Cuomo, Commodities and the Eviction Moratorium with Chelsea Manning

Today we're joined by Chelsea Manning to talk about how apparently sexual harassment is okay if it's not discriminatory, how evictions are still happening, and how what if they weren't.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Worst Year Ever, a production of I Heart
Radio Together. Everything all right, that's just let out some

(00:30):
vocal like, you know, stress relief sounds. That's right, that's right,
that's the healthy way to do things. Did it work?
Are you less stressed? I am less stressed. I feel great.
This is just a podcast of us like loudly yawning. Yeah,
this is the yawn Cast where we a totally push
air through our lungs on a microphone for roughly fifty

(00:54):
five minutes before suddenly ending the call and leave some
ads in there as well. Oh yeah, well, of course,
how are we all doing? How's everybody doing today? Actually?
Needed doing great? Doing great? I do feel like I
need to yawn right now, but doing pretty fine. You
know I know who's not doing fine today? There's it's

(01:19):
the Governor of New York gets saving. I knew it.
But before we get into that, we should probably introduce,
by the way, this is the Worst Year every It's
a podcast, and we're hi, hey, Robert, and you might
be high sober as a church mouse. Cody. It did
sound like you said you were high, but I think
he was just saying hi. I've not known Cody to

(01:40):
be sober um. Hello, I'm high on weed. This is
Katie and Cody and Robert. Yes it is, Yes it is.
I'm high on life and also high on today's guest,
our friend, Chelsea Manning. Chelsea, how are you doing? How's
it going, Roberts? You know, or at least here from
you professionally introducing a podcast the Pros, do you know? Yeah,

(02:02):
we've gotten really good at it. Yeah, yeah, we're we're
doing our best. How are you doing, Chelsea? Am I doing?
I have not had internet since last night. I've been
working off my phone, so it's been a pretty it's
been a pretty big pain in the ass. Yeah. That
sounds like a nightmare, to be honest, frustrating. I know

(02:22):
we're we're so lucky, like technology is marvelous and awful
and we're so lucky to have it. But the second
it's not there, I'm furious with it because well, because
we depend on it. It's life, you know. It depends
when you lose your internet, everyone else is going along
normally and you're just fucked. And that's horrible. When Twitter
goes down for everybody, the world gets remarkably better, Yeah,

(02:45):
a little nicer, noticeably, Yeah, to be fair, to be fair,
you know, being in jail, I got pretty used to
not having access to the internet, so I should be
I mean that's a very good point. Yeah, it was
just my space, right, but twelve hours is a long
time to go with out on internet. Yeah, yeah, that's
that's horrible, but also horrible as the governor of New York.

(03:09):
See I did it twice to Quomo pivots. We had
not planned to talk about this, but it all just
dropped today, so they finished. I mean, uh, the who
was it that did the investigations. There was a big
state investigation into the allegations. Yeah, yeah, James, Yeah, yeah,

(03:31):
t James, into the allegations of sexual harassment by Andrew Cuomo.
They spent several months, UH interviewed a hundred and seventy
nine individuals, UH, looked through seventy four thousand pieces of evidence,
and showed quote. The independent investigation has concluded that Governor
Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women and broke state and

(03:52):
federal law in doing so. Some of the women he
harassed included state troopers that were like you know, security
and stuff at government functions, just like went right up
and groped him. Um created a climate of fear in
the governor's office as well as a toxic workplace. Unwanted groping, kissing, hugging,

(04:13):
and unwelcome comments. Um. Pretty bad stuff. Also unlawful opportunity
groping though. Yeah, his defense, Yeah, you Cody, you want
to talk about how he's decided to defend himself. Uh,
he's it's it's remarkable. He's a precious, beautiful man who's
doing his best. Um. He released a video of a

(04:36):
bunch of photos of him hugging people, Uh, touching their faces.
You got some Bill Clinton in there. It's nice to
see that close together. Um. And basically his defense is
that he's just that way. Yeah, he's touchy, he's feeling.
He's a kissy, huggy man, and he does it for everybody,

(04:56):
I believe. I don't have the direct quote in front
of me, but he basically just like men, women, young, old,
all kinds. Um. And it's all under this slide show
of all these photos of him, and some are just
like posing for photos with people. And I don't think
that's what the report was talking about, Andrew. UM. So

(05:17):
it's just fascinating to even even fucking try. Yeah. Um, fascinating,
but also not unexpected as giving how I mean, just
the way he's handled it, the allegations from the beginning.
I am not surprised by by the results of the investigation,
and I'm not surprised by his inability to acknowledge or

(05:39):
accept his role or any sort of responsibility. I'm just
a creepy guy. Hey. Yeah, it's like I'm creepy with everybody.
Nobody likes it. All right, Well that's good to know,
but it sounds narcissistic to me someone who can't But
how is he going to get it out of this one?

(06:00):
Because he's gotten out it literally everything even pre Barrara
couldn't pin him on anything. Yeah, it's gonna be I
mean he's going to uh, he's gonna have to go
um like he'll do this for Hope. So right, Um,
well he's I don't think he's gonna resign. I don't
think he's gonna resign because that would know. Uh No,

(06:23):
that's admit everything that it sends. Um, but you know,
the uh people are called like like everyone is calling
for his resignation. I found one guy um in deep, deep,
deep deep in some comments who was like, actually, the
video kind of like made sense and made him look,

(06:44):
that's that that guy wanted it to make sense. That
guy has done it himself some some like small company
and has touched all the women in his workplace. And
he's like, yeah this Jory checks out. Yeah, that guy,
that guy like idolizes Michael Scott and it's like, what,

(07:07):
It's fine, It's just a joke. I'm joshing. Um. But
just like that's an excuse that many people use, right,
even like like like very obviously inappropriate touching where it's like, oh, no,
it's fine, I do what everybody It's like, well that
doesn't that's fine, I'm telling you no. End it sure did. Um,

