Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

May 5, 2020 - The Muckrake Political Podcast

46:50

Economic Genocide

New projections for the coronavirus pandemic show a country speeding toward mass tragedy, and yet Donald Trump and Republicans keep pushing for businesses to reopen. Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss what can only be called economic genocide and the escalating attempt to push conspiracy theories that the virus was an attack from China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Do you believe it was man-made or genetically modified?
	Look, the best experts so far seem to think it was man-made.
	I have no reason to disbelieve that at this point.
	Your office of the DNI says the consensus, the scientific consensus, was not man-made or genetically modified.
	That's right.
	I agree with that.
	The answer is yes, we're going to do more and you're going to have your job.
	You're going to get another job or you're going to get a better job.
	You get a job where you make more money, frankly.
	And I think that's going to happen.
	Hey, everybody.
	Welcome to the McCraig Podcast.
	I'm your host, Jared Yates Sexton.
	I'm here with my co-host, Nick Haussleman.
	Really rough day in the news that we got to break down today.
	Some really sober things, some really alarming things, unfortunately, as America Just runs towards 70,000 deaths from the coronavirus pandemic.
	A leaked study and projection from the Trump administration now shows that they expect well over 100,000 Americans to die.
	And it looks like by early June, they're expecting upwards of 3,000 deaths a day, including the possibility of 200,000 positive tests per day.
	It is not what we've been sold.
	It is a really horrific worst-case scenario.
	Nick, what do you feel about this?
	Well, the White House response was exactly that.
	This hasn't been vetted.
	It hasn't been sold.
	They haven't, like, changed the numbers yet to make it look a lot better for them.
	Now, there are some theories being floated out there.
	Nate Silver was sort of thinking about this today on Twitter, that maybe they're floating these numbers out there just so they can move the goalposts a little bit farther and then declare another success when it's a little bit lower than I think that's right too.
	And I don't know how the listeners have been feeling.
	too incompetent, I would imagine, to come up with a scheme like that.
	I think this is probably the CDC doing their numbers and somehow in between sending it over to the White House, somebody got a hold of it.
	I think that's right, too.
	And I don't know how the listeners have been feeling.
	But for me, especially over the past week or so, this is sort of a confirmation of a suspicion that I've been having, which is, you know, obviously, and we need to talk about the Reopen America movement, which is just a total and utter fraud and lie and And there's another way to put it.
	I mean, it's a willful genocide of, you know, working class Americans and minorities.
	It has confirmed for me the worst case scenario and the truth is that this thing is so far out of the barn that there's no putting it back.
	We're looking at, and by the way, they're talking about June, right?
	Not May.
	They're talking about June.
	Three thousand deaths a day.
	I don't see this thing slowing down.
	It sounds like we're going to lose the summer now.
	I mean, unless we just keep jumping, you know, off the cliff and seeing what happens.
	It sounds like we're going to lose the summer.
	The fall was already, you know, iffy.
	It sounds like we're in this for the long haul and we're going to see tragedy on a scale I don't think that a lot of us were necessarily ready for or prepared for.
	You know, I hate to, like, minimize this and sort of bring a sports analogy into this, but, you know, with the advanced analytics that we have, like, in basketball, you know, for instance, when the San Antonio Spurs were, you know, eight games below .500 in December, I could reasonably say they were not going to make the playoffs.
	It's just simply math.
	And I kind of feel like what we're seeing here is that there's a distinct lack of understanding of how math works and how these predictive models work.
	Because the second it got to like 40,000 deaths, you knew it wasn't going to stop at 100,000.
	Unless it stopped all of a sudden to zero in like a week.
	And you know it doesn't do that.
	We've seen across all these other countries how long that bend takes.
	So I just feel like people can't grasp that notion of What does predictability means and how reliable it really is?
	So I live in Georgia, where our governor, who we've spent some time talking about on here, is just an incompetent, dangerous man.
	You know, he reopened the state.
	Georgia's open, quote-unquote.
	Nobody's, you know, there are certain people who are taking advantage of it, but I'm certainly not.
	We're open even though our numbers are just on an unbelievable upward trajectory.
	And actually on Friday, we'll talk about this on a later podcast, the numbers are going to come out and it's just it's going to show that reopening these states right now is not only premature, but it's manslaughter.
	You know, it is really hard to wrap your head around what is being done here and that these states like Georgia, like Florida, like Texas, So many of these states are doing this for a multitude of reasons.
	One, they don't want to pay unemployment.
	Two, they're willingly sacrificing their workers, you know, and making an economic bet.
	Three, and this is terrible, and you want to go back to sports, a lot of these states are vying to try and get the major sports leagues to use them as the location for their quarantined seasons.
	And if you really think about it, I mean, how horrific is that?
	You know, I love sports and I miss them dearly.
	But to sit around and be like, yeah, we could sacrifice thousands of our citizens if Major League Baseball could play down here, you know, in our dome or whatever.
	It is such a horror that I it today has really sunk in like not just how horrific it is but like what a surreal horror it is.
