September 30, 2025 • 50 mins
Mia talks with CAW writer and editor Vicky Osterweil about Republican unpopularity, Jimmy Kimmel, and Disney’s history of fascism
Links:
https://www.cawshinythings.com/about-caw/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/09/24/trump-approval-rating/86306451007/
https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/kimmel-reinstatement-disney-price-increase-scoop
https://www.the-downballot.com/p/iowa-democrats-win-massive-upset
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media welcome to it could happen to hear a
podcast about why everything feels absolutely awful.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
And also deeply unhinged. I'm your host. Feel long and
oh boy, thing feel bad? I don't know. This is
my bost This is my most Robert in a while.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
With me to talk about why everything sort of feels
like this and the disconnect between the fact that like
everyone actually hates Trump and the way that's being not
covered and reflected in everything that you interact with. Is
Vicky Ostrowell, who is a writer and editor at the
collective journal Call you were of many things agitated.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
I'm very busy, I.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Think, it says bricklayer, right. Yeah. He also has a
new book called The Extended Universe out April fourteenth of
next year that is about the way that Disney sort
of took over the world through the deployment, expansion, and
usage of the violence of the copyright regime, a thing
that is suddenly very relevant again in our weird Jimmy
(01:17):
Kimmel Hours. So we'll be talking some more about that
and about Disney's long history of fascist bullshit towards the
end of the ship.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
Yeah, yeah, well it's it's it's a pleasure to be
hearing me at thanks And yeah, we are all Jimmy's Kimmel,
you know, in this moment, I think.
Speaker 5 (01:32):
Oh God, oh Jimmy's Kimmel.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
That okay.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
So I think that the place I wanted to start
is with this like question of like, why does it
feel like this? Yeah, And I think part of the
reason it feels like that is that Trump's Aprouler rating
is really low, Like people don't actually like him. It's
like we're reading is forty one percent. It's down like
a point in September. Even with all the Charlie Kirk stuff.
(02:05):
It's still down. His most popular policy is immigration policy,
which is terrifying, But his most popular policy is pulling
at forty two percent, So no one actually likes him
or anything that he does, right, and like, like forty
one percent is still like a lot of people, but
it's not the majority of the country, notably, like bi
(02:26):
how math works.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
There's been a few things I think are interesting about
this there. There there are signs that this is actually
really really there's something substantive happening here. One of them
was a special election that I think people have paid
attention to for about two days and then forgot about.
Which was a special election in Iowa which prevented the
GOP from getting a two third supermajority in the state
(02:52):
legislature and the Democrats somehow, miraculously, even though the Democrats
are hideously unpopular, they won a special election in a
district in Western Iowa that was plus eleven for Trump
this year. And this is not like a like this
is a district that is like just Sioux City or something,
(03:12):
or like you know, this is a this is a
jerrymandered ass district that is like a little bit of
Sioux City and then stretched out all the way into
a bunch of rural areas like diffuse the vote. They
won this district by eleven like last year they lost
this election by eleven points in Western Iowa.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
Yeah, unhinged.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
They're doing like all elections like this like that. It's
it's thing ridiculous, Like again this this is like this
is again like voting for people who are like not popular,
but it's like literally any alternative people are like holy shit.
Western Iowa is like nah, fuck this this fucking sucks
ass Like it's.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
Yeah, a thing that you know, I've been following a
bit is that farmers are freaking out. Yeah, soybean, soybean
crops and corn crops are going to be rotting in
the fields, you know. I think soybean so soy in particular,
something like fifty percent of the US soy crop is
traditionally export and by traditionally I mean every year exported
to China. This year, China is not buying any American
(04:13):
soybeans yep. So literally half of the market is going
to die. And I don't know, you know, sometimes these
numbers don't don't really do justice. If half of an
economy collapses, that's the whole economy collapsing. That's not that's
not like oh yeah, they just like took you know,
a haircut, Like that's massive.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
American farmers are like the most bailed out class of
people who are not like major corporations in the entire world.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
And it's not working.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Like they keep they keep being like, oh, it's okay,
we'll just like give you a bunch of money, and
it's not enough because China has decided not to buy any.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Of the soybean crop.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
But it's like okay, yeah, and this is something we
talked about like at the beginning of the administration, which
is that like this administration has been going through and
systematically alienating every single part of the coalition. Yeah, they're
pissing off like the farmers. They're pissing off like the
major pharmaceutical companies, they're pissing off the military. They're pissing
off a whole bunch of the parts of government bureaucracy.
(05:08):
Like they've kind of stripped the FBI to the bones
over like comey stuff that they're still mad about. And
then the guy they put in charge of it is
just like completely incompetence, and it's like, Okay, there's only
so long you can sort of go like systematically alienating
every part of your coalition, just like basically attempting to
drop a bomb on the economy every single week, and
(05:29):
sometimes it drops and sometimes it doesn't.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
Yeah, exactly. I think there's actually an interesting sort of
parallel here with tech stocks and with like the economy
in general that has been sort of you know, on
the ground for most of us has felt like it's
been in recession since twenty twenty. Yeahright, you know, of
different sizes and localities, but it's felt bad for a while.
Now it's really bad. No one can get a job, yep, right,
like things are really like prices are going up up up.
(05:54):
Everyone feels bad, and yet the stock market is still
achieving highs. And I think there's sort of a generalized
equivalent strategy of like make it look like things are
normal and good and like that will actually just support
things materially, and like, yep, I mean maybe it will forever.
Maybe the bottom will never fall out. I don't know.
(06:15):
I don't think that's I think that's a bad bad
but like, okay.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Yeah, well but and I think the interesting part of
this too is if you look at what's going on
with the economy, and it's also word noting, right, like,
the economy nominally in sort of econometric terms, looks fine.
You're not fine, but it looks sort of okay, right,
the stock market is still growing. There's technically like economic growth.
But comma, we both saw this chart a couple of
(06:44):
weeks ago. That is the most unhinged thing I've ever
seen in my entire life, which is there is a
GDP chart by a JP Morgan analyst which shows that
tech in the last like year roughly and like in
the last sort of like church and Window, it's been
thirty five to forty five percent of all US GDP growth.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
And when I say tech, by the way, like to
be clear about this, it is technically a composite of
like all sector, right, but like it's basically just the
like the top like the five big tech companies. Right,
it's like Apple, it's Microsoft, but pasifically. And this is
the one that's like unhinged right now, is that like
the most valuable company in the world is in video,
(07:29):
a company that makes graphics cards.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
Yep, yep.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
And this is all because this is all of his
GDP growth quote unquote is AI boom stuff? Right, it's
like massive fix capital investments. Sure, it's like yeah, there's
like incredible fixed capal investments, but the fixed capital investments
are just We're building a diesel powered AI data center
somewhere in Tennessee that is going to poison the entire
population for no benefits. Yeah, And it's like all of
(07:55):
these companies like have gone just completely totally all in
on AI. I think it doesn't make anybody, can't make
anybody in structurally, will not make anybody. And this is
like a third of like the growth of the economy.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
We are actually living through the famous old tweet the drill.
Is it drill about the candles? Someone out fixed my economy.
We're living in the candles tweet. The whole economy is candles. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (08:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
And this is the thing that our colleague at this
run argues that there's just there is not enough money
in the world to just continuously bail these companies out. Yeah,
Like there just isn't right the cash flow of these companies.
It's like they've managed to achieve a cash flow rate
that like can't be replaced by government contracts, which is
(08:36):
just unbelievable. And I think this is one of the disconnectings,
right because like it's interesting You're starting to see a
little bit of stuff crop up from like local level
politicians where every once in a while you get them
to be like, oh yeah, no, it is like a
recession economy, like on the ground in like Wisconsin. But
I feel like in the media, and this is one
of the things that I think makes everything insane. It's
(08:57):
not being treated that way.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
Yeah no, And I think you know, you you went
exactly where where you know, I mean, we had talked
about going but we were going to go, which is
that like part of what is so crazy making about
this current moment is precisely that disconnect between sort of
the on the ground experience that everyone's been having for
years now. But it's like especially intense and like the
fact that like AI is very obviously not interesting or
(09:24):
good and no one likes it, and like even that
people who sort of are i think, mostly in good
faith like trying to take it seriously, and who are like, yeah,
it's going to change everything, Like you know, like normally
people in work stuff, like they don't really use it
very much, or if they do use it, like it's
not effective. There wasn't a campaign to force everyone to
buy smartphones. When the iPhone happened, everyone wanted one because
(09:46):
it was like obvious what it did for you. Now
you know, they're obviously whatever. It's not This is not
a defense of the smartphone, but like there is this
broad recognition that that is nonsense, right, that like the
I economy is nonsense, that like the economy that everyone says
is doing fine feels bad. And this has been going
on since you know, Biden campaigned on you know, oh,
(10:07):
it's just a vibe session, the you know, the economy
is fine, and the economy wasn't fine.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
No.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
One of the charts I really am obsessed with is
a chart from like Bloomberg, which is like a small
business owner confidence from like twenty ten to twenty twenty five,
and like if you look like from twenty sixteen to
twenty twenty, which is the first Trump term, it goes
up like five hundred percent, right.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
She's cry, just goes up.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
It just just as huge. It's the highest that's been
by huge margin, and it just drops again in twenty twenty.
So it finally made me understand why so many Libs
were like so committed to the vibe session analysis, because
there was a massive vibe inflation under the first Trump administration.
So the reason people felt like the economy was good
was because small business owners. And this is the classic
analysis of fascists, right, the petty boys, wow, the small
(10:52):
business Yeah, they were like, this are the best times
you've ever lived through, based on no evidence. And if
you work for a business and your boss is like
things are booming, are doing great, you know, if you
don't run the numbers, you're likely to believe it. You know,
like if if everyone around you is saying that like
there's no reason to doubt it unless I mean, you know,
you don't you don't really believe your boss all the time.
But you know what I'm saying, like it just has
it has an effect of making everyone feel like things
(11:14):
are better. That chart started to creep up again after
Trump's election November twenty twenty four, before Liberation Day, but
on the announcement of the Liberation Day, traffs tanks. So
that's gone.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Yeah, it's gone.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Yeah, And I think that's a really vital sort of
conponent of what's happening. Is like, you know, we talk
a lot about how so there's sort of these like
self contained like reality tunnels that people are gone down.
But it's also really diffused by class. Yes, yes, And
this ties back to the AI stuff for example, where
it's like, if you are in the tech sector, AI
(11:47):
is kind of useful because the one thing you can
sort of kind of do decently well is programmed, right,
and you're and if you are in this sort of
like world, which is again, enormous portions of all of
the economic growth, right that is happening is coming out
of these places, and it's like, oh, this really does
look like like the future is here. If you've you
suddenly have this machine that can do your job for you.
(12:09):
And it's like, well maybe coding, which wasn't that hard
to begin with, maybe, but like you know, like guys,
I say this as someone who learned to code and
hated it, but like you know, but like it creates
these sort of like self reinforced like reality tunnels. But
every the thing about the reality tunnels is like every
once in a while, like the actual world comes in
(12:29):
like a giant fucking arrow and punctures it. And that's
what happened to those all business people was they were like,
oh shit, what do you mean they got rid of
the deminimistic scession? What do you mean they're putting all
these tariffs up? What do you mean they're like just
straight up taking a sledgehammer to the entire logistics system
that have been moved. Like that's the basis of like
most America's all businesses are like our shipping businesses right
like or they're either either directly shipping businesses or they
(12:51):
rely on on cheap imports from a whole bunch of
different countries. This even goes into like the grift economy, right, Like,
massive portions of the grift economy are just like, yeah,
I drop drip and grift bull supplements stacks.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
Yeah exactly, Yeah, like you know, it's another reality tunnel mea.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Oh these products and services, damn it, that was a
better one than I was. I was gonna do. You
know what else is a scam. But these products and
services that support this podcast. We are so back. We
(13:31):
have never been more back.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
I want to kind of also talk about what's been
happening structurally with the media as this has been going on,
which is that Trump and his party has staged a
pretty successful takeover of a lot of it. You know,
you had, I mean Elon Musk obviously buying X but
like they're in the process of taking over CBS basically
by using the fact that quote unquote free media is
(13:53):
actually capitalist media, and you can just buy them out
and bully them by threatening them with losing money. You
can and in fact just completely get them to fall
in line or have your own rich backers just buy it.
