Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the latest information regarding the Supreme Court leak that they're planning on reversing Roe v Wade. They then predict, based on what the right has been telegraphing for years, what they'll target next. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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| Now, as he brazenly incites mobs to disrupt the proceedings of the Supreme Court for partisan ends. | |
| Yes, Biden should be impeached for that. | |
| Hey everybody, welcome to the Muckrake Podcast. | |
| I'm Jared Yates. | |
| I'm here with Nick Halseman. | |
| Just a content warning. | |
| I'm coming in hot today. | |
| that there was no constitutional right granted to pregnant mothers to abort a baby in the Constitution. | |
| If you want that, you can amend the Constitution. | |
| Hey, everybody. | |
| Welcome to the Muckrick podcast. | |
| I'm Jared Yates-Saxon. | |
| I'm here with Nick Halseman. | |
| Just a content warning. | |
| I'm coming in hot today. | |
| I got thoughts, Nick. | |
| Do you need me to be here? | |
| Maybe just to listen? | |
| I want you here more than anything in the world. | |
| Okay, good. | |
| I mean, I'm ready. | |
| I'm here to help as many ways as I can. | |
| So a lot has happened since the last time we recorded. | |
| Just go ahead and pull back the curtain to our loyal listeners. | |
| Last week we had recorded the episode for Tuesday and had to scrap all of it because, of course, the leaked opinion from the Supreme Court came out, which said that Roe v. Wade is now destined to be overturned. | |
| We had to do a little bit of an emergency thing. | |
| We had already taped our episode for the weekender on Friday about the Batman and the political implications of that. | |
| If you haven't heard that yet, go over to patreon.com slash muckrake podcast. | |
| Go ahead and listen. | |
| I thought we did pretty well on that. | |
| But we've had a week, Nick, to sit around and really start digesting the absolute horseshit at play with all of this. | |
| I don't know how you're feeling about it. | |
| In the past week, I have watched this entire situation get worse, become more infuriating, more frustrating. | |
| It has played out already pretty much how I expected it had, which isn't good, by the way, at all. | |
| Before we get into the actual nuts and bolts of this, and I say some things that I've been thinking about and I want to get out there in the world, how are you feeling a week out from this stuff having leaked? | |
| Well, you know, I can't remember what your reaction was, but I do remember I had said that I thought this was probably a leak from the right. | |
| I think that's borne out. | |
| Yes, and I think that the first day people weren't necessarily willing to kind of get there, but it seems like that was true, and certainly all the think pieces have come out to try and prove these things. | |
| It seemed pretty compelling that, you know, Ginny Thomas is running around afraid that Brett Kavanaugh is wavering and needs to put public pressure on him to make sure that he is part of that And I'm not even sure they're going to be happy with a 5-4. | |
| Like they somehow want to make a big statement and really make this somehow like a 6-3 thing. | |
| Yeah, I think your instincts on that were right. | |
| We had talked last week in that brief little emergency taping as to what was happening. | |
| Whether or not this was sort of a warning signal to, and by the way, not just the left and not just liberals. | |
| 70% of Americans do not want Roe v. Wade overturned. 70%. | |
| Seventy percent. | |
| That's a vast majority of Americans, not the left, not just the liberal left. | |
| It felt like at the beginning it was a warning signal. | |
| Now, and by the way, John Roberts, Nick, he's so concerned. | |
| I mean, him and Collins and Murkowski, they're all just so concerned and they don't want the court being seen as an ideological body and they don't want anybody questioning what's happened. | |
| Roberts, of course, now has come out and basically said that this was real. | |
| He didn't want to overturn Roe v. Wade. | |
| He might have to, you know what I mean? | |
| Like, he might be forced to do this. | |
| He was going to go ahead and let the law stand. | |
| Now it feels like the right is basically using this as some sort of, first of all, pressure to keep the justices home, basically to whip votes in order to get what you were saying. | |
| They want a 6-3 vote on this as badly as possible. | |
| Also, to go ahead and infuriate public opinion and possibly lead to other situations. | |
| Also, to give the high sign to the Republicans. | |
| We're doing this, fellas. | |
| Good luck. | |
| Let's see what we can do. | |
| Let's see what we can bring in. | |
| Let's see, I don't know, what do you guys want to do? | |
| They have to repay the Republicans. | |
| They're like, thanks for all the support, guys. | |
| Here's your reward. | |
| Hey, by the way, maybe we don't stop at this. | |
| Maybe we just go wild and see what happens, you know? | |
| I have a game show little scenario set up for you later. | |
| We'll go through some of the possibilities of what might happen after this. | |
| Oh, so repulsive. | |
| And on top of that, I gotta say, it's also done Republicans just an incredible favor and also the liberal establishment. | |
| A lot of the media and the political status quo, which is basically like, you know, we don't like that Roe v. Wade might be overturned, but can you believe the breach of normalcy here. | |
| Can you believe that somebody leaked a Supreme Court opinion? | |
| I mean, isn't this just a sign of the times? | |
| We should find that person. | |
| We all want to find the guy who did this, right? | |
| We all want to find this guy. | |
| Meanwhile, it's just turned into a breach of etiquette. | |
| All of these major newspapers and networks have completely fallen for it. | |
| It's turned into a wild goose chase and taken all of the onus away from the fact That the Supreme Court, a reactionary body, and by the way, we need to go ahead and say this every episode now, that gave itself this power in the first place. | |
| This isn't in the Constitution. | |
| They weren't supposed to be doing this. | |
| They voted to give themselves this. | |
| They are only as legitimate as we allow them to be. | |
| That body, which has been stolen, is now just basically going to remake American society in every way, shape, and form imaginable if they get away with this thing. | |
| That scenario, or that setup, isn't harmful if you don't have justices who want to treat the Constitution as if it was written yesterday. | |
| And that is the thing. | |
| So, the impetus of this opinion is that there's nothing about abortion in the Constitution. | |
| Therefore, we should never have ruled on it in the first place, and we can't be the people to make it the law of the land now. | |
| Well, I got a little story for you, Jared. | |
| There's a lot of things in that original Constitution that weren't mentioned that we've had to deal with since then, and with the Supreme Court itself. | |
| So, it doesn't hold. | |
| That is simply an ideological argument that they want to have based on their religious values and how they want to impose them on everybody else. | |
| Half-assed internet research had shown me that the abortion hadn't been mentioned in the New Testament. | |
| People have been able to dig it up in the last week. | |
| Some sort of examples of some interpretations of what they're talking about. | |
| It could very well be abortion. | |
| Also, can I throw this out there on that? | |
| Yes. | |
