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Grandparents' Rights According to Jared Yates Sexton & Nick Hauselman of The Muckrake podcast · Autocratic Despair: The Podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_01: Some reporter was like, hey, what's the deal with not having any independent election observers for this midterm?
0:05
SPEAKER_01: That seems odd.
0:06
SPEAKER_01: And election expert David Becker's answer is doesn't matter.
0:12
SPEAKER_01: Not gonna change what'll happen.
0:14
SPEAKER_01: Never has.
0:15
SPEAKER_01: Never could if it wanted to.
0:18
SPEAKER_01: You good, Mr.
0:19
SPEAKER_01: Becker?
0:20
SPEAKER_01: That's a little bit more en we than I'm looking for in an election expert.
0:24
SPEAKER_06: It's definitely not the vibe that you want to get from this guy.
0:29
SPEAKER_01: Now that is Autocratic Despair.
0:31
SPEAKER_01: This is Autocratic Despair, the podcast.
0:35
SPEAKER_01: I'm Nick Mortensen, a comedian and father of three from Green Bay, Wisconsin.
0:40
SPEAKER_01: Each week on the Autocratic Despair Podcast, I stare into the abyss with my friend, Dr.
0:44
SPEAKER_01: Craig Johnson, PhD in global fascism, lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of 2025's most important book, How to Talk to Your Son About Fascism.
0:57
SPEAKER_01: Dr.
0:57
SPEAKER_01: Craig, on a scale of 1 to 10, where would you rank your Autocratic Despair this week?
1:02
SPEAKER_06: Well, this week I am up at a seven.
1:05
SPEAKER_06: There is a burning fire right now in the United States government in how the United States is treating certain elected officials.
1:13
SPEAKER_06: This morning, we're recording this on Monday, October the 12th.
1:17
SPEAKER_06: Today, ICE agents, that is, the secret anti-immigrant police in the United States, raided the home of sitting member of Congress, Ilan Omar.
1:26
SPEAKER_06: She's a representative from the state of Minnesota, and they raided her home.
1:30
SPEAKER_06: And what they were looking for was immigration papers that her father had filled out for her when she was a child when they were moving to the United States from Somalia.
1:41
SPEAKER_06: So they were looking for her papers.
1:42
SPEAKER_06: They were literally looking for her papers.
1:44
SPEAKER_06: From when she was a kid, she didn't do it.
1:47
SPEAKER_06: This is actually a new look.
1:49
SPEAKER_06: Can I contextualize this for the audience?
1:52
SPEAKER_06: This is super fucked up.
1:53
SPEAKER_01: This is the most fucked up thing that's happened so far.
1:55
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, that's exactly right.
1:56
SPEAKER_06: When the United States does this and accuses somebody of having had their immigration papers wrong the whole time, that's one of the ways that the United States denaturalizes someone, as in, strips them of their citizenship.
2:09
SPEAKER_06: It's true.
2:10
SPEAKER_06: The United States has done this.
2:11
SPEAKER_06: We do it to lots of people, actually.
2:14
SPEAKER_06: Recently, it's almost always been people who have been involved in Islamic terrorism, or people who committed genocide during the Yugoslav Wars, or back in the mid-20th century, it was if we found out that somebody was a Nazi and had like secretly moved to the US and gotten citizenship.
2:28
SPEAKER_06: And then if we found that out in the 1960s, we'd be like, actually, fuck you.
2:31
SPEAKER_06: You can't be a citizen of the United States.
2:33
SPEAKER_06: Get the fuck out.
2:33
SPEAKER_06: It's not cool, though.
2:34
SPEAKER_06: That's still takes ebaxies.
2:37
SPEAKER_06: It is kind of still takes e-baxies.
2:39
SPEAKER_06: Do your research.
2:39
SPEAKER_06: Do some due diligence.
2:40
SPEAKER_06: Well, you know, and there's like this is of course not counting the Nazis that we specifically invited to be in the United States.
2:45
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, those guys were cool.
2:46
SPEAKER_06: But the point is that, like, the U.S.
2:47
SPEAKER_06: does this to people.
2:48
SPEAKER_06: The United States has never done it to a sitting member of the federal government.
2:53
SPEAKER_06: The president of the Confederacy.
2:55
SPEAKER_06: Jefferson Davis.
2:56
SPEAKER_06: We didn't strip him of his citizenship.
2:57
SPEAKER_06: He got to stay a U.S.
2:59
SPEAKER_06: citizen.
3:00
SPEAKER_06: The Trump administration is going after Ilan Omar because she is Muslim, because she's a woman, and because she is an opponent of the Trump administration, and they're trying to remove her from office, possibly ahead of this midterm that's in less than a month.
3:14
SPEAKER_06: I'm I'm actually at a loss for words on this one.
3:17
SPEAKER_06: This is some third world dictatorship stuff.
3:20
SPEAKER_06: This is the real deal, what's happening now with Omar.
3:24
SPEAKER_01: And if they get away with it with her, they're gonna do it to other people.
3:27
SPEAKER_01: The Trump administration until today, if they were going to attack Ilhan Omar, it would have been for something else besides her immigration stuff.
3:37
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
3:37
SPEAKER_01: In June of this year, the State Department held a symposium on the rise of far-left political terrorism.
3:43
SPEAKER_01: In it, Sebastian Gorka, the administration's counterterrorism chief, in his capacity as an FBI official, gave a briefing titled, quote, Domestic and Transnational Far Left Terrorism.
3:55
SPEAKER_01: In July, Secretary of State Marco Rubio picked that up.
3:58
SPEAKER_01: He told a gathering that for 25 years, counterterrorism in the West had meant fighting radical Islamist extremism.
4:05
SPEAKER_01: But now the focus would move to extremist violence from the political left, which he called a distinctive and unique evil.
4:11
SPEAKER_01: Rubio promised that the State Department would designate various left-wing groups in the United States as terrorist organizations.
4:18
SPEAKER_01: And he delivered on that promise.
4:20
SPEAKER_01: Within a week, the State Department released a hundred-page report naming 43 individuals and groups as far left terrorists.
4:27
SPEAKER_01: It alleges they have ties to Cuba's campaign of subversion against the United States, calling Cuba the capital of 21st century communism.
4:35
SPEAKER_01: In that report, it named Black Lives Matter, the Democratic Socialists of America, Mayor Mamdani, Code Pink, Ben Cohen of Ben Jerry's, George Floyd, Hassan Piker, and Ilan Omar as far-left terrorists.
4:49
SPEAKER_01: Coverage note of this report presented little, if any, evidence for its claims, but they all tie back in one way or another to a man named in that same report, Neville Roy Singham.
4:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
5:00
SPEAKER_01: Ben Cohen from Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream is listed in that report on the basis of having attended the wedding of Neville Singham to Jody Evans, founder of the organization Code Pink, also designated as a far-left terrorist group, in that Cuba, the capital of 21st century communism report.