And I think this is refueling the disconnect right where
there was also this this post twenty twenty all of
like this the senior management level of all of the
(14:13):
newspapers kind of lost their minds in twenty twenty because
their staff was like, no, we don't want to Prince
Tom Cotton calling for the us RB to be deployed
against protesters, and these people were like, Okay, fuck it,
We're just we're like, you know, you see as like
the Washington Post, they were like, yeah, we will literally
rather burn the Post than have that happened again. And
(14:35):
the Post obviously is like under the control of Jeff Bezos.
She was a style war Trump ally, and I think
this has been contributing to it because like they've been
able to take over social media platforms, and they've been
able to take over the sort of corporate like bourgeois media,
and it's created this incredible unreality of this image that
he is like this like staggeringly popular leader and that
(14:57):
the things he do are popular, and that there's been
like a cultural shift towards his stuff, and it's like, well,
I mean, there kind of has been a cultural shift
in terms of like, you know, elite liberals are allowed
to be racist again. All of the people who always
wanted to be eugenicists are like, you know, on that
(15:17):
shit now.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
And they you know, they cracked their knuckles and warmed
up under COVID, right like this, This is also contiguous
in a way. And yeah, but yeah, and I think
that that's exactly right. And I think part of what
we saw in the last week, I mean, I know
we're going to talk about this a bit that like
the last week when we're recording this, which was the
week of the Charlie Kirk memorializing, when everyone pretended that
ventilating a Nazi was like the greatest tragedy that had
(15:40):
the fallen American heroes. And I saw a lot of
people who had been up until then relatively level headed
suddenly really start to panic that week and feel like
things were really And I think part of that was
because with a man as absolutely risless and as obviously
malicious and uninteresting as Charlie Kirk getting treatment like he was,
(16:01):
you know, Robert Redford or whatever he wants to pass,
I think that happening in unison across all the media.
I think people finally realized, like, oh, everything is totally captured,
and the people who hadn't really thought that felt like
that there was sort of this unanimity, the unanimity you're
talking about because they're able to project this unanimity through
(16:22):
this one sort of media voice, and like the fact
that that was punctured by Jimmy Kimmel getting.
Speaker 6 (16:27):
Fired, and they're being like a genuine upswell of popular
attention about the man show guy, like like who hasn't
been funny, like probably since he was fourteen or whatever.
I think a lot of people have focused on that
as being extremely embarrassing in cringe, which like, yeah, accurate,
but I think like also like they couldn't even hold
it together for a week, right, Like they couldn't even
hold this full court press together for a week.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
They had that Charlie Kirk documentary. They were like, we're
gonna film it on you know, in Sinclair, all the
places where we would be showing Jimmy Kimmel. They just
canceled it. They put it on YouTube.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Yeah, twenty six thousand use this means I'm very, very
proud of this. More people listen to me complaining about
the way that everything, everywhere, all at once, was spreading
the porschewise patriarchal ideology of the family. More people listen
to me talk about that on this show that watch
the stupid fucking Charlie gud worry.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
Sorry to that man, but people do not care, like
people don't care about that guy. And and it didn't
And also as you said the opening, his poles have
gone down. People are like shut up about this, like
they don't care. It doesn't work, like like poles aren't everything.
But like, I think that this disconnect that's so hard
is that if you are mostly getting your information from
a media environment, which all of us do, like that's
(17:41):
how most of us get all of our information. That's
this is not a judgment. It feels like everyone is
like you know, is at like half mast, you know,
for their for their beautiful their beautiful boy. Look what
they did to my beautiful boy with his tiny little
face and his huge neck that like apparently was made
of steel and caught bullets. Like a Fox News article
said that he was like particularly strong bodied and he
(18:03):
kept he saved other people.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Okay, I didn't talk about this for a second because
this is so fucking un hitch what Okay, So his
like surgeit or whatever was like, oh yeah he was.
He started his surgeon wrote a thing about like this
bone that doesn't exist. Yeah that he was like, oh yeah,
he had this really thick bone there that stopped the
bullet and this got like picked up by like Fox News.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Is that running a story about this magical iron.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Bone in Charlie Kirk's neck that like God put there
or something to save I just it's it's so lad I.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
Can read the headline for you. Hang on, I've got
it here. Oh God, this is Fox News on x
There's a picture of Charlie Kirk that says surgeon says,
Charlie Kirk's body stopped bullet in quote absolute miracle that
saved others, TPUSA says, and then quote man of steel,
Charlie Kirk's body stopped a bullet that would typically quote
just go through everything and it was quote an absolute miracle.
(18:58):
Nobody else was killed his surgeon Tod's turning point. You say,
so that's weird behavior that people don't like. That's not. Yeah, no,
So I think like basically they have this capacity to
do this like really really intense, unified message across the
entire spectrum of the media, and we're seeing it again
right now with like NPR publishing basically does tile it
(19:22):
all actually cause autism? So the science isn't out yet.
You know or whatever, like as their headline, you know. Yeah,
so like obviously, like that's scary if you're used to
a reality which is shaped largely by the media, and
Trump has gotten into office twice based on a media
reality shaping effect. The media has been the main tool,
both social and mainstream, for putting him into power. So
(19:45):
it's understandable to take it seriously because it does need
to be taken seriously. But there's other stuff going on.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Well, And like the funniest version of this was just
how fast Disney caved on bringing Jimmy Kimmel back, yes,
which was like sub one week.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
Yeah, no, it was sub one week. And you know,
to me, that says that actually the boycott spread real
fast and real far. Like there was a Disney adult
on TikTok right who was sort of like giving people
instructions on how to cancel their Disney World vacations and
was like canceling his Disney World wedding, you know, and
like this was like all happening really really fast. People
were really mad, and you know, yeah, it's again it's
(20:27):
goofy that it's over Jimmy Kimmel, but it's not really
about Jimmy Kimmel, Right, it's because everyone hates this man.
They hate this.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Yeah, and people don't actually want this in dipshit to
just literally and you know, and he's trying to do
this again, right, he's apparently trying to sue Disney like
they don't want the fucking orange guy to be able
to just straight up say what is legal to say
on TV. Yeah, which is the thing that he is
attempting to do right now.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
And the other thing about it that I think is
really important and relevant is that a better dictatorship doesn't
go to the press and fire this man. They pull
strings behind the scenes. They get him to retract like
on his show in a way that causes no attention,
and the people who follow Kimmel see it enough to
understand that power has been pulled behind the strings, but
(21:13):
they probably don't really think much about it. Right. That
is how like real, really smooth smooth repression of a
free press into a bot press involves a lot of
strings being pulled behind the scenes, and in fact, it
has been happening for twenty years in America. There has
been a lot of that going on. Part of what's
so obscene about this whole situation in a certain way.
(21:35):
Is that Trump just needs to do less. Things have
been set up for fascism for a while. He just
needs to do less. And he can't help himself. They
can't help themselves because they're you know, because they need
it to be in this sort of public mode. And
also he's lost his you know, his juice.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
But yeah, yeah, well and it's also just like, I mean,
this is so partially Trump is just like pathologically obsessed
with late night comedy, right because he's a TV guy,
and so he's just mad on red and mad and
nude online. Except like the previous version of it were
like you were just like throwing shit at your television
set in like nineteen fifty.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Five, which is a real really terrified.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Thing to have in the presidency. But you know, speaking
of speaking of having things in the presidency, these products
and services, look, if they've painted more, you get better transitions.
Speaker 7 (22:22):
Yeah, but they don't, so vote for them.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
We are back, So you know, I think it's worth
noting that, Like yeah, no, like like the immediate financial
pressure of you know, just just the collision of weight
hold on, like the people who buy things, which is
most people, admittedly, like Disney adults are a very narrow
subset of people. But like the speed and rapidity of
(23:00):
which reality, which is people don't like this guy hit
the like sort of you know, just just like just
like sort of smashed through this like tunnel of the
Charlie Kirk stuff was just unbelievable, you know. And like
part of this this is something that Marissa Cabas from
uh the Handbasket reported, which is that part of what
was going on was Disney was about to roll out
(23:21):
a price increase, yeah, and so they had to bring
it back so they could do their price increase, which well, brother,
just delay the price increase if we're trying to do
authoritaries whatever. Okay, you know, I am happy these people
suck at doing this.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
It's great.
Speaker 4 (23:35):
We like it.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
We like that they're bad at it, right, Yeah, you know,
like Disney is being fresher cheer. But I think it's
worth talking about something that you have been spending a
ungodly amount of time in the minds of, yeah, which
is Disney and fascist Oh boy.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
Hey, yeah, I mean part of what's been so funny
about this week for me personally, and that's what really
mattered obviously, is that is that is that, Like you know,
when we went into this administration, we started seeing what
they were doing. I was like, I can't believe I'm
writing a book about free trade and law fair right,
like warfare by law, like you know, like like sort
of this this massive corporate legal apparatus that has been
(24:17):
supported by global trade regimes because they're ripping it apart
right like that, Like yeah, like the pharma tariffs is
like a huge blow to the IP regime. Sorry, the
intellectual property regime. The IP regime is what I analyze
in the book I've just written and is coming out
in April, and it's about how Disney really was like
a sort of pioneer and understanding the value of intellectual
property and manipulating it and how you can see that
(24:39):
through the entire corporate and artistic history of Disney Studios.
So it's about like Disney movies and how they're all connected.
They actually all sort of tell stories about IP in
certain ways, and how we sort of miss that angle
on them very often, very frequently, and misunderstand how much
IP functions in the broader society because for example, fast
fashion companies. Now I know you said talk about Disney,
im talking about else fast fashion companies, they actually own
(25:03):
very very little materially, so their offices are leased. Mostly
their factories are contracted. You know, everyone who makes the
sewing is contracted. They might own their stores, but they
probably lease their stores, right, They like have very few
direct employees other than like store level if they don't franchise,
but they might even franchise. They might not even employ
the store level people, but they probably do store level
(25:24):
people corporate employees. And then they own their IP and
maybe they own a headquarters building somewhere right like that's
a fancy building, and everything else is quote unquote owned
by them, controlling the designs, the logos, the images, and
they can guarantee that they can make almost infinite money
off of that because the global trade regime enforces copyright
(25:47):
law in a way that would make people who would
like to see any human rights thing enacted blush with shame,
and it is incredibly effective. It is the one thing
that international law does quite well is is enforced copyright
and trademark and patent. So when you have stuff like
the you know, you can no longer ship under eight
hundred dollars without tariffs, like those companies are entirely reliant
(26:09):
on being able to move these products as cheaply and
as quickly as possible because they don't own ships, they
don't own factories, they don't even really own the you know,
they they own the shirts only when they arrive on
American shores. Really, this has.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
Always been the dream of reproduction of capital, which is
to have a company with no assets that makes money exactly.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
And they're so close, they're so cleanly.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
Close, and all this stuff is destroying it. So I
was like, well, great, now I've written this whole book
about how Disney, you know, is actually really like a
state actor, and like they have they have like a
sovereign territory in Florida that people talk about a little
bit called the Reedy Creek Improvement District you may or
may not know about. People talked about Celebration Florida a
bit when that happened in the two thousands, which is
like a weird, creepy company town that they run. They
(26:49):
actually own a huge section of It's like two counties.
