Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss Joe Biden being announced as the president-elect while Donald Trump and the Republican Party continue to try and find a way to undermine the election. Then, Nick interviews George Newall, the executive producer of the iconic Schoolhouse Rock series, discussing how their work influenced a generation in the ‘70s, only to be silenced in the ‘80s when Ronald Reagan instituted his draconian policies.
To support the show and unlock exclusive content, become a patron at http://www.patreon.com/muckrakepodcast
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
And President Trump is 100% within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options.
When you break the process on which we elect our leaders, you will break America forever.
So this isn't just about this election.
This is about every election in the future.
And the fact that the American people, the everyday people who get up and work hard, that are suffering through this pandemic, that have tragically lost family members, that they need to know at least, at least America still functions and we care about doing things right.
Hey everybody, welcome to the McCrake Podcast.
I'm Jared Yates Saxton.
As always, I'm here with Nick Halseman.
We have an interesting little show today.
Of course, we are on the other side of Joe Biden becoming President-elect of the United States of America.
But if you thought everything was over, if you thought we were completely out of the woods, we are not.
We just aren't.
It's not that easy to get rid of an authoritarian.
After we have a discussion about, somehow or another, how this slow-moving, stupid coup is continuing to unfold before us, afterwards we have a special treat.
Nick was able to sit down with the executive producer of Schoolhouse Rock, George Newall, to talk about the political and civic education that Schoolhouse Rock offered And how the Republican Party undermined that and did everlasting damage to our discourse in this country.
And I think that's an interesting conversation that can also give us a little bit of an idea of how we can move forward and maybe make this country somewhat better and improve our discourse and educational systems.
But that being said, Nick, we're not out of the woods.
Jared, I watched Aliens last night.
And I feel like we're in the elevator.
We're frantically pressing the button to like go up and get out of there while the alien is just about to get there before the doors close, which they did it like at least two or maybe three times.
They got that scare from us in that movie.
And we're still waiting for that first scare.
But we're in the midst of that door, not even like a quarter of the way closed yet.
You know, I've spent the last couple of days trying to tell people, like, number one, celebrate the victory.
Because again, when you are on the left, and when you are on the right side of history, the victories are very few and far between.
Saturday was an amazing moment of spontaneous joy after you and I finished taping our emergency podcast.
I got online and, I assume like you, I watched a lot of the spontaneous celebrations.
People rejoicing in the streets as if, you know, the Death Star 2 had just been destroyed.
And dance parties and people having a great time and just enjoying the fact that we had rejected authoritarianism at the ballot box.
But I told people, I said, we're not out of the woods yet and Donald Trump doesn't have it within him to concede.
There hasn't even been really a movement towards concession at this point.
And meanwhile, while we have been celebrating, unfortunately the Republican Party has been continuing to try and find and search for some means, any means possible, to steal this election.
And here we are on Tuesday, or well, it's Monday that we're recording this, Monday, November 9th.
Here we are two days later, and we are still watching this slow-moving, stupid coup unfold.
And God knows that these people are just desperately trying whatever they can do to hold on to power.
And meanwhile, maybe it'll work.
Maybe it won't work.
It probably won't work.
But it's dangerous what we're doing right now in this position that we're being put in by these people who are so afraid of losing power.
You know, it's hard to figure out where to begin because there's so much crap going on.
I mean, Mark Esper was just fired, terminated, and most likely just for pissing off Trump in the last few months.
And, you know, I hope that's all it is.
But, you know, you look at Sarah Kensler's timeline and she's referencing things like Iran and how people, you know, there's people in the government who have a hard-on for that and this might be his last chance to kind of sneak one in there before he leaves.
But that's another issue.
We never even discussed the Rudy press conference next to the Fantasy Island, but nonetheless, it's a shit show no matter what.
It's not organized very well at all, and they don't really have any kind of war room going on to manage all of these Lawsuits are trying to bring up and they're all getting dismissed as it is so the real question here is what is the endgame?
I guess we kind of acknowledge that Trump simply wants to get this to the Supreme Court But do you think he's even going to be able to get that far?
Well, I think that the, and by the way, let's just get on the record and say that the Four Seasons landscaping debacle is one of the funnier things to happen in a very long time.
And for those of you who weren't keyed in on this, somebody within the Trump campaign or Trump legal team or whoever in the, who even knows?
What is time?
It might have been Donald Trump himself making the call.
They tried to get the Four Seasons and instead they got the Four Seasons Landscaping Company which, by the way, I think I heard was between a crematorium and a sex shop.
So, well done fellas.
Meanwhile, then Rudy Giuliani gets in front, spews a bunch of conspiracy theories and nonsense and I believe he had a convicted sex criminal next to him, is my understanding.
So, you know, well done.
But this is emblematic of who these people are.
They are so incompetent.
Laughably incompetent.
And what they're trying to do right now is they're trying so hard to find some sort of legal avenue to get this case.
And by the way, there's no actual case, right?
They're trying to get Trump's vying for the presidency in front of the Supreme Court.
And we talked about this before.
Courts and the law rule when two realities rub against each other and there's friction and there's danger of those two realities rubbing against one another.
In this case, we have a person who won the presidential election and a group of people who refuse to believe that their person lost the election.
They want to get in front of the Supreme Court because they have stalked the court.
They've stolen the court.
But they can't find the means, they can't find the avenue, because they need somebody somewhere to rule in some way that would give them a route into the Supreme Court.
They can't find it yet.
But I will tell you, just again, just to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, just a few minutes ago before we started recording, and by the way, Bill Barr finally emerged out of whatever dank, dark cave where he's been hiding and hatching.
God knows what type of a plan.
He went and met with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
And by the way, can you imagine the auras in that room?
Can you imagine just them sort of sitting across from one another?
Bill Barr just subverting the rule of law.
He's just subverting the rule of law with every breath.
McConnell, pieces of him falling off, you know, because of whatever deal he made with the devil is starting to take effect.
And meanwhile, McConnell comes out in front of the cameras and says, I support Trump's litigation efforts.
And, you know, he should have his fair day in court or whatever.
Obviously, they think they have something that might stick.
Meanwhile, have you been watching right-wing news?
I have in the last couple days.
I turned it on a little bit, but no.
What are you going to tell me?
Oh baby!
They're getting buck wild over on Right Wing News, Nick.
They're talking about faithless electors.
They're talking about state legislatures getting involved.
I mean, this is all stuff that we kind of expected might happen, but to hear it said out loud... By the way, Lindsey Graham said the quiet part loud.
