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Aug. 7, 2020 - The Muckrake Political Podcast
46:54
Sending Thoughts And Prayers To The NRA

The Attorney-General of New York has exposed the National Rifle Association as the crooks we all knew they were, so co-hosts Nick Hauselman and Jared Yates Sexton dive deep into the history of the NRA, how the Republican Party partnered with them to sell white paranoia for profit and votes, and the longterm damage done to American culture and democracy itself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Time Text
It's clear that the NRA has been failing to carry out its stated mission for many, many years.
And instead, has operated as a breeding ground for greed, abuse, brazen illegality.
Even common sense measures with broad public support, like background checks, license requirements, and a ban on assault weapons, have been completely shut down.
In order to fight them, we need to understand how they are doing it.
Hey everybody, welcome to the Munkerick Podcast.
I'm Jared Yates Sexton.
As always, I'm here with my co-host Nick Halseman.
We got to talk about the NRA today and what a total shitshow that is.
The New York Attorney General, Letitia James, has filed a lawsuit that seeks to dissolve the National Rifle Association.
Couldn't have happened to a better group of people.
We need to go in-depth about the history of the NRA and how they became the fascistic organization that we all know and love today that promotes the slaughter of Americans and also the erosion of democratic institutions.
Before we do, a special announcement.
We are going to be releasing our first Patreon-exclusive episode today.
Nick and I are going to be talking about the movie Jaws, 1975's Steven Spielberg flick Jaws, talking about it as a metaphor for a hyper-capitalistic America in the grips of a pandemic.
I'm excited.
How about you, Nick?
Oh yeah, I got lots of metaphors to talk about.
It's going to be exciting.
We got metaphors?
We got mares in nautical-themed jackets?
Oh, I've been racking my brains to make connections here.
You're going to have to kind of maybe get me off the ledge in case I've gone a little too far with some of them, but I'm anxious to share them with you.
I'm really pumped because not only that are we going to be talking about JAWS and just sort of the metaphors within it and the social commentary.
There's an argument to be made that JAWS being made in like 75 is also at a really essential time period in America for why we're in the situation that we are now.
Not only are we going to talk about the movie, we're going to talk about the politics within it, but we're going to talk about the historical context and societal context.
So if you are interested in listening to that episode and you're not a patron yet, you need to head on over to patreon.com backslash muckrakepodcast just to just, you know, become a patron.
You'll get tons of exclusive material.
We're really excited about this.
But you know what else I'm excited about, Nick?
I am excited about the National Rifle Association.
Finally being held responsible, not just for the damage it's done for the United States, but being an organized crime network that has just abused charitable funds, which it's hilarious that they're a charity and a non-profit, but just finally being held accountable.
And yes, it's going to lead to some problems and it's a dangerous situation, but I am excited that we're finally dealing with the fact that this is a criminal organization.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
I'm sending my thoughts and prayers to the NRA because that's what they deserve.
Did you know, by the way, Jared, because we've heard all about the NRA, did you really in your mind wrap around your head around the fact that they are actually a not-for-profit organization?
It's really weird.
It's really weird that they are, isn't it?
Because, I mean, not only do they act as a for-profit organization... I'm just gonna... I got a little note card here, Nick.
I don't know if you're aware of this.
So, of course, Wayne LaPierre, who's the head of the NRA, who... We're going to get into the historical role that he's played driving the American right into fascism.
Uh, fun stuff here about Wayne LaPierre, who, by the way, has gotten trips around the world on not just the NRA's dime, but vendors of the NRA.
They've paid for trips, giant perks for their vendors, the people that they work with, given, uh, you know, privileged Treatment his wife Susan LaPierre who apparently shows up at these like women for NRA events tens of thousands of dollars on hair and makeup including flights for her makeup artist and Extended stays in luxury hotels, and this is a fun way.
Her name is Anelda Here's the fun thing this is great and Apparently, until recently, the NRA was in talks for a $5 million luxury golf course mansion for the LaPierres because nothing says not-for-profit like taking your leader and giving them a luxury golf course mansion in Dallas, Texas.
Am I right?
Yeah, but wait.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but they didn't take it.
It just wasn't nice enough for them.
Right?
Or one of those houses was not nice enough for them and they said, oh, we don't have enough room for our suits.
Well, here's the thing, Nick.
When you are accustomed to a certain level of luxury, it's really hard to lower yourself to a $5 million mansion.
Because here's the thing that we have to reckon with right now.
The National Rifle Association, for the past 40 years, has acted as a for-profit organization.
And by the way, the foremost profiteer off of white supremacist paranoia and conspiracy theories and advancing of fascist ideas in America.
This group has made so much money off of fear and a dystopian hellscape alternate reality in which they keep all of their supporters and members and so many white Americans as well.
They've been making money hand over fist.
It's a confusing thing because the NRA, I think, initially was, you know, helping people shoot better, I suppose, 150 years ago.
They had magazines and all that kind of stuff.
