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Dec. 3, 2019 - The Muckrake Political Podcast
54:31
A Kinder, Gentler Fascism

In the second episode of the Muckrake, analysts Nick Hauselman and Jared Yates Sexton tackle billionaire Mike Bloomberg's assertion that China isn't a dictatorship, define the moment as a post-political crisis, discuss how Ronald Reagan and neoliberalism laid the path for our current economic system, Joe Biden's self-destruction, and imagine a way out of this mess. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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The fact that Russia was so aggressive does not exclude the fact that President Poroshenko actively worked for Secretary Clinton.
You've done exactly what the Russian operation is trying to get American politicians to do.
Are you at all concerned that you've been duped?
No.
And by the way, you know, I sit on the stand, and to get hot, I got hairy legs that turn blonde in the sun.
And the kids used to come up and reach in the pool and rub my leg down so it was straight, and then watch the hair come back up again.
They'd look at it.
So I learned about roaches.
I learned about kids jumping on my lap.
And I've loved kids jumping on my lap.
Xi Jinping is not a dictator.
He has to satisfy his constituents or he's not going to survive.
He's not a dictator?
No, he has a constituency to answer to.
Let's go beyond the stale and tired narratives.
Let's use historical context and alternative perspectives to fully comprehend.
Let's dig deeper to tackle the news and bring a little order to these chaotic times.
That's what your hosts Jared Yates-Sexson and Nick Hauselman will do.
Welcome to the Muckrake Podcast.
So Jared, how was your Thanksgiving political banter?
I was busy explaining what a surfer was.
You know, talking about the Democratic primary, the wealth tax, the ins and outs of pardoning war criminals, you know, whether or not you should excuse technological dystopian dictators for your new Democratic campaign as a billionaire.
Perfectly rational, normal Thanksgiving talk.
I love it.
Yeah, you know, nobody in the world right now is supporting Michael Bloomberg, so somebody has to talk about him.
He's spending way too much money for us just not to mention him.
For sure, for sure.
Well, you know, there's an interesting thing about him and his age, too.
I feel like there's a certain generation of people that simply lack the ability to have any sensitivity to, you know, social Justice I suppose could be the word I've heard him say some horrible things about women And you and you can't really I mean I guess you want to excuse him for being from that generation, but it just seems Silly that we have to try and you know consider him a legitimate candidate in this day and age
Well, you know, it's a really kind of amazing thing.
I know myself and people who opened with our opening and the quotes that we do are going to hear Bloomberg for whatever reason in an interview.
I believe it was with PBS.
Basically say that China, which is one of the most nightmarish ideas of what can happen in a nation-state in this world, basically, not basically, he said it, that it wasn't a dictatorship.
This is a guy who has some really frightening ideals and I thought it'd be good for us to talk about this and sort of because last I checked he's running as a Democrat, I believe.
Okay, a quote-unquote reformed Republican running as a Democrat who, for whatever reason, got in front of a camera and said that China wasn't a dictatorship.
What we need to talk about is the fact that Michael Bloomberg represents a new movement in politics, what I've come to call post-politics, which is a group of people, and this is a very, very wide berth of people, these are billionaires, oligarchs, if you will, These are big tech people and it also happens to be what Donald Trump is about and what Russia is about.
We're basically talking about a group of people who are not interested in actually using government to help people, but using government to further their own interests, to empower themselves, to enrich themselves, and really that's the only explanation for why a person would get in front of a camera and even Hold a straight face.
As they said, that China, a place that murders people, imprisons dissidents, has basically said that its biggest enemies are free speech and democracy and independent media and independent thought.
I'm sorry, Nick, maybe I'm old fashioned, but to me, that is a dictatorship.
Oh, well, on a different level as well, in that interview is Margaret Hoover, who was interviewing him, and she's a young, really smart woman.
And you kind of got the sense that he couldn't deal with being challenged by a young, smart woman, who deigned to ask him these questions and push him back on what China really represents.
And those are the interesting little glimpses into his psyche that you get to see if you're really watching carefully.
And that is really what makes me frustrated from all those guys who are 70, 75 years old.
They all seem to lack that ability to have any self-reflection.
So, like you said though, this isn't about the government.
Right?
This is about Bloomberg seeing an opportunity because no one's quite grasping everybody or getting everybody that excited in the Democratic primary.
And I think he just sees this potentially as another way to expand his brand as well.
I don't know if I really get a sense that he is interested in helping the country regain any amount of standing that we had before Trump took office.
I think that might be the most important thing we're going to need from someone who does take over if Trump loses.
Yeah, there's no plan.
There's no plan besides Mike Bloomberg running for president.
That's it.
And you brought up an interesting thing.
None of these people are good at being questioned because they're CEOs, right?
They're billionaires.
They're very, very powerful men, Nick.
And they don't like it when people ask them questions.
This is why you see Mark Zuckerberg just sort of like stiffen up, and he's like, why am I sitting in front of a congressional committee right now?
Why am I having to explain why I broke digital democracy and reality in America?
It's because these people don't have to answer for things, and that's what they like.
They don't want a government that asks them questions.
This is why Donald Trump, every time a reporter asks him something, or you have an impeachment inquiry, He looks at it as just a it's a problem, right?
It's just like a speed bump.
And that's what this post political mindset is all about.
And it started for a little bit of historical context.
This starts in the 1970s, right?
This starts with Jimmy Carter, who loses the presidency to Ronald Reagan.
