CPAC heads to Hungary to get a pep-talk from Viktor Orban and a step-by-step guide to destroying liberal democracy. Hint: It includes taking over the government, the media, and beaming Tucker Carlson into homes 24/7. Co-hosts Nick Hauselman and Jared Yates Sexton breakdown the revelry, discuss the debacle that was the Disinformation Governance Board, and take note of a good sign from Down Under. To support the show and access additional content, including the extra Weekender show every Friday and live-shows, become a patron at patreon.com/muckrakepodcast
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Progressives are threatening the entire Western civilization.
And what is really dangerous is that they're not threatening it from outside, but from inside.
Hey everybody, welcome to the Muckrake Podcast.
I'm Jared Yates Sexton.
I'm here with Nick Halseman, the man of the hour, the MVP of the Muckrake Podcast.
For those of you who, unfortunately, aren't patrons, You did not hear the Weekender edition that came out on Friday in which my partner, my friend, my main man, Nick, made an incredible prognostication, an incredible prediction.
We, of course, had recorded this podcast.
We were talking about Elon Musk's He'll turn on Twitter his decision to vote Republican.
I thought it was because he had no idea what he was doing Nick immediately looked into his crystal ball and said I think there's probably a Scandal that's getting ready to break and not an hour after we finished recording it turns out that Musk had exposed himself and offered to buy a young woman a pony and I can't believe those words just came out of my mouth.
Congratulations again, Nick.
Oh, yeah.
And then, you know, Musk has just been on a bender.
He could, he might even lose Tesla the way he's behaving now.
The board could easily throw him off.
Everything, all the stock prices are going down.
You know, I love what his reaction was.
So he goes, if anybody can describe any unusual part of my body that you can't see without clothes on, then please do so.
And, you know, but that proves nothing or whatever.
I don't even know what he's trying to say.
So, a couple things on this.
We're going to have to cover this in the near future, the consequences and the fallout of having the world's richest man suddenly decide that he's really into authoritarianism, because that's a really important topic that we're going to have to discuss.
But I do want to point out, and I think Nick, again, you just nailed it, This is the most leveraged man in the world.
Maybe in history.
I mean, this is a Ponzi scheme of Ponzi schemes.
His entire fortune is basically resting on the public perception that he can do no wrong and that none of his Barker games are, you know, completely falling apart.
He went this weekend to Brazil.
Did you see this, by the way?
I did not see that he went to Brazil. - Well, I mean, it's hard to keep track of good old Elon.
Elon went to Brazil to party with Jair Bolsonaro.
Basically to try and find a new place that he could fleece and get a bunch of money and support from.
Bolsonaro, for those keeping track, is a complete and utter idiot, but also an authoritarian.
He goes, he gets this big award, he hobnobs with them and just continues to flirt with the international right-wing authoritarian movement.
But you're exactly right.
Like, his entire fortune could collapse at any given moment, possibly taking the economy with him.
But now he's on the move, he's going around the world, he's seeing what's what.
Yeah and by the way you also called it where you know another Tesla just spontaneously combusted and and the guy didn't know how to get out of the car you know there is a way when the electrical fails you pull up a latch and the door opens they did not know this because there's a lot of things you got to watch when you have a Tesla and and so yeah that's that's happening too and by the way a couple more though oh that's the autopilot stuff is also there's under scrutiny for causing accidents and killing people?
No!
Yeah, there was one.
Is it working the right way and could kill people?
I'm shocked.
Well, there's one that happened like in 2019 that was really bad.
Like it drove off of the freeway and never slowed down.
And then another one just recently where a construction site got hit and then people died.
That's terrible.
Yeah, and that's all it takes though to disrupt the making of the cars.
And then the margins are that slim, like the whole company just goes.
Very quickly.
So he has to be very careful about what he's doing these days, and I don't think he has the capacity to do so.
No, he's very much like a cornered rat at this point.
It's given me real, like, anxiety from afar.
It's like how I used to feel watching Breaking Bad.
Yeah.
You know, I would just sort of have my own anxiety that was like, God, you know, do I have a drug empire that I'm sitting upon that could fall apart at any given moment?
Really, really tough stuff.
But in related news, speaking of the international right-wing authoritarian movement, the Republicans, the conservatives, they had themselves a holiday, Nick.
And this is something that frequent listeners of the show probably aren't going to be surprised by, because this is something we regularly cover.
The CPAC conference.
Got their suitcases out, they put on some nice traveling shorts, they got on the plane, they flew over, and they went to Budapest.
Budapest, Hungary, in order to go and hang out with Viktor Orban, the Hungarian authoritarians, and what a good time they had, Nick.
You know, I'm watching this Gaslit Show, which I don't know if you watch on Starz, and they go to the Republican Convention in 72.
And I'm picturing something very similar, which, by the way, in 72 is as family-oriented as it was, as it is now, in values, in Christian, whatever.
Let me tell you, there weren't a lot of Christian values being observed.
This weekend with John Dean, a young John Dean wandering around.
So I can imagine there's probably some hijinks going on around Budapest.
So to get everybody up to speed, why in the world a bunch of Republicans and conservatives flew out to Budapest in order to hang out.
Basically the love affair that is currently blossoming and threatens to basically roll back all progress of the 20th century Get rid of your reproductive rights, get rid of gay marriage, get rid of basically anything that you Have to to rely on to make your life halfway livable in the United States of America.
This goes back a few years back, actually, to the legalization of gay marriage by the Supreme Court, when a bunch of Republicans and conservatives like Rod Dreher, who, by the way, is like just wild at this point and was the person who built the bridge over there to Hungary.
Basically, they looked at the American political landscape They said, the Republican Party has failed us.
All it's gotten us is a bunch of tax cuts, hyper capitalism.
But meanwhile, gay people can get married.
Women have halfway independent lives.
They basically were distraught.
They thought they were going to have to, like, escape into these almost, like, monk-like separate existences in order to get away from it.
Dreher and a bunch of the Republicans got a little phone call from Viktor Orban, an authoritarian in Hungary, and they said, Hey guys, come on over and stay a bit.
And they did!
And I'll tell you what they found in Hungary.
They found a society in which elections have been rigged.
The minority has completely taken over all levers of the government.
They've gone into schools and turned them into indoctrination sites.
I don't know if that sounds familiar to anybody.
They've gone after immigrants.
They've gone after gay people.
They've reduced the rights of women and minorities.
And what has happened at this point is that Republicans and conservatives look at Hungary and they say, we would like a little bit of that.
And the CPAC conference in Hungary was not only the consummation of that relationship, but they were given a lot of pointers on exactly how they can make their wildest, awful, nightmarish dreams come true.
Well, I mean, listen, Jared, you know, they had a decision to make where to host CPAC this year.
And I suppose they laid out the map of the world, right?
Because they could hold it anywhere they possibly wanted to across the entire globe.
