Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss Senator Sinema's speech and how it's emblematic of what's dysfunctional with the Democratic Party. Then they welcome Jonathan M. Katz on to the show to discuss his latest book "Gangsters Of Capitalism" and one man's remarkable story of being at the center of America's imperialism across the globe over and over again.
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But what is the legislative filibuster other than a tool that requires new federal policy to be broadly supported by senators representing a broader cross-section of Americans?
A guardrail, inevitably viewed as an obstacle by whoever holds the Senate majority, but which in reality ensures that millions of Americans represented by the minority party have a voice in the process.
Hey everybody, welcome to the Muckrake Podcast.
I'm Jared D. H. Saxton.
I'm here, as always, with Nick Halseman.
We've got a treat today.
We've got author Jonathan M. Katz, whose new book, Gangsters of Capitalism, Smedley, Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America's Empire.
He's going to come by, talk about his new book.
We're going to get in the weeds on this stuff.
Before we do, though, Nick, we talked about this last week.
We kind of knew where this thing was going.
You know, it kind of played out exactly as we expected it would.
Joe Biden's agenda for the Voting Rights Act, trying to somehow or another fight back against the Republican push to disenfranchise people of color and Americans.
Schumer had a plan.
It was harebrained and, you know, just crazy enough that it just might work.
We knew the Joe Manchin or Kirsten Sinema was going to stand up and basically kill this thing in the water.
That is what has happened.
It feels bad.
It's not good.
There's a lot to say about it, but what's your initial reaction here?
Did it feel so bad to Kyrsten Sinema that she was like on the verge of tears speaking to the Senate the other night?
I'm still troubled and can't figure that out what was happening there, but did you sense that when she was saying her speech that she was on the verge of crying?
If you think that I hate myself enough to subject myself to watching videos of Kyrsten Sinema speaking, You don't know me very well.
Forgive me, forgive me.
I thought, you know, like every people who had a rubber neck in an accident, they all watch this.
Listen, I got to be honest with you.
These speeches don't matter.
These speeches aren't real.
They're not heartfelt.
They're PR performances.
They are simply there to misinform you and lead you away from what's actually happening, which is that Kyrsten Sinema and Joseph Manchin and other Democrats and other Republicans who oppose this stuff are bought and sold by the wealthiest special interest in the United States of America.
Everything else is just whipped cream on top of shit.
That's all it is.
Well, speaking of misinformation, I'm going to kind of throw out a sentence from her speech because I thought that was really interesting.
Because remember this whole thing is centered about the filibuster and how important historically this is for like the minority, you know, people in the minority to be able to have a voice and represent people.
You know, we have to remember that the senators, the Republican senators, even when they've had control of the Senate, Represent at most 43, 44% of the country.
And that was on purpose.
That was how it was set up.
But here's one thing she said that I had to write down and transcribe, you know, in honor to Kimmer, who's the transcription of our stuff.
Did you sit down and listen to Kirstensen's bullshit and type it out?
I did.
At least this part.
Wow!
I did.
Are you ready?
It's good stuff.
Here we go.
She said, you know, she's concerned, by the way, Jared.
She really is just concerned.
It's incredible.
If we could somehow, Nick, if we could harness all of the concern and just somehow or another power cities with it, I think we might just power our way out of this problem.
Yeah, it's like Monsters, Inc.
We just need to be able to use that.
Bring it together.
All that concern.
If you could, listen, I think the concerns could do it, but if you could get the thoughts And the prayers?
Oh, you know, all we would need is Collins from Maine.
Her concern alone would power the entire United States.
It would be incredible!
Basically, we would solve power scarcity in our times.
That would be incredible.
So she's concerned.
Okay, good.
A white supremacy.
She's describing the filibuster, quote, a tool that requires new federal policy to be broadly supported by senators, representing a broader cross-section of Americans, a guardrail, inevitably viewed as an obstacle to whoever holds the Senate majority, but which inevitably viewed as an obstacle to whoever holds the Senate majority, but which in reality ensures that millions of Americans represented by the minority party have a voice That's what she describes it.
That's the way it's a tool that she describes and that represents the minority because they're the downtrodden and the people who are going to get walked over.
Now, is she lying?
No.
Okay.
OK.
And she's not.
But I want to point something out that the word minority is doing a lot of work because we've been taught that the minority in this is how the United States of America was set up, how our halls of power was set up, how the government was set up, how everything was set up.
We were told in our education that this was about making sure that there wasn't like we didn't run over vulnerable populations, right?
Like we didn't hurt people who could be overwhelmed.
But in truth, the minority that was to be protected was the wealthiest individuals, particularly white Wealthy people.
In this case, what Kirsten Sinema is saying without saying it, and I would love to know, because here's the thing I haven't figured out about her, because she's terrible at this.
She's really, really bad at the game of politics.
I would love to know if she understands this.
The minority that she is speaking of are corporate CEOs.
It's a lobbyist for the most powerful special interest in the United States.
That's the minority that she is talking about protecting.
Here's the thing, because she also says, I fully support the notion of protecting, you know, the rights and understand the voting rights, understand what states have done in the past to disenfranchise people.
She like throws all that stuff out there for people.
But then she somehow insists that the only way they can possibly do that is by getting the 60 votes.
That it has to be a voting process like we would, you know, pass this law and not by the filibuster.
What?
Which couldn't happen.
Couldn't happen.
Yeah.
I mean, we couldn't even get 60 votes when they had 60 votes for, like, for Obamacare.
Like, you know... Wouldn't it be interesting, Nick?
And tell me if this... Tell me if this helps.
Tell me if this... Tell me how this checks out.
Tell me how this falls upon your ears.
Are you ready?
My glasses are off.
Tell me if this... Because maybe I'm talking crazy.
Maybe I'm taking crazy pills here, Nick.
Maybe I'm talking straight bullshit, but do you think that there is any possibility That the same people who are lobbying and giving money to people like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, these CEOs, these libertarian millionaires and billionaires, these companies who are interested in never ever having anything pass through the halls of power that would actually help you or me or regular Americans.
Would you think that there's any possibility that those are the same people in the same organizations that are paying think tanks and institutes to cook up anti-democratic policies and laws and also to, I don't know, get together and talk about how to possibly overthrow elections and sort of undermine democracy.
Does that sound crazy to you?
Well, all right, let's do a little crossfire, a little counterpoint.
Love it.
Because here's the thing.
I get the corporate interest and how nefarious that can be as it relates to the way we govern this country.
I'm telling you, by the way, that this is actually what is happening.
I hope people have figured out that this was a bit.
But yes, that's what is happening.
But I'm not so sure I follow the rationale behind, like, corporate elite America being so concerned about the Voting Rights Act specifically, honestly.
I feel like they make money independent of whether or not the elections, you know, they can protect the elections.
Oh, they do make money independent of the elections, but they can make a whole hell of a lot more money.
So one of the things that's been coming out recently about January 6th is that all of the strategies and all of the ideas have been paid for by these people.
They have been meeting to take advantage of these opportunities.
It's not that they love Trump.
It's not, you know, that they're best friends with Trump.
It's not that they're part of the cult of Trump.
They enjoyed the fact that Trump dismantled the government.
They enjoyed the fact that Trump appointed people.
The Heritage Foundation told him to appoint that would sell off our natural resources and basically dismantle, you know, all public services imaginable.
They love that.
But they also want to make sure that they're able to take control of the government a little bit more.
That you're not going to get people in there who are able to rock the boat and somehow or another I don't know, raise taxes, pass regulations, or do things.
