Democrats Question Whether Biden Should Run In 2024
Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman examine what top democrats are saying in public to determine if there will be a push in the coming months to get Biden to step down from a re-election campaign. The documents scandal could be the impetus. They also discuss 74 Illinois Sheriffs refusing to enforce an assault weapons ban in their state, before Jared sits down with Dr. Sandra Bloom, an Associate Professor, Health Management and Policy at the Dornsife School of Public Health, Drexel University. They discuss what a sane society is and why our unbalance now is causing so many issues.
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Before we get going, I just wanted to say that today, possibly when you're listening to this, it's coming out on January 17th, it is the day that The Midnight Kingdom, A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis is released.
It's my newest book and probably the book I am the proudest of, the book I have worked the hardest on.
I cannot wait for you to read this.
It's the story of how the modern world was created using evangelical lies, white supremacist conspiracy theories, And in order to protect and expand the power of the powerful.
So, I hope you will go out to wherever your local bookstore is, order The Midnight Kingdom, A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Common Crisis.
I can't wait to hear how the book treats you, and thank you again for all the support all along the way.
All right, everybody.
Welcome to the Muckrake Podcast.
I'm Jared Yates Sexton.
I'm here with Nick Halseman.
Nick, we are going to have an interview here in a little bit with Dr. Sandra Bloom, an Associate Professor of Health Management and Policy at the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University.
A really, really important interview that I think is going to be really helpful for an audience in understanding what's going on, but also how we can make a better world.
Before that, Nick, how you doing, buddy?
You know, it's no rain.
It's still chilly here.
I won't say what the temperature is.
I'm sorry.
You know what?
You're right.
I was insensitive to people who are living in really cold weather.
And, you know, the sun is out here finally.
We'll have like a week of no rain.
I'm telling you, it was a deluge of rain.
Unprecedented in LA.
So, that was a little bit rough, man.
Well, good luck to the people in California.
Nick, I gotta tell you, I was doing an interview with somebody about the Midnight Kingdom the other day, and they're a new fan of the podcast, and they heard the episode where you were complaining about 54 degrees, and I'll just say that we had a nice little chuckle about that.
Well, thanks for listening, at least.
I'll take that as a win.
But yes, I feel bad for everybody out there having remembered how cold it can That's true.
That's true.
Well, we're going to have to talk about Nick's old stomping grounds in Illinois.
We're going to have to talk about George Santos.
Nick, shockingly, he has ties to Russian oligarchs.
Who could have imagined?
But before we get to that, A lot is happening with President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.
I've had some conversations with members of the party about some sea changes, some internal fighting that's taken place.
Before we get into that, though, Nick, they have found five more pages of documents within Biden's residence.
This scandal continues to get worse.
There are a lot of moving parts.
My first question is, will it ever end?
Um, yeah, you know, there's a finite amount of documents, right?
At some point it won't have anymore.
Is there?
Is there?
I don't know.
We talked about this in the last spot.
I said this over the weekend to talking to people about how we have this notion of, you know, the Jack Ryan and the CIA and all this stuff and how competent they must be with all these secrets.
And it's really, this is a farce, it seems like to me, like barely keeping it together as a ship is almost about the don't explode any chance I can get.
But, you know, I'm all for, you know, yeah, let them investigate.
That means they can continue to investigate Trump.
But again, I think what it ends up being, I think what you said was it just gives Merrick Garland an out for all of this.
Yeah, it does.
And, and, and, And what we're hearing from the Department of Justice.
Shockingly, Nick, he comes back into the spotlight in this new situation.
Tons more articles!
It's like the moment that Garland gets involved in any of this, all of a sudden Politico has like an exclusive thing.
People around Garland.
Garland saying all of a sudden there's stuff in the Washington Post.
It's always shocking like how quick Garland is to go ahead and manipulate those media sources.
Um, but I gotta tell you, uh, we have covered this in the past.
One of the biggest weaknesses in the Biden administration is its ability to communicate to the public.
Its communications department has sucked since the moment that they got, actually before they even got in, they did a terrible job of raising expectations way too high, basically promising that this was going to be an FDR administration that was going to be a complete nutter change.
Since then they have no ability whatsoever to talk about the victories that they've had and what has come to the forefront with this document scandal is that they don't know how to talk about it.
They have no clue.
You have the press secretary who is completely incapable of really answering questions about this.
Biden is just sort of rolling his eyes and pretending like this isn't a scandal, and the story's getting away from them.
And on top of that, they are losing their control and sway over the Democratic Party.
That is starting to come completely unglued by the second, and this thing is gaining more traction than it even needs to gain.
You know, it's funny because, you know, if you were a lawyer for Biden and you found this right before the midterms, of course, you're going to be like a slow walking over to NARA before the midterms or after the midterms happen.
Like you would have to fire that lawyer if he didn't do that in theory.
Right.
Although it's still not clear exactly how that timing all works.
But like it is a problem.
Right.
Like it is a great talking point for Republicans now that they like buried this and didn't tell anybody.
And again, nothing legally compels Biden to disclose that they found these documents.
Nothing.
But, in the political aspect of this, yes, like, should he, you think he should have, you know, immediately disclosed this?
Well, okay, so there's a difference when we talk about politics, right?
Like, sometimes, and I talked to Dr. Bloom about this later, sometimes you talk about politics as a way to come together and make a better future.
Other times, when you talk about politics, you literally are talking about how to manipulate conversations, right?
And I mean, that's a problematic thing.
But if you are a strategist, or if you are a consultant, or if you're part of a communications department, Nick, quick, quick question.
So let's say something happens that you don't want people to talk about.
What day of the week do you release it?
Friday.
You release it on Friday so the weekend can happen and it diffuses and people aren't paying a lot of attention.
What time of year would you say would you release things so that they'll just sort of, I don't know, let's just imagine there is a historic cold front and winter storm that is rolling through.
Wouldn't you rather have this be the conversation taking place around the holidays so that people aren't paying particularly close attention to politics?
Well, that's interesting because then they're also around the table and maybe they are talking about it.
I was going to thought you were going with like, you know, late summer, you know, when we're all kind of... Well, if you can hold it off to late summer, you should.
But they, this whole thing is coming to the forefront, Nick, as the new term is coming through.
This is when you make decisions about like what you're going to push forward.
By the way, it's not a coincidence that over the past couple of weeks, as we've been covering, Biden has been going out in front of people with Republicans talking about bipartisanship.
We're going to do this together.
I'm going to move towards the center as we get to 2024.
Instead of going ahead and putting this out there during the holidays when Hardly anyone's paying attention.
We're now defining the new term of Congress and Biden's third year based on this scandal.
It is really, really poorly done.
Right.
And again, you could talk if you're blue in the face about how nothing the scandal is or it is compared to Trump stuff.
But in reality, you know, I was thinking about this, like, let's play it all out.
Like what we expect is that Merrick Garland will say, oh, he came clean.
He gave all these papers to us, whatever.
So we're not going to prosecute him for an espionage act or anything.
He's he was fine.
And by the way, you know, Trump, so he was a little bit of an asshole to us, and he delayed giving us the paperback, but we got him back, so we're not going to do anything to him either.