(07:33):
So that's the place. Although he did. There's a there's
a clip from of Joe from probably like late last
year of him being asked about this and basically saying like, yeah,
the report comes back and he did it, then he
should resign. So I'm curious to see what he says now.
Jim Saki made a statement on it that was pretty

(07:53):
like they didn't. She didn't commit Biden to anything, but
she said that something along the lines of like the
report is horrifying you know, Um, well we'll see so
to to our side lawyers, uh, we're we're brought in
for this, and one described it as quote, it was
a culture where you could not say no to the
governor and if you upset him or his senior staff,

(08:15):
he would be written off, cast aside, or worse. That's
I'm sorry. It's all abuse. It's abuse. It's haunting, physical abuse.
It's also emotional psychological abuse. The creating an environment where
you can't say anything, a fear of speaking up or
losing your job. Yeah, it's a it's pretty unsettling. Um, yeah,

(08:40):
it's all. It's almost as unsettling as him with that
with that mountain last year where or the or the
wall of masks. Yeah, fucking these goblins like they're all
it's it's my governor to complin's. Yeah, maybe that's why

(09:02):
your internet's not working, trying to trying to protect the brand. Um,
you know, it's it's the fact that Chris Cuomo got
brought in to consult on how to defend his Uh.
Andrew's image is both a perfect example of like what, uh,

(09:24):
what's the term I'm looking for what unbiased journalism actually
means to the people who think that exists, um, which is,
don't ever attack anybody who's in power. Um. And it's
also a perfect example of just I don't know, nepotism
of it. It's an example of a lot of things
like Chris, Chris should resign to is what I'm saying,

(09:46):
um um. But but he won't. Uh, he'sn't an enabler
of the abuse. Well, it'll depend on ratings. And I
think his ratings. I think his rating, I think I
think it's ratings are not taking a deep after this.
It's kind of yeah, I think, I mean, yeah, I
go back and forth on this because like we'll see,

(10:07):
but it's pretty bad. Like it's really hard to ignore
some some things. Sometimes one hopes, Um, it could very
well be that, like, you know, we're all cuomo sexuals,
so let's give him a pass. But I'm pretty sure
now cuomosexual means like I touch people's faces. I don't
want me to, So maybe we're not. It's so hard

(10:28):
for me to believe that any of the I don't know, Like,
I guess it did matter for uh al Franken um,
and al Franken's what he did was much less serious
than this because al Franken took responsibility and wrongdoing like
he should have done, and then resigned, which I don't

(10:48):
know if it works that way anymore, Katie, I don't know.
I don't know if it ever didn't work that way.
Al Franken did the thing that we should expect. And
I always get frustrated when he gets brought up, because, yeah,
I miss al Franken too. He is delightful reigned. No, no,
I know you're not at all, but it does come up,

(11:09):
so I keep saying it is It's like, no, he
didn't do the wrong thing, it's that everybody else does
the wrong thing, right. It's like, that's like the one
example I can even think of. We're like, yeah, somebody,
I think there's a difference between Cuomo and Franken, though
in the fact that Cuomo was much much deeper tied

(11:30):
into New York politics than A totally you're completely correct
and like, yeah, there's no comparing what al Franken did
with me. Quomo has been you know what I mean?
There is, I mean some of the stories, like the
story like the trooper that he was harassing and stuff like,
there's some but like and and honestly, the defense that Cuomo,

(11:51):
you know, gives is something that al Franken could have,
you know about evolving and growing in comedy and learning.
But that's why I think El Franken is a good person.
It seems like my actions caused pain and I represent something.
So I don't feel like I should be leading anymore.
And again I don't wish that like now looking at everything, like, no,

(12:18):
I don't I miss him, sure, but I don't think
that he did the wrong thing anyway. No, I don't,
And I like, yeah, the reason I yeah, the reason
I brought up Franken was was more to say, like,
I don't know if that wellever, I don't know. I
don't think that's a particularly likely outcome here, Like, I
don't think it's likely that the outcome I think it's

(12:40):
he'll probably be broadly defended by a lot of Democrats.
Have already seen that among some people. Oh and yeah,
you know, I mean, I'll say this, I saw it
before in the in the weeks leading up to today.
I don't know how this report is going to change stuff.
Constant defenders, um, all these allegations, constant defenders. I'm just

(13:01):
wondering if like this report like you listed off what
they did, like it's very extensive. Um, And I'm just
you know, you hope that something like that is hard
to ignore because you know, no matter what side you're
gonna get, like so many people entrenched in in in
the party just blindly defending this sort of stuff like oh,

(13:21):
the accusations, the accusations, and then when it's on the
other party will be like, ah see believer And it doesn't.
It tends to not go both ways for a lot
of people. But when there's very extensive report with evidence,
I wonder if those people will will keep it up.
But by a popular attorney, uh, like a state attorney

(13:42):
to general. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, it's it's Cuomo's Um.
I think you believe he won't leave. He will, he
won't leave if his support right, he winds up getting

(14:03):
swept by the NYPD when he sets up at tent
in Central Park. Oh that's the dream right there. Because
we planned to talk about today and no it's not
move on what you just said, but first we got
we got to take snads breaks here. That is here.

(14:25):
It is, Yeah, raytheon does not support sweeps of homeless encampments.
Raytheon supports a draft ship. Okay, well together, everything so

(14:47):
don't don't Okay, we are back from that refreshing break.
Oh so good, just feels so refreshed. Yeah, what are
we talking about now? Cringe, cringe. The the eviction moratory

(15:15):
are a variety of of necessary goods, including like basic
food staples have are about to increase significantly in price,
UM because crop yields in some cases, like in large
chunks of the US, like corn crop yields have been
half what's expected. A lot of other stuff like that, UM,

(15:35):
and an unknown number of people are about to be
or at immediate risk of being evicted, possibly as high
as like ten million. It's hard to say. There have
been some reports in the Atlanta area that has many
like seventy people just had eviction claims filed against them
when the moratory amended. UM. We do not really know

(15:56):
at this point, like the the the exact numbers, like
every there's nobody's gotten great detail on that yet. UM.
But there's what's floating around is pretty unsettling. Everything it's
it's it's it's horrifying. UM. There are some states that
are going ahead or have already passed their own eviction moratoriums.