He said, if Trump concedes, we'll never win another election again.
Which is the quiet part loud.
So it is a situation that is getting out of control and the problem is Trump may lose this coup, which I think that he will, but this is going to have long-term consequences.
There's some really dangerous stuff happening here.
Oh, without question.
You know, I was thinking about this earlier, that the attack on mainstream media obviously has the effect of, you know, we don't trust what they say.
Well, you know, the bigger picture now is, well, when they call a race, that is also cause for them not to believe what they're saying, despite the fact that they've really gone overboard to be extra special careful not to call this thing until they were absolutely sure.
So I mean, I have no question Biden would have been called president in by Wednesday in any other election, you know, anything before 2016, they would have called it no problem for him earlier.
So but that is another one of these things that the destruction that might who knows if it ever comes back, it plays right into all of the followers of Trump's hands or into their beliefs.
It is really frustrating, all of those things, especially because, you know, they haven't been able to really show any kind of proof, right?
Generally, if you're going to come out and have a press conference and say something about this, you're going to cite something very specific.
Now, Ted Cruz gets on there and he tries to describe this very strange situation.
I think it was in Michigan where people were like getting their votes sort of denied when they were putting them in the actual ballot box.
But if they press a button, that would override the rejection.
But not only would it override their vote, it would switch it to Biden.
Which is like, okay, press the magic button and then you lose your vote, and they did that thousands upon thousands of times.
Oh, by the way, though, they did find eight dead people.
Maybe it was seven.
Seven dead people voted, Jared.
Seven.
I just want to go on the record.
Listen, I want to be a respectable pundit and journalist and thinker.
I am against dead people voting.
God knows who they would elect, Nick.
Like that right there, that's the real danger.
Like some sort of necropolis type of authoritarian.
I'm against dead people voting.
God, I admire you.
I gotta go on the record there.
I'm just against it.
Well, and we also have to talk about the fact that there is, and you gotta think about bookends.
Think about the Republican Party and Trumpism.
Think about how this whole thing started.
You know, a pandemic works where it goes up and then it goes down, right?
Think about the Republican Party and Trumpism.
Think about how this whole thing started, where Trump came on the scene and the Republican Party was like, oh shit.
We don't want Donald Trump, but we need to keep his supporters.
We need to keep the people who are true blue Donald Trump people, right?
And they assuaged them, and they pandered to them, and they sat there and let them do whatever they wanted in hopes that they would come home to roost and stay with the Republican Party, right?
And what ended up happening?
Trump took over the Republican Party.
And, you know, the Frankenstein monster that they created took over the party.
Well, what's happening right now?
And I've been talking about this for the past couple days.
Republicans have a weird math that they have to do right now.
Some of them absolutely are ride and die with Donald Trump.
I was watching, I want to say, what's his dumb ass?
It's Higgins or Riggins over in Louisiana.
He did like a fireside live stream where he was like, this election's been stolen.
And this is Donald Trump is the best thing to happen in 2,000 years.
And by the way if you do the math that means the birth of Jesus.
Like these are true blue people who are willing and he's like we don't want to be violent.
We don't want to be violent.
And you're like oh okay I'll fill in the other side of that sentence.
So there are the people who are the true blue cultists who totally believe Donald Trump was screwed out of this election and that there was ballot fraud and all this stuff.
Ted Cruz doesn't believe that.
Mitch McConnell doesn't believe that.
He knows it's a lie.
But he knows it's a useful lie.
Right?
Which tells their followers, like, no, there actually is more than us than there are of them.
It's a rallying cry.
Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell is trying to keep those Trump supporters At home, with the Republican Party.
Because there's a rift that has grown up in the past week.
Because they have started to blame the Republican Party, and they've started to blame Fox News.
There's a possibility that Trumpism will depart and become its own organism, which it was always, always, always destined to do.
But what they're doing in the meantime is, they're allowing extremists to believe that there's been a coup in this country, and that they're on the wrong side of it.
And when that happens, that leads to violence.
That leads to sectarian violence.
That leads to war.
That leads to terrorism.
And we're watching a situation where that is becoming more and more possible with every passing day because the Republican Party has to try and keep this illusion alive.
Even if you don't want to go to the extreme, it leads to never, ever, ever having a moment where we could get anything done in this government.
So that's really the baseline we're dealing with here.
And it's unnecessary because that's not the reality what they're describing.
It's not the reality what it needs to be.
But it also is history repeating itself.
We can't seem to get out from under this constant repetition of things happening.
So first of all, you know, we're talking about how Biden now needs to go around the world to repair our reputation.
We saw people outpouring of emotion across the world, excited for Biden winning.
But you know what?
I'm old enough to remember that we already did this in 2009.
Okay, Obama had to already do this.
Now, let's talk about the Republicans and what they're doing.
Just like Trump has taken over and cannibalized and made this Republican Party into a zombie, this is what the Tea Party did.
The Tea Party was supposed to be some fringe group in 2008 or 2010 in reaction to Obama.
Whatever the reaction is you want to fill in, you can feel free because it probably is racism.
But they ended up taking over the Republican Party.
And all the anger that they had channeled into this is exactly that same id that we see Trump lightning rotting into.
And so as a result, it's almost like when you see them think, "Oh, no, we're definitely moderate Republicans and we have all these different ideals." No!
This Republican Party has been taken over time and again in cycles by these really fringe right-wing groups and it keeps morphing into something worse.
It's like in Prometheus, let's go on the aliens thing.
We see the big blue alien guy, looks like a human almost, turning and then from that turns into the alien and from that alien it's gonna turn into a worse alien and by the time we're done with this it's gonna just kill everybody including themselves.
Well, and by the way, this is a great little glimpse at exactly what happened.
Because they went through the Tea Party, and they either were going to be overtaken by the Tea Party, or they were going to absorb them.
And they absorbed them.
They made a decision.
Then in 2012, when they lost that election, they had the infamous autopsy report, which said, we have to stop this.
We're not going to win any more elections using white supremacy.
We have to broaden our base.
Well, guess what?
When your presidential candidate loses... And by the way, just a reminder for everyone, we are working on a major audio documentary that we think is going to shed a lot of light on what's going on in this country.
And if you want more information on that, we're getting ready to send out an update over at patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast with an exclusive look at exactly what we're planning.
But quick question, Nick.
When Jimmy Carter lost his bid for re-election in 1980, was he the de facto head of the Democratic Party after that?
Nope.
Nope?
Actually, the one that gets a good question is, who was?
That's a great question, because there was a vacuum.
There was a massive, massive vacuum after Reagan's defeat of Carter in 1980.
