Latest / Ridiculous History / Eugene V Debs, Part Two: A Prisoner Runs For President

Transcript

Eugene V Debs, Part Two: A Prisoner Runs For President · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
0:27
Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
0:30
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Let's hear it for our
0:34
Speaker 1: own Eugene V. Debs, the one and only super producer.
0:37
Speaker 1: Mr Max Williams. Let's have a dab for our own
0:41
Speaker 1: Debs Max Williams. Everybody do a dad right now together.
0:46
Speaker 1: I hope you're doing it too while you're listening folks.
0:49
Speaker 1: Uh and if your friends ask you, tell them about
0:52
Speaker 1: the show they called me, Ben would joined as always
0:56
Speaker 1: with my ride or die. Uh. Mr Noel Down none
1:00
Speaker 1: other Hello, sorry for the lack and responding to your
1:07
Speaker 1: amazing big up of myself, Mr Noel Brown, the one
1:11
Speaker 1: and only. I guess that's true. You know it's funny though,
1:14
Speaker 1: Ben Um, I've I've grown up with a name like
1:16
Speaker 1: Noel and you don't get a lot of knowles in America.
1:20
Speaker 1: But the only ones that I know of are from
1:22
Speaker 1: the UK, and they're relatively famous. There's no old Fielding
1:26
Speaker 1: from the Mighty Bush and the Great British bakeoff fame.
1:30
Speaker 1: You got your Noel Gallagher, you got your Nol Coward.
1:34
Speaker 1: What are some other fame anybody know any other famous knowles.
1:36
Speaker 1: There's the first Noel, of course, Jesus Christ himself. There's
1:40
Speaker 1: also a good friend of good friend of mine, I think,
1:43
Speaker 1: good friend of yours as well, uh Noel who is
1:47
Speaker 1: uh Noel Flores, who is one of the marketing DEMI
1:53
Speaker 1: gods an event quartering coordinators here at my Heart Media.
1:59
Speaker 1: Of course, it's awesome, excellent taste in leather jackets. Oh
2:02
Speaker 1: my god, are you kidding? Are you kidding? Max? This
2:06
Speaker 1: is the person who will lead us to the correct
2:08
Speaker 1: leather jackets. I've been so weirded out for for many years.
2:12
Speaker 1: Are good friend Mr Matt Frederick of stuff they don't
2:15
Speaker 1: want you to know. And numerous true crime podcast has
2:18
Speaker 1: had this amazing leather jacket. I've asked them, you know, like,
2:22
Speaker 1: how do I how do I commit to this? How
2:24
Speaker 1: do I get a good leather jacket? And one time
2:27
Speaker 1: Matt told me something like, well, you see it, you
2:32
Speaker 1: try it on, and when you know, you know, I'm
2:35
Speaker 1: just yeah. Some things run small, some things run large.
2:40
Speaker 1: It's all about what fits you. And I really do
2:41
Speaker 1: envy the big wigs, the types that Eugene Debs might
2:45
Speaker 1: have been fighting against that get tailored suits, although in
2:48
Speaker 1: this day and age most anybody can afford a tailored suit.
2:51
Speaker 1: You can get well what does that uh that tailored
2:54
Speaker 1: suit company that we used to do up the weather
2:57
Speaker 1: suits supply and it's still ain't cheap. Yeah exactly, that's
3:01
Speaker 1: the one. It still ain't cheap, but it really man,
3:03
Speaker 1: the difference between like a suit off the act that fits.
3:06
Speaker 1: That sounds like I'm chilling for suit makers, but the
3:09
Speaker 1: difference is is night and day. Now. I got a
3:12
Speaker 1: black window pane suit earliest year, Taylor, and it was
3:15
Speaker 1: like throwing someone bucks for them about at all. And
3:16
Speaker 1: if it's great, it looks great, it looks great, if
3:18
Speaker 1: it's great, yeah, well this is uh, this is the
3:23
Speaker 1: time where we want to thank everybody who didn't write
3:26
Speaker 1: a review immediately saying, ah, these guys, these guys with
3:30
Speaker 1: their banter. We hope, we hope that you enjoy it.
3:34
Speaker 1: We love, of course your opinions, ridiculous historians on everything
3:38
Speaker 1: addressed in the show, whether or not it is, you know,
3:41
Speaker 1: officially part of the episode. But we have been and
3:47
Speaker 1: we've been through a heck of a week. We've got
3:49
Speaker 1: a we've got a book coming out or out now
3:53
Speaker 1: called stuff they don't want you know? For another podcast, Nolan,
3:56
Speaker 1: I do. And that book has been met with pretty
3:59
Speaker 1: great reviews. So if you want to review something, uh,
4:02
Speaker 1: please do go review that on Amazon. There's other big
4:05
Speaker 1: news before we get to debts. Oh my god, can
4:07
Speaker 1: I say one? I got the book? Um my aunts
4:11
Speaker 1: or I guess my aunt in law. I don't know.
4:13
Speaker 1: She's my uncle's ex wife. What does that make her?
4:15
Speaker 1: No idea? It was a librarian as a retired librarian
4:19
Speaker 1: and commented on a post that I made about the
4:22
Speaker 1: book and had seen the reviews in Kirkus Review and
4:26
Speaker 1: I think book there's another one there was a second one,
4:29
Speaker 1: and said that like those are the go to review
4:32
Speaker 1: sites for librarians choosing things to buy for libraries or
4:37
Speaker 1: to include in libraries. So that's pretty great man, good job, Ben.
4:41
Speaker 1: I mean, we did it together to a degree. But man,
4:44
Speaker 1: it's in your voice. You knocked it out of the park.
4:46
Speaker 1: It's just such a fun reading. I'm just so proud
4:48
Speaker 1: of you. Man. Man, I'm proud. I'm proud of all
4:51
Speaker 1: of us. You know. Also, it's so weird you mentioned this. No,
4:54
Speaker 1: my I have an aunt, I have many teachers and
4:58
Speaker 1: educators in my family, and one of my who lives
5:00
Speaker 1: out in Austin, Texas, is a librarian and said something similar.
5:05
Speaker 1: So at least we're at least we're going with the
5:08
Speaker 1: crowd of the people. We really want to impress the literati,
5:14
Speaker 1: the literati. Yes, just so. And this is the second
5:20
Speaker 1: part of a two part episode on a guy that
5:23
Speaker 1: may not be familiar to a lot of Americans today,
5:26
Speaker 1: but a person who has certainly affected your life if
5:29
Speaker 1: you live in the US and you're hearing this now.
5:32
Speaker 1: His name Eugene V. Debs, Debs to his friends, his
5:37
Speaker 1: street name Max's Daddy, because in addition to being our
5:40
Speaker 1: super producer, Yeah, it's at the top, Max. Uh. Max
5:45
Speaker 1: took points on this real on the research for this.
5:48
Speaker 1: So Max, we're gonna defer to you along the way,
5:51
Speaker 1: but I wanted to I think, just in the interest
5:55
Speaker 1: of transparency, we need to hit that you describe Eugene
5:59
Speaker 1: Debs in the title of our research here as Max's daddy,
6:03
Speaker 1: as your spiritual father. What's going on. I really like
6:07
Speaker 1: Eugene Redebs. I learned about him. I think I took
6:10
Speaker 1: an ap U s history class in high school, and
6:12
Speaker 1: that's like the first time I learn about him, he's
6:14
Speaker 1: not really someone gets talked to you and like, you know,
6:16
Speaker 1: your traditional public education classes. Yeah yeah, but like you
6:23
Speaker 1: know that that, I mean, that's the class week you
6:25
Speaker 1: really get to dive into it and it's like, wow,
6:26
Speaker 1: this guy's kind of important. Uh So, Yeah, it was
6:31
Speaker 1: you know, learning about like how this guy is really
6:33
Speaker 1: influential on all of our lives, especially before his stuff
6:36
Speaker 1: like social Security and the right to unionize and stuff
6:40
Speaker 1: like that. I've always been a big fantast guy. And
6:43
Speaker 1: can I just add to that, Max, you have been
6:45
Speaker 1: part of the effort of iHeart producers employees in the
6:49
Speaker 1: podcast network to do that very thing. And I can't
6:52
Speaker 1: imagine that you would have been as interested in that
6:55
Speaker 1: or you know, schooled if you hadn't discovered Eugene Debs
6:58
Speaker 1: early in your you know career. Yeah. No, it's definitely
7:02
Speaker 1: been a part. I mean, I've I will say, like
7:04
Speaker 1: you know, I was raised I think first generation and
7:06
Speaker 1: white college is probably the best way to describe it.