(16:19):
But I believe I read that only maybe one third
of the people facing evictions UM are living in states
that have done that. So it is incredibly dire. It's
already started, there's already doing some they've already started doing
mass evictions in some cities. Like there's moving trucks, there's music,
there's moving trucks. Like just some people sent me pictures

(16:43):
and it's one of those things where again, anticipating even
the number of people who will be on the street
is kind of hard because a significant number of the
homeless and this was this was true during the last
economic crash too, UM, and it was true in between them,
a significant number of people who cannot afford a home
of their own essentially wind up like couch surfing with
friends and family UM, which obviously has an impact, especially

(17:06):
during a pandemic. Right. So, the big eviction defense that
Portland had last year, the Red House UM, was this
family getting kicked out of a house in the middle
of a pandemic. And it was there was this you know,
gotcha moment when certain folks in the news point reported
that like, well, their parents owned a house. UM. So
see like why are we Why are why are people

(17:26):
getting all up in arms about this? They have a
whole other house and it's like, yeah, and three generations
of family are currently living there, which is a thing
that happened also increasingly during the economic downturn in two
thousand and eight and during the pandemic. Is a lot
of people in order to survive put three and four
generations into a single home, which number is not healthy
for a number of reasons. Um, so that kind of

(17:47):
stuff like we're going to see but all the rich
people got vaccinated, so I mean, yeah, Robert, to your point,
l A. One of the big driving factors of our
big surges has been the fact that l A is
I believe it's the we have the largest um amount

(18:09):
of multiple families dwelling in single residences because you can't
afford anything here. Yeah, it's such a dense place. You
can't afford to live in a property by yourself, and
so there's like several families. Sorry go ahead, Robert, No,
I mean I was actually reading an article about this
earlier um and some of the details on how much
worse the housing situations, like in the last ten years,

(18:30):
rent is increased by in the Los Angeles area, it's impossible,
and the number of single resident dwellings has collapsed because
it's less profitable, um, which means you have a lot
more people crammed into apartments that aren't meant to fit
that many. Ironically, it means less space for people because
but it also allows landlords to increase the profitability of

(18:53):
the properties they're buying. And you know, obviously a lot
of you know, there's there's a lot of different stuff
going on and kind of contributing to the house in
crisis in Los Angeles, but it all boils down to
rich people wanting to increase the profitability of their investments
ever further. UM. And that that that goes as deep
as like why housing keeps getting more expensive. Why I

(19:15):
think it was fifteen years ago or something, they essentially
made rent protections almost illegal, um. While they they also,
like fifteen twenty years ago, capped property taxes. UM. So
property taxes have stayed still, but rent protections have expired,
have been made basically impossible. UM. And it's all that
also extends to why there's so much political will UM

(19:40):
to four cracked down on homeless incampments to these people
who can't survive anywhere else, criminalize them right, forced them
out of any place that they might have found a
slight degree of stability. Um. And I I just read
today one of the major people who just had a
big meeting with the Los Angeles City Council to suggest
crack downs on homeless encampments was Jeffrey Katzenberg, the founder

(20:03):
of Oh Yeah, Yeah, Yeah to all of that, I
definitely wouldn't recommend coming to l A in near future. Yeah,
I mean in terms of you can't find, you can't find.
It's also what makes the worst all anti housing is

(20:26):
all the is all the amp hardwhere I know you're right,
you're yeah, it's it's um and the housing and the
housing bubble is artificial because it's mostly just like a
supply demand in the fact that there's an enormous amount
of supply, but none of it's being sold but by anybody,
because everybody's trying to hold onto it, and everybody's trying
to buy everybody that all these people that were renting

(20:46):
there's like second homes or whatever, are buying up new properties,
were selling out old properties all at the same time.
So just like everybody's just like getting into the market
all the same time, which is just causing the price
to shoot up. But as soon as the demand starts
to go down, even just the little bit, like it'll collapse.
And the renting market prices for things that are available
are ridiculously high right now, like an unhinged price. Yeah,

(21:12):
that's why I was definitely not going to move through
this breakup. But anyway about the l A rental market
and housing market, it's all a part of this this problem.
It's all a part of this like broader nationwide issue.
Like in Portland. One of the things that people have
been dealing with recently is UM I mean by recently
for like a couple of decades now. There's these things

(21:32):
and there's about a thousand of them in the United States.
They're called business Improvement districts, and they go into a
couple of different names, but broadly speaking, they're all b
I d s, And to b I D is a
place where the city government says, we're we want to
be particularly like positive towards businesses in this area to
try to like rejuvenate or whatever or increase you know,

(21:54):
the profitability of our downtown area. So we're going to
allow a sin like a business association to run this
chunk of this city, UM, including like hiring security, choosing
what laws are enforced. In some cases, these areas even
have their own d a's that are funded by local
business associations, which means you have groups of business owners

(22:15):
who are unelected uh in charge of chunks of cities
and including a sizeable chunk of downtown Portland where they
found homeless people in these b I d s are
like hundreds of times more likely to be arrested and
even killed um because they choose what kind of enforcement
to have, and it's all about, you know, making it
seem more pleasant for shoppers in a lot of cases.

