Bill Barr is gone! After bending the law of the United States of America and serving as a weapon for President Donald Trump, the disgraced Attorney General takes his leave just in time to head home for the holidays. Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman look back on a truly rotten career, discuss the rise of fascistic symbolism among Republicans, and take a second to truly marvel at one of the most misogynistic op-eds in years.
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The electors have unanimously cast 16 votes for Joseph R. Biden.
The electors of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania have cast 20 votes for the Honorable Joseph R. Biden for President of the United States, and 20 votes for the Honorable Kamala D. Harris for Vice President of the United States.
You know, respecting the will of the people is at the heart of our democracy.
Even when we find those results hard to accept, But that's the obligation of those who have taken on a sworn duty to uphold the Constitution.
Ho, ho, ho.
Oh.
Fuck Bill Barr, everybody.
Welcome to the Muckrake Podcast.
I'm your jubilant host, drinking a little nog, enjoying a little Christmas cheer.
Jerry D. H. Sexton.
I'm here with my co-host, as always, Nick Halseman.
Nick!
Bill Barr.
The Attorney General.
Ding dong.
What a terrible day, isn't it?
Just goodbye, Bill Barr.
Cheers.
What a run, my man.
What an unbelievable run as Attorney General by Bill Barr.
Sure, well, you know, you can't fire me because I quit, I think is the adage we should refer to in this situation.
I'm impressed that Trump was so magnanimous in his Twitter response to the letter that he sent, because I could have sworn that Trump would have just detonated on him and made it seem a lot worse than it was.
Well, I have to say, you know, we shit on Donald Trump a lot for being a terrible human being and for being a liar and being stupid.
You know, I really felt like this was a really heartfelt tweet in which he announced Bill Barr was leaving.
I'm just going to share this with everyone.
Just had a very nice meeting with Attorney General Bill Barr at the White House.
Okay, fine.
Good so far.
Our relationship has been a very good one.
He has done an outstanding job.
Well, I don't know, and you have to tell everyone what your relationship was like.
It's not great.
As per letter, Bill will be leaving just before Christmas to spend the holidays with his family.
Which, by the way, we've already said that undoubtedly Donald Trump is going to leave for the holidays and not come back.
The getting out is getting good.
Oh man, what a career Bill Barr has had.
What incredible damage and cruelty this asshole has done.
If there's any justice in the world, any justice whatsoever, like Rudy Giuliani, Letting loose of gas inside of a public hearing, or the hair dye coming out, or a new appointee tripping down the steps.
If there is some semblance of justice in this universe, Nick, on Bill Barr's way out, he'll trip and split his pants.
That's the way this thing needs to end.
OK.
I was kind of picturing more like bars and prison and much more horrible things than that.
We could go that route.
We could go that route.
Yeah.
I mean, certainly he should be disbarred for his staying on the actual law.
The destruction of the rule of law in the United States of America.
Yeah, that.
I think he's trying to kind of just waddle away before, as if we'll forget about him,
When the time comes to reckon for all these people what they've done once the administration is done That's my take on it and like if he leaves a little bit early Maybe they'll kind of like you know politically he'll fade away a little bit more But I think he he has to I would imagine that once they get in there unless they've destroyed a lot of the records There's going to be a lot of damning things that they come across in the Department of Justice that they could probably I mean I don't know how the the prosecutes the right word, but I
I would imagine there's going to be some horrible things they're going to discover about what they were really doing.
You think they've kept any shred of evidence whatsoever for the things that they've done?
Oh, man, there's no way!
They've been working off server.
They've already shredded and burned every last little piece of evidence.
I mean, what Bill Barr has done?
As Attorney General of the United States, it's really hard to talk about the damage, like the actual real tangible damage that he has done.
Number one, Barr tore the barrier down between the Attorney General's office and the presidency.
That used to be just like one of the top no-nos in all of the United States politics.
Tore that down completely, turned the DOJ into a political weapon for the President of the United States, did his bidding, interfered in investigations and hearings, interfered with justice being carried out.
On top of that, invented this brand new idea of targeted justice.
And by the way, we all know that justice in this country is targeted and it's unequal.
But it's the first attorney general to like really say it out loud, you know, in which he would say that communities need to show proper respect for police or they just won't help them anymore.
Right?
And by the way, that's fascism, but that's neither here nor there.
Bill Barr, Is just, and it's really hard.
Maybe we'll need to do this at the end of the year.
Maybe when Trump is gone, Biden has been inaugurated, we need to do a rankings, a power, a power ranking of the biggest pieces of shit in the Trump administration.
Because Bill Barr, man, Bill Barr is coming in hot on that ranking.
Well, you know, on Twitter, someone had done that where they listed, you know, who were you going to be most happy to see go.
And it was Murderer's Row.
It was really, really hard.
I couldn't even vote on it because it was too enraging.
It's the 1927 Yankees.
It really is.
Mike Pompeo was the first choice, but it was like, he's even quaint at this point.
Now, we can't see Mitch McConnell go.
That's the problem.
The guy who's at the very top is not eligible at this point.
Now, can I say one thing about the notion of separating the Department of Justice from the presidency and how important that is?
