How American Exceptionalism Turned Into Ugly Americanism
With covid-19 interrupting Major League Baseball and ravaging America, co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the role of the myth of American Exceptionalism in exacerbating the crisis, as well as the authoritarian fascists in the country looking to take advantage of the problem. In an exclusive interview, Nick gets to talk with Erwin Chemerisnky, Dean of UC-Berkeley's Dean of the Law School, about the legality of President Donald Trump's actions.
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There's been a COVID-19 outbreak among the Miami Marlins.
It is a crisis obviously unwelcome, not totally unanticipated in today's world.
These kids have got to get back to school.
They're at the lowest risk possible.
And if they do get COVID-19, which they will, and they will when they go to school, they're not going to the hospitals.
They're not going to have to send doctors off for days.
They're going to go home, and they're going to get over it.
Hey, everybody.
Welcome to the Muckrake podcast.
I am Nick Hauselmann.
And as always, I'm joined by Jared Yates Sexton.
And we got a lot to talk about today.
First off, don't miss coming up a little bit later in the pod.
I had the chance to interview Erwin Chemerinsky, who is the dean of the law school at UC Berkeley.
It's a terrific interview and it's amazing to be able to have like an encyclopedia of law to just answer your questions straight away.
He does a great job.
So make sure you wait and stay tuned for that one.
But let's talk about the show because there's some interesting news today on the Miami Marlins of the Major League Baseball have 14 players that tested positive for COVID.
Two games canceled already today and it kind of just gives a new meaning to the phrase, let's play two today.
Wouldn't you say Jared?
It's just awful, man.
I'll say so, you know, just to put all the cards on the table.
I'm a big baseball fan, and I've just loved being able to watch baseball over the past couple days, even though it's been like weirdly disturbing to watch like on Fox.
I don't know if anybody has seen it, but they have like virtual fans in the stands who are just sort of like, they inhabit that uncanny valley.
You know what I mean?
Where you just look at them and react in sheer terror.
I've also felt weirdly guilty watching these games because I love baseball and my god did I miss it.
But I also watch it knowing that these games probably should not be taking place.
knowing that they probably are not safe and they're endangering the players that I really enjoy and I root for.
Today this hit me really hard.
And it hit me really hard not just for my own complicity in it.
By the way, I looked around the country and I just saw that the MAAC mid-major conference has cancelled all of its fall sports.
In the Big Ten, which is one of the major Power Five conferences, they're only going to play within their own conference and they're talking about possibly cancelling their season.
Everyone is now talking about the multi-millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars, that this would cost institutions of higher education.
And then meanwhile, we have just absolutely deluded ourselves into a state of this idea of American exceptionalism that has not only made the pandemic worse, but just laughably worse.
You know what I mean?
Like it's really gotten us to a point where we believed for a lot of different reasons that like this thing was going to get under control or our leadership was going to deal with it that somebody somewhere was going to figure it out whether that was Trump if you want to believe that or Fauci if you want to throw your lot in with him and instead it is just this never-ending replicating problem.
And when I saw this come down about the Marlins and about baseball, it was just, it was hubris.
It was absolute hubris to try and restart this season.
It's absolute hubris and insanity to sit here and pretend that we're going to have a college football season that feels normal, or even that we should because it's turned into a cash factory for these universities.
I think we're getting a real hard look at how false the myth of American exceptionalism Well, you know, you can call it hubris.
You can call it greed because, again, this is all motivated by money.
They want their billions of dollars from the network so they can play.
That's what they want to play football.
all were with that mythology and that propaganda.
And I think we're getting a really ugly look at it right now.
Well, you know, you can call it hubris.
You can call it greed.
Because again, this is all motivated by money.
They want their billions of dollars from the networks.
That's why they want to play football.
They got to have students on campus to play the football to get the millions of dollars, the billions of dollars.
And that is really where it gets troubling.
Because I don't know if people really want to admit how greedy we are as Americans.
That's, you know, how motivated by money.
The American dream used to sort of mean some sort of noble ideology, but it really, what is it really saying?
You're going to go and get your money and you're going to be able to just spend it the way you want to and not have anybody get in the way and make you do something you don't want to do.
I'm old enough to remember a European vacation Where they explored, if you will, the ugly American phenomenon as they're traveling across Europe and in France, and you can see how they're treated and considered.
And it used to be sort of a joke, oh, we're all the old ugly Americans when we're out of the country.
But I kind of feel like that's the truth.
And that's really what's being borne out now in a deadly, serious way, is that the ugly Americanism that has existed for all this time has turned in on itself.
And it's directly leading to the horrible conditions that we're living under now with COVID.
It's really a fascinating thing.
You know, I spent a lot of time criticizing and analyzing politics around me and what's happening in the world.
I want to turn it inward for a second.
I want to talk about my own dealing with who I am and how I've had to look at my own privilege.
First things first.
I'm a sports fan.
I always have been.
Like, some of my greatest memories are sports memories.
You know, whether it was watching baseball with my grandpa as a kid, or going to games with my friends, or watching the Cubs win the 2016 World Series.
But I want to point something out.
That so much about what we're talking about, that ugly Americanism, is about this idea that this country, for whatever reason, is about the luxury of not being able to think about things.
You know what I mean?
Like just being able to sort of let it out.
So like for years, and by the way, I'm not going to shame anybody listening who likes football, but I can tell you personally, I had to sit with what I thought about football.
I used to love it.
I played it, you know, when I was in high school, I loved it.
It ruined parts of my body, but I still loved it.
You know, I sustained a couple of concussions.
I've still got injuries that still linger from playing football.
Meanwhile, I knew what the sport was like.
I still kept consuming it.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, I heard these CTE stories.
I, you know, I witnessed some of my heroes just become shells of themselves later on.
And meanwhile, what did I want to do?
I wanted to sit there on a Sunday and drink a beer and not have to think about it.
You know what I mean?
Like, keep politics out of it.
Play the sports or whatever.
And on top of that, I was really into college football.
I'm a college professor.
I deal with students all the time.
I love my students.
I want the best for them.
And yet, meanwhile, there were parts of my life where I was rooting for college students who weren't getting paid to go out on a field and put their lives on the line.
The thing about the pandemic, and the CTE scandal sort of put this in perspective, but I think the pandemic is putting it much more in perspective.
It's insane that we have operated like this.
