Latest / Start Me Up with Kimberley A. Johnson / Start Me Up: Jared Yates Sexton

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Start Me Up: Jared Yates Sexton · Start Me Up with Kimberley A. Johnson

0:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to the Start Me Up podcast part of M.S.W.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Media on the sexy liberal podcast network.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I'm your host Kimberly Johnson in DC.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Today, my returning guest is Jared Yates sexton.
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[SPEAKER_02]: He's a political analyst.
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[SPEAKER_02]: He's an author.
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[SPEAKER_02]: He is the co-host of the MuckRake podcast.
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[SPEAKER_02]: He writes the newsletter dispatches from a collapsing state.
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[SPEAKER_02]: He's so smart, I love talking to him, but before we get into it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Start me up podcast is independent, listen or fund it, and woman run.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Visit patreon.com slash start me up to see the variety of tears offered, including the option to get a bonus what's up episode just for patrons every Tuesday.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's kind of like my online journal where I get a little more personal and I talk about whatever's on my mind.
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[SPEAKER_02]: There's also an ad free tier with a much shorter intro.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Just visit patreon.com slash start me up.
1:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, please enjoy my conversation with Jared Yates, Sexton.
1:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome back to the show, Jared.
1:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And really, it is good to talk to you as I say to most people I enjoy talking to, I wish we had nicer things to talk to you.
1:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I know.
1:16
[SPEAKER_02]: I know, it's always nice to talk to you and you always scare me.
1:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you don't scare me, but what you say scares me because you're right about everything.
1:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm not just saying that you are.
1:24
[SPEAKER_02]: You're an expert on, I can never say this word, authoritarianism, okay, I said it.
1:29
[SPEAKER_02]: So you're an expert on this and you know what you're talking about.
1:32
[SPEAKER_02]: The last time we talked, you didn't really scare me.
1:34
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, we're all scared.
1:37
[SPEAKER_02]: We're all freaking out and I'm just gonna start this off by saying, you know, whatever flies into my head.
1:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Was I keep seeing people on the internet declaring that American democracy is dead and we've completely lost our country and it's over forever and it really pisses me off because I mean, obviously we are being run by fascist oligarchs right now.
2:04
[SPEAKER_02]: That's true, but from my understanding, everybody who seems to know what they're talking about when it comes to authoritarianism, it's always that like in the beginning,
2:14
[SPEAKER_02]: of a regime is the time to topple it.
2:17
[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to be talking about this extensively today, but I feel like we still have the ability to do that.
2:25
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not all over, and it's like I understand that people feel
2:31
[SPEAKER_02]: down and they feel discouraged, but when they declare that it's over, I feel like it's not necessarily true.
2:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And it pisses me off and I don't want to hear it.
2:42
[SPEAKER_02]: It's defeatism.
2:44
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm just curious what you have to say to all of that.
2:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, I feel the same way.
2:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there are obviously in all these things there are different shades of it.
2:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the way I try and explain it is this, that I don't think all hope is lost.
3:04
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that that is unnecessary and I actually think it's a lot of people going through the stages of grief.
3:10
[SPEAKER_00]: It's what it is.
3:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And so saying there's absolutely nothing we can do at this point.
3:15
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all over.
3:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that that is pessimistic and cynical to the point that it actually hurts the cause of what we need to do.
3:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And while I'm saying that, I think it's an important thing to stress, that I think it's true that something is over.
3:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And we have to be honest about that.
3:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
3:38
[SPEAKER_00]: The America that we thought we knew is over.
3:42
[SPEAKER_00]: America that, you know, people like you and me and I assume a lot of the people listening to that we were promised as kids.
3:49
[SPEAKER_00]: It's over.
3:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And, and that is a really frightening thing that we have to wrap our heads around.
3:56
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's something lovely about that, which is...
3:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Now that the mask has been taken off, and I say this all the time, Donald Trump is a symptom of a much larger disease.
4:07
[SPEAKER_00]: He is not the main problem.
4:08
[SPEAKER_00]: He just happens to be one of the harbingers or the faces of this thing.
4:15
[SPEAKER_00]: This has been coming for a very long time.
4:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, it hasn't worked the way that it needs to work for a very long time.
4:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And the good news here is that now that we've reached this point where the America that a lot of people thought existed has now been exposed to not just not only exist, but not to operate anymore.
4:37
[SPEAKER_00]: it gives us a new opportunity, and I call this thing reverse gratitude.
4:42
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a thing that I've been working with, which is if someone treats you poorly, if something goes wrong, if something in your life happens and it doesn't feel good and it knocks you down, it doesn't feel good but at the same time we can use that as an opportunity to say, thank you for showing me what I don't want.
5:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for showing me what I don't need, and so because we're going through this, we now have the opportunity to look at America as it is and as it was, and Decide what it is we want in the future.
5:16
[SPEAKER_00]: So yes, something has ended, but there is an opportunity to build something new and better and real.
5:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I just want to quickly point out, and money
5:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Gandhi, who is angry black lady, wrote on rewire.
5:29
[SPEAKER_02]: It was white people's performative ignorance is exhausting.
5:33
[SPEAKER_02]: So she said, still the constant expressions of shock seem performative to me, a kind of political groundhog day where white America wakes up over and over surprised that the system, I'm sorry, it's hard for me to read because I'm getting older.
5:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, the system, the government created to protect them, is now used by someone who doesn't care about protecting anyone, including them, and she goes, but here's the thing, for black, for black people, for indigenous people, for anyone who has lived outside the warm glow of American exceptionalism, that shock doesn't land, because the truth is this is who America has always been.
6:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just kind of, I'm glad that I wanted to point that out because it's true that like me, I've always thought, well, this is not the, it's, I like what you said.
6:26
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not the America we were promised when we were kids.
6:28
[SPEAKER_02]: We were told we were getting a certain kind of a country and we watched schoolhouse rock.
6:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, I mean, as a young white girl, I had the impression that things were going to just continue to progress.
6:44
[SPEAKER_02]: and obviously that didn't happen.
6:46
[SPEAKER_02]: So I kind of wanted to point out what she said because I liked it.
6:49
[SPEAKER_02]: But I want to bring this back and ask you about the fact that Belida was last week, Robert Reich and Heather Cox Richardson both wrote substax on, they believe that the sleeping giant is waking.
7:03
[SPEAKER_02]: That you know
7:05
[SPEAKER_02]: whether it's maga or some of the right leaning independence that they're waking up to this and they're understanding that they don't like what's going on.
7:13
[SPEAKER_02]: This is not what they voted for.
7:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you getting that same sense?
7:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, so I want to say something and I want to answer that question because I think it's very important.
