The good news: Nick is back from vacation! The bad? Republicans are openly discussing electing fascists and slaughtering their constituents with assault rifles. Nick and Jared discuss this escalation and the new developments in rising fascism among America's Right Wing. To support the podcast and unlock additional content, including the Weekender Show every Friday, become a patron at http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast
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I think you make a really solid point about the sadness and the powerlessness that people feel in the face of this.
And at some point, people are going to say, why should I follow the rules?
Why should I be a good citizen if they don't have to follow the rules?
I mean, things kind of break down at some point, don't they?
They will break down.
They are breaking down, Tucker.
I've said this before and I'm telling you, I'm worried that I'm right.
The right is going to pick a fascist within 10 to 20 years because they're not going to be the only ones on the outs.
That's so well put and you're absolutely right.
We're moving toward actual extremism because they're undermining the system that kept extremism at bay and I don't think we can say that enough.
I'm so glad that you just said it.
Hey, everybody.
Welcome to the McCraig Podcast.
I'm Jerry D. H. Sexton.
Nick is back!
Nick Halseman is back!
Nick is back from vacation.
Oh, he looks good.
He looks energized.
Ready to go.
How are you feeling, Nick?
Hey, I already exercised today.
I ate somewhat healthy.
I'm on a new kick.
I'm ready to go.
I love it.
It's a new era of the Muckrag Podcast.
I feel the energy coming out of here.
Unfortunately, we've got some terrible shit to talk about.
But before we do, I just want to let everybody know that our regular weekender edition, which is of course for our patrons who we appreciate so much, we're going to have a live show this Thursday at 7 p.m.
That is this Thursday at 7 p.m.
That is April 1st, or an April Fool's edition, if you will, of the MuttCraig Podcast.
We'll be taking questions, allowing people to watch the recording of The Weekender.
But before we get there, unfortunately, Nick, we have to talk about some worrying developments.
We have spent a lot of time on this podcast talking about The degeneration of the Republican Party, its descent into madness and quiet and sometimes loud embrace of fascism, we've reached a new level.
I think it's important to say that we've reached a new sort of stage.
And I want to talk about the fact that they are now openly admitting That they are in a position of embracing fascism, possibly electing an open fascist president.
For those who have already heard the opening of the show, Tucker Carlson on his show is now talking with Jesse Kelly about the possibility of the right just openly diving into fascism.
We also have Lindsey Graham openly fantasizing about killing his constituents with his favorite AR-15 Nick, welcome back to the show.
Sorry, this is this is what you got.
I mean, come on, I am shocked that they have acknowledged that they're going to elect a fascist in 10 years, whatever it's going to be.
I have a feeling that Lindsey Graham must have like the movie The Purge on a loop.
In his house, just watching it over.
Maybe he goes to Purge 2 every so often, but I don't know.
I don't know what his deal is.
Purge 2 is a better movie.
Purge 2 is a better movie.
Oh, is it?
Good to know.
Good to know.
But like, you know, he's describing, I guess, let's say he's in South Carolina and there's a, I guess, a hurricane and then maybe the power goes out and the police are busy so they can't help and then roving gangs come to, you know, loot houses and he's gonna make sure that he doesn't help anybody else in his neighborhood.
He's gonna just sort of, you know.
By the way, Nick, gangs.
Gangs.
The Gangs.
The gangs, I believe, right?
The gangs.
Yes.
You know, I wonder if he had to, like, prepare himself to say the words gangs.
Right.
For fear of slipping into another word.
Yes.
I don't know what he's thinking because last I checked, when you have those kind of disasters, you don't really have the gangs out looking to loot private houses like that.
I don't know.
Maybe I don't live in the right place, but that's sort of... I don't remember reading about those kind of things happening.
Enough to justify owning a, you know, semi-automatic weapon.
Yeah, so there's so much to unpack in all of this, and we're going to get into the implications of this and what this means for the fact that they're, you know, talking about this.
Like, not even that they're acting upon it, but now that they're actually in public talking themselves into blatant fascism, which is, again, that's an escalation.
And, you know, one of the things that you said, and I've been thinking about this for a while now, for as long as we've been doing this podcast, it is almost refreshing that they're open about it.
No.
You know what I mean?
That it's just like, you know, slide the armband on, folks.
Like, go ahead and start doing the goose stepping.
Like, let's figure it out.
Let's go ahead and just get everything out there.
Let's quit hiding behind this stuff.
It's important, by the way, that this week, also, one of Steve Bannon's neo-fascist academies in Europe was, like, thrown out of the country.
You know, where he's, like, treating, like, teaching people to be the neo-fascistic leaders of the future.
I want to talk about the Tucker thing in a second, but before we do, we gotta unpack this Lindsey Graham thing.
He went on Fox News, said that the reason that he wants an AR-15 is in case a hurricane hits and law enforcement won't be there fast enough to save him from, again, emphasis is mine, the gangs.
A certain group of people, by the way.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's not his neighbors, it's the gangs, right?
And it just brings to mind the McCloskeys of St.
Louis, right?
Just jumping out of their house with an AR-15 and a handgun because protesters happen to walk down their street, right?
That is the right-wing fantasy.
They have dismantled government, obviously, as a public good.
We can expect the government to show up and help us after a natural disaster at this point, right?
