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The Greying Wolf: The Twilight of Fascism · The Overlap

0:00
Hello everyone and welcome back to The Overlap.
0:03
I'm Joshua.
0:04
And I'm Will.
0:05
And if you're new here, if you've just found us through the algorithm, or if a friend passed us along, welcome to the bunker.
0:12
We should probably explain that what we do here because we aren't your typical news commentary.
0:17
We don't care about the horse race.
0:18
We don't care about the polls.
0:19
We don't care about the political theater that the cable news networks sell you to keep you angry and distracted.
0:26
Right, we care about the machinery.
0:28
We care about the systems, economic, political, social, that are designed to extract value from your labor and compliance from your mind.
0:37
Usually we talk about how these systems work too well.
0:40
We talk about how efficient the healthcare industry is at bankrupting you.
0:43
We talk about how efficient the housing market is at keeping you renting forever.
0:47
But today, today, we're doing something different.
1:06
Today, we're going to talk about what happens when the machine breaks.
1:09
We're going to talk about the end of the strongman.
1:12
We are living in a moment of authoritarian drift.
1:16
We see it globally.
1:17
The rise of the illiberal democracy, the return of the dictator and the narrative they sell us.
1:23
The narrative that seduces the working class is one of strength.
1:28
I alone can fix it.
1:30
I will bring order.
1:31
It's a seductive lie for people who have been crushed by neoliberalism for 40 years.
1:37
Exactly.
1:38
When the factories close and the rent goes up, people look for a savior.
1:42
They look for a dad.
1:44
But here's the thing about dads and kings and dictators.
1:47
They get old.
1:48
They decay just like the rest of us.
1:50
We rarely talk about how these regimes end.
1:54
History tells us that fascism rarely ends in a glorious cinematic last stand.
2:00
It ends with a wheeze.
2:02
It ends with a confused old man wandering around a gilded palace that was built with stolen money, shouting at a television that isn't turned on.
2:12
It ends in the gerontocracy.
2:15
So today we're going to run a simulation.
2:17
We're going to imagine a fictional, that's right, you heard that, fictional regime.
2:22
We're going to call it Republic of Frump.
2:25
Frump, with an F.
2:27
And we're going to imagine a fictional leader.
2:29
Let's call him, Shonald.
2:31
Shonald Frump.
2:33
The eternal president.
2:35
The orange emperor.
2:36
His highness.
2:38
And we aren't looking at Shonald in his prime, if he ever had one.
2:41
We're looking at Shonald in his twilight.
2:44
We're going to ask what happens to a movement built on strength when the leader becomes the embodiment of weakness?
2:50
All right, I want to set the scene.
2:53
I want you to view this not through the eyes of a pundit, but through the eyes of the people in the room.
2:59
The year is irrelevant.
3:01
Time is a flat circle in the Republic.
3:04
We are in a stadium.
3:05
Maybe it's in the Rust Belt.
3:07
Maybe it's in the Deep South.
3:08
The air conditioning is broken.
3:10
It's hot.
3:12
The air smells like popcorn, diesel fumes, and sweat.
3:17
There are 25,000 people here.
3:20
And let's be clear about who they are.
3:22
These are people who have been abandoned by the system.
3:25
These are workers.
3:26
These are people whose towns have been hollowed out by private equity.
3:30
They're here because they were promised a voice.
3:34
They were promised that this man was their retribution against the elites who destroyed their lives.
3:41
They're waiting for the show.
3:43
You know, they're waiting for the catharsis.
3:46
Just like the old rock bands on their fourth, fifth, tenth, twentieth tour.
3:51
The people want to hear the hits.
3:53
The wall.
3:54
Lock her up.
3:56
They want to feel for one hour that they are winning again.
3:59
And then the lights go down.
4:01
The pyrotechnics go off.
4:03
Boom, boom, shaking the cheap seats.
4:06
And he walks out, shunned.
4:09
He's wearing the uniform, the blue suit, the armor of the executive class, the red tie, the symbol of power hanging a perilous four inches below the belt line.
4:22
He walks to the podium.
4:23
He grips it.
4:25
He leans into the microphone.
4:27
The crowd screams, this is communion.
4:30
This is the moment they paid for.
4:32
He opens his mouth.
4:34
He raises a finger.
4:36
He begins to speak about the factories coming back, about the tariffs.
4:41
We're going to build a dome, he says, a beautiful iron dome.
4:47
And then silence.
4:50
He stops.
4:52
He freezes.
4:54
His eyes go wide, staring at a point in the middle distance.
4:59
He isn't looking at the crowd.
5:01
He isn't looking at the teleprompter.
5:03
He's looking at the void.
5:06
For 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds.
5:10
The leader is buffering.
5:13
He's offline.
5:15
And I want us to focus on the crowd here because the media laughs at this.
5:20
The liberals on Twitter a little laugh at it.
5:22
But if you're in that room, this is not funny.
5:25
It's terrifying because you pinned your entire hope for the future on this man.
5:31
You alienated your family for this man.
5:33
And now you're watching a malfunction in real time.
5:37
The cheering dies down.
5:38
It becomes this nervous murmur.
5:40
They're looking at each other thinking, is this part of the act?
5:44
Is this the 40 chess?
5:45
Please God let this be the 40 chess.
5:48
They're doing the mental gymnastics to protect themselves from the reality that the strong man is a fragile old man.
5:57
And then the synapse fires.
6:00
He blinks, he shakes his head and he shouts, drill baby drill.
6:05
And the crowd erupts.
6:07
They scream louder than before, not because they're excited, but because they're relieved.
6:13
They are relieved that the illusion held together for one more minute.
6:18
It's the out-breath after a collective gasp of denial.
6:21
But the aides backstage?
6:23
The people running the grift?
6:25
They know.
6:26
They know that glitch wasn't a pause.
6:28
It was a preview.
6:29
So let's diagnose this.
6:31
Shonald is pushing 80.
6:33
He lives on a diet of fast food and rage.