It's larger than the size of Manhattan in central Florida.
Jesus Christ, what the conflict was the Santa Us over
that don't say gay bill, which people you know, interpreted
largely through the lens of the you know, horrifyingly reactionary
politics who's pushing, which is understandable. Is also a conflict
(27:09):
over sovereignty in Florida because they don't pay taxes in
the same way, they make their own laws, they have
their own police force. So basically Jesus Christ.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Is they made the first networks.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
They did it, they.
Speaker 4 (27:22):
Actually did it, and they've been doing it for thirty years.
That probably sixty sixty nine is when they get the
deal for READI creatd. Hey, they've had it for a
lot for a long time. People don't love to talk
about this for some reason. I think it's really interesting, terrifying,
but really interesting. But the reason that that's all really
really connected to intellectual property is because one of the
things that Disney did, despite you know, having literally their
(27:46):
own statelet in the middle of Florida, is maintaining themselves
as the magic kingdom. They are associated with childhood, nostalgia. Magic.
Even as they've grown and grown and grown this behemoth like,
they've managed to largely stay connected to the sort of
image of American innocence and childhood and there have been
moments in the nineties they overreached a bit. There's been
(28:08):
like you know, there have been problems, and you can
read all about that. But basically they did image management
on all these different levels. So they managed Mickey Mouse,
They managed the law around copyright, Like copyright extensions famously
were largely driven by Disney lobbying in nineteen seventy six
and then again in nineteen ninety eight. Anyway, so all
of these things, I'm trying to reduce a very big
(28:28):
argument to a very small package here, But basically, Disney
designed and the and the other IP businesses that work
around it have figured out that if you can control
the way your product appears in the market, and you
can control the images and the feelings people have about
them and the sort of thoughts and stuff, you can
really do whatever you want materially behind the scenes. Right, Like,
(28:52):
controlling an image is so powerful, And part of why
like what's happening with Disney Weds falling apart so fast
is because if they give in to Trump at all,
it requires shattering that image that has been a century
in the making, right, Like, part of what was so
brutal about the thing with Jimmy Kimmel was like, it's
just obvious that Disney did that, that the corporate people
(29:13):
did that, and they did it because Trump did it publicly.
Trump is humiliating these corporations publicly. Right, He's humiliating them.
He's forcing them to come to heal. It's not working popularly,
he's not capturing anti corporate sentiment. Really, people are like,
why are you doing that over Jimmy Kimmel, Like, that's weird,
You're a creepy Yeah. But then also he's also destroying
(29:34):
legitimacy of everyone. It's pulling everything down around him. It's
a family annihilation. Right, He's so angry about twenty twenty
and like being tried that he's just going to rip
everything down around him.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (29:46):
I just said a lot of different things, but all
of which is to say, like, what's so interesting about
like the Trump regime in some ways and the relationship
to Disney is that Disney has for so long built
this image of America that has managed to persist like
across and against you know, a century of increasingly violent,
ineffective and visible imperialism like in Korea and Vietnam and
(30:08):
then Iraq and Afghanistan. It was so crucial to the
image of what American capitalism was. And then Trump, a
man who is just as built by images as the
Disney Corporation, comes and is just like just is ripping
it all down because he's sort of you know, one
gaping narcissistic wound, right, like running and running a country. Right. Yeah,
(30:28):
So if you look at the history of like Disney
in general, Hollywood, and intellectual property management in general, what
you can see is the way that we have that
this this media apparatus has been built. When I say
media apparatus, I think people tend to think, you know,
when you talk about images or the spectacle or whatever,
they just think about stuff on TV. But like, no,
it's also all the products that circulate through society. And
(30:51):
it's like the way that you get paid for your
job with you know, like the idea of clout is
like actually part of that, Like it does function as
a form of payment, right, Like it's not like people
make fun of that, like oh good, but like then
everyone acts as though it's real, right, And when everyone
acts though it's real, it's real. It's a social relation.
So the entire spectacular economy, which is built entirely on
(31:11):
images that rely only on being forced through a sort
of massive group thing from the top of the economy.
And the political class was built by these corporations, but
it was built explicitly to you know, reap as much
wealth as possible for their shareholders.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Yeah, yeah, to make money.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
Yeah. Trump is too perfect a product of that, and
this regime is too perfect a product of that. And
now it's all it's all, you know, it is its
own grave digger, you know.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
Yeah, deport us a line about like the way that
the spectacle sort of like intrudes into and like becomes reality.
And like if Disney is sort of like the stage
manager of this, right, Like Trump just is the thing
like come to life and powering through it, and she
doesn't because he is the image and not the thing
that creates the image. She has different interests. Yes, then
(32:00):
the people who create the image, who are you know,
trying to make money? Trump is trying to like satisfy
all of his like vindictive sort of versissistic rage.
Speaker 4 (32:13):
Exactly. It's worth remembering that, you know, although the damage
he's doing is extremely real. Yeah, he genuinely is fighting
over the election and over like Komi like he is,
like he really believes these things. This is a regime
that believes the things that for example, Carl Rove would
teach people to say to get away with doing what
(32:33):
they wanted to do. Right, these are these are as
you said, they are the image itself. They are true
believers in the spectacle, and as such break the fourth wall,
right if we're going to use a theater metaphor here,
as such, they end up they end up like just
destroying it. And I think Trump's power was that he
could puncture the spectacle, right, and then there were all
the people as you as you describe, and the people
(32:55):
who make the spectacle, maintain the image, make the image,
they were around him. So they would just they would
just close up the puncture, they would close up the suture.
They'd work really really hard. Right. So what I mean
by that is like Trump would say something absolutely unhinged,
and the New York Times would be like the controversial
statement from President Trump, right, which like completely normalizes it,
and like everyone would sort of pretend that he hadn't
(33:15):
just said the most unhinged lunatication. And this is the
first adminstration I'm talking about, right, Like people would just
pretend that it was normal.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
Yeah, that he was speaking of four seasons total landscagne
yah right, like, just like she would happen.
Speaker 4 (33:27):
Exactly and everyone would sort of try it would normalize it.
And that normalization repaired the fabric of the spectacle. And
it made Trump's fans really happy because you get to
watch August institutions such as the Washington Post going over
backwards to make an obvious, obscene lie seem like a
reasonable claim. Right, So they were humiliated in fixing the
(33:49):
spectacle behind him as he punctured it. Right, But he
he has actually too successfully gotten rid of everyone who
did that repair. He actually thought they were his enemies,
the Rhinos, right, the Republicans who kept him in line,
the Democrats, the media, they have been purged. They have
all been purged and controlled, and now they all just
(34:09):
repeat what he says. And what ends up happening is
that the spectacle just remains torn and people see through
it like it's just not working anymore. And I think
what's scary is that it still feels like they're repairing
the spectacle around his claims, because the entire media is
speaking as one and the Democrats are speaking as one
and the Republicans are speaking as one and they're all agreeing.
(34:30):
You know, we imagine someone else, John Q Public sitting
there and seeing that and going, oh, okay, it's all
pretty normal, Like, oh, Charlie Kirk was a good guy.
You know, we sort of project that that person is there.
But actually more and more people who would have been
like that in the first regime are like, well, I
don't believe any of this shit.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
Yeah, yeah, And I think it's also we're saying, like
the way that we're talking about this in terms of
his and popularity and reality and you know, in terms
of why it feels like this, it doesn't mean that
it's there's not just horrible shit happening constantly, right, And
that's the other part of his ability to sort of
eliminate that, the legitimization part of the spectacle was that
like that it was to some extent restraining him, right, Like,
(35:09):
that's the reason why there wasn't just like there were
a bunch of deportations in their Trump there are a
bunch of deportations under Biden. The thing that's happening now
is not the thing that was happening before, right, Yeah,
the Secretary of the Interior wasn't showing up at like
five thirty in the morning in a suburb of Chicago
(35:30):
to blow up someone's door and drag a bunch of
American citizens out of their house, Like that was like
not happening yeah before, And that's off. It's just you know,
it's unbelievably horrifying. And it's also not popular, like even
even those approval rating numbers, right, like you know, like
his immigration policy in theory is the most popular thing
(35:52):
he's doing. And also ICE can't do mass, large scale
raids because if they stay in one place for too long,
so many people will show up.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
They can't do it.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
And you know, and the lightning raids that they've been
doing have been really brutal and really effective, but like
those are not the tactics a stormtrooper force that broadly
has the popular has popular consents, right, they don't move
like that. And you know, I talked about this. I
guess it'll be like two weeks ago on Executives Order.
But like people are like stopping these raids in like
(36:27):
Whetan Like Wheton used to be literally the center of
the base of power of like the Bush administration ral
majority shit for like forty years, this was like the
center of the Christian Right, and they have lost whetan
it's been like electing democrats, and it's not just Latin democrats,
like the speed of which has moved from electing democrats
(36:48):
to like a bunch of people showed up and are
stopping like lightning ice raids, which is really impressive, genuinely,
very very impressive organizing. It's very hard to do. Most
times it doesn't work because you can't get there fast enough.
And somehow again like the place that used to be
the capital of the moral majority, it's like Jerry Farwell's
fucking like home domain, right, like the epicenter of like
(37:09):
of the Christian Right is in.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Doing the anti ice raid shit like what like and
this is the thing as we're going on for like
you know, probably like four or five years, but like
them do it like really serious, very good direct action.
The entire terrain of the world is shifting beneath us,
while all of these people constantly try to like paint
over this like little tiny scaffolding they've set up to
(37:32):
be like no, no, the ground's still there. There's all
these holes in the middle of it.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
But like you know, we're gonna put us some tarp
that like looks like the sky beneath it.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
It's like, wait, why is the sky down?
Speaker 7 (37:41):
Don't ask questions, keep walking exactly.
Speaker 4 (37:45):
And I think that's like, I think that's really important
and a thing that I think happens sometimes when I
sort of make this analysis of my friends, I think
they think that I'm saying that like fascism isn't here,
or that like this isn't a fascist regime, or that
like they don't want to like do Nazism like they
very clearly do. Yeah, I announced it has been like
since February. I mean part of what's happened is like
in February, when the dose stuff was going on, I
(38:05):
was like, well, the American Republic is over, Like we'll
never be able to go back, Like now what do
we do? So I think like a lot of a
lot of the disjuncture and the confusion and the craziness
feeling that people are having is because people are coming
to those realizations on separate timelines, because it's really hard
to accept. It's a hard and complicated thing to feel
and to recognize that actually, like this is dying, Like
(38:26):
this is a dying regime and a dying empire, and
like that does not mean it's less dangerous. In fact,
historically it's often more dangerous and it's death throws. And
it does not mean when you and I talk about
him being ineffective, it does not mean that the stuff
he's doing isn't terrifying. We're both trans women who organize
with other trans women, Like we know about it, okay, y'all,
(38:47):
Like we are dealing with the fallout all the time,
but like the situations that we could be going through,
the situations that they could be achieving that with the
public that they were handed by the Biden industry that
had broken solidarity around COVID, that had created an effective
red scare around Gaza, that had like you know, basically
perpetuated two genocides and gotten liberals to like say that
(39:09):
was normal and good, right, Like that was a very
very scary public, yeah, to hand to Nazis two now
with nukes, right, And like I think, you know, we
do ourselves a disservice when the only fascist regimes we
think about are Nazism, and we think that like it's
inevitably like going to be just like the Nazis, or
even if we just say, well, it could be more
(39:29):
like Italy. Like there are dozens of different dictatorships, yeah,
across the history. I don't expect everyone to study all
of them, but like, but like it's worth understanding.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
Learn a third one, pick one, literally, pick one, fucking
anyone that's got the maid too.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
There are so many like you have you are.
