While co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman herald the new infrastructure bill and all the good it will cause, they also dig deep into the announcement that a group of ostracized conservative academics are launching Austin University, dedicated to the elimination of safe spaces and promoting hate speech.
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This is the largest investment in roads, bridges, and highways since the creation of the interstate highway system, including the largest investment in our bridges ever, so that we can avoid devastating closures and disruptive collapses like we've seen, including what we saw in Tennessee and Florida and far too many other places.
Look, President Trump laid the groundwork for this infrastructure to pass, and he also wanted $1 trillion in spending into America's infrastructure.
And it's important for economic growth, right?
And we lose trillions over the next decade if we did not put in this investment to upgrade and modernize our infrastructure.
So, you know, I'm happy and appreciative to President Trump for being one of the first to really talk about the need for infrastructure.
Hey everybody, welcome to the Muckrake Podcast.
I'm Jared Yates Sexton and I'm here as always with Nick Halseman.
Breaking news as we started to record very quickly because we have a jam-packed episode.
Apparently the January 6th Committee has now subpoenaed Jon Eastman, who those of you who are regular listeners might remember is the think tank authoritarian coup mastermind behind the memo to take over the election of 2020.
Michael Flynn who those of you who pay attention is the disgraced former general who?
Think I don't even know how to explain Michael Flynn at this point Oh, you know, resident kook?
Can we just call him that?
Total resident kook.
One of my favorite things about Michael Flynn, this former general, is he has been completely Q-pilled and basically just goes out and rakes in thousands of dollars at this point telling people there should be a military coup and that somebody sent him an email forward that morning.
We have Bill Stepien, Jason Miller, Bernard Carrick, and Angela McCallum.
A lot of these were with Donald Trump on January 6th or tried to talk Donald Trump into overthrowing an election or carrying out a military coup.
A lot happening here.
Although, I don't know about you, Nick, I'm always a little bit doubtful with this stuff about whether or not the subpoenas will be heralded.
We've yet to see anything happen to Steve Bannon.
So I'm just keeping an eye on this at this point.
Yeah, but the name that's not in that list is your friend and mine, Rudy Giuliani.
Was he subpoenaed before?
I don't think so.
That's a great question.
Giuliani, how could he not have been subpoenaed at this point?
I don't know.
Maybe the leaking hair got them confused and they couldn't figure out his fellow's name.
Either way, maybe they could figure he won't I can't even.
He won't show up?
I'm not going to bother?
I don't know.
But yes, I think it's a murderer's row either way with some of those guys.
It's always nice to hear Bernie Kerik's name back in the news from way back yonder and with Giuliani as the former head of the New York Police Department.
So, yeah, fascinating group of people to be in a room with, wouldn't you say?
You've got to say there is some slime going on in these subpoenas.
But I will go ahead and also say that nothing's going to happen if the subpoenas aren't backed by some sort of power.
Of course, a lot of us right now are waiting on Merrick Garland to use his position to compel Steve Bannon and others into heeding these subpoenas, but we will keep track of this as this worm and slime turns.
In the meantime, Nick, we've got an agenda win.
Sound the alarm!
Ring the bell!
infrastructure week.
Infrastructure week.
Ring it.
We finally we can blow the Viking horn.
The Biden administration can finally notch something on their belt.
The House of Representatives finally passed the one point two trillion dollar infrastructure bill, which, of course, had been absolutely decimated by a senator from West Virginia that will remain unnamed for the near future.
Before we break this down, what it means, what it does, what it doesn't mean, what it doesn't do.
Nick, you have to say that this is at least something that you can call a victory at this point.
I mean, I can only pray that the Democrats don't fuck this up and not turn it into a victory.
You know, I mean, I don't know if we really understand just how monumental infrastructure bills are.
They don't get passed that often.
The last one I was trying to look it up, I believe was like maybe 2015, but it was pretty small.
It's like $300 million or whatever it was.
It wasn't certainly in the trillions like we're talking now.
And perhaps what we saw, which was dragging through the mud, was the natural negotiation process playing itself out.
So it started, whatever they really wanted, or obviously the goal, and then it gets whittled down.
The only problem I think we have here is that he that will be not be named got to whittle down very specific parts that directly affect his pockets.
And there's a word for that, I think, Jared, that starts with a C.
I was going to say shitheadedness, but I'll go with corruption as well.
Yeah, just a reminder that this infrastructure bill, while it was dwindled down, it is like the first major investment in American infrastructure in a long, long time.
Any article or discussion about this has to mention the fact that This culture of austerity that has held sway over the United States of America for decades now, an intentional austerity, has led to incredible amounts of deaths.
It has kept us in a state of arrested development.
It has meant that as an industrialized nation, we have fallen further and further behind.
This is a drop in the bucket, but it's a drop that was needed in that bucket.
And we look at this, you've got over $100 billion for roads, bridges, infrastructure projects.
You've got $40 billion for bridge repair and replacement, which by the way, like, we've been watching for years, just bridges crumbling, completely out of nowhere, killing multiple people, messing with all kinds of stuff.
This was absolutely necessary, but there's still, because it is a Democratic victory, there's still a bitter taste in the mouth from this bill being stripped down, but also some inter-party conflicts that have definitely rid their heads here.
Well, OK, so we've got to break this out a little bit as well, because it's a bipartisan bill.
They've got a significant amount of Republicans to vote for this.
So we now need to kind of figure out the math.
This is math, I think, more than politics, honestly, because I think what we're going to talk about here is that the squad and the progressives in the House, they were people that voted against it on the Democratic side.
And you have to imagine that everybody was in on this.
They knew how many people were going to vote and knew that they could afford not to vote for it on some sort of principle, which is cool.
Hey, have principles.
God bless you for that.
