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Jan. 2, 2024 - The Muckrake Political Podcast
46:52
Ringing in 2024 With Sarah Kendzior

Jared Yates Sexton is hosting the podcast while Nick Hauselman is out of the country. Luckily, bestselling author Sarah Kendzior stops by to talk 2024, the worsening political crisis, and how we can begin to fight back against this authoritarian threat. This is a must listen. For access to the weekly Weekender Show and exclusive reportage from the 2024 Presidential Election, head over to Patreon and subscribe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hey, everybody.
Welcome to the Muckrake Podcast, and welcome to 2024.
I'm Jared Yates Sexton.
I'm flying solo today with a very special guest we'll get to in just a second.
Nick Halseman is out of the country at an event where Javier Millet showed up, which has a lot of weird 1920s, 1930s German vibes, but we don't need to talk about that.
A quick run through of a couple of things.
A reminder to go over to patreon.com slash mcgreggpodcast.
We are entering into 2024, the campaign season.
You know that I'm going to cover this election unlike anybody else is doing.
We have a couple of things coming on.
Apparently there's another GOP debate before Iowa on January 10th because I guess we haven't heard enough from these assholes.
We'll be doing live coverage of that and then it's confirmed Done, set in stone and concrete, I'm going to Iowa for the caucuses and reporting live starting on January 13th through the caucuses on January 15th.
All that coverage, you need to go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast and go to my substack, Dispatches from a Collapsing State.
I'll also have my reportage from there.
Meanwhile!
I am very excited to tell all of you that we're starting 2024 off with a bang.
There is absolutely no one in the world I would rather have this conversation with.
We're actually recording this on January 1st.
This is the way to start off the year.
I am joined with crowd favorite, one of my favorite human beings walking around on the planet Earth.
The best-selling author of The View from Flyover Country, Hiding in Plain Sight, They Knew, and the new and amazing newsletter on Substack, which is already the best thing on the internet.
That's right, Sarah Kinzier is live and with us.
Sarah, it is so good to have you.
I'm so happy to be back.
Thank you.
It has been way too long.
And as I said, I couldn't think of a better person to start off 2024 with.
Sarah, you know, it's before we started recording, you'd even said it's been about a 10 year decade long cycle at this point, watching a lot of these things slip into place and get really, really bad.
There are certain years that are obviously really bad and really hard, and then there are other keystone years that I think we're going to look back on for a variety of reasons and see them as being integral into how we've reached certain states and certain places.
2024 to me feels definitely like one of those years.
How are you feeling?
I assume just completely optimistic, lighthearted.
Yeah, like usual.
No, I'm full of dread.
Me too.
I've been dreading this year for a while, and I especially began to dread it when my prediction that Trump would not be held accountable for his crimes, and more to the point that the prime cohort surrounding him, you know, professional operatives like Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Manafort, Bannon, etc., would not be held accountable for their crimes, which include sedition, and would be allowed to run again.
Once he launched his campaign, that filled me with dread because it was the clearest sign I could see that this is a completely non-functional governmental body.
Our institutions of accountability are not Functioning at all, they are in fact banked.
You know, what they operate in tandem most on lately is funding a genocide, but also letting sedition slide.
And so, you know, a lot of people are framing this election as, you know, oh, please, you know, run out and vote, or we're going to lose our democracy, not understanding how much of our democracy we have already lost over the last four years.
That doesn't mean there's not more to lose.
I mean, there's a lot more to lose.
Like, our ability to have this conversation, like you and me right now, is something that very much we can lose, which means there's still a lot of things to fight for.
But the situation has grown increasingly dire over the, you know, last 8 years, 10 years, you know, but also including over the Biden years, the last 3 years.
And I think it will kind of come to a culmination this year.
And my hope, though, is that because it now is so clear that people, you know, cannot continue to believe in this savior syndrome, that all of these complicit actors are going to actually rescue them and our institutions will suddenly function again, that they will see clearly how bad this is and rise up
In the manner that they were doing in 2020, when there was such a vigorous confrontation of our problems that predate Trump, problems that go back centuries in the United States.
I'm hoping that that kind of energy returns and that we get out of this backlash phase that we're in right now.
I was talking to a Democratic strategist the other day, and this was one of the people who, you know, I've been an acquaintance with for a while.
But they're also one of those people that for years were kind of rolling their eyes at me whenever I was telling them how bad things were getting.
And they expected, of course, Joe Biden to, you know, sort of set things right and everything to be fine.
And I think over the past four years, they've watched in kind of a sickening terror as things haven't gotten better.
And they asked me the other day, they said, how are you feeling about 2024?
And they also added the caveat, would you feel better if Trump was already in prison and barred from the election?
And I said, you know, I think I would feel better if that had happened, but we still wouldn't be out of the woods here.