6:36
And neurologically, we're seeing the fraying of the wiring.
6:41
His campaign calls it the weave.
6:43
Have you heard this?
6:44
It's their attempt to rebrand senility as genius.
6:48
They say, oh, he touches on five different subjects and weaves them together into a tapestry of truth.
6:55
Let's take a look at one of these tapestries.
6:57
He starts at a sentence talking about labor.
7:00
The autoworkers are being killed by China.
7:02
Okay, valid point.
7:04
But then mid-sentence, no pivot, he's talking about electric boats.
7:08
The boat's heavy because of the battery.
7:10
The boat sinks, do you get electrocuted?
7:11
Or are you eaten by the shark that's 10 yards away?
7:13
I'll take electrocution.
7:14
But Hannibal Lecter, great guy, he'd have you for dinner.
7:17
And then somehow he lands back on, and that's why we need to ban wind turbines.
7:21
It's a word salad, but here's the danger.
7:24
It's not just that he's confused.
7:26
It's that the state has to pretend this confusion is policy.
7:32
This is the ultimate gaslighting of the public.
7:34
When the leader says the sharks are the problem, the Department of the Interior has to waste millions of dollars starting an anti-shark task force.
7:45
Resources that should be going to, I don't know, healthcare, infrastructure, maybe
7:50
Education are being diverted to chase the phantoms of a dementia-riddled mind.
7:58
It's the looting of the public trust to service the ego of the leader.
8:02
And everyone, generals, senators, the media, is forced to participate in this shared psychosis.
8:10
And the working class, the people at the rally, they're left trying to decipher if the shark is a metaphor for capitalism or if he just watched Jaws last night.
8:19
Spoiler, he just watched Jaws.
8:22
Now, we need to talk about the people running the show, because Seanhold, this fictional leader in our story, isn't sitting at the resolute desk reading policy papers.
8:34
He doesn't read.
8:36
So who's pulling all the levers?
8:38
To understand the Twilight phase, we have to look at the evolution of his inner circle.
8:43
Let's go back to season one.
8:45
Who was in the room?
8:46
In our fictional season one, it was the adults in the room.
8:50
Tex Rillerson, General Hattis, General Pelley, Kerry Goan.
8:56
ah You know, the adults that we all know and imagine from season one.
9:03
Let's be clear about who these adults were.
9:05
ah These were the titans of industry, the enforcers of empire, the grand moffs of the...
9:12
uh
9:13
the Trump administration, sorry, Trump administration.
9:17
We had the CEO of...
9:22
We have the CEO of uh oil and company whose job was to extract oil and crush unions.
9:29
We have generals, we have power in the room.
9:32
These are competent people who are competent at exploitation.
9:36
They were competent in maintaining the status quo of neoliberal capitalism.
9:40
Exactly.
9:40
They weren't the good guys, right?
9:42
They were just effective at running the machine.
9:46
Their strategy with Shonald was containment.
9:49
They wanted to use him as a useful idiot to cut taxes and deregulate while they kept the empire running smoothly.
9:57
But Shonald realized the game.
10:00
He realized that they were telling him no, and Shonald hates no.
10:05
No is a constraint on his ego.
10:08
So he purged them.
10:09
He fired the CEO of Exxon via Twitter while the guy was on the toilet.
10:15
He humiliated the generals.
10:17
The Game of Thrones.
10:18
uh So the competent exploiters are gone now, right?
10:22
And who replaces them in season four?
10:24
Who comes in the room when the adults leave?
10:27
Well, it's the sycophants.
10:29
The wannabes, the grifters, the...
10:32
Your pillow cabinet.
10:34
So, Shonald starts hiring people based on one criteria, fealty.
10:40
He watches TV, he sees a guy screaming about deep space state lasers and says, get me that guy, he loves me, let's make him Secretary of Defense.
10:52
Sorry, Secretary of War.
10:54
Right.
10:56
Because, know, Shonald follows the current politics and decided that was a good name to adopt for his fictional branch of the government or department.
11:05
So now you have a cabinet of absolute lunatics.
11:08
You have a secretary of education whose only qualification is that she ran a wrestling federation.
11:14
You've got a national security advisor who's used to posting memes on 4chan.
11:19
These people are not only
11:21
evil, they're incompetent.
11:23
But unlike the generals who never told Shonald no, if Shonald says nuke a hurricane, the generals would have said, sir, that violates the laws of physics.
11:32
If the sycophants would say instead, brilliant idea, sir, very wet, very nuclear, we'll look into it right away.
11:37
This is the paradox.
11:39
For the working class, this is actually more dangerous.
11:43
The generals were bad because they maintained a system of oppression.
11:47
The sycophants are bad because they might accidentally collapse the entire food supply chain because they forgot to sign a paper.
11:56
We have traded malicious order for malicious chaos.
12:00
And this brings us to the engine of the regime.
12:02
What is the motivation?
12:04
If it's not ideology, because let's face it, they don't have one.
12:08
If it's not governance, because let's face it, they can't govern.
12:13
What is it?
12:14
Well, that's what has always been.
12:16
In a classic dictatorship like Nazi Germany, the secret police are terrifying zealots.
12:21
They're true believers.
12:22
In the twilight of Schönauld, the secret police are multi-level marketers.
12:25
Let's imagine the head of the secret police.
12:29
Let's call him Director Pash.
12:32
Pash Katel.
12:34
Director Pash goes on TV and threatens to arrest journalists.
12:40
He talks about deportation forces.
12:42
He sounds like a fascist.
12:46
But Director Pash also has a podcast and Director Pash is selling a line of
12:54
Patriot Vitamin Supplements on his Instagram.
12:58
And director Pash has written a children's book about a brave tractor that builds a wall.
13:04
Available now for $29.99.
13:08
Wait, the head of the Gestapo is an influencer?
13:11
Yes, that is the Twilight phase.
13:14
Corruption eats the terror, but here is the solidarity angle.