	I just feel like yeah there's enough people who don't well the question really is is do they take it seriously?
	You know, and you get some of those, you know, lip service to that to some degree.
	It does feel like the main thrust of the argument would be like, fine, you stay at home.
	You do whatever you want to do.
	I'm going to get the hell out of here.
	I'm going to go to work and do all the things I'm, you know, as an American citizen, I have the right to do.
	Meanwhile, what they don't really understand is that by doing that, it makes us have to stay in longer.
	Oh yeah, absolutely.
	And it's an interesting thing where, you know, all of a sudden this independence, this, um, you know, um, Ayn Rand, you know, mentality comes out of the woodwork where, you know, at some point it's like, yeah, you can't tell me what to do.
	You can't tell me to stay in my house.
	That's not legal or whatever that is, this libertarian notion.
	And, uh, it's such a lack of, uh, understanding of what, how we live in society is and how we are a community.
	It's frustrating.
	It's, It's so frustrating.
	I mean, there's not a better word for it.
	I mean, you know, you're seeing all these protests and you're seeing them in California.
	They're upset that a beach is closed down.
	You're seeing around the country where, you know, right wing billionaires are financing these shadow groups to make it seem like there's some sort of populist movement, you know, getting people out there, which, by the way, like right wing white supremacist terrorist groups are taking advantage of.
	Those people by going out and doing the protesting that you're talking about, they're making this worse, obviously.
	And they are continuing to make sure that we have to stay inside.
	But they're also being completely diverted from the actual truth of all of this.
	Republicans, Donald Trump and billionaires right now are trying to make Americans go back to work and sacrifice their lives.
	And they're making that the debate instead of having a debate about how to have an economy that can survive something like this.
	We need to have a larger conversation about like, well, I mean, you know, it's May 4th when we're taping this.
	People are missing left and right payments.
	They're missing their rent.
	I mean, a chunk of Americans are out of work right now.
	They've lost their health care, presumably.
	You know, there's all kinds of these situations right now that need actual—we have an election that we don't know how we're going to hold.
	Like, if this thing just burrows through to November, I don't know how you have the election.
	I really don't.
	I don't know how you hold it as a traditional election.
	But you look at it and you just say, we should be talking about how to make these things better and how to address it.
	Instead, we're having the most dumb shit argument ever.
	Right, which is, let me go back out and die from a virus.
	That is the dumbest, lamest, most useless argument at a time where we need to have actual discussions.
	Well, the real question is, where are they getting their argument?
	It's Trump.
	You know, Trump is out there day after day saying, You want to get back?
	They want to get back.
	Friends are saying we have to get back.
	We're not meant... You're going to die if you stay home, you know.
	Deaths are going to happen that way.
	You're going to trip over the blender in the bathtub.
	I don't know what he means by that, necessarily, but let's look at it from a numbers standpoint, because I was doing it this morning, where, okay, they're predicting 3,000 deaths per day by June.
	So, let's just pretend it averages like 2,500 deaths per day for the next month, okay?
	And that's probably, maybe it's low, maybe it's high.
	That's 75,000 deaths in May.
	That's already doubling what we have now, more.
	And so, the only thing that you could think about is maybe out of that, Finally, people might get a sense of, hey, we better do something about this as citizens on our own to make sure we can keep this under control.
	Maybe that will come out of this after a month, but man, imagine those people who are going to die because of that.
	I wish that were true.
	Because what you're saying is logical, right?
	Like, it's horrific, the idea that there would be a second wave of this thing, and suddenly people would take it seriously.
	But that, I don't know.
	I think there is as much of a chance that people just become callous to it.
	And it's just, and you just look up, I talked about this in an article on The Muckrake not too long ago.
	It could be like the Iraq War, which we're going to talk about in a little bit.
	Like, it could be a situation in Iraq and Afghanistan where you have wars that are just spiraling out of control.
	And maybe it's a blip in the evening news, like maybe it's segment C or segment D, where all of a sudden it's like, oh, you know,
	3,000 people died today and and it's just like well that's that's the society we live in because that's what they're trying they're betting that that happens they're betting the 2020 elections and the economy and their political and economic control on the idea they don't think this thing's going away like they understand what they're being told they're making the bet that people will become callous to it and not care and that's that's that that's another horror on top of another horror
	Part of the argument was, well, just, you know, as soon as it becomes directly related to you, then you might get that sense.
	Like, oh, my brother just got it, almost died, or my aunt died, or whatever, those kind of stories.
	But I have to ask you, Jared, what you think.
	I'm not sure that those are going to be compelling pieces of evidence for people who are upset and angry and want to go back to work right now.
	We've seen this absolute need to double down and triple down over some weird belief system.
	The death of someone in their family might not change the tide of this thing.
	You know, we were talking about this not too long ago and I was writing about it.
	Like, I come from rural Indiana and I have to tell you, like, I knew when this thing started seeping in from the coast.
	You know, it starts out in the urban centers and all of a sudden it starts going into middle America.
	I knew it was just going to absolutely destroy places like my hometown.