| Whether or not the New Testament mentions abortion? | |
| Please. | |
| Who gives a shit? | |
| Oh, right. | |
| I forgot. | |
| Because I don't have to live based on the Bible. | |
| I don't have to do anything based on the Bible. | |
| You know why? | |
| Because there's a separation of church and state that says, who gives a shit if your imaginary sky god tells somebody to do something? | |
| There are a lot of imaginary sky gods. | |
| And maybe you have faith in one. | |
| And maybe they mean something to you. | |
| But guess what? | |
| Because I am a sovereign individual in the world, I don't have to listen to whatever your sky god tells me what to do, unless I find merit in it. | |
| But that's neither here nor there. | |
| Well, then we have to get into the slightly less humorous discussion of what they're talking about. | |
| Which is, their side is, that it's murder. | |
| Exactly. | |
| Before we get to that discussion, because this is a big thing, we do have to get into what is now potentially down the pike. | |
| But before we do, last night, I got to tell you, Nick, and I am troubled as well. | |
| Can you imagine that these unelected jurists, this priest class, Oh, they would never even think about being ideological and they have lifetime appointments. | |
| And by the way, I don't know how their debts get paid off. | |
| It's really strange how that happens. | |
| Also, in the fact that the court's been completely stolen away or whatever. | |
| People, Nick. | |
| Citizens. | |
| They went to their neighborhoods. | |
| And they protested. | |
| And they said, we don't like what you're doing. | |
| And they violated so many norms, Nick. | |
| And Alito had to be taken to a safe place. | |
| A safe, undesignated space just to, I mean, my God, can you imagine what would have happened if the people singing and chanting would have, I don't know, disturbed his sleep? | |
| Nick, it is a troubling thing when people can be out in the street, I don't know, using their constitutional rights that they still have left. | |
| Meanwhile, our media is just like, we've gone too far. | |
| We're too far down. | |
| Never mind the fact that people stormed the Capitol and tried to overturn an election. | |
| And as we're finding out, it was more and more coordinated. | |
| But that's neither here nor there. | |
| Nick, they went into their neighborhoods. | |
| And they said, we don't like what you're doing. | |
| Can you believe that? | |
| Well, you know, a reporter who was very concerned went and said, you know, the neighbors would be really upset at how disruptive this is. | |
| The neighbors were with him! | |
| Well, that's what he said. | |
| Around Kavanaugh's house, they asked the people, aren't you concerned that you're disrupting the whole neighborhood? | |
| They're like, we are the neighborhood. | |
| We're his fucking neighbor. | |
| And we're out here telling him to stop doing this shit and not vote against Roe v. Wade. | |
| So here's the, you know, there is there is a law, by the way. | |
| There is a law 18 U.S.C. | |
| something something something that does that does say you're not supposed to do that to judges. | |
| Just saying it, Jared. | |
| And I looked that up. | |
| Somebody, one of these Republican or right-winger people on Twitter, quote, I didn't do all the research, but unless he's wrong, unless he's shown me a screenshot that's not right, supposedly you're not supposed to influence, at their homes, judges like this. | |
| Now, does that get overridden by your right to free speech? | |
| I would argue, sure. | |
| You should be able to protest if you want, but they did carve that out, probably with this in mind for other issues. | |
| So one of these justices should be able to walk down the street without being called an asshole without being afraid that someone's going to spit in their food. | |
| This is what happens when you steal a Supreme Court and when you push this reactionary bullshit that is by the way going to kill people. | |
| Literally kill people. | |
| It's going to lead to women dying. | |
| It's going to lead to children dying for that matter. | |
| It's going to lead to incredibly awful situations. | |
| Meanwhile Nick, all I'm hearing from our media is coverage of this, talking about norms and status quo. | |
| It's almost like, by the way, that they don't really actually care about women are the rights of anybody. | |
| They just care about just continuing on the way that we are. | |
| Tell you what, eat the shit, enjoy it, grin and bear it, deal with it. | |
| Meanwhile, Nick, we have only heard a couple of things out of the Biden White House since this happened in the past week. | |
| One, a reporter asked Biden if he would be willing to go beyond the filibuster in order to go ahead and make sure that abortion is legal on a federal level. | |
| He said, I'm not ready to have that conversation yet. | |
| Number two, Jen Psaki. | |
| Good luck on your cable news career, Jen Psaki. | |
| Best of luck. | |
| Bon Voyage came out and, of course, came out and said, you know, we're troubled by this and judges should do whatever. | |
| There's been no leadership from the Biden administration whatsoever. | |
| There's been no leadership in the Democratic Party outside of a couple of people. | |
| Elizabeth Warren, by the way, is one of the few people who's actually coming out and calling this the crisis that it is. | |
| I told you that I wanted to say this before we got on here that I was going to do this. | |
| Joe Biden has shown that he is not capable of this job. | |
| That doesn't thrill me to say that. | |
| Listen, I think the way he's handled Ukraine so far has been alright. | |
| The infrastructure thing has been alright. | |
| My God, I'm glad he's not Donald Trump. | |
| I don't want to hand it to the Republicans. | |
| I'm not sitting here telling you to vote for Republicans or concede an election or whatever. | |
| What has been shown in the past week after the leak of this memo and the inability to fight for voting rights? | |
| The inability to ensure that the Republican Party is called the authoritarians and extremists that they are. | |
| He has shown an inability to do this job. | |
| And that doesn't please me. | |
| That doesn't make me happy at all. | |
| But that's where I'm at right now. | |
| I don't know how you're feeling about it, but I can't sit here and not say that anymore. | |
| Well, if I'm Joe Biden sitting in the White House right now, and I'm aware of what I'm thinking about, I'm probably kind of angry that since 1971, no administration or none of the legislators have tried to get this codified into law. | |
| You know, Bill Clinton had all sorts of record high approval ratings, the country was going well right before, you know, the Monica Lewinsky stuff. | |
| It's like, you look at moments of these things where, okay, they should have just taken care of it then. | |
| Barack Obama had a super majority. | |
| Barack Obama could pass almost anything. | |
| He was busy with doing healthcare, but still. | |
| Um, you know, there was a lot of time, obviously it would be ridiculous to expect like Reagan or Bush or any of the Bushes to have done that, but still, we had Democrats' leadership throughout this process that really should have done this in the first place, and known that this might happen. | |
| The only reason why they wouldn't have done it then was like, oh, don't worry about it, it's the law of the land, it's stare decisis, no one's going to ever change it, all these Supreme Court justices are saying it's not going to change. | |
| And they're not prepared. | |
| Everything that we keep hearing, Nick, we talked about this a couple of weeks ago. | |