13:19
Who are they grifting?
13:21
They aren't stealing from the elites.
13:23
The elites are fine.
13:25
They're stealing from the base.
13:27
They're stealing from a grandma in Ohio who sends her social security check to the legal defense fund.
13:33
They're stealing from the worker who buys the victory coins because he thinks it will save the country.
13:40
It's a vampiric relationship.
13:41
These guys aren't trying to build a thousand year Reich.
13:44
They know the math.
13:45
They look at Channel.
13:46
They see the shaking hands.
13:47
They see the confusion.
13:48
They know his regime has an expiration date.
13:51
So they're looting the building while it's still standing.
13:54
They're selling pardons.
13:55
They're selling access.
13:57
They're cashing out.
13:59
And that, that is the most dangerous moment for the people.
14:04
Because you have a leader who is losing his mind.
14:08
You have a staff that is incompetent.
14:11
You have a police force that is greedy and the walls are closing in.
14:16
When a regime like that feels cornered, it does not just fade away.
14:21
It spasms and it lashes out.
14:24
And in the next section we're going to talk about that spasm.
14:26
We're going to talk about what happens when the wounded animal decides to bite.
14:29
We're going to talk about the bunker mentality.
14:32
And we're going to talk about the terrifying reality of weekend at bernie's policymaking where the whims of a dying man become the law of the land.
14:40
Stay with us.
14:40
The glitch is just the beginning.
14:42
All right, welcome back to the bunker.
14:45
In part one, we kind of established the baseline, right?
14:47
We were looking at this uh fictional glitching leader named Shonald Frump.
14:54
We looked at the grifting entourage.
14:57
We looked at the weave that is really just a frayed wire.
15:03
If you stopped the simulation there, you might feel weirdly comforted.
15:08
You might think, okay, well, Shonald is old.
15:12
He's tired.
15:13
The people around him are just trying to sell vitamins.
15:15
Maybe the regime will just peter out.
15:18
Maybe they'll just golf until the clock runs out or something.
15:21
That is the liberal fantasy.
15:24
That is the fantasy of the professional managerial class.
15:27
They think that because they would retire quietly, dictator will too.
15:32
But that is not how power works.
15:34
And it is certainly not how narcissism works.
15:37
Exactly.
15:38
We need to talk about what happens when the wounded animal realizes it's wounded.
15:43
Because history tells us that dying regimes don't fade away.
15:47
They spasm.
15:48
When a strong man feels his own strength fading, when he feels the walls closing in, he doesn't reflect.
15:56
He doesn't go to therapy and talk to a buddy.
15:59
He panics.
16:01
And how does a dictator soothe his own panic?
16:04
He hurts people.
16:05
Just in case we get a little too dark and heavy here, I can't help but remember the scene from Tommy Boy where they hit the deer.
16:12
They put it in the back of the car, thinking it's dead.
16:14
That's the spasm.
16:16
When an animal, you they thought was dead is not.
16:21
Getting back to the point here, cruelty is the only currency that the leader has left.
16:26
When he can no longer command respect through competence, and he can no longer command love through charisma, he commands fear through violence.
16:34
And this is where the solidarity angle becomes critical.
16:37
Because who bears the brunt of the spasm?
16:39
It's not the elites, it's not the donors, it's the vulnerable.
16:43
The workers, the people at the bottom of the pyramid.
16:46
So in part two, we're gonna look at the lashing out.
16:50
We're gonna look at the terrifying mechanisms of weakened at Bernie's policymaking.
16:54
And we're gonna look at the succession war, the knife fight in the nursing home that ensures no one is steering the ship while it heads for the iceberg.
17:03
Let's start with the physical reality of Shonald Holden as Twilight.
17:06
We have to understand his environment, understand his orders.
17:09
He isn't traveling anymore.
17:10
He's not doing road rallies like he used to.
17:12
Maybe once a month he sits on a stool.
17:14
ah But he's retreated to the golf course bunker at this point.
17:20
Yeah, I want you to kind of visualize this place, right?
17:23
This is a palace of tacky opulence.
17:27
Gold leaf on the crown molding, uh chandeliers that are just entirely too big for the room, thick red velvet curtains that are always drawn because he hates the sunlight.
17:40
It smells like hairspray, like fast food and old farts.
17:45
And Shonald sits there.
17:47
He sits at the head of the table.
17:49
that is 30 feet long.
17:51
This is the dictator's distance, right?
17:53
We saw it with Putin, we saw it with Hitler.
17:56
As the paranoia grows, the table gets longer.
18:00
He doesn't want people close to him.
18:02
He thinks they carry germs.
18:04
He thinks they carry betrayal.
18:07
So his advisors, the sycophants we talked about, have to shout to be heard, sir, the polls look great.
18:14
And Seannald sits there staring at one thing he trusts more than any human being around him, the television.
18:20
Yeah, that's going to be the Fox News feedback loop.
18:26
This is the engine of the spasm.
18:29
Shonald consumes fear for breakfast.
18:33
He watches a segment about migrant caravans invading the suburbs.
18:37
Now, you and I both know that segment is entirely manufactured outrage.
18:42
It's designed to sell reverse mortgages to terrified senior citizens.
18:47
But Shonald is.
18:49
a terrified senior citizen.
18:51
He believes it.
18:52
He watches the screen, he sees the scary music, he sees the grainy footage, and he gets scared.
18:59
But unlike your terrified grandfather, Shonald has the Department of Homeland Security on speed dial.
19:06
So he picks up the phone.
19:08
Or he picks up the tweet, the phone tweet, the tweeting phone, whatever the tweet phone is called.
19:14
And he issues an order based on a hallucination he just saw in cable news.
19:18
Deploy the National Guard to Topeka.
19:19
The caravan is coming.
19:21
And now down in the situation room, which is really just a conference room at Mar-a-Lego, the staff panics.
19:31
They know there's no caravan in Topeka.
19:34
Topeka is in Kansas, but they can't tell him that.
