It Could Happen Here Weekly 14

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file.2

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Once the last time you took a time out. I'm
Ev Rodsky, author of the New York Times bestseller fair
Play and Find Your Unicorn Space, activists on the gender
division of labor, attorney and family mediator. And I'm doctor
Addina Rukar, a Harvard physician and medical correspondent with an
expertise in the science of stress, resilience, mental health, and burnout.

(00:22):
We're so excited to share our podcast, time Out, a
production of I Heart Podcasts and Hello Sunshine, repealing back
the layers around why society makes it so easy to
guard men's time like it's diamonds and treat women's time
like it's infinite, like sand. And so, whether you're partnered
with or without children, or in a career where you
want more boundaries, this is the place for you for

(00:43):
people of all family structures. So take this time out
with us to learn, get inspired, and most importantly, reclaim
your time. Listen to Time Out, a fair Play podcast
on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or We're
ever you get your podcasts. Conquer your New Year's resolutions

(01:06):
with the Before Breakfast podcast, and each bite sized daily episode,
you'll learn how to make the most of your time
with practical tools to help you feel less busy and
get more done. Listen to Before Breakfast on the i
Heart Radio app for wherever you get your podcasts. The
Gangster Chronicles podcast is a weekly conversation that revolves around
the underworld and criminals and entertainers to victims's crime and

(01:29):
law enforcement. We cover all facets of the game. Gainst
The Chronicles podcast doesn't glorify, promotilictit of activities. We just
discussed the ramifications and repercussions of these activities because at
the wall, if you played gamester games, you are ultimately
rewarded with Gainster prizes. Our Heart Radios number one for podcasts,
but don't take our award for it. Find Against the

(01:49):
Chronicles podcast and my Heart Radio app or wherever you
get your podcast. Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and I
wanted to let you know this is a compiletion episode.
Every episode of the week that just happened is here
in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for
you to listen to in a long stretch if you want.

(02:10):
If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you
can make your own decisions. Welcome to it could happen
here a podcast about things falling apart, how they came
to be that way. I'm your host, Christopher Wong, and
today we're doing part three of our series of Neoliberalism.

(02:31):
We're gonna start today with one of the most famous
episodes in history of neoliberalism, September eleventh coup against Salvator
Allende was a democratic socialist of a type that has
broadly ceased to exist today. A committed Marxist to believe
that a class of society could be created by means
of electoral democracy, he embarked on a campaign drastically more

(02:53):
radical than any modern socialist politician has done, more than
dream of mass nationalizations, in an attempt to develop a
technical system that would allow the government to democratically plan
as much of the economy as humanly possible. In part,
his hand was forced by Chile's workers, who had embarked
on their own unsancitioned campaign of takeovers of minds and factories,

(03:14):
which I Andy disapproved of and now sought to bring
under the national planning scheme. To do this, he brought
in British cybernetics theorist Stanford Beer, who embarked on an
operation called Project Cybersen to collect and coordinate information between
various factories and allow democratic planning at the ground level
in a way that would allow stantaneous reaction to crises

(03:35):
and immediate changes in production levels and conditions inside the
factories themselves to deal with them. All End for all
of s Barker's credentials was fiercely critical of the bureaucratization
of the U. S s R, and, in particular in
the economic sphere, the way its planning systems were essentially
unable to react to local changes quickly in a context
where plans were only created every five years. Cybersen would

(03:58):
solve these problems by workers participle patient at the factory
level and constant updated data flows to the planning office.
As the project went on, Beer became progressively more radical.
Strike by right wing truck workers backed by capitalists in
the CIA in nineteen two threatened to grind the nation
to a halt. In response, workers formed enormous coodonas industrialities

(04:20):
or industrial belts to help self organized production and bypass
the striking right wing workers in coordination with the Andia's
government and a new cybers in control room. They were
able to outmaneuver the strike and maintain production and distribution
and nearly full capacity by tracking where goods were going
and where they needed to go along what roots. Beer
rapidly became convinced that quote the basic answer of cybernetics.

(04:43):
The question of how the system should be organized, is
that it ought to organize itself, in essence, that cybersen
should be used to eliminate the bureaucracy in the state
entirely and allow workers to directly organize production themselves. Now,
Cybersen in theory is what the neillerbles claim, at least
in public, to want, is an anti bureaucratic system that

(05:04):
uses the centralized control over the means of production to
combat totalitarianism and ensure that the state respects individual rights
and liberties. In fact, as if Vengi Monuos put it,
Pierre and Hayek knew each other. As Beer noted in
his diary, Hayek even complimented him on his vision for
the cybernetic factory after Beer presented at a conference in
the nineteen sixty in Illinois. So, naturally, when the system

(05:27):
was actually implemented, at least in part Chile. The new
liberal position was that every single person involved in the
entire economic exparment needed to be killed. Chile was put
under economic blockade by the US and multinational corporations with
full neilerable support, an ironic position given Milton Friedman, Hayek
and Rope case pure and absolute opposition to economic blockades
of South Africa Rhodesia to its eternal shame. The a

(05:50):
f L c i O's American Institute for Free Labor
Development provided training and funds to the right wing unions
that opposed the leftist government and others across Latin America.
In Chile, working directly with the CIA, the a f
L c i OS organizations to train the right wing
truckers whose nineteen seventy two strike we've already discussed and
whose nineteen seventy three strike would pave the way for
Pinochet's coup. In many cases, organized labor, especially in the US,

(06:15):
but also in places like Italy, spent the seventies battling
their own left flank in defensive capital. Their reward for
their service as was capital turning around and dutting them
like a fish in the eighties, Allen two fought a
series of battles with this left flank, disarming the mass
workers assemblies that had formed in nineteen seventy two and
could have saved him from the coup. The results was
the Other nine eleven, on which day in nineteen seventy three,

(06:38):
the military overthrew Allende and a coup, and Allende shot
himself in the presidential palace. The man who would emerge
on the top of the power struggle in the military
at the end of the coup was one Augusto Pinochet. Now.
Pinochet from the beginning had the support of Chile's own
domestic neo liberals, of which they were a fairly large number.
Upon taking power, he carried out what would become the

(06:59):
standard neo liberal program, returning nationalized industries to the capitalists,
eliminating price controls, and increasing interest rates, But full scale
neoliberalism didn't come immediately. Inflation, which Pinochet had nominally in
large part taken power to control, continued unabated, and in
nineteen seventy four Milton Friedman arrived in Chile to argue

(07:20):
for neoliberal shock therapy, but it wasn't until Pinochet's desperation
from money drove him to the I m F that
he would fully embrace neoliberalism. Most of the world had
refused to do business with new dictatorial regime, with the
exception of the U S and oddly enough Mao's China,
which poured money into the regime and Pinochet's personal pockets.
But that money was insufficient, and the I m F

(07:42):
was the only remaining body who would actually lend money
to Pinochet without any requirements on improving Chile's At this
point of Bismo human rights record, much of the full
neoliberal turn that hit Chile in ninety five came from
demands from the I m F itself, who demanded Conian
measures to control inflay. Here, Pinochet was aided by the

(08:02):
supporter of the neoliberals, whose legitimacy and academic standing allowed
them to negotiate and secure favor from the I m F,
which they had already begun to infiltrate. At this point,
the infamous Chicago Boys, economist trains at the University of
Chicago by Milton Freeman, were put in charge of the economy.
University of Chicago trained economist Sergio di Castro, known as

(08:22):
the Pinochet of the Economy was put in charge of
the Ministry of Economics. To Castro, privatized an enormous portion
of the remaining profitable state industries, eliminated tariffs and implemented
free trade policies, deregulated the finance sector, and eliminated any
remaining price controls. Chicago Boys would go on to do
things like privatizing the entire Chilean pension system with the
exception of the military, which is a good education of

(08:45):
any as to what the regime thought the actual effects
of privatization would be. In ninety eight, Pinochet declared something
called the Seven Modernizations, with quote reforms in labor, education, health,
regional decentralization, agriculture, and justice policy. The goal of these
reforms was to introduce the market into literally every aspect

(09:07):
of society. Now in episode one, I've very briefly mentioned
the Virginia School as one of the major schools of
deal liberalism. The Virginia School the people behind public choice theory.
Their thing is essentially taking the absolutely absurd set of
beliefs Chicago School holds about people. Humans are all knowing, rational,
calculating gods, optimizing their behavior to get the most of

(09:29):
every single interaction to maximize the utility, and then applying
it to political science and then literally every other field.
If you've ever heard someone say there's no rational reason
to vote, because if you're a rational, self interested person,
the cost of voting outwighs that benefit because your vote
only matters if a deciding one. Therefore, it's against your
interest to vote. That's the Virginia School and their public

(09:50):
choice theory bullshit at work. Pinochet's Seven Modernizations was an
application of Virginia School doctrine to the entire Chilean state
and as much as the siety he is humanly possible,
with the goal of transforming it into a market. I'm
going to read a section from the Road to Mount
Pelion describing Virginia School titan James M. Buchanan's work. Quote

(10:12):
Ineffectual consequences in the political market place were blamed solely
on the fallacies of political decision making. We can summarize
public choice as a theory of government failure end quote.
Buchanan delivered a highly abstract paper titled limited or Untitled
Democracy to the Montpellion Society in Vina del Mar in Chile,

(10:32):
which some constructed as a critique of the host country's
mobilization for action history. Buchanan stated that if limited democracy
was a polity predisposed to disable a political market that
would otherwise promote the most efficient allocation of resources, the
only meaningful task of the government would be to deprive
the polity of its ability to do so. Public choice

(10:53):
theory thus sought to limit democracy and deep politicize the
state in order to enable unconstrained market forces to guide
human into action. Since the Pinochet regime was committed to
using its governmental powers in precisely this manner, Buchanan's paper
provided theoretical support for the regime, even if it did
not openly endorsed the authoritarian rule. Buchanan, of course, would

(11:15):
spend a bunch of time doing lectures in Chile throughout
Pinochet's icatorship, but he was not that regime's most vociferous
neoliberal supporter. That award goes to Frederick Hyak Chris Hiek
when asked about Chile, which had been to ninety eight
and that blessed with his approval, aedicatorship can restrict itself
in a educatorship which deliberately is restricting itself can be
more liberal in its politics than a democratic assembly, which

(11:37):
has due limits. Chile's nineteen eighty constitution was drafted in
part by one of Hiak's friends. He has wrote Road
Abount Pelion Again. The constitution was not only named after
hias book The Constitution of Liberty, but also incorporated significant
elements of hias thinking. Above all, the Constitution placed a
strong emphasis on a neoliberal understanding of freedom. Guzman version

(12:00):
of freedom is intrinsically connected to private property, free enterprise,
and individual rights. Individual freedom, in his interpretation, can only
evolve in a radical market order. The Constitution was dedicated
to guarantee such an order without constraining any economic activities.
In order to protect free market conditions and individual freedoms
against totalitarian attacks or democratic interventions, the Constitution stipulated a

(12:25):
necessity of a strong central state authority to guarantee the
established rule of law, and thus, above all else is
hampered in the application of discretionary government power. Exempted were
measures to uphold the status quo, inasmuch as Goose Bond
aggressively supported continuing the state of emergency, which legalized the
use of whatever discretionary powers were deemed necessary. Quial opposition

(12:49):
that Folks is a high achi in constitution used the
state to murder any one wants democracy or God help them,
wants to control the production their forced to serve every day.
Chile is near liberals voltron By combinding the power of
all four major schools of neoliberalism Chicago School Monetary and
Economic policy, Austrian School Constitutional order order, liberal reliance on

(13:11):
the international bureaucracy and legal institutions like the I m
F in order to promote a market economy, and Virginia
School public choice theory running the state, you get a neoliberal,
right wing military dictatorship. Now most conventional accounts of neoliberalism
will move from Chile to Reagan and Thatcher and next
episode will cover the neoliberal kind of revolution in the

(13:33):
angle sphere. But focusing on purely national events gives a
skewed perception of how neoliberalism actually spreads, and in order
to correct that, we're going to look at Venezuela. I'm
going to be drawing heavily here from the work of
the legendary Venezuelan anthropologist Fernando core and Neil in his
book The Magical State, which I highly recommend as one
of the best things that are written about oil and

(13:55):
the Venezuelan state, so readers be warned. Chapter one is
an absolute slow dog that, on the one hand, is
one of the most interesting explanations of what oiler rents
are have ever encountered, but also features coroneal inventing a
new trielectic and then stubbornly refusing to explain what it
is or literally anything about how it works. So read
the Magical State skip chapter one now. The guiding principles

(14:18):
of the new mass capitalists, democratic parties and posted katorship.
Venezuela since the nineties sixties had been developing sovereignty by
economic independence. The keystone of this project was an attempt
to use the power of the state in new oil
rents to develop an automotive industry. The project has sort
of stalled out from its origins in the sixties until

(14:38):
the rise of the G seventy seven Opeque Alliance in
ninet nineteen seventy four that we discussed last episode. In
nineteen seventy five, Venezuela's Assembly passed a law that granted
the president's special powers to speed up the developments of
the auto industry. Corn the auto industry in Venezuela. Corneal
described it thus quote, The central goal was to have

(14:59):
the vehicle value, including the drive train, produced locally. By
nineteen eighty five. Major components would be produced by enterprises
having at least fifty one percent of their capital from
local private sources. Existing foreign companies would have to become
mixed or national firms in accord within day impact regulations
if they wanted to benefit from the common market. Now,

(15:19):
this plan is what's called industrial import substitution. Developing countries
would attempt to develop industries, in this case auto manufacturers
inside of a country to produce cars for internal consumption
instead of importing them from other countries. The other key
of this plan is the end Impact, an association of Bolivia, Columbia, Ecuador,
Peru and Chile that was collaborating to develop a regional

(15:41):
industrial economy, that we use local resources to build a
local industrial economy producing industrial goods made entirely inside of
the countries themselves from their resources. Now, Venezuela joins the
pack in nineteen seventy three and Pinochet notably leaves in
ninety seven. The key sticking points in this joint and
day impact Venezuela attempt to build an auto industry was

(16:03):
that Venezuela needed technology held by multinational corporations in order
to actually produce the vehicles. Multinational car companies were willing
to go ahead with the project to build cars in
Venezuela in the short term because they were hurting from
the oil shock and thus were willing to help national
plans develop cars as long as they could use the
parts to build their own cars with parts source from
around the world. And this is where the neoliberal defensive

(16:24):
intellectual property rights becomes extremely important, because the companies who
held the patents for the drive trains essentially had a
technological strangleholder for car development. Now, Venezuela conducted an extensive
bidding process for companies to make cars in Venezuela, but
the car companies essentially sabotaged it by submitting designs that
failed specs. The result was a kind of political war

(16:46):
inside Venezuela and particularly inside the Venezuelan ruling class, between
national developments and international profits. The Venezuelan developmentalists needed a breakthrough.
What they needed, in essence, was new international economic order
and its corporate regulations. Debt relief and technology transfers. Without them,

(17:07):
even a third World country like Venezuela, flush with oil
money was incapable of developing an industrial economy. But the
new international economic order never came. All the G seven
had to do in order to stop it was stall
the G seventy seven out until commodity power faded. The
G seventy seven had to fundamentally change the structure of
the economy in order to allow them to industrialize before

(17:29):
the sort of damocles hanging over all their heads the
mounting Third World debt fell and decapitated them. The G
seven strategy to outlast the seventy seven was to pull
the various factions in the seventy seven apart, in particular
pulling the moderate governments away from the radical wing OPEC
and the African Socialists. They attacked OPEC by using Saudi

(17:49):
Arabia to undermine its unity, and attempted to peel the
so called less developed countries away from their alliance with
OPEC with a promise of aid to patch up the
damage dealt by increased prices. Neither worked incredibly well, but
when combined with the US essentially shutting the U N
down by refusing to let any business get done, refusing
to vote for or even vetoing routine matters. The stalling worked,

(18:14):
no new international economic order was forthcoming. Instead, the world
would get neoliberalism. Neoliberalism arrived on the world stage in
the form of the Vulcar Shock. In nineteen seventy nine,
Jimmy Carter appointed Paul Vulcar as the Chairman of the
Federal Reserve for the broad mandate to do whatever he
wanted to reduce inflation. Vulcar had become a disciple of monitorism,

(18:36):
a Freedman Night Chicago School belief about the role of
the money supply in the economy, considered to be absolutely
crank even by modern neoliberals. His solution, which became known
as the Vulcar Shock, was to increase interest rate. This
essentially blew a crater in the American economy and immediately
sent it into recession. And we'll get to Vulcar at
Reagan's efforts to destroy American labor in the next episode.

(18:56):
But the damage to the Third World was even worse.
G seventy seven, governments had for decades taking on adjustable
rate loans pegged to something called the libor rate. When
they took the loans out, interest rates were virtually negative,
but when the Vulgar shock hit, the skyrocketed. Now, as
we talked about the last episode, a major part of

(19:16):
the crisis of the seventies was enormous piles of oil money,
mostly from the Gulf States, floating around that nobody could
actually get returns on because of declining manufacturing profit rates.
This money wound up flowing back into the American finance system.
When capital controls are lifted nineteen seventy five, the banks
through the money at loans in the Third World. Now,
some of that money had been put into industrial development

(19:37):
that had yet to pay off. Some of the money
had simply been put directly into dictator's bank accounts. But
the bank's essentially didn't care if the loans they were
making had little to no chance of being repaid without
some kind of structure reformed. Because in envy, control of
the I m F fell to an arch neo liberal
name Jacquis de la Rossier. I really don't know if

(19:57):
that's how he pronounce his name, but he is evil.
So neo liberals further took control of the World Bank
in nine from the I M f and the World Bank.
A secession of neo liberals enshrined the key principle of
the new neoliberal order. Debtors must always pay back their debts.
Creditors would no longer assume risk for their loans. Instead,
loans would be repaid at gunpoint. This was no mere

(20:19):
rhetorical slogan, as the G seventy seven imploded as a
political body under the weight of hundreds of billions of
dollars of debt now with interest. Thomas Sankara, the socialist
president of Burkina Fosso, attempted to rally its remains into
collectively negotiate debt relief. Sakara was promptly shot by a
former ally who accused him of threatening Burkina Fossil's relationship

(20:40):
with France. With all resistance slaughtered, entire nations were reduced
to debt servicing machines, as tax dollars were directed from health, education,
and social security programs into the coffers of international banks,
which used the newly neo liberal controlled International Monetary Fund
as their enforcer. The anthropologist David Graeber described the consequence
of one such I m F austerity program in debt

(21:01):
the first five thousand years quote. For almost two years
I had lived in the highlands of Madagascar. Shortly before
I arrived, there had been an outbreak of malaria. It
was a particularly virulent outbreak because malaria had been wiped
out in Highlight Madagascar many years before, so that after
a couple of generations, most people had lost their immunity.
The problem was it took money to maintain those mosquito

(21:23):
radication programs, since there had to be periodic tests to
make sure mosquitoes weren't starting to breed again, and spraying
campaigns if it was discovered that they were not a
lot of money. But owing to IMF and post austerity programs,
the government had to cut the monitoring program. Ten thousand
people died. I met young mothers grieving for lost children.
One might think it would be hard to make a

(21:44):
case that the loss of ten thou human lives is
really justified in order to ensure that City Bank wouldn't
have to cut his losses on one irresponsible loan that
wasn't particularly important to its balance sheet anyways. Following the
old old or liberal dream of a legal framework to
ensure neoliberal market economies, the new generation of neoliberals used
the I m F, World Bank and other bureacratic institutions

(22:05):
to act as dead enforcers and the imposed neoliberal policies
from above, without anything so petty as democracy interfering with it.
In fact, one of the first neo liberal structural adjustments,
one of a bewildering new array of terms for I
m F and force austerity programs, was implemented by the
Jamaican socialist Michael Manly in nineteen seventy seven, which in

(22:26):
a single year wiped out every gain in education in
public health that Madly had spent his first term building up.
Similar faith would befall health, education, and justice programs across
the world. The death toll remains unknown. Venezuela would fall
victim to a similar fate. Without the new international Economic order,
Venezuela's industrial policy imploded as post Volcra shock government debt

(22:50):
skyrocketed in the nineteen eighties, the government began to impose
ims structural adjustments. Carlos Andres Perez, the man who led
the industrial push in the Nite and seven ins, was
elected a second time in nineteen eighty nine, running a
campaign that I've seen euphemistically described as quote against liberalization policy.
It was somewhat more extreme than that, featuring lines such

(23:13):
as calling the I m F quote a bomb that
only kills people. But Perez was negotiating with the I
m F behind the scenes and imposed even harsher I
m F Asteria measures upon winning the election, leading to
a mass uprising in nineteen eighty nine that was suppressed
in a bath of blood, with hundreds killed by the army.
But even more structural adjustments were imposed after Perez was

(23:33):
deposed for corruption n implemented ironically by the founder of
the Movement towards Socialism, Teodoro Petkof, the head of Venezuela's
planning agency in nineteen ninety six. All of Venezuela's economic
crisis from the nineteen eighties until now stem from the
failures of nineteen seventies industrialization. Without any kind of industrial economy,

(23:54):
even the socialists that took power in the nine A
national level were reduced to shuffling oil and surround and
with the market economy still in place, the economy is
simply imploded again when the royal prices fell. This is
how neoliberalism comes to most countries not as policies implemented
by anything even remotely resembling the will of the people,

(24:15):
but enforced by the international economic system itself and the
bureaucrats the I m F, the World Bank, and the
World Trade Organization. It is imposed by enormous states at gunpoints,
constituted by the mass looting of the population in order
to pay corporate debt. Masters new liberals have effectively achieved
their goal and transcendent democratic politics entirely from their purchase

(24:35):
in the international bureaucracy. They can dictate policy to even
hostile leaders. But tomorrow we'll see what happens when they
take power domestically. As we would conclude our Neoliberalism series
with a man rotting in Hell with Paul Walker Ronald
Reagan when P. T. Barnum's Great American Museum burned to

(24:59):
the ground and eighteen six five what rose from its
ashes would change the world. Welcome to Grim and Mild
presents an ongoing journey into the strange, the unusual, and
the fascinating. For our inaugural season, we'll be giving you
a backstage tour of the always complex and often misunderstood
cultural artifact that is the American side show, So come

(25:21):
along as we visit the shadowy corners of the stage
and learn about the people who were at the center
of it all in a place where spectacle was king.
We will soon discover there's always more to the story
than meets the eye. So step right up and get
in line. Listen to Grim and Mile Presents now on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

(25:42):
listen to podcasts. Learn more over at Grim and Mild
dot com Slash Presents. I'm Jake Calbern, host of deep Cover.
Our new season is about a lawyer who helped the
mob run Chicago. We control the courts, We controlled absolutely everything.
He brobed judges and even helped a hit man walk free,

(26:05):
until one day when he started talking with the FBI
and promised that he could take the mob down. I've
spent the past year trying to figure out why he
flipped and what he was really after. From my perspective,
Bob was too good to be true. There's got to
be something wrong with this. I wouldn't trust that guy.
He looks like a little scum, big liar, stool pidgeon.

