Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton & Nick Hauselman discuss the coordinated attacks on school boards as decisions to keep students safe by wearing masks are met with fierce resistance. They also explore the reason why so many politicians and influencers are willing to spread ideas they don't truly believe in: because they can get filthy rich by doing so.
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I just wanted to let everybody know that the paperback edition of American Rule, How a Nation Conquered the World but Failed Its People, is coming out this September 14th.
It's available for pre-order right now.
If you haven't had a chance to read this book, it is My reconsideration of American history.
This is exactly what the people who are hysterical and losing their minds about critical race theory and accurate history.
This is what the actual history of America looks like.
Where we came from, how we ended up at this point, and unfortunately where we're going if we don't learn from that history.
This new edition also includes a new chapter that goes beyond the end of American Rule, the original edition, and this new chapter features a reckoning with the events of January 6th, with the attempted coup of the election, Trump and all of his cronies trying to overthrow the presidential election, and of course the ongoing tragedy of the pandemic.
If you haven't had a chance to pick up American Rule, this is your chance.
It also would make a great gift for your friends and family, for people who either know what's going on or who could use a little bit of insight into what is happening right now.
I've heard from a lot of people that it's made a difference, so if you will, check that out.
It's American Rule, How Nation Conquered the World but Failed Its People, the paperback which comes out September 14th.
Thank you for your support.
Hey, everybody.
Welcome to the Muckrake Podcast.
I'm Jared Yates Sexton.
As always, I'm here with Nick Haussleman.
Nick, we got to talk today about grifters and thieves and the danger that they pose, which is just another day in the life, is it not?
It is.
Sadly, it is.
That's unfortunately where we are.
And to begin this conversation that I think is going to be illuminating in terms of what the Republican Party and the right are doing, we have to go to the Keystone State in Pennsylvania.
And some of our listeners might have seen this clip that went viral yesterday, and rightfully so.
And in it, this man named Steve Lynch, who we only know for sure that he is running for the Northampton County Executive position, although rumors are that he is dabbling into maybe running for the gubernatorial race.
Is Governor curious?
He's governor, curious, trying to figure this thing out.
This Steve Lynch guy, who we're gonna get into here in a moment, obviously has made a splash because in his speech, and of course, what else is he going to talk about besides masks?
Right, because it's got to be about masks.
It's the worst possible thing happening as super hurricanes destroy the Gulf Coast, as fires rage across the western part of the United States, as war and civil war continue to trouble places like Afghanistan, the American empire is falling apart.
Steve Lynch decided to go up and make a speech at an anti-vaccination, anti-mask rally, anti-I assume potato head rally?
I don't know.
What are these people mad about today?
Do you hate Mr. Potato Head now?
I don't hate Mr. Potato Head.
And by the way, it's not Mr. Potato Head, it's Potato Head, which is why there is the controversy.
Whoops.
Yeah, because, right, it's PC culture gone mad.
It's another one of those things the Republican Party is really genuinely upset about, Nick.
Like, they are actually really upset about this thing.
And so Steve Lynch goes in front of this gaggle of assholes and tells everybody that he thinks the way to handle school boards, particularly school boards that would mandate masks or even possibly vaccines, It isn't enough to go in and talk to them.
It's not enough to vote them out of office.
Steve Lynch tells the people in the crowd, apparently to great acclaim, that him, and this is actually my favorite part about this, Nick, him and 20 strong men Right, but he has to say other strongmen.
So 21 strongmen are going to go into these school board meetings, grab them, I assume almost like a cartoon, grabbing them by the scruff of the neck and carry the school board out and replace them, which Nick, I'm going to check my notes.
We call that a coup d'etat is what we call that.
Yeah, I suppose.
I don't know if you use the French, if it's the school board versus the government, but okay, we can go with something like that.
We'll call that a liberty coup, you know, so we can go ahead and get the anti-French sentiment out there.
But basically advocates for a future Republican tact of using violence and force to overthrow ruling bodies that they don't agree with.
Which, before we get into who this is, what we can glean from it, let's just be very clear.
Horrible and actually really terrifying when you consider that this is again another way in which things are escalating in this terribly radicalized culture I think that there's a horrible misconception of what like free society truly means And I kind of feel like this is like people are saying, you know, you know civics classes are dead They don't teach government and our ethics in schools anymore.
And I think one I offshoot of that is you know there might be unethical behavior and criminal behavior that that gets through the cracks but it also might lead to this completely twisted notion of what they think america is like what you're supposed to be allowed to do because there's clearly no notion of uh anything he's advocating for as being illegal or being wrong um and we'll get
My biggest fear now is that the people who are on these school boards generally, you're not going to be rewarded with money and fame and fortune.
You're going to do this because you believe in helping people and making sure that schools are educating kids.
But who would ever want to do that now?
Who would ever want to be on a fucking school board from now on when you see what's going on from across the country?
And it's not, you know, we see in the parking lots where they're threatened and they know where their cars and where they live.
I mean, these are people in the community.
They know where they live as it is.
I worry because then you can follow this whole train of thought where it's, OK, they quit or they get out and they put in these lackeys who are now going to rubber stamp this agenda.
