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April 6, 2021 - The Muckrake Political Podcast
51:52
The Cure For Cancel Culture: Staggering GOP Hypocrisy

Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the latest grievance by the Right - how corporations recognize the game of sounding progressive in order to maintain market share, while the GOP threatens to punish them with legislation for daring to speak up.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Time Text
Cancel culture is not some new phenomenon.
Those who are insecure in their views, their ideas, those who are not convinced that they can win in the free marketplace of ideas, then resort to force, then resort to silencing voices and views that they, the powerful elite, somehow deem to be unacceptable.
Now, Donald Trump calling for a boycott of Coca-Cola is beautiful.
He had a Diet Coke button on his desk at the Oval Office.
The man urinates aspartame, okay?
And it's especially funny because...
With all his complaining about cancel culture, this guy's tried to cancel more culture than anybody ever!
If you listen to Donald Trump, you'd have to cancel Baseball, Coke, Delta Airlines, ViacomCBS, Citigroup, Cisco, UPS, Apple, Macy's, Univision, HBO, Oreo, Rolling Stone, Fox News, Starbucks, Geico, Goodyear, Amazon, AT&T, The NFL, T-Mobile, Harley-Davidson, Nike, Comcast, and Merck, which happens to make Propecia the drug Donald Trump takes to slow his balding down.
What are the chances that Donald Trump actually gives up Diet Coke or his bald head medicine?
None!
Hey everybody, welcome to the Muckrank Podcast.
I'm Jared Yates Sexton, here as always with Nick Halseman.
We have a lot to go over today.
We've got domestic white supremacist terrorism we've got to talk about.
Donald Trump bilking his followers.
How much was it?
120 million?
122?
Is that... I'm not great with money.
Is that a lot of money?
It's quite a bit of money, yes.
Is that a lot of money?
OK, we got to talk about that, too.
But before we do, we have to talk about something that doesn't seem really all that important, but is actually massively important.
And we want to go over a couple of things.
So we're going to start in a state that is near and dear to my heart, where I live right now, which is the rock blue state of Georgia, Nick.
Am I blue?
They voted for a Democratic president and voted for two Democratic senators.
That has not sat well with the Republican institution here in my state.
They have now passed laws that have made it harder to vote, hoping to disenfranchise people of color or poor people from voting who vote predominantly Democratic.
That has resulted in a cascading of dominoes.
And in the most recent moment of this culture war, We've seen Major League Baseball move their all-star game away from Atlanta, which has resulted in a curious case of cancel culture among the right towards Major League Baseball, Coca-Cola, Delta, and God knows who else they're boycotting at this moment.
Nick, are you having a hard time keeping track of this list of do not buy on the right?
Or are you caught up?
I'm more confused over everything because a lot of them feel like they are being silenced even though I'm watching them talking about being silenced which is kind of a dichotomy I suppose, right?
You can't turn on the TV without hearing them talking about being silenced.
Right.
And then on the flip side, yeah, they don't want these people to be cancelled, or certain people to be cancelled, but then they want other people to be cancelled, and that's totally fine.
It's very strange, and again, we talk about this all the time, the torque that must exist in these people's brains probably leads to this bad behaviour, right?
You can't possibly have these different positions So competing in your brain at one time.
It seems like I don't know how you live your life that way.
Well, you can.
I mean, that's the problem here is that you can.
You know, I've been thinking a lot.
Of course, the cause du jour right now is this this phrase cancel culture, which has been so fixated on by the right, like to the point where CPAC, the entire purpose of CPAC was America uncanceled.
Right.
And it was cancel culture.
It was socialism.
You know, it was any number of these like boogeymen that the right was was pointing out.
And I've been thinking a lot about this ability that they have.
And it comes from this logic of St.
Augustine, who was one of the original sort of thinkers of evangelicalism, of the of the Catholic Christian Church.
And the idea And tell me if this sounds familiar, Nick.
Was the idea of good persecution and bad persecution.
Which, the entire idea behind St.
Augustine was, it's bad persecution if somebody else does it to us.
That's just wrong.
If somebody were to persecute the church, that is an evil thing.
But because the church held divine, revealed truth, Then that meant that if the church persecuted other people, that was okay.
And matter of fact, that was a good type of persecution.
I mean, tell me if that sounds familiar.
I mean, it sounds exactly what the Republicans say now, as far as they always feel persecuted, especially by, you know, having to, you know, we can't say certain things anymore.
And it's like, you know, with our first First Amendment rights are being violated because of this, and I feel persecuted because I can't, you know, feel free to say whatever I want to say anymore.
And so, yeah, there's a lot of that.
But as a result, if you don't say what I want you to say, then you're going to be persecuted.
That's totally fine.
It's the same exact thing.
You know, and we've gone over this, the idea that the right is hypocritical.
I mean, we've been talking about this the entirety of our show.
It's been talked about going back into the I mean, back in the 20th century, it was being pointed out that, like, you know, the Republican Party basically jettisoned any of their principles.
And we're calling it different ways.
Right.
They kind of like.
It's actually not real, right?
Like, cancel culture is actually about public opinion, how people spend their money, how people vote, how people decide to interact with other people.
of the phrase cancel culture.
It's actually not real, right?
Like cancel culture is actually about public opinion, how people spend their money, how people vote, how people decide to interact with other people.