It's not like we this hasn't existed before because you don't need to go that far back to Nixon and John Mitchell, who was running, you know, a lot of the scam here of the interference for the The the obstruction of justice of Watergate, so I suppose was your I guess your point is since then right?
We've gone a little bit overboard really to make sure that it's separate because we kind of want to say that but like you want to go on the right during the Obama years when Eric Holder was there, which I know is probably What three parts racism and one part just dogma?
but you know they would are they would accuse Eric Holder and Obama of being in bed together the entire time and Well, at least Mitchell had the basic human decency to hide somewhat what he was doing.
I mean, Bill Barr, Bill Barr has gone out in this way, you know, and it's the whole Heritage Foundation group of people and the Federalist and all these people.
He has created a precedent for the future for legal scholars and lawyers and law enforcement officials and future attorney generals to Come out and say we had this Attorney General who set this precedent that we get to use all of this as a weapon.
Just openly.
And that's actually a really dangerous thing that he sort of pioneered to a certain extent.
Because it's happened.
But now it's in black and white.
It's in the history books.
It's in the books.
It's a definable philosophy at this point.
And that fact puts him way up at the top of that shit list.
So, just keep an eye out.
We're going to have to do that at some point.
Bill Barr, I mean, go to hell.
Go to hell.
One of the most disgusting, reviled people who could possibly come through.
And on top of that, I want to point this out.
This is important too because we're talking about historical context.
Bill Barr is not one of these Trumpian swamp creatures who like showed up.
You know, it's not like he was running like a Trump hotel last week and suddenly he's the undersecretary of defense.
Like Bill Barr has been involved in multiple Republican administrations.
And everyone's – and when he got appointed, they were like, thank God.
Thank God there's going to be an adult in the room.
This is a professional good person.
And what did Trump do?
It's like, it's like somebody getting a sunburn that brings out like a, like a, you know, some, some pigment in their skin or something, right?
Something that the sunburn like reveals something.
In this case, Trump always has the people around him reveal who they actually are.
And Bill Barr was revealed to be not just a fascistic, racist asshole, but a dominionist who wanted to use the law to create a theocratic, Christian state.
And that he was the Attorney General and argued for this, openly, It's mind-blowing now that we're even talking about it.
The fact that we've been living in this country with this guy at the helm of the DOJ.
Right.
And also to get a sense of just how clueless he was as far as what the boundaries of his role was.
I mean, he would be weighing in on like China trade policy.
He tried to compare mask wearing to slavery, you know, in a way that it's like, this is a guy speaking so out of turn for all these things.
But again, this is what Trump does as well.
But I think all these guys, that's the thing that's interesting is, you know, we keep saying that Trump is like a symptom.
Are we still on that?
Is that where we're at right now?
He's always been a symptom.
Oh, absolutely.
And it's something we've got to keep an eye on, for sure.
Because this is the culmination of the guys like Cheney and Rumsfeld.
Yes.
and Barr and these guys who want an imperial presidency.
They wanted this.
They wanted an authoritarian in power.
And I just finished watching the Reagans, the four episodes on Showtime, and we keep expressing our concern about what's going to happen when a better version of Trump gets in there and doesn't tweet us and whatever.
We've already had it.
Reagan was this guy.
And that's how scary it is because when you see the policies and the effects, we're now living in it now, like directly what Reagan did.
And we've talked about that ad nauseum.
So all these things are swirling around in my brain.
It's hard to even fathom this.
And so it's so nice to see him gone.
But I got to tell you, If we're talking about the pantheon of people who I don't like personally, and Barr, you know, it's frustrating.
Not as frustrating as, like, a McConnell.
Rubio really gets my butt in this.
Man, do I want to see something bad happen to, um... Dude, Rubio, the thing that pisses me off about Rubio
Is he hides behind this veneer of like I'm one of the better Republicans I know and I'm respectable and then meanwhile He's just he he just his instincts are so bad and you won't talk about people being revealed him doing that lame-ass Ducking and and trying to grab the water bottle was obviously who he is His instincts are terrible and the way that he makes up for like all of these gymnastics He has to do he pisses me off to like on an almost daily basis.
He gets under my skin in just a terrible way Sure, but here's what's more interesting to me as I've been reflecting, because I am one to self-reflect, is the guy that really makes me upset and really gets me pissed off in a weird, irrational way is Dan Crenshaw.
And I want to say, well, the guy served our country, he sacrificed, he did these things, and we should give him respect.
But even when he got involved in that thing with Saturday Night Live, and they fucking invited him on, and Pete Davidson had to apologize for the joke he said, which normalized this guy, there's something really awful about him that I can't get over, and it just really enrages me.
And I would imagine he might be under the radar up until Yesterday, but I think now maybe more and more people are understanding what the fuck I've been feeling for since he got into office Yeah, and by the way, I messaged you this video of the Dan Crenshaw super secret Antifa fighting spy video that got released which I want to break this thing down in totality before this episode is over and
And I told you, I was like, I will walk away from this podcast if we do not include clips from this thing.
What do we got?
Well, it's not over in Georgia.
Senate races went to a runoff.
What are we up against?
You'll never believe this.
