Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the effect the Pandora Papers have had on the world, considering how many wealthy people intentionally hide their money all over the world- including South Dakota. They then turn their focus on Krysten Sinema and Joe Manchin, two senators hellbent on holding up the process of passing Joe Biden's agenda.
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Wouldn't a lot of Wyoming families benefit from universal pre-cut?
There are a number of things that will help the people of Wyoming.
Overall, Joe Biden's policies have been hurting the people of Wyoming.
And I believe that there should be things means-tested.
You just don't give things universally to everybody.
You heard the Congressman from the Progressive Caucus say everybody ought to get free community college.
Everybody ought to get Senator Joe Manchin said this week that this reconciliation bill is dead on arrival if it does not include the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal dollars for most abortions.
So what's going to happen?
Dana, I can't tell you how many times in my senatorial career we have seen major pieces of legislation founder on this issue.
So I don't want to say anything now to jeopardize the negotiation.
I don't want to let the entire package break down over that issue.
Okay.
I take that as a yes.
Hey, everybody.
Welcome to the McCraig Podcast.
I'm Jared Yates Sexton.
We have the return, the wonderful, wonderful return of Tricky Nicky Hausman.
Nick, we missed you terribly.
I'm glad to be back.
Thank you.
And we're glad to have you.
I have a little bit of bad news for the podcast, Faithful.
As I near my 40th birthday, I had a Jim Carrey, late 1990s like moment today in which I just offhandedly, carelessly, used my birthday wish and just said out loud I hope that Facebook.com goes away and never comes back.
My apologies everyone.
I'm sorry.
I'm sure your crazy aunt and uncle and grandparents are losing their minds right now.
This one's on me.
I think to quote the great Jim Carrey, oh come on!
Yeah, it's exciting to be able to fire up Facebook and see, oops, something went wrong or, like, won't refresh.
Do you think it's related to what's going on with the Pandora Papers?
Man, it feels weird, doesn't it?
All the way around.
Everything from whistleblowers to Pandora Papers.
On top of that, for people who haven't been paying attention to this, like, China flew like six dozen of its warplanes over Taiwan It's a weird time there.
There was a moment today and I don't know how you feel about it Nick or how you process it But like when a website like Facebook goes down or when my internet even goes down There's a part of me deep down that hopes it just never comes back.
Oh Really?
That's what you feel Just please, just never let it come back.
Oh, you know what I feel.
Do you ever watch the show Mr. Robot?
Yeah, for sure.
So I love that show.
If you haven't watched it, the basic season one is about like hacking into the banking system and like wiping out everyone's credit card debt.
But I always sort of feel it's the other way around when something like this happens, where it's just going to be like, you're going to log in for your bank and it'll be like zero dollars in your account, right?
Everything's going to be gone, destroyed.
So I actually go the other way.
I feel nervous about it, like all of our wealth should be just wiped out in a keystroke.
That'd be a reason to celebrate!
Wipe the wealth out.
Let's start over.
Let's figure this stuff out.
Yeah.
But how are we going to eat?
Don't you think that's going to be the mortal blow to civilization?
I think you're taking this too far.
And I would say, based on what we've learned, and by the way, for people who haven't checked out the whistleblower stuff, we're taping this, by the way, on Monday, October 4th.
Last night on 60 Minutes, there was a Facebook whistleblower who got on 60 Minutes, which 60 Minutes still gets all of those whistleblowers.
You know what I mean?
It's the tobacco companies, it's all of those whistleblowers, they end up on 60 Minutes somehow or another.
And she got on there and she was like, you know what?
I've been in the room as Facebook has looked at the things.
They've realized that they destroy democracy.
They realized that they've enabled genocide.
They realized that they prioritize like dangerous, mind-melting misinformation and conspiracy theories.
No!
And what do they choose every time?
They know that their product is hurting people, killing people, destroying the world.
And what do they choose every time?
Money.
If they never came back, I would celebrate.
I would absolutely celebrate.
Now you're talking, as far as if it's limited to Facebook, but we're talking about WhatsApp, we're talking about Instagram.
How else am I going to go shop on the internet without Instagram, Jared?
It's going to be a real loss.
But it is concerning, because if this is a consorted effort from like a single group, this is what war will look like, right?
Eventually.
A hundred percent.
And that's immediately what came into my mind is that the possibility of whatever future conflict that we're going to have, like if any of these war hawks get what they want and we end up going to war with China, which I mean, everybody from John Bolton to these far right idiots and even some on the left, to be honest with you, some liberals are even champing at the bit for the idea of a new war against China.
That's what it's going to be.
It's going to be a meltdown of information technologies.
It's going to be some sort of a cyber attack, probably something that's going to take out energy grids, transportation, healthcare, you name it, which would be pretty gnarly.
But I do want to point out, though, that This is a system that is vulnerable to these things, but it's also a system that has been put in place, going back to what Facebook does and what they prioritize.
This is a system that was put in place in order to exploit people and in order to do damage like this.
For those who haven't listened, while Nick was hobnobbing around, enjoying himself, resting.
He looks great, by the way, for anyone keeping track.
Like, well-rested and ready to go.
Oh, which by the way, you could tell if you want to just by going over to YouTube page and watching this show there.
There you go.
Go over and watch that stream.
Like I talked about on the weekend or episode on Friday, and for those of you who haven't heard it yet, basically, I broke down the history of neoliberalism, how we've arrived at this point where we have this system that exploits and how it was constructed.
Go to patreon.com slash muckrake podcast to get access to that.
I think it's a pretty good episode.
But I will go ahead and say that what we're talking about here, these infrastructures, what Facebook represents, what they do, this is the machinery of exploitation.
This is the machinery by which the wealthy and the powerful control society.
They exploit people.
They extract money.
We've got to talk about these Pandora Papers that have been dropping over the past couple of days, which, while not surprising or telling, this is the apparatus of neoliberalism and hypercapitalism.
So I, for one, am hopeful in one way or another that Facebook has melted down permanently, although I'm not going to bet my money on it.
Well, you know, we've seen how this has worked before, where they've made even the banking system, the money system in America, really, really complicated on purpose to keep people away so that the rich people can continue doing what they're doing.
But the banking system is broken.
Anyway, and it's so susceptible to these kind of things that that's what makes me worried.
Like let me just give you a quick, you know, you know insight into my thing.
So, you know, the Pandora Papers are all about how everyone all these rich people are just protecting their wealth.
It's not well, we'll get to the legality of it because it really probably isn't illegal what they're doing, but I am trying to, you know, not pay as many taxes, so I want to fund an IRA, which I can do every year to a certain amount of money, right?
This is me, you know, hobnobbing with the rich for a couple thousand dollars to get whatever.
You live in California, you have to do these things.
Yes, right.
I mean, that's how this works.
Yes, because I think Trump said it best when he said, I'm smart.
So I am trying to do this.
I can't transfer this money that goes into an IRA from a business account.
It has to be from a regular personal banking account.
Why?
You know, like, what are these rules here for?