Like, that's probably what he wants to do, and I think if you have any hope of Trump being pinned with any of these crimes he might have committed over these last few years, that you're going to probably have to scratch this one off, and it won't be it.
And this is coming from a guy, me, who had been saying this is the one thing that they're going to get him on.
Like, there wasn't any other way to wiggle room out of this, and so now it's muddled in an unforced error.
By the way, do you even think that Biden had anything to do with the papers showing up in that closet or in his Corvette?
Absolutely!
I'm so sorry, I forgot about the Corvette part of it.
It's so stupid.
It's just so stupid.
Do I think that Biden did it personally?
Probably not.
But also, I want to point out, Nick, the correct way to handle this, and again, like, I know strategists and consultants and members of the administration listen, Come out and say, you know, this sucks.
You know what we're going to push for?
We're going to push for reform so this doesn't happen again in the future.
We need to take it more seriously how these documents and these secrets are handled.
As a result, maybe we need to strengthen the ability of oversight.
Maybe we need to make sure that there is a special office that makes sure that the handing over of this material happens.
That's proactive.
Instead, what has happened?
Is that the Biden administration, and this is what happened with Hillary Clinton too, in the lead up to 2016, their lack of proactive measures of talking about this, about getting in front of it, it has opened it up for Fox News, the Republican Party to create this like Chinese conspiracy that he stole documents to hand them over to like Chinese enablers or handlers or whatever.
Meanwhile, I got to tell you all about something that's bubbling up right now.
There is an insurrection brewing within the Democratic Party.
We talked about earlier on in the Biden administration, whenever the Manchin problems were happening, the Kyrsten Sinema problems were happening, a lot of Democrats were starting to talk about the idea that Joe Biden should not run for re-election in 2024.
There were a lot of different contenders.
Your boy Gavin Newsom was absolutely salivating over the prospect, right?
And as that took place, there were all of these unattributed quotes that were coming out, and some of them were getting bold.
They were just coming out in all these different articles.
That has opened back up.
That is now the conversation du jour.
This is a text that I got from a staffer from a Senate Democrat.
Quote, every conversation right now is whether Biden is going to step aside and allow someone else to come forward.
Now, that's on background.
I want to go ahead, I want people to hear, this is from very, very different sides of the Democratic spectrum.
First things first, I want people to hear what Ilhan Omar had to say when being asked about this entire situation.
To the news of today, six pages now, no additional pages of classified documents having been found at President Biden's home in Delaware.
Well, one, I'm glad that there is a special prosecutor that's been appointed to investigate.
You are glad that there's a special prosecutor?
Yes.
Tell me why.
Because anytime there is a deviance in regards to security protocols that should be taken serious, it should be investigated.
What I find interesting is that Republicans who have defended Trump After he literally stole classified documents, refused to turn them over, lied about having them, made up some story about how he declassified them, had to have his house raided in order for those documents to be found, are now only interested in investigating Biden, who has cooperated.
And by the way, Omar's exactly right there.
I mean, that is exactly how you should feel about all of this.
these documents in.
So you have to understand, right, Republicans aren't really interested in upholding the law, in following security protocols.
What they're interested in is playing a political game in now only wanting to investigate Biden.
And by the way, Omar is exactly right there.
I mean, that is exactly how you should feel about all of this.
And go ahead and link it over to what happened with Trump.
Jerry, can you send that transcript over to Karine Jean-Pierre over at the White House and just have her say that verbatim when Ducey tries to grill her over these questions?
Because it's like what we saw the other day was like them kind of getting into a tiff back and forth and she's sort of hostile toward him when all she needed to do is exactly what Omar did there and walk him through exactly why this is different.
That would probably shut him up at least for that day.
And again, why isn't the White House coming up with that kind of an answer very succinctly and specifically?
I don't know.
Well, and part of the problem in all of this, by the way, that that was an interview with Simone Sanders Townsend.
And Simone is is for a while, of course, was was working for the Bernie Sanders campaign, has since been brought in within the Democratic sort of parameters.
Simone there is shocked that Omar says that she welcomes the special prosecutor.
Which, by the way, is what we said.
It's good to get in there and figure out what happened.
Like, it is good to figure out when, you know, maybe a crime or something else has been committed.
But you heard Simone was like, oh really?
You appreciate that?
You even heard Simone say, only five documents, right?
It's already trying to form and shape this around.
What happens within, particularly the Democratic Party, is when they try and massage these things.
It falls apart.
It doesn't work.
You have to come out and say, man, we screwed up.
We need to do better.
That's not the same thing as capitulating to the Republican Party.
But what Omar is able to do there, as sort of an outsider within the party, is to admit when things are wrong and how to move forward.
Now, a more surprising little thing.
Nick would be so kind.
This is Representative Adam Schiff.
Is it possible that national security was jeopardized here as many, including you, raised that possibility with the Mar-a-Lago documents?
I don't think we can exclude the possibility without knowing more of the facts.
We have asked for an assessment in the intelligence community of the Mar-a-Lago documents.
I think we ought to get that same assessment of the documents found in the think tank as well as the home of President Biden.
I'd like to know what these documents were.
I'd like to know what the IC's assessment is.
whether there was any risk of exposure and what the harm would be and whether any mitigation needs to be done.
I think that would be appropriate and consistent with what we requested in the case of Mar-a-Lago.
Boy, howdy, Nick.
Yeah, I mean, he's an adult.
That's a very reasoned answer.
I would move to Burbank to be in his district.
I like what he said so much.
He's not wrong.
It's just shocking that this is how he's reacting to it, right?
The old political sort of playbook says that when someone says that, you're like, well, I don't know if we would do that.
The fact that he is going ahead and doing that, and I gotta tell you, there are plenty of other candidates that people like Adam Schiff are interested in becoming President of the United States of America, outside of Joe Biden.
We are starting to watch the party discipline break down a little bit.
There is a little bit of a move to go ahead and make sure that Biden serves one term and somebody else moves forward.
We've thrown names out there.
Buttigieg would love it, although the last few months have not been great for good old Mayor Pete, Secretary Pete, whatever we're calling him.
You know, you got Whitmer out there, Pritzker, who we got to talk about, Gavin Newsom out there.
There are a lot of different camps that for a while didn't feel like they were going to gain traction because Biden was winning some legislative victories.
Now he is weaker than he has been in a little while.
This scandal is real.
There is merit to this scandal.
This is wrong.
These camps are starting to break out now, and we're going to see more infighting within the Democratic Party.
And another reason why you'll hear that and why they're already wringing their hands is because I'm sure they're envisioning what the debate will look like.
Because I think looking back on it now, even though Hillary was much better prepared and she was just a serious candidate compared to Trump, Trump heard her on a lot of that stuff that he was being an asshole about, and it would be easy for you to imagine him saying to Biden, you idiot, you left papers in your garage next to your Corvette, and by the way, how do you even have money?
Corvette's a really expensive car.
You worked in government all these years.
How do you have that much money to be able to buy an expensive car?
He could go on and on about all that stuff, and then you'd have Biden be like, well, well, No, I did some speeches and I have some money now.
I'd be able to buy a car.
He would be stammering.
He would be unable to, on defense.