Far-left activists are attempting to gain full and total control of the U.S.
government.
That we secure a democratic Senate majority so that we don't have to negotiate in that way.
Your mission will be to rally support across Georgia behind these American patriots, Senator Perdue and Senator Loeffler.
We do have a small problem at the landing zone.
So-called anti-fascists, an ironic term given their propensity to, well, act like fascists, are patrolling the area.
Recommend we shift north three kilometers.
How does that sound?
Negative.
I want to say hello to the greeting party.
Where is that pirate?
I don't even know why I'm so angry, you know?
Oh, the news told us to be.
Nick, I don't know how many times I've watched it.
I have so many questions about it.
I have so many concerns about it.
But it is so indicative of where we are right now.
And this is one of the problems is, you know, I think we try and paint the Republican Party with like one brush as if everybody is of the same stripe.
Bill Barr is different.
Bill Barr is one of these institutionalists that he used to get invited to dinners and he would you know drink a drink and talk to people and and you know his kids probably knew other people's kids and he rubbed elbows with everybody in the DC Beltway.
You know what I mean?
Like he used to be this guy who would sit in these places and he was respected and treated like he was a decent human being.
Well meanwhile he worked with other Republicans to You know, target vulnerable communities and basically carry out white supremacy through our laws and our economy.
And now, it's like, you have people like Crenshaw, who, if people go watch the video, you have to go watch this video.
He is playing this new role, and I have to tell you, that video made me feel like Crenshaw might be the heir apparent to Donald Trump.
There is just an ugliness and a weirdness and a hunger for doing weird bullshit that this guy is able to do that is just, it's other level.
Like, I don't think that Ted Cruz would do this, you know, and for those who haven't seen it, Do you want to describe it for the good people who maybe haven't seen it yet?
I mean, listen, it's an action film out of, like, The Expendables, where, I mean, the big set piece is that he is, you don't know where he's walking towards.
Wait, time out, time out, that's not good.
We gotta start, he's giving a speech.
Okay.
and he's giving a speech and people are cheering for him and he realizes he has to go do something and so he leaves and I assume his wife takes over the speech duty in order to show you know he wants to show her off and then he goes backstage and he's got a mission Nick he's got a mission that he needs to carry out okay so he's whatever the mission is and he's got this guy walking with him and might be it's his chief of staff who knows what hell he is his who is he There's two guys.
Two guys, right.
But the one guy doesn't really talk.
So the other guy's talking and he's briefing him, you know, just like they would in Mission Impossible.
And he's taking off his clothes, he's changing his clothes, whatever.
By the way, this is very high production value.
And being a guy who worked on films and commercials for years and years, this is not cheap.
There's editing involved that's actually pretty good, considering what we've seen from like Donald Trump and those idiots and what they try and do.
But meanwhile, you know and there's and there's all the usual cuts and clips of all the the Democrats who we don't like AOC He has to go to Georgia for the special elections Democracy is at stake and he has to help the Patriots Nick, right?
The radicals are going to defeat the Patriots and of course, that's Leffler and Purdue They are the Patriots who need saved by super-secret agent Dan Crenshaw So yeah, so as he's walking and removing clothing and changing clothing, we're like, what is, what is going on?
Steadicam backing up with him and he's going somewhere.
It ultimately ends up being he's on, he gets onto a plane.
And the big set piece I was going to describe was after he gets stressed, he's like, realized he's going to actually get, jump out of the plane with a parachute.
You're like, okay, well, they're just going to cut to him on the ground, right?
No, the fucker jumps out of the plane and we jump out with him in one shot, just like we would see Tom Cruise do.
And this is the cosplay, like by the way, so when you say like he's the heir apparent to Trump, yes.
And he has this macho thing that Trump never was able to sell, even though he likes to talk about it.
And I think it was always tongue-in-cheek with him.
Everyone knew, even the wrestling bullshit you'd see Trump do was bullshit.
And everyone understood this.
This guy, though, has some chops because he served in the military.
He was probably, was he, I'm forgetting now what branch.
He was a SEAL.
He was in SEAL Team 3.
So he's like legit, right?
He is a legit kind of guy who does jump out of fucking airplanes like this.
So yeah, he jumps out of a fucking airplane and lands on Antifa's car.
He doesn't!
Okay, so he not only jumps out of an airplane, he delivers a line reading while he's skydiving.
And he's told, so in the middle of this ad, this is wonderful, in the middle of the ad, whoever is guiding him, this, I guess we're supposed to believe there's some sort of undercover intelligence agency that's being run by the Republican Party.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
That there would be a partisan intelligence agency running, you know, operations against their political opponents.
Not that that's fascistic at all, but anyway.
So as he's going down, they're like, oh, we've spotted Antifa revolutionaries in the area.
And we see in some sort of abandoned or, you know, some sort of put aside wilderness, you have a bunch of like people clad in black with black ski masks and with clubs.
And they're like, oh, we're going to move your landing area.
And he's like, no, I want to pay him a visit.
Like he wants to land on the ground and get into a physical altercation with these people.
He's telling supporters that he's going to skydive into a physical fight with the political opposition.
And he does a superhero landing.
Wait, no, you can't.
