Come on. There's no way Nick Hauselman and Jared Yates Sexton weren't going to talk about the interview with Meghan Markle, Prince Harry, and the fact that the Right is standing up for blatant racism in the wake of revelations that white supremacy is alive and well in the Royal Family. A discussion of the history of empire and the weaponization of white supremacy also leads to talks about domestic terrorists joining the military and law enforcement, and eventually the topic of Andrew Cuomo's continued scandals and how partisanship can often keep us from seeing reality as it is. To support the show and access more content, including the weekly Weekender show on Fridays, become a patron at http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
I just want to remind you that every week we have an additional bonus show, and all you have to do to access that is go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
Our Patreon community is One of the best in the business.
I stand by them.
They are wonderful, good, decent people who take care of each other.
They have a really good time, a really good thing that's going on over there.
All you have to do is go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast to join.
You'll also be helping Nick and me to complete our projects, including the second episode of our Certain Route to Failure audio documentary.
We appreciate everyone's help and everyone's support.
And yeah, let's get to the show.
So we have in tandem the conversation of he won't be given security, he's not going to be given a title, and also concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he's born.
What?
Meghan doesn't understand what that system is.
But what she says, which is even more insidious, is that actually the decision against Archibingham Prince was taken because of his skin colour.
Now, the only person that makes decisions about titles in the royal family is the Queen.
So what Meghan Markle is saying is the Queen is a racist.
And that is a disgusting and completely untrue allegation to make.
Hey everybody, welcome to the McCraig Podcast.
I'm Jerry D. H. Saxton here with Nick Hauselman.
We're going to take a quick detour today.
We're going to hop on board of a plane.
We're going to be responsible.
We're going to wear masks.
We're going to keep our distance from our fellow travelers.
We're going to hop the old pond And listen, it might not surprise a lot of people, but we have to talk about the shit that went down last night.
We are recording this on Monday, March 8th.
We got to talk about the shit that went down last night in the CBS special interview between Oprah Winfrey, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry.
And I don't know, Nick, I was absolutely shocked to hear that the royal family of Britain who built their entire fortune and power base on the oppression and exploitation of people of color around the world, has a problem with racism.
Shocking.
Yes.
But if we're going to be, you know, traveling, we make sure we have to do it POSH, right?
POSH, which stands for Port Out and then Starboard Home.
Did you know this?
That's what POSH means.
Is that true?
Is that true?
Don't let anybody tell you this podcast doesn't educate people.
Oh, yeah.
When you're on the port side you can see the horizon so you don't get seasick and then on the back you on the way back you want to be on the starboard side.
I'm not I can't remember where you're going at that point but that was somewhere from from and back to England and that was what Posh means.
And yes we cannot I would imagine England has a very similar historical issue with what they teach in schools and what you're supposed to be as far as Would it surprise you, Nick, that the innovators of the concentration camp were the Brits?
Would that surprise you?
book or two and find out how how ridiculously oppressive the their colonialization of you know places like India were would it surprise you Nick that the innovators of the concentration camp were the Brits would that surprise you would it surprise you if I told you that there was a bustling fascistic movement in Britain before their entry in World War two Would that surprise you?
Would it surprise you to hear that hardly any other group of people has oppressed, murdered, or exploited more people on the face of the planet Earth than our good friends the Brits?
But I will also say, And this is important for the conversation that we're getting ready to have, because one of the reoccurring themes of today's show is going to be the idea of fandom, or people who allow their passions or their loyalties to sort of keep them from being able to see reality as it is.
And I will say, one of the weirdest waves of sort of harassment and criticism I've ever received was pointing out that in 1688 the British were invaded by the Dutch and that the Dutch took over the entirety of their political system and remade it in the image of the Dutch.
People weren't ready to deal with the 1688 revolution that gave the Dutch control over Britain and I have to tell you that the British and also the right in America have not handled this interview event well at all.
They have not.
Almost as bad as a Dutch oven.
They're not handling that.
That's a terrible joke!
That's a terrible joke!
Listen, I'll never miss an opportunity to use the phrase Dutch oven.
You know what's great about that is that people can see this on the YouTube version of our show.
I didn't realize what the look on your face was but it was when I said Dutch and you realized you were going to get to use yolk in some way shape or form.
That was that that was you some would say that was cooking for a moment or two.
Oh I gotta I gotta improve my well my poker face but I don't know if there's another phrase for that for cooking nonetheless.
But yes, what were we talking about?
We're talking about, oh yeah, basically, you know what it is?
It's really just a focus on just the inability to accept that racism exists at all, I think.
It's a triggering thing because, of course, racism doesn't exist anymore.
Everyone's free and fair to have their own abilities to become successful if they want to, independent of the color of their skin.
And it doesn't matter, I guess, where in the globe, as long as it's English-speaking, by the way, It will affect them like this and and bring out just more ugliness yeah, there's a So it listen one of the one of the truths and I was writing about this today.
It's not Pleasant, you know what?
I mean like let's be real like this is not a pleasant thing that we have to address but the power and wealth of the modern world and we're focusing right now on Britain and America is Their power bases and their economic wealth is based on slavery and depression and the carrying out of white supremacy, which is the ideology that makes all of that possible.
That's not pleasant.
That doesn't make things great.
It doesn't feel like being at a birthday party and slicing into the cake.
I'm sorry.
It's an ugly business that we have to recognize.