Maybe the president will fly in and, like, you know, shoot a couple free throws with a paper towel roll or two.
But we can expect them to actually carry out their mandated protection of the people.
The fantasy of the right.
They are so obsessed with the idea that there are people who, the moment the lights go out, they're going to show up.
They're going to take everything that they own.
They're going to kill their kids.
They're going to, you know, assault their wives.
They need those guns.
They need to kill them.
And here's an important point of it.
Number one, the Republicans hate their fellow Americans.
Hate them.
Hate them so much that they fantasize about murdering them.
That's the truth.
That's not an exaggeration.
But also number two, I thought it was really incredible.
Lindsey Graham on live TV on Fox News was recreating old American slaveholding South Carolinian fantasies of killing slave uprisings.
South Carolina is a state that, after slave uprisings, legally mandated that their white men start carrying guns so that they could kill slave uprisings.
There is a direct line.
It's not even like a little bit of a loop.
It's not even like two dots.
It's a direct line from that legacy to that fascination and that fantasy that he indulged on national TV.
Well, you know, you described how much they hate, you know, their fellow Americans and that they want to kill them.
But there's also a whole frame of thought that doesn't consider a lot of these people Americans.
So they're not necessarily against Americans.
They're against these people who they don't really deem as true Americans anyway.
And I, you know, came across my timeline.
There was in 2019, there was a group, The Claremont Institute had written something.
They did a little extra.
If you don't mind, I'd like to maybe perhaps read a little excerpt of this.
Bear in mind that the Claremont Institute had gotten the National Humanities Medal from Trump in 2019.
This is like a, you know.
Deserved.
Yeah, an institute that is highly respected amongst these people.
But here's what he says.
I'll do it as quickly as I can.
Quote, let's be blunt.
The United States has become two nations occupying the same country.
When pressed or in private, many would now agree.
Fewer are willing to take the next step and accept that most people living in the United States today, certainly more than half, are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term.
I don't just mean the millions of illegal immigrants.
Obviously, those foreigners who have bypassed the regular process for entering our country and probably will never assimilate to our language and culture are, politically as well as legally, aliens.
I'm really referring to the many native-born people, some of whose families have been here since the Mayflower, who may technically be citizens of the United States, but are no longer, if they ever were, Americans.
They do not believe in, live by, or even like the principles, traditions, and ideals that until recently defined America as a nation and as a people.
It is not obvious what we should call these citizen aliens, these non-American Americans, but they are something else.
Wow.
Wow.
Can you imagine, like for just a second Nick, can you imagine you're sitting there in your cushy think tank job and like you're like, You stretch a little bit, you know, you crack your knuckles.
You're like, time to get down on this report.
And then somehow or another, your fingers type those words.
Can you imagine that?
Yeah, he's eating a muffin.
You know, it's like in the middle of it.
You know, it's unbelievable.
It really is.
There's so much to unpack there that is just absolutely incredible.
I do not think it is a coincidence, by the way, that as polarization in America, particularly on the right, has taken hold, that one of the, like, most favorite popular culture tropes has become zombie apocalypse movies, TV shows and entertainments.
Because everybody looks around and they just see, like, particularly on the right, they're like, oh, these are people who are coming to hurt me and I need to kill them.
They're inhuman.
They are not really Americans.
They're not my neighbors.
They're not, you know, people in my community or anything like that.
I can hear that a little bit, but it's not a big deal.
I'm so sorry.
Hold on.
Let me, let me, let me take care of this real fast.
Hold on.
Oh, I think she's done.
I think she's done.
Okay.
Okay.
I think we're done.
Okay.
Okay.
Community.
Okay.
Let me bring it back.
Okay.
I think we need to go ahead and also highlight something there.
Something else, right?
And this idea that there is a certain mindset that you have to be to be a true American, right?
We've been playing around with this for a few years.
I mean, that was Sarah Palin's favorite thing, right?
Real Americans versus whoever else.
And I always find, and the more that I do research and the more that I work on these historical projects, the more I find that the right has absolutely no idea what the principles were of the founding of America.
They get it completely wrong.
The founders hated these people.
They didn't want America to be a Christian state.
They thought that the Christians and the evangelicals were really dangerous people and that their whole like monotheistic mindset actually set America back and led to wars and strife and, you know, like these uprisings and things.
And now what is basically being said, and this is why it's being said in the way that it is, the right has decided that they are not going to share the country with everyone else.
They are telling people over and over, and this is why we've been sounding the alarm now for a while, they have decided that they are either going to get their way or they're going to burn the country down.
That's why they go out in public with these AR-15s.
That's why they are now talking about straight-up fascism.
Why Trump was always being like, oh, knock his ass down, you know, don't be careful putting him in the cop car.
Back in the day, he would have been carried out on a stretcher or whatever.
They are saying you either go ahead and conform with white patriarchal corporate rule or You will die.
And that is actually what's being said out in public right now.
Like, these are not just, you know, errant thoughts.
They're not just being put out in the atmosphere.
Like, they are literally advocating the idea of killing other Americans and oppressing them.
But I don't see how that's that much different than what the Founding Fathers intended either.
It's not.
Right?
They didn't allow black people to vote.
They didn't allow slaves to vote.
They didn't allow women to vote.
They had poll taxes.
They had tests you had to pass to be able to vote.
That was what we were founded on.
