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Dec. 26, 2023 - The Muckrake Political Podcast

54:35

We're In It Now, Ft. Karl Folk

Nick Hauselman is out, but Jared Yates Sexton is sitting down with Karl Folk, Founder of the Institute of Unreality, to discuss the fascist threat, 2024, and the need for direction if we're going to move forward and get out of this mess. For more Muckrake, including access to the Weekender show on Fridays and live tapings, head over to Patreon and become patron of the show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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	Hey everybody, welcome to the McCraig Podcast.
	I'm Jared Yates Sexton.
	Nick Halseman, I believe, is out of the country right now.
	And I'm saying that before he's out of the country, because time is a weird thing.
	A reminder to everybody, go over to patreon.com slash mccraigpodcast, support the show, also gain access to The Weekender, which again, is going to be my lonely ass carrying all of that weight.
	But guess what?
	Today, right now, with me, I have Carl Folk, who is the creator of the Institute of Unreality, a researcher of authoritarianism and radicalism.
	I really enjoyed the last time we were able to have a conversation, although we were talking about just the most absolute, dismal, threatening shit.
	We're here to do it again before the end of 2023, before we enter 2024.
	Carl, how the hell are you?
	You know, I'm good.
	For all intents and purposes, I'm good.
	We are definitely staring down the barrel of a gun, so it's always interesting when we're doing that.
	But, yeah, I'm excited to be back and, you know, have a nice little light conversation about where we are in the world.
	Carl, here's the thing, man, and I gotta tell you, and I say this all the time, like, the people I enjoy talking to the most, unfortunately, we have to talk about the worst stuff.
	I'm gonna throw something out there.
	I want, again, I want to be careful.
	We can get the weeds, we can move in, we can move out.
	I want to make this accessible.
	I'm gonna use a highly, highly technical term here, and we can start to dissect it.
	Carl, the vibes are bad.
	The vibes are, in fact, terrible.
	The vibes aren't awful, are they not?
	Some might even go so far as to say rancid.
	Yeah, you know, and a lot of, ironically, a lot of the issues that are not being dealt with or are being dealt with incorrectly are based on vibes, right?
	Like, we live in a vibe economy now.
	It's not about truth or fact.
	It's about truthiness and how it feels.
	And that really plays havoc with us.
	Emotionally, socially, it screws with us.
	And yeah, the vibes are bad enough right now that we are seeing incredibly They interest in the most Midwestern way possible with this interesting outcomes from both the individual and groups.
	And unfortunately, you know, normally I'd like to say we're gonna we're gonna come out of the the rancid vibe period soon.
	I don't actually believe that on this one.
	I think this is how we're going to go into 2024 and I think we're going to have some really bad vibes for a lot of the election cycle.
	That doesn't mean though that we can't Deal with them.
	And we can.
	And I think just having conversations like this and amongst each other, we can kind of push that back.
	Because if we're not dealing with the feeling and we're dealing with truth and with reality, we can start to deal.
	I'm a person, speaking of vibes and vibe changing, I'm a person, I'm hanging out with people.
	If there's a bad vibe, I don't have that filter where I don't bring up the bad vibes.
	I don't have the, and I think that's something you and I and a lot of people in our sort of lane don't do.
	And I think that's actually key, to talk about how vibes are bad.
	And I think about how for years now, and you've seen it, everybody else has seen it, every year these polls come out that say, Historic number of Americans do not have hope for the future.
	They do not feel like America is heading in the right direction.
	They don't have trust in institutions.
	They feel like things are off.
	They don't feel like the economy is good.
	They feel like America's standing is low.
	You name it, whatever it is.
	We have watched that for... I've, honest to God, lost track of how long of a stretch it's been like that, right?
	It's probably... Decades.
	Decades.
	I mean... Yeah, it's at least till 2001, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, and you can... we can see strains of it, right?
	Like, historically, I mean, that's what drove the birchers in some way.
	Well, and that's what I was getting ready to say is, you know, I think for the people who don't want to talk about how bad the vibes are, They want to pretend like it's not there.
	And by the way, I put major political figures and leaders in that category.
	They have no interest in talking about how bad the vibes are.
	But historically, what happens is that those bad vibes, they metastasize.
	And eventually someone takes advantage of them, eventually things change because of them, and the fact that we're not paying attention to that, or some of us are and others are absolutely refusing to do so, it only makes it worse.
	And not talking about it, not getting into it, and not addressing it is inevitably what leads to disaster.
	Every time, right?
	Like, it's one of those things where you can almost draw a straight line from the inability of people to have the conversations that are the toughest and the most consequential to worse decisions being made that end up leading to the inability to have those conversations.