With this interview, and I want to point out that what I'm getting ready to say are such obvious examples of racism Right.
But also expected.
Like when Meghan Markle comes into the lily white incestuous royal family.
Right.
That for generations has intentionally kept its quote unquote bloodline clean.
Right.
And just continue to push this wealth further and further.
And by the way, has completely continued to traffic in this mythology that there are these people, Nick, and they just happen to be Better than everybody else by blood and genetics and by the grace of God.
They just happen to be.
Tell me if you've heard this story before.
It's very much an American and also British story.
So she comes out and she says, as a black woman who entered the royal family, that her son was not given his proper titles, and also that there were a few conversations among the royal family about how dark his skin would be at birth.
Now, these are shocking revelations, but they're not all that surprising, right?
These are people who are sheltered and backward and, again, living testaments to white supremacy.
I want to share with people a couple of things.
I knew that this was coming.
I knew that these things were going to show up, but it still has an effect.
How do you feel about Pierce Morgan, Nick?
He's just a wonderful, gentle soul, isn't he?
Just, you know, it couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
Just a wonderful guy.
Just a wonderful guy.
Pierce Morgan in the Daily Mail today, and I was sort of, I'll be honest with you, Nick, I was sort of, I went to sleep last night after watching this interview, and a part of me, it was like Christmas Eve.
It was like, tomorrow we get the present of what Pierce Morgan has to say about this, right?
And Pierce Morgan, who's just a total asshole, his column in the Daily Mail says, Megan and Harry's nauseating two-hour Oprah wine-a-thon was a disgraceful diatribe of cynical race-baiting propaganda designed to damage the queen as her husband lies in hospital and destroy the monarchy. Megan and Harry's nauseating two-hour Oprah wine-a-thon was a disgraceful I mean, you know, tell us how you really feel, Pierce.
Then, of course, we have Ben Shapiro.
And by the way, I'm going to try and read this Ben Shapiro tweet in Ben Shapiro-ese.
Okay, are you ready?
Imagine being Prince Philip, fighting Nazis, helping preside over the UK during the Cold War and the economic struggles of the 1970s.
And now, watching your spoiled grandson basically called the institution to which you have silently devoted your life a vile repository of bigotry.
That's really, really good.
Thank you.
Then we have Charlie Kirk, who we don't talk about enough, Nick.
We don't bring up Charlie Kirk enough.
Charlie Kirk makes Ben Shapiro sound like Albert Einstein.
Oh, listen, it's amazing, by the way, that Ben Shapiro is like the intellectual heavyweight of the right.
That's quite something.
Charlie Kirk, of course, gets on radio, YouTube, I don't know the dispatches of hell.
He comes out and says that Meghan Markle made this up like Jesse Smollett and that Prince Harry is a metrosexual beta male, who by the way, let me check my notes here.
Prince Harry, veteran of the Afghanistan War, but that's neither here nor there.
The American right and the British right have rallied to the royal family because of accusations of racism, because of course they have.
Right.
I have a Harry story.
I feel like I should throw it in here.
I was studying in London for a semester in college around the corner from Harry's school.
They had sharpshooters, snipers up on roofs and everything like that.
But all you would hear all day long when they were outside playing was all the girls yelling, Because they all wanted to marry the prince, right?
They wanted to make sure they caught his eye.
And that's all you would hear.
It really was crazy every day when they were out playing.
It's just these girls incessantly yelling Harry.
It didn't work, obviously, because Meghan caught his eye.
And she was definitely not in one of those schools that he grew up in going to.
So...
It's not surprising at all it is I mean we've seen these movies right where these stuffy British aristocrats are all horrible people who are Close-minded and they don't want to have any progress at all.
They want to keep keep England great again Whatever you want to call that and it's it's very you know, it's it's packaged differently than like what Trump is doing But there's no question that it's the same Apparently Markle says it was not the Queen who was saying the racist things.
when you talk about the inability to accept things.
And there's always the end of the movie where they kind of finally warm up to things and the music fades in, everyone's like happy about it or whatever.
But this is not that case.
Piers Morgan, by the way, was trying to sort of, apparently Markle says it was not the queen who was saying the racist things.
However, he does try and connect these two things saying that the only person that could decide whether the kid is gonna get the rights to being a prince is the queen.
So, if the queen says that the kid is not going to be a prince, then the queen ipso facto ergo whatever, must then be the one who's saying all the racist things.
Which, by the way, could very well be true at this point.
I don't know.
I mean, listen.
One of the things I hate about the royal family is that it turns us into palace intrigue watchers.
You know what I mean?
Where it's like, Who did what to who?
And, oh, I wonder who said that thing over tea?
And like that actually, like, let's be frank about it.
Because again, we're talking about fandom here.
That has been the inspiration for so many of our entertainments as of late.
Like everything from The Crown to, what's that show where they just drink tea the whole time?
People are going to hate me for this.
Bridgerton.
I don't know.
No.
I don't know if you've ever read up on Bridgerton.
There are lewd things happening in Bridgerton.
Yeah, they do a little more than drinking tea.
They do things in Bridgerton, to my understanding.
Yeah.
No, Downton Abbey?
Yes.
Right?
Yes.
And of course, like, I have to tell you, but the Trump administration was our own American palace entry.
It was like, oh, Jared really has the ear of Trump right now.
No, Bannon's got it right now.
Oh, it's moving here and here and here.