So in some respects, it's like, again, this is the same thing we've discussed before in terms of what the South was fighting for in the Civil War and what they're doing now isn't that far off in my mind anyway.
But that's what's so troubling about this is that it's the embracing of it only in the sense that what do they have to lose?
If they're going to lose all these elections anyway and the country is going to go in a different direction they don't like, then let's just burn it all down and see if it works.
Why not?
Let's see what happens.
Now, again, that's not a democracy, but they don't seem to care about that either.
No, not even a little bit.
Not even the tiniest bit.
No, the democracy, they would love to have the veneer of democracy.
Like, you know, they would love to win elections 90 to 10, you know, and like not have any sort of opposition.
They would love, and by the way, if they did, they would still be miserable because it doesn't matter if they win elections.
Like they are still just pissed off.
They always think that there's something more and more and more.
And what you just said was really, really important, I think.
And, and this is important to talk about, like how the country was founded and where we are now.
The founders who were deists, who were not interested in Christianity or evangelicalism whatsoever, they wanted to get religion out of the public sphere.
They didn't totally reject it because they needed the veneer of it.
You know what I mean?
Like they needed that to be sort of a message.
They couldn't just come out and be like, now the atheist aristocratic kings of America welcome us, you know, it's the 18th century.
But they also kind of worked in concert with them to do this.
They were Basically in partnership with that white patriarchal wealthy control, which is exactly what you're talking about.
They created a government where wealthy white slaveholding men were in charge of the government and everybody else just kind of had to go along with it.
Then they would have the House of Representatives where it seemed like maybe you could get a couple of people elected or whatever, but the Senate made sure that those people had no actual power.
They want to go back to something that looks a lot like that.
They differ with the founding in a lot of ways, but they conform in terms of the aristocratic control.
They definitely want to get back there, and here's the problem.
They're not going to relinquish power.
They're not going to relinquish that stranglehold without some sort of violence.
There's no way at this point that they're just going to look the other way and be like, hey, congratulations on the elections.
Well fought.
That's gone.
That ship, much like the Evergreen in the Suez Canal, it's gone.
That ship is gone.
It has sailed into the horizon.
We're in a different stage at this point.
And here's the other thing, in the context of what Lindsey Graham was talking about with the AR-15s, he welcomes a debate about an assault weapons ban, and he even acknowledged I think that it would never pass, even though we've had it pass in 1994.
And it was very successful in eliminating mass shootings and even no matter how you want to define mass shootings because that's the other thing that they want to move the goalposts over is what does that mean and if you can change those numbers it's just enough of how many are dead people there are you can make it look like oh maybe it was ineffectual but it's not there was no way to stretch that to even make it appear that it didn't work it worked for those 10 years the assholes put a sunset provision in there
So that in 10 years later, it was going to expire, which is what happened, and they could not get it back in under Bush 2, under W. But look at the polls.
The polls have consistently shown that a vast majority, 70% or more, of Americans want to have assault rifle bans.
So, again, it just continues to accentuate the fact that they don't care about a democracy.
I've said it before, I like the fact that this bailout bill that's going to pass is bipartisan simply because it is so overwhelmingly popular among the Americans that they're supposed to be representing.
And this is the same idea here where they literally should just force it through.
Do not put a sunset provision in.
Listen, I want all guns.
I'm that guy that they're afraid of.
Oh, they're not gonna stop with assault weapons.
Yeah, that's me.
But either way, let's at least go with the assault weapons for now.
Get those off the streets, the semi-automatic guns that are worthless to anybody, you know, for protection.
Let, you know, if Lindsey Graham is so scared, give him a couple handguns.
Let him have that.
And that will be fine.
You can protect your house.
He can Yosemite salmon, huh?
Yeah.
Give him four guns then or whatever.
But just don't let him have a thing where you have more than 10 shots at a time semi-automatically.
That's what kills all these people so quickly.
Well, the problem here is that what you just laid out is common sense, realistic, taking place in something resembling reality.
When you're having that conversation with Lindsey Graham – by the way, Lindsey Graham wants to keep a weapon of war on the streets because he has a fantasy of playing Rambo.
You know what I mean?
Like, he literally, one of the most powerful senators of the United States, who by the way, went to the border and played border troop with the rest of these assholes, right?
Oh my god.
And by the way, they have no desire whatsoever to actually shut down the border.
These are people that they exploit.
These are people that they hire.
The people that they represent make a ton of money off of that labor.
They don't want to actually pay people minimum wage.
They don't want to give them benefits.
They take advantage of that stuff.
It was just going down there and playing Border Troop and doing a photo op and fear mongering.
It has nothing to do with reality.
Meanwhile, Lindsey Graham went on TV and said, we should keep this weapon of war that is creating mass slaughters because I want the ability to create a mass slaughter Should I need to?
These two positions aren't even, they're not even just in the same universe.
They're not even in the same cosmos, right?
Like you're not even having a conversation about the issue of gun control at that point.
You're having the issue of fantasies.
You're having the issue of completely incoherent symbolic gestures at that point.
Well, it's fear, right?
I mean, it's actually genius in that sense because they're conflating two really strong issues, the guns and the fear of the other, into one that will just rile them up and, you know, it's, yeah.
It's fear of two things, by the way.
Well, actually, I guess it would be three.
One, it's fear of people of color.
