It Could Happen Here Weekly 141

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted
to let you know this is a compilation episode. So
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.
If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
there's going to be nothing new here for you, But

(00:23):
you can make your own decisions.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hi, Scheren, Hi James, I was alarming.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
Yeah, I went in to like twenty tens YouTube boys.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Well, yeah, Hi, James is excited today I am excited.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
I'm always excited to make a podcast, you know, I
love to cast a pod, but today I am especially
especially with an X like Expresso the coffee drink. I
am especially excited to talk to you, Cherene, because we
are talking about a subject which I have wasted far
too much of my life reading and writing about. What
are we talking about, Sharen? Sports? Sports?

Speaker 4 (01:07):
Right?

Speaker 3 (01:07):
Yeah, sports. I'm going to explain to Sharen sports why
they're fun or I did too many of them? Okay,
we're talking about the Olympics, the Olympic Games specifically. I
guess they're happening in Paris this year. They may be
happening in Paris by the time you listen to this.
But I want to talk a little bit about the
history of Olympics because I wrote a book about it,
and so I get to drawing on about it for

(01:28):
half an hour and you have to listen to me
while you drive your cars to work. Cool. The mon
Olympic Games is it draws links to ancient Greece, right,
And it does that because at the time that the
modern Olympic Games in the late nineteenth century were being
created by a guy called Baron Pierre de Kubitain, the
aristocracy of Europe were obsessed with drawing links to the

(01:51):
classical period.

Speaker 5 (01:51):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
This is the same time when we see all those
like neoclassical buildings going up, and people were trying to
draw links between themselves and the ancient Greeks and to
sort of posit themselves as the new Greco Roman font
of civilization.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
And hey, I took our history, and I minor to that,
so I know stuff too.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
Okay, yeah, because I did not take our history. Okay,
I'm sure you know more kinds of stuff about like
impressionists and Shure I understand. So if we're looking at like,
to understand the Olympics, we have to understand sport, right,
and to understand sport, we have to understand play. So
I was right about sports. You don't have to Yeah, no, no,

(02:33):
you agree, you're right on it. Yeah, but first we
do play, right. So if we're looking at like kind
of the classic text on this, it's it's a book
called Homo Ludens, but we probably don't need to read that.
It's not a banger. We very few academic books are bangers.
I like to think mine's in a sort of semi
banging category. But yeah, it's also overpriced and you shouldn't

(02:53):
buy it. Just go to your library and get it
for free. Play is it's pretty obvious what play is.
It's the difference between play and sport is that sport
is bounded. It happens in a certain place, within a
certain set of rules. Play doesn't. So the archetypal kind
of example of transitioning from play to sport would be
folk football in Britain. So back in the day, in

(03:15):
the place where I come from, for holidays, the Saints'
Days and other days when people didn't work, they would
have a game of football which consisted of a ball
inflated pigs bladder or a similar similar device, and you
have to get it from one village into the other village.
And those are about all the rules, right. Sometimes they
had specific rules against stabbing. There have been like an

(03:37):
outbreak of stabbing incidents, but other than that, it was
pretty much you do what the fuck you wanted, right.
You want to go on a five mile detour and
come around people come in the back way, no problem.
You're on a form of phalanx of all your mates
and just kind of go through like a wedge style.
Not a problem at all. You know, you want to
start hitting people with sticks, yeah, not an issue. It

(03:59):
was very loose, right, and every village or pair of
villages that will play had their own kind of understanding
of the rules, but it wasn't a codified set of
rules in existed across all incidences of folk football. And
we go from there to association football. Right, That's where
soccer comes from, right, ass soccer soccer association becomes assoc

(04:21):
assoc becomes a soccer that becomes soccer. Does that make sense, kin, Yeah,
I'm going to say yes. It's a very like nineteenth
century posh British effect that takes the word association football
and comes out with soccer. That's so funny. Yeah, that's
where it comes from. So association football codifires the rules. Right,

(04:42):
there's a pitch that pitches the same size as a goal.
The goal is the same size. You can't pick it
up now, And from that comes rugby football, right, So
rugby football is type where you pick up the ball.
There's a kind of founding myth for rugby football that
this guy called William ware bellis with a glorious disregard
for the rules. Quote, picked up the ball and ran
with it. It's a bit weird that, like they've created

(05:05):
a founding this for due to effectively just like sucked
at football. So he picked it up and ran with it.
Like it doesn't seem like he deserves a literal statue
that he has. Yeah, and that happened at Rugby School, right,
which was one of these English boarding schools that existed
to prepare young men to be officers and administrators in
the British Empire. And that is really what's the codification

(05:29):
of sport as far as we can sort of create
like a reason for it is to prepare young men
and just men to be administrators in the British Empire. Right,
it's supposed to make them physically strong. It's supposed to
make them obey the rules and learn to do what
they're told, even in stressful situations. Right, it's part of
an idea called muscular Christianity. And like, as far as

(05:52):
we can attribute this whole combination of things to one person,
it would be Thomas Arnold. Right, Thomas Arnold being the
headmaster at Rugby School, he develops his idea of educating
young Christian men and doing so using sport as well
as academia and sports very quickly develop a set of
rules around amateurism. Amateurism like sometimes we just use amateur

(06:13):
now to me not very good, but at the time
its specifically meant not paid to do the sport. And
so yeah, this is the early Olympics. Actually, the Olympics
still relatively recently have an amateurism rule, right that people
can't participate if they are paid to do the sport.
They have exemptions for fencing coaches, which I think tells

(06:35):
you about everything you need to know that this isn't
this isn't there for any purity reason. It's there to
serve as a class barrier, right, And we see it
used as a class barrier first of all in football, right,
Like that's why we have rugby league at rugby union
because the rugby league people tended to be working people
and they needed to be paid. It's the rugby league

(06:56):
allowed for professionalism. Rugby union did not, and those tended
to be wealthier people, right. But it's used at the
Olympics extensively to police class. Like probably the most prominent
example would be Jim Thorpe. You're familiar with Jim Thorpe.
Jim Thorpe's the cool guy. Actually, I got to read
some of his correspondents. He actually wrote a history of
the Olympic Games, which is very sad when you consider

(07:17):
that Jim Thorpe himself he's a member of the sac
and Fox Nation, right, so he's indigenous to North America.
He won a medal for the United States in the
nineteen twelve Semmer Olympics who went to Gold Males actually
won in pentathlon and won decathlon. So like decathletes are
kind of like the uber athletes, right, Like you're doing
ten ten different sports that you have to just be

(07:38):
good at exercising, and Jim Thorpe was good at exercising.
He also played collegiate and professional football, professional baseball, and
professional basketball. See he's an all around sport to dad. Unfortunately,
he lost his Olympic title because he had been paid
at some point for playing baseball, even though he didn't
do baseball in the Olympics. That's all fucked. Yeh. It's

(08:01):
very clearly used as a way to class and race
police the games, right, And I think this gets to
our point about what the Olympics are. So the early
Olympics tend to coincide with what are called World's Fairs.
Familiar with worlds Fairs shreen Yeah, yeah, yeah. People sort
of get together and they have these big exhibitions and

(08:22):
they show off there you know if you really got
yeah us whatever, Yeah, look what I stole from this
country that I have colonized and under force extracted these
the following things. If you're in Britain, like the most
famous sort of Worlds Fair site would be Crystal Palace, right,
Crystal Palace was built, burned down, but it was built
for the Worlds Fair. If you're in San Diego, Balboa Park,

(08:45):
right was built fourteen. Yeah, yeah, I feel like I
knew that somewhere in my head. Yeah, when you go
to Balboa Park, little niche San Diego diversion for the
millions of you are not in San Diego, you can
just tune out for ten seconds. Those are little cottages
like the Internet national Cottages and Palestine House and yeah,
Palestine House. Cool that they got recognition in San Diego.

(09:06):
At least those are from the World's Fair. Each country
would have that little exhibition in their house right and
all down the Prado. So yeah, that's actually has zoo
started as well. Someone in their exhibition had lions and
then fucking left them when they left, and they were like, uh,
I guess we better start a zoo. Got a couple
of lions on our hands. Yeah, incredible, incredible vibes. So

(09:29):
the Olympics happen at the same time as Worlds for
its a long time, and that is because the Olympics
are essentially a gathering of transnational borche worse he That's
not a phrase I came up with myself. It's from
my friend David Goldblat, who's written a really excellent history
of Olympics. That's called the Games. And if you're going
to read one book about the Olympics, that it should
be David's book. He's a lovely guy. I'm sure he's

(09:50):
not listening, hello, David. If you are, I would recommend
his book because I think his analysis is great, right,
that what these become is a place where the sort
of the that people who make money from finance capital
all around the world can gather together and share their
little ideas and play their little games. And we see that,
for instance, in the nineteen oh four Saint Lewis Olympics.

(10:10):
Saint Louis. In addition to like the World's Fair, they
have the Olympics and they have something called the Anthropological Days.
Have you heard about this, Sharne oh Willieve, I have no.
It's one of the more fuck things happen in Saint Louis,
which I think is saying a lot. They essentially kidnapped
people from around their various imperial possessions, brought them to

(10:30):
Saint Louis, which in itself is a crime, and then
forced them to compete in events that they didn't fully
explain to them. What the fuck yeah, and then concluded
from this that like white people were better.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
It's like some gladiator shit that's like, yeah, yes, what
are you doing? That's too modern, that's too hard to happen.

Speaker 3 (10:51):
This is nineteen oh four, yeah, not so long ago. Yeah,
very yeah, And this kind of exhibits what the world's
fairs we're into and to agree to a degree like
what the Olympiad became, which was like a way for
the colonizing powers to get together. Right, right, do you
know what will not kidnap you from your home country

(11:13):
and fly you to Saint Louis and then force you
to compete in games that you don't understand? Gold? Yeah,
you're probably right. Well, indirectly it will, you know, because
as a sort of source of wealth.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
Yeah, right, okay, whatever, I was trying to make a
trying to think of something that I might hear next.

Speaker 3 (11:32):
Yeah, it's it's probably gold.

Speaker 6 (11:33):
You're right, we're back, and we hope you have bought
your gold, the only the only metal that you can
make an Olympic medal out of.

Speaker 3 (11:52):
Incidentally, really, and we'll go over to gold. Oh really,
deturned green. I get like you're like, it's it's not
good for my skin.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
Well, I'll get like infections, but like I'll get like
an exemer kind of reaction.

Speaker 3 (12:06):
Oh well, what do you? Uh? Did you have an
alternative jewelry?

Speaker 2 (12:10):
I don't wear a lot of jewelry. I wear rings
the most, but I can't wear ear rings anymore. They're
too My ears are too sensitive. I usually like stick
with silver if I have to. But yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (12:23):
Not meant to be rich, no shame. Maybe maybe platinum
is what's Oh yeah I could do platinum. Yeah, okay,
listeners sen cherine platinum do hickeys? Well yeah, to wear? Yeah? Gold?
They so they lipic metals are not solid gold, they're
just gold coated. Interesting. Yeah, it's a little cheap. Yeah yeah, right,

(12:46):
like you spend your whole life something. Then they did
chips off. Yeah, yeah, you drop it and it's just
plastic in the middle. I guess they have more values
on pic metals than they do as lumps of gold. Anyway,
you can sell them, and people have sold them online because,
as it turns out, like spending your entire youth exercising

(13:06):
and then getting to a point where you're too injured
or old to compete, it's sometimes not great for your
future career prospects and I've unfortunately seen lots of friends
take that path. And so I want to talk about
like the Olympics in the twentieth century, and specifically I
want to talk about the Olympics in the nineteen thirties. Right,
so when the Olympics. By the time we come to

(13:28):
the nineteen thirties, the Olympics have really become like they're
an American thing. The Los Angeles Olympics gives us a
lot of the modern Olympics, and the rest of the
mode Olympics we get from friend of the podcast Adolf
Hitler and his Nazi party. Of course, yeah, I knew
that you were expecting them. We never never don't expect Hitler.
So nineteen thirty two is great. Like nineteen thirty two

(13:51):
Olympic village. They build this Olympic village. They haven't patrolled
by cowboys, just like Hollywood cosplay Dude joh On horses
cowboy and around. It's the first. It's very weird. It's
the first Olympic village. And it's it becomes a real
estate investment, right like as soon as the Olympics are
done there in classic Los Angeles fashion, flipping the houses

(14:12):
for more than they were paid. So it also creates
this idea of like the Olympics as a mass spectacle
in nineteen thirty two is sometimes called the Hollywood Olympics, right,
and it really changes the game from rich people getting
together for rich people to a spectator event and a
mass spectator event. In nineteen thirty one, Spain's Dicta Blander

(14:34):
collapses and Dicta Blander is like a soft dictatorship as
opposed to Dictadoro as a hard dictatorship. Right, So, and
Spain becomes a republic. Nineteen thirty one. It's also the
time when the International Olympic Committee is meeting in Barcelona,
and for geographically challenged listeners Barcelona, it's in Catalonia, but

(14:54):
Catalonia is within Spain at this time. So the IOC
is all most entirely comprised of very rich people, and
many of them are like barons, counts, princes, other people
who like their job is being someone's kid, right, and
they just do things like being on the IOC to
occupy them what they spend their parents' money. So they're

(15:17):
in Spain at the time when Spain has just deposed
a monarch and it has this revolutionary republic, right, the
anarchists are in the street. It's about to begin a
campaign of two years of removing the church from its
official position, like anti clericalism and of land reform. These
are things which rich people do not like. And so

(15:41):
the vote happens in Barcelona about where to hold the
next Olympics, and the two leading candidates are Berlin and Barcelona.
After Barcelona, I think a little weird happens. See IOC
members all go home and not everyone has come to Barcelona,
right because of the because of the change in the situation,
and instead of being like, okay, well we had a

(16:03):
vote in Barcelona one, the IOC makes an interesting and
relatively unique decision to have another vote by telegram, and
in the telegram vote they instead of going for the
unstable Spanish Second Republic, up for a more stable and
liberal democracy, which is of course viy my Germany. Of course, yeah,

(16:26):
good choice by their better rich folks. They really helped
us out there, and it's very interesting, Like I've spent
a lot of time with these telegrams, like the actual
paper telegrams in the International Olympic Committee archive in Lausanne,
trying to ascertain did they just like did the vote happen.
And then they were like, no, fuck, we can't go

(16:47):
to Barcelona, like we got to redo, We've got to
work out way to dig this, like we can't go
to this republican place, or that they claimed that there
weren't enough votes, right, that they didn't have like a quorum.
But I've looked at previous and subsequent votes, and there
are there are plenty of other votes that have fewer participants,
And it was relatively normal at this time for not
everyone to show up at a meeting, right Because it's

(17:09):
nineteen thirty one, Traveling is hard, and so I can't
categorically say what's happened. But maybe that's what I suspect
has happened. I can't really see any way I could
find out now, and as I went to every member
of the International Olympic Committee at the time and looked
in their personal archive. But either way, they decided to
give the Olympics to this little place called firemar Germany

(17:31):
in between ninety thirty one and nineteen thirty six. History
fans will know that the Nazis game to parent Germany.
Nazis not very nice people and no bad Many people
are saying, yeah, many people are saying the mosquitoes of
the world. Not sorry, we just recorded the Mosquito episode. Yes, yeah,

(17:53):
in any ways, like the mosquito could be eradicated, maybe
wouldn't be bad. Yeah, my favorite georgiowelline one of my
favorite joints or all lines. I joined the militia to
kill a fascist because if all of us did so,
then there wouldn't be any of them left. Wow. Yeah, yeah,
very prescient. So the Olympics, when the Nazis going to power,

(18:15):
first they want to do away with it. Right then
when they're like, fuck this, this is some bougie shit.
We're not into it. We don't want to see other people,
we don't care about other nations with arians. And then
over time the administrators of the Olympics, including guy called
Carl DM who would be classified, according to the nazis
own sort of standards, as a Jewish person, they persuade

(18:36):
the Nazis that having the Olympics will be good for them.
It will let them exhibit their shit on a world scale.
And they are not wrong. Right, The Olympics turned into
a massive boon for Nazi Germany. We don't have enough
time in this short episode to explain the whole boycott movement.
There was a substantial boycott movement, including in the United States.

(18:56):
The United States very nearly boycotted the Berlin Olympics, but
in the end it ended up not doing so you
had opposition from really interesting groups. Actually had opposition obviously
from Jewish groups, right because Nazis. You have opposition from
elements of an NAACP, but not from other elements because
they have this very reasonable objection. They're like, well, America

(19:17):
is also racist as fuck. Actually, like we also like
this is a time where we exclude black folks from
a lot of yeah, not yeah, And so you have
black folks boycotting, and you have black folks being like, now,
fuck it, like we'll take the chance, you know. And
then you have the opposition from an interesting group like
the liberal Catholics, right, because the Nazis had their own

(19:39):
ideas on religion, and so a lot of Catholics were
anti Nazi at that point, including Jeremiah Mahony, who was
president of the Amateur Athletic Union at the time, who
was kind of leading the boycott movement. The United States
decides not to boycott, lots of other places in the
world decide that they are going to boycott, right, and
lots of other people around the world. And that's where Barcelona.

(19:59):
They had a conference in Paris, actually the International Conference
for the Respect of the Olympic Ideal, and that is
the conference out of which the bars that remember bars
Oonner applied in thirty one. Right, So they have all
their shit together. They actually have the site of a
former World's Fair and that's what they're going to use.
So the Catalans come to this conference in April of

(20:20):
thirty six and are like, hey, we can have another Olympics,
which isn't shit, And they go ahead and have their
Olympics and shit, now first happened the Nazi Olympics, Right.
The Nazi Olympics give us so much of what we
consider to be the Olympic tradition today. The torch relay,
you know, the torch relay. They go to Olympia and

(20:41):
bring the flame. Yeah, that's a Nazi thing. Actually, it
comes from the Nazis. The idea of drawing a link
from ancient Greece to Berlin was a Nazi idea. Why
don't we still do it? Yeah, that's a good question, Sharen.
Isn't it a good question. As we enter the Paris Olympics.
One thing they have done away was the Olympic salute
because it bears an unfortunate resemblance to the Nazis. So

(21:04):
they also start in no, the Olympic salute predates it.
So you have these interesting mark people march like were
they the parade at the opening ceremony of the Olympics, right,
and lots of these The pageantry of the opening ceremony
also comes from the Nazis, by the way, And we
got people walking in and the French come in and
they're doing a salute, and people like, is that the
Nazi salute they're doing? It's at the Olympic salute. I'm

(21:27):
pretty sure it's the Olympic salute. I'm pretty sure.

Speaker 2 (21:31):
If it's too close, I think it's bad. Yeah, I
think getting confused for something else.