And then what happens when you're a parent who does want Yeah, and this is, and again, this Lynch guy, as my family likes to say, a dingbat.
to take him out of that school.
So suddenly the schools become more segregated and that leads to everything that we're, you know, that's, that's worrisome.
Yeah.
And, and, and this is, and again, this, this Lynch guy, uh, as my family likes to say, uh, a dingbat, uh, just, it's just an absolute unserious person.
But this Lynch guy is picking up on something that is out there and it is growing.
Of course, we've covered on this show the fact that, you know, these libertarian millionaires and billionaires in the mold of the Koch brothers are shelling out just absolute ungodly amounts of money to right-wing think tanks in order to gin up, you know, anti quote-unquote CRT controversies.
We've also—and by the way, Nick, this is really strange.
I know that this is going to be shocking.
Somehow or another, that push is being made by right-wing think tanks and libertarians who are wealthy, and also QAnon at the same time.
Isn't that weird that those two things just happen to be trying to go after the same goal?
Isn't that strange?
You know, it's—we live in a strange world.
It's very odd.
It's almost like the fringe is always being used to advance these ideas, almost in a pincher maneuver with the establishment.
And so what we have seen over the past few months with this, and again, I hate to say even CRT because it's not about critical race theory at all.
It's just about trying to indoctrinate students, take over school boards, take over curriculum in order to keep people in the dark about how the rich and the powerful are manipulating society and exploiting people.
In this case, you're exactly right.
We have people leaving school board meetings and just mobs waiting on them, telling them, we know where you live, threatening them, we'll get you when you get home.
Now, all of a sudden, we're talking about physically removing people from places of power, which we have actually seen in America before.
I was just reading about There was this entire coup d'etat post-Civil War in Wilmington, North Carolina, where this mob of white people were tired of black people being involved in government and voting.
And so they went out and they intimidated people from voting.
And then they went and they removed people from the places of power and replaced them.
This isn't an accident that this stuff is picking up speed, because you're exactly right.
Open society is the target here.
This is what they're trying to get rid of.
And this dingbat, Steve Lynch, to go ahead and give people a little bit of an idea who this is.
So, before we get into how this guy makes his living, and the larger part of this conversation that we need to have, Nick, would it surprise you To hear that this guy was in Washington DC on January 6, 2021.
I want to give you a snarky answer, but I can't because it's simply not surprising.
Do you think he was taking in the sites?
Do you think that he was at the Smithsonian?
What do you think Mr. Lynch was doing in Washington, D.C.
on January 6th?
I'm sure he wedged a little insurrection in between the Martin Luther King.
No, he wasn't violent.
How dare you assume he was violent?
He was just there standing up for liberty.
And while we're on the subject of Mr. Lynch, how he makes his money is not in politics.
He's sort of an outsider, you know?
He plays by his own rules.
One, he's a personal trainer.
And two, he is the owner of Keystone Alternative Medicine, which is A really interesting thing to hear in the age of COVID, but also in the age of right-wing conspiracy theories, going after doctors and experts.
Can I read you a couple of posts that he has shared recently?
Please.
Just very, very quickly.
Okay, Nick, here's one.
Are you ready for elite human performance?
Are you ready to reverse your biological age and increase energy?
Are you ready to drive your partner wild?
I am.
I'm ready.
Tell me.
Sign me up, right?
Okay, one more.
One more.
Men, are you sick and tired of having low energy, low sex drive, and have...
God, he's talking to me, Jared.
I'm frightened.
You know what?
I had a moment in the middle of reading this title.
There's like a grammatical mistake.
There's actually a redundancy in it.
And my brain was like, just go through it, Jared.
Just read it like it should read.
But now I'm going to read it like it actually reads.
Okay.
Men, are you sick and tired of having low energy, low sex drive, and, and have an abundance of stubborn belly fat you just can't seem to get rid of?
Like, he's a, he's a grifter.
Playing off masculine insecurity, getting money from people, telling men that they can be stronger, that they don't have to be weak, How is this not a perfect metaphor for the Republican Party?
Send me the link.
Send me the link.
I'll DM you on it.
We'll make sure that gets out there.
Thank you.
Yes.
I mean, listen, I am... He's talking to people like me in their mid-40s who have all those issues and want to get rid of their belly fat, and that's me.
So I hear it's a siren song of getting in there.
Now, I'm assuming there's something about, like, ivermectin that's going to happen in this thing or anything like that?
No?
Nothing about treating COVID?
I don't see any pushing of sheep and horse dewormer in this case.
But I will say that what is happening here, it's the exact same thing that Trump has done, that the Republican Party has done, that these radical polarized people have done, which is they're appealing to insecurity of the white American male.
That's what this whole thing is about.
When you say, you know what?
You're not going to tell me what to do, government.
Me and my strong big friends are going to make you stop.
This is a masculine fantasy.
It's an overcompensation fantasy that he is trying to sell, and it's a natural bedfellow with this political idea and with this grift.
These two things are completely simpatico.
Well, let's open up a little further because, like you mentioned in the past after the Civil War when people in North Carolina decided to intimidate black people from voting, okay, they did it more than once, right?
Oh, they did it all the time.
After the first time, and they did it more often than that, why do you suppose they did it?