(22:36):
And so we we have increasingly in the United States
unelected groups of business owners running chunks of cities and
deciding deciding who gets fucking arrested and beaten by the cops,
and what the cops do and what what gets prosecuted.
Because in a lot of cases, this was the case
in Portland until a few years ago, the business association
in our big downtown b I d UM there was

(22:59):
a e A, an assistant d A for that chunk
of the city, and his salary was entirely paid by
the business Association, which is problematic. So I mean all
of this, there's a lot of and of course this
all ties and the climate change too. If you want
to look at a great case study, it was a
really good Intercept article about the Paradise fire um or
the camp fire. The camp fires, the biggest fire in

(23:20):
California history, destroyed the town of Paradise, um people who
a lot of people like me. Overnight, a ton of
people lost their homes. They fled to the nearby town
of Chico, and then just over the course of the
next couple of years, the folks who had money, who
had had insurance and stuff, who owned property, were able
to rebuild houses or move somewhere. But a large number
of people had been renters and had no protections and

(23:43):
are still homeless and have just been getting increasingly Like
the town of Chico elected an all right wing city
council on the basis of having the cops cracked down
on these encampments of people who lost their homes in
a fire and just haven't been able to recover. Um.
That sort of ship is just going to get more common.

(24:03):
I don't know. That's my rant, Okay, it's a great rant.
To do. So I think we should talk about how
we got here, because who's who's to blame. You know,
everyone's pointing fingers the Biden should have extended the moratorium

(24:24):
and Biden Congress or you know, the c d C.
But really the problem is is that the Supreme Court uh,
and the descent written by Kavanaugh, um, you know, passed
the buck back to Congress if there was going to
be in any extension. So it is a cluster fuck.
Pelosi is saying, we didn't know about this to the

(24:44):
last minute. She knew this was coming up. She knew
they all knew. But then again, if it's not gonna
even if it does pass the House, it's not going
to go anywhere in the Senate. But it's all just
a clusterfuck of ineptitude and people pointing fingers at each other. Sophie,
just to next at us. This um New York Times
article that just broke, which is that Biden is expected

(25:05):
to announce a new moratorium for places hit hard by Delta,
which we'll see what that looks like. Great love love
the means testing a plague unreal because it's probably because
the CDC. Because of that CDC announcement yesterday that got backlash,
which one Jesus, the announcement by the CDC that they

(25:28):
were going to UH basically basically, basically the CDC was
was causing the immigration was they found like a provision
under under Health and Safety for National Security to go
ahead and continue the program of deportations without without immediately.

(25:48):
It's weird that that would cause a backlash, and he
would choose a limited extension of UH eviction defenses as
the way to push back against that. But I guess
I shouldn't be surprised by both sides. Gotta play kate
both sides. I don't know, Chelsea, You've been talking a

(26:09):
lot about what you think, like the severity you think of,
like how many people? I don't know, what do you?
What do you? What are you looking at when you
are kind of anticipating where this is going to lead,
assuming Biden's eviction defense is kind of as milk toast
as it sounds right now, Um, what are you? Also?
The reality is is that that's a stay for a

(26:31):
moment and was still a problem that even if we're
punting it up the road a bit, it's still sorry
to interject that, but yeah, so I mean, like you know,
the like how like people having a lot of unhoused
people all across the country, you know, and ends up
in a nineteen thirties mass migration situation. This is This

(26:53):
is the other. The other thing that I've been looking
really intensely at is I've been going into commodities this
chords commodities reddits and looking at um looking at the
sort of speculator, looking at what speculators are saying, because
they pay a lot of attention to like crops and
uh and shipping and you know, the importation of stuff

(27:14):
and uh so at the same time, you have the
consumer price index, which is shooting up through the roof,
which is an indicator of inflation. You see things getting
more expensive, like common consumer items like go and get bread,
go to get milk, go get gasoline, and it's those
things at up even more than it sounds like by

(27:35):
the numbers you're looking because one of the things that
was just reading, they've changed over the years, Like initially
one of the consumer price index chage like tracked things
like here, what's how is the cost of like a
cut of beef risen? And they changed it to like
ground beef and they like they're continually altering, like some
of the more expensive goods for cheaper goods to make
it seem as if the CPI is raised less than

(27:55):
it has um, which is great, but what what but
what one of the things I'm seeing is now that
it's being compounded, it's going to be compounded because it
doesn't it takes a while for this to take effect.
Um because right now it's just speculation. Uh, it's speculators
who affect the futures prices, right of food right, so

(28:16):
grain corn, all of these things are having low yields
due to the climate crisis. So the housing crisis mixed
in with the with the climate crisis and the and
COVID which has led to a decreased number of migrant
workers that can show up and and provide cheap labor,

(28:37):
are causing an effect which is leading to high higher
consumer item you know, higher prices for consumer items and
a much lower amount of purchasability among people who can
pay for it. So the effect is that people have
less money to spend on things that are more expensive.

(28:58):
And that is Uh that that is a disaster scenario,
Like it's just that there's no bad Yeah, there's no
there's nothing good that comes out of that. And for
somebody who's burning the military and like looked that, looked
at these kinds of indicators before. I usually if I
was looking at another country, I'd go, oh, yeah, there's
something really bad is about to go down right here.
So oh I hadn't known you were in the military, Chelsea.

(29:20):
Oh yeah, yeah, I did for a couple of years. Yeah,
You've led a storied life, so you would think that
there would be like opportunity and in the fact that
so many people are at increasingly desperate situations. UM. And
there may be you know, like eviction defense stuff is
certainly more common and people are talking about it more

(29:42):
than they were earlier. UM, But you're also seeing like
one of the things that really worries me trend wise
is the the fact that I'm seeing more and more
information about how uh incarcerated labor is increasingly being used.
UM and how Biden administration has said that like people
who are at least on chrona virus have to go back,
and that's mixing in with all these like You've got

(30:04):
like one of the number of companies who have had
trouble hiring people because of the pandemic without raising wages,
have gone with incarcerated labors to avoid what raising wages,
including I think Farro Rocher, like the chocolate company, um Like.
There's been a couple of different companies that have done that.
And I keep seeing this mix of like, oh, an
unprecedented number of people are going to be homeless, a

