Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman begin the episode by discussing how conservatives in Texas were able to shop for the judge they wanted - a firebrand religious zealot who ruled that Mifepristone is "dangerous" and should stop being prescribed across the entire United States. They also tackle the issue of sexual abuse in the Catholic church as more revelations come out in Baltimore. Predictably, the GOP is calling for a military war against Mexico to stop Fentanyl from being imported into the United States.
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We've got another revelation in the Catholic Church chronic abuse scandals.
We've got the Republicans wanting to bomb Mexico.
We've got billionaire donors with gardens full of dictator statues and Nazi memorabilia.
I mean, for me, that's a fun day, right?
Oh, it's it's just a murderer's row of things that we all want to talk about, I'm sure.
So yeah, this is on murderers.
That's, that's exactly right.
But we have to start today with the the first story here.
In Texas, US District Judge Matthew Kaczmarek, an anti-abortion Trump-appointed judge, has overruled a 23-year approval of a drug that is essential in the medical abortion.
He says, quote, "The court does not second guess FDA's decisions making lightly, but in this case, the FDA acquiesced on its legitimate safety concerns based on plainly unsound reasoning." There's a whole lot to unpack here, but that's, I know the word unprecedented gets thrown around a lot lately, Nick, but this attack on women's bodily autonomy is just picking up steam.
I mean, you know, listen, it's one thing to have, like, whatever kind of opposition, if it's rooted in religion or whatever, opposition to abortion.
Even as a judge, I suppose, people have those thoughts and are also rated, you know, competent by the Bar Association.
But it's another one, and then kind of base your whole decision on, like, lies about the efficacy of a drug.
And that's what's so weird about this thing.
And the bigger picture then will become what's going to become of the FDA, which should have been a body that represented the government in a way that had the best interests of our citizens at heart and wasn't necessarily influenced by, you know, what they're trying to argue.
And that's if that this is a bigger picture that we have to really worry about as well.
Now, listen, I got to be honest.
We all know that one of my things is I have to talk about we shouldn't trust institutions, you know, even when we're being told that we should.
Listen, the FDA has been weird for a very, very long time.
There are many reasons to criticize the FDA and their decisions.
This is not one of them.
This is not one of the situations where that needs to happen.
This is literally, and you and I both are old enough to remember whenever Republicans talked about activist judges, right?
People who were legislating from the bench.
That's all that this is.
And going after a drug approval based on political bounds, it's one of those moments.
Where all of a sudden you start to realize that a lot of those guardrails that we've all thought were there, or, you know, people acting on honor, that those things are just gone at this point.
And because the Republican Party has so perverted the judicial system, stuff like this is going to continue to happen.
Now, if we take a look at this, and just to update people on the story, there are now conflicting judge rulings.
It's up in the air whether or not this pill is actually going to be taken off the market and effectively taken away from women making choices about their own body.
We need to also point out, Nick, That this was based on a lawsuit from a group calling themselves Alliance Defending Freedom.
And Nick, I'm going to go through the funders here.
And this, by the way, is the same group that was trying to outlaw not just gay marriage, but trying to resurrect sodomy laws.
They're funded by, I don't know, the DeVosses, the Kochs, the Bradleys.
This was another one of those triangulation schemes, where as soon as Roe v. Wade went down, they started going after the ability for these pills to be out there.
I mean, this is coordination, it's corruption, and it's part of the Republican Party's war on women that has continued now for decades.
Oh, if you his background, it's funny because Trump was nominating a whole bunch of judges while he was in the White House that were not rated competent and should not have been up as judges, right?
This guy actually was.
But, you know, having not had any judge experience before this, I mean, this guy was involved in some of the most severely right, religious right, you know, whatever groups that you can imagine.
And what we call this is, you know, forum shopping.
What they did to get this case in front of him in Texas was knowing that the way that Texas works in the geography of the land, they if they bring the case in this district, they know it's going to be him versus other areas of the country where it is.
It's a you don't know to be the judge.
So, you know, what you get from that is that they created this case because they know they're going to get the outcome they want, which kind of call me crazy, Jared.
but I don't think that that's really the intent of our judicial system, Is that and I am I off the rails there or maybe I'm crazy?
No, some would even call it a conspiracy.
I mean, like, this is the type of shit.
And, you know, we're going to talk more about Harlan Crowe here in a little bit, the billionaire guy who has just paid for, you know, Clarence Thomas to run around the country.
This is the kind of thing that happens when you're on a superyacht.
You know what I mean?
Or whenever you're out and about in Indonesia or checking out the Komodo Dragons.
