November 25, 2024 • 50 mins
Sasha Abramsky, British-born freelance journalist/author has written 100s of social justice articles in The Guardian, The Observer, The Sunday Telegraph, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, & 9 books including Chaos Comes Calling: The Battle Against the Far-Right; The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives; The House of Twenty Thousand Books; Jumping at Shadows: The Triumph of Fear and the End of the American Dream & more. He’s a lecturer in UCD’s Writing Program.
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It's Your Voice is broadcast live Wednesdays at 8PM ET Music on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com). It's Your Voice is viewed on Talk 4 TV (www.talk4tv.com).
It's Your Voice Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:20):
you for choosing W four c Y Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Let's Let's bag show.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
In Lot, Let's breech in Lot's.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
In Lott's Lot in a lot of.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Hello, and welcome to It's your Voice the show that
and enriching conversations in diversity.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
My name is Bihia Yaxon. I am a diversity educator
and a Corelimic coach.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
I support organizations and individuals and getting clear about what
their values are and making sure they can align their
actions with their values. This usually means helping people recognize
patterns of bias that are hurting themselves and everyone else
and cultivating new neural pathways literally to develop new habits
(01:31):
so that we can act on patterns that are far
more inclusive and create more belonging and truly benefit everyone
around them. Today, I am honored to have a very
learned scholar with us, Sasha and Abramski as my guest,
who's written at least eleven, I mean at least nine books.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
I would like you to I'm going.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
To read a little short bio and invite you out
here while I'm reading a piece of your bio, and
then ask you to add anything else you want folks
to know about you. The title of this conversation is
what is the fate of American Democracy?
Speaker 4 (02:11):
Now?
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Very relevant? And I just want to let folks know.
Sasha Mbemski is a British born freelance journalist an author
who now lives in the United States. He's written several
hundred articles, essays and editorials which have appeared in many
publications including The Guardian and The Observer and The Sunny
Telegraph in the UK, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, The
(02:36):
New York Online, The Village Voice, Rolling Stones, and I
want to just mention a few.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
Of the titles of your books.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
Chaos Comes Calling, The Battle against the Far Right, The
American Way of Poverty, how the other half still lives.
The House of twenty thousand books, which I believe is
about your grandparents, jumping at shadows, the triumph of fear
and the end of the American Dream, and a biography
(03:04):
and little wonder this is so this sounds a little
different the fabulous story of lot Lottie Dodd and the
world's first female sports superstar. And I understand you've traveled
over fifty countries, and I'm lucky that you live in
the same town I do, and you teach at the university.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
You see, Davis, ye if I do.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
It's good to be on new show by here.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
What do you think might be important for our listeners
and viewers? Anything you want to add that you would
like people to know about you, or your work or
your your focus.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
No, I think you were pretty comprehensive there. I was
almost embarrassed by the depth of your introduction. But look,
I write on social justice themes, and I've for thirty
years been exploring the fishers that are doing damage in
American economics, politics and so on. And I'm usually interested
(04:02):
in what happens not at the top of the economy
or society, but what happens further down the food chain
when vulnerable people, you know, get caught up in all
these big, big historical forces. And I think at the
moment that's particularly relevant. You've got these sort of massive
changes occurring in the politics of the country, very demagogic
(04:23):
political rhetoric coming out from DC and you know, will
be coming out for the next several years. And the
people who get hurt the most, it's asylum seekers, it's refugees,
it's desperate undocumented immigrants who've tried to come to America
because their families are starving or at risk of you know,
extreme violence, and those are the ones who bear the
(04:43):
brunt when our politics goes crazy. And that's what fascinates me.
So I think that's you know what i'd add into
your introduction.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
Thank you. That's that's very helpful. I I think.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
This might be my first like post twenty four election
conversation to sort of help us like digest and process
the change that is occurring at the top of the
US government, since we not only impact are the most
vulnerable in our country, but many many other countries are
(05:20):
impacted by what the US does or doesn't do in
our alignments or lack of alignments with other countries. But
I wanted to just start with the basics of like
I know, it was a recurring theme from the left
of don't let's not lose our democracy, be careful the
democracy as threatened.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
At the moment.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
If we indeed elect the far right president, then we
president elect who we have now elected. So I thought
it might be helpful, and partly, let me just say
because I have lived in a country that was a
kingdom that was run by a king for three years,
and I've lived in a country that was run by
a dictator for two years, and I realize I have
(06:03):
a strong sense of what it's like to be in
a country that is not democratic, But a lot of
Americans don't have that contrast contrasting experience. So I thought
it may be helpful if you can just I mean,
this might sound really basic, but just help us understand
what is a democracy and what are we at risk
of losing.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Well, at the most basic level of democracy is something
where the political institutions are responsive to the people, not
just to a sort of popular sector of the people,
but rights are respected. It's a law based, rule based society.
It's a society where institutions are designed not to meet
the needs of the ruler, but to meet the needs
(06:47):
of the people. And in the American context, it's a
society defined by foundational documents, in our case, the Constitution,
the Bill of Rights, the amendments to the Constitution. By contrast,
and autocracy, whether it's you know, literally a dictatorship of
one person or a dictatorship of a cardridge people at
(07:09):
the top is a rule based. It's regime based. So
you know, we have administrations here that change every four years.
Regimes aren't like that. Regimes are designed to milk a
country or milk a society for resources. Basically, you see
a flowing upwards of wealth to the people. Right at
the top, you see a sort of nexus of corruption
(07:31):
where laws are being used and institutions of government are
being used to personally benefit a handful of people are
ruling elite, a family at the top, their associates, their underlings,
and so on. When you said you lived in a
country that's or a couple of countries that were non democratic,
(07:51):
and that maybe Americans don't realize, you know what that means.
At the most basic level, What it means is that
rights that were taken for granted suddenly become fragile, that
everything becomes the favor of the ruling class. That you know,
maybe you're not prosecuted, but that's a favor. Maybe your
rights aren't taken away, but that's a favor. Maybe you
(08:12):
maintain economic well being, but that's a favor. Everything becomes
a series of trade offs with that ruling elite. And
you know, there's a real risk. I mean, it's not
inevitable that you know, it's possible that there will be
fight back against this, but there's a real risk, given
Trump's temperament, given the things he's said, given the promises
he's made on the campaign trail, that this will be
(08:34):
years and years of retribution based government. You prosecuted me, well,
I'm going to prosecute you. You you know, I don't
like the way that you let immigrants in, so I'm
going to penalize immigrants. You know, this series of things
that go beyond normal politics, and you end up in
a situation where very powerful institutions a state, whether it's
(08:55):
the Justice Department or the military or the intelligence agencies,
get turned in, and they get turned against US residents
and US citizens, And you know, we have that spectacle,
that spectrum. Now that Trump has sort of promised I'm
going to unleash the military on immigrants. Well, if you
unleash the military on immigrants, or if you unleash the
military on us political protesters or dissenters or politicians, you
(09:18):
don't like you're crossing a rubicon. You're crossing a line
into something very very different from what the American experience
has been before. And when that line's crossed, it's really
hard to roll it back because once you embark down
this route where you know the executive has such extreme
authority to go after enemies, to go after dissidents and
so on, very very quickly, that society starts resembling Putin's
(09:42):
Russia or Urduan's Turkey, or Victor Auburn's Hungary, something totally
different from what we like to think of ourselves when
we think of what the American experience means in history.
And I think that that's the risk that we're on
the edge of this abyss where we have a political
leadership now that doesn't respect baudies, doesn't mis limits, and
really frankly doesn't respect the rule of law in any way,
(10:03):
shape or form. That views all of this as instrumental mm.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Yeah, And speaking of not respecting the rule of law,
it's I was going to say, interesting, but also frightening.
Although I practice not staying in fear, it's just like
amazing to see how how many of the appointee appointing
(10:32):
nominations is that the right term for cabinet and heads
of departments have a criminal record, and it's it just
seems almost like ridiculously, like in your face to those
who believe in the rule of law and you know,
not to mention, extremely insulting, especially so many with sexual
(10:54):
assault accusations, and.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
It's it's just.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
Kind of confounding and just like, really, is this really
happening in America right now?
Speaker 4 (11:05):
Are you serious? So it's I mean, now I'm laughing.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
I was, it's pretty upsetting and nerve wracking, but I
just wanted to see what you want to say about
that kind of in your facedness, boldness, audacity that we
you know, I think helped bring Trump to the point
where he's now the president elects.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
I think that what we're seeing here is, as you said,
this very in your face, full frontal assault, not just
on the institutions of state, but on the sort of
infrastructure of decency, and it transcends left wing right wing.
It's really this idea that Trump's basically trying to bring
institutions of state to heal institutions that he doesn't trust,
(11:55):
especially to Justice Department. Well, what better way to do
that than to bring in people in leadership roles who
are manifestly unqualified, not just unqualified, but antithetical to the
mission of the Justice Department. So if the mission of
the Justice Department is upholding the rule of law, and
you nominate Matt Gates, who's under investigation or was under
investigation for sex trafficking, for having sex with underage miners,
(12:18):
for drug fueld orgies and all of this stuff, well
you're sending a very very clear message that from here
on in the Justice Department isn't about the rule of law.
It's going to be a creature of the president. It's
going to be a personal creature of Donald Trump. And
if you don't like it, get out of the way,
because the leadership is going to come in. It's going
to fire people who are professional, it's going to fire
the people who actually do follow the rules of law. Well,
(12:42):
I mean that's catastrophic. You know, the idea that someone
like Matt Gates could be anywhere near controlling the Justice
Department or any other government agency is just a scandal.
And the fact that Trump would use political capital before
he's even assumed the White House again, that he would
use so much political capital on this, it tells you
the direction he's trying to take the country in the
(13:04):
administration that you know, this isn't about competent government governments.