Speaker 4 (39:46):
Spoiled for exactly. Yeah, yeah, you could do. You could
do if you you know, pick a decade. You know,
you like the seventies, Go for Swartho Indonesia, You like
the eighties Brazilian military dictatorship, no problem, like, or you
could do Korea in the eighties. You got lots of choices. Oh,
the fifties, go for Green It's no problem, don't worry
about it. The reason that I bring all that up
is just to say that, like, things are really bad,
and if we don't, you know, throw down, this will
(40:09):
successfully build an authoritarian fascist state eventually, just by the
sheer inertia of the power that they have available on
the time that they can wait. But as you're saying,
and as I've been sort of seeing, also, there's tremendous
amounts of resistance it is completely uncovered. It is not
being seen. But because they live in the spectacle that
they themselves have made, they also don't see and understand
(40:33):
their level of resistance. Like they've just organized the FBI,
right they fired about like was it like a fifth
of FBI agents like headed agents, and then like a
bunch more are now doing like street crime and are
like being put into ice raids, And people talk about
that as being terrifying, and it is terrifying. The desire
they have to do really brutal ice raids and to
use every resource available in them is scary. But also
(40:54):
if they don't have the FBI's eyes on the ball,
which they clearly don't anymore. They have redirected the FBI,
they are not nearly as cognizant of what's going on
in terms of resistance as they were even six months ago.
Speaker 3 (41:05):
No, like if you look at the guy who shot
Charlie Kirk, right, this is like Carly Kirk is like
their guy, right that the FBI is so stripped down
right now that with a full court press. The only
reason they caught that guy was because he didn't understand
that discord wasn't private, and he like dropped his gun
and didn't pick it up again, and his dad recognized it, right,
(41:25):
And if he had done those two things, they wouldn't
have found him, Like they didn't catch him. He turned
himself in, right, And that's again someone assassinated like their
guy and they couldn't find him. Like this repressive apparatus
it is really really scary and very good at doing
the thing that it's focused on doing right now, which
(41:46):
is like dragging immigrant families from their homes at like
five in the morning by blowing their fucking doors down
and like dragging them away to a prison.
Speaker 4 (41:55):
Right.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
It's not good at anything else. And the thing, right
that is a very very good way to create an
engine of you know, like immense human misery that that
who's spectacle they can sell, But it's not actually a
good way to hold together an authoritarian dictatorship. We have
seen very very successful sort of dictatorships in the last
(42:17):
like twenty thirty years, right, yeah, And you know, like
they take a bunch of forms. I think, like the
most classically like nineteen thirties Nazi party one is Modi
in India, yep. And Modi India has done the thing
in the sense of like has really really successfully transformed
the consciousness of people in India to this sort of
like unbelievably unhinged right wing fascist version of like Hindu
(42:41):
supremacy that hasn't happened here.
Speaker 4 (42:44):
Right, You know, it's worth knowing that the RSS, which
is his brown shirts, like has four million people in it.
Yeah yeah, right, Like, I mean you know it has million.
They have millions of brown Shirts, right, Like Ice is
having trouble hiring twelve thousand extra agents in a continent
of four hundred million people. Again, this doesn't mean it's
everything's fine, but yeah, like if you look at that,
(43:05):
if you look at Ernola and Turkey, or you look
at Putin and Russia, or even Orbon to a different
degree in Hungary, like they slow rolled it, right, They
went through a few elections that were like slightly sketchy
but basically normal, like they like, and they just slowly
built power, and it took them a decade to get
to the point where they were openly doing the authoritarian
(43:26):
stuff that Trump was trying to do. And like, again
there's no rules, it might work what Trump is doing,
but like compared to Milay in Argentina, right, who they
all loved so much who came into power similarly to
Trump started throwing truth bombs everywhere, you know, is like
ripped apart and has now had to come hat in
hand begging for a bailout to the United States because
(43:49):
his whole thing, his regime, fell apart within twenty four months.
Speaker 3 (43:52):
Yep.
Speaker 4 (43:53):
There is ultimately a material limit to what you can do.
You can't just speak reality into existence for that long.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
Yeah, And that's that's the thing.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
Right.
Speaker 3 (44:02):
If it was possible to just speak reality into existence,
we would all be living on a neo conservatism, right.
There would be like a pure, well functioning oil extracting
American client state in a rock right now. And I
don't know what the fuck they would have done with
a guinnesson, but like if, if, if you could just
do the thing, And I talked about this on the show.
I talked about this on the show all the time, right.
The thing the neo conservatives thought they could do with
(44:23):
evidence based reality thing right, where like they they thought
that what they could do was just instead of observing
reality and creating your positions from it, they thought they
could just purely influence and manipulate reality to become whatever
they wanted it to be and they couldn't, right, Like
where is George Bush right now?
Speaker 2 (44:39):
Right? Like where is Dick Cheney?
Speaker 3 (44:41):
Like the Trump administration somehow staggeringly has managed to like
they finally found a war crime so bad that John
wu the art like the guy who wrote the torture manuals,
was like, wait, hold on, you can't just blow up
random like boats of people in Venezuela, Like what what?
Like I literally had not even occurred to me that
(45:03):
it was possible for you to commit a war crime
so bad that the guy who up the torture memos
was like, hold on, hold on, hold on, wolla, I
ain't set up for this shit.
Speaker 4 (45:11):
Like it's yeah, they're absolutely like unhinged. They're horrible, and
thank god they are so unpopular and so bad at this. Yeah,
because if they were just a little bit better at this,
I think it's very clear what they want.
Speaker 3 (45:28):
We're we're screwed, Yeah, like we go we go under
like four months, but that hasn't happened because they're not
good at this, and they're tearing apart the very institutional
apparattus like Disney, Like they're tearing apart the very institutional
lepparttus is that were designed to like propagate them. Like
Trump could have just made peace with Disney, right, Like
(45:49):
Trump could have just used it, you know, like like
basically like the way that every other being, like like
the way literally the Nazis did right like until like
literally until they were forced to break it off dream
like world War two, right, which is like used Disney
as a propaganda apparatus for you.
Speaker 4 (46:04):
And Disney was gun shy because of the fight with
the fight with Santas didn't go that well for them, yeah, surprisingly,
you know, like they had some trouble with that, and
so they were gun shy, like going into the administration,
Like they were very quiet, like they were not rocking
the boat. They were making lots of statements about how like,
you know, we support it, Like he didn't have to
goad them into taking a position in the culture war.
Like they were just very glad that they weren't fighting
(46:26):
off Tasantus anymore, and that they weren't fighting off you know,
the Daily Wire, you know, claiming that they were you
know whatever the woke mind virus or whatever the hell,
you know, yeah, like they were just they were just
putting there, keeping their heads down, trying to rebuild after
the disaster of the pandemic, right, like trying to like
get their cruise line back up and like as profitable
as it could be, you know, Like they were they
were working on like they were just doing their thing,
(46:46):
and they were like, no reason Trump should stop that.
There's no reason Trump should spp that. They is what
they thought.
Speaker 3 (46:50):
No, it's like they were implementing like a lot of
the culture warses they wanted in terms of like Okay,
we're going back to white people were never having another
non white character again.
Speaker 4 (46:59):
Like shit, like they cancel they're canceling TV shows with
just like queer characters. Like they're just they're just doing
stuff like that. They're doing they're doing everything that the
regime wants. But as you mentioned, he's just sitting there
watching TV and like like throwing his remote around and
like unfortunately his remote like dictates US policy.
Speaker 3 (47:19):
M I think that's an important note to close on
because like his remote dictates US policy to the extent
that everyone pretends that it does. And one of the
things that can start happening in the in the end
stages of these kind of regimes is that like the
levers of power become unglued from the mechanisms of the state.
Speaker 4 (47:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (47:38):
Right, so he just like declared that antifas like a
domestic terrorist organization. Right, we're gonna be talking about that
later this week, possibly earlier this week.
Speaker 2 (47:46):
Got to know when this episode's coming out.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
But that doesn't do anything in and of itself. He's
just like waving a magic wander round. But if he
doesn't have the repressive apparatus to make that matter, then okay,
then him throwing the remote around isn't like gesturally controlling
the arm of like one of the most sophisticated, what's
supposed to be one of the most fiscated pressed apparatuses ever. Right,
(48:10):
And they rely on both the compliance of the state bureaucracy,
which they've been decently good at pulling in line, but
also they rely at our compliance for this.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
And you don't have to comply with them. That's the fun.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
Thing about about existence is that they can't just they
can't just make it real unless you help them.
Speaker 4 (48:32):
And as we saw, as you're alreay talking about the
Charlie Kirk special, doesn't go up, right, they say, like
the yeah, the COVID vaccines are like, we're going to
restrict them. And most of the pharmacies are just like
just check a box saying you need it, like you know,
like not in every state. But again, like these massive institutions,
they can't really get them in line, So why are
you letting them get you in line?
Speaker 2 (48:50):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (48:51):
And remember, you know, like they had better control of
their institutional apparatuses in twenty twenty and the outcome of
that was there was a giant uprising and they put
the president and a bunker, a thing that he's still
mad about to this day. Right, even when it looks
like they have total control, they don't. And I don't
know if he's gonna like end up in a Hitler bunker.
(49:11):
But look, as of right now, as it stands, the
record of Trump administration's ending with Trump hiding in a
bunker is one hundred percent. So you know, if if
if the past is to be a prediction of the future,
we could see it again when all of this ship
goes to hell and the economy collapses and everyone's like, oh,
this was all lie the whole time.
Speaker 5 (49:32):
Wow, damn, hey look like you know, and oh god,
you can say that, But I don't know if we can't.
Speaker 3 (49:43):
Uh, we're just gonna, we're just gonna, we're just gonna
put a really long leap over that entire sentence, and
we're gonna, we're we're gonna leave that sentence as an
exercise to the reader completing the sentence, just figure out
what it was saying, not doing the thing. Okay, this
this has been It could happen here, Vicky. Where can
people for you order your book?
Speaker 4 (50:05):
Oh, you can go to Haymarket and that's who's putting
it out and they have a list of links. You
can also go to my blue Sky account vickiyacab dot
besky dot social and you can find a link there.
Speaker 2 (50:15):
Yeah, and where can people find you and your work?
Speaker 4 (50:18):
Call shiny things dot com. It's the Collective Anarchist Writers
or any other acronym you like. C AW. That's where
I'm working the most regularly.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
Now, good growth, heming, that's great, that's great.
Speaker 4 (50:28):
It's Corvid based.
Speaker 2 (50:29):
Yeah, we love a Corvid based economy.