7:22
[SPEAKER_00]: But I also want to say something about what you brought up, which I think is really essential in all of this and something that we need to realize.
7:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Kimberly, I assume you
7:34
[SPEAKER_00]: One thing that became clear to me a few years ago is all modes of apocalyptic or dystopian fiction, whether it's a movie TV show or book.
7:44
[SPEAKER_00]: It is always where the living conditions of black and brown people, immigrant people, and people around the world.
7:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Those conditions are visited upon Americans.
7:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Where all of a sudden the things that America is supposed to be suddenly go down to the
8:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's very telling, and I think the delusion that we're talking about basically that runs what's going on, and I'll get to the delusion in the answer to the second part there in a second.
8:13
[SPEAKER_00]: That delusion is one of the main problems in the United States of America, is that this has always been a country that runs on mythology, and always a country that runs on its own very, very soothing fairy tale.
8:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think a lot of people are waking up to the fact that it's always been a mythology and a fairy tale, which is useful, but it has to be put into action.
8:36
[SPEAKER_00]: On the second part with this idea that a sleeping giant has awakened, I'm not seeing that.
8:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
8:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there is something happening.
8:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I read both of these articles and you know have watched videos with people saying this.
8:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that there is something different that is happening right now that can't be explained necessarily through a liberal or maga lens.
9:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I think when you sort of look through like a red versus blue prism, it misses something.
9:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Because that paradigm keeps us from looking at what this actually is.
9:14
[SPEAKER_00]: We're in the middle of a class war.
9:16
[SPEAKER_00]: We're in the middle of an oligarchical fascistic takeover of this country where the people who have afforded all the resources, they want more.
9:24
[SPEAKER_00]: They can't stop.
9:25
[SPEAKER_00]: They have to continue until they're trillionaires until they own every resource.
9:29
[SPEAKER_00]: They do whatever it is that they want, and there's no impediment to them.
9:32
[SPEAKER_00]: I think within the Maga world, if we go ahead and move back into that paradigm, there are certain people who are looking around and they're saying, oh, this isn't what I thought it was going to be.
9:41
[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't some sort of like catch-all.
9:43
[SPEAKER_00]: and that happens in a cult situation.
9:46
[SPEAKER_00]: When you join a cult, like at the beginning, like for some people, it feels very good.
9:50
[SPEAKER_00]: You're around a bunch of other people, you're having a good time, and then as things worsen, it becomes more concentrated in terms of true believers and people who walk away.
9:59
[SPEAKER_00]: There are some people who are realizing like, oh yeah, Trump isn't actually going to do what he promised.
10:05
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think the larger way to look at this is that the vast majority of Americans, and for the record, the vast majority of people around the world, are looking at the past half-century and saying, oh shit, this didn't work.
10:20
[SPEAKER_00]: and it brought us to here.
10:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And so there is an awakening class consciousness that is starting to take hold.
10:29
[SPEAKER_00]: The problem
10:30
[SPEAKER_00]: is that what we're dealing with now with fascistic violence and oppression, which is of course what the Trump administration is doing and what other authoritarian administrations are doing around the world, their violence and control is directly proportional to how much people lose faith in their ability to solve problems.
10:49
[SPEAKER_00]: So as they become more unpopular and as the sort of mythology of the
10:57
[SPEAKER_00]: they have to become more oppressive because they're clinging on to like a thread of control.
11:03
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think there is an awakening mass consciousness that's taking place, but we also need to be aware that that is going to lead to more oppression and more exploitation and more violence.
11:16
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think there are shades of truth in that, but I think it gets a little bit more complicated than as it's been communicated so far.
11:29
[SPEAKER_02]: How do I add?
11:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm there's so many things swirling in my head right now and I would ask you like 15 questions.
11:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's go.
11:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, here's here's the best way to do the first one.
11:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, I keep like, for instance, there's a TikTok, but you know, it's with all these mega people and they're like, okay, I was in mega for a world that there was this one woman who.
11:47
[SPEAKER_02]: looks the part.
11:48
[SPEAKER_02]: She's a beautiful blonde woman.
11:50
[SPEAKER_02]: She's got the accent.
11:51
[SPEAKER_02]: She's the y'all girl all of it.
11:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And she's talking about how she was fully and fully invested in Donald Trump went to his inauguration.
11:59
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, she did all the things for him.
12:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And she specifically described that it was this community where she loved being in maga.
12:07
[SPEAKER_02]: It was so much fun.
12:09
[SPEAKER_02]: It made her feel like she was part of something like, you know, the cult situation you were describing.
12:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, I think the things that are making her turn right now are Israel and Epstein, those two things, but she's kind of waking up to it.
12:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, you know, there's a couple of people I follow on YouTube who have put together compilation videos of these magas and sometimes they're older men who are like, I did not vote for this and they're very angry.
12:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, so it's just runs the gamut.
12:37
[SPEAKER_02]: But my question here, and I know, I know you probably don't, maybe you do have an answer to this,
12:44
[SPEAKER_02]: These, a lot of these people were fine when violence or, you know, oppression or whatever was happening to those marginalized groups.
12:54
[SPEAKER_02]: But when they recognize that it's happening to them, that's when they're pissed off and upset.
12:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep.
12:59
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that's the case.
13:02
[SPEAKER_02]: How do we address this as a culture?
13:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Because this is going to keep coming up.
13:06
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not, like you said, Trump is just a symptom.
13:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And we've got all these cult members and these people who are fine with marginalized groups being treated violently and just, I mean, every bad possible way you can imagine, they're okay with that.
13:24
[SPEAKER_02]: But they're like, hey, don't do that to me.
13:26
[SPEAKER_02]: So like, how do we handle that?
13:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so there's a lot of different things to sort of tug on here and it's an excellent question.
13:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to, I'm going to bring together like three or four different threads here, too, because I think it's necessary.
13:41
[SPEAKER_00]: So first things first, if you actually study cult like mentality, right, cults happen in time periods where people lose faith in institutions,
13:53
[SPEAKER_00]: where people feel lonely and isolated and fearful of the future, right?
13:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it turns out people really, really want someone to tell them what's going on.
14:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And what's more like they come from a background in which they have a authoritarian or called like family or religious dynamics, right?
14:14
[SPEAKER_00]: So one of the things that you find studying called, some by the way, authoritarianism and fascism, these are all cults.
14:20
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what they are.
14:22
[SPEAKER_00]: If you study people who get involved in cults, Kimberly, one of the weird things that you find is that many of them will be like, well, I was in this cult with this guru for a while, and I realized that they weren't, you know, that they were full of shit.
14:35
[SPEAKER_00]: That's how I ended up over here.
14:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And then they describe another cult that they ended up with.
14:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the frightening thing about this, because you'll notice what you just said, right?
14:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to bring these elements together for listeners to sort of be able to put together where I'm going with this.
14:54
[SPEAKER_00]: One, these people are fine if minorities and vulnerable communities are being targeted, right?
15:02
[SPEAKER_00]: The problems that she has with Trump are Epstein and Israel.
15:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And for anybody who pays attention to right wing authoritarian conspiracy theory circles, the main explanation for both Israel and what has happened, and also Epstein, is the Jews control the world.
15:19
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the combining element there, right?
15:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So one of the things that I've been paying attention to over the last few years is the
15:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you look at Maga, it's an authoritarian called with Neo-Nazi principles, right?
15:36
[SPEAKER_00]: But they don't go all the way with Neo-Naziism.
15:41
[SPEAKER_00]: They've toyed with it, they flirt with it, they use it whenever they want.
15:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And eventually what happens is that it becomes a pipeline, and it becomes a pipeline for people like Nick Fuentes and other Neo-Nazi.
15:54
[SPEAKER_00]: So what we're actually looking at now,
15:58
[SPEAKER_00]: But is the magas in the authoritarian cult that works on behalf of the wealth class, the oligarchic go class, and is basically continuing to carry out the class war on their behalf while giving the people the catharsis of this alternate reality where Trump is going to make everything better again, right?
16:15
[SPEAKER_00]: On the other side of that, there are neo-Nazis who are gaining power and purchase, picking off the people who have become disillusioned with maga.
16:23
[SPEAKER_00]: the people who look at Trump and market and say that's not good, that's not okay.
16:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And the Epstein and Israel thing is creating a pipeline for people to go to straight neo-Nazis.
16:35
[SPEAKER_00]: People who don't even hide the fact that they heroize Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust and all these things.
16:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So there is a possibility that we might look back at some point and see Maga, not as the endpoint of American fascism, but actually the gateway to our God.
16:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the frightening aspect.
16:57
[SPEAKER_00]: But what that reveals, and this is where Judaism and cynicism and pessimism, where if you move these to the side, and what I just expressed to you, it's very frightening.
17:06
[SPEAKER_00]: It is.
17:07
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you move that to the side, the answers become very obvious.
17:12
[SPEAKER_00]: The answers are, why are people moving away from Maga or Trumpism towards Neonaziism?
17:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Because Trump is an answering the material conditions that he promised to answer.
17:24
[SPEAKER_00]: So here we have solutions, which is this thing is being used by the wealthy in order to increase their power.
17:31
[SPEAKER_00]: We live in a society with incredible historic inequality.
17:36
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you actually look at Democrats who are getting elected, like I don't know, is over on Mom Donnie.
17:42
[SPEAKER_00]: or you look at the Democrats who are actually becoming popular, or anybody who's gaining power and purchase in this country, it's people who are actually talking about cultural stuff, they're talking about the material conditions.
17:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And the answer throughout time when you look at fascism, notism, whatever it is, the way to beat it is to take care of the conditions that
18:07
[SPEAKER_00]: So there is an opportunity to get some of these people who are disillusioned, but continuing to not answer those things.
18:13
[SPEAKER_00]: I created this problem.
18:14
[SPEAKER_00]: It is going to lead towards moving towards a neo-Nazi as I'm in a vertneo-fascist.
18:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Yay.
18:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Yay.
18:23
[SPEAKER_00]: But those are the stakes.
18:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I know.
18:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I know.
18:27
[SPEAKER_02]: OK, well, let's go back to when you were talking about having hope.
18:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's a few things and, you know, I want to temper the hope with a little bit of reality here.
18:44
[SPEAKER_00]: First things first, the main reason that I have hope is the human spirit.
18:50
[SPEAKER_00]: If you actually look back throughout time, it's incredible what humans have done in terms of democratic, smallty, democratic power and human dignity.
19:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, if you want hope in all of this, go and look at how we escaped feudalism.
19:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Look how we got out from it.
19:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, this was a period of time where hardly anyone was literate, the wealth class at that time owned literally everything and had total control and humanity fought back.
19:20
[SPEAKER_00]: You go back into the 20th century when we defeated Nazism and fascism, we didn't defeat them enough, obviously.
19:26
[SPEAKER_00]: You look at all of this and people do not accept this shit forever.
19:31
[SPEAKER_00]: They get tired of it and they say I'm fucking done with this and it's over.
19:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I think my terms of hope have changed and just to give a little bit of background to give you an idea of how my ideas have changed.
19:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I started, you know, studying this 10 years ago because I was going to Trump rallies and telling people, hey, I think this is going to become a fascism thing.
19:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And for 10 years, I was like, okay, we can avoid this.
19:57
[SPEAKER_00]: We can figure it out if we talk about it, if we understand it, we can get away from it.
20:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Now we've arrived at this point.
20:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And my energies have been going towards organizing people into collective action.
20:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, actually, you know, everything from a national strike, to walk out, to going to Washington, DC, and trying to put pressure on this stuff.
20:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Where on that now is I'm starting to believe that there is going to be some sort of a flash point.
20:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if it's going to be violence.
20:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if it's going to be an ice-crew, you know, killing a bunch of people.
20:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if it's going to be a military takeover type situation or an insurrection act or whatever or an economic collapse.
20:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what it's going to be.
20:39
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think that these incompetent assholes are going to destroy themselves.
20:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that we're going to create a situation where this entire edifice starts to fall.
20:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's on us to figure out what it is that we want, so that when it does, we can start to create something, and looking at history, it tells me that that human spirit and the desire for freedom is going to win out in the long run.
21:06
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't mean it's going to be easy, it doesn't mean it's going to be clean, but in the long run, I do think that we're going to have something better in the future.
21:15
[SPEAKER_02]: So like for instance, we're seeing all this stuff happening in Portland, we're seeing Trump and the right acting like it's a war zone, and then we're seeing people dressed up like dinosaurs jumping up and down.
21:26
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I mean, and I am assuming that's a spirit you're talking about.
21:30
[SPEAKER_02]: It's this idea of like, okay, not only are we going to fight fascism, but we're going to do it with some humor.
21:37
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's kind of maybe what's going to be saving us, that kind of whole spirit.
21:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and yes, that's exactly what it is.
21:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'll just go ahead and I'll take this conversation as an example.
21:50
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, shit's on fire, Kimberly.
21:53
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so bad.
21:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Yet you and I are able to have this conversation.
21:57
[SPEAKER_00]: We're able to compare and use people to enjoy each other's company.