5:16
SPEAKER_01: Neville Singham is an American tech mogul that lives in China, who is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, having sold the company he founded and owned 97% of the stock in, ThoughtWorks, to a global private equity firm based in London for just short of$800 million in 2017.
5:33
SPEAKER_01: Neville Roy Singham took that$800 million and stepped down from ThoughtWorks.
5:37
SPEAKER_01: And he's used a significant portion of the proceeds from the sale to fund a global network of non-governmental organizations, nonprofits like Code Pink, media outlets like Breakthrough News, and progressive political initiatives.
5:49
SPEAKER_01: In 2023, Neville Singham was the subject of a major investigative reporting regarding his ties to pro-China propaganda efforts.
5:59
SPEAKER_01: The New York Times did most of the publishing of that report.
6:01
SPEAKER_05: I think so.
6:02
SPEAKER_01: The New York Times investigation only went as far as to say that Neville Roy Singham's political causes and entities all have interests that align with China's.
6:10
SPEAKER_01: In fact, Code Pink, the organization started by Jody Evans, the one who married Singham, shortly after being funded by Singham, pivoted from being critical of China's human rights abuses to defending its policies in Xinjiang and Hong Kong.
6:23
SPEAKER_01: I think that that's accurate.
6:24
SPEAKER_01: The New York Times reporting produced evidence that Singham actively met with Chinese propaganda officials and attended Chinese Communist Party workshops focused on international media promotion.
6:34
SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's good.
6:35
SPEAKER_01: The reporting also mentioned that despite pushing talking points closely aligned with a foreign state like China, none of Singham's nonprofits or funded media outlets were registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, claiming their political activity was independently operated.
6:52
SPEAKER_01: Not at all at the behest of China.
6:53
SPEAKER_01: The New York Times got as far as laying these things out when it comes to Singham and China, but it took some pretty large steps to mention that they couldn't prove that any of the money Singham is using for these groups that authentically do want to take down the structure of our government is from China.
7:08
SPEAKER_01: Although they definitely mentioned that Singham does do business with China, and he lives in Shanghai, China, and his fund shares an office in downtown Shanghai, China with the Maku Group, a media firm whose goal is to educate foreigners about, quote, the miracles that China has created on the world stage.
7:26
SPEAKER_01: Content partially funded by the Municipal Propaganda Department of China.
7:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
7:31
SPEAKER_01: Now the New York Times took great pains to mention that they didn't know if the Singham Network's interests align with China's for any particular reason.
7:38
SPEAKER_01: That's probably true.
7:38
SPEAKER_01: They just don't have access to the kind of information that they would need to determine whether they could legally make accusations that Neville Singham was acting as a cutout for the Chinese Communist Party.
7:50
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
7:50
SPEAKER_01: But it might just be a coincidence.
7:52
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
7:52
SPEAKER_01: So they didn't draw that conclusion.
7:54
SPEAKER_01: They made sure to say that they weren't drawing that conclusion.
7:57
SPEAKER_01: The New York Times said that, and I want to make sure that I say that.
8:00
SPEAKER_01: There is no evidence tying Neville Singham to the Chinese government.
8:04
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, that's exactly right.
8:05
SPEAKER_01: The reporters just don't have access to the kind of information that would establish whether the Chinese Communist Party is using Neville Singham's network to spread propaganda in the United States, aimed at taking down our government.
8:17
SPEAKER_01: But you know who does have that information?
8:19
SPEAKER_01: The United States government.
8:20
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
8:21
SPEAKER_01: And they are categorizing Singham, his network, and plenty of his friends as far left terrorists.
8:27
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
8:28
SPEAKER_01: A designation that currently presents more of a threat to the United States than radical Islamic terrorism.
8:33
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
8:33
SPEAKER_01: A designation that they only came up with this past summer.
8:36
SPEAKER_01: It bears repeating that there are other people the State Department accused of far-left terrorism, like Black Lives Matter or the Democratic Socialists.
8:45
SPEAKER_01: But for our purposes right now, we want to highlight that Ilan Omar made this list of far-left terrorists, according to our State Department.
8:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
8:54
SPEAKER_01: My point is that the U.S.
8:55
SPEAKER_01: government has been setting up this play on Ilan Omar for months.
8:59
SPEAKER_01: And they are kind of taking a weird approach by going after papers when they could easily slap terrorism charges on her for being a far-left terrorist.
9:10
SPEAKER_01: And they can tie her to a guy who they could easily charge as an agent of the Chinese Communist Party that is trying to destroy our democracy by spreading communism on behalf of China.
9:23
SPEAKER_01: So why are they taking this route?
9:24
SPEAKER_01: I get it.
9:25
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's kind of a splashy debut for the far-left terrorism designation.
9:29
SPEAKER_01: Maybe they want to lay down a little foundational pretense in order to re-migrate her based on something more sturdy than is a democratic elected official who is also a woman of color who was born in Somalia.
9:43
SPEAKER_01: But because they have successfully poisoned the term Somali in Minnesota, and they can whip that up at any time, they have cover in order to do something like that.
9:53
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, that's exactly right.
9:54
SPEAKER_06: By threatening to strip her citizenship in this way, they're putting her in the same category as terrorists who have planned to kill people.
10:02
SPEAKER_06: Rhetorically, they're saying there's something similar about what she did, or rather what her father did, because again, if there was any irregularity with filling out her immigration paperwork, it was her father that did it.
10:12
SPEAKER_06: They're putting them in the same boat as people who plan to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge, who did bomb a base somewhere, or something like that, right?
10:19
SPEAKER_06: That has happened and it has been done by U.S.
10:21
SPEAKER_06: citizens, by naturalized citizens, and they've had their citizenship taken away.
10:24
SPEAKER_06: I don't think that should happen.
10:25
SPEAKER_06: I don't think anybody should be stripped of their citizenship, but it has happened before, and what they're doing is they're saying, this is the same thing.
10:32
SPEAKER_06: We can do it to you.
10:33
SPEAKER_06: It's crazy.
10:34
SPEAKER_06: We talk about new lows on this show.
10:36
SPEAKER_06: This is a big one.
10:38
SPEAKER_06: This is a big one.
10:39
SPEAKER_01: The Trump administrations aren't really famous for making sure to dot all the I's and cross all the T's.
10:46
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
10:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, it's true.
10:47
SPEAKER_01: Maybe they're worried it might look political?
10:49
SPEAKER_01: Maybe they couldn't connect that last dot between Neville Singham and the company his foundation shares office space with in Shanghai, China, that is definitely producing Chinese government-funded Chinese propaganda to spread all over the world about the miracles of the Chinese Communist Party.
11:10
SPEAKER_01: Was there no lunchroom?
11:11
SPEAKER_01: The same company that occupies the building that he works in.