Like, this is about coordinating a very specific attack.
And watching what has happened here, I mean, it's horrific how much this has not just perverted a system that was already perverted, but also to go ahead and see how the tide is turning on a lot of this.
You know, these pills, Nick, they're outlawed in certain places.
We even see Walgreens, and we've heard about this for the past couple months, saying they're not going to carry it even in some states where it's legal because they're caving under the pressure for this.
This is, again, in a way that a lot of the Republicans are trying to carry out.
There is a hard press against bodily autonomy for women, right, in terms of overturning Roe v. Wade, in terms of passing these restrictions or outright bans, and then there are the soft ones that are happening on the other side.
And we're going to look up, unless we take this seriously, we're going to look up and a woman's right to her entire body is going to be taken away in its entirety.
Like, it is absolutely a conspiracy and it is absolutely a planned attack at trying to go after these people.
Exactly.
And it's...
It's just troubling.
It's troubling because the way they'll end up twisting these court cases to whatever ends they want.
I mean, it is legislating from the bench.
And we remember in the early 2000s how the right was really railing against this because they felt like, you know, Liberal judges were doing the same exact thing.
Which very well, from their point of view, is probably a legitimate take on what was going on.
I just feel like the only tenable way this is going to work legally for abortion Is either or, right?
It feels like either it needs to be legal across the entire United States or it can't be legal anywhere.
That's what's so scary about this.
It doesn't seem like it's tenable to have it the way they think that it would happen with the states getting deciding because of this kind of stuff.
And then what you mentioned is the Washington judge suddenly rules the exact opposite way.
Now we're in an intractable mess that goes to the Supreme Court, which, Lordy, is going to be a real problem if they get to decide this one.
You're exactly right.
I mean, a house divided against itself cannot stand.
I think somebody said that somewhere along the way.
And it's almost as if this thing, going back to 1972, was settled law.
It was a settled issue.
On top of that, by the way, depending upon what poll you're looking at, 75 to 85% of Americans agree that a woman should have the right over her own bodily autonomy.
Like, this is not something that was actually up for debate.
It is a power grab.
And I have to tell you, and I know that this isn't going to be shocking for people to hear me say it, I think it is just absolute weak tea to hear from the President of the United States and his administration that they're very concerned about this and that they really wish that this wasn't happening and this is another attack.
You're exactly right, Nick.
This needs to be codified into law.
This needs to be done.
There needs to be a push for it.
And we need to move past this bullshit.
Because this is just going to continue to get worse until somebody takes a stand and actually makes sure that this bullshit actually gets stopped in its tracks.
But that doesn't settle it.
Because even if you pass a law, the Supreme Court can then override it.
That's what's so troubling about this.
At any time now, 20 years, 50 years from now, it doesn't really necessarily matter.
And that's the genius of the evil genius of Mitch McConnell, knowing that they didn't have to necessarily have control over all the houses because they can just legislate from the Supreme Court, which is what they are now going to be able to do for many, many years.
You know, unless somehow Clarence Thomas is forced to resign.
Well, first of all, Clarence Thomas should be impeached.
There should be a push against that.
Second of all, by the way, could we find out how Brett Kavanaugh suddenly paid off all of his debts?
And can we get into that?
Or also, I don't know, now that you're in charge of the government, can you use the Department of Justice to go back and find out if the man perjured himself?
Because there wasn't an actual investigation?
Or, I don't know, go around the country.
And by the way, since we're on the subject, Joe Biden has now told MSNBC he's going to run for a second term.
Maybe while you're out campaigning for that second term, maybe you start talking about packing the court or expanding the court.
Maybe you start talking about bringing Puerto Rico in or Washington, D.C.
as a state.
Maybe you start actually playing hardball instead of talking all the time about how concerned you are.
Show me how concerned you are.
Actually put something on the line.
Oh, that would be too scary for someone like Joe Biden.
Too scary.
Yeah, because he can't risk it.
Don't want to look at anything more than just an extremely moderate, you know, center candidate.
And that's why you can't.
And by the way, like what we've been arguing this whole time is that he would be able to garner as much, if not more support by having those positions than this whatever fear he thinks he has of this random, you know, swing voter that might not vote for him because of that.
I think that's what's ridiculous.
Can we go back for one second?
Because before I forget, you know, what they're trying to cast aspersions about, let's see, mythoprestone, mythopristone, I had it, I think is how you say it, is that it's not safe.
And it's like, I looked it up and, okay, again, according to the FDA, and this is what they'll say, the FDA is simply lying.
But, you know, for the longest time, we've had to rely on them.