It is, and we just brought up something like you just said, the millions of dollars, the billions of dollars.
Why is higher education tied to any of this?
Do you know what I mean?
That's just the level of it, right?
And it just brings up the insanity of it.
But also, let's talk about the fact that we're watching human beings right now be put in danger, and we're pretending as if the pandemic's not happening.
And it's not just that.
It's schools, Nick.
We're getting ready to put children in danger.
We're getting ready to bring tens of thousands.
At my school, it's going to be 20,000 people from around the country who are just going to converge on my small college town.
We're not ready for it.
Colleges really aren't ready for this thing.
And the pandemic is not just not under control, it's growing, Nick.
It's growing every single Day and for whatever reason, people are still caught up in the delusion that for whatever reason, America will work and things are just going to get fixed.
But guess what?
Sometimes things don't get fixed.
Sometimes countries don't come back.
Sometimes countries fall apart and this is this is the sad truth.
It's a wake up call and we have to look in the mirror.
You know, the Governor of Missouri, Governor Mike Parson, was quoted as saying, quote, these kids have to go back to school.
And if they do get COVID-19, which they will, and they will when they go to school, they're not going to the hospitals.
They're going to go home and they're going to get over it.
We've been talking about this, and I've been railing about this for a long time, how the Republicans live in this bubble where you can't, it doesn't exist that you can transfer and transmit this disease asymptomatically.
They refuse to acknowledge that that could happen.
They refuse to acknowledge that the teachers could get sick, and the parents could get sick, and anybody else working in the school could get sick.
And by the way, There's enough kids who have gotten sick seriously that you couldn't possibly say that with a straight face and have any credibility left.
Yet that seems to be resonating a little bit.
And I've also said this, and I don't know what the pushback has been as far as when I was saying that Trump must think politically that these suburban moms want to get their damn brats out of their hair for a few hours in the day, and they'll be more than happy to get them into school.
And that's such a complete and utter falsity.
And we know that those moms care about their kids more than anybody else.
And we know that Trump wouldn't give a shit about his kids.
And so that's probably how he feels.
And it's now, in the way Trump's been talking recently, it is completely clear that that's his triangulation politically on this one.
So it really is-- He said it.
He said it the other day.
He literally said suburban moms in a tweet.
Because somebody had said... By the way, real fast, can you read that?
Quote one more time.
Sure.
This is a quote from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, quoted by Governor Mike Parson.
These kids have got to get back to school.
And if they do get COVID-19, which they will, and they will when they go to school, they're not going to the hospitals.
They're going to go home, and they're going to get over it.
Doesn't that make you nauseous?
Like, really.
Like, somebody who is in control of a state.
Somebody who has risen up the ranks of power could say that.
And, by the way, not immediately go, hey, by the way, let me rethink what I just said.
Let me restate that.
Let me say this a little bit clearer.
I mean, you know, this is something that got put out there.
It is... Wait, do you want to... just picture in your mind what a person like this looks like.
Right.
This would be an old white guy with the silver hair who, you know, I mean, it's like it's, you know, Trump like central casting.
This is right out of central casting here where a guy has no conception of anyone else's life and how that functions, which.
And we're going to have to bring up, you know, what's going on with the unemployment insurance because it ties into this as well.
But continue on.
Well, a big part of this.
And by the way, I'm glad you brought up the person who's doing this and sort of the profile.
There's so much of a general generational disdain in this.
Right.
We have older white people who are telling younger generations, well, I put up with a bunch of bullshit.
You have to put up with a bunch of bullshit.
Like these are people who, you know, some of them grew up with polio.
Some of them grew up with other things that, you know, they had to see eradicated or whatever, or they had to live impoverished or whatever.
And that is, by the way, the essence of that party.
Is that they're like, guess what?
Everybody has to go through a bunch of bullshit and you're going to have to go through yours.
You need to suffer.
And that's part of why they write all these columns about, you know, these pampered kids at school or free speech or cancel culture or whatever.
They just, they want everybody to be as miserable as they were, right?
They never want any sort of progress.
They never want anyone to be safer than they were or have anything better than them.
Which, by the way, I would argue is antithetical of a liberal democracy.
We're supposed to be continually improving, right?
Like, the reason why people go to war is in order to make life better for future generations that don't have to go to war, which is something that these people lose sight of.
I just, I'm so stunned.
I've heard this quote, I've read this quote probably 15 times.
Hearing you just read it again, it literally made me nauseous.
Like, in order to think that.
And how many people around the country right now have that mindset?
Yeah, the kids are going to get sick and they're going to take their diseases home, right?
And that sort of brutality, that inhuman quality is what we're talking about.
I want to get back to my life.
I want to go back to my job.
We need to get the economy running.
And as a result, let's just sacrifice people.
But by the way, real fast, Nick, because you want to bring up that unemployment stuff.
We don't have to do it like this.
It does not have to work this way.
That's not the conversation that we need to be having in this country because we could have a conversation about changing our economy for the near future.
Which, by the way, everybody that I've talked to who is an expert, it sounds like they think the next year, year and a half, we're going to be affected by this.
Right?
It's not going to just, I don't know, go away like a miracle.
It's not going to disappear one night.
So what should we do?
And by the way, I want people to think about Buildings in California.
Buildings in California are built to withstand earthquakes.
Because earthquakes are possible.
Right?
They're a probability.
How many earthquakes have you had in the past year, would you say?
How many have you felt, Nick?
Oh, it's been pretty quiet, believe it or not, in LA.
Like, I don't know if you've felt one.
So we're ready to do it.
You just jinxed it.
God damn it.
That just... Listen, as a person who grew up on, like, all kinds of, like, supernatural shit, like, I just got a little worried for you.
You know what this is like?
This is like when you're in the middle of a perfect game, a pitcher's throwing, and then you clear it up.
I just... I ruined it.
I ruined it.
Yeah, we're going to be broadcasting next week, and Nick is going to be broadcasting from the island of California is what's going to happen.
But no, in a state where there are a bunch of earthquakes, you start building buildings to withstand earthquakes, right?
You're like, okay, this is a thing that happens.
We need to build a society, and by the way, these pandemics, this isn't the only one we're going to get.
Like, we're going, we're bulldozing forests.
We're taking over environments.
We have a lot more vicinity with animals, factory farming and all these unsafe practices, the using of resources.
We're going to have more.