Well, Because it works, right?
They looked around and realized, shit, no one is going to stop us from doing this.
This is amazing.
And part of this, like, you ever remember, like, at some point in my memory, in my adult memory of, like, my youth, at some point someone programmed into a computer, like, all the pop songs from that era.
And they said, computer, generate a song that we, based on what you've learned from all these other songs, that will be a hit.
And they came up with something and I remember it kind of being like, oh yeah, it was not like a, you know, a terrible experience to listen to and whatever.
But the point being is that all these, and you said this all the time before, all of these talking points and all these things that they're saying are workshopped in the think tanks ahead of time to know what's going to get them to respond.
So, the danger of this stuff is because they don't really care what the effect might be when real people actually believe this stuff or listen to it.
They simply want to pique their interest, get them riled up, and get them on their side.
It doesn't necessarily matter what the English words are and what order they're speaking them in.
It's like, this is what the computer is spitting out and telling you to say.
And that's what's scary about this because the people who are following it don't realize that.
No, they don't at all.
They feel like somebody like this is actually speaking to them.
And again, you know, we were talking about this last week with the Afghanistan issue, where we were talking about how this ISIS-K group got their name out there because they murdered a bunch of people.
Whatever Steve Lynch wanted, he has now gotten.
You know what I mean?
I assume that he got a ton of support.
I assume he gained... I don't know if he's on Twitter or else he's been banned probably for pushing, you know, sheep dewormer or whatever, but I assume in Parler, Gab, whatever in the hell these people are on nowadays, undoubtedly he's gotten an influx of support.
Undoubtedly his name has more recognition now.
He gained the system.
And he did it in the exact same way.
You want to go back into post-Civil War, and let's even go pre-Civil War.
What was one of the biggest pursuits here?
It wasn't just money.
It wasn't just power.
It was telling white men, you know what's going to happen if you don't keep these people under supervision, right?
They're going to come and they're going to take your women.
Which is why, of course, we have paramilitary groups like the KKK, why we have all these lynchings, because you have to protect women.
They'll take what's yours.
There's all of this terrible masculine paranoia and insecurity that goes into all this, and we're just watching it again.
And this thing, this idea of taking supplements, Or being big and strong, undoubtedly also plays into gun culture.
It plays into, you know, fascistic sort of idealization.
It plays into porn.
It goes into all of it.
It absolutely does.
And the whole point of what we wanted to talk about today is that this isn't just politics.
This is marketing, is what this is.
And it's not a surprise that Donald Trump, a total huckster, who would throw his name on whatever, and to remind people who might not know this history, Donald Trump was an absolute business failure, who was in hock to a bunch of banks and a bunch of people who loaned him money, and those people decided that he was worth more money if they allowed him to pretend like he was a wealthy, successful business person.
And so he put out wine, board games, you name it.
And this guy understood the huckster of this entire movement more than anybody, and then eventually it can lead to actual violence and actual political change and radicalization.
So what we're actually dealing with here is not just politics, we're dealing with consumer identity, and the two have completely intertwined at this point.
Well, and then worse than that is the death that it leads to as well.
And that's where I never thought we'd get to the point where it is so clean, the science believers, on what ideological side they fall upon, the left or the right.
It's very clean as far as who doesn't want to believe in, you know, vaccines and the science and the masking.
Just pretend, because this is the root of what Lynch is saying about masking, right?
He doesn't want masks in school, and as a result, because the school board decided they were going to do that, we have to rip them out of their chairs and replace them with someone who's going to say no masks.
I mean, we had in Marin County, which is California, where people are very liberal and they don't believe in masking a lot of the places, we had a teacher who was sick for two days with COVID symptoms, still teaching, She takes off her mask because she wants to read, you know, a story because, you know, it makes the stories in your classroom a little bit more, you know, scary when you take the mask off.
You don't know if you're gonna get infected by COVID or not.
So I think that must have added to the reason why.
Because apparently she had a mask on for most of the time she was teaching.
And it infected everybody in the freaking classroom and then into the families beyond that.
One teacher got 27 people sick with COVID.
This is the problem, is that we have ideological lines that have now been drawn that are so completely on one side, just about all completely on one side.
I never thought we'd get to that point where that was what was going to divide us between, you know, progressive and conservative.
Well, and to go ahead and take this, and here's another real quick choice quote from Mr. Lynch from this rally.
Quote unquote, I plan on giving a voice to people who are not okay with being told how they're going to live their lives.
It is not the government's authority to tell us how we're going to do things, which maybe I was missing on the day of civics and political class, but that's what the government does.
They do.
They do tell you how you're supposed to live your life in certain ways and certain restraints.
There are laws.
If you live in an open society, there are going to be the laws that are going to be in place and at some point or another and regulations and rules.
When it doesn't go your way, though, it's how you react to that.
It's whether or not you trouble the system or whether or not you go in and remove people violently.
But this whole thing has to do with this Massive amount of insecurity that these people have created this idea around, right?
They're terrified of people dominating them.
They're terrified of people telling them what to do, to the point where they can't even wear a mask, right?
Because the mask is a symbol of weakness.
It's a symbol of being cowed, you know, to some sort of authority.
But this wasn't just by accident.