You cannot jump forward because then we go down to a vehicle.
Where there are two Antifa members, right?
And they're so soft, Nick.
Like, they're such lame wusses.
They're so lame.
He's got a nose ring.
I love it.
They got this thick beard.
Glasses, though.
They're wearing glasses because they gotta have glasses.
And by the way, they're like, what are we mad about?
And the one guy's like, I don't know, somebody told me I'm supposed to be mad, so I'm mad.
And of course it's showing that Antifa, which by the way at both times they have to be incredibly lame and weak, but dangerous.
Right?
Both things at the exact same time.
And they're waiting on Dan Crenshaw to show up and he lands on the hood of the car like he's getting ready to go into a battle as a superhero.
It's a tour de force.
It's an absolute tour de force.
Oh yeah, this will get everybody he wants to get riled up and really excited and puts him on the map.
This is like him running for president in 2024.
And what I want to point out is something that we've kind of been talking about a little bit, but we haven't really nailed down, which is it's the same thing as Kelly Loeffler Doing these ads where she's wearing, like, an American flag hat.
She's out, you know, in a field somewhere with a semi-automatic rifle.
No one's gonna take my guns.
Meanwhile, by the way, she has, like, five massive mansions, right?
This is an incredibly wealthy person.
David Perdue, who is incredibly wealthy, his ads, he's walking through a meadow in a denim jacket and, you know, I assume there's somewhere he's holding a Glock or something.
The Republican Party is all about symbolism now.
They're not actually telling their supporters that they're going to do anything, right?
There's no legislation.
If you actually see any of Loeffler's ads, it's just like Raphael Warnock is a thug.
He's a thug and he's an Antifa supporter and, you know, he supports Jeremiah Wright.
I don't know where they got Jeremiah Wright out of the mothballs, but they brought him out and he is back in the political discourse, baby.
And so they have no message.
Beyond.
We will make sure that the radicals don't hurt you.
Number one.
Take your guns.
Number two.
And number three, do you want violence done to them?
We'll do violence to them.
That's fine.
We'll do violence.
That's fine.
We have no problem doing violence.
I mean, we'll shoot people in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
We'll, um, I don't know, march in Washington, D.C.
and beat the hell out of people and stab people.
Like, there's no actual politics here.
It's all symbolism.
It's all violence and symbolism now.
You know, I just had a thought, Jared.
We keep wringing our hands over the notion of what's going to happen when somebody has the Trump playbook but decides to act more appropriately and gets in.
What if that's not what we should be afraid of?
What if what's going to happen is someone's going to act just like Trump?
Yeah.
Or worse.
Or worse.
Uncouth, I suppose, could be the word.
Just, you know, completely misogynistic and racist and just, again, out loud and brash and bold and all these things.
What if that is the future?
This is what this guy is like.
Now, he's been able to package, Crenshaw's been able to package himself.
He likes to sound reasonable.
And this is why I always felt him the most dangerous.
Because he will get out there and he'll be like, you know, so frustrated because it seems so reasonable, like what the right is trying to say, what their positions are in these things.
When you listen to him for more than a couple minutes, you realize he's just lying.
He doesn't have any accuracy to any of the statements he's saying, which is a lot like what Trump would do anyway.
So again, he doesn't necessarily fall into that category because he presents himself as a reasonable person generally, who's not screaming and yelling and loud and all these things.
But I would be really, really worried and I think that there's no other explanation for what this means than this is his going to Iowa to begin this process of running for president.
Yeah, and you know, that's the thing is I actually think that he is – that Crenshaw has carved out a niche for himself.
I actually, in going back to Bill Barr and Trump, like these two pollers, these two polls of the Republican Party, right?
Which is, on one, we're going to use power for this, but we're also going to appear legitimate.
We're gonna appear, you know, like upstanding, respectable people.
On the other hand, we're just going to be straight-up racist fascists, right?
This disgusting boorishness.
Which, those are the two polls that the Republican Party has sort of revolved around for a while.
It just so happened in the past, they were able to control the boorishness, right?
They were able to control the fascism.
You know, you brought up the Reagan thing, and you're absolutely right.
Like, Reagan was able to carry out Just absolutely cruel, dog shit, austerity punishment in this country, but under the veneer of being the embodiment of America, right?
He was what you would think of if you thought about a president, if you didn't know anything about him.
Well, we're now to the point where you can't just do that anymore.
Like, if Ronald Reagan was around at this point, he would be carrying around semi-automatic weapons.
You know what I mean?
He would put up Obamacare up in a field and throw a hand grenade at it.
And that's who these people have become.
And somebody like a Crenshaw who can kind of do both.
For those who are interested, you can unlock exclusive content over at patreon.com slash mccraigpodcast.
We did live streams for every night of the Republican convention.
And there's the one night, and I think you remember this too, where Madison Cawthorn, who is now a representative, and is this guy who, you know, he went over to Germany and he went to Hitler's house and his hideaway and called him the Fuhrer.
I mean, like a really messed up dude who, of course, can't walk at the Republican National Convention to show that he loved America.
He rose up out of his chair and stood And that's kind of where we're going.
