In this preview of The Weekender, Jared Yates Sexton begins by talking about the passage of the GOP domestic agenda through Congress in what represents possibly the penultimate blow to liberal democracy, the social-safety net, and the funding for full-blown authoritarianism. In the full episode, he discusses ICE becoming a domestic occupation force, the construction of a system of concentration camps, and how a dystopian future is being put in place.
To gain access to this episode and every other Weekender, and to support the show, head over to http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast and become a patron today.
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Hey everybody, welcome to the weekender edition of the Mutt Craig Podcast.
I'm JJ at Sexton.
Nick Houseman is still out of the country, so I'm flying solo.
No cracking open of a can today.
This one is not going to be a joyride.
I don't want to lie to you or tell you that this is necessarily going to be a fun broadcast.
But we do have to talk about some truly disturbing developments.
We have to talk about the passage of the Republican domestic agenda, what it means for us in terms of how it will change our lives, in terms of how we must wrap our heads around this, to understand it, where it comes from, and ultimately where we have to go from here.
I've said it before, and I want to state it again, that politics will break your heart.
They will bring you to your knees when you look at devastation, when you look at oppression, and when you look at exploitation.
It's all you can do sometimes to hold on to hope and to not become so discouraged that you throw up your hands and say, what is it that I can do or that anybody can do?
And I want to say before we get into this broadcast, which will have some tough moments in it, do not give up hope.
Because even if instead of talking about an absolute, dismal, embarrassing theft of a bill such as this one, the job is never done.
There is a fight ahead of us.
And we are going to have to do so much to repair the damage that has been done during this fascistic regime and to move beyond it.
It's not going to be just about repair, which is what we were promised in 2020.
But to look at what this is, to stare into its face, to look into the abyss and see what our future will be if we do not only reject this madness, these crimes, but to demand something far beyond what it's even taking from us.
So we're going to get into all of that.
We're going to discuss that and other developments that have been taking place.
We have a lot to get to.
I ask that if you are listening to this and you haven't already, head to patreon.com slash McGregpodcast.
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We need your support.
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I hope it resonates with you.
I hope it has helped.
I hope that illuminating this in some way, shape, or form makes it not only understandable, but provides something of a roadmap going forward, how we can move beyond this thing.
And of course, the story of the day, and I'm recording this on Thursday, July 3rd, and I hope you all have a happy, safe holiday weekend, although the meaning of it is rather dubious and off-putting at this point.
After Vice President J.D. Vance broke a tie in the Senate, the House GOP has approved the administration's domestic bill by a vote tally of 218 to 214, with two Republicans voting no.
What was once dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill, and my God, what an insult that is.
By being passed, it will extend and expand tax cuts for the wealthy.
It will hand deliver a staggering $150 billion to ICE, making it one of the wealthiest and most powerful military forces in the world.
It cuts Medicaid by more than a trillion dollars.
17 million people, an estimated 17 million people, will lose their health insurance.
Food assistance has been fundamentally hobbled completely.
America's rural hospitals, because of the Medicaid slashes, could very well disappear, leaving places like my hometown without much in the way of medical service.
God knows how many people are going to suffer and die because of this.
It is essentially the next step in the plundering of the United States of America by the wealth class, who have spent decades putting together a coalition of some of the most powerful people in the country to use their wealth and resources and
affluence to dismantle the federal government and reconfigure it into a redistribution machine that takes our wealth, takes our social programs, destroys them, liquidates them, and delivers them to their own pockets.
We are presently living in a moment of their design.
I wrote this week in my newsletter that fascism is theft, and that is the truth and it has always been the truth.
Authoritarianism is always a means of escalating the theft of wealth, property, and resources by any means necessary.
And they have exhausted every seemingly legitimate way, meaning that there's no need anymore to hide what they're doing.
And the only thing that is left is full-throated, unabashed plunder.
And that's what this is.
It is the using of state power, including through this administration, the Supreme Court, and Congress, to finish the job of stealing everything that they possibly can from us.
And operations like ICE and the other apparatuses of state power will be used to intimidate us, to hurt us, and to facilitate more shakedowns, which is what this is.
This is pure unvarnished robbery.
This has been a free preview of the weekender edition of the Mutt Greg Podcast.
If you'd like to listen to the rest of the episode and gain access to every additional episode on Fridays, as well as access to our Discord and special events, mailbags, all those good things, and if you want to support the show, please head over to patreon.com slash Mutt Gregpodcast and become a patron today.