(26:25):
He looked like what he was or at I can
say with all certainty. I think he's a hero because
he didn't have to do what he did, and he
did it anyway. The moment I put the wire around
the first time, my life was over. If it ever
got out, they would kill me in a heartbeat. Listen
to deep Cover on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Colleen with joined

(26:50):
me the host of Eating Will Broke podcast. While I
Eat a meal created by self made entrepreneurs, influencers and
celebrities over a meal they once ate when they were broke.
Today I have the lovely aj Crimson, the official Princess
of compon, Asia Kidning and Assia. This is the professor.
We're here on Eating While Broke and today I'm gonna
break down my meal that got me through a time

(27:12):
when I was broken. Listen to Eating While Broke on
the I Heart Radio app, on Apple podcast or wherever
you get your podcasts. Welcome to It Could Happen Here
a show about things falling apart and is for one
final time this week about why and how things have

(27:37):
fallen apart in this specific way. Um, I'm I'm I'm
your host Christopher and Today with Me, I have Garrison, Garrison, HELLU,
how you doing. I'm doing fine. We're gonna talk about
something that's not fine. It's not fine at all, is
in fact extremely grim and bad, which is part four
of our series of deal Liberalism, i e. All of

(28:00):
the bad things happened at once, so in in in
in all last episode we talked about how throughout throughout
most of the Third World or you know what was
at the time known as the Third World, new liberalism
is not really imposed by people voting for it. It's
mostly imposed by either external forces via coup or by

(28:21):
just the I m F going okay, just we're running
the country now, um, but this this, yeah, we're we're
gonna shift our focus a bit this episode with the
people who were I don't know, unfortunate enough, misguided enough,
decided that they hated each other enough to actually choose
neoliberalism for themselves. Now, one of the sort of stories

(28:43):
we've been tracing here on sort of a very broad
arc is the reaction by ne liberals to kind of
kind of compromise it had been worked out between labor
and capital, particularly the US after sort of the open
class warfare in the reteen thirties, and you know, there's
essentially this there's a kind of deal that's set up informally,
which is so the we're working class will stop literally

(29:06):
constantly going on strike and showing up the strikes with
like enormous numbers of guns and shooting at people, and
they will you know, stop trying to overshow the government
in exchange, the state gives you welfare programs, the state
will give you a house. And this is this is
particularly after what we're too the Americans say it just
you know, does this massive homeownersial campaign. And you know,
if if you're if you're if you're you know, a
union worker, particularly if you're a white man like this, this,

(29:29):
you know, working working, working one of these union jobs
will put you into the middle class. You can take vacations,
you can have a house, um, you can get pensions.
Your unions are legal now, which is the thing that
like you know, hadn't happened before. And this is essentially
you know, this is essentially a kind of insurgency tool. Um.
The goal of this is to stop people from you know,

(29:50):
doing the kinds of revolts. So we're happening in at
the dirties, but by the nineteen seventies, it's becoming very
clear that this sort of the like can't it can't
really be maintained because it's too expensive for sort of
the capital states to maintain and trying to maintain both well.
And you know, the secondary thing here is is, you know, okay,
so this deal specifically goes out to white men right now.

(30:12):
Throughout the sixties and seventies, you get a bunch of
other people who are not white men attempting to enter
the workplace, attempting you get the same bargain, and you know,
they're in a lot of ways significantly were militants. And
this causes normal sponseimentional strife. You get you know, the
US is murdering the black panthers. You get similar stuff
in the UK. And the neoliberals basically are the people

(30:39):
who just fully called this to tants off and are
you know, essentially going to return to full scale class war.
And so now now we are, we are finally getting
to Reagan and Thatcher. And one day we will do
a full episode about how Ronald Reagan, in a weird,
shadowy cabal of Italian intelligence services, rigged the nineteen eighty
election by planting fake stories about Jimmy Carter's brother and
the press, which is if you hear the story, Garrison, No,

(31:03):
but it sounds like regular media manipulation that happens all
the time. Now. Yeah, yeah, it's it's yeah, there, there's, there's,
there's there's there's a whole three line there because you
know a lot of those like same kind of intelligence
tactics are gonna be used SOUTHI Iraq war, and there's
there's this whole sort of thing. Then you know, there's
also the specific Italian angle of uh yeah, the Italian

(31:25):
States being run by this rogue Masonic lodge led by
a fascist and it's it's a time this is all
going on there. But that's you know, I'm just I'm
just thinking like Hunter Biden laptop and all of that. Yeah,
yeah stuff. It's like, oh so that's just the same playbook. Yeah,
it's it's the same thing, except like they were like
actual intelligence people running it instead of just sort of

(31:46):
like whatever Tucker carloson Tucker Carlos said in Glenn Greenwaal
trying to get people like care about this thing that
just nobody gives a single ship about. Yeah, you know,
it was, it was, but the E's version of it
was significantly more effective. And you know, the product of
this is that Reagan sort of Reagan finds like the

(32:08):
secret sauce for right wing politics, which is kind of
you know, in in in in some ways, and Nixon
had been trying to develop it hadn't quite gotten right,
which is no, yeah, yeah, yeah. He he figures out
that you know, if if you want to do nei liberalism,
if you want to stroy the unions, you want to
stroy the welfare state, the way you do it is
basically a combination of racist tax and welfare recipients, and

(32:29):
you mobilize new religious right. And this is extremely effective
and it's but I think it's also interesting and worth
noting that, you know, if if you got all the
back to episode one, like this is this is rope
keys like white nationalism, like sure German white nationalism. Thing
is this is explicitly what Ropeky sort of strategy for
implenting new liberalism was. The problem is he was German
and Catholic, which meant that like it could never work

(32:51):
in the US. But you know, you get Reagan, suddenly
you get the American version of it, that is, you know,
white but Erican and then also works off the sort
of of off of the sort of mass Protestantism in
the US, and this becomes a force that is responsible

(33:12):
for like almost every bad thing that exists today in
some form or another. Lot of them. Yeah, I mean
not not often, but you know, I think thing things
go extremely badly. And so Reagan wins this election, and
then almost exactly the same time, Margaret Thatcher wins the
wins her election in in the UK, and that the

(33:34):
combination of those two things, and also, as you talked
about last episode, the Vulcar shock, where Vulcar raises the
interest rates, just raised defendation become so Vulcar is installed
weirdly not by Ronald Reagan but by Jimmy Carter, but
is given this sort of mandate to just do whatever,
literally do whatever you have to to to get inflation
under control. The thing that he decides to do is

(33:55):
just literally nuke the entire world economy, you know when
we talked about the effects of this hat on sort
of the world in the last episode. But in the
US this sets off a recession at last basically from
like nineteen seventy nine to Night two at the height
of it. It's like it's I think we finally got
more people unemployed during the pandemic, but I'm like sure

(34:18):
that between World War Two and the pandemic, that was
the single largest number of people who have been unemployed
in the US, which just yeah, it was just apocle,
just apocle devastation. And you know, there's there's there's a
whole thing here where the head of the a f
l C. I OH is literally begging Vulcar like, please
don't do this, like we can get inflation under control after,
you know, after the economy recovers, and vocals just like no.

(34:39):
The consequence of this is that you have you have
an economy in which is no more number people unemployed,
and the unions are weak, and both Reagan and Thatcher
sort of see this. Now the unions in the UK
are in a snifful better position of the American unions.
Reagan is able to sort of smashed the American unions

(35:01):
very quickly. There's there's the you know, the famous air
traffic control strike where a bunch of American air traffic
controllers go on strike technically illegally, and Reagan just has
literally every single one of them fired and replaces them
with just like like like people from flight school, like
people who just just like ap literally anyone he can
just like pull off the street who sort of kind

(35:21):
of knows how to how to land an aircraft, like
they put on people from the military. It's it's just
like this absolutely wild sort of feet of strike breaking.
And then you know, and when when when that falls,
and that that strike fails, you know, the air traffic controllers, well, okay,
funnily so, the air traff controllers had actually backed Reagan.
They were like the only union that backed Reagan in

(35:41):
the election, and they immediately just get you know, they
get gutted for it, which, like I have mixed feelings
about because like on the one hand, like, yeah, that's
that's that's what you get. But on the other hand,
this is basically what the stories this dis is the
consequences that this is basically what the stories like trade
unions in the US because at this at this point,

(36:03):
everyone realizes that the unions a week and they just start,
you know, there's uet to the point where employers are
deliberately provoking strikes so that they can just fire all
the unionized employees. And it's extremely effective. In in Britain,
the fight is a lot more intense um in in
in Ninity four, Thatcher cuts cold, like basically Thatchery wants

(36:23):
to provoke a fight with with the coal unions, and
so she basically wants to shut down a whole bunch
of coal production and fire like twenty miners, and the
miners go on strike, and they go on strike for
over a year. But Thatcher had basically stockpiled enough cold
to stay off the worst effects of the strike. And
then she makes these incredibly elaborate network of deals with

(36:44):
like She's like this this whole scab driver like union,
like basicallyically this whole network of scab drivers, like make
sure you can move the coal around while the strike's
going on. There there's all of this stuff, and you know,
and and she eventually is able to crust the coal strike.
And this also just just completely annihilates, like the British

(37:04):
trade union movement, I mean union participation, I think dreaming
Thatcher's term alone falls and it's gotten way worse since then.
So so with with those two incidents, the air traffic
control and the coal did did those just kind of
make people be disillusioned or did that just like pave
the way for similar tactics to be acceptable for every

(37:26):
other union that tried to do the same thing both
and then the ever thing was fear because you know,
so with the air traffic controllers, right, the air traffic
controllers are you know, these are the most highly skilled
like people people in there there. These are a bunch
of people who are incredibly highly skilled, and they're in there,
in there in a logistic industry, right, So you know,
in theory, these are the people who have like the

(37:46):
maximum amount of impact if they would go on strike.
And when Reagan shows that you can literally just fire
twenty four thousand people of like the most highly skilled
sort of workers in the in the US, you can
fire them and just break the strike and nothing will happen,
and you know, the result is total defeat and none
of these people ever work again. That basically spreads this
massive wave of fear through the union movements because you know,

(38:09):
if they can fire those guys, that can fire anyone,
and then you know, the the employers should start doing it.
And the other thing that's been happening here is that
for really since the end of the forties, the unions
have kind of so we'll we'll talk about this more
in in in an interview that's gonna come out probably

(38:29):
next week about sort of the history American union movements,
but American unions basically so American, like the union movement
was built by radical organizers and in the forties and
sort of moving on from there, all these people get
expelled from labor movement, and labor fights this basically incredibly

(38:52):
intense battle against its own left flank, and you have
you know, like, for example, in in there's this thing
called the Dodge Revolutionary Movement, right, which is a bunch
of mostly black workers in Detroit who are you know,
they're they're they're they're forming unions, they're going on strike,
but they're also fighting against the the u a W
because the U a W is cooperating too closer but

(39:12):
the bosses etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And there's there's there's these
you know, there's there's basically this battle between like not
even just basically between the unions ranked and file and
the radicals and the sort of business union management. And
in fighting that battle, the unions had basically like massively
weakened themselves. And then you know, by by by by
the time you hit the eighties, especially in the US,

(39:35):
the unions are just sort of a shell out their
former selves and and Reagan just sort of like smashes
them aside. And Thatcher the British unions are much stronger,
but you know, I mean that Thatcher is preparing to
like like there she she has plans to, like the
army is going to come in and suppress the strike.
There's these and especially there's there's just, I mean just
an absolutely incredible amount of police violence. Um that's you know,

(39:59):
I mean, this is this is something that had like
happened before dream strikes, but the the the the level
of intensity of it is just like massively increased. And
there's also another thing that's happening basically at the same
time of this, which is squeezing the units from the
other side, which is there's this I guess you could

(40:21):
call it like an internal class war inside the ruling
class between well specifically inside inside of the sort of
corporate management between the sort of traditional like manager CEO
class and the sort of like I guess you could
call them, I don't know, the sort of Wall Street
finance bank types and so so yeah, so One of

(40:41):
the other things that that happens at the end of
you know, basically after the war is the sort of
class compromise was talking about like this, this happens inside
of the company too, and people start to see the
corporation as like a social institution. It has you know,
it's like, well, okay, so there's this alliance between middle
management and the workers. And I was like, okay, so
we we both worked with each other, and you know,

(41:03):
the compromises that you guys got to have unions, but
the unions won't sort of disrupt production, will all work
together and we'll just make like I don't know, we'll
we'll make really really good ballpoint pens together. And so yeah,
you have this lince between sort of middle managements and
and these unions. You know, and this this is embedded
into the structure of the corporation because you know, you
not you not only have the unions, but you have

(41:23):
corporations paying pensions. One of the things that that Reagan
does is that Reagan starts, you know, Reagan does this
massive series of financial deregulations, and the other part of
this agreement basically had been that like the high level
of finance class has sort of stayed out of the
way of management, and so management kind of like you know,

(41:44):
the the you get this like this independent sort of
CEO class that that's that's a distinct thing that you
know that there people who come up through the company
who managers and worked away at the top. And this
is a distinct thing from sort of the finance people
who are like they're not supposed to be allowed, like
you know, the touch production. But in the nineteen eighties,
the finance people start to look at this and go, wait,

(42:06):
hold on, why are we not running things? And the
finance people have because they have are two things on
their side. One they have a sort of neoliberal ideology,
and the second thing they have is so Michael Milken
he figures out how to do this thing called a
leverage buyout option. It's it's it's a it's a kind
of complicated financial instrument. The short and simple explanation of

(42:27):
what it is is he figures out a way too
basically go into a bunch of debt, and he gets
he gets people to givehim a bunch of money, like
in the form of these bonds, and then he uses
it just buy out entire companies he buys one of
the company. And if you own fits of the company,
now you control, you have controlling interest. And so he

(42:48):
goes in and she just she just raises the stock
prices of all these companies. And now you know, but
I mean, now he's gone into an enormous amount of
debts right in order to buy, in order to buy
this company, and so you know, in order to pay
off that debt, he just starts strip money in the company.
And so he starts, you know, anything that can be
sold for money that he can put in his pocket
to pay off his debt starts getting sold. And you know,

(43:10):
every anything the corporate that the company is doing, it
doesn't immediately make money or doesn't immediately raise the stock
price gets cut. And so you know, there there, there,
there are. There are two major things that a company
has that don't immediately make money and don't raise the
stock price, and that is pensions and research and development.
And this this has you know, this, this this this

(43:32):
this becomes known as the sort of this is the
hustle takeover waves. It gets rebranded as mergers and acquisitions
in the nineties, but it's it's this huge sort of
wave those these corporate scrips corporate America, and it turns
the corporation from this kind of social body where it's like, well,
everyone's cooperating and companies sort of have this responsibility to

(43:52):
like provide for their workers and provide sort of for
like the social good into literally the only like the
single entire your purpose of any company is to raise
the stock price. And this yeah, this is really bad. Yeah,
and and and you know, the part about it that's
awful is that, you know, okay, so all all literally

(44:14):
all a corporate rad has to do in order to
buy out one of these companies is be able to
is be able to offer a price for the stock
that's higher from the stock price of the company now.
And this means even so they're they're they're there's a
very famous series of battles they buy out. An enormous
number of companies get bought out into strip minds like this,

(44:36):
and you know, and everything and again these are these
are very very profitable companies, right, These are companies with
large research development budget. These are companies that are making
enormous amounts of money, and they're just completely destroyed in
order to sort of just like satiate these just like
absolute Google, corporate like vulture Rader people. This is you know,
if you remember, might be too young for this, but
Romney's campaign for so yeah. One of one of the

(44:59):
reasons why Romney loses is that like he's one of
these guys like he's he's like he's the big bang
capital guy, and everyone's kind of looked at him and
goes like, you're the reason we'd like guide to this
mess in the first place. But the problem, the problem
is that these people who have enough money and they
have enough power, they were able to do this and
in order to stop them, so either there there there's

(45:21):
a massive there's a massive fight. A bunch of people
try to take over good Year, who you know, they
make the tires, they have the blimps, and Goodyear CEO
is like fanatically opposed to all of this because you know,
he's he's from the old ceo crop who's like, wow, okay,
we're here to like make things instead of you know,
increased stock prices. But the problem is the only way

(45:43):
he can save off the raiders is by increasing a
stock price. And the only way to increase stock prices
is by doing the things the corporate raiders already doing
so he starts slashing ptations. He starts slashing with your
development budgets. Yeah, and this and this, this sort of
cycles because now you have you know, there's there, there's
it's it's it's you're not only having pressure for you know,
like the government that's that's anti union. The corporations themselves

(46:04):
are being forced to become more anti union because they're
you know, they now have this pressure on them from
the top down, from from these sort of these sort
of finance schools, and the finance schools in a lot
of ways just the perfect nilable subjects, right, because they
only see the world in money. They see everything as
a market that they literally think that like they they
are like these like shamans if if if there's a

(46:25):
really good ethnography that I've plugged before on here called
liquidated and an ethnography and void yet liquidated in Ethnography
of Wall Street where an anthropologist goes onto Wall Street
and works there for a while and then you cannot
a bunch of interviews, doesn't it does endthpological stuff. And
the way they talk about the market, they they literally
talk about as if they're channeling it, right, like it's

(46:46):
like something and they're like, these are yea, these are
these are that's that's one of the new gods of
of our world. That yeah, that's I mean, that's that's
not an uncommon term of phrase to describe stuff like this. Yeah,
and and what what what what I think is they
just think about it though, is that you know that
conception of the market of like every person is just

(47:06):
like a peer like completely socially unbounds like thing of
capital that you oh, well, okay, if you lose your
job here, you can just moved to another firm, right,
So this makes sense inside of the context of Wall
Street because these people like like these Wall Street firms
they have they have like like thirty pc and turn
over a year, and so all these people are constantly
being fired and shuffle onto the next job, and fired

(47:28):
and shuffle on to the next job. And so you know,
they so they they do they do this very common
sort of fallacy thing where they assume that because this
is the way that it works for them, but this
is the way it's gonna work for everyone else, And
then they genuine and a lot of these people genuinely
believe this. They're like, well, Okay, So the things we're
gonna with, things that we're about to do, like, you know,
when we destroy these workers entire lives, when we be
you know, when we close their factories, when we take

(47:49):
their pensions, when we literally destroyed like every community and
every like thing that's every just in your lives, they're like, oh,
they'll just pick themselves up and go to another place
and they'll be fine, because you know, if you're you're
you know, a Wall Street finance school, like, yeah, that's
that's what happens when you get fired every three months.
And so these people, these people basically take control of

(48:12):
the entire corporate sector. They do. They do this very
quickly by you know, they start this in the sort
of early eighties. And uh, Milliken, the guy who comes
up with the junk bonds leveraged buyout scheme, like he
he goes to jail for I think securities fraud. They
get him for fraud. But it doesn't it a lot
of those guys, yea, all of these people like again,

(48:35):
all of these people are just doing crime. Like now, yeah,
that's how finance standards, this is how this is how
the Action Park guy got kicked out. You got kicked
out doing in all the same stuff. And again I
want to put this out, like the stuff they're doing
is so illegal that like even the Reagan administration was like, no,

(48:56):
we have to prosecute you. Like it's like this is
the this is the Ronald Reagan Justice Departments, and they're
like it was it was so much grib Yeah, it's
it's really bad. And and you know the result of
this is just basically the total visceration of of the

(49:16):
working class just like as a movement. And you know,
all the left wing parties are sort of shaped by this,
and you know, and you know, we we've been focusing
on on the US and UH and the UK here,
but this is not the only place this happens. And
you know, so one of the you know, like this,
this happens, this, this also starts happening like in socialist states.

(49:37):
Um and we talked about this in more detail in
our interview with Arnessa Kusutra about Bosnia. But one of
the big things that Miloshevik is doing in Yugoslavia and
when when he takes power and he starts like actually
being a real political force in think in eighties, is
he starts doing basically all of the same stuff that
that that Reagan attacherent doing. He starts, he starts implemented

(49:57):
shocked dooction, he starts privatization, he starts um like marketization,
he starts cutting studying, cutting price controls, he starts sort
of he starts doing I don't know if decollectivization is
quite the right word, because Yugoslavia's economic system is complicated
and weirder than uh, the USSRS. But you know, he

(50:20):
does this, and this is one of the things that
starts Yugoslavia's death spiral, because you know, you have this
enormous economic devastation from the increase in oil prices for
the oil shock, and then that gets paired with, you know,
the the economic devastation from everyone losing their benefits, people
losing de pensions, the state own industries going under and
getting privatized, um the sort of like collective ownership structures, imploading.