Um, if if Trump were to be held accountable, if he were to be thrown off the ballot, that would at least express movement towards a system that was at least had a little bit of energy to fight off what is happening.
But the fact that Trump is still the leader for the GOP nomination, it appears he's going to win it unless something a little screwy happens.
I told this person, I said, this tells me that not only is the system not operating in any way, shape, fashion or form, but that it's actually picking up momentum and going in the direction that is I think you and I have been very concerned about for a while.
And they asked me what my prognosis was at this point.
And I said, it feels as if we're on a plane that is about to make a crash landing.
The question at this point is what happens when we hit the ground?
Yeah, I think that that's absolutely right, and I also think You know, Trump still, in many ways, is the front man of this operation, of multiple operations, of the transnational criminal syndicate, you know, tied to Russia, tied to Israel and Saudi Arabia, of a hard right wing, you know, evangelical movement, of plutocratic movements, of, you know, the most corrupt elements of big tech.
He is the front man for all of those.
He's their demagogue.
He's not the mastermind behind it.
And if Trump were in prison, They would just find someone else, and it's hard to find someone who fits the bill as well as Trump, but these people would continue to operate, which is why I've always encouraged, you know, not that they give a shit about what I do other than to try to harass me on the internet, but I've encouraged the DOJ to, you know, look for the masterminds, the Roger Stones, the people who've been, you know, up to these criminal activities for decades on end.
Before I was even born, because that's who is really the problem.
And then they just, you know, put some guy, a Bush, a Trump, whoever, and put them in.
But what has happened, you know, what makes things different is that under Trump's tenure, there wasn't even an attempt to hide criminality from the public.
And so we witnessed all of this in plain sight.
We witnessed people like Jared Kushner, you know, a family member, I'm deeply connected to Netanyahu, to MBS committing a multitude of crimes in public, not elected, not qualified, like a clear kleptocrat and a massive national security threat.
They do nothing about him.
They don't even bring him up now, even though Israel is in the news so much, and I think he's playing a very vital part.
In that operation, they're completely subservient to people like Kushner, and you've got to ask, well, why?
Because with Trump, at least, you could be like, well, he was the former president, there are certain laws, it's a situation we've never encountered, etc.
There's no reason they shouldn't be going after Kushner and others.
And they all are just falling in line, like every last senator, every person that all these progressives, you know, put their effort and, you know, money and whatnot to in office.
People like John Fetterman, you know, they're flat out saying, like, you know, I work for Israel over my state, over Pennsylvania.
You know, they mock those who have genuine concerns about things like, you know, Biden letting COVID spread, Biden building Trump's wall and circumventing Congress to do that, circumventing Congress to give Israel weapons to kill children and not giving Ukraine weapons to defend itself from Russia.
I mean, there's a lot of very legitimate critiques of this administration.
And the main ones are, you know, they are continuing Trump administration policies and they're not holding the overt criminals of the Trump administration accountable.
And those are very reasonable critiques.
But if you make them, then they threaten you, pile on you.
And it's much, much worse if you're not white.
Like the way that they go after Muslim Democratic voters are saying they're extremely hesitant to vote for Biden or are going to withhold their vote.
Instead, they're like, well, you know, see you in the internment camps.
You know, they get greeted with responses like that.
The way they target black women, like Bree Newsome, you know, outspoken activists.
Like, there's something very nefarious going on within the, you know, more elite halls of the Democratic Party.
The folks based out of D.C.
New York have a lot of money and they are punching down at voters who have almost no structural power.
They'll go on and on about the danger of the left.
Left has no real power.
The left doesn't exist.
It barely exists.
It certainly doesn't exist as a coherent, organized body.
And we're what people thought there were, you know, left-leaning representatives.
Somebody like Fetterman is a good example of this.
It turns out, you know, we had a little heel turn in our WWE politics there.
And, you know, we don't have anybody representing our interests.
Like, I do feel like representative democracy, to some degree, is dead because of donor money, gerrymandering, dark money, you know, all of these issues that we've discussed before.
I don't think That democracy itself is dead because there's so much more to it.
There are so many, you know, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, but it is deeply threatened.
And I hope that folks work together to preserve those freedoms that are not purely based around an election, but that are freedoms that we practice every day in our day-to-day lives.
I think one of the important things here is that democracy is never truly dead until the last democratic person dies.
Exactly!
And I think when you take a look at this, and you know, I think you and I, and this is one of the reasons I think this has served us well in what we've done, but it's also hindered us to a certain extent.
We both come from academic backgrounds.
We don't settle for conventional, simple narratives that make everybody feel better.
It's really important for people to understand that, like, you know, when you think about something like Israel, personally, Benjamin Netanyahu and his cadre of criminals, they use the idea of Israel for cover.
Donald Trump uses America for cover.
You know, Putin uses Russia for cover.