Everyone likes to pretend it's about American individualism, right?
Like, we're all just a bunch of cowboys, Nick.
We can't help it.
We play by our own rules.
That's not true.
That's actually a marketing device.
That's something that was created to sell cigarettes and cars and clothes and...
And lifestyles.
It's a complete fantasy.
And meanwhile, people are like, I do what I want and I go where I want.
No, you are being manipulated every single day, if not every minute of every single day, to do things by powers and forces that you don't even have the beginnings of an understanding of.
Like, I'm an individual.
Why do you look like all of these guys?
Why do you all buy the same guns?
Why do you drive the same trucks?
Why are you all wearing the same red hat?
And what we have seen, again, is the conquering of the political sphere Because, quite frankly, everyone feels like their vote doesn't matter anymore.
And, you know, capitalism is more or less taking over the process.
So the only thing that we have left is it's it's all over but the shouting, as some people would say.
And so you go out and you scream and you make yourself seem larger than you are because you're performing for everybody.
And these people are unbelievably terrified.
And I want to say real fast, I was talking about this this weekend.
Nick, they're, they're drinking horse and sheep dewormer.
Like, for all the people who say that they don't believe COVID's real, and that it's not dangerous, and it's just, it's, it's basically a cold, if it's even anything.
It's a made-up, fake, liberal, you know, fear.
They're so terrified.
By the way, showing that they were wrong and going and getting a vaccine or getting treatment or wearing a mask.
They're so afraid of being exposed.
They're so insecure about themselves that they would rather go and ingest poison.
They would rather poison themselves than deal with this.
And that is the root of it, too.
It's the insecurity.
It can go two ways.
Either you can wallow in your insecurity and feel terrible about yourself, or you can go on the attack, I suppose, is the instinct that they have.
There's a guy named Joe Manning, who was a police officer who just died after railing against vaccines and railing against COVID for all this time.
He had tweeted or written in Facebook, whatever it was, in May of 2020.
He wrote, it's not the government.
He shared a meme, whatever it is.
There's a picture of a syringe on top, and it says, it's not the government's job to protect my health.
It's the government's job to protect my rights.
It's my job.
That's not true at all.
Well, it's not even – oh, my God.
At least this is a cop who's supposed to know and actually represent the Constitution, right?
Like, he's supposed to know his stuff.
He goes, it's my job to protect my health.
When you trade liberty for safety, you end up losing both.
And I thought it was really, that gave me like a hard wire into the brain here of the other side here because that's it, when you get to the fundamental, such a fundamental difference of what you view government as, then I don't know how you're supposed to ever come back to any kind of a way where we can figure out how to exist together, right?
Because it is so diametrically opposed to the point where, and by the way, I would love for him to feel this way on a thing like abortion.
You know if that's an issue where it's the government's job not to protect my health or whatever then that can't get involved in great Then you should you should be for abortions and for a poor choice, but they you know they can't do that either Because well then we got thrown the whole religious stuff, but nonetheless This is what's interesting and I think this is the crux of the matter is that they don't understand or they don't view this as the government the same way and Oh, man, that's so frustrating.
You know, we talked about this a while back.
That's the civics classes we're talking about that's missing in schools.
And that's when you start mixing in capitalism and religion and all this stuff.
And it just gets warped.
Oh, man, that's so frustrating.
You know, we talked about this a while back.
The idea of American freedom is so perverted and the idea of liberty.
And again, to get people who maybe because we've been getting new listeners.
So let's go ahead and make sure that everybody's on the same page with this.
When America was founded on the idea of freedom, it was not that you and I should be able to do this or that.
Freedom was about protection of property.
It was about making sure that nobody was going to come along and take your land or your slaves, by the way.
And it was supposed to be this idea of protecting your capitalistic accumulation, right?
And so as a result, we've been spending centuries now trying to change the definition from the protection of your property Two, human beings should be able to live decent lives.
Now, this guy, a quick aside, if he thinks that the government shouldn't make sure that our meat isn't polluted, that we're not getting sick off of vegetables, if that our drugs should be safe, like if he wants to live that life, best of luck.
Because I have to tell you that those are the bedrocks of society.
They actually truly are.
To make sure, you want to talk about protecting property, let's talk about the fact that the people who are making the money off of the meat, the vegetables, all of these products that need to be made safe, they don't give a shit about making it safe.
Because capitalism always says, churn it out and sell as much as possible.
Spend less and less on safety.
And we saw what happened.
Like, at the turn of the century, this country, people were getting sick, people were dying, they were being taken advantage of.
So that's neither here nor there.
But let's go back to the idea of property, protecting property.
If freedom and liberty are about protecting property, and that's the end of it, which by the way is what a lot of these people truly do believe, If you live in a society, and hear me out Nick, I'm just talking about a fictional country here.
I'm not even talking about the United States of America.
A country where white supremacy was present from the very beginning, that you had generations of people held in bondage.
You had genocide left and right in order to clear out territory so that there could be more farms and that there could be more homesteads.
If you lived in a country like that, and if white people truly believe that people of color are just constantly coming for their things, and are constantly dangerous, and if they're allowed to vote, if they're allowed to live, if they're allowed to exist outside of a mass incarceration state, or being shot by police just randomly, if the entire purpose of the country is protection of property, those people who are quote-unquote threats, they have to be stopped.