And they have scientists who do this, who, who would, Their careers would be ended if they're going to misuse data, but the bottom line is what they report is that there are five deaths per million users of Mifepristone.
In comparison, a 2001 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that there were about 20 deaths per million users of penicillin.
So it's like, what are we doing here?
This is not saying it's dangerous.
And then they've used this for so long.
And then we have the data now.
It's been for 20 some years.
They've been able to use this, this combination of drugs through this.
I think it's probably more unsettling to them because it does cast into doubt the notion of the fetus versus a bunch of cells that aren't viable that become, you know, that, that, that become part of this procedure.
And it might feel like these religious people that this is some sort of weird wiggle room that doesn't apply to what their values are.
And they have to somehow just put a stop to it so they can't, it won't be on their conscience. - Well, and by the way, we'll get to those religious people here in just a second, but I also want to point out, Part of this is an aggressive defense against the idea that these abortion bans are going to get worked around by these pills being sent out to people.
That's one of the deals here is the idea that, you know, you might you may be able to go after people who are carrying out surgical procedures.
But if you can take out one of the pills or both of the pills, I'm sure they're probably looking at both of them, that you might be able to go ahead and cut that out without some sort of an interstate act.
You know, going back to the Comstock Act, which is basically what they're going to try and revive, in which they're going to go through people's mail.
And by the way, go ahead and give this historical context.
That stuff, that was based in the idea that the white race was going to be replaced by minorities, Nick.
I mean, I know that's shocking to hear, but that's exactly what all that has been about for a very, very long time.
But no, they're trying to wipe that out before they think it's going to be an assault on abortion bans in some of these red states.
Yeah, you know it do we want to get into the head of the judge for a minute again because I just did a deep dive and it was kind of just I'm always curious because again it's new it's one thing to okay say I'm never gonna get an abortion I'm never my wife's never gonna get an abortion or whatever and it's another thing that then Trying to dictate someone else's autonomy or their own body, right?
That's really where it gets hard, and this has been reported.
It's like, first of all, he had a sister who was 17 who got pregnant and who had it adopted, and that shaped his thinking about why he'd never want anybody, I guess, to get an abortion, and then they had a stillborn kid.
His wife and him had a stillborn kid, you know, That this tragedy happened to them.
And what the reporting is, is that that is what solidified his complete and utter, you know, stance on anti-abortion.
And when you see his, the language he uses in this decision, like he doesn't use the word fetus.
He uses, you know, unborn human.
And he uses all the flash words that the anti-abortion people use.
And he's doing this on purpose, right, Jared?
I mean, you're not just willy-nilly adding random vocabulary into a decision.
He's signaling this.
And I just find it very, very bizarre that a really unfortunate situation happened to them that had nothing to do with abortion somehow solidifies anti-abortion in his mind.
I mean, that's how intractable these positions can be in one mind.
It's stories.
It's the story of who you tell yourself that you are.
And that goes back to the ideology that Elmo was talking about.
He has told himself a story about him, his sister, his family, his wife, whatever it is.
And now, as a result, it is how he goes ahead and makes sense of how he's taking away other people's rights.
Like, and that's, whatever it is that helps you sleep at night, that's what it is.
By the way, speaking of sleepless nights, Nick, we gotta talk about this disturbing story out of Baltimore.
Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown released a 400-plus page report revealing that over the past 60 years that at least 600 children had been abused by members of the Catholic Church and that the church itself, surprise surprise, had been engaged in constant cover-ups.
Nick, can we hear from Attorney General Anthony Brown?
What we learned is that the incontrovertible history uncovered by this investigation is one of pervasive, pernicious, and persistent abuse by priests and other Archdiocese personnel.
It's also a history of repeated cover-up of that abuse by the Catholic Church hierarchy.
That is terrible.
And if you look at this report, I spent some time poring over it, at least 156 members of the Baltimore Archdiocese carried out this abuse.
One of them, a priest named Frederick Date, apparently abused 26 boys with the knowledge of the Catholic Church who counseled him continually on how to avoid the consequences of his actions, to cover the thing up, how to manipulate lawyers and investigations.
Nick, I have more to say about this, but I have to imagine that you're joining me in sheer horror here.
I mean, it just kind of makes me wonder, because, you know, we're talking about the solution.
What would the solution be?
I don't understand how the Catholic Church is kind of like it's still in business.
And I use that term in business because that's sort of what they are anyway, with the way they are able to, how rich they are, I guess, is the point.
And it is, it's so frustrating because it's a joke, right?
This was a joke for a long time.
Oh, the cat priests, whatever.