19:39
If they say, sir, that's fake news, they get fired.
19:43
They become enemies of the deep state.
19:46
So they have to act.
19:47
They have to mobilize real troops.
19:50
Real people spend real tax dollars and terrorize real communities in Kansas just to soothe the anxiety of one old man who got scared by the TV.
20:04
This brings us to the mechanism of cumulative radicalization.
20:08
It's not a weather term.
20:10
It's a term historians use for the Nazi regime.
20:13
But it applies perfectly here.
20:14
Surprise, surprise.
20:16
Because the leader's orders are vague and mumbled.
20:19
There's something about the vermin.
20:21
The underlings have to interpret them.
20:23
And because the underlings are competing for favor, they always interpret the order in the most extreme, violent way possible.
20:30
Let's introduce a character.
20:32
Let's call him advisor Steve.
20:36
Steve is 32.
20:38
He wears a suit that's a little bit too tight.
20:41
He used to run a right wing meme page called liberaltears.com.
20:47
Steve has no security clearance, but he has the wifi password.
20:52
He is standing next to Shonald while Shonald is eating a cheeseburger and shouting at the television.
20:59
These judges, they're destroying us.
21:01
Somebody should stop them.
21:03
That's all he says.
21:05
Someone should stop them.
21:07
Then he goes back to eating.
21:09
Now Steve has a choice.
21:11
Does Shonald old mean file a legal motion?
21:14
Or does Shonald old mean send a mob to the judge's house?
21:18
Steve looks at the other aides.
21:19
He sees director Pash watching him.
21:22
If Steve chooses the legal motion, he looks weak.
21:25
He looks like a rhino, Republican in name only.
21:28
If Steve chooses the mob, he looks like a warrior.
21:32
So Steve pulls out his phone.
21:33
He drafts the tweet for Shonald.
21:35
The corrupt judge must be stopped.
21:37
Patriots, go to his house.
21:39
And he hits send.
21:41
Shonald didn't write it.
21:42
Shonald might not even read it.
21:45
We don't even know if Shonald can read, but the signal goes out and suddenly a thousand miles away, a real judge, maybe a guy who's just trying to uphold the law, a Republican
21:58
principal has his windows smashed.
22:01
His family has to go into hiding because Steve wanted a promotion.
22:06
This is the chaos engine.
22:09
Policy is not being crafted, it's being hallucinated by extremists trying to out crazy each other to impress the senile boss.
22:17
And the consequences fall on the working class.
22:20
Let's talk about the tariff spasm.
22:22
Seanal wakes up grumpy.
22:23
Maybe he saw a segment about Canada.
22:25
He tweets, Canada's ripping us off.
22:27
50 % tariff on maple syrup starting now.
22:30
Again, he hits send.
22:32
Now, think about the ripple effect.
22:34
Think about the logistics manager at a trucking company in Detroit.
22:38
He wakes up, he checks his phone, he sees this troth central tweet.
22:45
His entire business relies on crossing that border every single day.
22:51
But suddenly, the border's closed.
22:53
The trucks are stopped.
22:54
He has to fire 50 drivers in that afternoon.
22:58
50 families lose their income.
23:00
50 families can't pay rent next month, all because Shonald was in a bad mood and advisor Steve wants to look tough on trade.
23:09
This is the anti-solidarity of the regime.
23:12
They claim to be for the American worker, but they treat the economy like a casino where they play with the chips and the workers are the ones who get cashed out.
23:21
The volatility is the violence.
23:23
You cannot plan your life.
23:25
You cannot build a union.
23:26
You cannot organize when the rules of reality change every time the president touches his phone.
23:31
And underneath the chaos of the policy, there's a deeper rot.
23:36
The succession war.
23:38
Everyone in the bunker knows the secret.
23:41
They see the shaking hands.
23:43
They see the weave.
23:45
They can literally smell the decline on Fox News.
23:49
They know, Shonald old is mortal.
23:52
And in a personality cult, the death of the personality is the end of the world.
23:57
Unless someone can inherit the crown.
24:01
But who?
24:02
Fascism is a monarchy without the bloodline rules.
24:05
There's no Prince of Wales.
24:07
There's only a pit of vipers.
24:09
So let's meet the players in the game of phones.
24:12
First, you have the princes of blood, Ron Jr.
24:16
Jr.
24:17
He's the loudest.
24:19
He looks like he's vibrating.
24:21
He's always shouting into a camera, eyes wide, talking about total war.
24:26
He thinks he's the heir because he mimics the father.
24:30
He does the voice, he does the insults, but he lacks the charisma.
24:35
Shonald was a star.
24:37
Ron Jr.
24:37
Jr.
24:38
is a cover band.
24:40
Should that be Shonald Jr.
24:41
Jr.
24:41
or Ron Jr.
24:42
Jr.?
24:43
Right, okay, makes sense.
24:47
looks at him with contempt because Shonald hates desperation and Ron is desperate for daddy's love.
24:55
Then you have.
24:57
If on let's just call her that the quiet accountant She's trying to distance herself.
25:05
She's going to she goes to parties in the Hamptons.
25:07
She tells the donors I'm the reasonable one.
25:09
I'm the bridge to the future Meanwhile, she's quietly funneling campaign money into a private equity fund.
25:15
She doesn't want to be shannell She wants to sell shannell.
25:18
She wants to franchise the brand
25:20
And then you have the pretenders, the outsiders who want to steal the mantle.
25:26
We have to talk about the JP vents, the intellectual fraud, the guy who wrote a book about how much he hated Shonald old calling him America's Hitler.
25:38
And then realizing that grifting pays better than integrity.
25:43
Now he wears the eyeliner.
25:45
He lowers his voice.
25:47
He tries to sound profound.
25:49
He thinks he can strip the chonaldism of the clownishness and make it efficient.
25:56
He wants to be competent, Shammel, which is terrifying.
25:59
But there's the problem for JP Vince.
26:01
The base doesn't want competence.
26:03
They want the clown.