Other than to make it ridiculously, you know, more complicated for everybody.
And even the fact that you have to pay like $3 to do an automatic transfer from one bank account to another when it's just computer stalking.
It's like, they just rigged this whole thing.
It's like tape and glue.
And it's probably some people on the other end literally hand typing shit in.
I still think that's probably what it's like.
And now we have to rely on the fact that these people have some sort of, you know, cutting-edge technology to stop hackers from getting into that?
Like, we've already seen it happen, right?
Energy grids have been hacked, and it's only a matter of time until they actually do some real, you know, nefarious damage.
Well, and you know, everything you just described, it's funny hearing you talk about, like, your dealings with finances.
I am stupid when it comes with money.
I don't have a clue how any of this works.
Honest to God, my family is the type of working class family that if they had over $100 in a checking account, they would freak out.
They wouldn't know what to do with it.
It's too much.
I'm financially illiterate.
I don't know how this stuff works.
I heard it last night.
What's the phrase?
It's like, make your money work for you.
Right.
I don't know how to make my money work for me.
By the way, those guys are always like, yeah, so just take $5,000 and you put it here.
And then you make money.
Simple.
That's what they say.
I love it.
I love, by the way, I'm so glad you brought that up.
It's one of my favorite genres of writing.
It's sort of the Wall Street Journal's or Forbes specialty, right?
Which is how to have a million dollars by the time you're 25.
And it's like, take your $300,000 trust fund and invest it.
It's like, oh my God.
And what you just brought up, though, is it's like we need to understand that there are different grades of how money, wealth, and power work.
So, for instance, we were joking about Facebook.
By the time we started recording this, Mark Zuckerberg had lost $7 billion.
$7 billion.
Simply because his website went down and because somebody went on TV and said that they weren't, you know, doing things on the up-and-up.
And listen, I want to say we joke around a lot on this podcast.
Let's be very serious when we need to be serious.
Just a quick moment of silence for Mark Zuckerberg falling behind Bill Gates on the richest human beings list because of today.
It's enough to... We'll pour one out for him.
Pour one out for old Mark.
And it's 120 billion that he has left.
Oh, how can you even like show your face, you know, at the at the at the launch pad for everybody?
He won't sleep well tonight, I don't think.
I tell you.
And so what you're talking about now is like how the wealthiest and the most powerful people have taken advantage of a system.
And we need to point out very quickly, this system is what they designed.
The people that we're talking about taking advantage of this, I just have a quick little list of people here.
The leaders of the Czech Republic, Montenegro, Kenya, Ecuador, Dubai, Chile, Ukraine, Sri Lanka, King Abdullah II of Jordan, who, by the way, bought $100 million of homes in Malibu, California.
So, I mean, you know, he's right down the road from you.
Oh, yeah.
Well, the thing in L.A.
is there's a lot of those kind of really, really expensive properties that no one lives in.
Like they're bought and like they're just vacant.
And that's including near me too, like the nicer areas.
It's very strange.
That's very strange, Nick.
I wonder what they could possibly allegedly be doing with these properties where no one lives and they're paying cash and using offshore banking accounts to do it.
It's very weird.
Especially if they're ahead of a country, per se, where they have access to, you know, bank accounts and numbers of the actual citizens and their country's money.
Yeah, it's interesting.
Yeah, and it's interesting also that the names of these countries, and I talked about this on the episode on the weekend or on Friday, neoliberalism in this globalist system, there are different ranks, right?
Like you have the major powers, like America, Great Britain, who by the way, a fun name that showed up on this list, Mr. Tony Blair!
Mr. Tony Blair!
Well done!
Who knew?
Well done!
Mr. Neoliberalism himself, by the way.
So neoliberalism has first, second, and third world countries, If you were down there on like the second level, the best that you can do is basically be a middle manager in one of these countries.
And what do you do?
You tell the people of Kenya, you tell the people of Chile, you tell the people of Ecuador, you say, we don't have any money to fund things for you.
I'm so sorry.
We're just trying to make it.
And meanwhile, you're stashing tons of money and profit.
And who protects you?
That's right.
That's right, you're a good friend in the United States of America because you are a wonderful middle manager who makes sure that your country can be exploited and your people can be exploited.
Well, you know, there's no better time to visit South Dakota in the United States than this time of year.
And certainly when we discover that South Dakota, of all places, is a haven for private entities to be able to store their cash.
It used to be Delaware was that way because you could There's no reason for Delaware to exist besides banks, credit card companies, and finance companies.
That's it.
And then reenactments of Plymouth Rock, right?
I guess, right?
But yes.
But South Dakota?
Wait, is Plymouth Rock in Delaware?
Am I even close?
I don't believe so, no.
That doesn't strike me as historically accurate.
It's somewhere near there, nonetheless.
But like, yeah, especially because, you know, Christian Owen, we have to decide if you want to talk about her anyway.
But the idea that that would be some sort of safe haven where you're finding out that these murderers and and, you know, authoritarians are stashing their money there, of all places, is crazy.
I don't even know what to make of it, but this is the kind of details we're getting out of these millions of pages of documents.
And again, a lot of this might not even be illegal, although you have to wonder sometimes when you're a head of a country, you know, a lot of people are probably rich anyway, but like if you're getting into the 10s and 20s and 30s of millions of dollars, you got to kind of, it doesn't look good at the very least of like where that source of that money is coming from.
No, they do not want you to understand First of all, they don't want you to understand the system that they use.
We all know that these people are stashing money, you know, in these places.
We all know that these people are taking advantage of tax loopholes or, you know, offshore havens or hidden accounts or whatever.
We all know it, but it's so complicated.
It's so hard to wrap your head around.
It's like the rest of us are not even playing checkers, right?
We're playing like 52 pickup and they're like grandmaster chess wizards.
And the reason that they are is because they designed this system.
They're the ones who put these laws into effect.
They're the ones who pay accountants and lawyers ungodly amounts of money to find out how to do this so that they can make sure they're not giving you and me any money.
They're not going to pay for roads.
They're not going to pay for education.
They're not going to pay for health care.
They're sure shit not going to make sure that people live better, longer, happier lives.
In fact, they look down on us like ants, like, you know, like shitty little ants that they wouldn't even step on.
And they don't want us to get their money.
They want to send their money down to their next kid so their kid can rule the world or build up an empire for themselves.
That's what this is about.
That is what our politics have been for the last few decades.
It has been a constant globalizing system in order to increase profits, take our money and give it to them, by the way.
And then on top of it, figure out the best way possible to manipulate the system so that nothing goes back in.
Meanwhile, America has.
has been more than happy, like you were saying, to serve as sort of the launderer of all of this.
Because we are where finance capital, international capitalism, where these things were born.
That's what we're made to do.
People say America doesn't make anything anymore.
You're right, America launders.
That's what we do.
We are basically where legal crime comes to stay. - Well, you know, you're saying how complicated it is.
One way to simplify it is to ask the question, why do they want to keep it so secret?
Right?
This is an acknowledgment that we are not going to tell anybody because not every businessman will stash their money in a Swiss bank account and obscure all that stuff.