Right?
That's the literal meaning of freedom, which is how all of a sudden you go from that to going into school boards and removing people, going into state houses, brandishing your weapons, overthrowing the capital of the United States of America, because there is an existential threat, which is white supremacy being challenged.
And we've stopped saying that in so many words.
Right?
Like, he's not going to say that at this rally.
Republicans aren't going to say it at rallies.
They might in the next couple of years if things continue on the path.
But I have to tell you, Nick, for centuries, that's what American politicians said out loud.
They didn't hide it.
There weren't dog whistles.
They said it in so many words.
And we've reached a point where they've learned that they can't say that.
But that is the ideology that is currently playing out here.
I might add that if you're talking about freedom and property being one and the same and how they want to do that, it would make sense why they're triggered by Black Lives Matter and looting during protests and that kind of thing.
Yeah, you know, and it's like, listen, protests are messy and people need to want to make their points.
Some windows will get smashed.
It's sort of a thing.
And there are plenty of people who are going to take advantage of maybe the lack of police presence in certain areas and like, you know, break into the Walmart and Target and steal stuff, whatever that is.
But to hear the right bitterly complain because that's That's their problem with it and they completely dismiss the underlying reason for the actual march and for the actual movement.
It makes a lot of sense if the fundamental belief system that they have is all about the property and how they just simply need to protect that above all else.
But I think this is capitalism.
Capitalism will lead to death and will kill people.
You know, until the government will step in and try and stop that.
But we don't, it's not like we live in a perfect society.
I mean, look, in Michigan, we still have leaded drinking water, right?
You still have companies that are poisoning the ground around people that live around their factories.
You have the state of Texas that has a winter storm and then later on has a heat wave.
And because capitalism has come in and dominated the infrastructure, It just goes away and people end up having to like burn their goods or else die of heat exhaustion and die of hypothermia.
All based on a risk-reward assessment that they had just done beforehand.
Okay, a thousand people will die, we'll be able to handle that.
Like that's basically what they'll think and they'll write it off as collateral and not a big deal.
And if you have somebody like this guy, Or any number of these right-wing people, right?
The whole point of freedom for these people is that it allows me to do whatever I could possibly want to do, right?
The problem is other people.
The problem is you have to keep them from trying to take what is mine, or else I'll put on my favorite pink polo and run outside with a weapon, right?
The other issue with it, it goes back to this idea of, like I said, infrastructure failing.
Right?
All of a sudden the power grid goes down.
Then all of a sudden these people want the government there.
You know what I mean?
How dare that you don't take care of my freedom?
How dare you don't take care of me?
And it's that malleable mindset which goes back to what we keep talking about which is we want small government until we're in charge of the government.
We want government to not spend money on social programs.
Unless it's for me, right?
It's this constant protagonist type of thing.
And the problem is that when this grift continues to go and go and go, and by the way, we're going to talk about this in a second.
The grift has gotten to the point where you have people making multi-million dollar empires off of feeding this mindset, whether they believe it or they don't, meanwhile making their listeners die or take dewormer while all of these radio hosts who are trying to be the next Rush Limbaugh are dying in hospital beds because they didn't take the COVID virus seriously.
That stuff gains.
And we keep talking about, like, Niches and demographics and marketing pushes.
Shit like this?
The only reason somebody like this Lynch would say something like that is because he recognizes this is the direction.
He knows which way the wind is blowing and he's not going to be the last one.
This is why for years we've seen Republicans fire big guns in their ads, set off explosions, talk about kidnapping people.
It's because the trajectory is there politically, but also economically and marketing wise to keep pushing the envelope.
It's got to keep going.
Well, the perfect circle here is that the apathy that is engendered from like a government systems failing, like for instance, the power grid going down, it adds to the feeling that people will have.
First of all, all politicians lie.
They're all, you know, a bunch of grifters, right?
The government doesn't really work.
None of that really works.
So it's like even though they want to support it when it helps them directly, I do feel like when you get to the position in your life where you're like – you're so cynical where you don't think anything works, that's where you're susceptible to being influenced by these people as well.
So it's almost like the more things go poorly, the more things like the grid going down in the middle of winter, the more powerful the movement gets behind it, behind the government.
despite the government being less and less effectual, That's a weird, vicious circle to me.
And it just screams like we simply need more competence.
We need more people who are earnestly interested in helping other people.
And again, who would ever want to do that anymore in this system?
Why would you ever think about it?
And I say that, and I need the listeners to hear this.
If you are thinking about running for a school board, if you are thinking about running for an office, if you're thinking about somehow or another engaging in civic duty, you should, because we need you.
But at the same time, you're exactly right.
They've made it So poisonous and noxious and now on top of that like if you go out and you speak your mind And you actually like challenge these people they have made the decision that they will come after you I I'm telling you that as somebody who like for years now has Every time that I report, every time that I talk about this stuff, every time a book or an article comes out, or I do an interview, I am constantly inundated with specific threats against my safety.
This is what they do.