Xi uses China for cover.
All of this is about a larger trend that is growing in the world, which is an authoritarian trend.
And that is based on continuing to accrue more power and more wealth.
We're at a dogleg, so to speak, a crossroads where democracy is being not just smothered, but absolutely wiped out and eradicated.
They want to leave people afraid, apathetic.
They want to go ahead and move things further and further towards more control, towards more accumulated capital in fewer and fewer hands.
This is everywhere.
It's all around the world.
It's growing.
It's basically a virus that has grown throughout global capitalism.
And we've now reached this point where we're watching it pop up in every corner of the globe.
It's not as simple as talking about America versus Russia versus China, but these things also find their way through expressions of geopolitics.
And a lot of people are still getting caught up in that.
And I think they're still trying.
Some people are still trying to play games of good guys versus bad guys, white hats versus black hats.
Other people know full and well, whether they're in the media or in politics, they know full and well what's actually happening.
They're very excited about tamping down democracy and maintaining their power and possibly even growing their power.
And we're coming to a point where 2024 is going to be one of those major moments where either the world is going to get freer or it's going to get a hell of a lot worse.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think the changes in technology, of digital technology and surveillance technology in particular, are going to have a huge effect on this.
Like, I think if you are looking at the war on Gaza, people should be analyzing the use of technology in that war and the type of I think we are going to see a year of a lot of protests, some of it related to Israel and Palestine, some of it related to the elections.
I do think that there's going to be pushes for third party candidates.
I think we're going to see possibly more and more as Biden's numbers continue to sink.
And Trump, of course, is extremely unpopular.
I need to emphasize that because The media continues to present him as this, like, larger-than-life, you know, popular bottom-up kind of force.
This is a top-down guy, you know.
This is a Wall Street favorite.
This is someone who's being pushed down our throats.
This is a guy who's committed sedition that the deep state, if they wanted to actually, like, follow their own laws and put in prison, could do so at any given time and has decided not to because he is their guy.
He is the guy of the deep state.
So, We don't really have anybody.
You know, these are two historically unpopular candidates and everybody's fed up.
I think that's going to continue to create protests.
We also see, and I think this is a good thing, a lot of labor-related protests.
And so it's going to be a very lively year.
But I also think, you know, over Biden's tenure, we've seen the creation of cop cities, we've seen the creation of new types of police surveillance technology.
I think they're going to use those in new ways to crack down on protests.
And I think there's also going to be, like you said, this demoralization effort.
You know, we see it online, these cult tactics, you know, where people are piled on and made to feel alienated, made to feel hated, pushed out of, you know, the various political movements, pushed out of their own party as potential voters.
And it's meant to make you kind of fall into a fascist mode inside your own mind.
They want obedient Americans.
They don't want Americans to think for themselves, to challenge authority, who do all of the things and follow the precepts upon which America is based.
And that is true of both parties.
And I don't think that America will obey.
I think America was beaten down so badly by the pandemic There was a period of cult-like obedience, and you saw this thrive with QAnon, and you saw this thrive with the, like, Mueller's gonna save us, Garland's gonna save us garbage that, you know, the liberals put out.
I think folks have reached the end of their ropes, and though COVID is still with us, you know, they're pissed about that too.
So I think there's going to be a lot of people fighting.
I wouldn't—I don't know who they're going to be fighting.
I was going to say fighting back, and then I think against what exactly.
I'm not quite sure.
I think it's going to be a kind of free-for-all in the streets.
And that does worry me.
I do worry about increased violence, somewhat from the protesters, but really in reaction to the protesters, from the police, from the government.
Yeah, and I think, you know, the closest thing that a lot of people have in their imagination to what I think is coming is the tumult of the 60s and the 70s.
And, you know, you can watch on CNN or Time Life or whatever, and you get like this sort of like sepia-toned vision of this.
It was like the good kids and the good people and the civil rights people against the bad people, you know, almost like Richard Nixon was out there facing them down.
But I think people forget that all those movements were actually against the status quo in general.
It was actually saying, you know what, there's nobody in the Democratic Party or the Republican Party who is worth a damn right now, who's actually looking after these people and making sure our rights are being upheld or making sure that we have freedom.
And when you actually take a look at our situation, and I think this is dawning on people for a while, and I'm glad you brought up Trump being this handpicked person.
Like, there are a lot of people who, like, will sit around and say anti-Trump shit.
They really love what he does.
Oh, absolutely.
And they really love the outcome of it.
They love the economic stuff.
They love the authoritarian stuff.
They just don't want to be associated with him because they find him disgusting and rude.
But a lot of these people are actually very okay with this.
And I'm talking about a lot of quote-unquote good white liberals.
They have to be pushed against, which is of course what happened again in the 60s and the 70s.
You actually looked around and you saw all of this protest, all this tumult.
