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March 17, 2020 - The Muckrake Political Podcast

50:04

Inevitable But Preventable: The Coronavirus Pandemic

The news on the coronavirus front keeps getting worse, and co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman are here to discuss the origins of the crisis, the political and historical factors that aren't being discussed, possible consequences, and a disturbing new trend in Fox News and Donald Trump's treatment of the pandemic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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	It seems to me that if we do a really good job, we'll not only hold the death down to a level that is much lower than the other way, had we not done a good job.
	People are talking about July, August, something like that.
	So it could be right in that period of time where it, I say washes, it washes through.
	Other people don't like that term, but where it washes through.
	I think a lot of the media actually has been very fair.
	I think people are pulling together on this.
	I really think the media has been very fair.
	I think it could be that you have some foreign groups that are playing games, but it doesn't matter.
	Hey, everybody.
	Welcome to the Muckrake Podcast.
	We're really glad that you're listening.
	This is a podcast that works really, really hard to go beyond the headlines and the normal superficial talk.
	And I think that's more important than ever.
	So thank you to all the new listeners.
	I am your co-host, Jared Yates Sexton.
	I'm here with my co-host, Nick Halselman.
	Nick, things are constantly moving.
	Constantly changing.
	We're in an odd time with the coronavirus pandemic.
	We have a completely ineffectual president at the helm of this thing who is only making matters worse.
	I think that all brings us to a very important question.
	How are you?
	I'm doing okay, but I want to make it clear right now that I take no responsibility if this show isn't as good as it could be.
	Zero.
	Zero.
	Zero responsibility.
	And no matter what happens, I give myself a 10.
	Right.
	And you know what?
	I socially distance myself every day anyway in my office, just working away.
	And that's how my life has been for years.
	But it is starting to really creep in.
	This is now that movie that we've all watched, you know, the pandemic movie where things are starting to get really serious.
	But thankfully, they are only because it's kind of went at least a week and a half too long before people really try, you know, enough people to understand the gravity situation.
	I mean, if you look at the numbers compared to Italy, we're on the same path as Italy, but I think 11 days behind them.
	And I gotta tell you, if that's the case, in less than 11 days, it's gonna be the walking dead. - So we talked a couple times last week, and you know, one of the things I keep having conversations with people about is how quickly reality changes and really feels completely different.
	Last week, of course, and you know, we've been hearing about the coronavirus for a while, probably as long as this administration has heard about it and not really done anything about it.
	But you know, it's just sort of been on the periphery and something that we had to keep an eye out on or didn't really necessarily take completely seriously the same way maybe swine flu or SARS or any of these things.
	In the past week, this is going to be our first episode where it's like, no, we're in.
	Like, we're in it right now.
	We're inside.
	We have to socially distance ourselves.
	Society's going into hibernation.
	That's what's happening.
	Like, you know, we can sugarcoat it all we want.
	What's actually happening here?
	We're going into hibernation.
	Societal hibernation.
	In large part because our leaders are ineffective.
	Donald Trump being foremost among them, but there are so many other leaders that deserve so much responsibility for this and need to be named and need to, you know, claim their fair share of it.
	But here we are.
	We're possibly, we just heard from Donald Trump.
	Yesterday the CDC said eight weeks of social distancing and society shutting down and basically staying in our houses and quarantining ourselves.
	Donald Trump has now said July or August and this episode of the podcast is the moment where we've realized society isn't just in hibernation.
	It's possibly in sustained hibernation for a while.
	You know, and it's a welcome tone shift from Trump today to finally acknowledge that.
	And I feel like what the danger we have of having a president like this is that independent of any of the kind of corruption stuff you might want to talk about, or even mismanagement, you know, he simply has an inability to acknowledge the reality of what's going on in front of him.
	And the reality tends to be not as good as he wants it to be.
	So he has to sort of rosy it all up.
	And that's, if you want to take it as face value and not look at anything more nefarious about who Trump is and what he is, then at the very least what he likes to do is always play things up a lot better than they are.
	And here we are in the biggest dangerous part of this is because for this long he has been trying to downplay how serious this is.
	And even when he's even trying to make that point, the visuals are so off.
	So, for instance, on Friday, when he has this huge press conference and all these people sharing the mic and they're all shaking hands, only one guy finally gave him an elbow bump, which he seemed to think was cute versus necessary.
	Those are the things.
	And there was a poll that came out that said, I think, 60% of Republicans were not social distancing versus 30% of Democrats.
	And I think it's pretty clear why.
	that this is now falling along political lines and it's going to become so dangerous to people because of that.
	And it really just, it just blows my mind and it really just, it crystallizes why his style is so dangerous.
	Yeah.
	We have to talk about what is coming.
	If For those listening, and we've got a bunch of new listeners here, I don't want to bum people out because we have to be honest about what's happening.
	Things are about to get pretty bad.
	You brought up the curve in Italy and how that's looking and how we are following the same sort of curve.
	We also have another problem in America which is rugged individualism and the fact that, and we need to talk about this today at some point, the fact that we've been told for decades now with every terrorist attack and major societal crisis that we are to pretend like it's not happening and go about our lives as if, you know, nothing is occurring.
	We got to talk about that today because that's a big giant major thing.
	Republicans right now who are not social distancing because of Donald Trump and because of Fox News, they're going to make this pandemic worse.