7:08
Speaker 1: Both my parents have white colored jobs that they were
7:10
Speaker 1: raised in the very blue color like Detroit area. Uh
7:14
Speaker 1: I would, I mean many many people from union jobs
7:17
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, and that's how like towns like
7:20
Speaker 1: not towns, cities like that, we're able to you know,
7:22
Speaker 1: people have these livelihoods, to the kind of families and
7:27
Speaker 1: not be like, you know, so tied of money all
7:30
Speaker 1: the time because they were able to get you know,
7:32
Speaker 1: fair and equal pay and wages and stuff. So it's there,
7:36
Speaker 1: there's it's stuff that I very much believe in and
7:37
Speaker 1: everything like that. It's no accident or maybe somewhat of
7:40
Speaker 1: an accident that We also just recently did an episode
7:42
Speaker 1: on the Luddites and the you know, fabric or textile workers.
7:47
Speaker 1: Early in that industry, there were certain skilled workers who
7:51
Speaker 1: could kind of name their name, their price and and
7:54
Speaker 1: and could really command a lot of um, you know,
7:57
Speaker 1: perks and things like that. And then as industrials nation
8:00
Speaker 1: took hold, that became less of a thing. And I
8:03
Speaker 1: think the reason unions are important is to kind of
8:05
Speaker 1: re level the playing field and make sure that those
8:08
Speaker 1: in power and those that kind of have their hands
8:10
Speaker 1: on the purse strings and all of that aren't able
8:13
Speaker 1: to just you know, completely diminish the idea of of
8:17
Speaker 1: a fair wage and uh and treat people just like
8:20
Speaker 1: human capital. And that's a struggle that continues. You know,
8:24
Speaker 1: uh here in twenty two if you live in the
8:27
Speaker 1: United States, fell ridiculous historians, you have to be aware.
8:31
Speaker 1: This isn't a political point that most other nations. This
8:36
Speaker 1: is true story. Most other nations have uh much better
8:41
Speaker 1: maternity leave or paternity leave, things like that. The again,
8:45
Speaker 1: the struggle continues. And wherever you find yourself on the
8:50
Speaker 1: political platform, I'm gonna go ahead and take a wild guess.
8:56
Speaker 1: Don't kill me in the reviews here, I would take
8:59
Speaker 1: a while. Guests, you like things like weekends, uh, and
9:03
Speaker 1: you like things like fair pay. So this is something
9:08
Speaker 1: that happens that that happens with Debs. When we left
9:11
Speaker 1: Debs in part one on Thursday of our show, we
9:17
Speaker 1: had we had left him right around the time that
9:22
Speaker 1: he was learning some would say being radicalized huh in
9:27
Speaker 1: jail while incarcerated. At this time, still he said that
9:32
Speaker 1: he was still thinking of himself, maybe more as an
9:34
Speaker 1: Americanist rather than a socialist. But here's where we find
9:39
Speaker 1: him now. It is eighteen nineties six, and he is
9:45
Speaker 1: endorsing a US presidential candidate named William Jennings Bryant, and
9:52
Speaker 1: Brian is doing something really interesting in his campaign. He's
9:56
Speaker 1: running on multiple tickets. Yes, he he's running on the
10:00
Speaker 1: Democratic ticket. He's also running on the ticket of something
10:04
Speaker 1: called the People's Party. Spoiler alert for any non presidential campaign.
10:11
Speaker 1: Buffs Brian doesn't win. He loses to a guy called
10:17
Speaker 1: William McKinley. And William McKinley is funded by some of
10:23
Speaker 1: the very same business entities that sought to break Deb's
10:30
Speaker 1: union movements with railroad workers. That's right, and um, if
10:34
Speaker 1: I'm not mistaken, Max, this whole thread in the story
10:38
Speaker 1: is maybe what led this to being considered ridiculous because
10:41
Speaker 1: of the some of the situations that the Debs found
10:46
Speaker 1: himself in while also running a presidential campaign. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
10:52
Speaker 1: there's some of the um, these guys you know who
10:57
Speaker 1: are supporting with people like McKinley don't exactly like things
11:01
Speaker 1: that Dev's is doing and saying, and some most actually
11:05
Speaker 1: basically all of which are not bad in my opinion,
11:08
Speaker 1: but it's kind of I would say the ridiculousness of
11:12
Speaker 1: this story is the amount that Debs wants to help people,
11:15
Speaker 1: no matter how much consequences he face this for it. Yeah, yeah,
11:20
Speaker 1: I think that's well said. You know this there's a
11:25
Speaker 1: thing that people started saying that was circulating the zeitgeist
11:30
Speaker 1: of the time, and folks would say, well, President McKinley
11:34
Speaker 1: was elected by money and Brian was the people's candidate.
11:39
Speaker 1: William Jennings. Bryan, by the way, is worth an episode
11:42
Speaker 1: all his own. I think we can agree. Here's what happens.
11:46
Speaker 1: This is enough to really sour debs. Our boy Jean
11:51
Speaker 1: sees what he um what from his perspective is systemic,
11:56
Speaker 1: dangerous corruption. The system is raw eight from within, like
12:01
Speaker 1: a like a wound that creates gang green. And so
12:05
Speaker 1: he says, this two party system, this Democrat Republican thing,
12:09
Speaker 1: it's kind of a con job, you know what I mean.
12:12
Speaker 1: It's sort of a trap. It's a false dichotomy. And
12:16
Speaker 1: to this end, he proclaims himself publicly as a socialist.
12:22
Speaker 1: In one of several Railway magazines periodicals he writes for
12:26
Speaker 1: it's January, first New Year's date. He comes out and
12:31
Speaker 1: he says, the result of the November election has convinced
12:35
Speaker 1: every intelligent wage worker that in politics per se, there
12:39
Speaker 1: is no hope of emancipation from the degrading curse of
12:42
Speaker 1: wage slavery. I am for socialism because I am for humanity.
12:48
Speaker 1: And this is a quote we mentioned in part one.
12:51
Speaker 1: He goes on, money constitutes no proper basis for civilization.
12:56
Speaker 1: Arguably true. You don't have to agree, but he makes
12:58
Speaker 1: some good points. Uh definitely does. In that June at
13:01
Speaker 1: the yearly meeting of the American Railway Union, Debs made
13:07
Speaker 1: a big splash by founding the Social Democracy of America Party.
13:13
Speaker 1: And as parties sometimes do, whether it's political or just
13:17
Speaker 1: you know, get together things, people break away, they go
13:21
Speaker 1: their own way. They have their little clicks that form.
13:23
Speaker 1: And so the Social Democracy of America Party splintered and
13:27
Speaker 1: Victor berger Um and Debs joined what ultimately became the
13:33
Speaker 1: Social Democratic Party. And then there's another evolution, right in
13:40
Speaker 1: nineteen o one, this outfit become starts calling itself the
13:44
Speaker 1: Socialist Party of America. And Debs has uh, Debs has
13:52
Speaker 1: some rousing quotes. Again, he's a great orator, right, He's
13:55
Speaker 1: a he's a political writer. He's a fantastic speaker. He's
13:59
Speaker 1: one of those guys who start shouting and his forehead
14:02
Speaker 1: and his temples get the veins popping out, and you know, he's,
14:07
Speaker 1: as we would say in the American South, he takes
14:09
Speaker 1: people to church when he speaks, and he really does. Uh,
14:14
Speaker 1: and we've got this, We've got this other quote here
14:18
Speaker 1: he he equates socialism. One of the prime things that
14:22
Speaker 1: he sees as a tenet of socialism is public ownership
14:26
Speaker 1: over what are called the means of production. Uh No,
14:31
Speaker 1: I don't want to put you on the spot, but
14:33
Speaker 1: I do want us to trade off really cool like
14:36
Speaker 1: lamb basting, galvanizing quotes from our boy geen. So how
14:44
Speaker 1: could you do uh we the people of favor and uh,
14:49
Speaker 1: maybe give us give us an approach of this quotation
14:52
Speaker 1: from his speech to minors in Illinois and Kansas, aroused
14:58
Speaker 1: from your slavery, join the Social Democratic Party and vote
15:03
Speaker 1: with us to take possession of the minds of the
15:07
Speaker 1: country and operate them in the interests of the people.
15:14
Speaker 1: That's me clapping, clapping too. Multiply that though by like
15:19
Speaker 1: the voice of the people, you know, and then you
15:22
Speaker 1: have a truly rousing round of applause, and envision a
15:26
Speaker 1: lot of veins popping out while he's saying it. Many
15:30
Speaker 1: so many also people are loving these sorts of speeches.
15:35
Speaker 1: He is so supported in these crowds that you could
15:38
Speaker 1: imagine people weren't just clapping, but while they were clapping,
15:41
Speaker 1: they were probably just yelling the word clap. They were like, clap, clap, clap, clap, clup, clap, clap, clap, clappy, clap, clap.