This is the reverse. This is about putting in place
wrecking bulls, wrecking bulls who are going to go into
those departments and literally evis errate them, you know, whether
they formally dissolve institutions or whether they just drive qualified
people out of work. What they're aiming to do is
(13:24):
make large parts of the government nonfunctional. And then if
you sort of tied in with Elon Musk and Vivek
Ramaswami's ambition, I mean this idea that you can appoint
a non elected group of billionaires, including the richest man
on earth, to scrub government of about a third of
its dollars, which is what they're talking about doing. Well,
(13:46):
you can do it, but you're going to get rid
of vital nutritional programs, vital health care programs, vital retirement programs,
vital housing programs, and you're going to leave the surviving
government incapable of responding to emergencies. So yes, you can
do it, but next time there's a hurricane or an earthquake,
FEMA will be dysfunctional. Next time there's a pandemic, while
between the cuts that have been put in place and
(14:07):
the hiring of public health officials such as Robert Kennedy
to dismantle from within, next time there's a pandemic, they
won't be an aggressive public health response. So you can
get those cuts in place, but you do it at
a staggering cost to the well being of society. And
I think that's what we're facing. We're facing basically a
wrecking ball from within. And that's not conservative. I mean,
(14:29):
I know we talk about this as a sort of
conservative moment that is revolutionary. It's right wing revolutionary, but
it's revolutionary in the same way that fascist movements in
the thirties in Europe weren't conservative by any real understanding.
They were revolutionary. It's about destroying and then building something anew,
and there's something a new that they're looking to build
(14:49):
is deeply unpleasant and deeply antithetical to at least modern
American values.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
There's one side effect if it just amazes me that.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
If these wrecking balls are successfully put into place and
departments like Department of Health, Department of Education, housing, human
resource programs are dismantled and cut, is there no thought
about the ramifications? And let me just throw in one
(15:31):
more thing. If female bodies are forced to bring have
full pregnancies and give birth to children that some of
whom were raped, something over sixty four thousand births were
came from women who are victims of rape, and just
(15:53):
in the last couple of years, is there no thought
or care about what's happening to the population, Like, and
I'm skipping the lives of the women, and you know,
and God knows I care, And I think that's the
whole you know, anti choice and control over women's bodies
is atrocious and outrageous and cruel in itself.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
But look at the results.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
That they're asking for that will come from the wrecking balls.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
Do they just totally not care?
Speaker 3 (16:23):
There will be presumably many more people being born who
without people having the resources to feed them to school them,
to educate them.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
Why does why would they want that? What's deserved about that?
Speaker 2 (16:39):
I don't claim to get inside their heads psychologically. I
don't know why the far right in America takes the
positions it takes on a lot of these issues. You
talk about abortion, and you know there are obviously moral
arguments on both sides. It's a complicated moral issue, But
you're right, at the end of the day, the policies
they're putting in place are going to desperately hurt women,
especially poor women's, actually women of color. They're not going
(17:02):
to improve the conditions of life on the ground. In fact,
all the evidence suggests when you put these extreme policies
in place, you get increased mortality rates for women. You
get terrible health outcomes for kids, because, as you said,
you've got children who are just being taken. All the
(17:24):
resources are being removed from the well being of young children.
So none of this is sort of a good thing
for women if you're talking about abortion. If you're talking
about immigration, the same thing. If you terrorize immigrant communities,
you have far worth public health outcomes, you have far
worse nutritional outcomes because people are scared away from applying
(17:45):
for benefits. You have people living in slum housing who
are scared of reporting the slum conditions because they know
that their landlords can then report them and get them
deported or at least render them vulnerable to deportation. So
on all kinds of measures. When you introduce a government
that's you know, quote unquote tough in the way that
the Trump administration is sort of claiming to be tough,
(18:08):
what you get is worse outcomes for the well being
of society. Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't certain
sectors that are going to that are going to benefit.
You know, any autocracy makes trade offs. Any autocracy sort
of puts down at least some benefits to some groups
because that's how it holds onto power. Some people benefit
(18:30):
when there are these kind of policy changes put in place.
It looks to me, and I may be wrong, but
if you look at who's in the government, it's stack
full of billionaires, it's stack full of the super wealthy,
and the Commerce Department, the Treasury, Agricultural, Interior, Education, Trump himself,
you know, musk Ramaswami, You've got this sort of who's
(18:50):
who are very wealthy people now, very wealthy people don't
tend to empathize with not very wealthy people. You know,
if you're putting people who have nine or ten zeros
in front of their income in charge of nutritional programs
where literally every dollar matters, well you're not going to
(19:11):
get the empathic response you need. So when Trump sort
of says to Elon Musk and Ramswami, go crazy, you know,
destroy as many government programs as you like, I'm sure
Musk is going to be able to come up with
ways to cut a huge amount for the federal government
because he's a slash and burn kind of figure. That's
what he does. He goes into companies, he overcuts, he
(19:31):
doesn't really care what the consequences are, and then maybe
later on he tries to repair the damage. Well that's
a bit late. If you're removing access to nutritional programs
from tens of millions of people, or you're block granting
Medicaid so that millions of people suddenly have no healthcare,
it's a bit late a year or two in saying
you know what, we may have gone a bit too far,
(19:53):
But I think that's the scenario that we're going to see.
We're going to see these absolutely massive cuts and sort
of reimagining as the federal government and the consequences be damned.
And so you know when you say do they care
about the consequences, Yes, and no. They care about it
for select groups, but take the populace as a whole.
(20:14):
I don't think this is government particularly concerned with breaking eggshells.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Yes, if you're surrounded with the resources, you can detach
from everyone else, you can fly away.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
So as a coach, I really want when I work with.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
People, I and I and I had to be coached
myself in order to become a coach, which I really appreciate.
And one of the questions that was repeatedly asked of
me was, no, what do you want?
Speaker 4 (20:50):
You keep talking about what you don't want? What do
you want?
Speaker 3 (20:54):
And it took a while before that that penetrated my brain.
Speaker 4 (20:57):
Like, oh, focus on what you want.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
And I think that matters also collectively, individually, with a group,
with an organization, with large groups of society, even if
we are as divided as we appear to be. I'm
wondering what would be helpful for people who want to
(21:24):
be proactive and resist resist actions or you know, it
could be like one bill at a time or one
nomination at a time, who are willing to do what
keeps on democracy alive, participate, be active, use their voices.
Can you help us think about, like, what can people
(21:46):
do to stay focused on what they want and not
get stuck in fear and anxiety and depression about the
election results.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
I mean, that's a huge question. You know. I'm struggling
with this every day because you know, it's clearly not
enough to say, well, look, I don't like Donald Trump,
I don't like his administration. I don't like what it
stands for. I think it's cruel, it's statistic, and so on.
What are the things that progressives should invest energy in. Well,
there's a lot of things. You know, we're doing a
(22:17):
really good job at the moment of wrecking our environment. Well,
progressives need to work out ways to push environmental policies
to the fore again, and they need to work out
ways to talk about environmental policies in a way that
brings people in because I think one of the things
we've seen in the last few years is a lot
of people, especially lower down the income chain, very very
(22:38):
scared of change around around environment. They think that it's
a trade off between environment and jobs or environment and
economic security. Well that's actually not right. In fact, the
more you protect the environment, the more you shore up
your economy for the future generations. But you have to
work out ways to do that in a way that
doesn't lead people behind. So I think the environment's a
huge one. I think human rights are a huge one.
(23:00):
Clearly going to enter a period where human rights are
the very best takeer back burner. But more likely we're
going to enter a period where for large sections of
the public we just don't think in terms of human
rights anymore. For immigrants especially, the government is going to
be sort of turning itself on those immigrants in a
really quite horrifying way. And I think one of the
(23:20):
things as progressive thinkers we have to do is work
out ways to again talk about a language of human rights,
of universalism. You know, we've done that for hundreds of years.
Progressives since Thomas Payne onwards, have talked about the rights
of man and the idea that you can sort of
embed those rights in the way society is structured. Well,
(23:40):
if we turn our back on that as a society today,
that's a terrible thing. So, you know, one thing is
how do we protect human rights. How do we define,
expand those human rights and then really protect them using
the courts, using public opinion, using the media, using protests.
You know, there are lots of ways that we can
do that. But I do think we've got to keep
(24:01):
our eye on this. So for me, those are the
two big issues, human rights and the environment. But I
think beyond that, there are just so many ways that
we can look at what's gone wrong with the economy.
The economy is so unequal at the moment. The fact
that you know, Trump managed to somehow claim to be
an economic populace is observed because he's stacked, as you know,
as we talked about, he's stacked as administration with some
(24:24):
of the wealthiest people in the world. But the idea
that there's inequality, it's true, and you know, progressives have
to work out a way to craft an economic agenda
that's going to speak to that and going to work
out ways to reign in the inequality, reverse the inequality.
I think we should have a conversation in this country
about a wealth tax. You know, people like Elizabeth Warren
(24:45):
and Bernie Sanders have talked about that for years. If
we have an American oligarchy emerging, and we clearly do.
People who control so many more resources than anybody else, Well,
maybe we should work out ways to break up their wealth.
Maybe we should sort of say, right, ten billion dollars,
that's your limit. Well, that's still a stunning amount of money.
(25:07):
Why does Elon Musk need three hundred and twenty billion dollars?
How is it conceivable that one human being should control
resources more than the entire annual budget of the state
of California. How is that conceivably fair or justified? And
I think those are messages that will resonate. So I
do think there are areas that there's room for progressives
(25:29):
to craft really interesting policies and to reshape the political alliances. Again,
but at the moment, you know, in one of the
weirder paradoxes of American history, at the moment, Trump and
his billionaire acolytes have got the mantle of being economic populace.