And so I could easily see them being, you know, already being like, this is going to be a real killer.
And what didn't seem like it at the time during the actual debates in 2016, come on.
I think looking back on it now, it did hurt him, hurt her, and it will hurt Biden.
And it could legitimize his campaign again and be a real headache.
There are plenty of reasons why 2016 happened.
I'm not saying these are the main reasons, but within those debates, some of the things Trump was able to do to Hillary Clinton were very effective.
One is to go ahead and pin NAFTA and free trade on her and the efforts of Bill Clinton.
Absolutely, because it was true.
Another part of it was for him to say, I gave money to everybody and they answered my phone calls, including Hillary Clinton.
She can't say no because it was true.
The problem in all of this is that the weaknesses are, they're piling up.
And if you can't, and again, Almost every presidency outside.
Nick, you brought this up last week.
Barack Obama's presidency was one of the few in recent memory that didn't have some sort of a defining scandal.
They always happen.
That's how power works.
It just is a testament to Obama's sort of administrative skills that that didn't happen.
It's a question of how you react to it.
And by the way, I want to point back to the last Democratic president who had something like this, which is Bill Clinton.
Bill Clinton went into war mode and basically just completely dragged, you know, all the wagons in and basically went on the defensive, which made it look worse, which didn't allow them to get out actually in front of the story.
And what ends up happening?
You have Monica Lewinsky suddenly talking to Ken Starr.
This thing has to be dealt with both professionally, but also from a standpoint where you admit what you did wrong and start acting proactively to fix it.
And by the way, getting out in front of the story was probably the answer to the question from the beginning of the pod, where we were saying, why did they delay it?
They didn't say anything.
In theory, if you want to control the narrative, then yeah, you come out with it and you explain what happens first, kind of like what Bill Barr did with the Mueller report.
And that that was effective.
So they probably could have been able to do something around this, because obviously they all knew about it.
Merrick Garland knew about it in November, too.
So, you know, when he appointed the investigator for Trump, you know, he already knew that Biden had the same issue.
I have no idea, but I will say that we are in sort of that really, really important period.
and what they could have done differently if they were on better footing.
What do you think?
Do you think that Biden's going to step down and not run?
I have no idea, but I will say that we are in sort of that really, really important period.
If he was going to run, he would probably go ahead and announce his intention in the next month and a half, give or take.
That would probably be a month, month and a half, two months, something like that.
For this to happen, like, what's going to happen behind the scenes for the next couple of months as that decision is being made is that the people who work within Biden and the people who work within the Democratic National Party, they're going to start seeing where the donors are.
They're going to start seeing if they're going to flee.
You had made the mention, I think, in the last podcast, look out for the people who are going to Iowa.
Look out for the people who are going to South Carolina.
We're all of a sudden going to look up and see what these moves are.
You know, like this is the kind of thing where Gavin Newsom shows up at the University of South Carolina, you know, completely unannounced.
All of a sudden he's giving like a speech, you know.
You know how South Carolina deals with erosion of the beaches and stuff like that, right?
That's right.
And by the way, you have other questions.
There's so many moving pieces behind the scenes.
Pete Buttigieg has his eyes on the Democratic Senate seat in the state of Michigan, right?
Is that something that like the Biden people and the Obama people?
Oh yeah, that's been in the works for a minute.
So you start to have a question, which is, how do you start moving things around?
And does the Biden machine still have control over the party?
The party right now is incredibly fractured, and it doesn't help that he is an incredibly old president and also now has this scandal to pull around.
I don't know if he's going to be the nominee in 2024.
I know he's stubborn as hell.
I know that all of the Democratic operatives that I'm talking to right now, it's the only conversation that they're having.
You know, they're not talking about impeachment.
They're talking about 24.
So I don't know.
If I had to put money down right now, I have literally no idea what I would be betting on.
Oh, and you have to add that because you said, you know, the next two, three months, we're going to find out, you know, when he'll start the campaign again, which is also the timeframe in my mind, when we would ever hear about any of these things against Trump, which would probably really hurt Trump if they, if any of the cases finally move forward, the indictments come out.
And again, so we're, yeah, we're getting into that time where we're going to find out very quickly about those things are when they're very, very much connected.
Well, and I want to point something out about that, too.
Biden and Trump are linked.
They are polarized together.
The reason Joe Biden was able to win in 2020, the nomination, by the way, is because he told everybody, I'm the guy who can beat Trump.
And he was right, by the way.
He was the guy who could beat Trump specifically in that contest.
Now, all of a sudden, if Trump goes off the board, does Biden go off the board?
If all of a sudden we're going to look at the Republican Party getting younger, getting more professional, all of a sudden are we looking for what's it going to look like to have a governor like Ron DeSantis on stage with Joe Biden?
These questions are all up in the air.
And one of the defining characteristics of the 2023 American political landscape, Nick, Is that we have no idea where any of this stuff is going.
Where's the Democratic Party going?
Who's winning in the Republican Party?
What's it going to look like in the next 6 to 12 months?
We don't know.
There are so many moving parts at this point.
If you told me that neither Trump or Biden was a nominee in 24, I would believe you.
I wouldn't have a hard time believing it.
Yeah, and you can say that everything is always up in the air in politics, but in theory, with an incumbent president, you should have some semblance of organization right now.
knowledge of what's going to happen.
So I hear you.
It's going to be interesting the next few months, which will ultimately determine what we're going to happen here.
But the other thing is going to be Biden won't really be able to endorse anybody else for at least a while because he's got his vice president who clearly isn't, they're not going to support her.
And then, but you know, that then, well, why did you pick her as vice president?
Why?
Was that a bad idea?
Is that bad judgment?
Like he won't be he'll have to like sit it out right for a little while until these other rivals come in and and get a footing and then it becomes clear they're much better and then he can maybe endorse but that'd be late so I think that's an awkward situation all around.
Yeah, it's a terrible situation.
And by the way, speaking of terrible situations, Nick, I regret to inform you that George Santos has more scandals and more problems.
Are you surprised?
Are you just blown over?
And here's the funny thing.
I'm the guy who's way out front of this.
Like if you watch my Twitter feed, I'm like, he's going to resign in two months.
This is it.
And I keep sharing it.
Right.
And by the way, you know, if you're, you can be, I'm either wrong or right to flip a coin on this one.
Right.
And, you know, I'm, I'm hopefully I'm right.
I don't want to be wrong.
And as a result to answer your question, like, yeah, no, this is going to continue to get worse.
He's got a bunch of Republicans already against him, you know, that's big.
And so, but again, like I said, this is going to be related to money.
It's not going to be related to anything about what he lied about with his background.
Volleyball star or not.
By the way, I did check.
I did check his senior year.
Oh, sorry.
If he had gone to Baruch College and was a senior there on the volleyball team, they actually did play Harvard like he was boasting.
And that team actually did beat Harvard by pretty soundly.
So he was right.
He must have looked it up and then decided to pretend that he was on that team.
So kudos for the research.
But nonetheless, it's not going to be any of that crap.
It's going to be the money laundering and And not even the campaign finance law violations, which are probably many as well.
It's going to be the money laundering.