| Biden got an interview and he's like, oh, I just, who could have guessed that they were going to obstruct the agenda this much? | |
| And they're not they were not prepared at all for this and they're not prepared everything that we keep hearing Nick we talked about this a couple of weeks ago Biden got interviewed and he's like oh I just who could have guessed that they were going to obstruct the agenda this much everybody everybody who paid any attention. | |
| Who would have guessed that they would be so radical? | |
| All of us that paid any attention whatsoever. | |
| Now we have reached the point where literally the best thing that the Democratic Party can do right now, besides go ahead and meet with their pollsters and their strategists, the best thing that they can do is fundraise off of this. | |
| And I can tell you there has been a lot of time and energy and effort spent on using this to fundraise. | |
| And by the way, there are Democrats running in November In November! | |
| Who are pro-life candidates. | |
| And who knows if some of that money ends up in their coffers. | |
| Like, this party doesn't know what it is anymore. | |
| It knows that it doesn't want to say all the awful things that the Republicans say. | |
| It doesn't want to say the offensive, the racist, the sexist, the misogynistic. | |
| They know that they can do better than this. | |
| They know whenever BLM protests are coming, they'll pose for pictures down on one knee. | |
| They don't have a direction. | |
| There's no leadership here. | |
| There's no idea that, oh my god, we're in real trouble. | |
| And here, in a few months, we're looking at the possibility of a major right being taken away. | |
| The Democratic Party has not rallied. | |
| The Democratic Party has not stood as opposition. | |
| I don't know who can do it. | |
| I don't know who it is that can go ahead and do this. | |
| But I can tell you, I've seen enough, Nick. | |
| And Joe Biden can't do this? | |
| No. | |
| And I would love to be shocked. | |
| I would love if like while we're recording this all of a sudden a new corner gets taken, but I'm not confident. | |
| Are you? | |
| No. | |
| Here's the real interesting wrench in this is that if the Republicans take over, if Mitch McConnell is going to screw up and say, you know what, we might end up trying to pass our own national anti-abortion law that will actually take care of what the Democrats should have done all these years and then make it really hard to ever get it legal again in states. | |
| Nick, it's like the Fugitive Slave Law. | |
| That's what we're looking at. | |
| We're literally looking at a period in time where you're going to have two types of state. | |
| One state where abortion is legal. | |
| Another state where abortion is illegal. | |
| And you're going to have the states that say it's illegal, they're going to start suing other states because people are going to go over and get their abortions there. | |
| It's going to be that same thing. | |
| But if it's a national law, a federal law, then that simply cannot happen. | |
| And now, of course, if they did it while Biden is in the White House, he vetoes it. | |
| But what does that do for his chances running in 2024? | |
| Because they can use that, right? | |
| Even though it's such a 30% of the country is the only people want that, I have a suspicion that they can use that against Biden when he's running for president. | |
| And that's maybe what they're trying to do here. | |
| Meanwhile, the Democrats, well, you know, they're going to write a bill right now. | |
| Did you hear that? | |
| They're going to try and pass a bill right now that makes abortion legal across the country. | |
| Whoops! | |
| And you know how long it's going to take them? | |
| You know how many days? | |
| You know, a few. | |
| A couple days. | |
| Boom, they have this law. | |
| Oh, look at this! | |
| We now have a law we can fucking vote for. | |
| We know we will never have the votes to pass it. | |
| But this is a political thing that they're trying to do. | |
| And all I can come up with is that this is for 2024. | |
| This is for them to win the White House again. | |
| Afraid that Biden could somehow... | |
| He could win it. | |
| He won it by a lot the last time, but this is an issue that they could easily use against him. | |
| Yeah, and what's the strategy then? | |
| What are we voting for besides the fact that they're not Republicans? | |
| That's all they give us at this point. | |
| Oh, what are you going to do? | |
| Vote for a Republican? | |
| Of course you're not. | |
| They're absolute insane people. | |
| Look at what we've got right now, Nick. | |
| The moment that this hit, All of a sudden, it was like the mask. | |
| We talk about this all the time. | |
| You're like, I'm glad the mask is coming off. | |
| At least we're starting to see it, right? | |
| Look at what has happened the moment that this came out. | |
| Suddenly, all of these people. | |
| And by the way, Nick, how many Republican right-wing pundits out there told us for years, come on guys, we go to the same cocktail parties, this is never gonna happen, they'll never, come on now, you all are just, this is reactionary. | |
| And meanwhile, what happened? | |
| It's everything you and I have talked about. | |
| The moment this happens, all of a sudden the flood doors open. | |
| Suddenly we're talking about making abortion illegal around the country. | |
| Suddenly we've got Abbott down in Texas who's suddenly saying, You know, maybe we need to take another look at public education. | |
| Because why should the state have to provide education? | |
| Which we've talked about, right? | |
| We've also got Blake Masters out in Arizona, I mean, talking about literally making contraception illegal. | |
| And for anybody who knows anything about the history of that, that used to be a pretty big thing in America, particularly around the turn of the century. | |
| The government went ahead and banned any ability whatsoever for this stuff to come in. | |
| They made it, like, lascivious and they made it dangerous. | |
| All of this is leading to a point where the Republicans are basically going to push a shadow agenda, possibly without anything even nearing a majority in power. | |
| But they have completely stolen the Supreme Court. | |
| They've taken these states. | |
| They've managed to take away any sort of Democratic apparatus that could go ahead and stand in their way. | |
| Meanwhile, we do not have even a sniff of a Democratic Party that calls it what it is, provides any type of leadership. | |
| And I gotta tell you, if you're a person who's wringing your hands about protests out in the streets, what's the alternative? | |
| Vote every November? | |
| Is that literally all that we've got at this point? | |
| Go out and vote and hope maybe at some point you get over 60 people who aren't bought and sold by corporations and special interests? | |
| Because I've got to tell you, you're not going to get there in this day and age. | |
| And we're going to keep going down this path and that mask is just going to, it's going to evaporate is what's going to happen. | |
| And you're going to wake up in a country that doesn't look anything like the one you thought you lived in. | |
| You know, and there are Democrats who would vote for Republicans on this issue if the Democrats are going to go way overboard to try and protect Roe v. Wade, which, you know, I don't even want to get into so much. | |
| But here's what I was thinking because I was going through the notion of where is this going? | |
| The argument itself that's in this memo is fascinating because it's an originalist person. | |
