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June 12, 2020 - The Muckrake Political Podcast
59:03
Trump Happy To Defend Racism

As Donald Trump promises he'll conquer racism in America "very easily," co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the long and problematic roots of white supremacy in the United States, reasons for hope, and why fascists are suddenly exposing themselves in droves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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But we'll make no progress and heal no wounds by falsely labeling tens of millions of decent Americans as racist or bigots.
We have to get everybody together.
We have to be in the same path, I think, Pastor.
If we don't do that, we have problems.
And we'll do that.
We'll do it.
I think we're going to do it very easily.
It'll go quickly and it'll go very easily.
Because if you change the name, what you are saying to the men and women who left those sports, who died for this country in many cases, you are telling them that the institution they left was fundamentally and inherently racist because of the name that is on it.
Do you want the President to have facts before he tweets anything out?
He's the President of the United States.
The President did have facts before he tweeted it out.
That undergirded his questions.
It's a baseless conspiracy theory.
It's not a baseless conspiracy.
No, not at all.
I won't acknowledge that.
Hey, everybody.
Welcome to the Muckrake Podcast.
I'm your host, Jared Yates Sexton.
As always, I'm joined by my loyal co-host, Nick Hausman.
I think we're setting a record today, Nick.
This is, I think, two hopeful podcasts in a row from the Muckrake Podcast.
Not bad.
Well, we have to separate hopeful and sort of slightly uneventful days in between.
Is there a distinction there?
Well, we're in a weird We're in a weird moment right now.
And we're in a weird moment within a weird moment, right?
I mean, like, we can't be totally hopeful because, as we all know, not necessarily the second wave of coronavirus is spiking because it's just been one wave and, you know, it's currently happening.
But also, we're in this weird place where the Black Lives Matter protests have really changed everything about American politics for the moment.
For those of you who are unfamiliar, I mean, we've got Americans who are bringing down Confederate statues all around the country.
Every company has basically come out in support of this, which we're going to talk about at some point.
NASCAR, which for those of you who have listened to enough episodes, I grew up in southern Indiana in redneck territory.
And I have to tell you, if somebody went back to 1997 or 1998 and told me that NASCAR was going to risk its viewership by banning the Confederate flag, I don't know that I could have ever foreseen that.
You know, I'm glad you brought that up now, because I'm not sold.
I don't know if I really believe that what NASCAR is doing is from a place of authenticity.
Do you know what I mean?
I don't think a lot of these things are from a place of authenticity.
And we're going to talk about that a little bit, because what we're going to talk about today is why this is happening, and exactly how this whole thing is occurring, and why it's different.
This isn't the first protest movement in the past few years, but there's something that's sparking and it's happening at exactly the right time.
And there's a lot of techniques that are being used right now that I think are being overlooked in terms of why it's working.
And one thing that we need to talk about, obviously, is Donald Trump.
And before we start with this conversation, I'm just going to share a quote that Donald Trump gave us today.
Donald Trump, President of the United States of America, who's just really great at bridging the divide between the people.
That's what he's all about, right Nick?
He's about bringing us together, is what he's about.
He said today, we'll make no progress by falsely labeling tens of millions of decent Americans as racist.
We're going to do it, and by do it, he means overcome racism.
We wouldn't say what it was, but we're going to do it very easily and quickly, and it'll go very easily.
First of all, tens of millions of Americans are racist.
I'm sorry to blow everyone's minds, but those decent people that he's talking about, tens of millions of Americans are racist.
It's pretty shocking that in the middle of this, that not only can he not read the room, But the ignorance is... I mean, you could power a small city with the ignorance of this man.
You know, it's not uncommon for people who have trouble with the notion of what racism is to try and dismiss it and think that it isn't anything that you can't just simply decide not to do and have to deal with.
And this is certainly somebody who really struggles deeply with what racism is.
What do you think he thinks racism is?
If you had to put yourself in that diseased, addled mind, what do you think Donald Trump thinks racism is?
Because I think this is exactly what we're talking about today.
What do you think he thinks is racism?
I think he probably has the Roots image, the famous Alex Haley novel, where if you don't own slaves and you're not whipping black people in the streets, Uh, then, you know, you're not racist.
If you have a friend or two that's black that you treat really nicely, and you can cheer for a black athlete, you know, those are probably the checklist of things that he goes through in his mind that will indicate to him that he's not a racist.
Right?
I think that's true, and I think that's really telling about what is happening right now, and one of the reasons why we're in the situation we are.
We talk all the time about Make America Great Again, or MAGA, or Trumpism, all these things.
I just want to give a working definition of that.
I think when Donald Trump says, Make America Great Again, it's not about any project.
It's not about any achievement.
It's not about a wall.
I don't think he ever intended to actually build the wall.
I think, or an economy, or whatever.
I think it means that he wants to get back to an America where people who are oppressed will just shut up.
You know what I mean?
They don't have the voice that they do now.
They're not going to be paid attention to.
These culture wars won't exist.
He wants to get back to an America like the quote-unquote consensus.
And I say quote-unquote because history tells us, again like CNN Time and Life History, tells us the consensus which is like Eisenhower 50s, right?
That it was the best moment in American history.
It was after the war, we were flush with cash, yada yada yada.
It wasn't great for people of color.
It wasn't great for women.
It wasn't great for LGBTQ Americans.
But they didn't get paid attention to, right?
They were shoved over here and everybody could just pretend that things were great.
I think that's what Donald Trump wants because what you're saying, I think, is really interesting.
You're talking about Confederate-era America.
As long as it's not the Confederacy, it's great, which I think is one of the reasons this country is in the mess that it is right now is because of that mindset, right?
the difference between, oh, we have another country called the Confederacy, and now we have an America where everything is great.
We have two countries.
And part of me starts to think, you know what, like maybe the Civil War was not the proper solution.
Like maybe we should just be two separate countries.
Now, the problem with that is that there's an implication there that we should still have slavery then, right?
Or at least on these shores in some other southern country that's not part of what we live in.
And maybe there would have been enough, you know, evolution there where they would have gotten rid of slavery on their own anyway because of outside pressures or whatever.