But I don't think we can be pretending here, thinking that, like, if they didn't have those Republican votes and they needed the progressives, I'm pretty sure, wouldn't you agree, that they would have simply voted for this bill?
That's what my sources in the Progressive Caucus have told me.
I think what ended up happening here was when the numbers came down, and you got to understand sometimes that even within the same party, people understand that they have different goals, right?
The Democratic Party is a huge tent, massive, massive With so many different, differing ideas of where stuff is going.
What ended up happening was a deal was bargained between the so-called moderates or the rank-and-file Democrats and the Progressive Caucus.
They knew where the numbers were going to be.
They knew that the Progressive Caucus had room and cover to go ahead and vote for this and say, and by the way, they're not wrong, that not enough was done here.
for climate change.
And not enough was done here in order to move towards more equality, both in terms of income and race.
And they had every right to vote against this thing, but they were given cover to do it.
But that also leads to a current situation, because if you go down the list, it's rank and file.
I mean, Bowman voted against this, Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Presley, they all voted against it and they are all out there right now telling everybody who will listen that they had to break from the rest of the Democratic Party in this.
And it does set up a larger conflict that is going to play itself out.
This is not the end of this.
And now we have this social safety net bill that they were told was going to be paired with infrastructure that way they would go ahead and invest in social safety net.
Now they're not so sure.
And I was talking about this last night on my Bourbon Talk livestream.
They have said if they get screwed over on this, if they feel like the social safety net investment goes ahead and gets punted because the infrastructure bill got passed, which is what they've been worried about for forever, that there's going to be hell to pay.
And that is the understanding within the Democratic Party right now.
And it's worth, you know, accentuating that fact by the vote, by not voting there.
That's then, you know, signaling that there will be hell to pay.
It's not just going to be I'm going to wave my fist a few times and get angry about this.
That is a pretty significant thing.
But two things I like about this or two things that are interesting.
One is that it's great to see the Democratic Party does have disparate voices and And there is clashing.
This is not a rubber stamp party that simply follows along with whatever the leader says.
This is obviously when I'm describing the Republicans.
But I'm not sure votes even matter anymore.
There was a time in our political climate where somebody could get dinged in a campaign because of a vote they made from a few years before.
I don't even feel like I've heard any of that.
The voting records don't really come up that much, right?
Like, no one's holding anyone's feet to the fire on those things anymore.
They just lie about it.
They just lie about it.
I mean, at this point in our political process, they simply make up bullshit and blame people for things that they voted against.
I mean, it really doesn't matter.
You know what?
That happened to Biden when they were trying to ding him on school busing and even stuff like that, right?
Way back.
And he lied about it, whatever he wanted.
He completely obfuscated and made it seem like he was on a completely other side than he really was.
So I guess that's the point.
And then if you do that enough times, people are just like, eh, there really isn't much point to hold your record.
We can't hold people's voting record for the Iraq War anymore.
No one seemed to care.
grab anybody's political heartstrings.
So that's what's interesting about all these things and how these are playing out.
But I definitely feel like, yes, they needed to at least signal that they are serious about making sure that the BBB bill actually gets focused and gets passed.
Yeah.
And for those who maybe have just started paying attention to politics because of all of this, you know, giant crisis and mess that we've been covering for so long, what you need to understand about the Democratic Party is it's not like the Democratic Party has not had a progressive what you need to understand about the Democratic Party is it's not like the Democratic Party
In a lot of ways, the Democratic Party sort of looked at that caucus sort of with a, bless your heart, you know, you had like a little Dennis Kucinich, right, who would come out and basically, and Dennis Kucinich was for a very long time the conscience of the House of Representatives.
He was the one that stood up and said, "We shouldn't be funding these wars.
"We should be actually helping people." Bernie Sanders, of course, was in that position for years, and they treated them for a long time as if they were precious, because they did not think that their votes could possibly hurt them.
What we're watching now is something we've talked about and discussed in the past, which is this is a new generation of a progressive caucus.
If they get screwed over on this, and people keep asking me, they say, do I think the social safety net bill is going to get passed?
I think it's going to get passed for a couple of reasons.
I think, first and foremost, the Democratic Party right now is bleeding.
They need to chalk up some wins.
And this infrastructure thing is a huge achievement, but it's hard to sell infrastructure to people.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's really hard to sort of say, look at what we've done here, look at what we've done here, you know, whether it's widening a bike path or something like that.
They need to chalk up some wins.
The second part is, I really truly believe that heading into the midterms and then eventually into 2024, I do not think you want to screw around with this progressive caucus.
Because they'll go out and they'll find someone to primary your ass and they'll find somebody who doesn't even have to raise a bunch of money in order to take you out going into the actual election.
I think it will end up getting passed if only because this friction exists the way that we're talking about.
Well it sounds like you're also saying they'd be willing to let the Democrats lose power in both chambers for their agenda.
They would make the argument that they would make the Democratic Party stronger.
That the Democratic Party needs to evolve and change, and that will actually help them.
But I will say, and I'm sure that you've been seeing this too, the media has been jumping all over this.
I mean, you have Maureen Dowd, of course, and by the way, in the interest of clarity, I have met Maureen Dowd.
I have been in an event with Maureen Dowd.
I'm not going to talk about what happened there.
It was strange, but You know, Maureen Dowd comes out and basically says that, quote unquote, wokeness, which we're going to have to talk about here in a couple of minutes, is costing the Democratic Party.
You see all these pundits come out and they say that there's a leftward movement in the Democratic Party that is costing people's voters.
I think the progressive caucus would say that you need to embrace that and build your base that way.
So I hear what you're saying.
I think there's other people who believe that it will lead to a cataclysmic loss, which I think that's that's up for debate.
Yeah.