| And, you know, if you want to start thinking about, well, what else is not mentioned in the Constitution that they're going to try and walk back because of this overstepping? | |
| And, you know, remember, for years they were talking about how the left was legislating from the bench, and it turns out it's completely the opposite. | |
| But let me ask, we'll do a game show style. | |
| I'm going to throw some ideas out there. | |
| You tell me what you think. | |
| Are they going to get rid of these? | |
| Are they going to make maybe federal anti-trans laws? | |
| Yeah, yeah. | |
| I think they would do that if they possibly could. | |
| And by the way, while we're on that subject, this is something that, because our media is so bad at this, our pundits, our politicians are so bad at this, what they're going to do, and it's not been so long since this was the case, like in the middle of the 20th century, like being gay, being queer, being trans, those were all listed as being mentally ill. | |
| Like, that is a recent thing to change that has not been outside of the scope of possibility for all that long. | |
| Nick, it's not only going to be anti-trans laws. | |
| It's going to be stuff where they're going to be able to take your kids away. | |
| You're going to be able to not be denied employment. | |
| You're going to be able to be denied federal and state services. | |
| Like, they are going to, you're absolutely right, they're going to take that all the way to the bank. | |
| And they're seeing states already pass laws, so any kind of help you might do for a kid in that process, you can get prosecuted as well. | |
| And I could see other states looking around going, hey, that's a really great idea, we have control of Congress, we have control of the Senate, and maybe they get the White House. | |
| Let's just make it a law and everybody has to deal with that. | |
| Okay, so that's an easy one. | |
| Sure, sure. | |
| Let's get into, you know, you mentioned schools. | |
| Creationism. | |
| Oh my god. | |
| I mean, that's literally a big chunk of where all this is going. | |
| I mean, basically every time that you see an authoritarian state, what ends up happening is they go into the meeting rooms and they're like, guess what guys? | |
| Science just changed. | |
| Right. | |
| It's like, oh, you don't care for that, do you? | |
| Well, I hope you enjoyed your job. | |
| I hope you enjoyed your freedom. | |
| By the way, every now and then we'll make you a little camp over there and you can live over there. | |
| Oh, wait, you're OK with science changing? | |
| Weird. | |
| OK, well, that's cool. | |
| You'll see science change, history change. | |
| You name it, Nick, because not only will there be extra time for it, if this thing keeps going, we're talking about like mandatory prayer in schools. | |
| I mean like that's... go in your mind palace wherever you want. | |
| You're exactly right. | |
| That is... that's on the table. | |
| Absolutely. | |
| Religion was the A right below that. | |
| But yes, creationism and religion are the same. | |
| Okay. | |
| Alright. | |
| Let's um... How about this? | |
| Segregated schools. | |
| Well, Nick, that's the thing, man. | |
| Is it's like... | |
| You know, economics and demographics, those things aren't racist. | |
| What do you mean people are going around saying that, like, the way neighborhoods are planned is racist? | |
| Like, if you just end up in a school that has a ton of, like, funding and it's all white kids, like, that's not racist. | |
| Why are we talking about that as segregation? | |
| I just want my kid to go to a good college, Jared. | |
| Yeah, it's not about that. | |
| Nick, I'm so glad you brought that up because there's this thing that ended up getting published the other day. | |
| Our good friend, friend of the show. | |
| Ross Douthat, who for people who don't follow this closely, Ross Douthat was the one who after an incel murder, God knows how many people, used his space in the New York Times to basically be like, we need to consider sex redistribution for lonely white men. | |
| So thanks, Ross. | |
| Ross came out and basically said that Roe v. Wade was what destabilized America. | |
| That's a complete and utter horseshit lie. | |
| It's been segregation from the very beginning. | |
| That was the animating influence that made the right go crazy in the 20th century. | |
| They ended up using abortion and going ahead and using that as the cudgel because it tested better than saying that whites and blacks should have different types of schools. | |
| So at that point, you will take away all of the post-desegregation sort of rules and oversight and regulations. | |
| Because, Nick, and thanks John Roberts, and thanks the Roberts Court, we've figured out racism. | |
| That's not a thing anymore. | |
| Why do we have all these guardrails? | |
| Let's just go back to where we were. | |
| And by the way, if we get rid of public education, Nick, because public education is where it has to be desegregated, Well, what if we're having a bunch of private schools, because they can decide who gets in and who doesn't, and all of those schools, all of those institutions that were created post-desegregation, those themselves were segregated. | |
| Those themselves were intended to be segregated. | |
| That's where all of this is going. | |
| Absolutely. | |
| But that's not even the argument that they're getting. | |
| I think the argument is that it wasn't in the Constitution, so it's not our place to be adding that to it. | |
| If you want to make that a thing, then you've got to do a law. | |
| You know, so that we don't. | |
| But guess what? | |
| Then they'll just have a suit against that law and then we'll be right back where we started. | |
| And here's the thing about why the Roe v. Wade was decided the way it was in the first place. | |
| Part of it is, I think that the justices obviously knew, and I have a couple more things we've got to go through before I finish the game show part. | |
| But anyway, they knew that if you were to... This is the worst game show in the history of games. | |
| Yes. | |
| No one's taken this one up. | |
| But, um, they knew, and this is, by the way, that's the other nefarious part of this, is that the right would always say, well, it just goes to the states. | |
| We're not, like, outlawing anything. | |
| So the states decide. | |
| Guess what? | |
| As soon as this leaks, what are they talking about? | |
| A national law to ban abortion. | |
| McConnell already let the cat out of the bag. | |
| So here's the thing. | |
| The justices in 1971 knew that they would, you know, you'd force people to have to go to a different state to get this done. | |
| And it would get done. | |
| They would get an abortion if they needed it and they could afford to get over there, that would happen. | |
| So it really made little sense to have a law like that where you have certain states that don't allow it and other ones that do. | |
| It punitively, you know, hurts very specific people in this country unwarrantedly. | |
| You know, that was sort of the idea. | |
| Can I comment on that very, very quickly? | |
| Because this is important. | |
| We've been covering for the past few months how federal power has been eroded. | |
| And power is going back to the states. | |
| That's been done by a Republican Party that has a hard time winning federal power now and on top of that has always wanted to decimate it because of segregation and desegregation. | |
| So what we're watching actually is the wave is moving back into the states where Republicans have dominated for the most part. | |
