send you back to Mexico. They're not from Mexico. They
Speaker 2: don't know anybody in Mexico. They don't probably even speak
Speaker 2: Spanish half the time, you know, And doing this to
Speaker 2: people is cruel. It is unconscionable what we do to people.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, like so when I was thinking to myself, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm all right, this like fictional revolution and it's going
Speaker 2: to be on Mars. What are some of the things
Speaker 2: that I want to do that will make the revolution happen? Yeah,
Speaker 2: some of this does is like a little bit of
Speaker 2: like this is these are Mike's political interests and the
Speaker 2: deportation issue, and trying to highlight the horror of the
Speaker 2: deportation issue and laud those who would hide those people
Speaker 2: and help those people and bring those people food. Like
Speaker 2: the bravest people going are the ones who like go
Speaker 2: out and leave you know, water jugs out in the
Speaker 2: middle of the desert so people don't die, right, And
Speaker 2: the cruelest thing is these guys who go out and
Speaker 2: then break those knowing that people are going to knowing
Speaker 2: that people are going to like die of dehydration and
Speaker 2: die of starva, but just not care because they don't
Speaker 2: care about those people.
Speaker 1: That's one of the sickest things to me, Like, it's
Speaker 1: just that there's information coming out now that there's that
Speaker 1: horrible video of that ICE agent smashing the window of
Speaker 1: that woman's car to deport her, and then the informations
Speaker 1: come out that he is a deputized volunteer border guy.
Speaker 1: And you know what's really happened if you look at it,
Speaker 1: is we've kind of recreated in a decentralized form the
Speaker 1: eindset Skrupa, right, like, instead of having a centralized state
Speaker 1: having to raise these organizations that are going to be
Speaker 1: carrying out this kind of violence. Like it's it's largely
Speaker 1: become something that vigilantes have gotten into on their own
Speaker 1: as part of like just their's special interest in hurting
Speaker 1: people at scale. And it's it's such a uniquely it's
Speaker 1: so uniquely tied to like this American individualism. It's such
Speaker 1: a uniquely sick thing about the way things work here
Speaker 1: that that's happening, Like that wouldn't have happened, not that
Speaker 1: Germany is you know that German culture in the thirties
Speaker 1: was better, but it wouldn't have happened because it was
Speaker 1: a different kind of culture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, and then it's really important to remember
Speaker 2: that this is not just a Trump problem, Like what
Speaker 2: he's doing right now is like, of course, like we
Speaker 2: are entering next levels beyond next levels of what he's doing.
Speaker 2: And even you know, just this morning, we've got an
Speaker 2: American citizen who has been held and they are not
Speaker 2: being released despite the passport and the Social Security card
Speaker 2: being shown to the judge, and the judge is like,
Speaker 2: I don't I can't actually release this person. Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: sort of where we're at now. But this has been
Speaker 2: an ongoing thing for twenty years, across both parties and
Speaker 2: both administrations, and nothing really has like sort of churned
Speaker 2: my stomach more since Trump got elected than all of
Speaker 2: the Democrats and people doing like sort of post mortems
Speaker 2: on the election and being like, well, you know, we
Speaker 2: really should be tougher on the border, and we really
Speaker 2: should sort of like buy into this framing that there
Speaker 2: is this like invasion and we just need to do
Speaker 2: border enforcement better. Like and they're then even moving and
Speaker 2: positioning themselves to a place where it's like Trump's not
Speaker 2: even doing a good job protecting the border, and like
Speaker 2: there was somebody I forget even who it was, but
Speaker 2: somebody one of them senators like tweeted, you know, this
Speaker 2: time last year, Biden had deported this many people and
Speaker 2: Trump isn't even deporting that many people. And he was
Speaker 2: like trying to make this point that like Trump wasn't
Speaker 2: following through on his promises or something was like do
Speaker 2: you even hear yourself? Like, do you even hear yourself? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 2: it really is. And I can't you know, stomach the
Speaker 2: fact that Democrats are are going to take away from
Speaker 2: all this that the American people love cruelty towards immigrants
Speaker 2: and that that we need to lean into that. Yes,
Speaker 2: And then you see the polls before all the tariffs
Speaker 2: stuff and all this stuff is going on, and he
Speaker 2: Trump is still sitting at like fifty percent approval, and
Speaker 2: it's like, I don't maybe they're right, Maybe the American
Speaker 2: people really do just love this.
Speaker 4: So I mean, I think the other the other side
Speaker 4: of that though, and this is, you know, part of
Speaker 4: the reason I brought up specifically like the resistance to
Speaker 4: it was it like the other aspect of the kind
Speaker 4: of individualism of American culture was that it also meant
Speaker 4: that there, you know, a bunch of people went out
Speaker 4: to the desert. Like our coworker James, spent a lot
Speaker 4: of time during the Biden administration like at these I
Speaker 4: mean just like the open air prisons they built in
Speaker 4: the middle of the fucking desert, like on the border,
Speaker 4: and you know, and like like one of the stories
Speaker 4: that he covered extensively was that like probably most of
Speaker 4: these people would have died if it wasn't for like
Speaker 4: literally border volunteers like passing food and water to the bars.
Speaker 4: And that's something that I was thinking about a lot,
Speaker 4: looking at the mutual aid networks and looking at the
Speaker 4: kind of mutual aid networks that trans people are building
Speaker 4: up right now, and like, I mean, I okay, like
Speaker 4: there's I mean, there's always been a million mutual aid
Speaker 4: networks because it's just impossible to survive if you're trans
Speaker 4: without like getting stuff from other trans people.
Speaker 2: We're not supposed to do anything alone, man, We're not
Speaker 2: supposed to do anything at Yeah. Well right, yeah, that's nothing.
Speaker 2: We're not supposed to be doing anything alone.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And that's honestly, the most optimistic thing about your
Speaker 1: podcast is that, like Martian society develops this very communal
Speaker 1: because it's we're living in like an art artificial habitat,
Speaker 1: and if shit goes really wrong, everyone dies at once.
Speaker 1: You have to have this more collaborative, collective attitude towards
Speaker 1: safety and security that is just so completely absent from
Speaker 1: American culture. It's the thing that continually sends me into
Speaker 1: the darkest spirals is because there's there's no fixing the
Speaker 1: fundamental underlying problems without fixing that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like on Mars, you know that that sort
Speaker 2: of communal stuff is like they're also living in close quarters,
Speaker 2: so you can't really be somebody who needs to be alone, right,
Speaker 2: That's the thing. And then also like in terms of
Speaker 2: like the early colonization of Mars, like, yeah, you have
Speaker 2: to do this stuff together. And like there's there's a
Speaker 2: like when I was doing like cultural like there's cultural
Speaker 2: background like like works and and you know, like music
Speaker 2: that was going on that the Martians were creating. And
Speaker 2: I can't quite get into this, but there is a
Speaker 2: song that I've got like half written called the Ballad
Speaker 2: of Lonely Joe, which is like a it's like a
Speaker 2: Martian folk song about lonely Joe who went off and
Speaker 2: tried to like do it himself, but and then he
Speaker 2: never comes back and now lonely Joe like wanders the
Speaker 2: red sands of Mars because like he tried to go
Speaker 2: out and not do it like with the group and
Speaker 2: not do it with the community, because you can't survive
Speaker 2: alone on Mars. Yeah, but to your other point, Like,
Speaker 2: one of the things that I definitely wrote into the
Speaker 2: show is that everybody on Mars has a skin chip
Speaker 2: in their hand, and the skinship in their hand is
Speaker 2: what opens door. It like literally opens doors, and it
Speaker 2: gives them access to the Commissary, and it gives them
Speaker 2: access to restaurants, it gives them access to food and employment.
Speaker 2: Like everything goes through that skinship. And when the people
Speaker 2: get fired by Werner, their skin chips just get turned
Speaker 2: off effectively, and it doesn't it doesn't open doors anymore.
Speaker 2: They can't get food anymore. They are living inside of
Speaker 2: a society that they literally cannot interact with anymore. And
Speaker 2: so it took other Martians around them, and so there's
Speaker 2: a thing in the show called the no Doors movement,
Speaker 2: which is Martians jamming open doors so that the people
Speaker 2: who have they were called the annulled because their contracts
Speaker 2: were annulled. Yeah, but so so that the annulled could
Speaker 2: get from here to there without needing their skin chip. Yeah,
Speaker 2: those are the kinds of things that you know are
Speaker 2: are necessary, and those are the kinds of things that
Speaker 2: are going to protect people. And I hope that those
Speaker 2: things are going on out there, and I hope that
Speaker 2: none of us publicly state right now what we may
Speaker 2: or may not be doing that front. Yeah, let's just
Speaker 2: go ahead and keep that words at.
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of the don't fed post on
Speaker 1: social media or in your podcast thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, something you touched on there, I think is interesting
Speaker 4: about about the way that I being forced to live
Speaker 4: together like creates this consciousness. It reminds me a lot
Speaker 4: of I was a student. I was an anthropology student,
Speaker 4: and one of the things that we read was this
Speaker 4: the sort of classic of I guess, I guess you'd
Speaker 4: call it like structurals, Marxists, like anthropology from the eighties.
Speaker 4: It's this book called Wet the Minds and the Minds
Speaker 4: Eat Us, which is about these indigenous bolivion Tins. And
Speaker 4: one of the things that I always struck me about
Speaker 4: that was, you know, like because they're all they're all
Speaker 4: literally like sleeping next to each other, like in these rooms,
Speaker 4: you can literally hear like the stomach of like the
Speaker 4: child next to you, like rumbling at night because I
Speaker 4: don't have enough food, and that like turns them into
Speaker 4: like one of the most militant sort of like working class.
Speaker 4: I mean, for like a hundred years they are like
Speaker 4: like they're syndicalists and then their communists and like they're
Speaker 4: they're one of those Miltont things. And I, I don't know,
Speaker 4: it's it's interesting to me that that this is like
Speaker 4: this aspect of the society that that you've you know,
Speaker 4: you've sort of drawn out of of these historical revolutions
Speaker 4: where a key element of it again is is this
Speaker 4: sort of collectivity. And also there's this like if you
Speaker 4: look at like the trajectory of like the modern American
Speaker 4: state and like the modern just the modern development of capitalism,
Speaker 4: it's been specifically trying to make that stuff not happen
Speaker 4: by like kicking people into suburbs and like trying to
Speaker 4: physically alienate people. And I was, I don't know, I
Speaker 4: was wonder how much you were sort of thinking about
Speaker 4: that kind of stuff when you were like writing the
Speaker 4: cultural aspects of this.
Speaker 2: Sure, No, that's that stuff is all in my mind,
Speaker 2: and like I said, like, we're not meant to do
Speaker 2: anything alone, Like humans are communal creatures. Like you don't
Speaker 2: go anywhere in history, like all the way back to
Speaker 2: the dawn of the species, you do not find individual
Speaker 2: humans like living by themselves. We have always done this
Speaker 2: as a group. This has always been a group project.
Speaker 2: And like when you go back, because this is something
Speaker 2: that comes out of sort of like I study a
Speaker 2: lot of like political theory in school and those state
Speaker 2: of nature sort of works, you know, these thought experiments
Speaker 2: that like Thomas Paine would do or Rousseau would do,
Speaker 2: and you know it's like, how did we come together?
Speaker 2: Why did we come together? Well, let's first imagine like
Speaker 2: an individual human wandering through the forest and like they
Speaker 2: encounter another one, so they come together for defense and
Speaker 2: they come together, you know, to share food and do
Speaker 2: some division of labor. And it's like, no, there's no
Speaker 2: such thing as a human wandering alone. That's not a thing.
Speaker 2: Like any outgrowth that comes from our description of what
Speaker 2: human society is, like, whether it's defense or the division
Speaker 2: of labor, begins with the fact that we are already
Speaker 2: a group. There is a mother, there is a child,
Speaker 2: there is a father, there, there are aunts and uncles
Speaker 2: and others, like whatever the group is there, we are
Speaker 2: always doing this as a group. And hyper individualization and
Speaker 2: hyper adamization of our society is something that is trying
Speaker 2: to undo one of the most fundamental parts of what
Speaker 2: it means to be human. This is something that I
Speaker 2: thought about a lot too, because when I started having kids,
Speaker 2: and you know, I have two kids, and the model
Speaker 2: for like having a family at this point is like
Speaker 2: you have a mother, a father or whatever, you have kids,
Speaker 2: but the point being that they are a unit that
Speaker 2: is unto itself, and they live in their own house,
Speaker 2: and they have to supply their own food, and they
Speaker 2: are in charge of getting their own money, and everything
Speaker 2: that happens is just up to that little nuclear family.
Speaker 2: And the nuclear family is not really how we've ever
Speaker 2: done it before. Now. There's always been a broad network,
Speaker 2: a broad fad family friend network that has been a
Speaker 2: part of you know, raising our kids and having our families.
Speaker 2: And you know, if something bad happens, we don't just say,
Speaker 2: oh wow, bad luck for them. You know, you support
Speaker 2: that person. Yeah, And that is something that we've really
Speaker 2: gotten away from as a society.
Speaker 1: Obviously, and it's something that we've been pulled away from purposefully, right,
Speaker 1: like the atomization isn't isn't just a byproduct of incentives,
Speaker 1: right like it is a it is a directed move.
Speaker 1: I mean, you just got to look back to some
Speaker 1: of the shit Thatcher was saying. Right, there's no such
Speaker 1: thing as a society. There are men and women, and
Speaker 1: there are families. Right, this is a directed change. And
Speaker 1: I'm not saying this in like the conspiratorial since I'm
Speaker 1: saying this a a This is what a lot of people,
Speaker 1: a lot of the worst people in our society believe
Speaker 1: because it's convenient for them, and they have pushed to
Speaker 1: make that belief more common and done so by funding
Speaker 1: think tanks and funding media organizations.
Speaker 2: In part right, I was actually.
Speaker 4: About to quote literally that exact thing. But the interesting
Speaker 4: part to me about that Thatcher line is that everyone,
Speaker 4: almost everyone who quotes that line only quotes the part
Speaker 4: about their are only individuals and then leaves out the
Speaker 4: part about the family, yes, which which I think is
Speaker 4: a really important connection to to what you were saying,
Speaker 4: where it's like their vision of the family is also
Speaker 4: still fundamentally this isolated group because yes, they still need
Speaker 4: some kind of collective because again, you literally you can't
Speaker 4: just like leave it, leave a baby like out in
Speaker 4: the woods.
Speaker 2: It just dies.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: But like they had, they had to like create this
Speaker 4: version to to be the like the political base of
Speaker 4: their thing. They had to create this, this one collective
Speaker 4: that would be cut off from everything else that had
Speaker 4: normally made it a collective.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: You know people think these days that that atomized nuclear
Speaker 2: family is like the law of nature, right, that this
Speaker 2: is like this is the way it's always been, and
Speaker 2: like that's not true. It's just not true. There's a
Speaker 2: great line I don't have it right in front of
Speaker 2: me at the moment, but in uh in Tokeville's oustieon
Speaker 2: regime in the French Revolution, which is really dynamite but
Speaker 2: everybody should read. At the end of it, he lays
Speaker 2: it out. He's writing this in like the eighteen forties
Speaker 2: and eighteen fifties, and he straight up says that like
Speaker 2: what liberal capitalism is doing, which he was himself. I mean,
Speaker 2: he's a conservative liberal. Like it's not like he's on
Speaker 2: the left or anything, but he's he's watching as the
Speaker 2: atomization of families and individuals is happening, and He's like,
Speaker 2: and that's how that's what tyranny thrives on. Tyranny thrives
Speaker 2: when everybody is disconnected from everybody else and everybody is
Speaker 2: in competition with everybody else. Because that's the other key
Speaker 2: part of it is your family is now pitted against
Speaker 2: every other family in terms of like getting money, getting jobs,
Speaker 2: like getting that, getting this other thing. Like we're all
Speaker 2: scrambling out there in a competition to get a little
Speaker 2: bit more, a little bit better, or just you know,
Speaker 2: have enough. Like I feel this every time I have
Speaker 2: to sign the kids up for like summer camp, you know,
Speaker 2: like I'm at war with every other family in the
Speaker 2: neighborhood because I'm just trying to get my kid into
Speaker 2: this camp and some people aren't gonna make it and
Speaker 2: other people will, and you got to be there, and
Speaker 2: you gotta have strategies about when to log onto the thing,
Speaker 2: like because they because they they're pitting us against each
Speaker 2: other like all the time, in all those little subtle ways.
Speaker 6: Yep.
Speaker 4: I think that's what's optimistic kind of about the Martian
Speaker 4: Revolution is like, you know, on the one hand, there
Speaker 4: is this kind of like collective society, but on the
Speaker 4: other hand, you know, this is a this is a
Speaker 4: society entirely ruled by corporations, right and it is it
Speaker 4: is literally every single aspect of it is specifically designed
Speaker 4: to get to do this pitting each other like being
Speaker 4: people against each other. And yet anyways, somehow they you know,
Speaker 4: even even if it is by accident, which is to
Speaker 4: be fair, how a lot of revolutions start, they they
Speaker 4: do it.
Speaker 1: I think the key thing is here is that we
Speaker 1: see throughout time like really extreme societies that try to
Speaker 1: mold people in certain ways with the idea of permanently
Speaker 1: changing them. And what happens in the past, at least
Speaker 1: to every one of those societies, is that the society
Speaker 1: dies and people go on being people, right.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, yeah, Yeah, there's no there's no year zero,
Speaker 2: there's no creat new There's there's no there's no new
Speaker 2: Man right now, that's not ever going to happen. That's
Speaker 2: actually I mean, just I wouldn't even have thought that.
Speaker 2: I'm going to tie this back again to Tokefield, which
Speaker 2: the reason I would recommend Onnian regime is because that
Speaker 2: is a book about how much of the revolution was
Speaker 2: a continuation of what was going on before it and
Speaker 2: not actually caused by the revolutionary break And even if
Speaker 2: you believe in the revolution and believe it was this,
Speaker 2: I actually believe in the revolution because it accomplished these
Speaker 2: great things, but there was no year zero thing that happened.
Speaker 2: A lot of this stuff like is just on a continuum.
Speaker 2: And you know, like I don't want to get in
Speaker 2: a fight with somebody about whether human nature is a
Speaker 2: thing that exists or doesn't exist, like like as an
Speaker 2: as an abs tract thing, because because I'm not sure
Speaker 2: that it's true, but there sure are a lot of
Speaker 2: things that keep popping up, right, Like we're interested in sex,
Speaker 2: and we have to eat food, and we live in shelters,
Speaker 2: and we make music, and there do there does seem
Speaker 2: to be some very like human qualities that exist across
Speaker 2: all time and across all space. And if you just
Speaker 2: say to yourself, like, well, like I mean, this is
Speaker 2: one of the things. I'm very sympathetic to anarchists, but
Speaker 2: like there's a point with anarchism, like especially the early stuff,
Speaker 2: where their idea was that if you smash the state,
Speaker 2: and you destroy the state, then humans will be allowed
Speaker 2: to flourish in their natural goodness. And communalism, which is,
Speaker 2: you know a little bit what we are moving towards
Speaker 2: right now. But I'm not sure even that exists, because
Speaker 2: if you if you crash the state out, it's not
Speaker 2: the state that's necessarily making us this way. There is
Speaker 2: there is stuff inside of human nature that's that we
Speaker 2: created the state to begin with. So the whole, the
Speaker 2: whole thing is like a very it's a balancing act
Speaker 2: that has gone way too far in So yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think that's something I always I always try
Speaker 1: to keep in mind, Like it's not that societies can't
Speaker 1: alter or improve aspects of like how things are right
Speaker 1: by changing the incentives, but by altering like the way
Speaker 1: things work, you can reduce the prevalence of certain problems.
Speaker 1: You can make things better in some ways. But there's
Speaker 1: certain stuff that you're just never going to Like when
Speaker 1: I look at when I look at what the white
Speaker 1: supremacists want to do, right, well, you're never going to
Speaker 1: get people to stop mingling with other kinds of people.
Speaker 2: You simply can't.
Speaker 1: It's never worked and it never will right like that,
Speaker 1: that's an impossible dream. So I can just say, like
Speaker 1: that's a thing, no matter what how tightly you grab
Speaker 1: a hold of the reins of state, and how many
Speaker 1: weapons you deploy, you simply won't succeed in the long
Speaker 1: term of doing this because it's just not something we
Speaker 1: can do. You can't stop people from mingling.
Speaker 2: This is actually one of my points about immigration and migration, yeah,
Speaker 2: is that no matter how tightly you try to control it,
Speaker 2: no matter you could build every all you want, you
Speaker 2: can make it as hard as you want, people are
Speaker 2: still going to move here. People are still going to
Speaker 2: move away from here. People are still going to go
Speaker 2: from here to there and from there to here. And
Speaker 2: that is something that is going to happen no matter what,
Speaker 2: and especially if we're going into the twenty first century
Speaker 2: with all of its various climate disasters that are you know,
Speaker 2: facing us really and yeah, is going to make such Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's gonna it's gonna it's already making some places less
Speaker 2: habitable and other places will be more habitable. And what's
Speaker 2: going to happen is that people who are living in
Speaker 2: less habitable areas are going to want to go to
Speaker 2: where there are areas that are still habitable. And so
Speaker 2: there there is there's going to be movements of people.
Speaker 2: And the question before us in the twenty first century
Speaker 2: is not you know, can we keep people in the
Speaker 2: places that they are now and you know, like sort
Speaker 2: of lock in rigidly to like these xenophobic nation states
Speaker 2: and that will actually stop those migrations from happening. Or
Speaker 2: do we open ourselves up to the idea that this
Speaker 2: is going to happen and simply make it more humane
Speaker 2: and more more rational. That's the question. It's not whether
Speaker 2: the migrations will happen or not. It's simply how cruel
Speaker 2: they will be when they happen. And right now we
Speaker 2: are choosing maximum cruelty.
Speaker 1: Yep, sucks, Yeah, it does. Like that's that's so much
Speaker 1: of our present society is like, well, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: the cruelest way I can imagine this happening, you know,
Speaker 1: like and we are we are staring down the barrel
Speaker 1: of the worst case scenario, right like that. That's the
Speaker 1: thing everyone's had to make peace with. You know, even
Speaker 1: once Trump won, there was still a degree of like, well,
Speaker 1: I guess we'll see and we've seen, right, and we
Speaker 1: do just kind of have to guide off that without
Speaker 1: pretending it's otherwise. Like the That's one of the few
Speaker 1: things that does give me hope is that the people
Speaker 1: who are insistent upon pretending otherwise seem to be getting
Speaker 1: increasingly marginalized. I mean, we'll see Gavin Newsan still hasn't
Speaker 1: been sort of choked off of access to the public,
Speaker 1: but you know, the statements he's been making recently about
Speaker 1: Abrego Garcia, it's just like, yeah, I just can't. I
Speaker 1: can't imagine this guy being the future of the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party if this is just looking at where popular discourse
Speaker 1: is right now.
Speaker 2: Right, and there's a lot of them who would like
Speaker 2: it to be the future of the Democratic Party because
Speaker 2: they don't care as much as Republicans don't care about
Speaker 2: the lives of these people who are living on this earth,
Speaker 2: who are living, breathing human beings who are just someplace
Speaker 2: else and living in a world where like, yeah, the
Speaker 2: United States and Europe, we suck up the world's wealth
Speaker 2: and resources, like that's where the imperial center of the globe,
Speaker 2: and people are like, oh they And even when people
Speaker 2: say like, well, why do people come here, and you know,
Speaker 2: there's a kind of a standard American exceptionalist notion which
Speaker 2: is like, well, they come here because they want their
Speaker 2: because they want freedom and freedom is what America offers,
Speaker 2: and like the American dream and all that stuff, like
Speaker 2: the entrepreneurial spirit, et cetera, et cetera. But mostly it's
Speaker 2: because this is where you can come and get the
Speaker 2: world's money. Yeah, this is where it all is. It's
Speaker 2: sitting in my pocket, it's sitting in your pocket. Right,
Speaker 2: we are the ones who have all of the world's money,
Speaker 2: and so that is why they are coming here. Yep.
Speaker 2: So you just have to like fit that in your brain.
Speaker 2: And what is happening is is this this constant division
Speaker 2: between like Americans being more important than anybody else, And
Speaker 2: I understand why that exists politically, and even these questions
Speaker 2: are like citizens versus non citizens. Like one of the
Speaker 2: things that got me when I was reading Bakunin was
Speaker 2: like he had it was a throwaway line, It wasn't
Speaker 2: even like a point he was making, but he referred
Speaker 2: to something as mere citizenship, which kind of struck me
Speaker 2: because I grew up very liberal, Like I come from
Speaker 2: like the liberal suburbs of Seattle, and I had very
Speaker 2: liberal notions and citizenship, in sort of the liberal imagination
Speaker 2: is the highest thing that you can be, be a
Speaker 2: citizen of a polity with rights, there's a constitution, you
Speaker 2: get to participate in the government. Like citizen and citizenship
Speaker 2: are these words that had great, profound meaning and really
Speaker 2: kind of like knock me sideways to have and be
Speaker 2: like mere citizenship. Right, You've been reduced to simply a
Speaker 2: part of a polity, and your humanity has been taken
Speaker 2: away from you. You're no longer being recognized as a
Speaker 2: human being. You're being recognized as a citizen. And if
Speaker 2: you're not a citizen, then you just don't count at all.
Speaker 2: And it totally wipes out their humanity. So not only
Speaker 2: do I not have humanity because I'm simply a part
Speaker 2: of some polity rather than being me, Mike Duncan, a
Speaker 2: human being, but it's erasing our human obligations to each other,
Speaker 2: to non citizens and the idea like and you just
Speaker 2: see this very casually, like right now, like all over
Speaker 2: the place. It's just like they're not citizens, so they
Speaker 2: don't deserve due process. They're not citizens, so we can
Speaker 2: just send them to El Salvadorian torture prisons and it's
Speaker 2: fine because they're not citizens and therefore they don't have rights.
Speaker 2: It's like what about you know, just being a person
Speaker 2: thinking about other people. And one of the greatest, one
Speaker 2: of my very favorite. I know I'm steamroll in here.
Speaker 2: I'll let you get a word in edgeways here in
Speaker 2: a second. But the I forget what the court case was,
Speaker 2: but there was a court case out of Texas, you know,
Speaker 2: like back in like the sixties, when they decided that
Speaker 2: the Texas school districts had to open the schools to
Speaker 2: undocumented children. And they said that because it says in
Speaker 2: the Fourteenth Amendment persons, it doesn't say citizens. And they
Speaker 2: were arresting a lot of this on the notion that
Speaker 2: like it's it says person has these rights, not citizen
Speaker 2: has these rights. And this is what conservatives and MAGA hate,
Speaker 2: hate hate, this is why they're going to try to
Speaker 2: undo the fourteenth Amendment. But to have the Supreme Court
Speaker 2: at one point in the past be like, no, you
Speaker 2: have to do this because you owe an obligation to
Speaker 2: them as a person, not just as a citizen, that's
Speaker 2: like mind blowing. I could not see the Supreme Court
Speaker 2: today making that same decision. But like, that's that's the
Speaker 2: kernel of something really good I think for the future
Speaker 2: of humanity. Rather than like clinging to this like citizen
Speaker 2: or non citizen thing.