It's going to become, particularly, and this is what fascism is about too, you're going to see veterans getting skin in the game.
You know what I mean?
And that's what Crenshaw is going to be.
It's going to be the performative acts of veterans like people like Crenshaw as mixed in with that fascistic sort of undercurrent of intelligence units and operations and violence.
And we've already seen that happening.
I mean, this is how all this stuff coalesces.
You know what's funny?
Just out of the blue reminds me of, you know, I'm busy on my basketball side of things a lot of the time on Twitter and invariably when some asshole comes flying hot into my mentions to argue about a point I made about how we teach basketball or how we view the game, which by the way has, you know, overarching themes of life as well.
Invariably, when you get the sense of, like, this guy is completely hard-headed, he is rooted to a past that's long gone, and fake fundamentals and things we shouldn't be teaching anymore, you go to the bio, and you want to take a guess of what's almost all the time in there.
There's two possibilities.
One is some sort of Christ believer, you know, really religious, Psalms, quoted, whatever, in the bio, or military.
And for me, I would imagine that a lot of times the military I thought were the ones who were, you know, trained to constantly reassess their situations and be, you know, forward thinkers, whatever.
But I don't know.
To me, on an anecdotal level, and I think it applies, there is a sense of, like, military training, probably especially at a certain era, tends to develop this sort of... What's the kind of thinking I'm... What's the word I'm looking for?
The inability... Like a dichotomous sort of...
It's hard-headed thinking that can't adjust.
It's, you know, it's stuck in one way and it's very aggressive.
Yeah.
Well, I'll just say first and foremost, like not to, you know, not going to paint the military by too broad of a brush because of course there are like different groups within the military.
I mean, you actually, I mean, you have liberal people who are in the military.
I mean, that, that happens all the time.
You have a, you actually have people in the military who question everything.
That's like a contingent within the military.
And a lot of the military rejects the Trump.
Right, absolutely.
But then you also have this other thing, and this is a really...
This is one of the reasons we're in the situation that we are.
And, you know, we're working right now, just to go ahead and plug this, we're working on an audio documentary that traces the situation we're in now, back into the 1970s, and where we could have made changes and where things could have been better.
And eventually we're going to come across the Iraq War, and we're going to come across the Afghani War, and we're going to come across these forever wars.
Well, what ends up happening is a country like America, particularly when I don't know, man.
We can't have health care.
Our infrastructure's crumbling.
We can't save people from a pandemic.
We can't really do anything.
We're kind of declining as an empire.
What you end up seeing within declining empires, particularly militaristic empires, is that the military is like, we go out and do what you ask us to do.
We'll go conquer a country.
We'll go kill a bunch of people.
That's more than fine.
You give us a job, we'll do it.
Why don't you do your job?
And all of a sudden, the political scene and the social scene, they start looking at it and they're like, we could do all this better.
And it happens in empires, one after another.
You have general uprisings among like the, you know, the general class.
You have military members, and that's why you have military coups.
You know?
Why in a country where there's discord, all of a sudden the military comes in and is like, we're done with this shit, we're taking care of it.
What we're watching now is a bunch of people who grew up in the forever war era.
Who grew up in this system.
And by the way, they weren't treated well either.
They weren't given the weapons and the armor and any of the things that they actually needed.
They were thrown into a bunch of wars that they didn't need to fight.
But within the military and within the right has grown a fascistic movement.
We see it all the time.
I assume like every now and then you'll get behind a truck that has like Infidel on it.
You know or tell Muhammad about me or whatever they're in the thin silver line stuff and all the fascistic clothes and I mean hell you can buy fascistic coffee now you know and and and so it's it's its own movement and you see this stuff in declining militaristic empires and now we're starting to watch this thing come into full fruition.
Well, let's also not forget that for a long period of time, it was really hard for the Army and the Armed Forces to meet their quotas.
And they had to lower their standards to allow people in.
And you have to imagine that had a big effect for a while on the quality of soldier That they were producing.
And you know, it weighs everybody down.
It's like if you're a student in a class with a bunch of kids who are, you know, disruptive, everybody suffers from that.
And I would imagine there's got to be a connection to that as well, where because of those standards having to be lower, because they just simply needed bodies to fill these, their armed forces, you know, we suffered that way.
And the training suffered as well.
Well, and it's important to mention also, so Crenshaw's a SEAL.
We have to mention SEAL culture.
Like, these are people who are, like, thrown in situations where, like, six of them go into a country and they have to, like, topple the country.
And they have to do it by any means necessary, you know?
And it doesn't matter how they get it done.
It doesn't matter who they hurt.
It doesn't matter who they kill.
SEAL culture is crazy.
And SEAL culture and mercenary culture, all of this stuff bubbles up in a country that is like America where all of a sudden it's been in control for forever and then it starts to decline.
And you see this man, you know, we had a conversation with Nate Powell about the sort of creep of fascism and how a lot of it had to do with how the military had to change its tactics and how they had to bring in these mercenaries and they had to pay people to do this.
And all of a sudden what America is and what it does and how it acts on the world stage I hate to tell everyone this, but what I keep finding in my research is that whatever you throw out into the world to suppress people and oppress people and make them like crumble to your will, it boomerangs back.