And you know, it's a con it's a grift. It's
not going to improve the lives of working class people.
(25:52):
But we have to create an alternative message to help
disattach large numbers of work in class voters from the
Donald Trump machine.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
Well, put.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
Now, do you think one thing.
Speaker 4 (26:11):
I do think the right was so.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Skilled that was messaging and reaching a lot of people
that apparently the left could didn't reach who are disadvantage economically.
And you know, is it a matter of like flooding,
flooding the airwaves, getting more, using more and more media,
more and more memes, more and more.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
Like how much do you think is through media? And yeah,
let me just start with that.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
I think a lot of us to do with the
way the media functions. The fact that you know, every
story for four months was a Trump story. Now a
lot of those stories were negative, but if you're scrolling
down CNN or New York Times or Fox or whatever
it might be, and every single story you see leads
with Trump says or Trump or Trump believes or Trump
will do well, it exites into the brain. I think
(27:04):
the media has a lot to answer for. And you know,
there are no easy answers there because Trump's story, you know,
there is something compelling because it's so outrageous what he
was saying and doing that you know, we in the
media had that an obligation to cover it. But at
the same time, if you literally just saturate the airwaves
with Trump stories, the oxygen gets sucked out of the room,
(27:24):
and nobody else can craft an agenda, nobody else can
get their policy viewpoints across, and everybody else is seen
in sort of comparison to Donald Trump. And so I
do think the way media and then especially social media
amplified Trump was really important in this last electoral cycle.
I think the way Elon Musk laser targeted young men
(27:47):
in particular low propensity voters who maybe had never voted before,
didn't vote for any other race apart from the presidency,
but came out to vote for Donald Trump. You know,
I mean that's it's a powerful coalition they created, and
it's based around beat and switch. It's based around you know,
they pushed cultural war issues, whether it's transgender issues or
(28:09):
whether it was gun ownership or whatever it might be.
They pushed these cultural war issues and convinced a lot
of people that somehow Democrats were out of touch. Well,
you know, if you actually look at the economic agenda,
Joe Biden, for all his other faults, was the most
pro union president in American history, So why were so
many union voters convinced that he was bad for them economically?
(28:33):
Kamala Harris's proposals, they may not have been the most programmatic,
but she had some interesting proposals out there. Six thousand
dollars child tax credits, subsidies for new home buying. I mean,
these things would have made a really tangible difference in
a lot of people's lives. Expansion of medicaid. You know, again,
these very very basic nuts and bolts, things that would
(28:55):
have changed the ability of a lot of Americans to
access healthcare, to access nutrition programs, access and affordable housing.
None of that's going to happen now. And instead you
have government buy four and our billionaires. And that's an
extraordinary bait and switch. And you know, if you want
to sort of think of the contortions that you have
(29:16):
to go through to end up with a group like
the group we now have in power being seen as
somehow economically populist. You know, to me, it's extraordinary. But
I do think a lot of it's to do with
the way that media was used and misused, the way
that social media, in particular, you know, drummed home these
messages to people who weren't necessarily very well informed about
(29:37):
the political process.
Speaker 4 (29:40):
I totally agree, I really yeah, I could. I could
not believe how much.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
So many media channels and venues and were just every
single day amplifying Trump. It just it just to me
reminded me of that coaching principle, just talked about like
it was focusing on what we so many of us
don't want and keeping and as you said, suck the
oxygen out of the room so that people couldn't hear.
(30:12):
And I know a lot of people don't listen to
the mainstream news, but like.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
Why weren't we touting.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
That the benefits of bidyonomics again, like despite flaws, everybody
has flaws, no one's perfect, and the Kamala Harris's proposals
were I really still wonder how many people who voted
for Trump did not ever actually have access to Kamala
Harris's economic plan.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
I think probably a huge number. But you mentioned the
word biodonomics, and I think that probably also speaks to
you part of what happened here. That the economy by
a lot of metrics was doing very very well. There
was low low unemployment, there was low it was high
economic growth, and you know, by by the middle of
this year, inflation was clear sort of coming back down again.
(31:02):
But there is a problem, and the problem is that
for two to two and a half years, inflation was
extremely high in a way that you know, nobody in
this country had experienced in more than forty years, and
that scared people. It completely dislocated family finances, and it
made it much harder to afford houses, in particular because
(31:23):
interest rates soared. So if you're trying to message your
administration and your accomplishments given all of that, is probably
a really, really bad idea to come up with a
phrase like Bidenomics, because basically you're owning all of that.
(31:43):
And yeah, there's some good stuff there. There's investments, industrial reinvestments,
there's the Inflation Reduction Act. There are all these things
that were important, and over the long run, assuming they're
allowed to stay in place, we'll create an awful lot
of high tech jobs and an awful lot of infrastructure investments.
But in the short what it meant was that the
Biden team was basically saying, hey, it's all good, we're
(32:04):
so happy with the state of the economy, we're going
to name it after our president. Well, you know, if
you're paying more for basic household goods and you're certainly
paying more for buying a house, and you're certainly paying
more for car purchases and all of that. And you
hear the term Bidenomics, it leaves a sour taste. And
I do think that, you know, one of the problems
(32:25):
I had with Biden throughout his presidency, even before you know,
questions of ours as to whether or not he was
mentally competent enough to be president. But even before then,
he seemed to me to be amongst the worst sellers
of his own product, of anyone I've ever encountered that.
You know, the product wasn't bad, he hasn't really good policies,
(32:46):
but he had the worst messaging you could possibly imagine.
And you know, it stuns me. How do you go
through a presidency for four years and fail that dismally
to communicate your best message. And that's partly the fault
of Biden, It's partly the fault of the people surrounding him,
it's partly his communications team. But for whatever reasons, it
(33:07):
was a fiasco from start to finish. He just had
no idea how in the year, you know, in the
twenty twenties, how to reach out to people and communicate
and that's a part of leadership, and it is. You know,
I think Biden deserves a huge amount of criticism for
his failure to message over the last four years, because
(33:27):
if you can't do it, it doesn't matter how good
your policies are, you're basically going to be seen as
a failure. And in the end, the public saw him
as a failure, and now we're bearing the costs of that.
Speaker 4 (33:40):
I blame his communication teams.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
I mean, taken his communications team to a point, but
I'm always loath to sort of appropriate blame lower down
the food chain, because at the end of the day,
Biden was at the todd of the food chain. Was
then't in charge of it all. If he didn't like
his communications team, he could have shaken it up. But
the fact was, every time Biden tried to message, he failed.
(34:09):
Every time he held a press conference it didn't work.
Every time he sort of reached out to try and
communicate to young people, it was a flop. Well, you
know again, I'll say it again. Part of the job
of the president of the United States is selling a message.
Roosevelt knew that Bill Clinton knew that Ronald Reagan knew
that Obama knew that how come it was so hard
(34:29):
for Biden to message his own successes.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
No, that's an excellent point. Let me just ask one
question that about the inflation, because you know, I kept
thinking about, you know, the sort of global economy and.
Speaker 4 (34:49):
Which wasn't fair or right, and.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Like from a privileged point of view, about how like,
of course there's inflation. We're coming out of COVID, coming
out of disaster. We were sent checks also in Trump's
and and and Biden's time to help us survive and
get back on our feet.
Speaker 4 (35:10):
There's inflation all over the world.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Why is everybody plate blaming Biden?
Speaker 4 (35:16):
But maybe it's because they call it by dynamics.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
I think partly, and also because America is the most
powerful country on earth. So what America does impact the
rest of the world. Now, yes, there would have been
inflation regardless because there were supply chain disruptions. There was
huge bottled up consumer demand because of the lockdowns, and
when that demand was sort of uncourked, when you sort
of added in the supply chain disruptions, I think it
(35:39):
was inevitable there was going to be some inflation. Yeah,
probably make an argument that that inflation was worsened by
the fact that Biden overheated the economy and then when
inflation took off for you know, a few months at
the beginning of that, the administration said, this is just transitory,
you know, it's just the supply chains working out. The
King's all well, get back to normal, and they were
way too slow to us on to the fact that
(36:00):
there was an inflation crisis that was accelerating. So, you know, yes,
you're right, the whole world experienced inflation, and the last
part of that was just the inevitable byproduct of this
calamitous pandemic. But there were some policy choices that were
made that maybe could have been made differently that could
have tamped down that inflation or brought it to heal
earlier and quicker. And so, you know, I think it's
(36:21):
fair enough to say that's one of Biden's failures. There
are many successes, you know. I you know, as I said,
you look at some of the legislation they passed, the
Inflation Reduction Act, a lot of the investments in infrastructure,
a lot of the investments in environmental policy. They were
really really important, and you know, they were some of
the most important domestic law legislation passed and the last
(36:43):
fifty years. But take the good with the bad. At
the same time, there was bad, and if you're going
to own the good, you have to earn the bad.
They didn't succeed in inflation in twenty twenty one and
twenty twenty two. By the time they know pivoted and
did begin paying attention to it, a lot of people
were hurting. And I think that that contributed to the
anti incombascy mood. It wasn't the only thing that led
(37:04):
to anti incumbassy, but it definitely contributed to it.
Speaker 3 (37:12):
So I have another question about reaching more people and
like what was missed and reaching and not, you know,
not to blame people, but I'm wondering again who didn't
have access to information? And sometimes it's because people are working,
(37:32):
like myself more than one job, Like who you know,
who has time to go do your political research when
you're raising kids and working and trying to just keep
your life together. But I keep thinking wondering how many
people because I don't I forgot the number of followers.