15:48
Speaker 1: Just pop some coconuts. Yeah, there we go. So his um,
15:56
Speaker 1: his socialism. Remember, now he's gone from what he described
15:59
Speaker 1: as Americaism, making a very good point about America the
16:04
Speaker 1: United States itself, rather being a consequence of going on strike.
16:09
Speaker 1: Right when you think about it, he went from Americanism
16:12
Speaker 1: to now socialism. But his critics said this was too idealistic.
16:18
Speaker 1: They said, you know what you should. They call it
16:21
Speaker 1: it is impossibleism, which is a funny word, and he said, uh.
16:26
Speaker 1: They were saying, look that what you were doing will
16:30
Speaker 1: What you're proposing is never gonna work. It doesn't have
16:33
Speaker 1: much to do with actual Marxism or communism. It's more
16:38
Speaker 1: like this weird, utopian, Walt Whitman esque religious approach, to
16:44
Speaker 1: which he responded, watching socialism merely Christianity and action. It's
16:50
Speaker 1: recognizes the equality in men, which is pretty dope. That's
16:55
Speaker 1: pretty cool rapost pretty cool response. Um. But again, of course,
17:00
Speaker 1: not everyone agreed with him, especially if they had a
17:03
Speaker 1: lot of money and we're sort of vibing with the
17:06
Speaker 1: status quo. Well, we're in a political cycle right now.
17:10
Speaker 1: We were just talking about this, the three of us off,
17:12
Speaker 1: Mike and Uh. I think we've all been subject to
17:15
Speaker 1: a lot of very alarmist um political advertisements on like
17:20
Speaker 1: Hulu and various streaming services. And I bet you that
17:23
Speaker 1: at the time there might have been some who might
17:25
Speaker 1: have called Deb's radical liberal Eugene Debs wants to take
17:30
Speaker 1: away your jobs because he's asking for these unreasonable request
17:35
Speaker 1: these unreasonable terms, you know, And it's sort of like
17:38
Speaker 1: like shifting the narrative saying, you know, okay, I am
17:43
Speaker 1: the you know, big wig that owns the means of production,
17:46
Speaker 1: and it's just not realistic for the working people to
17:49
Speaker 1: have this kind of protection. And it's almost saying demonizing
17:54
Speaker 1: someone like Deb's for even asking for such So it's
17:57
Speaker 1: a way of like flipping the narrative and saying, like,
18:01
Speaker 1: we're the ones giving you jobs. Do you really want
18:03
Speaker 1: to piss us off? Like I mean without saying that
18:06
Speaker 1: exactly right. Yeah, Yeah, it's like, hey, be a shame
18:11
Speaker 1: if something happened to the existence who currently have uh,
18:15
Speaker 1: so so he starts running for president himself. He's gone
18:19
Speaker 1: beyond polling for other people and hyping them up. Right,
18:24
Speaker 1: It's like he has started his own political solo album.
18:28
Speaker 1: And spoiler, he doesn't do super well, but he does
18:31
Speaker 1: get some He does garner some attention. In nine hundred,
18:42
Speaker 1: he runs for president. And when he runs for president,
18:46
Speaker 1: Gene gets about nineties six thousand votes. Just for um
18:51
Speaker 1: a sense of perspective. According to the census conducted the
18:55
Speaker 1: same year in nineteen hundred, the population of the US
18:59
Speaker 1: was seventy six point three million. So he's not you know,
19:05
Speaker 1: he's not exactly busting down the door. Uh. Then, okay,
19:10
Speaker 1: so he loses that election. Fast forward four years he
19:14
Speaker 1: runs again. You know, he's kind of getting one of
19:16
Speaker 1: those uh I can do this all day sort of
19:19
Speaker 1: tropes attached to him. This time he gets four hundred
19:23
Speaker 1: thousand votes, So that's a heck of a jump, but
19:26
Speaker 1: it's still not enough to swing the needle. I love
19:29
Speaker 1: the idea of swinging the needle um and moving the pendulum.
19:33
Speaker 1: I think it's great. And that's right, no, you got
19:35
Speaker 1: me fair play. Yeah. So he also joined in with
19:39
Speaker 1: other union folks who might have been considered radical or
19:44
Speaker 1: militant at the time to create something and organize something
19:48
Speaker 1: called the Industrial Workers of the World or the i
19:51
Speaker 1: w W again um a f l C I oh
19:54
Speaker 1: is an excellent resource for this information in addition to
19:58
Speaker 1: being an excellent organization. Him uh that that protects a
20:02
Speaker 1: lot of these very things that we're talking about. Um,
20:04
Speaker 1: I love this. The Wobblies a term used to refer
20:09
Speaker 1: to the Industrial Workers of the World because they called
20:15
Speaker 1: on all workers to join a massive, single union like
20:21
Speaker 1: that would kind of be this like overarching umbrella and
20:24
Speaker 1: sees control of those means of production. And if anyone
20:28
Speaker 1: follows any communist or socialist kind of meme pages, the
20:31
Speaker 1: idea of seizing the means of production is sort of
20:34
Speaker 1: a three point and a lot of those it can't
20:36
Speaker 1: actually be used sort of hilariously, and a lot of
20:39
Speaker 1: these memes Oh yeah yeah man uh. This is also
20:43
Speaker 1: first off, there's a lot to be said about nomenclature
20:46
Speaker 1: and branding. Even even back then it was it was
20:49
Speaker 1: very much the same. For some reason, it seems weird,
20:53
Speaker 1: right when they to hear this group that wants to
20:56
Speaker 1: be a very much power to the people movement say
20:58
Speaker 1: you know what's depending well, you know what will make
21:01
Speaker 1: people associate us with steadfastness and doggedness and being on
21:06
Speaker 1: the course. Let's just establish that we're wobbly. Let's let
21:10
Speaker 1: people know that we're sort of on a on a
21:14
Speaker 1: teetering thing. Uh, that's just my you know, that's just
21:17
Speaker 1: my branding marketing note there. But this was huge and
21:21
Speaker 1: as you can imagine, it terrified the people in power, right,
21:25
Speaker 1: the international set, uh, the banking interest, of course, mining interest,
21:32
Speaker 1: resource extractors. They couldn't let this happen. And Debs. Debs
21:39
Speaker 1: was a guy who was, you know, a real barn
21:42
Speaker 1: stormer of a speaker, but maybe not always the most
21:47
Speaker 1: diplomatic or collaborative person. He could be quite argumentative. He
21:52
Speaker 1: resigned from the Wobblies in nine eight and ran for president.
21:58
Speaker 1: Ran for US president a third time, but he plateaus
22:01
Speaker 1: a little, not in a bad way. He's just nineteen
22:06
Speaker 1: o four, he gets four hunder thousand votes. Nineteen o eight,
22:10
Speaker 1: he's still again not swinging the needle or moving the pendulum.
22:15
Speaker 1: H and later elections are occurring. He still hasn't given up.
22:21
Speaker 1: Nineteen ten, nineteen twelve, Right, there are congressional elections, and
22:27
Speaker 1: a lot of Socialist Party members are actually victorious in
22:32
Speaker 1: their state and local elections, and this inspires depths. You know,
22:37
Speaker 1: he's always thinking it's bigger than me. He's saying, this
22:40
Speaker 1: is our year in nineteen twelve, and in nineteen twelve,
22:45
Speaker 1: he's not just blowing smoke. Almost a million Americans voted
22:50
Speaker 1: for him for president. And just for a reference there,
22:55
Speaker 1: in nineteen twelve, the US population had grown pretty significantly
23:01
Speaker 1: to nine five million people, so still not a huge percentage. Yeah,
23:06
Speaker 1: and jump in there to kind of put this in
23:08
Speaker 1: framing it to like how he wasn't that far out
23:11
Speaker 1: on this one. Obviously he only got he got six
23:12
Speaker 1: percent of the vote, which is significant. Obviously, No, we're
23:15
Speaker 1: close to winning. This is also a really weird election
23:18
Speaker 1: where there was basically three major party candidates. There was
23:22
Speaker 1: William Howard Taff, Theodore Roosevelt who decided to come out
23:25
Speaker 1: of retirement and run against Taff, and then our all
23:28
Speaker 1: time favorite president on this podcast, Mr Woodrow Wilson, our
23:35
Speaker 1: boy who at home is in my hometown. I think
23:38
Speaker 1: I may be mentioned that last episode. But not a
23:40
Speaker 1: great guy, right, what's the deal? He seems so innocuous
23:43
Speaker 1: and little and slight and bald. But can you explain,
23:46
Speaker 1: Max and or Ben why this guy kind of sucked?
23:50
Speaker 1: We can absolutely explain why he sucks. I would suggest
23:54
Speaker 1: reading articles like Talking Points, Memo dot com Woodrew Wilson
23:59
Speaker 1: was even worse than you think, or National Interest dot org.