	It was just going to ravage them.
	You know, they do not have the hospitals that they need.
	They don't have the health care.
	They have a ton of pre-existing conditions.
	They don't want to go to the doctor.
	They can't afford to go to the doctor.
	All of that stuff.
	There is a... What's the word I want to call it?
	It's not just a cynicism, but it's like a hardness.
	You know what I mean?
	We're like, in my family, The tragedies mount all the time.
	You hear about people who get killed constantly.
	You hear about, like, I'm from a factory family, right?
	People get maimed in factories all the time, you know?
	And then meanwhile, like, their spouse is right down the line from them, or, you know, their brother is over here working here, and they keep working.
	You know, I've watched people in my family get absolutely used up in factories and laid off while everybody else continues working at the factory because there's no other choice.
	You know what I mean?
	Like, that's all you're going to do.
	Um, there might become a really terrible, again, just a normalcy to it where it's like, yeah, most of your family gets wiped out by it.
	And you know, a bunch of people who got wiped out and that's life.
	And that's, and like, you're shaking your head.
	That's the correct response.
	It's a horrific tragedy.
	And the fact is that we could be looking at a thing because of political malevolence and malfeasance and greed and Inhuman cruelty.
	We could be looking at a situation where that just becomes life.
	I mean, it's terrible, but it's true.
	Right.
	And Jared, you know that I'm shaking my head because you can see me.
	And if you're listening to this, you can also watch this on YouTube as well, because we're going to be releasing these as a video podcast as well, where you can stream it there if you like.
	And I think we're even going to create a YouTube channel dedicated toward it.
	But either way, you can always find it by looking up the Muckrake Podcast on YouTube.
	I brought this up before though, and I kind of was sheepish to even mention it, but the notion that this purge, and I don't know any other name to call it when you look at how it breaks down racially, this purge, and economically, this purge to some extent must look to these economists like a chance to sort of like free up jobs for other people.
	It honestly feels like that.
	Now, I didn't even want to make it.
	It sounded too heinous to mention that.
	But the more you listen to like what Trump had said, like in this town hall, you know what?
	We have to change the name.
	Town hall is certainly not the right description for what he's doing on Fox in front of the fucking Lincoln statue.
	It's a propaganda hour is what it is.
	Yeah.
	And and he even said he's like, oh, the jobs are going to get better jobs now.
	When you see when this comes back.
	And I instantly was thinking, gosh, he's saying that because your supervisor just died and three other people below you just died.
	There's no one else.
	You're going to get that job.
	And that's what it sounds like to me.
	I Here's the thing Nick.
	I I understand why you would hesitate to talk about that, but there's even a word for it correction It's when you have a situation where, and we brought this up.
	God, what is time?
	You know, it was probably like a month and a half ago.
	We talked about this.
	We talked about like sort of the corporate mindset of how this thing works, right?
	And how you have so many boardrooms right now that are just absolutely thrilled.
	I don't know if you saw, but it's like because of the coronavirus pandemic, it looks like Jeff Bezos is going to be the world's first trillionaire.
	Let that sink in.
	Trillionaire.
	And all because of this.
	And he's not the only one.
	I mean, there are companies around this country right now that are thrilled.
	I know of a lot of companies right now that are just so excited because they get to restructure their debt.
	They get to look into, you know, government aid.
	And there's a ton of them that wanted to lay people off and they didn't want to take the PR hit, you know?
	And the sad truth of it is, there are a lot of people who look at this and they're like, And God, this is terrible, but this is really the mindset that happens.
	It kills people over 60, right?
	That's like the main target of it.
	These are people in the past who would have retired, but they weren't able to retire during the 2008 recession.
	You know?
	Wiped out their retirement, so now they have to work longer, and it quote-unquote clogs up, you know, lanes to, you know, improvement or whatever.
	There are people who view that like this.
	And it is this thing that has happened in the post-Reagan America where you can look at it.
	A lot of people refer to it as technocracy, right?
	You just judge everything by numbers.
	You never ever consider the human toll or cost or whatever.
	That's part of it.
	But the other part is just hypercapitalism, where you're not really worried about anybody.
	You're just worried about so-called trickle-down economics, which basically means that you have a lower class that is exploited.
	And that's what's happening here.
	What you proposed is nightmarish, but it's not wrong.
	And that's one of the things that, like, really bothers me.
	Oh, let's go further.
	Let's get more bothered.
	Glenn Kirshner was watching his YouTube channel.
	He's a legal analyst on MSNBC and he was a 30-year federal prosecutor for decades.
	He described the notion of what manslaughter is because the question comes up, you know, can you convict Trump for manslaughter on this?
	And, you know, it was the easiest way for him to describe it, I thought, which was pretty compelling, was, you know, if you're chasing somebody and you chase them and they run out into the street to get away from you and get hit by a car and die.
	Now, the car, the guy driving the car is the one who actually, like, killed the person, but you can be charged for manslaughter because your intentions led this person to get out into the street and get hit and die.