It was because you had people who were tired of the same bullshit, they were tired of having no representation, and they were actually raging against all participants of the status quo.
And I feel like people are starting to look around and they realize not only is representative government completely bought off, But all of these saviors, all of these promises that there's a plan, that's all horseshit.
And it's been horseshit from the very beginning.
And the only way that we can save this is to save it ourselves.
Yeah, it's complete horseshit.
And it is funded and backed by the government.
And I don't think people understand exactly how that works.
Like, there are certain podcasts, like Mueller, she wrote, for example, they're running for an agent with the FBI.
In return, it appears, you know, PPP loans were given, student loans were forgiven.
I don't know exactly how direct payment is.
There are other people on Twitter.
They get paid through PACs.
You know, the receipts are on there.
You can go to OpenSecrets.
Like, these are not organic hackers.
These are people who provide an administration.
Thanks to the White House, one of them is the son of Lev Tarnas, you know, the mobster, the indicted mobster working for Giuliani, working for Trump.
Someone who you certainly would not want around the White House just as a potential national security risk.
Others are professional fraudsters that, you know, occupy, you know, democracy.
I forget, I blocked them so long ago.
You know, I'm talking about the Krasenstein brothers.
There's all these twins involved.
I don't know how so many twins got in on the action.
Anyway, these are a bad group of twins.
They're all evil twins.
There's no good ones.
And they are professional grifters and fraudsters.
And I mean that seriously, as in they have an arrest record and they have a long documented history that predates Trump of this type of activity.
And that is who the Democratic Party has decided to invest their money in.
So on one hand, we've got this.
We have a very professional propaganda apparatus that mirrors MAGA and QAnon in many ways, down to the rhetoric, the tactics, you know, the direct connections to government and so forth.
Meanwhile, you have a media, and this is where we really differ from the 60s and the 70s and all those movements, that is completely gutted, where you have people kind of, you know, I don't want to say milk toast because that sounds mean, but kind of middle of the road, liberals who are trying to do a good job and, but kind of middle of the road, liberals who are trying to do a good job and, you know, tell the truth about situations like Greg Sargent from the Washington Post or Manny Hassan from MSNBC, but who are not like, you know, kind of radical or pushing things too hard, although Manny does
Both looking for jobs.
Yes.
They're both looking for jobs.
Well, meanwhile, you know, the Lincoln Project, all these quote, never Trump Republicans that, as you said, absolutely love the policies of the Republican Party.
These brutal policies, these policies that benefit plutocrats, these policies that discriminate against people.
They're completely fine with that.
And they love the industry that has been created around Trump, that it is a moneymaker.
And, you know, it's grotesque.
And I think that a lot of people, you know, some of them are purely just in it for the money.
They want, you know, this is like a gravy train with biscuit wheels.
They just want it, you know, running and running to no end.
And I don't know what they'll do after he's gone.
And then there are those of us, and this is the most ironic thing about the situation, where there's folks like you and me and a few others who back in 2016, 2017 were saying, you know, Donald Trump is an extremely dangerous demagogues connected to the mafia who will attempt to turn Donald Trump is an extremely dangerous demagogues connected to the mafia who will attempt to turn the And our institutions are not strong enough to fend this off.
And if they're going to try, they need to try vigorously and they need to try early.
And all of the people in Trump's fold need to be examined, including the connections of his children, including the connections of people like Kushner and his campaign advisors, most of whom have now been indicted, yet are still running around free.
You know, we all said that and people mocked us, they threatened us, they harassed us, you know, they made our lives hell for it.
Now they are all saying the exact same things that you and I said back in 2016, 2017, making bank over it, because they will never, Now they are all saying the exact same things that you and I said back in 2016, 2017, making bank over it because they will never, ever criticize the Biden administration or the DOJ or the FBI or any of these institutions that were supposed to bring, you know, ever criticize the Biden administration or the DOJ or the FBI or any of They skipped that part.
They're like, yes, Trump's very bad.
We've got to make sure he doesn't win again.
And I'm like, yeah, sure.
You know, I agree with you.
But one way for that to happen would be for the Biden administration to actually, in Congress, to follow the law and indict and block this individual from running and also arrest the criminal foreign agent circle that surrounds this man.
Like, you know, all these national security-minded folks, like, they don't seem to give a shit that he stole a shitload of nuclear, you know, related documents, and that he sold, you know, state secrets to the Saudis, and very likely to the Israelis, and to all, you know, and to Russia, and to all these other countries.
Like, They're treating that as an afterthought, which I find very suspicious.
That to me implies that we lost our sovereignty a long time ago, and that Trump coming into office to begin with was the aftereffect of a loss of sovereignty, possibly through espionage, you know, or just through some sort of You know, transnational plutocratic system that transcends the traditional boundaries of the nation-state.