And people would, you know, joke about it despite how the horrors of what it really stood for.
But I think the reason why it was used as a punchline for a long time was that we didn't really know.
It was like maybe a little bit here or there on the outs or something that this is systemic.
This is not just Baltimore.
This is not just Boston.
This is across the entire world.
And that's what's so horrifying about this thing.
So I don't see how the Catholic Church should be allowed to be in existence at this point.
Well, there's a couple of things to jump off on here.
One, I want to say that any of our listeners who are Catholic, this has nothing to do with you.
This isn't about people who hold this faith or this religion within themselves.
We're talking about an institution of power.
And if you take a look, and one of the things I found writing The Midnight Kingdom was just how many abuses have been carried out by these institutions of power, right?
And I mean, not just abuse, but I'm talking about torture, I'm talking about murder, I'm talking about genocide.
And eventually what happens, and I want to be very, very clear here, because I think this is a serious subject and I feel pretty seriously about it.
I want to say something which I haven't said on a show and I haven't talked about in discussing these things.
I'm a survivor of sexual abuse.
And I know a lot of people who are.
And I know that there are people left and right who have dealt with this their entire lives.
And these abuses have been covered up as a matter of power, right?
This has been done in order to protect people who are putting the fates of other people to the side to ensure that they can continue to keep money and influence and affluence.
And meanwhile, I'll tell you what, Nick, this is what pisses me off the most.
QAnon, Pizzagate, the Republican Party, whatever it is that they're pushing when it comes to groomers or the idea that children are being taken and sold or all this, there's real abuse happening in this country.
And it's happening within the halls of power.
It's happening in these churches.
It's also happening in homes.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's happening with families.
We are so wrapped up in talking about this bullshit that what we have missed is the actual epidemic that no one wants to discuss, which is that we have an epidemic of child abuse in this country that we don't want to deal with outside of talking about the mythology of it.
And you're absolutely right.
These people, first of all, so many of them are dead and can't be prosecuted.
Anybody who's still alive needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
And after that, this archdiocese, it needs to be handed over at least to somebody else.
You know what I mean?
Like, it shouldn't take a report.
Like, this needs a reckoning on a massive, massive scale.
And it's just head-scratching that it's been allowed to get to this point.
Well, you know, I'm kind of glad that you brought up the cover-up part of it, because that doesn't always get as much focus either, because it's interesting to kind of pull apart exactly why they felt the need to cover this up, because in theory there could have been ways, they could have been transparent, and they could have come off as in a way that, look, we weren't putting an end to this, and we were on top of it, and, you know, all those different things.
We want to help the people, the victims, all these different things.
But they don't, right?
They need to cover it up.
And so it's interesting in terms of why, because a lot of times we just go, well, it's a power or whatever.
I mean, it has to be, A, that they want to stay out of prison themselves, right?
The people above them who are involved, they might feel like there might be some, you know, exposure, that they have exposure as well.
But like, I would like to maybe fill that in a little bit and figure out exactly what the motivation is To bury this, what are they so afraid of?
Well, I mean, that's the thing, right, is I think the idea within something all-encompassing an ideology like Christianity or Catholicism, the idea that anybody within it can do something awful, that there can be abuse, that there can be some sort of a breach of trust or ethics or morality, that idea really isn't compatible with the idea that this church stands for all of those things.
Right?
From the very, very beginning, once Christianity took over state power with the Roman Empire, the idea had to be that it was almost infallible.
Right?
The idea that, like, anything from a pope in order or church doctrine.
I mean, you know, yesterday, we're recording this on Monday, April 10th, yesterday was Easter.
Right?
And you have, like, one meeting and argument and clash after another over when is Easter?
Right?
Or what is the nature of Jesus Christ?
Or how are you supposed to do this?
Or you're supposed to do that?
And in all cases, the decisions were not, you know, based on the faith.
They were not from God.
They were, like, temporal, secular decisions.
That we're about power.
It's about saying, this group cannot be included in here.
We have to section them off.
So you always have to say, well, we don't like this, and this is obviously terrible, but we have to go ahead and make sure that we're not allowing that to be seen as part of us.
So as a result, we would rather protect this person than to go ahead and admit there's a problem and deal with the issue that's at hand.
And that has been there For centuries now.
I mean, that mindset has just never gone away.
You know, looking at it in other terms, like, okay, if there was a school that was having systemic abuse of their students, it gets closed down, right?
They get shut down, they knock the building down, whatever, it's gone.
And obviously, you know, that's probably what should happen to, let's say, individual parishes if they discover this thing.