And we start having this mindset now where the government shouldn't be doing anything besides assisting business, right?
That's the only thing it's supposed to do because all of a sudden we now have this mindset where if you are wealthy, it means – and people should look back on this.
It's this old idea of the wealth of nations, right?
That there's an invisible hand that guides the market basically that makes the market and the economy a tool of an omnipotent, all-powerful god.
And so the people who are doing well, they deserve it, right?
It's not that there is a biased system.
It's not that there's a white supremacist system.
It's not that they had money and so they're going to continue to be privileged and powerful.
These people literally believe that they have been deigned by the universe to be successful.
So who are we, Nick?
Who are the people and who are the government to ask these people questions?
And this all goes to China.
And I want to point this out, that the mindset we're talking about here, that market mindset, is what leads to China.
This is why Mark Zuckerberg doesn't mind working with China.
This is why big tech doesn't mind shutting down dissidents and censoring the internet and helping with this dictatorship, is because it's not about democracy, it's about the bottom line.
Right.
Well, let's even expand that into the basketball world, because we saw what happened with the NBA in China.
Oh, let's go there.
Because Daryl Morey tweets out in support of Hong Kong, and China really doesn't take that well at all.
And the threat of them pulling any amount of money out of the NBA means that the team's salary caps would go down.
That's how important China's money is.
And I had never, ever seen Greg Popovich and Steve Kerr, both, and even LeBron James, Just go mute as if they were puppets from the Commissioner Adam Silver telling them they can't say anything when in the past they've always felt free to speak about whatever.
But they clearly were gotten to and it was eerie to see almost like the official state policy coming down on people who should be able to speak as freely as they want to.
So that's what that is.
When we talk about China, they're simply talking about money.
Right?
They're talking about how much money can we make together, and that extends to Russia, too.
And that's sort of the crux of all this stuff.
This is not about ideals.
It's not about ethics.
It's not about helping people and the constituents who actually live in these countries.
It's simply about the bottom line for a very few people.
And a lot of the wealthy people in this country have fooled themselves into thinking that they're self-made.
And I think that's the thing.
And they think that because what they had to do to get to where they are now, making a lot of money, well, that means anybody could do that.
And it's the same kind of inequality that that's what government is supposed to be for, to sort of help balance that even a little bit.
And we've gotten so far away from that ideology since Reagan, and probably before, that this is the biggest wedge that's driven us apart.
I'm so glad that you brought up the NBA-China controversy, because for me, that was one of the most nightmarish moments, because it made it very clear, right?
And it's funny, you said that LeBron went mute, he didn't.
LeBron criticized Daryl Morey.
Right.
Like that was his immediate reaction.
LeBron James, who has been very, very outspoken on social justice and on these issues, sided with China.
And let's give context.
I assume everybody listening sort of understands this, but what was happening was that Daryl was criticizing China for cracking down on Hong Kong.
Right.
And what we're seeing in Hong Kong is it's an iron fist that's coming down.
It's China determining the rights of the people and whether or not they can express themselves and whether or not they can protest.
What Daryl tweeted out was really, really innocuous.
It wasn't anything at all.
And he's one of the more powerful people in the NBA.
This is the guy who set a lot of the trends in the NBA that has led to the game that it is now.
And it seemed for a minute that he might be gone.
And he might have been gone.
And you saw LeBron James do what he did.
And you saw the NBA do what they did.
Because when they look at China, they look at the numbers, right?
It's like a scale.
They say, here's the possible money that we can earn.
And here is human rights.
And guess what?
Human rights don't add up.
Because we have a history in this country of doing that math.
And let me tell you what, human rights never add up.
And that's where we are now.
And people need to realize that something has fundamentally changed in the past you at least People appreciate human rights, but you at least had to act like that was an important thing, right?
What Bloomberg did in saying that it's not a dictatorship, and you'll notice if you listen to the full quote, if you go and find it, he says that what happens here is that the president of China, who by the way is a person who eliminated all term limits, who is now president for life, and is basically considered a living god in China, right up there with Mao.
That's who he is.
Now, and he's imprisoning people and people are dying left and right.
When he says that it's not a dictatorship, he says that it's not because if there's so much pollution happening in China, then Xi is going to feel the pressure from the people.
Well, Nick, let me tell you what that is.
That is a monarchy.
That's the idea of what we moved away from.
That's what America, when we were founded, we were moving against the idea of there being an all-powerful monarch.
And the idea behind the monarch was, and this happens right at the Age of Enlightenment, there's like this moment where people start saying, well, why do we have kings?
And it's like, well, they have the right of God.
And people are like, that doesn't make sense.
Right.
We rejected that.
Now, all of a sudden, we have an oligarch billionaire who is getting into a presidential race.
I believe the last poll I looked at, he's polling at two percent, maybe.
And his constituency, by the way, is probably less than two percent.
It's the billionaires of the country.
And that's why he's running.
But you have a two percent person who's getting in and flood.
And by the way, if you watch TV over Thanksgiving, you saw Michael Bloomberg ad.
Like you couldn't get away from it.
This is a person who has incredible wealth and incredible sway.
Who comes out in favor of a dictatorship that basically pretends not to be a dictatorship.
Who stands up for the idea of a monarchy in 2019.
That should terrify everyone, but it should terrify them even more that it's not just Bloomberg.
It's that part of the Democratic Party, and it's also the Republican Party.
They've swallowed this hook, line, and sinker.
That's what Donald Trump is.