This is the result of it, and they won't confront that.
They need to, like, as you said, they want to do this good guy, bad guy thing.
They want to cover up crime with scandal.
You know, I was barely online for the last couple weeks.
When I go online, it was stuff like, ooh, Trump smells bad.
Trump's a career mobster who committed sedition and tried to overthrow the government.
Does that not bother you?
It's just like a rank odour, that's the thing, really?
That's what we're going to be focused on right now?
Like, what is wrong with you?
I mean, it's so profoundly unserious, and it would be, like, almost amusing, except that it is so deeply threatening to us as ordinary Americans, that it is so unserious that our safety, Our public health, our ability to speak freely, all of that is under grave threat, and absolutely nobody has our backs on it.
I want to say a couple things before I ask my next question.
First of all, I can already hear people being like, what do you mean podcasts are doing this or they're funded?
People literally believe that COINTELPRO just stopped.
The government, you know, hasn't been funding intelligence operations in order to mislead people.
It's just blatant!
They're working with the FBI.
I mean, literal members of the FBI are the co-hosts of the show.
This isn't even like, you know, bow down, oh, I'm pretending to be a normal journalist kind of pointillist.
This is like, hi, I work for the FBI and I'm the co-host of this podcast.
I love it.
I just I just love that all of this stuff happens.
And on top of that, every single billionaire, every institute, every think tank sponsors their own, you know, disinformation, whether it's this podcast or that podcast or this online thing.
Second of all, I just want to say from from everything you're talking about, I think people have actually and Donald Trump is actually a very interesting figure because people need to understand, again, He's not the mastermind in all of this.
It just so happens that he is the perfect individual to fit a perfect Donald Trump-sized hole in all of this.
Like, how many secrets this person has sold and given away as we are inching up?
And for the record, everyone needs to understand this.
You know, like wars and cold wars mean a loss of freedom.
It means death.
It means so much incredible suffering.
You need to understand that beyond the idea of America, China, Russia, you name it, in all these situations, going back to what you were saying, This goes further than nationalism.
This goes further than this geopolitical simple game that everybody likes to believe in.
Like, war and violence and oppression and tension works for the wealthy.
It's always been that way.
And it's always a wonderful concept.
cover to go ahead and carry these things out as that noose gets tighter and tighter and tighter.
It's not a coincidence that he's giving away nuclear secrets.
It's not a coincidence that he's helping the Saudis, that he's helping the Russians, that he's helping anybody who wants to give him money and anybody who's there and willing to go ahead and encroach on these things.
We're watching a world that a lot of people think that they used to live in.
It's evaporated.
It's extinct.
You now live in a corrupted global system in which there are only a few handful of people who are interested in having all the power and all the wealth to themselves.
Yeah, that's absolutely right, and I think people aren't willing to confront that because, you know, they get their information from... It's terrifying!
Also, they're getting their information from consolidated media empires, you know, cable news and whatnot.
We're never going to say what you just said on the air, even though a lot of people... We can't go on them anymore for that reason.
Yeah, pretty much.
Sometimes I do go on, and I just say that, and then they're like, uh-oh.
Oh, we'll see you in a couple years.
And like, you know, but yeah, I mean, it's getting worse and worse.
The fact that, you know, people who were more restrained than we were in our critique, you know, in these sorts of critiques are now getting banned and the types of folks that they're putting on.
I mean, honestly, I don't watch these channels, so I don't fully know what's happening, but, you know, I read about it on Twitter.
A lot of it is, like, anyone who dare express sympathy or grief for what's happening in Gaza, you know, is effectively banned from television.
So I'm sure I am banned and, you know, Whatever, like, I don't care.
I'm much more worried about the genocide that is unfolding.
But yeah, folks don't, they don't quite grasp it, or they grasp it, but not in a way that it can explain why it's happening.
You know, they know that all of these things are unusual.
If you're old enough, you know that it's different than your childhood was.
That's the case for people like you and me.
One thing that I find interesting, you know, having two teenagers who are politically aware is that they don't know any other world than this.
You know, like my youngest was five when Trump was elected, so he doesn't remember any world before Trump, before pandemics, before coups, before the Capitol getting stormed and nothing being done after it.
You know, he just thinks this is how life goes.
But because of that, they see things with a sort of plain, you know, honesty, and they, the older members of this generation will just flat out say it.
And I hope that they are able to keep that kind of clarity and not fall for the cult mentality, because there will be that temptation for them.
You know, people feel a need to belong to a community if they feel like they can't belong to a country.
Like if they're part of a country that acts as if they don't want them in it, which is what our country essentially does to its own citizens.
You know, I do worry about people falling into cults, especially into hate groups, things like that.
But, you know, we'll see.
I, I think just people don't have a handle on it because a lot of folks are afraid to say it as bluntly as the way you just said it, but that's the way it needs to be said.