It is taking advantage of a window that Trump and the Republicans have opened for them, if that makes sense.
You're right.
I guess I was a bit half-baked on the idea, because you're right, even just regulations alone, knowing that the Republican Party would dismantle as many as possible, which then directly leads to a lot more revenue on that side.
Okay, I guess I can follow that.
And that there is that inherent notion of, you know, it's funny that the party that has the reputation of being, you know, the people's champion, the Democrats in theory, couldn't, you know, and they tried to somehow also been on that side of corporate America too, or they couldn't win that PR war.
Because listen, it's not like the Democrats have been awesome at keeping regulations in place and protecting the environment either.
But okay, so I can see that and that's a real problem.
And people like Sinema, here's the problem.
We've had in the past them rail against the filibuster and recognize how it's a white supremacist thing.
If you trace the history of it, it's not this hallowed tradition in the Senate that you're supposed to be protecting something.
Are you telling me the golden eagle of liberty didn't fly down with the plan for the filibuster?
No.
Just a beautiful golden eagle shined by the Philadelphia Liberty Hall.
All that straight bullshit.
You're telling me that this wasn't cooked into the pie at the very beginning?
That's weird.
With a Lee Greenwood in the background.
No.
No.
Lee Greenwood.
We haven't mentioned him in a while.
I felt like we had to drop it in there.
Yeah, we got to get Lee in there every now and then.
Yeah.
But, you know, I kind of was gonna say, but yeah, that is the the Phil the history of the filibuster is so wrought with, you know, the need to get in the way of actual voting rights anyway.
And equal rights for everybody.
That's why it's just so galling that they're using this that this notion is grand notion of like protecting it.
Now, the biggest problem I have is that, OK, someday the Democrats are going to be in the minority and then they're going to need the filibuster.
Right.
That's the big overwhelming caution about all this stuff.
Well, here's the thing.
We know that the Republicans would do away with the filibuster in a minute.
As soon as they have a chance when they want to do it, right?
Like that's sort of what I would say they do.
Now, the only protection we have against that is that they're such ineffectual idiots that even when they have control of all three branches of the government, they can't even, they can't get shit done anyway, right?
Like that's the craziest thing is all they got done under Trump would be the tax cuts.
It's all they could figure out.
I think that's shifting.
I actually, so here again, I hate to be the wet blanket, man.
I hate to be this person.
But one of the reasons they weren't able to get a lot of that done is because the Republican Party before Trump was a libertarian-focused group, right?
It was your Paul Ryans, who basically wanted to come in and carry out austerity.
Meanwhile, all the Patriot Caucus Tea Party people were just wild-eyed freaks.
You know what I mean?
Basically, the ancestors at this point of Marjorie Taylor Greene and her gaggle of assholes.
They were in the middle of a civil war.
That's why John Boehner couldn't remain speaker.
That's why Paul Ryan couldn't remain speaker.
It's because they were at odds about what they were actually doing.
You had all the serious Republicans who were like, no, get rid of all taxes and all regulations whatsoever.
And then other people were coming in.
They're like, what about the mole children?
And that is part of the radicalization, and to be frank, when they are able to gain some sort of a majority at this point, you're going to have a bunch of people who are basically on the same page, which again, and this is important, is a healthy dose of bullshit of things like CRT and other things, but it's also a bunch of things that are cooked up by the Heritage Foundation and all of these think tanks who go ahead and say this is what's going on.
And I want to talk really, really quickly, I don't know if you've seen this, the founder of the Oath Keepers was just arrested for sedition on January 6th.
He is probably going to jail because the Oath Keepers tried to overthrow the government of the United States of America and were idiots about it and basically were like, hey, we have weapons, we're ready for this, right?
They tried to overthrow the government.
Like, not well, but they did.
Do you know who's not going to jail?
Do you know who isn't even being scrutinized except for in sources and articles that only people who pay way too much close attention to this pay attention to?
The corporations and the think tanks who put all this together, who came up with the legalese, who pulled the strings behind all these scenes.
Meanwhile, we're talking about Kirsten Sinema.
Who is just a figurehead at this point.
Somebody who can stand up and draw the ire, and she loves it.
She loves being that person, and it suits her, and it helps her politically and economically.
She's soaking up all this money.
Meanwhile, Nick, we're sitting here on Martin Luther King Jr.
Day of 2022.
Voting rights right now have completely stalled.
Biden's response to it was to say, we'll try again.
On top of that, COVID is an absolute mess right now.
And I'm telling you that I don't know how liberal democracy handles this.
I don't know how America in the position it's in handles this.
We've got people going into stores.
They can't find things because, again, the supply chain has been absolutely screwed.
Corporations have taken advantage of the moment to raise up inflation.
And here's the thing.
The best the Democrats have are to say, look at Kyrsten Sinema.
We wish we could reason with her.
Look at Joe Manchin.
We wish we could reason with her if they are going to survive.
And I mean this and I that we do remember we talked about this when Biden got elected.
We said we're not going to be a partisan show.
We're not going to stand up in front of this thing and pretend that things aren't.
We're not going to cheerlead.
We're going to call it like it is.
Biden has lost the script at this point.
There's no message out there.
If the Democrats are going to stave off a incredibly well-funded, well-orchestrated, neo-fascistic party that is backed by all these people that we're talking about, They have to give an explanation for what in the hell is going on that's better than Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin have completely, you know, undercut everything.
There's got to be something.
And we know what the problem is.
We know what the solution is.
They can't say it.
They just can't possibly even try and come out and say it.
Yeah, Joe Biden is weak, and he's older, and all the things that are fraught with being older in terms of being an orator that he really struggles with, and he's already coming in with a bit of a disadvantage.
And so Kamala Harris is... Nick, he told us he was the one guy who could fix this.
Yeah, well, of course.
I mean, yeah, of course.
We're not supposed to listen to anything they actually say during the campaign, are we?
I know, but that was...
That's the problem here.
That was his actual promise to the American people.
He said to the American people that we are facing, uh, what's the line?
It's a crisis of the American soul.
Yeah.
Right.
And he said, I'm the person who can reach across the aisle, bring people across.
He can't.
That's not, that's not where we are right now.
There has to be a shift or a change in how we talk about this.
And the Democrats are just, I'm sorry, they're standing around on MLK Day being like, well, Can't really hold a vote at this point.
Sorry.
Yeah, I mean, listen, what we need is someone that could, you know, remember, the whole idea of democracy is kind of like a state of mind.
We talk about this all the time.
So that's why orators and those people who can inspire are so important because they kind of make you forget about how ineffectual government really can be.
And listen, I want to defend a lot of them.
There's a lot of programs out there that benefit a lot of people across the landscape.
And that's why it is important to have government and it is important to have regulations and these things.
But, you know, Ronald Reagan wasn't exactly lying when the nine words, the most frightening words you're going to hear are, I'm from the government, I'm here, what can I do to help?
You know what I mean?
There is a notion of truth to that as well.
And so, as a result, they just kind of destroyed all these, the whole, the mindset we would require to keep democracy functioning properly is gone, right?
Everything's been pulled away.
When we see this, when we hear Jonathan Katz talk about it in his book, you know, you really start seeing how the sausage is made.
And you really start to realize, like, you know what, maybe, maybe this It hasn't been what we thought it was this whole time.
Certainly Trump pulled that away and let us see the scab underneath.
It's not even a scab, it's a festering wound.
Yeah, and here's the thing, you know, when I was doing my research on Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, one of the things that really struck me in all of this, and I want to put my cards on the table, that's right now the only thing that's going to save this.
Which is somebody who is willing to come out.