(50:46):
And the product of this is that, you know, Melosvik
looks at this and it's like, Okay, how can I
stay in power? And his answer is just genocide on that.
It's just genocide on nationalism. And this sort of collapse
or sort of state in social life is you know,
and and the leaders at the top realizing that they
can weaponize sort of nationalism is one of the things

(51:08):
at least directly to the Boston and genocide. Now towards
the end of the eighties, the whole Soviet block starts
coming apart. Um. Yeah, you know, the Berlin Wall falls
and eventually, you know, the Soviet Union dissolves, and the
people who are trying to end the Soviet Union, the
things that they want basically are like freedom of speech, uh,

(51:28):
the ability to like leave the country and basically like
Scandinavian style social democracy. And it was like reasonable from
the Soviet Union. Yeah yeah, and you know, I mean
these these people like you know, this is these you know,
like they they they wanted to live in Scandinavia and
instead they got, hey, welcome to the US. But like

(51:50):
even worse. Yeah and so yeah yeah, yeah, it's it's
really bad. And you know what what they get said
is just these this normous wave of privatizations the worldfaret
stage just vanishes, and you know this this causes basically
like total societal collapse. Um. Like one of my one

(52:10):
of my professors, and this this happens basically across the
whole Soviet block one of professions in college, and I
think she was fumble gary. Um. She she told me
about how dream the nineties like when she when she
was growing up, like she and her family would just
the only thing they had to eat was raw millet
because there's no food. There's there's literally no food anywhere.
The entire economy is collapsed. Nobody has any money, and

(52:31):
so you know, I was like, well, okay, everyone's eating
raw grain because you know that that's what that's that's
the only thing you can you can you have to survive.
And you know, it's this it's it's literally so bad
that in Russia it causes the single largest life expectancy
drop in post World War Europe. It's like like it's
the life expected to decrease is about like four years

(52:51):
because so many people die from this. Um you know,
and on one of the one of the ways this
happens is that there's so the way either they're going
to deal with like the state owned industry thing is
they they okay, And I've never been able to figure
this figure out if it was like they they actually
took Murray Rothbard's plan for this or if they just
independently developed were a Rothbar's plan for for for dissolving

(53:15):
state own the industries, which is give like everyone who
worked in it a share of the company. And so
they do this right, and everyone has these shares, but
these shares are just like paper, and you can't eat
this paper. So a bunch of sort of like organized
crime guys and the people who have been you know,
like like the sort of the people who've been richer
or like had been sort of connected party people who
were just like I'm just gonna cash out start, you know,

(53:36):
just just going through cities and they're they'll, you know,
they'll be like, okay, we'll give you a pair of gene,
like we'll give you some food if you give us
their share, and you know, everyone people just give up
their shares. And the result of this is that like
just every industry at Russia immediately falls under the control
of just just like absolutely psychotic oligarchs. And you know,
the the West definitely sharing this on that this this

(53:56):
whole process is engineered by just a bunch of just
like pure neoliberal ghoul like Harvards, like weird Harvard grads
who gets sent into Russia and who are like, oh,
we're gonna we're gonna run the Russian economy and we're
gonna like fix everything, and they just just absolutely destroy it.
And you know, the West has the thing they're they're

(54:18):
you know, they're they're they're cheering on this whole process.
They have this thing about how like everyone has to
do belt tightening and it's you're gonna suffer for a
bit and it'll all be worth it. And meanwhile, Boris
Jelson is just completely drunk off his asked like shelling
the parliament with tanks, while like the U. S. Press
is cheering, and you know there's the sort of like

(54:39):
you know, the tragedy this is like it's not really
like Russia got like more free, you know, like they
still they still torture and disappeared anarchists and secret prisons
like you know they're there. They still just like randomly
assassinate political dissidence with through increasingly bizarre like poison bullshit.
Yeah they sure do. Yeah, but you know the big

(55:04):
difference is that a bunch of Harvard grads made an
indescribable amount of money. You now, no one has any
pensions um and there's there's this is great, like this
is a great Russian joke from this period that goes
he's talking about the communists. Everything they ever told us
about communism was alive, but everything they ever told us
about capitalism was absolutely true. Yeah, that's that seems to
be roughly accurate. Yeah, it's it's basically true. And you know,

(55:27):
and and the product is sort of neoliberalism coming to
Russia is that by by by the end of the nineties,
Russia is just literally controlled by the mob and these
sort of monsters oligarchs. And Putin's campaign is like I
am better than the mob, and I will bring them.
I will bring the mob and the oligarchs under control.
And this is you know that, this is how Putin
takes power because and he has failed to hold up

(55:48):
to that probless to be fair, to be fair, the
you are significantly less likely to just like randomly be
kidnapped and ransoms. Not me. Oh I have I have
wrote for a website. He does not like I could.
That's true, that's true. Yeah, if yeah, if you kiss
off Putin, you might be held for ransom. But it's like,

(56:10):
you know the number of random people who don't do
anything political who are just like randomly held for ransom.
Did kind of go down a bit, and like that's
I mean, all right, all right, you gotta hand it
to Putin, Okay, I give him. Yeah, well okay. The
thing on hand to Putin is that he restored the
state's monopoly on violence. Now that's not a good thing now,

(56:34):
but he did it. Yeah, he well he did it.
And you know this, this was the basis of sort
of because his power and political support was that and
sort of nationalism. And this is like you know, and
and there's always just the sort of liberal line on
on on Putin. He's like, oh, he's an SKGB guy,
and like oh, it's still communism again. And it's like no,
like no, no, and and that this this brings me

(56:56):
back to the single thing that I I need everyone
to understand about, need to listen, which is that near
liberalism does not decrease the size of the state. Like
there there were more there were more bureaucrats now in
the Russian State than there were under the Soviet Union. No,
And it definitely and in order for it to operate,
it definitely extends drastically that like the hands of the

(57:16):
state in terms of like like like military police, law enforcement,
like all those things. In order to keep this weird
market driven thing alive, you need to have a lot
of like enforcement on people who don't have but both
both people who like actually make money and then but
most of the people who don't make very much money.
So it increases not only like the bureaucratic state, but

(57:38):
also like the enforcement armor of the state. Yeah, and
I think there's there's there's there's there's two interesting ways
this happens. One is that, well, okay, there's three ways happens.
One is that anytime someone says they're gonna they're gonna
do deregulation, like deregulation does not mean that they're going
to decrease the number of regulations there are. What it
means is that the regulations are bad for this company,

(58:00):
and so they're they're going they're going to they're going
to add more regulations in a way that is good
for this company. And the thing is that this actually
this you know, this net increases the size of the state.
Right there. They're not like they're not like they're not
decreasing the number of laws or whatever. They're you know,
they're they're they're they're they're writing like incredibly like absolutely
incomprehensible banking legislation that like, let's banks charge like interest

(58:23):
rates that previously only organized crime could do. And then
there's there's another aspect of this, which is that, you know,
so the the welfare that remains right, you know, it
becomes means tested, and you know that means that there's
so you have the bureaucracy right that like gives you things,
and then you have another bureaucracy on top of that
that decides whether or not you should be allowed to

(58:43):
do the thing it puts you know, there's this this
is just just this like process of abject humiliation that
you have to go to to receive anything, yeah, from
the state. And it's like and that sucks. And then
because that is so awful, there's another layer of bureaucracy,
which is like social workers and stuff, whose job it is,
in large part, is to help you bypass the second
layer of bureaucracy. So that creates another layer. Yeah, there's

(59:05):
there's there's there's so much. Yeah it is, and but
but this is you know this, this this is one
of the things in the liberals do, which is okay,
so you know, you you have you have, you have
your two doctrines. Right, you have the thing they actually believe,
which is enormous, bureaucratic, military state, and then you have
the thing they claim to believe, which is, oh, the
state needs to be smaller, state needs to be decentralized,

(59:26):
the state shouldn't it you fear in the market. And
so whenever, whenever, like the things that they do get
too bad, they have this other thing that can turn
to you to go, oh, yeah, the reason there's too
much bureaucracy is because the state's getting involved too much.
Elect us and we will get rid of the bureaucracy.
And then you elect them and they make the state bigger,
and you know, you get this started perpetual cycle. I
think the reason people get confused by this is that

(59:49):
when when people when most people think of the state, right,
they think of the state is something that provide services.
You know that the quintessential thing of state does is
build roads roads. Yeah, you know, you know when we
can talk about how like the US building roads probably
doomed the entire earth climate change. Oh yeah, no, like
the way that we've done roads around cars and the

(01:00:10):
type of things we make roads. Yeah it's horrible, but
yeah it's awful. Yeah, but but there there's there's there's
another thing about roads which is interesting, which is that
roads are you know, so the original reason why states
built roads was they can move armies around and and
this comes back to the core of what a state is. Right,
there is nothing in the actual core definition of a state,

(01:00:32):
which is basically it's a hierarch couple of localized monopoly
on violence. Right, there's nothing in that that has that
like says at all the state has to do anything
for you, right, like if if you know, if two
guys with guns show up and sees a place, right,
they can create a state. They don't have to give
you anything. The state is the fundamental core of the

(01:00:55):
state is just a bunch of armed people who can
order people around and you know, people people sort of
can people sort of confuse the two. And the neoliberalisms
entire thing is increasing the increasing the military, you know
that the part of the state that takes things from
you at gunpoint and decreasing the part of the states
that like gives you things. And you know, one of

(01:01:16):
one of the there's one of one of the other
things that that happens in this period is that labor
increasingly stops being about making or doing anything and just
becomes pure guard labor. So, you know, the the the
last big neliberal project that doesn't really get talked about

(01:01:39):
as a deliberal project ever, is that mass incarceration is
a deliberal project. It started under under Nixon and under Carter.
But you know, so when when Reagan takes office that
the American prison population is about three thousand. When he
leaves office, he has basically doubled it to uh six
seven thousand. We have now more than doubled it again.

(01:02:00):
And you know it it basically it You know when
whenever you get a large near liiberal administration that they
you know, they double it, right, it basically doubles again
dreamed between the Clinton administration, you know, it keeps accelerating
and you know this is this is this is the
other thing that that neoliberalism brings in, which is that okay,

(01:02:20):
so near liberals and produces this enormous population of people
who don't have any jobs, have no opportunities whatsoever, are
just screwed. So what do you do with them? And
the answer is slavery and basically everywhere that you stay
using neoliberalism, you see massive increases into prison population. Espect
like the US is by far the worst example of this,
but this happens. You know that the seven is basically

(01:02:41):
across the world and what what what you see is
in place of you know, it's this is this one
of the things that dries politics in sort of in
real reasons in the US, which is that you have
these places that used to sort of have industry is used,
particularly like coal mining, things like that, and it gets
replaced by prison because prisons, you know, having a prison

(01:03:02):
in your sort of rural town is is the only
way to sort of ensure that you have a large
economic base. And so you know, like local local city
councils are you know, incredibly pro prison because it's like, oh,
well the president would bring your jobs and you know
this means that okay, so so so the people a
lot of people who are prison guards are just you know, fascists.

(01:03:23):
But there's also people who are prison guards who normally
would just be workers. Yeah no, absolutely, yeah, who have
just been sort of but you know, there's nothing left
right and they they're fighting, Uh Mike Davis talks about this,
that they're fighting this just incredibly desperate, ferocious struggle to
like stay in the places they love and stay with
their families, and stay with their friends, stay with their communities.

(01:03:43):
And the only way they can do this is, you know,
by becoming part of this like just the neo liberal
health state. And you know, they don't like it either,
but that's you know, that's what the liberalism is, right,
is you no longer have a job. The only job
available to you is picking up a gun and pointing
it at someone who is exactly the same as you,

(01:04:04):
except you know, they've been thrown into the slavery part
of the system instead of the people holding the guns
at the slavery part of the system. And one of
the things that that happens a lot of people just
really conflate about what neoliberalism is is they can use
it libertarianism, yes, and they're not the same thing. And

(01:04:26):
and this, this is a condus is a very confusing
problem because well, a, the term nea liberals don't get
used in the US all that much. When people use it,
they usually use it to mean something bad. And that's
just about it. Yeah, yeah, and and you know, and
and also another part of the problem is that even
if you go into like the Montpellion Society, right, which

(01:04:47):
you know this is this is this is the arch
de liberal institution, and it's just like basically like a
think tank generator. There are there are libertarians in there.
There there are there are narco capitalists in the Montpellion Society,
and the one Pillion Society is fighting this sort of
constant internal battle between the people who actually believe the
things that they say publicly, like you actually believe you
should have a small state blah bla blah blah blah,

(01:05:09):
and the people who understand that all the small states
stuff is just like stuff you tell the masses in
order to get them to like slash welfare things, while
you just hire more cops. And probably the single biggest
distinction between the libertarians and and the New Liberals is
about border control. Now, if if you listen to New
Liberals on Twitter, or you listen to Neil or you

(01:05:30):
listen to libertarians, right, capitalism is supposed to have open borders,
is supposed to be free movement to people, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Um,
if you look at literally everything every neo liberal government
has ever done, it's exactly the opposite. They don't like that. Yeah, yeah,
they hit it. And and you know, the this whole
thing about like oh you need workers to uh yeah,

(01:05:51):
if if you, if you, if you let workers from
other countries go into into the US, like oh they'll
they'll they'll decreased wages, blah blah blah blah. So the
the period in which the US like had strong unions
and strong wages and stuff, with the period where there
was like basically no militarization on the Mexican border. I mean,
there were some and you know there there's there's there's
a build up sort of dream the Vietnam War and

(01:06:13):
they're they're they're sort of been one back like around
election revolution era. But you know it's it's nothing. It's
literally nothing like it is today today. The US border
is this just absolute hellscape. Um. I mean just like
there's there's there's this enormous perimeter of the U. S
border where just the Constitution doesn't apply, where like the
Bill of Rights just doesn't exist. If if if you're

(01:06:34):
if you're if you're close enough to the border, it's
just it's all suspended. Uh, it's not entirely supended, but
like basically the border patrol can just do whatever the
funk they want to you, and you know, like this, this,
this is this is how the border patrol was able
to be deployed in Portland, right because Portland's technically on
the border and the border patrol has increased power is
there and the actual goal is so people people are

(01:06:56):
always going to move right, And what with the New
Labels figured out was that you know, these these these
enormous miket labor populations, the best way you could exploit
them as if they're just absolutely terrorized by just this,
you know, an incredible sort of ferociously hostile, murderous just
border regime run by fascists. And it works, like they kill,

(01:07:21):
they kill enormous numbers of people, They do horrible things,
They put people with concentration camps, They sterilize people they like,
they sexually assault children, they disappear people they like, still
people's babies. And this is you know, this is what
neoliberalism is, right, This, this is what it actually is
in practice. This is you know, like, this is the

(01:07:43):
this is the this is the policy that is imposed
by they liberal states. And I think I want to
end on that and I want to end on a
note about what the quintessential sort of figure of neoliberalism is,
because I think, you know, in the neil liberal's mind, right,
the quintessential neo liberal figure is like the small entrepreneur

(01:08:05):
who's like guy who's you know, turned their own creativity
and like harnessed it into like the ability to create value,
and you know, they're creating things in the world and
they're reaching themselves. And I think a lot of leftists
think of it as like the quintessial the liberal is
you know, a Chicago, Chicago School of Economics person. Yeah,

(01:08:27):
and I want to suggest that they quit. The single
quintessential like neo liberal figure is a riot cop, and
specifically specifically that the you know, if if you know,
if every everyone by now knows what a riot cop
looks like, right, I want everyone to go back and
even even from from like two thousand one, look at

(01:08:50):
what a riot police officer looks like in two thousand
one versus what they look like now. And then go
back to even like the nineteen sixties and look look
at look at what the those guys look like. Yeah,
I know, looking at the footage from the sixties and
riot cops is like really depressing because they're like, I
could take these guys. Yeah, they're they're just wearing T shirts.

(01:09:11):
They're just guys. It's it's way more of a fair fight.
They have T shirts and sticks. We could have T
shirts and sticks. That is that it's like the a
riot of the sixties. It sounds like now they also
in some cases will be much more willing just to
murder tons of people. Now there is that exception, but
in like a big street brawl, it is it is
generally a bit of a fair fight. I mean, I

(01:09:33):
will say also sixties police love love dogs. They love
like sicking dogs people, which is really bad. Yeah, I'm
I'm looking at the looking at at the two thousand
one riot cops, and yeah, they are not nearly as
robo copy. That's what they are now. Drin the Tin
Chilean uprising in I was talking to someone in Chile

(01:09:55):
and they were talking about how like they were describing
it as like the cop we're just like like something
had a change, beating Ninja turtles like it was like
fighting the shredder. There's even even even the L. A. P. D.
Riot cops for the nineteen two riots. They're also still
just wearing like shirts like they just have they just
have colored shirts and one stick. Yeah and now versus

(01:10:19):
now they're wearing there whatever dumb armor they have. Yeah.
But you know, and this is this is you know
and this this is this is if if you want
to trace the path in near liberalism, it's this. It's
a lot of the army surplus stuff that like the
police have gotten a lot of. It's really scary. A
lot of it also sucks, like a lot of those
a t v S. Every like everyone who's ever had

(01:10:40):
the drive them hates them. But you know, like like
my my like absolutely tiny dinky town has a bear
cat and that shouldn't that shouldn't be. And I know
where it is too, I know where the bear cat is.
It's like, there shouldn't be a bear cat. My town
is a tax cutout, like it's it's literally a tax

(01:11:01):
carve out like that that's the reason, that's the really
reason it exists. And it has a bear cat, And like,
you know, this is this is sort of the this
is the consequence of of of what neoliberalism, isn't it.
Vicky usta Well talked about this on on on the
Occupy episode it's it's the cops become more like, become
more like the army. The army becomes more like the cops.
And you know, the the result is this sort of

(01:11:25):
pent opticn surveillance states where like if you and seven
people stand on a sidewalk, sixteen cops will show up. Yeah,
they've they've really uh excelled in making the capitalist realism
Dumer philosophy be almost like the base philosophy for anyone
who takes two seconds to think about the world that
they live in. And you know, and this has been

(01:11:47):
really effective in a lot of ways. But you know,
David Graeber point had pointed this out, which is that
the problem with doing this is that, you know, okay,
so like the the norm was some amount of guard labor, right,
the enormous amount of sort of prison guards. Like that's
all unproductive labor, right. You know, you you you make
you make some of that money back off that the

(01:12:09):
companies make some of the money back off the slave labor. Right.
But like, but that in general there the guards aren't
adding anything. They're not they're not they're not producing any
goods um and not really much service either. No, and
and and this is you know this this this is
a problem, right because because neoliberalism is profit driven, and
so you know, what you have is is that the

(01:12:30):
system has a choice between either it functioning or it
making it appear as if it's the only system. And
that's the thing is that it's it's it's kind of
profit driven. But honestly, the more that I the more
that you've been talking like, no, it's just about eliminating
any alternative. So it's not not even profit driven. It's
that it's forcing itself to be the only acceptable option. Yeah,

(01:12:54):
that's how it gets so much of its power. Yeah,
but but you know, the the problem with this is
that all of that sort of ideological coercion only last
as long as the police can hold the streets, which
is which is they're good at it there, They're sometimes
they're decent. You know. One of the story I want

(01:13:16):
to end on is so there's you know, there has
been in some with more varying degrees of success, there
has actually been resistance in neoliberalism. And there are places
where people have won the people. There are places where
people have run the I m f out those people.
There's places where people have you know, defeated coups where

(01:13:37):
they've like you know, where they've where they've they've they've
successfully sort of taken over the state. There's places where
you know, I mean there's there's there's places like you know,
we're gonna talk about couple of things in Mexico, but yeah,
I mean there's there's the Appetittas who have you know,
are constantly besieged, but have carved out a territory in
which they have you know, like totally defeated the Mexican

(01:13:57):
almost really defeated the Mexican state. And I think one
of the sort of forgotten incidents in in the two
thousands is this uprising in Wahaka where the yeah, yeah,
there's a there's an enormous sort of a bunch of
teachers are going on strike. And you know, Wahawka's teaching
unions are enormously powerful, incredibly radical, and so you know

(01:14:19):
that they one of the things they do is that
they go into the city and they have these like
these giants start of protest tents that they showed up
and they have these like giant camps and she just
in six the police attack them, and so they start
attacking and and the teachers fight back, and so you
have there this you know this, this this massive battle
erupts um just in this city and you know this

(01:14:40):
is this is all the police attack at like three
in the morning, right, but they they there's not enough
of in the clear teachers out and the teachers hold
and they hold and they hold, and the city of
Wahaka wakes up to this just enormous battle in the
streets between a bunch of like teachers and the cops.
And when Wahawka wakes up, they are just like what

(01:15:03):
the fuck is this? And you know, they joined the
teachers and they go fight the cops and they they
they're largely successful in like like they beat them, they drive,
they drive the police from the city and you know,
and and for for for for for several months, the
city is basically under the control of these like direct
democratic councils and like they're there are these there are

(01:15:25):
these things they call the mega marshes, which just a
million people will do a march to the streets and
the police there's the police just can't stop them because
you know, there's a million people and yeah, that's that's
the only way that I've seen that be successful, whether
it be you know, just to sure sheer massive people
driving cops out of a police station, or you know,
an entire city rallying behind people like in in in

(01:15:48):
Portland when the fence came, it's like you need to
have like everybody to show up because they could fight
two hundred like twin canarchists. They're pretty easily you usually, um,
but when you have like all of the moms and
dads and regular people come up, that is much more
of a complicated of fight on like on on their end,

(01:16:08):
because yeah, we'll still have the teenage front liners throwing
at the cops, but when you have like regular people
behind them, that creates the whole media narrative to be
something totally different. And it got the feds to back
down in Portland when Trump really wanted to not happen.
And I think also the thing, the thing that that

(01:16:30):
was increding incredible hawky is it wasn't just people sort
of like standing behind them, like maybe like tens of
thousands of people just joined the fight in in in
a way that you know it like if you know,
if if there's like fifty thou people in a city
throwing bricks at you like you you either have to
start shooting into the crowd or try to hold them.
Can't you can't. And even when he start shooting into
the crowd, Yeah, they tried it and it made it

(01:16:53):
made even people the crowds were larger, and like, you know,
one of the things that happens is that the revolutionaries
try to like you know, they go to the radio
station or like okay, well you broadcast this. The radio
station says no, and so they start seizing radio stations
all over all over the city. Yeah, and they yeah,
and then you know, and then they had they had
these they had these like bonfire at the edge of
the city where if one's at the meets and like

(01:17:13):
they're there's they're they're sending their they're they're sending radio
like messages like over the radio stations they've taken over
from like barricade to barricade, and you know, eventually the
police and like the like the Mexican Army shows up
and at that point they're able to sort of retake
the city. And there's a couple of other things happening
in Mexico at this point that are sort of this

(01:17:34):
is giants sort of left wing tide, and the way
that it gets stopped is that the Mexican army basically
fully kicks off the drug war and they kill I mean,
I've seen numbers up to like eight hundred thousand people
in ten years. They just they basic they basically genocides

(01:17:56):
the indigenous population of of of Mexico. And you know,
I think I think that's that's that's sort of a
place to leave it because more hopeful note to end
to the show on. Yeah, but I mean I think
I think it is it is worth it is you know,
it's it's it's it's worth thinking about. Is one. It
is possible to beat the police too. The ruling class

(01:18:19):
will literally bathe the entire country in blood, like they
will destroy their own country. Is different the way I
mean this gets discussed and sell happen here, But like
the way the American military works, I think it will
be less likely to do that. Yeah, well, I mean,
and I want I want to put this o. Like
so the thing that the army doesn't directly murder people

(01:18:41):
what they do is but what they do is basically
like they they set off a bunch of fighting between
the cartels and then and the cartels fucking murder enormous
members people you know it will happily murder each other.
But yeah, yeah, well and also you know, I mean
it's it's also this is this is you know, it's
the thing with the MYSIC and state. It's it's very,
very difficult to tell where the Gartels stop and where

(01:19:02):
the Mexican Army begins because a lot of them are
the same thing. And like you know that there's yeah,
that's hopeful. Note to end on and just but just
to make the ending a bit better, I do want
to say I'm no longer going to call anyone, uh neoliberal.
I made this joke in the group chat yesterday and
nobody responded to it, so it was set. So I'll

(01:19:23):
say it now. I'm only going to call them Thomas
Anderson liberals. That that that that that's that is what
I'm calling them now. Um, and I'll make everyone wait
two seconds to understand what's going on and then sigh
and then motion to get me out of the room.
So thank you Chris for talking about the prom and

(01:19:46):
thank thank thank thank you all for joining us. That
this this has been NI could happen here. Um. You
can find us on Instagram and Twitter. If you so desire,
if you want to get, if you want, if you
want people to know that you follow us, create a
whole network of surveillance based so everyone knows what you're
watching and what you're listening to, to create a better
picture for you are online so you can get better advertisements. Yeah,

(01:20:08):
follow us online. Yeah, joined the Panopticon. Throw bricks at it.
It is pretty funny how they tricked everyone into carrying
around gps is wherever they go. It's it's pretty funny. Yeah,
it's it's amazing. It's like, oh, everyone, everyone, everyone in
my town is like, oh, we can't get the vaccine.
They have micro trips and it's like you have a phone.
It's hilarious. They tricked us into carry around speakers, cameras

(01:20:32):
and gps is everywhere we go. It is really funny.
It's amazing, all right. Well, by Funny Fye. I'm Evrodsky,
author of the New York Times bestseller fair Play and
Find Your Unicorn Space, activists on the gender division of labor,

(01:20:55):
attorney and family mediator. And I'm doctor as eating a rootcar,
a Harvard physician and medical correspondent with an expertise and
the science of stress, resilience, mental health, and burnout. We're
so excited to share our podcast Time Out, a production
of i Heeart Podcasts and Hello Sunshine. We're uncovering why
society makes it so hard for women to treat their

(01:21:15):
time with the value it deserves. So take this time
out with us. Listen to Time Out, a fair play
podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tanya Sam, host of
The Money Moves podcast powered by Greenwood. This daily podcast
will help give you the keys to the Kingdom of
financial stability, wealth and abundance with celebrity guests like Rick Ross,

(01:21:40):
Amanda Sill's, angela Ye Roland Martin, JB. Smooth, and Terrell Owens.
Tune in to learn how to turn liabilities into assets
and make your money moved by Subscribe to The Money
Moves Podcast powered by Greenland on the I Heart Radio
app or wherever you get your podcasts, and make sure
you leave a review. The Gangster Chronicles podcast is a