But just for example, I'm going to mention Joe Rogan
(37:54):
in his podcast, I forgot how many followers he has
with like a ridiculously high number of and they keep thinking,
like that little rumor that went around that Kamala Harris
was going to be on Joe Rogan. I kept thinking
that would be a really good idea because a lot
of people who listened to Joe Rogan probably don't listen
to other channels or podcasts that actually have her on
(38:17):
to hear her again, to hear her message.
Speaker 4 (38:21):
And just I don't know, do you have any response
to that? I like that.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
Yeah, I mean, given the state of the media ecosystem
in this country, given who has the huge podiums, Yeah,
the Democrats should have done a better job of reaching
out to I mean, whether it was Rogan or some
of the other people on the conservative and or libertarian
end of the spectrum, they should have reached out of
them more. Harris tried, but it was too late in
(38:48):
the day. The first couple of months for candidacy, and again,
you know, she was creating a candidacy from scratch with
almost no notice. I mean, this was an extraordinary ask
in a way, and I think the first month month
and a half she was just finding her feet. And
then there was this policy or not policy. There was
this sort of idea, which I think was misguided, that
(39:09):
she should only be giving interviews in very controlled environments
and I think, you know, again hindsights everything. But they
were quite risk averse. They didn't want to sort of
play hostess to fortune. They thought that Trump was seen
as so extreme that you know, all they had to
do was play safe and fifty two percent of the
public would reject Trump. And it turned out that they
(39:30):
were wrong a little bit that you know, about fifty
percent of the public was okay with Trump. And in
the Swing States in particular, where there was this you know,
laser focus to get low propensity voters, young men in particular,
out to vote. In the Swing States in particular, that
proved devastating because, yes, well educated people heard Harris's message
(39:53):
or heard listaneous message, or heard John Kelly's message about
fascism and it raised warning signs, but an awful lot
of people pople that messaging, it just apparently didn't mean anything.
You know, The sort of moral dangers of what fascism
was just didn't really sink in. What did sink in
was the economic messaging, and what did sink in was
(40:13):
the cultural war messaging. And the right wing was very
very good at relentlessly hitting on those issues. And so yes,
I think, with hindsight, Harris should have reached out to
some of those outlets like Joe Rogan. I don't know
if Wrogan would have had her on, but you know,
the outlets that had the potential to reach into the
homes of those voters who weren't being moved by the
(40:35):
messaging around authoritarianism or around fascism. But she didn't do that.
And you know, I think at the margins that may
have made a difference of a few thousand votes here,
a few thousand votes there, and those margins were really important.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
Yes, I reached out and I invited her team to
have her on the show, but they didn't get the message. No,
thank you for like confirming that. I mean, surely, surely
that was a big miss. And I remember feeling so frustrated, like,
(41:10):
speak to other audiences.
Speaker 4 (41:11):
They're they're out there.
Speaker 3 (41:14):
I wanted I'm thinking about because we have about nine
minutes left. You were talking and on one of the
I watched a YouTube video talk you did about.
Speaker 4 (41:27):
Forgive me. I can't remember the full title of your
book on chaos.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
So the book is Chaos comes calling the battle against
the far right takeover a small town America came out of.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
Thank you, thank you, And you were talking about an
example of a small town in Washington and the state
in a small town and uh in just California, northern California,
and there's a It was interesting.
Speaker 4 (41:54):
Because you were talking.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
About kind of like cycles and rhythms and like culture
wars can only last so long, and they can have
a big flash point and then they can kind of
burn out because when people realize that doesn't really it
doesn't really affect me if they're you know, if there
are some minor percent of people are trans that doesn't
(42:15):
really affect whether or not I can buy a house?
Speaker 4 (42:16):
Like why am I proactive by with that?
Speaker 3 (42:18):
Like there's other things to think about.
Speaker 4 (42:21):
So anyway, can you talk a little bit about.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
Like like how these I'm thinking of, like Hegel, like,
how these political movements can shift and present us with
some a vision of directions that the US can move
into that maybe would give us a little bit more
(42:45):
like energize us and more hope about how to you know,
proactively resist acts towards authoritarianism.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
Yeah, So when I was reporting my book, I focused
on two places. So one of them was a county
and Washington State. It was called Clallam County. It's on
the Olympic Peninsula. Within that, I focused on a small
town called Squim. And the other was this quite far
right county in northern California called Shasta County, where the
board of supervisors have been taken over by just extremely
(43:16):
hard right characters in the pandemic period, and in both
Washington and Squirming in Shasta County. One of the things
that happened was that as the counties veered right wood,
the first thing that took a hit was public health
because basically you had the public health officers in the
pandemic proposing public health measures as they were supposed to do,
(43:38):
and the local governments, instead of backing them, basically going
to war against them. And that gave a stamp of
approval for all these crazies on the internet, in particular,
to come out of the woodwork and threaten, harassed, intimidate,
you know, do all kinds of blood curdling emails and
instant messages to these public health officers. And that's very,
very dysfunctional because it ends up sort of of making
(44:01):
rational response to crisis almost impossible. But then the second
thing that happened was beyond public health, you had this
sort of raft of measures that these hard right governments
would take that made it harder to keep community services going,
housing services, drug treatment programs, mental health services, all these
things that are the sort of bread and butter of
(44:22):
local government. And over time, in both places, local government
it didn't grind to a halt, but it became increasingly dysfunctional.
And what you saw in squim in particular was a
reaction against that that people pretty much across the political
spectrum looked at what was happening and realized that nothing's
(44:43):
getting done, that the communities that they were living in
were suffering, not just in the abstract but in very
concrete ways, that the things that local government were supposed
to do to make lives better weren't getting done. And
they formed this group called the squim Go Governance League,
and it had in a pendents, it had liberals, had Democrats,
it had quite a lot of moderate Republicans as well.
(45:04):
And the Schimgrop Governmance League basically set to work at
educating locals and they started knocking on doors, they started
holding community meetings, and then by twenty twenty two, they
were ready to run slates and political candidates. They were
very effective. They won at the city council level, they
won at the school board level, they won. There were
a series of different committees and different agencies that had
(45:25):
elected officers, and they won wherever they ran. And to me,
it was a lesson that if you're looking what happens
in an authoritarian moment when the public, you know, actually
realizes this isn't working well, one of the things that
needs to happen is real classroots organizing and building up
power again for the ground up, because ultimately, I do
think these sort of very extreme movements like MAGA, they
(45:47):
are slightly cult based, and I also think they burned
themselves out because they're so extreme and people get tired
of screaming after a while, and you know, after a while,
people want the basics. They want government that work, they
want potholes filled in in the streets, they want schools
that work for the kids, and so on. I think
one of the things we're going to see in the
next few years, especially if these huge cuts to government
(46:10):
services go in, which you know is ramas Raman and
muss dream, it won't be smooth sailing. You know, if
you cut food stamps the way they're talking about it,
or you can't medicate the way they're talking about it,
an awful lot of people are going to start realizing
this doesn't work. You know, I traded my vote. I
voted for these guys because they were talking about immigration,
(46:32):
they were talking about the border, they were talking about
transgender issues, whatever it was that brought people into the
Trump coalition. So I voted for them for this. And
now I find that I can't access food stamps, or
now I find that my kids' schools are closing, you know,
one afternoon a week because there's no funding for schools,
Or now I find that avian flu is taking off,
and turns out that the public health officers now and
(46:53):
Judge Benet the faintest idea what they're doing. You know,
that is going to have a huge impact. And I
do think that, you know, if there is a way
out of this mess, you know, it's going to be messy,
and I can't imagine it happening quickly, But if there
is a way out of this mess, it's going to
be in reaction to the sheer disfunction the Trump's government
promises because it does. You know, every single day of
(47:16):
the last administration was dysfunctional, and there's every indication of
the Trump administration in twenty sixteen to twenty twenty was dysfunctional,
and there's every indication the same thing's going to happen
this time. It will be filled with personal drama, it
will be unable to implement most of the policies that's
trying to implement, and the ones it does implement will
be destructive, and after a while, the public's going to
turn on that.
Speaker 4 (47:40):
Thank you for the illustration.
Speaker 3 (47:41):
That totally that totally makes sense, and I just want
to give you the opportunity. We have just a couple
of minutes. Do you have a closing thought before I
think everyone, I.
Speaker 2 (47:51):
Mean, look, I really enjoyed this conversation because you ask
questions that took us on a wide journey, and I
think that's important. I guess my closing comments are, this
is too big an issue to think about in silos.
So if your issue is immigration, that's great, but also
look at what's happening around environmental policy, or if your
issue is trade union representational workers rights, that's fine, but
(48:15):
also look at the damage being done to the healthcare system.
You know, there are all these ways that things are interconnected.
The book I wrote, care Comes Calling tries to sort of,
you know, connect all the dots. But I do think
that over the coming years, you know, that's important connecting
the dots, looking at the way this plays out holistically
rather than these sort of different silos. And the final
(48:38):
thing is, look, there's going to be an awful lot
of temptation to just pull back and disengage because people
are going to be so depressed and miserable about what's
coming down. If they're progressive, it's a bad response because ultimately,
the only way we get out of this is to
stay engaged and to stay paying attention and to continually
focus in on and highlight, you know, all the nefariousness
(49:00):
that's going to come down over the coming years.
Speaker 3 (49:04):
Stay engaged, participate, break out of silos, work together and yeah,
and communicate across differences. Thank you so much, Sasha Abrimski.
I really appreciate your time, and I want to thank
our listeners and viewers, and our engineer Rebel and our
producer Dean Piper, and remind everyone to tune in next
(49:26):
Wednesday at eight pm Eastern time on Talk for TV
and W four cy dot com. Thank you so much
and maybe all have more enriching conversations and diversity of
a good Thanksgiving.