And if you read FDR's speeches, particularly his addresses and his campaign speeches, He came out and he said, I have to tell you something, which is that the wealthy and the powerful have completely captured the country.
Completely captured the country.
And they're instilling anti-democratic trends in this country.
They've taken over the government.
They've taken over all ways of life.
And he would say to Americans, I know it and I know that you know it.
And guess what?
Everyone around America is like, yeah, that is what has happened.
Like it's very clear that that's what's occurred.
And he said, I'm going to go and I'm going to fight them.
And, you know, as we talk about with Katz and as I keep finding, like, the wealthy put together political action groups.
They tried to overthrow his presidency in a fascist coup.
And he weathered it.
You know what I mean?
Like, he was able to stand up and he was able to take this shit on.
And right now, to just say, I don't know, folks, we just don't have the votes, that doesn't do it.
Do you know what I mean?
That there's like, oh, you want me to go out and find you more people based on the fact that you haven't been able to do this?
Like, that doesn't work.
Like, that's not a cohesive message.
That's not a clarion call.
That's not a rallying cry.
That that doesn't do anything.
It's honest to God.
And I would be interested to see how you feel about it.
It feels like a National Malaise Part Deux.
Yeah.
Well, here's the contrast that I can offer up to you.
When Trump ran in 2015, he had a broad section of senators condemning him as this ridiculous person, right?
And within a year of him becoming president, all of a sudden, all of them, all of them were completely in line, ready to vote for whatever he told them to vote for.
Now, you can surmise how and why, what the circumstances were, and they were probably, some of them were pretty nefarious.
But, you know, that is not a bad example of at least, you know, like a strong leader coming in and, you know, leading the party that they're in charge of.
This is what Biden is not doing.
It can't do, it can't figure it out.
Yeah, where's the punch at Cinema or Mansion?
Right.
There's a fear, the honest to God fear, is if he says anything cross to them.
And this is what administrations do, and Democrats have been terrible about this forever.
If I say something to them, they'll leave.
Yeah.
I mean, Joe Manchin has an open invitation to join the Republican Party.
I assume Kyrsten Sinema would be more than welcome, although they might not put up with her shit.
Wait, do you want to elaborate on that or not?
Yeah, I don't know if the Republican Party would want Kirsten Sinema.
I don't even know if a Sinema family reunion would want Kirsten Sinema.
Are we talking like family values?
I'm talking about in general.
I'm talking about having somebody like this around.
I mean, I'm sure she would fit in with the Republican Congress, but as a Republican Senator, that's not what they do.
- Well, they actually, weirdly enough, the Republican Party stratifies what their personalities are.
Like, the absolute crazy assholes are in the House.
And the senators are the ones who have the closest ties with these people.
She sort of weirdly straddles that.
But the Democrats, particularly the Biden administration, are terrified of saying anything cross to either one of them or these other Democrats who are afraid of stepping out behind the filibuster.
They can't talk about neoliberalism.
They can't talk about corporate cash.
They can't talk about what's happening in the economy.
But they have to discover courage.
They have to discover boldness, because this ain't cutting it right now.
Right.
I mean, because I think your point is, the opposite, like, if it doesn't work, then you're still in the same place.
But at least you might have a chance.
You don't lose shit at that point.
Yeah.
And again, did Trump ever say anything bad about Ted Cruz?
You know, actually, I think Trump was pretty respectful of Ted Cruz.
Sure.
You know, I can't imagine that he ever would have accused his dad of killing Kennedy and his wife of being a dog.
Yeah.
How about Lindsey Graham?
Did they ever give out Lindsey Graham's cell phone number?
So here's the thing about this, and everything that you're saying here is exactly right, because it is psychological.
Politics is psychological.
So much of it has to do with which narrative is winning or which narrative has control, right?
If you make life hell for Manchin or Sinema beyond people being upset with them on Twitter or making memes or whatever, if you actually say, you know what, I don't know that there's room in the Democratic Party for you.
Matter of fact, I don't even know if you're officially going to be a Democrat in the next primary.
Like, you start pushing those things, you start making them lightning rods, that changes things.
That shifts things.
And you're exactly right.
At this point, you're going to end up in the same spot if it doesn't work.
And I don't know if you saw this.
Tom Friedman's out here floating a unity ticket in 2024 between Joe Biden and Liz Cheney.
And first of all, shut the fuck up, Tom Friedman.
Like, my God.
And the moment, like, let's say, for instance, that that were to happen, which it's not going to happen.
And if it does, I think we're done.
I think it shows... I'm not going to say that because I don't want to jinx it.
It might happen, but okay.
Yeah, so like if that happens, you think the Republican Party is just going to be like, yes, absolutely.
This is where we're... No!
She's going to be persona non grata.
These people have Beltway brain.
They've got worms in their heads at this point.
This shit is crazy.
Well, Cheney would switch parties.
The Democrats lined up to shake Dick Cheney's hand.
They lined up to shake Dick Cheney's hand.
They would.
They let everybody in.
But Jesus Christ.
Of all the people, that's like, no, I don't want to use a really horrible dictator example.
But Liz Cheney joining the Democratic Party would be, give me, I don't know.
The Democrats lined up to shake Dick Cheney's hand.
They lined up to shake Dick Cheney's hand.
You have to have principles.
You have to look at these war criminals and say, no, you.
You have to look at these people and say no!
Like, my god, I just, I wish somebody would discover a spine!
Alright everybody, we're gonna go talk with Jonathan M. Katz about his new book and we'll be right back.
Hey, everybody.
Welcome back.
I got to tell you, we have a real treat today.
We have Jonathan M. Katz, who is the author of Gangsters of Capitalism, Smedley Butler, the Marines and the Waking and Breaking of America's Empire.
I would go through your accolades, Jonathan, but I'll just go ahead and say that you are one of the most respected and best nonfiction writers out there.
Everybody should know who you are, read all of your work, and it's an absolute treat.
So thank you so much.
Thank you.
That's a great intro.
Could you just follow me around and do that everywhere I go?
I'll be your hype man and I'm more than happy to do it, particularly as I think you've written a really important book here.
And before we get into the substance of this, I was hoping that you could talk a little bit about the subject or the opening that you used to get into the subject, which is Smedley Butler, who is one of the, I think, one of the most amazing and underappreciated American figures ever.
I first came across him, like I think a lot of people in around 2003, as War is a Racket started being handed out, you know, on the student quads.
As we were talking about what was getting ready to happen in Iraq.
But could you could you talk a little bit about Smedley Butler and the project as a whole and how all this came together?
Yeah.
So Butler was a Marine and he was he lied about his age at 16 and joined the Marines during the war in Cuba against Spain.
And from there, he basically went to everywhere that the United States invaded and occupied from 1898 until the eve of the Second World War.
And then at the end of his life, the last 10 years, he became an anti-war, anti-imperialist activist who basically spent all his time trying to keep the United States from getting involved in another war, which ended up being World War II.
And also in his spare time, blew the whistle on a fascist plot to overthrow Franklin Roosevelt.
You know, just a couple of... I mean, there's more.
Just a small, just a small thing.
Well, I just want to say, I'm glad that you went ahead and broached this, because I've been talking to people, I'm writing this book myself, and I've been talking to people about the business plot.
And to tell people who have not heard about this particular circumstance around Franklin D. Roosevelt, And the fact that some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the United States of America tried to overthrow the presidency and install a fascist dictator.
Can you get into this?
Because it sounds so batshit crazy and made up, but unfortunately, it's none of those things.
Yeah.
