Why South Korea's Democracy Is More Resilient Than The U.S.
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Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the coup attempt by the president of South Korea and the government's immediate response to protect its democracy, unlike the GOP representatives here after January 6th. They move on to the assassination of the CEO of United Health and what that means to society in general before examining who the head of the DNC might be.
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Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Muck Rake Podcast.
I am your co-host, Nick Houselman, joined by Jared Yates-Sexton, who's on the road, so he might sound a little bit different, but in spirit, he's with us.
And we have a lot to talk about.
Thanks so much for being part of this conversation.
And as you know, we have a thriving Patreon community.
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So Jared, how's it going today?
I mean, I'm on the road.
It is what it is.
But I just want to pause for a second, my friend, and just talk about the dulcet reading that you just gave.
Let nobody be mistaken that Nick Houselman has a professional-sounding broadcasting voice.
Well, thank you so much.
Sometimes I hear that, and I wonder if they're just trying to, like, you know, make me feel a lot better about what's going on, but I'll take your word for it.
Well, I mean, you know, if you can have that, even in the midst of, like, a complete shitstorm that is cultural and political and all of it, like, I mean, that should help.
Well, speaking of cultural shitstorm, let's just quickly describe to everyone listening what we're going to talk about today because we have the South Korea coup attempt.
We have the assassination of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare.
We have a Supreme Court case going on that's going to have vast implications we must talk about.
Plus, we have pardons from the Biden administration preemptively, and then talk for who the DNC chair might be.
This is a chock full of things to talk about, Jared, and a lot of them have, I don't know, I suppose interest, but maybe even makes us feel concerned, I think is the word.
Yeah, I think concerned.
There are no throwaway topics anymore.
We're on a runaway freight train at this point.
And so there's not a whole lot of being neutral at this moment, as we'll talk about today.
Well, what do you make about the South Korean coup attempt, which was basically the head of South Korea declaring martial law, and then basically the government defying that to convene and vote it down?
You know, that's a pretty impressive standing up of democracy, wouldn't you say?
Yeah, and I just want to give a little bit of background.
I got into this over on my substack, Dispatches from a Collapsing State, but just to go ahead and set the table for a lot of people who are like, what the hell just happened in the past three hours over in South Korea?
Basically, President Yoon of South Korea is a right-wing shithead, Nick.
Just a really conservative, Trump-like kind of guy.
Tell me if this sounds familiar.
Anti-woman, anti-progress, talking about how he's going to clean up the, you know, make South Korea great again.
And he got in power and surprise, surprise, a right wing shithead engaged in a bunch of corruption, him and his wife with political favors and God knows what else.
He was going to be impeached more than likely.
And on top of that, the parliament was wasn't going to pass his budget.
And so he did what right wing shitheads do, Nick.
He said, you know what?
There's a threat to liberal democracy.
So I need to destroy liberal democracy, basically saying that his political rivals in the Democratic Party of South Korea were engaged in a clandestine conspiracy.
And of course, he used North Korea, you know, their natural rival, to go ahead and underscore that.
And he said, we're going to declare martial law.
Well, within like an hour, South Koreans citizens started showing up in mass and basically taking on the military and special forces and basically bullied them, you know, put them in their place and made sure that the Democratic Party of South Korea, as well put them in their place and made sure that the Democratic Party of South Korea, as well as members of President Yoon's party, were able to go into parliament and vote to It's a huge victory.
But, you know, for Americans who are listening to this and you're like, why are we talking about South Korea?
We need to understand, again, this is an international authoritarian movement.
They all say the same things.
They all have the exact same playbooks.
We need to learn from what we saw in South Korea, which is when this stuff happens, you have to get in the streets and you have to push back against authoritarian regimes.
Wait, wait, wait.
I don't think there's anything to learn, because I remember on January 6th here, the lawmakers, they convened, they got together, they were going to...
Oh, wait.
In fact, there was hundreds, I believe, of people in Congress who decided to continue to spread the lie and say that the 2020 election was stolen.
All manner of horrible, horrific things.
And even now, with the push to pardon the January 6th insurrectionists, it persists.
So, yes, we can definitely learn something from what democracy is supposed to look like, especially from a...
It was a thriving democracy, not a very young one, and one that was, you know, the bastion of hope for everybody around the world because of how well it was working until now.
Well, South Korea has...
Well, you're talking about America.
I mean, America has had its democratic, small-D democratic moments.
You know, South Korea is a very fragile democracy.
They've had, like, authoritarian overreach before, and luckily, the citizenry takes it seriously.
The problem in the United States of America is that we've been more or less lulled into a sense of comfort because of everything that we're taught, the culture that we're given, as well as the education that we're given.
And on top of that, we've had a commercialized political system.
Basically, we yell about it on Twitter, we'll retweet things, we'll do whatever, or re-skied, or whatever the hell we're calling it, Nick.
And basically, it's turned into sort of a pastime, something that we watch.
I I've said before, when the Dobbs decision—we'll talk about the Supreme Court in a little bit—when the Dobbs decision came down, I think a lot of people expected there to be mass protests that would actually push back against the Supreme Court and possibly try and, you know, tip the balance here.
We need to look at what the South Koreans did, and we need to understand that we're getting ready to, like, really wade into some deep, deep waters— And, you know, I keep trying to give people advice.
You need to talk to people, your friends, your community members, your co-workers, all that, not just about getting organized and creating coalitions, but what are your red lines in the sand?