Speaker 3 (21:35):
I think I think you should stop. Yeah. I just
tried to not do things that look like gunsi kilink like.
That is how I how I live my life. You
have other nations who don't do it, right. You have
the Americans. The Americans traditionally in the so they're supposed
to dip their flag. The Americans have never dipped their
flag and Olympic opening ceremonies. So sometimes you'll see this written

(21:55):
as like, yeah, the Americans said, fuck, hey, they didn't.
They just did what they'd always done and which was
to not dip their flag, and that that Olympiad is
a great success for Hitler, right, Like this is where
a lot of this like, oh, but yeah, he's very efficient.
He makes a trains run on time. Kind of shit
comes from, right. They use it as a pageant and
they downplay their racism. They include a couple of Jewish

(22:17):
athletes on their team, which is one of the demands
of Avery. Brandage, head of the American Olympic Committee. Brandage
Brandish is an interesting dude. Brandage. You can read more
about Brandage in my book Rubber Did Behind the Bastards.
On Brandage, I don't think he begins the nineteen thirties
is an anti Semite. But after the boycott campaign, which

(22:37):
he calls a Jewish Communist conspiracy, well yeah, he absolutely
becomes an anti Semite. Like he grows closer to Hitler
when other because like his idea is that politics shouldn't
influence the games, which is inherently a political choice. When
the games have been given to fucking Adolf Hitler. So
the ninety thirty six Olympics go ahead in Germany, lots

(22:59):
of fascism, lots of zeg hiling, a real success for Hitler.
Ninety thirty six Olympics in Barcelona don't go ahead because
the Spanish Civil War. The Barcelona Olympics are like an
alternative to the Berlin Olympics. Yeah, at this time, also,
it should be pointed out that you got the Winter
Olympics when you've got the Olympics. So the Nazi had
already had their garments part in Kirshen Winter Olympics and

(23:24):
had predicted to be done a bunch of Nazi shit right,
which didn't stop anyone going to the Summer Olympics. Saran,
do you know what won't do a bunch of Nazi
ship what? James, it's the products and services that support
this show, Saran. I found it.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
It's easier instead of trying to come up with something
just to give you the question right now.

Speaker 3 (23:43):
Yeah, damn foiled again way back. So yeah, these Olympics
they're supposed to have in Barcelona, they don't happen because
of Spanish Civil war starts at the same time. Right,

(24:05):
lots of these anti fascist athletes go on to participate
as fighters in the Spanish Civil War, about four hundred
of them. The popul Olympics are call The main reason
they're call is because I've written a book about them,
but other reasons include that they had like elite amateur
and then provincial races, so like you could just show
up and be like, yeah, man, I'm just going to
fucking check my hand the ring one hundred meters, let's
see how I do, and there would be a place

(24:27):
for you to compete.

Speaker 7 (24:28):
Right.

Speaker 3 (24:28):
It wasn't about who was a freak athlete. They were
really interested in working class health. So for that reason,
they also had like these mass relay events where you'd
have like the fifty by twenty five meters or the
ten by fifty meters, and you couldn't have all runners.
So the idea was that the country that would win
or the nation that would win. Right, They competed as

(24:49):
nations rather than states, So the exiled Jews of Europe
competed together for the obvious reason that, like, if you're
a German Jew in nineteen thirty six, you don't want
to compete for fucking Germany, so even at the Populalympics,
they competed to Jewish workers sports associations. And you have
exiled and anti fascists from Germany and Italy competing under

(25:09):
their own banners. And you have Glicia, Catalonia Skendy, the
Basque country competing s own ould nations, right, and the
same with the colonized people of North Africa. And you
have the women students of the world with their own
old team, which is nice. They also made a big
deal of including women, allowing women to do sports that
men do at the time in nineteen thirty six women

(25:29):
can run more than two hundred meters. Well, but they
actually could, as it turns out, Yeah, yeah, right, they
just weren't allowed to c Yeah, shocking discovery. They didn't
just involve that capacity since thirty six. But these Olympics
don't go ahead because the Spanish evil War starts. Lots
of the anti fascist affete who came state to fight, right,

(25:51):
including people I've written about in my book. We did
a whole cool people who did cool stuff about this.
So you can listen to more if you want to.
In Margaret's feed. I'm sure if you search popular Olympics
will be there. By the way, you sometimes see it
translated as People's Olympics. I prefer popular because it's inherently
tied to the idea of a popular front, right, which
is a policy of like united front between everyone from

(26:13):
the liberals to the communists to the anarchists against fascism.
Sometimes the anarchists don't participate in the popular Front because
it is dominated by communists, and the communists, in fact
love to kill anarchists a lot more than they love
to kill fascists, and they use the Popular Front as
cover for doing that, as we see in Spain. But
the anarchists did participate in workers or popular sport in Barcelona,
at least to an extent. So these games that said,

(26:37):
they don't happen. You can read about that in my book,
or you can listen to Margaret's podcast about it. But
I want to talk about what the Olympics represent today,
the modern Olympics. Right, they have become as they always were. Right,
they continue to be a spectacle that they've been since
thirty two, and they continue to be a vehicle for
capitalism as they have been forever. Right, if we look

(26:59):
at their research, Olympic Games. Right, we look at London,
we look at Rio. I think Rio is a really
great example, right the Olympics, that they were able to
clear areas of the city using the potential Olympics. Right,
displace favela communities, displace poor and excluded and marginalized people,
and take advantage of incredibly underpaid labor. And there's probably

(27:22):
it's a bit rarer now. But for like most of
the last eight years, you've met Haitian folks in Tijuana
mostly right, the US has been especially racist and bigoted
towards Haitians, and you can I wrote a piece for
NBC about Biden's hypocracy on Haitian immigration. But there were
people who had worked on the Olympic Stadium in Brazil. Right,

(27:45):
So they've gone from Haiti, like after the earthquake or
the economic and political issues, so they've had ever since
the earthquake, they've gone to Brazil. And then they've worked
in Brazil building the stadia, getting paid fuck all and
doing dangerous work. And then eventually I've been able to
find work that visas had run out or they'd otherwise
chosen to come north to the United States, and they
often end up not being able to they end up

(28:07):
stuck in Tijuana or living in Tijuana and find finding
work there. Right, So often Olympics take advantage of migrant labor.
They are used as a means of like reshaping the
city into like sculpting it under capitalism, right, pushing folks
out of their neighborhoods. They don't do the Olympics in

(28:29):
bougie neighborhoods. They use it as an excuse to gentrify
a neighborhood, to remove in trenched working class communities. Yeah,
Like it's really sad. It's when I read so much
of the stuff about, like specifically the Barcelona Olympic Games,
Like we see these people who are unquestionably good people, right,
Like they genuinely believe that through what they see is

(28:50):
the ideal of the Olympics, they can liberate women. They
the Barcelona organizers so like, they didn't have much money, right,
they were putting people up. And I found these forms
in the arch if they'd go around people's houses and
be like, hey, do you have a spare bedroom? And
in the form you can tick I have one, two,
three spare bedrooms. I can serve breakfast. I can't serve
breakfast and that's how they would bill at the athletes, right,

(29:11):
the athletes didn't have an Olympic village. They had a
hotel and then any surp plus you would just stay
with with a local person. It was a very different
vision of what the Olympics could have been. Right. They
really believed in the youth of the world coming together.
They really thought that at the popul Olympics they could
show the strength of anti fascism, that anti fishing wasn't
just a talking point, that it was that it was

(29:32):
young and it was healthy, and like most importantly, that
they could fucking kill you, right, like that that sport
all Well again double or Well quote episode or Well
called sport War without the shooting, and I think he's
spot on. Actually it is good. He's got some bangos
sharene you do say that, Yeah, he's a word guy,
George Orwell. People do love to misquote George your Well,

(29:55):
but I like to quote him correctly. You know you
can you can always when someone misquote Georgia Will you
can always just quote tweet them with the I had
joined them Unlicia to kill a fascist, right or the
other absolute banger from all Well. I have no particular
love for the idealized worker as he exists in the
mind of the bourgeois communists. But when I see a
real flesh and bug worker in conflict with his natural enemy,

(30:16):
the policeman, I don't have to ask myself which side
them on. Ooh, it's a banger, that's that's poetry. Yeah
it is. It's great. Like it's something that when I
get around, will have tattooed on my body maybe like
maybe when I have to cross fewer borders. It's probably

(30:36):
not something you want to be showing after the intelligence
agencies of various countries. Yeah, it's really sad to see
this thing, and I think it does have potential. I
think it's a potential. What I want to end on
is like I think we can recover that potential, Like
we can take the Olympics away from the people who
did nineteen oh four and the people who did nineteen
thirty six, and like it doesn't mean to have to

(30:57):
use that obviously that the IOC is not fucking coming
with us, right, I've been to the IOC, very nice building,
but like this is the you know, the the interests
of finance, capital and the interesting iOS here inherently tied
coca coat. Every massive corporation in the world is a
massive spot for the Olympics, right, And it's also been

(31:18):
a platform for some really good things that we think about.
Tommy Smith and John Carlos right at the ninety sixty
eight Olympics giving a raise fist salute on the podium.
I'm sure you've seen it. There's a statue of them,
several statues of them, I think, actually, but yeah, very
famous Olympic moment. The whole ninety sixty eight Olympics actually
kind of gave a platform for protest, and Parisians have
been protesting against this Olympics, and Angelino's are already protesting

(31:41):
against what it's going to happen in twenty eight. You
can look up no Olympics LA for those folks, and
I think that that is something that's worth supporting. I
don't think that the idea is inherently bad, the idea
of coming together to play and like sports are, where
we decide who's on our team and who's not on
our team, right, And what the popular Olympics did was
said working people are all on the same team. And

(32:01):
they've played that out right. The day the games were
supposed to start. Some of those athletes were in the
streets killing fascists and they weren't. Right that day, that
minitary coup failed in Barcelona, and a lot of them
left really feeling like they got something out of the
games that they couldn't have got, or that they came
to play and then they saw like what they were
playing for acted out. And I think there's still something

(32:24):
really powerful in that, but we can only get there
by acknowledging how fucked up the Olympics have always been.
I see this like liberal narratives that the Libs the
Olympics were once great and about sportsmanship and now they're
about capitalism. No fuck that, Like they have always been
inherently about capitalism, they've been inherently about colonialism, about eugenics. Right,
the medal table. We don't do the medal table for

(32:46):
shits and giggles. The medal table is there to prove
like the superiority of one race. Like that is why
Hitler is obsessed with the medal table. Right, He's extremely
worried that like either they like folks in the United States,
or like God forbid, the Japanese do well in the Olympics.
It's like, and then the Olympics trying to sort of

(33:08):
posit itself as inherently pro human rights I think is
very problematic when yeah, we look at like how Olympics
Stadia get constructed by whom they get constructed and where
they get constructed, Yeah, who they effect and yeah, and
who who they're for and who who they take from.
So I know, I'm not saying don't watch the Olympics.
Like when I was a kid, the Olympics were like

(33:30):
fucking formative in me wanting to do sports, and when
I was an athlete, the Olympics I wanted to do.
I have friends who are going to be at the Olympics,
and like, I guess I wish them the best, but
still a bad thing. And like I certainly don't blame
folks who come from like resource coorse settings for taking
that chance.

Speaker 2 (33:47):
Of course, but it is like, yeah, the way it
currently is and the way it's always been is just.

Speaker 3 (33:56):
Doesn't necessarily make the world a better place. But maybe
there's a.

Speaker 2 (34:00):
Different timeline where I don't know, Barcelona's idealism of an
Olympics is like.

Speaker 3 (34:06):
True, Yeah, I know, I think we can bring it back.
I think like antio fascism is having a moment that
it probably hasn't had it in to Nineteen's true, that's
very true in the last four years. Can we can
get together and we can have our own institutions too, Like,
I don't think we should abandon sport to the chuds,
of course, the chuds of like sport, Like, yeah, there's
a way.

Speaker 2 (34:25):
But I also don't want anyone to use it as
a way to like not sports wash, but like kind
of focus on something that is not as relevant as
the bigger picture.

Speaker 3 (34:35):
Does that make sense? Like it yeah, totally, Like, yeah,
it shouldn't be used to distract exactly, that's what that's
the short word. Yeah, And like it has been like
global sports are increasingly going to like Petro states in
the Middle East. Yeah, right, Like, and that is a problem.
I think if you're an athlete, I would encourage you
to really consider what your role is. I know some

(34:55):
of my friends listen who are still like professional athletes
and there just think about out what you can do,
and like, I will tell you that when you stop
getting paid to exercise, all of it seems very unimportant
and like you suddenly realize that in my case, but
there's important shit that you can do if you have
a chance to do it, and you should do it
if you get the chance. But yeah, I think hopefully,

(35:19):
you know, if people want to know more about the Populalympics,
I will fucking talk Carreer of med Email. Yeah, my book,
I think it might be on libcom now as well.
I think you can. I think it's been pirated, which
is good to see. You can get it from your library.
I'd love you to get it from your library, because
the it's fair for someone else libraries. Yeah, I do
love a library. Yeah, we should do a library episode.

Speaker 6 (35:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (35:39):
Well, I was trying to get the library San Diego
Library Association on because we've been defunding the libraries here
in San Diego to have more cops.

Speaker 2 (35:45):
Yeah, it's fucking great. Yeah, no, I love the libraries.
Are just this I don't know, pure little place. We
got to do some library episodes.

Speaker 3 (35:54):
Yeah, we'll do, and we we'll get them back. We'll
get the library. So if you work in a library
and the police are takeing away the money used to
read books of little children, you can you can DM
me on x dot com. Yeah, and we will fight
the good fight for you. Yeah, all right, that's uh,
that's that's been the Olympics. No, go, go forth, do

(36:15):
a little decathlon. Here's a fine Olympic fact for you,
a fun fun facts. End the episode. A general pattern, right,
American war guy entered the pentathlon at the Olympics and
used such a large pistol that they were unable to
determine the size of his grouping of shots on the
target because he just viscerated the whole target his handcannon. Yeah. So,

(36:39):
embody that the pentathlon a sport that was designed to
train offices. Right, you have to run, swim, ride a horse,
sword fight, and shoot. Yeah, so make a better pentathlon,
make make an anti fascist to cathalon. Yeah, send us
your You can tag us with your your decathlon ideas
on on x dot com. We both use at I write, Okay,

(36:59):
bizarrely we have the same the same Twitter handle. Yeah,
send us your sporting ideas. Enjoy your little Olympic viewing.
Now that I've ruined it all for you, I guess.

Speaker 2 (37:09):
Yeah, no, I mean, it's it's good to know context.
But yeah, until next time, Until the next time you
and dreams talk about something either terrible or fun.

Speaker 3 (37:18):
Or somewhere in between. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll yeah, we'll
be back seeing with something else. You'll never know what
These will always fucking just these must just come out
of left field for people like, what the fuck are
they talking about today?

Speaker 2 (37:30):
Well, I guess I'll ever know until you listen.

Speaker 3 (37:33):
That's listen every day.

Speaker 4 (37:34):
Bye bye bye.

Speaker 7 (37:56):
Welcome to it up Here a podcast where I Lea
Wong have Readamala Harris's dad, Donald Harris's book. This is
This is the podcast that you're listening to now with
me to experience this actually genuinely fairly interesting work of
political economy.

Speaker 3 (38:14):
Is James Stout. Hi, man, I'm so excited to know
what Donald has for us today. Me too.

Speaker 7 (38:20):
I'm you know, I'm I'm of a bunch of minds
of this book because I think the the actual key
element of this book, which is called Capital Accumulation and
Income Distribution, is that it is unbelievably technically dense.

Speaker 3 (38:35):
You know.

Speaker 7 (38:35):
Okay, we're going to get into the book. First, we
sort we should talk a bit about who Donald Harris is.
So a lot of the focus around this is Kamala Harris,
the presumptive Democratic nominees dad. So a lot of the
media coverage around him is around him being a Marxist.
This is debatable obviously, is what I'm like the conclusion

(38:57):
I'm going to come out of this, But.

Speaker 3 (38:58):
I'm shocked that people plan on media today might misunderstand
basic things about Marxism and who is and he's not
a Marxist, Yeah, I mean I think.

Speaker 7 (39:06):
But so the thing about this book, So this book
is from nineteen seventy eight, which is actually after he
had broken up with Kamala's mom, and so Kamala doesn't
like know him super well.

Speaker 3 (39:18):
Was he like not present in her younger life. Kamala's
mom and.

Speaker 7 (39:21):
Dad divorced when she was like five, in like four
or five, So this is this is written about a
decade after that.

Speaker 3 (39:27):
Yeah, much like the New American Communist Party, like a
lot a lot of divorce guys just love to be Communists.
It's the thing about divorce guys. Oh god.

Speaker 7 (39:35):
Yeah. So you know, one of the sort of the
thing everyone kind of cites about, like Donald Harris's politics,
that he was in this sort of like Black Studies,
like I guess proto Black Studies group that produced a
bunch of like black panthers produced a lot of very
radical people. But you know, the interesting thing about Donald

(39:56):
Harris is that he is not the Marxist that you
would expect to see coming out of sort of like
that Miliu, because those people's Marxism, you know, I mean,
he is very interested in sort of underdevelopment and you know,
sort of like imperialism, but he's he's not well from
one of the sort of like Baoists inflected kinds of Marxism,
which are the kinds that tended to be sort of

(40:17):
floating around.

Speaker 3 (40:19):
Like that time.

Speaker 7 (40:21):
He in fact, he is a very very rare kind
of Marxist, which is to say, well, A, he doesn't
call himself a Marxist. He calls himself a Marxi in
the entire time. But b yeah, in tolerable and we
don't understand what this is. So there's a very famous
marx quote where he's complaining about I think it was
something the German Social Democratic Party did or something where
he where people are calling themselves Marxists, and he goes,

(40:43):
and this is what if this is what Marxism is,
and I am not a Marxist. And so for one
hundred years, since then, one hundred and fifty years, people
have been calling themselves Marxians instead of Marxists.

Speaker 3 (40:53):
But this is all over that book. I'm developing a
picture of a kind of guy, Oh yeah, panting me
a rich portrait man. Yeah so.

Speaker 7 (41:01):
But the interesting part is he's what's known as a
post Kanesian and weirdly, dear listeners, you are you are
some of the only people in this entire country. You
have a prayer of knowing who these people are because
we've actually had a bunch of them on the show.
If if people remember the episodes that I did about
inflation over the last sort of like year, I guess,
like two years. I don't know it, it's been it's

(41:21):
been a long time. But the episode's about inflation that
we did with the with the folks over at Strange Matters.
Those people are the sort of the int one of
one of the groups that are the intellectual heirs to
sort of post Kanesianism. It's a you know, I guess
it's post Kansianism, is kind of it's I guess it's
like the largest of what's called the heterodox economics UH schools.