	And, you know, I think about the 1920s and 30s a lot.
	Bad vibes.
	Respect to the vibes about democracy specifically, right?
	And the rise of like communism, socialism, and fascism in America were based on the fact that the Great Depression had left people In a place where they had, in some cases for younger people, never seen democracy work, right?
	In the idealized way that we see it.
	And I would argue that's the same thing we're dealing with now.
	It's just amped up on information warfare steroids.
	And, you know, if you were born, let's say in 2003, You've never seen a country that, and you were born in the US, you've never seen a functional democracy.
	You've seen a pseudo-democratic state that's being controlled by financial interests that are far outside of politics, but have a huge want to change politics.
	And, you know, you couple that with a couple of disastrous choices for president.
	Historically bad choices because of the disconnect with the public.
	You get to a point where, I mean, I sympathize with people who don't think it's working correctly, but I also look at it as a moral duty.
	When the vibes are bad, as you said, to speak out.
	And that's one of the toughest parts, right?
	Is that moral compunction gets harder for people the longer they sit in the soup.
	And if you've never seen anything work and you think the ideal that we should work towards better isn't going to facilitate something better, you retreat.
	And You know, that's one of the toughest parts is we have no other options than to move through now.
	And to move through, we have to have people of good conscience work together to be informed and to have these larger conversations that hurt.
	Because sometimes they hit the part where Reality and a sense of self come into conflict, right?
	And like for a lot of people, they don't know what to do in those moments.
	Cognitive dissonance is quite powerful.
	Oh, it's incredible.
	And especially when you have a desire to not see exactly what's going on.
	We recorded this mailbag episode that's going to air later on this week.
	And one of the questions was about if suddenly the people in Trump's orbit were actually held accountable for their crimes, would that like stop MAGA or would it stop the movement?
	And I said, The time for that has passed.
	And that's actually one of the sadder facts about this.
	Like, whatever my career is or has been, I've been on this beat now for going on seven years, right?
	And it's been long enough that, like, when this all started and a lot of people's hair was on fire and they were saying, Donald Trump is running for president of the United States of America.
	He is an existential threat.
	That was the time to stop this.
	That was the time to take it seriously.
	And then, when he became president, that was another Rubicon that had been crossed.
	But meanwhile, you have to take him seriously.
	He's going to try and become an authoritarian.
	He's going to try and stay in office.
	He's going to try and overthrow an election.
	Then he did it!
	We crossed that Rubicon.
	We continue to cross these thresholds.
	And what you just said about, like, we are at the point where we have to go through with this.
	There's no silver bullet.
	There's no, uh, I'm sorry, Jack Smith isn't going to put this thing to bed the exact same way that Robert Mueller didn't put this to bed.
	James Comey didn't put this to bed.
	We have moved past the point where this thing is going to be diverted or avoided.
	We're in the shit now.
	Yeah.
	And since we're in the shit, we're going to have to deal with this.
	Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, we've, like you said, we've crossed so many of these Rubicons, so many of these bridges, that, you know, I had a long conversation earlier today that has continued now for a couple days on exactly this.
	Like, you could remove every single Republican in power at the federal level, We're still going to be dealing with the threat they pose for generations.
	There is going to be no tidy Marvel Avengers style ending to this where good wins over evil.
	Our methodology in this country has left us ill-equipped to deal with the reality of truly bad actors.
	And.
	Truly malevolent forces at the level that we're dealing with.
	And like, I'm really happy to see that some of the media has decided that it's no longer a bad thing to say that the Republican Party's pose an existential fascist risk.
	Because that's one of the steps we have to take to understand the thing we are now in.
	Because not understanding it is going to doom us.
	But the ultimate goal should be high information for those of us who are here and able to have the conversation and those hearing us.
	The higher, the more informed you are as a person, the more likely you are to resist the forces at play against you.
	And that's backed up by a lot of really good psychological and social Research.
	Like, high-informed, high-information individuals have a real ability to push this back when it really starts to get going in the way that it has.
	And we are in the shit.
	We are in a place where there are going to be no Single solutions to these problems and no single saviors.
	We're not going to get a white hat out of this to borrow a term.
	Because reality doesn't work that way.
	Reality does, though, work in high information highly motivated people coming together to have conversations as community that lead not just to a better understanding that brings more people in, but also gives those who are involved a sense of community that allows for resilience to grow.
	And we are all going to get very acquainted with loss tolerance and what ours is over the next year or the next five years, depending on how this goes.
	And for each and every one of us, that's going to look different.
	But finding how to have the conversations like this one and like the ones going on around the reality of what we are dealing Are the ways that you build little bits of resilience so you're not completely overwhelmed when it's 2026 and there are paramilitaries disappearing people into the back of trucks.