And it comes back to the main country.
And when it comes back from the main country, from your colonial interest or your imperial interest, it comes back and you do it to your own people.
Why?
Because you figure out that those behaviors work.
And they make sure to suppress and oppress people.
So why wouldn't you use it in your country when all of a sudden you have an economic crisis, or a political crisis, or people all of a sudden are out in the streets and doing all this stuff?
That's one of the reasons, going back to Bill Barr, why he can go to hell.
That's why when you look at Washington D.C., you have people out in the streets protesting, and you have a helicopter that starts to lower down to the street and basically attacks people with its downdraft.
It's because you're using all of those imperial tactics and they always find their way back home.
Right.
And he, just the public persona and the way he was willing to lie about what he was doing also just sullies the whole thing.
They should just burn the White House down and rebuild it.
They really just should because you're never going to get rid of the smell that's in there right now.
And the same with the Department of Justice.
It's so rotten at this point.
And by the way, maybe the FBI has a new building.
Remember when they were going to have a new building for the FBI because pieces of concrete were killing people practically, falling on the ground, and Trump wouldn't let them because that building was going to get bought by another hotel that was going to be a competitor to the Trump Hotel?
Maybe they'll have to do that and literally just change the venues of all these things and hopefully that will do something because, again, Barr needs to be punished for what he has done because he is equally as fallible as all of the people that we've already pointed out.
And I think that what's frustrating about it is he consistently would refuse to acknowledge systemic racism in police forces.
He certainly would not emphasize white supremacists' violence in the country, which was growing and probably the biggest threat we have domestically.
The number one threat.
Yeah.
The number one threat to domestic security.
Yeah.
And it would constantly be minimizing that under the guise of we just need more religion.
Let's just pray some more.
Get some more people involved with that.
And as a result, that's when you start seeing violence in the streets.
You know, it's all connected, even though if people who might have gotten stabbed in the protests this weekend, they might not say, oh, well, you know, I heard Bill Barr talk about this.
So that's why I got violent on people.
So it's not going to be direct like that.
But it's not one for one.
No, but it contributes in a mindset and it's subtle sometimes and it's it creeps and it really that's why we need to be on top of this and really focus and make sure everyone understands it and that's why this dichotomy between the left and the right is so great because the right doesn't want to even acknowledge it.
Well, I'll say first and foremost, um, I don't mean to burst everyone's balloons, but I don't think they're going to burn down the White House and build a new one.
I don't think they're going to tear down the DOJ or tear down the FBI or the CIA, but it's important what you mentioned, which is this stuff has been going on for so long and the systemic rot has been going on for so long.
We are in the late stages of something, and that's why we're seeing all the violence, that's why we're seeing all the corruption, that's why we're seeing all the fascism.
What ends up, and by the way, this goes for our institutions, it goes for our political constructs, it goes for, I'm sorry, but the Constitution, while we're having this conversation, it goes for our culture, and it goes for our economy.
There's a late stage that we are at.
We have been in this moment for so long that it's starting to be threadbare.
You know what I mean?
It's that point where that sweatshirt that you really love, your favorite sweatshirt, it's starting, the holes are starting to come through, right?
And you have to start making decisions about what you do with that.
And what you end up finding is if you don't have a restorative moment, you don't have a new like generation of of new ideas and new directions and some sort of revitalization or a revival of sorts.
Which, by the way, again going back to this audio documentary we're doing, that's what happened in the 1970s.
Something had to give.
Things had reached a terminal point.
It was either going to be they changed everything wholesale or they had the revival of Reaganism.
Right?
You either make a bunch of necessary changes or Reagan comes along and is like, we're having an American party everyone!
You're invited.
So, we're at this point where we need to make these big, giant changes, or fascism is going to square the circle.
It's going to make sure that nobody complains about it, and that everybody is oppressed and exploited through violence.
And that's the problem, is we need something large.
All those things you're talking about, you're exactly right.
I'm not going to tell you that we need to burn down the White House.
But a metaphorical burning down of these structures and creating of something new is pretty much the only way we're going to avoid a massive meltdown that's going to be an incredible tragedy.
Well, I think, you know, people are putting a lot of faith in, like, Biden coming in and restoring normalcy.
But I think what you just described, it would explain why, you know, people on the progressive left are really upset at having Biden coming in there, because that's not going to happen.
What you just described is not going to happen.
And as a result, nothing is going to happen, right?
Maybe on the margins, they'll pass a law that says you can't, you know, you know, Sell the things that make a handgun into an automatic weapon, right?
Okay, we'll get gun control, right?
That's what they're gonna do, you know on these very little things.
It's gonna trudge along We've always seen that, you know, the radical people in this country when they present their ideas Moves us faster.
It's a glacial pace as it is, but I think at some point Yes, we're going to have to move a lot faster to get these things done.
But but it's so intractable at this point even if they were to win the Senate and they could get laws passed, right, with Kamala Harris being the tiebreaker.
I just don't have a lot of faith that we're going to get a ton of things done.
And by the way, part of it is because they're going to have to clean up what they've been doing the last four years.
They're going to be busy with that for three of the years, and then they're going to be campaigning again.