(41:42):
We're gonna get more into what it is later, because
it's not just like you know, so it's post Kanesian
after like John Vader Kanes, it's not really Canes and
that that's that's gonna become very important as second. But
you know this, this is sort of an issue because
it means that it's actually it's really really hard for
a normal person to figure out what the fuck is
going on with this book book. And this is something
that I discovered, you know, partially just from reading it,

(42:03):
and partially also I mean this like, I have a
pretty good background to do this, because I know a
lot of Postcansian economics, and I also have studied a
lot of Marks, and you need both of those to
be able to write about this. However, come I discovered
two hours to put this recording. I discovered that the
economist had set some hack who they refused to name,
to write about this book, and this person managed, okay,

(42:26):
on top of just like straight up, like not literally,
their explanation of what the book is about is simply wrong.
In just four paragraphs, they managed to make an error
so egregious that if I had turned this shit into
my professor's in college, it would have failed before it
So okay, okay, So one of the things the author
talks about is this thing called the Cambridge capital controversy.

(42:48):
And this author claims that this controversy was fought between
the neo and post Kansians. Now, this is probably gibberish
to like nineteen percent of people listening to this, but
in terms of heterodox economics, this is the equivalent of
not knowing who fought in World War Two. Like this
is the Cambridge cancer controversy. Is It's it's basically these
single moments in which this kind of like this kind

(43:08):
of heterodox economics appears onto the economic scene in a
way that like they were able to force the sort
of mainstream neoclassical economists to take to pay attention to.
And this battle should, like intellectually should have completely destroyed
all of neoclassical economics. Right, everything you've ever heard about
how price equal supply and demand like so all those curves,

(43:29):
all of that is fucking bullshit. All of it was
destroyed by one single happening about the course of a
decade between the sort of post Knesians, mostly Serappha but
also Joe and Robinson I think actually started it. We're
gonna talk about those people more later. This is a
battle between them, and there is specifically the neoclassical economists,
and by the end of it, the neoclassical economists were
forced to admit that they couldn't they couldn't figure out

(43:53):
a way to like measure the value of a bundle
of like capital goods. So if you have two different machines,
neoclassical economy cannot tell you the value of And this
this completely annihilates neoclassic economics. All of it is fucking
fake because you know, they need this for the production function.
Without the production function, like you can't even get to
supply and demand, right, every literally everything, all of their

(44:15):
stuff immediately falls apart. I'm not going to like attempt
to an explanation of the Cambridge capital controversy was what
it was actually about here, because it's it's a little
bit it's something that you can understand, but it's a
little bit technical and it's hard to explain in podcast
form if you if you're really curious about this, the
book Capital as Power. Capital as Power has a really

(44:35):
great explanation of it in chapter five that's pretty short.
You can just literally find a PDF of Capital as
Power by just googling it. But this is a level
of sort of like confusion we're getting with here. We're
like the person the economist assigned to write this like
knows so little about it that and you know, the
other thing about this, this whole controversy is that the
Cambridge Cancel capital controversy is in the book, and in

(44:56):
the book, Donald Harris very specifically talks about the There's
an entire chapter of the book that it's just him
using the products of the Cambridge capital controversy to completely
destroy a classical economics.

Speaker 3 (45:06):
This is an entire chapter of the book. And this
guy got who was about wrong? Right?

Speaker 7 (45:10):
So this is a book that is is very very
easy to misinterpret and very very easy to sort of
not like you know, just to sort of like completely
misunderstand or bounce off of.

Speaker 8 (45:21):
I it was.

Speaker 7 (45:21):
It was hard for me, and like I'm pretty well
set up to deal with it. So, Okay, what what
the fuck is this book about? The very the shortest
answer I can possibly give is it's an attempt to
build a sort of mathematical model of how how of
of sort of like that measures the growth of an

(45:42):
economy and can sort of like determine based on like
different sort of inputs of uh, you know, we'll get
to the bore of the second and like in terms
of like inputs of capital and like parts of labor,
like how how you can have an economy that grows
stably over time. But in order to like get into
really what this is, we need to do something that

(46:03):
actually is the first part of this book. We need
to do a brief survey of the last two hundred
and thirty two hundred and forty years of economics. But
before we do that, do you know what economics exist
to sell you?

Speaker 3 (46:19):
I do? Actually that is a fantastic transition. Mayah, That
is it goods and services. It is in fact goods
and services, price less capital goods.

Speaker 7 (46:39):
All right, and we are back, So okay, in order
to understand literally what this fundamental project is, we have
to talk about sort of the three broad categories of economists.
So the first sort of original in we're not gonnare
there's a couple there's people before this, but like the
the in terms of like economists whose work is important

(47:01):
to now, there's three broad categories, and we're going to
start with the classical economists broadly. There's also about three
important classical economists. This is this is an argument, and
this is one of the arguments that Donald Harris makes
in the opening of this book is about who these
people are. So his argument is it's Adam Smith, Malthus,
and Ricardo. We don't care about Mauthus for our purposes.
He's most well known for being the like the the

(47:25):
like out of control population growth will kill one on Earth.
We need to like slow populate stuff like. That's not
super relevant for us. Everyone, I think kind of has
a has a basic familiarity with Adam Smith. But for
our purposes, the important one is Ricardo, who is not
very well known at all. Ricardo is sort of concerned
with basically the distribution of surpluses between the classes. So

(47:50):
for him, that there's there's there's three major classes, right,
there's landlords as capitalists, and there's workers. And he's concerned
about how the sort of the the surplus product of
a society, which is like all of the sort of
stuff that's produced in an economy that isn't literally directly
necessary for everyone to survive. How is that sort of
surplus like distributed and how does this sort of impact
economic growth? The post Kanesian tradition that Donald Harris is

(48:13):
in is in a real sense they are successors to Ricardo, right.
A lot of I've mentioned Piero Siraffa, who is like
probably the central figure of post Kanesian economics. He's a
really interesting guy. He knows like everyone, like he knew Canes.
He was weirdly friends with Antonio Grampsi, the former head
of the Italian Communist Party, who's enormously influential work was

(48:36):
like new him, And a lot of what Sarafa's work
is is kind of like getting Ricardo's economics to like
work properly and then turning that into sort of a
new framework for how you model economies. Now, the other
part of this, you know, so okay, who isn't isn't
the classical economist is also a huge source of debate

(48:57):
because there's a lot of people who throw marks in
as part of the classical economy, that's a traditional way
to view it. Harris doesn't think that he's a classical economist.
He thinks that he's his own thing. So for our purposes,
you know, it's and and Harris is also I mean,
I think he considers himself a Marxist, even in this
period and a lot of this book is an attempt

(49:17):
to sort of merge Marxian political economy with like the
sort of neo Ricardi and stuff that s Rafa is doing.

Speaker 3 (49:24):
Does he change later? Do you know? Is Harris one
of these guys who goes on like intellectual journey and
becomes Oh, we'll get there, We'll get to where all
this ends up at the end of this episode.

Speaker 7 (49:34):
But you know, it's interesting because you can actually see
it kind of happening in the middle of this book
in ways that we're going to get to.

Speaker 3 (49:40):
I love that. I love a book where your thic
sort of personal journey.

Speaker 7 (49:44):
It's also very funny because the economist guy, I was like,
oh my god, he's so Marxist. He's concerned with the
value for him and like, okay, I to put my
Marxist cards on the table.

Speaker 3 (49:53):
Maybe six people will understand this.

Speaker 7 (49:54):
But like I was like brought up in terms of
learning like Marxist theory, like through the through the value
form school.

Speaker 3 (50:01):
He is not a value form guy. He plays really
fast and loose. What value is? Uh, it's it's I
was reading this and I was going, oh god, oh no,
what is this. He's so wrong? He's so bafflingly wrong.
The What the the Economists is subtitled A Combative Marxist
Economists with White House Influence, which like, thanks God.

Speaker 7 (50:27):
Yeah, okay, so so the the the basis of Marxist
Marxian political economy is the labor theory of value. We're
gonna explain this briefly because it actually winds up mattering
a lot to this book. So value is the product
of the labor time socially necessary to produce a commodity. Right,
It's like how long does it take like a specific
place to produce a watch? You know, workers are paid

(50:47):
enough to reproduce themselves or paid enough to sort of
like eat, sleep and like have kids. There are more workers,
but the rest of their labor time is stolen by
capitalists and is thus unremunerated. This unpaid labor time is
called surplus value. And this is what capital has made off.
So this is like a very very basis of sort
of what Marxism is, and you know, in in sort
of Marxism. And this is sort of different than Ricardo,

(51:10):
which is like work. Ricardo understands that there are classes
and that they are in conflict to some extent. But
you know, for marx the central dynamics of capitalism is,
you know, is the conflict between the bourgeoisie or the
capitalists who own the means of production and then you know,
and buy that ownership, like extract surplus value from the
proletariat and the proletariat or the working class or forced
to sell their labor to capitalists, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 3 (51:32):
Something very interesting.

Speaker 7 (51:34):
Two ideas run into each other very quickly in Harris's work,
because you know, so there is a thing called surplus
in in the tradition of sort of Ricardo and in
the tradition of like Serapha and this of the post Kansians, right,
and that surplus is very critically not the same thing
as Marxian surplus value. So you know what part of

(51:57):
part of what's happening here is that Harris is trying
to square the circle base between these two approaches to
like to what surplus is and sort of what the
nature of value is. So you know, in the Marxist tradition, right,
surplus value is still in labor time, and the value
of producer sort of flows through the economy, and it's
what turned you know, like stealing this labor time is
what turns capital into more capital. Right in the post

(52:20):
in post Cantine economics, surplus is you know, so so
in in sort of like a seraf in work or
in this book too, right, you have basically a production matrix,
which is like as a MATC that models how production works,
and it's what it's doing is modeling the entire output
of society at one time. And in this model, so

(52:42):
there there's sort of like you know, there's all the
commodity and labor inputs that compose the economy and they
come back out and there's a certain amount of commodities.
This is the thing we talked about with the Kardo, right,
there's there's certain amount of commodities you need to produce
so that everyone can the entire system can reproduce itself,
and beyond that is surplus. So what you're dealing with
is this weird mixture because Harris is trying to work

(53:03):
with both of these at the same time, where like,
on the one hand you have surplus as like like
stolen value in a form of like stolen labor time,
and on the other hand you have it in this
regarded sense of like there's a bunch of commodities that
we've produced that's like access to our like ability to
to like our needs to reproduce ourselves. And he's trying
to square these and it doesn't work. It just sort

(53:27):
of breaks down, like.

Speaker 3 (53:30):
Does he like actively address this like dual meaning and
then explain like, y.

Speaker 7 (53:36):
Yeah, well so his basic issue is that so the
way he does this mostly is by just moving back
and forth between the two systems and not trying to
reconcile them. And then the one time he has to
kind of do it, he has to, oh god, do
I want to try to explain the transformation problem?

Speaker 3 (53:56):
He has to do this thing where.

Speaker 7 (54:01):
Okay, so if theoretically, if you want to convert surplus value,
like in the Marxist Marxian sense into the sort of
like neo Ricardian thing, you need to turn it into prices.
And there's a long running controversy in in Marxism over
whether or not you can actually do that because the
math is weird, it doesn't work very well. I'm not

(54:21):
gonna he doesn't solve it. He just gives up and
says that you can't do it because they're in two
separate spheres, which is the most compound answer I've ever
seed in my entire life.

Speaker 3 (54:31):
It's I love that. Yeah, it's it's it's it's wild.

Speaker 7 (54:37):
But you know, so, so back to the sort of
main arc of what the fuck is smoke about here,
I'm probably probably I'm promost we're reaching.

Speaker 3 (54:46):
The promised lamp. We have to do this stuff first.

Speaker 7 (54:49):
Okay, so those are, you know, the the two kinds
of economics that that Donald Harris is trying to work
with are this sort of post Canesian stuff, which is
derived from like Ricardo and classical economists, and then like
Marxian stuff. There's also the third school, which is neoclassical economics,
which this is all the economics that you've learned in school, right,
This is supplied demand. This is like your production functions.

(55:11):
This is your like every time someone starts lecturing you
about how the economy works.

Speaker 3 (55:15):
This is all this stuff.

Speaker 7 (55:16):
Yeah. What's very important for our purposes, and this is
something that Harris brings up is the single largest difference
between neoclassical economics and whatever came before. It isn't that like,
I don't know, everything's about marginal utility or whatever the
fuck's that. It's that in neoclassical economics, there are no classes.

(55:38):
They just pretend that classes don't exist.

Speaker 3 (55:40):
Yeah wow, And in much of American politics, yeah, Germany
politics sadly well.

Speaker 7 (55:48):
And this is also why like the American conception of
class is so nuts and why everyone's running around in
circle is trying to measure it by like income levels,
because all the economics they use don't have a thing
that establishes what class is.

Speaker 3 (56:01):
It is one of the jarring differences between the United
Kingdom and the United States, how like we are hyper
aware of class and like it's something that like arguably,
like Britain is obsessed with to detriment of other Like yeah,
and you go to America and fucking like like if
if you have a job that pays you occasionally, your

(56:22):
middle class and then fucking everyone is apparently and like
it becomes a meaningless term. I guess. Yeah.

Speaker 7 (56:28):
This is very explicitly for political reasons, right. Neoclassical economics
is developed as an attack on Marxism, like this is
this is this is its actual sort of origin, and
it's originators are like very explicit about this right now,
And this is where we get back to Sarafa, because
Sarraffa's work effectively is an attack on neoclassical economics, and
Sarraffa in ninety nine pages literally destroys everything they'd ever produced.

(56:53):
But you know, the new classical solution to this is
basically to get everyone who talked about it fired. And
this actually worked, Like they's basically massive social cleansing campaign
of like all of the sort of heterodox economists they
got they got the ball fired and it worked. And
Harris actually weirdly was kind of was like one of
the last holdouts into the nineties, but he just like
retires in like the late nineties, and that's like basically

(57:16):
ever all of them get rent out.

Speaker 3 (57:18):
Uh, there's a good we'll talk about him later. There's
there's another uh.

Speaker 7 (57:21):
Postcanesian economists named Frederick Lee who my friends estrange matter
really like, who's an anarchist who's in this school, and
he has like an excruciatingly detailed account of all of
these economists getting runt out by the neoclassical people. And
so you know, like neoclassical economists like in in some
sense they there there. Their strategy is a strategy of capitalism,

(57:43):
which is like obviously we're not right here, but we
have money and we have force. So we're going to
defeat your ideas by simply destroying you all tightlightly actual
physical force.

Speaker 3 (57:55):
So incredible, Yeah, the cultural revolution in economics.

Speaker 7 (58:00):
Yeah, but it's interesting because Harris Harris is writing this
in seventy eight, and in seventy eight, it's still the
battle hasn't been settled yet, right, there's still kind of
like the fight going on between like who is going
to be like in control of economics? And I mean,
the you know, the answer is to Theokanzian is that
the post Kansians lose.

Speaker 3 (58:17):
But you know that wasn't necesarily the case of this time.

Speaker 7 (58:20):
There's also a really weird artifact of this that I
want to talk about a little bit, which is that, like,
you know, so remember at the beginning of this, I
said that that stupid economist person has said that it
was neo Kandians versus post Kansians. Yeah, so those two
groups are not the same thing. The post Kandians are
the people who we've been talking about this whole time, right,
Like they're they're like they're basically neo Ricardans, right, They're

(58:40):
they're like based on classical economics. The neo Kansians are
just regular Kansians basically, but they had to change the
math to be shittier and make themselves more right wing
to like survive.

Speaker 3 (58:52):
She reads plain like John maynol Keynes and supply side economics. Yeah,
if if you want to yeah, if you want to
give back, I mean, go ahead. Fucking I am a historian,
but it's a it differs from classical economics. I guess
in the idea that the state can make interventions, am
I ukotomby after as I fucked up? The state interventions
can be beneficial for the economy, And it emerges like

(59:15):
in the I guess post Great Depression, Like I guess
maybe from the from like you know, the New Deal
and these these and then post World War two, right,
like it's very influential in the kind of build up
after World War Two. The idea that like the state
shouldn't necessarily be like what's happen Adam handed the invisible hand,
the fucking invisible hand, maybe isn't killing it and we
needn't stead the hand of the state.

Speaker 7 (59:37):
Yeah, And I mean, well, you know, it's worth mentioning
that like in Adam Smith, the hand of the state
is explicitly God, sorry, exquisitely God. Unfortunately, unfortunately there was
no God to bail out the markets of the nineteen twenties.
So Kids was like shit, yeah, And I mean, you know,
he's like in sort of like more detail, like his
thing basically is about like he's he's obsessed with sort

(59:57):
of like like like basically cyclically counteracting crises by using states,
betting to like, you know, like his things basically is that,
like capital will misallocate resources, you have to use the
state to like kick the bastards into line, like the
stable economy. And the problem is that by by the
late seventies, the Kansians are in crisis because in in

(01:00:18):
original likea Kansian theory, it wasn't supposed to be possible
for there to be both rising unemployment and rising inflation,
but that was like happening over the entire world, and
so they got kind of annihilated. And this is the
thing that like the neoliberals used to like take power.
And it's interesting because the post Kansians like they use
you know, and like the beginning of this book is
a bit of like Kansian stuff. But then he just

(01:00:40):
like you know, they go off and do other more
interesting things. But it's very funny because because this is
still seventy eight, he Harris calls himself a neo Kansian,
and he calls all of his collaborators Theokansians because the
real Neokansians hadn't like developed yet.

Speaker 3 (01:00:56):
Oh he's just trying to he's just trying to find
can claim it, like he's trying to get his like
stick in the ground. First.

Speaker 7 (01:01:03):
Yeah, well, but I mean that's the thing, like at
that point they were the neo like the there.

Speaker 3 (01:01:08):
There wasn't like there.

Speaker 7 (01:01:09):
Their school had had as good acclaim to it as anyone.
It's just that they got kicked out later by the
sort of board. Like yeah, it makes sense, ones.

Speaker 3 (01:01:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:01:17):
It's also a thing that's also important about this, for
reasons we're gonna get to in a second, is that
the post Kanesene tradition also has a lot of very
eclectic Marxists in it. We're gonna get the Joe and Robinson,
who's a very close collaborator of a very good Marxist philosopher.
She's actually the person who like kicks off the Cambridge
Captural Capital controversy. And she's she's a very kind of
esoteric Marxist kind of in a similar way to uh

(01:01:40):
to what Donald Harris is. But you know, you know
what Marxism in theory isn't supposed to support.

Speaker 3 (01:01:46):
Would that be the sale of goods and services?