What the Republican Party and the right is doing right now is saying we do not have control over culture.
We don't have the votes necessary to win an election.
Public opinion, and we talked about this on last episode, people hate Republicans.
I mean their approval rating is in the toilet.
This entire thing is about having Power and money, but also portraying yourself as a victim.
And by the way, if you are a victim, that means that you deserve something, right?
You deserve some sort of power or things deserve to change.
And like these are people, I'm sorry, we're watching millionaires and billionaires Get up and be like, oh my god, I am being silenced right now.
They could go out and start their own social media company.
They could go out and start their own business.
They could start their own TV network.
Some of them own their own TV networks.
And meanwhile, they're trying to have it both ways.
They're trying to have power, influence, and profits while also saying somehow or another they are being oppressed because an all-star game got moved.
Yeah, well, you know, I was reflecting on the origins of cancel culture itself.
I kind of feel like BDS might be the first time we really sort of had the Republicans react to something like this.
BDS being a sort of Palestinian backed movement towards boycotting, you know, Jewish businesses or Israeli businesses.
And we know how the right reacts to like criticism of Israel in general.
Which is usually pretty severe, the way they react to it.
Right?
And so I don't know if you'd agree with me, but I kind of feel like that was the triggering event.
And this is, you know, this has been probably a couple decades, I think, worth of that.
I think there's a direct line between something like that and then into, like, Colin Kaepernick and kneeling.
And it's sort of like the Republicans need to frame the reality on their own.
And they need to decide what these things stand for on their own, even though it's not what I think you can take cancel culture.
stand for if that makes any sense I think you can take cancel culture I mean again this idea of what supposedly cancel culture is which is oh you have not behaved according to the norms of society and now people either look at you differently they don't buy your products they you know you're you feel like you're a pariah or whatever I'm I mean, you know, I was just researching the beginnings of America.
It was like, if you didn't get on board with the revolution, they would tar and feather you.
You know like like they would they would carry you out to the outskirts of town on a pole and dump you in a ditch If you want to even get into the beginnings of the 20th century or mid 20th century Like during the Red Scare if you were seen as being a leftist or having communist sympathies or as we talked about the other day You know being part of a New Deal coalition All of a sudden McCarthy would have you up in front of Congress and you would be blackballed in Hollywood or in any kind of industry.
The point isn't that there is a cancel culture.
The point is that they do not have control of it.
They cannot define what is happening in this country.
The point is that culture has left them behind.
Which, by the way, we both know this.
That's what happens to conservatives.
Conservatives say, I don't want anything to change and things always change unless you make them not change.
And the only way to do that is through violence or oppression.
So they've lost the plot.
They've lost the narrative.
And now, and by the way, speaking of, um, you know, Nick, I always love it when you talk about this.
Um, and I think it's one of the more salient points that you have made during the entirety of this podcast.
You always point out how the right wants so badly to be funny.
They want just... They want so badly... We're not going to bring him up, are we?
Are we allowed to bring him up?
I'm bringing him up because this is a hall of fame.
The right wants to be comedians.
And by the way, it's not in their DNA.
We know this.
It's not how they are.
They're not actually funny.
And they want to be comedians.
They want to be actors.
They want to be influencers.
They want in the culture, but they can't do it.
And the greatest example, I actually think, I think this is his masterwork.
I think this is Mike Huckabee's Mona Lisa.
For those who haven't seen it yet, Mike Huckabee.
Nick, can you check our notes?
Was he a contender for the nomination for President of the United States of America through the Republican Party at one point?
That is a fact.
That is a fact.
Mike Huckabee, you know, is one of the chief Hucksters, and pun intended, of this entire situation.
And of course, he comes out and he says, I've decided to quote-unquote identify, which by the way is just like making fun, I guess, of trans people, so fuck him, as Chinese.
Coke will like me, Delta will agree with my quote-unquote values, and I'll probably get shoes from Nike and tickets to at MLB games.
Ain't America great?
Oh!
Oh!
Oh, it's so bad, but they want to be so funny.
They want to be part of the culture so bad, but they hate it because they can't.
I mean, Ted Cruz is the poster child for that as well.
They lack that gene or that characteristic that makes them interesting enough and friendly enough that you want to spend... When you go to see a comedy show, you have to like the guy.
That's always the number one rule when you're doing this stuff.
I mean it's disgusting but it's again he is just sitting there you know like what most of the right do is they just want to troll.
I have a question for you.
You know up until maybe recently maybe even still now there is a cure for cancel culture right?
The cure used to be a nice big apology.
You know, America loves people who show contrition.
Look at like, I mean, the list is long of people who have screwed up royally.
Like, I'm thinking in the NBA circles, like Marv Albert is a good example of that, right?
That guy, you know, we don't have to get into the sort of details of what happened, but the fact that he came back and is still broadcasting because he apologized and he did his penance and now he's back.
That's always been sort of the American way as well.
But it's the fear now, I wonder, of the cancel culture that this is it.
It's permanent and there's no way back.
Well, and what it is, really, is it's a fear of emerging media.
It's a fear that social media, and by the way, I'm sorry, but social media is all about personal and social anxiety.
You know what I mean?
It's about, will my next tweet, will it get enough likes?
Will it get enough retweets?