	And as it gets worse, and this is the cult-like mindset, and I want to point this out, I want this on people's radars, and you're going to remember this.
	If you're listening to this, you're going to remember this in about a week.
	When things get really bad, and they're already starting to not be great, Fox News has already started changing their tone.
	They were going on TV, and they were telling their elderly viewers, the ones that are most susceptible to this, that it's a hoax, that it's a democratic ploy, it's over-exaggerated.
	They were going on, they were putting their viewers at risk.
	And not just at risk, they were pretty much entailing that their viewers were going to go and catch this thing and possibly die.
	The tone has changed.
	The tone has significantly changed on Fox News and it is significantly changed with Donald Trump.
	And here's what I want people to prepare for.
	As it gets worse, they're not going to be able to deny that it's a problem because this is a problem that is going to be very obvious, right?
	We're going to see, we're going to see hospitals overrun.
	We're going to see the numbers go up like crazy.
	They're not going to be able to deny it, but what they're going to do is they're going to accept it and they're going to shift the blame for it.
	And they're going to point out who they think is responsible.
	And with all of these people, the way that they work, they're going to pick out vulnerable populations, people of color, enemies like liberals and Democrats, and they're going to shift the blame onto them.
	And that's what's coming in the next week or so as society starts to be tested.
	Well, it's funny that you bring that up because just a few hours ago, Newt Gingrich tweeted, quote... What did Newt say?
	He tweeted, quote, quote, tweeted, quote, quote, tweeted, quote, quote, tweeted, quote, quote, Most Americans discounted their hysteria as phony.
	So remember the whole thing I said about why Trump is dangerous and he has to have everything be positive?
	Well, that was wrong.
	This is why they were dangerous.
	It's because they so tried to corrode the faith that people have in media, in the journalists that are doing their jobs, that he now thinks that that's why people weren't taking it seriously because it was like their hysteria.
	Now, here's the real problem.
	Whatever percentage of people there are that we all are talking about, all were nodding their head reading this tweet saying, yes, that's exactly why I didn't want to take this seriously.
	And that is – I mean, do you have a reaction besides groaning and despair?
	I'm sorry.
	I am so enraged that I've lost the ability to speak words.
	Okay, so a couple things.
	You know, I get why people don't trust the media.
	There's a reason not to.
	I said this... I actually sent out a message to a lot of the people back home in Indiana because I was seeing a bunch of propaganda and misinformation being shared on their social media, right?
	That was all about, this is a democratic hoax, it's not real, don't worry, go out, do your stuff.
	So, like, I come from that.
	Those are my people.
	And I reached out to them and I was like, hey listen, I understand why you don't trust the media.
	You know me, right?
	I'm the one that you went to high school with.
	I'm the one you grew up with.
	I'm the one that was in your family.
	You love me.
	I hope that you trust me.
	Hear me out.
	I've talked to experts.
	I don't trust the media either.
	Like this is a real thing.
	And what I started to notice was When you admit that the media has problems, and it absolutely does, because, and by the way, real fast, we don't give out a lot of credit to cable news, do we?
	No.
	We do not, because they are one of the bigger problems in American society today.
	Do you know who's doing an unbelievable job in all of this?
	MSNBC.
	If you want up-to-date medical information, turn on MSNBC.
	They've turned the entire network over to doctors, which is exactly what should be happening right now.
	And Chris Hayes, by the way, deserves a medal or a trophy.
	The work that that dude is doing in the face of all this is incredible.
	But there's a reason not to trust the media.
	There absolutely is.
	But do you know one of the reasons that the media is the way that it is?
	That is one Newton Leroy Gingrich who created this entire scenario That prioritized and economized political tribalism from the top down.
	He is one of the inventors and the craftsmen behind it.
	And the fact that anybody puts a microphone in front of that man's face is a complete and utter failure of American society.
	Oh, I agree.
	And by the way, let's go on to the fact that we're still seeing on social media plenty of pictures and video of people congregating in big crowds.
	Almost like flying in the face of, you know, trying to troll everybody about this.
	Just a couple hours ago, there's images from, you know, actually speaking of Chris Hayes' Twitter handle, he tweeted out, you know, the beaches are completely filled in clear water in Florida on spring break.
	And it's just like, this really feels like Jaws, right?
	This is the shot in Jaws where we're sitting on the beach chair and the camera moves in while it's zooming out and has that effect where you can't believe what you're seeing.
	And we saw this in clubs, we saw Denver had a big concert a couple nights ago with 25,000 people there.
	It really is an interesting thing and you almost want to trace back this behavior or figure out what the root of the behavior is.
	And I think it has to be that people don't necessarily live for each other as if we're all in one big community to help each other.
	I really kind of feel like we've lost that.
	If we ever did have it, I don't know how you would argue with that.
	root of this is why people don't seem to care that they could be spreading it and not even feeling the disease, but spreading it to the next person gets it, who then will be really sick or perhaps die.
	I don't know how you would argue with that.
	I think the American society by design and by the efforts of capitalism have created an incredibly problematic individualistic society.
	I think that's a big chunk of it.
	It's like, I'll go out and I'll live my life and I'll be fine.
	I think that's part of it.
	But also, I'll say, Nick, you live in Los Angeles.
	Yeah.
	So you're a car guy.
	You drive everywhere, right?
	Yeah, everywhere.
	Everywhere.
	And you get on the interstates.
	And by the way, I have to say, I've traveled all over this country and Los Angeles is some of the more interesting driving that I've ever had to do.