Speaker 6 (01:01:48):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:01:49):
Yeah, it's product and services that support this podcast. We're
distributing the amusing the price mechanism. Yeah, we're back. So yeah,
there's there. There's also you know, there's got.

Speaker 7 (01:02:08):
A Galecki who's very important to this too, so that
there are Marxists kind of on the ground of this,
and they're they're trying to sort of their their goal
is to try to like explain an economy that has
monopolies in it, because Marxist theory sort of like assumed
that there weren't and that there was like actual competition
in markets and so part of what but this this
comes to the sort of fundamental project of of what

(01:02:30):
this book is about, which is that it's it's it's
about developing a sort of growth model that you can
sort of you know, that that that that accounts that
that can be modified to account for all of these things.
So the initial thing that they're trying to produce. Is
is like a model of what they call a Golden age,
which is a thing that's from Joan Robinson. Yeah, that's
basically like it's the Golden age is a theoretical like

(01:02:52):
economic configuration. You have, you have full employment, you have constant,
stable economic growth, and the system can reproduce itself. Yeah,
and you know, I'm going to read a passage from
this book so you can understand. Partially so you can
because it's about this, right, and partially so you can understand,
like this isn't even a particularly technical paragraph.

Speaker 3 (01:03:14):
We're talking about hit me. Steady state.

Speaker 7 (01:03:17):
Yeah, Golden age is also kind of similar thing to
a concept called steady state economies he's writing about. A
particular steady state is based on a given set of
conditions and interrelations among them, a given rate of accumulation
of capital, given rates of savings from the stream of
net income, a given state of technological knowledge or rate
of technological innovation, a given rate of increase of the

(01:03:39):
labor force, and a given set of expectations. To ask
whether such a situation exists is to ask whether the
conditions which define it are mutually compatible or self consistent.
So this is Basically what he's doing, right, is you
can you can build these models of like these sort
of Kanzian models that like and I started a post

(01:03:59):
Kansian model that you know, if you if you, if
you set up all the elements right, you can theoretically
generate stable growth. But then you know, obviously his thing
is like this doesn't work, right, Like, no, no, no
economy will ever generate this because there's only really like
it's extremely hard to actually get you know, your sort
of like input levels and your technological development whatever the

(01:04:22):
fuck like at the same rate to do this. But
he's he's using this as basically the model for as
like as like a sort of toy model that you
can then sort of warp to fit the rest of
the the rest of the capitalist economy. But in order
to do this, he has to generate a crisis theory.
And this is where he just like suddenly all the
marks comes back in and he's like, so his he's

(01:04:43):
the product he's trying to do is he's trying to
use a post Kinesian model of how economic growth works
and then and then combine that with Marxist crisis theory
to produce basically a model of you know, what, what
kinds of conditions in an economy will cause like crisis state? Now, ooka,
the every thing is very weird about this, right, It's
like he doesn't do normal, Like there's like an entire

(01:05:07):
school of Marxist crisis theory, and he doesn't do it.
He instead like rewrites a bunch of Marxist equations and
then comes up with his own like version of crisis
theory of like different kinds of crises. And I like what,
it's so weird, it's so baffling.

Speaker 3 (01:05:25):
Maybe he wanted to make him make his mock you know.

Speaker 7 (01:05:28):
Yeah, I guess it's weird because it's like this whole
thing is interesting, but it's like I don't think anyone
ever followed up on it.

Speaker 3 (01:05:33):
Really, right, It's just like this dead end of academic theory.

Speaker 7 (01:05:37):
Yeah, well, I think it's also you know, I mean
it's partially like a rude Nott travel thing. It's partially
because as as the post Kanesians went on, they got
less and less Marxist. So like a lot of the
original people are like Seraphison a Marxist, but like a
lot of the original like Joan Robinson is definitely a Marxist,
but they get like less and less over time, and
so there's less interest in kind of like folding in
Marxism to it.

Speaker 3 (01:05:59):
Yeah, so he's losing interest in that. Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:06:01):
But this is where we get to the final question,
like is he a Marxist? And my answer is I
don't even in even in sixty eight and seventy eight,
which is pretty early, I don't think he's a Marxist.
I don't think he's a Marxist in this book. I
think he's using Marxist theory, but I don't think he's
actually a Marxist, like politically. And the reason I don't
think this is because, you know, so we talk about
surplus value, right, the surplus value is supposed to be

(01:06:23):
this value it's extracted, but it's the magnitude of it.
One of the things like how much value you extract,
like how many hours of the day you can steal
from a worker, depends on how many hours of the
day you'd need to pay them for in order for
them to survive. Right, And one of the crucial things
about this is that that and then Marx is very
explicit about this that rate of like how much you
need to pay them to survive is determined by social struggle, right,

(01:06:46):
because like you know what what a worker quote unquote
needs to survive in like in different places in context
is different, and you can fight in order for that
rate to be higher. And this is like an incredibly
basic part of Marxism, right, It's the part of Marxism
where the economy is also determed, like the function of
the capitalist economy is produced by class struggle.

Speaker 3 (01:07:08):
This is like this is like this is even one.

Speaker 7 (01:07:11):
This is Marxism zero zero zero, like this this is
this is the ship they hand you on the flow
on like your fucking tour of Marxism school before you
holding classes.

Speaker 3 (01:07:21):
Yeah, it's so when you get that very you know,
there's very short introductions you can get where it's like
like a tiny little booklet that explains so like the
sene Quan on the little elements of things.

Speaker 7 (01:07:31):
Yeah, and Harris writes pages and pages and pages of
stuff about like about about like the rate of surplus
value extraction. And do you know how many times he
mentions class fucking once in like and it's it's like
the thirty eight thing he mentions after like the technical
composition of capital and like it's all other crisis, Like

(01:07:52):
it's all of this ship and he just doesn't mention it.
And this is this is the thing that like fundamentally
has convinced me that what what he's doing isn't substantively Marxism.
He's using the tools of merchistpolitical economy, but he's he's
he's he's viewing capitalism as purely a sort of like

(01:08:15):
top down thing, right as and not something that's actually
like you know, like he he acknowledges there are classes,
but he doesn't see them as actors at all.

Speaker 3 (01:08:25):
Yeah, so like the struggle between the classes is is And.

Speaker 7 (01:08:28):
It's funny because he has this thing that he calls
the rate of exploitation, right, which is this calculation of
sort of surplus value extraction. But he's like, well, obviously
because the rate is going to change over time due
to the condition to struggle. But he's like an Oscar,
I'm just putting his one number, like it's just like right, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:08:45):
It I'm too lazy to figure that out. And I'm like,
what what are you doing? Like you this is this
is the basis of Marxism. Yeah, I mean, maybe he
was just an economics guy, but even still no, yeah,
this is.

Speaker 7 (01:08:55):
This is this is the thing that I've been sort
of realizing because one of the issues Sarafha is that,
you know, Sarafa is a genius economist, right, he is
genuinely and unbelievably brilliant. But he's also a pure economist.
Like here's here is how the start of his most
influential book, Production of Commodities and Means of Commodities starts.

(01:09:16):
Let us consider an extremely simple society which produces just
enough to maintain itself. Commodities are produced by separate industries
and are exchanged for one another, et cetera.

Speaker 3 (01:09:24):
Culture.

Speaker 7 (01:09:25):
So, okay, what is he he he he just has
like created a mental model. And this is the basis
of like of his major economic theories. Him just creating
a mental model where somehow, out of nowhere has appeared
a simple society that produces like one commodity, which is
like just enough commodities, separaties in the station. And you know,

(01:09:46):
if you think about sort of like Marx, right, Marx
is also a sociologist, right. He cares about you know,
like like the actual point of production, right, he cares
about the production process. He cares about the sort of
like like that there are he cares that there are
workers that are doing the production. He cares about the
sort of historical conditions that created you know, these these things.
Don't like as Kamala Harris's mom, this is actually very important.

(01:10:10):
The Kamala Harris you didn't just follow out of the
coconut tree exist in the context of all that came
before you. That's Kamala Harris's mom, who is like, I think,
a better Marxist than Noel Harris's and Harris will occasionally,
like Donald Harris will occasionally gesture to this one. He'd
be like, well, yeah, obviously this is all determined by
historical conditions, and then he just has no interest in
ever pursuing any of that. He's just like, yeah, this
is we left a later book that he never wrote.

(01:10:31):
And what you get to is is this this is
like a real issue with sort of Postkansianism is that
it doesn't have like Marxism at least in theory, has
politics embedded into it. Postkansianism kind of doesn't it. Just
like I have a lot of friends who I like,
I deeply care about who are Postkansians, right, they are
political like you know, they're they're leftists because they're leftists, right,

(01:10:52):
Like it's it's not something that's an automatic generation of
your theory, and you know you can kind of write
it that way, right, Like this is the thing about
Frederick Lee, who's the sort of the a lot of
my like a lot of the Traine writers people sort
of like learn economics from, like I mean indirectly, but
like through his book. But you know Lee Lee is
a committed anarchist and that shows up in his work.
But he has to like add that in pure like
pure Sarraffa by itself, you could theoretically like run any

(01:11:15):
form of government you want with it.

Speaker 9 (01:11:17):
Right.

Speaker 7 (01:11:18):
And I think I've been vindicated in this whole process
because Donald Harris writes a couple more books on one
of which is a book that is like commissioned by
the Jamaican government.

Speaker 3 (01:11:29):
Okay, he's Jamaican descent or he was born himself directly
in Jamaica, you.

Speaker 7 (01:11:35):
Know, Like he's just like he's he's Jamaica and he
lives in Jamaica. Okay, I think I think he currently
lives in Jamaica.

Speaker 3 (01:11:41):
I'm pretty sure. Yeah, And this came to the US
for his graduate like for his academic yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:11:46):
One.

Speaker 7 (01:11:46):
One he lived in the US for a long time
because he was at Stamford, but then he kind of
like left and one I think went back at Jamaica.

Speaker 3 (01:11:52):
I'm good. I'm going to read.

Speaker 7 (01:11:54):
So he wrote a book called a Growth This is
in twenty eleven, A Growth Inducement Strategy for Jamaica and
the shortened term. I'm going to read you the bullet
points under a section called guiding Principles. Okay, unleash entrepreneurial
dynamism by unlocking latent wealth, tied up and idle assets.
Infrastructure investments is catalysm for job creation through strengthening resiliency

(01:12:18):
of the built in natural environments. Build an innovative and
competitive modern economy of big and small firms by strengthening
business networks and removing supply side constraints. Modernize and improve
the efficiency of government. Social inclusion through community renewal, expand
as south agency in equity and proactive partnership between government
and private sector ALSOSO A giant thing in this about crime.

(01:12:42):
So what has happened is that these two people have
circled back around and they now have the same politics
which is like tough on crime, austerity.

Speaker 3 (01:12:53):
Public private partnership, fucking infrastructure spending. Yeah, they circled back around.

Speaker 7 (01:13:00):
It's funny because the person writing the economists was like, oh, yeah,
they actually have.

Speaker 3 (01:13:03):
Circles back around because they're a bouth.

Speaker 7 (01:13:05):
They're both concerned about wealth inequality, and this book is
not concerned about wealth inequality at all. Like, that's not
that's not what it's about. It's about like capital accumulation,
and you know, it's sort of about distribution of surplus,
but it's it doesn't it's concerned with the distribution of surplus.
Is that Seraphan economics like doesn't have a fixed race

(01:13:25):
like way for it to be distributed. It can be
distributed in an enormous number of ways, and the trick
is finding out how it's actually done.

Speaker 4 (01:13:32):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:13:33):
Yeah, there's a point in here.

Speaker 7 (01:13:35):
There's a point in this book too that like is
the thing that's like really first struck me about it.
Where he's talking about how he's talking about surplus value
and he's talking about how this is an objective measure
of exploitation. But then he goes and he says, contrary
to vulgar readings, this does not actually indicate who deserves
like it doesn't.

Speaker 3 (01:13:55):
It's not it's not a moral argument about who should
have the value that's and stolen. And this this right here, this,
this is the roade.

Speaker 7 (01:14:05):
This is the road that is going to lead this
man from a kind of interesting book about like the
dynamics of economic growth and like building economic models and
like using marks in theory to sort of make it
work to straight up I writing investment documents for the
Jamaican government.

Speaker 3 (01:14:21):
Yeah, Like he seemed like it's very like in a way,
like you know, there are looks like edmller Bands Stabs
and Marxist right, but like it reminds me a lot
of like the New Labor thing in the UK, you know,
which grew out of a party which genuinely had a
commitment to socialism and became like, yeah, this sort of
very neoliberal like like sort of really like peak neoliberal

(01:14:43):
kind of. Yeah. That there was some Kinesian influence, I guess,
but certainly nothing the one would call combus or even
really socialist.

Speaker 7 (01:14:52):
Yeah. Yeah, And I don't know, it's it's sad because
it's like because the interesting thing about that.

Speaker 3 (01:14:58):
Was twenty twelve, he wrote The Growth in strategy fuck me, okay,
in the game.

Speaker 7 (01:15:04):
Yeah, but he's still the game in the sense that
he's doing like this is you know, reading that it
very much felt like I was reading like a modern
Chinese five year plan, exceptly it was like less weird slogans.

Speaker 3 (01:15:19):
Yeah, I mean it reads like a like a fucking
like a new labor policy document, like a think tank.
It's it's a lot of like a analyst guy think
tank guy kind of talk right, like, which was extremely
like it looks like he left stand for in the
late nineties, which is when this ship was fucking everywhere, right,
Like what is he called Joseph Stiglitz? Is that right?

(01:15:43):
And like yeah, yeah, yeah, like yeah, this was the
economic fucking theory of the day. You know, this was
very popular then. But it is absolutely just like this.
This is not like black Panther, black panther inflected Marxism.
This is not what I trists by the economists here.

Speaker 7 (01:16:02):
Yeah, no, this is this is this is something genuinely
very sad because it doesn't have to go that. We
know that it's possible to like do this kind of
economics not be like this. Because Frederick Lee was an
IWW member until the day he died, Like he's he's
like out there to occupy given like like the first
days of all Like he's out there, like there are

(01:16:22):
videos of him giving speeches to crowds that occupy right,
like you don't have to do this, but he did.
And this is also like, you know, I think that
this kind of political trajectory is kind of also you
can see in it like how his child, even though
he wasn't in her life, Munch is going to end
up as the person she is. And I think that's
why that's my final conclusion from this is he's.

Speaker 3 (01:16:43):
Not a Marxist and him and his child are libs. Yeah,
these are things that Tanya does to motherfucker. They you
start to hang out with a bunch of other rich
people who have ten and you'd be in too identify
with him and.

Speaker 7 (01:16:58):
Yeah, stripped you away from who you Yeah, so this
has been It could happen here. Don't become a daughter
and capitalist bastard in.

Speaker 3 (01:17:07):
Your old age, yeah or your young age. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:17:32):
Hello, and welcome to it could happen here. My name
is Sharene and today is the first part of a
two part series where I'm going to give you all
a general Palestine update and also talk about how Joe
Biden's legacy that will endure long after the end of
his shitty presidency and his life is first and foremost
the genocide in Gaza. On Sunday, July twenty first, Biden

(01:17:56):
said that he was ending his presidential re election campaign
after a week's pressure from party officials, donors, Democratic Congress members, voters,
and pro Palestinian organizers and advocacy groups. This move comes
months after organizers led a nationwide campaign to vote uncommitted
during Democratic primary elections to push Biden to end his

(01:18:17):
unconditional support for Israel during his genocide in Gaza or
risk losing their vote in the general election. In several states,
uncommitted or no preference received far more votes than other
candidates challenging Biden, and so Biden dropped out surprise. Ever
since his announcement to withdraw, Democratic politicians and commentators in

(01:18:40):
the US have come out to heat praise and laud
the president's character, and draw attention to all his contributions
over the years. None of that matters to me, though,
and it shouldn't matter to you, because for me and
many others, Biden will be remembered for nothing else than
his support for Israeli crimes. But let's hear from our
us ridiculous public servants, shall we. Senate Majority leader Chuck

(01:19:04):
Schumer said, Joe Biden has not only been a great
president and a great legislative leader, but he's truly an
amazing human being. His decision, of course, was not easy,
but he once again put his country, his party, and
our future first. House Minority Leader Hakim Jeffries called the
president quote one of the most accomplished and consequential leaders

(01:19:26):
in American history. Representative Maxine Waters called Biden a kind
and decent man. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi praised his vision,
values and leadership. She said in a statement, his legacy
of vision, values in leadership make him one of the
most consequential presidents in American history. She also called Biden

(01:19:46):
quote a patriotic American who has always put our country first.
I did find it a little funny that multiple people
described Biden as consequential, because out of all the words
you can choose to describe him, that one doesn't necess
Saily screamed positive to me, so that did amuse me
quite a bit. Former President Barack Obama issued a statement

(01:20:07):
acknowledging the difficulty of the decision that Biden faced.

Speaker 3 (01:20:10):
Quote.

Speaker 2 (01:20:10):
For him to look at the political landscape and decide
that he should pass the torch to a new nominee
is surely one of the toughest in his life. But
I know he wouldn't make this decision unless he believed
it was right for America. It's a testament to Joe
Biden's love of country, an historic example of a genuine
public servant once again putting the interests of the American

(01:20:31):
people ahead of his own that future generations of leaders
will do well to follow. Gandhi Audiada. Democratic governors also
latted Biden. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer called him a great
public servant who knows better than anyone what it takes
to defeat Donald Trump. California Governor Gavin Newsom thanked Biden,
calling him a quote extraordinary history making president. Kentucky Governor

(01:20:54):
Andy Basheer said Biden's decision is quote in the best
interest of our country and our party. Several Democrats who
had publicly called on Biden to step aside also issued
statements praising the president's decision. Representative Jerry Nadler said, Joe's
announcement today reflects what we've known all along. He is
an American patriot who was willing to put America's interests

(01:21:17):
over his own. Senator SHIROD. Brown from Ohio thanked Biden
for his years of committed service, and his son Hunter
Biden issued a statement lauding his father as a selfless leader,
writing he is unique in public life today in that
there is no distance between Joe Biden the man and
Joe Biden the public servant of the last fifty four years. Well, yikes.