Now we're getting into the timing of the infrastructure bill and how quickly they can get things done.
Because I disagree.
I think that infrastructure is the big moneymaker thing where people can see it.
There's construction workers.
They're making roads better.
These big contracts are being signed.
Can I point out something by the way?
One of the things that Barack Obama was really terrible at was putting up signs that said, this is what's happening.
Wait, terrible?
I thought he was amazing at that.
No, only in certain parts of the country.
Other parts of the country, you had massive investments like that that simply did not get distributed.
In L.A., they had beautiful signs, really.
The fonts, they really nailed them.
You really enjoyed that font.
Yeah, so they did it well there.
I don't know why they couldn't have sustained that.
Obama did not like to spike the football.
Which is one of the biggest problems with Obama in terms of, especially going into the midterms.
He always was, and the people around him, the Democrats, ran away from that.
But you're right.
I think if we see the construction, and if it's attributed, I think that's one of the ways it can seem like something's being done.
And here's the other thing is the economy is going like gangbusters right now and to juice it with an infrastructure bill should really get people feeling great about the economy going into the election as long as it gets instituted quickly enough which you know appropriations could happen relatively quickly you know we have a year so they should be able to get some stuff going although again you know you can picture you know, all sorts of bureaucratic red tape and get things get tied up.
But I would imagine they begin the process of getting a lot of the stuff going, at least.
And that would be the visual that the people need to see that would make them feel better about it.
But again, it's a high bar if you're going to talking about getting anybody who might have voted for the Republicans in the past to like feel good about the economy and about infrastructure.
And that would then have them switch their vote.
I don't know if that's happening.
Well, are their kids going to get hired?
I mean, you know what I mean?
Like, are their kids, are they going to get a job?
Are they going to, you know, work on some sort of a road crew or a construction crew?
And I will say...
The perception is what's important here because we're not always rational creatures.
Sometimes our perception is like really, really screwed up.
And in the case of the economy, I think people right now are going ahead and combining their perception of how the economy is working with supply chain issues.
They go into a grocery store and they see that there's like, in my town, you can't buy chips.
What?
Yeah, it's like you'll go in sometimes and it'll just be like an entire shelf of chips are just missing.
Or, you know, I talk to my family and they go into stores and they can't find things.
There's a perception that somehow or another the economy has come apart, which a certain factor of it has, right?
A certain sector of it has.
So if that starts happening and they do not make this readily apparent what they're doing, then all of a sudden we're going to go back into, you know, Obamacare territory, which is where you have like something that is actually like positively impacting people's lives, but they can't necessarily which is where you have like something that is actually like positively impacting people's lives, but they can't necessarily pinpoint it or understand what You know, those kids you're talking about who might get hired and that makes it feel the parents better get.
Can we get the 4th and 5th graders onto some of these construction crews too?
Because then it would get them out of learning CRT and we wouldn't have that issue to argue with.
Nick, listen.
I roll with almost everything you say.
Don't say that too loud.
Because if the Republican Party hears you advocating for child labor, I mean, listen.
They just need it suggested and they're ready to go.
Right.
Yeah.
Capitalism, man.
You can't put that in their mind.
Nothing like being outdoors and, you know, healthy and you're learning about measuring, you know, concrete.
I mean, listen, it's math and all sorts of stuff.
I think Josh Hawley would be into that.
You know, teaching those young men about masculinity.
I think he would be all about that.
Well, yeah, but then he'd make sure that the, uh, oh.
I mean, you could tell me this is in bad taste, but he'd make sure all the people would have, like, the guys had their shirts off while they're working on the construction crews.
That's the masculine, not casting aspersion, it's the masculine image I'm thinking of here.
That's the fascistic, that's the fascistic masculine image.
Oh yeah.
Yeah, that's what that is.
I mean, they really adore this like absolute alternate reality fascistic masculinity.
And listen, they will throw our kids out and make them work for sure.
They would happily do that.
They would have problems.
Cheap labor, absolutely.
Just like we see in those murals.
By the way, on Twitter this weekend, someone was trying to cast this person to the TVA and the New Deal.
Who?
Who did that?
You know, somebody.
Some right-winger.
I spend a lot of time on the right-wing sub, unfortunately.
And they're talking about how TVA was socialism to the Tennessee Valley.
Oh my god.
And I'm like, the only thing about the TVA that was socialist were their murals, as far as I'm concerned.
And those are those murals, but again, those murals of the construction worker, you know, and he's, I don't think he's got his shirt on, and he's hammering, and he's working hard, and he's sweating, and it's American Dream.
Certainly not the kind of American Dream you'd have if you were on a college campus.
Well, real fast, because we gotta talk about this bullshit here in a second.
I just wanna say, I've been spending so much time recently studying the implementation of the New Deal.
And, like, first and foremost, this Tennessee Valley Authority, for those who don't know it, basically FDR got in, he looked at what was going on, and basically everybody who wasn't, like, a corporate head or stooge You have to invest in public works.
You have to put people to work.
Give them something to do.
And as a result, you can work on infrastructure.
You can, you know, build highways.
You can go in and do parks.
You can make dams.
You can go in and provide electricity for some of the most rural areas of the country.
And immediately, by the way, I know this is going to shock you, he was a socialist!
Obviously he's a socialist!
He's giving electricity to the poor people, and it's like, my god, do you not understand that that helps you too?
Like, it's not actually even socialism.
Like, FDR just said, you know what, you are too far into hyper-capitalism, we gotta pull you back a little bit.
Back towards actual true capitalism as they thought that they were carrying it out.
But in this case, like, this isn't... They're already calling this communism, by the way.
Like, Big Bird, of course.
And, you know, it is so stupid because it's just what government's supposed to do.
Government's supposed to make sure that your bridges don't collapse as you're driving down the street.