	It is, it is.
	Sometimes you're going very, very fast and you're just, you know, just by the grace of God, you make it to where you're going.
	Other times you're not moving at all.
	What I want to, what I want to try and impress on people is this.
	So I live in southeastern Georgia.
	There's about three hours between me and Atlanta, and I have to go to Atlanta all the time.
	In three hours of driving on an interstate, there are times where you kind of forget that you're driving.
	You know what I mean?
	Like you're just you're behind the wheel.
	Maybe you have cruise control on and you're just driving and you turn into like a cruise control machine yourself.
	And when you're really driving well, you forget that you're driving and that it's dangerous, right?
	Because every time you get behind the wheel of a car, it's incredibly dangerous.
	The only reason we continue driving is because we forget how dangerous it is.
	Here's the thing in all of this.
	There are a lot of people.
	who are not ready psychologically to understand the gravity of the situation that we are in.
	They're driving a car, they're going 90 miles an hour, they're not thinking about what happens next.
	You know, there are these moments when you're driving a car and suddenly you realize, in traffic, you're like, oh my god, I'm in a car, bad things could happen, right?
	It's when the cruise control goes off and you suddenly realize, oh my god, driving a car is an existential threat.
	Right.
	And and I think a lot of people and I'm very angry about them.
	I brought this up on the last podcast.
	Like I have a mother who's very vulnerable and all of this stuff and like, you know, like anybody else who has parents who are vulnerable in this or people that they love who are vulnerable in this.
	I just want everyone to do the right thing.
	I just want us to do the right thing.
	America is not set up like that.
	It's unfortunate and there's going to be so many consequences and so many deaths because America has responded to one disaster after another saying, just live your lives.
	Do what you usually do.
	It's the way to beat the terrorist.
	People keep saying, I'm sure you've seen this.
	We are going to defeat the virus, right?
	They keep using that language and that language is about Americanism.
	It's about you can win anything with troops.
	I just saw a thing.
	Oh my God, Nick this this made me like this made me lose my mind for a full 20 minutes yesterday.
	There was this guy.
	I want to say he's a sports reporter and he got on there and he was like, okay, I'm going to read these tweets because I think our audience will benefit from them.
	The quote-unquote experts say we can't beat coronavirus.
	They say it'll spread no matter what.
	I remember when the experts said America couldn't win the miracle on ice, beat the Japanese in World War II, storm the beaches of Normandy, and go to the moon.
	I don't listen to the experts.
	That's Americanism!
	That is the full You know, that's the concentrated version of Americanism, which is American exceptionalism says we're the most best country, strongest country in the world.
	We can do anything.
	Nobody can tell us different.
	That's how we ended up here.
	And that's why we're going to have so many deaths here.
	Is that mindset is just poison.
	And it's every speech you hear Trump say is laced with the most unconvincing asides.
	Whenever he goes off script, he's always in that mindset to try and make sure that it's the best or no one will do it like we've never seen before.
	It's so unconvincing now.
	and he's like, And he's such a horrible reader of text as it is.
	It really is embarrassing sometimes 'cause he needs to have empathy and he needs to be able to do this.
	And instead he just shows that he's really bored and has the inability to read and just doesn't want to do it.
	And so it is, now that we're back on Trump for a second, can we talk a little bit about like this whole testing thing that he did or didn't do?
	Because I feel like it does have ramifications.
	It does sort of comment on the whole issue we have with testing as it is in general in this country, certainly compared to other countries in the world.
	Yeah, can we talk about something I'm not feeling great about?
	Okay.
	I'm sorry.
	I had to ask for permission before we went down this rabbit hole.
	Why?
	It's the same thing I'm asking, right?
	Maybe.
	I don't know.
	Maybe it is.
	Maybe it's not.
	First of all, I just want to say it's really problematic that we can't believe the President of the United States talking about his medical condition.
	That's a problem.
	First off, we cannot believe that he is technically negative on coronavirus.
	Also, it doesn't matter.
	People test negative because they're not displaying symptoms.
	That's a different thing altogether.
	I watched the debate last night between Biden and Sanders, and we can talk a little bit about that and what that means and where to go with it.
	But one thing that really came across in all this, and I've been saying this since we started this podcast, we have no idea how to predict elections.
	At all.
	We have no idea, one moment to another, what's going to happen.
	Coronavirus should show you that, right?
	I mean, right now, this would be an incredibly different environment if that stage also had Elizabeth Warren on it.
	You know what I mean?
	Like, that would be a completely different thing.
	You never know one moment to the next.
	You have two candidates on the Democratic side, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.
	I believe Biden is 77 and Bernie Sanders is 78.
	Donald Trump right now has been exposed to multiple people who have been exposed to coronavirus.
	Some of them have tested positive.
	We can't trust that he would admit that he has coronavirus.
	We can't trust that.
	There's just no trusting it whatsoever.
	He wouldn't admit it if he was.
	If Sanders or Biden, and by the way, most Americans are probably going to get the coronavirus.
	Like 70% of Americans are going to have it filtered through them.
	If one of them gets it and they are in the most at-risk range, all three of these men are, That changes elections.
	And the Democrat wouldn't lie about it.
	The Democrat, Sanders or Biden, would come out and admit it.
	And you want to talk about bad scenarios?
	There's a bad scenario for you.
	And I just watched it and I was just like, this whole thing is so unpredictable and it's so changing at all times.