(01:21:40):
I also wanted to mention an end with how his wife,
the First Lady Joe Biden responded, which was with a
heart's emoji in response to his announcement on X. But
while political leaders and I guess his family showered Biden
with compliments, bombs continued to rain down on Gaza, killing
dozens to add on to the nearly forty thousand Palestinians

(01:22:01):
killed and sparking another wave of mass displacement in ran Yunis.
For many Palestinian rights advocates, the carnage and abuses in
Gaza will define Biden's place in history books, especially as
the US remains steadfast in its support of Israel's onslaught
on the Palestinian land. Nadine Kaswani, an organizer with the
Palestine advocacy group Within Our Lifetime, said, nine months of

(01:22:25):
saying genocide Joe has got to go, he finally got
the message, but not before committing a heinous genocide against
the Palestinian people. I bet Eyub, the executive director of
the American Arab Anti Discrimination Committee the ADC, said He'll
be remembered for the hundreds of thousands killed, injured and
displaced in Gaza. There is no way around it. Genocide

(01:22:48):
Joe is what he's going to be remembered as. And
before continuing to shit on Biden, because trust me, I
would love to do that, let's talk about what is
currently happening in Gaza since Israel's genocide Gaza started on
October seventh, while really escalated starting October seventh, because the
genocide of the Palestinian people has been ongoing since Israel's

(01:23:08):
inception in nineteen forty eight. But since October seventh and
well before that, Biden has offered the government of Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin and Yahoo unconditional military and diplomatic support.
Only once did Biden withhold a shipment of bombs to
Israel over humanitarian concerns, and even then he released part
of that cargo a couple months later amid pressure from

(01:23:31):
n Yahoo. Israel's genocide meanwhile has killed at least thirty
nine thousand Palestinians, displaced hundreds of thousands, and fueled a
man made famine, and also has destroyed nearly all of
the territory. United Nations experts and other observers have outright
called what is happening in Gaza as a textbook case

(01:23:51):
of genocide, and the cumulative effects of Israel's genocide could
mean that the true death toll is much much more.
Ordering to a study recently published from the journal Lancet,
the death toll could reach more than one hundred and
eighty six thousand people. The study pointed out that the
death toll is likely higher because the official death toll

(01:24:13):
does not take into account the thousands of dead buried
under rubble and indirect deaths due to destruction of health facilities,
food distribution systems, and other public infrastructure. Conflicts have indirect
health implications beyond the direct harm from violence, the study said,
and even if the God's genocide ends immediately, it will

(01:24:34):
continue to cause many indirect deaths in the coming months
and years through things like disease. The study said. The
death toll is expected to be far larger given that
much of God's infrastructure has been destroyed. There are shortages
of food, water, shelter medicine. The United Nations Relief and
Works Agency for Palestine Refugees UNRA has also seen its

(01:24:57):
funding cut. Israel's relentless bombs has collapsed Gaza's health care infrastructure,
and the destruction of Gaza's water infrastructure in particular is
more than just a little significant. One reason for this
is that Israel just reintroduced polio to Palestinians, but of
course Israel's only providing vaccinations to the Israeli army, and

(01:25:19):
this is according to Herot's Polio is a fecal oral
disease and infections can be linked to contaminated and poor
sewage systems, and it can lead to paralysis. On June
twenty third, twenty twenty four, samples were collected from two
environmental surveillance sites in kan Uness and Dead and Badach.
Polio variant two was found in six wastewater samples. According

(01:25:43):
to the Polio Global Eradication Initiative, currently only sixteen of
the thirty six hospitals are partially functional and forty five
out of one hundred and five primary health care facilities
are operational. The impact on health systems insecurity, in excessive ability,
population displacement, and the shortages of medical supplies, coupled with

(01:26:04):
poor quality of water and weakened sanitation, have contributed to
routine immunization rates and an increased risk of many vaccine
preventable diseases, including polio. The World Health Organization considers there
to be a high risk of spread of polio within
Gaza and internationally, particularly given the impact that the current

(01:26:25):
genocide continues to have on public health services, and even
if vaccines were able to be given to Palestinians in Gaza,
the continued bombing and a decimated health care system, coupled
with the intentional devastation of water and sanitation infrastructure, would
render the vaccines close to useless without an immediate ceasefire.

(01:26:47):
The threat from polio being reintroduced in Gaza will disproportionately
affect Palestinian babies and eventually Israeli babies as well. In
November twenty twenty three, the World Health Organization warn Israel
of diseases spreading due to Israel's indiscriminate bombing and attack
on health care infrastructure. And then on July twenty second,

(01:27:08):
twenty twenty four, three days after the news came out
about polio being reintroduced to Gaza by Israel, the Israeli
Parliament voted to declare UNRA a terrorist organization and UNRA
is a key partner in vaccine campaign distribution. With this
and with many other things, Israel has shown its genocidal

(01:27:29):
intent calculating the destruction of Palestinian life in Gaza, because
if there is any war on Gaza, it's an epidemiological war,
weaponizing health and medicine and the incidents, distribution and control
of disease. Back to the Lancet study, it said, quote
in recent conflicts, such indirect deaths range from three to

(01:27:53):
fifteen times the number of direct deaths, and after they
applied a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per wark
undirect death, they said it is not implausible to estimate
that up to one hundred and eighty six thousand or
even more deaths could be attributable to the Gaza quote
unquote war. Such a number would represent almost eight percent

(01:28:15):
of Gaza's pre war population of two point three million people,
half of which, may I remind you, are children. The
Lancet study also noted that Israeli intelligence services, the UN,
and the World Health Organization all agree that claims of
data fabrication leveled against Palestinian authorities in Gaza over its
death toll in particular, are implausible. It pointed out that

(01:28:39):
the toll is likely much higher because the destruction of
infrastructure in Gaza has made it extremely difficult to maintain
account that is not lower than the actual death toll.
It said, quote Documenting the true scale is crucial for
ensuring historical accountability and acknowledging the full cost of the war.
It is also a legal requirement. The STU pointed out

(01:29:00):
that the International Court of Justice said interim rulings in
January in a genocide case brought against Israel that it
needs to quote take effective measures to prevent the destruction
and ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations of
acts under the Genocide Convention. Before we continue on, let's
take our first break and we'll be right back, and

(01:29:31):
we'rebec I was talking about the International Court of Justice earlier,
and speaking of the International Court of Justice. On July nineteenth,
twenty twenty four, the ICJ said Israel's presence in the
Palestinian territory is unlawful and that Israel's policies in the
occupied Palestinian Territory amount to annexation. It ruled that Israel's
continued presence in the occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful and

(01:29:54):
should come to an end as quote rapidly as possible.
The judges pointed to a why list of policies, including
the building and expansion of Israeli settlements in the West
Bank in East Jerusalem, the use of the area's natural resources,
the annexation and imposition of permanent control over lands, and
discriminatory policies against Palestinians, all of which it said violated

(01:30:17):
international law. As of July twenty twenty four, and since October,
Israel has killed one hundred and forty three Palestinian children
in the West Bank on Palestinian land that is occupied
by Israel. Because since Israel began committing genocide in Gaza
over nine months ago. It has been attacking and killing
hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank, including these one

(01:30:40):
hundred and forty three children. UNICEF reported that Israel has
killed an average of one Palestinian child every two days
in the West Bank. UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said,
we are seeing frequent allegations of Palestinian children being detained
on their way home from school or shot while walking
on the streets. This report by UNICEF came out just

(01:31:04):
days after the International Court of Justice confirmed that Israel
is committing the crime of apartheid against Palestinians and that
its occupation of the West Bank is illegal and must end.
The Court went on to say that Israel has no
right to sovereignty in any of its territories and it
is violating international laws against acquiring territory by force, as

(01:31:26):
well as impeding Palestinian's right to self determination. It said
that other nations were obliged not to quote render aid
or assistance in maintaining Israel's presence in the territory. It
said Israel must end settlement construction immediately and existing settlements
must be removed. And this is all according to a
summary of the more than eighty page opinion read out

(01:31:49):
by the Court President Nawaf Saddam, The Court said, Israel's
abuse of its status as the occupying power renders its
presence in the occupied Palestinian territory unlawful Israeli settlements in
the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the regime associated
with them have established and are being maintained in violation

(01:32:09):
of international law. Mind You, Israeli settlements in the West
Bank and East Jerusalem have always been illegal under international law,
but that has never stopped Israel from continuing to expand
its illegal settlements. Since nineteen sixty seven, when the borders
of what is currently seen its occupied Palestine, which are
the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem, were established,

(01:32:32):
Israel has since built settlements in the West Bank and
East Jerusalem and steadily expanded on them. It also had
settlements in Gaza before a two thousand and five withdrawal.
And I said what is currently seen its occupied Palestine
because in reality, the whole of Israel is occupied Palestine.
But as far as the UN and the majority of

(01:32:52):
the international community goes, they consider the Palestinian territory as
defined in nineteen sixty seven as Israeli occupied Palestinian Foreign
Minister Riyad Maniki told reporters in The Hague that the
ruling signaled a quote watershed moment for Palestine, for justice
and for international law. He said the ICJ fulfilled its

(01:33:15):
legal and moral duties with this historic ruling. All states
must now uphold their clear obligations. No aid, no assistance,
no complicity, no money, no arms, no trade, no nothing,
no actions of any kind to support Israel's illegal occupation.
Riad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, said the

(01:33:37):
ruling was quote a significant step in the direction of
ending the occupation and attaining the inalienable rights of the
Palestinian people, including their right to self determination, the statehood
and the right of return. The right to return for
those who don't know, is it demands that Palestinians who
were forced from their homes in the nineteen forty eight
Nekba as well as the nineteen sixty seven Nexa, be

(01:33:59):
allowed to return to them. Monsour said his team would
study the entire opinion and dissect every sentence. We will
consult with an army of friends at the UN and
in all corners of the globe. We will produce a
masterpiece of a resolution at the UN General Assembly and
then Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejected the opinion as

(01:34:21):
fundamentally wrong and one sided. Nhennyahu's office issued a statement
in which it called the ruling a decision of lies
that distorted the truth and asserted that the Jewish people
are not occupiers in their own land. Jeffrey NICs, a
human rights barrister, told El Jazeira that it will be

(01:34:41):
hard for world leaders to completely disregard the ICJ ruling,
even though it is non binding. This is one part
of the legal system saying enough is enough, he said.
He also said it would be difficult for the interested, informed,
concerned public not to say its time is reel put
its house in order. El Jazeera's senior political analyst, Marwan

(01:35:05):
Dishada said there is a lot of room for hope
that this ruling will support a movement, an international movement
across the board in the West and elsewhere in the world,
in favor of more sanctions, more pressure on Western governments
to put more pressure on Israel. In a separate case
brought by South Africa, the ICJ is also considering allegations

(01:35:25):
that Israel's committing genocide into war on Gaza. And yes,
a preliminary ruling has been made in that case, with
the court ordering Israel to prevent and punish incitement to
genocide and to increase its provisions of humanitarian aid, and
of course Israel has done nothing to do this. In May,
the ICJ had also ordered Israel to halt its offensive

(01:35:47):
on Rapah, the border city in southern Gaza, citing immense
risk to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians taking shelter there.
But Israel has continued its attacks on Gaza, including Raphah,
defiance of the UN court. So it's clear Israel doesn't
give a shit about international law. But it's also clear

(01:36:07):
that no one is doing anything to actually stop them
from continuing their genocide on the Palestinian people. Before I forget,
let's take our second break here and we'll be right back.
Let's go back to abed Au, the executive director of

(01:36:29):
the American Arab Anti Discrimination Committee, who said Biden will
be remembered for the hundreds of thousands killed, injured and
displaced in Gaza.

Speaker 3 (01:36:38):
That genocide.

Speaker 2 (01:36:38):
Joe is what he's going to be remembered as he
told Al Jazeera that despite Biden's domestic achievements, the president
will rank among the worst in US history due to
his unconditional support for Israel. The US Campaign for Palestinian
Rights the USCPR, echoed that comment, saying nothing will erase

(01:37:00):
the fact that Biden's legacy is and always will be genocide,
and the US President has been an annoyingly loyal supporter
of Israel throughout his too many decades too long political career.
Biden frequently calls himself a Zionist proudly and argues that
Jews across the world would not be safe without Israel.

(01:37:20):
He infamously said in June nineteen eighty six, over thirty
seven years ago, when Biden was just a young chap
of forty three, that quote. Were there not in Israel,
the United States of America would have to invent an
Israel to protect her interest in the region. The United
States would have to go out and invent in Israel.

(01:37:40):
I want to just throw it out there that even
in this quote, Israel exists to protect America's interest in
the region, not to protect the Jewish population, because it
never has done that in the first place.

Speaker 3 (01:37:53):
But I digress.

Speaker 2 (01:37:54):
Biden put his worldview into policy during his presidency as
he pushed on with form Represident Trump's pro Israel doctrine.
Biden kept US embassy in Jerusalem, and he refused to
reverse the Trump era decision to recognize Israel's claims to
the occupied Goal and heights in Syria. He also aggressively
pursued formal ties between Israel and Arab states, a goal

(01:38:18):
that Trump advanced with the twenty twenty Abraham Accords. That
push for normalization, however, came without progress toward the recognition
of an independent Palestinian state or the dismantling of the
systemic anti Palestinian discrimination that has existed since the jump
a Ka apartheid. And then the outbreak for the genocide

(01:38:39):
in Gaza further underscored Biden's pro Israel policies, and then
mere weeks after October seventh, Biden traveled to Israel and
publicly embraced n Yahou in what many critics described as
a bear hug, and that sign of friendliness was widely
understood to be an endorsement of Natanyahu's response in Gaza.

(01:39:01):
Even early in the conflict, human rights groups accused Israel
of horrific violations rising to the level of genocide, a
push to destroy the Palestinian people, and within the first
week alone, the Israeli military said it had unleashed twenty
thousand strikes across Gaza, a strip of land. May I
remind you that is roughly the size of Las Vegas.

(01:39:24):
According to ap WS January twenty twenty four, the Israeli
military campaign in Gaza now sits among the deadliest and
most destructive in modern history. In just over two months,
researchers said that the offensive caused more destruction than the
raising of Sirius Aleppo between twenty twelve and twenty sixteen,

(01:39:45):
Ukraine's Mariupil, or proportionally the Allied bombing of Germany in
World War II. Israel has killed more civilians than the
US led coalition did in its three year campaign against Isis.
An analysis was done of data from the Copernicus Sentinel
I satellite by Corey Scherr of the Kuni Graduate Center

(01:40:06):
and Jaman Vanderhoek of Oregon State University, both of whom
are experts in mapping damage during wartime. Corey Scherr said
Gaza is now a different color from space, it's a
different texture, and he has worked with Vanderhoek to map
destruction across several war zones, from Aleppo to Mariupol. They

(01:40:28):
say the visible damage in Gaza is worse than they
have found in both places. But how does the destruction
of Gaza stack up historically? By some measures, destruction in
Gaza has outpaced the Allied bombings of Germany during World
War II. According to Robert Pape, a US military historian,
between nineteen forty two and nineteen forty five, the Allies

(01:40:51):
attacked fifty one major German cities and towns, destroying about
forty to fifty percent of their urban areas. Pape said
that this amount to ten percent of buildings across Germany,
compared to the thirty three percent across Gaza, a densely
populated territory of just one hundred and forty square miles.

(01:41:12):
Pape said Gaza is one of the most intense civilian
punishment campaigns in history. It now sits comfortably at the
top quartile of the most devastating bombing campaigns.

Speaker 3 (01:41:24):
Ever.

Speaker 2 (01:41:26):
The US led coalition's twenty seventeen assault to expel the
Islamic State group from the Iraqi city of Mosul was
considered at the time one of the most intense attacks
on a city in generations. That nine month battle killed
around ten thousand civilians, a third of them from coalition bombardment,
according to an Associated Press investigation at the time. During

(01:41:48):
the twenty fourteen to twenty seventeen campaign to be Isis
in Iraq, the coalition carried out nearly fifteen thousand strikes
across the country, according to air Wars, a London based
independent group that tracks recent conflicts by comparison. The Israeli
military said itself that in a single week in January,

(01:42:09):
it conducted twenty two thousand strikes in Gaza. Again, compared
that to the fifteen thousand in the three years the
US was fighting Isis three years compared to one week.
One week had more strikes in Gaza than three years
in Iraq. To further put it in perspective about how

(01:42:29):
alarming this is from the jump that what is happening
is not fucking normal warfare and instead it is genocide.
On October twelfth, twenty twenty three, merely days after October seventh,
the Israeli air force had dropped about six thousand bombs
throughout the Gaza Strip. At the time, military experts stated
that the number of strikes carried out by the IDF

(01:42:51):
since the outbreak of hostilities was quote striking, and it
said it was greater in number than the US military
used in the month of the campaign against ISIS in
Iraq in Syria. Mark Duralsko, a Dutch military adviser and
former UN war crimes investigator in Libya, said in less
than a week, Israel dropped the number of bombs that

(01:43:12):
the US dropped in Afghanistan in a year, in a
much smaller and denser area where the margin of error increases.
During the most intense year of the American fighting in Afghanistan,
a little more than seven thousand, four hundred and twenty
three bombs were dropped during the entire war in Libya,
NATO reported dropping more than seventy six hundred bombs and

(01:43:34):
missiles from aircraft and not even a month after October seventh.
On November two, twenty twenty three, Euromed Human Rights Monitor
said in a press release that Israel had dropped more
than twenty five thousand tons of explosives on the Gaza Strip,
equivalent to two nuclear bombs. The press release said that

(01:43:54):
due to technological developments affecting the potency of bombs, the
explosives dropped on Gaza may be twice as powerful as
a nuclear bomb. This means that the destructive power of
the explosives dropped on Gaza exceeds that of the bomb
dropped in Hiroshima, noting that the area of the Japanese
city is nine hundred square kilometers, while the area of

(01:44:17):
Gaza does not even exceed three hundred and sixty square kilometers.
The rights group's statement underlines that Israel uses bombs with
huge destructive power, some of which range from one hundred
and fifty to one thousand kilograms, and they cited a
statement at the time in November by Israeli war Minister
Yoev Galant that declared that more than ten thousand bombs

(01:44:40):
had been dropped on Gaza City alone and then Israel's
use of internationally banned weapons in its attacks on the
Gaza Strip has been documented, said EUROMED Monitor, especially the
use of cluster and phosphorus bombs, which are waxy, toxic
substances that react quickly to oxygen and cause severe sound,
second and third degree burns. The Euromed Monitor team also

(01:45:04):
documented injuries among Gossins due to Israeli airstrikes that are
similar to those caused by the aforementioned cluster bombs. These small,
high explosive bombs cause penetrating shrapnel, wounds and explosions inside
the body, leaving victims with severe burns that lead to
skin melting off and sometimes to death. Fragments from these

(01:45:26):
bombs cause unusual swelling and poisoning of the body, plus
internal injuries from transparent fragments that do not even appear
in X rays. Euromed Monitor said Israel's use of highly
explosive bombs in densely populated areas poses the single greatest
threat to civilians and modern armed conflicts, and explains the

(01:45:47):
complete leveling of residential neighborhoods in Gaza and the overall
severity of the widespread devastation there. According to euromed Monitor,
which is a Geneva based human rights organization, the Israeli
Army as admitted to bombing over twelve thousand targets in
the Gaza Strip, with a recordality of bombs exceeding ten

(01:46:07):
kilograms of explosives per individual. It highlighted that the weight
of the nuclear bombs dropped by the US on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki in Japan at the end of World War
II in August of nineteen forty five was estimated to
be about fifteen thousand tons of explosives. The Rights organization
further stressed that Israel's destructive and arbitrary attacks are in

(01:46:30):
violation of international humanitarian law, which stipulates that the protection
of civilians is obligatory in all cases and under any circumstances,
and that killing civilians is considered a war crime in
both international and non international armed conflicts and may amount
to a crime against humanity. The Hague Conventions of eighteen

(01:46:52):
ninety nine and nineteen oh seven and the nineteen forty
nine Geneva Convention both regulates fundamental human rights in times
of war to prevent lethal health effects from weapons that
are prohibited by international law, some of which because they
have the potential to cause quote unquote genocide. According to
Article twenty five of the Hague Regulations relating to the

(01:47:14):
Laws and Customs of Land Warfare, quote, the attack or
bombardment by whatever means of towns, villages, dwellings or buildings
which are undefended is prohibited, So think of all of
that as you listen to this next bit. Biden has
since authorized continuous arms transfers and more than fourteen billion

(01:47:35):
dollars in additional aid to sustain Israel's Gaza offensive. Moreover,
Biden's administration has vetoed three UN Security Council proposals that
would have called for a ceasefire. Hatem Abudeya, the chair
of the US Palestinian Community Network, said Biden will be
remembered above all for enabling Israel's crimes against humanity.