22:02
[SPEAKER_00]: that desire for connection and that desire to be informed and fight against this, it doesn't matter what you do to people.
22:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, if you read these stories about people who have been thrown into the carceral state, they've been thrown into prison, they've been tortured, they've been thrown in solitary confinement.
22:22
[SPEAKER_00]: You can crush the human spirit, but if the human spirit doesn't want to be crushed, it won't be.
22:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And you figure a way out of it, and what you just brought up, man, I'm enjoying watching this in Portland.
22:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm loving watching ice-shooting pepper balls at a person in a frog costume, and he was stands the assault, and then he goes back to dancing.
22:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that shit because it represents something which is there is an there is an irrepressible part of the human spirit.
22:54
[SPEAKER_00]: It's silly.
22:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, it's funny.
22:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, but what it shows is you can go out there in these jackboot dugout feds and
23:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And just like you cannot make these people stop enjoying life.
23:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
23:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's a miraculous revolutionary spirit.
23:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's the answer to that that if there's anything people take away from this conversation.
23:14
[SPEAKER_00]: It's this.
23:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Fascism stops when the people decide they deserve better.
23:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Fascist wind because they take advantage of our own internal self-loathing and trauma.
23:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's anybody who has ever been and this is deeply personal and hard, but it is also true.
23:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Anybody who has been in an abusive situation, the way to get out of it is to realize that the person doing it is wrong and you deserve better.
23:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is the answer because what is fascism but abuse by the state.
23:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we as a people have to decide, guess what, we actually deserve better than this.
23:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And we will do that.
23:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's one of the things I continues to give me hope.
23:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow, I love that.
24:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, we have to take a quick break, but we'll be back after this message.
24:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Hey, this is Kimberly, the host of the show you're listening to right now.
24:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you like what you hear, please consider going to patreon.com slash start me up.
24:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Check out the different tiers, support the show by becoming a patron today.
24:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you and advance.
24:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, we're back.
24:20
[SPEAKER_02]: I saw you posted something and I want to ask you about it.
24:23
[SPEAKER_02]: So you say, if you're talking about the midterms or the 28 presidential election, you've lost the plot at this point, why?
24:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so there's a couple of things going on there, and of course social media posts are provocative and, you know, that's space.
24:38
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, I have these conversations, I'll do an interview and someone will be like, you know, who do you like in the 2028 Democratic primaries?
24:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll say, you know, first of all, we have to live day by day at this.
24:54
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I don't mean to alarm people, but we're living in a fascistic environment.
24:59
[SPEAKER_00]: We cannot take these elections for granted.
25:02
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't know that they're going to be held.
25:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason that I say that is because every authoritarian and every dictator does their damn does to get rid of, you know, small-d democratic action.
25:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we can't, like, it's fine to look forward and make plans for these things.
25:21
[SPEAKER_00]: but we have to realize that we can't just wait until 2026 or 2028.
25:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Every single day, every single week, every single month at this point, the time counts.
25:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And voting is only one piece of democracy.
25:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a very, very small piece of democracy.
25:40
[SPEAKER_00]: There are other actions and other ways of living that we have to embrace now.
25:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And
25:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And we each have a responsibility to meet this thing in the moment.
25:50
[SPEAKER_00]: We can't just wait on a hero on a white horse to show up.
25:54
[SPEAKER_00]: We can't just wait for an election.
25:55
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't know that those things are coming.
25:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And so everything that they tell us at this point, we need to listen to, which is that they don't particularly care about free and fair elections.
26:05
[SPEAKER_00]: They have already said that they want the military to take over our cities.
26:08
[SPEAKER_00]: They've already said that they want, they've declared war on the American people.
26:12
[SPEAKER_00]: So we have to take that for granted that that's what they want.
26:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
26:16
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't just wait for elections.
26:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Because that is one of the reasons that we've gotten in this problem in the first place is because we have been convinced that our elections are the only thing that has anything to do with democracy.
26:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow, yeah, well, I mean, I'd like to point out at this, you know, indivisible, I think it's dot, as it dot org, I think it's on dot org.
26:37
[SPEAKER_02]: They're fantastic because they're not only about, you know, voting and making calls, it's, it's about community.
26:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's another way that you fight fascism is taking care of the vulnerable people in your community.
26:51
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't talk today.
26:52
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, just doing little things.
26:54
[SPEAKER_02]: I was,
26:55
[SPEAKER_02]: saying on another podcast it's like you can find out through indivisible some of the elderly people who live in your community who need people to go grocery shopping for them or to you know do things take them to the doctor get their medications and it seems like this little simple act but it is a way to a fight fascism because it is taking care of everybody and that's the whole point like you are saying it's abuse it's abuse from the state and so when we are all helping and gathering one of the things that I try to do and I know
27:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Just not like a lot, but I take it very seriously every single time I'm out in public I mean, I make a real effort to just be friendly to everyone.
27:33
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not hard for me But I'm friendly because I you know I understand I'm a white person.
27:38
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know how people view me I don't know if they look at me through a political lens or not But I live in a very diverse community There are so many different people from all over.
27:48
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm in the DC area.
27:49
[SPEAKER_02]: So I mean people from all over the world are here
27:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't know how they're treated by other white Americans.
27:54
[SPEAKER_02]: So I do try to make sure people recognize that I'm being kind.
27:59
[SPEAKER_02]: And to me, even though that's not fighting fascism, I'm not directly fighting Donald Trump by doing that.
28:06
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think culturally speaking, there are such a division and there's so much anger.
28:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just want to be somebody, it's one little tiny thing that I can do.
28:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Kimberly, I actually take issue with what you just said because that is fighting fascism.
28:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not, like, listen, I could talk about this for hours because I, one of the things that I'm studying right now and I'm writing about in researching, which is, you know, we,
28:34
[SPEAKER_00]: we talk about politics as if it is like something other than it is.
28:38
[SPEAKER_00]: We talk about it like who's going to win this or what district is going to happen or what the polls are saying.
28:44
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's not true.
28:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Politics is a reflection of the health and psychology of the society.
28:52
[SPEAKER_00]: and fascism doesn't take place in the healthy society.
28:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Fascism takes place in a society where people are scared of the future, and more particularly, they're lonely and they're isolated.
29:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not a coincidence that you look at every poll and while fascism and anti-democratic actions are gaining speed, that we're experiencing historic levels of loneliness, depression, and anxiety.
29:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And so what we're actually talking about here and you know, we've been talking about some heavy things and people always say to me, they say, what can I do?
29:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's one thing to say, go out in the streets and shut this motherfucker down.
29:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
29:32
[SPEAKER_00]: That's that it like obviously, that's where we need to go.