	We have no idea what's getting ready to happen.
	Well, you know, people out here listening might be like, oh, what's Jared talking about?
	He can't just lie about getting a test.
	It's no way.
	Yes, he can.
	But but let's go through some of the facts that we know so far, because one that just came up today that I'll bring up, I just saw.
	But certainly what we we know is late Friday night.
	I'm talking about late, like close to midnight.
	The White House doctor's office issued a statement saying they did not test him.
	Trump comes out and says he got tested almost at the exact same time as they were writing that letter saying they did not test him.
	Okay.
	Then they asked him in the press conference, well, when did you find out that you were negative?
	He's not sure.
	He doesn't know if it was like, you know, sometimes Saturday, sometimes Sunday, which is strange because you would think, wow, what a relief to know that it's negative.
	And I was doing this at that moment when that happened.
	But then again, we don't know what kind of adult brain Trump has that doesn't stick.
	Times don't always stick in his mind, clearly.
	But, they asked him today what the test was like.
	Did you see this?
	No, oh my god, Nick.
	You can't keep springing this stuff on me.
	I'm sorry, but reporters are really smart.
	Like, they know how to ask questions that would either reveal what people know or don't know, and like, almost like they're, you know, cross-examining in a courtroom.
	So, they asked him what he, you know, what it was like to take a test, and Trump says, quote, not, not, um, something I want to do every day, you know, it's a little bit of a, It's a little bit of good doctors in the White House, but it's a test.
	It's a test.
	It's a medical test.
	Nothing pleasant about it.
	That was his answer.
	This is not a rectal exam or anything like that.
	This is simply a swab of your nose.
	Wait.
	Can you give me a quick readout of that quote again?
	I just want to let this sink in.
	I want the people to hear it.
	Can you do that one more time?
	Sure.
	I'll cut it and I'll edit it into the actual pod so we can hear his words.
	Not something I want to do every day I can tell you that it's a you know it's a little bit of a it's a little bit of good doctors in the White House but it's a test it's a test it's a medical test nothing pleasant about it.
	I gotta put this out there.
	Like, there's so much to unpack right there.
	First of all, I don't know about you, but I feel so much more confident that this man took the test and that everything is fine.
	Second of all, if you had a working brain and were a leader and cared about people, and by the way, you haven't gotten test out because you were afraid of, you know, numbers looking bad for you at the expense of people's lives.
	Wouldn't you, if you actually got this test, describe it to people so they would understand what they're going to get and to prepare the American people for their new reality and to lead the way as an example?
	Like, like all of those things, like number one, I'm now more convinced than ever that he didn't, he either didn't get the test or he now just can't remember things besides, you know, Anything.
	And on top of that, he doesn't even have the wherewithal or capability of being a leader.
	Which, by the way, is what people need to understand.
	Trump is not going to wake up tomorrow and be presidential.
	That's not who he is.
	He is inherently insecure and inherently incompetent.
	That's who he is.
	That's who we have at the front now.
	We are on our own.
	I saw...
	That he told all the governors to go out and get their own test and take care of themselves.
	That's the truth of the matter.
	The federal government has failed.
	The federal government is incapable.
	We're on our own, and we have to start, and this is my message to people listening, we have to start taking care of ourselves.
	And by ourselves, I mean our communities, I mean our local communities, I mean organization for each other, helping each other, looking out for each other.
	We can't rely on that man anymore.
	Oh, well, yeah, that's what he said.
	Now, supposedly the federal government is trying to, you know, get more ventilators made.
	I mean, it's a fraction available that we're going to need.
	But yes, on that call today, he told them, you go get them on your own.
	Like this is like his weird businessman version of something where he's like, yeah, it'd be much better if you just go and do that when they're not necessarily in a position to, you know, negotiate with vendors and have these ventilators like built and made for them.
	However, then, in that conference, again, any opportunity he has to, like, make it seem like he's presidential or whatever, he'll try.
	He says he's given the governor's authorization to buy ventilators themselves.
	Like, what?
	The president doesn't give authorization to governors in how to spend their budgets.
	This is more the stuff where it just doesn't make any sense and he's so desperate.
	And at some point, enough people are going to realize that the emperor has no clothes.
	It just sounds sad.
	It just sounds ridiculous.
	And eventually, he'll be exposed to enough of the people where he can't win again.
	And I don't know if you're going to want to touch upon this, but of course, this is going into the polls and the elections that are happening coming up and how that's going to get either delayed or delayed indefinitely.
	And I think you had mentioned that in our last pod.
	That is starting to hit me like a ton of bricks, what the potential for that could be.
	If you think right now, if you're 100% certain that we're going to have a presidential election in November, you need to reconsider what you're thinking.
	These things, and I talked about in the last podcast, an election by itself is a perfect opportunity to spread this virus.
	There are so many easy ways to float the idea that it would be dangerous to hold one, but it's essential.
	I have to say, and God, I've been covering this guy for so long, Nick.
	I've been watching this clown show just play out and play out.
	I can tell you why Trump said that to the governors, because the crash is getting ready to happen in the next couple of days before you hear from us again, probably, and we'll probably end up having to have an emergency podcast over this because it's going to be bad.
	In the next few days, maybe in the next week or so, The check's coming due.
	It's gonna be really bad.
	A lot of people are gonna die.
	And it's going to be chaos.
	Like, what we feel right now is anxiety.