But clearly now they're the leading influential, you know, lobbying firm, lobbying group, I suppose we'll call them, in the world or in the country.
So they're political.
And so they are now screaming that this is simply a political stunt by the Democrats to attack them.
And it's weird because they're not a very big organization if you think about it in terms of the country itself.
Do you know how many people are members?
No, but the influence that they have peddled is incredible.
It's not about the members.
It's about the fact that they have driven an alternate reality within America.
And the way that they are simpatico with not just the Republican Party, but right-wing media, that entire infrastructure has driven the NRA and has turned America just upside down.
Right, so you could argue that the AG in New York is simply just trying to protect the hallowed halls of non-for-profits, right?
You're supposed to run these things a certain way.
And what's interesting is that this is all opened up from them being able to dissolve the Trump Organization for doing very similar things.
So the precedent is there.
It seems legally it would be easy for them, or not easy, but certainly there's a pathway for them to do this.
I think what they're anticipating is, is the more details we get out of the abuses of not just William LaPierre, but Ali North is involved in this and a whole bunch of other people involved at the top.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
I'm not going to sit here.
Well, you besmirch the good name of Mr. Oliver North.
When did Ollie North ever do anything wrong?
And when did he ever harm America?
At any time, Dick.
I can't believe you're saying this.
I will just... Hey, listen.
Okay.
We won't slander him.
Can we slander Charlton Heston?
That's too far, too.
When did Charlton Heston hurt America?
Are you telling me that Charlton Heston, just an absolute maniac, following massive slaughters of Americans, he went out and said from my cold dead hands, wait, I'm not gonna sit here while you talk bad about Oliver North and Charlton Heston.
That's incredible, Nick.
Thoughts and prayers.
This is off to a bad start.
Thoughts and prayers.
Yes.
And I want to let people know this for a second.
And before, you know, you dismiss this conversation we're having, you know, as if we're just a couple of leftist gun-hating liberals or whatever, I'm a gun owner.
I just want to lay that on the table.
Like, I have multiple guns.
I mean, I just do.
I come from Indiana.
Like, my family had guns around all the time.
Here's the thing.
You can own guns and also understand that things like gun control are important.
It's an important thing.
In fact, the National Rifle Association existed not just as a sporting club, but it existed as a lobbying group that tried to bring about Gun control.
They wanted to make things safe because if you are a responsible gun owner, or if you're from a family of responsible gun owners, what do you learn first about a gun?
You don't learn how to shoot it.
You don't learn about the threats that you're going to use it about.
You learn about gun safety.
You learn about gun control.
And by the way, if they actually were a group that cared about people being safe, which is what supposedly they're all about, They wouldn't behave like this.
And what they have done is they have put Americans in danger one time after another, and we need to talk about the metamorphosis that took place, particularly in the 1970s, and how it led into the 1980s and 90s, and now to the situation that we're in.
Because it is not a coincidence.
This is something that is a long time coming, and there's a reason why this group is in the trouble that it is.
Well let me aside from just scratching my head wondering why the hell you would ever own guns and you know I am the person that wants to pry your gun out of your cold dead hand I'm telling you right now.
You can make that argument and by the way I think we should have a quick conversation about that.
You can make that argument.
You absolutely can.
The reason that I have it is because my family had guns and so I was given guns after people died.
And I just sat there, and I was like, I guess I have guns now, right?
And also, by the way, I'm a journalist.
I receive a fair amount of death threats.
I believe that you should be able, if right now, particularly in the environment we're in, if you want them for personal safety, you can.
But if it came out to, and by the way, I don't have an AR-15.
Okay, right, well that was my next sentence.
I'm not running out of my St.
Louis mansion waving my AR-15 at peaceful protesters.
Wait, we have to put your cocktail down first and then wave your AR-15.
Everyone forgets that detail.
I have to tell the floutest, please hold on your next movement as I go take care of these ruffians in my front yard.
Right, maybe tune it a little bit better.
Turn to the harp is a little off tune.
Anyway, yes, I was the kid who grew up with every kind of gun in my house, but like the toy guns.
So if there are parents listening to this who are really afraid and don't want their kids to play with guns because that will lead to that, if you want to point to me, I am the guy who had every gun and my mom's best friend, who was the farthest left person you could ever imagine, wouldn't have her son come over to play often because of all the play guns we had at our house.
And I am now of the mind that we should be able to get rid of every single gun in the entire world and just melt them down.
And by the way, I also want to point out that what we're having right now is a dichotomous conversation that we don't even need to have.
And this is actually one of the giant consequences of the National Rifle Association.
We don't need to talk about guns, we need to talk about the situation that has led to gun culture.
Right?
We need to talk about how we've gotten to be a country where not only do we have guns, we have more guns than people, and we have mass slaughters constantly.
And the NRA has played an essential role in this, and we need to go back.
And again, before 1977, the National Rifle Association was a sportsman's club.
It was all about common sense gun control.
They wanted to get common sense gun control enacted.