You know, I've said before, it's a lot like the Kaiser Soze thing.
You're looking around the area and you're like putting these pictures together.
I mean, the incredible lives of this man.
So what has come to the forefront?
And by the way, I just want to, before I say any of this, I want to remind people, because when we talk about this developing story, we cannot help but point out This all should have come to the forefront before he was ever elected to Congress.
Period.
The opposition research was there.
The Democratic Party knew about some of this stuff.
The media, parts of the media knew about it.
Others weren't interested in it.
It has now come to the forefront.
By the way, tons of money that's unaccounted for.
How he paid for his campaign, how he gained his own personal fortune.
Well, maybe we've found a missing piece, which is a relationship to a fellow named Andrew Entrader, who is part of a firm called Columbus Nova.
And this investment firm, more or less, is nothing more than using the money of sanctioned Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg, who is in the energy world of Russia, which translation means is as corruptive and authoritarian as you could imagine.
This Intrader guy has been using Vexelberg's money basically more or less as a halfway point into all the different parts of the world, including you've got real estate, you've got politics, all of it.
That's what's happening here.
That money has been handed over to Santos as well as Harbor City Capital, which is where Santos made his money, which has now been shown to be under investigation as a Ponzi scheme.
And every Ponzi scheme is also, ding ding ding, usually a money laundering scheme while it's at it.
So, as a result, we're now looking at this relationship that got Santos to the forefront of politics and also into Congress.
It looks like he was probably picked out as a result of these—I'm trying to be diplomatic here, Nick—of these movements of money and expressions of power from Russia and from the corruptive world.
It just keeps getting better, man.
Just keeps getting better.
I just don't get it though.
We talked about this before.
I don't understand because they could have picked anybody to back and boost and and this is the guy that they picked.
I mean, I you kind of felt like the Russians were a little bit more organized or they're more confident in this in this scheme because right like it's just it's weird because what's the whole scheme?
We're going to wander a whole bunch of our money through you and then you can be able to use that, you know into your campaign, but make sure we're going to get a lot of it back to so it's back in the making system legitimately.
Um, and, and then you, I guess you'll be in Congress.
You could be another vote for us to help, you know, just, you know, destabilize America, all that kind of stuff.
I'm like, okay, that all makes sense.
But like, but then why are they picking the guy that, you know, suddenly, I don't know, he suddenly made up his whole resume.
I don't know.
Maybe I'm actually coming to the answer here by talking this out.
But what's your answer?
Well, he's a useful idiot, first of all.
I mean, if you are an oligarch and you have billions of dollars and, you know, why not throw a couple million at something like this?
Like, even if George Santos would have lost his race, right?
You're still building relationships with the Republican Party.
You're still getting in those meetings.
All of a sudden, he then becomes basically an unregistered lobbyist, right?
That's worst case scenario.
The absolute worst case scenario is you build inroads and relationships in these circles, you start to gain power within the Republican Party.
Best case scenario, he gets elected to Congress, Nick!
All of a sudden you have a proxy vote within the House of Representatives.
And by the way, if he gets exposed as a complete and utter charlatan, oh, you're just undermining confidence in our institutions?
That's money well spent all the way around.
It makes total sense.
And part of the reason why Russian oligarchs, and I'm including Vladimir Putin in that category, by the way, the reason why they're doing all this is there's no loss.
What, they're going to get discovered to be bad actors?
Everybody knows they're bad actors.
Everyone knows that they're assholes.
So as a result, it's money well spent no matter what you get out of it.
Okay, I like that.
It's like the producers, basically, what they try to do, and they were going to take it.
And in theory, maybe Santos was like, well, no, I'm going to win this.
So I'm wondering, in his mind, he lost in 2020.
So he figured, well, I need a whole other backstory and new facts to, like, help me look like a better candidate, right?
That's sort of what he must have said as a triangulation to, like, win that race.
So he was like, so maybe he was on his own doing that old stuff, because he's like, I'm going to show them I'm actually going to win.
And he's also, I guess, isn't this reporting that he's related, right, to one of these guys, to Bechselberg, somehow?
Yeah, that's his cousin.
Right, the cousins, which is interesting.
And again, there's no law against being cousins with Russians, man, right?
Like, that's not illegal.
But, man, it's gonna get worse, Jared, I'm telling you right now.
Well, and you know, I was trying to think about this before we started recording.
It's like, could you imagine this happening in the 1980s?
Like, it would have set off, like, it would have been the biggest story in the world, and he would have had, probably gone to jail.
You know what I mean?
Like, it would have been a mess.
But also, the only way that this happens is the opening up of these Super PACs, right?
It's Citizens United that opens the door for this.
Now, this is just par for the course.
This is what's going to happen.
We are going to have so many grifters and so many absolutely chronic liars and manipulators who are going to be running Ponzi schemes, which is the quickest way to get in the Republican Party.
I mean, the Republican Party more or less is its own scheme to sell people their fears and then sell them, I don't know, discount dick pills.
And then hopefully you can get elected to Congress.
I mean, Rick Scott is basically like one of the biggest grifters in the history of the world, which is why he ended up being given the keys to Republican fundraising.
Like, that's what this is.
It's not about actual governance.
It is about the best ability to grift people and to screw people over, and that's what gets you in the party.
Didn't we, didn't you and I get the memo we're not supposed to say the words Rick and Scott consecutively on this podcast?
God, I just got the heebie-jeebies.
So yes, yes, you know, people that are listening to this can't, my neck is sore from nodding so much from what you're saying.
I just want you to know that if you're not watching this.
It's so awful.
And by the way, before we get Sandra Bloom, we've got to talk about another thing that should be on our radars.
Nick, I'm from Indiana.
You have roots in Illinois.
The really disturbing story that we wanted to dive into a little bit today, Illinois became the ninth state in the United States to ban assault rifles.
Almost immediately, over 70 sheriffs, who by the way, represent 4 million People.
We're talking about 30% of the state.
74 sheriffs have announced their intention to defy the law, said that they will not go after people who are selling these things.
They will not go after people who are registering them.
They are claiming that this is part of a constitutional sheriff movement, which we have to talk about in a couple of minutes.
But for anybody keeping track of this, this type of nullification is, it's never good.
I'll just say that.
Oh, I agree, because it's like, what are they supposed to do?
Aren't they pledging that they're going to uphold the law?
You know, and then when we realize, because for me, it's like law enforcement should be the people, if they're looking at the statistics and they realize that when you increase gun safety laws and make them more effective, you have less mass shootings, for instance.
You'd think that they'd like that, and yet I suspect that you're dealing with people who live on their reality is that they don't believe those studies, right?
Those studies are fake.
They're lies.
They didn't happen.
I suppose it's the only way you can get around, like, why you wouldn't be for more of the bad guys getting the guns.
Now, in Illinois, they used to talk about this all the time, where they say, well, they'll just go over to Indiana and buy them.
Well, there's no laws, right?
So what's the point?
What's the difference?
Well, I'm all for making it harder for people and they should be too.
So it's really kind of disgusting.
What else is behind this?
Is there some monetary benefit from them that they're going to be able to make?
Because the only other way you can justify that position is that they're going to be making some money off of this in my mind.