| It's going back into the states. | |
| And by the way, you want to talk about the Democratic part of abortion and all this? | |
| Look at how many people have disenfranchised in these states. | |
| Look at how many election officials that they've completely done over. | |
| By the way, the Biden administration and the Democrats have done nothing to help those people or even give them a fighting chance in the midst of all of this. | |
| Good luck organizing your way out of it, guys. | |
| That's what they want you to do. | |
| But on top of that, so the wave goes from federal to state. | |
| Guess what happens eventually? | |
| It moves back to federal with brand new bosses who have taken advantage of all the power that they had at states. | |
| It's a really ingenious move that you're talking about right now. | |
| It's about taking away federal power when you don't have it, bringing it back when you do. | |
| Right? | |
| We're for small government until we're in charge of the government. | |
| And now it's in your bedroom, it's in your head, it's in your heart, it's in your religion, it's in all of it. | |
| But that's exactly right. | |
| It'll move out and then back and around. | |
| And every one of our fears and every one of our virtues that we believe that we live by, everyone has to live by. | |
| And that's the other thing that's disgusting about all of this. | |
| It's like, fine, you don't want an abortion, don't get an abortion. | |
| But that should never be and let me just I want to make something clear here. | |
| It's like I'm not necessarily like I would hope that nobody would ever have to go through the ordeal of having an abortion. | |
| I would pray that that would never have to happen, but I certainly going to tell you that no asshole in the DC is going to tell a woman to she can't do that. | |
| That's always like really that's the whole point of this Al Gore had a great thing with with the gosh quail where he couldn't get you know quail refused to say I support a woman's right to choose and that's really what this is about. | |
| But here's the thing because we now we're getting about talking about women in this sense. | |
| You know the last thing on my list for what they could keep walking back would be the women's right to vote. | |
| Sure. | |
| Why not. | |
| How about a woman's right to not not be raped by their spouse. | |
| How about a woman's right to get divorced? | |
| How about literally anything that could be seen as detrimental to a patriarchal, white, Christian nation? | |
| That's what all of this is about. | |
| It's about restoring the power of the white patriarch beyond any sort of push. | |
| And by the way, if you look at all of this, The actual idea of abortion, it's not just about controlling women's bodies in terms of reproduction. | |
| There are multiple facets to this. | |
| There's the philosophical idea that women should have that right. | |
| There's the idea that women should be able to have some sort of autonomy over their lives. | |
| Guess what? | |
| If you have to have that baby, and it costs a lot to have a baby by the way, in a country, you know we haven't even talked about this, our infant mortality rate is unbelievable in this country. | |
| We don't even take care of the mothers who are actually giving birth. | |
| But on top of that, it's so expensive, which means, I don't know, maybe you'll stay in that relationship. | |
| Maybe you'll stay in that household. | |
| Maybe you'll have to do this or do that. | |
| It is all about making sure that that world just continues to shrink and shrink and shrink. | |
| By the time that this is all said and done, if they get their way, we're going to be talking about suffrage of a very specific type. | |
| And this is originalism, Nick. | |
| Let's go back to the very beginning of the Constitution. | |
| Tell the good people at home who got to vote when the Constitution was ratified. | |
| Can I just say who did not get to vote? | |
| Yeah, make that list. | |
| Well, let's do it. | |
| Women? | |
| Slaves? | |
| People of color, I think, generally, and anybody who couldn't pass an unpassable test. | |
| And anybody who didn't have property or wealth. | |
| Yes, didn't have property. | |
| That's it! | |
| And that's where we're going with this. | |
| They are going to deal with the crisis of not just this postmodern modernity and all this stuff shifting and the crisis of neoliberalism. | |
| They are going to deal with the future by literally bringing back the past and saying things are in a point of crisis. | |
| The real people in charge need to be in charge again. | |
| The best and the brightest, the wealthy, white, evangelical men are the ones who should be in charge. | |
| That's exactly where we're going. | |
| And the point of public schooling, I think, was supposed to be to combat this kind of thing. | |
| It was supposed to educate enough people who can become... It's not progressive. | |
| Well, it's progressive in the lower P, where we can continue to evolve. | |
| The idea with liberalism, and again, this is a very classist The idea with liberalism was the founding fathers were like, you know what? | |
| Regular people are pretty stupid. | |
| But maybe if we lift them up and after enough time of educating them, maybe eventually they could handle the rigors of government and politics and representative government. | |
| And you're exactly right. | |
| It's going back to the point where it's like, well, people don't need to get educated. | |
| They just need to go and have service jobs and be in this new industry push that these people are going to have. | |
| Like, yeah, they're going to get to the point where it's like, we do not need to educate these people. | |
| In fact, we need to restrict education, which is why this public education push is happening. | |
| Well, and that's sort of been the push and pull for all of these years. | |
| I think everyone agrees that the public school system kind of sucks. | |
| It's not doing the kind of education that we want. | |
| There's no money in it whatsoever, and that's by design. | |
| Yeah. | |
| And so as a result, it was doing what they wanted to do anyway, in some interesting way. | |
| But what they're going to have to combat is 50 years worth of people who grew up with Roe v. Wade being the law of the land. | |
| And that's why, again, it's 70%. | |
| Now, if you wait a few more years, and that could be 15, 20 years, that 70% will go down without question, because you'll have more and more people who'd simply exist without it, and they don't know what it was with that, with it, you know? | |
| Just like, because I, we have to go check what the, what it was, the support for it was. | |
| It had to be pretty high in 71, but it probably was lower than 70. | |
| It was not controversial when it happened. | |
| Okay. | |
| Yeah, it was, it was, it was pretty much a bipartisan type situation when it happened, but that will change | |
| If all of a sudden you have an increased push towards Christian nationalism, which will just, and I gotta tell you, man, if we get to a Christian nationalist society, the types of which we've been talking about and we've been warning about, do you think that all of us that we're pushing this hedonistic, sinful, satanic society, you think that we're just gonna hang out? | |
| And everything's gonna be fine? | |
| As they're having like all these sermons about how sinful we were and how we betrayed the country and look at all the depravity we were a part of? | |
| That's not how this works. | |
| How do you think they're going to react if all these mothers of these women are going to have these babies now versus having an abortion? | |