Will people like it?
Will people follow me?
Will people unfollow me?
Will this get me cancelled?
We are walking on, like, a thin line at all times over a wilderness of razor blades.
But guess what?
That's not the worst thing in the world to think about what you say or what you do and how it's going to affect people.
These people, and by the way, it's just like these assholes.
It's like Huckabee.
I'm sorry, man.
He's a former governor.
He's a luminary.
Oh, even saying luminary just made me feel a little bit ill.
Like he is a high profile person on the right.
He typed that out on his phone and decided to hit tweet.
You know what I mean?
And then you've got, oh my God, Brian Kemp, who, Just what a numbskull this guy is.
What an asshole idiot.
And this guy, by the way, if you want to talk about the right and their idiosyncrasies and their psychosexual problems, like Trump basically has Governor Kemp on a dog chain.
You know what I mean?
Like down at his feet.
And he's like, do you like being humiliated?
Oh yeah, you do.
Kemp comes out and of course during this whole thing and and this is a guy who put out an ad once where he held a gun on a guy about to date his daughter he comes out during this whole thing he says quote MLB cave MLB cave to fear lies a liberal activist and ignore the facts of the new election integrity law MLB didn't decide a single reason why what they are moving and and meanwhile is he saying they should get rid of the Braves by the way is
Is he saying that the Atlanta Braves should not be in Georgia anymore?
Of course he's not saying that!
He's trying to secure re-election against Stacey Abrams.
He's trying to get back Trump voters.
This whole thing is a bullshit lie.
They're not in any trouble.
Every time there's a quote-unquote move to cancel one of these people, they get profits.
They get voted for.
They become more secure in their jobs.
This isn't a real thing to them.
And for them to keep pointing at it and claiming it's real, it's just a straw man.
It's just a way to build themselves up.
Right and you know it's worth maybe a quick discussion about what this law is and what they've instituted because you know there was a whole thing about Seoul so the polls was going to be uh struck down and that wasn't they didn't actually couldn't keep it in they tried um but you know we obviously know the big ticket item is you can't give people water and food in line within 150 feet of a thing for Electioneering.
OK, whatever.
I mean, you know, there's there is this notion of, OK, we can't have electioneering going on, although that's all bullshit now, too, because people do it.
So stupid.
And and so but obviously putting oversight of the election process into the hands of local Republican legislature members is a real problematic thing.
And, you know, also removing the Secretary of State pretty much completely out of the process, which is interesting because Brian Kemp was the Secretary of State when this shit was going down in 2018.
No!
Not at all.
This is how they're going to keep that from happening.
I mean, the writing is on the wall.
Like, not just the Biden election, but the Warnick and Ossoff election.
could get into power at some point, and they're in charge of all these things.
And what was your response? - No, not at all.
This is how they're going to keep that from happening.
I mean, the writing is on the wall, like not just the Biden election, but the Warnick and Ossoff election.
And not to mention, I'm glad you brought that up because Kemp stole 2018 as Secretary of State.
He did everything in his power to steal that election.
The writing is on the wall that the sea change is coming.
They can see the water coming.
The question is, are they going to figure out a way to stop the water?
This is how you do it.
This is how you go ahead and you ensure that you can win future elections.
We've talked about this before, too.
It used to be you would see that water coming and you'd be like, maybe we need to change our strategies.
Maybe we should think about how we appeal to people.
But now it's such an anti-democratic idea.
It's such a anti-majoritarian mindset that they are in that they have to figure out a way to disenfranchise people and disincentivize voting.
That's the only way they can ever imagine winning again.
I mean, it's all wrapped up in this idea of cancel culture and who has culture and who doesn't.
Well, how about this?
Creating a problem and then having to try and legislate to solve that problem?
That sounds familiar, right?
It seems like what they do all the time.
So this is just another piece of that code they've written for years, decades now.
So they create a fake problem on a big lie and then they say we have to fix these things.
Now, it's interesting because the issue of, let's say, gun laws don't seem to apply in that same way for them because they don't recognize it's a real issue.
It's all mental health.
And so in my mind, again, there's this torque going on where they don't have the principles to be able to govern effectively.
I think that's probably the issue here.
And so when you realize they don't, like, they just turn around and it's like the staggering hypocrisy that goes on.
It's like you can, this is not how lawmakers should be able, they can't, you can't live in that kind of reality and then be a governing body for hundreds of millions of people.
That's the issue here.
So then you got to try and pull out, well, why are they doing this then?
And this is where you get to the bigger sort of white supremacist notion, right?
This is really to keep white people in power, which is probably the most triggering thing you could ever say to anybody on that side, you know, when you actually try and say that.
And then again, then they try and turn it around on you again.
It's, it's a frustrating loop.
And I feel like that's why we've talked about this thing.
And I say it every time, it's like, there doesn't seem to be a way to get on any kind of even ground to figure this out other than to find all the never Trumpers, at least.
At least there, there's some common ground, right?
We can at least acknowledge that this guy is a detriment to democracy, and we can kind of move on from there.
But other than that, I don't know what we do.
Well, so this is the true heart of the matter here.
The reason why they don't want to get rid of the guns is because the guns are the failsafe.
You know what I mean?
Like if the election laws and the disenfranchising and all these appeals don't work, they'll figure it out.