The entire conversation about the inner workings of the royal family is designed to keep us from talking about what's actually happening in the world.
That's why they're there.
They are figureheads that captivate the idea of royalty or chosen leaders or whatever, the same way Donald Trump was.
Donald Trump didn't do anything to earn his money.
He was born into it, and he claimed he had these genetic gifts that made it possible.
These are figureheads of a white supremacy that doesn't work anymore, that doesn't, like, the meritocracy myth is completely gone.
And by the way, American and British empires, I don't know if you've noticed this, Nick, I don't know if you've looked around in the year during the pandemic and economic crisis and basically everything else, they're falling apart.
They don't work.
Like, the American and British empires are done.
It's sealed.
That is signed, sealed, and delivered.
But we still have these figureheads who tell us otherwise.
Right.
They're influencers.
The royals are just simply influencers.
They have no legislative responsibilities or any kind of effect on that anyway.
But they can say things that people will listen to in that fandom.
But I think you're right.
As we move away from the Queen and she moves on, And then certainly Prince Charles has no influence.
He doesn't have that kind of personality.
Like, I suspect that the royals are going to, yeah, fade away a little bit more now that, you know, yeah, we have the two of them here.
So it's not going to be a thing where they're going to be able to sway the feelings of the British population by decree.
Okay.
By the way, I'm laughing because you're talking about the Queen moving on.
She's moving on.
She's just going to be like, I'll see y'all later.
Take care.
Different realms, different, you know.
It depends on how you want to view.
It's been real, everybody.
I'm moving on.
I'm out.
Peace out.
She picks up her cake dust old luggage like a country singer hitting the road.
I'm moving on.
Well, I actually think, and this is like, I don't know, I don't know where this is coming from, but it seems true.
It almost feels like the American president has become our own sort of figurehead in that regard.
They don't have that much power besides bombing other countries.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's not like they can really direct legislation anymore.
I mean, our Congress really keeps anyone from doing Pretty much anything.
I mean, we're going to talk about the COVID bill here in a few minutes, but these parties, for the most part, do not exist to be proactive.
They're mostly reactive.
I mean, the only reason we got a COVID relief bill is because there was a COVID emergency and because there was an economic emergency.
Right?
The fact that they were able to even do something about it was a reaction to something else, which is the only time that they actually ever do anything.
They have become, as we've talked about in the past, people to show up on our shows, talk, get in fights, get in arguments and scraps, and that's about it.
They've become characters in our own TV show, much like the Royals.
Did you see the response from many English people?
Because I don't know if you realize this, people did.
The feed that the English people got of this interview was the American feed with American commercials.
Did you see the response?
Oh, I love that.
I love that.
So the response on Twitter from hundreds and hundreds of probably even more of English people were they couldn't understand the amount of commercials that are dealing with drugs.
And it's like, ask your doctor about Zeneca, whatever, like, you know, all these different drugs and like, what are you talking about?
Ask your doctor.
Your doctor tells you if you need to take a drug and that's it.
And we, you know, but like they couldn't even fathom the notion that without health care, without national health care system, there's all these, you know, it's marketing to like to come up with illnesses that you might think you have that you need to treat.
It's it was very striking to me to see that.
And also, I think another part of this whole thing where, you know, it kind of brings us to the to the notion of like, I'm pretty pumped to talk about that actually.
We're gonna bring that up in one of our future episodes of our audio documentary.
Like the moment where all of a sudden America is just like, you know what?
Pills for everybody.
Right.
Just ask your doctor for pills.
Are you unhappy?
Are you feeling bad?
Take some pills.
Do it.
But it's connected to advertising, allowing advertising for pills and for lawyers and all those things that were not allowed for a long time on TV.
That is probably even the bigger issue we had that was unleashed.
Yeah, one of my favorite things is, and I could be wrong on this in terms of timing, but like that sort of coincided, like that was allowed to start happening as they started saying you can't show advertisements for smoking or liquor on TV.
It's weird how that happens, isn't it?
Isn't that odd how like that and that just sort of coincide and work together?
It's weird that marijuana isn't illegal in the country, isn't it?
Moving along.
It's almost like there are people behind the scenes who are pulling the levers.
But I think what we watched was really, really telling.
And it goes back to a conversation we've been having, which is the right has gone so far off the cliff that they have no ideology beyond reacting to this shit.
I mean, like the people that I read, like Kirk and Shapiro and any number of these people today who are going or who are defending the royal family, Are the ones who will go up on a stage on CPAC and stand in the Nazi rune, like you do, right?
Everyone does.
And be like, the greatest thing that ever happened was the American Revolution when we threw off tyranny and monarchy.
And now they're like, why don't you leave those monarchs alone?
You know, it's an incredible mind thing that they're doing.
And meanwhile, um, we were talking about this before we started recording this COVID bill that got passed with no Republican support whatsoever.
In the past, if, like, the majority party, the Democratic Party, would push a relief bill, they would present it, and the minority party, the Republican Party, would present a plan.
And it wouldn't necessarily be a plan that they expected to pass.
It would probably be something that was, like, left on the printer, you know, some think tank, right?
And then they brought it out.
They were like, ah, give it a shot.
Tell people about it.
And then they would at least present it and act like that was something they wanted to do.
Meanwhile, they didn't present any alternative to the economic relief package.
The only thing that you saw was Kevin McCarthy reading Green Eggs and Ham because, my god, the Dr. Seuss discourse cannot end, Nick.