(01:22:02):
weekly conversation that revolves around underworld and criminals and entertainers
to victims, crime and law enforcement. We cover all facets
of the game. Gangster Chronicles podcast doesn't glorify promotilsta of activities.
We just discussed the ramifications and repercussions of these activities
because at the Wall she played gamester games. You are
ultimately rewarded with Gangster prizes. Our Heart Radios number one

(01:22:25):
for podcasts, but don't take our award for it. Find
Against the Chronicles podcast and my Heart Radio app or
wherever you get your podcast. Welcome to it could happen here. Um.
The show that is normally introduced by me shouting a tonally,

(01:22:47):
but today I did like a professional because today myself
and my colleagues Garrison and Christopher are talking to someone.
I'm very excited to chat with Mr Corey. Doctor. Oh Corey,
Well the show. Thank you very much. It is my
pleasure to be on it. It's great to meet you
all and to be talking to you today. Corey. You

(01:23:07):
do a lot of writing about kind of technology and
surveillance and cultural issues around those. You're also an author.
You've written some great fiction. I think today will probably
talk most around books like Attack Service and walk Away,
but you've written a lot of wonderful stuff. Um, and
you've also worked with the e f F for years
and years. Um, so you you you're coming at what

(01:23:28):
I love about. I mean, we're gonna be talking today
broadly about surveillance and kind of the future of of
the Internet, will probably talk about some metaverse e stuff.
What I love about the way in which you think
and write about the future is that you're kind of
coming about it from a number of angles, both as
like a tech industry journalist, as a fiction writer imagining

(01:23:48):
the future, and as somebody who's kind of weighted in
as an activist to this. And UM, I'm kind of
wondering where do you see like the greatest potential for
actual like change? Um? Is it? Is it in kind
of is it in lobbying and engaging as an activist
or is it in sort of imagining as a as
a as a fiction writer? What might be? So I

(01:24:11):
I see them as adjuncts uh, you know, diversity of
tactics and all that stuff. Um. The thing is that
tech policy arguments are often very abstract, uh, and they
are only visceral for the people who would provide the
kind of political will to do something about them. Usually

(01:24:34):
that that comes when it's too late, right, People people
care about tech monopolies once the web is turned into
five giant websites stilled with screenshots of text from the
other four. But not when Yahoo is on a buying
spree of tech companies. And we're saying, oh, that's how
tech companies grow, and all tech companies will grow in
the future by buying all their nascent competitors and rolling
them up into a big vertically integrated monopoly, which is

(01:24:57):
kind of how we got Facebook and Google and the
rest of it. And um, you need to be able
to make policy arguments to policy people, but you also
need to be able to put uh, some some sinew
and muscle on the bone of that highly abstract kind
of argument. And and that's where fiction comes in. It's
kind of a like a fly through of like an

(01:25:18):
emotional architects rendering of what things might look like if
we get it wrong or if we change it. It
preserves the sense of possibility, you know. I think one
of the great enemies of change is the inevitable is
um of capitalist realism and the idea that there is
no alternative. So if you can make people believe in
an alternative, then they might work for one. And certainly
the opposite is true. If people don't believe there is

(01:25:41):
any alternative possible, they won't work for one, why why
would you? Uh? And so all of that together, I
think is part of how you mobilize people to care
about stuff. Yeah, I mean that makes that makes total sense,
and it is. It's difficult, I think because I first
came into technology as a journalist, and it's very difficult

(01:26:04):
to get people to care about stuff. And I think
in particular privacy, which there was, it has been one
of the most interesting cases of like the kind of
thought leaders in in an industry freaking out over something
and people not really having an issue with it because
we kind of all agreed to hand over all of
our data to a number of big side not all,

(01:26:25):
but I don't know. I'm interested in your thoughts on that.
I understand the idea that like fiction is um is
a much better way to try to get people to
care about these things because it makes them feel as
opposed to kind of reporting on I think people can
get kind of lost in the weeds of acquisitions and
like uh, pivots and you know, tech companies acquiring each
other and whatnot. Well, look, I think that the part

(01:26:47):
of the problem with privacy. The reason that we we're
late to wake up and do something about it is
because it was obfuscated. You know, if you've ever seen
the maps of like how an ad tech stock works,
the flow diagrams. Uh. And there are some things that
are complicated because um, there are some things that are
hard to understand because they're complicated. And then there are

(01:27:09):
some things that are made complicated so they will be
hard to understand. And I think in the case of
the surveillance industry, the latter is true. And it wasn't
just that they were trying to play us for suckers.
They were also playing their customers for suckers. Right. One
of the reasons that the ad tex st act is
such a snarled hair ball is so that the people

(01:27:32):
who buy ads and the publishers who run ads can't
tell how badly they're being ripped off by their intermediaries.
But this also has the side effect of making it
very hard for us to know as the as the
kind of inputs to that system, how our own dignity
and private lives and safety and integrity are being put
to risk by these systems as well. Um, And you know,

(01:27:56):
it may be that people if they had been well
informed about what was going on, they might have been
indifferent as well. But I think that when most people
were very poorly informed, right when all there was was
this kind of that privacy discourse was just like stuff
as being your personal information is being siphoned up, but
no kind of specifics on how that was being used

(01:28:18):
and how that was being done and how it might
bring you to harm. Um, it's not clear that that
you can say that that the reason they were indifferent
is because they were fully informed and didn't care if
you know that they weren't fully informed, if you know
that they were barely informed. Mhm. I mean yeah, I
think you're absolutely right. Because when the Cambridge analytic Is

(01:28:39):
scandal broke, which was I think one of the first
times that there was a really huge international story that
made it clear some of the consequences of all this,
like it did provoke a lot of a lot of anger.
Um I I do you worry at all that, Like
there's a degree to which because it because people got
tricked or whatever you want to frame it, and it's

(01:28:59):
glow the the kind of um financialization of people's private data,
of people's like personal information, because that has gone so far,
there's a risk that people are just kind of inured
to it. Um. Yeah, well, well, I mean that kind
of gets to my theory change here, which is that
there is always going to be uh a point of

(01:29:22):
maximum and difference peak in difference. You know, Um, if
you think about something like being a smoker, the likelihood
that you care about cancer goes up the longer you
smoke and the more health effects you feel. And certainly
there will come a point in your life when you

(01:29:43):
will only ever grow more worried about the effects of
smoking on your life. But there's also a point of
no return. Right if the point at which you you're
you're concern reaches the point where you're actually going to
do something about smoking is the day you get diagnosed
with stage four on cancer, then that, um, denialism can

(01:30:04):
slide into nihilism. You can say, why bother, right, it's
too late. It's like if if we spend years arguing
about the crashing population of rhinos and then finally there's
only one left, and you say you're right, there was
a problem. You might as well say, like, why don't
we eat him and find out what he tastes like?
It's not like the rhinos are ever going to come back, right,

(01:30:25):
And so for me, so much of the work is
about shifting the point of peak indifference to the left
of the point of no return on the timeline, so
that people actually start to care earlier, because it's it's
it's if you haven't a genuine problem, right, like the
overcollection of our private data, the mishandling of it, the

(01:30:46):
abuse of it, that genuine problem will eventually produce tangible
effects that are undeniable, right that the the our ability
to ignore it just goes monotonically down. It's the thing
about the climate emergency. You know, even if Shell had
not our Exxon had not hidden the data had had
on the role that it's products were playing in climate

(01:31:08):
change in the seventies, it would have been hard to
muster a sense of urgency in the seventies, right because
the story is that in fifty years something bad's going
to happen. But here we are fifty years on, something
bad is really happening, and a lot of people are
caring about it. They still don't seem to care about
it enough, or maybe they've slid into nihilism. There's certainly,
I think on the part of the elites, a kind

(01:31:29):
of nihilistic sense that maybe they can all retreat to
like mountaintops and build fortresses and breathe their children by
harrier jet you know, and and and you know that nihilism,
I think is is what you get when the point
of no return has passed before peak denial. Uh and

(01:31:50):
the privacy um catastrophe that is looming in our future
that we haven't quite reached yet. I mean, we've just
had the first kind of trickles of the dam breaking
that's in our future. It hasn't been enough yet to
shift people away from it. But but we might be
getting there, right, We might We might eventually be able
to do something about it. And one of the things

(01:32:13):
that will hasten that moment is UM restoring competition to
those industries that one of the reasons that uh, the
industry that spies on us is able to foster denial
and indifference is because it is a monopolized industry. To
companies control eighty percent of the ad market, Google and Facebook,

(01:32:36):
and as as monopolists, they're able to extract huge monopoly rents.
They're among the most profitable companies in the history of
the world. And some of those monopoly rents, rather than
being returned to shareholders, can be mobilized to distort policy,
to to make us think that there's nothing wrong with
the way that they collect data and use it to
forestall regulation, to pay Nick Clegg four million a year

(01:32:59):
to go around Europe and the world and say, as
the former Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, I'm
here to tell you that Facebook is the friend of
the democratic regimes of the world. And and you know,
if if the anti monopoly movement, which is a thing
I've become very involved with, is able to go from
strength to strength it's surging now, then one of the

(01:33:21):
things that we might do is is destroy the ammunition
that's being used by these large monopolistic firms to distort
our policy and harm us in these ways with impunity.
And and then maybe we can actually take the the
nascent and natural alarm that people do feel about the

(01:33:42):
invasions of their privacy and and actually turn that into
privacy policy that is meaningful in respect of these big
companies that actually reigns them in. Yeah, and I think
I like that you frame it as a privacy catastrophe
because I think I mean, what I just exhibit it
earlier in this episode, is this this tendency that I

(01:34:03):
certainly see in myself and I see in other people
to get kind of beaten down by the continued um
excesses of this industry and the continued kind of failure
of anything to be done to curb it. And I
think you're right. It has to be viewed as um
as a calamity and I and nothing I think makes
that clearer than some of watching some of the stuff
Facebook in particular has put out about their plans for

(01:34:25):
the metaverse, and kind of thinking back from all of
these sensors they want to store in your house, all
of the ways in which they want to map everything
around you, um, they never you know. They they kind
of advertise as like you'll be able to play basketball
with somebody who's in a different state, But really what
it is is you're giving Facebook access to every measurement
of your body and you know, the pulse of the

(01:34:45):
beat of your heart and all this this stuff that like,
maybe we don't quite know what it would be useful
for from financialization standpoint, but they it's unsettling to think
that they'll have to find a way because they'll have it.
You know, I don't know, I don't know what is
be done about that other than, as you say, kind
of breaking up these monopolies. Well and and I mean
breaking up is like one of the things we can

(01:35:07):
do to monopolies. And and it takes a long time,
you know, um A T and T. The first enforcement
action against it happened sixty nine years before it was
broken up in nineteen two. I don't think we can
wait that long. But there's a lot of intermediate steps,
right Like we can force them to do interoperability, we
can block them from from predatory acquisitions. We can force

(01:35:29):
them to divest of companies and engage in structural separation.
We can do all kinds of things. It actually looks
like the United Kingdom is going to stop them from
buying Giffee, which might seem trivial after all, it's just
like animated jifts, but um, what it actually is a
surveillance beacons in every social media application, right because if

(01:35:49):
you're hosting a Jeff from Giffee in your message to
someone else, Facebook has telemetry about that message. Um. And
so the the the not the i c O. The competition,
competition and Markets Authority in the UK was like, yeah,
this is just gonna strengthen your market power. That's why
you're buying this company. You have too much market power already.

(01:36:11):
We're not gonna let you do it. Um. It was
almost the case that the Fitbit merger was blocked Google's
Fitbit merger. I think it's still not too late to
roll it back. And Lena Cohn, who's the new fire
breathing dragon in charge of the FTC, who is an
astonishing person who was a law student three years ago. Uh,
she has said, oh, yeah, this this like one point

(01:36:33):
three trillion dollars worth of mergers and acquisitions that you're
doing right now to get in under the wire before
we started enforcing. Guess what, We're gonna unwind those fucking
mergers if it looks like they were anti competitive. And
not only are you going to lose all the money
you spent on the M and A due diligence and
the paperwork and the corporate stuff, but all that integration
you're going to do between now and then, you're gonna
have to de integrate those companies. When we tell you

(01:36:55):
that you don't have uh, you don't have merger approval
and you're on notice. You can't come and complain later, right,
Like you can either get in line and wait for
us to tell you whether or not your merger is legal,
or you can roll the dice. But I tell you what,
if you come up sneak, guys, you are fucked. And
that is amazing, right, that is a powerful change in

(01:37:16):
American industrial policy that really makes a difference. Yeah, I
mean that is a beautiful thing to think of being
in place and actually hitting as hard as it could. Obviously,
the concern is that, like who will be you know,
picking the head of the FTC in three years in change?
And like how how how much influence is Peter Teal
going to have their in the like um, yeah, well,

(01:37:39):
and Peter til of course love's monopolies. He says, competition
is for losers. So you're right. I mean, obviously elections
have consequences, but you know, one of the ways that
you win elections is by making material differences in people's lives,
and so you know, if people are policy, then uh.
One of the most important policies by to set so

(01:38:00):
far is hiring Lena Khan and her colleagues canter at
the d R j and Tim Wu and the White House. Yeah,
I mean I would. I would love nothing more than
to see particularly like Facebook reigned in at this point
because I'm one of the casualties of the of the
of the the ad market like crash of started in
like two sixteen seventeen. It feels like the odds of

(01:38:24):
them being able to, like, I don't know, we we've
got three years where we know, you know, theoretically these
policies will be in place, and and I don't know,
I'm hopeful, like when I when I because the Republicans
are talking a lot about regulating social media too, about
even breaking up these companies, but they often tend to
be talking about it in a very different way and

(01:38:45):
with a very different kind of end goal in mind.
Um And I guess you know, obviously they know that,
right and Facebook they are well aware that like this
might be a way out the clock situation for them,
and they have some arrows in that quiver. I mean
that may be so, but also remember that Facebook's users
are outside of the US, and that even a change

(01:39:05):
administration here won't won't UM put Margueritte vest Dagger, who's
the Competition Commissioner in the EU back in the bottle,
and she's another fire breather, right, She's another amazing person.
And so you know I wouldn't be too quick to
write that off. I mean Facebook needs its foreign markets. Yes,
it's u S customers are worth more to anyone else
because we have the most primitive privacy frameworks, so it

(01:39:28):
can extract a lot more data for like we're the
we're the richest people with a worse privacy. So that's
that's UM. You know, it's a real home court advantage
for Facebook, but it needs that other eighty percent of
its users. It wouldn't be what it is without them,
and that makes it subject to their jurisdiction. And you know,
one of the things about ad driven firms like Facebook,
UM is that they really need sales offices in country.

(01:39:52):
Uh so you know, even before we we had the
proliferation national firewalls, which don't get me wrong, I don't
think it's a good thing. UM. These large global firms
that operated UM sales offices in country, in every territory
they worked in, were vulnerable to regulation because if you
have staff in a country, then you have someone that

(01:40:13):
can be arrested, right, and so it's not like they
can just be like I don't know, like the Tour Project,
which just you know, it has people um who who
sit and hack on tour who are close to lawyers
who can defend people who sit on hack and on tour. Uh.
You know, if the Tour Project had to have staff

(01:40:34):
full time in Turkey and China and Russia and Syria
in order to operate, it would be a very different project.
But you know, Facebook and Twitter and Google, they all
have staff in those countries and it makes them vulnerable
to regulation. And so, you know, China is really interesting
because because m j and Ping, for his own reasons

(01:40:57):
which are not my reasons and stink from the Democrats
and the Republicans reasons, is doing stuff to rein in
big tech in China. And it's actually quite interesting because
you know the argument that Nick Legg makes when he
says why we shouldn't break up Facebook, as he says, uh,
you know, China is coming for your UM, for your
I P and for your industrial competitiveness with its big

(01:41:20):
tech giants that it treats as national champions that projects
soft power around the world. Meanwhile, China is like these
tech giants, we hate these tech giants. They present a
countervailing force to the hedgemony of the the Communist Party
and the and the executive branch that she should bring
sets at the top of we're gonna neuter them, and
we're gonna we're gonna disappear their founders, like Jack Mont

(01:41:41):
to fucking Googlogs right Like, they're like, we don't want
national champions because the nation that you know, we Bow
and Ali Baba is the champion four is we Bow
and Ali Baba and ten Cent they're not. They're not
champions for China by any stretch of the imagination. They
don't give a shit about China. And so you know,
they're all of these companies are going to face regulatory pressure,

(01:42:04):
anti monopoly regulatory pressure all over the world, and you're
you're so much more um optimistic. I guess about about
the potential for that to bite than a lot of
people I talked to, and I think more knowledgeable as well.
And I kind of wonder because there's this very strong,
obviously influenced by decades of cyberpunk attitude that like, we're
in this age of mega corporations whose power is you know,

(01:42:29):
there's nothing that can stop Amazon from doing what Amazon
wants to do. Right, Facebook is going to keep doing
whatever they want to do forever. You you clearly don't
believe that. And I you know you, you clearly know
your stuff. I'm wondering why you think that that image
is still persist so persistent that like attitude in our heads,
of these these these are kind of monolithic forces in

(01:42:52):
our society that um just have to be endured. So
I think it's a belief in the great forces of history, right, um,
and the great man theory. You know that the the
these um. Uh, you know that these rich people are
driving history. Yeah, these these these powerful figures are driving history.

(01:43:13):
They're in charge there in the driver's seat. I mean,
that's kind of what's behind Trump arrangement syndrome, right, the
idea that Trump is uniquely powerful and talented demagogue as
opposed to just like a demagogue shaped puzzle piece that
fit in the demagogue shaped hold that was left by
the collapse of credibility of capitalism. Uh. And you know,
a man who is clearly too stupid to be a

(01:43:35):
cause of anything and will only ever be the effect
of something. And uh, you know, the for me, the
theory of of history and how it goes was really
transformed by an exercise that my friend Ada Palmer does. So.
Aida is a science fiction novelist. She's she's just published
the fourth book of her Terra Ignota series, her debut series.

(01:43:58):
It's an incredible series of books. But she's a real
like kind of multi talented, multi threat. So she's a
librettiston singer who has produced album length operas based on
the Norse mythos. She's also a tenured history of um
a tenured professor of Renaissance history in Florence at the
University of Chicago, where she studies heterodox information, pornography, homosexuality, witchcraft,

(01:44:22):
and so on. During the inquisitions and every year with
her undergrads, she reenacts through a four week long live
action role playing game, the Election of the Medici's Pope,
and each of her students takes on the role of
a cardinal from a great family and the in the
actual election of the I forget what year was, uh,

(01:44:44):
fourteen ninety or something, I forget, but they each take
on this role and they have a character sheet and
has motivations like a dinner party, murder mystery. But for
four weeks they make a alliances break, alliances stab each
other in the back UH stage surprise reversals, And at

(01:45:05):
the end of the four weeks there's a u faux
Gothic cathedral on campus and they dress up in costume.
Aida has a a Google alert for theater companies that
are getting rid of their costumes, so she clothes them
in the garb of the Medici's cardinals, and they gather
and they go into a room, and then a puff

(01:45:27):
of smoke emerges, and you get the new Pope. And
every year, four of the final candidates UH there are
four final candidates rather and two of them are always
the same, because the great forces of history bear down
on that moment to say those people will absolutely be
in the running for the for the papacy, and two

(01:45:48):
of them have never once been the same, because human
action still has space to alter the outcomes that are
prefigured by the great forces of history. And so for me,
the idea of being an optimist or a pessimist has
always felt very fatalistic. It's this either way, this idea

(01:46:09):
that the great forces of history have determined the outcome
and human action has no bearing on it. And I
think that rather than optimism or pessimism, we can be hopeful,
And that's the word you use before. Hope is the
idea not that you can see a path from here
to the place you want to get to, but rather
that you haven't run out of things that you can
do to advance your your goal, right, Because if you

(01:46:30):
can take a step to advance your goal, you can
ascend the gradient towards the peak that you are trying
to reach, then you will attain a new vantage point,
and from that vantage point, you may have revealed to
you courses of action that you didn't suspect before you
took that step. So, so long as the step is available,
there's always another step lurking in the wings that you

(01:46:52):
can't see from where you are. And the reason I'm
hopeful about this is I can think of like fifty
things that could improve the monopoly picture that we're living
in now, and it's up from thirty things last year.
And so even though I don't know how we get
from here to a better future, and even though I
absolutely see the blockers you're talking about Trump landslide, uh

(01:47:14):
losing Congress because they let Joe Mansion and Christmas Cinema
Newter the build back better, Bill, Um, you know, all
of those things that can happen. I have hope, you know,
which is not the same as optimism or a belief
that things will be great or even even like a
sense a lack of a sense of foreboding. I have
that in spades. But I have hoped that when the

(01:47:37):
next phase of the fight begins, that we will have
many UM vulnerable spots we can strike at, and that
we can capitalize on whichever victories we attain to find
more vulnerabilities and move on. I think that's so important,
and I think it goes in line with to bring
up climate change again, the idea that like one of
the most toxic things you can think are e climate

(01:47:58):
change is that they're nothing to do. We're already past
every point of no return and there's no there's no
positive action because it just leads you to doing the
same thing as the people who deny it. UM. And
it's Yeah, I think it's it's very important to UM
recognized that like, not only are there things you can do,
but when you do those things, you start taking those steps,
other steps reveal themselves. Yeah, And you know what, if

(01:48:23):
you're feeling nihilistic about about climate. I'm nearly through Saul
Griffith's book Electrify Uh. Saul's an old friend of mine.
He's MacArthur Winner's electrical engineer, and he's just done the
He's it's a popular engineering book. It's one of my
favorite genres. They're like popular science books, except instead of
telling you about how science works, they tell you about
how engineering works. And he's basically like, here is why

(01:48:46):
all the estimates of how much renewable as we need
are hugely overestimated. And it's basically that like keeping uh
fossil fuel power online requires a lot of fossil fuel, right,
something like of that estimate is just it's the energy
that we need to make the energy, and it's not

(01:49:06):
present in electrical models. Here's how we can manufacture it.
Here's how we can distribute it. Here is basically how
if we can figure out the financing, Americans can UH
spend less money every year than they do now to
get more stuff that they love every year. That we
can do this without hair shirts. It's a spectacular book. Um,

(01:49:28):
And you know, I don't agree with everything Saul says
every all the time, but he is very careful about
his technical facts. There aren't technical errors in this. There
might be assumptions that we disagree with, but as a
technical matter, he's basically written a piece of design fiction
in which, over the next fifteen years, using clever finance

(01:49:50):
and and solid engineering, we really actually do avert the
climate emergency. And Yeah, as always, kind of the main
barriers to doing the best version of the thing is
the political realities on the ground. You know, you have
to but I think that's the that's the value of
at least trying to make it clear that there are options.