In 1977, in an event called the Coup in Cincinnati, a bunch of hardliners took over the NRA.
And by the way, like again, we're going to be talking about Jaws here in a little bit.
We're going to talk about the conservative push and hyper capitalism in the 70s.
All of the stuff that we're getting ready to talk about is what leads to the Reagan Revolution.
It's a bunch of hardliners who figured out that they could gain power and they could gain money by making people afraid.
And so they took over this group and they said, no, this isn't about gun control.
This is about protecting the Second Amendment.
The Second Amendment has never actually been in trouble in this country.
Like, it's not going to be done away with.
I know what you're saying in terms of, like, the idea of making the country safer.
It's not going to go away.
It's just not.
And the idea that it's under attack is a complete fantasy.
It is an illusion, right?
That the NRA has peddled in order to make money and gain political influence.
And it's all based on stoking white supremacist paranoia.
And why do white people want guns?
And why do they join the NRA?
Because they're afraid of people of color.
Because they're afraid that people of color are going to show up at their mansion in St.
Louis and try and take their Rococo paintings and you know like burn their houses down.
But this whole thing is about profit and power through absolute unfounded paranoia.
I mean it sounds like we're gonna have to do the movie Death Wish next as well because We're talking about vigilantism in the 70s when these movies arrived.
So there's probably a direct connection between that coming out in 74 and then 77 being taken over by the NRA.
That 70s stretch was not great for the country.
By the way, this is also the reason why this is not about the Second Amendment with this lawsuit.
It's simply about corruption.
And that's the thing that they're going to keep trying to paint is that this is a Second Amendment attack.
There's nothing about that.
This is about corruption and wanting to protect the five million members of the NRA who are paying their dues and having all that money being wasted.
Now, the other thing is we need to go do some more research because I suspect that if you were to add up all the dues from five million people, it doesn't match how much money they're able to be spending right now on all these different things.
So what really becomes an issue is the money laundering thing, and then we haven't even mentioned the Russia hoax, which certainly plays into what happened with the NRA during the 2016 election.
So they gain a ton of money from gun manufacturers is where they get the majority of their money.
And real fast, by the way, I'm just going to read the quick statement from the NRA because you just nailed it.
They're absolutely what they've said so far is this.
This was a baseless premeditated attack on our organization.
And by the way, baseless premeditated attack sounds like, I don't know, like a terrorist attack, right?
On our organization and the Second Amendment freedoms it fights to defend, you could set your watch by it.
The investigation is going to reach its crescendo as we move into the 2020 election cycle.
It's a transparent attempt to score political points and attack the leading voice in opposition to the leftist agenda.
Which, by the way, it's a conspiracy, Nick.
And what do you do if you're facing a conspiracy in America?
What if the UN is going to roll down your street and all of a sudden institute a One World Order?
Or what if Satan's New World Order plan is getting ready to take over?
What do you need, Nick?
What do you need?
You need that gun.
You need that gun because you are going to do battle with the combined forces of the United Nations.
But wait, but wait, but what if federal officers swarm into your city with guns and marching across and trying to take everything over, unwelcomed by the local authorities?
No.
What happens there?
That can't possibly be anything, no?
I fail to see that connection.
Wait, how does any of that have anything to do with one another?
Are you saying...
That the NRA and the American Right are hypocrites about the way that they view federal power and encroachments upon personal liberties?
That doesn't make sense.
So I just want to tell people a quick little story going back into the 1990s, which is where this Wayne LaPierre, this piece of shit.
Runs the NRA and they really balloon out, right?
They really grow in power and influence.
And what happens is we have a couple of really unfortunate tragedies.
In 92 we have Ruby Ridge.
And in 93 we have the Branch Davidian disaster in Waco, Texas.
And both of these things are terrible events.
And in both cases the Clinton administration just fails.
They just fail, right?
It's a black mark on the Clinton administration and the way that they handled this, but it was almost impossible to handle it.
Both of these groups were wanting an apocalyptic showdown, and then it ends up being an apocalyptic showdown, right?
And that's a topic for another conversation another day.
Immediately the NRA realizes a couple things.
One, it can start gaining a lot of members and a lot of money by going after the Clinton administration and calling them like a dystopic New World Order type of administration.
Wayne LaPierre starts talking about jackbooted thugs.
He starts talking about the New World Order.
He starts talking about the Clinton administration being a traitorous group, right?
On top of that, the Republican Party recognizes we can get some political points here.
So basically, the GOP and the NRA start working together.
In fact, going into the hearings on Ruby Ridge and Waco, they start sharing intelligence.
They start sending out operatives together.
They sort of come together into this idea that we can say that Democrats are traitors.
And that they're like Nazi-esque, or that they're going to institute a New World Order type situation.
But here's the other thing that they do, and this is something everyone needs to be aware of.
They realize they have a new voting bloc.
They have people in, you know, rural places like Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and they start looking at like this burgeoning patriot movement, right?