24:03
Speaker 1: Why Woodrow Wilson is America's worst president ever. Now that's
24:06
Speaker 1: a hot take, because there's a contest that's been going
24:10
Speaker 1: on for many, many years to figure out who was,
24:13
Speaker 1: in fact the worst president ever. Uh Noel, will do
24:16
Speaker 1: you one better than this one? Uh Man. At the
24:19
Speaker 1: very end of today's show, uh Max has prepared a
24:24
Speaker 1: special segment, a hit list of bad things about Woodrow Wilson.
24:28
Speaker 1: So if you if you feel like we're talking too
24:31
Speaker 1: much about the nuts and bolts of Eugene V. Debs,
24:34
Speaker 1: hold on. There is quite a spiteful dessert at the end.
24:39
Speaker 1: And it is spiteful dessert. Is it best served cold?
24:42
Speaker 1: Of course it is? Yes, yeah, and maybe it was?
24:47
Speaker 1: And so uh with Debs? Uh he with Deb's we
24:52
Speaker 1: see exactly what you described, Max. It's the presidential campaign
24:56
Speaker 1: is kind of a bowl of spaghetti. Right, we're looking
24:59
Speaker 1: at high human drama here, there's something else interesting that occurs.
25:04
Speaker 1: The Democratic and Republican parties are starting to crib some
25:09
Speaker 1: notes and policies from socialists. So we see them embracing
25:16
Speaker 1: what we're considered progressive reforms at this time, giving women
25:21
Speaker 1: the vote, busting up huge trust that's where you know,
25:25
Speaker 1: like one company, one entity functionally owns all of an industry,
25:30
Speaker 1: doing economic reforms, saying stuff like people can only work
25:34
Speaker 1: up to a certain amount per week or per month,
25:38
Speaker 1: people can only get paid to a certain low threshold
25:43
Speaker 1: minimum wage we call it now. And and these were
25:46
Speaker 1: novel ideas at the time, right, Like, I mean, because
25:49
Speaker 1: a lot of these things were kind of new ish.
25:51
Speaker 1: I mean, the trusts and the giants. Conglomo has really
25:54
Speaker 1: began with things like the railroad, which Eugene Dev's had
25:58
Speaker 1: been in on since the start least in terms of,
26:01
Speaker 1: you know, arguing for fair treatment of workers. But this
26:05
Speaker 1: was not something that had been just like, you know,
26:07
Speaker 1: decades uh in the making, right Yeah, this is this
26:12
Speaker 1: is a signal from the mainstream and their industrial puppet
26:16
Speaker 1: masters that they need to give a little to get
26:21
Speaker 1: what they want to maintain their economic power and status
26:25
Speaker 1: quo and social hierarchies. So they also say no more
26:29
Speaker 1: child labor, and hey, maybe you should be able to
26:32
Speaker 1: directly vote for your senator instead of just trusting us. Uh,
26:37
Speaker 1: there's a guy against that right now, the guy to
26:39
Speaker 1: running to get rid of that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
26:43
Speaker 1: I'm where you know what I mean. It's it's always
26:46
Speaker 1: halloween in America, man, So the yeah, because people wear
26:50
Speaker 1: masks year round. I guess that what you're getting that
26:53
Speaker 1: that's sort of good. Yeah, and it's spooky, you know.
26:56
Speaker 1: You could you could say there's a bit of a
26:58
Speaker 1: haunted house. And that is an a political point. America
27:01
Speaker 1: is always the United States rather has always been a
27:05
Speaker 1: grand experiment, one long improv game. So Deb's is saying
27:11
Speaker 1: Deb's is championing socialism. Nineteen twelve is what that New
27:16
Speaker 1: Yorker article we we mentioned earlier by Jill Lapour nineteen
27:21
Speaker 1: twelve is what you could call the high water mark
27:24
Speaker 1: of socialism in the United States. And it had done
27:31
Speaker 1: something very important that doesn't often get talked about. While
27:36
Speaker 1: there was not a socialist president elected, it changed the
27:40
Speaker 1: trajectory of the two major parties. The folks who already
27:44
Speaker 1: held the power started to make some concessions to you know,
27:51
Speaker 1: for what they saw is the greater good, which was
27:53
Speaker 1: them retaining some measure of power. Deb's get sick. He's
27:59
Speaker 1: not feeling great. He is actually too ill to run
28:04
Speaker 1: a national campaign in nineteen sixteen, because you know, right
28:07
Speaker 1: when we think about it, and all these these guys
28:10
Speaker 1: who are running for any political office on a federal
28:14
Speaker 1: or national level, they have to travel a lot. They
28:17
Speaker 1: can't go on zoo. Sure, can I ask one more question? Um?
28:22
Speaker 1: At this time, the idea of socialism didn't have as
28:25
Speaker 1: much political kind of buzzy nous that it does today
28:30
Speaker 1: because we weren't necessarily fighting with the Soviet Union like
28:34
Speaker 1: we are. You know that that legacy was not as
28:37
Speaker 1: asconced as established. So it wasn't like when someone established
28:41
Speaker 1: the Socialist Party or said I believe in the teachings
28:44
Speaker 1: of of Marx and Angles or whatever. They weren't immediately
28:47
Speaker 1: demonized the way they might be today because of our
28:51
Speaker 1: you know, uh beef with Russia in the Soviet Union.
28:54
Speaker 1: So not yet. And what's crazy is we are literally
28:58
Speaker 1: getting on the timeline to that point right right now,
29:01
Speaker 1: because the Bolshevik Revolution is nineteen seventeen, so we're one
29:06
Speaker 1: year away from really like you know, you see this
29:10
Speaker 1: major world power get their entire government overthrown but behind
29:15
Speaker 1: socialist and communist ideas and stuff like that. And that's
29:18
Speaker 1: when you know, we start getting like the first like
29:20
Speaker 1: red scare that is about to come up in this
29:23
Speaker 1: time period. And then later of course this will we'll
29:27
Speaker 1: see this reflected in McCarthy ism. Right, So history history
29:33
Speaker 1: is a quickly, right, Like, I mean, this whole demonization
29:36
Speaker 1: happened quickly. The Red Scare was something that escalated very
29:40
Speaker 1: quickly and became this kind of witch hunt within our country. Yeah, yeah,
29:44
Speaker 1: and this there are multiple Red scares throughout the history
29:48
Speaker 1: of the United States as well as Europe, and uh,
29:52
Speaker 1: to Max's student point, there may well be another one
29:56
Speaker 1: on the way. Why why we're people scared of this? Well,
30:03
Speaker 1: Debs thinks they're scared of it because, uh, there are
30:06
Speaker 1: people who are totally fine morally and ethically with damning
30:13
Speaker 1: the majority of a population into something very much like
30:18
Speaker 1: servitude because it will make their individual lives a little
30:22
Speaker 1: bit nicer. Since he can't traps around the country running
30:27
Speaker 1: for president, he runs for Congress in his home district.
30:30
Speaker 1: A lot less travel Uh. He comes in second. He
30:34
Speaker 1: doesn't win. Um, he is not he doesn't become a
30:38
Speaker 1: congress person, and he's also a very distant second. The
30:43
Speaker 1: person who ends up beating him is a Republican and
30:46
Speaker 1: they get way, way, way, way more votes. Other socialist
30:50
Speaker 1: candidates are encountering something very similar in their neck of
30:54
Speaker 1: the woods. And it looks like his big dream of
31:00
Speaker 1: creating a union for all railroad workers and then expanding
31:03
Speaker 1: to a union of the people of every worker, it
31:08
Speaker 1: looks like it's not gonna happen. Okay, So now we're
31:11
Speaker 1: back to Woodrow Wilson and why he sucks. Uh. In
31:16
Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen, President Woodrow Wilson, who was really only president
31:21
Speaker 1: because Teddy Roosevelt's um, decided to come out of retirement
31:26
Speaker 1: and essentially, you know, wave around his big stick and
31:30
Speaker 1: speak very loudly actually uh and essentially sabotage the nineteen
31:35
Speaker 1: twelve election. Uh. Wilson asked Congress to declare war on
31:41
Speaker 1: Imperial Germany and everything that went along with that, all
31:45
Speaker 1: of its allies. Um. This was in response to what
31:48
Speaker 1: the a f l c I O refers to as
31:51
Speaker 1: vituperative opposition. I need a little help with that one, fellas. Yeah,
31:58
Speaker 1: vituperative position means blame worthy. Basically that they like Congress
32:07
Speaker 1: in this sense, is being being blamed or attacked for
32:14
Speaker 1: their plan. And uh, they're being rightfully attacked because the
32:20
Speaker 1: US is supposed to be a representative democracy, which means
32:24
Speaker 1: that in theory, the US goes to war when the
32:27
Speaker 1: domestic population supports it. But because Congress is kind of
32:33
Speaker 1: getting caught with their hands in the military industrial complex
32:38
Speaker 1: cookie jar of the day, they passed something called the
32:42
Speaker 1: Espionage Act. The Espionage Act says it is against the
32:46
Speaker 1: law to have a problem with the US getting involved
32:51
Speaker 1: in this conflict that we now know as World War One.