	Because, you know, like the outcomes we're talking about are so historically bad.
	That people don't want to believe it's true, but I, you know, take the authoritarian at their word.
	And Donald and co have made it very clear, about 875 pages clear, what their goal is.
	And, you know, we have a real chance here to not end up in the worst possible outcome, but we also, there's a, the longer we go, the closer we get to a black hole.
	I agree.
	And I think, to go along, just to get on the edges of what you're talking about, I think something that is very peculiarly of the moment, very American, right, in this, that is a problem, which is that we're not only atomized, we're not only away from each other, our communities and our, you know, our coalitions have been absolutely destroyed as a matter of neoliberalism, hypercapitalism.
	They did it on purpose.
	It is also riven through our character.
	Yes.
	Like, one of the things that happened, and I think about this all the time, Carl, because I want to go ahead, because I think when we have conversations like this, it's important to say, we mean what we're saying.
	100%.
	Like, what we're discussing, and this is one of the reasons I do enjoy you and I do enjoy these conversations, like, I know you're not bullshitting.
	It's how I feel also when I talk with Sarah Kinzier.
	There are groups of us that are like, hey, this actually isn't a grift.
	This actually isn't some sort of an opportunity.
	Meanwhile, social media and all of this stuff has created God knows how many grifters, how many resistance grifters, how many people who are out there offering there's a secret plan that's being taken care of, don't worry, Mueller's got it, you name it.
	And it's weird because it's impossible For solidarity to be built that is necessary in this.
	For the conversations you're talking about, common cause, common outcomes, and by the way, something that gives us meaning.
	Because none of this is going to matter if we don't find something that gives us meaning and direction and common cause.
	And that can't happen when you feel like someone's trying to scam you or someone's trying to run a game on you, which creates this weird system now where even the people who are having legitimate conversations and issuing legitimate warnings... Yeah.
	And by the way, I'm worried about the people I love.
	I'm worried about, you know, gay and trans people, people of color, women I know.
	Exactly.
	People around me like you have to be able to have a conversation where you can have faith in one another.
	But this system has so thoroughly destroyed that, that it's very, very hard to find and even harder to believe.
	Exactly.
	And I mean, it's one of the hallmarks of this style of democratic authoritarianism, right?
	Like modern, the modern model that Trump has taken aspects on of and the Republican Party as a whole have embraced in part are, you know, you look at it and like older democracy or older dictatorships ruled through fear you look at it and like older democracy or older dictatorships ruled through fear and terror and coercion through a combination of New ones, though, Don't.
	They survive by disrupting rebellion.
	And they do that in the most insidious way possible, which is removing the desire to rebel.
	Right.
	So they use, I mean, I have caught a lot of flack, let's say.
	online for just clearly laying out that it is in the understanding of modern authoritarianism that has been informed by years of research and academic work Resist is a pacification movement, not a resistance movement.
	And using the language of resistance to pacify is not necessarily new, but it's one of the hallmarks of the thing we're dealing with.
	Yeah, I want to point out, I want to make one quick thing because I don't want to lose a chunk of people.
	Yeah!
	I think that there are a lot of people that was their only means of associating with other people.
	No, absolutely.
	But overall, that structure.
	Yes.
	The structure that was created was a brand.
	Exactly.
	And that's more what I'm getting at.
	Individuals, individuals who came into it with good faith aren't part of the problem, right?
	That's not the issue.
	The issue is we have a brand of resistance to authoritarianism versus resistance to authoritarianism.
	Right.
	And what people Want and need is that community that that's provided and that's important to understand because those people are not Acting in bad faith.
	They're doing what they know to do and the only thing they can, in a lot of cases, do.
	So it's not on the individual in that case.
	It's in the way that we've done.
	We corporatized whatever we want to call it.
	And it's even in a corporate public space.
	Exactly, exactly, exactly.
	And that part is what I'm getting at when I say the resist accounts.
	It's not the individuals who are doing that because they know The same things we know, which is that the moral thing to do is speak out and find communities that approximate their views.
	That's the correct way to act.
	But we have people who have decided to co-opt that for their own personal gain.
	And in doing that, have shown how that synergy works to keep people locked into something that is not effectual in actually doing the thing that needs to be done.
	And in some cases works directly against the cause that they are trying to work.
	And, you know, there's an internally consistent portion of this that's really interesting when you start to look at something like Orban's, you know, Hungary and how their opposition works you know, Hungary and how their opposition works or Putin's Russia and how their opposition works.
	The individuals may believe they're in opposition because they are, and their intention is to oppose this, but because they've now come into a group that does not have that interest, but has the interest to capitalize on it.