Speaker 1: I guess kind of for me, the most important belief
Speaker 1: I ever came to was the understanding that, like, I
Speaker 1: don't care about citizenship and I don't care about who
Speaker 1: is supposed to be in a specific place, right, I
Speaker 1: think one of the most toxic ideas possible is that, like,
Speaker 1: your rights as a person are dependent on where you
Speaker 1: were born. Yeah, that's just the thing I'll never believe.
Speaker 1: And it's the fight we've lost the worst as the
Speaker 1: left or you know, I should even say getting beyond
Speaker 1: left and right, because I really think those are not
Speaker 1: the most useful ways to look at things.
Speaker 2: It's like human beings.
Speaker 1: The fact that that battle, the battle to just see
Speaker 1: people as humans with inherent value as humans, regardless on
Speaker 1: their place of birth. The fact that that has been
Speaker 1: botched so badly is maybe the greatest calamity of the
Speaker 1: twenty first century. Although there's a few contenders, don't get
Speaker 1: me wrong.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a lot well, and it's so it's so
Speaker 4: deeply ingrained. Something I'm going to talk about more like
Speaker 4: different place. But like, one of the things that's been
Speaker 4: driving me the most up the walls is like, so
Speaker 4: I've had to read like every single piece of terrorists covered.
Speaker 4: Tariff coverage has been written by like fucking all these analysts,
Speaker 4: all of these media people, like, and every single one
Speaker 4: of them only fucking talks about its impact on Americans, right, yep.
Speaker 4: And if you look at the like the Liberation Day
Speaker 4: like turf tariff package, right, the single country that is
Speaker 4: the most fu from this is Sri Lanka yep. And
Speaker 4: if those tariffs go back into effect in like in
Speaker 4: like fifty days whatever, like eighty days, like, the entire
Speaker 4: country of Shri Lanka is fucked. They're doomed, They're completely fucked.
Speaker 4: And all of these countries, you know, all these countries
Speaker 4: need US dollars in order to like literally to buy
Speaker 4: fucking fuel. And then suddenly, oh wait, hold on, you
Speaker 4: can't do experts of the US and like the entire
Speaker 4: this is something that affects literally the entire world.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: You can look at the terariff rates on every single
Speaker 4: country like in the world, and everyone writing about it
Speaker 4: only writes about its effect upon the US because there's
Speaker 4: this just like like there's this this this pure sort
Speaker 4: of Americ centrism thing where like people and I see
Speaker 4: this on the left too, wherechs like they fundamentally don't
Speaker 4: see anyone who's not in the US as human, and
Speaker 4: the people in the US who who are seen as
Speaker 4: like people who seems like humans, who you know, like
Speaker 4: think and feel and like act and like hurt in
Speaker 4: the same way. So we do, like that's only a
Speaker 4: thing that happens if you're a very specific kind of
Speaker 4: American citizen. And if you're not, or God help you, you
Speaker 4: were born in like most of the like the rest
Speaker 4: of the world, which is again it hitteous super majority
Speaker 4: of everyone on Earth. You just you don't matter, and.
Speaker 2: Yep, they don't, yeah, not in all this. And like
Speaker 2: I mean to bring it back to the Martian Revolution,
Speaker 2: like that one of the things that is happening right now.
Speaker 2: Like in the series, I'm you know, it's going to
Speaker 2: be thirty episodes long, and I'm writing episode twenty three
Speaker 2: right now. But like we've gone through the revolution, there's
Speaker 2: been I don't want to give away too many spoilers,
Speaker 2: but obviously like they win, you know at certain points,
Speaker 2: otherwise it wouldn't be a very interesting story. And they're
Speaker 2: is a debate right now among the victorious Martian revolutionaries
Speaker 2: about who should count inside of the Martian constitution and
Speaker 2: this thing called the Republic of Mars that they have
Speaker 2: just declared they're no longer a part of a corporation.
Speaker 2: They're going to be this thing called the Republic of Mars.
Speaker 2: And there's a guy who is passionately committed to Mars
Speaker 2: and to the Martian people, and he hates earthlings and
Speaker 2: he doesn't trust earthlings. And there's no reason for him
Speaker 2: to trust earthlings. They have tried to screw them over
Speaker 2: a bunch of times and it cause nothing but pain.
Speaker 2: And so, but there are a bunch of earth born
Speaker 2: Earthlings on Mars, and he wants to exclude them from
Speaker 2: the Republic of Mars. And if you're born on Mars,
Speaker 2: then you should get to participate. And if you're not,
Speaker 2: then you shouldn't have rights, you shouldn't be a part
Speaker 2: of this project. And I would love to just I
Speaker 2: would love to deport you. That's what he's going to
Speaker 2: be arguing. And then there is another side that has
Speaker 2: a more universalist take on this, and my character Alexandra Clair,
Speaker 2: who is like a d class. She comes out of
Speaker 2: the warrens. She can just that's basically like the working class.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 2: She's like when Earthlings come here, Yeah, I don't like
Speaker 2: it when they bungle things because they're new and they
Speaker 2: don't know what they're doing. Like I'm as annoyed by
Speaker 2: the new guy as anybody, but like they've suffered right
Speaker 2: alongside me, like suffering the same conditions. Like the fact
Speaker 2: that they were born on Earth doesn't mean that they're
Speaker 2: not suffering right now, that their contracts weren't annulled, that
Speaker 2: they are not suffering from the new protocols. Like and
Speaker 2: you know when during these revolutions, did they hold neutron
Speaker 2: guns in their hands and fight and die for Mars? Yeah?
Speaker 2: They did, And so probably we should say that it's
Speaker 2: not Martian good, Earthling bad. But like, let's just open
Speaker 2: it up to everybody and we will sort out, like
Speaker 2: you know, who's you know, who's in on this and
Speaker 2: who's who's actually trying to undermine us, because you know
Speaker 2: there is there are loyalist fifth columnists that they are
Speaker 2: gonna have to deal with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I think we're encroaching on an hour here,
Speaker 1: so we're I think we need to probably uh call
Speaker 1: this for the day. But Mike, I really appreciate your time.
Speaker 1: You've been so generous, and I can't wait to see
Speaker 1: where you end. I know that you're also can't wait
Speaker 1: to see where you land on all of.
Speaker 2: This, right, right, right, I've got all the plot points,
Speaker 2: you know, I know where it's going, but just getting
Speaker 2: there is. Yeah. It's weird because sometimes when you write fiction,
Speaker 2: characters are like, you weren't supposed to do that, and
Speaker 2: now I've got to deal with that, and like, what
Speaker 2: do you? Well, she wouldn't do that in this moment,
Speaker 2: So I guess I was going to have her do it,
Speaker 2: but I just can't believe that she would ever do
Speaker 2: that in that situation. So I guess she can't do it,
Speaker 2: and I'll have to figure that out. And that's my
Speaker 2: weekly struggle these days.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, that's that's the struggle of releasing fiction before
Speaker 1: you're entirely done with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I write it. I mean I wake up,
Speaker 2: I wake up every Monday morning with a blank piece
Speaker 2: of paper and have to have that week's episode done
Speaker 2: by Sunday night, and so I'm writing these in real time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I congratulate you on trapping yourself in such an
Speaker 1: exquisite hell I'm enjoying listening to it. I know everyone
Speaker 1: else's as well.
Speaker 2: It's great.
Speaker 1: I love it all right, that's the episode everybody, Thank
Speaker 1: you fight.
Speaker 8: What's so, y'all's your favorite cousin? I just came over
Speaker 8: you feel me? Y'all don't have no cousins that just
Speaker 8: kind of pop up, just be at the house like
Speaker 8: a ninety sitcom where you don't knock on the door,
Speaker 8: you just be walking in. That wasn't my life, mainly
Speaker 8: because most of the cousins on my mother's side lived
Speaker 8: on the other side of the country, and then my
Speaker 8: cousin's on my father's side, since we lived in gang
Speaker 8: infested areas, you didn't.
Speaker 6: Just pop up.
Speaker 8: That was just not the safest thing to do. But
Speaker 8: I'm doing that at youall house. And you know what
Speaker 8: happens when you have cousins come over. Well, now, a
Speaker 8: small percentage of y'all are black, but a lot of
Speaker 8: percentages y'all grew up poor, which means that you got
Speaker 8: whooping just like we did. So you know, usually when
Speaker 8: your cousin comes over, somebody's getting We all somebody getting
Speaker 8: in trouble, and it's usually you because you're supposed.
Speaker 6: To know better. I never got more spankings.
Speaker 8: Than when my cousins came over because we would just
Speaker 8: get into stuff. And then since I'm the one that
Speaker 8: lived there and I was cutting up in front of company,
Speaker 8: I ended up getting into most trouble. Anyway, this isn't
Speaker 8: where I'm working out trauma, although it is called it
Speaker 8: can happen here podcasts, so I feel like we all
Speaker 8: collectively working out trauma of being Americans. And lastly, on
Speaker 8: the rambling preamble, I got a dog. Now, well, my
Speaker 8: daughter got a dog. And to all the parents that listen,
Speaker 8: you know when your child gets a pet, who's pet
Speaker 8: that actually is? So I find myself doing a lot
Speaker 8: more chores than I signed up for. But it's a pug,
Speaker 8: and it keeps trying to eat the cat's food. Therefore
Speaker 8: it's got liquid doodoo and I'm not a fan of that.
Speaker 8: And since I get to work in my pajamas because
Speaker 8: I'm just recording podcasts and rap music back here, seems
Speaker 8: to fall on me to scoop up this liquid doodoo.
Speaker 8: But that's only when she eats the cat's food. Stupid dog,
Speaker 8: eat your own food. Anyway, I'm here to talk about
Speaker 8: something that you can do nothing about.
Speaker 2: All right, y'all?
Speaker 8: Ready, here we go, a brother like me who bleeds
Speaker 8: Los Angeles. You cut me open and Pacific Ocean salt
Speaker 8: water comes out. You poke my lungs, and small pours
Speaker 8: out of me. I could work for the Tourist Department
Speaker 8: of Los Angeles. I love this city at an unhealthy level.
Speaker 8: There are things about this place that is absolute trash.
Speaker 8: Don't get me wrong, there is a lot wrong with
Speaker 8: this city. With this place, the ground shakes up under us.
Speaker 8: We've been such a horrible steward as to how to
Speaker 8: take care of this land. I'm gonna include myself, even
Speaker 8: though I am not the invasive colonizer. But there are
Speaker 8: really only nine native trees to California, two of which
Speaker 8: are not the palm tree or the eucalyptus. The plants
Speaker 8: that are here naturally are drought resistant and fire resistant.
Speaker 6: They don't burn that easy.
Speaker 8: The ones that burn up real quick are the sycamores
Speaker 8: and the palm trees.
Speaker 6: And if you may have noticed, Los Angeles hit.
Speaker 8: A bit of a dry spell recently and had quite
Speaker 8: the disaster. Now, I'm slowly backing that thing up into
Speaker 8: what we're gonna talk about right now, which you should
Speaker 8: probably know if you have already read the show title
Speaker 8: when you clicked play. But I'm gonna back that thing
Speaker 8: up into it. California catches fire every year in some location. Now,
Speaker 8: my mother, you know, Mama prop she worked thirty years
Speaker 8: for the La County Fire Department, you know, in the
Speaker 8: city of West Covina.
Speaker 6: Because I'm at six two.
Speaker 8: Sixer and I have vivid memories of the different firemen,
Speaker 8: fire chiefs. I think I talked about this in the
Speaker 8: La on Fire episode. Block is literally hot on the
Speaker 8: Hood politics show, which hopefully you guys are supporting and
Speaker 8: listening to also.
Speaker 6: But even my boy Chris.
Speaker 8: Who's you know, firefighter, you know, been fighting the fires
Speaker 8: out here. Everybody knew that one day this day would
Speaker 8: come and that, let's just say, all of the bureaucratic
Speaker 8: failures had not happened. If the water was as full
Speaker 8: as possible, the fire hydrants were fined, if everything was
Speaker 8: the budget, if everything was done perfectly, this was going
Speaker 8: to happen.
Speaker 6: This day was going to come. That it's a perfect storm.
Speaker 8: We were had a specific type of drought, lack of rain,
Speaker 8: the Santa Ana winds and then a fire sparking, and
Speaker 8: that fire sparking in a densely populated urban area. It
Speaker 8: was every fireman I knew was like, yeah, one day
Speaker 8: it's gonna happen. And like I said in the last episode, yeah,
Speaker 8: like you know, we could find ourselves a time machine
Speaker 8: and practice the indigenous practices.
Speaker 6: Oh.
Speaker 8: Actually, as a small little beacon alike, there's an area
Speaker 8: Alta Dina that was actually given back to the Tongva
Speaker 8: tribe many years back. There was a first like actual
Speaker 8: land back given back to the tribe and they started
Speaker 8: taking care of the land the way that their elders
Speaker 8: and ancestors did.
Speaker 6: And guess what, that area didn't burn anyway in the.
Speaker 8: Midst of this disaster that we were having a desperate,
Speaker 8: desperate man who I completely understand is desperation. On Tuesday
Speaker 8: night on January seventh, while the fires were just rumbling
Speaker 8: through the Palisades, a man named Keith Wasserman, who's the
Speaker 8: co founder of a real estate investment firm, desperately took
Speaker 8: to Twitter and said, does anyone have access to private
Speaker 8: firefighters to protect our home? Need to act fast here
Speaker 8: all neighbors houses burning will pay any amount. There was
Speaker 8: another click of Rick Caruso, who almost in a multiverse situation,
Speaker 8: is our mayor, a billionaire developer who owns the Grove
Speaker 8: on the West Side. Just that if you ever watched TMZ,
Speaker 8: whenever somebody's walking out of a place, it's probably at
Speaker 8: the grove and was a you know, real estate magnate. Anyway,
Speaker 8: there are videos of him driving through an area that
Speaker 8: he had with his private security and private firefighters where
Speaker 8: it's smoke billowing all around the place, but his situation
Speaker 8: was fine. Why because he had private firefighters. They shaved
Speaker 8: his shopping center, but he tried to unsuccessfully save nearby
Speaker 8: homes as well, which reminded everybody about the time that
Speaker 8: Kanye and Kim tweeted about their house being saved by
Speaker 8: fired fighters.
Speaker 6: And which made people be like, wait a minute, you
Speaker 6: can buy fire department, man, What the hell is this?
Speaker 6: What type of shit?
Speaker 1: Man?
Speaker 6: What we over here arguing over firefightrants.
Speaker 8: And tanks running low and somebody just paid them?
Speaker 6: Where they get the water from?
Speaker 8: How the hell you can just oh my god, what
Speaker 8: the hell water are you using, nigga, that's not your water?
Speaker 8: And what you gonna do? Are you gonna help out
Speaker 8: the neighbors. Okay, So if I buy a fire department,
Speaker 8: fire apartment show up from my house, but the neighbor's
Speaker 8: house is burned, you just gonna lead a neighbor's house.
Speaker 8: You gonna tell them to call the city's fire department.
Speaker 8: What the hell is happening? How does this shit work?
Speaker 8: Is there any other way rich people can be evil?
Speaker 8: What is happening right now? Which is basically what happened
Speaker 8: and how most of the regulars felt. So this episode
Speaker 8: is not just about private fire departments, because that would
Speaker 8: not be a very interesting full episode. It's about the
Speaker 8: question that private fire departments bring up, which is like nigga,
Speaker 8: whose water is that?
Speaker 6: Wait a minute, who owns the water? Is the water
Speaker 6: private too?
Speaker 8: And if the water is private too, what else of
Speaker 8: my utilities are private?
Speaker 6: And this is what I mean by there is nothing
Speaker 6: you can do about it?
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 8: If there is any of you that are built like
Speaker 8: Robert and Magpie, then maybe you ain't got to worry
Speaker 8: about this. Maybe you could dig your own well and
Speaker 8: find the groundwater. However, there are things called water land rights,
Speaker 8: which I will talk about into this. So even if
Speaker 8: you move off the grid to live on a mountain.
Speaker 8: You find somewhere in the backwoods, you know, four acres
Speaker 8: away from Magpie wherever the hell Magpie live, and you
Speaker 8: dig to find some water. Somebody owned that water. It
Speaker 8: already happened here, y'all. Let's go all right, this may
Speaker 8: or may not be a shock to y'all. I know
Speaker 8: in the first the block is literally hot episode I
Speaker 8: did way way, way way back when I first joined
Speaker 8: Wellkools on media first launch, when I first joined the team,
Speaker 8: my first episodes, it was one of those things where
Speaker 8: it's like the thought has probably never crossed your mind,
Speaker 8: and and some of it's like sitting I'm talking to
Speaker 8: y'all who pay bills. Some of this stuff is sitting
Speaker 8: right up under your nose, Like Southern California Medicine is
Speaker 8: one of our power companies. But then there's PG and E.
Speaker 8: This isn't the City of Los Angeles providing this. That's
Speaker 8: a company. In the same way that your internet come
Speaker 8: from a company. What makes you think your power don't
Speaker 8: come from a company. And if your power come from
Speaker 8: a company and an internet come from a company, why
Speaker 8: wouldn't your water come from a company? I like, well,
Speaker 8: I don't know what would make you think that that's
Speaker 8: just a city municipality. Well, because duh, because water fall
Speaker 8: from the sky.
Speaker 2: What the shit?
Speaker 6: So what I'm paying for you to pump it through
Speaker 6: the through the dog on pipes for me?
Speaker 8: I understand that that's a service, But what the hell
Speaker 8: of my taxes for you? Somebody like I don't know
Speaker 8: if you noticed, you can own the rain. So the
Speaker 8: water that fell inside the lake, somebody bought the lake.
Speaker 8: This is the episode that I'm going to tell y'all.
Speaker 8: Right now, so your utilities, most likely your city has
Speaker 8: sold your water and your sewage processing to a private company.
Speaker 8: And the bills that you're paying your water bill is
Speaker 8: not going to the city for the service you are receiving.
Speaker 8: It is paying the company back the money that the
Speaker 8: company paid your city to get this gig. Let me
Speaker 8: back up here first, let me cover the private fire departments.
Speaker 8: Now here's the thing. Private fire departments usually are hired
Speaker 8: by insurance companies. So what they do a lot of
Speaker 8: time is like prevention. They'll come in here and you know,
Speaker 8: clear out shrub, make sure that your house is not
Speaker 8: like set up for failure. You know. In California, I mean,
Speaker 8: people always talk about our strict laws and building codes,
Speaker 8: and it's like, well, nigga, do you see why every
Speaker 8: time you got a bureaucratic law, like there might be
Speaker 8: a historical evidence as to why we need that, one
Speaker 8: of which is my nigga, California ain't got a lot
Speaker 8: of water. So if you're gonna build a house, you
Speaker 8: can't just have dry shrubbery up around your house. Why
Speaker 8: because you just basically put a box of matches just
Speaker 8: around your house. So yes, bam, like that's why you
Speaker 8: can't do that.
Speaker 6: Why you not allowed to have a lot of trash
Speaker 6: in your house? Nigga?
Speaker 8: What I mean, what the hell you think? Because this
Speaker 8: shit will catch on fire. So these private companies, private
Speaker 8: fire companies usually come through and again they hire body
Speaker 8: insurance companies normally to come and clear shrubbery, make sure
Speaker 8: that your length, your dryer is cleared out, make sure
Speaker 8: your h VAC is good. And usually they got their
Speaker 8: own little tank right, So they come in with their
Speaker 8: own little tank of water that stay private water that
Speaker 8: basically they bring in their bottle water, you know what
Speaker 8: I'm saying, while the rest of us is using tap right,
Speaker 8: But eventually that little tank go run out. You feel
Speaker 8: me and then at that point you got to tap
Speaker 8: into the fire hydrant. Right now, what most of these
Speaker 8: companies will say is, like the guys were not monsters, dude, Like,
Speaker 8: if if the neighborhood is on fire, of course we're
Speaker 8: going to help. What do you like, what are you
Speaker 8: talking about? Which I truly believe for this reason. If
Speaker 8: I'm paying to protect this house, but the neighbor's house
Speaker 8: is on fire, that probably means that the neighbor's house
Speaker 8: is going to cause my house to catch on fire.
Speaker 8: So of course it would be in my best interest
Speaker 8: to help put that one out.
Speaker 6: According to the New York Times.
Speaker 8: They reported that, yeah, good, forty five percent of all
Speaker 8: firefighters working in the United States today are employed privately
Speaker 8: right now. A lot of those are like wildlife suppression. Now,
Speaker 8: there's such thing as called the National Wildlife Suppression Association,
Speaker 8: which represents more than like three hundred private firefighting groups,
Speaker 8: and a lot of them work more as like government contractors,
Speaker 8: right as far as like again supplement for like wildfires,
Speaker 8: right and like I said, the others are hired by
Speaker 8: private companies. Yo, and peak this like a little two
Speaker 8: person private firefighting crew with a small vehicle.
Speaker 6: I mean it could cost like three grand a day.
Speaker 8: Like a large crew of like twenty firefighters and four
Speaker 8: trucks can run ten thousand dollars a day. This is
Speaker 8: according to Brian Weelock, the vice president of the Gray
Speaker 8: Back Forestry. It's a private firefighting company in Oregon. But
Speaker 8: most of the time, like I said, these people don't
Speaker 8: really work directly with homeowners. But that's not what's the
Speaker 8: interesting part of this story to me. The interesting part
Speaker 8: of this story to me is the reality of the
Speaker 8: utilities that we live in. Now, let me go ahead
Speaker 8: and run off some statistics to you. I just want
Speaker 8: to go ahead and add to the dystopia that we
Speaker 8: live in because we need to say, we need to
Speaker 8: change the name of this show too.
Speaker 6: It has happened here.
Speaker 8: I'm going to link all this data to the show notes.
Speaker 6: Now you're ready for this.
Speaker 8: Water and wastewater service privatization follows broader trends. More than
Speaker 8: forty percent of drinking water systems nationwide are private regulated
Speaker 8: utility systems, of the sixty percent of the systems owned
Speaker 8: by local governments. Privatization by contracting of operations management has
Speaker 8: grown rapidly since two thousand and one, nationwide, the privatization
Speaker 8: of water wastewater group by thirteen percent after growing eighty
Speaker 8: four percent over the decade in the nineteen nineties. Right,
Speaker 8: so what that means is almost half of y'all are
Speaker 8: paying a private company for your water. Now, let's make
Speaker 8: some distinctions here between public utilities and private utilities. And
Speaker 8: you know what are we even talking about. So public
Speaker 8: utilities are owned and operated by your local, state, and
Speaker 8: federal governments on behalf of the citizens and customers in
Speaker 8: that area. So a public utility would be your municipal water, sewage,
Speaker 8: sanitation services, like if you have a public electricity providers, government,
Speaker 8: government ran public transit systems, state owned telecommunication companies, public utilities.
Speaker 6: Right now, listen, here's where it's interesting.
Speaker 8: Have to balance serving the public interests while remaining financially
Speaker 8: sustainable since they are not profit driven, any revenue earned
Speaker 8: is invested back into maintaining the infrastructure of the operations,
Speaker 8: which seems like a big old dug. We're not here
Speaker 8: to make money. This is not our money making interest.
Speaker 8: This is living, right, It's a utility. Like It's just
Speaker 8: I'm not trying to make money off it. I'm trying
Speaker 8: to keep the lights on, right, But as we know,
Speaker 8: it costs to do those things, so the temptation becomes
Speaker 8: easy to be like, how do I offload this cost
Speaker 8: right and make sure that this service is there? Because
Speaker 8: as you know, oftentimes public utilities don't be very good.
Speaker 8: You know what I'm saying. Flint still ain't got fresh
Speaker 8: water right now. Altadena is in a situation where they
Speaker 8: was like, look, don't even boil the water, like whatever
Speaker 8: coming out of your tap is just not good.
Speaker 6: Boiling is not good enough, Like do not drink this water?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 8: Is the situation that they in, and it's like we're
Speaker 8: where the money at, Like, how are we going to
Speaker 8: fix this?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 6: That's a public utility.
Speaker 8: Now, private utility is utilities obviously owned and operated by
Speaker 8: private companies. So that would be an investored owned electricity
Speaker 8: company like a private telecommunication, private owned oil gas and pipelines,
Speaker 8: and private owned waste management companies. Now, their goal, because
Speaker 8: it's a company, is still to make profit for their
Speaker 8: shareholders while also delivering reliable service. Now, they argument their
Speaker 8: defense would be if we don't give you a good product,
Speaker 8: we won't have customers, So it is in our best
Speaker 8: interests for our own money to give you a best service. However,
Speaker 8: are you seeing the truck size hole in their logic? Nigga,
Speaker 8: we don't have a choice. Do you have a choice
Speaker 8: as to what water company provides the water to your house?
Speaker 8: Who go run the sewer? I don't have an option anyway.
Speaker 8: So the key differences are very obvious.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 8: One is the ownership and motives. Like publicly owned utilities
Speaker 8: serve the public interests rather than pursue profits. Right, private
Speaker 8: owned utilities are there for their investors in the maximize returns.
Speaker 6: Regulation and pricing.
Speaker 8: Public utilities are regulated by the governm in imported commissions
Speaker 8: that oversee pricing. Private utilities are also regulated, but usually
Speaker 8: more flexible in their rate setting, because what the hell.
Speaker 6: You gonna do?
Speaker 8: Get you a called a water company? Be like, I
Speaker 8: ain't paying this bill. They gonna be like, ooh, no problem.
Speaker 8: Service areas most publics utility service customers are within municipal boundaries.
Speaker 8: Investor owned utilities often are defined by regional monopolies with
Speaker 8: little overlap or competition with customers.
Speaker 6: Listen, if you ever.
Speaker 8: Moved into an apartment and you was like, y'all, I'm
Speaker 8: trying to like, you know, install cable and they was like,
Speaker 8: or your Internet. It was like, oh, it's AT and
Speaker 8: T over here. I was like, oh, but I have Spectrum.
Speaker 8: They're like, Spectrum don't serve this area.
Speaker 2: Nigga.
Speaker 6: It is the Internet, it's the air, it's wires, this polls.
Speaker 9: I'm not allowed to.
Speaker 8: U can't come over here because it's a private company.
Speaker 8: Now I'm in a situation where AT and T knock
Speaker 8: on my door every day being like, yo, we laying
Speaker 8: fiber optics. You know, we lay we laying new pipes
Speaker 8: down here, up under your up under your street.
Speaker 6: We can move faster than Spectrum.
Speaker 8: I done ditch them both, and then Spectrum still email
Speaker 8: me every day. Spectrum sent somebody was like, we heard
Speaker 8: you left Spectrum. We're trying to figure out why. I'm like, nigga,
Speaker 8: because I don't want to use either of y'all, but
Speaker 8: we're the area you serve. When I first moved into
Speaker 8: the house that I'm in now, like, I made an
Speaker 8: account on Edison and they were like, oh, nigga, Edison
Speaker 8: don't serve here. You had SoCal Gas and I was like,
Speaker 8: who the hell is so cal Gas? They was like
Speaker 8: that's who that's who else gonna give me the gap?
