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Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the effect the fires have had on areas that aren't used to seeing fires like this, and whether climate change is leading to so many recent extreme weather events. But Trump can't stay out of the news, as the money laundering is getting creative as Amazon pays $40 million for the rights to a documentary about Melania no one will watch. They then reflect on the death of Jean-Marie Le Pen, who singlehandedly kept fascism alive in France for decades.
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Welcome to the Weekender Edition of the Buckwreck Podcast.
I'm Jared D. Sexton.
I'm here with my friend, my compatriot, my co-host, Nick Hausman, who, of course, lives in Los Angeles, California, and has been dealing with the fallout from the unprecedented historical fires in that region.
How are you doing, buddy?
I mean, I am very fortunate.
We're doing fine.
Everything was okay.
You know, the worst that we dealt with personally was just the awful air quality.
Not easy to breathe.
You can't really be outside.
The weird haze, you know, it casts a glow across the city of this weird orange, sickly orange thing.
But, you know, I had one of my good buddies had a sleepover last night because he lives in Hollywood and they were evacuated, which, just for context, like where the Runyon Canyon fire happens is a very popular place for people to go hiking, right?
Just like sort of where the Hollywood sign is.
We've never had fires through there.
And so this was unprecedented.
The winds were really, you know, 100 mile an hour winds in the Palisades.
So it's been, thankfully, I haven't been directly affected like that, but it's been scary and it's caused a lot of, you know, destruction in its wake.
Yeah, before we get into the reasons why this is happening, and of course, the right-wing radicalization and weaponization of this shit, what's it like in Los Angeles right now?
What's it like having people all around you who are dealing with this?
What is the general feeling in the city right now?
I think everyone is apprehensive and nervous because, again, it's a concrete jungle where I live.
We would never, ever be concerned about fires.
That would never be a thing because there's not a way for it to spread around here.
But when you started to see how it came down from Runyon Canyon toward Hollywood Boulevard...
All of a sudden, that would have been like the Chicago fire in 18, whatever that was.
It did have that feeling a little bit, and nervously watching the news.
Plus, it started popping up in random places.
North Hollywood all of a sudden had a fire, besides the places in Malibu.
So it was like, what is next?
And it was windy enough that, yes, if, you know, unfortunately, just whatever fire started, however it did, yes, when the wind is that high, it is just a really big concern.
And, you know, I don't even know if it helps to watch local news.
I don't know if you've ever watched local news.
I don't much anymore, but they were doing man-in-the-street interviews, and it was like, you know, I could know where they were and where they were talking, and it was just...
A new level of anxiety that we hadn't experienced in a while here.
You know, I've had a lot of people reach out from the McRae community asking me how you've been doing, Nick, and worrying after you.
And, you know, it's a really beautiful thing to have people who worry about this.
But also, I think, and we'll get into the political ramifications of this in a little bit.
Unfortunately, the experience that you're having is something that I think a lot of us are going...
Whether it's fire or tornadoes or flooding or drought or disease or whatever it is, I think we're being...
Shot put, more or less, into a new era.
Personally, as your friend, I've been worried sick about you, and I think everybody else has as well.
This is, unfortunately, I think, not a new normal because we've been dealing with this for a while, but I do think that this is the emerging future that we're kind of looking at at this point.
Oh, I think without question, especially on the coasts.
The coasts are going to be really susceptible to this, especially because of the waters rising.
You know, you're going to see things like, you know, my dad is in Sarasota, and, you know, they got hit with two consecutive hurricanes during the season, which hadn't ever happened in years and years.
And, yeah, it will probably become more prevalent.
I mean, I don't even want to say, like, earthquakes could become affected by this, but I feel like there probably is some science that would argue that it's somehow connected as well.
So it is really, really troubling, and I wish we could have an argument on just the merits of climate change when this stuff happens.
If they would just stay focused on that, then at least it wouldn't feel as horrible as it does now, because across the country, we're seeing what people are trying to spin this into.
And it's truly awful.
Yeah, and we're going to get into that.
We have a full show today.
We're going to be talking about these fires, the reaction to it, as well as Trump's push for Greenland, Panama Canal, and Canada, which also figure into this exact topic.
The beginning of the show is going to be very heavy in climate change and what is actually happening in American and world politics as a result of this.
We have to talk about the Facebook moderation thing, $40 million being spent for a Melania Trump update, and also more.