Well, I want to pivot on one point on the Bloomberg thing, which is, what does it say about a guy and his views on climate change when he cites simply moving coal plants a little bit farther away from major cities as this big solution to what's clearly plaguing the whole planet?
And that's his answer to what is supposed to happen.
Even if we get cleaner air and use cleaner energy, what happens because China isn't?
That was his answer.
It was, oh, well, they're letting their people in their cities can breathe a little easier because they've moved these coal plants farther away.
That was frightening, probably more frightening or as frightening as what he said about the dictatorship.
Because as far as I'm concerned, what we need in a candidate and the next president is someone who is a lot more forward thinking at the very least on climate change and what we're going to do about that.
Versus when you hear Trump keep talking about how he is unwilling, just like Bloomberg would probably be, he's unwilling to sacrifice any amount of cash in exchange for cleaner air and cleaner water and a cleaner environment.
Yeah, but Nick, that's the neoliberal philosophy.
All we have to do is we need to take our problems and we need to move them out of our eyesight.
I mean, that's like, that's Donald Trump saying, you know what, we have a problem with the homeless.
We need to move them out of the city so I don't have to look at them.
That's what the idea is.
And that's what's at the heart of this thing.
Neoliberalism isn't actually, and real fast, the definition for people who are listening, I'm sure you hear this all the time.
Neoliberalism is a reaction that takes place at the end of the 1970s, and we're currently still in.
It is a nightmare machine.
It's a disastrous policy that basically says that the market is always right.
That is why we don't get paid enough.
That's why we're not appreciated.
That's why our lives, quite frankly, are hellscapes a lot of the time, and we're always working ourselves to death.
Well, the neoliberalism basically says we don't need to fix those problems.
We need to get those problems out of the way so we can focus more on production because that's what's happening here, right?
The problem with climate change is a problem that can't be answered unless you back away from production.
which by the way, isn't good for business.
It's not good for the bottom line.
It's not for expediting because you always get to grow, grow, grow, grow.
And that's Bloomberg who, I mean, that's who this guy is.
That's what the philosophy is at the heart of this thing.
It's not about serving people.
It's not about serving the wellbeing of of anybody besides a small group of people who are consolidating power and wealth.
And again, that's not Democrat.
That's not just Republican.
That's an entirely different group of people.
And the more that we talk about this thing as if it's, oh, Democrat, Michael Bloomberg, Republican, Donald Trump.
Well, guess what?
They've both been Democrats and Republicans.
They've shifted allegiances based on whatever help.
help them.
It's not like they have actual principles.
The principles that they have is making money and having more power.
That's all that happens here.
It's a class structure thing.
It's a power thing.
It's not about the politics we think of.
Let me just piggyback on that to explain it even a little bit better or a little bit more in depth.
I remember in the late 90s having to deal with private health insurance and how much they would constantly charge more and change the terms and all these different things.
I remember saying to one of my best friends, who was an investment banker at the time, I said, why, instead of making a billion dollars in profit, can't they just make $750 million and we can actually get this to run right?
And his response was really telling.
He said, if you take away their incentive to earn money, they're not going to give you good service.
As if they were already giving us good service for that.
And they weren't.
It was really a hellscape then.
It's a hellscape now.
But that was the notion of any amount of regulation that you'd want to impose that might sacrifice a little bit of the bottom line indicates to someone who is dedicated to money that, oh, that's simply it.
You will not have that.
It's the end of the business once you take away this, whatever incentive would be.
And it was really striking to me.
And we've seen it kind of go all the way through until we are in here with the argument about health care and everything else.
They're all representative of the same idea that we keep talking about here.
And again, it's insidious, but I get it.
I'm a capitalist.
I like money like everyone else likes money.
But at some point, we need to understand what the reality is, which is, Well, it's about growth.
That's the main problem here.
And if we're going to talk about what's actually happening, if we're going to get into the economics, the thing that ultimately kills the idea of neoliberalism is that it has to be continual growth.
If you don't continually grow, if you're not always gaining more than the last time you gained, then you're stagnant.
The first time that I understood this was when I started looking at, like, giant retail shops like, you know, like Sears or a Penny's.
You know what I'm talking about?
These stores that people of our generation sort of grew up with and they seemed like they were never going to go away, and now all of a sudden they're falling to the wayside.
The problem isn't that they didn't make money.
The problem is that they didn't make as much money as they needed to keep making, and eventually they end up in these siloed races, right?
Which is actually, if we're going to take this metaphor a little bit further, look at Bloomberg and look at Trump.
These are two guys who have been involved in the same race, right?
These are media personalities who have been involved in enrichment and empowerment, and all of a sudden now they're sort of narrowing up at the top.
I mean, that's what's happening with the big tech people.
They're not in competition with everybody.
They're in competition with each other.
Right?
And if they fall back even a little bit, right?
And that's the problem here, is all of a sudden you start working with a philosophy that is anti-human.
Because you and me, what you're talking about, we're impediments.
We're a natural resource for them, right?
We can help them profit if they use us well enough.
And this is filtered down through the rest of society.
That's the problem with so-called trickle-down economics.
Is we're turned into natural resources that have to be used and juiced for all of our potential profit, as opposed to being treated like humans.
Because the market is not about humanity, the market is about profit.
And the whole idea there, with the idea of what capitalism is based on and what we're doing, is that we can't consider other people because it's the inherent greed and it's the inherent self-interest that makes this machine work.
And here's what that machine does as well, and we're always looking for where does this whole thing start?
Is it Newt Gingrich?