Speaker 8: I don't have no options. Oh, I got to live
Speaker 8: in La. These this is who serves LA infrastructure spending.
Speaker 8: With public utilities, they might find it easier to raise
Speaker 8: funds for long term capital projects and maintain infrastructure proactively,
Speaker 8: while privately owned businesses and utilities answered to share seeking returns,
Speaker 8: which impact investment decisions. Meaning if I'm like, yo, somebody
Speaker 8: gotta clean this sewer pipe because this water ain't good
Speaker 8: in this neighborhood, it would behoove the city of Los
Speaker 8: Angeles to fix this, and it would be easy for
Speaker 8: them because I am a Los Angeles resident.
Speaker 6: This is a public utility. If I have private water,
Speaker 6: they might be like.
Speaker 8: H how much money that's that neighborhood give us? You
Speaker 8: know if we fix the water up there in Palace
Speaker 8: verd aids you know what I'm saying, Like, we got
Speaker 8: to talk to them because they know, I mean, they
Speaker 8: kind of give us the bread, so they're not incentivized
Speaker 8: necessarily to fix my infrastructure. Right, and then the customer
Speaker 8: service focus right. Public utilities often focus more on customer
Speaker 8: satisfaction and addressing community complaints, while private entities have profit motives.
Speaker 8: I mean, I don't know what else I need to
Speaker 8: explain to y'all. Right, now, let me show you how
Speaker 8: this works and what the allure is for a public
Speaker 8: city council to make this decision. Are y'all here to
Speaker 8: more perfect union? It's another one of those podcast folks
Speaker 8: that just got more money than us. They're able to
Speaker 8: produce things that we had bread we would produce it anyway.
Speaker 8: They did one about investor own water companies and how
Speaker 8: they lobby to give them the contract to run their
Speaker 8: sewage and water, right, And it's a super dope stuff.
Speaker 8: It's a super dope study. It's a good, like focused
Speaker 8: study to show like as sort of an example of
Speaker 8: how it could happen anywhere. And they focused this one
Speaker 8: study on this city in Pennsylvania, right. And here's the
Speaker 8: ill part about all of this is that how would
Speaker 8: you know this is happening?
Speaker 6: I mean, are you really looking at the logo on
Speaker 6: your water bill?
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 8: No, you just like looking at the costs, right and
Speaker 8: hoping that it don't be that much. Now again, if
Speaker 8: you've written it, if you rent in an apartment, I
Speaker 8: don't know what utilities you gotta cover, right, let's say
Speaker 8: you are renting in an apartment. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 8: Like a lot of times, Joe utilities, It's like that's
Speaker 8: like they cover water and gas, you cover electricity and
Speaker 8: internet and then whatever it is. I'm not thinking about
Speaker 8: who the company is. I'm just like paying the bill.
Speaker 8: But if one day your bill triple, I mean, who
Speaker 8: do you call you? Like, I haven't used more water.
Speaker 8: I don't understand why it costs more. Now you might
Speaker 8: call the city the city like, oh, we don't even
Speaker 8: run the water no more.
Speaker 6: And that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 8: So in twenty twenty in New Garden, Pennsylvania, they sold
Speaker 8: their water to get this Agua, Pennsylvania Jerks, a subsidiary
Speaker 8: of Essential Utilities, they sold.
Speaker 6: They water for thirty million dollars.
Speaker 8: And just for you to get a grasp on how
Speaker 8: much money can be made by doing this. If you
Speaker 8: a company, that company made two point zero five billion
Speaker 8: dollars in twenty twenty three. And essentially, if you the city,
Speaker 8: the city runs up. Are you having all kinds of problems?
Speaker 8: You got people not paying bills on time, you got
Speaker 8: all these different you know, all this stuff you gotta
Speaker 8: hire the workers.
Speaker 6: You gotta do all this stuff.
Speaker 8: And this company runs up and was like, yo, we'll
Speaker 8: take all this off your hands. Not only will we
Speaker 8: take it off your hands, we'll pay you for it.
Speaker 8: So to the city and they saying, look, I do
Speaker 8: a better job than y'all do. Why because this is
Speaker 8: all we do. You got all this other stuff you
Speaker 8: gotta take care of. We gonna only take care of
Speaker 8: the water. Look, we'll give you thirty million dollars for it.
Speaker 8: That's free money. And you ain't got to worry about it.
Speaker 8: All you gotta do when people call complaining about they
Speaker 8: water is just say please hold and transferred to us.
Speaker 8: You ain't got nothing to worry about it. And the
Speaker 8: city say, okay, that sounds good. Now are you going
Speaker 8: you're gonna change your prices? It's like, why would we
Speaker 8: change our prices. We won't need to change our price.
Speaker 8: Matter of fact, we can probably charge less because we
Speaker 8: ain't got the same things y'all got, well, at least
Speaker 8: for the first few years. Kind of like the phone
Speaker 8: bill when they like, oh, you sign up for this
Speaker 8: much money a month for the first three months. Are
Speaker 8: your cable for the first first two years, and then
Speaker 8: one day, your cable bill come in and it's just
Speaker 8: psycho and you like, I don't know why to hell
Speaker 8: this costs so much more. And they're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 8: the contract was for this long and then after that
Speaker 8: it went back to regular price. That's essentially what's happening.
Speaker 8: That's why I was like, if your water bill go crazy,
Speaker 8: who you're gonna call? Like what you gonna say?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 6: Uh?
Speaker 8: They could just be like, yeah, it just costs more now.
Speaker 8: So for the city, the city is like, look, it's
Speaker 8: free money. We could put this money into other stuff
Speaker 8: we've been trying to work on, and y'all gonna get
Speaker 8: a better situation. And again, no one looks at the
Speaker 8: logo on their bill. So the utilities industries, right a
Speaker 8: few years ago, I think in twenty sixteen, got this
Speaker 8: law passed that made cities want to sell it. It's
Speaker 8: called the fair market Value laws. One example is in
Speaker 8: Pennsylvania was Act twelve, which was in twenty sixteen. And
Speaker 8: the concern is cities feel like they can't keep up
Speaker 8: with dunt dunt dun environmental laws and keep up with
Speaker 8: city growth. Cities are growing so fast, so many people
Speaker 8: are moving in, We're destroying the Earth at a particular
Speaker 8: exponential rate, and the government wants us to not destroy
Speaker 8: the planet.
Speaker 6: Ho home. So I got all.
Speaker 8: These laws I got we just you know, he's a
Speaker 8: hat of the money for it.
Speaker 6: He's out of the money for it at the time.
Speaker 8: So when you're evaluating how much this utility would be worth,
Speaker 8: you can include, because of Act twelve in Pennsylvania, the
Speaker 8: median income, the expected repairs and future revenue, which means
Speaker 8: it makes that water worth way much more. Right, And
Speaker 8: a lot of times when you selling this, when you
Speaker 8: selling this disutility, the price tag what these people be
Speaker 8: paying you be six times the city budget.
Speaker 6: So think about this. I'm just trying to make this
Speaker 6: real for you.
Speaker 8: Let's just say somebody comes in and says I'll buy
Speaker 8: your car. You say, word for how much? And they say,
Speaker 8: I tell you what, I'll pay you your year's salary
Speaker 8: for this car. The fam you gonna add I add
Speaker 8: another car in there for that. You know what I'm saying, Hey,
Speaker 8: you know, throw throwing another six months for the stalary.
Speaker 8: I'll make you some dinner. Like it's it's kind of
Speaker 8: a no brainer. You like, you our entire year's budget
Speaker 8: just for the water. No brainer, But who pays the company? Nigga,
Speaker 8: you you paying the company? What do I mean by that?
Speaker 8: The company cuts cuts the city at check. Now the
Speaker 8: company gotta make their money back. How they make their
Speaker 8: money back? Nigga, your bills?
Speaker 2: What is you like?
Speaker 6: What is you saying? Of course they gonna make their
Speaker 6: money back now.
Speaker 8: Again, they're incentivized to make that money back as fast
Speaker 8: as possible, which means they're not going to spend more.
Speaker 8: They hadn't already spend thirty million dollars to get the thing.
Speaker 8: But then they'll promise to like fix their systems, their
Speaker 8: promise like you sold the city saying I'm gonna be
Speaker 8: able to spend some time to upgrade and do all
Speaker 8: this difference. And they don't have a upgrade nothing, because
Speaker 8: it's kind of a no brainer.
Speaker 6: This is easy money to them.
Speaker 8: In Philly, there's this area called the Chester Water Authority
Speaker 8: that went straight up bankrupt. So like the city's water
Speaker 8: authority just went bankrupt. So they was like, yo, we
Speaker 8: gotta sell it. They got offered four hundred and ten
Speaker 8: million dollars. Well the city did, and the city says, nigga,
Speaker 8: Chester Water Authority, you ain't got the right to sell
Speaker 8: because you are not a company. You are part of
Speaker 8: the City of Philadelphia. Chester Water Authority is like, my jig,
Speaker 8: I mean, what the hell you want us to do?
Speaker 8: How does this stuff become legal? Well, like saying, way
Speaker 8: any other stick come legal? They just you lobby candidates
Speaker 8: all the time. And the only way to stop this
Speaker 8: is you got to sign up to some sort of
Speaker 8: city council news led us something to be able to
Speaker 8: walk up in there and protest the shit. Nigga, good luck.
Speaker 8: Now let's talk about specifically California. All right, I bring
Speaker 8: up specifically California because of all this stuff about the fire,
Speaker 8: hydrants and water issues that we had recently. Remember that
Speaker 8: the water that water's Los Angeles comes from the north right,
Speaker 8: It comes from right up under Sacramento through the California
Speaker 8: Aqueduct that was put together by this man named maulhulland
Speaker 8: so the mulhulland passed mulhulland drive that was all based
Speaker 8: on this man that made Los Angeles be possible because
Speaker 8: he just went up there just like any other colonizing
Speaker 8: was like a buy your water, and they was like
Speaker 8: water ain't for sale.
Speaker 6: He was like, uh, yeah it is.
Speaker 8: And went over their heads and bought the water, built
Speaker 8: a whole Basically like when you was a kid at
Speaker 8: the beach and you dig a little thing in the
Speaker 8: sand to make the water go a certain way. That's
Speaker 8: basically what he did through the middle of California to
Speaker 8: bring water to Los Angeles. Now, Los Angeles did have
Speaker 8: one river, that was the San Gabril River that starts
Speaker 8: in the top of the San Gabriel Foothills and comes
Speaker 8: into what we call the La River, which is paved,
Speaker 8: which there is a movement to unpave that because that
Speaker 8: would probably help us with a lot of climate issues.
Speaker 8: But either way, that was an actual river. It was
Speaker 8: enough to support the native tribes here because it wasn't
Speaker 8: that many people here and they had sense enough to
Speaker 8: not plants that need the water that they ain't got.
Speaker 8: They wasn't trying to build a city in the area.
Speaker 8: They ain't supposed to be a city. Nigga, Have you
Speaker 8: ever been to Las Vegas. There should not be a
Speaker 8: city there. Y'all ever been to the Inland Empire? There
Speaker 8: should not be that many humans there. According to the Earth,
Speaker 8: unless you pump water over there. The natives were fine
Speaker 8: the indigenous communities figured out how to live in the
Speaker 8: shit for thousands of years, but you know, we had
Speaker 8: to do our thing. Now some vocabulary. California got a
Speaker 8: thing called senior water rights, which means whoever got there
Speaker 8: first gets the water, Like basically, it's my land, di
Speaker 8: licted right. But they only got them rights when it
Speaker 8: started from the gold Rush. So they was like, well,
Speaker 8: who was there first? Was this white man?
Speaker 6: Not the people that already lived there, but these white men.
Speaker 8: So if you happen to have a farm, you know
Speaker 8: up near North Fresno, if your family been there longer
Speaker 8: than somebody else's family, then that water is yours, right,
Speaker 8: that's senior water rights.
Speaker 6: And then there's.
Speaker 8: Junior water rights, which is like the second person. So
Speaker 8: whatever water you don't use, they get to use right now.
Speaker 8: Why that is specifically important for California, especially the Central Valley,
Speaker 8: is because Cali provides everybody's produce. I mean, for the
Speaker 8: rest of the country, the vast majority of the fruits, vegetables, nuts,
Speaker 8: and lagoons that you eat come from California.
Speaker 6: We gotta have water. It would be hoof.
Speaker 8: Of rest of America to make sure that Cali got water.
Speaker 8: So those are water rights. Now, the water that gets
Speaker 8: pumped down into our fire hydrants, here's the situation like
Speaker 8: that had to do a water pressure. Now you could
Speaker 8: refer to the block is literally hot episode where I
Speaker 8: go into detail as to what happened with that. But
Speaker 8: there was this whole thing about the water being owned
Speaker 8: by some billionaires. Now I would love to run with
Speaker 8: that one, but the fact is, that's just not true.
Speaker 6: It's not that simple. Let me go ahead in fact
Speaker 6: check that.
Speaker 8: So the wonderful code which is who they were talking about,
Speaker 8: it's Steward and Linda Resnik. They do have a majority
Speaker 8: steak in a water bank that can store up to
Speaker 8: one point five million acres right, which is close to
Speaker 8: five hundred billion gallons of water. But the realness is
Speaker 8: that's like a tiny fraction of the water capacity of California.
Speaker 8: California's groundwater basins combined can hold more than five hundred
Speaker 8: and sixty six times as much water, with a storage
Speaker 8: capacity of eight hundred and fifty million to one point
Speaker 8: three billion acres of feet across the California Department of
Speaker 8: Water Sources. The state's surface resources hold more than forty
Speaker 8: million acres On top of that. So there's two types
Speaker 8: of water here. There's surface water and there's groundwater. Groundwater
Speaker 8: obviously that's stuff that you would dig in for a well,
Speaker 8: that's a whole other thing.
Speaker 6: Right now.
Speaker 8: It is true this family owns brands is like wonderful pistachios,
Speaker 8: Fiji water wonderful, land halos, wonderful halos, and palm wonderful
Speaker 8: and that's a you know, I don't know if you're
Speaker 8: in a pomegranate juice, but if that's your thing. But anyway,
Speaker 8: let me quote from politiffect. The water the Resinics use
Speaker 8: gets stored underground initially before the water that is delivered
Speaker 8: to the roots of Resinic's pistachios, almonds, pomegranate orchards. Specifically,
Speaker 8: it's stored in the Kerrent Water Bank that is the
Speaker 8: most valuable water resource in the region and critical to
Speaker 8: America's fresh flood supplies. The water bank, which is watch
Speaker 8: This the bank itself a public private partnership with the
Speaker 8: Resnic's owned fifty seven percent of the steak is thirty
Speaker 8: two square mile recharge basin, which looks like floodlands from
Speaker 8: the street that essentially stores again the one point five
Speaker 8: million acre feet of water five hundred billion gallons. The
Speaker 8: resins storage arrangement is very controversial.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 8: They've been banking on the water by using public and
Speaker 8: private dollars to corral public resource. Because of their water
Speaker 8: rights and their wealth, they are insulating themselves from this
Speaker 8: type of drought, which, of course that's what rich do, right.
Speaker 8: This is what Chas Miller says, the director of Environmental
Speaker 8: Analysis at Pomona College. Private capital has no problem with
Speaker 8: the drought, while the rest of us are looking at
Speaker 8: deep social divides. Somebody bought the water, but water isn't
Speaker 8: the only thing, like I said, as somebody else owes,
Speaker 8: you know. According to Publicpower dot Org, utilities that were
Speaker 8: sold since nineteen eighty have ranged dramatically in size. Although
Speaker 8: many had a small number of customers at the time
Speaker 8: of the sale, with the median of fewer than six
Speaker 8: hundred customers, less than thirty percent of utilities sold had
Speaker 8: more than a thousand customers at the time of sale. Right,
Speaker 8: so back then it was a small amount of people.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 8: Watch this, Only five public power utilities with ten thousand
Speaker 8: or more customers have sold, right, and four of those
Speaker 8: five sales occurred were approved since twenty fifteen. Now the
Speaker 8: largest sale of such electric department was the city of Murphysboro, Tennessee,
Speaker 8: which had about sixty eight thousand customers and when it
Speaker 8: sold to the Middle Tennessee Electric Membership Cooperative in twenty twenty.
Speaker 8: Other utilities substantial size include those serving the cities of
Speaker 8: Vero Beach, Anchorage, Alaska, Eagle Mountain, Utah, and all together
Speaker 8: we are talking about eight hundred thousand citizens today have
Speaker 8: their electricity. Private sales have occurred in twenty six states,
Speaker 8: and almost all of Kansas was sold, and it was
Speaker 8: sold in the nineteen eighties. Now, why even make an
Speaker 8: episode on this? And it's because of this last thing.
Speaker 8: Corporate cities. Now, of course, company towns is as old
Speaker 8: as companies are. You know, you had trained things and
Speaker 8: stuff like that, you know, where like a company moves
Speaker 8: in and it just it just made sense for the
Speaker 8: company to make sure that they were providing housing and
Speaker 8: you know, saloons and stuff like that for the people
Speaker 8: that you know, lived.
Speaker 6: In their area. It just made sense.
Speaker 8: That was just it was just good business, right, you
Speaker 8: wanted to attract more people to stay in this area.
Speaker 8: If you've ever been in northwest Arkansas, city called Bentonville.
Speaker 8: It's actually very dope to be in, but it is
Speaker 8: the headquarters for Walmart. So if you're gonna work in
Speaker 8: corporate Walmart, you gotta live in Bentonville.
Speaker 2: Now, the city's dope is that.
Speaker 8: A corporate town, not in what I'm talking about. It
Speaker 8: is a company that said we're gonna dump a kajillion
Speaker 8: dollars to make this city as dope as possible. That's
Speaker 8: one thing I am talking about, a brand duh making
Speaker 8: a city.
Speaker 6: I wish I was making this up.
Speaker 8: Google got One is working on a community called North
Speaker 8: Bay Shore in Mountain View, California that'll have seven thousand
Speaker 8: housing units, and another called Middlefield Park that'll have two
Speaker 8: thousand units. Meta is building Willow Village dubbed Zucktown in
Speaker 8: Menlo Park, California, and they'll have seventeen hundred housing units,
Speaker 8: a hotel, and plenty of retail. Disney is developing a
Speaker 8: fourteen hundred thousand units across eighty acres in Kissamee, Florida,
Speaker 8: right near Walt Disney World. Elon Musk is building his
Speaker 8: city called in snail Brook outside of Austin, Texas for
Speaker 8: employees of his constellations of startups, including SpaceX, Tesla, and Boeing,
Speaker 8: but the most ambitious is California Forever. It's supposed to
Speaker 8: be Silicon Valley two point zero. It's this group ran
Speaker 8: by the former Golden Sacks trader Jane Samark and is
Speaker 8: backed by investors like the Lincoln co founder Reed hofsman
Speaker 8: Chris Dixon, and this philanthropist name Loreene Powell. And it
Speaker 8: plans to create this new city in Solano County, sixty
Speaker 8: miles north of San Bernardino, with tens of thousands of homes,
Speaker 8: large solar energy orchards, with a million new trees, and
Speaker 8: one hundred thousand acres of new park space. And they
Speaker 8: hope to build this community will generate thousands of jobs
Speaker 8: in a wockable Paris or West village in New York.
Speaker 6: And there was this.
Speaker 8: Reporting of this unknown group that was coming up in
Speaker 8: just like just buying farmland. It was called Flannery Associates,
Speaker 8: And for years nobody had any idea who these people were.
Speaker 8: They purchased fifty two thousand acres, spent eight hundred million,
Speaker 8: paying five times a market rate, and.
Speaker 6: Nobody knew who they were.
Speaker 8: It's a little po dunk town people selling their little farms.
Speaker 8: It's because these billionaires is building a city.
Speaker 9: Now.
Speaker 8: I am telling you all this ultimately to introduce you
Speaker 8: to Curtis Yarvin, who is probably going to be a
Speaker 8: future bastard pod person or either way, one of these
Speaker 8: shows is gonna cover this man, because this man, in
Speaker 8: a lot of ways, is the patient zero, the contagion
Speaker 8: number one of these new Republicans, this new conservatism, this
Speaker 8: new extremist that's been kind of been trying to.
Speaker 6: Tell everybody, here's why it's so poisonous.
Speaker 8: He's like, because not only is democracy dead, democracy being dead,
Speaker 8: and whatever you think you have now ain't a democracy,
Speaker 8: to which all of us would be like, nigga, Yes,
Speaker 8: That's why it's so dangerous, because I'd be like yeah.
Speaker 8: He's like, the system's failing you, and I'm like amen.
Speaker 8: So his solution is a monarchy, but.
Speaker 6: He mean a monarchy like a CEO.
Speaker 8: So this man says if the country was ran like
Speaker 8: a tech company, everything would be cool, we would all
Speaker 8: be better. And his example of that is he would say, Okay,
Speaker 8: look at that laptop you use it.
Speaker 6: Look at that phone you got.
Speaker 8: Do you think you would have got to that phone
Speaker 8: to that laptop, the quality of that laptop you had,
Speaker 8: if it was done by the City of California's Tech
Speaker 8: Municipal Department. He's like, nigga, no, you got that because
Speaker 8: of Steve Jobs. That's why you got that phone, because
Speaker 8: that nigga was like, Look, this is what we're doing.
Speaker 8: This is how we're doing it. He would argue that
Speaker 8: Roosevelt over the New Deal. He was a tech bro.
Speaker 8: He ran his mug like a tech startup. He was like, look, nigga,
Speaker 8: this is what we're doing. We building freeways.
Speaker 6: I don't care what y'all say. We building freeways.
Speaker 8: He's like, if the country ran like a tech company,
Speaker 8: then maybe this country would work better. And he's like,
Speaker 8: in newsflash, whatever the hell you think you got now
Speaker 8: ain't working anyway. We might as well just lean into it.
Speaker 8: All I'm saying is I don't know what I'm saying, fam,
Speaker 8: it could happen here. So this is your favorite cousin
Speaker 8: swooping in and signing off ruining another thing for you.
Speaker 6: Don't catch me at the hood of politics, Pop.
Speaker 10: This is it could happen here. A show about things
Speaker 10: falling apart, and this episode is about the people who
Speaker 10: want to make it being the United States fall apart faster,
Speaker 10: allowing them to install a white supremacist ethno state, though
Speaker 10: it kind of feels like that's pretty much already happening.
Speaker 10: This episode is also about the people in government who
Speaker 10: categorize and classify want to be terrorists, who want the
Speaker 10: country to collapse faster, and what these changes in categorization
Speaker 10: methods can tell us about the future of the country.
Speaker 10: I'm Garrison Davison today I'm joined by a very special guest,
Speaker 10: philosophing comedian Michael Burns of the YouTube channel Michael o'burns
Speaker 10: and formerly wiscrack rip. How you doing.
Speaker 3: Pretty good, you know, besides living in the world that
Speaker 3: you just described past that everything's going great.
Speaker 10: Yeah, that's kind of been my mood the past three months,
Speaker 10: maybe longer. There's a tad, a tad like liminality. But
Speaker 10: I don't know if that's just like living in denial
Speaker 10: and trying to cope. But hey, you know what's wrong
Speaker 10: with a little bit of coping.
Speaker 3: Especially if it helps one simple survive these times. So,
Speaker 3: you know, I encourage a healthy dose of of coping
Speaker 3: or sort of a you know, mental bifurcation. If that's
Speaker 3: what we need to do to get up in the
Speaker 3: morning and get through it all. Yeah.
Speaker 10: Now, unfortunately, this episode that I have prepared today is
Speaker 10: uh not a super cheery one for you, Michael. Uh,
Speaker 10: which is which is maybe kind of kind of appropriate
Speaker 10: because the reason why I have you on this episode
Speaker 10: today is because the FBI and the Department of Justice
Speaker 10: have come up with a new terrorism classification acronym which
Speaker 10: name drops the internet's favorite and sometimes least favorite philosophy, nihilism.
Speaker 10: They're they're calling these guys nihilistic violent extremists. Oh boy,
Speaker 10: we will, we will get into this. Do you want
Speaker 10: to give like a philosophy one oh one definition of nihilism?
Speaker 10: A super well known and universally agreed upon term that
Speaker 10: always means the same thing to everybody.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it's not confusing at all. And yeah, I
Speaker 3: mean I think the root of it, at least in
Speaker 3: like a modern philosophical sense, is Nietzsche. At least that's
Speaker 3: a common reference point. And when Nietzsche is talking about nihilism,
Speaker 3: especially in a book like The Genealogy of Morality a
Speaker 3: lot of other places, he is making the argument that
Speaker 3: sort of Christian European culture, and particularly a Christian European
Speaker 3: culture influenced by idealist philosophy, creates nihilism. The reason he
Speaker 3: says it creates nihilism is because people care more about
Speaker 3: Heaven than they do about earth. They care more about
Speaker 3: the life they're going to have an eternity than the
Speaker 3: life they have in the here and now. So for him,
Speaker 3: it's like this devaluement of life that happens if your Christianity.
Speaker 3: More broadly speaking, nihilism has a I guess more positive usage,
Speaker 3: which is the you know, disbelief in the inherent or
Speaker 3: necessary meaning in an overarching.
Speaker 10: System, like in like the existential sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you kind of have this this distinction, and
Speaker 3: some people use of positive and negative nihilism, and to
Speaker 3: be really crass and simple here, negative nihilism is nothing
Speaker 3: means anything, So I don't give a shit. I'm just
Speaker 3: gonna hang out and do whatever. Positive nihilism is there's
Speaker 3: no inherent meaning in reality.
Speaker 2: But cool.
Speaker 3: Now, me and the homies can construct meaning as we
Speaker 3: see fit, which is more like the existentialist response. We're
Speaker 3: going to create meaning where maybe there wasn't natural meaning
Speaker 3: in this like old school platonic or Christian sense.
Speaker 10: And I'm not sure how much the FBI agents who
Speaker 10: are doing these federal court filings have read Nietzsche or
Speaker 10: the French existentialists and instead are probably using a colloquial
Speaker 10: definition of nihilism, right this like no nothing matters, you know,
Speaker 10: this like apathetic postmodernist like idea to go a little
Speaker 10: Jordan Petersony, right, yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Mean I think there's the sense in which it is
Speaker 3: the kind of weird Jordan Petersony alt right philosophy version
Speaker 3: of nihilism, which just means like people that think the
Speaker 3: dominance of the West is bad. And it also reeks
Speaker 3: a little bit of like big Lebowski nihilism for totally
Speaker 3: you know. And of course in that movie, nihilism is
Speaker 3: represented by a crew of I think Austrian techno producers
Speaker 3: called Autobond, who are also nihilists, and they say throughout
Speaker 3: the film like we are nihilists, we believe in nothing,
Speaker 3: which is a really and obviously the Coen Brothers made
Speaker 3: that film, at least one of them was a philosophy major,
Speaker 3: so they know what they're doing. That's kind of the
Speaker 3: really basic, not good enough version of this thing that
Speaker 3: it seems like the FBI is operating with like people
Speaker 3: who don't believe in the goodness of the Western project.