It can't end.
And then, too, of course, we have bills about not allowing transgender people to compete in high school sports.
Like, that's all that they've got.
Like, these symbolic battles that they continue to fight, it's all that they have, and it's always in the attempt to preserve capitalistic dominance and patriarchal white supremacy.
That's it.
That's all they've got for anybody.
Well, you know, and let's not forget they're trying to create the Biden Neanderthal comments into a deplorable... Oh, no, that's right!
That non-existent group of people now.
Like, any chance that they have to be like, oh, that's offensive.
Oh, I got him!
Hey, the Neanderthals were really progressive people.
They really, you know, are important in our history.
We can't just disparage them for that, you know.
It really is frightening.
For the record, Biden shouldn't be talking about fucking Neanderthals.
Like, just stop, right?
That's like one of those Bidenisms.
He doesn't need to say it.
It's stupid.
They're going to find anything they want.
It's like the Democrats need to kind of avoid being so scared about saying any of those things because, oh, the Republicans are going to make a big thing out of it.
They're going to make a big thing out of it anyway.
Everything.
It doesn't really matter.
But yes, whatever.
I didn't mind Neanderthal.
It's not a bad way of describing that kind of thinking, of rejecting science.
I mean, I don't know what else... You're a writer.
What other words can we use to describe people like that?
I don't... Dumb.
I don't know.
You know, that's the thing.
It's one of those deals where, I mean, the moment I heard Biden say it, I... Maybe this is...
Maybe this is indicative of the trauma that I've suffered in the last few years.
But, like, I now, like, view the world sometimes through, um, predicting fox chyrons.
Oh, wow.
Where I'm like, Neanderthal gate.
You know, Biden says Neanderthal.
Unity?
You know what I mean, and it's just like I just saw it now.
It's just like oh my god It's like watching watching a sporting event knowing that an unforced error just occurred You know what?
I mean like just waiting on that bullshit to form.
Yeah, which is forms.
Yeah again It forms no matter what in a way the trans thing was interesting to me because you know as a coach I started to reflect on this and thinking okay.
Well, I mean If there is a, they're calling them biological males now, go through transgender transition and then are competing with girls like they'd be so much better at sports.
I think what I came down to this is that there are lots of good athletes from both genders.
And I think the point is, is what they're trying to do.
I think this is the underlying insidiousness of what the public are doing.
girls or boys at that level, whatever.
And I think the point is, is what they're trying to do, I think this is the underlying insidiousness of what the publics are doing.
They're trying to make it sound like people will go through transition to transgender in order to like break a few high school records that girls have in certain sports.
That's sort of what they're trying to make it sound like to you, which you can't possibly have because that's what they're going to do.
So one of the things that I Love and loathe about Republican appeals.
So like, for instance, the whole transgender bathroom debate.
Right.
Like this idea that like, oh, they're going to go into your bathrooms and they're going to pretend to be transgender in order to like, you know, be predators.
And it's like, oh, you think somebody who would be willing to be a predator would look at something on a door and be like, I'm going to let that stop me?
That's insane.
Second of all, I played sports.
You played sports.
We've both been involved in sports.
I have to, and by the way, somebody who has been around locker rooms, somebody who has been around schools, high schools, things like that.
Yeah, I assume that there are going to be people who pretend to be transgender or become transgender in order to play a sport because it's so worth it.
And it's not like they don't get harassed, picked on, targeted, assaulted in larger numbers.
The mindset that they have is so stupid, I would go so far as to say Neanderthalithic.
There you go.
That it is this id, this reptilian brain, that just cooks up whatever slippery slope argument that they could possibly ever imagine for anything.
And by the way, for the record, people need to know this.
That mindset is the exact mindset of apocalypticism.
The idea that, oh, if we allow this to happen, the country will fall apart.
Oh, if we allow this to happen, like, Satan will take over the world and we'll lose the Battle of Armageddon.
Done.
And it's like, what proof do you have?
And they're like, I don't need proof.
Why would I need proof?
I have a revelation from God.
Like it was in my mind.
It's the exact same idea and it has no relationship whatsoever to reality and it is taking us down so many ugly roads that proof exists and science proves will actually lead to bad things as opposed to a gut feeling.
The Venn diagram of fear and hatred and Republican politics are basically a circle.
It's a circle at this point.
That is what it is.
And it's not just fear.
It's hatred as well.
And that's what's so frustrating because they've also turned us around and make it seem like the Democrats are not the ones who are inclusive.
And they're trying to push us out and be whatever.
When in fact, the policy is consistently from Democrats is to be inclusive.
We want to get as many people as we can to vote.
We want to have enough – as many people as we can have rights that will protect their ability.
Remember, like we said last week, to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
That's – there's a lot of issues that the Democrats have with their legislation as well.
But there's an overall arching policy feeling over the last several decades that what the focus is going to be on is how can we have this tent as big as possible and how can as many people as possible be protected under their laws.
That's what it is.
And it's weird to have to deal with a Republican base that wants to argue the opposite of that, when what they're really saying is, we are afraid of these people, we have to keep them down, and we can't have equal rights for everybody.
And you can't get anywhere when those are the things you're arguing about.
No, and you know, we were talking about this a little bit before we started recording.
You know, there are these We start talking about white supremacy, and of course we talked about how the American right just instinctually was just like, I will protect white supremacy, you know, with everything that I possibly have.