	And by the way, as somebody who has suffered anxiety his entire life, welcome.
	It is a hard...
	It is a hard time and it's a hard thing to wrap your head around.
	It's disorienting.
	It makes you feel bad.
	It makes the world feel bizarre.
	You didn't even talk about the largest stock market drop we've ever had in one day.
	We haven't even talked about that yet, Nick.
	Like, that's how bad this is.
	So, welcome to anxiety.
	In the next couple of days, the anxiety is going to come real.
	It's going to be bad.
	And you're not going to be able to turn on your television without seeing people in hospitals overrun by people.
	You're going to be seeing... I just had this moment the other day.
	This is important to bring up.
	I just saw an ambulance the other day.
	And I was like, oh god.
	We're gonna see a lot of that.
	You know what I mean?
	It's just going to be left and right, and it's going to be really overwhelming and really taxing.
	Trump said that.
	You guys go get the ventilators.
	You guys go get the masks.
	You guys go get the test.
	Because then, from now on, every time that somebody's like, wear the ventilators, wear the mask, wear the test.
	Oh, the governors!
	The governors are now in charge of getting that.
	He's just punted the football completely, because that's what he's going to do.
	He is an authoritarian.
	Authoritarians do not take responsibility for what they have done wrong.
	They push it off on other people to take the fall for them, and they scapegoat people.
	This is the beginning of that, and it's gonna get bad, and it's gonna get worse by the day.
	I just, I hate to tell everyone that, but it is.
	Well, for those who didn't know what I was referencing in my first, when I first started speaking on this podcast today, you know, Trump was asked by Yamiche Alcindor whether he took responsibility for some of the late response that they had.
	And I'm sorry, responsibility also for, you know, basically dissolving the team in charge of pandemic viruses across the globe in the United States, or basically dissolving 80% of it and then sort of folding it into another part of the NSC.
	And that was his response.
	I took absolutely no response or responsibility for that.
	And so that is an interesting question here because obviously there have been a lot of mistakes.
	At this point it's not clear that it wouldn't have happened anyway the way it's playing out, right?
	This is a really horrible virus that is so contagious that it's really almost, you know, I don't know how they'd ever stop this.
	Short of completely closing down every airport and not letting anybody in or out in January of this year.
	So, but that is another interesting thing that's coming out with this whole thing and that might end up sticking is that they did severely weaken the ability for the U.S. to respond.
	They severely drain the talent of and what's the word I'm looking for?
	Experience and intelligence of those people in those specifically designed to learn how to control these different things.
	Without them there, there were some really horrible things that were done, some really stupid things that were done or not done.
	And, you know, there's no direct, there's no question that we are in this situation now and it's worse because of it.
	Oh, the Trump response to this whole thing has been one of the greatest betrayals of public trust.
	That we've ever seen from a president.
	Like, we have to get that on the record.
	The other thing, and this is much larger, we had talked about this and I think we're gonna do it.
	We're gonna do a podcast where we go through the background of how we got to this and what factors led to this massive, massive crisis.
	And here's something that we need to talk about real fast.
	You said something and I think this is interesting.
	You said we were always going to get here, right?
	Like it was always going to be this bad.
	And I think you're both right, but there's one other thing that we have to take a look at here.
	And this is something that we'll get into more, more in depth, possibly in the next episode.
	This whole system right now that is crashing is the result of years and years of work and construction.
	Right?
	Talking about the world order that we're currently in.
	Like, we probably would not have a pandemic like this on the scale that we have if we didn't have globalism, neoliberalism, the markets the way that they work, travel the way that it works, and then on top of it, the way that we have mistreated people with wages, preventative healthcare, healthcare in general, all those things.
	So, what's actually happened?
	And this is something that I don't think most people are talking about or looking at, which, by the way, is what we do on here, so you're welcome.
	This entire system is at an end point where you find all the people in the world right now are basically elected because they're business managers.
	Do you know what I mean?
	Like they're people who were elected because they were able to control the system that's in place.
	Well, what ends up happening, and I talked about this in an article on The Milk Rake, you end up treating all of this like it's a corporate problem.
	And anyone who has ever worked in a corporation or something that's like a corporation, and most things are now because it's infected all of our discourse and all the way we look at things, You always look at things and you're like, oh, there's a crisis.
	Well, let's not let it get too big, but we don't want to talk about it and let people know there's a crisis.
	Oh, people know about the crisis.
	Well, send out a press release that says, well, we're aware of it and we're looking at it.
	And then you never ever take responsibility and you never ever take actual, uh, you know, proactive action.
	This whole thing was inevitable, but preventable.
	That's the thing that we need to look at is how we got here and how we can make it better after this thing.
	Because you're exactly right.
	This thing was always going to be this bad, but it was always going to be this bad in this world and this arena that was constructed.
	The problem is that the construction of the world as it is was faulty and people knew it for the longest time and it just it provided power and profit and that's how we ended up where we are.
	Right.
	But then again, if you want to look at the grand scheme and really pull back as far as you can, I do feel like if you want, not to pick sides, but the Democrats tend to screw up from a place of trying to help people and trying to cover their bases.
	And the Republicans tend to screw up by trying to be more austere and to cut and get rid of things.
	And every time they've done something like this, it just completely reinforces that they don't care about their constituents at all.
	And in fact, they're going to be active to make it worse for them in order to maintain power control over a shrinking, shrinking base.