Speaker 10: Correct, and that's what they're really honing in on. I
Speaker 10: will read an expanded definition of nihilistic violent extremism. This
Speaker 10: is from a Federal court filing dated March eighteenth, twenty
Speaker 10: twenty five. Nihilist violent extremists are individuals who engage in
Speaker 10: criminal conduct within the United States and abroad in furtherance
Speaker 10: of political, social, religious goals that derive primarily from a
Speaker 10: hatred of societ at large and a desire to bring
Speaker 10: about its collapse by sowing indiscriminate chaos, destruction, and social instability.
Speaker 10: Nihlis violent extremists work individually or as a part of
Speaker 10: a network with these goals of destroying civilized society through
Speaker 10: the corruption and exploitation of vulnerable populations, which often include miners. Now,
Speaker 10: this is where it's going to get into some kind
Speaker 10: of weirder stuff that we will kind of explain later.
Speaker 10: They have like a second definition here quote Nihilistic violence streamists,
Speaker 10: both individually and as a network, systematically and methodically target
Speaker 10: vulnerable populations across the United States and the globe. They
Speaker 10: frequently use social media communication platforms to connect with individuals
Speaker 10: and desensitize them to violence, among other things, breaking down
Speaker 10: societal norms regarding engagement violence, normalizing the possession, production, and
Speaker 10: sharing of gore materials, and otherwise corrupting and grooming those
Speaker 10: individuals towards committing future acts of violence unquote. And that
Speaker 10: kind of outlines some of the strategy of these groups,
Speaker 10: the groups that they're kind of gonna mention here. I've
Speaker 10: been doing like freelance research on for about four years now.
Speaker 10: I've been trying to publish a few articles on these
Speaker 10: guys over the years, but it's always it's always tricky,
Speaker 10: and we will get to kind of the darker corners
Speaker 10: of that in a sec But let's let's first kind
Speaker 10: of talk about what this new term, this nvees nihilist
Speaker 10: violent extremists, What this is kind of replacing in the
Speaker 10: in the FBI lexicon. Now, it seems that that this
Speaker 10: term is being used in place of two previous FBI
Speaker 10: terrorism categories. This is from a November twenty twenty FBI bulletin.
Speaker 10: Quote anti government or anti authority violent extremism. This threat
Speaker 10: encompasses the potentially unlawful use or threat of force or
Speaker 10: violence in furtherance of ideological agendas derived from anti government
Speaker 10: or anti authority sentiment, including opposition to perceived economic, social,
Speaker 10: or racial hierarchies, or perceived government overreach, negligence, or illegitimacy.
Speaker 3: Can I say something that stood out to me about
Speaker 3: those definitions? The hatred thing I found really interesting in
Speaker 3: like the very first definition you give that nihilism is
Speaker 3: defined as like in a motive state, because again, I
Speaker 3: think nihilism is classically conceived totally is almost more like
Speaker 3: ontological or metaphysical, And by that I just mean looking
Speaker 3: at these structures of belief in the world. So rather
Speaker 3: than being like motivated by hatred or love or fear
Speaker 3: or whatever, a more classically nihilists few is just again like, oh,
Speaker 3: I've been sold a bill of goods on what the
Speaker 3: meaning of existences or what the undermining underlying principles of
Speaker 3: political reality are, And now I see that they are
Speaker 3: maybe bs.
Speaker 10: Not the hatred of society and wanting to collapse it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess there's just like this negativity associated with
Speaker 3: all that language. And of course I was having never
Speaker 3: heard the definitions that you were just bringing up, you know,
Speaker 3: the way in which it just quickly zigs and zags
Speaker 3: to like some very dark stuff in terms of like radicalization.
Speaker 3: That seemed like there was a reference towards like a
Speaker 3: like like pedophilia or something there.
Speaker 10: Child sexual abuse materials, Yeah, come up a little bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, so it just getting from A to B.
Speaker 3: There is more like getting from A to Z or something.
Speaker 3: It's just not a connection that I think would be
Speaker 3: obvious to anyone who has thought about, read about written
Speaker 3: about nihilism as more of an intellectual or even like
Speaker 3: a political and philosophical.
Speaker 10: Concept totally, because there is like political nihilists and like
Speaker 10: the Russian tradition and more recently in like the American
Speaker 10: Aniatest tradition or the Greek anarchist tradition, where they believe
Speaker 10: in this like idea of like intigation and trying to
Speaker 10: trying to like in negate to government institutions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but which is still a far cry from believing
Speaker 3: in causing active harm psychologically, physically whatever to human.
Speaker 10: Being vulnerable populations.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a sense in which it's painted as like
Speaker 3: if you knew nothing else and you were to read
Speaker 3: those definitions and you were just just scared suburban insurance
Speaker 3: salesman or something. It would sound as if it was
Speaker 3: like a death cult infecting the minds of the children,
Speaker 3: like zombie esque little super soldiers.
Speaker 10: That's actually what they're going for. And I have a
Speaker 10: lot of mixed opinions on this term because I think
Speaker 10: this term is trying to describe a group that does
Speaker 10: kind of defy classification. But I think the use of
Speaker 10: the nihilist term is also not good. So I'm kind
Speaker 10: of in a rock and a hard place here as
Speaker 10: someone who does a lot of extremists and research. Now,
Speaker 10: the other term that the FBI is probably seeking to replace,
Speaker 10: at least in part with this new nihilism definition is
Speaker 10: racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism. Right, this is like
Speaker 10: your what term assists your neo Nazis. The FBI defines
Speaker 10: it as quote. This threatning compasses the potentially unlawful use
Speaker 10: or threat of force or violence and furtherance of ideological
Speaker 10: agendas derived from bias, often relating to race or ethnicity
Speaker 10: held by the actor against others or a given population group.
Speaker 10: Racially or ethnically motivated boid extreamists purported to use both
Speaker 10: political and religious justifications to support their racially or ethnically
Speaker 10: based ideological objectives and criminal activities. This was the group
Speaker 10: that saw like a massive, a massive explosion and growth
Speaker 10: the past ten years, really starting around twenty sixteen to
Speaker 10: twenty seventeen, with you know, the neo Nazi mass shooting
Speaker 10: like epidemic, especially around like twenty seventeen to twenty nineteen.
Speaker 10: This is the most lethal group and it grew exponentially
Speaker 10: during that period, and we're kind of seeing some of
Speaker 10: these groups start to reform now. Now there's been some
Speaker 10: reporting that this that this anti government or anti authority
Speaker 10: violent extremism, which I'm just going to say AGAVE, which
Speaker 10: is the acronym which does make me a little bit
Speaker 10: hungry for a glucose syrup. That it's fine. Now, there's
Speaker 10: been some reporting that state agave is specifically like a
Speaker 10: Biden era term, but it actually like predates the Biden
Speaker 10: presidency and was in use under Trump. In fact, a
Speaker 10: lot of the internal FBI reforms that are being reported
Speaker 10: on right now are actually undoing changes and counter terrorism
Speaker 10: strategies that started under the first Trump presidency. But we'll
Speaker 10: get more on that later. We're gonna go on an
Speaker 10: ad break real quick and return to talk about a
Speaker 10: gruesome act of violence in Wisconsin last month.
Speaker 1: All right, we are back.
Speaker 10: I'm gonna get more into how the government is using
Speaker 10: this term and like what they are applying it to,
Speaker 10: what they're applying the nihilist of violent extremism labeled to.
Speaker 10: Earlier this year, a Wisconsin teen male named Nikota Cassup
Speaker 10: killed his parents in an attempt to gain the financial
Speaker 10: means and autonomy necessary to carry out a plot to
Speaker 10: assassinate President Trump and accelerate the collapse of the United States.
Speaker 10: I'm gonna read a quote from a federal criminal complaint
Speaker 10: filed last month.
Speaker 5: Quote.
Speaker 10: On March third, twenty twenty, five County sheriffs obtained a
Speaker 10: search warrant for casp cell phone. During the review, they
Speaker 10: identified material on the phone related to quote unquote the
Speaker 10: Order of Nine Angles. The sheriff's review of the phone
Speaker 10: identified possible usernames for Cassup, including Accelerationists fourteen and Awoken unquote. Now, Michael,
Speaker 10: are you unfortunate enough to be familiar with the Order
Speaker 10: of Nine Angles?
Speaker 3: I am not so.
Speaker 10: This is a group that was originally based in the
Speaker 10: UK and now is primarily active in Eastern Europe, though
Speaker 10: there are branches or spin offs called nexions in the
Speaker 10: United States. This is a group that is kind of
Speaker 10: hard to find. People often call it a Nazi Satanist group.
Speaker 10: I think it's more accurate to call them a like
Speaker 10: white supremacist, a cultic group who essentially try to cultivate
Speaker 10: evil for the sake of evil. They're like a left
Speaker 10: hand path a cult group that has orchestrated multiple terrorist attacks,
Speaker 10: especially through radicalizing US soldiers. At this point, they're pretty
Speaker 10: mythic with their writing and tactics, leaving a strong lingering
Speaker 10: presence across the left hand path fascist occult milli U.
Speaker 10: We also have a reference to quote unquote accelerationism here,
Speaker 10: which kind of similar to nihilism. Is like this philosophical
Speaker 10: term which has kind of been like warped and changed
Speaker 10: VIA's people's application of it in politics, and specifically kind
Speaker 10: of the way that we're going to be using this
Speaker 10: word here is this idea of trying to like accelerate
Speaker 10: the collapse of the country, mostly to install like a
Speaker 10: white supremacistats in a state after the country has collapsed.
Speaker 10: This is how most Nazis use the term even though
Speaker 10: it has a slightly different cultural background with the work
Speaker 10: of Nick Land and Fisher.
Speaker 3: When I was growing up, acceleration just men accelerating the
Speaker 3: contradictions of capitalism.
Speaker 2: But kids these days.
Speaker 3: That's right, not a good one.
Speaker 10: So this eddial criminal complaint alleges that Cassup was communicating
Speaker 10: with people on the messaging app Telegram, and these people
Speaker 10: were possibly in Ukraine and or Russia, and these people
Speaker 10: helped him plan this attack. The FBI found TikTok messages
Speaker 10: on his phone where he discussed the struggle of telling
Speaker 10: his friends that he quote unquote follows O nine A
Speaker 10: teachings that's Order of nine angles, and he discussed a
Speaker 10: previous FBI visit to his home in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 10: In other exchanges on TikTok, he shared information with a
Speaker 10: user named Nihilis about how to find Nazi telegram channels.
Speaker 10: I'm gonna I'm gonna read through some of this, some
Speaker 10: of this uh chat transcript Nihilis, Hey, dude, do you
Speaker 10: know any telegram groups where niners that's O nine A
Speaker 10: and drex can interact and exchange info? Awoken, that's Cassup. Sorry, No,
Speaker 10: I'm mostly in NSWP telegram groups. L ol. If you
Speaker 10: do find any, it'd be nice if you tell me. Nihilis,
Speaker 10: what's WP? Awoke, Wikipedia dot org, slash national underscore, socialism underscore,
Speaker 10: white power, nilus oh, white power cool? Awoken? Do you
Speaker 10: know any on nine a telegram groups? Nihlis? Oh, not
Speaker 10: a group, but a channel. You can find documents there. Awoken?
Speaker 10: All right, send awoken? Can you send me the link
Speaker 10: to the account? Awoken, It says, I can't access the message, Nihlis,
Speaker 10: How can I do that? Wait a second, awoken? Here's
Speaker 10: my telegram user name accelerationists fourteen. Nihlis. I sent a message,
Speaker 10: So there you go.
Speaker 3: That's the man.
Speaker 10: Just There is some later telegram messages that are archived
Speaker 10: in this in this complaint as well, where at accelerationist says,
Speaker 10: what country do you think will get the blame for this?
Speaker 10: Meaning his planned attack? An unknown user replied Russia will
Speaker 10: be blamed for it. This is the goal, accelerationist said.
Speaker 10: Quote when the time comes for you to send my
Speaker 10: manifest to you so you can spread it online? Should
Speaker 10: it be a pdf? Also?
Speaker 3: Sorry? I just like that when the contexts of all
Speaker 3: that they're discussing file types.
Speaker 10: And also, you won't anyhow change or modify the manifesto,
Speaker 10: The unknown user replies, write it on a piece of
Speaker 10: paper and take a picture.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 10: The FBI personnel performing the preliminary review saw images of
Speaker 10: a three page document titled Accelerate the Collapse. The images
Speaker 10: are screen grabs displayed on a phone, and these images
Speaker 10: were created on February twenty eight, twenty twenty five. This
Speaker 10: document is the manifesto referred to by at Accelerationist. The
Speaker 10: manifesto calls for the assassination of the President of the
Speaker 10: United States in order to ferment a political revolution in
Speaker 10: the United States to quote unquote save the white race
Speaker 10: from quote unquote Jewish controlled politicians. The third page of
Speaker 10: the document contains images of Adolph Hitler with text that reads,
Speaker 10: quote Hail Hitler, Hail the White Race, Hail victory. Now,
Speaker 10: from what I can read it, this manifesto, it's pretty basic.
Speaker 10: It's heavily plagiarized, like most of these kind of white
Speaker 10: supremacist accelerationist manifestos are. It talks about how Jews control
Speaker 10: white countries and are promoting white genocide and degeneracy. Talks
Speaker 10: about the need to quote unquote collapse Jewish occupied governments.
Speaker 10: The manifesto states that his motivation for wanting to kill
Speaker 10: Trump was to sow chaos and raise public awareness that
Speaker 10: quote assassinations at accelerating the collapse are possible things to do,
Speaker 10: unquote not that possible, since he's arrested and did not
Speaker 10: accelerate the collapse. But he also advocates that people unable
Speaker 10: to commit to taking direct action instead make connections with
Speaker 10: other white supremacists and grow a network to take over
Speaker 10: the country once America collapses. He recommends the writing of
Speaker 10: Nazi accelerationists, including James Mason, who wrote the influential Nazi
Speaker 10: book Siege, and the Terror gram Collective, a group of
Speaker 10: white premacists from around the world who organize on the
Speaker 10: messaging platform Telegram to share guides on how to do terrorism.
Speaker 10: He also recommends the writings of former Adam Waffen members,
Speaker 10: an American accelerationist group, writing quote, there's much to learn
Speaker 10: from the successes and mistakes of Adam Waffin. I think
Speaker 10: it's worth noting that Adam Waffin was also either like
Speaker 10: infiltrated or partially co opted and inspired by some nine
Speaker 10: A teachings. This is kind of how the more bizarre
Speaker 10: and occultic influence of on nine A seeped more into
Speaker 10: the kind of general American accelerationist Nazi mill you this
Speaker 10: was like in like twenty eighteen. Now, Cassip advises that
Speaker 10: if the reader of the manifesto is already like pilled,
Speaker 10: that you should just skip the theory and just read
Speaker 10: practical how to guides for terrorism and bomb making, since
Speaker 10: quote unquote, there is no political solution. Huge amounts of
Speaker 10: violence will be required long past the days where we
Speaker 10: can vote for a Hitler to save us. White revolution
Speaker 10: is the only solution, unquote, which is I guess I'm
Speaker 10: kind of desensitized to this sort of stuff. In fact,
Speaker 10: I just find this slightly funny considering kind of the
Speaker 10: victory lap that like Steven Miller and like white nationalists
Speaker 10: are currently having in the government where many of them
Speaker 10: do think they can just vote for a Hitler to
Speaker 10: save us, and that Hitler may may already be in
Speaker 10: office forever.
Speaker 3: Well, that is, it's so shocking hearing all this as
Speaker 3: someone that doesn't know all these details. I mean a,
Speaker 3: I feel like the blinders just got taken off me
Speaker 3: and now I'm seeing the world anew but be shocking
Speaker 3: that from a more normy perspective, in my mind, I
Speaker 3: would think all of these types would be pretty excited
Speaker 3: about how things are going politically, not trying to tear
Speaker 3: things down further. It's like you guys won you know,
Speaker 3: accept it.
Speaker 10: Even Trump is not actually enough for a lot of
Speaker 10: these guys. Yeah, they really go places now. Cassup was
Speaker 10: coordinating with multiple telegram users, likely in Ukraine and Russia,
Speaker 10: on how to build a drone that can drop an
Speaker 10: explosive and paid some individuals for some of the required materials,
Speaker 10: and also had a plan to flee to Ukraine after
Speaker 10: his attack. That he was coordinating with Ukrainian Nazis on telegram.
Speaker 3: Tough look for telegrams.
Speaker 10: It's always a tough look for telegram. Not great, not
Speaker 10: a great platform, pretty much only used by these guys.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 10: No, he was talking about how he probably needs to
Speaker 10: quote unquote brush up on my Russian Oh yeah, definitely
Speaker 10: before he flees to Ukraine after trying to kill the president.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you download due LINGO after you do.
Speaker 10: That, that's right, that's right. He had plans to meet
Speaker 10: up with with ten people with similar beliefs in Ukraine.
Speaker 3: My mind is just so blown by all this. I
Speaker 3: thought I knew things. I know nothing now.
Speaker 10: On March tenth, Sheriffs interviewed a classmate of Cassup, and
Speaker 10: the classmate told them that the Cassup would send quote
Speaker 10: unquote gore edit videos that includes flashing like gore like
Speaker 10: bodygore imagery and war images put to Russian music sent
Speaker 10: via Snapchat. This is a common tactic done by these
Speaker 10: sort of like teenage extremists. This is this is a
Speaker 10: whole like subgenre of video that has like changed and
Speaker 10: altered in aesthetic multiple times. Frankly, if you spend enough
Speaker 10: time on Twitter now in the comments of blue Check
Speaker 10: Neo Nazis, you can find some some of these edits
Speaker 10: where they have like you know, like techno techno, like
Speaker 10: fast paced sometimes like Russian music set to like you know,
Speaker 10: glorified images of like like like Rome or Nazi Germany,
Speaker 10: or a large variety of stuff. But the gore genre
Speaker 10: is specifically unique to kind of the to the oh
Speaker 10: nine to a like a culti Nazi branch, because they
Speaker 10: think that like viewing these images like increases your power
Speaker 10: level of like evil. Right, It's a very video game
Speaker 10: view of like of like spiritual development of like you
Speaker 10: have to you have to like raise your evil stat
Speaker 10: by looking at Gore and this will make you more
Speaker 10: able to commit like big acts of violence.
Speaker 3: WHOA So just desensitizing yourself. So the image just makes
Speaker 3: you a more violent person and capable of doing these
Speaker 3: things yourself.
Speaker 10: Correct correct, And that's like a big part of their process. This,
Speaker 10: this is why they send this type of to a
Speaker 10: lot of kids on the internet, because they hope that
Speaker 10: if they decenitize these kids, it'll be easier to convince
Speaker 10: them to then do acts of violence themselves. Cassup told
Speaker 10: his classmate that he intended to kill his parents by
Speaker 10: shooting them, but could not because he didn't have access
Speaker 10: to a gun. He later told his classmate that he
Speaker 10: would befriend someone with a gun and then steal it,
Speaker 10: and told him that he was in contact with a
Speaker 10: male in Russia via telegram and that they were both
Speaker 10: plotting to overthrow the government of the United States and
Speaker 10: assassinate Resident Trump. Cassip told the classmate that when he
Speaker 10: saw ten consecutive attacks in the news, it would have
Speaker 10: to be him.
Speaker 3: I've already transitioned to this sort of person who can
Speaker 3: now laugh at this because of the absurdity.
Speaker 10: Oh my gosh, and get those laughs in now, because
Speaker 10: the next section is much more dark. Oh no, because
Speaker 10: it's funny to laugh at a guy like this who
Speaker 10: mostly failed. I mean, he did kill his parents, that is.
Speaker 10: Oh no, he did kill his parents. He did flee
Speaker 10: through a different state. He wasn't smart enough to he
Speaker 10: at least tracked him on him and his parents' cell
Speaker 10: phone and their car who he still had with him.
Speaker 10: So yet not a very good attacker, I guess. But no,
Speaker 10: like this, this kid murder of his parents sat in
Speaker 10: the house with their decomposing bodies for twelve days before
Speaker 10: trying to carry out the rest of his attack on
Speaker 10: the United States. So yeah, though he did not succeed
Speaker 10: in his larger goals like these, these people still absolutely
Speaker 10: do get like groomed into doing violence. And this is
Speaker 10: something that happens at a pretty frequent basis, honestly, to
Speaker 10: the point where these types of things don't make giant
Speaker 10: headlines anymore. They would have maybe in twenty seventeen, but
Speaker 10: now a lot of journalists are desensitized to this, and
Speaker 10: because it happens so frequently, it is less newsworthy, which
Speaker 10: is a very unfortunate place to be in for a country.
Speaker 10: Do you know what else is unfortunate? Michael?
Speaker 3: Oh, what what's that?
Speaker 10: Having to pivot to ads actually necessary evil.
Speaker 3: It's way better than killing your fend.
Speaker 10: Yes, yes, I will go on record. I will go
Speaker 10: on record. Eat me get aboord. Sorry, I love ads. Actually,
Speaker 10: as it heads up, the next section will reference online
Speaker 10: exploitation and child sexual abuse material. All right, we are back.
Speaker 10: Let's get more depressing. Unfortunately, but I think we will
Speaker 10: find a way to turn this around. Well, not like
Speaker 10: in an optimistic way, but in a way that it's
Speaker 10: like useful. Well, well, we'll learn something together. So at
Speaker 10: the end of this section of this complaint that attempts
Speaker 10: to describe Cassip's collapse driven political ideology is the appearance
Speaker 10: of this new term, nihilistic violent extremists right now. This
Speaker 10: was actually the second time this term has appeared in
Speaker 10: court documents. The earliest appearance of this term was in
Speaker 10: a March sentencing memo for a child sexual abuse material
Speaker 10: case first filed in November of twenty twenty four, which
Speaker 10: was linked to the seven six four child extortion and
Speaker 10: exploitation network. Ken Kleppenstein, who first reported on the use
Speaker 10: of the nihilism term, missed this first appearance and attributed
Speaker 10: the origin to the cassup case. Michael, are you similarly
Speaker 10: unfortunate enough to be aware of seven six'?
Speaker 3: Four this is another one where my brain is more
Speaker 3: pure than. YOURS i guess at this point for dad
Speaker 3: to get, Ruined so let's still let's do.
Speaker 10: It, YEAH i mean it has been for a lot of,
Speaker 10: people Like I've i've been doing like extremism, research And
Speaker 10: i've been aware of these guys for about four. Years
Speaker 10: THE fbi think first did their like public announcement like
Speaker 10: warning parents about this in twenty twenty. Three seven six
Speaker 10: four is like a network of groups that operate either on, Discord, Telegram,
Speaker 10: instagram social media. Apps they're kind of inspired by some
Speaker 10: aspects OF oz NINE, a but they are much more
Speaker 10: focused on the production and district abution of child sexual
Speaker 10: abuse materials and trying to manipulate groom and like blackmail
Speaker 10: and extort miners into producing this. MATERIAL a lot of
Speaker 10: it's done by other miners, Too like a lot of
Speaker 10: this is teens targeting other teens with adults kind of
Speaker 10: helping this process. Along it's a pretty big. Problem there's
Speaker 10: been some good reporting on it In wired And The
Speaker 10: guardian the past few, years if you want to read. More,
Speaker 10: now This march sentencing memo for the seven six four
Speaker 10: case describes seven six four and related groups as quote
Speaker 10: nihilist violent extremists who engage in criminal conduct within The
Speaker 10: United states and engage with other extremists. Abroad the seven
Speaker 10: six to four Networks accelerationist goals include social unrest in
Speaker 10: the downfall of the current world, order including The United states.
Speaker 10: Government members of seven six four work in concert with
Speaker 10: one another towards a common purpose of destroying civilized society
Speaker 10: through the corruption and exploitation of vulnerable, populations including. Miners. Quote,
Speaker 10: NOW i think this this definition may be a bit to,
Speaker 10: generalizing but it's not. Incorrect like, this this is correct
Speaker 10: in what the explicit goals of this group, are maybe
Speaker 10: not just every individual member of this. Group BUT i
Speaker 10: think it would be a mistake to kind of dismiss
Speaker 10: this definition as outlandishly, grandiose. Right it kind of it
Speaker 10: calls into like my you, know like conspiracy, theory like,
Speaker 10: framing because it sounds very like extravagant and, complicated and
Speaker 10: it kind of, is but it's it's also like. Simple
Speaker 10: it's it's people trying to automate the process of producing
Speaker 10: and distributing illegal. Materials BUT i do believe it is
Speaker 10: a mistake to completely dismiss, this both in terms of
Speaker 10: like the government trying to ascribe political motive for the
Speaker 10: distribution of these, materials and also the ideological justifications held
Speaker 10: by some members of these. Groups now there have been
Speaker 10: two more seven six four cases From april of twenty
Speaker 10: twenty five that have used the nihilist of violent extremism
Speaker 10: designation in court. Documents, now part of kind of the
Speaker 10: struggle with this, is Like Ken kippenstein, reported, quote it
Speaker 10: sounds to me like some demented philosophical justification for just
Speaker 10: being a, pedophile and like it, Is but that doesn't
Speaker 10: mean the political motivations shouldn't be, discounted because those motivations
Speaker 10: impact how they, operate how these groups, spread which targets they,
Speaker 10: pick and other political actions members might, take like mass
Speaker 10: shootings targeting racial, minorities TARGETING lgbtq. Individuals so, yeah this
Speaker 10: is kind of WHY i push back a little bit
Speaker 10: on this kind of dismissive tone towards this like, larger
Speaker 10: almost conspiratorial kind of matrix put onto groups like seven
Speaker 10: and six. Four, now part of the tricky thing with
Speaker 10: use of this new nihilism term is that it's being
Speaker 10: used to rope in a variety of horrific incidents under
Speaker 10: a singular nebulous. Category, Right so let's take the case
Speaker 10: Of Cassip. Here Cass up that the guy who killed
Speaker 10: his parents in a plata collapse The United, states is
Speaker 10: a relatively bog standard like Neo nazi accelerationist with seemingly
Speaker 10: no direct ties to seven to six four activity besides
Speaker 10: an interest IN o NINE, a which was just one
Speaker 10: of the inspirations that influenced seven to sixty four as
Speaker 10: it evolved into its own complex machine about five years.
Speaker 10: Ago But cassup openly admitted to being radicalized By nazism
Speaker 10: and the White power movement, online and yet in his
Speaker 10: criminal complaint contains an expanded version of the nihilist violent extremism,
Speaker 10: definition which is literally copy and pasted from a child
Speaker 10: sexual abuse material sentencing memo from five days. Before so
Speaker 10: they just used this same thing despite it not really.
Speaker 10: Applying reading. Quote individuals are targeted online often through synchronized group.
Speaker 10: Chats nihilist of violent extremists frequently conduct coorinated extortions of
Speaker 10: individuals by blackmailing them so they comply with demands of the.