Like, it's supposed to make sure that... There are massive wildfires that are happening right now because our electric infrastructure is just crumbling.
Like, hundreds of people dying, billions of dollars in damage is happening right now because these people can't be bothered to go out and replace their stuff.
Like, something has to be done.
Handouts, Jared!
Can't be giving handouts to the poor people who are going to sit on their couch and watch TV all day while their checks come in every two weeks.
We can't let that happen, Jared!
Die in a wildfire inferno.
Again, I mean, every this is going to be music for this part of the pod every time we every week, because it's we are the wealthiest civilization or sorry, the wealthiest country in the history of civilization.
And yet we're not willing to help everybody survive the homelessness or survive mental trouble that will cause them to be homeless or any any number of reasons why they don't have work and they can't put food on the table.
It's it's just mind boggling to me that like what they the perception is, is that if you give them money, then they're never going to ever work.
And that's the that can't be that's not capitalism.
We can't do that it's just It's an interesting combination of when you have capitalism and then the roots of our, oh god, now I'm going to CRT, but the roots of the white supremacy we have in this country.
Yeah, and let's talk about what this should look like.
First of all, there's no reason why this bill is getting passed in 2021.
There's no reason for it.
There should have been a steady increase in infrastructure all the time.
Right.
All the time.
I mean, the fact that we have not gotten ourselves off of fossil fuel is Actual madness.
You know, like, it's actual madness.
The fact that we have power grids that are falling apart.
The fact that, like, we have this infrastructure that's causing this massive damage.
The fact that one of our biggest and most powerful states, by the way, like, had a winter storm and people just froze to death.
That's not okay.
There should have been investments.
There should have been regulations.
This bill should have been massively bipartisan.
In a working country, the way this should work is the Republicans would have voted for it and then they would have campaigned on how they would have tweaked it.
Or maybe where they would have moved this amount of money over here.
But the problem, of course, is that the Republican Party has gotten to the point where their entire ethos and principle is that the government should not help people.
It cannot help people.
The only thing it can do is redistribute wealth from the poor to the wealthy and go out and punish your enemies.
The way that this has happened, the way that this has taken shape, is completely, completely irrational and irregular.
I mean, this should have had a ton of investment over a period of time, and this country shouldn't even look the way that it does right now.
It's an abomination that it does.
And actually, in even more detail, the Republicans would have run, anything good out of the infrastructure bill that came out of it, they would take all the credit for.
And all the things that didn't go very well, they'd blame the Democrats.
That's what they're going to do.
Yeah, and that's how it should work.
I mean that's and that's almost okay as long as they get the freaking thing passed like okay like do your lying or whatever but like yeah, I remember that happened.
That happened.
They took all the credit for some progress.
Oh, no, I'm forgetting what it was.
Do you remember this?
Well, they did it with the PPE stuff.
Yes, yes, they all voted against it and they took credit.
Look how much this helps you.
Yes, thank you, Jared.
That's why you're here.
Well, yeah, I'm here because that shit just drives me insane and keeps me up at night.
I mean, this is an irrational situation.
We've talked about this in the past, man.
In a past where it wasn't so dysfunctional and screwed up, and we're going to talk about the symptoms of this in just a second, Like in the past, they would have put up an alternative proposal.
They would have had some kind of a plan, and then what would have happened?
They would have taken the Democratic plan and the Republican plan, and they would have smashed it together, and they would have found something that probably leaned heavier towards what the Democrats wanted, but at least took into consideration what the Republicans wanted.
They don't have a plan.
They don't have a platform.
They don't have a principle.
What they care about is going after Big Bird.
Big Bird, Nick.
Going after Big Bird.
If you find yourself, and here's a piece of advice, here's some free education for everybody listening at home, driving around, walking around, running.
If you end up on the opposite side of an issue with Big Bird, you've failed.
Period.
It's not easy being green.
Oh, that's the wrong... Wait, I thought you were insinuating that Big Bird and Kermit were rivals, which I don't like that world.
Oh, no, yeah, but that would be the fascinating episode To see them, you know, maybe now I'm picturing them playing chicken like in cars like in rebel without a cause Wow Then he can't get out of the car because he's stuck because he's the head is stuck in there in the sun This is a terrible and then and Miss Piggy is doing the is dropping the you know doing the the You know, that is as good of a place as any to go from that deranged imagination into what we... Listen, we talk about a lot of things on this show.
She has a nice thing tied around her neck anyway.
Like that's Ascot. - You know, that is as good of a place as any to go from that deranged imagination into what we, listen, we talk about a lot of things on this show.
There are things that come across current events that happen and Nick and I will see them and we know immediately that we're going to have to talk about it on the show.
We know that this was tailor-made for the Muckrake podcast, that it's something that we need to get into.
And today, this beautiful thing was dropped in our laps, and we would be remiss if we did not talk about what I think could potentially be the greatest university Place of higher learning on the face of the planet Earth, and that is the University of Austin.
And before we get into this, Nick, can you give us your initial reaction to when you heard about the University of Austin, which we will define for anybody who, again, if you're not online, you don't see this, you haven't heard about this yet, congratulations, because we're about to blow your hair back.
Yeah, I think my, it was all caps, and it was Austin, of all places, Austin, Texas, where UT Austin is, you know, the only, it's the bastion of liberal enclave, you know, in Texas.
It's only a couple places in this huge state, and that's the big one.
I can't believe that's where they decided to put this place.
You know, I've been to Austin now a couple times.
One time for a book festival, another time for South by Southwest.
Yep.
And I gotta tell you, I was not cool enough for Austin.
Wait, when did you go for South by Southwest?
What year?
A few years ago.
Oh, I was there in 95.
Oh, watch out everybody!
Check out the original But you know what?