Not everybody does that, but a lot of people do.
And you have to wonder, okay, there is obviously a reason why they want to keep it secret.
Certainly, there's no shortage of essays and articles and thought think pieces that talk about the devastating effect of withholding taxes from these people at that level of income.
The things that you could do with that money if they properly paid their taxes would end all sorts of problems and troubles that we have across the country in a split second.
Yeah, and on one hand, in like the first world countries it's about taxes, right?
It's about making sure that Tony Blair pays his fair share.
And let me tell you something, the reason I called Blair Mr. Neoliberalism, he was on board with this whole thing.
He looked at the Clinton Project, he looked at Reagan, he looked at Thatcher, and he's like, I need in on that.
And all of us were so surprised whenever he got on, you know, on board with George W. Bush for the Iraq War, because I don't think a lot of us at the time understood how politics worked or what these people were up to.
Blair should have paid tons in taxes that should have gone again to schools, health care, all these human projects.
Americans like Donald Trump have continually passed the buck on these things.
and kept enormous amounts of wealth for themselves.
These other people, it's not just keeping taxes from them.
It's keeping them in like an arrested state of development, right?
Because like I was talking about on Friday, if you're in one of these second or third world countries and you need to borrow money from international finance, finance sends a team of lawyers and strategists, and they're like, this is wonderful.
We're going to get you a wonderful rate to go ahead and make sure that you borrow some money.
But we are going to require some control of your economy and your politics.
And if you elect the wrong person, the money that's coming, it might change and maybe it might dry up or we might invade you.
But we'll figure it out as we go.
It's really a Faustian bargain, and these people that you're talking about, who are pumping their money into this stuff, and who are buying up basically your neighborhood, and allegedly laundering money.
We can't legally say that they're laundering money, although allegedly it looks like a lot of laundering of money.
Those people, they're getting paid off to make sure that their people live shorter, more miserable lives without everything from roads to just, you know, basic plumbing.
They have basically been paid off by organized crime that you and I would just call government.
That would just call the normal working order of government in the modern world.
Right.
You know, money doesn't really mean anything anymore.
Also, it's not like an entity, like a thing that you're going to hold in your hand.
It's going to be completely digital at this point.
It only represents numbers on a computer screen.
It's weird, Nick.
Isn't it weird that we started getting digital money whenever this globalized system happened?
Isn't it weird?
It's almost like it's easier to move those amounts in order to sort of...
Thanks.
It's trained, isn't it?
Yeah, but listen, but it makes other people's lives easier too, all of us included, you know, in a lot of ways.
But, like I was thinking, I had done a video once for George Roberts, who was part of KKR.
He was the R in KKR, one of the original mergers and acquisitions firms that would come in and buy a company and just rip it all to shreds in the 80s and the 90s, remember all that was happening?
What's the book that Tom Wolfe wrote, you know, Barbarians at the Gate, perhaps?
And, uh, anyway, so we did a video on him and whatever, but I started looking... I started looking... What?
Yeah?
Oh.
Well, I just want to say, like, do you know who the company... who was employed?
Like, people like my family.
Right.
Like, my family... my family's factories have been passed from one of those people to another, and what do they do?
Like, how do they make their money?
They go in, they lay off as many people as humanly possible, they cut wages, They work you to the point where you either die, get injured, or you quit, and then they sell it.
And they just, I mean, that's like, that's what Mitt Romney did.
That was Mitt Romney's entire thing.
That's what America is based on now, are firms like that, for sure.
And I don't even want to cast aspersions on him or on those people, whatever.
The reason why I brought it up was because when I was doing the research, just kind of for fun to know who the guy was, because we were doing like a, you know, a birthday video for the guy, because the guy was, you know, whatever, making a crazy Expensive video.
But the point being that at that time, and whenever I was making that video, like 20 some years ago, I think, there was something like $20 billion total in the banking system, you know, that was available as cash at any one time or something like that.
Mark Zuckerberg himself has $120 billion in his own bank account now, basically.
That's his worth is.
He probably doesn't have it in cash, but you know what I'm saying?
It's so exploded that the amount of like money that we consider, it doesn't really mean anything anymore.
That's what's so crazy about this.
We have so many more billionaires we ever had in the past, too.
And then, obviously, the distance between the wealthy and the middle and the lower classes is so much greater than it ever has been, too, that, like, this is why it feels like we're leading to something that's really, really catastrophic.
And it wouldn't be that hard because, again, our systems are not protected well enough.
And we only need to look at every other month, there's another hack, another breach of security.
And at some point, you know, It's almost like at some point everyone's either going to get the virus or get the vaccine and they'll go away.
At some point, everybody will have been hacked and everyone's identity will be stolen and everyone's money will be taken.
It's like, I don't see how we ever, you know, get out of that.
Oh, and we haven't mentioned climate change.
Well, I just want to say, like, it doesn't even take an extraneous circumstance.
Like, this economy is a complete shambling mess.
And it's ready to fall apart at any given moment.
Wait, this is the why do you hate America moment, Jared.
Oh yeah, for sure.
Well, first of all, for anybody who hasn't paid attention to this, I've gained a lot of enjoyment watching recently this scandal that's taken place with this company called Aussie.
And Aussie is this company that, like a lot of American companies in this environment that you're talking about, you can't even explain what they do because they don't do anything.
They apparently have a few videos here and there that they pay people to watch or they pay farms to get them views.
They've lied to literally everybody possible about what they do.
They've used fake quotes.
One of their people apparently pretended to be the president of YouTube, or the CEO of YouTube, in order to try and get a bunch of money from Goldman Sachs.
And like even today, after that was exposed, the guy who runs the company got on TV.
He's like, I don't think we're done.
I think we're ready to do this.
And Nick, they might get $40 billion invested in their company after all of this, because all this is, is a scam.
And like we were talking about last week, you just don't want to be the person left holding the bag when the music stops.
Right.
And America is a giant shambling mess, which by the way, our government could do something about, our government could figure it out, Our government could intervene.
It could, and by the way, heaven help us that I'm even about to say this, they could actually invest in things.
They could actually try and help people's lives better.
If two senators, you know, happen to pull their heads out of their asses and get on board, although it's unclear if they will, but they could make this better and they could make sure that all this house of cards doesn't fall over.
But they're not that interested in it because we're a shambling disaster of an economy in a country at this point.
It's not hyperbole what you're saying even though people might think that it is because it sounds that way.
Facebook has already been exposed as completely fabricating their video numbers to get more people to advertise there.
We know that, yeah, the bullshit views on YouTube are supposed to actually get caught.
Like, YouTube's supposed to be so good that they know that doesn't happen.
This is sort of in my realm, on the other end of the, on the sports side that I do.
But, like, it was the same thing with, like, Yahoo.
When Yahoo was the titan of all websites and search, you know, they would feature a video I did, for instance, on my b-ball breakdown side, and I would get, like, no extra views from that.
But this is like Yahoo Sports, like the premiere or whatever.