11:15
SPEAKER_01: Couldn't link that company to the guy who owns news organizations that promote left-wing progressive ideology in the United States?
11:24
SPEAKER_01: Are you kidding me?
11:24
SPEAKER_01: You can't make that connection?
11:26
SPEAKER_01: You need something more solid than that.
11:28
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, exactly.
11:28
SPEAKER_06: I don't understand it.
11:29
SPEAKER_06: That is one possible direction that they could go in a sort of red scare direction, but specifically China as opposed to Russia.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
11:37
SPEAKER_06: The fact is that much like the original Red Scare in the 20s and the repeat after World War II in the 1950s, there is some daylight.
11:45
SPEAKER_06: There are some things there.
11:47
SPEAKER_06: There were Russian agents in the United States, in fact, who were working with the Soviet Union.
11:52
SPEAKER_06: That's true.
11:52
SPEAKER_06: There were communists in the United States who were working with the Soviet government.
11:55
SPEAKER_06: That's true.
11:56
SPEAKER_06: There probably are people in the federal government of the US who are on the payroll of China, like, of course there are.
12:00
SPEAKER_06: In the same way that the United States certainly has people in other foreign governments, that's just kind of what espionage is.
12:06
SPEAKER_06: It's linking that, which is just sort of like background radiation, background noise of geopolitical struggles, especially between two countries that disagree with each other so much, like the United States and China, linking that to domestic partisan politics.
12:20
SPEAKER_06: Donald Trump's racist hatred towards Omar and the squad in general, the other left progressives in Congress.
12:27
SPEAKER_06: Making that link, Nick, exactly as you say, that's not a tough putt.
12:31
SPEAKER_06: That's pretty easy for them to do.
12:33
SPEAKER_06: And I think it would be compelling to lots of people in a place like Minnesota.
12:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
12:38
SPEAKER_06: Anyway, I'm freaking out.
12:39
SPEAKER_06: I don't know what, like Trump administration deports sitting member of Congress, claims she was never citizen.
12:47
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
12:47
SPEAKER_06: What the fuck?
12:48
SPEAKER_06: I'm expecting that headline.
12:49
SPEAKER_06: Maybe not ahead of the midterm, because if they do it now, then they'd get a replacement.
12:53
SPEAKER_06: Who's the governor of Minnesota?
12:54
SPEAKER_01: Tim Walls now, Amy Clobichar soon.
12:57
SPEAKER_06: Is that how it works in Minnesota?
12:58
SPEAKER_06: Do you know?
12:59
SPEAKER_06: Does the governor get to a point?
13:00
SPEAKER_01: It's Congress, so it'd sit open until a special election could be held.
13:03
SPEAKER_01: They do it in the Senate, but not in the House.
13:05
SPEAKER_06: Oh, yeah, that's right.
13:06
SPEAKER_01: This seems impossible that it would ever have gotten this far.
13:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
13:09
SPEAKER_01: But it seems somehow equally impossible that they're going to take her out of Congress.
13:12
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
13:12
SPEAKER_01: And it makes you scared.
13:14
SPEAKER_06: Maybe they're just trying to scare people.
13:15
SPEAKER_06: I don't know.
13:16
SPEAKER_06: Working?
13:17
SPEAKER_06: If I were her, or if I were her consillier, her aide or something, we would have been like, hey, this is what they're going to do.
13:24
SPEAKER_06: They're going to try to denaturalize you 100%.
13:26
SPEAKER_06: Why wouldn't they?
13:27
SPEAKER_06: The only reason that they wouldn't is if they aren't scared.
13:30
SPEAKER_06: If they don't think they need to.
13:32
SPEAKER_06: I think they're going to be doing this to fucking knows how many people.
13:35
SPEAKER_06: I don't know.
13:35
SPEAKER_06: They've been talking about denaturalizing people for a while.
13:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
13:38
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
13:39
SPEAKER_06: This is this is this is a bad one.
13:41
SPEAKER_06: This is ICE as the actual Gestapo.
13:44
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
13:44
SPEAKER_06: Secret police raiding the home of sitting members of Congress.
13:48
SPEAKER_06: This is bad news.
13:51
SPEAKER_06: Anyway, Nick, where's your autocract spare this week?
13:54
SPEAKER_06: I too am at a seven, Dr.
13:55
SPEAKER_06: Craig.
13:56
SPEAKER_06: Hey, twinsies again.
13:58
SPEAKER_01: For completely different reasons.
14:03
SPEAKER_01: And I also think it might be a new love.
14:05
SPEAKER_01: I had heard something in the last couple weeks about election monitors not being allowed into the country.
14:11
SPEAKER_01: I expected I'd hear more about that.
14:13
SPEAKER_01: Seemed like a pretty big deal.
14:14
SPEAKER_01: A little bit.
14:14
SPEAKER_01: There'd be a lot of follow-up on it.
14:15
SPEAKER_01: Probably.
14:16
SPEAKER_01: You know, people are busy, so there really wasn't enough fuss about that.
14:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
14:19
SPEAKER_01: We got a platform.
14:20
SPEAKER_01: Why not talk about it, right?
14:22
SPEAKER_01: So I go looking up the details, and what the reporting is, it's way worse than I imagine.
14:27
SPEAKER_01: Oh no.
14:28
SPEAKER_01: The USA is part of an organization called the OSCE, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
14:37
SPEAKER_01: The OSCE operates the world's most prominent international election observation framework through its specialized agency, the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights.
14:48
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
14:48
SPEAKER_01: Think of the OSE as independent health inspectors for voting, a referee network for democracy and security.
14:56
SPEAKER_01: Months before an election, they send neutral teams.
14:58
SPEAKER_01: They don't run the election, they watch.
15:00
SPEAKER_01: They audit the whole process.
15:02
SPEAKER_01: They check on things like the rules.
15:04
SPEAKER_01: Is the law written so the ruling party always wins?
15:07
SPEAKER_01: And how are people registered?
15:08
SPEAKER_01: They check on things like the news.
15:10
SPEAKER_01: Do opposition candidates get fair TV time, or does the state media only show the incumbent?
15:15
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
15:16
SPEAKER_01: They check on things like the pressure.
15:17
SPEAKER_01: Are people being threatened, fired, or bribed to vote in a certain way?
15:21
SPEAKER_01: And they check on the count.
15:23
SPEAKER_01: On election night, are votes counted out in the open?
15:25
SPEAKER_01: Or do the ballots mysteriously vanish and then reappear?
15:29
SPEAKER_01: Pretty valuable stuff right now.
15:30
SPEAKER_01: What with the election and voter fraud being at the top of everyone's mind?
15:35
SPEAKER_01: And yet these independent election observers haven't been observing the midterm elections so far.
15:40
SPEAKER_01: And they won't be here when the ballots are cast and counted for the 2026 midterms.
15:45
SPEAKER_01: These are independent observers.