And a lot of people thought it was batshit crazy and made up at the time, but it definitely had a lot behind it.
So basically, In 1933, the year that Franklin Roosevelt became president, a representative of a bond house, a stock brokerage basically on Wall Street, started trying to court Smedley Butler into overseeing this coup plot in which basically Butler would lead a column of like half a million World War One veterans
Armed with rifles by the Remington Arms Company into Washington, D.C., they would intimidate FDR into either resigning or delegating all his powers to a cabinet secretary who the voters would name.
And basically the idea was that in so doing, they would undo the New Deal, which, you know, had already been sort of ratified by the voters at the ballot box in 1932.
And, you know, wasn't going to be up for for reelection until 36.
And the businessmen, however many there were who were behind it, you know, were fairly convinced that it was going to be popular enough with the masses that they wouldn't be able to get rid of FDR and and the New Deal otherwise.
And, you know, they obviously so the reason we know about it is because Butler.
He went to Congress, blew the whistle, testified under oath, He enlisted the help of a newspaper reporter to investigate this sort of somewhat independently, although obviously I think they were kind of working together.
And, you know, long story short, you know, the the the congressional committee said that, you know, all of the pertinent statements that Butler had made were true.
You know, I can I can go into two reasons why I think, you know, there's A lot of circumstantial evidence around it that shows that this really happened.
It is hard to say.
It was behind it, like exactly how high up in the business world it went, if all of the people who Butler implicated in it were actually involved because Congress basically cut its investigation short.
But, you know, more or less, I think we can definitely say that Butler thought he was telling the truth.
He wasn't making this up.
And there was a lot of reason to think that he was telling the truth.
And there were other things that were happening in the world at that time that lend more credence to this as well.
Well, you know, Jonathan, as you're reading the book, you know, you kind of want to say, wait a minute, it's just not possible that there's this one person so deeply involved in so many of these different events that you describe that are major events in the history of the country.
I suppose you start thinking about more recent times and you see people like the Bushes, you know, have cut across decades upon decades of our major, you know, engagements across the world.
So maybe it isn't that hard and I thought was it hard for you and I thought one of the best parts about what you do with the book is was it hard for you to kind of draw parallels and going back and forth to today and what's happening now versus what they were doing back then and in terms of I guess American imperialism?
So it was disturbingly easy to draw parallels between the period that I'm writing about and today.
So the way that I wrote Gangsters, it's it's got a major historical component.
I think it definitely could be shelved as a history book, but it's actually two books in one, more or less.
I went around the world trying to follow the trail that Butler and his generation of Marines had blazed to both understand What they did, right?
Because the memory of the wars of the early 20th century have been almost entirely memory hauled in the United States, but they're still remembered in other places.
And so it was one way of sort of recovering these things that had been silenced.
But it was also a way of understanding what the consequences of those wars were elsewhere.
When I started writing this book, so I started writing it, I got the idea for it, I think in like 2015.
And I like, you know, sold it to a publisher in 2016.
And at the beginning, I thought, like, I was going to be writing a book about how the wars of Smedley Butler's day created, like, the neoliberal empire overseen by President Hillary Clinton.
And then we're having some other conversation at that point.
Yes.
Yes.
And then and then and then some other things happened.
And what I realized.
And so as so as I was writing this book, You know, the things that happened in Butler's era, those those were, you know, more or less frozen in amber, although, you know, obviously the perspectives on them could change.
But the things that were happening in the contemporary frame of the book kept accelerating and spinning out of control.
And I and I realized, you know, over the course of writing it, that I was writing a very different book than the one that I had set out to write in the first place.
You know, I think that I I don't know.
For instance, you know, it says in the subtitle that I'm writing about the making and breaking of America's empire.
I think that the breaking idea was sort of in there like maybe originally, but like it wasn't.
It really came through over the five years that I was writing this as just sort of everything just sort of started falling apart.
And, you know, even the business plot.
You know, I knew, look, I'm writing a book about Smedley Butler.
I need to talk about the business plot somewhere.
But I wasn't sure, like, how much play I was going to give it.
Is it going to just show up at the end?
Because if I write it sort of chronologically, according to the arc of his life, it's in the last chapter.
And I had already started moving toward the idea, you know, I think around the election, I think it was probably.
You know, November, December of 2020, I realized, OK, the business plot is going to have to be probably in the prologue.
And it was while I was sort of working on the prologue and the last chapter that the full like, you know, Trump coup began.
And then January 6th happened.
And it was like as if I was seeing, you know, the business plot in real time.
So, yeah.
So, I mean, the parallels.
I can't even begin to say, like, how many things, how many tendrils there are between Butler's era and today, whether you're talking about the ways in which, you know, American interventions in China, there are two chapters in China, you know, the ways in which China, you know, the Chinese government uses its memory of our invasions to inform its policies today.
To talk about the way that, you know, the rise of fascism and the attempted rise of fascism in the 1930s, the way that that is echoed today, the way in which the imperial wars in which Butler fought are really, you know, the closest analog and the best way to understand the wars that we're still fighting today in Syria and Libya and Somalia and just got done with in Afghanistan and Iraq.
So yeah, I mean, like, it's one of those projects where, like, I wish it was less relevant than it is, but every single page of this book, you know, and often I sort of am doing that work for the reader, trying to make these connections, but every single page of this book is just disturbingly relevant.
I mean, the problem is that you're diagnosing a long, long process here.
I mean, you know, I enjoyed that you said memory hold in terms of war.
I was just having this conversation the other day.
When we talk about American wars, we talk about maneuvers.
We talk about who won.
We talk about, you know, the official story of why we end up in a war.
And of course, we kind of wink and nudge and nod about what we gained from it.
But when you actually start looking at the history of this, and Butler is I actually think a really incredible Rosetta Stone for it.
Like, all of these conflicts with, you know, we can sit here and say World War II obviously because of Pearl Harbor, but all of these conflicts have corporate capitalistic objectives.
There is territory to gain.
There are resources to gain.
There are new markets to open up.
And when you actually start to crack that egg and you look inside, These inexplicable things that people seem... I don't know if you caught this, but David Brooks has no idea what's going on right now.
He just spit like... Tell me more.
He just spit like 2,000 words in the New York Times being like, something's wrong, but I have no idea after a career of trying to explain what's going on.
But if you actually crack that egg and look inside these inexplicable threads, they become really obvious very quickly, right?
Exactly.
Yeah, I mean, and and and that was, you know, a lot of the work that I was doing in Gangsters, which is part of what took me so long to write the book, because I was trying to I had to, you know, verse myself in the history of each of these countries.
Nine countries are sort of featured in the book.
And then also, you know, like the historiography and the fights, you know, within the historiography and then also just trying to like unravel and kind of read against the grain.
You know, what happened, like what got us in there?
Out there, if you do if you do the work going through each individual war, but I don't think that anybody had put the at least the wars that I'm talking about had put them all together in sequence and also showed the extent to which it's the same people being involved time after time.
So, you know, I think part of this has to do with just like how fewer people were around at the time and also just how small the Marine Corps was and how small like the sort of this rogues gallery of Capitalists who end up everywhere, but like there's this guy named Roger Farnham who shows up in all of these different places.
Two highlights are that he is the bag man for William Nelson Cromwell, who is maybe familiar to some people because of the law firm Sullivan and Cromwell, which is still still around today.
And Sullivan and Cromwell is sort of they are one of the Uh, all time, you know, villains, depending on how you tell the story or heroes, I guess, if you're an imperialist in sort of the story of America's empire, especially in Latin America.