Speaker 2 (49:41):
Let's speech, let's speech show.
Speaker 3 (49:49):
In lot.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
Let's preach in lot. Let's preach.
Speaker 4 (49:59):
In lot.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
Garlet switch a large in Garlet switch off her con
The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are
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(00:20):
you for choosing W four c Y Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Let's Let's bag show.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
In Lot, Let's breech in Lot's.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
In Lott's Lot in a lot of.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Hello, and welcome to It's your Voice the show that
and enriching conversations in diversity.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
My name is Bihia Yaxon. I am a diversity educator
and a Corelimic coach.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
I support organizations and individuals and getting clear about what
their values are and making sure they can align their
actions with their values. This usually means helping people recognize
patterns of bias that are hurting themselves and everyone else
and cultivating new neural pathways literally to develop new habits
(01:31):
so that we can act on patterns that are far
more inclusive and create more belonging and truly benefit everyone
around them. Today, I am honored to have a very
learned scholar with us, Sasha and Abramski as my guest,
who's written at least eleven, I mean at least nine books.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
I would like you to I'm going.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
To read a little short bio and invite you out
here while I'm reading a piece of your bio, and
then ask you to add anything else you want folks
to know about you. The title of this conversation is
what is the fate of American Democracy?
Speaker 4 (02:11):
Now?
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Very relevant? And I just want to let folks know.
Sasha Mbemski is a British born freelance journalist an author
who now lives in the United States. He's written several
hundred articles, essays and editorials which have appeared in many
publications including The Guardian and The Observer and The Sunny
Telegraph in the UK, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, The
(02:36):
New York Online, The Village Voice, Rolling Stones, and I
want to just mention a few.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
Of the titles of your books.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
Chaos Comes Calling, The Battle against the Far Right, The
American Way of Poverty, how the other half still lives.
The House of twenty thousand books, which I believe is
about your grandparents, jumping at shadows, the triumph of fear
and the end of the American Dream, and a biography
(03:04):
and little wonder this is so this sounds a little
different the fabulous story of lot Lottie Dodd and the
world's first female sports superstar. And I understand you've traveled
over fifty countries, and I'm lucky that you live in
the same town I do, and you teach at the university.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
You see, Davis, ye if I do.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
It's good to be on new show by here.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
What do you think might be important for our listeners
and viewers? Anything you want to add that you would
like people to know about you, or your work or
your your focus.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
No, I think you were pretty comprehensive there. I was
almost embarrassed by the depth of your introduction. But look,
I write on social justice themes, and I've for thirty
years been exploring the fishers that are doing damage in
American economics, politics and so on. And I'm usually interested
(04:02):
in what happens not at the top of the economy
or society, but what happens further down the food chain
when vulnerable people, you know, get caught up in all
these big, big historical forces. And I think at the
moment that's particularly relevant. You've got these sort of massive
changes occurring in the politics of the country, very demagogic
(04:23):
political rhetoric coming out from DC and you know, will
be coming out for the next several years. And the
people who get hurt the most, it's asylum seekers, it's refugees,
it's desperate undocumented immigrants who've tried to come to America
because their families are starving or at risk of you know,
extreme violence, and those are the ones who bear the
(04:43):
brunt when our politics goes crazy. And that's what fascinates me.
So I think that's you know what i'd add into
your introduction.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
Thank you. That's that's very helpful. I I think.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
This might be my first like post twenty four election
conversation to sort of help us like digest and process
the change that is occurring at the top of the
US government, since we not only impact are the most
vulnerable in our country, but many many other countries are
(05:20):
impacted by what the US does or doesn't do in
our alignments or lack of alignments with other countries. But
I wanted to just start with the basics of like
I know, it was a recurring theme from the left
of don't let's not lose our democracy, be careful the
democracy as threatened.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
At the moment.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
If we indeed elect the far right president, then we
president elect who we have now elected. So I thought
it might be helpful, and partly, let me just say
because I have lived in a country that was a
kingdom that was run by a king for three years,
and I've lived in a country that was run by
a dictator for two years, and I realize I have
(06:03):
a strong sense of what it's like to be in
a country that is not democratic, But a lot of
Americans don't have that contrast contrasting experience. So I thought
it may be helpful if you can just I mean,
this might sound really basic, but just help us understand
what is a democracy and what are we at risk
of losing.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Well, at the most basic level of democracy is something
where the political institutions are responsive to the people, not
just to a sort of popular sector of the people,
but rights are respected. It's a law based, rule based society.
It's a society where institutions are designed not to meet
the needs of the ruler, but to meet the needs
(06:47):
of the people. And in the American context, it's a
society defined by foundational documents, in our case, the Constitution,
the Bill of Rights, the amendments to the Constitution. By contrast,
and autocracy, whether it's you know, literally a dictatorship of
one person or a dictatorship of a cardridge people at
(07:09):
the top is a rule based. It's regime based. So
you know, we have administrations here that change every four years.
Regimes aren't like that. Regimes are designed to milk a
country or milk a society for resources. Basically, you see
a flowing upwards of wealth to the people. Right at
the top, you see a sort of nexus of corruption
(07:31):
where laws are being used and institutions of government are
being used to personally benefit a handful of people are
ruling elite, a family at the top, their associates, their underlings,
and so on. When you said you lived in a
country that's or a couple of countries that were non democratic,
(07:51):
and that maybe Americans don't realize, you know what that means.
At the most basic level, What it means is that
rights that were taken for granted suddenly become fragile, that
everything becomes the favor of the ruling class. That you know,
maybe you're not prosecuted, but that's a favor. Maybe your
rights aren't taken away, but that's a favor. Maybe you
(08:12):
maintain economic well being, but that's a favor. Everything becomes
a series of trade offs with that ruling elite. And
you know, there's a real risk. I mean, it's not
inevitable that you know, it's possible that there will be
fight back against this, but there's a real risk, given
Trump's temperament, given the things he's said, given the promises
he's made on the campaign trail, that this will be
(08:34):
years and years of retribution based government. You prosecuted me, well,
I'm going to prosecute you. You you know, I don't
like the way that you let immigrants in, so I'm
going to penalize immigrants. You know, this series of things
that go beyond normal politics, and you end up in
a situation where very powerful institutions a state, whether it's
(08:55):
the Justice Department or the military or the intelligence agencies,
get turned in, and they get turned against US residents
and US citizens, And you know, we have that spectacle,
that spectrum. Now that Trump has sort of promised I'm
going to unleash the military on immigrants. Well, if you
unleash the military on immigrants, or if you unleash the
military on us political protesters or dissenters or politicians, you
(09:18):
don't like you're crossing a rubicon. You're crossing a line
into something very very different from what the American experience
has been before. And when that line's crossed, it's really
hard to roll it back because once you embark down
this route where you know the executive has such extreme
authority to go after enemies, to go after dissidents and
so on, very very quickly, that society starts resembling Putin's
(09:42):
Russia or Urduan's Turkey, or Victor Auburn's Hungary, something totally
different from what we like to think of ourselves when
we think of what the American experience means in history.
And I think that that's the risk that we're on
the edge of this abyss where we have a political
leadership now that doesn't respect baudies, doesn't mis limits, and
really frankly doesn't respect the rule of law in any way,
(10:03):
shape or form. That views all of this as instrumental mm.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Yeah, And speaking of not respecting the rule of law,
it's I was going to say, interesting, but also frightening.
Although I practice not staying in fear, it's just like
amazing to see how how many of the appointee appointing
(10:32):
nominations is that the right term for cabinet and heads
of departments have a criminal record, and it's it just
seems almost like ridiculously, like in your face to those
who believe in the rule of law and you know,
not to mention, extremely insulting, especially so many with sexual
(10:54):
assault accusations, and.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
It's it's just.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
Kind of confounding and just like, really, is this really
happening in America right now?
Speaker 4 (11:05):
Are you serious? So it's I mean, now I'm laughing.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
I was, it's pretty upsetting and nerve wracking, but I
just wanted to see what you want to say about
that kind of in your facedness, boldness, audacity that we
you know, I think helped bring Trump to the point
where he's now the president elects.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
I think that what we're seeing here is, as you said,
this very in your face, full frontal assault, not just
on the institutions of state, but on the sort of
infrastructure of decency, and it transcends left wing right wing.
It's really this idea that Trump's basically trying to bring
institutions of state to heal institutions that he doesn't trust,
(11:55):
especially to Justice Department. Well, what better way to do
that than to bring in people in leadership roles who
are manifestly unqualified, not just unqualified, but antithetical to the
mission of the Justice Department. So if the mission of
the Justice Department is upholding the rule of law, and
you nominate Matt Gates, who's under investigation or was under
investigation for sex trafficking, for having sex with underage miners,
(12:18):
for drug fueld orgies and all of this stuff, well
you're sending a very very clear message that from here
on in the Justice Department isn't about the rule of law.
It's going to be a creature of the president. It's
going to be a personal creature of Donald Trump. And
if you don't like it, get out of the way,
because the leadership is going to come in. It's going
to fire people who are professional, it's going to fire
the people who actually do follow the rules of law. Well,
(12:42):
I mean that's catastrophic. You know, the idea that someone
like Matt Gates could be anywhere near controlling the Justice
Department or any other government agency is just a scandal.
And the fact that Trump would use political capital before
he's even assumed the White House again, that he would
use so much political capital on this, it tells you
the direction he's trying to take the country in the
(13:04):
administration that you know, this isn't about competent government governments.