(01:50:12):
I wanted to shift for a moment um. I was
thinking recently about I think probably the earliest back book
of yours that I've read, Pirate Cinema, which is heavily involved.
I think I'm gonna you know, if you're one of
the folks like me who was on the Internet back
when you know, file sharing sites, when that was a
huge topic of discussion, when the r i A Was

(01:50:33):
going after people, when like copyright was kind of a
a much more prevalent part of kind of the online discourse. Um,
it deals a lot in that and these kind of
I think there's elements of it that kind of prefigured
what Disney has done buying up every imaginable fictional property
in the world. And that's kind of the the elements

(01:50:55):
of dystopia that book deals with is is, you know,
the attempts of these this, these giant multinational entertainment corporations
to shut down the free tape trading of ideas, remixing
and all that stuff. And then kind of thinking about
the difference between the focus of that and the focus
of books like Attack Surface, where you're really delving more into,
you know, I the fictional versions of real life companies

(01:51:18):
like Tiger Swan that do it, uh the surveillance on
protesters and all around the world, and that are kind
of using tactics that were pioneered by other contractors and
like Iraq and Afghanistan years earlier. I guess kind of
the things that I find interesting about that as as
I can remember, when I was first on the Internet,
the big social kind of crusades online with the people

(01:51:42):
that that I paid attention to at least, was all
around copyright. It was about not just you know, the
attempts to stop people from remixing and sharing copyrighted work,
but about um attempts to like buy up copyrights and
like into these these ever kind of larger uh agglomerations,
and and that's kind of hit. It seems to have

(01:52:04):
hit like a terminal point with the you know, movies
like Ready Player one and kind of a lot of
the stuff we're seeing in Marble where everything is showing
up everywhere Space Jam two. UM. I guess the part
of it that feels less dystopian the days attempts to
crack down on file sharing, which I don't think went
kind of in the worst case scenario. I'm interested actually

(01:52:24):
in your thoughts on that, um, because I can remember,
you know, when the r I A would be threatening
people with years in jail and whatnot over sharing stuff
on kaza we seem to be I don't know. Is
it just that it gets less like I'm interested in
your in your thoughts on that. Is it just that
it's less publicized when they cracked down on people, or
has kind of the nature of their response to that
really changed. Well. I think that what's happened with the

(01:52:47):
kind of steady state of the copyright wars has been
the introduction of um brittleness and fragility into our speech
platforms like Twitter, UH and and Facebook and YouTube, where
it's very easy to get material removed by by making
copyright claims UM. And you know, we see that with
the sleazier side of the reputation management industry, where they

(01:53:10):
use bogus copyright claims to take down criticisms. You know,
there was a group of leftists who are really celebrating
the idea that if you if Nazis were marching in
your town, you could stop them from uploading their videos
by playing copyrighted music in the background. And I was like,
you have no idea, what a terrible fucking idea that is.

(01:53:30):
And you know, within a couple of years, cops and
Beverly Hills were doing it. Whenever people tried to film
the police there, they would just turn on some Taylor
Swift to try and stop uploading UM. You know, the
thing about the copyright wars is that the real action
turned out to be in UM wage theft through monopolization. So,

(01:53:51):
you know, the neutering and destruction of label independent music
distribution platforms like Khazah or grow Ster or Napster, and
the Supreme Court decision, the Groster decision that supported that
meant that the only UM way that you could launch
a service like that was in cooperation with the big labels,

(01:54:12):
and the you know, most successful one is Spotify. Spotify
is actually partially owned by the labels, and the labels
use that ownership stake to negotiate a kind of formalized
wage theft where they allowed for a lower purse stream
rate because when they get royalties for a stream, part

(01:54:33):
of that money goes to their musicians, and that meant
that the firm Spotify retain more profits which it returned
to it in the form of higher dividends, and dividends
go just straight to their shareholders. They don't that there's
no claim that musicians can make on this. And because
they set the benchmark rate, it meant that everyone, irrespective

(01:54:53):
of whether you were assigned to one of the big
three labels, ended up getting the same perse stream eight
as as Universal's artists. So they were able to structure
the whole market. In the meantime, in the industrial side,
UH copyright laws, notably Section twelve of one of the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which is a law past that

(01:55:15):
makes it a felony to remove DRM to bypass a
technical protection measure UM that has become the go to
system for blocking repair interoperability UH and to prevent third
parties from um UH from from creating services or add
ons that accomplish positive ends like improved accessibility, improved security,

(01:55:39):
um AD blocking and privacy and so on. They just say, well,
you know, we we put a one molecule thick layer
of DRM around say YouTube, and when you make a
YouTube downloader for archival purposes or whatever, UM, you you
just create a um A UH, you bypass our technical
protection measure. And so you're committing a elmy and you

(01:56:00):
can go to prison for five years and and pay
a five dollar fine. And so you have this like
relentless monotonic expansion of DRM into like automotive tractors. Medtronic
uses it to block people from fixing ventilators. UM. So
you know, this, this UM assault on the ability to

(01:56:21):
reconfigure a technology that is ever more prevalent in our
lives and that increasingly holds our lives in its in
its hands right its choices determine whether we live or die,
has been really consequential. And I know, we don't really
think of it as a copyright problem. We think of
it as right to repair. We think of a security
auditing our accessibility. But the rule that is being used

(01:56:44):
to block into operability is a copyright law. It's what
printer companies used to stop you from buying third party
inc um. It's what Apple uses to stop you from
installing a third party app store. And you know the
absence of a third party app store is why when
Apple removed all the working VPNs in China, Chinese users
couldn't just switch to another app store that had working

(01:57:05):
VPNs in it. And so you know that this um
endgame of the copyright wars is I think a lot
more dystopian than merely suing college kids. Uh, it's it's
actually really screwed us in ways that are that are
hard to fathom. Yeah, it's a fascinating example of kind

(01:57:26):
of dystopic creep because, at least kind of from my
more more ignorant position. When I was nineteen, I was
like worried that all of these these people remixing music
and movies that I liked, like we're going to get
cracked down on or have their stuff pulled um, and
the the kind of thing that I didn't I don't
think a lot of people saw coming until it hit.
I certainly didn't was what you were just talking about

(01:57:48):
the fact that kind of the logic of how these
these entertainment companies were looking at like an album or
you know, a movie, and and cutting up pieces of
that they've they've applied to like a tractor, you know,
and now you can't like repair your John Deer or
modify your John Deer so it works better. And then
you know, you get situations like we just kind of
averted with the John Deere strike, where there was a

(01:58:10):
very real possibility that we wouldn't be able to get
a large chunk of a harvest because there wouldn't be
parts and you can't put your own in. And that's
to think that that the thought process that led us
there started with like trying to protect Metallica. In some ways,
it's kind of funny. And this is why the anti
monopoly critique is great because it shows you that there's
cause for solidarity between John Deere tractor owners and John

(01:58:32):
Deere tractor UH makers the workers who work there, because
the same force that has allowed John Deere to cram
down its workforce for forty years is the is the
force that allows it to um UH take away the
agency and economic liberties of farmers who own John Deer tractors,

(01:58:54):
and it's it's the it's the political power that comes
with monopoly. And so you know, if John Deere were
a smaller, weaker firm, it would be less able to
resist both the claims of its workforce and the claims
of its um uh customers. Mhm yeah, I mean that
makes that makes sense, And it is like I like

(01:59:14):
that idea of of because it's not just kind of
solidarity between John Deere purchasers UM and and the people
who work in the factories. It's also there's kind of
solidarity between a wide like anyone concerned with UM copyright.
It's a much broader base of solidarity than just people
who are worried about you know, what's happening uh to

(01:59:36):
fiction or like what Disney is doing to like copyrights
around Mickey Mouse or whatever. Like it's it. You can
you can draw in concerns UM from right to repair
to a bunch of other things, which potentially means there's
there's a greater body of people available for action if
you can make them see kind of UM converging interests there,
which is I think is an interesting idea. Well, I

(01:59:58):
think you're getting something really important. And this is um
This comes from James Boyle, who's a copyright scholar at
Duke University and was really involved and found in creative
commons and in those early copyright fights. And and Jamie
makes an analogy to the coining of the term ecology.
And he says that before the term ecology came along,
you know, someone us cared about owls and someone us

(02:00:18):
cared about the ozone layer. But it wasn't really clear
that we were on the same side. You know, it's
not clear if you're Martian looking through a telescope, you
might be hard pressed to explain why. You know, the
destiny of charismatic charismatic nocturnal birds and the gaseous composition
of the upper atmosphere were the same issue. Right in
the term ecology. Let all these people who cared about

(02:00:39):
different things find a single point to rally around. It
turned a thousand issues into one movement. And I think
that in the in the course of resisting corporate power,
which is to say, resisting monopoly, we have the potential
to weld together people from very diverse fields. You know,
farmers and and people who make tractors. Sure, but you know,
if you grew up watching professional wrestling and now you're

(02:01:02):
aghast that the wrestlers that you loved are begging on
go fund me for pennies to die with dignity. You know,
once someone explains to the reason that that's happening is
that thirty wrestling leagues became one wrestling league that was
able to practice worker's classification, turn those performers into contractors,
take away their health insurance, and leave them to die.
Then suddenly you're on the same side of the people

(02:01:24):
who were worried about big tech and big tractor, and
the people are worried about the fact that there's only
one manufacturer of cheerleading uniform uniforms, and two manufacturers of
athletic shoes, and two manufacturers of spirits, and two manufacturers
of beer, one manufacturer of eyewear that also owns all
the eye wear stores and the eyewear ensure. You know
that Duff Beer thing from the early Simpsons, where there's

(02:01:46):
like Duff Beer, Rispberry thing, Dulci Gabana, Oliver, People's Boushan,
Loam Versaci. Every eyewear brand you've ever heard of is
one company coach all of them and They also own
Sunglass Hut and uh Target Optical and Sears Optical and

(02:02:07):
lens Crafters and spec Savers and every other eyewear story
you've ever heard of. And they bought all the labs
that make the lenses, so more than half the lenses
in the world come from them. A division called and
they bought imed, which is the company that bought all
the insurance companies that ensure I Wear, and so they're
also the company that's ensuring your glasses, your your eyes

(02:02:29):
one company, and I Wear costs a thousand percent more
than it did a decade ago. They stole our fucking eyes, right,
So people who care about that have common cause with
people who care about wrestlers and people who care about
beer and big tech and the fact that there's four
shipping companies and they have no competitive pressure and so
they just keep building bigger ships that gets stuck in

(02:02:50):
the fucking Suez canal Right, we're all on the same side. Yeah,
And I I like the idea that I like. I
like hoping that that kind of inherent solidarity, if you
can point it out to people, is potentially an antidote
to or at least a partial antidote to the level
of the layer of politicization that's fallen down over everything, um,

(02:03:12):
that stops people from actually considering matters but instead considering
like I don't know, is this owning the libs right?
Like if you if they if if you can get
them to see that, like, yeah, their favorite wrestler is
like dying because he couldn't afford insulin, and that that
that's tied to the issue of like the reason his
dad can't get tractor parts this year or whatever, um,
And that that's tied to other issues that are maybe

(02:03:34):
championed by people he would reflexively dismiss. But like, yeah,
I I I find that really inspiring. It's still a
significant there's a significant challenge for people who are trying
to make those connections, for folks who are who are
trying to like inform them of that state. I mean, yeah,
that's true. And you know, like Steve Bannon will tell

(02:03:56):
you that the reason to do cultural world culture culture
war bullshit is because politics are down downstream from culture,
and there's probably an element of truth to that. But
I also think the reason that people find culture war
bullshits so attractive is because they got nothing else. Yeah,
I think we we talked about that a lot within
the context of conservative for politics. I grew up very conservative,

(02:04:17):
and I do remember how the tenor of things I
was hearing through the bush ears changed from advocation of
policies to just all culture war all the time, all
all striking the dims all the time, and it was
the kind of um it and that's not the only
place that's happen. You see it on the left to
absolutely like it's it's endemic. Now it's it's a poison

(02:04:39):
and kind of the discourse. But I think that there's
a lot that needs to be I think there's a
lot to be discovered still for like how to break
people out of that. I'm kind of bullish when we
talk about these issues like you were bringing up with
sort of the monopolization of these industries you wouldn't expect
to be monopolized. I'm hopeful about the future that stuff

(02:04:59):
like three deep printing presents for that. We have an
organization in Portland that does kind of three D printing glasses,
frames and stuff and is helping people with that sort
of stuff. And I'm in conversations with like the four Thieves,
Vinegar collective. I think it's called. UM. Yeah, some of
the folks doing like trying to do working on pharmaceutical

(02:05:19):
hacking making at the moment like lower cost uh kind
of home scratch brood versions of like different aids medications,
and the Holy Grail is doing that with um insulin effectively.
UM And I think it is. And I do think
one of the things that's exciting about that is because
the way in which the way in which collaboration on

(02:05:41):
three D printing works, in the way in which actually spreading,
like the ability to do stuff works. I think it's
synergizes nicely with the ability of people to kind of
reach other folks through writing or other forms of content,
because they can both spread through the same You can
have a video or a story, and you can have
like kind of embedded guides on how to do that.
UM I I I don't know that I've I've runned

(02:06:03):
into a lot of your writings on kind of the
potential of three D printing in this space, But I'm interested,
like to what do you do. Are you looking at
that as kind of an area of hope or do
you see that still is kind of too two niche
and labor focus to really actually take off in the
way that it would need to to crack some of
these nuts. This is where I do my my woody Allen,

(02:06:24):
you know nothing of my work stick because I had
this novel Maker Makers in two thousand and eight. It's
it's why uh Bree Pettis went out and founded Maker
Bought uh and it's you know, credited with like kickstarting
the homebrew three D printed revolution blah blah blah blah
blah and um and it was a very bullish novel

(02:06:47):
about three D printing. I um, you know, the reality
hasn't lived up to the hype yet. It may just
be that we're in the long trough of despair, as
the Gardner hype cycle model has it. Uh. But you know,
I think the problem with three D printing was that
the patents had been concentrated into the hands of two
large firms that had bought all their competitors, including Maker

(02:07:09):
Bought and UM. When those patents finally expired. The big
one was the laser centering of of powder patent expired.
There just wasn't a big bang. And I think it's
because the supply chain for it still had a lot
of proprietary elements and so producing the powder and producing
the components that allowed for that powder printing remained a

(02:07:33):
very high bar, and so we just didn't see the
kind of new industry emerged that we would have hoped for.
And you know, it's like seven years since those patents expired.
Five years since those patent expired. Now we're seeing a
few more of those powder printers. You get a lot
more like UVY cured epoxy printers because those came off
patent earlier and they have a less complicated supply chain. Um.

(02:07:55):
But still, I mean mostly when we talked about printers,
we're talking about filament, and just filaments just not a
great technology. It's been pushed in ways that you wouldn't
even believe, and people have figured out how to do
absolutely incredible things with it. But it's not it's not
something that you would make aerospace components for, you know,

(02:08:17):
it's it's it's something that you make, um novelty dungeons
and dragons dice, which is an important industry to disrupt.
Don't get me wrong, but I'm with you, with you.
I can remember paying thirty bucks for a set of
dice as a kid and thinking somebody's gotta fix this scam.
I can put you something for Christmas, Robert, Thank you Garrison.
And you know now I I own a I bought

(02:08:39):
a comic con a couple of years ago. I bought
a tiny little D twenty made out of meteoric or
I have a sky metal D twenty. Oh now that's yeah,
that's that's classy. Um. I'm curious. We've got a little
bit of time left, and I wanted to ask in
your your novel Attack Surface. I know it was released
right October if I'm not mistaken, um, And obviously a

(02:09:01):
lot of that deals with again these kind of like
corporations that have been contractors for the D O D
doing like fucked up surveillance shit in Iraq and Afghanistan,
bringing that technology to crack down on like US uh,
sort of dissident left wing political movements. It comes out
the year that we have a nationwide kind of uprising.

(02:09:22):
Um that a lot of fucked up surveillance ship that
had been kind of demoed state side around it like
Standing Rock and whatnot, gets gets really put into its
own How much of that was written before ship went down?
And I and I'm assuming like I don't know exactly
how your process works, but I'm wondering, like I assume
you started the project before everything went the way it

(02:09:44):
did last summer. How much did kind of what happened
last summer affect the way you imagined that technology in
those tactics functioning in that book. Yeah, the the timeline
goes the other direction. I wrote that book before the
are uprising, um long, long, long long before that, and
I wrote it about things like, um, the surveillance technology

(02:10:07):
we saw in Belarus and chev and also at Occupy
and Standing Rock and at other Black Lives Matter demonstrations
and uprisings in Americans. Yeah, and if you you know,
also the monotonic expansion of surveillance leagues right where you know,
first we learned about MC catchers, and then we learned

(02:10:30):
about dirt boxes, which are MC catchers on airplanes, and
you know, like we just all of that stuff leaked
like crazy because you know, these surveillance giants are are
not good at what they do, right, which isn't a
reason we should be hopeful. A company that's bad at
what it does is in some ways even worse because

(02:10:50):
one of the ways that they're incompetence expresses itself is
that they often gather a bunch of data on innocent
people and then leak it. Yeah, right, not deliciously, just
through incompetence. Um. And so you know, the this expansion
of surveillance has like been on my mind for a
long time, and I've been writing about it, well at

(02:11:11):
least since Little Brother, Right, So two thousand and six,
I wrote that novel, and I've had my finger in that. Yeah.
So I've had my finger in that for all that time,
and and working with the f F it's impossible to miss. Sure.
Was there a degree to which, um, I don't know,
I guess we're you surprised by anything that happened last time?
Or did it just kind of comprehensively feel like these

(02:11:33):
are everything slotting into place that I knew was heading
in this direction? Because yeah, I mean you're right, I
did like there was like everything was kind of presaged
um years before. I'm yeah, I I'm wondering if if
there was anything that kind of surprised you, um, or
was it was it all just sort of what you've
been braced for. Yeah, I don't feel like there were

(02:11:55):
any kind of surveillance surprises. I mean the reverse the
use of reverse warrants. I think we all kind of
assumed was going on. There had been hints of it
in Google's warrant canarias beforehand. But you know, those defense warrants,
which again, if you're like sitting there going oh gofense,
warrants are awesome because they're catching the one six rioters, Like, dude,

(02:12:17):
you are going to be so disappointed, Holy sh it,
that's not where they're going to keep using this. Yeah. Um, So,
you know, learning more about those reverse warrants I think
was was interesting. Um, but I don't feel like, I
don't well, off the top of my head, I can't
say that there was any new technical stuff that emerged.
You know. I I am kickstarted the audio book for

(02:12:40):
Attack Surface. Uh, and I offered as like the top
tier you could commission short stories in the Little Brother universe,
and there were three of those and I just finished
the first of them, and it's about um future pipeline
protests and uh. You know, I spent a lot of
time in my research looking at the survey that was

(02:13:00):
done on the pipeline protests, and a lot of it
was provocateurs and undercovers who were just terrible at their jobs, right,
like the intercepts, long publication of of uh, you know,
long documents about how those operators worked. They just like
showed up in military haircuts and combat boots. And then
we're like, hey, I'm from Portland and I'm here because

(02:13:21):
we're gonna funk up some bad guys. Let's go do it.
Let's go do violence and save Indian country. And like
everyone was like you and like does anyone want to
buy drugs? And and the actual protesters were like, you're
a provocateur, like go away, you know, like they could tell.
I mean, I guess you know, there are a lot
more effective in the UK in infiltrating the climate movement.

(02:13:43):
You know, they impregnated several protesters, so you know, and
had long term relationships with them and raised kids with them.
So there is that. But here stories yeah, here, it
was not that we didn't just didn't see that incredible efficacy. Yeah,
and I do think it. That's I think kind of
the message I took out of it because I I

(02:14:03):
was I started reporting on like dirt boxes back during
Standing Rock, just having them like it explained to me
by people who were on the ground when I showed
up that like, yeah, there's this your like phones don't
work the same out here, and like we're trying to
figure out what's going on, but like everything is is
and it's not just that we're out in the sticks
or anything. And I think the only surprise, the big
surprise for me last year was how I think how

(02:14:25):
little the technology accomplished for them and how much it
just it just wound up back down to violence. Was
like that was kind of the for all of the
toys they had. The toys that actually made the most
difference was gassing and beating people and violence and like
old fashioned informants that was that was the stuff, and
just having a dude there. Yeah, they were really relied on.

(02:14:47):
And the fact that you that that you, Corey, weren't
super surprised, But anything last year I think kind of
just more shows kind of the strength of your work
in terms of how you're very good at seeing the
trends that are already happening but taking them to their
next logical place. Um and it's a really great way
to kind of get a sense of what is something,

(02:15:08):
what what will something maybe look like in the next
decade or so, because it's it's all based on already
existing stuff, just in different kind of original ways. So
that's why I think it's it's so useful to look
at your books as as an activist, specifically around like
surveillance and stuff, because it's it's just really it's it's
really good for kind of keeping keeping an eye on,

(02:15:30):
keeping your head, yeah, and and keeping an eye on
what's keeping an eye on you, um and all that
kind of stuff. This was a really lovely conversation. Was
a lovely last thing to do in my home office
in because I leave tomorrow and won't be back until
the next year, and then I'm actually gonna be offline
for a month after a joint replacement. So it was

(02:15:50):
it was really lovely to meet you all on to
chat with you. Thanks so much for chatting with us today, Glory,
what's up? Guys? Have a shop Aloud and I am
Troy Millions and we are the host of the Earnier
Leisure podcast where we break down business models and examine
the latest trends and finance. We hold court and have

(02:16:12):
exclusive interviews with some of the biggest names of business,
sport and entertainment, from DJ Khaled to Mark Cuban, Rick Ross,
and Shaquille O'Neil. I mean our alumnilists expansive. Listen to
as our guests reveal their business models, hardships and triumphs
and their respective fields. The knowledge is in death and
the questions are always delivered from your standpoint. We want
to know what you want to know. We talked to
the legends of business, sports and entertainment about how they

(02:16:34):
got their start and most importantly, how they make their money.
Earn your Leisia is a college business class mixed with
pop culture. I want to learn about the real estate game, unclears,
how the stock market works. We got you interested in
starting a truck and company or vending machine business. Not
really sure about how taxes or credit work. We got
it all covered. The Earnier Leisure podcast is available now.
Listen to Earnier Leisure on the Black Effect podcast Network,

(02:16:56):
I Heart Radio, app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get
your podcast. Raffie is the voice of some of the
happiest songs of our generation. Babya So who is the
man behind Baby Bluga. Every human being wants to feel respected.