15:46
SPEAKER_01: All they do is observe and later issue a public scorecard.
15:50
SPEAKER_01: They publish a detailed report stating whether the election was actually fair, flawed, or outright stolen.
15:56
SPEAKER_01: And if it was stolen, how?
15:58
SPEAKER_01: After the election.
15:59
SPEAKER_01: I imagine that report is very useful for countries that care about knowing whether their election is fair, flawed, or outright stolen.
16:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, a little bit.
16:09
SPEAKER_01: I think I can speak for both of us, Craig, when I say a report like that would be very helpful in the weeks upcoming.
16:15
SPEAKER_01: Democracy, flawed as it may be at times, demands continuous improvement.
16:20
SPEAKER_01: And a report like that seems like a great jumping off point if you're looking to establish a more perfect union.
16:26
SPEAKER_06: I think that that's accurate.
16:27
SPEAKER_01: But we're taking this year off.
16:28
SPEAKER_01: They weren't invited this year, which is unusual because we've had him here for every election cycle since 2000, when we have that whole election between Bush and Gore nearly go sideways, right about the time when the wheels started flying off this whole democracy thing in earnest?
16:43
SPEAKER_01: Probably.
16:44
SPEAKER_01: On September 23rd, the OSCE announced that for the first time in 24 years, the United States didn't invite the election observers.
16:52
SPEAKER_01: Surely this was some sort of error, right?
16:54
SPEAKER_01: I assume so.
16:55
SPEAKER_01: There's no explanation from the White House.
16:57
SPEAKER_01: Someone did ask, and the State Department said the OSCE should focus its limited resources where it can have the most impact.
17:04
SPEAKER_01: Then it haranged the reporter for never asking positive questions, called them fake news.
17:09
SPEAKER_01: Very transparent.
17:10
SPEAKER_01: They tried, the media asked, the White House gave an answer.
17:13
SPEAKER_01: What more can we really ask for at this point, right?
17:15
SPEAKER_01: I think the United States is hoping that we'll take our eyes off the ball on this one.
17:19
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
17:20
SPEAKER_01: Did you see the military is planning to live stream and execution everybody?
17:27
SPEAKER_01: That was the last time the White House addressed it, which left a lot to be desired as far as answers go.
17:32
SPEAKER_01: It does.
17:32
SPEAKER_01: Now we know that the USA is taking this year off.
17:36
SPEAKER_01: We know because the OSCE themselves chimed in to let us know.
17:39
SPEAKER_01: Also, they mentioned what illustrious company we are in.
17:42
SPEAKER_01: They couldn't help themselves.
17:44
SPEAKER_01: Prior to the USA, the only two countries to have shut out international election observers are Russia, nothing to worry about there.
17:51
SPEAKER_01: They're great.
17:52
SPEAKER_01: And Belarus, who definitely did not have a fair election in 2020.
17:57
SPEAKER_01: Quite correct.
17:58
SPEAKER_01: It is.
18:10
SPEAKER_01: Becker assured people that whether the international observers are here or not, it changes nothing about election security.
18:16
SPEAKER_01: Becker even says they don't count ballots, they can't stop anybody from cheating.
18:20
SPEAKER_01: Some states like Texas already don't allow these observers in the room.
18:24
SPEAKER_01: Becker's right.
18:25
SPEAKER_01: The international election observers are there to observe, to get a sense of what's new in elections, what's hot in the streets.
18:31
SPEAKER_01: They don't actually care if your elections are secure or not.
18:33
SPEAKER_01: They just want to watch from the cuck chair and file a report in six months.
18:38
SPEAKER_01: So David Becker is absolutely right that they don't affect elections.
18:41
SPEAKER_01: And that should ease my mind a little bit, but it doesn't, because the question put to David Becker, elections expert, was why wouldn't the USA want international election observers for the midterm?
18:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
18:53
SPEAKER_01: And that's sort of a weird way to answer that question.
18:55
SPEAKER_01: It is.
18:55
SPEAKER_01: Some reporters like, hey, what's the deal with not having any independent election observers for this midterm?
19:01
SPEAKER_01: That seems odd.
19:02
SPEAKER_01: And election expert David Becker's answer is doesn't matter.
19:08
SPEAKER_01: Not gonna change what'll happen.
19:10
SPEAKER_01: Never has.
19:10
SPEAKER_01: Never could if it wanted to.
19:13
SPEAKER_01: You good, Mr.
19:14
SPEAKER_01: Becker?
19:15
SPEAKER_01: That's a little bit more enwi than I'm looking for in an election expert.
19:19
SPEAKER_01: It's definitely not the vibe that you want to get from this guy.
19:23
SPEAKER_01: Because I was asking you about observers and you just started singing dust in the wind.
19:26
SPEAKER_01: That's not a good sign, right?
19:28
SPEAKER_01: Hey, Mr.
19:28
SPEAKER_01: Becker, you're the expert on elections.
19:30
SPEAKER_01: Any insight into why these international election monitors aren't coming this year?
19:34
SPEAKER_01: What's up with that, huh?
19:35
SPEAKER_01: And he's like, What are we even doing here, big picture, you guys?
19:39
SPEAKER_01: We're at the apex of civilization.
19:41
SPEAKER_01: That's perfect.
19:42
SPEAKER_01: And we care about the midterms?
19:44
SPEAKER_01: We're talking about the midterms, man.
19:46
SPEAKER_01: Not the presidential elections that people die for.
19:49
SPEAKER_01: We're talking about the midterms.
19:51
SPEAKER_06: That's great.
19:51
SPEAKER_06: That's wonderful.
19:52
SPEAKER_01: I read that and I thought maybe the media just caught a dud with this Becker guy.
19:56
SPEAKER_01: This country is probably lousy with election experts right now.
19:59
SPEAKER_01: So many you can get one of them to say anything you want.
20:01
SPEAKER_01: When something clearly bad happens, and his response is like, yeah.
20:06
SPEAKER_01: Maybe David Becker was part of the regime, trying to help Trump out by tricking us into thinking that it's not a big deal.
20:11
SPEAKER_01: So I decided that I'd have a look into David Becker, election expert.
20:15
SPEAKER_01: Oh no.
20:16
SPEAKER_01: Just to see what his credentials are.
20:17
SPEAKER_01: It turns out that his credentials are frighteningly good.
20:21
SPEAKER_01: He makes it all the more terrible.
20:23
SPEAKER_01: He may have the most credentials.
20:25
SPEAKER_01: David Becker was on the American team of international election observers that observed other elections.
20:31
SPEAKER_01: This is absolutely his lane.
20:33
SPEAKER_01: David Becker is executive director and founder of the Nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, which works with election officials from both parties.
20:44
SPEAKER_01: Oh my God.
20:44
SPEAKER_01: And a big piece of that work is running the election official legal defense network, which gives free legal help to election officials threatened with frivolous prosecution, harassment, or violence.