(30:25):
huge number of cities are criminalizing existence as under homeless,
like as a homeless person, um. And there's a labor
shortage based on the fact that businesses don't want to
pay more um. Seems like it seems like that could
go in some unpleasant directions. The market will figure it out.
That's kind of what I'm scared about coding. What exactly

(30:48):
are they going to figure out? This all reminds me.
Have you guys seen There's been a variety of articles
based on the same about a worldwide global collapse. You're
researchers say a worldwide breakdown could happen within a few
decades and have identified the five countries most likely to

(31:08):
withstand it, you know, basically you know, the BBC, just
different places have been putting out this this. Yeah, there
was I think in There's there was a paper that
was written in vent which looked at a number of
indicators and the one and look, there's a graph. There's
basically a graph of sort of like inputs and outputs
and how they sort of flip like the good the

(31:30):
good things go up for a bit and then they
run out, and then the bad things start to go
up because the good things are running down. Uh, those
good things being like populated being like population indicator, uh,
food availability, strength of the economy, prices fuel, food, and
essentially like the tension point is somewhere around between twenty

(31:52):
thirty and we've were at the sort of transitional period
on that graph, interestingly enough, where the tension begins and
then before and before it does that flip very well explained. Yes, um, yeah,
it's it's daunting. Yeah. And the I mean, the the
potential here obviously is that if you've got millions and

(32:16):
millions of people additionally out on the street being criminalized,
then you also have like tens of millions of their
family members who are also being affected by this, and
you have a potential for a critical mass of people
who can't like you know, one of the things we
saw with the last with the uprising last year is
a bunch of people got out in the street. Um,
some pretty intent ship happened, and then a lot of

(32:38):
folks decided after a certain point, well, this has gone
as far as like it can, or at least as
far as seems reasonable for me. I have like a
life to get back to, And there's gonna be a
lower number of people with a life to get back to,
and a greater number of people at risk of kind
of completely falling through the cracks and winding up and
intolerable situations more than they have been in our life times.

(33:00):
And um, I guess what the possibility is that all
of these additional people forced to the edge or off
the edge. Yeah, if they're not buying things, and if
they're in fact, like not participating in the economy, and
if they're they're willing to, like, especially with like other

(33:22):
people who are close to them, and also realize that
they're close to the edge now willing to like even
shut down the economy. We talked about a general strike
a lot. Yes, that that's an opportunity, right, There's some
possibility there for like something positive to happen in the
midst of a really unpleasant situation. At the same time. Um,
I don't know. I'm I'm I'm very I'm pessimistic more

(33:45):
than I ought to be these days because I keep
I don't know, I feel like, what whatever if if
if something is actually done with that to mobilize people effectively,
it's not going to come out of any organization that
presently exists on the left, because is most of them
are useless. U is kind of where I stand. Again,
I'm I'm very pessimistic these days. I don't think that

(34:07):
you're being overly pessimistic. I think you're being honest. Yeah,
I don't know. I would like I would love to
be wrong about that. But I've always had a saying
in this regard, which is that UM, organizing, organizing doesn't
lead to things. Things lead to organizing. So it's whenever, whenever,
whenever things good, whenever material conditions deteriorate enough, then organizing

(34:30):
just starts to happen. So I think that that's that's
one of the things that and it doesn't happen spontaneously,
but it happens, you know, it starts, it starts on
its own. I think the worrying part is the logic
pretzels that people have been able to get themselves into,
whether it's quean on on the right or you know,
various different sort of individual individualistic like reasons for I'm

(34:53):
not doing enough or I'm not doing very well. The
the Protestant work ethic kind of of like logic pretzels
that are going on to where you it doesn't take
into account the fact that there are systemic problems that
need to be they have they haven't put off and
have been left unresolved and eventually will lead to crisis.
Um uh yeah, and uh that's not good yea for

(35:18):
a long time. And it's it's a wonder because like
the people, a lot of many people who can do
something about it. They like they surely they know the
Christ Semas who launched in black block against the w
t O and UH will now not stay in town
in order it demands like her like five week vacation

(35:39):
or whatever twee approach to uh politics And what the
fun is? What the funk is up with that? Sorry,
I just I'm so it's I mean, it's hey, you
the more you have, the more reaction you become. It
is a real tendency that people have and you know,
just like you have just to lose that attention, right

(36:02):
her and mention or they love being the ones right, Um,
but like surely they know that when that tension snaps,
it's not gonna be like it potentially isn't good for them.
I mean, I think they're all all of the people

(36:22):
on that side of things are making the bet that, well,
the police are more powerful than they've ever been and
more committed to hurting regular Americans than they've ever been.
But the security establishment is also like that. There's a
distinction between the politicians who are like, yeah, the security
stablish will take care of this, and the security establishment
who are like, we don't know if we can take

(36:43):
care of this or handle this. Yeah, I mean again,
you this is something like I've thought about a lot.
If you go back and read the last like ten
years of Defense Department reports on climate change, they have
a very accurate, unvarnished opinion about the Yeah, yeah, we've
talked about this. Um, They've been talking about this for

(37:04):
a while. The fact that like this is there, there
are significant like it's it's potentially like the most significant
threat faced by the United States military establishment, Like is
the the supply line crunches and the unrest and everything
else that's going to come as a result, and then
you threw and then in the middle of all that
while this was pre COVID, all these reports came out

(37:25):
pre COVID, and now for years half yeah, yeah, you
were saying, you know, you throw in, you throw you
throw in this virus. Uh and the lockdowns and the
sort of and what's up with the economy being so weird? Right?
It's like this, like the stock market is completely disconnected
from the from the reality on the ground, like and
committed commodities, commodities have commodity. The commodities market is reflecting

(37:51):
the reality. And that's one of the reasons why I
pay so much attention to what commodities and futures traders
are doing, whereas like stocks are just like stocks at
this point, yeah, because they don't mean anything to not
They aren't reflective of anything. It's reflective of the people
that can play with the stock market. And I think
you're absolutely right to be focusing on commodities because one