(02:17:18):
When we start with young, all good things can grow
from there. I'm Chris Garcia, comedian New dad and host
of Finding Raffie, a new podcast from My Heart Radio
and Fatherly Listen every Tuesday on the I Heart Radio
app or wherever you get your podcasts. The art world
it is essentially a money laundering business. The best fakes

(02:17:40):
are still hanging on people's walls. You know, they don't
even know or suspect that they're fakes. I'm Alec Baldwin
and this is a podcast about deception, greed and forgery
in the art world. You knew the painting was fake?
Um Listen to Art Fraud starting Bory fet on the

(02:18:01):
I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get
your podcasts. You know what, I think it's time to

(02:18:22):
do a podcast. All right, I did it, Sophie. This
is it could happen here a podcast that's begun. We
talk about how things are falling apart, and occasionally, when
we're feeling good, how to maybe how to maybe put
them back together a little bit. But today we're more
talking about the growing consensus that things in the US

(02:18:48):
culture wars are heating up to an unacceptable level and
and maybe people are going to start doing some non
culture type wars here in the near future, like civil
type war here in the near future. Those of you
who know me, which why would you be listening to
this podcast if you if you don't know, like the
earlier seasons of this exact show, uh know that I

(02:19:11):
talk a lot about the potential of a mass civil
conflict in the United States. I've been kind of trying
to warn about it for a while, and today we're
gonna do an episode about some of the more mainstream
sources that have started to kind of accept this as
a possibility, um and get concerned about it. Garrison, You've
presented us with three articles, one from NBC News, one

(02:19:34):
from The Independent, and one from the Brookings Institute, all
kind of fiddling around this idea that certain unnamed journalists
have spent years discussing. So, yeah, we're gonna we're gonna
get into it. Garrison. Yeah, So it is that the
past the past few months, we have well I've I've

(02:19:55):
been watching to see how how this idea has been
slowly kind of eating in popularity. Of course, there was
like a spike in this around like January six, but
then stuff kind of settled down, and now we're kind
of seeing it come back up against we had these
these three pieces, all published within like a month of
each other, um all kind of on this topic, and specifically,

(02:20:16):
like the pieces themselves are definitely going coming out this
from a more like liberal perspective. But the thing that
made them interesting is that they did have a decent
number of like of of polls and uh and and
surveys in them based on like what who who what
types of people think are like are thinking about this
and think it's more more of a possibility. One survey

(02:20:38):
published on November one, they've said eighteen percent of Americans
believe that quote unquote patriots might have to resort to
violence to quote save the country. Um so. And then
that included a thirty percent of Republicans um so, but
eighteen percent of all of of of of Americans in

(02:20:58):
general of republic and so using that very specifically turn
of phrase is definitely uh notable. And then another pole
from are there in the Air found that forty six
percent of people thought the country was somewhat or very
likely to have another type of civil war. And that's

(02:21:19):
the plurality of the people pulled in that because only
like said unlikely, So the majority of people are not
the majority of people pulled, but like the most common
leaned on, yes, it is, I think we're going to
have us a war, yeah, which is not great. The
one that uh NBC published included in their article had
but like thirty three percent of people saying no, it's

(02:21:41):
it's probably not gonna happen, kind of on the maybe
and and and and forty seven leaning on yeah this, maybe,
this is, this is probably gonna happen at some point soon. YEP.
I mean a lot of a lot a lot of
what these articles are talking about is just like kind
of the increased increased threats against like elected officials and

(02:22:01):
then increased almost like militancy or performative militancy of elected
officials types of like like you know, like a performatively
bringing your gun into Congress and that type of thing.
And it lays out like a list of a list
of like of of of threats or stuff enacted against governors, congressmen,
all that kind of stuff in in the past, in

(02:22:22):
the past, like a year year mainly. Yeah. One of
the things I really disagree about the Brookings because Brookings
is the one who kind of is analyzing that made
that big poll and talking about it, has a list
of reasons why we might have a civil war and
a list of reasons why it's unlikely. And one of
the reasons why it's unlikely is quote most of the
organizations talking about civil war or private not public entities, um.

(02:22:46):
And note that when Southern States seceded in eighteen sixty,
they had police forces, military organizations, and state sponsored militias.
The rights of that now, Yeah, Like there's a ton
of signal posting from guys like Jim Jordan's uh Hawthorne um,
Gates Bobert um, a ton of signal posting of Gostre

(02:23:12):
from elected Republican leaders, from governors, from state level elected officials,
and like regular street cops. Yeah, and like regular street
cops that are like civil war adjacent, um, if not
directly advocating for internet scene violence. So I think that
that I don't think Brookings, I don't think they're analysis
is spot on with this. And I think there's just

(02:23:36):
one of every thing that's interesting about that, which is
I think it was one of those are these our
sles arguing that it was like, well, the Pentagon's not
particularly civil Like, well, the Pentagon doesn't want a civil war,
They're not gonna step into it. But but I think
it is also important to note that, like, like if
remember what happened last summer, there's a lot of FEDS

(02:23:56):
who are just like you know, like when like yeah,
so's you know, the army kind of doesn't want Trump
to like send the army against protesters, but like you know,
like Bortach for example, like was just like absolutely hyped
up to just like absolutely just go disappear a bunch

(02:24:17):
of people, and they were very excited about that part. Yeah, Yeah,
they love they love this stuff, and it's like, yeah,
the notion that it's less likely because it doesn't have
like formal police backing is really silly because if you
spend any time monitoring these type of militia groups, you
know that a good portion of them are also members
of some type of law enforcement or have like family
connections to member. There have been a bunch of cases

(02:24:42):
of weapons being stolen stolen from forts UM, particularly in
like the West Coast right now, Like, yeah, there's a
ton of connections to the and a ton of like
members in common. It's like at the Capital riot that
were like thirty something active duty police officers involved. UM.
To say that there's not direct connections with law enforcement
is nonsense. And it's true that, like our military leadership

(02:25:06):
remains pretty much a political and very like committed to
being a political in the sense that like in the
within the like US partisan context, right, Like they don't
come in to prop up the Democrats of the Republicans,
and I don't think that's immediately likely. But police forces
in the United States are extremely politicized and have more
than enough power to carry out a counterinsurgency campaign nationwide.

(02:25:31):
And as long as the US military didn't step in,
and why would they, Like the cops are willing and
able to do the civil warring for the government. Why
do you think they have all those tanks? You know?
So yeah, like there is there is a lot of
backing um, at least performatively among certain types of writing
politicians and of course police. But I think a lot
of what the politicians are trying to do is more

(02:25:53):
like encourage regular folks or people in like civilian militias
to just start doing violence against other elected leaders. That
it seems to be like like like Bobart and that,
and those types aren't they They're not like telling police
to go do this. They're speaking to like regular people um.
And I think one one one decent point the actually

(02:26:16):
the nbc PS actually puts out it says, all of
this kind of like divisive um and and more violent
rhetoric and behavior displayed by and towards some of our
elected officials does not necessarily mean another like civil war
in terms of like a military conduct contest between states. Um.
It just does not mean that it's inevitable or even
probable or even like probable. A more likely scenario is

(02:26:38):
a turbulent era of civil disturbances, armed confrontations, standoffs, threats,
assassination attempts, and other acts of political violence. In other words,
one that's a lot like the last two years of
American history, which I feel like, yeah, in terms of
in terms of the likelihood of there being like a
more formally declared kind of conflict versus just first just

(02:26:59):
like increasingly increasingly normalizing extreme violence against uh you know,
quote unquote fellow countrymen. I think is is a yeah,
like there's we are going to be more likely to
be just moving in that direction slowly, and at the
point when there's like frequent enough exchange of the fire,

(02:27:20):
that's when we say, yeah, we're basically in a civil war.
We're just not calling it that, um, which is you know,
that's the points that you Robert, you have made a
lot in the in the past. Yeah, I mean, and
there's I I'm I think a lot of this is
just a failure of kind of imagination and ability to
accept from a group like Brookings, who I know has

(02:27:42):
paid some attention to the Syrian Civil War, that like
civil conflicts in the United States or in the in
the twenty one century often don't like there's no clear
regional split. Like you look at a lot of what
was happening in Syria. You had cities divided up by
neighborhoods between like who who was in charge? Um, you
know that that's very much what we see here. And

(02:28:04):
you do see like clear regional split between urban and
rural divides. And it's not like they say, within specific states,
but like I would say, it's very specific and limited
states that don't have huge urban rural divides. Um, Like
that's that is the norm everywhere in this country that
I've been. Maybe it's different in fucking Vermont or New Hampshire,

(02:28:25):
but I don't trust those places. Um. Yeah, and I
guess I think they're overly optimistic based on kind of
a fundamental misunderstanding of how these sorts of conflicts occur.
Um that said, I don't know, like it's it's one
of those things. I think the number one the number

(02:28:47):
one thing you should be looking at in terms of
whether or not a civil war is likely is the
number of people who respond in polls with things like, yes,
I think we need to use violence to restore the
nation or what ever. Um That it's not just enough,
like I I it's not just enough to think that
a civil war is likely, because a lot of that's

(02:29:08):
just based on people who don't want one, but are
paying attention to the same media as everybody else and
are watching the same stuff we're watching, and they're like, well,
this seems sketchy. I think that the main indicator is
the number of people who respond, yeah, I think it
would be awesome to use violence as a like in
order to make America more like what I wanted to be. Um.

(02:29:31):
And again, that doesn't mean we'll we'll creep over the point.
There's a number of interesting things that have happened. UM
on kind of the we're headed towards the civil war side.
The number one thing that I've seen recently is the
use of paramilitary organizations UM to kind of choke uh,
local civil institutions, um, like school boards. I see that

(02:29:53):
as very concerning and as kind of prelude to the
sort of armed mobilizations that you would see a unlocalized
areas in any kind of civil conflict. It's it's the
precursors to death squads. So that's the that's the thing
that I see on the ground that worries me most,
um in terms of the thing that I'm I'm less

(02:30:14):
certain about honestly, Like one of the things they note
in here in the Brookings article that like the sheer
number of guns in the United States is a reason
why we might have a civil war, and I agree
with that entirely. When you have four million weapons in
private hands, it increases the odds that they'll be used
in some sort of scale. Um. We've also seen historic
numbers of non white people of of of like folks

(02:30:39):
who are from marginalized communities, UM, not just buying up
weapons that unprecedented rates, but organizing with them. And I'm
not really sure how to think of that. There's certainly
a way it could certainly be a very negative development,
but it could also be. I think a big part
of what I've seen from the right lately is the

(02:30:59):
sense of impede unity. UM. And I think the feeling
of being matched in arms is an end to impunity potentially. UM.
Then the big question is like, well what about the police,
and like, well if the police side with the riot
against you know, there's there's still a number of questions
there and we don't have any clean answers. But um,

(02:31:20):
I don't know that. I I think that on the
whole I'm more worried than I was two years ago
when I wrote it could happen here. Um. But it's
not clean, and I think in some to some extent,
I'm I'm a little more worried about something like the
years of lead in Italy than I am about Syria
right now, if that makes sense. I will say one

(02:31:42):
thing about the years of lead, which because a lot
of people talk about the years of less that the
years a letter, this kind of like a roughly ten
year period in Italy of I don't know, mass herostic
escalating political violence with effigant body counts in a way
that stood out from the years around it. Yeah, and
I mean you know, the years of Lead has and

(02:32:04):
the use at Also there's there's a bunch of intelligence
agents involved. There's a lot of four kind false flag
false flag bombings, like hundred hundreds of people are being
killed in bombings. And I think there's one absolutely crucial
difference between now in the years of let. I mean, well, okay,
so partially it's that unlike Italy, we don't have seventeen
thousand intelligence agenci is operating in the US and like

(02:32:26):
trying to kidnap and kill the foreign prime minister. But
the the other thing that's very important is that unlike
unlike the Italian left, and you know, really unlike the
whole global left of the seventies and eighties, there is
no American like left wing like left wing. I guess
you could call like there's there's no left wing terrorist tradition,

(02:32:47):
right like the like the left doesn't do suside bombings,
The left doesn't kidnap people like like the modern American
leftis doesn't do that, And that a big part of
of what was happening in the years of Lead was that,
you know, sometimes the left was doing this. A lot
of times it was the state pretending to be the
left carrying up bombings, and that isn't really something that
is happening right now because there's just like the like,

(02:33:11):
the the left is not in a place where everyone
is going, we need to do armed urban guerrilla movements
and yeah. So and then that that makes it harder
to sort of pin things like pin actual urban guerrilla
movement stuff on the left because there's just none of that.
But I don't think and I agree years of Left
is kind of like a broad Strokes comparison, because what

(02:33:35):
I see is more likely is what we're what we're
already witnessing on the ground with these right wing militant
groups increases, and they moved to the point of kidnapping
and executing and potentially in concert with law enforcement, like
doing stuff like in states that have issued harsh laws,
you know, banning certain books you have in a town,
local law enforcement and militias like go after and grab

(02:33:57):
individual leftists and either kill or im a is in them,
and conflicts over that, and you have the left increasingly
organized an arm um as a defense against that, and
then a number of armed conflicts you know, as a
result of that, which maybe then proceed to bombings and
stuff that that's terrorism or proceed to just more kind
of skirmishes that the FEDS have a minimal response to,

(02:34:22):
and local or state law enforcement kind of tacitly allows.
Um like that. That's that's kind of obviously that's not
a direct comparison to what happened in Italy, but of
course we're a different country. But that's kind of that's
kind of the the kind of brush fire conflict I
could see cropping up in the very near future in
this country. You know what else will start a series

(02:34:47):
of armed gunfights between left and right in American towns.
The products and services they they're they're working on it
every day. The products and services that support this podcast
urged violence on the streets of the United States. That's

(02:35:07):
behind the bastards. Guarantee, Sophie, we're not doing behind the bastards?
What what show are we? Who are we? Anyway? Here's ads?
All right? Oh my gosh, uh we're back. Yeah, what
a great ad. I really nailed that transition. Um, just

(02:35:29):
absolutely so. The next thing that I want to talk about, UM,
something that I think has some some backing behind it,
and something that I think is kind of more silly,
is that one of one of the reasons that this
uh NBC piece by what's his name, uh, Brian Brian

(02:35:50):
Michael Jenkins is uh. He says. One of one of
the reasons that we're kind of getting more okay with,
you know, uh, killing or hurting our neighbors essentially is
um quote, Americans do fewer things together. Church attendance is declining.
Membership and civic organizations and lodges have been decreasing for decades.

(02:36:14):
PTA membership has dropped by nearly half from what it
was in nineteen sixties, Bowling leagues have almost disappeared, and
a shared national experience of military service disintegrated with the
abolition of conscription in nineteen seventy three. Meanwhile, self proclaimed
citizen militia's driven mainly by far right conspiracy theories, have

(02:36:34):
surged since to US and eight, especially in the past
five years. So he is wrong, but he's yes, militias
have leagues, militias have risen. But is that due to
bowling leagues. Yeah, I don't think it's due to a
drop in bowling leagues. I think it's due to the
fact that all these guys are terminally online now and

(02:36:57):
we're watching Fox news for twenty years before that. That
that is the thing is that like, I don't think
this guy, Brian Michael Chickens understands how the Internet intersects
with extremism because he's he's doing this from a very
like like he's he's acting like we're still in the
seventies and he like like that's not how the world works,

(02:37:18):
and how like people spend their time. No, people aren't
doing bowling leagues, but yeah, whoman young men are spending
and and you know middle aged men are spending time online,
whether that be discord in a terrorist group chat, or
that be a Facebook group that's for a militia, and
that's where that socialization is happening. And because the Internet
rewards extremism and the hottest take, it's moving in that

(02:37:40):
direction even with people who would ordinarily just have historically
the past joined bowling leagues. I guess, but it very
it's it's correlation doesn't equal causation. Ship it's wow, less
people are in bowling leagues and going to church and
militias have grown wildly, wildly, Um, this one must cause
the other. And it's like, well, no, they're both both

(02:38:02):
of those things may have some causes in common. There
may be similar factors that are driving both of those things,
but they are not caused like that, they don't necessary
one doesn't necessarily cause the other. UM. And if you like, again,
the smart person version of this would be to say, hey,
people are doing less things together out in the world.
People are reporting because you can find statistic backup for this.

(02:38:25):
People seem to be lonelier than ever. UM. People are
more depressed than ever. Suicide rates have risen, and while
this is happening, militias and extremist groups have grown. Perhaps
there's something about these organizations UM that makes them particularly
attractive when folks are vulnerable due to these things, and like,
let's look at you know, the failure of our political
system to confront these issues further feeds into the desire

(02:38:48):
amongst some chunk of the populace for some sort of
nihilistic cleansing violence. And again, pieces of all the pieces
of this article could be could be reassembled into something
with um some insight, but I I don't think Brian
Michael Jenkins has much. I think it's also an interesting
thing to note here about because so the last thing

(02:39:09):
he talks about this oh is the thing that formed
the common sort of national identity was shared universal military service.
And it's like, okay, the reason shared universal military service
went away was that everyone kept murdering literally just blowing
their officers up in Vietnam like that. And you know,
if if you want to talk about I think like
incredibly high levels of political polarization and like mass violence

(02:39:31):
between Americans, I mean, the army basically fighting a civil
war against itself in Vietnam is you know, in an
enormously important part of this. And then simultaneously the sort
of right wing vets returning home and you know, going
Louis Beam and stuff like that that you know, he's
relying on this kind of mythos of this. So there

(02:39:54):
was a time when you know, it's it's it's basically
made it make America great again. But sort of like, yeah,
that's that's a liberal. This this type of rhetoric is
actually very similar to like the return return to tradition stuff,
being like the solution to our extremism need to be
going to church church again, being part of civil organizations,
joining bowling leagues, and conscript conscripted military service. That's like

(02:40:16):
that is that that is just the same that that
is very similar to like the make American grade again,
return to tradition sect because those are those are also
their goals, except that they're just willing to use violence
to achieve those goals, whereas this guy just wants people
to start doing that again. I guess, um, I don't know. Yeah,
Like in terms of like military service not leading to extremism,

(02:40:38):
I mean, like Oklahoma City bombing, I don't, I don't,
I don't really there is other stuff going on there,
But like in terms of terms of that being like
an example, it is, it is very silly because a
lot of a lot of a lot of the guys
even inside you know, are are current like three per
centers and stuff. A lot of them have former military service.

(02:41:00):
That I mean. But like, yeah, citizen Militia's in terms
of gaining popularity, but specifically due to um kind of
overall distrust of the federal government and the type of
socialization that being online too much results in, has yes,
grown grown grown the militia movement a lot um and

(02:41:22):
and I just don't see how Bowling is going to
solve that issue in terms of in terms of how
do we mean to trust the federal government solve that issue, Garrison.
But but you've never watched The Big Lebowski, so you
wouldn't you wouldn't understand. I've not watched The Big Lebowski,
So I'm kind of I'm kind of I'm kind of
done with the kind of done with the NBC piece there.

(02:41:46):
I know there was there was something Brian Michael Jenkins.
The other thing on on the Brookings thing that I
have a decent issue with is that they're one of
the reasons they give for and and this is actually
something that Brian Michael Junkins also brings up with the
NBC piece, is that one of the reasons why they
believe the civil war is not as inevitable is because

(02:42:07):
there is no clear regional split like a North South divide,
and they, for some reason think this means that there
is less likely to be civil conflict. Um. They they
recognized there is an urban rule divide in most states,
but because there is no large, kind of obvious North
South divide, they think this is going to make a

(02:42:27):
civil war less likely. Well, the map would really be
a pain in the ass, so it probably won't happen, right, Like,
That's that's the thing they're thinking, is like, oh, if
I was gonna if I have to map this out,
it's gonna be too complicated. When I read that, I
had flashbacks to my first trip to a war zone
in Ukraine, where we were like taking Google Maps up
to a certain point and then we had to use

(02:42:48):
like hand drawn notes because he was like, well the
different like the different chunks of this air next like
twenty acres that are owned by the separatists as opposed
to the government, or like, you can't use Google it'll
send you into enemy territories because it's not a clean
break because you had literally suburbs of cities fighting each
other and you still do. Yeah, this is a this

(02:43:10):
is you know, I think personally, this this this is
a sort of peak American brain thing because you know,
there's there's been like five ever civil wars that are
broken like this, and the problem is that there's American
civil war and then we also fought in both Vietnam
and North Korea, but like, well, yeah, yeah, but we
just really civil war. Yeah yeah, yeah, that's that's there
was fighting between two halves of the country that it

(02:43:32):
was a proxy for two others. Several other kind of yeah,
and that's yeah, and that's and that's the thing that like,
it's the combination of the American Civil War was very
unique civil war and then the other major things that
we think of as like quote unquote civil wars were
you know, we're basically cold war stuff, and I mean,
you know, like that, there there are a couple other

(02:43:54):
like yeah, I mean there have been other examples of
like secessionist stuff like that, as like I mean, in
in in any civil there's a lot of other countries
that get involved. In the US Civil War, there was
a significant amount of that sort of and even even
even even in the US Civil War, like there are
just like towns in the middle of like Confederate Territory
they're like, no, funk this, we're not going over. But

(02:44:15):
everyone but people have this just like incredibly myopic view
of what a civil war is. And it's like every
other civil war that's been fought in the last like
fifty years has been just seven thousand factions like neighborhood
fighting each other. I don't know, it's just incredibly frustrating
to watch these people not understand this. It's very America

(02:44:36):
brained and it's very sad because I'm going to read
a quote that's gonna make us want to purge our ears.
There are urban rule differences within specific states, with progressives
dominating the city as while conservatives reside in rural communities,
but that is a far different geographic divide than when
one region could wage war on another. The lack of

(02:44:57):
a distinctive or uniform geographic division limits the ability to
confront other areas organized supply chains and mobilize the population.
There can be local skirmaches between different forces, but not
a situation where one state or region attacks another, which
is complete nonsense. And that's not how like it's like
they don't understand that guerrilla fighting exists, and they don't

(02:45:20):
understand how the whole, the whole, the whole part about
organizing supply chains and mobilized population like that is just
another way to fight a war is by exploiting that
specific thing like the fact that cities are so isolated
um and lack and and and lack of home wage resources,
and the fact that rural areas are isolated in a

(02:45:41):
different way and lack separate resources. That is not something
that makes a civil war less likely. That just makes
it more complicated and makes it more fighting over Amazon
fulfillment centers and the like. Yeah, like it's it's the
it is it is ridiculous, um saying that, Yeah, saying
that the uh that that it's it's far different from

(02:46:02):
a geographic divide that one reacher could wage one another.
Is like that. No that you're you're just saying something
that is just completely wrong and like you have not
studied any type of like urban conflict whatsoever. Yeah, And
I think there's important thing in here, which is that
regions mostly it's not that region's wage warning. Yeah, it's

(02:46:24):
not people don't do the fighting. Yeah, Like regions aren't
the things that are fighting. It's the people in areas
and people can move around and people can block off
access to areas, and like it's it's this, it's a
weird it's a it's super weird way to think about things.
And it's the fact that if if this is something
that like the Brooking Institution, um is, if this is

(02:46:47):
what they think on this topic, that's pretty sad indicator
for what a lot of people how they how like
a lot of mainstream levels are going to view the
possibility of any type of civil conflict. And I don't know,
maybe they feel very secure in their cities um, which
which is a weird thing. I've I've not felt that
in years. Yeah. And I think the other thing that's
very weird about this is that because so a lot

(02:47:08):
of people writing about this are x are um like
kind are like kind of terrorism people, right, and the
kind of terrorism kind of insurgence people. It's weird because
they used to understand this, like, you know, like a
lot of like you know, because like in in you know,
in in the twentieth century and in even sort of
the early century, like the the sort of the sort
of standard like grilling insurgency doctrine was you know, it's

(02:47:31):
some some some some variation on the like maoists fish
in the sea, like surround the cities where we're like
real areas, etcetera, etcet etcetera, and like and you you
even see versions of this, you know, in things that
are quite civil wars but are kind of like what
happened like the water and gas wars and Oblivi and

(02:47:51):
the the two thousands were like you know what, what what? Yeah,
you have kind of an urban real divide without they
have allies in the cities, but the sort of you know,
like that the you have a bunch of rural indigenous
groups that literally just you know, they blockade every road
in the country and then start of the cities out right.
I mean, this is this, this is this is just
a thing that happened in It's just like yeah, that

(02:48:14):
is like, yeah, that is that. That is going to
happen sooner than later, whether that be caused by accident,
by some type of climate natural disaster, or on purpose
by a militia like that. It's just a matter of
time until we have to deal with this massive problem. Yeah. Um.
And it's like I've been reading recently about um Uruguay
and what happened with them, and like the seventies when

(02:48:36):
their dictatorship took over and they had a left wing
group that was like very much engaged in kind of
a lot of acts of poetic terrorism, like you know,
robbing banks to steal paperwork that they would then hand
over to like somebody to reveal malfeasance within a company,
or like stealing trucks of food going to like some
big wealthy Christmas party and redistributing it in poor neighborhoods.