But if you want to put that away, the mindset at least of a great deal of the South is really hasn't changed much.
It doesn't seem that way.
Now, are you aware of any of the triggering that's going on around the Confederate flag being banned at NASCAR?
And also, I mean, I've seen the reactions to the statues, and we've seen what Trump had reacted to as far as changing some of the forts, or the, well, I guess they're called forts still.
So, I have to imagine that the same kind of trigger is happening with the NASCAR fans.
It just indicates to me that, like, you know, it's a different country, and they would much prefer to go back to then, before the Civil War.
Well, there's a couple things here, and I'm so glad you said it that way.
First things first, people need to understand that this country was founded with exactly what you just said in mind.
Like, whenever they were ratifying the Constitution, the South was like, we have to have outsized influence or else we're not going to do this thing.
So Madison and Hamilton and others like them are like, well, we're going to give the South special privileges.
We're going to, of course, count slaves as part of the population while also allowing slavery.
And actually, if you go back in the Federalist Papers, Hamilton, under the pen name Publius, and that doesn't sound right to Green County, Indiana brain, let me tell you, Publius, he writes that, yes, we could fight with the South, like it would be a civil war now, right?
Which would be in like 1787.
We could fight with them, or we could go ahead and overlook slavery so we can have economic success now.
Right, it's a really weird bargain that ends up leading to the Civil War, right?
Because the the bargain that got the Constitution ratified is one of the reasons why we had to have a Civil War.
The next thing you said, which is the backlash to the Confederate flag, the backlash to Confederate monuments, the backlash of Confederate forts.
That's why this is winning right now.
Because in the past, and listen, These protesters and the people who are doing these things who are going and I want people to think about this.
They're pulling down monuments.
It's not like they have a permit to do it.
It's not like City Council told them to take down the monument.
They're tearing them down and daring people to put them back up.
Right?
So all of a sudden it's like, well, they're here, we can't do anything about them.
But then you tear them down and it's like, oh, I'm sorry, are you going to put that Robert E. Lee statue back up?
Are you going to do that?
That's your choice, right?
Oh, you're going to go against that fort being renamed.
Why are you standing here for Confederates?
Why are you standing here for the Confederate flag?
It's actually drawing racists out and making them stand up for racism.
Which, it's not what these people want to do.
We talked about it earlier on the podcast.
These people would much rather hide behind the veneer of being a liberal society, right?
And Trump, right?
Trump's like, well, we got a great country.
We're not racist at all.
He has to stand up for Confederacy.
They have to stand up and what the Republican Party has done for decades now, going back to our friend Richard Milhouse, is the Southern strategy.
They've been hiding the racism.
They've been dog whistling.
They've been doing whatever they can to make it about busing, to make it about taxes, to make it about small government, to make it about quote-unquote colorblind politics.
This is reversing 50 years of Republican dog-whistling tactics.
It's making them stand up and saying, you want to wear the Confederate stars and bars?
Do it.
Have at it.
Wear them.
Well, you don't have to stop at 50 years either, because like you were saying as far as what Hamilton did, this is everybody kind of in on this for so long, which is I think the point.
The point is that everybody needs to come and move.
That is why Black Lives Matter supersedes All Lives Matter.
Right?
This is why Me Too is so important to swing, because for so long it was the other way.
And that probably addresses the criticism that people will give to, oh, you can't move things too much, too fast.
And I have a feeling that when you talk to people like Martin Luther King, or Malcolm X, or leaders, they need a revolution.
They want to push it as far as they possibly can, knowing that what they'll end up getting is somewhere in the middle, or even just a little bit of movement that way.
So it almost requires radical movement, a radical statement of ideas, just to make it budge a little bit.
And that's sort of, I think, where we are right now.
But the idea that they're willing to even get rid of the confederacy, the confederate flag, and then even here, like, you know, Trump's pushback on it, and I loved what you said as far as they prefer to hide in their racism and not have to be out in front.
But then you have Trump who wants to defend these losing generals.
And I don't know if you saw there's a thread on Twitter that was fantastic that went through all the generals who were named by these forts and how bad they were and how mismanaged the other troops they were doing and how bad their tactics were and so there really is no reason to have these names except for the fact that this is the big troll job by the South after losing and what's the Women of the Confederacy?
What's that group?
Daughters of The Confederacy, who went around getting all the highways named after, you know, these different people.
And knowing that forever, it would then continue to facilitate the Old South ideology, right?
I mean, there's a reason why the statues have an effect.
People grow up and they see them.
They remember these names.
They realize they stood for something.
And if it's still up there, and they still have them there like that, it will further that ideology.
I mean, you don't have to say it's a theory.
Because it's fact we see it now.
No, and the way that it's been done is so insidious.
It's a really brilliant sort of a psychological operation that these people have done.
These statues didn't go up in the 1870s or 1880s or 1890s.
They started going up at the turn of the 20th century, where, and by the way, if you want to talk about being fair, Democrat Woodrow Wilson is responsible for so much of this stuff.
Probably one of the grossest presidents we've ever had.
He was a southerner, and not just a confederate apologist, but like a confederate romanticist.
Like, it was, he wrote all these books that were just about, oh, the masters loved their slaves.
It was a paternal relation.
It was so beautiful what they had.
And he creates the Lost Cause mythology, which is when, all of a sudden, the confederate, like, daughters of the confederacy and those groups are like, Oh, wait, culture has changed.
We're allowed to celebrate this now.
Let's erect a bunch of monuments.
Then, weirdly enough, they started erecting monuments in the 1950s where, uh, what happened there?
Oh, that's right.
Desegregation.
So what they end up doing is they put up all these monuments and they turn the South into a romantic notion, right?
And you'll notice, and I want to say this, and maybe people will blanch at this at first.
I like Ken Burns.
I like his documentaries.
They're enjoyable and they have a real ethos and a pathos to them, right?
Well, Ken Burns' Civil War did this thing in America where all of a sudden we talked about how noble the South was.
You know what I mean?
Like, they went into battle and they were overwhelmed and they still went in there and that's lost cause mythology.