Speaker 3 (01:47:58):
Quote.

Speaker 2 (01:47:59):
He could have turned and the tap of money and
weapons off in October, but he allowed this genocide to happen.
He is complicit and that's what will be written on
his tombstone. And with that, we'll be continuing this discussion
in the next episode, where we will talk about the
relationship between Biden and Palestinians and will also cover to

(01:48:20):
and Yahoo's deranged speech that he gave in Congress last week.
Until then, pre Palestine, Hello and welcome back to it

(01:48:41):
could happen here. My name is Sharene Still, and today
is part two of our two part series about a
Palestine update as well as a testament as to why
Biden's legacy will forever be genocide. In the last episode,
we talked about the amount of weapons that Biden had
has been sending to Israel and what this destruction has caused,

(01:49:03):
as well as the reactions to his withdrawal from his campaign.
So I want to get into a brief history of
Biden's history and politics, as well as what his relationship
has been like with Palestinians in general. So let's start
in nineteen seventy. Following his entry into politics in nineteen seventy,
Biden quickly rose from local to national prominence, mounting a

(01:49:24):
successful dark horse campaign to represent Delaware in the US
Senate in nineteen seventy two. After nearly four decades in Congress,
he became vice president under Barack Obama, and in twenty
twenty one, he won the presidency himself. So the current
president does not hail from a political dynasty, and he

(01:49:44):
is not an exceptional orator. His success in politics is
often credited to his interpersonal skills and his ability to
project empathy. That sense of compassion, however, has never extended
to Palestinians. After Biden's announcement of withdrawing from the race,
Jewish Voice for Peace Action said in a statement quote,

(01:50:07):
for nine and a half months, President Biden has funded
and armed the brutal Israeli genocide of Palestinians and Gaza,
making the US directly complicit in the killing of at
least thirty nine thousand people, including over fifteen thousand children.
Americans have watched in horror and outrage as Biden sent

(01:50:28):
to the Israeli government the weapons it used to wipe
out entire generations of Palestinian families, to destroy hospitals, bakeries, schools, mosques, churches, universities,
refugee camps, homes, and Gaza's entire healthcare system and electricity
and water grids, and beyond policy. Even Biden's rhetoric at

(01:50:50):
times seemed dismissive of Israeli atrocities and Palestinian suffering. Last October,
he said, I have no notion that the Palestinians telling
the truth about how many people are killed. I'm sure
innocens have been killed, and it's the price of waging
a war. It's terrible, fucking terrible. But that stance has

(01:51:11):
clearly caused Biden issues both domestically and abroad. Even before
Biden delivered a disastrous debate performance on June twenty seventh,
he had started to trail Trump in public opinion polls.
Parts of his Democratic base, including young people, progressives, Arabs,
and Muslims, voiced for months their frustration and anger over

(01:51:33):
Biden's support for Israel. Groups like the USCPR the US
Campaign for Palaicing in Rights argued that Biden's age and
debate performance were only one factor in the pressure that
forced him from the presidential race. I'm going to read
their statement because it's quite good quote. Nothing will erase

(01:51:54):
the fact that Biden's legacy is and always will be genocide.
It was not Biden's failed debate that showed he is
unfit to lead. It was the tens of thousands of
bombs he sent to kill Palestinian families. It was his callous,
dystopian disregard for Palestinian lives as he ate an ice

(01:52:14):
cream cone while speaking of a potential ceasefire that he
took no action to make Israel agree to. It was
his condemnation of thousands of student protesters on college campuses
demanding an end to the genocide in Gaza. Other commentators
likewise argued that Biden failed to show enough concern for

(01:52:34):
the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza. Aaron David Miller, a
veteran former US official, described the situation bluntly in an
interview with The New Yorker in April. Do I think
that Joe Biden has the same depth of feeling and
empathy for the Palestinians of Gaza as he does for
the Israelis. No, he doesn't, nor does he condicate. I

(01:52:57):
don't think there's any doubt about that. Additionally, Biden's withdrawal
from the race followed a particularly deadly month of violence
in Gaza. Two Israeli airstrikes killed more than sixty people
the week leading up to his withdrawal, including in Israeli
designated quote unquote safe zones and at a UN's school

(01:53:18):
where families were sheltering, and then the ICJ, the UN's
top court, ruled only a few days before his withdrawal
that Israel must end its illegal occupation of the West Bank,
East Jerusalem and Gaza, removing settlers from the Palestinian territories,
and pay reparations to Palestinians. The court also found that

(01:53:40):
Palestinians under occupation suffer quote systemic discrimination based on race, religion,
or ethnic origin, and it urged other states to stop
supporting Israel in maintaining the current situation, which is also
called apartheid. USCPR Action executive director Ahmad Abuznid in the

(01:54:00):
group's statement, the millions of people who have mobilized in
the streets and the voting booth demanding a permanent cease
fire and an end to military funding to Israel have
been clear. There is no going back to the status quo.
It remains unclear how differently the next Democratic nominee might

(01:54:21):
approach Israel. Harris, the most likely nominee as of now, obviously,
has repeatedly asserted Israel's right to defend itself while expressing
sympathy for Palestinians when calling for at least day six
weeks ease fire in March, which is a little hypocritical.
But she was also part of the Biden administration that
sent all those bombs to Israel. She does not get

(01:54:44):
a pass. She does not get to be distanced from that.
And on the other side of things, Trump called Biden
quote a very bad Palestinian during the first presidential debate
on June twenty seventh for not helping Israel quote finish
the job in God's During Trump's presidency, he moved the
US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and he recognized

(01:55:06):
Israel's sovereignty over the occupied Syrian region of the Golan Heights,
Whorrena Enyahu named a Jewish only settlement after Trump. But
as the genocide in Gaza continues, organizers are quick to
point out the Democratic Party's complicity as a whole. Hu
Taifa Ahmad, spokesperson for the Abandoned Biden Campaign, said, we

(01:55:29):
don't think this is solely a Joe Biden problem. This
is an institutional problem. In an online statement, the group
invited Harris to meet with its organizers. The Abandoned Biden
Campaign was one of the first coalitions to call for
Democrats to replace Biden. We were mocked, denigrated, spoken down to,

(01:55:49):
he said, but organizers stood firm in their principles as
they gained momentum, and they will continue to do so
as the quote disastrous and criminal approach to Gaza continues
under the Biden foreign policy, with officials like Anthony Blinken,
Jake Sullivan, and Brett McGirk. Ahmed said, abandon Biden means

(01:56:09):
abandoning this legacy and the decisions Biden made surrounding Israel.
Given the Democratic Parties lionizing the president since his exit
from the race, its becoming increasingly clear we may have
to extend this to whoever becomes the next nominee. He
indicated that they will continue to call on voters not

(01:56:30):
to support any candidate who maintains Biden's blanket support for Israel.
The Abandoned Biden Group released a statement referencing the June debate,
during which Biden at times was noncoherent to say the least.
It was largely his performance that triggered a wave of calls,
including from prominent Democratic Congress members, for Biden to step aside.

(01:56:52):
The statement read, it is clear that the DNC machinery
pressure Joe Biden to step down only after losing confidence
in his ability to lead due to his cognitive decline.
This action came not when he was enthusiastically supporting and
sponsoring the genocide in Gaza, but when his declining capabilities

(01:57:13):
could no longer be concealed. Biden's departure from the race
comes ahead of the party's upcoming national convention, which is
slated for August nineteenth, through the twenty second in Chicago,
and now with just under three months before the general election. Harris,
whom the Clintons and other Democratic leaders have also endorsed,

(01:57:33):
will need to gain the support of the majority of
the nearly four thousand delegates to win the party's nomination.
But for many voters pushing for an end to the
Gaza genocide, the path forward remains the same. A coalition
of more than one hundred and twenty five anti oppression
organizations said in a statement that it is still preparing

(01:57:54):
to gather tens of thousands to march on the Democratic
National Convention on August nineteenth. The Coalition to March on
the DNC said when it comes to the genocide and Gaza,
there is no difference between Biden, Harris or any of
the likely candidates for the nomination. They are all complicit.
This protest is about more than the name at the

(01:58:16):
top of a ballot. It is about stopping the most
horrific crime against humanity that we have seen in this century.
The statement said that the organizations that joined the coalition
quote recognize the links between the Palestinian liberation struggle and
their own struggles involving issues like police accountability, immigration, labor,

(01:58:38):
reproductive rights, and LGBTQIA plus rights. They also recognize that
Democratic Party higher ups often neglect their communities in favor
of serving the rich and powerful. Quote those responsible for
the genocide and not just Biden are often obstacles to
progress in the same movements they pay lip service to

(01:58:59):
in order to boost their campaigns. USCPR Action said the
masses of millions of Americans protesting in the streets will
certainly not wait for the next president. While US made
bombs paid for with our tax dollars are dropping in Gaza.
Regardless of who the Democratic presidential nominee and candidate elect is,

(01:59:20):
the next steps are clear. The group called on all
members of Congress to disrupt or protest the Nyaho's plan
addressed to Congress which happened last week, and they urge
lawmakers to pass an arms embargo against Israel. The group said, quote,
as Israel kills a Palestinian every four minutes and escalates
regional war, justice could not wait another day. Let's take

(01:59:46):
a break ry here before we jump into speech.

Speaker 3 (01:59:48):
That Nanyaho gave last week.

Speaker 5 (01:59:50):
So be right back.

Speaker 4 (02:00:01):
And we're back.

Speaker 2 (02:00:03):
So I had written the bulk of both of these
episodes before Prime Minision and Enya who gave his deranged
speech at Congress last week, but of course I had
to mention it because it was worse than I ever imagined. Actually,
this speech was then Enya whose fourth appearance before the
legislative body of Congress, and several high profile Democrats were

(02:00:24):
noticeably absent, an apparent protest to Israel's war on Gaza
and the humanitarians crisis that it sparked. Rashida Talib, though
the representative of Michigan's twelfth congressional district, was present. She is,
mayor remind you, the first Palestine American woman to serve
in Congress and one of the first two Muslim women
elected to Congress. She was there sitting during the Enyahu's speech,

(02:00:49):
wearing a coffea and holding a sign that read war
criminal on one side and guilty of genocide on the
other side, and she was holding the sign up throughout
his speech. July twenty fourth, the day of Nan Yahoo's speech,
also happened to be her birthday. So if my blood
was boiling thousands of miles away watching on my little

(02:01:10):
computer screen, I could only imagine how she felt sitting
in that room as everyone cheered and applauded and stood
up for this war criminal who was spewing lie after
lie in the entirety of his speech, as our tax
dollars are supplying him with more weapons to kill innocent people.

(02:01:32):
The almost certain Democratic nominee for President, Kamala Harris, was
also not present. Though she would ordinarily preside over such
a speech in Congress as vice president, her campaign cited
scheduling conference. I guess she gave a speech in Indianapolis
earlier that day. I also just wanted to highlight quickly
the hypocrisy of the vast majority of Democrats right now,

(02:01:54):
especially the ones that criticized the speech that the nayah
who gave it Congress or said that he should have
given speech at all. How much stronger would it have
been if they sat by Rashida in that room instead
of leaving the only Palaestini member of Congress sitting by
herself on her fucking birthday listening to the person that

(02:02:15):
has genocided her people. It would have been such an
amazing demonstration of support and strength to have her colleagues
sitting with her, but instead she was alone Naenyah who
gave this speech seeking to rally support for continuing Israel's
military campaign aka genocide in Gaza. He was greeted by

(02:02:37):
anti war protesters outside the Capitol understandably so. The day
before the speech, over five hundred Jewish people flooded the
Capitol building demanding arms embargo to Israel and demanding a ceasefire.
They shouted things like let Gaza live, free Palestine, not
in our name, and stop genocide. And then during the

(02:02:58):
Enyahu's speech, he blasted these protesters from his podium, calling
them Iran's useful idiots and calling pro Palestinian protester as
broadly as Hamas supporters and as nt Enyah who praise
Israeli military members as lions of Judah. Capital police was
using pepper spray against pro Palestinian protesters just outside the doors.

(02:03:21):
The irony of this speaks for itself, and we all
know by now. I hope that our police trains with
the Israeli military. Adam Abusala, a Arab American activist from Dearborn, Michigan, said,
it is a shame that the Enyaho was invited to
speak to Congress. It's a disgrace that members from both
parties have invited him to speak here. It's a disgrace

(02:03:43):
that Kamala Harris, the presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party,
will meet with him. Abu Salah told Al Jazeira this
at an anti na Enya who protest that was near
the Capitol. He said, we are here to say enough
is enough. As Americans, we will not stand for that.
In his speech, Naenyahoo praised the US Congress as a
citadel of democracy and described the genocide and Gaza as

(02:04:07):
a clash between barbarism and civilization. He said and repeated
lie after lie, and people stood up and applauded after
practically every sentence he repeated, proven untrue, hasbar propaganda lies,
repeating false claims about October seventh about how men were
beheaded and babies were burned. Alive investigations, including those done

(02:04:31):
by Israel, have found that little evidence has emerged to
substantiate some of the most gruesome stories pushed by Israeli
leaders like Naan Yahoo. And these lies were a part
of a methodology that was designed to bolster a false
notion of Palestinian's being an inherently subhuman people. I'm going
to play this clip from Mehdi Hassan about the most

(02:04:52):
egregious lie, in my opinion, that was spread around for
months and is still being spread around today as we
see from Danyahu's speech. But it's about the forty headed babies.

Speaker 10 (02:05:01):
Forty beheaded babies. How can we forget the most emotive
and most defensive lie of this entire conflict, A lie
that went viral and was repeated by the President of
the United States, who falsely said he saw pictures of
beheaded babies, even though there weren't any, nor were their
babies burned in ovens. As Israeli newspaper Haretes proved in
their investigation, they were all lies. In fact, according to

(02:05:23):
data released by Israel's Social Security Agency, Tragically, there was
one baby killed on October the seventh, ten month old
Miela Cohen. Maye her memory be a blessing, but in
the interests of facts, she was not beheaded. Now, one
baby killed is one baby too many, a tragedy, a crime,
But forty beheaded babies is just a cynical, reckless, repulsive
lie that was then used to justify the killing of

(02:05:44):
hundreds of Palestinian babies.

Speaker 2 (02:05:46):
Eljazerra released documentary called October seventh that goes into the
potential source of a lot of these lies. It's a
man named Josie Lindell who was an ultra Orthodox first
responder who operates throughout Israel and occasionally in South Face.
He was interviewed in this documentary and he is the
original source of the beheaded babies lie, and he was

(02:06:06):
a source of what formed the basis of the New
York Times now debunked investigation into the alleged systematic sexual
abuse perpetrated by Hamas October seventh. In these interviews, len
Dau comes off as almost like a used car salesman.
One of his claims is that he found a pregnant
woman whose quote, stomach was butchered open and whose baby
that was connected to the cord was stabbed. And he

(02:06:28):
insists in the reporter that if you want to see
their picture, I have a picture of it. And then
the reporter apologizes when looking at this photo because they
can't see a baby there, and then Lendau's stammers and
tries to cover his tracks because the photo, as it
turns out, depicts what the narrator of this documentary describes
as a quote unidentical piece of charred flesh, which, as
it happens, is not some unlike many of the bodies

(02:06:50):
that phil Lendau's accounts of unspeakable depravity, and as the
documentary further notes, the IDF has repeatedly debunked those stories
on the bay of basic forensic evidence, most notably when
it revised its total death count by two hundred because
it realized that some of the dead bodies were Palestinian.
And even though the IDF lies a lot, it does

(02:07:12):
concede eventually with enough pressure the truth. By November, the
IDF conceded that it had actually deployed Apache helicopters and
tanks to the Nova Music Festival that may have killed
some of the Nova Festival concertgoers in accordance to something
that is called the Hannibal directive, which I will also
mention in a bit, but it's a doctrine named for

(02:07:32):
a general who poisoned himself rather than be questioned by
his robin captors, and in a similar vein this directive
is basically when the Israeli army is ordered to fire
upon its own troops to prevent the enemy from taking
those troops hostage around noon on October seventh. According to
Israeli newspapers that were cited in this documentary, the IDF

(02:07:53):
may have invoked a version of the Hannibal Directive and
expanded it to include Israeli citizens, and in accordance to this,
began to blindly open fire with rockets and helicopter gunships
on any person or a vehicle seen moving across the
border to Gaza. In particular, the documentary visits Kabbutz be Air,
where a munitions expert demonstrates very strong evidence that some

(02:08:16):
of the houses had been hit with IDF tank fire.
It was Israeli troops, not Hamas murderers, according to one resident,
who killed twelve longtime residents there. But let's go back
to Nanyahu's speech. He also lied about civilian casualties and
Israel's liberate starving of Gaza. He said in his speech,

(02:08:37):
this is not a clash of civilizations. It's a clash
between barbarism and civilization. It's a clash between those who
glorify death and those who sanctify life. For the forces
of civilization to triumph, America and Israel must stand together,
because when we stand together, something very simple happens. We win,

(02:08:58):
they lose. Of course, he didn't mention the most daming
part of October seventh, the Hannibal Directive. Earlier this month,
Haretes reported that the IDF ordered the Hannibal Directive on
October seventh to prevent Hamas from taking soldiers captive. It
said there was a crazy hysteria and decisions started to
be made without verified information. Documents and testimonies obtained by

(02:09:22):
Heretes revealed the Hannibal operational Order, which directs the use
of force to prevent soldiers being taken into captivity, and
it was employed at three army facilities that were infiltrated
by Hamas. And this potentially endangered civilians as well, which
we know Israel has killed. We know Israel killed some
of its own citizens on October seventh, and now we

(02:09:45):
know that it killed some of its own soldiers.