(02:48:58):
Pretty rad stuff, and one of the ways in which
the new incoming dictatorial regime cracked down to them as
they deputized like ten thousand chuds and gave them guns
and sent them in with the army. Um. And I
was like, yeah, I could absolutely see could that happen? Yeah,
Like if there was some sort of uprising in a

(02:49:19):
in a liberal city, there's rual areas around them filled
with chuds there, and there is precedent, There is precedent
for police doing that. Um, they have done it within
your r I shot garrison like on small scales. So
I think we'll have one more break and come back
and talk about a talk about a hedge fund. Oh

(02:49:42):
funk I love hedge funds. Let me get Let me
get my hedge funds. Shared out the shirt that I
wear when talking about hedge funds. All right, I have
my hedge fund shirt on UM. As you can all see,
it's a picture of Ringo star filating himself. I don't
know why that's my head fun shirt. I don't know either,

(02:50:03):
but I love the beach Boys. Um. Anyway, so thank
you perfect nailed it. Uh. We should we talk about
this hedge fund guy? Yes, I do want to talk
with this hedge fund guy, because this is when something
with this much money is talking about this one just
for fun, right, he's doing this just for ship funds. Yeah,

(02:50:23):
he's doing it for ships and giggles. And he wrote
a book kind of on this topic and he proposed
one one solution. He came up with one thing that
will prevent us from entering a civil war. Um, which
shows how smart these hedge fund people are. Um. But first, uh,
I Chris would love to I would love for you

(02:50:44):
to explain who who this? Who this dude is? Okay,
So Rae Dao is a hedge fund manager and he
is so he runs Bridge Bridge Water Social allegedly the
world's largest hedge fund firm. Yeah, and it depends how
you de find everything. But yeah, it's a very large fund.

(02:51:06):
And this guy, this guy is weird by like venture
capital standards. So the Bridgewaters whole thing is that everyone
in the company is constantly surveiled at all times, and
anyone else when the company could look at when anyone
else is doing. It's supposed to be like it was
like total transparency, and what what it actually means again,
is it like you can you can look at like
fucking what any of your colleagues, like also working at

(02:51:26):
this place, is doing just sucking at their day job.
You can see all their records, you can see everything
they're looking at. And the other thing that he's known
for is that he doesn't trust anyone else to like
run the hedge fund after he retires. Your dies, So
he's trying to build like like a cybernetic version of
his brain to keep running the hedge funds. The like
other hedge fund weirdos think this guy is fucking wild.

(02:51:47):
And yeah, he's he's a time and he runs one
of the worlds or just has funds. It's great, it's
we it's it's amazing and good we give there's people
this much money to control. So I will say, when
it comes to his actual analysis of like whether or
not it's likely, I don't particularly disagree with anything. Yes,

(02:52:07):
it's it's broadly reasonable. Yeah, his looking Yeah for what,
he's just doing this because because he thinks it's fun.
He has enough money he's gonna survive whatever. Um. But yeah,
he's also I mean, part of why this is fairly
credible is he's I mean, if you're if you're good
at this, it means that you have one actual talent,
which is is judging risk. Um, and I think he's

(02:52:29):
probably pretty good at judging risk. Yeah. So he he
he said that he believes there's like a high likely
could that a civil war or something resembling it will
break out within the decade. Um is the number he gives.
He's the number he gives and then he, um, yeah, wait,
let's see. Yeah he said there's also he have a
quality says it's a we're we're in a we're in

(02:52:50):
a high risk position right now. Um. And yeah. He
talks about the different kind of reasons why he believes
so in this book, most of which are like pretty reasonable,
um in terms of like uh, in terms of like
looking at a population and how much how like you know,
the various like polarization between politics and culture and all

(02:53:13):
this kind of stuff. Um. But the solution that he
gives to this is that, um, we should make a
formal judgment for quote unquote close elections and have the
losers respect the outcomes, and then once that happens, the
order is going to be like restored and respected, and

(02:53:34):
then we will avert a civil war. So he he
thinks that a civil will will probably be like enacted
by some type of election dispute, which that is actually
very reasonable in terms of what happened in our last election.
If there's like a big if there's a big election dispute,
that could absolutely spark some type of conflict. But the
idea that we can avert a civil war by just

(02:53:55):
having an organization to judge close elections is like, but
that's not gonna solve, Like, that's not gonna if you
do that, that's not gonna solve the close election problem.
That doesn't even if you do it, that won't be
a solution, you know, And I I will say, like, yeah,
lexcuse some saying credit credit where minor credit is due.

(02:54:18):
Radalio is in fact right that the difference between two thousands,
which is when the last time someone actually literally stole
an election happened, where yeah, but Bush Bush openly rigs
the election. It's incredibly obvious, like there's like six ways
he does this. Everyone knows it's happening. And the reaction
is everyone just kind of shrugs because they're like, oh,

(02:54:39):
this dream courts legitimate compared to both, which yeah, that
that's you know, that's that's that's there there's been an
actual break there. It's just that I don't know, Maybe
I think it's it's almost just like a lip brained
thing where it's like you think that if if you
have an institution that sets down rules this, this will

(02:55:00):
make everything okay because everyone will obey it. And that's
just not where we are anymore. Yeah, I mean, there
was just a poll that came out recently. It should
like Americans trust in the military has fallen to its
lowest level ever registered, and like that was kind of
the one thing left that most people felt positively about.
Not to say that that's even a good thing, but
just like the there is such a complete fucking lack

(02:55:23):
of faith in institutions across the spectrum in the United States.
But it's like, how unless you're hiring I don't know,
um fucking no. I would say Tom Hanks, but Tom
Hanks has even gotten politicized even because believes in viruses.
So yeah, there's no one they could pick to get
do this job that people would feel good about if

(02:55:44):
they Yeah, I mean, I'm sure if they brought Mr
Rodgers back from the dead, half the country would call
him a cuck. So I don't I don't know what what,
I don't know who Dahio thinks is going to like
get everybody on board. So maybe maybe maybe um Danny DeVito,
Danny DeVito might be able to do it. Well. I

(02:56:06):
think if if we put all of our hope in
Danny DeVito, that is a better solution than what any
of these articles and the court. It beats it beats
every other quote solution the articles posited. I mean Odin
Kirk brought Twitter together that one week. Maybe, yeah, you know,
with with this practice in court, if you just picked

(02:56:28):
twelve random people off the street and we're like you,
that's that's the thing. It's like, I am, I am
all for It's the term isn't the term isn't a democracy. Um,
it's it's I forget the other yes of of almost
I forget exactly, but it's it's when a government is
not composed of elected leaders, composed of a random selected

(02:56:50):
a random selection of people, and the decisions and then
the decisions over then we then we get a new selection.
I'm all for that model of government over almost any other.
It sounds way better than what we have. Yeah. Yeah,
So that that is, that is the three pieces I
want to talk about the independent piece on the Hedge Fund,
Brooking Institution on the Civil War. And then uh, Brian wentno,

(02:57:13):
not not Brian, yes, um Brian Michael Jenkins Um, senior
advisor to the president of RAND Who who who wrote who?
Who wrote the thing for NBC. So yeah, that is
just the terms of in terms of you know, people
in institutions talking about the topic more generally and sometimes

(02:57:34):
decent ways, oftentimes not decent ways. That is, that is
the stuff from like the just the past between the
past week two months of people with big salaries talking
about the Civil War yea, or in terms of the
in terms of the Hedge Fund guy, not a salary,
just billions of dollars, Yeah, just billions of dollars and

(02:57:55):
thinking it's neat. Um. I don't know. You know, every
time one these comes out, I get tagged by a
bunch of people, um saying like, Robbert is the thing
you were talking about? Other people are talking about it,
and um, I don't know, I don't like that this
is the thing other people are talking about that I've
been talking about as opposed to mass Zeppelin, transit or

(02:58:18):
something more fun. Yeah, these people could dedicate the resources
into something more manageable for them, and because they don't
have a good grasp, especially that Brian Michael guys has
no grasp on how extremism works. Um, and it would
be better if they dedicate the resources to something else.
But this is the world we live in. It would
be better if perhaps Brian Michael Jenkins dedicated his his

(02:58:42):
efforts and his platform at NBC to looking into Mr
Dario and whatever the funk he's been up to. Um,
that might that might do more. Very man, he just
get plan them on. He would absolutely Brian Michael Jenkins
would get PanAm on so fucking quick. Al Right, Well,
the hannimnious motherfucker in journalism just just like not even

(02:59:04):
not even downtime before that car gets bombed as he's
talking on air. The Okay, Brian Michael Jakins is seventy
nine years old, so it won't it wouldn't be hard.
H I just that that that's like a ten minute job.

(02:59:25):
I'm just I'm just thinking like Brian Michael Jakins, he's
a quote unquote an American expert on terrorism and transportation
security with four neckets of analysis. This is why he
doesn't understand modern extremism. It's because yeah, he's still thinking
in the seventies mode. That's sure. I'm sure of his
thoughts on terrorism are just him rehashing opinions about like
Hezbollah in the eighties. Yeah, all of all of his

(02:59:47):
stuff is superdated. So that's that's why I said that previously,
is that he still views terrorism as like as it
was in the seventies. And yeah, this is this is why.
Um So that's great, guy, that's that's him. Um, anyway,
that wraps up our show. Um, yeah, watch out for
the one. The one Brian Michael Jenkins prediction I do

(03:00:08):
think will happen is that there's a decent chance we
might be back in an assassination territory, because it is,
but it has been a long time since that has happened.
It's it has been a hot minute and definitely leagues
when it keeps happening in the UK. Yeah, I was
meaning specifically in in in America and yeah, that's what
I'm saying. We're we're not that far away from them

(03:00:31):
in terms of like things happening, so that I'm kind
of surprised it hasn't had. I think it's probably just
because maybe American legislators are all much more concerned about
assassination because guns, so people like our elected leaders take
more precautions than British ones. Did. I don't know. Maybe
I don't know either. Well, speaking of assassinations, you can

(03:00:53):
follow us on Twitter and Instagram. That happened here particles
on media. If we go missing it was great. If
we go think it was Radaldio co Hi. Everybody, This
is Roxanne Gay, host of The Roxanne Gay Agenda, The

(03:01:15):
Bad Rominast podcast of Your Dreams. Now, what is the
Roxanne Gay Agenda, you might ask. It's a podcast where
I'm going to speak my mind about what's on my mind,
and that could be anything. Every week I will be
in conversation with an interesting person who has something to say.
We're going to talk about feminism, race, writing in books,

(03:01:37):
and art, food, pop culture, and yes, politics. I started
show with a recommendation. Really, I'm just going to share
with you a movie or a book, or maybe some
music or a comedy set, something that I really want
you to be aware of and maybe engage with as well.
Listen to the Luminary original podcast The Roxanne Gay Agenda,

(03:01:59):
The Bad Cominist podcast of your dream every Tuesday on
the I Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcast. Here's to the great American settlers. The
millions of you have settled for unsatisfying jobs because they
pay the bills, and you just kind of fell into it,

(03:02:22):
and you know, it's like totally fine, just another few
decades or so and then you can enjoy yourself. Of course,
there is something else you could do. If you've got
something to say, you could, I don't know, start up
podcast with Spreaker from my heart and unleash your creative
freedom and spend all day researching and talking about stuff

(03:02:46):
you love and maybe even earn enough money to one
day tell your irritating boss as you quit and walk
off into the sunset. Hey I'm no settler, I'm an explorer.
Spreaker dot com. That's spr e a k E R.

(03:03:07):
Hustle on over Today, Welcome to it could happen here
talk podcast YEP. I could say it a podcast. That's
what we're doing, and it's about it's about how things
are kind of kind of kind of falling apart sometimes,

(03:03:29):
or at least it feels like it, and I don't know,
maybe we can do some things to help make it better,
like what happened recently in terms of forests. So, hey,
a good news episode. Whoa rare rare rare episode drop
for us? Uh, we got some good news. So I'm
gonna be talking with Sam, who was on a previous

(03:03:50):
episode discussing a forest defense, about an update on on
all of the things that we were talking about a
few weeks ago. Um. So yeah, I think we can.
We can pretty much get into it, and then then
we'll talk about some other stuff around kind of forests
in general. So Hello, Sam, Thank thank you for joining
me again to talk about trees, one of one of

(03:04:11):
our favorite topics. Hello, my pleasure always. So I think
it was like a day or two after we dropped
the episode or something, or I think I think it was.
Actually it was maybe maybe even like right like right before, Um,
we got some extra extra news about all about the
post about the postfire logging um near the bright Bush Watershed. Um, yeah,

(03:04:37):
what happened there? Yeah, yeah, it was pretty wild. Actually
it was really serendipitous timing too. Um. We as I
think we mentioned in the last podcast, we were awaiting
the first hearing for the court case essentially, you know,
we believed that the plan to log in that area
for myriad reasons was not only unethical but also illegal. Um.

(03:05:00):
And so it was going to court and we were
awaiting a hearing that happened on December three, Friday, And
typically the judge does not rule from the bench and
these sorts of hearings, and so we did not expect
the decision on that day. UM. But sure enough the
judge felt uh strongly enough about this case and sure
enough about her decision that she did rule from the

(03:05:21):
bench and ruled in our favor. And so yeah, victories. UM.
Now we have um a preliminary injunction in place, meaning
that no logging can happen there um at least until
this uh timber sale has its real day in court,
or until the Fourth Service just drops this shenanigan entirely,
which hopefully they will do, but we'll see. Yeah. So

(03:05:44):
they they blocked, they blocked the posts part logging and
the the the basically started start starting to clear cut
these areas without without actual like public and putting, without
actually going through the process as flawed as the process.
Maybe they were just skipping it entirely so that that
was that was that was blocked by this, by by
this legal case. Um, what was I guess Yeah, what

(03:06:07):
what was what was the h what? What was what?
What was the reaction like in in in the room
and in the various signal chats when this happened. Yeah,
in the ether spheres, Um, the reaction was super awesome.
I mean, so many people love this place and that
was kind of the whole point of what we were

(03:06:28):
trying to do when we did the direct action out
there a number of years ago. It was just demonstrate
how many people love this place and how the four
Service wasn't going to get away with what they're planning
to do. UM because people, as we promised, would be
back if they tried to log it and move forward
with that logging, which, as you pointed out, and as
we said last time, was super sketchy, not only because

(03:06:49):
it was a terrible plan that they were planning to
do UM in this beloved for us, but also because
it was behind locked gates that in the public wasn't
allowed into and so UM it was just this you know,
travesty that was about to happen. And when we found out, um,
and when we heard the judges incredibly strong ruling. Um.
We you know, we're absolutely overjoyed. Um. The news spread,

(03:07:12):
you know, like wildfire, excuse the pun it do it um,
and just you know, all the signal threads were popping.
People were putting it on Twitter. People were reposting the
sexy photos of the blockade with the giant slash pile
and the fire truck and the band on top of
the fire truck. And I just wish that we all
could have hung out again and had another dance party

(03:07:32):
because it was the best that doesn't incredibly incredibly rad
um was was like your this is this is this
is something I don't I don't don't actually know, but
it was like the documentation that was taking place by
by going to these places and showing hey, this is
where they're cutting. Was that brought up in the court
case in terms of like, hey, this is we actually

(03:07:54):
went and saw what's actually happening. So it was was
that type of evidence used and did it, in your mind,
like um um uh kind of be a small part
of like the result of the ruling. Yeah, it definitely was.
And that is such an important point and I really
hope that everyone who's listening can just like put that
in their minds for later. How important it is for

(03:08:15):
people to be UM field surveying or sometimes we call
it ground true thing UM these places and actually collecting
documentation photographic evidence. UM. A lot of folks do kind
of like what we call community surveying and collect um
some site specific UM kind of like uh, community science
sort of stuff. But all of that was used in

(03:08:35):
court and it was super awesome. UM. I actually was
one of the standing declarence, so I got to submit
a lot of evidence from my many years of traveling
that place. UM, and that all of that was referenced
in court. So so so important. UM. Even you know,
when the forest services essentially trying to kick everyone out
and keep everyone out of these places, it's really important

(03:08:56):
to go um and see them. Anyways. Obviously, you know,
everyone needs to consider how they do that and their
own security and safety UM, and it's becoming difficult UM,
but certainly putting eyes on threatened places is one of
the best tools we have to save them. Yeah. I
just think that's really important to really focus on that

(03:09:17):
as like a thing, because like, yeah, stuff that people
did actually had an impact on this not happening right now. UM.
And yeah, but by going out there and documenting and
then talking about it, um, it has like an actual
like causal relation, which is very hard to It's it's

(03:09:37):
it's hard to get direct causal stuff to happen in
like the general umbrella of activism. Um. And it's I
think it's it's just really exciting that that that this happened. Yeah,
that's so true. It does feel in the general umbrellaive
activism really hard to point to things that we do
that are actually making an effect, and this is totally

(03:09:58):
one of them. I mean, wh and uh if and
when this case does have its day in court, um,
you know, outside of the preliminary injunction itself. UM, I
am sure that so much of that evidence from all
the folks who've been traveling there, um and documenting it
will be used. We documented, you know, so many green
living trees and places the Four Service that were dead. Um,

(03:10:20):
you know, so many like unused roads in places the
Forest Service said they needed to log alongside these roads
because they're so trafficed and they're posing a safety hazard.
And so it's basically like, you know, the best way
to expose their gas lighting and lies is to just
go document what's there. Yeah, because a big part of
their ability to do this is utilizing deception in terms

(03:10:43):
of like and and and utilizing like non information, Like
they're just not talking about the stuff that's actually happening,
or they're doing like white lies to make it sound better.
So they're just they're they're lying about the type of
like um uh, the type of sales that they're doing
with these with these treets, and how they're classifying the
trees that they're logging to like get it past all

(03:11:04):
of the loopholes. But they're not actually like that, that's
not actually reality. They're just changing the terms to make
it fit what they want. So like as as soon
as you start looking into this stuff, it gets all
it gets very sketchy because it is they're just lying
about a lot of this stuff. Like if you're like
listening and be like, oh, you know, be these people
just love trees, Like yes, we do love trees, but

(03:11:25):
like the actual thing that's going on is like they're
lying about the types of damage that's being done. They're
lying about what areas this is happening in all to
just rack up more timber sales like that that that
is that that that is what's actually happening. Um. And
that's so so important to say, like loudly and clearly,
because the Forest Service and other management agencies are experts

(03:11:46):
in making the public feel dumb and wrong and misinformed.
And right now, even we sound a little wing nutty
being like yeah, you know, but like let us be clear,
a federal judge agree with us, Yeah, yeah, you know,
like we're not the ones who are wrong here, and
I think you're totally right. You know, they're using a

(03:12:07):
mixture of blatant lies, um, but also euphemisms like we
no one's they don't they don't use the word clear
cut anymore. They're using all of these euphemisms, you know, regeneration, harvest,
I ship you not a lot of and a lot
of this stuff that they're deciding to do is like
not open to the public. You need to do like
fully requests to to to actually learn what they're doing,

(03:12:29):
because they don't talk about it like that. It is all.
It is all extremely sketchy and yeah, like the fact
that like a federal a federal judge agreed with like
green activists is not a sentence you here often so
like it's like yeah, like this is actually a thing,
and it's it's important to remember, like you are not
immune to propaganda, like all a lot of this stuff

(03:12:50):
is uh is has people who want a lot of
money are vested in making people believe things about about
about like force management, all this kind of stuff. Um. Yeah,
I know it may it may sound crazy when we're
talking about you know, the secret illuminati of the Force Service.
But like, no, like it acts like it's it is
a it is a governmental organization. All governmental organizations are

(03:13:12):
kind of sketchy, especially when their sole purpose is to
one of their purposes is to make money or assistant
like sales of something like yeah, it's it's gonna have
some sketchy stuff. Um. Absolutely, and also you know in
the realm of just like the propaganda machine. Um we
you know. Just the other day, UM, a hilarious response
piece came out from the timber industry and organization called

(03:13:34):
Federal Forest Resource Coalition, which is just a coalition of loggers.
UM put out this hilarious little mini video responding directly
to the line that we've been using in forest events,
which is worth more standing. Our forests are worth more standing.
And they put out a hilarious response that is essentially
you know, pushing this timber sale, this logging propaganda, saying well, actually,

(03:13:56):
our forests aren't worth anything standing after they've been burned,
and their contry a beating to the climate crisis, and
they're destructive and you know in all these things, and
so totally, I mean, even people who see it with
their eyes can be convinced by these voices that they're
wrong because they're so good, so good at making us
feel just like we're the wrong ones, but we're not.

(03:14:18):
We got this, yeah, in terms of like this the
secretive kind of decision making and stuff behind the scenes,
in terms of like the types of like terms they're
using to to you know, do like restoration, thinning, um
and all this stuff around around trying to like basically
just just take as many trees from the Bright britsh
Watershed as they can. And the judge said that she

(03:14:41):
was quote disappointed in the agency, uh for for all
of their silly behind the scenes trench coat meat in
the dark alley way to pass off information type of thing, um,
which is yeah, like so what what what is what
is some of the other kind of stuff that the

(03:15:01):
four Service and the related organizations were trying to we're
trying to hide like what like what what what? What? What?
What was the stuff that like came out um via
this legal process that was like yeah, what was it
was the what's a few of the actual things that
they were that they were trying to do that eventually
like came to light. M h. The major thing is
that they were trying to get away with changing the

(03:15:25):
logging contracts without doing any additional environmental analysis or public
engagement process. And so there were before there were there
was a plan to do what they what we had
fought them so hard to get them to agree to do,
which was not log a bunch of these this older
stands protect tree. They had a diameter limit on trees

(03:15:48):
that they were going to log. So we basically like
slapped their hands off of all of these trees and
finally were like, okay, we won't sue you if you
move forward with the plan as stated, and it had
very strong side bore words and you know, even local
folks were like, okay, go do this. And then the
fires came through and so what they were trying to
do was just change the plans. They turned it all
into clear cuts in the forest. That we slapped their

(03:16:11):
hands off of and they were trying to argue that
they didn't need to do any an additional analysis and
they didn't need to engage the public, and even in court,
you know, that's what they were arguing. Um they are
they're doing some stupid magic math and you know, somersaults,
um to try and explain how they had already done
an analysis that accounted somehow for the fires that no

(03:16:33):
one could have ever predicted before. A yeah. So the
judge was like just you know, she was just roundly like,
y'all couldn't have predicted. I like to give her, you know,
Southern accident, y'all, I couldn't have predicted, Judge Akins still
the South. No, Uh, you couldn't have predicted. Uh, you
know that the fires were going to burn through and
so there's no way you could have done analysis for

(03:16:55):
fire that you didn't know what's going to happen. Here
used silly little beasts. But she did talk to them, um,
you know, as if they were just naughty little children,
which I loved to hear. You know, the disappointed in
the Forest Service was a major move. And I think
the other one that came up is just you know,
the Forest Service was arguing that they needed quote need
to do this logging um, for restoration, for economic recovery, um,

(03:17:19):
and to prevent future wildfires from severely burning in the area.
All of that to BS. Like. One thing that the
judge said that was super strong, UM was that she
sees and obviously on paraphrasing here, um, but she she
sees that the community loves this place. It's obvious that
this is like a beloved place, and she, you know,

(03:17:40):
essentially understands that the forest is worth more standing. She
said that she wanted she thinks that the forest needs
an opportunity to recover from the fires, and so basically
just called the BS on the Forest Service for their hilarious,
you know, justifications for logging. All the we're gonna save
the forest by logging. It is just not it's not right,
not accurate, and the judge agrees. Yeah. I mean, I'm

(03:18:04):
very very excited about about this ruling and what it
means for the future and at least at least at
least postponing this until um if if if the if
if the lawsuit is going going to go through or
if or if they're just going to drop this, which
they also very well, maybe they might decide to focus
on another part that is that they just don't tell
anybody about and start doing it there and then you know,
we'll we'll start we'll start this again. But for this

(03:18:26):
particular area, UM, that is that is very exciting, and yeah,
it is. It is rare for a federal judge to
agree with people on this topic. UM. And now I
want want to talk about a few other kind of
stuff around like forests, um and how and how these
kind of types of things work. I I didn't get
an interesting comment which I totally agree with in terms

(03:18:48):
of like how propaganda works in this department, um. And
how like how like logging towns operate, or how like
towns became logging towns. How like they're basically able to
convince local populations that logging is is like good because
like yeah, like they're they're gonna they're gonna move into
this town, they're gonna restore the town because they're gonna
bring in new money through like a logging industry. UM.