29:35
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you actually work backwards from where we need to go, there are many steps that need to take place before them.
29:42
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, to be able to do that, to walk out from your job, people have to feel like they're not going to have their lives fall apart.
29:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh-huh.
29:49
[SPEAKER_00]: To go on strike from your job means that you're going to take an economic risk.
29:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
29:55
[SPEAKER_00]: You might not be able to buy groceries.
29:56
[SPEAKER_00]: You might not be able to buy your medicine.
29:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
29:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, then the answer to that is, well, then we need to create mutual aid.
30:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Where people are going to help people get food, they're going to help people get the things that they need.
30:07
[SPEAKER_00]: They need to feel like they have people there.
30:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so that brings us to the next step, which is we need to come together.
30:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that sounds great, you know, in a song.
30:16
[SPEAKER_00]: But in truth, there are psychological impediments to come together.
30:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, I'll go ahead and use myself as an example.
30:25
[SPEAKER_00]: There are reasons why, like, I've been in failed relationships.
30:30
[SPEAKER_00]: there are reasons why the people listening have been in failed relationships.
30:34
[SPEAKER_00]: What's usually the problem?
30:35
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a lack of intimacy, it's a lack of communication, and it's two people bringing their baggage to a situation and not handling their baggage.
30:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so in order for us to trust one another, and by the way it's not just in politics, obviously we don't trust each other in politics.
30:52
[SPEAKER_00]: In our workplaces, we don't trust each other, right?
30:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Because we feel like everyone was trying to screw each other over, because of the financial incentives.
31:00
[SPEAKER_00]: But out in the community, like we don't necessarily know each other, we're very atomized.
31:04
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't necessarily have like strong communities anymore.
31:07
[SPEAKER_00]: That's where this comes from.
31:09
[SPEAKER_00]: So that brings us to the beginning of it, Kimberly, which is, when people ask me what it is they need to do to defeat fascism, each person needs to take care of their own shit.
31:21
[SPEAKER_00]: They need to sit with the trauma that they've been through in their lives.
31:24
[SPEAKER_00]: What keeps them from trusting other people?
31:26
[SPEAKER_00]: What keeps them from being trustworthy for other people?
31:30
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't have solidarity and collective action without each of us meeting each other in good faith.
31:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you do that, if you skip that step, all alliances and all organizations and all coalitions will fall apart anyway.
31:45
[SPEAKER_00]: So we have to take these in steps in which we all need to look at the roles we've played in modern America, the roles that we've played in capitalism, and the trauma that's been inflicted on each of us.
31:57
[SPEAKER_00]: So we have to heal ourselves.
31:59
[SPEAKER_00]: We have to heal as a community.
32:01
[SPEAKER_00]: We have to heal as a society, and then we're able to take this motherfucker down.
32:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And it is a long process, but it's the work that we have to do.
32:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
32:14
[SPEAKER_02]: And I mean, I know that I think of my mega relative when you say that.
32:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't have a lot of faith that she's necessarily going to go over those traumas.
32:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Can I ask you a question about that?
32:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Because that's might be instructive.
32:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
32:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
32:31
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and again, we don't have to get into specifics of it, but I think this might help with the conversation because I have a lot of Maga relatives.
32:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a lot of people that I care about who become radicalized.
32:43
[SPEAKER_00]: So, just speaking of this relative who is Maga, right?
32:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Would it be fair to assume that this person while they're supporting Maga, they have some sort of
32:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Would it be fair to say that the person who's going through this has probably had a little bit of a complicated life that has left them in a place where they're not able to really interact with each other people in the healthy way?
33:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
33:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm going to, I'm just going to throw in that there is, I think anger against a situation that they're in that they don't want to recognize was their choice.
33:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
33:26
[SPEAKER_00]: So what has happened?
33:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think this is informed, I'm, thank you, by the way, so much for doing this little exercise.
33:33
[SPEAKER_00]: What I have found and what has come to the surface for me is that for everyone who has become radicalized, whether it's white supremacy, toxic masculinity, conspiracy theories, any of this shit, what is actually happening is that millions upon millions of Americans have shit that they haven't dealt with.
34:00
[SPEAKER_00]: So, everybody that we're dealing with who's making this country worse, they are self-loathing, they are going through each series of crises, and rather than dealing with their own things, they're projecting it onto the rest of us, and it's literally
34:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Think about relationships and family relationships.
34:21
[SPEAKER_00]: It is all of that stuff to scale.
34:24
[SPEAKER_00]: It starts in these interpersonal relationships and within the self, and then it grows out larger.
34:30
[SPEAKER_00]: So what we're dealing, and maybe this helps people to understand because I can't go to the White House today and tell Donald Trump to get out.
34:39
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I can't go over and end the war in Ukraine.
34:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't stop World War III from happening.
34:46
[SPEAKER_00]: That's beyond my control.
34:48
[SPEAKER_00]: What's within my control is how I interact with other people.
34:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And so if I'm talking to someone who's become radicalized, rather than fighting with them about their radicalized ideas, I can talk to them as a person.
35:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And if they might have an outlet, I have an old friend of mine.
35:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And Kimberly, it's hard to talk about.
35:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I haven't really discussed it very much in public.
35:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, friend of mine, who has become completely radicalized.
35:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not just because they convinced him to become radicalized.
35:18
[SPEAKER_00]: It's because he has a lot of shit that he hasn't taken care of.
35:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And so these people, they're enablers.
35:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Maga has gained power as a fascist organization, not by telling people, I'm going to do things for you.
35:32
[SPEAKER_00]: It's by saying, you're not the problem.
35:34
[SPEAKER_00]: It's everybody else.
35:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
35:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
35:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And that main appeal has created that cult-like idea, which tells them, no, you're not at fault.
35:43
[SPEAKER_00]: You didn't do anything wrong.
35:45
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not wrong for being racist.
35:46
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not wrong for being a sexist.
35:48
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not wrong for being gay or transphobic.
35:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Those people are wrong.
35:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And that has an incredible power as long as we don't work through our shit.
35:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, and absolutely does.
35:58
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, obviously it is.
35:59
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, when I look at this one family member, I can absolutely see everything playing out that you're discussing.
36:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And I realize that a while ago, like years ago, this person was radicalized by Rush Limbaugh specifically.
36:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, just took off from there.
36:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And unfortunately,
36:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't want to get in.
36:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I've talked about this role.
36:19
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not going to say whether it's a male or female and I don't really, I've talked about it before and I just don't, things have gotten worse because I recently talked to this person and I, for the very first time in my life, pointed out that I can't say anything
36:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, let me take that back, because I don't ever bring up politics.
36:42
[SPEAKER_02]: This person will bring up, for instance, here's an example.
36:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Back when there was this, you know, the Republicans were freaking out about Superman having, I think, a bisexual son, I think that was the deal.
36:55
[SPEAKER_02]: I was talking to his family member and they said, they made this joke about Batman being gay.
37:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was obviously meant as an insult.
37:05
[SPEAKER_02]: But the thing that drove me nuts and what they do all the time was acted like I was in on that joke with them that I thought it would like that Batman being gay as an insult was funny and you know this this person also said to me while Biden was president that you know well Donald Trump doesn't deserve to be stripped of everything he owns you have to admit that
37:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just kept saying, I'm not talking about this with you.
37:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, you have to admit that he doesn't deserve that.
37:34
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just, you know, it goes on and on and on and on.
37:36
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's like they try to pull you in as if you agree with them.
37:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it drives me nuts and I don't even know how, I mean, I would just not acknowledge it and move on and then finally when I did acknowledge it and I pointed this out to this person, I had my say, I told them not to interrupt me, they kept interrupting me, I finally was finished and then I was saying, you know, I want you to know that I loved you and then they hung up on me.
38:05
[SPEAKER_02]: So what's up?
38:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and I, man, I, I gotta tell you, can really what you just expressed there.
38:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I think is so familiar, not just me, but other people.
38:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah, everybody.
38:14
[SPEAKER_02]: So many people in this country.
38:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And listen, I am so glad that we got here.
38:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so here is, I think, one of the great secrets of all of this.
38:24
[SPEAKER_00]: There are a couple of threads here.
38:26
[SPEAKER_00]: One, the same people who are pissed off because Superman had a bisexual son, and the same people who got upset because Cracker Barrel changed their logo.
38:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
38:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Remember before Maga, those same people would watch television, and one commercial after another, the commercials would piss them off.
38:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
38:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Because they were miserable.
38:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, there's something, there's a self-loat, and on the right wing, and I've studied right wing at the Rotarian Mindset.
38:55
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a self-loathing about themselves because they grown up in an environment, particularly with abusive families and churches.
39:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And in order to survive in those environments, they've had to repress parts of themselves.
39:10
[SPEAKER_00]: This is one of the reasons why you see so many people who were involved in QAnon, who are suddenly getting swept up in like child abuse charges.
39:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, there's something about them that they have had to destroy and then they look forward everywhere.
39:24
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why they hate gay and trans people and women so much is because they are able to be themselves and they resent people for being able to be themselves.
39:33
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's a self-loathing there.
39:35
[SPEAKER_00]: But the second element of it is this in order to live that way.
39:41
[SPEAKER_00]: In order to live in that authoritarian environment, and let's just say hypothetically, and you brought up Rush Limbaugh?
39:48
[SPEAKER_00]: You know who Rush Limbaugh reminded me of?
39:51
[SPEAKER_00]: He reminded me of abusive father figures.
39:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
39:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Who were dismissive and treated you like you were stupid and little if you disagree with them?
39:59
[SPEAKER_00]: right?
40:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, what happens?
40:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is the crux of what we're dealing with in this country.
40:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that the people that we're talking about who support Donald Trump and by the way, there are some moderates who are lost in this too.
40:13
[SPEAKER_00]: It is, they have regressed to a childlike state.
40:17
[SPEAKER_00]: They are looking for a dictatorial father to take care of things.
40:22
[SPEAKER_00]: This is why they all refer to Trump as daddy.
40:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Daddy's home.
40:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Daddy's gonna put the house to rights, right?
40:29
[SPEAKER_00]: So as America declines and as conditions decline, they don't wanna be adults.
40:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Being an adult would be saying, oh, these are the reasons why the country's in the place that it is, rather than looking for a dictatorial abusive father to fix it.
40:46
[SPEAKER_00]: So we are essentially dealing with adults who are still stuck in a childlike state.
40:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And so what we're actually having to deal with here is not just a political problem.
40:58
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a massive psychological problem.
41:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And that denial and that projection and that regression to a child like state looking for a father, the same type of father and by the way, anybody who's listening to this who had an abusive father doesn't Donald Trump remind you of him like the way he talks the way he acts doesn't like that abuse is part of it.
41:21
[SPEAKER_00]: fascism, resembles, and reflects the abuse of nature of a family system.
41:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
41:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, dealing with groups of people who are literally attracted to the same type of abuser that they had as children.
41:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you put that together, it starts to make sense why they stick with him no matter why.
41:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Because what is it as a child you have to do?
41:44
[SPEAKER_00]: In order to survive, you have to think that your father or mother is perfect.
41:50
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't see their faults.
41:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And what is the secret to growing up Kimberly?
41:54
[SPEAKER_00]: It's realizing that your parents are not perfect.
41:57
[SPEAKER_00]: That you have to make your own way, and you have to be the adult.
42:02
[SPEAKER_00]: But instead, they have regressed back to the point of thinking that this father figure is perfect, and he will fix things as long as they give up their adult autonomy.
42:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, I mean, that's that's pretty much it in a nutshell.
42:16
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll say my the family member that is mega did not grow up in an abusive family, but I I think the reasons it's it's very complicated and I obviously am not going to get into this detail psychology of this person, but you know, I think it's because of certain choices they made and not being happy.
42:37
[SPEAKER_02]: and not wanting to take responsibility for those choices and then, you know, putting it all on the liberals.
42:42
[SPEAKER_02]: That because Rush Limbaugh told this person, it's all the liberals fault.
42:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Everything that's wrong in your life, go blame the liberals.
42:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, of course, in my family, which is quite small, pretty much,
42:58
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm gonna say everyone, not almost everyone is liberal with the exception of this one person.
43:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think this person feels isolated.
43:08
[SPEAKER_02]: And I mean, and it's really sad, because at this point, I don't know what to say to her.
43:12
[SPEAKER_02]: I said her, okay, it's a her.
43:14
[SPEAKER_02]: But I don't know what to say.
43:16
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I don't know.
43:18
[SPEAKER_02]: The only thing that I did was her birthday was recent and I sent her a birthday card letting her know that I sincerely wished things were different.
43:26
[SPEAKER_02]: And I do.
43:28
[SPEAKER_02]: and that I love her and I can't really talk to her that because she jabs, you know, she gets those little jabs and I'm not going to be silent about it anymore and on top of it, you know, sitting here talking to you right now, I don't feel terrified, but I don't know what it's going to be like in a year.
43:45
[SPEAKER_02]: So the people that she supports are causing, you know, I'm friendly with plastic martyr who is a trans woman and she left the country because
43:56
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, so people that I know are freaking out, they're hurt.