That mindset, this working with white supremacy, white nationalism, whatever you want to call it, whatever label you want to throw on it at the moment, right?
That is this idea that liberal democracy and shared society have failed Because people of color have started to gain power and purchase.
Now, if you want to go down an actual rabbit hole that actually exists and has been proven to exist with facts, figures, and scientific studies, what ends up happening is what we have now seen with the FBI, who by the way, Nick, you know about the FBI and the history of the FBI.
Would you say that this is just like a crazy, out there, left-leaning, progressive institution?
No.
No, because the FBI has more or less operated as a guardian of white supremacy and has taken out leftist institutions one after another, whether that meant killing and murdering people or infiltrating their groups or trafficking misinformation and propaganda, threatening people, carrying out, you know, giant, giant raids and programs designed to ruin them.
The FBI again, and they've been telling people this for a decade now, They've been ringing the alarm bell on this for a decade now.
It should have been longer, but it's been for a decade.
The FBI again released another report on February 25th that said that white supremacists are trying to join the ranks of law enforcement and U.S.
military so that they can quote, terrorize minorities and quote,
Initiate a collapse of society They said that white supremacists would quote likely seek affiliation with military and law enforcement entities in furtherance of their ideas Because those institutions by the way have been used to further white supremacy and defend white supremacy They are continuing to go into them and trying to use them gaining both communications and training and all these different things that go into creating domestic terrorism and extremism and
Meanwhile, they are the biggest threat in the country to our safety.
It's not outsiders, it's not caravans at the border, and it is this continuing ignorant defense of white supremacy that is making us less safe, and that is exactly what the right is supporting and working with.
It's a bizarre version of Fight Club, where all of a sudden he's, you know, he's sitting at a restaurant and, you know, he gets that look from one of the guys, he knows he's part of the Fight Club, and Of course, you know, Mr. Durden, I recommend not eating the soup.
It was one of the great lines.
But this is the soup that we're going to be tasting.
It's these police departments filled with white supremacists.
Now, the thing is, it's not new.
Like, this report isn't a bombshell where all of a sudden a bunch of these white supremacists are like, hey, let's all get hired by the cops and we'll be them and we'll be able to do all of our stuff.
This is how it's been for, you know, The only question is what the percentage is.
It's been this way forever, and if it's 10%, if it's 15%, I don't know if it's more.
The question is how many people have been in law enforcement and the military who have an unconscious white supremacy problem, and how many now have a conscious?
Right.
Now, here's the thing.
If you have an unconscious white supremacy bent, whatever you want to call it, there are ways to combat that, which is, you know, with extra training.
Which is what the Republicans are trying to ban.
Like Trump was trying to ban extra like sensitivity training in workplace to help people understand whatever might be subconscious that's coming out consciously to the people who they're working with or the people that they'd be serving as police officers.
That is the other thing where then it gets mold folded into like all the safe spaces and the politically correct stuff.
I mean we heard Trump ad nauseam and you heard of people applauding him when he would say, ah, you know, Don't don't protect their head when you put them in the cop car and don't be nice to these perps We got to you know, take him out back and show him what you know, the the bull bull.
Oh gosh Buchanan what's his name bulb Buchanan?
That's his name.
The southern cop who was, you know, Bull...whatever his name is.
Anyway, you know, the guy in Selma.
At any rate, someone's gonna yell at us for me not knowing.
But nonetheless, you know, that kind of old boy network has been around for so long, maybe it's only... Oh, Bull Connor!
Bull Connor, thank you.
Right?
Yeah.
And like, maybe it's, you know, it's now more like...
By the way, we are nothing if not open about our thoughts and mistakes.
Bull Buchanan was a wrestler in the WWE, which tells you how fried my brain is at this point in the pandemic.
police departments across the country.
By the way, we are nothing if not open about our thoughts and mistakes.
Bull Buchanan was a wrestler in the WWE, which tells you how fried my brain is at this pandemic.
Yeah, it's Bull Connor.
No, that's exactly right.
The issue of white supremacy is just so ever-present and just continuously runs Through all facets of our culture, particularly our economics and politics, and people who don't even understand that they have benefited from it, or understand that they are complicit in it, or that they have played a role in it, or that their families have, or that America has, or Britain.
I mean, it's a hard thing.
That's what I was talking about at the very beginning of this.
This isn't fun.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's really not fun to have to, like, look at this and actually understand it.
But if, man, if we're going to get past this, and if we're going to get rid of things like white terrorists and white supremacists who are trying to literally destroy society, Nick, like, they literally want to bring us into a new civil war and realize a new fascist state, which, by the way, they're not the first ones in America to want to do that, right?
We've had one movement after another.
In the name of protecting society that they don't want to have destroyed by the left.
It's like you're saying it's going to be destroyed by the right, they're saying it's going to be destroyed by the left.
And the rhetoric is the kind where we can never get on the same page.
It's almost, Nick, like the Immortal Seven in England who invited William of Orange to invade from the Netherlands in 1688.
It's almost like that.
Almost exactly like that.
I got a pop quiz for you.
How many Republican senators are there in the Senate right now?
Fifty.
And how many, what percentage of the country do they represent?
Oh, God.
I'm going to go high.
I'm going to go 36%.
Oh, because it's actually, I believe, 42%, which still is ridiculous that a constituency that represents 42% of the country can basically shut down the government and hold it hostage for whatever they want.