Why they didn't want to just stay home and go to, like, you know, San Diego, I don't know.
It's a nice place this time of year.
But it speaks volumes in the sense that, like, they live to troll people like you and I. Me.
You and me.
And that's why they hate us too, because I'm always trying to figure out whether we use I or me.
So, that is what they're doing here, but you're right.
I think it would help if you're going to crib, you know, if you need a crib sheet and really study something, it probably helps to actually go and really look at it up close, like when you go to the museum and study the brush strokes of the masters on the canvas.
Yeah, it's very much like a tutelage, right?
And by the way, speaking of staying at home, Donald J. Trump didn't make the trip.
Didn't make the trip, but guess what, Nick?
He sent his best greetings.
Also CPAC hungry.
We are very close, as you know, all of us, to Victor Orban.
He's a great leader, a great gentleman, and he just had a very big election result.
I was very honored to have endorsed him.
A little unusual endorsement.
Usually I'm looking at the 50 states, but here we went a little bit astray.
And I did that only because he really is a good man and he's done a fantastic job for his country.
We're looking to stop a lot of the problems that are going on in the world, including in the United States.
Socialism and even communism, if you look at it really deeply.
So here we are praising Viktor Orban, praising what he's done.
And by the way, Trump has no idea what he's talking about.
I know that's shocking everybody, but you know, he just sort of sent along, as meanwhile, everybody's like, oh, thanks, Don, with hearts in their eyes that have Ron DeSantis's picture in the middle of the hearts.
Like, that's how this is working.
And what happens at this conference?
It goes forward It's got the slogan and anybody who pays any attention to authoritarian history, this will make their little ears perk up.
The slogan was God, Homeland, Family.
And this of course has a ton of racism.
It has a bunch of climate denial.
It has a bunch of gender discussions.
About you know how many genders there actually are and how men should you know have dominion over women We have a bunch of Hungarian personalities who basically you know call out minorities and say they're unfit for existence And that's out on the stage Meanwhile, what's actually happening at these conferences?
And that's for the Rubes, the people who, you know, basically got completely screwed over by CPAC.
They bought a bunch of travel packages.
They're seeing what Budapest feels like.
They're seeing what this culture looks like.
Meanwhile, behind closed doors, Viktor Orban, the entire party that he represents, the entire movement he represents, We're having hardcore meetings is what's happening.
We're having discussions about how to push out this ideological blueprint.
We're talking about strengthening ties.
But I have to tell you, it is as disgusting as you can possibly imagine.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, his speech alone, which was not behind closed doors from Orban, was really, I don't want to call it eye opening because it's the same pap that we see, you know, these Republicans say as well.
It's just bizarre because you're also trying to picture all these Republicans there, these Americans there, slurping it up too.
And I'm not even sure where we should begin with what he was saying.
There's so many things in there.
Do you have a bite of the apple you want to start with?
I got way too much in here.
You know, basically what we're looking at is pretty traditional fascistic rhetoric and all of this.
You know, he goes out there and First of all, before we even get into the nuts and bolts of it, Nick, I don't know if you noticed this, he has an incredibly terrible tick in his public speaking where every couple of lines he's like, my dear friends, my dear friends.
It's awful.
He is just, he's such a bore and you'd expect an authoritarian to have a little personality, but not so much.
Basically he comes out and he says that His country has and by the way like I just want people to know like this is this is his words that they have quote-unquote cured Hungry of liberalism.
Meaning, of course, what's it mean if you cured something?
What is it, Nick?
You've eradicated it, I suppose.
You have eradicated a disease.
Oh yeah.
And the disease, of course, is not just, you know, wanting to tax the rich.
It's not just thinking that pluralism is a good idea.
It's the idea that trans people should exist, that gay people should exist, that That like anybody should even oppose a Christian illiberal regime.
He says he's cured it and not only has he cured it, he's cured liberals and communists.
And as he's saying that, Nick, I'm sorry to do this and I'm sorry that you're on a show that chronicles right-wing fascism and authoritarianism.
I'm sure it makes you uncomfortable when we start talking about these conspiracy theories.
I'm gonna read you a section and tell me if anything sticks out to you.
Is that okay?
All right.
That's okay.
He says, of course, and we'll get into the steps that he prescribes for Republicans.
He says that they need to have their own media, and that's going to be one of the more important things.
We'll talk more about that in a second.
He says the root of the problem is that the modern Western media aligns itself with the views of the left.
Reporters were taught at university by people with progressive left-wing views.
As soon as a conservative figure appears in the media, they're criticized, attacked, defamed, and vilified.
Dear friends, the Democrats in the U.S., for instance, do not obey such rules.
He says not only do the liberals dominate media, they control media.
Nick, does that set off any alarm bells for you?
Oh, but if you keep going, he'll really say what he's trying to say.
But yes, it's definitely his state-sponsored propaganda, the whole thing.
These guys don't hide anymore.
It's really amazing how they just lay it out there.
How dare you say this is anti-semitism when you say that a certain group of opponents controls education, controls the economy, controls the media.
How dare you start... Just because he mentions George Soros doesn't make this anti-semitic.
I just got out of the meeting, Jared.
So we just finished.
I was a little late to get here to record.
I'm sorry because we were busy, you know, meeting.
So, you know, let's not let's not pretend that he's not onto something here.
Well, and I want to share this clip real fast.
This is, and if, Nick, if we got told that CPAC was happening in Budapest, like in our minds, like we would go ahead and put these words in Viktor Orban's mouth, right?
Yeah.
But when we did that, we would say, that's silly.
There's no possible way that Viktor Orban, one of the leading authoritarian figures in the world, would possibly spend part of his speech Just absolutely kissing the cheek of Tucker Carlson.
Of course, the Grand Old Party has associates in the media.
Associated media.
But they do not compete with the dominance of the liberal press.
Only my friend Tucker Carlson places himself on the line without wavering.
His new program is the most watched.
What does it mean?
It means that programs like his should run day and night.
As you say, 24-7.
And there it is!
The answer to everything that Republicans want and conservatives want is that Tucker Carlson's show, and shows like Tucker Carlson's show, should be on American TV 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, because that's not brainwashing, that's not indoctrination at all.
Well, did you get the impression that he's trying to make a connection between Tucker Carlson being the highest rated of this kind of show and that means that the entire country must feel that way?
Is that sort of what he's trying to make a connection to?
Because I think that's what I heard.
So if you actually, and I know I'm not shocking anybody here, but if you actually try and follow the logic of what reactionaries say, your brain will melt down.
Like really to say, and he even goes so far as to say it's the highest rated show.
If it's the highest rated show, why are liberals and neo-Marxists so dominant?
Right.
Or they're not.
Or they prop that up and they're feeding everybody this information, but no one really wants it.
They don't believe in it.
Because Tucker is the most popular broad.
That's what everyone must believe because that's the highest rated show.