Um, uh, you know, they are, they are maybe even well, better known to, to some students of American history, um, because two of their board members, John Foss, um, used, it was their connections on Sullivan and Cromwell and Sullivan and Cromwell's client, United Fruit, That was sort of the movement behind the scenes in the coup to overthrow Jacobo Arabenz in Guatemala in 1954.
The founder of Sullivan and Cromwell, William Nelson Cromwell, he was this big dude in the plot to separate Panama from Colombia for purposes of building the Panama Canal.
Because essentially, Teddy Roosevelt decided we needed this canal in order to You know, connect the Atlantic and the Pacific to connect the Atlantic and Pacific fleets and to connect the Atlantic and Pacific shipping lanes.
But Columbia, which owned Panama, was the state of Columbia, didn't want to give the Americans just like complete control over this canal zone to the extent that the Americans wanted.
And so William Nelson Cromwell basically just fomented A secession plot with with the cooperation and to some extent at the instigation of some Panamanian elites.
That's another thing that I'm trying to do in the books.
I'm trying to show the ways in which this is not just America acting on the rest of the world, but like the rest of the world has its own stuff going on.
And we fight the people.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And so and so Roger Farnham is this he's this kind of rogue banker.
Who, you know, he's kind of been moving all over like Central America.
And he's also an ex-journalist.
And he's kind of this go between between Cromwell and the Panamanian conspirators.
He plants a story in in the newspapers in the States where he basically says, like, there's going to be a there's going to be a coup on November 3rd, 1903.
You know, watch for it.
And then it happens, right?
And he's the one who sort of prepares the ground for this.
He then moves through all these other things.
And then he's also in Haiti when in 1915, Haiti, which got its independence from France, France has imposed this crippling indemnity.
Uh, in order in exchange for diplomatic recognition, the Haitians have gone to the Americans to pay back the indemnity to get some loans.
And Citibank is worried that the Haitians aren't going to repay their loan.
It goes to William Jennings Bryan, his secretary of state, and says, you know, hey, I have an idea.
Why don't we send the Marines ashore?
They'll rob the central bank of Haiti.
They'll take half the gold out.
And take it to a vault in Wall Street.
This sets Haitian politics on its ear.
A Haitian president is assassinated for the last time that a Haitian president was assassinated until the summer of 2021.
And then it's Medley Butler and the Marines invade.
And so like you can tell you may be as exhausted as I am just having told those little bits of the story.
And that's like those are just scratching the surface of those individual stories.
These things are really complicated.
And it's not it's not it's not enough to just say, like, Oh, there's this, you know, shadowy cabal behind American foreign policy, and they're the ones pulling the strings.
But it is important to understand, like, the inner workings of how American elites find their partners in these countries and how, you know, different people and different rivalries are all playing against one another and how these figures like Roger Farnham and Smetley Butler keep ending up in the same places at the same times.
And it's a complicated story, but it's a fascinating story.
And that's what I've spent the last couple of years trying to tell.
You know, Jared will take every opportunity to light up corporate imperialism as much as he possibly can, and rightfully so.
And I see that in the book, but I also think what hit me harder, like a 2x4 in the face, was just the blatant racism that not only was occurring, but was just accepted for Probably, like, thousands of years.
This isn't even, like, a little blip in our history.
So, I'm kind of curious how you feel.
Are those two things, like, separate in your mind as you went through these, following this guy?
Or is there, like, a cause and effect here?
Like, just to throw my two cents out there, it definitely feels like this is rooted in just blatant racism across the board.
White Europeans deciding to just inflict all sorts of horrible things across the world.
Well, I think a real fast, a real interesting thing that Jonathan just brought up is like Haiti.
Haiti was absolutely hobbled from the very beginning of its independence.
And then everybody took that economic and political hobbling as proof that they couldn't handle themselves, that they couldn't take care of themselves.
So all of a sudden you have a self, you know, self-fulfilling prophecy, right?
Yes, exactly.
I mean, I think there's a lot of different ways to look at it.
You can see that, for instance, in You know, so at the beginning of the book, right, in 1898, essentially, when Americans are trying to decide what are we going to do with the Spanish colonies that we're seizing, right?
Because there had been sort of an appetite to swallow Cuba.
That went back to the founding of the United States, when originally it was looked at as sort of a place to expand slavery or a place that already had rampant slavery.
That the slave power, you know, could add to its constituency.
But what happens is by 1898, 1899, the super racists, like, you know, guys like Pitchfork Ben Tillman, who's just one of the just the most disgusting... I can cuss on here, right?
Sure.
I think we already cussed.
Like, he is just one of the most Bluntly racist motherfuckers has ever existed in American history.
He literally was an architect of Jim Crow.
He literally oversaw a surge in lynching as governor of South Carolina.
He then is on the Senate floor in vain against the annexation of the Philippines because he's basically like, if we annex the Philippines, we're going to get all these non-white people.
And he lists them all, you know, by racist categories.
And it ends up having to be a compromise between the super racist neo-confederate, I mean, essentially isolationists, and the equally racist but different racist expansionists like Teddy Roosevelt, who was 100% a white supremacist.
But he hated the Confederate lynching people.
He was the WASP-er, although he was of Dutch descent, but he was the sort of WASP-style paternalistic.
But still murderous.
I think of them as cocktail racists.
They're the ones who are at the polite society, but they're more than willing to work with the people who have the straight white supremacy.
Exactly.
And then they're also like, you know, and if we have to commit a couple of genocides, we'll do that because we're the adults.
Yeah, but lynching was just too, like, you know, visual, right?
Like, we can't have that being seen, right?
That's low class.
That's low class.
So I mean, so that's one example.
What ends up happening there, by the way, is that the Supreme Court ends up coming up with a series of rulings that are known as the Insular Cases, which are still in effect.
They still affect life every day in Guam, Puerto Rico, U.S.
Virgin Islands, you know, etc.
But basically, they said that, you know, well, just because something becomes a terror territory of the United States doesn't mean that people there deserve rights.
And they don't, they can't get constitutional protections.
They can't get representation in government.
And that's, that's a compromise that's acceptable to somebody like pitchfork Ben Tillman, because he's like, oh, well, as long as I don't have to like sit next to a Filipino congressman who then will have equal voting power to me, then, then I'm okay with it.
So that's, that's kind of what I mean.
But so, so they're complimentary tendencies.
The thing, the place where, the place where I think they converge, I try not, I'm not trying to like get, you know, way out of my lane and get like psychoanalytical here.
But like, I think like the Freudian, like, like, untying of the contradictions here is that all of these are basically permissions to do what we want, right?
So, So capitalism is, and the search for markets, it's permission to break all the bones that you want, you know, kill all the people that you want, rape all the women that you want, with the excuse of this is what the market wants, this is what consumers with the excuse of this is what the market wants, this White supremacy is sort of the same thing.
It's operating under a different set of logics and often ends up with a different set of ultimate results, but the means are basically the same.
It's still like, we get to break all the bones, we get to rape all the people, we get to kill all the people, and we ultimately are, you know, held harmless.
You know, we can we can do whatever we want, because we're the ones who are in charge.
And that and that's what and you know, that really and that was, you know, a thing that I write about Butler.
And this is a thing that I think is going to be.
Scandalized fans of Smedley Butler, and I count myself as a fan of Smedley Butler, I mean, it would be very hard for me to have spent as much time as I did.
Uh, with him mentally.
And also, like, I got to know his granddaughter, who has, like, a picture of my daughter in her house.
Like, it's, like, things got, things got close.
All of that said, Butler, like, he's racist.
I mean, like, to a certain extent, he's a man of his time.