So, we shouldn't just be sacrificing kids and saying survival of the fittest.
We should be creating an economy that can withstand this and is humane.
But if we have that conversation, guess what?
We have to talk about the economy.
And we have to start changing it.
And there's a lot of wealthy, powerful people who don't even want to start a dialogue about how to change the economy.
Well, I think it's also the credibility of politicians.
And I think that there is this one sect of people that don't think that leaders have much influence on people.
Like, I think a lot of people who are thinking that this is nothing and it's all a hoax for the pandemic and whatever, they must think, oh, well, politicians don't have much control over me.
I'm a free thinker.
However, they're very quick to attack the left, for instance, and say how much they're lying.
CNN's lying.
And then, you know, the politicians are lying.
So it's this weird dichotomy that they get trapped in, and it's fomented by the right-wing Republicans because they don't think that they're sheep and that they're following, but they are even more sheep-like than anybody on the left would be because at least it feels to me when you speak to enough people who are progressives, but they are even more sheep-like than anybody on the left would be because at least it feels to me when you speak
And it's amazing to see how their radar could be so attuned to any kind of lie or falsity that maybe the left might say or a politician on the Democratic side might say but then simply cannot turn that radar anywhere else in the direction of the people that they're following.
It's an interesting phenomena, and it's taken decades to take hold, but this is one of the bigger reasons why we're having the spread as well.
I want to talk about how deep that goes.
That, not just...
Because some people will call it brainwashing.
And certainly right-wing media has had an effect on the people who watch it.
They have put them in an alternate reality.
I want to talk about the personal belief in it.
The personal drive to believe despite all contradicting evidence in the world.
People are watching their family members get sick.
They're losing people to it.
They live, and by the way we're talking about like Trump supporters, they're living in small towns where the nursing homes are just being decimated.
You know what I mean?
Like it's just left and right.
They're losing people.
They would still rather put their children in harm's way than start to believe that somehow or another powerful people above them have lied to them.
That's how deep that goes.
And I want to talk for a second, if people haven't already, there was a really, I think, disturbing article in the Washington Post.
Nick and I were talking about it earlier.
It starts off by asking a question, which is, why doesn't Donald Trump do more to fight the coronavirus?
And I keep telling people, Trump is not going to fight the coronavirus.
He has no interest in it.
He has no interest in using government to help people.
He only wants to dismantle government as an impediment to corruption and personal profit and power.
That's it.
He's not going to use the government to help anyone.
So just stop asking that question.
But there was an anecdote in there, a quote, which is that Trump wasn't paying any attention to the coronavirus whatsoever.
And one of the reasons we've now got these briefings, we've got this quote-unquote new tone, which is bullshit.
Is somebody said to him the coronavirus is starting to affect quote-unquote our people.
Now our people means Trump supporters, Trump voters, people in red states all of that.
Now, I want to tell you, Donald Trump is not worried about his voters.
He's not empathic towards his voters.
Nick, why would Trump be worried about, quote-unquote, our people?
So he can stay out of prison.
And how would he stay out of prison?
By winning the election in November.
It's by winning an election.
It's not a personal attachment.
The people who are under the spell of people like Trump and right-wing media need to realize they are as expendable as everyone else.
He will kill people in blue states, which by the way, I've argued on here that it has bordered on and traipsed into genocide.
He's actually held life-saving devices away from blue states and people who didn't vote for him.
It's political genocide.
He doesn't care about you any more than he cares about them.
He only cares about your ability to keep him in power.
Everything he does, he poisons your water, he poisons your air, he makes sure that the things you put in your home are less safe and more dangerous.
He doesn't care about you.
He only cares about himself.
And the faster you learn that, the safer you and your children are going to be.
Jared, do you think that they practice trickle-down voting?
I kind of feel like, because we talk about trickle-down economics, which is basically, and it's pejorative, but it's basically the term for, let's give all the money to the wealthy people, and then eventually that money will get down to the less fortunate people.
It's their religion, basically, and it doesn't work.
I wonder... I would argue it's not pejorative.
I would argue it's imaginative and a lie, which is they never plan on it to trickle down.
It's just throw it at the top.
It's redistribution of wealth to the top.
But I hear you.
Yes.
Yeah.
So I almost feel like I'm always looking for patterns here.
And it feels like there is this notion that like, again, they don't give a crap about anybody who's poor.
You know, they're never going to enact any kind of legislation or any programs that will actually help people get out of those situations.
Wait, but Nick, the Republican Party is working right now to help people with unemployment.
Oh no, that's right!
They're cutting unemployment!
They're slashing unemployment.
And let's get to this because they're also spreading the welfare queen ideology, which was such a nefarious philosophy in the 80s when that took hold, that they sort of think that people are now going to take the $600 a week versus getting a job.
But newsflash, there are no jobs.
They're losing millions of jobs every month, though there are no jobs to get.
And I have to tell you, it's easy for these people to sort of envision Whatever this racist thing is of like these black people sitting on couches and just watching TV all day collecting welfare checks when in fact there's never been a study that the studies are the opposite.
They prove that these don't take people's motivation away from wanting a job.
People have pride.
They want to work.
They actually want to work for the money they make.
This in an extraordinary circumstance is actually almost a godsend for a lot of people who So believe it or not in this country a huge section of people live 95% of their income is is Exactly what they need to pay to live on, you know, the rent and and bills, right?
They don't have any discretionary funds.
So to have all of a sudden a little bit of relief where they can pay some of their outstanding debts is like a godsend.
And now they're going to cut it off.
Right.
You know, cold turkey this month and and not really replace it with much else besides that.
And then expect them to go get these imaginary jobs.
It is it's just it's unheard of how it's certainly unheard of.
It's ridiculous how how unempathetic The entire party is.
And that's what's so frustrating when you read these things because, again, it's not rooted in facts.
What the COVID-19 philosophy is they have is not rooted in facts.
This notion of what the poor class of a country, what their motivations are, is not motivated in fact either.
And it's just, it needs to end.
Once and for all, we need to get rid of these people who want to, you know, traipse in fantasy and conspiracy and not look at what the reality is.
So watching this Congress, and particularly the Republican Party, makes me feel stupid.
Makes me feel hazy, Nick.
It's so hard to... So I'm just going to ask you a couple of questions.
If you could bring me back to the shore, if you could.