So it's like, even still, you know, if you look at the numbers, right, the highest rated show today on cable compared to like, you know, 30 years ago is nothing.
You know what I mean?
It's like hardly any of the countries listen to this shit.
No, it's ridiculous.
And speaking of ridiculous, Orban rolls out a 12 point plan.
And Nick, I don't know how you feel about this.
Instantly, if I hear that somebody has a 12-point plan, and maybe this is the Philistine in me, I just think, roll back to 10, man.
Yeah, make it even?
Yeah, just don't do 12.
Come on.
Yeah, or like the 12 tribes of Israel.
No, I don't know.
Don't say that!
Don't say that!
He's not going to enjoy that.
But no, but remember, 12 is important to them, too.
The freedom fighters of Hungary have something about 12 in their myth, mythology.
Wow.
So, I don't know.
You are queuing on baking in real time.
That's incredible.
Yeah.
Well, yeah.
Lay some of them on us, please.
All right.
Let's go down this list.
And listen, there's some stuff going on here.
One, play by your own rules, which sounds like a sports motivation thing, but you don't want an authoritarian telling political radicals, play by your own rules.
Yeah.
I mean, basically ignore laws.
Yeah, completely ignore laws.
I mean, that's literally what this is.
He's saying if you want to get what we have, which is total control of a country and its culture, you literally have to throw all of the established rules and institutions and throw them away.
Great.
Cool.
Great start.
Do we even need any more steps?
That's the problem.
That's it.
Done.
One step.
That's great.
That's a great speech.
Yeah.
One step.
Yeah.
My friends.
My friend.
My friend.
Oh, it's so bad.
Step two is to use national conservatism in domestic politics.
And I really appreciated that he used the term national conservatism.
He went ahead and said it out loud.
He went ahead and used the name of the movement, which of course is what this is going to end up becoming known as around the world.
But it's the idea that when you are in control of the government, you need to go ahead and use this special type of illiberalism.
And that means not only fixing elections and the culture around you, that also means using all of those institutions Specifically for the delight of a very specific type of the base, which, if you're paying attention, evangelical white people.
Yep.
Three, national interest in foreign politics.
And the idea here is that everything you approach should be from the perspective of a country, nationalism.
He uses, by the way, Ukraine as the example.
And Orban has been playing a little trick in all of this because he's part of NATO.
because he's part of the European Union.
Right.
Basically, he's had to go ahead and pretend like he's against the invasion of Ukraine.
But in this, he plays around in his mind a little bit of pretzel logic and says, you know, we really want this war to end, but there's really nothing we should do because it's not in our best interest. - Right.
And you know what?
Something in my lizard brain says, okay, but it's America first or it's Hungary first.
It's that same thing whether we have no obligation to help anybody else in part of the globalist community, which they would rail against.
So that's an issue.
But at some point we should talk about that because there is a good argument about, like, why are we sending billions of dollars there when we could use it here to actually affect change in America?
Absolutely an argument to be made, and I think it displays something that we've talked about quite a bit, which is what are governments supposed to do in the neoliberal age?
They can't help anybody, right?
They can't help their own people.
They can send money out for war.
And by the way, that helps arms manufacturers, that helps the military industrial complex, and also it goes ahead and plays towards this geopolitical strategy.
But I have to tell you, like, I don't like it that there's a bunch of babies that are basically going without formula.
I completely agree.
And this is one of the reasons why the national conservatives and leftists, they're looking at a similar game board, right?
And they're saying, listen, this system is really screwed up and it needs to change.
It just so happens what the answers are.
Yeah.
And if you lay out the bullet points, a few of those will align.
We'll have a similar thing to rail against, and it will feel very strange, and I don't know if I'd feel like I'd sleep well knowing that I would agree with somebody like that, but still, there will be some crossover.
Absolutely.
Number four, this is where, of course, he mentions Tucker Carlson earlier.
We must have our own media.
Congratulations, Victor.
The strongest media in the country is right-wing media, which has absolutely fried people's brains.
Congrats.
But you got to do something about George Soros and the people he meets who have taken control of the media at all times.
I guess that's what he's saying is that they've been able to shut that down in Hungary.
So they imagine it's just Fox News being the only outlet basically.
That's what they've been able to create and that's why it's so easy to control.
We haven't even gotten to the religion part.
Oh, it's behind all of this.
And by the way, speaking of taking control of all the media, it's really hard if you have quote-unquote free and fair elections for any of your opponents to win or challenge you if state-run media is controlled by one party and won't get out the message of opponents.
And that's kind of what's happened here in Hungary.
Number five, expose your opponent's intentions.
And I don't know about you, but my eyes did one of those cartoons, iUGA things, where here he explicitly says that gay people are targeting children.
That's one of the main messages in this speech, is that you have to tell people that gay people are targeting children.
And I think the point of that is you have to frame the argument the way you want to frame it.
And it's very disarming when you do that.
They do, the Republicans do that really, really well.
And you're left to be like, well, wait, I'm not a pedophile.
Meanwhile, you know, we're not discussing what we were trying to discuss, which is like, you know, the proper way to educate children, right?
Now you're just sitting there defending baseless charges.
Yep, and this is the mainlining and international mainlining of QAnon.
That's literally all this is.
They've realized that it's a really good cudgel and a weapon.
Number six, focus on the economy.
Completely agreed, and that's one of the reasons why right-wing extremists and authoritarians are gaining powers, because they're actually talking about what's happening in the economy to people.
It just so happens that they're lying about it, why it's happened, and why it's affected people, and they've gone ahead and put in these boogeymen in order to take over what capitalism and neoliberalism has done, but basically saying to win elections and win power, you have to focus on the economy, which I think that's true.
Jared, has there ever been a Democrat in the White House when the economy has gone really well?
I mean, yeah.
Okay, just checking.
I just want to make sure.
I mean, Republicans usually wreck the economy, take a shit on it, and then say, later, hope somebody cleans this up.
And also will simultaneously act as if every single depression we've ever had is directly related to having a Democrat in the White House, as if we never had prosperity.
Speaking of Republicans taking a shit on the economy and leaving it for someone else to fix, real fast, Nick, we didn't talk about this George W. Bush clip that popped up.
In which he said the brutal invasion and then he said Iraq instead of Ukraine.
Yeah, and then he had to try and milk it twice to try and get a laugh out of it.
As all these ghouls and the... We need a whole, um, an hour to deal with that.
It makes me so mad.
Oh my god.
Number seven.
Do not get pushed to extremes.
Which felt like, to me, was basically just some rhetorical pandering.
The idea is that they are mainstream and that they're not actually extreme, but obviously they are.
They're authoritarians.
Keep going.
Number eight.
This is great.
This is one of the reasons why, as a writing professor, I got to tell you, like, this is where... Vic, you might be able to get rid of this one.
Read every day.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, Mein Kampf is a book that you could read every day if you, you know, We're starting to get into a little bit of thin gruel here.