Or the other.
Right?
Which, by the way, is always, and this is really important to point out, the fear of people of color, the way that white supremacists, and even people who don't know that they're racist do, they view people of color constantly as potential violence.
Right?
Like, if the law isn't there at all times, those people could become violent.
Right, there's something innate depraved about them.
There's something lesser than about them, which is the poison of white supremacy.
The second part is that they truly and honestly believe that they need to be ready to fight a war against the United Nations or the armies of Satan or, you know, traitorous troops who are going to show up at their house with tanks and somehow or another they're going to destroy the tanks, right?
The final and third thing, which is the actual thing at the heart of all of this, White supremacy has always managed to find power through the barrel of the gun.
The AR-15 is particularly the weapon of choice because it allows one person to overpower many, which is the essence of white supremacy, which is the small, small minority of people who are able to project their will over multitudes.
So there is a psychological problem at the heart of this that I don't even know that you can get to the heart of with Republicans.
I don't think you can have that conversation, which makes it a very, very dangerous topic and is one of the reasons they're currently moving in the direction that they are.
Well, it's also triggering to them because here comes that race card again that you're throwing out there.
You're a racist reporting out that it's racist.
You know, all that stuff.
I mean, they'll probably argue, I want to have the right to shoot anybody I want to.
I don't care what they look like.
You know, like that's probably what they would say.
You know, it's ridiculous.
I'm not a racist, I'll shoot anybody!
Yeah, yeah, it's like, ah, you know, too bad that guy was a white guy.
It kinda meant he got him, though.
You know, and by the way, they might have the other fantasy of, like, going out in the blaze of glory, right?
When the Coast Guard, the National Guard shows up and the tanks are there.
Yeah, they're gonna pull a, um... They love it.
A, uh, oh my god, a butch and Sundance, you know, or something, you know.
They love it.
Yeah, and that's... They love it.
Yeah, so it's really like, there's just nothing to, you have to force this stuff through.
So either we can figure out a way to have these elections run properly where 67 Democratic senators are in charge, which, do you remember what happened the last time the Democrats had that many senators in the Senate?
Remember what happened?
I mean, you know, we did pass the most, you know, important legislation of all time with Obamacare, but they promptly lost all that control.
Just like that.
And I was looking at this because, you know, back in the day, in 1994 when they passed this, it also led to massive Democrats losing their seats in the Congress from passing the assault weapons ban.
By the way, you know what it also did?
You know I don't want this is probably breaking but like people in Tennessee really like their guns.
Newsflash.
And it was probably one of the big contributors to why Al Gore couldn't even carry his own state in 2000 was what I was looking at.
And I don't remember that as much, but I was looking through some articles.
I'm like, oh, you know what?
This is a really big issue that they really hated him for.
So to me, it was like, oh, he didn't go like Hillary didn't go to Michigan or something like that.
This is something more profound.
And I think it's directly related to what this issue we have with guns and the fact that well-regulated needs to be applied to regulating any guns in America in the Second Amendment, and people want to ignore that and pretend like we can't have any restrictions on them.
Well, and by the way, the whole gore thing, it's really, really important to point out here, too.
It goes with the gun thing.
It's never about guns.
It's never about an object sitting here.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's never about the actual contraption or machine.
Gore was hated in part because he was seen as part of the New World Order.
Him and Clinton passing the North American Free Trade Agreement, and by the way, Hillary Clinton is part of that too.
She got lumped into all of that.
The so-called neoliberal project has always become, through conspiracy theories and through fear-mongering, it has always been, oh, these people are traitors to the country and they're handing us over to a satanic group of armies.
Yes, blood and shoes now that we're trying to sell.
The satanic shoes.
You see this?
Oh, it's incredible.
It's absolutely incredible that we're still talking about a supernatural entity.
You know what I mean?
And oh God, if you wore this pair of Nike and it's just the confluence of religion and hyper capitalism.
It's just insane watching this.
I mean, Republicans are getting on social media and they're like, we have reached the point of holy war.
And it's like, it's shoes.
Oh yeah.
Shoes.
By the way, I just watched Ragnarok the other night and I can't believe, did you ever see Thor Ragnarok?
Yeah.
So it hinges at the end on having to summon basically the devil and it looks just like the devil.
He's on fire the whole thing and ends up being like it's like the big smart thing to do to whatever and I'm kind of shocked that this wasn't like this movie wasn't protested by like the evangelicals because it clearly means do a deal with the devil and he's gonna bail you out and you'll be able to win and overcome and all this stuff.
Nick, I want to point out your talk and this is a real quick aside but this is important.
You're talking about a movie.
Thor, in which a religion's Christ-like figure, which Thor is.
Thor is a Christ mythologized character of a religion who has been turned into a superhero, right?
Like all of that meaning is sort of been scraped away because as we move forward with culture we start to take those old mythologies and we start to sort of like
Defame them a little bit and we start to sort of incorporate them in popular culture I mean, there's a reason why in the Thor series he's hanging out with Odin You know or why Zeus will show up in like clash of the Titans or whatever like we are still carrying this absolute insane like satanic panic
Idea of what's going on in the world like I really truly believe that if Ted Cruz was in front of the right crowd Today he would be talking about the assault rifle ban Lil Nas X and these quote-unquote Satan shoes and the new world He wouldn't call it the new world order right he would call it the deep state he would call it whatever They are talking about an apocalyptic situation, which is what Lindsey Graham was talking about as well.