Speaker 10: Network these demands vary and, include but are not limited,
Speaker 10: to self mutilation online or in, person sexual, as harms to, animals,
Speaker 10: sex sexual exploitation of siblings and, others acts of, violence
Speaker 10: threats of, violence, suicide and. Murder so very very dark.
Speaker 10: Stuff the definition goes on to state how Vulnerable india
Speaker 10: are targeted and members of the group attempt to gain
Speaker 10: notoriety throughout the network and spread fear among those targeted
Speaker 10: individuals for the purpose of accelerating the downfall of society
Speaker 10: and otherwise achieving the goal of nihilist violent. Extremists so
Speaker 10: while that does accurately describe groups like seven six, four
Speaker 10: it doesn't really relate to the case Of. Cassup it's
Speaker 10: tricky because a lot of these seven and six four
Speaker 10: guys are Also, nazis and a lot Of nazis are also.
Speaker 10: Pedophiles some of these guys start off as like evil
Speaker 10: occultic pedophiles who associate With nazism because it's a pretty
Speaker 10: universal symbol of, evil and sometimes it's the vice versa
Speaker 10: where they start off as like an antisemitic right, winger
Speaker 10: A nazi or A, fascist who then associate with this
Speaker 10: weird pedo occult stuff for a variety of reasons like,
Speaker 10: spiritual perverted pleasure or tactical network, building and usually usually
Speaker 10: it's a, Mix klippenstein, writes. Quote the warrant Alleges cassip
Speaker 10: was in touch with The order Of Nine, angles A
Speaker 10: satanic Neo nazi group that spouses except, racism a fancy
Speaker 10: word for the belief that destabilizing the social order allows
Speaker 10: for radical. Change that is pretty heady stuff to ascribe
Speaker 10: to a seventeen year old and ends up having the
Speaker 10: feeling of an episode of altered carbon, unquote AND i
Speaker 10: kind of like reject this dismissive, Framing, like, no these
Speaker 10: seventeen year olds are thinking about, This they are getting
Speaker 10: convinced of this material. Online that is the motivation for
Speaker 10: this isn't like a science fiction. Thing this is real
Speaker 10: and it's pretty common among like extremists this. Age there's
Speaker 10: a lot of young teenage male extremists that's kind of
Speaker 10: their main, demographic and this type of stuff is popular
Speaker 10: like this is at least popular within this small group of.
Speaker 10: Extremists so, yeah it is a little bit, heady but
Speaker 10: this is what they are genuinely thinking about. It it's
Speaker 10: not incorrect to like ascribe that to. Them cassap openly
Speaker 10: admitted to this connection well.
Speaker 3: And even speak to the flip side of. That you,
Speaker 3: know over the years making philosophy stuff on, YouTube i've
Speaker 3: gotten in touch with people who reached out to be, like,
Speaker 3: Oh i've been watching stuff since high. School WHEN i
Speaker 3: was like, FIFTEEN i was watching these like philosophy YouTube
Speaker 3: videos on heady ideas and reading.
Speaker 10: Stuff so like, ME i was one of these.
Speaker 3: People, yeah there's like young folks out there who take
Speaker 3: big ideas very seriously and they have, more absolutely less
Speaker 3: than every of these. Things so it doesn't and it
Speaker 3: doesn't shock me at all that some teen could go
Speaker 3: down that rabbit hole or even could start reading like
Speaker 3: A Kurtis jarvin Or Nick land and going down those
Speaker 3: rabbit holes and, stuff especially now that some of these
Speaker 3: people are you, know put on like The New York
Speaker 3: times and stuff like. That so, exactly it seems weird
Speaker 3: to dismiss. THAT i can understand the impulse to be,
Speaker 3: like this just seems like a very, stupid evil teen. Kid,
Speaker 3: totally it seems just as. Plausible like you're pointing out
Speaker 3: that there could be an actual engagement with, ideas and
Speaker 3: it's important to recognize that because then you have to
Speaker 3: get at the root of that.
Speaker 10: Exactly and, like these people aren't necessarily like philosophical nihilists
Speaker 10: or existential. Nihilists, yeah but they could be interpreted as
Speaker 10: reacting to a general like passive nihilist culture with this
Speaker 10: form of like pseudo political, nihlige this attempt at like social,
Speaker 10: negation like total systems. Collapse but even still they aren't
Speaker 10: total like political, nihilists since they have a very clear
Speaker 10: system of hierarchy that they want the current world order replaced.
Speaker 10: With though these individuals may be seen as like victims
Speaker 10: of nihilism and like like in like The nietzschean. Sense, now,
Speaker 10: like my main problem with the nihilist violent extremism term
Speaker 10: is that it's so depoliticized and like in a way
Speaker 10: that's rife for political. Abuse this term can be used
Speaker 10: to cover what the government deems as violence stemming from
Speaker 10: like apathy from frustration with, society as well as like
Speaker 10: anti tech or anti civilization, politics and this is all
Speaker 10: coming from like top down at the New Federal bureau Of.
Speaker 10: Investigation for, Years Cash bettel has closely associated WITH, QAnon
Speaker 10: has helped the legal defense campaigns For january sixth, insurrectionists
Speaker 10: which Included Proud, Boys ousekeepers since Three, percenters and now
Speaker 10: as head of THE, fbi he's INVESTIGATING fbi agents who
Speaker 10: worked Those january sixth. Cases Joe, kent the new director
Speaker 10: of The national Counter Terrorism, center has made media appearances
Speaker 10: With Nick fuentes and Neo nazi YouTuber David. Carlson he
Speaker 10: Hired Proud boys to consult in his failed congressional, campaign
Speaker 10: and his friends With Patriot prayer Leader Joey. Gibson kent
Speaker 10: has repeatedly called for THE fbi to INVESTIGATE. Antifa the
Speaker 10: co founder of The Global Project against And, Extremism Heidi,
Speaker 10: barrick has said That PATEL'S QAnon links And deputy Director
Speaker 10: Dan bongino's public conspiracism and bigotry make taking the threat
Speaker 10: of far right extremism quote unquote impossible for these two.
Speaker 10: Men she, says, QUOTE i think it makes it very
Speaker 10: unlikely that the far right will continue to be seen
Speaker 10: as the threat it actually is in terms of hate
Speaker 10: crimes and domestic. Terrorism all of this marks a huge
Speaker 10: departure from the First trump, administration where THE fbi for
Speaker 10: the first time Declared White premacy the country's greatest domestic terrorism.
Speaker 10: Threat facts about violence and its perpetuators probably won't matter
Speaker 10: this time, around, Unquote and these changes are already taking.
Speaker 10: Place an old counter terrorism try guide was removed from
Speaker 10: The White house website In. JANUARY a CURRENT fbi agent
Speaker 10: was quoted In Vanity fair as, saying, quote the key
Speaker 10: is The Domestic Intelligence Operations. Guide if they change, That
Speaker 10: patel will be able to shift domestic terrorism investigations away
Speaker 10: from the accelerationists and the right wing street fighters and
Speaker 10: towards things LIKE blm And antifa. Unquote patel has cut
Speaker 10: The Domestic Terrorism office staffing and reassigned agents and intelligence,
Speaker 10: analysts with new SENIOR fbi officials reportedly considering to disband
Speaker 10: the Entire Domestic Terrorism operations. Section in, addition THE fbi
Speaker 10: has discontinued their previous Domestic Terrorism tracking, tool where they
Speaker 10: take relevant investigations to identify and track trends for terrorism
Speaker 10: probes across the. Country sources for outlets Like reuters say
Speaker 10: that changes to the agency will reduce counter terrorism operations
Speaker 10: against far right and racially motivated extremists and. Militias Jacob,
Speaker 10: ware a domestic terrorism expert at The council On Foreign,
Speaker 10: relations Told, reuters, quote there is a broader, DESIRE i
Speaker 10: think within the administration to at best ignore data and
Speaker 10: put their head in the, sand and at worst to
Speaker 10: realign resources away from this battle. UNQUOTE a spokesperson For
Speaker 10: Higher Representative Jim jordan Told reuters that the termination of
Speaker 10: the domestic terrorism tracking tool is a quote great step
Speaker 10: in the right direction of returning THE fbi to its
Speaker 10: primary crime fighting mission. Unquote Representative jordan previously in twenty
Speaker 10: twenty three ran a congressional panel that alleged THE fbi
Speaker 10: terrorism case tagging tool was being improperly used to target.
Speaker 10: Conservatives After january, sixth three FORMER fbi agents testified at
Speaker 10: The republican led, panel and two of those former agents
Speaker 10: admitted to being paid By, patel who at the time
Speaker 10: was not director of THE. Fbi he was just a
Speaker 10: right wing. Influencer after being kicked out of the government
Speaker 10: after the First trump. Administration we've also seen The Joint
Speaker 10: Terrorism Task force largely shift their efforts towards immigration, enforcement
Speaker 10: HELPING ice with deeperas rotations and the so called wave
Speaker 10: Of tesla. Terrorism and like the other thing is that
Speaker 10: this new nihilist violent extremism term isn't just replacing A.
Speaker 10: Gave it's not just replacing the anti government or anti
Speaker 10: authority of biolin. Extremism because THE agave term itself has three.
Speaker 10: Subcategories as reference to AN fbi document that outlines domestic
Speaker 10: terrorism activity from twenty fifteen to twenty, nineteen this includes
Speaker 10: militia violent, extremists anarchist violent, extremists and sovereign citizen violent.
Speaker 10: Extremists and even in addition to those, three there's actually
Speaker 10: a newer subclassification from twenty twenty three called A gave,
Speaker 10: other which really isn't a great term at. All this
Speaker 10: is the problem with trying to use these like tracking
Speaker 10: and tagging tools is that they can get very. Convoluted
Speaker 10: but now they've seemingly collapsed all of these and are
Speaker 10: just using the term.
Speaker 3: Nihilism so would you, say like when you bring up
Speaker 3: The tesla, example is one of to be very reductive.
Speaker 3: Here the big risks at play that like someone who
Speaker 3: Starts tesla on fire or causes some damage at A
Speaker 3: tesla dealership largely for the motivation of trying to stick
Speaker 3: it To Elon musk or something like that gets classified
Speaker 3: in a way by THE fbi that is similar to
Speaker 3: some of the folks you have previously talked about exactly
Speaker 3: doing things that most rational humans can agree are deeply
Speaker 3: more insidious than like set a car on.
Speaker 10: Fire they can frame this as like a rejection of. Society,
Speaker 10: yeah the same, Way like there's been talk that they're
Speaker 10: going to try to use this label to explain cases
Speaker 10: like The United HEALTHCARE ceo, shooting ars attack At Josh shapiro's.
Speaker 10: House they're going to be using this term to apply
Speaker 10: to kind of any act that they see is like
Speaker 10: a contrary to like society and civilization and anything that's
Speaker 10: stemming from frustration with. Society and that's a huge. Problem
Speaker 10: and in doing, so they're shifting focus away from like
Speaker 10: right wing militias who do the majority of like actual lethal.
Speaker 10: Violence when these reports from like the past five years talk,
Speaker 10: about you, know militia violent, extremism it talks about how
Speaker 10: there is an increased to lethal threat from these militias
Speaker 10: to law, enforcement the government personnel due to factors related
Speaker 10: to grievances from the perceptions of fraud in the twenty twenty,
Speaker 10: election government measures related TO covid nineteen and legislation to
Speaker 10: restrict firearms or expand immigration or manage public. Land and
Speaker 10: these are the people that do the vast majority of
Speaker 10: planned attacks or executed. Attacks this report between twenty three
Speaker 10: outlines two attempted bombings by militia violenctreamists in early twenty twenty,
Speaker 10: one one by an individual targeted against data center thought
Speaker 10: to provide services to THE fbi AND, cia the author
Speaker 10: by two people against a State Democratic party headquarters In, Sacramento,
Speaker 10: california as well as the quote unquote t do dozens
Speaker 10: of militia violenctarymists arrested for their involvement In january. Sixth
Speaker 10: so even though we're going to take the gas off
Speaker 10: of groups like those as well as as racially motivated,
Speaker 10: violenceremists this definition can still include a lot Of like
Speaker 10: anarchist violent, actremists which the fbidmits into twenty twenty three,
Speaker 10: report are most likely to engage in non lethal criminal
Speaker 10: activity and just impact law enforcement.
Speaker 3: Operations, yeah it makes me think of like climate activism as,
Speaker 3: well and you, know the work of those in the
Speaker 3: climate community that call for like the destruction of equipment
Speaker 3: and not the harm of human life.
Speaker 10: TOTALLY i.
Speaker 3: Mean and the irony of course that you could call
Speaker 3: someone you, know disabling an oil pipeline a nihilist extremists
Speaker 3: when the act they're doing is precisely for the purpose
Speaker 3: of ensuring the continued existence of human civilization on a large.
Speaker 10: Scale that's the big issue, Here like The trump government
Speaker 10: still wants a term that focuses on what some people
Speaker 10: would like colloquially refer to as like accelerationist, terrorism and
Speaker 10: that does encompass some of the extremist violence from the
Speaker 10: weirder corners of the far, right like in the case Of,
Speaker 10: cassup but as well as as like leftists or post
Speaker 10: left like anarchistic. Extremism but in the administration's, mind the
Speaker 10: previous terms for this were tainted by crackdowns on right
Speaker 10: wing or patriot movements After january, Sixth and like the nihilist,
Speaker 10: violence streamism is not replacing the term terrorism, Necessarily like
Speaker 10: the Way clippenstein's suggested in his, article the word terrorism
Speaker 10: appears frequently in these very documents that we've been. Discussing
Speaker 10: nor does the term terrorism have quote unquote limitations in,
Speaker 10: law As clippenstein said that like prevent its use in political.
Speaker 10: Prosecution if, anything it carries kind of special powers of
Speaker 10: punishment which can be over applied to increase the, sentences sway,
Speaker 10: juries and strip. Rights we've seen bills to Label antifa
Speaker 10: as terrorists introduced to this, year the Whole tesla terrorism,
Speaker 10: thing and, historically like the use of terrorism has been
Speaker 10: used as a repression tool In Atlanta's Stop Cop city,
Speaker 10: movement which similarly has like a climate focus like you.
Speaker 10: Mentioned and what this new nihilism term lets them do
Speaker 10: is it allows The drop administration to signal to their
Speaker 10: base that they aren't going to be going after like
Speaker 10: right wing malicious style groups, anymore not anti, government anti authority. Chemists,
Speaker 10: instead they're just going to target zany weirdos who want
Speaker 10: to destroy. Society it's a, looser more flexible term that
Speaker 10: can be applied to a much wider swath of. People
Speaker 10: and like the kind of final THING i want TO
Speaker 10: i want to note here is that four groups like
Speaker 10: like seven six, four we really don't have a good
Speaker 10: term for them like sometimes some people have defended this
Speaker 10: nihilistic term specifically four groups like seven six, four since
Speaker 10: that was where it originally appeared in an industry that
Speaker 10: these groups kind of defy classic. Categorization some of them
Speaker 10: are certainly motivated by racial bias in the case Of,
Speaker 10: cassup who's like tied WITH o AND, a but not
Speaker 10: specifically seven six. Four but a lot of these other
Speaker 10: seven six four guys who are mostly in it for the,
Speaker 10: pedophilia still do have anti government ideologies that they are
Speaker 10: roped in. With, NOW i have seen a few alternative
Speaker 10: terms lofted by certain independent researchers that don't really do
Speaker 10: a good job but are gaining influence Under trump's. Government
Speaker 10: there's this like freelance researcher Named becca or Bicks wrights
Speaker 10: who mostly operates On. Twitter she's proposed the Term satanic
Speaker 10: accelerationism or s act not Good and this kind of
Speaker 10: outlines my problems with this person's research now out because
Speaker 10: all of the legitimate extremism researchers have kind of moved
Speaker 10: away From twitter and are just On Blue. Sky, now
Speaker 10: people like this have like exploded in influence Under elon's
Speaker 10: shepherding Of, twitter and like this this person just spreads
Speaker 10: like satanic panic style writing that appeals to Conservative christian.
Speaker 10: Audiences she boasts about how many mutuals she has with
Speaker 10: These nazi. Terrorists she posts On, rumble she went on Info,
Speaker 10: wars so that kind of tells you everything you need
Speaker 10: to know about this. Person and like a big part
Speaker 10: of her work is trying to downplay the right wing
Speaker 10: and a white supremacist influence in. Extremism she excitedly posted,
Speaker 10: quote THE fbi has coined a new term for this
Speaker 10: type of, individual nihilist bilin. Extremists this makes me so
Speaker 10: happy because it indicates that law enforcement are listening to
Speaker 10: researchers on the ground and are no longer considering these
Speaker 10: groups Neo nazis or quote unquote white. Supremacist so, yeah
Speaker 10: this is a big part of this push is appealing
Speaker 10: to these types of people who don't want their weird
Speaker 10: pedo freaks to be labeled as right, wing even though
Speaker 10: they all are pretty far right wing terrorists in most.
Speaker 10: Cases this researcher also a falsely linked cast up with
Speaker 10: A ukrainian A nazi a group CALLED. Mku she later
Speaker 10: retracted this claim on, substack but left the original viral
Speaker 10: tweet up online Because, hey. Engagement her substack post reads.
Speaker 10: Quote WHEN i first heard the news Of nicota cast,
Speaker 10: up my mind immediately darted to another NINE a AND
Speaker 10: mku linked individual Named. Nicota this turned out to be
Speaker 10: a mere, COINCIDENCE i, know because the Other nikota reached
Speaker 10: out to me personally to. Clarify it's moments like these
Speaker 10: that cause me to reflect on just how big this
Speaker 10: movement really is and just how close to the FIRE i. Am.
Speaker 10: Unquote this is not how you do extremism. Reporting this
Speaker 10: is not how you do. Journalism but this does demonstrate
Speaker 10: kind of the problem with this term is, that, yeah
Speaker 10: groups like this do need a different, term maybe like,
Speaker 10: accelerationists violent. Acreamists that's a term you could use that
Speaker 10: if you're going to remove all the other. Acronyms but
Speaker 10: certainly the nihilism label just kind of complicates things and
Speaker 10: allows for the targeting of just a massive swath of
Speaker 10: the population that could become like political prosecutions that then
Speaker 10: get linked to these child sexual abast material. Cases, okay
Speaker 10: that is my that's my that's my. Script, Michael how
Speaker 10: do you feel about that?
Speaker 3: Info.
Speaker 10: Dump i'm so, sorry.
Speaker 3: TRULY i you know you've AND i can send it to.
Speaker 3: It you've extracted a part of my soul and put
Speaker 3: it into a cosmic. Toilet, TODAY i know more Than
Speaker 3: i've known, before as a as a, human as An,
Speaker 3: american as a. Parent i'm terrified on every. Front and you,
Speaker 3: know my simple guy takeaway here is the, yeah like
Speaker 3: the idea that this is going to both let some
Speaker 3: of the worst folks off the, hook or at least
Speaker 3: make it harder to classify them with the groups that
Speaker 3: should be classified, with while also making it easier to
Speaker 3: lump in forms of what many of us would consider
Speaker 3: more reasonable political activism under that umbrella is quite. Bad
Speaker 3: AND i, think of course for, me due to my
Speaker 3: my pet. Interest you, know all of these instances of
Speaker 3: continuing to, like, pervert and misuse philosophical terms to have
Speaker 3: meanings developed over hundreds and thousands of years for these political,
Speaker 3: ends it is very.
Speaker 10: Upset, Well i'm excited to usher in the new wave
Speaker 10: Of kirkergardian violent extremists who are gonna usher in.
Speaker 2: To get me on a.
Speaker 3: List stop.
Speaker 10: IT i am actually sorry that this went on nearly
Speaker 10: double the length of WHICH i thought it had. Planned
Speaker 10: after such a depressing, Episode i'm gonna ask kind of
Speaker 10: an odd, question what philosophy booked do you think people
Speaker 10: should read in this political, Moment because a lot of
Speaker 10: people are approaching me with like like how DO i stay?
Speaker 10: Sane how DO i stay how DO i like keep
Speaker 10: going when things feel so? Bad and for, Me i've
Speaker 10: always turned to. Philosophy i've been recommending different books to different,
Speaker 10: friends And i'm kind of interested, in like what you
Speaker 10: have to say about kind of what philosophy can offer
Speaker 10: us in these times of like existential.
Speaker 3: Torment, YEAH i mean a really simple one THAT i
Speaker 3: talk about way too much is cure care. Guards the present,
Speaker 3: age which you find in this book Called Two, ages
Speaker 3: that's easy to. Buy it's normally really, cheap or you
Speaker 3: can just read it online. Someplace that kind of describes
Speaker 3: a society in which people get caught up in media
Speaker 3: and reflection and the bs they are told rather than
Speaker 3: developing their subjectivity for. Themselves and think that one's really.
Speaker 3: Great in terms of more contemporary, Stuff i've been Very
Speaker 3: Frederick jamison pilled recently nice AND i THINK i Mean
Speaker 3: i've Read jamison before on and, off but recently dove
Speaker 3: in more. Deeply and there's One, OKAY i have it
Speaker 3: at arms, reach SO i can say that the title
Speaker 3: correctly That i've really been. Enjoying it's called An American.
Speaker 3: Utopia Dual power in The Universal army By Frederick, jamison
Speaker 3: edited by Saw, Voygiak and it's this Large jamison essay
Speaker 3: about what he sees as an alternative for leftist power In,
Speaker 3: america responses from a bunch of other. SCHOLARS i have
Speaker 3: found it very. Interesting but for, me at, LEAST i
Speaker 3: find comfort in the fact that others have accurately diagnosed
Speaker 3: and understood what is happening right now and at least
Speaker 3: give us the tools to understand the, thing so it
Speaker 3: feels less nebulous and.
Speaker 10: Mysterious we don't have to reinvent the wheel all the. Time,
Speaker 10: Yeah and that's something THAT i feel like some leftists
Speaker 10: kind of get trapped, in or it's kind of a
Speaker 10: two sides. Thing is what some people just get fully lost,
Speaker 10: in like the labyrinth of, theory and the other people
Speaker 10: get lost and trying to constantly reinvent or like make
Speaker 10: for the first time stuff that already. Exists, Right AND
Speaker 10: i think there's a really careful balance between like reading
Speaker 10: some stuff so that you can like know what's going
Speaker 10: on and not feel the need to try. To like
Speaker 10: you cause every you, know philosophical evolution to come about
Speaker 10: via your own.
Speaker 3: Thought, yeah you don't have to be the one to do.
Speaker 3: It someone else are you Doing.
Speaker 10: You're not, alone like other people have done, this and
Speaker 10: you should still like think for yourself and still. Compare
Speaker 10: but people have thought about this type of, stuff but
Speaker 10: for people have been in bad political situations, before and
Speaker 10: it's useful to know what they've. Thought and like this is,
Speaker 10: like you, know my work is mostly looking at like
Speaker 10: current events and like trying to track but like extremism
Speaker 10: and like what the government is, doing and you, know
Speaker 10: more information always helps me choose how to navigate in the.
Speaker 10: World that's why do episodes like. This AND i think
Speaker 10: philosophy is just one other side of. That unless you
Speaker 10: have anything else to, say do you want to talk
Speaker 10: about where people can find you? Online and your new YouTube?
Speaker 3: Channel, YEAH i have a recently launched YouTube channel that's
Speaker 3: just under the Name michael Oh burns AND i think
Speaker 3: it's literally just YouTube Slash MICHAEL O burns them quickly.
Speaker 3: Yep YouTube Slash Michael oburns Or i'm gonna be doing
Speaker 3: more stuff quite, regularly extremes and video, essays largely doing
Speaker 3: some of the stuff we were just talking, about using
Speaker 3: philosophy and concepts from theory and from theory to try
Speaker 3: to understand what's going on in both the political and
Speaker 3: like the social and interpersonal, Levels Like i'm working on
Speaker 3: a Thing i'm excited about on like, depression, capitalism and mental.
Speaker 3: Health so, yeah And i'm on all most of the
Speaker 3: social Media's i'm Just Michael burns Or MICHAEL. O, burns
Speaker 3: relatively easy to find on most.
Speaker 10: Places, well thank you so, Much michael for joining me
Speaker 10: in this dive through the darkest depths of The internet
Speaker 10: and the extremism milieu that is festering In america and.
Speaker 3: Abroad thanks for having.
Speaker 2: Me welcome to it could happen.
Speaker 1: Here I'm Robert, evans and this is a podcast about
Speaker 1: things falling, apart which they always seem to be these,
Speaker 1: days and in, particular this is an episode about what
Speaker 1: to expect out of the next six months to a.
Speaker 1: Year if you're not sure what else to, do try
Speaker 1: and spread. CALM i first learned this lesson back in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen hanging out with Perennial libertarian presidential Candidate Vermin
Speaker 1: supreme during the protests around that Year's Democratic invention In.
Speaker 1: Philadelphia if you've never had the pleasure of Seeing vermin
Speaker 1: at a, protest he's essentially a rodeo clown for riot,
Speaker 1: cops and his example taught me a lot about how
Speaker 1: to communicate to a group of, angry scared people in tense.
Speaker 1: Situations those lessons came in handy for me back in twenty.
Speaker 1: Twenty but The George Floyd uprising is now almost five
Speaker 1: years in the. Past trump is once again in. Power
Speaker 1: very little seems to stand between him and the exercise
Speaker 1: of a kind of, arbitrary dictatorial violence that this nation
Speaker 1: has seldom seen within its own, borders but as often sponsored,
Speaker 1: elsewhere Including El, salvador Where trump has sent hundreds Of
Speaker 1: american residents and plans to send, thousands perhaps tens of thousands.
Speaker 1: More the purpose of this essay is to provide my
Speaker 1: predictions for the next six months to a. Year What
Speaker 1: i'm writing here is, speculative but it is based on
Speaker 1: the best DATA i have available and numerous Conversations i've
Speaker 1: had with activists current federal, employees former, soldiers and retired law.
Speaker 1: Enforcement there are a million places WHERE i could, start
Speaker 1: BUT i feel like the most responsible place to begin
Speaker 1: is by answering this, question is now the time to?
Speaker 1: Panic last, year After biden's disastrous debate, PERFORMANCE i put
Speaker 1: out a podcast essay Titled Don't. Panic it was my
Speaker 1: most shared episode of this podcast that, year AND i
Speaker 1: felt pretty good about the response Until trump won, again
Speaker 1: AND i found it briefly impossible to take my own.
Speaker 1: Advice Since january of twenty twenty, five the fascist takeover
Speaker 1: has only, accelerated AND i have lost count of the
Speaker 1: number of people who've asked, me is it time to?
Speaker 1: Panic the answer to that is still, no but not
Speaker 1: because there's no reason to. Panic in, fact panic is
Speaker 1: a natural reaction to our present. Moment if your fight
Speaker 1: or flight reflexes haven't been, triggered well they might be.