Because we are entitled to these rights as citizens.
You know, these are public servants.
They're supposed to be serving us.
And they've gotten folks in this mindset where we're supposed to be serving them.
We're supposed to be giving them money and making them phone calls.
you know, trying to get them in office so that they can turn their backs on us as soon as they get in there.
And it's like, well, why would we bother with that?
It's much better if we help each other and if we come to some sort of understanding of what the crisis is.
And if we understand what the crisis is, then we can begin to really solve it.
And it's not going to be easy at all.
And it's going to take a long time.
But I think the lack of knowledge, the lack of a vocabulary to express what we're seeing has been, you know, destructive ultimately in trying to, you know, get whatever it is we're facing resolved. - Okay.
You know, you and I, you just brought it up, you and I were texting before the holidays a little bit about our concerns about these cults that are sprouting up around this stuff.
And, you know, one of the things I found, I was writing The Midnight Kingdom about these cycles in history that reach these points of crisis.
And what always happens is that the old ideas of meaning and what gives people purpose, they fall by the wayside.
They die and leave a hollowness in people.
And as we start, you know, looking at the possibility of authoritarianism and fascism and Nazism, whatever you want to call it, these cycles always have these moments of growing cultish movements, people desperate for a meaning.
They start going to messiahs.
They start falling for one grift after another.
They get absolutely scammed out of everything they own.
Meanwhile, you know, they find murderous, you know, false prophets and messiahs and just, it gets so ugly.
And we're seeing that again.
It's, I don't think people understand that, like, white supremacist groups, paramilitaries, on top of that, people like Andrew Tate, people who are just absolutely growing these gross, like, You know, MLM scams on people that are basically offering them salvation or direction.
I don't think people understand how much people are desperate for meaning and trying to find something that's better than greed and consumption and everything else that's been offered to us over the last few years.
And it's really showing up in a lot of strange ways and people are just sort of throwing up their hands and like, I can't believe people are falling for this QAnon bullshit.
And meanwhile, they're believing their own version of QAnon.
They're believing in their own quote unquote plan that's taking place or their own messiahs that are politicians or law enforcement officials.
And meanwhile, it's just the same thing no matter where you're looking right now.
Yeah, it's a frightening thing, and I think it began to gain real traction during the pandemic, and especially in the, I don't want to say the aftermath of the pandemic, because it's continuing to go, but once Biden falsely proclaimed that the pandemic was over, you know, and a lot of people took him seriously and then got COVID, you know, but people, I think, have been
I hate to use the word groomed, but then inculcated to accept mass death, to treat mass death as normal, to not have empathy for the victims of COVID or for the victims of other things, you know, climate catastrophes, you know, other things that have The fall in us as a nation, war, etc.
And now we're in an era where they are being, you know, pushed to acclimatize themselves to mass murder, including the mass murder of, you know, over 10,000 children in Gaza.
And I think if you can get people to accept both of those things, like a permanent pandemic about which we lack We don't know how many people died.
We don't know how many people have been disabled.
We can't find remedies for it easily.
You know, it's very difficult to get treatment for it if you have it, at least in certain regions like where I live.
You know, and then get people to accept somehow Israel's retaliatory actions against, you know, the Hamas terror attacks of October 7th.
Somehow justified, somehow killing over 10,000 children solves that problem, which, you know, it doesn't.
It's just pure child murder on a scale I've never seen at a speed I've never seen.
You know, if people will come to accept that, God only knows what they'll accept.
And that is very advantageous for any aspiring fascist or autocratic regime.
You know, they will accept the abuse of their own citizens.
They'll accept the abuse of activists.
They'll accept the abuse of traditionally marginalized populations, you know, black populations, Native American populations.
We had this big, you know, kind of collective uprising in 2020 in which Americans were encouraged to confront, you know, the sins of history.
And a lot of white Americans were doing that for the first time, and now we're in this backlash period where not only are they not confronting it, they are, you know, basically abused and told not to.
You know, we have people overtaking school boards, we have PACs that are basically buying school boards, banning books, changing curriculum, banning accurate history, and all of that is, you know, it's taking us into a dark place in terms of knowledge, And what I worry is now that they've set the scene with that, you know, the right wing has been working very hard over the last three years to set that kind of scene.
When there are victims of violence in what I think is going to be a violent year, I mean, I hope it's not, but I think it will be in 2024, I think there'll be less empathy for those victims than there was in 2020 or in all the years previously where you saw so many protests and so many different forms of uprising in America.
Yeah, and I just want to tie that all together because I think the word that we haven't used yet, which is important, is it's abuse.
It is systematic abuse and authoritarianism.
And I used to think when I was a kid, I used to think, you know, I'd think about Nazi Germany and I just thought everybody had a gun trained on them at all times.