And they are saying, you are pushing us to the point where we have no other choice.
We're gonna have to grab our gun.
We're gonna have to kill you.
You know, you're not an American anymore.
You're a traitor.
You're part of this giant evil conspiracy.
I'm going to have to grab my gun and I'm going to kill you.
And by the way, let's go ahead and call it what it is.
Tucker Carlson's like, how dare you make me vote for a fascist?
How dare you make me openly embrace a fascist?
It's like, what the hell are you talking about?
You're seriously out in public on one of the highest rated cable news shows talking about, my God, I know I'm going to have to embrace a fascist if you keep doing this.
Like, it is the craziest shit imaginable.
Well, it's just like we see right now, as we speak, there's the trial of the Chauvin, of Officer Chauvin, and, you know, they're arguing that, like, yeah, he made him, George Floyd made the cop kill him, is, like, essentially what they're gonna try and sort of argue here.
And, you know, there are people around, there are people filming, and there are people yelling, and there are people behind him, and that just all makes the officer feel like he's threatened and he needed to continue and you know meanwhile the fucking person on the other end of the emergency call had a camp fixed camera was like call the cops on the cop to say but this isn't okay we have to help him emt what they wouldn't allow them to like check on his pulse and see if he was doing okay um it is uh it right it's like please
don't make me have to harm you for all the things that you stand for God, it's like in, oh gosh, there's that movie where Christopher Walken kills somebody.
He's like, I haven't killed somebody since 1984, goddammit!
And he's mad about it, as if he had to do it.
That was in True Romance.
At any rate, it's...
How do you come back from that?
How do you have a conversation about that?
How do you have any kind of, you know, they all want us to reconcile and have some coming together, but I just don't know when you're at that level of reality, of your own reality, it is frightening because it's not a level playing field at all.
It's not intellectually honest.
It's not anything that will actually benefit the country.
It's aspirational, right?
Just kind of like, so you said it's not about the guns, right?
Like, we're arguing about it.
It's really not about like the actual thing, a gun in your hand.
Well, it kind of reminds me about like the tax codes as well, where these people will vote to give more and more rich people more and more tax breaks, even though they're not part of that, and they don't benefit from that, but they aspire to that, right?
One day I will be really rich, and I better not have to pay those taxes, and I respect those rich guys, and I don't want them to be punished either.
You know, but that's the disconnect here.
And I don't know, other than blunt force, which is what they're going to talk about doing with the filibuster, to get anything done.
Well, I want to say first and foremost, you have to move beyond the filibuster.
But it is crucial, and in all of this that we're talking about, I think we have to say, the prescriptions That we're talking about are not without ramifications.
Like, let's say that tomorrow you are able to go and get AR-15s, right?
Let's say you even have a very generous buyback program where the United States government pays people for their AR-15s, right?
And, like, gives them a decent, like, like a two, two dollars on the dollar for every AR-15, right?
It's a steal to give back your AR-15.
That is still going to get spun into tyranny.
That's still going to get spun into conspiracy theory.
That's still going to, it's going to radicalize people.
Like we have to understand that, right?
While we're sitting here talking about the filibuster, do I think the Democrats should go ahead and go beyond the filibuster?
Absolutely they should.
The filibuster has been a tool of white supremacy since the filibuster existed.
You should go beyond it.
And on top of it, it's imperative that you go beyond it.
Because we are in, we're in a real situation right now.
We're at a crisis point.
No matter how quote-unquote normal it feels, we're in a crisis point.
Going beyond the filibuster?
That will be used to radicalize.
That will be used to make people afraid.
It will be spun into tyranny.
It's important that we talk about the solutions and what happens if you go ahead with them.
This is not an easy thing.
I want to say that something has become Pretty clear to me, and I don't know how you feel about it.
And this is like real talk, man.
I think we have to address this.
With what Tucker has been saying, with what the right has been saying, how this thing has been ramping up, it feels inevitable that there will be more violence at this point.
It feels that way, does it not?
Because for the Republican Party to realize this project, For them to dismantle democratic institutions.
And they, we keep talking about this.
They're incredibly unpopular.
They're not going to win these big elections anymore unless they rig them.
I mean, I live in Georgia.
Like, the shit that just got passed in Georgia is Jim Crow.
Let's, like, not dance around it, right?
And I think, luckily, I trust the organization down here and I trust the people on the ground down here to defeat it.
I really do.
I've seen it.
I know that they have power.
They're incredibly talented.
But that doesn't mean that they're not going to try and keep dismantling democratic institutions.
And by the way, they would love it if they could go in and just absolutely disenfranchise everybody and everyone just like linked arms and was happy about it.
That's not going to happen.
If the Republican Party recognizes their anti-democratic project, there will be violence.
If they lose out, we also know already, we've already seen it, that there are at least going to be quote-unquote lone wolves or extremists who are going to carry out violence.
We have to understand that this entire situation is incredibly combustible.
You know what I mean?
And there are solutions, but we also have to be realistic about what's going on and where this thing is heading.
Well, here's the problem because the implication that you're implying is that, you know, if we nuke the filibuster and we start, you know, passing these different things, it's going to, you know, amp up the fear of tyranny.