What happens with populations when they don't have enough money and they don't have the means to live their lives?
What ends up happening with crime and breaking of the law?
Oh, it goes up big time.
Wait, but why would that happen?
Because the Republican Party is so pro-law enforcement, and they're so strong on that.
It's weird that they would make things like that happen, isn't it?
Yeah, well, no.
I mean, listen, it's a radical idea that the better people do, and the more money they make, and the more jobs they can have, and the better jobs, and the better benefits, it's amazing how crime just, like COVID-19, just disappears.
Man, it's also weird because the conversation we're having right now is about a paranoia that people of color are going to be more dangerous than anyone else, which is part of white supremacist paranoia, and one of the reasons why we have a police state and mass incarceration, and also led to things like, you know, the Confederacy and violence in all kinds of moments of civil rights.
But weirdly enough, it turns out that when white people don't have money and don't have jobs, it turns out that white men in particularly, let me check my notes, that's right, they're more likely to become radicalized and violent and dangerous, which I don't know if you saw it or if our audience saw it, but there was a report that came out that said that right-wing White terrorism is one of the more violent threats to the country.
By the way, real fast, real quick question.
Did I have that, Nick?
Did I have that in prior episodes?
Did I predict that?
I believe I did.
More than once.
Okay, listen, I'm a Hoosier.
It's really hard for me to take a win.
I'm just going to take a quick win.
That's all I'm going to do.
It is the major threat facing the country.
Okay, so what happens if, let's say, the Republican Party torpedoes any sort of unemployment checks?
Any sort of support, and all of a sudden you have a bunch of white people who are already amped up on white supremacist paranoia.
They're watching Plandemic around the clock, right, and getting pissed off at Fauci and the Democrats and liberals.
By the way, they're probably already sharing QAnon bullshit, because I can tell you everybody I'm following and looking out for, they're diving deep into the QAnon fascistic bullshit.
Oh, hey, hey, Jesse Waters apologized for giving him a weird shoutout.
Isn't it weird that this stuff starts on the fringes, and then it moves in, and then it moves in, and then it moves in, and then all of a sudden it gets mentioned on Fox?
It's really weird how that happens.
And then all of a sudden, I don't know, QAnon people are in Congress.
So anyway, we start taking away those people's benefits.
They have no opportunity whatsoever to go to work.
Like you said, people want to go to work.
They want to have direction for their lives.
They want to have pride in what they're doing.
Well, guess where they find pride?
They find pride in extremist groups, they find pride in violence, feeling like they are larger than their own shame, and they find pride within radicalization.
So, is there a possibility that we could be on a powder keg where all this stuff is going to add up to not just crime, But actual violence?
Absolutely there is.
Jared, 1933 Germany just called.
They want their sentences back.
No!
Nick!
Time out!
Are you telling me that Nazi Germany in the Third Reich was in part powered by a Depression-era group of young men who had nothing else to do and were insecure and so they threw their lot into fascism?
Because if you're going to tell me that, I don't know if I can continue recording.
Jared, are you sitting down?
Wait, what?
I want to make sure you're sitting down when I tell you that.
Time out!
Wait, time out!
If you tell me that that is also what happened in Italy...
Sure.
Under Mussolini, where a strong man who stood up and said, I have a promise for you and you men are going to be strong under me, the ones who can't find jobs and can't find a purpose.
If you tell me that the basis of fascism is insecure white men who can't find jobs or purpose in their lives, I might have to walk away, Nick.
Shut up!
There's no way that there is a through line that could possibly connect to America because we are exceptional, Nick.
There's no way that we are teetering on the precipice of an authoritarian fascism that could possibly take this country into an abyss.
I refuse to believe it even though the facts tell me that that is the case.
They're going to ramp up federal troops.
This is Trump's own words now.
He's going to ramp up.
He's going to do a surge of troops.
In fact, I believe they use the word surge.
This is like Iraq kind of phrasing.
And then we have Trump even calling the moms.
We have moms who are standing in a line in a beautiful, peaceful image.
Then we have the veterans who are coming in and standing in front of them in Portland, making a stand.
And he's calling these people, what is the word, illegitimate?
He's calling them a sham Trump.
He went on a bender yesterday, I'm telling you, on Twitter.
It was crazy, 40, 50 plus.
And the only thing I get worried about is that I don't think people recognize how influential he is.
He really, he is a leader for however, you know, you want to classify him.
And these ideas and these words mean something.
And I feel like even the people who are most affected by it don't even necessarily have the reflection to understand that, but they are.
It would be bad enough if it was Trump alone, but I want to give people a little bit of history here and bring this around because we got to talk about Tom Cotton in a second, but I just want to focus on our good friend Dan Crenshaw, who went on Fox & Friends today and he said, No!
that Antifa has uniforms, and yes, they exist.
You can call them anarcho-fascist communists.
Which, by the way, Nick, I don't know how much you know about the rise of fascism.
Do fascists and communists get along?
No.
One of the defining characteristics of fascism is that they hate communists and that they are fighting versus how governments should work.
And they are natural antagonists towards each other.
But he says, in any case, they're basically a domestic terrorist organization.
What do you do with domestic terrorists, Nick?
What do you do with them?
Yeah.
What do you do with them?
You're supposed to, you know, arrest them.
You're supposed to arrest them and possibly execute them if they're traitors to the country.
Well, we have people like Dan Crenshaw who, by the way, are following right in line.
And we've talked about this on the podcast multiple times.
If you ask Donald Trump to explain fascism to you, I assume you wouldn't even come near an answer.
He intuits it, right?
It's instinctual.
He's an authoritarian by who he is.
I'll tell you who gets it.
Dan Crenshaw.
And Tom Cotton.
Because these are people who are engaged in a white identity fascism that is based on trying to raise up exactly what we're talking about.
You have Crenshaw spewing that bullshit, which I tweeted about this earlier.
It's a choose-your-own-adventure white supremacy paranoia.
Right.
Choose whatever upsets you the most and you want to grab your gun and go out and shoot somebody in the streets.
Which, by the way, I don't know if you saw, Louisville arrested a couple of right-wingers who are up on top of buildings with long guns dressed in fatigues who were just aiming at protesters.
So, not that that's going to boil over.
Meanwhile, we got good old Tom Cotton who's become a favorite of the Muckrake Podcast.
Let's just... I mean, he's become... He's really... Let's talk about this for a second.