Also, I have to point out- Wait, wait, wait.
So the implication is they're going to take the streets with their guns?
I'm sorry, but a bunch of dudes in camouflage marching around state houses showing their AR-15s.
It's a message.
So why didn't that happen on the Capitol on January 6th?
Why weren't there gun-toting people there?
Oh, I guess it's because it's not legal to have it out in open.
Is that in DC?
Yeah, in DC you're not allowed.
So this is also a situation, it's really awful, but it is true.
It's the implication at the heart of the thing.
But also while we're at it, I have to mention, they don't want to use government to do anything besides go ahead and maintain power and dismantle government.
They don't actually want to legislate.
We were talking about this before we started recording, They have no interest in actually passing any laws until a corporation, like, runs askew of them.
Immediately when Delta came out against this law, they were like, oh yeah, well, we'll see about taxing Delta, right?
Which, Delta is like, I don't know if you know this, maybe some of our listeners know this, Delta is the beating heart of Atlanta.
Like it is – that is this hub.
It's in the Atlanta airport and it basically is like one of the main groupings there in Georgia.
It's the biggest employer in Georgia or maybe the second biggest employer in Georgia I think.
It's up there.
And the Republicans are just like going to go to war with them?
Like, that's madness!
Coca-Cola, by the way, I don't know if people know this, Coca-Cola is beloved in Georgia.
It is an obsession with Georgia because it is headquartered in Georgia.
People have an entire culture around Coca-Cola.
Then MLB, like I said, they were like, oh, we'll see about their antitrust status.
And it's like, you're going after America's pastime.
America's favorite soft drink and one of the main employers of your state.
I mean this is, let's be frank about it, that is like self-inflicted damage.
You know what I mean?
Like there's no coherent idea going on here outside of panicked desperation and that's what defines them.
Well, they're the party of big business.
They're the party of capitalism.
And now they're going to get pissed off because big businesses are doing smart business?
That's what's so outrageous about this.
Of course these businesses, we talked about this before, and even the notion of the apology I talked about to get out of cancel culture, it doesn't have to be sincere.
These businesses don't have to be sincere about what they're doing, but they do these symbolic things because they know in the grand scheme of things, it'll lead to better sales.
Right.
Yep.
That's all they care about.
And so it's like, again, these Republicans who and by the way, their tax plan is to benefit these people.
They all they do is believe in big business and capitalism.
And yet when they do the things that are supposed to that will help them make more money, these businesses, meaning calling out what's going on in Georgia, then all of a sudden they're going to pass laws and try and hassle all these people.
It's like most of the time they'll say, oh, we don't need a law for that.
It's sufficient what we already have.
You know, let me just, we'll maybe get some better mental health, you know, for the guns.
We already have plenty of laws for that stuff.
We have to get less laws.
Like that's their whole take on it.
We need judges who are going to strike down more of these laws and who are not qualified and they don't have any experience and do all that stuff.
We don't want it.
We don't need more laws until They end up attacking people and using it as a revenge.
It's revenge taxes.
I don't know what it is.
Revenge governments?
We need another term for this, but it's insane.
It's troll government.
Troll government.
I love it.
That's the name of the pod today.
It's troll government.
And by the way, you're exactly right.
We just need to state this again because so much of the Trumpian post-Trump era is defined based on dichotomies.
Coca-Cola and Delta are not on your side.
They are not woke.
They don't have any philosophy besides profits, and they understand that they had to be on one side of the issue.
All of their about statements, their diversity, inclusivity, all of those things are all about keeping boycotts away.
They understand, going back to culture, culture is now progressive, at least in outward expression.
Not even necessarily in how it actually operates.
It's about performative progressivism.
They have to do this.
It's professional wrestling.
It's stomping your feet while you throw a punch so it looks like you're actually punching someone.
And while we're on the subject, the biggest performance of all of this was Donald Trump.
who managed to not actually give a shit about any of this stuff.
The only thing that Donald Trump actually got up for was putting people of color in their place because he was inherently a racist, going ahead and chipping away at democratic institutions because he was an inherent fascist, and dismantling government because he doesn't want government to work.
Meanwhile, the side effect of that is faux populism.
The entire idea that he could make a bunch of white people in middle America pissed off and a bunch of very wealthy white people pissed off and then...
I mean, like, set up a fundraising site that bilked people out of over a hundred million dollars by misleading them about how often they would be giving him fundraising donations.
And then eventually the entire idea behind it, and tell me if this sounds familiar with the rights ideology, it was better to apologize than to ask permission, and just kept going and going and going after people's money, hard-earned money, And didn't give them anything in return.
Nothing.
The only thing Trump did was lower taxes on the wealthy, dismantle government as a public good, and put a bunch of right-wing justices on the Supreme Court.
That's all.
And most of the people who gave him money were not people who benefited from that.
Well, and destroy the economy based on its misnomer of COVID, which directly hurts these people.
It was heart-rending to read that article this weekend about poor people.
Again, it's equally heart-wrenching when I read the articles about poor people who give evangelicals all their money.
Okay.
It's the same thing.
But it's the same thing without question.
And that's what Trump took advantage of.
It was already in place.
That mindset to like give and give is whatever you can.
But to hear people who are like death's door give $500 of which they might have had a thousand in the bank total and they're giving half their savings to him.