	I mean, we get into the funky, more nitty-gritty part of the danger of the post-truth world, for lack of a better term, and what that actually looks like in action.
	This isn't the politics of fear as it once would have been for what Trump is selling.
	There's a component, but he and others have picked up on the other part, which is We can limit the pushback by giving, you know, giving certain groups an avenue to feel like they're taking action.
	And that, all of this kind of together really works to hurt, you know, the collective ability to have conversations and the collective ability to understand ourselves and one another and what That looks like in the practice of resistance or even democracy itself, right?
	Because democracy itself at some level is that conversation.
	It's just everywhere and it's the shared commonality.
	Yeah, and it's a weird thing because I always like to draw a line when we get into this territory.
	It is both direct and indirect stuff.
	There's not one dark room where everyone is making all these decisions, you go out and do this, you know, you go do this.
	It's the way the market works.
	It's the way that capitalism works.
	So for instance, and just to go ahead and bring everybody along on this, one of the things I've always tried to explain was something like Twitter, I'm not going to call it X, fuck that.
	But on Twitter, that was a corporatized space where you were made to feel like you were making a difference as you were being rewarded financially and with dopamine hits.
	Yep.
	That entire thing, it was almost like a jar that you could scream into that would give you points for how much you screamed into it.
	Politics and democracy.
	And by the way, that doesn't mean that people didn't meet people or that they didn't organize or that there weren't meaningful connections on there.
	Absolutely.
	But I want to make this very, very clear.
	It turned democracy into customer service.
	You came to believe that, oh, the elected officials who should be taking care of this for you, because it is a consumer market, which is what neoliberalism did to everything.
	Yep.
	They just didn't know, Carl.
	They didn't know what was happening downstream.
	They didn't know that they were making the wrong decisions.
	They didn't have the right information.
	They hadn't heard from people.
	So as a result, it gave you the facsimile of democracy.
	Well, and that's just it, right?
	Like, it's the bizarre hollowing out and facade building versus the real thing.
	And what has happened to the real thing, for the record, is it has become more dangerous.
	Yep.
	It has become more, uh, and by the way, I don't just mean dangerous as in, like, it might cost your life, although it might in some states where you're allowed to run people over with legal impunity.
	And those laws are going to continue.
	It could cost you your job, as we've seen.
	It could cost you your scholarship, your student aid.
	It could hurt you in the future when it comes to jobs and careers.
	And so what has happened is it has incentivized staying at home and being pissed.
	Exactly.
	No, exactly.
	I mean, it's further atomized people, right?
	Like, I think about the response to 2020.
	And that was the opposite, right?
	Like, social media at that point worked to push people together and into forms of actual on-the-street action that did affect change.
	And, you know, that's the part where when you start to talk about this corporatized consumer version of the democratic process and the understanding of democracy itself, it gets much more Just inherently when you've commodified your political process.
	And it's also really one of the more deep understandings that I think people need to have is that exact synergy is what time and time again leads to really dark outcomes because people stop Being able, at some level, to interact.
	And it also radicalizes groups that may not have been previously radicalized.
	Because they see, it starts to push their buttons in the very specific way that we saw the right get radicalized, you know, from 2015 to 2020.
	2015 to 2020.
	And especially we've, we've gotten lucky, I think in the fact that the left hasn't demagogued in the same way the right did.
	And it's probably saved us some, some serious problems, but it's also one of those things where at some point those groups start to latch on to anyone else's, And everyone that sounds as mad as they are about the things they're mad on.
	And it gets us into the weird bedfellows phase that we're starting to kind of see emerge.
	And it's happening not just in the left, but in the, you know, the moderates and other groups where they're starting, we're seeing like, you know, I mean, Jonathan Greenblatt and the ADL are retweeting people like Elise Stefanik.
	And the Democrats are partnering with people who we know to be incredibly dangerous Christian nationalists because of common cause.
	And that's the kind of dynamic that we have to resist, I think, at all levels, because that's the one that starts to really erode not just the democratic understanding of the world, but also our ability then to feel safe, as you were saying, in going out and saying, you know what, this is wrong.
	Because we know it's wrong.
	And that's tough, because then The moral side gets so warped by our inability to speak on it that that specific Overton window shifts on its own again and again and again because people won't, can't, or aren't able to stand up without some fear that they could be deeply impacted in their life.
	Yeah, and I think one of the things, and you brought up the moderates and the centrists, I think people are starting to wake up with a start to the fact that a lot of the people who said the same things as them don't believe the same things as them.
	Yeah.
	Like this old idea of like never Trump Republicans are on the same side.
	Exactly.