Speaker 1: Broken even, so don't, panic because in combat and, disasters
Speaker 1: in any dangerous situation you might find yourself panic is
Speaker 1: what will kill you as surely as anything. Else there's
Speaker 1: a concept in military THEORY i bring up, often something
Speaker 1: introduced to soldiers undergoing training. Today it's called the ode.
Speaker 1: Loop it describes the process people go through while acting
Speaker 1: and reacting under, fire and particularly while deciding how to
Speaker 1: act and react under. Fire it stands for, observe, orient,
Speaker 1: decide and. Act if you can interrupt any part of that,
Speaker 1: loop you can stop your enemy from fighting back. Effectively
Speaker 1: the basic principle of THE oda loop functions on the
Speaker 1: grand strategy scale as well as it does in a.
Speaker 1: Gunfight this is the point behind the flood the zone,
Speaker 1: strategy orchestrated By Stephen miller and the other intellectual loom
Speaker 1: and aaries Behind trump. Too the fire hose of outrage
Speaker 1: is to distract you from observing everything that's, happening to
Speaker 1: keep you off balance so you can't orient, yourself to
Speaker 1: stop you from deciding and. Acting Elon musk's purchase Of
Speaker 1: twitter helped to supercharge the bullshit. CANON ai accelerated the
Speaker 1: spread of lies on social media beyond all of our worst,
Speaker 1: nightmares and this has helped blind and divide the people
Speaker 1: who should have linked arms to stop this shit before
Speaker 1: it got to the point that it's at. TODAY i
Speaker 1: want you to think of how many prominent leftists have
Speaker 1: fallen repeatedly for right wing propaganda like. That russia would
Speaker 1: never Invade, ukraine or That trump might actually be somehow
Speaker 1: better For. Gaza these and a million other things have
Speaker 1: blinded and hobbled potential. RESISTANCE i might also bring up
Speaker 1: the Whole maga communist, movement but the less set about those,
Speaker 1: people the. Better, meanwhile columnists at liberal legacy publications Like
Speaker 1: The times have fallen for every hyped up story about
Speaker 1: transgender athletes or woke kids on college, campuses and the
Speaker 1: danger of the illiberal left poses to free. Speech they've
Speaker 1: denied genocide and demonized those who protest against, it and
Speaker 1: too many Elected democrats have taken their lead as the
Speaker 1: path of least. Resistance many have pulled right for reasons
Speaker 1: far more. Sinister the fact That Gavin, newsom governor Of,
Speaker 1: california is hosting fascists on his new podcasts while mailing
Speaker 1: burner phones to tech CEOs points towards something, dark, immediate.
Speaker 1: Deadly we live now in the culmination of a successful
Speaker 1: decades long plot, two in the words Of Curtis, jarvin
Speaker 1: repeal the twentieth century and turn this nation into a
Speaker 1: dictatorship where our lives and our collective national arsenal are
Speaker 1: the personal property of some dudes who inherited oil money
Speaker 1: or invested In facebook back in like two thousand and.
Speaker 1: Five the early stages of the, plan of, course date
Speaker 1: back well Before Peter tiele Or Elon musk Or Donald
Speaker 1: trump begin and when a coalition of would be oligarchs
Speaker 1: tried to OVERTHROW fdr in what has become known as
Speaker 1: The Business, plot and were thwarted by A marine general
Speaker 1: Named Smedley. Butler these men wanted revenge for The New,
Speaker 1: deal but they found seizing power at the top harder
Speaker 1: than they'd, hoped and so they embarked on a, slower
Speaker 1: bottom up. Approach hence The John Birch, society the creation
Speaker 1: of countless think, tanks and the generation's long effort to
Speaker 1: stack The Supreme. Court the war on abortion was a
Speaker 1: concerted step towards this, plan an artificial creation alongside the
Speaker 1: birth of the religious right as a political. Coalition there
Speaker 1: was initially a small group of men at the center
Speaker 1: of the, web guys Like William Brignery won And William
Speaker 1: Brignery doo Or Paul. Wayrich but the engine of cultural
Speaker 1: and political change forged from the late forties to the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies was so successful that at some point it
Speaker 1: became self, perpetuating and when a gaggle of tech bros
Speaker 1: found themselves with more wealth than any humans had ever,
Speaker 1: held the machine was there to mold them and to
Speaker 1: be used by. Them it's all worked so damn well
Speaker 1: that many PEOPLE i know have lost hope. Entirely we're,
Speaker 1: fucked goes the. Script they're gonna send us to the,
Speaker 1: camps and they can't be, stopped at least not without apocalyptic.
Speaker 1: Bloodshed well that's not necessarily. So now people have already
Speaker 1: died as a result of this, administration a lot of,
Speaker 1: them and that will continue to. Happen but a collapse
Speaker 1: into total carnage is not, inevitable nor is a future
Speaker 1: that offers us nothing but a.
Speaker 2: Boot upon our.
Speaker 1: Necks despite the money that went into building this is
Speaker 1: a new house made with cheap, materials and there are
Speaker 1: already cracks in the. Foundation so my first prediction for
Speaker 1: the coming months is, This the cracks will, widen and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about, that but, first as we're obligated to,
Speaker 1: do here's some. Ads trump and the men who swim
Speaker 1: in his wake signal only. Strength honesty is neither in
Speaker 1: their interest nor a strong. Suit But Curtis, yarvin chief
Speaker 1: profit of the Neo reactionaries And Peter teel's pet, philosopher
Speaker 1: is in a different. Position he knows people in power
Speaker 1: listen to some of what he has to, say and
Speaker 1: over the last few months his profile has risen. ENORMOUSLY
Speaker 1: i can take credit for at least tiny amount of.
Speaker 1: That many normal liberals and Elected democrats now know who he.
Speaker 1: Is this exposes him to a danger that was not
Speaker 1: present for him During trump's first. Term if the current
Speaker 1: fascist salience should be pushed back and this movement, fails
Speaker 1: there could be and should be, Prosecutions and he rightly
Speaker 1: fears that if this, happens he might follow in the
Speaker 1: footsteps Of Alfred, rosenberg The nazi high theoretician who was
Speaker 1: executed At. Nuremberg that's why On march sixth he published
Speaker 1: a messi, sprawling seven thousand word essay Titled barbarians And
Speaker 1: mandarins in his trademark nigh unreadable. Style it comes with the.
Speaker 1: Subheading as soon as it stops, accelerating it stalls and.
Speaker 1: Explodes if you want to spare yourself the headache of
Speaker 1: reading through one tenth of a novel of yarvins at
Speaker 1: best turgid. Prose there's a good article by the Nerd
Speaker 1: reich that breaks all this. Down we'll link it in
Speaker 1: the show, notes but the gist is That yarvin Thinks
Speaker 1: musk And trump have been too, slow have embraced too
Speaker 1: many half, measures and the whole authoritarian project is careening towards. Disaster.
Speaker 1: Quote unless the spectacular earthquakes Of january And february are
Speaker 1: dwarfed In march And april by new and unprecedented abuses
Speaker 1: of The richter, scale The trump regime will start to
Speaker 1: wither and eventually. Dissipate it cannot stay at its current
Speaker 1: level of, power which is too high to sustain but
Speaker 1: too low to. Succeed it has to keep doing things
Speaker 1: that have never been done. Before as soon as it stops,
Speaker 1: accelerating it stalls and. Explodes now the week's since have
Speaker 1: seen massive and rising public awareness Of seacott the terrorism
Speaker 1: TO tenh facility In El salvador being used as a
Speaker 1: concentration camp by The trump. Regime this might rightly be
Speaker 1: called a new and unprecedented. Abuse but there's a couple
Speaker 1: of issues, Here at least as far As yarvin sees.
Speaker 1: Them for one, thing the people targeted there have been,
Speaker 1: migrants people who are in THE us either illegally or
Speaker 1: in THE us on visas that have been, revoked people
Speaker 1: who have been accused of being part Of, trindagua but
Speaker 1: not the people That yarvin wants to see, liquidated, because
Speaker 1: as he writes in this, column the thing that he
Speaker 1: thinks The trump administration should be doing right now is
Speaker 1: quite literally gassing media personalities and politicians who don't align
Speaker 1: with his, viewpoint basically literally killing the. Opposition and since
Speaker 1: he's shown to be unwilling to do, that the fact
Speaker 1: that he's shipping people to concentration camps on its own
Speaker 1: isn't terrifying. Enough, now the other thing that's Concerning yarvin
Speaker 1: is that while the use of this facility In El
Speaker 1: salvador as a foreign concentration camp by The trump regime
Speaker 1: is terrifying and is, unprecedented it's also been met with
Speaker 1: a significant, response one that burges on unprecedented. Itself i'm
Speaker 1: not just talking about the protests or of the Recent
Speaker 1: Supreme court ruling ordering a temporary halt of such. Deportations
Speaker 1: i'm referring to something else that's happened due to the
Speaker 1: sheer panic caused by the knowledge that our president has
Speaker 1: a concentration camp and has been talking about SHIPPING us
Speaker 1: citizen dissidents. There i'm talking about stuff like the fact
Speaker 1: that formerly conservative Columnist Bill crystal is now calling for
Speaker 1: the outright abolition Of, ice and the arch Neoliberal Mealymouth
Speaker 1: David brooks calling for a general strike in the pages
Speaker 1: of The New York times while quoting from The Communist.
Speaker 1: Manifesto this is more than just a vibe. Shift it's
Speaker 1: an open realization and acceptance by prominent people who are
Speaker 1: neither radical nor revolutionaries that any, action even the formerly,
Speaker 1: unimaginable might be necessary and justified in this. Region, now
Speaker 1: make no. Mistake first, off this is because a lot
Speaker 1: of these people are worried about their own privileges going
Speaker 1: away under a dictatorial. Regime but that doesn't change the
Speaker 1: fact that this is a crack in the very foundation
Speaker 1: of the authoritarian power. Structure yarvin is scared, then because
Speaker 1: we weren't supposed to be here. Now harvard was supposed
Speaker 1: to have folded Like columbia and then have been slowly
Speaker 1: and quietly. Liquidated the tame press was supposed to turn
Speaker 1: wholly for the regime or be, disappeared not Quote Karl
Speaker 1: marx and urge people into the streets to do a general.
Speaker 1: Strike SO i don't find all this cheery BECAUSE i
Speaker 1: Think David brooks is going to become Shithead Shay. GUEVARA
Speaker 1: i am, embraced, however by the failure that this represents
Speaker 1: for them and above us who seek unchecked. Dominance cracks
Speaker 1: are also visible in the recent history Of Elon, musk
Speaker 1: who has watched the value of the stock that underpins
Speaker 1: his whole empire. Collapse he fought desperately to Convince trump
Speaker 1: not to go through with the tariffs that would punish it.
Speaker 1: Further the result we See trump assuring his inner circle
Speaker 1: That elon is on the way, out While musk himself
Speaker 1: prepares to step back from doge in the hope that
Speaker 1: it will somehow protect the remainder of his. Ambitions these
Speaker 1: are all good, signs and the damage will continue to. Spread,
Speaker 1: however and this brings me to my next. Prediction The
Speaker 1: empire's gonna strike. Back we are in for a hot,
Speaker 1: summer my, friends and there's no way around. THAT i
Speaker 1: mean this in the literal, sense that it will probably
Speaker 1: be the hottest summer on, record although that fact will
Speaker 1: be true of every subsequent summer in our. Lives BUT
Speaker 1: i also mean this in the sense that things are
Speaker 1: going to cook off in the streets very. Soon this
Speaker 1: is something the administration has quite openly been waiting to.
Speaker 1: See trump has made no secret of his desire to
Speaker 1: use The Insurrection act not only at the, border but
Speaker 1: to SEND us troops INTO us cities to crush riots
Speaker 1: and punish leftist. Demonstrators this was a desire hatched in
Speaker 1: reaction to The George floyd, uprising and it always seems
Speaker 1: to be envisioned by the right as targeted against black
Speaker 1: clad antifa. Types the reality is that anti fascists have
Speaker 1: not been a consistent presence on the ground around the
Speaker 1: country for some, time at least not organizing in the
Speaker 1: way that they were back when antifa was a. Buzzword
Speaker 1: there are numerous reasons for, this but the biggest is
Speaker 1: that the fascist movement has moved beyond waving flags in
Speaker 1: the street and getting into fist fights to try and scare.
Speaker 1: PEOPLE a lot of them are running federal law enforcement
Speaker 1: agencies in the. Military now Proud boys just tain't a,
Speaker 1: priority not for those on the left who want to stop,
Speaker 1: this or frankly for the. ADMINISTRATION i expect protests around
Speaker 1: the country in the coming months for several, reasons but
Speaker 1: the likeliest event to provoke severe civil disruption has a
Speaker 1: rise in food, prices in the rise of everything else in,
Speaker 1: price as well as a collapsing economy courtesy of the president's.
Speaker 1: Tariffs there are already numerous signs of, this both in
Speaker 1: terms of the volume of shipping coming into The United
Speaker 1: states and early signs of collapsing crop yields in The United.
Speaker 1: States and this is where a study of history helps one,
Speaker 1: out because nothing but nothing brings down regimes like rising bread,
Speaker 1: prizes and any attempt to crack down will be stymy
Speaker 1: by the fact that a decent chunk of the elites
Speaker 1: who Backed trump before will be suffering. Too, obviously the
Speaker 1: people closest to him are making bank off the economic
Speaker 1: upswings and downswings over the whole teriff. Issue but there's
Speaker 1: a lot of other, people people who supported, him people
Speaker 1: who thought he had their, back who weren't quite close
Speaker 1: enough to, power and they're Watching trump shoot their own
Speaker 1: fortunes in the kneecap because they built their money on free.
Speaker 1: TRADE i won't pretend to know where things are gonna
Speaker 1: pop off or will be the, hottest but the evidence
Speaker 1: shows the regime at least Expects, washington D C to
Speaker 1: play a central role in what comes. Next Republican congress
Speaker 1: members recently reintroduced a bill to repeal DC's self, rule
Speaker 1: And trump Appointed Ed martin to be the city, attorney
Speaker 1: a man, who in the words OF Usa today Columnist
Speaker 1: Chris brennan, quote lacks experience but loves. Revenge, now the
Speaker 1: fact That Elon musk and His doze cronies left so
Speaker 1: many in the city and the surrounding area unemployed after
Speaker 1: their purge of the administrative state means that there's an
Speaker 1: even higher number of, motivated angry people with free time
Speaker 1: and experiencing organizing, large complex systems who have nothing to
Speaker 1: do right. NOW a similar set of circumstances brought us
Speaker 1: to the twenty twenty. Uprisings this was not just a
Speaker 1: product of the months of isolation or of the brutality
Speaker 1: Of George floyd's, murder but of the sheer number of
Speaker 1: people who were out of work and who were finally
Speaker 1: given a chance to take out their anxiety at an
Speaker 1: authoritarian president tightening his. Grip and today that grip is
Speaker 1: even tighter and the danger more. Real we have a
Speaker 1: president openly discussing his desire to Put american citizens in
Speaker 1: a foreign concentration. Camp trump and his inner circle are
Speaker 1: hoping for protests that stay isolated TO dc and perhaps
Speaker 1: a few major blue, Cities portland and the. Like this
Speaker 1: would provide an opportunity to send in the, troops to
Speaker 1: utilize The Insurrection act to s people in the, street
Speaker 1: and to send some ring leaders off to L. Salvador
Speaker 1: this would be the riskiest option For trump in some.
Speaker 1: Ways Pete hegseth has not been a competent or Popular
Speaker 1: secretary Of, defense and ASKING us troops to fire on
Speaker 1: protesters opens up the risk that some junior officer might
Speaker 1: bulk at that, order which could create a cascading chain of.
Speaker 1: Disobedience such things have sparked rapid collapse in other dictatorships throughout.
Speaker 2: History there's also the.
Speaker 1: Chance that spectacular and comprehensive violence by the military might
Speaker 1: succeed and thus strangle any protest movement in the. Cradle
Speaker 1: so we might call this the high risk high reward,
Speaker 1: option AND i should note That Donald trump has more
Speaker 1: than a few times in the past chosen the high,
Speaker 1: risk high reward, option SO i don't consider this. Unlikely
Speaker 1: but it won't be lost On trump or his cronies
Speaker 1: that the violence which met the first protest in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty provoke the largest domestic uprising and living. Memory people
Speaker 1: have not forgotten, this and some blue State democrats have
Speaker 1: even made let's, say confusing noises to that. Effect case in,
Speaker 1: Point Governor Bob ferguson Of washington just signed a bill
Speaker 1: barring other State National guard units from Entering washington without
Speaker 1: his approval unless they were mobilized by The. President, now
Speaker 1: as that last part might key you when, on this
Speaker 1: bill doesn't have a lot of legal force or any
Speaker 1: really at, all but it's a sign that even fairly
Speaker 1: milk toast Elected democrats are starting to consider the real
Speaker 1: possibility of a federal invasion of their. States The president
Speaker 1: has discussed sending out of state troops into blue cities,
Speaker 1: before largely in the context of cracking down on immigration
Speaker 1: and sanctuary. Cities this is all dangerous, language but going
Speaker 1: further than just language carries risk for the regime. TOO
Speaker 1: i would not be shocked if we were to see
Speaker 1: The Texas National guard or, whoever whichever state occupying let's Say,
Speaker 1: chicago after federal law enforcement makes good on the threats
Speaker 1: that have been made by members of The trump administration
Speaker 1: to arrest governors who aid in a bet undocumented migrants LIKE. Jb,
Speaker 1: Pritzker and an act like that would surely spark mass
Speaker 1: protests In chicago and very likely. Elsewhere the fact that
Speaker 1: a move like that would have such a risk of
Speaker 1: sparking mass, resistance as well as further legal, challenges might
Speaker 1: keep The trump administration focused on smaller fish and less dangerous,
Speaker 1: outrages at least for the time. Being and if that's
Speaker 1: the route they, CHOOSE i think something different might be.
Speaker 1: Likely AND i call this potential path forward the pressure,
Speaker 1: cooker and we'll talk about, that but, first here's more.
Speaker 1: Ads when public unrest exploded in twenty, twenty it did
Speaker 1: so after four solid years of build. Up if you'll,
Speaker 1: remember the earliest fascist anti fascist street clashes of that,
Speaker 1: period started before the twenty sixteen, elections were largely focused
Speaker 1: around speeches at campuses by right wing bocketeurs and dueling
Speaker 1: demonstrations in a handful of. Cities the first wave of
Speaker 1: such activity crested In charlottesville twenty seventeen with tragic, results
Speaker 1: but the vibe it set and the people it trained
Speaker 1: continued to take part in street, actions and many of
Speaker 1: them formed the infrastructural core of the movement that exploded
Speaker 1: onto the scene After George floyd's. Murder the last year
Speaker 1: of serious protests have focused more on the genocide And
Speaker 1: gaza than, anything and it's not coincidental that the first
Speaker 1: wave of deportations have heavily targeted legal residents who took
Speaker 1: part in those. Demonstrations Since trump took office AND doze
Speaker 1: started doing its, thing there have been more large scale
Speaker 1: demos that focused directly on the. Regime, now these have
Speaker 1: been quite manageable from the regime's point of, view and
Speaker 1: they have not yet attracted the same kind of, crackdown
Speaker 1: but that won't remain the case as people grow more.
Speaker 1: Desperate any fool can see that the apparatus of repression
Speaker 1: constructed to punish genocide protesters will be turned on, democrats
Speaker 1: former federal, employees and people who are just hungry and
Speaker 1: pissed about rising food. Prizes, however this represents another tight
Speaker 1: rope scenario for the. Regime these demonstrations are, large and
Speaker 1: unlike student protests Against, israel the media has proved less
Speaker 1: eager to marginalize the participants as. Extremists as time goes
Speaker 1: on and things get, worse folks who last year scoffed
Speaker 1: at college students occupying campus buildings may themselves consider if
Speaker 1: perhaps it might be time to fox some shit. Up
Speaker 1: this will be an uneven, process with sudden leaps forward
Speaker 1: and pulls, back and it will provoke an equally uneven state.
Speaker 1: Response there will be attempts to send so called instigators
Speaker 1: and organizers. Overseas du Will salvador unless the public reaction to,
Speaker 1: this which is building AS i, type continues to escalate
Speaker 1: to the extent that it becomes. Unfeasible if, so there
Speaker 1: are ample domestic locations to detain or even disappear those
Speaker 1: the regime considers. Dangerous first on the chopping block will
Speaker 1: be the people whose heads are currently closest to the,
Speaker 1: blade organizers and demonstrators against, genocide whose citizenship is not
Speaker 1: at all in. QUESTION i expect if, large disruptive demonstrations
Speaker 1: do threaten the administration's, hold they will also start to
Speaker 1: our Target antifa, again which will start with the targeting
Speaker 1: of longtime, activists many of whom would have been people
Speaker 1: arrested or at least heavily surveiled in twenty.
Speaker 2: Twenty, however it won't.
Speaker 1: End, there and it will quickly expand to Elected, democrats
Speaker 1: new people organizing, protests folks who have never had anything
Speaker 1: to do with any of the kind of anti fascist
Speaker 1: actions that so Captivated Fox news back in twenty. TWENTY
Speaker 1: i will be shocked if we make it more than
Speaker 1: another year without a serious attempt to Brand antifa a
Speaker 1: domestic terror, organization and if that succeeds in a way
Speaker 1: that has legal, force then the fact that there is
Speaker 1: no such organization won't. Matter Trump's feds will do what
Speaker 1: we've Watched ice do With. Trendagua they'll break down the
Speaker 1: door of whoever they, wish argue tattoos or possessions of
Speaker 1: certain literature or whatever is proof of, membership and then
Speaker 1: those who survive the raids will find themselves in the
Speaker 1: most restrictive detention the regime feels secure placing them. In
Speaker 1: if things follow WHAT i suspect is the likeliest, path
Speaker 1: we will watch this PROCESS ebb and flow over the
Speaker 1: next several. Months each spring and, summer protests will grow
Speaker 1: and peak in the hottest, months with new cities and
Speaker 1: tactics being attempted regularly by groups constantly reeling from raids
Speaker 1: that are devastating and, terrifying but due to the incompetence
Speaker 1: of AN fbi whose investigative capacity has been, neutered failed
Speaker 1: to really disrupt. Things as the weather cools, off exhausted
Speaker 1: activists will lick their wounds and make new. Plans scattered
Speaker 1: acts of disruption carried out by small groups or individual
Speaker 1: cells will occur year, round BUT i expect large scale
Speaker 1: demonstrations and clashes between demonstrators and law enforcement to follow
Speaker 1: a pattern not so different from What afghanistan veterans knew
Speaker 1: was fighting, season hot summers of mass, activity winters of,
Speaker 1: raids and experimentation to scout holes for the next year's.
Speaker 1: Offensive and as time goes, on the energy will, build
Speaker 1: the tension will, build and of course we might find
Speaker 1: ourselves reaching towards something that explodes in the not too distant,
Speaker 1: future perhaps a year or two down the. Line, now of,
Speaker 1: course none of this will occur in a vacuum or
Speaker 1: independent of the news churn that we've been drowning in for.
Speaker 1: Years and this brings me to my next, prediction which
Speaker 1: is the coming of politics as. UNUSUAL i apologize for
Speaker 1: coming back to The David brooks of it, all but
Speaker 1: seeing a man who in twenty seventeen wrote The trump
Speaker 1: had changed and we really needed to stop stressing out over,
Speaker 1: him and then wrote a column attacking millennials for their
Speaker 1: tribalism call for a general strike is a, sign and
Speaker 1: it's not a sign That brooks has gotten. Smarter it's
Speaker 1: a sign that we've entered radical, times and that radicalization
Speaker 1: spares not even the. Centrist if the worst case scenario
Speaker 1: occurs in a few weeks from, NOW us soldiers are
Speaker 1: gunning down demonstrators while ice officers krt Elected democrats off To,
Speaker 1: seacott feel free to disregard this. Passage but if the
Speaker 1: somewhat slower path, PREVAILS i expect to see more politicians
Speaker 1: and news editors chase viewers as they sprint left or
Speaker 1: at least away from the dissolving. Center we've watched this
Speaker 1: process occur on the right during The biden, years and
Speaker 1: to a, degree it is still occurring out of a
Speaker 1: fear of reprisals under The trump. Regime i'm finalizing the
Speaker 1: script on the day Sixty minutes Producer Bill owens stepped
Speaker 1: down over interference from paramount executives into his coverage Of Donald.
Speaker 1: Trump but the polls have started moving against the. Right
Speaker 1: trump's public approval on immigration policy is under water for
Speaker 1: the first time in, years and his approval on everything else,
Speaker 1: is while not always at record, lows diving with significant.
Speaker 1: Speed the next several months of shipping, data as well
Speaker 1: as concerning early reporting on farm, yields suggests a near
Speaker 1: future in which a lot less will be available for.
Speaker 1: Everyone we saw what a rising price of eggs did To,
Speaker 1: biden and we've also Seen Senator chris Van holland go
Speaker 1: almost overnight from a marginal figure IN us politics to
Speaker 1: one of the most Famous democrats in the nation because
Speaker 1: he had the modest courage to fly to L salvador
Speaker 1: and call the president's use of a foreign black site
Speaker 1: what it. Was there will be more people Like Van
Speaker 1: holland who display courage previously unseen in a moment of.
Speaker 1: Trial but much more than, that there will be, opportunists
Speaker 1: those who see the wind blowing and chase the approval
Speaker 1: of crowds more willing to countenance radical action in the
Speaker 1: streets than they were a year. Ago most politicians and
Speaker 1: most thought leaders in the old media are, reactive And
Speaker 1: i'm not saying that this will, change merely that what
Speaker 1: they react to will change because of who is in
Speaker 1: charge now and because of the desperation of the times
Speaker 1: brought on By republican, policies which is going to paint
Speaker 1: a target on the backs of conservative leaders as large
Speaker 1: as the targets they've been painting on the backs of.
Speaker 1: Dissidence and all of this means one, thing which is
Speaker 1: we're approaching the age of weird. Terror so much has
Speaker 1: happened in this, shitty stupid year THAT i think we've all.
Speaker 1: Forgotten twenty twenty five opened with a military veteran blowing
Speaker 1: himself up in a cyber truck in front of The
Speaker 1: Trump hotel And casino In Las. Vegas his reasoning was
Speaker 1: based as much on the numerous head injuries he'd suffered
Speaker 1: in his service as it was on his exposure to
Speaker 1: right wing, propaganda which convinced him that The democrats needed
Speaker 1: to be dealt. With but he saw things clearly enough
Speaker 1: to know that yet another mass shooting or self, immolation
Speaker 1: or even a run of the mill bomb wouldn't have
Speaker 1: garnered him or his manifesto any. Attention so instead he
Speaker 1: picked a cyber truck and A trump, building symbols of
Speaker 1: the two most viral men of our very stupid, era
Speaker 1: and he blew one of those up in front of the,
Speaker 1: other and by, gummet we all did pay attention for
Speaker 1: a few, days at least late last, year an anonymous
Speaker 1: gunman the government believes to Be Luigi mangione was even
Speaker 1: more successful at holding our attention with an even stranger,
Speaker 1: attack a brazen and i perfectly executed assassination carried out
Speaker 1: by a man with a dazzling smile and the wisdom
Speaker 1: to pick the most universally hated target that exists, today
Speaker 1: a healthcare. Ceo we have all watched so many mass
Speaker 1: shootings at, schools at grocery, stores, nightclubs everywhere imaginable that
Speaker 1: they've lost the ability to shock. Us but targeted assassinations
Speaker 1: of people at the top of the food chain are
Speaker 1: so rare that they can't help but draw eyeballs and
Speaker 1: sheer rollicking, strangeness like we saw In vegas has a
Speaker 1: captivating power all its. Own we will see more of
Speaker 1: both kinds of attacks in the months to. Come the
Speaker 1: arson attempt On Governor shapiro's home, bazar at least for
Speaker 1: the extensive damage, done might be seen as another data
Speaker 1: point on this. List but as new figures rise to
Speaker 1: prominence within new protest, movements we will see attempts to kill.