Is it Morning in America with Reagan?
Is it anything earlier than that?
Is it later?
Well, I got to tell you, when I was watching in 2008, and I know Obama got so much crap for talking about redistribution of wealth as if that was socialism.
And all he was proposing was a tax on like the very top half of 1% of the country.
But when you would see the normal Americans who are making $60,000 a year and living in middle America, they were so far away from ever being close to having that tax affect them.
And you would see them scream and yell bloody murder that these are raising our taxes.
We cannot have that.
And I feel like that is what the situation has done as well.
It sort of created this weird mindset where, I don't know, maybe we're not making a million dollars a year.
No, sorry, it's a lot more than a million dollars a year today.
But at some point, I'm working really hard.
I'm going to be in that bracket.
I don't want to get that tax.
And quite honestly, I don't want to pee on anyone's parade, but the numbers indicate that – It's simply not going to happen.
You're not going to attain that much wealth to be affected by that.
And yet it really was as bad as religion as far as how vehemently they would argue against that.
Well, let's start here.
Just a quick footnote.
It all started with the founding of the country, when the founding fathers decided that it was worth keeping people in bondage in order to have an economic advantage.
If anybody wants to, you know, have a light read, look at the Federalist Papers, where Alexander Hamilton, who is now one of our favorite pop culture icons...
Basically argues that we need to put aside our political and social differences including slavery so we can get ahead economically It's it's it's all there in black and white that that's what he says.
That's what he's pushing for It's really problematic but this current iteration that you're talking about is This is where everything starts going haywire, is in all actuality in the 1990s when we have Newt Gingrich and we have Bill Clinton, the Democratic Party made a decision following Ronald Reagan's re-election that they were going to move further right, that they were going to start embracing a lot of Reaganism and they were going to start Looking at the market.
They started issuing a lot of the social justice stuff.
And this isn't hearsay.
This isn't like strategy documents, right?
This is Al Fromm.
This is the Democratic Leadership Council.
This is what Bill Clinton was based on.
And if you look at how Clinton basically presented himself to the public, he used a lot of Reagan's language and a lot of his ideas, right?
So the Democratic Party goes down that route.
They still called him a socialist.
They still called him a dangerous liberal, right?
It didn't matter.
Then we get to Obama, and the thing that people need to understand about Obama is this.
In a different time, Obama probably would have been a Republican.
He was a center-right politician in so much of what he did, especially in economics.
And Obama would come out and he would basically talk about bootstrap ideology.
He would talk about, like, bringing yourself up and, like, you know, joining the middle class or, like, making money.
What you're talking about with when they said redistribution of wealth, this also goes for the idea of Obamacare, affordable health care.
This was a center right policy that was designed by the Heritage Foundation, which is the defining Republican conservative think tank, right?
This is a thing that Mitt Romney put into action before he ran against Barack Obama.
So what ends up happening?
Is the Republican Party looks at Obama and they look at the coalition of the ascending and we're talking about Obama starts bringing in minorities and different populations.
And all of a sudden they say, we can't beat them, especially when they're dealing with economics like this.
So we have to treat him like he's a danger and he's a threat.
So the Republicans, and this is a part of why we're in the situation we're in now, Republicans start saying, this is a dangerous person with dangerous ideas, but guess what?
The ideas are their ideas.
They started eating themselves, like an Ouroboros eating its tail.
They just changed reality forever, and that's how their principles started to go away, is that they actually started criticizing their own policies, and they had no policies anymore.
Right, and by the way, again, to reiterate what I was saying before, people of a certain generation born before 1950, 1955, You know, what they were using as talking points against Obama were inherently racist.
But they wouldn't be able to comprehend that because of the era they were born out of.
It's simply, there's a lack of self-reflection.
I've talked to enough people of that age who just don't understand that.
In fact, they'll turn around and say, well, it's reverse racism or whatever.
And I've heard that even moderate Republicans try and put Obama in the, filing him under the worst president we ever had.
And if you're willing to ruin your credibility to say that, I don't even know if you realize that's like that's just still casting these versions of racism there.
It's the other.
It's the guy who doesn't look like you.
It's what they actually Trump had to tap into because what you said was they knew they couldn't win based on how the demographics of the country were going.
So and they were never going to get those new demographics.
So they had to stir up out of the woods and everywhere else they can get.
Every person that was offended by having a black president in our country that never would have voted ever before, who always would stay home, I think that's what the Southern strategy ends up being now.
And it's frightening when they just are able to do it out in the open.
They don't even have to pretend like they're dog whistling.
It's just a regular whistle.
Well, and the Southern strategy mutated.
And what we're actually seeing now, what you're talking about, is it actually took this bizarre conspiracy theory, the New World Order, right?
This idea that there are like evil people who are conspiring against America.
Well, guess what?
When you talk to people about the New World Order, it's the idea that Satan is using a loose conglomeration of, and usually you're talking about, I don't know, African Americans, you're talking about immigrants, you're talking about women, which basically means that Satan is trying to take over white supremacy and patriarchal power.
Well, what happens with Obama is they start dog-whistling not towards racist appeals, they start calling him incompetent, they start calling him dangerous, all those things, right?
But they also start dog whistling towards New World Order ideas, which is how we end up in the reality that we're in now, where the Republican Party and Donald Trump operate on a mindset that they're not committing crimes.
They're actually trying to take down an international conspiracy of satanic evil.
And in some cases, it's child sex traffickers.
