This is a preview of The Weekender edition of the Muckrake Podcast. Please go to our Patreon to gain access to the regular Weekender episodes on Fridays.
Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman answer questions from the wonderful Muckrake community - topics like the increasing fascism in this country to their favorite film directors, this episode is a testament to the intelligence and dedication of their listeners.
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Welcome to the Weekender edition of the My Correct Podcast.
I'm Jared A. Sexton.
I'm in a car.
Nick, I'm just absolutely shotgunned a Red Bull.
I'm ready for the subscriber mailbag edition of the Weekender.
How are you, my friend, Nick Hausman?
I'm good.
I'm good.
I'm just, you know, busy getting down to the brass tacks of the NBA playoffs, and it's fun.
All sorts of stuff.
Pacers.
Indiana Pacers.
They have a really good shot, by the way, Jared.
They have a really good shot.
We don't need to talk about it too much, but I'm very excited.
Alright, well, shall we get into the minute?
We have a lot of questions from a lot of different places.
We have a lot of questions.
We have a lot of questions.
So, again, if you are not part of the Patreon subscription, you should really get over there because we do these from time to time.
Just a fantastic community.
And really the smart questions and really push us to have to come up with some interesting answers that will hopefully be enlightening to people.
I mean, I certainly hope so.
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Nick, roll that beautiful bean footage.
Here we go.
Well, we have Lori Balland who wants to ask, any thoughts on the Iran situation?
We have family there, some full-time, some part-time, as well as green card and nationalized Iranian-born family here.
It's always my awareness.
Thank you.
So what are your thoughts here?
Laurie, I'm so sorry that you've got family over there, and undoubtedly that's very, very stressful.
Basically, the entirety of the modern era, and you know this, Nick, has been focused on Iran in one way or another, especially with neoconservatives like John Bolton, who've wanted to go to war with them forever.
There's now word that Israel might open up a new front by striking Iran and supposedly hitting their nuclear program.
It's unclear.
Because we don't know what Israel will do at this point.
Netanyahu and the people around him seem completely focused on settling every score that they've got and shooting every shot that they've got.
It's a worrying situation.
And the last thing that we need is another flashpoint going on in all this, another loss of innocent lives.
I am worried about this.
And, you know, I haven't seen anything that shows that the United States of America is interested in restraining Israel in any way, shape, or form.
I am still hoping that cooler heads prevail and that we will not see once more another attack and another flashpoint.
I agree.
It's very disheartening to think that they're going to get closer to Russia and China out of all of this, especially because we had an agreement in place under Obama, and simply for the fact that a black man did this agreement, it was canceled by Trump.
And so we would have had a really great opportunity to strengthen those ties.
And now these demands, which anything that we demand from them now would be excessive and outrageous, like they're saying, because we already had the plan in place and we just kind of, you know, willy-nilly on a whim decided to get rid of it all with no evidence.
And so, you know, the idea that Israel likes to try and ramp up this notion that they have this nuclear material, they're going to be able to make a bomb, you know, next week.
You know, that never really bore out.
It sounded a lot like why we went into Iraq.
And so it's so frustrating that we're still dealing with this, and I don't see anything changing for the better as long as Trump is in the White House.
Well, and this puts me in a really bad situation to have to say this out loud.
And as I say a little bit more, I think people will understand where I'm coming from.
You mentioned Iran's relationship with China and Russia, sort of the unofficial axis of resistance or whatever in the hell they want to call themselves at this point.
Israel is really close with Russia, and they work with Russia quite a bit.
Maybe Russia can run interference on this, and that is a terrible thing to wish.
It's much like looking at Amy Coney Barrett as the swing vote on the Supreme Court.
Having to say that out loud, but hopefully in some way, shape, or form, this can be avoided.
Great, great answer.
All right, let's get to our next question, which is, Annette, thoughts on succession from MAGA land?
Yeah, I don't agree with that.
And I also think that that is a really dangerous precedent to set.
As I've said in the past, I think that we have to hit a united front on this.
We have to understand there are a lot of people in so-called red states who are our allies.
They are being oppressed.
They deserve our allyship.
And what's more, as I've always said when it came to anything seceding, if you share a border with people who are part of another country and they're already belligerent, Counterpoint.
We're kind of already there in our own way there.