This is the reverse. This is about putting in place
wrecking bulls, wrecking bulls who are going to go into
those departments and literally evis errate them, you know, whether
they formally dissolve institutions or whether they just drive qualified
people out of work. What they're aiming to do is
(13:24):
make large parts of the government nonfunctional. And then if
you sort of tied in with Elon Musk and Vivek
Ramaswami's ambition, I mean this idea that you can appoint
a non elected group of billionaires, including the richest man
on earth, to scrub government of about a third of
its dollars, which is what they're talking about doing. Well,
(13:46):
you can do it, but you're going to get rid
of vital nutritional programs, vital health care programs, vital retirement programs,
vital housing programs, and you're going to leave the surviving
government incapable of responding to emergencies. So yes, you can
do it, but next time there's a hurricane or an earthquake,
FEMA will be dysfunctional. Next time there's a pandemic, while
between the cuts that have been put in place and
(14:07):
the hiring of public health officials such as Robert Kennedy
to dismantle from within, next time there's a pandemic, they
won't be an aggressive public health response. So you can
get those cuts in place, but you do it at
a staggering cost to the well being of society. And
I think that's what we're facing. We're facing basically a
wrecking ball from within. And that's not conservative. I mean,
(14:29):
I know we talk about this as a sort of
conservative moment that is revolutionary. It's right wing revolutionary, but
it's revolutionary in the same way that fascist movements in
the thirties in Europe weren't conservative by any real understanding.
They were revolutionary. It's about destroying and then building something anew,
and there's something a new that they're looking to build
(14:49):
is deeply unpleasant and deeply antithetical to at least modern
American values.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
There's one side effect if it just amazes me that.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
If these wrecking balls are successfully put into place and
departments like Department of Health, Department of Education, housing, human
resource programs are dismantled and cut, is there no thought
about the ramifications? And let me just throw in one
(15:31):
more thing. If female bodies are forced to bring have
full pregnancies and give birth to children that some of
whom were raped, something over sixty four thousand births were
came from women who are victims of rape, and just
(15:53):
in the last couple of years, is there no thought
or care about what's happening to the population, Like, and
I'm skipping the lives of the women, and you know,
and God knows I care, And I think that's the
whole you know, anti choice and control over women's bodies
is atrocious and outrageous and cruel in itself.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
But look at the results.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
That they're asking for that will come from the wrecking balls.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
Do they just totally not care?
Speaker 3 (16:23):
There will be presumably many more people being born who
without people having the resources to feed them to school them,
to educate them.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
Why does why would they want that? What's deserved about that?
Speaker 2 (16:39):
I don't claim to get inside their heads psychologically. I
don't know why the far right in America takes the
positions it takes on a lot of these issues. You
talk about abortion, and you know there are obviously moral
arguments on both sides. It's a complicated moral issue, But
you're right, at the end of the day, the policies
they're putting in place are going to desperately hurt women,
especially poor women's, actually women of color. They're not going
(17:02):
to improve the conditions of life on the ground. In fact,
all the evidence suggests when you put these extreme policies
in place, you get increased mortality rates for women. You
get terrible health outcomes for kids, because, as you said,
you've got children who are just being taken. All the
(17:24):
resources are being removed from the well being of young children.
So none of this is sort of a good thing
for women if you're talking about abortion. If you're talking
about immigration, the same thing. If you terrorize immigrant communities,
you have far worth public health outcomes, you have far
worse nutritional outcomes because people are scared away from applying
(17:45):
for benefits. You have people living in slum housing who
are scared of reporting the slum conditions because they know
that their landlords can then report them and get them
deported or at least render them vulnerable to deportation. So
on all kinds of measures. When you introduce a government
that's you know, quote unquote tough in the way that
the Trump administration is sort of claiming to be tough,
(18:08):
what you get is worse outcomes for the well being
of society. Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't certain
sectors that are going to that are going to benefit.
You know, any autocracy makes trade offs. Any autocracy sort
of puts down at least some benefits to some groups
because that's how it holds onto power. Some people benefit
(18:30):
when there are these kind of policy changes put in place.
It looks to me, and I may be wrong, but
if you look at who's in the government, it's stack
full of billionaires, it's stack full of the super wealthy,
and the Commerce Department, the Treasury, Agricultural, Interior, Education, Trump himself,
you know, musk Ramaswami, You've got this sort of who's
(18:50):
who are very wealthy people now, very wealthy people don't
tend to empathize with not very wealthy people. You know,
if you're putting people who have nine or ten zeros
in front of their income in charge of nutritional programs
where literally every dollar matters, well you're not going to
(19:11):
get the empathic response you need. So when Trump sort
of says to Elon Musk and Ramswami, go crazy, you know,
destroy as many government programs as you like, I'm sure
Musk is going to be able to come up with
ways to cut a huge amount for the federal government
because he's a slash and burn kind of figure. That's
what he does. He goes into companies, he overcuts, he
(19:31):
doesn't really care what the consequences are, and then maybe
later on he tries to repair the damage. Well that's
a bit late. If you're removing access to nutritional programs
from tens of millions of people, or you're block granting
Medicaid so that millions of people suddenly have no healthcare,
it's a bit late a year or two in saying
you know what, we may have gone a bit too far,
(19:53):
But I think that's the scenario that we're going to see.
We're going to see these absolutely massive cuts and sort
of reimagining as the federal government and the consequences be damned.
And so you know when you say do they care
about the consequences, Yes, and no. They care about it
for select groups, but take the populace as a whole.
(20:14):
I don't think this is government particularly concerned with breaking eggshells.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Yes, if you're surrounded with the resources, you can detach
from everyone else, you can fly away.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
So as a coach, I really want when I work with.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
People, I and I and I had to be coached
myself in order to become a coach, which I really appreciate.
And one of the questions that was repeatedly asked of
me was, no, what do you want?
Speaker 4 (20:50):
You keep talking about what you don't want? What do
you want?
Speaker 3 (20:54):
And it took a while before that that penetrated my brain.
Speaker 4 (20:57):
Like, oh, focus on what you want.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
And I think that matters also collectively, individually, with a group,
with an organization, with large groups of society, even if
we are as divided as we appear to be. I'm
wondering what would be helpful for people who want to
(21:24):
be proactive and resist resist actions or you know, it
could be like one bill at a time or one
nomination at a time, who are willing to do what
keeps on democracy alive, participate, be active, use their voices.
Can you help us think about, like, what can people
(21:46):
do to stay focused on what they want and not
get stuck in fear and anxiety and depression about the
election results.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
I mean, that's a huge question. You know. I'm struggling
with this every day because you know, it's clearly not
enough to say, well, look, I don't like Donald Trump,
I don't like his administration. I don't like what it
stands for. I think it's cruel, it's statistic, and so on.
What are the things that progressives should invest energy in. Well,
there's a lot of things. You know, we're doing a
(22:17):
really good job at the moment of wrecking our environment. Well,
progressives need to work out ways to push environmental policies
to the fore again, and they need to work out
ways to talk about environmental policies in a way that
brings people in because I think one of the things
we've seen in the last few years is a lot
of people, especially lower down the income chain, very very
(22:38):
scared of change around around environment. They think that it's
a trade off between environment and jobs or environment and
economic security. Well that's actually not right. In fact, the
more you protect the environment, the more you shore up
your economy for the future generations. But you have to
work out ways to do that in a way that
doesn't lead people behind. So I think the environment's a
huge one. I think human rights are a huge one.
(23:00):
Clearly going to enter a period where human rights are
the very best takeer back burner. But more likely we're
going to enter a period where for large sections of
the public we just don't think in terms of human
rights anymore. For immigrants especially, the government is going to
be sort of turning itself on those immigrants in a
really quite horrifying way. And I think one of the
(23:20):
things as progressive thinkers we have to do is work
out ways to again talk about a language of human rights,
of universalism. You know, we've done that for hundreds of years.
Progressives since Thomas Payne onwards, have talked about the rights
of man and the idea that you can sort of
embed those rights in the way society is structured. Well,
(23:40):
if we turn our back on that as a society today,
that's a terrible thing. So, you know, one thing is
how do we protect human rights. How do we define,
expand those human rights and then really protect them using
the courts, using public opinion, using the media, using protests.
You know, there are lots of ways that we can
do that. But I do think we've got to keep
(24:01):
our eye on this. So for me, those are the
two big issues, human rights and the environment. But I
think beyond that, there are just so many ways that
we can look at what's gone wrong with the economy.
The economy is so unequal at the moment. The fact
that you know, Trump managed to somehow claim to be
an economic populace is observed because he's stacked, as you know,
as we talked about, he's stacked as administration with some
(24:24):
of the wealthiest people in the world. But the idea
that there's inequality, it's true, and you know, progressives have
to work out a way to craft an economic agenda
that's going to speak to that and going to work
out ways to reign in the inequality, reverse the inequality.
I think we should have a conversation in this country
about a wealth tax. You know, people like Elizabeth Warren
(24:45):
and Bernie Sanders have talked about that for years. If
we have an American oligarchy emerging, and we clearly do.
People who control so many more resources than anybody else, Well,
maybe we should work out ways to break up their wealth.
Maybe we should sort of say, right, ten billion dollars,
that's your limit. Well, that's still a stunning amount of money.
(25:07):
Why does Elon Musk need three hundred and twenty billion dollars?
How is it conceivable that one human being should control
resources more than the entire annual budget of the state
of California. How is that conceivably fair or justified? And
I think those are messages that will resonate. So I
do think there are areas that there's room for progressives
(25:29):
to craft really interesting policies and to reshape the political alliances. Again,
but at the moment, you know, in one of the
weirder paradoxes of American history, at the moment, Trump and
his billionaire acolytes have got the mantle of being economic populace.
And you know, it's a con it's a grift. It's
not going to improve the lives of working class people.
(25:52):
But we have to create an alternative message to help
disattach large numbers of work in class voters from the
Donald Trump machine.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
Well, put.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
Now, do you think one thing.