It's going to happen no matter if they don't.
Right.
It's almost like when the Democrats are worried about saying the wrong thing.
Don't say that because then they're going to be able to do attack ads.
They're going to do attack ads anyway.
It doesn't matter.
It's like with a coach.
Oh, I just took over a new program.
I don't want to ruffle feathers.
I don't want to coach that guy too hard because I don't want to get fired.
You're going to get fired anyway at some point.
Just coach what you believe.
Just do what you want to believe.
By the way, the idea behind what they're doing with Jim Crow in Georgia and across the country should have the opposite effect for progressives as well.
Completely and utterly energize the left to overcome these things and make it clear that this is democracy.
The will of the people.
That is what should be reflected in the lawmakers' decisions.
That is what's so frustrating here because it's clearly not that at all.
It's such a tiny minority that they're representing.
We know the numbers already from the Senate and the House.
But it's just like... I almost feel like no one ever calls them out on that and actually says, 71% of the country wants this relief bill passed.
Why did you vote against it?
No one actually puts it in those terms.
And in the meanwhile, they get to sort of trumpet that it passed, and whatever part they like, they get to say that they were a part of it when they weren't.
And they get to rail against these weird, random things that they think are on their way to tyranny.
It's crazy.
But it also is equally frustrating, which is why, again, push this shit through.
And I like what you said about how the filibuster traditionally has been just white supremacy.
From the very beginning.
Yeah, really.
And then there's a list that Kevin Crews had posted on Twitter.
And, you know, over and over and over again throughout this very long stretch of our history, it's all just about, yeah, literally forbidding black people to have rights.
It's disgusting.
There's no need to have this historical notion of protecting the filibuster at all.
And the only solution is to get more Democrats elected.
Yeah, in the past, and there have been these moments, these crossroads in American history.
In the beginning, and then going back to the founders, they were either slaveholders themselves, or they were men who were like, well, we need the slaveholders on our side.
So we'll go ahead and form the government around white supremacy and slavery.
And we'll just make sure that we have them on our side and they'll go ahead and they'll ratify the constitution and we'll be fine.
Then later on, when all of a sudden there starts to become the rift between the South and the North, they started showing up to Congress with knives and guns.
Tell me if any of that shit sounds familiar, because that's the territory that we're heading in.
And the anti-slavery people for a while were like, let's not touch on this.
We'll let it be.
We'll let it be.
And then, of course, the radical Republicans of the time, which, by the way, it's not the Republican Party that we have now, that's important to point out, showed up and they were like, yeah, we'll have a brawl on the floor of Congress in order to talk about slavery.
And and all of a sudden then we all know what occurred we all know where that went, right?
We are in a situation that we have a schism and I'm so glad that you read that Claremont thing because those are the words That's the truth what they honest to God believe which is they look around and they view people first of all They don't see people of color as Americans They see them as wards of state Right.
That they should have paternal control over.
Like, oh, we're not racist.
We like to take care of them.
They need to be taken care of.
They don't understand democracy.
Which, by the way, they're incredibly good at democracy.
And immediately after slavery was abolished, like the freed slaves were like, watch us do politics.
And they kicked everyone's ass.
But your Southern is almost too good.
When you embody that character, it makes me... Hey, I'm telling you though, you see it.
And that's what it is.
That's the mindset.
It's like, well, maybe they're Americans, but they need to be looked out for.
Right?
And occasionally, they'll get agitated.
And that's why when you go to church on Sundays, you have to be sure to carry your pistol with you.
Or your AR-15 if you're Lindsey Graham, thinking about taking down the gangs.
Right?
Meanwhile, they're all having fantasies about all these traitors.
And Nick, real fast, can you check the law for me?
What do you do to traitors?
What do you do if someone betrays the country?
I think you're supposed to put them in a firing line.
Oh, you're supposed to kill them.
That's right.
So all of a sudden, in the mindset, which by the way has been laid out by think tanks, think tanks, right?
People in ties, sitting in front.
You said they're eating a muffin, undoubtedly.
Eating a muffin, doing their shit.
Those people are sitting there laying out the mental foundation of killing other people.
Killing other Americans.
Killing neighbors.
Killing countrymen.
And on top of that, we now have it going on TV.
Live.
And we know that they're not going to back away from this.
That's only one step and now we're going to go further and further over the line.
It's inevitable at this point.
What's weird is that when you describe, like, what the good ol' boys want to do, they want to take care of the people of color.
We gotta make sure that they're all... It's about love, Nick.
It's about love.
Well, on the other side, I think, you know, progressives believe that the government should take care of underrepresented people, right?
And make the playing field level.
At least represent them!
Yeah, so in some respects, some of the vocabulary is the same.
But it comes from an entirely different avenue, I guess.
It is a thing where the idea, and this goes back to the idea of the tyranny of the majority.
When the tyranny of the majority was laid out in things like The Federalist, it was about making sure that landholding wealthy people were represented, right?
It wasn't about taking care of underrepresented minorities.
Right.
It was about like being able to keep all of your land and all of your riches and nobody coming for it.
That idea is one of the – and by the way, I know I said it earlier.
I just want to reemphasize.
Every new thing that I learned about the founding of this country, it's just amazing how wrong the right is about all of it.