And then, because it's so convoluted with the way the box looks on the screen, and they kept filling it with more and more text, so you don't see the very bottom of the small text, this was a recurring thing, weekly, first of all, monthly, then weekly, it was disgusting, they raised, so anyway, the good thing about our country, generally used to be, is okay, that makes, it's a mistake, it's a problem, whatever, you complain, and you will get a refund, but here's where it got so disgusting to me, is that,
I do remember a month ago, two months ago, when Trump raised all of his money to fight all these legal challenges of the election.
And you know, there's a lot of different legalese in there that sort of indicated that most of the money was not going to go there anyway.
Do you know where it all went?
Half of it goes to pay back everybody who had demanded their money back from these, you know, not illegal, but these erroneous charges.
That is why he was doing it.
I thought maybe he was going to put it in his pocket.
I'm sure he put a lot in his pocket.
Oh, I'm sure he put some in his pocket.
But there was no question.
There was a meeting saying, shit, we got to return $122 million because it's their right to request it back.
We don't have it.
And what do we do?
There's no question.
That's what he did.
He's like, oh, great.
We'll just do another.
We'll just pretend it's for legal fees.
You know, every time I think we've hit the bottom, we keep going further.
It's really gross, man.
Like even just thinking about it, like those meetings.
And it was to, they forwarded the big lie that could very well, it's already killed people.
I mean, people have already died.
And it's going to lead to more.
I mean, the other thing we have to talk about is the fact that like right-wing domestic white supremacist terrorists Are the main threat in this country and have been, by the way, for decades, but it's worse than ever.
And what helps that?
The big lie that Donald Trump pushed in order to pay off debt and probably put some cheese in his pocket while he was at it.
And the Republican Party used for all of this shit that those Georgia laws, by the way, those Georgia laws are just a result of that.
They use that as sort of the opening to go ahead and push that stuff through.
We're seeing it all across the country.
And by the way, it's the rhetoric.
I don't know if you saw this, but it came out that like over 50% of Republicans now believe that like, we don't know the truth about the Capitol insurrection.
And that, you know, it was actually people in the left wing trying to make Trump look bad, right?
It is a constant mill of the big lie that very well, by the way, could not just lead to more deaths.
It could actually lead to the destabilization of American politics and society as we know it.
It's that large of a lie and it got peddled by this asshole who wanted to pay off his debts and hopefully make himself not look like a giant loser.
A death of democracy.
is really what we're talking about here, which we're probably already, you know, you don't often realize when something happens to that monumental until it happens and you realize like a year, five years later, shit, that was when it happened.
Yep.
It was really dead then and we didn't realize it.
So we very well could be in that position right now because again, somebody out there and either it's the media, the right wing media or just Republicans or right wing people, they don't recognize how influential these people are.
Trump really is influential.
He can change people's minds, and then it's solidified for a generation.
That's how powerful this is, and people don't want to, I think, recognize that.
I think they feel like, oh, if a guy says something in power, and we all know it's not true, oh, we're not, we just know it's not true.
He's just trolling, he's lying, whatever.
No!
They take that, I've seen it firsthand, they take it as gospel, But, you know, the idea that they're going to finally reverse the Trump era policies of not investigating domestic terrorism.
So I want to reverse engineer this because we're seeing how they're going to put a lot more money into DHS to be able to track them.
Is it DHS?
Homeland Security?
Yeah.
So here's the thing.
Without that money You can't investigate domestic terrorism, right?
You don't have enough resources to actually keep your eye on what's going on.
So what do the domestic terrorists feel out of that for those four years?
That's what I'm starting to wrap my head around is there's tacit approval.
That has to be what they take from that.
That is like, wow, we're not being monitored.
No one's hassling us anymore.
Maybe they were being hassled or whatever.
Now all of a sudden they're free to roam around the woods and play all these games and prepare for what they're preparing for.
That is more frightening now looking back on it and like thank God we're gonna go restore some of these norms that we had and restore some of the funding that they can actually then monitor these things.
Maybe they can head off some of these attacks before they happen and perhaps scare some people from not joining.
So I got a couple things I got to say on this.
First and foremost, I've been really, really vocal about this, that we need to take this threat seriously and we need to address it.
Or if we don't, we're going to go down, we've already gone down a bad road, but we'll end up somewhere that we don't even recognize if we don't deal with this threat.
The next thing I want to say is that the Department of Homeland Security shouldn't even exist.
The Department of Homeland Security was created because the Bush administration didn't give a shit enough to listen to the intelligence communities that were telling it that they were going to get attacked on September 11th.
They were negligent in September 11th.
They had heard everybody told them something was coming.
They were too busy doing their own thing.
The Department of Homeland Security was created to make up for their failure.
The Iraq War was also created to make up for their failure and to redistribute wealth and to go in a different direction and hopefully like ring in a new era of democracy and liberty and all that bullshit, whatever.
The fact that we're going to go ahead and throw money at the Department of Homeland Security, obviously that's going to happen.
The problem here Is that we have to be really, really careful with this.
And I understand this is a victory.
Do not get me wrong.
It is a victory that we are going to actually take domestic terrorism seriously because they have decades of a head start on us.
Going back to the 1980s, 1990s with the New World Order, Patriot Movement, all that stuff.