	You know, and I always thought this was so strange, speaking of customer service, how many people scream at the New York Times or Washington Post, what are you doing?
	Why are you saying these things?
	And it's like, no, these are not leftist publications.
	And never have been.
	They never have been.
	And meanwhile, the Israel-Gaza thing has absolutely made apparent the divide that was always there.
	It just wasn't being focused on.
	And I guess my question for you is this, because I want to go ahead and broach 2024, how you're looking at it, how you're processing it.
	I have my thoughts on how I'm approaching this election, what I think is going to happen.
	How are you squaring the situation in your head?
	How do you see it playing out already?
	Obviously, this is going to be one of the most unpredictable years that we're ever going to see.
	What are the stakes?
	That's exactly it, right?
	Like, there's no way to predict anything going into this, just by virtue of the fact that this is probably one of not just the most outrageous political years we're facing, and probably since the Civil War have faced at some level.
	There's also, I mean, What we're coming to find out is that there is a whole lot out there that is floating around like a comet in the sunlight that we don't see until it literally is right on top of us.
	And we have a whole lot of weight on us as individuals and as a society.
	And that's really unpredictable, right?
	Like the, because of all of these new traumas being heaped on every one of us every day, week, month by political forces, our own things that we're dealing with and with just, you know, the understanding that we are facing our own things that we're dealing with and with just, you know, the I don't think making a prediction is worth it.
	The things I would say is, the longer this goes on in Palestine, the more chance there is that something truly heinous comes from that um and and i think we have to really understand that people at some point are going to act in their own best self-interest which is how this just works as humans and
	And sometimes that doesn't square with what we know to be true.
	And sometimes it also requires us to work with what we have, not what we wish we had.
	And I think that's what we're going to, I hope, we start to see more of is that level of like pragmatic We can't deal with four years of a person who is going to be there indefinitely.
	The politics of eternity are eternity, not the politics of what we've understood to be political action for all of our history.
	And so, you know, I really... This year's gonna be really, I think, confusing, right?
	Like, I think that's the thing I keep coming back to.
	Even for those of us who this is...
	A calling, a job, something they're doing academically and in a research capacity.
	This is confusing stuff because there are tons of inherent internal contradictions coming at us from the Republican Party especially because of the way that fascism and the way they've embraced works, but also the inherent contradictions of Our own democratic process, right?
	Liberalism writ large.
	Yes.
	And, you know, we believe some really powerful myths about ourselves that just don't square with the historical reality of how this works and how our history itself looks.
	And so we need to, I think, start to square those holes first.
	And the conversations coming from that are how we move forward.
	And for all of us, you know, I think the best advice I would give is to remember that nothing is inevitable.
	Not a damn thing, whether that's the arc towards, you know, bending the arc of history towards justice.
	That is not inevitable, nor is bending it towards the dark of fascist hate and true evil in that way.
	It takes all of us understanding that we're working towards something better that we're probably never going to see.
	That's the way I'm looking at 2024 is really starting to plant groves of trees that my nieces and nephews kids are going to hang out under.
	Because we're in a generational fight now.
	We're in a quagmire and it's one that's going to be increasingly scary.
	That's the other thing that I would definitely say we all know is going to be, 24 is going to be scary and personally scary for a lot of people who will be directly affected day one if things go sideways.
	And I do what I do.
	For the people I worry about most, in my friend groups, in my family.
	And the thing that I think has, in some ways, insulated me from some of the more pressing feelings of fear and despair is understanding, like, Sometimes doing the moral thing is the scariest thing you can do, but it still is the thing you can do, so you gotta do it.
	And we all have our internal clock on what that is, and some people may have not hit that place.
	That doesn't mean you're a bad person.
	It doesn't mean that you're doing the wrong thing.
	Protecting yourself as long as possible isn't necessarily a bad thing, because this is going to be a marathon.
	And 2024, outside of some of the bizarre Black Swan events we may get, in good and bad ways.
	I mean, we may get really lucky.
	We may not have the two major frontrunners make it to the election.
	That's what I'm saying.
	We may get very lucky.
	These people are old.
	You know, we could get a moment where the You know, where the claw game comes for someone.
	Including someone like a Vladimir Putin.
	We don't even know if Russia's going to hold out.
	Well, and that's just it.
	Or Xi!
	Like, I mean, literally everything's on the brink, yes.
	Yeah, and that's the thing, you know, there is a level of uncertainty that is very tough, because it's something that Neoliberalism tried to kill.
	That's right.
	And couldn't effectively- Tried to eradicate uncertainty from the face of the earth.
	Yeah, and it's just not how this works, right?
	No, it turns out that was a religious faith in and of itself.
	Exactly.