They have no idea what the hell they're talking about on any of this and they've twisted it and manipulated it and it's turned into this paternalistic, paranoid, power fantasy that unfortunately is going to lead to blood in the streets if we don't do something about it.
Right.
I actually likened this in a conversation this past week on vacation.
It's like WandaVision.
The Republicans have... I'm not going to ruin it, but the Republicans have created this fake bubble around themselves of this perfect society.
And by the way, the implications are probably not even that...
It was on purpose, I'm sure, when Marvel put this thing together, because what were they sort of, you know, this idealistic thing was the 50s and the 60s, they were kind of trying to tap in all those tropes on purpose, and so that's what they've done.
They've created this other reality, and whenever, you know, if they ever have to be faced with what it really is like, you know, they get cast out, and they throw them out, and it's violent, and they get away from me.
I will not accept anything that you're telling me that might actually be any other kind of reality beyond my, you know, Whatever the word is rose-colored view I have of all the situation And they reserve that right like that's their right I suppose in some respects is to view the country the way they want to view it and you are you know infringing on my rights to Come with facts or to come with any other thing that might help people.
I don't think should be helped I mean, I got there's no other way to look at this.
I No, and by the way, we covered this in part for those who haven't heard yet the first episode of our audio documentary, A Certain Route to Failure, A Crisis of Confidence.
You should go back and listen to that.
It's really, really good.
That idea of the consensus existed until the 60s and 70s, right?
Everything was great.
We were all living in the suburbs.
Don't talk about why we were in the suburbs, right?
Don't talk about why we weren't in the cities where, oh, hold on, the gangs were, right?
And after the 60s and 70s and the schism of that time, of course, we have the rebirth of this fantasy that takes place during Reaganism.
And by the way, I grew up in Indiana.
I am a white dude, right?
I grew up within that fantasy reality, you know?
I went to the parades, I had the flag, I believed all these mythological stories.
If I had to define what this podcast is about, it's trying to break open that alternate fake reality, right?
And getting to the actual essence of deep politics and what is actually occurring and why these things are so weird and what's actually occurring in this absolute time of madness.
But you're right.
They want you to live within that reality and if you refuse, they will either throw you out Kill you, or make you live in the reality under threat of violence.
Those are the options, and those are the essence of fascism.
And we are reaching a breaking point at this point, which is, are we going to let them control the world from that viewpoint?
And I have to tell you, if we were to do that, The consequences would be dire doesn't even begin to cover it.
You know what I mean?
Like if we are to actually allow them to reconstruct that reality and patch it up and either throw people out or keep people here under threat of violence, I have to tell you those consequences, we've seen them in history and they are bad.
Well, we need only look as far as having a doctor on TV representing the White House completely and utterly minimizing the severity of COVID from the very beginning.
Now, we also know that Republicans seem to refuse to recognize the influence that they have as leaders and how profoundly, because I think we acknowledge they don't often believe what they're saying.
No.
But they're manipulating this for power.
But the problem is that these ripples run deep across the country.
And you have people who are anti-maskers simply because Trump had said, oh, I don't want to wear a mask.
I look like a fool, whatever he said about that.
And no matter what kind of science we're going to show them now, hey, we have a new president who's wearing a mask.
That ain't going to have any effect on them.
But we have someone like Deborah Birx who's now going on trying to whitewash her legacy when
I don't think any I don't see how there was any other version of what she should have done besides quit well first of all burn it down on live TV and really just say everything she needed to say and then quit and then continue to say everything she needed to say outside of the bounds of being in that position but from what I've read and what the reporting is is she loved being able to traipse around the White House hallways and be part of all this it was intoxicating to her you know even though she was called and threatened
by the by Trump himself and she's even characterizing this last thing with with Sanjay Gupta in the interview, you know, saying like whatever you've heard about this call and how I mean it was, it was worse.
And I have no doubt that he threatened her and all sorts of horrible stuff.
So what what are we doing here?
I mean, this is where this is where we talk about when it causes death.
You know, this is not this is not politics.
This is not just like, oh, okay, we're going to, someone's going to make more money this, this quarter than somebody else.
This is 400,000 more people dying.
400,000 possible deaths that could have been, uh, could have been averted.
Yeah, it's, it's exactly that.
And it's all wrapped up in a couple of things.
It's wrapped up in wanting to be close to power.
You know what I mean?
Like wanting to be in the room where the decisions are made, which, by the way, is a large reason why people cozy up to dangerous people like Trump.
I mean, you know, that the whole cult of celebrity and power and wealth is all wrapped up into that.
But also, you know, with a lot of these Republicans who went along with this stuff, they knew that COVID was dangerous.
Trump knew COVID was dangerous.
He was admitting he knew it was more dangerous than he was telling anybody, which I'm sorry, but that guy should be in a jail cell right now.
He really should.
Don't apologize.
Listen, I don't like this politics of locking up your political enemies, but that dude like committed crimes against humanity.
He really did.
And immediately you have Republicans who either want to be in the room of power or around power, or they literally want to dismantle the government.
I mean, again, going back to the Lindsey Graham fantasy, you notice in his fantasy, the authorities don't show up.
Government doesn't show up.
They don't want government to show up.
They don't want government to show up in the case of a natural disaster.
They want to be left on their own.
They want to be able to go ahead and carry out their fates.