32:54
Speaker 1: So for any fans of free speech, you can imagine,
32:59
Speaker 1: this is a heck of a This is a tall milkshake.
33:02
Speaker 1: Now it's illegal to have a problem, even even though
33:07
Speaker 1: you live in a country that talks a big game
33:11
Speaker 1: about freedom. And Debs was anti war because I mean,
33:15
Speaker 1: why wouldn't you be, And I mean, you know, we
33:17
Speaker 1: know that certain industries love war and then love politicians
33:20
Speaker 1: who are hawkish or whatever. But Deb's as someone who
33:24
Speaker 1: wanted to protect, you know, the working people, was anti war.
33:29
Speaker 1: He says, quote I am opposed to every war, but
33:31
Speaker 1: one I am for that war with heart and soul,
33:35
Speaker 1: and that is the worldwide war of the Social Revolution.
33:39
Speaker 1: In that war, I'm prepared to fight in any way
33:42
Speaker 1: the ruling class may make necessary, even to the barricades.
33:47
Speaker 1: At dawn, I added at dawn. But you know, I
33:50
Speaker 1: mean seriously, like, this guy's got a revolutionary soul, but
33:54
Speaker 1: he doesn't want to kill anybody. He doesn't want to
33:56
Speaker 1: hurt anybody. He's all about a war of ideas and
33:59
Speaker 1: and and this is really kind of the beginning of
34:02
Speaker 1: regular people being able to kind of, you know, coalesce
34:05
Speaker 1: around someone like him like Debs, and seemingly be heard
34:12
Speaker 1: or the very least, you know, have some concessions made
34:15
Speaker 1: in their favor. Yeah, and this is the era of
34:18
Speaker 1: Joe Hill. Not the tremendously accomplished fiction writer is a
34:23
Speaker 1: son son of Stephen King, great writer, big fan, but
34:27
Speaker 1: Joe Hill, the activist and musician who is unite people
34:32
Speaker 1: in a grassroots movement. I also want to point out
34:36
Speaker 1: vituperative doesn't just indicate that Congress got caught. It also
34:40
Speaker 1: indicates that people are talking so much trash about them.
34:44
Speaker 1: This is verbal abuse, right, and it's way different than
34:48
Speaker 1: the political discourse you might hear today, even how you
34:51
Speaker 1: know how ugly it gets in the US and abroad today.
34:55
Speaker 1: Back in the day, Oh gosh, we should just do
34:58
Speaker 1: something on like the weirdest political smear campaigns, right, because yeah,
35:03
Speaker 1: these people were fighting, and because old boy Deb's no
35:08
Speaker 1: our boy, Jean just violated the Espionage Act. So he
35:12
Speaker 1: gets sent up the river. He's arrested, but like in
35:15
Speaker 1: a cool way, right, Well cool to us. I think
35:27
Speaker 1: he was. He wasn't exactly, he wasn't. I mean, it's
35:30
Speaker 1: hard to talk about a topic like this and kind
35:32
Speaker 1: of not let your your stripes show a little bit.
35:35
Speaker 1: I think, Um, you know, we we try to make
35:38
Speaker 1: the show relatively a political but man, a guy like
35:41
Speaker 1: this kind of just gets my gets my blood pumping
35:44
Speaker 1: in a good way. Debs was in fact arrested, like
35:46
Speaker 1: you said, been in Cleveland in nineteen eighteen, under the
35:49
Speaker 1: terms as you said again, of the nineteen seventeen Espionage
35:52
Speaker 1: Act for a speech. For a speech. I just want
35:56
Speaker 1: to reiterate that he didn't like, he didn't do as spionage.
36:00
Speaker 1: He wasn't spying, he wasn't like blowing up you know,
36:04
Speaker 1: checkpoints or you know, stealing classified documents. He did a
36:09
Speaker 1: speech that people didn't like. Uh, and that's when you
36:13
Speaker 1: start really going micro. You have people in power going
36:15
Speaker 1: micro in these acts like how can we take this
36:18
Speaker 1: guy to the mattresses, you know, go to the mattresses
36:21
Speaker 1: against this guy. I'm sorry, I'm I'm messing up my
36:23
Speaker 1: my godfather um expressions here. It was a speech he
36:26
Speaker 1: had made protesting the war, that he had given on
36:30
Speaker 1: June sixteenth in Canton, Ohio. He apparently, as the Washington
36:35
Speaker 1: Post put it, invited arrest. They were like, you shouldn't
36:40
Speaker 1: have been talking that way. You knew what would happen. Yeah,
36:45
Speaker 1: he freed him of speech, right, Well, as long as
36:49
Speaker 1: it's some speech, right they I think the powers that
36:52
Speaker 1: be were more into their freedom to arrest at this point,
36:55
Speaker 1: so so he gets he Yeah, like you said, Washington
37:00
Speaker 1: Post and other papers of the day are saying, this
37:03
Speaker 1: guy is courting incarceration, and a lot of the newspapers,
37:08
Speaker 1: who let's remember, are largely controlled by the same industrial interests.
37:13
Speaker 1: They team up on him and they do some character assassination.
37:16
Speaker 1: They say, they heavily imply this guy is abudding dictator perhaps,
37:21
Speaker 1: or what if he is a traitor to the country,
37:27
Speaker 1: and if if, and they would they did something very clever,
37:31
Speaker 1: quite insidious, Markavellian. Almost they say, look, we're all good Americans,
37:39
Speaker 1: dear readers, and what he has said is so traitorous.
37:43
Speaker 1: What he said is so seditious that we cannot in
37:47
Speaker 1: good conscience printed. And when they said that, the people
37:51
Speaker 1: who were reading had no idea what he was actually saying.
37:55
Speaker 1: He might have been like, you know what we should
37:57
Speaker 1: really be doing. We shouldn't try to text innocent people
38:01
Speaker 1: in Europe. We should all go out and collectively like
38:05
Speaker 1: kick puppies and poop in the streets, you know what
38:08
Speaker 1: I mean. Newborn babies our currency, you know, uh, and
38:12
Speaker 1: punt them, you know, over the goal post. And that's
38:15
Speaker 1: how we pay for bread and lick everything, all things.
38:20
Speaker 1: You know what. No foot privacy. People should be running
38:23
Speaker 1: up and touching stranger's feet. That's like, what is wrong? Wow, Wow,
38:30
Speaker 1: that's a bridge too far, my fact. We need to
38:33
Speaker 1: beat that out. That was I mean, I'm upset. No
38:38
Speaker 1: foot privacy, yea for some people in this day and age,
38:42
Speaker 1: they'd be stoked about that. I mean, foot picks are
38:45
Speaker 1: a currency of our modern day, you know, saying, yeah, well,
38:49
Speaker 1: shout out to the Tarantinos of the world. But but
38:52
Speaker 1: our point is, like we just made up several I think,
38:56
Speaker 1: hilarious ideas, but things that would be mess stuff and
39:00
Speaker 1: terrifying if they happen in real life. And that's what
39:03
Speaker 1: that is what is occurring when people read these newspaper articles.
39:08
Speaker 1: It's like the old Hitchcock idea that the monster who
39:12
Speaker 1: is out of the frame, off the screen is more
39:15
Speaker 1: terrifying than anything you could depict. So without knowing what
39:19
Speaker 1: this guy was saying, people were conjuring all sorts of sinister,
39:23
Speaker 1: horrific thoughts in their head, and they were associating them
39:28
Speaker 1: with our boy Gene. In fact, it was really just
39:32
Speaker 1: kind of stuff we'd already heard him say basically, maybe
39:34
Speaker 1: just a little more apt up in his rhetoric. Correct, Yeah, yeah,
39:38
Speaker 1: he was. I mean he was getting a little hyperbolic.
39:42
Speaker 1: You know, he was storming some barns for sure, when
39:44
Speaker 1: he said stuff like we are going to destroy all
39:47
Speaker 1: enslaving and degrading capitalist institutions and to recreate them as
39:52
Speaker 1: free and humanizing institutions. Uh. And then he said, you
39:57
Speaker 1: say things like destroy institutions. It's it's not too far
40:02
Speaker 1: off a walk to think he means like blow them
40:04
Speaker 1: up physically, But I think he's speaking more figuratively, right,
40:08
Speaker 1: the idea of destroying and not institutions like physical buildings,
40:12
Speaker 1: but institutions like concepts. Right. Yeah, in a way, he's
40:15
Speaker 1: like a drain the swamp, dude, and of of his age, right.