	Well, It seems like not a stretch that you can make that case for what Trump is doing, and by the way, Hannity as well, and they had that study we talked about last week, where you can make a case that you could prosecute this guy, like whenever he's out of office, of course, for manslaughter, the way he has encouraged people to go out and be so reckless.
	I would take it a step further and say that there has been a systematic war on America.
	I mean, this is a person who has Time and time again, not only betrayed intelligence and national interest, but has, you know, let Americans die for profit and power.
	You know, I always get really frustrated.
	You read these exposés, and by the way, like the New York Times and the Washington Post are doing wonderful journalism in all of this.
	They absolutely are.
	They miss the mark constantly in how they talk about this stuff and not giving proper context behind it, right?
	So on one hand, there was this article the other day that was about, like, how Trump failed, right?
	It was all about how the administration failed.
	It did not give the proper context, which is that they didn't fail.
	They're not interested in helping people.
	That's the important thing that we need to understand.
	This isn't an actual president.
	This is a person who happens to be president who's looking for ways to, you know, profit and gain power.
	There was an anecdote in there.
	I want to say that it was like, I don't know, 20 paragraphs in, Nick.
	It was from the governor of Maryland, a Republican named Larry Hogan, who went on the record, right?
	And by the way, going on the record right now to criticize Donald Trump as a governor is, you know, it's a really, it's a moment of courage, much less being a Republican and doing it.
	Hogan went on the record and said that he had to negotiate personally with South Korea.
	Right?
	He had to carry out more or less foreign relations, which is not how any of this is supposed to work, with South Korea.
	He had life-saving supplies shipped in from South Korea after he negotiated with South Korea.
	He had to bring in the National Guard and the state police to protect those supplies because he expected the Trump administration to take them by force.
	Not only did they have them to protect, they had to keep them in a secret location that no one knew where they were.
	Exactly.
	And I just want to pause for a second because every time that we do this podcast, we talk about batshit things.
	You know what I mean?
	It just, it piles up and it piles up and it piles up.
	Think about that.
	A Republican governor in the United States of America had to negotiate with a foreign power and then use his statewide law enforcement and military As a defense against the federal government.
	That's massive.
	You know what I mean?
	That's massive.
	But at least that was the first time that happened.
	Yeah, until we remember that they did this in Massachusetts as well, basically.
	They have states who are really concerned.
	And again, we talked about this before.
	It's not even like, oh, it's a humanitarian cause.
	We're taking this because someone else needs it a lot more.
	It's organized crime.
	Yeah, and it appears like they're repackaging this stuff and getting a chance to sell it and send it to cronies who call them on their cell phones directly and say, hey, I could use a couple extra, you know, a few million masks here.
	That's not how it's supposed to work.
	Oh, by the way, I'm running for senator right now.
	Right?
	That's the other thing that they do, which is, oh, I'm running for senator right now in Colorado.
	It'd be great if you sent my state some stuff.
	And Trump's like, oh, yeah, absolutely.
	And by the way, he's a great senator.
	Re-elect him.
	Where I come from, that's genocide, right?
	That's the intentional political withholding of life-saving supplies for political purposes.
	That's genocide.
	And America's fear of calling this what it is It's going to lead to so many deaths, Nick.
	It's going to lead to so much tragedy, and we're so afraid to call it what it is.
	It's a nightmare.
	You know, we saw him do a quid pro quo with this notion of sanctuary cities, where he's going to somehow try and withhold aid, monetary aid, to cities until they stop being sanctuaries.
	He keeps telling us what he intends to do.
	Mike Pompeo keeps telling us how they want to behave.
	William Barr, they continually tell us, and so I would have said it's alarmist, it's kind of crazy, it sounds a little bit off, you know, a year ago.
	But, like, when you look back on it now, every day, and, you know, it's like, it's so much easier to stomach this notion of, like, they're completely taking over the country and changing our democracy to something a lot more nefarious, and certainly not in the interest of the constituents.
	You know, I've had people reaching out to me left and right and they've been like, you know, back in 2016 when I was covering the Trump campaign, they reached out to me and they were like, you know, I always thought that you were being a little alarmist about this thing and maybe you were a little too worried about it.
	And it turns out, me back in 2016, I didn't even understand how bad it could get.
	You know what I mean?
	And it turns out that what we're looking at, and this is the thing, and by the way, We predicted this stupid ass China story already, and now it's taking off.
	And we got to talk about that too.
	But what people need to understand is there's two things that happen in all of this.
	This is going to get worse.
	And on one hand, we have to talk about the human toll first, right?
	Because we have to respect humanity.
	We have to look at this thing and talk about the human toll.
	But we also have to understand it's not like as it gets worse that Trump or Republicans or these corporate billionaires trying to get people back to work.
	It's not like they're going to take their foot off the gas, right?
	It's only going to get worse.
	And, you know, like you just said, they're already talking about playing games with sanctuary cities and immigrants or whatever.
	Meanwhile, and I'm so glad you brought up Pompeo because we've got to talk about this.