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Nick, the fire that is happening not too far from you in Los Angeles, of course, resulting from dry conditions and incredible historic winds that have fanned the flames, has now burned over 27,000 acres, destroyed a known over 2,000 structures, killed at least five people, probably more.
Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated, purely an apocalyptic scene there in Los Angeles.
Unfortunately, as we've sort of been tiptoeing around, this is the type of thing that we should expect more of.
As climate change is not addressed, as the multiple conditions that create the crisis that we've been covering and discussing for years now, everything from...
Resource extraction, austerity in our politics, what things are funded, what things aren't, changing climate conditions, as well as many tragedies that we're not even going to know about.
I mean, you and I were talking about off mic about insurance and whether or not some of these people are going to be covered.
And we've covered in the past in past episodes that insurance companies are going to stop covering people and stop offering them, you know, coverage in places like this.
This is a worsening tragedy with every passing day.
And, you know, it pisses me off to no end that not only are you in the line of this, I know people who have had to evacuate.
I know people who have had to leave their homes and possibly lose everything.
And the fact that this is only going to continue to become more commonplace and the fact that this is not going to be solved anytime soon, it fills my heart with rage.
And, you know, you can try and sort of figure out, well, who's to blame on this and why is this happening?
You know, when you have winds that high, the littlest thing, you know, you can have power lines that get blown down and then spark, and then all of a sudden it's done.
You see a lot of people, and Trump is one of those people who keep trying to say that, like, because Gavin Newsom...
Who is not in charge of the Forestry Service of California, but because he's not out there raking dry leaves in the middle of the forest, it's why we have these things, which is so far from the science, or controlled burns.
We don't have controlled burns.
You can't do controlled burns in Runyon Canyon.
The thing would go up in flames if you tried to even control that kind of thing.
It's not how that works.
And so the only solution you're looking at is, okay, if you want to try to have power lines that are not above ground, well, you would need, you know, I don't even know how much money it would cost to do that and how long that would take.
It would take a very long time.
It's not really practical at this point.
So it simply is what it is, and we have to be able to have enough response and resources to handle it and limit the damage, but you're never going to eliminate it.
Well, I mean, it would help if we had a federal work program that invested in people going around and updating infrastructure.
Like, if we're not going to solve the principal conditions that are creating climate change, I mean, you might as well pay people to make the country more ready for climate change.
You know, you could go ahead and do that, but none of these solutions are on the menu.
The problem here, Nick, and, you know, you and I, we're a little bit, you're a little bit older than I am, but I think you and I both grew up in a time in which we would go to school and we would be handled, you know, handed magazines that, what were those?
Like, we had, like, Ranger Rick, you know, Weekly Reader.
You know what I'm talking about?
Those type of scholastic type publications.
And we heard about climate change going back into the 1980s.
And I would read these articles and it would hurt.
I would read about animals that were becoming extinct or about ecosystems that were being affected.
And I always expected at some point or another there would be some sort of an incident that would happen where everybody would throw up their hands and suddenly say, hey, we need to do something about this.
I was naive about capitalism.
I was naive about what capitalism was going to do.
Not only was it going to exacerbate climate change, but it was going to figure out ways to profit from it, which has created this new situation, Nick, where we can say the Republican Party says climate change is real.
The Republican Party knows climate change is real.
Donald Trump knows climate change is real.
The oil executives, energy executives, the oligarchs, they all know it's real.
What we're actually watching right now and how this is covered...
Is how they're handling climate change, which is they're figuring out how to hide what is happening while profiting off of it and also benefiting their own political agendas.
So what have we seen?
We've seen an environment of cruelty and human indignity that's been created.
We're now treating immigrants the same way we're going to treat climate refugees.
refugees.
We're basically going to give resources to people who are favored in status while other people can either die or be displaced.
And on top of that, we're just going to go ahead and take advantage of the conditions that are being created.
This is climate fascism, and it is being carried out in plain sight now, and we're getting the answer, which is they're not going to come to their senses.
They're going to put their foot down on the accelerator, and then they're going to profit from it.
I don't know how I feel when you say that they know that climate change is real.
I honestly feel like, I mean, maybe Trump, I guess.
But when you hear some of the others, you really truly feel like they just assume this is just a natural cycle of millions of years of our, you know, of the environment.
I don't know.
But it doesn't really matter, right?