40:20
Speaker 1: And the swamp to him is corporate power and the
40:24
Speaker 1: high level nepotism of the aristocratic class in the US.
40:28
Speaker 1: And you know, despite what people say about a class
40:31
Speaker 1: system in the United States, there's always been an aristocracy here.
40:35
Speaker 1: So he wants to he wants to pump up class warfare, well,
40:40
Speaker 1: not class warfare especially, but class rights. And he talks
40:43
Speaker 1: about the working class, you know, the people who are
40:46
Speaker 1: sent to fight, the people who have to actually die
40:50
Speaker 1: on the front lines. He says they don't have a
40:54
Speaker 1: voice in deciding whether or not to go to war.
40:58
Speaker 1: And I am super not loving it. We're paraphrasing, but
41:02
Speaker 1: that's that's where he's going. So he goes to jail.
41:04
Speaker 1: He's not the only one. Thousands of anti war activists
41:09
Speaker 1: and socialists get jammed up during the First World War,
41:12
Speaker 1: and then like you mentioned old the Red Scare, and
41:16
Speaker 1: what we see is strange because at this point Uncle
41:19
Speaker 1: Sam is essentially trying to outlaw an ideology. They're trying
41:23
Speaker 1: to outlaw socialism as a it's like thought crime. Well,
41:27
Speaker 1: so the thing that I was talking about earlier where
41:28
Speaker 1: it's like we hadn't quite gotten there yet, now we're
41:30
Speaker 1: really getting there because they're like, oh, they sort of
41:34
Speaker 1: slept on it right where it was like they didn't
41:36
Speaker 1: quite realize how antithetical to the institutions that Uncle Sam
41:41
Speaker 1: relies on, you know. And uh, Uncle Sam always was
41:45
Speaker 1: kind of like a symbol of like equality and like
41:47
Speaker 1: you know, American stick tuitiveness and all of that. But
41:50
Speaker 1: what Uncle Sam ultimately became was just kind of this
41:53
Speaker 1: this representation of the powered class, you know, whether those
41:58
Speaker 1: be politicians or you know, the moneyed hierarchy of industry.
42:04
Speaker 1: And this is okay, so we're we're maybe lionizing or
42:10
Speaker 1: uh deified debs a little bit, but he's he's still him,
42:15
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, He's still his very version
42:17
Speaker 1: of Jenny from the Block. Uh, he goes to court
42:21
Speaker 1: and this is like a kind of moment. Yeah, they're
42:28
Speaker 1: sexy sexy justice and justice and sorry, okay, I got it. Yeah,
42:33
Speaker 1: Dick Wolf. So this is uh, this is a moment
42:38
Speaker 1: where he goes to court. He's got an attorney, and
42:41
Speaker 1: his attorney is getting kind of hyperbolic. His attorney basically, uh,
42:45
Speaker 1: compares Eugene Debs to Jesus Christ. And there's no one call.
42:51
Speaker 1: I know, that's the entry point. They're breaking the ice.
42:53
Speaker 1: No one gets called to the stand, but Gene and
42:57
Speaker 1: Jeans testimony is a two hour speech with like no interruptions,
43:03
Speaker 1: which I cannot imagine that happening in a like that
43:06
Speaker 1: does feel like a fake law and order courtroom situation.
43:10
Speaker 1: Two hours, two hours. Understand, what do you do? A
43:14
Speaker 1: little This is a little unrelated, but it just does
43:16
Speaker 1: kind of point to the power of speaking up in
43:19
Speaker 1: court like that because it becomes part of record and
43:23
Speaker 1: people react, you know, the jury reacts, the litigator's react,
43:27
Speaker 1: the judge reacts. And I saw a thing where remember
43:29
Speaker 1: murder was the case. You know Tupac he actually went
43:33
Speaker 1: to court for for a murder and he didn't say
43:35
Speaker 1: a thing throughout the entire case until the very end
43:39
Speaker 1: when he stood up and said something to the effect
43:41
Speaker 1: of this hasn't been justice. He essentially said, this is
43:44
Speaker 1: the kangaroo court. But he said, my my faith is
43:47
Speaker 1: not in your hands. My faith is in God's hands.
43:50
Speaker 1: And it was just the most baller kind of like,
43:53
Speaker 1: you know, I know that I'm you know, righteous here,
43:56
Speaker 1: and again I don't know even what came of that case.
43:58
Speaker 1: I meaning obviously didn't go to prison centered or get
44:00
Speaker 1: the death penalty. I think he was acquitted, if I'm
44:02
Speaker 1: not mistaken. But this is that level of like, you know,
44:06
Speaker 1: he's going to have his moments and people have to
44:08
Speaker 1: pay attention because it's part of public record. You're out
44:12
Speaker 1: of order. This whole court is out of order. This
44:15
Speaker 1: whole country is out of order. Uh Also, what's next
44:18
Speaker 1: airplane food? When those get invented, this is gonna be nuts.
44:22
Speaker 1: Uh So, yeah, he says, I believe in free speech.
44:27
Speaker 1: I believe in war as well as peace, and if
44:30
Speaker 1: this espionage law stands, then our constitution is dead. It
44:38
Speaker 1: was used as a workaround to to to jam this
44:41
Speaker 1: guy up. It was not the letter and spirit of
44:45
Speaker 1: the Act. It was a way of like literally shutting
44:47
Speaker 1: down free speech. So what he's saying, whether you agree
44:50
Speaker 1: with him or not, you know holds true. How can
44:53
Speaker 1: you do espionage isn't something you do in public? Espionage
44:56
Speaker 1: is something you do in the shadows. So to call
44:59
Speaker 1: make a speech saying something unpopular, it's called that espionage
45:04
Speaker 1: is absurd. I agree with you, because they're trying to
45:09
Speaker 1: sabotage an idea. A war on an idea is a
45:13
Speaker 1: very difficult war to win. Uh. There's one line that
45:17
Speaker 1: I think, I know this really speaks um to you, Max.
45:21
Speaker 1: I think it speaks to Nolan I as well. And
45:24
Speaker 1: it's something it's something I've always remembered since I first
45:28
Speaker 1: learned about this guy from his from his address. It
45:34
Speaker 1: comes to us via another socialist named Max Eastman. It's this,
45:40
Speaker 1: while there is a lower class, I am in it,
45:43
Speaker 1: while there is a criminal element, I am of it,
45:46
Speaker 1: while there is a soul in prison, I am not
45:50
Speaker 1: free again. Take him to church, yeah, man. And it's
45:55
Speaker 1: funny too, because if you look up images of Eugene Dabs,
45:58
Speaker 1: I mean he's a wiry, slight kind of fellow where
46:02
Speaker 1: he might as well have elbow patches, you know, he
46:05
Speaker 1: really does look like a you know, a professor um.
46:08
Speaker 1: So he doesn't have the the idea of casting him
46:11
Speaker 1: as like a would be dictator, which is ironic that
46:14
Speaker 1: kind of rhetoric, because he's couldn't be more anti dictator,
46:19
Speaker 1: you know, because I mean, we have these de facto
46:22
Speaker 1: dictators in the history of our country, in these captains
46:26
Speaker 1: of industry. You know, they are these folks that that
46:28
Speaker 1: there there are no checks and balances um and and
46:31
Speaker 1: we have this illusion of checks and balances kind of
46:34
Speaker 1: in the government, but within industry there really aren't. Um.
46:38
Speaker 1: We were even in the earliest days of things like
46:40
Speaker 1: regulatory um boards and things that are kind of calling
46:44
Speaker 1: uh industrial you know, giants to task in terms of
46:48
Speaker 1: what they're doing to the plan and what they're doing
46:50
Speaker 1: to the working people. So you have this kind of
46:52
Speaker 1: shadow government within industry that that essentially they are these dictators.
46:57
Speaker 1: So it's hilarious to try to cast the slight little
47:01
Speaker 1: preface sorial dude as like a would be dictator. Yeah,
47:04
Speaker 1: and then let's also consider that, um importantly, a lot
47:10
Speaker 1: of a lot of countries that would go on to
47:14
Speaker 1: practice what you would see as communism or some blend
47:18
Speaker 1: of socialism, a lot of them later failed, Right, So
47:23
Speaker 1: it was easy to point to those experiments and say, hey,
47:28
Speaker 1: watch out be scared, because if you if you want
47:33
Speaker 1: these things like better labor laws than the next thing,
47:37
Speaker 1: you know, uh, you're essentially going to be forced into
47:41
Speaker 1: serfdom like over in the U. S. SR. So there
47:44
Speaker 1: was there was a lot. This is ideological warfare. His speech,
47:50
Speaker 1: though it is dope and rousing for many people in
47:53
Speaker 1: the crowd, it doesn't persuade the judge. So the Espionage Act,
47:58
Speaker 1: whether or not you agree that it is morally just,
48:01
Speaker 1: is legal. It is letter is the lawful land. So
48:05
Speaker 1: he gets sent back up the river for ten years.