| In a sinful way, according to them, right? | |
| Yeah, but it's not about the mothers, man. | |
| That's the thing here. | |
| Have you ever seen any evidence that a lot of these states have any ability to provide support for women who are young mothers anyway? | |
| Is there any evidence to feel good about that? | |
| Well, I tell you what, Nick, it's almost like if the state can't and won't support them, Maybe those children would be better off with wealthy families, and maybe they would be better off with wealthy white Christian families, which is about redistribution of population. | |
| I want to go ahead and put this on people's radars because this is something that you and I, and Nick, I'm so sorry, we're about to go down disturbing tunnels. | |
| Okay. | |
| And I know that that's what we do on here. | |
| I know that that's what this show's always been about, but I gotta tell you, things are kicking up a notch. | |
| Nick, reactionary right-wing movements. | |
| They take children from their enemies. | |
| They declare them mentally unwell. | |
| They declare them unsafe. | |
| And what do they do? | |
| This is also happening around the world right now. | |
| It's happened recently. | |
| It's happened during colonialism. | |
| It happened during the Spanish Civil War. | |
| You name it. | |
| They go in, they take those children, and they go ahead and they give them to loyalists. | |
| And they give them to people who are on their side. | |
| White, wealthy, evangelical people. | |
| Which, by the way, it almost is kind of handy how it solves the population problem. | |
| How it solves the fact that like... | |
| Here's the problem, though. | |
| and right-wing people, they don't do well democratically, do they? | |
| It's almost like they need more people on their side, and maybe they can go ahead and give all those babies to those families. | |
| That's not by accident. | |
| Here's the problem, though. | |
| If there is a sudden influx of babies who are of color, for instance, those white families aren't going to adopt those babies. | |
| Oh, they do too. | |
| And that is part of the evangelical adoption community. | |
| It absolutely is. | |
| Okay. | |
| Okay. | |
| We might need to do an episode on that sometime in the near future. | |
| And it's absolutely a part and a feature of the entire thing. | |
| Okay. | |
| And so then they get to indoctrinate how they want to. | |
| Absolutely, they do. | |
| And so in theory, then you'd say, and the state will actually support that and give them money so that they can help raise these kids. | |
| And that's the whole other part. | |
| We are going to see a form of white Christian socialism. | |
| I mean, that's literally what we're looking at. | |
| And that's what's happening with national conservatism. | |
| I mean, we've seen it with white farmers. | |
| We've already seen a glimpse of it, you know what I mean? | |
| It's like communism and socialism and how dare you try and redistribute money. | |
| Meanwhile, by the way, you over here, you white farmers, here, here's help. | |
| We'll just, we'll pay for that. | |
| That's totally fine. | |
| Oh, Christian organization, we'll give you that tax cut. | |
| Don't worry about it. | |
| You, no, not over here. | |
| No, not, not this. | |
| It is, it is going to turn into a really weird, twisted, sort of a right-wing welfare state. | |
| Absolutely. | |
| Yeah, and especially if they're gonna start banning like it's worse bad enough that they're gonna ban Abortions, but now they're talking about the contraception is going to be banned, and that seems reasonable. | |
| Plan B pill is going to be banned. | |
| The other issue is there's so many exceptions that you really would need to grant just as a matter of not to be cruel, I suppose, as a matter of humanity, that at that point the only answer, which is another reason why the court in 71 voted this way, was because the only real answer is to have it be legal. | |
| Right? | |
| There are too many legitimate exceptions to whatever law you'd want to put in that it just doesn't work. | |
| And that's what's going to happen here. | |
| And that's the problem. | |
| The backlash to that would be like, well, there is too many. | |
| It's too confusing. | |
| So we just have to just get, you can't have any of them. | |
| You know, mother's going to die too bad in an atopic pregnancy. | |
| Like, too bad. | |
| Sorry. | |
| You know what I mean? | |
| Like, that's probably what their reaction is going to be on the other side. | |
| And then people are going to die, like you said. | |
| Except for white wealthy women who are going to be able to continue to have access to contraception and abortion services and, you know, they won't really have to deal with a lot of these laws and a lot of this overreach. | |
| Yeah, unless they pass this national law, you know, when they can control everything. | |
| Oh, they'll still get those abortions. | |
| Oh, hey, I've lived in the South in a dry county for long enough to tell you, Nick, that where there is a will, there's a way. | |
| So I want to ask you this, but in order to bring this thing full circle, what we're talking about, I don't even think is necessarily conjecture. | |
| I don't think it's overreach. | |
| I don't think it's hysterical. | |
| We've seen this. | |
| We've seen what happens in these countries where this occurs. | |
| We've listened to them talk about this, like they have been very forthcoming about what they want to do, like, and they know that the Democrats aren't going to mention it. | |
| And I don't know, culture itself really doesn't pay that much attention to it. | |
| What do you think, at this point, where we're at right now, what do you think we need to do to avoid this? | |
| And do you think that whatever that is will be done? | |
| Because I've got some thoughts on it, and I've got some opinions on where we are, and where we are in this entire process. | |
| What's your feeling on this? | |
| I mean, well listen, the answer is supposed to be legislation. | |
| They're supposed to pass a law that will protect abortion across the country. | |
| Do you trust the Democrats to get that done? | |
| Well, they're going to do it, you know, this week. | |
| And it's not going to pass, and that's no. | |
| So the answer is no, they're not going to get that done. | |
| They should have been trying to get it done for the last 50 years. | |
| So, like you had said, what are our choices to vote every November? | |
| The power of protest is strong. | |
| It gives you a sense of... Remember how we had Nick Carmody come on and talk about the dopamine rush of being on the right? | |
| Well, you get that kind of rush when everyone gets together and we march and you chant and you make your point felt and every once in a while that actually has an effect. | |
| Other than that... | |
| You know, I don't know what else we're going to be able to do to affect that kind of change or make sure it doesn't get overturned. | |
| And, you know, please help me figure out what we can do. | |
| Well, OK, on the protest front, I think you're exactly right. | |
| We have to distinguish the difference between protests that makes us feel like we've done something and protests that does something. | |
| A big fear of mine at this point. | |
| And it's when I think about this, it washes over me in a wave of white hot fear is what it does, which is the way that this country set up both with social media, but also the differences in socioeconomic statuses and geographical statuses. | |
| I am very afraid that Roe v. Wade is going to get struck down and people in blue states are going to protest for a few minutes and then basically say, best of luck, red staters. | |