Number nine is have faith, which I mean, sure, but like, come on now, let's condense.
Let's condense some things.
Number ten, make friends!
Which, I mean, it's pretty silly.
He's saying grab associations, work with people, which I think is absolutely true.
Number eleven is build communities.
Tell me if I'm wrong.
A couple of these could have been collapsed.
Am I wrong?
Oh yeah, he needs an editor.
Yeah, let's get it down to 10.
That's all I'm saying.
And finally, number 12, build institutions.
And there you have a recipe on how to take over a culture and a political structure and turn it into an authoritarian right-wing reactionary paradise.
Well, you like to give these think tanks way... I always kind of feel like way too much credit or way too much influence, but you know what?
Hearing him phrase it that way, you kind of realize, yes, these things last a lot longer than the people do, and they can continue to... I mean, and these are the evil geniuses.
These are the guys who are really thinking deeply about, like, January 6th.
How do you do the insurrections?
How do we manipulate this?
How do we do gerrymandering for over 12, 15 years to make sure that the Congress is locked up in the Republican control?
So, yes.
Here's what's interesting, but really quickly, because I don't know how this all mixed in reading the speech a little while ago.
He seems to think that Soviet-era communists are liberals.
Yes.
And I was fascinated by this notion that, like, those guys, the Soviets from, like, White Knights or whatever, like the movies we grew up with in the 80s about how, you know, those guys are, like, the liberals in this situation?
I can't, can you help me unpack that one?
So, that is one of the right-wing authoritarian sort of brain bugs that they all have.
So, again, and I've talked about this, I'll go ahead and set up the definition.
Liberalism was literally the transference from like the sovereignty of kings and feudalism into the marketplace with representative government.
That's what liberalism is.
It's the idea that you should have governments, you should have representation, that property is sacrosanct.
By the way, you can't say that property is sacrosanct And then go over to the U.S.S.R.
where private property has been abolished.
Like literally the U.S.S.R.
and the Hungarians in Orban basically have built their entire power base on opposing communists.
It just so happens now that what they're doing is a very Marjorie Taylor Greene communist corporation.
Thing you know what I mean where they're just they're bringing all these different things together and it allows them to sort of twist history and basically say that liberal means left which it doesn't and That those two things have come together in the confluence and and this is something that like Julia Savola fascist neo-fascist have all pushed this is essentially a neo-fascist construction and Okay, that makes sense to me.
And there's also this like the overriding notion that a liberal ideology, which you would tend to believe would mean opening for as many people as possible to allow everybody to have a life where they can find freedom and the right to, you know, what's the right they have?
Everyone has a right of happiness, right?
So, but to him that's imposing.
Yep.
You know, so as if it's like a, you know, trapping people in some sort of box and shoving them into something and making it less open.
And it's the opposite.
And it's weird.
So you have to be a really extreme person to look at the ideology of accepting as many people as possible as being something that's imposed on you and as almost like a prison.
That is what it's almost like, how would you ever have a conversation with somebody who is twisted it so far?
Well, I mean, Nick, who's pulling the strings on those puppets?
Who's, you know what I mean?
Because if you really look through that lens, I mean, the George Soros idea is that the main weapon, the doomsday weapon is an open society.
And that they'll send immigrants, they'll send people of color, they'll send this political, political, political, political.
Pluralism, man, that's a hard one to get out of the old head.
They'll send like a pluralistic society after you in order to replace your population, to go ahead and take over via complacent minorities, and that's literally what's being said here.
I mean, replacement theory was, you know, the shibboleth in all of this.
Like, basically, if you take a look at all of the speeches, all the programs, all the panels, All of it is calling neo-Marxists out.
All of it is very, very thinly veiled anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
The idea that open societies and the idea of different genders and transgenderism, that these are all weapons.
And he says it.
He says it in so many words that Western civilization is under attack, which means that anything that you do, any steps that you take are just in defense.
Right.
That's what it is.
And like somehow, like, you know, the communists are going to come from the West.
That was this weird thing.
He's like, you know, because the East, that's the Soviets, that's where the communists come from.
But somehow they, okay, and it's probably his version of what socialism means here.
That's what I was sort of getting at.
It seems like maybe when he says communism, he means like, you know, socialism, which is like this big, horrible word that we use.
And it comes from like the left and the liberals.
Here's a quote I wanted to read to you because it struck me as like where he resides ideologically.
And he says, but...
Dear friends, what is the difference between the denial of science by the extreme right and the denial of biology by LGBTQ movements?
The answer is simple.
There is no difference whatsoever.
Now that kind of gives you a really great insight too where now they're going to conflate these two things as if the LGBTQ movement is a denial of biology.
Yes.
And that opens the door for something that we're going to have to talk about in the near future, which is the fact that there is a growing eco-fascist movement, which are basically going to be people.
That is, climate change gets out of control.
And we got to talk about this a little bit in a minute, because there's actually some good news that we're going to finish the episode with.
As climate change becomes more and more undeniable, eventually people are going to say, guess what?
It's time for struggle.
Right?
It's races against races.
It's people against people.
And so eventually what everyone is going to turn around on is exactly what you were saying, which is we believe in science.
You're the ones who are out here talking about genders, right?
You're the ones that are out here talking about all this quote-unquote weird stuff.
And that you're exactly right.
It's the beginning of the twist of that.
And as this happens, like when we're starting to look at dwindling resources, that's exactly where all this is going.
And not to be too much of a downer, but as climate change causes the planet to suffocate and die, these governments are going to decide who gets to live.
And guess who they're not going to let live, or they're not going to give assistance to?
It's all the other people that don't look like them.
That sounds alarmist, but that seems pretty reasonable.
Oh, I don't think that's alarmist at all.
I think that is just baked into it at this point.
I mean, everybody that I've talked to who is an expert in climate change and everybody I've talked to who's an expert in authoritarianism, they agree when I say it's inevitable at this point if we do not end this authoritarian movement, if we don't actually give an alternative.
It's only going to grow because resources are going to shrink.
Land is going to shrink.
And as it happens, you have to have solutions.
And I have to tell you that racism, sexism, tribalism, all those things, they start looking pretty good when all of a sudden there's not a lot of dry land, there's not a lot of food, there's not a lot of water to drink.
And that's the turn that they're looking at right now.
Yeah, it's scary.
It is, and it's also scary when Viktor Orban says that we must coordinate the movements of our troops, and basically says that the American midterms and presidential elections, and then the EU elections, all of that, that that's going to play a big role.
But I got good news for you, Nick.
Are you ready for this?
I am.
The Democrats are on the job.
They're in charge, yay.
They're on the job, Nick.
Thank God.
And let me tell you about, we didn't cover this when it happened, but now we gotta talk about it.
We got to talk about the Disinformation Governance Board.
You and I both, when this thing happened, we both thought that it was just absolute horseshit, poorly done, bad idea.