They should end up being shut down in that area or whatever.
They shouldn't be allowed to continue going on.
And it's not the fact that it happened.
It's the fact that they covered it up so egregiously, right?
But I suppose if you were to do that when it's revealed how often it's happened, that is a fear.
You would not have a lot.
I don't know what percentage it is, but it's probably as Very significant percentage of Catholic churches in total would probably not, would cease to be functional.
And that is obviously an affront to what, you know, to their, to their empire, whatever you want to call it, uh, and, and their revenue.
Uh, and so I, I can't imagine, you know, any other way besides, okay, the myth of like what we're supposed to be and how we're supposed to be infallible, but it just feels like, um, they, they knew what would happen and that would be that they would have to shut all these places Well, and by the way, as long as we're being honest about this, there are churches, chapels, mosques, temples all around the world where this shit's happening.
I mean, it's, you know, we have found out that this has been endemic of the Catholic Church, but this absolutely, I mean, my God, in the Christian Church, it's happened left and right.
We've seen this.
This is part of what happens in these institutions.
And as long as they have an incentive to go ahead and protect themselves, you're going to see children And women and people taken advantage of left and right.
I mean, that's just what's happening here.
And until we start taking that seriously and not chasing these shadows on the wall with QAnon and Pizzagate and all that bullshit, like, this is going to continue to happen.
Yeah, I agree.
And it's it's almost like the gun thing to where you won't get people who will criticize the Catholic Church either.
For fear of again, it's it's got to be rooted in simply for fear of losing votes.
That's it.
There's no conscience here.
There's no there's no morals.
And you know, I don't I just still can't see how you could you could Consider yourself dedicated to the church and a higher power, knowing that you are covering this up.
You could say, oh, I didn't participate and do anything for abuse, you know, young kids.
But but covering it up is is completely antithetical to what you're supposed to be about in your entire life and would require you then to then, you know, quit that and not be part of that as well.
So it all doesn't make sense.
And you're right.
You seem to cross every religion.
It's not necessarily just Catholics.
You know, I mean, Scientology has a whole thing that, you know, is being uncovered about abuse that they're doing.
You know, it's hard to imagine there is any religion out there that you could follow in a real robust way.
It doesn't lead to some serious issues.
Of course, people are going to probably get upset for saying that, but like, there's just a lot of evidence that shows you that there's a problem, certainly with the traditional structures of what we have now for religion.
No, you couldn't be more right.
And by the way, while we're on the subject of chasing shadows, Man, Nick, there is weird chatter happening out there in the world that there is a ramping up within the Republican Party that one of their platforms and planks, and we've seen this happening over the past few months, but it's really, really picking up steam and we're starting to see the signals in the regular places.
There is a new trend in the GOP in terms of trying to push the idea that maybe we should declare war on Mexico, or that we should declare war on Mexican drug cartels, maybe even invading the country in general, in order to cut out the supply of fentanyl that is coming in the United States.
For those who don't know, we currently do have an epidemic of drug overdoses, about 70,000 coming from fentanyl a year.
We'll get into those numbers in just a second.
But we've already seen Donald Trump, as president and as a post-president, was calling for strike options, promising that he was going to take this stuff out.
We also have Representative Dan Crenshaw, who we're going to hear from in a second, who introduced articles for the authorization of military force in Canada.
Let's hear this, Nick.
You don't want to go to Dan Crenshaw right now.
The Texas Congress isn't kind enough to join us.
He has his own ideas and worries about what's happening at the border.
This one might need to involve the U.S.
military.
Congressman, good to see you.
Maybe explain what's got you very, very concerned.
Well, look, we recently introduced AUMF, an authorized use of military force against the cartels and any other organizations that traffic fentanyl specifically.
So why now and why not years ago?
These Mexican drug cartels have been around for a while.
The difference now is fentanyl.
This is not a drug problem.
This is not a war on drug problem.
This is a poisoning problem.
And they're killing about 80,000 Americans a year.
And the Mexican government does very little to thwart this.
And I think there should be bipartisan efforts in Congress to pass an authorized use of military force to deal with them.
If anything, that simply gives our president more leverage when trying to get the Mexican government to do its job.
And that's its job on thwarting immigration, which the cartels also control, and thwarting fentanyl coming north across our border and killing American citizens.
You know, these people are a lot more like ISIS than they are the mafia.
You recently saw... Man, I'll tell you what, Nick, that sounds great, but it's weird that the Republican Party didn't care about hundreds of thousands of people dying of COVID.
And by the way, if we're just going to start invading drug cartels, I don't know, how about we go after the opioid production?