That is also the biggest part of this is why it's being able to be continued, the white supremacist, because this is how it was designed in the first place anyway.
That's exactly right, that our institutions and the way that they work were completely designed for slaveholders and white wealthy men.
And once you realize that fact, suddenly you realize you have to start dealing with this stuff, but as long as you wave flags and pretend like nothing has ever been done wrong and America is just absolutely perfect outside of progressives, that's an issue.
But what we're also talking about, we're also talking about One thing that we've sort of been nibbling around the edges on, which is the idea of fandom or the idea of worship of public figures.
The fact that like our identities and what we believe oftentimes color what we think about the world and what we think about other people.
I have to tell you that in the last couple of weeks as I've criticized the Biden administration for the mishandling of the Jamal Khashoggi report with Saudi Arabia, I've talked a little bit about this minimum wage debacle.
I've received a lot of like harassment from people on the left and people telling me that obviously I'm on the payroll of Russia, right?
That I've worked four years, five years criticizing Donald Trump only to reveal that I'm actually a criminal asset now.
There is a problem with fandom also on the left.
There are a group of people who won't allow you to criticize the Democratic Party.
They are lost in the game of politics, which of course brings us to the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo.
I want to go on the record and say that I think he should resign.
I don't think that any one person is above these things.
I think that there have been damning reports going around about him.
Obviously, I've talked to a few people who have talked about this thing and leveled some accusations.
It would be better for the Democratic Party and for America and the people of New York if he resigned from his post and I think that this idea of Democrat versus Republican has clouded some people's idea of what should happen in this situation.
You know, here's the interesting thing.
The dude is 63 years old.
He spent a significant more amount of his time in offices being able to behave like this than not, right?
This is the kind of behavior we've seen for decades and decades and centuries before this.
So you know I read the things I see what he says I can tell right now he's in his office just sort of shrugging me like come on I was being cute I was being flirty whatever we're having a good time we're trying whatever the office now on the flip side of this what we're now starting to get out is that any notion of being disloyal to Cuomo Well, he's a bully.
means death for your career.
Like he was going to, you know, like what we heard Michael Cohen say on that one voicemail, like, you're gonna rip your head off and whatever.
And so we're seeing a very oppressive office situation where, yeah, women were objectified and, you know, made to seem like you had to date this guy if you wanted to move up or not. - Well, he's a bully.
He's a bully. - Yeah.
Now, I never really enjoyed these daily press conferences he was having on COVID, which made him a darling of the media for all that time, right?
It made it seem like he was in control of these things much better than maybe Trump would.
I have to imagine he's probably more than willing to let this be the scandal over versus how we handle COVID, which is the bigger issue for him and making him resign.
I completely agree and I think both are actual issues, not to downplay one, but I think it says a lot about our culture of spectacle that this is the thing that people are focusing on as opposed to the fact.
I mean, he really mishandled how senior citizens were treated during the COVID crisis.
He released a book that made him God knows how much money.
And this is a thing.
This goes back to what we're talking about.
You know, the right goes on on their radio shows or TV or whatever and defends blatant white supremacy and just, you know, runs themselves in circles.
We have to have hard conversations.
And that's one of the reasons why we're doing this podcast.
We don't want to shy away from that shit.
So let's be really, really real for a second.
We saw with Cuomo and also Gavin Newsom and also for a while Michael Bloomberg, whenever he was picking up a little bit of speed during the presidential primaries, we saw people who were lionized in our culture unnecessarily.
As Cuomo obviously was giving an alternative to Trump's terrible gaslighting briefings, Cuomo would have his tough talking where he would say it's real.
We need to take it seriously.
And automatically everyone's like, oh, he's bad and he's good.
Right.
And oh, I love him and he's wonderful and he's great.
Gavin Newsom was sort of the same thing.
We've turned out that, you know, he screwed the pooch a bunch of different ways in California with this thing.
Then it's like with Bloomberg.
I'm sorry, but Bloomberg is a disgusting human.
Human being of a technocrat.
And Democrats were like, no, but he really gets under Trump's skin.
It was the same thing with the Lincoln Project, too.
It's this dichotomous sort of a thinking, and I have to say, it is about, in America, this idea of polarization, tribalism, fandom, and it really is a problem that we have gotten caught in this dichotomous trench warfare mentality, and I think it's really dangerous.
I agree.
I'm not exactly sure if the Cuomo thing is fandom, necessarily.
I mean, I think the bigger point is... It's political gamesmanship.
Like, I've seen a lot of people who are like, yeah, what he did was wrong, but I'll watch him resign when a Republican resigns.
And that's chess.
You know what I mean?
That's trading a pawn for a pawn.
And it's not a game.
That's not how this stuff works.
Right.
But you think he I mean, I don't know.
I haven't even like weighed in whether I think I think he should resign or get thrown out of office.
I just sort of feel like he won't make it till April in either way.
But here's the problem is, like Trump, these guys don't just you know, he's not going to pull a Al Franken here and be like, be the, take the high road.
It's going to have to get really bad.
And I think that what will get bad for him is if another, you know, four or five women come out and there's another one that's, that's very damning about he tried to kiss her and all those different things.
You know, he's going to, he's going to write it off.
Hey, I was at a wedding and we were all having a good time.
I want to give her a kiss.
You know, we, this is what Italians do.
Like I'm sure that's what he's done.
That's what he's already done.
Yeah.