48:09
Speaker 1: He's taken from Cleveland to a prison out West Virginia,
48:13
Speaker 1: and then later they send him down here to Atlanta
48:17
Speaker 1: to the infamous Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, a very messed up
48:23
Speaker 1: place to live. He's stuck in a shoebox size cell
48:26
Speaker 1: with five other dudes. Isn't that the one that's still standing.
48:30
Speaker 1: It's like it's very like Gothic. It's like over by
48:33
Speaker 1: the good Taco place, Yeah, the prison Taco place. Yeah,
48:36
Speaker 1: everybody loves it. It's so good that place is is
48:40
Speaker 1: uh is um what's the word I'm looking for him striking.
48:44
Speaker 1: It's about it's gotta be a better word. But it's just, yes, foreboding.
48:48
Speaker 1: It's very Gotham city. You know, it's like it looks
48:50
Speaker 1: like a weird Dracula castle. Yeah, that's a good description.
48:57
Speaker 1: And uh so he's there, and this is way before
49:00
Speaker 1: where the taco places built. But try it when you
49:02
Speaker 1: come into town, folks, let us know. We'll meet you
49:04
Speaker 1: up there. He says, don't give me any special treatment.
49:09
Speaker 1: I wasn't just uh, I wasn't just styling on it
49:11
Speaker 1: when I was talking in court. You know, if there's
49:14
Speaker 1: a criminal element, let me be of it. Let me
49:16
Speaker 1: be part of what you call the lowest. And they say, yeah,
49:21
Speaker 1: right on, man. So you're gonna be in this cell
49:24
Speaker 1: for fourteen hours a day, uh, and we'll let you
49:26
Speaker 1: walk out in the prison yard twenty minutes every twenty
49:30
Speaker 1: four hours. The nutritional value of what they're feeding prisoners
49:33
Speaker 1: there is very, very bad. So he is gradually growing
49:38
Speaker 1: malnourished and weak. And like you pointed out, no, he
49:41
Speaker 1: doesn't have the best constitution to begin with. So he
49:46
Speaker 1: starts to think, Holy smokes, the people I've met in
49:51
Speaker 1: this prison, they're not necessarily bad people. They have, in fact,
49:56
Speaker 1: a lot in common with the guys I worked with
49:59
Speaker 1: in my real road days. He says, you it's a
50:02
Speaker 1: cross section of society. You can see every version of
50:05
Speaker 1: humanity here. And he says, you know what, also, I
50:10
Speaker 1: kind of like, how, uh, this prison I'm in is
50:13
Speaker 1: a model of equality because we're all in the same
50:16
Speaker 1: terrible situation. Right, Yeah, that's true. It really does kind
50:21
Speaker 1: of even the playing field. I mean, you know, there
50:22
Speaker 1: are obviously, we know there are certain folks in prison
50:25
Speaker 1: that get more privileges because of connections and skill sets
50:29
Speaker 1: or you know, the aid frames of the world and
50:32
Speaker 1: all of that. But in general, you really do have
50:35
Speaker 1: to bootstrap yourself and like, you know, become valuable in
50:39
Speaker 1: a very specific way in prison. Yeah. And of course
50:43
Speaker 1: this is not too in any way diminish the horrors
50:47
Speaker 1: of incarceration, which are you know many right, the risk
50:52
Speaker 1: of physical violence, Uh, the dangers of infection and disease.
50:57
Speaker 1: These are very real problems back then as well as today.
51:02
Speaker 1: He becomes this he has something really interesting. Um, he
51:07
Speaker 1: he becomes an ultimate champion of equality, right, and this
51:13
Speaker 1: is what he's talking about in his later writings. So
51:18
Speaker 1: this makes him a martyr, this makes him a folk hero.
51:22
Speaker 1: He's a champion of free speech. He runs for president again,
51:27
Speaker 1: that's right. Don't call it a comeback. This dude is
51:32
Speaker 1: in jail and he runs for president. He gets nearly
51:36
Speaker 1: a million votes as convict number nine six five three.
51:41
Speaker 1: We did a slight mention of it in part one,
51:44
Speaker 1: and we paid it off. And as the New Yorker
51:46
Speaker 1: puts it in this article that we uh that we
51:49
Speaker 1: referenced um by Jill Lapore, a vote for Deb's at
51:55
Speaker 1: that point was not a vote for the Socialist Party.
51:59
Speaker 1: It was a vote for free speech. Because again, whether
52:03
Speaker 1: you you know, buy into the various intricacies of socialism,
52:08
Speaker 1: which which there are many, what he was truly fighting
52:11
Speaker 1: for here was having his free speech shut down. Yeah yeah,
52:17
Speaker 1: And he probably at this point, given the national support
52:22
Speaker 1: he garnered, he conceivably could ask for a pardon and
52:26
Speaker 1: it probably would have been granted, right if he had
52:30
Speaker 1: made some sort of public maya culpa, right and sort
52:33
Speaker 1: of diffused the bomb of this activist movement. But he said, nag,
52:38
Speaker 1: that's past for me, or that's a know for me, dog,
52:41
Speaker 1: And he grew sicker, grew weaker. Day in day out.
52:46
Speaker 1: People began holding these free gene rallies, what they called
52:50
Speaker 1: them free debt rallies. But yeah, President Woodrow Wilson again,
52:57
Speaker 1: thank you, famously a dick. Uh. He refused to answer
53:02
Speaker 1: any of these national calls for just amnesty. Right, you
53:05
Speaker 1: can say that he's still guilty, but let this guy
53:08
Speaker 1: out of jail before he dies. For prison war, it
53:11
Speaker 1: would take a different administration. Warren Harding's administration releases him
53:15
Speaker 1: on Christmas Day one, but the damage to his frail
53:20
Speaker 1: condition was done. He never recovered. He lived in a
53:24
Speaker 1: sanatorium for the rest of his life. In he said
53:30
Speaker 1: the Socialist Party was pretty much dead in the US,
53:34
Speaker 1: and the next year he passed away. But you know,
53:39
Speaker 1: to this day, I think we have in Bernie Sanders
53:43
Speaker 1: sort of a Eugene Debs analog and that he really,
53:46
Speaker 1: you know, made a splash in the kind of mainstream
53:49
Speaker 1: political stage. And he obviously didn't win, but just by
53:53
Speaker 1: virtue of like him being out there kind of spreading
53:57
Speaker 1: these kinds of ideas, I think he made a big impact.
54:00
Speaker 1: And I think Eugene V. Debs would have been proud,
54:02
Speaker 1: And I couldn't I don't know this for a fact,
54:04
Speaker 1: but I can't imagine that that Sanders isn't a student
54:08
Speaker 1: of Debs. Oh? Absolutely, yeah, Because while this might sound
54:13
Speaker 1: like a story that is ultimately a story of failure,
54:16
Speaker 1: it's not really, because the legacy continued on, you know
54:21
Speaker 1: what I mean. The It's like the idea of seeing
54:26
Speaker 1: an apple fall to the ground and thinking, ah, dang,
54:30
Speaker 1: what a waste of an apple. But every apple has seats,
54:34
Speaker 1: as did the beliefs of Debs, and those seeds took root. God,
54:38
Speaker 1: that's a painful analogy, but I hope, I hope we're
54:40
Speaker 1: painting the picture, and they grew into things like new
54:43
Speaker 1: generations of social reformers who spearheaded stuff like the New
54:49
Speaker 1: Deal which saved the United States in the nineteen thirties.
54:54
Speaker 1: And uh, this becomes part of the great, at times contradictory,
55:02
Speaker 1: historical anatomy of the United States, of the country in
55:06
Speaker 1: which we live. And at this point, you know, because
55:10
Speaker 1: I don't want to sound sanctimonious, your ted talkie, at
55:15
Speaker 1: this point, I think we tip our hats to you,
55:17
Speaker 1: gene V Debs. Whether or not you agree with him,
55:20
Speaker 1: you have to respect that he kept it real the
55:22
Speaker 1: whole way through. And we can end on a lighter note. Gentleman, Noel,
55:28
Speaker 1: max is it is it time for our spiteful dessert
55:34
Speaker 1: said okay, alright, So, um Woodrow Wilson fans, if you
55:39
Speaker 1: are somehow still listening to this episode, uh we we
55:43
Speaker 1: would like to share with you some excellent research the
55:46
Speaker 1: Max did. Uh Nolan, I did a little on our
55:49
Speaker 1: own as well. We wanted to end this episode, which
55:52
Speaker 1: is a quick list of reasons we think Woodrow Wilson
55:56
Speaker 1: just sucks. Just sucks as a purse it not even
56:02
Speaker 1: a president. Oh my gosh, Max, I think you should lead.