It was already starting a little bit of the corporatization of it, a little bit, but it had a little taste of what it used to be.
And that's, and by the way, that's why it's Austin.
And that's what we need to talk about is what this is.
So for those who are not online enough to have seen this already, Barry Weiss, who—I struggle how to talk about Barry Weiss, but Barry Weiss is a former New York Times contributor.
And Barry Weiss's entire career is based on saying that the academy and higher education is not fair, it mistreats people, that, you know, there's a quote-unquote wokeness that is actually discriminatory.
She is a perpetual victim.
This is a person who, by the way, tried to get herself fired from the New York Times so she could reap the benefits of being a victim.
And the New York Times is just like, that's what we pay you for.
All of this.
Like, we pay you to come out and say that you are silenced and that there's an outrage.
Eventually, she quit.
She opened her own substack, which just is one post after another about this.
She has now organized what they are calling a university called the University of Austin, which, let's see what their principles are, Nick.
Their principles are unfettered pursuit of truth, freedom of inquiry, freedom of conscience, and civil discourse.
None!
None of it!
It sounds awesome though, it really does.
- And intellectually.
- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. - And politically.
Now, do you believe any of that for even a moment?
- None, none of it.
- None! - It sounds awesome, though.
It really does, well written.
- No, we don't.
It does, it's, it's, It's high-quality bullshit, is what I will say.
And they have obviously went around and they've looked at all of these websites for what universities look like.
Oh, by the way, quick disclaimer, they are not accredited, nor do they offer any degrees.
They will take your money, though, for the record.
Like, they will go ahead and take your money.
Their outline of what they're doing, first of all, They're establishing a summer program where a bunch of college students will come to Austin and basically be indoctrinated.
In 2022, next year, they're going to launch a graduate program in entrepreneurship and leadership, which we'll get to why that's important in a second.
In 2023, they're going to launch a politics and applied history and education and public service.
And in 2024, and tell me if this makes sense to you, Nick, that's when they're going to get around to an undergraduate program.
Oh, well, it takes time, Jared.
No, that's backwards.
That's all ass backwards.
Oh, OK.
That's an insane thing.
But basically, this is going to be an anti-woke, pro-libertarian, pro-crypto, undoubtedly, and pro-exploitation university.
That's what this is going to be.
Wait, you missed one of the great summer courses in 2022.
It's called The Forbidden Courses.
And would you like to hear what that's about?
Absolutely.
Our Forbidden Courses Summer Program invites top students from other universities to join us for a spirited discussion about the most provocative questions that often lead to censorship or self-censorship in many universities.
Trans rights.
Well, Jared, how many safe spaces did you have to walk across before you got back to your house from the campus?
I'm curious.
I have to tell you, as somebody who works at a state school in the state of Georgia, there aren't a whole lot of safe spaces.
I'll just say that.
The idea that the American University is actually that woke is absolute bullshit.
It's so stupid.
Well, I can remember, like, listening to Republicans and conservative people be really triggered by the notion of safe spaces.
How dare these, you know, you have to provide this for these people who are clearly so, you know, mentally unwell, they can't handle, you know, being abused or being racially profiled.
Like, it really is fascinating to see how it, with all the strong talk of like masculinity, you hear from some of these people, how upset they do get when there is any notion of sensitivity to anybody else.
It's, and by the way, these are people who are upset about Big Bird.
Yes.
Big Bird.
They're upset about Big Bird saying that your kid should get vaccinated.
They're upset about Mr. Potato Head.
They're upset about Dr. Seuss.
Yeah.
That's the depth.
That's the quality of reasoning we're dealing with here.
And these are people, and the entire purpose of this, and they're going to have such luminaries on their faculty, such as Andrew Sullivan, who, of course, is just a sort of all over the place, kind of awful writer at this point, who has made money off of being a person who questions whether or not trans people deserve rights and whether or not they should be recognized based upon, you know, the sex that they identify with.
This is going to be a place where you go, where you question trans people, where you go and you question mass democracy, where you go and you question even the sovereignty of the state, because these people are looking because they're in Austin.
The reason they're in Austin is because Austin is becoming a hotbed of tech people.
They have a ton of incredibly wealthy tech people who don't want to be taxed, who don't want laws to do anything but provide for them, and they look at the world and they say, how do we get democracy out of the way?
How do we get individuals out of the way?
That way we can go ahead and accumulate as much money as possible in order to make our utopic vision possible.
And that entire thing is what this university is going to be about.
They're trying to court Elon Musk.
They've got a ton of tech billionaires behind this thing, and the entire purpose is to have people come from around the country in order to take these courses about libertarianism, anti-trans ideology, and anti-democratic ideology.
That's what this is.
Well, I would be remiss if we didn't discuss, like, this mic drop of a post that they wrote to announce this whole thing.
Because in it, when you read about it, it references specific professors who are going to be coming and teaching at this university.
So what they're going to become is a magnet for all these professors that have been fired for, you know, quote-unquote being canceled or, you know, having their First Amendments abused.
Can I ask you a quick question on that front so we can unwind a little bit of the idea behind this?
Yeah.
What happens in America when you are cancelled or when you are let go of a job for stating a political idea?
Do you just go away?
Does no one ever hear from you anymore?
Or do you appear that night on Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity?
You appear on those shows and more talking about how you are silenced.
It's amazing how you can hear all this silenced talk.
It's almost like that that becomes a demographic consumer notation, right?
Right.
Oh, these people don't want you to hear him.
They don't want you to read his book.
Well, you should read his book.
You should listen to him.
He should get the job.
At this point, what is happening?
And before we get into this, because it is a mind-blowing thing that is written here, They are creating a parallel structure where all of a sudden you can now have, you know, academic rigor, quote-unquote, which isn't real, to go ahead and push the policies that they want, but also to say, look at these victimized people who are just making tons of money.