What that told me was that they were just having bots visit the site to give them the numbers, but there's no actual real people on that page reading and then actually clicking on the video.
Because if you got to the page where my video is embedded, you would have played it.
Because that's the only reason why you would have gotten there, unless you're just an automated bot who's not doing that shit.
And that was clear to me in 2010.
But that's what the internet and by the way, going back to Facebook, that's what the internet has created at this point.
When I was talking about neoliberalism last week, I was talking about how we reached this point and by the way, like I know that the right is really afraid of open borders.
Neoliberalism and hypercapitalism destroyed borders for corporations.
Not for everybody else.
Corporations.
It made sure that they could move goods here and there, basically created this global system.
But on top of that, when that happened and when the internet became the main avenue through which this worked, all of a sudden, reality went out the window.
You know what I mean?
Empirical results went completely away.
Now all of a sudden we have bots, we have fake followers, we've got misinformation seeping in from other countries, we've got every country under the sun trying to influence our politics and society and culture.
This is what happens when you push all of your chips in the middle towards this globalist system.
You end up with people like Facebook, like you said, they've lied about how much money they're worth, they've lied about views, they've completely changed algorithms around and lied about how that has occurred.
They push misinformation because they understand that there's profit to be had.
It's a giant poisonous system that has been created and it's only getting worse.
And by the way, there is evidence that's credible that Zuckerberg was sort of in cahoots with the conservative right as they did the run up to 2016 election.
There were there's meetings and there was this notion that like maybe he was giving them a little bit of a thumb on the scale.
So yeah, here's the funny thing about the actual global system is that you'll hear conservatives rail against globalism as if it's this other like new form of religion that people can't, you know, risk going over to it.
But this is what allows them to hide their money.
So, they need it.
They love it.
They want it.
But again, it's another instance of a thing where they, it sounds good.
It gives them the sound bites.
Kind of like, you know, being anti-abortion as well.
It gives them all the sound bites, but they don't necessarily care about that.
On the flip side, as far as globalism goes for money, they actually are knee-deep and need it.
They rely on it.
So, you hear all those whistles and bells of them saying, we have, you know, globalism and China, whatever.
But it's like, this is how they're hiding their money anyway, and they need that system to be able to continue their power and their money.
Well, the entire attack on globalism, and I'm glad you brought that up because this is the New World Order, deep state conspiracy theory.
It's the idea that there is a larger system that the United States of America has been taken over by.
That's how the Republican Party sort of covers up what they did with globalism.
The first person in American national politics to bring up the idea of a globalist system, Ronald Reagan.
And the first time that he ran for president, it was like one of the things that he wanted to get done.
And guess what?
It wasn't his idea.
It was think tanks that were being funded by corporations and the wealthy.
Shocking!
I know.
So the Republicans pushed on this.
And by the way, whenever NAFTA ended up getting passed, Bill Clinton is the one who signed the bill.
Who voted for it?
The Republican Party.
So they've created this boogeyman of all this idea that globalism is somehow or another this New World Order conspiracy.
It's not like they want to get rid of it.
Because they profit from it.
And on top of it, not only do they profit from it, but globalism and neoliberalism serve an incredible goal of the Republican Party, which is people of color, people in second world countries, people in third world countries, exploit them for everything they're worth.
Put them in sweatshops.
Make sure that you don't have to pay them all that much money.
Make sure that they don't get health care.
Make sure that there aren't regulations.
They love this shit.
They don't want to destroy it.
They want to take it over and they want to have total control over it, which is what we keep seeing in a liberal democracy, which, by the way, we have to talk about the Claremont Institute.
We have to talk about the Eastman memo.
We got to talk about all of these.
And Bannon, who, by the way, went buck wild today and said that he has 20,000 shock troops that he's going to unleash on Washington, D.C.
So congrats to Bannon.
All of these people, all they're interested in doing is co-opting the system.
And they're interested in using it for their own advantage.
It has nothing to do with freeing America from all this shit.
That's just rhetoric and bullshit.
It's so bizarre that you bring that up with Reagan because I had a fever dream last night and I had to go research John Connolly for some reason.
I got into a little JFK thing about John Connolly because, you know, you might remember he was a governor of Texas when JFK was assassinated.
It was in the car and he was also shot.
And then he goes from being, you know, the leading candidate to run for president as a Democrat to then joining the cabinet of Richard Nixon in 1972 or 73, which is almost the equivalent of Biden appointing, not Marjorie Taylor Greene, but, you know, Ted Cruz to be the Secretary of the Treasury.
So why?
Why was this?
How can a guy switch parties like that?
And then he ends up being a guy who was going to run for president in 76.
And they didn't choose him in a whole interesting bunch of different ways, but like it all ties into this notion of how they all want to control the game, right?
And so in the 70s, it was a lot easier to control like who was going to run, who they were going to accept, who they're going to, you know, you know, confirm in the Senate stuff, which again, speaking of Ted Cruz, we have this whole other issue now of the Senate where Biden can't get anybody confirmed for any of the State Department positions because one guy gets to hold the whole thing up.
And so it's just we're just teetering on the edge here where it's too many individuals have way too much power to control like the main levers of government.
So and by the way yeah and you know that does though it does just sort of erode the confidence everybody has in it.
And so now it's like the people who want to say deep state and whatever like they do have a kernel of truth in the fact that like nothing is working it's broken and I hate it and we must burn the whole thing down.
It's by design.
I mean, here's the thing, and we've talked about this before.
When people say deep state, like there's a kernel of truth to it, which is that there are tons of unelected people within the government who hold sway, particularly the military industrial complex, which ensures that we will never have money invested in anything that we do because it's being redistributed to the same people that we're talking which ensures that we will never have money invested in anything that we do because it's being redistributed Well, on top of that, like you were saying, there are a couple of people who are holding the government hostage.
Liberalism, hyper capitalism, austerity has squeezed this country.
It has so perfected economic exploitation that it's reached like a hundred percent almost, right?
We've almost reached the point where like we've had everything, our roads are falling apart, our hospitals are overwhelmed, our life expectancies are going down.
You cannot expect to even equal what your parents made, much less get ahead.
The American dream has been exposed as a complete veneer, right?
In that situation, what occurs?
Radicalism.
People get pissed off, they get frustrated, they start looking for answers.
And who gives the answers at this point?
It's the Republican Party, Donald Trump, with all these conspiracy theories.
oh, it's the new world order, it's globalism, all of that.
People are starting to grow more and more dangerous.
Trust and institutions are falling apart.
It makes coups possible, it makes violence possible, fascism, authoritarianism possible.
Meanwhile, we have an investment bill in the Senate right now that is just common sense investment.
It's not particularly aggressive, it's not liberal, it's not leftist.
And meanwhile, we have two senators who are so proud of themselves, Nick.
I don't know how you're feeling watching all this.
We've got Joe Manchin from West Virginia, who is, he even said it this weekend, he said, nobody ever said I was a liberal, and congratulations, well done, Mr. Cole.