	And it turns out, too, that, like, that's one of the, I think, founding misunderstandings of ourselves that politics has imbued in the United States, is that, like, we can understand Incredibly complex nested systems that incorporate a thousand different versions of itself in a way that we can say, oh, this is going to happen.
	It's just not how this works.
	And, you know, climate change could step in and make things so untenable that none of this matters this summer.
	And that's one of those ones where, like, low probability, but high likelihood of disruption if it were to happen.
	And that also, you know, I think people are looking for a moment where it literally is apparent to everyone that if we don't change, something fundamentally terrible is going to happen.
	I don't think we get one of those in the way that people would like, but we will get the one that we get.
	And, like, people Just need to understand, it's gonna be scary, it's gonna feel overwhelming as hell, and it's good to get away from it.
	You don't need to see every second of this train wreck to know it's a train wreck.
	Right.
	And, you know, the internal contradictions and the hypocrisy, you're never gonna be able to point it out enough to end it.
	So step away from that fight.
	Well, and I was going to say, I think people like you and me and, you know, the sort of people who traffic in this lane, we do it because we're obsessed with this.
	This is how we handle anxiety.
	Yes.
	I mean, one of the reasons why we research this and delve into it is because it gives us a measure of quote unquote control.
	Yes.
	Everyone else, we're talking about, we don't even know if the world economy is going to make it through 2024, you know?
	Every time they're like, maybe the Fed's going to manage this soft landing, I'm like, yeah, okay, great.
	And they may, they may not.
	But we don't know.
	Exactly.
	And you can't control that because the system was set up intentionally to keep you away from controlling it.
	I will say this, the only thing that we can do is take care of ourselves, Yep.
	Take care of the people we love and heal ourselves from this fucking mess that has been put upon us.
	100%.
	And with that, what you just said, I think, is always important, which is we have to stop expecting this to be solved easily.
	We have to stop expecting a win every day and or even ever, like just being in the fight the right way and opposing this the right way.
	For me, I look at this whole thing and I say, listen, I don't think the Democratic Party is up to the task.
	It's shown itself over and over to not be.
	That doesn't mean that I'm going to vote for Donald Trump or someone else.
	Exactly.
	It is on me, and it's on the people I know and the people I work with, to try and effect change.
	To try and bring about change that is outside of what is beyond my control.
	And when you look at it that way, That's where you gain meaning.
	Because, Carl, I know you know this as well as I do, when you talk, when you engage in solidarity with other people, that builds momentum and strength and power.
	Exactly.
	And what we need right now is a version of the future in which we all get a better world that we actually deserve.
	Well, and that's just... Because of this bullshit.
	That's just it.
	I mean, the left And I have said this many times, and I believe it with every bit of my being, the left and the liberals allowed their world building to stop and have now fundamentally shifted to seeing the world that is being built by the right and has been built over the last 30 years.
	The left, the liberals, the progressive movement in this country need to start imagining a world that is better.
	Yes.
	And that is one of the first steps we can do is really, you know, understand that some of this is literally just a failure of imagination on our part.
	In every way, shape, and form, the people who quote-unquote create the future in this country are awful.
	I'm sorry, but if the best you can do is an iPhone that you update barely, and that's it?
	That's what you've got?
	Like, you have failed somewhere.
	And for the record, all they have done is copied things that they've seen in sci-fi TVs and novels.
	Exactly.
	That's it.
	They're not actually creative, and there is a better world that feels different than this one.
	There's more out there than going to Red Robin.
	Oh yeah!
	And I mean, that's the fundamental thing, right?
	Like, there is a world out there that looks so fundamentally different than the one we have, it would feel like sci-fi.
	We have all of the pieces of it.
	And we have for ten years.
	Or more, in some cases.
	And we fundamentally abdicated Yeah.
	As opposition to the right in allowing them to build a world in all of our imaginations that looks like the worst possible outcome.
	And, you know, we don't need a surveillance state.
	We don't need to live in a subscription model of capitalism where you are increasingly owning less and paying more.
	Those are things that, again, We let the right take and run with and turn into a conspiracy theory against the West, right?
	And there's some really good, true arguments to be made about the fact that we are leaning into a subscription model from everything from the TV you watch to the way you own your home.
	No, and that's what the right does.
	They tell you that's the left bringing in communism.
	And what it is, is rent-seeking.
	That's it.
	And you're exactly right.
	We have lost that nuance because most people don't understand this.
	Most people aren't able to wrap their heads around it because they haven't been given the terms or the ideas.
	And what is actually happening is that the world just keeps getting smaller and smaller and smaller and pressing and pressing and pressing.
	But it's from the right.
	And it's always been from the right.
	And I was about to say, this is such a historic argument, right?