You know, why don't we go after pharma?
Like, you know, it just, it's weird.
I have thoughts on why this is happening and what it means.
What are your initial reactions?
Well, I mean, of course, we're talking about, you know, unilateral attack on us, neighboring nation, you know, and it's a me, it's like, you know, okay, we want to, there's no question, it's a problem.
In fact, I remember someone was telling me, oh, fentanyl deaths are more than You know, whatever it was, I was like, I had said a couple weeks ago, there's no way it's that high.
And it turns out, yes, it is.
Fentanyl is a real, is killing more people than we all believe, we all think.
So he's right.
Like, it is an issue we need to take care of.
And I would love to have Superman fly in there and, you know, x-ray vision, whatever he does with his, what is it?
Not an x-ray vision.
He's got the heat vision.
Heat vision?
Just like melt everything, whatever.
End the fentanyl production right from the beginning.
Um, you know, but it seems to me that if you're going to do this, you need to do this in cooperation with the Mexican government.
That's just how it would need to be done somehow.
Well, yeah, but then you wouldn't be the United States of America flexing its muscles.
I mean, that's part of the issue here.
I want to say, first of all, if you want to stop a drug trade, if you want to stop overdoses, why don't you make the quality of life better in the United States of America?
Because I have to tell you, the reason why people get addicted to drugs is not just the chemicals at hand, it's also the fact that they're trying to handle some sort of personal trauma or some sort of personal state.
That's how this stuff happens.
There's a reason why the war on drugs doesn't work, and it was a joke from the very beginning.
Also, if you don't want Mexico having to deal with drug cartels instead of just bombing or machine gunning them to death, maybe you should go ahead and make sure that, you know, people in the Global South aren't having, like, destabilizing political situations and economic situations.
That might help.
I gotta tell you, though, I got a weird feeling that there's a couple of reasons this is happening.
One is because the Republican Party has been scapegoating Mexico and immigrants for years and years and years.
They see this as a winning political issue.
But also, Nick, there's something weird that happens whenever you have the beginnings of a new Cold War.
Because you can't go to war with China because you're going to lob nuclear missiles at each other if you actually get into an actual conflict.
You know what we learned during the first Cold War?
We love us some proxy wars.
We love to go into Vietnam.
Man, we even love to go into Nicaragua.
We love to go into Grenada.
We love that shit.
And you know what?
It helps to have your military go in and show that they can kick a little bit of ass.
Give them a little bit of something to do.
This is another one of those situations where we have a bunch of military hardware and we have worsening military situations.
They want to go ahead and kick the tires and light the fires.
That's what this is about.
It's not about actually taking care of fentanyl.
It's going ahead and finding a reason to do what they want to do in the first place.
Yeah, you know, I agree.
That makes a lot of sense as well, because there's always the itchy trigger fingers.
We're out of, uh, we're not in Afghanistan anymore.
Where's, where's the next one?
That's right.
Yeah, these contracts to get, to get signed.
Um, you know, the, the fentanyl thing in particular, and I, you know, you read these heartbreaking stories of these kids who are dying, And there's a really awful, and I will acknowledge that this is an awful take and it's cynical, but it's like, what you end up hearing is that it's like, I want my, I wanted my kid to be able to do heroin in peace.
You know, I want them to do opioids without the fear of having fentanyl that's going to kill them, despite the fact that what they are doing with those drugs are going to kill them anyway, or would probably kill them.
And that's another interesting, weird whole take on this thing that no one is really talking about either, which goes back to your point, which is, we need to help people stop doing these kind of drugs in the beginning, or get off of these kind of drugs in the beginning, so they're not faced with those kind of decisions.
And that's really the issue that nobody wants to do.
Now, when you're talking about gun control, they will then go to say, we must have, you know, it's the crazy people who are getting it, we got to stop them from getting it.
And that is where they seem to be like, okay, we need I'm not even sure to the right does the right connect better mental health support with that or they just simply want to label some randos crazy and they can't get guns.
I can't I'm now complaining a couple things but help me out here.
Well, no, I mean, that's exactly how it works, is in all of this, there is no consistent idea, right?
There's no, like, consistency across it.
Whoever they don't agree with or whoever they want to marginalize, those people are unwell.
And by the way, like, we've already seen it in right-wing circles.
You know, this idea that like transgender people are unwell or gay people are unwell.
And as a result, they shouldn't have guns or they should be kept away from certain types of things.
And no, and by the way, it's always weird, Nick, because it's like, wait, do drugs kill people or do people kill people?
Right?