We have people kayaking outside of his yacht, called Almost Famous from West Virginia, or Almost Heaven, not Almost Famous, oh my God, I got that.
Good movie.
Good movie.
So they're kayaking outside his yacht and he's like leaning over the edge telling them why he's not going to spend any money on the country.
We've got Kirsten Sinema who is running off from, and she's loving all of this by the way.
She is having the time of her life holding up the country.
She's taken off from Washington.
She's doing multiple fundraisers with corporations.
And she's getting chased into bathrooms by constituents who I would love to hear what you think about this, by the way, that they followed her into the bathroom.
But they later on after they did it, they said Sinema has denied our request, ignored our phone calls and closed her office to her constituents.
She hasn't held a public event in months.
And we have two people who are holding this thing up, which right now is the only thing on the table in terms of trying to at least chip away at neoliberalism and austerity.
And meanwhile, the other side, they're not interested in fixing things.
They're interested in radicalizing people and destroying structures.
And these people are the people who are holding us up.
Sure, well I mean that's what I was going to say, like with Mansion, he's leaning over the side of his yacht talking to kayakers, which is like infinitely more communication than Cinema has done at all in her term.
So, but if you, let's talk about that because I guess I'm curious your thoughts too because it was, It's problematic if you're going to follow the person right up within an inch of the stall door of a bathroom.
I really think it is.
It was a stunt, I would say, and it was successful.
They got what they wanted as far as attention.
They went to her house, by the way.
Did you see that footage outside of her house?
Because they had these men coming out who looked like they were waiters.
So I was like, what is this?
Who has waited?
I mean, was she hosting like an event maybe at her house with like, you know, a catered event?
But, you know, I can't figure her out.
She's really opaque as far as what she wants.
And what's worrisome, though, is because, okay, Mansion could even say, well, you know, I'll do it for 2 trillion and not 3, right?
Or not 3, not 2 trillion.
It's what?
Down to 1.5, I think is what it's calling for now.
But it's not, you can't, right, okay, it's down to 1.5, but here's the thing.
You can't cut 2 trillion out of that Overnight, you need to spend the next six months going through the entire bill and marking the shit up until you figure out how to get money.
That's a lot of money to cut.
Oh, here comes the memes test, by the way.
And for anybody who doesn't know what memes testing is, this is the ultimate neoliberal idea, which is that every project you have to, you gotta apply for it, you gotta prove how much money you make, and most people, people like my family, They don't know how to do it.
You want to talk about being financially illiterate?
They don't know how to apply for this stuff.
They don't know how to go through it.
They don't know where the funds are.
Any of this stuff.
And on top of that, it's racist.
It completely excludes entire groups of people.
- It's disgusting.
And in that, you're exactly right.
They're going to cut into it using all of that and they're gonna basically just rip this entire thing apart. - And what's worse is means testing is expensive.
You gotta spend money to do the means testing.
So now you're putting yourself behind the eight ball again.
And it's, what's the word? - Well, let me say this about cinema really quickly.
Because I think you asked an interesting thing.
And this is the question of the moment.
Should constituents go in and harangue people, or follow people into restrooms?
I'll say this, and I mean this.
They wouldn't have done it if cinema wasn't playing this game.
If she communicated what she wanted.
If she said where her number was.
Meanwhile, she has built her entire political brand around being this inexplicable character.
Right?
No one knows what she wants.
No one knows where she wants to go.
Everyone's waiting to see what she's going to do and what she's going to decide.
She's building herself off, like you said, the opaqueness.
I don't think that they would have harassed her or followed her into a restroom looking to talk to her if, like I said, that she was having events, if there was a way to contact people.
You can't get a hold of your senator tonight.
I can't get a hold of my senator tonight.
I can send them a form email and what do I get back?
Some bullshit written random response that has nothing to do with what I have to say.
Our representatives are so far beyond us in general.
Even the ones who work hard and have actually good faith politics.
She is so far away from that.
No one has any idea what she actually cares about because this isn't about actual policy or principles.
This is about holding people hostage.
That's what this is.
But you can't make it seem like nobody can reach her, right?
Because it's not like she's completely cut off.
Yeah, if you're a corporation and you're willing to pay $5,000 a plate, oh, she's got time for you, man.
She'll pose for pictures.
She did a free internship in Napa for a pharma company or something like that.
It's insane.
As a senator, she did it last year.
So there's no question she's accessible, depending on who you are, and that's clearly what is driving this whole thing.
Oh, and by the way, she'll be really accessible whenever she leaves the Senate eventually, and she serves on a board of one of these groups that she served in her position.
Because that's what she's setting up.
She doesn't give a shit about any of this, or numbers, or budgets, or deficits.
She cares about what comes next.
She cares about how much money comes into her election coffers, and where she's going to serve when this whole merry-go-round ends.
And, you know, her next marathon that she's going to run.
Here's the question for you, because obviously what's wringing everyone's hands, or why everyone's wringing their hands, is because the progressives feel like if they pass the infrastructure bill by itself, then the Build Back America bill, which is really important, will just go away.
We'll forget about it.
So you believe that, that that seems reasonable to you, and the reason why we have to keep these things bundled together, or else only one of them gets passed.
Oh yeah, I mean, you know, it's Charlie Brown going to kick the football.
I mean, it's 100%.
I mean, at some point or another, and this is actually one of the reasons why I've actually enjoyed the fight that the progressives have been putting up, is that they've watched Lucy pull that football away enough times.
You know, there's no leverage.
There's no leverage if they go ahead and allow this thing to be decoupled.
And the last thing the Democrats ever want to do, particularly before midterm, and we've told people this before, and I want you to write it, get it tattooed where you can see it in the mirror sometimes, people.
The Democrats, when they are in power, when it comes time for the next midterm, they are going to apologize for being at the Democratic Party and everything that they've ever done and everything that they've ever voted for.
And they're basically going to say, don't worry, we'll be more like the Republicans, I promise you.
We're not liberal, we're not leftist, we're not socialist.
They will run away from everything that they've done.
There is nothing right now that has shown me that the Build Better Act, with any investment in anything, has any chance in hell of passing if the infrastructure bill goes on by itself.
Do you?
Do you think that would possibly happen?
Well, you have a whole bunch of people who would consider themselves moderates who would say something like, you know, 70% of something is better than 0% of nothing, you know, and all that shit.
But no, it's reasonable.
No, it is reasonable to assume that yes, the Build Back America bill would go, would get just, you know, hit pocketed and just go away, would never really get passed at that point.
So I get it.
Let me ask you this then.
Would any Republican voter vote against a Republican who increased the deficit?
Would they?
Knowingly?
Yeah, yeah.
Wait, who's the president?
a Republican candidate.
Would they vote against a Republican candidate if they were a Republican?
They're fine with that.
Oh, my God.
They'll balloon the deficit until it gets to a made-up number.
They'll balloon – a Republican party with a Republican president will balloon the budget to, like, one Googleplex dollars.
Right.
They're happy to do that.