And by the way, if Trump has his way in the next 30-some days, then they're going to take even longer to have to clean this up because that's what he's trying to do.
We have no idea what he's up to.
well I mean We know the overarching thing, right?
He wants to make it so difficult when Biden comes in that he'll just be tied up for a while trying to undo what they were doing, right?
Like, just for the sake of undoing it.
I think he's mucking up the system to an extent.
I think that that is true.
I will say a couple things, because I think what you just said is really important.
First and foremost, today, we're taping this on December 14th, which is why we're so jubilant about Bill Barr, you know, leaving his post as Attorney General.
Today, the Electoral College confirmed that Joe Biden is the next president of the United States.
Going back to the idea that these systems are antiquated and problematic, We should not have waited this long, terrified that faithless electors were going to steal the election.
The Electoral College is a piece of shit that was put in place to control normal citizens and to advance the interests of moneyed white supremacists.
It needs to go.
It needs to go.
Well, here's the problem.
It needs thrown into the sun.
But how do the people in North Dakota feel like they're part of the franchise then, if we get rid of the Electoral College?
People in Idaho.
People, you know, in these states that have nobody living in them.
you know they can enjoy the wide open spaces Nick I I don't know what to tell you.
The Electoral College needs to go away.
It will make our politics better, fairer, realer, more human.
But I will say this.
I think with the Biden thing, What you just said about nothing changing, I think first and foremost that Biden getting elected gave us a breath.
It gave us an opportunity, a window to possibly stave off, I'm sorry, but to stave off fascism.
We've seen it, we've recognized it, we've looked in the eye, we've seen what's possible.
And I have to tell you, if you think that there aren't moneyed, powerful interests in this country who have been looking at this coup, grift operation, and they're like, oh yeah, you can get away with whatever the hell you want in this country.
They absolutely are thinking about that.
So we have to deal with that.
But I will say that saying that absolutely nothing will change takes the moment into consideration and says that nothing will change so that nothing can change.
Right?
The way things are today in mid-December are the way things are going to be for the next couple of years.
Things change.
Things can change just on a dime.
And Joe Biden has shown an uncanny ability throughout his career to skate to wherever the energy is.
He's been center-right, he's been right, he's been center-left, he's moved left a couple of times.
It's always like moving back and forth, finding an equilibrium.
He's always been the fulcrum of America, more or less.
He goes where the energy and the gravity is.
We have to exert pressure.
And I mean you, I mean me, I'm talking about our listeners, the Montgomery community.
We need to start exerting our energy and our influence on the political process.
If we care about this, which I think we do, if we're passionate about this, which I think that we are, we have to work for this thing.
We cannot just wait for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to suddenly change everything.
And by the way, even if we do win the Senate, do you know who wins if we win the Senate?
Joe Manchin.
Joe Manchin wins.
Because all of a sudden, Joe Manchin is the decider of everything.
And if you think West Virginia doesn't get literally everything that they want from then on, you're crazy.
We have to work to change this country.
And it's not enough to simply win an election in 2020.
You have to win in 2022.
You have to build the framework in between the two elections.
Then you have to build the framework to the next one.
You have to build a lasting infrastructure.
It's a big, giant job, but we have to do it.
We just have to.
Right.
Well, it sounds good to me and I'm ready.
I'm willing and waiting.
I'm standing by and I'm standing, whatever, ready to do that.
So, I don't know how that's going to shape up.
I guess the next line is one day at a time.
First get him in the freaking office.
And then we can kind of figure out how we want to make this thing work.
So I mean, listen, if you listen to the right, you know, Biden's under control of AOC.
That would be terrific for me.
I'm like, great, let's let her be in control.
But by the way, you've also warned numerous times about the brewing fight inside the Democratic Party, which could cause all sorts of gridlock.
And basically, the midterm, you know, blue wave, no, red wave, excuse me, you know, in 2022, which is another scary proposition.
But do you want to talk briefly about, you know, what the Wall Street Journal did?
Because I did find it interesting.
I'm going to quote to you part of this.
If you haven't read it, there was an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal from a guy.
Basically, it was the most misogynistic thing I'd have read in a long time.
It's pretty impressive.
He wants Jill Biden to take the doctor away from her name.
And why it was worth even writing, I have no idea.
But here's a quote that's interesting.
I thought that applied that you'd find interesting.
Quote, May once have held prestige, but that has been diminished by the erosion of seriousness and the relaxation of standards in university education generally.
And this is why he wants to degrade the notion of having a doctor because she was a doctor of She got it in policy versus being a delivering babies, which is what he thinks is what an empty supposed to be a doctor supposed to be so Thoughts I use that guy I'll say this first and foremost just to preface all of it the Wall Street Journal published that article So everyone would get upset about it and talk about it and share it
And they were successful, which you want to talk about small things that all of us can do.
Stop sharing articles that piss you off.
Yeah.
Stop sharing them.
Yeah, because I'm telling you, these outlets, these media places, they do not care if the article is being shared because you love it and it defines your entire reality or if you hate it and you're talking shit about it.
You got to stop hate sharing stuff because it only gives people incentive to do this.