We have a bunch of militias, we have a bunch of extremists, we have a bunch of gun collectors, and by the way, I don't know if you remember this, that's when all those gun shows started bubbling up, that's when prepping shows start bubbling up, and all of a sudden the NRA and the GOP start Throwing out dog whistles to those people, right?
They get in their magazines, they get in their videotapes, on their radio broadcast, and they start dog whistling the exact same way the GOP dog whistled with the Southern strategy.
And they're like, yeah, you are under attack.
And there's a racist element to it as well, right?
The Clinton administration is going to take over, and they're going to give power to people of color.
And it just keeps doing this white supremacist paranoia, and it's just a complete cycle.
And that's how we end up in the situation that we are today.
That's the roots that got us here.
Well, let's connect some more dots, because 92 is Ruby Ridge, 93 is Waco, 94 is the Congress flips, I think, for the first time in forever to the Republicans with Newt Gingrich, which caused all sorts of problems.
And what's Gingrich say?
He says that Clinton is going to destroy this country and we're the only thing standing in his way.
Right?
Because Clinton's a traitor and with the help of the NRA we're the protectors and Rush Limbaugh pushes that entire idea as well.
Now, what also happens in 94 is that Clinton is able to enact an assault weapons ban for 10 years that gets rid of AR-15s off of the streets or off of wherever.
Are you aware of the statistics that show how mass shootings went down precipitously after that effect went in, that ban went into place?
I think it eliminated them for the most part for that stretch and you would have thought that would have been the once and for all we can finally see how at least some sensible gun control would have an effect and would limit deaths and yet it didn't and they were able to repeal that and get those these assault weapons back on the street and now AR-15s are the ones that kill everybody now.
Well, no, the AR-15 is the weapon of choice for slaughters, right?
For mass killers.
And I want to take people down a quick road because, again, this is stuff I was steeped in.
And I am so angry at the NRA, not just for the damage they've done to the country as a whole, the damage they've done to people that I love.
You know what I mean?
They have just bled them dry just by playing upon their insecurities and their fears.
Think about this from the mindset, right?
If you are in, and by the way, the New World Order Conspiracy Theory, we've talked about it on in this podcast before, is a simplification of what globalism is, right?
They are destroying your towns because they hate you and they want to destroy you.
That's why your factories went away.
That's why your jobs went away.
So put yourself in the mindset of people like my family who lost their factory jobs or whatever.
So they're being told, the government's against you, they're traitorous, they're possibly satanic, which by the way, it's almost like that led to things like QAnon in the deep state.
I don't know.
And then on top of it, the UN's going to show up at your house to try and confiscate your weapons, right?
A one world government's going to show up and kill you.
It'll be multiple troops, it'll be tanks, it'll be God knows what types of things.
What kind of a weapon do you need, Nick?
You need an AR-15.
You need a weapon of war.
And so here's what happens.
All of these people, the people that the NRA manipulated, they already had revolvers.
They already had handguns.
They already had shotguns.
But guess what they needed?
They needed a new product.
And what they did is they just rolled it out.
And it just kept escalating and escalating and escalating.
And you're exactly right.
Those mass shootings go down.
But it forwards the idea the New World Order is coming.
And then the people right now who are carrying out those mass shootings, they believe in the New World Order stuff.
They believe that they're fighting a war, that they are trying to strike back.
The NRA has not just inspired mass murders, but it's hidden mass murders, it's protected mass murders, it has done everything in its power to create a culture in America where this is a consistent problem.
It is a hellish operation.
But here's the thing, because if there's only 5 million members out of the 150 or 60 million adults that are in America, How?
How is it possible that they... I mean, I know they obviously have the money to wield to influence politicians in Congress, but you know what I mean?
It doesn't seem to me to make sense.
And I'm pretty sure if we look at the numbers for the polls, that most people would prefer sensible gun control, which usually means, okay, let's not have AR-15s out easily available.
And yet they are the most influential lobbying group anyway.
It's just, it's weird to me, right?
So I guess the answer would be that a lot of the cultural identity of this are from people who aren't necessarily official members of the NRA.
They're just sort of lurkers and whatever that word is.
They're just spying on them.
Well, what I would say, and this is a hard thing to understand, so I hope this comes across clear, it's something that we have to start wrapping our minds around.
This alternate reality that the right lives in, right?
It's not just something that Fox News sells them.
It's not just something that Breitbart sells them.
It's a different reality that is monetized.
Right?
It's not just a place to live.
It's not just a place to win elections.
It's also got features.
You know what I mean?
And just to give people an idea, think about, like, Resistance Twitter.
How many people on quote-unquote Resistance Twitter are selling, like, screw Donald Trump mugs and, you know, and aprons that you can wear that say 25th Amendment, you know?
Yosemite!
This is one of those things that makes money, but it's not on the level that the right-wing alternate reality makes money.
This is about buying guns.
We had Nate Powell a couple weeks ago Talking about things like trucks and paraphernalia.
It's all of this stuff that you buy in on.