And they are creating an environment where they're either going to intimidate people out of saying true things and engaging in politics and local governance, Or they're going to get to the point where they're going to go in with 20 of their strong friends and remove you.
And if you told me right now, if you came back from the future and you said, Hi, this is Nick from six, seven months from now, there's going to be a group of quote unquote strong men who go in and take people out of a school board meeting.
Would you be surprised?
Would that shock you?
No.
No, because we know there's not a lot of security at these places.
This is what we've been harping on for a long time.
At some point, we're going to look around and be like, you know, there just isn't enough police to stop everybody or us from doing what we want to do if we don't believe in the laws.
Or they're with us.
Or the police are with us.
One or the other.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Actually, I'm kind of curious now along these lines.
Okay, you have people who are earnest, who would want to help and would want to be on these boards or would run for local elections.
They're not going to do it because they're afraid for their safety.
What do those people do?
Like, what would they end up being – What's their job going to be going forward?
Like, if you're 23, 24 out of college, and you're earnest, and you want to... I don't know.
I really wonder if it's enough that the fear of your livelihood is enough that, A, you're not going to do those jobs, and then, B, you'll just get cynical, too, and become one of them, or just become, you know, a money-grubbing capitalist who just wants to, you know, operate on themselves.
I don't know, but that's another fear that this movement can grow.
Well, and so much of what's happening right now, and you know, you and I were talking about this a little bit before we started.
There was this article that came out in the Washington Post, which is about Dana Lash.
Who, of course, gained a lot of fame working with the National Rifle Association.
And, you know, people might have heard she did these ads that were like, we're going to crush them with the fist of truth.
And, you know, that like cities are being burnt down while she's like brandishing a semi-automatic.
You know, this is a person, and this article, I don't, listen, I don't think people should read it, but this is one of those articles which is about how she's growing her radio empire.
She has X number million of listeners.
She's got a great jawline.
Right, like, listen, oh my God, people need to listen to this.
Listen, oh, this is awful.
She is 42, slender, with penetrating dark eyes and a sharply defined jawline.
By now, she's gotten used to being called a gun hottie.
Go fuck yourself.
Type those words.
Go fuck yourself.
The journalist, I think, wanted to sleep with her, is what I got from that.
It's so disgusting.
And by the way, it's exactly like those old Richard Spencer articles.
Do you remember those?
Like, right after 2016, where the alt-right neo-Nazi Richard Spencer, there'd be these articles that are like, Wearing a tailored suit and looking strangely dapper for a Nazi.
And it's like, okay, great.
And meanwhile, the article is about her building this empire, and the article spells out, on cruelty, on exploiting dangerous issues, on exploiting radicalization.
You have somebody like this Lash, Dana Lash, who recognized a marketing opening.
Right?
That quote-unquote gun-hottie idea that the NRA needed somebody besides Wayne Elephant Assassin LaPierre to go out and talk in front of people and be a talking head and and be and by the way Fox News loves her and I'll leave that to the imagination of why.
Right.
Because that's their whole thing.
She realized that and cynically and nihilistically went ahead and took it.
And she, after every major shooting, after every mass shooting, after every national tragedy, she goes out there and says, guns don't kill people.
People kill people.
And they're going to take your guns.
And she has advocated that stuff.
And God knows how much blood is on her hands.
And what is the title of the article, Nick?
Do you have it?
I do.
It is the title, scroll, scroll up is... I'll hit the bottom.
Former NRA spokeswoman Dana Lash, a rising right-wing radio star, doesn't care if you call her a murderer.
Wow.
Great.
This is a style section, by the way.
This is not like, you know, this is, I mean, it is a puff piece and it's in the right section, I suppose, for that.
It's such horse shit.
How come they don't capitalize the words in the title, by the way?
Aren't we supposed to do that?
No?
I mean, come on, you're the guy I would go to to ask about that.
I don't know why.
Has the style sheet changed so much now?
I didn't enjoy that.
No, there has been a push towards lowercase and titles.
But again, I don't want people to go, look at this.
But the pictures are all very glamorous looking of her and very edgy.
It's an advertisement to get people to listen to her radio show.
And meanwhile, this is a person who is making a fortune.
A fortune, undoubtedly, on making the world less safe for people of vulnerable populations.
She goes after trans people.
She goes after people of color.
On top of that, she has completely scapegoated the media when it comes to mass shootings.
And this is a person who is making ungodly amounts of money.
And meanwhile, you have the Washington Post being like, yeah, go and get that money.
Great.
Good job.
That's wonderful.
Well, you know, they mentioned some of her numbers.
If she truly is getting six million plus listens or views a day, She's making more than $10 million a year at that rate.
That's really what that is.
That's how much money is involved here.
And it's also the vacuum of Rush Limbaugh you mentioned earlier in the show.
The picture of her.
Look at the picture of her in her house.
This armoire behind her.
By the way, it's not a good picture because you can see the light reflecting in the glass behind her, which is amateur hour.
But she's got, you know, George Washington over her right shoulder and then good old Abe Lincoln over her left shoulder.
I mean, it's obvious what's going on here, why they pick that.
And, you know, part of me wants to say, like, all right, let's let's give her props for the grind and like figuring this shit out.
And, you know, this is capitalism here.
She's making a really amazing living out of this.