And by the way, they still trotted out Jimmy Carter like photo ops.
They would go and cover him whenever he went out and did Habitat for Humanity because he's a basic, decent human being.
But here's the thing.
If Donald Trump had lost his bid for re-election, which he did, and he accepted it, that would leave a vacuum in the Republican Party.
But what is sizing up right now is that Donald Trump's never going to admit that he lost election.
And for his supporters, he is still going to be President of the United States.
He's going to turn into what I'm now calling an anti-president.
He's going to be treated in right-wing circles everywhere he goes like he is the sitting president in exile.
Guess what happens then?
The Republican Party is going to want to find their own people.
They're going to want their Ted Cruz's and their Marco Rubio's just like in 2016.
But guess what?
They're not going to be the leaders of the party.
It's going to be Donald Trump.
It's going to be the anti-president in exile.
They are not going to get away from the gravity of this.
It's like a whirlpool.
It keeps pulling you down.
And I have a piece coming out here pretty soon about what's going to happen in right-wing media and how that's going to affect it.
They're done with Fox News.
Fox News called the election for Joe Biden.
They're not accurate anymore.
They're fake news.
So guess what?
We've got to go deeper, deeper, deeper into that whirlpool.
We've got to go to OANN.
We've got to go to Breitbart.
We've got to go to Newsmax.
So that Overton window is just going to move further and further.
They are not going to escape this monster that they created.
It's impossible at this point.
And Trump has already acknowledged he's going to run again in 2024.
So he will continue to do his rallies.
We will have rallies all the way through the next four years without question.
Would you be shocked?
Would you be shocked if there's a rally like tomorrow or Thursday or something?
I wouldn't.
I've been saying it since Wednesday that he will have one.
I thought we thought maybe it would be this weekend.
So for sure, he's going to have one soon.
And that's really going to just pollute his brain.
Because again, he's going to simply pretend like it just didn't happen.
Because what was his presidency anyway?
Anyway, it was a bunch of rallies and watching a lot of TV.
Well, let's make a Truman Show for him.
Let's put him in a world, he won't even know the difference, where he can just wake up, watch whatever he wants to watch for six, seven, eight hours a day, and then have some rallies.
That's what's going to happen anyway.
That's coming.
And then four years from now, he'll run again, and there won't be any difference because it's the same rallies anyway.
And he'll have an election.
And again, he'll do the same thing.
It's really kind of insane and nefarious and a problem, which is another reason why, well, certainly Biden can't pardon him, but it's not going to happen because the whole pardon thing is going to have to become an issue in the next few months.
Now, here's the only thing that's weird.
If he gets into this weird mode where he won't even accept that he's lost, So here's where I'm at in what I think is going to happen.
So I think what you just talked about is exactly what we're going to see.
We're going to have this anti-president.
and then they can fucking charge him with all these crimes and then he won't be able to run for president again. - So here's where I'm at in what I think is going to happen.
So I think what you just talked about is exactly what we're gonna see.
We're gonna have this anti-president, and by the way, being anti-president is exactly what Donald Trump wanted.
You don't have to do all the work.
You can just go on TV and make comments about things and there are no consequences.
You don't have to actually sit through meetings and briefings and people weren't mean to you because you don't get a pandemic under control.
You can just say they're a bunch of morons.
They can't get anything done.
He's already in decline.
He's already declining in a mental and physical standpoint.
And meanwhile, they'll play Hail to the Chief when he comes out, and they'll be like, Mr. President, and I can't believe this was stolen from you.
The difference is, I think that he fully intends to run in four years, but he's already in decline.
He's already declining in a mental and physical standpoint.
I think what we really need to look at, and this is something we're going to keep a really close eye on here moving forward, because a lot's at stake here.
There is going to be a race for Donald Trump's kingmaker approval in probably four years.
And there are a lot of people who understand what Trumpism is and what it is.
We talked about this in the past.
They've already studied it.
They understand what he did that worked.
Because he was always flailing, right?
He was always just flailing wildly.
And then occasionally he would find a weak spot in democracy, in our democratic institutions.
And then he just went with it.
These people have looked at this, studied it, understand why it worked.
And they are more disciplined and they're smarter.
And the people who are going to try and come in and fill that vacuum that Trump is going to leave behind, I think we're going to watch over the next four years a bunch of people who are going to engage in a Trump primary.
Who are going to try and appeal to him, and lavish him with praise, and get his approval, and eventually somehow or another merge Republicanism, Trumpism, and whatever neo-fascism it's going to turn into.
Right.
And I like how you phrase that because it's not like they're going to do an oppositional run to try and primary him out.
They're going to need to somehow, yeah, sidle up to him because he will have his rallies and none of the other candidates are going to be able to have rallies like his that will have as many people and as many dedicated people.
And it would just it would fall flat.
So they're going to have to figure out where they could be like the warm up act to these rallies.
And then maybe eventually Trump, as he really declines, might realize that.
Now, here's the question is it's supposed to be Donald Jr.
And it's supposed to be Ivanka so that's the problem is he might just say great that you guys come along with me and you're gonna be the warm-up act and then who knows in the next two or three years if that happens where he even he can realize he's not fit then it's just gonna be them and they've already kind of assimilated the audience to them you know don't forget Nixon when Nixon resigned the day he got in the helicopter with the two finger ways whatever they called There were still a lot of people who thought that he got, you know, jobbed by the deep state.
Still a lot of people right now.
Still a lot of people around right now who think that.
Yeah, that he was set up and the whole thing.
So, you know, this is a very deep-seated psyche that people have when they really fall in love with a candidate or really, you know, fall under the spell.
It's not surprising.
Interestingly enough, the Democrats have never seemed to have a candidate like that, right?
Well, they started to, and you know, I wrote about this in, I think it was The People Are Going to Rise.
To be elected President of the United States, you have to create a cult of personality.
Like, that's how you win, right?
And the closest the Democrats have had would be, well, Bill Clinton had his own cult of personality in the early 90s, and Barack Obama had his own.
But everybody, when they get to the presidency, they're like, okay, I'm going to leave this behind.
I do not need a cult of personality while I'm the ruler.
I now have a civic responsibility to be president to all people.
And by the way, I just have to mention this.
I think if Trump would have won re-election, I assume that he probably would have went ahead and been president until he was unable to be president anymore.
And then it would have turned into a hereditary thing.
And then it would have turned into either Ivanka or Donald Trump Jr.
But at this point, because he lost this election, one, Ivanka Jr.
doesn't have that killer instinct that Trump does.