In some cases, it's the Clintons who apparently have murdered, I don't know, dozens of people at this point, according to these conspiracies.
But what ends up happening is they can't fight them any longer on policy.
And so what happens is, and this is how we get to post-politics, they're not arguing policy anymore.
They're not arguing about bills because the government is not designed to pass bills anymore.
There's a reason why we don't have relief for the problems that we have.
The government has been quarantined.
It's now a passion play where people fight, and guess what?
When that happens, the really, really rich rise to the top, and they make these appeals, right?
They make the appeals that sound like political appeals, but that's not what they're interested in.
They're interested in how to juice government for the most profit and power, and that's how you lose democracy, and that's how you go down this really nasty road that we're going down, and God help us if we get Michael Bloomberg versus Donald Trump.
God help us.
I know, and although, you know, by any means necessary, we need to get Trump out of there, is what certainly the Democrats would argue, but I certainly don't get any kind of, I don't feel good about where this race is heading for a lot of reasons.
And certainly the one thing that's under the surface now is, well, we didn't even talk about the Republicans' response to the impeachment process because it does, by the way, talk to what you were saying as far as what their reality is and how they've twisted it.
And it really isn't about the issues or what was testified.
It's mostly about the process of what's going on.
And it's interesting because I think you know it better and maybe everyone needs to hear a little bit more of the details of you spending a lot of time out and about amongst the Trump rallies where you get to really interact and see who the people are that we're talking about that would support Trump no matter what because that's really what's taken hold.
And it seems like it's just enough of the country to keep him eking out a victory after victory.
Well, hopefully, you know, it'll only be eight years if it's even that long.
But nonetheless, you know what I mean?
That is a really – I think certain people in this country that live in certain areas probably have a hard time believing what you're saying about the new world order.
And they can't really think that it's not really that way.
People really don't think that way, do they?
But I think that your insights, you can lay it on us, really would indicate that that's not the case.
I think it's in degrees.
So, for instance, my background, I come from a rural Indiana town and steeped in what I now look back on and I realize is a pretty radical Christian white identity religion.
I mean, it was hidden behind, you know, the tenets of it, but it was there.
So, like, people who grew up in that, I think that they recognize it a lot more.
And if you're on Facebook and you have friends who are involved in this stuff, You see the memes all the time.
I mean, you know, you see Donald Trump with like Jesus over his shoulder.
You see Hillary Clinton as a demon.
Like, this is the stuff that's being transmitted.
The other groups of people, for them, I think that they see Democrats as being Criminals?
I think they see them as being disingenuous because they have been so bathed in propaganda and the alternate reality that Republicans have created.
How could they possibly be outside of it?
You know what I mean?
Like, they look at it and they're like, how could possibly anybody think this?
Obviously, this is bad faith.
Obviously, they're trying to work behind the scenes.
But what has happened is the Republican Party is a party that doesn't Have a path to victory anymore.
It's not.
They do because they've constructed one, right?
And we're talking about gerrymandering.
We're talking about voter suppression.
We're talking about the electoral college.
We're talking about things that actually limit democracy, which is the important thing that we're talking about here.
And let's bring it back all the way around.
The idea behind post-politics is not for democracy.
They're interested in controlled democracies.
They're interested in the illusion of democracy in order to give quote-unquote consent.
This is why you look at somewhere like Russia where Putin will come out with 92% of the vote and it's considered a mandate and it's considered he has the will of all the people.
Well guess what?
That's manufactured.
That's not real.
And what we're seeing now, particularly in this country, is a slow movement towards the manufactured democracy.
This is why we have gerrymandering.
This is why we have suppression.
This is why the Electoral College works the way it does, is because we have a party that recognizes it can't win a democratic election, and so it has to manufacture one it can win.
Well, the question then arises is how long would it take to get there?
I mean, I know that Nazi Germany took you know They kind of came into power in the early 30s and by 39 they had control and they started World War two So, you know, that's that's seven years or so I wonder if
I would have to imagine it would take at least that long for that to happen and I guess what would have to happen for them to finally do it because what they're doing now the method with what certainly what Trump is doing is so dividing of people and so enraging of the other side that it's hard to imagine we'd ever just lay down and be like okay fine we're gonna we just we're beating into submission but now that you say it that way I can see that being a thing after You know, was it 10 years?
How long do you think it would be until guys like you and me would just simply shrug and be lobotomized?
So, here's the thing we have to say, first of all, is I don't actually think that the problem is necessarily just Republican.
You know, I say all the time, I don't think it's Democrat or Republican, I don't think it's left or right.
What we're dealing with is a different type of thing.
Somebody like Bloomberg, like it would be what I would call a kinder, gentler fascism.
Right?
Like, you know, this is the kind of thing that happens with, like, Zuckerberg.
This is the kind of thing that happens with Google, is we have a group of people who will basically know better than the rest of us and will just sort of capitulate, right?
Like, you don't necessarily know you're in a dystopia all the time.
Like, if you're getting a reality that reinforces what people above you are more powerful than you think, Then you're actually living in a dystopia that's sort of clouded.
Well, I'm not saying that it would be necessarily the same thing, because what happens on the right right now is a particularly dangerous strain of this, because every single day they're testing democratic institutions, and they have shown that they're more than happy to have a scorched earth policy.
And you brought up the Republican impeachment report.
It's a completely farcical document.
It shows that they're not engaging in good faith arguments.
They're not interested in the business of government.
They're interested in continuing power.
That's the road to fascism, right?