And by the way, if that wasn't enough to actually see the Patriot Movement taken off, Timothy McVeigh should have been the moment that this country got serious about right-wing white supremacist terrorism.
They have decades of a head start on us.
What I'm afraid of is when we start putting in ideological sort of focuses of domestic terrorism.
I'm already hearing from people that they're planning on going through social media.
They're planning on figuring out what people say.
And I have to tell you, going after right-wing terrorists is a really important thing because they pose a threat.
But you have to be very, very careful about how you set that up, because if you get a right-wing institution in charge, all of a sudden, Trump tweeting on a random Saturday, Antifa is a terrorist organization, takes on an entirely new dimension.
So this has to be a really, really careful thing.
But thank God they're taking it seriously.
But it has to be very, very specific in how it's taken care of.
I mean, I think what you're referencing is like, if a Trump person would take power again, they would just trigger, they would send the keyword out, and then that would unleash certain things, which is sort of what Trump was doing, wittingly or not.
You know, in the Q documentary, they show Trump doing things that are, it is strange, listen, it's all conspiracy theory or whatever, I just don't think Trump is smart enough and can manage all those things in his head, but yeah, somebody else could.
Somebody else more and more younger and with more mental faculties could certainly do that.
And it is concerning.
You know, it's interesting about the DHS because obviously they needed a more of a centralized control over a coordination between FBI and CIA.
Like had they talked better, maybe 9-11 would have been averted, which is sort of like that was what some people say.
So I find that – I mean that's what the Bush administration says because they don't want to take responsibility for September 11th.
I mean, well, yeah, but I mean, it was a fact like, you know, the CIA and the FBI were fighting over turf wars, weren't sharing Intel, like all that.
But that's been the case since they were brought into it.
We talked about this on The Weekender.
I mean, basically, we have two intelligence organs, and we're not even talking about the NSA.
We have two intelligence organs that are at war with each other at all times.
They're trying to chisel out their own little fiefdom.
Like, it's a problem already.
Right, which kind of makes me wonder about the Gates situation, which was a little bit quiet.
We got a trickle.
But the idea that the FBI was, you know, coordinating an extortion investigation, as well as the local cops, it's not CIA and FBI, but again, there's this notion of like inter, you know, disciplinary conflicts here, where they're not coordinating anyway.
I mean, we know it's still a problem.
So I guess your argument would be, why have the DHS if it's not doing its job?
Well, so here's my question.
And as always, this is really, really important.
Why are you going to shovel money at the problem?
Move money around!
And I have to tell you that if you're really interested in fighting right-wing white supremacist terrorism, maybe take a little bit of money away from suppressing the left.
Maybe stop looking at the left and trying to figure out how they're... Oh, I don't know.
Maybe stop working with the Proud Boys.
Maybe stop funding them.
I guarantee they've been on the dole.
I guarantee they've been giving money to the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters.
I guarantee they're getting government money right now.
We've got to be careful with this thing, is what I'm saying.
But did you also just say, why are we throwing money at the problem?
I mean, is this the moment we have to write down where you became a Republican?
Well, I will tell you, I am all for starving the intelligence and defense groups.
I really am.
Because they have served as an organ for the redistribution of wealth from the bottom up.
I mean, that's what they're there for.
They're their launder tax money.
Do you include the military?
Absolutely, I do.
100%.
Okay.
So we'll make sure we're got everybody covered on that one.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, certainly the military in 2021, it could probably just be much more of a lighter, modern, you know, we always talk about being modern.
But I mean, some Marines just died in a in one of those submersible things that's like decades old, and they're still training in these things for no reason.
We're not doing land landings on Normandy anymore.
I mean, it's like, It just boggles my mind when I hear those kind of stories because, again, we should have technology now where they hovercrafts and radars and people can drop down.
You know what I mean?
I want to see Mission Impossible.
I can see inside your brain right now.
Lasers.
Yeah, it should be Mission Impossible.
There's no reason why we can't have that kind of thing.
That could be the Army.
And you can do it a lot more streamlined.
You don't have to put people at risk like we do.
I mean, listen, I guess what I'm describing is drone killing and all that.
Let drones do it.
Yeah, I would offer the alternative of drawing down troops and that way we're not in a constant war footing where we're getting ready.
I mean, I'm sorry.
We are tiptoeing into Cold War 2.0.
I mean, that's where we're going.
And I'm pitching a clone war here.
Yeah, yeah, you're pitching a clone war.
I'm pitching drawing that stuff down and getting to the point where we don't distrust the populace, but we also understand that there are people among us who are looking to destroy the government and take over the country and plunge us into a second civil war.
I mean, that really are people among us and they wanted to do it forever.
And it's it maybe you need to redirect some money, but I am afraid of just making the blob get bigger and bigger.
And then I have to tell you, Nick, it's like reading this article and there is just like a part of it that like made my blood run cold, which is, oh, well, how are we going to handle this?
Well, obviously we're going to work with the social media companies I don't want those corporations deciding what is and isn't dangerous speech or what is and isn't treason because all and you know this I The idea of American capitalism and exceptionalism and the drive to grow American power has become synonymous with patriotism.
And if I'm going to suddenly become a terrorist because I say that America shouldn't go around conquering other countries or overthrowing governments, if that makes me a terrorist, I don't know if that's the country I want to live in.