26:04
They want the show.
26:06
JP Vince goes on stage and tries to give a lecture on post-liberal integralism.
26:10
The crowd falls asleep.
26:11
Shammel goes on stage and does a 10 minute dance to the YMCA and the crowd goes wild.
26:16
You cannot intellectualize the id.
26:19
So you have these factions sort of fighting back and forth, right?
26:24
And they're fighting dirty, right?
26:25
They're leaking stories to the press.
26:27
Did you hear Junior Kick the Puppy?
26:30
Did you hear JP Vince listens to NPR?
26:34
The West Wing becomes a knife fight.
26:36
And because they're so focused on killing each other, nobody is running the government.
26:42
And you might think it's good because at least they're too distracted to be robbing the people blind.
26:46
But this is administrative paralysis.
26:49
Imagine a hurricane is heading for Florida.
26:50
I know it's difficult.
26:52
A real crisis.
26:53
The head of FEMA needs a signature to release funds.
26:55
He goes to the White House, but he can't get to Schommel because Junior's team is blocking Yvonne's team and advisor Steve is blocking everyone who isn't a subscriber to his
27:03
substack.
27:05
And the FEMA director sits in the lobby for six hours while the hurricane makes landfall.
27:09
Nobody signs the paper.
27:11
The funds don't move.
27:12
People drown.
27:13
the state has been cannibalized by the court intrigue.
27:18
The safety of the public is secondary to the positioning of the heirs and Shonald loves it.
27:25
He watches them fight.
27:27
It makes him feel powerful.
27:29
Look at them, he thinks.
27:31
They all want what I have.
27:33
He will never name a successor because the name of successor is to admit that he's leaving and Shonald plans to live forever.
27:42
in this fictional story.
27:44
But there is a final darker stage to the spasm.
27:46
I know it gets worse.
27:47
As the end approaches, as the biological clock runs down, Shonl starts to sense that he might lose, not an election, but his life.
27:57
And a narcissist cannot conceive of a world that exists without him.
28:00
If he goes, everything must go.
28:02
This is the neuro complex.
28:05
He starts issuing orders that aren't just violent, they're suicidal.
28:09
Burn it down, release the secrets, default on the debt.
28:14
He wants to break the toys so no one else can play with him.
28:17
He wants to leave a crater.
28:19
And this is the moment of maximum danger for the Republic.
28:23
When the order comes down, the big order, arrest the opposition, fire on the protesters, launch the missile.
28:32
Does the machine obey?
28:34
Does the grunt holding the rifle obey?
28:36
Does the general appointed by a betting manufacturer probably obey?
28:40
This is the cliffhanger, because we assume that in a dictatorship, an order is an action.
28:47
But in a crumbling, geriatric, grift-filled dictatorship, the chain of command is kind of rusty.
28:55
The phone lines might be cut, the general might be busy selling vitamins or a new protein supplement, and the soldier might just look at his phone, see that his paycheck bounced
29:06
because of the chaos and decided, nah, I'm not doing that.
29:10
In part three, we're going to explore that moment.
29:12
We're going to talk about the great ignoring.
29:15
How the most powerful weapon against a dying tyrant isn't a revolution.
29:19
It's a shrug.
29:20
It's the bureaucracy quietly unplugging the machine while the leader is still shouting at the screen.
29:25
Stay with us, the silence is coming.
29:27
Welcome back.
29:29
In part two, we left you kind of at the edge of the cliff.
29:33
We described a regime in a spasm.
29:36
have Seanhold, our mysterious fictional character in this fictional scenario, hallucinating caravans.
29:43
You have advisor Steve frantically tweeting orders to arrest judges.
29:48
You have the princes of blood fighting a knife fight in the West Wing hallway.
29:52
And then the order comes down, the big order.
29:55
Deploy the 82nd Airborne to Chicago.
29:58
Fire on the protesters.
29:59
Nuked the hurricane.
30:01
This is the moment Hollywood loves.
30:03
In the movie, this is where the general stands up, tears off his medals and says, sir, I cannot obey this unlawful order.
30:10
It's a moment of moral clarity.
30:12
It's dramatic.
30:13
It's heroic.
30:14
kind of funny.
30:16
And in the Republic of Frump, that never happens, because the generals are gone.
30:22
The guy receiving the order isn't a hero.
30:25
He's a guy named Acting Secretary Bob.
30:29
Bob used to run a car dealership.
30:31
He got the job because he donated to the Legal Defense Fund.
30:35
Bob gets an order from advisor Steve, the president wants you to seize the voting machines in Arizona.
30:42
Bob looks at the order.
30:43
Bob looks at his pension.
30:45
Bob wishes he and Steve had gone into real estate development.
30:48
Bob looks at CNN poll numbers that show the regime is collapsing.
30:52
And Bob goes to lunch.
30:56
This is the great ignoring.
30:58
It's not a revolution.
31:00
It's not a coup.
31:01
It's kind of a hashtag ghosted.
31:04
The bureaucracy realizes that the cost of obedience is higher than the cost of defiance.
31:11
If Bob seizes the voting machines, he might go to prison when the regime falls in six months.
31:18
If Bob ignores the order, well, Shonald will probably forget he gave it by tomorrow.
31:23
not by this afternoon.
31:25
It's the weaponization of incompetence.
31:28
Bob tells Steve, oh, we're working on it.
31:31
We have a concept of a seizure.
31:33
Sorry, we have a concept of a seizure.
31:35
But we need to run it through legal.
31:37
And legal's out sick today.
31:38
He stalls.
31:39
He delays.
31:40
He misplaces paperwork.
31:42
It's the pocket veto of the administrative state.
31:45
But let's go deeper.
31:46
Let's look at the guys with the guns, because acting Secretary Bob is a suit.
31:52
What about the rank and file?
31:54
What about the border patrol agent?
31:56
What about the national guardsmen?
31:58
They're the ones who actually have to do the violence.