It's a grift all the way down.
Well here I wanted this you know there's two people that they mentioned there's a bunch of the two guys I just kind of decided let's just stroll through Google and look at what was what the gripe is and what was so wrong with what they did so this one guy is Dorian Abbott who you know by all accounts is a leading expert in his field of you know interplanetary study and solar systems and climate but he was disinvited from MIT
For giving a speech of which wasn't going to talk about politics at all, but because he had said, here's the thing, and I'll even do the quote, he's talking about programs like affirmative action and diversity programs, which the red flag needs to be in this day and age, like you need to be pretty careful of what you say and how you say it, no matter what you do.
And I don't care.
If you don't like that, then tough titties.
This is where we live in.
Like, for instance, I was going to do a joke about someone's hair on the basketball thing.
I sent it around and I didn't get the best response from it.
I completely cut it.
It was never going to get anywhere near it because there was a whiff of a possible wouldn't go over well.
Yes.
Some people really do think it's the apocalypse, that they can't just say whatever they want at any given moment.
They truly do.
And by the way, for the record on that front, most of them are white, cis, hetero men who have never had to think for a moment about what they say before they say it.
Now all of a sudden it's happening.
Oh my god, the sky is falling.
I mean, it's the worst possible thing that could ever happen.
Oh yes.
So this man, you just described Dr. Abbott as well, said something in two parts.
One part I think is fine and the other part is the problem.
So he says that such programs like Affirmative Action and diversity programs treat people as members of a group rather than as individuals.
That's okay.
First of all, and I know where this is going because I know this guy.
And I know where all of it is happening.
I want to go ahead and I want to put just a little asterisk next to that before you move to the next part because we're going to get back to that.
But let's go ahead and let's complete the circuit.
Oh, okay.
The asterisk is going to be now, and then you're going to actually explain the asterisk after I'm done.
We'll bring it back around.
Okay.
So he says those programs treat, quote, people as members of a group rather than as individuals, comma, repeating the mistake that made possible the atrocities of the 20th century, end quote.
Now he's trying to say, and at first glance even it's problematic, that affirmative action could make possible what the Nazis did in World War II.
It's basically what he's equating.
And I don't think I'm stretching that.
That's what he's saying.
Yes, that is almost verbatim what he has said on multiple occasions.
And so, okay, this would destroy your career, right?
You know, this would be all hell, firestorm, fire, rainstorm, whatever.
No, he was just simply disinvited from speaking at MIT.
But guess what happened that day?
He gets a call from, you know, this really shitty school, like, totally lowbrow community college.
It's called, oh yeah, Princeton.
Princeton invites him right away.
And so does, Stanford wanted to, but some other guy then quits because they wouldn't bring him over there.
This guy is not, you know, this is like the Kavanaugh thing.
Ugh, they ruined Kavanaugh's life by having him go in front of the Senate for his confirmation.
What the fuck?
The guy's got a beautiful house, beautiful family, he's a fucking Supreme Court justice for life.
What's his life?
What's wrong with his life, you know?
So what?
He had an hour that was tough.
This is the same thing here.
And this is the headliner that they're bringing in to teach at the school.
Well, and to go ahead and put this into perspective, and again, you know, there's a lot of stuff that we need to talk about higher education, and particularly in the moment, because this is like one of the main targets of the right in order to try and control reality and change culture.
I want to tell you something.
Not everybody who is in the academy is a raging liberal or leftist.
It's an entire spectrum, okay?
So what he talked about here, he was being ignorant.
And one of the reasons why there has been backlash is because nothing that he says, and I'll go ahead and I'll bring in Andrew Sullivan on this too, nothing that they say has actual academic rigor behind it.
So like Andrew Sullivan all the time does this thing where he's like, listen, The left doesn't want to talk about the fact that more black people are arrested for crimes, or that they don't do so well on intelligence tests, or whatever.
And the idea that he then says is, nobody wants to talk about biological inferiority.
Well, that's racial science, first and foremost, right?
I have to tell you, the experts, and this is why this isn't welcome, and why they have to go make their own college with fake degrees and fake experts, the experts look at and they say, no, you've got that entirely backwards.
The reason why more black people are arrested for crimes is not because that they are inferior.
It's because there is inherent white supremacy baked into the system from the very beginning.
We still have racist laws, racist institutions, racist traditions, and racist thoughts.
And that's not like raging liberals and raging leftists.
Like, we're talking about people across the political spectrum who are experts who understand that.
When that guy starts talking about affirmative action equals the Holocaust, none of that has anything to do with his specialty.
He's just running off at the mouth trying to push a political opinion that has no rigor behind it.
They are now going to take that bullshit And then say, look at this guy.
He's credentialed.
He has these publications and these other things.
That obviously makes sure that this is good science or this is good philosophy.
They are creating a by-structure in order to push these illiberal ideas that are actually really, really hurtful in the long run.
Well said.
I'm glad that you're here to do that for me.
Especially because the other guy I want to talk about, because they mentioned a few people, and I made a mistake.
He's not going to be teaching there.
They're just using him as an example of why they have to create this university.
Oh, he'll teach there.
Do not get it wrong.
He'll teach there.
And by the way, they will have so much more money to offer than a lot of academic departments around the country.
Because those places and a reminder that the labor force has been restricted within the academy.
They have made sure that there's a lot of us so they don't have to pay us anything and they can just kick our asses out at the drop of a hat.
They're going to have tech billionaires bankrolling this thing to create a new generation of quote unquote academics because they're not actually academics.
So they're going to bring in tons of people who want to go and not be afraid of being quote unquote canceled, which would be the best thing to happen in their career.