Well, so in all of these things, there's either going to be money or there's going to be some sort of an ideological bent, and these things absolutely go back and forth.
So, there is this long-standing idea within the United States of the constitutional sheriff, Nick.
And a reminder, when we talk about politics, when we talk about, like, the foundations of countries, I just want to point out, all of this is made-up bullshit.
When it really comes to Constitution's laws, this is all stuff that we've made up and agreed to do, right?
Which means that the moment that anybody stands up and says, this is bullshit, I didn't agree to this, the thing starts falling apart, right?
Constitutional Sheriffs is this movement that has, like, so much of an awful background.
We're talking about white supremacist conspiracy theories.
We're talking about the oppression of African Americans.
It is the ideal.
That somehow or another, and this is actually from the background of the constitutional sheriff's group themselves, this is an actual quote.
The power of the sheriff even supersedes the power of the president.
This is a absolute coconut bananas legal theory, it's not even actually legal but whatever, that the supreme leader within any county is the sheriff.
Now, for people who don't know this, sheriffs are not appointed.
For the most part, sheriffs are elected.
And this has a deep, deep background in English law, these old heritage things that helped go into American law.
They literally believe That they are the supreme powers within the United States of America.
And this is a belief that is being seeded and grown by right-wing billionaires.
We're talking about the DeVosses.
We're talking about the Kochs.
We're talking about the Bradleys.
And they are sending money to places like the Claremont Institute, that carries out these sheriff fellowships and all that, that basically brings these people in.
And by the way, Nick, what happens if they lose their next election as sheriff?
I'm sure they're going to find a job.
I'm sure they're going to have plenty of money that's going to be given to their campaigns.
They're going to have jobs on the other side of it.
They're going to be brought within the right-wing economy.
It's all going to happen.
So they are brought out and they are nurtured to believe that they are above the laws of the state.
And as a result, we have a situation where the federal authorities are not going to go in, they're not going to battle them, and you're going to create little fiefdoms that are going to be ruled over, honest to God, by sheriffs, because that's what they're trying to do.
Yeah, and by the way, they can justify this by saying, well, the Second Amendment is protected as a federal constitutional right, and we are bound by that.
We cannot be enforcing these things because we don't believe that the Second Amendment covers that, and you cannot have any limitations on that.
And that's the other thing, it's rooted in the Wild West as well, right?
Taking my gun from my cold, dead hands.
And they don't give a shit, I guess, in theory either, about whether or not it's being used to kill people.
We had a mass shooting in the middle of a fucking parade in Highland Park, in Illinois.
And they even have quotes, they even recognize that, but they, in their twisted minds, Are going to justify saying that this won't stop that.
Right.
And that's the that's the idiocy of it.
We've seen that it stops it.
It does stop these kind of shootings.
And maybe there was just 10 percent stopping it or 20 percent.
I will take that over any day.
And yet here we are with these people with their posses.
And by the way, I think that's what you're also talking about, right?
These sheriff's posses, they have the power to like to deputize people and then who can then kill people, you know, in the law.
That's how.
And it's not that long ago.
Right.
Like, you know better than me.
Like, how long ago were they having that stuff?
Like, probably less than 100 years ago they could do that.
No, they're deputizing people today.
I mean, that's absolutely true.
All right.
And by the way, I want to point out that like when you're talking about things like deputizing people or going after people or ignoring laws or enforcing certain laws, whatever, this literally comes from the idea.
And Nick, I don't know if you had a chance to look at it.
I sent you over the agenda from the conference from the Claremont Institute.
It is endless propaganda that tells these people that they are, and I know people know this idea, that they are the thin blue line between society and anarchy.
They are basically being told that they are the only thing standing between like polite civilization and quote-unquote rebarbarization.
That's what they, as they walk around carrying their guns, carrying their weapons.
And it's not even just like regular revolvers either.
They basically have, you know, the arsenals left over from the war on terror.
You know, that they are out there believing that they are fighting a war against supernatural evil threats.
So as a result, that apocalyptic mindset, it makes sure that they're not going to enforce the laws of the state.
It's going to undermine the federal government.
And by the way, again, the DeVosses, the Copes, the Bradleys, they want to destroy the federal government.
Right?
This is another piece in that larger agenda, and these sheriffs, they're thirsty for it, man.
They love it.
This is a country-wide problem, and what we're seeing in Illinois is going to happen a lot more.
And on the eve of, or on the afternoon of Martin Luther King Day, as I hear you talking about the fight against barbarism and the separation, like, what I'm hearing really is that it's these people of color are swarming our streets and we must protect the white people from all this.
I mean, I can't not hear that.
And again, now I'm being, I'm being racist against white people, right?
Because I'm saying something like that, even though it's a fact and we know how that all plays out.
And it also just quickly ties into the notion of the right keeps trying to use Martin Luther King.
You know one, you know, sentence from any of his speeches, right?
They just know the one thing about the color content of the character versus the color of their skin.
And I'm kind of curious if you have any insight into or any input into that about why, what they're really trying to say when they reference that as a talking point for the right and what their agenda is for.
Do you have insight into that?
Yeah, so when I was researching the Midnight Kingdom, one of the things that I found that was really disturbing was that white supremacist power loves, loves, loves co-opting the people who challenge it, right?
They love going ahead and taking any individual or movement or idea that could potentially destroy them, bringing them in, digesting them, and regurgitating them as sort of a support base of their power.
So whenever you hear about Martin Luther King, And I'm sure you've seen this.
You watch enough sports.
Around Martin Luther King Day, inevitably, there are always these segments that these corporations, right, that are run based on white supremacist prophets.
They always have these segments where people are like, MLK, he wanted to change the world.
It's like, well, And do what?
You know, like, you take all the substance out of it, including white supremacy, including equality, including, by the way, racial and economic equality.
That's what, like, you know, King went after poverty in his later years.
Like, they want to get rid of the specifics, and they want to turn it into something very, very disgusting, which is Martin Luther King practiced nonviolence.
Right?
Civil disobedience.
Well, they don't talk about civil disobedience.
They talk about the nonviolence.
So they don't want you getting involved.
They want to use, I have a dream as something passive, as something in the future that could possibly happen.
And as a result, they go ahead and they take out any notions of white supremacy, any notions of exploitation, and basically they create like sort of another brick in the wall, so to speak.
And they've regurgitated it and tried to co-opt it in one of the most repulsive ways imaginable.
Alright everybody, so on that note, I'm going to go talk to Dr. Sandra Bloom.
I'm really, really excited for you to hear this, talking about what a sane society could look like, and particularly what we can do as individuals to get there.
All right, everybody, as promised.
Listen, we have a really special treat.
I'm here with Dr. Sandra Bloom, who is an associate professor of health management policy at the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University and the author of several books, including Creating Sanctuary Toward the Evolution of Sane Societies.
I want to tell you, Dr. Bloom, I have become a quick and great admirer of yours.
I am so glad you could make some time to come by the podcast.
Well, same back at you.
You know, I read your book.
American Rule over Christmas and vacation, and it was a great read, and I'm looking forward to the next one!
Well, I always have to apologize that people have to spend time on those things, you know?