We watched it disintegrate very, very quickly.
And I got to tell you, this is supposed to be the thing that stops right-wing authoritarianism and extremism in its tracks.
It's going to go on the Internet and stop it and make sure that everyone knows the facts.
It was terribly named.
It was only very, very quickly put into quote unquote practice because it didn't actually have any power.
And all it did was hand the right wing a bunch of talking points and propaganda.
Just an absolute disaster.
And I don't know, man, I don't know if we're going to remember this in the future, but I think we should just as an absolute abject disaster.
You know I feel bad for the lady that was running it because she's got all these cute you know songs that she sings and she's got a nice voice and like they even wanted to disparage her voice and the way she sang which I thought was fine she sang nicely like in these cute little songs about misinformation but obviously if she was an expert in all this and they basically waged a campaign of what she was supposed to be working on against her.
And like I mentioned before, these assholes have a gun and they're basically constantly firing it at the Democrats, just waiting for any kind of bullets out of the air to like shove in there right before they sweep the next trigger.
So this was one of those bullets that they could catch out of the air.
And anybody should have known the way that this was rolled out and set up, that this was going to happen. - Oh, what a bad idea this was. - And by the way, Orban talks about that too, where, you know, the rules don't play by the same rules They play by rules they assume everyone is playing by, which are reasonable and fair, and it's certainly not what happened here.
So, a little bit of background on this.
It might have been a blip on your radar for a second.
The Disinformation Governance Board was put under the purview of the Department of Homeland Security.
I want to go on record as saying, I don't care who's in charge of the government.
If it's Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Greens, I do not care.
The Department of Homeland Security is a dangerous entity that never should have existed in the first place.
Maybe the intelligence communities should have, I don't know, Nick, talked to each other.
Maybe they just should have.
It's radical.
It's radical and awful.
And we'll talk more about the implications of it.
This thing came online on April 27th to quote-unquote coordinate countering misinformation related to Homeland Security.
Here's the thing, Nick.
It had no powers.
It had no real authority.
The only thing it had was the name Disinformation Governance Board, which is a terrible name.
It's just absolutely catnip for right-wing media personalities.
There was a stretch of time in the first week of its existence That 70% of all Fox shows aired at least one segment, of course, saying that this was Orwellian, that this was coming after people, is going to start telling people how to think.
Basically, it was a show entity.
That was supposed to take on an actual problem that we all know is an actual problem.
But it was just it was just basically like instead of putting a bandaid on a wound, it was like painting like healed skin over a wound like it did nothing.
It had no power and all it did was scare a bunch of people and add a bunch of conspiracy theories into the culture.
Yeah, it was quite impressive how quickly they were able to shut that thing down.
And you know what?
It just encourages them to do this again and worse.
And you know, at least we got some of these idiots pretending like they're well-read by using the Ministry of Truth from 1984, right?
Like, you know, hey, like they didn't read this book, right?
They didn't read George Orwell.
They could say Orwellian, but they're not following Orban's 10th step of reading a book every day, I'll tell you that.
No, they're not reading every day and nor do they actually understand 1984 or Animal Farm, which they always like to talk about.
In the midst of all of this, this is, I don't know, man, this is like one of the most, like, lame, most useless, problematic, self-destructive sort of things I've seen in a very long time.
The problem here is we live in a country that affords everyone the First Amendment, which is freedom of speech, Um, you can't go in and tell people that they can't spread conspiracy theories.
You maybe can rely on social media corporations and big tech to shut people down.
That's also a little bit of a frightening little bit of a paradox.
I gotta tell you, if you have a bunch of these institutions in place and the Republicans take over and have control, that leads to really nightmarish situations.
I mean, you don't want a Trump or a DeSantis having power like that.
You also don't even want liberals having that power.
That can lead to really bad stuff.
Meanwhile, the DHS continues to grow.
They're showing up at Roe v. Wade protests, Nick.
And they're passing more and more legislation to give them more money, more power, more purview.
The state is growing more and more dangerous.
I think that this was just such a misstep in every possible way.
Well, here's the issue I think we've discovered with the rise of Trump and disinformation is that, you know, and they'll tell you this, it's like when you point out that we're wrong, We get really angry about that and we get more radicalized, right?
So now if you want to take a step back and look at like what the goal here is and the goal probably is to live in a society where we have some version of truth that actually mirrors the reality.
I suspect that the people who get so triggered by being told they're wrong, which is a lot of people and probably on both sides.
is that like they probably didn't vote in the past.
They were probably the deplorables, right?
And you wanted to keep them in this realm where they were sort of, maybe they might be disaffected and angry or whatever, but they weren't part of the political process.
And we have to figure out how to get them to be detached from the political process again, honestly, right?
And if we engage them and if we try and tell them that they're wrong, we try and set up these ministries of truth, whatever, We're just going to create more of them.
Like, I can't think of any other solution than to try and get them to get complacent again and just stew in the back of their pickups.
Oh, that's terrible.
Just hang out in their houses and not go out to vote on those days.
I disagree completely on this one.
I was doing a think tank thing a while back and it was this, like, defensive democracy thing, right?
And, you know, I was talking about like my experience watching people that I know and care about get radicalized and sort of subsumed by misinformation.
And this guy on the panel, I won't name him, but undoubtedly some people have come across his name a couple of times.
He was like, the problem isn't democracy.
The problem is only certain people should have democracy, which is rough.
You know what I mean?
Like, listen, the problem is misinformation, but the problem is also the fact that, like, nobody's really talking to these people.
And all of a sudden you start having Fox News and Breitbart and these right-wing institutions and right-wing memes who throw disinformation governance board on everything, right?
And it's like, they're coming for you, they're coming for your guns, they're coming for your kids.
That's a really easily digestible sort of thing.
The problem is that nothing that this governance board, God that's such a bad name, nothing about it talks to these people about alternative explanations.
None of it even begins to address their material conditions.
tries to move people to a different direction.
Basically, what you were saying is it is a public relations tool to try and decide what the quote unquote truth is.
And I gotta tell you, there's hardly a person in Washington, D.C.
that I trust to tell me what the truth is. - And that's exactly what the right says as well, right?
Like, there's those bullet points that will match up completely.
You know, the problem is some of these outlets that are being vilified by the right, they actually do have journalistic standards and they try and verify information before they publish it.
Not many!
I'll just say that.
And if they screw it up, like some people will get fired, you know, or something like that.
I don't know.
There's not many of those left.
But yeah, they used to.
I don't know.
So, you know, meanwhile, I'm listening to a whole podcast about Judith Miller.
Remember her?
Wow.
She's still around on Fox News, too.
Yeah, she is.
When you sell an illegal war that a 75 year old former president can make a joke about, you know.
You can stick around for a while.
Now you're crossing some streams.
That's great.
Crossing those streams.
Yeah.
So, I mean, listen, do I really not want Americans to participate in their democracy?