And you make a ton of money both as a Republican and as a member of the NRA because you're just selling everything from weapons to prepping supplies to lifestyle supplies.
It's just constant commodification of white supremacist paranoia.
Right.
And it's perfectly in line with the Republican ideology as well, which is it's all about money.
And it's never about actually helping people, which is just the frustrating thing.
We talked about that in the last pod, is that, you know, for however much you want to criticize the Democrats, like there is some underlying notion that we kind of want to try and help people.
They want to help people.
But as is the case, when you get as corrupt as they have gotten, the money starts to dry up, right?
It's being spent, it's being wasted, it's being completely fraudulently invested.
And enter -- so I think that's what we're discovering is that we -- you know, the Russians had to come in here and basically kind of like -- it sounds like they bailed them out because there were expenditures even for, you know, campaigns, for commercials for them that they never had the kind of money to spend before.
So there's all this weird evidence on that end that somebody was pumping even more money than normal into their coffers.
I wonder if that's what's going to be uncovered as part of this as well.
And again, it may not matter because the people who follow Trump anyway are conditioned to disbelieve all that stuff anyway.
But I would certainly find it fascinating if they can continue to follow this path and make it harder for them to continue.
And by the way, you brought up Trump.
It's really important that we bring up, and by the way, the other day we talked about Dan Crenshaw, who talked about Antifa and said that they were fascistic, socialistic, and communistic, which by the way, none of those groups would be caught in the same place if they weren't having a bar brawl against each other, right?
He's just saying things to try and do whatever, you know, there's no actual ideology behind it.
Trump responded to this with one of his Dumbest and most desperate, disgusting attacks that we've actually seen.
He came out and said that Joe Biden will hurt the Bible, hurt God, and then said in just a moment that like, you know, my white identity, evangelical background, it just was something.
He goes, Joe Biden is against God, against God and against guns.
Which is just an incredible, like, back-to-back thing.
Trump doesn't care about any of those things.
Trump's not a gun enthusiast.
I would put good money on the idea that Donald Trump has never actually fired a gun.
The only type of God that he cares about is the God of the prosperity gospel.
He's not interested in going to church on a Sunday or actual spirituality.
The NRA, going back to what you were saying about Russia, they're not interested in protecting America.
They're not actually interested in protecting the Second Amendment.
It's a scam.
There's a reason why they are so corrupt.
It's because they don't actually have any sort of fixed ideology or something that they actually care about.
Whatever gets them money and power, they will do.
And that includes getting money and power from Russia.
Putin, and by the way, do you think that Russia has like open gun ownership?
No!
Absolutely it doesn't!
You can't just own a gun in Russia.
They don't care because it's the white identity part of it.
That's why the American right and Russia are aligned.
That's why Trump and Putin are aligned.
It's about white identity scams that just take everyone's money and power however they can.
It's the myth that they're selling.
It's not an actual ideology.
Is it fair to say that Russians will never be able to have access to guns like we have, right?
Is that fair to say?
I don't think anybody could have access to guns the way that we have.
So do you know how they were able to connect with the NRA?
They invited them over saying, hey, we're interested in how this all works about maybe we can get, you know, some gun rights for our citizens too.
So you could see it's like... Because it's a scam!
But they're so dumb, they don't even see it like that.
Because what they were really doing That was the three, which is just wonderful.
to then use them.
This is like a PSYOP or whatever, like the CIA would do for them.
But all of these things, it's basically like the Republicans and what Trump had said about Biden.
So Biden, you know, he's saying, yeah, he's against God.
He's against the Bible.
I think he threw an energy in there.
He's against energy.
No, that was the three, which is just wonderful.
So he said, Joe Biden is against guns.
Joe Biden is against God.
And Joe Biden is against energy, which what a holy trinity of America.
God's gun and energy.
But you know what?
It's like the Republican Party is basically like a washed up rock band that's still touring on their greatest hit.
You know what I mean?
This is them, like the Macarena.
They're still out there and they break it out.
Trump is really the poster boy for this.
And it's just like, you can predict.
This is like the end of a sports game.
You know the guy's going to say, we all played really hard.
You know, the other team was, you know, we really respect them.
I really think they're going to be good one day.
And like, you know, we just got to keep working 100%.
You know, you know what they're going to say every single time.
And at some point, I guess the hope has to be that it just has less effect every day goes by.
So here's the, here is the truth in that, and here is the difference in that, because you're exactly right.
The Republican Party has been running the exact same scam for 50 years now.
Ever since the Civil Rights Movement, they've been running the scam, they've been appealing to white supremacist and white supremacist paranoia, this whole gun operation.
And by the way, this isn't to say that this hasn't been one of the most disgusting scams of all time.
They literally are selling people's lives.
They are literally sitting here selling massacres.
Right?
That's what they're actually doing.
They're selling democratic institutions out.
They're absolutely doing that.
Here's the question, though.
How far are they willing to go?