Speaker 1: Them furious and Derange trump supporters armed with cars and
Speaker 1: guns And trump branded pocket dives will do as they've been,
Speaker 1: doing and this part won't be. New WHAT i do
Speaker 1: expect will be new is the increased threat felt by
Speaker 1: the oligarchs at the top of the, system as intelligent
Speaker 1: and patient young people continue to plot ways to go
Speaker 1: after them and the places and times where they feel.
Speaker 1: Invulnerable AND i also expect that editors and journalists will
Speaker 1: continue to learn that these actions draw eyeballs more than
Speaker 1: almost anything. Else and while all that's going, on the
Speaker 1: truly unbalanced among us we'll find ways to hitchhike off
Speaker 1: the well publicized turmoil coming our way and make their
Speaker 1: own confounding. Statements there will be public suicides and attacks
Speaker 1: utilizing weapons and tools we can't yet, imagine at least
Speaker 1: not openly on a podcast without receiving a visit from
Speaker 1: some friendly alphabet boy or. ANOTHER i don't know what
Speaker 1: exactly to expect beyond the unexpected and the very very.
Speaker 1: Silly and of, course as we talk about weird, TERRORISM
Speaker 1: i don't mean to discount The nazi accelerationist types. Here
Speaker 1: they'll keep, trying but if they want to raise above
Speaker 1: the chatter and an even more crowded media, ecosystem even
Speaker 1: they're going to find ways to get weird with. It after,
Speaker 1: all an attack no one notices isn't likely to accelerate
Speaker 1: much of. Anything AND i guess that's What i've got right.
Speaker 1: Now i've got ten pages or so on WHAT i see.
Speaker 1: COMING i didn't come up with a, smooth sexy ending
Speaker 1: for this like a writer, should Because i'm tired and
Speaker 1: thinking about this isn't. Fun BUT i did a, lot
Speaker 1: and there you. ARE i suppose the thing you're asking
Speaker 1: now is what the fuck DO i do about? It
Speaker 1: and you know that's what we talk about a lot
Speaker 1: on this. Show organize with your, friends get, involved find
Speaker 1: ways to help. People take a stop the bleed, glass
Speaker 1: and the love Of, god keep your eyes.
Speaker 10: Open this is it could Happen Here Executive, disorder our
Speaker 10: weekly newscast covering what's happening in The White, house the crumbling,
Speaker 10: world and what it means for. You I'm Garrison davis.
Speaker 10: Today i'm joined By, Miao James, stout And Robert. Evans
Speaker 10: this episode recovering the week Of april seventeen To april twenty.
Speaker 10: Three Jd vance has killed The. POPE a Second pete
Speaker 10: hegsath on authorized signal chat has hit The department Of.
Speaker 10: Defense The White house announces that The Education department will
Speaker 10: start collecting on defaulted student. Loans Beanie Clad Tim poole
Speaker 10: joins The White house press, pool and Hippie facebook moms
Speaker 10: rejoice with artificial food dies being banned Across? America how
Speaker 10: are we?
Speaker 1: Doing, everybody which was so after hearing, that, FINE i GUESS.
Speaker 4: I outlived The.
Speaker 2: POPE i outlived The.
Speaker 1: Pope you have to live several more decades to like
Speaker 1: outlive the. Pope, OFFICIALLY i think he was eighty, eight.
Speaker 9: So he id it and did.
Speaker 10: It thank goodness he did not die On hitler's, birthday
Speaker 10: because that would have been a whole, other whole.
Speaker 1: Other, Yeah i'm still one day. Off i'm thinking back
Speaker 1: to My catechism classes and trying to, remember Like pope
Speaker 1: dead On, easter good sign are.
Speaker 5: Bad that's definitely a S i'll get some kind of.
Speaker 1: Shie how do we take?
Speaker 4: That shout out to The pistons for holding off winning
Speaker 4: a playoff game just long enough for The pope to,
Speaker 4: die such That francistory's entire tournament office never saw A
Speaker 4: pistons playoff. Win congratulations to The, Pistons gradulations to The
Speaker 4: city Of. Detroit congratulations for withholding that from The.
Speaker 9: Pope didn't that mean love to see?
Speaker 1: It Did Pope francis have a strong opinion on The
Speaker 1: pistons that he expressed at some point BECAUSE i may
Speaker 1: have missed.
Speaker 5: That, no he knew they were in a mackelmore, song
Speaker 5: so therefore he hated.
Speaker 1: Them he was a huge mcle. Fan, yeah a lot
Speaker 1: of people don't know, this but the entire time The
Speaker 1: pope is lying in, state they're just going to be
Speaker 1: looping thrift. Shop so, yeah As Pope francis, Wanted.
Speaker 9: Yeah that was his dying. Wish do you know who?
Speaker 10: Else probably used to listen To, mackailmore not anymore because
Speaker 10: he got too. Woke But Pete heggseth seems like. Us
Speaker 10: he's like a twenty Twelve mackelmore.
Speaker 2: Guy yeah it might have.
Speaker 9: Been might have. Been he was.
Speaker 10: Sharing plans for you many air, strikes his, wife his,
Speaker 10: brother and a personal. Lawyer in another, signal.
Speaker 1: CHAT i do the same.
Speaker 9: Thing, yeah, well, yeah you've yet to act on your.
Speaker 9: Plans it's a. Difference they are not interested.
Speaker 10: Looping at the lawyers the real Like god to your move.
Speaker 7: There that's funny BECAUSE i mean it says so much
Speaker 7: both about like what's going on In pete Heads seth's,
Speaker 7: brain but of the quality of, lawyer because any lawyer
Speaker 7: worth assault would be like please.
Speaker 1: Chat, yeah you need to get me out of this.
Speaker 1: Chat what is wrong with? You are? You are you
Speaker 1: texting me missile package?
Speaker 10: Information that's the.
Speaker 4: Thing, though we've gotten great every like this guy From,
Speaker 4: julianni from all of the, lawyers these like random cartoon.
Speaker 4: Dipshits the right keeps finding that like they will just
Speaker 4: hand you a law, Degree like if you hand the
Speaker 4: state enough, money they will just hand you a law
Speaker 4: degree and you can just like bullshit your way to
Speaker 4: the bar and you'll be. Fine like they give that
Speaker 4: shout out to anyone.
Speaker 1: You can tell a really good lawyer in a room
Speaker 1: where legal things are being, Discussed And i've had this
Speaker 1: happen several times because they just, leave they, bounce they
Speaker 1: get the fuck out of the. Room and that's a smart. Lawyer.
Speaker 5: YEAH i don't know if you saw, it but The
Speaker 5: state Of california was USING ai to say it's bar exam. Questions, so,
Speaker 5: oh you don't even have to be SO.
Speaker 1: I bet THE ai would be able to tell, you
Speaker 1: don't text you your wife lawyer in sun classified information
Speaker 1: about missile. Strikes but.
Speaker 10: Whatever, now hopefully if they start USING ai more to
Speaker 10: get through, school they won't have they won't have as
Speaker 10: many student loans to be collected. On, yeah of practice
Speaker 10: that has been paused Since march of twenty, twenty set
Speaker 10: to be resumed On may. Fifth and then uh uh.
Speaker 10: Man The timpool thing was was really. Wild Press Secretary
Speaker 10: Carolyn levitt gave a give a glowing introduction To Tim
Speaker 10: poole's addition to the press, room And tim's first question
Speaker 10: to the administration was was asking why news media just
Speaker 10: lies so much About trump and journalism here from Comrade,
Speaker 10: tim really probing. Question let's pivot TOWARDS rfk and the
Speaker 10: concerning registry that has been, discussed which is a word
Speaker 10: you never like to. Hear whenever someone brings up the
Speaker 10: concept of a, registry it's usually, bad always.
Speaker 1: Bad So i'm going to talk in general about WHAT,
Speaker 1: rfk the things that he has, said not just about Autistic,
Speaker 1: americans but about people who are receiving psychiatric, medication people
Speaker 1: who are addicted to, opiates people who are utilizing like,
Speaker 1: stimulants by WHICH i MEAN adhd, medicine which if you HAVE,
Speaker 1: adhd that's not exactly the way it, functions but that's
Speaker 1: the way he frames.
Speaker 2: It because these are all tied, together.
Speaker 1: RIGHT i have some frustrations with kind of how it's
Speaker 1: been taken on social media THAT i think are not
Speaker 1: causing people to worry when they don't need to, worry
Speaker 1: but look at maybe sort of the wrong area to
Speaker 1: be to see the immediate threat coming. From so First
Speaker 1: i'm going to start with like what his been, said
Speaker 1: and before we get to the, registry we have to
Speaker 1: go back to what he was talking about on the
Speaker 1: campaign trail because prior and this is prior to him
Speaker 1: Endorsing Donald, trump when OUR Fk junior was like an
Speaker 1: individual like running for president on his own under his independent,
Speaker 1: campaign he started talking about wellness, farms, right and these
Speaker 1: were specifically in the language that he, use places that
Speaker 1: people who were addicted to psychiatric. Medication antidepressants he named
Speaker 1: specifically antidepressants and, stimulants as well as people with opiate, addictions,
Speaker 1: right and he has since talked about other drug addictions as.
Speaker 1: Well could go to spend three or four years working
Speaker 1: on a. Farm he always frames it as also like learning.
Speaker 1: Skills so it's this mix OF i want people to
Speaker 1: be able to work in this you, know lovely, bucolic you,
Speaker 1: know agrarian setting where they'll gain working. Skills and then
Speaker 1: there's also pepperdin these very frightening phrases like they need
Speaker 1: to be reparented right. Now in addition to, this he's
Speaker 1: not just that this is all focused On americans who
Speaker 1: are taking medications that he thinks are over prescribed or purely. Unnecessary,
Speaker 1: right that's always the, Way like psychiatric. Medication he almost
Speaker 1: has a scientologist attitude towards it that like this is
Speaker 1: all essentially. Unnecessary and, obviously you, know all of this
Speaker 1: stuff comes out of their elements of this that were
Speaker 1: true at one. Point for, example back in the, nineties
Speaker 1: Like riddlin was wildly overprescribed to. Kids but the way
Speaker 1: in which he's translated this now is that basically everyone
Speaker 1: on a, stimulant everyone on an, antidepressant is on it.
Speaker 1: Unnecessarily and in a podcast in twenty twenty, four he
Speaker 1: went further by kind of tying a lot of this to,
Speaker 1: race specifically stating, quote every black kid is now just
Speaker 1: standard put on adderall on SSRIs, benzos which are known
Speaker 1: to induce, violence and those kids are going to have
Speaker 1: a chance to go somewhere and get. Reparented so that's
Speaker 1: all deeply.
Speaker 10: Concerning it's like kidnapping children, unforcibly like de. MEDICATING i will,
Speaker 10: say that's not how he has framed. It so one
Speaker 10: of the things is People i've heard it phrases LIKE
Speaker 10: rfk has admitted he wants to imprison millions Of americans in,
Speaker 10: camps and, like that's not what he. Said the direct
Speaker 10: quotes about this are not framed as a mandatory. Thing
Speaker 10: it's framed as a replacement for other treatments that people
Speaker 10: can choose to go into and choose to. Leave that's
Speaker 10: what he's, said, Right, okay, now perfectly reasonable when a
Speaker 10: guy in an administration like this is talking about putting
Speaker 10: up camps to be, like, WELL i don't know IF
Speaker 10: i believe, him but it's not accurate that he said
Speaker 10: he wants to arrest millions of people and force them onto.
Speaker 10: Camps he just has not said, that, Right, yeah, Yeah
Speaker 10: AND i think it behooves us.
Speaker 1: To be honest about what he. SAID i think it
Speaker 1: also behooves us to talk about like where this idea comes, from,
Speaker 1: right and what he's looking back. To and, again a
Speaker 1: lot of the issue here is not necessarily WHAT rfk might,
Speaker 1: do but the fact that he might not be there.
Speaker 1: Forever and if he starts establishing this this kind of
Speaker 1: kind of program that starts in an attempt to be
Speaker 1: something that is, more you can choose to be on
Speaker 1: these camps or. Not there's certainly willingness within The Republican
Speaker 1: party to force people into different kinds of quote unquote
Speaker 1: treatment like. This and one THING i think that particularly
Speaker 1: is the way in which the right has liked to
Speaker 1: shift blame for gun violence and mass shootings off of
Speaker 1: the availability of firearms and onto people who are on psychiatric.
Speaker 2: Medication.
Speaker 1: Right and this is an area in WHICH i could
Speaker 1: see someone taking over FROM rfk or pushing past the
Speaker 1: things he specifically has stated he wants to, do BECAUSE
Speaker 1: i think he does come out of a more quack
Speaker 1: medicine goal here putting people forcibly in camps and colonies like,
Speaker 1: THIS i.
Speaker 10: Mean like the idea of like, REPARENTING i guess is
Speaker 10: more is deeply Problem, yes incredibly scary, phrase but it
Speaker 10: is worth noting as there's a there's a very good.
Speaker 1: Teen vogue article on the matter CALLED rfk wants to
Speaker 1: send people to wellness. Farms THE us already tried that
Speaker 1: that talks about the actual background that he is hearkening back,
Speaker 1: to because he is. Not but his vision of wellness
Speaker 1: farms is not like The nazi concentration. Camp which doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that it's not possible that things could wind up
Speaker 1: in a much darker. Direction but this gives you an
Speaker 1: idea of the history that he is specifically calling back.
Speaker 5: To.
Speaker 1: Quote beginning of the eighteen nineties and continuing through the
Speaker 1: first decades of the twentieth, century epileptic and feeble minded
Speaker 1: colonies sprung up around THE. Us the initial purpose of
Speaker 1: these colonies was to remove patients from, overcrowded badly run
Speaker 1: asylums in poorhouses in favor of farm, life where they
Speaker 1: would have access to the. Outdoors under the colony, model
Speaker 1: patients generally lived in cottages designed to be more homelike
Speaker 1: than Institutional patients were also given, jobs and many were
Speaker 1: expected to work on colony, farms where they grew their own.
Speaker 1: Food Doctor William, sprattling the medical superintendent of The Craig
Speaker 1: colony For epileptics In New, york declared that the farm
Speaker 1: model meant, nature the great, restorer will have an opportunity
Speaker 1: to do her. Best it didn't. Work supporters of the
Speaker 1: colony of model argued that with, time clean, air, sunshine
Speaker 1: and a restricted, diet physical labor could heal, patients but
Speaker 1: that didn't. Happen data from The Craig, colony one of
Speaker 1: The america's first electic, colonies illustrates this. Point during the nineteen,
Speaker 1: forties thanks to funding and staff limitations because Of World War,
Speaker 1: two conditions In North american institutions were particularly grim the.
Speaker 1: Institutions nineteen forty three to nineteen forty four annual report
Speaker 1: to The State commissioner Of Medtal hygiene shows that less
Speaker 1: than one percent of patients were discharged is cured that.
Speaker 1: Year during that same, period over two hundred patients attempted
Speaker 1: to leave the colony without, permission and five percent of
Speaker 1: the total patient population. Died and SO i mean that's
Speaker 1: reason enough to be deeply, worried, right the fact that
Speaker 1: without saying LIKE rfk wants to do what The nazis,
Speaker 1: DID rfk wants to do what The america already did
Speaker 1: and it killed a huge number of the people who
Speaker 1: were interned in those. Camps AND i guess the THING
Speaker 1: i keep bringing up is that WHEN i think about
Speaker 1: what the threat model is more than Fucking auschwitz for
Speaker 1: people who on OUR, nssris it's A Judge Rotenberg center
Speaker 1: on every. Corner it's camps like these where costs are
Speaker 1: going to be cut and there's not going to be
Speaker 1: good access for any kind of independent monitors to make
Speaker 1: sure health and safety are being. Followed it's not that
Speaker 1: people are going to be shoveled into. Ovens it's that
Speaker 1: as a result of this system being incompetently applied to
Speaker 1: the most. Vulnerable And i'm not even talking about my
Speaker 1: worry at the moment being that everyone on AN ssr
Speaker 1: will be forced.
Speaker 2: In it's going to be poor.
Speaker 1: Kids AND rfk has already talked about, that, Right, like
Speaker 1: that's why he's focusing on the black, kids, right that's
Speaker 1: who they're going. For we've had some people post up
Speaker 1: in the subreddit being, LIKE i Know i'm going to
Speaker 1: go to a camp BECAUSE i have, autism OR i
Speaker 1: Know i'm going to do go to a camp because
Speaker 1: i HAVE. Adhd And i'm telling, You i'm not saying
Speaker 1: don't be scared of. Fascism i'm saying this is where
Speaker 1: to fight right. Now it's NOT rfk wants to send
Speaker 1: every adult on AN ssri into a death. Camp it's
Speaker 1: that they're going to try and be putting these kids
Speaker 1: instead of you, know the different juvenile programs that, exist
Speaker 1: instead of any kind of functional medical, Program they're going
Speaker 1: to force them into hisities like, this and it's going
Speaker 1: to become easier for facilities like The Judge Rotenberg, center
Speaker 1: which horribly abuses and tortures autistic, kids to spread and
Speaker 1: to get state and federal. Funding and that's that's the, threat.
Speaker 1: Right it's an extension of what we're doing and what we've.
Speaker 1: Done it's not a carbon copy of what The nazis
Speaker 1: are doing or did speaking of The, nazis.
Speaker 2: And we're.
Speaker 1: Back so a couple of things happen in quick succession
Speaker 1: that is responsible in part for like why people are
Speaker 1: so freaked, out and rightfully. So one of them is
Speaker 1: THAT rfk gave a speech on the back of new
Speaker 1: data that showed yet another rise in the rate of autism,
Speaker 1: diagnoses and AS i said on a previous, episode it's
Speaker 1: because we're looking for it. More but he made a
Speaker 1: statement about people with profound autism not being able to
Speaker 1: pay taxes or write, poems you, know or that sort of.
Speaker 1: Thing and while he was specifically talking about people with
Speaker 1: quote unquote profound, autism it's reasonable for people to, assume, like,
Speaker 1: yeah but that's just kind of what he sees is basically, everyone,
Speaker 1: right AND i don't think that that's an unfair. Assumption
Speaker 1: and then coming right up on the heels of, that
Speaker 1: there was an announcement from THE, nih The National institutes
Speaker 1: Of health ABOUT Rfk junior's new effort to quote unquote study.
Speaker 1: Autism and basically what they're going to be doing is
Speaker 1: collecting comprehensive patient data with broad coverage of THE us
Speaker 1: population and kind of organizing it within THE. Nih this
Speaker 1: is the first time this has been. Done but they
Speaker 1: are going to be grabbing basically everything they can get
Speaker 1: their hands. On and we're talking about a mix of
Speaker 1: med medication records from, pharmacies lab testing, records genomic data
Speaker 1: from people who like go to the you, know department
Speaker 1: of the basically data taken by THE, va data taken
Speaker 1: by The Indian Health, service as well as data by
Speaker 1: from private. Insurance and they're also going to be buying
Speaker 1: data from smartwatchs from stuff like. Fitbits, right who does
Speaker 1: sell their data to anybody with like twenty dollars hanging
Speaker 1: out the back of their. Pocket and as a heads,
Speaker 1: up if you are looking for a fitness, tracker you
Speaker 1: should look more into. This there are a few that
Speaker 1: have reasonably good data protection. Histories garman is one of.
Speaker 1: Them this does not mean it's. Perfect all of them
Speaker 1: will hand over your data if given a court order
Speaker 1: to do. So none of them are going to break
Speaker 1: the law to hold on to your. Data But garman
Speaker 1: doesn't just like sell willy nilly to anybody who wants
Speaker 1: to like advertise based on. It right that, said most
Speaker 1: of them do the last Thing i'd write was something
Speaker 1: like twelve out of fifteen different free fitness tracking apps
Speaker 1: they checked sold data pretty, Widely so.
Speaker 4: Yeah about eighty.
Speaker 1: Percent, yeah it's the vast. Majority, Right, so THE nih
Speaker 1: is basically looking at taking the data that. Exists they're
Speaker 1: not talking about really gathering new, data but they are
Speaker 1: Taking they are talking about collecting everything that exists and
Speaker 1: putting it under one roof the first. Time and this
Speaker 1: is for a couple of. Purposes. Right they want to
Speaker 1: be able to track the spread of different illnesses and
Speaker 1: different health problems within the. Population these are their, claims
Speaker 1: but also they want to create a disease registry specifically
Speaker 1: to Track americans with. Autism, Right and this is Because
Speaker 1: kennedy describes autism as a preventable, disease which is not.
Speaker 1: Accurate and the fact that this database and these other
Speaker 1: databases are being made should be very. Worrisome, Right it's
Speaker 1: both important to talk about the fact that he is
Speaker 1: specifically signaling out autism while also stating like that's not
Speaker 1: the only thing they're looking.
Speaker 2: Into.
Speaker 1: Right they want data on people who are ON, SSRIs
Speaker 1: who are ON adhd. Medication they probably want data on drug.
Speaker 9: Use.
Speaker 1: Right there are a lot of things they are looking
Speaker 1: to be, gathering and none of it is shit that
Speaker 1: they should have access.
Speaker 2: For, yeah you.
Speaker 10: Can certainly see them expanding this out to like hormone replacement,
Speaker 10: therapy transfer, healthcare, yes.
Speaker 5: Yeah and also like the apps attract like menstrual. Cycles, right,
Speaker 5: yes people access and reproductive.
Speaker 2: Healthcare and again the immediate.
Speaker 1: Plan i'm, SORRY i SIMPLY i don't think THAT Rfk
Speaker 1: junior's master plan is the mass arrest of everybody who
Speaker 1: with autism in The United states and forcing them into a.
Speaker 1: CAMP i don't think that's what he, wants in part
Speaker 1: because number, one his base of support is a lot
Speaker 1: of the parents of these. Kids And i'm not saying
Speaker 1: those parents don't want to do things that they aren't
Speaker 1: already doing things to their kids that are, Harmful but
Speaker 1: those parents want control over what they see as their kids'.
Speaker 1: Healthcare they want the freedom to experiment with medications on
Speaker 1: their kids to quote unquote fix. Them and this data
Speaker 1: is going to be used both to provide basically to
Speaker 1: be massaged to provide evidence that different treatments that don't
Speaker 1: do shit do in fact. Work AND i THINK i
Speaker 1: have suspicions of financial interests. THERE i keep getting questioned, like,
Speaker 1: well what do you think is going to happen when
Speaker 1: the autism cures don't, Work, well then they're going to
Speaker 1: put people in. Camps, no the autism cures already don't.
Speaker 1: Work this is an. Industry they make money off of.
Speaker 1: This they make money off of drugging and medically torturing these.
Speaker 1: Children and as far that, is the threat is that
Speaker 1: it is going to get easier to do at a larger,
Speaker 1: scale and it is going to be harder to, fight
Speaker 1: even illegal to provide good information on what does and
Speaker 1: does not. Work and that is what's happening right now
Speaker 1: as opposed to something we might be worried, about you,
Speaker 1: know years down the. Line and, yes we should fight
Speaker 1: anytime the government is trying to put populations of people
Speaker 1: into a motherfucking database like, This we should fight all
Speaker 1: of this tooth and. NAIL i just think this is
Speaker 1: WHAT i see as the. Danger you, Know, yeah the
Speaker 1: risk is this to centralized. Stuff it's a centralized acceleration
Speaker 1: for things that have already been, happening less so than
Speaker 1: just like large scale direct sator.
Speaker 5: Intervention, YEAH i think a lot about, like in the
Speaker 5: context of this like quote unquote wilderness therapy, programs, Yes roberts,
Speaker 5: companies but which have been abusing children for.
Speaker 1: Years and that is WHAT i see when we talk
Speaker 1: about these these. Farms, again my worry is NOT rfk
Speaker 1: wants to forcibly put everybody into Fucking Auschwitz part. Two
Speaker 1: IT'S rfk wants a hundred times as many teen treatment
Speaker 1: facilities where kids who disobey are get in trouble with
Speaker 1: the large caught it fucking, protests can be forced to,
Speaker 1: labor and an amount of them will, die and all
Speaker 1: of them will suffer permanent mental and physical damage as
Speaker 1: a result of being put in these.
Speaker 10: Places, yeah like the behavioral improvement centers that are you
Speaker 10: could even be part, of you, know like like community.
Speaker 1: Service, yes, yeah it's extensions of what we. Do it's Extremely,
Speaker 1: american you. KNOW i just that's that's where my head.
Speaker 5: Is, yeah it's no Great so talking of WHERE i
Speaker 5: guess where my head is is, Immigration, Right that's WHAT
Speaker 5: i tend to update us. On SO i Guess i've
Speaker 5: seen it characterize as like legal ping pong between the
Speaker 5: courts and THE. Doj it would be like if one
Speaker 5: side was playing ping pong with a regular tennis, racket
Speaker 5: and everyone was just pretending that they weren't, Right like
Speaker 5: the doj is just continuing to kind of flout these court.
Speaker 5: Orders if we start from the top and go, down
Speaker 5: The Supreme court temporarily banned the government from Renditioning venezuelan
Speaker 5: men in the district Of North texas To El. SALVADOR
Speaker 5: i think people maybe sometimes this got a little misinterpreted
Speaker 5: on social, media like you have to look at who
Speaker 5: the class, was and the class was a group Of
Speaker 5: venezuelan men who were in immigration detention In North texas
Speaker 5: who were going to be sent To Wel, salvador and
Speaker 5: that was who got the. Relief the case at the
Speaker 5: time was pending before THE Us court Of appeals for
Speaker 5: The Fifth, circuit and The Supreme court said that once
Speaker 5: that court, acted the government could appeal to The Supreme. Court,
Speaker 5: however they, added the government should, not And i'm quoting,
Speaker 5: here remove any member of the putative class of detainees
Speaker 5: from The United states until further order of This.
Speaker 9: COURT i.
Speaker 5: E The Supreme court to update on the, case which
Speaker 5: we've covered a lot.
Speaker 9: Here The Abrego garcia.