20:57
SPEAKER_01: So he's been in the trenches on this.
20:59
SPEAKER_01: His day job since 2020 has been defending the people who count the votes.
21:05
SPEAKER_01: And he's lost it, man.
21:09
SPEAKER_06: That's really very good.
21:11
SPEAKER_06: But he's just like, well, what are we gonna do anyway?
21:15
SPEAKER_01: I can't say for sure there's nothing going on at home for David Becker.
21:19
SPEAKER_01: But the best elections expert in the country is actively dissociating, and he's announcing that to the world right now.
21:27
SPEAKER_06: I mean, I think that that's it.
21:29
SPEAKER_06: If we could do something about this, we would have done it.
21:31
SPEAKER_06: We'd have done it.
21:33
SPEAKER_01: I don't know how bad that is, but it's not good.
21:38
SPEAKER_01: Well, good news for all the nervous nlies out there.
21:41
SPEAKER_01: The Justice Department announced it'll be sending its own people to monitor polling places this November.
21:46
SPEAKER_01: It's just as good as the other thing, with a lot less foreigners roaming around our streets.
21:51
SPEAKER_01: Not a good time for them to be here anyway.
21:54
SPEAKER_06: I would not recommend coming to the United States if you can help it.
21:58
SPEAKER_06: For a while, I would say.
22:00
SPEAKER_06: Don't come to the United States.
22:01
SPEAKER_06: Why would you?
22:03
SPEAKER_01: Dr.
22:04
SPEAKER_01: Craig and I are going to do something a little different this week for all the despairables out there.
22:08
SPEAKER_01: We're going to play you a clip from another podcast, a long one, and then we're going to talk about it.
22:13
SPEAKER_01: The show is called The Muckrake.
22:15
SPEAKER_01: It's hosted by Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Houselman.
22:17
SPEAKER_01: If you've been listening a while, you know Jared.
22:19
SPEAKER_01: He sat in for Craig on this show back in July, episode 11.
22:23
SPEAKER_01: That's the episode with the title I'm proudest of.
22:26
SPEAKER_01: Gruff left his sweetheart, Jared Yates Sexton.
22:28
SPEAKER_01: Jared is a writer and a historian.
22:30
SPEAKER_01: He's written books about masculinity and about the history of American power.
22:35
SPEAKER_01: And he writes a newsletter called Dispatches from a Collapsing State.
22:38
SPEAKER_01: Nick Halsleman is his co-host, who's one of the great basketball analysts out there.
22:41
SPEAKER_01: And then he does this too.
22:43
SPEAKER_01: Impressive people.
22:44
SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you what I tell everybody about the Muckrake.
22:46
SPEAKER_01: This is the show that we aspire to be here at Autocratic Despair the Podcast.
22:51
SPEAKER_01: Now we got different backgrounds than they do, and we're different people, despite two of us being named Nick, essentially playing the same role.
22:58
SPEAKER_01: In anything you do, you have to pick a more successful entity to try to emulate, and the muckrake is ours.
23:05
SPEAKER_01: We know that our show is something special.
23:07
SPEAKER_01: You know it if you're listening, we have something here.
23:09
SPEAKER_01: We're good at this.
23:10
SPEAKER_01: This is a great podcast.
23:13
SPEAKER_01: And what you're about to hear is something that we can only aspire to.
23:17
SPEAKER_01: We don't have what Jared has.
23:18
SPEAKER_01: I don't think anyone does.
23:20
SPEAKER_01: That's a gift.
23:21
SPEAKER_01: The level of insight, the amount of history he can pull out of a two-minute clip.
23:26
SPEAKER_01: This is from the Muckrakes Weekender podcast.
23:28
SPEAKER_01: So only Patreon subscribers get this.
23:30
SPEAKER_01: And this is the only Patreon I subscribe to.
23:33
SPEAKER_01: And I only subscribed because he was a guest host and he wouldn't take anything for it.
23:37
SPEAKER_01: According to the cool dude code, I subscribed.
23:39
SPEAKER_01: The point is that I don't need anything out of this podcast for it to have value to me.
23:44
SPEAKER_01: If it was terrible, I'd still be happy with it because of what Jared Yates Sextant did for this program.
23:50
SPEAKER_01: And this is amazing.
23:51
SPEAKER_01: This is the weekender.
23:52
SPEAKER_01: This is the show where Nick and Jared from the Muck Rate cut loose.
23:55
SPEAKER_01: And Nick was on vacation.
23:56
SPEAKER_01: This was the first show back, so you know there's some rust.
23:59
SPEAKER_01: And the quality of analysis they're putting out, unbelievable.
24:02
SPEAKER_01: I just want you guys to hear it.
24:04
SPEAKER_01: I reached out to Jared to see if he'd let us air this, and I honestly don't think he had any idea that this was anything special.
24:10
SPEAKER_01: I think this is just the shit he was thinking about last Thursday night.
24:12
SPEAKER_01: And if I hadn't reminded him about it, he would never would have thought of it again.
24:16
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna hear it in a second.
24:17
SPEAKER_01: The clip starts off with a wild ride.
24:19
SPEAKER_01: Byron Donalds is running for governor in Florida as a Republican, and he was campaigning doing a QA.
24:24
SPEAKER_01: And the wrong person got on the microphone.
24:26
SPEAKER_01: It gets nuts.
24:27
SPEAKER_01: She rides it off the rail.
24:28
SPEAKER_01: So listen for that.
24:29
SPEAKER_01: And then listen to how the guys from the muckrake discuss it, and then Craig and I will try to discuss it afterwards if either one of us can think of anything to add.
24:40
SPEAKER_02: Hi, Mr.
24:41
SPEAKER_02: Donalds.
24:41
SPEAKER_02: It's a pleasure to talk to you.
24:43
SPEAKER_02: I am totally in love with your family.
24:46
SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for your values and what you've done.
24:49
SPEAKER_02: My question is about grandparents' rights.
24:52
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
24:53
SPEAKER_02: Do you know that Florida does not protect grandparents' rights if a regular parent, we're not talking about divorce, we're not talking about drug abuse, we're not talking about substance abuse, we're not talking about a parent missing, we're not talking about them never been married.
25:11
SPEAKER_02: We're talking about regular parents and a regular grandparent or grandparents that they argue, they don't agree, the parents can cut the grandchild out of the grandparents' life.
25:24
SPEAKER_02: And that has happened to me.
25:25
SPEAKER_02: I have not seen my grandson since August 7th of this year.
25:30
SPEAKER_02: And I want to know what can happen in that because I would make it because I have plans.
25:39
SPEAKER_02: And that's why I have not seen my grandson.
25:45
SPEAKER_02: Or at least directly to the right people.
25:48
SPEAKER_02: I have to wait in my district.