I wish we were talking about some better things, but I, you know, as I've been telling the listeners over the past few weeks, One of the things I've been focusing on is moving from diagnosing the problem into moving into creating solutions.
And that was one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you.
And before we get into solutions, I was hoping you could tell our audience, you know, we're talking about creating of sane societies.
What is a sane society?
And what is the alternative?
Tell us what we're living in right now.
Oh, we're not, we're living in a very, a very unbalanced society in a very unbalanced world.
You know, my, I don't think any of us know what a healthy community or healthy society would be.
And if there are people out there who do, please do share it.
But I think it's been so long, so many thousands of years, since we've been really living at peace in a way that we were, as human beings, designed to live long, long, long ago.
We don't even have a frame of reference.
So the frame of reference I'm using is to compare it to the human body and think about all of our systems in parallel from you and yourselves All the way up to through the family and the organizations and communities and the whole, the whole global system as being alive, being a living being.
And that means then that we can think in a completely different way.
Because as you know, well, for the last few hundred years, the basic model has been that of a machine.
And so we've become really mechanical and bizarre and
Well, I think it's really interesting that you bring up the idea of the machine, because one of the things that has really bothered me, particularly as I was doing research on the new book, is how the emphasis since industrialization and also the advent of capitalism
It is very much on a, the focus is on a system and what the results of the system are, particularly economics, the production of things.
And meanwhile, and I happen to believe, and I would love to hear what you have to say about this, I think one of the reasons we've reached this point And I always say it's a mental health crisis as well as a political, economic, societal crisis.
We've reached the point where the fates of individuals, the fates of human beings, is just absolute, not even secondary, it's just not even thought about, right?
When we talk about how the economy is working, we're talking about how money is being extracted or how profit is happening.
Meanwhile, I think it's become more and more undeniable that this is not a healthy way for us to live.
And on a societal level, I feel like we're reaching a breaking point because the individuals are reaching a breaking point.
Does that check out for you?
I think I'd probably look at it as the society is reaching a breaking point and it's affecting every single individual.
You can't get away from it.
We are all part of the same system.
So we're, you know, you probably have heard about this, but in 2016, no coincidence, it was 2016, the big geological group declared that we've started a new epoch in 1950, the age of the Anthropocene.
And it's when they believe the impact of humanity on the earth became more dramatic than any other impact.
So it's really the age of what human beings are doing and potentially could do to really help save the planet.
So I think what people have a hard time getting their heads around is that we are heading for complete destruction. - And we're not doing much about it.
I think that's what is so frustrating about the political system, no matter which camp you're in, is that it's paralyzed.
There are all these incredibly important issues.
that need to be addressed while they're arguing, you know, over how many angels are dancing on the head of a pin kind of arguments that are just not relevant to the dangers that all of us are in.
And I think that's what's so incredibly frustrating about the political scene, at least in this country, but I think probably in other countries as well.
So in that regard, and you know, this is something I kind of want to introduce listeners to a little bit.
You have been a pioneer in terms of trauma-informed research, trauma-informed psychology and understanding.
Can you talk about what that is and how How that basically has moved away from sort of the consensus way that people have looked at the world or how systems are supposed to operate and sort of get into what that means and what it could potentially lead to.
Sure, I'll give it a try.
It's a big topic.
So it really represents something that's called a paradigm shift.
And what that means is that It's really about very deep down change in our basic assumptions that we make about the world around us, about where we fit in, about who we are, about what has happened to us.
It changes everything.
And people can be misled because they think, oh, we're just talking about trauma and PTSD and what happens to soldiers and happens in disasters.
And it's because we don't have a word.
There is no word.
that captures what we're actually talking about.
So we've called it trauma-informed knowledge because that's kind of the bottom line of what you need to know about.
You need to know about how overwhelming events that are actually traumatic affect our brains and our bodies and our behavior and our social adaptation.
But what makes it a much bigger deal is that when we add to it, to the knowledge about Basic trauma, what we now know about people's exposure to adversity in childhood.
Well, what the result of that is going, oh, my God, most people who live today.
Around the world, there are studies, not just in this country, but around the world have been exposed to both childhood adversity and trauma.
And.
They have adapted because we're adaptable and we're malleable as a living creature, but not without a price.
So, our whole attitude towards ourselves, each other, and the world around us is skewed by what has actually happened to us.
That we just take for granted as just kind of normal and, you know, what you have to live with.
So the big, the way to, the simplest way to explain what trauma-informed knowledge is, it's a shift from what's wrong with you, the kind of the basic question of, of each other, of parents, of mental health, of social services, of healthcare, What's wrong with you?
Often, what the hell's wrong with you?
Right?
And the shift, the really transformative shift is realizing that all of it, all of the behavior, all of the problems in our society, all of the maladaptations are really a result of what's happened.
So it's changing that basic question from what's wrong with you to what's happened to you.
And once I understand what's happened to you, then a whole lot of other things make sense And then I can figure out how to be most helpful to you, how to help you figure out the pathway to recovery and to healing.
But without changing that underlying question, nothing changes.
People just end up getting more and more diagnosis and sicker and sicker and more and more behaviorally maladaptive and it ends up where we are.
I think that's what makes it such a big deal.
Well, I truly, honestly, the more that I sort of immerse myself in this, the more paradigm shift I think is exactly right.
It feels like the discovery of like cellular life at a microscopic level, right?
All of a sudden, all of the questions start to change.
So for instance, You know, I think a lot about the background that I grew up in, a lot of abuse, evangelical conditioning, the idea that you yourself are wretched, that there's something wrong with you, that people around you cannot be trusted.
And meanwhile, we have seen All of these systems that have been created that bring this in whether you know we've talked uh when we were recording about like how health care works and how even therapy works and and and people you know everything from like having to navigate health care in the United States of America to the political systems which by the way we have now seen with things like the Republican Party and right-wing politics is more or less a group that says
You don't need to look in the mirror and think about who you are.
You don't need to heal.
It's other people who are out to get you.
And when you actually start looking through that lens, all of a sudden we're not talking about good versus evil.
We're talking about this trauma-informed way of looking at the world.
Does that check out?
That's exactly right.
That's exactly right.
And although it really didn't come into my world, the world of psychiatry, until Vietnam, to the impact of the Vietnam War.
There's an earlier connection between the idea of stress, trauma, and politics that I really like your listeners to know about.
There was a physiologist at Harvard for about 40 years, a really famous guy named Walter Buchanan, And he's the guy that named the Fight Flight Response, which is really at the heart of trauma.
And he defined the concept of homeostasis, which means balance.
So if your homeostasis in your body becomes disrupted, you either get sick or you can die, depending on which organ is affected.
So that's a really important concept, I think, at every level.
That we have to be in balance.
And right now, we are completely out of balance.
So we have these extremes, on both right and left, that kind of meet around the back of a big ball, and really become very radical and fanatic.
But in 1940, Walter B. Cannon became the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
And in his presidential address, this is what he said, because I think it's so important.
The most stable, efficient human society would be a biocracy in which the myriad of differentiated cells would be organized into functional organs, all cooperating in a dynamic democracy.
in which any form of dictatorship would lead to degeneration and death.