(38:12):
of the things I think we've seen. I think why
Chelsea the economy so fucking weird is because after two eight,
when we were you know, we were in this situation
the Texas Electrical Grid was in this February where it
was like, oh, ship, we're like a minute and a
half away from this thing breaking maybe for good um,
And they pulled it back from the brink. And it

(38:33):
led to this commitment to at all costs, you've got
to keep ship looking like it's not going off the rails,
and you you have the fed do what it needs
to do. Um, like, as long as the value keeps
growing on paper, as long as like you keep the
numbers looking right, as long as you can like and
there's a degree to which you can like funk with

(38:55):
the indicators of economic health to make things seem better
than they are. But when there's not enough corn for
all of the people who need calories to avoid dying,
that's something you can't funk with, like to the same
up the books on that. Um, there's something we can do,
which is take a quick break. Sponsors. Yeah, you know

(39:18):
who will provide you with enough corn to avoid death. Um.
It's truly, it's no, no, not radio. But they are
looking at ways to weaponized corn. Very very exciting development.
The dream is closer and closer. Every day we get
a little closer to a device that can take out
a school bus and also provide a sizeable quantity of

(39:41):
soft corn those corn syrup. Yeah, all right, we're back,

(40:05):
we are We're bad. It happened. Feeling really great, craving
some corn, to be honest, global collapse, you'd run, let's go, yeah,
some like supermarket games type shit. I don't know what

(40:25):
else should we talk about right now, guys. I want
to bring it back. I want to bring it back
to the to the currency bit because I think that
one of the things that people aren't talking like you know,
because you know, like the said can cook the books forever,
and like you said, the commodities, they can't cook the
books on commodities. But I do think that is a
is a worrisome trend. Is this is as inflation and

(40:45):
the CPI just shoot up, right, then there's always the
the possibility that people just start pulling out of the
dollar globally, which creates this weird effect called deflationary spiral
where essentially the value of the dollar, like the like

(41:06):
the number of dollars just starts to implode, and so
you have a you have an over supply of do
instead of an oversupply, you have an under supply of
actual you know, made up dollars. So you know, I
think I think that, I think it. As long as
the US can project an air of confidence in the dollar,

(41:28):
it the scam works. But um it, if it if
it does appear that you know, the dollar is is
is as um transparently worthless as it is, then people
than other countries will just start pulling out their investments
on mass and then things will get bedder. That's when

(41:50):
we really turned the corner on this. I mean, uh,
I don't want to be so much of a pet. Yeah,
everyone get into bitcoin. That's really good. That will solve
every every problem we have. Bit Bitcoin will I'm gonna
I'm gonna use I'm gonna use cryptocurrency without without my

(42:11):
internet or without power. Well, Chelsea, that's why you get
your wallet address tattooed on you see. That's that's how
you change bitcoin into FIAT. I may not entirely understand
what fiat means. Not a car, yeah it is. Yeah,

(42:32):
that's it's the car that we will use this currency
in the future. Collapses will just be trading Honda fiats.
Make sure it's a Toyota highlax. I mean that that
is actually the car that will be worth money after
after everything falls apart. I don't know. I guess even
like the idea that things will fall apart in the

(42:54):
way that people think, like when they talk about collapse,
when they dream out in the movies is optimised Hollywood. Yeah,
it's like, no, there's no and we can survive it
if we just have more if we have more stuff,
and we're it'll be me and my friends wandering the
wasteland with guns like no, no, no, it'll be like
you and your friends finding it harder and harder to survive.

(43:16):
And then when you can't stay in a home anymore, like, uh,
your existence on the street will be criminalized and you'll
be forced to work quote unquote for your own good
um at at what amounts to almost slave wages. Like
that's that's the kind of ship that I when I
think about, like what collapse means, it's that more than
it's uh, the nukes go off and everybody's free wasteland one,

(43:40):
there still are those. I mean, the nukes could go off,
don't get me wrong, it's never impossible. But that's not
the scenario we're looking at right here. When I think
about the dystopias that scare me and are most likely
I don't think about I don't think the road, Yeah,
because at least in the road all the people I
hate lose too. And the stud cinematography was great. The

(44:01):
cinematography is great. Uh, you've got you've got Erra Gord,
so it can't be that bad right now. Yeah. You
Just the thing that I keep seeing though, is I
keep seeing the security establishment move more and more like domestically,
like consistently, you know, like the they're less focused on
like Iraq and Afghanistan, they're more focused on bringing stuff home.

(44:22):
They're still ramping up like sort of tech of things. Um. Also,
also there's a recruitment problem that the military is facing
right now where they can't really in slots. Yeah, they
are consistent. I mean this has been going on for
years actually, um, but it's become particularly acute. Um and
by some counts, like they're like understaffed, yeah, and and

(44:48):
understaffing of a unit, like the the number for a
unit is about is about nine before something is is
considered amber, which is uh anywhere, which is a unit
that would that that would be used in like a
war and like a total war, World war two situation,
be like, okay, well we can still use that. But
otherwise you would just not use that unit at all.