Like, it does not work in any way, shape, or form.
Like, it's not consistent.
It's not real.
It's not serious.
And in this whole thing, like, drugs are always a scapegoat in all of this.
Like, they always have been.
And, you know, on one hand, you know, it's funny we're, you know, talking about, like, what is legal, what is not, what you should invade, what you shouldn't.
I mean, for years and years and years, you have this opioid epidemic where, you know, it's killing people because people are in pain, because it gives people sort of a release or a warmth or an escape or something along those lines.
There's no talk about mental health.
There's no talk about investing in any of these things.
And again, what the Republican Party offers is this.
It's the illusion of taking care of a problem by taking care of an external problem.
Right?
If we can just go into Mexico and fight them off, and by the way, if we do go into Mexico and if we do carry out military operations, I guarantee you so much evidence, and I'm putting quotes around that, will come out that this is a Chinese conspiracy.
Because fentanyl has a link between these places in Mexico and also China.
You know, it's another, basically, it's trying to score a win in this burgeoning Cold War and to go ahead and give us an excuse to go into a place and take out a narco state.
Yeah, all very scary stuff because, again, it just leads to more war, more hot wars that are not just proxy wars at that point, and that's a scary thing.
Is that true?
I hadn't necessarily noticed that there was evidence of, like, China.
Is the idea that China is trying to poison our... That's the Republican conspiracy theory.
The idea is that there are components that go into the making of these drugs that come from China, chemicals and such, and parts that come from China that end up in Mexico where they're being manufactured.
Of course, and by the way, we haven't mentioned this in the past, but I have a wild, wild feeling, Nick, that this is going to be something that we're going to have to talk about more in the future, which is what's called the yellow peril.
And for anyone who doesn't know this, this was the old idea that, you know, whether it was China or Japan, that there were, you know, Asians out there in darkness who were trying to hurt Western democracies, whether it was through scepterfuge or through chemicals, poisoning, mind control, whatever it was.
This is another instance of that type of idea, that there's something out there that we have to protect ourselves from, and this is probably going to be a growing part of this Cold War environment.
Well, sure.
I mean, add the COVID to that list as well.
Yeah, COVID, absolutely.
You know, they're obsessed, which changes nothing whether or not you're going to somehow find evidence that it was created in a lab in China.
It doesn't necessarily mean anything in terms of how we would go about our business now, solving the COVID issue.
And yet, they need this.
They need to have that, the vilification of another race, in theory.
Uh, it's awful.
And by the way, you know, we've talked about this before and the notion that doesn't necessarily make sense if you're a drug dealer, why you'd be killing your clients.
You want your clients to survive so they can pay you more money to buy more drugs.
So a lot of it is weird.
It doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
And so I haven't been able to put all those things together.
But the bottom line is bombing Mexico, I suppose, would be in an effort to bomb, I guess, fentanyl factories.
Is that the idea here?
It doesn't seem like it would work out that well if that's the goal.
It's tough.
It's not a working situation.
Real fast, before we bring this episode to a close, we have to talk about something weird that happened this weekend on social media.
And outside of social media, it came out that Harlan Crowe, and again, this is the person who, such good friends, Such good friends with Clarence and Jenny Thomas that he's gifted them millions upon millions of dollars worth of free vacations and gifts and lavishes.
Including, and you know what we didn't talk about, he paid for a statue of Clarence Thomas's favorite teacher.
Oh.
That is profoundly weird.
Oh yeah.
It has since come out.
In the Washingtonian, that it's been an open secret apparently that at Harlan Crowe's residence, first of all, has apparently a garden of statues of dictators.
He claims it was to commemorate these people being overthrown, which is strange.
But then on the inside of his house, apparently wall-to-wall Nazi memorabilia.
We're talking about a signed copy of Mein Kampf.
We're talking about multiple Hitler paintings, Nazi regalia, Nazi iconography, Nazi napkins.
And Nick, one of the weirdest things about this over the weekend.
There was no end to conservative and right-wing actors coming out of the woodwork to defend this, to say, hey, I either have that in my home or I would have that if I had the money.
And it's weird, Nick, that almost to a person, all these people willing to come out on social media and say this and defend him, it's weird.
They're all people that he somehow or another, what's the word, funds, and that he gives money to their ventures and their ideas.
How do you feel about this?
You don't have this shit in your home, right?
Well, you know, I would be surprised if that's all the shit he's got in his house.
I would too!