Speaker 3 (02:09:48):
And of course these.

Speaker 2 (02:09:49):
Deaths are lumped into this overall death toll that keeps
being repeated as being due to only Hamas's attack. I
highly recommend reading the Harets report in full. It is
damning and important, especially as you see these leaders spouting
lies and then the NYAHUO praised the families of captives
being held in Gaza, and these families are a group

(02:10:12):
that has consistently expressed frustration with the n Yaho back
in Israel, but they of course figure prominently in his
messaging overseas because he uses them for his own benefit.
Believing this whole genocide or a war, if you want
to call it that, whatever about the hostages is disingenuous
at best.

Speaker 3 (02:10:32):
At this point.

Speaker 2 (02:10:34):
Several reporters who cover Israel reported that relatives of captives
were arrested for wearing shirts calling for a deal that
would bring the remaining captives home, an effort that critics
of the Nyahu have accused him of working to sabotage.
So you have his own people criticizing him and accusing
him of lying. I'm getting heated. Okay, let's take our

(02:10:55):
second break and we'll be right back.

Speaker 3 (02:11:06):
And we're back.

Speaker 2 (02:11:09):
So Republican House leader Mike Johnson had previously warned that
anyone who attempted to disrupt Naenyaho's speech could face arrest.
Jacob McGee, a correspondent with the Times of Israel, reported
that several relatives of captives held in Gaza, walked out
of nan Yahoo's speech. In a social media post, he
said several relatives of the hostages being held in Gaza

(02:11:32):
have walked out of nan Yaho's address to Congress. The
PM goes on to pledge not to rest until the
hostages are home, leading the vast majority in the room
to stand and applaud, save for roughly a dozen or
so hostage families. Israeli opposition leader air Lapede bashed nan
Yaho's speech in a social media post, saying that the

(02:11:52):
Israeli leader went through his speech without endorsing the deal
to bring the remaining captives home on x He called
speech a disgrace and to use an exclamation point for emphasis, disgrace,
that's how it read. Nanna, who also said that a
regional alliance must be forged to counter the influence of Iran,

(02:12:13):
and he thanked Biden for his efforts to that effect
and for calling for an extension of the so called
Abraham Accords. The Abraham Accords were signed on September fifteenth,
twenty twenty, during Trump's presidency, and it's something that Trump,
of course often takes credit for. The accords in brief,
normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and the UAE as well

(02:12:35):
as Bahrain, and then later a renewal in ties with Morocco.
So as part of the two agreements, both the UAE
and Bahrain recognized Israel's sovereignty, enabling the establishment of full
diplomatic relations. During his speech, n'annah who said, I have
a name for this new alliance. I think we should

(02:12:55):
call it the Abraham Alliance. And then he also thanked Trump,
of course for Trump's efforts promoting normalization efforts between Israel
and other countries in the region. And as I mentioned,
his speech was filled with nothing but lies. Some that
I've already mentioned, here are some more highlights. Nn Yaho
said the majority of Americans support Israeli actions, but polling

(02:13:18):
says otherwise. He said, quote, the vast majority of Americans
have not fallen for this Hamas propaganda. They continue to
support Israel. But a recent Gallup poll showed that forty
eight percent of people in the US disapprove of Israel's
actions in Gaza, compared to the forty two percent who
are supportive. A May poll by Data for Progress also

(02:13:41):
found that about seventy percent of all voters support a
permanent ceasefire in Gaza, which Natnyahu has firmly rejected time
and time again. And many things men Yaho said made
me pray that I would get an aneurism. And one
of those things is when he said that Israel is
going quote beyond what international law requires to avoid civilian casualties. Meanwhile,

(02:14:09):
of course, numerous rights groups have said Israel is flaunting
international law and targeting civilians in Gaza, where it has
systematically cut off supplies of food and water, displacing more
than ninety percent of the population and wiping out entire
neighborhoods and generations of families. And then you have media

(02:14:30):
outlets reporting that the Israeli forces in Gaza see large
swaths of the strip as quote free fire zones. And
then there was a US doctor who volunteered in Gaza
who recently spoke to a reporter and he accused Israeli
snipers of targeting Palestinian children. He said, the children are
being shot right in the heart and in the head,

(02:14:52):
so much so that a stethoscope was unable to go
over their heart. That's how precise these shots were. I'm
talking about Doc Mark pearl Mutter about his medical mission
in Gaza, and I want to play a clip of
him here because I think what he has to say
is very important and needs to be heard.

Speaker 9 (02:15:10):
All the disaster zones you've seen, how does Gaza compare?
All of this disasters I've seen combined, combined, forty mission trips,
thirty years, ground zero, earthquakes, all of that combined doesn't
equal the level of carnage that I saw against civilians.

Speaker 3 (02:15:33):
In just my first week in Gaza.

Speaker 9 (02:15:35):
And when you say civilians, is it mostly children? Almost
exclusively children. I've never seen that before, never seen that.
I've seen more incinerated children than I've ever seen in
my entire life combined. I've seen more shredded children in
just the first week. Shredded, shredded what do you mean?

Speaker 3 (02:15:57):
Missing body parts?

Speaker 9 (02:15:59):
Being crushed by billings the greatest majority, or bomb explosions
the next greatest majority. We've taken shrapnel as big as
my thumb out of eight year olds. And then they're
sniper bullets. I have children that were shot twice. Wait,
you're saying that children and Gaza are being shot by
snipers definitively. I have two children that I have photographs

(02:16:20):
of that were shot so perfectly in the chest. I
couldn't put my stethoscope over their heart more accurately and
directly on the side of the head in the same child,
No toddler gets shot twice by mistake by the world's
best sniper and they're dead center shots.

Speaker 2 (02:16:36):
So yeah, there's that. And again n Yahoo slammed college
protesters and administrators in his speech, leaning into the attacks
on student protesters who demonstrate against Israel's genocide and Gaza.
He blasted college administrators who resistant calls to crack down
on the protests. He also mocked queer activists who support

(02:16:58):
Palistinian rights and accuse them of ignorance, comparing them to
chickens who support the restaurant of KFC. And this bit
might have been my favorite quote, just because the level
of stupidity reached a level I didn't know what was possible. Quote,
these protesters hold up signs saying gaze for Gaza, they

(02:17:19):
might as well hold up signs that say chickens for KFC.
And then, of course, after he said this, nearly every
member of Congress stood up and clapped Naen Yahoo, for
whom the ICC prosecutors are currently seeking an arrest warrant
for for his alleged war crimes. Has said that pro

(02:17:39):
Palestinian protesters stand with evil. In his speech, he said
they stand with hamas they stand with rapists and murderers,
adding that they should be ashamed. He also said quote
the outrageous Slanders that paint Israel as racist and genocidal
are meant to delegitimize Israel, to demonize the Jewish state,

(02:18:02):
to demonize Jews everywhere, and no wonder, no wonder, we
witnessed an appalling rise and anti Semitism in America and
around the world. And of course, Dan Yahoo praised Biden
for his heartfelt support for Israel in his speech, Dan Yah,
who said quote, after the savage attack on October seventh,

(02:18:22):
Biden rightly called hamas sheer evil, and then he played
up their more than forty year relationship because they're both
fucking old and shouldn't be in power anymore. I guess
one of them won't be, he said. Biden dispatched two
aircraft carriers to the Middle East to deter a wider war,
and then he came to Israel to stand with us
in our darkest hour, a visit that will never be forgotten.

(02:18:45):
And yet it won't be forgotten because Biden's legacy will
forever be his complicity and assistance in the genocide of Palestine.
After the speech was concluded, Hamas said that the speech
shows n En Yahu's lack of interest in a ceasefire.
Hamas senior official Sammy Abuzuhui said that Natanyahu's remarks demonstrate
that he is not interested in ending the war, and

(02:19:07):
this is according to the US news outlet Reuters. He
said Nahnyahu's speech was full of lies and it will
not succeed in covering up for the failure and defeat
in the face of the resistance. He added that the
address would also not quote cover up for the crimes
of the war of genocide his army is committing against

(02:19:28):
the people of Gaza. In a statement, Zat Oldish, a
member of the Palestinian Group's political bureau, slammed the speech
by the quote unquote criminal Naanyahu as a party of lies.
At that Yusef, a thirty two year old Palestinian American,
told Al Jazeera that she traveled to Washington, d C.
From New York to voice her concerns by Nanyahu's address

(02:19:50):
to Congress, and she called the Prime minister, a quote
war criminal who should stand trial. Yes he should, that's
what international quote wants, she said, quote. We are just
here to cause a disruption, shut it down, and say
not in our names, not with our consent. She called
the N Yahoo's invite to Congress disgusting.

Speaker 3 (02:20:12):
Yes, yes it was.

Speaker 2 (02:20:15):
She said, I don't get how people get to a
level where they detach themselves so much from their humanity
that they can't see what's been happening in Gaza. She
also expressed surprise that US lawmakers still continue to entertain
the N Yahoo and invite him here. And I'm really
hoping this next part is true, because while Naanyahu's speech

(02:20:36):
sought to shore up support for Israel, El Jazeera correspondent
rosalind Jordan reported that it is unlikely to alter the
political landscape in the US, where the opposition to the
war in Gaza slash the genocide in Gaza is widespread.
She said, it's not going to change the political reality
here in the United States. There are many millions of

(02:20:57):
people who are disgusted by what they see how happening
in the war in Gaza. They see the mounting death
toll nearing forty thousand, men, women, and children, and many
thousands more injured, the entire population essentially homeless inside Gaza.
She also added that schisms have emerged within the Democratic

(02:21:17):
Party over support for Israel, while the Republican Party remains
largely united around calls for continued and even increased support.
My good friend and yours, Robert Evans said about Nanyahu's
speech at Congress, this is both the most resistance to
Israel I have seen from US political leadership and the

(02:21:39):
most public embrace of Israel I have seen.

Speaker 3 (02:21:42):
And He's right.

Speaker 2 (02:21:43):
It's disturbing and baffling behavior that is so divided it
seems impossible to bridge. It's hypocritical and frankly, quite dangerous
to normalize the support of someone who the Chief prosecutor
of the International Criminal Court, Kadim Khan, announced that he
was seeking an a rest war for to allow this
man to address Congress in any way is dangerous. The

(02:22:08):
Center for Constitutional Rights has also urged the Justice Department
to investigate an n Yahoo for genocide, war crimes, and torture,
which have all been well documented and plentiful. But that
doesn't matter though, because then Yahoo still gave his ridiculous
speech and bombs are still raining down on Gaza. And

(02:22:32):
with that we have concluded this two part series about
why Biden's legacy will forever be genocide. Until next time,
please continue to talk about Palestine and what's happening there.

Speaker 3 (02:22:46):
And the Palestine.

Speaker 8 (02:23:01):
Grinder. I hardly this is it could happen here where today?
The it is gay flirting and or harassment, and the
here is Milwaukee, Wisconsin, during the twenty twenty four Republican
National Convention. I'm gay also known by my undercover alias
Garrison Davis, and I was lucky enough to be one

(02:23:24):
of our on the ground RNZ correspondence. A few weeks ago.
We provided daily coverage of the GOP Coronation festival based
on our conversations with delegates, lobbyists, and think tank ghoules,
and reported on the general trends in rhetoric used by
popular speakers at the event. We'll have some more in
depth episodes about those topics in the weeks to come,

(02:23:45):
using more of our recorded interviews we collected at the convention.
But on top of our regular coverage, I also had
a special assignment that I'm more or less assigned to
myself on this show. We often talk about right wing
extremism and issue facing gay and trans people, including the
various ways conservatives and Christian nationalists are trying to make

(02:24:05):
life harder for queer people, whether through legislation, online harassment,
and physical violence. As these are two of our most
frequently covered topics, being at the Republican National Convention provided
me with the perfect opportunity to investigate the intersection between
conservatism and homosexuality. For years, I've heard rumors and urban

(02:24:27):
legends about a massive influx of Republicans flocking to the
gay hookup app Grinder to get laid during the RNC.
Whether they be twenty year old Republican twinks from Miami
or fifty three year old self hating, closeted gay men
from Idaho trapped in loveless marriages, Curiosity has often gotten

(02:24:47):
the better of me, and I needed to know how
many homosexual Republicans were actually logging onto Grinder. In case
you're unfamiliar, Grinder is technically a dating app that serves
the LGB community, but in actuality, it is a mediocre
hookup app that mostly serves as a way for strangers
in their forties to completely unprompted send you unflattering pictures

(02:25:10):
of their penis. Grinder was launched in two thousand and
nine and is arguably the largest and most popular gay
dating app, especially among men. Grinder has only been around
for two in person RNCs prior to this point, twenty
twelve and twenty sixteen, since all convention activities moved online
during twenty twenty for the pandemic. So this July, for

(02:25:31):
the first time in eight years, Republicans from all around
the country could gather in one city and once their
wives fell asleep, log on to Grinder and this episode,
I'm going to tell you about my RNC Grinder experience.
Before traveling to the city that was about to be
invaded by all of the weirdest Republicans in the country,

(02:25:52):
I needed to do some prep to help ensure safety
and success in my investigative endeavor. I hope you queers
liked that terrible place. Based on the massive increase in
violent anti trans rhetoric coming from the GOP, I already
knew that I would be dusting off my old boy
motor skills and going undercover as a cisgender male. Although

(02:26:12):
my ability to pass as a straight mail is debatable,
I can at least easily pass as a not quite
straight male. My trans feminine fashion taste has been skewing
more mask lesbian in recent years, so clothing wasn't really
an issue. I packed up basically all my button up
collar shirts, three ties, two black suits, and a beige
London fog trench coat. Basically, the vibe I was going

(02:26:35):
for was half young Republican, half Roman towel boy dressed
as a nineteen fifties FBI agent. I refer to this
as Dale Cooper Moting. I was unwilling to cut my
hair to match most of the young Republican frat boys,
so I settled on styling my wavy blonde locks like
Baron Trump meets Total Swinton. In Constantine, I was kind

(02:26:57):
of Gabriel maxing for most of the convention, and though
most attendees were unable to pick up on my diikish undertones,
the one day I wasn't wearing a tie, I did
get she heard by the Secret Service when entering the
convention through a security checkpoint. They're going woke, So that
was my general look for the convention. I also completely

(02:27:18):
remade my grinder profile for the RNZ for Simplicity's sake,
I got to emphasize my twinkish past and removed the
explicitly non binary transgender aspects of my profile, replacing some
of my more trans coded photos with pictures of my
light Yagami and Dale Cooper cosplay. Perhaps next rn C
I can experiment with discovering how many of the RNC

(02:27:40):
attendees are chasers. But for safety's at sake, I went
to more stealth, both online and in person at RNZ
related events. For my main profile picture, I chose a
pretty basic photo of me with disheveled hair, wearing a
light gray shirt and thin black tie, looking just frankly exhausted.
I chose the yet elegant user name Twink, and for

(02:28:03):
my bio wrote gen z in town for convention, which
I thought was pretty funny and signals to people that yes,
I am here for the RNC, but leaves the exact
reason why still a bit mysterious. So this was my bait.
On my way to the airport, I was already dressed
for the part, as I suspected the flight from Atlanta

(02:28:24):
to Milwaukee would be part of the whole RNC experience.
I arrived at the gate and the vibe shift was immediate.
Older white men with even whiter hair, wearing a mix
of poorly tailored suits and country club polo shirts fit
for the driving range. They all kind of looked like
my Republican grandfather. The women, meanwhile, regardless of age, were

(02:28:47):
all cause playing their favorite female Fox and News anchor
with bleached blonde hair. There were a handful of delegates
as well as Republican super fans wearing Trump buttons and
mega hats, just really excited to be going to the convention,
the way a nerd would be excited to go to
San Diego Comic Con. Others at the gate were more subdued,

(02:29:08):
perhaps not wanting to attract too much attention in the
Atlanta airport, but I could still overhear them getting into
quiet small talk about their RNC expectations and in hushed
tones asking others at the gate if they were going
to the convention. And that's what everyone called it, not
the Republican Convention, not the GOP convention or the RNC

(02:29:30):
the convention. As I was bording the plane, an older
woman with straw like blonde hair sitting a few rows
in front of me waves me and asked, young man,
are you going to the convention. I gave my best yes, ma'am,
took my seat, and then heard her remark to her
friend about how happy she was that more young people

(02:29:51):
are attending the convention, and I would suspect she would
be quite disappointed to learn why I was attending the
convention and what I was doing there, mainly trying to
collect as much information about these weird RNC Grinder Republicans
as I can. And you will hear more about those
weird Grinder RNC Republicans after the break. This episode is

(02:30:12):
brought to you in part by the top Gun soundtrack,
which I was listening to as I was coming out
from adderall while writing the second half of this episode,
as well as these products and sponsors. Okay, back to

(02:30:35):
the Grind. Most convention activities took place in the Peiser Forum,
which it took about four days to learn how to pronounce.
This venue is usually home to the NBA team, the
Milwaukee Bucks, and this is where I would do most
of my grinder cruising so I could see other profiles
within the radius of the convention area. Every time I

(02:30:56):
walked into the Pfeiser Forum, which was multiple times a
day for four days in a row, I would find
a little corner or a place to sit and discreetly
boot up Grinder and refresh my feed to see what
profiles were in my proximity. Now, if you're unfamiliar with Grinder,
one of its more terrifying features is the proximity detector,
telling you what users are near you, whether that be

(02:31:19):
five miles away or five feet away. Every night, when
I got back to the hotel after recording with Robert
and Sophie, I would once again check a Grinder to
see if any unlucky delegates were put up in the
hotels by the airport. The hotel we were staying at
was also home to the Idaho and North Dakota delegates,
and though I don't believe anyone from our hotel was

(02:31:40):
on Grinder, save for maybe an anonymous profile or two,
there definitely were RNC attendees at some of the nearby
hotels roughly fifteen hundred feet away from my bed. The
Grinder proximity detector was quite useful to me and locating
profiles active around the footprint of the R and C,
as well as when sorting through all my messages back

(02:32:00):
home to confirm who attended the RNC from out of state.
Because Milwaukee is about six hundred and fifty miles away
from Atlanta. If someone's distance marker was substantially different from that,
I could assume that they were in Milwaukee for the
rn C from out of state, even if I wasn't
able to confirm through any brief text exchange. I've also
done my best to follow up with certain profiles to

(02:32:22):
rule out possibilities of secondary traveling or other random reasons
for why their distance markers might not line up exactly.
And I think they have it narrowed down pretty well. Okay,
you've been very patient, and now I think it's time
to read through the highlights from my grinder in box.
And I gotta say I think I started off pretty strong.
While attending the RNC kickoff party the night before the

(02:32:45):
convention officially started, I got one of the very first
messages I received from a twenty one year old Republican
with the profile picture that's just a close up picture
of a dark suit with a dark blue shirt and
vegenta tie. Already frendous vibes. He asked me if I
was quote unquote with the GOP, and I said, I

(02:33:06):
was attending with friends, and then I got no further response.
I saw this guy online throughout the convention, and then
after the convention was over, he moved like three hundred
miles away, so I'm pretty sure he was there for
the RNC. I got a message from someone who identified
himself as a local conservative quote but not a hardcore
Republican unquote, and he was excited the convention was in town,

(02:33:29):
hopeful that he would quote meet my future husband unquote.
The first chaser I encountered with the bio looking for
some lady dick to feel in my ass, saw through
my sister gender disguise and messaged me cock question mark.
I got one other message from a chaser who was

(02:33:50):
pretending to be Tea for Tea, who asked me if
I was in town for Kitsu Khan, an anime convention
in Green Bay. A nice local messaged me, quote hope
you're finding what you're looking for smiley face, which was
very nice and just kind of amusing if you consider
that he thought I was just a gay Republican looking
for some other gay Republican. Another local with the name

(02:34:13):
Older for Young sent me the message quote boomer who
will talk politics with you or we can just fuck.
I asked him if the quote unquote talk politics pickup
line works very often, and he replied, quote less often
than I would hope for on here zero unquote. He

(02:34:33):
mentioned that he had noticed some convention attendees on the
app telling me that they have infiltrated grinder. He then
asked me what exact hotel I was staying at. So
that was the end of that conversation. A minority of
the Milwaukee locals who messaged me identified themselves as conservatives
and were largely excited that the RNC was in town.