She wants so badly just to be a part of high society, and she's so close to it.
You know what I mean?
She's so, so close to it in a way that Trump didn't, was never able to get to, which always fueled his spite, right?
Donald Trump Jr.
is just an utter failure.
I don't think he even understands intuitively on any level what Trumpism is.
If I had to tell you right now who the candidates are who are going to be running in the Trump primary, and I talked about this last night on my live stream, I think Tucker Carlson is number one, and I think Tom Cotton is probably number two.
And I think that those two guys are probably fighting with one another, actually right now probably in circles trying to be the heir apparent to Donald Trump.
Wow.
You know, what's funny is a couple tidbits came out over the weekend about Kimberly Guilfoyle.
And she apparently, for one of the strangest reasons I can imagine, was the head of the finance committee.
Like, what?
But she apparently was getting dinged by HR for completely sexually inappropriate stuff, like wanting to give a lap dance to somebody who would give them a donation.
And so I'm thinking of that, because of this oversexed, insane woman.
And I don't even get to her.
I kind of quickly go to Donald Trump Jr., who's dating her.
Right?
And like, that is my thought of like how the negative thoughts go to him.
Like, what are you doing?
But I think it kind of explains him in a way too.
Well, I think Donald Trump... and again, by the way, let's just talk about the psychology of Trumpism in a whole.
Donald Trump is... and by the way, I got to interview Mary Trump and we talked about this.
Donald Trump just wanted his father's love and he never got it.
Donald Trump Jr.
just wants his father's love and he can't get it.
And I have to tell you that if this were Shakespearean, and it's very Shakespearean in nature, the most Shakespearean thing possible That in the Trump primary for the the Kingmaker Trump to choose somebody the most Shakespearean thing possible would be Donald Trump jr.
Throwing his name in the in the race and Trump just being like don't worry about a junior You're not cut out for this and moving along, right?
I mean, that's that would be the most poetic moment because I he really truly does not respect him No.
And so I don't think that he's going to be the heir apparent.
But I'm telling you, one of the things to take from this, this is really, really important.
Trumpism didn't die on Tuesday or Saturday when he was declared the loser.
Trumpism's here to stay.
It's something that we have to deal with.
It's something we have to make inroads with.
We have to change the way we deal with politics and economics and society.
Like, this is something that we have to be back.
Because if you haven't noticed yet, this ongoing coup that we're dealing with, And by the way, we didn't even talk about the fact that Georgia Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler threw their own party mate, Brad Raffensperger, the Secretary of State in my state of Georgia, they threw him under the bus.
They want to get his ass out and they want to replace him with somebody who's going to try and help them.
In the upcoming special elections that will determine the fate of the Senate.
This is what the Republican Party is.
They are infected.
They are terminally infected with Trumpism and it's not just going to go away because of an election.
So a lot of things.
Let me see if I can grab on to one out of the air.
I feel like I'm wimpy watching the fight going over in Popeye.
OK, first of all, the Donald Trump Jr.
thing, it's like Keith Schiller getting on a boat with Donald Trump Jr.
on Lake Tahoe, and then one of them never comes back.
That's the image I'm seeing now when he says, this is not for you, Donald Jr.
I'm sorry, Fredo.
I'm so sorry.
It really is.
You know, he was – I felt for him.
Now, the – here's the thing I want to talk about because, okay, Loeffler and Perdue, it's just – here's the thing about prolonging this that no one is really saying, okay?
Another tidbit that came in was that in this run-up to raise money for their defense fund, half of it goes, first of all, to the debt that the Republican Party has for the campaign.
So in some cynical way, this is simply extending.
It just gets them enough time to raise more money to get rid of their debt.
Okay, that's one of the only reasons why they're doing this, really, right?
Let's just try and get some more money out of this before we all have to leave.
And so that's a real big problem.
Now the biggest issue I see here is, and I'm gonna light this podcast on fire in a minute, but first I want to bring up the fact that we have to have a transition.
It is a very complicated set of things where all these different, you know, committees and groups of people need to meet and then share information and whatever.
That's not happening when the president doesn't concede.
Now, we'd already read reams of articles of how there was no transition for the Trump administration.
Nobody showed up.
Like people from the Obama people were just waiting for weeks and nobody ever came to like whatever.
And they kind of stayed on after the inauguration.
Like where is everybody?
What's happening?
So that's not happening again.
And one of the things you have to be really afraid of is that they're burning all the documents and memorandum right now.
All the internal stuff, all the illegal shit that we would see quite clearly once you get in there is going to be gone.
And I'm not even – which is illegal by the way.
But I'm not even sure they're going to be able to prove enough of this to show that because it's obstructing the justice when you destroy evidence.
And also, there's laws where you can't destroy presidential records.
But they're going to be able to do this anyway.
In fact, they asked a guy in the government about it, like, what are you doing about all the double-top secret stuff, all the transcripts of all his conversations that they hid in that area.
And they're like, they won't even talk about that.
But you did hear a guy say, he literally said something like, Like, we're not crooks, you know?
Like, he sounded like some valley guy or valley girl, right?
Like, that's who's running the government right now.
So I'm really, really concerned about all of that, mostly because we need some more transparency of what happened in this last administration.
I thought you were setting the podcast on fire.
You ready?
Can I, before there's nothing left, before there's no scorched earth, Where is your gut leading you in the special elections in Georgia?
This is way too early to predict, but what are you feeling on those?
Remember how I used to be the guy who was really head in the clouds, dreamer?
I used to be that way.
He used to accuse me of that.
No, I feel, man, that just made me sad.
Have I worn you down?
Have I gotten rid of your optimism?
That makes me sad.
War changes a man.
So I kind of feel like why not both?
Why not the Democrats win both of those things?
They galvanize, they raise, they've already raised half a million dollars for each candidate in a few days.
And again, nothing frustrates me more, no matter who is getting the money, that the notion that the more money means you're going to win the election.
I hate that and I can't stand that we're in this situation, but hey, when in Rome.
So I don't know.
I kind of feel like I like both the candidates.
I think that they're really good, strong candidates who have a really great message.
So the question is, is Trump demoralizing his followers by doing all this bullshit?
Oh, it's rigged, whatever, I'm not going to go vote now.
And that would help the Democrats, maybe, you know.
I think it'll be very close.
You know, it's great to have the infrastructure in Georgia, Stacey Abrams et al., you know, being part of this to organize this and get it done right.
So I feel like, yeah, they have a legit shot, 50-50 shot of getting both, maybe 75-25 to getting at least one.