And for the record, there's plenty of evidence of cancel people being canceled from on the left.
As well, and we've seen in the past, you know, not getting tenure because of some, you know, the 1619 Project.
Sure.
We're seeing in Florida, we didn't even mention this last time, but in Florida where they're not being allowed to be expert witnesses in, what were the cases that you said?
It's a voting rights case.
Yeah, right.
It is literally, and I cannot emphasize this enough, the Academy is not left-leaning.
The Academy is not liberal.
It is a for-profit infrastructure at this point.
And not just that, Since it started, this is about creating a professional managerial class that doesn't question capitalism, that doesn't question the status quo.
In fact, they go ahead and they reinforce the status quo.
That's the purpose of the academy in a lot of ways.
And the idea that this is a bastion for liberalism People think that because of the 1960s and 1970s.
That's it.
They think it because there was like a student movement at one point.
That's not the case.
That's not what's happening.
This is a right, or center right, if you really want to, you know, talk about it.
It's more center right for profit institution.
Okay.
I thought you were starting to describe.
We can't.
He that won't be named who is describing the entire country that way.
And you've actually said that too.
But we'll get into that in a minute because we still need to talk about the second guy they mentioned.
Because there's obviously a reason why they mentioned certain people and in what order they're listening to them.
And so it's time to look at this because, again, this does happen.
People get canceled maybe fairly unfairly.
And there's all sorts of issues you'll see on campuses.
So it's worth like, let's look at why And who these people are?
Let's figure out, okay, was this guy really, was it a problem?
And so Peter Boghossian is another person that they specifically, you know, mentioned.
And this guy's fascinating because he's some guy at Portland State who, you know, I think he's one of those contrarians.
He wants to bring people in just to kind of have a different point of view, which is, isn't that what college is supposed to be like, Jared?
You're supposed to just be able to have different points of view, come in and talk and have a real robust discussion.
Well, yeah, but also, if it's going to be in the Academy, it needs to have facts and empirical evidence to back it up.
That's the problem.
When you start inviting monsters like this, when you invite a Richard Spencer to come in, who, that was the big thing for the longest time, right?
Like, Richard Spencer should be allowed to go and talk at colleges.
No, he goes and he pushes, like, racialist nonsense and mythology and propaganda.
The problem has always been that the Academy needs to actually be based on evidence and reason.
When you start getting these assholes coming in and just spouting off propaganda for the purposes of power and control, that's where the issue happens.
And it actually, if you want to hear it from me, and listen...
I'm 40 years old.
I'm a man.
I'm 40.
And I'll tell you this, like, I understand that there's a lot of paranoia about generations.
The kids are changing and they're so whatever.
Their reactions to bringing these people on campuses, it's a lot like the immune system of a body reacting to a foreign intruder and saying, they don't belong here.
They aren't part of the academy.
They're not part of logic and reason.
This is an enemy who's coming in to try and poison.
That's what this is all about.
Well, let's describe the poison, because it's really fascinating.
This guy is amazing.
I love him already.
He'd bring in flat earthers to talk.
Yeah.
You know, and that's just like a waste of time and like resources and money, like in my mind.
Like, that's just not even being provocative.
That's just being, you know, right?
It's just a waste of time.
climate change skeptics.
Again, we have to ask, this is like Tucker Carlson now, we have to ask these questions.
Occupy Wall Street movement, hey, there was something there for everybody.
Can I say real fast about the climate change skeptics?
There is a historical precedent for this university being created, which is, as the energy companies and the oil companies realized that climate change was real and happening and that they caused it, instead of actually doing something about it, they started buying off academics.
They started paying scientists in order to go out and that way you know it was like 98% of the scientific population was in consensus and then you had a couple of outliers who are making six figures or million dollars from these energy companies.
That's what's happening here.
They're creating a shadow infrastructure to push down into quote-unquote consensus in the same way that those people, the people who came to talk about climate change denial, were doing then.
Yes, and in an effort to, quote unquote, expose some sort of shadow peer review academia problem that clearly has to exist because, you know, it makes sense that it does to him.
For anybody who has ever submitted an academic article and the process you have to go through, if you think that the peer review process at any point is a condensed conspiracy, Like, ask reader number two who can never agree with anything that you talk about.
Like, that is such an absolute bullshit, nonsensical explanation.
Well, so here's what he did.
In order to expose what he felt was some sort of flaws in the peer review process in academia... Oh, yeah, this is great.
He decided to publish a series of hoax papers.
So he would just make shit up, and again, talking about a waste of time, these are important things, important papers, serious-minded people, it takes a long time to get reviewed, and to gum up the works by putting shit in there.
And I'm going to tell you, because this is funny, one of the things he published was one that argued, quote, that penises were products of the human mind and are responsible for climate change.
So he wrote a whole, in order to be peer reviewed, a whole argument paper about penises and how they were, you know, products of the human mind, as if maybe they don't even, I don't even know, they're controlled by the mind?
And by the way, that is, uh, that's not necessarily the cherry on top.
The cherry on top is all of these articles.
were signed under fake names.
Oh, really?
Wow.
So, obviously, he gets dinged by the Institutional Review Board for, quote, research misconduct.
These are the people that they're citing for egregious abuse and, you know, the First Amendment violations of their rights.
Like, this is the baseline we're dealing with here.
So, that's when you have to really Understand what this school is and where they are coming from because this has nothing to do with anybody who was unfairly treated or their First Amendment rights were abused for any reason at all.
These are unserious people who have no desire to raise the academic standards and the discourse.
They're just here to shitpost.
Yeah, no, they're trolls.
Shitpost University.
That's what they should call it.
I mean, listen, if they did it, it wouldn't be the worst thing possible.
Like, I think they would probably have more people attending if they just called it that, for sure.