Speaker 4 (26:11):
I do think the right was so.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Skilled that was messaging and reaching a lot of people
that apparently the left could didn't reach who are disadvantage economically.
And you know, is it a matter of like flooding,
flooding the airwaves, getting more, using more and more media,
more and more memes, more and more.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
Like how much do you think is through media? And yeah,
let me just start with that.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
I think a lot of us to do with the
way the media functions. The fact that you know, every
story for four months was a Trump story. Now a
lot of those stories were negative, but if you're scrolling
down CNN or New York Times or Fox or whatever
it might be, and every single story you see leads
with Trump says or Trump or Trump believes or Trump
will do well, it exites into the brain. I think
(27:04):
the media has a lot to answer for. And you know,
there are no easy answers there because Trump's story, you know,
there is something compelling because it's so outrageous what he
was saying and doing that you know, we in the
media had that an obligation to cover it. But at
the same time, if you literally just saturate the airwaves
with Trump stories, the oxygen gets sucked out of the room,
(27:24):
and nobody else can craft an agenda, nobody else can
get their policy viewpoints across, and everybody else is seen
in sort of comparison to Donald Trump. And so I
do think the way media and then especially social media
amplified Trump was really important in this last electoral cycle.
I think the way Elon Musk laser targeted young men
(27:47):
in particular low propensity voters who maybe had never voted before,
didn't vote for any other race apart from the presidency,
but came out to vote for Donald Trump. You know,
I mean that's it's a powerful coalition they created, and
it's based around beat and switch. It's based around you know,
they pushed cultural war issues, whether it's transgender issues or
(28:09):
whether it was gun ownership or whatever it might be.
They pushed these cultural war issues and convinced a lot
of people that somehow Democrats were out of touch. Well,
you know, if you actually look at the economic agenda,
Joe Biden, for all his other faults, was the most
pro union president in American history, So why were so
many union voters convinced that he was bad for them economically?
(28:33):
Kamala Harris's proposals, they may not have been the most programmatic,
but she had some interesting proposals out there. Six thousand
dollars child tax credits, subsidies for new home buying. I mean,
these things would have made a really tangible difference in
a lot of people's lives. Expansion of medicaid. You know, again,
these very very basic nuts and bolts, things that would
(28:55):
have changed the ability of a lot of Americans to
access healthcare, to access nutrition programs, access and affordable housing.
None of that's going to happen now. And instead you
have government buy four and our billionaires. And that's an
extraordinary bait and switch. And you know, if you want
to sort of think of the contortions that you have
(29:16):
to go through to end up with a group like
the group we now have in power being seen as
somehow economically populist. You know, to me, it's extraordinary. But
I do think a lot of it's to do with
the way that media was used and misused, the way
that social media, in particular, you know, drummed home these
messages to people who weren't necessarily very well informed about
(29:37):
the political process.
Speaker 4 (29:40):
I totally agree, I really yeah, I could. I could
not believe how much.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
So many media channels and venues and were just every
single day amplifying Trump. It just it just to me
reminded me of that coaching principle, just talked about like
it was focusing on what we so many of us
don't want and keeping and as you said, suck the
oxygen out of the room so that people couldn't hear.
(30:12):
And I know a lot of people don't listen to
the mainstream news, but like.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
Why weren't we touting.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
That the benefits of bidyonomics again, like despite flaws, everybody
has flaws, no one's perfect, and the Kamala Harris's proposals
were I really still wonder how many people who voted
for Trump did not ever actually have access to Kamala
Harris's economic plan.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
I think probably a huge number. But you mentioned the
word biodonomics, and I think that probably also speaks to
you part of what happened here. That the economy by
a lot of metrics was doing very very well. There
was low low unemployment, there was low it was high
economic growth, and you know, by by the middle of
this year, inflation was clear sort of coming back down again.
(31:02):
But there is a problem, and the problem is that
for two to two and a half years, inflation was
extremely high in a way that you know, nobody in
this country had experienced in more than forty years, and
that scared people. It completely dislocated family finances, and it
made it much harder to afford houses, in particular because
(31:23):
interest rates soared. So if you're trying to message your
administration and your accomplishments given all of that, is probably
a really, really bad idea to come up with a
phrase like Bidenomics, because basically you're owning all of that.
(31:43):
And yeah, there's some good stuff there. There's investments, industrial reinvestments,
there's the Inflation Reduction Act. There are all these things
that were important, and over the long run, assuming they're
allowed to stay in place, we'll create an awful lot
of high tech jobs and an awful lot of infrastructure investments.
But in the short what it meant was that the
Biden team was basically saying, hey, it's all good, we're
(32:04):
so happy with the state of the economy, we're going
to name it after our president. Well, you know, if
you're paying more for basic household goods and you're certainly
paying more for buying a house, and you're certainly paying
more for car purchases and all of that. And you
hear the term Bidenomics, it leaves a sour taste. And
I do think that, you know, one of the problems
(32:25):
I had with Biden throughout his presidency, even before you know,
questions of ours as to whether or not he was
mentally competent enough to be president. But even before then,
he seemed to me to be amongst the worst sellers
of his own product, of anyone I've ever encountered that.
You know, the product wasn't bad, he hasn't really good policies,
(32:46):
but he had the worst messaging you could possibly imagine.
And you know, it stuns me. How do you go
through a presidency for four years and fail that dismally
to communicate your best message. And that's partly the fault
of Biden, It's partly the fault of the people surrounding him,
it's partly his communications team. But for whatever reasons, it
(33:07):
was a fiasco from start to finish. He just had
no idea how in the year, you know, in the
twenty twenties, how to reach out to people and communicate
and that's a part of leadership, and it is. You know,
I think Biden deserves a huge amount of criticism for
his failure to message over the last four years, because
(33:27):
if you can't do it, it doesn't matter how good
your policies are, you're basically going to be seen as
a failure. And in the end, the public saw him
as a failure, and now we're bearing the costs of that.
Speaker 4 (33:40):
I blame his communication teams.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
I mean, taken his communications team to a point, but
I'm always loath to sort of appropriate blame lower down
the food chain, because at the end of the day,
Biden was at the todd of the food chain. Was
then't in charge of it all. If he didn't like
his communications team, he could have shaken it up. But
the fact was, every time Biden tried to message, he failed.
(34:09):
Every time he held a press conference it didn't work.
Every time he sort of reached out to try and
communicate to young people, it was a flop. Well, you
know again, I'll say it again. Part of the job
of the president of the United States is selling a message.
Roosevelt knew that Bill Clinton knew that Ronald Reagan knew
that Obama knew that how come it was so hard
(34:29):
for Biden to message his own successes.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
No, that's an excellent point. Let me just ask one
question that about the inflation, because you know, I kept
thinking about, you know, the sort of global economy and.
Speaker 4 (34:49):
Which wasn't fair or right, and.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Like from a privileged point of view, about how like,
of course there's inflation. We're coming out of COVID, coming
out of disaster. We were sent checks also in Trump's
and and and Biden's time to help us survive and
get back on our feet.
Speaker 4 (35:10):
There's inflation all over the world.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Why is everybody plate blaming Biden?
Speaker 4 (35:16):
But maybe it's because they call it by dynamics.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
I think partly, and also because America is the most
powerful country on earth. So what America does impact the
rest of the world. Now, yes, there would have been
inflation regardless because there were supply chain disruptions. There was
huge bottled up consumer demand because of the lockdowns, and
when that demand was sort of uncourked, when you sort
of added in the supply chain disruptions, I think it
(35:39):
was inevitable there was going to be some inflation. Yeah,
probably make an argument that that inflation was worsened by
the fact that Biden overheated the economy and then when
inflation took off for you know, a few months at
the beginning of that, the administration said, this is just transitory,
you know, it's just the supply chains working out. The
King's all well, get back to normal, and they were
way too slow to us on to the fact that
(36:00):
there was an inflation crisis that was accelerating. So, you know, yes,
you're right, the whole world experienced inflation, and the last
part of that was just the inevitable byproduct of this
calamitous pandemic. But there were some policy choices that were
made that maybe could have been made differently that could
have tamped down that inflation or brought it to heal
earlier and quicker. And so, you know, I think it's
(36:21):
fair enough to say that's one of Biden's failures. There
are many successes, you know. I you know, as I said,
you look at some of the legislation they passed, the
Inflation Reduction Act, a lot of the investments in infrastructure,
a lot of the investments in environmental policy. They were
really really important, and you know, they were some of
the most important domestic law legislation passed and the last
(36:43):
fifty years. But take the good with the bad. At
the same time, there was bad, and if you're going
to own the good, you have to earn the bad.
They didn't succeed in inflation in twenty twenty one and
twenty twenty two. By the time they know pivoted and
did begin paying attention to it, a lot of people
were hurting. And I think that that contributed to the
anti incombascy mood. It wasn't the only thing that led
(37:04):
to anti incumbassy, but it definitely contributed to it.
Speaker 3 (37:12):
So I have another question about reaching more people and
like what was missed and reaching and not, you know,
not to blame people, but I'm wondering again who didn't
have access to information? And sometimes it's because people are working,
(37:32):
like myself more than one job, Like who you know,
who has time to go do your political research when
you're raising kids and working and trying to just keep
your life together. But I keep thinking wondering how many
people because I don't I forgot the number of followers.
But just for example, I'm going to mention Joe Rogan
(37:54):
in his podcast, I forgot how many followers he has
with like a ridiculously high number of and they keep thinking,
like that little rumor that went around that Kamala Harris
was going to be on Joe Rogan. I kept thinking
that would be a really good idea because a lot
of people who listened to Joe Rogan probably don't listen
to other channels or podcasts that actually have her on
(38:17):
to hear her again, to hear her message.