(45:08):
You would just be like, Okay, they're they're completely unable
to function because there it's what we have warning bells,
so we need to take them out of the field
and and and replenish the numbers. And an Iraq in Afghanistan,
you know, it was not a typical to have to
make sure that a unit that a unit supply, that
a unit was was fielded with with one of one
hundred three to one five percent staffing into in order

(45:31):
to ensure that there was an oversupply of staffing. And yeah,
now like it's just impossible to staff at those levels. Um,
which you know, that's that's not entirely a negative, but
it's also like one of the things that's come along
with that is the kind of something similar to what
you've seen with police, where the kind of number of
families who have children in military service or members in

(45:53):
military services just like declined to this increasingly small and
insular group of people. Um, why what you want to now, yeah,
why would you want to? But from just a doggedly
pragmatic standpoint, I don't it's not necessarily a good thing
for the military membership to reflect less and less the

(46:14):
citizenry of the country. Yeah, and and kind of police
are in a much more extreme level of this. But yeah, so,
I mean, this is how we end up in a
situation where you end up with like a bunch of uh,
we end up with a bunch of soldiers like like
like in a uniform violation with wearing MAGA hats at
a Trump rally. Right, absolutely, yeah, yeah, I just um,

(46:38):
I don't know, there's a lot of problems. One of
the good signs is that uh again, there's there's clearly
there's clearly an understanding among the people in the in
the military establishment, the security establishment, who like know their
ship that um, the present circumstances are problematic for their

(46:59):
ability to uh maintain order, which provides opportunity for a
kind of organized um movement to uh demand significant material
changes um in order to make life more survivable. UM.
The downside of that is that the situations we're seeing

(47:19):
that make it, I think more possible for a kind
of mass movement based around a strike to succeed are
also situations that are increasingly making it possible for a
fairly small but motivated group of people to seize the
levers of power. Yeah, I think. I think the the
secondary is more likely in some regions and the front

(47:39):
and the the former is more likely in others. So
I think I think we were in a situation where, uh,
and I've said this before, we're we're going to be
more and more in sort of a less federal a
less federal government, like you know, focused society here in
the here in the United States at least, where but

(48:00):
and more of a patchwork quilt where the laws and
the norms that you know, you get in one state
are so drastically different than the laws and norms that
you get in another, Like the difference between like what
what you get in Alabama or you know, New Mexico
is very different than what you get in California or
or Chicago. Yeah, and I guess to an extent even

(48:24):
that's like I find that more hopeful than kind of
the worst case scenarios in my head, which is like
the worst case scenario is always some sort of really
concerned and effective authoritarian regime. Yeah they tried, yeah, yeah, yeah,
you only get one shot every thirty years. And yeah,
but I think you might get, but everything is faster
in the internet. We're in unprecedented times. I think we're

(48:49):
I think we I think one of the things about
an attempted fascism, and I think we've discussed this before,
is that attempted an attempt to fascism kind of innoculates
you from from the second attempt in the future. God,
I hope, because that didn't happen in Weimar, you know,
but Vimar it is a different like people draw. It's
important to not it's important to draw conclusions from that.
It's also important not to draw too many conclusions from

(49:11):
that because their democracy was like ten fucking years old. Yeah,
but isn't that much older? I mean it is, But
you know, I hope you're right too. Well. You have
more and more crises every like more often, and who
were the people are going to take advantage of those opportunities?
You know, I I just more and more. This is

(49:34):
all so unprecedented. I don't ever know what's going to
happen next time. I love I love how in the
last five years we've gone from like disinformation is the
worst thing to like, how do we feed ourselves? Yeah? Yeah, right,
because the reason why feeding ourselves is going to become
increasingly hard is because disinformation rendered it impossible to take

(49:56):
any kind of effective action that would have reduced the
the catastrophic effects of climate change twenty five years ago,
you know, thirty years ago or so. It is all
or pandemic. Yeah, I mean, well, Cody, you know, and
I feel differently about that because I don't believe there's
such a thing as viruses um. Interesting, Yeah, okay, I

(50:18):
would be in everything you have to say and write
about that. I will read. This is how Robert Evans
got banned off by Hardy. Yeah, the day everything changed
for us. You know, I'm I am. I am anti
vaccine um because I don't know. I'm trying to draw
like a George Bush did nine eleven conclusion here, but

(50:38):
I just don't have it in me right now, I've
follow with the joke pemic did the pandemic? Just you
can put it together yourselves, right think about are there
they have been for years? Just to symbol it. Okay,
come on, don't make me do everything exactly, you fucker's
I'm sorry. Okay, apology accepted, Thank you, Katie. I think

(51:01):
we're gonna be okay. We're pretty good. The solution here
is I mean, and I'm gonna be serious here for
a second, but I think that I think one of
the ultimate solutions here is that, UM, the more that
we can at least be aware of the fact that
there is an increasing amount of crunch coming that certain

(51:24):
people are preparing for it, UM should give some of
us at least the perspective to think a little bit more,
because I think I think one of the things that
social media's training is to do is to think of
in sort of in sort of terms of like, oh,
cuomo got you know, uh, cuomo got uh the allegations
came out just today, you know, is these twenty four
hour these like twenty four hour and even like twelve

(51:46):
and eight hour cycles, um, and sort of untrained that
and sort of think more six months, two years, ten years,
and sort of having a long long term uh thinking
and planning because you don't or as we rain ourselves
to do other things now and to think more long term,
we should be thinking more and more about how we're

(52:06):
going to get through the next the next decade. And
I think that that I think that that gives us
a lot of opportunities to be able to um to organize,
not on a scale of of oh my gosh, reactive,
but proactive. And I think that, uh, I think that
more and more people are taking the time now because

(52:27):
I'm definitely seeing a lot less Internet activity among people
who are more active and this and this sort of stuff,
and as they're taking a break and thinking more long term, like,
you know, okay, like we have to get through this
in the long haul. How do we you know, how
do we recharge? How do we uh stay how do
we stay motivated? How how do we keep you know?
How how do we move ahead and move forward? Not

(52:49):
get distracted? Yeah? I I I find myself like veering
wildly between tragedy and hope these days, which I think
a lot of people, uh, a lot of people do.
That's it's supposed to be that way. It's supposed to
be that way, Robert. But nobody better in the long run.
I I don't think anybody benefits from this really, Yes, right,

(53:12):
there's no there's no meme stock, there's no meme stocks,
there's no there's no bunkers for rich people really, because
most of those won't work, their security won't stay with them.
Nobody nobody wants Yeah, there'll be like a like a
lot of last minutes sort of like oh funk, Okay,
we gotta do something. Yeah, I mean yeah, whether or not,
whether or not it's too late, you know, we'll see um.