He's seizing the moment, is he not?
He knows what he wants.
He knows where he wants to go.
And he's gonna get there, Nick.
He's gonna figure it out, come hell or high water.
who came out this week in an interview with the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.
And he comes out and he makes a stand, Nick.
He decides he's going to draw that line in the sand because he's all upset, of course, about teaching the actual history of America and about slavery and what's happened.
And he, of course, goes out and he says that slavery is a necessary evil in creating the United States of America, which we can talk about and we can argue about, but these people are not being subtle about who they are.
They are not even pretending anymore that they're a legitimate political organization.
They are a fascist movement and they are embracing it wholeheartedly.
It gets worse, though, because we have to pull apart a couple of things he said, but not even four days ago, he already is introducing a bill that will forbid schools from teaching about slavery, basically.
He wants to discredit the Season 19 project.
As if it didn't happen, or that's not really the way we're supposed to be teaching American history.
And this is a Pulitzer Prize winning piece of journalism that really dove deep in a way that we hadn't really read before.
But Nick, it talks about African American experience, so it has to be bad, right?
It looks at American history through a lens that most people aren't comfortable with, so it has to be bad, right?
Listen, I said that before, but I kind of want to maybe say that even more clearly now.
The reason why we need to understand why these things happened and why they were bad in the past, not so we can shit all over the country and feel bad about the United States, it's motivation to continue to try and strive towards the ideals that the Constitution stood for, of which the second it was signed was already failing in what they described.
The second it was signed.
It was a PR job.
It was a PR job from the very beginning.
They took Jefferson's ideals of democracy, freedom, and equality and shoved it into a document that was weaponized inequality.
So yeah, no, it completely contradicted itself from the very beginning.
And these assholes, like Tom Cotton, want to stand in front of it.
And why?
Because if we actually work towards those principles, That would probably hurt the powerful and the wealthy, would it not?
Because they have built their power and their wealth based on weaponized inequality.
So if we even start having that conversation, whether it's about coronavirus, unemployment, making a humane economy, or changing our history, it hurts them.
They know that they cannot succeed, particularly the Republican Party cannot succeed if we actually talk about reality.
Do you know what really helps and makes capitalism succeed in its purest form?
Do you know what really the most important part of this is?
Adam Smith would argue self-interest, but I think Adam Smith can go to hell.
And so I would make an argument that it would be actual competition between people.
How about fair competition?
Fairness across the board?
Actual fair.
I talked about this last night on the livestream and somebody asked me real fast, I want to get this on the record, on the podcast.
I've brought up hypercapitalism a lot, and people want a definition of it.
Hypercapitalism is when it's not capitalism anymore.
The idea of capitalism is a free market where everybody can compete with each other, right?
They hold each other in check.
Hypercapitalism is when a powerful and wealthy few start to damn off capitalism.
They start to control it to the point where it's not fair anymore, and they destroy competitors, and they start owning politicians, and they stop thinking about human beings.
Which is where we're at!
So you're exactly right.
We're not even talking about the idea of Adam Smith.
Although I'm sure Adam Smith would be super-ass excited about hypercapitalism, right?
He would probably write the first book about it if he was still alive and, you know, menacing human beings.
But this whole idea that we've got right here?
They love it!
They love this idea!
They're not actually capitalists.
They're not actually about free markets.
These people love Hoarding the power and the wealth for themselves and they will do anything to destroy it including and especially embracing fascism.
Yes, which an offshoot is would be disenfranchising poor people and attacking the post office.
Now, what we're also seeing... That's number two on how to get to fascism.
You attack the post office.
Yeah, I mean, seriously, like, you know, that... I agree!
If there was ever a symbol of, like, free and fairness and, like, you know, very inexpensive way to send a very reliable messages across the country... Wait!
This was it.
Not just reliable.
Private.
You have privacy if you use the U.S.
Postal Service.
You have relative privacy if you're not sending like bad materials or like something that's threatening.
Guess what you don't have with a private enterprise?
Privacy.
Right.
They don't have to go through that type of thing.
And on top of that, yeah, no, you're exactly right.
You erode democratic institutions one by one.
That's what the Republican Party has been doing.
They've been knocking over dominoes everywhere they can find them.
I love that you went to the post office, though.
I love that that was number two on that list.
That's great.
Well, here's the prediction.
You know, they say that you have to have your ballot postmarked, you know, seven days before the election and no later than that.
But they were also finding out that it takes more than seven days now to send the thing, to get it into the post office and get it postmarked or whatever that is.
I'm sorry, delivered by then.
So they're actually encouraging you to submit it late, knowing that it's not going to get there in time and be counted.
This is going to get ugly and it's going to get worse.
Believe me, we're going to have, we'll be laughing at whatever we mentioned in this podcast, how bad it was and what things are doing with Tom Cotton and his stuff.
It's going to get 10 times worse between now and November.
Guaranteed.
What a shit show this election is going to be.
But I would be remiss if I didn't use this as a way to segue to mention to everybody that we are getting ready to start offering More premium content.
We're going to open up a Patreon at the beginning of August where we're going to have live coverage of the conventions, post-debate coverage, and election coverage.
Which, if you want to hang out with us while we sit here and chew our fingernails to the nub, As we watch election returns come in and as democracy hangs in the balance.
Look into that if you want more information of that.
And by the way, we've had such amazing feedback on this and we've had so many people coming out of the woodwork.
We are so grateful to all of you.
Shoot us a quick email over at muckrakepodcast at gmail.com.
We'll get you on a newsletter and keep you up to date on things.
We'll have more information in the next couple of weeks, but You're absolutely right.
This thing is going to get really ugly, really fast.
And I keep telling people, and they need to keep this in mind, fascists do not give up power easily.
And do you know what they don't like?
Elections.
They really, really hate elections.
And these guys in particular have shown an antipathy towards the idea of democracy from the very beginning.
So we're looking at the possibility of things getting incredibly hairy over the next couple months, which I, my prediction, The next couple of weeks, probably the next two to four weeks, are going to get batshit crazy.
And it's not just because of troops, it's going to be Trump angling for more and more support as his polls go down and as COVID gets worse.
So the next month, I think, is going to be absolutely crucial and it's going to get really hairy real fast.
And don't forget, the number one thing I think that fascists hate, aside from elections, is laws.
Communists.