	And, you know, if I were an alien who came down to this world and observed for a couple days, that's what I would come up with.
	I'm like, okay, this is what it looks like.
	This is what you're trying to do, right?
	And that is what's so frustrating about this whole thing, that we've gotten to a position where people will still vote for Republicans, even though it's not in their best interest at all.
	And that's what they've been able to do, to cling to this power.
	And, you know, we were destined to have this happen.
	We're going to have another one of these.
	I don't know when, but I can remember a friend of mine in medical school in the 90s talking about this saying, Nick, we are, you won't believe how frightened we are right now.
	We're studying all these different diseases.
	This is going to happen.
	He was probably talking about this, but I have a feeling that someone in medical school right now is having the same fears because he can't even imagine what it would be like 20 years from now when it's even worse.
	Yeah, and... Have a great day, everybody.
	Yeah, there's a lot of prob- and by the way, that's one of the big problems here anyway.
	We're in a period of time where we face a bunch of giant existential crises on a scale that we're not prepared for.
	I mean, so like, let's say... God, I don't want to be the one person who says this and is associated with it, but I have to.
	So we got this, we got coronavirus.
	Let's say that Trump knew what he was talking about, which, you know, that's, that's, you know, flip a coin.
	If this lasts until July or August, if we get into the summer and every summer now we have giant problems that come from global climate change, we could be looking at a destroyed economy, plus a pandemic that is still playing out, plus also climate change based disasters.
	We could be talking about the rise of fascism that always comes from created economies.
	Always.
	And authoritarians in power.
	We could be looking at all of these things converging into ones.
	At once, right?
	And by the way, all of those things are the result of people like the Republicans and what they have done.
	This is the main difference between the parties.
	And we've talked about this before.
	Politics is not a spectrum of left and right, blue and red, Republican and Democrat.
	But as long as we're talking about Democrats and Republicans and how they work, let's talk about it.
	Republicans create problems and then sell themselves as the only solution to the problem that they've created.
	That's how that party works.
	That's all they've got to offer.
	And that's what Donald Trump is offering.
	Period.
	The Democrats are terrible at organization.
	And they are terrible at messaging.
	And they act in good faith in an environment where good faith is all but extinct.
	Those are the different things.
	They're so bad at talking about what they actually believe, which would be popular, because they're terrified of the Republicans' bad faith.
	And that's how you get to this point.
	That's how you get people, and it happened last night on the debate, and it doesn't make for, it doesn't make people feel great when a Democratic debate turns ugly between two Democrats during a pandemic.
	But Bernie Sanders had Biden right.
	He said, no, you talked about getting rid of Social Security, which he did because he was trying to navigate with the Republican Party and it led him out of his principal zone.
	And that's what Democrats do.
	And they've done it for forever.
	The problem now, and you brought up a good thing with the alien thing, I keep thinking about what the history books will look like if there are history books.
	Imagine this time period.
	It's like looking back on the mass, what was it, the Dutch and the flowers.
	I believe it was the tulips, right?
	Where they just put all of their money in tulip futures and everybody went crazy over tulips.
	And they just kept pumping their money in it, pumping their money in it, and then all of a sudden they hit like a giant crash because they were putting all their money in tulips.
	And you look in a history book and you're like, what the hell are people doing?
	People are going to look at this.
	If there is a society, they're going to look at this time period in its proper framing, and they're going to be like, what the hell happened here?
	How does this happen?
	And unfortunately, we're in the middle of it.
	I agree.
	I keep reflecting on that every day about what this is going to look like 20 years from now or 30 years from now because I almost feel like when we've seen those sci-fi movies about, you know, the world is ending or what's the movie with Matthew McConaughey, Interstellar, where it's like there's a blight, you know, they have no food and they have to, you know, get everybody on another planet or else they're going to die here.
	It kind of feels like, yeah, that must be 100, 200, 300 years in the future.
	It would take forever to get to that point.
	But I don't know anymore.
	I don't know if it's longer than, again, we don't want to get into morose notions here, but at the very least, we've accelerated a lot of these processes.
	We didn't have to.
	And the only hope we have is that enough people will agree that we are in a situation that needs to be changed.
	And those people live in Minnesota, or they live in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and, oh my gosh, My mind is freaking out.
	Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.
	My gosh, not Minnesota.
	Thank you.
	This is what we come down to.
	How can it be that 60,000 people ended up destroying the country?
	Isn't that sort of what it feels like?
	Yeah.
	Or have we been destroying it for so long now that we can't just sort of pinpoint one night in 2016?
	So maybe, maybe it's quarantine that's gotten me to this point.
	But it's like one of those things, you know, you see in like a science fiction movie or a spy movie where they're like, they're looking at a picture and they're like, Sector 5-5 and it like zooms in and it's like more and it just keeps zooming in.
	I keep zooming in and you're right, it's like tens of thousands of people who voted for Trump.
	But if you really start to move back from the picture, which is unfortunately what I've been doing lately to get more of an idea of what's going on, and what I actually think Americans need to do too, actually, I think we should be using this time to educate and prepare ourselves.
	I think that's what this should be, right now, while there's still society to save.
	It's not just tens of thousands of people.
	It's a handful of like corporate CEOs, right?
	It's a handful of political leaders and what they did and why we ended up here is because they made a bet for the short term and not the long term, which is the corporate power ethos.
	That's what Trump is all about, right?