Speaker 4 (50:33):
Thanks so much for having me, Amia, Yeah, thanks for
coming on.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
It could happen here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 3 (50:41):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool Zonemedia. Dot com or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can now find sources for it could happen here,
listed directly in episode descriptions.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
Thanks for listening,
Also media welcome to it could happen to hear a
podcast about why everything feels absolutely awful.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
And also deeply unhinged. I'm your host. Feel long and
oh boy, thing feel bad? I don't know. This is
my bost This is my most Robert in a while.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
With me to talk about why everything sort of feels
like this and the disconnect between the fact that like
everyone actually hates Trump and the way that's being not
covered and reflected in everything that you interact with. Is
Vicky Ostrowell, who is a writer and editor at the
collective journal Call you were of many things agitated.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
I'm very busy, I.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Think, it says bricklayer, right. Yeah. He also has a
new book called The Extended Universe out April fourteenth of
next year that is about the way that Disney sort
of took over the world through the deployment, expansion, and
usage of the violence of the copyright regime, a thing
that is suddenly very relevant again in our weird Jimmy
(01:17):
Kimmel Hours. So we'll be talking some more about that
and about Disney's long history of fascist bullshit towards the
end of the ship.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
Yeah, yeah, well it's it's it's a pleasure to be
hearing me at thanks And yeah, we are all Jimmy's Kimmel,
you know, in this moment, I think.
Speaker 5 (01:32):
Oh God, oh Jimmy's Kimmel.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
That okay.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
So I think that the place I wanted to start
is with this like question of like, why does it
feel like this? Yeah, And I think part of the
reason it feels like that is that Trump's Aprouler rating
is really low, Like people don't actually like him. It's
like we're reading is forty one percent. It's down like
a point in September. Even with all the Charlie Kirk stuff.
(02:05):
It's still down. His most popular policy is immigration policy,
which is terrifying, But his most popular policy is pulling
at forty two percent, So no one actually likes him
or anything that he does, right, and like, like forty
one percent is still like a lot of people, but
it's not the majority of the country, notably, like bi
(02:26):
how math works.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
There's been a few things I think are interesting about
this there. There there are signs that this is actually
really really there's something substantive happening here. One of them
was a special election that I think people have paid
attention to for about two days and then forgot about.
Which was a special election in Iowa which prevented the
GOP from getting a two third supermajority in the state
(02:52):
legislature and the Democrats somehow, miraculously, even though the Democrats
are hideously unpopular, they won a special election in a
district in Western Iowa that was plus eleven for Trump
this year. And this is not like a like this
is a district that is like just Sioux City or something,
(03:12):
or like you know, this is a this is a
jerrymandered ass district that is like a little bit of
Sioux City and then stretched out all the way into
a bunch of rural areas like diffuse the vote. They
won this district by eleven like last year they lost
this election by eleven points in Western Iowa.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
Yeah, unhinged.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
They're doing like all elections like this like that. It's
it's thing ridiculous, Like again this this is like this
is again like voting for people who are like not popular,
but it's like literally any alternative people are like holy shit.
Western Iowa is like nah, fuck this this fucking sucks
ass Like it's.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
Yeah, a thing that you know, I've been following a
bit is that farmers are freaking out. Yeah, soybean, soybean
crops and corn crops are going to be rotting in
the fields, you know. I think soybean so soy in particular,
something like fifty percent of the US soy crop is
traditionally export and by traditionally I mean every year exported
to China. This year, China is not buying any American
(04:13):
soybeans yep. So literally half of the market is going
to die. And I don't know, you know, sometimes these
numbers don't don't really do justice. If half of an
economy collapses, that's the whole economy collapsing. That's not that's
not like oh yeah, they just like took you know,
a haircut, Like that's massive.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
American farmers are like the most bailed out class of
people who are not like major corporations in the entire world.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
And it's not working.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Like they keep they keep being like, oh, it's okay,
we'll just like give you a bunch of money, and
it's not enough because China has decided not to buy any.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Of the soybean crop.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
But it's like okay, yeah, and this is something we
talked about like at the beginning of the administration, which
is that like this administration has been going through and
systematically alienating every single part of the coalition. Yeah, they're
pissing off like the farmers. They're pissing off like the
major pharmaceutical companies, they're pissing off the military. They're pissing
off a whole bunch of the parts of government bureaucracy.
(05:08):
Like they've kind of stripped the FBI to the bones
over like comey stuff that they're still mad about. And
then the guy they put in charge of it is
just like completely incompetence, and it's like, Okay, there's only
so long you can sort of go like systematically alienating
every part of your coalition, just like basically attempting to
drop a bomb on the economy every single week, and
(05:29):
sometimes it drops and sometimes it doesn't.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
Yeah, exactly. I think there's actually an interesting sort of
parallel here with tech stocks and with like the economy
in general that has been sort of you know, on
the ground for most of us has felt like it's
been in recession since twenty twenty. Yeahright, you know, of
different sizes and localities, but it's felt bad for a while.
Now it's really bad. No one can get a job, yep, right,
like things are really like prices are going up up up.
(05:54):
Everyone feels bad, and yet the stock market is still
achieving highs. And I think there's sort of a generalized
equivalent strategy of like make it look like things are
normal and good and like that will actually just support
things materially, and like, yep, I mean maybe it will forever.
Maybe the bottom will never fall out. I don't know.
(06:15):
I don't think that's I think that's a bad bad
but like, okay.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Yeah, well but and I think the interesting part of
this too is if you look at what's going on
with the economy, and it's also word noting, right, like,
the economy nominally in sort of econometric terms, looks fine.
You're not fine, but it looks sort of okay, right,
the stock market is still growing. There's technically like economic growth.
But comma, we both saw this chart a couple of
(06:44):
weeks ago. That is the most unhinged thing I've ever
seen in my entire life, which is there is a
GDP chart by a JP Morgan analyst which shows that
tech in the last like year roughly and like in
the last sort of like church and Window, it's been
thirty five to forty five percent of all US GDP growth.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
And when I say tech, by the way, like to
be clear about this, it is technically a composite of
like all sector, right, but like it's basically just the
like the top like the five big tech companies. Right,
it's like Apple, it's Microsoft, but pasifically. And this is
the one that's like unhinged right now, is that like
the most valuable company in the world is in video,
(07:29):
a company that makes graphics cards.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
Yep, yep.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
And this is all because this is all of his
GDP growth quote unquote is AI boom stuff? Right, it's
like massive fix capital investments. Sure, it's like yeah, there's
like incredible fixed capal investments, but the fixed capital investments
are just We're building a diesel powered AI data center
somewhere in Tennessee that is going to poison the entire
population for no benefits. Yeah, And it's like all of
(07:55):
these companies like have gone just completely totally all in
on AI. I think it doesn't make anybody, can't make
anybody in structurally, will not make anybody. And this is
like a third of like the growth of the economy.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
We are actually living through the famous old tweet the drill.
Is it drill about the candles? Someone out fixed my economy.
We're living in the candles tweet. The whole economy is candles. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (08:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
And this is the thing that our colleague at this
run argues that there's just there is not enough money
in the world to just continuously bail these companies out. Yeah,
Like there just isn't right the cash flow of these companies.
It's like they've managed to achieve a cash flow rate
that like can't be replaced by government contracts, which is
(08:36):
just unbelievable. And I think this is one of the disconnectings,
right because like it's interesting You're starting to see a
little bit of stuff crop up from like local level
politicians where every once in a while you get them
to be like, oh yeah, no, it is like a
recession economy, like on the ground in like Wisconsin. But
I feel like in the media, and this is one
of the things that I think makes everything insane. It's
(08:57):
not being treated that way.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
Yeah no, And I think you know, you you went
exactly where where you know, I mean, we had talked
about going but we were going to go, which is
that like part of what is so crazy making about
this current moment is precisely that disconnect between sort of
the on the ground experience that everyone's been having for
years now. But it's like especially intense and like the
fact that like AI is very obviously not interesting or
(09:24):
good and no one likes it, and like even that
people who sort of are i think, mostly in good
faith like trying to take it seriously, and who are like, yeah,
it's going to change everything, Like you know, like normally
people in work stuff, like they don't really use it
very much, or if they do use it, like it's
not effective. There wasn't a campaign to force everyone to
buy smartphones. When the iPhone happened, everyone wanted one because
(09:46):
it was like obvious what it did for you. Now
you know, they're obviously whatever. It's not This is not
a defense of the smartphone, but like there is this
broad recognition that that is nonsense, right, that like the
I economy is nonsense, that like the economy that everyone says
is doing fine feels bad. And this has been going
on since you know, Biden campaigned on you know, oh,
(10:07):
it's just a vibe session, the you know, the economy
is fine, and the economy wasn't fine.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
No.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
One of the charts I really am obsessed with is
a chart from like Bloomberg, which is like a small
business owner confidence from like twenty ten to twenty twenty five,
and like if you look like from twenty sixteen to
twenty twenty, which is the first Trump term, it goes
up like five hundred percent, right.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
She's cry, just goes up.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
It just just as huge. It's the highest that's been
by huge margin, and it just drops again in twenty twenty.
So it finally made me understand why so many Libs
were like so committed to the vibe session analysis, because
there was a massive vibe inflation under the first Trump administration.
So the reason people felt like the economy was good
was because small business owners. And this is the classic
analysis of fascists, right, the petty boys, wow, the small
(10:52):
business Yeah, they were like, this are the best times
you've ever lived through, based on no evidence. And if
you work for a business and your boss is like
things are booming, are doing great, you know, if you
don't run the numbers, you're likely to believe it. You know,
like if if everyone around you is saying that like
there's no reason to doubt it unless I mean, you know,
you don't you don't really believe your boss all the time.
But you know what I'm saying, like it just has
it has an effect of making everyone feel like things
(11:14):
are better. That chart started to creep up again after
Trump's election November twenty twenty four, before Liberation Day, but
on the announcement of the Liberation Day, traffs tanks. So
that's gone.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Yeah, it's gone.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Yeah, And I think that's a really vital sort of
conponent of what's happening. Is like, you know, we talk
a lot about how so there's sort of these like
self contained like reality tunnels that people are gone down.
But it's also really diffused by class. Yes, yes, And
this ties back to the AI stuff for example, where
it's like, if you are in the tech sector, AI
(11:47):
is kind of useful because the one thing you can
sort of kind of do decently well is programmed, right,
and you're and if you are in this sort of
like world, which is again, enormous portions of all of
the economic growth, right that is happening is coming out
of these places, and it's like, oh, this really does
look like like the future is here. If you've you
suddenly have this machine that can do your job for you.
(12:09):
And it's like, well maybe coding, which wasn't that hard
to begin with, maybe, but like you know, like guys,
I say this as someone who learned to code and
hated it, but like you know, but like it creates
these sort of like self reinforced like reality tunnels. But
every the thing about the reality tunnels is like every
once in a while, like the actual world comes in
(12:29):
like a giant fucking arrow and punctures it. And that's
what happened to those all business people was they were like,
oh shit, what do you mean they got rid of
the deminimistic scession? What do you mean they're putting all
these tariffs up? What do you mean they're like just
straight up taking a sledgehammer to the entire logistics system
that have been moved. Like that's the basis of like
most America's all businesses are like our shipping businesses right
like or they're either either directly shipping businesses or they
(12:51):
rely on on cheap imports from a whole bunch of
different countries. This even goes into like the grift economy, right, Like,
massive portions of the grift economy are just like, yeah,
I drop drip and grift bull supplements stacks.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
Yeah exactly, Yeah, like you know, it's another reality tunnel mea.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Oh these products and services, damn it, that was a
better one than I was. I was gonna do. You
know what else is a scam. But these products and
services that support this podcast. We are so back. We
(13:31):
have never been more back.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
I want to kind of also talk about what's been
happening structurally with the media as this has been going on,
which is that Trump and his party has staged a
pretty successful takeover of a lot of it. You know,
you had, I mean Elon Musk obviously buying X but
like they're in the process of taking over CBS basically
by using the fact that quote unquote free media is
(13:53):
actually capitalist media, and you can just buy them out
and bully them by threatening them with losing money. You
can and in fact just completely get them to fall
in line or have your own rich backers just buy it.