I think those are easily the two most likely outcomes.
I think they either get both of them or, and again I keep saying this, one of the most aggravating things that Americans do is that they believe in split government.
They love having a president of one party and a congress of another.
So I could definitely see one of them winning and the other not.
But if I had to guess right now, I'd say that the Democrats pull it off.
Alright, so I'm going to hide behind my fireproof blanket.
I'm going to protect myself from the flames.
I'm going to get you warmed up on the first one.
I'm just going to dip a toe in here.
I'm uncomfortable.
I'm uncomfortable here.
Believe me, you will be.
Now, this is a good segue into what we're talking about for the Democratic race, because let's just say they win both of those.
And that means we have control of the Senate, basically, with Kamala.
So Chuck Schumer's got to go.
Chuck Schumer cannot be the head of the Senate.
I think he's done.
He's ineffectual.
I'm tired of him.
He's old.
He needs to go.
I think that there are a lot of Democratic supporters who feel that way.
I think at some point if you are the leader of a party or the leader of a party in a certain institution, I think maybe you were good at fighting battles that used to be the battles and maybe something passes you by.
I think there's a problem with Schumer where every time he deals with the Republicans, he tries to appeal to their consciences as if they're just going to, I don't know, watch enough West Wing episodes and just suddenly, you know, really find some sort of duty or remember their oaths.
So I don't think that's that controversial.
Okay, here it comes.
Nancy Pelosi, same thing.
I think people make that same argument.
Well, I think she needs to go.
Let her be the emeritus, you know, whatever.
Get somebody else to speak for the House.
They just blew it, man.
They blew it, and if you don't want to blame Pelosi, whatever.
But this was supposed to be a race where we were going to gain seats in the House, and they lost them.
And she ran an impeachment that I thought was toothless, and it was toothless anyway.
I get it.
Schiff did a nice job to represent himself, but I don't think they did it well.
I criticized it then, the way they processed the whole thing to begin with, even though they knew it wasn't going to go through the Senate.
I think, you know, let her just be the emeritus person, you know, and give her whatever the other role is, and let somebody else take the reins and be the speaker.
I'm always hesitant to tell the Democratic Party what they should do because I'm not a member of the Democratic Party.
It's almost like, I don't know, the Lincoln Project.
Letting people know what they think they should do, even though the Lincoln Project didn't change anybody's mind.
They just made a bunch of ads that a lot of us enjoyed on social media.
They used the dark arts for the good.
So I'm always hesitant to tell the Democrats what they should do, but I will tell you this.
And I told you this a month or two before the election.
There is a big, giant battle brewing within the Democratic Party between its establishment and progressive wings.
And it is already heating up.
Ocasio-Cortez has already given a couple of interviews and already gone on the record a couple of times that she is not going to accept the Democratic Party staying in the center or lurching right or trying whatsoever to move right.
There's a battle coming and it's a generational battle because what you just laid out with leadership is a generational question.
It is what those two bodies do and what they focus on and what their agenda is.
And on top of that, Schumer and Pelosi, particularly Pelosi, have sent out warning shots consistently at the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and telling them to get in line, wait their turn, calm down, look out for their rhetoric.
They are not going to continue doing that quietly.
Whether or not she maintains... and by the way, I don't know who would beat her right now.
I don't think anybody has the votes to beat Pelosi, but they're not going to handle being put in place anymore.
I think that there is a... again, there's a big giant battle brewing in the Democratic Party.
I did listen to Fox News at some point over the last couple days, and my friend Kevin McCarthy was on there.
He's not my friend.
And he said that when she originally had her vote for Speaker of the House, I think there was 15 Democrats who voted against her the last time.
And 10 of those are now back.
And the lead in the House has now shrunk.
So he seems to think they don't need very many more Democrats to vote against her to not get enough votes to be the speaker anyway.
So it's just time.
She's been doing it for long enough.
We need a new voice.
By the way, whoever wins in this center versus progressive, I don't give a shit.
We win.
I'll take any of those policies the way I feel these days.
I'm center.
I'm really left.
If you find anywhere between those two lanes, it's fine with me.
So they could have at it and figure out whatever the result would be fine.
It probably would be fine for everybody that voted for him.
So I think it's it doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing to have a big debate and a robust discussion and argument or whatever.
So I'm all for it.
We need something new, especially because if you look at the results of how we ran the congressional seats, it just there's no excuse for having a big lead that Biden is going to capitalize on.
Well, I'll just say this.
Having it not go down ballot like that, even the Senate was, you know, they're going to get a little bit closer.
But the House losing seats is just ridiculous.
So that's my take.
Well, I'll just say this.
First and foremost, again, you know, just to sprain my shoulder, patting ourselves on the back.
We pretty much called this election almost exactly.
When all votes were counted outside of a couple of Senate races and outside of my hesitance to call Georgia going blue, we pretty much called this thing dead direct.
but Biden had a resounding victory, but there is a question now.
Because this election was about staunching bleeding.
This was about saying, we have to reject Donald Trump, we have to have somebody come in and repair things.
Biden has consistently portrayed himself as a bridge to something coming.
The question the Democratic Party has to answer now is, what does the future look like?
Because it has to start offering a vision for the future that doesn't look like this one.
Because the way that things are set up now, particularly in this neoliberal, artificial austerity, market-friendly, corporatist environment, All we're going to do is engage in culture wars and trench warfare, and that's where it gets us.
They need to come up with some sort of vision that they can use to grow the electorate, create a mandate, and make everlasting change.
It's time to start having that debate over incremental debate, and I think that that's what we're going to see, especially if we can make our way out of this coup.
I think that's the important thing here.
And a lot of people who are already like that are so hardened and so firm in their beliefs that we're going to have to wait for the next generation of kids to come up.
And that's where this interview I just did is going to come in handy because when I interviewed George Newell, who was one of the creators of Schoolhouse Rock, what had gotten me to want to interview him was the American Melting Pot, that specific Schoolhouse Rock video which sort of touted the notion of we're all from different places and different cultures and we all come together and that's what makes America so great.
And I feel like when we've seen what Trump has capitalized on and since we didn't have that indoctrination, if you want to call it, for so long that we're missing that kind of education almost with our kids.
So I'm really excited to be able to bring this interview for you guys to hear it because he really is able to draw some interesting connections as to what the effect of the schoolhouse rock canon had on kids throughout the 70s and then why it so quickly stopped and what the ramifications of that are and they draw perfect parallels and distinctions to this day.
So I want to give you that one right now so sit back relax and enjoy the interview.
Hello, everybody.