	That guy went on Sunday political TV fun hour, whatever in the hell we're calling these things anymore.
	It's useless.
	And the inability to question these people and giving them room for propaganda is unbelievable.
	He goes on, I believe it was, I don't know, who cares?
	Martha Raddatz.
	There you go.
	Whatever.
	He goes on.
	Secretary of State of the United States of America goes on TV and says that there is significant evidence that the coronavirus pandemic originated from a lab in Wuhan, China.
	There's no evidence of that.
	None.
	None.
	Matter of fact, you would have to go on a really deep dive in right-wing online cultures to actually find evidence.
	The intelligence community says it's not there.
	Everybody else says it's not there.
	Scientists say it's not there.
	Secretary of State went out and did it.
	And do you know why?
	Because of the election plan for 2020 that the Republicans have.
	And it's just going to get worse.
	It just is.
	Now, the full readout of that was, Martha Raddatz says, do you believe the coronavirus was man-made?
	And he says, the best experts seem to think so.
	And then she says, but the DNI says the consensus is it wasn't.
	And he says, that's right.
	I agree with that.
	She says, to be clear, which is it?
	And he goes into attacking the Chinese government.
	This is crazy stuff.
	This is like Bananas.
	This is like Woody Allen's movie Bananas.
	You know, where he decrees that everyone will change their underwear every half an hour and to prove it, they will wear it on the outside of their pants.
	This is what it sounds like to me.
	And so I've been screaming about this.
	You know, there was a 57-page memo.
	It's floating out there if you want to see it.
	It's a GOP strategy memo.
	Which basically tells everyone, you know, blame this whole thing on China and start to talk about conspiracies between Democrats and China.
	You're going to hear every Republican doing this, left and right.
	Here's where it gets previewed.
	It's not just Pompeo doing that, right?
	Here's a tweet from the President of the United States, Comcast, which is what he calls Comcast because he thinks he's a comedian.
	At NBC News and Fake News at CNN are going out of their way to say great things about China.
	They are Chinese puppets who want to do business there.
	They use USA airwaves to help China, the enemy of the people.
	Then he starts talking about Democrats and how Democrats are, here it is, the Democrats are just as always looking for trouble.
	They do nothing constructive even in times of crisis.
	They don't want to blame their cash cow China for the plague.
	China is blaming Europe.
	Dr. Fauci will soon be.
	And you know, it's just worthless drivel.
	But this is obviously what they are planning on doing.
	It's not going to stop.
	And we got to talk about the history of the United States fabricating these things for political purposes.
	And this is just in a long line of Republicans doing this.
	They spin an alternate reality where they can win elections because they can't win it otherwise.
	He destroyed the economy, Nick.
	He's gonna kill so many people and this is the only way they could possibly win.
	But another layer to that is it's projection.
	He's describing himself.
	They're not making up reality.
	They're just taking the reality that they live in and just accusing somebody else of doing it, which is like the most disarming thing of all time.
	You know, you could try and, you know, it'd be like if Hitler were on the stand and they were, you know, laying out the prosecution and he tries to make it seem like the Jews were in charge of the Holocaust.
	But that's what, but that's what Nazism and authoritarianism does.
	Right.
	Like the entire thing.
	And like all of these conspiracy theories, authoritarians always project their own machinations on their opponents.
	We talked about that a couple of weeks ago, I think.
	It's going to be them claiming that the Democrats are in league with China while they are literally in league with Russia.
	That's what it's going to be.
	And they just continue to project these conspiracy theories that are just projections of their machinations.
	Well, do you believe that we had a report that said that, you know, China owned a lot of Trump's debt?
	And then it somehow came out that that was, you know, erroneous reporting.
	But like, I don't know, it certainly sounded like reasonable to me in the beginning anyway.
	And if they were able to somehow, well, maybe at that exact day, they didn't own any debt of his.
	I don't know.
	If you told me for a fact that another country didn't own Donald Trump debt, I would be shocked more than if I heard that they did.
	And that's the other thing.
	There's this thing, and listen, I know that most people don't want to talk about this, but if you want to understand modern politics, you need to understand professional wrestling.
	We don't know, right?
	Like, Steve Bannon has weird relationships with China.
	I mean, Trump, you know, one minute hates China and is in a trade war, another moment he loves Xi Jinping.
	There's so much posturing in this.
	You know, where it's like, I'm so angry at Macho Man Randy Savage, and I'm so angry at them, and then you go out and you have dinner.
	I don't know.
	And that's the problem.
	We literally do not have an accurate understanding of what's actually going on.
	Everything is such an illusion and a smokescreen.
	But I'll tell you, countries have gone to war with each other, like, and been on decent terms.
	You know what I mean?
	The United States and the USSR used the Cold War to their advantages.
	They understood that it was good for controlling populaces and managing their economies and hiding what they wanted to do out in the world.
	We have no idea what's actually happening, but there are real consequences to this.
	Sure.
	I mean, you know, with Kennedy and Khrushchev having back channels, that did nothing but enrage the military-industrial complex.