What they do with laws is they take laws, they destroy them, and then they rewrite them.
That way they can have their fascism ingrained in the law.
Which, by the way, is what you're seeing with Barr, right?
He's completely perverting the legal system and turning it into something new and moving it around.
No, you're absolutely right.
They hate laws.
Right.
And so with that in mind, we were really lucky to be able to have the Dean of the Law School at University of California, Berkeley, a very smart guy, an encyclopedia of knowledge, Erwin Chemerinsky, who's going to come on the show in a minute.
And I had a chance to really sit down and just ask him a whole lot of questions.
A lot of the things I'm sure people are really, were always questioning and wondering, just how legal are these things?
And what does the Constitution say?
And even more importantly, how radical Two questions before we move to that interview.
violating these laws.
Is that some crazy fantasy that some random law professor has?
Or is there a standard across the country that these really smart people all feel he's violating? - Two questions before we move to that interview.
One, how lawful are they? - Not very.
Not very.
And by the way, is this a crackpot conspiracy theorist?
Is he putting on the tin hats with us?
Who is this again?
Yeah, he's a dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley.
We're talking about one of the top law schools.
That's not a great school, right?
It's pretty good.
Berkeley?
Yeah, Berkeley.
Cal.
You see Berkeley?
The Bears.
That doesn't ring a bell.
Wait, are you telling me that this is a reputable school and somebody who's coming on this podcast from a reputable school in a high position?
Is that what you're telling me right now?
Listen, I made him verify himself because I asked him and you'll hear the thing.
I said, do you talk to other deans and other scholars across the country?
Because I wanted to make sure that he wasn't just a radical tin hat guy.
And that what he was telling me was some consensus.
And in fact, yes, I'm sure he's very conservative in his views on what laws they're breaking and not breaking.
I can't wait for this interview.
Let's do it.
I can't wait either.
So here it comes.
Hey, everybody.
Welcome back to the Muckrake Podcast.
I am honored to welcome on the show today Erwin Chemerinsky, who is Dean and Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.
Dean Chemerinsky, thank you so much for joining us.
I can't thank you enough.
It's my pleasure.
Delighted to do it.
Well, I'm glad that you're here because we do a lot of political analysis here and what it means in the context of the history of our country.
But we don't often have somebody who can really give us the deep insight into what the actual Constitution says about these things.
So what's on everyone's minds, and I think what's not clear, is exactly what are the ramifications of sending federal troops into local communities to enforce You have to start with the basic principle that the federal government, including the president, can act only if there's constitutional or statutory authority.
So let's talk about what the president can and can't do with regard to law enforcement.
President could do is invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807, which would allow him to send troops into cities if they're such a threat to enforcing federal constitutional rights that there's no alternative.
President Trump has not invoked the Insurrection Act of 1807.
It was used in 1958 by President Eisenhower to desegregate the Little Rock schools.
It was used by President George H.W.
Bush in 1992 when there were riots in Los Angeles.
But it's not being used here.
Another possibility is the president can have federal law enforcement enforce federal laws.
The FBI can enforce the federal laws against kidnapping or bank robbery.
ICE can enforce federal immigration laws.
And so if what these federal law enforcement personnel were doing is protecting federal property from destruction, then that would be constitutional.
The problem is what we're hearing and seeing on video is protesters being rounded up miles from any federal building.
And President Trump's saying that what this is about is bringing law and order to these cities and stopping these protests.
That has nothing to do with enforcing federal law.
What the president can't do, the president can't enforce state and local law.
The Constitution is clear that the federal government doesn't have the police power and cannot exercise that authority.
Yet that seems to be exactly what President Trump says is going on here.
Also, the president can't authorize violations of the First Amendment.
What we've seen on video and heard accounts of is peaceful protesters being rounded up by the police and that violates the First Amendment.
We've seen pictures of Border Patrol agents Sending out canisters of tear gas and shooting projectiles to scatter protesters.
That violates the First Amendment.
President Trump has said he's focusing on these cities that have, quote, liberal democratic mayors.
That's a violation of the First Amendment.
Also, the president can't authorize violations of the Fourth Amendment.
When these law enforcement officers are arresting people without probable cause, that violates the Fourth Amendment.
Well, let's dive into that one because this is the laundry list for possible violations of law.
And the Fourth Amendment, it deals with legal search and seizure and any probable cause.
So it seems like there's analysis out there that when we've seen the videos of these, basically they're not marked as police.
They might have a little patch that says police, but we don't really, they certainly don't look like any police I've ever seen.
Is there any burden on them to appear as Custom is that police officers are identified in terms of the department or level of government they work for.
LAPD, that's prominently displayed.
Chicago Police Department, that's prominently displayed.
FBI, it's prominently displayed.
Here, these were individuals in camouflage that simply said police, but no one knew who they were.
We heard from some of the people who were apprehended that they didn't know if this was vigilantes, right-wing groups apprehending them, let alone a part of the government.
And what about the fact that they're putting them into rented vans from Enterprise?
Again, it's part of the absurdity and the outrageousness of all of this.
The Constitution doesn't limit if a person's lawfully arrested what kind of card they're put into.
The key is, these are individuals who are not being lawfully arrested.
They're arrested without probable cause.
We know of instances of being taken to a federal building, being detained, given their Miranda rights.
In one instance, he said he invoked his right to a lawyer, and then they just let him go.
All of that violates the Fourth Amendment.
Um, now what about, so we had, the Fourth Amendment is this thing here.
The First Amendment obviously is the right, uh, free speech.
You should be able to peacefully assemble.
Although, let me make that clear.
Um, is, is that the First Amendment when you have the, the, the right to peacefully assemble as a protest?
Yes.
Okay.
So what we are seeing here is, okay, so I guess the other thing that we can talk about as far as the federal buildings go is, you know, there's some graffiti, right?
And there's some, some sort of, you know, things that maybe the normal police should be able to handle.
And I'm curious if, you know, we talked about the perimeter of a federal building and what that means.
Is that explicit at all about what they can protect and like how far they can leave that grounds to then enforce, you know, their mandate?
It's a question of reasonableness.
Federal police can enforce the federal law against destruction of federal property.
But when you see police rounding up people, blocks, And there is precedent to being able to use what he says to the press in a courtroom, right, to argue your point.
is protecting federal property.
Keep in mind too, President Trump doesn't put this in terms of protecting federal property.