56:05
Speaker 1: I mean, this is your this is your your baby.
56:08
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah yeah, Wildrow Wilson really sucks. So the article
56:12
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be referencing for most of this is a
56:14
Speaker 1: vast article titled Woodrow Wilson was extremely racist, even by
56:18
Speaker 1: the standards of his time. It was compared to two
56:22
Speaker 1: people around him at the time. Because you know, that's
56:24
Speaker 1: one of the hard things about going through history of
56:26
Speaker 1: people and be like it's like, well, they were not
56:29
Speaker 1: as racist as everyone else, But Woodrow Wilson was so
56:33
Speaker 1: racist that everyone around him like, wow, this guy is
56:35
Speaker 1: so ridiculously racist. So um, one thing he did I
56:38
Speaker 1: did not know about this, but you know, reconstruction. Uh,
56:44
Speaker 1: all that era stuff. There's a lot of the stuff
56:46
Speaker 1: was still in place, and unfortunately a lot of it
56:48
Speaker 1: would be carved away without these uh about these decades.
56:52
Speaker 1: And one of the main people to do that, Woodrow Wilson.
56:54
Speaker 1: He resegregated the federal government. He fired, or at least
56:59
Speaker 1: put in an action, the firing of fifteen of the
57:02
Speaker 1: seventeen black supervisors in all the federal service. There's only
57:06
Speaker 1: seventeen black supervisors, so there's not many that many of them,
57:09
Speaker 1: and by the time he was done, fifteen of them
57:10
Speaker 1: were gone. He was like, too far. He also yeah,
57:14
Speaker 1: he was like, um, like how Lovecraft was really racist
57:18
Speaker 1: for a large part of his life. Lovecraft was so
57:21
Speaker 1: racist that he made other racists uncomfortable. And that's kind
57:24
Speaker 1: of the Woodrow Wilson vibe. This is astonishing because uh,
57:31
Speaker 1: he also tried to high road people right when um,
57:35
Speaker 1: when he got confronted by black Americans who saw the
57:40
Speaker 1: threat of his his weird, his weird crush on segregation,
57:46
Speaker 1: he told them, what what do you say, Max? You
57:48
Speaker 1: should do the quote, Oh no, I have to read
57:52
Speaker 1: this one. He said, I'm not going to try an
57:53
Speaker 1: accent segregation. It's not humiliating, but a benefit and ought
57:58
Speaker 1: to be so regarded by you gentlemen. Wolf and you guys,
58:03
Speaker 1: I actually have another one. I have a secret one
58:05
Speaker 1: from this article that I did not list in here.
58:07
Speaker 1: It's so bad that I left out the side. But
58:09
Speaker 1: supposedly there was this there was this black gentleman whose
58:12
Speaker 1: job was deemed so essential they couldn't fire him. But
58:16
Speaker 1: they're like, well, we have or they couldn't fire him,
58:18
Speaker 1: and they couldn't move him into another department. He he
58:20
Speaker 1: worked so interconnected with everyone else in the department who
58:23
Speaker 1: was also who was by the way, white. They're like, okay,
58:26
Speaker 1: so we have to leave him here, but we still
58:28
Speaker 1: have to secre gae him. So they put this man
58:31
Speaker 1: in a cage in a federal office building. It is
58:34
Speaker 1: listed in this article. This, this man doing his job
58:38
Speaker 1: working for the federal government, was put in a cage
58:41
Speaker 1: while he worked in human Not to mention, he was
58:46
Speaker 1: a vocal defender of the Ku Klux Klan. Oh right, yeah,
58:49
Speaker 1: that part. Yeah. Woulard Wilson really loved the clan. He
58:52
Speaker 1: really loved Confederacy, and he was kind of just like
58:55
Speaker 1: obsessed with this whole lost cause thing where you know,
58:59
Speaker 1: this idea that, like the Confederacy losing the Civil War,
59:02
Speaker 1: there was this noble cause that they were fighting for
59:04
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, all this bs that does not stand
59:07
Speaker 1: up to any scrutiny whatsoever. And he really wanted to
59:13
Speaker 1: install these ideas and everything. M Yeah. He also he
59:20
Speaker 1: thought that the Confederacy was a pretty good idea. He said, look,
59:26
Speaker 1: these are bucolic, like, uh, philosopher kings of an agrarian society,
59:34
Speaker 1: and these northern industrialists just don't get it. Uh. He
59:40
Speaker 1: was his most You know, Wilson's an academic, but being
59:45
Speaker 1: an academic doesn't necessarily being intelligent does not necessarily make
59:50
Speaker 1: you a good person. He was really into what is
59:54
Speaker 1: called lost cause mythology, which is like the South was
59:58
Speaker 1: right kind of stuff. Yeah, and it occurs to me. Uh,
1:00:03
Speaker 1: Eugene V. Debs and you and Woodrow Wilson weirdly resembled
1:00:07
Speaker 1: one another. Yeah, it looked like kind of it's like
1:00:10
Speaker 1: a Marvel film where the hero and the yes like
1:00:17
Speaker 1: in metaverse kind of or not mass good in alternate
1:00:20
Speaker 1: kind of universe scenarios multi multiverse, thank you, not in metaverse.
1:00:27
Speaker 1: But man, what a ride. Um. I can't believe we
1:00:30
Speaker 1: I can't believe that we pulled two episodes out of this,
1:00:33
Speaker 1: and I think each one has, you know, something very
1:00:37
Speaker 1: special because this guy's early life was its own thing,
1:00:40
Speaker 1: and then his history. I gotta say to that one
1:00:42
Speaker 1: of the things I did to research for this, I
1:00:44
Speaker 1: found a dude on this history YouTube channel who's like
1:00:48
Speaker 1: a Eugene V. Deb's impersonator um and and it's sort
1:00:52
Speaker 1: of like in the office where there was that that
1:00:53
Speaker 1: eight that a blencoln um uh, Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Franklin
1:00:58
Speaker 1: impersonator exactly. This guy as these talks in character, and
1:01:01
Speaker 1: then afterwards he was interviewed not in character, and he
1:01:04
Speaker 1: pointed out that he did the version of Debs that
1:01:07
Speaker 1: was sort of more long in the tooth because he
1:01:09
Speaker 1: didn't feel like he could possibly ever match the rhetoric,
1:01:13
Speaker 1: the rhetorical fire that's kind of more young Eugene Debs brought. Yeah,
1:01:20
Speaker 1: and this and um, this is worth watching, by the way,
1:01:24
Speaker 1: to get a sense of Debs. What Noel's talking about here.
1:01:27
Speaker 1: We talked earlier. I love the h I love the
1:01:32
Speaker 1: um what do you call it? I love the re
1:01:33
Speaker 1: enactments I love those towns, I love the historical figures.
1:01:37
Speaker 1: I'm a sucker for that, but even I would probably
1:01:40
Speaker 1: skip a Woodrow Wilson re enactment. Uh. And with that,
1:01:45
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna We're gonna call it a date.
1:01:47
Speaker 1: This has been a crazy week for us, but it's
1:01:50
Speaker 1: it's thoroughly enjoyable. Um. We cannot wait to get to
1:01:55
Speaker 1: some of our future episodes. Couple of a couple of
1:01:59
Speaker 1: spoilers for your ridiculous historians. We're getting into hot tubs
1:02:03
Speaker 1: figuratively and maybe literally. We're also, uh, we're also going
1:02:08
Speaker 1: deep into the story of condiments. I am so gas man,
1:02:13
Speaker 1: oh man, and literally. Just by hearing you say that, now,
1:02:16
Speaker 1: I think we need to also do an episode on
1:02:18
Speaker 1: the story of condoms, because we know that could in
1:02:21
Speaker 1: and of itself be an interesting tale. You know what
1:02:24
Speaker 1: about condoms filled with condiments? No, I must stop you
1:02:30
Speaker 1: right there. As a family show, family show. Huge thanks
1:02:34
Speaker 1: to super producer Max Williams stopping him short of of
1:02:37
Speaker 1: of of just totally ruining my mind. Um, Alex Williams
1:02:42
Speaker 1: who composed this theme, doctor Zach Williams no relation, as
1:02:47
Speaker 1: well as Jeff Bartlett. Big thanks to our research associate team.
1:02:53
Speaker 1: Thanks to our long suffering friend and self appointed nemeses
1:02:57
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland ak the Quister, Thanks to Deb's. Thanks to
1:03:02
Speaker 1: our ridiculous historians for tuning in Noel. Thanks to you,
1:03:06
Speaker 1: Matt Hey ed you as well. We'll see you next time, folks.
1:03:16
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
1:03:19
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
1:03:22
Speaker 1: your favorite shows,