Speaker 4 (38:21):
And just I don't know, do you have any response
to that? I like that.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
Yeah, I mean, given the state of the media ecosystem
in this country, given who has the huge podiums, Yeah,
the Democrats should have done a better job of reaching
out to I mean, whether it was Rogan or some
of the other people on the conservative and or libertarian
end of the spectrum, they should have reached out of
them more. Harris tried, but it was too late in
(38:48):
the day. The first couple of months for candidacy, and again,
you know, she was creating a candidacy from scratch with
almost no notice. I mean, this was an extraordinary ask
in a way, and I think the first month month
and a half she was just finding her feet. And
then there was this policy or not policy. There was
this sort of idea, which I think was misguided, that
(39:09):
she should only be giving interviews in very controlled environments
and I think, you know, again hindsights everything. But they
were quite risk averse. They didn't want to sort of
play hostess to fortune. They thought that Trump was seen
as so extreme that you know, all they had to
do was play safe and fifty two percent of the
public would reject Trump. And it turned out that they
(39:30):
were wrong a little bit that you know, about fifty
percent of the public was okay with Trump. And in
the Swing States in particular, where there was this you know,
laser focus to get low propensity voters, young men in particular,
out to vote. In the Swing States in particular, that
proved devastating because, yes, well educated people heard Harris's message
(39:53):
or heard listaneous message, or heard John Kelly's message about
fascism and it raised warning signs, but an awful lot
of people pople that messaging, it just apparently didn't mean anything.
You know, The sort of moral dangers of what fascism
was just didn't really sink in. What did sink in
was the economic messaging, and what did sink in was
(40:13):
the cultural war messaging. And the right wing was very
very good at relentlessly hitting on those issues. And so yes,
I think, with hindsight, Harris should have reached out to
some of those outlets like Joe Rogan. I don't know
if Wrogan would have had her on, but you know,
the outlets that had the potential to reach into the
homes of those voters who weren't being moved by the
(40:35):
messaging around authoritarianism or around fascism. But she didn't do that.
And you know, I think at the margins that may
have made a difference of a few thousand votes here,
a few thousand votes there, and those margins were really important.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
Yes, I reached out and I invited her team to
have her on the show, but they didn't get the message. No,
thank you for like confirming that. I mean, surely, surely
that was a big miss. And I remember feeling so frustrated, like,
(41:10):
speak to other audiences.
Speaker 4 (41:11):
They're they're out there.
Speaker 3 (41:14):
I wanted I'm thinking about because we have about nine
minutes left. You were talking and on one of the
I watched a YouTube video talk you did about.
Speaker 4 (41:27):
Forgive me. I can't remember the full title of your
book on chaos.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
So the book is Chaos comes calling the battle against
the far right takeover a small town America came out of.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
Thank you, thank you, And you were talking about an
example of a small town in Washington and the state
in a small town and uh in just California, northern California,
and there's a It was interesting.
Speaker 4 (41:54):
Because you were talking.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
About kind of like cycles and rhythms and like culture
wars can only last so long, and they can have
a big flash point and then they can kind of
burn out because when people realize that doesn't really it
doesn't really affect me if they're you know, if there
are some minor percent of people are trans that doesn't
(42:15):
really affect whether or not I can buy a house?
Speaker 4 (42:16):
Like why am I proactive by with that?
Speaker 3 (42:18):
Like there's other things to think about.
Speaker 4 (42:21):
So anyway, can you talk a little bit about.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
Like like how these I'm thinking of, like Hegel, like,
how these political movements can shift and present us with
some a vision of directions that the US can move
into that maybe would give us a little bit more
(42:45):
like energize us and more hope about how to you know,
proactively resist acts towards authoritarianism.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
Yeah, So when I was reporting my book, I focused
on two places. So one of them was a county
and Washington State. It was called Clallam County. It's on
the Olympic Peninsula. Within that, I focused on a small
town called Squim. And the other was this quite far
right county in northern California called Shasta County, where the
board of supervisors have been taken over by just extremely
(43:16):
hard right characters in the pandemic period, and in both
Washington and Squirming in Shasta County. One of the things
that happened was that as the counties veered right wood,
the first thing that took a hit was public health
because basically you had the public health officers in the
pandemic proposing public health measures as they were supposed to do,
(43:38):
and the local governments, instead of backing them, basically going
to war against them. And that gave a stamp of
approval for all these crazies on the internet, in particular,
to come out of the woodwork and threaten, harassed, intimidate,
you know, do all kinds of blood curdling emails and
instant messages to these public health officers. And that's very,
very dysfunctional because it ends up sort of of making
(44:01):
rational response to crisis almost impossible. But then the second
thing that happened was beyond public health, you had this
sort of raft of measures that these hard right governments
would take that made it harder to keep community services going,
housing services, drug treatment programs, mental health services, all these
things that are the sort of bread and butter of
(44:22):
local government. And over time, in both places, local government
it didn't grind to a halt, but it became increasingly dysfunctional.
And what you saw in squim in particular was a
reaction against that that people pretty much across the political
spectrum looked at what was happening and realized that nothing's
(44:43):
getting done, that the communities that they were living in
were suffering, not just in the abstract but in very
concrete ways, that the things that local government were supposed
to do to make lives better weren't getting done. And
they formed this group called the squim Go Governance League,
and it had in a pendents, it had liberals, had Democrats,
it had quite a lot of moderate Republicans as well.
(45:04):
And the Schimgrop Governmance League basically set to work at
educating locals and they started knocking on doors, they started
holding community meetings, and then by twenty twenty two, they
were ready to run slates and political candidates. They were
very effective. They won at the city council level, they
won at the school board level, they won. There were
a series of different committees and different agencies that had
(45:25):
elected officers, and they won wherever they ran. And to me,
it was a lesson that if you're looking what happens
in an authoritarian moment when the public, you know, actually
realizes this isn't working well, one of the things that
needs to happen is real classroots organizing and building up
power again for the ground up, because ultimately, I do
think these sort of very extreme movements like MAGA, they
(45:47):
are slightly cult based, and I also think they burned
themselves out because they're so extreme and people get tired
of screaming after a while, and you know, after a while,
people want the basics. They want government that work, they
want potholes filled in in the streets, they want schools
that work for the kids, and so on. I think
one of the things we're going to see in the
next few years, especially if these huge cuts to government
(46:10):
services go in, which you know is ramas Raman and
muss dream, it won't be smooth sailing. You know, if
you cut food stamps the way they're talking about it,
or you can't medicate the way they're talking about it,
an awful lot of people are going to start realizing
this doesn't work. You know, I traded my vote. I
voted for these guys because they were talking about immigration,
(46:32):
they were talking about the border, they were talking about
transgender issues, whatever it was that brought people into the
Trump coalition. So I voted for them for this. And
now I find that I can't access food stamps, or
now I find that my kids' schools are closing, you know,
one afternoon a week because there's no funding for schools,
Or now I find that avian flu is taking off,
and turns out that the public health officers now and
(46:53):
Judge Benet the faintest idea what they're doing. You know,
that is going to have a huge impact. And I
do think that, you know, if there is a way
out of this mess, you know, it's going to be messy,
and I can't imagine it happening quickly, But if there
is a way out of this mess, it's going to
be in reaction to the sheer disfunction the Trump's government
promises because it does. You know, every single day of
(47:16):
the last administration was dysfunctional, and there's every indication of
the Trump administration in twenty sixteen to twenty twenty was dysfunctional,
and there's every indication the same thing's going to happen
this time. It will be filled with personal drama, it
will be unable to implement most of the policies that's
trying to implement, and the ones it does implement will
be destructive, and after a while, the public's going to
turn on that.
Speaker 4 (47:40):
Thank you for the illustration.
Speaker 3 (47:41):
That totally that totally makes sense, and I just want
to give you the opportunity. We have just a couple
of minutes. Do you have a closing thought before I
think everyone, I.
Speaker 2 (47:51):
Mean, look, I really enjoyed this conversation because you ask
questions that took us on a wide journey, and I
think that's important. I guess my closing comments are, this
is too big an issue to think about in silos.
So if your issue is immigration, that's great, but also
look at what's happening around environmental policy, or if your
issue is trade union representational workers rights, that's fine, but
(48:15):
also look at the damage being done to the healthcare system.
You know, there are all these ways that things are interconnected.
The book I wrote, care Comes Calling tries to sort of,
you know, connect all the dots. But I do think
that over the coming years, you know, that's important connecting
the dots, looking at the way this plays out holistically
rather than these sort of different silos. And the final
(48:38):
thing is, look, there's going to be an awful lot
of temptation to just pull back and disengage because people
are going to be so depressed and miserable about what's
coming down. If they're progressive, it's a bad response because ultimately,
the only way we get out of this is to
stay engaged and to stay paying attention and to continually
focus in on and highlight, you know, all the nefariousness
(49:00):
that's going to come down over the coming years.
Speaker 3 (49:04):
Stay engaged, participate, break out of silos, work together and yeah,
and communicate across differences. Thank you so much, Sasha Abrimski.
I really appreciate your time, and I want to thank
our listeners and viewers, and our engineer Rebel and our
producer Dean Piper, and remind everyone to tune in next
(49:26):
Wednesday at eight pm Eastern time on Talk for TV
and W four cy dot com. Thank you so much
and maybe all have more enriching conversations and diversity of
a good Thanksgiving.
Speaker 2 (49:41):
Let's speech, let's speech show.
Speaker 3 (49:49):
In lot.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
Let's preach in lot. Let's preach.
Speaker 4 (49:59):
In lot.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
Garlet switch a large in Garlet switch off her con
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