President Trump says this is about ending protests and returning law and order. - Now, and there is precedent to being able to use what he says to the press in a courtroom, right, to argue your point, is that right? - I'm not sure I understand the question.
So if you were arguing this in front of a court, you would be able to submit as evidence what he's saying to us on TV?
Absolutely.
I mean, the question is, what are they doing?
What's their authority for being there?
And what better evidence of that than what the President of the United States declares?
So with the Insurrection Act, which is an interesting, you know, it's rare I think in these days when you have to talk about laws that are so old, and we can dive into a couple of those coming up.
Can you give us a little context of exactly why was that act written in the first place?
What was it really for?
It was written to deal with the possibility of an insurrection in the United States.
And there was the belief at the time that Aaron Burr might have been leading such an insurrection, especially in some of the new states, And the law was passed.
It's been modified and amended over the years.
Most recently, for example, after Hurricane Katrina, it gave the authority to send in troops after a natural disaster.
One part of it would allow state, local or specifically state governors, state legislatures to request federal military assistance.
But the governor of Oregon, the mayor of Portland, the mayor of Chicago are saying they don't want it.
So it would have to be the president invoking this.
In order for it to be used, the president will have to sign a proclamation.
The president will have to declare that he believes that in that state, it's impossible to protect federal constitutional rights without the presence of these troops.
President Trump has not attempted to use this authority.
So are you saying that it's as simple as him simply, I guess, filling out a form that does that proclamation and then they could go in there and just do it?
Well, if he issues such a proclamation, then he would have the authority to send the military in.
Of course, there'd be a challenge and argue that the predicate under the statute is that federal constitutional rights can't be protected without the presence of these troops and the mayor or the governor would certainly challenge that premise.
Okay.
And it seems like they're not interested in dealing with having, you know, uh, well, I guess they certainly are, have no problem being litigious, but it doesn't sound like they want to actually follow these rules.
And we've seen, it seems like time and time again in this administration where, uh, The 10th Amendment simply says state and local governments can do anything that's not prohibited by the Constitution, but the federal government can act only if there's constitutional authority.
part of this as well.
Am I correct in saying that?
Sure.
The 10th Amendment simply says state and local governments can do anything that's not prohibited by the Constitution, but the federal government can act only if there's constitutional authority.
The 10th Amendment says all powers not delegated in the United States, nor prohibited to the states, are reserved to the states and to the people respectively.
The reason it's relevant here is the 10th Amendment means that state and local governments have what's called the police power, but the federal government can act only if it can point to authority.
The president can act only if there's constitutional or statute of authority, and none exists for what he's doing here.
What do you think is so different between what Eisenhower did in the 50s and what Trump is trying to do right now?
So President Eisenhower called out troops to implement a Supreme Court decision for the desegregation of the Little Rock schools.
President Trump is using these troops to quell protests.
President Trump is doing so to help his own political message with regard to law and order.
Using troops for this political gain is totally different than Eisenhower did.
It's quite outrageous.
Is it safe to say that you probably are in contact with lots of scholars of the law across the country?
Yes.
Okay, and I ask that only because I'm kind of wondering just how radical is this idea that he probably should be stopped lawfully from doing these things?
I think there's overwhelming consensus that this is inappropriate.
In fact, two heads of Homeland Security and Republican administrations, Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff, Not liberals by any means, has said that this use of the border patrol and homeland security is outrageous.
Think about it.
The idea of an essentially secret police force commanded by the president to round up dissenters, that's not something we create with democracy.
That's what we think of as a dictatorship.
Isn't that supposed to, what are the checks and balances normally that would avoid having these things happen?
Well, I would have hoped that tradition and history would provide a guardrail here and keep it from happening.
No other president has ever done that.
And so I would hope that would keep any president from doing it.
But of course, this president has done many things that no other president has done.
The next guardrail is going to come from the courts.
Lawsuits have been filed in the courts to stop this, and I hope they succeed.
Congress will then pass laws that limit the ability of future presidents to do this.
Ah, well that's another good question we'll talk about in one second, but I do feel like there's a, the founding fathers must not have envisioned someone who would so completely ignore, I don't want to call them norms because that seems too, there's no teeth to that, but this notion of, you know, the president commanding citizens not to Yes.
I mean, even when there were impeachment inquiries of Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton, they had their aides comply with congressional subpoenas.
President Trump instructed them not to do so.
And by the way, it would have been as easy for them to show up and just say, I plead the fifth, or they don't need to actually answer the questions, right?
They can just show up.
Well, they can always show up.
They can plead the Fifth Amendment if what they would say had the potential for incriminating them.
Otherwise, the Fifth Amendment wouldn't apply.
Right.
But even still, wouldn't that sort of quell the notion of, like, ignoring a subpoena and, like, that would get rid of that legal barrier?
Right.
But time and again, in the examples you mention, or in diverting the funds to build the border wall after Congress refused, or this, President Trump has shown he has no respect or regard for the law.
So, now that we're here, and all the norms have been basically shattered, and I worry what's going to happen over the next several months, and you know, even in the lame duck session if he doesn't win, do you have any kind of like a laundry list of laws that we probably actually have to enact now to prevent this from happening in the future?
Well, there's talk, in fact a bill passed the House on Monday to limit the powers under the Insurrection Act.
I certainly think that Congress should pass a law limiting the ability of Homeland Security and the Border Patrol to engage in domestic law enforcement.
These are some things that we would have never thought were needed before, but now we see are essential.
Now, why didn't we need these before?
And why didn't it seem to matter in the past?
Because no president has tried to do what President Trump is doing.
No president has ever tried to use the Border Patrol and Homeland Security to stop protests in cities.
Is it fair to say that no president in the past would have tried that because they know they would be either A, impeached, or B, they'd just lose the election as soon as it came up?
I think no president would have done that before because no president thought that he had the authority to do it.
No president would have done it before because presidents thought that's inconsistent with the rule of law in a democratic society.
It's always stunning, this long into American history, to see when the president does something that no other president has done, especially one that so takes away rights in this way.
What do you think is going to happen?
I mean, there's lawsuits all over the place and they've been able to slow some of this stuff down environmentally.
I mean, they almost were able to slow down the ban on the Muslim ban, but it doesn't seem to be as effective as I think a lot of people hoped.
So, what do you think is going to happen with this specific instance with the troops?