But there's also this other thing that we've done in America and this is the main problem in all of this.
We don't study the actual Civil War, right?
We don't study why it happened.
We don't study what cultures were like.
We study battles.
We study, oh, that's when they came over here.
They went around here.
That was when they had the offensive.
We do that because all of a sudden we take people like Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson and we don't have to talk about racism and white supremacy.
We talk about American militarism, right?
And that idea, and this is something forwarded by Andrew Johnson after Abraham Lincoln died.
They rejected the idea the Confederacy ever existed.
They basically said, you never stopped being Americans.
Like, right?
Like, you said you were the Confederacy, but you were still America.
No, they created their own country that was vying for ownership of America, and it was based on white supremacy.
And we don't want to talk about it, and so as a result, we hide it.
And it's an infection that has been in our bodies since the Civil War, and we've never dealt with it.
And it's coming to the surface right now, and that's what we're seeing with this movement.
Right.
And I think what people understand is the Union Army was the U.S.
Army, right?
Like, that was the point, was that it was the Union that was basically representing the United States against this other separatist, you know, group of people that wanted to, right, if they had their way, right, if the South had their way, they would have had their own country.
I think.
If they had negotiated or won enough of the battles, they would have been able to have their own country that's in the South, right?
Well, one thing that we don't talk about with the Civil War is that both the United States of America and the Confederate States of America believe that they owned the original America.
Right?
The South basically said, oh, America was built on white supremacy, which it was, right?
They said it was built on this and now you are going back on this agreement.
So basically, I mean, to put it mildly, you have a copyright.
Infringement battle, right?
Because we talk about the Confederacy like it was its own thing.
They glorified George Washington.
They considered the Civil War to be the second American Revolution.
They thought they were a new Founding Fathers in the mold of the original Founding Fathers.
So what you end up having is you have two groups that are fighting over which America is the real America.
And the truth is the North wasn't as tolerant as we pretend it was.
And the South wasn't as far from the founding as we like to pretend that it was.
And so we don't understand anything about this war, and we don't understand anything about this battle, and so all we do is we think about, you know, battles.
Right.
You're blowing my mind.
You know, that's a really fantastic way of describing that.
I was also thinking that sort of what we've been doing is by migrating to cities, You grew up in Wisconsin, correct?
of the countries anyway.
And while that's sort of a good thing because obviously you'd want to live in an area that you believe in how people are treated, it also fucks with electoral college.
- And I wanna, you grew up in Wisconsin, correct? - Chicago.
- Oh, you grew up in Chicago.
Okay, so you were in Illinois, you've been in the Midwest.
I assume you've seen your fair share of Confederate flags in the Midwest, right?
No.
Not so much.
I mean, I didn't see any in Chicago, obviously.
Well, Chicago might be a little bit different.
I went to Madison, and I spent my time in Wisconsin.
I don't have, in my mind's eye, memories of anything prevalent of ever really seeing Confederate flags.
But again, that's also a liberal bastion of the Midwest as well.
I didn't see much.
I think if I had, it would have been scary.
Right, so I assume that a lot of our listeners who are from what you would call Union States or Northern States have seen their fair share of Confederate flags.
I grew up in Indiana, a Union State, right?
A solid Union State.
Sent a lot of troops into this thing.
I saw my fair share of Confederate flags.
A lot of Confederate flags.
And people I knew would have them.
They'd have them in their garages.
They would have them flying as they drove around.
Have them on bumper stickers.
And here's the thing people don't understand.
The Confederacy wasn't just a geographical phenomenon.
The Confederacy was a state of mind.
The reason why the South went to war is because they started seeing themselves as a different people than Northerners.
And they thought that there was a conspiracy against them and that all of the Northerners were traitors.
Right?
By the way, does that sound familiar at all?
A little bit?
Because that's what Trumpism is.
Trumpism now tells these people who and it's all based on white supremacist paranoia and in all of these conspiracy theories everything from the the confederacy to the new world order to the deep state to QAnon which we talked about last week all of these have the idea That white supremacy is endangered by people outside of America and people inside of America, liberals who are traitorous to their race.
And so as a result, what you just talked about, which is these cloisters of liberalism around America, right?
So you have all like these liberals who are moving to the big cities.
All of a sudden, the infection of the Confederacy spread.
And in all of that middle America, where all of a sudden people started believing in things like the New World Order and the Deep State and Trumpism, it's an infection of white supremacist paranoia.
It's that conspiracy theory that is currently infecting America right now.
This fear that white supremacy is endangered because of internal traitors.
And that's exactly what all these things are.
But they also, you know, they're not going to say it like that.
They're going to say you're unpatriotic, which is I think that's the point here is you're not, you know, you're not in the real American.
And that's the dog whistle for you're not supporting your own race.
And it's interesting because we see this in a lot of other countries, like, for instance, in Russia, the Soviet Union.
Like, there just seems to be in their DNA this notion that they need to have, like, dictators, czars, whatever you want to call Putin at this point.
It just seems like, you know, over enough evolution of time, this is like where they've gravitated toward, you know, this sort of same version of the different named governments.
And you have to wonder if it's the same kind of thing happening here.
You'd like to think we're a little bit of a newer country, and there was a break, but we just seem to keep coming back and sort of being gravitated, you know, we gravitate toward the same stuff.
And then I think what becomes troubling to a lot of those kind of people are when the new people come that don't look like us.
And they don't have that same, they're not moths to the flame here.
They don't have that same wired DNA.
And then the question is, how do you react to that?
Some people in America are like, this is an amazing melting pot.
We want to continue to, you know, increase our cultural heritage with different people.
And then you have the others.
And again, we talk about this all the time, but the question is, the others, you know, just how many of them are there?
And how many are we worried about that, you know, of the ones that Trump is not, quote unquote, talking about when he thinks this is going to go really easy and swell and fast and bigly?
By the way, I just love the idea that Donald Trump thinks that American white supremacy and racism, something that we have struggled with for centuries, he's just gonna take care of it.
That's wonderful.
And by the way, what he's saying is he's gonna shut these people up so they'll stop complaining, is what he's saying.
But how do you do that?