25:54
SPEAKER_02: So it would be nationwide because grandparents should be able to see the grandchildren.
26:01
SPEAKER_03: I am so sorry.
26:06
SPEAKER_03: One, I I I am the law.
26:10
SPEAKER_03: Let me I you you have my word on this one.
26:13
SPEAKER_03: We are gonna look into that, and we will work with you, and we'll work with the members of the legislature on this.
26:19
SPEAKER_04: Okay, Nick, there's a lot to get into here, and I'm gonna talk about what I'm seeing here and where this goes.
26:26
SPEAKER_04: First things first, can we agree before and and and I'm sorry for this woman's emotional distress, and I love that Byron Donald's is like, I don't know what to say about this.
26:37
SPEAKER_04: Someone did not cut off the grandmother of their child because they refused to babysit one time.
26:43
SPEAKER_04: Right.
26:44
SPEAKER_04: Something else happened here that isn't being discussed.
26:47
SPEAKER_04: But I want to hear what you have to say because this is madness, but there is so much happening here that I think helps explain both manga and the right-wing authoritarian turn in this country.
26:59
SPEAKER_04: What is your immediate response to this?
27:01
SPEAKER_05: Well, you know what's hilarious is that you sent this over to me, you want me to look at this.
27:04
SPEAKER_05: And for however, I was processing the title and the description.
27:08
SPEAKER_05: I think I thought it was Byron Donald's parents, or one, like maybe his mother-in-law wanting to see Byron Donald's kid.
27:17
SPEAKER_05: I thought it was she was the grandparent talking to him through this.
27:20
SPEAKER_05: It's not, they're not, she's not related to him, um, which is interesting.
27:24
SPEAKER_05: But uh, I do feel like there that this is a notion of you know, when you have kids and the control that you think you have over your kids, no matter how old they are, right?
27:32
SPEAKER_05: You're always my baby, that kind of thing, um, is really instructive.
27:36
SPEAKER_05: And I think in the in the MAGA side of the world, where that kind of control probably is even more um, you know, uh profound than in other, you know, societies, other communities.
27:47
SPEAKER_05: Um, this is a fascinating take on like what a grandparent should be allowed to be able to do versus what because you would argue like listen, if I'm a parent and I don't want my kid to see somebody, I have that right.
27:57
SPEAKER_05: It's a kid's uh underage, right?
27:59
SPEAKER_05: That should be sort of a basic right.
28:00
SPEAKER_05: So the idea that someone wants to now leverage uh a federal law that would force a parent to make their kid, you know, see somebody else that they don't want to seems like ridiculous, doesn't it?
28:11
SPEAKER_04: Well, okay, so there's so many different ways.
28:14
SPEAKER_04: I'll get into the psychological aspect of it in a second and the motivation based on what you were talking about a second ago, which is invaluable.
28:20
SPEAKER_04: First things first, let's just talk logically.
28:24
SPEAKER_04: There's no way to make this work, there is no way to create a law that gives grandparents rights that somehow or another supersede parental rights.
28:37
SPEAKER_04: That that that literally, if you sit with it for a while, there's no way to make that happen.
28:43
SPEAKER_04: And I want to remind everybody the Republicans and MAGA, Nick, what are they always saying?
28:48
SPEAKER_04: They're saying, like, oh, the school and the state, they're infringing on parents' rights, right?
28:53
SPEAKER_04: Like, that's the thing.
28:54
SPEAKER_04: You should be able to raise your kid how you want to raise them, and they are an extension of you.
28:59
SPEAKER_04: So we have those contradictions.
29:01
SPEAKER_04: I've said multiple times that MAGA and right-wing authoritarian thinking, it has broken down cognitive dissonance.
29:09
SPEAKER_04: You can believe in this ecosystem in two completely contradictory things at once, right?
29:16
SPEAKER_04: They don't want a strong government, they don't want an authoritarian government, they want parents to have rights, but they want to have rights over parents that help them by a government that creates these things.
29:27
SPEAKER_04: So that brings me to the larger psychological thing that's happening here.
29:32
SPEAKER_04: It is a collective breakdown.
29:34
SPEAKER_04: And Nick, I you were out of the country, so you probably didn't see it.
29:37
SPEAKER_04: Over the past couple of weeks, we have seen one mainstream corporate media arm after another write articles about the epidemic of parental estrangement, right?
29:48
SPEAKER_04: People who say to their parents, I don't want anything to do with you, I don't want to talk to you.
29:53
SPEAKER_04: And these mainstream places are like, This is wrong, it's therapy culture, it's social media, you know, like this is breaking up the family structure, thereby giving a permission structure to say somebody needs to do something about this.
30:06
SPEAKER_04: And the story that she gave, and notice, Nick, she hasn't seen the kids since August.
30:11
SPEAKER_04: We're in the beginning of October.
30:14
SPEAKER_04: It's been less than two months that this has been going on.
30:18
SPEAKER_04: And this woman who is speaking has already gone to a congressman in Randy Fine, best of luck.
30:24
SPEAKER_04: She went to a gubernatorial rally to try and get, and by the way, she's asking a governor to make a federal law.
30:32
SPEAKER_04: That doesn't work.
30:33
SPEAKER_04: What's happening here is that her internal discomfort, she can't look at herself, like you said a while ago, no self-reflection.
30:43
SPEAKER_04: This didn't just happen willy-nilly.
30:45
SPEAKER_04: There's something else that has happened here that has led to the estrangement and being cut off.
30:50
SPEAKER_04: So instead of sitting with that, the right-wing authoritarian leading person, they have to seek power through authoritarians to try and fix the thing that is making them uncomfortable and having to reflect on themselves.
31:06
SPEAKER_04: So there, they're being motivated to seek power over others, no matter how contradictory it is.
31:12
SPEAKER_04: And here's where it gets weird, Nick.
31:14
SPEAKER_04: And I know it's already weird, right?
31:17
SPEAKER_04: So what happens in the right wing sphere, the law wouldn't work.
31:22
SPEAKER_04: You wouldn't be able to do it.
31:24
SPEAKER_04: But the moment that something like this catches a little bit of momentum, the right wing think tanks and institutes who are always looking for an angle, right, to gain more power using the state.
31:35
SPEAKER_04: Well, if you open up grandparents' rights, which sounds ridiculous, but Nick, I I don't know about you, but aren't most grandparents right now part of a generation that is largely turned right wing and has supported MAGA?
31:50
SPEAKER_05: I guess.
31:51
SPEAKER_05: I don't even know anymore.
31:52
SPEAKER_05: Okay.
31:52
SPEAKER_05: I don't even know.
31:54
SPEAKER_05: So grandparent, I guess.
31:56
SPEAKER_04: So let's say that you can get them power and and take care of a cathartic experience for them, make them feel better.
32:03
SPEAKER_04: All of a sudden, then, Nick, if there is the ability for a grandparent to supersede the parental rights, right?