Because the NRA, time and time again, after these massacres, will run ads that show America is like a dystopic hellscape, right?
They're coming for you.
They're coming for your wife.
They're coming for your kids.
They're coming for everyone that you love.
You better be armed.
The leftists are coming.
The leftists are coming, right?
Meanwhile, Donald Trump has been more than happy to play that exact same game, right?
So they've been willing to sell out the safety of Americans.
They've been willing to kill Americans and let Americans get slaughtered.
Where does it end?
That's the question.
Where are these people willing to take it?
And what this tells me is that I don't think in 1977, when they took over the NRA, these hardliners, I don't think that they thought we might get to 2020, get found out as a scam, and then go in the streets and kill people.
You know what I mean?
I don't think that they had that meeting.
I don't think Donald Trump in 77 was like, I might become president.
I might become a fascistic authoritarian.
It's a slope, man.
It just continues to get worse.
And then every decision you make, it makes it worse.
You know what I mean?
And that thing that you just saw from the NRA, that statement, shows they're ready to go to literal war.
And they know that they're a scam.
They know that they have misused money.
They know that they have been an organized crime organization.
They know that they're in the wrong, but they're willing to push it until they can't push it anymore.
Well, you're not making that up, because you know how we know that they know that they're wrong?
Because they did their own internal investigation not long ago, and all of a sudden, a bunch of these guys were kicked out, or quit.
Weird.
Yeah!
You know, almost as if they were like, dude, this is terrible, we gotta do something about that, and they're like, yeah, you're gone, you're fired.
That's what was going on.
That's a great indication of this, of what was really happening with the NRA.
So, listen, I am...
You know what's interesting about this?
I don't even know if I'm excited about it in the sense that a lot of times you'll say the vacuum gets filled by something else.
But that said, if the NRA does go away, I don't know if there's going to be a huge other lobbying firm that's going to be able to come in here and control that discussion as much as they have.
Right?
I wonder.
Man, that's an interesting question.
Some people were asking me today, they were like, do you think this is good timing?
For the AG to, you know, go after the NRA.
And, you know, we've talked on this podcast before that like political strategy is just a flip of the coin.
You can't predict what to do.
It's always better just to do the right thing.
This is a criminal organization and they need to be treated as such and it needs to be shut down.
I have to say that there is a big enough marketing niche, and particularly in a hyper-capitalistic, politically charged environment, somebody's going to show up.
There's too much money.
And here's the problem, is the NRA, again, in 77, I don't think they did this in order to think in 2020 we'll become basically a traitorous mass slaughtering machine.
Whoever comes after them, I have to assume, will start from traitorous mass slaughtering machine And then go further down the line.
I don't know.
It just feels like there would be too large of a vacuum.
But I do know over the next couple of months, and listen, we've talked about this multiple times, the next couple of months are going to be weird, man.
The next couple of months are going to be dangerous, dangerous times.
They do now have a narrative that they're coming after the Second Amendment because the NRA has intertwined themselves in it.
It's going to get really ugly.
It's going to get really dangerous and people need to be ready for it.
You know, most progressives also feel the way you do as far as the Second Amendment's never going to go anywhere.
And so if that's really the case, if you take a step back, you have to wonder, well, what do we need the NRA for?
If everybody understands that it's never going to go away and that they're only there to lobby for it, Then we don't really need it.
And as a result, that's another reason why it's so corrupt, is because they're just peddling this stuff to continue keeping the status quo.
Because you're right, where does it go from there?
Is it the bazookas?
Are they going to try and continue to increase the different types of arms you can have?
I don't know, but that would be, if you were writing this scenario, you'd have to continue to heighten that reality.
So I don't know what that is.
Now, the other question I am wondering about, are you bringing up is, is there the notion that like if Trump loses, we're going to have violence in the streets and it's kind of directly connected to what the NRA is doing and stirring up?
Yeah, what do you do when you have a deranged president who will not accept a defeat and you have an organization that is facing public disillusion?
Yeah, their entire Their entire market share and philosophy is based upon peddling this paranoid viewpoint that, you know, the jackboot thugs are coming and they're going to take you and kill you.
I had a conversation yesterday with Kimberly Johnson for her podcast and I was saying this.
I think it's almost inevitable that there's going to be violence around the 2020 election.
I, you know, I was telling people back in 2016 as I was going into Trump rallies and talking to Trump supporters that we would be really lucky if we avoided A lot of blood in the streets.
We would we would we would be there.
It would be a miracle almost if we avoided it.
That that check is going to come due.
I mean, we're going to look at violence and I assume there's somebody today.
There's somebody who is swimming in NRA propaganda, right wing Internet radicalization.
Who's like polishing up a gun and thinking that they're going to become a lone wolf soldier in an invisible war?
That's who Timothy McVeigh was, right?
He was radicalized.
By things like the NRA and GOP dog whistles.
There are people out there right now, undoubtedly, who are picking up their guns and think they're going to be soldiers in a new war.
So do I think there will be violence in the streets?