32:02
For years, the regime has fed them a steady diet of you are the warriors, you are the thin blue line, but in the twilight phase, the checks start bouncing.
32:13
This is the material reality of the collapse.
32:16
The grift economy we talked about in part one, it has consequences.
32:21
Because the elites were looting the treasury, the budget for the actual enforcers has been hollowed out.
32:26
The National Guard unit has deployed the border for a PR stunt, but they don't have food.
32:31
Trucks are breaking down.
32:32
They aren't getting paid on time.
32:34
They're sitting in the desert sweating when Director Pash is on Instagram selling vitamins from a yacht.
32:40
And that breeds resentment.
32:42
Number one killer of relationships.
32:44
Solidarity usually happens among workers.
32:48
But in the final days of a regime, you see a weird kind of solidarity among the enforcers against the leadership.
32:56
They look at Shonald and think, well, he doesn't care about us.
33:00
He's using us as props.
33:02
So when the order comes, crack down on that strike, the captain
33:07
looks at his exhausted underpaid squad and says, you know what, we didn't see anything.
33:13
Well, let's go patrol on the other side of town.
33:15
It is compliance theater.
33:17
They pretend to follow orders.
33:19
They drive the trucks around.
33:21
They make noise.
33:22
But they stop engaging.
33:24
They engage in what labor unions call work to rule.
33:26
They follow the regulations so precisely, so slowly, nothing actually gets done.
33:33
Sorry, sir, we can't arrest the dissidents.
33:34
The prisoner transport van hasn't had its mandatory emissions inspection.
33:38
Safety first.
33:40
To see this in action, we need a flashpoint.
33:43
Let's imagine a natural disaster, a real one, not a fake caravan.
33:47
Let's say a massive cat five hurricane hits the Gulf Coast.
33:52
In a functioning state, the gears turn, right?
33:55
FEMA moves, the president goes on TV to comfort the nation.
33:59
In the twilight of Schoenald, the gears are stripped.
34:03
Hurricane makes landfall.
34:04
Entire towns are underwater.
34:06
The governor calls the White House, Mr.
34:08
President, we need federal aid.
34:09
We need the Army Corps of Engineers.
34:11
But who answers the phone?
34:13
Not Seanal.
34:14
Seanal's watching a rerun of his own rally from 2016.
34:17
It's advisor Steve, and Steve says, the president says that the third stage didn't vote for him, so good luck.
34:24
It's the abandonment of the basic social contract.
34:27
The state ceases to exist as a provider of services.
34:31
And in that vacuum, something incredible happens.
34:34
This is where the solidarity we talk about on this show stops becoming a theory and starts being a survival mechanism.
34:41
The state is effectively gone.
34:43
The police aren't coming.
34:45
FEMA isn't coming.
34:47
So what do people do?
34:48
Do they turn into Mad Max?
34:50
Do they start eating each other?
34:52
Hopefully not.
34:53
Hopefully they turn into the Cajun Navy.
34:55
They get their own boats, they go save their neighbors, they set up mutual aid kitchens in the church basement, they organize distribution networks for water and diapers using a
35:03
Facebook group.
35:04
They realize in real time, we are the state.
35:08
The government in the bunker is a fiction.
35:10
The reality is the neighbor with the chainsaw helping you clear your driveway.
35:14
Now we're going to break for a second from the fiction because the Cajun Navy is a very real thing that absolutely helps overwhelmingly during hurricanes.
35:23
They pull up fishing boats and piro's and they actually get out there and help people and save them from collapsing structures.
35:31
They save them from high water.
35:32
They bring in loads of pets so that the pets can get the care that they need as well.
35:37
This is a real thing.
35:38
It's a real organization.
35:39
I do suggest you look it up.
35:40
It's a, it's a really cool thing to see people come together.
35:43
Indeed.
35:44
this is the most dangerous moment for the fascist, right?
35:47
Because fascism relies on the idea that only the leader can save you.
35:52
I alone can fix it.
35:53
When the people realize they can fix it themselves, the spell breaks.
35:58
They look at the TV where Shonald old is rambling about sharks and they don't feel anger anymore.
36:04
They feel pity.
36:05
They feel.
36:07
Irrelevance.
36:08
He isn't a monster.
36:09
He's just a noise in the background.
36:11
while they do the real work.
36:14
But surely, surely Cox News is still spinning.
36:19
Surely the propaganda machine can fix this.
36:22
Here's the problem with the grift.
36:24
It relies on a winner.
36:26
The media ecosystem, the podcasters, the influencers, the pundits, they are sharks.
36:31
And when they smell blood in the water, they don't try to save the swimmer.
36:34
They eat them alive.
36:36
Yeah, we start to see the rat line.
36:38
The influencers start pivoting.
36:40
The guy who spent four years screaming MAGA forever starts saying, well, you I've always had concerns about the spending.
36:48
I was never really a shondled guy.
36:50
I was a free thinker.
36:52
They're preparing the lifeboats.
36:55
They stopped defending him.
36:56
They start auditioning for the next regime.
36:59
And Chommel watches this.
37:01
He watches his favorite host, the guy he had dinner with last week, go on air and say, is the president too old?
37:07
And that betrayal, that cuts deeper than any protest.
37:10
That is the moment the bunker becomes a prison.
37:13
He starts firing the TV host in his mind, he screams at the screen, traitor, ungrateful.
37:18
But he can't tweet about it because advisor Steve changed the password to protect him from himself.
37:22
So we arrive at the final days.
37:24
The bureaucracy has ghosted him.
37:26
The enforcers are on a silent strike.
37:29
The base is busy saving each other from the flood.
37:32
The media is looking for a new star.
37:35
Shonald is alone.
37:37
He's wandering the halls of his residence at 3 a.m.
37:39
He's calling numbers that don't answer.
37:42
He's signing executive orders that nobody prints out or explains to him.
37:46
I hereby order the moon to be painted gold.
37:49
He signs it, he puts it the outbox, and the cleaning lady picks it up and throws it in the trash.