	It's like if you're in a boardroom and you're a CEO and somebody comes in your room and they're like, hey, our product is killing people.
	Your response should be like, how do we get that product off the shelves?
	That's being a human, right?
	Even worse, if they come in and they're like, oh, by the way, our baby powder is causing cancer.
	Or this product is causing tumors.
	Or our cigarettes are causing people to have lung cancer.
	Your question should be how fast can we get the word out and how fast can we get the product off the shelves?
	That is the human response.
	The inhuman response is this.
	It's a CEO of an oil company being told about climate change.
	And by the way, they employ some of the best scientists in the world.
	They know climate change is real.
	They're very aware.
	Documents have shown that they are very aware climate change is real.
	But they're like, okay.
	Eventually, we're going to reach a point of no return.
	How do we get the closest to the point of no return while making the most money possible?
	And then how do we profit after we pass the point of no return?
	What do we do?
	How do we make that happen?
	That's the ethos that we're in.
	We knew all of these problems existed.
	You brought up a good point.
	Scientists knew this pandemic was coming.
	They knew it.
	This thing was as predictable as anything.
	And it's not like this just came completely out of left field.
	It was a bunch of people who should have known better who made terrible inhuman deals about health care and income inequality, not to mention a deforestation, the spread of business and human habitation going into like the realm of animals.
	This was all preventable.
	It was all preventable and all predictable.
	And you're exactly right.
	It's the mindset that just isn't working.
	It just doesn't work.
	And we saw after they contracted the 80% of those people in the NSC because of the bloats, the guys that were left, you know, the head just quit.
	He resigned, knowing that he couldn't possibly be effective in his role of trying to prevent something like this or be prepared for it.
	There was a rolling of the dice.
	That's what that was.
	They decided to contract it and they were like, well, I bet a pandemic isn't going to happen.
	Roll the dice.
	And it's clear the guys like Tony Fauci, Anthony Fauci, you know, they're not... This guy is someone to be listened to.
	And he isn't going to quit, even though I'm sure he's thought about it a lot because of the way they've managed this, because he knows that once he's gone, it will really fall apart.
	And that's probably what a lot of people in this government have been saying, is, I can't leave because we need somebody who knows what they're doing to keep this ship going.
	But eventually, that might not be sustainable either.
	And it's already gotten to the point now where we're on the way to this oligarchy or to this you know dictatorship where he's already got control of the Department of Justice and they're already by the way they're talking about things that made my ears go prick up when I hear him say he acknowledged on Friday that the stock market wasn't doing very well but he also said it will go back up at the right time Something like that.
	I'm paraphrasing.
	But that made me really nervous thinking, well, what kind of market manipulation can they do just before November to somehow gin up the numbers to make everyone feel like, oh, the economy is working again?
	I don't know if it's possible at this point because it's so downhill.
	It's not going to recover for years.
	But I don't think.
	But I don't know what they could do.
	But that's got me thinking that they must have a plan for that, too.
	So we have to talk about the fact.
	So Trump on Friday goes in front of the nation surrounded by CEOs of Walmart, Walgreens, Target, CVS, God knows who else.
	Just basically everyone who has ravaged the interior of America.
	and kept people from getting health care and decent wages.
	He goes out in front.
	Why are they working with him?
	Is it because they have a burning desire to help people?
	Sure.
	Maybe.
	But also, when you are president, the market has a symbiotic relationship with you.
	Right?
	You're working towards the same thing.
	The American economy is supposed to be working together.
	When they talk about the health of the country, they talk about the economy.
	It is the number one priority.
	They want the economy to get better.
	That helps Trump.
	Now, that isn't me sitting here saying that we should crash it and hurt Trump.
	I'm not one of those liberals.
	I would much rather the economy gets better and we have a debate about the issues and we go from there.
	I do not want this to punish Trump.
	Do not put that out in the world.
	But this is a situation where you have to recognize The oligarchy is real.
	And the way that it works with the government is real.
	They flooded 1.5 trillion dollars into the economy to help businesses.
	Do you know who isn't getting that?
	The American people.
	You know who needs that?
	The American people.
	And I'm really worried.
	I just saw before we started taping that Mitt Romney is now floating the idea of a thousand dollars to every American to try and help with this thing.
	That's just a band-aid.
	It's just a band-aid and it looks good and it sounds good and I'm, you know, do it by all means.
	It'll help a little bit, but we're hiding big systematic problems is what we're doing.
	I can't agree more.
	And I don't even know what $1,000 would really do.
	It might tide some people over for maybe a month, barely, right?
	By the way, we haven't even talked to Lena about what is going to get covered if you get the coronavirus.
	I think Trump accidentally said that they would cover the testing of it, and then the insurance companies had to then do that, and they agreed to that.
	But as far as I can tell, they have not agreed to any kind of covering the treatment of it.
	And remember, the only treatment of this right now is hospitalization.
	And that's really expensive.
	And even if you have insurance, it's going to eat up your deductible in about three days.
	And then that's what's going to last you the whole year.
	So I don't know what the solution is.
	I mean, if you're lucky enough to have some sort of job that's impervious to this kind of thing, It's gotta be pretty tough to have that, but how would people do that?
	How would you expect someone who doesn't have a job, like as a waiter or anything like that, they can't get to August?
	you know, and they won't be able to live on unemployment.
	You know, you can't go down to the unemployment place.
	I guess you just do it online now.