I am extremely honored to bring on the show right now, George Newell, who is an executive producer for Schoolhouse Rock.
And I know you guys have heard me reference this quite a bit in our last several podcasts.
And so I can't tell you the honor I have to be able to bring you on, George, and discuss what was such a seminal moment of our country, I think, and how the whole thing came about.
Well, I feel honored to be honored.
It was a simple idea that my boss at the time, who ran an advertising agency called McCaffrey and McCall had, and Dave McCall had the idea.
He'd come back from a vacation with his kids at a dude ranch, and one of them, who was having trouble with multiplication tables, was singing all the rock tunes and knew all the lyrics to the rock song.
So he came in one day and he said, who do you know who could write You know, put the multiplication tables to music.
And I knew Bob Darrow.
And so we had Bob come up to the office and Dave told him what he wanted.
And the main thing he says, don't write down, you know, don't write down to the kids, you know.
So Bob went home and he was kind of an amateur mathematician.
He came back with the song.
Three is a magic number.
And it was, Unbelievable.
And he had a little wall and sack tape recorder and we played it.
And the minute we heard a man or a woman having a baby, three is a magic number.
That was it.
And so our biggest account at the time was ABC television.
And so our biggest account at the time was ABC television.
So we, to see the head of children's programming, who was a young guy named Mike Eisner, and it's...
Somebody named Michael Eisner, sure.
Despite that, you know, I remember Mike.
But at any rate, and in the in the in the meeting was Chuck Jones because he had a show running on ABC television.
So they played the song and Tom had done a storyboard and he's pointing to the to the pictures.
And when it was done, Eisner turned to Chuck Jones.
And said, what do you think?
And Chuck Jones said, buy it as long as he draws it.
And so Eisner turned around and said, okay, we're buying it.
You know, people go through their lives writing treatments and submitting ideas and never get anywhere.
And we, you know, we had one meeting and we were on television.
Wow.
So this was like probably 1972 when you had the meeting.
Does that sound right?
I think we started working on it in 72.
Yeah.
It came on about a year afterward.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So let me ask you this.
I mean, I'm picturing if you're talking about an advertising agency.
You're in New York.
Yes.
You know, early 70s.
You're probably there for a few years.
So this is like Mad Men.
Is this where you were living?
Well, I never I never lived the Mad Men thing.
I was in advertising.
We had a very good agency, but there was a lot more sex than there was in Mad Men.
Oh, wow.
OK.
That's what I tell people.
The great thing about it was that we were advertising guys.
I was a copywriter, Tom was an art director, and we had jobs.
We had very good paying jobs.
So we didn't have to worry about getting picked up next year.
Producers produce shows and they start worrying, oh, are they going to buy it again?
Well, that never bothered us because we were doing it for fun.
Wow.
Well, here's what I find interesting because in the context of why we bring up your show is in the politics pod that we record.
And when you look at all the titles of all the different, it seems like there's three main segments from the 70s, which were, you know, math, grammar, but then I guess we call it America rock, right?
And it seems to me that if you look at the titles of the America Rock section, that those seem to be more seminal consistently.
I know Freer's Magic Number, Conjunction Junction, Lolli Lolli Lolli, all those things are memorable, but when you list the titles for the America Rock section, for me at least, it seems like those were the ones, you know, I can do the preamble to the Constitution simply because of the preamble, you know, cartoon.
And I'm wondering if you had any sense of the differences between the three different categories and why some of them might be more memorable than others.
I never, personally, I never, you know, compartmentalized them like that.
We were just having fun.
And we'd sit around and say, well, what do we do next?
It's like, what are we going to do next?
You know, what are we going to do for Adjectives.
And I said, well, why not do a railroad thing and do a conjunction-junction thing?
And a week later, Bob came back with that song.
Unbelievable.
Well, no one in 1970 could forecast what's going on right now.
No way.
No one could imagine.
It's unimaginable to me.
And so time has made those things more significant.
So here's what's interesting, because the context is 1970, maybe no one pictured this, but by 1973, I would imagine, or 1974, maybe people would have realized, you know what, someone else like Nixon could come back and do the same thing that they're doing now.
And I'm wondering if there was, was that any kind of a motivation for you to do these kind of things to sort of reinforce what America is supposed to be like?
All I can say is that the boss, Dave McCraw, was a rabid Nixon hater.
Oh wow, okay.
And we actually, he started a series of, he was at Yale and made a speech and someone gave him the idea to unsell the war.
And we started this thing called Unsell the War.
And I think there were about 50 commercials that were done Gratis by different advertising agencies coming at unselling the Vietnam War from different angles.
It was it was quite remarkable.
So that almost sounds like what the Lincoln Project is doing almost, right?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Okay.
Wow.
That's that's fascinating because here's the next question I have for you is, you know, when you encounter a lot of the right people from the right, it used to be up until recently a big gripe was the indoctrination of children.
You know, green, you know, you know, everyone should be nice to each other, all these different things.
Did you have any kind of pushback on these back then for that?
No, that never, it never occurred to me that we were doing anything anti-right.
What we were doing is what Biden would call, you know, we were doing what's normal for the United States.
And we were, you know, we were very proud that we were getting through to kids.
And it was very popular.
And oddly enough, here's a political fact.
It was taken off the air about a month after Reagan was elected.
Because ABC, there used to be what they called the Saturday morning ghetto, and all the networks to make sure that their licenses would be renewed had to run something of an educational nature.
And of course when Reagan got in, he did what Trump has been doing.
He slashed everything.
And so all of a sudden, ABC didn't need us to fend off the government.
Wow, that's incredible.
I mean, I wouldn't have realized.
And just for the context, in case people are maybe too young listening to this or maybe too old, you know, Saturday mornings were the time when people my age, I'm, you know, 48, we'd go down to the TV at 7 a.m.
and probably for the next three, four hours, we'd just simply watch cartoons.
And ABC was the main thing.
And I'm kind of curious because obviously it became, quote unquote, successful.
These aren't these are the there's a clear time limit three minutes long.
They happened in between the cartoons.
So I'm kind of curious what how do they deem them successful or not?
Because I don't know what the what was the measurement of the metric?
Well, the measure, which I found out by accident, we did a seminar at the Harvard, the Harvard Business School, some division of it.
And I made the point that you had no you had no choice.
If you were watching ABC, the films would come up.
And a kid in the audience stood up and said, no, no, that's not right.
I watched NBC, but I would switch channels to see the Schoolhouse Rock things.
Because at that point, we were listed in TV Guide.
And so people would know when it came on the air.