32:11
SPEAKER_04: Then all of a sudden, what are we talking about?
32:14
SPEAKER_04: We're talking about the bill the ability to take kids if you think they're in an unhealthy environment.
32:20
SPEAKER_04: What does that open up?
32:22
SPEAKER_04: They're the wrong religion, they have the wrong political views, they allow their kids to be transgender, they don't uh they're they don't have the right parental style.
32:32
SPEAKER_04: So all of a sudden, you then have an opening for right-wing authoritarians looking to use emotional, cathartic feelings and fear-mongering, lack of control to then create programs that will allow them to push a political project that is possible.
32:48
SPEAKER_04: So it's absurd and ridiculous, but it has an insidious component because it goes back and forth in a feedback loop.
32:56
SPEAKER_04: Because MAGA might not be able to make your material conditions better, Nick, that they can take care of the problem of telling you that you don't need to look in the mirror and ask what role you've played in things and will give you power over others.
33:09
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, for sure.
33:10
SPEAKER_05: And there's even more to this because there's a friction between these two different generations, because the you would argue the grandparents, people who are that age, were of the last era of like prosperity, where housing wasn't completely uh overpriced.
33:24
SPEAKER_05: Uh, there were jobs, you can have generational wealth, you can save.
33:28
SPEAKER_05: You know, nobody under 30 probably feels that way, right?
33:32
SPEAKER_05: Everything feels way too expensive, and they probably resent the fact that like their parents aren't helping them, right?
33:37
SPEAKER_05: We see that a lot too, where like they're they're hoarding their wealth, they're not helping their kids as much as they could, and the kids are struggling because of the weight of the the economy and what Trump has done to this place.
33:47
SPEAKER_05: So um, that is another layer to this where parents might want to feel like they could say, Well, we'll give you this money, but you got to come this.
33:54
SPEAKER_05: Well, I don't know, come this Trump rally.
33:56
SPEAKER_04: But that already happens.
33:58
SPEAKER_04: That's the financial leverage that's already taken place outside of even this ask, right?
34:04
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and that's capitalism, right?
34:06
SPEAKER_05: Capitalism sort of puts that structure in there.
34:08
SPEAKER_05: And I you know it's it's really unfortunate if you have parents who would do that and would lower that over you.
34:13
SPEAKER_04: Child care is prohibitively expensive.
34:16
SPEAKER_04: This person wants me to believe that not only do they cut someone off, which is emotionally exhausting and painful, right?
34:24
SPEAKER_04: Like to cut your parent off, you don't do it willy-nilly, it hurts.
34:29
SPEAKER_04: But on top of that, I'm being asked to believe that they're cutting off their child care.
34:34
SPEAKER_04: Like they they made that decision because social media or therapy got in their heads and brainwashed them.
34:39
SPEAKER_04: And what do we keep covering?
34:41
SPEAKER_04: It's the idea of people who don't want to sit with their own shit.
34:44
SPEAKER_04: They want to believe social media brainwashed them, a school brainwashed them, a therapist brainwashed them, right?
34:52
SPEAKER_04: It has to be external, it can't be them.
34:56
SPEAKER_04: And all of this rationalization takes place, which then gets embodied in the right-wing authoritarian figure and project.
35:04
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and all it does is it pushes away the bad feelings, it won't make your life better, but it will make you feel better about things that you don't want to feel bad about.
35:13
SPEAKER_05: And by the way, as a parent, having had my parents around and my in-laws around to babysit, when you realize how expensive it is and how hard it is to get someone to babysit that you can trust, you would never pass that up unless something was wrong.
35:28
SPEAKER_05: Wrong.
35:29
SPEAKER_05: And I really refuse to believe in this situation.
35:32
SPEAKER_05: Now, it also reminds me of I'm sure you ever been you go to like that that community meeting and have the cop who's in or the police officer comes by who's in charge of that whole whatever.
35:40
SPEAKER_05: And you know what happens, right?
35:42
SPEAKER_05: Like he gives the whole spiel, or she gives the whole spiel about what's you know, the state of uh you know crime in your neighborhood, whatever.
35:46
SPEAKER_05: And then they all they open it up to questions, right?
35:49
SPEAKER_05: And you know at the end of that thing or in the middle of that thing or the beginning of the thing, there's there's gonna be multiple people.
35:55
SPEAKER_05: Well, someone's gonna get that mic and talk for like five minutes straight about how their neighbor likes to sunbathe naked and what there it is, stop this, and right and we're listening to this whole thing with all running on and all the unnecessary details, right?
36:07
SPEAKER_05: And they hijack the whole thing.
36:09
SPEAKER_05: So, this is also what this reminds me of.
36:11
SPEAKER_05: This is but on a grand scale of a there it is, because what you just brought up is the other aspect of this.
36:18
SPEAKER_04: We no longer have because of politics as usual, that brought us maga and brought us fascism, both Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives, you name it.
36:27
SPEAKER_04: There is no longer a belief in mass politics.
36:31
SPEAKER_04: There's no longer a belief that something can happen that can change for the greater good.
36:37
SPEAKER_04: So it becomes a contest of personal advancement, right?
36:42
SPEAKER_04: It becomes, you go into that meeting, your main concern, it isn't your neighbor, it's not your neighborhood.
36:47
SPEAKER_04: It's somebody stole an Amazon package off of my porch, right?
36:52
SPEAKER_04: It got taken from me.
36:54
SPEAKER_04: What are you going to do for my problem?
36:57
SPEAKER_04: This one is a boutique problem.
37:00
SPEAKER_04: And we always talk about what's the right wing do, the authoritarian personality.
37:04
SPEAKER_04: They imagine an entire ecosystem.
37:06
SPEAKER_04: This woman literally believes that this is a massive problem, you know, that it needs a federal law because it's happening everywhere.
37:15
SPEAKER_04: The same thing with trans women in sports, right?
37:18
SPEAKER_04: It's happening everywhere.
37:20
SPEAKER_04: Somebody needs to do something about they're living in the reality of their imagination that has no bearing on reality, but it comes down to one thing, which is please, please, please, dictator and dictator party, please make things better for me.
37:36
SPEAKER_04: Please take this anxiety and pain away from me.
37:41
SPEAKER_04: It's not mass politics, it's not expecting mass results or the changing of anything for the better.
37:46
SPEAKER_04: It's please, can you just make me feel better?
37:49
SPEAKER_04: Which also, by the way, kind of helps when you have a president who will just lie about how good things are and how good conditions are.
38:01
SPEAKER_05: And validates all of that validates, validates me, validates um the the sullying of the office itself without any self-reflection and any kind of appropriateness.
38:11
SPEAKER_05: I think that's also what this ends up being.
38:12
SPEAKER_05: And that's what happens when you're like you're threatening cities and basically putting putting them under threat.