	We could have been doing this over a tin-type radio in the 50s.
	We should have been in an Austrian coffeehouse.
	Right, and it would have been the same argument.
	Same argument in the Bavarian beer halls that weren't being inundated by Nazis during the Weimar years, right?
	Like, it's this idea that We can't think big, because if we do, that means there's a lot of things we have to address about our own self, our own histories, our own presence, that require true work in a way that is incredibly hard to do.
	Well, and it's a cynical argument, because what the right says is, shit has gotten so off track, we have to go back.
	Exactly.
	We have to go back to pre-liberalism, we have to go back to a feudal-type society that's based on white, hierarchical, you know, powers.
	Yeah, exactly.
	And meanwhile, there's nothing beyond this.
	And this is what happened again in the early 20th century with Nazism and Fascism, and now it's happening again because the only thing that's being offered to us, and I rail about this all the time, when I talk to Democratic strategists and communication experts, I say, tell somebody something that can happen later.
	Instead of, oh, you're going to protect what rights remain?
	That's it?
	Like, you don't have any vision for where we're going?
	Well, you need to find it.
	You need the hundred year plan, right?
	Like and it sounds really unbelievable at some level, but like that is one of the things that FDR understood was we need a 50 year plan.
	that addresses problems across a time span because you can't get things done in eight, four, eight or 12 years.
	I mean, he gave it a try and he got a lot done and he got a, and he got a ton done and he got, he, he kept getting reelected for it.
	Right.
	Well, and also by the way, he simply took the pressure off of things.
	So fascism could cool down.
	Exactly.
	And, you know, you read... I just read a really interesting book about labor in the 1910-1911 era.
	And, I mean, they were worried that there was going to be a full-scale civil war between labor and the workers in labor and the federal government.
	And there was a chance of it.
	There was a pretty good chance, actually.
	And, you know, the L.A.
	Times building was bombed.
	There were huge things happening.
	And, again, Woodrow Wilson got elected.
	It's this bizarre... We have a real interesting history where all of these forces now that are coming together at once have been here in different strains over our history.
	We can do a lot to separate some of that heat from the pot if we had elected officials who could say, you know what?
	You're absolutely right.
	These 10 things are broken, fundamentally, and it is a national tragedy that those have happened.
	But we can do better than they were before, and this is how, and this is why, and this is why it's good for you.
	And that kind of messaging, if that was going on right now, there would be much different conversations being held.
	That then that, by the way, was the messaging behind the Barack Obama campaign.
	Unfortunately.
	Exactly.
	Didn't get there.
	And actually, it's incredible.
	I say this all the time.
	If you listen to Obama post-presidency, it's just a guy saying there's nothing a president can do.
	Yeah.
	And to be honest, that is the message that's still getting, like, given to us now, which is your expectations are unrealistic.
	Nothing can be done.
	I'm not going to use a bully pulpit.
	I'm not even actually going to fight for your reproductive rights.
	I'll say you should have them.
	But nothing else gets put forward.
	And right now is the time to do it.
	For the record, if anyone's keeping a look, get off oil.
	You've got to deal with the climate crisis.
	Get off all of this.
	Push something that takes care of a problem that exists while also reforming things.
	They just can't do it at this point.
	They're not interested in doing it.
	Well, and I think they don't understand that, like, Obama's selling of hope and then pulling away from it, and again, going back to the initial part of this conversation, the feeling that he had given that up to take on the neoliberal shell did some damage that I think we're all just starting to understand.
	I agree.
	In that respect.
	But truly, you know, someone, if Biden tomorrow came out and gave a speech that was fully Things have been bad.
	They've gotten worse.
	But we have, these are the ways we can make it better.
	And it's not going to be me doing it, because I'll be dead by the time a lot of this comes to pass.
	But I want better for my kids and my grandkids.
	That would resonate in such a way that is almost unbelievable.
	And by the way, Carl, what you just did, and I really appreciate what you just did, because it actually does a couple, we're even like doing the strategy here.
	Yeah.
	By saying, I won't see the results of this.
	Yep.
	I am nearer to the end of my life than I am in the beginning.
	This is what can come.
	That actually neutralizes every problem right there.
	It takes care of what has happened and then you move from there.
	Yeah, no, and you always, the thing is, we've never seen a Democratic Party that understands that you can, you can say, We don't have the answer for this moment.
	Right.
	But we have the answer for the moment that's coming next.
	And I'll tell you who else doesn't have the answer.
	They sure as shit don't have the answer.
	No, the Republic, that's the thing.
	If you hammer on the we can't, and if we can't, they certainly won't.
	And that's the issue, and this is actually the brilliance of the right wing, and this is what I've been yelling forever.