That is blatant, bold-faced fascism, is when you do not care about actual good law and government, and that's what they're doing.
But there are different modes of this, and we have to be aware that For us to get out of this without something really, really bad happening, we need a larger, different vision.
We have to get out of this neoliberal mindset.
We have to move towards something more democratic and humane and better and human.
And unless we do that, we're trapped on different sides.
I mean, this is a big, giant matrix of problems.
And I say this all the time, and maybe I'll make it something I say every episode.
Donald Trump is not the disease.
He's a symptom.
And what we're watching right now could not have happened if there wasn't something really, really wrong in the engine of this country and in this world.
We have to look at it that way and we have to realize that we're kind of beset on all sides by this thing.
There has to be a better way and hopefully somebody can express that and galvanize some people behind it.
Well, one of the other keys to fascism, as it exists, is when things like the Justice Department and the White House, you know, lose their separation, ethical separation, whatever you want to call that, where there's not supposed to be involved with each other.
And it had been, we'd observed that norm for, you know, almost the entire republic until now.
Well, I got some breaking news for you, Jared.
Are you ready?
Bill, uh, William Barr doesn't agree with the key findings of the Russia investigation that his own IG that he brought in, Horowitz, is going to release next week.
And I was wondering with my dad earlier today about what's going to happen because we now know that that report is going to simply say, ah, well, there was this one low level lawyer who like changed the report.
They got rid of him.
It doesn't affect anything.
And it's certainly the key finding they're going to say is that the FBI was right in opening their investigation into Trump.
I'm so tired of this shit.
I'm just so tired of it.
And he's going to say that it's – he still disagrees.
He'll probably pick up the whole spying thing, which I thought was completely – almost to the point where they could have brought him on charges of lying to Congress for saying that.
And we're now going to get into this hazy thing where people are going to get confused and not know what to believe.
I'm so tired of this shit.
I'm just so tired of it.
It's watching people take one step after another to just completely undercut the law and reality and – And it's a betrayal.
I mean, there's no other way to put it.
And I really I don't say things like that lightly.
Like what we have now is we have a group of people in power who are not interested.
Again, they're not interested in law.
They're not interested in reality.
They're not interested in serving the people.
They're interested in serving themselves.
And that's what ends up happening in this system is you have And think about it like a business, because God knows that's how Donald Trump views all of this.
They are businesses that have grown larger than the country.
And as a result, they view the country as something that assists them as opposed to something they should assist.
Duty and honor don't figure into this.
And I am just, I don't know about you, Nick.
I'm so just tired and pissed off at this.
It's so ridiculous.
Have you ever thought about why John F. Kennedy said, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.
You know, he wouldn't necessarily have brought that up if The notion of people expecting the country to do something for them wasn't already there even back in the 60s.
So it's kind of interesting that coming out of the 50s of the Golden Age, Eisenhower, the Korean War, out of World War II and enjoying prosperity, I do think it's interesting that we could point, you know, at a lot of different times in history, a lot earlier than we thought probably we would have looked at earlier, that this kind of ideology had existed and started to take hold.
So, you know, but then again, what changed and where did we have moments and pockets of hope where we even got into the counterculture of the late 60s where things actually seem like we were going to have progression?
Well, it was out of what Kennedy had said.
And the point I'm making, I suppose, is that What we need is someone like Kennedy who would inspire us to live up to these ideals that, again, don't exist.
It's all a myth, we know, but we need to believe in that myth, and we need someone that can lead us to believe that myth.
And I think the crux of the matter now is that none of these candidates have any amount of ability to do that, and that's what we're missing and what we're needing, and I just don't know if anyone can ever fill those kind of shoes.
I'm glad you brought up Kennedy.
Um, so I, I've been dealing with, man, I'm so pissed off about this bar news.
I tell you, it's, it's just every time these crooks, just every time, it's incredible.
Anyway, so I've been, I've been dealing with, uh, health stuff in my family and I needed something good over Thanksgiving to watch.
And somebody had recommended, uh, the documentary Apollo 11.
I don't know if you've seen it.
It's absolutely incredible.
It's breathtaking.
I think that the moon landing and the Apollo 11 program, I think this is something we can look at and that we can sort of decipher, because let's put this out there.
The reason we went to the moon is because of the Cold War, right?
There we go, there's the Nick I know and love.
But if you believe that we went to the moon, the idea is that we got inspired to do it because we were in a Cold War and we were in a competition, right?
So you can say right there that maybe the idea wasn't noble, but I'll tell you what, watching what we did to do it, was noble.
And watching how it played out is noble.
Watching heroicism, watching the united factor of it.
Now, you can say again that it was self-serving and that it was about competition, which, by the way, is what people like Michael Bloomberg want to talk about all day, except for they don't.
They're not actually interested in competition.
They're interested in talking about competition while they quash competition.
But actual competition and actual nobleness and duty and those types of things, that's the inspiration that we need.
Kennedy, you can feel however you want about Kennedy and people have a lot of opinions about him and history says a lot of things because the people who get out in public, it's complicated, right?
People are people.
But I'll tell you what, when there's inspiration and there's duty and there's honor, at least a spouse to try and bring people together, that's when big things happen.
And But this post-political idea says it's naive.
That you should not talk about duty and honor and come together and do big things, except for if you're a business.
If you're a business, shoot for the stars, see what ends up happening.
But in public, the government should just be there to basically provide welfare for employees who aren't paid enough.
And otherwise, it's naive and ridiculous and a relic of the past.