I mean, he's already and he's just like, I'm not going to resign.
I mean, there there's so much.
We have a real obsession with people like this.
And actually, I think it's really interesting.
It's in like New York and New Jersey.
Trump, Cuomo, Chris Christie.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's just this asshole bully.
Well, let me ask you this.
Do you think that if he came out, and it's a little late to do this now, but if he had come out and said, you know what?
This is awful behavior on my part.
This is sort of an age-old thing that I had learned when I grew up, and actually, I'm going to take some courses or whatever to get trained for sensitivity.
I'm really going to work on this.
If he came out and said that, would that be enough for you to not have him get thrown out?
I guess what I'm saying is more that, you know, I think when you remove the chessboard, you know what I mean?
Because it's like what you just brought up was political public relations.
It's a crisis handling, right?
Like you pay somebody to come in and help you navigate like what are the best ways to make sure that you only lose 10 to 15 points in the polls and it doesn't cost you your job or whatever.
That what you just pointed out, I don't think is in him.
Like, I don't think it's who he is, and that's not why he was able to become elected governor.
It's not why he, I mean, and by the way, on the royal family sort of thing, I mean, he would not be governor of New York if he wasn't the son of Mario Cuomo.
Right.
I mean, like, like, you know, these are not the things that made him governor and gave him power and influence.
It is more that this is a person who was in this, has done this, and I don't think has even begun to reckon with it.
Right.
And this would be the moment where he could, but again, part of that PR is convincing us that he is properly, you know, sorry for what he did.
And that I don't think he'd ever be able to do anyway.
Like Justin Trudeau had an issue, I think it was Blackface, was that what it was for him?
Yeah.
At the very least, the performative nature of his apology was effective.
And it was convincing, at least when I was watching that, that he did feel that there were some issues that, you know, that he felt he had recognized right away that that was not, we shouldn't have done that, whatever.
And that was, that's worth something.
And again, it's political, but that's the game we play in America, right?
Everyone's worthy of a second chance, as long as they show contrition, I think, short of, unless your name's Al Franken.
I, there is just, So much to unpack there.
I mean, like, because it's one of the things, and you bring this up all the time, which I think is really, really important, which is that Trump sort of changed the nature of the game.
It used to be that there were invisible boundaries of good taste and shame.
And the moment that Trump was like, fuck that, I'm not going to behave by those rules, it just got thrown out.
And now, like, if you're, if you're a politician, Just don't say you're sorry.
You know what I mean?
There's no reason anymore for a politician to say they're sorry or admit that they lost an election or admit that they're on the wrong side of an issue.
They just don't have to.
They can make up literally anything that they want and live in their own reality, which unfortunately is one of the side effects of American culture now.
I mean, listen, some of the most noxious people that I've run across in the last couple of years have been like the Snyder Cut fans of Justice League, who are just like devoted to this filmmaker, you know?
Or it's like, we were talking before we recorded, sports fans.
And if you run across their team, if you ever say something about their beloved coach or their team, they will haunt you until the day that you die.
And those people are not healthy people.
Those people are not well.
Those people are unhappy, they're angry, which goes back again to the right and how they're behaving with this royal family thing.
It's people who cannot update their mindset, they cannot update their concept of reality, and so anyone who ever troubles them, they have to attack, and violently.
Well, you know, it even goes down to the vote on the COVID bill, the relief bill that got no Republican votes.
I think we had this weird sense that when Trump lost and Biden was going to take over, that things would return to normal and that Republicans would behave in some other way, when in fact it's the opposite.
I didn't believe that.
Okay, yeah.
But I don't know if I really had wrapped my head around an idea that they would even further coalesce around Trump.
And really, this is almost like Obi-Wan Kenobi getting struck down and becoming more powerful than ever.
This is like what happens to Trump now.
And we did talk about this.
And we felt like he could now legislate almost from a shadow government without any accountability now because there are no – he's not in power to have any accountability.
So he can now just complain and rail against and do all these things and then stir everybody up.
And meanwhile, it really is striking to me how even the numbers here – it's an interesting tweet from Ian Millhiser who said, for the record, the senators who voted for the COVID relief bill represent 42 million more people than the senators who voted against it, which goes to my the senators who voted for the COVID relief bill represent 42 million more people than the senators who voted against it, which goes But again, the point is that without not one freaking Republican congressman or senator voted for – sorry, senator.
Like it's just outrageous.
It's outrageous to me that after we go through they're going to still circle the wagons here around Trump.
By the way, for the record, I want to go and say this.
Part of the problem of recognizing the toxin of white supremacy is starting to understand how it actually affects the rules of the world that we live in, right?
Like, not only economically.
That's a different conversation.
That's a massive, massive conversation that we're going to have and partly talk about in our audio documentary, the second part.
We have to point out what's going on in the political scene.
Like, let's be honest, because some of the time people are so afraid to say things that might be controversial that they just go ahead and shy away from what's actual truth.
The Senate should not function the way that it functions.
Not just the filibuster, but there should not be a 50-state version where a state that doesn't have a population of another state holds outsized power.
That was about protecting white supremacy.
That was about classism.
That was about making sure that, like, the people at the top, the wealthiest, most powerful people were serving as lords, more or less.
When we look at something like the Electoral College, I'm sorry.
You shouldn't live in a country where somebody who gets beat by millions of votes becomes the President of the United States.
The Electoral College should be done away with.