	They are telling you that there's a problem.
	Yep.
	They are right that there is a problem.
	Yep.
	Their diagnosis and their solution is horseshit.
	Yeah, well, yeah.
	There's no alternative.
	That's it.
	It's exactly right, and it's one of the arguments I've gotten in with people both online and more academically, which is like, I get that you want something better.
	I do too.
	Right now we're stuck.
	And we have two terrible choices, we have a system that only rewards binary choice, and for 2024 at least, we're not going to get a different way to do it.
	So we have to work with what we have constraint-wise.
	And I will make the argument until the end of time that we need to do things differently in 28 if we get there.
	But with what we've got in front of us and what is right now, we're going to have to eat a shit sandwich and it's going to suck.
	But you know what?
	It also is going to give us more room and room is what we need.
	We need time.
	Time and room away from the fascist Heat sink.
	And the more room we have, the more distance we have away from that, even if it's with someone who we don't necessarily agree with on everything, the better position we are to neuter it in places where it has to get neutered to stop some of its effective range at the top.
	And, you know, if we do that, Trump is not going to survive that.
	Like, the movement isn't going to survive that.
	He may not.
	Time, again, is against him, just in the same way it is Biden.
	And the more distance we can give us, and the more time away from it, the better chance we have of having someone, and the Democrats, the New Order Democrats, whatever we want to call it, really realizing, oh, we can fundamentally message 30 years into the future, and work to achieve those goals, I mean, hell, I'd give them the free space right now of trains.
	If you say our plan for 2024 and until 2028 is to do the corridors we've already outlined, but the goal from 2028 to 2048 is cross-country travel at high speed, is all these different things.
	That right there is something that people get excited about because it's something new and it's something that they can see happening.
	And if there's a country that can do it, it's this one.
	Oh god.
	We have all the parts here for something that is truly different, and not just different in appearance, but revolutionarily different from the way that we have dealt with things since the late 70s.
	And you do it in a way that revitalizes the middle of the country as well.
	And that's the whole point, is you give them something.
	And for the record, because I want to make it very very clear in all of this, a lot of what is happening right now, a lot of this authoritarian drive, It is.
	It does straddle both parties.
	It happens that the Republican Party accelerates it.
	The Democratic Party likes to pretend it's not there and they don't want to deal with it.
	Meanwhile, they're going ahead and accepting immigration shit.
	They're accepting this movement, redistribution, you name it.
	But what actually needs to happen is there needs to be a fundamental shift in terms of whether there's an alternative or not.
	Yes, exactly.
	And that depends, for the record, on us.
	Yep.
	And that's a hard truth, but it's the truth.
	That's the pill.
	That's the toughest pill that every one of us has to swallow, is that it's on us.
	Like, there are a lot of times that the government shifts onus onto the individual where it's incorrect.
	This is one of the few times where we've shifted the onus onto government from the individual, and done that in a way that's incorrect.
	We have to understand that if we really, truly want to move forward, it's going to take action from all of us at different scales, at different levels, to push back and reshape the thing that we have idealized.
	And if we want America to look like a actual first world country that is functioning in a democratic manner and is not traveling backwards into inocracy, that's going to take us doing legwork of it.
	And it sucks, and it's just how it is.
	It just happens to be that countries, specifically democracies, at some point ask more of their citizens than they've ever done for their citizens.
	And this is one of those points with America where we have to get out and do the thing that allows us to be better for those of us who probably are too young to even know what's happening, right?
	Or don't even exist yet.
	And for all of us, you know, for me, that's how I'm looking at 24.
	Again, is with this vision that it can and will be better if we do the thing right.
	And that's gonna mean that people have to swallow some pills that suck.
	But if they do it, the medicine is far less bad.
	Then the affliction.
	Yeah, it's time to get the disease checked out.
	All right, everybody, I've been talking with Carl Folk, the creator of the Institute of Unreality.
	Carl, where can the good people find you?
	I'm on Twitter at BrainNotOnYet.
	I'm on BlueSky at BrainNotOnYet.antifa.llc.
	And then I have my website, theinstituteofunreality.com, where I have a bunch of longer form pieces, both on democracy itself, the alt-right, and the tech world.
	And, you know, more of the fun stuff that you and I talk about.
	All right, everybody, that has been Karl Folk.
	Thank you so much for tuning in.
	And your support, as always, a reminder, go to patreon.com slash mccraigpodcast, support the show, gain access to The Weekender.
	I'll have an episode coming up here very, very shortly.
	Actually, I think that's going to be the mailbag episode.
	I think you guys want to hear that.
	So in the meantime, you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me Ask Mitch, you can find me at J. William Saxton.

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