And here's a kid saying, you know, I always switched from NBC when I knew it was going to be on.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah, you know, I didn't do that because ABC was like super friends.
Yeah, we were never we're definitely watching that.
And so those were that's when it was coming.
And I've imagined there's probably a murderer's row of cartoons on ABC morning, I have to look at it, but I'm sure it was like, you know, But either way, um, but yeah, so I find that fascinating, especially in this context of everything's about ratings and views and what they can monetize.
And so I always found it interesting because it did feel like this was out of the kindness of your heart.
This was a real earnest endeavor.
And yet you're in the midst of, you know, the cutthroat world of, you know, TV programming.
We're, and yeah, we're an advertising agency.
We're selling breakfast cereal and cores and, Motor oil and things like that.
And the ability to be able to do something that's fun to do, but actually has a true moral background to it was irresistible to us.
And how is it possible?
I mentioned I know the preamble.
Like, did you did you realize that kind of power?
That like, you know, I'm telling you, most people my age will know it right off the bat.
Did it seem clear to you?
I mean, I guess based on the math stuff, you probably realize that people were picking this stuff up and learning it.
We had no idea of the power it had until years after.
Years after it had actually gone off the air.
But the thing, Bob Dorough and I did several NPR interviews.
And they were call-in shows.
And I would say 90% of the people who called in were school teachers.
And that's how it really got disseminated.
And I taught for a couple of years at St.
John's.
And I taught like an advertising writing course.
And the kids, the classes at St.
John's are like the UN.
I mean, they're from all over the place.
And they all knew it.
They all knew it.
And, you know, I was quite a celebrity there.
I can imagine.
And they all knew it because they had seen it in school.
You know, if we could put our hats back on in the time machine to go back to 1975 or right before the Bicentennial, which is it safe to say that the impetus for doing the America Rock version of this was because of the Bicentennial and people were, you know, sort of focusing on the country?
Is that where this came out of?
Well, there was now, I'm going to forget his name, but there was a producer at Rockefeller Center Who contacted us about using footage from Schoolhouse Rock in their Bicentennial Show.
And so we went over and we had, I'll never forget, he had a small office, but it had a white grand piano in it.
We, you know, we talked to him and Tom gave him some drawings.
And about a week later he said, come on over.
I want to show you the rough cut.
And so we went and we sat.
in the empty theater, Rockwell Center.
It's just cavernous.
And watch the rough cut of our stuff for the show.
It was incredible.
And Tom said, "This must be important "because the smokestack with my name on it "was three stories high." - Okay.
So your take on it then is with enough experience, you kind of feel like this isn't necessarily new because I feel like we could talk a little bit about what's going on right now.
There's a cycle here where it's not shocking to you what's going on now and it wasn't shocking then.
And, you know, because I guess the question then is, you know, there is a certain pride in the country that we can derive from the episodes.
And I'm wondering if that was important or that was, you know, that we needed to have that because there was a lack of that then.
Well, I think it was important.
The Watergate thing made it very important.
I mean, I remember that that was a huge, felt like a huge crisis.
But the government functioned the way it's supposed to function.
Now, you know, we have a guy who's a maniac, you know, who somehow has supporters.
I mean, I saw a visual the other day of an Amish carriage with a Trump sign on it.
I mean, what?
And this government is anti-government.
He's pushing us in a direction that is alarming to me.
My stomach turns.
I can't believe it.
And he's so crude.
I mean, Jesus, how did a guy with 18 rape allegations get to be President of the United States?
I'd like to do a Schoolhouse Rock thing about that.
Oh, wow.
Well, you know, a big part would have to be being a TV star for a number of years and developing that cult there.
But that's it.
I forget the producer's name.
Barnett, something Barnett, who produced, you know, and he made Trump seem like a tremendously successful businessman.
And he wasn't.
You know, he was a disaster.
And I played golf with him in like the late 60s.
I think he was still in school.
And, uh, I didn't, you know, somebody said, Oh, we're playing with Don Trump.
Oh yeah.
Who's that?
Well, his father owns Queens and he was a pretty good golfer, but it was, uh, it just was unreal.
Um, do you have a favorite one?
Uh, well, I, my favorite is the first one.
Because it proved it worked.
Three is a magic number.
And it proved, and what Bob brought to that, he didn't just write a song that started with two times two is four.
He, he put it in a context.
It takes three legs to make a tripod.
It takes three, blah, blah, blah.
You know, they're a man and woman had a little baby.
There were three in the family.
So he, he established a context, which was very good for Tom in designing it.
Because he made more of a story of it.
Did you have any problems getting talent to do these?
No, no.
No, I don't know anyone.
But in the first place, it should have been called jazz rock because there was very little rock and roll.
The musicians were not rock and roll musicians.
Maybe Bernard Purdy, the drummer, But we used mostly Jazzcocks.
We used Phil Woods.
The bands that Bob would put together were what used to be called the metronome all-stars.
They were all people with big reputations.
They loved doing it.
I wrote one called Energy Blues, and I remember Bob hiring a pianist whose name escapes me now, but is still very prominent and a music educator and piano teacher.
And I couldn't believe it when he sat down and he read everything.
I mean, we never had to stop and start again.
And that was the caliber of musicians that Bob brought to the show.
So with your experience as a copywriter, I suppose there's a smooth transition into writing lyrics, because that wasn't necessarily hard for you to do?
No.
And I think that the advantage all of us had at the agency was that we were writing, you know, I was writing mostly 30-second commercials.
And you have to figure out, how do I cram this in?
How do I get that?
What's this?
And so we were all used to working in a short format.
We could do things that rhymed.
Right.
Here's what's interesting to me.
Like, is this a reaction when I watch them now in preparing?
Some of these, I guess it's melancholy for some reason, and I can't quite figure out why.
I have a sense of almost sadness watching them.
The shot heard around the world.
But the Great American Melting Pot, which is why I even reached out to you in the first place.
Yeah.
And I don't know if you remember.
I mean, obviously, that particular one celebrates What I think America used to be celebrated for right how everybody's from different places And does it feel like did it feel like that was true?
Like that was the easy sell back then and then for certainly how it feels versus now It certainly felt true then yeah, you know But you know, there's no resemblance to what's going on now.
I mean, you know, we're we're essentially shutting ourselves off in the rest of the world and That doesn't make sense.
And I think it's easier for it to take hold because we're missing a whole section of people who didn't have this growing up after X amount of time, into the 80s, 90s.
I truly feel like this is what we've been missing.