There should be a direct election of the President of the United States of America.
Maybe those two things are radical.
It doesn't change the fact that these are systems that were put in place to help white supremacy and that that is all that they have ever done.
They have made sure in every instance Well, that's what I like about the new argument that the Democrats are putting out as far as passing this bill.
that was their intention, you start to reckon with the fact that they should be destroyed.
Well, that's what I like about the new argument that the Democrats are putting out as far as passing this bill.
They're arguing that it is bipartisan because the vast majority of the country approves of And I kind of like that argument.
Let's just pretend that we're already on the system that you're trying to describe, which is going to be a little tricky math-wise to have a Senate with 100 senators who don't each get like a full vote, is what you're kind of saying, right?
I would almost reconsider completely how the Senate exists.
The Senate was created as a tool to make sure that the wealthy and powerful could always override every other person in the country.
Yeah, and that makes sense to me.
So, the point being that, you know, if maybe we just move on to a different footing where you get rid of the filibuster, so whoever is in control gets to complete it, and it has no guilt.
I feel like there's still some sort of guilt on the Democratic side for trying to do this stuff and push it through.
And they only get a couple of a couple of shots at this right now with the COVID relief bill and then the infrastructure with reconciliation.
So it's not like they're going to be able to do willy nilly every bill they ever want to pass without the threat of that.
But I suppose getting rid of the billbuster will do that.
So the point being that get rid of the guilt, play on the fact that we know what the country wants, because this is checks notes, democracy or representative.
Yeah, supposedly.
Representative republic.
What's the word we use now?
The phrase?
Democratic Republic.
Democratic Republic.
You know, if that's really the case, then yeah, let's just, let's just move to that footing and just sort of use, I hate to say use the polls, but the polls tend to, you know, at least when you're talking about whether they approve of a COVID thing, that's pretty accurate with those kinds of polls on the phone and that kind of stuff.
Well, I mean, the numbers are so overwhelming.
I mean, we talk about this all the time.
If you watch the Sunday shows, or if you watch, like, cable news, they'll pretend that it's, like, 45% Republican, 45% Democratic, 10% Independent, when in fact it's, like, the Republican Party has, like, 25%.
Five percent.
I mean, maybe 30 on a good day.
And then everybody else is just like, oh, God, this is disgusting.
I don't want anything to do with that.
They are a vast unliked minority.
They are so despised and they do not represent anybody except for the wealthy and the powerful and the people who believe the propaganda and misinformation of the wealthy and the powerful.
That needs to be understood.
And as we move on to the end of the show, I want to make it really clear that like what's going on in Texas right now, Governor Abbott is trying to invoke a law that would prevent Twitter and Facebook of silencing people they don't agree with as if there's some move against Republicans on social media, which we Governor Abbott is trying to invoke a law that would prevent Twitter and Facebook of silencing people they don't agree with as if there's some These are the things that That's where Facebook gets its money.
Yeah, so it's insane that they're like crying about the cancel culture on social media, when in fact, the only reason why a tweet that they sent out doesn't go viral, which must piss them off to no end, is because the majority of the country hates them.
That is what social media is telling them, and they don't want to acknowledge that, right?
What they're gonna just say is, oh, we're being canceled, they're silencing us because we're, well, you know, we're passing along misinformation.
That's what's really going on on that end.
Blatant, blatant racism.
Right.
And again, these are private companies.
They're allowed to say no shoes, no shirt, no service whenever they want to.
And of all the fucking political parties you can ever imagine that would want to institute regulation over a whole segment of business, how can it possibly be the Republicans of all people?
We need to get in there and regulate this thing in the midst of a state specifically that had deregulated to the point where people fucking died because they couldn't provide enough power when it was cold.
Yeah, because it's not real.
They don't believe the bullshit that they're selling, and they never have.
That's the terrifying thing about it.
I talk about this all the time when I'm talking with students about how to write horror.
Horror is always about the realization that we thought something was one way, but it was actually the other, and that we were comfortable with it until we realized it suddenly wasn't what it appeared to be.
The Republican Party has never actually believed any of the bullshit that they've peddled.
Not once.
They've only they've only peddled it because it it pulled well for a while and it allowed them to establish a society where they could maintain control even though they're incredibly unpopular.
So yeah it this whole like social media thing by the way I'm all for going in and breaking up some of these companies.
I mean they they do need to be broken up like they need to be reined in in a big way but this whole idea that they're going about it it is just it's laughable that they have again Much like this whole thing with them suddenly supporting royal families and monarchs, they have disappeared up their own asses.
And I don't know that they'll ever find their way out again.
All right, everybody.
That's going to bring us to the end of the show.
Reminder, we have a bonus episode at the end of the week for Patreon subscribers.
If you want access to that, go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
It'll get you the weekly Weekender show, which we're excited.
We have scheduled a decent guest that hasn't been on the podcast yet.
It's great.
It's the whole thing is the Weekender is great.
You got to listen.
You got to subscribe and listen to it.
I love The Weekender!
I think our last couple of Weekender shows have been like some of the best shows we've done.
I'm very proud of The Weekender.
Absolutely.
Yeah, so a reminder that it's patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
You'll get a bunch of free additional content, plus also access to our Discord server, which is where the Muckrake community interacts.
They've got things like book clubs and stuff.
They're building up like a Sim City.
Second life, yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, it's a really beautiful type of thing that they're doing.
In the meantime, you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me?