Okay, because what I'm getting here is that, like, let's say, for instance, Manchin seems to be so concerned with how much money we're spending because, obviously, that means the deficit gets higher, right?
Like, that's the only reason.
And even though we've known time and again that the, The debt means nothing.
It's nothing.
By the way, we talked about this with Pete.
$27 trillion.
We're never paying the debt down.
So I don't think there's any Democratic voters who would look at Manchin and say, oh yeah, he just blew up our deficit by a couple trillion dollars.
I'm not voting for his ass.
You know what I mean?
But that's how he's acting.
Sinema, I don't even know how she's acting, I guess, like McCain, you know, some sort of Maverick, you know, thing going on.
I don't know.
But with Manchin, doesn't it seem like that is his concern?
And yet it's not founded in reality.
He's not going to lose votes if the budget goes, if our deficit goes up a little bit.
I think that Joe Manchin bases his entire political career on being able to go back to West Virginia and saying, you know, I'm a Democrat, but I'm the one who short that down to one point five trillion.
You saw the way that I fought for that.
Like, I'm all for investment.
You know, these tax and spend liberals.
I mean, because that's who he is.
I mean, that's his entire thing.
And on top of that, he doesn't, he's part and parcel, his role in Washington is to make sure, like Mitch McConnell, that money doesn't get spent on us.
I mean, he is there to ensure that we don't get used to it.
Cinema's thing, man.
I truly, honestly think that not only does she enjoy this, but I really do think that there is a for sale sign just outside her door.
I think that if you and I were able to scrap together enough cash, she could just basically introduce a Muckrake podcast bill into Congress.
I truly believe that.
I think she'd be more than fine with it.
Maybe she'll do a live read, our first one.
That'd be great for some winery or something.
I don't know.
I wouldn't trust her to do that without fucking it up.
I'll be honest with you.
I don't think she's very talented at this.
Because on top of it, she has made herself loathed because of her inability to communicate what she wants.
She's one of the most disliked people in the country right now, and to be honest, for good reason.
When's the last time you've heard about a Democratic candidate getting primaried?
I can't even think of any time the Democratic Party, I mean we hear about it on the other side all the time.
I mean Ocasio-Cortez, Ocasio-Cortez of course won that way.
I have to tell you, and I'll be honest and to go ahead and preview this for the future, if the Democratic Party has any hope of detaching itself again from neoliberalism, austerity politics, all of it, if they have any hope This would be the midterm, and 2024 would be the time where you would see a brand new slate, a new generation of progressives primaring people, promising, you know what, this is a terrible system and we'll fight it.
But people have to do it.
People have to throw their, you know, they have to put some skin in the game, throw their hat in the arena, and this would be the time to do it.
Right.
And by the way, I think it's really just getting out and voting and getting other people to vote.
I mean, really, that's what we have to do.
It's not even like you have to volunteer much besides that.
But we have an interview with the guy that runs the Claremont Institute, and he talked about how important it was, and we can get into this now, I hope, of how important it was.
They want to just eke out a couple of election cycles because they know if they can win this next midterm and then they can win 2024, that would pretty much do it.
That would be it for democracy as we know it.
Maybe we don't have a democracy.
We have a republic.
That'll be the end of the republic.
It'll be the end of what we know as the United States up until now.
So that's how, you know, you're talking about we can just kind of, if we can eke this out and kind of get on the right ship, you know, for a couple of election cycles in a row, that's great.
But I got to tell you, it could go backwards 150 years, right?
And I tweeted this out the other day and it got some traction where I was like, doesn't it feel like there are a number of states in this union who want to go back to the way it was before the Civil War?
It really does feel that way.
And if we let them do that, they will.
And that's what would happen, I think, if they lose the next couple cycles.
So to get people up to speed on this thing, the Claremont Institute, those of you who are patrons, you've heard on the weekend or the episode that I did talking about Michael Anton, who was a member of the Trump administration and the guy who wrote the Flight 93 election, basically telling Republicans that they had to vote for Donald Trump in 2016 because it was an existential crisis, because the Democrats were going to take over the government and they would never win it back.
Michael Anton, again, who served in the Trump administration.
I had talked about this interview that he did with a self-proclaimed monarchist who had talked about raising up an American Caesar.
And Caesarism, again, for those who aren't aware of it, is the idea that in a republic at some point or another, the system becomes so corrupt or becomes so unworkable that you need a strong man, a dictator to rise up and basically declare, you know what, we're done with democracy.
I run things now.
And the argument was, have we reached the point in which the so-called regime has become so corrupt and so intractable that it's time for Caesar to rise up?
The Claremont Institute, which bases itself on the work of a guy named Leo Strauss, who we've talked about The Noble Lie, which...
We've talked about Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, how they use the noble lie for the Iraq War, how a lot of this Straussian ideas about manipulating people and a hierarchy of like better people running the world for the lower, lesser people.
That's what we're talking about here.
And you're exactly right.
They are creating a framework, a legal framework.
We saw with John Eastman's memo, which was a six-part plan on how to overturn the 2020 election and perform a coup.
They're doing this by research.
They're doing this through studies.
They're doing it through academics.
They're doing it by fundraising.
This is the think tank in the group that is specifically very, very focused on what you said.
Overthrowing democracy itself, getting rid of the Republic, bringing in some sort of a Caesar-type figure, and rewinding time in ways that we can't even begin to actually fathom.
And while people are sitting over here dilly-dallying around about investment in infrastructure or rebuilding the social safety net, while radicalization gets worse, they're the ones looking to take advantage of this shit.
They're the ones who have designs.
Meanwhile, the left doesn't have a design.
They don't have some sort of a purpose yet.
These people have an idea, and they're going to overtake that globalist system that we've been talking about.
Oh, yeah.
So, I'm going to get into the ideas.
I'll read a couple of quotes because you won't believe what the guy was saying from the Claremont.
We'll believe it.
They are, just to let everyone know, I've kept my eye on the Claremont people for a while.
The Claremonts are wild.
They really, truly are.
And I'm so glad that you... Yeah, I mean, they hate think tanks.
They don't go far enough for them.
And so it's almost like they're just, yeah, ineffectual when in fact, you know, yeah.
But here's the thing.
Do you remember?
We've talked about John Eastman before during the 2020 campaign.
You might not remember.
We all might have forgotten.
He came up originally because he wanted to argue with the law and the constitution that Kamala Harris would not be eligible to run for president because her parents were immigrants.
Do you think if you get COVID from the President of the United States, do you think they give you a pin?
Do you think you at least get to take one home with you?
before January 6th, it's because he fucking got COVID by spending 15 minutes in the Oval Office.
That was it, and he got it there. - Do you think if you get COVID from the President of the United States, do you think they'd give you a pin?
Do you think you at least get to take one home with you?
Like maybe a little Snickers bar that has the seal on it? - Yeah, or Ren Benzivir or whatever on there I was sponsored by you. - Sorry we blew your lungs out.
And he was sick.
He was out for a while, but then he finally got his strength back, and with enough time to write that memo.
So this guy Eastman is not just like a rando.