But I do, I think that we have possibilities.
And whether that is a democratic space race, like the idea that we should like raise people up and have higher standards of living, things like the Green Revolution.
I think Elizabeth Warren throws some stuff out there at times that feels like it could bring us together and unite it.
And that's the thing.
This is all made up and it's all make believe and politics is about everyone believing something and being able to do something or nobody believing anything and not being able to do anything.
I think if we got some inspiration and we got some mobilization, I think some good things could happen.
But until we start believing in that and we start, like, actually focusing on that, we're going to be stuck in a pretty bad rut, I think.
Again, we need someone, I think, who's going to lead us that way and speak in a way.
Like, you know, Obama.
Go back and watch Obama's speech in 2004 at the Democratic Convention.
That was some inspiring stuff.
Like, you know, Cory Booker had a speech once a while ago, maybe, that was interesting.
But, like, you know, none of these people are able to summon that kind of inspiration anymore.
Wait Nick, you're not inspired by saying that China isn't a dictatorship?
That doesn't inspire you?
No, you know what's really inspiring is listening to a presidential candidate talk about getting his legs stroked at the pool, at the hot summer pool, and then kids sitting on his lap that he really likes.
You know, can we talk about that for a second?
Because it's on the top of my head right now and on my mind.
By the way, he's talking about Joe Biden for anyone who's confused that Nick just started talking about kids stroking his leg in a pool.
Here's a guy who, you know, as much as we talk about the diminished mental acuity of Trump, which, you know, it seems obvious if you've seen any of those quotes from the Anonymous book, who, man, wouldn't it be great if that was Kellyanne Conway?
I really kind of think there's hardly any other senior advisors that have been around that long, but nonetheless, the mental acuity, the diminished mental acuity of Trump is almost mirrored to some degree, in my mind, recently with Biden.
And he's doing things and saying things that are so cringeworthy that I'm so worried that if he gets the nomination at some point during the presidential race, he will say something so bad, so dumb, that he will not recover and it will just hand Trump the victory.
And by the way, Trump could say something even worse and that wouldn't...
affect him at all at this point.
So that's not even a fair race on that end.
But that's what I'm really worried about, because, you know, if the bottom line is to have a Democrat win the presidential race, you know, that's why Biden, I don't think, can be the guy.
Well, I think, you know, Joe Biden, speaking of complicated political figures, there's a lot of stuff that Joe Biden has done in his career that I think is really exemplary.
And there's a lot of stuff that is really troubling.
I will tell you, for me looking at this field.
I checked out the moment that he started saying the Republicans were having a fever and that they were suddenly going to get better if he got elected and Trump would go.
That's a falsehood.
Trump doesn't win the nomination of a party that's healthy.
Trump doesn't win the nomination of a party that is sound and is just going to get better.
That, to me, told me that he is operating in a different reality.
And not just a different reality, but a bygone era.
Right.
And I think that's what's at the heart of this thing, is I think that most Americans who oppose Trump, which, by the way, is most Americans, understand that we're in a different era.
We're in a different time now.
And there is one of those moments, and again, you brought up Kennedy, which I think is a really important thing.
That is a passing of the guard, right?
That is a movement into a new era in American history, to a new generation.
That's what we need.
We need something that is different and something that is galvanizing and inspiring.
Getting back to business as usual, I'm sorry, but the 1980s, 1990s, early 2000s American government is not something to have nostalgia for.
It's just not.
This is a problem.
It's the stew that led to what we're in right now.
So the moment that I heard that, I was out.
You know, what he would look like as a candidate, I have a hard time parsing that out and gaming it out, but I'm looking for somebody somewhere who can create a new vision that can inspire and galvanize and hopefully start to roll away the corruption because if we don't get rid of this corruption, we don't get rid of this disease, we're in real trouble.
Oh, I agree wholeheartedly.
I think also what we need to have a debate about or discussion is, A, the Democrats, the next Democrat that attacks another Democrat should just be disqualified right away.
The only thing they should be talking about is how bad Trump is.
That should be the only calling card they have.
It could be monotonous, I don't care.
But they also need to be talking about what are they going to do To prevent another Trump from happening.
I want a clear outline of what laws they intend to pass.
I think releasing your taxes would have to be the top of the list right away.
And there's got to be, I mean, again, the founding fathers were really, really smart.
They constructed a really good constitution.
But the ignoring of the norms that had been established for 200 years, they just, no one was quite prepared for someone that would be able to do that and survive an impeachment, which is what's going to happen here.
And I think we need to get more concrete laws in response to this so that we can get anywhere near back to some semblance of, and again normalcy is not the right word, but some sense of, and I don't want to say pride either, some sense of feeling that we're going in some direction that's the opposite of where we're going right now.
Well, I think that's one of the big problems right now.
I was listening to something earlier today.
It was talking about why Democrats are having a hard time selling impeachment, which they're not in all actuality.
Like the public is overwhelmingly in favor of it.
Everyone understands Trump committed impeachable crimes.
But the idea of how they sell it, one thing I think that could put this thing over the top or at least sort of change the dynamic.
is, I'm sorry, but the presidential candidates should be out there talking about this.
This should be the thing that everybody's talking about instead of spending time asking how they're gonna make programs work, which weirdly enough is only a question that Democratic candidates get asked in debates.
You know, it's like, how are you gonna pay for it?
What are you gonna do?
Well, that's a one-sided thing because one party happens to have at least one foot in reality versus another that is, I don't know, orbiting the moon somewhere, Let's bring that thing full circle.