But what does that mean to say somebody is a man of their time?
Because, like, he's, he's living at the same time as, you know, W.E.B.
Du Bois.
He's living at the same time as Ida B. Wells and William Monroe Trotter.
Like, there are, like, there are other people who are around who have different perspectives who are, that he's doing, it was obvious to many people in the United States, including the staff of the New Republic that was writing exposés on the US occupation of Haiti, that the things that Butler was doing were wrong.
And Butler is there, he's throwing around the N-word and he's justifying paternalistically killing people.
And he's doing it in a different, there are nuances here, Like there are people who are much more white supremacist than he is within the Marine Corps, but they're all on the same team and they're all doing the same thing.
And it's, you know, it's even at the end of his life, honestly, in terms of racism.
I mean, Butler, he ends up, you know, he ends up sharing a stage like he's on a stage with Langston Hughes.
Like an anti-war rally.
You know, he's, he is, you know, he's giving speeches to, you know, B'nai B'rith.
So, you know, he's, he is, he is, you know, he is, he's much more, he's, he's, you know, some people would consider him woke, right?
At his time, in his time, like, you know, for doing things like that.
But he never, he never develops, he develops kind of a class analysis.
He develops sort of an idea that, That American elites are preying on working white people and especially soldiers and using them and sort of sacrificing them to get their their, you know, their goals achieved.
But he never really he never really develops a sociological race, racist or racial analysis in terms of understanding And understanding those parts of what he was part of.
But I mean, you hit the nail on the head.
It drives a lot of what he and the Marines are doing in those days.
So I want to drill down real fast before we let you go just on something that you were talking about.
And this is something I think that is becoming clearer and clearer, but I think has been intentionally hidden behind a lot of history, intentionally and unintentionally, which is that the white supremacy that we're talking about, people who are very expressly racist and hierarchical about race, they're not.
They are many times in league with the capitalistic and liberal structure which actually takes all of that white supremacy and hides it behind market forces and considerations and basically allows a lot of this blood, a lot of this breaking of bones, a lot of this subjugation to happen away from people as they can sort of imagine themselves as not being a part of it.
Does that hold basically as part of this thesis?
Yeah, yeah, 100%.
I mean, you know, look, this is, you know, it is there, there are a bunch of different motivations who are sort of doing all these things at once.
And sometimes they're competing with one another.
Sometimes they're cross purposes with one another.
But yeah, I mean, I think I think ultimately, that is, I think that's ultimately something that you see throughout this.
I mean, you know, certainly, you look at, you know, some of Butler's fellow Marines, You know, one of the ones who appears a lot in the book is a guy named Littleton Waller.
Littleton Waller, Tazewell Waller.
Oh, he has plans for Haiti.
I was just reading his quotes about Haiti and they are terrible.
Yeah.
I mean, so Waller comes from, he comes from an FFV, you know, first family of Virginia.
His ancestor, Colonel John Waller, enslaved Toby Waller, who Alex Haley identifies as Kunta Kinte in Roots.
So, I mean, like this guy's, you know, his his history with with racism, white supremacy goes way, way back.
And yeah, I mean, he he he he.
Undertakes essentially a low level genocide in the Philippines in in revenge for a the massacre of some American soldiers at a place called Balangiga on the island of Samar, and he's instructed to turn the island of Samar into a howling wilderness.
Um, and, you know, essentially kill every male over the age of 10.
Um, he ends up getting court-martialed and acquitted.
And, you know, at the court-martial, he's like, well, we didn't kill everyone over the age of 10 like that.
I didn't, I didn't follow those letters exact, those orders exactly.
Um, but, but then, you know, and then, you know, he's in all these other places and, and he, and he ends up in Haiti and he's just like, let's just kill all these Edwards.
And, um, one of the other things that Butler does in, um, uh, in, In Haiti at that time is he ends up creating counterinsurgency doctrine.
And the way that he does that is because he's approaching this with a much more northern and I think maybe more legible in 2022 style of racism, where he's just sort of like, I'm a Quaker.
He's a Quaker, by the way.
I'm a Quaker.
You know, my grandfather's fought for the union in the Civil War.
I never liked slavery and I don't like lynching, but I also don't see these people as being my equals.
But I still can see them as being more individuals than a guy like Littleton Waller can.
And so it ends up happening is he is he's bringing down he's bringing down the structure of capitalism.
He's bringing down the structures of American society.
He isn't he isn't messing with those.
And you see, I mean, things I was reading in the archives, you know, in, you know, 1915, like they're just, they're blatant, you know, in is, you know, one of the businesses that starts up in the US occupation, like they, you know, issue direct instructions not to allow any guns to go to black people, that only white people Should be allowed to hold guns like on the security team and stuff like that.
And Butler has no problem with any of that.
He's perpetuating all of that.
And what he what he ends up doing militarily is because he's able to sort of look at individuals as being more individuals and give them sort of more respect as, you know, individuals than somebody like Littleton Waller can.
Then he ends up being able to sort of implement an even more effective method of control over Haiti and over Haitians, which ends up becoming more brutal and allows the United States to continue a military occupation that lasts for 19 years, which is a record that was only broken recently by the United States and Afghanistan for, you know, continuous military occupation.
So, I mean, you know, it's one of the things that I'm trying to get at.
And this is something that we see, you know, in debates about, you know, Race and wokeism and, and, you know, trying to understand, like, 2020s, you know, it's, yes, it is, it is, it is, it is important to understand the difference between somebody who is just, it's important to understand the difference between like a Derek, you know, Chauvin, I don't know how you actually pronounce his name.
But you know, Chauvin, the guy, I don't know if he even deserves to have his name pronounced correctly.
It's important to understand the difference between a guy who literally puts his knee on George Floyd's neck and crushes the life out of him and just uses racial epithets and uses that kind of violence and somebody
But it's also important to understand how ultimately, even though those things are sometimes across purposes, sometimes those people hate each other, they ultimately can sort of end up moving in the same direction.
And again, that was something that that was something that Butler, even in his self-critical period at the end of his life, That was a level of analysis that he just he never had because, you know, it just it was he didn't have access to that kind of thinking.
He wasn't he wasn't blessed with the kind of sources that that some of whom existed at the time, but he just wouldn't have had, you know, the bandwidth or the understanding to read.
Well, Jonathan, you know, Jared and I have a runner throughout our podcast throughout the years where he will very cogently, you know, break down the essence of something about the history of our country.
And I will pause and I'll turn to him and I'll say, Jared, why do you hate this country so much?
And I kind of wonder when you look at, you know, even just looking at the chapter list of your book, and it's like, you know, the greatest hits of some of the worst atrocities you can imagine the United States committing.
It's like, you know, Rambo wants everybody to love them as much as, you know, the vets love the country.
How do we get to this point where, like, we have to face these things but still try and, you know, not want to, I guess, you know, leave it because we can't love it based on what we know what's going on in the past so brutally and in the face of, like, how the Constitution had promised such lofty ideals and then completely and utterly ignores those when it deals with anybody else besides, you know, the people that they wanted to apply it to.
Yeah, I mean, so Butler's answer to that is that, you know, Butler never lost faith in America, even during his extremely critical phase.
His critique was that the America that he had been part of and the things that he had done in America's name didn't live up to the ideals that he had been taught America stood for.
You know, he joins the Marines again, at the age of 16, because he thinks that he's going to be bringing democracy to Cuba.
He thinks he's going to be fighting against this horrible Spanish empire.
And the Spanish empire was horrible.