But that's not what happens in totalitarian states.
You get destroyed from a perspective of soul and humanity.
You come to expect less.
You come to accept worse.
And, you know, as I've been going around, I've been going into these so-called red states to try and help people.
What I've realized is as I talk to the people who are fighting the battles there, their resiliency is being whittled away.
And I don't mean that as in, like, it's just happening, like, you know, just out of nowhere.
It is an intentional battle that is being waged against them by all of these billionaires and Republican operatives.
And, you know, there are there are actual programs that are being carried out to make these people not only, like, despair, but to leave their jobs, to leave their states, to give up the fight.
And people need to understand that what's happening around this country and around the world Is we are being abused.
We are having our resiliency destroyed to the point where eventually we're supposed to just throw up our hands and say, you know what?
Do whatever you need to do.
Just please leave me alone.
And that is the state where these things really, really thrive.
And that's where we're heading right now.
Yeah, I agree.
And, you know, this is what I started out studying in my career in academia.
I studied authoritarian states of the former Soviet Union.
And these were states like Uzbekistan that had been authoritarian under the Soviet Union that continued to be authoritarian in independence.
So people who lived there, you know, knew nothing else.
But that didn't mean They didn't also desire liberty and freedom and justice and all of these things.
They just knew that they were in a system of state surveillance in which their demands for these things would be routinely punished, in which a, you know, an officer could, you know, arrest them baselessly for any reason and they would have no recourse.
And if they criticized the government, they could go to jail.
Like, you know, as I said, it can get much worse.
And so, you know, the folks that I talked to the most tended to be Dissidents who had fled Uzbekistan and were living outside its borders and that's why they were able to talk to me at all because otherwise they would get arrested and some stopped talking to me out of fear for what would happen to their families in Uzbekistan if this was, you know, found out and I completely understood that.
Like, I never pushed because, you know, the safety of their families was more important.
You know, but I learned a lot of lessons from Working with people in such, you know, tired circumstances and that's, you know, you have to have a very strong internal moral compass that just doesn't bend and doesn't break no matter what is thrown at you.
And in terms of your outside actions, you know, your activism and so forth, like there'll be times where you're exhausted and you just simply can't do it.
And there'll be times where you're, you know, more active or more engaged or whatnot.
The thing that cannot change is your moral standards.
Like, you can't adjust them downward in order to fit in with some sort of political agenda or some sort of, you know, political cult.
That is something that just, it cannot change.
The people I knew who kind of had the ability to survive these times and not just check out of the situation altogether were the people who knew who they were and knew what they wanted and also tended to have some kind of Creative outlet, you know, writing or, you know, art or just anything, like something that was separate from the state, something that the state couldn't take away from them or couldn't control.
It's really like a life of the mind, a life of the soul, honestly.
It's beyond a life of the mind.
If you can preserve that, then I do think You can survive this, but I also think, you know, survival should not be our foremost aspiration, and it's very sad that we've come to a time in our country in which, for many, it is, you know, materially, but also just psychologically, psychologically surviving these times.
It's very difficult because we're constantly bombarded with images of mass death and mass murder, and we're expected to just shrug them off with a smile, and that is not a normal or humane way To react to that at all.
You know, if you're despondent upon seeing these things like that, that is humane.
You know, that means that you still have a soul and a heart and you care about other people and that's a good quality.
Like, that's a quality that you should never lose.
It's a quality the government very much wants you to lose because they want you to join these groups.
They want you to join hate groups.
They want you to join cults.
They want you to be obedient and they want you to obey in advance and that's the thing that you should never ever give in to.
Yes, sir.
I think you and I probably get a lot of the same comments from people or questions.
And one of them I always get asked is, how can you study all of this?
And just it has to make you so depressed and so unhappy.
And it's just got to really fuck with you.
And the truth is, it does.
But I also tell them that in that past 10 years that you've been talking about, Like, I, when I started getting into this, I, you know, in my 30s, I was depressed, I had certain, you know, anger, I had nihilism, I had stuff I hadn't healed from.
Over time, as this has become more obvious, I've healed from my things while also starting to appreciate the people I love, starting to appreciate the places I love, the things I love, the things I value.
And now it just makes me angry and determined to protect them.
I look around and I have so much love for the people in this country who want better things for themselves and their neighbors and their communities.
And I've told people, I think, the secret to this, because I know people are listening and they're like, well, what can I do about a transnational crime syndicate?
And that is a great answer.
But the answer actually begins with yourself.
And it begins with healing from all of this abuse and all of this shit and recognizing, going back to what you said, survival's not enough.
You have to come to a point where you understand that you, the people you love, your family, your neighbors, your community, your country, you know, your fellow citizens, we deserve better.
We deserve better than this shit.
And quite frankly, that's what needs to motivate us.
We need to get to the point where we will not accept this.