| Because we've seen that. | |
| We've seen a lot of people who are just like, if you don't like it, leave. | |
| Right? | |
| And maybe we'll see some people who will leave the red states and they'll relocate. | |
| But that's not an answer. | |
| Well, by the way, it is worth noting that some of the blue states are already trying to do things where they can help people from red states get over to blue states to then have abortions, which will trigger lawsuits. | |
| Well, that's going to lead to a whole different ballgame. | |
| But I have to tell you, if that's what you think should happen, you've got to get people out of these states. | |
| But I again, That doesn't save anybody. | |
| Because this thing is not going to stop with Roe v. Wade being overthrown, we're watching gay marriage, we're watching all this stuff go away, and they are going to push more and more for power at a federal level. | |
| But that was my idea, by the way. | |
| Remember, like, the whole Civil War thing, like, maybe just let them be on their side and we'll get the people out who need to get out. | |
| And it would never stop. | |
| It just would not stop. | |
| I'm sorry to say. | |
| I have to tell you, I think at this point, The Democratic Party has made it very clear who they are and who they aren't. | |
| It needs to get to a point where literally anyone who doesn't stand up for this and make some sort of a pledge and come through with it, that they're not just getting primary, but they're being shunned as a political body. | |
| We need grassroots solidarity in this country. | |
| We need people running for stuff. | |
| We need people putting pressure on them. | |
| And if they're not willing to do it, another party needs to come along. | |
| Or a grassroots movement needs to come along because we've reached past the point where this is anywhere near okay. | |
| This is a full-blown crisis. | |
| Here are the steps that need to be done. | |
| The problem at this point is that the Republicans have been able to do this because they are relying on minoritarian institutions that were built into the Constitution by white wealthy men to privilege white wealthy men. | |
| Here are those institutions. | |
| The United States Senate. | |
| The Supreme Court and the Electoral College. | |
| Those three things are what have made all of this possible in the first place. | |
| The Senate is a minoritarian place that was put in place to curb Democratic impulses. | |
| It doesn't matter that direct election has happened. | |
| It still does that. | |
| It over represents the minoritarian white wealthy base. | |
| That needs to be changed. | |
| Also, by the way, we need to go ahead and bring in Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. | |
| Fuck it. | |
| If they want to get real with this, let's get real with it. | |
| Bring those two states in. | |
| And by the way, it should have been done already. | |
| We don't even have to talk about it being political strategy. | |
| If you are part of the holdings, you should have a vote. | |
| Second of all, Supreme Court. | |
| I just want to say it again. | |
| They created the power that they are using right now, completely out of thin air, in order to curb Democratic power. | |
| The Supreme Court is only as legitimate as we allow it to be. | |
| And I have to tell you that there have been a lot of points in American history where the Supreme Court fucked it up and people said, no. | |
| And didn't listen to him and didn't do whatever. | |
| That's civil disobedience in a nutshell. | |
| But right now, if they want to do this, let's pack the fucking court. | |
| I don't care. | |
| Throw 20 more on there. | |
| I don't care about institutions. | |
| And the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, they want to talk about civility or norms or whatever. | |
| This is not a time to be holding onto those things. | |
| The Electoral College, Needs to have gone away. | |
| I mean, it never should have existed. | |
| It's time for it to go the way of the dinosaurs and be done. | |
| And until we start taking on these things and until we start becoming ambitious in terms of moving towards democratic power, this is not going to stop. | |
| Period. | |
| I like it. | |
| Those are all very good tangible things to work on. | |
| Obviously, packing the courts I don't think is even possible anyway either because of the hoops you're going to have to jump through for that. | |
| I guess in a more macro sense, I'm just worried that there are as many people as there are who have this originalist take and have this fundamental religious views. | |
| Because remember, it's not about your own life. | |
| Hey, if you want to live your life like a fundamentalist Christian person, that's fine. | |
| But built into that is, I need to make everybody else act that same way. | |
| Well, the only reason that there is any sort of number of people there is because those people, as we've talked about, figured out that they can make the faux populist-like class argument. | |
| The Democratic Party moved away from those people, just completely abandoned them and said, we're not going to win those states. | |
| We're not going to use that as our power base anymore. | |
| We're going to use the professional managerial class. | |
| We're going to use corporate donors, all of that stuff. | |
| They moved away from it. | |
| It's time to reinvigorate that. | |
| The Republican Party are basically the only people talking to those people anymore. | |
| And that's an absolute shame and a tragedy and that needs to change. | |
| Yeah, I mean it is, but I wish they'd change, for the people to change. | |
| And that way, what that change occurs is in public schools. | |
| That's the breeding ground for that, but not, and I wonder if the people who finally, because you know, I'm sure you know, when they sat down to design public schools that are sponsored by the government, there must have been a pretty big backlash, right? | |
| There must have been people who didn't want to do that. | |
| I mean, in the beginning of it, there was a struggle over it, but it was more seen as, oh man, look at us, we're like trying. | |
| It wasn't necessarily like this sort of big, giant, partisan deal. | |
| It used to be, and this is legitimate, you have to look at education and say, you know what, I think we'll all be better off if we're more educated. | |
| Okay. | |
| And that goes back to what, talking about that population, I wish they would change too, man. | |
| Because they're supporting a group of people right now. | |
| You want to talk about what the Supreme Court could do? | |
| Minimum wage, regulations, age restrictions, you name it. | |
| That stuff is coming for them. | |
| And they can cheer it on all they want and fly let's go Brandon flags and all of this bullshit. | |
| And maybe it feels good in the moment. | |
| Maybe you get that dopamine hit. | |
| But I'm telling you, like, that's the road that you're going down. | |
| Because my take on it was, like, let's say they're against it or whatever, or they're good old boys in the South, and they're just like, yeah, yeah, okay, we'll do that public school thing, because, of course, it's going to be segregated. | |
| That's really important. | |
| That's good. | |
| And then we can make sure that we can control that, you know, the curriculum enough to make sure that our kids continue to grow up like us, and unenlightened like us. | |
| So, in my mind, it was like, maybe from the beginning, they knew that they were going to, it would be corrupted. | |