He was a guy who was on Fox News, caught Trump's eye, just like Barr.
He was advising Trump.
He advised the President of the United States on how to overturn an election and perform an electoral coup.
And he was the only guy that was willing to do it, basically, which is why he was there.
But let's get back to the whole Claremont thing, because there was a couple passages that I thought were really interesting, because it really gives you insight into what the intelligent people on the right think, and where they exist, because we're always trying to figure this out, right?
We're always like, where are they coming from?
They are not like slobbering idiots.
These aren't Trump people being like, there's communism.
Like these people, and to go ahead and put it on people's radar, the Claremont people are scholars, but they're scholars of a different type.
They've studied, Plato's their guy, right?
Machiavelli's their guy.
They are into the philosophical underpinnings of the problems of democracy.
They believe in natural hierarchies.
They believe that there are people walking the face of the earth who are so far superior to everyone underneath them that they should rule, that they should take everything over, and that democracy, that electing leaders or trusting people to elect leaders, is a disgusting disgrace.
That it needs to be gotten rid of.
And by the way, in case you haven't picked up on it, they're the ones to figure that out, right?
They're the ones who should be controlling things.
They are so smart and erudite.
These people have theory.
These people are intelligent and they are working overtime to overthrow your right to vote and your right to live in a semi-free United States of America.
They are all over this thing.
OK, yes, here's and by the way, let me put a button on that because what I'm going to quote exactly speaks what you just said.
The interviewer asks, do you think America can hang together in 2021 without Christianity at its core?
And this guy who runs it responds, I'm ambivalent about that question.
I think it would be bad for America if that longtime Christian core disintegrated.
The founders were pretty unanimous with Washington leading the way that the Constitution is really only fit Yeah, I do.
I really, really do.
I would modify that a bit and say a majority Christian people could maintain that.
But if you don't think your rights ultimately come from a creator, you're halfway down the road to our modern confusion.
You want to unpack that?
Yeah, I do.
I really, really do.
Okay.
So I don't even know where to start, so I'll start here.
America's church attendance is declining.
And why?
Because the churches have been weighing in politically and they've, you know, basically taken some really repulsive stances on things as America has drifted away from these ridiculous ideas.
So, what are you gonna do if you need a majority Christian nation?
Well, of course, you're gonna mandate that people worship a certain way.
That's a theocratic society, which is exactly what these people believe.
They're not Christian, by the way.
They don't actually believe in this stuff.
They think that Christianity is a really good tool.
It doesn't matter if you believe in Christ.
It doesn't matter if you believe in Buddha.
It doesn't matter if you believe in Muhammad.
Whatever.
Whatever works.
Right?
Because that's who they are.
Which, by the way, should remind everybody, that's what Steve Bannon's about.
He doesn't have any actually deeply held religious conviction.
It's whatever gets the job done.
That's what Leo Strauss tells him.
The next thing.
The founders did not believe that Christianity was fundamental to America.
In fact, packed within the founding of America was an Enlightenment ideal that we needed to get away from religion, and that we needed to take secular and religious matters and completely separate them.
And a large part of our founders were part of the Enlightenment, in which they believed that all of this was superstition, and the quicker that we got away from it, the better.
That's the truth of this thing.
They were still aristocratic.
They were still white supremacists.
They were still classist.
Those things are still true.
They wanted to get away from religion because what happened in Europe with religion?
You slaughtered the shit out of each other.
Oh, you're a Protestant?
I'm a Catholic?
You're now dead.
You are now dead.
You are now oppressed.
They wanted to get away from that.
The Crusades only lasted for like a few months.
Oh my god, oh it makes me so angry when they talk that shit, but it's complete bullshit, and they know it's bullshit.
Just saying.
Oh, I got more, because again, yeah, the Christianity thing for me is always a watchword for white, and they actually broached the subject in this
In this interview as well because it reeks of like we need the white people to control this country just like the founding fathers were white and did not want to have women or people of color be involved at all in the process like that was if we can't accept that as the basis for how the Constitution was written then we can't really go forward and understand what they really meant and why you'd want to advocate for that Do you know who would agree with you, by the way?
Just like if we could put him in a time machine and bring him here?
The founders.
The founders would agree with that.
That the Constitution was written explicitly to the favor of white wealthy men at the exclusion of people of color and women and the poor.
They freely admitted that in so many words.
I've got the text right here next to me.
Madison's notes in the Constitution, the guy who framed the damn thing, even admitted as much in so many words.
I got to read this for you because another one of these things because again it's it's this high-minded they've clearly thought about this and tried to like intellectually approach what it means you know they have a problem with with equality that's a word that comes out a lot with them because when you start saying equality they think it's like well you got tip the scales and that's when you get like things like You know, like black students get a leg up to get into colleges, affirmative action, those kind of things.
And that's really just an affront to their society.
You know, how can you dare you?
How can anybody, you know, it's racist to them that somebody of color would get a different analysis of their, you know, application to college, right?
Because of other things.
Now, but here's what he says.
That means deconstructing and disrupting what was the dominant narrative for a long time, which was the founder's regime of natural rights.
One of the institutional vehicles for it was the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was meant to fulfill the promise of the Declaration of Independence for black Americans coming out of segregation.
But the courts and administrative agencies quickly turned against the colorblind, equal opportunity vision of the founding and toward affirmative action.
No.
This calculation of current oppressor or past oppressor and the pursuit of equity in social justice.
Now, this seems to mean that we're really not going to be where we need to be until all groups are equally represented and have the same outcomes for, say, homeownership, wealth, proportion to CEOs or member of Congress.
That seems to be the goal of wokeism. - Oh my god. - So here's their problem.
They're confusing equality with fairness.
Right?
That's how I look at this.
Is they're thinking, well, you know what?
We don't have a lot of, you know, African-American CEOs because not a lot of people like that are applying for those jobs.
Oh, not only are they not applying, Nick.
Right.
There's an implication at the heart of all of this.
That they don't want to say out loud.
Right?
They'll tiptoe up on it.
What they're saying constantly, and by the way, I'm going to say something that isn't at all controversial, and I think everybody actually knows this, regardless of where they come down on quote-unquote critical race theory, where they come down on any of the wokeism, right?
And that is that racism and white supremacy are baked into our laws, our culture, and our politics.
They were, from the moment that this country was settled, and that we went out and we killed Native Americans, where women were oppressed, where people of color were enslaved.
It happened at the founding.
It happened after the Civil War.
It's happening right now.
Those things are continually embedded in all of this.
What they want to say is this, is that this country is as free and fair as it possibly can be.
What they don't want to say is that they believe deep down that people of color, and poor people by the way, are inherently Untalented.
There's something wrong with them.
They quote-unquote commit more crimes.
That's why more of them are in jail.
They're not as smart.
That's why they're not CEOs.
And I mean look over here.
Oh God, look at, look at, and then this is one of their favorite things.
Look at Jay-Z.
Look how much money he has.
Look at how much money LeBron James has.
If everybody, you know, could do it, they would do it.