Like, I guess not, because you're right.
In that context, all of a sudden it's as bad as, you know, writing the Constitution where segments of the population were not allowed to vote.
But I think the reality of like having a Congress that was Democratic for 50 straight years of whatever that was, the House of Representatives.
You know, it had to be rooted in something related to that where a lot of these angry people simply weren't voting and Trump somehow got them out to the voting places.
And here we are.
Well, and I think the answer to what happened there, and this is important, and I know that there's some stuff in here that we need to talk about.
The problem here is that the diagnosis of why Trump won has become such a part of our cultural identity and sort of our demographics.
So, for instance, I always try and be very clear about this.
Like, I still believe in liberal democracy when it's not bought and sold and when concentrated wealth doesn't own it and corrupt it.
I would put myself on a scale of ideology as a leftist is where I would say.
I have problems with, you know, dyed-in-the-wool liberals who basically will come out and listen.
Did Russia interfere in the 2016 election?
Absolutely it did.
It's been proven that it has.
But leftists can't bring themselves to say it because they hate Hillary Clinton.
Because they just want to say Hillary Clinton just made up excuses why she lost.
And I can sit here and I can tell you that part of the reason she lost was because of that misinformation.
Another part of the reason is if you don't go to Wisconsin, you don't go to Michigan before an election, and if you don't speak to those people, chances are you're probably going to lose that election.
and after 30 years being in the public eye and being absolutely loathed by a large part of the population, that happens.
But the left says it's all material conditions, no disinformation.
Liberals say it's disinformation, it's not material conditions.
The answer's in between.
The answer's in between.
And you have to deal with disinformation, but you also, you can't just say, this is all fake because I got to tell you, people don't trust you.
People do not trust the institutions because they shouldn't.
It's not going to be Democrats saying, this is true and this is false.
You're going to have to go out there and actually talk to people instead of just going out and saying, this is true and this is false.
Yeah.
And there's also ways to combat that.
Like, for instance, Hillary, I thought, did a lousy job with the emails accusation.
She really wanted to play the game, which is either, like, play the string out and play a... What do you do with the football when you're up big and you're just... You run the clock out.
Run the clock out.
But there's a defense style.
I forgot what they call it.
Prevent.
Prevent.
Yeah.
You're playing Prevent D. And, you know, that's not really the way to do it anymore.
You kind of have to tackle these things.
Oh, and our media, by the way, played a massive role in all of that.
Because they were making tons of money off Trump and giving him billions of dollars of free advertising.
Absolutely.
And then meanwhile, the Durham report, which, aka Russia, Russia, Russia, I suppose is what we got to call this thing, you know, leaked a little bit recently over the weekend, trying to make it seem like Hillary Clinton had engineered the whole Alphabank Trump server story.
And I don't know if you were following this back in 2017 when it was starting to leak out, but this was a really good one for me.
I did super deep dives into this where very briefly, at some point when they were looking at the DNC hack by the Russians, they discovered that there was an Alpha Bank, which is a completely corrupt Russian bank, was pinging with a Trump server very regularly.
And they asked the people who are the guardians of the Internet.
These are scientists who dedicated their lives to making sure the Internet functions properly.
The guardians of the Internet?
Yeah.
Is that movie coming out here soon?
That sounds great.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, it's action-packed, Jared.
They're staring at packets all day long flying up to the screen.
So here's what they're asking us to believe.
So first of all, Durham, I have no doubt, has absolutely zero understanding of how the internet works.
He's probably just below Stevens, Senator Stevens in Alaska, calling it a bunch of tubes.
Or it's not a truck, whatever he said back then.
But they're asking us to believe that Hillary Clinton sat down with Robby Mook and whoever else in their campaign and said, you know what, we're going to invent an entire story to make it look like Russia and Trump are in bed together.
OK.
We're going to pretend that a server in a bank in Russia, in Moscow, is connecting with a server in Pennsylvania, but we're not going to have any other specifics.
It's going to be really vague, so we couldn't prove anything anyway.
It won't really sound big, and it won't even catch anyone's attention, but we're going to make all that up, and then feed it back into Christopher Steele's dossier, and then back into us, and we'll report it, and then we'll win the election.
It is so absurd.
And we have real people, real scientists who weighed in on this.
Dozens.
And who looked at all this data and have verified it was not made up and not faked.
And so the point being that there was, for some reason, these servers were talking to each other and it was related to a lot of the main events of the Republican campaign trail up until the 2016 election.
In fact, as soon as they got reported, they shut it down.
So why would you do that if it wasn't anything besides something nefarious and being hidden?
So anyway, they're trying to pin this on Hillary now and they're going to be very successful in this misinformation of making it seem like the entire Russia collusion thing was completely fabricated and we know that's not true.
And by the way, for the record, this is not a Hillary Clinton apologist podcast.
It's not!
Like, we have talked multiple times about how this was a flawed candidate.
I don't necessarily have a political agreement with Hillary Clinton.
I actually think Clintons have done incredible damage in terms of how this country has moved and how neoliberalism has taken over, but you cannot sit here and pretend Like there wasn't an actual attempt to influence the election, and that Donald Trump didn't have incredibly troubling ties to Russia.
And the more that we see, and by the way, we started off the show, I'm sorry, talking about CPAC in Hungary.
Like, there is an international authoritarian movement and people want to roll their eyes about it and pretend like this stuff isn't real and it's not something you have to worry about and everybody who talks about it is hysterical.
You can admit that this stuff is going on, you can admit that there are problems without saying, you know what, I think a disinformation governance board is needed.
Or, and this is a problem in the liberal world, they truly think, Nick, And I'm talking about like Democrats and people in that Democratic orbit.
They literally believe that if people would just hear what they're saying and weren't being inundated with misinformation, they would just agree with them.
That's not true.
Neoliberalism is really problematic.
It isn't necessarily just a piece of logic that is without flaws.
It is a flawed system that I'm sorry, but you can't go in and tell somebody who comes from like eight generations of mining, hey, guess what?
You're gonna need to code next week.
So good luck with that, fella.
I hope the markets treat you well.
That doesn't work.
The problem here isn't that they need some sort of governing board.
The problem here is that they need to reconsider the way they talk to people and the way that they present politics and what politics they follow.
And going back to this, the entire unraveling, quote unquote, of how this Russia thing was handled, I'm sorry, Nick, but we're moving towards a future where millions of Americans are going to be like, ah, that was completely dispelled.
Nothing happened there.
And meanwhile, we watched an entire election actually undergo a massive hack and a massive disinformation campaign.
I mean, it's so frustrating.
And again, like someone would argue, well, why do I know what I'm telling you is true?
Right?
It's like, this is a very difficult thing.
We need something like what they tried to set up.
I just, I understand your argument.
It really can't be the government doing it because we'll never trust that.
I will say, and this is an important thing for us to remember and our listeners to remember.