And I think this is refueling the disconnect right where
there was also this this post twenty twenty all of
like this the senior management level of all of the
(14:13):
newspapers kind of lost their minds in twenty twenty because
their staff was like, no, we don't want to Prince
Tom Cotton calling for the us RB to be deployed
against protesters, and these people were like, Okay, fuck it,
We're just we're like, you know, you see as like
the Washington Post, they were like, yeah, we will literally
rather burn the Post than have that happened again. And
(14:35):
the Post obviously is like under the control of Jeff Bezos.
She was a style war Trump ally, and I think
this has been contributing to it because like they've been
able to take over social media platforms, and they've been
able to take over the sort of corporate like bourgeois media,
and it's created this incredible unreality of this image that
he is like this like staggeringly popular leader and that
(14:57):
the things he do are popular, and that there's been
like a cultural shift towards his stuff, and it's like, well,
I mean, there kind of has been a cultural shift
in terms of like, you know, elite liberals are allowed
to be racist again. All of the people who always
wanted to be eugenicists are like, you know, on that
(15:17):
shit now.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
And they you know, they cracked their knuckles and warmed
up under COVID, right like this, This is also contiguous
in a way. And yeah, but yeah, and I think
that that's exactly right. And I think part of what
we saw in the last week, I mean, I know
we're going to talk about this a bit that like
the last week when we're recording this, which was the
week of the Charlie Kirk memorializing, when everyone pretended that
ventilating a Nazi was like the greatest tragedy that had
(15:40):
the fallen American heroes. And I saw a lot of
people who had been up until then relatively level headed
suddenly really start to panic that week and feel like
things were really And I think part of that was
because with a man as absolutely risless and as obviously
malicious and uninteresting as Charlie Kirk getting treatment like he was,
(16:01):
you know, Robert Redford or whatever he wants to pass,
I think that happening in unison across all the media.
I think people finally realized, like, oh, everything is totally captured,
and the people who hadn't really thought that felt like
that there was sort of this unanimity, the unanimity you're
talking about because they're able to project this unanimity through
(16:22):
this one sort of media voice, and like the fact
that that was punctured by Jimmy Kimmel getting.
Speaker 6 (16:27):
Fired, and they're being like a genuine upswell of popular
attention about the man show guy, like like who hasn't
been funny, like probably since he was fourteen or whatever.
I think a lot of people have focused on that
as being extremely embarrassing in cringe, which like, yeah, accurate,
but I think like also like they couldn't even hold
it together for a week, right, Like they couldn't even
hold this full court press together for a week.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
They had that Charlie Kirk documentary. They were like, we're
gonna film it on you know, in Sinclair, all the
places where we would be showing Jimmy Kimmel. They just
canceled it. They put it on YouTube.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Yeah, twenty six thousand use this means I'm very, very
proud of this. More people listen to me complaining about
the way that everything, everywhere, all at once, was spreading
the porschewise patriarchal ideology of the family. More people listen
to me talk about that on this show that watch
the stupid fucking Charlie gud worry.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
Sorry to that man, but people do not care, like
people don't care about that guy. And and it didn't
And also as you said the opening, his poles have
gone down. People are like shut up about this, like
they don't care. It doesn't work, like like poles aren't everything.
But like, I think that this disconnect that's so hard
is that if you are mostly getting your information from
a media environment, which all of us do, like that's
(17:41):
how most of us get all of our information. That's
this is not a judgment. It feels like everyone is
like you know, is at like half mast, you know,
for their for their beautiful their beautiful boy. Look what
they did to my beautiful boy with his tiny little
face and his huge neck that like apparently was made
of steel and caught bullets. Like a Fox News article
said that he was like particularly strong bodied and he
(18:03):
kept he saved other people.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Okay, I didn't talk about this for a second because
this is so fucking un hitch what Okay, So his
like surgeit or whatever was like, oh yeah he was.
He started his surgeon wrote a thing about like this
bone that doesn't exist. Yeah that he was like, oh yeah,
he had this really thick bone there that stopped the
bullet and this got like picked up by like Fox News.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Is that running a story about this magical iron.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Bone in Charlie Kirk's neck that like God put there
or something to save I just it's it's so lad I.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
Can read the headline for you. Hang on, I've got
it here. Oh God, this is Fox News on x
There's a picture of Charlie Kirk that says surgeon says,
Charlie Kirk's body stopped bullet in quote absolute miracle that
saved others, TPUSA says, and then quote man of steel,
Charlie Kirk's body stopped a bullet that would typically quote
just go through everything and it was quote an absolute miracle.
(18:58):
Nobody else was killed his surgeon Tod's turning point. You say,
so that's weird behavior that people don't like. That's not. Yeah, no,
So I think like basically they have this capacity to
do this like really really intense, unified message across the
entire spectrum of the media, and we're seeing it again
right now with like NPR publishing basically does tile it
(19:22):
all actually cause autism? So the science isn't out yet.
You know or whatever, like as their headline, you know. Yeah,
so like obviously, like that's scary if you're used to
a reality which is shaped largely by the media, and
Trump has gotten into office twice based on a media
reality shaping effect. The media has been the main tool,
both social and mainstream, for putting him into power. So
(19:45):
it's understandable to take it seriously because it does need
to be taken seriously. But there's other stuff going on.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Well, And like the funniest version of this was just
how fast Disney caved on bringing Jimmy Kimmel back, yes,
which was like sub one week.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
Yeah, no, it was sub one week. And you know,
to me, that says that actually the boycott spread real
fast and real far. Like there was a Disney adult
on TikTok right who was sort of like giving people
instructions on how to cancel their Disney World vacations and
was like canceling his Disney World wedding, you know, and
like this was like all happening really really fast. People
were really mad, and you know, yeah, it's again it's
(20:27):
goofy that it's over Jimmy Kimmel, but it's not really
about Jimmy Kimmel, Right, it's because everyone hates this man.
They hate this.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Yeah, and people don't actually want this in dipshit to
just literally and you know, and he's trying to do
this again, right, he's apparently trying to sue Disney like
they don't want the fucking orange guy to be able
to just straight up say what is legal to say
on TV. Yeah, which is the thing that he is
attempting to do right now.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
And the other thing about it that I think is
really important and relevant is that a better dictatorship doesn't
go to the press and fire this man. They pull
strings behind the scenes. They get him to retract like
on his show in a way that causes no attention,
and the people who follow Kimmel see it enough to
understand that power has been pulled behind the strings, but
(21:13):
they probably don't really think much about it. Right. That
is how like real, really smooth smooth repression of a
free press into a bot press involves a lot of
strings being pulled behind the scenes, and in fact, it
has been happening for twenty years in America. There has
been a lot of that going on. Part of what's
so obscene about this whole situation in a certain way.
(21:35):
Is that Trump just needs to do less. Things have
been set up for fascism for a while. He just
needs to do less. And he can't help himself. They
can't help themselves because they're you know, because they need
it to be in this sort of public mode. And
also he's lost his you know, his juice.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
But yeah, yeah, well and it's also just like, I mean,
this is so partially Trump is just like pathologically obsessed
with late night comedy, right because he's a TV guy,
and so he's just mad on red and mad and
nude online. Except like the previous version of it were
like you were just like throwing shit at your television
set in like nineteen fifty.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Five, which is a real really terrified.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Thing to have in the presidency. But you know, speaking
of speaking of having things in the presidency, these products
and services, look, if they've painted more, you get better transitions.
Speaker 7 (22:22):
Yeah, but they don't, so vote for them.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
We are back, So you know, I think it's worth
noting that, Like yeah, no, like like the immediate financial
pressure of you know, just just the collision of weight
hold on, like the people who buy things, which is
most people, admittedly, like Disney adults are a very narrow
subset of people. But like the speed and rapidity of
(23:00):
which reality, which is people don't like this guy hit
the like sort of you know, just just like just
like sort of smashed through this like tunnel of the
Charlie Kirk stuff was just unbelievable, you know. And like
part of this this is something that Marissa Cabas from
uh the Handbasket reported, which is that part of what
was going on was Disney was about to roll out
(23:21):
a price increase, yeah, and so they had to bring
it back so they could do their price increase, which well, brother,
just delay the price increase if we're trying to do
authoritaries whatever. Okay, you know, I am happy these people
suck at doing this.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
It's great.
Speaker 4 (23:35):
We like it.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
We like that they're bad at it, right, Yeah, you know,
like Disney is being fresher cheer. But I think it's
worth talking about something that you have been spending a
ungodly amount of time in the minds of, yeah, which
is Disney and fascist Oh boy.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
Hey, yeah, I mean part of what's been so funny
about this week for me personally, and that's what really
mattered obviously, is that is that is that, Like you know,
when we went into this administration, we started seeing what
they were doing. I was like, I can't believe I'm
writing a book about free trade and law fair right,
like warfare by law, like you know, like like sort
of this this massive corporate legal apparatus that has been
(24:17):
supported by global trade regimes because they're ripping it apart
right like that, Like yeah, like the pharma tariffs is
like a huge blow to the IP regime. Sorry, the
intellectual property regime. The IP regime is what I analyze
in the book I've just written and is coming out
in April, and it's about how Disney really was like
a sort of pioneer and understanding the value of intellectual
property and manipulating it and how you can see that
(24:39):
through the entire corporate and artistic history of Disney Studios.
So it's about like Disney movies and how they're all connected.
They actually all sort of tell stories about IP in
certain ways, and how we sort of miss that angle
on them very often, very frequently, and misunderstand how much
IP functions in the broader society because for example, fast
fashion companies. Now I know you said talk about Disney,
im talking about else fast fashion companies, they actually own
(25:03):
very very little materially, so their offices are leased. Mostly
their factories are contracted. You know, everyone who makes the
sewing is contracted. They might own their stores, but they
probably lease their stores, right, They like have very few
direct employees other than like store level if they don't franchise,
but they might even franchise. They might not even employ
the store level people, but they probably do store level
(25:24):
people corporate employees. And then they own their IP and
maybe they own a headquarters building somewhere right like that's
a fancy building, and everything else is quote unquote owned
by them, controlling the designs, the logos, the images, and
they can guarantee that they can make almost infinite money
off of that because the global trade regime enforces copyright
(25:47):
law in a way that would make people who would
like to see any human rights thing enacted blush with shame,
and it is incredibly effective. It is the one thing
that international law does quite well is is enforced copyright
and trademark and patent. So when you have stuff like
the you know, you can no longer ship under eight
hundred dollars without tariffs, like those companies are entirely reliant
(26:09):
on being able to move these products as cheaply and
as quickly as possible because they don't own ships, they
don't own factories, they don't even really own the you know,
they they own the shirts only when they arrive on
American shores. Really, this has.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
Always been the dream of reproduction of capital, which is
to have a company with no assets that makes money exactly.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
And they're so close, they're so cleanly.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
Close, and all this stuff is destroying it. So I
was like, well, great, now I've written this whole book
about how Disney, you know, is actually really like a
state actor, and like they have they have like a
sovereign territory in Florida that people talk about a little
bit called the Reedy Creek Improvement District you may or
may not know about. People talked about Celebration Florida a
bit when that happened in the two thousands, which is
like a weird, creepy company town that they run. They
(26:49):
actually own a huge section of It's like two counties.
It's larger than the size of Manhattan in central Florida.