I hope the courts will say that the use of federal troops for local law enforcement is unconstitutional and enjoin it.
And will we be able to get a quick verdict on that and that will be enforced?
Nothing is quick in the courts.
You know, it's being litigated in Portland.
It'll be litigated in Chicago.
It'll go up on appeal.
But I hope that the judges will issue temporary restraint orders and preliminary injunctions to put a stop to this.
Do you think that there should be a law that requires a presidential candidate to reveal his taxes?
Yes.
Why?
In fact, I supported the California law that said in order to get on the ballot, A candidate has to reveal the taxes.
Wouldn't we want to know if the candidate is compromised in some way by his or her financial transactions?
I'm constantly interested and worried about what kind of financial transactions has President Trump had that he so desperately doesn't want anyone to see.
He's fought so hard to keep his tax returns secret.
The more he does that, the more I wonder what's in them.
Is it possible?
Just possible.
That there's things in there that would show that Putin has something over him.
That there is some way in which Trump is economically compromised.
The people should be able to know that.
And if it's wrong, if there's nothing there, then the people should be able to see that.
Have you put your eye on the case involving Congress where the law seems pretty clear that he shall produce the taxes?
Can you weigh in on your opinion on that?
And I've written about this.
The law is clear.
The president should be doing this.
The president is required.
As well as, keep in mind, every presidential candidate for decades has done this.
It's a way of being able to make sure there's not conflicts of interest.
It's a way of making sure the president isn't compromised.
It's a way also of assessing the president.
Is the president telling the truth?
Donald Trump has boasted about a certain financial worth.
It'd be interesting to see.
Is it really there?
I agree.
Well, as we wrap this up, I figured I'd throw out a couple more because if we're going to go way back in the past to look at the Insurrection Act of 1807, what are your feelings about the Hatch Act and the Logan Act as far as enforcing these things that were installed so long ago and might not really apply to today's political climate?
The Hatch Act says that federal civil service workers cannot engage in political activity.
The Supreme Court upheld that as constitutional and said it did not violate the First Amendment.
There's reason to believe that some civil service workers in the Trump administration are violating this.
There's an article in the Los Angeles Times about that.
The Logan Act says that private individuals can't pursue their own foreign policy, that foreign policy is conducted by the president and the executive branch of government.
We now have reason to believe that Michael Flynn, among others, was violating the Logan Act.
The statutes may be old in the case of the insurrection since 1807, but that doesn't make them less important.
Okay, so obviously they were smart when they came up with these things and realized these things apply no matter what time frame we're living in.
Exactly.
Okay, and because certainly if you see President Trump with a whole bunch of cans of Goya beans and then his daughter, who's also part of the administration, it would seem like that's a slam-dunk case, yet nothing happens.
And I'm just wondering, how is that possible?
Neither Trump nor his daughter are covered by the Hatch Act.
That said, for him to so blatantly be endorsing a product because the president of the company supports him is not only unseemly, but it's just inappropriate.
Fair enough.
Inappropriateness is not one of his strong suits.
Or excuse me, appropriateness is not one of his strong suits.
How about last thing, this poll tax in Florida that they are now, excuse me, I should accurately consider it.
They're trying to enforce felons who might have court charges they need to pay.
People are now coming in, LeBron James among others, to pay it.
They're just going to create a fund and pay all these things.
Do you anticipate that going to be a legal challenge by, I suppose, DeSantis in Florida?
Well, the legal challenge is already there.
What was involved is Florida amends its constitution to allow ex-felons to vote.
The Florida legislature, controlled by Republicans, passed a law that says they can only vote if they pay their outstanding fines and fees, and many have fines and fees, and they won't be able to vote.
The Florida District Court says, hold it.
That's charging them money in order to be able to vote.
The Supreme Court declared that unconstitutional when it struck down the poll tax.
The Court of Appeals ultimately reverses and the Supreme Court says five to four, we're going to stay out of it.
I think that it's wonderful if people like LeBron James will create the fund.
I'll donate to it so that these individuals are able to vote.
I don't think there's anything in the Florida law that specifies who pays the money, just that it has to be paid.
Absolutely.
That sounds reasonable to me.
So, well, Dean Chemerinsky, thank you so much for joining us and breaking it down.
I trust you'll be safe.
You're going to be probably virtual teaching this fall, right?
We are.
Okay.
Well, I say, well, you know what?
Maybe I'll try and, you know, steal someone's login.
I would love to audit one of your glasses one day.
Be delighted to have you.
To see what happens in the hallowed halls of Berkeley.
So, thank you so much for joining us again and be safe, please.
You too.
Thank you.
So thanks for coming back with us.
That was Erwin Chemerinsky, who is the dean and also professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, and just a tremendous resource to be able to get as much information as possible on the Constitution, what is legal, what's not.
And that's just, you know, it's not loud enough in this country.
I don't think people are, you know, are getting it clearly enough.
I'm so glad that competent people keep coming on this podcast and we just have them absolutely fooled, Nick.
We keep having brilliant guests who have smart things to say and are like they get it and they understand what's going on and somehow or another we keep tricking them into coming on to this podcast.
So I'm so happy.
And I'm so happy.
You just gotta ask!
Right, but we're so happy to have you along for this.
I have to tell you just a real heartfelt moment.
I am so thrilled about what this podcast is becoming and we have you to thank for it.
The support from our listeners has been unbelievable.
You have built this thing up and you know the things that have helped time and time again, liking the podcast, subscribing, commenting, and telling people.
I keep getting notes from people who say, my friend told me about this.
My cousin told me about this.
My colleague told me about this.
And now they're hooked.
And we are so thankful.
So please tell people about it.
Like, subscribe.
And again, drop us a quick note over at muckrakepodcast.gmail.com.
We'll keep you up to date on the exclusive content that we're getting ready to offer and all the changes we've got coming.
It's really exciting.
I'm excited.
Are you excited?
Hypercapitalism, man.
Patreon.
But hyper in the strict hyper sense.
Like we're really excited.
I was showing actual excitement.
I said, are you excited?
And you said, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
I am very excited.
I'm jumping for joy.
I really am.
That's what I'm saying.
Hypercapitalism.
Literally hypercapitalism.
We got to grow though.
We got so many good ideas.
We were talking about doing feature-length documentaries.
We're talking about expanding out and having some really, really exclusive shows, like we said.