(53:33):
But that is the sort of like Okay, it's at
your gate, now, what are you gonna do? I do
vacillate as well, Robert, between being so pessimistic and then
and and fearful and having hope because I have faith
in our resilience and that sooner or later we will
um start doing things and that maybe we can't avert this,

(53:55):
but I have less and less faith in that. And
in the meantime mine xiety builds every day and it's
like what we have. I mean, it's not in the
near future. So we've got years of this building frustration
and tragedy surrounding us before anybody is going to actually
do anything. And then who even knows. But I do
have hope that we will start to do something eventually,

(54:16):
because yes, you're right, Chelsea, it's at the end of
the day, nobody wants uh global collapse, even the rich
fox don't want it either. But there are people who
are invested in certain things collapsing like democracy, and I
guess one of the things that scares me. There's a
concept I try to really hammer home to people on
the left a lot. Because of the kind of low
rate of people on the left who are in the military.

(54:38):
This is not as widely known as it is, but
there's a great term, the ODA loop, which is used
to kind of describe the way people react in crises.
It was initially developed by a fighter pilot UM It's
been used heavily to like describe kind of the way
decisions are made in combat. ODA stands for and this
is kind of the process you have to go to
to act effectively in a situation. UM observe, observe, or

(55:00):
orients decide at the your key. If you are engaged
in a conflict with somebody and you want to stop
them from acting right, that's always the goal is to
stop them from getting to a You have to disrupt
some areas some part of the ODA loop. So you
have to stop them from observing the reality of the situation.
You have to stop them from orienting themselves to the situation.

(55:20):
You have to stop them from making a decision. If
you can stop them at any point, you can stop
them from acting effectively. UM. One of the problems with
the way the news cycle works, with the constant stream
of outrage and like this, this never ending wave of
ship that that makes people feel beat down in addition
to the things that are literally beating them down, like

(55:40):
occasionally cops, is it it It makes it really difficult
for groups of people to hit that to figure out
what how to act and if you're in part of
it is because like most of us sitting here overwhelmed
by the news cycle, are seeing, the problems is so
comprehensively huge. There's you know, environmental collapse and all these
different regions. There's authoritarians surging in different countries around the world.

(56:03):
There's different authoritarians rising in our own areas. There's all
these problems with It's this wide variety of problems. Whereas
someone who just wants to take advantage UM and tweak
democracy a little bit more to weaken it has a
very simple ode loop right, easy to orient, easy to observe,
easy to decide, easy to act. UM. I think one

(56:23):
of the things that fox a large chunk of people up.
And this is less a problem on the far left
than it is with the liberals who are the majority
of people, and obviously the group that is most important
to get behind an idea if you're going to like
make anything happen in the world. Is coming to an

(56:44):
acceptance that we are in what scholars Zet and start
Are describes as post normal times, and start Our wrote
that post normal times are quote characterized by uncertainty, rapid change,
realignment of power, upheaval, and chaotic behavior. We live in
an in between period where old orthodoxes are dying, new
ones have yet to be born, and very few things

(57:04):
seem to make sense. A transitional age, a time without
the confidence that we can return to any past we
have known, and with no confidence in any path to
a desirable, attainable, or sustainable future. Now, when you accept
that you were in post normal times, that improves your
ability to act because you're no longer worried about let's
get back to normal, let's get back to the way

(57:24):
things used to be, because you that's an impossibility, and
you can set yourself up in a situation like your
enemies are in where you no Instead, I'm not worried
about getting things back to normal. I'm worried about building
this and then your out a loop gets much simpler
than it's harder to disrupt you than you can come
to decisions about how to act much more simply. And anyway,
that's my positive little rant at the end. Love Yeah

(57:48):
you do off, thank you for that best year ever? Yeah,
response is not filming its confidence. If every year is
now going to be the worst you're ever, then let's
try just try to make this the best day as
we can. Yeah, I love that, and that's true. That's

(58:08):
a perfect way to end on all right, turn off
your headphones and go out and hug a dog. People,
do something nice for yourself. Hug, hug people, um, and
participate in an eviction. Defict It's fine, you guys, it's
fine to touch people. Put your finger just go ahead
and shove your fingers in their mouths. Thank you Katie

(58:29):
for bringing us to get another positive conclusion. That's my
job here, um, and thank you so much for joining us, Chelsea.
This has been such a good conversation. And Telsa, where
can people follow you? People can follow me when I
actually am on social media because for almost a month, um,
i am at Twitter dot com forward slash x by Chelsea.
I am also at I also stream on Twitch which

(58:53):
I will be streaming again. I am at Twitch dot
tv Forward slash x by Chelsea eight seven. I am
at uh. I'm on YouTube at YouTube dot com Forward
slash x y Chelsea. I have not actually posted on
YouTube videos yet uh and then, but they are forthcoming.
I am filming or I am editing. I also having
a TikTok account. I've been doing a TikTok's at TikTok

(59:14):
dot com Forward slash x y Chelsea TV. Awesome, thank
you so much for coming on. We appreciate you coming.
Go follow her do all the things. I'm excited for
your YouTube channel. Also, I'm I'm on Patreon if you
want to if you if you want to do that
to paton Paton dot com, Patreon dot com. Forward slash
x y Chelsea is is my Patreon. And yes, i am.

(59:35):
I'm around and I'm doing stuff. But I needed I
needed July to like reset my friend. Yeah good. You
gotta do that for yourself sometimes to Yeah one of
these days, yes, Robert Uh. And you guys can check
us out online at worst your pod on Twitter, in Instagram, etcetera.

(59:55):
You can, but you can follow from there in mine
crop Yes, and that's the episode so Dump and It's
not again. I tried Dan. Worst Year Ever is a
production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from my

(01:00:16):
heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.