And last time I checked, an AR-15 cost about $2,000, give or take.
cost about $2,000, give or take.
You have to be able to afford the weapon of war, right?
In order to survive the gangs.
Right?
It all comes back to power, autonomy, and getting rid of government as a public good.
That has always been the heart of all this bullshit.
Stack up all the accomplishments like a Democratic White House has made versus Republican since the early 60s.
They have no desire!
If you were to do that, it would be just embarrassing.
And part of the problem we have with getting that to take hold is because it seems it takes a while before people really kind of, you know, like the Civil Rights Act in 64, like it took a while to really take hold and recognize.
I think now everyone's like, oh, of course, that was a really important piece of legislation that we had to get through, right?
Yeah, it wasn't so popular back then, but the point being that we're still in the midst of like, you know, even more recently things like Obamacare.
Obamacare should be looked at 50 years from now as like, and as I look at it now, as a monumental piece of legislation that saved people's lives.
But look at like what, so what do the Republicans do?
Go back, you'll see there is very little that they do that's not related to like out and out greed.
And then wealth redistribution to the wealthy.
That's all they do.
I feel like Republicans would be upset that Trump's legacy is going to be tarnished because he was a jerk.
That's what I'm trying to say.
I think Trump has a lot of other problems with his legacy besides being a jerk.
They haven't moved away from it.
I'm not a pessimist.
I consider myself a realist.
I mean, the Republicans have doubled down.
I have actually, I'll tell you, we've been doing this show long enough and people have been listening long enough.
I tend to examine this stuff through, I'm not a pessimist.
I consider myself a realist.
I didn't even predict how deeply they were going to jump into the post-Trump wake.
You know what I mean?
I thought they would even, I thought that they would even sort of like kind of go between.
They would try and have it both ways to try and separate themselves or whatever.
That trip to the border was an audition.
It really was it was an audition to see who could be the next Trump who could end up and Trump I don't know like okay, by the way in order to bring this thing around and make it a little bit lighter and actually more pathetic like he showed up at like a wedding in Mar-a-Lago and was just like Oh, everybody misses me.
Everybody knows that they made the wrong choice.
All this stuff.
And like so pathetic and so sad.
He's releasing like power rankings of Republicans who might succeed him and who's going to be the future of the party.
And it's actually affecting who the Republicans are supporting and who's doing what and who's doing what.
Ted Cruz is in a full-scale sprint after Trump's legacy right now.
I thought you were going to say Ted Cruz is a stylist because however he was like dressed and he's just a and then and also Lindsey Graham they just look you know what Lindsey Graham just like Dukakis on the tank wearing their live action role-playing and it goes back to everything we keep saying which it's all symbolic Oh, don't worry.
I'll be there with a gun.
I will stop them.
I will stop the people of color from coming over the border and coming to your house and the traitors and the armies and the UN troops and all that.
It's nothing to do with anything.
They're not interested in passing legislation to help anybody.
They're not interested.
They don't have any ideology.
All they have to do is to react to everything and fearmonger.
That's it.
And certainly in the last administration, they had no expertise.
So by the way, getting back to like being pessimistic or optimistic, you know, I was reflecting, you know, since the the election, you know, there does seem to be a little bit of restoring of competency into the government, right?
A little bit.
And then there's something satisfying about that at the very least as we move forward.
But again, we're right back in the cycles where, you know, the Congress is not running for their seats already, you know, and they're not going to get anything done.
They got to worry about the midterms.
It's it's it never ends.
I'm glad you brought this up.
I actually think what we're talking about today, this posturing, going to the border, talking about electing a fascist, I actually think that this is the right response to Biden having a couple of political victories.
And listen, the relief package was a big deal, like it's going to help some people.
By the way, I hope people have already got their stimulus checks and they figured out what to do with them.
This is their response to a legislative victory, is to just be like, we will embrace fascism if you make us.
That should tell you where this thing is going.
This administration actually has to go big.
They have to try something large.
They have to actually try and make this country somewhat fairer and also functional.
But if they're reacting simply this way to a piece of legislation that everybody should have voted for in the first place, There's no telling where they're gonna go with this thing.
Yeah, I gotta go kill some animals right now because you're making me do that, Jared.
I'm sorry, that's how I feel.
I hate that you are making me do this.
Isn't that incredible?
Just nuts.
Yeah, it is nuts.
It is nuts, but there is hope.
There is hope.
I have a lot of hope, and I hope you do, too.
We thank you, as always, for listening and all of your support.
A reminder, we do have a weekly second show for our Patreon members.
That is patreon.com slash mcgreggpodcast.
Again, this week on April 1st at 7 p.m.
Eastern, we will be doing a live taping of the Weekender Edition.
We'll be opening that up for questions and taking your topics and inviting you in and having a good time.
We have a great community of people, including, there's a Discord, Nick, where they're doing book clubs, they're watching movies, they're taking care of each other.
It's incredible what happens when there's mutual aid and respect and care and affection.
But again, there's patreon.com slash Muckrake podcast.
If you need us before our next episode, you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me, SMH.
He's back in the world from vacation.
You never left Twitter, let's be honest.
I did not.
Well, a little bit.
Barely.
You were still on Twitter.
Are you a troll?
Are you a lurker?
No, I unfortunately have to use Twitter as a means of communication.
And if you need me for that, you can find me at JY Sexton.