And I find that one paragraph almost prescient.
You know, he's in 1940.
If you think about where we were in 1940, in terms of Hitler and about to have a war, it's almost like he was looking into the future of right now.
And what's at stake in all of this is really practicing democratically as human beings.
And that is really the only way that our society can flourish.
When you asked me earlier, what would a healthy society look like?
Oh, it would be democratic top to bottom.
And I'm talking little d, not big D.
There would be consensus decision-making at every level, all the way up to national government.
And of course, that's not what we have.
Well, and so much of what we have to cover on the show, you know, we were talking last week about gas stove bans, right?
Which, you know, I think is a really interesting sort of an entry point.
Like it's undoubtedly in America, it's a dumb shit conversation that is just completely and utterly all over the place.
But if you actually look at the issue, There has been a discovery that this thing that a lot of us have in our homes is causing childhood asthma, adverse effects, global climate change.
This is, you know, a thing that you can look at.
The numbers are there, the statistics are there, the studies are there.
This is actually an opportunity to advance forward, possibly make children's lives better, and possibly help the environment.
But that's not the discussion that we're having.
The discussion we're having is that jackbooted government thugs are going to come into your home with their guns, more or less, you know, threaten your family.
And by the way, we're talking about really primal psychological appeals.
Meanwhile, people on the other side of the debate, right now, undoubtedly, if I opened up my phone, I would get five to six fundraising appeals that are all based on fight or flight, right?
Which says the Republicans are going to win.
It's all done unless you pay five dollars.
The incentive structure in the way that our politics are supposed to work, and I always try and remind people, politics is about how we come together as a people and make decisions about how to move forward in the best way.
That's gone.
That isn't at all what's actually occurring right now, right?
We're all sort of involved in psychological processes, appeals that we don't even understand.
We don't have the background to understand it.
And meanwhile, we're behaving in irrational, self-harming ways.
Exactly.
Exactly.
It's really, and I think it's, I think, I'm glad you brought up that particular example, because you might find this a little bizarre.
I think, I think it is all, all of it, all of the crazy division, all of the shared psychosis is about an unwillingness to really reckon with the way we treat children.
And I think it all gets back to that.
And in order to really politically and socially make the world safe for children.
We have to look at the ways in which it's been unsafe for us.
And we have to look at the ways we're deliberately enabling policies that are really dangerous to the next generations.
And that's not happening.
Our government is paralyzed.
That's not happening.
And I think that's what we're defending against.
Realizing how little love children are really getting from the world around them, and how much abuse.
I mean, when you actually find out the truth about what people have experienced as kids, it is very, very disturbing.
Because it's not an exception, it's the rules.
And to have a species that treats their offspring the way we do is really destructive and very puzzling.
And we haven't even begun to really grapple with that in any really meaningful way.
Well, and it's about ending cycles of abuse.
And I always find it very fascinating.
And, you know, one of the reasons why I do what I do is because it is both disturbing and fascinating to watch what right-wing politics has become.
So, for instance, you know, we currently have this CRT groomer type panic that looks a lot like going back into the 1980s.
We have the satanic panic, right?
In which like all of a sudden people are terrified because their kids are going into like daycare or you know moms are going into the workplace and what's happening is the projection is that people on the outside are coming for your children people on the outside are going to hurt your children whether it's teachers or it's gay people or trans people But we all know that the cycle of abuse mostly happens at home.
It mostly happens in these cycles and it's kind of amazing, you want to talk about self-harm, how the right wing continually prioritizes that cycle of at-home abuse by looking at things like, I gotta tell you some of the more disturbing things, they're not just going after gay and trans teachers, they're going after in-school therapy.
They're going after any treatment of anxiety, any treatment of these problems that kids are manifesting, in large part because of abuse and problems at home.
And what's actually happening is, in a way, they are fighting to continue that cycle of abuse.
That's correct.
Which is part of the reason why we talk about society becoming feminized or weak or whatever.
It's to keep it going.
That's right.
I mean, there are 19 states, I think, at last count.
that still permit corporal punishment in the schools.
And there are no states that prohibit it at home.
And that is telling children the same behavior that parents are allowed to do to children at home.
If they did it to another adult, they would be prosecuted for assault.
So how do we think violence is going to stop if it begins with violating a child?
It's completely nonsensical to think that that's okay.
And that we know there's a huge body of research about corporal punishment and how ineffective it is and how many problems it causes.
And yet, still, Trying to take away the right to beat your child is really threatening.
But I would say that's because in order to give up your willingness to hit your children, you have to deal with the way you've been treated as a child.
And that's so painful and so scary for so many people.
And it threatens what they've learned and it threatens authority figures that they've believed in that it doesn't happen.
That's a fascinating part.
I want to investigate that further, but I want to ask you what can be done.
But before we do, we had had, I thought, a really fascinating discussion about psychopathic tendencies in this culture, both like actual and like what we'd refer to as psychopaths, but also people who learn to behave in psychopathic ways.
I was wondering if you could talk to the audience a little bit about that.
Yeah, first to find for them what we mean by psychopathic behavior.
People who are psychopaths are people who lack a moral compass and lack compassion for other people, although they can fake it.
And they enjoy manipulating other people, sometimes to the point of serious cruelty and harm to others.
And most of them are not in prison.
So, in fact, there's a philosopher named Stephen Bartlett, and what he's written about is how it is as if human evil has become normative, that we look at that behavior, we're influenced To be that way by movies and television who glorify this really psychopathic behavior.
And so it's becoming normal instead of what it should be.
It is a diagnosis of serious ill health.
It's a real mental health problem.
And healthy people do not hurt other people or cause suffering.
That's part of the definition.
of what health is.
But that has changed in ways that I think are very, very frightening.
Because that gives license to virtually anything, to putting psychopaths in control of the world we live in.
I mean, that was what Hitler's world was about.
It was really, you know, taking Otherwise, carrying normal people and turning them into monsters.
Because there is only a small portion of the population that are actually psychopaths, but they have an amazing ability to influence, obviously, large groups of people.
All you have to do is feed into that Hatred, that paranoia, that xenophobia, whether it's about race, or religion, or age, or color, or whatever it's about, you just feed it.
And that's, I think, what you've seen happening, is the feeding of that monster.
Yeah, and the incentive structures all seem to go ahead and incentivize that type of behavior because, you know, extracting resources, exploiting people, oppressing people, that's the way that the status quo kind of continues to... Killing all the animals.
Killing life on earth.
Yeah, exactly.
It's psychopathic because Anybody with a moral conscience looks at what's going on in the environment, and even if they're making money off of it, there's something inside of them that's going, something's not right, I'm not comfortable with this, that they have to silence.
But they need to understand that there are people in the world, some of them running countries, some of them running businesses, some of them running families, That don't have that moral sense.
They don't have any trouble at all with doing anything that suits their needs, because they don't have a moral conscience that the rest of us do.
So we're easy to exploit, therefore, around when you do have a moral compass, then you become a target for those kind of people.
It's dangerous.
Well, I have to ask you this before I let you go, because we are so lucky to have you.
On an individual level and on a societal level, what is it that we can do?