38:17
SPEAKER_05: Or he said something about kissing my uh what do they say about they can kiss my ass or the and then the Democrats, whatever it is.
38:22
SPEAKER_05: And he's just like just sort of violating the kind of decorum that the the uh the uh president's uh the office itself demands, and we'll probably never get back.
38:32
SPEAKER_04: Well, on that note, just very quickly before we tie this up, she said, I'm working on this with Randy Fine, and by the way, Randy Fine is despicable.
38:40
SPEAKER_04: Do you believe for a second that this woman is in close contact and permanent contact with Randy Fine in order to solve this problem?
38:48
SPEAKER_04: Do you believe that Randy Fine is like, what's that?
38:51
SPEAKER_05: So she left a voicemail, I'm sure, on his machine.
38:53
SPEAKER_04: Okay, so she gets to go home after this rally and be like, Randy Fine and Byron Donald, they're on it.
39:01
SPEAKER_04: They took it seriously.
39:03
SPEAKER_04: This is over here helping me.
39:05
SPEAKER_04: The Donald Trump thing is the same thing, it's simply prolonging the delusion of, oh, I'm being represented.
39:14
SPEAKER_04: All the Donald Trump does is give people catharsis.
39:17
SPEAKER_04: He's on it.
39:18
SPEAKER_04: The wrong people, the the enemies of you are being punished, your life is getting better, and you're living in this delusional feedback.
39:28
SPEAKER_04: And that's how people vote for authoritarians.
39:30
SPEAKER_04: That's how countries fall into fascism.
39:32
SPEAKER_04: It is self-destruction and self-delusion that just continues to spiral and spiral and grow.
39:39
SPEAKER_06: How about that shit?
39:41
SPEAKER_06: That's a super interesting clip.
39:43
SPEAKER_06: I mean, both the original clip and the actual Mukrake.
39:46
SPEAKER_06: Talking about this actual clip from this woman, I guess one of the things that I want to talk about, you know, that comes to mind, Mukrake was talking about this woman who's like, I'm a grandmother, they're taking away my grandkids, my right to see my grandkids.
39:59
SPEAKER_06: And I think that when we think about this, we talk about the generation of people that are grandparents as if they are boomers.
40:08
SPEAKER_06: But the generation of people who are grandparents now, a lot of them are Gen X.
40:12
SPEAKER_06: And Gen X is the me generation.
40:15
SPEAKER_06: Gen X is also statistically the most conservative of the generations, so far, at least in terms of voting patterns.
40:21
SPEAKER_06: The idea that this woman who is maybe either a young boomer or an old Gen X, I don't know, roughly the age of my parents, if that's the age that we're talking about, there's something there.
40:31
SPEAKER_06: These people are the me generation, a generation raised uniquely more than others to think about themselves, to think about what they want, to think about their desires, to feel like that's gonna be what's catered to.
40:42
SPEAKER_06: They also talked about the end of mass politics, which is a super interesting, fascinating topic.
40:46
SPEAKER_06: Mass politics used to be how all political parties worked from starting way back in the 19th century.
40:52
SPEAKER_06: Mass political parties meant mass big rallies.
40:54
SPEAKER_06: If you've ever seen footage of a Nuremberg rally of the Nazi Party, people walking around carrying flags and torches and stuff.
41:03
SPEAKER_06: But it wasn't just the Nazis that did that.
41:04
SPEAKER_06: Communist parties did that, but also mainstream US parties did that.
41:08
SPEAKER_06: We had big parades, we had big marches, we had big rallies.
41:12
SPEAKER_06: When the president came and talked, millions of people would show up.
41:15
SPEAKER_06: We broadly don't have that anymore.
41:18
SPEAKER_06: Part of that is something that social scientists call atomization.
41:22
SPEAKER_06: We're all separated out into our individual components.
41:24
SPEAKER_06: We also talk about this in terms of the loss of mass culture or monoculture.
41:28
SPEAKER_06: We aren't all watching the same three news sources anymore.
41:31
SPEAKER_06: Each of us is getting their news from a podcast or a TikToker or from your friend's Instagram reels or something.
41:37
SPEAKER_06: So nobody knows what anybody even knows anymore.
41:39
SPEAKER_06: There isn't even an ability to have a common conversation.
41:42
SPEAKER_06: What does break through ends up often being lower brow, stupider, more base, angrier, more hateful.
41:49
SPEAKER_06: And that's one of the reasons the particular kind of politics that MAGA is anti-immigrant, anti-woman, anti-trans, anti-kid.
41:56
SPEAKER_06: It's what can cut through.
41:57
SPEAKER_06: It's what can actually cut through the noise and get spread around.
42:00
SPEAKER_06: The idea that like grandparents have special rights vis-a-vis children.
42:04
SPEAKER_01: Christopher Rufo just got a great idea for the next thing that they're gonna lure these people in with.
42:11
SPEAKER_01: That's gonna take off, Craig.
42:12
SPEAKER_01: I think it will too.
42:13
SPEAKER_01: They're gonna start atomizing the problems that people have.
42:16
SPEAKER_01: After all these years of being a proto-fascist with Donald Trump, are you mad that people are mad at you?
42:22
SPEAKER_01: We can stop that.
42:22
SPEAKER_01: That's one of the great things about fascism.
42:25
SPEAKER_01: You get to dominate people if you're on the right side.
42:28
SPEAKER_01: We can make your kids let your grandkids hang out with you.
42:31
SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
42:33
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
42:34
SPEAKER_01: It's been two months, right?
42:37
SPEAKER_06: It's been two months.
42:39
SPEAKER_06: It's been two months.
42:40
SPEAKER_01: That lady must really love her grandkids.
42:42
SPEAKER_06: Or really hate them.
42:43
SPEAKER_06: I don't know.
42:44
SPEAKER_06: Exactly like they were saying in the commentary clip on Mukrake.
42:47
SPEAKER_06: There's no fucking way that this is because she was busy that one time.
42:51
SPEAKER_01: It's not the first time she's told that lie to a group of people.
42:54
SPEAKER_01: No, certainly not.
42:55
unknown: No, no, no, no, no.
42:58
SPEAKER_01: Once again, we appreciate Jared and Nick from the Mukrake podcast for allowing us to air stuff that people are gladly paying for.
43:05
SPEAKER_01: For free.
43:06
SPEAKER_01: They didn't have to do that.
43:07
SPEAKER_01: It's just so impressive.
43:08
SPEAKER_01: Visit their Patreon, sign up for it.
43:10
SPEAKER_01: It's awfully good.
43:15
SPEAKER_01: Stare into the abyss with friends, the Autocratic Despair podcast with Nick Mortensen and Dr.
43:21
SPEAKER_01: Craig Johnson.
43:23
SPEAKER_01: And don't forget Dr.
43:24
SPEAKER_01: Craig's other podcast, 15 Minutes of Fashion, available wherever you get your podcast.