You dominate the battle space, is what you do.
If this stuff keeps going, He'll say some words, he'll pretend that he is trying to bring America together, and then if there are more protests he'll go back to the drawing board.
And by the way, one thing you said, I'm glad you brought up Putin and Russia, because I want to throw this out there and I want people to chew on it a little bit.
Because this isn't just happening in America, it's happening around the world.
We don't pay a lot of attention to Russia, because if we did, we wouldn't have had the Cold War the way that we had it, right?
If we understood them as a culture, like, it was intentional that we misunderstood Russia.
Russia right now, particularly under Vladimir Putin, was taken over by a person who was very insecure about his masculinity, right?
Who promised Russia that he would take them back to a point of greatness in their past.
And he built his base by using insecure, frustrated, white Russians.
And gained support with nationalist, fascist, paramilitary groups in the streets.
Sound familiar?
Because it's the exact same story.
And what actually happens is, the world moves in cycles.
We have moments of expansion, and then it shrinks.
Right?
Expansion, and then shrinks.
And right now, so what's happening is, nationalists are winning because globalism won.
And, you know, it'll keep moving in and out and in and out.
And so every time that we try and shrink away from some sort of global order, these nationalists come out of the woodwork and all they have is racism and prejudice and white supremacy.
So you're exactly right.
It's the exact type of organism and the exact same type of infection, but it's just replaying itself over and over and over.
And there's a reason why.
And again, Throw out conspiracy theories, right?
We don't even have to talk about like a conspiracy between Trump and Russia.
The American Republican Party is right on the same wavelength with Russia because they're doing the exact same thing.
It's all about protecting white supremacy and against a growing demographic change.
So it's the exact same thing whether or not they're having secret meetings, which we know that they did.
But if you don't want to believe in that, it's still the exact same process going on.
Well, you know, listen, Trump and Putin are having secret calls all the time, you know, and the White House doesn't even acknowledge them.
We have to find out when the Russians release the transcripts of these calls, which is, like, ridiculous.
It's never — the norms that have been violated so far across the board, like, might never, ever get put back in the bottle at this point.
And it's a real problem because you never — are you old enough to remember when Bill Clinton met in the tarmac with the attorney general at the time for 10 minutes on a plane?
I remember being at a Trump rally where he talked about that and all of a sudden a bunch of people inside of the theater started screaming that Clinton and her should hang.
So yeah, I remember that pretty well.
Because if you look today, you realize that Trump lands in Dallas on his plane and who walks out in his entourage?
It's like it's Turtle and Johnny Bravo and then, you know, William Barr.
Johnny Bravo?
Johnny Drama, excuse me.
Johnny Bravo is somebody else.
You know, so he's got his entourage with him, and it's like, really, Barr's hanging out with him, you know, just probably gonna appear at this rally he's gonna talk, you know, in Tulsa, which we didn't mention either, and there's a reason why he's in Tulsa.
We gotta talk about that.
But, you know, and then you also have Barr just traipsing around the world, you know, Glad handing, you know, other members of the intelligence communities of other countries, you know, desperately looking for, you know, any kind of information he could drag up that would make our FBI look bad.
So it's like, what is this?
Is this where they're so desperate to hang on to their power that they're willing to do anything about voting suppression?
They're willing to be as corrupt as they can, but then condone all the corruption because I suppose the only other alternative is to lose.
They are exactly that obsessed with holding on to power.
Mitt Romney, once and for all, couldn't just say what needs to be said.
He couldn't do that?
And he can keep his position as a Senator and he's still not going to get up for a little while?
Mitt Romney is in a weird position.
He's always been in a weird position.
Yeah, no kidding.
Profiles of occasional courage.
You know it's.
It's really admirable that he was able to go out and say the Black Lives Matter, but there's also a situation here.
I and again, there's no other way to put it because there are two games in town.
There's the Democratic Party, which by the way I want to go on the record.
They put out a plan.
It's a beginning, but my God, if they're not going to get their heads in the game, they're not worthy of their supporters.
They have to get out there and they have to fight as hard.
Americans are out in the middle of a pandemic, marching and putting their lives at risk.
The Democratic Party needs to join that and be worthy of their supporters.
The Republican Party isn't really a political party.
It's a fascist organization at this point.
And I say that because fascists, whenever their backs are against the wall, whenever they realize they can't win elections anymore, they start destroying the democratic institutions.
That's what the Republican Party has done with their voting.
That's what they've done with laws.
That's what they've done with their appeals.
And that's why I think there's actually hope right now, which is They have to come out and wear the Confederate flag, Nick.
They have to come out and stand on the side of bald-faced fascism.
You can't say history anymore.
And again, to bring it around to what you said about whether or not the corporations are being authentic, I think you're right.
I don't think they are being authentic.
But I'll tell you what corporations do.
They have very, very, very large and long meetings about what the right side of history is going to be.
And by the right side, I mean which side of history is going to win.
And America's corporations have made a decision.
And that is the future belongs to diversity and inclusivity.
They know that, you know?
Because right now if they come out and, you know, if Pringles, I don't know, if Pringles came out and was like, all lives matter, come on folks, Pringles done.
Right?
And every corporation understands that now.
The only group of people in this country that don't understand that right now are Trump, Trump supporters, and the Republican Party.
Fox News.
It's everybody else in Fox News.
Oh wait, no, Fox News understands this too though, right?
Like Fox News understands that, and they will, so at the very least, you can't, because we've seen the internal memos, or like a couple of the emails every once in a while, you get a glimpse.
And so it's not like they don't understand all of this.
And you know what?
Maybe I would take it.
Maybe we should just take some lip service to this.
Because, you know, a big corporation paying lip service and doing this, you know, the bullshit social media post about it, you know, at least it might change the environment, right?
And to the point where those are the norms we're talking about.
All of a sudden, they're the environment, the precedent has been set.
Coke can come out and talk about Black Lives Matter.
And, you know, ten years from now, you know, by the way, Speaking of how we progress, do you realize that the Republican National Convention, their platform, is not changing from 2016?
They're so lazy that they won't even change it.