	They could not handle that, like, wait, we could get along with these guys and continually try to cause war, a hot war, in the middle of all that.
	I knew there was a reason why I watched They Live again the other night, because it's Rowdy Roddy Piper speaking of wrestling, but I don't know if you've seen this movie.
	Have you seen this movie?
	Oh, what are you talking about?
	Absolutely, I've seen this before.
	Because he puts on sunglasses and he realizes that half of the population are just aliens.
	And when you look at all these different marketing, my favorite part of it is he looks at all the billboards and it says "Obey" or "Spend your money" or "Have a family and raise kids," whatever it says.
	And it kind of brings us right back to this populist outlashing against staying inside and keeping people from dying.
	There's a similarity there.
	That's kind of striking to me, and I used to think it was more of like just commercialism or you know Whatever, but now it's almost like it's morphed right.
	It's not about just like money Necessarily anymore not to the people who are on TV or on Twitter when you watch these videos screaming yelling at the cops Well, it's all of it.
	You're exactly right, though.
	It is about consumerism, but it's also about control.
	Those things go hand in hand.
	I mean, a large part, you know, you talk about they live.
	A large part of that is based off the idea of Edward Bernays pioneering.
	And so for those who don't know, Edward Bernays was Sigmund Freud's nephew.
	And he worked with Woodrow Wilson's propaganda campaign during World War I and then eventually basically pioneered American capitalism as we know it.
	And all of a sudden Bernays is like, you know, people are really insecure about who they are.
	We should sell them products that prey upon that insecurity and talk about like what psychological things could lead to.
	Well, that's what politics is.
	And actually what ends up happening is through the idea of Bernays, and it starts with your man Richard Milhouse Nixon, they start believing in the idea of politics as a product.
	And so what you end up having happening is in the post-Bernays era, American reality in the way that we understand it, Shifts completely and there's like, you know, originally there's like two levels, right?
	It's like we like Ike and Ike is like an uncle or whatever and meanwhile Ike is like, you know, a military militant president, right?
	Right and then all of a sudden it starts splitting and it's more than two ways It's three ways then it's six then it's twelve and it just keeps dividing and dividing and dividing and then you get to a point and and you know we we were talking a little bit about the Iraq war and The first Iraq War was fought against Iraq, and Iraq was using American weapons that we had either given them or given them the money to buy.
	When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, he thought he did so with the tacit approval of the United States.
	He thought that George H.W.
	Bush basically told him he would stand down and let whatever happens.
	And then, you know, we end up working with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and all of that, and we end up in a war.
	And by the way, on the note, going back to Bernays, and this has everything to do with China and what we need to look out for now.
	One of the reasons we got the Iraq War is because they sold Saddam Hussein as another Hitler, which by the way, they gave him the chemicals that he gassed his people with, but they also brought in a paid lobbying firm that created, and I'm sure you heard about this, it's like, oh, the Iraqis are throwing babies out of incubators and they're committing these mass atrocities.
	That was a PR event.
	It was created by a PR firm, and it goes back to this idea.
	It's like, well, we have to destroy Hitler.
	We have to take him down.
	And so we got a war, and it was all about oil and, you know, this geopolitical advantage.
	And by the way, don't get me started on the second Gulf War, but it all goes into that.
	You're exactly right.
	All that stuff is the same ball of wax.
	Wait, how do you think Osama bin Laden must feel?
	We backed him!
	We backed him so he could fight the Russians in Afghanistan in the late 70s and 80s, and when we had a chance to actually help them once the USSR fell apart, we just jumped out of there and don't help anymore, and completely destroyed that relationship.
	So again, these are all friends that, you know, ultimately, until they're not, it's... I mean, listen, are we going to try and just...
	This is foreign policy by the American government, you know, across the entire existence of our country.
	And they've never gotten it right.
	It doesn't matter who's in charge.
	I mean, it goes back to the Mexican-American War.
	I mean, that was a completely fabricated thing, you know, that Polk put together.
	And it's really amazing when you look at the history of it and you start to realize that a lot of the dates and events that we've been told just simply didn't exist.
	I mean, going back to the China thing and the Iraq War, the second Iraq War, What happened after 9-11, and by the way, this is the history that nobody pays attention to, the Bush administration had one warning after another.
	They knew that there was a possibility of attack.
	They got told left and right something was going to happen.
	They didn't pay attention, and it happened.
	They had to blame somebody.
	And I'll tell you what, they were looking to get into Iraq and finish the job that W. Bush's dad had done.
	So what did they do?
	They told the intelligence community, go out and find proof.
	And the intelligence community said then, there's no proof.
	So then what did they do?
	They found somebody who would say something bad.
	In this case, there's a guy named Ahmad Shalabi, who was part of the Iraqi National Congress, who was an Iraqi dissident who was profiting off of his relationship with the U.S.
	against Saddam Hussein.
	It gave him a war.
	You know what I mean?
	Like, they don't care if the intelligence is there.
	They'll make it.
	And this is one of those situations.