You know what I mean?
Because so much of this stuff is about protecting power and normalcy, quote-unquote normalcy, and the status quo, I'm really afraid of how this thing gets constructed.
And it cannot be a catch-all thing.
It cannot be like, It can't be trying to take out something a scalpel should do with a machete.
That's my fear here.
Okay.
I hear you.
I mean, listen, because what you have to battle against as well is the... What's the word I'm looking for?
Where, you know, people might just sort of be saying, you know, I don't have anything to hide.
You know, they already have my information anyway.
Then what's the difference if they see a little bit more?
And that's the dangerous part, right?
Because then it becomes a totalitarian state.
They're monitoring everything, Big Brother.
It's not that far of a stretch.
And by the way, is it Reality Winner?
No.
That's who blew the whistle on what the NSA was doing, right?
Because they can see all this anyway.
So that's the problem we have here.
It's probably already happened.
We don't really know it.
And the key here is to figure out if they have another whistleblower to tell us or Meanwhile, someone who tells us all that goes to prison instead of being welcomed as a hero.
Well, and that's the frightening thing, is they actually have went ahead and created this sort of a system.
And I remember when the Snowden stuff started coming out, a lot of people I would talk to about the road that this was taking us down, they were like, well, I'm not really worried about it.
I don't have anything to hide.
Well, I don't know if you, I know you have, but I don't know if our listeners have.
If you've ever watched a documentary about crimes or investigations or any of that, Those things are so imprecise.
And if, like, an investigator decides that you are guilty...
You're guilty, and they will find a way to prove that you were guilty, and they will find a way to make the system go with you being guilty.
The problem, and I have to tell you, I was doing research on the new book today, and I was going back into the 18th century in Britain, and even back then, man, they had these clubs where guys would get together, and they would be like, you know, we really should have liberty and equality.
And then all of a sudden it was like, these people are treasonous and these people are terrorists.
We need to bring them in.
We need to put them on trial.
They are dangers.
And you saw the government.
They were working with right-wing paramilitary groups.
They were working with law enforcement.
And it was all about seeing the left as the biggest danger in the world.
And it's in this country, by the way.
I'm not speaking on turn of something that this country hasn't done.
This country has a long history of doing that.
This country has continuously seen the left as like the real danger, which is why we've arrived at this point in the first place, where they don't pay attention to right-wing extremism.
Right.
The pattern is clear throughout history that it's the progressive, whatever you want to call that wing, that ends up being persecuted by governments.
It makes sense in some respects.
So there are certain governments across the world that I admire that I might have to move to or countries I might have to move to because they recognize the value of community and like having everyone should have national health care, have health care and not have to worry about raising their kids and going bankrupt or going bankrupt because you got sick.
You know, these are the things that should be appealing.
And yet there's some notion in America of like how that's just anti-American.
And that's what's right.
I mean, even the people who are rallying against, you know, getting rid of the student debt is an interesting.
Maybe you're done with all your debt.
that where it there's got to be some of the pulling them up by their bootstraps kind of mentality still related to that, which is why when they push back against just forgiving debt, it would be a generational transformation of getting people out of their situations.
You probably included.
I don't know.
Maybe you're done with all your debt.
I don't know.
Oh, my God.
Oh, oh no.
I mean, I can barely record for being underwater and all of my student debt.
Wow.
So, I mean, there you go.
So, I'm advocating for you, but like, that's what's crazy.
How long have you been out of college?
Oh my god.
Uh, let me see.
13 years?
Yeah, and some people who are 18, 19, you know, they're young and like, you know, I know Tom Nichols out there on Twitter is railing.
Well, if you can fight in the military at 18, then you should be able to know what the interest rates are and how those work over time.
But it's like, what are you going to do?
The situation requires you to go to college if you want to be successful in this capitalistic society.
And, you know, the only way you're going to do that is if you get a student loan and you really have no choice.
You can't shop for them.
And so, You know I have no problem and I was very very fortunate that I didn't need to do that but I certainly would have no problem for a generation of people you know and I feel bad for people who had to actually pay the whole thing off and made it that they didn't get that kind of benefit and maybe there's something you could do for that I don't know but it doesn't mean that the other people shouldn't benefit from that if the government's willing to do it.
So this is a really important thing and I want to bring all of this full circle Because hypercapitalism, particularly since Reagan, has taken over in this country, we have come to view each other as enemies, opponents, and competitors.
Going back to this idea of cancel culture, I mean, I'm sorry, but like if a corporation like spoke out against the left, the right would be celebrating it if they move their games or whatever.
I mean, this happened during the pandemic.
It was like you had you had like Republican states that were like vying for sporting events to come to them because states that wouldn't allow them to have big gatherings.
They were trying really hard to go ahead and lure them in.
The whole point here.
is that the right has completely descended into subjective politics and subjective right and wrong.
You are my enemy.
I want you punished by laws and rules and the economy.
I want it to serve me.
We have to be very careful that we don't go that route.
We have to be very, very careful.
And I want to point out really quickly, we are not so far removed from the Black Lives Matter protest where we saw people protesting on the street Black bagged and taken into cars and driven away.
We have no idea what happened there.
We saw police going in and cracking skulls.