But I think they should be bringing that message out there and they should be talking about the illness that this country has because it is.
It's a sickness that has to be treated and that should be number one.
That should be the thing that we're dealing with.
Absolutely.
I agree.
I wish we could argue more.
It would be probably more interesting.
But I think what's also interesting, because we talked about the impeachment notion and people supporting that, is we're now getting to the point where the impeachment trial in the Senate is on the horizon.
And we now need to figure out what that's going to look like and what's going to happen there.
And we've already heard McConnell You know, and boy, can we all, if there's a way to get him out of office, it might be more important to get him than Trump.
But he seems to have been throwing a little bit of nuggets and morsels of what he might do.
I honestly feel like it sounds like he's going to be able to decide how the format's going to go.
I know John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, has some say, but it kind of feels like if McConnell is going to control this whole thing, I mean, either they can make it into a complete circus, or he can literally make it last One day.
And just sort of say, all right, you can say a couple of things.
Here's your opening remarks.
All right, let's vote.
And he'll be able to do that.
And he knows the vote will come in.
It will not be 67 votes to remove.
And that will be it.
And my take on it is almost like maybe the Democrats should slow this thing down even more and just keep it in this limbo where little things drizzle out and it keeps a cloud over his head the entire time way into the presidential race and not let them crow about how they were exonerated and completely found innocent of everything.
Yeah, I think with McConnell, this is one of those things, right, where it's you can't spend all your time being anxious about something that's going to happen because the anxiety is going to take away the time between worrying about it when it actually happens.
Who knows what McConnell's going to do when we get to the Senate?
I think what people need to focus on, and to give people a little bit of a viewing guide over the next couple of days, The impeachment inquiry is going to bring in scholars who are going to talk about these things, and they're going to give some background for it.
I would tell people, look at this not as Democrats versus Republicans, because a lot of these people are Republicans.
Look at this as we have a group over here that are in touch with reality, which are Democrats and also Republicans, right?
There are people, and it's full circle.
It's left and right, Democrat, Republican.
There are people over here who say this isn't okay, and then you have everybody else that is the Republican Party, even though they're not even really Republicans.
They're, you know, whatever they are.
Like, it has to be framed like that.
Whether or not Trump gets acquitted is a different thing.
I think, personally, that they should just go through the court system and make some of these witnesses testify.
Make Rudy Giuliani get up in front of a committee and take the fifth.
And by the way, he probably won't take the fifth, because that dude loves talking on TV.
You know, get him up and make him say whatever he wants to say.
Get Mulvaney up there.
Get Barr up there.
Get Pompeo up there.
That's where I'm coming from on this thing.
But in the meantime, I don't think worrying about what McConnell's going to do gets us anywhere.
I think it's about framing this thing as it actually is.
Not as a duel, but as the warning.
These are the people who are actually in touch with reality, and here are the people who are dangerously out of touch.
And I think that framing is the only thing that Democrats have any control over right now.
For sure.
And by the way, let the trial go through.
Let all these people get in the record for what they voted for.
I have to believe there are enough people at risk in their races that if a Democrat ran against a Republican who voted to not impeach, you could turn one or two of those seats.
And that's, again, all they really need.
They have to just protect one of either Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, or Michigan.
So it seems to me that there would be enough swaying there based on the polling that we've seen about who supports impeachment that they would lose that election, their election, the down ballot, but then also that Trump would suffer because of that just enough.
Remember, we're talking about what, 60,000 votes, 70,000 votes across three states.
And that's all you kind of need.
So in some respects, I can see how having the vote happen and getting them on record could help you.
But then again, are these freaking Democrats going to run on that?
Are they going to use that like they should?
It's not clear the way they've been spending their money so far and the way the Republicans have been spending their money to win the public opinion polls on impeachment.
It's kind of scary when you see how big that difference is between spending that you wonder if they're ever going to figure that out and run the proper way.
Yeah, and real fast, just as a thesis statement before we bring this, you know, party plan in for a landing, I just want to say that when we talk about this, a lot of the time it sounds like we're strategizing and gaming for Democrats.
I don't consider myself a Democrat.
I have a problem with the Democratic Party.
I have many problems with the Democratic Party.
I think historically there are a lot of things there and a lot of philosophical things.
But right now, in this moment, You have to vote for Democrats because it's the only party that is actually in touch with reality.
And we have, in the Republican Party, if you have an R next to your name right now, you are saying that you are okay with some really tremendously awful stuff.
Like, you are not going to stand up for the rule of law.
So absolutely, 2020, I think that we need to get as many of them out.
And once we get that infection out, we can start dealing with other things and talking about what politics works and how to reform a lot of different things.
But I think you're exactly right.
You make them go on the record at all times saying that they're okay with this and showing time and time again that they should not be trusted with the levers of politics because they shouldn't.
This is a party, the Republican Party, that has shown they're fine jettisoning national security.
They're fine subjugating the rule of law.
They have no interest in limiting the power of the presidency.
Everything that they've ever said that they actually are It's been a sham.
It's a total lie.
They are hypocrites in every single possible way, and they shouldn't be allowed near government, which again brings us back to the post-political thing.
We have to get rid of that.
We have to expunge this post-political mindset and get back to having government do the business of the people.
Amen, brother.
Well, by the way, so before... I appreciate that.
That's a nice ending.
That's a nice ending.
Sure.
Okay.
Well, I just want to say before we go, thank you for all the support so far.
This is episode two.
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