I mean, they were, they just invented concentration camps and they were, they were, you know, introducing this brutal form of waterboarding in the Philippines.
Then the Americans then end up opening concentration camps and doing the same kind of waterboarding ourselves.
But, you know, that that, you know, the first idea was right, which was that like that imperialism is bad.
That kind of colonialism is bad.
That kind of racism is bad.
And and, you know, Butler is Butler is accessing a tradition that exists in America and goes back, you know, to the founding.
And, you know, to a certain extent, that's that's a lot of people's answers.
I mean, there's been a lot of talk lately about obviously about, you know, the 1619 project.
You know, especially Nicole Hannah Brown's, you know, introductory essay.
But that was really I mean, it's fundamentally a somewhat conservative and pretty it's a pretty, like, hardcore patriotic, like, take on America and what America could be like a real like a real like, you know, you know, anarcho leftist, you know, Marxist Leninist would be like, would reject a lot Out of her argument that like, oh, America was never this like America.
And, you know, and so, you know, she and Butler and a lot of people, I think, you know, me to a certain extent, like, you know, I grew up with I grew up with this vision of sort of what America can be.
And, you know, to a certain extent, I still subscribe to it.
I think that, you know, again, it's important.
And this is one of the things that I was trying to do in this book.
And it's why I sort of spend as much time as I do, you know, Parsing the different kinds of racism and parsing the different kinds of killing and parsing, you know, different kinds of crimes that are being committed, you know, because, you know, the United States and I, you know, I cited a number of sources that make this case very persuasively.
You know, the United States helped inspire Nazi Germany.
Right.
And and and the Nazis took like especially their race laws.
You know, they took a lot of of inspiration from The American authoritarian, you know, especially Jim Crow, you know, race law tradition.
But that doesn't mean that the United States is Nazi Germany.
Like we somehow avoided, you know, in part maybe because, you know, people like Smedley Butler at key moments, you know, kept the fascists from just like taking over entirely.
You know, we, you know, the Nazis have been among us, right?
Those kinds of people have been among us.
They're still among us.
They're trying to take over now.
But they but they but they remain a very powerful and very destructive minority, and they are one of a multiplicity of voices.
And this country is also full of people who are like, no, we actually believe in democracy.
We actually believe in pluralism.
We actually believe in, you know, social democracy, maybe even socialism, like, you know, somebody like FDR, who, you know, You'll encounter in gangsters, you know, he's a friend of Smedley Butler's.
He's in Haiti during the occupation of Haiti He's involved in like this kind of corrupt scheme to like, you know profit off of Haitians But he you know as he as he's matures a little bit more and then when he becomes president he looks and sees what's happening and he's like actually we need a little bit more social justice and and I need to be like a little bit more of a traitor to my class and Which is what sort of ends up, you know, getting people wanting to take him down.
And so, you know, it's, it is, you know, maybe somebody who's a better radical than I am will just be like, oh, you know, cats, you're just making excuses.
But like, I really do think that, like, you know, the good thing about America, the good thing about this country is that we have had these currents of people who have been fighting for social justice.
And who have been fighting for, you know, for equality, economic, racial, gender, et cetera, throughout our history.
And, you know, sometimes they're winning and sometimes they're losing, but they haven't been counted completely out of the fight yet.
And the big tragedy of Smedley Butler's life is that he did so much on a personal level to ensure that, you know, the forces of reaction and violence and exploitation and murder were strengthened and given power and were given this empire over the course of his life so that by the end of his life in the 1930s, he does blow the whistle on the business plot.
But his whistleblowing on the military industrial complex essentially falls on deaf ears.
And his ability to prevent a war from breaking out between the United States and Japan, which say what you will about the outcome of World War II and whether history would have been better like this or better like that, a lot of people suffered, especially in the Pacific War.
And that was, you know, that is not as noble a war as As as even the war in Europe was a war, as Americans often like to think that that it is.
And Butler was Butler was completely ineffectual at trying to undo the things that he had done.
And a lot of us find ourselves in that situation.
I mean, as we're facing climate catastrophe and as we're facing the degradation of democracy and all these other things, like a lot of us have paid played a role in helping create these structures that now we're, you know, to some extent, powerless to, you know, tear down.
But the fight is still going on.
And, you know, as long as there are still some people and hopefully, hopefully a growing number of people, I don't know, but maybe not.
But as long as there are still some people who are able to sort of, you know, carry, you know, that torch of the past and I couldn't agree more.
And everybody, we've been talking to Jonathan M. Katz, the author of the new book, Gangsters of Capitalism, Smedley Butler, The Marines and the Making and Breaking of America's Empire.
It's coming out, I believe, the day this podcast comes out.
Congratulations on that.
into the abyss. - I couldn't agree more.
And everybody, we've been talking to Jonathan M. Katz, the author of the new book, Gangsters of Capitalism, Smedley Butler, The Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America's Empire.
It's coming out, I believe, the day this podcast comes out.
Congratulations on that.
Where can the good people find you? - So I, first of all, I have a newsletter.
It's called The Racket, for obvious reasons.
You can find it at theracket.news.
It's a newsletter and podcast.
Right now, I'm doing a series called Gangsters Movie Nights, where I'm having guests on to watch movies about things related to themes from the book.
The first one we did was Spencer Ackerman and I did Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay.
And you can find me on Twitter at CatsOnEarth.
All right.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, guys.
All right, everybody.
That was Jonathan M. Katz.
Again, his new book, Gangsters of Capitalism, I think is a must read.
I think it brings things into pretty incredible clarity, which is shocking.
What happens if you look at history from, you know, realistic angles?
It's engrossing because, and I mentioned it earlier, was that he can do this Zelig-like thing with this guy in every major, you know, imperialistic conflict we've had in that time period, but it also then connects directly with what's going on now and he brings that in together.
I mean, you know, he's got two chapters on Philadelphia alone and then the one on Philly about police officers and we get into almost the history of policing.
It just continually reinforces where we came from and what the foundation of this country is and why that's the motivation to change, right?
That's not like we have to hate the country.
It's we know what we did, and this is why we have to continue to progress.
Yeah, and you know, the opening segment of this, I think, was appropriately frustrated.
I think there's a reason to be pissed off right now.
I think there's a reason to want something different at this point.
But I want to say this.
A note of something that I've noticed.
So, Katz's book, I think, is really, really good.
The book I'm working on, I feel like, has a lot of similar threads, a lot of the similar incidences, a lot of discoveries that I made, Katz is talking about, but it's not just that.
I'm hearing so many people start to reconsider history And start to reconsider what the problem is right now.
Which is something that we've been doing now for a couple of years.
We've been tracking this thing down trying to figure out what's going on.
I think that we've come together with a pretty good understanding of where we are, where we've been, and probably where we need to go.
But I'm hearing it elsewhere too, man.
And it feels like the scales are starting to drop off of the eyes.
Do you know what I mean?
It's starting to feel like the people are putting the puzzle pieces together and understanding how we've arrived at this point, what the problem is, and also what the threat is, too.
We've talked about this.
The media has started to, they've started to begin to understand that something bad is happening, right?
They're at least starting to consider the possibility of all these things that we've been talking about for two fucking years.
I was going to say six years, but I guess it's- Well, yeah, no shit.
We've been on this for six years at this point.
Like, it's starting to seep in.
I want to believe that there's time.
I want to believe, much like Katz is saying, that once we get some power and movement and we remember that we can change things, I do think that things will change.
And I do think that there's an incredible amount of hope.
But that's why I'm pissed off.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah.
If you weren't pissed off, I think that you just roll over.
And you're just like, fine.
Whatever.