And you realize it's filled with just this attacking of the administration, which basically means they're attacking Trump because they're so freaking lazy they won't even update the language.
Yeah, and by the way, speaking of language.
I just want to throw this out there because it hadn't occurred to me until right now what's actually happening.
And it's actually kind of revelatory and a little miraculous.
You know this as well as I do.
Republicans have controlled every argument for decades.
And they control it on a linguistic basis, right?
They've always figured out the right messaging.
They've always figured out what to say.
Something like Black Lives Matter, just the phrase, is ingenious.
Because all you can say is, all lives matter, and it reveals the ballgame, right?
It says, no, I'm against that.
You can't come out and say black lives don't matter.
You have to say all lives matter and instantaneously everyone knows what you're saying.
In this case, all of a sudden we have a situation where the Republican Party doesn't have control of the linguistics in the past.
Or right now.
They've always had it in the past.
And I want to bring up Ronald Reagan.
Ronald Reagan was one of the more insidious political figures because he took Nixon's Southern strategy and he took it up a notch.
Him and Atwater did a thing.
And they started talking about race via taxes.
And they started talking about a thing called colorblindness.
And colorblindness was this idea of, oh, we don't see race.
We don't see what race anybody is.
Everybody's equal.
Can you imagine right now if an American corporation came out and said, we're for colorblind policies?
That can't happen.
So what ends up happening is when Pringles or Gushers or God knows Star Wars comes out and says, we believe that all black lives matter.
All of a sudden you have them on your ground and you're like, oh, you believe in that, do you?
Well, how come you have only X number of higher up employees?
Why don't we see it in your boardrooms?
And all of a sudden, they're on your battlefield.
This is one of the things that happened with Donald Trump.
Donald Trump has infected our linguistics for years.
This is one of the reasons why people would say things like shithole or, you know, any of the numbers, very great, very easily, all that stuff.
He infected our linguistic conversation.
He isn't now.
He lost the threat.
The dominant voice in America isn't Trump anymore, and it's not the Republican Party.
It's this movement, and that's when things actually matter, because they have no choice.
They have to be revealed for what they are.
Yes, and it's nice that we have the Lincoln Project because they understand this because they're Republicans as it is.
So basically what we're doing is or what somebody is doing or what the situation has now gotten Trump to do is what you're saying.
He now is taking the bait and defending Confederate generals.
Right.
And it's like, you know, it's a loser for you.
And it's just like what you were mentioning before, what would drive liberals I think crazy is they would say stuff like, yeah, yeah, keep saying that.
That's going to mean Trump's going to win in 2020.
Yeah, yeah.
Keep doing that.
That's great.
Or the new one I've noticed on Twitter is your hatred for Trump has made you so blind to reality.
It was last night.
like, as if they're like some Jedi mind trick.
It's your hatred for Trump that's making you say all these terrible things that don't really exist.
And it's like, that's what they control the message with.
And you're right.
Now what we've gotten in this situation, when you're tearing down these statues, you know, yeah, you can't defend these guys.
In fact, there was somebody who got seriously injured.
It's terrible.
Do you know where it was?
It was like three Confederate soldiers.
It was last night.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was last night.
And it's a horrible tragedy.
But the point being that it was like what they were trying to, you know, rip down was important.
The symbolism of that was really important.
I know Ben Shapiro is so into symbology and what all these things mean, and that is what's been key.
I think, like we said in the beginning, I think the flags and I think the statues, you know, you might not want to consider them, you know, vital in continuing the Confederate ideology.
But I do think that it is.
I think they have an impact across the board.
And they have an impact when they're a little kid and when they really become indoctrinated.
And so it's exciting to be able to see these things get ripped down.
Now, you know, we're seeing Christopher Columbus being ripped down, you know.
And that's what the Republicans are now going to pull their hair out saying, what's next?
What are you going to do?
You're going to pull down George Washington?
You're going to do Thomas Jefferson?
What's going to happen now?
And it's like, you know, maybe, maybe okay.
Maybe we should start tearing down some of these other ones as well.
I mean, certainly Christopher Columbus is no hero in the Native American community.
Well listen, I had a thing a couple of days ago where I had a moment of, I was kind of fighting with some people, because over in England, and by the way this is a worldwide thing, it's really amazing, it's happening everywhere, a statue of Churchill had spray painted, is a racist, and then was hung with Black Lives Matter, and it's one of those things where
If you really want a country to work, you have to understand actual history, right?
Winston Churchill was an amazing leader during World War II and fought fascism.
He also was responsible for genocide and the oppression of people of color around the world.
Those things can be true simultaneously at once.
And you have to live in a reality where you can juggle those things.
You can't talk about Thomas Jefferson's idea of freedom without weighing it against...
He enslaved hundreds of people.
You can't talk about George Washington and his bravery without talking about the fact not only did he enslave people but he was the richest person in the country and that's one of the reasons that he had the power that he had.
I want to read something real fast.
This is Ted Cruz.
Sniveling coward Ted Cruz.
Uncle Ted.
Who stood up today to defend Columbus, and this is how stupid this is, okay?
Columbus sailed over and, you know, immediately enslaved people and killed people and oppressed people.
Ted Cruz says no, he didn't commit genocide literally, quote-unquote, or otherwise.
He did discover the new world, Which, by the way, like, I don't know about you, but I don't know if my eyes will ever stop rolling.
What a stupid, like, place to stand.
All you have to do... And that's the other thing, right?
We have the internet.
All you have to do is go look.
The history of what Columbus did to people is everywhere.
It's not hard anymore.
So, and by the way, on top of that, tons of other people actually discovered America.
It just so happened that he, like, got it wrong.
And, you know, if you take a look at history, all of a sudden this Ted Cruz quote, you look at it and you're like, shut up.
Just shut up.
Quit being an asshole.
And just do better.
And he's not going to.
And the Republican Party's not going to do better.
But I'm sorry.
I like our side of the fight.
I love being on the side that's not defending Columbus and Confederate generals and Confederate statues.
What a losing argument that is.
They have just decided to throw in their lot and they don't have a choice because they made their bed.
They made this bed years ago and it's where they're at.