	I mean, if you think for a second that Trump and all of these people aren't willing to put their, you know, political lives and destinies, the possibility that they could get, you know, prosecuted for God knows how many crimes, you think that they're not willing to go all the way on something like this?
	Absolutely they are.
	This could get really bad.
	We already had reporting that Trump was freaking out in the intelligence community because they could not bring him any evidence that China created this thing in a lab.
	And so we already know that they're trying to do that.
	They're trying to fabricate this whole notion.
	What's weird is that they spent all this time trying to do a trade deal, which he continually lies and says that China is paying us all this money and then now he's giving it to the farmers.
	This is like a second grader would understand this better than he does.
	That's what's so frightening about that.
	But he also then goes on to say like he wasn't even warned.
	This is just like 9-11.
	All these different warnings.
	Osama bin Laden determined to fly planes into buildings all throughout that summer.
	Just strike within the U.S.
	Yep.
	And so now we have all this reporting that says that he was warned 12 times leading up to the time before he did anything.
	And he even said with a straight face on the Fox News thing that he wasn't and that no one told him any of that stuff.
	And I guess he gets to say that because he doesn't read any of these things.
	And anything said verbally to him doesn't stick in his brain anyway.
	And by the way, I'm almost willing to accept that he just simply Didn't process what they were saying.
	I was willing to say that that's what was happening in like the early January.
	By the way, have you seen the reports that there's there's there's a notion at least that maybe Corona had been in the in the US in November.
	I hadn't seen that, but I will say that we have a lot of new listeners who might not be familiar with this, but I was out in Iowa covering the Democratic caucus out there, January into February, and I got incredibly sick.
	It was just like that.
	It was one of those situations where it was unbelievable sick.
	I was shaking.
	Oh, what do you call it?
	I'm like seeing Oh God, not even the visions.
	I was having prophecies in a hotel room in Iowa.
	That just sounds like a horror novel.
	No, I, you know, it was like, I just remember sitting in a hotel room and being like, this is how people die.
	I was like, this is really, really bad.
	I didn't have any taste.
	I didn't have any smell.
	Now that we're looking back, It feels weird, right?
	And I talked to a lot of people who had that, and it really made its rounds around the people that I know and communities.
	I would not be shocked if this thing was swimming around for a long time.
	I hadn't heard that in November, but...
	Well, they were saying that Wuhan hosted the military games, some sort of athletic event, and I think it was around November if I'm not mistaken.
	And there was like three different countries, Australia being one of them, that didn't send a representative.
	And those three countries were hit the least hard of anybody.
	And it's interesting that that's the case, because, you know, we've already had Dr. Burke say, like, there's just simply no way for this timeline to work based on how this huge explosion happened in New York.
	She's like, it had to have been there earlier.
	And so, yeah.
	I'm keeping an eye on stuff like that.
	So on one hand, and we said this in the last episode, and I think it's important to continue because I told you before we started talking that like the disinformation campaign that's going on online with China is in full swing.
	Right.
	Like there's not anything that I post right now that it isn't like you're a pro-Chinese Soros shill.
	Right.
	And it makes the circles and it's getting really, really ugly.
	So we have to go on the record.
	We are not pro-China.
	Like it is a dystopian nightmare.
	And they totally like screwed this thing up and they tried to hide it and they have a responsibility here.
	What we're talking about is this conspiracy theory, right?
	This idea that it's some sort of bioweapon, or that it was attack.
	Because on one hand, you can say they have a responsibility, but on the other hand, if all of a sudden you start talking about it as a weapon, or a war, or the invisible enemy, you look at the Trump administration and you say, well, they did the best that they could in a bad situation, right?
	They were under attack in a war.
	That's bullshit, right?
	So that idea that it took place at the military games, I'm not sure, because the Chinese kept talking about the idea that the U.S.
	military brought it to China or something like that.
	Who knows?
	But people need to understand that the game that's being played by nations is affecting all the rest of us, right?
	Like, all the things that they're doing for their own geopolitical, socioeconomic interest, it has nothing to do with us.
	Like, we're just pawns in their game.
	And we're just going to watch more and more people die.
	And, like, who knows how this thing got started?
	Who knows what stories are going to be out there?
	We're going to enter into a weird moment of disinformation.
	We really are.
	I mean, we've already, we're there.
	Yeah, we're there.
	Yeah, and maybe out of all this, there's enough awareness that comes out of it that maybe people get a little bit more shrewd than they had been in the past, but it just makes the world a horrible place because now, you know, nothing matters, nothing is the truth, and what's left is a side.
	You pick a side and you cheer for them like a sports team.
	That's kind of like where we are and where we're heading.
	Yeah, I want to put out there, you know, we talk a lot about this stuff.
	This show is a lot about diagnosing the problem.
	You know, I've had people reaching out recently, and it's like, well, what do we do?
	Like, we can't go out in the streets.
	We can't protest, right?
	That's off the table.
	Which, by the way, I don't know about you, but that sounds pretty good for an authoritarian, right?
	When to pull, like, consolidation of power when people can't go out in the streets.
	I think there are options.