We cannot just blindly accept everything.
And pretend, you know, that like, the people we support never lie.
Well, yeah, they do.
That's bullshit.
They absolutely do lie.
A really good test to see if you're dealing with politics well is to take someone that you admire and say, what are my problems with that person?
You know, like here's a list of the problems that I have with them and I can tell you there's not a political person on the scene in the United States of America or the world that I don't look at and I'm like, I got some problems with this person.
If you look at a party or an individual, I don't know if you're in the crowd at Budapest looking up at Viktor Orban with stars in your eyes, Like something's wrong.
You're not in a political movement.
You're not in an actual state of reality.
You're in a cultish environment.
And one of the things that we have to do is we have to start questioning things and using critical thinking in a way that doesn't conform with what you were talking about, Nick, which is our desire to be right.
And everybody wants to be right, and they don't want to be told that they're wrong.
Can I just share a quick Twitter interaction I had?
I did a whole thread.
If you want to check the thread of me, deep dive into this whole server thing.
And I didn't even get into the conspiracy thing, because you want to know really quickly what the one that resonates with me the most was.
Remember how they were doing this really incredibly targeted Facebook campaign with algorithms?
And like, beyond, what's the tall guy who got arrested for, you know, his campaign manager?
Pascal.
Brad Pascal.
Is that his name?
Yeah.
You know, this guy doesn't seem like he would have any sense of how to, like, run... This is, like, high-level stuff.
So, the idea was they were getting a lot of information on voters here, sending it over there through this connection.
They were processing all the information and then creating these targeted Facebook ads.
But nonetheless, here's an interaction I had.
It said, you know, defending Hillary is not a hill I die on.
She's a crook.
It doesn't mean we're not progressive, human-loving people, nor does it mean I support Trump.
Hillary is a bad actor.
So I said, okay, can you show me what real evidence you've ever seen that she broke the law?
And he goes, not literal.
She's just a phony.
I've got bigger problems with Hillary Clinton than the fact that she's phony.
Yeah, but like, you know, Hillary is a lock, you lock her up.
She's a crook.
She's created, violated all these laws.
Okay, what evidence have you ever seen that she broke any laws?
Oh, I don't.
I just don't like her.
She, they fired the travel agent at the White House and she lied about why they fired her.
Oh, that's thin sauce.
But that's, that's, I've heard that given as an excuse.
If that's the problem you have with Hillary Clinton and it's not the wars, it's not the Patriot Act, it's not like the Iraq War.
Well, wait, you want to put the Iraq war on Hillary?
Oh yeah, she voted for that stuff.
She was like one of the biggest hawks that voted for it.
Talk about neoliberalism, talk about law enforcement, talk about all that stuff.
The phoniness, I'm sorry, a lot of politicians are phony.
That's why her retail politics don't work.
My problem is the ideology.
If you're going to talk about traveling, the travel agents.
Travelgate.
That's, whoa, that's tough stuff, man.
Well, again, they're just looking for anything they can put in that gun to fire, that's all.
Oh, that's good, that'll fit, you know.
I'm sorry, but if we're gonna escape all this, if we're gonna get out of this crisis, we gotta start practicing, like, actual adult politics.
Which is saying, you know what, like, that person I have problems with, what problems?
Here are some logistical, here are some actual things that have happened.
Otherwise, you're in fantasy land.
yeah no and that's where we are and that's this fantasy land exists across both sides and um you know i don't know i'd like to think that at the very least there is one party that doesn't want to support an insurrection if that's how low we have to get to our standards to like choose i guess that's where i'm at That the division between liberals and leftists, particularly, I think the Internet and social media has made it very worse.
Like leftists want to look at liberals and sort of sneer and make fun of them.
You know what I mean?
Like, oh, you guys are so pathetic.
Like constant.
Yeah.
And meanwhile, liberals want to pretend that, like, you know, material conditions don't need to be discussed.
It's in between.
There is the fact that, you know, there is an authoritarian international movement.
I'm sorry, but I don't care if you're, what leftist you are, where you're being published, how many listens your podcast get, whatever.
You have to understand that there is an international right-wing authoritarian movement.
And if you want to keep pretending like there's not, like, congratulations, I hope you sleep better than me at night.
Meanwhile liberals have to understand it's not all brainwashing.
It's not all indoctrination and misinformation You got to go out and you got to talk to people about what's going on in their lives.
I'm sorry, but you just have to Well, we got good news that we're gonna end this podcast on in Australia Down under Nick I was about to try but I'm not going to you can't do it What, an accent?
I don't know.
Give me a beer.
No, do it.
Be an American.
Do a terrible Australian, just cliche accent as we get ready to talk about those.
I'm trying to think of how they speak in safety dance or any of the songs from Met Work.
I don't know.
I'm not going to sit there myself.
That's not a good start.
But I do like Texas Midnight Runners.
Oh, there you go!
By the way, are you aware of how dirty Come On Eileen is, that song?
It's a nasty little song.
Oh yeah.
It's a great song.
Yeah.
I mean, they're coming after that one next, I'm sure.
I love how American this conversation is going.
We're just thinking of anything that we know about Australia thrown at the wall.
Meanwhile, let's talk about some actual good news.
The Australian elections have just taken place, and this might not have come up on your radar, but there's some stuff to be actually hopeful about.
- Tonight, the Australian people have voted for change. - To go ahead and reset the story to get everybody up to speed, the Prime Minister in Australia up to this point, elected in 2018, is a real the Prime Minister in Australia up to this point, elected in 2018, is a Scott Morrison is a complete asshole who got very famous for denying climate change while waving a hunk of coal around.
I mean, like, this is coal!
It won't hurt you!
Just a complete idiot.
He's got all kinds of links to QAnon.
He's basically Australia's Donald Trump.
Nick, you'll appreciate this story.
When all the brush fires were happening and basically the entire continent... By the way, Australia is a continent.
I don't know if anybody knows that.
It's a real Trumpian moment.
A lot of people don't know it's actually a continent.
While the brush fires were happening, what do you think Prime Minister Scott Morrison was up to, Nick?
Do you think he was grabbing some buckets, throwing some water on it?
He was not.
He was in Hawaii.
Well, you can't be near the brush fires when they're happening.
It's dangerous.
He was in Hawaii.
And listen, guys, he cut that trip a little bit short.
But the thing here, and I want to talk about the results in just a second.
I want to get people understanding what was happening at the time where this election was held.
This might not be on people's radar either.
Australia is having a saber rattling moment with China.
They are constantly like they're in a war of words.
There's a possibility that things might escalate into armed conflict between Australia and China.
Nick, if there is the possibility of a war, what do most countries do?
Do they move left or do they move right?
They move right.
They move right, but guess what?
That's not what happened in Australia.
Scott Morrison has been unseated as the Prime Minister in Australia, and for the first time since 2007... That's right.
That's a standing O from down under, everybody.