And again, like I mentioned earlier, I feel like either the pushback from what Reagan did to not require these to be played, and then there just seems to be some weird resistance to this notion of teaching kids progressive ideas, I suppose.
Would you feel like these were progressive ideas at the time when you were making them?
No, we thought they grew right out of what the country was and how the country functioned.
You know, it doesn't function that way anymore.
Like back then, did it feel like, was there, you know, we talk about left and the right and it's such a dichotomous situation.
Was it, did it feel that way back then?
Well, the only instance of it beginning to feel that way was Lin wrote a song About the three divisions of government.
And it was based on, it was called three ring government.
And it was based on the analogy with a three ring circus.
Executives do this, the legislature does this.
And ABC, after we completed it, they wouldn't run it.
Because again, they were afraid of the FCC, and they were afraid the congressmen would feel offended by being compared to a circus.
And now that's come true.
We do have a service.
Yes, we do.
It really is.
We're missing something in our country.
I feel like a lot of it has to do with what the kids are learning more than what they're not learning.
And I just feel like, you know, it's just too bad.
I don't know any other situation or any other solution.
Besides trying to teach the kids now when they're much younger to respect people, to value, you know, different opinions.
And here's the thing.
I might be against so many of the opinions and they're right.
And the argument then is, well, you're not being accepting of our opinions.
And so it's a hard argument to make because it's like, well, I guess they're right in some respects.
The great tragedy to me is that the whole notion of the government How does a kid today grow up being idealistic about this country when it's being run by a guy who is essentially a criminal?
It's crazy.
I agree.
He has just, I mean, how does a kid today grow up being idealistic about this country when it's being run by a guy who is essentially a criminal?
I mean, it's crazy.
I agree.
I mean, you know, it's crude and vulgar.
And the United States isn't supposed to be crude and vulgar.
I don't want to do vulgar rock.
Right.
Yeah.
And I also think it's, there has to be a winner and there has to be a loser.
And I think that there's a certain, um, uh, satisfaction when somebody loses, uh, that people are deriving out of this.
Yeah.
I think that, uh, it's to me, it, It's lawyers.
Because everyone has a lawyer.
I mean, Trump has sued hundreds of people.
And I don't know whether you read the book by the ex-fixer, Cohen, but they'd stoop to anything.
And it's really interesting.
I played golf with a guy who was the head of the organized crime Task Force in New York City.
I guess it would have been when Giuliani was the mayor, but he told remarkable stories of their investigation, he's told us about.
And he's as offended by what's going on now as he would have been when he was fighting the mafia.
I mean, it's really, it's incredible.
Well, George, I can't thank you enough for coming on and giving us some insight into how Schoolhouse Rock came to be and the trials and travails.
Really important stuff.
I mean, I guess the question then is, you know, did you guys did you finish this when you wanted to finish it?
I know there was a break in between doing some of these.
Or did you feel like there were forces working against you that didn't allow you to continue going more consistently throughout the 70s?
I never I never felt that way.
This is television.
You know, they run Well, they have to run to get ratings, unless they give a little nod to right from wrong.
But it's a business.
And it's still a business.
And we won't be on Disney Plus very long if people don't stream our tunes.
It just won't work.
Well, hopefully there'll be some more streams after listening to this, but again, thank you so much for coming on.
I really appreciate it.
Well, thank you for calling.
I wish I had some of those guys standing behind me and talking as well.
Thank you again for reaching out, and I hope we'll be in touch.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
So there was an interview with George Newell.
I hope that you enjoyed that.
It really was just fascinating, especially when you get to talk to somebody who's lived through so much and has almost total recall of things that happened back then.
It was really great and really an honor to be able to have him on.
And I hope that we can find a replacement for that.
So maybe going forward, the kids today will, you know, have a different version of America that is actually something that is more realistic, but also hopeful.
You know, it's really crazy.
The Schoolhouse Rock series was so fundamental in instilling in people an understanding of not just government, but a pride in government behaving in a certain way.
Like this aspirational idea that it's supposed to be fair and pluralistic and kind.
And that ability, I think, it's really unappreciated like what they were capable of doing with that series.
For sure.
They tapped into a thing where, you know, I know the preamble to the Constitution because of them.
You know, I know how a bill gets signed because of them and not because of some book I read in history class or social studies way back in the day.
And they tapped into that.
So we need to think, you know, Not only figure that out better, but I just, I don't know, restore our pride.
And I hope that Biden can begin that process where we can kind of feel like, yes, this is the land we believe we live in.
Because you said it so many times, democracy is only, goes only so far as we choose to believe in it.
And right now we're at a problem here because not a lot of people do.
Well, I think that's a really interesting way to put it, because the Schoolhouse Rock thing is about processes.
You know, there's like a kindness and a goodness at the heart of it, but it's about this is how power works, and this is how power is orchestrated, and how it plays out.
It's not naive.
And so much of our political culture now is about this naivete that like if you have the right ideas you always win out and if you lose it's a symbolic victory and the swelling music plays and you're gonna live to fight another day.
And Schoolhouse Rock is much more like here are the bare bones of how the system works.
And it educated people in a way that made them ready to play a part in the system, which I have to tell you, and maybe this is aspirational, but I want to believe that maybe you and I are offering a similar process, which is here's how stuff actually works while maintaining hope for a better future, and how to think about what power actually does, and how to apply it, and how these things actually look behind the veneer of spectacle politics.
That would be amazing.
And I think maybe we do do that.
Again, because we can't stress this enough, the notion of reflection, self-reflection, doesn't have to be some sort of negative shitting on yourself or shitting on the country kind of thing.
This is a recognition of what reality is and how we can progress and be able to recognize Those moments and those details of progression that we can find the hope and the happiness in to continue to build toward that.
And I think that's what we're trying to do here.
So, you know, day by day.
Well, I just want to say again, I've been giving a lot of thanks to the Muckrake community lately because you deserve it.
This has been exhausting.
I keep saying we won this thing, celebrate the win, but be aware that there's a much larger battle coming and many more battles coming.
We're still not out of the woods yet, but I have to tell you, and I know I speak for Nick on this, Dealing with authoritarianism and fascism is exhausting and I would not have been able to do it if it wasn't well first of all I wouldn't have been able to do if it wasn't for Nick so thank you so much and second of all I definitely wouldn't have been able to do it without the support of the community so again a heartfelt thanks to Enjoy this victory.
Keep an eye on this bullshit, because they will steal this away if they possibly can.
And again, we have a lot more battles to come, but you have to find energy and the wins that you have.
In the meantime, we're going to be covering this whole thing.