That doesn't really matter because, again, the science is in.
And I don't know why anybody would want to screw around.
I remember when, like, CFCs were banned when we did spraying of, you know, for deodorant.
Aerosol cans.
Yeah, aerosol cans.
They had CFCs were banned in 1987, right?
No one gave a shit.
No one said anything about, oh, these are lefty environmentalists.
We just did it.
And we were all like, yeah, that makes sense.
Let's not put that out in our atmosphere.
So even then, in the middle of the Reagan years, we didn't have this kind of pushback like we do now.
I think it's safe to say that, right?
Well, yes, I think that is true, but at the same time, like, they've been denying climate change since they found out about it.
I mean, the energy companies have known about this since the 1950s, 1960s.
They've known all along, and they have just created their own infrastructure to hide this stuff, alternate academics and alternate intelligentsia.
You know, you bring up an interesting point.
You say you don't know if Trump knows.
That's a great point.
He is so addled that we don't actually know what he's talking about.
And of course, we're going to get into Greenland here in a second, which is part of eco-fascism, and we'll talk about why that is.
He might not know what is real and what's not.
You know, a lot of people tell themselves, like, very convenient fairy tales.
Well, it's just a cycle.
Oh, it's not real.
But a lot of people have been working overtime and spending billions upon billions of dollars in order to make tens of billions and hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars, to go ahead and keep these things going.
So there is a class of the right and of the Republican Party that knows full and well that this is a thing.
The same way there are people within the Democratic Party who know that climate change is real and have no interest.
So at this point, without a major sea change...
You and I and the people listening to this, we're all going to experience it.
Whether it's food shortages, droughts, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, whatever it is, poor air, you know, like all of these things are eventually coming for us.
And the hardening apparatus of authoritarian state power is there to keep us in our place and to keep us from being protected from it and to keep us from being taken care of because of it.
And so as a result, like what we're actually dealing with now are the full consequences of this thing coming into full view.
You could argue that one of the reasons why they really want a wall along the southern border is to stop people who are having to come here because of the environment.
You can picture the apocalyptic thing.
As the global south suffers, for sure.
There's no water.
There's no resources.
We're the only place that has them, and people are going to be coming.
That's why they want to do this.
I feel really bad there.
There was a guy who was very wealthy living in the Palisades who tweeted out, like, does anybody know of a private company that can...
What a putz, by the way.
Well, listen, the guy was probably in the most dire straits.
It's like, what do you...
Yes, after years of talking about how he didn't want to pay taxes.
Oh, I didn't see that part.
Oh, yeah, no.
He was a big MAGA guy who wanted to get rid of all taxes.
Yeah, so he somehow figures there must be somebody that can come because I'm wealthy and save just my house and no one else's house because I'm going to pay them to do that.
But again, that does line up with that notion of we will have to surround ourselves with walls and keep anybody else out so we can hoard all these resources, which is even worse.
It's like when we see those shows where, you know, they got the guns and they're going to just kill innocent people who are just desperate for something and some sort of food, whatever.
But I think we also need to fold this into like what the reaction of the right is and why they're trying to blame, who they're trying to blame for what's happening right now in L.A. specifically.
Yeah, and it's a pretty...
Pretty predictable pattern.
What we've seen from the Republican Party, and by the way, a lot of them have taken a great joy at watching Los Angeles burn.
You know, they've enjoyed, you know, the liberal bastion of LA burning.
They have blamed everything from DEI to Gavin Newsom, saying the deep state wants to create, you know, a carceral state and or bring in like a new utopia or whatever.
Basically, what has happened at this point is that...
We've talked about in the past, Nick, about getting rid of, like, science and getting rid of experts, right?
So the problem is, as climate change gets worse, you'll just get rid of the metrics that will explain it, right?
Things will just keep happening, and we'll go back to becoming more and more superstitious.
Well, you know what happened back in the day whenever there would be a plague?
Do you know who they blamed, Nick?
You have to know.
Don't tell me it's the Jews.
It was the Jews, right?
The Jews had poisoned the wells.
The Jews were passing along the sickness.
They were doing this.
They were doing that.
In all of these crises, regardless of what it is, they're going to go ahead and redirect the blame from what it actually is in this time, climate change and austerity, and they're going to go ahead and redirect it to their political enemies.
It is as predictable as it is effective, unfortunately.
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