What is it that Donald Trump and the people around him will do that you're just like, OK, shit, we're in the streets tonight?
And that's something that I think everybody needs to take a long, long look at.
I think that we're in that sort of lull period in between when Trump's going to take over.
And I think that right now, if you ask, you might not have a huge push for people who are willing to do any kind of protesting, but I suspect that the outrage will come back pretty quickly.
And we will probably, in 2025, see some things that will give us hope and mobilize people to act.
Lord knows we need it.
It's long enough now.
We need to make a stand.
And we know that there's enough people out there that agree to have solidarity and to have a showing once and for all against what's happening here.
So I kind of feel like we're going to have one of those moments in 2025 where everyone stands up to this.
I wonder if 2025 will be the year because there's so much that is coming up over the horizon.
We're going to talk about the Supreme Court stuff in a second, but also the assassination of Brian Thompson of UnitedHealthcare in a second.
I need to make it very, very clear that I think a lot of people are discouraged.
Turning off cable news has been one barometer, but that's also a group of people who've been watching this stuff as entertainment.
Almost like a religious type tenant.
You watch it and you feel like you're up to date or whatever.
But I've been having so many conversations, Nick, with people who are motivated to actually start doing the work.
And you're noticing that a lot of people are getting radicalized.
A lot of people are getting pissed off.
And they're like, you know what?
It's not enough to just vote.
You have to be a participant in small-D democracy.
And I do have a feeling that there are going to be some moments coming up, whether it's labor organization, anti-war stuff, anti-oligarchical authoritarianism.
I think you're right.
I think in the next year, two years, we're going to see some real opportunities to see if people are going to put Their safety and their economic fortunes on the line.
Because, Nick, let's not discount the fact, and we've covered it, ever since the BLM protest, we've seen an escalation of violence against protesters.
We've seen states passing laws that say you can run over protesters, that you're not going to have jobs, you're not going to have assistance.
So, yeah, I think the question now is what direction this takes.
And I think that this South Korean thing was something we should take a look at and be inspired by it.
For sure.
And I'm wondering if we can leverage the technology now to be even more creative with the way we protest because Perhaps it doesn't have to be some sort of million-person march on Washington.
It could be other ways that do have profound effects on the discussion and also cause enough of an inconvenience to people that they could be heard.
So there's something out there.
We'll have to kind of put our heads together collectively and figure out, and also particularly on a local level, too, to figure out how to then mobilize.
But I do feel that that's possible.
And, you know, it kind of does mirror into what we're going to talk about as far as UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson being murdered, because it does feel like it's a political assassination to some degree, certainly a statement against what healthcare has become in our country.
Yeah, I want to get into my takes on this, but I just want to ask you, what was your initial reaction, not just after you heard about this, probably saw it, but the reaction that you saw online and in these sort of public circles?
What was your reaction to all of this?
You know, just to give you an idea of how I think and how this goes, I kind of started the picture just like, how did he get away?
I don't know why.
That was sort of my thing.
And then I started to think about it because it connects to who was he, who was he sent by, or what was the motivation for this?
Because it does sound a little like in those movies that you see, those TV shows, where the guy is so smart that he does it there and he gets into the park where there are no cameras and he can get away, right?
Like it seemed like there were some little bit of details there where it sounded like it could have been a very professional setup.
But then there are things like the bullet casings have writing on them, right?
And then he left his phone and like a water bottle in the tunnel on the way as he's running away.
So things like that.
That indicates to me that it wasn't someone who's like one of those jackal, like the day the jackal kind of things where, you know, professional assassins.
So that's where my mind was kind of going to kind of trace like the forensic part of all of this, you know, versus even like sort of weighing in on like what this means, you know, politically and in terms of the healthcare system in general.
Well, I think in terms of the way this whole thing is playing out, and we're seeing sort of like these casings or whatever, and I just want to put this out there because I don't know how this story is going to evolve or what it's going to show.
Like, that might very well be a political, professional assassination that sprinkles in this stuff to go ahead and throw people off the scent.
But on top of that, Nick...
I want to focus on the fact that this guy who assassinated a CEO in broad daylight, more or less, out in Manhattan, has become something of a folk hero already.
What we've seen from people is, like, an excitement over the fact that this guy got murdered.
And I do not want to equivocate.
If you are in charge, if you are a CEO of a major healthcare corporation in this country, you are doing damage.
Period.
That is the thing I think a lot of people are missing out on this, is that when things get to the point, which is something we've documented, where the wealth class dominates something and they have so much money, but then on top of it, they start corrupting politics and it starts leading to actual consequences and even death and suffering.
People get to the point where they stop relying on democracy.
They stop relying on the laws.
We've seen the laws sort of fail and falter, particularly when it comes to the wealth class.
And Nick, I want to remind you.
We talked.
God, I can't even remember how long it was now.
I mean, what is time?
Back when Shinzo Abe was murdered in Japan, right?
I said, you know, one of the things that I'm keeping an eye on is we are probably entering into a period of assassinations.
We are probably entering into a period where a lot of people are going to start taking the law in their own hands because they feel like democracy or representative democracy doesn't work anymore.
And something I keep thinking about, Nick, is this.
Back in the early 20th century, during the era of robber barons, and even before that, you know, just as the wealth class concentrated wealth, who was celebrated, Nick, outlaws.
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