44:01
[SPEAKER_02]: I, you know, I have my own fears.
44:03
[SPEAKER_02]: My mother was thinking of leaving the country at 78 years old.
44:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Thankfully, she's not.
44:08
[SPEAKER_02]: But still, I mean, these things are affecting all of us.
44:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just, I can't, I can't talk to her right now.
44:13
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know what will happen.
44:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Because her friend group,
44:17
[SPEAKER_02]: is also very mega and it's like I was talking to my mom and I was saying because my mom's very liberal and I you know I was saying unless her friend group starts to wake up from this she never will she'll stay in the cult and so I don't know that's just how I'm seeing it but I agree with you that we you know I mean there's this huge cultural problem and I I do agree also that you know
44:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Humanity has found a way most of the time to thrive.
44:47
[SPEAKER_02]: So I hope we do, I really hope we do, but I have one more question for you and I want to ask this because, you know, many people are saying Trump's health is into decline.
44:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And so,
44:58
[SPEAKER_02]: He keeps talking about God and getting into heaven.
45:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And the first time he talked about getting into heaven, my take was like, okay, he knows he's dying and now he's kind of freaking out.
45:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Because he knows what he's done.
45:10
[SPEAKER_02]: He's a villain.
45:11
[SPEAKER_02]: He's committed crimes, he's, you know, he's in the Epstein files.
45:15
[SPEAKER_02]: We have no proof of anything that he's done, but we all pretty much know what he's done, some of the really horrible things that he's done.
45:22
[SPEAKER_02]: and he knows it.
45:23
[SPEAKER_02]: So he's freaking out.
45:24
[SPEAKER_02]: So my question to you is we don't know that he's going to leave office, but in case he does before his term is up, we've got vans likely.
45:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And I mean unless something weird happens, we have vans.
45:40
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's the argument that, oh, he went to Harvard and he's smart, he's smart as in Trump, so he's more dangerous.
45:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Then there's the argument that no, he's not more dangerous because, you know, I heard somebody say something right now, people in Congress, senators, whatnot elected officials are afraid, because if Trump says anything of against them, now their targets that JB Vance does not have that power or would not have that power.
46:10
[SPEAKER_02]: some of the stuff that you were talking about earlier and everything violence and all the stuff that fascist autocracies need in order to force people to comply.
46:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you think JD vents would be, what do you think would happen?
46:28
[SPEAKER_02]: I know you're not, I always say this to my guests, but I know you're not an oracle, but you are,
46:35
[SPEAKER_02]: You have a good sense of him and you do understand autocracies and fascism well.
46:39
[SPEAKER_02]: So what do you think of Vance?
46:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think I'm first of all.
46:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I think first of all, Vance is an incredibly dangerous piece of shit.
46:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
46:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And I, you know, I've unfortunately had a rivalry with Vance since he became a public person.
46:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And what I've learned about him is that, I mean, he sold God knows how many books throwing his entire family under the bus and his community.
47:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I will say, I understand the way people frame this, but I also think the framing is flawed, because it still takes into consideration politics as we've known it.
47:16
[SPEAKER_00]: So people will say to me, like, well, Vanceism is popular as Donald Trump, and he's not as charismatic.
47:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, okay, but they've constructed an anti-democratic apparatus.
47:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you don't do the things that this government
47:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
47:32
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't put together a surveillance state and you don't put together, you know, an oppressive, fascistic violence state.
47:40
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're worried about winning elections, like they don't care about poll numbers.
47:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And so there are a lot of different
47:47
[SPEAKER_00]: factors.
47:48
[SPEAKER_00]: It's funny, actually, Kimberly, you brought up Superman a while ago, and I was trying to explain this in a meeting the other day.
47:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Superman has X-ray vision.
47:58
[SPEAKER_00]: He can see through anything except for one thing, which is lead.
48:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And it feels like we've entered what I'm calling the lead times.
48:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Because, you know, those of us who study fascism, we knew that we were going to
48:13
[SPEAKER_00]: We knew that based on what was happening, if we didn't stop it, we were going to arrive at the moment we're at now.
48:20
[SPEAKER_00]: There are so many different factors.
48:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, if we would have talked a week and a half ago, we would have been having a conversation about that military meeting.
48:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
48:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
48:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And guess what?
48:30
[SPEAKER_00]: The United States military, the military industrial complex, has more money and power and sway than anything in the world.
48:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you came back from the future and told me that the military said, fuck these people were taking over, I wouldn't be shocked.
48:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And so all of a sudden, we're not even talking about elections, right?
48:46
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not even talking about parties.
48:48
[SPEAKER_00]: We're talking about a shift in power that has nothing to do with democratic will.
48:53
[SPEAKER_00]: So the answer is this.
48:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what would happen.
48:56
[SPEAKER_00]: But I know that Donald Trump isn't the reason that all of this is happening.
49:01
[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't create this.
49:02
[SPEAKER_00]: He wrote the momentum of some started well before him.
49:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Even if he dies before we're done with this interview, the momentum of where all this has been going will continue.
49:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
49:14
[SPEAKER_00]: The question is, where will it go, where will it stop, and what shape will it take?
49:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, I think Vance is incredibly dangerous.
49:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I think he is more competent than Donald Trump.
49:26
[SPEAKER_00]: He is the butcher boy, Aaron Boy, of the people who are carrying these things out.
49:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it is very very dangerous, but I also have no hope that if Donald Trump dies that suddenly this thing will go away.
49:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh no, I absolutely know it won't go away.
49:40
[SPEAKER_02]: I just, you know, I feel like...
49:43
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, there was that one guy, I think he was from Norway or something, and he was traveling and he got, they looked at his phone and they saw that picture of JD events that made him look like a bald garbage pill kid, and it made the news.
49:55
[SPEAKER_02]: And now it's like, that's kind of like this universal symbol for JD events.
50:00
[SPEAKER_02]: And I agree with you, he's extremely dangerous.
50:03
[SPEAKER_02]: He is very smart, and he's, you know, he's completely different than Donald Trump,
50:10
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess I don't I don't like the word evil because that sounds religious to me, but it's like they have evil intentions.
50:17
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, JD's got his own brand of it.
50:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, I mean, he's got the backing of that whole oligarch.
50:24
[SPEAKER_02]: party, you know, I mean, they're up their own party.
50:27
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I don't like, I don't know where this is going to go.
50:31
[SPEAKER_02]: I have no idea.
50:32
[SPEAKER_02]: I do think that there is with JB Vance.
50:37
[SPEAKER_02]: He's not taken seriously in the way that especially by the voters.