I've been advocating recently that in order to fight a revolutionary struggle, you have to disabuse yourself of a lot of the lies and the notions that this sick society creates.
And on top of that, we have to heal from our own trauma, from our own societal trauma, in order to start pushing back towards what you would refer to as a sane society.
So for listeners who are listening, Many of them who are frustrated, they're feeling their own mental health, you know, being affected by an authoritarian movement that holds a lot of power in its way, and also a society that isn't healthy.
What is it they can do individually?
And at a societal level, what is it that we can do to make this a saner society?
Well, individually, I think what people need to do is what you just alluded to.
They have to become more conscious and more knowledgeable.
So the knowledge has been accumulating for the last 40 years about the impact of adversity and trauma.
It's out there, it's available.
But it's really different from what people will have learned, even if they're professionals, even if they are doctors in psychology, they won't necessarily know this research.
So learn about it, learn about what trauma theory is all about, how it affects the body, the brain, How it affects groups of people.
They need to understand group psychology, very importantly.
And then they need to practice in their own lives different methods for healing and for interacting with other people.
So we create one of the dynamics of trauma is called traumatic reenactment.
We form habits easily.
So we get trapped in In these reenactment patterns where there are three main roles, victim, persecutor, rescuer.
And so in our own lives, we can look at how we are reenacting some really destructive stuff and change it and deliberately, consciously change those patterns.
We can do that in the workplace.
We can do it at home.
People need to bring this knowledge into their workplaces.
That we need trauma-informed workplaces desperately.
And then at a societal level, it means having to get involved.
There are lots of movements going on.
I would hope that your listeners would check out www.ctipp.org, which stands for The Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice.
So that's a group of us who are working at a national and a statewide level to try to bring the knowledge in, not with any particular political slant, but to bring the knowledge that we now have into community groups and into the national government as much as we can.
And then there are statewide movements in many states to Create a trauma-informed state.
Delaware is doing it.
Pennsylvania is doing it.
Louisiana is doing it.
So there are different states and Oregon has done a lot of work.
California has done a lot of work.
You know, different states are involved at different levels.
Get involved.
Find out what's happening where you live and start hooking up with other people.
This is a new movement relative to How long big social movements take?
This one's quite young, so there's still a lot of room for all different kinds of people with different kinds of knowledge to make a contribution that could be incredibly critical to changing and basically saving life on Earth.
That's really what it's about.
Is life going to continue?
It's not looking good right now, so we've got to push the envelope.
I want to say also as somebody who's like learning to sort of heal from trauma, the amazing thing is when you are in the midst of that sort of unwellness, you can't imagine things being better, you know, because that's what trauma does.
And the better that it feels, it sort of is a opening up, you know what I mean?
It is really miraculous the moment that you start healing from that stuff.
And I try and tell people all the time because, listen, I have a little bit of a reputation as a doomsayer.
I understand that.
And whenever I talk about being optimistic or being hopeful or even thinking about a better future, people say, how can you believe that?
And it's because When you're in that trauma, you don't see it, but when you're starting to heal from it, I have become a firm believer that there is so much improvement possible, that there is a better world that is out there.
And I know that you have dealt with a lot of patients and case studies undoubtedly.
You've seen some people go through some really complex things and live better lives than they probably could have ever imagined.
That's why I do what I do, because I watched people who had experienced abuse and violence that was inconceivable to me.
And they healed.
They healed.
It took a healthy environment to do that.
It took support, but they did the work.
And I have been and will forever be tremendously inspired by people's recovery, by how actually human beings Can get into a better place, but it doesn't happen.
We don't bounce back, but we can post-traumatically grow.
And I think it's vital that everybody look at themselves from that position.
And what can I do?
What do I need to grow out of the space where I'm in and go further and help create a different future?
This has been Dr. Sandra Bloom, an Associate Professor of Health Management and Policy at the Donsife School of Public Health at Drexel University.
There are several books.
I cannot, by the way, recommend more than the Sanctuary series, particularly the opening Creating Sanctuary Toward the Evolution of Insane Societies.
You are the absolute best.
Thank you so much for coming by.
Thanks for having me.
All right, everybody.
That was Dr. Sandra Bloom, again, a professor at Drexel, I think a really, really incredible person, talking about how this society functions with authoritarian energies and these unhealthy, traumatic cycles that we go through and our ability to heal from them and create a better future.
Yeah, pretty good stuff, Nick.
But I got to tell you, all this other stuff, tough.
Tough.
I agree.
And the more and more I look at this, the more and more, I mean, listen, I peruse Twitter all the time, which is what just happened there with that noise.
And I'm always looking.
I do deep dives.
I know I shouldn't, but I do deep dives on these right-wing accounts and I'm reading what they're saying just to get a handle on what their baseline reality is.
And the more I do that, it's like I don't want to be so negative on it, but it just feels like there's never going to be any way to bridge that gulf.
Like, somebody shared this right-wing podcast that was demonizing John Lennon's Imagine, because what they think he's saying is that we need to get rid of, like, God, and then Godless society is going to fall apart, whatever, when he's really saying, imagine if we don't have religion.
Right?
Which is what we've fought for thousands and thousands of years and killed each other over.
That, let's get rid of.
We could still have a higher being and believe in something bigger than ourselves.
That has never left John Lennon's stuff that he said.
But like, that's what they'll do.
And it's like, even if something is as what should be as inspiring a song as imagined becomes in that same co-opting way, this call against the, you know, for the devil by the left and continues to stoke that fire.
And I don't know how we're supposed to.
If we can't get together around John Lennon, I don't know what we can do.
Well, I want to say from the Bloom interview, you know, it is one of those things where the right-wing mindset is fight or flight.
It's the idea that the entire world is out to get you and destroy you, and as a result, you can't trust anything.
The idea of a better future to a right-wing person, it sounds like a lie, but it also sounds like an opportunity to get screwed over, right?
It's trauma that's continually speaking, and I think the right wing is completely full of it.
I think that they are, um, you know, you take a look at someone like Santos, who we talked about this chronic lying, Nick, this, uh, and, and by the way, we keep hearing stories about Santos has screwed one person after another.
And it's not just like business partners and stuff.
It's like friends, it's like roommates and relationships, right?
This is a person who has taken whatever they've gone through or whoever they are and just continue to cycle with all of these other people.
It is a sick society, and it's a sick movement, and I think we'll be able to heal from it, but my God, are we in the middle of a crisis right now.
Yeah, and there's $500 scarves out there that you can buy, that people are buying.
And then Santo's stealing, so that's even crazier.
I don't want to be controversial here.
That's too much to pay for a scarf.
It is way too much.
If I had a $500 scarf, Nick, I don't know what I would do.
Like, I wouldn't be able to wear it.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, I don't know.
Again, I had refused to pay over $100 for a pair of shoes pretty much my whole life, and I still maintain that, and I will go as far as I can to find that.
Because again, it's just not worth it.
Even if I was an oligarch and had millions of dollars, I wouldn't want to spend that much money on a scarf or whatever.
But that's just me.
Well, anyway, I can't.
$500 scarf.
That's too much.
Just way too much.
Thank you, everybody, for listening to the show.
Thank you to Dr. Sandra Bloom.
You were the absolute best.
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