| You know, at least for several decades until Brown v. Board, where they had at least a separation. | |
| But at the very least, it seems like that must have been part of, that was a built-in feature. | |
| They kind of felt like, okay, we're gonna be able to keep this limited and not get to the stated goals, which would be that everybody had enough civic knowledge to understand how elections are supposed to work and what's fair and all those things. | |
| But they don't have that knowledge. | |
| I mean, that has been weeded out intentionally. | |
| And one of the reasons why we have this show, and one of the reasons why we have the listenership that I do, or we do, Jesus God, not just me. | |
| One of the reasons that we have this listenership, man, is because we're talking about shit that you don't learn in public school. | |
| That you don't learn in conventional coverage and all of this stuff. | |
| And it's by design. | |
| Everything that we talked about today... I'm sitting here looking at my damn notes. | |
| Everything that we talked about today is stuff that basically does not get talked about or educated toward because they don't want people questioning the system. | |
| They don't want people working outside of it and pressuring for change and democratic power. | |
| All of that stuff is weeded out by design. | |
| And what you're talking about in terms of like how are they going to look at things in public education in the next few years – Well, go back and look at what schools were like during segregation. | |
| Look at what schools were like during the Civil War. | |
| Look at any moment in American history, and they go ahead and they deliver a version of reality that informs people to go ahead and think, wow, this is how the world actually works, until you're able to find information that works against it, like what we're talking about. | |
| Eventually, I mean if this goes down this path the way that it is, like every school textbook is gonna be like, there was an awful time for 50 years where America murdered babies and satanic people were doing this or doing that. | |
| The amount that it takes to climb out from underneath that indoctrination, I can tell you from personal experience, is incredible. | |
| You know what I mean? | |
| Like, just to find your way outside of that conventional sort of indoctrination, it's almost impossible. | |
| Well, and the fear of a teacher allowing that kind of glimpse into an alternative source of information, that fear is powerful, and I hate to reduce it to like a movie like Dead Poets Society, But you give a glimpse of anybody, especially when you're in that age and you're bored as hell, you can't stand school and all these different things. | |
| You get a little taste of something that's a little interesting and different. | |
| You're probably going to want more and like, hey, I want to look on my own. | |
| And by the way, what teacher in high school, let's say, wouldn't be ecstatic to think that a kid is out there researching on his own and learning his own information and becoming more aware about it? | |
| That's amazing. | |
| But then you cut to these school boards, right? | |
| And this is what's so frightening to these parents, who would probably otherwise seem like very normal, upstanding citizens in their communities, but who turn into these monsters because they can't risk having their kids taught how to think on their own. | |
| And it's every level of it. | |
| It's not a coincidence that this is happening at every level in society, including the local. | |
| Where these people are being preyed upon and radicalized by the wealthy people at the top who have gone ahead and sort of, you know, depowered federal government by their own design. | |
| Like they are the people who are taking over these places. | |
| And it basically, I gotta tell you, man, it's a really good plan that they've got. | |
| Like it's a really complicated, relentless plan. | |
| And it's, you know, they got this weapon in place, the Supreme Court. | |
| they knew that they were going to do all this shit, you know? | |
| And now it's just like, it's like the starting pistol. | |
| And that's why I keep saying, like, people have to get serious about this, 'cause like, it's not like they're suddenly gonna be like, "Hey, good job everybody." - Right. - "We did it, okay, cool, well, what happens now "when nobody wants to vote for us and, you know, "people are upset in the streets?" I keep saying, this isn't a process that's going to end peacefully. | |
| Like people don't live in dystopian societies out of choice. | |
| They live there because there's violence and intimidation and they learn that they shouldn't speak up and they shouldn't fight against it. | |
| And you know, it's at every strata. | |
| is what this is. | |
| It's a really ingenious plan that they've got going. | |
| And they're not going to rest, like you said. | |
| That's the thing that's really troubling. | |
| And that's probably out of the need to hold power. | |
| They realize it's not enough just for abortion. | |
| They need to continually find these little nooks and crannies where they can scrape a couple extra voters out in these little congressional seats to continue to win those elections. | |
| Because again, 70-30 is a terrible optics. | |
| This shouldn't help them at all. | |
| This is the one thing that you think in the midterms would really cause it to buck every trend that we've seen since the inception of the Republic and have Democrats win a midterm after having the president win it. | |
| But I still don't feel that much better about the midterms coming up. | |
| No, I don't either. | |
| And again, it's that vacuum. | |
| It's that lack of leadership. | |
| I don't want to be wrong. | |
| I hope in the time that we've been recording this, that maybe Biden came out and was like, this is what I think, and this is what we're going to do. | |
| And damn it all, this is how we're going to do it. | |
| I don't believe it. | |
| I don't believe that that's what's happened since we started recording. | |
| And I hate, I don't want to sit here and say this, that I've lost faith in this, but I don't know how you couldn't, man. | |
| It's been desperate silence. | |
| There's a reason why people are out in the street. | |
| They don't have anybody who's rallying them. | |
| They don't have whatever. | |
| The only advice I've got for people right now is get educated on authoritarian movements. | |
| Look at the history of how this stuff works. | |
| And on top of that, find somebody local who, um, you know, is looking for reproductive justice or rights. | |
| And if you have a couple of dollars, give it to them. | |
| If you can volunteer for them, do it for that. | |
| But you know, we got to get educated and pissed off because, whoo, this thing. | |
| This thing, man, I hate that we're watching it, and I hate that we've been expecting and predicting it, but it's really taken off. | |
| all right everybody we're going to come back on friday with the weekender edition we have a whole hell of a lot of things already to talk about it i i have to assume steve schmidt is probably somewhere still tweeting hours and hours and hours about sarah balin and megan mccain and john mccain so we might touch on that and uh keep covering these uh major major stories reminder if you want access to that go over to patreon.com slash mccrake podcast uh things are tough and | |
| Things are frustrating and infuriating. | |
| Thank you for being a community and taking care of each other and giving us hope and direction. | |
| Until next time everybody, you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me? | |
| SMH. | |
| You can find me at J.Y. | |
| Sexton. |