50:42
[SPEAKER_02]: I think they don't care about him as much as they love Trump because like he said he's daddy and he's I don't know that JD Vance could be the daddy but I agree with you that Donald Trump just wrote in on these you know fascist kind of waves that were already in the air and then he helped it explode.
51:02
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, I mean, there's, it's really tough.
51:05
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I don't know.
51:06
[SPEAKER_02]: I really, none of us know what would happen if Donald Trump dies, but I would say this.
51:11
[SPEAKER_02]: If, you know, there is the thing where maybe he's so ill that they push him out because, you know, he can't speak any more coherently and he kind of can't speak coherently now.
51:21
[SPEAKER_02]: But he can string a sentence together.
51:24
[SPEAKER_02]: It may be a bullshit sentence.
51:26
[SPEAKER_02]: But ultimately, if he were to die, I don't know.
51:33
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess this is kind of helpful, but there would be some kind of shock, and I don't know if that shock would switch energies.
51:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Not that I think that Mago would be no more.
51:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Obviously, there's still going to be people in this country who want the fascist father figure.
51:51
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think that it might change
51:56
[SPEAKER_02]: the energy.
51:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and I just want to say on that point, I mean, going back to the dynamics we've been talking about.
52:03
[SPEAKER_00]: If there is a cult and the cult leader dies, there is often a schism, right?
52:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, yes, right.
52:12
[SPEAKER_00]: So the question at this point, and there's so many, you know, I was trying to describe this the other day, Kimberly.
52:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I was saying, what's happening right now is the equivalent of someone driving a car across the country.
52:25
[SPEAKER_00]: They haven't gotten the car serviced in years, right?
52:29
[SPEAKER_00]: They haven't gotten the oil change.
52:30
[SPEAKER_00]: They haven't had things looking at.
52:32
[SPEAKER_00]: They haven't had a mechanic.
52:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at these things and make sure they're in good working order.
52:36
[SPEAKER_00]: There are 25 things that could go wrong and are going wrong with the car at once.
52:42
[SPEAKER_00]: right?
52:43
[SPEAKER_00]: So the question isn't whether or not that car is going to break down before it contrary, the question is what thing is going to break down will it lead to another thing breaking down and you know so on and so forth?
52:56
[SPEAKER_00]: So in this case and I just want to say very very quickly because to bring this into clarity.
53:02
[SPEAKER_00]: We have a great man of history, theory.
53:05
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the way we look at things.
53:07
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, oh, Donald Trump did this, or you go back into the 1930s, 1940s, and you say, Franklin Delano Roosevelt did this, right?
53:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Those people are representations of movements and momentums and things that you don't even know about.
53:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So an instance of this.
53:24
[SPEAKER_00]: If Mark Zuckerberg wouldn't have created Facebook, somebody else would have, because the time necessitated the thing.
53:33
[SPEAKER_00]: That's one of the reasons it's so frustrating that people like Zuckerberg or Elon Musk or Peter Teele have all this money.
53:39
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not that they did something extraordinary is that the moment required one of them to do something.
53:46
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you actually look at this, you don't get to 2025 without the war on terror.
53:52
[SPEAKER_00]: you don't, you know, like it's literally the war on terror coming to American soil is what it is.
53:58
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you look at it that way and you look at the economics and you look at the trends and the culture, something else will take the place of Trump.
54:07
[SPEAKER_00]: The question is what would that schism create?
54:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And I can't control that, and nobody will listen to this can control.
54:14
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean if they can, I hope they control it, right?
54:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope they stop it.
54:17
[SPEAKER_00]: But the only thing we can do is be prepared for moments like that, and while we're facing fascism, they're going to be moments where it's weaker and moments where it's stronger.
54:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And if there is some sort of a schism that happens after a Donald Trump dies, we need to be able to take advantage of that opening.
54:38
[SPEAKER_00]: and rather than saying well maybe when he's dead maybe this will fall apart that is very much like it's not conservative but it's almost a neurotic worry about how to control every outcome I don't know about you and you know I assume because we're talking about these things and on the same page when I'm not doing well
55:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm thinking out every possible outcome of everything in my life.
55:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Like what if this happens?
55:06
[SPEAKER_00]: What is it that I need to do, right?
55:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you're trying to sort of gain those things out, you're not actually living in the moment and you're not actually grounded.
55:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I don't know what shape Maga would take if Trump suddenly died.
55:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I know he's decomposing in real time.
55:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
55:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what direction that will take, but I do know that in less those of us who know better and those of us who want to fight for a better future, if we don't fight for it, it will continue to mutate and it will continue to metastasize.
55:40
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I think about the stuff a lot, but at the same time it's that lead thing I talked about.
55:45
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no way to tell how this
55:52
[SPEAKER_00]: One of my favorite things in the world is the ability to recognize the things that I can change the things I can't change and the wisdom to know the difference.
56:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And in this case, that serenity, I think, is the only thing that can guide us going forward.
56:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, alright then.
56:08
[SPEAKER_02]: I still feel worried.
56:12
[SPEAKER_02]: I know you do too, but I think these kinds of conversations are important.
56:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, I'm anybody listening, um, just, you know, go join up with indivisible if you want to make a difference.
56:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Follow Jared because he's so damn smart if you're not already following him and take his advice because Oh my god, I think you're I just think you're so great.
56:35
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I I like to praise the people that I have on my shows because I generally have people on my shows who I like and I admire so Why don't always praise them
56:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate that and, you know, as long as we're just being earnest here, like I always appreciate talking to you and the energy you bring to this fight is so lovely and it's just very very much appreciated and, you know, these are hard times.
56:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, thank you.
57:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, can I look?
57:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you and I look to people like you because you help keep me sane even though what I mean What you say scares me because it's the truth and the truth of our situation is scary But it's it's really important to Know what's going on so that we can have some control of it and you're one of the people that makes it very clear So thank you Okay, before I let you go I keep interrupting you and I just want to say this podcast I don't know what is going on with me today
57:28
[SPEAKER_02]: I kept hitting things while you were talking.
57:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And I normally don't do that, like a pen dropped.
57:35
[SPEAKER_02]: So pardon me.
57:37
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think everybody can understand what we were talking about despite all of my my fuckups.
57:43
[SPEAKER_02]: So, but Jared, I just, I think you're so great.
57:45
[SPEAKER_02]: I love you.
57:46
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm before I let you go.
57:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Please tell everyone where to find you.
57:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so the main outlet that I have right now is dispatches from a collapsing state where I talk about all these things I host the mucoric podcast and on blue sky and the JY sex.
57:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, all right.
58:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I know I'm going to have you back.
58:02
[SPEAKER_02]: So thank you for being on again and we'll talk soon.
58:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks so much.
58:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Take care.