Speaker 5: Case Judge genies ordered expedite disco discovery is when both
Speaker 5: parties in a, lawsuit like a mass information, right they're
Speaker 5: able to find out. Information and in this, case the
Speaker 5: government more or less ignored, this and it did so
Speaker 5: by sticking to its line that they can't bring him
Speaker 5: home to The United, states saying that the requests were
Speaker 5: And i'm quoting again, here based on the false premise
Speaker 5: that The United states can or has been ordered to
Speaker 5: Facilitate Bregor garcia's released from custody In El. Salvulo their
Speaker 5: claiming they were ordered to return, him and somehow in their,
Speaker 5: minds returning him does not include ensuring his, release like
Speaker 5: they're saying that they're only obliged to transport him should
Speaker 5: he be released. Anyway genies in a court order called
Speaker 5: this quote a wilful and bad faith refusal to comply
Speaker 5: with the discovery. Obligations geni's also called the government's assertions
Speaker 5: of executive privilege quote equally. Specious The city Of hyattsville
Speaker 5: in this case also clarified through a press release that,
Speaker 5: quote at no time did any member OF hpd identify
Speaker 5: or file any report Classifying Abrego garcia as a member
Speaker 5: of any. Gang despite, this the executive branch is still
Speaker 5: going with that he's a violent gang. Member they also
Speaker 5: doxed his wife this week by releasing a protective order
Speaker 5: that she had once filed and, withdrawn and when that was,
Speaker 5: released it contained her a, dress so she's now hiding
Speaker 5: in a safe.
Speaker 10: House they photoshopped A ms thirteen tattoo onto his knuckles
Speaker 10: above a weed leaf, tattoo a smiley face across and a.
Speaker 5: Skull, yeah, yeah that's what they're going.
Speaker 9: WITH i guess specious is a specious is a good? Word?
Speaker 2: Yeah just hideous?
Speaker 9: Nonsense, yeah, no absolutely obscenely.
Speaker 5: Ridiculu and then the other angler, Says i'm just saying
Speaker 5: that you don't have a right to do process right like,
Speaker 5: openly just Like miller has been saying. This Jd vance
Speaker 5: has been saying this on x dot com that, like
Speaker 5: these people don't have a right to do process for.
Speaker 5: That they've come up with various arguments for. That it
Speaker 5: also seems like two people sent Twelve salbador no longer
Speaker 5: appear on any official list of, detainees which is concerning
Speaker 5: one of, Them Ricardo. Pradovasquez he's not among the two
Speaker 5: hundred and thirty eight people we know on the manifest
Speaker 5: for those sent Twelve. Salvador he doesn't appear to be
Speaker 5: In Venice, whaler which is where his passport is, from
Speaker 5: and the fact that the government claims that they sent.
Speaker 5: Him the government has said they sent him on The
Speaker 5: march fifteenth. Flights he's not listed. There he's not visible in.
Speaker 5: Photos has led to concerns that we might have sent
Speaker 5: more people To El salvador than we currently know. About
Speaker 5: he entered the country with A cbp one appointment, right
Speaker 5: which of all the ways to, enter is the one
Speaker 5: that THE us government was trying to force people to
Speaker 5: use at that.
Speaker 10: Time, right he very like legally entered the.
Speaker 5: Country, yes to be, clear he entered at a port
Speaker 5: of entry with an appointment to claim. Asylum he appears
Speaker 5: made a mistake when delivering food and ended up driving
Speaker 5: Into canada and was arrested when he attempted to return
Speaker 5: to The United. States he doesn't show up on THE
Speaker 5: ice detainee, locator and essentially no one knows where he is.
Speaker 5: Right this concern has been compounded by the fact that
Speaker 5: it also emerged this week that THE us has sent
Speaker 5: at least one, Detainee Omar abdul Sata amen To, rwanda
Speaker 5: and the combination of these two, things raises are concerned
Speaker 5: that they are sending third country nationals to detention in
Speaker 5: other countries that we are not yet aware. Of, right of,
Speaker 5: course The Rwanda plan was something that THE uk government
Speaker 5: hatched a long time, ago and The kagami government In
Speaker 5: rwanda seems to see this offer right as a way
Speaker 5: of gaining legitimacy with governments in the Global, north especially
Speaker 5: given the widespread criticism for his actions in The Democratic
Speaker 5: republic Of. Congo, recently from The, handbasket which is like
Speaker 5: a kind of substacky, outlet they've reviewed memos between THE
Speaker 5: us government and the embassy In, rwanda And i'm quoting
Speaker 5: from one of them. Here THE us provided a one
Speaker 5: time payment of one hundred thousand dollars to support social,
Speaker 5: services residency, documents and work. Permits rwanda has, also according
Speaker 5: to the Hand, basket agreed to accept ten more third country.
Speaker 5: Nationals so THE us is Paying rwanda a little bit
Speaker 5: more than it's Paying El salvador rate it was Paying
Speaker 5: El salbora twenty thousand per person per, year but it's
Speaker 5: a one time. Payment, NONETHELESS i struggled to believe that
Speaker 5: you could concoct a way in which it would Cost
Speaker 5: rwanda one hundred grand to produce a residency document and
Speaker 5: a work permit for An iraqi. National but, yeah this
Speaker 5: has obviously led to the concern that people are being
Speaker 5: sent to other places that we don't don't yet know
Speaker 5: about talking to people being.
Speaker 9: Sent to other.
Speaker 5: PLACES A us, Citizen Jose, hermosille was detained BY ice
Speaker 5: after approaching a border patrol agent to ask for. Directions
Speaker 5: he was detained for ten. DAYS dhs is claiming that
Speaker 5: he was arrested near The nogales border and that he
Speaker 5: approached the border patrol agent and upon doing, so identified
Speaker 5: himself as a non citizen who was not in the country,
Speaker 5: legally which is what they. Claim, yes So hermaiceo disputes
Speaker 5: this along with his. Lawyers he says he approached the
Speaker 5: agent looking for, directions having had a seizure and been
Speaker 5: in the hospital and when he.
Speaker 9: Got out of hospital was trying to work out where to.
Speaker 5: Go he is From New, mexico but he was visiting
Speaker 5: his girlfriend's family In. Tucson he told the agent he
Speaker 5: was From New, mexico and the agent accused him of.
Speaker 5: Lying in his, ACCOUNT dhs has to produce a transcript
Speaker 5: With i'm not going to call it a signature because
Speaker 5: it just has.
Speaker 9: The Word jose written underneath.
Speaker 5: It, Right Mister, hermercio according to his, girlfriend has some learning,
Speaker 5: difficulties and by her, account he wouldn't have been able
Speaker 5: to read The english language transcript that he's alleged to have.
Speaker 5: Signed so like, totally whether or not he signed this
Speaker 5: is rather a material. Right he, clearly judging by her,
Speaker 5: account was not aware that he was in. It judging by,
Speaker 5: this this is not even a signature with a last.
Speaker 5: Name it's laughable to suggest that he like consentingly signed. This,
Speaker 5: Yeah but nonetheless he was detained for ten days till
Speaker 5: his family produced his documents in.
Speaker 10: Court, yeah he was arrested quote unquote without proper immigration,
Speaker 10: documents which you don't carry around when you're A us. Citizen,
Speaker 10: yeah you're not obliged to, papers, please you don't need.
Speaker 10: That his family brought His Social security card certificate to,
Speaker 10: court and eventually the case against him was dismissed after
Speaker 10: being held By ice for ten. Days this reminds me
Speaker 10: of a similar case from this past, week where A
Speaker 10: us citizen was detained On wednesday the. Sixteenth this is
Speaker 10: a twenty year old born In, Georgia Juan Carlo's Lopez.
Speaker 10: Gomez he was pulled over while driving to work near
Speaker 10: The florida. Border he doesn't speak Much english Or. Spanish
Speaker 10: he speaks an indigenous mind, language but he gave his
Speaker 10: REAL id card And Social security card over to a state.
Speaker 10: Trooper he was detained and charged with illegally entering the
Speaker 10: state as a quote unquote unauthorized. Alien, similarly the trooper
Speaker 10: claims That Lopez gomez said that he was in the country.
Speaker 10: Illegally this is like some kind of communication error or
Speaker 10: these law enforcement officers are just like lying or trying
Speaker 10: to construct like language traps to make someone agree to
Speaker 10: a statement that admits that they're in the country, illegally
Speaker 10: which allows them to be. Detained he was put into
Speaker 10: a twenty four hour ice. Hoold the next, day a
Speaker 10: federal judge verified his birth, certificate which was brought by his,
Speaker 10: mother but claims to lack the authority to release, him
Speaker 10: though he was released Later thursday, night and he was
Speaker 10: arrested under a New florida law signed by The santas last,
Speaker 10: month which a judge blocked. Earlier this month On april.
Speaker 10: Fourth this basically allows the state troopers to act as
Speaker 10: their state's own like border, patrol and it penalizes immigrans
Speaker 10: who quote unquote knowingly enter or attempt to enter the
Speaker 10: state after entering The United states by eluding or avoiding
Speaker 10: examination or inspection by immigration officers.
Speaker 4: Unquote, yeah and like and like the common thing, here
Speaker 4: right is that they're just we've seen. This there are
Speaker 4: a bunch of other cases that are like this, too
Speaker 4: where it's just like they see someone who's not white
Speaker 4: and they're just, like, yeah fuck, it we can grab
Speaker 4: this person and then just lie about what they. Said
Speaker 4: it's like it's not even very based on racial. Profiling,
Speaker 4: yeah but it's like the things it's like it's not
Speaker 4: even it's not even like racial profiling. Anymore like it's
Speaker 4: it's they're just attempting to black bag like random non
Speaker 4: white people that they're just running. Across, yes and so
Speaker 4: of course they're like GRABBING us, citizens right cause they're
Speaker 4: just grabbing random. People but it's like they're just fucking
Speaker 4: doing this to. Everyone this has happened in other states as.
Speaker 4: Well there's been instance like, this like the past few
Speaker 4: months which have which have increased in frequency Since.
Speaker 10: Trump has taken. Office, yeah let's go on a break
Speaker 10: and return to talk. Tariff, okay we are. Back how's
Speaker 10: the how's the economy? Going locking jazz b rock jazz
Speaker 10: Bot Sary.
Speaker 1: Lockingcky Jazz bocky Jazz.
Speaker 10: Bob do not? Like, Okay, mia what can you tell
Speaker 10: us about tariffs this? Week so we got a look
Speaker 10: inside The White house this week at how the, tariff
Speaker 10: the turf tariff suspension. Happened, now remember so there was
Speaker 10: there was a deliberation day tariffs a few weeks ago
Speaker 10: and then they got suspended for ninety. Days so we're
Speaker 10: all still on the ninety day count jone clock on those.
Speaker 10: Unsuspended but we got a view of how that happened
Speaker 10: from The Wall Street, journal and The Wall Street journal
Speaker 10: reports That Secretary Treasurer Scott bessett And Commerce Secretary Howard
Speaker 10: lutnik basically waited Until trump Advisor Peter navarro was out
Speaker 10: of the, room and then it was in a, meeting
Speaker 10: and then they Cornered trump and we're, like you gotta
Speaker 10: roll these terror you gotta do this pause on the.
Speaker 1: Tariffs honestly, iconic you, KNOW i hate to say, it but.
Speaker 4: Iconic this was also all the FIRST trup administration, ran
Speaker 4: and everyone appears to have forgotten that this is how
Speaker 4: all of the shit works, well.
Speaker 1: Because there was a there were all those stories for
Speaker 1: the first couple of weeks about how smooth and well
Speaker 1: run it was and everything.
Speaker 4: Slow, yeah and the many people assume that there was
Speaker 4: like a plan behind, this and, like, no, NO i
Speaker 4: am fucking. Vindicated they really are just this fucking, Stupid, like,
Speaker 4: no there is not a grand strategy behind this sort
Speaker 4: of like tariff.
Speaker 2: Rollout.
Speaker 4: Right there is a senile old man and his stupid warring,
Speaker 4: advisors and they're both fighting each other basically for like
Speaker 4: they're they're they're they're they're trying like they're they're trying
Speaker 4: to wait until the other persons out of the room
Speaker 4: so they can grab control of the fucking puppet. Rains
Speaker 4: but this this does actually lay bare something that's sort
Speaker 4: of important about, this which is that like there is
Speaker 4: a huge fight inside of The trump administration between kind
Speaker 4: of lutnik who's like the representative of a bunch of
Speaker 4: different sort of sectors Of american, capital, Right like he
Speaker 4: he's a representative of like you're fucking Like walgreens, dipshits,
Speaker 4: right and like he's also representative of the with the finance,
Speaker 4: people and those people are losing their fucking minds over
Speaker 4: the tariffs because it's again going to destroy the. Economy
Speaker 4: But navarro is you, know it's just like a hardline
Speaker 4: sort of like Anti china. Ideologue And navarro is the
Speaker 4: person who's been driving the most intense versions of these,
Speaker 4: tariffs and it's a real issue for everyone else in
Speaker 4: the administration who doesn't want this to, happen Because navarro
Speaker 4: is like the one guy in the administration and The
Speaker 4: trump actually likes and so they can't directly move against
Speaker 4: him because they. Lose Like Elon musk tried this and
Speaker 4: like it got. Nowhere and so you know what we've
Speaker 4: been seeing is is just like, again the tariff policy
Speaker 4: here is just being set by who's the last person
Speaker 4: in the room with. Him, yeah so we're probably still
Speaker 4: like about sixty days ish out from these terroists coming
Speaker 4: back into a. FACT i, mean this basically means like
Speaker 4: they'll be hitting in the, summer which is also just
Speaker 4: like absolutely the worst conceivable time for these terrors to
Speaker 4: take effect in terms of like if you were just
Speaker 4: like deliberately trying to cause a massive popular mobilization against.
Speaker 2: You this is what you would.
Speaker 4: Do they're not, that they're just, dumb but, like you,
Speaker 4: know so, okay let's most move on to the sort
Speaker 4: of big news of this week is the press has
Speaker 4: been carrying stories About trump backing off of the one
Speaker 4: hundred and forty five Percent china tariffs and the fact
Speaker 4: that there's gonna be negotiations and it's all going to
Speaker 4: get wound, down and, Like i'm pretty sure this is
Speaker 4: just kind of pure lutnik shit to try to calm
Speaker 4: the markets. Down the issue with this story is that
Speaker 4: there are no, negotiations. Right everyone keeps talking about how
Speaker 4: THE us is going to do negotiated settlement With. China
Speaker 4: there have not been any. Negotiations there are not. Negotiations
Speaker 4: there has not even been a process to start negotiations
Speaker 4: because you, know the last stories we had about this
Speaker 4: is that like neither side wants to be the person
Speaker 4: to like start going to the table because like asking
Speaker 4: the other side for negotiations makes them look. Weak Like
Speaker 4: trump has been Asking china to ask him to cert of.
Speaker 4: Negotiations The chinese are refusing And the second issue, here
Speaker 4: and this is the more substantive problem with with a
Speaker 4: sort of negotiated back, out is that The Trump navarro
Speaker 4: position hinges on the line that the trade deficit inherently
Speaker 4: like With, china is proof Of chinese market. Manipulation and
Speaker 4: the thing, is there's no actual way to systematically address
Speaker 4: that right like, That there's nothing that like Either china
Speaker 4: or THE us could do that would that would reverse
Speaker 4: the trade. Deficit so there's no sort of like you,
Speaker 4: know like, yeah like like the obvious way out here
Speaker 4: will be for Like trump to take some kind of
Speaker 4: weird symbolic victory and Like china to be like we're
Speaker 4: doing a fenntional crackdown or some. Shit but the thing, is,
Speaker 4: like ideologically for someone Like, navarro And navarro is the
Speaker 4: important figure, here Like navarro just Wants china destroy, it,
Speaker 4: Right there's no actual negotiating process that he can do
Speaker 4: that will actually sort of like make this like negotiation
Speaker 4: shit happen and have it actually like eliminited. Tariffs the
Speaker 4: only thing that can happen basically is a political battle
Speaker 4: inside of The trump administration Where davarro gets pushed out.
Speaker 4: Somehow but, Again navarro is Like trump's. Guy SO i
Speaker 4: just don't buy all of, this all of the fucking
Speaker 4: stories that are coming.
Speaker 9: Out and this happens.
Speaker 4: Constantly every single time there's one of these, things there's
Speaker 4: all these stories being, like well they're gonna get rolled.
Speaker 4: Back it doesn't actually mean, this and that just. Happens,
Speaker 4: right we have one hundred and forty five percent rais On. China,
Speaker 4: now the last THING i want to talk about is
Speaker 4: what the actual effects of this has. Been and the
Speaker 4: effect is that it has. Been there's been a massive
Speaker 4: slow down and a massive like shutdown in in exports
Speaker 4: From china to THE, us like internship container ship. Traffic,
Speaker 4: right we're talking talking About i'm just gonna quote FROM cnbc.
Speaker 4: Here so they're talking About, optimizer which is like a
Speaker 4: tracking system for, ships and they, said, quote year on,
Speaker 4: year the data shows a forty four percent drop in
Speaker 4: vessels schedule to arrive the week Of may fourth To may.
Speaker 4: Tenth now that that's not actually necessarily a forty percent
Speaker 4: drop in, traffic because there'll be more shit when like
Speaker 4: other boats get. Full but you, know to put this into, perspective,
Speaker 4: right during the worst for, trade the worst parts of
Speaker 4: THE covid lockdowns the year and a year drop was
Speaker 4: only twenty, Percent so and twenty percent is the number
Speaker 4: that's been that's been being spread around the media for
Speaker 4: like what roughly the drop looks like for some companies
Speaker 4: is larger than. Others and, again the, tariff we still
Speaker 4: haven't even seen the actual shocks of the tariffs, yet
Speaker 4: and we're already seeing a decline in experts From china
Speaker 4: that is like again around the level of the. Lockdowns
Speaker 4: and and you, KNOW i think like people remember like
Speaker 4: the kind of unhinged shit that that, caused, right and
Speaker 4: that's something that always only going to. Intensify and the
Speaker 4: other part of, this right is that the strategies right
Speaker 4: now for how this is being dealt with is moving Through,
Speaker 4: vietnam moving Through. Cambodia but if you remember the rates
Speaker 4: from the original sort of like turf tariffs From Liberation, day,
Speaker 4: right like the terif On vietnam was like one hundred
Speaker 4: percent or some, shit it was like eighty. PERCENT i don't,
Speaker 4: remember zap my. Head but like there's no actual viable
Speaker 4: strategy of just of ways you can route these goods
Speaker 4: through and it's been especially hitting the sort of drop shipping, companies,
Speaker 4: right like people Like temu and anything that relies on
Speaker 4: airfhrase just getting. Fucked and so this this is all
Speaker 4: just you, know just sort of rolling in the, background
Speaker 4: is just this logistics, crisis and it's it's it's also
Speaker 4: an echoing. Crisis and this THING i actually want to
Speaker 4: close this section on is, That, like so the big
Speaker 4: issue with with these sort of empty, boats, right and
Speaker 4: these cancelations at boat, waters is that in order for
Speaker 4: it to be, profitable because all of these these shipping
Speaker 4: companies run on such low, margins, right they only barely
Speaker 4: survived the pandemic by taking out a series of just
Speaker 4: like unhinged sort of like weird collateral based. Loans and
Speaker 4: in order for these companies to be, profitable they have
Speaker 4: to continuously keep on completely filling up.
Speaker 9: Ships.
Speaker 4: Right if a ship is not, full it is not
Speaker 4: profitable for them to run, it, so you, know and
Speaker 4: if that's if that's not, happening the entire system literally
Speaker 4: grinds to a halt until there's enough orders to move things.
Speaker 4: Through so even the ship that there is demand, for,
Speaker 4: right can't be shipped because these shipping companies cannot afford
Speaker 4: to unless the entire thing is. Full so the supply
Speaker 4: chain disruptions that we are going to see from, this
Speaker 4: as this sort of escalus and as this, continues and
Speaker 4: especially in a few months if the liberation dataies go
Speaker 4: back into, effect are, Catastrophic and we really, like it's
Speaker 4: just what it's this. Way you can hear the, thunder
Speaker 4: you can see the, lightning but the storm hasn't hit,
Speaker 4: yet and it is going to and when it, DOES
Speaker 4: i don't. KNOW i was trying to do a poetic
Speaker 4: thing about how we're all going to get fucking, drenched
Speaker 4: but we're. Fucked it's going to be unbelievably. Bad and
Speaker 4: the only process right now inside of the administration that
Speaker 4: doesn't involve like some kind of mobilization is, like, again
Speaker 4: Is leutnik winning this fucking intra intra administration political battle With?
Speaker 4: Navarro so, woo, well pre order Your nintendo switch too right.
Speaker 10: Now. Yes in other, news The Minnesota Attorney general is
Speaker 10: assuming The trump headmin over the executive order about trans
Speaker 10: women participating in school, sports saying he will quote not
Speaker 10: to participate in a shameful bullying and also says that
Speaker 10: this order violates The Minnesota Human Rights. Act so we'll
Speaker 10: see some more court cases over this in the weeks to.
Speaker 10: Come i'd like to talk a little bit about the
Speaker 10: student crackdowns For palestine, protests kind of in a different
Speaker 10: way like we've, discussed LIKE ice going after and detaining
Speaker 10: and deporting and taking away visas and green, cards so
Speaker 10: unrelated to that side of. It on the morning Of,
Speaker 10: Wednesday april twenty, third THE fbi served multiple search war
Speaker 10: in Southeast, michigan presumably related To palestine protests and encampments
Speaker 10: from the past. Year there's also some reporting of law
Speaker 10: enforcement activity in other states Like, pennsylvania But i'm still
Speaker 10: waiting to confirm. That the press secretary for The Michigan
Speaker 10: Attorney general confirms investigators executed search warrants for three. Homes
Speaker 10: he said that people were briefly detained during the execution
Speaker 10: of these, warrants but they were all eventually, released and he,
Speaker 10: noted quote there is no immigration enforcement angle to the
Speaker 10: execution of these search warrants, unquote so these people aren't
Speaker 10: being investigated BY ice to get deported. Necessarily this is
Speaker 10: seemingly for other protest. ACTIVITY a Pro palestine student group
Speaker 10: says that these rates happened at around eight. Am. Quote
Speaker 10: early this, morning police AN fbi agents rated for residences
Speaker 10: of The university Of michigan Pro palestine, protesters refusing to show.
Speaker 10: Warrants they seized all electronics and a number of personal. Belongings.
Speaker 10: Quote let's close this episode by returning to my Most
Speaker 10: Stephen Colbert Skibbity biden, Segment Stinky, musk which is still
Speaker 10: the worst Name i've come up. With Last, Tuesday Elon
Speaker 10: musk said that quote working for the government to get
Speaker 10: the financial house in order is mostly done, Unquote So
Speaker 10: musk is moving closer to stepping back FROM doge this,
Speaker 10: may around the time that his special Government employee designation
Speaker 10: is set to. Expire reporting From Washington post claims That
Speaker 10: musk is growing tired of the vicious and unethical attacks
Speaker 10: from the left and that is kind of dragging on,
Speaker 10: him with other reports suggesting That musk is annoying Other
Speaker 10: cabinet members and administration officials more Than trump. Himself in,
Speaker 10: fact just This, wednesday a few hours before, Recording musk And,
Speaker 10: bessett we're having a pretty intense shouting match in The White.
Speaker 10: House going, Forward musk says that he plans to work
Speaker 10: for the government about one to two days a week
Speaker 10: for the remainder of The trump presidency so that he
Speaker 10: can quote make sure that the waste and fraud that
Speaker 10: we've stopped does not come roaring.
Speaker 6: Back.
Speaker 10: Quote he keeps referring to his work At dogs like
Speaker 10: being already, completed, essentially like we already found all of the,
Speaker 10: fraud and now we just have to make sure more
Speaker 10: fraud doesn't. Happen we've previously reported on the alleged fraud
Speaker 10: that he claims to have found and the false numbers
Speaker 10: up on The doge. Site but it seems like this
Speaker 10: work really is like winding down the Musk doge like
Speaker 10: reply to this email with five things you've done this
Speaker 10: week or else be. Fired directive has essentially sputted out
Speaker 10: senior officials do not comply with the core aspects of the.
Speaker 10: Directive it was never really, enforced and The Trump office
Speaker 10: Of Personal management later said that this was voluntary and
Speaker 10: THAT opium officials may have never actually ever read those
Speaker 10: response emails at. All though a small number of agencies
Speaker 10: are still requiring compliance with this, mandate and in some fun,
Speaker 10: News tesla stock just continues to, decline dropping to half
Speaker 10: its peak from Last december and Anti testla vandalism potentially
Speaker 10: spiking the cost Of tesla. Insurance tesla had a just
Speaker 10: disastrous earnings call This, Tuesday april twenty, second showing That
Speaker 10: tesla profits have fell seventy one percent over the first
Speaker 10: three months of the. Year the total revenue was decreased
Speaker 10: nine percent compared to twenty twenty, four with car sales
Speaker 10: revenue dropping twenty percent compared to a year. Earlier The
Speaker 10: TESLA cfo stated that quote the negative impact of vandalism
Speaker 10: and unwarranted hostility towards our brand and our people had
Speaker 10: an impact in certain markets. Unquote in a company statement
Speaker 10: before this earnings, Call tesla claimed that quote, unquote a
Speaker 10: changing political sentiment could impact demand for their. Product musk
Speaker 10: announced that he would be shifting his attention back To
Speaker 10: tesla and that His doge time allocation will quote unquote drop.
Speaker 10: Significantly musk talked tariffs on this earnings call and tried
Speaker 10: to carefully like not Bash, trump whilst stating concerns over
Speaker 10: the high, tariffs saying, Quote i've been on the record
Speaker 10: many times as SAYING i believe lower tariffs are generally
Speaker 10: a good, idea but this decision is fundamentally up to
Speaker 10: the elected representative of the, people being The president of
Speaker 10: The United. States so you, Know i'll continue to advocate
Speaker 10: for lower, tariffs but that's ALL i can.
Speaker 11: Do.
Speaker 10: Unquote any thoughts On musk And tesla here before we.
Speaker 4: Close, yeah one THING i want to remind everyone that
Speaker 4: is genuinely good news is that the thing About tesla
Speaker 4: sales dropping is that it actually fucks them in two different,
Speaker 4: ways right because because again most of the most of
Speaker 4: their money is from these carbon credits that they're. Selling
Speaker 4: but the thing, is in order to be able to
Speaker 4: get the carbon, credits they do need to be able
Speaker 4: to sell cars. Totally and so each like subsequent cycle
Speaker 4: of people not buying cars is also destroying their carbon credit,
Speaker 4: subsidies which is like this sort of like spiraling like
Speaker 4: cash crisis. Thing so you, know, look Zero tesla sales as,
Speaker 4: possible we can keep driving.
Speaker 10: Of better world as, possible can destroy these.
Speaker 2: Bastards we can ruin.
Speaker 4: This one guy specifically's, life and it's not even that.
Speaker 4: Difficult so, yeah, well we reported the.
Speaker 2: News we reported the.
Speaker 1: News, Hey we'll be Back monday with more episodes every
Speaker 1: week from now until the Heat death of the.
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