And what happened was that a new collaboration sort of reared its head.
And what ended up happening, Nick?
was a couple of groups of environmentally minded politicians joined together, took a bunch of these spots from the conservatives.
On one hand, we've got the environmentalists who say we need to do something about climate change right now.
Australia, of course, is one of the places in the world that is really experiencing in real time with these fires, flooding, you name it.
They've come out and they've said, we have to do something about this, regardless of whatever else we do in politics, we have to deal with this.
There's another group calling themselves the Teals, Nick.
They're a more independent minded environmental group.
They are very much for taking on climate change, but by using the free market.
By using it as an opportunity to make a ton of money and profits for the free market in order to deal with climate change, they have come together and with the labor group, the more liberal group in Australia, they have taken over Australian politics.
The new prime minister promises that they're going to act on climate change, that they're going to look into indigenous rights, and on top of that, the possibility that they might establish a Republican government away from the purview of Great Britain.
and I think this right here, we might look back on this as a sign of the times.
Yeah, it's very, very encouraging.
Certainly, they're going to be dealing with climate change.
It's such a desert, you know, climate as it is, that it's, you can only hope it will start to grow and that'll be a movement.
I don't know, it's certainly here, I don't know, but it's very exciting to read about.
Well, to go back to what we were talking about a few minutes ago, I really do think there's going to come a point where climate change is going to be undeniable.
And eventually, and we talked about it before, the market is already admitting climate change is real.
It's just up to, you know, all of the gas and oil and fossil fuel people to flip the switch.
And they've already started and they're ready to go and do that.
The question is, when is this going to be the dominant force in politics?
When is addressing climate change going to happen?
America, and I'd be interested to see what you have to say, It feels like we're not going to address it until we're deep, deep in it.
We've already had, of course, natural disasters, lots of lives upended, our political system has been affected by it.
It feels like we're probably going to be in the throes of a bunch of crises at once.
That's when we'll end up dealing with it.
But it does seem like this is probably what's going to define politics for the next few decades at least.
Well, the right-wing argument now about you can't go too quickly and get go green is because it'll make, you know, gas so expensive for poor people.
Because they really care about poor people, Jared.
Oh, so much.
And they are so worried that, you know, heating your home and driving your car will become so expensive to them If you're gonna try and push for green so quickly and then those prices will go up because of course That that's going to happen because I we they seem to know everything about the economy That that is it like I'm just staring it's almost like
They're speaking a different language and I'm just staring at them going like there's no that has no effect on me that that's not a persuasive argument to me get figure it out there's a lot of money to be made by way you can get them to admit there's a lot of money to be made than this as well subsidized by the government which is fine and it's it's mind-boggling but it will take decades instead of you know a couple years and It doesn't make any sense to me.
It really doesn't.
And yet you have people out there who are, you know, who just will never believe in it.
And they're certainly a certain age and they don't care because they'll be dead before it bothers them.
And I got to tell you, at some point or another, talking about the gender of Mr. Potato Head or its genitals, at some point or another, like you're watching the water rise.
You know what I mean?
At some point you can't get drinking water.
At some point there there is a massive Immigration refugee crisis and you're not talking about dr. Seuss anymore, right?
Eventually that tide has to turn and it's going to really be interesting to see and in going back to the Orban thing It's gonna be interesting to see if the GOP coming back from Budapest or like hey, there might be a winner in this eco fascism And I don't think, and for anybody who unfortunately had the opportunity to see the manifesto written by this mass shooter in Buffalo, I mean, he identified as an eco-fascist.
He was like, eventually we're going to have to deal with this thing.
You're seeing a growing movement of this.
If the national conservatives say, hey, guess what?
Climate change is real and we're going to win it.
That is where politics starts to change.
But I think by looking at what's happened in Australia, Liberals and left need to read the writing on the wall.
People know this is real.
And Nick, I don't know how many people you talk to in your life who maybe live in California or maybe even live in the heartland.
People know that something's wrong with the environment.
People know that something's wrong with the climate.
Like, you know, you have all these like fossil fuel bought and sold representatives in Washington.
Real people, the so-called quote unquote deplorables, they know something's up.
Like many of them have lived through many summers and many winters.
They understand that the seasons aren't what they used to be.
Maybe they've even suffered from it, you know.
Like there's some possibility here.
And I think Australia is going to be – it's going to be one of those sort of bellwether things that is coming down the pike.
I don't know.
Just to give you an idea, one of these people that you're describing on the right was pushing a book that had been written recently about climate change and how touting that It really isn't a big deal because, okay, they can't grow grapes in the south of France and all that great wine anymore because the climate's gotten so hot, but guess what?
Finland is making great grapes right now and so is Washington State.
The market finds a way, Nick!
Yeah, so this is what's supposed to be compelling to me, that the climate is being so damaged in a part of the land that they've grown grapes for Thousands of years they can't do it anymore, but oh we can go a little farther north and that's great So we'll just keep moving north and by the way The other solution is buy more more guns hoard more and more resources and then eventually you're gonna have these areas where people are gonna be banging down to get in because they don't need food and
They don't have any water, they can't get out of the sun, and you're gonna have whoever these people supposedly prepared for this, I mean, by the way, living the most dystopian nightmare you can possibly imagine until, you know, in a very, without any, you know, there's no way to save your life at that point, and it's basically over.
We're supposed to finish on a good note with Australia, goddammit!
I feel really good about what happened in Australia, and I I recommend anybody going and checking out what happened here because this was a traditional dichotomous power structure that has been challenged by a bunch of citizens who said, We're tired of this shit.
But let's not forget they already gone through this with guns and they got rid of guns as well.
So they already had made a big leap a long time ago on that front which I feel like there's a connection right in some weird way.
Eventually you just gotta take action and I gotta tell you I feel very very good about this.
I feel like this happening, what happened with the elections in Chile, I think when all of a sudden you start pushing back and you say, hey, guess what?
Capitalism is cooking the planet.
It's hurting us.
It's killing us.
We have to figure out something else.
It turns out that when you say that to people, disinformation or not, they listen and then they come out and they vote.
Alright everybody, we're going to come back on Friday.
Hopefully, Nick, I have to assume the good times will keep rolling.
Like nothing bad will happen before we come back and record our next episode.
I don't know, it's May, right?
Nothing happens in the middle of May, right?
Ides of May?
That is not how it works anymore.
Day by day by day.
But if you want to tune into that additional episode on Friday, all you have to do is go over to patreon.com slash muckrake podcast.
Again, I cannot recommend highly enough not just signing up for that and going and listening to Nick nailing the Elon Musk scandal to the wall like a like a victory pelt.
I mean, that thing isn't leaving the wall.
I can't recommend that enough, but also coming and joining the Muckrake community, the best people that you can find, the best alternative to social media, that is patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
We will be back on Friday.
If you need us before then, you can find Nick at CanYouHearMe?