I do feel like there are sections of the country that are already kind of walled off to each other as it is.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
And I think that balkanization, it only serves the whims of the wealth class and authoritarians.
What they want is they want divide and conquer.
And I understand that there's a feeling of maybe there would be safety if maybe we could unchain ourselves from, you know, these lunatic assholes.
But at the same time, like, I think that that has been the strategy for a while anyway.
Fair enough.
Let's get to Kerry, who wants to know our thoughts on David Hogg, Malcolm Kenyatta's DNC controversy, in quotes.
Read headlines about how outlandish David was being about running the primary sitting congressman in his own party.
Found myself agreeing with him.
You know, I've talked to people within the Democratic Party and...
It sort of falls along a couple of lines, which I think has to do with the schism that you and I have been talking about for a while now.
Some people are like, well, this is a procedural thing.
It's going to get itself figured out.
And that is usually the sort of centrists and moderates and sort of the rank and file class of the Democratic Party.
I mean, they see David Hogg as a sort of internal insurgency.
And, you know, I can't remember if I was talking to you about this on the air, but I've been hearing a lot of talk of a lot of different apparatuses that are being put in place to try and take over the Democratic Party and force them to change.
But the people that I hear from who want the Democratic Party to change, they see this as a pretty much like open case of trying to push him out because he wanted to primary rank and file.
And so I look at this, I think I see it.
Much more along those latter lines.
I think that he said he wanted to primary people and they were like, okay, that's last straw.
We're going to get you out of here.
Yeah, I mean, this is politics and that's not the way you're, you know, A, supposed to do it.
And there might have been other ways that would have been more productive and kept him in the circle.
But at some point, if these elections continue to go more for the GOP...
You know, then he probably should just launch, you know, his own party at that point, right?
And, like, sort of try and get other people to join him.
Well, yeah, and I just want to make one last point because I think it should be illustrative and it goes off of what you were saying, which is...
Taking over a party is really difficult.
I mean, there's a reason why there are two major parties in this country and they haven't allowed much room for any sort of other party to take root, which is they have a monopoly over the donor base.
And they also, because they're the two major parties, they control a lot of the systems that allow people to get on ballots and be in debates and also fundraise.
And so you literally are going to have a struggle.
Over whether or not the Democratic Party is going to change or not.
Like, there's a reason why the rank and file doesn't want it to change.
And so what you just said is exactly right, Nick.
I think it's one of the, you know, biggest existential questions of the moment, which is, is the Democratic Party going to be able to change and reform, or is it going to resist it so heavily?
And by the way, we've covered this for years.
Look what happens every time that they see sort of an insurgency within the party.
They shut it down.
And they do it very quickly and they have a variety of ways of doing it.
So are they going to resist that to the point where there's going to be a need for another party?
Or is there going to be, you know, a base rebellion?
And I don't know.
I mean, what do you think?
If you had to, you know, we're playing a little fast and loose because it's a mailbag episode.
Do you think that somebody will be able to turn the party and change it?
Or do you think that eventually it's going to lead to some kind of new sort of representation?
Well, my thoughts are something like this, where the Democrats better be concerned that Bernie and AOC don't smoke a bowl tomorrow night while they're hanging out and then say, fuck it, we're going to create our own thing.
Because I don't see it being that hard for them to galvanize a whole bunch of pretty popular Democrats.
In theory, I think they might be able to do something like that and launch a parallel party, something inside of it.
Maybe it was even something like the Tea Party almost.
Because they need something like that, I would imagine, to spurn some sort of change.
So that would be the thing I think could happen.
Bernie's been going out there on some of the podcasts and lighting up the Democrats to some degree and talking about what they did to him in 2016.
That's the thing.
And you know what?
They're going to tell AOC she's too young and she hasn't been around long enough, whatever.
So if people like that want to start taking it into their own hands, why would they have to wait if they don't have to?
Well, let me just once more, because this is The Weekender and also because this is what we do.
We talk about this and I like to give glimpses into my processes and what I'm doing out in the world while I'm not recording with you.
I'll say this.
I'll be diplomatic about it.
What you just brought up as a possibility, there are several actions and there are several projects that are currently ongoing that are behind the scenes, that are not very loud, that I think kind of see the world through that lens.
And I won't get very much more specific about it, Nick, but I will say that in the work that I'm doing, I'm seeing a lot of signs of those types of things going on.
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