I think there would be if we didn't have this.
I think that this probably escalates it and it makes it a larger opportunity for those things to happen, unfortunately.
Well, I mean at least COVID-19 is going better, right?
Especially in Georgia.
Yeah, that's a good feeling.
And we're looking at a situation, of course, which, by the way, the NRA feeds into all of that.
If they're going to come take your guns and they're willing to take away all of your rights, well, the next stop is, oh, they created the virus and you shouldn't take the vaccine.
I mean, that's the paranoid worldview that they've been sowing for forever.
And so all roads lead to the current moment of American crisis.
The NRA has been one of the biggest peddlers and one of the biggest influencers.
And of course, the Republican Party, which joined with them like a Voltron of disgust, came together to create this situation that we have right now.
No, it's a really bad situation all the way around.
It makes us less safe.
And also, the other issue I think, fundamentally, is you really probably shouldn't have a not-for-profit organization be a lobbyist group.
Right?
That's like what Crenshaw is trying to, you know, communist, fascist, whatever group.
Communist, fascist, socialist, libertarian.
And I know if someone's going to point out to me, oh well here's a not-for-profit that really does great with lobbying, but like I just can't wrap my head around why that would be okay and why that wouldn't do anything but be corrupt ultimately.
How many not-for-profit organizations do you know of that launch their own TV network?
In order to have 24-hour, around-the-clock, dystopian shows about, like, fighting off federal troops and moments where people have murdered other people in the heat of, like, crime?
I mean, how many others do you know of?
The Sierra Club?
The Army has had those, I guess.
Do they count?
Well, okay, but you bring that up.
The NRA is one of the main drivers of the paranoid worldview that takes people and turns them into soldiers.
Those people are coming for your rights.
Oh, you enjoy firearms?
Here's a place you can do that legally.
Oh, you can go overseas and you can fight the people who want to take your guns.
Right?
That fascistic culture is so much part and parcel of what the NRA has sown.
And we have to recognize that.
It's time for them to go away, but it's going to be very dangerous for a while.
But they do need to go away.
Period.
Yeah.
I mean, at least let them go away before anybody else replaces them.
And then get a fucking ban on AR-15s and assault weapons.
I just... You know, it never makes sense to me.
No one's ever really had any kind of argument for why they should be legal and be bought.
If you want to go hunting, great.
You're not using that to go hunting.
Can I?
Okay, so I assume that our audience is just like overwhelmingly right-wing gun nuts, Nick.
I have to assume that the Muckrake podcast has a healthy amount of paranoid right-wing gun nuts who listen to us.
I assume they love our message and the way we go about things.
So I want to speak to them for just a second.
I know that you think that the AR-15 is going to save your family when the United Nations shock troops show up at your house with their weapons.
They won't.
They simply won't.
You don't need an AR-15 to hunt.
If you hunt with an AR-15, you're a disgrace.
Like, that's embarrassing.
Right?
That's actually really embarrassing for you and I feel bad for you.
But you know who would do that?
You know who would do that?
Is Trump would do that.
Oh, you know who does that?
Donald Trump Jr.
Donald Trump Jr.
is out, like, spreading, you know, semi-automatic fires.
Did I get it?
Did I hit it?
Yeah, wait, what is it?
Yeah, so here's the thing.
If you truly believe the New World Order is an oppressive, one-world government institution that has the entire firepower of every army in the world, you know what they have?
They have drones.
They have smart technology.
They have fully automatic weapons.
If they want to show up at your house and they want to toast you, they will toast you.
Your AR-15's not going to make a difference.
So, I hate to, I hate to be, and by the way, I know the Democrats don't want to have that conversation because they don't want to open the door towards legitimizing New World Order conspiracy theories, but it's true.
If you want to believe in it, believe in it, but you're not going to get any further with an AR-15.
But what you do do is you make mass murders like, like a Dylann Roof or somebody like that.
Let me ask you this.
going out to strike a blow against the quote-unquote invisible army.
They go out and they kill innocent Americans.
So it needs to be framed, and I keep telling people this, the way to frame this is to talk to these people and talk about sacrifice.
Because it's a lot of men, right?
It's a lot of really insecure men.
And make those men believe that they will sacrifice something for their families.
That's the way we get AR-15s off the street.
Let me ask you this.
Are guns expensive?
Yeah, they can be expensive.
You know, like, so if you want to buy an AR-15, is that like a couple thousand bucks?
What is that?
Yeah, yeah, you're gonna drop some money on it.
It's a hobby.
It's a hobby for a lot of people.
The way things are going now, like, you could spend that money and have an alarm on your house and it would probably be less than $2,000 for several years worth of coverage of an alarm.
My lovely California liberal co-host.
I love it!
I love it!
From Indiana!
Like, you're not setting an alarm.
What about when they stop showing up?
Well, I would think that at the very least, you know, when the alarm gets tripped, you get your bat out, at least you're ready, you know, to defend yourself versus, you know, I think that, but isn't that what they're worried about?