37:54
It's pathetic, but it's also precarious because the regime in this state is like a rotting tree.
37:59
It looks solid, still casts a shadow, but one strong wind, one little push, and it falls.
38:07
And the question is, which way does it fall?
38:08
Harmlessly onto the lawn or on the nuclear reactor?
38:12
Because while Seanhold is irrelevant, the machinery he built is still there.
38:17
The judges he appointed are still on the bench.
38:20
The laws he signed are still on the books.
38:23
The private equity ghouls who funded him still own the hospitals and the housing market.
38:28
The system of control survives the figurehead of control.
38:33
And the danger is not Seanhold.
38:35
The danger is the competent successor.
38:39
Remember JP Vince?
38:41
The guy liner?
38:42
He's watching this collapse and he's thinking, wow, Shonald will fail because he was sloppy.
38:47
I won't be sloppy.
38:48
I won't tweet about sharks.
38:50
I'll just quietly sign deportation orders.
38:52
The system is waiting for a new operator.
38:54
So the people, the ones in the boats, the ones in the mutual aid networks, they have a choice.
39:00
Do they go back to sleep or do they say, woo, the orange guy is gone, back to normal?
39:06
If they do that, JP Vince walks in the front door.
39:09
Or do they take the power they just found, the power of the boat, the power of the chainsaw, the power of the neighbor, and do they decide to keep it?
39:20
That is the cliffhanger.
39:21
The strong man is dying but the shadow remains.
39:24
In the final part we're going to talk to you about the exorcism.
39:27
How do you just remove, how do you not just remove the man but remove the rod itself?
39:33
How do you make sure that what crawls out under the statue isn't worse than the statue itself?
39:37
Stay with us.
39:38
The end is just the beginning.
39:40
Welcome to the morning after.
39:42
In our fictional simulation, the clock has run out.
39:45
Shonald Frump, the eternal president, the orange emperor has finally left the building.
39:51
Maybe he lost, maybe he was removed, or maybe biology finally did what the constitution couldn't and he simply stopped.
40:00
The golf course bunker is quiet.
40:02
The TV is off.
40:03
The ketchup stains on the wall are drying.
40:06
The era of the glitch is over.
40:09
And the immediate feeling for the resistance, for the liberals, for the exhausted public is relief.
40:15
Feels like waking up from a fever dream.
40:17
You check Twitter and there are no all caps threats.
40:20
You check the news and there are no stories about sharks or batteries.
40:23
The silence is intoxicating.
40:26
People pop champagne, they dance in the streets, say, we survived, the stress test is over.
40:30
The institution's hell.
40:32
This is the mission accomplished trap.
40:35
This is the most dangerous moment in the entire timeline because while the man is gone, the machine is still plugged in.
40:43
We spent the last three parts talking about how Shonald broke the machine, how his incompetence jammed up the gears, but the machine itself, the surveillance apparatus, the
40:53
deportation force, the executive orders, the loyalists SCOTUS, that is all just sitting there and it's idling.
41:02
It's waiting for a new operator.
41:04
And Shonald, for all his evil, was a chaotic operator.
41:08
He smashed buttons, he diet soda on the console.
41:11
But waiting in the wings is someone who doesn't spill.
41:13
Waiting in the wings is JP Vince.
41:16
And he's walking toward the chair right now.
41:18
Let's profile the successor.
41:19
We introduced him earlier, the JP Vents, the guy with the eyeliner and the Silicon Valley backers.
41:27
He watched the Shonald old regime collapse, but he didn't watch it with horror.
41:32
He watched it with a notepad.
41:34
He took notes on every mistake.
41:36
Shonald old failed because he tweeted too much.
41:39
Shonald old failed because he picked fights with the wrong people.
41:43
Shonald old failed because he needed applause.
41:46
And JP does not need a pause.
41:48
He is a creature of the new right.
41:50
He calls himself a post-liberal.
41:53
He doesn't want to be a celebrity.
41:54
He wants to be CEO of the state.
41:56
He walks into the Oval Office.
41:58
He sees the chaos Shonald would left behind.
42:01
He doesn't scream.
42:02
He doesn't throw a burger.
42:04
He sits down.
42:06
He opens the laptop.
42:08
And he starts executing the code.
42:10
This is technocratic fascism.
42:12
It isn't loud.
42:14
It doesn't have rallies.
42:15
It's quiet.
42:16
It's efficient.
42:18
Shonald tried to ban the vermin by screaming about it on TV.
42:22
JP Vince bans them by changing a line of code in the Department of Labor's database using Grok AI that revokes their work visas automatically.
42:34
No press conference, no trauma, just a silent digital purge.
42:39
This is the software update of the dictatorship.
42:42
Shonald was fascism 1.0.
42:45
Open beta version.
42:47
It was buggy.
42:48
It crashed a lot.
42:49
JP is fascism 2.0.
42:52
Enterprise edition.
42:54
He rehires the secret police.
42:55
Not the grifters, but the efficient zealots.
42:59
He purges the bedding guys, the your pillow guys, and replaces them with 28 year old law clerks from the Federalist Society.
43:06
who know exactly how to write an order that won't get overturned by the Supreme Court.
43:10
So the danger is that while the public is celebrating the end of the clown show, the real dismantling of democracy begins in the dark.
43:19
The resistance goes to brunch because they think the war is over, but the wars just move from the battlefield to a spreadsheet.
43:27
But there is a flaw in JP Vince's plan.
43:31
And that flaw is the base.
43:33
Shonald didn't just command a political party.
43:36
He commanded a cult.
43:38
And cults do not transfer their loyalty easily.
43:41
When Shonald is gone, the followers won't automatically love JP Vince.
43:45
In fact, they hate him.
43:46
They see him as a suit.
43:47
They see him as boring.
43:49
He doesn't dance.
43:50
He doesn't insult the sharks.
43:51
This creates the power vacuum, the MAGA movement fractures.
43:56
You have the true believers who think Shonald is still the rightful king.