	I think first and foremost, if people who are listening are looking for solutions, first things first, we're at the beginning of May.
	We should have been screaming about election reform and preparation weeks ago.
	We have to start talking about mail-in ballots because that is an uphill battle.
	The GOP is going to fight that left and right, and there's a possibility that this thing is going to have to get fast-tracked to the Supreme Court, and then John Roberts holds it all in his hand, whatever.
	We have to start talking about making mail-in ballots and ensuring, by the way, that there is an election.
	We have to get everybody on the record saying that there has to be an election, done, end stop, end of story.
	The second thing is, we really need to have a consideration as a society and as a nation About the possibility of using our purchase power.
	We have to start talking about the possibility of like a national day of non-purchasing.
	Right.
	Just to show people that there is a possibility that like there are economic ramifications for trying to open up this country and sacrificing lives.
	So we have to start talking about strategy because it's getting late in this game and it's looking really bad.
	So the thing about the elections, though, is obviously it's mandated by Congress in the Constitution.
	So there's nothing that the president can do, right, to change the date of the election.
	You were taught.
	OK, here's the thing.
	You are technically correct.
	But all those things are also constructs.
	They're completely made up.
	And I mean, that's the thing, though, is like I understand that that is the way that like most countries or most laws work.
	But, man, I wouldn't trust for a second that that would hold.
	Well, here's the thing.
	The more people that don't go, the better for the Republicans anyway.
	So they're almost like motivated to actually hold the election but not let anyone vote by mail, right, to make all that difficult so that it depresses the vote and then that's a good shot for them to win.
	That said, it's almost to me like, you know how Trump pretends there's thousands of people sitting in a living room, you know, we talked about this before, faking these votes.
	Well, if you send in votes, that seems to be a lot easier to mess with, too, on the other end, after they come in.
	I agree with that.
	I don't know what the proper total solution is.
	I really don't.
	I don't know how you have a free and fair election, which is one of the reasons why we need to Have a conversation about free and fair elections.
	I mean, they're not.
	They're not anymore.
	And I don't know what the answer is, but we have to at least we cannot just assume that the 2020 election is going to happen, which, by the way, I don't know if people saw this.
	Joe Biden, who is not an alarmist, you know, he is.
	He came out the other day and said there's a real possibility that they're going to try and postpone or cancel.
	I mean, when Joe Biden's out there talking about that in public, that's not great.
	No, no.
	I mean, listen, after what we've seen so far the last three and a half years, it's clear that, yeah, they're willing to do anything that they can.
	But this is a systematic attack on democracy as it's been for years.
	And we have the receipts now with these emails in Wisconsin and North Carolina.
	I mean, you've got to hand it to the Republican Party.
	They were very systematic about doing this.
	And I mean here's the thing you could do all we'll do to biometric voting and all high-tech or whatever but the problem is is at some point it goes behind closed doors and it's on some computer server somewhere and you never will know how accurate ends up being.
	That's kind of why I like the messiness of how we do it because there's you know some guy in Iowa would be like no I had you know he won by 65% not he didn't lose it whatever you know there's some some romantic notion to that idea where maybe it makes it more fair I suppose.
	Well, one way or another, however you fall on that side of the debate or how you see elections should be carried out, we need to make it an issue.
	We need to talk about it.
	We need to get it out in the national discourse, because just assuming that something's going to happen or something's going to be fine, I don't believe that.
	I mean, that's kind of how we all looked at everything from the Mueller report to, you know, Impeachment.
	It just seemed like something had to break, but it's an understanding that, you know, the Constitution and laws and customs and mores, they're only as solid as people's ability to fight for them.
	That's it.
	And right now they are very fragile and very malleable.
	Right.
	Again, a reminder that we need to do that podcast to the homework where we're going to explain what they need to do with specific laws to prevent somebody from ever taking advantage like this again.
	I would love if the news cycle would slow down and we didn't have to have emergency podcasts twice a week, which by the way, just for everybody's information, we do drop on Tuesdays and Fridays.
	Make sure you subscribe to the podcast, like it, share it.
	Leave comments.
	Nick loves the comments.
	I dip my toe in the comments, and you know what?
	They were really, really good.
	Thank you.
	They were really, really nice, and you all are really nice people, and we're very, very proud to have you as our audience, and we're very proud to have this show growing.
	Again, we do now have a video component, so you can see What's going on as we're having our conversations, the emotional exasperation of the moment as it takes its toll.
	But we're happy to be here and we're happy that you're listening.
	So please, again, like, subscribe, share, comment.
	Those things help us.
	You know, every one of those actually does help us.
	Until next time, Nick is at Can You Hear Me?
	SMH.
	I am at J.Y.
	Sexton.
	Did I get that wrong?
	No, I'm SMH-ing.
	Alright, I'm SMH.
	That had just become second nature.
	I was like, there's no way I screwed that up.
	Alright, so Nick, can you hear me?
	SMH.
	I am at J.Y.
	Sexton.
	Until next time, stay safe and keep washing your hands.

▲