The entire point is that they think that people are not biologically up to their level.
If given the pen, if given money, if given power, these are the same people that I'm reading about in the 1920s who are talking about either killing tens of thousands of people in America in order to push forward eugenics or sterilizing people or just giving power to a certain hierarchy. these are the same people that I'm reading about in It goes back to that point.
They truly, honestly believe in biological, inherent racial and class based differences.
They think that this system is serving them in a way that pushes that idea.
But they know it's racist.
They know it's class.
But they'll shroud it in the fact that like they're not racist because they believe that everybody, you know, by their bootstraps has a chance to be successful.
And that's the fundamental difference because it's not stacked fairly for everybody on purpose.
And that's what the whole show has been about, I think.
And that's the difference that they can't accept.
Because, again, look at Larry Elder.
Look at how well he's done.
Clearly we're not racist if he can do well or LeBron or anybody else.
And that's what's so disgusting about the whole thing.
But we don't have to limit it to even like black people or any other people of color.
It's white people too.
It's poor people who will never have a fair shake at anything either.
And it would be nice to think that we would give that opportunity.
It's like, why are we arguing whether or not we can fucking feed kids in school?
That's what we're arguing about.
You know, as if, oh, if we feed them in school, then they're not going to want to work hard and get their own food on their own.
It's like, what are we doing?
We're the wealthiest nation on earth ever in the history of mankind, and we're not willing to help kids who are starving in school so that they can, by the way, get better grades, learn better because they're not starving, and then go on to merit, you know, more wealth that they think is out there for everybody evenly.
People need to understand that these people are working their asses off to destroy democracy and to push that austerity that we're talking about and basically create an American Caesar or dictator.
And by the way, they'll say it openly.
They think Donald Trump is a total ass and buffoon.
But they would be more than fine if Trump took over and had all the power.
They don't care who it is.
It goes back to that Straussian idea.
It's whoever gets the job done.
And I want to point this out to bring this thing full circle.
They talk all the time about the tyranny of tech, particularly Twitter, because Donald Trump got thrown off of there and because they banned a bunch of conspiracy theorists and all of that.
Facebook works with these people.
Like, Facebook serves these people.
And I haven't checked to make sure that they haven't come back.
I still hope, fingers crossed, that they're completely gone.
But they're helping people like this.
They're helping people like Peter Thiel.
They're helping people who want to get rid of democracy in totality so that they can control the country through these means, and they are doing the research.
They're doing the work.
It's not all idiots.
It's a lot of really smart, informed people who look back through history and they rationalize fascism, totalitarianism, authoritarianism.
They rationalize it by going through these old texts from back when like slavery was everywhere.
And, you know, you had these quote unquote natural hierarchies like these people are working really hard to realize that project.
Yeah.
Now, at Facebook, it looks like it's sort of back, but no images.
It's like they can't quite load very quickly, or some of it's back.
But let me just give you the last, we'll tie this up because we're getting along in the tooth here, but the last bit of this interview I thought was interesting because they describe what the ideal, you know, So here's what he says, he goes, "The ideal endgame would be to affect a realignment of our politics and take control of all three branches of government for a generation or two.
The goal would not be the reconquest of blue America, but rather the restoration of the constitutional regime that we think has been lost.
We have to find some modus vivendi to go forward.
If we're two Americas, one of the more perfect solutions might be the return of federalism.
The Fed's laying off in many respects.
Let red America be red and blue America be blue.
It's obviously more complicated than that, because even in a red state, you have plenty of Democrats and vice versa.
But we need to restore a robust federalism, one that allows states much more leeway.
We've gone much too far into the realm of federal control, arbitrariness, and overreach.
Read Wokeness.
Remember when I said at one point, okay, aside from the slavery part, like, maybe we just should have kept the Civil War, you know, Mason-Dixon line and let these assholes have their own part of the country and not let them call it the United States anymore, because I don't want to live in that same country.
This is what they want too, it sounds like.
No, they're 100% avoid that.
And by the way, like, if you go back in the federalist system, and I want to point out, like, this is important.
When we say federalism, we're not talking about giving the federal government massive power.
We're talking about a system of one party rule.
The federalists had no intention whatsoever of sharing power.
There were no parties.
There was one party.
It was one party, basically autocratic rule among the white, the wealthy men.
of the country.
They were the ones that determined all of it.
The federal government, under federalism, it didn't get rid of slavery.
It said, you know what?
If you want slavery, if that's how you want your society to be, best of luck.
It took federal intervention to end slavery.
It took federal intervention to end Jim Crow.
This is whenever people are talking about small government.
You want to talk about like coded language.
They're talking about creating a situation where a government can't go in and desegregate.
They're talking about a situation where a government can't go in and make you stop having slaves.
And if we get in a situation where all of these quote unquote red states are in power, it's not going to be a democratic contest.
We're already seeing what's happening in my state of Georgia.
We're already seeing what's happening in Florida, in Texas.
They are rigging these things.
And we will get back to the point, and real fast to put a bow on this, during Jim Crow, they would not have had power if they didn't disenfranchise the African Americans.
That's why it happened.
The African Americans mobilized and were successful politically, so they had to make sure that they couldn't vote.
So, like, if they were to draw that line and not go into these states and not take care of these racist territories, Sure as shit, you would find one party, white supremacist rule, and the total exploitation of people.
That's what they want.
A hundred percent.
For sure.
I do want to call out Jason Everhart for sharing the Atlantic article with me in response to that tweet because it was an eye-opener that I had missed in Atlantic.
Again, they're telling us what they want to do and what they're envisioning.
This is not a fringe group here.
These guys are at direct access to Trump and to the top of the Republican Party.
This is what they want to do.
Well, and I had mentioned earlier, I had said that Ronald Reagan didn't know what globalism was and he didn't know what Reaganomics were, that it was a bunch of think tanks, right?
There was a bunch of experts who were brought in who talked about this stuff and basically told him what to say and what to push.
Trump is the exact same way.
Trump doesn't understand any of this.
He doesn't have any actual political philosophy.
He has instincts.
He has his own petty grudges, you know.
These are the people who are supplying him with an ideology.
These are the ones who get in his ear and say, you could totally overthrow an election.
You absolutely could.
And if you haven't yet, go back and listen to that American Caesar episode.
It's over on our Patreon, patreon.com slash mcgreggpodcast.
Go and listen because they say outright.
They're like, yeah, you know, American democracy has reached this point.
We, we just need someone to take over.
That's who they are.
That's who these people are.
It's brutal.
Oh my God.
We got to, we, we're in so much trouble with these assholes.
I swear, and I'm so glad that you got in that article today, and I'm so glad that you tuned in.
We appreciate you so much.
Like we were saying, to go ahead and get access to our extra episode every week, The Weekender, where this week I talk about the history of neoliberalism, sometimes we talk about what we've been watching, sometimes we talk about American Caesars, Go over to patreon.com slash muckregpodcast.
We will be back on Friday with that weekend or episode.
Do not miss it.
If you need me until then, you can find me at J.Y.