But the consequences are too great in this kind of thing.
But that's the exact point.
Capitalism creates an environment for bad faith actors to act against the health of the country.
There is a financial incentive for everything in this country.
Every political... Let's go ahead and put our cards on the table.
We occupy a certain demographic niche, which within the political spectrum, right?
We're outside the two-party narrative.
We're an independent media venture that leans left.
And again, by the way, thank you everybody for supporting us and being our patrons, which ensures that we don't have to go out and talk to people about our marketing demographics, and have people tell us what we should talk about, what we should avoid.
And again, that's patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast, and it keeps us from having to do that shit.
And it keeps us from having to make economic decisions that are based on what we think would bring in advertisers.
And the whole point of this is that capitalism is not conducive to a healthy society.
It automatically creates incentives for bad faith actors and radicalization.
What we saw again with Lynch and with people like Lash and, I mean, Trump.
We saw this with, oh, the fellow Crenshaw, right?
Where he did like a video of him attacking Antifa people.
And like all of these stunts that they keep doing that talk about political violence and authoritarianism.
All of this is based on them recognizing that there is a spot for them to do this in the same way that we have all these right-wing radio hosts talking about how COVID isn't real and then dropping dead because there was a marketing opportunity in doing it.
Well, meanwhile, the White House invited an openly gay influencer to come and do a really funny video popping around the White House and doing stuff.
And I know that Trump Jr.
shared it saying, this is the moment when the Taliban knew they won.
He didn't post that.
He did.
I saw it.
I think it was Trump Jr.
Where it's a picture of the guy with his white fingernails in front of one of the portraits or whatever.
And everyone's like, yeah, I'm pretty sure this is their moment.
And they share the picture of Pompeo shaking hands with the Taliban.
I think that was probably the moment when the Taliban knew they won.
It's an interesting dichotomy when you talk about it.
I think it's like the Sugar Ray effect.
Remember Sugar Ray, the band?
Yeah.
Listen, I have to tell you, there are times that I don't know where a conversation is going.
And hearing, it's like the Sugar Ray effect is a pinnacle of I don't know what's coming next.
All right, well, let me tell you.
So Sugar Ray, you know, they had that song, Every morning there's a halo hanging on the corner.
Anyway, they must have gone through three or four different musical genres.
trying to figure out what was going to work before they picked on pop 90s whatever and it actually worked they were like reggae at some point and you know it could be a testament to their musical skills i suppose or it could be a very cynical thing where it's like we're by the way it's the same with um uh the guys with the beards and you know who play uh the folk uh you know folk rock whatever uh the brothers uh one of those people in england or whatever you know and they threw one of them out who is a trumpeter Mumford & Sons.
They were another one of those who I think were like mulling around trying to figure out and they like glommed on to this sort of like niche and it like blew up for a little bit.
But here's the thing, like that's not looked down upon generally as much as it is where these guys, like why don't we do that Jared?
Let's open up our, let's become really popular by, I mean what would we do?
Would we end up going totally MAGA?
Would that all of a sudden blow up our listeners?
No.
I think what we would do, and again, this is the grossness of capitalism.
It really truly is, right?
The opportunism of it.
I think the way to make money, and I think from this show would be We would shift over to telling people what they wanted to hear.
You know what I mean?
Which would be like, Oh, don't worry about these people.
Don't worry.
There's no actual threat here.
The crisis is over.
Yeah, things are kind of hard, but don't worry.
It's going to work itself out.
I think that there's, I think that because you're going towards as many people as you possibly can.
And I want to point out, there's a really, really good political comparison here, which is Glenn Beck.
Glenn Beck is perhaps the best Uh, example of any of this.
So, of course, most people got to know Glenn Beck when he was on Fox News back in, like, 2010, right?
And nobody recognized that there was more of a marketing opportunity in 2010 than Glenn Beck, where he started making money off of both the racial insecurity of the Tea Party and also the conspiracy theory culture around Barack Obama, where he started pushing New World Order, you know, proto-deep state sort of stuff.
So Beck does that.
He uses Fox News to then launch what ends up being called The Blaze, which is his total, absolute, abysmal failure of a media venture.
And then when Trump comes around, he's like, Trump is disgusting.
He starts going on all these like talk shows and radio shows.
He's in the New York Times.
He's like, I'm sorry about what happened.
I'm sorry that inevitably I led to Donald Trump.
And then he makes a certain amount of money from that.
And then what's he do?
He goes full Donald Trump.
Like immediately and so many of these people are like this it's it's whatever is happening Which is why and by the way, I have to mention our good friend JD Vance did the exact same damn thing He sold out his family.
He basically everything that happened to his family he explained it away so the Republican Party and big business and also the media elite would care about him and He slagged Donald Trump when he thought there was no chance that Donald Trump could get elected president, and now it's just like, oh, Donald Trump is the greatest thing that's ever happened, and here are all the things I believe, which is total bullshit.
It's opportunism.
Dana Lash did the same, and her jawline did the same exact thing, where she was an anti-Trumper in the very beginning, and then realized, when she dipped her toe in there, you realize, oh my goodness, there's money to be made.