Let history pass us by.
It's done.
It's over.
I'm blackmailed.
Whatever you want to call it.
But I don't know.
I feel like there's an anger building that is productive.
Does that make sense?
There's one side of history you want to be on in this whole thing.
And it's very clear what side that should be.
I'm pissed off because we're recording this on Martin Luther King Jr.
Day.
And I even did a little bit of a deep dive on him and assassination and it just reminds me of what he stood for in and then you know up until 1968 And we're still dealing with the same exact shit today.
We're still dealing with people of color and black people being murdered by police officers and not having equal rights.
You know, listen, the most ironic thing of all this is that a lot of these right-wing Republican people will say, well, we had a black president, so that means we've already progressed.
We're there.
And it's just almost as bad.
We don't have lynchings anymore.
Well, we got different types of lynchings.
Yeah.
And in fact, there were a bunch of lynchings, you know, at some point in the last couple of years, they were in the news a little bit.
So it's like, you know, and then Jonathan Katz's book also just brings into such clarity when you read it about, like I said earlier to you guys, it's just, it's not even imperialism to me.
It's just out and out racism where these are savages that we can't even begin to trust First of all they can't trust and live you know on their own and without being you know incarcerated or whatever much less have a right to vote for anything.
I mean that's just That's 10 steps too far for these people.
And I think maybe we need more in the popular culture, maybe more movies again.
I remember there was a moment where there was a lot of movies about slavery and about this whole thing.
But I just know how traumatic it was as a kid seeing this and how important that trauma was to impress upon myself how evil that mindset was.
It's the guy who comes in on the first scene.
Well, and this is one of the reasons why it's so important that we talk about things like CRT and how history is portrayed and how it's given to us.
sickening evil and racism, racist.
I feel like we need to see it in our face.
We need more of this to understand how bad it is.
Well, and this is one of the reasons why it's so important that we talk about things like CRT and how history is portrayed and how it's given to us.
Martin Luther King Jr., and this is an important day.
I was posting about this.
We need to remember how hated he was.
He was despised.
He was probably one of the most hated men in the United States of America, and up until the point that he was assassinated.
He was constantly surveilled by the United States government.
The documents I've been reading lately discussing him, I mean, they not only thought that he was a communist agent, but they thought that he was more or less like an anti-Christ type figure who's going to lead a black liberation movement and he needed to be neutralized, right?
And you start looking at all of this and you start realizing that why do we have a Martin Luther King Day?
It's supposedly to sit here and reflect back on his legacy, It's been completely co-opted.
They've taken, and this is the really disgusting thing about the powers that be and these capitalist forces we're talking about, the same people who hated him, the same people who would have been happy that he got killed, the same people who used law enforcement to harass him and hurt his fellow civil rights movement members.
Those same people can now post about Martin Luther King.
They can say, you know what, look at all the progress he made, we don't need to do anything anymore.
Did you know we had a black president?
Racism is done in America.
And then what do they do?
They benefit from the remaining white supremacy and prejudice and inequality in the system.
It's grotesque.
This is why we have to learn actual history and not just conventional history.
We have to look at what actually happened and understand it because these people weaponize it.
They use it against you.
And Nick, tell me if I'm wrong.
One of the most grotesque things that I ever realized was the idea that they could take someone like a Martin Luther King and then twist his legacy and use it against what he stood for.
And it's so in your face and it's so obvious now, but it doesn't make it any less grotesque.
In 1968 when he was killed, his disapproval rate was 75%.
Tell me, is that high?
Oh yeah, that's high.
I mean, Trump had never gotten that low as far as his approval rating, right?
So here you have a guy, and these are all the parents of these right-wing people now, right?
It's rooted in this, and so yes, the idea that they would ever reference... We talked about this.
They didn't want to look at it on the TV.
They didn't want to think about race.
They didn't want to think about white supremacy.
They didn't want to think about exploitation.
He made them.
That's the problem.
They didn't want it on their TVs.
They didn't want their kids talking about it.
They didn't want their kids learning about it.
They hated him because he made them look at themselves.
Right.
And it's the same idea when they get to decide, they get to frame the argument however they want to in a shameless manner.
So for instance, Colin Kaepernick wants to kneel to protest and he makes it very clear They wanted to watch football!
They didn't want to think about race!
That's the exact same- I completely agree.
- And then he gets to decide, no, I believe that what he's really doing is, you know, an affront to the flag and to our troops. - They wanted to watch football.
They didn't want to think about race.
That's the exact, I completely agree.
Kaepernick was one of those things where he interrupted people.
Like, oh, I tuned in to watch a football game and all of a sudden now I gotta think about police brutality, inequality, and white supremacy?
It put it in people's faces.
They hated it.
But here's my mind.
They never went there.
They couldn't even get anywhere near what you just said.
To them, they instantly were like, oh, this asshole is disrespecting the flag and our troops.
Like, out of nowhere, this all happened.
How did you even get to that?
That's like jumping to the biggest conclusion of all time.
But again, you can do that easily in your mind if you're a little bit racist.
Or a lot racist.
And this is exactly why people accuse people of being, you know, virtue signalers.
Because what has actually happened in the reactionary mind, the Republican right-wing reactionary mind, is that they can say, you know what, there actually isn't a problem, those people are trying to use this to gain an advantage, right?
They're trying to use it for affirmative action so that they can get money that won't be mined.
They're trying to use this to steal elections.
That cognitive dissonance that you just brought up, that's exactly what that is.
It short circuits it immediately and then allows people like Trump and other racist demagogues to come in and be like, no, those people are lying.
There's no racism anymore.
There's no patriarchy.
Those people are simply trying to get more.
Right?
What is it?
- What is it, it was Obama bucks, Obama phones, right?
That was the whole thing for a while, is that he was just gonna give away free things, and as a result he was a socialist or a fascist dictator.
It's that crazy cognitive dissonance, the way that they deal with it, that you just brought up is exactly how it works.
And remember, those people that are railing against that would easily take a free phone or free bucks.
They would take it, that's fine, great, for free, give it to me, whatever.
But no, if it comes from a black person, if it's going to go to a black person or a person of color, oh, that's way too far.
So that short-circuiting that you're describing can only occur if your brain is already down that path of being racist curious or already racist.
That's the whole crux of the matter.
And you can't, there's no self-reflection there.
You can't do that.
And then as soon as you even try and discuss that notion, then you're the racist for pointing out that someone is being racist and can't see it.
Well, and that's what the Republican Party, Trump, Fox News, all these people offer.
So like there's a lot of inherent prejudice in people.
You know what I mean?
Like, they come from certain places.
They've been taught things.
There are cultural things that are there.
They have that ability to see the world through that lens.
There's no such thing as brainwashing, right?
It's not that like a Facebook post popped up and it suddenly put a racist idea in your mind and you went with it.
There has to be an openness to it, an acceptance of it, some kind of thing working in the background.
Trump, Fox News, right wing, all these social media things, they told people, no, listen to those worst aspects of yourselves, those people are trying to take advantage You're a realist.
They're trying to do this, which is how they treated Martin Luther King, how they've treated Black Lives Matter.
What they keep doing is that they turn it into a conspiracy, and it goes ahead and gives them carte blanche to believe that awful shit.
And it's really, really hard to start fighting that, but I got news for everybody.
You got to.
All right, everybody.
I'm fired up.
We're done recording.
We're finishing this thing, and I'm fired the fuck up right now.
All right, everybody, go check out Jonathan M Katz's book.
We will be back with the Patreon-exclusive Weekender Reminder.
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We just wouldn't.
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