It's worth saying that Ted Cruz is the guy who literally, gambling in the dormitory, lost a lot of money and then decided to report the guys he was gambling with for gambling, which is illegal in the dorms, because he lost all that money.
And he's never going to change.
You know what's a little bit frustrating is that we all know the scene in A Few Good Men where Tom Cruise is able to push Colonel Jessup's buttons enough to get him to admit that he ordered the code red.
And this is the situation that Donald Trump is in right now, right?
He's sort of starting to admit it.
And what's only frustrating is that Joe Biden is not that guy who's going to be able to, in a debate, push the right button to get him to say some of these things.
And it's really too bad.
But maybe it doesn't matter, because they could probably create enough media and the Lincoln Project and other people like that who are doing these things.
He might end up doing it on his own without needing to have that dramatic moment with the music.
That's the one thing that's frustrating is that you're not going to get that cathartic experience with Biden versus Trump.
I gain more hope from that fact.
And here's the thing.
I'm going to be real.
And I don't know.
I'm having a good day, Nick.
I'm having a good day.
So I'm just going to say it.
I'm just going to say it.
You know, there's a part of me that is almost relieved that it's bottom up instead of top down.
That it's from the people as opposed to from a leader.
I'm glad that we have a candidate for president right now who maybe isn't taking the lead on this thing.
And maybe it'd be better if we had it.
I don't know.
But no, Joe Biden's not the person to do it.
Joe Biden has a history of being one of the modern architects of the modern police state.
That's just the truth.
He is a Democrat who has continually won elections and gained political favor by defending police.
I mean, he's even said that he actually thinks that instead of defunding the police, that they should have more money in order to have more training and more programs.
Okay.
I think somebody a couple days ago, maybe a week ago, should have asked Trump to say that Black Lives Matter.
And who knows?
He's already falling apart.
His whole attack on the Buffalo guy, the 75-year-old dude who got shoved down in a skull crack, he's watching OANN.
And I don't know if you saw that segment.
They have gone full conspiracy theory.
The guy who reported this on, well, reported, quote unquote, was like a Russian journalist working for Kremlin propaganda.
And Trump just bought it hook, line, and sinker.
And it's just, he's degrading before our very eyes.
And I think you're right.
Whether or not we're going to have, I believe it's Colonel Jessup, correct?
Yep.
Whether or not we're going to have a Colonel Jessup, you can't handle the truth.
You know, I ordered it.
Like, I don't know that we're going to have that, but I mean, the environment is ripe for it.
If you want to get Donald Trump talking about race, he's already said some crazy shit about race in this presidency.
And if you just turn up the heat on this thing, God knows that he's willing to say some crazy shit.
Right.
Well, that's the first time I've ever seen you maybe acknowledge that something would get him.
Something that he says out of his mouth might actually hurt him.
And maybe this is it.
And then it seems like that would be maybe the one thing, which, considering the reaction of the George Floyd murder across the world anyway, right?
It's already been... We're primed for that and ready to go.
And he just needs to, you know, continue.
And now look at... By the way, we have seen that it has affected his polling numbers.
He fucking wants to try and sue CNN for simply publishing a poll.
That's how crazy he's now gotten.
Quite the alpha male move, by the way.
Quite the big, strong, masculine move.
Can I just throw this out there?
Do you know what the other part of the conspiracy is with Martin, the guy who knocked down and hit his head?
You know, they said he had on his phone some sort of either a jamming device on his phone that would stop the cops from being able to connect with each other or communicate with each other or some other thing that would then allow him to track the cops or something so that the looters would know when they're coming.
This is honestly what they think.
I had a guy who was arguing with me that it wasn't real blood coming out of his ears.
You know, it's just regurgitating what the stuff is.
This is what we've come to.
I mean, now again, this is shrinking.
This kind of person represents a much smaller group, I would imagine, which is why his Republican poll numbers are so high.
It's because the Republican Party, or people willing to admit that, has got to just be shrunken like a shriveled stack of nuts.
You asked me, and I want to say this is one of our first podcasts, you asked me what I thought the basement was for Trump.
Right for approval rating.
Yeah, approval rating.
Like what is what is the amount?
And again, this goes back to the quote that started this whole thing.
Tens of millions of decent Americans mislabeled as racism.
I would say that there is probably.
Maybe 20 to 25% of Americans who are in this thing for good, right?
But I want to listen.
I've said this in the past.
I've called this a cult.
And I meant it.
I wasn't being provocative.
That's literally what has happened is there is a cult that Trump has cultivated from American white supremacy plus also white identity Christianity.
This is what happens.
People can be in an alternate religion and don't cause problems, right?
You can have friends who are in alternate religions, people who believe stuff that you don't believe.
Eventually, it grows and grows and grows and just gets crazier and crazier until you can't be around these people, right?
That's what we're watching.
I'm sorry, but that, and I feel so bad for that guy who got knocked over and hurt, and I hope he's good, but the moment that they started claiming that a 75-year-old man was out jamming transmissions and is a deep state Antifa operator, all of a sudden, like, even people who are in the tank for Trump are like, What the hell are you talking about at this point?
You've lost the thread, right?
When you go to OANN, I'm not going with you, right?
Fox News is trying.
I don't know if you've watched Fox News over the past couple of days.
They keep showing footage from the first initial days of protests with the looting and the arson and all of that.
They won't show the modern, like, up-to-date protest.
There's a reason.
Because they won't go that OANN route.
Right.
Well, OK.
But it does remind me, like, a guy like Barr justified the violence in Lafayette Park on Monday.
But what he was describing was the tumultuousness that was happening at least 24 hours to 48 hours before that.
So in his mind, and by the way, the mental gymnastics he went through in that one interview were outrageous.
Saying that they didn't use, you know, chemical irritants is insane.
But basically what he was saying was, Well, because they were causing a lot of problems in looting and rioting.
I didn't want to say rioting, but they were, you know, looting and throwing stuff at the cops on Sunday night.
Well, at 6 p.m.
on Monday, we had to clear them out with extreme force.
We had to do it.
You would have done it.
I would have done it.
And people buy that.