Like, they're gonna sneak in, they're in the house before you have a chance to react and like, maybe you grab your gun quickly and shoot, I don't know.
No, they truly... So what ends up happening, what the NRA has sold to people, is this Rambo fantasy.
Which is that the red-blooded white men of America are going to, like, go out in the woods.
And they're gonna have to form militias, you know?
They'll, like, have tattered American flags that they wave, and they call themselves by, you know, nicknames, like...
Torpedo.
I don't know what a cool nickname is.
Blackjack, right?
And they're gonna go out and they're gonna do IEDs.
And by the way, just while we're talking about it, it's the other side of the coin of like Islamic terrorism.
It's the exact same thing.
It's the idea that your religion is going to be stamped out and so you have to create an insurgency and you have to go out and you have to fight oppressive forces in order to fight for your rights but also your God and your faith and all that.
It's the exact same thing, and that conspiracy theory leads to unbelievable deaths and the trampling of democratic institutions, and that's what we're looking at.
And in an interesting parallel, you know, you reference Rambo, and that's the bastardization of that movie because that's not what it's about either.
Right?
Rambo is basically about a misunderstanding and a guy who's been mistreated by his country, by all the lefties, I guess, who didn't like the Vietnam War.
But that has reminiscence of even what's going on with the Black Lives Matter movement, kneeling during the anthem, all those things.
Rambo would be kneeling during the anthem.
I think at this point, the way he felt.
If I'm remembering the movie correctly, and I am, Rambo actually carries out a guerrilla-style war against the police department and then eventually the National Guard.
So yeah, there's a lot happening there, but these people truly believe, and this is the problem, this is about America, and this is a thing we talk about all the time.
It's the mythology of America.
It's that every American is a gun-toting hero ready to be a messiah.
Right?
And that's one of the reasons why American culture for so long was obsessed with things like zombie movies.
It was the idea that you were fighting off like all of these people who didn't think, they were brainwashed, and you were going to have to just mow them down or else they were going to kill your family and society was going to fall.
They all believe, and this is the funny thing, They all call themselves patriots, but they believe that American democracy and our institutions are inherently so fragile that they need to be destroyed and subverted so they can take over and they can become their own private authoritarians and despots.
That's how you get to Donald Trump and how you get to the modern American right.
Oh, I can add on to that because it's not just the zombie notion of they're coming to get you the foreigners.
It was the communists.
That was the original version of that where don't go to sleep.
You're going to wake up a communist.
And so it seems kind of clear now how easily, how smoothly we can transition from these things to get to 2020 from the 50s.
And by the way, we can make a direct connection to Trump because guess who was involved in the Red Scare and beginning all that process, which then influenced our culture and our movies, which was you have Roy Cohn and you have, gosh, the junior senator from Wisconsin.
McCarthy.
McCarthy.
And Roy Cohn, who became Trump's mentor and lawyer.
It's a straight line.
By the way, we could do that with Bush and we could do that with Nixon.
It's a sordid pass that we have...
It's kind of like in Star Wars how it's the one family that has control over the entire galaxy, the Skywalkers.
You know, a couple people here have had such a profound effect on our history throughout the last 60, 70, 80 years, it's scary.
It really is.
And again, people need to reckon with this because I understand the American bias is to think about recent events.
And everyone's going to be talking about the NRA and mass shootings.
And absolutely, the NRA deserves so much scorn and hatred and shame for the way that they've treated mass shootings.
But you cannot understand mass shootings in America and gun culture in America and rising fascism in America without understanding the history of the last 40 years with the National Rifle Association and their relationship with the American right that have used all of this paranoia, weaponized paranoia, in order to gain tons of money and to win elections.
It's all part of the through line.
It absolutely is.
Alright, so.
We've already gotten in some movies.
For those of you who are interested in more conversation, I am really excited for this conversation we're about to have about Jaws.
The only way to get it.
The only way to get these exclusive episodes.
What's number two?
It's They Live?
Is that what we decided?
John Carpenter's They Live?
I don't know if we want to go so deep into the woods yet.
A little bit more of an accessible movie perhaps?
But we'll figure it out.
Wow!
Wow, we're getting selective.
There's a lot to talk about with Rambo, but today we're going to be talking about Jaws.
We're going to be talking as a metaphor for the current coronavirus pandemic, as well as the damage that hypercapitalism has caused in America, starting with the 1970s and moving to where we are now, to get access to those episodes.
And we're going to be doing a lot of bonus material because we're really excited about this.
And just to be frank, I think we're really... We're really touched by this community that we're growing here.
Go on over to patreon.com backslash muckrakepodcast and that's how you're going to get this exclusive content.
In the meantime, you can like, subscribe, share with people.
I keep seeing people recommend the podcast to other people.
That's the best way to let people know that we're having conversations other people aren't having.
We're going beyond the headlines.
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I don't think other people are.
Until next time, you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me SMH.
You can find me at J.Y.
Sexton.
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