Right, but there's probably other stuff in there and somewhere another door that's locked that we don't get to see but I don't know I mean the defense was that he's he's trying to in the never again mode of like we want to remember these things so it doesn't happen again and I just feel like that doesn't make a lot of sense I mean like I
As a Jewish person, and certainly never again is a very important phrase for us in terms of the Holocaust, we are not going to be collecting Mein Kampf, the signed Mein Kampf, and we're not going to have paraphernalia around and let certainly anybody else see that we have it.
I mean, that is a real, you know, violation of what that is supposed to mean.
You know, so Yes, it's a real, real problem.
And it's even more amazing that you're going to have people.
You know, you should probably just sit it out.
And if you like the dude or whatever, just sit it out, man.
There's no reason to get out there in public and start defending the guy like you are.
I always tell people, and some people have reached out to me in the past, and they've been like, do you have any advice when it comes to social media?
And I'm like, yeah, here's my piece of advice.
You don't have to post everything.
Why in the world do you think this is a good idea?
Even if you agree with him, it's just stupid to come out and be like, oh yeah, if I had that type of money.
I saw one guy, I don't know if you saw this, I wish I knew who it was.
He was like, listen, the problem here is that when you have that much money, it's hard to spend.
So you just end up getting some weird stuff.
And it's like, yeah, that's a great excuse.
That's awesome, because that's what I would be doing if I had that level of money.
But what it comes down to at the end of the day is that I think that these people, and Harlan Crowe can tell himself whatever he wants about why he has this stuff, right?
It's historical value or whatever.
But really what it comes down to is, even if they want to sit there and say that they hate this stuff, they're attracted to it.
There's a level of power and wealth that you reach where suddenly you start, I don't know, you start empathizing with dictators.
You start empathizing with totalitarianism.
And you start, whether you believe in it or not, or whether or not you want to admit it to yourself, you start becoming attracted to it and synonymous with it.
This is really screwed up.
And I wasn't shocked when I heard it, because that's the type of stuff that happens at this level.
You know, I don't think that he's necessarily a crypto-Nazi, but I have to tell you that there's a lot to chew on here.
Well, how about this?
Because, again, some people want to point out and say that this guy's not a Nazi because he's got Clarence Thomas, a black man, as one of his really good friends.
And, you know, certainly there's a lot of holes you could poke in that theory if you wanted to.
But I actually tweeted this out.
Flip it around.
Why would a black person have a deep friendship with the guy who's collecting Nazi memorabilia like this?
That is another interesting thing that I find, you know, just sort of unanswerable.
You know, it is really, really problematic, and there are not a lot of reasons.
Like, for instance, I have a whole collection of old books about basketball.
I've got, you know, by coaches, by referees, the rule books.
Fascinating stuff, right?
And I'm trying to never forget or commemorate or get into the mindset of what was likely in the 40s, the 20s, you know, about, you know, that sport.
What purpose is having napkins that are stamped with the Nazi insignia or Mein Kampf sign?
There's something nefarious in my mind about having that kind of stuff, and it's not just like voodoo, witchcraft, scary, ooh, I might have a Ouija board in my office.
This is something else.
No, they see a power in it.
You know, and that is the thing.
I think that a lot of these people who, and you know, I have to imagine that Harlan Crowe, if you get him in the right mood, is like, well, I don't think they were all bad.
You know, a real Kanye West type situation.
And I think it is, there is an inherent white supremacy at the heart of it.
There is an inherent totalitarian ideology.
I'm not qualified to jump into Clarence Thomas's head.
You know, I just I'm not, I can't sit there and tell you about any of that stuff.
But I can tell you at the heart of a lot of this, and I've seen it in halls of power, and I've seen it basically haunt a lot of this stuff.
There is an inherent totalitarianism and white supremacy that is lingering around it.
And it's really, really disturbing.
And I'm glad that people know about it.
And they have gotten this information.
But you know, it just it reveals more about what power is, you know, and how it works and who it rewards, I think.
Yes, but now you're having me trying to think about what goes on in Clarence Thomas's head.
Nausea is starting to seep in here a little bit.
I need something to settle my stomach because that is disgusting.
I do not want to be in that head for a second.
Yeah, I don't think any of us would want to be.
Listen, everybody, on that note, we're going to get out of here.
We will be back on Friday with the Weekender Edition of the Montclair Podcast.
Go over to patreon.com slash montclairpodcast.
Again, Nick, everyone's telling me, why didn't I do this earlier?
I don't know.
I don't know what you're doing.
I don't know why.
I don't know why you make the choices.
We can get in some people's heads, we can't get in others.
Come and join us at patreon.com slash my great podcast.
If you need us before that weekend, or you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me SMH, you can find me at J.Y.