(02:34:54):
They vicariously questioned me about how the convention was going,
as most were disappointed that they themselves cannot attend. One
such fellaw, who described Trump's first RNC entrance as electric
and a very emotional moment for him and the entire
crowd unquote, would have liked to attend, but he was
busy working at the hospital because they needed quote extra

(02:35:16):
staffing just in case unquote. Now, the worst profile picture
I found was an older guy wearing a baseball camp
and one of those half faced skull masks like Adam
Offfen used to wear. He said he was from Florida
and claimed to be in town not for the RNC
but to visit family, and mentioned that Vance had completely

(02:35:38):
sold out his morals for the VP spot. This guy's
politics were impenetrable. Maybe this was just like your average
Florida independent. Very baffling fella. A younger guy messaged me
asking you're a Republican and I said not really, putting
it lightly, and he never got back to me. I
did find a thirty one year old chaser named Greg

(02:36:00):
I do believe with attending the convention, and his bio
read quote anon come drain me trans CD as crossdresser
sissy fem to the front of the line. I asked,
you like trans and he responded yes. We had no
further conversation. I did talk with two other people who

(02:36:20):
happened to be covering the convention, including one guy who
thought I was with CNN because the Grinder proximity sensor
put me near the CNN area when I was actually
using Grinder at the Heritage Foundation party. And lastly, really
the only guy I saw who openly claims to be
attending the RNC in his public bio was a thirty

(02:36:40):
two year old from Shreveport, Louisiana with the user name
suck me Off one word. He described the convention as
exhausting but awesome and told me he was quote proud
to support President Trump unquote and called Trump's speech on
the final day amazing. A lot of the RNC speakers,

(02:37:02):
including Trump, talked about Corey Compretour, the man who was
killed at the Trump rally during the attempted assassination. So
after mister suck me off talked about how awesome Trump's
speech was, I just replied to him, poor Corey, and
he messaged me back Corey Who, and that he told
me what exact hotel he was staying at. Now, part

(02:37:25):
of the danger of trying to use Grinder directly in
the middle of the RNC, even discreetly, is that even
if I'm hunched over on my phone, there is a
non zero chance that some passer by or persons sitting
right above me might catch a glimpse of an unsolicited
dickpic that fills my phone screen as I try to
check my messages. And this is simply a non negotiable

(02:37:47):
part of the Grinder experience. Whatever you do, grainy, unflattering,
bizarrely angled photos of some Balding, forty three year old
married man will appear in your inbox ordinarroly. I would
check the profile first to see who might be sending
me a photo to weed out the undesirable prospects before
even considering to open up a DM. Unfortunately, multiple factors

(02:38:10):
prevented me from doing this. For one, this was research,
so I needed to collect the most amount of data possible.
But moreover, even if I still wanted to vet for
applicable profiles in my dms, this was impossible without opening
up each DM individually and clicking through to their profile
from the chatlog. Due to one of the many glitches
I experienced using Grinder at the RNC, about halfway through

(02:38:34):
the week, the app started crashing pretty frequently. But the
main glitch I had to deal with, which has since
been fixed, is that I could not access anyone's profile
from the DM's page. I had to click into each
individual chat log to open up a user profile, which
meant I had to look at a lot more unsolicited
dick pics before even being able to check anyone's profile.

(02:38:56):
So there I was watching Ted Cruise's speech sitting underneath
about fifty Republicans and right next to both of my bosses,
scrolling through an endless stream of Dick pics to see
who was local and who was here for the r
and C, hoping that whatever Republican voter from Alabama wasn't
looking over my shoulder at the plethora of dimly lit

(02:39:16):
hog But I was far from the only one reporting
issues with the app during the r and C. Around
midday on Tuesday, the second day of the convention, over
one thousand users reported a Grinder outage in the Milwaukee
area on the website down detector. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
wrote on the final day of the r and C
that quote reports that the Grinder app crashing increased by

(02:39:39):
more than ninety percent in the past forty eight hours
across the country unquote. The down detector heat map showed
Grinder outages in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York, as
well as a hot spot of outages in Milwaukee near
the end of the convention, indicating users were experiencing issues
with the app, possibly due to an increase in act

(02:40:01):
and you will hear more about that activity after this
ad break. This episode of It could Happen Here is
brought to you in part by the Challenger's soundtrack remix
by Boys Noise, which I was listening to as I
wrote most of this episode while on the plane back
to Atlanta. This episode is also brought to you by
these products and services. We once again returned to the grind.

(02:40:35):
We got to keep on grinding. We're almost done, but
we got to grind a little more. Just one more
grind bro I swear about addictors. One more grind broach,
one more grind. During the influx of reports about the
Grinder app breaking during the RNC, a post from the
Twitter account for the Halfway Post went extremely viral, bolstering
claims of a massive increase in activity. Quote breaking, an

(02:40:58):
executive of the gay dating app Grinder says the Republican
National Convention is quote basically Grinder's super Bowl unquote. This
quote from a Grinder executive went super viral, prompting discussions
all over the Internet about five different articles, and even
a disgraced former New York Congressman, George Sentos, commented on

(02:41:18):
the phenomenon, content warning gay Republican.

Speaker 5 (02:41:22):
So Grinder executives are calling the RNC convention the Grinder
super Bowl.

Speaker 3 (02:41:30):
Folks.

Speaker 5 (02:41:31):
Look, I'm openly gay. No qualms about it. Proud conservative Republican.
I met my husband on Grinder and we've been together
for six years going on seven, married for almost three.

Speaker 3 (02:41:45):
Let me tell you something. Just come out the closet, boys,
come on, it's fun. You can be gay and conservative.

Speaker 5 (02:41:53):
But look, Grinder's already out of you anyway. Based on
the hits, and guess who's in town. It's all you
conservative by.

Speaker 3 (02:42:02):
Now.

Speaker 8 (02:42:02):
I certainly did observe a lot of blank or anonymous profiles,
at least more than I'm used to. I also received
messages containing variations of hey sexy from at least five
accounts that have since been deactivated. And this does line
up with a report from a Milwaukee area Grinder user
who spoke with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel saying that he
noticed a major bump in anonymous users.

Speaker 3 (02:42:24):
Quote.

Speaker 8 (02:42:25):
On any given day, you'll go on there and see
a headless torso or a blank profile, said the source,
who did not want to be named. The Grinder user said,
on a normal day, you'll encounter maybe ten users with
no public profile. But Thursday, when he checked the app,
he said he stopped counting at fifty blank profile photos.

Speaker 3 (02:42:43):
Unquote.

Speaker 8 (02:42:44):
Now we don't have any official data yet on Grinder
usage near the twenty twenty four r and C only
the down detector reports which our user submitted, but we
do at least have data from the last in person
convention in Cleveland, Ohio, all the way back in twenty six.
A Vice article by Candice Brian spoke with sources from
Grinder and wrote that quote, Grinder usage near the Quick

(02:43:07):
and Loans Arena showed a sixty six percent increase during
the RNC. Other active destinations including Times Square, Capitol Hill, Disneyland,
South Beach, and Trump Tower showed no comparable increase in
active users. Unquote. Many of the local twinks and trans
folks certainly were concerned about possible RNC freaks hiding on

(02:43:27):
the app. People would often first ask me if I
was a Republican or why I was in town before
trying to hit on me. One such twink told me, quote,
I would be surprised if you were a delegate or something,
but I had to check. As the week progressed, more
locals told me that they had found a handful of
out and proud patriots online, but really not many. In fact,

(02:43:50):
multiple Milwaukee locals I chatted with on Grinder did claim
to notice an uptick in users, but mostly recognizable local
users who were online for the same reason than I was,
to see if there was an influx of closeted Republicans.
Someone told me, quote for the record, it's like three
times busier here than normal. Everyone is out to see

(02:44:10):
what the Republicans are up to, and the chasers have
come out of the woodwork unquote. Far from being the
app's super Bowl. According to Weiss, the twenty sixteen rnc's
sixty six percent bump in activity is less than one
half of the increase in Grinder activity that was seen
at the last in person DNC, an event, which was

(02:44:31):
also a whole day shorter. I'lade from Wes Quote. However,
from Sunday to Monday, the week of the Democratic National Convention,
there was an even higher one hundred and forty eight
percent increase in activity around the Wells Fargo Arena in Philadelphia.

Speaker 3 (02:44:48):
Quote.

Speaker 8 (02:44:49):
It's also worth noting that of that sixty six percent
increase in activity around the twenty sixteen r and C,
only about forty percent of those users were visiting Cleveland,
most were local. Meanwhile, sixty percent of Grinder users active
near the DNC in Philadelphia. We're visiting the city. Oh,
and that quote from a Grinder executive calling the RNZ

(02:45:11):
grinders a super Bowl, as well as George Sandos's other
claim about Grinder purposely outing gay conservatives. Both of those
claims originate from Twitter satire accounts.

Speaker 3 (02:45:21):
It is totally made up, pure fiction. It's fiction.

Speaker 4 (02:45:24):
It's fiction.

Speaker 3 (02:45:25):
We made it up. We made this one up. It's
a made up tail. It's a total fabrication. It never happened.

Speaker 8 (02:45:32):
It's an urban legend that never happened. So no, the
RNC is not Grinders a super Bowl. I got messages
from over one hundred and fifty different people. Over ninety
percent of the messages I received and profiles visible online
even while inside the Pfizer forum were from locals completely
unaffiliated with the RNZ, and any boost activity that can

(02:45:54):
be attributed to people visiting for the r and C
is a minuscule drop in the bucket compared to the
proverbial orgy festival of out of town gay Democrats who
travel to the DNC, and like, if you think about
this logically, this shouldn't at all be surprising. The Republican
Party has spent the past two years screaming about how
all drag queens are child groomers. And though this was

(02:46:18):
the first year the GOP has removed opposition to gay
marriage from their party platform, they have massively increased their
opposition to and attacks against trans people and really any
display of a visible queerness, like, come on, this is
the Republican Party. There's this kind of fucked up cultural
conception that homophobic politicians must be so because they are

(02:46:39):
secretly gay. And while there is the occasional like Lindsey
Graham or repressed homosexual preacher, this is not the norm,
and all Republicans being secretly gay is not the driving
force of legislative homophobia. It is an ideological drive, largely
in furtherance of hegemonic Christian nationalism, and now for people

(02:47:00):
like Elon Musk and more, young Republicans of fascistic notion
of reproductive futurism built on fears that young people white
people aren't having enough white babies, which they partially attribute
to society becoming more accepting of gay and trans people,
resulting in people having less reproductive or heterosexual sex. Never

(02:47:21):
mind the fact that queer and trans people oftentimes can
and do have children, which still doesn't seem to please
these conservatives, as it doesn't align with their traditionalist view
of the family unit. So no, Grinder wasn't flooded with
closeted Republicans because there simply isn't that many closeted Republicans
that are going to be attending the RNC. And while
there may not be as many Republicans as I thought

(02:47:44):
there might be, I do believe that I have the
bump in activity, albeit a smaller bump than rumored. Basically
figured out based on my anecdotal experience and the reports
of a handful of local Grinder users and journalists I
talked with who were online during the twenty twenty four
rn C, and considering the twenty sixteen Grinder data, I

(02:48:04):
can report that merely a small minority of activity was
due to ordinary RNZ attendees. The majority of activity was
from locals who either regularly used Grinder or were specifically
curious about who might be online during the RNC. I
observed two more groups that would contribute to any noticeable

(02:48:25):
increase in activity. Not everyone who attends the RNC are
guests or delegates. A lot of people work at the
convention center or work tech, and a sizeable chunk of
people are like myself, researchers, pollsters or journalists who attend
conventions like this for work. And lastly, the final group
that fills out the bump in grinder activity, one that

(02:48:47):
for some reason didn't really expect to see upon arrival,
but in retrospect makes total sense.

Speaker 3 (02:48:53):
Are cops?

Speaker 8 (02:48:55):
So many cops? There were so many cops online at
the RNC, just like delegates or reporters. They are coming
to town from all around the country. There was cops
or state troopers from Texas, Ohio, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, California, Indiana,
and many more states, as well as US Capitol Police,
Secret Service, TSA, DHS.

Speaker 3 (02:49:15):
And FBI.

Speaker 8 (02:49:16):
They were all in town as a part of the
security detail. A few of the guys that messaged me
I can absolutely confirm are one hundred percent police or
some kind of military police. A thirty three year old
cop or military guy quote looking for sexy bottoms with
the tag's jock military discreete and weightlifting, as well as
many pictures of him in the gym. Said it in

(02:49:39):
his bio that he was quote really into slim skinny
toned and muscular people. He messaged me saying, hey, now
I got a lot of Hayese in my inbox, which
is not unusual for Grinder. You will probably mostly get
hay as a message as well as just like, you know,
a picture of someone's penis, but between a penis and hey,

(02:50:01):
those are probably the two most received messages you will
get on Grinder. There was another guy with a username
DL military who said in his bio he was working
security for the week and that Grinder messages had completely
broke for him and to instead message him on Snapchat.
The DL in DL military stands for down low. It's

(02:50:22):
a tag that only the worst people on Grinder will use,
mainly like self hating gay men who are closeted and
it's download because they don't want to be like publicly
seen being gay. Just absolutely the worst. We do not
fuck with DL, both literally and figuratively. There were a
bunch of other non locals who I would describe as

(02:50:43):
cop types. I can't one hundred percent say for sure
that they are cops, but they have like the look,
you know, like the look, the cop look. I don't know.
They could also be like a bodyguard or working private security.
But one of these cop looking guys message to me
asking if I was a trans guy, which I always
love to see. It means I'm doing gender very well.

(02:51:05):
And a few other cop types sent relatively boring messages.
So yeah, a lot of cops, which is not completely
surprising considering the fact that basically half the cops in
the country were at the Republican National Convention in some
form or another. A few final notes, Now this didn't
really make up a sizeable chunk of the Grinder population,

(02:51:26):
but after saying I was just covering the RNC, a
couple people on Grinder just completely unprompted told me that
they were attending the protests against the RNC.

Speaker 3 (02:51:37):
Please do not do this.

Speaker 8 (02:51:38):
That's a horrible idea for multiple reasons. You gotta stop
talking about your political activities on dating apps, especially Grinder,
especially at the RNC. Horrible idea. Do not do this.
And despite my lazy attempt at a young Republican disguised
online profile, a few too many people did recognize me

(02:51:58):
from Twitter or the pod, but they they were very nice.
They gave me some recommendations for gay bars to check
out after convention hours, and one person told me this
interesting anecdote that I'd like to share. Quote, I don't
think Trump is going to win. I can missed for
Hillary in twenty sixteen, and at least here it doesn't
feel the same.

Speaker 3 (02:52:16):
Unquote.

Speaker 8 (02:52:17):
I thought that was a little interesting tinbit that I
received at probably round three am on grinder.

Speaker 3 (02:52:22):
So there you go.

Speaker 8 (02:52:23):
Anyway, that was my RNC Grinder experience.

Speaker 3 (02:52:27):
I'm sorry to.

Speaker 8 (02:52:28):
Report it is not the hotbed of closeted Republicans that
we mean it to be. It's mostly local gaze, a
few reporters and a few more cops. I do not
think I'll be reporting on the DNC grinder, but I
am curious to see if there is a sizeable increase
in activity as compared to the RNZ Grinder. So I

(02:52:51):
guess I will maybe posted by that on Twitter at
Hungry bow Tie if you want updates on that. Anyway,
Stay safe out there. Be careful if you're ever on grinder,
please especially I don't tell someone covering the RNC that
you're attending any protests, but in general, be careful on
these types of dating apps, and I will see you
on the other side. Message from Quickie Grinder said you

(02:53:15):
were super close yesterday. Wasn't stalking?

Speaker 3 (02:53:18):
I promise?

Speaker 8 (02:53:19):
Message from birthday present emoji. I almost thought you were
Josh Thomas. Message from anonymous. Wait are you pro or
anti Republican? I'm not gonna lie. I mainly asked your
politics because I thought you were cute, but I didn't
want to hit on a Trumper message from older for
young aren't all the delegates propositioning you?

Speaker 3 (02:53:40):
You're cute?

Speaker 8 (02:53:42):
Message from anonymous? Why establish a detlitarian state if I
can't breed It's a dictator message from suck me off?
I'm down for anything.

Speaker 3 (02:53:54):
Lol.

Speaker 8 (02:53:55):
Are you supporting Trump?

Speaker 2 (02:53:56):
Ha ha?

Speaker 6 (02:54:02):
Hey.

Speaker 1 (02:54:03):
We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from
now until the heat death of the Universe.

Speaker 2 (02:54:08):
It Could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at
Coolzonmedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.

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Behind the Bastards News

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