Second of all, this guy sucks.
I don't know if people have looked up his background, but this is a guy who is an absolute mediocre white dude.
And let me tell you what, academia has a few mediocre white dudes in it.
And by the way, I'm an academic, so I'm just gonna, I'm gonna tell you about what goes on in these situations.
Academia has a tendency to be dominated by white mediocre men who maintain their power and influence by being misogynistic racist pieces of shit.
And they have had control of the academy for forever.
It's why you read what you read, why you study what you study, and why it's necessary to reform and to sort of open up people's minds.
This guy, back, I want to say it was in the 1980s or early 1990s, was writing articles about how gay men were awful and terrible, and if he could, he would wish gay people off the face of the earth.
That was gang published.
That was out in the world.
The fact that this guy was given a column to spew this bullshit is an indictment of the Wall Street Journal.
This guy should not have been published.
And the entire thing, it's just academic infighting and just absolutely absurdism.
It's offensive on every level and just straight-up stupid.
Just dumb as hell.
Yeah, and you know what?
I'm embarrassed a little bit now that you're bringing it up, only because you're right.
We don't need to give it any more power.
I mean, listen, there are articles written about the op-ed now, and it's like just furthering this whole thing.
But certainly, it was worth just sort of calling out, I suppose, just because it's sort of what we got with Network when we did the Patreon about Network, which was the... And I just saw it in something else.
Oh yeah I was watching broadcast news and that comes out there too where she's like there's no reason why we can't have the newsroom make money you know but that notion of needing to make money and by the way the op-ed side and the opinion side the news side are completely supposed to be separate they are but you know one hand washes the other they need to you know raise to make money to keep everything going that's where we are that's the sad part about the situation of journalism now.
But I'll tell you what happens We're talking about this in a way that was being serious about it, but what does this do?
And you and I have been around the block a few times on this stuff.
We've listened to our fair share of talk radio programs.
We've listened to sports talk, right?
There's an entire industry of people who just need content.
They just need to talk about something.
They need to fill time.
So it's like, this article comes out, it gets everyone pissed off, rightly so, because it's an asshole being a misogynist.
Meanwhile, Ben Shapiro's like, I'm sorry, an asshole being a misogynist?
And he's just like, there.
You know what I mean?
It's just like, I'm now going to argue about this for days.
You know and and and so what ends up happening is it's being turned in to another culture war And instead of talking, and again, I'm glad that we talked about it because I think it's important that you actually dismiss it and diagnose what it is, but while people are talking about this shit, we're not talking about larger, more important things.
It's a culture battle.
It's a culture war that doesn't really have any standing whatsoever on whether or not our lives are better or not.
The fact that he's getting blasted the way that he is might make some men decide not to write an op-ed like this, although that op-ed has no reason to be written, by the way, at all.
But it's just another culture battle that shouldn't have to be fought, and these people should be ashamed of themselves.
It's just an absolute waste of time and energy and space and attention that these people have created.
Sure.
But it also is, you know, I don't know if I want to say it's nice, but it's good to be reminded of who these people are.
Yes.
And there's no question a large swath of people in the country read his thing.
It's like, yeah, he's right.
Well, you get that doctor, you know, I mean, does it remind you at all of when Trump asked Romney to get rid of her last name, Ronna McDaniel?
I'm not sure why, but it's just like it sticks like it's the same kind of dismissiveness of like, just you don't have an identity.
I I can tell you who you are and I get to decide what you stand for.
And whether, like Colin Kaepernick, I get to say that you're against the flag and you're against the troops because you're kneeling during the National Anthem.
And meanwhile, the troops are suckers and losers and die for no reason.
Yeah.
And it's like, who are you?
And it's only older white men who get to decide.
Like, who are you to decide why he is doing that when he is telling you why he is doing it?
And you're simply dismissing that and telling him why he's doing it.
Same thing with women, people of color.
That's sort of the overall indicative picture that we're seeing here.
We need to be reminded of that.
It needs to be called out as much as possible, I suppose.
So that's sort of what I guess we're getting out for that, too.
I have a rhetorical question for you to bring this thing full circle on this very topic.
Are you ready for how rageful you're going to feel in about a year when there's some sort of a protest movement and Bill Barr publishes an op-ed in the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal talking about how the attorney... I just watched you!
For those who don't watch our YouTube Companion Show, Nick just had a moment.
But you know that's going to happen.
Bill Barr is going to publish some sort of article criticizing whoever the Attorney General is and how he would handle it and what decorum calls for and how society is falling apart.
And the problem is That these people who have watched Bill Barr absolutely abuse the office of the Attorney General and the Department of Justice, they're going to go ahead and publish it, they're going to welcome them to their fundraisers, they're going to rub elbows, and they're going to continue the same damn cycle.
Nick can't even respond!
That's a good way to end it.
It makes me so mad!
That's what pisses me off, is it should be better and people should know better.
As always, we're so thankful you hung out with us.
Very, very grateful for your support.
If you want to support the show, like us, subscribe us, tell people about us.
Like, it's really important to get the word out about this podcast.
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We'll be back later this week.
Knock on wood, no emergency podcast.
If you need us until then, you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me SMH.