But here's an interesting question, I think, is if you're looking at, like, if you're trying put groups of Americans in, you know, it's different categories based on like who is most willing to give money to somebody else, right?
This is what's interesting because you have to kind of figure out where, which of those groups and what you would have to say to get those groups to then get behind you and then, you know, donate money to you or whatever.
And it seems like there is a through line to the really big money and it's not necessarily progressive voices that can tap into that, right?
It seems, and maybe it's anecdotal to me, but right now, but I could do some more research, but it feels like there's a certain segment of this country that is willing to give up like money they can't even afford to send to these people.
And they ain't progressives.
I think it's fair to say and I'm actually really glad you brought that up because I know these people.
And, you know, I don't think it's a big secret.
I grew up in abject poverty as a kid.
I've talked about this extensively.
My family still gave money to televangelists.
They still gave money to the 700 Club.
What we're watching here is not a far cry from that.
In fact, you know, I mean, You know, all these investigations were coming out about how people would sign up to give Trump money, but there was like a hidden button that made sure that it was an annual amount of money, and then they would have to like go almost to legal measures to get their money back from Trump.
I mean, Trump was a televangelist.
I mean, it's exactly the same thing.
It's a grifter who says what these people want to hear.
He talks about their cultural ideas, their ideological ideas.
And I will say that this is a larger problem in politics.
And one of the reasons we have to get money out of politics Which is, and I blocked all of them.
Here's a quick little aside.
Nick, do you unsubscribe from emails or do you just delete them?
What's your move on that?
I have moments throughout the year where I will just spend time unsubscribing to those emails.
The rest of the time, they just accrue.
I don't even know if I delete them.
They just kind of sit there in my inbox.
I used to just delete them and I'd be done with it.
But like in the past like year, I've started to unsubscribe from all these mailing lists.
And I'm on a lot of them because, you know, I keep track of like messaging and things like that from the political spectrum.
And you – I'm sure you've had these.
You get the fundraiser email and they all read the same.
You know what I mean?
Like the verbiage is all the same.
And unless you donate $5 to $10 right now, Mitch McConnell will take over the Senate.
All of that sort of Those are psychological appeals, and those are being created by firms who are making millions upon millions of dollars, and your hard-earned money isn't even necessarily going towards the campaign of the politician.
They're actually going to those groups.
Those people are getting obscenely wealthy.
So what we've reached is almost like an arms race type situation.
Where everybody who goes to Washington D.C.
has to be wealthy themselves, plus also have a giant donor net, and all of these special interests, all of these lobbyists, all of these people who are pumping them full of cash, and meanwhile most of their time is spent with these marketing appeals, which have nothing to do with actual politics.
It's all fearful shit, right?
And so what we're talking about here is that money has corrupted our political project, But on top of that, it has kept us from actually being a part of the political process.
If we can get this out, we can get rid of some of these charlatans.
But right now, this is just, it's a mess from top to bottom.
Yeah.
And that kind of goes in line with what we were talking about before, about who would ever want to run for office anymore.
Well, I mean, the people who would are the ones who want to get rich.
Which is scary to say, because you do get a salary.
You get six figures, you know, as a congressman.
Not easy to make it there.
It's a lot of, you know, you have to really, you know, to win a congressional race is next to impossible.
But you get there, they'll pay you.
But nonetheless, there's so many more riches to be made once you get in.
And then it's set up for you to win, you know, until you decide you don't want to run again.
I mean, they need to stop being able to trade stocks.
Like, how can that even be a thing in 2021?
That's still totally legal.
And then assholes like Rand Paul get to say, oh, you know, whoops, 16 months ago, I was investing in a company that makes hydroxychloroquine.
Who didn't?
Who didn't have, you know, foreknowledge that things were going to happen and then went and used our positions of power and authority to get rich?
And there's no penalty, you know, for him being, you know, a year and a half late reporting that kind of stuff.
And like I keep saying, at some point, I'm worried we'll get to a critical mass where enough people realize, hey, you know, nothing's going to happen to us if we commit this crime.
That is, guess what that means?
That's the downfall of our country.
And let's take that to the next step.
And this is the unfortunate truth that if we were looking to, you know, grow and find our marketing demographic, we wouldn't admit this.
But the longer that the corruption goes on, the longer that our government doesn't actually represent us and doesn't take care of political crises and the worst that these situations get with polarization, violence, radicalization, all of it, the more that we all just look around and say, fuck it.
Everybody else is getting rich.
Everybody else is doing this.
If I'm going to live in a society that isn't actually an open society and isn't actually democratic and or kind or even functional, why not make a little money while you're at it?
And that idea is what permeates society.
And on one hand, it can make lots of us A cynical opportunist who are going to hurt other people and add on to the crisis as it is, and then meanwhile, assholes like this Lynch guy are gonna say, you know what?
Who cares?
Let's just go in and hurt people.
And that is the truth, is that this environment just continually churns and escalates.
And that's what we're looking at now.
All right, everybody.
We are going to come back on Friday with our regular Weekender episode.
A reminder, if you haven't already, go over to patreon.com slash muckregpodcast in order to support the show.
Keep us editorially independent.
You are the reason that we don't have to go out and do that bullshit that we've been talking about.
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We'll be back on Friday.
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