	But, you know, that's not enough money either to live off of.
	So it's a problem that this might be the biggest issue we have as far as Trump not acknowledging how serious that part of it is.
	I don't think he's even considered that.
	So, again, I don't like to be the bearer of bad news, and I hate telling people this kind of stuff, but they need to know it.
	Okay, on one hand, the government is telling people you're not going to have to pay for your treatment.
	Do you know who else they told that to?
	The 9-11 first responders.
	And they waited years.
	They had to be publicly shamed to give even a dollar to the 9-11 first responders.
	And in that time, how many first responders died?
	You know what I mean?
	They waited it out and waited it out and waited it out.
	The second part is this and I hate to talk about this and it's just true and we have to wrap our heads around it to understand how all this stuff works.
	So let's say.
	We make it through this pandemic.
	The American economy doesn't crater.
	It's still rough, right?
	People have been laid off.
	We get on the other side of it and we get into a moment of economic renewal, right?
	We get into a point where all of a sudden businesses start doing well.
	You and I are like, God, I haven't been outside to have dinner in a long time.
	I'm going to go eat dinner.
	I can't wait.
	I'm going to go to a bar.
	I'm going to go to here.
	I'm going to purchase this.
	I'm going to do that.
	So all of a sudden you have all the American businesses that are now competing in the new economy, right?
	They're competing in this new environment.
	Well, guess how you compete and you get an edge?
	You don't hire as many people as everybody else.
	And you take the money and you keep it and you put it in a bank.
	And then you get a tiny bit of an advantage against your opponent.
	And guess what the opponent does?
	They say, we shouldn't hire as many people.
	And suddenly it just and that's what keeps happening.
	That's what happened after 2008.
	And that's how this thing works.
	These people look for competitive advantage because it's a corporate ethos.
	They don't have a responsibility to the country.
	They have one responsibility, and that is their Board of Investors.
	That's it.
	They don't have any, and by law, they're not allowed to consider the health of a country.
	They've grown larger than the country.
	Walmart is its own country.
	You know what I mean?
	They don't worry about America.
	America is only good so much as it is a host.
	And I hate to tell people, but unless we make a change, unless we see this For the the systematic failure that it is and change things on a major level.
	It's just gonna continue If this system does not just go away you have to change it wholesale Because all of these things they're saying is it's the same stuff that they say every time there's a crisis.
	It's the exact same line Right.
	And imagine, you know, anybody who's graduated college from 12 years, 12 years ago and until now, that's all they know.
	They don't even know a world where, you know, in the late 90s, in the tech bubble, where you could work, whatever amount of work you're doing there was for one person versus now, they would have, you know, three people doing, I'm sorry, the reverse.
	They would have, you know, they have to do the work of three people, the equivalent of what it would have been in the 90s for one.
	So that's the other reality here is that we're already knee-deep into this where a whole generation of workers have come into the environment not knowing anything but austerity and shrinking budgets and have to do much more than you ever have to do and less sick leave and actually just not being treated as well in the workplace itself.
	And that's important because what ends up happening and this is so terrible and we'll talk about this when we do this episode.
	The corporate mindset is this.
	What happens over the next couple of weeks or the next couple of months is going to show them what they can do.
	You know what I mean?
	It's going to show what the American system can take before it breaks.
	So, yeah, they're going to lay people off.
	They're going to see what skeleton crews can do.
	Chances are, they're probably going to have people start working from home and telecommuting and not worrying about office space or things like, I don't know, HR in the workplace, right?
	It's going to test out all kinds of things.
	And so much of what we're doing is actually going to be a test for how, like, society can change.
	I agree.
	In fact, it might be so desperate to get a job that the environment around there could be terrible for everybody and toxic because you're just lucky to have this job and you can't complain, you can't say anything, and that could be a whole other cycle of horrible behavior in the workplace that we've been You know, trying to combat for a lot of these years, by the way, which is also called, you know, political correctness and safe places and all those other words that they'll use on the right.
	And so that's another concern.
	But all I can say is, you know, let's hope that within the next month, the numbers start to go down after after a month or so and things can kind of get back to somewhat normal.
	And I only pray that we can actually have this election in November and get Trump out of there and begin the process, which will take a decade or more.
	We really appreciate you listening.
	and even get close to somewhere positive.
	But again, it's the beginning of the week, so let's all-- - Hey, yeah, so on that note, we really appreciate you listening.
	I know we say that all the time, but it feels like this thing is gaining momentum because people need actual information that goes beyond headlines and just the standard sort of content.
	I think it's appreciated that we're giving this historical and actual deep thought.
	So we appreciate everyone listening.
	We're going to be covering this constantly.
	We're going to be, you know, Recording a lot more podcast really because I think we need it.
	I think we need discussion now more than ever and I think it is more integral than it's ever been particularly in these really dangerous times.
	So on behalf of my co-host Nick Houselman who you can find on Twitter.
	Can you hear me SMH?
	I'm Jared Yates Sexton.
	You can find me at jysextonthemuckrake.com.
	We're going to have updates there.
	We're going to record pretty much around the clock at this point to get this thing, you know, nailed dead to rights.
	Please share.
	Please tell people about this.
	Let them know we're having a conversation other people aren't having.
	We always appreciate the help and the ratings and the liking and the subscribing.
	All of it helps.
	Thank you so much.
	And until we see you next time, wash your hands and stay inside when you can.

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