It is not so hard to imagine a country where that happens, but there's more of an apparatus for it.
And again, this is important to say, yes, they might rein in white supremacists and domestic terrorists, They're going to use it against you if power ever shifts.
So we have to be very, very careful about how we apply these things and how we move forward.
And we have to stop seeing everybody as our opponents and as sworn enemies, even though some of these people are incredibly dangerous.
You know, it's worth studying more to get more information about the historical aspect of these kind of departments and as they get put in.
It feels to me like there was a time in our country where the libertarian mindset was really powerful and like we really have to make sure that you cannot do that.
Now, we even saw an example when Wolfowitz was in the hospital.
It was Wolfowitz in the hospital and they rushed to get him to sign something to extend the Patriot Act.
He was the one who didn't want Lady Justice to have her breast exposed.
He's saying we gotta do this.
He was in the hospital.
He was sick.
He was the one who didn't want Lady Justice to have a breast exposed.
It was – Anyway.
No, he's saying we got to do this.
What's his name?
He's saying let the eagle soar like she's never soared before.
And Kobe stopped him, right?
They raced to the hospital and stopped him before it happened.
Anyway, but like there's an example even in the midst of like the most ridiculous time that you describe in the under the W era where we still had Republicans who felt really strongly about that.
And I don't think we do anymore.
That's the real question here is I don't know if we had that notion.
If it will benefit the Republican Party, they don't give a shit anymore.
Ashcroft!
Who's Ashcroft?
God, what a fucker Ashcroft was.
I mean, they're all the... I mean, you know, murderer's row of just the worst people.
Which, again, goes under the cancel culture thing.
It's like, if you reflect on your life and you want to, like, you see people who are retiring.
Roy Williams at Carolina is retiring after 33 years, and there's an outpouring of emotion and great thoughts.
It's like, I would imagine most Americans would want to be seen that way when all is said and done.
And that is, it's the only way to do that is if you, you know, you don't get canceled because you're not an asshole.
It's a fascinating thing.
Or you live to troll and you want to be that guy who like, your tears, you know, keep my skin moist or whatever those people say.
I mean, it's insane.
A real Rush Limbaugh.
Yeah, you know what?
And by the way, how do you get people to be, to want to be that way?
Right?
That's an interesting thing.
I don't know.
Well, I think it all has to do with the system.
I really do.
The economic system that makes us all competitors.
And I actually think Donald Trump is one of those guys.
I mean, like, it's the old 1980s ethos.
You can almost see the commercial.
It's almost a Nike commercial, which is, I don't need to be liked.
I just need to win.
Right?
And that is the mindset that is taken over.
And that is antithetical to all of this.
I mean, and real fast, I just want to put a quick bow on this.
The Patriot Act Didn't really work against terrorists.
It was used against critics of the Iraq War.
It was used against Americans who got caught in the gym saying that they didn't agree with the war, and they were the ones being reported.
This stuff always boomerangs around.
And again, we have to learn from this.
Americans are so bad.
at learning from our mistakes.
We have to learn from it.
And we have to get better, man.
We have to start forging actual relationships.
And the only way forward is if we get rid of this whole enemy mindset.
But that being said, that doesn't change the fact that there are people out there right now who are studying ways to destroy the government and plunge us into a civil war.
We have to be able to do both things at once.
We have to chew gum and walk at the same time.
And it's hard.
It's really hard.
Yeah.
I had no idea you'd be an advocate to want to protect.
Gosh, who is the idiot who got caught up in the FISA for the Russian investigation?
The bald guy.
You know what I mean?
Carter Page.
Carter Page.
I feel like you're advocating because Carter Page got caught up in that FISA stuff.
No, I personally, if you're flirting with the Russians and trying to give them secrets and help interfere in an election, I'm out.
I'm out on that.
Yeah, fine.
Let him get FISA'd out the wazoo.
Okay.
Yeah.
I do want to say one thing about the, you know, you mentioned that, you know, these corporations, you know, don't really care about these things.
They're doing it performatively.
Stakem is woke.
Stakem hired some PR slash marketing person who took a Marxist class their freshman year of college.
It's one guy, one kid, you know, I'm sure, in their social department.
They probably only have one person in the social department total anyway, so I'm sure that's who it is.
Well that person, by the way, has earned themselves some money.
Because they figured out, and by the way, just on that note, people need to remember this.
Marketing 101 for brands and corporations, you have to give yourself a personality.
If you give yourself a personality and you make your corporation seem like it's a person, that takes away the poison of the corporation and the relentless pursuit of profit.
And that's what these people do.
Again, it's like they don't care about whether or not you get to vote.
They don't care about whether or not the flag, you know, is honored or whatever.
It's always about angling and finding marketing issues.
Absolutely.
All right.
On that note, man, Stakehams.
I haven't had stakehams in a long time.
That's the way ahead.
A little garlic salt to fry them up.
See, but that's the thing.
See what just happened?
They talked about Marxism on their Twitter, it got us talking, and now all of a sudden we're thinking about stakehams.
It's insidious, man.
It's insidious.
All right, everybody.
So until next time, hopefully you can go out and find yourself some delicious steak substitutes.
If you need us, you can find Nick over at Can You Hear Me?
SMH.
You can find me, J.Y.
Saxton.
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Yeah.
Until then, stay safe.
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