Jesus Christ, what the conflict was the Santa Us over
that don't say gay bill, which people you know, interpreted
largely through the lens of the you know, horrifyingly reactionary
politics who's pushing, which is understandable. Is also a conflict
(27:09):
over sovereignty in Florida because they don't pay taxes in
the same way, they make their own laws, they have
their own police force. So basically Jesus Christ.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Is they made the first networks.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
They did it, they.
Speaker 4 (27:22):
Actually did it, and they've been doing it for thirty years.
That probably sixty sixty nine is when they get the
deal for READI creatd. Hey, they've had it for a
lot for a long time. People don't love to talk
about this for some reason. I think it's really interesting, terrifying,
but really interesting. But the reason that that's all really
really connected to intellectual property is because one of the
things that Disney did, despite you know, having literally their
(27:46):
own statelet in the middle of Florida, is maintaining themselves
as the magic kingdom. They are associated with childhood, nostalgia. Magic.
Even as they've grown and grown and grown this behemoth like,
they've managed to largely stay connected to the sort of
image of American innocence and childhood and there have been
moments in the nineties they overreached a bit. There's been
(28:08):
like you know, there have been problems, and you can
read all about that. But basically they did image management
on all these different levels. So they managed Mickey Mouse,
They managed the law around copyright, Like copyright extensions famously
were largely driven by Disney lobbying in nineteen seventy six
and then again in nineteen ninety eight. Anyway, so all
of these things, I'm trying to reduce a very big
(28:28):
argument to a very small package here, But basically, Disney
designed and the and the other IP businesses that work
around it have figured out that if you can control
the way your product appears in the market, and you
can control the images and the feelings people have about
them and the sort of thoughts and stuff, you can
really do whatever you want materially behind the scenes. Right, Like,
(28:52):
controlling an image is so powerful, And part of why
like what's happening with Disney Weds falling apart so fast
is because if they give in to Trump at all,
it requires shattering that image that has been a century
in the making, right, Like, part of what was so
brutal about the thing with Jimmy Kimmel was like, it's
just obvious that Disney did that, that the corporate people
(29:13):
did that, and they did it because Trump did it publicly.
Trump is humiliating these corporations publicly. Right, He's humiliating them.
He's forcing them to come to heal. It's not working popularly,
he's not capturing anti corporate sentiment. Really, people are like,
why are you doing that over Jimmy Kimmel, Like, that's weird,
You're a creepy Yeah. But then also he's also destroying
(29:34):
legitimacy of everyone. It's pulling everything down around him. It's
a family annihilation. Right, He's so angry about twenty twenty
and like being tried that he's just going to rip
everything down around him.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (29:46):
I just said a lot of different things, but all
of which is to say, like, what's so interesting about
like the Trump regime in some ways and the relationship
to Disney is that Disney has for so long built
this image of America that has managed to persist like
across and against you know, a century of increasingly violent,
ineffective and visible imperialism like in Korea and Vietnam and
(30:08):
then Iraq and Afghanistan. It was so crucial to the
image of what American capitalism was. And then Trump, a
man who is just as built by images as the
Disney Corporation, comes and is just like just is ripping
it all down because he's sort of you know, one
gaping narcissistic wound, right, like running and running a country. Right. Yeah,
(30:28):
So if you look at the history of like Disney
in general, Hollywood, and intellectual property management in general, what
you can see is the way that we have that
this this media apparatus has been built. When I say
media apparatus, I think people tend to think, you know,
when you talk about images or the spectacle or whatever,
they just think about stuff on TV. But like, no,
it's also all the products that circulate through society. And
(30:51):
it's like the way that you get paid for your
job with you know, like the idea of clout is
like actually part of that, Like it does function as
a form of payment, right, Like it's not like people
make fun of that, like oh good, but like then
everyone acts as though it's real, right, And when everyone
acts though it's real, it's real. It's a social relation.
So the entire spectacular economy, which is built entirely on
(31:11):
images that rely only on being forced through a sort
of massive group thing from the top of the economy.
And the political class was built by these corporations, but
it was built explicitly to you know, reap as much
wealth as possible for their shareholders.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Yeah, yeah, to make money.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
Yeah. Trump is too perfect a product of that, and
this regime is too perfect a product of that. And
now it's all it's all, you know, it is its
own grave digger, you know.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
Yeah, deport us a line about like the way that
the spectacle sort of like intrudes into and like becomes reality.
And like if Disney is sort of like the stage
manager of this, right, Like Trump just is the thing
like come to life and powering through it, and she
doesn't because he is the image and not the thing
that creates the image. She has different interests. Yes, then
(32:00):
the people who create the image, who are you know,
trying to make money? Trump is trying to like satisfy
all of his like vindictive sort of versissistic rage.
Speaker 4 (32:13):
Exactly. It's worth remembering that, you know, although the damage
he's doing is extremely real. Yeah, he genuinely is fighting
over the election and over like Komi like he is,
like he really believes these things. This is a regime
that believes the things that for example, Carl Rove would
teach people to say to get away with doing what
(32:33):
they wanted to do. Right, these are these are as
you said, they are the image itself. They are true
believers in the spectacle, and as such break the fourth wall,
right if we're going to use a theater metaphor here,
as such, they end up they end up like just
destroying it. And I think Trump's power was that he
could puncture the spectacle, right, and then there were all
the people as you as you describe, and the people
(32:55):
who make the spectacle, maintain the image, make the image,
they were around him. So they would just they would
just close up the puncture, they would close up the suture.
They'd work really really hard. Right. So what I mean
by that is like Trump would say something absolutely unhinged,
and the New York Times would be like the controversial
statement from President Trump, right, which like completely normalizes it,
and like everyone would sort of pretend that he hadn't
(33:15):
just said the most unhinged lunatication. And this is the
first adminstration I'm talking about, right, Like people would just
pretend that it was normal.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
Yeah, that he was speaking of four seasons total landscagne
yah right, like, just like she would happen.
Speaker 4 (33:27):
Exactly and everyone would sort of try it would normalize it.
And that normalization repaired the fabric of the spectacle. And
it made Trump's fans really happy because you get to
watch August institutions such as the Washington Post going over
backwards to make an obvious, obscene lie seem like a
reasonable claim. Right, So they were humiliated in fixing the
(33:49):
spectacle behind him as he punctured it. Right, But he
he has actually too successfully gotten rid of everyone who
did that repair. He actually thought they were his enemies,
the Rhinos, right, the Republicans who kept him in line,
the Democrats, the media, they have been purged. They have
all been purged and controlled, and now they all just
(34:09):
repeat what he says. And what ends up happening is
that the spectacle just remains torn and people see through
it like it's just not working anymore. And I think
what's scary is that it still feels like they're repairing
the spectacle around his claims, because the entire media is
speaking as one and the Democrats are speaking as one
and the Republicans are speaking as one and they're all agreeing.
(34:30):
You know, we imagine someone else, John Q Public sitting
there and seeing that and going, oh, okay, it's all
pretty normal, Like, oh, Charlie Kirk was a good guy.
You know, we sort of project that that person is there.
But actually more and more people who would have been
like that in the first regime are like, well, I
don't believe any of this shit.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
Yeah, yeah, And I think it's also we're saying, like
the way that we're talking about this in terms of
his and popularity and reality and you know, in terms
of why it feels like this, it doesn't mean that
it's there's not just horrible shit happening constantly, right, And
that's the other part of his ability to sort of
eliminate that, the legitimization part of the spectacle was that
like that it was to some extent restraining him, right, Like,
(35:09):
that's the reason why there wasn't just like there were
a bunch of deportations in their Trump there are a
bunch of deportations under Biden. The thing that's happening now
is not the thing that was happening before, right, Yeah,
the Secretary of the Interior wasn't showing up at like
five thirty in the morning in a suburb of Chicago
(35:30):
to blow up someone's door and drag a bunch of
American citizens out of their house, Like that was like
not happening yeah before, And that's off. It's just you know,
it's unbelievably horrifying. And it's also not popular, like even
even those approval rating numbers, right, like you know, like
his immigration policy in theory is the most popular thing
(35:52):
he's doing. And also ICE can't do mass, large scale
raids because if they stay in one place for too long,
so many people will show up.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
They can't do it.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
And you know, and the lightning raids that they've been
doing have been really brutal and really effective, but like
those are not the tactics a stormtrooper force that broadly
has the popular has popular consents, right, they don't move
like that. And you know, I talked about this. I
guess it'll be like two weeks ago on Executives Order.
But like people are like stopping these raids in like
(36:27):
Whetan Like Wheton used to be literally the center of
the base of power of like the Bush administration ral
majority shit for like forty years, this was like the
center of the Christian Right, and they have lost whetan
it's been like electing democrats, and it's not just Latin democrats,
like the speed of which has moved from electing democrats
(36:48):
to like a bunch of people showed up and are
stopping like lightning ice raids, which is really impressive, genuinely,
very very impressive organizing. It's very hard to do. Most
times it doesn't work because you can't get there fast enough.
And somehow again like the place that used to be
the capital of the moral majority, it's like Jerry Farwell's
fucking like home domain, right, like the epicenter of like
(37:09):
of the Christian Right is in.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Doing the anti ice raid shit like what like and
this is the thing as we're going on for like
you know, probably like four or five years, but like
them do it like really serious, very good direct action.
The entire terrain of the world is shifting beneath us,
while all of these people constantly try to like paint
over this like little tiny scaffolding they've set up to
(37:32):
be like no, no, the ground's still there. There's all
these holes in the middle of it.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
But like you know, we're gonna put us some tarp
that like looks like the sky beneath it.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
It's like, wait, why is the sky down?
Speaker 7 (37:41):
Don't ask questions, keep walking exactly.
Speaker 4 (37:45):
And I think that's like, I think that's really important
and a thing that I think happens sometimes when I
sort of make this analysis of my friends, I think
they think that I'm saying that like fascism isn't here,
or that like this isn't a fascist regime, or that
like they don't want to like do Nazism like they
very clearly do. Yeah, I announced it has been like
since February. I mean part of what's happened is like
in February, when the dose stuff was going on, I
(38:05):
was like, well, the American Republic is over, Like we'll
never be able to go back, Like now what do
we do? So I think like a lot of a
lot of the disjuncture and the confusion and the craziness
feeling that people are having is because people are coming
to those realizations on separate timelines, because it's really hard
to accept. It's a hard and complicated thing to feel
and to recognize that actually, like this is dying, Like
(38:26):
this is a dying regime and a dying empire, and
like that does not mean it's less dangerous. In fact,
historically it's often more dangerous and it's death throws. And
it does not mean when you and I talk about
him being ineffective, it does not mean that the stuff
he's doing isn't terrifying. We're both trans women who organize
with other trans women, Like we know about it, okay, y'all,
(38:47):
Like we are dealing with the fallout all the time,
but like the situations that we could be going through,
the situations that they could be achieving that with the
public that they were handed by the Biden industry that
had broken solidarity around COVID, that had created an effective
red scare around Gaza, that had like you know, basically
perpetuated two genocides and gotten liberals to like say that
(39:09):
was normal and good, right, Like that was a very
very scary public, yeah, to hand to Nazis two now
with nukes, right, And like I think, you know, we
do ourselves a disservice when the only fascist regimes we
think about are Nazism, and we think that like it's
inevitably like going to be just like the Nazis, or
even if we just say, well, it could be more
(39:29):
like Italy. Like there are dozens of different dictatorships, yeah,
across the history. I don't expect everyone to study all
of them, but like, but like it's worth understanding.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
Learn a third one, pick one, literally, pick one, fucking
anyone that's got the maid too.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
There are so many like you have you are.