It's really, really what was frustrating.
I think Barr ends up being the guy who deserves as much of the ire as Trump does at this point.
I don't know if you saw the article, but the in-depth investigation about what happened there and around it, they had bayonets and live ammunition.
They came to Washington D.C.
ready to kill Americans.
We missed that bullet by not very much.
You know what I mean?
Who knows what would have happened after that?
I mean, I said this before on the podcast, the fact that the military stood down from Trump's orders and were like, no, we're not going to go to war with America.
America missed a very, very tragic moment.
Well, the National Guard, you know, it's very diverse.
And so apparently a lot of them, first of all, a lot of them got COVID.
Second of all, a lot of them were really concerned and did not want to be.
There was footage of a guy who was saying, I'm black and I'm proud, like mouthing the words as the protesters were saying these things too.
He was like in some sort of solidarity.
So they were really troubled as well.
And they were also being told, this is even more like, Whether or not you believe the possibility of them opening fire, or it could happen, and you could say, oh, that would never happen, but it happened in 71.
But the rhetoric they were using, the commanders were saying, you better get control of these crowds right now, or they're going to bring the 82nd Airborne and take care of it for you.
That's what they were saying.
And that kind of pressure, you know, in an environment where I'm sure National Guard, they're competitive, and they don't want to feel like they're not sufficient enough to handle a crowd.
And that is the kind of mindset that struck me as being really frightening because that's what's going to incite some of these renegade guys to really go off.
And it might be why.
They were over-aggressive in their displays because, well, we couldn't possibly have the 82nd Airborne come in and do our jobs for us.
So that was really the kind of rhetoric that scared me the most.
Have you ever seen, I assume you have, They Live?
It's one of my favorite movies.
I just watched that.
Mine too.
I love it too.
For listeners who haven't seen it, it is well worth watching.
Don't ruin it though.
I'm not going to ruin anything, but there's a moment where The hero of the movie realizes that people are among him that are not like him.
Right?
And it's this startling thing.
And I bring it up for this reason.
I've spent the last few years warning people about fascism in America.
And one of the reasons I've been warning about fascism in America is because I grew up with a lot of fascists.
And on top of that, when I went to Trump rallies, the fascists told me they were fascists.
They told me what they wanted.
It was fascism.
Straight up.
What we've seen over the past few weeks...
If not the past few years, is a lot of people who thought that America was one thing have realized it's another thing.
They've realized that there are a lot, and by the way, fascism is part of the human condition.
It's not a phenomenon that took place in Europe in the 20th century.
It's everywhere.
America has a fascist past, and we've always had fascists here.
It just so happens that in moments of progress, fascists show who they are.
We're seeing that.
All of a sudden, we're looking around.
We're realizing America doesn't look the way that maybe we thought it did.
That's a really terrifying thing, but it's also really exciting.
You know what I mean?
Because they can't hide anymore.
Again, make them go out and put Confederate statues back up.
Make them wrap themselves in the Lost Cause and the stars and bars.
Make them own it because they have no other choice.
When you push the envelope against them, when their backs are against the wall, fascists show that they're fascists.
You know, one thing that's been bothering me in this general context is the notion of you have Democrats, you have Republicans, and then you have Independents.
And supposedly, the Independents are a bigger group than either Democrats or Republicans.
I don't believe it.
And I would like to know if there's research that shows that these quote-unquote independents tend to vote a certain way way more often than the other.
And I would imagine, I don't know if you've had that experience, but it's got to be one way or the other.
I can't believe in this climate now we'd have enough people who would be looking at both sides and be like, yeah, I don't know, I can't really, really commit either way.
I just don't believe it.
I remember not believing this in 2004.
And it's just gotten exponentially more incredulous that that would possibly be a situation.
And I just don't think that, I don't think independence exists anymore.
I don't think that American politics looks anything like what we've been told it looks like.
Right?
I think independents are people who want to believe that they're not one or the other.
Right?
Like, so for instance, I've said this before, I renounced my membership in the Democratic Party once I started doing history and I found out about Woodrow Wilson and what has become the Democratic Party.
Doesn't mean I won't sprain my wrist voting Democrat against, you know, this fascist Republican Party.
Most Americans understand that this is insane.
What was the number about systemic prejudice and racism?
73%?
74%?
I believe?
That's the number of Americans who understand what's actually going on, and the needle is moving.
It doesn't mean that Trump isn't going to get votes, because he absolutely is.
There are Republicans who will hold their nose and vote for him.
There are other Republicans who will dance their way in to vote for him, right?
But we have been told that it's equal, almost.
That it's like 50-50, and it's just a coin flip.
It's not.
Most Americans understand this as madness.
It just so happens that things like the Electoral College, and by the way, Set up for the South and for slavery and for power purposes.
When those things are set up the way that they are, it's how you end up in this situation.
And again, we don't like to talk about that because we don't like to talk about white supremacy and slavery and why we were founded the way that we were.
But we have to start digging up those roots and understanding how we got to this place.
And that's part of it, is understanding America doesn't look the way that we thought it did.
Right.
And meanwhile, we have Americans in Seattle who are trying to create their own version of America by basically taking over a six-block radius section of the city.
And it's hard to get a lot of good information.
When you look it up now, much more of it is the right wing sort of condemning this like a Ruby Ridge situation, whereas it sounds a little bit more like the musical Hair or something like that, where It's like a commune or something like that where they're trying to make their own, you know, utopia.
And it does sound like maybe the city council is sort of like, you know, standing back and being like, OK, we're not going to go in there and make anything crazy.
Let's see what happens.
It's strange.
It's strange.
I can't quite wrap my head around that.
Isn't it weird that a bunch of right-wing conspiracy theorists took over federal land in, I believe it was Washington, right?
Maybe it was in Oregon.
The Bundy clan took over federal land and everybody was like, oh, these are patriots, right?
They're out there with the guns and they're standing down.
Everyone's like, this is for liberty.
We're in weird times, man.
We really, really are.
This is why I talked about, and by the way, I've been really high on hope for about a week now.
I've been very, very high on the idea that things are changing rapidly and in the best possible way.