44:00
Maybe he's ruling from a secret submarine.
44:03
You also have the nihilists who realize it's all a scam and drop out of politics entirely.
44:09
And you have the mercenaries who side with JP Vince because the pay is better.
44:14
This fracture is the opportunity.
44:16
This is the moment where the solidarity movement has to step in.
44:20
Because you have millions of working class people who are suddenly politically homeless.
44:24
They are promised a savior.
44:26
The savior failed.
44:28
They're angry.
44:29
They're broke.
44:30
They're disillusioned.
44:31
You can't win them over by saying I told you so.
44:34
You can't win them over by lecturing them on MSNBC.
44:37
You win them over by solving the problem.
44:39
Remember the hurricane in part three.
44:41
Remember the Cajun Navy.
44:42
This isn't just a survival tactic, right?
44:46
This was a political act.
44:48
When the guy in MAGA with the hat on and, you know, t-shirt and all of that is drowning and the guy in the Bernie t-shirt pulls up to him in a boat, that does more
44:59
de-radicalization in five minutes than a thousand op-eds or letters to the editor.
45:06
Which brings us to our core solution.
45:08
How do we stop fascism 2.0?
45:12
We can't just vote harder.
45:14
They've gerrymandered the map.
45:15
They've rigged the courts.
45:17
Voting is necessary.
45:18
Don't get me wrong, but it's insufficient.
45:20
We need dual power.
45:22
Dual power is a concept from labor history.
45:25
It means you build institutions that replace the state rather than just asking the state to be nicer.
45:31
If the state won't fix the roads, we fix the roads.
45:35
If the state doesn't feed the hungry, we feed the hungry.
45:39
If the state won't protect the tenants, a tenants union protects the tenants.
45:44
This may sound familiar from an earlier episode.
45:46
We create a parallel state.
45:48
We make the current state irrelevant.
45:51
They can sign all the executive orders and do whatever they want, but if the community is organized, if the workers control the logistics, if the neighbors control the food supply,
45:59
those orders are just paper.
46:02
Power doesn't come from a signature.
46:04
Power comes from the ability to make things happen.
46:06
If we have the ability, we have the power.
46:09
Let's go back to our acting secretary Bob example.
46:12
This bureaucrat who ghosted Shonald, how do we turn Bob into an ally?
46:17
We don't need him to be a socialist.
46:19
We just need him to be a human being.
46:21
We build networks inside the institutions, whistleblowers, leaks, slow walking strikes that make it impossible for the JP Vince to execute his clean digital fascism.
46:33
We throw sand in the gears of the 2.0 machine, just like Shonald threw diet soda in the 1.0 machine.
46:39
And then there's the interpersonal work, the aforementioned exorcism.
46:43
How do we live with people who cheered for concentration camps and deportation camps?
46:48
How do we live with the uncle who posted memes?
46:51
The impulse is to purge them, to shun them.
46:55
But you can't build a society by shunning 30 % of the population.
46:59
That way leads to civil war.
47:02
We have to offer them an off ramp.
47:04
Shonald old offered them strength through cruelty.
47:07
We have to offer them strength through solidarity.
47:10
We have to show them that the elites that they hate the private equity, sob's, the pharmaceutical companies, the tech bros are the same people that JP Vince is working for.
47:23
We have to realign their anger.
47:25
You're mad at the system.
47:26
Good.
47:27
You should be.
47:27
You're just mad at the wrong guy.
47:29
The immigrant.
47:30
didn't close your factory, the guy liner did.
47:34
It's class consciousness disguised as neighborliness.
47:37
It's fixing the pothole, sharing the generator during the blackout.
47:41
It's providing day by day that we don't need a strong man to save us.
47:45
We can save each other.
47:46
This is the only thing that kills the desire for a dictator.
47:49
If you feel safe in your community, you don't need a daddy or a savior to build the wall.
47:53
So here's the ending of our simulation.
47:56
Shonald is gone.
47:57
JP Vince is trying to boot up the machine, but the machine is clogged with sand.
48:02
The people are tired, but they're awake.
48:04
They are in the boats.
48:06
They are in the unions.
48:07
The danger has not passed.
48:10
It's just changed its shape.
48:13
The gray wolf is dead, but the pack is still hungry.
48:16
And that means our job is not done.
48:18
We can't go back to sleep.
48:19
We can't go back to brunch.
48:21
The end of history isn't coming.
48:22
History is a flat circle and it's trying to run us over.
48:24
The only way to stop it is to put a brick in the road.
48:27
And that's the show.
48:29
We've simulated the collapse, the spasm, the rebirth.
48:34
Hopefully, we managed to scare you enough to get you organized, but not enough to make you hide under your bed.
48:40
And if we overshot and you are hiding under the bed, please come out.
48:44
It's okay.
48:46
And we need you to build a dual power structure.
48:48
And it's hard to do that from under a mattress.
48:51
If you enjoyed this deep dive into the twilight of tyranny, please do the things that help us keep the lights on in our bunker rate and review us on Apple podcasts and Spotify.
49:00
The algorithm is a fickle deity and it demands sacrifice.
49:04
Share this episode, send it to your friends who think the election is going to fix everything.
49:09
Send it to your friends who think that the election has already been rigged.
49:15
Send it to your friend who's doom scrolling.
49:17
Send it to advisor Steve.
49:18
If you have his number.
49:19
Maybe not.
49:20
He might be annoyed at the fictional world that we built.
49:24
And you can also find us on the socials.
49:25
BlueSky and Mastodon.
49:27
Come tell us your theory on what Seanhold is doing in the bunker right now.
49:30
We're taking bets.
49:32
And check out our website for the reading list.
49:34
We have links to books like The Banality of Evil, Dual Power, and How to Fix a Generator.
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We will see you next week, but until then, I am Joshua.
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and I'm still Will.
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Don't fear the glitch, if you're the guy who knows how to fix it.
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And for God's sake, stay in the boat.
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Bye!