We will not accept trinkets and distractions and consumption.
And instead, we need to, like, reignite something within ourselves and fight back against this idea that that's all this is and you better take it and accept it.
Yeah, I think that's absolutely right.
And some of that is just what, I don't know, kind of can soothe a person on an individual basis and just make it possible for them to get through their day, whether it's their families or their hobbies or, you know, an appreciation of nature or something.
But a lot of times, I feel like people are pushed to focus on elections and on politicians and on figures instead of on broader movements where there often is You know, overlap of people from all sorts of different backgrounds fighting for the same thing.
You see that in labor movements.
You definitely see that in environmental movements.
You know, like in Missouri, some of the biggest, you know, environmentalists are people who vote Republican, people who want their streams clean, people who want their woods, you know, free for hunting.
You know, like these are people who I get along with very well because I have that same Deep reverence for the, you know, for the environment of Missouri, for the natural environment.
And so there is this ability to cross lines.
But again, it comes down to sort of figuring out, you know, what do you want out of life?
It can't just be battling Trump.
You know, it can't just be battling a bunch of assholes who show up like, you know, WWE scripted production.
Because really, that is what we're watching.
And you know, you and I both watch WWE, so we know it.
We know what this is.
We recognized this right away, and we kind of, I'm not gonna say I checked out of it, but like, once I realized fully that that's what it was, which was around early 2021, when they didn't prosecute people from the attack on the Capitol in an urgent matter, I was like, oh, I see, you know, this is fake, this is scripted, there are not really two sides here, there are appointed heels and appointed saviors, and it's a lot of nonsense, and until I see some,
Yeah, something meaningful, like one of the real powerful operatives prevented from doing further harm.
Like, I'm just going to kind of half-assedly watch this and really pay attention to what's happening on the ground.
Things like the construction of these cop cities, for example, which I find deeply alarming.
But yeah, you know, it's horseshit and folks are encouraged to get sucked into that and to just watch from the sidelines as cheerleaders or, you know, people booing instead of being immersed in the world around them.
And I think the pandemic, again, had a huge effect there because folks were very, they were less likely to leave their home for a very good reason.
You know, they didn't want to catch, you know, COVID.
And because of that, I think they spent a lot of time online and they fell prey to a lot of this mode of thinking, but I do encourage people to like get out in the world in a safe way, you know, get out in your natural environment.
I mean, that's the thing at least I find personally helpful, like get to know the state that you're in beyond just your immediate vicinity.
You know, those are all things that could potentially help you love this country, because there is so much to love about it, and there's so much to fight for.
And, you know, that's why I think Barrett and I both do fight very hard for it, even though it is incredibly depressing, and I'm not going to deny that.
But, you know, the depressing thought of it is that we could lose it.
It's not the fight itself.
It's the prospect of loss, the idea that my children You know, won't be able to see a lot of the things I see, which seems to some degree is inevitable, things like climate change.
But, you know, what we can do now to try to prevent that very dark future, that future that can be worse, you know, we should be doing.
It is our responsibility as adults, you know, it's not the, you know, the children will save us.
I hate that shit.
You know, we should be saving things for kids, for that generation.
Yeah, and I think before we get out of here, I think that's how I'm looking at 2024.
If people ask me what I'm thinking about, it's this.
We have a really volatile, important year.
This is, I think, a year that is going to make or break a lot of different things, but it's not just because of what happens in November.
It happens based on what we're able to start building, what we're able to start fighting for.
You know, the election is one aspect and a much larger thing, but, you know, things go on beyond November.
And this is going to be, unfortunately, and I'm sorry to tell people this, this is going to be a battle that we're going to spend the rest of our lives fighting.
That's where we are in this.
The Pandora's box has been opened.
We have to deal with this thing.
And what you just brought up is exactly right.
We need to do this for our children, our grandchildren, future generations, people that we will never ever meet.
And we have to start caring about democracy and ourselves and each other.
And start fighting a fight that will define us and will define the future.
I mean, that's the thing.
This is actually the great calling of our lives.
And if we're just thinking about this, oh, did Trump win the nomination?
Is he going to win in the election?
We have to move beyond that.
We have to start thinking about something larger.
We have to start thinking about something much, much more, much more important than that.
Yeah, absolutely agree.
All right, Sarah.
And, of course, you already know all of her books.
The View from Flyover Country, Hiding in Plain Sight, They Knew.
If these aren't already on your shelves, you're making a mistake.
And, of course, her newsletter on Substack, which is absolutely fantastic.
Sarah Kinzer, you're the absolute best.
Thank you again for stopping by.
Oh, thank you for having me on any time.
All right, everybody, that's going to bring us to an end.
I will come back on Friday with The Weekender Edition.
Go over to patreon.com slash mccraigpodcast in order to get that and other goodies.
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