(03:19:09):
And yeah, this is a very like, very like a
typical move, whether it be for like you know, coal mining,
whether it be for pipelines, in terms of like big
companies going into small towns to be like, hey, we
can promise you economic growth if you can like assist
in this you know, extractive process, and they'll be able
to convince them with you know, misleading statistics on and
you know all that kind of stuff. In terms of

(03:19:31):
logging industry is getting getting really good at radicalizing rule
populations to have them believe that it's one not it's
it's not like economically destructive to take down trees. They
might even say it's like good, um and all all
that kind of stuff has have Has there been like
any outreach in terms of kind of addressing addressing people

(03:19:54):
in small towns who like maybe used to like you know,
rely on unlogging or something and how does how does
that works? I know, like they'll be like, oh, but
you people come from the city and now you're coming
out here into like the woods where I live, and
I think it's good that they're chopping down these trees. Right.
There's there's there's there's like that kind of that that
kind of disconnection because again, no one, no one's immune

(03:20:14):
to propaganda. You can you just you just just have
to find the specific one. Um. See I'm just curious about,
like in terms of in terms of like forest defense,
how often this comes up and how and how you
kind of yeah, I don't know what's what steps to
make to to be like to tell people, hey, maybe
you're believe these things because timber industries told you them,

(03:20:35):
Like how how? How how do you start that conversation
with people? Yeah, this is like actually the heart of
the forest defense work ahead, what you're talking about right now,
the heart of our work ahead, um. And I would
also say, you know, there's a there's certainly, um, a
dichotomy that the media especially likes to present between the

(03:20:59):
rural logging communities and you know, Portland or city based
in batimentalists and the hippie environmentalists to come in and
yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, And everyone's familiar with that,
and there's of course some truth um to that, but
I want to say, like super clearly, there are so
many rural folks who do not support the logging industry,

(03:21:21):
and so that's like a false dichotomy that gets presented
to us right off the bat, and a lot of
those you know, for in the in um the work
that I've been doing on forest forest defense, Essentially, we're
always connecting with folks on the ground in literally the
backyards of these logging proposals, and many of them are
super uninterested in having their backyards clear cut. And so

(03:21:43):
we you know, the we we pushed directly against that
mythology that you know, it's just environmentalists coming in from Portland,
because we work directly with people, including for Brighton Bush,
but with every single thing that we work on directly
with people who are literally on the front lines of
that logging. That said, there is absolutely um a huge
pole um. You know, Oregon specifically as you know, famous

(03:22:05):
for logging. Like we talked about last time, there's a
logger on top of the capitol. UM. You know, are
the mayor of Portland's logging money It's in Oregon's Oregonians blood. Yeah,
and for rural Oregonians, UM, there are economic realities where
in some cases some counties benefit from um logging in

(03:22:28):
their total from the logging industry, their school you know,
schools are tied to logging money. UM. And there's you know,
in a lot of ways a narrative that is not
really accurate anymore, but has like an element of nostalgia
to it. Like you know, logging towns and um this
old story about how things used to work with small,
small family logging. That's not how it is anymore. But

(03:22:51):
that narrative that like nostalgic narrative, carries on into a
lot of communities. And so what the way that I
like to cut through that um for people is by
makeing it really clear that there's a difference between small
you know, family loggers of lore um and and you
know of you know, people's what people are attached to
and the kinds of what we're seeing today is we're

(03:23:12):
looking at Wall Street logging. We're looking at Wall Street
invested UM invested, huge you know, corporate industries who owned
who can who still own like you know, huge percentages
of our drinking water sheds, of our um communities. Some
some of the communities on the coast are owned primarily

(03:23:33):
by private industrial Wall Street funded UM logging corporations. And
that's you know, those aren't mom and pop. They're not
living in the community. They're living often not even on
the Pacific Northwest. These are rich ass assholes who are
destroying our bioregion. And you know, I think that making

(03:23:54):
it clear that those aren't those folks are not like us.
You know, those are not like rural Aragonians, your those
are not your friends. Those are not you know, your
pals or your neighbors. And just cutting through that narrative
that like, oh, you know logging communities, Um, you know
loggers are your friendly neighbor. Actually, no, loggers are Wall Street, Um,

(03:24:15):
you know, investment corporations, rich money people who are doing
this destruction. And just kind of like breaking that I guess,
like that um, that attachment that people have to this idea,
that's just not a reality anymore. The reality is that
people who are for logging in rural communities are they

(03:24:38):
have a lot more common with those of us who
are fighting logging than the actual people doing the logging,
if that makes sense. Like there's a lack of understanding
of what the logging industry actually is. It's like back
to that nostalgia, Like people who are against logging in
rural communities, um, you know often genuinely do not realize
that this is Wall Street and like who's doing this logging.

(03:25:00):
They're still thinking it's their you know, neighbor or their
friend and it's you know, these stories. But you know
the reality is that you know, this is corporate timber
owners who are maximizing their financial gain by buying out
small landowners all over the place, um ensuring that they
aren't taxed by lobbying heavily in the government, so they
don't you know, have any sort of taxation that then

(03:25:21):
goes back to benefit our communities. Don't even get me
started about how many taxes the timber industry skips out
on that could actually benefit our communities and our schools
and our libraries and our fire departments but aren't. UM.
And then they're adopting exploitative labor practices. Basically, you know,
the contracted workers who are in the logging industry right now,
who are doing the logging and hauling UM and reforestation

(03:25:43):
so called reforestation planting of mono crop plantations, they are
experiencing flat wages and declining work quality conditions um. Meanwhile,
while the corporate timber forms are expanding their profits um
and you know, getting more wealthy investors. So that is
the reality of the timber industry. These are not you know,
your friendly neighborhood loggers anymore. So. A few other points

(03:26:06):
I wanted to bring up, kind of on force itself
someone someone said something about how we talked about like
old growth, and and I guess they think that we
said that all forests in this area is old growth,
and that's not something we actually said. Old growth is
a specific term that means a specific thing. And yeah,

(03:26:27):
regardless of it being old growth or not, they still
shouldn't be cut down. I don't know, So I'm not
sure why this point was really raised, because we didn't
I did. I don't think we did, uh say that
every that every tree there is is old growth. Um.
A lot of them were planted in the past few
hundred years, UM, But that that doesn't mean like they're
like much less important. It's like, just because they're not

(03:26:50):
old growth doesn't mean we shouldn't be preserving this particular
watershed in this particular environment and not be clear cutting
all of it. Yeah, old growth is like like the
term old growth is just like become fetishized to me,
and this like this thing that you know. This also,
let's be clear, that's not an agreement on what old
growth actually means across the board, even between agencies, Like
there's an arbitrary date cut off that the federal government

(03:27:12):
uses to define old growth. UM. But obviously if you
walk into a forest stand, this a healthy you know,
a healthy old growth stand is complex in terms of
age diversity. There's going to be old growth individual trees,
there's going to be a lot of younger trees. Is
gonna be horizontal and vertical diversification, Like old growth is complicated,
it's messy, But the whole point is like you're right,

(03:27:33):
Like it doesn't actually matter if it's like quote in
the CAD, the small narrow category of what the Forest
Service would define as old growth, if it's a forest
that's been around for you know, a hundred years or
even you know, I would argue, if it's a forest
that's over like seventy or eighty years old, what are
we doing cutting that down? Especially now you know that's

(03:27:53):
storing so much carbon safely in the ground. And also
by that age, it's had the opportunity, you know, to
to become more diverse than these like monocrop plantations that
we're seeing younger forests. So I would argue any forest
that's not a monocrop plantation, a young monocrop plantation should
absolutely not be clear cut. It's just an inappropriate activity
to do in native forest and speaking of a clear cut,

(03:28:16):
there was another Another comment was about how clear cutting
can sometimes be good because it creates new environments for
other animals and living things to exist in. And I
find this to be a really weird comment to make. Um,
I don't, I don't quite understand this, this kind of idea,

(03:28:39):
because yes, of course, if you cut down a forest,
you are creating a new environment, but that's not where
that environment should be, nor is it where it is.
It's like if you if you erect a whole bunch
of concrete skyscrapers where a force used to be. Yeah,
you're also making a new environment. But I would say
we probably shouldn't do that, though I don't. That's not

(03:28:59):
that's not a good thing. The same thing with like
the people obsessed with like putting solar panels in the desert,
Like the desert is an actual environment, like it has
There is reasons for why deserts need to exist and
that have this whole like a whole like a whole
whole environment and a whole um I forget the word,
but like and it has an entire system of living

(03:29:21):
things that exist there that should Um, we we don't
need to terraform everything. I don't think that's like, I
don't we shouldn't. I think preserving the environment in general,
preserving the environments that are existing and who are creating
like ecosystems, is a good thing. I think generally, the
less terraforming probably probably the better, at least right now,

(03:29:42):
when we're dealing with a massive like looming climate crisis
that's caused by us terraforming the earth. Um, maybe we
should not do that as much. Yeah, we could call
a bout a general role like no more terraforming, You'll
just leave it. Let's just let's just leave let's leave
us for a bit. We just addressed the other things.
But for real, though, whoever wrote that comment, I mean,

(03:30:03):
that is a timber industry talking point that at the
time it's literally, that is literally and whether they meant
it or not, you know, this is how the timber
industry gets us. They're real good at this. This is there,
you know, nice sounding talking points that we rebut all
the time, um, you know, not just in media but
also in court. Um. And the talking point is clear

(03:30:24):
cuts mimic natural disasters like severe fires by replacing it.
And it's part totally don't clear cut, go look at
a fire. It's a completely different experience than I could
go down that rabbit hole all day on fire ecology
another time maybe, but suffice it's to say, you know,

(03:30:45):
what they're arguing is that they're creating young forest or
quote early several habitat by clear cutting an old forest.
But what they're actually doing is DeForest station. They're replacing
an old forest with something that's not forest, A young
mono crop plantation is a crop. It is not a forest,
and so they are deforesting, and um, it is ecosystem.

(03:31:08):
It is ecoside, and um, yeah it is. It is egoside.
And I think, yeah, the insistence that like it's it's
good because it will allow some species to exist in
this new environment, like, yeah, but there's other environments where
they can't exist, and we don't we don't need to
be destroying the ones that are already kind of important
and doing good stuff to make room for other ones

(03:31:29):
that aren't already there. And they argue that the deer
and the butterflies love the clear cuts, and so just
call that out as bullshit next time you'all hear that.
It's you know, spread the word that is some timber
industry bs. They're tricksy, but don't let them get you.
And the last thing I want to mention is why
blocking off access to these areas is bad. Um, because
I got someone someone said something like, um, you know,

(03:31:52):
because fires are human caused, closing off public lands is
it can be good because then fires wone gets hurt
in those areas, And this really just misunderstands why fires
get started. And also it's just a bad thing to
do anyway, because like fire if you look at like
the map of where wildfires start, um, almost all of

(03:32:13):
them are on the path of highways. UM. Specifically in
California that when when the fires are really there. There
was a firefighter who who who made a great video
about like why the fire line was all next to
the highway and there was like conspiracy theories of like
including the Antifa's driving down highways and setting the forest
on fire, which was which was an actual popular talking

(03:32:34):
point because we live in the hell world. Um. But
like you know, he's explained like the reason why, like
they are like human caused, but they're not, like a
lot of them aren't intentionally caused. It's because that's where
power lines run. And this is where a lot of
sparks can ignite stuff on the edges of of of
highways that will then take out a part of the forest. Now,
every once in a while there's a gender reveal party

(03:32:54):
that goes horribly wrong and does and and does ignite it.
That is true, and I think the solution to that
is not closing down the forest. It's not having gender
reveal parties that we stopped selling uh on Amazon. I'm
all thor Tanna right as an idea, But how about
let's stop selling blue and pink Tanna right packets to

(03:33:15):
people who don't know how to use explosives genuinely don't know,
because yeah, like they're not they're not actually using Tanna
right for what it's meant for, and they're not using
it to do like like training. Um, they're using it
to say that they're having a baby. And this has
caused a lot of wildfire death. So how how about
we just stopped selling uh the gender reveal party bombs.

(03:33:37):
I think that'd be a better solution than closing down
massive swaths of public land. And how about our power
line companies get their ship together and stop Yeah, do
actually have a plan for planned power shut offs. And actually,
you know, we know now actually Pacific Corps is in
court right now because they started the Santiam fires. Their

(03:33:59):
power lines started the stand Inspires and the Archie Creek
fires and probably more. And so yeah, how about the
powerline companies get their ship together. But I feel like
the other huge thing here is that, you know, the
suggestion that we should close off these forests to the
public to me is just like more uh you know,
it's you know, blatantly it's racist, um, and it's you know,

(03:34:21):
I think it's wrong because these lands, these belong to
indigenous people. We should be giving these lands back to
indigenous people. And you know, when we're talking about like
rural communities too in adjust transition, like rural community members
should actually have more say in what happens in their backyard.
Forests should be able to be more engaged, um in
you know, the forests that literally provide them with their

(03:34:43):
drinking water, um, and you know all of the things
that they need, um to survive. So we should not
be you know, locking off these lands and keeping humans out.
Humans have a place in these lands. I've always had
a place in a role in these lands, and um,
if we take leadership from the right folks, and we
could totally live in a much more reasonable way than
the gender revealed party path. Yeah, and like I don't

(03:35:05):
know if you know this, but like being in the
forest is great. It's like it is great to be
surrounded by giant trees. It makes you feel awesome. The
last thing I want to talk about is um you
mentioned before, like getting people who live in these rural
areas who used to rely on logging, getting them are
involved and doing a just transition, because this is a

(03:35:27):
topic that comes out that comes up on climate change
like everywhere in terms of like you know, like countries
that are still developing not being able to have access
to the same amount of fossil fuels that countries like
the States you know had when they when when they
were developing, and like how is that fair? Right? This
is this is like this is a very common thing
of in terms of countries that are better off. UM

(03:35:47):
need will you know have kind of kind of like
a duty to assist assist countries that are trying to
develop and trying to get better standards of living. Um,
because we profited off the fossil fuels and now they
won't have the same opportunity if we're trying to you know,
get to a carbon neutral world. Um So, in terms
of like a just just transition, this is something like

(03:36:07):
you know, a COP twenty six. There was supposed to
be funding for adaptation efforts in in the developing countries.
Now that failed because of course it's COP twenty six.
But in terms of like, in terms of like this
this idea of a just transition, how do you see
this like locally in the rural environment within the States
and for for like these types of areas, because like, yeah,
because it's similar to like coal mining, the town's similar

(03:36:30):
to you know, logging towns. How how does how how
do you see this working? Yeah? This is something I
think about so much. Um And we actually put out
a platform called a Green New Deal for our Forests
in the Pacific Northwest that talks like all about what
a just transition could look like for communities. But I mean,
this is a dream and I think it's like a
really inspiring, uh inspiring path forward because what it means

(03:36:53):
is that you know, we're not saying to end logging
and we're not saying that rural communities basically need to
like stop existing and getting funding from lodge. And what
we're saying is that rural community members, what we that
nostalgic dream that are that people are playing to, we
actually want to have something in that regard. We would
like people to you know, engage with and interact with
their local forests. Now that shouldn't look like clear cutting them,

(03:37:15):
because um, that's irresponsible and that doesn't benefit local communities
or you know, of the benefit of future. But that
could look like restoring these young mono crop plantations into complex,
healthy forests. It could be looked like bringing fire back
onto the landscape with prescribed fire and cultural burning, taking
lessons from indigenous folks who are doing network UM. It

(03:37:36):
could look like education and recreation and so many things
of like you know, hands on engagement with backyard forests
that surround us UM. And you know that that could
look like basically firing the freddies and uh taking this
land and giving it to local communities with UM you know,
the with with conservation goals, but also goals to economic

(03:38:00):
support by all of those ways you know, jobs but
also jobs and recreation UM economically support local communities. So
basically giving the land back to the local communities who
rely on them and giving them power and control um
to care for them in ways that makes sense because
right now wall streets caring for our forests, and really
it should be us. And I think one other thing

(03:38:22):
on this topic, for like how how well propagando works
when I was um at the stop plane three purchase
camps last summer in terms of like how do corporations
get towns to start supporting these ideas and how do
they like foster this hatred of environmentalism um, despite you know,
these areas often being the worst impact one of the

(03:38:42):
worst impacted ones by these like effort efforts. Right uh,
you know, you're they're chopping down forests near where this
town is. Pipeline is going next to the town. If
it leaks, it's going to cause all this problem to
like their water splant and stuff. But like how they do.
It's like the day of the direct action to block
the pipeline, Enbridge was sponsoring like a town fair in

(03:39:04):
like the little downtown area, and it's like this super
surreal moment of being like, oh, this is like I've
read this happened in like comics before, like and this
this is like this is like one of Lex Luthor's
favorite things to do. Like hell, like go into this
like small town. Who's gonna start like this evil you
know evil like a like lab at and he'll like

(03:39:26):
fund like this small town event thing and like I've
seen this before in so many superhero comics. Like I've
seen this trope and that I'm just like living it.
You're just like watching it happen. You're like driving past
the town to go block up pipeline and then you
see like Enbridge with like a little stage and like
a little like fair and like everyone in the towns

(03:39:46):
like dancing and they're giving up like free drinks and
like oh no, like this is yeah, like you're like
living the things like you know, a lot of it.
It's about like this idea of like rein like reinvigorating
like like you know like the the like the spirit
of the town and injecting injecting new life into it.
So like you know, this this is like a new
one for like they're they're putting a pipeline down, but

(03:40:08):
like you know, it's the same thing for like you
know old like old coal towns, old logging towns, and
these corporations will come in you know, make the town
more active again, start putting on events, make it feel
like more of a place, and then that that gets
so the company gets associated with positive changes. Right, so
then people who live in the towns like, oh yeah,
and we're just doing all these good things for my town.

(03:40:29):
That must mean they actually, you know, are gonna care
about us here and then help and help us out. Meanwhile,
these people from all around the country are driving through
and trying to block the pipeline and the police are
driving everywhere. Now it's all this chaos, right, these stupid environmentalists,
they don't understand how this is gonna you know, it's
it's we're creating so many jobs here, which actually didn't.
Enbridge outsourced most of the jobs out of state, but

(03:40:49):
they lied about the type of job creation. You know,
all all all all this type of stuff. And this
is a very very common thing totally, and like timber
unity is like delivering would to people when the when
when the snow storm happened and everyone was cold and
didn't have power and they were you know, going door
to door with mutual aid support. Um. But that is

(03:41:10):
why you know, a remember how everyone should remember how
how tricks e and how dishonest these folks are, but
also be why um, those of us who want to
see a different way need to be doing mutual aid too,
Like we actually need to be out there in our
communities and making friends and building trust and not just
showing up to function up when it's time to function up.

(03:41:30):
And I think that kind of like circles back to
the point we talked about earlier, which is like building
relationships with people on the front lines. Um. Looks like
so much more than just like the defense of a
bad thing in their backyards. It looks like, you know,
mutual aid because the industry is doing it, um, and
they're they're good at it, and we need to be better. Um.
I think that wrops up for us today. What one

(03:41:51):
thing I want, like, what what is going to happen
going forward now after this, after this legal victory. What's
kind of just to just just just just as so
people know, like what is like the next steps that
are going to be taken on the legal process that
will kind of determine what what happens um with like
you know, direct actions and going to see the forest
in like in the future. Yeah, Um, well, basically we're

(03:42:13):
waiting um for a date for this court case. UM.
And so that will hopefully be scheduled if it if
it ends up having to go through, which it might not. UM.
Obviously there's going to be an effort made on behalf
of lawyers UM to try and get the Forest Service
to just stop, to just drop this shenanigan UM and
walk away UM while they're you know where they're at, UM,

(03:42:33):
because we we do think we have a really strong
case UM that will win in court if it goes
to court. So that's kind of like the legal avenue UM.
Same story as what I said with the last time
we talked. You know, if if logging is going to
move forward in that area, whether that be because UM
it happens in the future or because somehow this legal
case is lost, direct action will happen. People will be

(03:42:56):
out there in the way of logging. There's no way
people are going to let that go down in the
Brighton Bush community. UM. So right now we're kind of
in a waiting game. We're watching and waiting UM. But
you know, I hope the Forest Service knows now that
they can't just get get away with stuff like this.
People are watching. People are going to file public records request.
We're documenting this and um, hopefully you know, we won't

(03:43:17):
be seeing more of this, but because we live in
the real world, the real sad world, we will be
seeing more of this, and so, um, you know, we'll
be out there again when the next forest is on
the chopping block, which is probably going to be you know, today, tomorrow. Yeah,
it's kind of always the thing. Um. Well, thank thank
you so much for coming on to talk about this
and the uh rare rare good news episode of Hey,

(03:43:40):
something good happening. Thank you. In any other sources people
can kind of follow along on the fight that the
people can find online. Yeah, make sure to follow Cascadia
Forest Offenders and Portland Rising tide Um, who will be
definitely tracking and posting. You can also follow Cascadia Wildlands,
who um was the lead nonprofit on the lawsuit and

(03:44:03):
they've been posting about it too. Great. All right, thanks
everybody for listening. Uh go see a tree, Touch Tree. Hey,
We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from

(03:44:26):
now until the heat death of the universe. It could happen.
Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more
podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone
media dot com, or check us out on the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for it could happen here, updated
monthly at cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks
for listening, Mama. What does the chicken say? What the draft?

(03:44:58):
Draft really do? Rat draw? You're not gonna get it
all right. Just make sure you know the big stuff,
like making sure your kids are buckled correctly in the
right seat for their agent's eyes. Get it right visits
n h s A dot gov slash the Right Seat
run to you by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
and the AD Council. Make sure to check out Drink Champs,

(03:45:19):
your number one music podcast on the Black Effect Podcast Network.
Hosts n O r E and d J E f
N sat down with artists and icon Yea, which Vulture
called one of most significant interviews. I literally had to
go like Danos and I don't want to have to
be the villain. But when I went and did the
Donda thing, they returned and anybody had to sit back

(03:45:40):
and watch the real leader. Check out Drink Champs conversation
with Yea and many more legendary artists, each and every
Friday on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or
where ever you listen to your favorite shows. What Girls
in the Forest, our imagination and our family bonds the
forest closer than you think. Find a forest near you

(03:46:02):
and discover the forest dot org brought to you by
the United States Forest Service and the AD Council