Change is not comfortable.
You know what I mean?
Like it's.
We all get used to the status quo, the stasis.
We get used to life feeling the way it does, and even people who believe in this stuff can look at it and be like, Oh God, this is rough.
I remember when I watched it was when the the precinct was set on fire in Minneapolis, which we found out was done by a white dude.
Surprise surprise, but when it happened, I watched it burn.
And I was like, oh, God, this is scary.
You know what I mean?
Like, oh, thank God they're reclaiming their neighborhood and their purpose.
But this is frightening.
There's going to be stuff that happens in the next few weeks that is going to be uncomfortable and is going to be frightening.
But that's also part of change.
That's also part of hope.
It's things things are going to happen that are going to seem really rough at moments.
Yeah, and speaking of the precincts, there's a precinct in this area that they took over that they abandoned.
And the reality was they were talking about making it a community center and making this into something good.
And the right-wingers, though, were all saying the most ridiculous things about how they were going to create their own version of a jail in here.
And sort of oppress people in charge, extort money from owners of the businesses in this area.
And then it turns out the businesses are more than happy to have a whole bunch of people kind of hanging out and maybe buying stuff from their stores.
I am worried, though.
I am worried that there's going to be some sort of tinderbox situation there if somebody gets too impatient.
But at the very least, things are changing.
And I agree.
For the first time ever, Since Trump took over, I do feel positive and I do feel like it's reasonable right now looking at all the polls.
Now again, people were so snakebitten or so traumatized by what happened to Hillary, who for all intents and purposes should have won the election.
Every number, every metric indicated that she was going to win.
Every historical measure said there's no problem here and we're in that same situation now, right?
But Biden is not Hillary.
Trump could win the election still.
It is a reasonable take.
What do we have now?
We have to hope that Russia doesn't so completely obliterate the voting.
Trump could win the election still.
But it's a reasonable take to say that, you know what, Biden has got to be the favorite.
And that's a reasonable take is that he's the favorite to win.
It is a reasonable take.
What do we have now?
We have four months?
Four months until this thing goes down?
No, we have five.
We have five months.
Five months is an eternity in political reality.
And especially, and by the way, we're in a revolutionary moment.
We have no idea what's going to happen.
The pandemic right now is surging.
The economy... the economy is... and by the way, isn't it weird that the stock market doesn't like a people's revolution?
It's so weird, Nick!
It's almost like this thing isn't wired to actually work for people.
I don't know.
I have no idea what's going to happen.
It's so manipulated.
And they're going to manipulate it even more right before the election.
Oh, it's actually down 1,800 points right now.
I can't believe it.
But the market has no bearing to what reality is.
And it frustrates me only because it so helps Trump in this situation.
It's the one thing that's buoyed him.
And these jobs, they lied about.
But here's the thing.
What I was thinking about as far as how he's going to solve You know, these racial issues, whatever.
It's like, he's just gonna, you know, create more of these dead-end, low-end jobs that, like, get people stuck in them for a long, long period of time in their class system and never be able to move up.
Like, that's what I feel like he's gonna do.
You know, in the same way that, you know, George W. Bush, remember when he decided he wanted everyone to have a house and they opened up this thing?
He created a whole class of people who are now forever indebted, like, are slaves to a mortgage for the rest of their lives.
They'll never get out of that.
Almost like the same kind of thing with student loans, right?
But for the most part, students, I think, do get out from under it.
It might take them 20 years, but they do.
These houses, no, you can speak from experience.
I like thinking that maybe I'll get out of my student loans within 20 years.
That's almost utopic at this point.
But I will say, I think you're right about the economy.
I think what we're gonna see out of Trump is he's going to realize that all of this talk about white supremacy is not a winning hand for him.
They're probably gonna try and push everybody back to work.
You know, to help the economy, to help his election chances.
They're going to push people out there and we're going to see basically every red state, which, by the way, are just running hot with coronavirus right now.
And they're all still pushing reopening, even though I think Arkansas and Arizona and Texas are just being ate up by this thing.
They're still going to push reopening because they're going to try and get this thing back together.
And by the way, if people are jobs, they're not protesting.
And so you're going to see a bunch of that.
And I really think that's the next move, unless he's that stupid.
And he is stupid.
So maybe he's stupid enough to go down this and think it's a winner for him.
But if you think Donald Trump getting out every day and talking about race and white supremacy is a winner, then you don't deserve your paycheck.
And I just want to say real fast, going back on this, because I want to end this on a note of hope.
You brought up a few good men.
Think about before Jessup admits that he did what he did, right?
These movies, it's all about rising tension, right?
It's all about, oh my God, I think all is lost.
I don't think anything's gonna happen here.
I'm so scared.
I think this is going badly.
And it builds and builds and builds until it crescendos.
That's what happens with revolutions.
It just, the state does not give up easily, and people in power don't give up easily, and fascists don't give up easily.
It's gonna be frightening and worrisome, but there's hope.
Do you remember what happens to the two people he's defending, though, and a few good men?
Those two guys end up getting prosecuted anyway for listening to these orders.
And even though it was confusing to one of them, it still is the reality that they followed an order they shouldn't have.
So there's all sorts of hope tinged with concern that will hopefully continue to get better on the hope side, but I don't know.
I think I'm going to be on pins and needles for the next five months.
Revolutions are messy, my friend.
Revolutions are messy.
All right, everyone.
Thank you so much again for joining us.
Again, I know I've been saying this lately, but it remains true.
Your support has just been so awesome.
Just so many people sending out kindness and telling people about this podcast.
We're growing by leaps and bounds.
We depend on you.
As always, people keep asking if we, you know, take donations or whatever.
We don't want donations.
Tell people about the podcast.
Like, subscribe, share, comment.
All that stuff actually does help.
We are growing an audience, we're growing a base, and we are so grateful for all of you.
Until next time, if you want to follow us, Nick is at CanYouHearMeSMH.
I am at J.Y.
Sexton.
Hopefully no emergency podcast over the weekend.
Hopefully all hell doesn't break loose.
Fingers crossed.
Knock on wood.
Please be safe out there, everyone.
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