Speaker 4 (39:46):
Spoiled for exactly. Yeah, yeah, you could do. You could
do if you you know, pick a decade. You know,
you like the seventies, Go for Swartho Indonesia, You like
the eighties Brazilian military dictatorship, no problem, like, or you
could do Korea in the eighties. You got lots of choices. Oh,
the fifties, go for Green It's no problem, don't worry
about it. The reason that I bring all that up
is just to say that, like, things are really bad,
and if we don't, you know, throw down, this will
(40:09):
successfully build an authoritarian fascist state eventually, just by the
sheer inertia of the power that they have available on
the time that they can wait. But as you're saying,
and as I've been sort of seeing, also, there's tremendous
amounts of resistance it is completely uncovered. It is not
being seen. But because they live in the spectacle that
they themselves have made, they also don't see and understand
(40:33):
their level of resistance. Like they've just organized the FBI,
right they fired about like was it like a fifth
of FBI agents like headed agents, and then like a
bunch more are now doing like street crime and are
like being put into ice raids, And people talk about
that as being terrifying, and it is terrifying. The desire
they have to do really brutal ice raids and to
use every resource available in them is scary. But also
(40:54):
if they don't have the FBI's eyes on the ball,
which they clearly don't anymore. They have redirected the FBI,
they are not nearly as cognizant of what's going on
in terms of resistance as they were even six months ago.
Speaker 3 (41:05):
No, like if you look at the guy who shot
Charlie Kirk, right, this is like Carly Kirk is like
their guy, right that the FBI is so stripped down
right now that with a full court press. The only
reason they caught that guy was because he didn't understand
that discord wasn't private, and he like dropped his gun
and didn't pick it up again, and his dad recognized it, right,
(41:25):
And if he had done those two things, they wouldn't
have found him, Like they didn't catch him. He turned
himself in, right, And that's again someone assassinated like their
guy and they couldn't find him. Like this repressive apparatus
it is really really scary and very good at doing
the thing that it's focused on doing right now, which
(41:46):
is like dragging immigrant families from their homes at like
five in the morning by blowing their fucking doors down
and like dragging them away to a prison.
Speaker 4 (41:55):
Right.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
It's not good at anything else. And the thing, right
that is a very very good way to create an
engine of you know, like immense human misery that that
who's spectacle they can sell, But it's not actually a
good way to hold together an authoritarian dictatorship. We have
seen very very successful sort of dictatorships in the last
(42:17):
like twenty thirty years, right, yeah, And you know, like
they take a bunch of forms. I think, like the
most classically like nineteen thirties Nazi party one is Modi
in India, yep. And Modi India has done the thing
in the sense of like has really really successfully transformed
the consciousness of people in India to this sort of
like unbelievably unhinged right wing fascist version of like Hindu
(42:41):
supremacy that hasn't happened here.
Speaker 4 (42:44):
Right, You know, it's worth knowing that the RSS, which
is his brown shirts, like has four million people in it.
Yeah yeah, right, Like, I mean you know it has million.
They have millions of brown Shirts, right, Like Ice is
having trouble hiring twelve thousand extra agents in a continent
of four hundred million people. Again, this doesn't mean it's
everything's fine, but yeah, like if you look at that,
(43:05):
if you look at Ernola and Turkey, or you look
at Putin and Russia, or even Orbon to a different
degree in Hungary, like they slow rolled it, right, They
went through a few elections that were like slightly sketchy
but basically normal, like they like, and they just slowly
built power, and it took them a decade to get
to the point where they were openly doing the authoritarian
(43:26):
stuff that Trump was trying to do. And like, again
there's no rules, it might work what Trump is doing,
but like compared to Milay in Argentina, right, who they
all loved so much who came into power similarly to
Trump started throwing truth bombs everywhere, you know, is like
ripped apart and has now had to come hat in
hand begging for a bailout to the United States because
(43:49):
his whole thing, his regime, fell apart within twenty four months.
Speaker 3 (43:52):
Yep.
Speaker 4 (43:53):
There is ultimately a material limit to what you can do.
You can't just speak reality into existence for that long.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
Yeah, And that's that's the thing.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
Right.
Speaker 3 (44:02):
If it was possible to just speak reality into existence,
we would all be living on a neo conservatism, right.
There would be like a pure, well functioning oil extracting
American client state in a rock right now. And I
don't know what the fuck they would have done with
a guinnesson, but like if, if, if you could just
do the thing, And I talked about this on the show.
I talked about this on the show all the time, right.
The thing the neo conservatives thought they could do with
(44:23):
evidence based reality thing right, where like they they thought
that what they could do was just instead of observing
reality and creating your positions from it, they thought they
could just purely influence and manipulate reality to become whatever
they wanted it to be and they couldn't, right, Like
where is George Bush right now?
Speaker 2 (44:39):
Right? Like where is Dick Cheney?
Speaker 3 (44:41):
Like the Trump administration somehow staggeringly has managed to like
they finally found a war crime so bad that John
wu the art like the guy who wrote the torture manuals,
was like, wait, hold on, you can't just blow up
random like boats of people in Venezuela, Like what what?
Like I literally had not even occurred to me that
(45:03):
it was possible for you to commit a war crime
so bad that the guy who up the torture memos
was like, hold on, hold on, hold on, wolla, I
ain't set up for this shit.
Speaker 4 (45:11):
Like it's yeah, they're absolutely like unhinged. They're horrible, and
thank god they are so unpopular and so bad at this. Yeah,
because if they were just a little bit better at this,
I think it's very clear what they want.
Speaker 3 (45:28):
We're we're screwed, Yeah, like we go we go under
like four months, but that hasn't happened because they're not
good at this, and they're tearing apart the very institutional
apparattus like Disney, Like they're tearing apart the very institutional
lepparttus is that were designed to like propagate them. Like
Trump could have just made peace with Disney, right, Like
(45:49):
Trump could have just used it, you know, like like
basically like the way that every other being, like like
the way literally the Nazis did right like until like
literally until they were forced to break it off dream
like world War two, right, which is like used Disney
as a propaganda apparatus for you.
Speaker 4 (46:04):
And Disney was gun shy because of the fight with
the fight with Santas didn't go that well for them, yeah, surprisingly,
you know, like they had some trouble with that, and
so they were gun shy, like going into the administration,
Like they were very quiet, like they were not rocking
the boat. They were making lots of statements about how like,
you know, we support it, Like he didn't have to
goad them into taking a position in the culture war.
Like they were just very glad that they weren't fighting
(46:26):
off Tasantus anymore, and that they weren't fighting off you know,
the Daily Wire, you know, claiming that they were you
know whatever the woke mind virus or whatever the hell,
you know, yeah, like they were just they were just
putting there, keeping their heads down, trying to rebuild after
the disaster of the pandemic, right, like trying to like
get their cruise line back up and like as profitable
as it could be, you know, Like they were they
were working on like they were just doing their thing,
(46:46):
and they were like, no reason Trump should stop that.
There's no reason Trump should spp that. They is what
they thought.
Speaker 3 (46:50):
No, it's like they were implementing like a lot of
the culture warses they wanted in terms of like Okay,
we're going back to white people were never having another
non white character again.
Speaker 4 (46:59):
Like shit, like they cancel they're canceling TV shows with
just like queer characters. Like they're just they're just doing
stuff like that. They're doing they're doing everything that the
regime wants. But as you mentioned, he's just sitting there
watching TV and like like throwing his remote around and
like unfortunately his remote like dictates US policy.
Speaker 3 (47:19):
M I think that's an important note to close on
because like his remote dictates US policy to the extent
that everyone pretends that it does. And one of the
things that can start happening in the in the end
stages of these kind of regimes is that like the
levers of power become unglued from the mechanisms of the state.
Speaker 4 (47:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (47:38):
Right, so he just like declared that antifas like a
domestic terrorist organization. Right, we're gonna be talking about that
later this week, possibly earlier this week.
Speaker 2 (47:46):
Got to know when this episode's coming out.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
But that doesn't do anything in and of itself. He's
just like waving a magic wander round. But if he
doesn't have the repressive apparatus to make that matter, then okay,
then him throwing the remote around isn't like gesturally controlling
the arm of like one of the most sophisticated, what's
supposed to be one of the most fiscated pressed apparatuses ever. Right,
(48:10):
And they rely on both the compliance of the state bureaucracy,
which they've been decently good at pulling in line, but
also they rely at our compliance for this.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
And you don't have to comply with them. That's the fun.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
Thing about about existence is that they can't just they
can't just make it real unless you help them.
Speaker 4 (48:32):
And as we saw, as you're alreay talking about the
Charlie Kirk special, doesn't go up, right, they say, like
the yeah, the COVID vaccines are like, we're going to
restrict them. And most of the pharmacies are just like
just check a box saying you need it, like you know,
like not in every state. But again, like these massive institutions,
they can't really get them in line, So why are
you letting them get you in line?
Speaker 2 (48:50):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (48:51):
And remember, you know, like they had better control of
their institutional apparatuses in twenty twenty and the outcome of
that was there was a giant uprising and they put
the president and a bunker, a thing that he's still
mad about to this day. Right, even when it looks
like they have total control, they don't. And I don't
know if he's gonna like end up in a Hitler bunker.
(49:11):
But look, as of right now, as it stands, the
record of Trump administration's ending with Trump hiding in a
bunker is one hundred percent. So you know, if if
if the past is to be a prediction of the future,
we could see it again when all of this ship
goes to hell and the economy collapses and everyone's like, oh,
this was all lie the whole time.
Speaker 5 (49:32):
Wow, damn, hey look like you know, and oh god,
you can say that, But I don't know if we can't.
Speaker 3 (49:43):
Uh, we're just gonna, we're just gonna, we're just gonna
put a really long leap over that entire sentence, and
we're gonna, we're we're gonna leave that sentence as an
exercise to the reader completing the sentence, just figure out
what it was saying, not doing the thing. Okay, this
this has been It could happen here, Vicky. Where can
people for you order your book?
Speaker 4 (50:05):
Oh, you can go to Haymarket and that's who's putting
it out and they have a list of links. You
can also go to my blue Sky account vickiyacab dot
besky dot social and you can find a link there.
Speaker 2 (50:15):
Yeah, and where can people find you and your work?
Speaker 4 (50:18):
Call shiny things dot com. It's the Collective Anarchist Writers
or any other acronym you like. C AW. That's where
I'm working the most regularly.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
Now, good growth, heming, that's great, that's great.
Speaker 4 (50:28):
It's Corvid based.
Speaker 2 (50:29):
Yeah, we love a Corvid based economy.
Speaker 4 (50:33):
Thanks so much for having me, Amia, Yeah, thanks for
coming on.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
It could happen here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 3 (50:41):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool Zonemedia. Dot com or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can now find sources for it could happen here,
listed directly in episode descriptions.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
Thanks for listening,
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Cardiac Cowboys
The heart was always off-limits to surgeons. Cutting into it spelled instant death for the patient. That is, until a ragtag group of doctors scattered across the Midwest and Texas decided to throw out the rule book. Working in makeshift laboratories and home garages, using medical devices made from scavenged machine parts and beer tubes, these men and women invented the field of open heart surgery. Odds are, someone you know is alive because of them. So why has history left them behind? Presented by Chris Pine, CARDIAC COWBOYS tells the gripping true story behind the birth of heart surgery, and the young, Greatest Generation doctors who made it happen. For years, they competed and feuded, racing to be the first, the best, and the most prolific. Some appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, operated on kings and advised presidents. Others ended up disgraced, penniless, and convicted of felonies. Together, they ignited a revolution in medicine, and changed the world.