Yeah, and if you don't know what shitposting is, it's basically that, just to troll, like to write up bullshit just to make it, get people upset about it.
My son loves shitposting, by the way.
Well, and I'll tell you, like, it's not like, it's not like he was out there, like, dragging in these big giant journals.
Like, he was sending this to places that, like, weren't that, like, they didn't really go through the process all that much.
He basically did it to try and score points for social media and to go to these conferences and talk to these people and eventually work for places like the University of Austin.
I can't believe they call themselves a university.
It makes me feel so gross.
But that was the entire point of all of this.
is to go ahead and be contrarian assholes.
And what they're doing, and I want to go ahead and put a big shiny bow on this, what they're doing is that they are trying to undermine actual academics, they're trying to undermine actual higher education, and they're doing it in order to sway those institutions into the service of the wealthy and the powerful.
So that they can go ahead and that they can act unobstructed.
They can gain as much power and wealth.
And by the way, if you go through these people, they're all wealthy.
Right.
They're all from places of privilege.
All of them.
So you can't overlook it because there's obviously a reason why they want to do this.
And you're saying maybe move the goalposts slowly and surely to the right.
But they're doing it to make fucking money.
Right.
This is what they're going to do.
This is going to be a private university.
They're going to pay a lot of money for tuition.
That's what they're doing this for.
You know, huge endowments, whatever.
It's all about money is what it sounds like to me.
Which is, by the way, capitalism.
So it's almost funny because in my mind, if capitalism is truly like the dominant force on campuses, which it is, it feels to me like when you're deciding what you want to study and what area you want to go into, and this happens to most people, they're dictated by where they can make the most money, right?
That's sort of what would happen, which is really unfortunate that that's what would No, it absolutely is.
And that's what it's become.
It has become glorified job training.
Right, Jared?
That's probably what every calculation goes for most college students.
No, it absolutely is.
And that's what it's become is it has become glorified job training.
And this is part of the problem at this point is that because the economy has turned towards the information society, because of deindustrialization, which we talk about all the time, where neoliberalism took over in the 1980s and 1990s, they pushed out all these manufacturing jobs where neoliberalism took over in the 1980s and 1990s, they pushed out all these manufacturing jobs and they said, everybody will Everybody will now be middle class.
Everybody now has to go to colleges.
So the universities and colleges were like, fantastic!
We're going to charge an arm and a leg.
We're gonna make everybody go into debt.
And so suddenly college became about getting a job and having an opportunity by paying all that money and going into the debt by joining the middle class.
The people who are going to the University of Austin, that's not what they're doing.
They're going there to either become influencers, writers like Barry Weiss, or they're going to go and work for disruptive tech firms and or hedge fund operators.
Like, this is about a different class of professional managerial class.
I mean, with their raging against safe spaces and PC whatever, it's just something they all want to go there to be raging assholes.
Raging asshole university.
I want to be as mean and rude and racially insensitive to as many people as possible.
Where can I go and do that for four years?
Awesome, show me the way.
Have you ever studied Plato at all?
Nah, no.
So, good.
That's great.
So, Plato was a complete asshole.
Complete asshole.
And all of these people always go back to the idea of platonic logic, right?
And I have to tell you, Plato basically would say that a fascist society is the absolute best way and that there's an elite who should control society and there are people who deserve to be great and others who deserve to follow and be exploited.
They always get back to that.
And the problem is that the people who are going to go to this fraud charade of a university, they want to get in a room and they want to talk about natural rights of hierarchy.
They want to go in and talk about how some people should be exploited and others are leaders.
They shouldn't be encumbered by this.
Meanwhile, if you go into a state school and you have conversations like that, you're going to walk out with a bunch of people telling you to go to fuck yourself.
Because they're not putting up with that anymore.
Because things have changed to the point where you cannot engage in homophobic, racist, patriarchal, discriminatory things.
In modern workplaces, which is where you're learning to go and fit in and to be these professional managers, you can't do it.
But over in these tech corners, over in these libertarian corners, they want their safe space.
That's what this is.
It is their own academic safe space and that's what it boils down to.
Yeah, that's the irony.
And again, I know people might get upset we've swung too far the other way and it's oppressive and hard to figure out and pronouns and whatever but it's like the bottom line for me, what I've gotten to the point is it's like we're just trying to figure out how to be less assholes to each other.
That's what it's rooted in.
I just don't want to be an asshole and if I say something that's going to be upsetting to you, then I'll be an asshole.
I don't want to be an asshole.
No!
And it would make things easier for people and you'd be better at social media and you'd be better as an influencer if you're not perceived as an asshole.
By the way, although maybe that's debatable because people like Tucker Carlson are able to increase the size of their audience by the asshole meter growing into the red.
But I think it's still there's a limit to that and I feel like what is so wrong with wanting to be less of an asshole?
Maybe that's going to be the title of this pod, I guess.
I don't know if that might trip a couple of triggers in the whole system, but I think that that's a generally good philosophy.
I mean, really, a lot of what we need to do at this point is build back empirical evidence, but also solidarity and kindness.
We're being pitted in a war against each other.
They're profiteers.
Who we're talking about here, look at this entire thing, they're like, here's how we can make money, here's how we can influence legislation and the economy, and we'll get rich while we're doing it.
And we'll get to be assholes and basically become, you know, uncancellable, which is bullshit anyway.
It's a total scam.
Just a really disgusting sham.
All right, everybody, we're going to come back, as always, on Friday with our Weekender Edition, if you want access to that, and if you want to support the podcast, because we need it.
These assholes have billionaires out there who are funding them.
We rely on you.
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To get access to that Weekender episode and support the pod, go over to patreon.com slash monkrakepodcast.
So we'll be back on Friday.
If you need us before then, you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me?